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https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/the-iss-is-getting-a-new-wc/ | The ISS Is Getting A New WC | Kristina Panos | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Lifehacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"cheek separation",
"international space station",
"suction",
"toilet",
"toilet hacks",
"weightless"
] | Every home needs renovations after a few decades, and the International Space Station is no different.
This fall, they’ll be getting a new Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), aka a new toilet
.
Though the news coincides with increased traffic to the ISS, this move stems from a more serious issue with bacterial contamination during longer-term space travel. Today’s ISS toilets already recycle urine back into potable water and scrub the air reclaimed from solid waste as it gets compacted and stored. The new UWMS will act more like a food dehydrator, reducing the water content as much as possible to save on space, and petrifying the poo to inactivate the bacteria.
The current commode on the American side of the ISS was designed in the 1990s and is based on the Space Shuttle’s facilities. It has a funnel with a hose for urine and a bag-lined canister with a seat for solid waste, both of which are heavily vacuum-assisted.
Though the current toilet still does everything it’s supposed to do, there is room for improvement. For instance, women find it difficult to engage both parts of the system at the same time, and almost everyone prefers the toe bars on the Russian toilet to the more encumbering thigh bars on the American throne. Also, the current commode’s interface is more complicated than it needs to be, which takes up valuable crew time.
Check out that cheek cleaver! Via
NASA
(PDF)
The most intimate change is probably the seat design. In a weightless environment, it’s more like a hovering zone than a throne. According to
the white paper
(PDF), the UWMS seat has homing ridges and “includes a tailbone section to encourage crew cheek separation”. Maybe the vacuum works against separation? We’re not sure.
Although the new latrine wasn’t designed specifically for the ISS, the crew members will make excellent guinea pigs to test the new features. And they don’t have to send it back or anything — it will stay up there until it breaks, or until the ISS is retired, whichever comes first. A second unit is being built for those longer-term missions and will be installed on the Orion capsule,
which is slated to return to the Moon in 2024
. | 32 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259659",
"author": "Rex",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T14:34:57",
"content": "You’re saying that the toilet designed by Howard Wolowitz is no good?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259661",
"author": "Ren",
"times... | 1,760,373,438.453883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/adding-pcie-to-your-raspberry-pi-4-the-easier-way/ | Adding PCIe To Your Raspberry Pi 4, The Easier Way | Maya Posch | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"PCIe",
"Raspberry Pi 4"
] | Ever since people figured out that the Raspberry Pi 4 has a PCIe bus, the race was on to be the first to connect a regular PCIe expansion card to a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC. Now [Zak Kemble] has
created a new approach
, using a bridge PCB that replaces the
VL805
USB 3 controller IC. This was also how the original modification by [Tomasz Mloduchowski] worked, only now it comes in a handy (OSHPark) PCB format.
After removing the VL805 QFN package and soldering in the bridge PCB, [Zak] confirmed that everything was hooked up properly and attempted to use the Raspberry Pi 4 with a PCIe extender. This showed that the Raspberry Pi would happily talk with a VL805-based USB 3.0 PCIe expansion card, as well as a Realtek RTL8111-based Ethernet card, but not a number of other PCIe cards. Exactly why this is is still unclear at this point.
As a bonus, [Zak] also found that despite the removal of the VL805 IC from the Raspberry Pi rendering its USB 3 ports useless, one can still use the USB-C ‘power input’ on the SBC
as a host controller
. This way one can have both PCIe x1 and USB on a Raspberry Pi 4.
This is the third iteration we’ve seen for using PCIe with the Pi. If you’re building on
the work of [Thomasz Mloduchowski]
, which
inspired [Colin Riley] to add expanders
, and now this excellent hack by [Zak],
we want to hear about it
!
(Thanks to Itay for the tip) | 58 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259589",
"author": "Blamoo",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T11:15:57",
"content": "Molten plastic everywhere. Seems like that pi4 have seen some terrible things…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259627",
"author": "tekkiene... | 1,760,373,438.327001 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/unrolling-the-mystery-inside-an-aluminum-electrolytic-capacitor/ | Unrolling The Mystery Inside An Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor | Roger Cheng | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"capacitor",
"electrolytic",
"electrolytic capacitor"
] | When we remove the enclosure of modern electronics, we see a lot of little silvery cylinders wrapped with heat shrink plastic. These aluminum electrolytic capacitors are common residents on circuit boards. We may have cut one open to satisfy our curiosity of what’s inside, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we understood everything we saw. For a more detailed guided tour, follow [TubeTime]’s
informative illustrated Twitter thread
.
Electronics beginners are taught the basic canonical capacitor: two metal plates and an insulator separating them. This is enough to understand the theory of capacitor operation, but there were hints the real world is not quite that simple. We don’t even need to disassemble an electrolytic capacitor to get our first hint: these cylinders have markings to indicate polarity, differentiating them from the basic capacitor which is symmetric and indifferent to polarity. Once taken apart and unrolled, we would find two thin aluminum foils separated by a sheet of paper. It would be tempting to decide the foil were our two plates and the paper is our insulator, except for the fact those two metal plates are different sizes further deviating from the basic capacitor.
Electronics veterans know the conductor–insulator–conductor pattern is not foil–paper–foil, but actually foil–oxide–electrolyte. But there is more to [TubeTime]’s tour than this answer, which includes pictures of industrial machinery, a side adventure in electrolytic chemistry using a tiny glass beaker, concluding with links to more information. And once armed with knowledge, we can better understand why electrolytic capacitors
don’t necessarily need to be replaced in old equipment
and appreciate them within the larger
history of capacitors
context. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259579",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T08:52:36",
"content": "Related to this:BigClive fills (dry_ electrolytic capacitors with a homebrew electrolyte:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQClL3bZzg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,373,437.883569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/commodore-sx-64-keyboard-upgraded-from-trash-to-treasure/ | Commodore SX-64 Keyboard Upgraded From Trash To Treasure | Kristina Panos | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"bondo",
"brass",
"commodore",
"Commodore SX-64",
"fiberglass putty",
"keyboard case repair",
"plastic welding"
] | Released in 1984, the Commodore SX-64 Executive Computer was one of the first
portable
luggable color computers. It cost twice as much as a Commodore 64, had a tiny 5″ diagonal screen, and couldn’t actually support both 5¼” drives as advertised. On the upside, people say it had a slightly better keyboard than its classic cousin.
[Drygol] agreed to restore the keyboard from a friend’s Commodore SX-64 sight-unseen, and boy was this thing in bad shape
. Most people would probably consider the condition a shame and write it off as a lost cause, since two of the corners were missing most of their plastic. But [Drygol] isn’t most people. [Drygol] had mad restoration skills to begin with, and this project honed them to a razor’s edge.
Plenty of the other vintage computer restorations [Drygol] has done required plastic welding, which uses heat or a lot of friction to smooth over cracks. Some of those have not stood the test of time, so he’s now in the habit of stabilizing cracks with brass mesh before filling them with fiberglass putty.
The best part is how [Drygol] managed to rebuild the corners using the same methods, soldering the brass mesh at the 90° joins, and reinforcing them with thick copper wire before beginning the painstaking putty/sand/putty process. The use of blank copper clad boards as straight edges and thickness gauges is genius.
There’s a whole lot to learn here, and the adventure beings with something that probably keeps a lot of people from trying stuff like this in the first place: how do you safely remove the badges?
You’re right, plastic welding
is
awesome. There even used to be a toy plastic welder. But there’s no need to troll the electronic auction bay to give it a try —
just use a cheap soldering iron
. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259547",
"author": "Sjaak",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T05:26:44",
"content": "Coincidently I brushed up mine Executive64 recently. Was in amuch better shape though. Only one clip of the keyboard was broken. See my story:https://smdprutser.nl/blog/restoring-a-commodore-sx64/Nice job."... | 1,760,373,437.934343 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/freedvdboot-opens-up-the-playstation-2-like-never-before/ | FreeDVDBoot Opens Up The PlayStation 2 Like Never Before | Lewin Day | [
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"console hacking",
"dvd",
"playstation 2"
] | For many generations, home consoles have featured copy protection. Aiming to stop users from playing pirated games as well as running homebrew code, hackers often race to find vulnerabilities shortly after each new launch. Of course, finding workarounds can sometimes be more of a marathon than a sprint. [CTurt]’s new hack may come many years after the PlayStation 2 has since faded from store shelves,
but remains impressive nonetheless.
The goal was to find a way to run unsigned code on the PlayStation 2 without using any complex external hardware. Hacked memory cards, network interfaces, and other trickery were ruled out. Instead, sights were set on using the only other way in to the console – through the DVD drive.
The only burnable media the PS2 DVD drive will normally read comes in the form of DVD video discs. Thus, [CTurt]’s search began in the code of the on-board DVD player software. After finding potential overflow targets in the code, it was possible to exploit these to run unsigned code.
It’s not yet a fully-polished piece of code, and [CTurt] notes that additional work may be required to get the exploit working on all firmware versions of the console. Regardless, it’s as simple a hack as you could possibly ask for – burn the disc, and away you go!
It reminds us fondly of the Sega Saturn hack exploiting the MJPEG interface.
Video after the break. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259523",
"author": "Kyle K",
"timestamp": "2020-07-01T02:32:45",
"content": "Hi Lewin, please double check the text of the last link. Right now it says MJPEG but the link says its an MPEG interface. Thanks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,373,438.231918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/30/towards-a-3d-printed-neutrino-detector/ | Towards A 3D-Printed Neutrino Detector | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"3d printing",
"neutrinos",
"radiation detector",
"scintillator"
] | Additive manufacturing techniques like fused deposition modeling, aka 3D printing, are often used for rapid prototyping. Another advantage is that it can create shapes that are too complex to be made with traditional manufacturing like CNC milling. Now, 3D printing has even found its way into particle physics as an international collaboration led by a group from CERN is
developing a new plastic scintillator production technique that involves additive manufacturing
.
A scintillator is a fluorescent material that can be used for particle detection through the flashes of light created by ionizing radiation. Plastic scintillators can be made by adding luminophores to a transparent polymer such as polystyrene and are usually produced by conventional techniques like injection molding.
Design of the ND280 scintillation detector. The scintillator cubes are read out by wavelength shifting fibers. One end of the fiber is viewed by a photosensor, another end is covered by a reflector.
Credit:
S. Fedotov et al.
For a future upgrade, the ND280 detector of the
T2K
neutrino oscillation experiment will use about two million cubic-centimeter polystyrene-based scintillator cubes with a total mass of two tons. The assembly of such a detector would be an extremely cumbersome task that is usually achieved by exploiting the workforce of many graduate students. To ease the assembly, the goal is to 3D print a single “super-cube” that is composed of many individual cubes separated by an optical reflector.
As shown in the image above, the researchers have used an FDM printer to successfully produce scintillator cubes with a light yield comparable to commercial plastic scintillators. Next, the scintillator parameters need to be further optimized and the reflector material to optically isolate the individual modules has to be developed.
3D printed plastic scintillators are not completely new. Researchers from Korea have also
produced plastic scintillators with a commercial DLP printer
. We would like to see this technique developed further until everybody can print their own
DIY scintillation detector
at home. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259286",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T10:07:21",
"content": "While printing a single form is far better, why haven’t they built a robot to assemble this stuff? It seems like it would be pretty ideal, doing a single repetitive task a couple million times. I must be... | 1,760,373,438.177418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/mini-gaming-pc-nails-the-look-streams-the-games/ | Mini “Gaming PC” Nails The Look, Streams The Games | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"case modding",
"Gaming Computer",
"raspberry pi",
"rgb"
] | To have a proper gaming “rig”, you need more than a powerful GPU and heaps of RAM. You’ve also got to install a clear side-panel so lesser mortals can ogle your wiring, and plenty of multicolored LEDs to make sure it’s never
actually
dark when you’re up playing at 2 AM. Or at least, that’s what the Internet has led us to believe.
The latest project from [Michael Pick]
certainly isn’t doing anything to dispel that stereotype
. In fact, it’s absolutely reveling in it. The goal was to recreate the look of a high-end custom gaming PC on a much smaller scale, with a Raspberry Pi standing in for the “motherboard”. Assuming you’re OK with streaming them from a more powerful machine on the network, this diminutive system is even capable of playing modern titles.
But really, the case is the star of the show here. Starting with a 3D printed frame, [Michael] really went all in on the details. We especially liked the little touches such as the fiber optics used to bring the Pi’s status and power LEDs out to the top of the case, and the tiny and totally unnecessary power button. There’s even a fake graphics card inside, with its own functional fan.
Even if you’re not interested in constructing custom enclosures for your Raspberry Pi, there are plenty of tips and tricks in the video after the break that are more than worthy of filing away for future use. For example, [Michael] shows how he fixed the fairly significant warping on his 3D printed case with a liberal application of Bondo and a straight-edge to compare it to.
This
isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Raspberry Pi masquerade as a high-end computer
, but it’s surely the most effort we’ve ever seen put into the gag. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259257",
"author": "Nasrudin",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T06:41:12",
"content": "What’s the name of the game at the beginning of the video?thanks in advance!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259264",
"author": "bbp",
... | 1,760,373,438.384838 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/implementing-the-exponential-function/ | Implementing The Exponential Function | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"exponential",
"math",
"taylor series"
] | Ask ordinary software developers how to code an exponential function (that is, e
x
) and most will tell you to simply write an expression in their favorite high level language. But a significant slice of Hackaday readers will program tiny machines down to the bare metal or need more speed or precision than available with a customary implementation. [Pseduorandom] knows
quite a few ways to do the calculation
, and while it isn’t light reading for the math-phobic, it is an interesting tour.
The paper covers a variety of ways to calculate the function ranging from various Taylor series approximations, Lagrange interpolation, and Chebyshev interpolation. The paper is somewhat abstract, but there are Python and C++ examples to help make it concrete.
The paper does cover a bit about why you might want to compute e
x
, but, honestly, we still love the
Better Explained post
about how it relates to any continually growing process. If you missed it, you can see the related video, below. We sure wish our math teachers had explained this to us.
We have to admit, if we had ever learned about some of these methods, we’ve forgotten them. But it is easier to get interested in this math when you aren’t having to cram it in right before a final exam.
We confess we are usually more interested in
bit tweaking
math these days. But we do occasionally open a program like
Mathics
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259230",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T02:10:09",
"content": "When I gotta start messing with logs and exponentials on a cramped system I’ll give it an analog co-processor and ADC the result back in :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,437.992926 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/make-your-own-pet-fire-breathing-dragon/ | Make Your Own Pet Fire Breathing Dragon | Orlando Hoilett | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Adafruit Crickit",
"Charizard",
"Circuit Playground",
"pikachu",
"pokemon",
"Spyro"
] | [Jorvon Moss] a.k.a. [Odd_Jayy] is known as a maker of “companion robots” which he carriers perched on top of his shoulders. (I don’t know about you, but we’re getting some pretty strong Ash and Pikachu vibes.)
In one of his recent builds, he decided to give his companion bot a bit of sizzle. His
Widget Dragon Companion Bot
is an impressive 3D printed build, divided into a surprisingly few parts. The robot is controlled using an Adafruit Crickit, marketed specifically for robotics projects, and is easily programmed using the increasingly popular Microsoft MakeCode.
With a few servos, [Odd Jay] was able to animate his bot giving it more of an “alive” feel. Finally, he added a vape pen to give the dragon some pyrotechnic effects.
This is just the kind of energy we love to see here at Hackaday. While you’re around,
take a look
at some of [Odd_Jayy’s]
other robot projects
and
head over to his Instagram page
to see more real-time project updates. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259204",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T23:26:54",
"content": "Why not? At the last Maker Faire held in NYC, the lady ambassador from Hackster.IO went around with one. She said it was named Archimedes, after the Greek fellow who coined the word “Eureka!”, (which does ... | 1,760,373,438.129354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/build-a-lathe-like-its-1777/ | Build A Lathe Like It’s 1777 | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hand tools",
"lathe",
"woodworking"
] | We’ve seen quite a few scratch built lathes here at Hackaday, but none quite like
the handcrafted pole lathe put together by [Jon Townsend]
and his band of Merry Men as part of their effort to build a period-accurate 18th century log cabin homestead. With the exception of a few metal spikes here and there, everything is made out of lumber harvested from the forest around them.
The lathe is designed to be a permanent structure on the homestead, with two poles driven into the ground to serve as legs. Two rails, made of a split log, are then mounted between them. The movable components of the lathe, known as “puppets” in the parlance of the day, are cut so they fit tightly between the rails but can still be moved back and forth depending on the size of the work piece. With two metal spikes serving as a spindle, the log to be turned down is inserted between the puppets, and wedges are used to lock everything in place.
So that’s the easy part. But how do you spin it? The operator uses a foot pedal attached to a piece of rope that’s been wound around the log and attached to a slender pole cantilevered out over the lathe. By adjusting the length and angle of this pole, the user can set the amount of force it takes to depress the pedal. When the pedal is pushed down the log will spin one way, and when the pole pulls the pedal back up, it will spin the other.
Since the tools only cut in one direction, the user has to keep letting the pressure off when the log spins back around. The fact that the work piece isn’t continuously rotating in the same direction makes this very slow going, but of course, everything was just a bit slower back in the 18th century.
So now that we’ve seen lathes made from wood,
intricately cut slabs of stone
, and
a grab bag of junkyard parts
, there’s only one question left. Why do you
still not have one
? | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259151",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T20:14:39",
"content": "People have been using this idea for thousands of years, and it works.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6259162",
"author": "gipetto",
... | 1,760,373,438.062177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/thumbmouse-keeps-your-hands-on-the-keyboard/ | Thumbmouse Keeps Your Hands On The Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"Joystick",
"mouse",
"trackpad"
] | Let’s face it, those touchpads on laptops are awful, and were never meant to be the primary mouse for all-day use. Not that external mice are much better on your shoulder and neck in the long term — especially if you’re reaching past a 10-key and back to use it. So what’s the answer? What does a comfortable, portable mousing solution look like? Is such a thing even possible?
[Matias N.] has an idea:
make the mouse an extension of your hand
. The idea is that by wearing a battery-powered Bluetooth pointer on your thumb or index finger, you have a seamless back and forth transition with less overall stress. The trackpad includes a button that would be used to cover left clicks. To make it a full mouse, [Matias] plans to have extra buttons for right click and middle click, and a joystick for scrolling.
[Matias] started designing thumbMouse with a Blackberry 9900 trackball module in mind, but found it was way too slow for modern mousing needs. Turns out the trackpad module is much better suited: it’s a lot more responsive, and the movement is surprisingly sensitive.
Of course the standard mouse still has its place, but it can always be improved. As far as those go,
this completely modular mouse might be the endgame critter
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259140",
"author": "Wade",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T19:48:42",
"content": "I don’t get it, how exactly are you supposed to use it attached to your thumb? Pinch your thumb and index finger together and manipulate it with your index finger?I like the idea, but it seems like it might ... | 1,760,373,438.513168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/led-art-hack-chat/ | LED Art Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"art",
"burning man",
"digital",
"Hack Chat",
"interactive",
"led",
"neopixel"
] | Join us on Wednesday, July 1 at noon Pacific for the
LED Art Hack Chat
with
Aaron Oppenheimer
!
From the first time humans crawled into a cave with a bit of charcoal to sketch scenes from the world around them, artists have been searching for new media and new ways to express themselves. Natural products ruled for thousands of years, with pigments stolen or crafted from nature as well as wood, ivory, bone, and stone for carving. Time and experience guided our ancestors to new and better formulations and different materials, to the point that what qualifies as art and what we’d normally think of as technology have, in many cases, blended into one, with the artist often engineering projects of mammoth proportions and breathtaking beauty.
Aaron Oppenheimer co-founded
color+light
, a company that specializes in large-scale custom art installations for companies like Google, Nike, and Nissan. One of their projects, the
“Oddwood Tree”
, is displayed alongside other gigantic art pieces at
Area15
on the Las Vegas strip. His most recent project,
fluora
, is a digital houseplant, with addressable LEDs in the leaves that can be controlled by a smartphone app or respond to stimuli in the environment.
Aaron will join us on the Hack Chat to discuss the LED as artistic medium. Join us as we learn what it takes to make enormous art that’s strong enough to interact with yet responsive enough to be engaging.
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 1 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. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6259210",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-06-30T00:06:58",
"content": "Bigclive starts sweating",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,438.551644 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/linux-fu-parallel-universe/ | Linux-Fu: Parallel Universe | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"GNU parallel",
"linux",
"parallel",
"parallel computing"
] | At some point, you simply run out of processing power. Admittedly, that point keeps getting further and further away, but you can still get there. If you run out of CPU time, the answer might be to add more CPUs. However, sometimes there are other bottlenecks like memory or disk space. However, it is also likely that you have access to multiple computers. Who doesn’t have a few Raspberry Pis sitting around their network? Or maybe a server in the basement? Or even some remote servers “in the cloud.”
GNU Parallel
is a tool that lets you spread work across multiple tasks either locally to remote machines. In some ways, it is simple, since it looks sort of like
xargs
but with parallel execution. On the other hand, it has myriad options and configurations that can make it a little daunting to use.
About xargs
In case you don’t use
xargs
, it is a very simple program that among other things lets you do something with a list of files. For example, suppose we want to search all C source files for the string “hackaday” using grep. You could write:
find . -name ‘*.[ch]’ | xargs grep -i hackaday
Here,
xargs
grabs an input line, calls
grep
and after
grep
completes, it repeats the process until it runs out of input lines. (Note: handling files with spaces is a bit tricky. Using -d ‘\n’ might help, although not all versions of xarg support it.)
In the simplest case, Parallel does the same thing, but it can execute
grep
— or whatever you are using — multiple times at once. On a local machine, this allows you to use multiple CPUs to improve timing. However, you can also spread the work among different machines that have passwordless
ssh
logins.
Demos
The author of GNU Parallel has a multipart video demonstration of the system. You can see the first part, below. The
tutorial
is also very good, and clears up a number of details that might not be obvious from the man page.
Just for my own amusement, I took a directory with some large
mp4
files in it and used both
xargs
and
parallel
to
gzip
each file. I know, I know. The files are already compressed, so
gzip
isn’t going to do much. But I just wanted some large task to time. Here are the results:
[:~/Videos/movies] $ time find *.mp4 | xargs -d '\n' gzip
real 6m10.796s
user 2m52.828s
sys 0m9.718s
[:~/Videos/movies] $ time find *.mp4 | parallel --jobs 8 -d '\n' gzip
real 5m25.050s
user 2m56.676s
sys 0m7.732s
Admittedly, this wasn’t very scientific, and saving about 45 seconds isn’t a tremendous gain, but still. I picked eight jobs because I have an eight-core processor. You might vary that setting depending on what else you’re doing at the time.
Remote
If you want to use remote computers to process data, you need to have passwordless
ssh
remote access to the other computer (or computers). Of course, chances are the remote computer won’t have the same files and resources, so it makes sense that — by default — your commands only run on the remote server. You can provide a comma-separated list of servers, and if you use the server name of “:” (just a colon), you’ll include your local machine in handling jobs.
This might be very useful if you have a mildly underpowered computer that needs help doing something. For example, we could imagine a Raspberry Pi-based 3D printer asking a remote host to slice a bunch of models in parallel. Even if you think you don’t have any computational heavy lifting, Parallel can do things like process files from a
tar
archive as they are unpacked without waiting for the rest of the files. It can distribute
grep
‘s work across your CPUs or cores.
