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https://hackaday.com/2020/11/20/this-week-in-security-sad-dns-incident-documentation-done-well-and-tcl-responds/	This Week In Security: SAD DNS, Incident Documentation Done Well, And TCL Responds	Jonathan Bennett	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Security Hacks" ]	[ "DKIM", "TCL", "This Week in Security", "Wardialing" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rkarts.jpg?w=800	One of the big stories from the past few days is the return of DNS cache poisoning . The new attack has been dubbed SADDNS , and the full PDF whitepaper is now available. When you lookup a website’s IP address in a poisoned cache, you get the wrong IP address. This can send you somewhere malicious, or worse. The paper points out that DNS has suffered a sort of feature creep, picking up more and more responsibilities. The most notable use of DNS that comes to mind is LetsEncrypt using DNS as the mechanism to prove domain ownership, and issue HTTPS certificates. DNS Cache poisoning is a relatively old attack, dating from 1993. The first iteration of the attack was simple. An attacker that controlled an authoritative DNS server could include extra DNS results, and those extra results would be cached as if they came from an authoritative server. In 1997 it was realized that the known source port combined with a non-random transaction ID made DNS packet spoofing rather trivial. An attacker simply needs to spoof a DNS response with the appropriate txID , at the appropriate time to trick a requester into thinking it’s valid. Without the extra protections of TCP connections, this was an easy task. The response was to randomize the txID in each connection. I have to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite gotchas in statistics. The Birthday paradox. The chances that two randomly selected people share a birthday is 1 in 365. How many people have to be in a room together to get a 50% chance of two of them sharing a birthday? If you said 182, then you walked into the paradox. The answer is 23. Why? Because we’re not looking for a specific birthday, we’re just looking for a collision between dates. Each non-matching birthday that walks into the room provides another opportunity for the next one to match. This is the essence of the DNS birthday attack. An attacker would send a large number of DNS requests, and then immediately send a large number of spoofed responses, guessing random txIDs. Because only one collision is needed to get a poisoned cache, the chances of success go up rapidly. The mitigation was to also randomize the DNS source port, so that spoof attempts had to have both the correct source port and txID in the same attempt. The other major DNS security improvement we have to mention is DNSSEC . DNS Security Extensions is the DNS protocol built on top of public key cryptography. Cache poisoning and DNS spoofing essentially goes away when DNSSEC is implemented. The problem is that so many resolvers, forwarders, and domains don’t yet support DNSSEC. SADDNS specifically targets those resolvers and forwarders. The real linchpin to SAD DNS is a quirk of DNS ports that allows a port scan to identify the sending port of a given DNS query. That quirk is that when a UDP packet is sent from a given source port, that port is considered open to incoming packets by the OS. Any other port will return an ICMP bounce message, indicating a closed port. This technique, combined with a denial of service attack, gives an attacker enough time to identify the source port and send a flurry of txID guesses. Because they can figure out the port and txID in a two step process, the cache poisoning attack is viable once again. There is one quick-and-dirty mitigation against this attack, that is easy to implement. Instead of setting your firewall to reject packets by default, set it to drop them by default. It’s possible that this workaround could be overcome, but the mechanism described in this paper does not work if the target DNS resolver/forwarder is set to default drop unsolicited packets. How To Document a Breach Capcom of Japan was recently hit with a ransomware attack. How exactly their network was compromised is still unclear, but Capcom is being very clear about what data was compromised , and what data may have been compromised. In fact, their overall response looks like a textbook case of getting it right. They give the types and numbers of records exposed. Additionally, they intentionally don’t keep things like credit card numbers in their database, so those are known not to be compromised. They give a detailed timeline in section four. As soon as the results of the attack were noticed, they pulled the plug on their servers and went directly into incident response mode. It’s very likely that the attack remained minor due to this quick action. Within two days of the incident, they had an initial statement out , confirming it was an attack. The more detailed report being available two weeks later is reasonably quick as well. If you’re ever in the unenviable position of having to write the public incident summaries for an attack, this might be a good reference, as to how to get it right. Intel Intel has dropped 40 security advisories in November , for a total of 95 vulnerabilities disclosed. As noted in the link above, that’s a lot. What strikes me is that over half of those were discovered by Intel employees doing paid security research. Some of the more interesting vulns discovered were a pair of remotely exploitable problems in Intel’s AMT management platform , and a similar problem in Intel Bluetooth products . While it’s great that these bugs are getting fixed, I would love to see a bit more information about what exactly is going on with each of these vulns. TCL Responds Remember last week, we talked about the problems in TCL TVs? One of the biggest complaints security researchers had about that issue was the deafening silence from TCL. That silence has been broken , and quite a few questions have been answered. I’ve seen some additional information, where TCL states that TerminalManager is strictly for remote diagnostics, and can only be activated by the end user. The primary vulnerability we discussed, the filesystem being exposed over HTTP, was caused by a seperate app, T-Cast. This application enables streaming from mobile devices, and wasn’t installed on North American TVs. It seemed to be an unintended side-effect of the app. There may be more to come, as there are several of us digging into TCL TVs and firmware. So far, however, my experience has been that the firmware is relatively well put together. On the model I bought, SELinux is enabled, the root filesystem is mounted read-only, and no SU binary is installed. There are a few oddities, but if anything comes of those, we’ll let you all know at the appropriate time. Modern Wardialing Remember War Games? A young Matthew Broderick was just looking for early access to a video game. He decided to dial every phone number in LA, and make note of which ones had computer modems at the other end, so he could find which one belonged to his favorite game developer. I think [Martin Vigo] must have had that in mind when he made a discovery . Many services allow you to trigger a password reset through a cell number. Often times, that process gives away a few digits of the associated number. If you could coordinate a lookup against multiple services, you could recover multiple digits, maybe all of them, from a simple email address. The second half of that tool is now available: Phonerator. It scrapes Open Source INTelligence (OSINT) sources for information on valid phone numbers, and lets you generate a list of known good numbers from a partial match. “Open Source” here doesn’t refer to source code, but to publically available data. Martin suggests a few clever uses of these tools. One would be a reverse lookup on a stalker, assuming you have an email address that’s associated with their number. The read is interesting, particularly if you’re a telephone geek like many of us are. Worst Idea of the Week? And finally, we have the idea that strikes me as the worst idea of the week . In this blog post, [Matthew Green] makes a simple request. He asks Google to release their old DKIM secret keys after they expire, and maybe rotate those keys more often. First, DKIM is the “DomainKeys Identified Mail” system. It’s a simple way to confirm that the claimed sender of an email is the actual sender. In the case of gmail, Google signs each outgoing message with their secret DKIM key, confirming that the message was really sent from the claimed account, and hasn’t been tampered with. The purpose of this signature is to give admins another spam-fighting tool. So why does Matthew want Google to release those keys? Google DKIM has recently been used to validate some very high-profile email dumps. His argument is that if anyone has access to the signing keys, signatures on dumped emails will no longer be trustworthy. Since they can no longer be proven to be real, email hacks will slow down and cease to be an issue. Why is this a bad idea? Because it won’t cut down on email hacks, it will just make it impossible to debunk the fake ones. If anything, giving away the signing keys will just encourage fake email dumps. There’s a separate point to be made here about DKIM being useful in the case of law enforcement and prosecution. In this case, it not only confirms validity, but also prevents anyone from tampering with the emails. [Editor’s note: We’re not all agreed on this. Deniability is often seen as a good thing in crypto algorithms, both because it’s privacy-preserving and prevents the system from being used in these kind of blackmail schemes. If you want to sign your e-mails, there are tons of ways to do so: GPG is the most obvious. But you shouldn’t have to . Users shouldn’t have this fundamental privacy choice made for them, especially with the default mode being the privacy violation. Discuss!]	6	2	[ { "comment_id": "6296258", "author": "Ewald", "timestamp": "2020-11-20T15:32:21", "content": "Instead of setting your firewall to reject packets by default, set it to drop them by default.This is a best practice for Internet facing firewalls anyway, with REJECT the firewall can be used in a DDoS att...	1,760,373,281.824223
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/20/3d-printable-cloth-takes-advantage-of-defects/	3D Printable Cloth Takes Advantage Of Defects	Al Williams	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "3d printing", "fabric", "mit", "textile", "underextrusion" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/11/3d.png?w=800	Normally, a 3D printer that under extrudes is a bad thing. However, MIT has figured out a way to deliberately mix full extrusions with under extruded layers to print structures that behave more like cloth than normal 3D printed items. The mesh-like structure apparently doesn’t require any modification to a normal 3D printer, just different software to create special code sequences to create the material. Called DefeXtiles , [Jack Forman] is producing sheets and complex structures that appear woven. The process is known as “blob-stretch” because of the way the plastic makes blobs connected by fine filaments of plastic. According to the talk by [Jack] (see the second video, below), the technique works with different types of filament and it is possible to print very large items folded up, even on a standard printer. After printing, you simply unfold or unwrap the plastic. For example, by printing a spiral, a 70 meter roll of “fabric” came out of an unremarkable-looking 3D printer. The thickness is under 0.4 mm. Another example is the full-sized skirts you can see in the paper. They print in a roll form and then expand after printing. Other demonstration objects include a shuttlecock (you know, the thing you use for badminton) and lampshades. We were hoping to find software or G-code files to demonstrate the technique, but if they were there we missed them. However, it seems like it should be easy enough to create some test files. Let us know if you try. We’ve seen folding prints before . Fabric like this could transform printing wearables .	24	9	[ { "comment_id": "6296190", "author": "Daniel Dunn", "timestamp": "2020-11-20T12:16:16", "content": "They forgot the most important use: 3D printable TP for the upcoming shortage!But more seriously I’d love to be able to designate specific areas to print with this instead of normal walls, because it ...	1,760,373,281.960431
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/20/mushroom-canoe-one-ups-climate-change/	Mushroom Canoe Is Rooted In Nature	Kristina Panos	[ "green hacks", "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "canoe", "mushrooms", "mycelium", "sustainability hacks", "sustainable materials" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…oe-800.jpg?w=800	Mushrooms might be the most contested pizza topping after pineapple, but can you build a boat from pineapples? Probably not, but you can from mushrooms. Mushrooms, or rather their mycelium root systems, can be used for things like packaging, insulation, and furniture, and it could be the next thing in floatation, too. Just ask [Katy Ayers], a Nebraska college student who built an eight-foot canoe molded almost entirely of mycelium . [Katy] got into mushrooms when she was tasked with researching solutions to climate change. She loves to fish and has always wanted a boat, so when she found out that mycelium are naturally buoyant and waterproof, she decided to try using it as a building material. [Katy] floated the idea by the owner of a local mushroom company and they got to work, building a frame suspended in the air by a hammock-like structure. Then they covered the boat’s skeleton with spores and let it proliferate in a hot, humid growing room. Two weeks later, they had a boat made of live mycelium, which means that every time it goes out on the water, it spawns mushrooms. The total cost including tools was around $500. The boat experiment spawned even more mycelium projects. [Katy] has since experimented with making lawn chairs and landscaping bricks from mycelium. Don’t want to wait to grow your own mycelium boat? You can build one out of stretch wrap, packing tape, and tree branches . Thanks for the tip, [ykr300]! Main image by Katy Ayers via NBC News	38	19	[ { "comment_id": "6296162", "author": "bbp", "timestamp": "2020-11-20T09:21:36", "content": "This is extremely fascinating and creepy!", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6296165", "author": "zombie", "timestamp": "2020-11-20T09:44:31", "...	1,760,373,281.900186
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/circuit-boards-you-can-stretch-liquid-metal-nanomaterials-make-a-strange-flex/	Circuit Boards You Can Stretch: Liquid Metal Nanomaterials Make A Strange Flex	Dan Maloney	[ "chemistry hacks", "News" ]	[ "flex PCB", "gallium", "indium", "liquid metal", "nanomaterial", "stretchabale", "wearable" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…11-51.jpeg?w=800	If you think polyimide-based flexible PCBs are cool, wait until you get a load of what polymerized liquid metal networks can do . Seems like [CNLohr] has some pretty cool friends, and he recently spent some time with a couple of them who are working with poly LMNs and finding out what they’re good for. Poly LMNs use a liquid metal composed of indium and gallium that can be sprayed onto a substrate through a laser-cut stencil. This results in traces that show the opposite of expected behavior; where most conductors increase in resistance when stretched, pol LMNs stay just as conductive no matter how much they’re stretched. The video below shows [CNLohr]’s experiments with the stuff. He brought a couple of traditional PCB-based MCU circuits, which interface easily with the poly LMN traces on a thick tape substrate. Once activated by stretching, which forms the networks between the liquid metal globules, the traces act much like copper traces. Attaching SMD components is as simple as sticking them to the tape — no soldering required. The circuits remain impressively stretchy without any apparent effect on their electrical properties — a characteristic that should prove interesting for wearables circuits, biological sensors, and a host of real-world applications. While poly LMNs aren’t exactly ready for the market yet, they don’t seem terribly difficult to make, requiring little in the way of exotic materials or specialized lab equipment. We’d love to see someone like [Ben Krasnow] pick this up and run with it — it seems right up his alley .	9	5	[ { "comment_id": "6296105", "author": "mrehorst", "timestamp": "2020-11-20T04:16:18", "content": "How many times does it survive being stretched? If it lasts it might be a good position sensor in a body suit or glove.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_...	1,760,373,282.34356
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/the-battle-for-arecibo-has-been-lost/	The Battle For Arecibo Has Been Lost	Tom Nardi	[ "News", "Science", "Slider", "Space" ]	[ "Arecibo", "Arecibo Observatory", "collapse", "radar", "Radio Telescope" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…o_feat.jpg?w=800	It is with a heavy heart that we must report the National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to dismantle the Arecibo Observatory . Following the failure of two support cables, engineers have determined the structure is on the verge of collapse and that the necessary repairs would be too expensive and dangerous to conduct. At the same time, allowing the structure to collapse on its own would endanger nearby facilities and surely destroy the valuable research equipment suspended high above the 300 meter dish. Through controlled demolition, the NSF hopes to preserve as much of the facility and its hardware as possible. Section of the Arecibo Message When the first support cable broke free back in August, we worried about what it meant for the future of this unique astronomical observatory . Brought online in 1963 as part of a Cold War project to study how ICBMs behaved in Earth’s upper atmosphere, the massive radio telescope is unique in that it has the ability to transmit as well as receive. This capability has been used to produce radar maps of distant celestial objects and detect potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids. In 1974, it was even used to broadcast the goodwill of humankind to any intelligent lifeforms that might be listening. Known as the “Arecibo Message”, the transmission can be decoded to reveal an assortment of pictograms that convey everything from the atomic numbers of common elements to the shape of the human body. The final icon in the series was a simple diagram of Arecibo itself, so that anyone who intercepted the message would have an idea of how such a relatively primitive species had managed to reach out and touch the stars. There is no replacement for the Arecibo Observatory, nor is there likely to be one in the near future. The Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China is larger than Arecibo, but doesn’t have the crucial transmission capability. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California can transmit, but as it’s primarily concerned with communicating with distant spacecraft , there’s little free time to engage in scientific observations. Even when it’s available for research, the largest dish in the Goldstone array is only 1/4 the diameter of the reflector at Arecibo. Just last week we wondered aloud whether a nearly 60 year old radio telescope was still worth saving given the incredible advancements in technology that have been made in the intervening years. Now, unfortunately, we have our answer.	98	23	[ { "comment_id": "6296010", "author": "cb88", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T22:50:17", "content": "Just a thought… but the best place to build a giant radio telescope, is in space where you are not constrained by corrosion and gravity. Or for instance on the moon minimally constrained by gravity.", "p...	1,760,373,282.482049
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/radioshack-to-be-reborn-as-online-first-retailer/	RadioShack To Be Reborn As Online-First Retailer	Tom Nardi	[ "News" ]	[ "bankruptcy", "Buyout", "online", "radio shack", "radioshack" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.png?w=800	The good news is that as of today RadioShack has officially been purchased by Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV) , giving the troubled company a new lease on life. The downside, at least for folks like us, is that there are no immediate plans to return the iconic electronics retailer to its brick-and-mortar roots. As the name implies, REV specializes in online retail, having previously revamped the Internet presence of other bankrupt businesses such as Pier 1 Imports and Dressbarn. While the press release doesn’t outright preclude the possibility of new physical RadioShack locations, it’s clear that REV believes the future of retail isn’t to be found in your local strip mall. As the US mulls further lockdowns in response to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s hard to disagree. There will be millions of bored kids and adults looking for something to do during the long winter nights, and an electronic kit or two shipped to their door might be just the thing. REV says they plan to relaunch the rather dated RadioShack website just in time for the company’s 100th anniversary in 2021. As of this writing the website currently says that sales have been temporarily halted to allow for inventory restructuring, though it’s unclear if this is directly related to the buyout or not. Getting an accurate count of how much merchandise the company still has on hand after shuttering the majority of their physical locations in 2017 certainly sounds like something the new owners would want to do. Like most of you, we have fond memories of the Golden Age of RadioShack, back before they thought selling phones and TVs was somehow a good idea . To their credit, they did try and rekindle their relationship with hackers and makers by asking the community what they’d want to see in their stores . But we all know how that story ended. While it doesn’t look like this news will get us any closer to having a neighborhood store that stocks resistors, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that RadioShack kits and books will still be around for the next generation .	103	30	[ { "comment_id": "6295978", "author": "joelfinkle", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T21:50:32", "content": "I still haven’t decided whether having adapter cables, USB chargers, routers, etc. available everywhere from drug stores to home improvement centers is a blessing or a curse… I still miss the $#!+ Shac...	1,760,373,282.106759
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/micro-macro-keyboard-is-mega-based/	Micro Macro Keyboard Is ‘Mega-Based	Kristina Panos	[ "Microcontrollers", "Peripherals Hacks" ]	[ "atmega32u4", "custom keyboard", "Gateron", "macro", "macro pad" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eb-800.jpg?w=800	There’s a certain kind of joy that comes in throwing something together from spare parts, or from finding utility in a proof of concept for another project. [Clewsy] is cooking up something clacky and built this baby keeb to prove some stuff out, such as reading a key matrix . Now it’s become a music/media controller that looks great next to a giant matching volume knob. Beneath the gently backlit Gateron blues is a custom ATMega32u4-based board, which is viewable through the clear acrylic bottom plate. That’s a nice touch. We’re not sure if the wood came from a picture frame, but if not, they seem like a great candidates for enclosure material. This keeb looks fantastic, and we are partial to both the clear and the chrome keycaps. We can only hope [Clewsy] sends the details of the next build our way. If you want to get started building keyboards, you can’t go wrong with a macro keyboard like this one. If you have way more than four macros in mind, build something bigger, like a custom game pad with a joystick .	3	1	[ { "comment_id": "6295995", "author": "bbp", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T22:25:43", "content": "Is that a VHS head i see on the left?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295999", "author": "clewsy", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T22:32:38",...	1,760,373,281.728772
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/remoticon-video-firmware-reverse-engineering-workshop-with-asmita-jha/	Remoticon Video: Firmware Reverse Engineering Workshop With Asmita Jha	Mike Szczys	[ "cons", "Security Hacks" ]	[ "2020 Hackaday Remoticon", "Binwalk", "firmware", "jack the ripper", "qemu", "reverse engineering", "workshop" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	Taking things apart to see how they work is an important part of understanding a system, and that goes for software as much as for hardware. You can get a jump start on your firmware reverse engineering skills with Asmita Jha’s workshop which was presented live at the Hackaday Remoticon. The video has just been published, and is found below along with a bit more on what she covered in her hands-on labs. Where do you start when poking around a binary file with which you’re unfamiliar? The first part of the two-hour workshop tackles this issue. Asmita takes a systematic approach to figuring out what you’ve got and what methods will have the best chance of success. The tools needed for static analysis are likely familiar names to you already: Binwalk, John the Ripper, Ghidra, Firmwalker, FACT Tool, and EXPLIoT Firmware Auditor. Three of the four labs use these tools to practice things like extracting firmware binaries to find hardcoded credentials, modifying and repacking binaries, and cracking passwords found inside. There is also an example of dynamic analysis where the hardware architecture for which the firmware is compiled differs from the computer you’re using for reverse engineering. In that case you can use a flavor of Qemu to make sense of it. Beginning about half-way through the workshop the hands-on labs begin. You can follow along with this using workshop slides and setup instructions found on the workshop page .	4	3	[ { "comment_id": "6295985", "author": "Gravis", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T22:04:03", "content": "FYI, the generated closed captions on the video are great, incase you have a problem understanding the accent.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6296188...	1,760,373,282.203451
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/easy-iot-logging-options-for-the-beginner/	Easy IoT Logging Options For The Beginner	Lewin Day	[ "Hackaday Columns", "internet hacks" ]	[ "datalogger", "DataLogging", "internet of things", "IoT" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ogging.jpg?w=800	If a temperature sensor takes a measurement in the woods but there’s nobody around to read it, is it hot out? If you’ve got a project that’s collecting data, you might have reasons to put it online. Being able to read your data from anywhere has its perks, after all, and it’s key to building smarter interconnected systems, too. Plus, you can tell strangers the humidity in your living room while you’re out at the pub, and they’ll be really impressed. Taking the leap into the Internet of Things can be daunting however, with plenty of competing services and options from the basic to the industrial-strength available. Today, we’re taking a look at two options for logging data online that are accessible to the beginner. Key Things To Look For When trying to find an online logging platform, there’s a few things to consider. Ease of use is a primary consideration, as those just getting their feet wet with the Internet of Things don’t need to be scared away by complexity. Anything involving compiling obscure libraries or setting up complex databases is out. Additionally, cost is also a factor. Expensive subscriptions are a discouragement for those who wish primarily to dabble. For this article, we’ve selected two options that have a good feature set and a low bar of entry for beginners. IOTPlotter IOTPlottter will graph your data in an attractive way, all with a minimum of fuss. For many IoT projects, the aim is to get a bunch of sensors, monitor the output, and make some graphs. If that’s your use case, IOTPlotter , as the name suggests, may be just the tool for you. Free to use, it’s perfect for low-key logging of numerical data. To use IOTPlotter, it’s necessary to create a feed , which generally would correspond to a single device. This feed can contain several graphs, pertaining to different sensors or data. Writing to a feed is easy, achieved most readily through Python code or any other platform capable of making a basic HTTP request. To prevent random interlopers from making unauthorised changes, a feed is secured by an API key which is required to submit data and make requests. While it’s by no means a high-end security measure, it’s more than enough for the average DIY project. A smattering of other features make IOTPlotter just that little bit more useful. It’s possible to combine multiple data feeds onto a single graph, and also automatically export graphs in PNG format for external use. This is particularly applicable to situations where you may wish to display the data on an external website or in a mobile phone application. There’s also privacy options that allow you to close your feed so that it’s for your eyes only. Perhaps the only feature you may miss at this level is data export – there’s no easy way to spit out a CSV file of all your collected data to date. The documentation for the service is succinct – barely two pages long! Those with basic Python experience can be up and logging within half an hour, including initial sign up. If your applications swerve towards the more powerful, there are rate limits to consider, and as a free service, it doesn’t come with the same guarantees as a full-fat commercial offering. But if you’re working at that level, it’s likely IOTPlotter is not the solution for you anyway. Google Sheets Google Sheets doesn’t automatically graph for you, so you’ll have to set that up yourself. However, your data is all there in a convenient format for number crunching later on. If your logging needs are more serious, and you’ve got designs on doing some serious number crunching down the track, you’ll want to focus on storing your data in an accessible format. Throwing it into a spreadsheet is a great way to go, and Google Sheets is a great online platform for just such a purpose. When all you need is to handle creating, reading, updating, and deleting records, we call this a CRUD app. While it’s more common to use a full-fat database, for many applications, Google Sheets is powerful enough, and takes a lot less work to set up. As a bonus, it’s already set up to access from anywhere and can easily be shared with others, too. As a spreadsheet, you have the full flexibility to write in data any way you like. However, this also means that there’s a little more complexity involved in writing to Google Sheets. There’s also authorization required via OAuth 2 and the Google API Console. It’s not as easy as working with IOTPlotter, but still achievable in a few hours for the average user. These requirements mean that it’s generally easier to work with Google Sheets using a computer, like a Raspberry Pi, rather than a microcontroller. [Greg Baugues] has a great guide to getting the job done for those working in Python. However, it is possible to use workarounds to get the job done on a more lightweight platform. As [Shishir Dey] demonstrates, it’s possible to submit to Google Sheets with an HTTP request with the help of a little scripting. The benefit of such a method is that exporting data for further analysis is trivial. Simply clicking “File->Download” provides a variety of options, including CSV, for export. This allows the data to be used in software like MATLAB or other scripting languages, allowing you to run statistics and generate plots till the cows come home. It requires a little extra legwork, but for scientific projects, this flexibility is key to getting good results from data. Other Options For those looking for fancier interfaces or more bulletproof offerings, other options do exist. We’ve run features before on IoT services, and also discussed the benefits of MQTT as a data transport method. If what we’ve discussed here today doesn’t quite fit the bill, do a little further reading on what’s out there and see what best suits your use case. When you’re project is done, take some photos and drop us a line , and as always, happy hacking!	20	9	[ { "comment_id": "6295924", "author": "Dave", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T18:23:07", "content": "I’ve wanted a good data logger and plotter that actually looks good and interacts well on a mobile device. A built-in assumption to these and many other similar projects is that I’m on a desktop with a mouse...	1,760,373,282.166796
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/colorful-quinary-clock-makes-the-most-out-of-five-neopixels/	Colorful Quinary Clock Makes The Most Out Of Five Neopixels	Dan Maloney	[ "clock hacks" ]	[ "clock", "ESP8266", "ntp", "quinary", "ws2812b" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…15_43a.jpg?w=800	If binary digits are bits, are quinary digits “quits”? Perhaps, but whatever you call them, you’re going to have to wrap your head around some new concepts in order to make sense of this quinary display clock . The transition between 15:42 and 15:43. Why quinary? [Spike Snell] wanted to minimize the number of LEDs, and 5 2 is enough to cover all 24 hours. Binary clocks may have geek chic, but there are only so many ways to display ones and zeros. [Spike]’s clock is unique because it shows each quit using a single WS2812 Neopixel. The values zero through four are each represented by a different color, meaning the user needs to memorize which color goes with which value, which we suspect is the hardest part of learning this clock. The clock’s software is fairly simple and runs on an ESP8266, and uses NTP to keep on track. The clock self-adjusts for Daylight Savings time, and it has a nice feature that dims the display in the evening to make living with it easier. Even for those not up on their base-five arithmetic, [Spike]’s clock is still a nice, slowly evolving abstract art piece. And for those who grok the quinary clock, perhaps a career awaits you in an alternate future where bi-quinary relay computers caught on.	14	10	[ { "comment_id": "6295911", "author": "Mike Szczys", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T17:33:28", "content": "Shouldn’t it be easy to do quinary in my head since base 5 is a multiple we use all the time? Steam starts coming out of my ears when I realize that decimal 10 is quinary 20.", "parent_id": null, ...	1,760,373,281.784055
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/the-shipping-industrys-transition-to-atomic-power-and-faster-deliveries/	The Shipping Industry’s Transition To Atomic Power And Faster Deliveries	Maya Posch	[ "Featured", "Interest", "Original Art", "Slider", "Transportation Hacks" ]	[ "naval propulsion", "nuclear propulsion" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ipping.jpg?w=800	The transport of goods with cargo ships and especially container ships is the backbone of today’s economies, with about 90% of non-bulk cargo transported with them. This is in addition to the large number of oil tankers and LNG carriers. Unfortunately, due to their use of diesel engines they are also responsible for about 3.5% of the world’s CO2 emissions, in addition to 18 – 30% of nitrogen oxide and 9% of sulfur oxides. Although the switch to low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) and the use of speed limits has reduced some of these pollutants, the shipping industry sees itself faced with the necessity to decarbonize in order to meet the obligations of the Paris Agreement. This essentially means finding a way to switch from diesel engines to an alternative which has comparable or better fuel costs, produces no or almost no pollutants and will not negatively affect logistics. As a highly competitive, cut-throat industry, this does seem to leave shipping companies backed up against a wall. Yet an existing, proven technology just so happens to exist already which can be retrofitted into existing cargo ships. Ship It Bigger, Not Faster Windjammer Moshulu, in 2009. Since most cargo is not of the perishable type, the main motivating factor behind the shipping industry’s investments has been to carry more cargo with a single ship. During the last decades of sailing cargo ships ( iron-hulled sailing ships ) that lasted into the early 20th century, they managed to compete with the steam ships of the time mostly on account of being cheaper to operate. The largest so-called windjammer to survive to this day ( Moshulu ) was constructed in 1903 in Scotland. With steam engines quickly losing ground by the 1960s to diesel engines, both in the shipping and rail industries, diesel engines became the workhorses of the modern world, powering everything from trucks to trains to the biggest container ships. At about the same time, the massive leaps in our understanding of the atomic world led to a number of experiments with using a nuclear fission reactor as a direct replacement of the steam boilers of yesteryear. One of the most famous early nuclear-powered cargo ships was the NS Savannah , which was launched in 1959. As a demonstration vessel with mixed passenger/cargo use, she was however not meant to be profitable. With the far less complicated regulations concerning diesel engines and low diesel fuel prices taking precedence over other considerations, the shipping industry would collectively opt for this propulsion method. SMR-powered Sevmorput container ship in 2007. At this point in time, the Russian Sevmorput container ship (launched 1986) is the only active nuclear-powered cargo ship in the world. It is currently used for supply runs to Russia’s Antarctic research stations, alongside Russia’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. The new Project 22220 icebreakers feature an RITM-200 SMR (small modular reactor) with a 7 year refueling cycle, similar to the multi-year fuel cycle of the Sevmorput. The elimination of refueling considerations is helpful in this environment, allowing for increased cargo capacity and simplified logistics. It’s the Logistics, Silly As alluded to earlier, shipping companies are not interested in risks when they can avoid them. With a mid-century deadline to reach near-zero emissions looming, there is willingness to invest in change, but only so much. This is where radical propositions — such as in this 2018 IEEE Spectrum article on switching to hydrogen and fuel cells — face a very tough sell. In this article, it is pointed out that a converted cargo ship, filled with fuel cells, batteries and hydrogen storage tanks, could theoretically have enough electrical power to last one trip to the next port. This points at a number of negatives, with the possibility of a hydrogen leak leading to a stranded cargo ship, the need to refuel highly compressed hydrogen at every port, and a large amount of space taken up by the (thick-walled) compressed hydrogen tanks. It is also not a system that’s compatible with turbo-electric transmissions , and would require extensive retrofitting in existing cargo ships. A final nail in the coffin is the lack of refueling infrastructure at ports around the world, and the fact that right now virtually all hydrogen is produced from fossil methane (‘natural gas’) steam reforming and similar sources. Essentially, this transition would be one of many unknowns, high risks, expensive world-wide investments and uncertain gains in the event that it does work out as hoped. Welcome to the Navy USS Nimitz (CVN-68), a US Navy aircraft carrier. Photo is from after her 1999-2001 refit. Although the shipping industry has mostly opted to go with cheap bunker fuels for its cargo ships, since the 1950s the use of nuclear propulsion has become an integral part of the world’s most powerful armed forces. While a diesel submarine is useful, it cannot stay submerged for days on end and needs to refuel weekly instead of once every few decades. Similarly, CATOBAR-style aircraft carriers require both the power and elimination of refueling that could otherwise make a conflict rather embarrassing when one’s prized aircraft carrier runs out of fuel. If adopted to a cargo ship context, and assuming marine reactors like those used in Russia’s RITM SMRs with 20% low-enriched uranium-235 (compared to >90% for some US naval reactors), the logistics of refueling would be limited to a single refueling stop roughly once every seven years, during which the fuel would be swapped. If one were to use a molten salt or pebble bed reactor, refueling could be done more flexibly, with less time spent on the process. Wärtsilä RT-flex96C naval diesel engine. Other advantages of the use of nuclear propulsion is that since the fuel has a very high power density, no fuel tanks are needed. Instead the reactor along with a steam turbine could replace the building-sized diesel engine in container ships, like the Wärtsilä RT-flex96C with a height of 13.5 meters and length of 26.5 meters. The nuclear retrofit would thus combine engine and fuel in the same space as the engine block originally, allowing for increased cargo capacity. Due to naval reactors having been in use by various nations in a variety of scenarios since the 1950s, the risks and benefits are both well known, making them as much of a known quantity as the diesel engines that they are set to replace. Time to Step On It The past few years, the use of nuclear propulsion has found new voices within the shipping industry. As noted by people in the industry, a major hurdle is the lack of legislation by the International Maritime Organization ( IMO ) in this area, which at this point mostly considers nuclear propulsion in the context of military vessels. This might change quickly, however, as noted by Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chairman of shipping company BW Group. According to him, the benefits of nuclear propulsion are evident, with the low operating costs being the most obvious. Instead of having to deal with the recurrent costs of refueling, a cargo ship with nuclear propulsion would be effectively free after the upfront investment. With no pollution emissions or fuel costs to consider, this would allow for cargo ships to go faster, allowing for a 50% speed increase in some cases. Or more simply put, assuming a casual three-week shipping time for a container ship from China to the US, a 50% speed increase would reduce that time by a full week. Economics aside, the fact of the matter remains that the shipping industry has to reduce its emission footprint rapidly. As a risk-averse industry, any changes would have to be gradual and well planned out, with drop-in solutions likely welcomed over revolutionary upsets. Here a solid and proven technology like nuclear propulsion could provide just what is needed. These facts have been recognized by British maritime classification society Lloyd’s Register when it rewrote its rules after feedback from its members. Lloyd’s has stated that it expects to “see nuclear ships on specific trade routes sooner than many people currently anticipate.” A Potential Shipping Revolution Depending on how things work out, we may see a shipping industry which not only manages to decarbonize in record time, but also makes the shipping routes faster and more reliable than before. With cargo ships free to travel as fast as the weather and local traffic allow, ordering some widget from the other side of the world might take considerably less time, all without the guilt of the environmental impact that shipping has today. Then there is the other kind of ‘shipping’, in the form of cruise ships, which are also far from clean, especially when idling in ports . Going on a cruise may seem slightly less decadent if those ships no longer belch out plumes of black diesel exhaust fumes while steaming past idyllic islands. Here is to the Age of the Atom to conclude the Age of Diesel.	203	44	[ { "comment_id": "6295860", "author": "Kyle", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T15:18:28", "content": "One thing you didn’t touch on is the number of nations that say no nuclear ship in my water/port. At least I didn’t see that specifically stated.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ ...	1,760,373,282.73656
