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https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/inflatable-hospital-isolation-wards/ | Inflatable Hospital Isolation Wards | Chris Lott | [
"News"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"hospital",
"ICU",
"portable building"
] | The continued spread of Covid-19 has resulted in a worldwide shortage of hospital beds.
A temporary hospital isolation ward
(
translated
) was co-developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences (KIRAMS) to help alleviate this problem. We’re not familiar with the logistics and expense of installing traditional temporary hospital facilities, but the figures provided for this inflatable building approach to the problem seem impressive. It takes 14 days to produce one module, a process which presumably could be pipelined. Being 70% lighter and smaller than their rigidly-constructed counterparts, they can be more easily stored and shipped where needed, even by air.
Once on-site, it takes one day to inflate and outfit it with utilities such as electricity, water, and communications. One of these modules, which look like really big inflatable Quonset huts, contains an intensive care unit, four negative-pressure rooms, a nursing station, staff area, changing and bathrooms, and storage. All this in a 450 m
2
building 30 m long and 15 m wide. That works out to be almost 2-stories tall, which is confirmed by the photo above.
Now that the design is finished and a functional unit constructed, the goal is to put it into production as soon as possible. Of course, physical hospital facilities are not the only thing in short supply these days — doctors, nursing and support staff, medical supplies, not to mention the vaccinations themselves, are all needed. But hopefully the success of this project can contribute to the global effort of saving lives and getting control of the virus sooner rather than later. The video below is in Korean, but the automatic English subtitles aren’t too bad. | 22 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314171",
"author": "Bernie M",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T20:09:10",
"content": "But for the other 64% (to use your numbers) of humanity, this is an important development! :-)Yes, from a geographic point of view there are almost no cases on the oceans, and that’s 75% of the surface!... | 1,760,373,212.926829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/a-few-of-my-favorite-things-amateur-radio/ | A Few Of My Favorite Things: Amateur Radio | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"gnu radio",
"ham radio",
"homebrew",
"sdr",
"uhf"
] | Hackaday has among its staff a significant number of writers who also hold amateur radio licenses. We’re hardware folks at heart, so we like our radios homebrew, and we’re never happier than when we’re working at high frequencies.
Amateur radio is a multi-faceted hobby, there’s
just so much
that’s incredibly interesting about it. It’s a shame then that as a community we sometimes get bogged down with negativity when debating the minutia. So today let’s talk about a few of my favourite things about the hobby of amateur radio. I hope that you’ll find them interesting and entertaining, and in turn share your own favorite things in the comments below.
Homebrew Radios Of The Minimal Kind
This book was where it all started for me.
Contesting and disaster preparedness may leave me cold, but there’s magic in the minimal when it comes to radio. My introduction to electronics sometime in the 1970s came in the form of the simplest of radios, when my dad bought me a copy of George Dobbs’
Making A Transistor Radio
, and showed me how to build a crystal set. That so few parts could form a working radio that pulled a signal from the air and into my headphones without the need for batteries was enough magic to get a 9-year-old me hooked.
Upgrading it to a germanium transistor
regenerative receiver
set me on the path that led me through university to an electronic engineering degree, and ultimately to writing here at Hackaday. There is in a very literal sense a whole world out there to be unlocked using radios made with relatively small bills-of-material, and though I’ve at times
fumed
about the tendency for such designs to be a little stuck-in-the-mud there is no reason why minimalist radios can not move with the times. That a quadrature front end for a sound-card SDR
can be made from little more than a pile of 74-series chips
is a particularly appealing example.
Scrap Televisions As The Gateway To RF Design
A UHF construction kit in every dumpster
I got my amateur radio licence back in the mists of time, when the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry only handed out two types of document. There was the class A licence or the Class B, with the difference being that for the former you had to pass a Morse test but got access to the HF bands while for the latter you had no Morse but were restricted to 144MHz and above. Thus the old men could talk in peace about The War on 80 metres, and the 2 metre band was a lively place.
I had zero interest in Morse so I had a Class B licence, and since radio construction was my passion then as now I set about building for the VHF and UHF bands. I didn’t have a grown-up’s budget so my component supply was limited to what I could pull from scrap consumer electronics, which meant abundant 1970s PAL TV sets and the occasional earlier-model video recorder. There were plentiful VHF-capable inductors and transistors, and every
TV tuner
and VCR modulator had a set of UHF-capable transistors, so both the 2 metre and 70 cm bands were within my grasp.
There’s a sensible point among all this reminiscing, and it came in a thorough grounding in RF design techniques. RF is seen as a Dark Art by many engineers, and while there are certainly elements of design at these frequencies that edge into the complex it remains true that once you have a feel for the basics
it’s something that’s easily possible to master
. When you learn about stripline circuits by assembling them from copper wire and tinplate you learn a lot about shielding, impedances, routing, and interactions between neighbouring circuitry. Sure, it’s easy to make mistakes, but in that medium with a soldering iron it’s equally easy to try alternative designs until performance improves. So much UHF and higher RF circuitry is now packed into the silicon that the type of transistor circuits I was messing about with has become rather obsolete and your UHF work is much more likely to be on a PCB than a piece of tinplate, but the same principles apply. I miss those BF180 RF amplifier transistors from scrap 1970s TV sets.
The SDR As A Digital Playground
The age of the homebrew RF tinkerer may be at a close, at least in the manner in which I started it. Nobody at the cutting edge of radio is likely to be messing around with discrete transistor circuits in the 2020s, unless perhaps they are working with extremely exotic devices up in the millimetre wavelengths.It’s all software-defined radios, opaque black plastic boxes that deliver a useful radio experience on a computer but that’s it. No more homebrew, no more tinkering.
This would have taken a long time to build and get right as physical components.
You might well agree with the previous paragraph, but SDRs provide me with another of my favourite things about radio, namely that using GNU Radio I now have a general purpose digital signal processing playground. Coupled with a dirt-cheap RTL-SDR stick it gives me the ability to play with all the same building blocks I used to with my soldering iron and many more, at lightning speed in my computer. I can make a radio in no time, and change its parameters at will! The best part is though that it’s not simply restricted to radio. GNU radio works at whatever frequency can be digitised by its input device, and if that happens to be an audio card then it can work with audio too. Most readers last April Fools’ day probably spotted
my fake gold USB cable
a mile away, but perhaps fewer understood that the simple audio analyser in GNU Radio was completely real. It was inspired by
a Supercon talk from Mike Ossmann and Kate Temkin
, and if you didn’t see that talk I suggest you give it a watch.
So yes, there’s plenty in amateur radio that interests other radio amateurs but has never interested me, and there are still some aspects of the hobby that can be justifiably criticised. But amateur radio is a very broad church indeed, and above you’ve seen some of the things that keep me interested in it. Now it’s your turn, tell us in the comments: what radios do it for you? | 50 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314125",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T18:14:53",
"content": "That book was evil, sends you to the dark side of OC44 and OC72 hoarding :-D I kid, but it was kinda 10 years out of date when published, and by the time it caught my attention a few years after that... | 1,760,373,213.170408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/third-times-the-charm-for-this-capable-cyberdeck/ | Third Time’s The Charm For This Capable Cyberdeck | Tom Nardi | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"cyberdeck",
"mechanical keyboard",
"portable computer",
"retro"
] | For those who decide to build their own personal cyberdeck, it’s often as much about the journey as it is the final product. The recent write-up that
[Sophie Wheeler] put together about the process that lead her to build her own bespoke mobile computer
is a perfect example. She went through three distinct design phases to create something that had what she describes as a “retro-futuristic, hand-built, utilitarian aesthetic”, and we think you’ll agree the final product is right on target.
At Hackaday, we’re strong believers that you can learn just as much from a failed attempt as you will from a rousing success, which is why we especially appreciate the way [Sophie] has documented this project. The basic layout and general bill of materials for his hypothetical cyberdeck had been sorted out in her head for about a year, but it took a few attempts until everything came together in a way she was happy with. Rather than pretend those early missteps never happened, she’s decided to present each one and explain why it didn’t quite work out.
This laser-cut acrylic design was difficult to assemble.
Frankly both earlier attempts look pretty slick to us, but of course the only person who’s opinion really counts when it comes to a good cyberdeck is the one who’s building it. The original acrylic design was a bit too fiddly, and while the first attempt at 3D printing the computer’s frame and enclosure went much better, it still left something to be desired.
The final result is a clean and straightforward design that has plenty of room inside for a Raspberry Pi 4, UPSPack V3 power management board, 10,000 mAh battery, internal USB hub, and a AK33 mechanical keyboard. Topside there’s a 7” 1024×600 IPS LCD with touch overlay that’s naturally been offset in the traditional cyberdeck style, and on the right side of the enclosure there’s a bay that holds a KKMoon RTL-SDR. Though that could certainly be swapped out for something else should you decide to
print out your own version of this Creative Commons licensed design
.
In our 2020 review we noted the
incredible influx of cyberdeck builds we’d seen over the last 12 months
, and judging by just
what we’ve seen in just these last few weeks
, 2021 should be
another bumper year for these unique computers
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314167",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T20:05:31",
"content": "Seems wrong this doesn’t have a comment or two (visible) yet!!Its rather neat and tidy, some interesting progression through the iterations, and a very sensible case design. Lots of space with those sep... | 1,760,373,212.747788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/new-parts-new-hacks/ | New Parts, New Hacks | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Microcontrollers",
"Slider"
] | [
"microcontrollers",
"newsletter",
"raspberry pi"
] | The biggest news this week is that Raspberry Pi is no longer synonymous with single-board Linux computers: they’re
dipping their toes into the microcontroller business
with their first chip: the RP2040, and the supporting breakout board, the Pico. It’s an affordable, capable microcontroller being made by a firm that’s never made microcontrollers before, so that’s newsy.
The Hackaday comments lit on fire about this chip, with some fraction of the commenters lamenting the lack of wireless radios onboard. It’s a glass-half-full thing, I guess, but the RP2040
isn’t
an ESP32, folks. It’s something else. And it’s got a hardware trick up its sleeve that really tickles my fancy — the programmable input/output (PIO) units.
The other half of the commenters were, like me, salivating about getting to try out some of the new features. The PIO, of course, was high on that list, but this chip also caters to folks who are doing high-speed DSP, with fast multiplication routines burnt into ROM and a nice accumulator. (You know you’re a microcontroller nerd when you’re reading through a 663-page datasheet and thinking about all the funny ways you can use and/or abuse the hardware peripherals.)
All chip designs are compromises. Nothing can do everything. The new peripherals, novel combinations of old elements, and just pleasant design decisions, open up new opportunities if you’re willing to seek them out. When the ESP32 was new, I was looking at their oddball parallel-I2S hardware and thinking what kind of crazy hacks that would enable, and
clever hackers
have
proven me right
. I’d put my money on the PIO being similar.
New chips open up new possibilities for hacks. What are you going to do with them?
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
! | 84 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314851",
"author": "MEGA Version of the RP2040?",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T15:28:51",
"content": "I remain curious what their MEGA version upgrade of the RP2040 or RP2740 or whatever current or likely modified cores it winds up using will do and support. Keep the price reasonable, ... | 1,760,373,213.062389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/low-cost-metal-3d-printing-by-electrochemistry/ | Low Cost Metal 3D Printing By Electrochemistry | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"electrochemistry",
"electroplating"
] | [Billy Wu] has been writing for a few years about electrochemical 3D printing systems that can handle metal. He’s recently produced a video that you can see below about the process. Usually, printing in metal means having a high-powered laser and great expense. [Wu’s]
technique is an extension of electroplating
.
Boiling down the gist of the process, the print head is a syringe full of electroplating solution. Instead of plating a large object, you essentially electroplate on tiny areas. The process is relatively slow and if you speed it up too much, the result will have undesirable properties. But there are some mind-bending options here. By using print heads with different electrolytes, you can print using different metals. For example, the video shows structures made of both copper and nickel. You can also reverse the current and remove metal instead of depositing it.
This looks like something you could pretty readily replicate in a garage. Electroplating is well-understood and the 3D motion parts could be a hacked 3D printer. Sure, the result is slow but, after all, slow is a relative term. You might not mind taking a few days to print a metal object compared to the cost and trouble of creating it in other ways. Of course, since this is copper, we also have visions of printing circuit board traces on a substrate. We imagine you’d have to coat the board with something to make it conductive and then remove that after all the copper was in place. When you build this, be sure to
tell us about it
.
We’ve seen
electroplating pens
before and that’s really similar to this idea. Of course, you can also
make your 3D prints conductive and plate them
which is probably faster but isn’t really fully metal. | 80 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314808",
"author": "Arthur Wolf",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T12:06:32",
"content": "Urg I’ve been working on this in my garage for 6 months now :(Well, my technique is a bit different, still this is pretty annoying, why does this keep happening. Next week you’ll have an article about... | 1,760,373,213.40462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/two-key-keyboard-build-log-starts-small-but-thinks-big/ | Two-Key Keyboard Build Log Starts Small, But Thinks Big | Donald Papp | [
"hardware",
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"custom keyboard",
"keyboard",
"macro keyboard",
"macroboard",
"QMK",
"Teensy"
] | Interested in making a custom keyboard, but unsure where to start? Good news, because
[Jared]’s build log for an adorable “2% Milk” two-key mini-keyboard
covers everything you need to know about making a custom keyboard, including how to add optional RGB lighting. The only difference is that it gets done in a smaller and cheaper package than jumping directly in with a full-size DIY keyboard.
[Jared] is definitely no stranger to custom keyboard work, but when he saw parts for a
two-key “2% Milk” keyboard
for sale online, he simply couldn’t resist. Luckily for us, he took plenty of photos and his build log makes an excellent tutorial for anyone who wants to get into custom keyboards by starting small.
The hardware elements are clear by looking at photos, but what about the software? For that, [Jared] uses a
Teensy
Pro Micro clone running
QMK
, an open source project for driving and configuring custom input devices. QMK drives tiny devices like the
2% Milk
just as easily as it does larger ones, so following [Jared]’s build log therefore conveys exactly the same familiarity that would be needed to work on a bigger keyboard, which is part of what makes it such a great project to document.
Interested in going a little deeper down the custom keyboard rabbit hole?
You can go entirely DIY
, but there’s also no need to roll everything from scratch. It’s possible to buy most of the parts and treat the project like a kit, and
Hackaday’s own [Kristina Panos] is here to tell you all about what that was like
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314785",
"author": "Adrian Gunnar",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T09:20:56",
"content": "This seems like a great, easy, and cheap gatewaydrug to the world of custom diy keyboards. I will definitely try to build one myself.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,373,212.857029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/a-computer-in-your-pocket-1980s-style/ | A Computer In Your Pocket, 1980s Style | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"pocket pc",
"radio shack",
"retrocomputing",
"trs-80"
] | These days, having a little computer in your pocket is par for the course. But forty years ago, this was a new and high tech idea. [The 8-Bit Guy] has a great video
covering the state of the art in pocket computers
and personal digital assistants from the 1980s and 1990s. You can see the video below.
There are a lot of familiar faces on the video including the Radio Shack pocket computers, Palm Pilots, and some more obscure machines of varying quality.
It might impress you to know that the Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-1 pocket computer actually had two CPUs. Of course, each CPU was a 4-bit processor running at 256 kHz, so maybe not as impressive as it sounds. Still, what a marvel in its day, programming BASIC on a 24-character LCD.
The Casio PB-700 was from 1983. For under $200, you got a 4-line display, with each line having 20 characters. But it also had some graphic capabilities. You could even get an optional docking station that provided a color plotter and a microcassette recorder. Unfortunately, they were not widely available, at least in the United States.
If you want ultra-portable, the Seiko UC-2000 was actually a wristwatch that could dock with a keyboard and printer. Unfortunately, [Guy] couldn’t get a battery for it, but we did enjoy seeing him take it apart to pull out the dead battery.
I suspect the personal anecdote at the end will be somewhat familiar to many people who were school-aged in the 1970s and 1980s. Times have certainly changed.
You can fit a lot more computing power
in your pocket
today, of course. This video isn’t the only nostalgic love letter we’ve seen for
computers of that era
. | 25 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314770",
"author": "dgmsox",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T06:33:55",
"content": "Some searching for the Casio PB-700 via newspapers.com suggests that it was first sold in Australia starting in 1983. It doesn’t show up in the US until 1986 (along with a PB-770). Here’s an ad in the Los ... | 1,760,373,213.572223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/do-androids-search-for-cosmic-rays/ | Do Androids Search For Cosmic Rays? | Al Williams | [
"Android Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"android",
"citizen science",
"cosmic ray"
] | We always like citizen science projects, so we were very interested in
DECO
, the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory. That sounds like a physical location, but it is actually a network of cell phones that can detect cosmic rays using an ordinary Android phone’s camera sensor.
There may be some privacy concerns as the phone camera will take a picture and upload it every so often, and it probably also taxes the battery a bit. However, if you really want to do citizen science, maybe dedicate an old phone, put electrical tape over the lens and keep it plugged in. In fact, they encourage you to cover the lens to reduce background light and keep the phone plugged in.
According to the project website:
Cosmic rays are energetic subatomic particles produced by powerful cosmic accelerators, such as black holes and exploding stars. When they hit the top of the atmosphere, they produce showers of secondary particles, including electrons, photons, neutrinos, and muons. Many of these muons, which are similar to electrons but heavier, reach the ground at sea level and are a great tool for studying cosmic rays because they are easy to detect.
In practice, the app takes a photo every 1-2 seconds and looks for bright pixels. If it finds enough, the image becomes a candidate and receives further processing. Only a small number of frames are candidates and even fewer are actual events. They mention that it typically takes about 24 hours to get a few events on your phone. We aren’t sure how much data is sent to the server for processing and how much is done locally, but we suspect almost all the analysis is on the server. The app records your location but does degrade it somewhat for privacy.
You can see your results and the results of others on a
public data page
. There’s a map and you can narrow data by location, altitude, time, or even check in on a specific device or model.
Citizen and crowd-sourced science is all the rage lately, even
NASA’s
in. Citizen science even located a
lost moon lander. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314742",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T03:18:35",
"content": "Very, very cool! I bet Forrest Mims would be proud.I will soon have 2 old Android phones that I’ll be signing up for this project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,373,213.460273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/casio-f-91w-going-dark/ | Casio F-91W, Going Dark | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"backlight",
"Blue LEDs",
"casio",
"Casio F-91W",
"casio watch",
"leds",
"modding",
"polarizing film"
] | The Casio F-91W is easily one of the most iconic and popular watches worldwide. But what’s cool about having the same exact thing as millions of other people? Not much, unless of course you modify it to make it your own.
That’s exactly what [Gautchh] did to their beloved watch
. Between permanent dark mode, stereo blue LED backlights, and a new strap, this timepiece really stands out from the crowd.
Once [Gautchh] got the watch open, the first order of business was to re-polarize the LCD with a different film so the digits are light and the background is dark. This watch ships with a single green backlight LED that’s fairly faint, so [Gautchh] upgraded it to bright blue and added a second 1206 LED in parallel on the other side of the readout. Finally, they replaced the rubber strap with something less likely to chafe.
We think dark mode looks great, though [Gautchh] says it requires a little bit of training to hold your wrist just right to make it readable. They make these mods look easy, but they likely aren’t for the faint of heart. If you want to give it a shot, there are good step-by-step instructions and several pictures to help out.
We’ve seen a lot of Casio F-91W projects over the years,
including a method for waterproofing the internals
. If you have a lot of love for this watch,
why not make a giant version? | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314697",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T00:11:03",
"content": "Isn’t this this watch that all the terrorists use?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6314783",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timest... | 1,760,373,212.807587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/esp32-inkplate-gives-kindle-displays-a-second-chance/ | ESP32 Inkplate Gives Kindle Displays A Second Chance | Tom Nardi | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Parts"
] | [
"e-paper",
"e-waste recycling",
"electronic paper",
"Inkplate",
"kindle"
] | Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of hackers repurpose their Kindle or similar e-reader to reap the benefits of its electronic paper display. Usually this takes the form of some software running on the reader itself, since cracking the firmware is a lot easier than pulling out the panel and figuring out how to operate it independently. But what if somebody had already done that hard work for you?
Enter the Inkplate.
By pairing a recycled Kindle display with an ESP32
, Croatian electronics company e-radionica says they’ve not only created an open hardware e-paper display that’s easy for hackers and makers to use, but keeps electronic waste out of the landfill. Last year the $99 USD 6 inch version of the Inkplate ended its CrowdSupply campaign at over 920% of its original goal. The new 9.7 inch model is priced at $129, and so far managed to blow past its own funding goal just hours after the campaign went live. Clearly, the demand is there.
The new model’s e-paper display isn’t just larger, it also features a higher 1200 x 825 resolution and reduced refresh time. Outside of the screen improvements, you’ll also find more GPIO pins, an RTC module to keep more accurate time, and a USB Type-C port for both programming and power. You also get a choice of languages to use, with both Arduino and MicroPython libraries available for interfacing with the display. Interestingly, the Inkplate also features a so-called “Peripheral Mode” that allows you to
draw graphics primitives on the screen using commands sent over UART
.
While we’ve recently seen some
very promising efforts to repurpose old e-paper displays
, the turn-key solution offered by the Inkplate is admittedly very compelling. If you’re looking for an easy way to jump on the electronic paper bandwagon that works out of the box, this might be your chance.
[Thanks to Krunoslav for the tip.] | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314684",
"author": "Christopher J. Biernacki",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T23:31:51",
"content": "I may have to jump on this bandwagon!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6314686",
"author": "Ryan",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T2... | 1,760,373,213.511606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/getting-closer-to-metal-3d-printing/ | Getting Closer To Metal 3D Printing | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"laser sintering",
"metal 3d printing",
"NUBM31",
"OpenSLS",
"sls"
] | Most of our 3D printers lay down molten plastic or use photosensitive resin. But professional printers often use metal powder, laying out a pattern and then sintering it with a laser. [Metal Matters] is
trying to homebrew a similar system
(video, embedded below). And while not entirely successful, the handful of detailed progress videos are interesting to watch. We particularly enjoyed
the latest installment
(the second video, below) which showed solutions to some of the problems.
Because of the complexity of the system, there are small tidbits of interest even if you don’t want to build a metal printer. For example, in the most recent video, a CCD camera gives up its sensor to detect the laser’s focus.
Before you get the idea to try this with your cheap Chinese laser cutter, you should know that you’re going to have to splash out for some more lasers — the NUBM31 laser array from a laser projector has 20 diodes, each producing about 4.75 watts output.
Not that we haven’t seen
laser cutters used as 3D printers
, though. We hear a 5 W laser is good enough to
work with nylon
. We realize [Metal Matters] has some work left to do, but we have a feeling it is going to work out in the end and we can’t wait to see the success video. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314002",
"author": "jim",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T12:44:06",
"content": "This is looking pretty promising! I would suggest that sealing the print chamber be his number one priority, And if possible, see if you can get rid of the z axis laser movement. It’s just adding another laye... | 1,760,373,213.636207 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/the-sony-scopeman-possibly-the-best-product-they-never-made/ | The Sony ScopeMan, Possibly The Best Product They Never Made | Jenny List | [
"Portable Video Hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"Sony Watchman",
"vector display",
"X-Y. oscillograph"
] | From the perspective of a later decade it’s sometimes quaint and amusing to look back at the technological objects of desire from times past. In the 1980s for example a handheld television was the pinnacle of achievement, in a decade during which the Walkman had edged out the transistor radio as the pocket gadget of choice it seemed that visual entertainment would surely follow. Multiple manufacturers joined the range of pocket TVs on offer, and Sony’s take on the format used a flattened CRT with an angled phosphor screen viewed from behind through its glass envelope. [Niklas Fauth]
took one of these Sony Watchman devices and replaced its TV circuit board with one that turned it into a vector display
. The Sony Scopeman was born!
The schematic is deceptively simple, with an ESP32 receiving audio via Bluetooth and driving the deflection coils through a pair of op-amps and a set of driver transistors. These circuits are tricky to get right though, and in this
he acknowledged his inspiration
. Meanwhile the software has two selectable functions: a fairly traditional
X-Y vector ‘scope display
and
a Lorenz attractor algorithm
. And of course, it can also
display a vector version of our Wrencher logo
.
We like the Scopeman, in fact we like it a lot. There may be some discomfort for the retro tech purist in that it relies on butchering a vintage Watchman for its operation, but we’d temper that with the observation that the demise of analogue broadcast TV has rendered a Watchman useless, and also with the prospect that a dead one could be used for a conversion project.
[Niklas] has had more than one project appear on these pages, a memorable example being
his PCB Tesla coil
. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313940",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T09:20:50",
"content": "Für Hackaday reicht’s.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316087",
"author": "davedarko",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T10:59:36",... | 1,760,373,213.699445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/raspberry-pi-enters-microcontroller-game-with-4-pico/ | Raspberry Pi Enters Microcontroller Game With $4 Pico | Elliot Williams | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Parts",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"microcontroller",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040"
] | Raspberry Pi was synonymous with single-board Linux computers. No longer. The $4
Raspberry Pi Pico
board is their attempt to break into the crowded microcontroller module market.
The microcontroller in question, the RP2040, is also Raspberry Pi’s first foray into custom silicon, and it’s got a dual-core Cortex M0+ with luxurious amounts of SRAM and some very interesting custom I/O peripheral hardware that will likely mean that you never have to bit-bang again. But a bare microcontroller is no fun without a dev board, and the Raspberry Pi Pico adds 2 MB of flash, USB connectivity, and nice power management.
As with the Raspberry Pi Linux machines, the emphasis is on getting you up and running quickly, and there is copious documentation: from “Getting Started” type guides for both the C/C++ and MicroPython SDKs with
code examples
, to serious datasheets for the
Pico
and the
RP2040
itself, to hardware design notes and KiCAD breakout boards, and even the
contents of the on-board Boot ROM
. The Pico seems designed to make a friendly introduction to microcontrollers using MicroPython, but there’s enough guidance available for you to go as deep down the rabbit hole as you’d like.
Our quick take: the RP2040 is a very well thought-out microcontroller, with myriad nice design touches throughout, enough power to get most jobs done, and an innovative and very hacker-friendly software-defined hardware I/O peripheral. It’s backed by good documentation and many working examples, and at the end of the day it runs a pair of familiar ARM MO+ CPU cores. If this hits the shelves at the proposed $4 price, we can see it becoming the go-to board for many projects that don’t require wireless connectivity.
But you want more detail, right? Read on.
The Specs and the Luxuries
In many ways, the Pico is a well-appointed “normal” microcontroller board. It has 26 3.3 V GPIOs, a standard ARM Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port, USB host or device capabilities, two UARTs, two I2Cs, two SPIs, and 16 PWM channels in eight groups. (The PWM unit can also measure incoming PWM signals, both their frequency and duty cycle.) The Pico has a 12-bit ADC, although it’s connected to only
four
three pins, so you’ve got to be a little careful there. (Ed note: the RP2040 has four ADCs, but the fourth isn’t available on the Pico.)
The twin ARM M0+ cores run off of PLLs, and are specced up to 133 MHz, which is pretty fast. There are separate clock dividers for nearly every peripheral, and they can be turned on and off individually for power savings, as with most other ARM microcontrollers. It runs full-out at around 100 mA @ 5 V, and has full-memory-retention sleep modes under 1 mA.
As the ESP8266 and ESP32 modules do, it uses external flash ROM to store programs, and can run code directly from the flash as if it were internal memory. The Pico board comes with a decent 2 MB QSPI flash chip, but if you’re handy with a soldering iron, you can fit up to 16 MB. It has 264 kB of SRAM, which is certainly comfy. The RAM is divided up internally into four striped 64 kB banks for fast parallel access, but they’re also accessible singly if you’d like. Two additional 4 kB banks are non-striped and suggest using themselves as per-core stack memory, but nothing forces you to use them that way either.
There are numerous minor hardware-level conveniences. All of the configuration registers are 32 bits wide, and so you might not want to have to specify all of them, or maybe you want to avoid the read-modify-write dance. Like many of the STM32 chips, there is a special memory map that lets you set, clear, or XOR any bit in any of the config registers in a single atomic command. There are also 30 GPIOs, so they all fit inside a single 32-bit register — none of this Port B, Pin 7 stuff. This also means that you can read or write them all at once, while setting individual pins is easy through the above atomic access.
An internal mask ROM contains the UF2 bootloader, which means that you can always get the chip back under control. When you plug the Pico in holding down the BOOTSEL button, it shows up as a USB mass storage device, and you can just copy your code across, with no programmer, and Raspberry even provides an all-zeros file that you can copy across to completely clean-slate the machine. If you copy the Pico’s MicroPython binary across, however, you’ll never need the bootloader again. The mask ROM also contains some fast routines that support integer and floating point math, and all of the contents are open source as mentioned above.
The power regulation onboard is a boost-buck configuration that takes an input from 1.8 V to 5 V. This is a good range for lithium batteries, for instance, which can be a hassle because they run both above and below the IC’s 3.3 V, so it’s nice to have a boost-buck regulator to squeeze out the last few milliamp-hours. Or you could run your project on two AAs. That’s nice.
So the Pico/RP2040 is a competent modern dev board with some thoughtful touches. But it gets better.
The PIO: Never Bitbang Again
The real standout peripheral on the RP2040 and the Pico is the Programmable I/O (PIO) hardware, which allows you to define your own digital communication peripheral. There are two of these PIO units, and each one has four programmable state machines that run sequential programs written in a special PIO assembly language. Each of the state machines has its own clock divider, register memory, IRQ flags, DMA interface, and GPIO mapping. These allow essentially arbitrary cycle-accurate I/O, doing the heavy lifting so that the CPU doesn’t have to.
If you want to program another UART, for instance, it’s trivial. But so is Manchester-encoded UART, or a grey code encoder/decoder, or even fancier tricks. One of the example applications is a DPI video example, with one state machine handling the scanline timing and pixel clock, while another pushes out the pixel data and run-length encodes it. These are the sort of simple-but-fast duties that can bog down a CPU, leading to timing glitches, so dedicated hardware is the right solution.
The PIOs are meant to have a lot of the flexibility of a CPLD or FPGA, but be easier to program. Each state machine can only take a “program” that is 32 instructions long, but the “pioasm” language is very dense. For instance, the command to set pin states also has an argument that says how long to wait after the pins are set, and additional “side-set” pins can be twiddled in the same instruction. So with one instruction you can raise a clock line, set up your data, and hold this state for a defined time. A basic SPI master TX implementation is two lines.
Or take the example of the WS2812 LED protocol. To send a logical 1, you hold the self-clocked data line high for a long period and low for a short period. To send a logical 0, the data line is held high for a short period and low for a long one. Creating the routines to do this with reasonable speed in the CPU, without glitches, required a non-trivial shedding of hacker tears. With the PIO peripheral, writing a routine to shift out these bits with absolute cycle accuracy is simple, and once that’s done your code can simply write RGB values to the PIO and the rest is taken care of.
