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https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/printed-ts100-case-beats-the-heat-with-a-bearing/ | Printed TS100 Case Beats The Heat With A Bearing | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"iterative design",
"thingiverse",
"ts100"
] | As we’ve said many times in the past, the creation of custom cases and enclosures is one of the best and most obvious applications for desktop 3D printing. When armed with even an entry-level printer, your projects will never again have to suffer through the indignity of getting hot glued into a nondescript plastic box. But if you’re printing with basic PLA, you need to be careful that nothing gets too hot inside.
Which was a problem when
[Oleg Vint] started work on this 3D printed case for the popular TS100 soldering iron
. But with the addition of a standard 608 bearing, the case provides a safe spot for the iron to cool off before it gets buttoned back up for storage. Of course, you can also use the flip-out perch to hold the iron while you’re working.
The bearing stand that served as inspiration for the case.
As [Oleg] explains on the Thingiverse page for the case, he actually blended a few existing projects together to arrive at the final design. Specifically, the idea of using the 608 bearing came from
a printable TS100 stand originally designed in 2017 by [MightyNozzle]
. Released under Creative Commons, [Oleg] was able to mash the bearing stand together with elements from several other printable TS100 cases to come up with his unique combined solution.
In a physical sense, this project is a great example of the sort of bespoke creations that are made possible by desktop 3D printing. But it’s also a testament to the incredible community that’s sprung up around this technology.
While the logistics of it still could use some work
, seeing
hackers and makers swap and combine their designs
like this is extremely inspiring.
[Thanks Arturo182] | 55 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262318",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T20:25:25",
"content": "Wonder how long it’ll go before it warps? PETG maybe?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262323",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2020... | 1,760,373,427.22228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/maybe-one-of-the-most-adorable-obstacle-avoiding-robots-youve-seen/ | Maybe One Of The Most Adorable Obstacle Avoiding Robots You’ve Seen | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Crazy Circuits",
"HC-SR04",
"lego",
"proximity",
"robotics"
] | We’re all pretty well-acquainted with the obstacle avoiding robot. These little inventions use a proximity sensor to detect an object in front of the robot, then circumvent the object accordingly.
Brown Dog Gadgets’ little robot
really caught our eye, mostly because it’s kind of cute.
This little robot combines a few LEGO pieces, Arduino, and Brown Dog Gadgets’ own in-house invention,
Crazy Circuits
. The LEGO pieces make up the body of the robot, craftily enclosing a small portable battery pack used to power the bot. Brown Dog Gadgets uses another home-grown design, their robotics controller board, breaking out a few GPIO pins of an Arduino-compatible microcontroller into LEGO-compatible connections. This makes it easy to interface two of our favorite DIY STEM tools using a solderless connection.
Add a few LEGO wheels and a caster for pivoting and you’ve got a pretty simple, little robot. Fortunately, Brown Dog Gadgets was very thorough in their write-up,
so head on over to their Instructable for all the details
.
In the meantime, we’ve got a rich history of obstacle-avoiding robots here on Hackaday
. Take a look around. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6264485",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2020-07-20T09:37:28",
"content": "That’s a pretty cool breakout.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264804",
"author": "Orlando Hoilett",
"timestamp": "2020-07-21T09:12:1... | 1,760,373,427.261973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/7-segment-display-is-no-small-feat/ | 7-Segment Display Is No Small Feat | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"giant",
"ws2812"
] | The 7-segment display certainly is a popular build, and surprisingly people still come up with new takes on this over a hundred-year-old way to represent numbers. This time [jegatheesan.soundarapandian] is making it big by building a giant
7 feet tall 7-segment display
.
Apparently, the plan is to build a giant clock so he started off by making the first digit. To keep it cheap and simple the segments are made from corrugated cardboard which was carefully cut, folded, and then glued together. The light-diffusing lid is simply made from white paper. He used the ubiquitous WS2812B strips to light up the segments, but things turned out to be more complicated as he was not able to get enough strips to fill up all the segments. This forced him to cut up the strip into individual pieces and space them out by reconnecting the LEDs with wires. Cutting, stripping, and soldering 186 wires took him almost 10 hours. An Arduino Uno serves as the brains of the device and there is a nice Android app to control it via Bluetooth.
We are excited to see the complete clock once it is finished. In the meantime let us remember other epic displays like that made from
144 individual 7-segment displays
or the
giant LED video wall using 1200 ping pong balls
.
Video after the break. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262258",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T14:57:38",
"content": "For anyone interested, you can buy ws2812 leds chained together with short lengths of wire from the regular chinese places for not to much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,373,426.904027 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/softcore-cpu-comparison/ | SoftCore CPU Comparison | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"cpu",
"fpga",
"RISC-V",
"SoC",
"softcore"
] | Monty Python once did a sketch where people tried to summarize Proust in fifteen seconds. Although summarizing eight FPGA-based CPUs is almost as daunting, [jaeblog] does a nice job of
giving a quick sketch of how the CPUs work
with the Xilinx Vivado toolchain and the Digilent Arty board.
The eight CPUs are: VexRiscv, LEON3, PicoRV32, Neo430, ZPU, Microwatt, S1 Core, and Swerv EH1.
The comparison criteria were very practical: A C compiler (gcc or llvm) for each CPU and no CPUs that were tied to a particular FPGA. Two of the CPUs didn’t fit on the Arty board, so their comparisons are a bit more theoretical. There were other considerations such as speed, documentation, debugging support, and others.
It was interesting to see the various CPUs ranging from some very mature processors to some new kids on the block, and while the evaluations were somewhat subjective, they seemed fair and representative of the things you’d look for yourself. You can also get the
test code
if you want to try things for yourself.
The winner? The post identifies three CPUs that were probably the top choices, although none were just perfect. Of course, your experience may vary.
If you want an easy introduction to adding things to a soft CPU, this
RISC-V project
is approachable. Or if you prefer SPARC, check out
this project
. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262226",
"author": "Patrick McDonald",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T12:04:01",
"content": "My first thought was “You can’t find enough people who have read Proust to have a survey like that.” My take is “Man eats cookie, hilarity ensures.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,427.01322 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/learn-the-secrets-of-matching-bottle-cap-threads-to-one-another/ | Learn The Secrets Of Matching Bottle Cap Threads To One Another | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"bottle",
"bottle neck",
"reverse engineering",
"thread calculator",
"threads"
] | Do you want to design something to match existing threads on a bottle, or a cap? It turns out there’s an easier way than reaching tiredly for the calipers and channeling one’s inner reverse-engineer. Bottle cap threads — whose industry term is the
neck finish
— aren’t arbitrary things; they are highly standardized, and [Noupoi] researched it all so that you don’t have to!
The Bottle Cap Thread Calculator
takes a few key measurements and spits out everything needed to model exact matches. Need some guidance on how exactly to use the information the calculator spits out? There is
a handy link to a Fusion360 tutorial on creating bottle threads
(YouTube video) to demonstrate.
This all came from [Noupoi] wanting to model an adapter to transfer the contents of one bottle to another, smaller bottle. By identifying which thread was used on each bottle, the job of modeling a matching adapter was much easier. It turns out that the bottle necks were an SP 28-415 (larger) and a 24-415 (smaller), and with that information the adapter was far simpler to design. If you want to check the adapter out,
it’s available on Thingiverse
.
If truly reverse-engineering bottle threads is needed,
here’s a method we covered that involves making a simple cast
and working from that.
[via
Reddit
] | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262211",
"author": "Menga",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T08:42:34",
"content": "I don’t have a 3d printer yet, but the specs of the threads from the ISBT come handy to me. Might make a tap for PCO-1881 wich is the most common in my country.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,426.964896 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/life-saving-surgery-for-a-telescopic-antenna/ | Life-Saving Surgery For A Telescopic Antenna | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"antenna",
"RC transmitter",
"repair",
"telescopic"
] | Whether it was as an impulsive youth or an impatient adult, there’s probably few among us who haven’t broken a telescopic antenna or two over the years. It doesn’t take much to put a bend in the thin walled tubing, and after that, all bets are off. So [The Amateur Engineer] couldn’t really be too upset when his son snapped the antenna off the transmitter of an old RC truck. Instead, he decided to
take it apart and see how it could be repaired
.
Taking a thin screwdriver to the antenna’s bottom most segment, he was able to widen up the opening enough to remove the upper sections as well as recover the broken piece and copper locking plates. He cut out the damaged area and drilled new holes for the pins on the copper plates to fit into. Inserting the repaired section back into the lowest segment was no problem, but he says it took a little trial and error before he was able to roll the edge over enough to keep the antenna from falling apart.
Buying a replacement would certainly have been easier, but as the radios in our devices have moved into the higher frequencies, these collapsible antennas have become a bit harder to come by. Modern RC vehicles operate on 2.4 GHz, so they don’t need the long antennas that the older 27 MHz systems utilized. [The Amateur Engineer] did find a few direct replacements online, but none for a price he was willing to pay.
We might have used the broken transmitter as
an excuse to switch the RC vehicle over to WiFi control
, but we appreciate [The Amateur Engineer] showing how this type of antenna can be disassembled and repaired if necessary. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262198",
"author": "Tiger",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T05:31:46",
"content": "Yes. I did this as a kid once.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6549680",
"author": "Francis Cole",
"timestamp": "2022-12-13T13:02:43"... | 1,760,373,427.131902 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/11/detect-covid-19-symptoms-using-wearable-device-and-ai/ | Detect COVID-19 Symptoms Using Wearable Device And AI | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Machine Learning",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"COVID",
"NBA",
"Oura Ring",
"RNI",
"Smart ring",
"Wearables",
"WVU"
] | A new study from West Virginia University (WVU) Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) uses a wearable device and artificial intelligence (AI)
to predict COVID-19 up to 3 days before symptoms occur
. The study has been an impressive undertaking involving over 1000 health care workers and frontline workers in hospitals across New York, Philadelphia, Nashville, and other critical COVID-19 hotspots.
The implementation of the digital health platform uses a custom smartphone application coupled with an Ōura smart ring to monitor biometric signals such as respiration and temperature. The platform also assesses psychological, cognitive, and behavioral data through surveys administered through a smartphone application.
We know that wearables
tend to suffer from a lack of accuracy
, particularly during activity. However, the
Ōura ring appears to take measurements while the user is very still, especially during sleep
. This presents an advantage as the accuracy of wearable devices greatly improves when the user isn’t moving. RNI noted that the Ōura ring has been the most accurate device they have tested.
Given some of the early warning signals for COVID-19 are fever and respiratory distress, it would make sense that a device able to measure respiration and temperature could be used as an early detector of COVID-19. In fact,
we’ve seen a few wearable device companies attempt much of what RNI is doing
as well as
a few DIY attempts
. RNI’s study has probably been the most thorough work released so far, but we’re sure that many more are upcoming.
The initial phase of the study was deployed among healthcare and frontline workers
but is now open to the general public
. Meanwhile
the National Basketball Association (NBA) is coordinating its re-opening efforts using Ōura’s technology
.
We hope to see more results emerge from RNI’s very important work. Until then, stay safe Hackaday. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6262184",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-12T03:25:37",
"content": "That Oura web page looks terrible on my Brave browser",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6262223",
"author": "Blah, blah, blah",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,426.852839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/tablet-oscilloscope-claims-100-mhz-but-is-it/ | Tablet Oscilloscope Claims 100 MHz, But Is It? | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope"
] | [LearnElectronics]
grabbed a FNIRSI tablet oscilloscope
from a vendor from China. The device has a seven-inch touchscreen and claims to be a two-channel 100 MHz scope. But is it? Watch the video below and you’ll see.
Spoiler alert: [LearnElectronics] was skeptical of the 100 MHz claim and it looks like it is more like a 30 MHz analog bandwidth. Despite that, it does seem like a pretty capable 30 MHz scope in a very handy form factor and a very cheap price: as little as $120 or so, depending on where you shop.
The test setup was a bunch of can oscillators and up to about 30 MHz, the scope did OK. After that, the results were less than stellar. However, we aren’t sure that the test setup — on a solderless breadboard — wasn’t part of the problem and we’d have liked to see the test done with some known
good quality probes
as that can also contribute to bad readings even if the scope’s circuitry is up to par. We’ve seen
reviews of these cheap probes
that suggest they aren’t bad, but they aren’t actually all they claim, either.
The verdict? [LearnElectronics] likes it for a 30 MHz cheap scope. Of course, cheap is a relative term here. You can get a much better scope, but it will probably cost more than this one. For most of what you are probably doing with a scope, this seems like it would be adequate. On the other hand, throw in a few hundred extra dollars and you could have more channels, a more likely chance of measuring high-frequency signals, and probably enhanced measurement capabilities, too.
We will admit, though, having a portable battery-operated scope can be super handy sometimes, and you don’t always need the highest speed. You probably use your cheap multimeter more than your six and a half digit bench scope, too, right?
While the screen isn’t large, it is more convenient than a
tube full of flames
. And while it may not quite make 100 MHz, it is cheaper than one that will do
100 GHz
. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261699",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T18:42:33",
"content": "Yeah this test is worthless when he’s using a solderless breadboard lol. He’s just measuring the stray capacitance in there, who knows if the tablet is the problem? Although I also doubt it measures up to 1... | 1,760,373,427.396062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/video-bil-herds-looks-at-mitosis/ | Video: Bil Herds Looks At Mitosis | Bil Herd | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science"
] | [
"bil herd",
"hackaday",
"microscope",
"microscopy",
"science"
] | I loved my science courses when I was in Junior High School; we leaned to make batteries, how molecules combine to form the world we see around us, and basically I got a picture of where we stood in the scheme of things, though Quarks had yet to be discovered at the time.
In talking with my son I found out that there wasn’t much budget for Science learning materials in his school system like we had back in my day, he had done very little practical hands-on experiments that I remember so fondly. One of those experiments was to look and draw the stages of mitosis as seen under a Microscope. This was amazing to me back in the day, and cemented the wonder of seeing cell division into my memory to this day, much like when I saw the shadow of one of Jupiter’s moons with my own eyes!
Now I have to stop and tell you that I am not normal, or at least was not considered to be a typical young’un growing up near a river in rural Indiana in the 60’s. I had my own microscope; it quite simply was my pride and joy. I had gotten it while I was in the first or second grade as a present and I loved the thing. It was just horrible to use in its later years as lens displaced, the focus rack became looser if that was possible, and dirt accumulated on the internal lens; and yet I loved it and still have it to this day! As I write this, I realize that it’s the oldest thing that I own. (that and the book that came with it).
Today we have better tools and they’re pretty easy to come by. I want to encourage you to do some science with them. (Don’t just look at your solder joints!)
Check out the video about seeing mitosis of onion cells through the microscope
, then join me below for more on the topic!
What is Mitosis?
The microscope is an excellent tool of Biology and a great place to start is by observing mitosis as it happens. Mitosis is where cells divide to make more cells so that tissue may grow. As it turns out, the tips of fresh roots on onions and garlic have rapid tissue growth in a concentrated area, making the viewing of the various stages of cell division worthwhile. In preparation for this article I started growing a shallot and an onion in a class of water and waiting for the tips to spout.
mi·to·sis /mīˈtōsəs/ noun BIOLOGY
a type of cell division that results in two daughter cells each having the same number and kind of chromosomes as the parent nucleus, typical of ordinary tissue growth.
I can think of no better example of being able to see one of the complex miracles that make life possible than to look at cell division with one’s own eyes.
Scope with a Camera
My son owns a ‘scope that is much better than my old tiny clunker, yet he got it for the same price as what mine cost back in the day relatively speaking. What’s more is that I can replace one of his eyepieces with a camera and share what I see with others — you in this case. This is something I would not have ever imagined being able to do “back in my day”.
I actually have several microscopes in my hardware lab, two are dedicated to assisting with surface mount assembly, but my son’s includes up to 2000x magnification! That what I used to make these picture.
What We’re Looking For
Life based on cell division has the ability to make new copies of vital tissue cells starting with the ability of DNA to divide and replicate. As the process continues, whole chromosomes replicate by division with two new cells forming in place of the original one. Different organisms have differing numbers of chromosome by default, the onion under the scope today has 16 chromosomes arranged in 8 pairs, by default compared to the 23 pairs of a human. The number of chromosomes doesn’t necessarily imply the complexity of the organism, dogs have 78 chromosomes for example, compared to humans’ 46.
Major Events in Mitosis [Image source:
NIH Science Primer
]
Phases
Onion cells in different stages of mitosis [Image by
Edmund B. Wilson
]
Some of the main phases of Mitosis are:
Prophase
or the “before” phase. The cell still looks very similar to a non-replicating cell even though things are starting to happen.
Prometaphase
is where the walls of the nucleus break apart and the act of cell division takes over the whole cell. This is where it really starts to be visible using this level of microscope.
Metaphase
or “next to” and true to its name the chromosomes line up side by side near the center of cell as various forces pull in opposite directions. This looks cool when seen in real life.
Anaphase
or “after” is when it starts to look like as new twin cells.
Telophase
or “end”. ‘nuff said.
Sliding Away
To prepare the onion tissue for observation I first soaked it in warm hydrochloric acid. If you think that that sounds like I am digesting the tissue much like our own stomachs do, you would be correct. The cells cease activity, sometimes called “fixing”. A bunch of the matter exterior to the cell walls is digested or softened, allowing us to concentrate on the contents of the cells. It also makes it easier for dye to get into the cell and to mash the tissue thin enough to see one layer of cells.
I meant to use a Feulgen stain and thought I had some. I didn’t. I ended up using Methylene Blue, an old standby and was the stain I used originally back when I was young. The slides weren’t quite as clear as I would have liked but my son still got the experience of making his own slides.
Smashing Roots
The next step is to carefully smash the softened root tissue as flat as possible in an effort to get as close to one layer of cells. Usually I break the slide cover doing this, occasionally resulting in my finger bleeding all over the slide, but today it goes almost perfectly.
With that said, there is only so much flattening the “mash method” and part of the experience in looking through the eyepiece is continuous adjustment of the focus as the subject matter still has an amount of three dimensional aspect to it.
As can be seen in the images below, we caught all of the major phases of mitosis, my onions have been sacrificed for a worthy cause.
Conclusion
I loved my microscope, and still do, it represented my ability to study and learn on my own and yet see way more than I could than I could without it. It also allowed me to focus my curiosity in a hidden realm and was a early gateway in my quest for science when I was young. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261689",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T18:06:17",
"content": "FYI,Cancer radiation therapy targets cell in mitosis, that is when the DNA of cancer cells are most vulnerable to mutation, (mutated DNA/RNA are more likely to kill a cell as opposed as making it cancerous).[... | 1,760,373,427.329799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/turning-a-waterjet-cutter-into-a-wood-lathe-for-no-reason/ | Turning A Waterjet Cutter Into A Wood Lathe, For No Reason | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"carving",
"cnc",
"fixture",
"lathe",
"turning",
"waterjet",
"wood"
] | On the shortlist of dream tools for most metalworkers is a waterjet cutter, a CNC tool that uses insanely high-pressure water mixed with abrasive grit to blast sheet metal into intricate shapes. On exactly nobody’s list is
this attachment that turns a waterjet cutter into a lathe
, and with good reason, as we’ll see.
This one comes to us by way of the Waterjet Channel, because of course there’s a channel dedicated to waterjet cutting. The idea is a riff on fixtures that allow a waterjet cutter (or
a plasma cutter
) to be used on tubes and other round stock. This fixture was thrown together from scrap and uses an electric drill to rotate a wood blank between centers on the bed of the waterjet, with the goal of carving a baseball bat by rotating the blank while the waterjet carves out the profile.
The first attempt, using an entirely inappropriate but easily cut blank of cedar, wasn’t great. The force of the water hitting the wood was enough to stall the drill; the remedy was to hog out as much material as possible from the blank before spinning up for the finish cut. That worked well enough to commit to an ash bat blank, which was much harder to cut but still worked well enough to make a decent bat.
Of course it makes zero sense to use a machine tool costing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to machine baseball bats, but it was a fun exercise. And it only shows how far we’ve come with lathes since
the 18th-century frontier’s foot-powered version
of the Queen of the Machine Shop. | 30 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261652",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T16:19:33",
"content": "Convert a pressure washer into a waterjet. Get more use out of the tool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261664",
"author": "Drew",
... | 1,760,373,427.075775 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/the-simplest-ts100-upgrade-leads-down-a-cable-testing-rabbit-hole/ | The Simplest TS100 Upgrade Leads Down A Cable Testing Rabbit Hole | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cables",
"extension cable",
"soldering",
"ts100"
] | By now, I must have had
my Miniware TS100 soldering iron
for nearly three years. It redefined what could be expected from the decent end of the budget soldering iron spectrum when it came on the market, and it’s still the one to beat even after those years. Small, lightweight, powerful, and hackable, it has even spawned
direct imitations
.
If the TS100 has a fault, it comes not from the iron itself but from its cable. A high-grade iron will have an extra-flexible PVC or silicone cable, but the TS100 does not have a cable of its own. Instead it relies on whatever cable comes on its power supply, which is frequently a laptop unit built with portable computing rather than soldering in mind. So to use it is to be constantly battling against its noticable lack of flexibility, a minor worry but one that I find irksome. I determined to find a solution, making a DC extension cable more flexible than that on my power supply.
Unexpectedly Spawning A Product
The TS100 has a standard DC barrel jack, but surprisingly it’s rather an unusual one. It requires an extraordinarily long reach of about 15mm, and the plugs on some laptop supplies won’t mate with it satisfactorily. For my cable I would have to find the longest plug I could, and it turned out that there are surprisingly few on the market.
Lumberg do one
, but it tops out at too low a current rating for a soldering iron so I was rather stumped.
I approached
Toby Components
, my go-to supplier for connectors who have helped me secure unobtanium in the past, to see whether they had any better options. And that was where this saga took an unexpected turn. They didn’t have any off-the-shelf connectors, but they could get their cable people to make up a custom extension using an extra-flexible PVC cable. I parted with some cash, and duly received a package containing a couple of their prototypes. My build-a-cable project abruptly turned into a product test.
The first thing I did was plug it in and do some soldering, at which it was fine, and noticeably more flexible than the stock cable on my PSU. But merely saying that doesn’t give much information, I need some means of quantifying the flexibility of a cable. We can all tell by feel that one cable is more or less flexible than another. Holding it in our hands, the less flexible cable requires more force to bend it than the flexible one. Researching
standard tests for cables
reveals a surprise, they have a focus on safety and stress performance rather than its static physical properties, so while there are a host of fascinating tests to ensure that they don’t fail under repeated flexing or when being pinched, the standards don’t seem to include a simple measure of flexibility. It deserved some thought, so I considered and rejected measuring the droop angle of a set length of cable under its own weight, wondered whether a test rig could be set up in which a horizontal cable could have weights attached to it, and finally arrived at something much simpler.
How Do You Characterise Cable Flexibility?
My rough-and-ready minimum natural bend radius test rig.
If you take a piece of cable and hold it between your hands, it forms a line with 180 degree angle. Should you now bend it, it won’t form a point as it takes a narrower angle, instead it will curve and tend towards a circular outline. You’ll find there is a natural minimum bend radius it will comfortably take, at which it forms the circular outline and readily returns to straightness, yet is not bent to the extent that it kinks. So measuring the natural minimum bend radius of a cable is a straightforward and easily-reproducible test that can allow comparison of cable flexibilities.
My bend radius rig is simple enough, a flat piece of wood with another slim piece of wood held above its edge using a pair of screws. The cable is bent at 180 degrees back upon itself to form a loop of its minimum natural radius, then it is clamped between the two pieces of wood, thus the diameter can be easily measured and the radius calculated. I’ve added a piece of graph paper on top of my wooden base so that I can easily judge measurements, however I found my caliper to be the most convenient way to take them. As well as the two TS100 cables I’ve measured a few others from around my bench for comparison.
Cable
Diameter
Radius
Toby TS100 extension cable
20mm
10mm
TS100 laptop-style PSU cable
33mm
16.5mm
“Grundlagen Audio” gold USB cable
29mm
14.5mm
Multimeter test lead
16mm
8mm
IEC computer mains lead
48mm
24mm
It can straight away be seen that this is a readily reproducible way to characterise the flexibility of a piece of cable. At the extremes are the multimeter lead and the computer mains lead, no surprise as the former is designed to be as flexible as possible while the latter is a thick and heavy mains lead. That’s a cheap multimeter, it’s likely that had I been less miserly and bought a decent one it would have a significantly more flexible set of leads. The fake “Grundlagen Audio” USB lead from
my April 1st sojourn into using GNU Radio for audio analysis
meanwhile is surprisingly stiff for what was in reality a cheap Amazon Basics item. This is probably due to two factors; it has a braided outer in a bid to copy more expensive leads, and my spraying it with gold paint has only made it stiffer.
To the point of the test though, the TS100 cables. The Toby cable is under two-thirds the stiffness of the laptop-style power supply cable, which does make a significant difference to the ease of soldering. I didn’t expect to spawn a product when I asked them about connector availability, but if you’d like one
they have it for sale on their website
. And meanwhile, Hackaday now has another test in its armoury, measuring the bend radius whenever we take a look at a cable. | 55 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261617",
"author": "CRImier",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T14:12:14",
"content": "The last link (the “have it for sale”) is 404.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261619",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09... | 1,760,373,427.485788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/open-source-stream-deck-does-it-without-touch-screens/ | Open Source Stream Deck Does It Without Touch Screens | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"74HC4051",
"arduino",
"arduino pro micro",
"macro pad",
"oled display",
"sd card",
"stream deck"
] | [Adam Welch] has built macro pads in the past out of pre-fab key matrices and handfuls of Cherry MX clones. But all the stickers and custom keycaps in the world wouldn’t make those macro pads as versatile as a stream deck — those visual shortcut panels with tiny touchscreens for each button that some streamers use to change A/V settings or switch between applications.
Let’s face it, stream decks are expensive. But 0.96″ OLED displays are not, and neither are SMD tactile buttons. Why not imitate a screen deck on the cheap by making it so the screens actuate buttons behind them? [Adam] based this baby on the clever design of [Kilian Gosewisch]’s
FreeDeck
, and they ended up working together to improve it with a dedicated PCB.
The brains of the operation is an Arduino Pro Micro, which addresses each screen individually via two 74HC4051 mux ICs. Thanks to an SD card module, there’s no need to flash the ‘duino every time you want to change a shortcut or its picture. Even if this deck doesn’t hold up forever, it won’t break the bank to build another one. Poke past the break for the build video, which has all the links you’d need to make your own, including a handy configurator.
There’s more than one way to do a visual macro pad.
Here’s one that uses a single screen and splits it
Brady Bunch
style to match the matrix
.
Thanks for the tip, [arturo182]! | 32 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261587",
"author": "sneakypoo",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T11:24:35",
"content": "So what is the final cost once it’s assembled and done? Looks like one of the “real” ones with six buttons are only about 80-90 bucks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,427.549203 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/open-source-grinder-makes-compression-screws-for-plastic-extruders-easy/ | Open-Source Grinder Makes Compression Screws For Plastic Extruders Easy | Dan Maloney | [
"green hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"compression screw",
"extrusion",
"grinder",
"helix",
"pitch",
"plastic",
"recycling"
] | In a world that’s literally awash in plastic waste, it seems a pity to have to buy fresh rolls of plastic filament to feed our 3D-printers, only to have them generate yet more plastic waste. Breaking that vicious cycle requires melding plastic recycling with additive manufacturing, and that takes some clever tooling with parts that aren’t easy to come by, like the compression screws that power plastics extruders.
This open-source compression screw grinder
aims to make small-scale plastic recyclers easier to build. Coming from the lab of [Joshua Pearce] at the Michigan Technological University in collaboration with [Jacob Franz], the device is sort of a combination of a small lathe and a grinder. A piece of round steel stock is held by a chuck with the free end supported by bearings in a tailstock. On the bed of the machine is an X-Y carriage made of 3D-printed parts and pieces of electrical conduit. The carriage moves down the length of the bed as the stock rotates thanks to a pulley and a threaded rod, carrying a cordless angle grinder with a thick grinding wheel. A template attached to the front apron controls how deep the grinder cuts as it tracks along the rod; different templates allow the screw profile to be easily customized. The video below shows the machine in action and the complicated screw profiles it’s capable of producing.
We’ve seen lots of
homebrew plastic extruders
before, most of which use repurposed auger-type drill bits as compression screws. Those lack the variable geometry of a proper compression screw, so [Joshua] and [Jacob] making
all the design documents for this machine available
should be a boon to recycling experimenters. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261568",
"author": "Lukas",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T08:08:29",
"content": "What?? :) amazing movie.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261569",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T08:24:40",
"content": "F... | 1,760,373,428.102924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/your-own-electronic-drum-kit/ | Your Own Electronic Drum Kit | Orlando Hoilett | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"acoustic",
"bass",
"drum",
"drum trigger",
"kick",
"kick pedal",
"metronome",
"midi",
"music",
"snare"
] | [Jake_Of_All_Trades] wanted to take up a new drumming hobby, but he didn’t want to punish his neighbors in the process. He started considering an electric drum kit which would allow him to practice silently but still get some semblance of the real drumming experience.
Unfortunately, electric drum kits are pretty expensive compared to their acoustic counterparts, so buying an electric kit was a bit out of the question. So, like any good hacker,
he decided to make his own
.
He found a pretty cheap acoustic drum kit on Craigslist and decided to convert it to electric. He thought this would be a perfect opportunity to learn more about electric drum kits in general and would allow him to do as much tweaking as he wanted to in order to personalize his experience. He also figured this would be a great way to get the best of both worlds. He could get an electric kit to practice whenever he wanted without disturbing neighbors and he could easily convert back to acoustic when needed.