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/3d-printer-lets-you-play-will-it-shred/	3D Printer Lets You Play “Will It Shred?”	Mike Szczys	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "gearbox", "shredder" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	[Brian Brocken] is at it again, building mechanisms that are as striking in their aesthetic as they are in their function. This time around, he’s extended a project we recently featured by adding a menacing 3D-printed shredder attachment . When you hear “3D-printed shredder” you think that paper is all you’ll be able to feed it, but this beast can eat its own by shredding parts from failed prints. His original goal in building the high-torque 3D-printed gear box we looked at back in August was to show that 3D printed parts can be functional and not merely decorative. Using it as a winch to pull a car did a good job of that, but this goes much further. The very nature of shredder blades is to tear apart objects, but the forces that destroy those things are also present on the shredder parts themselves. Still, as you can see in the video below, the counter-rotating twin-shaft shredder mechanism does its work without catastrophic damage to the blades which were printed with “least 25 percent infill for the structural parts”, and up to five outer perimeters. The result is a shredder that can gobble up small pieces of failed prints, in addition to chewing on paper, cardboard, and polystyrene with ease. [Brian] does show a few failures along the way, all in the gearbox itself. The first was a defect in the housing that let an gear shaft pop loose and was fixed up with a reprint. The second is a catastrophic gear failure when trying to shred a soda bottle. This is not surprising as PET is quite tough and not brittle like the waste prints were. The shredder teeth got bogged down, and the power of the motor strips teeth from a few gears. But when working, it’s oddly satisfying to watch that powerful gear ratio chip away at sacrificial materials. If you’re more on the prowl for a way to usefully recycle your plastics, set the 3D-printed stress test of this one aside and take a look at the plastic shredder Fablab RUC built out of metal and plywood a few years back.	22	8	[ { "comment_id": "6295823", "author": "z", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T12:49:05", "content": "I don’t see the point in it with the current 3d printing technologies. It looks nice, but it is just isn’t there, and i don’t expect it to change. You can use smart ways to overcome some limitations, but you ...	1,760,373,282.837416
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/19/e-ink-calendar-paves-a-path-for-all/	E-Ink Calendar Paves A Path For All	Matthew Carlson	[ "Microcontrollers", "Wireless Hacks" ]	[ "calendar", "eink", "ESP32", "TinyPICO" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.png?w=800	[Martin Fasani] has set out to build a beautiful low power E-Ink Calendar he can hang on his wall . But perhaps more importantly, the work he has done makes it easier for everyone in the future to have a e-ink display. Many battery-powered e-ink projects connect to some server, download a bitmap image, display the new image, and then go into a deep sleep power mode. [Martin’s] project is no different, but it uses a handy microservice that does the conversion and rendering for you. The firmware for this ESP32/ESP32S2 based calendar is open sourced on GitHub , with a version based on the Arduino framework as well as the native ESP-IDF framework. One particularly fantastic part of the firmware is a C++ component called CalEPD that drives e-paper displays. CalEPD extends the Adafruit_GFX class and is broken out in a separate repo , making it easy to consume on other projects. Since this supports dozens of different e-paper displays, this simplifies the process of building a calendar with different screens. The firmware includes a Bluetooth setup flow from a smartphone or tablet. This means you can quickly configure how often it wakes up, what it queries, and other important features. The hardware shown in the demo video has a 7.5″ Waveshare screen with 800 x 400 resolution nestled inside a 3D-printed shell. There is also a 5,000 mAh battery with an ESP32 TinyPICO powering the whole system. The TinyPICO was picked for its incredible deep sleep power consumption. All this fits into a frame just 11 mm thick, for which STL files are available. [Martin] continues to work on this calendar display and has recently added support for FocalTech touch panel controllers. We’re excited to see where he takes it next! This isn’t the first e-ink display project we’ve seen but this is a great reference to build your own. If you need another good starting point, this weather display might give you that little bit of inspiration you need.	5	2	[ { "comment_id": "6295795", "author": "Trandi", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T09:20:59", "content": "Wow, very nice..!I wish I had such a big screen for my recent similar project :https://trandi.wordpress.com/2020/10/07/epaper-calendar/", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { ...	1,760,373,282.773786
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/c64-runs-on-stm32f429-discovery/	C64 Runs On STM32F429 Discovery	Chris Lott	[ "classic hacks", "Retrocomputing" ]	[ "commodore 64", "discovery board", "emulators", "stm32f429" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eature.jpg?w=800	There have been various reincarnations of the Commodore C64 over the years, and [Dave Van Wagner] has created one that can run on an STM32F429ZI Discovery development board. These dev boards have been around quite a few years and feature a 2.4 inch color TFT LCD in addition to the typical I/O circuitry, and are a pretty good value — [Dave] says they currently sell for under $30 through distribution. The project began earlier this year when [Dave] set out to write a command line program in C# that emulated C64 Basic. He had written a 6502 emulator many years earlier, but had not tested it. [Dave] went on a programming binge in March and got it up and running over a very long weekend. He subsequently decided to add support for VIC-20, TED, and PET as well. Even though [Dave] says C# is a beautiful language, he subsequently ported the program into C (an ugly language?) in order to run on the Discovery board, swapping the command line terminal interface for real LCD video and a USB keyboard. There’s also an Arduino version (terminal interface only). It runs about 15% slower than a real C64, and there are some limitations still like no SID. But overall, this is a great project and a low-cost way to emulate a C64 in an embedded format. If you want to explore further, here is the Mbed project for the STM32F429 , and you can find the Arduino and C# versions on his GitHub page . You may remember [Dave] from the C128 video hack we wrote about last year.	23	12	[ { "comment_id": "6295765", "author": "Mike", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T06:03:32", "content": "“Even though [Dave] says C# is a beautiful language, he subsequently ported the program into C (an ugly language?)”Uh… Do you even know whats under the hood for C# or python for that matter ? Its C/C++", ...	1,760,373,282.943911
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/turning-github-into-a-url-shortening-service/	Turning GitHub Into A URL Shortening Service	Sven Gregori	[ "Software Hacks" ]	[ "github", "javascript", "url", "website" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rtener.jpg?w=800	URL shortening services like TinyURL or Bitly have long become an essential part of the modern web, and are popular enough that even Google killed off their own already. Creating your own shortener is also a fun exercise, and in its core doesn’t require much more than a nifty domain name, some form of database to map the URLs, and a bit of web technology to glue it all together. [Nelsontky] figured you don’t even have to build most of it yourself, but you could just (ab)use GitHub for it . Using GitHub Pages to host the URL shortening website itself, [nelsontky] actually repurposes GitHub’s issue tracking system to map the shortened identifier to the original URL. Each redirection is simply a new issue, with the issue number serving as the shortening identifier, and the issue’s title text storing the original URL. To map the request, a bit of JavaScript extracts the issue number from the request, looks it up via GitHub API, and if a valid one was found (and API rate limits weren’t exceeded), redirects the caller accordingly. What’s especially clever about this is that GitHub Pages usually just serves static files stored in a repository, so the entire redirection logic is actually placed in the 404 error handling page, allowing requests to any arbitrary paths. While this may not be as neat as placing your entire website content straight into the URL itself , it could be nicely combined with this rotary phone to simply dial the issue number and access your bookmarks — perfect in case you always wanted your own website phone book. And if you don’t like the thought of interacting with the GitHub UI every time you want to add a new URL, give the command line tools a try .	11	6	[ { "comment_id": "6295750", "author": "NiHaoMike", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T03:51:18", "content": "Archiveteam heavily criticizes URL shorteners because they’re just another thing that can make links break. So keep backups…https://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam", "parent_id": null, "...	1,760,373,282.887354
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/giving-recalled-fitness-trackers-a-second-chance/	Giving Recalled Fitness Trackers A Second Chance	Tom Nardi	[ "Android Hacks", "Wearable Hacks" ]	[ "decompile", "fitness tracker", "obsolete", "product recall", "smartwatch", "spoof" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…h_feat.jpg?w=800	When it was released back in 2012, the Basis B1 fitness tracker was in many ways ahead of its time. In fact, the early smartwatch was so impressive that Intel quickly snapped up the company and made it the cornerstone of their wearable division. Unfortunately a flaw in their next watch, the Basis Peak, ended up literally burning some wearers. Intel was forced to recall the whole product line, and a year later dissolved their entire wearable division. Given their rocky history, it’s probably no surprise that these gadgets can be had quite cheaply on the second hand market. But can you do anything with them? That’s what [Ben Jabituya] recently decided to find out , and the results of his experiments certainly look very promising. So far he hasn’t found a way to activate a brand-new Basis watch, but assuming you can get your hands on one that was actively being used when Intel pulled the plug, his hacks can be used to get it back up and running. Examining the downloaded sensor logs. The Basis Android application has long since been removed from the Play Store, but [Ben] said it wasn’t too hard to find an old version floating around on the web. After decompiling the application he discovered the developers included a backdoor that lets you configure advanced options that would normally be hidden. How do you access it? As a reminder of the era in which the product was developed, you simply need to log into the application using Jersey and Shore as the username and password, respectively. Between the developer options and API information he gleaned from the decompiled code, [Ben] was able to create a faux Basis authentication server and point the application to it. That let him get past the login screen, after which he was able to sync with the watch and download its stored data. Between examinations with a hex editor and some open source code that was already available online, he was able to write a Python script for parsing the data which he’s been kind enough to share with the world. We’re very pleased to see an open source solution that not only gets these “bricked” smartwatches back online, but allows the user to keep all of the generated data under their own control. If you’d like to do something similar with a device that doesn’t have a history of releasing the Magic Smoke, the development of an open source firmware for more modern fitness trackers might be of interest .	6	4	[ { "comment_id": "6295731", "author": "Jack Danson", "timestamp": "2020-11-19T01:45:31", "content": "Maybe he could work with the GadgetBridge folks to give it proper support.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6295749", "author": "Matt", "t...	1,760,373,283.116894
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/actuator-opens-the-door-to-drier-dishes/	Actuator Opens The Door To Drier Dishes	Kristina Panos	[ "Lifehacks", "Microcontrollers" ]	[ "blue pill", "dishwasher", "linear actuator", "lm358" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…r-800.jpeg?w=800	Dishwashers are great at washing dishes and even rinsing them, most of the time. Where they tend to fail is in the drying part. Somehow these things dry hot enough to warp stoneware dishes, but not so well that things are actually dry when you open the door. Blame it on the lack of air movement. Ideally, the dishwasher cycle is started soon after dinner time so it can be finished and opened up before it’s time for bed. But if you do that, then you miss all the dishes from late-night snacking and the occasional wine glass. Wait until bedtime to start it, and it has to sit several hours with moisture inside. Obviously, the answer is to listen for the victory beeps at the end of the cycle, and use a slow but forceful actuator to push the door open . [Ivan Stepaniuk] is listening for the dishwasher’s frequencies with a microphone, amplifying them with a trusty LM386, and using an STM32 blue pill to crunch the audio. [Ivan] has plans to incorporate an ESP8266 board for IoT, presumably to get a notification when the door has been opened successfully. Check out the demo after the break. Yes, dishwashers are great until they aren’t, and some little part breaks. But why pay for a new detergent compartment cover when you can just print one?	41	12	[ { "comment_id": "6295662", "author": "hfiennes2", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T21:14:53", "content": "Such a good idea that the recent Bosch dishwashers have it built in! (auto air). No idea why it took so long for that to happen…", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { ...	1,760,373,283.022848
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/easy-device-configuration-for-your-pi-projects/	Easy Device Configuration For Your Pi Projects	Jenny List	[ "Raspberry Pi" ]	[ "Daemon", "raspberry pi", "system configuration" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…GB-RAM.jpg?w=800	We’re all familiar with a typical configuration sequence for a new mass-market IoT device. Turn it on for the first time and it exposes a temporary Wi-Fi network, connect to that network and open a Web page for device configuration. Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to incorporate that functionality into your own projects without having to write it yourself! Happily now thanks to [Peter Walsh] you can, with his AppDaemon project for the Raspberry Pi. At its heart is a set of Perl scripts that run whatever your software is, then monitor a GPIO. A button press toggling the GPIO stops the application and fires up the access point and web server. Handily the code can all be found in a GitHub repository , and there is a run-through of the features in a video that we’ve placed below the break. It’s not something that will appeal to everybody, but for anyone who has to pass their work onto people who can’t dive into a config file and break out the editor, it should be a particularly useful addition to the armoury.	14	6	[ { "comment_id": "6295644", "author": "Doug", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T19:44:37", "content": "Looks good and simple. I have an rPiZW project running NodeRed controlling a hydroponics garden and this will make a nice starting point to setup user parameters(wifi/network, email notification, etc) before...	1,760,373,283.070424
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/larry-berg-and-the-purple-open-passion-project/	Larry Berg And The Purple Open Passion Project	Chris Lott	[ "Featured", "gps hacks", "Interest", "Original Art", "Slider" ]	[ "garmin", "gps", "Hacking History", "injection molding", "model 100", "open hardware" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…roject.jpg?w=800	It all started with an 88-ton Arburg RP300 injection molding machine in the basement, and a bit of inattention. Larry Berg wanted a couple custom plastic plugs for his Garmin GPS, so he milled out a mold and ran a few. But he got distracted, and came back an hour later to find that his machine had made 400. Instead of throwing them away, he mailed them away for free, but then he found that people started throwing money at him to make more. People all over the world. This is how the Purple Open Project turned into an global network of GPS geeks, selling molded alternatives to the oddball Garmin plugs for pledges to pay an unspecified amount, and ended up producing over 350,000 plugs over 16 years before he passed away in 2012 . This is the story of a hacker’s hacker, who wanted to be able to connect his GPS to his computer and use it the way he wanted, and accidentally created an international business. We Have the Tools Arburg Injection Molding Press, close up view Larry studied computer science in California, obtaining his Masters degree in the early 70s. He then worked for some years in the aerospace industry, programming big mainframes like Seymour Cray’s CDC 7700. He started his own successful computer company, Purple Computing. But after five years, and in the midst “sky rocketing growth”, he decided to get off the merry-go-round and chose a simpler life in the woods of southern Oregon in 1988. Somehow Larry came to be in posession of the Arburg injection molding machine. According to Larry’s notes, it was a substantial and well-made piece of 1976 German craftsmanship — over 3 meters long, it could clamp 88 tons and inject 14.5 tons. While the press worked fine in manual operation, the automatic mode wasn’t working well. Rather than paying $2,000 to service the machine, Larry, like a true hacker, took things into his own hands. As you did back in the day, he interfaced it to a Radio Shack Model 100 laptop , enhanced with one of his own Purple Computer disk drives. He used a bunch of relays to operate buttons on the press, and electrically sensed the switches and clamp position. Anyone remember the old Tigertronics serial to parallel and parallel to serial converters? An Oddball Connector Why did Larry start this project? Because of his Garmin GPS 45 handheld receiver. Garmin used a non-standard, if not proprietary, connector on this and other models. It was a four-pin circular connector carrying external power and a NMEA serial interface . If you wanted to power your receiver in the car, boat, or motorcycle, you needed one of these connectors. If you wanted to connect your receiver to your computer for mapping or logging, you needed one of these connectors. People were making all kinds of hacks to connect to these receivers, including carving up XLR plugs and various industrial circular connectors. The GPS 45 Receiver, Complete with all Accessories Garmin didn’t sell the mating connectors, and their pre-made cables cost $30 and up. Because of all the varied installations, no single cable could really serve everyone’s needs. The cable length and mating connectors would likely be different from user to user and installation to installation. I know that personally, because I was using a similar unit, the GPS III Plus, at the time. I was frustrated moving it around between two cars, my house and my work office, and that’s how I stumbled upon Larry and the POP in the first place. I still remember thinking to myself at the time, “I bet his neighbors really love the smell from his house on molding days”. But then Larry accidentally made 400 Garmin plugs instead of five . Those 400 connectors went to people in 18 different countries. Larry and his girlfriend, Ardel, grappled with all the ins and outs of international product fulfillment, and eventually learned how to ship everywhere in the world except Bora-Bora. But the project didn’t end there. Requests asking for Purple GPS connectors began pouring in from all over. The Finished Product – a Purple GPS Connector Kit Rather than turn these folks away, Larry decided to meet the demand, and established a “pledge” system. He asked you to send him a few bucks, kind of like a tip at a restaurant, or whatever you thought the plug was worth — after you receive the package and can inspect the quality yourself. Before long, he was shipping over 1,000 connectors per month all over the world. But paying postage on each plug kit was absurd. A loose network of stocking distributors sprung up, called “pfrancs” (POP Franchises), the term “phranchisee” being rejected as too long to type. Eventually there were more than 60 pfrancs located in over 48 countries , keeping local stock on hand all over the globe. To GPS 45 and Beyond Not content to rest on his purple laurels, Larry continued to expand his GPS connector offerings. While the original plug worked with over a dozen varieties of Garmin GPS receivers, newer models were coming along. He made new molds for plugs that connected to the eMap and eTrex GPS receivers as well as the Rino radio . The pfranc network began offering other services, too, like custom cable assemblies priced to be hobbyist-friendly. This wasn’t much of a stretch for Larry, having patented a similar data cable years earlier for Casio calculators called the PC-Link. But eventually the demand for these products fell off. The GPS receiver manufacturers eventually moved on to more standard interfaces. I just spot-checked a few Garmin receivers, and they all used either micro- or mini-USB or wireless. Furthermore, with the growth of GPS-capable smartphones, I suspect the need for standalone GPS receivers has declined except for specialized applications. A Hacker’s Life I don’t think the slowdown in Garmin sales bothered Larry at all. He was just in it to help out, after all. And he had invested $0.07 for every plug sold into a fund, and was planning to get all of the “pfrancs” together in 2017 to watch the eclipse . It’s a shame that never would come to pass. But it’s not like the pfrancs were Larry’s only passion. You would not expect less from the kind of guy who refurbishes an automatic industrial injection molder in his basement for laughs. Indeed, it looks like he was also into home-made jet engines , ultralight airplanes, and eventually a scratch-built jet-engine helicopter, from which he naturally took a video when he first flew over to his neighbor’s house . Most astonishing, at least for visitors to Larry’s house, was his deck. It had a beautiful view overlooking the river, but would also descend 25 m down the hill to the riverbank, on rails . Apparently, sometimes without warning. I really enjoyed reading through Larry’s old build logs and website. He was a unique and truly interesting fellow. Here’s what he said about this whole project back in 1996, typos and all: “…is this cool? One guy, me, and his girl, Ardel ( who thinks i’m crazy but works for us anyway ), and the internet, are creating trusting working relationships between people who are creating a new way to transport physical things from my molding machine to you, fast, easy, and almost free.” I think we can all agree — it is cool. [Editor’s note: None of this research would have been possible without the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine , which makes forgotten websites available today. Consider donating, or at least tell your friends. We use it all the time here at Hackaday to help fight link-rot and the loss of hard-gained hacker knowledge that goes along with it.]	31	22	[ { "comment_id": "6295631", "author": "Randy R", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T18:57:32", "content": "Wow, I’d never thought I would hear this story again. I was one of the people who asked-for and received one of the 1st 400 plugs he’d made for the GPS 45. I guess we were all following some sort of GPS...	1,760,373,283.186104
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/sorting-thousands-of-drill-bits/	Sorting Thousands Of Drill Bits	Mike Szczys	[ "Tool Hacks" ]	[ "digital calipers", "drill bits", "organization", "sorting" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	[ Austin Adee ] came into some drill bits. A lot of them actually. But when thousands of assorted sizes are delivered in one disorganized box, are they actually useful? Not unless you’re drilling holes where diameter doesn’t matter. So two projects were at hand: finding a place to store a few hundred different sizes of bits, and tackling the actual sorting itself. In the end, he used input from a digital caliper alongside a Python script that showed him where to put them . The start of the tray design process was a bit of a research project, establishing the common sizes and how many would fit into a given space. This data was used to spin up the layout for trays with 244 different pockets to hold the bits. The pockets were CNC milled, but getting labels for each to work with the laser engraver was a bit of a hack. In the end, filling in the letters with white crayon really makes them pop, despite [Austin’s] dissatisfaction with the level of contrast. But wait, we promised you an epic sorting hack! Unfortunately there’s no hopper, vibration feed, and sorting gantry that did this for him ( now if it were perler beads he’d have been all set ). Still, the solution was still quite a clever one. A set of digital calipers with a Bluetooth connection sends the dimension back to a python script every time you press the capture button. That script find the pocket for the nearest size and then highlights it on a map of the drill bit drawer displayed on the computer monitor. In the end the trays fit into a wide tool chest drawer, and are likely to keep things organized through exactly one project before everything is once again in disarray. [Austin] mentions a lag of up to one second for the Bluetooth calipers to do their thing. For assembly-line style work, that adds up. We remember seeing a really snappy reaction time on these digital calipers hacked for wireless entry .	42	21	[ { "comment_id": "6295279", "author": "dendad", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T21:58:14", "content": "I’m tempted to say this is is a very boring story, but maybe I should not ;)", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295307", "author": "Hirudinea"...	1,760,373,283.358293
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/kipp-bradford-discusses-the-entanglement-of-politics-and-technology/	Kipp Bradford Discusses The Entanglement Of Politics And Technology	Mike Szczys	[ "cons" ]	[ "2020 Hackaday Remoticon", "engineering", "ethics", "keynote", "Kipp Bradford", "philosophy", "politics" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ured-1.jpg?w=800	Kipp Bradford wrapped up his keynote talk at the Hackaday Remoticon with a small piece of advice: don’t built bridges in the middle of the ocean. The point is that a bridge must connect two pieces of land to be useful and if technology isn’t useful to humanity, does it matter at all? In reality we build bridges in the middle of the ocean all the time as each of us finds nonsensical reasons to learn new skills and try things out. But when it comes time to sit down and make an organized end goal, Kipp wisely asks us to consider the impact we’d like that work to have on the world. Equally importantly, how will we make sure completed work actually gets used? This is where the idea of politics in technology comes to play, in the sense that politics is a major mechanism for collective decision-making within a society. Currently the CTO of Treau, and a Lecturer and Researcher at Yale, Kipp delivered this keynote live on November 7th. Kipp was an expert judge for the Hackaday Prize in 2017 and 2018. The video of his talk, and a deeper look at the topics, are found below. Engineering is Change Kipp shares Melvin Kranzberg’s laws of technology , the first of which is that “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”. That’s because new technology represents a change in how something is done, it seeks to exert change on a system merely by getting people to use it. Further, Lance Strate writes that because technology is a form of change it has an inherent bias. In watching his talk my mind immediately leapt to current challenges for technology, like the advances in automation that are sweeping the world. Automation is making goods and services more affordable while optimizing away the jobs that used to perform those tasks. At this point the engineers might be thinking: we just wanted to build some cool robots and it got political very quickly! Now where you land on the issues like automation is a product of the biases that shape all of our opinions in different ways. That’s an oversimplification to be certain, but these issues are all around us and this is nothing new, although the rate at which they affect our lives has accelerated immensely. Kipp has several interesting historical examples to get you thinking, from the slow adoption of new voting technology and the policy choices that shaped LED lighting manufacturing, to a bridge collapse in the 17th century that led its replacement to be designed to instill public trust in addition to just carrying a load. Technology is Human Evolution The talk tips into transhumansim as Kipp calls engineering our special super power. The idea is that evolution could make us better at living in warm or cold climates, but we sped that up by building heating and cooling systems for our buildings. He calls it our “extra-corporeal DNA” — the evolutionary traits that are outside of our body yet still augment our existence, shape who we are, and can be passed on to our progeny, while discarding the less useful ideas along the way. Watching this talk provided a perfect analogy. How far can you shout? I was able to hear Kipp’s voice from 1,200 miles away, his words traveling faster than the speed of sound. That sounds very much like a super-power, and if you’re reading this you have the same power at your disposal this very moment. The great Stan Lee popularized the Peter Parker principle that with great power comes great responsibility and it certainly applies here. Kipp is asking us all to put our work into context, to think about the impact we’d like to see in the world from the projects we work on. Take the time to educate the public on the benefits and drawbacks of utilizing technology and share the agency of what you’ve built. This is the other half of the work that makes hard-won technical solutions worth it. Check out Some of Kipp Bradford’s Work: Tested — building a refrigerated cooling suit Cold Tube — chilled panels that cool by absorbing your body heat away Check out Kipp’s Twitter , Instagram , and Webpage	8	3	[ { "comment_id": "6295240", "author": "mrehorst", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T20:25:03", "content": "I’m so sick of politics invading every little thing. Hopefully after Jan 20th we can get back to not having to hear about the stupid crap that politicians are doing or trying to do on an hourly basis. Ye...	1,760,373,283.402314
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/bare-metal-stm32-from-power-up-to-hello-world/	Bare-Metal STM32: From Power-Up To Hello World	Maya Posch	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Microcontrollers", "Slider", "Software Development" ]	[ "bare metal", "nodate", "stm32" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…c_logo.jpg?w=587	Some may ask why you’d want to program a Cortex-M microcontroller like the STM32 series using nothing but the ARM toolchain and the ST Microelectronics-provided datasheet and reference manual. If your first response to that question wasn’t a panicked dive towards the nearest emergency exit, then it might be that that question has piqued your interest. Why, indeed? Definitely, one could use any of the existing frameworks to program an STM32 MCU, whether the ST HAL framework, plain CMSIS, or even something more Arduino-flavored. Yet where is the fun in that, when at the end of the day one is still fully dependent on that framework’s documentation and its developers? More succinctly, if the contents of the STM32 reference manuals still look like so much gibberish, does one really understand the platform? Let’s take a look at how bare-metal STM32 programming works, and make the most basic example run, shall we? Like a PC, only different Fundamentally, there is little difference between a microcontroller and a full-blown Intel or AMD-based computer. You still got at least one CPU core which is initialized once external power has stabilized, at which point start-up firmware is read from a fixed location. On your desktop, this is the BIOS. In the case of an MCU this is the code stored starting at a specific offset in the (usually) integrated read-only memory (ROM). Whatever happens next is up to this code. Generally, in this start-up code one wants to do the essentials, such as setting up the interrupt vector table and the basic contents of specific registers. Initializing the stack pointer (SP) is essential, as well as copying certain parts of the ROM into RAM and initializing a number of registers. Ultimately the main function is called, akin to when the operating system of a PC is started after the BIOS has finished setting up the environment. The Pushy example Probably the most basic useful example would be what I affectionately call ‘ Pushy ‘ in my Nodate STM32 framework . It’s more basic than the traditional ‘Blinky’ example, as it only uses the Reset & Clock Control (RCC) registers and basic GPIO peripheral. All it does is read the input register of the GPIO pin and adjust an output depending on the input value, but that still gives one the power to turn a LED on or off at will: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/d4b71ae6ba86f9e5e036d00dd8c9bacf /] Here we can see the two most visible elements: first is the main() function that gets called, the second is the included GPIO module. This contains a static C++ class which gets called to write to the GPIO output, with connected LED, as well as read from another input that has a button connected to it. We can also see that the so-called ‘Blue Pill’ (STM32F103C8) has its pins defined, but the example has a few more presets we can change by uncommenting the appropriate lines. STM32F0xx’s RCC_AHBENR register description in the RM. So where do the RCC registers come into play here? As their name suggests, they control the clock domains within the MCU, essentially acting as on/off switches for parts of the MCU. If we look at for example the RCC_AHBENR register description in the STM32F0xx Reference Manual (section 6.4), we can see a bit there that’s labelled IOPAEN (Input/Output Port A ENable), which toggles the clock for the GPIO A peripheral. The same is true for the other GPIO peripherals. As listed in the above graphic, AHBENR means the enable register for the AHB , which is one of the buses inside the MCU to which the processor core, SRAM, ROM and peripherals are connected: STM32F0xx system architecture (RM section 2.1). The AHB (Advanced High-performance Bus) along with the APB (Advanced Peripheral Bus) are covered by the Arm AMBA specification. Generally, the AHB is the fastest bus, connecting the processor core with SRAM, ROM and high-speed peripherals. Slower peripherals are placed on the slower APB, with an AHB-to-APB bridge allowing for communication. Time to assemble As mentioned earlier, the first code to run is the start-up code. For the STM32F042x6 MCU, a generic start-up program in Thumb assembler can be seen here . This is the generic ASM as provided by ST (e.g. for STM32F0xx ) along with the CMSIS device package. It initializes the MCU and calls the SystemInit() function in the low-level CMSIS C code, e.g. for STM32F0xx . This SystemInit() function resets the system clock registers to the desired reset state: using the internal HSI oscillator, at default speed. After libc setup routines (here Newlib , a C/C++ support library), it finally starts the main() function with: bl main This instruction means ‘ Branch with Link ‘, causing the execution to jump to the specified label, essentially. At this point we’re firmly in our ‘Pushy’ example’s main() . It’s now all down to the GPIO class to pull things together. GPIO The first class method we call is GPIO::set_output() to set a certain pin as an output with enabled pull-up resistor. This is also where we encounter our first differences between the STM32 families, as the older Cortex-M3-based F1 family has very different GPIO peripherals from its newer F0, F4 and F7 siblings. This means that for the STM32F1xx we have to wrangle multiple options per pin into a single register: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/2272560bbd38f4f882e3d80cfbd21c20 /] But for the other mentioned families we have a different register for each option (mode, speed, pull-up/down, type): [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/1a1c93c6113a28d8cda40f2799431ce7 /] Setting an option in a register is done using bitwise operations to set the target bits through bitmask manipulation. The register name is usually fairly descriptive, with for example PUPDR meaning Pull-Up Pull-Down Register. Which style one prefers is mostly in the eye of the beholder. In the case of setting a pin as input, however, I much prefer the newer GPIO peripheral style, with the following nice, compact code instead of the STM32F1xx convoluted horror show: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/8b896e7f6bcaa74a407251661339fce6 /] To read from an input pin, we reference the Input Data Register ( GPIO_IDR ) for that GPIO bank: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/a84fb356eb096e3c435a50c0ec494d4f /] Similarly, we use the Output Data Register ( ODR ) when we write to a pin: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/2e4d761821350867cb05016f129f86c7 /] Finally, the instance in the above code snippets is a reference to an entry in an std::vector which was created statically upon start-up. It registers properties for each peripheral: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/5128d064d2048d353180dc319a918810 /] If a peripheral exists (i.e. listed in the CMSIS header for that MCU, e.g. STM32F042 ), an entry is created in a GPIO_instance struct pointing to its memory-mapped registers (‘ regs ‘). These instances can then be referenced along with any meta information in them, such as whether they have been activated yet: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/7139aa853733d12d5fdbb5c7e9ec6419 /] The advantage of this is – as we saw earlier – that the same code can then be used, no matter which peripheral we’re addressing, as they are all identical in terms of register layout. RCC The RCC class also tracks whether a peripheral exists using the same CMSIS preprocessor defines to prevent any surprises. After this, enabling a peripheral’s clock is quite easy: [gist https://gist.github.com/MayaPosch/9443988784d8e31ce2c00a900a3be7a6 /] In addition to toggling the relevant bit position ( ph.enable ), we also perform reference counting, just so that we don’t accidentally disable a peripheral when another part of the code is still using it. Running the example After working through the above material, we should have some idea of how the ‘Pushy’ example works on a fundamental level. We can now build and run it. For this we need, as mentioned, the ARM toolchain and Nodate framework installed. The former can be obtained via one’s favorite package manager (package: arm-none-eabi-gcc) or Arm website . The Nodate framework is obtained via Github, after which the location of Nodate’s root folder has to be specified in a global NODATE_HOME system variable. After this has been taken care of, navigate to the Nodate folder, and into the examples/stm32/pushy folder. Here, open the Makefile and pick any of the board presets (currently Blue Pill, Nucleo-F042K6, STM32F4-Discovery or Nucleo-746ZG). Next, open src/pushy.cpp and ensure the appropriate lines for the target board are uncommented. Next, in the folder with the Makefile, build with make . With the target board connected via ST-Link, ensure OpenOCD is installed and flash with make flash . This should write the firmware image to the board. With a button connected to the specified pin and Vdd , pushing this button will make a LED light up on the board. This demonstrates the basic use of an STM32 GPIO peripheral, and you’re already one step beyond “blinky”. Hopefully this showed how bare-metal STM32 development is rather straightforward. Please stay tuned for more advanced topics as we push further into this topic.	59	34	[ { "comment_id": "6295192", "author": "Greg A", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T18:20:39", "content": "i did not want to use C language or arduino libraries or bloated IDEs for stm32, and collected the resources i needed herehttp://galexander.org/stm32", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies":...	1,760,373,283.504679