To run PIO code from C, the assembler is called at compile time, the program is turned into machine language and stored as a matrix in a header file, and then this can be written to the PIO device from within
main()
to initialize it. In Python, it’s even easier — the
@asm_pio
decorator turns a function into PIO code. You just have to write the “Python” function using the nine PIO assembly instructions and then hook it up to GPIO pins. After that, you can call it from your code as if it were a normal peripheral.
Having played around with it only a little bit, the PIO is the coolest feature of the Pico/RP2040. It’s just a little bit of cycle-correct programmable logic, but most of the time, that’s all you need. And if you don’t feel like learning a new assembly language — although it’s only nine instructions — there are a heaping handful of examples already, and surely folks will develop more once the boards hit the streets.
IDEs and SDKs: C and MicroPython
The Raspberry Pi single-board computers (SBCs), when combined with their documentation and examples, usually manage a nice blend of being simple enough for the newbie while at the same time not hiding too much. The result is that, rather than having the underlying system’s Linuxiness abstracted away, you get introduced to it in a friendly way. That seems to be what the Raspberries are aiming at with the Pico — an introduction to microcontrollers that’s made friendly through documentation and MicroPython’s ease of use, but that’s also not pulling any punches when you turn to look at the C/C++ code.
USB for power, UART for communication, and SWD for programming and debugging.
And having a Raspberry Pi SBC on hand makes a lot of the most hardcore microcontrollering simpler. For instance, if you want to do debugging on-chip, you’ll need to connect over the SWD interface, and for that you usually need a programmer. But of course, you can also bit-bang a SWD controller with the GPIOs of a Raspberry Pi SBC, but you’ll have to configure OpenOCD just right to do so.
If that all sounded like gibberish, don’t worry — all of this is taken care of by a simple
pico_setup.sh
script. It not only installs all of the compilation and debugging environment, it also (optionally) pulls down VScode for you. Nice.
And you
will
want to program it over the SWD eventually. The cycle of unplugging USB, holding down a button, and re-plugging USB gets old real fast.
If you’re a command-line junkie, the C SDK’s build system is based on CMake and runs just fine from the command line if you’ve already got the ARM toolchain installed. And as with all SDKs, there’s a certain amount of boilerplate necessary to start up a new coding session. This is taken care of by the
pico project generator
, so you don’t have to.
In the “Getting started” guides, you’ll find instructions for setting up your environment on a Raspberry Pi SBC, Windows, Mac, or desktop Linux machine. If you prefer Eclipse as an IDE, there are integration instructions as well.
Two Cores: Here be Dragons
If there’s one area that strikes me as not yet fully developed, it’s the dual-core aspect of the system. Right now, if you write either C or Python code, it’s running on Core 0, while Core 1 is simply sitting idle. Both the C and Python SDK documentation tell you how to start up a thread on the other core, and there’s example code available as well, but the instructions are sparse. In C, there’s a
pico/multicore.h
and even mutex, semaphore, and queue libs for you to include, but the documentation warns that most of the
stdlib
functions aren’t thread-safe. In Python you
import _thread
and call the
start_new_thread()
method, but I don’t know how much fine-grained control you have.
If all of the above sounds scary, well, it is a little. The truth about coding for multiprocessor systems is that it opens up new ways for things to go wrong, as one CPU changes values out from under the other, or they both try to write out to the UART at the same time. We wrote the Raspberries and asked if they were planning to port over an RTOS, which provides a little more structure to the problem, and they replied that that was actually first on their plate after they get through the release. So unless you know what you’re doing, you might not get the full benefit of the dual-core chip just yet. But we’re honestly looking forward to an RTOS getting the Raspberry Pi documentation-and-tutorial treatment when it happens.
Deep Thoughts
It’s not every day that you see a new player enter the microcontroller market, let alone one with the hacker-friendly qualifications of Raspberry Pi. For that alone, this board is notable. But the feature set is also solid, there are many creature comforts in both the silicon and the support, and it brings one truly new capability to the table in the form of the PIO units. Add to all this a price tag of $4, and you can imagine it becoming folks’ go-to board — for those times when you don’t need wireless connectivity.
Indeed, the only real competitor for this board in terms of price/performance ratio are the various ESP32 boards. But they’re also very different animals — one offers fewer GPIOs but has extensive wireless features, and the other has more (and more flexible) GPIO, device
and
host USB, but no radio. Power consumption while running full-out, with wireless turned off, is a slight advantage for the ESP32, but the sleep modes of the Pico are slightly thriftier. Both SDKs get the job done in C, and both run MicroPython. ESP32’s dual cores run FreeRTOS, but we imagine it won’t be very long before that playing field is levelled. So basically it’s down to WiFi vs USB.
Of course, for slightly less money, one can pick up one of the STM32-based “
Black Pill
” boards, with yet another set of pros and cons. Choices, choices!
With the Pico, Raspberry Pi is entering a crowded field. They’ve got the name recognition, a cool hardware trick, a great value proposition, and a track record of solid documentation. If I were coding up a GPIO-heavy application without the need for wireless, the Pico would be a solid choice, especially if I could make use of the extra core.
I’ll leave you with a teaser: On page 9 of the RP2040 datasheet, they lay out what “2040” stands for: two cores, type M0+, more than 256 kB RAM, and zero kB flash. Does that mean we’ll eventually see models with more RAM, onboard flash, or different ARM cores? RP2050? RP2048? Speculate wildly in the comments. | 351 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313856",
"author": "KG5DXG",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T07:06:39",
"content": "Will you actually be able to buy more than one of them at that price, or is this just doomed to be another repeat of the Pi Zero fiasco?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,214.041085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/3d-printed-pi-arcade-is-an-emulation-horn-of-plenty/ | 3D Printed Pi Arcade Is An Emulation Horn Of Plenty | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"emulation",
"retro",
"retropie"
] | Let’s be honest, building a home arcade cabinet isn’t exactly the challenge it once was. There’s plenty of kits out there that do all the hard work for you, and they even sell some pretty passable turn-key units at Walmart now. If you want to put a traditional arcade cabinet in your home, it’s not hard to get one.
Which is why
this wild build by [Rafael Rubio] is so interesting
. The entirely 3D printed enclosure looks like some kind of art piece from the 1970s, and is a perfect example of the kind of unconventional designs made possible by low-cost additive manufacturing. Building something like this out of wood or metal would be nightmare, especially for the novice; but with even a relatively meager desktop 3D printer you’re only a few clicks away from running off your own copy.
Removable side panels allow access to the electronics.
Inside the nautilus-like enclosure is a Raspberry Pi running Retropie, a 10″ LCD panel from Pimoroni, and a GeeekPi interface board that connects up to the 8-way joystick and arcade buttons. [Rafael] has included a Bill of Materials and an assembly overview that you can follow along with, though the cavernous internal dimensions of the enclosure certainly give you ample of room for improvisation if you’d rather blaze your own path.
Like the
retro-futuristic computer terminals created by [Oriol Ferrer Mesià]
, this arcade machine completely reinvents a traditional design that most people take for granted. Is this layout actually better than the standard arcade cabinet? It’s not really our place to say. But it’s certainly a new and unconventional approach to “solved” problem, and that’s what we’re all about. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313862",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T07:32:54",
"content": "I don’t get why “Raspberry Pi running an ancient build of MAME” is so popular as a choice for arcade emulation rather than running an actual modern build of MAME (on suitable hardware) with howeve... | 1,760,373,214.137196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/a-one-transistor-ham-transmitter-anyone-can-build/ | A One-Transistor Ham Transmitter Anyone Can Build | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"30-m",
"40-h",
"am",
"amateur",
"cw",
"ham radio",
"HF",
"morse",
"transmitter"
] | What attracts a lot of people to amateur radio is that it gives you the ability to make your own gear. Scratch-building hams usually start by making their own antennas, but eventually, the itch to build one’s own radio must be scratched. And building
this one-transistor transmitter
is just about the simplest way to dive into the world of DIY radio.
Of course, limiting yourself to eight components in total entails making some sacrifices, and [Kostas (SV3ORA)]’s transmitter is clearly a study in compromise. For starters, it’s only a transmitter, so you’ll need to make other arrangements to have a meaningful conversation. You’ll also have to learn Morse code because the minimalist build only supports continuous-wave (CW) mode, although
it can be modified
for amplitude modulation (AM) voice work.
The circuit is flexible enough that almost any part can be substituted and the transmitter will still work. Most of the parts are junk-bin items, although the main transformer is something you’ll have to wind by hand. As described, the transformer not only provides feedback to the transistor oscillator, but also has a winding that powers an incandescent pilot lamp, and provides taps for attaching antennas of different impedances — no external tuner needed. [SV3ORA] provides detailed transformer-winding instructions and shows the final build, which looks very professional and tidy. The video below shows the rig in action with a separate receiver providing sidetone; there’s also the option of using one of the
WebSDR receivers
sprinkled around the globe to verify you’re getting out.
This little transmitter looks like a ton of fun to build, and we may just try it for
our $50 Ham series
if we can find all the parts. Honestly, the hardest to come by might be the variable capacitor, but
there are ways around that
too.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/emtx_sv3ora_set_for_10w.mp4
[via
SWLing.com
] | 66 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313822",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T03:25:43",
"content": "Here’s my reply from elsewhere when somebody else thought this was a good idea to repost.We really need to end this fixation on extreme simplicity.Everyone should build a crystal oscillator, that wa... | 1,760,373,214.390626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/oscilloscope-learns-how-to-speak-japanese-and-vga/ | Oscilloscope Learns How To Speak Japanese, And VGA | Dan Maloney | [
"Art"
] | [
"clock",
"japanese",
"oscilloscope",
"raster",
"vector",
"vga"
] | Nostalgia aside, there are a few things an analog scope can still do better than a digital, with oscilloscope art being a prime example. The blue-green glow of phosphors in a real CRT just add something special to such builds, and as a practitioner of this craft, [
Aaron
] decided to
paint a New Year’s affirmation on his oscilloscope screen
, in Japanese calligraphy of all things.
When used in X-Y mode, analog oscilloscopes lend themselves nicely to vector-based graphics, which is the approach [Aaron] has taken with previous “Oscilloclock” builds, like
the Metropolis Clock
. The current work, however, doesn’t use vector graphics, opting instead to turn the scope into the business end of a VGA display. He had previously developed
the hardware
needed to convert a VGA signal into X- and Y-axis analog outputs, so the bulk of the work was rendering the calligraphy, first in ink and then scanning and processing the results into a file. In keeping with the Japanese theme, [Aaron] chose a rare scope from Nihon Tsushinki Co., Ltd., from 1963. It’s a beautiful piece of equipment and obviously lovingly restored, and with the VGA adapter temporarily connected, the four Japanese characters scroll gracefully up the screen, delivering the uplifting message: “
Steady progress, day by day.
”
[Aaron] sure puts a lot of work into his analog scope builds, which we’ve featured a few times. Check out
the clock he made from Grandpa’s old Heathkit scope
, or
his Tektronic vectorscope clock
. And don’t forget about other forms of oscilloscope art —
they can make music too
, after all. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313800",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T00:16:35",
"content": "私に加わるか死ぬ。あなたはそれ以下をすることができますか？",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313825",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T03:59:11"... | 1,760,373,214.431873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/multi-channel-battery-monitor-aces-first-sea-trial/ | Multi-Channel Battery Monitor Aces First Sea Trial | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"battery management",
"battery monitor",
"marine",
"NRF24",
"TFT display"
] | A little over a a year ago, we covered an impressive battery monitor that [Timo Birnschein] was designing for his boat. With dedicated batteries for starting the engines, cranking over the generator, and providing power to lights and other amenities, the device had to keep tabs on several banks of cells to make sure no onboard systems were dipping into the danger zone. While it was still a work in progress, it seemed things were progressing along quickly.
But we know how it is. Sometimes a project unexpectedly goes from having your full attention to winning an all-expense-paid trip to the back burner. In this case,
[Timo] only recently put the necessary finishing touches on his monitor and got it installed
on the boat. Recent log entries on the project’s Hackaday.io page detail some of the changes made since the last time we checked in, and describe the successful first test of the system on the water.
Certainly the biggest issue that was preventing [Timo] from actually using the monitor previously was the lack of an enclosure and mounting system for it. He’s now addressed those points with his 3D printer, and in the write-up provides a few tips on shipboard ergonomics when it comes to mounting a display you’ll need to see from different angles.
The printed enclosure also allowed for the addition of some niceties like an integrated 7805 voltage regulator to provide a solid 5 V to the electronics, as well as a loud piezo beeper that will alert him to problems even when he can’t see the screen.
Under the hood he’s also made some notable software improvements. With the help of a newer and faster TFT display library, he’s created a more modern user interface complete with a color coded rolling graph to show voltages changes over time. There’s still a good chunk of screen real estate available, so he’s currently brainstorming other visualizations or functions to implement. The software isn’t using the onboard NRF24 radio yet, though with code space quickly running out on the Arduino Nano, there’s some concern about getting it implemented.
As we said the first time we covered this project
, you don’t need to have a boat to learn a little something from the work [Timo] has put into his monitoring system. Whether you’re tracking battery voltages or
temperatures reported by your BLE thermometers
, a centralized dashboard that can collect and visualize that data is a handy thing to have. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313754",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T21:43:54",
"content": "“The printed enclosure also allowed for the addition of some atrocities like an integrated 7805 voltage regulator”Fixed it :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,373,214.177917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/automated-balcony-shade-uses-nfc/ | Automated Balcony Shade Uses NFC | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"blinds",
"controller",
"ESP32",
"NFC",
"shade",
"sun",
"voice"
] | [Udi] lives in an apartment with a pleasant balcony. He also has three kids who are home most of the time now, so he finds himself spending a little more time out on the balcony than he used to. To upgrade his experience, he installed a
completely custom shade controller
to automatically open and close his sunshade as the day progresses.
Automatic motors for blinds and other shades are available for purchase, but [Udi]’s shade is too big for any of these small motors to work. Finding a large servo with a 2:1 gear ration was the first step, as well as creating a custom mount for it to attach to the sunshade. Once the mechanical situation was solved, he programmed an ESP32 to control the servo. The ESP32 originally had control buttons wired to it, but [Udi] eventually transitioned to NFC for limit switch capabilities and also implemented voice control for the build as well.
While not the first shade controller we’ve ever seen, this build does make excellent use of appropriate hardware and its built-in features and although we suppose it’s possible this could have been done with a 555 timer, the project came together very well, especially for [Ubi]’s first Arduino-compatible build. If you decide to replicate this build, though, make sure that your shade controller is rental-friendly if it needs to be. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313761",
"author": "MovingToTheModern",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T21:53:58",
"content": "Could have been done with a 555? Good luck getting that on wifi, alexa, rfid",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6313795",
"author": "Anon"... | 1,760,373,214.080528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/the-origin-of-cut-copy-and-paste/ | The Origin Of Cut, Copy, And Paste | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Rants",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"alto",
"apple",
"clipboard",
"CUA",
"parc",
"xerox parc"
] | I’m always fascinated that someone designed just about everything you use, no matter how trivial it is. The keyboard you type on, the light switch you turn on, even the faucet handle. They don’t just spontaneously grow on trees, so some human being had to build it and probably had at least a hazy design in mind when they started it.
Some things are so ubiquitous that it is hard to remember that someone had to dream them up to begin with. A friend of mine asked me the other day why we use Control+X and Control+V to manipulate the clipboard almost universally. Control+C for copy makes sense, of course, but it is still odd that it is virtually universal in an industry where everyone likes to reinvent the wheel. I wasn’t sure of the answer but figured it had to do with some of the user interface standards from IBM or Sun. Turns out, it is much older than that.
Back When CTRL-C Only Meant Break
If you recall, though, Control+C hasn’t always been synonymous with copy. Control+C was well known as a break command in TOPS-10, CP/M, MSDOS, and several other systems. This might have been because C was for “cancel” or it could be because the ASCII for “end text” is Control+C. So I knew there was some point in relatively recent history where the control keys took over the world.
Then again, the clipboard itself isn’t that old and it also needed inventing. Pentti Kanerva, from Stanford, was using delete buffers to hold text for later, a technique that caught the attention of Larry Tesler. Larry worked for Xerox PARC — the people who more or less invented the graphical user interface. In the book,
Designing Interactions
by Bill Moggridge, there is mention that the team was already working on cut and paste of elements as part of a desktop publishing application for Ginn and Company, and they knew of Kanerva’s work. It was a natural idea to extend the cut and paste concept to text.
Early PARC
The only problem with the original system was the wording of “delete” sounded too permanent. Early PARC software sent deleted things to a trashcan and set cut things to a wastebin. Talk about confusing. The new cut and paste metaphor also used fewer keys than Kanerva’s system.
It may seem obvious now, but the right way to move text around was highly debatable back then. While some designers favored the cut/copy/paste method we have now, others wanted a move/copy/delete/transpose. This is more akin to how some older systems like WordStar did things. The commands operated on a block of text on the screen with no intermediate step. Even the ideas of putting the cursor between letters, the shape of the cursor was not obvious at the time.
The Xerox Alto was ahead of its time and it offered a graphical text editor,
Gypsy
. This 1975 word processor did allow cut and paste as we know it. However, the commands used the Escape key. As far as I can tell, the actual control commands we think of today originated with the Apple Human Interface Standard.
The Apple Standard
Bruce Tognazzini, otherwise known as Tog, was an early and influential Apple employee and wrote much of the original standard for the 1984 Macintosh. However, there were many people involved and you can catch a video of Larry Tesler and others discussing the early history of Apple GUI and the PARC influence on it, below.
According to the video, the team knew that people would use cut, paste, copy, and undo quite a bit and they wanted a standard way to do that across applications. The official story is that C was for copy, X looks like a crossout or a pair of scissors, and V looks like an insertion mark. The Z just happens to be the next character in that cluster–we might well have had Control+B as undo.
CUA
IBM CUA from 1988
via the Internet Archive
It is hard to remember, but Apple didn’t always set market direction. IBM’s Common User Access (CUA) standard came out in 1987 and — not wanting to conflict with Control+C as a break character — defined different characters for cut, copy, and paste. This was three years after the Apple document and early versions of Windows used these keys. However, the Control+C,V,X trinity was so prevalent, that Windows eventually allowed both sets of characters. Today, programs like emacs support CUA mode which allows for Control+C,V,X even though those weren’t in the original CUA standard.
Unix would see a similar effort to standardize on the Common Desktop Environment as part of the Common Open Software Environment in 1993, nine years after the Apple document. By that time, most programs had already adopted what we think of as normal keystrokes.
Our Designs
Today it seems only natural how the clipboard works and the keystrokes you use. Programs that buck this trend — I’m looking at Eagle — take a lot of flack for making you pick a command like copy and then making a selection.
Still, I’m struck by how many times a casual decision winds up becoming a big thing. Which way do electrons flow? How many buttons should a mouse have? To their credit, the Apple team seemed to understand that even tiny decisions could become a big deal and they put a lot of thought into things.
What causal decision will you make this week that will have a far-reaching impact? Most of us won’t get a chance to set the keystrokes used by everyone on the planet. But how many times have you written a quick shell script that turns into something used for years, or made up a quick cable that becomes a permanent part of a lab setup? Something to think about before your next causal hack. | 90 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313661",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T18:09:34",
"content": "The Mother Of All Demos contains an even earlier copy-paste example.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313695",
"author": "Steve L",
"... | 1,760,373,214.558774 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/diy-hepa-fan-clears-the-stale-office-air/ | DIY HEPA Fan Clears The Stale Office Air | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"air filter",
"fan",
"fresh air filter",
"HEPA",
"HEPA filter",
"muffin fan"
] | Although it would be nice, we can’t all work from home. If you have to spend the day in close quarters with other people, you might want more protection than just a mask and sanitizer. Check out [jshanna]’s
DIY HEPA filtering fan
— it looks like a breeze to build and uses commonly-available parts plus a few 3D-printed pieces to put it all together.
The basis of this attractive and useful office must-have is a muffin fan from Amazon that has an optional variable speed controller. A long threaded rod runs up the center of the HEPA filter, so it attaches kind of like a lampshade. The fan draws up air from underneath and blows it upward through the filter and out into the room. Whenever the HEPA filter gets dirty, just take it out and wash it.
Are you still buying disposable masks?
You might save money in the long run by making your own
. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313630",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T16:41:29",
"content": "A regular fan is about as good at pushing air through a filter as a crocheted pool cue is for playing pool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,373,214.615878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/blue-pill-vs-black-pill-transitioning-from-stm32f103-to-stm32f411/ | Blue Pill Vs Black Pill: Transitioning From STM32F103 To STM32F411 | Maya Posch | [
"ARM",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Microcontrollers",
"Slider"
] | [
"black pill",
"blue pill",
"stm32"
] | For many years now, the so-called ‘Blue Pill’ STM32 MCU development board has been a staple in the hobbyist community. Finding its origins as an apparent
Maple Mini
clone, the diminutive board is easily to use in breadboard projects thanks to its dual rows of 0.1″ pin sockets. Best of all, it only costs a few bucks, even if you can only really buy it via sellers on AliExpress and EBay.
Starting last year, boards with a black soldermask and an STM32F4 Access (entry-level) series MCUs including the F401 and F411
began to appear
. These boards with the nickname ‘Black Pill’ or ‘Black Pill 2’. F103 boards also existed with black soldermask for a while, so it’s confusing. The F4xx Black Pills are available via the same sources as the F103-based Blue Pill ones, for a similar price, but feature an MCU that’s considerably newer and more powerful. This raises the question of whether it makes sense at this point to switch to these new boards.
Our answer is yes, but it’s not entirely clearcut. The newer hardware is better for most purposes, really lacking only the F103’s dual ADCs. But hardware isn’t the only consideration; depending on one’s preferred framework, support may be lacking or incomplete. So let’s take a look at what it takes to switch.
The Hardware
The F4 MCUs have significantly better specs than the F103, with a higher clockspeed, more flash storage and more SRAM. In total we have three MCUs to compare on the old and new boards:
F103: 72 MHz, 64/128 kB Flash, 20 kB SRAM. (
STM32F103C8T6
)
F401: 84 MHz, 256 kB Flash, 64 kB SRAM. (
STM32F401CCU6
)
F411: 100 MHz, 512 kB Flash, 128 kB SRAM. (
STM32F411CEU6
)
The
Cortex-M core
in the F103 is the M3, whereas the F4xx has an M4 core. For the CPU side of the MCU this effectively means that in addition to higher clockspeeds we also get the ARMv7E-M ISA, instead of the ARMv7-M of the M3. This adds full
saturation arithmetic
instructions, DSP instructions and optional single-precision floating point instructions. Both the F401 and F411 have a single-point FP unit, and are thus much more suited for floating point arithmetic than the F103.
More detailed differences can be found when we look at Application Note 4904 (
AN4904
) from ST:
Migration of microcontroller applications from STM32F1 Series to STM32F4 Access lines
. This document summarizes all of the differences between the two MCU families worthy of note when migrating from one to the other, whether for the physical pin layout, peripherals or the bootloader.
Here the biggest changes are probably in the memory layout, along with the number of certain types of peripherals. Feel free to compare along with us in the block diagrams.
STM32F103 internal block diagram.
stm32F411 internal block diagram.
A significant change between F103 and F4xx is that the GPIO peripherals were moved off the Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB) onto the AHB. AHB is the high-performance bus, for high bandwidth, low-latency operations. It is connected directly to the Cortex-M core via the AHB bus matrix. The APB on the other hand is a simpler bus, with no burst operations. Accessing peripherals on the APB from the Cortex-M core requires that the instructions pass over the AHB-to-APB bridge to the APB.
This should mean that GPIO operations are faster on the F4xx MCUs, especially with high-frequency operations. In addition, the I/O pin multiplexing on the F4xx MCUs changed to only allow one alternate function (AF) to be defined for a single GPIO pin. This corresponds to the integration of AF registers in the GPIO peripheral.
A big change is also seen in the
RTC
peripheral, which on the STM32F1 family is a simple 32-bit counter with programmable prescaler and an alarm register. On the STM32F4xx the RTC peripheral implements a full calendar, with sub-seconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years. It also has an alarm which can be triggered by any of these calendar fields, as well as an event time-stamp feature and a digital calibration circuit.
While
DMA
, the
FLASH
interface and
Interrupts
also see some changes, these are fairly minor and only of relevance when doing bare-metal programming. The one real gotcha with the F4xx chips is that in place of two 12-bit
ADC
s with 16 shared channels, the F401 and F411 have a single 12-bit ADC. For the trade, the ADC is marginally faster on the F4xx (2.4 Msps versus 2 Msps on the F103) and has a lower minimum voltage supply requirement of 1.7 V -1.8 V.
The Pills
Comparison of Blue and Black pill boards. Clone STM32F103 at top and STM32F411 on the bottom.
The differences between the two boards are quite stark, even beyond the soldermask color. The board which I am comparing with here is the STM32F411 version, which incidentally seems to be the most popular version when I searched for these boards on the German Amazon website.
The USB connector changed from micro USB-B to USB-C, the MCU package is a 48-pin
UFQFPN
instead of a 48-pin LQFP, we get an extra user button, and the HSE and LSE oscillators are much smaller. The boot mode pins are gone, but we get a boot mode button instead. We keep the same user-controlled LED on PC13, but the pin-out on the sides of the boards are not 100% compatible. Finally, one ‘Ground’ pin has been replaced with a 5 V pin. (!)
Flipping the boards over, the F103 board features a heap of passives and one IC, while the F411 board is clean except for a footpring for an SPI ROM footprint that fits an
W25Q32JVSSIQ
32 Mbit SPI Flash ROM, for instance. This could be used to add a configuration ROM or similar.
Underside of the F103 Blue Pill and F411 Black Pill boards.
Beyond these differences, programming and debugging the board stays the same. One can use serial programming, with genuine STM32 MCUs, Single Wire Debug (SWD) via the four-pin break-out header, or the USB port if a suitable bootloader is installed. The
schematic for the board
is also available, which refers to the board as the ‘MiniF4’. This schematic also reveals without having to pull out the DMM that the user button is connected to PA0 without pull-up or pull-down resistor.
The Software
The STM32F4 family of MCUs is fully supported by ST’s
CMSIS F4 device files
, as well as its hardware abstraction layer (HAL) framework. Some may prefer to use ST’s
STM32CubeMX
software to auto-generate the hardware configuration and setup code.
STM32Duino
also shows both the F401 and F411 boards to be
supported
. Those who are more inclined to meddle with tiny non-venomous snakes should be relieved to know that there are multiple MicroPython definitions for the boards, for the
F401
and
F411
, as well this
MicroPython board definition
for the F411 version of the board. This means that at least as far as Arduino and MicroPython goes, existing code for F103 boards should run with minimal changes on F401 and F411 boards, keeping in mind potential changes to GPIO and AF pins.
In my own
Nodate
STM32 project I have added a
board definition
for the F411 board version as well. The fact of the matter is that these ‘Pill’ boards are such basic break-out boards for STM32 MCUs that very little support is needed. Besides the MCU on the board there’s just the LED on PC13 and a switch on PA0 if one’s framework is the type that abstracts such details away.
Conclusion
There comes a time when one has to move on. Considering that the STM32F103 is part of ST’s first-ever generation of Arm Cortex-M-based MCUs should already hint at that the time may have come for the Cortex-M3. As I noted in my recent
article on STM32F103 clone chips
, the supply of F103 ‘Blue Pill’ boards has recently become flooded with fakes, clones and brazen imitations of the genuine STM32F103. This makes it hard to even get such a board. Unless one is ready to validate and accept certain of these (admittedly quite good) F103 clone MCUs.
Meanwhile these F401/F411-based ‘Black Pill’ boards do not seem to have any issues with clones or fakes so far, cost roughly the same per unit as the older F103 ‘Blue Pill’, and unless you absolutely need the second ADC unit, are a better deal all-around. Software support should pose no obstacles either, with even details like the user LED using the exact same pin.
Just make sure that that you keep the slightly different pin-out of the F4xx boards in mind (i.e. the new 5 V pin), and double-check against the F401 or F411 reference manual to ensure that the peripherals one uses in a project are still on the same pins after recompiling for the new board. For new projects, using these new boards seems like a no-brainer, which is why I’m pretty sure that I’ll be stocking up on them.
What will your stockpile of cheap STM32 development boards look like the coming years? Will you be switching to F4 MCUs, or sticking with those F103 boards, if only because you bought 75 of them in an auction once and still haven’t used them up? Do you have any special use cases that make the F103 more suitable for your projects? Please let us know in the comments. | 79 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313601",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T15:07:24",
"content": "What I want to know; are counterfeit STMs infesting the Black Pill products as well?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313602",
"author": "Ren",... | 1,760,373,214.736708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/3d-printed-gesture-controlled-robot-arm-is-a-ton-of-tutorials/ | 3D Printed Gesture-Controlled Robot Arm Is A Ton Of Tutorials | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"arduino",
"bluetooth",
"gesture control",
"hc-05",
"mpu6050",
"robotic arm",
"tutorial"
] | Ever wanted your own gesture-controlled robot arm?
[EbenKouao]’s DIY Arduino Robot Arm project
covers all the bases involved, but even if a robot arm isn’t your jam, his project has plenty to learn from. Every part is carefully explained, complete with source code and a list of required hardware. This approach to documenting a project is great because it not only makes it easy to replicate the results, but it makes it simple to remix, modify, and reuse separate pieces as a reference for other work.
[EbenKouao] uses a 3D-printable robotic
gripper
,
base
, and
arm
design as the foundation of his build. Hobby servos and a single NEMA 17 stepper take care of the moving, and the wiring and motor driving is all carefully explained. Gesture control is done by wearing an articulated glove upon which is mounted flex sensors and MPU6050 accelerometers. These sensors detect the wearer’s movements and turn them into motion commands, which in turn get sent wirelessly from the glove to the robotic arm with HC-05 Bluetooth modules. We really dig [EbenKouao]’s idea of mounting the glove sensors to
this slick 3D-printed articulated gauntlet frame
, but using a regular glove would work, too. The latest version of the Arduino code can be found on
the project’s GitHub repository
.
Most of the parts can be 3D printed, how every part works together is carefully explained, and all of the hardware is easily sourced online, making this a very accessible project. Check out the full tutorial video and demonstration, embedded below.
3D printing has been a boon for many projects, especially those involving robotic arms. All kinds of robotic arm projects benefit from the advantages of 3D printing, from
designs that focus on utility and function
, to
clever mechanical designs that reduce part count in unexpected ways
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313595",
"author": "4ndreas",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T14:43:21",
"content": "Nice to see an offspring of my gripper in the wild. (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1480408)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313711",
"... | 1,760,373,214.781369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/20/scanner-snooping-uncovers-focus-farce/ | Scanner Snooping Uncovers Focus Farce | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"auto focus",
"driver",
"film scanner",
"scanner",
"shim"
] | From his comments about the noisy image and limited controls, we’re going to go out on a limb and assume [Andrew Jeddeloh] isn’t a huge fan of using his Epson V550 for scanning film. But is it really irredeemable? That’s what he set out to determine in a recent series of posts on his blog, and from what we can tell, it’s not looking good for the old Epson.
