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https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/ubuntu-update-hack-chat/ | Ubuntu Update Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"appliance",
"desktop",
"distro",
"gnome",
"Hack Chat",
"IoT",
"linux",
"server",
"snap",
"ubuntu",
"unity"
] | Join us on Wednesday, July 22 at noon Pacific for the
Ubuntu Update Hack Chat
with
Rhys Davies
and
Alan Pope
!
Everyone has their favorite brands, covering everything from the clothes they wear to the cars they drive. We see brand loyalty informing all sorts of acquisition decisions, not only in regular consumer life but in technology, too. Brand decisions sort people into broad categories like Mac versus PC, or iPhone versus Android, and can result in spirited discussions of the relative merits of one choice over the others. It’s generally well-intentioned, even if it gets a bit personal sometimes.
Perhaps no choice is more personal in hacker circles than which Linux distribution to use. There are tons to choose from, each with their various features and particular pros and cons.
Ubuntu
has become a very popular choice for Linux aficionados, attracting more than a third of the market.
Canonical
is the company behind the Debian-based distro, providing editions that run on the desktop, on servers, and on a variety of IoT devices, as well as support and services for large-scale users.
To fill us in on what’s new in the world of Ubuntu, Canonical product manager Rhys Davies and developer advocate Alan Pope will stop by the Hack Chat this week. They’ll be ready to answer all your questions about the interesting stuff that’s going on with Ubuntu, including the recently announced
Ubuntu Appliances
, easy to install, low maintenance images for Raspberry Pis and PCs that are built for security and simplicity. We’ll also talk about snaps, desktops, and whatever else crops up.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 22 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you down, 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. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264567",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T16:42:58",
"content": "As long as they are not going to mess with /home like it mentioned on HaD a few months back.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264578",
"author": "Ano... | 1,760,373,415.902188 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/raspberry-pi-shuffler-is-computerized-card-shark/ | Raspberry Pi Shuffler Is Computerized Card Shark | Lewin Day | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"opencv",
"playing cards",
"raspberry pi"
] | If you’re playing Texas Hold’em or other card games with a small group, you may get tired of shuffling over and over again. [3dprintedLife] was in just such a position, and realized there were no good automatic card shufflers in his budget. Instead, he elected to build one,
and put in some extra functionality to corrupt the game to his whims.
The mechanicals of the machine took much development, as accurately handling and dispensing cards is a challenge, particularly with the loose tolerances of 3D printed parts. After developing a reliable transport mechanism, it was more than capable of shuffling a deck well with some basic commands.
However, the real magic comes from installing a camera and Raspberry Pi running OpenCV. This is capable of reading the value and suit of each card, and then stacking the deck in a particular order to suit the dealer’s wishes. It’s all controlled through a web interface and is capable of creating guaranteed wins in Blackjack and Texas Hold’em.
Files are on Github
for those eager to delve deeper into how the machine works.
The mechanism does such a beautiful job of shuffling, that your friends may not even notice the ruse. It goes to show that you should always have your wits about you when gambling with the aid of machines. Of course, if you wish only to create havoc,
this Lego card machine gun may be more your speed
. Video after the break.
[via
Reddit
] | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264559",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T16:07:49",
"content": "Like the visible mechanism, rather slow but with a little work on the wiring it becomes an object of Art as well as a functional loaded shuffler…That said I’d say you are wrong Lewin to malign the flesh... | 1,760,373,416.327845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/model-hydroelectric-plant-is-an-illuminating-educational-tool/ | Model Hydroelectric Plant Is An Illuminating Educational Tool | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"bldc motor",
"hydroelectric",
"hydroelectric plant",
"led strip",
"Pelton turbine",
"power generation",
"turbine"
] | There’s more than one way to light up a strip of LEDs. Have you tried building your own hydroelectric power plant to do it? Well, now you can. Replicating
[Matic Markovič]’s entry into the 2020 Hackaday Prize
is bound to teach you something, if not many things, about the way hydroelectric power is generated and the way the variables play into it.
In [Matic]’s model, water from an adjustable-height reservoir flows into a 3D-printed Pelton turbine. The water jet hits the turbine’s cupped fins at a 90° angle, causing the assembly to spin around rapidly. This mechanical energy charges a brushless DC motor that’s connected to an Arduino Nano, which rectifies the AC from the generator and uses it to light up an RGB strip like an equalizer display that represents the power being generated.
This is easily one of the coolest educational displays we’ve ever seen. The reservoir can move up and down over a 55 cm (21.6″) range with the flick of a three-way toggle, which makes it easy to see that the higher the reservoir, the more power is generated. [Matic] has the STLs and INOs in the usual places if you want to make your own. Flow past the break for a demonstration, followed by an exploded render that gets put back together by invisible hands.
Your hydroelectric setup doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to work.
One man’s trash can be another man’s off-grid phone charger
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264927",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T18:15:35",
"content": "Those colour changing LED showerheads are a great source of cheap readymade hydroelectric impellers, with reasonable output currents. The ones I’ve opened have been three phase with encapsulated motors. Th... | 1,760,373,416.15563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/beyond-printf-better-logging-practices-for-faster-debugging/ | Beyond Printf(): Better Logging Practices For Faster Debugging | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Skills",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"debugging",
"libPoco",
"logging",
"printf"
] | All of us who do some programming know that logging is a time-tested way to output messages about the internal state of our code. With varying degrees of adjustable granularity, these messages allow us to keep track of not only the state of the application, but also its overall health. When things do end up going FUBAR, these log messages are usually the first thing we look at as a software equivalent of a Flight Data Recorder in an airplane.
Spending some time and care in not only designing the logging system, but also in deciding what should be logged and at what level, can make our future self appreciate life a lot more. We’re all familiar with the practice of ‘printf-debugging’, where logging is added as part of the usual post-crash autopsy as one tries to figure out what exactly went wrong. It’s one way of doing it, and eventually it works, but we can do much better.
People are lazy, and you’re only going to stick to good logging practices if they are at least as easy if not easier than sprinkling printf() statement throughout the code. Yet at the same time we want to be able to handle things like log levels and newlines without too much extra typing. The most successful logging libraries are built with this
Setting the Context
Not every application calls for the same kind of logging. Consider the context of your project when deciding on the logging that will fit your needs.
Many embedded platforms are highly application-specific. Whether it’s a simple 8-bit MCU inside a washing machine or a powerful SoC-based system, it follows that a microwave’s MCU firmware does not require the same level of logging as a car’s ECU or an industrial PID controller. However, they all benefit from good logging practices, whether those messages are being stored, or only visible when actively debugging the hardware.
For server applications, logging is a pretty central part of operations, as a system administrator will want to read out the logs from a central location for all services that run on the servers for which they are responsible. This implies that these logs should only contain the information that a system administrator might find useful, which is not the same information developers will be looking for.
Desktop platforms are similar, where on most platforms a central logging service will record the standard output from any running services. For regular applications (i.e. not services), any logging output tends to either be a more ephemeral thing. Either the standard output is displayed in a terminal window, or vanishes into the void without a terminal or other output associated with it. For the sake of this article we will assume that we just have to write to stdout without concerning us with any further details.
As a small aside,
mobile platforms
are a rather special case when it comes to logging. They are more similar to server platforms, in the sense that every application’s standard output is logged. This way one gets the logging for every single service and application that is running, without having to configure anything. The exact details of how to obtain this log on mobile platforms like Android, iOS, Tizen, or ChromeOS will differ per platform.
Use Log Levels Wisely
Why have log levels, you may ask? Because you want to differentiate between the importance of log messages, possibly even filter just for particular types of messages. Common log levels are:
Fatal.
Critical.
Error.
Warning.
Notice.
Info.
Debug.
Trace.
Normally you’d run a service at a log level of at most ‘Info’ level, but if the service is too ‘chatty’ at this log level one might want to bump it down to Notice or even just Warning. The onus is hereby on the developer to properly consider what log level the message they’re about to add to the code should exist at. Is it an informational message? A notice that should be looked at at least once? Or is it a warning that must be addressed?
Obviously, an Error level message is bad news, but we have two more levels beyond that. Here ‘Critical’ level should be used for errors that fall between ‘well, bugger’ and ‘the system just caught on fire’. It follows then that ‘Fatal’ messages involve the service reaching an unrecoverable state, a fatal runtime error, and anything else which might mean that a sysadmin is about to get paged out of bed at 3 AM on a Saturday.
Finally, the ‘Debug’ level is for information that is useful while debugging the code, like values of certain variables and verbose logging of application activity. For truly fine-grained debug output, there is the ‘Trace’ level, which is for tedious information. This is generally used for maximum verbosity logging.
Using Poco::Logger; — A Practical Server-Based Example
Over the years, I have had to add logging to both hobby and commercial projects. Among my favorites was an embedded server project that would run on countless headless systems around the world, with the only feedback being the built-in logging that could be read out with the right software and sent back to HQ. For this I used
Poco::Logger
from the
libPoco
library. It takes care of the more tedious stuff, such as herding different logging streams (channels) together and other logistics.
The right logging was essential not just for myself to diagnose problems, but also for colleagues who could use the same logging to figure out where (and why) things had begun to catch on fire by tracking requests and their data. It worked well and and I’ve ended up using the same kind of logging in some of my hobby projects, including
NymphRPC
, a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) library in C++. The part that I implemented is contained in
nymph_logger.h
and
nymph_logger.cpp
. It allows NymphRPC-based applications to write to the log as follows:
NYMPH_LOG_DEBUG("Added new connection with handle: " + NumberFormatter::format(handle));
The
NYMPH_LOG_DEBUG ()
part is a preprocessor macro, which is defined in nymph_logger.h as:
#define NYMPH_LOG_DEBUG(msg) \
if (NymphLogger::priority >= Poco::Message::PRIO_DEBUG) { \
NymphLogger::logger(loggerName).debug(msg, __FILE__, __LINE__);\
}
Here we can see how the line is replaced with an if-statement that checks at which log level the application is supposed to be logging at. The preprocessor statement saves us from typing all of this every single time, while also expanding the
__FILE__
and
__LINE__
text into the current filename and line in the (unprocessed) source code where the log statement is used. The static
NymphLogger::logger()
call returns a specific logger, which is an instance of
Poco::Logger
.
A single
NymphLoggerChannel
(inherited from
Poco::Channel
) is provided to
Poco::Logger
as an output channel. This channel merely passes a formatted string along with the log level to an externally provided function pointer, from where it can be printed to stdout, written to a file, stored in a database, or whatever else is appropriate.
The formatting code:
string msgStr;
msgStr = NumberFormatter::format(msg.getPid());
msgStr += "." + NumberFormatter::format(msg.getTid());
msgStr += "\t" + msg.getSource() + "\t";
msgStr += NumberFormatter::format(msg.getSourceLine()) + "\t";
msgStr += msg.getText() + "\t\t- ";
msgStr += msg.getSourceFile();
(*loggerFunction)(level, msgStr);
When we then run the NymphRPC test client and server, we can see log output like the following:
6 - 14524.2 NymphSession 130 Read 37 bytes. - src/nymph_session.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphMessage 79 Method ID: 2. - src/nymph_message.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphMessage 93 Message flags: 0x0 - src/nymph_message.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphUtilities 170 NYMPH_TYPE_STRING - src/nymph_utilities.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphTypes 306 String value: callbackFunction. - src/nymph_types.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphSession 148 Calling method callback for message ID: 0x3 - src/nymph_session.cpp
6 - 14524.2 NymphMethod 92 Calling callback for method: helloCallbackFunction - src/nymph_method.cpp
Looking at the test server’s code we can see that the first number is the log level (6: Debug), with the rest being the previously formatted string. This contains the process ID, the thread in this process which logged the message, the name of the logger, the line in the source, the message, and finally the relative path (from the Makefile) to the source file.
Final thoughts
I have found that having to regularly eat one’s own dogfood and dealing with commentary from colleagues and customers about the logging output from one’s code has been highly motivating to polish the rough spots. The one which this article cannot cover is what is important to log in your code. That is something which you, the dev, either knows already or will find out through bitter experience while digging through a log file.
That said, a hobby project is a good place to get started with trying out different logging approaches. Once you find yourself working on a commercial project, it is definitely too late to get creative. On the positive side, once you figure out how to do logging right in different situations, it can turn weekend-long bug hunting sessions into a brief, 10-minute log-reading-code-tweaking and CI-bothering session on a Friday afternoon. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264921",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T17:54:09",
"content": "Big advantage to using a logging library that can log in the background is it can *really* help for applications that need consistent latency and can avoid logging-related performance issues. Printf in a runn... | 1,760,373,415.811964 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/flipping-a-coin-10000-times-with-a-dedicated-machine/ | Flipping A Coin 10,000 Times With A Dedicated Machine | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"coin",
"coin flip",
"coin mechanism",
"random number generator"
] | Flipping a coin is often the initial example used to help teach probability and statistics to maths students. Often, there is talk of how, given a fair coin, the probability of landing heads or tails should approach 0.5. Of course, if you want to test this, it pays to have a machine do the hard work for you.
[Andrew Consroe] has the rig to do just that.
The build consists largely of 3D printed parts. A large cylindrical shroud is used to keep the coin within the flipping area. A spring-loaded dowel is actuated by a stepper motor spinning a cam, which flips the coin. Once the coin has landed, it is photographed with a webcam. An image processing pipeline then determines whether the coin landed heads or tails. A black spot is used on one side of the coin to aid analysis, as the poor-quality webcam images weren’t good enough to recognise the coin in its standard form. Once the flip has been analysed, a sliding aperture is used to push the coin back towards the flipper for the next cycle.
The machine completes a flip approximately every two seconds, meaning 10,000 flips would take approximately 2.5 days. Unfortunately, due to noise and occasional coin escapes, [Andrew] hasn’t yet been able to achieve his goal. He aims to increase speed significantly before making an all-out attempt.
Coin flips can make for decent random numbers, but if you need better ones,
perhaps NIST can help you out.
Video after the break. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264874",
"author": "Ken Hansen",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T15:46:18",
"content": "Very clever design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264891",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T16:18:48",
... | 1,760,373,416.053954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/window-in-the-skies-why-everyone-is-going-to-mars-this-month/ | Window In The Skies: Why Everyone Is Going To Mars This Month | Sven Gregori | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"astronomy",
"mars",
"mars rover",
"orbit",
"orbital mechanics",
"orbital rendezvous",
"space program",
"space race",
"space science"
] | Mars may not be the kind of place to raise your kids, but chances are that one day [Elton John]’s famous lyrics will be wrong about there being no one there to raise them. For now, however, we have probes, orbiters, and landers. Mars missions are going strong this year, with three nations about to launch their rockets towards the Red Planet: the United States sending their
Perseverance
rover
, China’s
Tianwen-1
mission, and the United Arab Emirates sending their
Hope
orbiter.
As all of this is planned to happen still within the month of July, it almost gives the impression of a new era of wild space races where everyone tries to be first. Sure, some egos will certainly be boosted here, but the reason for this increased run within such a short time frame has a simple explanation: Mars will be right around the corner later this year — relatively speaking — providing an ideal opportunity to travel there right now.
In fact, this year is as good as it gets for quite a while. The next time the circumstances will be (almost) as favorable as this year is going to be in 2033, so it’s understandable that space agencies are eager to not miss out on this chance. Not that Mars missions couldn’t be accomplished in the next 13 years — after all, several endeavors are already in the wings for 2022, including
the delayed
Rosalind Franklin
rover launch
. It’s just that the circumstances won’t be as ideal.
But what exactly does that mean, and why is that? What makes July 2020 so special? And what’s everyone doing up there anyway? Well, let’s find out!
A Window To Mars
Even the simplest model of our solar system will show how Earth and Mars revolve differently around the sun, with distance and speed being the most obvious ones.
Earth
rotates in a distance of
roughly 149,597,870.7 km
1 astronomical unit (AU) from the sun at an average speed of 29.78 km/s, while
Mars
does the same at ~1.523 times the distance and an average speed of 24 km/s. It takes Earth ~365 days to end up in a same spot again, and Mars ~668 amounts of its own definition of a day, i.e.
sols
, which is roughly the equivalent of 687 Earth days.
Throwing around all these numbers shows mainly one thing: Earth and Mars don’t have much in common here, and as a result, they don’t hang around much in each other’s proximity. Still, they do revolve around the same sun, and are therefore bound to meet on occasion. Okay, “meet” is a strong word with fatal results if taken too literally here, but rather have close encounters with each other. The accurate terminology would be that they are
in opposition
on occasion.
Opposition
Mars in conjunction (white) and opposition (green)
Every time the Sun, Earth, and another celestial object are aligned in a way that you could draw a straight line through them, they’re said to be either
in conjunction
, or
in opposition
, depending on which side of the sun that third object is. If the arrangement is in conjunction, the object in question has the furthest possible distance from Earth, usually having the Sun between them, while in opposition, it’s as close as it’s ever going to get in that specific moment of proximity. Mars is in opposition with Earth on average every 780 days: 2 years and 50 days. That means in theory, there’s a great opportunity to travel to Mars every 780 days.
However, opposition as reference for a launch window isn’t only about traveling the shortest possible way for resources reasons, but to do so in a perfect time frame to match the speed and trajectory of everyone involved, and make sure there is an actual chance of our rocket meeting our object of desire — in this case Mars. Let’s not forget that we’re dealing with giant objects moving with unimaginable speed through space here. They may be close to each other in a relative sense, but we’re still talking about millions of kilometers distance between them.
Typical flight path of a Mars mission, demonstrated by the
InSight
mission in 2018. Source:
Wikipedia
The thing is, we can’t just launch a rocket along that imaginary line in the moment of opposition. Not only will it take months to reach there, the rocket also has to travel in an
elliptical orbit
that matches up between Earth and Mars. Doing so on the shortest possible distance simply has the highest chance for success. Launching too early, the rocket might have to wait unnecessarily long for Mars to catch up, wasting fuel and potentially running out of it altogether. Launching too late, and it’ll end up like Wile E. Coyote desperately chasing the Road Runner — minus the rocks and cliffs.
As a result of all that, Mars missions happen indeed roughly every 2.x years, launching usually a few months before the opposition itself, and landing / entering orbit a few months after the opposition then.
Looking at the history of the last few oppositions and the launch dates of the missions at that time, it all adds up:
Mid October 2020 – our 3 missions in late July
Late July 2018 – 2 missions in early May
Late May 2016 – 2 missions in mid March
Early April 2014 – 2 missions in early and mid November 2013
Early March 2012 – 3 missions in early and late November 2011
We can go back as far as October 1960 with this, when the Soviet Union (unsuccessfully) attempted the very first launch to hit the window in late December that year — and of course 1965 when NASA’s
Mariner 4
performed the first successful flyby of Mars. While this shows a steady amount of launch windows over the years, it also shows that missing the opportunity will cause a definite delay until the next windows opens — as it happened with the
InSight mission
in 2016, and the previously mentioned
joint mission between ESA and Roscosmos this year
.
There are two other things noticeable in the mission history excerpt above: I’m quite vague about the dates, and the period between mission launches and opposition varies. Let’s get into the date vagueness first by taking a look at the actual launch windows.
The Window
While there is a definite time we can attach to the opposition and the closest proximity, we don’t have to be at a specific point at a very specific time here, but have a bit of tolerance — hence launch
window
. The exact width and location of that window varies on different factors like the rocket and its trajectory, and is individually determined for each single mission.
For example, as shown above, there were two launches at different periods back in November 2013 for the April 2014 opposition. India’s
Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)
had a window from October 28th to November 19th and was launched on November 5th, while the US’s
MAVEN
had a window from November 18th to December 7th, and was launched straight away on its first possible launch date on November 18th.
Each day within the launch window has usually its own window of a very few hours for a rocket to launch in hopes to rendezvous with another object. Remember, everything is rotating and spinning in all sorts of directions in space, so depending where on Earth you launch from, you have to account for that as well.
Considering that a launch also depends on weather conditions, it’s a good thing that there is usually a ~3 weeks window for each mission, which explains my vagueness on the mission times earlier. But what about that shift between the launch frame and opposition time then? Well, nothing is going perfectly round up there in space.
Eccentricity
Exaggerated eccentricity of Mars and Earth shown at different times of opposition
In an ideal world, the planets would rotate in a perfect circle around the sun, having the same distance to it at any given time. In the real world, it’s all a bit off-center though, and
eccentricity
causes a variation of the distance over the (local definition of a) year. For example, the
apsides
of Earth, i.e. the closest and farthest points from the sun, differ around five million kilometers — or five gigameters (Gm) — within the year, This may sound like a lot, but at an average distance of ~150 Gm, its eccentricity is a low 0.0167. It’s still enough to have spring and summer a few days longer than autumn and winter, and as someone living close to the Arctic Circle, I can certainly appreciate this.
Mars is, after Mercury, the most unbalanced planet in our solar system, with an eccentricity of 0.0934 that places its apsides at ~206.6 Gm and ~249.2 Gm respectively. Since the timing of opposition occurrences don’t add up to either of the planet’s orbital period, their moment of closeness always happens at a different place within their orbit. As a result, the actual distance of each opposition varies, and with it, the time it takes to travel. However, it falls within a similar range every 15 to 17 years.
Currently, we’re in a good position where Mars and Earth are on the lower end with their distance during opposition at 62.07 Gm. However, it’s also not as good as during the 2018 window’s 57.29 Gm, or the all-time low record in 2003 of 55.76 Gm — not counting that one encounter back in 57,617 BC. However, seeing that the distance increases again, it is as close as it gets until 2033 and 2035 with their 63.28 Gm and 56.91 Gm respectively —
here’s a list
if you want to check more. Looking at those years, the “every 15 to 17 years” parts really adds up.
That list also shows that the Soviet Union’s series of missions back in 1971 that resulted in the first lander on Mars, along with the United States’
Mariner 9
as first orbiter, all happened at a good time with a opposition distance of 56.20 Gm. Unlike the previous
Mariner 4
mission in 1965 at almost double the distance of 100.00 Gm — which makes its success on the other hand even more impressive. Comparing it with
all the Mars missions
, it might also explain why there were barely any launches between the two
Vikings
in 1975 and
Pathfinder
in 1996, with the Soviet Union once again using the best window back in 1988.
This also shows that even the worst case scenario won’t stop Mars missions, so even though the conditions won’t be as ideal as in 2018 or this year until 2033 — which incidentally matches everyone’s current time frame for sending humans to Mars — we definitely won’t have to wait that long to see more rockets launched towards it.
But let’s not rush off into the future, after all we have a whole series of launches just waiting to happen right now. So what’s that all about then?
2020 Mars Missions
As mentioned in the beginning, three different countries will each launch their own independent mission this July. In the grand scheme of Mars missions, this is the first time we see this happening — the same number of countries were involved in 2011, but Russia and China had a single, collaborative launch back then. This time, it’s actually three independent missions.
Some more fun facts about this year’s run to Mars. Assuming that all three missions succeed, it will be the first time an Arabic nation is on an interplanetary journey. Further assuming that
Curiosity
remains active, it will break the record of active rovers roaming Mars’s surface, and the first time a non-US rover is one of them. We can also expect to see the first drone footage from Mars!
While that’s all great, it’s hardly all there is to it though. So what else can we expect from these missions?
United Arab Emirates
First up in the schedule is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had to postpone their initial July 16 launch due to bad weather conditions in their launch site in Japan for three days. The good news is, their launch window had just opened on July 15th, and would have remained open until August 12th, so there wasn’t too big time pressure yet. But there was no need for further delay, the weather conditions improved, and in the early Monday morning hours local time — July 19th, 21:58:14 UTC — their HII-A rocket successfully took off from the Tanegashima space center.
UAE instruments used on their mission. Source:
Emirates Mars Mission
The mission
will send their
Hope
probe into Mars’s orbit, where it will record everything about the atmosphere with the main objective to create “the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere”. Their goal is to research the climate dynamics on Mars — essentially creating the first full weather map of Mars — and how the escaping hydrogen and oxygen play into that and why it’s escaping in the first place. The probe itself is equipped with three imaging instruments:
an infrared spectrometer, an ultraviolet spectrometer, as well as a high resolution imager
.
While the mission’s main focus is naturally on the research itself, the UAE takes this also as an opportunity to demonstrate their newly achieved position in space exploration, especially as a rather small nation. Aiming to inspire future Arab generations to pursue the field of space science, they want to establish themselves as “beacon of progress in the region” and show that nothing is impossible. Considering the achievements the Islamic world once contributed to humankind during
its Golden Age
, the UAE’s
hope
is also to commemorate, if not revive, the region’s importance within astronomy.
China
Tianwen-1 undergoing tests in 2019. Source:
Wikipedia
The second mission is China’s
Tianwen-1
, scheduled to launch on 23. July. After the
joint expedition with Russia in 2011
, which unfortunately ended unsuccessfully as the rocket failed to leave low Earth orbit, China conducts their second-ever attempt to travel to Mars on their own — and doesn’t appear too eager to share much details about the mission itself or the instruments involved.
From what is known and speculated,
Tianwen-1
is a full-blown, all-inclusive mission with orbiter, lander, and rover on board, unlike the previous mission which was just an orbiter. While parts of its objective will also look into Mars’s atmosphere, it’s assumed that the main focus lies on and below its surface. The main objectives seem to include creating a geological map, exploring soil characteristics, and finding water-ice pockets — also in hopes to find evidence of past and possibly present life on Mars.
United States
Perseverance undergoing final testing.
Finally, the third mission, the US’s
Mars 2020
mission, is expected to launch the
Perseverance
rover
with its
Ingenuity
drone
on July 30th — the first day of the its launch window that closes on August 15th. And even though the US has made it to Mars numerous times before, an endeavor like this is hardly ever a routine operation, and there’s just as much at stake as for the other two countries.
Continuing the work of the
Mars Exploration Program
,
Perseverance
will look for past life on Mars, specifically microbial life, by collecting soil and rock samples. The idea is that a future mission could either bring further equipment to Mars to analyze those samples, or bring them back to Earth, whichever seems more feasible at that time. [Dan Maloney] wrote about the details earlier this year, so if you’re interested in it,
go check it out
.
Final Words
There are certainly some exciting days ahead of us, followed by weeks and months of enduring until we will see the actual outcome of all the launches, as all three missions are expected to reach Mars in February 2021. What will come of it? We’ll just have to wait until next Spring to find out.
As for sending humans to Mars, they’ve missed this window, so that’s still at least a good decade ahead of us for now. And nothing’s going to change the orbital dynamics of the situation. | 51 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264861",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T14:40:29",
"content": "Shit you learn playing KSP …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6265063",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2020-07-22T04:54:46",
... | 1,760,373,416.282425 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/a-stylish-raspberry-pi-camera/ | A Stylish Raspberry Pi Camera | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"camera",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi HQ camera"
] | The Raspberry Pi HQ camera module is an exciting product that for the first time puts something close to a decent quality interchangeable lens camera into the hands of hardware hackers. It’s already attracted the attention of those who have a wish to explore the boundaries of camera form factors. Our latest entrant in this field comes courtesy of [BBまどーし], who has opted for
a very good 3D-printed analog of a conventional compact camera
.
On the front as you might expect is the module, concealed behind a smart plastic ring. Behind that is a battery compartment, concealing not the brace of 18650s or the bare LiPo pouch that you might expect, but a 10,400 mAH USB power bank. Behind that is something approaching a conventional Raspberry Pi case, designed to take a Hyperpixel screen. The battery might seem an unadventurous choice, but it serves to highlight just how much bang for your buck can now be found in compact power banks. It may not have a hacker aesthetic, but you can’t argue with its cost and simplicity.
The details are the interesting part of this design, for instance it has a standard accessory shoe printed into its top. There is also a shutter button, but they admit to not being a software wizard enough to get it working. Perhaps a quick look at
this Pi Camera in a 1970s Merlin game
would be in order. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264901",
"author": "stereoscope3d",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T16:59:59",
"content": "Although this is an interesting project, it is in monoscopic 2-D, being capable of only distorted pictures that are squashed flat. It would be much more useful if it made use of the stereoscopic 3-... | 1,760,373,416.190532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/a-simple-soft-power-switch-using-common-modules/ | A Simple Soft Power Switch Using Common Modules | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts"
] | [
"buck converter",
"dc-dc",
"lm2596",
"TTP223"
] | If you want to easily control the power in a circuit, you’ll probably reach for the classic toggle switch. While there’s certainly nothing
wrong
with that, physical toggles are a bit dated at this point. A soft power switch that turns your gadget on and off at the tap of a finger is far more 21st century. You might think this kind of modern trickery is too difficult to implement on a DIY project, but as [Sasa Karanovic] shows,
it’s actually a lot easier than you might think
.
Now to be fair, that wasn’t actually his goal. All [Sasa] was trying to do was come up with a slick way to control the LED lighting in his 3D printer enclosure. Which, as you can see in the video below, he accomplished. But the hacked together circuit he used to do it could easily be adapted for other electronic projects. If you’re using a LM2596 DC-DC converter module to power your gadget, you can add a touch sensitive soft switch for literally pennies.
The trick is utilizing the enable pin on the LM2596. The common buck converter modules tie this pin to ground so the regulator is always enabled, but if you lift the pin off the PCB and connect it to the output of a TTP223 capacitive touch sensor, you can simply tap the pad to control the regulator. Power for the touch sensor itself is pulled from the input side of the regulator, so even when the power is cut off downstream, the sensor is still awake and can kick the chip back into gear when you need it.
If you’re not interested in touch control, you could try connecting the enable pin on the regulator to an ESP8266 and
making a cheap Internet-controlled DC power supply
. | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264799",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T08:36:25",
"content": "w",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264800",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T08:42:30",
"content": "Neat circuit, but using th... | 1,760,373,416.387739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/life-size-lancer-becomes-gears-of-war-motion-controller/ | Life Size Lancer Becomes Gears Of War Motion Controller | Lewin Day | [
"Games"
] | [
"controller",
"game controller",
"gears of war"
] | Gears of War is a franchise famous for its giant gun with a big chainsaw on the front. [Eric] laid his hands on a toy replica,
and decided it had to become a usable motion controller for the game.
The build is straightforward, following the usual format for motion controller builds. Fitted with a gyroscope and accelerometer, it’s interfaced to the PC using a microcontroller. The toy has a trigger which is hooked up to the fire button in game. Additional buttons were added to the shell for movement and other actions such as reloading and finding cover. As a nice final touch, the large pull handle on the left of the weapon is used to activate the chain saw in-game.
While it’s unlikely to be competitive with a mouse or even gamepad in practice, it’s hard to argue against the fun of wielding a full-size, 10-pound weapon when playing Gears of War 5. [Eric] has also shared a basic controller hacking guide
for those eager to get into similar builds themselves.
We’ve featured [Eric]’s work before, too –
with this epic Minecraft pickaxe build
. Video after the break. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264883",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T16:07:30",
"content": "Im confused, did he build it or get it from Amazon?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264908",
"author": "Khordas",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,373,415.848058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/clacker-hacker-hot-rod-switch-mods/ | Clacker Hacker: Hot Rod Switch Mods | Kristina Panos | [
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Interest",
"Misc Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"cherry mx",
"ergonomic",
"ergonomic keyboard",
"j-spacer",
"Kailh",
"lube",
"mechanical keyboard",
"O-ring",
"specialized tools",
"spring",
"springs",
"switch films",
"switch stickers"
] | Whether you’re a programmer, gamer, writer, or data entry specialist, the keyboard is an extension of your nervous system. It’s not so much a tool as it is a medium for flow — for being in the zone. So I think it’s only natural that you should care deeply about your keyboard — how it looks, how it sounds, and above all, how it feels to finger-punch those helmeted little switches all the live-long day. That’s my excuse, anyway.
It might surprise you that mechanical keyboard switches can be modified in a number of ways. Depending on what you want from your keyboarding experience, you can make switches feel lighter or less scratchy, quiet them down, or tighten up any wobble in the housing. Why would you want to do this? Because customization is fun. Because electromechanical things are awesome, and because it’s fun to take switches apart and put them back together again. Because it’s literally hacking and this is Hackaday.
This is a pair of plates from a macro keeb I’m making that will sit directly in front of my trackball.
I got into switch modding because I wanted to put Cherry clears in my dactyl, but worried that they would take too much force to actuate and wear my fingers out. So I bought some really light (39g) springs and was really looking forward to swapping them into the clears, but they just don’t work. Like, physically. Slider goes down, slider gets stuck. It will come back up, but only if I hit it again and smear my finger to the side a bit at the same time. Those springs must be too weak to return clear sliders.