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/custom-firmware-for-cheap-bluetooth-thermometers/	Custom Firmware For Cheap Bluetooth Thermometers	Tom Nardi	[ "Software Hacks" ]	[ "ble", "bluetooth", "custom firmware", "environmental sensor", "thermometer", "xiaomi" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…w_feat.jpg?w=800	The Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC temperature and humidity sensor is ridiculously cheap. If you’re buying a few at a time, you can expect to pay as little as $5 USD a pop for these handy Bluetooth Low Energy environmental sensors. Unfortunately, that low price tag comes with a bit of a catch: you can only read the data with the official Xiaomi smartphone application or by linking it to one of the company’s smart home hubs. Or at least, that used to be the case. Over the past year, [Aaron Christophel] has been working on a replacement firmware for these Xiomi sensors that unlocks the data so you can use it however you see fit. In addition, it allows the user to tweak various features and settings that were previously unavailable. For example, you can disable the little ASCII-art smiley face that usually shows on the LCD to indicate the relative comfort level of the room. The new firmware publishes the temperature, humidity, and battery level every minute through a BLE advertisement broadcast. In other words, that means client devices can read data from the sensor without having to be paired. Scraping this data is quite simple, and the GitHub page includes a breakdown of what each byte in the broadcast message means. Avoiding direct connections not only makes it easier to quickly read the values from multiple thermometers, but should keep the device’s CR2032 battery going for longer. But perhaps the most impressive part of this project is how you get the custom firmware installed. You don’t need to crack the case or solder up a programmer. Just load the flasher page on a computer and browser combo that supports Web Bluetooth (a smartphone is probably the best bet), point it to the MAC address of the thermometer you want to flash, and hit the button. [Aaron] is no stranger to developing user-friendly OTA installers for his firmware projects, but even for him, it’s quite impressive.	52	25	[ { "comment_id": "6295161", "author": "Jan Praegert", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T16:47:36", "content": "That escalated quickly. Another 12 € spend on aliex.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295176", "author": "Johny007", "timestam...	1,760,373,283.655941
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/the-special-fridges-behind-the-covid-19-vaccine-why-its-surprisingly-difficult-to-be-that-cool/	The Special Fridges Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine, Why It’s Surprisingly Difficult To Be That Cool	Jenny List	[ "Current Events", "Featured", "Medical Hacks", "News", "Original Art", "Slider" ]	[ "Covid-19", "refrigeration", "vaccines" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…Fridge.jpg?w=800	One of the big stories last week was the announcement of results from clinical trials that suggest a new COVID-19 vaccine developed through the joint effort of the American and German companies Pfizer and BioNTech is strongly effective in providing immunity from the virus. In the midst of what is for many countries the second spike of the global pandemic this news has been received with elation as well as becoming the subject of much political manoeuvring. While we currently have two vaccine candidates with very positive testing results, one of the most interesting things for us is the need to keep doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine extremely cold until they are administered. Let’s dig into details of the refrigeration problem at hand. Special Fridges for -80 ° C (-112 ° F) This rather unappetising view is the scar on my arm from my smallpox vaccination. You probably don’t have one of these if you’re young, because vaccinations like this one across whole populations successfully eradicated smallpox worldwide by 1980. This particular vaccine must be refrigerated at -80 Celsius until it is ready for use. This presents a significant problem for any mass vaccination programme, because while -80 degree freezers are a done deal in terms of manufacture they are not commonly to be found in community healthcare. Labs and major hospitals may have them, but we’re told that even in a developed country the general practitioners who will be tasked with administering the vaccine have until now had little need for one. If this presents a problem in a place with significant resources then it is magnified significantly in less wealthy regions of the world, because to effectively fight a global pandemic it is imperative that the whole planet be vaccinated to avoid a remaining reservoir of infection. I’m not biologist, but every school biology class teaches the for-the-children basics of vaccination. In the late 18th century Dr. Edward Jenner successfully inoculated a boy with the cowpox virus to bestow immunity to smallpox, and from that developed the science of immunology. It’s likely we will all have received similar vaccines which our high-school biology simplifies for us as weakened or less-potent relations of the target, and the fact that past killers are now receding into folk memory is testament to their success. These are the jabs my doctors and their team in Oxfordshire administer by the thousand, and they can protect generations of British kids with them using only a relatively conventional refrigerator. What’s so special then about the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine? The answer lies in its method of operation, instead of exposing us to a pathogen it’s a so-called RNA vaccine. It contains a fragment of the virus’ genetic material, which once administered enters our cells and triggers their immune responses to the coronavirus. The problem we are told lies in the fragility of the RNA, and to prevent it degrading an extra-cold fridge is needed. The Logistics Of Last-Mile Cryogenic Transport The inner workings of a two stage refrigerator. David M. Berchowitz and Yongrak Kwon, CC BY-SA 3.0 . As engineers our obvious next question then is what makes a -80 ° C freezer so special? We’re on firmer ground when it comes to the operation of a fridge: it’s a heat pump with a radiator, expansion valve, and condenser, through which a propellant is pumped by a compressor. The condensing propellant causes the cooling of the inside of the refrigerator, and the resulting captured energy is radiated as heat to the room by the radiator. There’s a limit to the level of temperature differential that can be created by such a heat pump, so the -80 degree freezers have two of them in series. They’re less efficient and more expensive to produce than your domestic fridge, but their manufacture is well established. We’re told it’s simply that there aren’t enough of them where they would be needed, and thus it’s interesting to think for a minute about the implications of that. Jurassic Park style improvisation is probably inappropriate. J.accurate, CC BY-SA 3.0 . One might think that equipping all doctors with suitable -80 degree freezers would be the obvious course, after all while they aren’t cheap in domestic terms (a quick Google search suggests $10,000 and upwards), to governments throwing billions at the pandemic their cost would be easily manageable. But the problem there lies in the supply chain, the global market for them in non-pandemic times is not enough for there to be manufacturing capacity to meet unexpected huge demand. It’s unlikely that domestic refrigerator plants could be tooled up to make them in bulk within a reasonable timescale, so the prospect of a brand new -80 degree freezer landing in my doctor’s surgery seems slim. One might expect that such devices could be requisitioned for the effort from their existing owners, from universities and research labs, but therein lies another problem. These vaccines are for injection into patients, and therefore they must be protected from contamination at all costs. The idea of a fridge fresh from a university chemistry lab where Ph.D students have been using it to store highly toxic organometalic compounds is simply not tenable if serious risk to patients is to be avoided. Another option might be to eschew refrigeration, and instead opt for different cooling methods such as passive cooling with liquid nitrogen. The manufacturing capacity exists to make this substance in industrial quantities, and it is already something that sees extensive use in medical environments. The snag is that it is used at the consumer end of medicine for cryongenic treatments such as wart removal rather than for cryogenically cooled transport or storage, so there would be a need for an entirely new infrastructure to put in place. Cryogenic sample transport boxes are a done deal, but aside from any supply issues with a sudden demand for tens of thousands of them they can only guarantee the low temperature while their payload of liquid nitrogen has not evaporated. They alone are not a replacement for an infrastructure of -80 degree freezers, though they might provide a substitute for active refrigeration in lengthening the last stage of delivery. A bright spot in this story is that a second vaccine developed by Moderna doesn’t require the extreme refrigeration, and can be stored at 2-8 ° C (35-46 °F) for up to a month. This would make reaching parts of the world without infrastructure for extreme cooling possible. But in the near-term we will certainly need both of these vaccines and as many doses of them as can be produced and delivered as possible, since two doses are needed for each person in world population that numbers almost 8 billion. As we will no doubt see from the various solutions our governments will pursue over the coming months, there is no magic bullet for the unexpected mass deployment of a cryogenic vaccine. For the UK I’d expect to see distribution centres at major hospitals which have the required freezers, with the day’s doses being delivered each morning to vaccination sites. We are however a relatively small and densely packed country for whom the challenges are different to one spread over a huge area, and a world away from those in some developing countries. With this operation assuming a global significance it’s unexpected to think that the key to the end of the pandemic does not only lie in the hands of the scientists creating the vaccines, but also with the refrigeration engineers responsible for its safe arrival at the point of use. Editor’s Correction: The article originally indicated that Pfizer and BioNTech were both German companies. Pfizer is an American company and GioNTech is a German company.	162	31	[ { "comment_id": "6295126", "author": "mime", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T15:05:15", "content": "nice article", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295198", "author": "Drew", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T18:39:56", "content": "Agree...	1,760,373,283.860657
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/another-kind-of-bare-metal-6502-computer-powers-rpn-calculator/	Another Kind Of “Bare Metal”: 6502 Computer Powers RPN Calculator	Dan Maloney	[ "Retrocomputing" ]	[ "6502", "calculator", "machine language", "retro", "retrocomputer", "RPN" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ulator.jpg?w=800	[Mitsuru Yamada] states that one of the goals for this 6502 computer build was to make it strong enough to survive real-world usage. In that regard alone we’d call this a success; the die-cast aluminum enclosures used are a little blast from the past and lend a nice retro industrial look to the project. The main chassis of the computer fairly bristles with LEDs and chunky toggle switches for setting the data and address busses. The interior is no less tidy, with the 6502 microprocessor — date code from 1995 — and associated support chips neatly arranged on perf board. The construction method is wire wrapping, in keeping with the old-school look and feel. Even the hand-drawn schematic is a work of art — shades of [Forrest Mims] . As for programming, this machine is as low-level as it gets. Nothing but 6502 machine language here, entered manually with the toggle switches, or via an externally programmed ROM. The machine can only address 1k of memory, a limit which the code to support the RPN calculator add-on [Yamada] also built brushes up against, at 992 bytes. The calculator keypad has a 20-key matrix pad and an eight-digit dot-matrix LED display, and can do the four basic operations on fixed-point binary-coded decimal inputs. The brief video below shows the calculator in action. We love the look of this build and we’re eager to see more like it. We’ve seen a ton of 6502 builds from discrete chips lately, and while we love those too, it’s nice to see one of the big old DIPs put back in action for a change.	11	5	[ { "comment_id": "6295102", "author": "justsayin", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T12:56:25", "content": "Shiny!", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295315", "author": "Mitsuru Yamada", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T23:43:20", "content...	1,760,373,283.55852
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/prusa-mini-gets-custom-heavy-duty-enclosure/	Prusa Mini Gets Custom Heavy Duty Enclosure	Tom Nardi	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "3d printer enclosure", "polycarbonate", "prusa", "Prusa Mini" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…e_feat.jpg?w=800	Still waiting on your Prusa Mini to arrive? Join the club. Between the incredible amount of interest in the inexpensive 3D printer and the COVID-19 pandemic, it can take months for the machine to arrive at your doorstep. But patient makers are finally taking delivery of their new printers, and as such the hacks and modifications are starting to trickle their way in. First up is this gloriously over-engineered enclosure from [Build Comics]. While PLA and PETG usually print fine with nothing more exotic than a heated bed, trickier materials like ABS work best when the printer is enclosed as it helps maintain a consistent temperature. Plus it keeps any curious hands and paws a safe distance from the hot moving bits, and if things go really pear-shaped, can help contain smoke and flames. The enclosure is made from welded steel square tube, wood, and fire-retardant fiber board. A hinged polycarbonate cover, taking the form of a four-sided cube, is lowered over the printer with some heavy-duty hinges that look like they were intended for a fence. To keep the cover from slamming back down, [Build Comics] came up with a simple locking mechanism that can easily be operated from the front or side of the enclosure. With the addition of a small temperature and humidity display, the conditions inside the chamber can easily be monitored. But [Build Comics] didn’t stop there. He also rigged up a relay box that will cut power to the printer should the smoke detector mounted above it trip. While there’s no reason to think the Prusa Mini would suffer the same fate of earlier budget desktop 3D printers , but there’s certainly no harm in taking precautions. Will you need to build a similar enclosure whenever your Prusa Mini shows up? Maybe not. But if you felt so inclined, at least now you’ve got plenty of images and details that can help you spin up your own solution .	15	4	[ { "comment_id": "6295085", "author": "Cyna", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T10:43:05", "content": "Speak for yourself (and other Prusa-enthusiasts), which you do. But enclosing an open-frame printer made with PETG parts (they switched from ABS) is not exactly ideal…", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1...	1,760,373,284.283209
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/3d-printed-electric-motor-wants-to-take-flight/	3D Printed Electric Motor Wants To Take Flight	Al Williams	[ "Transportation Hacks" ]	[ "electric aircraft", "electric airplane", "inverter", "motor" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…tor800.gif?w=800	Airplanes and spacecraft have a big problem. The more engine or fuel you have, the more engine and fuel you need. That’s why aircraft use techniques to have lightweight structural members and do everything they can to minimize weight. A lighter craft can go further and carry more payload or supercargo. Electric motors are very attractive for aircraft, but they suffer from having less efficiency per kilogram than competing technologies. H3X thinks they can change that with their HPDM-250 integrated motor and inverter. Although the 15 kg motor is still in testing, the claimed specifications are impressive: a peak power of 250 kW for 30 seconds and continuous torque of 95 Nm and 200 kW sustained. The company claims 96.7% efficiency. The claims are for the motor running at 20,000 RPM, so you’d need to add the weight of a gearbox for practical applications, but the company says this adds a mere 3 kg to the overall weight. The patent-pending innovation behind this motor is a 3D printed copper stator coil that improves current handling. The company claims these coils are 40% better than conventional coils. There’s also a 3D printed cooling jacket that contributes to the motor’s performance. How real is it? We don’t know, but none of the claims seem farfetched or crazy. The company promises real performance data in the second quarter of 2021, so that will probably tell the whole story. Meanwhile, it is interesting the dream up what you could do with a motor that light and powerful. While somewhat rare, there are larger electric planes out there. Of course, most hobbyist drones are electric, but there have also been some electric ultralights .	49	9	[ { "comment_id": "6295585", "author": "Joel B", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T16:43:12", "content": "I wonder how well it’d do strapped into some small, home-built car, like a Locost.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295722", "author": "Greg...	1,760,373,283.946886
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/how-to-get-into-cars-offroading-mods/	How To Get Into Cars: Offroading Mods	Lewin Day	[ "car hacks", "Hackaday Columns", "Slider" ]	[ "4wd", "4x4", "cars", "four wheel drive", "four wheeling", "how to get into cars", "offroad", "offroading" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	While plenty of automotive enthusiasts are all about carving corners at the local track days, it’s a special breed that leaves tarmac behind for the dusty trail ahead. If your chosen ride is of the four-wheelin’ variety, here’s how you can modify it to dominate the dirt and mud. Handling The Terrain Building a good offroad rig requires a very different focus than building a car for street performance. A screaming high-performance engine is of no use when your tires are spinning in the air because you’re stuck in deep sand or on top of a pointy rock. Instead, four wheelers are concerned with a whole different set of parameters. Ground clearance is key to getting over obstacles without getting stuck, and good articulation is key to keeping your wheels on the ground and pushing you forward in deep ruts and on crazy angles. You’ll also want plenty of low-down torque, and tyres that can grip up in all conditions without snagging a puncture. It’s a whole different ballgame, so read on! Wheels and Tyres Larger tyres make it easier to roll over obstacles. Image credit: Auto Tribute Tyres are the vehicle’s contact with the road, and without a good set of tyres, you’re going absolutely nowhere. Tyre choice for a four-wheel drive application is dependent on where you want to go, and what you want to do. Specialised tyres are available for sand driving, for example, and if you want to play in the mud, a good set of “mud boggers” will do you well. Of course, for those intending to split their time between the highway and the trail, a more conservative set of all-terrain tyres might be the best bet for a blend of off-road performance and on-road comfort. Fitting bigger tyres is perhaps the most popular modification for offroad vehicles. They’re perhaps the easiest way to gain ground clearance and help a vehicle roll much more easily over small holes and obstacles on trails. However, their greater circumference can decrease vehicle acceleration, and the heavier unsprung weight can lead to handling and braking issues. Beadlock wheels allow for running lower tyre pressures for maximum grip, without risking the tyre slipping off the rim. Be wary, however – many cheap wheels include fake beadlocks as a styling feature. Image credit: Jeep Kingdom Wheel choice is also a major consideration when outfitting an offroader. Classically, 15″ wheels were the norm, but 17″ designs are now more common. Wheels in this size provide for plenty of sidewall, allowing the tyre to help soak up bumps off road. Choosing an oddball wheel size will give you no end of headaches trying to find tyres to match, so it’s best not to stray from the norm. Of course, if you’re getting super serious, particularly in rock crawling disciplines where very low tyre pressures are key, you might consider getting a set of bead lock wheels . These come with special retaining rings that hold the tyre to the rim mechanically, rather than simply relying on air pressure. These allow the tyres to remain on the rim at incredibly low air pressures, allowing for maximum grip thanks to the greater contact patch of a lower-inflated tyre. However, they add a lot of complexity and weight to a wheel, and can be illegal in some jurisdictions, so be wary. Lift Kits Lift kits can improve ground clearance by allowing larger tyres to be fitted. Image credit: investinwaffles Lift kits are another popular way to increase ground clearance of offroad vehicles. They come in two major variations – suspension lifts and body lifts , each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Suspension lifts consist of installing longer springs and higher travel shock absorbers, lifting the entire vehicle’s ride height. This generally offers the best improvement to articulation and ground clearance, however can be expensive due to the need for a full set of new suspension components. A body lift, on the other hand, consists of simply raising the body of the vehicle relative to the chassis. This is cheaper than a suspension lift, and is often done with a series of spacers between the frame and cabin of a vehicle. Commonly done to allow clearance to fit bigger tyres, a body lift does not increase ground clearance of the vehicle in and of itself. Often times, a combination of suspension and body lift will be done, providing more ground clearance and providing the most possible space for larger tyres, further raising the vehicle’s ride height. Lifts of either kind can have major impacts on handling, due to the higher center of gravity of a lifted vehicle. Additionally, execution can be difficult, with many lifts requiring modifications to drive shaft angles, brake line routing, or even steering shafts. All these components are designed around a set factory ride height, and can only withstand limited adjustment before problems become apparent. Often, lift kits that go beyond a limited height range will come with equipment to help solve these problems during installation. Locking Diffs Differential locks often come fitted as standard to high-end offroaders, but aftermarket options are plentiful, too. Image credit: Mercedes Benz The open differential is a useful invention that allows a car’s wheels to turn at different speeds, such as when cornering. This allows for smooth driving in regular conditions. However, on loose surfaces, it can be more of a hindrance than a help. This is because an open differential transfers torque equally to both wheels. For example, when one wheel is in the air or spinning in mud, it will spin freely. The other wheel attached to the differential will get the same amount of torque as the wheel spinning in the air, which is virtually none. This can make forward progress difficult when one wheel leaves the ground or gets stuck in sand — conditions regularly encountered on any off-road trail. The popular solution to this is the locking differential, commonly fitted to four-wheel drive vehicles that don’t have time to get stuck. Often available as a factory option, they can also be fitted as an aftermarket upgrade to most popular four-wheel drives and trucks. Available in air and electrically activated versions, when switched on, they lock both sides of the differential together, forcing them to spin at the same speed. This allows greater torque to be supplied to whichever wheel actually has traction, making for much better progress in mud, sand and snow. The trick is that they can be switched on and off, so once back on road, the vehicle can be driven without suffering all the drawbacks of a locked differential on a high-grip surface — like drivetrain damage and annoying tyre squeal around corners. Locking differentials can be difficult to install for the novice, and may require the assistance of a dedicated diff shop to put together if upgrading a stock differential to locking operation. However, the gains they bring to performance can’t be understated, and they’re a necessity for any serious offroading in mud and sand. Save your pennies, because this hardware certainly doesn’t come cheap! Accessories A good set of traction boards will help when stuck in sand. Image credit: Maxtrax Having the right gear on hand can save you from getting stuck waiting for help on a distant trail. Basic tools are a must, as there’s plenty of hazards offroad that will catch out the unprepared. As a start, a full set of tyre changing gear, including a jack, is key, along with gasoline and water — potable for yourself, and some for the car’s cooling system in the case of overheating. A pair of recovery boards can help if you get bogged, along with a shovel for digging your way out of more serious jams. A winch is great for getting yourself unstuck – just be sure to follow safe recovery procedures to avoid injury. Looking further, you may want to fit brush guards and bash bars to prevent damage to your vehicle from the more gnarly trails out there. These can often serve as great mounting points for additional gear like winches and lights, which can aid in recovery, or help you spot obstacles before you even get stuck in the first place. Having a stout towing point on your vehicle is also key, so you don’t rip a bumper off when a friendly Jeep stops by to pull you out. Of course, when wiring in accessories, make sure to use properly rated conductors and weather proof connectors, otherwise your adventures may be cut short by an electrical fire! Conclusion Offroading is a fun practice, and often times, a stock vehicle is more than enough to get started on basic trails. The key is to find out what area of offroading you like, and then modify your vehicle to suit as you gain more driving experience. Spending huge money on a maximum-articulation suspension lift is great for rock crawling, but probably not the first mod you’d make for snow racing, for example. Focus on figuring out what you’re into, and go from there!	44	17	[ { "comment_id": "6295556", "author": "Jerry", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T15:36:54", "content": "This is how to do off road in the US.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSQd6NrhdyM&t=107s", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6295559", "author": "Jerry"...	1,760,373,284.035788
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/hacking-the-fpga-control-board-from-a-bitcoin-miner/	Hacking The FPGA Control Board From A Bitcoin Miner	Tom Nardi	[ "ARM", "FPGA" ]	[ "ASIC", "bitcoin mining hardware", "cryptocurrency", "fpga", "repurpose" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…a_feat.jpg?w=800	For anyone serious about mining cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, we’re well past the point where a standard desktop computer is of much use. While an array of high-end GPUs is still viable for some currencies, the real heavy hitters are using custom mining hardware that makes use of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to crunch the numbers. But eventually even the most powerful mining farm will start to show its age, and many end up selling on the second hand market for pennies on the dollar. Naturally, hackers are hard at work trying to find alternate uses for these computational powerhouses. While it won’t teach an old ASIC a new trick, [xjtuecho] has documented some very interesting details on the FPGA control board of the Ebit E9+ Bitcoin miner . Known as the EBAZ4205, this board can be purchased for around $20 USD from online importers and even less if you can find one used. Since it’s just the controller it won’t help you build a budget super computer, but there’s always interest in cheap FPGA development boards. The Zynq SoC combines an FPGA and ARM CPU. According to [xjtuecho], it takes a little bit of work to get the EBAZ4205 ready for experimentation. For one thing, you may have to solder on your own micro SD slot depending on where you got the board from. You’ll also need to add a couple diodes to configure which storage device to boot from and to select where the board pulls power from. Once you’re done, you’ll have a dual core Cortex A9 Linux board with 256 MB DDR3 and a Artix-7 FPGA featuring 28K logic elements to play with. Where you go from there is up to you. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen FPGA boards hit the surplus market at rock bottom prices. When IT departments started dumping their stock of Pano Logic thin clients back in 2013 , a whole community of dedicated FPGA hackers sprouted up around it. We’re not sure the if the EBAZ4205 will enjoy the same kind of popularity in its second life, but the price is certainly right. [Thanks to Rog77 for the tip.]	49	12	[ { "comment_id": "6295519", "author": "Gewandsznajder", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T13:48:05", "content": "Why are some of the traces by the “EBAZ4205” text wavy?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295537", "author": "Stuart Rubin", ...	1,760,373,284.125741
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/18/more-leds-means-faster-print-times-for-3d-printer-but-theres-a-catch/	More LEDs Means Faster Print Times For 3D Printer, But There’s A Catch	Donald Papp	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "3d printer hacks", "casting", "custom lenses", "led", "LED array", "lens array", "MSLA", "resin", "sla", "UV emitter" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…-board.png?w=800	[Jan Mrázek] is no stranger at all to home-grown improvements with his Elegoo Mars SLA 3D printer, and there is a lot going on in his experimental multi-LED upgrade which even involved casting his own lens array. In the end it did speed up his prints by a factor of three to four, though he cooked an LCD to failure in the process. Still, it was a fun project done during a COVID-19 lockdown; as usual there is a lot to learn from [Jan]’s experiences but the mod is not something he necessarily recommends people do for themselves. [Jan] started by wondering whether better print quality and performance could be obtained by improving the printer’s UV light source. The stock printer uses a single large UV LED nestled into a reflector, but [Jan] decided to try making a more precise source of UV, aiming to make the UV rays as parallel as possible. Custom LED array molded in clear epoxy. To do this, he took a two-pronged approach. One was to replace the single large UV LED with a 4×7 array of emitters plus heat sink and fans. The other was to make a matching array of custom lenses to get the UV rays as parallel as possible. Casting one’s own lens array out of clear epoxy was a lot of work and had mixed results, but again, it was a lockdown project and the usual “is-this-really-worth-it” rules were relaxed. In short, casting a single custom lens out of clear epoxy worked shockingly well, but when [Jan] scaled it up to casting a whole 4×7 array of them, results were mixed. Mold deformation and artifacts caused by the areas between individual lenses robbed the end result of much of its promise. More success was had with the array of UV emitters, which enabled faster curing thanks to higher power, but the heat needs to be managed. The stock emitter of the printer is about 30 W, and [Jan] was running his new array at 240 W. This meant a blazing fast one second exposure time per layer, but the heat generated by the new lighting was higher than anticipated. After only ten hours the LCD failed, probably at least in part due to the heat. [Jan] halved the power of the array down to 120 W and added an extra fan, which appears to have done the trick. Exposure time is two to three seconds per layer, and it’s up to 150 hours of printing without problems. Again, it’s not a process [Jan] necessarily recommends to others (and he definitely recommends buying lenses if at all possible instead of casting them) but as usual there is a lot to learn from his frank sharing of results, both good and bad. We’ve seen 3D-printed lenses as well as adding WiFi connectivity to one of these hobbyist printers , and it’s great to see the spirit of hacking alive and well when it comes to these devices.	13	8	[ { "comment_id": "6295488", "author": "Nik", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T12:09:56", "content": "Another POF is that epoxy is not usually UV resistant.I wonder how much a UV-resistant urethane coating (or UV additive in the resin itself) will affect the print time.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1...	1,760,373,284.33473
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/magnifying-on-the-cheap/	Magnifying On The Cheap	Al Williams	[ "Tool Hacks" ]	[ "magnification", "microscope", "smd soldering", "soldering" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/mag-3.png?w=800	If there is one thing we’ve learned during several years of running the Hackaday SMD soldering challenge it is this: Most people need magnification to do good soldering at a tiny scale. The problem is, like most tools, you can buy something as cheap as a $5 binocular headset or you can spend $1,000 or more on a serious microscope. What’s in between? [Noel] looks at some affordable options in a recent video that you can see below. [Noel] started out with a cheap “helping hand” that has a simple little magnifying glass attached to it. The major criterion was to find something that would have no delay so he could solder under magnification. While it is possible to work under a scope with a little lag in the display, it is frustrating and there are better options. The first attempt was a 10 Euro set of magnifying glasses that have different strength lenses that interchange for different amounts of magnification. Of course, each lens has a different focal length, and you won’t want to be an inch away from your hot soldering iron. The next contender was a 26 Euro LCD microscope. We know from experience the stand is everything with these cheap scopes. Luckily, [Noel] got a stand that is pretty stable. He mentions that the scope isn’t USB. We like the flip-down binoculars, with a few lenses that stack, although the ones in the video are probably workable. We also have enjoyed our cheap microscope, although you should be aware they can be flaky if you use any of the additional features. Also, pushing on buttons is likely to move you off target at high magnification. Still, what do you want for that price? Some people prefer soldering with a stereo microscope for depth perception. If you want to work around some of the limitations of the cheap microscope, [Elliot Williams] hacked one to work a little better .	28	16	[ { "comment_id": "6295419", "author": "John", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T06:25:22", "content": "I have what is essentially that same microscope. I like it. It works well enough and I can solder under it without much trouble despite the default being double mirrored or something a little crazy. Flipping...	1,760,373,284.442386
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/portable-ham-antenna-uses-smd-capacitors/	Portable Ham Antenna Uses SMD Capacitors	Al Williams	[ "Radio Hacks" ]	[ "antenna", "EFHW", "end fed half wave", "ham radio" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…11/ant.png?w=800	[K6ARK] likes to operate portable, so he puts together very lightweight antennas. One of his latest uses tiny toroids and SMD capacitors to form trap elements. You can see the construction of it in the video below. You usually think of toroid winding as something you do when building transmitters or receivers, especially small ones like these. We presume the antenna is best for QRP (low power) operation since the tiny core would saturate pretty quickly at higher power. Exactly how much power you should pass through an FT50-43 core depends on the exact application, but we’ve seen numbers around 5 watts . The SMD capacitors mount right inside a hacked up BNC connector. That makes for a very compact construction at the expense of a little fine work with a soldering iron while building. There is more construction detail on similar traps in a second video that you can see below. The availability of antenna analyzer equipment makes projects like this easier. The concept of end-fed halfwave has its detractors and proponents. [AA5TB] has a page that explains a bit about the theories surrounding the antenna . Regardless, [K6ARK] says he’s worked the world on this type of antenna and many people swear by them. Not a ham yet? [Dan Malone] wants you to invest $50 and change that. We suspect, though, you’ll be happier with more wire in the air .	13	5	[ { "comment_id": "6295391", "author": "Lynx", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T03:56:35", "content": "His efhw antenna dosen’t have a counterpoise (or using a coax as counterpoise), so I doubt if it can effective work.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6...	1,760,373,284.38128
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/17/exploring-the-new-super-mario-game-watch/	Exploring The New Super Mario Game & Watch	Tom Nardi	[ "handhelds hacks", "Nintendo Hacks" ]	[ "game and watch", "nes", "nintendo", "retro", "rom", "SWD" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…w_feat.jpg?w=800	Nintendo has revived the classic Game & Watch , this time in glorious full-color and running the same Super Mario Bros that first graced the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in 1985. Even though it’s only been on the market for a few days, [stacksmashing] has already made some impressive progress towards unlocking the full potential of this $50 retro handheld . It will come as no surprise to the average Hackaday reader that what we’re looking at here is a pocket-sized NES emulator, but until [stacksmashing] cracked his open, nobody was quite sure what kind of hardware is was running on. Thankfully there wasn’t an epoxy blob in sight, and all of the chips were easily identifiable. Armed with the knowledge that the Game & Watch is running on a STM32H7B0 microcontroller with a nearby SPI flash chip holding the firmware, it was just a matter of figuring out how the software worked. Connecting to the SWD header. It didn’t take long to find that an unpopulated header on the board would give him access to the Serial Wire Debug (SWD) interface of the STM32, though unfortunately he found that the chip’s security mode was enabled and he couldn’t dump the firmware. But he was able to dump the RAM through SWD, which allowed him to identify where the Super Mario Bros NES ROM lived. By connecting the SPI flash chip to a reader and comparing its contents with what the system had in RAM, [stacksmashing] was able to figure out the XOR encryption scheme and come up with a tool that will allow you to insert a modified ROM into an image that can be successfully flashed to the chip. So does that mean you can put whatever NES ROM you want on the new Game & Watch ? Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet. The emulator running on the device has a few odd quirks, and it will take some additional coaxing before its ready to run Contra . But we’ve seen enough of these devices get hacked to know that it’s just a matter of time. [Thanks to NeoTechni for the tip.]	26	8	[ { "comment_id": "6295325", "author": "arturo182", "timestamp": "2020-11-18T00:29:35", "content": "There’s already an update on this :)https://twitter.com/ghidraninja/status/1328404559388155904", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295721", ...	1,760,373,284.507711
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/3d-print-your-way-to-a-modular-midi-playset/	3D Print Your Way To A Modular MIDI Playset	Tom Nardi	[ "Arduino Hacks", "Musical Hacks" ]	[ "3D printed enclosure", "arduino pro micro", "midi", "Modular synthesizer", "RGB LED", "synthesizer", "tact switch" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…i_feat.jpg?w=800	Have you ever wanted to experiment with MIDI, but didn’t know where to start? Or perhaps you didn’t think you could afford to properly outfit your digital beat laboratory, especially given the average hacker’s penchant for blinkenlights? Well worry no more, as [Johan von Konow] has unveiled a collection of DIY MIDI devices that anyone with a 3D printer can build on the cheap. The LEET modular synthesizer is made up of a keyboard, drum pad, chord keyboard, arpeggiator and a step sequencer that plug into your computer and interface with industry standard digital audio workstation (DAW) programs. The down side is that they don’t do anything on their own, but this simplification allowed [Johan] to really streamline the design and bring the cost of the build down to the bare minimum. Integrated wire channels mean no PCB is required. You don’t need to build all the components either, especially if you’re just testing the waters. The keyboard is a great starting point, and even if you have to buy all the components new from eBay, [Johan] says it shouldn’t cost you more than $10 USD to build. You just need an Arduino Pro Micro, some tact switches, and a section of WS2812 RGB LED strip. There’s an excellent chance you’ve already got some of that in the parts bin, which will make it even cheaper. There is one missing element though: the PCB. But not because you have to source it yourself. Like his clever Arduboy clone we covered earlier in the year , the 3D printed bodies for all of the LEET devices have integrated wiring channels that serve as a stand-in for a traditional circuit board. Simply place all your components, push some stiff 0.3 mm diameter wire down into the channels, and solder the ends. It’s a very neat approach, and something we could see becoming more popular as desktop 3D printers become an increasingly common sight in the home workshop .	6	5	[ { "comment_id": "6295052", "author": "ziew", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T06:35:58", "content": "Is that OCD yet if I’m bothered by the fact that he didn’t use white tact switches for the white keys? ;-)", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295322", ...	1,760,373,284.551866