The first post
attempts to quantify the optical capabilities of the scanner
by determining its modulation transfer function (MTF), point spread function (PSF), and comparing its horizontal and vertical resolution. As you might expect, the nuances of these measurements are a bit beyond the average user. The short version of his analysis is that the scanner’s slide frame does indeed seem to be holding objects at the proper “sweet spot” for this particular image sensor; meaning that contrary to the advice he’d seen online, there’s nothing to be gained by purchasing custom film or slide holders.
MTF versus height of film from bed.
While investigating the optical properties of the scanner,
[Andrew] became curious about the automatic focus options offered by the VueScan software
he was using. The images produced appeared to be identical regardless of what option he selected, and he began to suspect the feature wasn’t actually doing anything. To confirm his theory, he wrote a shim program that would sit between the proprietary VueScan program and the V550 driver and log all of the data passing between them.
After tweaking various options and comparing the captured data streams, [Andrew] determined that enabling automatic focus in VueScan doesn’t do anything. At least, not with his scanner. He did notice a few extra bytes getting sent to the driver depending on which focus options were selected, but the response from the scanner didn’t change. He thinks the program likely has some kind of generic framework for enabling these kind of features on supported hardware, and it’s just mistakenly showing the autofocus options for a scanner that doesn’t support it.
If there’s some film you want to digitize, but you’re saddled with a scanner like the V550,
you could always do it with a camera instead
. You could even
put together a passable film scanner with LEGO
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313544",
"author": "JC",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T10:00:33",
"content": "Interesting work and all, but you just need to read the spec sheet of the scanner to know it’s a fixed focus model. The top of the line scanners from Epson are the ones which have focus functions.",
"paren... | 1,760,373,214.831227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/the-probably-most-thoroughly-commented-linker-script-for-the-sam-d21-mcu/ | The (Probably) Most Thoroughly Commented Linker Script For The SAM D21 MCU | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"arm",
"linker script",
"microchip sam"
] | Linker scripts are one of those things which nobody who does software development really wants to deal with, but like many things in life sometimes they are inevitable to make things work. Although one could keep pretending linker scripts do not exist and let IDEs handle such pesky details, some of us suffer from this unfortunate condition called ‘curiosity’ and just have to know. People like [Thea].
Recently, [Thea]
wrote a blog post
on exactly what the linker script generated by the Microchip IDE for a Cortex-M-based SAM D21 project does. The result is a nicely annotated overview of the file’s contents, accompanied by links to the Arm and GCC documentation as well as other references where appropriate. The entire linker script (.ld file) can be
viewed on GitHub
. With the SAM D21 being a popular choice for Arduino and Arduino-compatible board, this article is a good starting point to understanding what a linker script does and how it affects one’s project.
For other (Cortex-M) MCUs this linker script is also useful as a starting point. Especially knowing which sections are required and what changing them affects in the final (ELF) binary and the firmware that is ultimately written to the MCU. We
recently covered linker scripts for Cortex-M
as well, along with the concept of memory-mapped I/O. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313568",
"author": "Try Being Nice",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T12:04:59",
"content": "I actually found it really readable, and super useful for those who haven’t dug into a linker file before :) Is there a format you think would be better? It would be great if you could contribute a... | 1,760,373,214.923856 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/cura-plugin-offers-custom-support/ | Cura Plugin Offers Custom Support | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed supports",
"3d printing",
"cura"
] | [Chuck] likes the ability of Simplify3D to add support to parts of a model manually. However, not everyone wants to spend $150 for a slicer, so he’s shared how to install a plugin that allows you to
do the same trick
in Cura.
The plugin is “Cylindric Custom Support.” That doesn’t sound very exciting, but you get five choices of shapes you can create custom supports easily. There are also size and angle parameters you can use to customize the effect.
The cylinder and cube choices are pretty obvious, but the explanation of abutment support is useful. [Chuck] shows how this can be more efficient than the default support.
Of course, the proof is in the print, and the model looked pretty good for a first attempt. [Chuck] mentions that he should have made larger supports, which is possible, of course.
We liked his
earlier video on tree supports
, which also talks about support in general, so if you aren’t doing much with support in Cura, you might check that one out, too. It explains a lot of the support options you can tune.
We used to think we really wanted water-soluble support, but modern slicers do a good job of making support material easy to remove. You can also try
providing a release agent
. If you want some more background on support,
here you go
. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313507",
"author": "Zippy",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T03:52:40",
"content": "If you spend $150 on Simply3D now, you’re a sucker. The vaunted “5.0” release is over a year overdue with no details and there hasn’t been a bug fix in just shy of 2 years. It’s a shame because it was a r... | 1,760,373,214.882431 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/pen-plotter-draws-maps-directly-on-the-wall/ | Pen Plotter Draws Maps Directly On The Wall | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"News"
] | [
"cnc",
"CoreXY",
"OpenStreet Map",
"pen",
"plotter",
"stepper",
"TMC5160",
"Trinamic"
] | For map-lovers like [Christopher Getschmann], poring over a quality map can be as satisfying as reading a good book. Good maps can be hard to come by, though, especially at a scale worth looking at, or worth using as adornment on a dull, lifeless wall. The solution is obvious: build
a wall-mount CNC plotter
to draw maps directly on the wall.
[Christopher] began his map quest by scraping world map data from a number of sources, including OpenStreetMap, Natural Earth, and GEBCO. This gave him data for coastlines, terrain, and bathymetry — enough for a map of the world large enough to fill a wall. Since the scale of the map would preclude the use of even a large-format inkjet printer, [Christopher] set about building a wall-covering pen-plotter to render the map. The
CoreXY-style
plotter is large, but still light enough to hang on the wall while it works, and to be repositioned to cover a larger area.
The plotter runs on steppers driven by ultra-quiet Trinamic TMC5160 drivers, so the plotter wouldn’t be a nuisance while it worked. The map was plotted on eight pieces of cardboard mounted directly to the wall, filling the 2- x 3-meter space almost entirely. Landmasses and elevation contours were plotted as continuous lines in black ink, while bathymetric data was rendered in blue ink as cross-hatching with variable spacing, to make deeper oceans darker blue.
We find [Christopher]’s map breathtaking, all the more so considering the work that went into making it. It would be interesting to find alternate uses for the plotter, which reminds us a little of a cross between
a draw-bot
and
a Maslow vertical CNC router
, now that it’s done with its cartographic duties. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313464",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T00:10:25",
"content": "Nice, whether you’re Lord Cutler Becket, head of the East India Company (https://pirates.fandom.com/wiki/World_map), Chief of SPECTRE, or Dr Evil, a wall sized map is de rigueur to plan world dominat... | 1,760,373,214.990089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/homebrew-relay-computer-looks-like-it-could-be-a-commercial-product/ | Homebrew Relay Computer Looks Like It Could Be A Commercial Product | Dan Maloney | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"ALU",
"backplane",
"computer",
"DPDT",
"finite state machine",
"FSM",
"memory",
"register",
"relay",
"sequencer"
] | You may not have noticed, but we here at Hackaday really love our clicky stuff. Clicky mechanical keyboards, unnecessarily noisy flip-dot displays, and pretty much anything made with a lot of relays — they all grab our attention, in more ways than one. So it’s with no small surprise that we appear to have entirely missed perhaps the clickiest build of all:
a fully operational 8-bit computer using nothing but relays
.
What’s even more amazing about our failure to find and feature [Paul Law]’s excellent work is that he has been at it for the better part of a decade now. The first post on his very detailed and very well-crafted blog describing the build dates from 2013, when he was just testing LEDs in the arithmetic-logic unit (ALU). Since then, [Paul] has made incredible progress, building module after module, each containing a small portion of the computer’s functionality. The modules plug into card cages with backplanes to connect them, and the whole thing lives in an enclosure made from aluminum extrusion and glossy black panels for a truly sleek look. The computer is incredibly compact for something that uses 400+ DPDT relays to do its thinking.
In addition to the blog, [Paul] has a criminally undersubscribed YouTube channel with
a quite recent series
going over the computer in depth. We included the overall tour below, but you should really check out the rest of the videos to appreciate how much work went into this build. We’ve seen relay computers ranging in size from
single-board
to
just plain ludicrous
, but this one really takes the prize for fit and finish as well as functionality. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313425",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T21:50:14",
"content": "Looks as good as a commercial product, yes, could be produced commercially, hmm, I’ll go with …“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”Thomas Watson, president of IBM, sometime in ... | 1,760,373,215.169183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/remoticon-video-learning-the-basics-of-software-defined-radio-sdr/ | Remoticon Video: Learning The Basics Of Software-Defined Radio (SDR) | Mike Szczys | [
"cons",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Remoticon",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"workshop"
] | Have you dipped your toe into the SDR ocean? While hacker software-defined radio has been a hot topic for years now, it can be a little daunting to try it out for the first time. Here’s your change to get your legs under you with
the SDR overview workshop
presented by Josh Conway during the 2020 Hackaday Remoticon.
Josh’s presentation starts with a straightforward definition of SDR before moving to an overview of the hardware and software that’s out there. Hardware designs for radios can be quite simple to build, but they’ll be limited to a single protocol — for instance, an FM radio can’t listen in on 433 Mhz wireless doorbell. SDR breaks out of that by moving to a piece of radio hardware that can be reconfigured to work with protocols merely by making changes to the software that controls it. This makes the radio hardware more expensive, but also means you can listen (and sometimes transmit) to a wide range of devices like that wireless doorbell or automotive tire pressure sensors, but also radio-based infrastructure like airplane transponders and weather satellites.
This is the quickstart you want since it explains a lot of topis at just the right depth. The hardware overview covers RTL-SDR, ADALM-PLUTO, HackRF, KerberosSDR, and BladeRF (which
we just featured over the weekend used on the WiFi procotol
). For software, Josh recaps GQRX, SDR#, SDRAngel, ShinySDR, Universal Radio Hacker, Inspectrum, SigDigger, RPITX, GnuRadio Companion, and REDHAWK. He also takes us through a wide swath of the antenna types that are out there before turning to questions from the workshop attendees.
If SDR is still absent in your toolbox, now’s a great time to give it another look. Once you’ve made it through the ‘hello world’ stage, there’s plenty to explore like
those awesome RF Emissions testing tricks
we as in another Remoticon talk. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313392",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T20:28:47",
"content": "“Have you dipped your toe into the SDR ocean?”Yup, it’s full of plastics. Seriously need a better indoor antenna.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,373,215.211765 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/a-new-era-of-spacecraft-delivers-science-on-time/ | A New Era Of Spacecraft Delivers Science On Time | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"dragon",
"Dream Chaser",
"nasa",
"recovery",
"Sierra Nevada",
"Space Shuttle",
"SpaceX",
"splashdown"
] | When the Space Shuttle
Atlantis
rolled to a stop on its final mission in 2011, it was truly the end of an era. Few could deny that the program had become too complex and expensive to keep running, but even still, humanity’s ability to do useful work in low Earth orbit took a serious hit with the retirement of the Shuttle fleet. Worse, there was no indication of when or if another spacecraft would be developed that could truly rival the capabilities of the winged orbiters first conceived in the late 1960s.
While its primary function was to carry large payloads such as satellites into orbit, the Shuttle’s ability to retrieve objects from space and bring them back was arguably just as important. Throughout its storied career, sensitive experiments conducted at the International Space Station or aboard the Orbiter itself were returned gently to Earth thanks to the craft’s unique design. Unlike traditional spacecraft that ended their flight with a rough splashdown in the open ocean, the Shuttle eased itself down to the tarmac like an airplane. Once landed, experiments could be quickly unloaded and transferred to the nearby Space Station Processing Facility where science teams would be waiting to perform further processing or analysis.
Atlantis
is towed from the runway for payload processing.
For 30 years, the Space Shuttle and its assorted facilities at Kennedy Space Center provided a reliable way to deliver fragile or time-sensitive scientific experiments into the hands of researchers just a few hours after leaving orbit. It was a valuable service that simply didn’t exist before the Shuttle, and one that scientists have been deprived of ever since its retirement.
Until now.
With the successful splashdown of the first Cargo Dragon 2 off the coast of Florida
, NASA is one step closer to regaining a critical capability it hasn’t had for a decade. While it’s still not quite as convenient as simply rolling the Shuttle into the Orbiter Processing Facility after a mission, the fact that SpaceX can guide their capsule down into the waters near the Space Coast greatly reduces the time required to return experiments to the researchers who designed them.
On Dragon’s Wings
While it took nearly ten years to
resume crewed launches from American soil after the retirement of the Space Shuttle
, there wasn’t nearly as much of a downtime for cargo flights. SpaceX put their first Dragon capsule into orbit in 2010, and just over a year after the final flight of
Atlantis
, they were ready to begin regular resupply missions to the International Space Station. Not only could the privately developed craft carry a combined 6,000 kilograms (13,000 pounds) of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the orbiting outpost, it could also bring approximately 3,000 kg (6,600 lbs) back down to Earth.
By 2012, SpaceX had already sent a Dragon to the ISS.
In comparison, the Shuttle could safely land with around 14,400 kg (31,700 lbs) packed in its cavernous cargo bay. But realistically, that capacity was intended for hauling satellites and was completely overkill for simply returning racks of scientific experiments. Price was also a consideration: a Dragon mission cost NASA just a fraction of what a Shuttle flight did. Combined with the much higher launch cadence of the Dragon, it’s clear which vehicle was better suited to performing regular “milk runs” up to the ISS and back.
But there was a downside. Despite SpaceX’s stated intention to
one day perform pin-point propulsive landings with the Dragon
, the small spacecraft ended up splashing down in the ocean under parachutes just like the Apollo and Gemini capsules before it. This meant returning to Earth on a Dragon was a much rougher ride than what the Shuttle offered. While not a problem for many payloads, it could be a ruinous experience for sensitive experiments such as those designed to study crystal growth in microgravity.
Further complicating matters was the fact that the capsule came down in the Pacific Ocean, several hundred kilometers off the coast. This made recovery operations easier for the California-based SpaceX, but as NASA lacked suitable payload processing facilities on the West Coast, returning cargo would need to be transported to Johnson Space Center in Houston or all the way back to Kennedy Space Center. The prospect of experiments potentially having to endure a cross-country flight before they could be released to scientists made certain research difficult or impossible to accomplish.
The Human Element
While hardly ideal, landing cargo and experiments on the West Coast and flying them back to Florida was still better than having to transport them back from Kazakhstan if they flew on a Soyuz. But it wouldn’t quite do when it came time for SpaceX to start carrying astronauts as part of the Commercial Crew Program. NASA wanted the primary splashdown point for the new Crew Dragon to be as close to Kennedy Space Center as possible to leverage the existing Shuttle era resources and facilities, with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico reserved for contingencies.
GO Navigator
with Crew Dragon onboard.
This required a considerable expansion of SpaceX’s recovery capabilities. Two ships,
GO Searcher
and
GO Navigator
, were procured by the company and outfitted with medical facilities, a helipad, and a lifting apparatus on the stern for hoisting the floating Crew Dragon capsule onto the deck. For redundancy the two craft are virtually identical and can be deployed simultaneously.
With the operational assets and trained personnel moved to East Coast for Crew Dragon, recovering the cargo variant of the spacecraft in California no longer made fiscal sense. Besides, given how similar the two vehicles are, experience gained while pulling the Cargo Dragon from the ocean would serve to improve crewed recovery operations. As NASA’s requirements state that astronauts must egress the capsule within 60 minutes of splashdown, the teams need all the practice they can get.
Beyond the faster delivery time, Cargo Dragon has a number of other advantages over its predecessor. The upgraded capsule has increased payload capacity, twice the number of climate controlled lockers for storing sensitive materials, and a fully autonomous docking system that reduces the workload for astronauts aboard the orbiting outpost. It can also be more easily refurbished for reuse, which not only lowers costs but allows for a higher launch cadence than would be possible otherwise.
Chasing the Dream
With a helicopter waiting to take time-sensitive payloads from the recovery ship to the Space Station Processing Facility, SpaceX can now deliver experiments to scientists between four and nine hours after splashdown. This is a vast improvement over what was possible previously, and arguably the best that can be realistically expected for an off-shore operation. But it’s still not as fast as the Space Shuttle.
Ultimately, having to pull the spacecraft from the ocean and transporting the human crew members or scientific payloads back to land via helicopter will always take longer than simply landing the vehicle at a designated facility. Since SpaceX is no longer pursuing targeted propulsive landings with their Dragon spacecraft, that means another company will have to step up to meet the challenge of truly rapid payload return.
Dream Chaser prototype during testing.
As it so happens, that’s precisely what the
Sierra Nevada Corporation hopes to do with their Dream Chaser spaceplane
. Currently slated to fly in 2022 as part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services-2 program, the vehicle can return as much as 1,750 kg (3,860 lbs) of cargo to a gentle horizontal landing. Being a quarter the size of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, the Dream Chaser has the advantage of being able to use any runway long enough to accommodate a large passenger plane.
This ability to land essentially anywhere on the planet has clear benefits for international scientific collaboration. But more importantly, when the company completes work on their human-rated variant of the spacecraft, it could be a potentially life-saving capability in the event that a medical emergency necessitates a crew member be transported back to Earth as quickly as possible.
Space Force Leads the Way
The fact that multiple commercially operated spacecraft are now in competition to bring cargo and crew members to the International Space Station and beyond is an incredible achievement. It’s something that many people in the industry believed would never happen, and things are just getting started. The next decade will see several more vehicles and boosters come online, all fighting to be the fastest, most reliable, and of course, cheapest. The democratization of space has officially begun.
The X-37B on the Shuttle runway at Kennedy Space Center.
But as has often been the case historically, it seems that the military is considerably ahead of the curve. The Boeing X-37B spaceplane, now being operated by the newly formed Space Force, is an ideal platform for orbital research and development that in many ways exceeds the capabilities of its commercial peers.
Naturally there’s still a lot we don’t know about the secretive craft, but its ability to
conduct free-flying experiments and return scientific payloads from space to a soft runway landing
has been publicly demonstrated several times. Being fully autonomous, the X-37B is also able to remain in orbit for far longer than any crewed vehicle. This provides a unique opportunity to conduct long-duration experiments in complete isolation; something that simply isn’t possible on the bustling International Space Station.
As you might expect for a shadowy military operation, most of the research being conducted aboard the X-37B is classified. Some believe the vehicle is designed to
evaluate new reconnaissance equipment and techniques
, while others think its
a test platform for anti-satellite weaponry
. But there are signs that the Space Force is willing to share its miniature spaceplane with non-military researchers, with the last launch in May carrying a record number of NASA experiments.
In the end, none of these vehicles can carry more scientific payload than the Space Shuttle, and to date, only the government-operated craft is able to approach the sort of rapid turnaround necessary for the truly time-sensitive experiments. But for the first time in history there’s an array of competitive choices available to researchers who want to get their payload into space and back down in one piece; and that’s definitely a step in the right direction. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313359",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T18:29:40",
"content": "In the context of the current space game of rich boys spending other-people’s-money: Seeing in the graphic “SPAC Ex” I could not help but be reminded of the current infatuation with SPACs and Alan Greenspan’... | 1,760,373,215.118092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/expresslrs-open-source-low-latency-long-range-rc-protocol/ | ExpressLRS: Open Source, Low Latency, Long Range RC Protocol | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"esp8285",
"FPV",
"LoRa",
"rc",
"RC airplane",
"wireless protocol"
] | One of the major choices a newcomer to the RC flying hobby must make is on the RC link protocol. To add the list of choices (or confusion) there is now a new open-source, low latency, and long-range protocol named
ExpressLRS
.
ExpressLRS’s claim to fame is high packet rates of up to 500 Hz, with plans for 1000 Hz, and
latency
as low as 5 ms. Long-range testing has pushed it out to 30 km with a flying wing (video below), but this is not unheard of for other protocols. Most modern RC protocols run either in the 2.4 GHz or 915/868 MHz bands, with the latter having a definite advantage in terms of range.
ExpressLRS has options to run on either band, using Semtech SX127x (915/868 MHz) or SX1280 (2.4 GHz)
LoRa
transceivers, connected to STM32, ESP32, or ESP8285 microcontrollers. The ESP microcontrollers also allow software updates over Wi-Fi.
We’re excited to see an open-source competitor to the proprietary protocols currently dominating the market, but several open-source protocols have come and gone over the years. Hardware availability and compatibility is a deciding factor for a new protocol’s success, and ExpressLRS already has an advantage in this regard. Existing Frsky R9 transmitters and receivers, and Immersion RC Ghost receivers are compatible with the firmware. There are also DIY options available, and the GitHub page claims that several manufacturers are working on official ExpressLRS hardware.
If you’re already into the RC hobby, and you have compatible hardware lying around, be sure to give it a try and give some feedback to the developers! One scenario we would like to see tested is high interference and congested band conditions, like at RC flying events.
All the source code and hardware designs are available on GitHub, and there are active community discussions on
Discord
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbWvFIpVkto
Thanks for the tip [Jye]! | 42 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313334",
"author": "pacraf",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T16:59:44",
"content": "If you are interested in something similar but cheaper, look for qczek lrs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313346",
"author": "greenbigfro... | 1,760,373,215.679433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/the-50-ham-a-cheap-antenna-for-the-hf-bands/ | The $50 Ham: A Cheap Antenna For The HF Bands | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Original Art",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"antenna",
"balun",
"ferrite",
"impedance",
"The $50 Ham",
"toroid",
"unun"
] | So far in the $50 Ham series, I’ve concentrated mainly on the VHF and UHF bands. The reason for this has to do mainly with FCC rules, which largely restrict
Technician-level licensees
to those bands. But there’s a financial component to it, too; high-frequency (HF) band privileges come both at the price of learning enough about radio to pass the General license test, as well as the need for gear that can be orders of magnitude more expensive than
a $30 handy-talkie radio
.
But while HF gear can be expensive, not everything needed to get on the air has to be so. And since it’s often the antenna that makes or breaks an amateur radio operator’s ability to make contacts, we’ll look at a simple but versatile antenna design that can be adapted to support everything from a big, powerful base station to portable QRP (low-power) activations in the field: the end-fed half-wave antenna.
Making a Match
There are plenty of hams out there for whom antenna building is the be-all and end-all of the hobby. I get that; there’s a non-zero amount of wizardry that goes into designing an antenna that will do what you want it to do electrically, and plenty of engineering involved in making sure it stands up to the elements. I think the latter aspect of antenna building is more attractive to me personally. Getting an antenna to survive wind, snow, sun, and rain is an interesting challenge, so I tend to spend more time thinking about the mechanical aspects of design that someone has already worked the RF bugs out of.
So I set out looking for an antenna that would work for my situation. Perhaps the easiest antenna to build is the classic half-wave dipole. These have two elements, each one-quarter of the design wavelength, radiating out from a central feed point, which is where the coaxial cable feedline attaches. There are elaborations and complications, of course, but the basic issue for me is the central feed point. My shack is located at the very back corner of my property, so it’s difficult to rig an antenna like that without a long feedline, which can introduce unacceptable signal losses. Plus, a dipole for the 80-meter band would be 40 meters end-to-end, and that would be hard to fit across my long, narrow suburban lot.
For my purposes, the end-fed half-wave (EFHW) antenna is a good choice. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a chunk of wire one-half of a wavelength long (in my case, 40 meters long so I can work the 80 meter band) that is fed from its end. But it’s not as simple as cutting a 40 meter long piece of wire and sticking it on your radio. The problem is that the impedance of an antenna varies as the feedpoint moves away from the center. The impedance increases all the way up to about 2,500 ohms when the feedpoint reaches the end of the wire, which would be a very bad match indeed for a transceiver expecting a 50 ohm load.
To fix this, EFHW antennas need a transformer to match impedances. When used to match impedance between a balanced antenna, like a dipole, and an unbalanced feedline, like coaxial cable, these are referred to as “baluns”. In this case, though, both the antenna and the coax feedline are unbalanced, so the transformer I built is technically an “unun”. Whatever you call it, it’s a pretty easy build.
My 49:1 matching transformer, mounted and ready to go outside. I considered potting the whole thing in epoxy, but decided against it.
I followed
the excellent instructions
provided by Steve Nichols (G0KYA) to wind my 49:1 autotransformer. It’s basically just big ferrite toroid core — I got mine from eBay, but there are plenty of options on Amazon — with a few windings of magnet wire. My core is an FT-240-61, which means its outside diameter is 2.4 inches and it’s made of type 61 material. I used 18 AWG magnet wire for the windings. While I was winding it, I noticed that the lacquer coating on the magnet wire was getting nicked by the edges of the ferrite core. I rewound it after covering the toroid with cloth friction tape to cushion the edges a bit — shorts would be no bueno in something designed to handle 100 Watts of transmitter output.
Like I said, a lot of the fussing I did with this transformer had to do with making it work mechanically. I mounted it into a sturdy plastic electrical enclosure and provided stainless steel fittings for connecting the antenna wire and the ground connection. I also installed an eye bolt to tether the antenna wire. A good-quality SO-239 socket for the feedline connection and a 100 pF high-voltage capacitor for better matching on the higher frequency bands completed the transformer. With luck, this antenna should cover 80 m to 10 m bands.
Pushing Rope
My method for placing a pulley up a tree from the ground. It would have worked better on a tree with smoother bark.
As luck would have it, my lot is just about 150 feet deep, and I’m both blessed and cursed by a lot of very tall, very sturdy Ponderosa pines. The length of my lot and the location of the trees allows for a full 40-meter wire in a sort of “inverted-L” configuration. My plan was to slope the wire from the transformer up as far as possible in the first tree, then run it horizontally to an anchor point in a second tree.
This sounds far, far easier than it actually is. While many hams have had good luck suspending antennas from lines lofted over branches, my pine trees have all been pruned of their lower branches, with the first living branches more than 40′ (12 meters) above the ground. I opted for a “work smarter” approach and came up with an idea to basically push a loop of rope up the tree using PVC pipe as a push stick. Although the roughness of the Ponderosa bark constantly snagged the nylon rope and the PVC pipe flopped around as I added sections , it actually worked well enough to get the anchor point about 25′ (7.5 m) above the ground — not much higher than I could have gotten with my 24′ ladder, but with a whole lot less risk of falling to my death.
The anchor point was set in the other tree using a similar method, which drew a lot of attention from the neighbors. One should always seize such opportunities to do a little “ham goodwill” outreach, and I assured the neighbors that I wouldn’t be sterilizing their kids or interfering with their TV reception. In an example of karma, though, the tree I was working in decided to shed a dead branch the next day, which came down and damaged my neighbor’s Durango. It clearly came from much higher in the tree than I was working, but it still caused a little bit of the old stink eye.
Sway relief on the anchor end. Note the safety line that runs through the bore of the spring, just in case it breaks.
One of the most important parts of using trees as anchors for long-wire antennas is dealing with sway. Trees move around quite a bit, and if you anchor a wire tightly between two trees without allowing for them to move with the wind, sadness will ensue. And yet, you want your wire to stay more or less taut, since its shape affects its performance. There are a couple of ways to deal with this, and I chose to use clothesline pulleys at both my anchor points. At the midpoint, the wire runs through the pulley; at the end anchor, the wire is tied off to a length of strong nylon cord through a dogbone insulator. That cord runs through the pulley and down the trunk of the tree to an anchor point through a strong spring. When the trees sway, the antenna can extend or retract by several inches without sagging or snapping.
On the Air at Last
I have to admit that this installation isn’t actually complete yet. Antennas really should be properly grounded, and I’m keen to pound a ground rod in near the transformer. However, both the mains feeder for my house and the primary feeder for the entire neighborhood are buried directly under our back fence, making this a high-risk endeavor. As good as underground location services are, I’m not keen to test their precision with my precious self. So I’m going to wait for a decent ground.
Still, I couldn’t help but want to try this antenna out, so to keep RF out of the shack, I wound a 10-turn air-core choke on the feedline and hooked it up. I haven’t made any QSOs yet, but using WSPR, the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter system, I was able to reach four continents over a 24-hour period on the 80-, 40-, 30-, and 20-meter bands.
The world on one antenna: 24 hours of WSPR reports on 80, 40, 30, and 20 meters.
And speaking of WSPR, that and other digital modes are what we’ll be talking about in the next installment of the $50 Ham. Spoiler alert: despite
my previous gripes
, I think I’m falling in love with ham radio again. | 65 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313312",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T16:04:08",
"content": "One of the great advantages of an end-fed half-wave antenna is the fact that they usually do not need a counterpoise! (as far as I’m aware) Or, as I understand the RF magic of them, they kinda are the... | 1,760,373,215.554301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/start-your-new-career-in-robot-dance-choreography/ | Start Your New Career In Robot Dance Choreography | Roger Cheng | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"boston dynamics",
"choreography",
"dancing robot",
"spot"
] | Boston Dynamics loves showing off their robots with dance videos. Every time they put one out, it ignites a discussion among robot enthusiasts debating what’s real versus merely implied by the exhibition. We really want to see tooling behind the scenes and fortunately we get a peek with a
Spot dance choreography session
posted by [Adam Savage]’s
Tested
team. (YouTube video, also embedded below.)
For about a year, the
Tested
team has been among those exploring a Spot’s potential. Most of what we’ve seen has been controlled from a custom tablet that looked like a handheld video game console. In contrast, this video shows a computer application for sequencing Spot actions on a music-focused timeline. The timer period is specified in beats per minute, grouped up eight to a bar. The high level task is no different from choreographing human dancers: design something that can be performed to music, delights your audience, all while staying within the boundaries of what your dancers can physically do with their bodies. Then,
trust your dancers to perform
!
That computer application is Boston Dynamics Choreographer, part of the
Spot Choreography SDK
. A reference available to anyone who is willing to Read The Fine Manual even if we don’t have a Spot of our own. As of this writing, Choreography SDK covers everything we saw Spot do in an earlier
UpTown Funk
dance video
, but looks like it has yet to receive some of the more advanced Spot dances
in the recent
Do You Love me?
video
. There is a reference chart of
moves illustrated with animated GIF
, documented with customizable parameters along with other important notes.
We’ve seen a lot of hackers take on the challenge of building their own quadruped robots on these pages. Each full of clever mechanical design solutions that can match Spot’s kinematics. And while not all of them can match Spot’s control systems, we’re sure it’s only a matter of time before counterparts to Choreographer application show up on GitHub. (If they already exist, please link in comments.) Will we love robots once they can all dance? The jury is still out. | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313286",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T14:50:26",
"content": "Last I checked, they only ever put out one dance video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313358",
"author": "Colton",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,215.750125 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/19/mavic-mini-gets-custom-clear-case/ | Mavic Mini Gets Custom Clear Case | Lewin Day | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"DJI",
"drone",
"mavic mini"
] | Apparently, in the drone scene, sticker wraps are popular for a custom aesthetic. [Useless Mod] wanted to go a little further, however, and decided to build a full crystal enclosure for his Mavic Mini,
facing some hurdles along the way.
(Video, embedded below.)