First, he had to do a bit of restorative work with the cheap acoustic kit he found on eBay since it was pretty worn. Then, he decided to convert the drum heads to electric using two-ply mesh drum heads made from heavy-duty fiberglass screen mesh. The fiberglass screen mesh was cheap and easy to replace in the event he needed to make repairs. He added drum and cymbal triggers with his own DIY mechanism using a piezoelectric element,
similar to another hack we’ve seen
. These little sensors are great for converting mechanical to electrical energy and can feed directly into a GPIO to detect when the drum or cymbal was struck. The electrical signal is then interpreted by an on-board signal processing module.
All he needed were some headphones or a small amplifier and he was good to go! Cool hack [Jake_Of_All_Trades]!
While you’re here, check out some of our best DIY musical projects over the years
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261551",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T06:15:03",
"content": "A few years ago I started a similar project but went doen the track of using peizos from greeting cards mounted on hard faced mouse mats as the pads. They fed into a PIC that output midi into a keyboard t... | 1,760,373,428.056472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/this-week-in-security-f5-novel-ransomware-freta-and-database-woes/ | This Week In Security: F5, Novel Ransomware, Freta, And Database Woes | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ransomware",
"This Week in Security",
"vulnerabilities"
] | The big story of the last week is
a problem in F5’s BIG-IP devices
. A rather trivial path traversal vulnerability allows an unauthenticated user to call endpoints that are intended to be restricted to authenticated. That attack can apparently be as simple as:
'https://[F5 Host]/tmui/login.jsp/..;/tmui/locallb/workspace/tmshCmd.jsp?command=list+auth+user+admin'
A full exploit
has been added to the metasploit framework
. The timeline on this bug is frighteningly quick, as it’s apparently being actively exploited in the wild. F5 devices are used all over the world, and this vulnerability requires no special configuration, just access to the opened management port. Thankfully F5 devices don’t expose the vulnerable interface to the internet by default, but there are still plenty of ways this can be a problem.
Freta
Microsoft has made
a new tool publicly available, Freta
. This tool searches for rootkits in uploaded memory snapshots from a Linux VM. The name, appropriately, is taken from the street where Marie Curie was born.
The project’s namesake, Warsaw’s Freta Street, was the birthplace of Marie Curie, a pioneer of battlefield imaging.
The impetus behind the project is the realization that once a malicious actor has compromised a machine, it’s possible to compromise any security software running on that machine. If, instead, one could perform a security x-ray of sorts, then a more reliable conclusion could be reached. Freta takes advantage of the VM model, and the snapshot capability built into modern hypervisors.
As you might imagine, the idea of sending snapshots of your Linux VMs to Microsoft for scanning has been met with some skepticism. That said, the primary use case for Freta will likely be the Azure cloud, so it’s reasonable to see this as just another tool for that ecosystem. It will be interesting to see this technology mature, as there seems to be great potential.
Vulnerability Compatibility in IE11
Earlier in the year, yet another
jscript.dll
vulnerability was found and fixed in Internet Explorer. As a quick recap,
jscript.dll
is the javascript engine from IE8. The continual presence of IE8 compatibility mode means that this old codebase still persists in modern Windows versions. Were IE8 only accessible by user intervention, this would be much less of an issue, but a website can request this compatibility mode, meaning that simply visiting a malicious website could enable an attack.
What we have this week is
a detailed look at CVE-2020-1062
, the bug in question. It’s a use after free, and it’s triggered by freeing an object in an overridden callback of that object. In the example code, the exploit defines the “toString” function, and manages to free the parent object in that function. As is almost always the case, finding a crash is the easy part, but turning it into a working exploit is much harder. The use-after-free bug doesn’t in itself allow for code execution, but results in code execution jumping to a location controlled by the attacker. Using the Binary Ninja tool, the researchers found an existing function that they could jump to, and from there pull off remote code execution. The full story is more involved than we have space here to cover, so go check it out for the full details.
Citrix Bug Detailed
Earlier this year,
we covered CVE-2019-19781,
another path transversal vulnerability, but this one is in Citrix products. Now, six months have passed since the initial disclosure, and Mikhail Klyuchnikov has written up
a more detailed report on the flaw
.
At it’s core, the vulnerability is simple. On a Citrix gateway, “/vpn/” hosts the login page for remote users. The url isn’t properly sanitized, so something like:
/vpn/../vpns/portal/scripts/[scriptName].pl
doesn’t require authentication, but does actually execute the Perl script at the given location. The ability to interact directly with these scripts as an unauthenticated user would be problem enough, but the
newbm.pl
script actually allows writing data to arbitrary locations. Between the ability to execute Perl scripts, and the ability to write to the file system, it’s rather trivial to install a remote shell using this vulnerability.
Ransomware Hitchhikes on USB Drives
Try2cry is a new ransomware,
spreading itself through USB flash drives
. In the old days, this sort of worm would simply use the autorun feature of Windows to automatically infect a machine when plugged in. On modern machines, with autorun disabled, malware authors have to be more creative in order to spread their wares. Try2cry copies it’s installer to the root of the flash drive, marks all the existing files and folders as hidden, and then creates shortcuts in place of the hidden files. These shortcuts all point back to the malware installer, and the hope is that a user won’t notice the change, and installs the malware when trying to access the files.
Apparently this ransomware is little more than a copy-and-paste of the open source “stupid” ransomware, available on GitHub. The good news is that
it can be decrypted with available tools
.
MongoDB Ransomware
Yes, even more ransomware. MongoDB databases are quite popular, with something like 45,000 of them exposed to the internet. The problem is that half of those are configured without a password. Anyone can connect to, read, and write to them. Yes, many of those are probably just for testing, but inevitably some of them have live data as well. Apparently some aspiring blackhat realized that all those unprotected databases were a prime target,
and launched an attack
.
Each database is wiped, and a ransomware note is added in place. As far as ransomware goes the .015 BTC that is requested is rather cheap, valued at $138 at time of writing. The worst part of the attack might be the threat attached: to leak the stolen data, and then file a GDPR complaint on behalf of those whose data was exposed.
And Finally…
Samba announced a
pair
of
bugs
recently. So far, it appears that neither problem can lead to RCE, but they’re rather simple to launch DoS attacks. One attack is a variation on the zip bomb, where a DNS name composed of 8127 dots causes Samba to lose its mind. The other flaw is a code softlock triggered by a UDP packet with an empty data message. Both flaws require netbios to be enabled in an Active Directory configuration.
IBM’s Db2 database software has
a remotely exploitable buffer overflow
. This issue can result in arbitrary code execution as root, so make sure to get this patched if you’re running big blue. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261903",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T16:38:54",
"content": "> The worst part of the attack might be the threat attached: to leak the stolen data, and then file a GDPR complaint on behalf of those whose data was exposed.Uhm, okay – leaking the data is bad but then f... | 1,760,373,427.93369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/making-pcbs-the-easy-way/ | Making PCBs The Easy Way | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"engraving",
"etching",
"manufacturing",
"mill",
"milling",
"pcb",
"scratch",
"tool"
] | Building a PCB at home can be fraught. If you’re etching, there are chemicals and the nuances of toner transfer. If you’re milling, getting the surface height just right, and not breaking those pointy little v-cutters is always a challenge. [Robin] has tips for both of these cases, and solves a lot of the common hassles by
using a milling machine
.
Whether he’s scraping away etch resist or entire copper isolation lines, [Robin] uses a non-spinning scratching tool instead of a v-bit: they’re more robust and cut every bit as well. He’s got tips for using FlatCam and KiCAD to make scratched-out traces. His registration system allows him to get double-sided boards with a minimum of hassle. And as a bonus, he’s doing some experimentation with embedding SMT parts inside the boards as well. Be sure that you check out his whole guide, or just watch the video embedded below.
We’re pretty sure you’ll pick up a trick or two, and maybe you’ll be convinced to bite the bullet and invest in a nice mill. If you’d like a more traditional take on PCB milling, try out our own
[Adil Malik]’s guide
. | 52 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261828",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T11:03:26",
"content": "The title should have been “MAKING PCBS THE HARD WAY” . Why anyone in the world would even bother wasting their time on doing it this way anymore amazes me. You can get qty. 5, 4″ x 4″ pcb with mask a... | 1,760,373,428.019194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/10/an-nec-v20-for-two-processors-in-one-sbc/ | An NEC V20 For Two Processors In One SBC | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"8080",
"8088",
"nec v20"
] | In the days when the best an impoverished student could hope to find in the way of computing was a cast-off 1980s PC clone, one upgrade was to fit an NEC V20 or V30 processor in place of the Intel 8088 or 8086. Whether it offered more than a marginal advantage is debatable, but it’s likely that one of the chip’s features would never have been used. These chips not only supported the 8086 instruction set, but also offered a compatibility mode with the older 8080 processor. It’s a feature that [Just4Fun] has taken advantage of, with
V20-MBC
, a single board computer that can run both CP/M-86 and CPM/80.
If this is starting to look a little familiar then it’s because we’ve featured a number of [Just4Fun]’s boards before. The
Z80-MBC2
uses the same form factor, and like this V20 version, it has one of the larger ATMega chips taking place of the acres of 74 chips that would no doubt have performed all the glue logic tasks of the same machine had it been built in the early 1980s. There is a video of the board in action that we’ve placed below the break, showing CP/M in ’80, ’86, and even ’80 emulated in ’86 modes.
The only time a V20 has made it here before, it was in the much more conventional home of
a home-made PC
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261807",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T08:32:57",
"content": "If you think it took “acres of 74 chips” to make a Z-80 system, you never made a Z-80 system. Most of the chips on early-80s Z-80 systems were there for supporting things like a CRT display and a d... | 1,760,373,427.741086 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/a-wearable-that-jives-to-the-beat-of-your-heart/ | A Wearable That Jives To The Beat Of Your Heart | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"DFPlayer",
"DFRobot",
"dopamine",
"hypothalamus",
"mp3",
"music",
"pulse"
] | We’re always searching for the coolest biohacking projects all over the web, so imagine our excitement when we ran across [marcvila333’s]
wearable biometric monitor on Instructables
. This was a combined effort between [Marc Vila], [Guillermo Stauffacher], and [Pau Carcellé] as they were wrapping up the semester at their university. Their goal was to develop an integrated device that could modulate the wearer’s heart, and subsequently their mood and stress levels, using music.
Their device includes an LCD screen for user feedback, buttons for user input,
an MP3 module
, and a heart rate sensor module. The user can measure their heart rate and use the buttons to select the type of music they desire based on whether they would like to decrease or increase their heart rate.
The science behind this phenomenon is still unknown
, but the general sense is that different music can trigger different chemical signals in your brain, subsequently affecting your mood and other subtle physiological effects. I guess you can say that we tend to jive to the beat of our music.
It would be really cool to see their device automatically change the song to either lower or raise the user’s heart rate, making them calmer or more engaged.
Maybe connect it to your tv?
Currently, the user has to manually adjust the music, which might be a bit more inconvenient and could possibly lead to the placebo effect.
Either way; Cool project, team. Thanks for sharing! | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,427.88803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/easyocr-makes-ocr-well-easy/ | EasyOCR Makes OCR, Well, Easy | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"neural network",
"ocr",
"optical character recognition"
] | Working on embedded systems used to be easier. You had a microcontroller and maybe a few pieces of analog or digital I/O, and perhaps communications might be a serial port. Today, you have systems with networks and cameras and a host of I/O. Cameras are strange because sometimes you just want an image and sometimes you want to understand the image in some way. If understanding the image involves reading text in the picture, you will want to check out
EasyOCR
.
The Python library leverages other open source libraries and supports 42 different languages. As the name implies, using it is pretty easy. Here’s the setup:
import easyocr
reader = easyocr.Reader(['th','en'])
reader.readtext('test.jpg')
The results include four points that define the bounding box of each piece of text, the text, and a confidence level. The code takes advantage of the GPU, but you can run it in a CPU-only mode if you prefer. There are a few other options, including setting the algorithm’s scanning behavior, how it handles multiple processors, and how it converts the image to grayscale. The results look impressive.
According to the project’s repository, they incorporated several existing neural network algorithms and conventional algorithms, so if you want to dig into details, there are links provided to both code and white papers. If you need some inspiration for what to do with OCR, maybe this
past project
will give you some ideas. Or you could
cheat at games
. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261770",
"author": "lou",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T02:08:47",
"content": "bad ass. (seldom earned slow-clap)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261772",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-10T02:28:01",
"c... | 1,760,373,428.157783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/3d-printing-a-macro-pad-switches-and-all/ | 3D Printing A Macro Pad, Switches And All | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed mechanical keyboard",
"macro pad",
"mechanical keyboard",
"spring"
] | Building a macro pad inside of a 3D printed enclosure is hardly news these days. Neither is adding 3D printed keycaps to the mix. But if you go as far as [James Stanley] has, and
actually print the switches themselves
, we’ve got to admit that’s another story entirely.
Now you might be wondering how [James] managed to print a mechanical keyboard switch that’s the size of your garden variety Cherry. Well, the simple answer is that he didn’t. While his printed switches have the same footprint as traditional switches, they are twice as tall.
The switches could probably made much smaller if it wasn’t for the printed spring, but using a “real” one would defeat the purpose. Though we do wonder if the
mechanical design could be simplified by making it an optical switch
.
But can printed switches really stand up to daily use? [James] wondered the same thing, so he built a testing rig that would hit the switches and count how many iterations before they stopped working. This testing seems to indicate that the keys will either fail quickly due to some mechanical defect, or last for hundreds of thousands of presses. So assuming you weed out the duds early, you should be in pretty good shape.
Naturally, there are a few bits of copper inside each printed switch to act as the actual contacts. But beyond that, all you need to build one of these printable pads yourself is a USB-HID capable microcontroller like the Arduino Pro Micro. If you used the ESP32,
you could even make it Bluetooth
. | 15 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261750",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T23:10:29",
"content": "I’d be worried that copper will oxidize long term, effecting the reliability of the contact. Testing 100,000 presses in rapid succession shows absence of mechanical flaws that will kill it in 100,000 press... | 1,760,373,428.207569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/09/robotic-cornhole-board-does-the-electric-slide/ | Robotic Cornhole Board Does The Electric Slide | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"bag toss",
"Cornhole",
"geared motor",
"X/Y motion on the cheap"
] | There’s a reason why bowling lanes have bumpers and golf games have mulligans. Whether you’re learning a new game or sport, or have known for years how to play but still stink at it, everyone can use some help chasing that win. You’ve heard of the can’t-miss dart board and no-brick basketball goal. Well, here comes the robot-assisted game for the rest of us: cornhole.
The game itself deceptively simple-looking — just underhand throw a square wrist rest into a hole near the top of a slightly angled box. You even get a point for landing anywhere on the box! Three points if you make it in the cornhole. In practice, the game not that easy, though, especially if you’ve been drinking (and drinking is encouraged). But hey, it’s safer than horseshoes or lawn darts.
[Michael Rechtin] loves the game but isn’t all that great at it, so he built a robotic version that tracks the incoming bag and moves the hole to help catch it
. A web cam mounted just behind the hole takes a ton of pictures and analyzes the frames for changes.
The web cam sends the bag positions it sees along with its predictions to an Arduino, which decides how it will move a pair of motors in response. Down in the cornhole there’s a pair of drawer sliders that act as the lid’s x/y gantry.
We love how low-tech this is compared to some of the other ways it could be done, even though it occasionally messes up. That’s okay — it makes the game more interesting that way. We think you should get 2 points if it lands halfway in the hole. Aim past the break to check out the build video.
Seems like there’s a robotic-assisted piece of sporting equipment for everything these days. If cornhole ain’t your thing,
how’d you like to take a couple strokes off your golf game?
Thanks for the tip, [Itay]! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261722",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T20:58:14",
"content": "When I play this bean bag game with children, I face away from the target and throw the bean bag without looking.It evens the odds for the kids.(No, I am not that good of a player even when I face the target,... | 1,760,373,428.257244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/software-defined-radio-academy-goes-virtual/ | Software Defined Radio Academy Goes Virtual | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"gnu radio",
"sdr",
"SDRA",
"software defined radio academy",
"software-defined radio"
] | They say every cloud has a silver lining. It’s hard to find a positive among all the bad news about the current global pandemic, but it has pushed more conferences and events to allow online participation either live or after the fact. A case in point: The
Software Defined Radio Academy’s annual event
is all on a YouTube channel so you can attend virtually.
Not all the videos are there yet, but the keynote along with some very technical talks about techniques ranging from FPGAs to spectrum monitoring and spectral correlation density — you can see that video, below. We presume you’ll eventually be able to watch all the presentations listed in the
program
.
There are some older videos on the channel, too, including some GNU Radio material. We hear some of the upcoming videos will have some new GNU Radio content, too, including some on the GNU Radio implementation for Android.
It is remarkable how software defined radio has transformed from an exotic technology to the commonplace. If you like these tech-heavy presentations, you might also enjoy this
free book
. No matter what your If you want the pick of cheap SDRs, there
have been reviews
. Not to mention reviews of the
higher-end devices
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261563",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T07:39:26",
"content": "An SDR built on a conference badge would be nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261566",
"author": "Laurence Stant",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,373,428.295193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/this-freezer-failure-alarm-keeps-your-spoils-unspoiled/ | This Freezer Failure Alarm Keeps Your Spoils Unspoiled | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"dht22",
"freezer",
"freezer alarm",
"piezo speaker"
] | Deep freezers are a great thing to have, especially when the world gets apocalyptic. Of course, freezers are only good when they’re operating properly. And since they’re usually chillin’ out of sight and full of precious goods, keeping an eye on them is important.
When [Adam] started looking at commercial freezer alarms, he found that most of them are a joke. A bunch are battery-powered, and many people complain that they’re too quiet to do any good. And you’d best hope that the freezer fails while you’re home and awake, because they just stop sounding the alarm after a certain amount of time, probably to save battery.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
[Adam]’s homemade freezer failure alarm is a cheap and open solution that ticks all the boxen
. It runs on mains power and uses a 100dB piezo buzzer for ear-splitting effectiveness to alert [Adam] whenever the freezer is at 32°F/0°C or above.
If the Arduino loses sight of the DHT22 temperature sensor inside the freezer, then the alarm sounds continuously. And if [Adam] is ever curious about the temperature in the freezer, it’s right there on the 7-segment. Pretty elegant if you ask us. We’ve got the demo video thawing after the break, but you might wanna turn your sound down a lot.
You could assume that the freezer is freezing as long as it has power.
In that case, just use a 555
. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261493",
"author": "CapoMafia",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T23:15:40",
"content": "Nice. But I’d have used an esp8266 so that you can check the temperature remotely via wi-fi as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6264143",
... | 1,760,373,428.457125 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/synthesizer-gets-an-external-touch-screen/ | Synthesizer Gets An External Touch Screen | Tom Nardi | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"external display",
"linux",
"synthesizer",
"touch screen",
"yamaha"
] | Like other owners of the high-end Yamaha MODX, [sn00zerman] wasn’t happy with the synthesizer’s integrated touch screen. It’s a bit small, and not at a very good angle for viewing. So he made it his mission to find some way of
adding a larger external touch screen without making any permanent modifications
to the expensive instrument.
This might seem like a tall order, but he wasn’t starting from zero. It was already known that you could plug an external display into it if you used a USB to DVI/HDMI adapter; but without the touch overlay it wasn’t a particularly useful trick. He pondered adding an external connector for the device’s built-in touch screen overlay, but that broke his no modifications rule. Considering how much one of these things cost, we can’t blame him for not wanting to put a hole in the side.
Sometimes you just have to dig out the right parts.
So he started to look for a software solution to get him the rest of the way. Luckily the MODX runs Linux, and Yamaha has made good on their GPL responsibilities and released the source code for anyone who’s interested. While poking around, he figured out that the device
uses tslib to talk to the touch screen
, which [sn00zerman] had worked with on previous projects. He realized that the solution might be as simple as finding a USB touch screen controller that’s compatible with the version of tslib running on the MODX.
In the end, a trip through his parts bin uncovered a stand-alone touch screen controller that he knew from experience would work with the library. Sure enough, when plugged into the MODX, the OS accepted it as an input device. With the addition of a USB hub, he was able to combine this with an existing display and finally have a more comfortable user-interface for his synthesizer.
Now all he’s got to do is plug in a USB floppy drive
, and he’ll have the ultimate Yamaha Beat Laboratory. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261467",
"author": "wrzwicky",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T20:21:31",
"content": "Beautiful graphics, huge 24-bit frame buffer, unbelievably slow processor.Seems about right.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261618",
"author":... | 1,760,373,428.395208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/cakeday-countdown-clock-is-a-sweet-little-scroller/ | Cakeday Countdown Clock Is A Sweet Little Scroller | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"cake",
"countdown",
"countdown timer",
"DS1307 RTC",
"led matrix",
"rtc"
] | If you want strangers to give you well wishes on your birthday out in the real world, you have call attention to the occasion by wearing a pointy hat or a button that says ‘today is my birthday, gimme presents’. But on your reddit cakeday, aka the day you joined, you’re automatically singled out with the addition of a slice of 8-bit cake next to your username. The great thing about your cakeday is that you’re almost guaranteed to get some karma for once, especially if you make something cakeday related like
[ScottyD]’s cakeday countdown clock
. But plenty of people forget what their cakeday is and miss out on the fun.
This countdown clock works like you might expect — every day that isn’t your cakeday, a message scrolls by with the number of days remaining until your next one. When the big day comes, the message becomes TODAY IS YOUR CAKE DAY. Both messages are bookended by cute little pixelated cake slices that we would apply liberally to the day-of message if we made one of these.
This simple but fun project shouldn’t put too big of a dent in your parts box, since it’s essentially an Arduino, a real-time clock module, and a 32×8 LED matrix to display the text. We love the uni-body design of the enclosure because it creates a shelf for the Arduino and gives easy access for gluing in the display from the rear. If for some reason you don’t reddit, then make one anyway and use it to count down to your IRL birthday or something. We’ve got the build video cut and plated for you to consume after the break.
We would understand if 2020 is supplying you with enough existential crises, but if not, consider building
a clock that counts down the rest of your life expectancy
.
Via
r/duino | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261515",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T01:49:00",
"content": "… but the cake is a lie.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261597",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-07-09T12:24:47",
"content": "... | 1,760,373,428.639959 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/3d-printering-selling-prints-and-solving-the-pickup-problem/ | 3D Printering: Selling Prints, And Solving The Pickup Problem | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"delivery",
"gig",
"local pickup",
"pickup",
"side business",
"small business"
] | After getting a 3D printer up and running, it’s not uncommon for an enterprising hacker to dabble in 3D printing to make a little money on the side. Offering local pickup of orders is a common startup choice since it’s simple and avoids shipping entirely. It’s virtually tailor-made to make a great bootstrapping experiment, but anyone who tries it sooner or later bumps up against a critical but simple-seeming problem: how to get finished prints into a customer’s hands in a
sustainable
way that is not a hassle for either the provider, or the customer?
It’s very easy to accept a 3D file and get paid online, but the part about actually getting the print into the customer’s hands does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. This is what I call The Pickup Problem, and left unsolved, it can become unsustainable. Let’s look at why local pickup doesn’t always measure up, then examine possible solutions.
The Problems with Local Pickup
Local pickup for delivery of print jobs is great because there is no mucking about with shipping supplies or carriers. Also, many 3D prints when starting out will be relatively low-value jobs that no one is interested in stacking shipping fees onto, anyway.
“Your order is complete. Come to this address to pick up your order.” It is straightforward and hits all the bases, so what’s the problem?
For a business with a staffed physical location, there’s no problem! But if you are an enterprising hacker trying it as a side gig, it is lacking in several important ways.
Schedules Need To Match Up
You need to be home for local pickup to work. Customers will understandably expect to be able to pick up their order at their own convenience, but your schedules will need to match up for it to happen. Any time you are not home and available to answer the door, local pickup won’t work and that brings us to the next issue.
Scaling and Sustainability
Time and focus are your most precious resources, but committing to making yourself available for local pickups can have an impact on your life and routine in ways you may not anticipate. You may find yourself rushing home, or avoiding going out in order to be home to accommodate pickups.
While home, you may also find yourself avoiding activities, such as putting off tasks or not starting a project because it would interfere with your ability to drop what you’re doing if the doorbell rings. These can be accepted as occasional growing pains, but if they become the new normal these hidden costs will rapidly outweigh any benefits.
Location May Not Be Suitable
Not everyone’s home or workshop location is good for having people drop by to pick up an order. Ideally, a pickup location is easy to get to and has good lighting, security, and accessibility. This isn’t true for every location. An apartment or condo that lacks visitor parking and is not in a convenient location (or seems unsafe or unwelcoming to strangers) is not a good candidate for local pickups. You may get customers, but you won’t keep them.
What it boils down to is that local pickup isn’t as “free” as it may seem at first glance; there are hidden costs involved and they will be borne by you. Fortunately, there are ways around most of the usual problems.
Potential Solutions
Everyone’s needs are different when it comes to working environment, location, timetable, or security. There may not be a one-size-fits-all easy solution, but there are options that can be mixed and matched by an enterprising hacker to meet specific needs.
Have Pickup Only During Fixed Days and Times
Instead of trying to be as available as possible, offer pickups on a fixed schedule and commit to being available during those times. One might choose to offer local pickups Tuesdays and Thursdays between 5:00 pm and 9:30 pm, for example. This provides structure and boundaries while also being easier to plan around for everyone involved. The rest of the time, you can perform your usual work and activities free from interruption or stress.
Offer Reasonable Shipping
This increases costs and will limit the kinds of jobs you can accept. In addition, you will need to obtain and manage some basic shipping supplies such as boxes, packing tape, and packing material. But the payoff is the benefit of having someone else handle the delivery entirely, and you’ll be able to serve a wider area than with local pickup alone.
Seek out online shipping partners that offer postal services at discounted parcel rates; these are in common use among online sellers. You’ll be able to purchase shipping labels online and drop the box off at your nearest postal outlet, or in some cases request a pickup. Just remember that when it comes to shipping, in general smaller and lighter equals cheaper. Shipping proficiency is a bit like baking bread; the more you do it, the better you’ll get.
Offer Some Form of Self-Serve Pickup
With the global COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, self-serve and contactless pickups are a much more common and accepted ways to do things. Highly dependent on location and security, it can nevertheless be a useful option.
A good example of self-serve pickup is a home-based business from whom I recently made a purchase of specialty vinyl sheets. They had a very simple system: open their mailbox and retrieve whichever envelope had your name on it. No locks or access controls to speak of, but they apparently weren’t needed. It was extremely convenient.
This is a situation where perfect can be the enemy of good. It is entirely reasonable to mix and match solutions, or move from one to another as needs change. Since 3D printed objects are relatively low in value (compared to, say, laptops or bricks of gold) it’s easier to accept some risk and experiment in finding a good compromise.
What Worked for Me
After trying a few different things, I settled on a self-serve pickup method combined with fixed hours for pickup.
I purchased a lockable outdoor plastic storage bin and attached a sign to the front, and a cable lock to the back. Each morning, I put the bin on the front deck (a well-lit spot that was not entirely visible from the sidewalk) and secured it with the cable lock. At night I brought it indoors.
For access control, the latch was secured with a word lock. Turning the dials to form the right word would open it.
When an order was complete I would email the customer with the pickup instructions and the code for the word lock. They would come at their convenience, retrieve their order, and be on their way. If there was any issue or problem, my cell phone number was provided.
I eventually decided I had gone overboard with security and removed the word lock. It was a hassle for customers and I could always lock things down more if I ran into problems, but I was fortunate enough that none ever came up. The box even occasionally doubled as a drop-off point for other jobs and materials.
I was quite happy with the solution, and it worked well until I stopped accepting online print orders to focus instead on my own jobs, and no longer needed it. If I were to do anything differently, I would raise the bin up to waist-height for better comfort, but that’s about it.
Have You Encountered the Pickup Problem?
Have you ever run into the pickup problem as a seller or a customer, whether for 3D printing or something else? What did you do about it? If you have any insights or experiences to share, please put them in the comments because we’d love to hear them. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261453",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T19:08:37",
"content": "I use exactly the same solution – I have an old red wood toolbox on my front porch that one of my neighbors gifted me when he moved (it belonged to his dad so he couldn’t throw it away, but he didn’t want i... | 1,760,373,428.770781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/heater-joins-the-internet-of-things-with-esp32-board/ | Heater Joins The Internet Of Things With ESP32 Board | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"data visualization",
"heater",
"home automation",
"internet of things",
"rs-485"
] | The wood-burning heater [g3gg0] has at home works perfectly, except for one flaw: the pellet reservoir needs to be manually refilled every few days. Humans being notoriously unreliable creatures, this critical task is sometimes overlooked, which naturally leads to literally chilling results.
With automatic fill systems expensive and difficult to install, [g3gg0] wanted to find some kind of way for
the heater to notify its caretakers about any potential fault conditions
. Not just the fact that it was out of fuel (though that would naturally be the most common alert), but any other issue which would potentially keep the heater from doing it’s job. In short, the heater was going to get a one-way ticket to the Internet of Things.
As it turns out, this task was not quite as difficult as you might expect. The Windhager heater already had upgrade bays where the user could insert additional modules and sensors, as well as a rudimentary data bus over RS-485. All [g3gg0] had to do was tap into this bus, decode what the packets contained, and use the information to generate alerts over the network. The ESP32 was more than up to the task, it just needed a custom PCB and 3D printed enclosure that would allow it to slot into the heater like an official expansion module.