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/freecad-debugging/	FreeCAD Debugging	Al Williams	[ "3d Printer hacks", "Software Development", "Software Hacks" ]	[ "cad", "freecad", "python" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…11/rob.png?w=800	Powerful software programs often have macro programming languages that you can use, and if you know how to program, you probably appreciate them. However, sometimes the program’s built-in debugging facilities are lacking or even nonexistent If it were just the language, that wouldn’t be such a problem, but you can’t just grab a, for example, VBA macro from Microsoft Word and run it in a normal Basic interpreter. Your program will depend on all sorts of facilities provided by Word and its supporting libraries. [CrazyRobMiles] was frustrated with trying to debug Python running inside FreeCAD, so he decided to do something about it . [Rob’s] simple library, FakeFreeCad, gives enough support that you can run a FreeCAD script in your normal Python development environment. It only provides a rude view of what you are drawing, but it lets you explore the flow of the macro, examine variables, and more. You can read more about it on the GitHub page, but essentially, you wrap your Python code into a function, import FakeFreeCAD, and then add a little boilerplate code and call the function. Here’s a partial example of a test function: from FakeFreeCad import * ### code from FreeCad starts here ### Make it into a function that can be called to make the part def makePlate(): plate = Part.makeBox(800,600,100) hole = Part.makeCylinder(200,200,Base.Vector(400,300,0)) plate = plate.cut(hole) Part.show(plate) Gui.SendMsgToActiveView("ViewFit") Gui.activeDocument().activeView().viewAxometric() ### End of the FreeCad code You’ll have to dig through the code to see how many things are supported, but it would probably be pretty easy to add anything that’s missing. Naturally, having debugging support in FreeCAD would be better, but this is a pretty handy hack to get you most of the way there. FreeCAD has gotten a lot better in recent years. We’ve seen a lot of talk about its parametric capabilities . If you want a basic tutorial , we’ve had those, too.	20	5	[ { "comment_id": "6295029", "author": "Nonny Moose", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T04:13:28", "content": "Looks like you’ve got a bit of an indentation problem there…", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295042", "author": "Al Williams", ...	1,760,373,284.607884
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/youtube-dl-makes-their-case-returns-to-github/	Youtube-dl Makes Their Case, Returns To GitHub	Tom Nardi	[ "News", "Software Development" ]	[ "dmca", "drm", "github", "riaa", "takedown" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…n_feat.png?w=800	Last month, the GitHub repository for the popular program youtube-dl was taken down in response to a DMCA takedown notice filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The crux of the RIAA complaint was that the tool could be used to download local copies of music streamed from various platforms, a claim they said was supported by the fact that several copyrighted music files were listed as unit tests in the repository. While many believed this to be an egregious misrepresentation of what the powerful Python program was really used for, the RIAA’s argument was not completely without merit. As such, GitHub was forced to comply with the DMCA takedown until the situation could be clarified. Today we’re happy to report that has happened , and the youtube-dl repository has officially been reinstated. Represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the current maintainers of youtube-dl made their case to GitHub’s DMCA agent in a letter this afternoon which explained how the tool worked and directly addressed the issue of copyrighted videos being used as test cases in the source code. They maintain that their program does not circumvent any DRM, and that the exchange between the client and server is the same as it would be if the user had viewed the resource with a web browser. Further, they believe that downloading a few seconds worth of copyrighted material for the purpose of testing the software’s functionality is covered under fair use. Even still, they’ve decided to remove all references to the songs in question to avoid any hint at impropriety. Having worked closely with the youtube-dl developers during this period, GitHub released their own statement to coincide with the EFF letter . They explained that the nature of the RIAA’s original complaint forced their hand, but that they never believed taking down the repository was the right decision. Specifically, they point out the myriad of legitimate reasons that users might want to maintain local copies of streamed media. While GitHub says they are glad that this situation was resolved quickly, they’ll be making several changes to their internal review process to help prevent further frivolous takedowns. Specifically the company says they will work with technical and legal experts to review the source code in question before escalating any further, and that if there’s any ambiguity as to the validity of the claim, they’ll side with the developers. The Internet was quick to defend youtube-dl after the takedown , and we’re happy to see that GitHub made good on their promises to work with the developers to quickly get the repository back online. While the nature of open source code meant that the community was never in any real danger of losing this important tool, it’s in everyone’s best interest that development of the project can continue in the open.	47	11	[ { "comment_id": "6294956", "author": "Hirudinea", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T22:20:20", "content": "Oh if only we could smash the RIAA as easily as a record.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294972", "author": "𐂀 𐂅", "timestamp...	1,760,373,285.06057
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/gorgeous-mini-lathe-makes-the-most-out-of-wood-and-metal/	Gorgeous Mini-Lathe Makes The Most Out Of Wood And Metal	Dan Maloney	[ "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "brass", "carriage", "lathe", "lead screw", "Machine tool", "metal", "wood" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…19-37.jpeg?w=800	It’s a cliche that the only machine tool that can make copies of itself is the lathe. It’s not exactly true, but it’s a useful adage in that it points out that the ability to make big round things into smaller round things, and to make unround things into round things, is a critical process in so many precision operations. That said, making a lathe primarily out of wood presents some unique challenges in the precision department This isn’t [Uri Tuchman]’s first foray into lathe-building. Readers may recall the quirky creator’s hybrid treadle-powered and electric lathe , also primarily an exercise in woodworking. That lathe has seen plenty of use in [Uri]’s projects, turning both wood and metal stock into parts for his builds. It wasn’t really optimal for traditional metal turning, though, so Mini-Lathe 2 was undertaken. While the bed, headstock, and tailstock “castings” are wood — gorgeously hand-detailed and finished, of course — the important bits, like the linear slides for the carriage and the bearings in the headstock, are all metal. There’s a cross-slide, a quick-change tool post, and a manual lead screw for the carriage. We love the finely detailed brass handcranks, which were made on the old lathe, and all of the lovely details [Uri] always builds into his projects. Sadly, at the end of the video below we see that the lathe suffers from a fair amount of chatter when turning brass. That’s probably not unexpected — there’s not much substitute for sheer mass whenit comes to dampening vibration. We expect that [Uri] will be making improvements to the lathe in the coming months — he’s not exactly one to leave a job unfinished . [DainBramage] sent this tip in. Thanks!	32	11	[ { "comment_id": "6294958", "author": "dfekne", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T22:26:46", "content": "no cnc?we have 2020 year!", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6337616", "author": "someone", "timestamp": "2021-04-06T22:25:59", ...	1,760,373,285.127935
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/celebrating-the-4004s-0x31st-anniversary/	Celebrating The 4004’s 0x31st Anniversary	Chris Lott	[ "classic hacks" ]	[ "anniversary", "Busicom", "history", "intel 4004" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eature.jpg?w=800	This weekend marked the 49th anniversary of the legendary Intel 4004 microprocessor, and to celebrate [Erturk Kocalar] combined the old and new in this intriguing Retroshield 4004 / Busicom 141-PF calculator project. We have reported on his Arduino shield project before, which lets you connect a variety of old microprocessors to an Arduino so you can experiment with these old chips with a minimum of fuss. [Erturk] decided to use the Arduino to simulate the hardware of the Busicom 141-PF , a calculator famous for bringing us the microprocessor. In addition to the calculator, the Arduino has to simulate the Intel 4004 CPU’s supporting chips, which include ROM, RAM, and shift registers. If you want to build one of these yourself, all the design files are open source, or you can get an assembled shield from his Tindie store. In either case, you will have to provide your own 4004, which are surprisingly still available. (Tindie and Hackaday share the same parent company, Supplyframe. We’ve got nothing to do with Intel.) We really appreciate the detailed explanation that [Erturk] provides about the inner workings of the calculator. Interfacing the emulator to the original ROM code running on the 4004 is non-trivial — take a look at the explanation of the spinning drum printer, for example. We enjoyed perusing the annotated ROM listing , as well as reading the story of the efforts which have been undertaken to prevent these historical documents from being lost forever. Be sure to check out the history of the 4004 and its inventor Federico Faggin if you’d like to delve deeper.	5	2	[ { "comment_id": "6295010", "author": "Ren", "timestamp": "2020-11-17T02:16:12", "content": "“as well as reading the story of the efforts which have been undertaken to prevent these historical documents from being lost forever.”Tell me about it!A couple of weeks ago the company I work for threw out 4...	1,760,373,284.907455
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/teardown-recon-sentinel/	Teardown: Recon Sentinel	Tom Nardi	[ "Featured", "Linux Hacks", "Security Hacks", "Slider", "Teardown" ]	[ "16x2 LCD", "cybersecurity", "honeypot", "Pine64" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…_feat1.jpg?w=800	It might be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the average home had only a single Internet connected device in it. This beige box, known as a “desktop computer” in those olden days, was a hub of information and productivity for the whole family. There was a good chance you might even need to wait for your turn to use it, since it’s not like you had a personal device in your pocket that let you log on from the bathroom whatever room you might be in at the time. Which is just as well, since even if you had broadband back then, you certainly weren’t shooting it around the house with the Magic Internet Beams that we take for granted now. Things are a lot more complicated today. Your computer(s) are only part of the equation. Now there’s mobile phones and tablets sharing your Internet connection, in addition to whatever smart gadgets you’ve brought into the mix. When your doorbell and half the light bulbs in the house have their own IP address, it takes more than a fresh copy of Norton AntiVirus to keep everything secure. Which is precisely what Cigent Technology says the Recon Sentinel was designed for. Rather than protecting a single computer or device, this little gadget is advertised as being able to secure your entire network by sniffing out suspicious activity and providing instant notifications when new hardware is connected. According to the official whitepaper, it also runs a honeypot service Cigent calls a “cyber deception engine” and is capable of deploying “Active Defense Countermeasures” to confuse malicious devices that attempt to attack it. It certainly sounds impressive. But for $149.99 plus an annual subscription fee, it better. If you’re hoping this teardown will tell you if it’s worth springing for the $899.99 Lifetime Subscription package, don’t get too excited. This isn’t a review, we’re only interested in cracking this thing open and seeing what makes it tick. Well…That Was Easy Folks, this is a first. Inside the Recon Sentinel’s oddly shaped injection molded enclosure is a ROCK64 board from Pine64 and the same I2C 16×2 LCD that we’ve all got kicking around our parts bin. That’s it. Beyond the enclosure, the only custom made component for the Recon Sentinel is the adapter cable that goes from the 40 pin Raspberry Pi style expansion header down to the four wires that connect to the display. It’s even packing a run-of-the-mill SanDisk 8 GB micro SD, at least the one in the Wonder Bible was branded . It’s no exaggeration to say that the hardware for this product is only one step above a DIY weekend build. You could go on Thingiverse right now, find a printable case that could take this identical LCD and whatever flavor of Linux board you’re fond of, and be half-way there. Which would be fine if this was some kind of prototype, but this is what they’re actually shipping out to customers. While calling it “easy” might be a stretch, building a single board computer (SBC) that runs Linux is now within the reach of the dedicated hacker . We’ve also seen a number of individuals create custom carrier boards for the Raspberry Pi Compute module . In short, there’s no technical reason that even a small company couldn’t pump out a custom board that would be a better fit for this application. Something with dual Ethernet interfaces would have been ideal, and there’s no reason to include USB and HDMI ports if they’re never going to be used. That said, it looks like Pine64 was clearing out stock of the entry-level ROCK64, selling them for just $25 USD in single quantities . The Recon Sentinel might be the product of some bulk-order deal that brought the unit cost even lower. It wouldn’t be the first time one company’s fire sale lead to the creation of a new product . Doing Recon on the Recon We don’t normally concern ourselves with the software side of things during these teardowns, but frankly, there’s usually more hardware to look at. So in this case, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at the Linux system running inside the Recon Sentinel. Clearly that’s where all the time and effort was spent on the product anyway. I searched online a bit and didn’t find any indication of what the root password for the Recon Sentinel is out of the box, but of course it’s not hard to gain access when you can just pop the micro SD card out. I mounted it on my desktop, wiped the hashed root password from /etc/shadow , and then replaced the sshd_config file with a minimal version that allowed root logins and blank passwords. I didn’t want it phoning home, so I plugged it into an unused wireless router that allowed it to pull a DHCP lease without getting a link to the Internet. The LCD showed an error message about connectivity, but I was able to log in over SSH with no issue at that point. The system appears to be the standard Debian Stretch image that Pine64 distributes for the ROCK64 , with the addition of some Raspbian packages. It looks like most of the custom software developed for the Recon Sentinel was developed in Python, so it’s easy to open up the files and see what its up to. There’s also a handy tool called lcd_display that allows you to push two lines of text to the screen which is used extensively throughout the system. While it’s easy enough to pop in and poke around (and convenient that the LCD is already set up and working), there’s a few issues with the OS that make repurposing it impractical. For one thing, it appears that local logins have been disabled entirely. I also noticed that after a few minutes the device reboots, probably because it can’t connect to the Internet. Of course you could identify and undo these changes, but I think your time would be better spent wiping it and starting fresh. Putting the Sentinel to Work Ultimately, the Recon Sentinel may be one of most unusual commercial devices we’ve ever looked at. Sure we’ve uncovered boards we recognized before, such as the Electric Imps that are often found hiding inside of Quirky’s line of oddball IoT gadgets , but nothing quite like this. If there’s a more eminently reusable device for hardware hackers, I can’t imagine what it would be. Just wipe the SD card, do a fresh install of Debian, and you’ve got a handy little Linux box with a built in LCD display that you could use for literally anything. In fact, some enterprising company has apparently gotten their hands on a bunch of surplus Recon Sentinels and started offloading them on Amazon as development kits . Prices seem to fluctuate, but overall it looks like you can pick one up for less than 15% of the original price. It seems like a safe bet that things aren’t going so great for the company, so personally, I’d skip the Lifetime Subscription. It’ll probably end up being a lot shorter than you hoped for.	35	14	[ { "comment_id": "6294900", "author": "Say what?", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T18:21:16", "content": "Run some throughput and latency tests with and without and let us know if this thing slows you down.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6294901", ...	1,760,373,284.983102
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/harnessing-your-creativity-hack-chat/	Harnessing Your Creativity Hack Chat	Dan Maloney	[ "Hackaday Columns" ]	[ "creativity", "Hack Chat", "innovation", "inspiration", "invention", "organization" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.png?w=800	Join us on Wednesday, November 18th at noon Pacific for the Harnessing Your Creativity Hack Chat with Leo Fernekes! ( Note: this Hack Chat was rescheduled from 10/14/2020. ) You’re sitting at your bench, surrounded by the tools of the trade — meters and scopes, power supplies and hand tools, and a well-stocked parts bin. Your breadboard is ready, your fingers are itching to build, and you’ve got everything you need to get started, but — nothing happens. Something is missing, and if you’re like many of us, it’s the one thing you can’t get from eBay or Amazon: the creative spark that makes innovation happen. Creativity is one of those things that’s difficult to describe, and is often noticed most when it’s absent. Hardware hacking requires great buckets of creativity, and it’s not always possible to count on it being there exactly when it’s called for. It would be great if you could somehow reduce creativity to practice and making it something as easy to source for every project as any other commodity. While Leo Fernekes hasn’t exactly commoditized creativity, judging from the breadth of projects on his YouTube channel , he’s got a pretty good system for turning ideas into creations. We’ve featured a few of his builds on our pages, like a discrete transistor digital clock , the last continuity tester you’ll ever need , and his somewhat unconventional breadboarding techniques . Leo’s not afraid to fail and share the lessons learned , either. His projects, though, aren’t the whole story here: it’s his process that we’re going to discuss. Leo joins us for this Hack Chat to poke at the creative process and see what can be done to remain rigorous and systematic in your approach but still make the process creative and flexible. Join us with your questions about finding the inspiration you need to turn parts and skills into finished projects that really innovate. Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging . This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, November 18 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones baffle you as much as us, we have a handy time zone converter . Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.	0	0	[]	1,760,373,284.86726
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/a-microwave-repair-even-mechanical-keyboard-fans-will-love/	A Microwave Repair Even Mechanical Keyboard Fans Will Love	Dan Maloney	[ "Repair Hacks" ]	[ "analog switch", "clicky", "duckyPad", "keypad", "matrix", "mechanical", "microwave", "repair" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rowave.png?w=800	Microwave oven design and manufacturing have been optimized to the point where the once-expensive appliances are now nearly disposable. Despite the economics, though, some people can’t resist fixing stuff, especially when you get a chance to do it in style. Thus we present this microwave repair with its wholly unnecessary yet fabulous adornments. The beginning of the end for [dekuNukem]’s dirt cheap second-hand microwave started where many of the appliances begin to fail first — the membrane keyboard. Unable to press the buttons reliably anymore, [dekuNukem] worked out the original keypad’s matrix wiring arrangement and whipped up a little keypad from some pushbutton switches and a scrap of perfboard. Wired into the main PCB, it was an effective and cheap solution, if a bit on the artless side. To perk things up a bit, [dekuNukem] turned to duckyPad , a hot-swappable macropad with mechanical switches and, of course, RGB LEDs. Things got interesting from here; since duckyPad outputs serial data, an adapater was needed inside the microwave. An STM32 microcontroller and a pair of ADG714 analog switches did the trick, with power pulled from the original PCB. The finished repair is pretty flashy, and [dekuNukem] now has the only microwave in the world with a clicky keypad. And what’s more, it works.	32	9	[ { "comment_id": "6294687", "author": "Tweepy", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T21:32:01", "content": "I’ve always wondered why numerous keypad are present mainly on the US microwave market, where the rest of the world seems to do with start stop button and rotary encoder.", "parent_id": null, "dept...	1,760,373,285.564995
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/halloween-pumpkin-scares-with-an-evil-eye/	Halloween Pumpkin Scares With An Evil Eye	Lewin Day	[ "Holiday Hacks" ]	[ "halloween", "jack o lantern", "pumpkin" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eye800.jpg?w=800	These days, a classic Jack O’ Lantern just doesn’t cut the mustard. Kids are expecting to be scared by high-quality animatronics at a minimum. This haunting work by [Zero To Infinity] might just do the trick. A real pumpkin is pressed into service in this build, with the usual threatening grin and candlelit interior. However, where it differs is in its single, animated eye. The eye itself is constructed of a pingpong ball, drawn upon with markers for a creepy bloodshot look. A pair of servos allow the eye to twitch and roll, under the command of an Arduino Nano. For further interactivity, an ultrasonic sensor is used to only trigger the pumpkin when it senses a person approaching. It’s a fun holiday build that also serves as a great primer on how to work with servos and microcontrollers. We can imagine a more advanced setup using more sensors and pumpkins to train multiple eyes on the unsuspecting visitor. If that’s not scary enough, perhaps just make your pumpkins breathe fire instead . Video after the break.	1	1	[ { "comment_id": "6294737", "author": "Gary", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T02:54:42", "content": "There’s no site for a sketch download.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] } ]	1,760,373,285.235163
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/cutting-balsa-wood-with-air-oh-and-a-laser/	Cutting Balsa Wood With Air (Oh, And A Laser)	Al Williams	[ "cnc hacks" ]	[ "air assist", "balsa", "laser", "laser cutter" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/laser.png?w=800	[DIY3DTech] likes using his Ortur laser cutter for balsa wood and decided to add an air assist system to it. Some people told him it wasn’t worth the trouble, so in the video below, he compares the results of cutting both with and without the air assist . The air assist helped clear the cut parts and reduced charring in the wood. The air system clears residue and fumes that can reduce the effectiveness of the laser. It can also reduce the risk of the workpiece catching on fire. In addition, the video shows the results of cutting wood using different speeds and number of passes. So the holes marked 5/10, for example, are cut at 5mm/second and ten passes. Although air assist might help if you are engraving, the real benefit, according to the video, is when you are trying to do cuts. However, removing the fumes is probably a good idea even when engraving. The video doesn’t go into much detail about the air system, but there are links in the video description to pages that have more information about how to add something like this to your laser cutting setup. There’s also a more recent video specifically about how the air assist system works . If you need more on laser cutter basics , we read a great post about it last year. Like 3D printers, it used to be fashionable to build your own cutter , but now it is cheap enough to buy one if you’d rather not mess with it.	34	7	[ { "comment_id": "6294610", "author": "jpa", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T15:27:40", "content": "It seems a lot of people are using quite weak pumps, like aquarium air pumps, for the air assist. A little bit of airflow certainly helps a lot compared to no airflow, but has anyone tried out at what point t...	1,760,373,285.201356
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/interactive-subway-map-talks-you-through-the-route/	Interactive Subway Map Talks You Through The Route	Lewin Day	[ "Transportation Hacks" ]	[ "information display", "metro", "nextion", "subway" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…map800.jpg?w=800	Old-school rail monitoring systems had amazing displays of stations and tracks covered in flashing lights that tracked the progress of trains along a route. While it’s unlikely you’ll fit such big iron from the mid-20th century in your home, you can get a similar aesthetic with [Kothe’s] interactive subway information display. The display relies on an Arduino Mega 2560 Pro Mini as the brains of the operation. It drives strings of WS2812B LEDs which correspond to stations along the various metro lines in the area. Additionally, the microcontroller drives a 4.3″ Nextion LCD display. The Nextion displays have the benefit of acting as a self-contained human machine interface, running their own controller on board. This means the Arduino doesn’t have to spend cycles driving the display, and the Nextion hardware comes with a useful software package for quickly and easily designing GUI interfaces. For further feedback, a DFPlayer MP3 module is used to allow the system to playback prerecorded voice samples that provide information on the rail system. The attractive front panel is made with lasercut acrylic and a color printed acetate sheet. It’s a build that bears striking similarity to real rail information systems fielded by railways around the world. We can imagine such a device being particularly useful in a backpacker’s hostel or university dorm to help those new to town find their way around. If you prefer a more stripped-back aesthetic, we’ve seen a barebones PCB build done as well . Video after the break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L22DO0J6EdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57thd1ImP8	2	2	[ { "comment_id": "6294621", "author": "RF Dude", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T16:12:05", "content": "Nice board! I’m thinking it could also have an application for complex model train sets, that today run on software like JMRI and PC or Linux platforms (Raspberry Pi). While it is easier to use an LCD t...	1,760,373,285.29661
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/an-ev-conversion-engineered-as-a-drop-in-replacement/	An EV Conversion Engineered As A Drop-in Replacement	Jenny List	[ "Transportation Hacks" ]	[ "ev", "EV conversion", "mini" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	With electric vehicles such as the Tesla or the Leaf being all the rage and joined by fresh competitors seemingly every week, it seems the world is going crazy for the electric motor over their internal combustion engines. There’s another sector to electric traction that rarely hits the headlines though, that of converting existing IC cars to EVs by retrofitting a motor. The engineering involved can be considerable and differs for every car, so we’re interested to see an offering for the classic Mini from the British company Swindon Powertrain that may be the first of many affordable pre-engineered conversion kits for popular models. Swindon Powertrain’s demo Mini The kit takes their HPD crate EV motor that we covered earlier in the year , and mates it with a Mini front subframe. Brackets and CV joints engineered for the kit to drop straight into the Mini. The differential appears to be offset to the right rather than the central position of the original so we’re curious about the claim of using the Mini’s own driveshafts, but that’s hardly an issue that should tax anyone prepared to take on such a task. They can also supply all the rest of the parts for a turnkey conversion, making for what will probably be one of the most fun-to-drive EVs possible. The classic Mini is now a sought-after machine long past its days of being dirt-cheap old-wreck motoring for the masses, so the price of the kit should be viewed in the light of a good example now costing more than some new cars. We expect this kit to have most appeal in the professional and semi-professional market rather than the budget end of home conversions, but it’s still noteworthy because it is a likely sign of what is to come. We look forward to pre-engineered subframes becoming a staple of EV conversions at all levels. The same has happened with other popular engine upgrades, and no doubt some conversions featuring them will make their way to the pages of Hackaday. We like the idea of conversions forming part of the path to EV adoption, as we’ve remarked before .	87	20	[ { "comment_id": "6294571", "author": "Bruce Richardson", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T10:01:07", "content": "This isn’t the only one.electricclassiccars.co.uk in Wales are starting to do kits for the original VW Beetle and Land Rover Discovery.25kWh Beetle kit for about £20k.", "parent_id": null, ...	1,760,373,285.500362
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/automatic-scoring-for-skeeball-mini-golf/	Automatic Scoring For Skeeball Mini-Golf	Lewin Day	[ "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "arduion mega", "mini golf", "scoreboard" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ore800.jpg?w=800	Minigolf is a fun, simple pastime that has the benefit of taking up much less space than the classical game it is inspired by. [gcall1979] had built himself a small game for the lounge room, but found keeping score to be a tedious exercise. Of course, that was nothing that couldn’t be solved with some electronics! The game consists of a skeeball-type minigolf course, where the score is determined by the hole the player puts the ball through. To track this, each hole is fitted with an IR break-beam sensor that triggers when a ball passes through. Vinyl siding is used to guide the balls going through the holes to ensure the sensor is triggered consistently. The sensors are read by an Arduino Mega, which is also responsible for flashing LEDs and updating the score throughout the game on the included 7-segment displays. It’s a basic hack, but one that makes the game far more of a self-contained experience. No more fumbling with pencils and paper means it’s easier to focus on dominating the competition on the (miniature) green. Of course, those with dreams of the driving range might consider this recreation of the famous Floating 14th Hole !	1	1	[ { "comment_id": "6294838", "author": "Mako", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T15:13:12", "content": "“Tagged arduion mega”At least this isn’t a common typo of a tag, as it’s the only article.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] } ]	1,760,373,285.601557
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/micropython-on-microcontrollers/	Micropython On Microcontrollers	Bryan Cockfield	[ "Microcontrollers" ]	[ "c++", "ESP32", "library", "microcontroller", "micropython", "multitask", "python" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…2-main.png?w=800	There are plenty of small microcontrollers available for all kinds of tasks, each one with its unique set of features and capabilities. However, not all of us want to spend time mucking about in C or assembly to learn the intricacies of each different chip. If you prefer the higher planes of Python instead, it’s not impossible to import Python on even the smallest of microcontrollers thanks to MicroPython, which [Rob] shows us in this project based on the ESP32 . [Rob] has been working on a small robot called Marty which uses an ESP32 as its brain, so the small microcontroller is already tasked with WiFi/Bluetooth communications and driving the motors in the robot. Part of the problem of getting Python to run on a platform like this is that MicroPython is designed to be essentially the only thing running on the device at any one point, but since the ESP32 is more powerful than the minimum requirements for MicroPython he wanted to see if he could run more than just Python code. He eventually settled on a “bottum-up” approach to build a library for the platform, rather than implementing MicroPython directly as a firmware image for the ESP32. The blog post is an interesting take on running Python code on a small platform, and goes into some details with the shortcomings of MicroPython itself which [Rob] ended up working around for this project. He’s also released the source code for his work on his GitHub page. Of course, for a different approach to running Python and C on the same small processor, there are some libraries that accomplish that as well .	54	14	[ { "comment_id": "6294538", "author": "Erffrfez", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T04:58:49", "content": "Typo:“not” should be “now”‘ it’s not impossible to import Python on even the smallest of microcontrollers ‘", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "629461...	1,760,373,285.691628
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/simple-tips-for-better-3d-printed-enclosures/	Simple Tips For Better 3D-Printed Enclosures	Donald Papp	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "3d printing", "advice", "design", "dfm", "enclosures" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	3D printing can be great for making enclosures, and following some simple guidelines can help the whole process go much smoother. 3D Hubs has an article on designing printed enclosures that has clear steps and tips to get enclosures coming out right the first time. 3D Hubs offers 3D printing and other services, and the article starts with a short roundup of fabrication methods but the rest is a solid set of tips applicable to anyone. The first recommendation is to model the contents of the enclosure as a way to help ensure everything fits as it should, and try to discover problems as early as possible during the design phase, before anything gets actually printed. We’ve seen how a PCB that doesn’t take the enclosure into account risks needing a redesign , because there are some issues an enclosure just can’t fix. The rest of their advice boils down to concrete design guidelines about wall thickness (they recommend 2 mm or more), clearances (allow a minimum of 0.5 mm between internal components and enclosure), and how to size holes for fasteners, clips, or ports. These numbers aren’t absolute minimums, but good baseline values to avoid surprises. One final useful tip is that using a uniform wall thickness throughout the enclosure is general good practice. While this isn’t strictly necessary for successful 3D printing, it will make life easier if the enclosure ever moves to injection molding. Want to know more? Our own Bob Baddeley has an excellent primer on injection molding , and his been-there-done-that perspective is invaluable.	23	6	[ { "comment_id": "6294887", "author": "fthrthy", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T17:29:19", "content": "1. buy a good printer", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294937", "author": "BrightBlueJim", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T21:09:55", ...	1,760,373,285.824837
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/3d-printering-the-things-printers-dont-do/	3D Printering: The Things Printers (Don’t) Do	Donald Papp	[ "3d Printer hacks", "Hackaday Columns", "Slider" ]	[ "3D Printering", "advice", "sandcastle rule" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…er-New.jpg?w=800	3D printers are amazing things, but if one judges solely by the successes that get showcased online, it can look as through anything at all is possible. Yet in many ways, 3D printers are actually quite limited. Because success looks easy and no one showcases failure, people can end up with lopsided ideas of what is realistic. This isn’t surprising; behind every shining 3D print that pushes the boundaries of the technology, there are misprints and test pieces piled just out of sight. If you have ever considered getting into 3D printing, or are wondering what kinds of expectations are realistic, read on because I am going to explain where objects come from, and how to recognize whether something is a good (or bad) fit for 3D printing. The important thing to understand is that printers have limitations, and to get a working idea of what those limitations are. The result will be a better understanding of what they can do, and what problems they can reliably solve. 3D Printers Have Limits I recently had a talk with someone who wanted to know if a 3D printer could help with a problem they had. As I listened to them describe their needs, I realized I had in a way heard it all before many times. My colleague actually had a fairly good idea of what printers could do, in theory. But they had very little grasp of what printers did not do, and that disconnect left them a bit adrift when it came to practical applications. To help address this gap, here are some tips that can give anyone a working understanding of the things 3D printers do not do well. They Do Not Create Objects Effortlessly Repairing household items is a common use case, but 3D printers do not work like photocopiers for objects, nor do they magic up replacements for missing or broken things. There is currently no practical way to take a few pictures of a broken part and have someone print a new one, nor is there a quick and easy way to make copies of existing objects. Ideally, if someone required a replacement part to repair a household item, the process would begin with looking the part up online by manufacturer and model number. Then a user would download a 3D model of the missing or broken part, and print a replacement at the press of a button. We’re not there yet. There are plenty of 3D models available online, but we are far from having libraries of user-serviceable parts for manufactured products readily available for download and printing. 3D printers can only create objects from 3D models, and 3D models get made by someone using a CAD program. Creating a 3D model needs to happen first, because without a model a 3D printer is useless. Making a Thing Means CAD Work If an object doesn’t already exist as a 3D model, one must be created. Fortunately, the internet is already home to a staggering number of models for useful gadgets, tools, and knickknacks, ready to be downloaded from places like Thingiverse , PrusaPrinters , MyMiniFactory , and others. These models already exist and are — for the most part — ready to be 3D printed. However, if one needs an object to interface with something else (for example, a replacement part for an appliance) then a 3D model for that object most likely does not already exist. It will need to be carefully designed from scratch, and reverse-engineering of a mechanical design is a process that will involve a lot of careful measuring and testing in addition to the CAD work. Access to both the thing being fixed, as well as the broken part being replaced, will probably be needed. The job could be anywhere between an afternoon’s work, to a multi-day effort. 3D scanning techniques, like photogrammetry, can be useful, but scanning is only a tool to aid other design work; it doesn’t yet remove the need to choose a CAD package and start designing . A good example of how 3D scanning can assist the design process is showcased nicely by this project to 3D print a custom control panel to fit onto a complex shape . Some Things Do Not 3D Print Well To print reliably, a 3D model must be designed with a 3D printer’s strengths and weaknesses in mind. One must always play to a tool’s strengths, and 3D printers are no different. Just as a table saw is the wrong tool for cutting curves, so too are some shapes and part geometries not easily 3D printed. The two types of 3D printing that are most accessible to hobbyists are filament-based (FDM) and resin-based (SLA). Both work by building an object layer by layer, starting from a flat build platform, with each new layer being laid upon the foundation of the one before it. Because of this, some things print more easily and reliably than others. How can one know whether an object will be troublesome to 3D print without having a lot of experience? Below is a simple checklist of potentially troublesome features. The more items in this list an object matches, the more likely the object will have challenges. Does the object lack a flat surface to use as a base, or does it have a very small base relative to the rest of the model? Such models are often more complex to print than those with stable, flat bases. Is the object very large, or very small? Object size can be an issue, and may depend on the printer and material type. Does the model have thin walls or fine details? Thin walls are often weak points. Does the model depend on tight tolerances and exact dimensions? If so, it may require experimentation to get right. Are there protruding features that are not well connected to the rest of the model? The more parts stick out, the more challenging it will be to print. For people who work with their hands, here is an evaluation method that is as intuitive as it is simple: Would the object be easy to build out of wet sand, as if one were building a sandcastle? If so, then it will probably 3D print just fine. 3D Printers Are Great, So Long As You Play By Their Rules 3D printers do not run flawlessly every time, nor do they operate in a foolproof manner. Operating and maintaining a 3D printer is not difficult, but it is a skill acquired through experience. It is entirely possible to damage a printer by running it carelessly. Ideally, one would simply press a button then sip a margarita until the machine spits out a perfectly-finished part. Unfortunately, this isn’t true of 3D printers any more than it is for any other power tool. To be clear, 3D printing is one of the best things to have happened to hobbyists over the last decade, and the benefits are not limited to those who design objects from scratch. For example, printing miniatures for tabletop gaming is a niche that has probably single-handedly propelled hobbyist SLA printing to where it is today. As a result, hackers around the world have reaped the benefits, making it easier than ever to add an SLA printer to the workbench . Successes are great, but knowing what 3D printers are not good at is also important. With a better idea of what printers do poorly, a thoughtful hacker is not only in a much better position to decide whether buying a 3D printer is a good idea, but will also have a better idea of how many beers that friendly printing favor might be worth.	56	14	[ { "comment_id": "6294853", "author": "David", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T15:35:06", "content": "Nobody says a document is “printering” on the laser printer. Why “3D printering”?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294861", "author": "Matias...	1,760,373,285.934558