The first stage of the build was disassembly, with the compact 249 gram drone requiring a deft touch to avoid damaging the delicate ribbon cables and mechanisms inside. With the drone stripped down to its bare components, a silicone mould was made of each individual piece of the case, with new parts being cast in clear epoxy. It’s not a job for the faint of heart, with many undercuts and complex features to contend with. However, [Useless Mod] managed to produce the parts and get it all back together.
An initial test flight ended poorly, when the drone entered an uncontrollable wobble due to the case not being fully assembled. However, with fresh internals and with everything properly put together, everything worked! It’s not a build we’d suggest for the inexperienced, as the moulds required are complex and the electronics quite fragile. The final result is a good one though, and it even weighs 10 grams less than the original casing!
For those in the US,
the world of drones is set to change drastically in short order
.
[Thanks to Frederik for the tip!] | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313385",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T20:13:56",
"content": "Damn, that’s beautiful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6313639",
"author": "Paul Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T17:03:25",
"... | 1,760,373,215.598797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/apple-ii-prints-off-the-breaking-news/ | Apple II Prints Off The Breaking News | Lewin Day | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple II",
"dot matrix",
"dot matrix printer",
"serial terminal"
] | These days, we’re alerted to the rise of Bitcoin and the fall of nations via little buzzes from the smartphones in our pocket. Go back fifty years or so and it was all a bit more romantic, with noisy teletype machines delivering hot tips straight to the newsroom for broadcast to the wider public. [Joshua Coleman] wanted a bit of that old fashioned charm,
so set up a news printer at home with his old Apple II.
The Apple II in this case isn’t directly connected to the Internet. Instead, it talks to a modern Macintosh, acting as a serial terminal. The Macintosh then connects to a modern BBS that delivers news headlines over Telnet. The Apple II then routes the headlines as they come in to a beautiful Epson LQ-500 dot matrix printer, replete with vintage tractor feed paper. [Joshua] takes the time to highlight just what hardware is required, as well as how to set up the Apple II to redirect the serial output to the printer so the news automatically prints as it comes in.
It’s a fun and noisy way to stay up to date, and you can be sure that if you hear the printer really start going for it, you might want to switch on the TV for more information on just what’s going wrong at the present minute. Old computers may not have the grunt to really hang with the modern net, but they can make a charming interface for it;
this SE/30 does a great job with Spotify
, as an example. Video after the break. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313193",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T06:20:58",
"content": "Ah, the sounds of impact printers. It’s been a while. I wonder if there’s a website where you can enter a decade and hear the sounds of computers of that time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,215.855521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/q-multiplier-er-multiplies-q/ | Q Multiplier — Er… Multiplies Q | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"heathkit",
"q multiplier",
"receiver"
] | If you are below a certain age, you’ve probably never heard of a Q multiplier. This is a device that increases the “Q” of a radio receiver’s intermediate frequency and, thus, provide a higher selectivity. If you enjoy nostalgia, you can see inside a 1960s-era
Heathkit QF-1 Q multiplier
in [Jeff’s] informative video, below.
The Q multiplier was a regenerative amplifier that operated at just below the oscillation point. This provided very high amplification for the frequency of interest and less amplification for other frequencies. Some radios had a stage like this built-in, but the QF-1 was made to add into an external radio. For some Heathkit receivers, there was a direct plug to tap into the IF stage for this purpose. Othe radios would require some hacking to get it to work.
The QF-1 had several modes of operation where it could act as bandpass filter or a notch filter. You could also tune the frequency using the main knob. The circuit when revealed isn’t overly complex and there is no printed circuit board. The active device was a dual triode.
If you want a deeper discussion of the circuit, the Orange County Amateur Radio Club newletter a few years back had
a great article on this device
by [AF6C]. It explains how each mode works. It also mentions a few of the device’s offspring such as the HD-11 and GD-125, which was sold until 1971.
If you have plans of building a circuit like this, keep in mind that the intermediate frequency for most radios in those days was 455 kHz, which is what the QF-1 expects. Most communication receivers today use significantly higher IF for a variety of reasons (10.7 MHz, for example, is common).
We always enjoy [Jeff’s] videos of old receivers and gear.
Not that he’s the only one
doing things like that. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313149",
"author": "Eric R Mockler",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T03:07:54",
"content": "Not allowed to talk about “Q”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313156",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T03:30... | 1,760,373,215.796742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/solar-safety-bag-lights-up-the-night-charges-your-phone/ | Solar Safety Bag Lights Up The Night, Charges Your Phone | Kristina Panos | [
"Solar Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"cork",
"safety",
"solar",
"solar backpack"
] | Spend enough time riding a bike, and chances are good that you’ll start carrying a few tools with you. Even if you don’t, you’re probably going to use a bag to carry
something
along, so why not make that bag do triple duty?
This convertible backpack/tote bag can charge your phone and provide safety lighting for nighttime rides
. The design lends itself nicely to turn signals, too.
This bag was designed to show off the capabilities of Loomia, a line of prototyping parts made with e-textiles and other flexible applications in mind. It can be sewn, fused, or adhered to various substrates including fabric and wood. [AmpedAtelier] is using a Beetle microcontroller to control RGB LED strips using an illuminated Loomia soft switch on the strap. The switch is wired to the microcontroller through Loomia busses running through the strap.
Although Loomia’s site has
a deep dive into the capabilities of their technology
, it isn’t exactly open source. If that’s what you’re after, take a look at
PolySense, which uses piezoresistive dye to create textile sensors
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313122",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T00:27:41",
"content": "Interesting, but I wonder how waterproof it is, getting caught miles from home in the rain and stuff (like you) is going to get drenched. Also I would prefer light up panniers.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,215.910205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/retrofitting-usb-c-to-an-ipod-nano/ | Retrofitting USB-C To An IPod Nano | Danie Conradie | [
"ipod hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"ipod nano",
"retrofit",
"USB C"
] | Some hacks serve a critical need, while others are just for the challenge or fun of it. We suspect the latter was the real reason [David Buchanan]
converted a first generation iPod Nano from its original 30 pin connector to USB-C
.
USB-C mounted
[David] bought the iPod with a dead battery, so when he opened the iPod to get the old battery out, he noticed there was enough space to fit a USB-C connector. The original Apple 30 pin connector runs USB 2.0 through four of the pins, so [David] used the original USB cable and identified the appropriate pins and traces with a continuity tester. The connector was destructively removed with side cutters, ripping off all but one of the pads in the process. A hot air station might have made things easier, but we assume he did not have one on hand. The USB-C connector was scavenged from a cheap USC-C to USB Micro adaptor and mounted by soldering the housing directly to the PCB’s ground plane. The three remaining terminals were soldered to the traces with enamel wire.
With the new battery installed, [David] confirmed that both charging and data transfer worked. The IC that handles the button and scroll pad interfered slightly with the new connector, so he filed away some of the IC’s excess. Any open pads close to the new connector was covered with Kapton tape to avoid shorts. The large hole in the enclosure for the 30 pin connection was partly filled in with five-minute epoxy. The final assembled product looks almost factory produced and works as it’s supposed to, so we call this a win.
Retrofitting
USB-C
connectors in various electronic devices has become a popular hack over the past two years. We’ve seen it done on everything from
Thinkpads
to
soldering irons
. | 29 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313049",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T21:28:17",
"content": "Love the idea of retrofitting USB-C, however thats a lot of time to spend on a 1st gen Nano…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313059",
"author"... | 1,760,373,216.026998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/handheld-farkle-really-sparkles/ | Handheld Farkle Really Sparkles | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"arduino",
"arduino pro mini",
"dice",
"electronic dice",
"Farkle",
"MAX7219"
] | Farkle is a classic dice game that only requires 6 dice and a way to write down scores based on the numbers rolled. Even so, this type of game isn’t inherently portable — it would be fairly difficult to play on a road trip, for instance.
[Sunyecz22] decided that Farkle would make an excellent electronic game and got to work designing his first PCB
.
This little game has everything you could want from a splash screen introduction to a handy scoring guide on the silkscreen. After choosing the number of players, the first player rolls using the momentary button and the electronic dice light up to indicate what was rolled. As long as the player rolled at least one scoring die, they can take the points by selecting the appropriate die/dice with the capsense pads, and either pass or keep going. The current player’s score is shown on the 7-segment, and the totals for each player are on the OLED screen at the bottom.
The brains of the operation is an Arduino Pro Mini. It controls two MAX7219s that drive the 42 LEDs plus the 7-segment display. A game like this is all in the code, and lucky for us, [Sunyecz22] made it available. We love how gorgeous the glossy 3D printed enclosure looks — between the glossy finish and the curved back, it looks very comfortable to hold. In the future, [Sunyecz22] plans to make a one player versus the computer mode. Check out the demo and walk-through video after the break.
The capsense modules are a great touch, but some people want a little more tactility in their handheld games.
We say bring on the toggle switches
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313078",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T22:19:58",
"content": "I can’t resist!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqu09DyXoUk",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6313133",
"author": "Comedicles",
"time... | 1,760,373,215.954052 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/pandemic-chip-shortages-are-shutting-down-automotive-production/ | Pandemic Chip Shortages Are Shutting Down Automotive Production | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Current Events",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"automotive",
"Fiat-Chrysler",
"ford",
"Honda",
"Infineon",
"just in time",
"manufacturing",
"nxp",
"shortage",
"toyota"
] | Once upon a time, the automobile was a mostly mechanical beast, but no longer. Advanced electronics have weaved their way into the modern car, from engine to infotainment and climate control to the buttons now sprinkled throughout the passenger cabin. The gains in amenity and efficiency can’t be sniffed at, but it leaves manufacturers reliant on semiconductor suppliers to get cars out the door. Over the past year, it’s become much more complicated —
with many automakers having to slow production in the face of integrated circuit shortages
that can be traced back to Spring of 2020.
Shortages Rippling Through the Supply Chain
Production lines are set up for just-in-time manufacturing, where parts are delivered as needed. If there’s a delay in the supply chain, everything quickly grinds to a halt.
Unsurprisingly, the blame for this situation can be lain firmly at the doorstep of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Automakers were forced to scale back production as factories closed to avoid spreading the deadly virus. This meant slashing orders with suppliers, particularly as
the just-in-time nature of modern automobile production
means there’s little to no space to warehouse excess parts in factories. It coincided with a drop in automotive sales during the early part of lock down, as few contemplated new car purchases during the turmoil of March and April, 2020.
In this same period, demand for consumer electronics shot through the roof, as schools and businesses switched to remote operation. Webcams flew off store shelves, and companies spent great sums equipping their workers with laptops to enable their staff to work from home. With a shortage in that sector, semiconductor foundries switched production lines over to churn out the parts in greatest demand, scaling back on parts for automakers who had curtailed their orders.
As the year progressed,
demand for new automobiles rose
, often attributed to general fear of being exposed to the virus causing consumers to avoid public transportation. With limited production capacity, chip foundries can’t simply make more chips; instead, automakers have had to shut down production on some lines while they wait for deliveries to catch up with demand.
Honda, Toyota, Fiat-Chrysler, and Ford have all been impacted by the shortages.
Tier-one supplier Bosch have noted the shortage is particularly acute in parts used for engine and transmission control units. With these parts being particularly specialised for automotive applications, it’s likely their comparatively small market has meant that foundries are focusing on shipping parts for consumer goods first thanks to their higher volumes. With lead times measured in months, it’s likely to be some time before car manufacturers can get back to full capacity.
You Need Every Part to Finish the Build
Semiconductor manufacturers like Infineon and NXP count automakers as some of their major customers, with their chips finding their way into everything from engine control units (pictured) to infotainment systems and seat controls.
It’s not the first time automakers have faced shortages, and it won’t be the last.
A fire at a magnesium casting plant in 2018 led to widespread shortage
of structural parts used by several makers. In 2012,
a disaster at a German firm producing a chemical for fuel line coatings threatened to curtail production
.
While having redundant supplies of critical components is desirable for automakers, it isn’t always practical in the modern marketplace.
Chip fabrication plants cost over one billion dollars to build
. Idle production lines don’t make money, so there is rarely spare capacity in this industry. Production runs are queued far in advance, with lead times to spin up a new run measured in months. Combine this with an aversion to keeping parts on hand due to the just-in-time nature of modern supply chains, and it’s clear that it’s a problem that promises to reoccur.
Short of a major cultural shift in automaking on a global scale, shortages aren’t going away any time soon. Instead, now and then, the average consumer will have to wait a little longer for that new car to roll off the line, and automakers will have to keep making frantic phone calls to suppliers to get parts on the boat. Of course, if you’re an armchair logistician yourself, sound off in the comments with your best ideas to solve this conundrum! | 66 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312974",
"author": "denis obrien",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T18:21:53",
"content": "I’m an autospark/ diagnostic tech/spannermonkey, part shortages are a real issue right now, most every big order I put in has one item on indefinite backorder. Not just electronic parts obviously , h... | 1,760,373,216.129659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/movie-magic-hack-chat/ | Movie Magic Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"borg",
"cinema",
"electroluminescent",
"Fifth Element",
"film",
"Hack Chat",
"miniature",
"model",
"movie",
"practical effect",
"prop",
"tron"
] | Join us on Wednesday, January 20th at noon Pacific for the
Movie Magic Hack Chat
with
Alan McFarland
!
If they were magically transported ahead in time, the moviegoers of the past would likely not know what to make of our modern CGI-driven epics, with physically impossible feats performed in landscapes that never existed. But for as computationally complex as movies have become, it’s the rare film that doesn’t still need at least some old-school movie magic, like hand props, physical models, and other practical effects.
To make their vision come to life, especially in science fiction films, filmmakers turn to artists who specialize in practical effects. We’ve all seen their work, which in many cases involves turning ordinary household objects into yet-to-be-invented technology, or creating scale models of spaceships and alien landscapes. But to really sell these effects, adding a dash of electronics can really make the difference.
Enter Alan McFarland, an electronics designer and engineer for the film industry. With a background in cinematography, electronics, and embedded systems, he has been able to produce effects in movies we’ve all seen. He designed electroluminescent wearables for
Tron: Legacy
, built the lighting system for the miniature Fhloston Paradise in
The Fifth Element
, and worked on the Borg costumes for
Star Trek: First Contact
. He has tons of experience making the imaginary look real, and he’ll join us on the Hack Chat to discuss the tricks he keeps in his practical effects toolkit to make movie magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e13S0SenmPQ
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 20 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. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313192",
"author": "Feinfinger (today just a moderate meanie)",
"timestamp": "2021-01-19T06:12:23",
"content": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAqta11AlFg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,216.400019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/robotic-fish-swarm-together-using-cameras-and-leds/ | Robotic Fish Swarm Together Using Cameras And LEDs | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"fish",
"Raspberry pi camera",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W",
"underwater",
"Visible Light Communication"
] | Robotics has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past few decades, but in terms of decentralized coordination in robot swarms, they far behind biological swarms. Researchers from Harvard University’s Weiss Institute are working to close the gap, and have developed
Blueswarm
, a school of robotic fish that can exhibit swarm behavior without external centralized control.
In real fish schools, the movement of an individual fish depends on those around it. To allow each robotic fish to estimate the position of its neighbors, they are equipped with a set of 3 blue LEDs, and a camera on each side of the body. Four oscillating fins, inspired by reef fish, provide 3D control. The actuator for the fins is simply a pivoting magnet inside a coil being fed an alternating current. The onboard computer of each fish is a Raspberry Pi W, and the cameras are Raspberry Pi Camera modules with wide-angle lenses. Using the position information calculated from the cameras, the school can coordinate its movements to spread out, group together, swim in a circle, or find an object and then converge on it. The
full academic article
is available for free if you are interested in the details.
Communication with light
is dependent on the clarity of the medium it’s traveling through, in this case, water — and conditions can quickly become a limiting factor. Submarines have faced the same challenge for a long time. Two current alternative solutions are ELF radio and sound, which are both covered in [Lewin Day]’s excellent article on
underwater communications
.
Thanks for the tip [Qes]! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313110",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T23:55:31",
"content": "In the video the robot-fish from Harvard swim to the right in a circle. That can’t be correct, anything associated with Harvard is Marxist; so they should be swimming to the LEFT all the time! I hope the po... | 1,760,373,216.170121 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/tv-detector-vans-once-prowled-the-streets-of-england/ | TV Detector Vans Once Prowled The Streets Of England | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"television",
"television licence",
"television set",
"TV licence",
"United Kingdom"
] | The United Kingdom is somewhat unique in the world for requiring those households which view broadcast television to purchase a licence for the privilege. Initially coming into being with the Wireless Telegraphy Act in 1923, the licence was required for anyone receiving broadcast radio, before being expanded to cover television in 1946. The funds generated from this endeavour are used as the primary funding for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
A typical TV licence invoice. Separate licences for black and white and color sets still exist,
with 6000 B&W licences issued in 2019
.
Of course, it’s all well and good to require a licence, but without some manner of enforcement, the measure doesn’t have any teeth. Among other measures, the BBC have gone as far as employing special vans to hunt down illegally operating televisions and protect its precious income.
The Van Is Coming For You
To ensure a regular income, the BBC runs enforcement operations under the
TV Licencing
trade name, the entity which is responsible for administering the system. Records are kept of licences and their expiry dates, and investigations are made into households suspected of owning a television who have not paid the requisite fees. To encourage compliance, TV Licencing regularly sends sternly worded letters to those who have let their licence lapse or have not purchased one. In the event this fails, they may arrange a visit from enforcement officers. These officers aren’t empowered to forcibly enter homes, so in the event a homeowner declines to cooperate with an investigation, TV Licencing will apply for a search warrant. This may be on the basis of evidence such as a satellite dish or antenna spotted on the roof of a dwelling, or a remote spied on a couch cushion through a window.
Alternatively, a search warrant may be granted on the basis of evidence gleaned from a TV detector van. Outfitted with equipment to detect a TV set in use, the vans roam the streets of the United Kingdom, often dispatched to addresses with lapsed or absent TV licences. If the van detects that a set may be operating and receiving broadcast signals, TV Licencing can apply to the court for the requisite warrant to take the investigation further. The vans are almost solely used to support warrant applications; the detection van evidence is rarely if ever used in court to prosecute a licence evader. With a warrant in hand, officers will use direct evidence such as a television found plugged into an aerial to bring an evader to justice through the courts.
Detecting Television Usage
An example of the original detector van design, as deployed in 1952. Note the three loop antennas – one front, two rear.
The vans were first deployed in 1952
, with equipment designed to pick up the magnetic field from the horizontal deflection scanning of the picture tube, at 10.125 KHz. Loop antennas were used to detect the second harmonic of this signal at 20.25 KHz, which was mixed with a local beat frequency oscillator at 19.25 KHz to create a 1 KHz tone to indicate to the operator when a signal was picked up. Three antennas were used, one on the front of the van and two on the rear on the left and right sides. When the van was next to an operating television in a house, the signal between the front and side antenna would be roughly the same. Signal from the right and left antennas could then be compared to determine which side of the street the television was on.
The VHF era brought with it a new detector van design, this time built on a car such as to avoid clearance issues with the tall antenna.
Once ITV started broadcasting in 1963, this method of detection became impractical. The two television stations did not synchronise their line-scan signals, so neighbouring houses watching different channels would create confusing interference for the detector. To get around this,
the vans switched to detecting the local oscillator of the TV set’s superheterodyne VHF receiver instead.
With stations broadcasting on bands spanning 47 to 240 MHz, it was impractical at the time to build a tuner and antenna to cover this entire range. Instead, the equipment was designed to work from 110-250MHz tuning in the fundamental frequencies of the higher bands, or the harmonics of the lower frequency oscillators. A highly directional antenna was used to hone in on a set, and a periscope was installed to allow the operator to view the house the antenna was pointing at. If operating in the dark, the periscope could instead be used to shine a small dot of light in the direction of the antenna’s facing, to identify the relevant target. Results were cross-referenced with a list of houses with lapsed or absent licences to help hunt down evaders.
A pair of antennas was used to search for televisions in the UHF era, with the twin setup helping to improve directionality.
The introduction of UHF transmissions led to further redesigns
. Engineers again leaned on harmonics to allow a single system to cover the full range from low VHF to higher UHF frequencies. A pair of 6′ long log-periodic spiral antennas were used, mounted on top of the van, which could be varied in spacing to effectively tune different frequencies. In practice, the antennas would be pointed towards a row of houses, while the van was slowly driven along the street. The beam pattern of the antenna pair would show seven distinct lobes on a CRT inside the van when a TV was detected. An operator would press a button to mark house boundaries on the CRT as the van moved, and when the lobe pattern centered on a particular house, the TVs location was clear. The hardware was further refined over the years, with various antenna rigs and detection equipment used as technology marched on.
Seeking Television in Modern Times
In the UHF era, pinning down a detected television set took some finesse, with the operator having to interpret signals received on a CRT display.
Modern efforts to detect licence evasion are shrouded in mystery. Modern flatscreen displays receiving digital television signals do not emit as much radio frequency interference as older designs, and any such signals detected are less easily correlated with broadcast television. An LCD television in the home can just as easily be displaying output from a video game console or an online streaming service, with both being usage cases that do not require the owner to pay a licence fee.
Based on an alleged BBC submission for a search warrant in recent years
, there may be optical methods used in which reflected light from a television in a viewer’s home is compared to a live broadcast signal. The BBC declined to answer the Freedom of Information request with any details of their methods, other than to say they have employed vehicles and handheld devices in enforcement efforts. However, given the multitude of broadcast, cable and satellite channels now available, the comparison effort would necessarily be much harder,
leading some to suspect the days of the detector van are largely over.
While the TV licence may have its days numbered with the increased dominance of streaming content, it remains a quirky piece of legislation that spawned the development of a technical curiosity. If you fancy yourself a television sleuth, sound off in the comments with your chosen approach to hunting for televisions watching broadcast content illegally in this modern era. And be sure to look over your shoulder – you never know when TV Licencing might be knocking on your door! | 307 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312862",
"author": "Mark S.",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T15:09:26",
"content": "“somewhat unique in the world ”Not really. We had the same system here in the Netherlands until the year 2000 and they still have similar schemes in France, Germany and Belgium. And yes, we also had vans ... | 1,760,373,216.884337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/a-miniature-vt102-running-a-miniature-pdp11/ | A Miniature VT102 Running A Miniature PDP11 | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"2.1BSD",
"BSD",
"PDP11",
"sprite_tm",
"VT102"
] | We spend a lot of time looking at retrocomputing in the form of gaming and home computers, but it’s true to say that minicomputers are less common than hardware projects. Perhaps it’s the size, cost, or even relative rarity of the original machines, but DEC minicomputers are a bit unusual around here. [Sprite_TM] hasn’t bought us a PDP11 or a VT102 terminal, but he’s done the next best thing in the form of
a miniature working VT102 that also conceals a PDE11 emulator
. It runs Tetris, which was originally developed on a Russian clone of the PDP11 architecture, and the 2.1BSD operating system.
Powering it all is an ESP32 module, and the PDP11 emulator is the well-known SIMH software. Porting this to the slightly limited environment of the microcontroller required a few compromises, namely the network stack and the configuration interface. In a particularly clever move [Sprite_TM] enabled BSD networking by writing an ESP32 layer that takes network packets via SIMD directly from BSD. It includes its own DHCP client and wireless network configuration tool, allowing an ancient UNIX-derived operating system from the 1970s to connect to the 21st century Internet through an emulator with its network code stripped out.
The case is a masterwork in OpenSCAD, a complete VT102 unit in miniature with a tiny LCD screen that when printed on a resin printer is a remarkable facsimile of the real thing. It doesn’t have a keyboard counterpart, but even with a miniature Bluetooth ‘board it still looks pretty impressive. In the video below the break he boots it into 2.1BSD, and importantly since it is a server operating system, logs into it from his laptop and plays a game of
Zork
.
[Sprite_TM] has brought us so many impressive projects over the years using the ESP32 and other parts. Maybe you have a favorite, but for us it’s
the PocketSprite Game Boy-like tiny handheld console
. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312829",
"author": "Mog",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T12:54:35",
"content": "“network packets via SIMD directly from BSD” – I’m pretty sure this is a typo for “SIMH”, as the expansion of “Single Instruction, Multiple Data” doesn’t really make sense in this context.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,373,216.361817 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/on-air-sign-helps-keep-your-broadcasts-g-rated/ | On-Air Sign Helps Keep Your Broadcasts G-Rated | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"alexa",
"Amazon Echo",
"arduino",
"ESP32",
"mosfet",
"RGB LED",
"status indicator",
"status light"
] | Like many of us, [Michael] needed a way to let the family know whether pants are required to enter the room — in other words, whenever a videoconference is in progress. Sure he could hang a do not disturb sign, but those are easy to forget. There’s no need to worry about forgetting to change status because
this beautiful wall-mounted sign can be controlled with Alexa
.
Inside the gorgeous box made from walnut, curly maple, and oak is an ESP32, some RGB LEDs, and three MOSFETs. [Michael] is using
the fauxmoESP library
to interface the ESP32 with Alexa, which emulates a Phillips Hue bulb for the sake of using a protocol she already knows. [Michael] can change the color and brightness percentage with voice commands.
The sign is set up as four different devices — one default, and one for each color. Since talking to Alexa isn’t always appropriate, [Michael] can also change the color of the LEDs using sliders on a website that’s served up by the ESP. Check out the full build video after the break.
Need something quick and dirty that works just as well?
Our own [Bob Baddeley] made a status indicator that’s simple and effective
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312847",
"author": "Peter Knoppers",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T14:19:10",
"content": "Would it not have been easier to put a real Philips Hue bulb inside? Or would that have been too easy?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63128... | 1,760,373,216.449801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/ | LEDs From Dubai: The Royal Lights You Can’t Buy | Al Williams | [
"LED Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"bulb",
"dubai",
"lamp",
"led",
"philips"
] | [Clive] had an interesting video about LED lights from
Philips
. You can’t buy them unless you live in Dubai. Apparently inspired by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who wanted more efficient and longer-lasting bulbs. The secret? A normal LED bulb uses an LED “filament” at 1 watt each. The Dubai bulbs run at about a fourth of that which means they need more LEDs to get the same amount of light, but they should last longer and operate more efficiently.
After exploring the brightness and color of different lamps, [Clive] tears one up and finds some surprises inside. The LEDs get over 200V each and the driver circuit has a lot of pairs of components, possibly to keep the size small for the high voltages involved, although it could be to improve reliability, [Clive] wasn’t sure.
By reducing the power, [Clive] was able to count that each LED strip contains 21 LEDs. He also notes some of the oddities in construction that appear to be for reliability and ease of manufacturing. We aren’t sure how that compares to the construction of conventional bulbs. The circuit includes a bridge rectifier and a linear current regulator using a MOSFET.
The bulbs cost a bit more, but if you factor in the probable long life, their total cost over time should be reasonable. Overall, it is interesting that a nice design came from what amounts to government regulation. Of course, there is a price: in exchange for the development of the bulbs, Philips has the exclusive right to make and sell the bulbs for the next several years. They expect to sell 10 million lamps by the end of 2021, although they are only available, currently, in Dubai.
The last time we looked in on Dubai, their police were
flying quadcopters
. If you want a
teardown of a more conventional bulb
, we’ve looked at that before, too. | 103 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312758",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T06:14:10",
"content": "Clive is a treasure. He has a very smooth, soothing voice and an unhurried, leisurely way of speaking, making it very pleasant to listen to.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,217.244853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/at-keyboard-becomes-childs-speaking-toy/ | AT Keyboard Becomes Child’s Speaking Toy | Jenny List | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"at keyboard",
"keyboard",
"learning toy",
"talking keyboard"
] | Just as cats find sitting on a keyboard to be irresistible, so do children find pressing their keys. After throwing some ideas around with other parents, [Peter] came up with the idea of
transforming an old AT keyboard into a learning toy by making each key press “speak” its corresponding letter
.
The donor keyboard is a nondescript late-80s AT compatible PC. Before readers imagine that a sought-after mechanical ‘board is being defiled, these were manufactured in their millions back then with exactly the same lackluster actions as modern cheap input devices. This one had plenty of space inside for an Arduino Nano that emulates an AT keyboard host and plays WAV file samples from an SD card to one of its PWM outputs. An op-amp low pass filter cleans up the noise from this rudimentary DAC, and feeds a little speaker through an audio amplifier. The keyboard supports both male and female voices, as well as a piano.
Hours of juvenile fun will no doubt result, but we can’t help wondering whether this could become the bane of a parent’s life in the manner of so many other noise-producing toys. Meanwhile, [Peter]’s work has graced these pages in the past, most recently with
an automatic cooker hood
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312762",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T06:49:56",
"content": "Oh my God no no please kill it with fire. I have enough of noise makers in my childs hands. Piano you can walk on, Noahs Ark with dozens of animals sounds, jigsaw puzzle boards that make noise when you conn... | 1,760,373,216.924048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/hackaday-links-january-17-2021/ | Hackaday Links: January 17, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"hackaday links"
] | Sad news from Mars, where
the InSight lander’s “mole” was officially declared dead
. The self-drilling probe, the centerpiece of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) experiment, was designed to ram itself 5 meters into the Martian regolith while deploying a sensor-laden tail. The mole would then explore heat flow from within the planet. But the unexpected properties of the soil beneath the lander, including lower-than-expected friction on the hull of the mole and a cement-like “duricrust” layer, confounded the probe’s downward progress for the last two years.
We covered the design of the mole
, which is similar to an impact drill, as well as
the valiant efforts to save the mission
, but after one last try on January 9 where the mole gave 500 more whacks without any progress, controllers threw in the towel. It just goes to show that space travel and exploration are anything but routine, and that there’s far, far more we don’t know about even our nearest solar neighbor than what we do know.
Sad news, too, from closer to home, this time — Ohio, to be exact:
the 2021 Hamvention has been canceled
. It’s not exactly a surprise given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s still a blow to have ham radio’s biggest party canceled for two years running. We expect a lot of cons and meetings will suffer a similar fate in 2021. We’ll be sure to bring you any announcements we hear about.
One event that hasn’t been canceled is
iQuHACK
, a quantum hackathon hosted by MIT. We don’t pretend to fully understand quantum computing, or even to have scratched the surface of the subject in any meaningful way. Following up on what comes out of iQuHACK after it runs next weekend might be interesting for the quantum-curious, though. But really, just the fact that we’re in an age where quantum hackathons are a thing is pretty cool.
Back on the COVID-19 theme, managing editor Elliot Williams gave us the heads up on a story about
gorillas at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park testing positive for the virus
. It’s not exactly surprising that some of our evolutionarily closest relatives would be susceptible to the disease, and it’s not exactly a funny story, but the conversation in the morning meeting at the zoo must have been priceless:
“Hey, that gorilla looks sick. We’d better test him for COVID.”
“Yeah, probably. Here’s the brain-tickling swab, you go stick it up his nose.”
“Nu-uh, you stick it up his nose!”
“Nope. Hey, where’s the intern?”