Honestly, it would take a lot to explain each feature in detail, but I hope this has encouraged you to read more about GNU Parallel. Between the videos and the tutorial, you should get a good idea of some of the things you could do with this powerful tool. | 38 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258944",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T17:21:20",
"content": "Interesting. I could find uses for that. I’m thinking I could maybe lighten my in-progress OTA TV snarfer, knock it back to a lower power dual core, then have it stash work to a shared drive, then ov... | 1,760,373,439.180148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/fail-of-the-week-this-sd-card-wont-slot/ | Fail Of The Week: This SD Card Won’t Slot | Jenny List | [
"Fail of the Week",
"Slider"
] | [
"fotw",
"Octavo",
"sd card"
] | If you’ve got a few self-designed PCBs under your belt, you probably know the pain of missing some little detail and having to break out the bodge wires to fix it. So we feel for [Arsenio Dev], who placed an SD card slot next to an SoC,
only to find that it was the wrong way round
. Rather than tossing it in the bin, he decided to employ a
particularly crafty set of bodge wires
that curve over the board and connect to an SD card adapter on the other side.
Our attention was taken by the board itself, he’s posted little information about it and taken pains to conceal one of the pieces of text on it. Since it has an Octavo Systems BeagleBone-on-chip, a slot for a cellular modem, and a connector marked “CONNECT AERONET HERE” which we are guessing refers to the
Aeronet
sun photometry network, we’re guessing it might be a controller for remotely-sited nodes for that system. Either way it’s enough to have us intrigued, and we wish him every success with the next spin.
Meanwhile,
this certainly isn’t the first PCB CAD fail we’ve brought you
. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258872",
"author": "ATF (not the agency)",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T16:46:20",
"content": "If there is a bunch of these boards already made, maybe some sort of “riser” or breakout board could solve the case. A small board that would be soldered right over the original SD card slot ... | 1,760,373,439.233396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/updating-the-language-of-spi-pin-labels-to-remove-casual-references-to-slavery/ | Updating The Language Of SPI Pin Labels To Remove Casual References To Slavery | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [
"CIPO",
"COPI",
"language",
"MISO",
"MOSI",
"OSHWA",
"sdi",
"SDO",
"spi",
"terminology"
] | This morning the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) announced
a resolution for changing the way SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) pins are labelled
on hardware and in datasheets. The protocol originally included MOSI/MISO references that stand for “Master Out, Slave In” and “Master In, Slave Out”. Some companies and individuals have stopped using these terms over the years, but an effort is being taken up to affect widespread change, lead by Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun.
The new language for SPI pin labeling recommends the use of SDO/SDI (Serial Data Out/In) for single-role hardware, and COPI/CIPO for “Controller Out, Peripheral In” and “Controller In, Peripheral Out” for devices that can be either the controller or the peripheral. The change also updates the “SS” (Slave Select) pin to use “CS” (Chip Select).
SPI is widely used in embedded system design and appears in a huge range of devices, with the pin labels published numerous times in everything from datasheets and application notes to written and video tutorials posted online. Changing the labels removes unnecessary references to slavery without affecting the technology itself. This move makes embedded engineering more inclusive, an ideal that’s easy to get behind.
[2022 Editor’s Note: The
OSHWA changed its recommended naming to PICO/POCI
for “Peripheral In, Controller Out” and “Peripheral Out, Controller In”. Fine by us! I’ve updated this throughout the rest of the article because it doesn’t change Mike’s original argument at all.]
The Technology Itself
Even though the terminology needs an update, the approach to how SPI data lines are designated is one of the best of all protocols because the *O*I/*I*O format stays the same even when the device changes. This is easiest to understand when thinking about a microcontroller that can act as either the “Controller” or “Peripheral”. A controller will always send out its data on the PICO line (controller out) and receive data back on the POCI (controller in). Now, the same device acting in the peripheral role retains the exact same pin labels. It just begins listening on the PICO line (peripheral in) and sending on the COPI line (peripheral out). Under this naming scheme, the controller is always the device that controls the clock.
The SDI/SDO labels have most commonly appeared on devices that lack the ability to serve as an SPI controller (think sensors or LCD screens). But here’s the problem, when you have three or more chips in a design, which SDI lines get connected to SDO lines? Even with two chips, if one port is called SDI and the other is called SDO, what name do you assign to the wire? It’s the
UART RX/TX problem
all over again.
Retaining the PICO/POCI paradigm, the problem is answered without any knowledge at all of function: all PICO lines should be connected to one another, as should all POCI lines. Brilliant.
We Can All Decide to Make This Change
SPI is a de facto standard which Motorola published starting back in the 1980s. It’s simple and it works well, becoming one of the two most widely used chip to chip communication protocols along with I2C. But it’s not governed by a ruling body. That means, to change the pin names, all it takes is for people to decide we should change them. That’s what’s happening here.
With hardware manufacturers like Sparkfun and Adafruit, and the Open Source Hardware Association adopting the SDO/SDI and PICO/POCI labels, the effort gets a jump start. I encourage you to make the changes in your own schematics, software, and documentation.
The hardware world isn’t the only place removing references to slavery from design specs. The OpenZFS project changed references to “slave” in the code base to “dependent” which was also abbreviated as “dep” for variable names. An article in Ars Technica
published on the OpenZFS
change also references a paper published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards organization
recommending a shift away from oppressive language being included in defined standards
.
The history of slavery is a dark and disturbing one, and its casual inclusion in engineering can be hurtful. In this time of introspection sparked by massive protests over racial inequality, systemic racism, and violence within law enforcement, this is one small but meaningful change the hardware world should choose to adopt. And one that I wish had been adopted long ago. | 287 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258652",
"author": "Vexar",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T14:56:36",
"content": "How does changing the name of a term make something more inclusive? There is nothing stopping anyone from being interested or working in the field.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,439.632005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/does-php-have-a-future-or-are-twenty-five-years-enough/ | Does PHP Have A Future, Or Are Twenty Five Years Enough? | Ben James | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"birthday",
"facebook",
"frameworks",
"future",
"hack",
"hhvm",
"hiphop",
"history",
"interpreted",
"javascript",
"JIT",
"laravel",
"php",
"scripting",
"security",
"web development"
] | In June, 1995, Rasmus Lerdorf made an announcement on a Usenet group. You can
still read it
.
Today, twenty five years on, PHP is about as ubiquitous as it could possibly have become. I’d be willing to bet that for the majority of readers of this article, their first forays into web programming involved PHP.
Announcing the Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0.
These tools are a set of small tight cgi binaries written in C.
But no matter what rich history and wide userbase PHP holds, that’s no justification for its use in a landscape that is rapidly evolving. Whilst PHP will inevitably be around for years to come in existing applications, does it have a future in new sites?
Before we look to the future, we must first investigate how PHP has evolved in the past.
The Beginnings
Rasmus Lerdorf initially created PHP as a way to track users who visited his online CV. Once the source code had been released and the codebase had been re-written from scratch a sizeable number of times, PHP was enjoying some popularity,
reportedly being installed on 1%
of all domains by 1998. At this point, the language looked nothing like we know today. It was entirely written within
<!-- html comments -->
, with syntax noticeably different to modern versions.
Enter Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, who were using PHP to try to build a business but found it lacking in features. Collaborating with Rasmus, PHP was once again re-written and released as PHP 3.0. Now we’re getting somewhere, with PHP 3 installed on an estimated 10% of domains at the time. This is also the point where the meaning of PHP changed from Personal Home Page to everyone’s favorite recursive acronym, “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. This version and period is generally seen as the time in which PHP cemented its future status. Between PHP 3 and 4, phpMyAdmin was created, Zeev and Andi mashed their names together and founded the PHP services company Zend, and the venerable elephant logo appeared.
The rest is history: shortly after PHP 4 came Drupal; in 2003 we got WordPress; then in 2004 along came a student at Harvard named Mark.
Facebook and PHP
Facebook famously started as a PHP site. But when thousands of users became millions, and millions were beginning to look like billions, there were growing pains.
In particular, PHP was (and still is) a scripting language. Great for developer productivity, not so great for resource efficiency. So in 2008, Facebook began work on HipHop for PHP, a transpiler. Very simply, it parsed PHP, transpiled it to C++, then compiled the resulting C++ into x64. This was no mean feat given that PHP is weakly-typed and dynamic. But the results speak for themselves: a 50% reduction in CPU load.
I’m sure you’re imagining the horror of working as a developer at Facebook using this process. Making a change to the PHP code, running the transpiler, then compiler, drumming your fingers, running the executable and finding the problem you need to go back and fix. That’s a pretty long iteration cycle, which is why Facebook also developed HPHPi, an interpreter that does the same job as the transpiler/compiler (HPHPc), but just to be used for development. As you can imagine, keeping the two projects in sync was an almighty headache, so in 2011 they developed HHVM, the HipHop Virtual Machine.
HHVM is a PHP runtime. It uses JIT (just-in-time) compilation to provide the best of both worlds. It’s pretty cool, and you can
read more in Facebook’s own blog post if you’re interested
. The next big step came in 2014, with the invention of Hack, a language specifically built for HHVM. It’s both a superset and subset of PHP, adding optional type annotations and extra features such as asynchronous architecture. It also helps make HHVM’s JIT more efficient by enabling it to optimise with confidence using the specified type hints. Soon, new code at Facebook was written in Hack, with existing code being converted over time. Both
Hack
and
HHVM
are open source, and actively maintained today.
Does the fact that Facebook found PHP in its native form unusable at scale mean that it’s a badly engineered language? No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe any of the options which were around at the time had been created for the scale or specifics which Facebook required. However, that doesn’t stop people using it against PHP.
The Hate
Within the wider software community, as PHP became larger it inevitably drew fire from a growing group of cynics. Except, PHP objectively speaking gets more hate than most other languages. According to the recent
2020 Stack Overflow Developer Survey
, PHP is the sixth most dreaded language. Why?
I don’t want to get into technical minutiae here, but if you do,
PHP: a fractal of bad design
, is the bible blog post for PHP haters. Written in 2012, some problems it mentions have since been fixed but many haven’t. (eg: why is there no native async support in 2020?)
Stack Overflow 2020 survey of
most dreaded
languages
I think more general problems lie in the philosophy of the language. It’s a tool for a fairly narrow domain, implemented in a complex way. In an ideal world, if an application must be complex, the complexity should be visible to the developer in user code, not the language itself. You don’t need a complex tool to create complex projects. When I say PHP is complex, I’m not saying it’s hard for beginners to use (quite the opposite in fact), I’m saying it has inconsistent naming conventions and a lot of very specific functions, both make it easy to create errors which aren’t caught until runtime. But are these simply properties of PHP’s age, to be expected? Whilst perhaps a factor, it’s certainly isn’t the reason for the hate. After all, Python was created in 1989, six years before PHP, and comes in as the 3rd most loved language in the Stack Overflow survey, as well as being one of the fastest-growing languages today.
When it comes to security, there’s some debate as to whether the above-average number of vulnerabilities on PHP sites are the fault of the language or the site developers. On the one hand, a coding language designed to appeal to a broad range of people including non-programmers, who produce sites with code hacked together from decades-old tutorials will always have issues, no matter the merit of the language itself. On the other hand, PHP has attempted to fix basic security issues in questionably convoluted ways, for example fixing SQL injection first with
escape_string()
, then fixing vulnerabilities with that by adding
real_escape_string()
, then adding
addslashes()
,
mysql_escape_string()
,
pg_escape_string()
and so on. Add this to its labyrinthine error/exception handling (yes, errors and exceptions are different), and it’s easy to make mistakes if you’re not well versed in the nuances of the language. The amount of sites running old, unsupported versions of PHP past their End Of Life continues to be staggeringly large, so PHP sites will continue to be low-hanging fruits for hackers for years to come.
Be this as it may, I’m not convinced that the problems the language has are as large as many would make out. Despite there being reasonable grounds for complaint about PHP, it seems to me that much of the stigma is absorbed because it’s fashionable, rather than reasoned by individuals.
The Future
This author is well aware of the irony of typing critiques of the language into a page with
post.php
in the address bar. But this isn’t about existing sites. I don’t think even the most ardent pitchfork mobs would suggest that we re-write all existing sites made with PHP. The question is, in June 2020, if I want to create a new website, should PHP be an option I consider?
There is no doubt that the current web development trends are setting a course for Single Page Applications – where your browser never reloads, but navigations occur from Javascript re-rendering the page using data from lightning-fast API calls (eg: browsing GitHub or Google Drive). There is an ever-growing ecosystem of Javascript libraries, frameworks, and tools for building reactive and performant applications in the browser — React and Vue being the most popular.
Ultimately, PHP is for server-side rendering. That’s fine for most sites and the best option for many. But if you’re building something new in 2020, you have to accept that this brings limitations. And whilst PHP-style server-side rendering isn’t dead (did everyone forget about SEO?), modern sites are likely to be Isomorphic, that is, able to render the same Javascript on server and client, using frameworks such as Next.js (for React) or Nuxt.js (for Vue), putting PHP out of business on the server.
But we can’t ignore the fact that PHP is evolving too.
Laravel
, self-publicised as “The PHP Framework for web artisans”, provides an MVC architecture for creating PHP applications safely and quickly. It’s held in high esteem by the community, and enjoys active and rapid development. Additionally, PHP 8 is coming out later this year, with a bunch of new features (many of which will look familiar from the Facebook section), such as a JIT, Union types, and improved errors.
So, happy twenty-fifth birthday PHP, you are endlessly quirky and will undoubtedly endure for many more years. You’ve empowered many people and played a key role in the rise of the web. But don’t be too upset if people are looking elsewhere for the future, it’s 2020 after all. | 54 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258643",
"author": "Abraham Limpo",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T14:30:05",
"content": "I love the self-contained nature of PHP processes. I love not having to deal with Async/await/promises or whatever they invent next to handle multithreading in Javascript. I love the flexibility of ... | 1,760,373,439.769312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/diy-pocket-mp3-player/ | DIY Pocket MP3 Player | Orlando Hoilett | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Portable Audio Hacks"
] | [
"arduino pro mini",
"DFRobot",
"FAT16",
"FAT32",
"mp3",
"soundcloud",
"TP4056"
] | When [Neutrino-1] saw DFRobot’s DFPlayer module, he decided he wanted to
make his own retro MP3 player
. This tiny module comes packed with a ton of interesting capabilities such as EQ adjustment, volume control, and a 3 watt amplifier amongst other things. It can even play ads in between songs, should you want such a thing.
Controlling the DFPlayer module is easy using serial commands from a microcontroller, making it a convenient subsystem in bigger projects, and a potential alternative to the popular VLSI chips or the hard to come by WT2003S IC. [Neutrino-1] does a good job walking readers through the build making it fairly easy to remix, reuse, and reshare.
With the hardware sorted, all you’ve got to do is flash the firmware and load up an SD card with some MP3s. There’s even a small Python GUI to help you get your new player up and running. [Neutrino-1] also introduces users to the U8g2 display library which he says is a bit more feature-rich than the common Adafruit SSD1306 library. Great job [Neutrino-1]!
While you’re here,
take a look
at some of our
other MP3 projects
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258601",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T11:06:42",
"content": "At first i was like “this is quite compact for DIY design” but then i was like “nah. even 10 year old child in chinese factory can make smaller one”. Just kidding, nice build :-)",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,373,439.041669 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/an-affordable-home-made-vacuum-chamber/ | An Affordable Home Made Vacuum Chamber | Jenny List | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"plexiglass",
"vacuum",
"vacuum chamber"
] | The term “vacuum” means many different things depending whether you are working on space equipment, scientific instruments, or even internal combustion engines. In our sphere it is so often used as a means to draw bubbles out of resin castings, for which it is a relatively easily achievable partial vacuum. It’s something [Fab] is using, in
a vacuum chamber made from Plexiglass
.
A simple Plexiglass box would collapse under the air pressure on its own, so to mitigate that it’s made from a piece of tube, and with an internal frame of aluminium extrusion with 3D printed joints to strengthen it from the inside. A pressure sensor allows regulation of the pump that drives the vacuum, and connections are made to the chamber using pneumatic hose connectors. It’s not immediately clear how it is sealed, whether there are nay gaskets or other sealant, or whether air pressure pushing the parts together provides enough of a seal.
We’ve featured a lot of vacuum chambers made for this purpose over the years, and we’d be interested to know what vacuum pump is being used here. If you’re curious too and want to build your own,
perhaps you could try a fridge compressor
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 31 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258588",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T08:37:54",
"content": "It looks kinda like transparent pressure cooker bomb.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6258649",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,373,439.104965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/faux-vintage-radio-gets-airplay-upgrade/ | Faux Vintage Radio Gets AirPlay Upgrade | Lewin Day | [
"Portable Audio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"airplay",
"apple",
"apple airplay",
"charlieplexed",
"radio",
"Raspberry Pi Zero"
] | There’s plenty of vintage-styled hardware out these days, with quality and functionality being mixed at best. [Huan] found such a device in the form of an attractively-styled Bluetooth speaker. Deciding he could improve on the capabilities while retaining a stock look,
he got down to hacking.
The aim of the project was to keep the original volume knob, buttons and screen, while replacing the internals with something a bit more capable. A Raspberry Pi Zero was sourced as the brains of the operation, with the Google Voice AIY hardware used as the sound output after early attempts with a discrete amplifier faced hum issues. An Arduino Pro Micro was pressed into service to read the volume encoder along with the buttons and drive the charlieplexed LED screen. Shairport Sync was then installed on the Pi Zero to enable Airplay functionality.
It’s a basic hack that nonetheless gives [Huan] an attractive AirPlay speaker, along with plenty of useful experience working with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis.
We’ve seen similar hacks before, too.
If you’re working on your own stereo resurrection at home,
be sure to drop us a line! | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258587",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T08:35:03",
"content": "Too bad pulse audio protocol does not work properly over wifi, since it is not compressed and airplay support si rather clumsy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,438.871176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/hantek-3-in-1-instrument-reviewed/ | Hantek 3-in-1 Instrument Reviewed | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"handheld oscilloscope",
"hantek",
"oscilloscope"
] | What kid doesn’t want a Swiss Army knife? Maybe that was the idea behind Hantek’s 3-in-1 instrument that
[Rui Santos] reviewed in a recent blog post
. You can also watch the video version, below. The instrument is a combination oscilloscope, multimeter, and signal generator. The device is pretty inexpensive and comes in 40 MHz and 70 MHz versions. You can also get versions that drop the function generator if you want to save a little bit more.
The multimeter does 4000 counts and has the usual scales along with capacitance measurements. Rechargeable batteries make it portable, and the signal generator is capable up to 25 MHz. The scope is dual channel, but the sampling drops in half (125 megasamples per second) when using both channels.
The 2.8 inch color screen isn’t as big as your bench scope, but it’s good for a portable device. The review also mentions that there are few buttons so many operations require a lot of menu navigation, but — again — that’s a function of being small. Overall, [Rui] seemed to like the meter well enough. We’ve spent more on a good digital meter, so if this can do that function plus also give you a reasonable scope and signal generator, it seems like a fair deal.
This reminded us of a very polished version of the
EM125 we took a look at a few years ago
, although that didn’t have a color screen, a second channel, or a signal generator. Of course, signal generators are
cheap enough
if you want to keep it separate. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258552",
"author": "RP",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T03:59:59",
"content": "One thing I always look for in a digital scope is screen update rate (especially the portable kind). I scanned through the whole video but never saw a live updating display so for all I know this one updates ... | 1,760,373,439.284433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/hackaday-links-june-28-2020/ | Hackaday Links: June 28, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"ads-b",
"amateur radio",
"ctf",
"flight tracking",
"hackaday links",
"handy talkie",
"hardware challengem ham radio",
"lunar",
"moon",
"nasa",
"repeater",
"toilet",
"waste"
] | You can imagine how stressful life is for high-power CEOs of billion-dollar companies in these trying times; one is tempted to shed a tear for them as they jet around the world and plan their next big move. But now someone has gone and upset the applecart by coming up with
a way to track executive private jets as they travel across North America
. This may sound trivial, but then you realize that hedge fund managers pay big money for the exact same data in order to get an idea of who is meeting with whom and possibly get an idea of upcoming mergers and acquisitions. It’s also not easy, as the elites go to great lengths to guard their privacy. Luckily,
the OpenSky Network
lists all ADS-B traffic its web of ground stations receives, unlike other flight monitoring sites which weed out “sensitive” traffic. Python programs scrape the OpenSky API and cross-reference plane registrations with the FAA database to see which company jets are doing what. There are plenty of trips to Aspen and Jackson Hole to filter out, but with
everyone and his little brother
fancying themselves a day trader lately, it’s another tool in the toolbox.
We got a nice note from Michelle Thompson this week thanking us for mentioning
the GNU Radio Conference
in
last week’s Links article
, and in particular for mentioning the virtual CTF challenge that they’re planning. It turns out that Michelle is deeply involved in designing the virtual CTF challenge, after having worked on the IRL challenges at previous conferences. She shared a few details of how the conference team made the decision to go forward with the virtual challenge, inspired in part by the success of the
Hack-A-Sat
qualifying rounds, which were also held remotely. It sounds like the GNU Radio CTF challenge will be pretty amazing, with IQ files being distributed to participants in lieu of actually setting up receivers. We wish Michelle and the other challenge coordinators the best of luck with the virtual con, and we really hope a Hackaday reader wins.
Amateur radio is often derided as a hobby, earning the epithet “Discord for Boomers” according to my son. There’s more than a grain of truth to that, but there are actually plenty of examples where a ham radio operator has been able to make a big difference in an emergency. Case in point is
this story
from the Western Massachusetts ARRL. Alden Jones (KC1JWR) was hiking along a section of the Appalachian Trail in southern Vermont last week when he suddenly got light-headed and collapsed. A passing hiker who happened to be an emergency medical technician rendered aid and attempt to contact 911 on his cell phone, but coverage was spotty and the dispatcher couldn’t hear him. So Alden, by this point feeling a little better, pulled out his handy talkie and made an emergency call to the local repeater. Luckily the Western Massachusetts Traffic Net was just about to start, so they went into emergency mode and coordinated the response. One of the hams even went to the rescue staging area and rigged up a quick antenna to improve the signal so that rescuers could finally get a helicopter to give Alden a ride to the hospital. He’s fine now, and hats off to everyone who pitched in on the eight-hour rescue effort.
And finally, there are obviously a lot of details to be worked out before anyone is going to set foot on the Moon again. We’ve got Top People™ working on all the big questions, of course, but apparently NASA needs a little help figuring out how and where the next men and first women on the Moon are going to do their business.
The Lunar Loo Challenge
seeks innovative designs for toilets that can be used in both microgravity and on the lunar surface. There is $35,000 in prize money for entrants in the Technical division; NASA is also accepting entries in a Junior division, which could prove to be highly entertaining. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258517",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T23:54:09",
"content": "” We’ve got Top People™ working on all the big questions, of course, but apparently NASA needs a little help figuring out how and where the next men and first women on the Moon are going to do their bus... | 1,760,373,439.327172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/mini-library-for-kids-gets-blinky-lights-and-solar-upgrade/ | Mini Library For Kids Gets Blinky Lights And Solar Upgrade | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"book",
"LED lighting",
"library",
"rgb",
"solar"
] | Reading is
big
in Québec, and [pepelepoisson]’s young children have access to a free mini library nook that had seen better days and was in dire need of maintenance and refurbishing. In the process of repairing and repainting the little outdoor book nook,
he took the opportunity to install a few experimental upgrades
(link in French,
English translation here
.)
The mini library pods are called
Croque-Livres
, part of a program of free little book nooks for children across Québec (the name is a bit tricky to translate into English, but think of it as “snack shack, but for books” because books are things to be happily devoured.)