I took this as a sign that I should suck it up and use browns instead. After all, no one else has to know what my sliders look like. While I was opening switches, I tried out one of these super-light springs in a brown, thinking maybe they wouldn’t have to go to waste. Not only did the lighter spring work in the brown, it felt pretty nice. It’s hard to imagine how a whole keeb would feel based on a single switch, but if you can gather a handful and snap them into a plate to riffle your fingers over them, well, it’s probably close enough to a full keyboard to get a good feel for whatever mod you’re doing.
Open for Business
Please note that I only have experience modding Cherry MX switches and their perfectly cromulent clones, so that’s what I’m gonna talk about here. There are a few notable differences between the two, especially in the way the housings are designed. A tool that opens a Cherry won’t necessarily open a clone switch.
There are a bunch of ways to open switches in general. You can use a tiny flat head screwdriver to open most any kind of switch, as long as you know where to put it. I printed a switch opener that made it through about 10 switches before one of the teeth broke off. The second one lasted much longer after I switched from shoving switches squarely down on the teeth to working the teeth under the switch housing clips one side at a time.
Then I came across the bent binder clip method. I think it’s really fun to do it this way, but the method is a bit on the brute force side. If you liberate the spring steel handles from a binder clip, you can bend the ends into a little tool that opens switches from the top like a pair of keys. These are a little difficult to make without a real, bolted-down bench vise, but I managed by holding it in place with locking pliers and doing my bending with regular pliers.
A Little Cushion for the Pushin’
Most mods must be done with loose switches, but not all. Don’t want to go through all the trouble of pulling or de-soldering all the switches on your daily driver? That’s understandable. Some keyboard noise comes from bottoming out — pushing the keys all the way down when typing. About the easiest and most reversible thing you can do to mod a switch is pull off the keycap and stick an o-ring on the keycap stem. You can even use those tiny rubber bands meant for orthodontia. If they feel too mushy, all you have to do is pull the keycap again and try another size of o-ring.
The white piece is the click jacket, and the black piece is the j-spacer. Image via
Bland Name
Some people like the feel of clicky switches like blues and greens but they can’t stand the clicky sound. Or maybe they grow tired of the sound after awhile, or they love the sound but everyone else is breathing down their necks about that awful machine-gun keyboard. Clicky switches get their clicks in different ways, and some of them can’t be quieted without losing the feel that comes with it.
Clicky Cherry MX switches are kind of special, because they are also built to be tactile. They have an extra piece of plastic on the stem called a click jacket. If you feel like spending the time and aren’t afraid of opening switches, you can make a clicky Cherry MX more like a sharp tactile by putting a little piece of rubber called a j-spacer between the slider and the click jacket. This is called a
jailhouse mod
, and it works by immobilizing the click jacket. The tactile bump is still there, but the noise is dampened.
Clicky Kailh switches work very differently. Instead of an extra piece of plastic on the slider, there’s a horizontal spring-loaded bar that gets plucked by a protrusion on the shaft of the slider. You’re pretty much stuck with o-rings to quiet most of these types of switches down, but o-rings don’t do anything against clickiness. They will still function with the click bar removed, but since that thing does double duty, the feel will be linear.
Big Switches
are great for the purposes of demonstration. This one sounds like a stapler!
Left to right: stock Cherry brown spring, stock Cherry clear, 39g replacement.
Spring Fling
Are you a gamer or a speed typer who feels slowed down by your keyboard? Are your fingers tired at the end of the day? If you don’t mind opening switches, changing out the springs is something that’s easy to do and completely reversible.
Lighter springs can make a huge difference in the way a keyboard feels
.
I’m replacing the stock springs in my Cherry browns because I want the lowest-force possible typing experience without sacrificing tactility. The stock brown springs actuate somewhere around 45-50g of force, and the new ones only take 39g.
If you’re not so much into experimentation, there are a couple of well-known spring mods among the community, such as Ergo Clears — Cherry MX clear sliders with springs from reds, blues, or browns. These are so well-liked that there is now a commercial version called Zealios.
Lube Job
This is where things get serious and irreversible. A little lube can go a long way, especially if you’re using a grease and not a liquid. It all depends on what the switch is like to begin with, and what you want out of it.
Lubing switches is a bit of a slippery slope. I don’t say that to discourage anyone away from trying it — quite the opposite, in fact. I suggest easing into it slowly, trying the least amount of lube in the fewest places, and adding more until it feels like you want it to feel.
You can see above where I lubed the browns for my dactyl. I only applied it to the business parts of the slider and the corresponding rails inside the housing. I didn’t want to overdo it and make the switches feel mushy. The other places that make sense to lube are up inside the slider where the spring goes, the floor of the housing where the other end of the spring goes, and the spring itself. I’ve heard that some people straight up soak all their springs in lube and pull them out with tweezers.
Switch Films and Stickers
These are basically the same thing, except that switch films are generally a little bit thicker than stickers, and stickers are adhesive whereas films are not. Both of them serve the same purpose — reducing wobble in your switch housings.
I thought films would be easier to work with than stickers, and better overall because of the material. I found it was true until I tried to put the switches back together and found myself wishing the films were stuck down.
Some say that switch wobble and the subsequent need for gaskets is an invented problem. I disagree. If your switches are PCB-mounted and rely on solder joints for stability instead of snapping into a plate first, there’s definitely room for wobble. Switches break in over time, and there are always going to be switches that get used more than others. I would also posit that taking switches apart to add lube or change out the spring might introduce wobble. If switch stickers or films work for you, what’s the harm? Who cares? They’re cheap, and they come in a bunch of nice colors that will peek out all around the edge of the housing.
Do What You Feel
How many more n00bs could you pwn if every key press felt like perfection? How much more work could you get done if typing became something to look forward to? The point of all of this is to personalize the feel of your keyboard, meaning that nothing is really set in stone except that some stuff physically won’t work. Inventing your own mods is part of the fun. So go crack open some switches! | 18 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264542",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T14:32:35",
"content": "The golden rule of motorcycle maintenance applies here as well: if at the end of your efforts, the engine power has been reduced by less than 30%, the tuneup can be considered a success.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,373,416.115432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/automated-part-removal-gets-serious-with-the-chain-production-add-on/ | Automated Part Removal Gets Serious With The Chain Production Add-on | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"automated part removal",
"automatic build platform",
"automation",
"chain production",
"part removal",
"prusa"
] | Giving a 3D printer the ability to remove its own prints means that it can crank out part after part automatically, without relying on a human operator between jobs. [Damien Weber] has done exactly that to his Prusa MK3/S printer, with what he calls the
Chain Production Add-on
.
[Damien]’s approach is one we haven’t quite seen before. When printing is complete, a fan cools the part then an arm (with what looks like utility knife blades attached at an angle) swings up and behind the bed. The arm zips forward and scoops the print off the bed, dumping the finished part in the process. It’s all made from 3D printed parts, aluminum extrusion and hardware, two stepper motors, and a driver PCB. The GitHub repository linked above holds all the design files, but there is also
a project page on PrusaPrinters.org
.
Not quite sure how it all works? Watch it in action in the video embedded below.
We have seen quite a few different approaches for automatic part removal in the past.
Literally punching prints off the bed
is a thing we have seen, and we’ve also witnessed
an industrial robot arm handle an entire print farm
. | 46 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264508",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T12:37:21",
"content": "Kudos to Damien. What is the build surface? The “release” is unreal to the point of -looking- fake.I have a lot of trouble with my MP Mini Delta where the parts won’t come off. Some have stuck so much that I... | 1,760,373,416.468779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/20/grok-the-z80-with-this-simulator/ | Grok The Z80 With This Simulator | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"microporcessor",
"simulator",
"z80"
] | Many of us will have at some point encountered a Z80 microprocessor, whether we’ve bare-metal programmed for it, or simply had a go at blasting some invaders on a game system using one. Like all the processors of its era, it’s got a relatively simple and accessible internal block diagram, so there’s a good chance that readers well even know how it works, too. But do any of know how it
really
works, down to the gate, transistor, and net level? [Goran] does, because he’s written a
Z80 netlist simulator
that allows the running of code alongside the examination of the chip and its signals. It’s not particularly fast, achieving a modest 2.3kHz clock speed when run of a fairly high-end PC, but we’re guessing readers needing to run Z80 code for anything other than learning would use the real thing anyway.
There’s a video of the software in operation which we’ve placed below the break, and we can see it will be a fascinating tool even to people who aren’t dedicated reverse engineers. To be able to bring up a logic analyzer view of the internals of a processor while it is in operation is truly astounding if you are used to it as a black box, and to have logic diagrams at your fingertips rather than puzzling out individual transistors really gives a window into what is going on.
This isn’t the only such simulator out there, in the past we’ve mentioned
Visual6502
, when we covered
the Monster 6502
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264483",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T09:32:03",
"content": "Super, Super interesting!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264486",
"author": "Bonzadog",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T09:57:40",
"content": "WH... | 1,760,373,416.572455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/3d-printer-revives-large-format-camera/ | 3D Printer Revives Large Format Camera | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d pring",
"Instax",
"land",
"large format",
"photography",
"polaroid"
] | With a quarter-century of more of consumer digital cameras behind us, it’s easy to forget that there was once another way to see your photos without waiting for them to be developed. Polaroid Land cameras and their special film could give the impatient photographer a print in about a minute, but sadly outside a single specialist producer, it is no longer a product that is generally available. [The Amateur Engineer] sought an alternative for a large format camera,
by adapting a back designed for Fuji Instax film instead
.
Lomography, the retailer of fun plastic cameras, had produced an Instax back for one of their cameras, and to adapt it for a Tachihara large format camera required a custom 3D-printed frame. Being quite a large item it had to be printed in three pieces and stuck together with epoxy. Then a series of light leaks had to be chased down and closed up. The result is a working Instax back for the camera, which appears to deliver the photographic goods.
We’ve seen a few digital backs for larger cameras produced with scanners, but we rather like
this linear CCD one
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,416.645291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/digging-deep-into-sd-card-secrets/ | Digging Deep Into SD Card Secrets | Lewin Day | [
"hardware"
] | [
"microsd",
"sd",
"sd card"
] | To some, an SD card is simply an SD card, notable only for the amount of storage it provides as printed on the label. However, just like poets, SD cards contain
multitudes.
[Jason Gin] was interested as to what made SanDisk’s High Endurance line of microSDXC cards tick,
so he set out to investigate.
Naturally, customer service was of no help. Instead, [Jason] started by scraping away the epoxy covering which hides the card’s test points. Some delicate soldering was required to hook up the test points to a breakout board, while also connecting the SD interface to a computer to do its thing. A DS Logic Plus signal analyzer was used to pick apart the signals going to the chip to figure out what was going on inside.
After probing around, [Jason] was able to pull out the NAND Flash ID, which, when compared to a Toshiba datasheet, indicates the card uses BiCS3 3D TLC NAND Flash. 3D NAND Flash has several benefits over traditional planar Flash technology, and SanDisk might have saved [Jason] a lot of time investigating if they’d simply placed this in their promotional material.
We’ve seen other similar hacks before,
like this data recovery performed via test points.
If you’ve been working away on SD cards in your own workshop,
be sure to let us know
! | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264447",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T03:23:36",
"content": "What concerns me most is if there are vendor-proprietary commands that allows one to overwrite the firmware while it’s plugged in to your PC/laptop/smartphone. SD cards have the potential to act like BadU... | 1,760,373,416.611647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/hackaday-links-july-19-2020/ | Hackaday Links: July 19, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"antenna",
"astronomy",
"cartel",
"coding style",
"darpa",
"ethical hacking",
"exoplanet",
"github",
"hackaday links",
"narco antenna",
"Red Team",
"style guide",
"Svalbard",
"terminology",
"transceiver"
] | Care to flex your ethical hacker muscles? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, is running
its first-ever bug-bounty program
. The event is called “Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering”, or FETT — get it? Bounty hunter? Fett? — and is designed to stress-test security hardware developed through DARPA’s System Security Integration Through Hardware and Firmware, or SSITH. Tortured backronyms and pop culture references aside, FETT will start this month and go through September. This is not an open challenge per se; rather, the Red Team will be coordinated by crowdsourced security research company Synack, who has
called for security researchers
to sign on.
The Linux kernel development team has decided to
join the trend away from insensitive terminology
like “master/slave” and “blacklist/whitelist” in coding style.
A July 4 proposal
by kernel maintainer Dan Williams goes into some detail on the logic of making the change, and it’s quite convincing stuff. It’s hard to argue with the fact that code reviewers can easily be distracted by coding style changes, so replacing terms that have become lightning rods only makes sense. Linus himself has signed off on the changes for all future code; the current terminology will only be allowed for purposes of maintaining older code.
Some stories just leap off the screen when you’re scanning headlines, and
a story with the term “narco-antennas”
practically begs further investigation. It turns out that the drug cartels in Mexico (and probably elsewhere, but the story focused on Mexico) are quite sophisticated in terms of communications technology. Eschewing cell phones for some of their communication needs for obvious reasons, they still apparently leverage the cell system by installing their own transceivers at cell sites. This can lead to some tense moments for the engineers who maintain legitimate gear at these sites; the story above recounts one hapless tech who powered down a site to make some repairs only to be confronted by armed men upset about the loss of their radios. It’s a fascinating look at the underworld and their technology, and we can’t help but feel for the men and women who have to face down these criminals just to do their jobs.
Way back in January — remember January? — we
kicked off the 2020 Hack Chat series
with a fellow named Alberto Caballero, principal investigator of the Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project. At the time, I was blown away by the fact that the tiny changes in intensity caused by planets transiting across their star’s face were detectable on Earth with instruments an amateur astronomer could easily afford. And now, the project’s crowdsourced planet hunters have hit pay dirt, with the discovery of a Saturn-sized exoplanet in orbit within the habitable zone around star GJ 3470, also known as Gliese 3470, a red dwarf about 30 parsecs away in the constellation Cancer.
Their paper
is still in preprint and hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, but it’s exciting to see this kind of citizen science being done, and we’d like to congratulate the team on their achievement and wish them continued luck in their search for “Earth 2.0”
And finally, if you can’t stand the idea that future archaeologists may someday pore over your code in an attempt to understand the digital lives of their long-dead forebears, then you might want to skip this story about how
GitHub shipped 21 terabytes of open-source code to cold storage
. The destination for the data, contained on reels of archive film and shipped on two pallets, is the world’s long-term memory: the Artic World Archive on the island of Svalbard. Perhaps better known for the Svalbard Seed Vault, where the genetic diversity of the world’s plants is stored, the Artic Code Vault is in a nearby abandoned coal mine and set deep within the permafrost.
The rationale for making the effort
to preserve code makes for some interesting reading, but we can’t help but feel that like
the graffitists of Pompeii
, if we’d known someone would be reading this stuff in a thousand years, we might have edited out a few things. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264429",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T00:15:13",
"content": "I hope the very first item in the github archive is a rickroll.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264430",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-0... | 1,760,373,417.195778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/upgrading-the-ram-in-a-25-year-old-oscilloscope/ | Upgrading The RAM In A 25 Year Old Oscilloscope | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"ram",
"tektronix",
"upgrade"
] | From reading his extensive write-ups on the subject, there’s one thing we know for sure: [Tom Verbeure] loves his Tektronix TDS 420A oscilloscope. While it might be older than some of the people reading this, it’s still an impressive piece of hardware with more than enough bells and whistles to keep the average hacker occupied. Especially if you’re
willing to perform some hardware modifications
.
Note the battery to retain calibration data.
[Tom] already knew how to tickle the scope into unlocking software features, a process not unlike what we’ve seen done on more modern scopes. But there’s only so far you can get by toggling software flags.
Some of the more advanced features that are turned off in the firmware actually need additional hardware to function. Simply bumping the sample points to 120,000 in software wasn’t enough, the scope actually needs the memory to hold them in.
Now logically, if there’s a software option to increase the number of samples, there must be a hardware upgrade that goes along with it. Sure enough, [Tom] found there were 6 open spots next to the scope’s existing M5M51008 static RAM ICs.
As luck would have it the chips are still available, albeit from a different manufacturer and a bit faster than the original parts. Digikey wouldn’t sell fewer than 100 of them, but UTSource was happy to sell him 10. In this case, the parts were cheaper than the shipping cost. Installation was about as straightforward as it gets, though [Tom] does note that he had to keep the board powered up during the operation or else the scope would have lost its calibration data.
Squeezing more features out of modern scopes like the Rigol DS2072A
just takes a USB cable and some software
. Sometimes it’s
only a matter of tapping in a code
. But we certainly appreciate [Tom] putting in a little extra effort to get the most out of this classic piece of hardware. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264396",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T20:43:26",
"content": "I’m always amused by the fact that the back of every oscilloscope I’ve owned says “No user serviceable parts inside”Seems like most oscilloscopes are used by people who service things. Also, they take stat... | 1,760,373,417.254554 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/reverse-engineering-teaches-an-old-scope-new-tricks/ | Reverse Engineering Teaches An Old Scope New Tricks | Adil Malik | [
"classic hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Digital oscilliscope",
"ethernet",
"expansion port",
"reverse engineering"
] | [PMercier] clearly loves his old Tektronix TDS3014 scope, which did however lack essentially modern connectivity such as an Ethernet port for control and a USB port for a convenient way to capture screenshots. So he decided to
do some in-depth reverse engineering and design his own expansion card for it
. The scope already has an expansion port and an expansion card, but given this model was first released in 1998, purchasing an OEM part was not going to be an option.
They don’t make ’em like they used to. Test equipment is today is built to last a decade — but usually lives on much longer. This is certainly true for the previous generations of kit. It’s no surprise that for most of us, hand-me-downs from universities, shrewd eBay purchasing, and even fruitful dumpster dives are a very viable way to attain useful and relevant test equipment. Now, while these acquisitions are more than adequate for the needs of a hobbyist lab, they are admittedly outdated and more to the point, inaccessible from a connectivity and communication standpoint. A modern lab has a very high degree of automated data acquisition and control over ethernet. Capturing screen dumps on a USB is a standard feature. These modern luxuries don’t exist on aging equipment conceived in the age of floppy disks and GPIB.
The first step [PMercier] documents is reverse-engineering the pin-out of the custom expansion connector on the scope. Some pins he notes were easy to deduce, others not so much. This was solved by examining some high-resolution photos of the original expansion card and then using Gimp to do a layered, copper track analysis of the 4 layer PCB! This uncovered most of the unknown pins and the rest required a laborious cross-examination of the scope’s CPU and its BGA package pin-out.
The last piece of the puzzle was to fool the scope into accepting his DIY expansion card. This turned out not to be as simple as pulling a control line. The correct
one-hot encoded
byte corresponding to the expansion card had to be determined and asserted onto the data bus at the right time.
This is truly a commendable Hack and we thank [PMercier] for meticulously documenting his progress! If rejuvenating old test equipment excites you, check out our article on
reverse engineering an old HP scope to give it a new LCD screen. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264234",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T23:06:47",
"content": "Oh, man, I need this for my previous-generation DSO. (Due to an artifact of timing, I have a TDS1002, no letter. It still has a 68k, but the expansion cards use 2mm pin header (and a lot fewer pins) inst... | 1,760,373,417.093527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/tool-changing-3d-printers-shouldnt-break-the-bank/ | Tool Changing 3D Printers Shouldn’t Break The Bank | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"hypercube",
"tool changer"
] | Close-up on the magnetic coupling
One of the Holy Grails of desktop 3D printing is the ability to print in multiple materials, for prints that mix colours or textures. There are printers with multi-way hot ends, add-ons that change your filament, or printers with tool changers, that swap hot ends as needed.
[Amy] has taken the final route with her Hypercube
, and her Doot Changer allows her to print in two materials with ease. Best of all, she tells us it only cost her $20 to make.
For those not familiar with Hypercube-style printers, they have a roughly cubic frame made using aluminium extrusion. On the rear upper rail are a couple of receptacles with metal locating pins onto which a hot-end unit can be slotted. The printer carriage has a magnetic coupling that can pick up or disengage a hot end from its receptacle at will,
as can be seen in action in a short video clip
.
All the parts
can be found on Thingiverse
, and there is a photo album with plenty of eye-candy should you wish to see more. Meanwhile as far as tool changers go,
we’ve been there before in great depth
. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264214",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T19:55:05",
"content": "Does the video clip have a 4 point coupling? Not the kinematic (Maxwell) coupling in the photo? The kinematic with magnets is very cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,417.145093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/the-sincerest-form-of-flattery/ | The Sincerest Form Of Flattery | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"clones",
"competition",
"newsletter",
"open source"
] | In the art world, it’s often wistfully said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the open-source hardware world, this flattery takes the shape of finding your open-source project mass produced in China and sold at outrageously low markups. Looking around on my lab, I’ve been the direct beneficiary of this success.
I see an
AVR Transistor Tester
that I picked up for a few bucks a long time ago. Lacking anything better, it’s my go-to device for measuring inductance and capacitor ESR. For $7, it is worth much more than I paid for it, due to some clever design work by a
community of German hackers
and the economics of mass production. They’re so cheap that we’ve seen people re-use them
just for the displays
and with a little modification,
turned them into Tetris consoles
. That’s too cool.
Microcontroller boards? My go-to is the “Blue-Pill” style STM32F103 breakouts, which cost nearly the same as the processor itself in small quantities. But these are clones of one of the first non-Atmel Arduino-compatible boards:
The Maple Mini
. Leaf Labs stopped making the boards, but with the designs out there and the price of the middle-aged microcontrollers dropping, it’s a huge win for hackers. I just bought a
multi-protocol remote control for RC airplanes
. I could have made one myself by sourcing parts and whipping up a PCB, but why? It’s cheaper to buy one pre-built, and I got a nice plastic case for free. My current 3D printers are a ripoff of the Prusa i3 design and a kit-built Prusa Mendel. The former cost less than a fourth as much as the latter, although the results are about the same. Why? Chinese mass manufacturing of open-source designs. I could go on for days.
It’s noteworthy that the folks who did the initial design work for all of this don’t get paid this way, and that bums me out. But of the aforementioned projects, only two were ever manufactured and sold by their originators. I’ve talked with Andrew Meyer of Maple Labs, and he said that he’s happy that they got cloned: the margins on the hardware were nothing compared with their design service income, and the benefit of having a bazillion Maples out there keeps their libmaple library well maintained by the community without requiring more of their resources. I know Joe Prusa isn’t a huge fan of “clone” competition, but he’s continuing to do what got him into the scene anyway — innovating — and that keeps their business running and expanding.
(The Mendel was actually a kit of Joe’s that he helped me assemble at a weekend workshop back in 2011 so I’ve paid him off directly anyway, and I just donated €5 to Pascal’s RC project too. My conscience is clear on these examples.)
Bigger businesses like Sparkfun and Adafruit can afford to be cloned because what they’re really selling is innovation, education, and documentation. Plus customer service and logistics and all the rest of the business of business. And for that, they earn a well-deserved markup. (See Nate Seidle’s
great talk on the matter
from 2016.) But doing all that “business” is a lot of work, and for a hacker with a few good ideas, getting the idea out there and getting it cloned is probably the easiest path to getting the goods into as many hands as possible, and making the project better.
Would the Transistor Tester ever have sold hundreds of thousands of units if left to the original hackers? I think not. And not every project is a mass-market project either. There are tons of interesting designs being sold in small quantities by the hackers who originated them, and I’m stoked to be able to buy them directly whenever possible. (Insert plug for Tindie, Hackaday’s sister company, here.)
But to those of you out there who have had the honor of being mass-cloned and ending up in my tool drawer, I salute you. And that’s the sincerest form of flattery coming from my hacker heart. I’ll buy you the beverage of your choice when we meet.
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
! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264161",
"author": "Harvey",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T14:35:56",
"content": "The original intent for building most of the open-sources gadgetry, wasn’t to start a business, and make huge profits. They were made to fill a personal need, or simply to see if it could be done, with th... | 1,760,373,417.453078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/techniques-for-making-complex-carbon-fibre-tube-parts/ | Techniques For Making Complex Carbon Fibre Tube Parts | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"carbon fiber",
"composite"
] | Many a hacker spent their high school years picking up a few new skills in workshop classes. Whether it be woodworking, welding, or the patient, delicate skill of technical drawing, they’ve been a mainstay of secondary education for decades. However, composites are new enough that they aren’t a major feature of the curriculum. For those wishing to fill in a few gaps,
[Easy Composites] have some great videos on carbon fibre techniques.
The video in question concerns the manufacture of a complex cross-section tube part, but these techniques can also apply to more complex hollow sections, like a bike frame, for example. Starting with a mold, the first step is to cut a rough template. This is then used to lay down the first layer of pre-preg carbon fibre material, and a more accurate template is made. The rest of the steps involve the production of a secure lap joint between subsequent layers, and how to properly use vacuum bag techniques on hollow parts.
It’s a useful primer on the basics of producing hollow carbon fibre parts with prepreg material. We’ve featured composites before,
with this bulletproof armor a particularly good example
. Video after the break. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264125",
"author": "Merialsscientist",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T11:39:04",
"content": "I’ve looked at several of their videos in the past. And to my knowledge their videos are very instructional and very accurate (or rather state of the art). (My science background: I’m a masters s... | 1,760,373,417.391679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/forget-led-matrices-how-about-neon/ | Forget LED Matrices, How About Neon! | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"matrix display",
"neon",
"optoelectronics"
] | The low-cost LED has changed the way we approach lighting in all its forms, allowing complex addressable displays and all sorts of lighting goodness. But what did we do before we had cheap LED arrays? Use neon bulbs, perhaps? That’s exactly what [Manawyrm] has done with her
chainable 8×8 neon matrix boards
, taking 64 neon indicator bulbs and driving each from mains potential with an individual triac. A line of 74HC595s handle the data transfer, floating at mains voltage while their ESP32 driver is kept safe by a set of isolators.
A Twitter post
shows it in action
, but perhaps the most hackworthy praise should be reserved for the test rig. Unable to source a variable 230 V mains supply for testing the array, she applied a 50 Hz sine wave to an audio power amplifier, and
replaced the speaker with the low voltage side of a mains transformer
. It’s the sort of hack we can’t help liking.
Neons have generally featured here
as novelties
rather than as significant displays in their own right. They’re interesting components that everyone should have a play with, not least because the possess negative resistance, and
can be made to oscillate. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264149",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T13:10:06",
"content": "Using an audio amp as a power source is honestly something I would have never thought of doing. Kudos!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264163"... | 1,760,373,417.510897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/a-z80-board-with-very-few-parts/ | A Z80 Board With Very Few Parts | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Arduino Mega 2560",
"Atmega 2560",
"retrocomputer",
"retrocomputing",
"z80"
] | The Z80 is one of those old CPUs that is both obtainable and easy to work with — at least in some versions. [Doctor Volt] put together what may be the simplest possible setups to get a working Z80 system. He has the processor, of course. But everything else — clock, memory, and power — are from an Arduino Mega 2560. You could argue that’s two chips, but the board actually has several chips on it. On the other hand, you could probably pull off the same stunt with a bare ATMega 2560.
We’ve seen this done before, but usually with a few more support chips. If you are a purist, [Doctor Volt] also has some
Z80 and CP/M experiments
where the Arduino only acts as a disk drive for the computer and there are only two support chips. There are three videos for both projects that you can see below.
We were struck by how simple the first project was, though. Around 100 lines of source code is all it takes, and some of those are comments. The Arduino even provides the system memory (1K of it) and you initialize it by changing the memory.h file and reloading the Arduino.
The code does a bit of setup for interrupts and the clock and then just spins. The Arduino gets an interrupt on a CPU read and a different interrupt on a CPU write. All memory reads draw out of the simulated 1K RAM and memory writes go there, as well. The write code also can detect an I/O port write and sends that data to the Arduino serial port. It doesn’t appear to matter what I/O port you write to.
This reminded us of one of our favorite
cheap Z80 projects
. That board uses an ATMega32A in a similar way but also has external RAM. If you add a few EEPROMs to act as disk drives, it sits somewhere in the middle of the two computers from [Doctor Volt]. With so few parts, it is easy to get these 8-bit wonders in
fairly small spaces
. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264084",
"author": "John7",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T05:49:22",
"content": "Heard about mechanical switches? Maybe add a resistor to avoid some bounce. That’s what I had available in school to drive a Z80.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,373,417.624994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/bluepill-copies-code-so-you-dont-have-to/ | Bluepill Copies Code So You Don’t Have To | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"ARM",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arduino",
"bluepill",
"cw",
"ham radio",
"morse code",
"stm32"
] | You really should learn to read Morse code. But if you can’t — or even if you can, and just want a break — you can always get a computer to do it. For example, [jmharvey1] has a
decoder
that runs on a cheap Bluepill dev board.
The device uses a touchscreen and a few common components. The whole thing cost about $16. You can see it at work along with a description of the project in the video below.
The code uses the Arduino-style setup for the Blue pill — something
we’ve talked about before
. As for the decoding method, the software employs the Goertzel algorithm which is akin to a single frequency Fourier transform. That is, while a full transform gives you information about the frequency component of a signal across a wide range, the Goertzel algorithm probes the signal for one or a small number of distinct frequencies.
The decoder table looks confusing at first until you realize that each “decode” value consists of a 1 as a start bit followed by a 1 for a dash and a zero for a dot. All bits to the left of the start bit don’t count. So an “E” codes as 02 hex — a start bit followed by a single zero or dot. A “C” is 1A hex (1 + -.-.). Once you find the matching code, you apply the same index to another table to look up the actual letter or string of letters.
If you buy a Bluepill to make one of these, you might as well get two and build something to
send code
, too. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264118",
"author": "vivvvi",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T10:46:18",
"content": "Who’s going to be the first to implement a TCP/IP stack for morse code?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264193",
"author": "Marcus",
... | 1,760,373,417.559438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/this-68k-board-is-about-as-simple-as-it-gets/ | This 68k Board Is About As Simple As It Gets | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"68000",
"SBC",
"uclinux"
] | For those of us who remember the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, it’s likely that a sizeable quantity of those memories will come in the form of a cream or grey box with a Commodore, Atari, or Apple logo on it These machines were the affordable creative workstations of their day, and under the hood were a tour de force of custom silicon and clever hardware design. We might, therefore, be excused for an association between 68000 based computers and complexity, but in reality, they are as straightforward to interface as the rest of the crop of late-1970s silicon. We can see it in [Matt Sarnoff]’s
68k-nano
, about as simple a 68000-based single-board computer as it’s possible to get.
But for all its simplicity, this board is no slouch. It packs a megabyte of RAM, 64k of ROM, a 16550 UART, and an IDE interface for a CompactFlash card. There is also provision for a real-time clock module, through an interesting bit-banged SPI interface from the 16550’s control lines. There appears also to be a 50-pin expansion header.
Software-wise there is a ROM monitor that provides test and housekeeping functions, and which loads an executable from the card plugged into the IDE interface if there is one. This feature makes the board especially interesting, as it opens up the possibility of running a μClinux or similar kernel for a more fully-featured operating system.
The 68k doesn’t receive the attention here that some of its 8-bit contemporaries do, but it still appears from time to time. We’ve certainly featured
at least one other 68000-based SBC
in the past.
Thanks [Anton] for the tip. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264381",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T19:12:07",
"content": "I used to think a lot of wiring up a 680×0 board. I would probably use a 68020 or 68030 because they can be configured to use an 8 bit bus interface, in particular for ROM. The 680×0 family... | 1,760,373,417.672462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/building-a-motion-capture-suit-on-the-cheap/ | Building A Motion Capture Suit On The Cheap | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"mocap",
"motion capture",
"suit"
] | Motion capture is a technology used in many films, particularly the animated variety. It makes giving characters realistic movements a cinch, as they’re all based on those of a real person. [Checkered Bug] worked with a middle school group who were looking to get started,
so he whipped up a capable rig on a budget.
The rig is based around a chest unit that connects out to several satellite units placed at points on the body. Each unit contains a Bosch IMU which is used to measure the acceleration and rotation of the user’s various body parts. The data is fed back to an Arduino Mega, where it’s then passed to a PC running Blender. Motion sequences can be recorded live in Blender, or saved to an SD card and imported later.
Files are available on Github for those keen to recreate the project.
It’s a tidy setup that does good motion capture on a low budget. Such a rig would have been inordinately expensive back in the day, but can now be whipped up for just a few hundred dollars.
We’ve seen other motion capture systems before, too.