And speaking of dangerous work environments, behold yet another classic of corporate safety propaganda:
The Color of Danger
. Like
Shake Hands with Danger
, this film was produced by heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. But this time, instead of concentrating on the various opportunities maintaining heavy equipment presents for traumatic amputations, the subject matter is forklift safety. We’ve spent a fair number of hours in the driver’s seat of a lift truck, so we know full well how quickly things can go wrong, and this film does a great job of showing a lot of them. But what you’ve got to admire is the trick driving and stunt work that went into these vignettes; not too many people can pull off forklift drifting safely (12:30), and putting the truck in the drink without drowning was a neat trick (13:00). And of course, with any film on forklift safety, we’d be remiss not to tip our hardhat to
Staplefahrer Klaus and his oft-bloodied co-workers
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312715",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-18T00:34:59",
"content": "Well NY Times is paywalled, so here’s the news straight from the horses mouth, or the gorillas butt…https://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/pressroom/news-releases/gorilla-troop-san-diego-zoo-safari-park-test-po... | 1,760,373,216.974548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/unknown-quantum-effect-makes-insulator-oscillate/ | Unknown Quantum Effect Makes Insulator Oscillate | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"conductors",
"insulators",
"particles",
"quantum physics"
] | If there are two classes of matter that electronics people can agree on, its conductors and insulators. Electrically, conductors and insulators don’t have much in common. The same has held true in the quantum physics world until some research at Princeton has suggested that quantum oscillation — a phenomenon associated with metals —
is taking place in an insulator
. Scientists aren’t sure what’s really happening yet, but it may suggest there is a new quantum particle yet to be discovered.
In metals, electrons are very mobile which allows a relatively easy flow of electrical current. However, at low temperatures, a magnetic field can shift electrons to a quantum state causing its resistance to change in an oscillating pattern. Insulators generally do not exhibit this effect.
Researchers made a monolayer of tungsten ditelluride using the same kind of adhesive tape process you see to create graphene. In bulk, the material is a conductor but in a monolayer, tungsten ditelluride is an insulator.
The researchers postulate there may be a neutral-charge quantum particle responsible for the effect. We aren’t physics gurus, but we’ll be interested to see if anyone finds this effect in an insulator that didn’t start off being a conductor. We also aren’t sure how this relates to earlier work with
quantum oscillations in Kondo insulators
which also took place at Princeton.
A new quantum particle could be a big deal for
quantum computing
. That could scramble the
playing field
on the race to make a really practical machine. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312663",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T21:06:20",
"content": "I wouldn’t bet my money on a new particle though…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312666",
"author": "TC",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T... | 1,760,373,217.297864 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/trs-80-model-100-gets-64-bit-cpu-and-a-very-wide-lcd/ | TRS-80 Model 100 Gets 64-Bit CPU And A Very Wide LCD | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"4:1 LCD",
"cyberdeck",
"Pine64",
"retro computer",
"TRS-80 model 100"
] | To say the TRS-80 Model 100 was ahead of its time would be something of an understatement. It had a high-quality mechanical keyboard, phenomenal battery life, plenty of I/O and expansion capabilities, and was actually small and light enough to easily carry around. While its layout might seem to be a bit dated to modern eyes, there’s little debate that it was one of the most successful and influential computers in history.
So it’s little surprise that
[belsamber] thought the Model 100 might make an ideal platform for his mobile command line work
. With a
few
modifications, naturally. While technically the nearly 40 year old portable could connect to a Linux computer as a simple serial terminal, its outdated and non-backlit LCD leaves a bit to be desired in 2021. But there’s little sense in upgrading the display if he’d still be saddled with the anemic Intel 80C85 motherboard, so he decided to clean house and replace everything.
Once stripped of the original hardware, the Model 100’s enclosure offered up plenty of room for a Pine A64 LTS single-board computer, four 18650 cells, and a 1920×480 ultra-wide LCD. While not a perfect match for the dimensions of the original panel, the new screen is an exceptionally close fit. The keyboard has been left intact, but rather than adding a QMK-compatible microcontroller to the mix,
[belsamber] wired the matrix directly into the GPIO of the A64
.
While we know some retro aficionados might shed a tear to see an iconic computer get gutted, [belsamber] mentions that nothing will go to waste; the parts he pulled from this machine will serve as spares for a second Model 100 he has in his collection. Besides, given the immense popularity of these machines, they aren’t exactly rare to begin with.
As an aside, we recently saw this same unique display used in a
3D printed desktop computer with distinctively retro-futuristic styling
. We didn’t have miniature 4:1 ratio displays on
our list of 2021 hardware predictions
, but it seems they’re already making a strong showing. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312616",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T18:24:35",
"content": "“While its layout might seem to be a bit dated to modern eyes, there’s little debate that it was one of the most successful and influential computers in history.”Even starred in movies.http://www.starrin... | 1,760,373,217.046867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/ai-learns-to-drive-trackmania/ | AI Learns To Drive Trackmania | Lewin Day | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"genetic algorithm",
"machine learning",
"trackmania"
] | Machine learning has long been a topic of interest for humanity, but only in recent years have we had broad access to great computing power to enable to the average person to dive in.
[Yosh] recently decided to put an AI to work learning how to race in
Trackmania.
After early experiments with supervised learning, [Yosh] decided to implement a genetic algorithm to produce an AI to drive in the game. The AI takes distance from the track walls as an input, and has steering and accelerator values as an output. Starting with 100 AIs in generation 1, [Yosh] iterated by choosing the AIs that covered the longest distance in 13 seconds. Once the AIs started to get the hang of the first few corners, he changed the training to instead prioritize the lowest time taken to traverse each of the checkpoints along the track.
The AI improved over time, and over 100 generations, got down to a 23.48s time on the test track, versus 19.63s for [Trabadia], a talented human. We’d love to see how much better the AI could do with more training. [Yosh] is trying more experiments, like providing extra feedback in the AI fitness function
to keep it from hitting the walls
.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a genetic algorithm used to train a racing AI, either.
Video after the break. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312591",
"author": "nemgias",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T15:36:21",
"content": "But is it learning to drive or did it just learn that one particular track?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312641",
"author": "Steven13",... | 1,760,373,217.107193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/serving-the-feline-masters-a-chair-to-follow-the-sunny-spot/ | Serving The Feline Masters: A Chair To Follow The Sunny Spot | Danie Conradie | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"cat",
"chair",
"light sensor",
"NodeMCU",
"sunny spot"
] | Terry Pratchett once wrote, “In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this”. [Jonathan]’s cat has clearly not forgotten, and makes it loudly known whenever her favorite chair needs to be moved to stay in the spot of sunlight. He was looking for a fun hack anyway, so he decided to give in to her majesty’s demands, and
automated the task
.
[Jonathan] first considered adding motorizing the chair itself, but decided to keep it simple and just drag the chair across the room with a spool attached to a motor. The rope spool was attached to a small geared DC motor, mounted on a salad bowl base, and connected to an ESP8266 via a motor driver. The ‘8266 is running NodeMCU with a web server that accepts simple motor commands through a RESTful API. This setup can’t reset the chair to it’s starting position at the end of the day, but this is a small price to pay for simplicity. The motor was a bit underpowered, but it only needed to move the chair in small distances at a time, so [Jonathan] removed the chair’s back to reduce the weight, and upped the motor voltage.
Determining when and how far to move the chair is the second part of the challenge. [Jonathan] considered a simple lookup table for the time of day, but the motor’s movement wasn’t consistent enough. The final solution was a set of three BH1750 digital ambient light sensors to give feedback. A pair of sensors on the chair determines its position relative to the sunny spot, by comparing light levels to a reference sensor mounted in the window. These light sensors are also attached to NodeMCUs, and send movement commands to the winding unit as necessary.
Unfortunately, it appears the hack was in vain, due to the end-user being frightened off by the motor noise. However, it still helped [Jonathan] to scratch his hacking itch, and fortunately for us, he documented the adventure and shared all
the code
.
This is the first cat chair we covered, but we have seen a few hacks to
feed them
or
keep them away
. | 21 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312534",
"author": "micropower8",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T12:23:39",
"content": "I like it. I think … his cat feels well and he is in good company.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6312545",
"author": "LordNothing",
"t... | 1,760,373,219.499944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/arduino-wannabe-should-have-used-a-555-oh-wait-it-does/ | Arduino Wannabe Should Have Used A 555. Oh Wait, It Does. | Dan Maloney | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"555",
"arduino",
"dev board",
"microcontroller",
"timer",
"troll",
"uno"
] | It’s a little known secret that when the Hackaday writers gather in their secret underground bunker to work on our plans for world domination, we often take breaks to play our version of the corporate “Buzzword Bingo”, where paradigms are leveraged and meetings circle back to loop in offline stakeholders, or something like that. Our version, however, is “Comment Line Bingo”, and right in the middle of the card is the seemingly most common comment of all: “You should have used a 555,” or variations thereof.
So it was with vicious glee that we came across
the Trollduino V1.0
by the deliciously named [Mild Lee Interested]. It’s the hardware answer to the common complaint, which we’ll grant is often justified. The beautiful part of this is that Trollduino occupies the same footprint as an Arduino Uno and is even pin-compatible with the microcontroller board, or at least sort of. The familiar line of components and connectors sprout from the left edge of the board, and headers for shields line the top and bottom edges too. “Sketches” are implemented in hardware, with jumpers and resistors and capacitors of various values plugged in to achieve all the marvelous configurations the indispensable timer chip can be used for. And extra points for the deliberately provocative use of Comic Sans in the silkscreen.
Hats off to [Lee] for a thoroughly satisfying troll, and a nice look at what the 555 chip can really do. If you want a more serious look at the 555, check out
this 555 modeled on a breadboard
, or dive into
the story of the chip’s development
. | 89 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312507",
"author": "nes",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T09:07:40",
"content": "Meh, should have used two 555s and made it twice as useful.:-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312508",
"author": "Simon Ludborzs",
"t... | 1,760,373,219.386099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/rgb-glasses-built-from-pcbs/ | RGB Glasses Built From PCBs | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"fr4",
"RGB glasses",
"sunglasses",
"ws2812b"
] | Shutter shades were cool once upon a time, but if you really want to stand out, it’s hard to go past aggressively bright LEDs right in the middle of your face.
A great way to achieve that is by building a pair of RGB glasses, as [Arnov Sharma] did.
The design intelligently makes use of PCBs to form the entire structure of the glasses. One PCB makes up the left arm of the glasses, carrying an ESP12F microcontroller and the requisite support circuitry. It’s fitted to the front PCB through a slot, and soldered in place. The V+, GND, and DATA connections for the WS2812B LEDs also serve as the mechanical connection. The right arm of the glasses is held on in the same way, being the same as the left arm PCB but simply left unpopulated. A little glue is also used to stiffen up the connection.
It’s a tidy build, and one that can be easily controlled from a smartphone as the ESP12F runs a basic webserver which allows the color of the glasses to be changed.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a flashy pair of LED shades either!
Video after the break. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312485",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T06:19:30",
"content": "For an even stronger PCB-to-PCB solder joint, use plated through slots instead of pads placed on the edge of a non-plated slot. At least JLCPCB can do up to 6 mm long plated slots, which would fit 5mm wide ta... | 1,760,373,219.436598 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/diy-lego-record-cleaner-is-revolutionary/ | DIY LEGO Record Cleaner Is Revolutionary | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"lego technic",
"ultrasonic",
"ultrasonic cleaning",
"Vinyl Record"
] | There are many schools of thought when it comes to keeping vinyl records clean. It’s a ritual that’s nearly as important as the one that comes after it — queuing up the record and lowering the needle. We’ve seen people use everything from Windex and microfiber towels to ultrasonic cleaning machines that cost hundreds or even thousands. In the midst of building a beefier ultrasonic record cleaner and waiting for parts,
[Baserolokus] looked around at all the LEGO around the house and decided to build a plastic prototype in the interim
.
The idea behind ultrasonic cleaning is simple — high-frequency sound waves pumped through distilled water produce tons of tiny bubbles. These bubbles gently knock all the dirt and grime out of the grooves without using any brushes, rags, or harsh cleaners. [Baserolokus] built two pieces that hang on the edge of a washtub. On one side, a Technic motor spins the record at just under one RPM, it spins against a 3D printer wheel embedded in the other side. Check it out in action after the break.
Cleaning your vinyl is a great first step, but you might be ruining your records with a sub-par turntable.
Take a deep dive with [Jenny List]’s thorough primer on the subject
. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312462",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T03:36:01",
"content": "How about using a laser pickup, and keeping the record in an enclosed and filtered environment?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312469",
... | 1,760,373,218.939338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/3d-printing-without-support-material-thanks-to-an-additional-axis/ | 3D Printing Without Support Material Thanks To An Additional Axis | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"FDM"
] | Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printers which squirt out molten plastic layer by layer are by far the most popular type in general use. Most machines extrude plastic through a nozzle above print bed, and struggle to produce parts with overhangs without using support material. However,
a German team of researchers have recently come up with a solution
.
In a prototype built by researchers at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), a standard Cartesian printer has a third rotary axis added, upon which the nozzle can rotate. Additionally, the nozzle is angled at 45 degrees to the print bed, rather than the usual perpendicular setup. This allows layers of a print to be built up in such a way that support material is not needed for the vast majority of typical overhangs. This is particularly useful for hollow parts, where removing support material can be particularly difficult.
The team believes that such technology could be implemented on existing printers by way of a simple upgrade kit, and we can imagine a few experimenters will be champing at the bit to try it out. If you do, be sure to drop us a line. Alternatively,
consider using a marker to make removing supports easier
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Andreas for the tip!] | 52 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312433",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17T00:24:18",
"content": "What a lack lust article for such a superb design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6312434",
"author": "Michael Greer",
"timestamp": "2021-01-17... | 1,760,373,219.272841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/interference-patterns-harnessed-for-optical-logic-gates/ | Interference Patterns Harnessed For Optical Logic Gates | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"and",
"contructive",
"destructive",
"diffraction",
"gates",
"interference",
"nor",
"optics",
"OR",
"photolithography",
"xor"
] | The basics of digital logic are pretty easy to master, and figuring out how the ones and zeroes flow through various kinds of gates is often an interesting exercise. Taking things down a level and breaking the component AND, OR, and NOR gates down to their underlying analog circuits adds some complexity, but the flow of electrons is still pretty understandable. Substitute all that for photons, though, and you’ll enter a strange world indeed.
At least that’s our take on [Jeroen Vleggaar]’s latest project, which is
making logic gates from purely optical components
. As he himself admits in the video below, this isn’t exactly unexplored territory, but his method, which uses constructive and destructive interference, seems not to have been used before. The basic “circuit” consists of a generator, a pair of diffraction patterns etched into a quartz plate, and an evaluator, which is basically a pinhole in another plate positioned to coincide with the common focal point of the generator patterns. An OR gate is formed when the two generators are hit with in-phase monochromatic light. Making the two inputs out of phase by 180° results in an XOR gate, as destructive interference between the two inputs prevents any light from making it out of the evaluator.
All seven basic gates are possible using variations of this technique, but of course, actually building such things poses challenges. The microscopic manufacturing techniques, including photolithography and etching patterns on thin metal coatings, are pretty non-trivial. And while [Jeroen] was able to construct a few basic gates and test them, there’s still a long way to go. He says that he needs to add both input beam controls — LCD shutters, perhaps — as well as output detection.
The potential applications of this are pretty exciting, and we’ll be staying tuned for details. For deeper background on the dual nature of light and how interference patterns form, check out
[Jeroen]’s explanation of the double-slit experiment
. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312408",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T21:47:26",
"content": "There is one problem with photonic elements, that makes photonics impractical as a replacement of electronics. Electronic elements are more or less square, while photonic elements are extremely rectangul... | 1,760,373,219.638464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/usb-c-programmable-power-supply-for-any-project/ | USB-C Programmable Power Supply For Any Project | Danie Conradie | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"arduino",
"atmega32u4",
"PD3.0",
"power delivery",
"USB C"
] | USB-C Power Delivery 3.0 (PD3.0) introduces a new Programmable Power Supply (PPS) mode, which allows a device to negotiate any supply of 3.3-21 V in 20 mV steps, and up to 5 A of current in 50 mA steps. To make use of this new standard, [Ryan Ma] create the
PD Micro
, an Arduino-compatible development board, and a self-contained software library to allow easy integration of PD3.0 and the older PD2.0 into projects.
The dev board is built around an ATMega32U4 microcontroller and FUSB302 USB-C PHY. The four-layer PCB is densely packed on both sides to fit in the Arduino Pro Micro Form factor. The board can deliver up to 100W (20 V at 5 A) from an appropriate power source and shows visual feedback on the PD status through a set of LEDs.
The primary goal of the project is actually in the software. [Ryan] found that existing software libraries for PD take up a lot of memory, and are difficult to integrate into small projects. Working from the PD specifications and PD PHY chip data sheet, he created a lighter weight and self-contained software library which consumes less than 8 K of flash and 1 K of RAM. This is less than half the Flash and RAM available on the ATmega32U4.
[Ryan] is running a
Crowd Supply campaign
(video after the break) to get some of these powerful boards out in the wild, and has released all the
source code and schematics on GitHub
. The PCB design files will be released during the last week of the campaign, around 25 January 2021.
USB-C and power delivery
are not simple standards, but the ability to add a high-speed data interface and a
programmable power supply
into almost any project has real potential. | 57 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312359",
"author": "Can't use a 555 for this one!",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T18:09:18",
"content": "Arduino based soldering iron?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312375",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,373,219.590472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/hackability-matters/ | Hackability Matters | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Software Development"
] | [
"hackability",
"newsletter",
"philosophy",
"Rant",
"unix"
] | The Unix Way
™ provides extreme hackability. The idea is that software should be written as tools to accomplish discrete tasks, and that it should be modular, extensible, and play well with others. It’s like software as a LEGO set — you can put the blocks together however you want, within limits, and make stuff that’s significantly cooler than any of the individual blocks alone.
Clearly this doesn’t work for all applications — things like graphics editors and web browsers don’t really lend themselves to being elegant tools that integrate well with others, right? It’s only natural that they’re bloaty walled gardens. What happens in the browser must stay in the browser, right?
But how sad is it that the one piece of software you use all day, your window into cyberspace, doesn’t play well with the rest of your system? I’d honestly never really been bothered by that fact until stumbling on
TabFS
. It’s an extension to Chrome that represents the tabs on your browser as if they were files on your local system — The Unix Way™. And what this means is that any other program that can read from or write to a file can open tabs, collect them, change webpages on the fly, and so on. It opens up the browser to you.
This is tremendously powerful. Don’t like the bookmarking paradigm of your particular browser? Writing your own would be a snap in Python — and you could do cleverer things like apply a little machine learning to handle putting them in categories. Want to pop open (or refresh) a set of webpages at a particular time every day?
Cron
, or its significantly more complicated counterpart
systemd
, and a couple lines of code will do that. Want to make a hardware button that converts dark mode to light mode and vice-versa for every website starting with “H”? Can do.
I’m picking on browsers, but many large pieces of software are inaccessible in the same way — even if they’re open source, they don’t open up channels for interaction with user code or scripts. (Everything “in the cloud” or “as a service”, I’m looking at you! But that’s a further rant for another day.) And that’s a shame, because most of these “big” pieces of software actually do the coolest things.
So please, if you’re working on a big software package, or even just writing a plug-in for one,
do
think about how you can make more of its abilities available to the casual scripter. Otherwise, it’s just plastic blocks that don’t fit with the rest of the set.
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.
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! | 42 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312334",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T15:31:56",
"content": "“Otherwise, it’s just plastic blocks that don’t fit with the rest of the set.”Heyyyy why come nobody printed a “universal block” yet? Lego studs down one edge, stickle brick bristles on another, mecc... | 1,760,373,219.02876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/tv-turned-automatic-etch-a-sketch-with-raspberry-pi/ | TV Turned Automatic Etch A Sketch With Raspberry Pi | Tom Nardi | [
"Art",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"etch a sketch",
"LCD TV",
"rotary encoder",
"stepper motor",
"wall mounted"
] | Considering one of the biggest draws of the original Etch a Sketch was how simple it was, it’s always interesting to see the incredible lengths folks will go to recreate that low-tech experience with modern hardware. A perfect example is this
giant wall mounted rendition of the iconic art toy created by [Ben Bernstein]
. With a Raspberry Pi and some custom electronics onboard, it can even do its own drawing while you sit back and watch.
At a high level, what we’re seeing here is a standard Samsung LCD TV with a 3D printed Etch a Sketch shell mounted on top of it. That alone would be a pretty neat project, and had [Ben] just thrown some videos of designs getting sketched out onto the display, he could have achieved a similar end result with a lot less work. But where’s the fun in that?
It took hundreds of hours to print the shell.
To make his jumbo Etch a Sketch functional, [Ben] spent more than a year developing the hardware and software necessary to read the user input from the two large 3D printed knobs mounted under the TV. The knobs are connected to stepper motors with custom PCBs mounted to their backs that hold a A4988 driver chip as well as a AS5600 absolute magnetic rotary encoder. This solution allows the Raspberry Pi to not only read the rotation of the knobs when a person is using the Etch a Sketch interactively, but spin them realistically when the software takes over and starts doing an autonomous drawing.
Several Python scripts pull all the various pieces of hardware together and produce the final user interface. The software [Ben] wrote can take an image and generate paths that the Etch a Sketch can use to realistically draw it. The points that the line is to pass through, as well as variables that control knob rotation and pointer speed, are saved into a JSON file so they can easily be loaded later. Towards the end of the
Imgur gallery [Ben] has created for this project
, you can see the software working its way through a few example sketches.
We’ve seen several projects that
motorize an Etch a Sketch to draw complex images
, but this may be the first example we’ve seen where everything was done in software. This digital version doesn’t need to follow the traditional “rules”, but we appreciate that [Ben] stuck to them anyway. Incidentally this isn’t the first Etch a Sketch TV conversion to grace these pages, though to be fair,
the other project took a radically different approach
.
View post on imgur.com | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312325",
"author": "Michael Gardi",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T13:52:23",
"content": "Nice! Great example of go big or go home.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312460",
"author": "nuclear",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,373,219.187546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/hackaday-podcast-101-lasering-and-milling-absolutely-everything/ | Hackaday Podcast 101: Lasering And Milling Absolutely Everything | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams discuss our favorite hacks of the past week. We accidentally chose a theme, as most of the projects use lasers and are about machining work. We lead off with a really powerful laser that can directly etch circuit boards, only to be later outdone by an even more powerful laser using a chemistry trick to etch glass. We look at how to mix up your own rocket motors, bootstrap your own laser tag, and go down the rabbit hole of building tools for embedded development. The episode wraps up as we discuss what exactly NVMe is and where hardware hacking might take it.
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 101 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Elliot builds a workshop screen (kinda)
Luggable PC
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Laser Blasts Out High-Quality PCBs
Vertical Mill Completes Scrapyard Lathe Build
Building a lathe from industrial scrap – YouTube
DIY Laser Tag System Comes With All The Bells And Whistles
Micromachining Glass With A Laser — Very, Very Slowly
Single Flute end mill at 15,000 FPS: DATRON Cross Cutter – YouTube
ImageJ: An open platform for scientific image analysis
TabFS Makes Your Browser A File System
It Isn’t Rocket Science — Wait, Maybe It Is
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
ESP8266 Socket Is A Snap-Fit, Breadboard-Friendly Wonder
Retro Terminals Bring Some Style To Your Desktop
Old Kindle Shows HDMI Video, Eventually
Elliot’s Picks:
Visualizing Ionizing Radiation With DIY Plastic Scintillators
3D Printing In Five Axes Makes The World Flat
Knockoff Kapton Nearly Sinks DIY Flex PCB Project
Can’t-Miss Articles:
NVMe Blurs The Lines Between Memory And Storage
You Got Something On Your Processor Bus: The Joys Of Hacking ISA And PCI
Death Of The Serial Squid: When Do You Give Up? | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6313626",
"author": "fid",
"timestamp": "2021-01-20T16:30:39",
"content": "Fun podcast as usual.Elliot, you mention using an esp8266 and g-link in the final section about the serial squid. Is it g-link, gee-link, glink, or something else? I didn’t find a link in the show notes. I’d ... | 1,760,373,218.869453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/civil-defense-disco-ball-rocks-ground-zero/ | Civil Defense Disco Ball Rocks Ground Zero | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"civil defense",
"cold war",
"disco ball",
"geiger counter",
"RGB LED"
] | Old Civil Defense survey meters like the V-715 are interesting conversation starters, but of very little practical use today. These devices were intended to be a sort of litmus test that survivors of a nuclear blast could use to determine when it was safe to venture out of their radiation shelter: if the needle on the meter moves, even when it’s on the most sensitive setting, you should probably go back inside. Since [Hamilton Karl] would (hopefully) never need such an indicator, he decided to
have a little fun with this Cold War holdover and turn it into a Disco Containment Unit
.
Technical details are a little sparse on this one, but we can infer most of it just from the pictures. In place of the original meter [Hamilton] has mounted a tiny mirrored ball inside of a protective cage, which is spun by a geared motor that’s occupying the space that used to be taken up by the ion chamber.
A handful of Adafruit NeoPixel RGB LEDs, an Arduino Nano, and a few switches to control it all round out the functional aspects of the build, and a new disco-themed trefoil replaces the original Civil Defense logo on the side. The project page mentions there’s a piezo buzzer onboard that performs a stirring rendition of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, but alas there’s no video that shows it in action.
Thanks to the rugged construction and built-in handle of these old survey meters, [Hamilton] can now take the party with him wherever he goes. Not that he can really go anywhere with this whole global pandemic hanging over our heads, but at least he’ll be ready when things start trending towards normal. In a way the device’s functionality has now been reversed from how it originally worked, since the meter going wild will now be an indicator that its safe to come out.
While the V-715 isn’t of much use outside of a post-apocalyptic hellscape, the
V-700 is actually a proper Geiger counter that’s still useful for surveying or research
. An important distinction to remember if you ever get a chance to snap one of them up at a swap meet or flea market. Whenever we can start having those again, anyway. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312135",
"author": "Vinalon",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T17:51:02",
"content": "Adorable. “Disco Containment Unit” might be the funniest phrase that I’ve heard all month.It’d be a pretty good band name, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,373,219.684384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/this-week-in-security-ubiquiti-nissan-zyxel-and-dovecot/ | This Week In Security: Ubiquiti, Nissan, Zyxel, And Dovecot | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Solarwinds",
"telegram",
"This Week in Security"
] | You may have been one of the many of us who
received an email from Ubiquiti this week, recommending a password change
. The email stated that there was an unauthorized access of Ubiquiti systems, and while there wasn’t evidence of user data being accessed, there was also not enough evidence to say emphatically that user data was not accessed. Ubiquiti has mentioned that the database that may have been accessed contains a user’s name, email address, hashed password, and optionally the mailing address and phone number.
Depending on how the Ubiquiti authentication system is designed, that hashed password may be enough to log in to someone’s account. In any case, updating your password would invalidate the potentially compromised hash. This event underscores a complaint voiced by Ubiquiti users: Ubiquiti has been making it difficult to administrate hardware without a cloud-enabled account.
Nissan Source Code
Nissan was hosting a large git repository using Atlassian’s Bitbucket. That install was still using
default credentials for the admin account, and someone finally noticed
. The researcher who first discovered the issue has remained anonymous, and
the primary source for the linked article
was caught up in the recent outbreak of Twitter censorship, with an account suspension.
The repository contained code from Nissan mobile apps, marketing information, and code for internal-only services. The 18.4 GB data dump is still available on the darker corners of the internet, via torrent files.
Zyxel Scans Seen by ISC
Remember the Zyxel problem we talked about last week? Well this didn’t take long. The Internet Storm Center (ISC) is reporting that
it is already seeing SSH login attempts using those hard-coded credentials
.
It’s worth taking a minute to call out the ISC and similar efforts for
their invaluable work
. The ISC primarily serves as a clearinghouse for data from Intrusion Detection Systems and firewalls around the internet. When new patterns emerge, volunteers watching the data can quickly identify new attacks as they emerge. In some cases, this quick response can give administrators around the world time to patch the vulnerability being targeted before they are compromised.
Dovecot Hibernation
Dovecot has released
version 2.3.13
, and there is a fix for a notable vulnerability,
CVE-2020-24386
. IMAP supports an IDLE command, putting the connection to the server in a holding pattern, ready to push real-time mail notifications to the client. The vulnerability allows a client to put its connection in this state, and then send a malicious request to the server. This request can allow for limited filesystem access, most notably the downloading of messages from other accounts. It’s possible to mitigate the flaw through disabling IMAP hibernation, but the recommendation is to simply update to the latest release.
Telegram Triangulation
Telegram is one of the go-to solutions for sending secure messages. Just over a year ago, Telegram introduced “People Near Me”, a feature for finding nearby users who have opted in to the service. If you’ve opted in, you might consider going and turning that feature off. Telegram gives a very precise and accurate distance to anyone else who is within seven miles. That distance updates in real time, which is great for meetups. What might not be immediately obvious is that it’s rather trivial to spoof a device’s location to anywhere in the world. Within a few minutes,
it’s possible to precisely locate anyone in the world who has Telegram’s location service turned on
. Other services have prevented this problem by giving less precise location data. So far, Telegram has responded that this is not a bug, and it doesn’t plan to make any changes.
How Solarwinds Got Hacked
More details on the Solarwinds backdoor is slowly coming to light. The more information is revealed, the more interesting the story becomes. This week, we got
Crowdstrike’s write-up of the malware running on Solarwinds machines
. This malware, dubbed Sunspot, isn’t the Orion backdoor itself, it is a custom-written piece of malware that modifies source code surreptitiously at compile time. This brings to mind the old
Trusting Trust
attack.
Sunspot was written to very carefully hide from detection, and to only take action when it detects code compiling. It checks once a second for
MsBuild.exe
, and whether it was building Orion. If it is, it modifies one source code file, waits for compilation to complete, and then undoes the malicious change. A developer would be hard pressed to discover the modification, because it only exists during compilation, while the developer is out getting coffee anyway. We were somewhat skeptical when Solarwinds first called this a “sophisticated and novel” hack, but the evidence seems to affirm that opinion. | 27 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312093",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T15:15:53",
"content": "I’m not an IT guy so help me here:“This event underscores a complaint voiced by Ubiquiti users: Ubiquiti has been making it harder to avoid administrating hardware with local only accounts.”I’m having troubl... | 1,760,373,219.743816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/programmable-filament-for-multicolor-printing/ | Programmable Filament For Multicolor Printing | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"filament",
"multimaterial"
] | A recent research paper shows a way to create multicolor 3D prints using a single extruder if you are too lazy to babysit the machine and switch filament. The concept: print your own
“programmable” filament
that has the right colors in the right place. This is the same idea as manually splicing filament but presumably is more efficient since the process works with one color at a time and doesn’t repeat. In other words, to print the 64 squares of a chessboard you’d swap filament at least 64 times on each layer. Using programmable filament, you’d load one spool, print half of the filament, load another spool, print the other half, and then finally load the newly created filament and print the chessboard. Notice that the first two operations aren’t printing the chessboard. They are printing the spool of filament you feed through on the third pass.