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/automatic-winder-takes-the-drudgery-out-of-tesla-coil-builds/	Automatic Winder Takes The Drudgery Out Of Tesla Coil Builds	Dan Maloney	[ "Tool Hacks" ]	[ "coil", "magnet wire", "PSoC 5", "tension", "tesla", "winder" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…winder.jpg?w=800	What is it about coil winding automation projects that’s just so captivating? Maybe it’s knowing what a labor saver they can be once you’ve got a few manually wound coils under your belt. Or perhaps it’s just the generally satisfying nature of any machine that does an exacting task smoothly and precisely. Whatever it is, this automatic Tesla coil winder has it in abundance. According to [aa-epilectrik]’s account, the back story of this build is that while musical Tesla coils are a big part of the performance of musical group ArcAttack , they’re also cool enough in their own right to offer DIY kits for sale. This rig takes on the job of producing the coils, which at least takes some of the drudgery out of the build. There’s no build log, but there are enough details on reddit and Instagram to work out the basics. The main spindle is driven by a gearmotor while the winding carriage translates along a linear slide thanks to a stepper-driven lead screw. The spool holding the fine magnet wire needs to hold proper tension to prevent tangling; this is achieved through by applying some torque to the spool with a small DC motor. There are some great design elements in this one, not least being the way tension is controlled by measuring the movement of an idler pulley using a linear pot. At top speed, the machine looks like it complete a coil in just about three minutes, which seems pretty reasonable with such neat results. Another interesting point: ArcAttack numbers [Anouk Wipprecht], whom we’ve featured a couple of times on these pages, among its collaborators. Small world. https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/We-made-this-machine-that-can-wind-a-Tesla-coil-at-250-RPM.-Full-speed-by-about-1-minute-in..mp4	11	6	[ { "comment_id": "6294809", "author": "LightningPhil", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T12:48:28", "content": "Certainly looks easier than sitting in a cold shed winding one with a mate on a metal lathe – both hindered by prior consumption of rum.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ ...	1,760,373,285.768044
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/16/vectron-adds-basic-and-christmas-tree-control/	Vectron Adds Basic And Christmas Tree Control	Chris Lott	[ "News", "Retrocomputing" ]	[ "6502", "breadboarding", "tiny BASIC", "Vectron" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eature.png?w=800	Not content to leave things alone, [Nick Bild] has updated his nearly practical breadboard 6502 Vectron project once again by adding Tiny Basic and home tree automation. Instead of using an LCD module like last time, or his custom-built VGA output using 7400-series logic , [Nick] chose to go modern this time and implemented a VGA output using a TinyFPGA BX. Tiny Basic was one of the first versions of Basic released after Bill Gates famous open letter to hobbyists in 1976. While Altair Basic was selling for $150, Tom Pittman wrote Tiny Basic for the 6800 and sold it for only $5 (don’t worry, Tom has since made it free to use ). We got a kick out of browsing the Tiny Basic manual and learning that our serial number can be found on the paper tape leader, and that a Teletype will generally receive one more character, at least, after getting the X-OFF control signal. In the video, you can see [Nick] running a short Basic program and operating his Christmas tree lights from the Vectron, although it’s only on-off control. He suggests that a PCB version is in the works, but he’s having trouble deciding when to quit adding features. That’s a conundrum we know all too well.	9	3	[ { "comment_id": "6294793", "author": "Jack", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T10:26:35", "content": "[Nick] implemented a VGO output?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294805", "author": "Nick Bild", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T11:50:23", ...	1,760,373,288.203765
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/gyroscope-level-is-digital/	Gyroscope Level Is Digital	Al Williams	[ "Arduino Hacks" ]	[ "arduino", "gyroscope", "level", "mpu6050", "spirit level" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/level.png?w=800	A spirit level, you know the kind of level with a little bubble in a tube of fluid, is a basic construction tool. [DesignBuildDestroy] took an Arduino, a gyroscope chip, and an OLED, and made a 3D printed level with no bubble, but it does have a nice digital display. It is funny when you realize that at one time a gyroscope was a high tech item reserved for missiles and aircraft. Now you can grab a six-axis sensor for pennies. Even, better, the code used in the project can offload the Arduino for a lot of processing. Initially, the device lived on a breadboard, which is always a good idea to get the kinks out of things. Thanks to the OLED, the Arduino can calibrate itself without a PC and do other tricks. The display is easy to read, but we thought there should be a mode that shows a little bubble made with an O character. Seems like that would be a fun rainy day project. We did like the automatic screen rotation, though. We’ve seen a nice level done with a Raspberry Pi before . If you need something smaller, how about something the size of a dime ?	33	14	[ { "comment_id": "6294757", "author": "Vinalon", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T07:15:33", "content": "Great idea, love the execution!If it’s going to be used on a worksite, it might be nice to accept NiMH cells instead of bare LiPos.I like using AA/AAA holders because you can use NiMH when the device migh...	1,760,373,288.160232
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/diy-high-voltage-kirlian-photography-rig/	DIY High Voltage Kirlian Photography Rig	Lewin Day	[ "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "coin", "high voltage", "kirlian", "kirlian photography" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…nhv800.jpg?w=800	High voltage is a fun, if dangerous, thing to play with. [Mirko] is an enthusiast in this space, and built a high-voltage Kirlian photography device that’s capable of creating some stunning images . The construction of the device itself is basic. High-frequency, high-voltage electricity is connected to a metal object placed on one side of a glass plate. On the other side, salt water is pooled, and connected to a second electrode. This creates a transparent window through which the electrical discharge can be viewed either by eye or with a digital camera. Historically, this was done with photographic film in place of the transparent window , but the principle is the same. Popular in the paranormal and alternative medicine spaces, the actual scientific application of Kirlian photography is minimal. Rather, it’s an interesting way to explore high voltages that creates some pretty results! If you find yourself becoming a fan of high voltage, you might also consider your own Tesla coil build, too . Video after the break.	4	2	[ { "comment_id": "6294766", "author": "salec", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T08:03:06", "content": "I wonder if it can highlight some microscopic features or defects of object’s surface, like, finding coarser or slightly more prominent spots, or places with chemical or radioactive impurities?", "paren...	1,760,373,287.748795
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/15/hackaday-links-november-15-2020/	Hackaday Links: November 15, 2020	Dan Maloney	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Hackaday links" ]	[ "3d scan", "autodriving", "crash", "darpa", "dash cam", "dorbell", "hackaday links", "LEO", "lipo", "low earth orbit", "ring", "satellite", "shitty robot", "Starlink", "SubT", "tesla" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…banner.jpg?w=800	Now that we drive around cars that are more like mobile data centers than simple transportation, there’s a wealth of data to be harvested when the inevitable crashes occur. After a recent Tesla crash on a California highway, a security researcher got a hold of the car’s “black box” and extracted some terrifying insights into just how bad a car crash can be . The interesting bit is the view of the crash from the Tesla’s forward-facing cameras with object detection overlays. Putting aside the fact that the driver of this car was accelerating up to the moment it rear-ended the hapless Honda with a closing speed of 63 MPH (101 km/h), the update speeds on the bounding boxes and lane sensing are incredible. The author of the article uses this as an object lesson in why Level 2 self-driving is a bad idea, and while I agree with that premise, the fact that self-driving had been disabled 40 seconds before the driver plowed into the Honda seems to make that argument moot. Tech or not, someone this unskilled or impaired was going to have an accident eventually, and it was just bad luck for the other driver. Last week I shared a link to Scan the World , an effort to 3D-scan and preserve culturally significant artifacts and create a virtual museum. Shortly after the article ran we got an email from Elisa at Scan the World announcing their “Unlocking Lockdown” competition, which encourages people to scan cultural artifacts and treasures directly from their home. You may not have a Ming Dynasty vase or a Grecian urn on display in your parlor, but you’ve probably got family heirlooms, knick-knacks, and other tchotchkes that should be preserved. Take a look around and scan something for posterity. And I want to thank Elisa for the link to the Pompeiian bread that I mentioned. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)has been running an interesting challenge for the last couple of years: The Subterranean (SubT) Challenge . The goal is to discover new ways to operate autonomously below the surface of the Earth, whether for mining, search and rescue, or warfare applications. They’ve been running different circuits to simulate various underground environments, with the most recent circuit being a cave course back in October. On Tuesday November 17, DARPA will webcast the competition, which features 16 teams and their autonomous search for artifacts in a virtual cave. It could make for interesting viewing. If underground adventures don’t do it for you, how about going upstairs? LeoLabs, a California-based company that specializes in providing information about satellites, has a fascinating visualization of the planet’s satellite constellation . It’s sort of Google Earth but with the details focused on low-earth orbit. You can fly around the planet and watch the satellites whiz by or even pick out the hundreds of spent upper-stage rockets still up there. You can lock onto a specific satellite, watch for near-misses, or even turn on a layer for space debris, which honestly just turns the display into a purple miasma of orbiting junk. The best bit, though, is the easily discerned samba-lines of newly launched Starlink satellites. A doorbell used to be a pretty simple device, but like many things, they’ve taken on added complexity. And danger, it appears, as Amazon Ring doorbell users are reporting their new gadgets going up in flame upon installation . The problem stems from installers confusing the screws supplied with the unit. The longer wood screws are intended to mount the device to the wall, while a shorter security screw secures the battery cover. Mix the two up for whatever reason, and the sharp point of the mounting screw can find the LiPo battery within, with predictable results. And finally, it may be the shittiest of shitty robots: a monstrous robotic wolf intended to scare away wild bears. It seems the Japanese town of Takikawa has been having a problem with bears lately, so they deployed a pair of these improbable looking creatures to protect themselves. It’s hard to say what’s the best feature: the flashing LED eyes, the strobe light tail, the fact that the whole thing floats in the air atop a pole. Whatever it is, it seems to work on bears, which is probably good enough. Take a look in the video below the break.	13	5	[ { "comment_id": "6294714", "author": "PWalsh", "timestamp": "2020-11-16T00:32:08", "content": "Level 2 self driving is only a bad idea in the minds of Tesla short sellers.The real measure of self driving is whether the enhancements reduce accidents. It is a statistical certainty that Level 2 reduces...	1,760,373,287.798602
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/a-different-kind-of-ikea-hack-javascript-price-comparison-by-location/	A Different Kind Of IKEA Hack: Javascript Price Comparison By Location	Lewin Day	[ "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "ikea", "javascript", "script" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…lar800.png?w=800	When looking for the best deal, it pays to shop around. When it comes to chain stores, of course, one expects the price to be the same across their retail network. However, where international companies are concerned, occasionally a better deal is just a border crossing away. To investigate the best possible price on IKEA’s flatpacked goods, [Sn0w5t0rm] whipped up a scirpt to make comparisons easy. The hack consists of a small piece of Javascript that runs in a browser extension like Greasemonkey (Firefox) or Tampermonkey (Chrome). When visiting an IKEA product page, it shows the price of the same item in the alternative country of your choice. Often, significant savings can be had – the SKOGSTA table is €176 cheaper in the Netherlands compared to Belgium . While the script does require some customization to suit your location, it could nonetheless save you a bundle on some home furnishings if your live near enough to a border. We’d love to see the concept taken further to tease out best prices in a given region for goods from all stores. Similar techniques can net you cheap airfares, too!	8	6	[ { "comment_id": "6294547", "author": "Drone", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T06:38:23", "content": "This is called “Automated – Arbitrage” or AA.Arbitrage – Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294587", ...	1,760,373,287.904638
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/illuminated-3d-printed-guitar-is-ready-to-rock/	Illuminated 3D Printed Guitar Is Ready To Rock	Tom Nardi	[ "LED Hacks", "Musical Hacks" ]	[ "3d printed musical instruments", "electric guitar", "fft", "RGB LED", "sound reactive" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…r_feat.jpg?w=800	When we think of 3D printed parts for our projects, most of us imagine little bits like brackets and mounting plates. Perhaps the occasional printed project enclosure. But if you’ve got a big custom printer as [Joshendy] does, plus plenty of time, it opens up a whole new world of large scale projects. Take for example the gorgeous RGB LED guitar body he recently completed . Despite the considerable 300 x 300 mm build area of his custom 3D printer, [Joshendy] still had to design the guitar body in sections that could be bolted together after being printed in ABS. It took around 60 hours to run off all the parts, with the large central section taking the longest to print at 28 hours. With the generous application of heat-set inserts , the assembled guitar should be plenty strong. The white ABS of the guitar body helps diffuse the LEDs. While the skeletal plastic body of the guitar is certainly visually interesting in itself, it only makes up for half of the final look. Inside the central cavity, [Joshendy] has embedded two strips of RGB LEDs, a 128×64 OLED screen, and a custom PCB that plays host to a STM32L4 microcontroller the appropriate voltage regulators necessary to run it all on a battery pack. The board taps into the audio being produced by the guitar and uses a fast Fourier transform (FFT) to get the LEDs reacting to the beat. As demonstrated in the video after the break, you can use the screen to navigate through the different lighting modes in real-time right on the instrument itself. We covered the equally impressive large-format 3D printer that [Joshendy] used to produce this guitar earlier in the month, and it’s quite exciting to see the sort of things he’s printing on it already. This project has already set the bar very high, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.	6	5	[ { "comment_id": "6294513", "author": "mrehorst", "timestamp": "2020-11-15T00:04:12", "content": "How long does it stay in tune? I would expect the printed parts would be too flexible, and every time you tune one string you would throw the others off.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "rep...	1,760,373,287.709967
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/microos-is-immutable-linux/	MicroOS Is Immutable Linux	Al Williams	[ "Linux Hacks" ]	[ "btrfs", "linux", "microos", "opensuse" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/micro.png?w=800	Linux finds a lot of uses in computers that aren’t desktops. But there is a problem. What happens if your mission-critical control computer or retail kiosk gets an update and then fails? Happens all the time with Windows and it can happen with Linux, too. The openSUSE project has an answer: MicroOS which bills itself as immutable. Aimed at container deployment, the operating system promises atomic updates with no disk changes during runtime. If an update does break something, the BTRFS file system allows you to roll back to a previous snapshot. [Tyler] installs the OS and gives it a walkthrough in the video below. As [Tyler] found, there are not many applications installed by default. Instead, you are expected to install flatpaks so the applications live in their own containers, isolated from the operating system and each other. Of course, this isn’t for everyone. On the other hand, there is something seductive about having a computer that is very reliable even in the face of updates. Of course, you can do snapshots with BTRFS or ZFS anywhere those are supported, but unless you are very careful, you might have problems with dependencies for applications and the wrong update can still ruin your day. The OS supports GNOME or KDE, with system requirements that claim you can run it in 1GB of RAM and 20GB of disk space. We’d imagine you’ll be happier if you have more, of course. If you are interested in snapshot file systems for the PI, you can play with BTRFS on that platform. We imagine you could develop some super robust system using FUSE , too, if someone hasn’t already done it.	41	12	[ { "comment_id": "6294436", "author": "UnderSampled", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T19:16:47", "content": "Another approach is what Guix and Nix have been developing: functional package management. This creates a deterministic image by on the packages selected.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, ...	1,760,373,287.657626
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/what-is-worth-saving/	What Is Worth Saving?	Elliot Williams	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Rants", "Science", "Slider", "Space" ]	[ "Arecibo", "Arecibo Observatory", "newsletter", "Rant", "repair or replace" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/07/dx.jpg?w=800	When it rain, it pours. One of the primary support cables holding up the Arecibo Observatory dish in Puerto Rico has just snapped , leaving its already uncertain fate. It had been badly damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017, and after a few years of fundraising, the repairs were just about to begin on fixing up that damage, when the cable broke. Because the remaining cables are now holding increased weight, humans aren’t allowed to work on the dome until the risk of catastrophic failure has been ruled out — they’re doing inspection by drone. Arecibo Observatory has had quite a run . It started out life as part of a Cold War era ICBM-tracking radar, which explains why it can transmit as well as receive. And it was the largest transmitting dish the world had. It was used in SETI, provided the first clues of gravitational waves, and found the first repeating fast radio bursts. Its radar capabilities mean that it could be used in asteroid detection. There are a number of reasons, not the least of which its historic import, to keep it running. So when we ran this story, many commenters, fearing the worst, wrote in with their condolences. But some wrote in with outrage at the possibility that it might not be repaired. The usual suspects popped up: failure to spend enough on science, or on infrastructure. From the sidelines, however, and probably until further structural studies are done, we have no idea how much a repair of Arecibo will cost. After that, we have to decide if it’s worth it. Per a 2018 grant, the NSF was splitting the $20 M repair and maintenance bill with a consortium led by the University of Central Florida that will administer the site. With further damage, that might be an underestimate, but we don’t know how much of one yet. When do you decide to pull the plug on something like this? Although the biggest, Arecibo isn’t the only transmitter out there. The next largest transmitters are part of Deep Space Network, though, and are busy keeping touch with spacecraft all around our solar system . For pure receiving, China’s FAST is bigger and better . And certainly, we’ve learned a lot about radio telescopes since Arecibo was designed. I’m not saying that we won’t shed a tear if Arecibo doesn’t get repaired, but it’s not the case that the NSF’s budget has been hit dramatically, or that they’re unaware of the comparative value of various big-ticket astronomy projects. Without being in their shoes, and having read through the thousands of competing grant proposals, it’s hard to say that the money spent to prop up a 70 year old telescope wouldn’t be better spent on something else. 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 !	72	25	[ { "comment_id": "6294407", "author": "Col. Panek", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T15:25:00", "content": "Sometimes you have to let go of your vintage machine and get a new daily driver, because a careful cost analysis tells you the numbers just don’t add up.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "r...	1,760,373,288.09738
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/turn-by-turn-smart-glasses-give-you-direction/	Turn-by-turn Smart Glasses Give You Direction	Al Williams	[ "gps hacks", "Wearable Hacks" ]	[ "gps", "iphone", "navigation", "smartglasses", "swift" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…/glass.png?w=800	[SamsonMarch] designs electronic products by day and — apparently — does it in his spare time, too. His latest is a pair of really cool shades that give him turn-by-turn directions as he walks around town. Unlike some smart glasses, these get around the difficult problem of building a heads-up display by using a very simple interface based on colored LEDs visible to your peripheral vision in the temples of the frames. The glasses themselves look great; designed in Fusion 360 and cut out of wood, no one would give them a second glance. [Sam] says you could 3D print them, too, but we think the wood looks best even if the stock is a cheap bamboo cutting board. He also cut the lenses out of acrylic. The slots in the temples are where the action is, though. An iPhone app takes input and talks to Apple services to get directions. A lot of thought went into making the app work even though the phone keeps trying to put it to sleep. Each PCB hosts an RGB LED for indicating left/right turn and destination. They talk to the app using BLE and include accelerometers which put the boards — powered by coin cells — into sleep mode when no movement is detected. Overall a fun and good looking project. There are even covers to hide the boards during normal use. The files you need to reproduce it are on GitHub. Usually, when we see smart glasses, they have some sort of screen which is harder to do. Of course, it is impossible to avoid comparisons to Google Glass . View post on imgur.com	22	12	[ { "comment_id": "6294371", "author": "Hans Peter", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T12:30:21", "content": "first I was ‘Oh – Cool project’ then it just continued to get bigger and bigger.then: DA14531 – crazy part! small package and BLE… what’s not to like here?and then: is that a FLEX PCB?? whaaaat?and swi...	1,760,373,287.864278
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/14/dremel-3d20-printer-gets-modern-overhaul/	Dremel 3D20 Printer Gets Modern Overhaul	Tom Nardi	[ "3d Printer hacks" ]	[ "dremel", "duet controller", "ethernet cable", "rj45" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…0_feat.jpg?w=800	Dremel’s attempt at breaking into the 3D printer market back in 2014 was respectable, if not particularly exciting. Rather than design their own printer, their 3D20 “Idea Builder” was a lightly customized Flashforge Dreamer (itself a Makerbot Replicator clone) with a new warranty and support contract tacked on. It wasn’t necessarily the 3D printer of choice for the hacker and maker crowd, but it was a fairly solid option for folks who wanted a turn-key experience. [Chris Chimienti] says he got about 1,000 hours of printing out of his 3D20 before it gave up the ghost. Given the age of the machine and its inherent limitations, he decided to use the Dremel’s carcass as the base for a very impressive custom 3D printer with all the modern bells and whistles. He kept the enclosure, rods, bearings, and the stepper motors, but pretty much everything else was tossed out. Some of the replacements are off-the-shelf parts, but it’s the custom designed elements on this build that really help set it apart. A print bed strong enough to park your car on. Under the machine, [Chris] has installed a new power supply and a Duet 2 WiFi controller which itself is connected to the new LCD control panel on the front. There’s an external case fan to keep the electronics cool, but otherwise things look a lot neater under the hood than they did originally. Moving upwards, he’s designed a gorgeous adjustable print bed and a new extruder assembly that cleverly uses RJ45 jacks and Ethernet cables to connect back to the control board. All told, the custom components have taken this once relatively mid-range 3D printer and turned it into something that looks like it wouldn’t be out of place on the International Space Station. While custom 3D printer builds like this still trickle in from time to time , we’re seeing far fewer now than we did back when machines like the 3D20 hit the market. Most people are more than satisfied with commercial entry-level desktop printers, and aren’t looking for yet another project to tinker with. There’s nothing wrong with that, though we certainly wouldn’t complain if the recent interest into more advanced high-temperature filaments triggered something of a bespoke 3D printer renaissance.	8	4	[ { "comment_id": "6294356", "author": "Laurens", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T09:58:37", "content": "We used to have one of these at my DIY store.I don’t think we sold even one…", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6294380", "author": "Johann", "t...	1,760,373,287.575747
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/haunted-tv-does-mirror-scares-with-raspberry-pi/	Haunted TV Does Mirror Scares With Raspberry Pi	Lewin Day	[ "Holiday Hacks" ]	[ "halloween", "raspberry pi", "television" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…otv800.jpg?w=800	Hallowe’en may be over for another year, but that just means you’ve got more time to prepare your build for next time. [gocivici] has a fun twist on the classic mirror scare that might be just up your alley. The build starts with an old black and white TV, hooked up to a Raspberry Pi 3. The Pi films the scene in front of the television through a camera secreted into the screen’s headphone jack, and displays it on screen. The camera feed is run through OpenCV, which runs face and eye detection algorithms to determine when a person is looking at the screen. Based on a basic timer script, when a viewer has looked long enough, a ghostly apparition is displayed, lurking behind the viewer. When the user looks over their shoulder, the apparition quickly disappears, as per the classical horror trope . It’s a fun build that would make an excellent set piece for your next Hallowe’en party. For extra effect, be sure to secret it down a dark hallway with some IR LEDs illuminating the scene for the camera only. If you prefer something with a little more whimsy, consider these animated singing pumpkins instead . Video after the break.	0	0	[]	1,760,373,288.241473
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/this-week-in-security-platypus-git-bat-tcl-tvs-and-lessons-from-online-gaming/	This Week In Security: Platypus, Git.bat, TCL TVs, And Lessons From Online Gaming	Jonathan Bennett	[ "Hackaday Columns", "News", "Security Hacks", "Slider" ]	[ "PLATYPUS", "TCL", "This Week in Security" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rkarts.jpg?w=800	Git’s Large File System is a reasonable solution to a bit of a niche problem. How do you handle large binary files that need to go into a git repository? It might be pictures or video that is part of a project’s documentation, or even a demonstration dataset. Git-lfs’s solution is to replace the binary files with a text-based pointer to where the real file is hosted. That’s not important to understanding this vulnerability , though. The problem is that git-lfs will call the main git binary as part of its operation, and when it does so, the full path is not used. On a Unix system, that’s not a problem. The $PATH variable is used to determine where to look for binaries. When git is run, /usr/bin/git is automagically run. On a Windows system, however, executing a binary name without a path will first look in the current directory, and if a matching executable file is not found, only then will the standard locations be checked. You may already see the problem. If a repository contains a git.exe , git.bat , or another git.* file that Windows thinks is executable, git-lfs will execute that file instead of the intended git binary. This means simply checking out a malicious repository gets you immediate code execution. A standard install of git for Windows, prior to 2.29.2.2, contains the vulnerable plugin by default, so go check that you’re updated! Then remember that there’s one more wrinkle to this vulnerability. How closely do you check the contents of a git download before you run the next git command? Even with a patched git-lfs version, if you clone a malicious repository, then run any other git command, you still run the local git.* file. The real solution is pushing the local directory higher up the path chain. Intel’s PLATYPUS Intel has a new, interesting vulnerability fix in their processors, PLATYPUS . A series of OS updates, firmware releases, and even microcode patches have been released to deal with this new issue. We can take a look at the whitepaper (PDF) and decide, just how serious of an issue is PLATYPUS? The mechanism at the center of PLATYPUS is Intel’s RAPL, the Running Average Power Limit interface. Put simply, it’s a real-time power meter for Intel CPUs. In the Linux kernel, that interface was exposed to unpriviledged users. Now what could an unpriviledged user do with such a power meter? Apparently one of the demonstration attacks was able to map out the randomized Linux kernel address space, in about 20 seconds. From a privileged (root level) attack position, the secrets in Intel’s SGX Enclave can be discovered. How? It’s essentially the same problem as TEMPEST from the WWII era. Anything that leaks information about the internal state of a cryptography device can be used to attack the cryptography. In this case, it’s not radio emissions, but information emission in the form of power usage. There are some other clever elements to this story, like abusing a seperate bug to single-step processor functions, giving an attacker much finer resolution in their data gathering. It’s likely that in the next few months, we’ll see news about the PLATYPUS attack being used again AMD chips, and possibly even ARM processors. TCL TVs There’s an old adage, to never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple negligence. It’s unclear whether the problems that [sick codes] and [John Jackson] in certain TCL TVs can be fully explained by negligence. Before we speculate, let’s cover what was actually found. First, the target system is a line of TCL-branded smart TVs running Android. As many of us would, [sick codes] started with an NMAP scan, looking for open ports. Fourteen. There were fourteen open ports, and not standard services, but semi-random high level ports. Most of them running HTTP/HTTPS services that are probably API connections of some sort. The most interesting port they found was 7978, where the entire root filesystem was available. That one got assigned CVE-2020-27403. A second vulnerability, CVE-2020-28055, is a folder permissions problem. The TCL vendor folder is world-writable, meaning that other apps could inject code there. I managed to talk to [sick codes] himself about the issue, and he pointed out an app called TerminalManager_Remote as being particularly interesting. It seems to be a custom implementation of the TR-069 protocol, which is intended for remote management of ISP hardware. Why exactly that protocol is being used for smart televisions is unknown. One could speculate about how much information is being captured and sent back to TCL. At the very least, we can say that there is the potential for abusive behavior, given what we know about the software running on the unit. There’s enough interesting elements to this story that I have ordered a TCL television, and plan to do some work on this topic myself. Keep an eye out for updates, and likely more CVEs to come. Online Gaming and Security I discovered a wonderful trio of articles by [Dan Petro] of Bishop Fox. He takes a look at the cheating issues in the world of online gaming, and which anti-cheat measures have worked and which haven’t, and then applies the lessons leaned to web application security. He makes the same observation that many of our readers have, the games industry has a weird love of using spyware for cheat prevention. Article one is all about hidden information, and where the rules are actually enforced in a game. If the entire game map is sent to the clients, then it’s inevitable that a cheat can show the entire map to the player. Similarly, if the client is trusted to enforce game logic, then a client-side cheat can easily modify that logic. The obvious application is not to trust anything that runs on the user’s hardware. It’s far too easy to open the web console on a modern browser, and look closely at every bit of information that has been sent to the browser. Don’t trust the client. Part Two is about detecting and banning bots. Aim-bots and macros are the two big problems in the gaming world. The preferred way to detect these is through “anomaly detection”. Is a certain gamer performing too many perfect inputs too quickly? Do they have a nearly impossible level of accuracy? You may recognize the similarity to Google’s reCAPTCHA program. In both cases, the system is looking for a “tell”, a giveaway that the user isn’t entirely human. The last installment is all about race conditions. The example is how a player experiencing network lag seems to teleport around the map, and is impossible to hit. Some unscrupulous players went so far as to install a “lag switch” to intentionally trigger this behavior. The solution is using techniques like mutexes and enforcable syncronization rules to guarantee expected behavior. All told, the articles were an unexpected take on the philosophy of security, but a fun read. Also on Tap Earlier this week, Al Williams covered etherify . It’s a clever hack that uses an ethernet port as a makeshift transmission antenna. Bryan Cockfield wrote up a clever attack against Ubuntu where a user could crash a system service, which fools the system into running the first-boot user creation dialogs again, allowing local priviledge escalation.	9	3	[ { "comment_id": "6294183", "author": "Ewald", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T16:07:31", "content": "thanks for the article, i couldn’t help but spotting two typo’s, taxt-based & anomoly", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294192", "author": "Ba...	1,760,373,288.940258
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/easy-carrier-board-for-the-compute-module-4-shows-you-can-do-it-too/	Easy Carrier Board For The Compute Module 4 Shows You Can Do It, Too	Lewin Day	[ "Raspberry Pi" ]	[ "cm4", "compute module 4", "raspberry pi" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rry800.jpg?w=800	The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 has got many excited, with a raft of new features bringing exciting possibilities. However, for those used to the standard Raspberry Pi line, switching over to the Compute Module form factor can be daunting. To show just how easy it is to get started, [timonsku] set about producing a quick and dirty carrier board for the module at home . The Twitter thread goes into further detail on the design of the board. The carrier features HDMI, USB-A and USB-C ports, as well as a microSD slot. It’s all put together on a single-sided copper PCB that [timonsku] routed at home. The board was built as an exercise to show that high-speed signals and many-pin connectors can be dealt with by the home gamer, with [timonsku] sharing tips on how to get the job done with cheap, accessible tools. The board may look rough around the edges, but that’s the point. [timonsku] doesn’t recommend producing PCBs at home when multi-layer designs can be had cheaply from overseas. Instead, it serves to show how little is really required to design a carrier board that works. Even four-layer boards can be had for under $10 apiece now, so there’s never been a better time to up your game and get designing. For those eager to learn more about the CM4, we’ve got a full breakdown to get you up to speed!	25	11	[ { "comment_id": "6294144", "author": "Bootdsc", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T13:00:03", "content": "That’s some excellent homebrewing.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294151", "author": "jpa", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T13:23:27", ...	1,760,373,289.220297