After sanding and repairs and a few coats of new paint, the Croque-Livres was enhanced with a strip of WS2812B LEDs, rechargeable battery with solar panel, magnet and reed switch as door sensor, and a 3.3 V Arduino to drive it all. [pepelepoisson]’s
GitHub repository for the project
contains the code and CAD files for the 3D printed pieces.
The WS2812B LED strip technically requires 5 V, but as [pepelepoisson] found in
his earlier project Stecchino
, the LED strip works fine when driven directly from a 3.7 V lithium-polymer cell. It’s not until around 3 V that it starts to get unreliable, so a single 3.7 V cell powers everything nicely.
When the door is opened, the LED strip lights up with a brief animation, then displays the battery voltage as a bar graph. After that, the number of times the door as been opened is shown on the LED strip in binary. It’s highly visual, interactive, and there’s even a small cheat sheet explaining how binary works for anyone interested in translating the light pattern into a number. How well does it all hold up? So far so good, but it’s an experiment that doesn’t interfere at all with the operation of the little box, so it’s all good fun. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258554",
"author": "Werfu",
"timestamp": "2020-06-29T04:57:45",
"content": "These are book sharing pods, designed mostly for kids and teenagers to exchange books and donate books they no longer want. They are installed in a lot of public places here (shopping malls, public sports f... | 1,760,373,439.369301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/reproduction-1960s-computer-trainer-really-pushes-our-buttons/ | Reproduction 1960s Computer Trainer Really Pushes Our Buttons | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"DEC",
"Digital Equipment Corporation",
"lab",
"pdp",
"reproduction",
"trainer"
] | If you were selling computers in the early 1960s you faced a few problems, chief among them was convincing people to buy the fantastically expensive machines. But you also needed to develop an engineering force to build and maintain said machines. And in a world where most of the electrical engineers had cut their teeth on analog circuits built with vacuum tubes, that was no easy feat.
To ease the transition and develop some talent, Digital Equipment Corporation went all out with devices like the DEC H-500 Computer Lab, which retrocomputing wizard
[Michael Gardi] is currently building a reproduction of
. DEC’s idea was to provide a selection of logic gates, flip flops, and other elements of digital electronics that could be hooked together into more complicated circuits. We can practically see the young engineers in their white short-sleeve shirts and skinny ties laboring over the H-500 in a lab somewhere.
[Mike] is fortunate enough to
have
have access to an original H-500, but he wants anyone to be able to build one. His project page and
the Instructables post
go into great detail on how he made everything from the front panel to the banana plug jacks; almost everything in the build aside from the wood frame is custom 3D printed to mimic the original as much as possible. But the
pièce de résistance
is those delicious, butterscotch-colored DEC rocker switches. Taking some cues from
custom switches he had previously built
, he used reed switches and magnets to outfit the 3D printed rockers and make them look and feel like the originals. We can’t wait for the full PDP build.
Hats off to [Mike] for another stunning reproduction from the early years of the computer age. Be sure to check out
his MiniVac 601 trainer
, the
Digi-Comp 1 mechanical computer
, and
the paperclip computer
. If you’d like to pick [Mike’s] brain about this or any of his other incredible projects, he’ll be joining us for a Hack Chat in August.
Thanks to [Granzeier] for the tip! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258474",
"author": "Michael Gardi",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T18:15:53",
"content": "Thank you Dan for such a flattering write up. One clarification though, I do not in fact own an original H-500, they are way out of my price range these day. I was fortunate enough to to get some he... | 1,760,373,439.677253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/calcuino-is-an-arduino-calculator/ | Calcuino Is An Arduino Calculator | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"calculator",
"MAX7219"
] | All by itself, a calculator based on an Arduino isn’t necessarily very novel. However, [Danko Bertović] of
Volos Projects
has a nice board that, of course,
looks like a calculator.
There are 16 keys and an LED display. But it seems to us the real value would be using this as a base for other projects.
As an inexpensive development board, it’s handy to have a simple processor with a keyboard and a display. There’s some extra I/O pins and the first example in the video below shows using the setup as a simple organ, for example. We’d love to see an option to replace the LED with an LCD and maybe even some different CPU options, as well.
The board is essentially an Arduino with a standard USB to serial chip and a MAX7219 display driver. Of course, you could breadboard up all of these things, but it wouldn’t be as neat looking. One unusual thing about the keyboard is that it is not multiplexed. Each button has a label that indicates what Arduino pin it connects with. So key 6 connects to pin 6 and pin A2 connects to the key marked =/A2.
With the availability of inexpensive PC boards, we’re seeing many nice designs out there that would be easy to repurpose for other things. For example, we thought this board would easily run the
Kim Uno
, with some modifications to the I/O routines. Might even be able to work out a clone of
an even older computer
to fit on the board. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258447",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T15:15:39",
"content": "It just got me scribbling into page 372 of Volume 3 of the “Things to look into Sometime” list, the idea that you could put an AVR/ATtiny on an interposer that will solder down to one of the “ubiquit... | 1,760,373,439.981912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/a-dead-macbook-gpu-shouldnt-stop-you-with-this-bga-soldering-hack/ | A Dead Macbook GPU Shouldn’t Stop You, With This BGA Soldering Hack | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"bga",
"gpu",
"macbook pro",
"soldering"
] | On some 2011 Macbook Pro models, there is a tendency for the Radeon GPU to fail. This should mean game over for the computer, but surprisingly salvation is offered by its having not one but two GPUs on board. The Intel processor also has a GPU, and Apple use a pile of logic in an FPGA to switch at will between them. The community have produced fresh FPGA code to revive a dead Mac on its Intel GPU, but at the expense of losing brightness control.
[Ayilm1] has brought back the brightness with a clever BGA reworking hack
that gains access to a brightness control line present on the Intel
BD82HM65 Platform Controller Hub chip but not used in the Macbook.
We’re used to impressive soldering work here at Hackaday, and we’ve seen our share of wiring direct to the balls on an upturned BGA chip. This is a similar idea but at another level, as a section of the top insulation on an in-place BGA is removed to expose the microvia above the ball carrying the required signal. A tiny wire is soldered to the exposed pad and taken to a piece of copper tape stuck down to provide mechanical strength, and a piece of enameled copper wire is run from that to the other side of the PCB where lies its destination. It comes with
FPGA code
to take advantage of it, but even for non-Macbook owners, it’s an extremely impressive piece of work.
It’s not the first fine-soldering Macbook fix we’ve seen, either
.
Thanks [lightpink784] for the tip. | 42 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258406",
"author": "0xfred",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T12:14:37",
"content": "That is some impressively fine reverse engineering and soldering. I wouldn’t have even though to try accessing connections from the top and even then would have dismissed it as impossible to pull off.",
... | 1,760,373,439.944034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/hacking-a-thinkpad-usb-c-adapter/ | Hacking A ThinkPad USB-C Adapter | Lewin Day | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"lenovo",
"resistor",
"thinkpad",
"USB C",
"USB Type-C"
] | USB-C has brought the world much more powerful charging options in a slimline connector. With laptop chargers and portable battery packs using the standard, many with older hardware are converting their devices over to work with USB-C. [victorc] was trying to do just that, purchasing an adapter cable to charge a ThinkPad. Things didn’t quite work out of the box,
so some hacking was required.
The problem was the power rating of the adapter cable, versus the battery pack [victorc] was trying to use. In order to allow the fastest charging rates, the adapter cable features a resistor value which tells the attached Lenovo laptop it can draw up to 90 W. The battery pack in question could only deliver 45 W, so it would quickly shut down when the laptop tried to draw above this limit.
To rectify this, [victorc] looked up the standard, finding the correct resistor value to set the limit lower. Then, hacking open the cable, the original resistor on the Lenovo connector was removed, and replaced with the correct value. With this done, the cable works perfectly, and [victorc] is able to charge their laptop on the go.
For all the benefits USB-C has brought, there’s been plenty of consternation, too
. Whether this clears up, only time will tell! | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258389",
"author": "Mile Truba",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T09:10:50",
"content": "This is not an USB-C connector it is Lenovo Slim tip. Already there Is a lot of info about resistors of Lenovo connectors on the following wiki page:http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Power_Connector",
... | 1,760,373,440.223219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/diy-hand-mixer-whips-coffee-into-shape/ | DIY Hand Mixer Whips Coffee Into Shape | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"6V motor",
"coffee",
"Dalgona coffee",
"hand mixer",
"pinion gear"
] | Along with the substantial rise in bread baking over the last few months, many people have been whipped into a frenzy over this tasty-looking frothy coffee beverage called Dalgona. It’s like a caffeinated meringue made from instant coffee, sugar, boiling water, and a whole lot of air that is then spooned onto milk or milk and ice.
Sure, you can use a whisk to mix it up if you don’t mind doing so continuously and vigorously for at least a full three minutes. [HimanshuS8] quickly got tired of making his wife’s coffee this way, and
designed a small electric hand mixer especially for this task
. [HimanshuS8] happens to be a hardware design engineer, which is why it looks so minimalist and beautiful.
The inside is just as beautiful, mixing junk bin parts like the 6 V motor from a cassette deck with printed gears and beaters. At the risk of reviving an old debate, we hope [HimanshuS8]
used food-safe filament for those
. If you replicate this, you could try to design it around standard metal beaters instead. Check out the demo after the break while you wait for the water to boil.
Coffee makes everything better, including 3D prints
— the high cellulose content in coffee waste has been shown to drastically improve print strength. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258377",
"author": "Pio",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T05:54:21",
"content": "Coffee is indeed awesome. It can even be used to develop film to photographs as demonstrated here by [James Hoffmann]https://youtu.be/9bhOtTUtPhg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,373,440.070447 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/433-on-a-stick/ | 433 On A Stick | Jenny List | [
"home hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"433 mhz",
"arduino",
"radio",
"rc-switch"
] | Cheap 433 MHz wireless switches are a tempting way to enter the world of home automation, but without dedicated hardware, they can be less easy to control from a PC. That’s the position [TheStaticTurtle] was in, so the solution was obvious.
Build a USB 433 MHz transceiver
.
At the computer end is a CH340 USB-to-serial chip and the familiar ATmega328 making this a compact copy of the Arduino. At the RF end are a pair of modules for transmit and receive, unexpectedly with separate antennas. This device is a second revision, after initial experiments with a single antenna connector and an RF switch proved not to work. On the software side the Arduino uses
the rc-switch library
, while on the PC side there’s a Python library to make sense of it all. The code and hardware files
are all on GitHub
, should you wish to experiment.
The problem of making a single antenna transceiver is not for the faint-hearted RF engineer, as while diode switches seem on paper to deliver the goods, they can be extremely difficult to get right and preserve linearity. We’re curious that a transceiver module wasn’t used instead, but we’re guessing that cost played a significant part in the equation.
Over the years we’ve featured quite a few fascinating 433 MHz projects,
like this TP-Link router conversion
. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258366",
"author": "Vinalon",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T02:53:54",
"content": "Is it a copy of an Arduino, or a copy of a copy? I thought only the bargain-bin counterfeits used CH340s.On the other hand, who cares? The brand name is mud after “the untold history of Arduino” and the a... | 1,760,373,440.159277 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/comparing-bare-silicon-on-two-game-boy-audio-chips/ | Comparing Bare Silicon On Two Game Boy Audio Chips | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"audio amplifier",
"chip decap",
"chip decapping",
"decapsulation",
"game boy",
"game boy color",
"gameboy",
"gameboy color",
"ken shirriff"
] | We always look forward to a new blog post by [Ken Shirriff] and this latest one didn’t cure us of that. His topic this time?
Comparing two Game Boy audio chips
. People have noticed before that the Game Boy Color sounds very different than a classic Game Boy, and he wanted to find out why. If you know his work, you won’t be surprised to find out the comparison included stripping the die out of the IC packaging.
[Ken’s] explanation of how transistors, resistors, and capacitors appear on the die are helpfully illustrated with photomicrographs. He points out how resistors are notoriously hard to build accurately on a production IC. Many differences can affect the absolute value, so designs try not to count on exact values or, if they do, resort to things like laser trimming or other tricks.
Capacitors, however, are different. The exact value of a capacitor may be hard to guess beforehand, but the ratio of two or more capacitor values on the same chip will be very precise. This is because the dielectric — the oxide layer of the chip — will be very uniform and the photographic process controls the planar area of the capacitor plates with great precision.
We’ve decapsulated chips before, and we have to say that if you are just starting to look at chips at the die level, these big chips with bipolar transistors are much easier to deal with than the fine and dense geometries you’d find even in something like a CPU from the 1980s.
We always enjoy checking in with [Ken]. Sometime’s he’s taking apart
nuclear missiles
. Sometimes he is
repairing an old computer
. But it is always interesting. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258422",
"author": "aleksclark",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T13:42:26",
"content": "I would have appreciated some spoilers here :P e.g. “the reason they’re different is that the GBC chip uses a capacitor comparator to finely tune the output frequencies resulting in higher fidelity, an... | 1,760,373,440.024433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/variable-mirror-changes-shape-under-pressure/ | Variable Mirror Changes Shape Under Pressure | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"conic constant",
"ellipse",
"mirror",
"optics",
"parabola",
"spherical",
"telescope",
"vacuum"
] | Unless you’re in a carnival funhouse, mirrors are generally dead flat and kind of boring. Throw in some curves and things get interesting, especially when you can control the curve with a touch of your finger, as with
this variable surface convex mirror
.
The video below starts off with a long but useful review of conic constants and how planes transecting a cone can create circles, parabolas, or ellipses depending on the plane’s angle. As [Huygens Optics] explains, mirrors ground to each of these shapes have different properties, which makes it hard to build telescopes that work at astronomical and terrestrial distances. To make a mirror that works over a wide range of distances, [Huygens Optics] built a mirror from two pieces of glass bonded together to form a space between the front and rear surface. The front surface, ground to a spherical profile, can be deformed slightly by evacuating the plenum between the two surfaces with a syringe. Atmospheric pressure bends the thinner front surface slightly, changing the shape of the mirror.
[Huygens Optics] also built an interferometer to compare the variable mirror to a known spherical reference. The data from the interferometer was fed to a visualization package that produced maps of the surface shape, which you can easily see changing as the pressure inside the mirror changes. Alas, a deeper dive into the data showed the mirror to be less than perfect, but it’s fascinating to think that a mirror can flex enough to change from elliptical to almost parabolic with nothing more than a puff of air.
We’ve seen a couple of interesting efforts from [Huygens Optics] before, including
this next-level spirit level
. He’s not all about grinding glass, though — witness
this investigation into discriminating metal detectors
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258354",
"author": "Drew",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T01:06:42",
"content": "His youtube channel isn’t huge- but its a wonder look into the dark arts of bespoke lens and optics manufacturing.I highly recommend checking it out, really impressive stuff he does",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,440.110918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/what-does-the-bat-say-tune-in-with-this-heterodyne-detector/ | What Does The Bat Say? Tune In With This Heterodyne Detector | Sven Gregori | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"4066",
"555",
"bat detector",
"bats",
"heterodyne",
"MCP6002",
"MEMS microphones",
"nature"
] | Bats are fascinating animals, and despite all the myth and creepiness surrounding them, they really remind one more of a drunk bird lost in the night sky than the blood-sucking creature they’re often made out to be. Of course, some really fall into that category, and unlike actual birds, bats don’t tend to grace us with their singsong — at least not in ways audible for us humans. But thanks to bat detectors, we can still pick up on it, and [Marcel] recently
built a heterodyne bat detector himself
.
The bat detector (and an insight to the beauty of German language, where a bat is a
flutter mouse)
The detector is made with a 555, an MCP6004 op amp, and a 4066 analog switch — along with a bunch of passives — and is neatly packed into a 3D-printed case with a potentiometer to set the volume and center frequency for the detection. The bat signal itself is picked up by a MEMS microphone with a frequency range [Marcel] found suitable for the task. His write-up also goes in all the mathematics details regarding heterodyning, and how each component plays into that. The resulting audio can be listened to through a headphone output, and after putting together an adapter, can also be recorded from his smartphone. A sample of how that sounds is added in his write-up, which you can also check out after the break.
In case you want to give it a try yourself, [Marcel] put all the design files and some LTSpice simulations on
the project’s GitHub page
. If you are curious about bat detectors in general and want to read more about them,
follow [Pat Whetman] down that rabbit hole
, or have a look at
this one made in Python
for something more software-focused.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bat_sample.mp3
(Banner image by
Signe Allerslev
) | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258270",
"author": "VMC",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T17:27:13",
"content": "It is called fleder not flutter",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6258275",
"author": "Sven Gregori",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T17:36:50",... | 1,760,373,440.438454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/nothing-comes-from-nowhere/ | Nothing Comes From Nowhere | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"graffiti",
"hackaday",
"ideas",
"inspiration",
"interactive art",
"million dollar ideas",
"newsletter"
] | How do you come up with new ideas? As much as it sometimes seems like they arrive in a flash out of the blue, they don’t just come out of nowhere. Indeed, we all have well-stocked mental toolboxes that say “this thing can be used to do that” and “if you want to get there, start here”.
One incredibly fertile generator of “new” ideas is simply putting old ideas next to each other and realizing that a chain of two or three can get you to someplace new. It just happened to me while listening to Mike and myself on
this week’s Hackaday Podcast
.
Here’s the elevator pitch. You take something like the
player-pianoesque MIDI barrel piano
that we featured last Thursday, and mix it together with
the street-painting bicycle trailer
that we featured on Friday. What do you get? A roll of paper that can be drawn on by normal kids, rolled up behind a bicycle, with a tank that they can pressurize with a bike pump, that will spray a pixelated version of their art as they roll down the sidewalk.
Now how can I make this real? One of my neighbors has a scrap bike trailer…
But see what I mean about ideas? I just took two existing ideas and rubbed them together, and in this case, they emitted sparks. And I’ve got a mental catalogue of all of the resources around me, some of which fell right into place. This role as fountain of good proto-ideas is why I started reading Hackaday fifteen years ago, and why it’s still a daily must-read for folks like us everywhere. A huge thank you to everyone who’s sharing! Read more Hackaday!
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
! | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258249",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T15:05:57",
"content": "In the creativity exercises I’ve taught, the synthesis of putting existing things/functions next to one another and bridging the gap gets really interesting when you make that gap very much bigger, cre... | 1,760,373,440.272995 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/recreating-paintings-by-teaching-an-ai-to-paint/ | Recreating Paintings By Teaching An AI To Paint | Maya Posch | [
"Art",
"Science"
] | [
"art",
"machine learning",
"paintings"
] | The
Timecraft
project by [Amy Zhao] and team members uses machine learning to figure out a way how an existing painting
may have been originally been painted
, stroke by stroke. In
their paper
titled ‘Painting Many Pasts: Synthesizing Time Lapse Videos of Paintings’, they describe how they trained a ML algorithm using existing time lapse videos of new paintings being created, allowing it to probabilistically generate the steps needed to recreate an already finished painting.
The probabilistic model is implemented using a convolutional neural network (CNN), with as output a time lapse video, spanning many minutes. In the paper they reference how they were inspired by artistic style transfer, where neural networks are used to generate works of art in a specific artist’s style, or to create mix-ups of different artists.
A lot of the complexity comes from the large variety of techniques and materials that are used in the creation of a painting, such as the exact brush used, the type of paint. Some existing approaches have focused on the the fine details here, including physics-based simulation of the paints and brush strokes. These come with significant caveats that Timecraft tried to avoid by going for a more high-level approach.
The time lapse videos that were generated during the experiment were evaluated through a survey performed via Amazon Mechanical Turk, with the 158 people who participated asked to compare the realism of the Timecraft videos versus that of the real time lapse videos. The results were that participants preferred the real videos, but would confuse the Timecraft videos for the real time lapse videos half the time.
Although perhaps not perfect yet, it does show how ML can be used to deduce how a work of art was constructed, and figure out the individual steps with some degree of accuracy. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258287",
"author": "William Gallant",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T18:38:57",
"content": "The A.I. recreating art is very interesting as it illustrates its capabilities in handling complex colors, strokes, pressures, counterfeiting…imagine what it can do with money?",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,373,440.519502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/27/the-trouble-with-tamagotchis/ | The Trouble With Tamagotchis… | Jenny List | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Playground Express",
"tamagotchi",
"tribble"
] | The must-have toy of a couple of decades ago was the Tamagotchi, a virtual pet in an LCD screen on a keyring, that demanded your attention and which would die were you to neglect it. Fortunately it had a reset button on the back through which it could be resuscitated, but even so it lacked a satisfying tactile experience. [Nadine] has done something about this with her Tamagotchi-style Tribble, an anthropomorphic ball of fluff that demands attention and purrs when it receives some.
Inside the ball of fake fur is an Adafruit Circuit Playground with a capacitive touch pad and a haptic motor. After a random time with no attention it “cries”, and its owner strokes it, after which it responds with a purring vibration. It’s quite cute as you can see in the Twitter video below, and fortunately it won’t multiply and fill up your starship. We wonder whether a small resistive heater to give it a body temperature would complete its appeal as a virtual pet.
Given the popularity of Star Trek TOS among Hackaday readers perhaps it’s surprising that we don’t see more Tribble related projects.
They have made a notable appearance as a DEF CON badge though
.
The tribble lives. It has no other features except It just randomly screams for attention until you pet it, and then it purrs.
pic.twitter.com/S668rHSq5V
— _n ⚔️ (@_nadine)
June 12, 2020 | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258189",
"author": "Nitpicker Smartyass",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T09:00:52",
"content": "Cute! I have seen the same thing a few years back (or maybe 10?) on a fair in Germany, they sold it for something like 50,-DM …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,440.557678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/reliving-heathkits-glory-days-through-a-teardown-and-rebuild/ | Reliving Heathkit’s Glory Days Through A Teardown And Rebuild | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"Heath",
"heathkit",
"rebuild",
"recapping",
"restoration",
"retro",
"signal tracer",
"teardown"
] | In its heyday, the experience offered by the Heath Company was second to none. Every step of the way, from picking something out of the Heathkit catalog to unpacking all the parts to final assembly and testing, putting together a Heathkit project was as good as it got.
Sadly, those days are gone, and the few remaining unbuilt kits are firmly in the unobtanium realm. But that doesn’t mean you can’t
tear down and completely rebuild a Heathkit project
to get a little taste of what the original experience was like. [Paul Carbone] chose a T-3 Visual-Aural signal tracer, a common enough piece that’s easy to find on eBay at a price mere mortals can afford. His unit was in pretty good shape, especially for something that was probably built in the early 1960s. [Paul] decided that instead of the usual recapping, he’d go all the way and replace every component with fresh ones. That proved easier said than done; things have changed a lot in five decades, and resistors are a lot smaller than they used to be. Finding hookup wire to match the original was also challenging, as was disemboweling some of the electrolytic cans so they could be recapped. The finished product is beautiful, though — even the Magic Eye tube works — and [Paul] reports that the noise level is so low he wasn’t sure if turned it on at first.
We’ve covered
the rise and fall of Heathkit
, as well as their many attempted comebacks, including
an inexplicable solder-free radio
and
the “world’s most reliable” clock
. Looking at these offerings, we think [Paul] may be onto something here. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258177",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T07:02:27",
"content": "that’s a neat build and a nice writeup",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6258209",
"author": "Dr. Cockroach",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T10:21:43",
... | 1,760,373,440.601678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/slipping-sheets-map-multiple-bends-in-this-ingenious-flex-sensor/ | Slipping Sheets Map Multiple Bends In This Ingenious Flex Sensor | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"capacitive",
"flex",
"flex PCB",
"Kapton",
"polyimide",
"resistive",
"sensor",
"strain"
] | When thoughts turn to measuring the degree to which something bends, it’s pretty likely that strain gauges or some kind of encoders on a linkage come to mind. Things could be much simpler in the world of flex measurement, though, if
[Fereshteh Shahmiri] and [Paul H. Dietz]’s capacitive multi-bend flex sensor
catches on.