Video after the break. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264503",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T12:13:13",
"content": "really cool! well done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264512",
"author": "Ron Jones",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T13:01:30",
"content": "Re... | 1,760,373,417.715758 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/rc-car-becomes-cable-cam/ | RC Car Becomes Cable Cam | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Action camera",
"camera slider",
"R/C car",
"rc toy",
"rc toy car",
"slider"
] | The prevalence of drones has made airborne photography much more widespread, especially among hobby photographers and videographers. However, drone photos aren’t without their problems. You have to deal with making the drone follow the shot which can be difficult unless you have a very expensive one. Worse, you can’t really fly a drone through heavily wooded or otherwise obstructed terrain.
[Makesome’s] friend faced these issues and wanted to buy a
cable cam
— a mount for the camera that could go back and forth on a cable strung between two trees or other structures. Instead of a design from scratch, they decided to cannibalize a cheap RC car along with an HP printer and the effect — as you can see in the video below — is pretty good.
Repurposing toys is an honored tradition and, after all, what do you need but a motor that goes forward and reverses? We can’t help but notice though that toy hacking is much easier now that you can 3D print custom widgets to connect everything together.
The video isn’t really a tutorial because you will likely start with a different car and have different needs. But there’s enough info there to give you some ideas. It looks like the car’s contribution was mostly the RF remote control portions. There’s also an Arduino and some drive electronics to take care of the motor donated by an old printer.
If you prefer to slide your
camera on a rail
, we’ve seen many setups for that. Or try a camera
dolly on wheels
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264343",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T13:03:46",
"content": "I think an electric drill might be a better parts donor than a toy RC car for something like this because you’d have a rechargeable battery, strong motor and gearbox, and PWM controller matched to the mo... | 1,760,373,417.935463 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/the-real-story-how-samsung-blu-ray-players-were-bricked/ | The Real Story: How Samsung Blu Ray Players Were Bricked | Lewin Day | [
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"blu-ray",
"samsung"
] | In June, many owners of Samsung Blu Ray players found that their devices were no longer usable. Stuck in a boot loop, speculation was rife as to the cause of the issue. Now it seems that the issue has become clear –
a badly formatted XML file may be responsible for the problems (via The Register).
The problem stems from the logging system that stores user data and passes it back to Samsung over the Internet. Which data is logged and sent back is managed by an XML file which contains the policy settings that control this behaviour. According to a source known only as
“Gary”
“Gray”, the XML file posted on Samsung’s servers on June 18 featured a malformed list element. This caused a crash in the player’s main software routine, leading the player to reboot.
The failure was exacerbated by the fact that the XML file is parsed very early in the boot sequence, even before checking for firmware updates or a new XML file. This has prevented Samsung from rolling out an update or fix over the air, and is why the player gets stuck in a loop of continuous reboots.
Reportedly,
the file can be found at this URL
, though is now an updated version that shouldn’t brick players. Samsung have had to resort to a mail-in repair scheme, wherein technicians with service tools can manually remove the offending XML file from the player’s storage, allowing it to boot cleanly once again.
While this shows our initial assumptions were off the mark
, we’re glad to see a solution to the problem, albeit one that requires a lot of messing around.
[Thanks to broeckelmaier for the tip!] | 84 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264281",
"author": "Technics",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T08:05:28",
"content": "Where do we send the “I test in prod.” T-shirt?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264284",
"author": "Lvcas",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T08:23:... | 1,760,373,418.241049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/a-tin-can-modem-just-for-fun/ | A Tin Can Modem, Just For Fun | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"baud",
"demodulate",
"modem",
"modulate",
"phone",
"string",
"tin can"
] | Anyone old enough to fondly recall the “bleep-burp-rattle” sequence of sounds of a modem negotiating a connection over a phone line probably also remembers the simple “tin-can telephone” experiment, where a taut string transmits sound vibrations from the bottom of one tin can to another.
This tin can modem experiment
puts both of those experiences together in a single project.
As [Mike Kohn] notes, this project was harder than it would seem that it should be. He actually had a much harder time getting the tin can phone part of the project optimized than getting the electronics sorted out, resulting in multiple tries with everything from the canonical tin cans to paper coffee cups before eventually settling on a pair of cardboard nut cans, the kinds with the metal bottoms. Linked together with a length of kite string — dental floss didn’t work — [Mike] added a transmitter on one end and a receiver on the other.
The transmitter used an ATtiny 2313 and everyone’s favorite audio amplifier,
the LM386
, while the receiver sported an electret mike preamp board, an LM566 tone decoder, and an MSP430 microcontroller. The modulation scheme was as simple as possible — a 400 Hz tone whose length varies whether it’s a one or a zero, or a stop or start bit. Connected to a pair of terminal programs, [Mike] was able to send his name over the
wire
string at what he calculates to be six or seven baud.
This project has all the hallmarks of lockdown boredom, but we don’t care because it’s good fun and a great learning opportunity, particularly for the young ones. There’s plenty of room for optimization, too — maybe it could even get fast enough for
the Hackaday Retro 300-baud challenge
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264271",
"author": "Andrejs",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T06:50:43",
"content": "The speaker sounds so loud, wouldn’t it work without any string at all on such a short distance?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264372",
... | 1,760,373,418.072536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/an-hdmi-monitor-from-your-phone/ | An HDMI Monitor From Your Phone | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"android",
"hdmi",
"mobile phone"
] | Digital video has proceeded to the point at which we have near-broadcast-quality HD production capabilities in the palm of our hand, and often for a surprisingly affordable price. One area in which the benefits haven’t quite made it to our wallets though is in the field of small HD monitors of the type you might place on top of a camera for filming. It’s a problem noted by [Neon Airship], who has come up with a solution allowing
the use of an Android mobile phone as an HDMI monitor
. Since many of us will now have a perfectly capable older phone gathering dust, it’s an attractive proposition with the potential to cost very little.
The secret isn’t the most elite of hacks in that it uses all off-the-shelf hardware, but sometimes that isn’t the only reason to be interested in a project such as this one. [Neon] is using an HDMI-to-USB capture card of the type that has recently become available from the usual sources for an astoundingly small sum. When paired with a suitable USB OTG cable, the adapter can be seen by the phone as just another webcam.
We see him try a few webcam viewer apps including one that rather worryingly demands a direct APK download, and the result is a very good quality HDMI monitor atop his camera that really didn’t break the bank. Sometimes the simplest of solutions deliver the most useful of results.
This is something of special interest to
those of us who experiment with our own camera form factors
. | 46 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264252",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2020-07-19T02:38:34",
"content": "This is great! There are so many useful things you can do with an old cell phone!I use an old cellphone with a cracked screen to monitor 3D prints by snapping a picture every minute or so, or even on eve... | 1,760,373,418.022463 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/18/faux-radar-uses-ultrasound-python/ | Faux Radar Uses Ultrasound & Python | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"PPI",
"radar",
"ultrasonic",
"ultrasound"
] | Radars are simply
cool
, and their portrayal in movies and TV has a lot to do with that. You get a sweet glowing screen that shows you where the bad guys are, and a visual representation of your missiles on their way to blow them up. Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, day to day life for most of us is a little less exhilarating.
We can make do with a facsimile of the experience instead.
The project consists of an Arduino Uno outfitted with an ultrasound module that can do basic range measurements on the order of tens of centimeters. The module is then placed on a servo and scanned through a 180 degree rotation. This data is passed back to a computer running a Python application, which plots the results on a Plan Position Indicator, or PPI – the sweeping display we’re all so familiar with.
While it’s unlikely you’ll be using such a setup to engage bandits, it could prove as a useful module for robot navigation or similar applications.
We’ve seen ultrasonic transducers used for exactly that.
Video after the break. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264235",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T23:12:59",
"content": "Would have been way better if you used some with more power like a ESP32 to keep it smooth.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264238",
"author"... | 1,760,373,418.131025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/hyundai-makes-push-towards-fuel-cell-trucking/ | Hyundai Makes Push Towards Fuel Cell Trucking | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Current Events",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"18 wheeler",
"fuel cell",
"fuel cells",
"hyundai",
"prime mover",
"semi trailer",
"semi truck",
"tesla",
"truck",
"trucking",
"trucks"
] | Hyundai has begun shipping fuel-cell based heavy duty trucks to face off against battery-electric trucks in the commercial hauling market.
Battery electric vehicles, more commonly known as electric cars, have finally begun to take on the world in real numbers. However, they’re not the only game in town when it comes to green transportation. Fuel cells that use tanks of hydrogen to generate electricity with H
2
O as the main byproduct have long promised to take the pollution out of getting around, without the frustrating charge times. Thus far though, they’ve failed to make a major impact. Hyundai still think there’s value in the idea, however,
and have developed their XCIENT Fuel Cell truck to further the cause.
400 km on 32 kg of Hydrogen
Not just a one-off prototype, Hyundai is already shipping the vehicles in bulk lots to lease customers.
Hyundai has invested significant resources into the project, with the first 10 fuel cell trucks already shipped to Switzerland for use by commercial haulage firms, with plans for another 40 trucks to join in the field tests by the end of this year.
The aim is to have 1600 trucks in service by 2025
, meaning that there’s scope for production on the order of hundreds of units a year. This remains a drop in the ocean compared to global sales of millions per year for trucks in this class, but nevertheless shows a strong commitment to developing the technology.
With a range of 400 km on 32.1 kg of hydrogen, the trucks should have more than enough range between stops to do some serious work. While they’re unlikely to compete with diesel big rigs in the near term, short refueling times overcome one of the showstoppers present with all-electric vehicles. Hyundai’s next goal is to reach 1,000 km between refueling stops, which should come close to the average trucker’s shift length. The trucks use dual fuel cells capable of putting out 95 kW each for a total power of 190 kW. While this isn’t a huge number, the more important thing for such vehicles is torque. With the instant-on twist offered by electric motors, the Hyundai prime movers should hold their own against their classic diesel counterparts in this regard.
The Nexo is a modern SUV packing the latest in fuel cell technology. You may find it hard to buy one, however, unless you’re in an area with the right infrastructure.
The company is no stranger to fuel cell technology, however.
Like Toyota, they have had a presence in the marketplace for several years.
The first major milestone for the Hyundai was the development of the Santa Fe FCEV,
way back in 2001.
Since then, they’ve forged ahead with new models in select markets around the world. The Nexo is the latest offering, with a 570 km driving range from 5.6kg of hydrogen. Despite being production ready, it’s not yet on open sale across the world. Limited infrastructure means owners in the US will have to relocate to California for the privilege.
Viability of Alternative Fuel Trucks
Cities around the world are pushing to eliminate fossil fuel vehicles,
for the sake of both global climate and local pollution.
While battery electric vehicles have traditionally been presented as the solution to this problem, their long recharge times and expense continue to draw detractors. While infrastructure is being built out around the world to support them, there remain significant edge cases that hamper take up for many.
Fuel cell vehicles have attractive qualities that circumvent some of the hangups people have about their battery-reliant cousins. Unlike a battery that can take, at best, tens of minutes to get a meaningful charge, fuel cell vehicles can replenish their hydrogen tanks in a similar time to that of conventional fossil fuel vehicles. In the ideal hydrogen-powered world, there’s also no need to have your own charger at home — simply drive to the hydrogen station and top up! Additionally, they maintain positive qualities like having no carbon dioxide output, not to mention other harmful pollutants like oxides of nitrogen and particulates. This is key for dense city centers that need frequent delivery of goods while maintaining strict emissions standards.
There remain two major bugbears of fuel cell technology. The first is infrastructure. As it stands, there are only a scattered handful of hydrogen refilling stations around the world. Despite fuel cell vehicles being on the market since 2014, only a few locations in the world actually have the necessary installations to make them usable. With a smaller installed base than their electric counterparts, this doesn’t look likely to change any time soon. The other is hydrogen production. Steam reforming techniques are cheap, but involve hydrocarbons that make the process dirty from an emissions standpoint, somewhat eliminating the gains of what is supposed to be clean transportation. Alternatively, electrolysis of water is a way to produce hydrogen that’s as clean as the electricity generation used to power the reaction. However, this is more expensive, and less efficient than simply using the electricity directly to charge a battery-powered vehicle.
Battery-electric vehicles like the Tesla Semi will be the primary competitors of Hyundai’s fuel cell trucks.
The heavy haulage application of Hyundai’s trucks is a great opportunity for fuel cell technology, however. The problem of infrastructure is lessened for vehicles used in a commercial fleet. As they regularly operate out of depots, a small number of filling stations can be installed in a freight network at a more affordable cost, versus having to install hydrogen stations everywhere for the commuter population. Additionally, it’s possible for the companies involved to ensure that their hydrogen is sourced from clean processes in order to maintain the climate benefits of the project. It’s also a promising way for heavy vehicles to continue their work in and around cities that have banned more polluting vehicles. Battery-electric trucks are competing hard for this market, but for companies that wish to do away with the hassle of slow charge times, fuel cells will offer a compelling alternative.
The chances of fuel cells beating out battery electric vehicles in the commuter market seems slim, with offerings from the likes of Tesla, Nissan, and other automakers outselling their hydrogen rivals thousands of times over. However, the battle for clean trucking is only just beginning. With a viable solution to the recharging problem, and the possibility of building out hydrogen infrastructure along major freight roadways, there’s a good likelihood that the trucks hauling your next online order could very well be powered by fuel cells! | 102 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263592",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T17:32:19",
"content": "Hydrogen fuel cells sounds remarkable until one faces reality.Producing hydrogen is remarkably inefficient. (the best process currently used doesn’t even touch 60% efficiency…)And fuel cells, w... | 1,760,373,418.54051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/freecad-vs-solvespace/ | FreeCAD Vs SolveSpace | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d modeling",
"cad",
"freecad",
"solvespace"
] | When you are ready to design real things, you’ll find simple CAD programs can be pretty limiting. Serious modern designs tend to use parametric modeling where you don’t necessarily set dimensions and positions of everything but instead constrain the design by describing the relationship between different elements. For example, you can create a vertical line and constrain other lines to be parallel, perpendicular, or form a given angle with that line. There are many tools that can do that, including FreeCAD and SolveSpace, two programs that [Joko Engineeringhelp] uses to create
a complex compressor blade
and it really shows the differences and similarities between the two tools.
You probably don’t need this particular design, but watching over someone’s shoulder while they do a complex design can be very valuable. Being able to see the differences between the two tools might convince you to learn one or the other or maybe even switch.
Our choice? We often use FreeCAD although we like how SolveSpace handles certain things. We haven’t used it as much, though, and FreeCAD integrates nicely with OpenSCAD which we use a lot, too. So, generally, we reach for FreeCAD but it is mostly because of habit. Both tools have a lot of great features.
We’ve looked at
SolveSpace before
. And we’ve talked a lot about
FreeCAD
, too. What’s your pick? | 59 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263560",
"author": "JWhitten",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T15:48:37",
"content": "Personally, I prefer Fusion 360. But I’ve tried FreeCAD before and it’s not terrible.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263786",
"author": ... | 1,760,373,418.733908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/tend-your-garden-again/ | Tend Your Garden… Again | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cooking hacks",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"food",
"garden",
"gardening",
"produce",
"victory garden"
] | In the early 1940s, several countries saw an incredible shift in agriculture. What were called “victory gardens” were being planted en masse by people from all walks of life, encouraged by various national governments around the world. Millions of these small home gardens sprang up to help reduce the price of produce during World War 2, allowing anyone with even the tiniest pot of soil to contribute to the war effort.
It’s estimated that in 1943 alone, victory gardens accounted for around one third of all vegetables produced in the United States. Since then, however, the vast majority of these productive gardens have been abandoned in favor of highly manicured, fertilized, irrigated turfgrass (which produces no food yet costs more to maintain), but thanks to the recent global pandemic there has been a resurgence of people who at least are curious about growing their own food again, if not already actively planting gardens. In the modern age, even though a lot of the folk knowledge has been lost since the ’40s, planting a garden of any size is easier than ever especially with the amount of technology available to help.
As someone who not only puts food on the table as a writer for a world-renowned tech website but also literally and figuratively puts food on the table as a small-scale market farmer, there are a few things that I’ve learned that I hope will help if you’re starting your first garden.
You Can Garden Anywhere, But Location Does Matter
For reference, I live in south Florida (zone 10b, which we will talk about later) and I sell various salad greens to farmers markets near me. I also grow lots of other edible, but unprofitable, plants for fun as well. The soil here is mostly worthless sand, but that touches on the two most important things to know before getting started: your own climate and soil type.
The beginning of growing season at my mini-farm in December in south Florida. This used to be an expensive lawn and is now semi-profitable salad green beds instead: lettuces, kale, arugula, and spinach, with some tomato trellises on the left and fruit trees and pineapples in the back. In the summer I rotate to sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, okra, and watermelon.
Garden Keystone: Climate.
The most important of these is climate, since almost every other factor for a healthy garden depends on it, so the first step is to figure out what climate your plants will grow in.
The
Köppen climate classification
system can help here, as it is much easier to grow plants that are native to the climate they will be growing in. For example, it would be difficult (
although not impossible
) to grow a mango tree in Michigan, or an apple tree in Texas, or a date palm outside of a desert. Another resource that is helpful for determining if your plants of choice will grow where you live is the
USDA plant hardiness zone map
. (Other countries have similar resources available.) This is a map of the lowest expected temperature in a typical year for any given location. A plant that is “hardy” to zone 6, for example, will survive temperatures down to -23 C but a plant that is only hardy to zone 10b (as I mentioned before) will likely not survive if the temperature even approaches freezing. It is important to note that this scale doesn’t apply in reverse, i.e. a plant hardy to zone six may or may not survive in a higher numbered zone.
Related to climate, you will also need to make sure your plants are growing in their correct season. For example, tomatoes are a common vegetable to grow in the summer in temperate climates, but if you live in a place that is hotter than average (like I do in south Florida) you may find out that almost all tomatoes (
with some exceptions
) will die in the extreme heat. To solve that problem, most people near me plant their tomatoes in October and harvest all the way through the following April, but if you happened to be living in Vermont you’d need to make some obvious adjustments to this schedule.
Köppen climate types (left) compared to USDA hardiness zones (right). There are some trends between the two maps. Also note that the section of blue at the tip of Florida isn’t the same color blue as the Northeast and Midwest. It’s the only tropical climate in the continental US!
Garden Keystone: Soil Types
. The next thing to consider is soil type. Virtually all soils have some sort of plant that loves to grow in them, and it’s usually not too difficult to amend soil for small plots to allow other things to grow in them. For example, sweet potatoes love sandy soil with low nutrient content, but planting a banana tree next to them will not be fruitful. All states in the US have an agricultural university with extension offices that soil samples can be sent to, and these labs can tell you how much of various nutrients are available in the soil and some suggestions on what to plant, or how to add various supplements to the soil. They can also make recommendations for what plants you can grow natively, and are a tremendous resource. Soil is the most important thing to watch when growing any plants, though, and if you take care of your soil properly a lot of other aspects of your garden will fall into place naturally, such as disease resistance, pest resistance, and improved yields.
From Kitchen Window to Tilling the Yard Under
Once climate and soil type have been figured out, though, there is essentially no end to the number of gardening rabbit holes (pun intended) that can be fallen into. Did your worthless Bradford pear tree fall over in a storm? Plant an apple or peach tree! Want a maintenance-free groundcover for a patch of lawn that won’t ever grow because it’s too hot or sunny? Might be time to plant some sweet potatoes. Some of the
more extreme of us
have plowed up our entire yards to grow food, but it’s best to at least start small.
Even if you have limited space or no access to any land as an apartment dweller, for example, there’s still some ways that you can grow some food for yourself. With a few pots of topsoil from the local gardening center, or by being patient and using kitchen scraps to
make your own compost
, it’s possible to grow a lot of herbs and spices near open windows, especially green onions, basil, oregano, and many others. With a small grow light, other things like lettuce and peppers are possible as well.
Victory Garden poster via
Wikimedia Commons
Technology can really step up in this area. If you have a fish tank, for example, it’s possible to filter the water for the fish using plants that will benefit from the waste the fish generate. This symbiotic relationship is known as
aquaponics
, and setups can be as small as a few plants, a grow light, and an aquarium with only a few fish. Of course, aquaponics projects can be huge as well, but if you have limited space and already have an aquarium then it’s a great starting point. If you don’t have an aquarium, you can build a similar system without the fish known as hydroponics,
which we have seen in several projects before
.
Apartment Gardening: Fungus
Other things can be grown inside a small space or apartment as well, and some of them aren’t even plants.
Various mushrooms can be cultivated fairly easily
in buckets of straw or spent coffee grounds. These methods require almost no specialized equipment either. Growing mushrooms also eliminates one of the greatest obstacles to growing plants in an apartment: access to sunlight. Mushrooms don’t require sunlight for the energy needed to grow, so this is a viable alternative to growing plants. While oyster mushrooms are the most popular for starting cultivators, other edible mushrooms can be cultivated indoors as well, such as shiitake, maitake, and lion’s mane mushrooms.
Growing oyster mushrooms from a five-gallon bucket isn’t too hard and requires very little space.
Making Small Plots Yield More Produce
If you do have a good amount of land and are ready to get started using technology to help cultivate as much food as possible for your area, climate, and soil type though, there is perhaps no better resource than Akiba’s various projects. He is a member of Freaklabs and while his projects aren’t all devoted to farming, and from his home base at Hacker Farm outside of Tokyo, a good percentage of his projects are aimed at helping farmers to improve yields or otherwise making their jobs easier. From
sensor nets for improving rice farming
to
entire farms devoted to using and teaching technology
, his work offers more than enough inspiration for the budding gardener or farmer to draw from. I have used some of his projects for inspiration on my own small farm, especially when it comes to managing irrigation with a limited/expensive water supply, so there is certainly a wealth of knowledge there to draw upon. Others that have had popular farming-oriented builds here include Brad aka [AtomicZombie] who grows a good chunk of his own food in the Canadian prairies and has built some
unique tools to help manage his homestead
as well.
Eating Something You Grew is So Much More Satisfying, and Often Objectively Better Tasting
The process of growing at least some of your own food is possible in virtually every circumstance, provided that you understand the basics of climate and soil type and have reasonable expectations. As a beekeeper (a rewarding hobby in itself that can greatly improve your garden’s yield, as well as provide tasty honey, useful wax, and even tasty adult beverages), there’s a common saying that easily translates to growing a garden: “All beekeeping is local”. This means that only you can find out what works best for your specific set of circumstances.
In a sense, all gardening and farming is local too, and a certain amount of trial and error will occur before you really get the hang of your current situation despite all the things you have read online about the “right” ways to grow various plants. But using the technology widely available to most of us as part of the Hackaday community should make the process of starting a modern victory garden much easier. You’ll end up eating more produce as you don’t want your hard work to go to waste. And I’ll put my garden tomatoes up against those in a grocery store any day of the south-Florida winter. | 55 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263537",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T14:21:06",
"content": "Not to be ‘that person’, but should this be a hackaday article? Recently, hackaday articles have been becoming more and more generic, like things I’d find on any old news outlet/blog. I read hackaday becau... | 1,760,373,418.640468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/super-mario-64-as-experienced-by-mario/ | Super Mario 64 As Experienced By Mario | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"controller",
"jumping",
"Kinect",
"mario",
"motion sensor",
"super mario 64",
"video game"
] | Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion-sensing peripherial originally for the Xbox 360, is almost exactly a decade old now. And in that decade it has expanded from its limited existence tied to a console to a widely-used tool for effective and detailed motion sensing, without breaking the bank. While it’s seen use well outside of video games, it’s still being used to reimagine some classic games. In this project, Reddit user [SuperLouis64]
has used it to control Mario with his own body
.
While the build still involves some use of a hand controller, most of Mario’s movements are controlled by making analogous movements on a small trampoline, including the famed triple jump. The kinect is able to sense all of these movements and translate them into the game using software that [SuperLouis64] built as well. The trickiest movement seems to be Mario’s spin movement, which appears to have taken some practice to get right.
We appreciate the build quality on this one, and [SuperLouis64]’s excitement in playing the game with his creation. It truly looks like a blast to play, and he even mentions in the Reddit thread that he’s gotten a lot of productive excercise with his various VR and augumented reality games in the past few months. Of course if this is too much physical activity, you could always switch to
using your car as the unique game controller instead
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263477",
"author": "Digitalzombie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T11:07:23",
"content": "Very nice.I can wholeheartedly recommend Nimso Ny’s YT channel. He built a Mario 64 (and Sonic) demo with VR locomotionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBagYX7oKMwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxou... | 1,760,373,418.281278 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/speech-to-morse-code-courtesy-of-google/ | Speech To Morse Code, Courtesy Of Google | Tom Nardi | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Google AIY",
"morse code",
"Voice To Text"
] | Google has been responsible for unleashing some pretty incredible hardware and software on the world, but they can only take
partial
credit for the
voice to Morse code gadget that [WhiskeyTangoHotel] recently completed
.
With the Google AIY Voice Bonnet, [WhiskeyTangoHotel] had everything he needed to pick up on human speech and turn that into text the Raspberry Pi can parse and act on. Usually this would get passed to some kind of virtual assistant software, but in this case, a Python script breaks the speech down into individual characters and looks up their Morse representations. All those “dits” and “dahs” are then sent to one of the Pi’s GPIO pins, to which a relay has been connected.
At this point, you’ve got an interesting little toy that can sit on your desk and turn your speech into audible Morse code as the relay clicks and clacks its way through the message. In fact, if you don’t have a ham radio license, this is probably where you should stop. But if you’ve done the appropriate paperwork to transmit over the air, the relay can be connected to a radio to actually transmit messages.
If you think giving Google access to the content of your Morse code messages is a step too far,
you’ll just have to learn it yourself
. It might not be necessary to get your amateur license anymore,
but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth knowing
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263473",
"author": "Ockhams",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T10:56:26",
"content": "Using the worlds cutting edge technology to emulate the first electrig/electronic transmission method. Curious",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626349... | 1,760,373,418.330181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/quickly-mute-and-unmute-yourself-using-the-physical-mute-button/ | Quickly Mute And Unmute Yourself Using The Physical Mute Button | Orlando Hoilett | [
"computer hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"COVID",
"Meet",
"mute",
"Native USB",
"OneButton",
"virtual conference",
"WebEx",
"zoom"
] | With many conferences moving to fully virtual this year, video conferencing will continue to be a mainstay in our lives for the foreseeable future. [Elliot] wanted to spice up his video conferencing experience just a bit and make his experience a bit more ergonomic. We’ve all had the problem of looking for our Zoom window buried behind any number of other applications, desperately searching for the mute button. Furthermore, when we get called on, we’re desperately trying to give the impression that we’ve been paying attention the entire time, even when we haven’t been.
To solve all these problems,
he built a physical mute button
to easily toggle the mute option on and off during Zoom calls. The device takes advantage of the native USB feature of his Digispark board, and a few built-in keyboard shortcuts in Zoom. With native USB, the Digispark board can act like a keyboard, making it really simple to emulate keyboard presses using the microcontroller. Throw in an arcade-style button and do a bit of handcrafting and you have yourself your own physical mute button.
We were really impressed by the simplicity of the design as well as the elegance of the mechanical assembly. [Elliot] even made a revamped version with a second button allowing him to control his video as well. Cool button(s) [Elliot]!
What’s your favorite work-from-home hack?
Check out some of our favorites here on Hackaday
. | 52 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263412",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T05:21:28",
"content": "The need to mute reminds of the need for a PTT button on a transmitter.That almost would be a better solution – press to talk rather than press to mute.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,373,418.902677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/will-2020-be-the-year-of-rust-in-the-linux-kernel/ | Will 2020 Be The Year Of Rust In The Linux Kernel? | Sven Gregori | [
"Current Events",
"Software Development"
] | [
"change",
"linus torvalds",
"linux",
"linux kernel",
"rust"
] | One problem with modern programming languages is the reach their overly enthusiastic early adopters have nowadays thanks to the internet. As a result, everyone else’s first encounter with them are oftentimes some crude, fanboyish endeavors to rewrite every single established software project in that shiny new language — just because — which may leave an off-putting taste behind. However, Rust certainly seems to have outgrown this state by now, and with its rising popularity within the general developer population, it’s safe to say it
will
stick around. Will it fully replace C one day? Probably not, but there’s a big chance for coexistence, and [Nick Desaulniers]
got the ball rolling for that within the Linux kernel
.
Now, before you storm off pledging your allegiance to C by finding a new operating system: nothing is happening yet. [Nick] simply tested the waters for a possible future of Rust within the Linux kernel code base, which is something he’s planning to bring up for discussion in this year’s Linux Plumbers Conference — the annual kernel developer gathering. The interesting part is [Linus Torvalds]’s
respone
on the LKML thread, which leaves everyone hoping for a hearty signature Rust rant akin to
his C++ one
disappointed. Instead, his main concern is that a soft and optional introduction of the support in the build system would leave possible bugs hidden, and therefore should be automatically enabled if a Rust compiler is present — essentially implying that he seems otherwise on board.
We’ll see what comes of it, but with Rust language team lead [Josh Triplett] stating that enhancements benefiting and advancing a kernel integration are certainly imaginable for Rust itself, we might see interesting collaborations coming up in the near future. If you don’t want to wait for that and use Rust already today in a user-land driver,
check out this 35c3 talk
. And if that doesn’t go far enough for you,
here’s a whole (non-Linux) kernel written in Rust
. | 55 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263384",
"author": "Jonathan Bennett",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T02:47:34",
"content": "Rust is one of the few modern languages that has a real chance at replacing C for kernel level stuff. Getting use in a real world environment like the Linux kernel will be good for the language, ... | 1,760,373,418.822209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/home-monitoring-without-all-the-sensors/ | Home Monitoring, Without All The Sensors | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"electricity",
"home",
"meter",
"notification",
"oven",
"pre-heating",
"sensor",
"temperature"
] | Smart homes come with a lot of perks, not least among which is the ability to monitor the goings-on in your home, track them, and make trends. Each piece of monitoring equipment, such as sensors or cameras, is another set of wires that needs to be run and another “thing” that needs to be maintained on your system. There are sometimes
clever ways of avoiding sensors, though, while still retaining the usefulness of having them
.
In this build, [squix] uses existing sensors for electricity metering that he already had in order to alert him when his oven is pre-heated. The sensor is a Shelly 3EM, and the way that it interfaces with his home automation is by realizing that his electric oven will stop delivering electricity to the heating elements once it has reached the desired temperature. He is able to monitor the sudden dramatic decrease in electricity demand at his house with the home controller, and use that decrease to alert him to the fact that his oven is ready without having to install something extra like a temperature sensor.
While this particular sensor may only be available in some parts of Europe, we presume the idea would hold out across many different sensors and even other devices. Even a
small machine learning device
should be able to tell what loads are coming on at what times, and then be programmed to perform functions based on that data. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264044",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T00:07:09",
"content": "What’s really creepy is when you realize that utility companies (and any government that subpoenas them, or anyone with enough cash) has access to this same type of measurement. Afik it also works with wat... | 1,760,373,418.95211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/usb-flash-drive-reveals-strange-sd-card-heart/ | USB Flash Drive Reveals Strange SD Card Heart | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"flash",
"microsd",
"microsd card",
"nand",
"sd card",
"usb"
] | Many a hacker has dug an old flash drive out of the bottom of a backpack, and peeled apart the damaged plastic case to look inside. More often then not, you’d expect to see some SMD chips on a PCB along with a few passives, an LED and a USB port.
[Gough] found something else entirely, and documented it for the interested public.
Inside the Comsol 8GB USB stick, [Gough] found an entire microSD card. One might be led to think this is a card reader and microSD masquerading as a normal flash drive, but the reality is far different. Instead, the drive contains a Flash memory controller which addresses the microSD card as raw NAND, through test points normally covered up on consumer-grade cards. The drive appears to be manufactured from factory second microSD cards that don’t pass the normal tests to be onsold to the public.
Armed with software obtained through spurious channels, [Gough] is able to dive deeper into the guts of the flash drive. The engineering tools allow the card to be optimised for capacity or speed, and different levels of error correction. It’s even possible to have the flash drive emulate a U3 CD ROM drive for OS installs and other purposes.