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/tracking-drone-flight-path-via-video-using-cameras-we-can-get/	Tracking Drone Flight Path Via Video, Using Cameras We Can Get	Roger Cheng	[ "digital cameras hacks", "drone hacks" ]	[ "3d tracking", "airplane tracking", "anti-drone", "digital camera", "drone", "flight tracking", "geometry", "ieee iros", "IROS", "video", "video camera", "video processing" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…16x9-1.jpg?w=800	Calculating three-dimensional position from two-dimensional projections are literal textbook examples in geometry, but those examples are the “assume a spherical cow” type of simplifications. Applicable only in an ideal world where the projections are made with mathematically perfect cameras at precisely known locations with infinite resolution. Making things work in the real world is a lot harder. But not only have [Jingtong Li, Jesse Murray et al.] worked through the math of tracking a drone’s 3D flight from 2D video, they’ve released their MultiViewUnsynch software on GitHub so we can all play with it. Instead of laboratory grade optical instruments, the cameras used in these experiments are available at our local consumer electronics store. A table in their paper Reconstruction of 3D Flight Trajectories from Ad-Hoc Camera Networks (arXiv:2003.04784) listed several Huawei cell phone cameras, a few Sony digital cameras, and a GoPro 3. Video cameras don’t need to be placed in any particular arrangement, because positions are calculated from their video footage. Correlating overlapping footage from dissimilar cameras is a challenge all in itself, since these cameras record at varying framerates ranging from 25 to 59.94 frames per second. Furthermore, these cameras all have rolling shutters, which adds an extra variable as scanlines in a frame are taken at slightly different times. This is not an easy problem. There is a lot of interest in tracking drone flights, especially those flying where they are not welcome . And not everyone have the budget for high-end equipment or the permission to emit electromagnetic signals. MultiViewUnsynch is not quite there yet, as it tracks a single target and video files were processed afterwards. The eventual goal is to evolve this capability to track multiple targets on live video, and hopefully help reduce frustrating public embarrassments . [ IROS 2020 Presentation video (duration 14:45) requires free registration, available until at least Nov. 25th 2020.]	4	2	[ { "comment_id": "6294128", "author": "BrightBlueJim", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T11:57:05", "content": "Since this research was done to advance the state of the art of surveillance, what we need now are suggestions for countering such techniques. For every cat there are many mice.", "parent_id": ...	1,760,373,288.888973
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/domino-clock-tells-the-time-in-style/	Domino Clock Tells The Time In Style	Lewin Day	[ "clock hacks" ]	[ "clock", "domino", "dominos" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ino800.jpg?w=800	It seems there are as many ways to display the time as there are ways to measure it in the first place. [Kothe] saw a fancy designer domino clock, and wanted a piece of the action without the high price tag. Thus, the natural solution was to go the DIY route. An Arduino Nano is the heart of the build, paired with a DS1307 RTC for accurate timekeeping. The case of the clock consists of a 3D printed housing, fitted with layers of lasercut acrylic. Behind this, a smattering of WS2812B addressable LEDs are fitted, which shine through the translucent grey plastic of the front panel. This enables each LED to light up a dot of the domino, while remaining hidden when switched off. Reading the time is as simple as counting the dots on the dominoes. The first domino represents hours, from 1 to 12, while the second and third dominoes represent the minutes. As a timepiece, the domino clock serves well as a stylish decor piece, and could also be a fun way to teach kids about electronics and telling the time. Makers do love a good timepiece, and our clock tag is always overflowing with fresh hacks on a regular basis. If you’ve got your own fancy build coming together at home, you know who to call!	11	6	[ { "comment_id": "6294070", "author": "Jack", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T07:59:02", "content": "what is time ?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294106", "author": "John", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T10:48:44", "content": "9:5...	1,760,373,289.261417
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/rotating-magnetic-fields-explained/	Rotating Magnetic Fields, Explained	Al Williams	[ "Science" ]	[ "ac motor", "RMF", "rotating magnetic field", "tesla", "three-phase" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…11/mag.png?w=800	If you made a motor out of a magnet, a wire coil, and some needles, you probably remember that motors and generators depend on a rotating magnetic field. Once you know how it works, the concept is pretty simple, but did you ever wonder who worked it all out to start with? Tesla figures into it, unsurprisingly. But what about Michael Dobrowolsky or Walter Bailey? Not common names to most people. [Learn Engineering] has a slick video covering the history and theory of rotating magnetic field machines , and you can watch it below. Motors operated on direct current were not very practical at the time and caused a jerky motion. However, Tesla and another inventor named Ferraris realized that AC current could cause a rotating magnetic field without a moving commutator. Tesla’s motor used two AC currents with a 90-degree phase difference produced by his two-phase generator. Ferraris used a single phase along with an inductor to create the phase difference. However, two-phase motors have limitations and Dobrowolsky’s three-phase design quickly replaced two-phase designs. The video has many animations to help understand how motors work. It also explains why the magnetic poles of a motor winding appear opposite of the poles in a permanent magnet. Will you be ready to design the next super-efficient electric motor after watching this video? No. But you will have a better understanding of what really goes on inside an AC motor. If you send electricity to a coil near a magnet, you can make a shaft rotate. If that shaft rotates a magnet and a coil, you get electricity. So, while not ideal, many generators can work as motors and vice versa . If you think the whole world runs on three-phase AC, you should read about the stubborn persistence of two-phase .	11	5	[ { "comment_id": "6294029", "author": "Paul", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T04:08:35", "content": "Uh oh. Here they come. You’ve triggered the RodinOverunityTelsa wingnuts. Take cover.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6294086", "author": "Hans", ...	1,760,373,288.776329
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/bringing-an-ibm-model-f-into-2020/	Bringing An IBM Model F Into 2020	Jenny List	[ "Peripherals Hacks" ]	[ "ibm", "IBM model F", "keyboard", "Model F" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	We know that the Hackaday family includes many enthusiasts for quality keyboards, and thus mention of the fabled ‘boards of yore such as the IBM Model F is sure to set a few pulses racing. Few of us are as lucky as [Brennon], who received the familial IBM PC-XT complete with its sought-after keyboard . This Model F has a manufacture date in March 1983, and as a testament to its sturdy design was still in one piece with working electronics. It was however in an extremely grimy condition that necessitated a teardown and deep clean. Thus we are lucky enough to get a peek inside, and see just how much heavy engineering went into the construction of an IBM keyboard before the days of the feather-light membrane devices that so many of us use today. There follows a tale of deep cleaning, with a Dremel and brush, and then a liberal application of Goo Gone. The keycaps had a long bath in soapy water to remove the grime, and we’re advised to more thoroughly dry them should we ever try this as some remaining water deep inside them caused corrosion on some of the springs. The PC-XT interface is now so ancient as to have very little readily available in the way of adapters, so at first a PS/2 adapter was used along with a USB to PS/2 converter. Finally though a dedicated PC-XT to USB converter was procured, allowing easy typing on a modern computer. This isn’t our first look at the Model F , but if you can’t afford a mechanical keyboard don’t worry. Simply download a piece of software that emulates the sound of one .	41	11	[ { "comment_id": "6294000", "author": "Michael", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T00:15:52", "content": "It may be very solid but it was a losy keyboard to use. Clack, clack, clack and the return key was terrible. Too small and in an awkward place.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ ...	1,760,373,289.076292
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/highly-sensitive-camera-makes-a-great-night-vision-scope/	Highly Sensitive Camera Makes A Great Night Vision Scope	Lewin Day	[ "digital cameras hacks" ]	[ "low light", "nightvision", "runcam" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ion800.jpg?w=800	Traditional military-grade nightvision gear has a history stretching back to the Second World War, relying on photomultiplier tubes to help soldiers see in the dark. Such devices have trickled down to the civilian market in intervening years, however other simpler techniques can work too. [Happy_Mad_Scientist] whipped up a simple nightvision monocular using a very sensitive camera instead. Due to the high noise, still photos don’t do it justice. The video quality is highly impressive for a system running with no IR illumination. The camera in question is the Runcam Night Eagle 2 , prized for its 0.00001 lux sensitivity. Black and white only, its capable of providing vision in moonlight and starlight conditions without external illumination. In this project, it’s hooked up to a monocle display designed for use with drone FPV setups. With lithium batteries and a charge circuit hooked up, and everything stuffed inside a compact 3D printed case, the final result is a portable, pocket sized night vision device for under $200 USD. [Happy_Mad_Scientist] notes that in starlight conditions, it provides an advantage over other nighttime Airsoft players relying on IR illumination to see in the dark. We can imagine it would perform well in concert with a bright IR headlamp for those times when there’s simply no ambient light available – particularly indoors. If your tastes are more military-spec, consider this teardown of a high-end Norweigan device . Video after the break.	18	8	[ { "comment_id": "6293971", "author": "AKA the A", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T21:47:14", "content": "a comparison of a modified high(er)-end mirrorless camera and Gen3 NVGhttps://youtu.be/CFDNEjJ0cME?t=374the same modified camera VS a prob. one of the best commercial digital NVGs available (costs $800-...	1,760,373,289.00442
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/wireless-earphones-and-getting-them-back-after-they-fall-on-tram-tracks/	Wireless Earphones And Getting Them Back After They Fall On Tram Tracks	Maya Posch	[ "Lifehacks", "News", "Wireless Hacks" ]	[ "earbuds", "earphones", "wireless earbuds" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	Over the past years, the trend has become to ditch anything with wires. This has led to many people dropping wired earphones and headphones for wireless (Bluetooth) versions. Yet along with the freedom from having the wires snagged on something and having earphones painfully torn out of your ears comes the very real risk of having them drop out of your ears to land potentially very inconvenient. In Japan this has led to a big issue for railway companies, where throngs of commuters will often accidentally drop possessions onto the tracks. Staff members will then use a mechanical claw (‘magic hand’) to fetch them without having to risk their life by jumping down. With small items such as wireless earphones, this is however not so easy. With 947 cases of dropped earphones in the period of July-September in just the Tokyo area, this has led to desperate staff members coming up with new methods of easily retrieving the small gadgets . Solutions range from putting something sticky like tape at the end of a stick, to modifying vacuum cleaners. Most recently Tokyo railway company JR East has collaborated with Panasonic to develop a vacuum cleaner-like device that is especially designed to easily retrieve such small items from the tracks, according to the Japan Times article. The embedded video (also found after the break) from a Japanese broadcaster describes the issue in detail, along with tips on how to properly wear earphones so that they’re far less likely to fall out when you’re waiting on the tram or walking down the street. While it’s possible to fetch your dropped wireless earphones from the tracks, having someone step on it right after it falls out of your ear on the street is less easy to recover from. https://youtu.be/_5T2RwpRsc0	34	11	[ { "comment_id": "6294316", "author": "mrehorst", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T04:01:19", "content": "A magnet on the end of a stick should work….", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6294322", "author": "Ren", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T0...	1,760,373,288.846498
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/robotics-club-teaches-soldering/	Robotics Club Teaches Soldering	Al Williams	[ "Tool Hacks" ]	[ "hot air", "hot air soldering", "microscope", "osu", "reflow", "reflow soldering", "smd", "smd soldering", "soldering" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…1/smd0.png?w=800	Oregon State University must be a pretty good place to go to school if you want to hack on robots. Their robotics club, which looks active and impressive, has a multi-part video series on how to solder surface mount components that is worth watching. [Anthony] is the team lead for their Mars Rover team and he does the job with some pretty standard-looking tools. The soldering station in use is a sub-$100 Aoyue with both a regular iron and hot air. There’s also a cheap USB microscope that looks like it has a screen, but is covered in blue tape to hold it to an optical microscope. So no exotic tools that you’d need a university affiliation to match. We agree with [Anthony’s] order of parts. He does components that only have bottom pads first. Then he does the remaining difficult multi-lead components followed by the passives. However, for learning, it would probably be best to get used to soldering some easy components first. He uses hot air to do the components with bottom-only pads. This is a great way to do it, although we’ve sometimes used nearby pads to inject heat under a part when we didn’t have hot air handy or were too lazy to use it. [Anthony’s] method is to tin the pads and then remove most of it with solder wick. He uses some extra solder to the wick to prime it, although we often use flux for the same reason. He uses the hot air gun but not solder paste, so you don’t have to worry about storing paste to use these techniques. Doing these parts first makes it easier to control the hot air flow since you don’t have to worry about dislodging other nearby parts you haven’t placed yet. He doesn’t use hot air for the other components that have exposed leads. Even if you’ve done a lot of SMD soldering, you can always pick up new tips and tricks. There’s lots of flux, of course, and careful alignment before you secure the component down. We know the feeling of leaving a bad solder joint long enough to go secure the other pads and then cleaning it up at the end. We figure [Anthony] might do well at our annual SMD Challenge although we admit using our tools is what makes it a challenge. Of course, the big trick isn’t always building something new with surface mount components. It is repairing them .	25	8	[ { "comment_id": "6294285", "author": "John", "timestamp": "2020-11-14T00:17:37", "content": "What I’d like some tips on is how to carefully and non-destructively pull up the double decker USB3 ports on the Raspberry Pi 4B without pulling up any pads. Especially those ground pins never never NEVER wa...	1,760,373,289.317934
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/artificial-sun-lighting-via-old-satellite-dishes/	“Artificial Sun” Lighting Via Old Satellite Dishes	Lewin Day	[ "LED Hacks" ]	[ "daylight", "led", "light", "lighting", "sunlight" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…esu800.jpg?w=800	Real sunlight is a beautiful thing, but due to the vagaries of Earth’s orbit and local weather systems, it’s not available all the time. [Matt] decided this wasn’t good enough, and set about building a rig to replicate the sun’s rays as closely as possible. Rayleigh scattering is emulated by passing the light through a glass chamber filled with soapy water – taking advantage of the Tyndall effect. The great distance between the Sun and the Earth means that the sun’s rays are essentially parallel from our local vantage point. Replicating this, and the soothing nature of a blue sky, were [Matt]’s primary goals with the project. To achieve this, an old satellite dish was pressed into service as a parabolic reflector, coated with mirror-finish vinyl strips. A 500W white LED with a good color rendering index was fitted at the focal point, outfitted with a water cooling system to shed heat. With a point source at its focal point, the parabolic reflector bounces the light such that it the rays are parallel, giving the sense that the light source is coming from an effectivelyl infinite distance away. To then achieve the blue sky effect, the light was then passed through a glass chamber filled with soapy water, which scatters the light using the Tyndall effect. This mimics the Rayleigh scattering in Earth’s atmosphere. The final result is amazing, with [Matt] shooting footage that appears to be filmed in genuine daylight – despite being shot at night or on rainy days. He also features a cutdown build that can be achieved in a far cheaper and compact form, using Fresnel lenses and blue film. We’ve featured [Matt]’s daylight experiments before, though we’re amazed at the new level reached. Video after the break.	53	14	[ { "comment_id": "6294277", "author": "JR", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T23:30:09", "content": "Has anyone had any luck building tyndall diffusers by mixing small amounts of fumed silica into clear epoxy? The particle diameter looks like it would work out well based on the scattering equations.I’m planni...	1,760,373,289.164608
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/fran-finds-four-foot-alphanumeric-displays-from-1910/	Fran Finds Four Foot Alphanumeric Displays From 1910	Chris Lott	[ "Retrocomputing" ]	[ "20th Century", "alphanumeric display", "computer history", "incandescent lamp", "tungsten" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…eature.png?w=800	Video blogger and display technology guru [Fran Blanche] has discovered a splendid retro-tech alphanumeric display from 1910. (Video, embedded below.) We have always enjoyed her forays into old and unusual displays, including her project researching and reverse engineering an Apollo DSKY unit . This time [Fran] has dug up an amazing billboard from the early 20th century. It was built by the Rice Electric Display Company of Dayton Ohio, and operated in Herald Square for about two years. Requiring $400,000 in 1910-US-dollars to build, this was clearly an Herculean effort for its day and no doubt is the first example of selling advertising time on a computer-controller billboard. It boasts characters that are about 1.3 m tall and 1 m wide which can display letters, numbers, and various punctuation and symbols. These are arrayed into a 3-line 18-character matrix that is about 27 x 4 meters, and that’s up only a third of the total billboard, itself an illuminated and dynamic work of art. Diagram Depicting the 3×18 Character Display There are quite a few tantalizing details in the video, but a few that jumped out at us are the 20,000 light bulbs, the 40 Hz display update rate, the 150 km of wire used and the three month long installation time. We would really like to learn more about these two 7.5 kW motorized switch controllers, how were they programmed, how were the character segments arranged, what were their shapes? In the video, you can see triangles arranged in some pattern not unlike more modern sixteen segment displays, although as [Fran] points out, Mr Rice’s characters are more pleasing. We hope [Fran] can tease out more details for a future video. If you have any ideas or knowledge about this display, please put them in the comments section below. Spoiler alert after the video… …this display is no longer standing.	19	15	[ { "comment_id": "6294243", "author": "BillSF9c", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T20:39:28", "content": "Fran… a class act, in a class by herself. Strange and wonderful, and the tech too!Our lil world would be much the poorer without her.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { ...	1,760,373,289.471267
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/dsp-spreadsheet-the-goertzel-algorithm-is-fouriers-simpler-cousin/	DSP Spreadsheet: The Goertzel Algorithm Is Fourier’s Simpler Cousin	Al Williams	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Skills", "Slider" ]	[ "digital signal processing", "dsp", "fft", "Fourier", "Goertzel", "spreadsheet" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…anner1.png?w=800	You probably have at least a nodding familiarity with the Fourier transform, a mathematical process for transforming a time-domain signal into a frequency domain signal. In particular, for computers, we don’t really have a nice equation so we use the discrete version of the transform which takes a series of measurements at regular intervals. If you need to understand the entire frequency spectrum of a signal or you want to filter portions of the signal, this is definitely the tool for the job. However, sometimes it is more than you need. For example, consider tuning a guitar string. You only need to know if one frequency is present or if it isn’t. If you are decoding TouchTones, you only need to know if two of eight frequencies are present. You don’t care about anything else. A Fourier transform can do either of those jobs. But if you go that route you are going to do a lot of math to compute things you don’t care about just so you can pick out the one or two pieces you do care about. That’s the idea behind the Goertzel. It is essentially a fast Fourier transform algorithm stripped down to compute just one frequency band of interest. The math is much easier and you can usually implement it faster and smaller than a full transform, even on small CPUs. Fourier in Review Just to review, a typical system that uses a Fourier transform will read a number of samples at some clock frequency using an analog to digital converter. For example, you might read 1024 samples at 1 MHz. Each sample will be 1 microsecond after the previous sample, and you’ll get just over a millisecond’s worth of data. The transform will also produce 1024 results, often known as buckets. Each bucket will represent 1/1024 of the 1 MHz. Because of the Nyquist limit, the top half of the results are not very useful, so realistically, the first 512 buckets will represent 0 Hz to 500 kHz. Here’s a spreadsheet (after all, this is the DSP Spreadsheet series of articles) that uses the XLMiner Analysis Addon to do Fourier transforms. The sample frequency is 1024Hz so each bucket (column G) is worth 1 Hz. Column B generates two sine waves together at 100 Hz and 20 Hz. We talked about generating signals like this last year. The FFT data in column C are complex numbers and they do not update live. You have to use the XLMiner add on to recompute it if you change frequencies. The magnitude of the numbers appear in column F and you’ll see that the buckets that correspond to the two input frequencies will be much higher than the other buckets. One Bucket of Many If our goal was to find out if the signal contained the 100 Hz signal, we could just compute cell F102, if we knew how. That’s exactly what the Goertzel does. Here’s the actual formula for each bucket in a discrete Fourier transform (courtesy of Wikipedia): If you apply Euler’s formula you get: Mathematically, N is the block size, k is the bucket number of interest, x n is the nth sample. Since n varies from 0 to N-1, you can see this expression uses all of the data to compute each bucket’s value. The trick, then, is to find the minimum number of steps we need to compute just one bucket. Keep in mind that for a full transform, you have to do this math for each bucket. Here we only need to do it for one. However, you do have to sum up everything. Cut to the Chase If you do a bit of manipulation, you can reduce it to the following steps: Precompute the frequency ratio in radians which is 2Πk/N Compute the cosine of the value you found in step 1 (call this C); also compute the sine (call this S) For each bucket in sequence, take the value of the previous bucket (P) and the bucket before that (R) and compute bucket=2CP-R and then add the current input value Now the last bucket will be set up to nearly give you the value for the kth bucket. To find the real part, multiply the final bucket by C and subtract P. For the imaginary part, multiply S times the final bucket value Now you want to find the magnitude of the complex number formed by the real and imaginary parts. That’s easy to do if you convert to polar notation (find the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the real and imaginary part). Of course, there’s a spreadsheet for this, too . With the limitations of a spreadsheet, it does a lot of extra calculations, so to make up for it, column D hides all the rows that don’t matter. In a real program you would simply not do those calculations (columns E-G) except for the last time through the loop (that is, on each row). You need a few samples to prime the pump, so the first two rows are grayed out. There are other optimizations you’d make, too. For example, the cosine term is doubled each time through the loop but not on the final calculation. In a real program, you’d do that calculation once, but for a small spreadsheet, there’s not much difference. Column B is the input data, of course. Column C is the running total of the buckets. Columns E-G on the last row represents the final computations to get the bucket k’s complex result. The real place to look for the results in around L11. That part of row 11 picks up the one visible part of columns E-G and also squares the magnitude since we are looking for power. There’s also a threshold and a cell that tells you if the frequency (at L1) is present or not. Try changing the generated frequencies and you’ll see that it does a good job of detecting frequencies near 20 Hz. You can adjust the threshold to get a tighter or broader response, but the difference between 20 Hz and 19 or 21 Hz is pretty marked. Real Code Since a spreadsheet doesn’t really give you a feel for how you’d really do this in a conventional programming language here is some pseudo-code: omega_r = cos(2.0pik/N); omega_r2=2omega_r; omega_i = sin(2.0pik/N); P = 0.0; S = 0.0; for (n=0; n<N; ++n) { y = x(n) + omega_r2P -S; S = P; P = y; } realy = omega_rP - S; // note that hear P=last result and S is the one before imagy=omega_iP; magy=abs(complex(realy,imagy)); // mag=sqrt(r^2+i^2); Since you can precompute everything outside of the loop, this is pretty easy to formulate in even a simple processor. You could even skip the square root if you are only making comparisons and want to square the result anyway. Tradeoffs Don’t forget, everything is a tradeoff. The sampling rate and the number of samples determine how long it takes to read each sample and also how broad the frequency range for the bucket is. If you are having to probe for lots of frequencies, you might be better off with a well-implemented Fourier transform library. There are other ways to optimize both algorithms. For example, you can limit the amount of data you process by selecting the right sample rate and block size. Or, instead of using a Fourier transform, consider a Hartley transform which doesn’t use complex numbers. In Practice I doubt very seriously anyone needs to do this kind of logic in a spreadsheet. But like the other DSP spreadsheet models, it is very easy to examine and experiment with the algorithm laid out this way. Developing intuition about algorithms is at least as important as the rote recollection of them — maybe it is even more important. The Goertzel is an easy way to sidestep a more complicated algorithm for many common cases. It is a tool you should have in your box of tricks.	30	10	[ { "comment_id": "6294226", "author": "Should be Matt from \"Stand up maths\" YouTube channel but isn't", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T19:15:45", "content": "Hideously complicated spreadsheets! Me like.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6295089", ...	1,760,373,289.577292
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/hackaday-podcast-093-hot-and-fast-raspberry-pi-dr-seuss-drone-mm-mass-meter-and-fpga-tape-backup/	Hackaday Podcast 093: Hot And Fast Raspberry Pi, Dr. Seuss Drone, M&M Mass Meter, And FPGA Tape Backup	Mike Szczys	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Podcasts" ]	[ "Hackaday Podcast" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ophone.jpg?w=800	Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams wrangle the epic hacks that crossed our screens this week. Elliot ran deep on overclocking all three flavors of the Raspberry Pi 4 this week and discovered that heat sinks rule the day. Mike exposes his deep love of candy-coated chocolates while drooling over a machine that can detect when the legume is missing from a peanut M&M. Core memory is so much more fun when LEDs come to play, one tiny wheel is the power-saving secret for a very strange multirotor drone, and there’s more value in audio cassette data transfer than you might think — let this FPGA show you how it’s done. 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 (~70 MB) Places to follow Hackaday podcasts: Google Podcasts iTunes Spotify Stitcher RSS Episode 092 Show Notes: New This Week: The BYTE Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2020 Hackaday Prize Tensions High After Second Failed Cable At Arecibo New Contest: Say Goodbye To 2020 Interesting Hacks of the Week: Binary Calculator For All 0b10 Types “Hey, You Left The Peanut Out Of My Peanut M&Ms!” Milkscanner – 3D Mapping That’s Good For You Milk-Based 3D Scanner One Wheel Is All We Need To Roll Into Better Multirotor Efficiency The Best New Quad Is A Bicopter Open Source Self-Driving Smartphone Robot Ask Hackaday: Why Aren’t We Hacking Cellphones? Visualizing Magnetic Memory With Core 64 Core Memory Explained and Demonstrated – YouTube Proper Cassettes For Your FPGA Retrocomputer Ventilator 202 – Wikipedia ArVid – Wikipedia Kansas City Standard – Start here if you’re interested in tape storage Quick Hacks: Mike’s Picks: Getting Over 4Gbps Out Of A Compute Module 4 Teardown Experts Sing Praise Of Stretch-Release Adhesives Door Mutes Microphone To Prevent Remote Learning Humiliation Elliot’s Picks: Lunar Ark Boldly Goes Help, I’m Buried Alive By Tablets! Kinect Gave Us A Preview Of The Future, Though Not The One It Intended Can’t-Miss Articles: Prism Lighting – The Art Of Steering Daylight Adventures In Overclocking: Which Raspberry Pi 4 Flavor Is Fastest? PIII CPU Lapping – Overclockers	0	0	[]	1,760,373,289.506865
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/13/zoom-control-box-helps-keep-meetings-on-track/	Zoom Control Box Helps Keep Meetings On Track	Lewin Day	[ "Peripherals Hacks" ]	[ "macro keyboard", "teleconference", "video conferencing", "zoom" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…box800.jpg?w=800	For many people, the biggest change of 2020 has been adjusting to a glut of online teleconferences as a part of daily working life. [p_leriche] has had to adjust the way church services are conducted, and found managing a complicated streaming meeting setup to be complicated at best. To ease the workload on the presenter, he created a simple Zoom control box. At its heart, the box is little more than a fancy keyboard. An Arduino Pro Micro is hooked up to a series of brightly colored pushbuttons, each labelled with regularly used Zoom functions. The Pro Micro is programmed to fire off the corresponding keyboard shortcuts when the buttons are pressed, activating the relevant function. It might be a simple build, but it greatly reduces the hand gymnastics required mid-presentation, and we’re sure the users greatly appreciate the new hardware. While this is a quick-and-dirty build thrown together in a basic enclosure, macro keyboards can be both useful and attractive if you so desire. If you’ve built your own time-saving control console, be sure to let us know!	19	9	[ { "comment_id": "6294203", "author": "Jan Helebrant (@jhelebrant)", "timestamp": "2020-11-13T17:33:04", "content": "Such thing might be extremely useful for elderly people. Remember there were “Skype phones” with buttons etc. and I can imagine some (maybe Raspberry based, running some custom linux) ...	1,760,373,289.628807
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/three-wheeled-turret-car-looks-like-it-should-be-orbiting-thunderdome/	Three-Wheeled Turret Car Looks Like It Should Be Orbiting Thunderdome	Mike Szczys	[ "car hacks" ]	[ "Douyin", "electric vehicle", "Mad Max", "post-apocalyptic", "Thunderdome", "TikTok" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	In a post-apocalyptic world, this is the hacker you want rebuilding society. He’s showing off a three-wheeled go-kart that pivots the cockpit as it steers . A hand crank mounted at the center of the vehicle pivots each of the three wheels in place, but keeps the driver facing forwards with a matching rotation. Hit up the video after the break to see it for yourself. The real question here is, how did he pull this off? The watermark on the video shows that this was published by [wo583582429], a user on Douyin (the platform known as TikTok in the US). We plied our internet-fu but were unable to track down the user for more of the juicy details we crave. If you have a lead on more info, leave it in the comments below. For now, please join us in speculating on this build. This is a pretty good closeup of one of the wheel assemblies. First question is how does the turning mechanism work? Since all three wheels and hub are smoothly coordinated it’s likely this is a planetary gearing setup where the inner ring has teeth that turn the rings around the tires themselves. However, we can see a spring suspension system which makes us doubt the lower ring surrounding the tire would stay engaged with a planetary gear. What do you think? Trying to figure out how control and locomotion happens is even more of a head-scratcher. First guess is that it’s electric from the mere simplicity of the setup and this closeup shows what looks like a circuit breaker and wires connecting to batteries on either side of the suspension system. But where is the electric motor? It’s a horrible image, but this is the best we can do for a view of the other side of the wheel assembly. There is a box that appears to be made from aluminum mounted to the wheel frame. After a few hundred times through the demo video we don’t think there’s a chain drive going down to the axle. It doesn’t look like there is a hub motor at play here either. We wondered if there was a second smaller wheel under the top of the frame to drive the main tire, but again, the suspension system would make this unfeasible and at points in the video there is clear daylight. Spend some time reviewing the Zapruder demo film below and when you figure all of this out, clue the rest of us in please! It’s awesome seeing bootstrapped vehicles come to life. One of our favorites remains this all-terrain motorcycle that has no problem taking on stairs . funny design [via r/nextfuckinglevel ]	31	17	[ { "comment_id": "6293936", "author": "Julian Silden Langlo", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T19:42:41", "content": "Dang, I want this.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6293945", "author": "Alijah", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T19:58:01", "conten...	1,760,373,290.002749
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/tech-hidden-in-plain-sight-gas-pumps/	Tech Hidden In Plain Sight: Gas Pumps	Al Williams	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Interest", "Original Art", "Slider", "Transportation Hacks" ]	[ "bowser", "fuel", "gas", "gas pump", "gasoline", "petrol", "petroleum" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…asPump.jpg?w=800	Ask someone who isn’t technically inclined how a TV signal works or how a cell phone works, or even how a two-way switch in a hall light works and you are likely to get either a blank stare or a wildly improbable explanation. But there are some things so commonplace that even the most tech-savvy of us don’t bother thinking about. One of these things is the lowly gas pump. Gas pumps are everywhere and it’s a safe bet to assume everyone reading this has used one at some point, most of use on a regular basis. But what’s really going on there? Most of it is pretty easy to figure out. As the name implies, there must be a pump. There’s some way to tell how much is pumping and how much it costs and, today, some way to take the payment. But what about the automatic shut off? It isn’t done with some fancy electronics, that mechanism dates back decades. Plus, we’re talking about highly combustible materials, there has to be more to it then just a big tank of gas and a pump. Safety is paramount and, experientially, we don’t hear about gas stations blowing up two or three times a day, so there must be some pretty stout safety features. Let’s pay homage to those silent safety features and explore the tricks of the gasoline trade. Gravity Pumps of the Old Days Many old gas pumps had manual pumps, a big glass tank at the top, and a siphon hose with a stopcock. If you wanted, say, 5 gallons, the attendant would pump the gas from the underground tank into the big glass tank that had measurement marks on it. Once it held the requisite amount, the hose would go into your gas tank, the attendant would open the stopcock, and gravity would do the rest. Oddly, the gas pump predates the automobile. Sylvanus Bowser sold a pump as early as 1885 to sell kerosene that people used in lamps and stoves. In some parts of the world, a gas pump is sometimes called a bowser, although in the United States that term usually means a fuel truck for aircraft. Obviously, this is a simple arrangement but ripe for improvement. But with the proliferation of pumping stations, and microcontrollers decades away, designers had to do some clever electromechanical work to make a functioning pump that could be used without skill or even by the customer themselves. Mid-Grade: The Cocktail of the Filling Station At the core of it all are large underground tanks that hold the gas. Trucks periodically stop by and refill these tanks. Fun fact. The Exxon truck and the Texaco truck get their gas at the same place that the Shell truck does. Either at the terminal or at the point of delivery, special additives are mixed in with the gas. That’s what makes one gas of the same octane rating different from the other brands. The trucks usually have a few different compartments. One for regular gas, one for premium, and one for diesel. Some have more compartments. However, there is usually no mid-grade gas. When you buy midgrade gas, you are really just mixing regular and premium together right in the pump. This is accomplished with a blend valve. This is two valves connected in such a way that when one is open, the other one is closed in proportion so that the total flow is always equal to 100%. For example, if one valve is at 100% the other is always at 0%. But if you turn the first valve to 60%, the second valve will be at 40%. This allows the exact mix of two fuels into an intermediate grade. The additives are very important for modern engines. In 2004, automakers were concerned that some gas didn’t have enough detergents to prevent carbon buildup effectively. With higher compressions, direct injection, and other modern engine techniques, this is more important than ever. They formed the TOP TIER standard that gas producers could certify against. AAA found that using TOP TIER gas did produce fewer deposits in the engine than the minimum standard gas. Of course, brands that are not TOP TIER may be the same or better, they just aren’t tested. Automatic Shutoff The most amazing part of the gas pump is how it somehow knows — even with old tech — that the tank is full. The video below from [BrainStuff] shows a good diagram. There’s a small hole near the end of the nozzle that has its other end near a flexible diaphragm and a Venturi tube. The Venturi effect causes a pressure drop when you compress a moving fluid. For example, if you squeeze a rubber tube in the middle, whatever is flowing through the tube will be at a lower pressure after the compressed part of the tube. Before leaving the nozzle, a narrow part of the fuel path in the handle compresses the fuel, causing a lower pressure area after this bottleneck. The diaphragm inside the handle expands because ambient air pressure (which enters through the small “safety” tube hole at the tip of the spout) is higher than the low pressure fuel area created by the Venturi effect. Gas pump nozzle cutaway shows the Venturi valve diaphragm. The demo video from Husky Corporation mentions that more modern nozzles have additional safety features. When the rising level of fuel blocks the hole at the tip, it causes the suction to stop, the diaphragm collapses, and the fuel valve springs shut with a loud click. No electronics at all. Just a flexible diaphragm, a tube, a spring, and some clever arrangement of all the parts. Richard C. Corson originally came up with a version of the automatic shutoff in 1939 and received a patent in 1942. He had noticed workers had to fill barrels one at a time so as not to overfill and was inspired by the operation of a toilet to come up with an automatic valve. Flow Metering Gasoline is difficult to meter accurately. There’s a diaphragm that constricts the flow to a known rate. The diaphragm also expands to slow down when you approach the point where the pump will shut off (for example, if you asked for $10 worth of gas). The metering itself is usually a 4-stroke piston flow meter that sends data to the onboard controller. In the old days, it just drove the little dials that showed the price. Piston flowmeters are very accurate. The video below from [Max Machinery] shows how they work. Gas has a thermal expansion coefficient at 20C of over 4 times that of water. When you buy gas in bulk, the amount is usually compensated for temperature and some countries, like Canada, have done this at the retail level, too. Hidden in Plain Sight Next time you are pumping gas, you’ll have something to think about. There’s a lot of technology out there that someone is an expert on, but most of us just take it for granted. You have to admit, there’s probably a lot more to it than you would have thought. If you are interested in the Venturi effect, you can make 3D printed Venturi tubes . If you thought about using your old car’s fuel pump to cool your PC , you might want to think again.	67	20	[ { "comment_id": "6293932", "author": "oldnerd", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T19:21:36", "content": "In the 50’s I worked at a Hancock service station. We had a pump that the customer could dial in the octane they wanted, and the price was automatically adjusted.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1,...	1,760,373,290.19052