When an interesting message flashes across the bus, the ESP32 captures it and relays the appropriate message to an MQTT broker. From there, the
automation possibilities are nearly endless
. In this case, the heater’s status information is being visualized with tools like Grafana, and important alerts are sent out to mobile devices with PushingBox. With a setup like this, the Windhager will never go hungry again. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261407",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T16:05:34",
"content": "Or you simply put a recurrent task in your calendar… KISS",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261412",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,373,428.819279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/bridge-over-trebled-water-how-the-golden-gate-bridge-started-to-sing/ | Bridge Over Trebled Water: How The Golden Gate Bridge Started To Sing | Alex Weinberg | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Golden Gate Bridge",
"moaning",
"railing",
"singing",
"whistling",
"wind tunnel"
] | Throughout the spring, some Bay Area residents from Marin County to the Presidio noticed a sustained, unplaceable high-pitched tone. In early June, the sound reached a new peak volume, and recordings of the eerie noise spread across Twitter and Facebook. Soon after, The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, & Transportation District, the agency responsible for the iconic suspension bridge’s maintenance, solved the mystery: The sound was due to high winds blowing through the slats of the bridge’s newly-installed sidewalk railing. Though a more specific explanation was not provided, the sound is most likely an Aeolian tone, a noise produced when wind blows over a sharp edge, resulting in tiny harmonic vortices in the air.
The modification of the Golden Gate Bridge railing is the most recent and most audible element of a multi-phase retrofit that has been underway since 1997. Following the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, & Transportation District (The District) began to prepare the iconic bridge for the wind and earthquake loads that it may encounter in its hopefully long life. Though the bridge had already withstood the beating of the Bay’s strong easterly winds and had been rattled by minor earthquakes, new analysis technology and construction methods could help the span hold strong against any future lateral loading. The first and second phases of the retrofit targeted the Marin Viaduct (the bridge’s north approach) and the Fort Point Arch respectively. The third and current phase addresses the main span.
Bridges Fight More Than Just Gravity
A suspension bridge is meant to support its own weight and the weight of all the automobile and pedestrian traffic that it carries. The road deck is supported by vertical suspenders, which hang down from the swooping suspension cables. These suspension cables, loaded entirely in tension, transfer their weight into the towers (of which there are typically two), acting in compression and sending the force into the ground.
Suspension bridges are very efficient in resisting those gravitational forces, but like all other above-ground structures, they must also resist the horizontal forces applied on them when the wind blows or the ground shakes. When the wind blows perpendicular to a bridge’s span, the road deck has a tendency to sway like a clothesline in the breeze. In extreme cases — most notably in the 1940
collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
— the rocking of the road deck in the wind can start a feedback loop that eventually causes the bridge to twist itself apart. (With the Tacoma Narrows collapse in mind, The Golden Gate Bridge
was reinforced in the 1950s with a series of trusses
to help provide additional torsional rigidity.)
Resisting the Wind (and Dodging It)
While the Golden Gate Bridge has safely resisted eight decades of winds whipping from the west into San Francisco Bay, engineers were still concerned about the long term viability of the bridge’s lateral system. The District’s public affairs manager, Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz indicated that the bridge is currently safe for winds of about 68 miles per hour, but the area can sometimes experience gales that exceed 100 miles per hour. Therefore, any reduction in drag or exposed transverse surface area would be beneficial to the bridge’s lateral system.
Replacing the original, chunky pedestrian railing with something more svelte was a relatively simple way of reducing the surface area exposed to wind. The work could be completed at the level of the road, without temporary scaffolding, and without even disrupting the majority of the bridge’s traffic. Even this seemingly minor modification, when extrapolated across the length of the bridge, would have significant structural benefits: The new railing decreases the exposed surface area by thousands of square feet, meaning a likely reduction of hundreds of thousands of pounds of lateral wind loading.
However, the design of the new railing had more than just aerodynamic considerations. Cosulich-Schwartz explained, “When bridge engineers designed the original railing, they wanted pedestrians to feel secure, but they also wanted motorists to take in the majestic views of the ocean to the west and the city of San Francisco to the east. So they came up with this slatted design that is solid, but when you’re driving by at speed, they appear to be transparent.” The
new railing
had to meet the functional and aesthetic requirements of the original design, while still reducing the surface area.
Old railings
New Railings [via
Marin Independent Journal
]
Prior to construction, The District performed a wind tunnel analysis of the new road deck, including the modification to the westmost railing (visible in
the Golden Gate Bridge District’s wind tunnel testing video
, on the left at the roughly 2:53 mark). However, the one twentieth scale test did not provide sufficiently fine-grained results to predict that the railing would shriek in high winds. “In our study and analysis, it was revealed that there would be some sound, but at no point was it shown that we would hear the level and degree of sound that we heard on June 5th,” relayed Cosulich-Schwartz.
Bridge over Trebled Water
That sound you may have heard:
The Golden Gate is whistling. 💨
pic.twitter.com/ItOMTm8Z08
— Brodie Brazil (@BrodieNBCS)
June 6, 2020
The District is well aware of the public response to the bridge’s new vocal stylings. Regarding their plans for addressing the issue, Cosulich-Schwartz disclosed, “We’re doing more analysis and engaging experts in the field to better examine precisely and under what conditions the sound can be expected to occur. And we’ll also be investigating any mitigation efforts to address the sound.” The District may even conduct another round of wind tunnel testing with a full-scale segment of railing, which could then lead to an in-situ remediation program. A retrofit of the retrofit.
The installation of the west side railing is already about 75% complete as of this writing, and The District has no plans to turn back. In addition to the railing work, the District is working to give the bridge a more aerodynamic profile by installing a new quarter-circular fairing at the base of the western sidewalk. Similar to the one installed on the
Whitestone Bridge
in 2003, the fairing would reduce the wind load on the bridge by covering exposed flat surfaces and streamlining the bridge deck’s wind-facing side. So if the Golden Gate Bridge develops a bellowing baritone voice in the coming weeks, you already know why.
Even with state-of-the art design methods, our biggest structures sometimes surprise us once they’re complete. None of the facade consultants at London’s 20 Fenchurch tower predicted that it would be
melting cars
on the streets below. And in spite of thorough wind tunnel testing, skyscrapers still produce
deafening tones
of their own. The engineering team behind the Golden Gate Bridge’s retrofit seems to have exercised due diligence, but sometimes the difference between plans and reality can be heard loud and clear. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261393",
"author": "Jerry",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T15:13:42",
"content": "My father in law worked on this one after it failed in 1940.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261404",
"... | 1,760,373,428.710074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/animatronic-nikola-tesla-sets-the-record-straight/ | Animatronic Nikola Tesla Sets The Record Straight | Tom Nardi | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"animatronic",
"Nikola Tesla",
"robotics"
] | While the Hackaday reader likely knows all about Nikola Tesla and his incredible body of work, the same can’t necessarily be said for the average passerby. Even a child can be counted on to know the names of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, but as [Daniel Springwald] laments, the name Tesla is more often associated with the line of sleek electric cars than the brilliant Serbian inventor they were named for.
Hoping to level the playing field a bit,
[Daniel] has come up with a way for the great man to plead his case
. This custom designed robotic facsimile of the alternating current aficionado is able to speak about Tesla’s life and accomplishments in an interactive, if rather creepy, format.
There isn’t a lot of technical detail on this one yet, but what we can glean from the image gallery and video below is that there are an incredible number of OpenSCAD-designed 3D printed parts knocking around inside Mr. Tesla’s head. Add into the mix a healthy dose of springs, linkages, and servos, and you’re just a mustache short of a museum exhibit.
Most of the animatronic projects
we’ve covered in the past
have been based on animals
, so it’s certainly interesting to see what goes into approximating human mannerisms mechanically. We’re not sure if this talking Tesla head will help educate the masses, but it’s certainly an impressive technical achievement. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261329",
"author": "hutzlibu",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T11:26:32",
"content": "“Even a child can be counted on to know the names of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell”I would argue, that Tesla is more famous amongst children, even before the car, because of the use of his name... | 1,760,373,429.112501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/the-latest-linux-on-a-floppy-in-a-486/ | The Latest Linux – On A Floppy In A 486! | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"486",
"i386",
"linux"
] | If you have ever studied the early history of the GNU/Linux operating system in its many forms, you’ll have read that [Linus Torvalds] developed his first kernel for his Intel 386-based computer. Though the 386 architecture is now ancient, the current Linux kernel can still be compiled for it and many distributions still maintain an i386 branch to provide broad compatibility for later machines able to run i386 code. But what if you were to take a current Linux kernel and stick it on a floppy in a machine from the early 1990s, with meagre RAM? [Fozztex]
did just that
, with not a 386 but a 486, sporting what would have been an impressive for the time 36MB of RAM. You can watch it in action in the video below the break.
A recent Linux kernel is rarely if ever compiled for something as small as a floppy disk, so getting one to boot from such ancient media appeared to be a challenge. It was possible though with the
tinyconfig
make option, and after finding a small enough root filesystem courtesy of
Aboriginal Linux
, a bootable floppy was created. It’s not entirely useful and its sole purpose was to see whether Linux could see a large hard drive on the 486, but it’s still a version 5.6 Linux kernel booting from floppy on an ancient computer. Never complain that your Raspberry Pi Zero is slow again, we’ve come a long way!
Header image — Afrank99 /
CC BY-SA 2.0 | 97 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261298",
"author": "Arne",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T09:04:45",
"content": "This even seems to be a 5.8rc2 😊",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6261301",
"author": "Sykobee",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T09:15:35",
"conten... | 1,760,373,429.061724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/color-your-workspace-calm-your-mind/ | Color Your Workspace, Calm Your Mind | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"blinkenlights",
"mid-century",
"mood lighting",
"wemos d1 mini",
"WLED",
"ws2812b"
] | Every day, it seems to get harder and harder to relax and unwind. A person can only take so many lava-hot showers before they start cutting into work time. Listening to music is a wonderful option, but it can be difficult to find something to listen to that’s soothing without being disruptive. So what else can we try? Oh yes, blinkenlights.
Frosted, glowing blinkenlights that bathe the room in color. Ahhhh
.
There’s something about those enclosures that completes these so well. [ChrisParkerTech] used Alder wood sprayed with clear coat, which gives them a delightfully clean mid-century look. We also dig the lack of ceiling and unfinished top edge, because it gives the leaking light a bit of infinity pool mystique.
Of course, these wouldn’t be much of a relaxation tool if you have to get up up from your couch, chair, or bean bag every time you want to adjust them. Each strip is connected to a Wemos D1 mini, so [Chris] can control them with his phone via WLED, or make Alexa do it. Check out the build video after the break.
If you really love LEDs, don’t leave home without them.
Show the world how you feel with a stylish LED hat
. | 5 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261274",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T05:33:25",
"content": "I sometimes feel like I’m the only person who doesn’t like this bonbon colored rgb lighting in their home (or workspace for that matter). To me the biggest recent achievement in LED lighting has been ret... | 1,760,373,428.860293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/gaming-in-different-languages/ | Gaming In Different Languages | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"65c02",
"assembly",
"c++",
"forth",
"game",
"microcontroller",
"optimization",
"processor",
"programming languages",
"python",
"retro",
"robot"
] | One of the perks of using older hardware is its comparative simplicity and extensive documentation. After years or decades of users programming on a platform, the amount of knowledge available for it can become extensive. This is certainly the case with the 6502 microprocessor, used in old Apple computers and some video game systems from the ’80s. The extensive amount of resources available make it
a prime candidate in exploring various programming languages
, and their advantages and disadvantage.
This project looks into those differences using a robot game, which has been programmed four different ways in three languages. [Joey] created the game in Python first and then began to port it to the 65C02, a CMOS variant of the 6502. The first iteration is its assembly language, and then a second iteration with optimized assembly code. From there, he ports it to C and then finally to Forth. Each version of the game is available to play in a browser using an emulator to run the 6502 hardware.
Since the games run in the browser, other tools are available to examine the way the game runs in each language. Registers can be viewed in real time, as well as the values stored in the memory. It’s an interesting look at an old piece of hardware and of its inner workings. For an even deeper dive into the 6502,
it’s possible to build a working computer on breadboards using one
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261449",
"author": "JRD",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T18:46:05",
"content": "The most interesting part of this is the details of the “second iteration with optimized assembly code”. He rewrote it in NASM (which isn’t an assembler for the 6502, but no matter), and then passed that thro... | 1,760,373,429.147568 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/salvaged-drill-gets-a-magnetic-upgrade/ | Salvaged Drill Gets A Magnetic Upgrade | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"drill press",
"electromagnet",
"magnetic drill press",
"salvage"
] | For most people, a broken tool is at the end of its useful life. But rather than toss a heavy-duty drill that had its handle broken off, [Workshop From Scratch] thought it was a perfect opportunity to create something new. In his latest video, he shows how he
converted this old hand tool into a magnetic drill press
with predictably impressive results.
Despite being assembled largely from pieces of scrap metal cut into shape with an angle grinder, we wouldn’t blame you for believing the end result was a commercial product. From the handles salvaged from chewed up old screwdrivers to the scratch-built rack and pinion assembly, the attention to detail here is really fantastic.
Removing what was left of the broken handle.
It’s difficult to pick a favorite detail, but the reinvented enclosure for the drill certainly ranks up there. [Workshop From Scratch] could have simply bolted on the tool as-is, but instead he surgically removed the vestigial handle to make it look as though the drill was always meant for this application. After cutting, it was finished off with some body filler, a bit of sanding, and a coat of his signature orange spray paint.
When he built his magnetic vise,
[Workshop From Scratch] used magnets pulled from automotive air conditioning systems
. They got the job done, but were somewhat annoying to work with given their round shape. This time around, he’s used off-the-shelf magnetic locks intended for steel doors. When energized with a 19 V laptop power supply, he says the three rectangular electromagnets have a combined pull of 540 kilograms.
If you don’t have a broken drill to use as a donor for this type of project, don’t worry. You could always
use a salvaged hoverboard motor instead
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261253",
"author": "Hales",
"timestamp": "2020-07-08T03:26:09",
"content": "Wow, pretty neat. I like the use of old screwdriver handles as grips.Some nitpicks:(1) 12VDC switch being used for 19VDC. That mores than a 50% over-rating, but is _probably_ ok compared to the next point... | 1,760,373,429.203814 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/rc-car-becomes-useful-little-mower/ | RC Car Becomes Useful Little Mower | Lewin Day | [
"green hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"lawn mower",
"mower",
"radio control"
] | When we think of lawn mowers, our first thought is of heavy, rusty old machines that take the best part of an afternoon to get started. Of course, there’s always another way,
as [Mark] ably demonstrates with his own build.
Beginning from an unconventional starting point, [Mark] chose a remote control car, of the type that can flip and drive in both orientations. Having lost the controller, he started by ripping out the original electronics. In its place, an ESP32 receives signals from a FlySky RC receiver, and runs the drive motors with a
Sparkfun Monster Motor Shield.
Another channel on the receiver is hooked up directly to a drone speed controller driving a brushless motor, outfitted with a sawblade to cut the grass.
It’s a small platform, and one that ordinarily you might doubt could do the job. However, for [Mark]’s purposes, the rig works just fine, and has been doing good work for the last two years! We’ve seen mowers hacked before too,
like this autonomous rig out in the wild.
Video after break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261175",
"author": "Aaediwen",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T20:33:33",
"content": "That looks like a neat little trimmer. Also incredibly dangerous. Certainly don’t get a finger too near the bottom of that thing unless you intend to sacrifice your digits to your lawn. Really cool way ... | 1,760,373,429.251708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/bantam-tools-pcb-mill-gets-a-ferocious-new-sequel/ | Bantam Tools PCB Mill Gets A Ferocious New Sequel | Sonya Vasquez | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Bantam Tools",
"CNC machine",
"desktop mill",
"othermill",
"PCB mill"
] | When the first Bantam Tools’ Milling Machine landed, it put PCB prototyping at the forefront with a smooth software and hardware pipeline for spinning out circuit boards in a manner of minutes. Now the folks at Bantam Tools are back, putting those insights into
a new machine that makes cutting aluminum a first class feature
. While machine details are still sparse from their announcement page, knowing that Bantam Tools has spent a few years turning classrooms of students into hardware prototypes reassures us that we’re in good hands. Now let’s spill some beans on this beast.
A Big Shift in the Construction
Othermill made from HDPE
The heritage of this machine goes back a few years to the Other Machine Company’s design
known as the Othermill
. It was designed from a compact structure made from HDPE. Doing so made the machine fairly lightweight and easy to manufacture from large sheets with subtractive tooling, not to mention giving it an adorable A+ lunchbox aesthetic. In 2017 Bre Pettis — a founder of MakerBot and investor in Glowforge — bought the company, changing the name to Bantam Tools and shifting the focus to professional desktop milling.
Today’s offering — officially called the Bantam Tools Desktop Desktop CNC Milling Machine — grows the work region to a full 3″-by-9″-by-7″. The change calls for stiffer construction, and the design team has spared no expense at opting for thick steel linear motion components installed into a rugged aluminum frame. Just like the previous model, Bantam Tools’ new machine will get a full enclosure, making it classroom and office friendly.
Taking a closer peek at the construction itself, the machine frame borrows the T-slot technique from rapid prototyping with flat panels of laser cut components. However, unlike laser cut plastic joints, an aluminum frame should be more than enough to resist any stresses on these joints from everyday operation. This construction also has us suspecting that the machine is squared up and aligned with separate fixtures by the folks on the factory floor. In this setup the precision of the machine comes from the assembly process using references, rather than the precision of the machine that made the parts, which keeps the components simple and the fabrication expenses down without compromising on the machine’s ability to make precise parts.
Software Encapsulation
Let’s be frank. Cutting Aluminum is hard, especially at high speeds with tiny tools. Without some serious consideration of our cutting tool’s feeds and speeds, we can easily be left with a big pile of broken bits, a smaller pile of metal chips, and a never-to-be-finished part. But fear not. In the last few years, Bantam Tools took the complex precision process of milling two layer circuit boards and simplified it with a streamlined software workflow. How? Encapsulation.
By delegating more and more of the machine behaviors to software and accepting a variety of common file formats, the resulting machine could be used easily by both novices and experts. As more of us become generalists, encapsulation is key. It helps those of us who aren’t milling every minute of the day to be almost as capable at partmaking as those who mill day in and day out.
With the arrival of their new model, Bantam Tools promises a new set of software tools keen on doing the exact same thing. And features like their 2.5D
Auto Cam
, which turns 2D SVGs into toolpaths, speak exactly to this principle of user simplicity. I’m confident that their prior experience can take a number of key elements that make cutting aluminum so tricky and simplify them, hiding the complexities and providing a great overall user experience.
An even more Capable Garage, Office, and Hackerspace
As eager onlookers, we’ve had the pleasure of watching Bantam Tools grow their hardware capabilities from the early days of the
MTM-Snap prototype
, to hearing about
the joys and woes of bootstrapping a hardware startup
, to
hearing early success stories
as a PCB Prototyping machine, to their latest
name change
. I continue to have that same eagerness at seeing new design from a crew that packs giant dreams into tiny machines. But what do you think? Let us know in the comments. | 50 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261149",
"author": "anszom",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T19:27:51",
"content": "What is this Encapsulation which is supposed to solve all problems? I was really curious, but the whole paragraph is a long-winded way of saying “they threw software at the problem”.Sorry but this reads li... | 1,760,373,429.348807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/marian-croak-is-the-mvp-of-voip-adoption/ | Marian Croak Is The MVP Of VoIP Adoption | Kristina Panos | [
"Biography",
"Hackaday Columns",
"internet hacks",
"Network Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"bell labs",
"facetime",
"google",
"skype",
"text to donate",
"text voting",
"voip",
"women in technology"
] | If you’ve ever used FaceTime, Skype, own a Magic Jack, or have donated money after a disaster by sending a text message, then you have Marian Croak to thank. Her leadership and forward thinking changed how Ma Bell used its reach and made all of these things possible.
Marian Croak is a soft-spoken woman and a self-described non-talker, but her actions spoke loudly in support of Internet Protocol (IP) as the future of communication. Humans are always looking for the next best communication medium, the fastest path to understanding each other clearly. We are still making phone calls today, but voice has been joined by text and video as the next best thing to being there. All of it is riding on a versatile network strongly rooted in Marian’s work.
Image via
Twitter
Little Miss Fix-it
Most kids, girls especially, want to help Mom and Dad at some point in their childhoods. But young Marian wasn’t interested in learning to cook or do the laundry — she wanted to be the one her mother called on when the furnace quit working or the dishwasher started leaking. Whenever a repairman came to the house, Marian would follow close behind, bugging them with questions about their equipment and troubleshooting procedures.
Other 1960s households might have discouraged that behavior, but Marian had a lot of support from her family, especially her father. She even quit Catholic school in 10th grade to chase a more scientific education in a gritty NYC public high school with bars on the windows. Marian’s parents weren’t pleased, but they didn’t try to stop her. In fact, her Dad showed his support by building a chemistry set in the basement. After graduation, Marian went to Princeton and then moved across the country to USC for graduate school. There, she earned a PhD in quantitative analysis — now known as data science — and social psychology.
Pulling Ma Bell Into the Internet Age
Marian accepted a position at Bell Labs in 1982 and moved back to the east coast before her USC graduation cap hit the ground. While most of the company was focused on voice, Marian worked on messaging applications and was tasked with finding out whether already-deployed messaging applications were compatible with each other.
Marian at Bell Labs. Image via
Greater Diversity News
By the early 1990s, Marian moved into data services and networking. These were both due for a new infrastructure, and AT&T was planning a multi-billion dollar switch over to the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol. Marian and her team started looking at TCP/IP instead, and believed it was the wave of the future. They advocated for the protocol and convinced the executives that IP was the way to go, even though the technology wasn’t quite ready for the proposed load of integrated voice, data, and video.
AT&T merged the IP and voice networking engineering teams and assigned Marian to manage this group of 2,000 or so engineers in order to get the network ready. Because of her background, Marian was in a unique position to understand both the plight of the fast-to-market IP engineers as well as the slow and steady, test-happy approach of the networking side. But Marian wasn’t some hands-off VP — she was down in the trenches by day, night, and weekends. By the end of Marian’s 32-year career with AT&T, she had racked up over 200 patents, more than half of which are related to Voice over IP (VoIP) products.
Vote with Your Phone
In the early 2000s, text messaging was in its infancy and ruled by T9 input — using the numeric keypad on the phone to spell out messages,
often through
[leveraging a predictive algorithm to avoid] repeated presses to select each letter. Still, Marian saw the potential in the service. AT&T partnered with
American Idol
to create a text-based voting system built by Marian’s team. Millions of people learned how to text so they could weigh in each week.
Image via
AT&T
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, Marian saw even more potential and
created a platform for people to donate to the relief fund by texting
, essentially authorizing a bit extra on next month’s phone bill. Text to donate was used again to great success to provide relief for Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Marian was hired by Google in 2014 and is currently a Vice President of Engineering. Today, she leads the charge of expanding internet access in developing countries. She continues with her humanitarian work, having led Project Loon’s initiative to provide balloon-based emergency cell service to the residents of Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.
In many ways, she is still doing the same thing she has done throughout her career — ‘trying to change the world in simple, pragmatic ways’, as she put it in
a 2012 letter she wrote to young women in technology
. Marian continues to be an inspiration. You can watch her keynote address below from Google’s 2017 Women Techmakers Mountain View Summit. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261224",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T23:50:52",
"content": "Back in the early 90s, my employer was renting T-1 lines for about ~$1K/month, and fractional for a bit less.i guess I was under the impression that TCP/IP had been around since the dawn of Ethernet…",
"p... | 1,760,373,429.408596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/magnetic-couplings-make-this-lego-submarine-watertight/ | Magnetic Couplings Make This Lego Submarine Watertight | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"magent",
"neodymium",
"prop",
"rov",
"submarine",
"submersible",
"Technic"
] | Although you’d be hard-pressed to tell in some areas, it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, which always seems to bring out the projects that require a swimming pool for adequate testing. The [Brick Experiment Channel]’s latest build,
a submersible made almost entirely from Lego
, is one such project and has us pining for weather that makes a dip sensible rather than suicidal.
The sub featured in the video below is a significant improvement over the “Sub in a Jug” approach the [Brick Experiment Channel] favored for
version 1
. Rather than starting with a vessel specifically designed not to hold water, the hull for this vessel is an IKEA food container, with a stout glass body and a flexible lid with silicone seals. And instead of penetrating the hull for driveshafts and attempting to seal them, this time around he built clever magnetic couplings.
The couplings transmit torque from the motors on the inside to gears and props on the outside. And where the first version used a syringe-pump ballast tank to control the depth, this one uses vertical thrusters. The flexible lid proved to be a problem with that scheme, since it tended to collapse as the depth increased, preventing the sub from surfacing. That was solved with some Lego bracing and adjustment of the lead shot ballast used to keep the sub neutrally buoyant.
This looks like a ton of summer fun, and even if you don’t have Legos galore to work with, it could easily be adapted to other materials. There are a ton of other fun [BEC] Lego builds to check out, some of which we’ve covered, including
a Lego drone
and
a playing card shooter
.
Thanks for the tip, [Vox]! | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261103",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T16:18:37",
"content": "Anyone who is hesitating to check out more videos on the channel, go for it. Especially if you’ve got kids, it is high quality educational content!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,373,429.462553 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/not-just-gps-new-options-for-global-positioning/ | Not Just GPS: New Options For Global Positioning | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"Beidou",
"Galileo",
"glonass",
"gnss",
"gps",
"navic",
"qzss",
"satellite navigation"
] | A few weeks ago, China launched the final satellite in its BeiDou-3 satellite positioning system. Didn’t know that China had its own GPS? How about Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, or Japan’s QZSS? There’s a whole world of GPS-alikes out there. Let’s take a look.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) that we all know and love flew its first satellite in the distant past of 1978, just five years after the project began. Becoming fully operational in 1993, it was originally intended for use by the military. After decrees by government and the increase in civilian accuracy in 2000, GPS took the world by storm.
While open access to GPS spawned new industries and made navigation easier for everyone, governments worldwide were keenly aware that such a useful system was under the sole control of the United States. As more came to rely on it for day to day activities, it became clear to many that it would be advantageous to have a system under their own control.
These factors have led to the development of a spate of satellite navigation systems being developed by other nation states. Russia’s GLONASS, the European Union’s Galileo, and China’s BeiDou navigation system all offer comparable functionality to GPS. Meanwhile, Japan and India have both undertaken the construction of regional navigational systems, with QZSS and NAVIC, respectively. Each have their own unique qualities, and it bears learning about the relative systems and what they bring to satellite navigation.
GLONASS
Vladimir Putin unwraps a GLONASS navigation unit, after his efforts to bring the system back to full functionality in the early 2000s. Credit: Kremlin.ru
The oldest system next to GPS, GLONASS was developed by the Soviet Union, kicking off in 1976. A little slower to come together, its full constellation of satellites was first completed in 1995. Russian economic issues led to the system falling out of maintenance, and global coverage was lost a few short years later.
It was only in the new millenium that proper funding was restored to the project. Since then, GLONASS has become a priority of Russian leadership, taking a full third of the Roscosmos budget. Global coverage was once again reached in 2013.
At its standard level of operation, GLONASS offers between 4.5 m and 7.4 m of accuracy – competitive with unaugmented GPS. Despite this, it was late to the party, and initially failed to find acceptance as GPS was already the favored choice. Regulations were put in place for a
25% import tariff for any GPS navigation device that didn’t also support GLONASS
. This political move quickly changed things, with manufacturers making the effort to create devices that could take advantage of both satellite navigation systems. This had the additional benefit of improving acquire time, as receivers had a broader set of satellites from which to receive a fix.
Galileo
Kicking off in 1999, The European Union’s Galileo system was nearly scuppered before it got started, with the United States having severe reservations about the program. With the system offering high accuracy navigation to anyone and everyone, the US feared it could be used in attacks on its home territory. With the original frequency plan, it would be impractical for US forces to jam Galileo transmissions without also interfering with GPS used for their own weapons. However, the EU pushed on, coming to a compromise that the system would be built, albeit in a way that would leave the two systems using suitably seperate frequency allocations. The first craft was launched took place in 2011, with launches taking place thick and fast ever since.
The Return Link functionality is intended to allow those activating emergency beacons to be notified that their message has been received, and help is on the way. [Image source:
ESA
]
Currently, 22 satellites are operational out of a planned total 30: 24 to be in use, and 6 on active standby. Coverage is considered global, while likely not yet perfect until the constellation is completed sometime this year.
Through the use of Precise Point Positioning technology
, Galileo offers accuracy to the centimetric level in its high accuracy mode, without requiring any communications with base-stations like augmented GPS or RTK.
Plans also include implementing rudimentary two-way communication for the Galileo Search-and-Rescue service, allowing first responders to indicate to those seeking assistance that their call has been received and help is on the way.
BeiDou
China’s final BeiDou satellite was launched on June 22, 2020. The booster made landfall downrange and
set a small fire amongst some trees.
Spawned from discussions in the 1980s, China’s Beidou system kicked off with BeiDou-1, with the first launch taking place in 2000. A China-only regional system, it was superseded by BeiDou-2 which began launches in 2007 which began the march towards more global coverage. 2015 marked the start of BeiDou-3 deployment,
with the final satellite of the constellation being launched on June 22, 2020
.