It’s a great dive into how USB drives work on a low level, and how the firmware and hardware work together. We’ve seen other flash drive hacks before too –
like this simple recovery trick
! | 41 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263980",
"author": "Kyle Brinkerhoff",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T20:05:46",
"content": "your forgetting the part that we now know we can use micro sd cards like smd. which is cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263987",
... | 1,760,373,419.027954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/this-soap-dispenser-will-crush-your-germs/ | This Soap Dispenser Will Crush Your Germs | Sharon Lin | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"soap",
"stepper motor"
] | When it comes to cleaning your hands, [Arnov Sharma] is not messing around. He built an
automatic soap dispenser
using ultrasonic sensors, a stepper motor for activating the pump, and 3D printed components for housing a bottle of soap – a spectacular display of over-engineering. At least he won’t be needing to stand in line at the supermarket for motion detection soap dispensers anytime soon.
Initially, he had the idea to build the dispenser using a common servo motor-based method. This would involve activating motors to push down on the plunger for the soap bottle to dispense soap. Instead, he for a different approach that ended up being fairly straightforward in theory, although the execution is pretty involved.
Model of the soap dispenser made in Fusion 360
He started off by 3D printing the compartment where the soap bottle would sit and the structural support for the
Z-axis rail
that would be pushing down on the soap bottle. It’s similar to the type of linear actuator you might find in a 3D printer or PCB mill, where a motor controls a rotating screw that moves the carriage across a belt. (We presume the linear rail came first, and the ultrasonic soap dispenser second.)
In this build, there are two additional rods added to help support the lever pressing down on the soap dispenser.
The setup is controlled by an Arduino, which triggers the movement from the linear actuator if it receives a signal from an ultrasonic sensor. He’s added the model files and Arduino code for other makers curious about building a similar project. Check out his video for the soap dispenser in action – the stepper motor definitely makes for a much more powerful plunge than you might expect.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263961",
"author": "Val",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T18:42:43",
"content": "pretty cool project! when the bottle is empty you can even crush it before putting it in the recycling bin heh!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6263965",... | 1,760,373,419.081882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/modern-radio-receiver-architecture-from-regenerative-to-direct-conversion/ | Modern Radio Receiver Architecture: From Regenerative To Direct Conversion | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"radio receiver",
"regenerative receiver",
"RF",
"Superhetrodyne",
"superregenerative"
] | Modern radio receivers have a distinct advantage over the common
early designs which I covered in my previous article
. Most of the receivers you will have worked with over the past couple decades are designs by
Edwin Armstrong
; regenerative, superregenerative, or most commonly superheterodyne. These are distinguished by a few fascinating key traits that bring both benefits and drawbacks.
Today let’s dive into Mr. Armstrong’s receivers. I’ll also talk about DC receivers which, despite the name, are not made to listen to batteries. These are receivers you are much more likely to encounter in modern equipment.
Regenerative and Superregenerative
The regenerative receiver is all about doing more with less. You still see some of these in simple applications like RF remote controls. The idea derives from how an oscillator works. In a simple way of thinking, an oscillator is an amplifier with enough positive feedback that any tiny signal at the right frequency will amplify and then, through feedback, continue to output over and over. If everything were perfect, then, an oscillator would have infinite gain at a given frequency.
Of course, things aren’t perfect, but they are close enough. You have to set the feedback network up just right to get the frequency you want. Also, things in nature tend to be linear, so it isn’t like the amplifier has no gain at the given frequency and then suddenly has infinite gain. The gain increases until it meets the Barkhausen criteria and achieves stable oscillation.
In fact, sometimes we want to build an amplifier and find that it oscillates for some reason. Maybe that’s what made Edwin Armstrong think about the regenerative receiver. In it, an amplifier is pushed almost to the point of oscillation at the frequency of interest. This can result in a huge gain for a single tube or transistor. This was especially important when using low-quality active devices. For example, a tube capable of a gain of 10 without regeneration might amplify between 5,000 and 10,000 times when it was right on the edge of oscillation.
That’s a big improvement and meant that a very simple device could pick up very distant radio signals. There are many ways you could arrange positive feedback. However, the most common way (as in the accompanying schematic) was to have a pickup coil called a tickler around the primary tuned circuit coil. If that coil was out of phase, you’d get negative feedback, so common advice on this kind of radio was that if it didn’t work after you built it, try reversing the leads of the tickler.
The superregenerative was another design by Armstrong. It is essentially the same circuit, but after a certain frequency higher than the bandwidth of interest, the design stops the oscillation action allowing it to build again. Armstrong called this quenching. This could improve gains into the neighborhood of a million times. Armstrong’s original demonstration of the concept showed a three-tube receiver that was as sensitive as a nine-tube conventional design.
There are some downsides to both of these designs, though. You usually have to adjust the regeneration and the circuit can easily go into oscillation, producing a squeal. It also radiates signal back out the antenna, so it is a sort of transmitter. This is bad for interference or — for military applications — where you wish not to be found. If you want to build your own, we’ve had some
advice for you
in the past, including
some
on a breadboard
. If you prefer, you can just
simulate one
that [Qrp Gaijin] demonstrates in the video below.
Superheterodyne
Armstrong was also behind the most successful architecture of all, the superheterodyne. If you have a non-software defined radio, it probably uses this technique. The idea is simple and has to do with selectivity. Consider the TRF radio. You can get better performance by putting more stages ahead of the detector. But each stage has to cover the entire range of the radio and requires tuning when you change frequency.
Armstrong’s idea was to limit that. You may or may not have one relatively broad filter in front of
a mixer
that adds (and subtracts) two RF signals. Then a local oscillator provides another signal to the mixer. Suppose you want to receive a signal at 1 MHz and you set the local oscillator to 9 MHz. You’ll get a signal at 10 MHz (and 8 MHz). You can now filter that 10 Mhz signal and amplify it using filters and amplifiers that you don’t have to tune (at least, not more than once). This makes their design simple and is also less hassle for the operator.
Now, if you want to receive a signal at 1.1 MHz, you change the local oscillator to 8.9 MHz. You still get a 10 MHz signal. If there is a station at 1.2 MHz, you’ll also get a signal at 10.1 MHz, but since you have the 10 MHz filters and amplifiers, you can get rid of that easily. That 10 MHz, in this example, is the IF or intermediate frequency.
This is a great way to build a radio. You can pile on gain and selectivity by adding more IF stages. The only real downside, as I mentioned in the last article is the possibility of images. Because the mixer both adds and subtracts, you can hear a station at the wrong frequency. Consider our 1 MHz signal with a local oscillator frequency of 9 MHz. A 19 MHz signal at the antenna will also show up at the 10 MHz output of the mixer since 19-9=10, just like 1+9=10.
There are several ways to get over that. First, you can filter before the mixer. That’s why a lot of radios have a band switch — well, it is at least one of the reasons. You select a filter that roughly cuts out the interference from images. High-quality receivers will use dual conversion where one mixer produces one IF signal that is later mixed again to form a second one. Some will even use more conversions to optimize filtering.
There are several ways this can help. Image frequencies are always at twice the local oscillator frequency. Going back to the 1 MHz signal example, the image is at 2×9+1=19 MHz. So the higher the IF, the easier it is to filter off images. As a silly example consider if the 1 MHz receiver used an IF of 61 MHz. Now the local oscillator will run at 60 MHz and the image frequency will be at 121 MHz. It is trivial to filter 1 MHz from 121 MHz.
The problem is that using a higher IF makes it more difficult to reject stations adjacent in frequency. In our extreme example, filters to select between 61 MHz and 61.02 MHz are going to be more complex and costly than ones that select between 10 MHz and 10.02 MHz. Granted, there are surface acoustic wave filters and other devices that can do the job, but typically the best performance for a given cost is going to go to the lower frequency filters and amplifiers.
If you want a nice overview of the superheterodyne that isn’t too technical, check out the video below.
Direct Conversion
The direct conversion (DC) receiver has seen a resurgence in use since many
software defined radios use this as a front end
before digitizing the signal. You can think of a DC receiver as superheterodyne where the local oscillator doesn’t produce an IF, but instead is set to the frequency you want to receive. That means the output is the detected radio signal.
Using our 1 MHz example, to tune it in, you set the local oscillator to 1 MHz. The output is what you’d normally process with an audio amplifier (in the case of AM radio). The design has several practical problems. If the local oscillator isn’t locked to the transmitting station, the output will be incorrect. With SDR, that’s not a problem because the SDR software can track any shifts, but if you don’t have a computer handling things, it requires a lot of components to stay on frequency (essentially, a phase locked loop).
On the other hand, images are all at low frequencies and easily rejected. A lot of simple ham radio receivers use this technique because you don’t need a lot of frequency-specific amplifiers and filters that require tuning.
Getting Started Receiving
If you want to start designing receivers, the best bet is to build some and see how they work. It is hard to beat the simplicity and performance of a regenerative receiver. Sure, a crystal set is easier, but it won’t pick up like a regen. Using the NE602 or NE612 mixer is a handy way to make a direct conversion receiver with only a little more work. You can use that same mixer in a superhet design, but it is definitely more work.
Even if you are using SDR, you usually need some kind of front end. There are a few more exotic designs we didn’t talk about. If you want to read about Hartley, Barber Weaver, and other interesting topics, A
Texas A&M presentation on the topic
will fill you in.
Of course, the best way to learn is to go build something! There’s no shortage of design ideas for every kind of radio we’ve discussed. Once you start tweaking on real hardware, you’ll quickly find out what works and what doesn’t.
Acknowledgment: Most of the pretty pictures of block diagrams and schematics were adapted from public domain sources on Wikipedia, particularly from [Chetvorno]. What a great resource. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263946",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T17:11:49",
"content": "I thoroughly documented the design and construction, from scratch, of a Direct Conversion receiver that can be used on any HF band on my site:https://miscdotgeek.com/building-direct-conversion-receiver... | 1,760,373,419.129256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/hackaday-podcast-076-grinding-compression-screws-scratching-pcbs-and-melting-foam/ | Hackaday Podcast 076: Grinding Compression Screws, Scratching PCBs, And Melting Foam | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Arduino IDE",
"extruder",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"hard drive recovery",
"injection molding",
"PCB mill",
"smalltalk"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys are enamored by this week’s fabrication hacks. There’s a PCB mill that isolates traces by scratching rather than cutting. You won’t believe how awesome this angle-cutter jig is at creating tapered augers for injection molding/extruding plastic. And you may not
need
an interactive way to cut foam, but the art from the cut pieces is more than a mere shadow of excellence. Plus we gab about a clever rotary encoder circuit, which IDE is the least frustrating, and the go-to tools for hard drive recovery.
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!
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(60 MB or so.)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 076 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Roboticist Grant Imahara Of Mythbusters Fame Dies Of Aneurysm At Age 49
Don’t Wait, You Need To See Comet NEOWISE Right Now
Stellarium Web Online Star Map
Dream Team Members Announced For The 2020 Hackaday Prize
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Making PCBs The Easy Way
Ironclad Tips For Copper-Clad Prototyping
Build An Everlasting Continuity Tester
Learn The Secrets Of Matching Bottle Cap Threads To One Another
threadlib: thread library for OpenSCAD
Making Smalltalk On A Raspberry Pi
Project Oberon
Reviving a computer system of 25 years ago
Hjalfi makes smalltalk (in Javascript)
Interactive CNC Foam Cutter Churns Out Abstract Art
We Didn’t Know The Sun Could Do Digital
CNC Hot-Wire Cutter Gives Form To Foam
Open-Source Grinder Makes Compression Screws For Plastic Extruders Easy
Spoofing An Analog Rotary Knob With An ATtiny, And Vampiric Power
LS7183 quadrature converter datasheet
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Home Automation Covers Everything
An Easier Way To Roll Your Own LED Ball
High-End Ham Radio Gives Up Its Firmware Secrets
Mike’s Picks:
1975 Circuit Board Was A Masterpiece Hidden On Your Wrist
Printed TS100 Case Beats The Heat With A Bearing
Video: Bil Herds Looks At Mitosis
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Tales From The Sysadmin: Impending Hard Drive Doom
Surgery On The Arduino IDE Makes Bigger Serial Buffers | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263976",
"author": "Jonathan Bennett",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T20:01:19",
"content": "“Cults are a thing of the past, we’re all about science and rationality now”Hahaha. Humans are just not rational creatures. Cults of one sort or the other will always be with us.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,419.203983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/four-on-the-floor-for-your-virtual-race-car/ | Four On The Floor For Your Virtual Race Car | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"arduino",
"city car",
"H shifter",
"hid",
"human interface device",
"Joystick",
"leonardo",
"manual transmission",
"stick shift",
"usb hid"
] | There was a time when building realistic simulations of vehicles was the stuff of NASA and big corporations. Today, many people have sophisticated virtual cockpits or race cars that they use with high-resolution screens or even virtual reality gear. If you think about it, a virtual car isn’t that hard to pull off. All you really need is a steering wheel, a few pedals, and a gear shifter. Sure, you can build fans to simulate the wind and put haptics in your seat, but really the input devices alone get you most of the way there. [Oli] decided he wanted a quick and easy
USB gear shifter
so he took a trip to the hardware store, picked up an arcade joystick, and tied it all together with an Arduino Leonardo. The finished product that you can see in the video below cost about $30 and took less than six hours to build.
The Leonardo, of course, has the ability to act like a USB human interface device (HID) so it can emulate a mouse or a keyboard or a joystick. That comes in handy for this project, as you would expect. The computer simply has to read the four joystick buttons and then decide which gear matches which buttons. For example up and to the left is first gear, while 4th gear is only the down button depressed. A custom-cut wooden shifter plate gives you the typical H pattern you expect from a stick shift.
Of course, the joystick doesn’t have a long handle like a true stick shift, so [Oli] added some extensions. In addition, a real shifter doesn’t require you to hold it in position as a joystick would. To rectify this, the shifter plate has magnets that grab the stick and hold it. They aren’t strong enough that you can’t move the stick, but they are strong enough to keep it from moving on its own.
We noticed that the design doesn’t allow for a clutch, so it isn’t quite the same as driving a real stick. However, [Oli] mentions several upgrades he has in mind and a clutch is one of them. Some haptics would be a cool addition so could feel the gears grind if you didn’t do the shift correctly.
The last
shifter
we saw like this was 3D printed. It is getting harder to find a car in the US with a manual transmission, but [Kristina Panos] is
definitely a fan
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264047",
"author": "Fennec",
"timestamp": "2020-07-18T00:56:36",
"content": "Logitech, thrustmaster etc make really nice gearsticks for only a bit more money, though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6264054",
"author": "Wre... | 1,760,373,419.166538 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/this-week-in-security-twitter-windows-dns-sap-recon/ | This Week In Security: Twitter, Windows DNS, SAP RECON | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"android",
"apple",
"This Week in Security",
"Windows Server"
] | Twitter just had their biggest security breach in years.
Mike warned us about it on Wednesday
, but it’s worth revisiting a few of the details. The story is still developing, but it appears that malicious actors used social engineering to access an internal Twitter dashboard. This dashboard, among other interesting things, allows directly changing the email address associated with an account. Once the address is changed to the attacker’s, it’s simple to do a password reset and gain access.
The bitcoin address used in the crypto scam ended up receiving nearly $120,000 USD worth of bitcoin, all of which has been shuffled off into different accounts. It’s an old and simple scam, but was apparently rather believable because the messages were posted by verified Twitter accounts.
Screenshot from
Motherboard
A series of screenshots have been posted, claiming to be the internal Twitter dashboard used in the attack. More than a few eyebrows have been raised, as a result of that dashboard. First off, the fact that Twitter employees can directly change an account’s email address is asking for trouble. Even more interesting are the tags that can be added to an account. “Trends Blacklist” and “Search Blacklist” do call to mind the rumors of shadow-banning, but at this point it’s impossible to know the details. Motherboard is reporting that Twitter is removing that screenshot across the board when it’s posted, and even suspending accounts that post it. Of course, they’d do that if it were faked as well, so who knows?
We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport)
July 16, 2020
SIGRed
CVE-2020-1350 was just announced and fixed
as a part of Microsoft’s patch Tuesday push. If you run a Windows Server machine, especially if it has a DNS resolver running, make sure to go patch right away. Yet another CVE scoring a perfect 10, this one is particularly bad as it appears to be a wormable exploit.
Some of the vulnerability details are already available
— enough to get an idea of what’s going on. The flaw is in how the DNS daemon handles DNS SIG responses. The code that allocates a buffer for the sig response uses a 16 bit int for the allocation size. It maxes out at 64k characters. As UDP DNS responses have an enforced size limit of 4096 bytes, this seems safe. As you might guess, there’s a catch.
Certain legitimate DNS responses do in fact require more than 4096 bytes, so the spec includes the truncation flag, which means that there is more to this message that didn’t fit in the UDP packet. The proper response is to initiate a TCP connection and make the request again. Once the DNS request is happening over TCP, that message can be up to 64k in length. Still not long enough to trigger the bug. Enter DNS pointer compression. DNS responses can contain a simple type of data compression, usually used to squeeze a message into a single UDP packet. If this compression is used on a TCP DNS query, the final decompressed message size can exceed 64k.
Once the message is decompressed, a buffer is allocated, based on the message size, but because it’s a 16-bit int, if the size is over 64k, that value wraps back around to 0. So a small buffer is allocated, and then 64+ kB of data is copied to it, overwriting the end of the buffer. Because of the security features built into modern versions of Windows Server, there are more steps to a full compromise, but based on the response to this vulnerability, it seems that a sophisticated attacker won’t have too much trouble developing it into a full exploit.
SAP RECON
The third major event of this week is
the RECON vulnerability in SAP devices
, accompanied by a
not very helpful PDF
. CVE-2020-6287 scored a severity of 10, as it’s exploitable from the network with no authentication, and easily leads to a full takeover of the system. The flaw is twofold, first is yet another path transversal attack. The “../” operator isn’t properly stripped out of incoming requests. The other half of the vulnerability is the fact that certain URL endpoints on a vulnerable device are accessible without authentication.
A Proof of Concept has been posted to Github
, though without the RCE elements. It’s likely that the specifics needed to fully compromise the device will be figured out in short order, so best to get your devices updated right away.
Apple Security Bypass
MacOS has a built in app sandboxing system, known as TCC. The aim of this particular component is to keep an app from accessing the rest of the filesystem without user permission. [Jeff Johnson]
discovered a way to bypass that protection
, and reported it to Apple, who have yet to fix it. After waiting six months, double the standard disclosure time, he’s published his findings for all to see.
Android Security Updates
The
July security updates for Android
have been released, and there are a couple of interesting vulns in there, namely CVE-2020-0224 and CVE-2020-0225.
0224 seems to be related to
the processing of regular expressions
. Based on the limited bug writeup, it’s unclear how this vulnerability would be triggered remotely. This bug is a bit of an older one, first discovered in the Chromium project. Because of the code sharing between projects, it was present in both, and only now getting patched in Android.
0225 is
a Bluetooth issue, related to audio over Bluetooth
. The details are scarce, but it appears that a 0-length packet can trigger a null pointer access.
The 4 Hour Unc0ver Uncovering
And lastly for this week, [Brandon Azad] at Google’s Project Zero steps us through
the story of taking apart the unc0ver jailbreak, designing a PoC, and sending the issue over to Apple
. In the case of a big release like that one, there’s something of a race to see who can reverse engineer it first. Brandon couldn’t make heads or tails out of the heavily obfuscated exploit binary, but he had a clever trick up his sleeve. Start the exploit, but kill that app before the install finished. The system was left in an unstable state, crashed, and he was able to trace the crash back to the vulnerability. The full write-up is worth checking out. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263911",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T14:54:03",
"content": "“The flaw is in how the DNS daemon handles DNS SIG responses. ”DNS daemon?So, MicroSoft is not even hiding that they stole stuff from UN*X/Linux anymore?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,373,419.250967 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/make-your-own-filament/ | Make Your Own Filament | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"extruder",
"extrusion",
"filament",
"pellets"
] | According to [Alex] it is easy to make your own rolls of 3D printing filament, even though existing off-the-shelf solutions don’t work very well. His explanation for this is economics. He built
a filament extruder
using a high torque induction motor and gearbox that was locally sourced. He argues that shipping heavy gear around would make a similar extruder commercially unattractive. He sunk about $600 into the device but estimates that a company would need to charge at least $1,500 or more for the same thing. That may seem steep but as [Alex] points out, a 1 kg roll of filament really only has about 750 grams for filament and plastic pellets cost $2 to $3 per kilogram.
There are other costs, of course, like the electricity required to heat and move the plastic. Still, the system appears to use about $1 of electricity for every 10 kg of filament. You can see the process in the video below.
If you think about it, the mechanism isn’t too different from a 3D printer. You heat plastic, force it through a nozzle, and it cools off. The big differences are you are not moving around and have to manage the pellets using a screw feed. It turns out the screw and associated components make up a large part of the machine’s cost.
The other key component is a 1 HP motor. A typical motor will run at 1800 RPM, so you also need a gearbox to slow things down. You’ll also need drive electronics, heaters, and temperature control. If you pay retail for everything, you are going to have trouble matching the $600 price tag. However, the motors and quite a bit of it can be found used or salvaged. A lot of the details are in the
second post
. The details of the part of the machine that winds the new filament are in
yet another post
.
If you don’t want to spend quite as much, you can also make a smaller version that can produce about 2 kg per hour as opposed to the 5 kg per hour that the big machine makes. The little sister uses an eBike motor and the whole thing should come in for well under $500. There are several other posts linked from the original ones, including notes on the water bath required, measuring filament thickness, and even selling filament for profit.
We’ve seen a lot of takes on
making filament
. One even claims to
cost about $100
. | 52 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263825",
"author": "Arthur Wolf",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T11:09:47",
"content": "Note if you do a Youtube search for “filament extruder” there are ( actual ) hundreds of projects on there, most being succesful.Really wish there was a core Open-Source project aiming at taking the b... | 1,760,373,419.47546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/17/the-motherboard-of-all-cnc-controllers/ | The Mother(board) Of All CNC Controllers | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"ESP32",
"gcode",
"grbl"
] | If you’re building a CNC machine from scratch, the number of decisions you have to make is nearly boundless. Metal or wood construction? Welded or bolted? Timing belts or lead screws? And even once the mechanical bits are sorted, you still face a universe of choices in terms of control electronics. That’s where something like
this modular CNC controller
could really prove to be a game-changer.
The idea behind [Barton Dring]’s latest creation started with
his port of GRBL to the ESP32
. In fact, the current controller bears a strong family resemblance to his version 1.0 dev board, with a few conspicuous and intriguing additions. First, everything is modular — the main PCB is basically a motherboard with little more than a 5-volt power supply and some housekeeping electronics, plus a lot of headers. There’s support for up to six channels of steppers, either directly on the board with Pololu-style modules or as external drivers using pluggable screw terminal blocks. There’s also room for five IO modules; the current collection of modules includes a four-channel switch input, a relay output, an RS-485 module and a 0-10-V interface for talking to a variable frequency drive (VFD) spindle controllers, and buffered 5-V output module. The best part is that the IO module spec is completely open, so designing custom modules should be a snap.
The video below gives a quick tour of the controller. We’re really impressed with the thought that went into this, and we’ll venture a guess that having something like this available is going to kickstart a lot of stalled CNC machine projects. We can think of one shop that finally lost its last excuse for making the move. | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263794",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T08:49:01",
"content": "I think most efforts are now focused to the grblHAL fork right now:https://github.com/terjeio/grblHAL",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6333901",
... | 1,760,373,419.734893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/smoother-text-scrolling-on-hd44780-lcds/ | Smooth(er) Text Scrolling On HD44780 LCDs | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"character lcd",
"hd44780",
"lcd display"
] | Most Hackaday readers are likely to be familiar with character LCDs driven by the extremely common Hitachi HD44780 controller chip. If you’re looking for a cheap and easy way for your microcontroller project to display some data, they’re pretty much the go-to solution. But as popular as these displays are, there’s no denying that they’re starting to look a bit dated in 2020. Which is why
the tweaks [Joseph Rautenbach] is working on are so interesting
.
With one of these displays, the controller puts a single character on each 5×8 block of pixels. There’s also support for creating custom characters, which can be used for rudimentary icons. You’re pretty limited by the per-block resolution, but with a little imagination, you can usually get the point across. With a bit of dead space between each block of the display there’s little point in trying to make icons that “bridge” multiple blocks, as they’ll always be segmented.
Hardware support is not guaranteed.
But as [Joseph] realized, that’s less of a problem for scrolling text. So he wrote some code that takes an ASCII string and breaks it down into partial letters and numbers which can be displayed as custom characters. The controller only has space for 8 of these characters though, so the code needs to continually step through the string and generate the appropriate offset characters as the position of the text changes.
While the effect looks pretty good in the video after the break, [Joseph] has found that real-world utilization is a bit finicky. He tried the same code on one of the displays that uses white text on a blue background, and the scrolling text ended up ghosting together so it looked like gibberish. So while he’s released the source code for others to experiment with this trick, your mileage may vary.
This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody make clever use of custom characters on the HD44780. We’ve seen it used for an
exceptionally tiny game of
Tetris
, a
rendition of Conway’s Game of Life
, and even
a horizontal space-shooter. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263768",
"author": "Mark F",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T05:13:48",
"content": "So the window of text is determined by the number of custom characters the display supports?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263784",
"auth... | 1,760,373,419.835811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/ham-radio-mobile-operations-circa-1919/ | Ham Radio Mobile Operations Circa 1919 | Al Williams | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"car antenna",
"history",
"mobile antenna",
"radio",
"radio history"
] | You used to be able to tell a die-hard ham radio operator on the road by the number and length of antennas protruding porcupine-like from their vehicle. There are still some mobile high frequency operators that have respectable car-mounted antenna farms, but they have nothing on Alfred H. Grebe. In 1919, he fitted
a medium wave transmitter in his car
that operated around 2 MHz. Since it needed a very large antenna, Grebe rigged a wire antenna that looked like a clothesline between the two bumpers. Obviously, you had to stop, set up your antenna, and then operate — you couldn’t talk and drive. But this may have been the world’s first automotive radio setup for voice communication.
The car had a separate battery for the radio and a dynamotor to generate high voltage for the tubes. Although many radio enthusiasts found ways to add receivers to their cars in the 1920s, it would be 1930 before Motorola made radios especially for cars in production quantities.
That wasn’t what Grebe was most famous for, though. He worked as a ship’s operator After making a few receivers for friends, he decided to open up a business. Grebe radio, though, is hardly a household name today. But he was best known for setting up radio stations, including founding the station that would eventually become WCBS, often called the father of news radio.
We always enjoy learning about radio pioneers including
Edwin Armstrong
and
Reginald Fessenden
. This is certainly a far cry even from the
old mobile telephones
. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263748",
"author": "thomastechguy",
"timestamp": "2020-07-17T02:43:37",
"content": "I suspect that initially the casual observers wondered why there was a clothesline on top of that sedan. But the few early techies that knew it was an antenna probably had their minds blown at the i... | 1,760,373,419.654256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/ljusmaskinen-takes-the-rave-to-the-streets-eventually/ | Ljusmaskinen Takes The Rave To The Streets (Eventually) | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"dmx",
"DMX lighting",
"dmx512",
"Pride",
"raspberry pi",
"rave"
] | When humanity comes out the other side of this pandemic there will be a mountain of awesome projects to show off in person. For instance, this
backpack mounted DMX lighting was built to be worn as a mobile rave rig
by Swedish hacker [Tim Gremalm]. In-person raves aren’t happening right now but that just means there’s time to add waaaaay to many features to this thing until lockdowns become a thing of the past.
The frame holding the lighting integrates into this backpack and we assume that’s where the battery is stored. The Y-shaped masts hold four PAR lights. Incidentally, that mean
parabolic aluminized reflectors
, which are commonly used for stage lighting, but in this case the halogen bulbs have been torn out for a trio of 4 W RGBW LEDs. The yellow rectangles are 10 W Chip-on-Board LED panels that serve as strobe lights.
Festmaskinen audio rig in 2015
But merely having the lights does not make it a Rave — this party needs both music and a way to synchronize the lighting effects with it.
The music part was already built
and used at the West Pride Gothenburg festival (the second largest in Sweden after Stockholm) five years ago. That project, called Festmaskinen, works in conjunction with Ljusmaskinen (the Light Machine). So two people carry the rave on their backs, one with music, the other with the lighting, now that’s a party!
The light controller board uses a set of four Arduino Nano boards along with four voltage regulators to provide control to each of the PAR lights. All of it is stitched together by control from a DMX input board which also controls the COBs. (In this image the DMX board is hidden below the light control board.) Of course you need something that can process the audio and turn it into DMX512 to bring those lighting animations to life and for that he reached for a Raspberry Pi.
[Tim] has
a quick demo of the rig at work
which we’ve embedded below. What we’re missing is seeing how the top-heavy structure handles when worn as a backpack. Hopefully he’ll be able to get out of his low-ceilinged home and let the stage lights fly before too long!
View this post on Instagram
A small black box hosting a #qlcplus session running on a #raspberrypi for #Ljusmaskinen
A post shared by
Tim Gremalm
(@timgremalm) on
Jul 1, 2020 at 1:15pm PDT | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263718",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T23:51:48",
"content": "Yup, lots more time, 4 months down, 44 months to go…. just kidding, maybe 20.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6263725",
"author": "Pedant",
... | 1,760,373,419.783181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/touch-screen-reflow-oven-pulls-out-all-the-stops/ | Touch Screen Reflow Oven Pulls Out All The Stops | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"reflow oven",
"solid state relay",
"toaster oven"
] | We’ve seen plenty of simple reflow ovens, and there’s an excellent chance that some of the people reading these words have even thrown their own together. A minimal example isn’t much more than a old toaster oven, a Solid State Relay (SSR), a thermocouple, and a microcontroller to get them all talking. But if you’re like [Mangy_Dog] and willing to put in a bit more effort, the final result can be
a capable piece of equipment that will be the envy of the hackerspace
.
This build started as most do, with a search for a used toaster oven. But in the end he actually found a German model cheap enough that he could buy it new without going over budget for the project. Though he soon found out why: when it arrived, the so-called “pizza oven” was far smaller than he’d imagined. Luckily, it ended up being the perfect size for PCBs.
Unfortunately, the heating elements weren’t quite where he wanted them. Even after wrapping the heating chamber with ceramic insulation, a feature that was likely left off the original oven to cut costs, he says the temperature would only rise about 1 degree per second. So he added an additional halogen heating element at the top of the oven which pushed that rate up to 6 degrees per second.
Control is provided by an Arduino Pro Mini and a touch screen display with some very slick graphics. There’s the expected thermocouple to detect the current temperature, but while the earlier versions of the electronics used the aforementioned SSR to control the heating elements, [Mangy_Dog] eventually replaced it with a dimmer module rated for 4000 watts. After coming up with a circuit that allowed him to control the dimmer with the Arduino, this module gave for much finer control over the chamber temperature. Plus it apparently kept all the lights in his house from flickering when the elements kicked in at 100%, which was a nice bonus.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
somebody
shoehorn an LCD into an off-the-shelf toaster oven
, but it’s certainly one of the most polished examples to ever come our way.
When even commercially available units need some hacking
to reach feature parity with DIY versions, building your own reflow oven still seems like the way to go in 2020. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263653",
"author": "mark",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T20:16:04",
"content": "Whoa, that’s super well put together!Way better than the time I hacked together a reflow oven out of an old pizza oven and took an angle grinder to the thing to make holes for the temperature controller haha... | 1,760,373,419.88789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/16/a-lowly-8-bit-micro-busts-copy-protection-from-the-16-bit-era/ | A Lowly 8-Bit Micro Busts Copy Protection From The 16-Bit Era | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"BBC Micro",
"copy protection",
"dungeon master"
] | When floppy disks were the data storage medium of choice, software companies and in particular game developers came up with ever more inventive ways to make them difficult to copy. Tinkering at the edges of the disc format standards didn’t come cheap though, and for example the
Dungeon Master
game for the Atari ST was reported as using $40,000 worth of custom hardware to achieve its so-called “fuzzy bit” technique. [Chris Evans] set out to recreate it, not by building a modern version of the custom hardware,
but by doing it the
hard
way, with an early-1980s 8-bit BBC Micro home computer
.
One could be forgiven for thinking that a computer sporting a 2 MHz 6502 would be unable to manage this task without extra hardware, and were it simply the 6502 itself you would of course be right. So to get anywhere he had to get creative with the Beeb’s built-in peripherals. Eschewing the floppy controller it was hooked up directly to the parallel port, and after a voltage problem courtesy of the drive’s termination resistors we’re taken through some of the 6522 VIA’s different modes in order to achieve a higher speed data burst than would normally be possible. All of these approaches hit the buffers though, until he looks at the 6845 video chip and uses its video output as a very fast shift register. With a custom cable and some work on special video modes, a home computer that would have cost several hundred dollars in the early 1980s can do the work of $40,000 custom hardware from later in the decade. Colour us impressed!