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/meticulous-bionic-hand/	Meticulous Bionic Hand	Matthew Carlson	[ "Peripherals Hacks" ]	[ "bionic", "hand", "prosthetic hand", "prosthetics" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…_large.png?w=800	[Will Cogley] is slowly but surely crafting a beautiful bionic hand . (Video, embedded below.) The sheer amount of engineering and thought that went into the design is incredible. Those who take their hands for granted often don’t consider the different ways that their digits can move. There is lateral movement, rotation, flexion, and extension. Generally, [Will] tries to design mechanisms with parts that can be 3D printed or sourced easily. This constrains the hand to things like servos, cable actuation, or direct drive. However, the thumb has a particularly tricky range of motion. So for the thumb [Will] designed to use a worm geared approach to produce the flexing and extension motion of the thumb. These gears need to be machined in order to stand up to the load. A small side 3d printed gear that connects to the main worm gear is connected to a potentiometer to form the feedback loop. Since it isn’t bearing any load, it can be 3d printed. While there are hundreds of little tiny problems still left to fix, the big problems left are wire management, finalizing the IP (Interphalangeal) joints, and attaching the whole assembly to the forearm. All the step files, significants amounts of research, and definitions are all on [Will’s] GitHub . If you’re looking into creating any sort of hand prosthetic, the research and attention [Will] has put into this is work incorporating into your project. We’ve seen bionic hands before as well as aluminum finger replacements, but this is a whole hand with fantastic range and fidelity. Thanks [Johnathan Beri] for sending this one in!	12	5	[ { "comment_id": "6293905", "author": "Ian", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T17:06:00", "content": "Yet another failure to use 3d printing properly.You don’t design a finished thing to be printed.You print a thing to test how works in the physical world.Prototyping and Art. That’s what 3d printing ‘is for’....	1,760,373,289.92775
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/after-eight-month-break-deep-space-network-reconnects-with-voyager-2/	After Eight-Month Break, Deep Space Network Reconnects With Voyager 2	Dan Maloney	[ "Featured", "News", "Slider", "Space" ]	[ "Canberra", "Deep Space Network", "dish", "DSN", "ecliptic", "gain", "orbital dynamics", "Radio Telescope", "upgrades", "Voyager 2" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…grades.jpg?w=800	When the news broke recently that communications had finally been re-established with Voyager 2 , I felt a momentary surge of panic. I’ve literally been following the Voyager missions since the twin space probes launched back in 1977, and I’ve been dreading the inevitable day when the last little bit of plutonium in their radioisotope thermal generators decays to the point that they’re no longer able to talk to us, and they go silent in the abyss of interstellar space. According to these headlines, Voyager 2 had stopped communicating for eight months — could this be a quick nap before the final sleep? Thankfully, no. It turns out that the recent blackout to our most distant outpost of human engineering was completely expected, and completely Earth-side. Upgrades and maintenance were performed on the Deep Space Network antennas that are needed to talk to Voyager. But that left me with a question: What about the rest of the DSN? Could they have not picked up the slack and kept us in touch with Voyager as it sails through interstellar space? The answer to that is an interesting combination of RF engineering and orbital dynamics. Below the Belt To understand the outage, one needs to know a little about the Deep Space Network and how it works. I discussed this in detail in the past, but here’s a quick summary. The DSN is comprised of three sites: Madrid in Spain, Goldstone in California, and the site in Canberra, Australia. Each site has an array of dish antennas ranging from 26 meters in diameter to a whopping 70-meter dish. The three sites work together to provide a powerful communication infrastructure that has supported just about every spacecraft that has been launched in the last 50 years or so. What’s interesting about the DSN sites is their geographic arrangement. Looking down on Earth from the north pole, the DSN sites are spaced almost exactly 120° apart. This means that each site’s view of the sky overlaps the other about 300,000 km into space, thus providing round-the-clock coverage for every space probe. But space travel is not necessarily only two-dimensional, and that’s where the geographic oddities of Earth and curiously, the birth of the solar system itself, play into the recent Voyager blackout. The ecliptic, with a comet. ESO.org Almost everything that orbits the Sun does so in a pretty well-defined plane called the ecliptic. The ecliptic plane is likely a remnant of the early disk of dust and debris that eventually congealed into our Sun and the planets. The only major body in the solar system that varies appreciably from the ecliptic is Pluto, whose orbit is inclined about 17° to the ecliptic. The Earth is pretty much always in the ecliptic, and therefore anything that leaves Earth is pretty much going to stay in that plane too, unless provisions are made to alter its orbit. And that’s exactly what happened with the Voyager twins. Launched to take advantage of a quirk in orbital alignment of the outer planets that occurs only once every 175 years, the Voyager probes were able to complete their Grand Tour because each planetary encounter was planned to give the probes a gravitational assist, flinging them on to their next destination. Both probes remained very close to the plane of the ecliptic for the first part of their journey before intersecting the orbit of Jupiter and picking up speed for the trip to Saturn. At Saturn, the twin probes would part to carry on very different missions. To get a good look at Saturn’s moon Titan, Voyager 1 approached the planet from below the ecliptic, coming under the south pole. The gravitational assist put it on a trajectory aimed above the ecliptic plane, in the general direction of the constellation Ophiuchus . Voyager 2, however, continued on in the ecliptic, using its gravitational assist to shoot first to Uranus, and eventually to Neptune. There, in the mirror of the trick its twin used to explore Titan, Voyager 2 flew over the north pole of Neptune, which put it on a path to fly close to its moon Triton and on in the general direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Hello, Canberra Calling It was this last move that would eventually make Voyager 2 completely dependent on Canberra for communications. Canberra is the only DSN site that lies below the equator, and even though the plane of the equator and the ecliptic are not coplanar — they differ by the roughly 23° tilt of the Earth’s axis — eventually Voyager would get so far below the ecliptic plane that none of the northern hemisphere DSN sites would have line-of-sight to it. Luckily, Canberra is well-equipped to support Voyager 2. As the probe streaks away from home at 55,000 km/h, with its fuel slowly decaying, Voyager is getting harder and harder to talk to. The giant 70-m dish at Canberra, dubbed DSS-43, provides the gain needed to blast a signal powerful enough to cross the 17 light-hour gap between us and Voyager. Interestingly, Richard Stephenson, a DSN controller at Canberra, reports that although the smaller 34-m dishes at the complex can still be used to radiate a control signal to Voyager, such contacts are “spray and pray” affairs that may or may not be received by the probe and acted upon. Only DSS-43 has the power and gains to still effectively command the spacecraft. Despite its importance in continuing the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), DSS-43 was showing its age and had to be scheduled for repairs. As we reported back in July , the big dish was taken offline in March of 2020 and has been getting upgrades ever since. After eight months the repairs have progressed to the point where DSS-43 could try out a simple command link to Voyager 2 — just a basic “Are you still there?” ping, which was sent on October 29. Happily, despite the fact that Voyager had crossed an additional 300 million kilometers of interstellar space in the meantime, the probe returned confirmation of the command almost a day and a half later. There are still a number of DSS-34 upgrade tasks to complete before the antenna is returned to full service in January of 2021, but it seems like the controllers just couldn’t bear to be out of touch with Voyager any longer. If you want to keep up on progress on DSS-43 specifically and the goings-on at DSN Canberra in general, I highly recommend checking out Richard Stephenson’s Twitter feed . He’s got a ton of great tweets, plenty of pictures of the big dishes, and a wealth of insider information. And a hearty thanks to him for pitching in on this story, and to all the engineers making the DSN continue to deliver important science. [Featured images sources: CSIRO , JPL/NASA ]	48	26	[ { "comment_id": "6293873", "author": "CMH62", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T15:26:08", "content": "Great story. Thanks for sharing, Dan.I wonder what the practical limit is in terms of the amount of radioactive isotope that can be included on a probe like this to power any future ones even longer into t...	1,760,373,290.086515
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/quick-and-dirty-trebuchet-flings-mashed-potato/	Quick And Dirty Trebuchet Flings Mashed Potato	Lewin Day	[ "News" ]	[]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…reb800.jpg?w=800	Thanksgiving is just round the corner and [mrak_ripple] was worried about serving food under social distancing conditions. Rather than bother with standard best practice, he chose to take a more exciting route – flinging side dishes with miniature siege weaponry. (Video, embedded below.) The mashed potato trebuchet is a build in the modern style, relying on 8020 aluminium extrusion to allow for quick and easy assembly. It also takes advantage of what appears to be a heavy duty laser cutter, which creates strong steel brackets to hold everything together. The launcher cup to hold the mash is a 3D printed part, created in resin and held on the end of the arm with duct tape, since appropriate bolts didn’t fall to hand. In the end, repeatability was a struggle, and we suspect the trebuchet won’t actually do food service on the holiday itself. However, it could certainly make for a fun game after dinner, seeing who can get the most mash onto a willing target. We’d love to see a mash cannon too, so if you’ve built one, drop us a line. Of course, if you’re into weirder, high performance designs, the flywheel trebuchet may be more your speed . Video after the break.	9	5	[ { "comment_id": "6293840", "author": "Anonymous coward", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T12:50:13", "content": "Trebuchet? Not an expert but looks more like a Mangonel. Maybe someone with actual siege weapon knowledge can comment.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "c...	1,760,373,289.840991
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/12/really-useful-robot/	Really Useful Robot	Bryan Cockfield	[ "Robots Hacks" ]	[ "computer vision", "mapping", "navigation", "Nvidia Jetson", "robot", "useful", "wheels" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…t-main.png?w=800	[James Bruton] is an impressive roboticist, building all kinds of robots from tracked, exploring robots to Boston Dynamics-esque legged robots. However, many of the robots are proof-of-concept builds that explore machine learning, computer vision, or unique movements and characteristics. This latest build make use of everything he’s learned from building those but strives to be useful on a day-to-day basis as well, and is part of the beginning of a series he is doing on building a Really Useful Robot . (Video, embedded below.) While the robot isn’t quite finished yet, his first video in this series explores the idea behind the build and the construction of the base of the robot itself. He wants this robot to be able to navigate its environment but also carry out instructions such as retrieving a small object from a table. For that it needs a heavy base which is built from large 3D-printed panels with two brushless motors with encoders for driving the custom wheels, along with a suspension built from casters and a special hinge. Also included in the base is an Nvidia Jetson for running the robot, and also handling some heavy lifting tasks such as image recognition. As of this writing, [James] has also released his second video in the series which goes into detail about the mapping and navigation functions of the robots, and we’re excited to see the finished product. Of course, if you want to see some of [James]’s other projects be sure to check out his tracked rover or his investigations into legged robots .	8	4	[ { "comment_id": "6293816", "author": "salec", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T10:20:49", "content": "Since the robot will have a prominent height, perhaps lidar should be placed on the top of the mast, to be able to check for overhanging obstacles as well. Since “really useful” here means “getting its way ...	1,760,373,289.881543
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/homebrew-slide-rule-gets-back-to-mathematical-basics/	Homebrew Slide Rule Gets Back To Mathematical Basics	Dan Maloney	[ "classic hacks", "Retrocomputing" ]	[ "analog", "analog computer", "cursor", "python", "scale", "slide rule", "vinyl" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rule-3.jpg?w=800	In the grand scheme of things, it really wasn’t all that long ago that a slide rule was part of an engineer’s every day equipment. Long before electronic calculators came along, a couple of sticks of wood inscribed with accurate scales was all it took to do everything from simple multiplication to logarithms and trig functions. While finding a slide rule these days isn’t impossible, it’s still not exactly easy, and buying one off the shelf isn’t as fun or as instructive as building one yourself . [JavierL90]’s slide rule build started, ironically enough, on the computer, with a Python program designed to graphically plot the various scales needed for the fixed sections of the slide rules (the “stators”) and the moving bit (the “slide”). His first throught was to laser-engrave the scales, but the route of printing them onto self-adhesive vinyl stock proved to be easier. With the scale squared away, work turned to the mechanism itself. He chose walnut for the wood, aluminum for the brackets, and a 3D-printed frame holding a thin acrylic window for the sliding cursor. The woodworking is simple but well-done, as is the metalwork. We especially like the method used to create the cursor line — a simple line scored into the acrylic with a razor, which was then filled with red inks. The assembled slide rule is a thing of beauty, looking for all the world like a commercial model, especially when decked out with its custom faux leather carry case. We have to admit that the use of a slide rule is a life skill that passed us by, but seeing this puts us in the mood for another try. We might have to start really, really simple and work up from there .	49	20	[ { "comment_id": "6293782", "author": "Peter", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T06:54:56", "content": "I always wanted to learn how to use it, my father had used one up to mid 90ties even when he had all the gizmos at the hand it was his prefered method. It was magic for teenage me.", "parent_id": null, ...	1,760,373,290.27839
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/laser-induced-graphene-supercapacitors-from-kapton-tape/	Laser-Induced Graphene Supercapacitors From Kapton Tape	Dan Maloney	[ "chemistry hacks", "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "graphene", "laser", "supercapacitor" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ercap2.jpg?w=800	From the sound of reports in the press, graphene is the miracle material that will cure all the world’s ills. It’ll make batteries better, supercharge solar panels, and revolutionize medicine. While a lot of applications for the carbon monolayer are actually out in the market already, there’s still a long way to go before the stuff is in everything, partly because graphene can be very difficult to make. It doesn’t necessarily have to be so hard, though, as [Zachary Tong] shows us with his laser-induced graphene supercapacitors . His production method couldn’t be simpler, and chances are good you’ve got everything you need to replicate the method in your shop right now. All it takes is a 405-nm laser, a 3D-printer or CNC router, and a roll of Kapton tape. As [Zach] explains, the laser energy converts the polyimide film used as the base material of Kapton into a sort of graphene foam. This foam doesn’t have all the usual properties of monolayer graphene, but it has interesting properties of its own, like extremely high surface area and moderate conductivity. To make his supercaps, [Zach] stuck some Kapton tape to glass slides and etched a pattern into with the laser. His pattern has closely spaced interdigitated electrodes, which when covered with a weak sulfuric acid electrolyte shows remarkably high capacitance. He played with different patterns and configurations, including stacking tape up into layers, and came up with some pretty big capacitors. As a side project, he used the same method to produce a remarkable effective Kapton-tape heating element, which could have tons of applications. Here’s hoping that [Zach]’s quick and easy graphene method inspires further experimentation. To get you started, check out our deep-dive into Kapton and how not every miracle material lives up to its promise. Thanks to [Sebastian] for the tip.	47	12	[ { "comment_id": "6293555", "author": "justsayin", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T12:48:14", "content": "Can we get some ballpark values for the kind of capacitance from that? Like the piece in the picture, how many nF is that one?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "...	1,760,373,290.35811
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/tensions-high-after-second-failed-cable-at-arecibo/	Tensions High After Second Failed Cable At Arecibo	Tom Nardi	[ "News", "Science" ]	[ "Arecibo", "Arecibo Observatory", "damage", "deep space", "Radio Telescope", "reflector" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…e_feat.jpg?w=800	Today we’re sad to report that one of the primary support cables at the Arecibo Observatory has snapped , nudging the troubled radio telescope closer to a potential disaster. The Observatory’s 300 meter reflector dish was already badly in need of repairs after spending 60 years exposed to the elements in Puerto Rico, but dwindling funds have made it difficult for engineers to keep up. Damage from 2017’s Hurricane Maria was still being repaired when a secondary support cable broke free and smashed through the dish back in August, leading to grave concerns over how much more abuse the structure can take before a catastrophic failure is inevitable. The situation is particularly dire because both of the failed cables were attached to the same tower. Each of the remaining cables is now supporting more weight than ever before, increasing the likelihood of another failure. Unless engineers can support the dish and ease the stress on these cables, the entire structure could be brought down by a domino effect; with each cable snapping in succession as the demands on them become too great. Workers installing the reflector’s mesh panels in 1963. As a precaution the site has been closed to all non-essential personnel, and to limit the risk to workers, drones are being used to evaluate the dish and cabling as engineers formulate plans to stabilize the structure until replacement cables arrive. Fortunately, they have something of a head start. Back in September the University of Central Florida, which manages the Arecibo Observatory, contacted several firms to strategize ways they could address the previously failed cable and the damage it caused. Those plans have now been pushed up in response to this latest setback. Unfortunately, there’s still a question of funding. There were fears that the Observatory would have to be shuttered after Hurricane Maria hit simply because there wasn’t enough money in the budget to perform the relatively minor repairs necessary. The University of Central Florida stepped in and provided the funding necessary to keep the Observatory online in 2018, but they may need to lean on their partner the National Science Foundation to help cover the repair bill they’ve run up since then. The Arecibo Observatory is a unique installation , and its destruction would be an incredible blow for the scientific community. Researchers were already struggling with the prospect of repairs putting the powerful radio telescope out of commission for a year or more, but now it seems there’s a very real possibility the Observatory may be lost. Here’s hoping that teams on the ground can safely stabilize the iconic instrument so it can continue exploring deep space for years to come.	45	15	[ { "comment_id": "6293519", "author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T09:43:08", "content": "What a surprise! Unmaintained and underfunded infrastructure starts to collapse. Meanwhile red team on far east:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope",...	1,760,373,290.740351
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/trying-and-failing-to-use-gpus-with-the-compute-module-4/	Trying (And Failing) To Use GPUs With The Compute Module 4	Lewin Day	[ "Raspberry Pi" ]	[ "compute module 4", "gpu", "raspberry pi" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…rpi800.jpg?w=800	The Raspberry Pi platform grows more capable and powerful with each iteration. With that said, they’re still not the go-to for high powered computing, and their external interfaces are limited for reasons of cost and scope. Despite this, people like [Jeff Geerling] strive to push the platform to its limits on a regular basis. Unfortunately, [Jeff’s] recent experiments with GPUs hit a hard stop that he’s as yet unable to overcome. With the release of the new Compute Module 4, the Raspberry Pi ecosystem now has a device that has a PCI-Express 2.0 1x interface as stock. This lead to many questioning whether or not GPUs could be used with the hardware. [Jeff] was determined to find out, buying a pair of older ATI and NVIDIA GPUs to play with. Immediate results were underwhelming, with no output whatsoever after plugging the modules in. Of course, [Jeff] didn’t expect things to be plug and play, so dug into the kernel messages to find out where the problems lay. The first problem was the Pi’s limited Base Address Space; GPUs need a significant chunk of memory allocated in the BAR to work. With the CM4’s BAR expanded from 64MB to 1GB, the cards appeared to be properly recognised and ARM drivers were able to be installed. Alas, the story ends for now without success. Both NVIDIA and ATI drivers failed to properly initialise the cards. The latter driver throws an error due to the Raspberry Pi failing to account for the I/O BAR space, a legacy x86 feature, however others suggest the problem may lay elsewhere . While [Jeff] may not have pulled off the feat yet, he got close, and we suspect with a little more work the community will find a solution. Given ARM drivers exist for these GPUs, we’re sure it’s just a matter of time. For more of a breakdown on the Compute Module 4, check out our comprehensive article . Video after the break.	15	5	[ { "comment_id": "6293524", "author": "TCPMeta", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T10:30:32", "content": "Wonder if it’s the BIOS on the GPU. I know back in the day Apple users had to flash PC Graphics Cards to become compatible.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment...	1,760,373,290.406078
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/retrotechtacular-shake-hands-with-danger/	Retrotechtacular: Shake Hands With Danger	Dan Maloney	[ "Retrotechtacular" ]	[ "caterpillar", "danger", "grinder", "heavy equipment", "retrotechtacular", "safety", "Solvent", "tool safety" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…-3-23.jpeg?w=800	OK, you’re going to have to engage your safety squints and sit back to enjoy this one: a classic bit of safety propaganda from US heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar from 1980 entitled “ Shake Hands with Danger.” Actually, you’ll probably need to engage your schlock filters for this 23-minute film too, as both the writing and the theme song are pretty hard to take. The film is one of those “Scared Straight” attempts to show just how horrifically wrong things can go both in the field and in the shop when working on anything made of stuff stronger than human flesh and bone. And in that regard, the film is highly effective — we found ourselves getting a bit queasy at a few points, with the poor dude who got his hand sucked into a bench grinder being both terrifying and relatable. [Three-Finger Joe] indeed. Now, you might take exception with the acting, but as you watch all these vignettes, keep in mind that these are all old-school stunts — that’s actually a gigantic D9 bulldozer they crashed, and that brake chamber explosion really blew out that truck’s windows. They did a great job making the potential consequences of a moment’s thoughtlessness sickeningly vivid. Especially that arm-in-the-linkages scene. Ugh. Whatever way you practice the hacking arts, stay safe out there. And don’t “Shake Hands with Danger.” Thanks for the tip, [Paulie]!	42	17	[ { "comment_id": "6293470", "author": "msat", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T03:07:52", "content": "With steel that thick, my hard hat would need a hard hat", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6293472", "author": "Sprite_tm", "timestamp": "2020-11-...	1,760,373,290.57821
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/xbox-series-s-teardown-shows-a-glimpse-at-the-future/	Xbox Series S Teardown Shows A Glimpse At The Future	Drew Littrell	[ "Games", "Teardown" ]	[ "ssd", "teardown", "videogames", "xbox", "xbox series" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…nel-3.jpeg?w=800	Console launch season is upon us. A time for billion dollar corporations ingratiate themselves with “Johnny Consumer” by promising the future of entertainment is finally available to one-and-all. The focus of this new generation of consoles has been the battle for 4K supremacy between Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Interestingly, Microsoft also created another iteration of their Xbox Series for those satisfied with games in 1080p, and thanks to [Dimitris] we have been able to see the internals of the Xbox Series S (XSS) . The Xbox Series S features standard m.2 slot that could be used for future storage expansion. Microsoft’s choice to produce an all-digital console has greatly affected the internal design of the XSS. With the lack of a disc-drive there is only a single cable, the fan cable, tying the components together. The heat sink covering the 197mm² AMD APU takes up nearly 60% of the motherboard surface area. Though the XSS may be diminutive by modern console standards, its cooling fan is huge, somewhere in the 140 mm range. What little space is left by the heat sink and fan assembly is taken up by the internal power supply. As a fun nod, the PSU sports a Master Chief insignia to denote the location of the two-pronged connector beneath. On the underside of the motherboard lies the biggest surprise of the “little brother” console. The system storage SSD is socketed rather than directly soldered to the board itself. The primary design goal of the XSS was to provide a cheaper alternative for players, but this standard m.2 slot reveals that Microsoft has plans for future expansion. This SSD, while not user-accessible in a traditional sense, will likely provide an alternative method to expanding storage outside of Microsoft’s proprietary external offerings. For a look at the teardown in process, [Dimitris’] video from his Modern Vintage Gamer YouTube channel is below.	22	11	[ { "comment_id": "6293461", "author": "Steven13", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T01:42:03", "content": "> The heat sink covering the 197mm² AMD APU takes up nearly 60% of the motherboard surface area.The motherboard is double sided. Also, saying it takes up that surface area is a strange choice of words, s...	1,760,373,290.929902
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/help-im-buried-alive-by-tablets/	Help, I’m Buried Alive By Tablets!	Jenny List	[ "Tablet Hacks" ]	[ "dumpster diving", "intel tablet", "SBC", "tablet" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	It’s fair to say that many Hackaday readers will have a propensity for hoarding electronic or tech junk. Who hasn’t hung on to something because “It might be useful someday”? Spare a thought for [Mike Drew], who in his own words is “buried alive by tablets”. In this case the tablets are Intel-based ones that look as though they ran one of those cut-down Windows versions, and they appear to be rejects from a repair shop processing customer returns that he saved from the dumpster. They are missing their backs, and not all of their screens work, but they amount to a tidy pile of Stuff That’s Too Good To Throw Away. The exact spec is a 1.4 GHz quad-core Atom with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of Flash, and appear from the photos to have HDMI and USB 3 interfaces. Happily they run Linux Mint 20 so they have plenty of potential, but there is only so much that one person can do with them before running out of ideas. He tells us he’s made a Folding@Home cluster, but beyond that he’s open to suggestions. Depending on the age of the commenter no doubt he’ll be exhorted to run Beowulf or mine Bitcoin, but we’d suggest more sensible ideas. So, what would you do with them? They lack the handy GPIO port of a Raspberry Pi, but with suitable USB peripherals could you use them in any lowish-power distributed node project where the popular SBC would be the usual choice? Perhaps something like WeeWX , or OpenEnergyMonitor . Or how about distributed mesh network nodes, after all there’s an x86 port of LibreMesh . It’s obvious that there’s plenty of potential to be found, so help [Mike] with his problematic bounty in the comments.	50	30	[ { "comment_id": "6293397", "author": "Lons", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T21:09:49", "content": "I’m so jealous… Free SBCs!Cluster computer, homemade laptop, handheld PC, portable gaming device, media streamer/server", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "...	1,760,373,290.659377
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/illuminating-the-inner-workings-of-a-venus-flytrap/	Illuminating The Inner Workings Of A Venus Flytrap	Roger Cheng	[ "Science" ]	[ "genetic engineering", "glowing", "protein" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…16x9-1.jpg?w=800	As a carnivorous plant, Venus flytraps have always been a fascinating subject of study. One of their many mysteries is how they differentiate an insect visit from less nutritious stimulants such as a windblown pebble. Now scientists are one step closer to deciphering the underlying mechanism, assisted by a new ability to visualize calcium changes in real time . Calcium has long been suspected to play an important part in a Venus flytrap’s close/no-close decision process, but scientists couldn’t verify their hypothesis before. Standard chemical tests for calcium would require cutting the plant apart, which would only result in a static snapshot. The software analogy would be killing the process for a memory dump but unable to debug the process at runtime. There were tantalizing hints of a biological calcium-based analog computer at work, but mother nature had no reason to evolve JTAG test points on it. Lacking in-circuit debug headers, scientists turned to the next best thing: add diagnostic indicator lights. But instead of blinking LEDs, genes were added to produce a protein that glows in the presence of calcium. Once successful, they could work with the engineered plants and get visual feedback. Immediately see calcium levels change and propagate in response to various stimuli over different time periods. Confirming that the trap snaps shut only in response to patterns of stimuli that push calcium levels beyond a threshold. With these glowing proteins in place, researchers found that calcium explained some of the behavior but was not the whole picture. There’s something else, suspected to be a fast electrical network, that senses prey movement and trigger calcium release. That’ll be something to dig into, but at least we have more experience working with electrical impulses and not just for plants , either.	12	5	[ { "comment_id": "6293372", "author": "macsimski", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T19:52:42", "content": "I think that if you dig deep enough, you will find the biological equivalent of a 555 timer somewhere, or maybe an arduino. :)It,s all just signals as usual.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, ...	1,760,373,290.787645
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/aircraft-radio-bares-all/	Aircraft Radio Bares All	Al Williams	[ "Radio Hacks", "Teardown" ]	[ "aircraft", "Collins", "VOR" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…colins.png?w=800	There is a certain charm to older electronics gear. Heavy metal chassis and obviously hand-wired harness can be a work of art even if they would be economically impractical for most modern gear. Watching [msylvain59’s] tear down of a Collins 51R VOR receiver is a good example of that. The construction looks so solid. If you aren’t familiar with VOR, it stands for VHF omnidirectional range and allows airplanes to tune into a fixed ground-based beacon and determine its heading in relation to the beacon. In some cases, it can also calculate distance. Years ago, VOR antennas actually rotated rapidly, but today it is more likely to be an array of antennas switched electrically. The radio beam has several encoding schemes, including an FM reference signal that allows an airplane receiver — like the 51R — to determine the heading to the beacon. If you know the heading to two beacons, you can figure out where you are. Even with a single beacon, you can hold course towards it or away from it if you maintain a steady heading. A receiver like the Collins would drive a Course Deviation Indicator (CDI), a Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI), and a Radio Magnetic Indicator (RMI) on the plane’s cockpit and might also provide input to an autopilot. Compared to modern gear, the components look huge. Understanding where an aircraft is has always been a big deal, and there are many ways to deal with it. Transponders are one part of the equation. We see a lot of hacks relating to ADS-B , too.	9	4	[ { "comment_id": "6293769", "author": "Doug Jackson", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T03:36:15", "content": "Beautiful equipment, made in an era long gone.There is sooo much that could be discussed in this video, like how the crystal synthesiser operated, allowing a range of frequencies to be synthesised to...	1,760,373,290.826946
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/rotary-plotter-draws-on-bottles/	Rotary Plotter Draws On Bottles	Lewin Day	[ "cnc hacks" ]	[ "cnc", "pen plotter", "plotter", "rotary plotter" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…lot800.jpg?w=800	A pen plotter is often the first experience many ambitious makers have of the world of Computer Numerical Control, or CNC. While they typically operate on flat stock, with the right build, they can be designed to draw on curved surfaces, too – as [tuenhidiy] demonstrates with this rotary bottle plotter. The plotter uses shafts salvaged from an old printer to act as the rollers for the bottle to be drawn upon, turned by a pair of stepper motors. X and Z axes are created out of two CD drive mechanisms – a popular way to build two linear axes on the cheap. The hardware is controlled by GRBL, running on an Arduino Uno kitted out with a CNC shield to handle the necessary I/O. The build is somewhat limited to by the short range of its X axis, which prevents the plotter from easily drawing on a full-size bottle label or can. However, this could easily be fixed with some upgrades and extra steppers if so desired. As a home build, it’s a great way to learn about the CNC techniques required to work with curved surfaces effectively. Video after the break.	10	4	[ { "comment_id": "6293746", "author": "Garth Bock", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T00:51:35", "content": "Eggbot .https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/171", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6293761", "author": "fhunter", "times...	1,760,373,290.871486
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/teensy-controller-for-powerful-cncs/	Teensy Controller For Powerful CNCs	Adam Zeloof	[ "cnc hacks" ]	[ "cnc", "grbl", "Teensy 4.1" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	It seems like every year, it gets a bit easier to build your own CNC. From the Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) project of the early 1990s to Arduinos running Grbl in the late 2000s, the open source community has moved ahead in leaps and bounds. Grbl is at its core firmware that interprets G-code and commands stepper motors, usually to move a tool head in such a way as to make something. Tons of systems have been built around it, including early Makerbot printers. Its also spawned a plethora of other projects (the Grbl GitHib repo has 2,400 forks!), including a 32-bit flavor called grblHAL. This version is at the heart of a fantastic CNC controller board developed by [Phill Barrett] . Ditching the Arduino for a more powerful Teensy 4.1, [Phil]’s controller supports full five-axis control, variable frequency drive spindles, dust extractor control, and flood and mist coolant control. It can run at blazing stepping rates of up to 160 kHz (standard Grbl on an Arduino hits 30 kHz) and can be assembled with either a USB or Ethernet interface. There’s no shortage of interesting Grbl-based machines out there — including a revamped Atari plotter and a three-axis rotary CNC (shameless plug for the author’s own project) but it’s always exciting to see new hardware developed that will undoubtedly find its way into the next generation of a family of projects. We can’t wait to see what comes next!	44	11	[ { "comment_id": "6293743", "author": "Teensy Isn't Arduino", "timestamp": "2020-11-12T00:08:00", "content": "Why hasn’t Arduino come out with an actually official and faster unit yet exactly? The ARM Cortex-M7 processor at 600 MHz isn’t too shabby or expensive either.", "parent_id": null, "d...	1,760,373,291.112467
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/escalating-privileges-in-ubuntu-20-04-from-user-account/	Escalating Privileges In Ubuntu 20.04 From User Account	Bryan Cockfield	[ "News", "Security Hacks", "Software Hacks" ]	[ "accountservice", "administrator", "Daemon", "display manager", "gdm3", "gnome", "privilege", "security", "ubuntu", "user" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…y-main.png?w=800	Ubuntu 20.04 is an incredibly popular operating system, perhaps the most popular among the Linux distributions due to its ease-of-use. In general, it’s a fairly trustworthy operating system too, especially since its source code is open. However, an update with the 20.04 revision has led to security researcher [Kevin Backhouse] finding a surprisingly easy way to escalate privileges on this OS , which we would like to note is not great. The exploit involves two bugs, one in accountservice daemon which handles user accounts on the computer, and another in the GNOME Display Manager which handles the login screen. Ubuntu 20.04 added some code to the daemon which looks at a specific file on the computer, and with a simple symlink, it can be tricked into reading a different file which locks the process into an infinite loop. The daemon also drops its privileges at one point in this process, a normal security precaution, but this allows the user to crash the daemon. The second bug for this exploit involves how the GNOME Display Manager (gdm3) handles privileges. Normally it would not have administrator privileges, but if the accountservice daemon isn’t running it escalates itself to administrator, where any changes made have administrator privileges. This provides an attacker with an opportunity to create a new user account with administrator privileges. Of course, this being Ubuntu, we can assume that this vulnerability will be immediately patched. It’s also a good time to point out that the reason that open-source software is inherently more secure is that when anyone can see the source code, anyone can find and report issues like this which allow the software maintainer (or even the user themselves) to make effective changes more quickly.	28	8	[ { "comment_id": "6293683", "author": "epitaxial", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T19:49:31", "content": "Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. Unattended updates that happen in the background and services that send data to Amazon. No thanks.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ ...	1,760,373,291.029772