There are machines made to do this, of course, although they generally just splice lengths of filament together for you automatically. Using one filament solves the problems of keeping multiple heads in alignment as well as the added cost and complexity. However, you now have different problems such as the transition between materials and knowing exactly how much material will be at each point in the print.
We wondered how much filament you can print spooled up on a reasonable size print bed. According to the paper:
The maximum length of a printed filament is highly dependent on the build area given the type of 3D printer. With a 300×300 mm bed size, a printed filament in a spiral shape can be approximately 20-m long.
Printing the working filament is time-consuming, too. The paper reports that a boat that took two hours to print required five hours to print the programmable filament. Still better than swapping a bunch of plastic by hand, we suppose.
Oddly enough, the inspiration for this paper came from an
Instructable
. If you plan to try this, you might want to watch the videos there about printing hexagonal filaments with different colors.
If the idea of printing filament seems strange, we’ve
seen it before
. Of course, you don’t need any equipment at all if you are
patient and willing to lie about it
. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312048",
"author": "j.woo",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T12:39:20",
"content": "I’m super confused by this. We’ve been doing this for years, right? That’s what the Palette does? In order for this to work correctly, there has to be some kind of feedback mechanism between the printer and... | 1,760,373,220.363783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/a-136-euro-pulse-jet-for-some-no-firework-lockdown-fun/ | A 136 Euro Pulse Jet For Some No-Firework Lockdown Fun | Jenny List | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"pulse jet",
"stainless steel",
"stick welder"
] | With the aim of reducing virus transmission due to gatherings during the pandemic, the Dutch government have banned fireworks. The people of the Netherlands like their noisy things so we’re told that the ban has been widely flouted, but [Build Comics] are a law-abiding group of workshop tool heroes.
For their lockdown noise, they created an entirely-legal pulsejet
. The interesting part is that it was made entirely using fairly basic tools on a minimalist budget, with TIG and MIG eschewed in favour of a mundane stick welder.
The form of the pulse jet will probably be familiar as it has been taken from other published designs. A long tube is bent back upon itself with a combustion chamber placed in one of its arms such that the jet forms a resonant chamber that produces continuous pulses of exhaust gas. This one is made from stainless steel tube, and the exhaustive documentation should be worth a look for anyone tempted to make their own. Welding thin sheet with a stick welder requires quite a bit of skill, and in a few places they manage to burn a hole or two. One requires a patch, but the time-honoured technique of running a bead around the edge manages to successfully close another.
Their first attempt to fire it up using a leaf blower with a 3D-printed adapter fails, but following the construction of a more resilient part and a more efficient gas injector the engine starts. It’s then taken out on a farm for some serious noise without too many angry neighbours, as you can see in the video below the break.
The hero tools of Build Comics have appeared here before, most recently with
an analogue meter clock
. | 21 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312009",
"author": "Pascal",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T09:40:23",
"content": "For the record, the reason for a fireworks ban was not the reduced transmission, but rather the alleviation of hospital workers. Typically, a new years eve results in a lot of firework accidents in the Net... | 1,760,373,220.221219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/dynamic-map-of-italy-on-a-pcb/ | Dynamic Map Of Italy On A PCB | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"api",
"art",
"data",
"ESP8266",
"italy",
"led",
"live",
"map",
"pcb",
"rgb",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | While most PCBs stick to tried-and-true methods of passing electrons through their layers of carefully-etched copper, modern construction methods allow for a large degree of customization of most aspects of these boards. From solder mask to number of layers, and even the shape of the board itself, everything is open for artistic license and experimentation now. [Luca] shows off some of these features with
his PCB which acts as a live map of Italy
.
The PCB is cut out in the shape of the famous boot, with an LED strategically placed in each of 20 regions in the country. This turns the PCB into a map with the RGB LEDs having the ability to be programmed to show any data that one might want. It’s powered by a Wemos D1 Mini (based on an ESP8266) which makes programming it straightforward. [Luca] has some sample programs which fetch live data from various sources, with it currently gathering daily COVID infection rates reported for each of the 20 regions.
The ability to turn a seemingly boring way to easily attach electronic parts together into a work of art without needing too much specialized equipment is a fantastic development in PCBs. We’ve seen them turned into
full-color art installations with all the mask colors availabl
e, too, so the possibilities for interesting-looking (as well as interesting-behaving) circuits are really opening up. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311977",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T07:23:06",
"content": "Why is that PCB shaped like a boot?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312024",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T10:41:04... | 1,760,373,220.162695 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/beam-dump-makes-sure-your-laser-path-is-safely-terminated/ | Beam Dump Makes Sure Your Laser Path Is Safely Terminated | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"beam dump",
"laser",
"optics",
"plumb bob",
"reflecor",
"safety",
"termination"
] | Between hot things, sharp things, and spinny things, there’s more than enough danger in the average hacker’s shop to maim and mutilate anyone who fails to respect their power. But somehow lasers don’t seem to earn the same healthy fear, which is strange considering permanent blindness can await those who make a mistake lasting mere fractions of a second.
To avoid that painful fate, high-power laser fan [Brainiac75] undertook
building a beam dump
, which is a safe place to aim a laser beam in an experimental setup. His version has but a few simple parts: a section of extruded aluminum tubing, a couple of plastic end caps, and a conical metal plumb bob. The plumb bob gets mounted to one of the end caps so that its tip points directly at a hole drilled in the center of the other end cap. The inside and the outside of the tube and the plumb bob are painted with high-temperature matte black paint before everything is buttoned up.
In use, laser light entering the hole in the beam dump is reflected off the surface of the plumb bob and absorbed by the aluminum walls. [Brainiac75] tested this with lasers of various powers and wavelengths, and the beam dump did a great job of safely catching the beam. His experiments are now much cleaner with all that scattered laser light contained, and the work area is much safer. Goggles still required, of course.
Hats off to [Brainiac75] for an instructive video and a build that’s cheap and easy enough that nobody using lasers has any excuse for not having a beam dump. Such a thing would be a great addition to the safety tips in
[Joshua Vasquez]’s guide to designing a safe laser cutter
. | 37 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311947",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T03:35:39",
"content": "Lasers earn complete terror from me, as in, I will not even consider messing with the high power ones without the full level of precaution.I really have no answer or explanation for why people don’t t... | 1,760,373,220.634666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/sand-plotter-built-with-3d-printer-parts/ | Sand Plotter Built With 3D Printer Parts | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"plotter",
"sand plotter"
] | Sand plotters are beautiful machines. They can make endless patterns, over and over again, only to wipe away their own creation with each new pass. Having seen the famous Sisyphus sand sculpture online,
[Simon] decided to make his own.
The build came together quickly, thanks to [Simon]’s well-stocked workshop and experience with CNC motion platforms. The frame was built out of wood, with a combination of hand-cut and lasercut parts. After fabric-wrapping the outer rim turned out poorly, rope was substituted instead for a stylish, organic look. LEDs were installed inside to light the sand for attractive effect. The metal ball is moved through the sand via a magnet attached to an XY platform mounted on the back of the table. The platform is built out of old 3D printer parts, with a Creality CR10S Pro chosen for its ultra-quiet stepper drivers. Initial attempts to make the system near-silent were hung up by the crunching sound of the ball rolling over the sand; this was fixed by instead mounting the ball on a foam pad. While the ball is now dragged instead of rolling, the effect is one of blissful quiet instead of crunching aggravation.
The final build is incredibly attractive, and something we’d love to have as a coffee table as a conversation piece. We’ve seen [Simon]’s work around here before, too –
with the water-walking RC car a particular highlight.
Video after the break. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311537",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T17:56:06",
"content": "This is so great. Might have to put some time in and make one of my own!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311539",
"author": "sweethack",
"times... | 1,760,373,220.29421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/nvme-blurs-the-lines-between-memory-and-storage/ | NVMe Blurs The Lines Between Memory And Storage | Maya Posch | [
"computer hacks",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"NVMe",
"PCIe",
"storage technology"
] | The history of storage devices is quite literally a race between the medium and the computing power as the bottleneck of preserving billions of ones and zeros stands in the way of computing nirvana. The most recent player is the Non-Volatile Memory Express (
NVMe
), something of a hybrid of what has come before.
The first generations of home computers used floppy disk and compact cassette-based storage, but gradually, larger and faster storage became important as personal computers grew in capabilities. By the 1990s hard drive-based storage had become commonplace, allowing many megabytes and ultimately gigabytes of data to be stored. This would drive up the need for a faster link between storage and the rest of the system, which up to that point had largely used the ATA interface in Programmed Input-Output (
PIO
) mode.
This led to the use of DMA-based transfers (
UDMA
interface, also called Ultra ATA and
Parallel ATA
), along with DMA-based
SCSI
interfaces over on the Apple and mostly server side of the computer fence. Ultimately Parallel ATA became Serial ATA (
SATA
) and Parallel SCSI became Serial Attached SCSI (
SAS
), with SATA being used primarily in laptops and desktop systems until the arrival of NVMe along with solid-state storage.
All of these interfaces were designed to keep up with the attached storage devices, yet NVMe is a bit of an odd duck considering the way it is integrated in the system. NVMe is also different for not being bound to a single interface or connector, which can be confusing. Who can keep M.2 and U.2 apart, let alone which protocol the interface speaks, be it SATA or NVMe?
Let’s take an in-depth look at the wonderful and wacky world of NVMe, shall we?
Deceiving Appearances
Diagram of the elements in SATA Express, functionally similar to M.2.
Ask anyone what an NVMe slot on a computer mainboard looks and they’ll be inclined to show you a picture of an
M.2
slot, as this has become the most used standard within consumer electronics for solid-state storage devices. Yet even an M.2 slot with a solid-state drive (SSD) in it may not even be an NVMe slot or SSD, since SATA also uses this interface.
Often the mainboard’s silkscreen next to the M.2 slot will mention what technology an M.2 slot can accept. Checking the manual for the board in question is a good idea too. The reason for this confusion is that originally there was a Mini-SATA (mSATA) standard for SSDs which used the PCIe Mini Card form factor, which evolved into the M.2 form factor as well as the
U.2
interface. The latter is more akin to the SATA and SAS interfaces, combining both SATA and PCIe channels into a single interface for connecting SSDs.
Meanwhile, the M.2 standard (after a brief detour with the short-lived SATA Express standard) was extended to support not only SATA, but also
AHCI
and NVMe. This is why M.2 slots are often (improperly) referred to as ‘NVMe slots’ when in reality NVMe is a PCIe-based protocol and defines no physical form factor or connector type.
M.2 interface in ‘B’ and ‘M’ keying.
Meanwhile the M.2 form factor is by itself rather versatile, or convoluted depending on how you look at it. In terms of physical size it can have a width of 12, 16, 22 or 30 millimeters, while supporting lengths between 16 and 110 mm. On its edge connector interface a pattern of notches is used to indicate its functionality, which is matched on the M.2 slot itself. Most common are the ‘B’ and ‘M’ key ID notches in the Key ID list, which contains e.g.:
A:
2x PCIe x1, USB 2.0, I2C and DP x4.
B:
PCIe x2, SATA, USB 2.0/3.0, audio, etc.
E:
2x PCIe x1, USB 2.0, I2C, etc.
M:
PCIe x4, SATA and SMBus.
This means that the physical dimensions of an M.2 expansion card can be any of 32 different permutations, before the 12 possible Key ID notch permutations are included. Fortunately in mainstream use the industry appears to have standardized for storage cards on 22 mm wide connectors with any of a fairly limited number of lengths, resulting in NVMe SSD identifiers such as ‘2242’, which would be a 22 mm wide and 42 mm long card. Meanwhile SSD cards can be keyed for B, M or both.
Important to note here is that by now M.2 slots are commonly used as essentially PCIe expansion slots for situations where space matters. This is why WiFi cards are also commonly found in M.2 form factor.
Defining NVMe
This then lands us at the essential definition of what NVMe is: a standard interface for storage devices that are directly connected to PCIe. What makes NVMe so different from SATA is that the latter translates the PCIe protocol to the SATA protocol, which then has to be interpreted by a chip on the storage device that speaks SATA before any storage-related commands can be executed.
Instead, NVMe defines the interface which can be used directly by any operating system which has an NVMe driver. Commands are sent to the NVMe storage device, which in turn executes those commands to read or write data, or perform certain maintenance operations, like
TRIM
. As one can safely assume that any storage device that identifies itself as an NVMe device is a solid-state storage device (NAND Flash, 3D XPoint, etc.), this means that the NVMe protocol is designed around the assumption of a low-latency, high burst rate storage device.
Intel’s 3D XPoint-based Optane SSD has very consistent performance regardless of the task load. (Credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Recently, a feature of NVMe called Host Memory Buffer (
HMB
) has become popular as a way to skip the need for a DRAM buffer on NAND Flash-based SSD. This feature uses part of the system RAM as a buffer, with relatively little loss in performance, with the buffer used
primarily for an address mapping table cache
.
As storage solutions keep evolving, new storage technologies such as
3D XPoint
have made even such features already irrelevant in the long term, as 3D XPoint’s access speed is closer to that of a DRAM buffer than that of NAND Flash. As 3D XPoint SSDs do not have a DRAM buffer, the increased use of such SSDs may result in NVMe being optimized for such storage devices instead.
Hacking NVMe
64×64 (4 kb) magnetic core memory.
At some point one has to wonder what you can actually do with NVMe, beyond buying NVMe SSDs and putting them into an M.2 B and/or M keyed slot on a mainboard. Here you should probably consider whether you’re more interested in hacking some solid-state storage together (if even just in the form of some DRAM or SRAM), or whether the M.2 slot itself is more intriguing.
Where full-sized PCIe slots are fairly big and the expansion cards offer a lot of space for big, clunky components like massive BGA chips and gigantic cooling solutions, M.2 expansion cards are intended to be small and compact, allowing them to fit in laptops. One could, say, combine an FPGA with the requisite SerDes and PCIe hardware blocks with an M.2 form factor PCB to create a compact PCIe expansion card for use in laptops and embedded applications.
Some recent hacks promise to add
NVMe support to Raspberry Pi
compute modules, replacing the SSD in a Pinebook Pro
with a WiFi card
, and
reading out an iPhone’s NVMe Flash storage
module using a ZIF adapter for PCIe.
Which is not to say that there is anything against someone trying to combine something as silly as making an NVMe storage drive using, say,
core memory
:)
Wrapping Up
Looking back on a few decades of computing, there has always been this distinction between system memory and storage, with the former being fast SRAM or DRAM volatile RAM. This distinction has decreased significantly in recent years. While NAND Flash-based storage along with NVMe means that we have the potential for extremely low latency and gigabytes per second of data transfer (especially with PCIe 4.0 NVMe), this is not the end of the story.
The newest thing appears to be the use of so-called
‘Persistent Memory’ DIMMs
in regular system memory slots. These use Intel’s Optane solid-state storage, allowing for system RAM to be increased by up to 512 GB per module. Naturally, these modules currently only work in Intel (server) boards which work with these special memory modules. Their use is in buffering for example databases, where the large size would make an in-memory buffer prohibitively expensive or impractical (e.g. multiple TBs of DDR4 DIMMs).
By having what is essentially very fast, persistent storage directly on the CPU’s memory controller, latency is reduced to the absolute minimum. Even though 3D XPoint (as a form of
Phase Change Memory
) is as of yet not as fast as DDR SDRAM, it may show us a glimpse of what may lie beyond NVMe, with conceivably the difference between ‘system RAM’ and ‘storage’ completely obliterated or changed beyond recognition. | 50 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311493",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T15:44:19",
"content": "” Even though 3D XPoint (as a form of Phase Change Memory) is as of yet not as fast as DDR SDRAM, it may show us a glimpse of what may lie beyond NVMe, with conceivably the difference between ‘system RAM... | 1,760,373,220.558183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/custom-coil-lets-mouse-charge-without-wires/ | Custom Coil Lets Mouse Charge Without Wires | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"inductive charging",
"qi charger",
"wireless charging"
] | It’s 2021, shouldn’t all of our devices be able to pull the power they need from the ether? [Sasa Karanovic] certainly thinks so, which is why he recently took it upon himself to
add wireless charging capabilities to his desktop computer peripherals
. The Qi transmitter and receiver modules are relatively cheap and easy to come by, the trick is in getting them installed.
The keyboard gets non-invasive Qi charging.
For the keyboard, [Sasa] took the path of least resistance. The receiver coil lives inside a little 3D printed box attached to the back, and power is routed through a hacked up right-angle USB cable. It’s a simple addition that doesn’t make any permanent changes to the keyboard; perfect for those who don’t want to risk toasting their gear.
But that wasn’t really an option for the mouse. Obviously the Qi hardware would have to go on the inside, but at a glance it was clear there wasn’t enough room to mount the stock coil. So [Sasa] pulled the original coil apart and rewound it around a small 3D printed jig. This resulting coil was perfectly sized to fit inside the flat area on the left side of the mouse with no apparent degradation in charging ability. Wiring the module up to an unpopulated pad on the PCB allowed him to easily
inject the 5 V output into the device’s existing charging circuitry
.
We’ve seen plenty of
aftermarket Qi charging coils take up permanent residence in various gadgets
, but rewinding the coil is a neat trick that we’ve only seen pulled off a couple times in the past. Something to file away mentally should you ever want to
wirelessly power up one of your projects
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311453",
"author": "alfie",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T12:19:17",
"content": "At what size would it become unusable? so if I made it so the whole mouse mat was the charger, would that work?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63114... | 1,760,373,220.761352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/it-isnt-rocket-science-wait-maybe-it-is/ | It Isn’t Rocket Science — Wait, Maybe It Is | Al Williams | [
"chemistry hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"rocket",
"rocket engine",
"Rocket Motor",
"solid rocket",
"solid rocket booster"
] | We don’t know why, but for some reason, the more dangerous something is, the more hacker appeal it seems to have. We like to deal with high temperatures, high voltages, dangerous chemicals, and powerful lasers. So [Tech Ingredient’s] recent video about
homemade rocket motors
certainly caught our attention. You may need a little commitment, though. The first video (yes, there isn’t just one) is over an hour long.
Turns out, [Tech] doesn’t actually want to use the rockets for propulsion. He needed a source of highly-ionized high-velocity plasma to try to get more power from his magnetohydrodynamic project. Whatever you want to use it for, these are serious-sized motors. [Tech] claims that his design is both powerful and easy to build. He also has a “secret” rocket fuel that he shares. What is it? We won’t spoil the video for you, but it is a sweet surprise.
The video isn’t just a how-to. There is a lot of discussion about how rocket motors work, which isn’t as intuitive as you might think. Of course, when you build rockets, weight is everything. There’s generous use of epoxy to provide strong barriers and seals without a lot of weight. If you just want to see the pyrotechnics, you can start with the second video — a smaller investment at less than 12 minutes.
The largest motor was roughly an H-class motor, which is very powerful. A top-end commercially available model rocket engine is usually an F-class and each letter is double the amount of thrust, so these are serious size motors.
If you want a better look at what happens inside a motor, try
building this one
. Surprisingly, you can even
3D print a liquid engine
. | 22 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311397",
"author": "nah!",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T09:31:43",
"content": "strictly speaking even farting is applied ropcket science",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6311411",
"author": "Marty",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,373,220.695272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/smart-power-delivery-for-long-led-strips/ | Smart Power Delivery For Long LED Strips | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"Neopixels",
"ws2812b"
] | Addressable LED strips, most commonly using the WS2812B, have revolutionized the pursuit of the glowiest and flashiest of builds. No longer does a maker have to compromise on full RGB color or number of LEDs due to the limitations of their chosen microcontroller, or fuss around with multiplexing schemes. However, the long strips of bright LEDs do have an issue with voltage drop on long runs, leading to dimming and color irregularities. Thankfully,
[Jan Mrázek] has come up with a useful solution in the form of the Neopixel Booster.
The device consists of a small PCB which packs a 5 volt regulator capable of putting out up to 4 amps. It’s designed with pads that match typical Neopixel strips, such that it can be neatly soldered in every 50cm or every 60 LEDs or so. Each booster PCB is fed with a set of fat power wires, at between 6-18 volts. This allows electricity to be fed to the full length of the strip at higher voltage, and thus lower current, greatly reducing resistive power losses. By having several regulators along the length of the strip, it helps guarantee that the whole length of a long run is receiving plenty of voltage and current and can light up the correct color as desired.
It’s a well thought out solution to a frustrating problem, and [Jan’s] efforts on the design front mean that a 5 meter long waterproof strip can be converted in around about an hour. We can imagine this could be manufactured into strips in future, too. If you’re wondering what to do with all those LEDs,
consider making yourself a custom display. | 51 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311360",
"author": "bung",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T06:24:36",
"content": "There were strips available on aliexpress with a similar board soldered inline every meter or so years ago. Nothing new.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,373,220.844397 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/extremely-simple-tesla-coil-with-only-3-components/ | Extremely Simple Tesla Coil With Only 3 Components | Anool Mahidharia | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"magnet wire",
"spark gap",
"tesla",
"tesla coil"
] | Tesla Coils are a favourite here at Hackaday – just try searching through the archives, and see the number of results you get for all types of cool projects. [mircemk] adds to this list with his
Extremely simple Tesla Coil with only 3 Components
. But
Be Warned
— most Tesla coil designs can be dangerous and ought to be handled with care — and this one particularly so. It connects directly to the 220 V utility supply. If you touch any exposed, conductive part on the primary side,
“Not only will it kill You, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying”
. Making sure there is an ELCB in the supply line will ensure such an eventuality does not happen.
No prizes for guessing that the circuit is straight forward. It can be built with parts lying around the typical hacker den. Since the coil runs directly off 220 V, [mircemk] uses a pair of fluorescent lamp ballasts (chokes) to limit current flow. And if ballasts are hard to come by, you can use incandescent filament lamps instead. The function of the “spark gap” is done by either a modified door bell or a 220 V relay. This repeatedly charges the capacitor and connects it across the primary coil, setting up the resonant current flow between them. The rest of the parts are what you would expect to see in any Tesla coil. A high voltage rating capacitor and a few turns of heavy gauge copper wire form the primary LC oscillator tank circuit, while the secondary is about 1000 turns of thinner copper wire. Depending on the exact gauge of wires used, number of turns and the diameter of the coils, you may need to experiment with the value of the capacitor to obtain the most electrifying output.
If you have to look for one advantage of such a circuit, it’s that there is not much that can fail in terms of components, other than the doorbell / relay, making it a very robust, long lasting solution. If you’d rather build something less dangerous, do check out the huge
collection of Tesla Coil projects
that we have featured over the years. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311316",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T03:41:33",
"content": "ok, so who else had to look up ELCB to find out that you use them all the time but now how they are typically referred to in your area?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,220.901037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/vertical-mill-completes-scrapyard-lathe-build/ | Vertical Mill Completes Scrapyard Lathe Build | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"gantry",
"lathe",
"lead screw",
"linear bearing",
"mill",
"scrap",
"spindle"
] | One thing’s for sure: after seeing [Roland Van Roy] build
a vertical mill from industrial scrap
, we’ve got to find a better quality industrial scrapyard to hang around.
The story of this build started, as many good shop stories do, at the lathe, which in this case was also a
scrapyard build
that we somehow managed to miss when it first posted. This lathe is decidedly different from the common “Gingery method” we’ve
seen a few times
, which relies on aluminum castings. Instead, [Roland] built his machine from plate stock, linear slides, and various cast-off bits of industrial machines.
To make his lathe yet more useful, [Roland] undertook this build, which consists of a gantry mounted over the bed of the lathe. The carriage translates left and right along the bed while the spindle, whose axis lines up perfectly with the center axis of the lathe, moves up and down. [Roland] added a platform and a clever vise to the lathe carriage; the lathe tool post and the tailstock are removed to make room for these mods, but can be added back quickly when needed. Digital calipers stand in for digital read-outs (DROs), with custom software running on a Picaxe and a homebrew controller taking care of spindle speed control.
[Roland] reports that the machine, weighing in at about 100 kg, exhibits a fair amount of vibration, which limits him to lighter cuts and softer materials. But it’s still an impressive build, and what really grabbed us was the wealth of tips and tricks we picked up. [Roland] used a ton of interesting methods to make sure everything stayed neat and square, such as the special jig he built for drilling holes in the T-slot extrusions to the use of cyanoacrylate glue for temporary fixturing. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311283",
"author": "then",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T00:24:36",
"content": "de tering",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311294",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T01:12:27",
"content": "That P... | 1,760,373,220.948983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/16/doing-wifi-with-software-defined-radio/ | Doing WiFi With Software Defined Radio | Lewin Day | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"bladeRF",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"wifi"
] | Software defined radio lets RF hardware take on a broad spectrum of tasks, all based on how that hardware is utilized in code. The bladeRF 2.0 micro xA9 is one such device, packing a fat FPGA with plenty of room for signal processing chains on board. As a demonstration of its abilities,
[Robert Ghilduta] set about writing a software-defined WiFi implementation for the platform.
The work is known as bladeRF-wiphy, as it implements the PHY, or physical layer of the WiFi connection, in the 7-layer OSI networking model. Modulation and demodulation of the WiFi signal is all handled onboard the Cyclone V FPGA, with the decoded 802.11 WiFI packets handed over to the Linux mac80211 module which handles the MAC level, or medium access control. Thanks to the capability baked into mac80211, the system can act as either an access point or an individual station depending on the task at hand.
[Robert] does a great job of explaining the why and the how of implementing WiFi modulation on an FPGA, as well as some basics of modem development in both software and hardware. It’s dense stuff, so for those new to the field of software defined radio,
consider taking some classes to get yourself up to speed! | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312305",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T10:33:17",
"content": "This is so cool and Impressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6312338",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T15:42:01",
"conten... | 1,760,373,221.00977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/lego-tank-fires-soccer-ball-cannon/ | Lego Tank Fires Soccer Ball Cannon | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"lego technic",
"slingshot"
] | Back in the 20th century, Lego Technic was a popular toy designed to teach kids about mechanical technology, and be a lot of fun to boot. Motors and pneumatics were available, but by and large you had to move your creations and make the noises yourself. That’s not the case these days,
as the [Brick Experiment Channel] demonstrates with this impressive Lego tank.
The drivetrain is straightforward, using standard Lego tank treads with each side given its own motor for easy skid steering. However, the real party piece is the slingshot cannon, which launches Lego soccer balls at 60 km/h. Utilizing several motors, it’s complete with elevation adjustment for accurate ranging, and a 6 round magazine so you can (slowly) prosecute your targets with rounds downrange.
What really makes this build great is the control system, with the tank being controlled by a PS4 controller via Sbrick, a device that lets Lego motors be controlled via Bluetooth. We’d love to build a couple of Lego vehicles and have them blast away at each other. We’ve seen the technology used before
for a secret heist robot
. Video after the break. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312290",
"author": "Mrroland",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T08:42:04",
"content": "Nice build!The cannon seems to have a lot of force for its scale.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6312313",
"author": "hutzlibu",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,221.046237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/manual-antenna-tuner-shows-how-homebrewing-is-done/ | Manual Antenna Tuner Shows How Homebrewing Is Done | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"atu",
"ham radio",
"radio"
] | If there’s anything about amateur radio that has more witchcraft in it than the design and implementation of antennas, we don’t know what it would be. On the face of it, hanging out a chunk of wire doesn’t seem like it should be complicated, but when you dive into the details, building effective antennas and matching them to the job at hand can be pretty complex.
That doesn’t mean antenna topics have to remain a total mystery, of course, especially once someone takes the time to explain things properly. [Charlie Morris (ZL2CTM)] recently did this with
a simple antenna tuner
, a device used to match impedances between a transmitter and an antenna. As he explains in the first video below, his tuner design is really just a Wheatstone bridge where the antenna forms half of one leg. A toroidal transformer with multiple taps and a variable capacitor forms an LC circuit that matches the high impedance antenna, in this case a multi-band end-fed halfwave, with the nominal 50-ohm load expected by the transceiver. A small meter and a diode detector indicate when the bridge is balanced, which means the transceiver is seeing the proper load.
The second video below shows the final implementation of the tuner; as a fan of
QRP
, or low-power operation, [Charlie] favors simple, lightweight homebrew gear that can be easily taken into the field, and this certainly fits the bill.
A final video
shows the tuner in use in the field, with a
NanoVNA
proving what it can do. As usual, [Charlie] protests that he not an expert and that he’s just documenting what he did, but he always does such a good job of presenting the calculations involved in component selection that any ham should be able to replicate his builds. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312251",
"author": "12AU76L6GC",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T03:06:44",
"content": "*This* is what amateur radio is all about, IMHO. Very nicely done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312295",
"author": "Joshua",
... | 1,760,373,221.511232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/extensive-modification-of-dslr-includes-high-quality-audio/ | Extensive Modification Of DSLR Includes High Quality Audio | Bryan Cockfield | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"camera",
"canon 80d",
"case",
"dslr",
"flash",
"mixer",
"modification",
"saramonic",
"shutter",
"sr-ax100"
] | Modern DSLR cameras are incredible pieces of technology that can take excellent high-quality photos as well as record video and audio. However, as they become jacks of all trades they risk being masters of none, and the audio quality in modern DSLRs certainly reflects that old cliche. To get true high-quality audio while recording with a camera like this Canon 80d, you’ll either need a secondary audio recording device or you’ll need to interface one directly into the camera itself.
This build from [Tony] aka [Carnivore]
goes into the inner workings of the camera to add an audio mixer to the camera’s audio input, allowing for multiple audio streams to be recorded at once. First, he removed the plastic around the microphone port and attached a wire to it that extends out of the camera to a 1/8″ plug. While he had the case open he also wired a second shutter, added a record button to a custom location on the front of the camera, and bypassed a switch which prevents the camera from operating if the battery door isn’t closed.
With those modifications in place, he removed the internal flash from the camera before closing the body. A custom 3D printed mount was placed in the vacant space which now houses the audio mixer, a SR-AX100 from Saramonic. This plugs in to the new microphone wire from earlier in the build, allowing the camera to have an expanded capacity for recording audio.
While [Tony] has a fairly unique use case for all of these modifications to an already $1000 camera, getting into the inner workings of DSLRs isn’t something to shy away from if you need something similar done. We’ve even seen modifications to cameras like these to allow for
watercooling during video recording
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASJ4PaiIf38 | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312231",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T00:56:31",
"content": "Ummm.. What?I’m so lost.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6312327",
"author": "Phrewfuf",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T14:31:06",
... | 1,760,373,221.562374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/youre-going-to-flip-out-over-this-rocket-league-rc-car/ | You’re Going To Flip Out Over This Rocket League RC Car | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"flip mechanism",
"R/C car",
"rocket league"
] | Rocket League
is a video game famous for being wildly popular despite being virtually unplayable without several hours practice. It involves hyper fast cars playing soccer, complete with the ability to flip, jump, and rocket boost into the ball. [mrak_ripple] decided he wanted some of that action in a real RC car,
and set to work.