If you’d like to know more about the
Dungeon Master
copy protection,
we’ve been there in the past
.
BBC Micro header image: StuartBrady /
Public domain
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263624",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T18:52:21",
"content": "Also, you can make video output from fast shift registers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263644",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"ti... | 1,760,373,421.808197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/a-shrine-for-all-the-555-lovers/ | A Shrine For All The 555 Lovers | Sven Gregori | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"555 timer",
"aluminum can",
"cardboard",
"model",
"soda can"
] | For many of our readers, the classic 555 timer holds a special place in their heart, and cursed be the fool who dares to use an Arduino in its place. For the seriously devoted ones, or those who simply like a novelty decorative item, [acerlaguinto7] built just the right thing:
a giant, actually functional, cardboard 555 timer IC
.
Taking all the measurements of the original IC, [acerlaguinto7] scaled it up by factor 22 and started cutting out pieces of cardboard — also considering the orientation notch — and added the markings to emulate TI’s NE555P. Next he took a bunch of aluminum cans apart and shaped them into the pins, again staying as close as possible to the original. To top it all off, he put an actual NE555 inside the giant counterpart, and hooked it up to the soda can pins, turning it into a fully operational, oversized timer IC.
Obviously, giant conductive pins like that scream for some
dead bug blinky light
that even the shakiest of hands could manage to solder, and [acerlaguinto7] certainly delivers, as you can see in the video after the break. One nifty way we could see this taken further would be integrating
this breadboard implementation as replacement for the 555 inside
— or then just connect it to
the giant Raspberry Pi
. | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263347",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T23:14:14",
"content": "I’m gonna need that in coffee table size. :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263350",
"author": "Eric Weatherby",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,421.767424 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/todays-twitter-hack-is-new-take-on-nigerian-prince-scam/ | Today’s Twitter Hack Is New Take On “Nigerian Prince” Scam | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"hack",
"hacked",
"scam",
"twitter"
] | Don’t send bitcoin to celebrities… or to random people for that matter. This afternoon a number of
high profile Twitter accounts were taken over
, including Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple, Jeff Bezos, and Kanye West, and the event appears to be ongoing. Each displayed a message saying they wanted to “give back” by doubling the bitcoin that they are sent. The messages all appear to have the same bitcoin wallet address.
This is reminiscent of the “Nigerian prince” scams, a form of advance-fee scam where an email asks for help with a small sum of money in order to obtain a larger sum. Those usually come in as spam emails which most people are wise to at this point. However, blindly following celebrities on Twitter may still deliver a good dose of naïveté when those platforms are misused.
Bitcoin transactions
can be viewed publicly
and this wallet is showing 11.8 BTC in and 5.8 BTC out in a total of 288 transactions. The net is roughly 6 bitcoin or $55k USD at the time of writing. Twitter’s response appears to have locked down all verified accounts from publishing new tweets. They retain the ability to retweet and delete existing tweets.
Main image screenshot sources:
@Fiction49613028
@isouravsethi
@AbhishekKarnek | 52 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263316",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T22:04:48",
"content": "55K is a nice payday. Somehow I’d imagined you could get more with the access they had although it was always going to be brief.I wonder what a “better” way to use it would have been. It seems given t... | 1,760,373,421.901763 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/no-assembly-required-for-this-compliant-mechanism-dial-indicator/ | No Assembly Required For This Compliant Mechanism Dial Indicator | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bed leveling",
"compliant mechanism",
"dial indicator",
"machine tools",
"metrology",
"print in place"
] | If you’ve ever had the good fortune — or, after a shop mishap, the misfortune — to see the insides of a dial indicator, you’ll know the workings of these shop essentials resemble nothing so much as those of a fine Swiss watch. The pinions, gears, and springs within transmit the slightest movement of the instrument’s plunger to a series of dials, making even the tiniest of differences easy to spot.
Not every useful dial indicator needs to have those mechanical guts, nor even a dial for that matter.
This compliant mechanism 3D-printed dial-free indicator
is perfect for a lot of simple tasks, including the bed leveling chores that [SunShine] designed it for. Rather than print a bunch of gears and assemble them, [SunShine] chose to print the plunger, a fine set of flexible linkage arms, and a long lever arm to act as a needle. The needle is attached to a flexible fulcrum, which is part of the barrel that houses the plunger. Slight movements of the plunger within the barrel push or pull on the needle, amplifying them into an easily read deflection. When attached to the head of a 3D-printer and scanned over the bed, it’s easy to see even the slightest variation in height and make the corresponding adjustments. Check it out in the video below.
We’re big fans of compliant mechanisms, seeing them in everything from
robot arms
and
legs
to
thrust vectoring for an RC plane
. This might look like something from a cereal box, and it certainly doesn’t have the lasting power of a Starrett or Mitutoyo, but then again it costs essentially nothing, and we like that too.
[via
r/3Dprinting
] | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263363",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T00:14:05",
"content": "Interesting. I like the fact you can bake one at home and the cost is right.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6263367",
"author": "Joel B",
"time... | 1,760,373,422.12909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/exposing-computer-monitor-side-channel-vulnerabilities-with-tempestsdr/ | Exposing Computer Monitor Side-Channel Vulnerabilities With TempestSDR | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Airspy",
"HackRF",
"hdmi",
"monitor",
"RF",
"sdr",
"sdrplay",
"side channel attack",
"signal analysis",
"TempestSDR",
"vga"
] | Having been endlessly regaled with tales of side-channel attacks and remote exploits, most of us by now realize that almost every piece of gear leaks data like a sieve. Everything from routers to TVs to the power supplies and cooling fans of computers can be made to give up their secrets. It’s scary stuff, but it also sounds like a heck of a lot of fun, and with an SDR and a little software,
you too can get in on the side-channel action
.
Coming to us via software-defined radio buff [Tech Minds], the video below gives a quick tour of how to snoop in on what’s being displayed on a monitor for almost no effort or expense. The software that makes it possible is
TempestSDR
, which was designed specifically for the job. With nothing but an AirSpy Mini and a rubber duck antenna, [Tech Minds] was able to reconstruct a readable black and white image of his screen at a range of a few inches; a better antenna and some fiddling might improve that range to several meters. He also shares a trick for getting TempestSDR set up for all the popular SDRs, including SPRplay, HackRF, and RTL-SDR.
Learning what’s possible with side-channel attacks is the key to avoiding them, so hats off to [Tech Minds] for putting together this simple, easy-to-replicate demo. To learn even more, listen to what
[Samy Kamkar] has to say about the subject
, or check out where
power supplies
,
cryptocurrency wallets
, and
mixed-signal microcontrollers
are all vulnerable.
[via
RTL-SDR.com
] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263281",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T19:17:10",
"content": "First there were tin-foil hats. Now one is needed for our monitors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6263294",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
... | 1,760,373,421.528134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/printed-it-print-in-place-pcb-gripper/ | Printed It: Print-in-Place PCB Gripper | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Skills",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"PCB holder",
"PCB vise",
"PETG",
"PLA",
"print in place",
"spring"
] | The goal of
Printed It
is to showcase creations that truly embrace the possibilities offered by desktop 3D printing. The most obvious examples are designs that can be printed quickly and cheaply enough that they’re a valid alternative to commercially available products. But as previous entries into the series have shown, there are also technical considerations. Is it simply a duplicate of something that could be produced via traditional means, or does the design really benefit from the unique nature of 3D printing?
A perfect example is the
Print-in-Place PCB Holder/Gripper created by SunShine
. This design is able to hold onto PCBs (or really, whatever you wish) without any additional components. Just pull it off the bed, and put it to work. While having to add a rubber band or generic spring would hardly be an inconvenience, there’s always something to be said for a design that’s truly 100% printable.
The secret is the dual flat spiral springs integrated into the device’s jaws. While most of the common thermoplastics used in desktop 3D printing are relatively stiff, the springs have been designed in such a way that they can be printed in standard PLA. The backside of the jaws have teeth that mesh together, so the energy of the springs is combined to provide a clamping force. Serrations have been added to the jaws to catch the edge of the PCB and help stabilize it.
Visually, it’s certainly striking. The design largely eschews right angles, giving it an almost biological appearance. Many have compared it to the head of a mantis, or perhaps some piece of alien technology.
There’s no question that the design leverages the strengths of 3D printing either; there’s no other way to produce its intricate interlocking components, especially without the use of any sort of fasteners. In short, this design is an ideal candidate for
Printed It
. But there’s still one question to answer: does it actually work?
Choose Wisely
The PCB Gripper comes in two distinct variants, so before you warm up the extruder you’ll need to make a pretty important decision. One version has an integrated stand, which has been designed in such a way that it will hold the PCB at a roughly 45 degree angle relative to the work surface. There’s no way to adjust the stand (short of heating the plastic and bending it), but it’s a fairly comfortable angle so you probably won’t feel the need to.
The other version forgoes the integrated stand in favor of a GoPro style mount. There’s a large selection of both printable and commercial mounts and stands that use this style of attachment, which makes this version of the Gripper far more versatile. Of course, you’ll actually need to
have
those accessories. Without a mount, this version of the Gripper can’t even stand up on its own.
So which one should you print? If you’re just looking to play around with the mechanism and have a useful little gadget on your bench, then the integrated stand version is probably the best bet. The downside is that it takes quite a bit longer to print, but at least it will be fully independent when it’s done. On the other hand, if you want to actually put the Gripper to work and are willing to buy or print an articulated mount for it, the GoPro version is clearly the superior option.
Pushing the Envelope
These sort of print-in-place designs are notoriously unforgiving when it comes to poorly tuned printers, but SunShine has done his best to make sure as many people as possible can run this design off with acceptable results. All of the tolerances are a healthy 0.3 mm, so even entry-level printers shouldn’t have too rough of a time of it.
No room for support here.
Which is not to say the design is without challenge. For the mechanism to work, it’s crucial that all support material generation be turned off in your slicer settings. You’ll need to have faith in your printer to navigate some fairly extreme overhangs and bridges, even if they might seem insurmountable at first glance. Bed adhesion is also crucial, since even a slight warping is likely to render the final mechanism inoperable.
If you decide to go with the integrated stand version, you’ll really be in for a treat. To make sure nobody accidentally gummed up their spring mechanism, SunShine had to design the angled base in such a way that it would print properly even with supports off. The easier route probably would have been to just design a base that you could just attach to the GoPro mount version of the Gripper, but where’s the challenge in that?
Instead, he uses what might be one of the most extreme overhangs I’ve ever seen on a 3D printed design. At approximately 70 degrees, it’s far beyond the normal “safe” range for an unsupported overhang, but incredibly it seems to work out pretty well. It’s definitely not perfect, and on close inspection you can see some irregularities in the surface, but for a practical component like this it’s more than acceptable.
Time and Materials
At 0.2 mm layer height, the integrated stand version of the PCB Gripper finished in around 4.5 hours and the GoPro version in less than 3. Naturally, you’re mileage may vary, but that should give you an idea of what to expect. Printing at a higher resolution might clean up the bottom surface of the stand overhang a bit, but personally I don’t think it would be worth the extra time.
SunShine recommends the design get printed in standard PLA, but I also ran off a version in PETG. The glass transition temperature of PETG is considerably higher than PLA, which I hoped would help prevent any issues from extended soldering sessions. PETG is also a bit more flexible, which seemed like it would be a benefit.
But as it so happens, the more flexible material was actually a mistake. While the Gripper printed fine, the springs are obviously much weaker than their PLA counterparts. ABS may give you a good balance between flexibility and temperature resistance, but its temperamental nature could make such an intricate print difficult.
Putting on the Pressure
To be clear, I think this is a phenomenal design and SunShine deserves nothing but praise for what he’s accomplished here. This may well become one of those “must have” prints that people will do just to see how the mechanism works. If you’re looking for a good example of the sort of non-traditional designs that are made possible by affordable home 3D printing, this is as good as any.
As a practical tool though, there are some pretty glaring issues. Even when printed in the relatively stiff PLA, the springs just don’t have a lot of strength. This is especially true with smaller boards, as the springs don’t seem like they wind back far enough to really exert any force on the jaws. It definitely works better with larger PCBs, but those introduce a different problem. After using it just a few times with larger boards in the jaws, the springs have weakened to the point that they no longer close fully on their own.
But even when you’ve found a PCB of the right size, the mechanism itself still has a lot of play. It doesn’t take much pressure from a soldering iron or probe to push the jaws out of alignment and rock the board back. Those with a gentler touch might feel differently, but I found this to be a show stopper personally.
In the end, I think this is a great design to show off what your new 3D printer can do. But I wouldn’t count on doing much soldering with it. If you just want to print something that will hold a PCB still while you work on it,
a more traditional design would be a much better bet
. If you need something that looks really cool to hold boards at your table during the local Maker Faire, this one’s for you. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263264",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T18:22:36",
"content": "I was feeling deja vuey because ofhttps://hackaday.com/2020/06/17/print-in-place-helping-hand-grabs-a-hold-of-your-pcb/But then I realised the goal of this new “Printed it” column is to review such i... | 1,760,373,421.582861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/arduino-plays-nes-games/ | Arduino Plays NES Games | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino DUE",
"emulator",
"memory",
"nes",
"nintendo remix",
"video game"
] | Watching the advancement of technology is interesting enough by looking at improved specifications for various components as the years go by. But clock speeds, memory size, and power consumption are all fairly intangible compared to actual implementation of modern technology when compared to days of yore. For example, this $40 microcontroller
can do what a video game console was able to do in the 80s
for a tenth of the (inflation adjusted) price.
The NESDUE is an emulator for NES games which runs completely on an Arduino Due. The Arduino does have some limitations that have to be worked around to get the Nintendo to work, though. For one, it needs to be overclocked to be playable and it also needs a workaround to get past the memory limit of 96 kB of RAM. From there, a small screen is wired up along with a controller (from a Super Nintendo) and the gaming can begin.
This is an impressive feat for an Arduino platform to accomplish, especially with the amount of memory tweaking that has to happen. This might be the most advanced gaming system available that runs everything on an Arduino,
right up there with the Arduinocade
which can provide an arcade-like experience straight from the Arduino as well. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263212",
"author": "Clyde",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T15:49:43",
"content": "That soft SPI connection to the display is gonna be a bigger bottleneck than anything else.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263215",
"author... | 1,760,373,421.630663 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/the-many-methods-of-communicating-with-submarines/ | The Many Methods Of Communicating With Submarines | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [] | It sometimes seems hard to believe that we humans have managed to explore so little of what we have so much of: the seas. Oceans cover something like 70 percent of the world’s surface, but we’ve only mapped 20 percent of the ocean floor. The 228,000 ocean-dwelling species that we know about represents about ten percent of the estimated total aquatic species. And almost all the life we know about, and the area that we’ve explored thoroughly, is limited to the first few hundred meters from the surface.
The paucity of our deep-water investigatory efforts has a lot to do with the hostility of the sea to those who haven’t evolved to survive in it. It takes extreme engineering and fantastically expensive machines to live and work even a few meters down, and even then submariners quickly become completely isolated from the rest of the world once they’re down there. Underwater communication is particularly challenging, since the properties of seawater confound efforts to use it as a communications medium.
Challenging though it may be, underwater communication is possible, and in this article we’ll take a look at a few modalities that have made operating under the sea possible, and a new technology that might just extend the Internet below the waves.
Hello, Gertrude?
For most of the early years of the Silent Service, once a submarine was submerged, it was on its own. For the submarines and U-boats of World War I, this fact was of little practical consequence since these boats operated mainly as surface vessels, submerging only to attack or to evade pursuit. There was little need for command authorities to contact them during the small fraction of time they were submerged, and as they mostly operated alone and attacked on the captain’s initiative.
Later in the century, as submarine tactics morphed into “Wolf Pack” attacks, the need for underwater communications between boats to coordinate attacks became clear. U-boat and submarine captains depended on their high frequency (HF) radios to communicate between boats in the pack and coordinate their attacks on convoys, but this could expose them to detection by opposing forces using radio direction-finding gear, and since they needed to be surfaced to use their radios, they were easy pickings for surface vessels and aircraft.
AN/BQC-1 Underwater Telephone, aka “Gertrude”. Source:
San Francisco Maritime National Park Association
One of the earliest modes of underwater communication that the US Navy fielded was the AN/BQC-1 Underwater Telephone. This was a battery-powered and completely portable device that was used by surface vessels to communicate with submerged submarines, and for subs to communicate with each other. Commonly referred to as the “Gertrude”, the device was self-contained except for the hull-mounted transducer. The base unit had a telephone handset for voice communications between units; in addition, the Gertrude could be made to emit a 24.26 kHz audio tone to call to other vessels operating sonar sets using that frequency.
To transmit voice, the Gertrude used a modulation method that’s familiar to amateur radio operators: single-sideband. Just like radio waves, an acoustic carrier wave can be amplitude modulated. In the case of the Gertrude, the carrier wave was anywhere from 8.3375 kHz to 11.0875 kHz, and just like in radio, the receiver and transmitter had to be tuned to the same carrier frequency. On the transmitter side, the AM signal was filtered to remove the carrier wave and one of the sidebands, leaving a single-sideband signal that was applied to the transducer. The receiver demodulated the SSB signal with the standard product detector and beat-frequency oscillator arrangement, very similar to that used in SSB radio signals but at different frequencies.
A more modern acoustic underwater telephone, backwards compatible with the Gertrude. Source:
ITT Corp
The AN/BQC-1 Gertrude remained in service through the end of World War II and into the Cold War era. A more powerful unit, the AN/WQC-2, was put into service in 1945 and some version of the technology remains in almost every US Navy vessel to this day. Modern underwater telephones still use the SSB modulation scheme and still support the frequencies that were established by the Navy for the original Gertrude, even if the electronics behind it all has changed vastly over the intervening decades.
Low and Long
As useful as they are, acoustic underwater telephones have limited capabilities. The range on acoustic telephones is limited; the AN/BQC-1 was best used for voice comms at less than 500 yards (365 m), although its 24.26 kHz ping could reach out to ten times that distance. Acoustic waves are subject to all the same vagaries of propagation as radio waves are, with reflections off solid surfaces and diffraction by layers of differing water temperature or salinity resulting in multipath interference or even total loss of signal.
Submarines were also moving to a vastly different role in the Cold War years, as nuclear-powered boats came to the scene. Capable of months at sea, these boats became the perfect platforms for ballistic missiles, which would need to be in contact with command authorities to a degree that the skippers of WWII subs would never have thought possible. But radio waves generally don’t penetrate seawater, raising the problem of a sub having to periodically surface to check for new orders and losing its one tactical advantage: stealth.
To keep the subs safely below the surface, naval commands began exploring the very lowest end of the radio spectrum. While the high frequency (HF: 3 MHz to 30 MHz) and low frequency (LF: 30 kHz to 300 kHz) bands are perfectly capable of reaching across the globe thanks to ionospheric refraction, the high conductivity of seawater rapidly attenuates signals in these bands.
Dialing down the spectrum a bit, the very low frequency (VLF: 3 kHz to 30 kHz) band starts to exhibit decent penetration of seawater, down to a depth of perhaps 20 meters. This is not deep enough to ensure the stealth of most submarines, which need to unfurl a long antenna wire to trail behind them as they cruise along far too close to the surface for comfort. VLF communications also suffer from bandwidth limitations, making voice communications impractical. VLF comms are therefore limited to a bit rate of 300 bps or so. Another disadvantage is that the huge antenna arrays and high power transmitters needed for VLF make two-way communications impossible.
Going even further down the spectrum, signals in the extremely low frequency (ELF: 3 Hz to 30 Hz) band are capable of penetrating 120 meters of seawater, which is deep enough for any submarine to maintain its stealth. The US Navy began investigating the ELF band in 1968 with Project Sanguine. With wavelengths from 10,000 to 100,000 kilometers, an ELF transmitter requires enormous antennas; indeed, the original proposal for an ELF station in Wisconsin would have buried antenna cables under 40% of the land area of the state. These cables would have coursed with 800 megawatts of power while transmitting.
Project ELF antenna. Source:
Chetvorno
/ CC0
Project Sanguine was never built, defeated by antiwar activists and budget hawks alike. Nor were the series of scaled-down ELF projects the Navy proposed built, until finally in 1989 Project ELF came online. There were two transmitters, one in Wisconsin and one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The antenna feedlines are 14 to 28 miles (22 to 44 km) long, strung on wooden poles like utility lines and connected to enormous ground rods driven deep into the bedrock. When energized, current flowed between the ground rods and through the granite bedrock, creating a massive magnetic field that generated the ELF waves. It was basically a giant loop antenna made of rock.
The completed system was capable of sending a coded message on 76 MHz to a sub submerged 400 feet (122 m) off the coast of Florida. Unfortunately, the bandwidth of the signal was so low that it took 15 minutes to send a single three-character code group. Project ELF could only ever serve as a “bell-ringer” signal, to notify a sub to surface and use other means to receive a full message. The system was shut down in 2004 once VLF technology had advanced far enough that subs could use it without fear of detection.
WiFi Under the Waves
Limited bandwidth undersea comms certainly have their place, but being able to securely communicate underwater at high bit rates could be possible if new research pays off. In
a recent paper
, Basem Shihada
et al
from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have demonstrated a system they call “Aqua-Fi” that extends the Internet to the underwater realm. Using mainly off-the-shelf components, including a Raspberry Pi 3b, they were able to build an IEEE 802.11-compliant wireless network with a range of up to 20 meters. Both LEDs and lasers were used for emitters, with the lasers providing greater range but at the cost of directionality. In tests using waterproofed smartphones and blue and green lasers, they were able to achieve 2.11-Mbps and conduct Skype calls through the Aqua-Fi link.
The Aqua-Fi system. Source: Shihada, B., Amin, O., Bainbridge, C., Jardak, S., Alkhazragi, O., Ng, T. K., … Alouini, M.-S. (2020). “Aqua-Fi: Delivering Internet Underwater Using Wireless Optical Networks.”
IEEE Communications Magazine
, 58(5), 84–89.
doi:10.1109/mcom.001.2000009
It’s not likely that Aqua-Fi has much future as a network for submarines, but undersea warfare is far from the only activity such a system could support. Undersea research could benefit from making the Internet available below the surface; one could imagine a solar-powered buoy with a satellite link above the surface and a string of Aqua-Fi access points trailing into the deep below. Divers, remotely operated vehicles, or autonomous drones could take advantage of a full-time connection to the Internet, leading to advances in marine biology, geology, conservation, or even just recreation like sport diving. We can get down with that! | 36 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263181",
"author": "ziew",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T14:10:13",
"content": "> ELF> 76 MHzPick one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6263227",
"author": "jcamdr",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T16:23:40",
"cont... | 1,760,373,421.706884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/x-ray-sleuthing-unveils-the-fake-in-your-adaptors/ | X-Ray Sleuthing Unveils The Fake In Your Adaptors | Adil Malik | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"apple",
"counterfeit",
"fake",
"xray"
] | Lets face it, the knock-off variety of our favourite adaptors, cables and accessories are becoming increasingly challenging to spot. We would be the first to admit, to have at some point, been stooped by a carefully crafted counterfeit by failing to spot the tell-tale yet elusive indicators such as the misplaced font face, the strategically misspelled logo or perhaps the less polished than expected plastic moulding and packaging. When you finally come around to using it, if you are lucky the item is still more or less functionally adequate, otherwise by now the inferior performance (if not the initial cost!) would have made it pretty obvious that what you have is infact a counterfeit.
[Oliver] recently found himself in a similar situation, after acquiring a seemingly original Lightning to Headphone Adaptor. Rather than dismay, [Oliver] decided to
channel this energy into an excellent forensic investigation
to uncover just what exactly made this imitation so deceptive. He began by comparing the packaging, printed typeface and the plastic moulding, all of which gave very little away. [Oliver] concluded that atleast superficially, the clone was rather good and the only way to settle this was to bring out the X-ray, of course!
The resulting images of the innards make it blatantly obvious as to why the adaptor is indeed very fake. For a start, compared to the original adaptor, the clone hosts a far more thin BOM count! If you are really serious in getting some training to better spot counterfeits,
check out a post we featured earlier on the subject! | 36 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263149",
"author": "ScriptGiddy",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T11:19:24",
"content": "I look forward to the day where micro closed cabinet Xray systems are as ubiquitous as 3D printers, laser etchers, etc. photons go pew pew!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,421.481224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/diy-dongle-breathes-life-into-broken-ventilators/ | DIY Dongle Breathes Life Into Broken Ventilators | Kristina Panos | [
"hardware",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19",
"dongle",
"Medtronic",
"right to repair",
"ventilator"
] | We have a new hero in the COVID-19 saga, and it’s some hacker in Poland. Whoever this person is,
they are making bootleg dongles that let ventilator refurbishers circumvent lockdown software
so they can repair broken ventilators bought from the secondhand market.
The dongle is a DIY copy of one that Medtronic makes, which of course they don’t sell to anyone. It makes a three-way connection between the patient’s monitor, a breath delivery system, and a computer, and lets technicians sync software between two broken machines so they can be Frankensteined into a single working ventilator.
The company open-sourced an older model at the end of March
, but this was widely viewed as a PR stunt.
This is not just the latest chapter in the right-to-repair saga. What began with locked-down tractors and phones has taken a serious turn as hospitals are filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients, many of whom will die without access to a ventilator. Not only is there a shortage of ventilators, but many of the companies that make them are refusing outside repair techs’ access to manuals and parts.
These companies insist that their own in-house technicians be the only ones who touch the machines, and many are not afraid to admit that they consider the ventilators to be their property long after the sale has been made. The ridiculousness of that aside, they don’t have the manpower to fix all the broken ventilators, and the people don’t have the time to wait on them.
We wish we could share the dongle schematic with our readers, but alas we do not have it. Hopefully it will show up on iFixit soon alongside all the ventilator manuals and schematics that have been compiled and centralized since the pandemic took off. In the meantime, you can take
Ventilators 101
from our own [Bob Baddeley], and then
find out what kind of engineering goes into them
. | 51 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263106",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T08:09:44",
"content": "I don’t know why the article is blaming the companies, I don’t believe the author is that naive but maybe they are an easy target.If they let some schmo fix the ventilator and later it kills someone (... | 1,760,373,422.088956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/soviet-core-memory-experiments/ | Soviet Core Memory Experiments | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"core memory",
"Ferrite core",
"magnetic core",
"soviet"
] | What do you do when you’ve bought some old Soviet core memory modules on eBay? If you are [CuriousMarc], you wire it up to some test connectors and use your test bench to see if
the core memory still works
. Spoiler alert: it does.
While it seems crude by today’s standard, there was a time when these memory modules would have been the amazing miniature tech of their day. Each little magnetic torus represents a bit and the modules have 1,024 and 4,096 tiny little donuts strung together in a grid.
Core memory did have several interesting benefits. First, it was non-volatile. The state of the bits did not depend on active power to the array. Second, core memory was notably radiation-resistant. That was a big reason the original Space Shuttles used core memory until tests indicated an upgrade to solid-state memory would be workable.
There were downsides, too, of course. The manual fabrication was costly, and reading a bit is destructive and requires rewriting. While the bit density seemed impressive at the time, we now look at these 1K bit and 4K bit devices then look at even the smallest SD card and you realize how times have changed.
Why do something like this? Why not? We liked the casings made for the modules which are both attractive and would protect against students or visitors poking the delicate little ferrite rings.
Think core memory was the strangest old memory around?
Not by a long shot
. Want core on your Arduino?
No problem
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263078",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T05:17:19",
"content": "“Why do something like this?”Because Marc and his friends are aiming at dumping the core of a Saturn V computer :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626... | 1,760,373,422.173971 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/high-end-ham-radio-gives-up-its-firmware-secrets/ | High-End Ham Radio Gives Up Its Firmware Secrets | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"bga",
"firmware",
"Ghidra",
"ham",
"jtag",
"JTAGulator",
"Kenwood",
"reverse engineering"
] | Amateur radio operators have always been at the top of their game when they’ve been hacking radios. A ham license gives you permission to open up a radio and modify it, or even to build a radio from scratch. True, as technology has advanced the opportunities for old school radio hacking have diminished, but that doesn’t mean that the new computerized radios aren’t vulnerable to the diligent ham’s tender ministrations.
A case in point:
the Kenwood TH-D74A’s firmware has been dumped and partially decoded
. A somewhat informal collaboration between [Hash (AG5OW)] and [Travis Goodspeed (KK4VCZ)], the process that started with [Hash]’s teardown of his radio, seen in the video below. The radio, a tri-band handy talkie with capabilities miles beyond even the most complex of
the cheap imports
and with a price tag to match, had a serial port and JTAG connector. A JTAGulator allowed him to probe some of the secrets, but a full exploration required spending $140 on a spare PCB for the radio and some deft work removing the BGA-packaged Flash ROM and dumping its image to disk.
[Travis] picked up the analysis from there. He found three programs within the image, including the radio’s firmware and a bunch of strings used in the radio’s UI, in both English and Japanese. The work is far from complete, but the foundation is there for further exploration and potential future firmware patches to give the radio a different feature set.
This is a great case study in reverse engineering, and it’s really worth a trip down the rabbit hole to learn more. If you’re looking for a more formal exploration of reverse engineering, you could do a lot worse than
HackadayU’s “Reverse Engineering with Ghidra” course
, which just wrapping up. Watch for the class videos soon. | 46 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263035",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-07-15T02:09:59",
"content": "Cease and Desist letter from Kenwood in 3… 2… 1…I think this is awesome! This is way beyond my skill level, but I’m glad to see people doing it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,373,422.265112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/dont-wait-you-need-to-see-comet-neowise-right-now/ | Don’t Wait, You Need To See Comet NEOWISE Right Now | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"comet",
"neowise",
"orbit"
] | By now you’ve heard of NEOWISE,
the most spectacular comet to visit our little corner of the galaxy
since Hale-Bopp passed through over 20 years ago. But we’re willing to bet you haven’t actually seen it with your own eyes. That’s because up until now, the only way to view this interstellar traveler was to wake up in the pre-dawn hours; an especially difficult requirement considering a large chunk of the population has gotten used to sleeping-in over the last few months.
But things are about to change as NEOWISE begins a new phase of its trip through our celestial neck of the woods. Having come to within 44.5 million km (27.7 million miles) of the sun on July 3rd, the comet is now making its way back out of our solar system. Thanks to the complex dance of the heavens, that means that observers in the Northern Hemisphere will now be able to see NEOWISE in the evening sky just above the horizon.
NEOWISE is on a kind of “up and over” trajectory compared to the orbital paths of the planets. Get a better feel for it with
JPL’s interactive solar dynamics tool
.
While NEOWISE might be beating a hasty retreat from Sol right now, the comet it actually getting closer to us in the process. On July 22nd it will reach perigee, that is, the point in its orbit closest to Earth. On that evening the comet will be approximately 103 million km (64 million miles) away. Not exactly a stone’s throw, but pretty close in astronomical terms. The comet will appear to be getting higher in the sky as it approaches Earth, and should be visible with the naked eye between 10 and 20 degrees above the northern horizon.
Most estimates say that NEOWISE should remain visible until at least the middle of August, though it will be dimming rapidly. After that, you’re going to have to wait awhile for a repeat showing. Given the orbit of this particular comet, it won’t come around our way again for approximately 6,800 years, give or take a few lifetimes.
NASA will be hosting a NEOWISE live stream tomorrow afternoon
where researchers will answer questions about this once in a lifetime celestial event, though we think you’ll get a lot more out of it if you just go outside and look up. | 74 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262993",
"author": "Clouds",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T23:06:25",
"content": "You will not see it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262998",
"author": "Southern Hemisphere",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T23:30:12",
... | 1,760,373,422.721146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/take-pottery-for-a-spin-with-a-pocket-sized-wheel/ | Take Pottery For A Spin With A Pocket-Sized Wheel | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"9v",
"ball bearing",
"bearing",
"pottery",
"pottery wheel"
] | If 2020 can be remembered in any positive light, it would be that this has been the year of the hobby tryouts. Why not pottery? Sure, throwing pots won’t fill your belly like homemade bread. But we would bet you can see the value in having a bunch of expendable objects that are easily (and quite satisfyingly) smashed to smithereens. The best part is that between the workbench, junk box, and recycle bin,
you can probably build [Jadem52]’s pottery wheel for ants with stuff you already have
. Bonus!