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/spacing-out-a-big-anniversary-starlink-failures-plummet-lunar-cellphones-and-a-crewed-launch/	Spacing Out: A Big Anniversary, Starlink Failures Plummet, Lunar Cellphones, And A Crewed Launch	Jenny List	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Roundup", "Space" ]	[ "Crew Dragon", "iss", "moon", "nokia", "SpaceX", "Spacing Out", "Starlink" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…encher.jpg?w=800	After a couple of months away we’re returning with our periodic roundup of happenings in orbit, as we tear you away from Star Trek: Discovery and The Mandalorian , and bring you up to date with some highlights from the real world of space. We’ve got a launch to look forward to this week, as well as a significant anniversary. The ISS as it looked twenty years ago. NASA (Crew of STS-106), Public domain . A quiet but extremely significant anniversary first up: in the week that this is being written we’ve passed the 20-year anniversary of a continuous human presence in space aboard the ISS . The geopolitical map of the world may have swirled around down on the surface over the last couple of decades, but American, Russian, Canadian, European, and Japanese astronauts and cosmonauts with all their modules and experiments have continually passed over our heads in an island of international harmony and scientific endeavour. There appears to be political uncertainty over how long the station will eventually serve, however for now its future seems assured with talk of its use in research for Mars missions and for commercial expansion modules . SpaceX’s Starlink global satellite broadband project has been in the news. As any long-term space-watchers will know, there is a failure rate among satellites and it’s not uncommon for craft to be lost before they can come into service, and in this Starlink is no exception. Their failure figure was reported as 2.5% leading to a possible thousand or so dead satellites in orbit by the completion of the constellation, but revised calculations from the astronomer Jonathan McDowell show an impressive improvement over the different series’ of launches. The latest launches boast a failure rate of only 0.2%, which almost certainly corresponds to some impressive behind-the-scenes work from the SpaceX engineers. If you remember Nokia only for their dominance of the consumer mobile phone market over a decade ago then you may not be aware that they remain a major player in the world of cellular phone infrastructure, even if their handset glory days are behind them. As such they’ve been selected by NASA to deploy the first 4G cellular network off-planet , on the lunar surface. So if you’re in a spot with poor signal down on Earth you can now complain that even astronauts have better service than you! Jokes aside, the network won’t be an extension of the ones we use down here. Instead it will use 4G technologies to provide reliable on-moon communication for voice, video, and telemetry across the whole surface of NASA’s area of operations. The system will consist of space-hardened and miniaturised base stations that will be robotically deployed, so there are unlikely to be astronaut cell tower engineers working on the moon any time soon. The story to look out for this week will be the launch of SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission to the ISS on the 14th of November. We all saw the first manned Crew Dragon test mission earlier in the year, and this will form the first operational crew launch of the capsule. This mission has been delayed since August due to some technical issues for the SpaceX engineers to iron out. We wish them every success, and will let out a sigh of relief when we watch the hatch open and them coming aboard their new orbiting home.	32	4	[ { "comment_id": "6293664", "author": "Dude", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T19:03:46", "content": "0.2% out of how many launches? If there’s going to be 30,000 – 50,000 satellites each with a service life of 3-4 years (running out of fuel), then 15-25 satellites are falling down randomly every year by mal...	1,760,373,291.183875
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/visualizing-magnetic-memory-with-core-64/	Visualizing Magnetic Memory With Core 64	Adam Zeloof	[ "hardware" ]	[ "core memory", "led", "Magnetic-core memory", "memory", "VCF West" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.jpg?w=800	For the vast majority of us, computer memory is a somewhat abstract idea. Whether you’re declaring a variable in Python or setting a register in Verilog, the data goes — somewhere — and the rest really isn’t your problem. You may have deliberately chosen the exact address to write to, but its not like you can glance at a stick of RAM and see the data. And you almost certainly can’t rewrite it by hand. (If you can do either of those things, let us know.) These limitations must have bothered [Andy Geppert], because he set out to bring computer memory into the tangible (or at least, visible) world with his interactive memory badge Core 64 . [Andy] has gone through a few different iterations, but essentially Core 64 is an 8×8 grid of woven core memory, which stores each bit via magnetic polarization, with a field of LEDs behind it that allow you to visualize what’s stored. The real beauty of this setup is that it it can be used to display 64 pixel graphics. Better yet — a bit can be rewritten by introducing a magnetic field at the wire junction. In other words, throw a magnet on a stick into the mix and you have yourself a tiny drawing tablet! This isn’t the first time we’ve seen cool experiments with core memory , and not even the first time we’ve seen [Andy] use it to make something awesome , but it really illuminates how the technology works. Being able to not only see memory being written but to manually write to it makes it all so much realer, somehow.	17	7	[ { "comment_id": "6293629", "author": "James Knott", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T16:55:53", "content": "Here’s a photo of a core memory plane from a Collins 8500 computer. I salvaged it from a system that was being scrapped at work. Back in the late 70s and into the 80s, when I was a computer tech, I ...	1,760,373,291.238716
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/adventures-in-overclocking-which-raspberry-pi-4-flavor-is-fastest/	Adventures In Overclocking: Which Raspberry Pi 4 Flavor Is Fastest?	Elliot Williams	[ "computer hacks", "Featured", "Interest", "Raspberry Pi", "Slider" ]	[ "compute module 4", "overclocking", "Pi", "raspberry pi", "Raspberry Pi 4", "raspberry pi 400", "Raspberry Pi Compute Module" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…atured.png?w=800	There are three different versions of the Raspberry Pi 4 out on the market right now: the “normal” Pi 4 Model B, the Compute Module 4 , and the just-released Raspberry Pi 400 computer-in-a-keyboard . They’re all riffing on the same tune, but there are enough differences among them that you might be richer for the choice. The Pi 4B is easiest to integrate into projects, the CM4 is easiest to break out all the system’s features if you’re designing your own PCB, and the Pi 400 is seemingly aimed at the consumer market, but it has a dark secret: it’s an overclocking monster capable of running full-out at 2.15 GHz indefinitely in its stock configuration. In retrospect, there were hints dropped everywhere. The system-on-a-chip that runs the show on the Model B is a Broadcom 2711ZPKFSB06B0T, while the SOC on the CM4 and Pi 400 is a 2711ZPKFSB06C0T. If you squint just right, you can make out the revision change from “B” to “C”. And in the CM4 datasheet, there’s a throwaway sentence about it running more efficiently than the Model B. And when I looked inside the Pi 400, there was this giant aluminum heat spreader attached to the SOC, presumably to keep it from overheating within the tight keyboard case. But there was one more clue: the Pi 400 comes clocked by default at 1.8 GHz, instead of 1.5 GHz for the other two, which are sold without a heat-sink. Can the CM4 keep up with the Pi 400 with a little added aluminum? Will the newer siblings leave the Pi 4 Model B in the dust? Time to play a little overclocking! Raspberry Overdrive Overclocking a Raspberry Pi is basically painless. In most cases, it’s as simple as editing your /boot/config.txt file and typing in the desired maximum speed and CPU core voltage. If it doesn’t boot, you pick a lower CPU speed until you get something that works. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the full performance bump — the main CPUs run alongside, or maybe underneath, the GPUs which run the ThreadX RTOS , and throttle the main CPUs when they get hot. This thermal throttling means that you can run a Raspberry Pi as fast as you can shed the excess heat that it generates, below a ceiling of about 2.15 GHz. Not too shabby for a system that’s marketed as either 1.5 GHz or 1.8 GHz. But this is also the Pi’s Achilles’ heel; when our own Jonathan Bennett tried to use a Pi 4B as a desktop machine for a week , without a heatsink, he found it throttled occasionally. On all three of the test models here, throttling occurs around 82.5 °C. Our test suite consisted of running stress-ng in --matrix 0 mode to fully load the CPU, and then recording the time and temperature from the Linux system, and measuring the CPU speed with vcgencmd measure_clock arm . Simple! Bone-Stock Baseline The absolutely worst thing you can do with a brand new Raspberry Pi 4B that’s going to see any load is to buy an unventilated case, like the official Raspberry Pi case, and put it in there, even at the stock 1.5 GHz. As you can see, plotted below in red, it starts throttling after as little as 10 minutes at full load, and that pulls the average speed down to something like 1.1 GHz after a while. Opening the case up to get some cool breezes buys you a lot: there was evidence of just the tiniest bit of throttling at the nominal 1.5 GHz after just about 25 minutes on full blast, and it’s not so bad. This is why 1.5 GHz is the advertised speed of the Pi 4B: it’s right on the edge of where it’s happy, if left out in the open. Compare this with the Compute Module at the same 1.5 GHz, in yellow, and you can see that it’s making less heat — the energy savings mentioned in the datasheet. No doubt, the Compute Module gets hot without a heatsink. But it settles down at around 75 °C in the open air, maybe 7 °C below the throttling threshold. For contrast, check out the Pi 400 in blue. That massive aluminum heatsink does what it’s supposed to, and then some. At the stock 1.8 GHz, which is already 20% faster than either of the other modules, it’s not breaking a sweat — holding it down under 60 °C. You could run the Pi 400 full throttle forever, in my attic, in the summer. Hotrodding the Pi 400 So if the Pi 400 runs just fine at stock speeds, what happens if we turn up the speed? To do so, I edited the /boot/config.txt file and set arm_freq=2000 and over_voltage=6 and rebooted. Why six? Because that’s the highest over-voltage level available without pushing the chip outside of its design envelope and voiding the warranty — you can go higher, but there’s likely little gain and you might burn things up. (Oddly enough: the Pi 400 ships with over_voltage=0x11170 by default, which feeds it 0.95 V instead of the default 0.86 V, but less than the 1.03 V you get at over_voltage=6 . I don’t understand the new format, so I didn’t play around with it. Anyone?) At 2.0 GHz, the Pi 400 got up above 60 °C and showed signs of continuing to warm up even after 50 minutes, but it was nowhere near throttling. So I tried 2.2 GHz, at which speed the CPU refused to boot entirely. Backing down to 2.15 GHz, it ran just fine, so I left it for three hours. It settled in at a cozy 62.5 °C, which is warm, but well within specs. My guess is that is about the limit to the performance you’ll get out of the Pi 400, but note that this is all totally stock, and it’s hammering all four cores 100% for hours on end. Given that all of the Pi 4 series use dynamic CPU speed, and throttle down to 600 MHz when idle to save power, there’s absolutely no reason I can think of to not overclock it. It’ll be faster when you need it, but not use more power when you don’t. But the Compute Module and the Pi 400 have the same, more efficient, SOC in them. Could you get the same results from the CM4 with a little heatsinking? I bought some cheap heatsinks to find out. Cheap Heatsinks Don’t Really Help First, I thought that adding the small heatsinks to the CM4 would get it up at least into the 1.8 GHz region that the Pi 400 runs stock. And the answer was a definitive “kinda”. Where before it was on the edge of throttling at 1.5 GHz, the small aluminum wonder got it running at 1.8 GHz, on the edge of throttling. An improvement for sure, but not a good life for the SOC to be living. For science, I put another cheap heatsink set on the Pi 4B and ran it at 1.8 GHz. This is as close to an apples-to-apples test of the two revisions (“B” and “C”) of the SOC as is possible — both boards had free air circulation, with the fins of identical heatsinks, oriented vertically. But overclocking isn’t kind to the Pi 4B. It got up to throttling temperature after just five minutes. Worse, it throttled so much that it ran at an average 1.5 GHz, no faster despite consuming more power and heating up my office. The culprit is increasing the core voltage to facilitate overclocking, and maybe it’s possible to find a lower voltage setting that’ll run more efficiently, but at this point my conclusion was that cheap heatsinks are a marginal benefit at best. Bring the Aluminum! Not to be beaten, I went searching in my junk box for a heatsink that would fit both the CM4 and Pi 4B. Selecting a well-aged tube of paste from the heatsink cellar, and two gamer-grade overclocking zip-ties, I affixed the aluminum to both the CM4 and Pi 4B in turn. How would they run now? First, I ran the CM4 with the larger heatsink at 1.8 GHz to give some basis for comparison to the cheap heatsinks. What a big difference a big hunk of aluminum makes! It settled in at a comfortable 68 °C or so. Even pushing it up to 2.15 GHz and leaving it for a couple hours, it stayed just a hair below 70 °C — a safe margin on the throttling threshold — and only a few degrees warmer than that huge heat spreader in the Pi 400. That worked! When I tried to replicate the success with the Pi 4B, I ran into the first two spontaneous shutdowns in mid-run, which I didn’t expect to see due to the built-in thermal management. (Flashback from the era of lapping Celerons!) It seems that 2.15 GHz is just a little too fast for the 4B and the junk-box heatsink. I stepped it down to 2.1 GHz, and it ran on the ragged edge, for hours, with the heatsink oriented vertically. But it’s really on the edge: during the first 2.1 GHz run, I turned the board flat on the table after a couple hours, which meant that the heatsink was no longer vertical, and it picked up a few degrees and went into full crash. This is no way to live. Summary This whole experiment has been playing around with two effects. First, the CM4 and the Pi 400 have a slightly more energy-efficient chipset that allows them to run cooler or faster — take your pick. And that effect is very real, with the CM4 running about 10 °C cooler at the stock 1.5 GHz, giving a nice margin against thermal throttling right where it counts. Or if you’re willing to live on the edge, for the same temperatures and cooling solutions, you can run the CM4 at 1.8 GHz where the Pi 4B runs at 1.5 GHz, and that without a heatsink. But over and above the efficiency gain, any member of the Pi 4 family will run up into the 2 GHz range with no problem if you put a good enough heatsink on it. How big is big enough? That’s going to be a product of your environment, your tolerance for throttling and/or shortening the lifespan of the SOC, and how badly you want to get the heatsink into a small space. From my tests with a junkbox heatsink, you should be able to figure out a passive cooling solution that’ll work for anything but the tightest of fits. What’s definitely true is that the Raspberry engineers have pulled off a nice design with the Pi 400. A big enough hunk of aluminum gives them plenty of thermal overhead to run the four CPUs inside at full bore without breaking a metaphorical sweat, and on top of that it runs the more energy efficient chipset. I’m still surprised that the Pi 400 heatsink is so effective, being nothing more than a big sheet of aluminum inside a plastic box, but it is more than sufficient. I’m going to run my Pi 400 at 2.15 GHz, because — why not? Does any of this make sense? In the end, you’re talking about a small and only moderately powerful single-board computer, not a liquid-cooled mega-number-crunching rig of doom. It has limited memory and a moderate GPU. The overclocking gains are on the scale of 10% to 30%, so they’re moderate as well. The configuration effort involved, editing a config file, is truly minimal, but you’ll spend a moderate amount of time and money sourcing the right heat sink. For average workloads, you probably don’t need to overclock, and for hard-core workloads the Raspberry Pi might not be the right choice anyway. But if what you need is a mid-sized speed bump, you can get it. And in our mind, you might as well. We think it’s cool that the Raspberry crew got their hands on a better silicon revision and put it into their two latest products. If the Broadcom “C” series SOC is a drop-in replacement for the “B”, we wouldn’t mind seeing the newer version in future Pi 4Bs. Why not? It seems to be about 10% more energy efficient, and while that’s maybe not earth-shattering, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. Meanwhile, just put a little bit more aluminum surface area on your 4B, and you’re all set.	56	20	[ { "comment_id": "6293601", "author": "Rhys", "timestamp": "2020-11-11T15:43:57", "content": "Not seeing the usual docs on this one yet. Is this a custom carrier board for a CM4 internally, or a completely custom board? It only comes in 4GB ram, so I’m wondering if you can swap in an 8GB ram CM4 wi...	1,760,373,291.437706
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/linux-fu-send-in-the-cloud-clones/	Linux Fu: Send In The (Cloud) Clones	Al Williams	[ "Hackaday Columns", "Linux Hacks", "Slider" ]	[ "cloud", "fuse", "gdrive", "google drive", "linux", "rclone", "rsync" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…inuxFu.jpg?w=800	Storing data “in the cloud” — even if it is your own server — is all the rage. But many cloud solutions require you to access your files in a clumsy way using a web browser. One day, operating systems will incorporate generic cloud storage just like any other file system. But by using two tools, rclone and sshfs , you can nearly accomplish this today with a little one-time setup. There are a few limitations, but, generally, it works quite well. It is a story as old as computing. There’s something new. Using it is exotic and requires special techniques. Then it becomes just another part of the operating system. If you go back far enough, programmers had to pull specific records from mass storage like tapes, drums, or disks and deblock data. Now you just open a file or a database. Cameras, printers, audio, and even networking once were special devices that are now commonplace. If you use Windows, for example, OneDrive is well-supported. But if you use another service, you may or may not have an easy option to just access your files as a first-class file system. The rclone program is the Swiss Army knife of cloud storage services. Despite its name, it doesn’t have to synchronize a local file store to a remote service, although it can do that. The program works with a dizzying array of cloud storage providers and it can do simple operations like listing and copying files. It can also synchronize, as you’d expect. However, it also has an experimental FUSE filesystem that lets you mount a remote service — with varying degrees of success. What’s Supported? If you don’t like using someone like Google or Amazon, you can host your own cloud. In that case, you can probably use sshfs to mount a file using ssh , although rclone can also do that. There are also cloud services you can self-host like OwnCloud and NextCloud. A Raspberry Pi running Docker can easily stand up one of these in a few minutes and rclone can handle these, too. The project claims to support 33 types of systems , although some of those are serving local files, but by any count, it is at least 30. The big players like Google, Box, Dropbox, and Amazon are there. There are variations for things like Google Drive vs Google Photos. Some of the protocols are generic like SFTP, HTTP, and WebDAV, so they will work with multiple providers. Then there are lesser-known names like Tardigrade, Mega, and Hubric. Each system has its idiosyncracies, of course. Some file systems are case-sensitive and some are not. Some support modification time recording, but others don’t. Some are read-only and some do not support duplicate files. You can mount most of the filesystems and there are also meta systems that can show files from multiple remotes (e.g., Google Drive and Dropbox together) and other special ones that can cache another remote or split up large files. How Does It Work? When you setup rclone , you use the program to configure one or more remotes. The program stores the setup in ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf although you rarely need to edit that file. Instead, you run rclone config . From there you can see any remotes you already have and edit them or you can define new ones. Each backend provider has slightly different setup, but you’ll generally have to provide some sort of login credentials. In many cases, the program will launch a Web browser to authenticate you or allow you to grant permission for rclone to access the service. Once you have a remote, you can use it with rclone . Suppose you have a Google Drive and you’ve made a remote named HaDFiles: that points to that drive. You could use commands like: rclone ls HaDFiles: rclone ls HaDFiles:/pending_files # directory name, not file wildcard! rclone copy ~/myfile.txt HaDFiles:/notes/myfile.txt rclone copy HaDFiles:/notes/myfile.txt ~/myfile.txt rclone sync ~/schedule HaDFiles:/schedules The copy is more like a synchronization. The file is copied from one path to another path. You can’t copy a directory. In other words, consider this command: rclone copy /A/B/C/d.txt remote:/X/Y/Z This copies d.txt from /A/B/C to /X/Y/Z . If won’t copy a file that already exists on the other side unless it hashes to a different value than the new file, indicating the file changed. There is also a move command, as well as delete , mkdir , rmdir , and all the other things you would expect. The sync command updates the destination to match the source, but not vice versa. However, what we are interested in is the mount command. On the face of it, it is simple: rclone mount remote:/ /some_local_mount_point Caveats There are a few problems, though. First, the performance of some of the filesystems is pretty poor and could be even worse if you have a slow connection. This is especially bad if you have tools like a file index program (e.g., baloo ) or a backup program that walks your entire file system. The best thing to do is to exclude these mount points from those programs. Hitting the remote filesystem can be inefficient so rclone will cache file attributes for a short period of time. If a file changed on the remote side, you could get stale data and that could be bad for your data. It also caches directories, so if you are using this with multiple users, be sure to read the documentation. You also can’t write randomly into files by default. This stops some programs like word processors from working. You can pass --vfs-cache-mode with an argument to cause rclone to cache the file locally, which may help that. There’s no free lunch, though. If you set the cache mode to full, all file operations will work, but you risk rclone not being able to move the complete file over to the remote later which, again, isn’t good for your data integrity. Problems If you don’t mind manually setting up things, it is really just this simple. Run a mount command, probably specifying a cache mode, and you are done. However, I wanted to mount the cloud all the time and that leads to some problems. You can set up rclone to run as a systemd service, but that didn’t work well for me. Just putting my commands in my login profile seemed to work better. But there were two problems. First, it was wasteful to call it every time I run a login shell, even if the mount was already there. Second, sometimes the network connection would drop and the mounted directory was in some kind of zombie state. You couldn’t remount, but you also couldn’t get any files out. The Script The answer to my problems? Create a simple script. #!/bin/bash # error checking if [ $# != 2 ] then cat <<EOF Usage rclonemount volume mount_point EOF exit 1 fi if ! which rclone >/dev/null # check we have rclone then echo Can\'t find rclone, exiting. exit 3 fi if [ ! -d "$2" ] then echo Mount point $2 does not exist. exit 2 fi VOL="$1" DIR="$2" # Check if getting something out of the dir fails # if so, maybe a stale mount so try to unmount if ! ls "$DIR/." >/dev/null then fusermount -u "$DIR" fi # See if directory appears to be mounted. If so, we are done if grep "$DIR" /etc/mtab >/dev/null then echo $VOL Mounted else # if not, mount it echo Mounting $VOL rclone mount --vfs-cache-mode full "$VOL"/ "$DIR" & # run in background fi exit 0 # we tried In my shell startup, I simply call this script once for each remote and mount them to things like ~/cloud/googledrive or ~/cloud/dropbox . You could also run the script as a user service for systemd , of course. There is one caveat. One day, one of your remotes will fail to mount. You have to remember you probably need to run the configuration again to reauthorize the connection to the remote service or change the password if you recently changed it. The error messages won’t make that clear. You can use the same general script with sshfs instead of rclone , and rclone can mount over SSH, too. Pick your poison. Head in the Clouds I have my own WebDAV server and having it simply look like a directory on all my machines is really handy. I’ll admit that I enjoy having Google Photos mapped to my filesystem, too. The scope of rclone is very impressive and it seems to have kept up with the various changes that the remote services seem to make every few months that often breaks tools like these. Overall, it is a good tool to have in your Linux box. I haven’t tried it, but apparently rclone will also work on other platforms including BSD, MacOS, and even Windows, where it looks like it mounts a drive letter. Let us know!	17	11	[ { "comment_id": "6293355", "author": "Paul", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T18:28:14", "content": "Ahh. Gone are the days when you could just NFS mount a disk on the other side of the country. Sure was convenient.", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "62...	1,760,373,291.296924
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/new-contest-say-goodbye-to-2020/	New Contest: Say Goodbye To 2020	Mike Szczys	[ "contests" ]	[ "Goodbye 2020!" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…ured-1.jpg?w=800	Every year you find yourself wanting to build an awesome hack to show off on New Year’s Eve, but like all hackers, you procrastinate and it’s a rush job, if it happens at all. But considering the hot mess of a year 2020 has been, let’s all plan ahead and give 2020 the boot by building the things that make us happy. The Goodbye 2020! contest kicked off this morning: build something that ushers in the new year in a fun and creative way. Maybe it’s a robot that tears off the pages of a daily desk calendar of 2020, shredding one for each of the last 365 minutes of the year. Build a video countdown device that works with any HDMI screen, or a dedicated LED display — perhaps in hat, glasses, or sweater form factor? There’s unlimited room for creativity here, so don’t forget to show us video of it to get the full effect. Top three finishers will win a $500, $250, or $100 shopping spree from Digi-Key electronics who are sponsoring the Goodbye 2020! contest. Start your project page on Hackaday.io right now and use the “Submit project to…” drop-down box on the left sidebar to enter it into the contest. We’ll be keeping an eye out for awesome entries from now until the end of December.	4	2	[ { "comment_id": "6293337", "author": "Martin", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T17:29:08", "content": "Reminds me of Sparkfun’s antimov contest from 10 years ago, love it!", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6293386", "author": "Hirudinea", "timesta...	1,760,373,291.575324
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/mini-imac-g4-made-with-nuc-and-3d-printer/	Mini IMac G4 Made With NUC And 3D Printer	Lewin Day	[ "Misc Hacks" ]	[ "imac", "Intel NUC", "NUC" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…mac800.jpg?w=800	Apple’s computers have been well regarded over the years for their sharp design features. Of course, something that’s great can only be cuter and cooler if it’s made even smaller. In just that vein, [Gary Olson] whipped up a 54% scale iMac G4 . The iMac G4 was the futuristic-looking flatscreen model, and the direct successor to the original CRT-based iMac. Unlike other projects that run Raspberry Pis or simply fit iPads inside, [Gary] elected to go for a Hackintosh-based build. The system runs Mac OS X on a Intel NUC kitted out with a Core i3 CPU. While it’s not a genuine PowerPC, using OS X fits the proper G4 aesthetic. The build relies on 3D printed components, with the scale size largely chosen to suit the size of [Gary’s] printer and the Intel NUC motherboard. [Gary] goes into detail explaining what was required to get the paint finish right and how to make the hinges stiff but movable. We’re always fans of a mini retro builds, even if the fact that iMacs are now retro means we’re showing our age. If you’ve got your own cute micro PC coming together in the ‘shop, be sure to drop us a line!	5	3	[ { "comment_id": "6293324", "author": "Ben Chaosbc", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T16:34:33", "content": "Super cool ! Love it", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [] }, { "comment_id": "6293325", "author": "Ben chaosbc", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T16:37:22", "content"...	1,760,373,291.611171
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/10/sending-3d-printed-parts-to-mars-a-look-inside-jpls-additive-manufacturing-center/	Sending 3D Printed Parts To Mars: A Look Inside JPL’s Additive Manufacturing Center	Dan Maloney	[ "3d Printer hacks", "Engineering", "Featured", "Original Art", "Slider", "Space" ]	[ "Additive Manufacturing", "DED", "direct metal laser sintering", "DMLS", "jpl", "mars", "Mars 2020", "nasa", "Perseverance", "rover" ]	https://hackaday.com/wp-…Mars3D.jpg?w=800	With the Mars 2020 mission now past the halfway point between Earth and its destination, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab recently released a couple of stories about the 3D-printed parts that made it aboard the Perseverance rover . Tucked into its aeroshell and ready for its high-stakes ride to the Martian surface, Perseverance sports eleven separate parts that we created with additive manufacturing. It’s not the first time a spacecraft has flown with parts made with additive manufacturing technique, but it is the first time JPL has created a vehicle with so many printed parts. To take a closer look at what 3D-printing for spaceflight-qualified components looks like, and to probe a little into the rationale for additive versus traditional subtractive manufacturing techniques, I reached out to JPL and was put in touch with Andre Pate, Additive Manufacturing Group Lead, and Michael Schein, lead engineer on one of the mission’s main scientific instruments. They both graciously gave me time to ask questions and geek out on all the cool stuff going on at JPL in terms of additive manufacturing, and to find out what the future holds for 3D-printing and spaceflight. You Got MOXIE, Kid We’ve been keenly interested in the Mars 2020 mission in general, with a special interest in the engineering behind its mobile astrobiology and geology laboratory, Perseverance. In addition to deep-dives into the Adaptive Sample Caching system that will seal up Martian regolith samples for an eventual sample return mission, and Ingenuity , the first aircraft designed to operate off-world, we profiled the Perseverance rover , which will carry all this gear around the Red Planet. The amount of science this rover is slated to perform could very well change our perception of Mars, and may well turn up the first definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life. Perseverance rover, with 3D-printed parts on PIXL (end of arm) and MOXIE (starboard side of hull). Source: NASA/JPL . To accomplish these missions, Perseverance includes a number of sophisticated instruments, two of which sport most of the 3D-printed parts included on the mission. The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry or PIXL, is designed to search deep inside Martian rocks for signs of fossil life. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, is intended to test technologies for producing unlimited amounts of oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, in support of refueling rockets for the return trip to Earth. Both instruments contain parts made with advanced metal 3D-printing techniques, both in-house at JPL’s Additive Manufacturing Center, and externally at vendors contracted for special jobs. Materials and Methods In addition to more typical polymer printers, which are mainly used for prototyping and printing fixtures and jigs, JPL’s in-house additive lab has a wide range of technologies available for printing metal parts. Which modality is used depends very much upon where the part is going to be used. JPL also has arrangements with outside additive manufacturing vendors to print the pieces they can’t do in-house. Directed-energy deposition printer being used to print a part at JPL’s Additive Manufacturing Center. Source: NASA/JPL . For non-flight parts, the JPL team uses mostly directed-energy deposition, possibly the coolest-sounding 3D-printing modality there is. DED depends on a high-energy beam, either laser or an electron beam, into which powdered metal or a fine wire is fed. The energy creates a pool of molten metal that is applied to the growing print. DED is somewhat like spray arc welding or laser cladding, with the addition of CNC control of the print head and an inert environment to reduce oxidation of the growing print. DED has the advantages of relatively fast build rates and the ability to create fine features, as well as minimal need for post-processing steps like additional machining or pressing (more on which below). Another advantage of DED is that prints can be created with gradient alloys. JPL’s DED printer is an RPM 222XR , which supports up to four different metals in a single print. This is similar to an FDM printer that can support multiple filaments and print different colors or different materials within a single print, but even better since it can do what is known as gradient alloys , where a metal part is created from multiple powders, with different areas of the part having different metallurgical properties. For example, on Curiosity, the steel shaft of an actuator was causing problems with a magnetic encoder. By printing just the magnetically sensitive portion of the shaft from non-magnetic stainless steel, they were able to avoid the issue. Parts that are destined to fly on JPL-built spacecraft are not printed on the in-house DED machines, though. Rather, JPL turns to powder-bed fusion printers for their flight-qualified parts. There’s an alphabet soup’s worth of initialisms for powder-bed printing processes, including selective laser sintering (SLM), selective laser melting (SLM), and direct metal laser sintering (DMLS). The video below shows DMLS on an EOS M290 , one of the three DMLS machines the JPL Additive Manufacturing Center runs. Of all the hobbyist-grade polymer printing methods that we’ve all become accustomed to, powder-bed fusion methods are perhaps most closely related to resin printing by stereolithography, or SLA. Where SLA prints use light to polymerize photosensitive resin, though, powder-bed fusion printers use a high-energy beam to sinter or melt the granules at the surface of a thin bed of powdered material to form each layer of the print. The beam can either be a powerful fiber laser or an electron beam; JPL can do laser prints in-house but contracts with a vendor when a part needs to be electron-beam printed. Regardless of which energy source is used, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into controlling the powder bed of these printers, since print quality is directly related to the depth of the powder. When a layer is complete, the build platform moves down into a reservoir by the programmed layer height. More powdered metal is then added to the tiny space on top of the receding bed surface by a complex squeegee mechanism that ensures that a completely homogeneous layer of fresh powder is laid down upon which the next layer can be built. The print builds up a layer at a time until it’s finally dug out of the loose powder, cleared of any supporting structures, and readied for post-processing. Post-Processing Hot isostatic pressing, or HIP, is a process that has long been used by the powdered-metal industry to finish parts made by, for example, die pressing or metal injection molding, and more recently for metal additive manufacturing. Parts created with any of these techniques necessarily have voids within them; no matter how fine the powder grains used to create the part, gases are still trapped within its structure. HIP aims to literally squeeze those bubbles away, using a combination of extreme heat — up to 2,000°C — and extreme pressure of perhaps 100 MPa or more, using an inert gas like argon. Parts subjected to HIP treating experience considerable shrinkage as the parts are compacted. This has to be accounted for at design time, but HIP has the decided advantage over regular hot pressing because it applies pressure evenly to the part, shrinking it predictably in all dimensions. This tends to avoid the dimensional distortions that traditional pressing using solid anvils introduces into parts. Another consideration in additive manufacturing of metal parts for spaceflight is the “foundry in a box” problem. For traditional subtractive manufacturing, the starting material is a block of metal that has already been through a foundry process. The metal has either been cast, extruded or perhaps forged, has been heat-treated and tempered, and has known properties with regard to strength, ductility, and hardness. It may even have been X-rayed to reveal any hidden imperfections. Its crystal structure is more or less fixed, and all that’s left to do to it is to remove the unnecessary bits to expose the part hidden within. For additive manufacturing, though, the metal part that results is not as well-characterized. Where the crystal structure of the starting material in subtractive manufacturing is pretty much set, the energetic means needed to accomplish metal 3D-printing by definition change the microscopic structure of the starting material. Hence the “foundry in a box” — the metal in a 3D-printed part was literally made de novo . For flight-qualified parts, where potentially billions of dollars are on the line, engineers need to account for the chaotic, energetic regimes that 3D-printed parts experienced, however briefly, during their fiery birth. That adds a layer of uncertainty, but for the flexibility offered by additive manufacturing, it’s just another cost of doing business. Subtractive vs Additive I asked about the analysis that goes into deciding whether a part is made by traditional subtractive techniques or additive methods. Going into it, I assumed that cost would be the prime driver. NASA and JPL have made much lately of lowering the cost of space exploration, and their budgets have consistently reflected the need to do big, important things for as little as possible. And so when you look at a part that, when made using subtractive methods, turns 90% of the block of starting stock into chips, additive methods seem to make a lot of sense. After all, if a part can be made using a volume of stock material that’s pretty much exactly the volume of the finished part, the cost savings would be considerable. The front cover of PIXL is one of the eleven 3D-printed parts on Perseverance. Additive manufacturing made this part possible, while traditional machining would have been prohibitive. Source: NASA/JPL . It turns out I was wrong about that. With parts destined for flight, cost is hardly ever considered as a driver for moving to additive manufacturing. Additive is generally viewed more as an enabling technology, and is used to create parts that can’t be created any other way. The aforementioned gradient alloy encoder shaft is a perfect example — blending metallurgical properties within a single part is difficult to accomplish with anything but additive manufacturing. Another example of parts that are not feasible with anything but additive are parts where mass must be kept to a minimum, or parts which will go into an assembly with specific cooling needs and need to have built-in cooling channels. Such parts would be difficult to create subtractively, but are much more easily 3D-printed. Another area where additive shines is in the re-creation of legacy parts. We’ve all heard the stories about how we could never build a new version of the mighty F1 engines from the Apollo program, mainly because of the loss of the expertise and tooling that went into building them. While it’s unlikely that the massively complex engines will ever be built again, additive manufacturing is often used to recreate parts that are no longer available. While JPL doesn’t do much of this — they are in the business of building the future, after all — other entities like the US Air Force, which needs to keep airplanes that rolled off the assembly line over 60 years ago alive , often need to. They’ll regularly scan parts, often going so far as to use a CT scanner, and print parts made by long-defunct vendors by decades-retired machinists to keep their fleets flying. For as flexible and powerful as additive manufacturing is in aerospace applications, you’d think that the industry would be flocking to it en masse. And while they are to some degree, in a lot of ways it’s a very conservative industry that wisely looks at radical change with skepticism. But as additive manufacturing continues to make parts possible that were once impossible, and as JPL keeps racking up successful missions using these previously impossible parts, it’ll prove itself and solidify its place as a manufacturing method of choice for all kinds of missions.	5	3	[ { "comment_id": "6293338", "author": "Ren", "timestamp": "2020-11-10T17:29:40", "content": "“Perseverance sports eleven separate parts that we created with additive manufacturing.”“we” or “were”?", "parent_id": null, "depth": 1, "replies": [ { "comment_id": "6293384", ...	1,760,373,291.760662

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