While rocket boosts were out of scope for this build, [mrak_ripple] was pretty confident he could build a jumping, flipping RC car modelled after the
Rocket League
Octane vehicle. Initial experiments involved a custom 3D printed spring mechanism, but the results were underwhelming. Instead, in the true hacker spirit, a jumping mechanism was taken from an existing toy, and installed in the car instead. This was combined with a mechanism built out of a brushless motor with a flywheel added to generate a flipping moment in mid-air.
The final result is impressive, with the car flipping relatively cleanly once refined and lightened from its original design. We’d love to see a two-axis build that can front- and back-flip as well. It’s a step up in complexity from the last build we saw from [mrak_ripple],
the amusing mashed potato trebuchet
. Video after the break. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312196",
"author": "Radio",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T22:00:52",
"content": "Amazing!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6312225",
"author": "Le Roux Bodenstein",
"timestamp": "2021-01-16T00:27:01",
"content": "I wonde... | 1,760,373,221.468054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/a-surefire-way-to-make-masks/ | A Surefire Way To Make Masks | Jenny List | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"COVID",
"mask",
"PPE"
] | By now, the wearing of a facemask to protect ourselves from pandemic infection is for many of us a daily fact of life. Perhaps that means a cheap disposable mask, but there’s no reason that has to be the case. It’s easy to make more durable masks that can be washed and re-used time and time again, and
our Hackaday colleague [Kristina Panos] has shared her pattern and workflow to help you do it
.
Her pattern isn’t a complex cut-out but a simple rectangle, and the trick of sewing them together and flipping them inside out makes for a very tidy result. With three pleats pressed in and the elastic sewn up the result is a mask that’s neat, attractive, effective, and cheap, which is a win in our book.
It’s worth repeating her important point that these are not for use in medical environments, instead they’re the standard street-wear aerosol catchers we’re all used to. This isn’t the first time we’ve looked at masks here at Hackaday, or indeed though [Kristana]’s are by far the tidier neither is it first time one of us has made a mask. We looked at them in depth last year in our
surviving the pandemic as a hacker
series. | 41 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312165",
"author": "Single Layer Cloth Masks = Not Effective",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T19:57:34",
"content": "No, we know it’s not that effective. Better than nothing at all? Sure. Actually effective? Not really.Also, editors, please add a space between “to.This” as well.",
"p... | 1,760,373,221.812545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/15/circuit-vr-even-more-op-amps/ | Circuit VR: Even More Op Amps | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"amplifier",
"common mode noise",
"differential amplifier",
"op-amp"
] | In the last Circuit VR
we looked at some basic op amp circuits
in a simulator, including the non-inverting amplifier. Sometimes you want an amplifier that inverts the signal. That is a 5V input results in a -5V output (or -10V if the amplifier has a gain of 2). This corresponds to a 180 degree phase shift which can be useful in amplifiers, filters, and other circuits. Let’s take a look at an
example circuit simulated with falstad
.
Remember the Rules
Last time I mentioned two made up rules that are good shortcuts for analyzing op amp circuits:
The inputs of the op amp don’t connect to anything internally.
The output mysteriously will do what it can to make the inputs equal, as far as it is physically possible.
As a corollary to the second rule, you can easily analyze the circuit shown here by thinking of the negative (inverting) terminal as a virtual ground. It isn’t connected to ground, yet in a properly configured op amp circuit it might as well be at ground potential. Why? Because the + terminal is grounded and rule #2 says the op amp will change conditions to make sure the two terminals are the same. Since it can’t influence the + terminal, it will drive the voltage through the resistor network to ensure the – terminal is at 0V.
This virtual ground idea makes the analysis of the circuit simple. You can see on the simulation that the amplifier has a gain of 3. So pretend the input is 5V DC or, if you like,
change the voltage source
. Since the – terminal is virtual ground, we know the current through the 1K resistor must be (5-0)/1000 = 5mA. Rule #1 says the input terminals aren’t going to look like they are connected to anything, so that means the current through the 3K resistor must also be 5mA and one end of it is virtually grounded.
So what’s the output voltage? (V-0)/3000=.005. If you do a little high school algebra, you can rewrite that as V=.005(3000) = 15V. In real life, you wouldn’t want the output so close to the supply rail, but you get the idea. In the simulator, we only specify the maximum and minimum output voltages for this op amp model, so perhaps the power supply is really +/- 16V. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Gains
For the non-inverting amplifier the gain was equal to the reciprocal of the feedback network’s voltage divider ratio. That is, with a 1K and 3K resistor, the divider ratio is 1000/(1000+3000)=1/4, so the gain is 4. That makes sense, because in that case, we reduce the op amp’s output voltage while it is trying to make the two terminals equal.
For an inverting amplifier, the gain is the simple ratio of the two resistors, since what sets the gain is the equal current flowing through both resistors. If the two resistors were equal, a
non-inverting
amplifier has a gain of 2, while an
inverting
amplifier has a gain of 1. If you recall, to get a unity gain in the non-inverting circuit, you don’t need any resistors, just a zero ohm resistor (a wire) between the output and the – input.
What’s the Difference?
Of course, the idea of a virtual ground is really nothing more than restating rule #2. If both terminals have inputs, you have a differential amplifier. These are important for several reasons. One of the biggest use of differential amplifiers is to reduce common mode noise.
Suppose you have a temperature sensor that puts out a tone from 250 to 300 Hz depending on the reading. The wires going to the sensor are long and you find that you are picking up 60 Hz hum from the AC wiring. Your input signal might look something like the one on the right. The 60 Hz hum is about 5 times a strong as the square wave data signal. How can you recover it?
There are several answers, of course. But if you observe that both the positive and ground wire going to the sensor will pick up the hum, a good answer is to subtract the return leg from the positive leg. Since the noise is the same on both wires, it should subtract out, leaving only the signal of interest. Here’s
an example circuit for removing 60 Hz hum
:
Here, the + terminal will be at 50% of the input signal. That means, by rule #2, that the – terminal will also be at that same voltage. Suppose there is a steady 2V on both inputs. The + terminal will then have 1V on it. That means the – terminal will also have 1V. If the input is 1V and the – terminal is 1V, the output must be at 0V since the feedback network will be like a voltage divider. No matter how the voltages change together, the output will remain zero.
But what happens if both inputs are at 2V and suddenly the input at the + side jumps by itself to 4V? Now the + terminal is at 2V, and this causes the current flowing to change (to zero, in this case). That means the output voltage has to change to set the same current in the feedback resistor. Since that’s zero in this case, the output must also be 2V.
If the zero current is confusing,
try a different voltage like 3V in this circuit
. When you flip the switch to feed 3V into the circuit, the + terminal because 1.5V so you have 0.5V across the input resistor, which means you’ll need the same current through the feedback resistor and the output will be 1V.
Is That All?
There are a lot more things you can do with op amps, but those will have to wait for a future Circuit VR. While modern op amps are great, they still aren’t perfect. The inputs will have a little leakage. The outputs will not get right up the rail if you draw much current from them in a general-purpose op amp. If you are dealing with high frequency, you’ll need to carefully select parts. Precision circuits may need care for offset trimming and other special design considerations. However, compared to building precision amplifiers from bare transistors, having high-quality op amps is a real time saver.
There are many specialty op amps. Some operate on current inputs. Some have special output stages. For example, comparators are op amps with high speed output stages that tend to saturate quickly one way or the other. There are many choices depending on what’s important to your design. If you want some extracurricular reading on op amp architecture selection,
Analog Devices AN-360
is a good overview of the subject. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6312141",
"author": "Tanjent",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T18:34:34",
"content": "I continue to dislike the magic “opamp rules” – there’s a much simpler explanation that makes more sense to most people I’ve tutored and can explain more real-world opamp behaviors –1. If the voltage at t... | 1,760,373,221.415633 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/esp32-soil-monitors-tap-into-ultra-low-power-mode/ | ESP32 Soil Monitors Tap Into Ultra-Low Power Mode | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"home-assistant",
"low power",
"soil moisture sensor",
"soil sensor"
] | Soil moisture sensors are cheap and easy to interface with, to the point that combining one with an Arduino and blinking an LED when your potted plant is feeling a bit parched is a common beginners project. But what about on the long term? Outside of a simple proof of concept, what would it take to actually read the data from these sensors over the course of weeks or months?
That’s precisely the question [derflob] recently had to answer. The goal was to build a device that
could poll multiple soil sensors and push the data wirelessly into Home Assistant
. But since it would be outside on the balcony, it needed to run exclusively on battery power. Luckily his chosen platform, the ESP32, has some phenomenal power saving features. You just need to know how to use them.
The custom board can read from six soil sensors.
In his extremely detailed blog post, [derflob] goes over some of the tricks he used to eek out as much runtime as possible. The big one, and arguably the key to the whole project, is his use of the ESP32’s Ultra-Low Power coprocessor (ULP). This powerful feature allows the microcontroller to do some useful work, albeit with a reduced instruction set, without waking up the power-hungry primary processor.
Since the ULP can read from the ADC, he was able to craft some assembly code that only wakes the CPU if the readings from one of the six connected sensors has changed more than a set threshold value since the last update. This keeps the chip asleep the majority of the time, and so far, [derflob] says his board has been humming along for six months on a single LiFePO4 18650 cell. If you’re not so keen on diving into assembly, we’ve seen a similar technique accomplished with a
simple circuit that only wakes the microcontroller when there’s work to be done
.
So where does the project go from here? Now that the PCB is largely finalized, [derflob] is turning his attention to waterproofing both it and the sensors so they can survive outside in the elements.
Some kind of epoxy encapsulation is probably in order
, though that will be a project for another day. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311952",
"author": "Capt McAllister",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T04:28:35",
"content": "I wonder how often the sensor is sleeping and waking up. I’m no firmware engineer by a long shot, but by using the WiFiManager Arduino library by tzapu, I made an ESP8266 sensor that runs a time ... | 1,760,373,221.629322 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/opencv-spreads-smart-camera-joy-to-see-ideas-come-to-life/ | OpenCV Spreads Smart Camera Joy To See Ideas Come To Life | Roger Cheng | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"computer vision",
"machine vision",
"movidius",
"myriad x",
"opencv",
"smart camera"
] | Do you have a great application for computer vision, but couldn’t spare the cost of hardware needed to build it? Or perhaps you just need a deadline to pull you away from endless doom scrolling? Either way, the OpenCV team wants you to enter their
OpenCV AI Competition 2021
and they’re willing to pitch in hardware to make it happen.
This competition is part of
OpenCV’s 20th anniversary celebration
, and the field of machine vision has changed a lot in those two decades. OpenCV started within Intel harnessing power of their high end CPUs, but today the excitement is around specialized acceleration hardware for vision processing. Which is why OpenCV put their support and lent their name to the OpenCV AI Kit (OAK) Kickstarter
we covered a few months ago
. Since then, the hardware was produced and starting to arrive in project backer’s hands. (Barring pandemic-related shipping restrictions…)
This shiny new hardware is the competition’s focus. Phase one solicits team proposals for putting an OAK-D’s power to novel use. University teams may have up to ten members, general teams are limited to four. Each team’s geographic home will put them in one of six global regions. Proposals must be submitted by January 27th, 2021. By February 11th, judges will select the best twenty-five general and ten university team proposals from each region, and every member of the team gets an OAK-D unit to turn their idea into reality by phase two deadline of June 27th. That’s up to 1,200 OAK-D modules available to anyone who can convince the judges they have a great idea and they are capable of bringing it to fruition. Is that you? Of course it is!
Teams will also receive additional resources such as an allotment of cloud compute credits to train their models, and naturally all tutorials and sample code released as part of OAK Kickstarter. No explicit resource for project team organization is mentioned, but of course our own
Hackaday.io
is available to support you. Best of luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing all the projects this contest will bring to life. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311918",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2021-01-15T00:41:50",
"content": "The Oak-D normally costs $299 and you can find the specs here:https://store.opencv.ai/products/oak-d",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311921",
"au... | 1,760,373,221.85066 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/basics-of-remote-cellular-access-connecting-via-vpn/ | Basics Of Remote Cellular Access: Connecting Via VPN | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Network Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"3g",
"4g",
"cellular",
"cellular data",
"cellular data connection",
"modem",
"vpn"
] | You’ve got a machine hooked up to the Internet
via a shiny new cellular modem,
which you plan to administer remotely. You do a quick check on the external IP, and try and log in from another PC. Try as you might, SSH simply won’t connect. What gives?
The reality of the modern internet is that most clients no longer get their own unique IPv4 address. There simply aren’t enough to go around anymore. Instead, most telecommunications operators use
Carrier Grade Network Address Translation
which allows a single external address to be shared by many customers. This can get in the way of direct connection attempts from the outside world. Even if that’s not the case, most cellular operators tend to block inbound connections by default. However, there is a way around this quandary – using a VPN.
A Network That’s Private And Virtual
A VPN allows two or more systems connected to the Internet to behave as if they’re on a local network. This is useful for remote administration, particularly when working with cellular connections with restrictive traffic rules.
VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are exactly what they sound like. They’re a private network that exists between clients on a broader public network like the Internet. When it comes to making connections to remote hosts on cellular connections, they’re the perfect tool to get the job done. Having the remote host connect to a VPN server gets around the issue of rejected incoming connections, as all traffic goes through the VPN tunnel initiated by the remote host itself. Additionally, it means that other hosts connected to the VPN can talk to the remote host as if it’s another machine on a local network. With the correct setup, a VPN can be a highly secure and flexible way of talking to remote machines with a minimum of fuss and bluster.
You can run your own VPN server at home without much trouble. You’ll need a computer with reliable Internet access, that can accept incoming connections. Typically, this will involve enabling port forwarding on your home router so that connections made to your home IP on a particular port are forwarded to the computer running the VPN server software. Additionally, you’ll need to make sure your home internet connection isn’t behind carrier-grade NAT. Generally, if you’ve got cable, ADSL, or fiber, a simple phone call to your ISP is all that’s required. However, in some cases, you may find you have to upgrade to a higher tier connection package to get such treatment. There’s no need to have a static IP, either; dynamic DNS services can make it easy for your remote system to call back home.
You can even run your own Dynamic DNS if you so desire.
So, assuming you’ve got a computer standing by, and a router with an open port to the wider internet, all you need to do is install the right software. OpenVPN is a popular choice for running a VPN server, and has all the functionality required with a bonus of being free. Historically,
it’s required a significant amount of setup
to install and generate all the required cryptographic certificates, however,
with the release of OpenVPN Access Server
, getting started is somewhat more streamlined.
Other options exist, however. PageKite is an opensource VPN solution that aims to make connecting remote systems a cinch.
We’ve featured it before
when discussing how to connect to Raspberry Pis from anywhere and everywhere. It’s available on a pay-what-you-want basis, with some data going through PageKite’s cloud servers to make everything that much easier to setup. Recommended pricing is just $3 USD a month, rising to $6 USD a month for more serious users. It’s a great way to get started if you just need to get your remote system talking online
without a lot of unnecessary yak shaving.
Another solution is
WireGuard
, an open-source VPN built upon concepts of ease-of-use, speed, and simplicity. With clients available for a broad base of popular operating systems, it’s easy to get up and running without a whole lot of fuss.
Once you’ve got your remote host connecting to a VPN, admin is easy. Simply enable SSH or your favored remote admin protocol, and log in as if the machine were on your local network. If your remote machine is properly configured to maintain the connection and reconnect on dropouts, you should have no issues controlling the machine no matter where it finds itself in the world – as long as it’s got a good cellular data connection. Just make sure that before you deploy it to a far flung locale, you have it to connect to the VPN on boot – else you’ll be out of luck the first time you need to command a restart.
If you’ve been following this series, you should now be confident to select the right hardware and software to control a computer remotely over the cellular network. Of course, with the roaming freedom of cellular network comes the difficulty that your remote system may end up somewhere far away and difficult to access. In the event something goes wrong, this can make solving the problem expensive and complicated. In future articles, we’ll explore ways to minimise these problems and how to best stop things from going sideways. Until then, happy hacking! | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311856",
"author": "getoffmyhack",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T20:32:53",
"content": "I would also recommend looking at SDN. I use ZeroTier and no longer use a traditional VPN for remote access back to my home network.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,373,222.062236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/risc-v-comes-to-the-beagleboard-ecosystem-with-upcoming-beaglev-sbc/ | RISC-V Comes To The BeagleBoard Ecosystem With Upcoming Beagle V SBC | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"beagleboard",
"RISC-V",
"Seeed",
"Starfive"
] | The Beagle V, a RISC-V-based single board computer
from a collaboration between BeagleBoard and Seeed Studios aims to be “The First Affordable RISC-V Computer Designed to Run Linux”. RISC-V is the open-source processor architecture that everyone is interested in because it bypasses proprietary silicon of manufacturers such as Intel or AMD, allowing companies to roll their own silicon processors without licensing fees for the core.
BeagleBoard has long been one of the major players in the Single-Board Computer arena so far dominated by the Raspberry Pi. The board, slightly larger than the company’s previous offerings, features a StarFive dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor running at a 1.0 GHz clock speed.
The spec sheet on their GitHub repo
indicates 4 and 8 GB RAM options, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, and hardware video support for decoding, two camera connectors, one DSI connector for an external display, as well as a full-sized HDMI port. Gigabit Ethernet, four USB-3 ports, an audio jack, and USB-C as the power supply are packed onto the edges of the board. GPIO is routed to a 2×20 pin header.
Seeed Studio
pegs the cost of the board at $149
for the 8 GB RAM version, although currently you must apply and be selected to purchase a board in this early stage. It’s unclear if the price will remain unchanged after this first run; the product page notes a coupon code is necessary and
the Seeed Studios article
indicates this is an introductory price. However, the same article also lists the 4 GB RAM variant at $119. The BeagleBoard page shows a timeline of April 2021 for a “pilot run for community”.
It’s exciting to see RISC-V continue to make inroads. This is a powerful board based around the core, and if successful it will help further prove the viability of open source processing cores in increasingly mainstream products. | 54 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311832",
"author": "sqelch",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T19:04:51",
"content": "Awesome 👌",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311835",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T19:23:12",
"content": "I am ... | 1,760,373,222.011654 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/3d-printing-air-filter-system-does-a-lot/ | 3D Printing Air Filter System Does A Lot | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"air filter",
"filtration",
"HEPA",
"ventilation"
] | We know we aren’t supposed to eat a lot of sugar, but we still have ice cream. We also know we probably shouldn’t be inhaling solder smoke and 3D printer fumes, but we do that too. Not [Mike Buss]. His 3D printer has
a major exhaust system
.
We can sympathize with his process. He mentions he started out just wanting a fan running with some filters. Then he decided to add a way to turn the fan on and off when printing. Then he added sensors to detect fumes and fire. Data collection was almost an afterhthought.
Of course, most of the system is 3D printed, alongside the electronics and some Lexan parts. We thought it was nice that [Mike’s] motivation was his newborn son, [Theodore]. There’s no word if he’s been operating the printer yet, but we sure it is just a matter of time.
We’ve seen simliar
vent systems
. Some of them also make the
printer quieter
. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311786",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T16:48:39",
"content": "Nice case of feature creep you had there!Kids can be a major motivation for a lot of things.Speaking of feature creep, if you monitor temperature and smoke, could you also flood the box with a gas such as... | 1,760,373,221.916722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/teardown-tap-trapper/ | Teardown: Tap Trapper | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Phone Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"listening device",
"phone line",
"pots",
"privacy",
"surveillance"
] | The modern consumer is not overly concerned with their phone conversations being monitored. For one thing, Google and Amazon have done a tremendous job of conditioning them to believe that electronic gadgets listening to their every word isn’t just acceptable, but a near necessity in the 21st century. After all, if there was a better way to turn on the kitchen light than having a recording of your voice uploaded to Amazon so they can run it through their speech analysis software, somebody would have surely thought of it by now.
But perhaps more importantly, there’s a general understanding that the nature of telephony has changed to the point that few outside of three letter agencies can realistically intercept a phone call. Sure we’ve seen the occasional spoofed GSM network pop up at hacker cons, and there’s a troubling number of StingRays floating around out there, but it’s still a far cry from how things were back when folks still used phones that plugged into the wall. In those days, the neighborhood creep needed little more than a pair of wire strippers to listen in on your every word.
Which is precisely why products like the TA-1356 Tap Trapper were made. It was advertised as being able to scan your home’s phone line to alert you when somebody else might be listening in, whether it was a tape recorder spliced in on the pole or somebody in another room lifting the handset. You just had to clip it onto the phone distribution panel and feed it a fresh battery once and awhile.
If the red light came on, you’d know something had changed since the Tap Trapper was installed and calibrated. But how did this futuristic defender of communications privacy work? Let’s open it up and take a look.
Reality vs Expectation
The Tap Trapper certainly
looks
high-tech, at least for the time. Despite the simplistic controls, you can’t help but imagine that there must be some electronic wizardry lurking inside the case. The design is reminiscent of an Atari 2600 that has been shrunk down along its width, complete with the decorative ridges that were so popular on electronic devices of the era.
Unfortunately, once the case is open it’s clear we’ve been had. The enclosure is almost entirely empty, and even with a 9 V alkaline battery installed, its probably twice as large as it needs to be. Obviously the manufacturers wanted the Tap Trapper to have a certain air of sophistication and complexity, and thought that a smaller unit simply wouldn’t do. I’m almost surprised there aren’t any weights embedded into the case to make it feel heavier.
For the optimists in the audience, I’m sorry to say that a close look at the PCB only makes matters worse. There’s no technical magic going on here. In fact, this device is only a few steps above a breadboard project. I suspect if you looked hard enough, you could probably find a Forrest M. Mims III diagram out there that’s not far off from what the Tap Trapper is packing.
Keeping an Ear Out
It’s really pretty incredible just how little is on this board. We’ve got three transistors, an LED, a handful of resistors, and what appears to be a simple diode rectifier. So how does that tell you if somebody is listening in on all your juicy gossip? It’s just a matter of understanding the different voltages present in the
standard North American phone line
.
For starters, the rectifier is presumably there to block the 90 VAC signal that comes down the line whenever the phone rings. Beyond that, the line voltage should be sitting at around 48 VDC when all the phones are on the hook. Once a device actually connects to the line, such as when a handset is picked up, that voltage will drop down to below 9 VDC. Each additional device added to the line adds a bit more resistance, which naturally causes the voltage to dip even lower.
Knowing this, and seeing the circuit used in the Tap Trapper, we can surmise that what we essentially have here is an adjustable low-voltage indicator light. The user calibrates the circuit to the peculiarities of their home phone wiring by adjusting the potentiometer until the LED
just
turns off when their primary phone is off the hook. If the LED lights up while you’re using that phone, it means the line voltage has dropped further, and that there’s an excellent chance somebody’s listening in.
A Product Out of Time
So what can we learn from the Tap Trapper? Well, not a whole lot really. This is the kind of circuit that you probably could have found in an old issue of
2600
or
Phrack
, dusted off and plopped into an ill-fitting injection molded enclosure. In that respect,
it’s not entirely unlike the Recon Sentinel we looked at last month
: bog standard hardware tossed in a funky looking enclosure with just enough whiz-bang advertising copy on the box to convince the user that what they’ve purchased is greater than the sum of its parts.
In the increasingly unlikely event you’re still using POTS
, then the Tap Trapper will still do what it says on the tin. Otherwise, if you see one of these gadgets languishing in a pile of e-waste, you should probably just leave it there. | 46 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311752",
"author": "Tom Hargrave",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T15:13:48",
"content": "Don’t assume that simple is junk.Every device put on an analog phone line changes it’s local impedance and changes the static (on hook) voltage on your side of the circuit. My guess is this device is... | 1,760,373,222.245586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/is-your-echo-flex-listening/ | Is Your Echo Flex Listening? | Al Williams | [
"home hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"Amazon Echo",
"echo",
"home-assistant"
] | We are always surprised that Amazon or Google doesn’t employ Kelsey Grammer — TV’s Frasier — as a spokesman for their smart home devices. After all, his catchphrase was, “I’m listening…” Maybe they don’t want to remind you that the device could, theoretically, be sending everything you say to them or a nefarious hacker or government agency. Sure, there’s a mute button and it lights up a red LED.
But if you are truly paranoid, that’s not enough. After all, the same people want to eavesdrop on you would be happy to fake a red light. [Electronupdate] had the same thought and decided to answer the question:
does the mute button really mute your microphone?
The answer required not only some case opening and analysis, but there was even some IC decapsulation.
We were impressed with the depth of the analysis. The tiny SMD parts are marked confusingly, and if you are really paranoid you don’t believe them anyway. But looking at the actual circuit die is pretty unambiguous. The parts in question turned out to be a Schmitt trigger, a flip flop, and a NAND gate.
In the end, it appears that the red mute light comes on when the microphone has no power. So it looks like the mute button is real. The comments are already speculating ways that a spy could listen in even with the red light on — or at least appearing on, but it isn’t clear that would really be possible.
Tearing down
home assistants
is a common practice. If you think a device like this can’t be coopted,
think again
. | 42 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311721",
"author": "red_light_is_record",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T12:32:56",
"content": "What? So the RED LIGHT means it is NOT LISTENING?That’s the opposite of what everybody else has been doing for years, with videocams, and even the webcams of today, turning on a light when the... | 1,760,373,222.320977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/14/reachy-the-open-source-robot-says-bonjour/ | Reachy The Open Source Robot Says Bonjour | Roger Cheng | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Dynamixel",
"Google Coral",
"humanoid",
"humanoid robot",
"OnShape",
"open source robotics",
"python",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"tensorflow",
"Unity3d"
] | Humanoid robots always attract attention, but anyone who tries to build one quickly learns respect for a form factor we take for granted because we were born with it. Pollen Robotics wants to help move the field forward with
Reachy
: a robot platform available both as a product and as a wealth of information shared online.
This French team has released open source robots before.
We’ve looked at their Poppy robot
and see a strong family resemblance with Reachy. Poppy was a very ambitious design with both arms and legs, but it could only ever
walk with assistance
. In contrast Reachy focuses on just the upper body. One of the most interesting innovations is found in Reachy’s neck, a cleverly designed 3 DOF mechanism they called
Orbita
. Combined with two moving antennae at the top of the head, Reachy can emote a wide range of expressions despite not having much of a face. The remainder of Reachy’s joints are articulated with Dynamixel
serial bus servos
though we see an optional Orbita-based hand attachment in the demo video (embedded below).
Reachy’s € 19,990 price tag may be affordable relative to industrial robots, but it’s pretty steep for the home hacker. No need to fret, those of us with smaller bank accounts can still join the fun because Pollen Robotics has open sourced
a lot of Reachy details
. Digging into this information, we see Reachy has a
Google Coral
for accelerating TensorFlow and a Raspberry Pi 4 for general computation. Mechanical designs are released via web-based Onshape CAD. Reachy’s software suite on GitHub is primarily focused on Python, which allows us to experiment within a Jupyter notebook. Simulation can be done within Unity 3D game engine, which can be optionally compiled to run in a browser like the
simulation playground
. But academic robotics researchers are not excluded from the fun, as
ROS1 integration is also available
though
ROS2
support is still on the to-do list.
Reachy might not be as sophisticated as
some humanoid designs we’ve seen
, and without a lower body there’s no way
for it to dance.
But we are very appreciative of a company willing to share knowledge with the world. May it spark new ideas for the future.
[via
Engadget
] | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311703",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T10:26:06",
"content": "I’m not sure if I find this a little creepy in relation to the uncanny valley or simply a bias by how fast these things are advancing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,222.158896 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/handheld-slayer-exciter-wand-makes-for-easy-high-voltage-magic/ | Handheld Slayer Exciter Wand Makes For Easy High Voltage Magic | Tom Nardi | [
"how-to",
"Science"
] | [
"air core",
"coil",
"high voltage",
"slayer exciter"
] | It’s often said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and when a DIY device lets you light up fluorescent bulbs with a flick of the wrist, it’s certainly not hard to see why. The latest creation from [Jay Bowles],
this high voltage wand is actually a Slayer Exciter coil
that’s able to boost the output of a standard 9 V alkaline or rechargeable battery high enough to perform some of the wireless power tricks we usually associate with the more complex Tesla coil.
We really can’t overstate how simple it is to build one of these yourself. Sure you’ll still need to wind the coil, but if you can chuck the 1/2 inch acrylic tube into a electric drill you should be able to make short work of it. Once you’ve wound your secondary coil from 32 gauge magnet wire, you only need a couple turns of common doorbell wire to make up the primary.
Think there must be some complex electronics hiding in the handle? Far from it. All that’s hidden by that faux-leather wrapping is a transistor to do the high-speed switching, an LED functioning as both the power indicator and the circuit’s diode, and a resistor. [Jay] put it all together dead bug style, but you could do it on a scrap of perfboard if you’d like something a little more robust.
Being a big believer in STEM education, [Jay] says the wand was designed to be as kid-friendly as possible so he could gift it to his young niece and nephew. Inspiring the next generation is certainly something we respect around these parts, though we think there’s plenty of adults who wouldn’t have been disappointed if they unwrapped a gadget like this over the holidays.
If you’d like to play around with a Slayer but
aren’t into the whole Harry Potter motif
, you might be interested in the
larger and more capable version [Jay] built earlier in the year
. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311690",
"author": "[skaarj]",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T08:51:10",
"content": "What is ‘STEM education’?It is the first time that acronym appears in an article not related to medicine, at least on this side of the planet at the far far eastern border of the Empire.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,222.393583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/stepping-down-voltage-with-reliability/ | Stepping Down Voltage With Reliability | Bryan Cockfield | [
"hardware"
] | [
"3.3v",
"5v",
"pcb",
"power supply",
"reliability",
"robotics",
"roboticsbrno"
] | The availability of inexpensive electronics modules has opened up a world of opportunity for more complex projects to be completed quickly. Rather than designing everything from scratch, ready-made motor modules, regulators, computer vision modules, and control modules all ready to be put to work after arriving at one’s doorstep. Sometimes, though, these inexpensive electronics aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,
so [Jan] decided to produce them from scratch instead
.
[Jan] is the creator of several robots, and frequently makes use of 3.3V and 5V step down modules, but was not happy with the consistency offered by the prefab modules. The solution to this was to build them from scratch in a way that makes producing a large amount nearly as easy as ordering them. The boards are based around the SY8105 chip, and are built in two batches for the robotics shop based on the two most commonly needed output voltages. With their design they get exactly what they need every time, without worrying about reliability from a random board shop overseas.
The robotics shop is called RoboticsBrno and they have made the schematics available for anyone that wants to build their own. That being said, the design does not make considerations for low noise since it isn’t required for their use case, but if you’d prefer something simple and reliable this will get the job done. It’s also important to understand the limitations of the parts in a build that are built by a third party, although
power supplies are a pretty common area to make improvements on
. | 36 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311651",
"author": "Earl Colby Pottinger",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T04:21:50",
"content": "Where is the circuit diagram? I just see pretty pictures and nothing else.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6311655",
"author"... | 1,760,373,222.463311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/hacking-a-3d-pen-for-better-performance/ | Hacking A 3D Pen For Better Performance | Bryan Cockfield | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D pen",
"3d printing",
"handheld",
"microcontroller",
"pen"
] | When 3D pens first became available, many assumed them to be gimmicky or part of a general fad that would eventually die out. Like most revolutionary technologies, though, they’ve found a firm foothold, especially in the art community where the ability to 3D print in freehand is incredibly valuable. There are still some shortcomings with the technology, though, but [tterev3]
recently tore into a 3doodler pen to make some necessary upgrades
.