Pottery wheels aren’t that complicated. They’re honestly kind of expensive for what they are — a motor and a belt driving a rotating platter. It’s like a record player, but less fussy. Where they really get you on expense is the kiln to heat-treat those pots into sturdy vessels. But you could always use air-dry clay, especially if you’re making these things just to smash them whenever you need to let off some steam.
So anyway, you don’t need much more than a motor, a jar lid for a wheel to throw on, and a bearing to make it spin smoothly. Store-bought pottery wheels have a foot feed to control the motor speed, but this pocket version is either spinning on nine volts or it isn’t. The great thing about a project like this is that once you have the general principle down and use the thing, you can iterate and upgrade to your heart’s content. Take it for a little spin after the break.
If you want to hack together a more conventionally-sized wheel,
an old ceiling fan motor should be more than sufficient
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262964",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T20:38:36",
"content": "Moist wet clay getting into a motor running on a 9 volt battery? No problem. Just get a new motor when you need to.Moist wet clay getting into a ceiling fan motor running at 120 V? Now you learn about ele... | 1,760,373,422.389852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/a-robotic-stylist-for-your-lockdown-lengthened-locks/ | A Robotic Stylist For Your Lockdown Lengthened Locks | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"haircut",
"robot",
"salon",
"scissors",
"servo",
"stylist",
"vacuum"
] | It’s perhaps easy to think that despite the rapid acceleration of technology that there are certain jobs that will never be automated out of existence. Generally the job said to be robot-proof is the one held by the person making the proclamation, we notice. But certainly the job of cutting and styling people’s hair could never be done by a robot, right?
We wouldn’t bet the farm on it, although judging by
[Shane Wighton]’s quarantine haircut robot
, it’ll be a while before the stylists of the world will be on the dole. Said to have sprung from the need to trim his boyishly long hair, the contraption is an object lesson recreating the subtle manual skills a stylist brings to every head they work on — there’s a reason it takes 1,500 hours or more of training to get a license, after all. [Shane] discovered this early, and realized that exactly replicating the manual dexterity of human hands was a non-starter. His cutting head uses a vacuum to stand the hair upright, 3D-printed fingers to grip a small bundle of hair, and servo-driven scissors to cut it to length. The angle of attack of the scissors can be adjusted through multiple axes, and the entire thing rotates on a hell-no-I’m-not-putting-my-head-in-that-thing mechanism.
To his great credit, [Shane] braved the machine as customer zero, after only a few non-conclusive life-safety tests with a dummy head and wig. We won’t spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that the thing actually worked with no bloodshed and only minimal damage to [Shane]’s style. The long-suffering [Mrs. Wighton], however, was not convinced to take a test drive.
In all seriousness, kudos to [Shane] for attacking such a complex problem. We love what he’s doing with his builds, like his
basketball catcher
and his
robo-golf club
, and we’re looking forward to more.
Thanks to [Ilkka Takayama] for the tip. | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262944",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T18:56:39",
"content": "Whatever happened to the FloBee? Attach it to your shopvac and it pulled and cut your hair in one step. Possibly with a minimal amount of hair pulled out, resulting in a perfect 3-stooges haircut. No robot... | 1,760,373,422.448774 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/jerry-lawson-and-the-fairchild-channel-f-father-of-the-video-game-cartridge/ | Jerry Lawson And The Fairchild Channel F; Father Of The Video Game Cartridge | Jenny List | [
"Biography",
"Games",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"edge connector",
"fairchild",
"Fairchild Channel F",
"game console",
"Jerry Lawson",
"video game cartridge",
"video game console",
"video games"
] | The video game console is now a home entertainment hub that pulls in all forms of entertainment via an internet connection, but probably for most readers it was first experienced as an offline device that hooked up to the TV and for which new game software had to be bought as cartridges or for later models, discs. Stepping back through the history of gaming is an unbroken line to the 1970s, but which manufacturer had the first machine whose games could be purchased separately from the console? The answer is not that which first comes to mind, and the story behind its creation doesn’t contain the names you are familiar with today.
The Fairchild Channel F never managed to beat its rival, the Atari 2600, in the hearts of American youngsters so its creator Jerry Lawson isn’t a well-known figure mentioned in the same breath as Atari’s Nolan Bushnell or Apple’s two Steves, but without this now-forgotten console the history of gaming would have been considerably different.
The Coin-Op Project That Kicked It Off
The primordial Pong machine. Frmorrison /
CC BY-SA 4.0
Jerry Lawson was an engineer from New York who had arrived at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1970 after having worked at various companies in the defense electronics industry. Working as part of their customer engagement effort, he achieved prominence in the company by revolutionising the point of contact with the customer using an RV (yes, a camping vehicle) converted as a demonstration lab for Fairchild products. He was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to be a member of the famous Homebrew Computer Club, cradle of so much of the later microcomputer industry, which put him at the center of a web of contacts covering the games business as it was in the early 1970s.
Though his employer was not involved in gaming, Jerry got his start in that field as a side project. When his friend Allan Alcorn installed the first
Pong
machine in Andy Capp’s Tavern it suffered from customers interfering with its coin mechanism to score free plays, so Jerry produced a game cabinet of his own called
Demolition Derby
that had a more robust system. This led to Fairchild Semiconductor International offering him the chance to start their new video game division, and the road to the Channel F was laid.
For the First Time, Removable Software
The first home video consoles were one-trick devices that presented either a single game such as
Pong
or a set of variant games enabled through circuitry. As Al Williams wrote in
his article on the 1972 Magnavox Oddyssey
, that console had something resembling a game cartridge, but instead of containing software it rewired the machine’s configuration. Lawson’s innovation was to incorporate the game software and even deliver extra functionality such as RAM into the cartridge, allowing a near-infinite variety of games to be programmed. With this he created what would lead to the entire business model of console gaming, as well as sowing the seeds of the computer games development and publishing industry.
The Fairchild Channel F console. Evan-Amos (
CC BY-SA 3.0
)
The Channel F was launched in November 1976, nearly a year before Atari’s VCS console. Its Fairchild F8 microprocessor, low resolution color graphics, and 2K RAM were outclassed by its rival despite its far superior joysticks, and its lack of the Atari’s much larger software catalog saw it steadily lose ground into the 1980s despite a hardware revamp. Surprisingly it continued production until 1983, by which time it must have appeared an anachronism when compared to the crop of 8-bit microcomputers.
Lawson had by 1980 left Fairchild to found Videosoft, a company producing Atari software, and the chipmaker would not release any follow-up to the console. After Videosoft he became a consulting engineer and moved away from the limelight. Having suffered ill-health due to diabetes, Jerry passed away in April 2011.
There are many names from the annals of computing history who roll off the tongue. People such as Jobs and Wozniak, Bushnell, Dabney, Sinclair, Miyamoto, or Miner. We should also add Jerry Lawson to that list, as his vision to make one console and sell multiple games, done inexpensively with the use of the PCB edge connector, set the standard for decades to come. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262913",
"author": "gary",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T17:29:12",
"content": "I had one of these back when everyone had Pong. I had about 6 different games. My favorite was Drag Race. just like drag racing against another player. you had to shift the gears with the hand held con... | 1,760,373,422.598585 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/roboticist-grant-imahara-of-mythbusters-fame-dies-of-aneurysm-at-age-49/ | Roboticist Grant Imahara Of Mythbusters Fame Dies Of Aneurysm At Age 49 | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"battelbots",
"grant imahara",
"Industrial Light and Magic",
"mythbusters",
"obituary",
"robotics",
"usc",
"White Rabbit Project"
] | We awake this morning to sad news of
the premature passing of Grant Imahara at the age of 49 due to a brain aneurysm
. Grant was best known for his role on the wildly popular
Mythbusters
television show on which he starred and built test apparatus for seasons three through twelve. He landed this role because he was a badass hardware hacker as much as he was an on-camera personality.
Grant received his degree in electrical engineering from USC in 1993 and landed a job with Lucasfilm, finding his way onto the Industrial Light and Magic team to work on blockbuster films like the
Star Wars
prequels (R2-D2 among other practical effects) and sequels to
Terminator
and
The Matrix
. Joining the
Mythbusters
team in 2005 was something of a move to rapid prototyping. Each of the 22-minute episodes operated on a 10-day build and a film cycle in which Grant was often tasked with designing and fabricating test rigs for repeatable testing with tightly controlled parameters.
After leaving the show, Grant pursued several acting opportunities, including the Kickstarter funded web series
Star Trek Continues
which we reported on back in 2013
. But he did return to the myth busting genre with one season of
The White Rabbit Project
on Netflix. One of the most genuinely geeky appearances Grant made was on an early season of Battlebots where his robot ‘Deadblow’ sported a wicked spiked hammer.
Video of his appearance in the quarter-finals
is like a time-capsule in hacker history and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
Grant Imahara’s legacy is his advocacy of science and engineering. He was a role model who week after week proved that questioning how things work, and testing a hypothesis to find answers is both possible and awesome. At times he did so by celebrating destructive force in the machines and apparatus he built. But it was always done with observance of safety precautions and with a purpose in mind (well, perhaps with the exception of the Battlebots). His message was that robots and engineering are cool, that being a geek means you know what the heck you’re doing, and that we can entertain ourselves through creating. His message lives on through countless kids who have grown up to join engineering teams throughout the world.
Grant was the headliner at the first Hackaday Superconference in San Francisco back in 2015
. I’ve embedded the fireside chat below where you can hear in his own words what inspired Grant, along with numerous stories from throughout his life.
[Main image source:
Grant Imahara in The Verge 2018 web series Home of the Future
]
[Thumbnail image source:
Grant Imahara by Gage Skidmore
CC-BY-SA 3.0 | 45 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262873",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T15:27:54",
"content": "just when you thought 2020 couldn’t possible get any worse",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262935",
"author": "Gunplumber",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,422.537738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/an-easier-way-to-roll-your-own-led-ball/ | An Easier Way To Roll Your Own LED Ball | Kristina Panos | [
"how-to",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Sculpture",
"fr4",
"FR4 construction",
"LED ball",
"SMD LED",
"soldering puzzle"
] | Yes, circuit sculptures are amazing. But the patience and skill required puts most of the designs we’ve seen fairly far out of reach of the average beginner. We totally understand — not everyone finds fun in fiddly, structural soldering.
[Hari Wiguna] was captivated by the LED ball that [Jiří Praus] made last Christmas and figured there had to be less painful ways to cover a sphere in blinkenlights than printing a negative to use as a soldering jig. Turns out there is at least one way — just
design the structure to use PCBs in place of brass rod, and fit everything together like a 3D puzzle made of FR4
.
This SMD LED ball is almost ready for prime time. [Hari] wants this to be accessible for everyone and completely parametric, so he’s still working out the kinks. Check out the current form after the break as [Hari] rolls the ball through the various display modes using an Arduino and talks about the failures along the way, like having to file out the LED slots because they were designed too tightly the first time. [Hari] is also working on the friction fit of the pieces so the ball is easier to assemble, especially at the beginning.
3D prints as circuit sculpture soldering jigs are great tools, don’t get us wrong.
How else are you gonna solder brass rod together on a curve
? | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6263475",
"author": "rolinger",
"timestamp": "2020-07-16T11:03:41",
"content": "This is ingenious- really simple, innovative and well documented- brilliant!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,422.760004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/tales-from-the-sysadmin-impending-hard-drive-doom/ | Tales From The Sysadmin: Impending Hard Drive Doom | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"backup",
"crash",
"ddrescue",
"hard drive",
"rescue"
] | It should have been another fine day, but not all was well in paradise. Few things bring a creeping feeling of doom like a computer that hardlocks and then refuses to boot. The clicking sound coming from the tower probably isn’t a good sign either. Those backups are up to date, right? Right?
There are some legends and old stories about hard drive repair. One of my favorites is the official solution to stiction for old drives: Smack it with a mallet. Another trick I’ve heard repeatedly is to freeze a hard drive before trying to read data off of it. This could actually be useful in a couple instances. The temperature change can help with stiction, and freezing the drive could potentially help an overheating drive last a bit longer. The downside is the potential for condensation inside the drive. Don’t turn to one of these questionable fixes unless you’ve exhausted the safer options.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll assume the problem is the hard drive, and not another component like a power supply or SATA cable causing problems.
A truly dead drive
is a topic for another time, but if the drive is alive enough to show up as a block device when plugged in, then there’s hope for recovering the data. One of the USB to SATA cables available on your favorite online store is a great way to recover data. Another option is booting off a Linux DVD or flash drive, and accessing the drive in place. If you’re lucky, you can just copy your files and call it a day. If the file transfer fails because of the dying drive, or you need a full disk image, it’s time to pull out some tools and get to work.
As a hard drive degrades, individual sectors can become unreadable. This is an expected process, and modern drives are built with spare sectors to fend off the inevitable. As sectors begin to become unreliable, they are retired, and spare sectors are used instead. When the spare sectors are gone, the disk begins accumulating unreadable sectors. An unreadable sector in the middle of a file will kill a file transfer, or maybe even make the device unmountable. The ironic part is that it’s usually only a tiny percentage of the disk that’s unreadable. If only there was a way to manage those unreadable sectors.
Turning to DDRescue
The amateur sysadmin has a potent tool in his toolkit:
ddrescue
. It’s a descendant of sorts of the venerable
dd
disk copy tool, but with an important difference. When
dd
encounters a read error, it stops the transfer and displays the error.
ddrescue
makes a note of the error, leaves a blank spot in the output file, and continues transferring what data it can. Because there is record of the missing chunks, we can keep trying to read the missing parts, and maybe recover more data.
To get ddrescue running, we give it an input, an output, and a mapfile.
ddrescue /dev/sda diskimage.img mapfile.log
By default, ddrescue goes through three phases of rescue. First, it copies a sector at a time until it hits an error. For a drive that’s working perfectly, this operation completes without issue and the whole drive is copied. If a sector can’t be copied, or is even particularly slow in responding,
ddrescue
jumps ahead, hopefully beyond the problem.
The second phase is trimming. To put it simply,
ddrescue
starts at the end of each skipped section, and works backwards till it hits a bad sector. The purpose is to recover the largest amount of data as quickly as possible, and to establish exactly which sectors are the problematic ones. The last phase is scraping, where each unread sector is examined individually, attempting to read the data contained. Each time a sector is read, the mapfile is modified to keep track.
A sector might fail to read 15 times in a row, and on the 16th attempt, finally read successfully. Because of this,
ddrescue
supports making multiple scraping passes in alternating directions. Part of the theory is that the read head alignment might be slightly different when approaching the sector from a different location, and that difference might be enough to finally get a successful read.
When It’s Not So Simple
While the ideal operation of ddrescue is straightforward enough, there are some potential problems to be aware of. The first is heat. The process of trying to recover data from an already dying drive can quickly overheat it, and make further reads impossible. The best and simplest solution is a fan blowing cool air over the drive. The other common problem I’ve encountered is a bit harder to explain, but it’s identified by a specific error message:
ddrescue: Input file disappeared: No such file or directory.
When trying to read from the drive, something went wrong badly enough that the drive has disappeared from the system. My theory in this case is that the firmware on the drive itself has crashed and halted. Regardless, unpowering and repowering the drive is usually enough to get back to work.
This could have worked better.
This means that for a particularly stubborn drive, the process of recovering bits feels a lot like babysitting. Power cycle the drive once it crashes, and restart
ddrescue
— over and over and over again. Since the read fails as a result of the crash, that sector is marked as bad, and the rescue attempt jumps past it. Sectors in good shape might not trigger the crash, so some data gets read.
If you think that spending hours power cycling a hard drive doesn’t sound like a fun task, and is something that should be automated, then you’re right. It’s easy enough to wrap our
ddrescue
command in a loop, ideally along with five seconds of sleep. That handles half the problem, but power cycling the drive isn’t a software problem. I’ve used Adafruit’s power switch tail in the past, connected to a Raspberry Pi GPIO pin, to kill the drive’s power supply every 30 seconds. It’s not ideal, but it works. Unfortunately that device is discontinued, and I’m not aware of a direct replacement.
The last time I ran into this problem, I used a WiFi power switch, pictured above. Whenever the device disappeared, the script triggered the plug to power cycle the drive. This worked, and on a 500 GB drive, I recovered all but the last 1.5 megs. The only downside is that the smart plug only works via the cloud, so every power cycle required a request sent to the IFTTT cloud. Leaving the drive running overnight resulted in too many requests, and my account was frozen. Next time, Ill have to use a device that supports one of the open source firmwares, like
Tasmota
. Regardless, the script is simple:
while true; do
sudo ddrescue /dev/sda diskimage.img mapfile.log
if [ -a /dev/sdc ]; then
sudo ddrescue /dev/sda diskimage.img mapfile.log -M
else
curl -X POST https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/switch_off/with/key/REDACTED
sleep 10
curl -X POST https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/switch_on/with/key/REDACTED
sleep 10
fi
done
If the device disappears, use the switch to power cycle the drive. If ddrescue completes, and the device is still present, then use the
-M
switch to mark all the bad sectors as untried.
In many cases, this isn’t a process that ever really finishes, but the rate of recovery eventually drops too low to be worth continuing. Once you’ve copied as much of the raw data off the drive as possible, it’s a good idea to use
fsck
/
chkdsk
to repair the now-rescued filesystem. If it’s a system drive, after you burn it to a new disk, you’ll want to use your OS’s tools to verify the system files. For Windows, I’ve had good success with
SFC
and
DISM
. On Linux, use your system’s package manager to verify your installed packages. On a Fedora/Red Hat system,
rpm -Va
will show any installed binaries that have unexpected contents.
Over the years I’ve rescued a handful of drives with
ddrescue
, that other techniques just wouldn’t touch. It’s true that a good backup is the ideal solution, but if you find yourself in a situation where you really need to get data off a dying drive,
ddrescue
might just be your saving grace. Good luck!
Banner Image: “
Shiny
” by Nick Perla, BY-ND | 70 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262852",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T14:04:20",
"content": "I actually used the freezer trick on a drive and it worked. I documented it all on my site if anyone cares to read it:https://miscdotgeek.com/adventures-in-hard-drives/",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,373,422.875908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/spoofing-an-analog-rotary-knob-with-an-attiny-and-vampiric-power/ | Spoofing An Analog Rotary Knob With An ATtiny, And Vampiric Power | Donald Papp | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"jv-1080",
"repair",
"roland",
"rotary encoder",
"synthesizer",
"vampiric power"
] | [Mitxela]’s repair of a Roland JV-1080 (a rack-mounted 90s-era synthesizer) sounds simple: replace a broken rotary encoder on the front panel.
It turned out to be anything but simple
, since the part in question is not today’s idea of a standard rotary encoder at all. The JV-1080 uses some kind of rotary pulse switch, which has three outputs (one for each direction, and one for pushing the knob in like a button.) Turn the knob in one direction, and one of the output wires is briefly shorted to ground with every detent. Turn it the other way, and the same happens on the other output wire. This is the part that needed a replacement.
The finished unit uses a modern rotary encoder and microcontroller in place of the original part, and implements a few tricks to power it.
Rather than track down a source for the broken part, [Mitxela] opted to replace it with a modern rotary encoder combined with an ATtiny85 microcontroller to make it act like something the JV-1080 understands and expects. There was an additional wrinkle, however. The original rotary pulse switch is an entirely passive device, and lives at the end of a four-conductor cable with no power provided on it. How could the ATtiny85 be powered without resorting to running a wire to a DC voltage supply somewhere? Success was had, but it did take some finessing.
For the power, it turns out that the signal wires are weakly pulled up to +5 V and [Mitxela] used
that
for a power supply to the microcontroller. Still, by itself that wasn’t enough, because the ATtiny85 can easily consume more current than the weak pullups can source. We really recommend reading all the details in [Mitxela]’s writeup, but the short version is that the ATtiny85 does two things.
First, it minimizes its power usage by spending most of its time in sleep mode (consuming barely any power at all) and uses an interrupt to wake up just long enough to handle knob activity. Second, the trickle of power from the weak pullups doesn’t feed the ATtiny directly. It charges a 100 uF capacitor through a diode, and that is what keeps the microcontroller from browning out during its brief spurts of activity. Even better, after browsing the datasheet for the ATtiny, [Mitxela] saw it was possible to use the built-in ESD protection diodes for this purpose instead of adding a separate component.
It’s a neat trick and makes for a very compact package.
Visit the project’s GitHub repository
to dive into the nitty gritty. In the end, a single assembly at the end of a 4-wire connector acts just like the original passive component, no extra wires or hardware modifications needed.
When opening older hardware it’s never quite certain what will be found on the inside. But at least [Mitxela]’s repair duties on this synth didn’t
end up with him tripping out on LSD
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262841",
"author": "VirusCorona",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T13:05:55",
"content": "I had a similar idea – buttons in public places can be replaced with proximity sensors without the need to provide additional wire to power them. Such a module can have 2 pins and be connected instead... | 1,760,373,422.935275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/14/modern-mice-on-old-computers/ | Modern Mice On Old Computers | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"A to D converter",
"atari",
"Computing",
"converter",
"db9",
"ps4",
"retro",
"usb"
] | Getting retro hardware up and running again is sometimes a feat, and the amount of effort needed tends to go up exponentially with increased hardware age. Getting an IDE hard drive running again is one thing, but things like peripherals on truly “retro” computers like Commodores and Amigas is another beast altogether if you even have a 30-year-old mouse still lying around. That’s why adapters like
Project mouSTer are here to help you connect modern USB hardware to truly ancient computers
.
This piece of equipment was built for the Atari ST (hence the name), a
8-bit
computer from the mid-80s. It mates a DB9 plug with USB via a small microcontroller which does the translating. The firmware can be flashed over the USB connection so there’s planned support for other machines of this vintage. The chip supports all the features the original mouse did, too, including PS4 pad support and support for joysticks, and comes in an impressively tiny package once assembled which blends in seamlessly.
The project is a great step to getting retro computers working again, even if you can’t find exact OEM replacements anymore. That’s a common problem, and we’ve seen this
solved in other ways for other old Ataris
. It’s not uncommon to put
modern power supplies in retro computers
, either, as long as they power up and work after everything’s wired together. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262776",
"author": "irregularshed",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T08:33:05",
"content": "Obviously *someone* has to say that the Atari ST was a 16 bit computer, and that Amigas were made by Commodore, and the original mouse didn’t have PS4 controller support.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,423.137654 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/bubbles-the-people-pleasing-pandemic-panda/ | Bubbles, The People-Pleasing Pandemic Panda | Kristina Panos | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"433MHz",
"arcade button",
"bubble blower",
"bubble machine",
"ESP32"
] | This year, [Thomas]’ neighborhood has gone from a quiet burg to a bustling lane full of families and children who go out walking for exercise and a change of scenery. Early on, a game emerged to distract children from the pandemic by turning these walks into bear hunts — that is, looking for stuffed bears sitting in the windows of houses and keeping count of them.
With no stuffed bears in the house, he decided to join in the fun by pasting up a 2D panda bear in the window that’s cute enough to calm anyone’s nerves. That was fun for a while,
but then he turned it up to eleven by making an interactive 3D version
named Bubbles the Bear that blows bubbles and speaks in a friendly voice.
Bubbles sits in a second-story window and waits for passers-by to press one of the buttons mounted on the utility pole below. Both buttons are wired to a 433MHz remote that sends a signal to an ESP32 in Bubbles’ habitat that says it’s time to perform.
We particularly like the bubble maker that [Thomas] designed, which aims a blower fan with an air concentrator at a carousel of 3D printed bubble wands. Both the fan and the carousel can be controlled with a custom web app, and he gets an email every time Bubbles has a visitor that tells him how much bubble liquid is left. Check out the fun-size demo after the break.
Bubbles are fun, especially if you can
make them in extremely large quantities
. Bubbles can also do work —
remember this next time you need a random number generator
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262758",
"author": "nat",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T06:35:18",
"content": "that button gonna spark a new outbreak…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262799",
"author": "hackaday.inputoutput",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T09:5... | 1,760,373,422.989495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/softbank-robots-pinch-hit-for-baseball-cheerleaders/ | SoftBank Robots Pinch Hit For Baseball Cheerleaders | Roger Cheng | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"baseball",
"boston dynamics",
"pepper",
"robotics",
"robots",
"SoftBank",
"spot"
] | Grand venues of spectacle to entertain audiences has long been a part of history, but such tradition is highly problematic at the moment in the light of the pandemic. Some sports leagues are testing the waters with a soft restart by playing only to a broadcast audience, leaving the stadium empty. Many experiments are in progress trying to liven up an empty stadium and this is where SoftBank saw an opportunity: as a multinational conglomerate that has both a baseball team and a robotics division, they
called a team of robots to cheer-leading duty
.
Some clips of the cheerleading squad in action have started circulating. A few people may greet the sight with an indifferent shrug, but most tend to fall to an extreme: either finding them hilarious or react with horror. It is only natural to have a strong reaction to such a jarring sight.
「Spotさん」と「Pepperさん」によるおそらく宇宙史上初のいざゆけ若鷹軍団コラボレーションダンス(部)
#sbhawks
pic.twitter.com/MeGxUkmxo6
— パ・リーグ.com Lite / パーソル パ・リーグTV Lite (@PLcom_lite)
July 7, 2020
Spot was only
available for sale recently
, and we admit this was not the type of task that came to our minds. Pepper has a longer track record and this is not Pepper’s first baseball game. The humanoid robot has been around long enough to raise questions about a robot’s role in society from
unionization
to
sex work
. We haven’t made much progress answering those questions, and now we have even more questions that the lightweight
SoftBank Robotics press release
(in Japanese) didn’t try to answer.
When people fret about “robots taking our jobs” the conversation doesn’t usually involve sports team cheerleaders, yet here we are. Welcome to the future. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262716",
"author": "Orlando Hoilett",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T02:03:53",
"content": "Wild. Lol. Just wild.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262720",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T02:45:12",
"content": ... | 1,760,373,423.181144 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/1975-circuit-board-was-a-masterpiece-hidden-on-your-wrist/ | 1975 Circuit Board Was A Masterpiece Hidden On Your Wrist | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"calculator watch",
"circuit board art",
"digital wristwatch",
"pcb",
"pulsar",
"wristwatch"
] | There has been an argument raging for years over whether you should design circuit boards with 45-degree corners or 90-degree corners. Why make them with corners at all?
This breathtaking circuit board art
is from a digital watch circa 1975.
The Pulsar Calculator Watch was the first of its kind and came along with a stylus to operate the miniscule buttons. The circuit board traces would have been laid out by hand, explaining the gentle curves rather than straight lines. The chip-on-board construction is wild, with the silicon die bonded directly to those traces on multiple chips in this image. There is also a mercury tilt sensor on this model that would have switched the display off when not being held up to view the time (or calculate your tip at the Ritz).
We found working models of this watch for sale online for about $225-350. That’s a steal considering the original list price for these is reported to be $550 ($2600 considering inflation).
The beauty of the PCB artwork is hidden away, not just inside the watch case, but obscured by the plastic battery housing to which those tabs on the right are soldered. Think of how many geeks were lucky enough to have one of these and never realized the beauty within. If you’re looking to unlock more of these hidden masterpieces, check out [Greg Charvat’s]
article on collecting and restoring digital wristwatches
.
[via
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories link dump
] | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262684",
"author": "MrMagloo",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T23:17:33",
"content": "What ? no mention of the magnificent HP-01 ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262921",
"author": "Erik",
"timestamp": "2020-07-14T... | 1,760,373,423.250521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/solar-weather-station-listens-for-lightning/ | Solar Weather Station Listens For Lightning | Tom Nardi | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Science"
] | [
"bme280",
"lightning detector",
"solar power",
"weather station",
"weatherproof"
] | Custom weather stations are a common enough project these days, especially based around the ESP8266. Wire a sensor up to the MCU, power it up with an old phone charger, and you’re half way there. But if you want something that’s going to operate remotely on the long term, you’ve got to put a little more thought into it.
Which is exactly what
[BuckarewBanzai] did for his solar powered Raspberry Pi weather station
. With an industrial NEMA-rated enclosure, a beefy 35 watt photovoltaic panel, and enough lead-acid battery capacity to keep the show going for days, this build is certainly more robust than most. Some might call it overkill, but we think anyone who’s ever deployed hardware outdoors for more than a few days knows you can never be too careful when Mother Nature is involved.
To keep the 18 Ah battery topped off, [BuckarewBanzai] is using a 10 amp Wanderer charge controller. It sounds as though he burned through a few lesser models before settling on this one; something to consider for your own off-grid projects. An LM2596 regulator is then used to provide a stable 5 V for the Raspberry Pi.
In addition to the BME280 environmental sensor that picks up on temperature, humidity, and pressure, there’s also a AS3935 lightning sensor onboard which [BuckarewBanzai] says can pick up strikes up to 40 kilometers away. All of this environmental data is collected and stored in a local SQLite database, and gets pushed offsite every five minutes with a REST API so it can be visualized with Grafana.
Critics in the audience will no doubt pick up on the solderless breadboard located in the center of the weather station, but [BuckarewBanzai] says he’s already on the case. He’s working on a custom PCB that will accept the various modular components. Not only should this make the station more reliable, but he says it will cut down on the “spaghetti” wiring. Though for the record, this is
hardly the worst offender we’ve seen in that department
. | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262618",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T20:18:53",
"content": "Does anything need to be calibrated before use?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262646",
"author": "zombielinux",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,373,423.315797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/back-to-basics-hack-chat/ | Back To Basics Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"classic",
"Hack Chat",
"retro",
"simplification",
"technology"
] | Join us on Wednesday, July 15 at noon Pacific for the
Back to Basics Hack Chat
with
Simplifier
!
Stay in the technology business long enough and eventually you’ll have to face an uncomfortable question: “Have I built anything permanent?” Chances are good that most of us will have to answer in the negative. For all the flash and zazzle we put into our projects, and for all the craftsmanship we try to apply to our systems, all of it is built on a very fragile foundation of silicon that will be obsolete within a decade, held together by slender threads of code in a language that may or may not be in fashion in a year’s time, and doesn’t even really exist in anything more tangible than a series of magnetic domains on a hard drive somewhere.
Realizing you’ve built nothing permanent is the engineer’s equivalent of a midlife crisis, and for many of us it sets off a search for an outlet for our creativity that we can use to make things that will outlast us. One hacker, known only as “Simplifier”, turned his search for meaningful expression into a quest to make technology better by making it more accessible and understandable.
His website
, itself a model of simplicity, catalogs his quest for useful materials and methods and his efforts to employ them. He has built everything from
homebrew vacuum tubes
to
DIY solar cells
, with recent forays into telecom tech with his
carbon rod microphone
and
magnetostrictive earphone
.
In this Hack Chat, Simplifier will answer your questions about how turning back the technology clock can teach us about where we’re going. Join us as we explore what it takes to build the infrastructure we all take so much for granted, and find out if there’s a way to live simply while still enjoying a technologically rich life.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 15 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you down, 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. | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262604",
"author": "BNBN",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T19:44:26",
"content": "This poster would be a great addition to the subreddit r/crappydesign.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262653",
"author": "cy",
"time... | 1,760,373,423.440268 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/home-automation-covers-everything/ | Home Automation Covers Everything | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"Domoticz",
"features",
"home automation",
"open source",
"updates"
] | When starting out on a project, it’s accepted best practice to try to avoid feature creep. Of course, we can’t all say that we follow this guideline completely every time. In fact, sometimes it can get away from us, and in rare situations it might actually turn out pretty well. That appears to be what happened with [superczar]’s home automation project which
now covers basically everything possible in home automation
.
The build started in 2013, so we assume that features have been added periodically and that the system wasn’t designed and built all in one furious weekend. Either way, though, it covers a lot: lights, switches, media players in several rooms, includes sensors and logging for temperature, smoke, fire, and power, supports a number of cameras, the doorbell, and the locks. It also includes voice control for most of the systems.
That’s an impressive list, but what really drew our attention to this project is that it used to be based on domoticz, but that community has waned over the years and [superczar] had kept his system patched together with self-built scripts. An accidental upgrade recently broke the entire setup, so rather than rebuild everything a migration was made to home-assistant, an open-source platform that has a more active community. We’ve seen plenty of projects around here that use it as a platform, for
ceiling fans
,
custom remotes
, and
doorbells
.