With accuracy on the order of 10 meters for civilian use, it also delivers a military-only signal to the armies of China and Pakistan, reportedly down to 10 cm.
Short messaging capability is also included in the platform
, though whether this will be available to the general public is not clear at this time.
Around 70% of Chinese smartphones already support the system.
With China’s huge manufacturing muscle and massive population, expect BeiDou hardware to become commonplace incredibly quickly.
Regional Systems
Creating a global satellite navigation system is incredibly expensive. While the economic benefits can be huge, they’re not always readily capturable by those implementing the system, particularly now in a world where we have four. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t gains to be had from throwing up a few satellites to augment things locally.
Japan’s QZSS system does just that, acting as a local support to standard GPS satellites. The goal was to create a regionally-specific system to help with GPS reception in urban canyons, where tall buildings make it difficult for receivers on the ground to see enough satellites to get a fix. Signals transmitted from the satellites are compatible with standard GPS receivers. First launched in 2010, the constellation currently consists of four satellites, with a further three planned.
Qualcomm chipsets will include NAVIC functionality going forward, after a deal was signed in 2019.
India’s NAVIC system was partially borne out of
a loss of GPS access in the midst of the Kargil War in 1999.
The first launch took place in 2013, with the system declared operational five years later. With seven satellites currently in use, coverage extends up to 1,600 km from India’s borders. Using a dual-band system with transmissions at 1176 MHz and 2492 MHz to calculate atmospheric distortion, it aims to offer better accuracy than unaugmented GPS.
As in Russia,
India is using goverment legislation to push adoption,
and deals signed suggest smartphones could work with NAVIC signals
as soon as this year.
What It Means For Users
For the average user on the street, the new systems coming online won’t be particularly noticable. It’s likely that smartphone chipsets will pack functionality with most, if not all, systems moving forward, allowing quicker fixes and more accurate positioning. For makers and hackers, there will be more options than ever for satellite navigation modules. For those seeking access to the most satellites possible,
units like the ublox NEO-M8U will be attractive.
Combined GPS/GLONASS receivers have
already been around for years.
Anyone out there using Galileo’s centimeter-level resolution?
For nation states, their leaders may sleep a little more soundly knowing that their military has accurate strike capabilities on lock, regardless of the whims of the USA. Conversely, they may fear their adversaries hitting their own soft targets with more precision than ever before. Realistically, positioning systems will just be yet another front on which electronic warfare rages on the battlefield. Incidents like
Iran’s use of GPS spoofing
are a great example of how these systems can be used and abused.
Regardless, it’s an exciting time for those interested in the cutting-edge of positioning technologies. We look forward to ever-more accurate data helping out with new technologies like drone deliveries, self driving cars, and just finding your way to that new happening coffee shop across town! | 79 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261080",
"author": "Luke",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T14:44:19",
"content": "> This had the additional benefit of improving acquire time, as receivers had a broader set of satellites from which to receive a fix.It also means that Russia can interfere with GPS devices by the back door... | 1,760,373,429.576185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/designing-3d-printed-enclosures-for-kicad-pcbs/ | Designing 3D Printed Enclosures For KiCad PCBs | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"freecad",
"KiCAD",
"PCB design"
] | If you’ve used KiCad before, you’re certainly familiar with the handy 3D view that shows you a rendered view of what your assembled board would look like. But as [Vadim Panov] explains, you can take this capability a step further. With a few extra tools and a little bit of know-how,
you can leverage KiCad’s PCB renderings to make custom 3D printable enclosures
.
The first step is to design the PCB as you normally would in KiCad. This could be an original PCB of your own invention, or a digital representation of an off-the-shelf model you want to build an enclosure for. If the latter, then the PCB doesn’t need to be 100% accurate; the goal is really just to get the big components into roughly the right areas so you can get the clearances right. Though obviously you’ll want to make sure the board’s outer dimensions and mounting hole locations are recreated as accurately as possible.
From there,
[Vadim] recommends a tool called StepUp
. This will take your PCB KiCad PCB files and create either a STEP or STL file of the assembled board which can be imported into your CAD package of choice. For the purposes of this demonstration he’s sticking with FreeCAD, as he likes the idea of it being a completely FOSS toolchain from start to finish.
Now that you have a model of the PCB in your CAD software, the rest is up to you. Naturally, there are existing enclosure models you can use such as the ones produced by
the “Ultimate Box Maker” that we covered previously
, but you could just as easily start building a new enclosure around the digital PCB.
Looking for a bit more guidance? As it so happens, our very own [Anool Mahidharia] will be
presenting a class on how you can develop a KiCad + FreeCAD workflow
as part of our recently launched
HackadayU initiative
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261051",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T12:36:22",
"content": "I used to extrude the footprint shapes to what I measure and use that as a reference. For existing ready made PCBs I like to use a 2D scanner to get a fairly accurate placement. It’s better than photograph... | 1,760,373,429.626719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/07/milling-dies-and-injection-moulding-some-acrylic-lenses/ | Milling Dies And Injection Moulding Some Acrylic Lenses | Adil Malik | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"injection molding",
"lens",
"milling",
"optics"
] | [Zach] over at his channel Breaking Taps has put up an extraordinary
account on manufacturing some homemade acrylic lenses
. In the end, not only does he produce some beautiful concave lenses, he also covers the complete manufacturing process, from milling the aluminium die used for injection moulding to tweaking the parameters associated with injecting the actual acrylic, he even goes over the limitations of optics produced in this fashion.
What caught our eye in particular, was how [Zach] used the finished product to practically demonstrate photoelasticity originating from the stress induced by the moulding process. You might be familiar with describing the optical properties of a material by a single number, i.e its permittivity. But what happens if in addition to altering speed, the material also alters the polarisation and direction of light depending on the stress distribution within the material? Whilst a quantitative answer gets a bit complicated you can check out [Zach’s]
additional videos to visualise the answer
in a pretty and colourful way, without resorting to fancy computer simulations! If however, you really want to persist with the simulation route, check out our article on stress analysis in a
totally different setting using Finite Element Analysis
. | 18 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261016",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T09:14:57",
"content": "You can try to anneal the lens in oven to remove the stress patters.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261072",
"author": "Zachary Tong (@... | 1,760,373,429.684263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/filmmaking-from-home-with-projection-mapping/ | Filmmaking From Home With Projection Mapping | Sharon Lin | [
"Art",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"filmmaking",
"lightform",
"projection mapping"
] | Stuck at home in self-quarantine, artist and filmmaker [Kira Bursky] had fewer options than normal for her
latest film project
. While a normal weekend film sprint would have involved collaborating with actors, set designers, and cinematographers in a frenzied attempt to finish in
less than 48 hours
, she instead chose to indulge in her curiosity for projection mapping, a technique that involves projecting visuals onto three-dimensional or flat surfaces.
In order for the images to properly map onto a surface, the surface first has to be mapped so that the projection is able to properly transform the flat image in order to produce the illusion of the light wrapping around the object. The technique is done in layers, in software similar to Photoshop, making it easier for the designer to organize the different interacting components in their animation.
[Kira] used a tool called Lightform to design her projections, which relies on a camera to calibrate the location of the surface and a projector to display the visuals. Her animated figures are drawn with loose lines and characterized by their slow gradients and ethereal movements. In the background of her film, a rhythmic sound plays while she brings the figures closer to view. Their outlines come into greater focus until the figures transform into her physical body, which also dances with the meandering lights.
Check out the short film below.
You can check out some other projects including
video game projections
, using a
Raspberry Pi for projection mapping
, and
projection mapping onto moving surfaces
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260996",
"author": "Zengar",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T05:33:01",
"content": "Projection mapping is such a cool technique and can produce such unique results.Another example of it, courtesy of Pomplamoose:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7X8ZnmLfM0",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,373,429.763208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/remote-code-execution-on-the-n64/ | Remote Code Execution On The N64 | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"modem",
"n64",
"nintendo",
"nintendo 64"
] | Some like to garden in their spare time, while others prefer to smoke cigars or fold complicated origami figurines. Security researcher
[grifter]
[CTurt] seems to enjoy cracking consoles instead, and had a go at
exploiting the Nintendo 64 over an obscure modem interface
.
The 1990s were a wild time, where games shipped in cartridges. This format opened up crazy possibilities to add additional hardware to the cartridge itself. Perhaps most famously, Nintendo packed in the SuperFX chip to enable 3D graphics on the Super Nintendo. Later on, the N64 game Morita Shogi 64 shipped with an entire telephone modem in the cartridge itself. The resulting exploit is therefore dubbed “shogihax”.
Armed with a dodgy GameShark and a decompiler, [CTurt] set to work. Through careful parsing of the code, they were able to find a suitable overflow bug in the game when using the modem. Unlike more pedestrian savegame hacks, this not only allowed for the execution of arbitrary code but also the modem interface means that it’s possible to continually stream more data to the console on an ad-hoc basis.
It’s a great hack that takes advantage of a relatively accessible cartridge, rather than relying on more obscure hardware such as the N64DD modem or other rarities.
We’ve seen other N64 homebrew hacks before, too
. Video after the break.
Thanks to [grifter] for the tip! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261002",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T07:08:07",
"content": "Am I Missing something or is the second time Grifter has got credit for Cturts work?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6261010",
"author"... | 1,760,373,429.722154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/the-spin-cycle-washing-machine-motor-converts-10-speed-to-e-bike/ | The Spin Cycle: Washing Machine Motor Converts 10-Speed To E-Bike | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike",
"BLDC",
"brushless dc",
"custom",
"ebike",
"ebikes",
"electronics",
"motor",
"washing machine"
] | The “Spin Cycle” is an amazing electric bicycle built using a motor salvaged from a washing machine; when the puns are this perfect you have to roll with them. [jimminecraftguy’s] creation is one of
the most hacked-together yet functional electric vehicle we’ve seen in a long time
.
The drive train of this bicycle starts with a brushless DC motor from a washing machine. It has been slightly modified to run on 48 volts, and is installed inside the triangle of the bike’s frame. It has a chain driving the bike’s crank, retaining the original chain and gearing setup (unlike many electric bike hacks that
utilize hub motors
). The crank has also been specially modified to include a freewheel, a necessary feature so that the motor can operate without spinning the pedals. Everything except the motor has been custom fabricated including the mounts and the electronics.
[jimminecraftguy] reports speeds of 110 kph which is a little crazy for a 20-year-old aluminum frame bike, and we’d guess it’s not street legal in many jurisdictions, but we can’t really find much fault with this build in general based on the amount of innovation required to get this working at all. A few more improvements for the build are in the works, including improved batteries and a cover for the sides to keep the local law enforcement from getting too suspicious. We can’t wait to see the final version. | 77 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260748",
"author": "fdufnews",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T11:16:00",
"content": "“[jimminecraftguy] reports speeds of 110 kph which is a little crazy”I think so. If the brakes stay the same maybe one day the driver will needed to be hacked too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,373,429.954804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/elegant-shoji-lamps-from-your-3d-printer/ | Elegant Shoji Lamps From Your 3D Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"decorative",
"japanese",
"lamps",
"RGB LED"
] | The gorgeous Shoji-style lamps you’re seeing here aren’t made of wood or paper. Beyond the LEDs illuminating them from within, the lamps are completely 3D printed. There aren’t any fasteners or glue holding them together either, as creator
[Dheera Venkatraman] used authentic Japanese wood joinery techniques
to make their components fit together like a puzzle.
While we’re usually more taken with the electronic components of the projects that get sent our way, we have to admit that in this case, the enclosure is really the star of the show. [Dheera] has included a versatile mounting point where you could put anything from a cheap LED candle to a few WS2812B modules, but otherwise leaves the integration of electronic components as an exercise for the reader.
All of the components were designed in OpenSCAD, which means it should be relatively easy to add your own designs to the list of included panel types. Despite the colorful details, you won’t need a multi-material printer to run them off either. Everything you see here was printed on a Prusa i3 MK3S in PETG. Filament swaps and careful design were used to achieve the multiple colors visible on some of the more intricate panels.
If the timeless style of these Japanese lanterns has caught your eye,
you’ll love this beautiful sunrise clock we covered last year
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260778",
"author": "f1vefour",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T13:16:02",
"content": "If I weren’t putting these outside I would definitely use wood PLA for the cases then give them a nice stain.Awesome design and execution.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,430.002384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/your-microcontroller-is-your-ide/ | Your Microcontroller Is Your IDE | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"ide",
"micropython"
] | What if your microcontroller IDE was
running on the microcontroller itself
and not hosted on the computer you use to do the programming? The greatest legacy of Arduino in all its forms has arguably been a software one, in that it replaced annoying proprietary development environments with one that installed easily on a range of operating systems, was easy to use, and above all,
worked
. The next level of portability is to get rid of any specialize computer-side software. [Ronny Neufeld] wrote MicroIDE for ESP32 as an IDE accessible through a web browser, which interestingly is hosted on the target device itself.
Using the IDE is easy enough, install a binary, connect to the ESP with a web browser, start writing MicroPython code. There is a choice of connecting directly to the chip as a hotspot, or connecting via another WiFi network. The interface is looking pretty slick but he’s at pains to remind us that it’s a work in progress. Sadly there is no source code yet as it’s a binary distribution that is free for non-commercial use, we’d hope that an open-source release might one day happen. It’s not for everyone, but the convenience of accessing the same interface from almost any modern device should help attract a healthy community.
This appears to be the first web-based on-chip ESP IDE we’ve shown you. But it’s not the first on-chip coding example,
as this BASIC interpreter shows
.
[Main image source: Ubahnverleih /
CC0
] | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260704",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T05:43:17",
"content": "Indeed, reminds me of the oldie XT days with DEBUG on MS-DOS 8088 and 8086 that was a lot of fun, very absorbing…What’s the best update for MS-DOS DEBUG these days that run... | 1,760,373,430.062368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/live-map-of-london-tube-created-in-pcb-and-lights/ | Live Map Of London Tube Created In PCB And Lights | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"bus",
"hardware",
"led",
"london",
"pcb",
"public transit",
"schedule",
"subway",
"transportation",
"tube",
"underground"
] | If you’re a frequent traveler on a public transit system, it can be helpful to know when the trains or buses are arriving and if there are any delays. We might reach for a tablet to mount on the wall, but that relies on keeping the OS, the software, and its library dependancies up to date. For true reliability you’ll need to build directly in hardware,
which is exactly what this map of the London tube system uses
.
The base map is printed directly on PCB, with LEDs along each of the major routes to indicate the current location of the trains. A few small chips handle the WiFi connection — it appears to our eye to be an ESP8266 — and pulling the information about the trains from the London Underground API (it would be virtually impossible to build
everything
for this project in hardware). The hardware can be easily reprogrammed, and with the PCB layout this could be adapted for other public transit fairly easily.
Even apart from the philosophical differences on design between hardware and software approaches, we still appreciate the aesthetic of LEDs on PCB. In fact, we’ve seen a
whole host of artwork on PCBs
ever since the price came down dramatically in the past two decades.
Thanks to [Al] for the tip! | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260688",
"author": "jenningsthecat",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T02:30:16",
"content": "That is awesome! When I refreshed the page all I saw was the picture – no title or text. Yet it only took about 2 seconds for me to go ‘Oh cool! A subway map! With it being that immediately obvious... | 1,760,373,430.115004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/hackaday-links-july-5-2020/ | Hackaday Links: July 5, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"astronomy",
"Betelgeuse",
"cockpit",
"Covid-19",
"f-15",
"factory tour",
"hackaday links",
"HMI",
"museum",
"prosthetic",
"Supernova",
"UI"
] | Remember all the hubbub over Betelgeuse back in February? For that matter, do you even remember February? If you do, you might recall that the red giant in Orion was steadily dimming, which some took as a portent of an impending supernova. That obviously didn’t happen, but we now seem to have an explanation for the periodic dimming:
an enormous dark spot on the star
. “Enormous” doesn’t begin to describe this thing, which covers 70% of the face of a star that would extend past Jupiter if it replaced the sun. The dimming was originally thought to be dust being blown off the star as it goes through its death throes, but no evidence could be found for that, while direct observations in the terahertz range showed what amounted to a reduction in surface temperature caused by the enormous star spot. We just think it’s incredibly cool that Betelgeuse is so big that we can actually observe it as a disk rather than a pinpoint of light. At least for now.
F-15c cockpit
F-15a cockpit
If you think you’ve seen some challenging user interfaces, wait till you get a load of
the cockpit of an F-15C Eagle
. As part of a new series on human interfaces, Ars Technica invited Col. Andrea Themely (USAF-ret.) to give a tour of the fighter she has over 1,100 hours on. Bearing in mind that the Eagle entered service in 1976 and has been continually updated with the latest avionics — compare the video with the steam gauges of
the cockpit of an F-15A
— its cockpit is still a pretty busy place. As much as possible has been done to reduce pilot load, with controls being grouped by function and the use of color-coding — don’t touch the yellow and black stuff! — and the use of tactile feedback. It’s a fascinating deep dive into a workplace that few of us ever get to see, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the series.
Sad news from Seattle, where
the Living Computers: Museum + Labs is closing up shop
. The announcement only says they’re closing “for now”, so there’s at least some hope that the museum will be back once the COVID-19 downturn has run its course. We hope they do bounce back; it really was a great museum with a lot of amazing hardware on display. The Vintage Computer Festival PNW was held there in its inaugural year, an event
we covered
and had high hopes for in the future. We hope for the best for these educational and cultural institutions, but we can’t help but fear a little for their future.
So you suffer a partial amputation of your left hand, leaving you with only your thumb and your palm. That raises an interesting conundrum: you haven’t lost enough to replace the hand with a prosthetic one, but you still don’t have any fingers. That appears to be what happened to Ian Davis, and so he built his own partial prosthetic to replace his fingers. There’s not much backstory on
his YouTube channel
, but from what we can gather he has gone through several designs, most of which are myomechanical rather than myoelectric. Through a series of complex linkages, he’s able to control not only the opening and closing of the fingers, but also to splay them apart. It’s all in the wrist, as it were — his input gestures all come from flexing and extending his hand relative to his forearm, where the prosthesis is anchored. This results in a pretty powerful grip — much stronger than a myoelectric hand in a head-to-head test. And the coolness factor of his work is just off the scale. We’re looking forward to more from Ian, and hopefully enough background information for a full story on what he has accomplished. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260673",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T23:20:28",
"content": "Better link about Betelgeuse:http://www.mpia.de/news/science/2020-08-betelgeuse",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260850",
"author": "Sean",
... | 1,760,373,430.269556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/syringes-put-the-squeeze-on-this-mini-drill-press/ | Syringes Put The Squeeze On This Mini Drill Press | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"drill press",
"hydraulic",
"rotary tool",
"syringe"
] | If you’re making your own PCBs for through-hole projects at home, getting the board etched is only half the battle; you’ve still got to drill all those little holes. It’s a tedious process, and if you’ve got a lot of them, doing them freehand with a drill just isn’t going to cut it. Which is why
[Ruchir Chauhan] built this tiny 3D printed drill press
.
This design is actually interesting for a number of reasons. The fact that it’s primarily 3D printed is a big one, though of course it’s not the first time we’ve seen that. We also like the minimal part count and low-cost, which is sure to appeal to those looking to produce PCBs on a budget. But the most impressive feature has to the hydraulic system [Ruchir] has come up with to actually do the drilling.
Rather than pulling an arm to lower the bit towards the work piece, a system utilizing four syringes, some water, and a bit of tubing is used to pull the tool down. This might seem extravagant, but if you’ve got a lot of holes to drill, this design is really going to save your arms. This method should also give you more consistent and accurate results, as you won’t be putting any torque on the structure as you would with a manually operated press.
[Ruchir] doesn’t offer much in the way of instructions on the project’s Hackaday.io page, but once you print out all of the provided STLs and get your syringes ready to go, the rest should be fairly self explanatory. Personally we might have added a smooth steel rod in there to make sure the movement is nice and straight, but we can see the appeal of doing it with a printed part to keep things cheap.
Looking for more ideas? If you’re after something a bit larger
we might suggest this one made from PVC pipes
, and
this 3D printed desktop press would look good on anyone’s bench
. Just don’t blame us if your arms get tired.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/drill-press-short-video.mp4 | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260658",
"author": "Ghent the Slicer",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T20:15:45",
"content": "It looks like cool project. Not sure if its practical though. Instead of a lever, you have to pull the side drawer/panel?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,373,430.222282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/reviving-a-doa-smart-bulb-with-custom-firmware-for-its-esp8266/ | Reviving A DOA Smart Bulb With Custom Firmware For Its ESP8266 | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"firmware",
"lighting",
"Smart Bulb",
"smart home"
] | There are some incredibly cheap WiFi smart bulbs on the market these days, but as is often the case, you tend to get what you pay for. When [Viktor] took delivery of his latest bargain basement bulb, the thing didn’t even work. So much for Quality Assurance. On the plus side, it was
a great excuse to pop it open and replace the firmware
.
For anyone wondering, [Viktor] never actually figured out why the bulb didn’t work. Its ESP8266-based control board was getting power, and data was getting spit out of the serial port when he connected it to the computer (although he never got the communications settings right to actually see what it was saying). But he also didn’t care much; once he confirmed that the hardware was good, he just uploaded the custom firmware he’d previously developed for another ESP8266 bulb.
Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. The chances that both bulbs would have used the same GPIO pins to control the red, green, blue, and white LEDs were pretty slim. But after some testing and modifications to the code, he was able to fire them up. The other issue was a bit trickier, as it turned out the bulb’s flash chip was too small to hold his firmware’s web configuration pages. So he had to break out the hot air gun and replace the SPI flash chip with something a bit roomier. We suppose he could have just made smaller web pages… but where’s the fun in that?
Even with the chip swap, this
looks a lot easier than building your own smart bulbs from scratch
. With
so many cheap ESP8266 bulbs on the market
, it seems there’s never been a better time to code your own home lighting solution. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260645",
"author": "BillSF9c",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T17:21:11",
"content": "Beyond color preference and a bit of lifestyle due to hours and time on, perhaps illumination levels used, what more sinister stuff can spyware tell you, esp given the small memory? Or is this just china... | 1,760,373,430.164382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/analog-noise-generator-fighter-of-other-noises/ | Analog Noise Generator, Fighter Of Other Noises | Donald Papp | [
"how-to",
"Musical Hacks",
"Portable Audio Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"analog design",
"enclosure",
"prototyping",
"red noise",
"white noise"
] | A chaotic drone of meaningless sound to lull the human brain out of its usual drive to latch on to patterns can at times be a welcome thing. A nonsense background din — like an old television tuned to a dead channel — can help drown out distractions and other invading sounds when earplugs aren’t enough. As [mitxela] explains, this can be done with an MP3 file of white noise, and that is a solution that works perfectly well for most practical purposes. However he found himself wanting a more refined hardware noise generator with analog controls to fine tune the output,
and so the Rumbler was born
.
It’s a tight fit, but it does fit.
The Rumbler isn’t just a white noise generator. White noise has a flat spectrum, but the noise from the Rumbler is closer to Red or Brownian Noise. The different
colors of noise
have specific definitions, but the Rumbler’s output is really just white noise that has been put through some low pass filters to create an output closer to a nice background rumble that sounds pleasant, whereas white noise is more like flat static.
Why bother with doing this? Mainly because building things is fun, but there is also the idea that this is better at blocking out nuisance sounds from neighboring human activities. By the time distant music (or television, or talking, or shouting) has trickled through walls and into one’s eardrums, the higher frequencies have been much more strongly attenuated than the lower frequencies. This is why one can easily hear the bass from a nearby party’s music, but the lyrics don’t survive the trip through walls and windows nearly as well. The noise from the Rumbler is simply a better fit to those more durable lower frequencies.
[Mitxela]’s writeup has quite a few useful tips on analog design and prototyping, so
give it a read
even if you’re not planning to make your own analog noise box. Want to hear the Rumbler for yourself? There’s an embedded audio sample near the bottom of the page, so go check it out.
For a truly modern application of white noise, check out the
cone of silence for snooping smart speakers
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260968",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T01:00:29",
"content": "I suppose the design fulfills its purpose, but it looks unnecessarily complex. The high frequencies are very heavily filtered.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,430.316573 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/multi-volume-knob-gives-all-your-programs-a-turn/ | Multi-Volume Knob Gives All Your Programs A Turn | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"led ring",
"oled",
"oled display",
"rotary encoder",
"Volume knob",
"ws2812b"
] | We’ve all been there. You’re manning the battle station, deep in the sim-racing or some other n00b-pwning zone and suddenly some loudmouth blows out your eardrums over Discord. It’s insulting to have to stop what you’re doing to find the right Windows volume slider. So why do that?
Build [T3knomanzer]’s simple yet elegant multi-volume knob
and stay zen in the zone.
It’s easy, just turn the knob to cycle through your programs until Discord comes up on the little screen, and then push down to change it into a volume knob. If you need to change another volume, just click it again. Since there’s no Alt+Tabbing out to the desktop, no checkered flags should ever slip through your fingers.
Inside the well-designed case you’ll find the usual suspects — Arduino Nano, rotary encoder, an OLED display, and an LED ring, each with their own place carved out.
This completely open-source knob looks great, and we love that it’s been made incredibly easy to replicate by standing up a site with foolproof, well-depicted, step-by-step instructions. Watch them take it for a spin after the break.
Want more than volume at your fingertips?
Here’s a DIY USB knob that does shortcuts, too
. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260913",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T20:43:55",
"content": "Nice, but it needs numbers around it that go from 0 to 11.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6260988",
"author": "TJ",
"timestamp": "2020... | 1,760,373,432.181878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/time-bandit-clock-hits-the-aesthetic-jackpot/ | Time Bandit Clock Hits The Aesthetic Jackpot | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"binary clock",
"binary encoder",
"discrete logic",
"fruit machine",
"slot machine",
"stepper motor"
] | When was the last time you looked forward to looking at a clock? Not to find out the time per se — like gee, maybe it’s beer o’ clock already — but waited with bated breath to gaze upon a particular clock? Never? We don’t blame you, but only because you haven’t seen this fruit machine clock in action yet.
Every 60 seconds, the reels start spinning like some little man inside pulled the lever on a slot machine (or fruit machine, as they’re called across the pond). The reels slow down and stop one by one, left to right, settling on the four digits of time in 24-hour mode. Imagine the suspense of coming to see what time it is just as the reels start spinning!
[timebanditclock] grew this fruit machine out of old-school discrete logic beautifully applied to stripboard
. Each of the reels has a DIY binary encoder that uses IR transmit/receive pairs to generate a binary word. These four binary words are compared to a binary clock module using comparators.
We think this is an amazing concept already, but then [timebanditclock] worked overtime by doing it all in discrete logic. Spin past the break to see a demo and stick around for the build video.
Want a challenging clock build that’s a little less challenging?
Maybe it’s time to try circuit sculpture
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260873",
"author": "aggregatvier",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T18:41:29",
"content": "You can just change the encoder wheels to make the selections out of sequence or to replace positions with valid numbers where a clock would never use those numbers in that position.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,432.492852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/the-wimp-is-dead-long-live-the-solar-axion/ | The WIMP Is Dead, Long Live The Solar Axion! | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"axions",
"dark matter",
"neutrinos",
"XENON1T"
] | For decades scientists have been building detectors deep underground to search for dark matter. Now one of these experiments, the XENON1T detector,
has found an unexpected signal in their data.
Although the signal does not stem from dark matter it may still revolutionize physics.
Since the 1980s the majority of scientists believe that the most likely explanation for the missing mass problem is some yet undiscovered Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). They also figured that if you build a large and sensitive enough detector we should be able to catch these particles which are constantly streaming through Earth. So since the early 1990s, we have been putting detectors made from ultrapure materials in tunnels and mines where they are shielded from cosmic radiation and natural radioactivity.
Over the decades these detectors have increased their sensitivity by a factor of about 10 million due to ever more sophisticated techniques of shielding and discriminating against before mentioned backgrounds. So far they haven’t found dark matter, but that doesn’t mean the high-end sensing installations will go unused.
No Dark Matter So Far
Unfortunately, apart from a
long-standing unconvincing claim
, WIMP searches have yet found nada. Still, the search continues and everybody hopes that WIMPs are just around the corner as experiments will soon hit the sensitivity limit due to the background from neutrinos. Lately, people have developed
ambiguous opinions of whether the field is already dead
and some argue that
we should diversify the search for dark matter
instead of focussing on WIMPs.
The dwindling hopes of detecting WIMPs also inspired the collaborations running these experiments to think of other interesting physics searches. After all, having a super-sensitive detector not only lets you search for WIMPs but also for other exotic particles and rare nuclear decays plus one can do some interesting neutrino physics. Having a broad physics program helps to secure funding and keeps your Ph.D. students busy. Earlier this year the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment, XENON1T, was able to
measure the double electron capture decay in Xe-124.
With a half-life of ~10
22
years this is the rarest decay ever measured, 12 orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe.
Detecting Particles in Liquid Xenon
Detection principle of the XENON1T detector.
Credit:
E. Shockley
The XENON1T detector showing the bottom array of light sensors and copper rings that shape the electric field.