This is one of those ideas that seems so obvious that you don’t know why it hasn’t been tried before. The basic idea is to leverage the geometry of layered materials that slip past each other when bent. Think of the way the pages of a hardbound book feather out when you open it, and you’ll get the idea. In the case of the ShArc (“Shift Arc”) sensor, the front and back covers of the book are flexible PCBs with a series of overlapping pads. Between these PCBs are a number of plain polyimide spacer strips. All the strips of the sensor are anchored at one end, and everything is held together with an elastic sleeve. As the ShArc is bent, the positions of the electrodes on the top and bottom layers shift relative to each other, changing the capacitance across them. From the capacitance measurements and the known position of each pad, a microcontroller can easily calculate the bend radius at each point and infer the curvature of the whole strip.
The video below shows how the ShArc works, as well as several applications for the technology. The obvious use as a flex sensor for the human hand is most impressive — it could vastly simplify
[Will Cogley]’s biomimetic hand controller
— but such sensors could be put to work in any system that bends. And as a bonus, it looks pretty simple to build one at home.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/paper142vf.mp4
Thanks to [Hephaix] for the tip. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258138",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T02:20:02",
"content": "Now all you need is a memory metal strip the other side for force feedback… One small step for man, one giant leap for teledildonics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,373,440.791941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/hinge-brings-new-meaning-to-flexible-pcb/ | Hinge Brings New Meaning To Flexible PCB | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"flex PCB",
"flexible PCB",
"folded pcb",
"folding pcb",
"hinge",
"hinge pcb",
"pcb"
] | It is not a secret that flexible PC boards can bend. But despite the substrate’s flexibility, you can’t really fold them completely over. That bothered [Carl] so he developed a
hinge design
so that he can fold a board completely in half. You can watch a video showing an example, FlexBox, below.
Normal boards can fold over, but the copper traces can’t tolerate a very tight bend radius. [Carl’s] trick is to make the folding part have no traces at all. Only a small bridge carries traces between the two halves and it is allowed to bend almost like an interconnecting cable.
It’s true that a board-level interconnect between two PCBs could also be used but there is something attractive about having the entire assembly as one piece, especially if you are using a flex PCB anyway. We don’t have any data, but we imagine the flexible PCB is more reliable than a socket and plug and adds no additional cost.
[Carl] is the master of flexible boards. He’s done videos on
cheaper prototyping
for hybrid flexible/rigid PCBs using stiffeners. He’s used them for
jumping robots
and
sort of holographic optical displays
. If you want more ideas about flexible PCBs, check out the results of last year’s
flex PCB contest
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258114",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2020-06-27T00:32:58",
"content": "> flexible PCB is more reliable than a socket and plug and adds no additional cost.OSH charges $5/in^2 for regular PCB, but $10/in^2 for their flex. So you are paying 2X per sq footage. It doesn’t ta... | 1,760,373,440.899567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/smart-toilet-paper-holder-keeps-track-of-white-gold/ | Smart Toilet Paper Holder Keeps Track Of White Gold | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"toilet",
"toilet hacks",
"toilet paper"
] | As we all woke up in 2020 on New Year’s Day, few of us would have predicted how terrible everything would get in just a few short months. Worldwide shortages of toilet paper were just the tip of the iceberg, making everyone more keenly aware of their stocks at home. This was something [thepenguinmaster] decided to take a stab at managing in the cloud.
Enter the Smart Toilet Paper Roll.
The device consists of a 3D printed toilet roll holder, outfitted with sensors to track usage of the precious material. A magnetic rotary encoder is used to monitor rotation of the roll, with a LIDAR device used to sense when a user’s hand is in close proximity. Data is trucked to the cloud by an Avnet Azure Sphere MT3620. The link with Azure allows for the automatic generation of graphs and access from anywhere over the Internet.
The project goes to show that just about anything around the house can be monitored over the Internet. We’d love to see the tracker go even further, measuring usage on a per-sheet basis and automatically ordering more when supplies get low.
We’ve seen similar work before, too. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258042",
"author": "Michael S Westman",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T20:18:48",
"content": "Needs to have a proximity card reader to track usage by user.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6258068",
"author": "TP-god",
... | 1,760,373,440.848245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/smart-thermometer-can-tell-flu-from-cold/ | Smart Thermometer Can Tell Flu From Cold | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"Medical Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"bayesian estimation",
"Covid-19",
"IR thermometer",
"Teensy 3.2"
] | Before the outbreak of coronavirus, the seasonal flu was one of the most dangerous infectious diseases, but a lot of people have trouble telling the difference between a flu and a cold by their symptoms alone. This gave [M. Bindhammer] the idea to design
a smart thermometer that can distinguish between flu and cold
.
Automated medical diagnostics is certainly an
important technology of the future
. [M. Bindhammer]’s project, named F°LUEX, is the second version of his
iF°EVE thermometer
. After taking the body temperature it asks the patient a set of questions about his symptoms and then calculates the probability of whether it is more likely to be a flu or a cold. [M. Bindhammer] uses a method commonly used in medical diagnostics based on Bayesian statistics which assigns a probability score to both hypotheses. It takes into account how often a certain symptom occurs when you have a common cold or flu as well as the overall probability of catching one or the other.
The hardware of the project is based on a custom PCB that includes a medical-grade MLX90614 infrared thermometer with an accuracy of ±0.2˚C around the human body temperature. The sensor is being read out by a Teensy 3.2 and information is displayed on a small OLED screen. Everything is housed in a 3D printed enclosure that received a nice finishing by painting with primer and acrylic spray paint. Unfortunately, [M. Bindhammer] project also got delayed by the corona crisis as his order for the temperature sensor got canceled due to the current high demand. But that does make us wonder how useful this could be to discriminate between cold, flu, and COVID-19.
An IR thermometer is something useful to have around not only for medical applications and
can also be built without a custom PCB and minimal parts
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258005",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T18:45:12",
"content": "Ah statistics based medicine, lovely, that’s like the doc putting you on the pill because you’re 51% likely to be female.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,373,440.965354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/ask-hackaday-what-can-be-done-with-your-bootlooping-blu-ray/ | Ask Hackaday: What Can Be Done With Your Bootlooping Blu-Ray? | Lewin Day | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"blu-ray",
"certificate",
"samsung",
"ssl",
"ssl certificate"
] | Last Friday, thousands of owners of Samsung Blu Ray players found that their home entertainment devices would no longer boot up. While devices getting stuck in a power-cycling loop is not uncommon, this case stands out as it affected a huge range of devices all at the same time. Samsung’s support forum paints a bleak picture,
with one thread on the issue stretching to 177 pages in just a week.
So what is going on, and what can be done to fix the problem? There’s a lot of conflicting information on that. Some people’s gear has started working again, others have not and there are reports of customers being told to seek in-person repair service. Let’s dive in with some wild speculation on the problem and circle back by commiserating about the woes of web-connected appliances.
Time To Die
When thousands of devices all fail at the same time, it tends to point to an external causal factor. One theory put forth by many has been that the issue was caused by an automatic firmware update, bricking the machines. However, with the problem affecting a wide cross section of machines, all presumably running different hardware and different firmware, this would seem an unlikely cause. While firmware updates can cause problems, it would be unusual for Samsung to roll out an update to so many varied models all on the same day. A staggered rollout as fixes were developed would be more likely, particularly for a product line facing end of life, like Blu Ray players.
Blu Ray players are, at this point, primarily used by cinema buffs looking for the highest resolution, best quality experience. However, many use Samsung players day to day for their streaming and recording features, too.
A more likely culprit is an expired SSL certificate which the players use to access Samsung servers. With Samsung’s Blu Ray players often featuring Internet connectivity for streaming video, such certificates are necessary to avoid security issues out in the real world. If not kept up to date, these certificates eventually expire, and need to be updated if secure connections are to be maintained.
Of course, if expired certificates are the problem, it highlights far deeper issues with Samsung’s appliances. While an expired certificate cannot be used for secure online communication, there is no reason that it should brick the entire device. A simple few lines of code are all that is required to detect the out-of-date certificate and notify the user as to the cause of the problem. The player could then allow the user to still use the offline functionality of the device. Instead, what users see is
a machine that fails within 10 seconds of power on
, getting stuck in an infinite loop.
The fact that the problem is affecting even devices
that aren’t connected to the Internet
will prove yet more galling for Samsung’s customers. While a certificate failure is a problem for online use, there’s no reason it should affect the proper operation of the Blu Ray player itself. One of the major benefits of physical media is it sidesteps the requirement for an internet connection, and yet owners of these machines still find themselves out of luck.
A Potential Fix
Assuming the problem is indeed an SSL certificate issue — a plausible scenario since Blu Ray involves a lot of signed DRM features — the only real way to fix this problem for the average user will be for Samsung to issue a valid certificate, rolling it out to machines with a firmware update. This may prove difficult with the machines stuck in a bootloop if the affected units restart prior to checking for online updates. And, of course, assuming the updates are sent through an SSL secured channel, there’s no hope of an over-the-air fix at all. Users who don’t have their players connected to the Internet at all are out of luck whatever happens.
However, this isn’t WaitForAnUpdateADay, it’s Hackaday, and we’re in the business of providing quick and dirty back-of-the-envelope solutions. If the problem is tied to the magic date of Friday the 19th of June, resetting the machine’s clock prior to this date may just coax the machine back into life. The really adventurous could try packet-capture the running device to determine where it connects to, and spoof NTP servers on a closed network. But more likely than not the firmware was written with this type of attack in mind.
Consumer Rights
Fundamentally, the consumers who purchased these Samsung devices are feeling hard done by. A week has passed with no solution, and it’s likely Samsung doesn’t have a whole lot of resources on the problem.
Having announced their exit from the market in 2019
, the simple factors of lower demand in the face of streaming services have meant the Blu Ray market is shrinking fast.
Despite various countries having rules that manufacturers can’t sell defective hardware without proper restitution, it’s unlikely Samsung will be shipping new Blu Ray decks to affected customers. Manufacturing lines have likely already been closed, and the stock simply isn’t available. In our current throw-away society, there isn’t exactly a network of service centres for this sort of hardware either. If they can’t fix it, past bricked-hardware debacles point to class-action and refund settlements. A messy way forward, but with plenty of historical precedent behind it. Let’s hope a device firmware update (DFU) from a USB thumb drive can resurrect these before it gets that far. What a mess!
So what are your thoughts? Is there anything that can be done to get these working again? What happens when a stored SSL cert expires, and what is the proper way to fail in that case? We’d love to hear from any readers who have experience with how the authentication stack works for Blu Ray DRM, especially if there’s an offline fall-back that make these appliances simmer down and spin up some discs. | 159 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257968",
"author": "Willaim",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T17:21:18",
"content": "After several run-ins with samsung appliances I’ve a new motto:FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS BUY SAMSUNGexploding washing machines, refrigerators that last 3 years and stoves that won’t heat to tempand now vi... | 1,760,373,441.315021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/hackaday-podcast-073-betrayal-by-clipboard-scratching-4k-flaming-solder-joints-and-electric-paper/ | Hackaday Podcast 073: Betrayal By Clipboard, Scratching 4K, Flaming Solder Joints, And Electric Paper | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"4k projector",
"clipboard",
"copy and paste",
"epaper",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"player piano",
"Thermite",
"vga"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams review a great week in the hacking world. There’s an incredible 4k projector build that started from a broken cellphone, a hand-cranked player (MIDI) piano, and a woeful story of clipboard vulnerabilities found in numerous browsers and browser-based apps. Plus you’ll love the field-ready solder splice that works like a strike-on box match (reminiscent of using thermite to weld railroad rail) and we spend some time marveling at the problem of finding power cuts on massive grid systems.
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 073 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Developing Android Apps with Kotlin
Mike was
working on an android app
during time off last week
What’s The Deal With Snap Packages?
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Less Rock, More Roll: A MIDI Barrel Piano
VGA Framegrabber Built From Scratch
Michael Ossmann Makes You An RF Design Hero
Strike A Solder Joint Behind Enemy Lines
Thermite welding of railroad rails
A True 4K Projector From Scrap eBay Components
Why Sony’s Trinitron Tubes Were The Best
Make your own first surface mirror from a reglar one
Message In A Bottle: Bicycle Trailer On A Mission
Tracked Robot Makes Sand Drawings
Copy And Paste Deemed Insecure
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
WiFi Networks Turned Targets In This Pocket Game
Switch Tester Servo-Slaps Them ’til They Fail
Voice-Command Chess Board Powered By Alexa
Elliot’s Picks:
Boot-To-BASIC Box Packs A Killer Graphics Engine
An Open Source Tool To Document Your Wiring
Chaotic Oscillator From Antique Logic
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Hands On With A Batteryless E-Paper Display
New Part Day: Battery-Less NFC E-Paper Display
E-Ink Price Tags Fall Off Store Shelves Onto Your Workbench
Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough To Know When There’s No Power?
TRN comment on e-field current sensors
Mark Houston comment on utility pole current sensors | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,441.00698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/get-the-party-started-with-a-mesh-wifi-light-show/ | Get The Party Started With A Mesh WiFi Light Show | Sven Gregori | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"javascript",
"light show",
"mesh network",
"microphone",
"music",
"oled",
"wemos d1 mini",
"ws2812b"
] | Wildly blinking LEDs may not be the ideal lighting for the average office environment, but they’ll surely spice up any party. And since a party without music is just a meeting, having both synced up is a great way to set the mood. Sure, you could simply roll out your standard LED strip instead, but that gets a bit boring, and also a bit tricky if you want to light up several places the same way. [Gerrit] might have built the perfect solution though, with his
(mu)sic (R)eactive (Li)ghts
, or muRLi, which are a set of individual lights that synchronize a programmable pattern over WiFi.
The system consists of muRLi itself as the base station that defines and sends the light pattern through WebSockets, and several muRLi Nodes that house a set of WS2812B LEDs to receive and display it. Both are built around a Wemos D1 Mini configured to set up a WiFi mesh network, and depending what’s in reach, the nodes connect either to the base station or other nodes, giving the system definitely enough reach for any location size. The music is picked up by a MAX4466-amplified microphone inside the base station — adding some more flexibility to positioning the system — and analyzed for volume and audio spectrum, which is also shown on an OLED.
The best part however is how the light patterns are programmed. Instead of hard-coding it into the firmware, [Gerrit] went for a modular approach with little ROM cartridges to plug into the muRLi base station. The cartridge itself contains just an I2C EEPROM, storing JavaScript code that is interpreted by the firmware using
mJS
. The scripts have access to the analyzed audio data and amount of LEDs within the network, and can dynamically generate the patterns as needed that way. Everything is neatly housed in 3D-printed enclosures, with all the design and source files available
on the project’s GitHub page
— but see for yourself in the video after the break.
If you don’t care about the wireless part but enjoy light synced up with music, have a look at
a plain MIDI solution for that
. As for [Gerrit], we’re definitely looking forward to seeing his next endeavor one day, since we also enjoyed
his last one
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6258381",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2020-06-28T06:29:18",
"content": "Hmm, think I need a contemporary update on mesh networks which covers wifi latency for max throughput, thanks for posting :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,373,441.352735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/this-week-in-security-bitdefender-ripple20-starbucks-and-pwned-passwords/ | This Week In Security: Bitdefender, Ripple20, Starbucks, And Pwned Passwords | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Pwned Passwords",
"This Week in Security"
] | [Wladimir Palant] seems to be on a one man crusade against security problems in security software. The name may not be immediately recognizable, but among his other infamies is originating Adblock Plus, which we have a love-hate relationship with. (Look, surf the net with an adblocker, but disable it for sites you trust and want to support, like HaD).
This week,
he announced a rather serious flaw in the Bitdefender
. The disclosure starts off with high praise for the Bitdefender: “security-wise Bitdefender Antivirus is one of the best antivirus products I’ve seen so far….” Even with that said, the vulnerability he found is a serious one. A malicious website can trigger the execution of arbitrary applications. The problem was fixed in an update released on the 22nd.
Image by Wladimir Palant, CC BY-SA 4.0
The vulnerability is interesting. First, Bitdefender uses an API that was added to web browsers specifically to enable security software to work without performing man-in-the-middle decryption of HTTPS connections. When a problem is detected, Bitdefender replaces the potentially malicious page with it’s own error message.
Because of the way this is implemented, the browser sees this error message as being the legitimate contents of the requested site. Were this a static page, it wouldn’t be a problem. However, Bitdefender provides an option to load the requested page anyway, and does this by embedding tokens in that error page. When a user pushes the button to load the page, Bitdefender sees the matching tokens in the outgoing request, and allows the page.
This can be exploited through an AJAX call. A malicious webpage makes an
XMLHttpRequest
call back to the same domain, and manipulates the response so an error message is injected by Bitdefender. Since it’s the same domain, the contents of that response are accessible to the malicious page, meaning the security tokens are leaked. Those tokens can then be used to trigger the launch of Bitdefender’s Safepay browser. That’s not terrible in itself, but the real problem is the fact that the Safepay browser is launched using an attacker provided url.
request.send("data:text/html,nada --utility-cmd-prefix=\"cmd.exe /k whoami & echo\"");
The spaces don’t get properly escaped, so command line arguments can be injected, leading to arbitrary execution.
Ripple20
JSOF just released
part of their research on the Trek TCP/IP stack,
but they’re exploiting this to harvest email addresses, a tactic that I find repugnant, and frankly any security company should as well. Thankfully
the PDF is available once you know where to look
.
Trek produces an IP stack that can be used as an element of a Real Time OS, or even on embedded devices that lack a full OS. That software stack has been deployed on IoT devices around the world. This is what the JSOF researchers are talking about when they say “the supply-chain factor”. They discovered 19 separate vulnerabilities in this software stack, four of which were critical remote code execution (RCE) problems.
(I feel I must take JSOF to task once more, as they refer to these as zero-day vulnerabilities. While it may have been strictly true that they were zero-days when they were first discovered, the fact that JSOF went through a coordinated disclosure process means that these are no longer zero-day vulnerabilities. This seems like an attempt to hype their research, rather than being based on fact.)
JSOF reached out in response to my criticisms, and made some fair points in their defense. I’ve included their response below.
“JSOf only uses the emails to send a one time single email offering to join our mailing list of all-research and content. Subscribing to the mailing is explicit and a subscriber would have to insert their email again and press subscribe. We have been receiving good feedback to this process.
We believe the description of vulnerabilities as zero-day vulnerabilities correctly depicts the situation at the time of publishing and the current ongoing situation where patches are not available for many devices, many devices remain unpatched, and more vendors and devices are expected to release advisories and patches”
So far, the details have only been released for two vulnerabilities: CVE-2020-11896 and 11898. The first is a RCE and the second an information leak. Both vulnerabilities stem from improper handling of fragmented
IP-in-IP tunneled packets
. Apparently the target device doesn’t need to have an IP tunnel configured, but it does need to have IP tunneling support. It’s unclear how common or uncommon this configuration is, but as long as fragmentation and tunneling support is present, all that is needed for compromise is a single open UDP port.
When receiving packets, when the length of packet fragments exceeds the length indicated in the packet headers, a function is called to trim the excess received data. It’s possible to manipulate this function such that more data will be processed than is expected. The excess data is copied beyond the end of an allocated buffer, leading to predictable results. There are some clever additional steps needed to actually achieve RCE, so go read the paper for more details.
Interestingly,
Cisco just released an advisory
detailing their initial work on triaging the Ripple20 bugs. So far it appears that patches are not yet available for vulnerable Cisco products, which highlights what a challenge this particular set of bugs might be.
Secure Boot Bypass
[Jason A. Donenfeld] of Wireguard fame has
discovered a fun flaw
in the Linux kernel’s lockdown mode. Kernel lockdown is an extension of the EFI Secure Boot scheme that, among other things, ensures that unsigned kernel modules don’t get loaded, even by root. As you can imagine,
it was an uphill battle
getting that feature in the Linux kernel at all.
The vulnerability is an EFI variable that can be written to, even with a kernel lockdown policy, that inserts an ACPI table. This essentially means injecting code into the pre-boot process, instructing the booting machine to set the kernel lockdown policy to disabled. The humorous part of all of this work is that Donefeld’s test case is loading the Wireguard module. It seems like a lot of work just to get his VPN to load.
Searching a Starbucks API
[Sam Curry] must constantly have his browser’s DevTools window open, because
he just happened to notice API calls
that were being processed while he was purchasing a Starbucks gift card. Being the curious, security minded individual he is, Sam decided to take some time to explore the API that was being used. He quickly determined that the API was using an Internet facing front-end to proxy API calls into the Starbucks internal network. After much trial and error, the following API endpoint was discovered:
/bff/proxy/stream/v1/users/me/streamItems/
web\..\.\..\.\..\.\..\.\..\.\..\.\search\v1\Accounts\
It was never intended to be publicly accessible, but some clever path traversal work made it possible. This endpoint allowed Sam to search through every user in the Starbucks system, all 100 million records.
This did represent quite the problem, so the finding were quickly reported, and fixed within 24 hours. There isn’t any evidence that the vulnerable endpoint was independently discovered or exploited. Sam did net a nice $4,000 bounty for the find.
Pwned Passwords, Version 6
[Troy Hunt] keeps popping up, and this week it’s because he published the sixth iteration of
the Pwned Passwords service
. He wrote
a blog post about the update
, and the update added over 17 million new passwords. For those of us not familiar with the service, it’s a web page where you can enter your password, and see if it’s been compromised in a data breach. Yes, you read that right, the intention is for you to go enter your password on someone else’s web service. Yes, this is nuts. The
r/netsec Reddit thread
has both had
a lot of fun
with this, and has suggestions for how to use the service without trusting any of Troy’s code.
All kidding aside, the service uses
k-anonymity
to protect your password. It works like this. Your browser takes the password you enter, generates a SHA1 hash, and then sends the first five characters of that hash to the service. The list of hashes beginning with those five characters is returned, and the code running in your browser checks to see if the full SHA1 is in the returned list. It’s clever, should be safe, and there’s still no way I’m putting an important password into that web site. Instead, I prefer
the simple python script put together by [Ben Wiederhake]
. It’s short and simple enough for all of us to read through the source before running it.
(Editor’s note: I use Pwned Passwords occasionally. It’s good for
verifying
that your
non-critical
password(s) aren’t easily crackable.
Hackaday1234
passes, for instance, so feel free to use that for forum logins. But your actually important passwords should be unique, long, and randomly generated, and thus don’t even require checking.
head -c 8 /dev/urandom | base64
and done. Security can be very simple if you let it.) | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257935",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T15:30:35",
"content": "I enjoy the weekly updates on electronic security fails.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257942",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2020-... | 1,760,373,441.41158 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/double-the-ram-of-a-dreamcast-console-for-a-cool-32-mb/ | Double The RAM Of A Dreamcast Console For A Cool 32 MB | Jenny List | [
"Games"
] | [
"dreamcast",
"ram",
"sega"
] | The Sega Dreamcast is the forgotten orphan of the console wars, an extremely capable machine never able to escape the shadow of its PlayStation rivals and because it marked the end of Sega’s console line, never redeemed in reputation by a more popular successor. It retains a significant following a couple of decades after its heyday though, and still sees hardware hacks such as [Tsowell]’s
doubling of its available RAM to 32 MB
.