Thanks to [
pradeepmur] for the tip! | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262578",
"author": "Joshua Johnson",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T18:17:22",
"content": "I want to know what those graph cards are, much better than the default Home Assistant graph cards.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262590"... | 1,760,373,423.378369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/surgery-on-the-arduino-ide-makes-bigger-serial-buffers/ | Surgery On The Arduino IDE Makes Bigger Serial Buffers | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino IDE",
"arduino serial"
] | It is pretty well-known that I’m not a big fan of the Arduino infrastructure. Granted, these days you have more options with the pro IDE and Platform IO, for example. But the original IDE always gives me heartburn. I realized just how much heartburn the other day when I wanted to something very simple: increase the receive buffer on an ATmega32 serial port. The solution I arrived at might help you do some other things, so even if you don’t need that exact feature, you still might find it useful to see what I did.
Following this experience I am genuinely torn. On the one hand, I despise the lackluster editor for hiding too much detail from me and providing little in the way of useful tools. On the other hand, I was impressed with how extensible it was if you can dig out the details of how it works internally.
First, you might wonder why I use the IDE. The short answer is I don’t. But when you produce things for other people to use, you almost can’t ignore it. No matter how you craft your personal environment, the minute your code hits the Internet, someone will try to use it in the IDE. A while back I’d written about the
$4 Z80 computer by [Just4Fun]
. I rarely have time to build things I write about, but I really wanted to try this little computer. The parts sat partially assembled for a while and then a PCB came out for it. I got the PCB and — you guessed it — it sat some more, partially assembled. But I finally found time to finish it and had CP/M booted up.
The only problem was there were not many good options for transferring data back and forth to the PC. It looked like the best bet was to do Intel hex files and transfer them copy and paste across the terminal. I wanted better, and that sent me down a Saturday morning rabbit hole. What I ended up with is a way to make your own menus in the Arduino IDE to set compiler options based on the target hardware for the project. It’s a trick worth knowing as it will come in handy beyond this single problem.
The Issue: Arduino Serial Buffer Size Limit
I won’t bore you with the details about getting the board to work since you will only care if you have one.
Details are available in a discussion on Hackaday.io
, if you really want to follow it. But the upshot was that for XModem transfers, [Just4Fun] felt like the default Arduino serial buffer wasn’t big enough to be reliable. It did seem to work with the default 64-byte buffer, but XModem sends more data than that and it would be easy to imagine it getting overrun.
How hard can it be to update the buffer? In one way, it is trivial. In another way, it is very difficult because the tools want to help you so badly.
Tool Chain
The little computer project uses a real Z80 chip and uses an ATMega32A for almost all the support functions. It generates the clock, acts like a serial port, acts like a disk drive, and so on. However, the ATMega32 doesn’t directly have Arduino IDE support so you have to install a toolchain for it. The project called for MightyCore so that’s what I used.
The libraries for hardware serial were all set up using #define statements to allow you to adjust the buffer sizes. By default, if you haven’t set up anything, you get a default based on the amount of RAM your processor provides:
#if !defined(SERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE)
#if ((RAMEND - RAMSTART) < 1023)
#define SERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE 16
#else
#define SERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE 64
#endif
#endif
#if !defined(SERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE)
#if ((RAMEND - RAMSTART) < 1023)
#define SERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE 16
#else
#define SERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE 64
#endif
#endif
Making the Change
So this is easy, right? Just define those symbols before
HardwareSerial.h
loads. Uh oh. That file is loaded by
Arduino.h
. The IDE wants to add that to your program and it forces it to be first. There seems to be some IDE versions that check if you already included it so they don’t include it twice, but version 1.8.5 didn’t seem to do that. Maybe I can add some options in the preferences to pass to the compiler. Nope. Not via the IDE, anyway.
Not that I didn’t try a lot of things. It was tempting, of course, to simply change the core libraries. But that’s bad. You might want the defaults later. If you update the tool chain, you’ll lose your updates. I wanted to avoid that. Some people on the Internet suggested making a copy of the platform files and modifying those. Still not ideal.
Test Your Assumptions With Custom Error Reporting
I could tell things I tried were not working because I would put
#if
statements and
#error
statements temporarily in
HardwareSerial.cpp
. For example:
#if SERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE==256
#error 256
#endif
Now if a compile causes an error 256, I know I was able to set the size. If not, then the system was resisting my changes.
Compromise: Adding Menu Options At the Board Level
I really wanted a way to make a change just in my project and set the serial buffer sizes. I failed at that. What I did do was make a modification to the boards.txt provided by Mighty Core. Yes, I will have to watch for upgrades overwriting my changes, but they are simple and it will be obvious that it is missing.
The reason it will be obvious is that I created a menu for the IDE that only appears when using ATMega32 for Mighty Core. This menu lets you select a few preset buffer sizes.
There were three parts to making this work:
You have to tell the IDE you have a menu item and what it looks like.
The new item needs to set some compiler options.
Because the existing system also sets some compiler options, you have to make sure not to clobber them.
The first part is easy. The
boards.txt
file was (for me) in
~/.arduino15/packages/MightyCore/hardware/avr/2.0.5/boards.txt
. Near the top there’s a list of menu keys and I added mine to the end:
# Menu options
menu.clock=Clock
menu.BOD=BOD
menu.LTO=Compiler LTO
menu.variant=Variant
menu.pinout=Pinout
menu.bootloader=Bootloader
menu.SerialBuf=Serial Port Buffers (RX/TX)
Next, I moved down the file and added my menu before the existing LTO menu option for the ATMega32:
32.menu.SerialBuf.disabled=Default
32.menu.SerialBuf.disabled.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=
32.menu.SerialBuf.disabled.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB64=64/64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB64.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=64 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB64.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=64 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB128=128/128
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB128.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=128 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=128
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB128.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=128 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=128
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB12864=128/64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB12864.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=128 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB12864.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=128 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB256=256/256
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB256.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=256
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB256.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=256
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25664=256/64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25664.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25664.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=64
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25632=256/32
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25632.compilerSB.c.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=32
32.menu.SerialBuf.SB25632.compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags=-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256 -DSERIAL_TX_BUFFER_SIZE=32
Menu Structure
You can see that the
32.menu
object groups all the items together for this processor. The next part is our menu key (
SerialBuf
). After that is a unique key for each memory item. It is important that you don’t reuse these. So, for example, if you have two
SB64
keys only one is going to work.
If you stop at that key and put an equal sign you can assign the menu item the text you want to display. For example “Default” or “64/64.” You can also extend the key with a property and that property will be set if the option is active.
So, for example, if you select 256/256 then the
compilerSB.c.extra_flags
property will get set. I made that name up, by the way, and you’ll see why in a minute.
Peaceful Coexistence
There is no property called
compilerSB.c.extra_flags
. The correct property is
compiler.c.extra_flags
. However, the Mighty Core
LTO
option uses the same key. That’s why it was important that the new menu appears first and also that it sets a fake property. Then the
LTO
code needs a slight modification:
# Compiler link time optimization
32.menu.LTO.Os=LTO disabled
32.menu.LTO.Os.compiler.c.extra_flags={compilerSB.c.extra_flags}
32.menu.LTO.Os.compiler.c.elf.extra_flags=
32.menu.LTO.Os.compiler.cpp.extra_flags={compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags}
32.menu.LTO.Os.ltoarcmd=avr-ar
32.menu.LTO.Os_flto=LTO enabled
32.menu.LTO.Os_flto.compiler.c.extra_flags={compilerSB.c.extra_flags} -Wextra -flto -g
32.menu.LTO.Os_flto.compiler.c.elf.extra_flags=-w -flto -g
32.menu.LTO.Os_flto.compiler.cpp.extra_flags={compilerSB.cpp.extra_flags} -Wextra -flto -g
32.menu.LTO.Os_flto.ltoarcmd=avr-gcc-ar
The big change is that each set of flags adds to whatever the new menu set in its custom property. This way, all the flags get put into the correct property,
compiler.c.extra_flags
.
I set up error traps to catch all the cases to make sure they were being set right. In addition, after removing those traps, I could see my memory usage go up accordingly.
Customize
Of course, you can modify the parameters if you want something different. You could also use this trick to set other parameters before the Arduino.h file takes over. There’s some
documentation
about how to set up the platform definitions, including
boards.txt
.
It would have probably been better for me to make a custom
boards.txt
file with the same information in it but then I’d need to take the rest of Mighty Core with me. Instead, I just keep a copy of the file called boards.txt.custom and if my menu disappears, I just have to compare that file with the boards.txt file to see what changed.
Of course, if you don’t have to support people using the IDE, maybe just give it up. The
Pro IDE
is better, even if it does have some shortcomings. Plus there’s always
Platform.io
. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262562",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T17:33:00",
"content": "Thanks Al, this looks useful. Couple of designs I have in mind that I might try this in.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262589",
"author":... | 1,760,373,423.509373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/mergers-and-acquisitions-analog-devices-snaps-up-maxim-integrated-for-21-b/ | Mergers And Acquisitions: Analog Devices Snaps Up Maxim Integrated For $21 B | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"acquisition",
"Analog devices",
"maxim",
"Maxim Integrated",
"Mergers & Acquisitions"
] | Analog Devices will acquire Maxim Integrated for $20.9 billion dollars in stock,
as reported by Bloomberg
this morning.
Perhaps the confusing part of the news is that the Bloomberg article mentions the acquisition will let Analog Devices better compete with Texas Instruments. Wait,
didn’t Texas Instruments acquire Maxim back in 2015
? Actually, no. There were rumors (reported then by Bloomberg) that TI was nearing an acquisition deal
but it fell through in January of 2016
.
You may remember that
Analog Devices snapped up Linear Tech
in a $30 B acquisition back in 2017. Considering this morning’s news, how will they compare to the might of TI? Looks like 2019
revenue for TI
was $14.38 B while
Analog reported
$5.99 B. Add in
Maxim’s revenue
of $3.1 B and there’s still a David and Goliath scenario here. Although revenue doesn’t tell the whole story and the proverbial slingshot for Analog may be its existing portfolio of high-margin devices, grown even larger with this acquisition.
Considering how the last half decade played out, this might mark the beginning of another wild cycle of mergers and acquisitions. The consolidation trend continues as we approach a world where just a few gigantic semiconductor companies turn production lines up to eleven to fill the world’s insatiable appetite for more powerful electronics (and more electronics in general). | 25 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262538",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T16:29:20",
"content": "Other way around Mike. Maxim is buying Analog to save it from becoming an also-ran known only for good MEMS sensors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,373,423.565537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/build-an-everlasting-continuity-tester/ | Build An Everlasting Continuity Tester | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"how-to",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"comparator",
"continuity",
"continuity tester",
"electronics tools",
"transient blocking unit"
] | When you need a continuity tester at the bench, what do you reach for? Probably your multimeter, right? It may surprise you to know that the continuity tester in the meter isn’t all that sensitive, even if it’s the yellow expensive kind. [Leo]’s will beep even if there is 50Ω of resistance in the line.
Disgusted by modern commercial testers, [Leo] set out to make the ideal continuity tester in the spirit of old school tools that do one thing and do it really well.
It had to be simple to use, always ready to go, and capable of measuring continuity at 5Ω or less resistance
(video, embedded below).
There’s no power switch or even labels, because it doesn’t need any. Just put the probes where you want ’em, and it either beeps and lights the LED or it doesn’t. It looks simple, but inside that blast-resistant enclosure are lots of cool features that certainly make it seem like the ideal tester to us.
Our favorite has to be the transient blocking unit that works like a little circuit breaker. They’re used to protect circuits from lighting and electrostatic discharge by way of depletion-mode MOSFETs and switches to protected mode in under a microsecond. Watch [Leo] build this workbench necessity and then abuse test it with mains power after the break.
Making your own tools, however simple or complex is a great experience. If you want to up your speedy prototyping game,
[Leo]’s got you covered there with a special scratching tool for hand-scribing copper PCBs
. | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262524",
"author": "jcwren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T15:46:19",
"content": "Nice, except for the metal box. Just let that accidentally bump against those exposed mains he had the multimeter connected to, and it’ll be unpleasant.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,373,423.791752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/changing-system-architectures-and-the-complexities-of-apples-butterfly-approach-to-isas/ | Changing System Architectures And The Complexities Of Apple’s Butterfly Approach To ISAs | Maya Posch | [
"ARM",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Mac Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"m68k",
"macintosh",
"Motorola 68000",
"motorola 88000",
"power mac",
"Power Macintosh",
"powerpc",
"ppc",
"rosetta"
] | Apple computers will be moving away from Intel chips to its own ARM-based design. An interesting thing about Apple as a company is that it has never felt the need to tie itself to a particular system architecture or ISA. Whereas a company like Microsoft mostly tied its fortunes to Intel’s x86 architecture, and IBM, Sun, HP and other giants preferred vertical integration, Apple is currently moving towards its fifth system architecture for its computers since the company was formed.
What makes this latest change possibly unique, however, is that instead of Apple relying on an external supplier for CPUs and peripheral ICs, they are now targeting a vertical integration approach. Although the ARM ISA is licensed to Apple by Arm Holdings, the ‘Apple Silicon’ design that is used in Apple’s ARM processors is their own, produced by Apple’s own engineers and produced by foundries at the behest of Apple.
In this article I would like to take a look back at Apple’s architectural decisions over the decades and how they made Apple’s move towards vertical integration practically a certainty.
A Product of its Time
The Apple I. Wooden board not included in delivery.
The 1970s was definitely the era when computing was brought to living rooms around the USA, with the Commodore PET, Tandy TRS-80 and the Apple II microcomputers defining the late 1970s. Only about a year before the Apple II’s release, the newly formed partnership between Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had produced the Apple I computer. The latter was sold as a bare, assembled PCB for $666.66 ($2,995 in 2019), with about 200 units sold.
Like the Apple I, the Apple II and the Commodore PET were all based on the
MOS 6502
MPU (microprocessor unit), which was essentially a cheaper and faster version of
Motorola’s 6800
MPU, with the
Zilog Z80
being the other popular MPU option. What made the Apple II different was Wozniak’s engineering shortcuts to reduce hardware costs, using various tricks to save separate DRAM refresh circuitry and remove the need for separate video RAM. According to Wozniak in a May 1977 Byte interview, “[..] a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use, and inexpensive.”
With the Apple III, Apple saw the need to provide
backward compatibility
with the Apple II, which was made easy because the former maintained the same 6502 MPU and a compatible hardware architecture. Apple’s engineers did however put in limitations that prevented the emulated Apple II system to access more than a fraction of the Apple III’s RAM and other hardware.
The 32-bit Motorola Era
With the ill-fated Apple Lisa (1983) and much more successful Apple Macintosh (1984), Apple transitioned to the Motorola 68000 (m68k) architecture. The Macintosh was the first system to feature what would become the classic Mac OS series of operating systems, at the time imaginatively titled ‘
System 1
‘. As the first step into the brave new world of 32-bit, GUI-based, mouse-driven desktops, it did not have any focus on backward compatibility. It also cost well over $6,000 when adjusted for inflation.
Welcome to the future of home computing.
The reign of m68k-based Macintosh systems lasted until the release of the Macintosh
LC 580
, in 1995. That system featured a Motorola
68LC040
running at 33 MHz. That particular CPU in the LC 580 featured a bug that caused incorrect operation when used with a software FPU emulator. Although a fixed version of the 68LC040 was introduced in mid-1995, this was too late to prevent many LC 580s from shipping with the flawed CPU.
The year before the LC 580 was released, the first Power Macintosh system had been already released after a few years of Apple working together with IBM on the PowerPC range of chips. The reason for this shift could be found mostly in the anemic performance of the CISC m68k architecture, with Apple worried that the industry’s move to the much better performing RISC architectures from IBM (POWER), MIPS, Sun (Sparc) and HP (PA-RISC). This left Apple no choice but to seek an alternative to the m68k platform.
Gain POWER or Go Vertical
The development of what came to be known as the
Power Macintosh
series of systems began in 1988, with Apple briefly flirting with the idea of making its own RISC CPU, to the point where they bought a Cray-1 super computer to assist in the design efforts. Ultimately they were forced to cancel this project due to a lack of expertise in this area, requiring a look at possible partners.
Apple would look at the available RISC offerings from Sun, MIPS, Intel (i860) and ARM, as well as
Motorola’s 88110
(88000 RISC architecture). All but Motorola’s offering were initially rejected: Sun lacked the capacity to produce enough CPUs, MIPS had ties with Microsoft, Intel’s i860 was too complex, and IBM might not want to license its POWER1 core to third parties. Along the way, Apple did take a 43% stake in ARM, and would use an ARM processor in its Newton personal digital assistant.
Motorola 88110, or what could have been Apple’s future.
Under the ‘Jaguar’ project moniker, a system was developed that used the Motorola 88110, but the project was canceled when Apple’s product division president (
Jean-Louis Gassée
) left the company. Renewed doubt in the 88110 led to a meeting being arranged between Apple and IBM representatives, with the idea being to merge the POWER1’s seven chips into a single chip solution. With Motorola also present at this meeting, it was agreed to set up an alliance that would result in the PowerPC 601 chip.
Apple’s System 7 OS was rewritten to use PowerPC instructions instead of m68k ones, allowing it to be used with what would become the first PowerPC-based Macintosh, the
Power Macintosh 6100
. Because of the higher performance of PowerPC relative to m68k at the time, the
Mac 68k emulator
utility that came with all PowerPC Macs was sufficient to provide backward compatibility. Later versions used dynamic recompilation to provide even more performance.
Decade of POWER
Who doesn’t miss this Apple?
The PowerPC era is perhaps the most distinct of all Apple designs, with the colorful all-in-one
iMac G3
and Power Macintosh G3 and Power Mac G4 along with the Power Mac G5 still being easily recognized computers that distinguished Apple systems from ‘PCs’. Unfortunately, by the time of the G4 and G5 series of PowerPC CPUs, their performance had fallen behind that of Intel’s and AMD’s x86-based offerings. Although Intel made a costly mistake with their Netburst (Pentium 4) architecture during the so-called ‘MHz wars’, this didn’t prevent PowerPC from falling further and further behind.
The Power Mac G5, with its water-cooled G5 CPUs, struggled to keep up with the competition and had poor performance-per-watt numbers. Frustrations between IBM and Apple about whether to focus on PowerPC or IBM’s evolution of server CPUs called ‘Power’ did not help here. This led Apple to the obvious conclusion: the future was CISC, with Intel x86. With the introduction of the Intel-based
Mac Pro
in 2006, Apple’s fourth architectural transition had commenced.
As with the transition from m68k to PPC back in the early 90s, a similar utility was used to the Mac 68k emulator, called
Rosetta
. This
dynamic binary translator
supports the translating of G3, G4 and AltiVec instructions, but not G5 ones. It also comes with a host of other compromises and performance limitations. For example, it does not support applications for Mac OS 9 and older (‘Classic’ Mac OS), nor Java applications.
The main difference between the Mac 68k emulator and Rosetta is that the former ran in kernel space, and the latter in user space, meaning that Rosetta is both much less effective and less efficient due to the overhead from task switching. These compromises led to Apple also introducing the ‘
universal binary
‘ format, also known as a ‘fat binary’ and ‘multi-architectural binary’. This means that the same executable can have binary code in it for more than one architecture, such as PowerPC and x86.
All’s Well that Ends Vertically Integrated
The Apple Silicon future.
A rare few of us may have missed the recent WWDC announcement where Apple made it official that
it will be switching to the ARM system architecture
, abandoning Intel after fourteen years. What the real reasons are behind this change will have to wait, for obvious reasons, but it was telling when Apple acquired P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor company, in 2009. Ever since Apple began to produce ARM SoCs for its iPhones instead of getting them from other companies, rumors have spread.
As the performance of this
Apple Silicon
began to match and exceed that of desktop Intel systems in benchmarks with the Apple iPhones and iPads, many felt that it was only a matter of time before Apple would make an announcement like this. There has also
the lingering issue
of Intel not having had a significant processor product refresh since introducing Skylake in 2015.
So there we are, then. It is 1994 and Apple has just announced that it will transition from m68k CISC to its own (ARM-based?) RISC architecture. Only it is 26 years later and Apple is transitioning from x86 CISC to its own ARM-based RISC architecture, seemingly completing a process that started back in the late 1980s at Apple.
As for the user experience during this transition, it’s effectively a repeat of the PowerPC to Intel transition during 2006 and onward, with Rosetta 2 (Rosetta Harder?) handling (some) binary translation tasks for applications that do not have a native ARM port yet and universal binaries (v2.0) for the other applications. Over the next decade or so Apple will find its straddling the divide between x86 and ARM before it can presumably settle into its new, vertically integrated home after nearly half a decade of flittering between foreign system architectures. | 64 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262490",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T14:14:49",
"content": "“Although the ARM ISA is licensed to Apple by Arm Holdings, the ‘Apple Silicon’ design that is used in Apple’s ARM processors is their own, produced by Apple’s own engineers and produced by foundries at ... | 1,760,373,423.959682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/500-lasers-are-not-necessarily-better-than-one-but-they-look-great/ | 500 Lasers Are Not Necessarily Better Than One, But They Look Great | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"array",
"converging",
"focal point",
"laser",
"led",
"lens",
"mirror",
"modules",
"optics",
"pointer"
] | If playing with but a single laser pointer is fun, then playing with 500 laser pointers must be 500 times the fun, right? So by extension,
training 500 laser pointers on a single point
must be the pinnacle of pointless mirth. And indeed it is.
When we first spotted this project, we thought for sure it was yet another case of lockdown-induced boredom producing an over-the-top build. Mind you, we have no problem with that, but in this case, [nanoslavic] relates that this is actually a project from a few years back. It’s really as simple as it looks: 500 laser pointer modules arranged on a plate with a grid of holes in a 25 by 20 array. As he placed the laser modules on the board with a glob of hot glue, he carefully aimed each one to hit a single point about a meter and a half away. There are also a handful of blue LEDs nestled into the array, because what project is complete without blue LEDs?
The modules are wired in concentric circuits and controlled by a simple bank of toggle switches. Alas, 500 converging
150-mW
5 mW lasers do not a
75-W
2.5 W laser make; when fully powered, the effect at the focal point is reported to be only a bit warm. But it looks incredible, especially through smoke. Throwing mirrors and lenses into the beam results in some interesting patterns, too.
You’ll still need to take safety seriously if you build something like this, of course, but this one is really just for show. If you’re really serious about doing some damage with lasers, check out the long list of inadvisable laser builds that [Styropyro] has accumulated — from
a high-powered “lightsaber”
to
a 200-Watt laser bazooka
.
(Terminate your beams carefully, folks. We don’t want anyone going blind.) | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262451",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T11:26:58",
"content": "They don’t look like 150mW modules, but more like these generic 5mW ones:https://www.google.com/search?q=6mm+5mw+laser+module&tbm=isch",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,423.852572 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/13/nasa-making-big-upgrades-to-their-big-dish-dss43/ | NASA Making Big Upgrades To Their Big Dish DSS43 | Roger Cheng | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"antenna",
"Deep Space Network",
"dish antenna",
"DSN",
"jpl",
"nasa",
"reflector",
"voyager"
] | When it comes to antenna projects, we usually cover little ones here. From copper traces on a circuit board to hand-made units for ham radio. But every once in a while it’s fun to look at the opposite end of the spectrum, and anyone who craves such change of pace should check out
DSS43’s upgrade currently underway
.
Part of NASA’s
Deep Space Network (DSN)
built to communicate with spacecraft that venture far beyond Earth, Deep Space Station 43 is a
large
dish antenna with a diameter of 70 meters and largest of the Canberra, Australia DSN complex. However, the raw reflective surface area is only as good as the radio equipment at its center, which are now outdated and thus focus of this round of upgrades.
The NASA page linked above offers a few pieces of fun trivia about DSS43 and its capabilities. If that whets an appetite for more, head over to Twitter for a huge treasure trove. Whoever is in charge of
Canberra DSN’s Twitter account
has an endless fountain of facts and very eager to share them in response to questions, usually tagged with
#DSS43
. Example: the
weight of DSS43
is roughly 8.5 million kilograms, 4 million of which is moving structure. They also shared time lapse video clips of work in progress, one of which is embedded after the break.
Taking the uniquely capable DSS43 offline for upgrades does have some consequences, one of which is losing our ability to send commands to distant interplanetary probe
Voyager 2
. (Apparently smaller DSN dishes can be arrayed to receive data, but only DSS43 can send commands.) Such sacrifices are necessary as an investment for the future, with upgrade completion scheduled for January 2021. Just in time to help support
Perseverance (formerly “Mars 2020”) rover
‘s arrival in February and many more missions for years to come.
BIG DAY for the BIG DISH
#DSS43
Installation of the new X-band cone in the centre of the antenna dish – Deep Space Station 43🏗️🧂📡
pic.twitter.com/nFg8zf58tJ
— CanberraDSN (@CanberraDSN)
May 7, 2020 | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262425",
"author": "McNugget",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T09:15:53",
"content": "I never realized how large those dishes really were. If anyone is interested, here’s a link to where you can see what the Deep Sky Network is actively doing:https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html",
"pare... | 1,760,373,424.247529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/remaking-a-colecovision/ | (Re)Making A ColecoVision | Al Williams | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Adam",
"Coleco",
"colecovision",
"z80"
] | [Leaded Solder] found some ColecoVision game cartridges at a flea market, and like most of us would, thought, “I’ll build a ColecoVision console from scratch to play them!” Well, maybe most of us would think of that, but not actually do it. He did and you can read about the results in great detail since he wrote up two posts, one covering
the design
and one covering the
construction
.
The ColecoVision was a game console that famously could be expanded into a nice — for its day — personal computer. It even had a daisy wheel printer in that configuration. However, in either configuration, the game console was the brains of the operation. According to [Leaded Solder] the price of a unit in working order is high even though over 2 million were made because of several design problems that make them less likely to survive the decades. Rather than repair and modify an original unit, it was cheaper and much more educational to build new.
The design goal was to use composite video, a single power supply, and reduce the size of the board, mainly by using surface mount parts where possible. [Leaded Solder] admits he didn’t fully understand how address and data buses worked in a system like this when starting this project, and he documents what he learned and winds up with a pretty succinct summary of bus operation. We’d argue that the statement, “…only one chip on a bus is supposed to be enabled at a time…” is a little misleading, however. Two chips are enabled at a time, one writer and one reader. In addition, it isn’t uncommon to have several devices read at the same time (for example, some CPUs have two copies of each register). But that’s a nitpick, especially in the context of the Z80 CPU used here.
By the time the PCBs arrived, the total price tag was up to just over $68 Canadian. We remember scrambling EPROMS on circuit boards to make layout easier. After all, you don’t care that location 0 and 1 in your EPROM are actually in adjacent cells. You just care that when you ask for one, you get it. The ColecoVision apparently did the same thing with its video and audio chips. The data bus runs in reverse. That is the Z80’s D0 pin connects to D7 and D7 connects to D0. Unfortunately, the original PCB didn’t take that into account for the sound chip, so a new board revision solved that problem.
The posts are pretty blunt about mistakes made and maybe we can all learn a little from reading about them. For example, subtle differences in footprints caused several problems with the first two versions of the board. By the end, there were 6 spins of the board. Luckily, PC boards are cheaper than they used to be.
Even so, there are still some controller issues, but we have no doubt he’ll solve it and tell us about it when he does. If you’ve ever tackled a project of this size, you are probably all too familiar with the process of debugging a new board. But most of us don’t document it to this extent. If you ever wanted to watch over someone’s shoulder doing a new design like this, you’ll want to read these posts.
Maybe before making boards,
a breadboard would have helped
. The idea of converting a game console into a PC wasn’t just for the ColecoVision and Adam (the ColecoVision’s computer personality). There were some attempts to do the same with the popular
Atari 2600
. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262402",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T05:35:16",
"content": "Breadboard something like this? I’d rather do revs of boards.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262409",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,424.099689 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/making-smalltalk-on-a-raspberry-pi/ | Making Smalltalk On A Raspberry Pi | Al Williams | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"object oriented",
"raspberry pi",
"smalltalk"
] | Today, you probably don’t think much about object-oriented programming, it’s just part of the landscape. But decades ago, it was strange and obscure technology. While there were several languages that led up to the current object-oriented tools we use today, one of the most influential was Xerox PARC’s Smalltalk language. [Michael Engel] took a C++ implementation of the Smalltalk VM, some byte code for a complete Smalltalk system, a Raspberry Pi “bare metal” library, and produced a
Smalltalk workstation
running on a bare Raspberry Pi — even a Pi Zero. The code is on
GitHub
and is admittedly a work in progress.
Smalltalk was interesting — and sometimes annoying — because everything was an object. Literally everything. The system took over the entire machine. It provided the GUI, the compiler, and the run time libraries. That’s probably why it was easy for [Michael] to forego the usual Linux OS for his project.
If you don’t want to use a spare flash card to boot into the system, there are
Smalltalk 80
versions that run on normal operating systems. The tutorial in that program’s user manual might be helpful to you if you haven’t done Smalltalk before.
Even a lowly integer is a full-scale object in Smalltalk. When you say “3+2” you are actually saying, in Smalltalk, that you have an integer object with value 3 that receives a + message with an integer argument of 2. If you were trying to wrap your mind around object-oriented principles, this was very confusing, although with a few decades of hindsight, it makes more sense. Smalltalk also did a lot to popularize the model/view/controller design for graphical user interface software.
We’ve looked at object-oriented for
state machines
before, which is a nice use case. If you want to see just how well PARC predicted the future, check out the
mother of all demos
. | 43 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262378",
"author": "Jan Steinman",
"timestamp": "2020-07-13T02:15:33",
"content": "While it’s true everything *behaves* like an object in Smalltalk, there are actually “primitives” that handle certain low-level details (like integer math), rather than actually sending math messages... | 1,760,373,424.04896 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/hackaday-links-july-12-2020/ | Hackaday Links: July 12, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bmw",
"CME",
"drm",
"germany",
"hackaday links",
"harbor freight",
"legislation",
"mexico",
"mitm",
"recall",
"SDO",
"security",
"solar",
"sun",
"trojan"
] | Based in the US as Hackaday is, it’s easy to overload the news with stories from home. That’s particularly true with dark tales of the expanding surveillance state, which seem to just get worse here on a daily basis. So we’re not exactly sure how we feel to share not one but two international stories of a dystopian bent; one the one hand, pleased that it’s not us for a change, but on the other, sad to see the trend toward less freedom and more monitoring spreading.
The first story comes from Mexico, where
apparently everything our community does will soon be illegal
. We couch that statement because the analysis is based on Google translations of reports from Mexico, possibly masking the linguistic nuances that undergird legislative prose. So we did some digging and
it indeed appears
that the Mexican Senate approved a package of reforms to existing federal copyright laws that will make it illegal to do things like installing a non-OEM operating system on a PC, or to use non-branded ink cartridges in a printer. Reverse engineering ROMs will be right out too, making any meaningful security research illegal. There appear to be exceptions to the law, but those are mostly to the benefit of the Mexican government for “national security purposes.” It’ll be a sad day indeed for Mexican hackers if this law is passed.
The other story comes from Germany, where
a proposed law would grant sweeping surveillance powers to 19 state intelligence bodies
. The law would require ISPs to install hardware in their data centers that would allow law enforcement to receive data and potentially modify it before sending it on to where it was supposed to go. So German Internet users can look forward to state-sponsored man-in-the-middle attacks and trojan injections if this thing passes.
OK, time for a palate cleanser: take an hour to watch
a time-lapse of the last decade of activity of our star
. NASA put the film together from data sent back by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a satellite that has been keeping an eye on the Sun from geosynchronous orbit since 2010. Each frame of the film is one hour of solar activity, which may sound like it would be boring to watch, but it’s actually quite interesting and very relaxing. There are exciting moments, too, like
enormous solar eruptions
and the beautiful but somehow terrifying
lunar transits
. More terrifying still is
a massive coronal mass ejection
(CME) captured in June 2011. A more subtle but fascinating phenomenon is the gradual decrease in the number of sunspots over the decade as the Sun goes through its normal eleven-year cycle.
You’ll recall that as a public service to our more gear-headed readers that
we recently covered
the recall of automotive jack stands sold at Harbor Freight, purveyor of discount tools in the USA. Parts for the jack stands in question had been cast with a degraded mold, making the pawls liable to kick out under load and drop the vehicle, with potentially catastrophic results for anyone working beneath. To their credit, Harbor Freight responded immediately and replaced tons of stands with a new version. But now, Harbor Freight is forced to
recall the replacement stands as well
, due to a welding error. It’s an embarrassment, to be sure, but to make it as right as possible, Harbor Freight is now accepting any of their brand jack stands for refund or store credit.