Credit:
XENON1T collaboration
The XENON1T detector is a so-called dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC). It consists of a cylindrical tank filled with the noble gas xenon cooled down to its liquid state. Above the liquid, there is also a gaseous phase, and an electric field is applied between the two. Whenever a particle interacts in the liquid it produces a flash of light (S1) which is detected by an array of light sensors located at the top and bottom of the tank. In addition, the charges produced in the particle interaction are swept to the top by the electric field and produce another flash of light (S2) when they enter the gas layer. From the time difference between both signals S1 and S2, it is possible to reconstruct the z-position (height) of the particle interaction while the distribution of light seen by the top and bottom arrays allows the array to determine the xy-position. In addition, the energy deposited by the particle can be deduced from the combined intensity of both light flashes while their ratio S2/S1 provides some information about the type of interacting particle. The latter makes it possible to distinguish if a particle interacted with the electrons of a xenon atom, as is the case for radioactivity from beta decays and gamma-rays, or if the particle bounced off a xenon nucleus, as WIMPs or neutrons do.
An Unexpected Signal
While an
earlier published WIMP search
did unfortunately not reveal any signal, in their latest analysis, the XENON1T collaboration looked more closely at the electron recoil data which is normally disregarded as background. As mentioned, most of these types of events come from radioactive contamination of the xenon and the surrounding materials. This background was modeled by Monte-Carlo simulations and constraint by separate measurements, e.g. by the previous screening of materials for their radioactivity. When the collaboration looked at the data and compared it to the background model this is what they saw.
Energy spectrum observed by XENON1T. The red line shows a fit to the data with the background model. The lower section indicates the deviation between data and model in units of standard deviations. Credit:
XENON1T collaboration
The data shows an excess of events between energies of 1 to 7 keV which peaks around 2 keV. By counting the events in this energy region and comparing it to the number of expected events from the background model, one gets a 3.5-sigma fluctuation. This means the probability to observe that many events for the given background model is merely 0.02%. While this sounds like it is safe to exclude a statistical fluctuation there have actually been a number of excesses in particle physics with a similar significance which later vanished. The most prominent example is the
750 GeV diphoton excess at the LHC
, which had a significance of up to 3.9 sigma and led to the authorship of over 500 articles but turned out to be just a statistical fluke. Still, the XENON1T result calls for some interpretation of the data, and the collaboration studied three possibilities.
Did Someone Drop Their Watch?
According to Occam’s razor the most likely but also most boring explanation would be some kind of yet unaccounted background. It turns out that the beta decay of tritium, the unstable form of hydrogen with two additional neutrons, has a shape that resembles the observed excess. Tritium is also the stuff that excites the phosphor in self-glowing watches. A tiny fraction of hydrogen atoms, about 10
-18
, are tritium which is naturally produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere. Therefore, a concentration of about 60 ppb of hydrogen or water inside the XENON1T detector could explain the observed excess, although the collaboration thinks the actual concentration should be ~100x lower.
Axions from the Sun
The more exciting interpretations of the signal are those that involve new physics and one of them would be the detection of solar axions. Axions are hypothetical particles, named after a brand of laundry detergent, and were postulated to solve a “fine-tuning” problem in particle physics. Axions are probably also the second most favorable dark matter candidate after WIMPs. However, dark matter axions have very small masses and need a totally different kind of detector technology to be searched for that involves microwave cavities. But axions with higher masses detectable by XENON1T can be produced in the sun through different processes such as the
Primakoff effect
. A statistical analysis shows that the data favors an axion signal with a significance of 3.2 sigma over the background model. If tritium is added to the background the axion signal is still favored but with a reduced significance of 2.1 sigma.
Neutrinos are not so Standard
The second interesting explanation of the signal comes from particles that we already know exist, namely neutrinos. Much like WIMPs, neutrinos are only weakly interacting and therefore show up very rarely in the detector. In fact, they were already considered in the background model but their contribution is minor. However, there are theories beyond the current Standard Model of particle physics that propose a higher interaction probability for neutrinos at low energies caused by a higher than usual magnetic moment of these particles. Fitting the data with this non-standard neutrino model gives a similar statistical significance as the axion model. But in this case, adding the tritium component reduces the significance to only 0.9 sigma.
Problems from Cooling Stars
One problem that should make us skeptical about the new physics interpretations of the signal is the fact that they are in tension with astrophysical observations. The properties of solar axions and the neutrino magnetic moment are constrained by studies about the cooling rate of stars which would lose additional energy through the emission of these particles. These constraints are in tension with the properties derived from the XENON1T data. On the other hand, particle physicists tend to not take astrophysical constraints too seriously because of the uncertainties involved in their models. Also, some astrophysical observations point towards an additional source of stellar cooling compatible with axions even if the parameters are different.
If the signal would be confirmed to originate from new physics the impact would be huge. It would be the first confirmation of physics beyond the Standard Model since the discovery of neutrino oscillations and therefore even outshine the discovery of the Higgs boson and the detection of gravitational waves. The good thing is that we should not have to wait too long until the situation is cleared up as the XENONnT, LZ, and PandaX-4T experiments are currently racing to build the next most sensitive WIMP detector. It looks like XENONnT will make the game as their detector is already being commissioned. With about three times as much xenon and a factor of ~6 lower background, the signal could be confirmed after only a few months of data collection. In the meantime, theorists have already started the publishing frenzy to come with new physics models that explain the excess, all hoping that this time the result will stick. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260862",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T18:15:32",
"content": "“it may still revolutionize physics” you mean like down is really up and fast is slow?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6260953",
"author... | 1,760,373,432.125789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/linux-in-the-machine-shop-hack-chat/ | Linux In The Machine Shop Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"cnc",
"Hack Chat",
"LinuxCNC",
"Machine tool",
"machining",
"realtime",
"RTOS"
] | Join us on Wednesday, July 8 at noon Pacific for the
Linux in the Machine Shop Hack Chat
with
Andy Pugh
!
From the time that numeric control started making inroads into machine shops in the middle of the last century until relatively recently, the power of being able to control machine tools with something other than a skilled human hand was evident. Unfortunately, the equipment to do so was expensive, and so NC technology remained firmly in the big shops, where a decent return on investment could be realized.
Fast forward a few decades, and everything that makes the computerized version of NC possible is cheap and easily available. Servos, steppers, drivers, and motion control components can be plugged together into CNC machines that can move a tool to a fixed point in space with incredible accuracy and repeatability. But without CNC software, none of it means a thing.
Enter
Linux CNC
, the free and open-source CNC package. With support for realtime operation, one-step installations, and a huge range of capabilities provided by a team of volunteer developers and supported by an active community, Linux CNC has democratized the world of CNC machines.
Andy Pugh is a frequent contributor to the Linux CNC codebase and a moderator on the forum. He knows a thing or two about Linux CNC in particular and Linux in the machine shop in general. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to share his experiences with the Linux CNC project, tell us how Linux can revolutionize the machine shop, and maybe share a few stories from the world of CAD, CAM, and using Linux to make a few chips.
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 8 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. | 67 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260857",
"author": "gfeae",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T17:51:32",
"content": "Doing CNC on Linux is like snowboarding on a toilet seat. Sure you can but why? It makes sense to use hard realtime system like FreeDOS.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,432.283337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/new-misuse-for-lithophanes-miniature-diorama-backgrounds/ | New (mis)Use For Lithophanes: Miniature Diorama Backgrounds | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"3d printed",
"diorama",
"figure",
"lithophane",
"miniature",
"photography",
"stl"
] | What’s better than a well-lit photo of a 3D-printed miniature?
A photo of the miniature in a mini diorama, of course
. [OrionDeHunter] shows off a clever technique that has something in common with old-timey photo stages and painted backgrounds, and (mis)uses 3D-printed lithophanes to pull it off. What [OrionDeHunter] does is use a curved and painted lithophane as a stand-in for a background, and the results look great!
Lithophanes are
intended
to be illuminated from behind to show an image, with thin areas showing as lighter and thicker areas darker, but when it comes to high contrast patterned images like brick walls, the same things that make a good lithophane just happen to also make a pretty good 3D model in the normal sense. No 3D scanning or photogrammetry required.
Here is the basic process: instead of creating a 3D model of a brick wall from scratch, [OrionDeHunter] simply converted an image of a brick wall (or stairs) into a curved lithophane with
an online tool
. The STL model of the lithophane is then 3D printed, painted, and used as a swappable background. When macro shots of the miniatures are taken, the curved background looks just right and allows for some controlled lighting. It’s a neat trick, and well applied in this project. Some sample images demonstrating how it works are just under the break.
3D model of curved lithophane
A painted lithophane makes a convincing brick wall
Other images like these stairs can work, too.
Lithophanes were originally made using marble or thin porcelain, but
a modern spin has been put on the technique with 3D printing
. Enterprising hackers have even
discovered ways to add color
, too. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260847",
"author": "k-ww",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T17:03:57",
"content": "For those w/o a 3D printer, it may be worthwhile to look at the offerings of the Faller company [faller.de] and their lines in various model train gauges [HO, Z, etc] specifically their mountain and rocks s... | 1,760,373,431.959417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/06/3d-printing-bigger-wind-turbines/ | 3D-Printing Bigger Wind Turbines | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d printed concrete",
"wind farm",
"Wind turbine"
] | Many decades ago, a much younger version of me was in the car with my dad and my brother, cruising down the highway on some errand or another. We were probably all in the front seat, and none of us were wearing seatbelts; those were simpler times. As we passed under an overpass, my dad said, “Do you know why the overpasses on these roads are so high?” Six-year-old me certainly didn’t, but it was clear dad did and had something to say about it, so we just shook our heads and waited for the lesson. “Because that’s how big nuclear missiles are.” He then went into an explanation of how the Interstate Highway System in the USA, then still in its infancy, was designed to make sure the armed forces could move around the country, so overpasses needed to allow trucks with big loads to pass.
It was an interesting lesson at the time, and over the years I’ve continued to be impressed with the foresight and engineering that went into the Interstate system here in the US. It’s far from perfect, of course, and it’s only recently that the specifications for the system have started to put a pinch on things that seem totally unrelated to overpass dimensions — namely, the size and efficiency of wind turbines.
The Taller, the Better
Outwardly, the ability to turn the kinetic energy of wind into electricity would seem to have little to do with the design decisions made by civil engineers during the Eisenhower administration. But when dealing with wind power, size, or more specifically height, matters. The higher a wind turbine’s hub is above ground level, the more consistent and the faster the wind.
A study
by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory mapped wind speeds at 110 m and 160 m above ground level (AGL) over the entire country. When compared to the winds at 80 m — about the average height for a big wind turbine these days — the difference is striking.
If wind turbines could be lifted up to 160 m AGL, vast swathes of the country could potentially be used for wind energy production. The NREL estimates that taller turbines could generate up to 45% more electricity.
Low Bridge Ahead
So the need for taller turbines is clear, but building them taller creates other problems. The taller the tower, the wider the base needs to be, to support the massive weight of the machinery above it and to resist the loads placed on it by the wind. The current crop of 80 m turbines has base sections that are about 4.5 m in diameter, which is just shy of the minimum highway overpass height (16 feet, or 4.9 m) specified for Interstate highways. When placed on a low-boy trailer, or on a trailer tailor-made for the job, the lowest sections of the tower just barely scrape underneath some overpasses, making for
some interesting moments
.
Wind turbine tower transporter with rear steering. Source:
Shandong Steer Machinery Co., Ltd.
The obvious answer to the need for such large tower base sections is to forget about fabricating them in factories and to just build them on site. And while that’s possible, the economics of construction works against it. The factories that make such huge parts are filled with even bigger machines needed to make them. The workers there are skilled tradespeople working under controlled conditions to produce precision parts that will stand up to enormous loads. Expecting such precision processes to be performed in the middle of a North Dakota cornfield in the middle of February is asking a lot.
On-Site Extrusion
As it turns out, though, it may actually be possible to set up a wind-turbine tower factory on the job site. General Electric, in cooperation with building materials company LafargeHolcim and construction 3D-printing concern COBOD, has
recently announced
plans to 3D-print the lower sections of wind turbine towers up to 200 meters tall. Their first prototype, a ten-meter tall tapering cylinder of extruded concrete, was printed in late 2019 at COBOD’s Copenhagen facility, was printed using the company’s BOD2 modular gantry printer.
The BOD2 printer was originally designed to print entire structures, from houses to small office buildings, onsite with minimal need for skilled trades. Depending on how the 2.5 m modules for the X- and Y-axes are configured, the BOD2 can print structures up to 14 m by 50 m, so it should be plenty big enough to print the base sections for even the largest wind turbine towers. Once the base sections are printed on-site to a height where the diameter narrows to less than 4.5 m, traditional prefabricated sections will presumably be transported to the site and assembled on top of the extruded pedestal.
There’s obviously a lot of engineering to be done to make sure this hybrid approach will support the loads that such large wind turbines will experience. But it seems like a clever use of a technology that, frankly, has always seemed to us to be a non-starter in terms of its ability to produce buildings that are attractive enough for people to actually want to live and work in them. Such a utilitarian application seems to be the perfect use case for large-scale 3D printing, and we’re eager to see if it pays off in the long run. | 66 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260797",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T14:30:55",
"content": "When I was in “Jolly Old England” several years ago, I noticed their overpasses had higher clearance than those found om most Interstate highways. My guess it is because the double decker busses are taller. ... | 1,760,373,432.062985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/the-cheap-way-to-glitch-an-stm8-microcontroller/ | The Cheap Way To Glitch An STM8 Microcontroller | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"FPGA",
"Microcontrollers",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"failure injection",
"glitching",
"memory read-out protection",
"stm8"
] | Reverse engineering or modifying a device often requires you to access the firmware stored on a microcontroller. Since companies are usually not fond of people who try to peek into their proprietary data, most commercial devices are readout protected. [rumpeltux] ran into this problem when he tried to dump the firmware on an HC-12 wireless serial communication module for yet undisclosed reasons. Hacking into the device was a challenge that he gladly accepted and in the end, he
succeeded by building a low-cost setup for voltage glitching
.
Voltage glitching is a form of fault injection that has, e.g., been successfully used to
hack the Playstation Vita
. It involves the injection of voltage spikes on the power line in order to force the bootloader to skip security checks. The hard thing is trying to find the right shape of the waveform and the best way to inject the signal.
While there are already open-source boards for fault injection like
ChipWhisperer
, [rumpeltux] chose to build his own setup around an FPGA. By using a cheap EPM240 board, some MOSFET, and a USB-to-Serial converter, the total costs of the glitching setup were under 20 Euros. [rumpeltux] then recorded a larger number of voltage traces on the VCC pin around the reset phase and analyzed the differences. This helped him to pinpoint the best time for injecting the signal and refine the search space. After some unsuccessful attempts to glitch the VCC and GND pins, he got lucky when using one of the voltage regulator pins instead.
Be sure not to miss
Samy Kamkar’s talk at Supercon 2019
if you want to know more about hardware attacks or how to eavesdrop on people using a bag of potato chips. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260518",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T17:33:00",
"content": "EPM240 is a CPLD, although Max II due incorporate some architectural features more common on FPGAs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260521",
... | 1,760,373,432.446654 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/a-reason-to-code/ | A Reason To Code | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"learning",
"newsletter",
"robots",
"stem"
] | My son is just getting to the age that puts him in the crosshairs of all of the learn-to-code toys. And admittedly, we’ve been looking at some of those
Logo-like
toys where you can instruct a turtle-bot to make a few moves, and then to repeat them. After all, if breaking down a problem into sub-problems and automating the repetition isn’t the essence of programming, I don’t know what is.
But here’s the deal: I think drawing ‘bots are cooler than he does. If you ask a kid “hey, do you want a car that can draw?” that’s actually pretty low on the robot list. I’m not saying he won’t get into it once he’s got a little bit more coding under his belt and he can start to make it do fun things, but by itself, drawing just isn’t all that impressive. He can draw just fine, thank-you-very-much.
Meanwhile, I was making a robot arm. Or rather, I started up on yet another never-to-be-completed robot arm. (Frankly, I don’t know what I would
do
with a robot arm.) But at least I started with the gripper and wrist. Now that’s pretty cool for a kid, but the programming is waaaay too complicated. So I pulled the brains out and hooked up the servos to an RC plane remote. Just wiggling the thing around, duct-taped to the table, got him hooked. And this weekend, we’re building a remote controlled cherry-picker arm to put on a pole, because cherries are in season. His idea!
So no coding. He’s a little too young anyway, IMO. But silly little projects like these, stored deep in his subconscious, will give him a
reason
to program in the future, will make it plainly obvious that knowing how to program is useful. Now all I need is a reason to finish up a robot arm project…
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
! | 48 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260484",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T14:24:19",
"content": "When I was a kid, you had to know BASIC to get your home computer to do ANYTHING. We all became programmers out of necessity, because if we wanted to play a computer game, there was a good chance we h... | 1,760,373,432.627557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/travel-globe-spins-you-around-memory-lane/ | Travel Globe Spins You Around Memory Lane | Sven Gregori | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"dymaxion",
"ESP8266",
"google maps",
"icosahedron",
"IMU",
"javascript",
"MPU-6050",
"travel",
"world map"
] | We all have our own preferences when it comes to travel souvenirs — that little something that brings back the memories and feelings of a past holiday every time we look at it, whether it’s the cliché fridge magnet, some local speciality, or just the collection of photos we took. But then there are those journeys that can’t be summarized into a single item and may require a bit more creativity. For [Jonathan], it was last year’s trip around the world that took him and [Maria] to locations all over Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and he found a great way to remember it:
an interactive, laser-cut travel globe displaying all the places they went to
.
Building a sphere is of course a bit tricky with a laser cutter, so [Jonathan] went for the icosahedron shaped
Dymaxion map
projection (think of a large d20 dice) and burnt the world onto it. Inside the globe is an ESP8266, an MPU-6050 IMU, and a bunch of LEDs to light up the travel locations using the
WLED
library. Taking the data from the IMU, he customized the WLED library to determine which way the globe is positioned, and highlights the top-facing location in a different color.
While that would already make a nice souvenir on its own, [Jonathan] didn’t stop here. Using Google’s
My Maps
service, which lets you create custom maps with own points of interest and have for example photos attached to them, the ESP8266 hosts the travel map also as a web page. Feeding the IMU data to the JavaScript code that’s handling the map API, the globe itself now doubles as an input device to control the virtual map. So whenever the globe is physically rotated to highlight a certain location, the web page’s map is focused to that same location and shows randomly the pictures they have taken there. Check out the video below to see it all in action.
This is a great way to reminisce about a memorable journey even years down the road, and while it may not be flexible to extend, it seems like the kind of trip that deserves a standalone device anyway. Plus, the Dymaxion map is definitely an interesting projection — so
here’a a foldable one
, just because. And If you like tracking things on a globe,
here’s one that shows the location of the ISS
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260470",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T12:06:45",
"content": "way cool & nicely done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260964",
"author": "gigawatts121",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T00:36:35",
"content": ... | 1,760,373,432.39676 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/this-iron-man-suit-is-a-hackers-dream-come-true/ | This Iron Man Suit Is A Hacker’s Dream Come True | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"fan-made",
"friday",
"iron man",
"jarvis",
"tony stark"
] | [Techmaster], like probably a lot of us, was hugely inspired by the engineering wonder that is the Iron Man suit. So, like any good maker,
he decided to build his own
. [Techmaster’s]
social
media
pages are filled with promotional videos that are sure to get you excited for your next Comic-Con (when you can go in-person of course).
It’s difficult to summarize all the work [Techmaster] has put into his suit in a single post, so we’ll let his social media pages do the talking. From the
knuckle launcher
to the
repulsor
and the beloved
Arc rector
, [Techmaster] is really putting together an impressive set. Now,
we’ve seen our fair share
of
Iron Man-inspired projects
here on Hackaday, but [Techmaster’s] designs might be the closest attempt to a
full suit
with the
projectiles to match
.
[Techmaster’s] goal is to develop the most realistic Iron Man suit ever, well..other than the original we suppose. Given the dynamic nature of his development process, there aren’t any DIY instructions for the rest of us to follow as of yet (though he does host live streams), so you’ll have to piece together design ideas from his promotional videos.
[Techmaster] might be living the dream a lot of us wish were our realities and we certainly can’t wait to see an official version 1 release. Feel free to
support his development
if you feel so inclined. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260475",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T12:59:17",
"content": "He calls himself [TechMaster] and he’s trying to duplicate the Iron Man suit? *Obviously* he’s a super-villain.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626048... | 1,760,373,432.538914 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/djing-without-the-truckload-of-equipment-secret-ingredient-is-raspberry-pi/ | DJing Without The Truckload Of Equipment; Secret Ingredient Is Raspberry Pi | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dj",
"Mixxx",
"raspberry pi"
] | There is a romance to notions of a byegone age of DJing — driving a pair of Technics 1200s dwarfed on either side by the stacks, pumping techno bass through the laser-tinged darkness into a hungry crowd. Even if the reality of early evening Saturday wedding parties playing inoffensive crooners for the 50-somethings didn’t really live up to it.
The trouble with DJing old-style was that it required extensive logistics to shift all that equipment not to mention a record collection, so the modern DJ for whom everything has gone digital is truly lucky in the scale of their operation. For some people even that is too much to carry, and [Dennisdebel] has minimised a DJ rig to the next level,
by running the popular Mixxx DJing software on a Raspberry Pi hooked up to his DJ controller
. You can see the result in the video below the break.
This is more of a HOWTO for installing a set of software packages on the Pi to achieve an aim rather than a special hardware hack, but as he points out the interest lies in regaining control of the process. The DJ space is dominated by commercial offerings increasingly laden with DRM and proprietary cloud offerings, so this represents a means of taking back control of the process. If it’s not hacky enough, you can always add
a home-made DJ mixing station
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260443",
"author": "darkspr1te",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T07:37:57",
"content": "I wonder if mixx support the various decks with LCD screens (numarks nv2, ns7’s , pioneers, denon) , that would be really cool, As a DJ myself I would love to see mixx grow but ultimately I use Virtual... | 1,760,373,432.666369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/iwings-for-the-new-apple-power-adaptor/ | IWings For The New Apple Power Adaptor | Adil Malik | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"apple charger",
"cable management",
"PLA"
] | You might remember the old Apple MagSafe adaptor with the cute little fold out “wings” that served not only as a pragmatic cable management tool, but in our experience also expedited the inevitable and frayed end of your charger. Apple seems to have remedied the latter by opting for removable USB-C cables in latest designs, but the complete omission of a pop-out cable spooling contraption is problematic.
[Eric], an industrial designer,
took it upon himself to design a 3D printed add on
for the new generation of chargers. His video is certainty one of those satisfying accounts, where the whole process from conceptional sketch to a working Hack is neatly self-contained in a single video. The design is largely based off the original version, implemented in PLA together with piano wire serving as the hinge pin. We think this is a very good example of how 3D printers can be used to personalise and tweak commercial products to suite particular needs.
If you are looking for a more general 3D printed cable management tool, check out this
geared cable winder we featured earlier
. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260415",
"author": "bruce,desertrat",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T02:36:16",
"content": "I cannot count how many Apple Power supplies I’ve seen that have been ruined by people wrapping the cords around those crappy wings. It puts a huge 90degree strain on the cable right at the exit ... | 1,760,373,433.257715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/robotic-biped-walks-on-inverse-kinematics/ | Robotic Biped Walks On Inverse Kinematics | Orlando Hoilett | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"alexa",
"arduino",
"artificial intellegence",
"Autodesk Fusion 360",
"Biomimetics",
"biomimicry",
"biped",
"gait",
"humanoid robot",
"inverse kinematics",
"jibo",
"social robot",
"terminator"
] | Robotics projects are always a favorite for hackers. Being able to almost literally bring your project to life evokes a special kind of joy that really drives our wildest imaginations. We imagine this is one of the inspirations for the boom in interactive technologies that are flooding the market these days. Well, [Technovation] had the same thought and decided to build a
fully articulated robotic biped
.
Each leg has pivot points at the foot, knee, and hip, mimicking the articulation of the human leg. To control the robot’s movements, [Technovation] uses inverse kinematics, a method of calculating join movements rather than explicitly programming them. The user inputs the end coordinates of each foot, as opposed to each individual joint angle, and a special function outputs the joint angles necessary to reach each end coordinate. This part of the software is well commented and worth your time to dig into.
In case you want to change the height of the robot or its stride length, [Technovation] provides a few global constants in the firmware that will automatically adjust the calculations to fit the new robot’s dimensions. Of all the various aspects of this project, the detailed write-up impressed us the most. The robot was designed in Fusion 360 and the parts were 3D printed allowing for maximum design flexibility for the next hacker.
Maybe [Technovation’s] biped will help resurrect the
social robot
craze. Until then, happy hacking. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260456",
"author": "Derpatron9000",
"timestamp": "2020-07-04T09:19:05",
"content": "Watching the video shows that the actual walking is very different from the motion implied by the photo use in the article. To me this doesn’t seem any better than those cheap wind up toys that have... | 1,760,373,433.116745 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/bathymetric-map-uses-edge-lighting-to-stunning-effect/ | Bathymetric Map Uses Edge Lighting To Stunning Effect | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bathymetric",
"laser cut bathymetric",
"map"
] | A bathymetric map is one concerning the floor or bottom of a body of water. It’s the wet equivalent of a topographical map. Combine this with humanity’s inherent taste in seaside real estate, and they can be quite attractive when done correctly.
We’d say this effort from [pubultrastar] hits the mark.
Created as a commission piece, the subject of the map is Tichigan Lake in Wisconsin, USA. Made on a Glowforge laser cutter, the design is built of layers of lasercut wood stacked up to represent the natural contours of the bottom of the lake. There’s also a layer of acrylic included, to which special standoffs are fitted. These standoffs hide blue LEDs inside, which allow the acrylic to be edge lit without the LEDs themselves being visible.
The final effect is impressive, with the blue water contrasting artfully with the laser-engraved wood front panel when the lights are turned on. It’s an excellent conversation piece, particularly for those with a waterfaring bent. It’s not the first bathymetric map we’ve featured, either,
with this book serving as a particularly stunning example
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260631",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T14:58:54",
"content": "Very impressive! It would be very cool to have something like that for NH’s Lake Winnipesaukee, which is local to me. Not sure I could afford it, though.One ever so slight suggestion to the maker: It ... | 1,760,373,433.068497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/slothbot-lives-up-to-its-name/ | Slothbot Lives Up To Its Name | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"Cable Bot",
"cable switching",
"solar"
] | For moving about in the real world, robots can crawl along the ground or take to the sky. Both options have disadvantages, with obstacles being a problem on the ground and flying being very energy intensive. What we don’t often see are robots that move along aerial cables, which can offer the best of both worlds for certain use cases. Taking inspiration from a sloth’s slow and efficient movement through the trees, researchers from Georgia Tech
created a robot to crawl slowly along a cable network and monitor the world around it
, and of course named it Slothbot.
The cable switching mechanism
Slothbot trades speed for efficiency, letting it operate for very long periods on solar power alone. It does require the set up and maintenance of a cable network, but that brings the advantage of no obstacles, and the ability to stop and recharge. To us the most interesting feature is the cable switching mechanism, that allows it to navigate its way along a web of interconnected cables.
Ring gears with a section removed hold the upper part of the pulley mechanism, but can rotate it’s opening to the left or right to allow an interconnecting cable to pass through, The body is in two pieces, with an actuated hinge in the middle to allow it to turn onto a different cable section. Each section of the body also has a powered wheel which pushes up against the cable and moves the robot along slowly. Not surprisingly, researchers say that making the cable switching mechanism reliable is the biggest challenge. It does look like the current design would not work well with thicker cable joints. Watch the video after the break for a better look at the mechanism
Slothbot has been deployed to the
Atlanta Botanical Gardens
for testing, although judging by the extra pulleys for the shell, it won’t be doing any cable switching. We can think of a number of use cases for this type of robot, like monitoring orchards or warehouse stock. Drop some more ideas in the comments below!
We saw a similar slow-but-steady approach on [rctestflight]’s
solar rover
, but it had a bit more trouble with obstacles. For another type of robotic sloth, take a look at this
cool but slightly creepy climber
.
Thanks [Qes] for the tip! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260623",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T13:02:27",
"content": "That is quite neat. Though i expect it will have rather heavy wear issues around that change mechanism and eating bits of plant is bound to gum it up sometimes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,433.301161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/05/diy-baby-mit-cheetah-robot/ | DIY Baby MIT Cheetah Robot | Orlando Hoilett | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"A3DXYZ",
"arduino",
"boston dynamics",
"cheetah",
"companion",
"hc-05",
"HC-SR04",
"jibo",
"mit",
"mit app inventor",
"spot",
"tinkercad"
] | 3D printers have become a staple in most makerspaces these days, enabling hackers to rapidly produce simple mechanical prototypes without the need for a dedicated machine shop. We’ve seen many creative 3D designs here on Hackaday and [jegatheesan.soundarapandian’s]
Baby MIT Cheetah Robot
is no exception. You’ve undoubtedly seen
MIT’s cheetah robot
. Well, [jegatheesan’s] hack takes a personal spin on the cheetah robot and his results are pretty cool.
The body of the robot is 3D printed making it easy to customize the design and replace broken parts as you go. The legs are designed in a
five-bar linkage
with two servo motors controlling each of the four legs. An additional servo motor is used to rotate an HC-SR04, a popular ultrasonic distance sensor, used in the autonomous mode’s obstacle avoidance mechanism. The robot can also be controlled over Bluetooth using an app [jegatheesan] developed in MIT App Inventor.
Overall, the mechanics could use a bit of work — [jegatheesan’s] baby cheetah probably won’t outpace MIT’s robot any time soon — but it’s a cool hack and we’re looking forward to a version 3. Maybe the cheetah would make a cool
companion bot
? | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260601",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T08:10:59",
"content": "Neato, could provoke some Xmas models, great for stem teaching too, thanks for post :-)Cheers",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,433.215293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/finding-a-secret-message-from-a-gaming-legend/ | Finding A Secret Message From A Gaming Legend | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"classic game",
"easter egg",
"nintendo",
"VIC-20",
"vintage"
] | Satoru Iwata is perhaps best remembered for leading Nintendo through the development of the DS and Wii, two wildly successful systems which undeniably helped bring gaming to a wider and more mainstream audience. But decades before becoming the company’s President in 2002, he got his start in the industry as a developer working on many early console and computer games.