The console shipped with 16 MB of memory in two banks, but while the SH4 processor can address twice that figure the designers at Sega never brought the required address line out from under the BGA. So it should be impossible to give it a memory expansion, but when hardware hackers are at work nothing should be ruled out. The hack involves manipulation of the bank switching addressing, and took several careful readings for us to fully understand. The new RAM chips have two address lines tied together and wired to another, a job for some fine but ultimately not impossible soldering. To take advantage of the extra RAM there are a set of patched BIOS images.
So, if you either have a spare Dreamcast you care little enough about to risk, or you consider your console hacking skills to be so advanced that it will be a piece of cake, you can now double the platform’s RAM.
Extra points if you also make it portable
.
Thanks [John Little] for the tip.
Header: Evan-Amos /
CC BY-SA 3.0 | 32 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257859",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T11:12:48",
"content": "“…Dreamcast is the forgotten orphan of the console wars…”Reading CAD, too, I presume? :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257915",
"author":... | 1,760,373,441.561512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/is-anything-really-private-anymore/ | Is Anything Really Private Anymore? | Orlando Hoilett | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"fbi",
"iphone",
"ipod",
"privacy",
"security"
] | In the connected age, every day it appears privacy is becoming more and more of an idealistic fantasy as opposed to a basic human right. In our latest privacy debate per [TechCrunch], apparently the
FBI is taking some shots at Apple
.
You may recall the unfortunate events, leading the FBI to ask Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to a person of interest
. Apple did not capitulate to the FBI’s request on the basis of their fundamental commitment to privacy. The FBI wasn’t really thrilled with Apple’s stance given the circumstances leading to the request. Nevertheless, eventually, the FBI was able to unlock the phone without Apple’s help.
You may find it somewhat interesting that the author of the news piece appears to be more upset with the FBI for cracking the phone than at Apple (and by extension other tech companies) for making phones that are crackable to begin with.
Maybe we should take solace in knowing that Apple stood their ground for the sake of honoring their privacy commitment. But as we saw, it didn’t really matter in the end as the
FBI was able to hire a third party to help them unlock the phones
and were later able to repeat the process in-house. The article also noted that there are other private companies capable of doing exactly what the FBI did.
We understand that no encryption is 100% safe
. So it begs the question, “
Is anything really private anymore?
” Share your thoughts in the comments below. | 53 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257809",
"author": "Midnight",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T08:19:44",
"content": "Wrote an AES265 plugin for social media so you could encrypt your posts in images.Was basically an alternate private layer of the Facebook.. Twitter etc.Only the ones that have your key could read it anc... | 1,760,373,441.497944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/teardown-of-the-singaporean-covid-19-tracetogether-token/ | Teardown Of The Singaporean COVID-19 TraceTogether Token | Maya Posch | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"contact tracing",
"Covid-19",
"SARS-CoV-2"
] | A large part of fighting against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is the practice of contact tracing, where the whereabouts of an infected person can be traced and anyone who has been in contact with that person over the past days tested for COVID-19. While smartphone apps have been a popular choice for this kind of tracing, they come with a range of limitations, which is what the TraceTogether hardware token seeks to circumvent. Now [Sean “Xobs” Cross]
has taken a look at the hardware
that will be inside the token once it launches.
The Simmel COVID-19 contact tracer.
Recently, [Sean] along with
[Andrew “bunnie” Huang]
and a few others were asked by GovTech Singapore to review their TraceTogether hardware token proposal. At its core it’s similar to the
Simmel
contact tracing solution – on which both are also working – with contacts stored locally in the device, Bluetooth communication, and a runtime of a few months or longer on the non-rechargeable batteries.
The tracing protocol used is
BlueTrace
, which is an open application protocol aimed at digital contact tracing. It was developed by the Singaporean government, initially for use with their
TraceTogether mobile app
.
This smartphone app showed a number of issues. First is that Apple does not allow for iOS apps to use Bluetooth in the background, requiring the app to be active in the foreground to be useful. Apple has its own tracing protocol, but it does not cover the requirements for building a full contact graph, as [Andrew]
covers in more detail
. Finally, the app in general is not useful to those who do not have a recent (compatible) smartphone, or who do not have a smartphone at all.
A lot of the challenges in developing these devices lie in making them low-power, while still having the Bluetooth transceiver active often enough to be useful, as well as having enough space to store interactions and the temporary tokens that are used in the tracing protocol. As Simmel and the TraceTogether tokens become available over the coming months, it will be interesting to see how well these predictions worked out. | 63 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257753",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T05:13:23",
"content": "Whatever problems the phone software might have, everyone has one. Nobody has this hardware. Even if given away for free, how would you convince people to carry this with them?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,441.663527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/creating-a-custom-asic-with-the-first-open-source-pdk/ | Creating A Custom ASIC With The First Open Source PDK | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Parts"
] | [
"ASIC",
"foundry",
"google",
"openpdk",
"pdk",
"skywater"
] | A process design kit (PDK) is a by now fairly standard part of any transformation of a new chip design into silicon. A PDK describes how a design maps to a foundry’s tools, which itself are described by a DRM, or design rule manual. The FOSSi foundation
now reports
on a new, open PDK project launched by Google and SkyWater Technology. Although the
OpenPDK project
has been around for a while, it is a closed and highly proprietary system, aimed at manufacturers and foundries.
The
SkyWater Open Source PDK
on Github is listed as a collaboration between Google and SkyWater Technology Foundry to provide a fully open source PDK and related sources. This so that one can create manufacturable designs at the SkyWater foundry, that target the 130 nm node. Open tools here should mean a far lower cost of entry than is usually the case.
Although a quite old process node at this point (~19 years), it should nevertheless still be quite useful for a range of applications, especially those that merge digital and analog circuitry. SkyWater lists their SKY130 node technology stack as:
Support for internal 1.8V with 5.0V I/Os (operable at 2.5V)
1 level of local interconnect
5 levels of metal
Inductor-capable
High sheet rho poly resistor
Optional MiM capacitors
Includes SONOS shrunken cell
Supports 10V regulated supply
HV extended-drain NMOS and PMOS
It should be noted that use of this open source PDK is deemed experimental at this point in time, and should not be used for any commercial or otherwise sensitive applications.
Header image: Peellden/
CC BY-SA 3.0 | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257733",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T02:14:45",
"content": "Damn 130, thought there were academic tools around that could do 22… mind you that’s not so much a kit/IDE, but this tool for that, etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,441.721631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/baby-grand-gets-midi/ | A Baby Grand Gets MIDI | Al Williams | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"baby grand",
"disklavier",
"midi",
"piano"
] | Like a lot of people, [Jacques] doesn’t think a big hunk of plastic light enough to carry under your arm is a piano, even if it does have 88 keys. A piano is supposed to be a hefty piece of furniture that you have to buy people pizza to help you move. So he bought a used baby grand piano. It wasn’t in very good shape, though, so while restoring it, he also
added MIDI to it
. You can see the finished result in the video below.
At $100, the price was right, although it cost more to move it. Between water damage, moth attacks, and storage in a garage, the piano — an old Zimmerman — needed a lot of tender loving care. When it came to MIDI, [Jacques] found a used Disklavier — a very expensive piece of kit — but it didn’t fit the Zimmerman or another piano at hand. The solenoids and optical sensors are set up for a particular piano, so what can you do? Easy! Rebuild the bar that holds the solenoids and sensors.
Doing anything that you have to duplicate 88 times is sure to be a challenge. But it was even worse than that. The keys are tightly and irregularly spaced. The solenoids have to be very closely packed and any error means redoing the whole assembly. Luckily, the new bar design groups the solenoids so you can remove some of them without taking out all of them.
So far, only the output solenoids are working. Reading the keys is future work, but we think that might be easier than what he’s already accomplished. We’ve seen a lot of takes on
pianos
over the years. We’ve even seen the solenoid trick done
on a smaller scale
. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257725",
"author": "Brad",
"timestamp": "2020-06-26T01:22:28",
"content": "Just last week I seen a beautiful baby grand piano on Craigslist in the free section! You can’t even give them away anymore. I’ve already got a piano I don’t play because it’s so out of tune. It’s easier to ... | 1,760,373,441.817491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/excercise-ball-makes-a-passable-landing-gear/ | Excercise Ball Makes A Passable Landing Gear | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"exercise ball",
"flitetest",
"plane"
] | Exercise balls are great for many things, from amusing children to breaking everything in your living room, often in quick succession. After seeing some German WWII prototype aircraft with wild landing gear designs, the [FliteTest] crew decided to see whether they could
use an exercise ball to build a plane ready for even the bumpiest of runways
.
Comparisons to the Gee Bee R-1 abound in the video.
The exercise ball created some constraints on the design, due to its weight and the large amount of drag it creates. To work around this, the design features a foamcore and carbon fibre construction to save weight. The exercise ball is placed front and center, serving as both the nose and landing gear of the aircraft. V-tails are used to place the rear control surfaces outside of the shadow of the ball, to help maintain control authority. Initial tests of the airframe showed handling problems. The team solved this by using a pair of gyro stabiliser boards of their own design,
named Aura
.
With the issues solved, the final aircraft is hilarious to behold. The huge, bouncing ball makes an excellent landing gear, able to launch off lumps and bumps and even skim over water.
We’ve seen [FliteTest] get up to other escapades in the past, too
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!] | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257665",
"author": "mikemac",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T20:34:12",
"content": "Another terrible day at the office, eh?That thing cracks me up! Looks like it could use a tad more power but it’s awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,373,441.775677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/measuring-the-time-is-a-breeze-with-this-air-flow-clock/ | Measuring The Time Is A Breeze With This Air Flow Clock | Dan Maloney | [
"clock hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"arduino",
"blower",
"fan",
"pid",
"pwm",
"rangefinder",
"rtc",
"VL53L1X"
] | If you’ve ever had surgery, and you’re over a certain age, chances are good you’re familiar with the dreaded incentive spirometer. It’s a little plastic device with one or more columns, each of which has a plastic ball in it. The idea is to blow into the thing to float the balls, to ensure that your lungs stay in good shape and reduce the chance of pneumonia.
This unique air-powered clock
reminds us a little of that device, without all the pain.
Like
a spirometer
, [Nir Tasher]’s clock has three calibrated tubes, each big enough to hold a foam ball loosely. At the bottom of each tube is a blower whose motor is under PWM control. A laser rangefinder sits below each ball and measures its height; the measurement is used by a PID loop to control the speed of each fan and thus the height of each ball. The video below shows that the balls are actually pretty steady, making the clock easy to read. It doesn’t, however, reveal what the clock sounds like; we’re going to go out on a limb here and guess that it’s pretty noisy. Still, we think it’s a fantastic way to keep time, and unique in the extreme.
[Nir]’s Air Flow clock is an early entry in
the 2020 Hackaday Prize
, the greatest hardware design contest on Earth. Everyone should enter something, or at least check out
the cool things people are coming up with
. It’s still early in the process, but there are so many neat projects already. What are you waiting for?
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257631",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T19:21:26",
"content": "“If you’ve ever had surgery, and you’re over a certain age, chances are good you’re familiar with the dreaded incentive spirometer.”Well I don’t know about the AND but yes I’m familiar with it.",
"pa... | 1,760,373,441.868029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/old-tech-french-tv-encryption-1980s-style/ | Grey Gear: French TV Encryption, 1980s Style | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Discret11",
"encryption",
"grey gear",
"hbo",
"ntsc",
"pal",
"retrotechtacular",
"scrambled channels",
"SECAM"
] | Who among us didn’t spend some portion of their youth trying in vain to watch a scrambled premium cable TV channel or two? It’s a wonder we didn’t blow out our cones and rods watching those weird colors and wavy lines dance across the screen like a fever dream.
In the early days of national premium television in America, anyone who’d forked over the cash and erected a six-foot satellite dish in the backyard could tune in channels like HBO, Showtime, and the first 24-hour news network, CNN. Fed up with freeloaders, these channels banded together to encrypt their transmissions and force people to buy expensive de-scrambling boxes. On top of that, subscribers had to pay a monthly pittance to keep the de-scrambler working.
In France, the first nationwide cable channel was Canal+, which debuted on November 4th, 1984
. They might have adopted the VideoCipher system used in the States and been done with it, but they couldn’t — VideoCipher was meant for NTSC broadcast systems. French television is broadcast in SÉCAM format, which uses the same frame rate and number of interlaced lines as PAL, but processes the color information differently. Canal+ needed an encryption scheme to match. The system they came up, Discret11, with was simple and effective, but perhaps a little bit short-sighted.
Analog televisions used electron guns to paint the picture on the screen one line at a time very quickly. Discret11 encrypted the Canal+ signal simply by delaying the lines being drawn — filleting the picture by pushing the information off the screen to the right and back-filling it with blackness from the left. The system turned the audio into an unbearable whine by splitting up the signal into two bands and inverting the high and low ends.
Canal+decoder box via
Home Cinema France
Discret11 was named for the 11-bit key that it uses to seed a linear feedback shift register, which in turn computes the delay time for the lines. Subscribers had to enter this key into their decoder box, and Canal+ changed the key every month in an attempt to prevent piracy.
Schematics for a DIY de-scrambler began to be passed around a mere month after the service premiered. Although Canal+ continued on and became quite successful, the Discret11 encryption scheme was phased out by 1995.
Even so, the technology lives on as an artistic medium —
you can buy a newfangled Discret11 encoder
built from a decoder and make your own trippy videos.
Main image via
@htp.syntonie
Got any old tech that you want us to look into?
Send in your ideas for future installments
. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257565",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T17:13:50",
"content": "Oh the memories …I now learn it was such a weak “scrambling”.As a teenager in this era : it was such a gift to the “electronics” field in France ! maybe tens of electronics parts shops would strive from the... | 1,760,373,443.608301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/diy-tv-b-gone-is-a-ok/ | DIY TV-B-Gone Is A-OK | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"ir leds",
"MOSFETS",
"tv-b-gone"
] | Where won’t they put a TV these days? We’ve even seen one creeping behind semi-transparent mirror film in the ladies’ room of a sports bar, though that one didn’t last long. Up until that moment, we had never wished so hard for a TV-B-Gone,
especially one as small and powerful as this DIY version by [Shane]
.
The best thing about [Shane]’s DIY TV-B-Gone is the strength of signal, though the size is nothing to sneeze at. That’s a 10-watt array or IR LEDs out of a security camera, and you can see how much brighter it is than a single IR LED in the video after the break.
Packed inside this minty enclosure is an Arduino Nano, which holds all the TV power-off codes known to hackers and fires them off in quick succession. [Shane] salvaged a MOSFET from an electronic speed controller to drive that LED array, and there’s a voltage booster board to raise the 3.7V lithium battery to 5V. [Shane] hasn’t really had the chance to test this out in public what with the global pandemic and all, but was able to verify a working distance of 40 feet inside the house.
Don’t care for such a raw look? Hide your zapper inside a toy,
like this sonic screwdriver version
. | 49 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257534",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T15:48:39",
"content": "Can someone make a Car-Audio-B-Gone?I press the button and all aftermarket Pioneer/Sony radios in loud cars be gone?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "62... | 1,760,373,443.862037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/ditching-x86-apple-starts-an-arm-race/ | Ditching X86, Apple Starts An ARM Race | Lewin Day | [
"ARM",
"Featured",
"Mac Hacks",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"architecture",
"arm",
"mac",
"macbook",
"x86"
] | At its annual World Wide Developer Conference, Apple dropped many jaws when announcing that
their Mac line will be switching away from Intel processors before the year is out
. Intel’s x86 architecture is the third to grace Apple’s desktop computer products, succeeding PowerPC and the Motorola 68000 family before it.
In its place will be Apple’s own custom silicon, based on 64-bit ARM architecture. Apple are by no means the first to try and bring ARM chips to bear for general purpose computing, but can they succeed where others have failed?
ARM – A Long Road To The Top
Apple’s Newton PDA was one of the first applications of the ARM processor outside Acorn’s failed computer business.
The
ARM processor was created by Acorn Computers in the distant past of 1983
, with the name originally standing for Acorn RISC Machine. Using Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) techniques, the resulting chips used fewer transistors than classical CISC designs, and used less power as a result. Developed for Acorn’s computer line, later chips also found a home in Apple’s Newton PDA, as far back as 1992. However, as Acorn’s computer business faltered, the technology was largely forgotten from the mainstream.
Despite this, the underlying technology was sound. Spending most of the next two decades languishing in obscurity, the ARM architecture hit its stride when smartphones hit the scene. Devices required plenty of processing power while maintaining great battery life; the ARM was just the tool for the job. Fast forward to today,
and ARM chips power 95% of the world’s smartphones.
The iPad featured Apple’s first system-on-chip (SoC) designed in-house.
When Apple’s iPhone revolutionized the way we all thought about phones, it was packing a 32-bit ARM processor sourced from Samsung. As Apple’s continued to release new mobile hardware they were
acquiring companies and talent to expand the company’s silicon design capabilities
. In 2010, Apple took a major step forward with the A4. The first System-on-Chip designed in-house by Apple, it was an ARM Cortex-A8 manufactured by Samsung to power the iPad and iPhone 4. This was just the beginning, with Apple continuing to build on this success with each following generation of tablets and smartphones.
After years of being beholden to outside companies for its CPUs, Apple was finally in charge of its own destiny – on mobile platforms, at least. Its desktop and laptop computers had benefited from the switch to Intel’s x86 chips in 2006. However, working with outside partners necessarily has drawbacks, and with over a decade of experience at designing its own chips, Apple no longer considered it worthwhile. The announcement makes it clear that the official transition
will take place over a two-year period,
with Intel-based machines being supported for some time afterwards. But the writing is now on the wall over at Apple — x86 is dead, long live ARM.
The Switch
Changing processor architecture is a major decision that can affect the entire viability of a platform. In bringing ARM to the desktop, Apple will be looking to succeed where others have failed. However, if past performance is any predictor of future results, they’re well placed to pull off the switch.
Historically, ARM has struggled for a foothold in
computer
computers — laptops, desktops and the like. A simplistic look might suggest this bodes poorly, but digging deeper, it’s clear that’s not the case. Acorn’s failure in the very beginning was more due to a minnow attempting to launch a new platform in the shadow of IBM’s dominance. In modern times it’s the operating systems and software that have impeded ARM’s progress, but that’s beginning to change.
More recently, Microsoft has launched Windows on lightweight notebooks powered by ARM chips. In doing so, they have tried to create a second Windows ecosystem compiled for ARM instead of x86. These versions of Windows can’t run apps compiled for x86, requiring developers to change their software to suit to take ARM architecture into account. Due to a low install base, very few developers have bothered to build apps for the platform. At the same time, due to the lack of apps, it’s very difficult to increase the install base.
The chicken and the egg.
Apple shouldn’t face the same problem, for the simple reason that they’re converting over their entire ecosystem over just two short years. Developers won’t be forced to create two versions of every app for the foreseeable future, hoping that the work done to create ARM versions pays off. Instead, they have the choice to switch over to ARM and go forward with a smile on their faces, or be locked out of Apple’s future desktop offerings. Casual users will barely notice, simply downloading the latest version of whatever software they already use,
with Apple’s Rosetta 2 emulator filling in legacy gaps here and there.
The Developer Transition Kit packs Apple’s new ARM chip into a Mac mini enclosure to help developers transition to the new platform.
The hardest hit by this announcement will be developers of Mac software. Existing software for the x86 OS X platform will need to be modified to run on ARM instead, or else make do with Apple’s emulation tools in the meantime. To ease this process, Apple are providing access to development hardware ahead of time for interested parties, similar to the path they took with the previous switch to x86. Long having held an iron grip on their platform, Apple have spent the last two decades investing heavily in development tools and their own programming language. This has allowed them to lay the groundwork to make the switch as painless as possible. While it’s unlikely the transition will be as simple as
clicking a checkbox and hitting the compile button
, the necessary tools are already ready to go.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the switch is that the Mac line will now run the same architecture as the iPad and iPhone. This means that apps will be able to run across all devices, opening up new possibilities for developers. Formerly mobile-only apps will run natively on Mac, without requiring recompilation. Obviously developers will make tweaks to interfaces and other such changes to suit the desktop environment. However, the broader problem of creating separate applications for the desktop and mobile realms will largely be a thing of the past in Apple’s world.
Conclusion
While such a major change can seem fraught, by all appearances, Apple couldn’t be better placed to make the switch. With a huge installed base already running Apple silicon, and with ARM computers mere months away, we suspect the transition should be fairly straightforward. Power users and those with complex edge cases will feel some friction, but for the vast majority of Mac users, the journey into the land of ARM will likely be smooth sailing. | 160 | 41 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257495",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T14:16:54",
"content": "“Long having held an iron grip on their platform, Apple have spent the last two decades investing heavily in development tools and their own programming language. This has allowed them to lay the groundw... | 1,760,373,444.140093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/building-and-flying-a-helicopter-with-a-virtual-swashplate/ | Building And Flying A Helicopter With A Virtual Swashplate | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"collective",
"cyclic",
"drone",
"flight",
"helicopter",
"quadcopter",
"rotary wing",
"Swashplate"
] | They say that drummers make the best helicopter pilots, because to master the controls of rotary-wing aircraft, you really need to be able to do something different with each limb and still have all the motions coordinate with each other. The control complexity is due to the mechanical complexity of the swashplate, which translates control inputs into both collective and cyclical changes in the angle of attack of the rotor blades.
As [Tom Stanton] points out in his latest video,
a swashplate isn’t always needed
. Multicopters dispense with the need for one by differentially controlling four or more motors to provide roll, pitch, and yaw control. But thanks to a doctoral thesis he found, it’s also possible to control a traditional single-rotor helicopter by substituting flexible rotor hinges and precise motor speed control for the swashplate.
You only need to watch the slow-motion videos to see what’s happening: as the motor speed is varied within a single revolution, the tips of the hinged rotor blades lead and lag the main shaft in controlled sections of the cycle. The hinge is angled, which means the angle of attack of each rotor blade changes during each rotation — exactly what the swashplate normally accomplishes. As you can imagine, modulating the speed of a motor within a single revolution when it’s spinning at 3,000 RPM is no mean feat, and [Tom] goes into some detail on that in
a follow-up video
on his second channel.
It may not replace quadcopters anytime soon, but we really enjoyed the lesson in rotor-wing flight. [Tom] always does a great job of explaining things, whether it’s
the Coandă effect
or
anti-lock brakes for a bike
. | 33 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257463",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T11:15:21",
"content": "at a certain point: Physics dark magic",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257536",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T... | 1,760,373,444.207375 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/audiomoth-the-proverbial-moth-on-the-wall/ | AudioMoth: The Proverbial Moth On The Wall | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"audiomoth",
"environmental recording",
"μMoth"
] | Monitoring environmental sounds is perhaps not a common task, but much like with wildlife cameras, we could learn a lot from an always-on device listening in on Mother Nature. The
AudioMoth
is one of such devices. Although it has been around for a few years, it is notable for being an
open platform
, with the full Eagle-based hardware design files, BOM and firmware available, as well as NodeJS- and Electron-based utility software.
The AudioMoth is powered by a Silicon Labs EFM32-based MCU (
EFM32WG980F256
) with a Cortex-M4 core, 256 kB of Flash and 32 kB of SRAM. Using the onboard MEMS microphone it records both audible and ultrasonic frequencies that are written in uncompressed WAV format to the SD card. This makes it capable of capturing the sounds from bats in an area in addition to the calls of birds and other wildlife.