And finally, if you thought that the experience of buying a new car couldn’t be any more miserable, wait till you have to pay to use the windshield wipers. Exaggeration?
Perhaps only slightly
, now that BMW “is planning to move some features of its new cars to a subscription model.” Plans like that are common enough as cars get increasingly complex infotainment systems, or with vehicles like Teslas which can be upgraded remotely. But BMW is actually planning on making options such as heated seats and adaptive cruise control available only by subscription — try it out for a month and if you like it, pay to keep them on for a year. It would aggravate us to no end knowing that the hardware supporting these features had already been installed and were just being held ransom by software. Sounds like a perfect job for a hacker — just not one in Mexico. | 30 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262349",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T23:11:46",
"content": "“available only by subscription — try it out for a month and if you like it, pay to keep them on for a year”Nothing new in this, unfortunately.My 2017GM remote start is that way, as is GPS. No. I wil... | 1,760,373,424.350837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/interactive-cnc-foam-cutter-churns-out-abstract-art/ | Interactive CNC Foam Cutter Churns Out Abstract Art | Adil Malik | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"art",
"cnc",
"foam",
"foam cutter",
"gcode",
"xbox controller"
] | Foam is certainly an indispensable raw material for various craft and construction projects. Any serious sculptor however, inevitably grows tired of grinding through a foam block using a simple preheated utensil. The next step up, is to assemble a simple but thoroughly effective hot wire cutting contraption, formed out of a thin guitar wire held taut on a “C” shaped mounting frame. Finally, the addition of some electronics to regulate the power delivery makes this simple tool useful for most settings.
[Freddie] has taken this basic idea a step further, by
building a complete multi-axis CNC foam cutter
intended as an interactive exhibit on computational art. The CNC has the traditional three Cartesian axes but the platform hosting the foam piece can also rotate, introducing an additional degree of freedom. As this is indented to be controlled by attendees, there is no G-code in the mix, rather the inputs of an Xbox controller are applied directly to the work piece.
What is very interesting is how the resulting tool path is visualised and displayed. [Freddie] explains that while the user input tool path could be generated and displayed as equivalent G-code, it does not capture and convey the inherent organic nature of the finished pieces. The solution [Freddie] came up with is to display the toolpath much like a series of musical notes!
We would have loved to have a go at this machine in person, but seeing that isn’t possible in the current circumstances, you can either build
a simpler machine we featured earlier
or [Freddie] could perhaps fire up a camera and let us control it via the interweb, with a live video feed ofcourse! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262165",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T23:37:01",
"content": "“indented to be controlled” Where would we be without the infallible spell checker? It has added so much to our literature.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,373,424.282719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/hack-together-your-own-bat-signal/ | Hack Together Your Own Bat Signal | Orlando Hoilett | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"batman",
"binary counter",
"cd4040",
"Comic-Con",
"cosplay",
"echolocation",
"heterodyne",
"lm386",
"ultrasonic"
] | Bats use echolocation to see objects in front of them. They emit an ultrasonic pulse around 20 kHz (and up to 100 kHz) and then sense the pulses as they reflect off an object and back to the bat. It’s the same type of mechanism used by ultrasonic proximity sensors for object-avoidance. Humans (except perhaps the very young ones) can’t hear the ultrasonic pulses since the frequency is too high, but an inexpensive microphone in a simple bat detector could. As it turns out bat detectors are available off the shelf, but where’s the fun in that? So, like any good hacker, [WilkoL]
decided to build his own
.
[WilkoL’s] design is composed primarily of an electret microphone, microphone preamplifier, CD4040 binary counter, LM386 audio amplifier, and a speaker. Audio signals are analog and their amplitudes vary based on how close the sound is to the microphone. [WilkoL] wanted to pick up bat sounds as far away as possible, so he cranked up the gain of the microphone preamplifier by quite a bit, essentially railing the amplifiers. Since he mostly cares about the frequency of the sound and not the amplitude, he wasn’t concerned about saturating the transistor output.
The CD4040 then divides the signal by a factor of 16, generating an output signal within the audible frequency range of the human ear. A bat signal of 20 kHz divides down to 1.25 kHz and a bat signal of up to 100 kHz divides down to 6.25 kHz.
He was able to test his bat detector with an ultrasonic range finder and by the noise generated from jingling his keychain (apparently there are some pretty non-audible high-frequency components from jingling keys). He hasn’t yet been able to get a recording of his device picking up bats. It has detected bats on a number of occasions, but he was a bit too late to get it on video.
Anyway, we’re definitely looking forward to seeing the bat detector in action! Who knows,
maybe he’ll find Batman
. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262137",
"author": "Karl",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T20:36:46",
"content": "The real question i have is whether this could be used to repel the locusts that invaded Las Vegas last summer…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "626214... | 1,760,373,424.486357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/aerodynamics-for-dummies/ | Aerodynamics For Dummies | Al Williams | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"aerodynamics"
] | We don’t know if aerodynamics is really a subject for dummies,
per se
, but if you are interested in flying or building drones and model aircraft, [Jenny Ma’s] new video that you can see below will help you get an easy introduction to some
key concepts
. (Embedded below.)
The show starts with coverage of lift, thrust, and drag, but moves on to topics such as stalling and coffin corners. If you have a pilot ticket, you might not learn a lot of new things, but for the rest of us, there are some interesting nuggets that you might not have known or might have forgotten from your physics classes in high school.
Actually, some of us are old enough that we learned an incorrect theory of how wings generate lift in school, and [Jenny] covers that and explains how we now know that the cause and effect of that theory were backward.
Speaking of bad theories, the video covers subsonic flight, although there is a little discussion of supersonic flight. Remember that before the X1 broke the sound barrier in 1947, many people thought it was not possible to do that.
This video won’t prepare you for designing the next jumbo jet or X1, but it might just help you next time you want to build a
novel quadcopter
or even a
paper airplane
. | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262091",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T17:32:27",
"content": "So according to her, a cambered wing with an airfoil cross section will not generate lift at zero angle of attack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262... | 1,760,373,424.425112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/hackaday-made-me-buy-it/ | Hackaday Made Me Buy It! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"cnc",
"diy pcb",
"newsletter"
] | Reading Hackaday is great! You get so many useful tips from watching other people work, it’s truly changed nearly everything about the way I hack, especially considering that I’ve been reading Hackaday for the past 15 years. Ideas, freely shared among peers, are the best of the free and open-source hardware community. But there’s a dark downside: I’m going CNC mill shopping.
It all started with [Robin]’s excellent
video and website tutorial on his particular PCB DIY procedures
. You see, I love making PCBs at home, because I’m unafraid of chemistry,
practiced with a rolling pin and iron
, and super-duper impatient. If I can get a board done today, I’m not waiting a week, even if that means an hour of work on my part.
Among other things, he’s got this great technique with a scriber pen and a cleverly designed registration base that make it easy for him to do nearly perfectly aligned two-sided boards with a resolution approaching etching. The ability to make easy double-sided boards, with holes drilled, makes milling attractive, but the low resolution of v-cutter milled boards has been the show-stopper for me. If that’s gone, maybe it’s time to take a serious look.
And heck, making PCBs is really just the tip of the iceberg for what I’d want to do with a CNC mill. Currently, I do dodgy metalworking with an x-y table and a drill press, some of which may someday land me in the hospital. But if I had a mill, I’d be doing
all sorts of funny wood joinery
and who knows what else. I lack experience with a mill, but coincidentally, we just had a
Hack Chat on Linux for machine tools this week
. You see? It’s all conspiring against me.
The only question left is what I should get. I’m looking at the ballscrew 3040 range of CNCs, and maybe upgrading the spindle. I’d like to mill up to aluminum, but don’t really need steel. What do you think?
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
! | 44 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262056",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T14:39:57",
"content": "Love your writing style, Elliot! We need more Elliot articles!😀",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262074",
"author": "Drew",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,373,424.613797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/a-desk-calendar-with-a-difference/ | A Desk Calendar With A Difference | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"calendar",
"e-ink",
"pcb",
"RT-thread"
] | With the office computer revolution now many decades old, many of the items that once stood on a typical desk are now part of history. The typewriter, the Rolodex, and the desk calendar have all been subsumed by computers and mobile phones.
This electronic desk calendar
is perhaps an exception, created as a promotional device for the RT-Thread IoT OS. It features an interesting take on a perpetual calendar, with an array of days spanned by a sliding frame such that any month’s days of the week can be depicted. The days are touch buttons, and can be used to bring up the information on an e-ink display.
Behind it all is a WinnerMicro W600 WiFi-enabled system-on-chip, that runs the aforementioned RT-Thread IoT OS. This OS is a bit of a mystery, according to
its Wikipedia page
it’s an open-source project from China with ten years of development behind it, but this appears to be the first time we’ve seen it here at Hackaday. Anyone using it?
We like this project though, for its perpetual calendar, and for its re-imagining of a bygone desk accoutrement with an e-ink display to conserve battery. It’s not the first e-ink calendar we’ve seen,
this previous one used a Raspberry Pi
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262047",
"author": "hackaday.inputoutput",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T13:34:17",
"content": "It reminds me about the foldable device with clock, alarm, timer and calculator which I had. It displayed a calendar of a current or other chosen month. There was a similar layout – number of... | 1,760,373,424.530489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/a-zx80-with-a-proper-case/ | A ZX80 With A Proper Case | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"sinclair zx80",
"zx80"
] | A popular project among Hackaday readers is to recreate a piece of home computing or gaming hardware from the past, and in that endeavour we’ve seen some truly amazing projects. Usually they take the form of bare PCBs or custom cases that look nothing like the original, but not [Cees Meijer]’s Sinclair ZX80 clone.
It sports a 3D printed replica of the original computer’s vacuum-formed case
, which from a distance you could be mistake for the real thing.
Internally it’s not a ZX80 at all, but a Raspberry Pi Zero running an emulator. But with a case like this one that’s not the point. It doesn’t have the full-length PCB of the original but a modern ZX80 membrane keyboard, and the Pi appears to be hiding somewhere in the “hump” used by the Astec UHF modulator on the original. There is more information
in a blog post
, and the model
can be downloaded via Thingiverse
. Handily, the files also include the original CAD file from RS DesignSpark, should you wish to modify it to your own tastes. If somebody could mate it with
Tynemouth Software’s ZX80 kit
then our cup would run over.
Of course,
this isn’t the only retrocomputer for which a replacement case can be found
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262033",
"author": "0x",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T09:53:54",
"content": "i hate membran keys, I must write a program on zx81. ach terrible!!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262036",
"author": "Darren",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,373,424.659523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/its-time-for-watch-clocks-to-make-a-comeback/ | It’s Time For Watch Clocks To Make A Comeback | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Mega 2560",
"capacitive touch",
"casio",
"casio watch",
"clock",
"HMI",
"HMI display",
"synchronize Swatches!"
] | Along with all the colorful, geometric influence of Memphis design everywhere, giant wristwatch clocks were one of our favorite things about the 80s. We always wanted one, and frankly, we still do. Evidently, so did [Kothe]. But instead of some splashy Swatch-esque style, [Kothe] went the nerdy route by building
a giant Casio F-91W to hang on the wall
.
Not only does it look fantastic, it has the full functionality of the original from the alarm to the stopwatch to the backlit screen. Well, everything but the water resistance. The case is 3D-printed, as are the buckle and the buttons. [Kothe] might have printed the straps, but they were too big for the bed. Instead, they are made of laser-cut foam and engraved with all the details.
Inside there’s a 7″ touch display, a real-time clock module, and an Arduino Mega to make everything tick. To make each of the printed buttons work, [Kothe] cleverly extended a touch sensor module’s input pad with some copper tape. We think this could only be more awesome if it were modeled after one of Casio’s calculator watches, but that might be asking too much. Take a few seconds to watch the demo after the break.
Prefer your clocks less clock-like?
Get a handle on the inner workings of this slot machine-based stunner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_1-9a8SJyw | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262013",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T05:05:57",
"content": "That is friggin Awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6262014",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T05:33:55",
"conte... | 1,760,373,424.89694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/mmm-obfuscated-shell-donuts/ | Mmm… Obfuscated Shell Donuts | Sven Gregori | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"ASCII",
"ascii animation",
"ascii art",
"IOCCC",
"obfuscated",
"Obfuscated C Code Contest",
"shell",
"The Simpsons"
] | In case you grow tired of clear-written, understandable code, obfuscation contests provide a nice change of scenery, and trying to make sense of their entries can be a fun-time activity and an interesting alternative to the usual brainteasers. If we ever happen to see a Simpsons episode on the subject, [Andy Sloane] has the obvious candidate for a [Hackerman Homer] entry:
a rotating ASCII art donut, formatted as donut-shaped C code
.
The code itself actually dates back to 2006, but has recently resurfaced on Reddit after [Lex Fridman]
posted a video about it on YouTube
, so we figured we take that chance to give some further attention to this nifty piece of art. [Andy]’s blog article goes in all the details of the rotation math, and how he simply uses ASCII characters with different pixel amounts to emulate the illumination. For those who prefer C over mathematical notation, we added a reformatted version after the break.
Sure, the code’s donut shape is mainly owed to the added filler comments, but let’s face it, the donut shape is just a neat little addition, and the code wouldn’t be any less impressive squeezed all in one line —
or multiple lines of appropriate lengths
. However, for the actual 2006 IOCCC, [Andy] took it
a serious step further with his entry
, and you should definitely give that one a try. For some more obfuscated shell animations, check out
the fluid dynamics simulator
from a few years back, and for a more recent entry, have a look at the
printf Tic Tac Toe
we covered last month.
int k;
double sin();
double cos();
main() {
float A=0;
float B=0;
float i;
float j;
float z[1760];
char b[1760];
printf("\x1b[2J");
for (;;) {
memset(b, 32, 1760);
memset(z, 0, 7040);
for (j = 0; 6.28 > j; j += 0.07) {
for (i = 0; 6.28 > i; i += 0.02) {
float c = sin(i);
float d = cos(j);
float e = sin(A);
float f = sin(j);
float g = cos(A);
float h = d + 2;
float D = 1 / (c * h * e + f * g + 5);
float l = cos(i);
float m = cos(B);
float n = sin(B);
float t = c * h * g - f * e;
int x = 40 + 30 * D * (l * h * m - t * n);
int y = 12 + 15 * D * (l * h * n + t * m);
int o = x + 80 * y;
int N = 8 * ((f * e - c * d * g) * m - c * d * e - f * g - l * d * n);
if (22 > y && y > 0 && x > 0 && 80 > x && D > z[o]) {
z[o] = D;
b[o] = ".,-~:;=!*#$@"[N > 0 ? N : 0];
}
}
}
printf("\x1b[H");
for (k = 0; 1761 > k; k++) {
putchar(k % 80 ? b[k] : 10);
}
A += 0.04;
B += 0.02;
}
}
If you want to slow down (or speed up) the animation, decrease (or increase) the values added to
A
and
B
at the very end of the loop. Keep them in the same proportion to retain the rotation animation, or just play around with them and see what happens.
Remember to link against the Math library with
-lm
when compiling.
[via
/r/programming
] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262009",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T04:16:59",
"content": "If you were on the “shorter lines means cleaner code” side in the Linus 80-char line length hullaballoo, I give you this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,373,424.802548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/vintage-instrument-gets-modern-replacement-for-unobtainium-parts/ | Vintage Instrument Gets Modern Replacement For Unobtainium Parts | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"ECL",
"emitter-coupled logic",
"H-P",
"hewlett packard",
"pulse generator",
"SPICE"
] | One of the best parts about Hackaday is how much you learn from the projects that people tackle, especially when they are repairs on old gear with unknown failure modes and potentially multiple problems. By the same token, the worst part about Hackaday is seeing what other people are capable of and knowing that you’ve got a long way to go to catch up to them.
A case in point is
[Curious Marc]’s recent repair of an old pulse generator
. The instrument in question is an H-P 8082A, a device from a time when H-P was a place where “good engineers managed by even better engineers [wanted] to help other engineers,” as [Marc] so eloquently puts it. The instrument was capable of 250 MHz output with complete control over the amplitude, frequency, duty cycle, and rising and falling edge geometry of the pulses, in addition to being able to output double pulses. For an all-analog instrument made in 1974, it was in decent shape, and it still powered up and produced at least the square wave output. But [Marc]’s exploration revealed a few problems, which are detailed and partially addressed in
the first video below
.
In
part two
[Marc] goes after the problem behind the pulse delay function. He traced it to a bad IC, which was bad news since it was a custom H-P part using emitter-coupled logic (ECL) to achieve the needed performance that can no longer be sourced. So naturally, [Marc] decided to replace the chip with a custom circuit. The design and simulation of the circuit are detailed in part two, while the non-trivial details of designing a PCB to handle the high-speed signals take up most of
part three
. We found the details on getting the trace impedance just right fascinating.
In the end, [Marc]’s pulse generator was salvaged. It’ll go into service helping him probe the mysteries of
vintage electronics from the Apollo era
, so we’re looking forward to seeing more about this great old instrument. | 13 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261982",
"author": "Old Guy",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T23:19:07",
"content": "Not to belittle the article or the project but sometimes I get overwhelmed by the beauty of the PCB or the equipment as a whole as ART. This was one of those times. In the 70s I imprinted on an HP gas c... | 1,760,373,424.84806 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/hacked-case-fan-follows-the-leader-with-ir-sensor/ | Hacked Case Fan Follows The Leader With IR Sensor | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny85",
"case fan",
"fan controller",
"RPM sensor",
"speed controller"
] | Adding an additional fan to your PC is usually pretty straightforward, but as [Randy Elwin] found, this isn’t always the case with the newer Small Form Factor (SFF) machines. Not only was the standard 80 mm fan too large to fit inside of the case, but there wasn’t even a spot to plug it in. So he had to come up with
his own way to power it up and control its speed
.
Now if he only needed power, that wouldn’t have been a problem. You could certainly tap into one of the wires coming from the PSU and get 12 V to spin the fan. But that would mean it was running at max speed the whole time; fine in a pinch, but not exactly ideal for a daily driver.
Note the SATA connector pulled from a dead HDD.
To get speed control, [Randy] put together a little circuit using an ATtiny85, an IR LED, and a LTR-306 phototransistor. The optical components are used to detect the GPU fan’s current speed, which itself is controlled based on system temperature. Using the GPU fan RPM as an input, a lookup table on the microcontroller sets an appropriate speed for the 80 mm case fan.
One could argue that it would have been easier to connect a temperature sensor to the ATtiny85, but by synchronizing the case fan to the computer-controlled GPU fan, [Randy] is able to manually control them both from software if necessary. Rather than waiting on the case temperature to rise, he can peg the GPU fan and have the external fan speed up to match when the system is under heavy load.
You may think this is overkill for a simple case fan, but compared to
some of the cooling hacks we’ve seen in the past
, it’s pretty tame. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261948",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T20:16:20",
"content": "Nice exercise, but overkill for fan control. Why not use some temp sensor to control speed?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262020",
"autho... | 1,760,373,424.956167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/dream-team-members-announced-for-the-2020-hackaday-prize/ | Dream Team Members Announced For The 2020 Hackaday Prize | Mike Szczys | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"Dream Team challenge"
] | The Dream Team program is an exciting new element of the
2020 Hackaday Prize
, with twelve people accepted to work full-time on a specific problem for each of our non-profit partners this summer. Each team of three is already deep into an engineering sprint to pull together a design, and to recognize their efforts, they’ll be receiving a $3,000 monthly microgrant during the two-month program.
Join us after the break to meet the people that make up each of the teams and get a taste of what they’re working on. We’ll be following along as they publish detailed work logs on
the Dream Team project pages
.
Conservation X Labs Dream Team
Erin “RobotGrrl” Kennedy, Oluwatobi Oyinlola, and Leonardo Ward have been selected for the Conservation X Labs Dream Team. Erin is the technical founder of Robot Missions, recently completed the Space Studies Program at the International Space University, and is from Ontario, Canada. Oluwatobi is an Embedded Systems Engineer, Inventor, and IoT Evangelist from Ibadan, Nigeria. Leonardo is an electronics engineer who works on future technologies and lives in La Guaira, Venezuela.
Together
they are working on the challenge of reducing ghost gear in the world’s oceans
, the equipment from fishing and maritime industries that doesn’t make it back to the ship and remains in the environment as pollution.
Field Ready Dream Team
Antonio Anaya, Meesha Gupta, and Thomas Hartley have been selected for the Field Ready Dream Team. Antonio has experience adapting methodologies and tools for use in remote and difficult environments, and lives in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico. Meesha is an electrical engineer who’s worked on building prosthetic arms and lives in Schenectady, New York. Tom is a design engineer with backgrounds in computer science and electronics who lives in London, UK.
Together
they are working on the challenge of ensuring quality control of distributed manufacturing processes
. When developing on-site manufacturing in remote areas and disaster relief situations, a feedback loop for what worked and what didn’t will multiply the effectiveness of the efforts.
CalEarth Dream Team
Sameera Chukkapalli, Jason Knight, and Alex Whittemore have been selected for the CalEarth Dream Team. Sameera is an advanced architect and director of Needlab in Barcelona, Spain. Jason is a product designer interested in biological fabrication and design who lives in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Alex is an electronics engineer with expertise in design for manufacture who lives in Manhattan Beach, California.
Together
they are working on the challenge of automating parts of the building process for SuperAdobe housing
. The labor that goes into the earthen building system is the most expensive and time-consuming part of this building process, and any efficiency gain means more housing at reduced time and expense.
United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles Dream Team
Kelvin Chow, Ruben Kackstaetter, and Nataliya Kosmyna have been selected for the UCPLA Dream Team. Kelvin is a mechanical and biomedical engineer from Toronto, Canada. Ruben is an embedded software engineer with a background in electrical engineer who lives in Frederick, Colorado. Nataliya is an MIT researcher and entrepreneur with a Ph.D in computer science who lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Together
they are working on the challenge of designing a new type of universal remote to meet the needs of physically challenged individuals
. One-off accessibility devices are surprisingly expensive and require specialized skills to integrate into everyday life. This dream team will work to break down barriers of cost and usability for people living with a range of physical challenges.
We Want to See Your Projects in the Hackaday Prize!
Congratulations to all of the Dream Team members, it’s exciting to see people from all over the world come together to work on the challenge. Of course that’s the point of the Hackaday Prize, and we want to see everyone spending some cycles to tackle hard problems.
You have until August 31st to submit your own entry in any of the challenge categories of
the 2020 Hackaday Prize
. You’ll be solving
real-world issues highlighted by this year’s non-profit partners
, and be in the running for a $50,000 grand prize and nine other top prizes. We can’t wait to see what you’re working on!
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262019",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2020-07-11T06:55:05",
"content": "Hey, all the pictures are in black and white! I came here to see who has the most imaginative hair coloring this time around. Sigh…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,425.161297 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/how-early-radio-receivers-worked/ | How Early Radio Receivers Worked | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"crystal radio",
"radio frequency",
"receivers",
"reflex receiver",
"RF",
"TRF",
"TRF receiver",
"Tuned Radio Frequency"
] | If you’ve ever built a crystal radio, there’s something magical about being able to pull voices and music from far away out of thin air. If you haven’t built one, maybe you should while there’s still something on the AM band. Of course, nowadays the equivalent might be an SDR. But barring a computer solution, there are not many ways to convert radio waves into intelligence. From a pocket radio to advanced RADAR to a satellite in orbit, receiving a radio wave is accomplished in pretty much the same way.
There are, however, many ways to modulate and demodulate that radio wave. Of course, an AM radio works differently than an FM radio. A satellite data downlink works differently, too. But the process of capturing the radio wave from the air and getting them into a form ready for further processing hasn’t changed much over the years.
In this article, I’ll talk about the most common radio receiver architectures you may have seen in years past, and next week I’ll talk about modern architectures. Either way, understanding receiver architectures will help you design new radios or troubleshoot them.
Comparing Radios
If you were going to grade a receiver, there are several things that are of prime importance:
Selectivity
– There are lots of radio waves swimming around you. A selective receiver can pull out just the one you want. This is particularly noticeable when you have two strong stations near each other in frequency.
Sensitivity
– The signal coming in from an antenna is probably very weak. Receivers have different levels of sensitivity and a more sensitive receiver will pick up a weaker signal.
Noise floor
– Receivers will have a certain amount of noise that will cover up a weak signal. Obviously, the lower the noise floor, the better reception for weak signals.
That Crystal Radio
The
crystal radio
is one of the simplest of radio designs, operating without an amplifier and getting its power from the radio signal itself. The crystal radio you built as a kid is very similar in design to the earliest radio receivers. A tuned circuit picks the frequency and a detector — usually a diode — demodulates the signal directly. If you do the math, the tuned circuit has low impedance to all frequencies except the one you’ve tuned into. The coil and the capacitor effectively cancel each other out at that frequency, and — if the components were perfect — present an infinite impedance to the signal of interest. That means all other signals will attenuate compared to the main signal.
The original design of these radios date to when there was no good way to amplify signals, so it doesn’t. That means you need a strong signal and a big antenna. You also benefit from a solid ground connection. Never built a crystal radio? My favorite simulator, Falstad, has a crystal radio you can
simulate
. The simulation relies on the program’s antenna component which has AM modulated signals at 3 kHz, 2.71 kHz, and 2.43 kHz.
While the tank circuit offers some selectivity, it isn’t very good. The sensitivity of this receiver is also not very good. You don’t generally see circuits like this in practical applications. However, some people like to try to push the best possible performance from a crystal radio, like Chris Wendling does in the video below. If you decide to build one, you might want to start with something
more modest
.
TRF and Reflex
A step up from the crystal radio is the TRF or tuned radio frequency architecture. With TRF, you basically have a crystal radio with some amplifiers ahead of the detector that amplify better at some frequencies than others — essentially filters with gain.
If you’ve ever seen a
1920s- or 1930s-era radio
with numerous tuning knobs on the front panel, that’s probably a TRF radio. You had to tune each dial to the correct frequency.
The TRF is not a bad design, especially if you could figure out how to change the tuning of the amplifiers from a single control. But it is on the lower end of the performance spectrum. However, many inexpensive radios still use TRF because a 1972-era chip and its successors cram an entire TRF radio into a small IC package.
The device looked like a transistor and at least one variant had 10 transistors inside. It provided the RF amplification, detection, and even automatic gain control using only six external components. The original chip expected you to have an external coil and capacitor, a few filter capacitors, and a few resistors to both power the device and provide the automatic gain control (AGC) action. Later models also had some audio amplification stages.
Obviously, one three-legged device appealed to companies that wanted to make small cheap radios. Speaking of cheaper, another old version of the TRF is the reflex receiver. It dates back to 1914, although it was independently discovered at least one other time in the early 20th century.
The idea is to use one amplifier for amplifying both RF and the audio output (see the accompanying block diagram and schematic). This is possible because the radio frequency is so much higher than the audio frequencies and you can use filters to steer the signals through the same tube. These are generally not seen much anymore, but it is an interesting solution to the days when saving a single active device was a major cost savings.
Modern Times
While you don’t see many crystal and reflex radios these days, there are still TRF designs floating around, especially based on the many ICs that work that way. However, the regenerative receiver is probably a better choice if you want to make a very simple but workable radio. There are also direct conversion receivers — you see them a lot with software defined radio setups. The gold standard is the superheterodyne receiver, which is what an overwhelming number of devices use today.
I’ll talk about those architectures, and a few others, in the next article. Meanwhile, see what you can do to build that crystal radio. If you don’t have the right parts, you can make most of them
from common items
. If you don’t have a diode, you could use a razor blade and a pencil, as [RimstarOrg] — the YouTube channel of Hackaday’s own Steven Dufresne — shows in the video below.
Acknowledgment: Most of the pretty pictures of block diagrams and schematics were adapted from public domain sources on Wikipedia, particularly from [Chetvorno]. What a great resource. | 43 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261911",
"author": "Laurens",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T17:11:54",
"content": "The AM radio IC in to92 ‘transistor’ package mentioned is the ZN414, aka MK484, aka TA7642.They are fun things to experiment with. A complete radio with headphone output consists of something like 10 part... | 1,760,373,425.118338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/hackaday-podcast-075-3d-printing-japanese-joinery-android-phonk-one-armed-time-bandit-and-whistling-bridges/ | Hackaday Podcast 075: 3D Printing Japanese Joinery, Android PHONK, One-Armed Time Bandit, And Whistling Bridges | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Golden Gate Bridge",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"joinery",
"n64",
"project box",
"Shoji Lantern"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams scoop up a basket of great hacks from the past week. Be amazed by the use of traditional Japanese joinery in a 3D-printed design — you’re going to want to print one of these Shoji lamps. We behold the beautiful sound of a noise generator, and the freaky sound from the Golden Gate. There’s a hack for Android app development using Javascript on an IDE hosted from the phone as a webpage on your LAN. And you’ll like the KiCAD trick that makes enclosure design for existing boards a lot easier.
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!
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(60 MB or so.)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 075 Show Notes:
New This Week:
How do you get a foam airplane out of a 35 m tall tree?
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
PHONK – A Hacker’s Fun Shortcut To Android Programming
Ask Hackaday: Why Aren’t We Hacking Cellphones?
Designing 3D Printed Enclosures For KiCad PCBs
HackadayU: KiCad + FreeCAD Tickets, Multiple Dates
Time Bandit Clock Hits The Aesthetic Jackpot
Remote Code Execution On The N64
Elegant Shoji Lamps From Your 3D Printer
MAKE:
CNC Panel Joinery Notebook
Twitter:
Sampo-gumi-shikuchi
joint rendering
Thingiverse:
Japanese Carpentry: Sampo-gumi-shikuchi
Analog Noise Generator, Fighter Of Other Noises
Don’t Fear The Filter: Lowpass Edition
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
The Spin Cycle: Washing Machine Motor Converts 10-Speed To E-Bike
Your Microcontroller Is Your IDE
Magnetic Couplings Make This Lego Submarine Watertight
Elliot’s Picks:
Syringes Put The Squeeze On This Mini Drill Press
Gaming In Different Languages
Reviving A DOA Smart Bulb With Custom Firmware For Its ESP8266
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Bridge Over Trebled Water: How The Golden Gate Bridge Started To Sing
Suspension Bridges Of Disbelief
Review: Calculator Kit Is Just A Few Hacks From Greatness | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,425.003091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/steampunk-geiger-counter-is-a-mix-of-art-and-science/ | Steampunk Geiger Counter Is A Mix Of Art And Science | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"dekatron",
"geiger counter",
"ionizing radiation",
"nixie tube",
"steampunk"
] | It took nearly a year for [Chris Crocker-White] to
assemble this glorious mahogany and brass Geiger counter
, but we think you’ll agree with us that it was time well spent. From the servo-actuated counter to the Nixie tubes and LED faux-decatrons, this project is an absolute love letter to antiquated methods of displaying information. Although for good measure, the internal Raspberry Pi also pushes all the collected radiation data into the cloud.
[Chris] says the design of this radiation monitor was influenced by his interest in steampunk and personal experience working on actual steam engines, but more specifically, he also drew inspiration from a counter built by [Richard Mudhar].
Based on a design published in
Maplin
back in 1987
, [Richard] included a physical counter and LED “dekatron” displays as an homage to a 1960s era counter he’d used back in his school days. [Chris] put a modern spin on the electronics and added the glowing display of real-time Counts Per Minute (CPM) as an extra bonus; because who doesn’t like some Nixies in their steampunk?
Internally, the pulses generated by a common Geiger counter board are picked up by some custom electronics to drive the servo and LEDs. Triggered by those same pulses, the Raspberry Pi 3A+ updates the Nixie display and pushes the data out to the cloud for analysis and graphing. Note that the J305β Geiger tube from the detector has been relocated to the outside of the machine, with two copper elbows used as connectors. This improves the sensitivity of the instrument, but perhaps even more importantly, looks awesome.
We’ve seen some very
high-tech DIY radiation detection gear
over the years,
but these clever machines that add a bit of whimsy
to the
otherwise mildly terrifying process of ionizing radiation
are always our favorite. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261897",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T15:58:58",
"content": "If i were going to put this much work into it i would at least put a nice pancake tube in.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261900",
"author": "qw... | 1,760,373,425.290807 |
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