First, this pen has some design choices that are curious, to say the least. The cooling fan runs regardless of temperature, and it has pushbuttons for start and stop rather than a momentary button that controls the extrusion. To fix these issues, as well as change the filament size, improve the cooling, and provide greater control over the extrusion speed, [tterev3] completely rewrote the firmware, changed the microcontroller on the PCB, and made several hardware upgrades to accommodate these changes. He also went ahead and installed a USB-C port for charging, which should be standard practice on all low-voltage consumer electronics by now anyway.
The detail work on this project is impressive, given the small size of the pen itself and the amount of precision hardware needed to make the changes. Especially regarding the replacement of the microcontroller on the board itself, which is an impressive feat even without the incredibly small dimensions. The firmware upgrade is available on
his GitHub page
as well if you have your own 3doodler that needs modifications, and if you’re still struggling to find uses for these handy devices, we’ve seen them
used with interesting effect to build drones
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311629",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T01:03:00",
"content": "Very nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6311654",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2021-01-14T04:34:43",
"content":... | 1,760,373,222.554215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/hex-matrix-clock-does-it-with-six-sides/ | Hex Matrix Clock Does It With Six Sides | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"hexagon",
"hexagonal display",
"ws2812b"
] | LED matrixes were once a total headache, requiring careful consideration to make the most of limited I/O pins and available microcontroller resources. These days, addressable LED strings have made it all a cinch. Thus, going a little out of the box isn’t so daunting.
[w.r.simpson] did just that with this hex-matrix clock.
Relying on hexes instead of a normal Cartesian grid requires some attention to how the rows and columns are laid out, but the Instructable goes through the necessary coordinate system to address the display. The whole display was built without a 3D printer, instead relying on some basic craft skills and a picture frame as the enclosure. Strips of WS2812B LEDs were used to build the hexagonal matrix, run by a Adafruit Metro Mini 328. To give each hexagonal pixel, or hexel, a crisp outline, a shadow grid was built using black paper to stop the light bleeding between the display segments when switched on. Smoked plexiglas wasn’t available, so instead, tinted window film was used to darken the front of the display.
The result is impressive; while some glue marks from the shadow grid are visible closeup, from a distance the final product looks incredibly futuristic thanks to the hexagonal layout. We can imagine this would make a great set dressing in a futuristic film clip; we fully expect to see this concept in the background of the next Ariana Grande single. If this build isn’t enough six-sided fun to sate your appetite,
consider getting into Super Hexagon too! | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311589",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T21:14:28",
"content": "Doesn’t display 24 hour clock. I am disappoint.I know it’s mentioned as a possibility in the Instructable, but I’d have preferred to see a 24 hour version with a mention of the possibility of a 12 hour ver... | 1,760,373,222.511403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/remoticon-video-pigweed-brings-embedded-unit-testing-library-integration-to-commandline/ | Remoticon Video: Pigweed Brings Embedded Unit Testing, Library Integration To Commandline | Mike Szczys | [
"cons",
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Remoticon",
"embedded development",
"libraries",
"Pigweed",
"toolchain",
"unit testing"
] | When it comes to embedded engineering, toolchains are the worst. Getting a new toolchain up and running correctly is often hard, and often prone to breaking when the IDE or other software is upgraded. A plethora of different toolchains for different hardware makes things even more murky, and if you want to get into time-saving tricks like automated testing, you’re in for a wild ride.
Those pain points led to the creation of the Pigweed project. As Keir Mierle demonstrates in this workshop from the 2020 Hackaday Remoticon,
Pigweed is a set of libraries to make working with embedded development more hacker-friendly
. The collection is accessed via commandline, and coordinates work with existing libraries to deliver unit testing, linting, static analysis, logging, and handling key-value stores, all alongside more commonly called-for tasks like compiling and flashing.
Demonstrated on a Teensy microcontroller and an STM32 Discovery board, the presentation drives home the utility of
Pigweed
, a Google project that was released as open source back in March of 2020. Graphical IDEs for these platforms are nowhere in sight, yet test firmware is built and flashed to these devices with relative ease. Unit testing, traditionally a sticky subject for on-chip applications, is demonstrated both emulated on the computer side, and running on the boards themselves. As the capabilities of microcontrollers have ballooned in recent years, writing tests for existing functions and confirming them during new development is becoming a must-have in your skillset.
There’s much more shown off here, so
grab the workshop repository
to follow along. It’s still considered experimental, and the irony of having to learn the intricacies of the Pigweed toolchain to ease the pain of other toolchains is not lost on us. However, most people reading will have their own affinity for the ability to use unified tools and commandline automation; this is a fascinating way to deliver a number of powerful software development techniques to low-level hardware projects. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311568",
"author": "RetiredHobgoblin",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T20:07:14",
"content": "Their method of “bootstrapping” pigweedpw_env_setup is our compromise solution for this problem that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It leverages the Chrome packaging system CIPD to bootstrap a... | 1,760,373,222.662681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/13/making-a-kid-friendly-computer-as-a-present-or-how-to-be-the-cool-aunt-at-christmas/ | Making A Kid-Friendly Computer As A Present: Or How To Be The Cool Aunt At Christmas | Erin Pinheiro | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"children",
"education",
"games",
"kid friendly",
"kids",
"repurpose",
"upcycling",
"windows"
] | This article was meant to be finished up before Christmas, so it’ll be a little late whenever you’re reading it to go and prepare this for the holiday. Regardless, if, like me, should you ever be on the lookout for something to give a toddler nephew or relative, it could be worth it to look into your neglected old parts shelves. In my case, what caught my eye was a 9-year-old AMD laptop catching dust that could be better repurposed in the tiny hands of a kid eager to play video games.
The main issues here are finding a decent selection of appropriate games and streamling the whole experience so that it’s easy to use for a not-yet-hacker, all the while keeping the system secure and child-friendly. And doing it all on a budget.
This is a tall order, and requirements will be as individual as children are, of course, but I hope that my experience and considerations will help guide you if you’re in a similar boat.
The Motivation
We live in a vastly different time in regards to computers, the internet, and technology in general than the one we grew up in. I have fond memories of figuring my way through DOS and Windows, running games from CD-ROMs and having a computer I could poke and prod to feed my curiosity of how such a magical box worked as a kid. I wanted to be able to pass some of that experience forward to a younger generation which has already been born into the era of smartphones and social media.
The subject in my case is my nephew, who, despite being younger than the hardware I’m setting up for him, is obsessed with things such as Minecraft and other games he watches loud YouTubers play. My idea with this project was to give him some hardware he could play with without much worry, since it would contain only curated programs and games. With that in mind, I made no plans to connect said computer to the Internet, removing the need to supervise his interactions there.
Another reason not to connect it to the Internet is that a laptop of this vintage might not run modern operating systems well, depending on your choice. In my case it’s running 64-bit Windows 7, and given that
long-term support for it ended at the start of 2020
, it would be at the very least unsafe to put it online.
The Games
The Windows ecosystem was bustling in the mid 90s to early 2000s in terms of edutainment software, such as the Jumpstart series that was popular in computer labs worldwide. My initial idea was to find games like those to give the young user something more wholesome and productive to play with than the current options provided by the handfuls from a smartphone’s app store.
In my case, they needed to also be available in Portuguese, so I didn’t have much luck finding software. They existed, and I played with a fair share during my own time in elementary school, but they likely haven’t been kept around except by a few collectors. You’ll doubtless have a lot better luck in English.
“Como As Coisas Funcionam”, the Portuguese version of David Macaulay’s “The Way Things Work”.
One piece of software I did have the luck of finding was a translated version of David Macaulay’s “The Way Things Work”, an interactive Windows 3.11 multimedia CD based off the book of the same name. I’d grown up with the English version, not understanding much of it until later on when I could speak the language, but appreciating the pictures and sounds nonetheless, and was delighted to find out it had been translated by a national publisher, which meant I could share it with my nephew.
As for what other games to install on the machine, this can be a highly subjective topic. My rationale for this was to go for anything that wasn’t violent yet wouldn’t be necessarily childish. Puzzle games such as old PopCap titles and pinball games can provide a quick bite of fun without anything objectionable in them, or having to understand a complex story. Kid Pix was also another choice, naturally, among others such as games in the LEGO series and brain teasers like Marble Drop and The Incredible Machine.
Kid Pix, the source of many an eyesore in computer lab decades ago.
These choices are going to depend on what platform you’re running, and the age of the kid you’re aiming to gift. If you’re not on Windows, you might have to look around for a list of software elsewhere, but that’s the basic idea of how I chose what to load on the computer. However, with the need for virtual machines for older titles and certain applications having launchers I’d like to bypass, there’s a few tweaks we need to do to accomodate a less-than-savvy user.
Making it All Play Nice
For games and programs running in DOSBox, for example, it’s desirable to configure the VM to close once your application is done instead of having to figure out you need to type “exit” in DOS, or close Windows 3.11. To that effect, there are a few tools you can use, such as [Shodon]’s
RunExit
and a custom configuration file to automatically call it. This way, the program can be nearly seamlessly launched from a newer host system and the kid user is none the wiser.
In other cases, bypassing a launcher menu can cut down on having to teach a kid exactly which buttons to click, which might get confusing and potentially lead to undesired consequences. I used the trusty
Process Hacker
to do such job. Double-clicking on a currently running process gives you the full launch arguments, which you can then put in a shortcut or batch file in order to make the game easier to launch. Using this, I was able to make Class6’s Creature Crunch run from the hard drive, whereas normally it’s hardcoded to expect to be run from a CD volume handle.
A screenshot of how KidsMenu would look fully configured, taken from the author’s website.
To tie it all up, it would be nice to keep everything in a simple menu to pick from and to avoid unwarranted misconfiguration by leaving out access to certain parts of the system. On one hand, if you want your kid to grow up to be more tech-savvy, it’s always a good idea to give them more choices and be around to help when things go wrong. In my case, since I wouldn’t be there to help my nephew and he’s not quite literate yet, I figured limiting the system was a better idea.
In order to do that, you can use something called a shell replacement. [Byron Jones]’
KidsMenu
hasn’t been updated since 2011, but that doesn’t make it any less useful for our case in Windows 7. Fitting my use case precisely, it provides a way of not only presenting the choices in a clear manner, but also hiding that pesky Start Menu which can be overwhelming to someone who doesn’t know what it does.
In Conclusion
Once it’s all buttoned up and ready to go, all there was left to do was package it all up in gift-wrapping and send it off to my nephew. As expected, he was excited mostly for Minecraft, but hopefully he’ll be encouraged to try the other menu items I hand-picked for him as well. I’ll also make not-so-rushed plans for a future gift, taking away the proverbial training wheels and giving him a computer with a more standard interface once he’s ready for it.
While this was the choice that worked for me, it was heavily influenced by what I had on hand. When I discussed the project with other friends, it sparked ideas on how it could be done differently. If you have an Android tablet lying around, for example, the built-in app store not only has plenty of choices for kid-friendly games, it also has launchers that provide parental controls much like I implemented by using KidsMenu on Windows. But then you have a different selection of games available.
Have you made a child-friendly computer? What age did you target, what software did you choose, and how streamlined did you try to make the whole experience? | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311543",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2021-01-13T18:27:06",
"content": "I spent years with qbasic.exe and its built-in help. It was all that was needed to learn programming, without any internet access and with only very basic knowledge of English.I wish more of the modern day pr... | 1,760,373,222.625581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/remote-control-robot-deals-dominoes/ | Remote Control Robot Deals Dominoes | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"bluetooth",
"continuous rotation servo",
"dominoes",
"R/C",
"remote control",
"servo"
] | Oh, dominoes — the fun of knocking them down is inversely proportional to the pain of setting them all up again. [DIY Machines] is saving loads of time by
automating the boring part with a remote control domino-laying machine
. If only it could pick them back up.
This machine can be driven directly over Bluetooth like an R/C car, or programmed to follow a predetermined path via Arduino code. Here’s how it works: an Arduino Uno drives two servos and one motor. The 1:90 geared motor drives the robot around using a 180° servo to steer. A continuous servo turns the carousel, which holds nearly 140 dominoes. We love that the carousel is designed to be hot-swappable, so you can keep a spare ready to go.
[DIY Machines] really thought of everything. Every dozen or so dominoes, the machine leaves a gap in case one of the dominoes is tipped prematurely. There are also a couple of accessories for it, like a speedy domino loading stick and a fun little staircase bridge to add to your domino creations. Though
all the machine files are freely available
, [DIY Machines] requests a small donation for
the accessories files
. Check out the complete build video after the break, followed by a bonus video that focuses on upgrading the machine with an HM10 Bluetooth module for controlling it directly with a phone.
This certainly isn’t the first domino-laying device we’ve seen, though it might be the most accessorized.
[Matthias Wandel]’s version uses only one motor to move and deal the dominoes
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311237",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T21:03:35",
"content": "As per recently thought up tradition, you now have to fight Lewin to see whose article stays up…https://hackaday.com/2021/01/01/domino-layer-lets-you-focus-on-toppling/",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,373,222.817551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/visualizing-ionizing-radiation-with-diy-plastic-scintillators/ | Visualizing Ionizing Radiation With DIY Plastic Scintillators | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"ionizing radiation",
"scintillator"
] | Although most types of radiation are invisible, except for the visible part of the EM spectrum, there are many ways that we can make various types of radiation visible. One of these methods is called ‘scintillation’, which can be used to make ionizing radiation visible. Recently [Lukas Springer] demonstrated
how to make scintillators
out of what is essentially plastic: bisphenol-A (E45, ‘epoxy’) resin with hardener and other additives.
The essential principle of operation behind a
scintillator
is its sensitivity to ionizing radiation, along with the tendency to absorb the energy and re-emit it in the form of light, i.e.
luminescence
. This is akin to the luminescence of LEDs, except that in their case the underlying principle is that of electro-luminescence. In the case of a plastic scintillator, the scintillating material is suspended in the solid polymer matrix base.
As [Lukas] points out, plastic scintillators are hardly ideal when it comes to their sensitivity to ionizing radiation, but they compensate for this by being easy to shape and produce, while being very durable. For this experiment, he used regular epoxy as the scintillator matrix,
p-Terphenyl
as primary scintillator and
Coumarin 102
as the wavelength shifter. These three compounds act as a reaction chain, with the matrix absorbing the radiation and transferring it to the primary scintillator, which in turns emits the energy as light.
As the primary scintillator tends to radiate in the deep UV part of the EM spectrum, a wavelength shifter (i.e. secondary scintillator) which ‘shifts’ the emitted UV radiation into the visible part of the spectrum.
After producing a batch of plastic scintillators following the above recipe, [Lukas] irradiated them with gamma radiation, and found them to perform worse than some already not remarkable Russian PS-based scintillators. [Lukas’s] guess is that the matrix may be absorbing the primary scintillator’s output, or a mismatch between the primary and second scintillator.
While tricky to get right, it does seem like a fun hobby if one has some interesting in chemistry. [Lukas] (@GigaBecquerel on Twitter) provides a basic recipe as well as many other compounds to use for the primary and secondary scintillator, as well as the matrix compound. Enough to get started with. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311225",
"author": "Jan Steinman",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T20:40:22",
"content": "Interesting experiment!One drawback is that it will probably not detect beta radiation, and almost certainly won’t detect alpha radiation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,222.864142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/death-of-the-serial-squid-when-do-you-give-up/ | Death Of The Serial Squid: When Do You Give Up? | Chris Lott | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"design",
"failures",
"lessons",
"specifications"
] | While searching for a connector recently, I revisited an old project of mine called the Serial Squid. This was to have been my first open-source hardware design. After completing the entire design, PCB, BOM, and preparing for a crowd-funded campaign, I eventually gave up for reasons discussed below, I’ve always thought of this as a failure, but on further reflection I see it in a new light. There were some good lessons learned along the path to abandonment.
When do you let go? When should you push through?
An Idea Forms
The Serial Squid was to be essentially an Ethernet-connected Bus Pirate. The motivations for this project were many. Too many, in fact, and perhaps that should have been an early warning sign. At first, I just wanted a remote serial UART, and this out of laziness. It annoyed me to carry my laptop from my desk to the lab bench for debugging, or carrying the project to my desk. Surely there must be some way to physically extend my office computer’s I/O across the room or building to the lab bench over the network. So I focused only on serial UART solutions, and in fact had some modest success sharing a second compter’s serial port using
socat
. But I gradually expanded the scope of my notional widget to include other serial interfaces of interest to the embedded developer.
Around this time, I had stumbled upon a small handheld flash programmer from China called Eagle Comm. It was designed for a variety of MCUs such as PIC, Cortex, AVR, etc., and was super easy to operate. It was perfect for small production runs at the factory or to send to customers to upgrade prototype boards. The more I used it, the more I liked the form-factor and wondered whether I could repurpose it. But the manufacturer wasn’t willing to share the code, and the hardware wasn’t that good a fit for my application to warrant reverse engineering it. But maybe my still-unnamed widget could learn a thing or two from the packaging and layout of the Eagle Comm unit.
Speaking of sending something to a client for flashing a chip, it would also be helpful to have something I could send some of my clients to use for data logging, especially when a system was installed on a remote location with no network access. Could my widget be battery powered and easily used as a logger?
And finally, I had been intrigued for years about packaging an electronics in a flat “enclosure”, made entirely of layers of PCBs. A suitably thin SMT board could be made into a flat package by adding a few fiberglass PCBs, some with cutouts for components. Connections and help could be silkscreened directly on the outer layers, and assembly would be as simple as screwing the layers together.
Specifications Solidify
Gradually this product began to gel in my mind. Ideally, I wanted a small handheld device with a keyboard and display, and the provision for several I/O modules corresponding to each kind of interface. If you’ve ever held an old HP-41C calculator, imagine the plug-in modules being I/O blocks, for example. Alas, this approach eluded me for some time. There wasn’t a perfect intermediate bus for these modules. I wanted something that was not only technically suitable, but also low-cost, license-free, and that wouldn’t disappear next year. I was circling around Ethernet or SPI, when I hit upon the solution: defer a modular design until version 2, and go with a fixed set of ports for version 1.
Rejected Squid Shapes
I was having a tough time with the form factor. Making a half-decent keypad wasn’t going go be easy. And I was considering crowd sourcing, and if I was going to get any traction, a simple calculator-like layout was just plain boring. I wanted my widget to have a catchy look. I pursued several candidate designs with mockups and CAD, but none of them were quite right.
Then one day it hit me, something suggestive of a common food here in South Korea — my widget was going to be a squid. Each arm of the squid would be an interface port, and the head would naturally be the brain. Ten legs would be plenty. Now I could offer almost every serial protocol known. My newly-named Serial Squid would be really versatile.
After several explorations of squid-like shapes, I settled on the design below. I went through an exhaustive exercise to find the best connectors and pinouts for each interface.
Do Your Research
This part of the design took a really long time. Many serial protocols don’t have standard connectors. Sometimes we take for granted those everyday things we use like the TTL-level serial connector pinouts or what connector and pinout should an RS-485 interface have. (There’s no standard, but a fairly well adopted de-facto one.) Knowing the related specifications, history, and common usage can be quite helpful.
The Variety of I/O Connectors
I researched as many different implementations as possible from other projects and products. Eventually I selected the most appropriate connector and pinout for each of the interfaces.
All the time I was trying my best to keep the “flat PCB” construction technique in mind. Because of the physical constraints of many of the connectors, some compromise was needed. This would not be a sleek, slim PCB sandwich, but I still feel the result would have been acceptable for the intended application. I was also leaning towards a 3D printed case instead of a PCB sandwich, because the stackup of PCBs needed were getting quite complicated, and I suspect more expensive than 3D printing.
The Death of a Squid
I abandoned the project after almost a year. I was so close. I had the Gerbers ready, the PCBs were quoted from China, parts were in my shopping cart ready to order. There were lots of reasons why, but three main ones come to mind.
Killer #1: Software
While I was cheerfully doing hardware design, the dark clouds of firmware development were looming. For this board to perform as I envisioned, I needed firmware that would present its various serial ports to a remote computer over Ethernet and possibly USB. While this didn’t seem too daunting when I thought about a UART, when you toss in a dozen other interfaces you have a problem. The biggest one being no standard xxxx-over-LAN protocol existed for these ports, nor did computers even have most of these ports natively. The enormity of the firmware task slowly sank in, not to mention possible desktop device driver development, and my enthusiasm began to fizzle out.
Killer #2: No Clear Purpose
Many people I discussed the project with admitted it was catchy and novel, but it was difficult to explain what it did. “It can do anything” was an unrealistic answer, and an honest evaluation led me to conclude it was trying to do too much.
Killer #3: Distracted by Rev 2
I was never quite happy with the the ten legs having fixed I/O ports. Ideally, I wanted the user to be able to mix and match the legs. This way I could make the body smaller, perhaps moving away from form factors based on 10-legged creatures. Four or five legs would be plenty. I kept debating with myself whether I should wrap up the squid first and then move on to Rev 2, or drop the squid and leapfrog directly to a new design. I did neither.
Lessons Learned: Feature Creep
Over the years as an engineer, I’ve experienced the mental letdown when a project ends or gets cancelled. But interestingly, I didn’t feel that way upon giving up this project. I had such a good time doing the design, learned or re-learned a lot of lessons, and gained some new skills along the way.
Beware of broad scopes and feature creep.
This is well known by everyone in the community. But despite being a gray-beard, I was tripped up. Try to recognize the warning signs of a bloated specification. And if you see it happening, try to fix it or quit before you get in too deep. The fact that nobody could understand the purpose was a big red flag — I saw it, but ignored it anyway. Also, be flexible, know when to give up or abandon on a feature. Don’t be too rigid in the specifications, especially if it’s a hobby project.
I quickly abandoned my idea of the Squid appearing as port extensions on your desktop. Had I pressed on, I was going to either replace the micro with a Linux SBC, or run a scripting lanuage like Python or Forth on the Squid. If you find yourself having to re-invent or build new protocols from scratch, take a close look. There might be valid reasons to do so, but more often than not, you will be better off adopting existing interfaces and standards.
Don’t underestimate the value of mockups, either physical or simulated in CAD. I used this project as an opportunity to learn OpenSCAD, a skill that I’ve found quite useful. I also made a decision to get up-to-speed on KiCad for this project. Having used several professional PCB design tools over the years probably helped, but I could see that KiCad was going places and I needed to become proficient with it.
Be honest with yourself — brutally honest. As eye-catching as the Serial Squid is, I have to admit that I’m not sure how comfortable it would be to use in real life. Also really look closely at the problem you’re trying to solve. In hindsight, 99% of the use cases I was looking at solving could have been done with a Raspberry Pi and a custom shield or two.
Although strictly speaking the project was a failure, I had a lot of fun doing it. I met new people and companies, and learned new skills that I’m still using five years on. If you have a new project in mind, use some common sense. Bounce your ideas off of colleagues and fellow hackers. Then jump in and start. And don’t be afraid of a flop — even a failure can be valuable. | 46 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311194",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T18:27:02",
"content": "” At first, I just wanted a remote serial UART, and this out of laziness.”A lot of great ideas developed from laziness. Someone got tired of doing something, and thought up an easier way to do it.",
"par... | 1,760,373,222.951626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/hackadayu-announces-rhino-mech-eng-and-avr-classes-during-winter-session/ | HackadayU Announces Rhino, Mech Eng, And AVR Classes During Winter Session | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"AVR",
"HackadayU",
"mechanical engineering",
"prototyping",
"Rhino",
"rhino 3d modeling"
] | The
winter lineup of HackadayU courses
has just been announced,
get your tickets now
!
Spend those indoor hours leveling up your skills — on offer are classes to learn how to prototype like a mechanical engineer, how to create precision 3D models in Rhino, or how to dive through abstraction for total control of AVR microcontrollers. Each course is led by an expert instructor over five classes held live via weekly video chats, plus a set of office hours for further interaction.
Introduction to 3D using Rhino
Instructor: James McBennett
Course overview
: Introduces students to Rhino3D, a NURBS based 3D software that contains a little of everything, making it James’ favorite software to introduce students to 3D. Classes are on Tuesdays at 6pm EST beginning January 26th
Prototyping in Mechanical Engineering
Instructor: Will Fischer
Course overview
: The tips and tricks from years of prototyping and mechanical system design will help you learn to think about the world as a mechanical engineer does. Classes are on Tuesdays at 1pm EST beginning January 26th
AVR: Architecture, Assembly, & Reverse Engineering
Instructor: Uri Shaked
Course overview
: Explore the internals of AVR architecture; reverse engineer the code generated by the compiler, learn the AVR assembly language, and look at the different peripherals and the registers that control their behavior. Classes are on Wednesdays at 2pm EST beginning January 27th
Consider becoming an Engineering Liaison for HackadayU. These volunteers help keep the class humming along for the best experience for students and instructors alike.
Liaison applications are now open
.
HackadayU courses are “pay-as-you-wish” with a $10 suggested donation; all proceeds go to charity with 2019 contributions topping $10,100 going to
STEAM:CODERS
. There is a $1 minimum to help ensure the live seats don’t go to waste. Intro videos for each course from the instructors themselves are found below, and
don’t forget to check out the excellent HackadayU courses from 2020
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311211",
"author": "reger",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T19:18:23",
"content": "not version for linuxno problem no needed rhino",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311227",
"author": "forty-2",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T20:41:4... | 1,760,373,222.999358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/baby-yoda-becomes-personable-robot/ | Baby Yoda Becomes Personable Robot | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"baby yoda",
"openbot",
"star wars",
"yoda"
] | Baby Yoda has been a hit character in Disney’s
The Mandalorian,
but does not actually exist in real life as far as we know. Instead,
[Manuel Ahumada] set about building a robotic replica, complete with artificial intelligence.
(Video, embedded below.)
The first step was to build a basic robotic simulcra of Baby Yoda, which [Manuel] achieved by outfitting a toy with servos, motors and a Raspberry Pi. With everything hooked up, Baby Yoda was able to move his head and arms, and scoot around on wheels, all under the control of a Bluetooth gamepad. With that sorted, [Manuel] added brains in the form of a smartphone running Intel’s OpenBot machine learning platform. This allows Baby Yoda to track and follow people it sees on its smartphone camera, and potentially even navigate real-world spaces with future upgrades.
It’s a fun build, and we’d love to see the bot let loose at a convention to explore and make friends.
We’ve covered OpenBot before, and look forward to seeing it used in more builds.
Video after the break. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311159",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T16:40:08",
"content": "Shaved the hair off of a Furby?B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6311247",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T21:32:16",
"content":... | 1,760,373,223.040363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/12/spacing-out-launch-successes-and-failures-next-stop-mars-rocket-catching-and-new-space-stations/ | Spacing Out: Launch Successes And Failures, Next Stop Mars, Rocket Catching, & Space Stations | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Roundup",
"Space"
] | [
"aliens",
"Axiom Space",
"hope",
"Ingenuity",
"Long March 8",
"Perseverance",
"SpaceX",
"starship",
"Super Heavy",
"Tianwen-1"
] | As large sections of the globe have seen themselves plunged into further resurgences of the pandemic over the past few weeks there has been no let-up in the world of space exploration even for the Christmas holidays, so here we are with another
Spacing Out
column in which we take a look at what’s going up, what’s flying overhead, and what’s coming down.
Not today, Paul. r2hox from Madrid, Spain,
CC BY-SA 2.0
.
December was eventful, with China returning lunar samples and Japan doing the same with asteroid dust. And it was reported that we
might just possibly have detected radio waves from ET
. The truth may be out there and we sincerely want to believe, but this widely reported signal from Proxima Centauri probably isn’t the confirmation of alien life we’ve all been waiting for.
There has been no shortage of launches over the last month from the usual agencies and companies, with
a first launch from China of their Long March 8 heavy lift rocket
from the Wenchang launch site in Hainan Province. Its payload of five satellites made it safely to orbit, and we expect the rocket will be a workhorse of their future exploration programme. Meanwhile SpaceX
conducted a high-altitude test of their Starship SN8 vehicle
, which proceeded according to plan until the craft was approaching the landing pad, at which point the failure of one of its engines to fire caused a spectacular crash. This does not equate to an unsuccessful test flight as it performed faultlessly in the rest of its manoeuvres, but it certainly
made for some impressive video
.
On the subject of SpaceX and Starship, Elon Musk
has said he will sell all his personal property to fund a Martian colony
. This will require a fleet of up to 1000 Starships, with three launches a day to ferry both colonists and supplies to the Red Planet. He attracted controversy though by saying that interplanetary immigration would be open to people of all means
with loans available
for the estimated $50,000 one-way travel cost, and Martian jobs on offer to enable the debt to be paid. Many critics replied to his Tweets likening the idea to indentured servitude. It’s worth remembering that Musk is the master of the grand publicity stunt, and while it seems a good bet that SpaceX will indeed reach Mars, it’s also not inconceivable that his timeline and plans might be somewhat optimistic.
A more tangible story from SpaceX comes in their super heavy booster rocket, which is to be reusable in the same manner as their existing Falcon 9, but not landing on its own legs in the manner of the earlier rocket.
It will instead dock with its launch tower
, being caught by the same support structures used to stabilise it before launch. At first glance this might seem too difficult to succeed, but no doubt people expressed the same doubts before the Falcon 9s performed their synchronised landings.
Finally away from more troubling developments in the political field, The Hill
takes a look at some of those likely to have a hand in providing a commercial replacement for the ISS
when it eventually reaches the end of its life. They examine the likely funding for NASA’s tenancy on the station, and looked at the cluster of Texas-based companies gearing up for space station manufacture. That’s right — space station modules from the likes of
Axiom Space
will become a manufactured assembly rather than one-off commissions. The decades beyond the ISS’s current 2030 projected end of life are likely to have some exciting developments in orbit.
The coming year is likely to be an exciting one, with a brace of missions heading to Mars for February as well as a new space station to catch our attention. The Chinese aren’t content to stop at the Moon, with their
Tianwen-1 Mars mission due to start exploring our planetary neighbour
, and the first Tianhe module of what will become their much larger space station taking to the skies in the coming year. Meanwhile the Red planet will see
NASA’s Perseverance rover
also reaching its surface, taking with it
the Ingenuity helicopter
. Finally, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe will go into orbit, making the second month one that should have plenty of news.
Wherever you are, keep yourself safe from Earth-bound viruses, and keep looking at the skies in 2021. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6311126",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2021-01-12T15:36:44",
"content": ">it’s also not inconceivable that his timeline and plans might be somewhat optimistic.That’s somewhat of an understatement. Musk will probably sell SOME of his property while investors pay the lion’s share o... | 1,760,373,223.083556 |
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