The AudioMoth has also a micro-sized, low-cost version called the
μMoth
, which shares the same features as the AudioMoth. This project is still in progress, with updates expected later this year.
Although the AudioMoth device can apparently be bought from sites like LabMaker for $74 at this point, it should be noted that the MCU used on the device is listed as ‘NRND’ (not recommended for new designs) by SiLabs, which may complicate building one in a number of years from now. Or at least you’ll have to substitute in a different microcontroller.
Regardless, it does seem like an interesting starting point for wildlife monitoring, whether one simply wants to build a device like this, or to use it as inspiration for one’s own design. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257460",
"author": "ArduinoEnigma",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T11:02:18",
"content": "#1 PCB design pet peeve. Tent those vias.https://hackaday.io/project/27257-fritzing-tricks/log/148636-tented-vias",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,373,443.665661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/rotary-phone-takes-you-around-the-world-and-through-time-with-music/ | Rotary Phone Takes You Around The World And Through Time – With Music | Sven Gregori | [
"Phone Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arduino",
"chrome extension",
"python",
"radio",
"rotary dial",
"rotary phone",
"web radio",
"world map"
] | Purposely choosing obsoleted technology combines all the joy of simpler times with the comfort of knowing you’re not actually stuck with outdated (and oftentimes inferior) technology. The rotary phone is a great example here, and while rarely anyone would want to go back to the lenghty, error-prone way of dialing a number on it on an everyday basis, it can definitely add a certain charm to a project. [Caroline Buttet] thought so as well,
and turned her grandma’s old rotary phone into a time-traveling, globe-trotting web radio
.
The main idea is fairly simple: a Raspberry Pi connects via browser to
a web radio site
that plays music throughout the decades from places all over the world. [Caroline]’s implementation has a few nice twists added though. First of all, the phone of course, which doesn’t only house the Raspberry Pi, but serves both as actual listening device via handset speaker, and as input device to select the decade with the rotary dial. For a headless setup, she wrote a Chromium extension that maps key events to virtual clicks on the corresponding DOM element of the web site — like the ones that change the decade — and a Python script that turns the rotary dial pulses into those key events.
However, the phone is only half the story here, and the country selection is just as fascinating — which involves an actual world map. An audio connector is attached to each selectable country and connected to an Arduino. If the matching jack is plugged into it, the Arduino informs the Raspberry Pi via serial line about the new selection, and the same Chromium extension then triggers the country change in the underlying web site. You can check all the code in
the project’s GitHub repository
, and watch a demo and brief explanation in the videos after the break.
Sure, listening radio through a telephone may not be the most convenient way —
unless it’s the appropriate genre
— but that clearly wasn’t the goal here anyway. It’s definitely an interesting concept, and we could easily see it transferred to some travel- or spy-themed escape room setting. And speaking of spying, if [Caroline]’s name sounds familiar to you, you may remember
her virtual peephole
from a few months back. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257419",
"author": "UnderSampled",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T05:59:29",
"content": "Seems like a great addition to an Escape Room, especially when you consider how apparently puzzling it is for people who’ve never seen one used before to dial one — conditioned as we all now are to e... | 1,760,373,443.712512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/intel-says-nanowire-and-nanoribbon-in-volume-in-five-years/ | Intel Says Nanowire And NanoRibbon In Volume In Five Years | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"finfet",
"intel",
"nanoribbon",
"nanowire"
] | Intel’s CTO says the company will eventually abandon CMOS technology that has been a staple of IC fabrication for decades. The replacement?
Nanowire and nanoribbon structures
. In traditional IC fabrication, FETs form by doping a portion of the silicon die and then depositing a gate structure on top of an insulating layer parallel to the surface of the die. FinFET structures started appearing about a decade ago, in which the transistor channel rises above the die surface and the gate wraps around these raised “fins.” These transistors are faster and have a higher current capacity than comparable CMOS devices.
However, the pressure of producing more and more sophisticated ICs will drive the move away from even the FinFET. By creating the channel in multiple flat sheets or multiple wires the gate can surround the channel on all sides leading to even better performance. It also allows finer tuning of the transistor characteristics.
Of course, another goal of these nanostructures is density. With the fin topology, one section of the channel remains bound to the die. With the nanoribbon or wire structure, it as if the fin is floating and this allows the gate to surround the channel.
We’ve seen a lot of work on
nanowires
lately. New structures and new
materials
will lead to devices that far exceed the performance of what we have today. | 33 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257396",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T02:38:41",
"content": "Now if only they could avoid side-channel attacks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257400",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-0... | 1,760,373,443.784205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/3d-printed-tools-make-circuit-sculpture-a-little-easier/ | 3D-Printed Tools Make Circuit Sculpture A Little Easier | Dan Maloney | [
"Art",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"artwork",
"Circuit Sculpture",
"soldering"
] | Having the tools needed to do a job is a powerful thing. Having the tools needed to make more tools for doing cool things is even better, though, and that’s where [Jiří Praus] took things with
this 3D-printed jig for making his blooming tulip circuit sculpture
.
If you haven’t seen [Jiří]’s tulip, check out
our coverage
from back when he first built it. The brass wire and tube mechanism and some clever linkages let a single servo open the Neopixel-adorned petals at a touch. But what started as a one-off romantic gesture for his wife on Valentine’s Day became something more, and what was a labor of love turned into just labor very quickly. [Jiří]’s solution, explained in the brief video below, is a 3D-printed jig that holds all the wires that form the tulip petals locked into position. The wire that defines the spine of the petal goes into a groove and gets held down with removable clips. The edge wires are held by rotating clips, and the veins of the petals just lay in place in grooves. The area around each joint is hollowed out so [Jiří] can solder easily without melting the plastic jig.
The best part comes at the end, when it’s time to release the completed petal. For that, a tool with pins that looks a little like a hedgehog is inserted from below, and pins that fit into each joint’s hole pop the finished petal off. We can see how this tool would greatly increase the production of his tulips, so if that’s his goal, he’s on track.
If you’re into circuit sculpture, you’re in the right place. Check out
[Mohit Bhoite]’s Supercon talk
on the subject, or
some more of the tools
[Jiří] has come up with to improve his art.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/jir-praus.mp4 | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257364",
"author": "voidnill",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T23:33:41",
"content": "Ok, this is really the most beautiful 3D project/Tool I have seen so far. The idea is so simple and genius.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6257373"... | 1,760,373,443.952885 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/hacker-turns-thermal-clacker-into-usb-keyboard/ | Hacker Turns Thermal Clacker Into USB Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"baby wedge",
"Cypress PSOC",
"PSoC 5",
"thermal typewriter",
"typewriter",
"usb keyboard",
"word processor"
] | Back before there were laptops and subsequently, netbooks, there were these adorable thermal typewriter/word processors that are lovingly referred to by their fans as baby wedges or wedgies. These fascinating little machines can put words on paper two different ways: you can either use a prohibitively expensive little ribbon cartridge and regular copy paper, or you can go the easy route and get yourself a 96′ roll of thermal fax paper and type until you feel like tearing off the page.
[David] was lucky enough to pick up a Canon S-70 in working condition for next to nothing, thinking it would make an awesome USB keyboard
, and we agree. The PSoC 5 that now controls it may be overkill, but it’s pretty affordable, and it was right there on the desk just waiting for a purpose. And bonus — it has enough I/O for
all of those loud and lovely keyswitches
.
One thing that keeps these baby wedges within the typewriter camp is the Shift Lock function, which can only be disengaged by pressing Shift and had its own discrete logic circuitry on the board before he was forced to remove it.
That little screen is pure word processor and was used to show the typing buffer — all the characters you have a chance to correct before the print head commits them to paper. In a win for word processors everywhere, the screen was repurposed to show the current word count.
He was kind enough to
post his firmware
as well as real-time footage of the build. Watch him demo it in the wild after the break, and then stick around for part one of the build saga.
Portable word processors were still being made ten years ago, though they were mostly aimed at the primary school market as keyboarding trainers.
Our own [Tom Nardi] recently did a teardown of a model called The Writer that relies on IR to send files
. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257335",
"author": "BaldPower",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T21:10:30",
"content": "Nice. Hope some conver a IBM Selectric",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257450",
"author": "eternityforest",
"timestamp": "2020-0... | 1,760,373,443.909559 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/sentry-water-gun-relies-on-lidar/ | Sentry Water Gun Relies On LIDAR | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"sentry",
"sentry gun",
"water gun"
] | As we head into summer, Super Soakers and their ilk become de rigeur ways to cool off in the heat. Not content with chasing targets himself,
[Marcel] instead built a sentry water gun to do his bidding
.
The build is one that leverages typical 3D printer components to get the job done. A Minitronics 2.0 board is used to run the show, packing a 40 MHz SAMD21 microcontroller for plenty of grunt. It’s Arduino compatible too, making it easy to program. It’s combined with NEMA17 and NEMA23 steppers and an external driver board to slew the gun towards a target. Target detection is via a RPLIDAR A1, which detects the range of nearby objects. This data is used to calculate the pan angle and tilt required to hit the target with a stream of water, fired by a relay-controlled solenoid.
It’s a fun build that does a good job of soaking those playing by the pool. [Marcel] aims to do further work to improve performance by reducing backlash and increasing slew speed.
Sentry guns are a forever popular build around these parts.
Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFVZ-LVM_vs | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257378",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-06-25T00:46:58",
"content": "That’s just what I need to keep the birds from eating my grass seed. Gets rid of the birds and waters the lawn at the same time ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,373,443.411535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/whats-the-deal-with-snap-packages/ | What’s The Deal With Snap Packages? | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"apt",
"canonical",
"distribution",
"linux",
"snap",
"ubuntu"
] | Who would have thought that software packaging software would cause such a hubbub? But such is the case with snap. Developed by Canonical as a faster and easier way to get the latest versions of software installed on Ubuntu systems, the software has ended up starting a fiery debate in the larger Linux community. For the more casual user, snap is just a way to get the software they want as quickly as possible. But for users concerned with the ideology of free and open source software, it’s seen a dangerous step towards the types of proprietary “walled gardens” that may have drove them to Linux in the first place.
Perhaps the most vocal opponent of snap, and certainly the one that’s got the most media attention, is Linux Mint.
In a June 1st post on the distribution’s official blog
, Mint founder Clement Lefebvre made it very clear that the Ubuntu spin-off does not approve of the new package format and wouldn’t include it on base installs. Further, he announced that Mint 20 would actively block users from installing the snap framework through the package manager. It can still be installed manually, but this move is seen as a way to prevent it from being added to the system without the user’s explicit consent.
The short version of Clement’s complaint is that the snap packager installs from a proprietary Canonical-specific source. If you want to distribute snaps, you have to set up an account with Canonical and host it there. While the underlying software is still open source, the snap packager breaks with long tradition of having the distribution of the software also being open and free. This undoubtedly makes the install simple for naive users, and easier to maintain for Canonical maintainers, but it also takes away freedom of choice and diversity of package sources.
One Package to Rule them All
To understand the situation, we should probably take a step back and look at what snaps actually are. Put simply, they are a containerized software packages that include libraries the given program requires to run. The idea is that developers could release a single snap that would work on essentially any modern Linux system, rather than having to create distribution specific packages. In theory this saves time and effort on the developer’s part, and makes sure that even users of more niche distributions can get access to the software they want.
Naturally, there are downsides to distributing software like this. For one, a snap package will always be larger than a traditional package for the same program, as all the dependencies need to be shipped with it. Since many programs will naturally have the same dependencies, this means a system with many snaps installed will be needlessly wasting storage space on redundant data. Although when even entry level systems are now including terabyte hard drives, this is perhaps not as much of a concern as it would have been in years past.
Mounted snap packages on a default Ubuntu 20.04 install.
Snap packages also tend to be slower to run, in part because they are actually compressed filesystem images that need to be mounted before they can be executed. Some users find this element to be especially annoying from a system maintenance standpoint, as every snap package you install will actually show up as a mounted filesystem.
There’s actually been some talk about adding a special flag to mounted snap packages so that common tools like
mount
or
lsblk
won’t show them, but obviously that leads to its own problems. After all, there’s value in being able to determine just how much of your disk space they’re taking up.
For example, let’s take a look at how the snap package for a common tool compares to installing it directly:
As you can see, the difference is substantial. If we download
youtube-dl
directly from the developer’s website, the script only takes up 1.7 MB on disk. But the snap package of the same program weighs in at an incredible 91 MB. It’s clear how this problem would be compounded as more snaps are installed.
That being said, there’s undoubtedly demand for this sort of “universal” Linux package. Enough that there are at least two other competing approaches which operate under similar principles, Flatpak and AppImage.
The Chromium Debacle
From a system resource standpoint, containerized packages clearly aren’t ideal. On the other hand, many would be more than happy to take the performance hit if it meant they had access to the latest versions of popular programs without having to wait for them to arrive in their distribution’s native package repository. Users should be free to decide for themselves which route they want to take based on their personal needs.
Which is what makes Canonical’s handling of the Chromium package in Ubuntu 20.04 so troubling. Let’s take a close look at what happens when you attempt to install it through
apt
:
While we asked the system to install the native package, what we actually receive is the snap. The user is given no choice, no warning. If they weren’t paying close enough attention, they wouldn’t even realize what happened. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, this is subversion.
To be sure, there are valid reasons that Canonical would want to distribute Chromium as a snap. Rather than building versions for each supported release of Ubuntu, they can push out
a single snap that will work on all of them
. This is especially true of older LTS (Long Term Support) Ubuntu releases, which might otherwise be stuck on an older version of the browser due to outdated system libraries.
By using this “stealth” installation method for the Chromium snap, they can ensure that the process is as streamlined and painless as possible for their users. Indeed, the majority would likely not even notice the change over happened.
But for those that did notice, it’s a huge deal. Many users left proprietary operating systems specifically to get away from this sort of behavior. These people want to be the arbiter of their own computer, and don’t take kindly to important decisions being made on their behalf without even so much as a warning they’re happening. These are the users that Clement Lefebvre had in mind when he promised future versions of Mint would never install snap packages without prior consent.
Snap to the Future
While
Canonical is no stranger to walking back on unpopular decisions
, snap packages are almost certainly here to stay. The logistical advantages of containerized packages are simply too great when your whole company is structured around providing support for multiple versions of a Linux distribution. Conversely, the users who have strong feelings on snaps will inevitably be a small (if vocal) minority. Canonical designed snaps to be the solution to the unique challenges of maintaining a huge and multi-faceted distribution like Ubuntu, and it’s working exactly as intended.
That said, it seems unlikely that snap packages will be embraced by the larger Linux community. Currently, the repository back-end is actually proprietary. While Canonical does allow for companies to
create “branded” versions of the Snap Store
, it’s just a cosmetic change and doesn’t allow you to run your own server. So even if another distribution such as Mint decided to embrace the snap package format, they would have to rely on Canonical to provide the infrastructure for distributing the packages to their users. This single point of failure is bound to be a point of contention for adoption outside of Ubuntu itself. | 151 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257253",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T17:15:51",
"content": "Snaps make zero sense for small apps and single apps, but they make more sense for bigger things, like e.g. I use the Nextcloud Snap. I could, of course, install all the requisites manually and configure... | 1,760,373,444.389082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/macros-for-a-mazda/ | Macros For A Mazda | Kristina Panos | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"android",
"android auto",
"black pill",
"head unit",
"macro",
"macros",
"steering wheel",
"STM32F103C8T6"
] | [Arik Yavilevich] recently upgraded his second-gen Mazda’s control console, going from the stock busy box to an Android head unit that does it all on a nice big touchscreen. It can also take input from the handy steering wheel buttons — these are a great option for keeping your eyes on the road and occasionally startling your unsuspecting passengers when the radio station suddenly changes.
The only problem is that [Arik]’s stock steering wheel doesn’t have any media-specific buttons on it. After a short trip to the junkyard, [Arik] had a fancier wheel to go along with the new head unit.
[Arik] doesn’t use cruise control, and those particular buttons can’t be hooked up with reprogramming the car’s computer, so
he made them into macro buttons that control the head unit
over Bluetooth, using an STM32 black pill board stashed in the glove box.
[Arik] found out that the cruise control buttons don’t ride the CAN bus — they use a resistor ladder/voltage divider and go directly into the ECU. After that it was mostly a matter of finding the right wires and then cutting and re-routing them to make the buttons work on the ACC setting as well as ON. A brief demo video is idling after the break.
Have an old smart phone lying around? Of course you do. Why not
make your own head unit?
Props to [Hedgehog] for the tip! | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257002",
"author": "Htf",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T21:44:38",
"content": "I have one of those Android radios on my motorhome and there is a kit with 2 five button remotes that can be programmed to control different functions of the radio. They are powered by a coin cell each and co... | 1,760,373,444.776167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/building-a-scooter-exhaust-from-scrap-metal/ | Building A Scooter Exhaust From Scrap Metal | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"exhaust",
"metalwork",
"metalworking",
"scooter"
] | When a part on a vehicle fails, oftentimes the response is to fit a new one fresh out the box. However, sometimes, whether by necessity or simply for the love of it, it’s possible to handcraft a solution instead. [Samodel] does just that when
whipping up a new exhaust for his scooter out of scrap metal
.
It’s a great example of classic backyard metalworking techniques. The flange is recreated using a cardboard template rubbed on the exhaust port, with the residual oil leaving a clear impression. Hard work with a grinder and drill get things started, with an insane amount of filing to finish the piece off nicely. A properly tuned pipe is then sketched out on the computer, and a paper template created. These templates are cut out of an old fridge to create the main muffler section.
There’s plenty of other hacks, too – from quick and dirty pipe bends to handy sheet forming techniques. It’s not the first time we’ve seen great metalworking with scrap material, either. Video after the break.
[Thanks to BrendaEM for the tip] | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256921",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T18:52:09",
"content": "I often wonder what it would take to make a quieter muffler for my small engines, (without sacrificing engine power).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,373,444.558437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/ask-hackaday-is-our-power-grid-smart-enough-to-know-when-theres-no-power/ | Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough To Know When There’s No Power? | Jenny List | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Engineering",
"Slider"
] | [
"power grid",
"power outage",
"smart meter",
"time domain reflectometer"
] | Just to intensify the feeling of impending zombie apocalypse of the COVID-19 lockdown in the British countryside where I live, we had a power cut. It’s not an uncommon occurrence here at the end of a long rural power distribution network, and
being prepared for a power outage is something I wrote about a few years ago
. But this one was a bit larger than normal and took out much more than just our village. I feel very sorry for whichever farmer in another village managed to collide with an 11kV distribution pole.
What pops to mind for today’s article is the topic of outage monitoring. When plunged into darkness we all wonder if the power company knows about it. The most common reaction must be: “of course the power company knows the power is out, they’re the ones making it!”. But this can’t be the case as for decades, public service announcements have urge us to report power cuts right away.
In our very modern age, will the grid become smart enough to know when, and perhaps more importantly where, there are power cuts? Let’s check some background before throwing the question to you in the comments below.
A Power Cut On A Sunny Afternoon
In the aftermath I was discussing it among my neighbours, and a difference of opinion emerged over whether our electricity provider has automatic monitoring of their network or whether we need to call a fault in.
We really have reached the end of the line.
It seems the power company operators had issued the advice that there was no monitoring, but my mind had gone back to a summer afternoon in the mid 1990s. Our then neighbour was a lifelong farmer with decades of conjuring a decent yield from the unforgiving heavy Oxfordshire clay behind him, but that was not his lucky day. The long CB whip antenna on the roof of one of his machines touched the village’s 11kV supply line, and our power went out. I never saw what it did to the unfortunate CB transceiver, but I remember him talking about his surprise as when he reached the farmhouse to call it in he found the electricity people calling him instead. Their monitoring equipment had detected the fault and narrowed it down to his property.
But the power people here in 2020 told my current neighbour we have none, and it’s obvious both can’t be true. It’s most likely that they have it on some circuits but not others, but that guess doesn’t really put the whole question to bed.
It’s easy to be certain that there is no power monitoring equipment on any of the poles in our village, by simply looking at them and seeing no untoward equipment in place. We’re in the midst of a nationwide rollout of smart meters so it’s possible that if any of our neighbours have one it might have called home over the cellular data network and alerted their operators to the loss of power. But since the rollout is optional and there is no compulsion on a consumer to have one it’s by no means certain that there are any in the village. It’s thus safe to assume that any power monitoring equipment is centralised rather than distributed. And with that it’s a reasonable guess that some form of time-domain reflectometry would be in use.
Bouncing Pulses Along Your Power Lines
Time domain reflectometry demonstrated on the bench, with the original pulse on the left of the screen and its reflection on the right. Constant314 /
CC0
Time domain reflectometry is an extremely simple process that relies on the property of a traveling waveform to bounce off the end of a transmission line and be reflected back to its originator. It’s a standard lab experiment for electronic engineering students that can easily be replicated with a pulse generator, a coil of cable, and an oscilloscope. Adjust the ‘scope to see the end of the generated pulse, and there a short time later will be its reflection. The time between the end of the sent pulse and the arrival of the reflection is the time it has taken to travel the length of the cable and back again, so from that the length of the cable can be calculated.
Since the pulse will reflect from any faults, the distance to the fault can also be worked out. Once the breaker has been triggered by the fault the electricity company can measure the distance, and send out a repair team to fix it. That’s exactly how an El Segundo steam plant
located a fault in ten miles of buried cable
.
So goes the theory, but something tells me that even with state-of-the-art equipment it is unlikely to be that simple. For example, is our 11kV power distribution to the 230V transformer in the village a linear one in which a succession of farms and groups of houses as it gets further from the substation tap in with their own transformers, or is it a branched topology in which the line splits, and splits again? Time domain reflectometry would be useless when there are multiple ends of the line. Is the only way to deal with that by waiting for a human (or a smart meter) to phone home?
I’m told mains electricity finally arrived in this village in the 1950s, so I am fortunate to be of a generation for whom it has always been there. It’s so much part of the scenery that we don’t really notice it and certainly don’t appreciate the effort that must lie behind it, so I’m slightly ashamed as an electronic engineer that I don’t know more about its technology. Power engineers, now is your time to shine, and tell us something about your art!
Satisfy my curiosity, Hackaday, what’s the current State of the Art when it comes to automatic power distribution system monitoring? Share your stories in the comments below. | 63 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256856",
"author": "Chr E",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T17:12:43",
"content": "11 KV into a radio? That must have gone bang.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256927",
"author": "Moryc",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T1... | 1,760,373,444.657898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/chaotic-oscillator-from-antique/ | Chaotic Oscillator From Antique Logic | Bryan Cockfield | [
"hardware"
] | [
"chaotic",
"circuit",
"led",
"logic",
"oscillator",
"random",
"resistor-transistor",
"RTL",
"transistor"
] | While working on recreating an “ancient” (read: 60-year-old) logic circuit type known as resistor-transistor logic, [Tim] stumbled across a circuit with an unexpected oscillation. The oscillation appeared to be random and had a wide range of frequency values. Not one to miss out on a serendipitous moment,
he realized that the circuit he built could be used as a chaotic oscillator
.
Chaotic systems can be used for, among other things, random number generation, so making sure that they do not repeat in a reliable way is a valuable property of a circuit. [Tim]’s design uses LEDs in series with the base of each of three transistors, with the output of each transistor feeding into the input of the next transistor in line, forming a ring. At certain voltages close to the switching voltages of the transistors, the behavior of the circuit changes unpredictably both in magnitude and frequency.
Building real-life systems that exhibit true randomness or chaotic behavior are surprisingly rare, and even things which seem random are often not random enough for certain applications. [Tim]’s design benefits from being relatively simple and inexpensive for how chaotic it behaves, and if you want to see his detailed analysis of the circuit be sure to visit his project’s page.