[Robin Harbron] recently decided to dig into one of the Iwata’s earliest projects
,
Star Battle
for the VIC-20.
Finding the message was easy, if you knew were to look.
It’s been known for some time that Iwata, then just 22 years old, had hidden his name and a message in the game’s source code. But [Robin] wondered if there was more to the story. Looking at the text in memory, he noticed the lines were actually null-terminated. Realizing the message was likely intended to get printed on the screen at one point during the game’s development, he started hunting for a way to trigger the nearly 40 year old Easter Egg.
As it turns out, it’s hidden behind a single flag in the code. Just change it from 0 to 1, and the game will display Iwata’s long-hidden credit screen. That proved the message was originally intended to be visible to players, but it still didn’t explain how they were supposed to trigger it during normal game play.
That’s where things really get interesting. As [Robin] gives us a guided tour through
Star Battle’s
inner workings, he explains that Iwata originally intended the player to hit a special combination of keys to tick over the Easter Egg’s enable flag. All of the code is still there in the commercial release of the game, but it’s been disabled. As Iwata’s life was tragically cut short in 2015 due to complications from cancer, we’ll perhaps never know the reason he commented out the code in question before the game was released. But at least we can now finally see this hidden message from one of gaming’s true luminaries.
Last time we heard from [Robin],
he’d uncovered a secret C64 program hidden on a vinyl record
. With his track record so far, we can’t wait to see what he digs into next. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260598",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T07:17:35",
"content": "Probably for similar reasons to the first easter egg which appeared in Adventure for the Atari 2600. Atari’s owners demanded that all their developers be anonymous (and therefore interchangable and cheap),... | 1,760,373,433.878936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/digi-key-hacks-uv-into-conveyor-line-to-protect-warehouse-staff/ | Digi-Key Hacks UV Into Conveyor Line To Protect Warehouse Staff | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"cdc",
"coronavirus",
"COVID",
"digi-key",
"distribution center",
"ECIA",
"Electronic Components Industry Association",
"manufacturing",
"pandemic",
"uv"
] | No doubt that every hacker has already heard of Digi-Key, the electronic component distributor that makes it just as possible to order one of something as it is to order a thousand of it. As an essential business, Digi-Key has been open during the duration of the lockdown since they support critical manufacturing services for virtually every industry on the planet including the medical industry.
Ensuring their workforce stays healthy is key to remaining open and as part of their efforts they hacked together a nice addition to their sanitation regime. They use around 8,000 plastic totes to transport components around the distribution center and
devised a way to sanitize tote coming in from the receiving area using a UV light tunnel
. From their
sanitation plan
we can see this is in addition to the fogging system (likely a
vaporized hydrogen peroxide
system) used to regularly sanitize the totes passing throughout the warehouse.
They developed a UV light tunnel that wraps around the conveyor rollers. The design includes a sensor and a timer to control when and how long the UV lights are on. The totes are a frequent touch point for employees, and running incoming shipments through the UV light tunnel helps decrease the chance of exposure.
Thinking of using UV as a sanitation tool? Make sure you do your research on the wavelengths you need and vet the source of critical components. [Voja] ran into
UV lamps that were anything but germicidal
. | 21 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260576",
"author": "Circs",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T03:32:01",
"content": "Germ theory isn’t political. You’re also not a good troll.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260578",
"author": "scott.tx",
"timestamp": "2020-0... | 1,760,373,433.354422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/an-rgb-backlight-for-the-nokia-5110-lcd/ | An RGB Backlight For The Nokia 5110 LCD | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"backlight",
"Nokia 5110 LCD",
"RGB LED"
] | Hardware hackers love the Nokia 5110 LCD. Or at least, they love the clones of it. You can pick up one of these panels for a couple bucks wherever electronic bits and bobs are sold, and integrating it into your project is a snap thanks to all the code and documentation floating around out there. But while it might be cheap and reliable, it’s not a terribly exciting component.
Which is perhaps why
[Miguel Reis] thought he’d spruce it up a bit with an RGB backlight
. While we’ll admit that this hack is mostly about looking cool, it’s not
entirely
without practical application. If your gadget experiences some kind of fault, having it flash the LCD bright red is sure to get somebody’s attention from across the room.
The board itself is very straightforward, with four MHPA1010RGBDT RGB LEDs and a couple of passives to keep them happy. The Nokia 5110 LCD module just pops right on, and beyond the extra pins added for the three LED colors, gets wired up the same as before. The backlight LEDs just need a few spare GPIO pins on your microcontroller to drive them, and away you go.
[Miguel] is currently selling his RGB version of this iconic LCD on Tindie
for only a couple dollars more than the standard version, so it looks like a pretty cheap way to add a little bling to your next project. (Tindie is owned by Supplyframe, which also owns Hackaday. But they didn’t put us up to adding this link.) | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260558",
"author": "Bitwise",
"timestamp": "2020-07-05T00:06:59",
"content": "That’s actually really useful. Two thoughts: used in a test jig to give the background color, as the author mentioned, plus an error code or friendly icon for the technician – or used in a DIY gaming hand... | 1,760,373,433.173688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/04/a-word-clock-you-dont-have-to-actually-build-to-enjoy/ | A Word Clock You Don’t Have To Actually Build To Enjoy | Sven Gregori | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d model",
"3d modeling",
"blender",
"pebble watch",
"word clock"
] | The great thing about word clocks is that while they all follow the same principle of spelling out the time for you, they come in so many shapes, sizes, and other variations, you have plenty of options to build one yourself. No matter if your craft of choice involves woodworking, laser cutting, PCB design, or nothing physical at all. For [Yasa], it was learning 3D modeling combined with a little trip down memory lane that led him to
create a fully functional word clock as a rendered animation in Blender
.
Inspired by the picture of a commercially available word clock, [Yasa] remembered the fun he had back in 2012 when he made
a Turkish version for the Pebble watch
, and decided to recreate that picture in Blender. But simply copying an image is of course a bit boring, so he turned it into an actual, functioning clock by essentially emulating a matrix of individually addressable LEDs using a custom texture he maps the current time to it. And since the original image had the clock positioned by a window, he figured he should have the sun move along with the time as well, to give it an even more realistic feel.
Of course, having the sun situation in real-time all year round would be a bit difficult to render, so [Yasa] choose to base the scene on the sun during spring equinox in his hometown Stockholm instead. You can see
the actual clock showing your local time (or whichever time / time zone you set your device to) on his website
, and his write-up is definitely a fun read you should check out if you’re interested in all the details or 3D modeling in general — or just to have a look at a time lapse of the clock itself. As he states, the general concept could be also used to model other word clocks, so who knows, maybe we will see
this acrylic version
or
a PCB version
of it in the future. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6261032",
"author": "Hassi",
"timestamp": "2020-07-07T10:24:11",
"content": "Did someone built a word clock with a stencil on a LED-Display?Or even an old digital picture frame – white squares behind the words that should light up and one picture every five minutes should do the tri... | 1,760,373,433.391267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/sky-anchor-puts-radios-up-high-no-tower-needed/ | Sky Anchor Puts Radios Up High, No Tower Needed | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"antenna",
"drone",
"geostationary",
"heavy lift",
"hover",
"Tether"
] | When it comes to radio communications on the VHF bands and above, there’s no substitute for elevation. The higher you get your antenna, the farther your signal will get out. That’s why mountaintops are crowded with everything from public service radios to amateur repeaters, and it’s the reason behind the “big stick” antennas for TV and radio stations.
But getting space on a hilltop site is often difficult, and putting up a tower is always expensive. Those are the problems that
the Sky Anchor, an antenna-carrying drone
, aims to address. The project by [Josh Starnes] goes beyond what a typical drone can do. Rather than relying on GPS for station keeping, [Josh] plans a down-looking camera so that machine vision can keep the drone locked over its launch site. To achieve unlimited flight time, he’s planning to supply power over a tether. He predicts a 100′ to 200′ (30 m to 60 m) working range with a heavy-lift octocopter. A fiberoptic line will join the bundle and allow a MIMO access point to be taken aloft, to provide wide-area Internet access. Radio payloads could be anything from SDR-based transceivers to amateur repeaters; if the station-keeping is good enough, microwave links could even be feasible.
Sky Anchor sounds like a great idea that could have applications in disaster relief and humanitarian aid situations. We’re looking forward to seeing how [Josh] develops it. In the meantime, what’s your world-changing idea? If you’ve got one, we’d love to see it entered in
the 2020 Hackaday Prize
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 65 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260343",
"author": "Rulon Rock",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T20:10:03",
"content": "“Let me first say I do not like the word “Drone” to describe multi copters as it is negative and improper.” – Description from project.Very fitting that it is in the “Drone hacks” section, lol.",
"... | 1,760,373,433.484899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/spacing-out-oneweb-rescue-starlink-base-stations-and-rocket-tests/ | Spacing Out: OneWeb Rescue, Starlink Base Stations, And Rocket Tests | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Roundup",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"nasa",
"OneWeb",
"roundup",
"skyrora",
"space",
"SpaceX",
"Spacing Out",
"Starlink",
"Virgin Galactic"
] | Another couple of weeks, and a fresh crop of space news to run through as a quick briefing of the latest in the skies above us.
OneWeb’s most recent launch, from Baikonur on the 21st of March 2020. (
OneWeb
)
The global positioning orbits are getting pretty crowded, with GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, the EU’s Galileo, Japan’s QZSS, and now with
the launch of the final satellite
in their constellation, China’s BeiDou. As if five were not enough the chance that they might be joined by a sixth constellation from the United Kingdom resurfaced this week, as
the UK government is expressing interest
in supporting a rescue package for the troubled satellite broadband provider
OneWeb
. The idea of an independent GPS competitor from a post-Brexit UK
has been bouncing around for a couple of years now
, and on the face of it until this opportune chance to purchase an “oven ready” satellite constellation might deliver a route to incorporating a positioning payload into their design. The
Guardian
has its doubts,
lining up a bevvy of scientists
to point out the rather obvious fact that a low-earth-orbit satellite broadband platform is a very different prospect to a much-higher-orbiting global positioning platform. Despite the country
possessing the expertise
through its work on Galileo then it remains to be seen whether a OneWeb purchase would be a stroke of genius or a white elephant. Readers with long memories will know that
British government investment in space has had its upsets before
.
Happily for Brits, not all space endeavours from their islands end in ignominious retreat. Skyrora have scored another milestone,
launching the first ever rocket skywards from the Shetland Islands
. The Skylark Nano is a relatively tiny craft at only 2m high, and gathered research data during its flight to an altitude of 6km. We’ve followed their work before, including their testing in May of a Skylark L rocket on the Scottish mainland with a view to achieving launch capability in 2023.
A Starlink phased array end user antenna, spotted in Winsconsin. (darkpenguin22)
SpaceX’s
Starlink
is never far away from the news, with a fresh set of launches
delayed for extra pre-launch tests
, and the prospect of signing up to be considered for the space broadband firm’s beta test. Of more interest for Hackaday readers though are a few shots of prototype Starlink ground stations and user terminals that have made it online, on the roof of a Tesla Gigafactory and
at a SpaceX facility in Wisconsin
. What can be seen are
roughly 1.5m radomes for the ground stations and much smaller dinner-plate-sized enclosed arrays for the user terminals
. The latter are particularly fascinating as they conceal computer-controlled phased arrays for tracking the constellation as it passes overhead. This is a technology more at home in billion-dollar military radars than consumer devices, so getting it to work on a budget that can put it on a roof anywhere in the world must be a challenge for the Starlink engineers. We can’t wait to see the inevitable eventual teardown when it comes.
Elsewhere, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two
completed its second glide test
over its Mojave Spaceport home since being grounded in 2019 for extensive refitting, and is now said to be ready for powered tests leading to eventual commercial service giving the extremely well-heeled the chance to float in the zero gravity of suborbital spaceflight. And finally, comes the news that NASA
are naming their Washington DC headquarters building for Mary W. Jackson
, their first African American female engineer, whose story some of you may be familiar with from the book and film
Hidden Figures
. The previously unnamed building sits on a section of street named Hidden Figures Way. | 23 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260324",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T17:49:15",
"content": "A shallow analysis of the LEO sat mesh gives you the “hurr durr it’s not geostationary” knee jerk, but those sats need to know where they are. How are they achieving this? I would imagine they specif... | 1,760,373,433.940601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/hackaday-podcast-074-stuttering-swashplate-bending-mirrors-chasing-curves-and-farewell-to-segway/ | Hackaday Podcast 074: Stuttering Swashplate, Bending Mirrors, Chasing Curves, And Farewell To Segway | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"flex sensor",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"helicopter",
"macbook",
"segway",
"spi",
"Swashplate",
"vibratory",
"wind generator"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys recap a week of hacks. A telescope mirror that can change shape and a helicopter without a swashplate lead the charge for fascinating engineering. These are closely followed by a vibratory wind generator that has no blades to spin. The Open Source Hardware Association announced a new spec this week to remove “Master” and “Slave” terminology from SPI pin names. The Segway is no more. And a bit of bravery and rock solid soldering skills can resurrect that Macbook that has one dead GPU.
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 074 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Updating The Language Of SPI Pin Labels To Remove Casual References To Slavery
Your Own Open Source ASIC: SkyWater-PDK Plans First 130 Nm Wafer In 2020
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Variable Mirror Changes Shape Under Pressure
Print Your Own Adjustable Lenses
Building And Flying A Helicopter With A Virtual Swashplate
Video with more details on this design
Your Quadcopter Has Three Propellers Too Many
Experimenting With Vibratory Wind Generators
A Dead Macbook GPU Shouldn’t Stop You, With This BGA Soldering Hack
What Does The Bat Say? Tune In With This Heterodyne Detector
Worried About Bats In Your Belfry? A Tale Of Two Bat Detectors
Slipping Sheets Map Multiple Bends In This Ingenious Flex Sensor
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Hinge Brings New Meaning To Flexible PCB
Make Your Own Pet Fire Breathing Dragon
Calcuino Is An Arduino Calculator
Mike’s Picks:
DIY Hand Mixer Whips Coffee Into Shape
An Open Source Tool To Document Your Wiring
Adding PCIe To Your Raspberry Pi 4, The Easier Way
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Segway Is Dead, Long Live The Segway
Ditching X86, Apple Starts An ARM Race | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260335",
"author": "kc8rwr",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T19:27:30",
"content": "Uh oh. Guys.He’s talking bad about the 555.Get ‘im!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260691",
"author": "bbbbb",
"timestamp": "2020-07-06T02... | 1,760,373,433.659007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/this-week-in-security-palo-alto-scores-a-10-cursed-images-vm-escapes-and-malicious-music/ | This Week In Security: Palo Alto Scores A 10, Cursed Images, VM Escapes, And Malicious Music | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"CVE",
"This Week in Security",
"vmware"
] | We’ve looked at many vulnerabilities over the years here on Hackaday, but it’s rather rare for a CVE to score a perfect 10 severity. This is reserved for the most severe and exploitable of problems. Palo Alto
announced such a vulnerability, CVE-2020-2021
, on the 29th. This vulnerability affects Palo Alto devices running PAN-OS that have SAML authentication enabled and a certain validation option disabled. The vulnerability is pre-authentication, but does require access to a service protected by SAML authentication. For example, a Palo Alto device providing a web-based VPN could be vulnerable. The good news is that the vulnerable settings aren’t default, but the bad news is that the official configuration guide recommends the vulnerable settings for certain scenarios, like using a third party authentication service.
The issue is in the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) implementation, which is an XML based open standard for authentication. One of the primary use cases for SAML is to provide a Single Sign On (SSO) scheme. The normal deployment of SAML SSO is that a central provider handles the authentication of users, and then asserts to individual services that the connecting user is actually who they claim to be.
The setting needed for this vulnerability to be exploitable is ‘Validate Identity Provider Certificate’ to be disabled. If this option is enabled, the SSO provider must use a CA signed SAML certificates. This doesn’t appear to mean that unsigned SSL certificates would be accepted, and only applies to certificates inside the SAML messages. It seems to be widely accepted that
these certificates don’t need to be CA signed
. In the official announcement, the vulnerability type is said to be “CWE-347 Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature”.
There isn’t much additional detail given about the vulnerability, except that it is considered very exploitable, and gives Admin level access to the attacker. The US Cyber Command went so far as to announce that we should expect foreign actors to begin using this vulnerability right away. We can take an educated guess as to what’s going on here. Because it’s classified as an improper verification attack, we can assume that information that is intended to be provided by the SSO provider can instead be provided by the attacker. The attack is likely a variation on this: An attacker makes a request for verification, but within the request, also includes a mostly valid spoofed response from the SSO provider, claiming that the request is valid. The victim device doesn’t properly handle the unexpected extra entries, and accepts the message.
It’s likely that a proof of concept will eventually be released, so hopefully we can come back to this vulnerability and see how accurate our guesses are.
Emergency Windows Patches for Cursed Images
A pair of Windows bugs
have been patched outside the normal Patch Tuesday cycle
. CVE-2020-1425 & CVE-2020-1457 are flaws in the Windows Codec Library, specifically in the handling of image codecs. An application that uses this library only needs to parse a malicious image in order to trigger code execution. Notable about these flaws and fixes is that they are not being patched through Windows Update, but through the Microsoft store.
VMware Escape Vulnerabilities
A pair of vulnerabilities in the VMware virtualization platform were recently disclosed.
CVE-2020-3962 and CVE-2020-3969
both target the virtual SVGA device that provides graphical output for VMs. Both exploits require graphical acceleration to be enabled, which is the default state on some VMware products.
Not much information is given, beside the fact that one is a use-after-free problem, while the other is an off-by-one heap-overflow. What’s interesting is that both flaws allow escaping the virtualized environment and running code on the hypervisor. Many of us have a VM floating around for opening suspicious files, visiting known malicious links, and other assorted security research. The assumption there is that it’s almost impossible for malware to jump the gap back to the host machine. Vulnerabilities like this are a good reminder that this assumption doesn’t always hold up.
Malicious Music
My interest was piqued by the story of a minor vulnerability in TuxGuitar, a program for editing and viewing guitar scores. Guitar music is often written out in a unique format, tablature, often just called “tab” for short. This form of music is niche enough that several dedicated file formats and editors are dedicated to it. [Michael Dardas] was intrigued enough to take a look at the source code, and
discovered some problems
.
XML is a complicated beast with its own security problems. One of those potential problems is the XML External Entity (XXE) attack. Put simply, XXE is referencing some external service or document as part of an XML file. The TuxGuitar program doesn’t have sufficient checks for XXE in the XML-based tab files it loads. This means that a malicious tab file could reveal an IP address, exfiltrate a local file, or perform other limited unwanted actions.
Now, TuxGuitar isn’t a security focused application, and it’s likely that the authors didn’t think much about possible security flaws. This is an easy trap to fall into. However, even though there isn’t an immediately apparent attack vector, there is often still a way that vulnerabilities could be leveraged. I can imagine a targeted attack where a tab file is used to unmask a Tor user.
As far as I can tell, this issue isn’t being addressed in the upstream project, so if you do happen to use TuxGuitar, be wary of untrusted tab files.
Odds and Ends
If you haven’t checked it out yet, go look at
the new Hackaday U series on reverse engineering with Ghidra
! It’s a beginners guide to using the tool, and reverse engineering in general, presented by [wrongbaud].
All three major browsers have
officially jumped onboard the one year SSL validity train
. There’s been a bit of drama between browser vendors (Google and Apple) and the CA providers regarding this new policy. Not everyone seems happy about the change, but Firefox, Chrome, and Safari now refuse to honor SSL certs older than a year.
Last week we talked about Ripple20
, a set of security problems present in a widely used TCP/IP stack. While the research itself was top notch, I took umbrage at a couple of details concerning their disclosure process. JSOF, the company behind the research, responded to my annoyances. Go check it out, particularly if you read it before their response was added.
I still don’t like giving up my email address to get access to the actual vulnerability paper, but I’ve seen several more reports of devices containing these vulnerabilities without having patches ready to fix those problems. In at least some cases, the vulnerabilities in question are indeed 0-day problems. Also, for what it’s worth, two of the nineteen issues also managed CVE scores of 10. | 12 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260291",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T15:09:17",
"content": "Anything that ends on AML (YAML SAML XAML etc) is just straight up terrible, if you want to use XML then just do that, dont try to use a worse version of XML because you heard somewhere that it was a good... | 1,760,373,434.102138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/diy-filtered-positive-pressure-suit-shows-fine-workmanship/ | DIY Filtered Positive Pressure Suit Shows Fine Workmanship | Donald Papp | [
"how-to",
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"activated carbon",
"activated charcoal",
"air filter",
"BLc7000",
"diy",
"HEPA",
"positive pressure"
] | [Andrew]’s
Air filtering unit & positive pressure supply
might look like something off the set of
Ghostbusters
, but it’s an experiment in making a makeshift (but feasible) positive pressure suit. The idea is to provide an excess of filtered air to what is essentially an inflatable soft helmet. The wearer can breathe filtered air while the positive pressure means nothing else gets in. It’s definitely an involved build that uses some specific hardware he had on hand, but the workmanship is great and shows some thoughtful design elements.
The unit has three stacked filters that can be easily swapped. The first stage is medical mask material, intended to catch most large particles, which is supported by a honeycomb frame. The next filter is an off-the-shelf HEPA filter sealed with a gasket; these are available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes so [Andrew] selected one that was a good fit. The third and final stage is an activated carbon filter that, like the first stage, is supported by a honeycomb frame. The idea is that air that makes it through all three filters is safe (or at least safer) to breathe. There isn’t any need for the helmet part to be leakproof, because the positive pressure relative to the environment means nothing gets in.
Air is sucked through the filters and moved to the helmet by an HP BLc7000 server fan unit, which he had on hand but are also readily available on eBay. These fan units are capable of shoveling a surprising amount of air, if one doesn’t mind a surprising amount of noise in the process, so while stacked filter stages certainly impede airflow, the fan unit handles it easily. The BLc7000 isn’t a simple DC motor and requires a driver, so for reference [Andrew] has
a short YouTube video of how the fan works and acts
.
All the 3D models and design files
are available online
should anyone wish to take a closer look. It’s certainly a neat experiment in making a filtered positive pressure supply and head cover with materials that are fairly common. If [Andrew] ever wants to move to a whole-body suit, maybe
repurpose an old Halloween costume into a serviceable positive pressure suit
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260248",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T11:16:47",
"content": "What you need for this is a blower that can move a lot of air quietly. You can 3D print it…https://drmrehorst.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-mother-of-all-print-cooling-fans.html",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,434.056337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/03/make-your-own-microdot/ | Make Your Own Microdot | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"film",
"Microdot",
"spy"
] | If you spent your youth watching James Bond or similar movies on rainy Saturday afternoons, then you may be familiar with a microdot as a top-secret piece of spy equipment, usually revealed as having been found attached to a seemingly innocuous possession of one of the bad guy’s henchmen, which when blown up on the screen delivers the cryptic yet vital clue to the location of the Evil Lair. Not something you give much thought in 2020 you might think, but that’s reckoning without [Sister HxA],
who has worked out how to make them herself
and detailed the process in a Twitter thread.
A microdot is a tiny scrap of photographic film, containing the image of some secret document or other, the idea being that it is small enough to conceal on something else. The example she gives is hiding it underneath a postage stamp. Because of their origins in clandestine work there is frustratingly little info on how to produce them, but she found a set of British instructions. Photographing a sheet such that its image occupies a small portion of her negative she makes a postage-stamp-sized one, and with care photographing that she manages to produce another of only a few millimetres in size. The smaller one isn’t very legible, but it’s still a fascinating process.
While we’re shopping at Q branch, how about
an air-gun pen worthy of James Bond
? | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260217",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T08:35:40",
"content": "I was commenting recently “elsewhere” that these days you can buy a flash memory chip for about $1 that will hold a novel’s worth of data (1MB) and fits within the dimensions of a “microdot” (1.6×2.3 mm)",... | 1,760,373,434.159256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/watch-conways-game-of-life-flutter-across-a-flip-dot-display/ | Watch Conway’s Game Of Life Flutter Across A Flip-Dot Display | Donald Papp | [
"classic hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"display",
"flip-dot",
"game of life"
] | Like many of us, [John Whittington] was saddened with the news that John Horton Conway passed away a little earlier this year, and in honor of his work, he
added the Game of Life to a flip-dot display
that he has been working on. The physicality of an electromechanical display seems particularly fitting for cellular automata.
Like what you see? If you’re curious about what makes it all tick, the display shown is an
Alfa-Zeta XY5 28×14
but [John] is currently working on building them into a much larger 256 x 56 display. GitHub hosts the
flip-dot simulator and driver software
[John] is using, and
the Game of Life functions are here
.
If you’re new to the Game of Life and are not really sure what you’re looking at, [Elliot Williams]
tells you all you need to know in his writeup
celebrating its profound impact and lasting legacy. Watch the flip-dot display in action in the video embedded below. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260201",
"author": "LinusTapped",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T06:26:37",
"content": "Now THAT is definately worthy of honoring Conway’s (game of) life, maybe even inspired to do a build myself .. very nice! ]:o)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,373,434.000042 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/easy-secure-https-with-an-esp8266/ | Easy, Secure HTTPS With An ESP8266 | Rich Hawkes | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"https",
"IoT"
] | Security has always been an issue with IoT devices. Off the shelf devices often have terrible security while DIY solutions can be complicated, needing recompilation every time a website’s fingerprint changes. [Johannes] wrote in to let us know he’s been working on a way to make
HTTPS requests easier to do on ESP devices
.
The normal ways to do HTTPS with an ESP8266 is to either use Fingerprints, or to use client.setInsecure(). Fingerprints require the user to know exactly which pages the ESP will connect to and extract the Fingerprints from each of those websites. Since the fingerprints change yearly, this means the fingerprint will have to be re-extracted and the code recompiled each time a fingerprint changes. The use of client.setInsecure() is, obviously, insecure. This may not be an issue for your project, but it might be for others.
[Johannes’] solution is to extract the trusted root certificates and store them in PROGMEM. This allows access to any web page, but the root certificates do expire as well. As opposed to the fingerprints, though, they expire after 20 years, rather than every year, so the program can run for a long time before needing recompilation. This solution also doesn’t require any manual steps – the build process runs a script that grabs the certificates and stores them in files so that they can be
uploaded to the SPIFFS
written to PROGMEM to be used during HTTPS requests.
He’s come up with a fairly straightforward way to have your IoT device connect to whichever web page you want, without having to recompile every once in a while. Hopefully, this will lead to better security for your IoT devices. Take a look at some
previous work
in this area. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260159",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T02:35:22",
"content": "Thanks for post, will be following, weird nice timing too, funny that ;-)Cheers",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "62601... | 1,760,373,434.27979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/custom-packet-sniffer-is-a-great-way-to-learn-can/ | Custom Packet Sniffer Is A Great Way To Learn CAN | Adil Malik | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"can-bus",
"cars",
"vehicle"
] | Whilst swapping out the stereo in his car for a more modern Android based solution, [Aaron] noticed that it only utilised a single CAN differential pair to communicate with the car as opposed to a whole bundle of wires employing analogue signalling. This is no surprise, as modern cars invariably use the CAN bus to establish communication between various peripherals and sensors.
In a series of videos,
[Aaron] details how he used this opportunity to explore some of the nitty-gritty of CAN communication
. In Part 1 he designs a cheap, custom CAN bus sniffer using an Arduino, a MCP2515 CAN controller and a CAN bus driver IC, demonstrating how this relatively simple hardware arrangement could be used along with open source software to decode some real CAN bus traffic.
Part 2
of his series revolves around duping his Android stereo into various operational modes by sending the correct CAN packets.
These videos are a great way to learn some of the basic considerations associated with the various abstraction layers typically attributed to CAN. Once you’ve covered these, you can do some pretty interesting stuff, such as these dubious devices
pulling a man-in-the-middle attack on your odometer!
In the meantime, we would love to see a Part 3 on CAN hardware message filtering and masks [Aaron]! | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260146",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T00:27:32",
"content": "I can CAN, can U CAN?B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260153",
"author": "Alan Hightower",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T01:55:38",
"content":... | 1,760,373,434.212001 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/the-open-source-mars-rover-one-year-later/ | The Open Source Mars Rover, One Year Later | Tom Nardi | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Curiosity",
"ESP32",
"LoRa",
"remote control",
"rocker-bogie",
"rover"
] | As the name implies, here at Hackaday we strive to bring you interesting projects every single day. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a project only gets
one
day to grace these storied pages. Quite the opposite, in fact. We’re always happy to revisit a project and find out how far it’s evolved since we last crossed paths with it, especially when the creators themselves reach out to give us an update.
Which is exactly what happened when
[Jakob Krantz] recently wrote in to get us up to speed on this incredible open source rover project
. We first saw this 3D printed
Curiosity
inspired robot a little less than a year ago, and at that point it was essentially just a big box with the distinctive NASA rocker-bogie suspension bolted on. Now it not only looks a lot closer to the Martian rovers that inspired it, but it’s also learned a number of new tricks that really take this project to the next level.