If you want to get your chaos the old fashioned way, with a Chua circuit,
look out for counterfeit multipliers
. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256824",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T15:59:13",
"content": "The cropped title photo (for the blog) doesn’t show the transistors, so I started reading to find out how LEDs, resistors, and a capacitor was causing the oscillations.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,373,444.723078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/usb-c-is-taking-over-when-exactly/ | USB-C Is Taking Over… When, Exactly? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Rants"
] | [
"USB C",
"USB Type-C",
"USB-PD"
] | USB is one of the most beloved computer interfaces of all time. Developed in the mid-1990s, it undertook a slow but steady march to the top. Offering an interface with good speeds and a compact connector, it became the standard for hooking up interface devices, storage, and even became the de-facto way to talk old-school serial, too.
In late 2014, the USB Implementers Forum finalised the standard for the USB-C plug. Its first major application was on smartphones like the Nexus 5X, and it has come to dominate the smartphone market, at least if you leave aside the iPhone. However, it’s yet to truly send USB-A packing, especially on the desktop. What gives?
Peripherals Are Where It’s At
USB-C peripherals are hard to find, but they are out there. They’re primarily aimed at the laptop market, as desktops lag in implementing USB-C.
Fundamentally, it all comes down to peripherals. Even in 2020, the average computer comes with a bunch of classic USB-A ports, sometimes 10 or more on a well-provisioned desktop. Meanwhile, it’s still possible to buy laptops that come without a single USB-C port. If the average user were to pick up a new keyboard off-the-shelf, and got it home to find a USB-C connector, they’d be completely out of luck – and likely quite furious. Manufacturers simply haven’t adapted their product lines to the future of USB-C yet. Thus, for the meantime, commodity peripherals – keyboards, mice, and the like – will all continue to ship with classic USB-A connectors.
There’s also the problem of compatibility. For example, the Intel® NUC NUC8i7HVK is a compact computing system that packs a full 11 USB ports. There are five USB 3 ports (type A), two USB 3.1g2 ports (type A), two USB 3.1G2 ports (type C), and two more USB 3.1g2 ports that also support Thunderbolt 3 (type C).
Flash drives are actually a solved problem. SanDisk have been shipping drives with both connectors for several years now, and as a bonus, they can plug straight into your smartphone for added storage.
This leads to a situation where a user can plug in devices to ports that fit, but don’t support the hardware attached. For example, a Thunderbolt to HDMI connector will fit in either type C port, but only work in the two that support Thunderbolt. It’s an absolute headache for even experienced users, most of whom don’t have the time to memorize a multitude of arcane specifications and what ports support which interfaces. Colour coding and labels help, but fundamentally, it’s a backwards step from the old world where you plugged in to a USB port, and things just worked.
Even in the smartphone world, where USB-C made its beachhead, things remain uncertain. The new standard allows for higher current and higher voltages, allowing charging to happen faster than ever. However,
not all USB-C cables are up to the job
, with many omitting several lines or components necessary to enable this operation. Having a single connector used for both data and charging is handy, but it has fragmented the market into “data-only” and “data and charging” USB-C cables. What’s more, laptops can use the Power Delivery standard too, again creating an even higher grade of USB-C cable that can handle up to 100 W.
To the uninitiated, these all look the same. It takes a solid understanding of hardware and electronics to be able to tease out the different capabilities of each. The standards are so confusing,
even the Raspberry Pi foundation got things wrong at their first attempt.
Regardless, the hardware community continues to adapt. Hackers fly to a good supply of power like moths to a flame, and we’ve seen many mods taking advantage of the USB-PD standard.
USB soldering irons are now common,
and
others have put it to the job of recharging batteries.
We’re also beginning to see staples take up the cause, with Arduino boards starting to sprout
with the new connector in place.
It’s clear that the community is ready for the new standard, even if the industry is yet to catch up.
One Real Solution – Give Us The Ports!
An ASUS gaming motherboard launched in late 2019 – featuring just one USB-C port.
Realistically, peripheral manufacturers aren’t going to start making keyboards and mice with USB C connectors just yet. With laptops having one or two ports at best, often with one usually needed for charging, it’s simply unworkable. The desktop scene is worse, with even high-end motherboards often featuring just one USB-C connector. With a normal setup usually involving a keyboard, mouse, webcam, and often a headset, too, one cable is simply nowhere near enough.
Hubs, dongles and adapters are worst-case workarounds, not a way of life. Instead, to move forward is going to require commitment on the part of hardware companies. Laptops and desktops need to start shipping with three or more USB-C ports, and slowly reduce the number of USB-A ports, if we are to see a transition to a singular connector ecosystem. Once there’s an installed base, it won’t take long for factories to switch over to shipping hardware with a USB-C connector on the end instead. Legacy computers will then be able to get by with adapters from USB-A to newer USB-C hardware, where it’s much more acceptable to make such compromises. Devices like existing printers won’t even need an upgrade – a simple USB-C to USB-B cable will allow them to work seamlessly with newer computers.
Additionally, the USB-IF, in conjunction with Intel, should do whatever is possible to bring about a stable capability set for the port.
With USB 4 on the horizon
, the timing couldn’t be better. Obviously, with a single cable handling high-power charging, high-bandwith video, and general interface duties, there will always be confusion. The less technologically inclined will look to the skies and wail when their pocket-sized USB power bank won’t run their Macbook Pro – and rightfully so, I might add. The die has been cast, however, and there is room to at least ease the process going forward. Make as many USB-C ports as available as possible, and make as many of them act the same as each other so that users know what to expect. Then, and only then, will we know peace – and the rest of the world will join the party! | 182 | 42 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256792",
"author": "lthemick",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T14:10:51",
"content": "Most beloved? Or most successful/ubiquitous?Not dissing the article – I enjoyed it quite a bit! – I’ve just never heard anyone expressing their love for USB.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,445.077051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/switch-tester-servo-slaps-them-til-they-fail/ | Switch Tester Servo-Slaps Them ’til They Fail | Kristina Panos | [
"Android Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino pro micro",
"keyswitch",
"robot",
"servo"
] | [James] is designing an open-source 3D printed keyboard switch, with the end goal of building a keyboard with as many printed parts as possible. Since keyswitches are meant to be pressed quite often, the DIY switches ought to be tested just as rigorously as their commercial counterparts are at the factory. Maybe even more so.
The broken spring after 13,000+ automated boings.
Rather than wear out his fingers with millions of actuations, [James] built a robot to test switches until they fail
. All he has to do is plug a switch in, and the servo-driven finger slowly presses the slider down until the contacts close, which lights the LED.
The system waits 100ms for the contacts to stop any tiny vibrations before releasing the slider. That Arduino on the side tracks the contact and release points and sends them to the PC to be graphed. If the switch fails to actuate or release, the tester stops altogether.
We love that this auto-tester works just fine for commercial switches, too — the bit that holds the switch is separate and attaches with screws, so you could have one for every footprint variant.
[James] recently did his first test of a printed switch
and it survived an astonishing 13,907 presses before the printed coil spring snapped.
One could argue that this doubles as a servo tester. If you want a dedicated device for that,
this one can test up to sixteen at a time
.
Via
@Microchip_Makes | 33 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256746",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T11:13:22",
"content": "I doubt the servo will last long enough to damage the switch :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256747",
"author": "qwert",
"ti... | 1,760,373,444.847062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/ota-esp32-gui-makes-updates-simple/ | OTA ESP32 GUI Makes Updates Simple | Al Williams | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"OTA",
"over-the-air update",
"processing",
"python"
] | One of the disadvantages of having cheap WiFi-capable boards like those based on the ESP32 is that you have to update them. If you have even a few in every room of your house, it can be a pain to pull them out and connect them to a cable for programming. Over the air programming is a great answer, and [Kevin] shows how you can
control the update via a simple GUI
. You can see a video demonstration of how it works below.
[Kevin] uses a ready-made OTA library to do the work, but creates a GUI configuration and downloader tool. There is a manual step to force the board into the OTA mode, which might be a mild inconvenience, but it improves security since you need physical access to the device to do an update.
The GUI uses Processing’s Python mode and generates for Windows, Linux, or the Mac. Of course, you can do the same job with a command line interface, which might be more daunting for human operators but would be much easier to integrate with an automated system. For example, you might want to update as part of a Makefile.
You do need Java on the workstation to get everything working. We’ve seen
ESP32 OTA
done before. You can even pull the
same stunt with an Arduino
. | 18 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256727",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T08:49:12",
"content": "I can strongly recommend that you give a shot to Mongoose OS.https://mongoose-os.com/I am not affiliated with them in any way, but i am happy user (and sometimes opensource contributor).They provide jus... | 1,760,373,445.16875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/tracked-robot-makes-sand-drawings/ | Tracked Robot Makes Sand Drawings | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"beach",
"drawing robot",
"robot",
"sand",
"sand drawing",
"sand robot",
"sandbot",
"tank thread",
"track",
"tread"
] | [Ivan] seems to enjoy making 3D printed vehicles with tracks. His latest one uses 50 servo motors to
draw patterns in the sand
at the beach. You can see it work in the video below. Well, more accurately you can see it not work and then work as the first iteration didn’t go exactly as planned.
An Arduino Mega 2560 provides the brains and the whole unit weighs in at almost 31 pounds, including the batteries. We didn’t see Ivan’s design files, although it wouldn’t be hard to do your own take on the robot.
Speaking of the weight, we were amused at [Ivan’s] quick and dirty trailer he built to haul the thing around. We wondered if he had those wheels sitting around or if he had to source them from somewhere for this project.
The robot more or less moves in a straight line and the servos either drag a pointy part into the sand or lift the pointy part up so the sand is undisturbed in that area. The robot isn’t perfect. Not only did it not work the first time, but it also looked like it dropped at least one pointy part during the second test run. The tracks seemed to provide good traction, but we would not want to bet that the motion was completely straight.
On the other hand, it did get the job done. It was a lot of wiring and we suspect that’s why it was made all in one piece. Making it break down into sections would have been nice for transport. You might even be able to make it take a varying number of sections if you did it right. However, it would take a lot of connectors and a way for those connectors to support the weight of the beam, so that would be a much tougher problem.
We wish the design files were posted, but we still thought this was a neat enough idea and easy enough to figure out. We aren’t likely to build a 30-pound robot, but we might think about replicating it on a smaller scale to take to our local beach next summer.
We couldn’t help but remember
Skryf
, the robot that didn’t draw in the sand but drew
with
sand. Then there’s also
SandBot
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257291",
"author": "Pert",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T18:57:35",
"content": "Love Donostia !!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6257292",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T19:02:23",
"content": "as proud as I... | 1,760,373,445.116796 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/netbooks-the-next-generation-chromebooks/ | Netbooks: The Next Generation — Chromebooks | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"laptops hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"chromebook",
"crostini",
"crouton",
"dual boot",
"linux",
"netbook"
] | Netbooks are dead, long live the Chromebook. Lewin Day wrote up a proper
trip down Netbook Nostalgia Lane
earlier this month. That’s required reading, go check it out and come back. You’re back? Good. Today I’m making the case that the Chromebook is the rightful heir to the netbook crown, and to realize its potential I’ll show you how to wring every bit of Linuxy goodness out of your Chromebook.
I too was a netbook connoisseur, starting with an Asus Eee 901 way back in 2009. Since then, I’ve also been the proud owner of an Eee PC 1215B, which still sees occasional use. Only recently did I finally bite the bullet and replace it with an AMD based Dell laptop for work.
For the longest time, I’ve been intrigued by a good friend who went the Chromebook route. He uses a Samsung Chromebook Plus, and is constantly using it to SSH into his development machines. After reading Lewin’s article, I got the netbook bug again, and decided to see if a Chromebook would fill the niche. I ended up with the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, codename Scarlet. The price was right, and the tablet form factor is perfect for referencing PDFs.
Behold, my netbook credentials.
The default ChromeOS experience isn’t terrible. You have the functionality of desktop Chrome, as well as the ability to run virtually any Android app. It’s a good start, but hardly the hacker’s playground that a Linux netbook once was. But we can still get our Linux on with this hardware. There are three separate approaches to making a Chromebook your own virtual hackspace: Crostini, Crouton, and full OS replacement.
The Official Solution: Crostini
Crostini is the officially supported way to run Linux applications on a Chromebook. It’s a refined process, if your device supports it. Crostini uses virtualization to sandbox the Linux install, so there are some older devices that will never receive support for it. If you want to use Crostini, make sure you purchase a supported device.
Crostini is particularly simple to set up. Go into the ChromeOS settings, to the Linux section, and press the button to enable it. ChromeOS will download a Debian image and do all the install. It asks you for a username to use, and that’s it. Once it’s set up, you have a Debian system ready to go.
Apt works as expected, and the whole Debian collection of software is available. Any graphical programs are forwarded to the ChromeOS graphical layer, so you can interact with them as expected. Even audio is forwarded.
Crostini is quite flexible, all things considered. You can swap the default Debian system for Fedora, Kali, Arch, or another Distro. On an x86 Chromebook, it’s possible to install Steam and run OGL accelerated games. If you’re looking for a full desktop experience, there are even
guides to install a desktop environment
like KDE.
There’s even an Unsupported USB flag that can be enabled to forward virtually any device into the Linux VM. Want to program an Arduino? Yeah, it’s possible. Another experimental flag adds the ability to forward ports into the Linux VM. This opens up the ability to do web programming and all sorts of other tasks. The best part about Crostini is that it’s still being actively developed, and features are being added. For example, an experimental audio capture flag was recently added. One of the best resources I’ve found for learning more about Crostini developments is the aptly named
r/Crostini subreddit
, and particularly
their wiki
.
As neat as Crostini is, it does depend on your device getting whitelisted by Google. If you’re stuck with hardware that isn’t on the Crostini supported list, there is another option:
Crouton
.
Crouton
I won’t wade into the debate on which is tastier, but Crouton does have some distinct advantages. The biggest advantage is that it runs on just about any ChromeOS device that has devmode. Instead of running a VM, Crouton is based on chroot, so direct access to the hardware is possible. On the other hand, Crouton requires putting your device in developer mode, AKA the official rooting process. If you’re willing to commit to dev mode, and the powerwash it requires, then
the steps required to install crouton
are simple.
Crouton running Gnome and Gimp on a Chromebook
Download the crouton binary, install it to the proper location, and run
sudo crouton -t xfce
to download and set up the image. Once it’s installed,
sudo enter-chroot startxfce4
starts up the chroot and launches the XFCE desktop. From there, install the Crouton extension and xiwi, and you can run linux application GUIs right on your ChromeOS desktop. It’s a little less refined than Crostini, but does the trick.
Since we have root from dev mode, it’s easy enough to pull a few tricks, like adding a udev rule to redirect devices into the chroot. Want direct access to a built-in camera? Crouton can do it.
Full OS Replacement
For absolute full control over your device, the only option is to ditch ChromeOS altogether and install a Linux distro. On x86 devices,
chrx
is a popular option for dual-booting a full-fat Linux distro with ChromeOS. Even some Arm models
can be convinced to boot a Linux distro
that supports their chipset, but beware that you’re way outside the realm of what’s officially supported by Google. Not that that ever stopped us before.
There’s a distro that’s designed specifically for Chromebooks,
GalliumOS
. It’s a stripped down Xubuntu, designed to run well on the lightweight Chromebook hardware. There is, of course, a catch. GalliumOS can only run on
certain devices
. Arm devices are totally unsupported, and some older machines have other various incompatibilities.
Google did add support for a
legacy boot mode
that makes the installation of a full Linux OS much easier. Even if your device has a firmware write-protect switch, it’s probably possible to put the device in dev mode and boot via the venerable BIOS process.
Final Thoughts
I’ve written most of this article from the Acer tablet I mentioned earlier. The experience reminds me a lot of working from a netbook. I have Crostini installed, and have been working my way though testing out a multitude of programs. Not everything works perfectly, but each update brings fixes and features.
Is a Chromebook the next netbook for you? Maybe. A modern Chromebook is an impressive piece of hardware, and it brings a lot of hackability.
If you go the Chromebook route, be sure to let us know in the comments how it’s worked for you, and send in some other Chromebook related hacks! | 35 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257218",
"author": "Nathan Bunnell",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T14:58:09",
"content": "I’m still using my first gen Samsung Chromebook from 2013ish w/ Crouton as my living room based ssh/ dev machine. I’ve been meaning to get something newer but couldn’t decide if I wanted to go w/ a... | 1,760,373,445.243461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/how-to-retrofit-a-pick-and-place-machine-for-openpnp-in-detail/ | How To Retrofit A Pick And Place Machine For OpenPnP, In Detail | Donald Papp | [
"cnc hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"Charmhigh",
"CHM-T36VA",
"OpenPnP",
"pick and place",
"SmoothieWare"
] | [Erich Styger] owns a Charmhigh CHM-T36VA pick and place machine, which he describes as well-built and a great value of hardware for the money. However, the software end is less impressive, with a proprietary controller that is functional but not great. The good news is that
it is possible to retrofit the machine to use the OpenPnP framework
, which is open-source and offers more features. Even better, [Erich] has already done and documented all the hard parts!
The CHM-T36VA has two heads, vision system, and uses drag feeders.
The conversion requires upgrading a few hardware parts such as the cameras,
replacing the controller’s firmware
, then installing and configuring
OpenPnP
(which runs on an attached PC.)
[Erich] does not recommend this conversion for anyone who is not very familiar with electronics, or has any worries about voiding warranties. Barring that, he suspects the conversion could be done in about a day or two’s worth of focused work. It took him two weeks, including time spent fine-tuning the first production job. He says the bulk of the time was spent on configuration, but he has
shared his configuration on GitHub
in the hopes that it will save a lot of time for anyone using the same hardware.
After populating some 300 boards and placing over 7000 parts, he’s very happy with the results. The machine places between 600 and 700 parts per hour, so speed might not be amazing but it’s perfectly serviceable. [Erich] finds that while the machine runs a little slower than it did with the original controller, it also runs much smoother and quieter overall. In return he gets what he truly wanted: a pick and place machine whose operation and configuration is entirely open and accessible. You can see it in action in the video, embedded below.
Putting affordable pick and place machines into the hands of hackers and home shops is a huge step towards enabling people to reliably and effectively assemble more than just a handful of boards at a time. There have been some wonderful steps towards that recently, such as
these re-imagined component feeders
and efforts at making low-cost
open source pick and place machines
a reality. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257172",
"author": "Sebastiaan Swinkels",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T11:09:47",
"content": "You may want to steer way clear of Charmhigh. Seon / Unexpected Maker recently bought one of their machines that has been nothing but trouble for him. Charmhigh pretty much said thank you for ... | 1,760,373,445.290569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/raspberry-pi-takes-control-of-ham-radio/ | Raspberry Pi Takes Control Of Ham Radio | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"fast fourrier transform",
"fft",
"ham radio",
"numpy",
"touchtone",
"yaesu"
] | Today’s ham radio gear often has a facility for remote control, but they most often talk to a computer, not the operator.
Hambone
, on the other hand, acts like a ham radio robot, decoding TouchTone digits and taking action — for example, keying the radio and reading off the weather — in response to the commands received.
The code is in Python and uses numpy’s fast Fourier transform to identify digits. We’d be interested to test the performance of that compared to doing a Goertzel to specifically probe for the 8 digit tones: there are four row tones and four column tones. On the other hand, the FFT is handy and clearly works fast enough for this application.
The project is actually a spin off from [notpike’s] failed project to send paging tones. It is set up for a specific Yaesu handheld, but any radio should be workable with it. However, if you are connecting it to the same radio, there were a few tricks involved that you’ll want to read about.
Remote operation
is getting more common and this probably would be one place to start if you wanted to build your own remote setup. If you ever thought about being a ham, we can do it
for about $50
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257166",
"author": "Peter Sutton",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T10:51:35",
"content": "VK6FCIP , Raspberry PI is a good tool but beware in using this in Repeaters or Links as it has the habit of operating remotely and can cause problems",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,373,445.676322 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/boot-to-basic-box-packs-a-killer-graphics-engine/ | Boot-To-BASIC Box Packs A Killer Graphics Engine | Lewin Day | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"basic",
"color maximite",
"color maximite 2",
"Maximite",
"vga"
] | In the early days of the home computer era, many machines would natively boot into a BASIC interpreter. This was a great way to teach programming to the masses. However on most platforms the graphics routines were incredibly slow, and this greatly limited what could be achieved. In 2020 such limitations are a thing of the past,
with the Color Maximite 2
. (Video, embedded below.)
The Color Maximite 2
is a computer based around the STM32H743IIT6 microcontroller, packing a Cortex-M7 32-bit RISC core with the Chrom-ART graphics accelerator. Running at 480MHz it’s got plenty of grunt, allowing it to deliver vibrant graphics to the screen reminiscent of the very best of the 16-bit console era. The Maximite 2 combines this chip alongside a BASIC interpreter complete with efficient graphics routines. This allows for the development of games with fast and smooth movement, with plenty of huge sprites and detailed backgrounds.
[cTrix] does a great job of demonstrating the machine, designed by [Geoff Graham] and [Peter Mather]. Putting the computer through its paces with a series of demos, it shows off the impressive visual and audio capabilities of the hardware. It serves as an excellent spiritual successor to BlitzBASIC from back in the Amiga days. Particularly enjoyable is seeing a BASIC interpreter that adds syntax highlighting – making parsing the code far easier on the eyes!
We’d love to see this become an off-the-shelf kit, as it’s clear the platform has a lot to offer the retro hobbyist.
It’s certainly come a long way from the original Maximite of nearly a decade ago
. Video after the break.
https://vimeo.com/430487977/1e440c49d3?fbclid=IwAR2HgMjnj1AbJkN-6OHncED7O2TTgf8esCugSnl_WTM_0Eu1Gt7a40CVBbk | 58 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257097",
"author": "scott.tx",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T05:31:11",
"content": "pretty neat but for that much I could have a couple raspis.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6257099",
"author": "Artenz",
"timesta... | 1,760,373,445.624613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/an-open-source-tool-to-document-your-wiring/ | An Open Source Tool To Document Your Wiring | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"documentation",
"python",
"wiring",
"wiring harness"
] | Most of us are familiar with the tools available to create circuit diagrams, as generally that’s the first step towards producing a custom PCB. But that about the cables and wiring harnesses that don’t live on your board? How do you easily document the
rat’s nest
perfectly logical wiring of your latest and greatest creation?
That’s precisely the question that
led [Daniel Rojas] to create WireViz
. This open source Python tool takes human readable input files and turns them into attractive and functional visualizations of where all the wires in your project are going. It can even be used to generate a Bill of Materials that documents the lengths of wire required and types of connectors needed to hook everything up.
If you’re still using pre-made cables to connect all of your components together, than you might not immediately see the benefit of a tool like this.
But as we’ve talked about in the past
, the creation of custom wiring harnesses is something that serious hardware hackers should become familiar with. Yes it takes more effort, but the end result is worth it. With a tool like WireViz, the creation of a bespoke harness for your next project just got a little bit easier.