The articulated head and grabber arm don’t just help sell the
Curiosity
look, they’re actually functional. [Jakob] notes that he doesn’t have kinematics integrated yet, so moving the arm around is more for show than practical application, but in the future it should be able to reach out and grab objects. With the new cameras in the head, he’ll even be able to get a first person view of what he’s picking up.
Last year [Jakob] was using a standard RC transmitter
to drive the rover around, but he’s since put together a custom controller that’s truly a thing of beauty. It uses an ESP32 and LoRa module to communicate with matching hardware inside the rover, as well as a smartphone clipped onto the top that’s displaying telemetry and video over WiFi.
The controller is actually its own separate project
, so even if you aren’t in the market for a scaled down Mars rover, its controller could come in handy for your next robotics project.
Presumably the
multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG)
on the back of the rover is just pretend….but with this guy, we’re not so sure. Give him another year, and who knows. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260113",
"author": "Sharat Chander",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T20:27:29",
"content": "Does it use Java in any way?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6260127",
"author": "ScriptGiddy",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T21:... | 1,760,373,434.339217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/an-off-the-grid-instant-messaging-plattform/ | An Off-The-Grid Instant Messaging Plattform | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Wearable Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"instant messaging",
"LoRa",
"watch"
] | Having an open-source communication device that is independent of any network and works without fees sounds like a hacker’s dream come true. Well, this is exactly what [bobricius]’ is aiming at with his
Armawatch and Armachat
devices.
Recently, [bobricius] built
a LoRa based instant messaging device named Armachat
. The gadget is controlled by a SAMD21 MCU with native USB and includes a QWERTY keyboard and an LCD display. Communication is based on an RFM95 LoRa transceiver which can reach a range of up to 2 km under ideal conditions. [bobricius] is a wiz when it comes to PCB design and one thing that makes his projects look so good is how he often uses PCBs as enclosures.
Armachat came in two form factors a large desktop and a smaller pocket version. The new Armawatch is another downsized version that perfectly fits on your arm by using a smaller display and keyboard. [bobricius] also did a lot of work on the firmware which now features a message delivery confirmation and the possibility to automatically resend undelivered messages. Future improvements will include message encryption, a store-and-forward function, and GPS position parsing. [bobricius] is also working on completing his portfolio of communicators with a credit-card-sized version.
LoRa is the go-to technology for
off-the-grid communication devices
and there are already other ongoing projects for using it to
construct a mesh network
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260093",
"author": "alfcoder",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T19:11:32",
"content": "if the communication speed (data rate) is very low you can communicate very far, there are even some coding protocols that supporting this over the lora layer",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,434.388985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/review-calculator-kit-is-just-a-few-hacks-from-greatness/ | Review: Calculator Kit Is Just A Few Hacks From Greatness | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Microcontrollers",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"calculator",
"hd44780",
"kit",
"math",
"repurpose",
"RPN calculator"
] | While most people are satisfied with a calculator application on their smartphone these days, there’s still something to be said for the old fashioned desk calculator. Maybe it’s the fact the batteries last long enough that you can’t remember the last time you changed them, or the feel of physical buttons under your fingers. It could even be the fact that it keeps your expensive smartphone from needing to sit out on the workbench. Whatever the reason, it’s not uncommon to see a real-life calculator (or two) wherever solder smoke tends to congregate.
Which is precisely the idea behind this DIY calculator kit. Available from the usual overseas retailers for about $15 USD, it has some hobbyist-oriented features such as the ability to decode resistor color bands, convert hexadecimal numbers, and calculate resistor values for driving LEDs. If you’re going to keep a knock-around calculator on your bench, why not build the thing yourself?
Given the dual nature of this product, a DIY electronics kit and a functional desk calculator for electronic hobbyists, it seems only appropriate to review both aspects of it individually. Which is good, since there may be more to this product than just the sum of its parts.
Kit Review
From a hardware standpoint, I was very impressed with this kit. All of the components are separated logically in their own individual bags, and there are even a few spares provided for the resistors, screws, nuts, and standoffs. There are however no spares for the buttons, nor the plastic caps that go over them. This was a bit surprising, as both components are pretty likely to have some damage from transit; several of the buttons in my kit had mangled legs, and at least one of the clear caps had a chunk taken out of it.
The PCB especially struck me as being of unusually high quality. Anyone who’s imported electronic components from China has likely run into thin and brittle PCBs that you can snap with your fingers, but that’s not the case here. The PCB is substantial, and will have no trouble surviving the physical stress that pushing the buttons will put on it.
In terms of documentation, the kit only comes with a printed circuit diagram and a brief overview of how to operate the calculator’s modes once it’s been assembled. There is however a QR code that takes you to
a step-by-step pictorial guide for assembling the calculator
. While the average Hackaday reader might not need them, it’s worth mentioning that there are no written assembly instructions that I could find.
Even if you didn’t have the circuit diagram to help you, the silkscreen on the PCB is really quite excellent. It shows the values for all the resistors, part numbers, and the proper orientation for the components that need it. If there’s any pitfall for new players, it will probably be with the installation of the semiconductor devices; there are two different types of transistors and a voltage regulator, all of which are nearly identical externally beyond their part numbers. If you’ve assembled your calculator and it doesn’t work, those are the parts you’ll probably want to double check.
There are, of course, a few sour spots. The laser-cut acrylic enclosure, while it looks very nice when assembled, doesn’t go together very well. The small pockets cut into the plastic to hold the nuts are too large, and I dropped them into the case during assembly more times than I’d like to admit.
The interconnection between the main PCB and the LCD module also leaves something to be desired. Rather than wires, the kit has you connect the two components with long pin headers.
This would be fine if the boards were to be installed parallel, but to fit inside the enclosure, the LCD needs to be at an angle. Bending the pins is a fiddly operation, and took a few attempts to get right. Not a huge deal, but it does seem like an oversight considering how well the rest of the kit went together.
Calculator Review
While the hardware was a pleasant surprise considering how cheap the kit was, the software is another matter entirely. For one thing, there are annoying glitches throughout. Such as characters disappearing from the display, or the fact that only some buttons seem to be registered by the calculator’s inactivity timer. Several times the device has turned off while I was using it, apparently because I had been shuffling through modes instead of entering numbers.
While it might not be a problem in day-to-day usage, one of the biggest surprises to me was that I could only enter in 7 digits. This seems an arbitrary limitation on a 16×2 display, especially when the answers can be longer.
Note the inexplicable disappearance of the 1.
Although, not
much
longer apparently. If you try to calculate too large of a number, it will quite literally tell you that it can’t do it. We’re not even talking scientific notation stuff here, even numbers in the tens of millions are beyond this device.
The 1 has now returned. Your guess is as good as mine.
On the subject of the firmware, I was also disappointed to find that there doesn’t appear to be a public release of either the code or binary that the calculator’s STC IAP15W413AS microcontroller is running. On a DIY kit with a socketed MCU, you’d think there would be at least some provision for updating or modifying the firmware. Though to be fair, nothing it the kit’s documentation or marketing lead me to believe this would be the case.
Beyond the firmware and usability issues, the enclosure of the calculator is designed in such a way that changing the batteries would require the entire kit be disassembled. Seriously, you’d have to take the whole case apart and remove the PCB from it just to pull the two coin cells out. Perhaps that’s the reason for the calculator’s incredibly aggressive automatic power off feature.
Hacking Possibilities
While the out-of-the-box experience might not be too hot, we don’t worry too much about such things here at Hackaday. There’s at least one open source project that
offers a Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) replacement firmware for this calculator
, capable of handling up to 18 digits. This firmware doesn’t include the resistor calculator and hex conversion functions of the original, but anyone looking to turn this kit into a proper tool for mathematics probably won’t mind the trade.
The project goes to great length to document the calculator’s hardware, going as far as to identify compatible components that can be used as drop-in replacements or upgrades. For example, you can replace the original blue-lit LCD with a transflective type that is a bit easier on the eyes. To make the transformation complete, it even includes new cutouts for the calculator’s keys.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the entire kit.
It’s those new key inserts that actually has me the most excited about the possibilities for this calculator kit. Being able to create your own artwork for the buttons allows you to completely customize the device for whatever functions you could need.
That might not be terribly useful if you stick with the STC IAP15W413AS, but what if you ripped that out and replaced it with an ESP8266? With the included wiring diagrams, connecting the key matrix up to the more powerful MCU and the HD44780-compatible LCD would be simple enough.
Now you’ve got the makings of something really special. Perhaps a
handheld MQTT home automation controller
with custom button art that represents the devices you want to control, or maybe a little macro pad with its own display,
perfect for controlling Kerbal Space Program
. For the price, it’s a very compelling platform for further hacking that will hopefully start getting more attention. | 48 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260066",
"author": "Canuckfire",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T17:12:00",
"content": "Now I kinda want to get one of these and try to interface it to KSP…At that point though, I would rather it be cabled than have to change batteries. :/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,373,434.551649 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/avr-multi-tool-learns-the-latest-tricks/ | AVR Multi-Tool Learns The Latest Tricks | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"atmega",
"attiny",
"avr programming",
"CH330",
"UPDI"
] | Like many of us who fiddle with microcontrollers, [Mike] and [Brian] often found themselves using an ISP programmer and a USB-to-serial adapter. But when they started working on the latest generation of ATtiny chips, they found themselves in need of a Unified Program, and Debug Interface (UPDI) programmer as well. So they decided to
wrap all three functions into one handy open hardware gadget
.
They call their creation the AVR General Purpose Programmer, or AVRgpp for short. It runs on an ATmega328P with a Pro Mini bootloader, which means that the programmer itself is fully compatible with the Arduino IDE. USB-to-serial capability is provided by a CH330N, and a MC14053 digital switch IC is used to select between talking to the AVRgpp’s onboard MCU or the target device.
A 128 x 32 I2C OLED and two push buttons are used to select the device’s current mode, and there’s a physical switch to select between 5 V or 3.3 V power for the target. There’s also a ST662 12 V regulator, as UPDI targets occasionally need a high voltage pulse to switch into programming mode. Everything is packaged up in a pocket-sized laser cut enclosure that you can easily toss in your bag.
[Mike] and [Brian] say they are considering putting the AVRgpp into small scale production if there’s enough interest, so let them know if you’d like to get one without having to build it yourself. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260042",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T15:48:49",
"content": "The way the title was phrased I thought it was gonna run on my AVR component tester thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6260055",
"author... | 1,760,373,434.758304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/inputs-of-interest-x-bows-ergo-mechanical-keyboard/ | Inputs Of Interest: X-Bows Ergo-Mechanical Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"battleship",
"ergonomic",
"ergonomic keyboard",
"Gateron",
"keyboard",
"mechanical keyboard",
"optical switch",
"Outemu",
"RGB underglow",
"RSI",
"thumb cluster"
] | Okay, let’s just get this out of the way up front, shall we? This ergonomic mechanical keyboard was a free sample offered to me by
X-Bows
. They contacted me after I expressed interest in trying one in the comments of
my post about the Kinesis Advantage
. I had my doubts about this keyboard as far as my own personal ergonomic needs go, which are admittedly on the extreme side. TL;DR: I won’t be abandoning my curvy girls anytime soon. But I will say that I’m definitely impressed by the X-Bows.
X-Bows was founded by a doctor who saw a lot of RSI issues in programmers and writers and decided to take matters into his own hands. The keyboard was
born on Kickstarter in 2017
and now comes in three models. They sent me the mid-range model called The Knight, which retails for $249, but seems to be on permanent sale for $199. The top-of-the-line Knight Plus has a magnetic, detachable 10-key that can attach to either side.
It Doubles as a Melee Weapon
I waited and waited for this thing to show up, excited to try out a more modern, mass-produced ergo-mechanical keyboard. X-Bows ships from China, so as the pandemic progressed, I started to tell myself it just wasn’t going to make it. But after several weeks, it arrived on a rainy afternoon looking like it had been through a lot.
Fortunately there was another layer of protection inside the box — a carrying clutch made of thick felt that secures with a wide elastic band. It also came with some accessories: a branded keycap puller, a generic switch puller, and four extra switches. Instead of fold-out kickstands for changing the typing angle, there’s a pair of removable, rubber-coated magnetic feet that raise it by maybe 4°.
It’s all good, though. The keyboard itself doesn’t have a scratch on it, and functions perfectly well in spite of the shipping adventure it suffered. And rightly it should — the case is a single piece of aluminium alloy and the whole thing weighs just over two pounds (965g). This is clearly a tank of a keeb. It’s not going to flex when you pound the keys, and it won’t move around on the desk, either.
Getting the Lay of the Land
The first thing that caught my eye after feeling out the build quality was the keycaps and their gorgeous, retro legends. The website says they are customized spherical OEM, and that the material is double-shot ABS. My favorite part has to be the homing bumps. I’ve only ever seen straight lines and small dots, but these are curved like eyelashes.
Interestingly, the keyboard itself has no branding whatsoever. The only things that say X-Bows on them are the box, the carrying case, and the keycap puller. It seems as though they want the the layout to speak for itself. You may not notice at first that the layout is ortholinear — the keys are vertically aligned instead of being staggered like a brick wall. X-Bows calls it a butterfly layout, and I can see why.
A few of the layout choices strike me as pretty strange, like the giant Backspace and the 2u Print Screen key. I also don’t understand why the Delete key needs to be 2u wide. X-Bows says that some of the design decisions are there to help noobs get used to using their thumbs for more than just the space bar, so there’s a total of three Shifts and three Ctrl keys. But that’s a problem waiting to happen. What do you do with the normie Shifts and Ctrls once you’re used to using the thumb cluster keys? The only thing you can do: reprogram them for more useful things.
Let’s Get to Clackin’
A few things stood out to me right away once I started typing on it, like the fact that Home and End are non-existent. That’s unacceptable to me, and if I were to use this keyboard regularly, I would remap one of the extra Shift/Ctrl pairs. The layout can be changed through the X-Bows software, but so far, it only works on Windows.
Also, I really don’t like the thumb cluster layout. It’s true that I’m used to the Kinesis thumb clusters, but this map doesn’t seem practical to me. My biggest gripe is with the group in the middle — using my thumb to hit Backspace and Enter requires either ugly and uncomfortable wrist movement, or curling up my fingers and pushing them forward so my thumb can reach. I think that swapping Backspace and Enter with Control and Shift
would be perfect, because then they would be a short thumb extension away from the two space bars.
But then you have a bit of a keycaps problem because so many of them are custom shaped. I rearranged the thumb cluster the way I wanted it and relabeled it with caps from that Bezos Barn keeb just to confirm how much easier typing is with Backspace and Enter on the bottom. It doesn’t even look half bad that way, except for the exposed stabilizer.
I used this keyboard for as long as I could on a few separate occasions to really get a good feel for it. I’ll be honest: none of the trials lasted very long before I started to feel that tingling that says I should stop if I don’t want to wear compression sleeves for the next week or two. Some of the keys are just a little too far apart for my hands to be comfortable typing on this all day.
Of course, your mileage may vary. I have pretty darn small hands and history of repetitive stress injury issues. In other words, I’m too far gone for this lovely keyboard, but I definitely see the value for someone who is looking to ease into ergonomic keebs instead of diving right into key wells, QMK, and jelly wrist rests. The gentle split isn’t that different from a Microsoft Natural. Depending on your typing habits, you might ease right into the non-staggered layout without making errors.
Switchable Switches
X-Bows was kind enough to let me choose my switches, so I asked for blues. They use Gateron optical switches exclusively, which are inherently hot-swappable — instead of two contacts closing inside the switch, the spring-assisted plunger breaks a tiny IR beam being launched across a hole in the PCB.
These particular switches have metal contacts inside, and I imagine it was just easier to take the Cherry MX form factor, cut the pins off the contacts, and hollow out the slider housing. The only other tried and true way (that I’ve seen) to generate a clicky tactile feeling is with a click bar — a spring-loaded bar that gets plucked on the downstroke by a little nub on the slider.
Optical switches sound pretty darn futuristic, and they are, but they don’t escape being mechanical. There’s still a spring that will wear out eventually, but they are rated to last for more actuations than purely mechanical switches. Our own [Bob Baddely]
covered optical switches in great detail
not so long ago. I will say that these Gateron blues feel smoother and less brittle than the Outemu blues on the similarly-constructed Bezos Barn keeb.
Teardown Time
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not a lot to the chassis here. It’s a single piece of aluminium alloy with two side pieces that are attached with tiny Torx screws. The trickiest part of opening this keeb was finding the right tool with which to knock out one of the side panels from the inside. Turns out it’s a butter knife.
The warranty says something about breaking the seal. I’m not worried about getting some unwarranted refund, but I don’t want to just break this keeb. Now that I’ve opened it, I can tell you there’s no glue or anything. Once I removed the panel, the PCB just slid out. It’s anchored to a plastic tray with eight Phillips screws, and the tray has a pair of magnets on the back to secure it to the case.
The micro is around back, and it’s nothing I’ve heard of before — a
Weltrend WT59F164
. It seems to be a general purpose 32-bit µC with RISC architecture that does USB natively. There are also three SM16136S LED drivers, and another IC near the Weltrend that I could barely read with my magnifying glasses, I didn’t find search hits for any combination of guesses. I would guess I/O expander, but it only has eight legs. Lastly, there is another unpopulated IC pad near the microcontroller that I’m guessing handles the detachable 10-key on the top shelf model.
Putting It Back Together
I definitely get what X-Bows are going for here, and I think they succeeded in most ways. Everybody has different needs when it comes to keyboards, especially once all of their keyboarding starts to catch up to them. This is definitely going to cover it for plenty of people, although they might grow out of the software quickly and wish for something more powerful like QMK.
The X-Bows is a baby step towards full ergo, like what you might try if a Microsoft Natural isn’t cutting it, but you’re not ready to go crazy. It’s a great effort, and I hope it inspires more and more ergo-mechanical designs until there’s one that works for everybody. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6260024",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T14:40:57",
"content": "Clever. It certainly looks much better than the others I’ve seen at several stores, and of course the Microsoft Natural one, but only just.I’m waiting for someone to successfully create a keyboard that res... | 1,760,373,434.820743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/phonk-a-hackers-fun-shortcut-to-android-programming/ | PHONK – A Hacker’s Fun Shortcut To Android Programming | Sven Gregori | [
"Android Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"android",
"ide",
"ioio",
"java",
"javascript",
"web browser",
"Web IDE",
"web server"
] | As the common myth goes, the average human utilizes only about 10% of the true potential their smartphone is capable of. Especially when it comes to electronics projects, it seems that we often overlook how we can integrate and take advantage of their functionality here. Maybe that’s not a big surprise though — while it isn’t rocket science, getting into mobile development certainly has its hurdles and requires a bit of commitment. [Victor Diaz] figured there had to be a better way, so he went on and created
PHONK, the
self-contained creative scripting toolbox
for Android
.
PHONK is installed like any other app, and allows rapid prototyping on your Android device via
JavaScript
by abstracting away and simplifying the heavily boilerplated, native Java parts. So instead of setting up an app from scratch with all the resources defining, UI design, activity and application lifecycle management — not to mention the Android development environment itself — PHONK takes care of all that behind the curtain and significantly reduces the amount of code required to achieve the task you’re actually interested in. In case you’re worrying now that you have to actually program on your phone, well, you
can
, which can definitely come in handy, but you don’t have to.
Once the app is opened, a web server is started, and connecting to it from any modern browser within the same WiFi network presents you the PHONK development environment with everything you need: editor, file browser, console, and API documentation. You can write your code in the browser, and pressing the run button will execute it straight on the device then. As everything is self-contained within the app itself, no additional software is required, and you can start right away by exploring the set of provided examples that showcase everything supported so far: sensor interaction, BLE server and client, communication protocols like MQTT or WebSockets, OpenStreetMap maps, and even integration with
Pure Data
and
Processing
. Attach a USB OTG cable and you can program your Arduino, have serial communication, or interface a
IOIO board
. You can even connect a MIDI controller.
This is really impressive work done by [Victor], and a lot of attention to detail went into the development. If you have an old Android phone collecting dust somewhere, this would be a great opportunity to revive it and build something with it. And as [Victor] writes on
the project’s GitHub page
, he’s always curious what people will come up with. If you’re thinking about building a mobile sensor lab, or want to learn more about the sensors inside your phone,
have a look at the 36C3 talk about phyphox
. | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259976",
"author": "Digitalzombie",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T11:30:43",
"content": "What the PHONK? :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6260326",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2020-07-03T17:58:37",
"... | 1,760,373,434.883264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/02/number-crunching-gps-for-the-diyer/ | Number Crunching GPS For The DIYer | Lewin Day | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"KiwiSDR",
"sdr"
] | Many of us have had cause to add GPS to a project, whether it’s because we need an accurate timebase or just want to know where the bloody thing is. Normally, this consists of plugging in a cheap module and making sure the antenna has a good view of the sky. [Mike] wanted to dig deeper, however,
and figure out just what goes into decoding a GPS signal and calculating a location fix.
[Mike]’s investigation combined several avenues of investigation. In terms of decoding live radio signals, he selected a KiwiSDR software defined radio. Combined with a Digilent Nexys 2 FPGA, it was now possible to get live data off the air and into the PC quickly for decoding. In concert with this, [Mike] used a sample of raw GPS data captured in Nottingham, UK in order to test his code. After much experimentation, [Mike] was able to get the data decoded with 700 lines of C code. Decoding three minutes worth of data took all night, but further development allowed things to be sped up over 200 times. For the curious,
the code is up on Github to convert raw ADC samples into actual location fixes.
Armed with the wealth of resources online and the right hardware, [Mike] was sucessfully able to achieve his goal, and figure out just precisely where his house is, to boot. As a bonus, the whole project was inspired by
a similar project posted in these very pages back in 2013!
If you’re working on your own satellite-based projects,
be sure to drop us a line. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259972",
"author": "Chris Muncy",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T11:05:08",
"content": "The article is almost exactly 3 years old, but worth the read. It would be interesting to do the same today with more powerful hardware and see what type of speeds could be achieved.",
"parent_id"... | 1,760,373,435.008622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/merlin-pi-camera-is-a-photographic-wizard/ | Merlin Pi Camera Is A Photographic Wizard | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"camera",
"Merlin",
"Rapsberry Pi",
"Raspberry Pi 3",
"Raspberry Pi HQ camera",
"touchscreen"
] | [Mister M] was quite excited to mess around with the new high-quality Raspberry Pi camera and build a project around it
. Unfortunately, lockdown forced him to rummage through old tech on hand rather than hunting down a fresh eye-catching enclosure out in the wild. We spent many hours playing with one of these Merlin toys whenever six AA batteries could be spared to feed the matrix of hungry 1970s LEDs, so we would argue that [Mister M] should explore his personal stores more often.
Before we forget — it’s cool; this one was already broken. The Merlin Pi camera’s wizardry works on two levels — [Mister M] can take still pictures and record video through the GUI he built for the touchscreen, or go retro and use the little push buttons nestled in the Merlin control panel. [Mister M] worked a Dropbox uploader into the GUI, so he doesn’t have to worry about filling up the SD card with backyard bird movies in the middle of filming them.
[Mister M] says he accidentally warped the Merlin’s battery cover while trying to soak away the sticker and had to use a piece of acrylic. Although it’s unfortunate, we think it may have been for the better given the huge hole necessitated by the camera lens. Check out the build video after the break.
If you hadn’t heard about this beefy new camera module until now,
our own [Jenny List] brought it into focus a couple months back
and more recently
had a go at hacking with it herself
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvZZ5b8CLMc | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259901",
"author": "Norbert",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T06:15:51",
"content": "If you could not get a hand on a Raspberry HQ camera module, yet, you can control mine remotely and study the effects of focus, aperture, or shutter speed settings:https://homofaciens.de/robospatium-contr... | 1,760,373,434.704235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/3d-printing-damascus-like-steel/ | 3D Printing Damascus-like Steel | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"laser sintering",
"metalwork",
"sintering",
"sls",
"steel"
] | Recreating Damascus steel remains a holy grail of materials science. The exact process and alloys used are long ago lost to time. At best, modern steelworking methods are able to produce a rough visual simulacra of sorts that many still consider to be pretty cool looking. Taking a more serious bent at materials science than your average knifemaker, a group of scientists at the Max Planck institute
have been working to create a material with similar properties through 3D printing
.
The technology used is based on the laser sintering of metal powders. In this case, the powder consists of a mixture of iron, nickel and titanium. The team found that by varying the exact settings of the laser sintering process on a layer-by-layer basis, they could create different microstructures throughout a single part. This allows the creation of parts that are ductile, while remaining hard enough to be sharpened – a property which is useful in edged weapons like swords.
While the process is nothing like that used by smiths in Damascus working with Wootz steel, the general idea of a metal material with varying properties throughout remains the same. For those eager to get into old-school metalwork,
consider our articles on blacksmithing.
For those interested in materials research, head to a good university. Or, better yet – do both!
[Thanks to Itay for the tip, via
New Atlas] | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259903",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T06:22:15",
"content": "I’m sorry but long lost secret of Damascus steel is known for ages. For example herehttps://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_a/backbone/ra_4_1.htmlSo many inacuuracies in this article. Damascus or Woo... | 1,760,373,435.057507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/pop-open-your-neighbors-front-door-with-12-volts/ | Pop Open Your Neighbor’s Front Door With 12 Volts | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"doorbell",
"physical security",
"security",
"smart home"
] | Many in the community are skeptical about the security of commercial smart home devices, and for good reason. It’s not like you have to look far to find examples of poorly implemented systems, or products that are abandoned by their manufacturers and left without critical security updates. But the design flaw in this video doorbell really drives home
how little thought some companies give to their customer’s security
.
As explained by [Savvas], and demonstrated in the video after the break, all you need to do if you want to get into a home equipped with one of these vulnerable door bells is pop the unit off the wall and hit it with 12 volts DC.
Incredibly, the terminals that connect to the electronic lock inside the house are completely accessible on the back of the unit. They even labeled them, on the off-chance the robber forgets which wire is which. It’s not even as though the thing is held on with some kind of weird security screws, it’s just a garden variety Phillips.
In the video, [Savvas] even shows he used a little gadget attached to a QuickCharge USB battery bank to get a portable 12 VDC source suitable for tripping these locks. Which, interestingly enough,
is based on a trick he read about in the Hackaday comments
. Something to consider while penning your next comment on these storied pages.
[Savvas] says he’s reached out to the company to get their side of the story, but so far, hasn’t received a response. We aren’t surprised, this is a fundamental flaw in the product’s execution. Clearly they wanted to make an easy to install device that doesn’t require any additional electronics in the house, and this is the inevitable end result of that oversimplification. All the more reason
to roll your own smart doorbell
. | 57 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259799",
"author": "Jake of All Trades",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T23:11:12",
"content": "I do love that it lends credence to every lazy action/sci-fi movie’s keypad hacking scene!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259837",
... | 1,760,373,435.236354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/tidy-laser-cut-packaging-for-pcbs-with-kicad/ | Tidy Laser Cut Packaging For PCBs With KiCAD | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"packaging",
"pcb",
"Tindie"
] | A laser cutter is a useful tool to have in any workshop. While many hackers use them for their cutting abilities, it’s important to remember that they can be great as engravers, too. [Wrickert] was well aware of this when he set his to work,
producing attractive packaging for his Tindie orders.
[Wrickert] sells a variety of small PCB-based devices on Tindie, and it’s nice to have something to package them up with, rather than just sending a bare board. To do this quickly and effectively, KiCAD is used to help generate the packaging from the original PCB geometry itself. The board outlines are exported as an SVG file, reopened in KiCAD, and then used to create the required cardboard parts. The laser can then also be used to engrave the cardboard too.
It’s a tidy packaging solution that requires no messy inks or printers, and can be designed in the same software as the device itself. We’ve covered this area before, talking about
what it takes to go from a home project to a saleable kit.
If you’re in the game, you might find [Wrickert]’s hack to be just the ticket! | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259905",
"author": "Splud",
"timestamp": "2020-07-02T06:38:00",
"content": "I have occasionally cut packaging for things with my 40W CO2. More like cardboard mailers for a bunch of microsd cards or a snug-fit for a pcb so it isn’t swimming around inside an envelope.However, along ... | 1,760,373,435.09193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/blueretro-is-the-ultimate-console-controller-adapter/ | BlueRetro Is The Ultimate Console Controller Adapter | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"ESP32"
] | Retro consoles are great fun, packed with classic games and plenty of nostalgia. However, they also lack the polish and ergonomics of more modern hardware. Serious gamers will often find their original gamepads wearing out, too.
A solution to all these problems and more is BlueRetro
.
BlueRetro is a Bluetooth controller adapter for a wide variety of vintage console platforms. Developed by [Jacques Gagnon], it uses an ESP32 for its powerful wireless capabilities. One core of the ESP32 is used to speak Bluetooth and handle controller interfacing, while the other processor core handles speaking to the attached console.
The level of attention to detail is where this project really shines. [Jacques] has implemented many advanced features, like mapping axes to buttons and vice versa – essential when swapping controllers across varied systems. The output of BlueRetro is a DB25 connector, which is then used with adapter cabling to hook up to the controller ports of various consoles. It’s even capable of emulating multitap adapters for up to 7-player action.
In a video,
[Jacques] shows off the hardware in use with his collection of vintage consoles, hooked up on a shelf with an impressive A/V switcher setup. It’s clear that this is the build of a hacker that doesn’t skimp on doing things the right way. We’ve seen his work before too,
with a tidy RGB input mod for CRT TVs.
Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259774",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T20:44:14",
"content": "Incredible! I especially like the use of the DB25.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6259775",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T... | 1,760,373,435.145965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/automating-the-disinfection-of-large-spaces-with-robots/ | Automating The Disinfection Of Large Spaces With Robots | Maya Posch | [
"Machine Learning",
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"CSAIL",
"disinfecting",
"mit csail",
"UV-C"
] | What do you do when you have to disinfect an entire warehouse? You could send a group of people through the place with UV-C lamps, but that would take a long time as said humans cannot be in the same area as the UV-C radiation, as much as they may like the smell of BBQ chicken. Constantly repositioning the lamps or installing countless lamps would get in the way during normal operation. The answer is
to strap UV-C lights to a robot
according to
MIT’s CSAIL
, and have it ride around the space.
As can be seen in the video (also embedded after the break), a CSAIL group has been working with telepresence robotics company
Ava Robotics
and the Greater Boston Food Bank (
GBFB
). Their goal was to create a robotic system that could autonomously disinfect a GBFB warehouse using UV-C without exposing any humans to the harmful radiation. While the robotics can be controlled remotely, they can also map the space and navigate between waypoints.
While testing the system, the team used a UV-C dosimeter to confirm the effectiveness of this setup. With the robot driving along at a leisurely 0.22 miles per hour (~0.35 kilometer per hour), it was able to cover approximately 4,000 square feet (~372 square meter) in about half an hour. They estimated that about 90% of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 could be neutralized this way.
During trial runs, they discovered the need to have the robot adapt to the constantly changing layout of the warehouse, including which aisles require which UV-C depending on how full they are. Having multiple of these robots in the same space coordinate with each other would also be a useful feature addition. | 31 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259493",
"author": "epitaxial",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T23:20:38",
"content": "Doesn’t the virus die within 24 hours on most surfaces? Shut the door for the weekend and it should be fine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259... | 1,760,373,435.297773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/experimenting-with-vibratory-wind-generators/ | Experimenting With Vibratory Wind Generators | Tom Nardi | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"magnet",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"turbine",
"vibration",
"wind generator"
] | We’ve all got a pretty good mental image of the traditional wind-powered generator: essentially a big propeller on a stick. Some might also be familiar with vertical wind turbines, which can operate no matter which way the wind is blowing. In either case, they use some form of rotating structure to harness the wind’s energy.
But as demonstrated by [Robert Murray-Smith], it’s
possible to generate electrical power from wind without any moving parts
. With simple components, he shows how you can build a device capable of harnessing the wind with nothing more than vibrations. Alright, so we suppose that means the parts are
technically
moving, but you get the idea.
In the video after the break, [Robert] shows two different devices that operate under the same basic principle. For the first, he cuts the cone out of a standard speaker and glues a flat stick to the voice coil. As the stick moves back and forth in the wind, the coil inside of the magnet’s field and produces a measurable voltage. This proves the idea has merit and can be thrown together easily, but isn’t terribly elegant.
For the revised version, he glues a coil to a small piece of neoprene rubber, which in turn is glued to a slat taken from a Venetian blind. On the opposite side of the coil, he glues a magnet. When the blind slat starts vibrating in the wind, the oscillation of the magnet relative to the coil is enough to produce a current. It’s tiny, of course. But if you had hundreds or even thousands of these electric “blades of grass”, you could potentially build up quite a bit of energy.
If this all sounds a bit too theoretical for your tastes, you can always
3D print yourself a more traditional wind turbine
. We’ve
even seen them in vertical form
, if you want to get fancy.
[Thanks to Itay for the tip.] | 43 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259452",
"author": "jP314",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T20:12:19",
"content": "If this was real, he would have shown the meter’s screen — if that’s standard Fluke meter, he appears to have it on the mVDC scale — he’s not measuring the AC output at all. Secondly, you can’t efficiently ... | 1,760,373,435.378243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/the-challenges-of-monitoring-water-streams-and-surviving-mother-nature/ | The Challenges Of Monitoring Water Streams And Surviving Mother Nature | Danie Conradie | [
"Tech Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"cellular",
"environmental monitoring",
"particle",
"water level"
] | Small waterways give life in the form of drinking and irrigation water, but can also be very destructive when flooding occurs. In the US, monitoring of these waterways is done by mainly by the USGS, with accurate but expensive monitoring stations. This means that there is a limit to how many monitoring stations can be deployed. In an effort to come up with a more cost-efficient monitoring solution, [Rohan Menon] and [Ian Vernooy] created
Aquametric,
a simple water level, temperature and conductivity measuring station.
The device is built around a Particle Electron that features a STM32 microcontroller and a 3G modem. An automotive ultrasonic sensors measures water level, a thermistor measures temperature and a pair of parallel aluminum plates are used to measure conductivity. All the data from the prototype is output to a
live dashboard
. The biggest challenges for the system came with field deployment.
The great outdoors can be rather merciless with our ideas and electronic devices. [Rohan] and [Ian] did some tests with LoRa, but quickly found that the terrain severely limited the effective range. Power was another challenge, first testing with a solar panel and lithium battery. This proved unreliable especially at temperatures near freezing, so they decided to use 18 AA batteries instead and optimized power usage.
The mounting system is still an ongoing challenge. A metal pole driven into the riverbed at a wider part ended up bent (probably from ice sheets) and covered in debris to the point that it affected water level readings. They then moved to a narrower and shallower section in the hopes of avoiding debris, but the rocky bottom prevented them from effectively driving in a pole. So the mounted the pole on a steel plate which was then packet with rock to keep it in place. This too failed when it tipped over from rising water levels, submerging the entire sensor unit. Surprisingly it survived with only a little moisture getting inside.
For the 2020 Hackaday Prize,
Field Ready
and
Conservation X Labs
have issued challenges that need require some careful consideration and testing to build things that can survive the real world. So go forth and hack!
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259423",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T19:01:07",
"content": "Suspend it from a bridge.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259431",
"author": "NateH",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T19:26:28",
"con... | 1,760,373,435.435346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/your-own-open-source-asic-skywater-pdf-plans-first-130-nm-wafer-in-2020/ | Your Own Open Source ASIC: SkyWater-PDK Plans First 130 Nm Wafer In 2020 | Al Williams | [
"FPGA",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"130 nm",
"ASIC",
"custom chip",
"custom silicon",
"open source",
"skywater"
] | You might have caught
Maya Posch’s article
about
the first open-source ASIC tools from Google and SkyWater Technology
. It envisions increased access to make custom chips — Application Specific Integrated Circuits — designed using open-source tools, and made real through existing chip fabrication facilities. My first thought? How much does it cost to tape out? That is, how do I take the design on my screen and get actual parts in my hands? I asked Google’s Tim Ansel to explain some more about the project’s goals and how I was going to get my parts.
The goals are pretty straightforward. Tim and his collaborators would like to see hardware open up in the same way software has. The model where teams of people build on each other’s work either in direct collaboration or indirectly has led to many very powerful pieces of software. Tim’s had some success getting people interested in FPGA development and helped produce open tools for doing so. Custom ASICs are the next logical step.
Who Needs Open Source ASICs?
Of course, FPGAs and ASICs aren’t the answer to every problem. We can’t help but notice that some examples you see — including ours — are sometimes better for learning than actually practical. For example, the classic sample for learning about state machines on an FPGA is a traffic light. Why not? Everyone sort of understands what it is supposed to do, it has clear state logic, and you can make it as simple as you like or quite complex if it senses vehicles and pedestrian crosswalk buttons or changes based on schedules.
However, if you were really building a traffic light, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to do it in an FPGA. Even the simplest microcontroller would be up to the task and would be cheaper both to buy and in terms of engineering costs by a wide margin.
ASICs occupy a similar niche, but with a little bit of a difference. On the plus side, they should be denser, faster, and less power hungry than a similar FPGA. That makes sense because the ASIC is sort of an FPGA where the interconnections are made with dedicated metal lines instead of being generally configurable. You can also put down exactly the circuits you want — or, at least, choose from a variety of cells instead of having to use whatever the FPGA’s architect decided you need. You can even include analog cells alongside digital circuitry.
On the negative side, ASICs are not for the sloppy. Historically, taping out an ASIC has been very expensive. So you have a run of parts but — oops — you forgot that counter needs to reset to a non-zero number. In an FPGA, that’s a minor annoyance; you simply change the configuration — especially now that one time programmable FPGAs are rare outside of certain applications. Even if you have to trash an FPGA and program another one, they are generally not very expensive unless they are radiation hardened or very large devices.
If you make that mistake on an ASIC, you are in big trouble. You can’t change anything on the parts you have. You have to have a new batch built with new upfront costs. In the commercial world, that kind of mistake can be career-ending.
Tim makes it clear that his target audience isn’t the professional building custom ASICs, though. It is us. The hackers and tinkerers that want to create custom ICs. There may be some student market, too, although schools often have deals to make that feasible already.
Tim does point out, though, that a lot of those school deals are bound up with nondisclosure agreements the students have to sign, so it’s possible that open tools will spur new published research which would be a good thing. Still, I get the sense they think most of the interest will be from our community.
Notable about this process is that the 130 nm process being used isn’t cutting edge technology. The Skywater Technologies fab was built by Cypress Semiconductor in 1991 in Bloomington, Minnesota. Tim says professional designers have moved so far from these large geometries that our designers may have to rediscover some lost knowledge along the way to get the most from an IC made on the larger processes now. But the existing infrastructure is a big part of what makes this project more affordable.
So How Do You Get Them?
Tim had a lot to say about cell libraries that are eminent and how each one was tuned for a different purpose (e.g., high density or low power or high speed). However, we wanted to know how we’d get actual parts. Apparently, some of the details or still being worked out.
Chip scale devices on a penny by
Cp82
CC-BY-SA 3.0
In November, they plan to order a multiproject wafer with 40 slots. They don’t know yet if they will have to beg and plead to get 40 designs or if they will have to winnow the select down from all possible candidates. If you are one of the 40, you’ll get about 10mm square to play with and wind up with somewhere around 100 to 300 chips in chip-scale packaging (CSP). You can see a typical CSP sitting on a US penny in the accompanying photo.
There are a few stipulations. You’ll submit your design on GitHub (or some similar public repository), so your design is going to be open source. That means even if you aren’t one of the 40, you’ve just put your chip out for the world to see. The foundry will automatically check your design to meet certain technical criteria. At this early point there doesn’t seem to be a firm plan on how they will select designs for inclusion in the first run. Presumably, if there are a lot of entrants and things work well, there will be more wafers in 2021.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions. Can you pay to get your own tape out? If so, do you still have to be open source? What if you have some made and then want more? How much does that cost? This is very early and we do we not yet know the answers to these questions, but details will come together over time.
The Key
Like I said earlier, ASICs aren’t for everyone and they certainly aren’t for people who test and debug as they go. Verification is essential for a successful ASIC project. That means a lot of this will hinge on the simulation tools available and the quality of the models available. Spending a lot of time and money getting ICs that won’t work at the speeds you need, consume more power than you expected, or simply don’t work is heartbreaking.
Many times an FPGA can be used to validate some or all of your design before trying to go to an ASIC. When that works, it works well. However, because of the differences between the two technologies, it isn’t as simple as thinking of an ASIC as a fixed FPGA. You have the same problems you might have going from a hand-wired circuit to a PCB. Logically they are the same. But we all know you can have problems with that transition because of the different characteristics. It is the same problem here. How do you test your analog cells? Will the clock distribute the same? And ASICs have speed or power requirements which are difficult to mimic in a validation stage.
Tim Ansel
gave an online talk today
officially announcing the project. Take a look for more details on the process node itself and the tools used to design for it:
So will you try to design your own IC? I’ve been involved in ASIC development before, but I still might be interested in doing my own personal project just to be able to do all the steps. Let us know what IC you want to design — or see someone else design — in the comments.
Header image: Peellden/
CC BY-SA 3.0 | 51 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259399",
"author": "alfcoder",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T17:32:05",
"content": "custom chips, it’s coming for sure, pretty, pretty good :) as i imagine we will have some open source (or free) fpga development environment with a cool dev board with a beefy fpga then after we are done... | 1,760,373,435.523194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/aggressive-indoor-flying-thanks-to-steamvr/ | Aggressive Indoor Flying Thanks To SteamVR | Lewin Day | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"SteamVR",
"vr"
] | With lockdown regulations sweeping the globe, many have found themselves spending altogether too much time inside with not a lot to do. [Peter Hall] is one such individual, with a penchant for flying quadcopters. With the great outdoors all but denied, he instead endeavoured to find a way to make flying inside a more exciting experience.
We’d say he’s succeeded.
The setup involves using a SteamVR virtual reality tracker to monitor the position of a quadcopter inside a room. This data is then passed back to the quadcopter at a high rate, giving the autopilot fast, accurate data upon which to execute manoeuvres. PyOpenVR is used to do the motion tracking, and in combination with MAVProxy, sends the information over MAVLink back to the copter’s ArduPilot.
While such a setup could be used to simply stop the copter crashing into things, [Peter] doesn’t like to do things by half measures. Instead, he took full advantage of the capabilities of the system,
enabling the copter to fly aggressively in an incredibly small space
.
It’s an impressive setup, and one that we’re sure could have further applications for those exploring the use of drones indoors.
We’ve seen MAVLink used for nefarious purposes, too.
Video after the break. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259521",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T01:45:32",
"content": "Cool project, companies spend thousands of dollars on a system like this, great idea to use SteamVR tracking for it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,373,435.61243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/the-segway-is-dead-long-live-the-segway/ | The Segway Is Dead, Long Live The Segway | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"dean kamen",
"electric scooter",
"electric vehicle",
"personal transport",
"segway",
"transportation"
] | Before it was officially unveiled in December 2001, the hype surrounding the Segway Human Transporter was incredible. But it wasn’t because people were excited to get their hands on the product, they just wanted to know what the thing was. Cryptic claims from inventor Dean Kamen that “Ginger” would revolutionize transportation and urban planning lead to wild speculation. When somebody says their new creation will make existing automobiles look like horse-drawn carriages in comparison, it’s hard not to get excited.
Dean Kamen unveils the Segway
There were some pretty outlandish theories. Some believed that Kamen, a brilliant engineer and inventor by all accounts, had stumbled upon some kind of anti-gravity technology. The kids thought they would be zipping around on their own
Back to the Future
hover boards by Christmas, while Mom and Dad were wondering what the down payment on a floating minivan might be. Others thought the big secret was the discovery of teleportation, and that we were only a few years out from being able to “beam” ourselves around like Captain Kirk.
Even in hindsight, you really can’t blame them. Kamen had the sort of swagger and media presence that we today associate with Elon Musk. There was a general feeling that this charismatic maverick was about to do what the “Big Guys” couldn’t. Or even more tantalizing, what they
wouldn’t
do. After all, a technology which made the automobile obsolete would change the world. The very idea threatened a number of very big players, not least of which the incredibly powerful petroleum industry.
Of course, we all know what Dean Kamen
actually
showed off to the world that fateful day
nearly 20 years ago. The two-wheeled scooter was admittedly an impressive piece of hardware, but it was hardly a threat to Detroit automakers. Even the horses were largely unconcerned, as you could buy an actual pony for less than what the Segway cost.
Now, with the announcement that
Segway will stop production on their eponymous personal transporter in July
, we can confidently say that history will look back on it as one of the most over-hyped pieces of technology ever created. But that’s not to say Kamen’s unique vehicle didn’t have an impact.
A Balancing Act
The core technology used in the Segway came from one of Kamen’s previous inventions: the iBOT electric wheelchair. Developed in the early 1990s, it was capable of a number of notable feats which were intended help those with limited mobility live more full and independent lives.
iBOT at the White House in 2000
The most practical of which was its ability to “climb” stairs utilizing two sets of powered wheels that could rotate around each other. The ride was a bit rough, but assuming the user had the strength to hold onto the railing, the iBOT would allow them to navigate a set of stairs on their own. If the occupant wasn’t strong enough, then a helper could stabilize the wheelchair as it trudged along. An elevator or ramp would still be easier, but now it wasn’t strictly required.
But the unique wheel arrangement was capable of other tricks. By rotating the wheels into a vertical orientation and raising the seat, the iBOT could elevate the user to approximate standing height. For those who believed they would have to live the rest of their lives sitting down, being able to look others into the eye could provide a huge boost to their self-esteem and overall morale. Utilizing onboard gyroscopes the iBOT was able to maintain its equilibrium with just two wheels on the ground, and could even drive in the “standing” position.
This self-balancing capability served as the basis for the hardware and software used in the Segway. Since the Human Transporter (which would later be renamed to the Personal Transporter) wasn’t a medical device, it wouldn’t be subject to the same kind of scrutiny and quality standards as the iBOT. This would let the company leverage their existing R&D to create a product that was not only more profitable to manufacture, but had a much larger potential user-base.
Failure to Launch
You couldn’t buy the sort of media hype that was generated around the Segway. Steve Jobs said the vehicle would ultimately be as important as the personal computer, and there was even an
episode of South Park inspired by the mysterious transportation device
. Naturally there were skeptics, but as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
But when it finally hit the market in early 2002, the Segway failed to excite consumers. Undoubtedly, some of it was due to the disappointment of finding out this revolutionary new transportation device wasn’t a flying car, but an awkward looking scooter you couldn’t even sit down on. There was also a question of where owners would store the relatively large vehicle when not actively using it; if you drove a Segway to work, where would you leave it when you got there?
Of course, the biggest problem was the price. The first model of the Segway cost an incredible $5,000 (over $7,000 today). For that amount of money you could buy a decent used car, or a brand-new motorcycle if you were a bit more daring and wanted the open-air driving experience. The high sticker price was at odds with Kamen’s grandiose claims; how could the Segway revolutionize urban transportation when the average person couldn’t afford it? On paper, it would have been the perfect vehicle for teens without a drivers license or the elderly that didn’t need the extravagance of a full-sized car, but neither group was likely to have the cash to actually buy one.
To be sure, part of the problem was the technology available in the early 2000s. The Segway might have been a cost-optimized version of the iBOT, but the core hardware still didn’t come cheap. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but the incredible price reductions on rechargeable battery packs, powerful brushless motors, and fast microcontrollers have all been relatively recent events. It’s a classic example of an idea that was simply ahead of its time.
A Lasting Legacy
By the company’s own numbers, the Segway product line has sold less than 150,000 units in the 18 years they’ve been on sale. To put that into perspective, the company initially believed they’d be able to sell nearly that many in the first year. The average consumer simply wasn’t interested. The biggest customers ended up being security and police agencies, as it allowed officers to cover greater distances when on patrol.
While the Segway itself might never have enjoyed widespread commercial success, personal electric vehicles are today more popular than ever. The self-balancing “hoverboards” that have been on every tween’s Christmas list for the last several years
are arguably a direct evolution of the Segway concept
. More traditional electric scooters, which drop the balancing gimmick entirely, are similarly seeing a lot of interest.
Especially when coupled with ridesharing technology
that allows riders to rent them on demand.
In the end, there’s no question that some of Dean Kamen’s ideas are starting to change the way people get around in dense urban areas. Unfortunately for Segway, they just ended up doing it 20 years too late for them to make any money from it. | 87 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259336",
"author": "Il Ruz",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T14:10:26",
"content": "Impressive technology for the era, crazy costs for the value – still boycotted by the law in most countries (too quick for the sidewalk, too slow for the road, etc.). I still think it would be really usefu... | 1,760,373,435.849881 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/quadcopter-with-stereo-vision/ | Quadcopter With Stereo Vision | Bryan Cockfield | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"amazon",
"cloud",
"drone",
"facial recognition",
"northwestern",
"project",
"quadcopter",
"stereo",
"tracking",
"university",
"vision"
] | Flying a quadcopter or other drone can be pretty exciting, especially when using the video signal to do the flying. It’s almost like a real-life video game or flight simulator in a way, except the aircraft is physically
real.
To bring this experience even closer to the reality of flying, [Kevin]
implemented stereo vision on his quadcopter
which also adds an impressive amount of functionality to his drone.
While he doesn’t use this particular setup for drone racing or virtual reality, there are some other interesting things that [Kevin] is able to do with it. The cameras, both ESP32 camera modules, can make use of their combined stereo vision capability to determine distances to objects. By leveraging cloud computing services from Amazon to offload some of the processing demands, the quadcopter is able to recognize faces and keep the drone flying at a fixed distance from that face without needing power-hungry computing onboard.
There are a lot of other abilities that this drone unlocks by offloading its resource-hungry tasks to the cloud. It can be flown by using a smartphone or tablet, and has its own web client where its user can observe the facial recognition being performed. Presumably it wouldn’t be too difficult to use this drone for
other tasks where having stereoscopic vision is a requirement
.
Thanks to [Ilya Mikhelson], a professor at Northwestern University, for this tip about a student’s project. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259313",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T13:22:48",
"content": "Perhaps a weight savings and better aerodynamics could be achieved by custom PCBs for the ultra sonic modules?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259352"... | 1,760,373,435.573051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/why-are-digital-cameras-still-boring/ | Why Are Digital Cameras Still Boring? | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"camera",
"digital camera",
"Raspberry Pi HQ camera"
] | In the matter of technological advancement, we are as a species, mostly insatiable. The latest toy, the fastest silicon, the largest storage, the list goes on. Take digital cameras as an example, what was your first one? Mine was a Casio QV200 in about 1997, I still have it somewhere though I can’t immediately lay my hands on it, and it could hold a what was for its time a whopping 64 VGA-resolution pictures in its 4Mb of onboard memory.
The QV200 showing off its VGA photography capabilities. It’s March 1998, and this is a brand-new PlayStation that I’m about to install a mod chip inside.
It’s a shock to realise that nearly a quarter century has passed since then, and its fixed-focus 640×480 camera module with a UV-sensitive CMOS sensor that gave everything a slight blue tint would not even grace the cheapest of feature phones in 2020. Every aspect of a digital camera has improved beyond measure since the first models in the 1980s and early 1990s that started to resemble what we’d know today as a standalone digital camera, they have near-limitless storage, excellent lenses, huge and faithfully-reproducing sensors, and broadcast-quality video capability.
But how playful have camera manufacturers been with the form factor? We see reporters in sci-fi movies toting cameras that look nothing like their film-based ancestors. What do our real-life digital cameras have on offer as far as creative body design goes?
When Photographic Companies Didn’t Drive The Digital Camera Market
Every aspect of a digital camera has improved, that is, except one. When mass-market digital cameras came out, their designers experimented with the form factor of a camera. The Casio was an example, instead of being a brick with a lens sticking out of its middle it put the camera in a rotating turret on one of its ends. For the first time it was possible to take a picture from an angle other than with your face up to the viewfinder.
The Ricoh RDC-i700 from 2000, one of a line of cameras with a distinctive form factor from the company. Morio /
CC BY-SA 3.0
Other manufacturers took similar departures from the norm, just to note a few examples Apple’s 1994 QuickTake 100 had a form factor about the size of a paperback book with lens and viewfinder at opposite ends, Nikon’s 1996 Coolpix 100 had a vertical form factor that concealed a PCMCIA card for retrieving photos, and a series of Ricoh cameras through the ’90s had a candy-bar format reminiscent of 110 cartridge film cameras but with a flip-up LCD on top.
Product designers were given free reign to reinvent the camera after it had remained essentially unchanged for decades since the widespread adoption of 35mm film, and the result was an explosion of interesting new devices. Some of them were maybe a little
avant garde
, but among them were a few that genuinely did make the job of taking a photograph that little bit easier.
By the 2000s this era of creativity stuttered to a halt, and digital cameras retreated to being updated facsimiles of their 35mm ancestors, but with LCD screens. Compact cameras lost their viewfinders and were a bit slimmer than their film ancestors, an entirely new genre of not-quite-an-SLR bridge camera appeared that yet again looked as though it might have a 35mm canister somewhere, and DSLRs were replicas of their film predecessors, but bulging and overweight as if on steroids and festooned with buttons. Now compact cameras are all but dead in the face of mobile phones, and bridge cameras have given way to mirrorless cameras that look for all the world like a 35mm rangefinder. Dare I say it, cameras are a little bit
boring
.
Your Parents Didn’t Want Anything Exciting
Even Sega tried their hand at digital cameras, with the 1996 Digio SJ-1. Morio /
CC BY-SA 3.0
So, what went wrong? The answer lies with who was making cameras in the 1990s, and who was buying them. On the whole your parents didn’t have a digital camera, instead they were the preserve of the early adopter. Probably quite a few of you who went on to become Hackaday readers, in fact. And the other side of the coin was that they were being manufactured by electronics companies rather than the photographic brands from whom we might have traditionally bought a camera. Companies who brought the product design experience of making computer peripherals to the table rather than the entrenched idea of how a camera should look.
Customers like us wanted something visibly high-tech and manufacturers were ready to break the mould. It was the perfect recipe for some exciting products. By comparison in the 2000s, your parents bought their first digital camera, and they probably did it from a brand they trusted because they already owned a film camera with the same logo. Their innate conservatism brought to the fore the replicas of 35mm form factors as something safe, and as a result here we are in 2020 when my camera looks like one made in the 1950s.
Ricoh Theta V 360 degree camera (front and back)
All is not lost however. Digital cameras replaced flat, rectangular images made from film with flat, rectangular images made from a digital sensor. But a new generation of cameras is exploring past that paradigm. Here you can see the form factor for a 360 degree camera that stitches together the captured image from two different hemispheric lenses. And all signs point to 3D cameras peeking over the horizon. Surely these form factors will be used to echo how much their features stand apart from what came before, following in the footsteps of action cameras that set them selves apart by flaunting their robust, almost indestructible nature.
And for those with a personal interest in pushing the boundaries of camera form factors, it’s a great time to be a hardware hacker. Affordable components are available to enable the construction of almost anything. Given a camera module and a small computer we can step in and produce the camera
we
want, rather than the one our parents want. I put this to the test, picking up a
Raspberry Pi HQ camera module
, and a C-mount lens. It may not be the match of a truly high-end model, but it’s a decent enough combination that opens up limitless possibilities for the experimenter.
The Future Of Camera Form Factors In Your Hands
My pistol grip camera. Needs a bit of tweaking maybe, but breaking the 35mm-inspired form factor.
In a way the form factor I arrived at is a bit conservative, being a pistol grip design with a nod towards 8mm cine cameras and more recently the FLIR thermal cameras. But it’s an illustrative piece to demonstrate the ease of creating a usable camera with these components.
Some work in OpenSCAD produced a simple triangular chassis with a front mounting for the camera module and a sloping face to which a Raspberry Pi case with display can be attached using Velcro strips. There are tapered locating points for a handle on both sides and the bottom to which handles or other mountings can be attached. The pistol grip is probably oversized as it’s designed to hold two 18650 cells in holders, but it could easily be replaced by a side grip, a GoPro-style accessory clip, or anything else that the imagination could come up with.
Find all the files in my GitHub repository
. On the software side, given time I could surely come up with a beautiful interface, but for now I’m running
[silvanmelchior]’s web interface
which I can load in a very slow web browser on an original single-core Pi model B+. In time I’ll look at ways to achieve a working preview without the Raspbian X bloat (If anyone can help me get the framebuffer version of Netsurf to
compile
and
run
instead of falling over on a Model B+, I’d be much obliged!), but for now the hardware has been the driving force.
This isn’t a review of the Pi HQ camera, but here’s a sample picture from my pistol grip camera.
In use, it’s an unexpected return to a bygone era of completely manual cameras. Even my old 1980s 35mm SLR had automatic light metering and a prismatic focusing aid, by contrast this is photography entirely by the seat of one’s pants for someone used to an autofocusing mirrorless camera. But a little more work on the aperture and focus is soon a part of the flow, and I can take decent quality photographs with it. The final result is definitely on the functional side, but I like to think I’ve avoided producing the
Homer
of cameras.
The days of delightfully wacky digital camera form factors may now be far behind us then, but I hope I’ve shown that even if the camera manufacturers no longer have the courage to break any moulds then the hacker community can still have fun in this arena. We’ve finally reached the point of having affordable high-quality camera components at our disposal, so it’s time to get creative. How are you going to re-interpret the camera, please share it with us! | 102 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259705",
"author": "Bastiaan",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T17:19:04",
"content": "challenge accepted! Although form factor only needs to change if that improves anything. It’s not a goal in itself imho",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,373,436.251005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/breadboard-breaks-the-speed-barrier/ | Breadboard Breaks The Speed Barrier | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"contest",
"oscillator"
] | It is common wisdom that solderless breadboards are only good for low frequencies. But how fast can they really go? There’s been a contest going on to see who can make the fastest breadboard-mounted oscillator and [Joe Smith] has been trying to
keep his leading position
. He’s already managed 6 GHz and now he’s shooting for 20 GHz, as you can see in the video below.
One of the biggest challenges at these frequencies is just measuring your output. You may have a scope, but how does it do at 20 GHz? So half of the story is how [Joe] managed to monitor his output.
You’ll see in the video that while the breadboard is just an ordinary-looking breadboard, it is covered with strange-looking cages, feed lines, and shields. The rules prohibit using ICs and crystals, so if you want to compete, you’ll need to brush up on your RF skills.
If you enjoy this sort of thing, there are several older videos on the topic from [Joe.] We aren’t sure what practical use there is to building a microwave transmitter on a breadboard, but we get the sport of it.
We see a number of
contestants
that try to unseat the ubiquitous solderless breadboard, but none of them seem to
stick
. Maybe if it isn’t broke, there’s no need to fix it. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259676",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T15:37:52",
"content": "This is a stupid challenge and I’m jealous of everyone involved. I wonder if you could model the breadboard’s internal structure in a simulator and try to turn it into a resonator?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,435.89588 |
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