[Daniel] has done a fantastic job documenting this project,
providing not only a tutorial
on how to feed and care for your WireViz, but a gallery of examples that shows off the kind of
complex wiring the tool can help make sense of
. But there’s plenty more to be done, and he’s happy to get feedback or code contributions from anyone who wants to get involved. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257074",
"author": "nebk",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T02:37:25",
"content": "This looks very cool, and potentially incredibly useful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6257080",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T0... | 1,760,373,445.532486 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/eico-signal-generator-gets-a-repair/ | Eico Signal Generator Gets A Repair | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"eico",
"oscillator",
"wein bridge"
] | The Eico model 377 was a pretty common audio signal generator. [The Radio Mechanic] picked one up from 1956 that was in reasonably good shape, and shares a
teardown and repair
of the unit that you can see in the video below. The device could produce sine and square waves using a few tubes.
The unit was a bit different inside than expected because there were several versions made that shared the same model number. The bottom of the case had some goo in it, which is never a good sign. Unsurprisingly, the culprit was an old capacitor.
The oscillator uses the Wien bridge circuit that incorporates an incandescent light bulb as a dynamic resistance element. This was a common low-distortion audio oscillator circuit. The bulb acts as an automatic gain control since its resistance is lower when cold.
We will warn you: the end of this video isn’t a success — it is something of a cliffhanger. But part two is right below the first video. If you want to understand the lightbulb better, [Jeri Ellsworth]
took us through that circuit
before. We’ve even
simulated them
virtually. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6257056",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-06-24T01:16:03",
"content": "Heyyyy I recognized that circuit immediately! Just found the exact same model at a thrift store and fixed it up. And I found that same circuit diagram printed on a folded-up and yellowed piece of paper tape... | 1,760,373,445.331555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/educational-radio-educates/ | Educational Radio, Educates | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"agc",
"am radio",
"automatic gain control",
"detector",
"elenco"
] | Analyzing and troubleshooting a modern AM/FM radio, digital radio, or TV can be a pretty daunting task. However, a common AM radio is easy to understand, experiment with, and repair. Learning about that will help you understand more complex circuits later. That’s the idea behind the Elenco AM radio which is built on a wide-open PCB with markings for all the important sections. [The Offset Volt] uses one of these to
explain how a receiver works
, especially how a diode detects the signal and how the automatic gain control works.
Between a series of diagrams and live scope demonstrations, you can see the effects of capacitance in the receiver along with other circuit effects.
There are only a few simple constructs needed to understand a large number of circuits. Voltage division, resistor/capacitor charging, and capacitive/inductive resonance will cover a lot of ground. You’ll see that in several places here — many manifestations of just a few concepts.
Even if you cut your teeth on old AM radios, this kit might be just the thing to get a young person started learning the mysteries of radio. How simple can a radio be?
Pretty simple
. If FM is more your speed, you might enjoy reading
about its history
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256715",
"author": "Alan Frost",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T05:18:57",
"content": "Any ETA on these kits??Perfect for my little ones :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256737",
"author": "benchly",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,445.720196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/new-silq-programming-language-aims-to-make-quantum-programming-easier/ | New Silq Programming Language Aims To Make Quantum Programming Easier | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"q#",
"quantum computing",
"quantum programming",
"silq"
] | Fresh from ETH Zurich comes the new
Silq programming language
. They also have
submitted a paper
to the
PLDI 2020
conference on why they feel that it is the best
quantum programming
language so far. Although it may be not common knowledge, the lack of usable general purpose quantum computers has not kept multiple teams from developing programming languages for such computer systems.
Microsoft’s Q#
is a strong contender in this space, along with the older
QCL language
. The
claims
by the Silq team on exactly why their language is better appear to come down to it being ‘more high level’, and by supporting automatic (and safe) uncomputation. While the ‘high level’ aspect is suspect since Q# is most decidedly a high-level programming language, their uncomputation claim does at least have some merit.
Quantum algorithm with uncompute step.
Uncomputation is a concept in quantum programming, where one occasionally has to remove a few intermediate objects from the current state because they may cause quantum interference that would affect the resulting output. Normally, one would save the intermediate result to a register for this, then reset the state and continue. Which parts of the state to keep and what to uncompute is however not easily determined, as a quick glance at
related answers
over at the Quantum Computing StackExchange and
Theoretical Computer Science
might reveal.
The main question thus appears the validity of this claim about Silq being able to automatically determine what ‘garbage’ can be safely uncomputed, and what should be part of the quantum interference. We have all seen with languages like Java and C# how even with traditional computing something as simple as garbage collecting can go horribly wrong. Maybe we shouldn’t count our quantum chickens yet until this particular waveform has fully collapsed.
(Thanks to Qes) | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256696",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-06-23T02:42:10",
"content": "Quantum puns… Now I can laugh and simultaneously roll my eyes and moan.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6256710",
"author": "Jul13",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,373,445.777707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/a-true-4k-projector-from-scrap-ebay-components/ | A True 4K Projector From Scrap EBay Components | Danie Conradie | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"4k projector",
"diy",
"home theater",
"lcd"
] | Cinemas all over the world have become no-go zones with COVID-19 around, but watching the latest blockbuster on the small screen at home is simply not the same. You could bring the big screen home, but buying a quality projector is going to set you back a small pile of cash. Fortunately [Matt] from [DIY Perks] has an alternative for us, demonstrating
how to build your own true 4K projector
with parts bought off eBay, for a fraction of the price.
The core of the projector is a small 4K LCD panel, which is from a modified Sony smartphone. [Matt] disassembled the phone, removed the backlight from the LCD, which leaves it semi-transparent, and mounted it at a right angle to the rest of the phone body. The battery was also replaced with a voltage regulator to simulate a full battery. To create a practical projector, a much brighter backlight is needed. [Matt] used a 100W 10 mm diameter LED for this purpose. The LED needs some serious cooling to prevent it from burning itself out, and a large CPU cooler does the job perfectly. Two Fresnel lenses in series are used to turn the diverging light from the LED into a converging light source to pass through the LCD. An old 135 mm large format camera lens is placed at the focal point of light to act as a projection lens. The entire assembly is mounted on a vertical frame of threaded rods, nuts, and aluminium plates. [Matt] also used these threaded rods with GT2 pulleys to create a simple but effective moving platform for the projection lens that allows the focus of the projected image to be adjusted. The frame is topped off by a 45-degree mirror to project the image against a wall instead of the roof, and the frame is covered with aluminium panels.
The video after the break goes into incredible detail on how projector functions and how to build your own down. It definitely looks like a doable build for most hackers. [Matt] will also be releasing a complete PDF build guide in the next few weeks.
Compared side by side, the DIY projector beats a $2000 commercial 4K projector in terms of image sharpness and colour. The DIY version only falls short in terms of brightness, because it uses a lower output light source. It requires a very dark room to see the projected image, but it also means that less active cooling is needed, making it quieter than the commercial projector.
We’ve featured [Matt’s] work before, including a
dual-screen laptop
and
flexible LED panels
. His videos are always easy to watch and packed with technical detail, and we’re looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next. | 44 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256647",
"author": "NeoRazz",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T23:09:25",
"content": "Throwback….who remembers lumenlabs ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256650",
"author": "hybridblue",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T23:... | 1,760,373,445.957211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/popping-the-hood-on-the-flux-beamo-laser-cutter/ | Popping The Hood On The Flux Beamo Laser Cutter | Tom Nardi | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"beamo",
"flux",
"laser cutter",
"review",
"teardown"
] | While the K40 has brought affordable laser cutting to the masses, there’s no question that it took a lot of sacrifices to hit that sub-$400 price point. There’s a reason that we’ve seen so many upgrades and improvements made to the base model machine, but for the price it’s hard to complain. That being said, for users who don’t mind spending a bit more money for a more complete out-of-the-box experience, there are other options out there.
One of them is the beamo, from FLUX.
[Frank Zhao] recently picked up one of these $1,900 USD laser cutters
because he wasn’t thrilled with the compromises made on the K40. Specifically, he really liked the idea of the internal water cooling system. Oddly enough, something about using a garden hose and buckets of water to cool the laser seemed off-putting. Luckily for us, he’s got a technical eye and the free time necessary to do a teardown and objective analysis of his new toy.
The short version of the story is that [Frank] is not only happy with the results he’s getting, but finds the machine to be well designed and built. So if you’re looking for a rant, sorry. But what you will find is a methodical look at each subsystem of the beamo, complete with annotated pictures and the kind of technical details that Hackaday readers crave.
We especially like his attempts to identify parts which might be difficult to source in the future; it looks like the CO2 laser tube might be proprietary, but everything else looks fairly jellybean. That includes the Raspberry Pi 3B that’s running the show, and the off-the-shelf touch screen HDMI display used for the interface. [Frank] did note that FLUX was unwilling to give him the credentials to log into the Pi and poke around, but with direct access to the SD card, it’s not like that will stop anyone who wants to get in.
In a way, laser cutters are in a similar situation today to that desktop 3D printers were in a few years ago. The cheap ones cut so many corners that
upgrades and fixes are almost a necessity
, and
building your own machine
is often
less expensive than buying a commercial offering with similar specs
. While the beamo is still a bit too expensive for the average hobbyist, it’s good to see machines of this caliber are at least coming down out of the 5 figure range. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256620",
"author": "Sebastiaan Swinkels",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T20:34:44",
"content": "It’d be great if there was an open source graphical front end that you could run on a Raspberry Pi similar to this but on the K40 though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,373,445.842581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/voice-command-chess-board-powered-by-alexa/ | Voice-Command Chess Board Powered By Alexa | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"chess robot",
"lego"
] | Talking to computers used to be reserved for
Star Trek
and those with overactive imaginations. Now, it’s a regular part of daily life. [CodersCafe] decided to put this technology to work in a chess robot,
with the help of Amazon’s digital assistant.
The build relies on an Cartesian motion rig, built out of Lego Technics parts. The end effector is fitted with a magnet , fitted onto the Z-axis screw for engaging and disengaging with the pieces. A Mindstorms EV3 controller is used to run the show, hooked up over Bluetooth to an Amazon Echo. This allows the user to ask Alexa to move the pieces for the white player in natural language – by saying, for example, “move from B1 to C3”.
It’s a build that demonstrates how easy it is to create projects with advanced functionality by lacing together the correct off-the-shelf hardware.
Other Cartesian-type motion platforms can make great chess robots, too.
Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256582",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T18:21:23",
"content": "Now, have Alexa play against Deep Blue on that board!Deep Blue would probably win, but could blow a gasket waiting for each piece to finish moving!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,445.881532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/hunting-neutrinos-in-the-antarctic/ | Hunting Neutrinos In The Antarctic | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"ANITA",
"black holes",
"IceCube Neutrino Observatory",
"neutrinos"
] | Neutrinos are some of the strangest particles we have encountered so far. About 100 billion of them are going through every square centimeter on Earth per second but their interaction rate is so low that they can easily zip through the entire planet. This is how they earned the popular name ‘ghost particle’. Neutrinos are part of many unsolved questions in physics. We still do not know their mass and they might even be there own anti-particles while their siblings could make up the dark matter in our Universe. In addition, they are valuable messengers from the most extreme astrophysical phenomena like supernovae, and supermassive black holes.
The neutrinos on earth have different origins: there are solar neutrinos produced in the fusion processes of our sun, atmospheric neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere, manmade reactor neutrinos created in the radioactive decays of nuclear reactors, geoneutrinos which stem from similar processes naturally occurring inside the earth, and astrophysical neutrinos produced outside of our solar system during supernovae and other extreme processes most of which are still unknown.
The Largest Detector Ever Built
Schematic diagram of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
Credit:
Nasa-verve
–
IceCube Science Team – Francis Halzen, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin
,
CC BY 3.0
Because neutrinos have no charge and are only affected by the weak interaction (and gravity) they are hard to detect. Some experiments use large tanks filled with pure water and equipped with light sensors as detectors. Neutrinos can knock out electrons from the water molecules that will travel faster than the speed of light in that medium and thereby produce
Cherenkov light
, which is also responsible for the healthy blue glow that emanates from nuclear reactors. The IceCube experiment takes advantage of this detection method on a much larger scale. Instead of building a huge water tank, they buried 86 strings equipped with a total of 5,160 light detectors up to 2,500 m deep in the Antarctic ice. The total volume of the detector is one cubic kilometer which corresponds to a target mass of one gigaton and is thus the largest detector ever built.
Neutrinos from Supermassive Black Holes
Inner structure of a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus.
Credit:
Rothwild
,
CC BY-SA 3.0
A great success of IceCube was the
first detection of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos
in 2013. Before that, the only neutrinos from astrophysical sources outside our solar systems were detected during a
supernova in 1987
. At the time of the IceCube observation, it was not clear where these neutrinos originated but this changed in 2017 when another
high-energy neutrino event could be attributed to a known gamma-ray blazar
. A blazar is formed by an active galactic nucleus (AGN), the center region of a galaxy that is theorized to house a supermassive black hole. Mass falling into the black hole produces a pair of relativistic jets that can be seen as a bright source throughout the electromagnetic spectrum when they are directed towards the observer. Recently, Russian researchers made another progress in identifying the sources of astrophysical neutrinos. They
compared the IceCube events with data from a network of radio telescopes
and found them to be associated with several radio-bright AGNs. Multimessenger astronomy like this is a striving field that became even more interesting since we added gravitational waves to the game. To enable the coincidental observation of neutrinos, electromagnetic radiation, cosmic rays, and gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, different telescopes around the world are joined by the
Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON)
Neutrino Detection with Radio Pulses
Detection principle of the ANITA experiment.
Credit:
The ANITA collaboration
IceCube is not the only neutrino experiment at the south pole. The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) is a balloon-borne experiment designed to detect radio waves created by very high-energy neutrinos smashing into the ice, known as the Askaryan effect. ANITA detects radio pulses that travel upwards in the atmosphere as they are produced by neutrinos traveling through the earth. An upwards going radio pulse can also be produced by cosmic rays coming from above when the signal is reflected off the surface of the ice, however, during reflection it changes polarization. ANITA can therefore distinguish these radio pulses by looking at the phase of the detected signal.
An Unexpected Signal
The ANITA-IV experiment in Antarctica, prior to being launched on a balloon.
Credit:
Drummermean
,
CC BY-SA 4.0
The experiment made the headlines when they
detected two anomalous events
during two separate flights in 2006 and 2014. Both events were consistent with upwards propagating radio pulses produced by neutrinos traveling through the earth. The problem was that the measured arrival angles and energies of the neutrinos were much higher than the expected neutrino flux. The neutrinos must have traveled through more than 5700 km earth and had energies of ~0.5 EeV. Since we know the flux of neutrinos at these energies from other experiments but also from ANITA itself and their interaction rate, there was simply no way that they could have survived traveling through that much rock.
A possible explanation was that the neutrinos came from an intense point source. Some kind of cosmic accelerator, like a supermassive black hole, which shoots out a narrow beam of high energy neutrinos. This explanation was disproven earlier this year by the IceCube collaboration which
conducted a search for such point sources in the direction of the ANITA events
but found nothing. If the two ANITA events would have originated from a point source, IceCube should have detected many more, which they did not.
The only two remaining explanations for the anomalous events were some systematic error or new physics. In fact, when the ANITA result first came out one collaboration member jumped the gun and tweeted that he thinks they just broke the Standard Model of particle physics. This is typical behavior for scientists who are under the impression that they unexpectedly made a great discovery and you cannot really blame them for getting overexcited. However, in many cases, it leads to embarrassment when the result turns out to be just a fluke. Some recent examples for this include the false detections of
superluminal neutrinos
and
gravitational wave signatures in the cosmic microwave background.
When Tabloids Interpret Physics
In April
New Scientist published an article
about the ANITA anomaly where they cited an
older paper from 2018
by another group of theoretical physicists that interprets the events as evidence for a theory where our universe is the mirrored image of another universe that existed before the big bang. The story was immediately picked up by several tabloids like the UK
Daily Star
under the headline
“NASA scientists detect parallel universe ‘next to ours’ where time runs backwards”
One can immediately see what is wrong with this headline. Firstly, it connects NASA who is founding ANITA with the theory paper by an entirely different group. Secondly, it pretends as if the theory was a fact instead of being merely one of many interpretations of the data and even not a very likely one. ANITA researchers from the University of Hawaii were evidently annoyed by the false media coverage and
issued a press release
to clarify that they are in no way affiliated with the theory paper about the parallel universe. One has to point out that the theory paper was written by respectable physicists and should not be regarded as shady.
This is definitely not the first time though that the media has taken scientific speculation at face value. The discovery of dark matter, e.g., was falsely announced several times by major news stories over the past years, whenever an experiment published a result that contained some unexplainable events. Like the ANITA researchers, also in these cases, scientists were very careful not to make any claim of discovery in their publications. Usually, this requires confirmation by another experiment, like the discovery of the Higgs boson had to be seen by both ATLAS and CMS detectors. Journalists are less careful about making such claims as it simply makes for better headlines.
So what is the most likely explanation for the ANITA result? There are numerous papers that try to explain the events with beyond-the-standard-model physics scenarios but some people have also proposed more mundane solutions. One group of researchers has pointed out that
radio signals reflected slightly below the ice surface can occur without phase inversion
. There is also a possible explanation due to the
interaction of cosmic rays with the Earth’s magnetic field
. Future experiments like the proposed
Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO)
, the successor to the ANITA program, may shed some more light on this matter. In addition, the ANITA collaboration is still analyzing the data from their latest flight, and we are eagerly awaiting the results.
Banner image:
University of Madison-Wisconsin
. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256556",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T17:08:51",
"content": "“Neutrinos are some of the strangest particles we have encountered so far. About 100 billion of them are going through every square centimeter on Earth per second but their interaction rate is so low tha... | 1,760,373,446.072535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/gigatron-hack-chat/ | Gigatron Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"7400-series",
"diy",
"gigatron",
"Hack Chat",
"kit",
"retrocomputer",
"ttl"
] | Join us on Wednesday, June 24 at noon Pacific for the
Gigatron Hack Chat
with
Walter Belgers
!
There was a time when if you wanted a computer, you had to build it. And not by ordering parts from Amazon and plugging everything together in a case — you had to buy chips, solder or wire-wrap everything, and tinker endlessly. The process was slow, painful, and expensive, but in the end, you had a completely unique machine that you knew inside out because you put every bit of it together.
In some ways, it’s good that those days are gone. Being able to throw a cheap, standardized commodity PC at a problem is incredibly powerful, but that machine will have all the charm of a rubber doorstop and no soul at all. Luckily for those looking to get back a little of the early days of the computer revolution or those that missed them entirely, there are alternatives like
the Gigatron
. Billed as a “minimalistic retro computer,” the Gigatron is a kit that takes the builder back even further in time than the early computer revolution since it lacks a microprocessor. All the logic of the 8-bit computer is built up from discrete 7400-series TTL chips.
The Gigatron is the brainchild of Marcel van Kervinck and Walter Belgers. Tragically,
Marcel recently passed away
, but Walter is carrying the Gigatron torch forward and leading a thriving community of TTL-computer aficionados as they extend and enhance what their little home-built machines can do. Walter will stop by the Hack Chat to talk all things Gigatron, and answer your questions about how this improbably popular machine came to be.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 24 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. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256562",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T17:22:43",
"content": "“In some ways, it’s good that those days are gone.”Now I need to reread The Soul of a New Machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6256578",
"au... | 1,760,373,446.001893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/wearable-device-for-preventing-sudep-sudden-unexpected-death-in-epilepsy/ | Wearable Device For Preventing SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death In Epilepsy) | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"Center for Implantable Devices",
"CID",
"epilepsy",
"Neurava",
"Pedro Irazoqui",
"purdue university",
"SUDEP",
"Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering"
] | Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by the occurrence of seizures. Epilepsy can often prevent patients from living a normal life since it’s nearly impossible to predict when a seizure will occur. The unpredictability of the seizures makes performing tasks such as driving extremely dangerous. One of the challenges in treating epilepsy is the condition is still not very well understood.
Neurava, a recent startup company from Purdue University, aims to change this fact
. Neurava is developing a neck wearable that “records key biological signals related to epilepsy.” None of the
press releases we’ve found so far
elaborate on what those biological signals are.
Though
we have
some
guesses
of our own
, we’ll leave it to the Hackaday community to speculate for the time being. One of the major hurdles in using biological signals to treat conditions like epilepsy both lies in the
accuracy of the measurement itself
in addition to
how well the measurement correlates to the underlying condition
. From the looks of it,
Neurava has been working on this technology for a long time
and are certainly more aware of these challenges than we are.
Neurava’s wearable includes a few other functionalities we’ve come to expect in this era of smart devices such as wireless data transmission to both the physician and patient, physician dashboard to monitor the patient’s progress over extended periods of time, and in-time alerts in the event a seizure is detected.
Neurava appears to have
garnered a bit of publicity
in these last few months and are currently securing seed money to help advance their technology. We’ll check in every so often to see how they’re doing. | 13 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256500",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T15:35:29",
"content": "So, is it mainly for use for patients in hospital?I mean, notifying the physician, would be much more effective if the physician (or crash cart team) was near enough to react to an alert.I wonder how much of ... | 1,760,373,446.192875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/teardown-wonder-bible/ | Teardown: Wonder Bible | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Teardown"
] | [
"18650 cell",
"human interface device",
"microsd",
"mp3 player",
"usb",
"usb audio"
] | Even the most secular among us can understand why somebody would want to have a digital version of the Bible. If you’re the sort of person who takes solace in reading from the “Good Book”, you’d probably like the ability to do so wherever and whenever possible. But as it so happens, a large number of people who would be interested in a more conveniently transportable version of the Bible may not have the technological wherewithal to operate a Kindle and download a copy.
Which is precisely the idea behind the Wonder Bible, a pocket-sized electronic device that allows the user to listen to the Bible read aloud at the press of a button. Its conservative design, high-contrast LED display, and large buttons makes it easy to operate even by users with limited eyesight or dexterity.
The commercial for the Wonder Bible
shows people all of all ages using the device, but it’s not very difficult to read between the lines and see who the gadget is really aimed for. We catch a glimpse of a young businessman tucking a Wonder Bible into the center console of his expensive sports car, but in reality, the scenes of a retiree sitting pensively in her living room are far closer to the mark.
In truth, the functionality of the Wonder Bible could easily be replicated with a smartphone application. It would arguably even be an improvement by most standards. But not everyone is willing or able to go that route, which creates a market for an affordable stand-alone device. Is that market large enough to put a lot of expense and engineering time into the product? Let’s crack open one of these holy rolling personal companions and find out.
Off-the-Shelf Salvation
Let’s be very clear from the start: the Wonder Bible is just an MP3 player. Literally. There’s a micro SD card stuck right in the side with roughly 4 GB of MP3s in a hierarchical directory structure that separates the different books of the Old and New Testaments. The tracks even have proper ID3 tags, so you could easily import the lot into your media player of choice instead of using the Wonder Bible itself.
With that out of the way, it’s not hard to see how quickly and cheaply you could spin-up a device like the Wonder Bible. A microcontroller powerful enough to decode MP3s is hardly a tall order these days, and you’d only need a few spare GPIO pins to run such a simplistic user interface. Toss a battery and speaker into an injection molded enclosure, and all you’re missing to make the product complete is the sprayed on crucifix.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with the build quality on the Wonder Bible. If anything, it’s built like a tank. Glued together and with a screw insidiously hidden under the display bezel, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that for the first time in this teardown series I had to physically break the device open to get in.
You’ll note there’s
no trace of the dreaded black epoxy blobs
in the Wonder Bible, but unfortunately that doesn’t help us much in this case. The device is powered by a single SQFP-48 chip labeled CCK2F9L, but I haven’t been able to find any datasheet for it.
The chip does have a very distinctive manufacturer logo on it though, so perhaps one of our Constant Readers will recognize the manufacturer at least.
Beyond the main chip and the 8002 amplifier up by the speaker, there’s not much else on the board. A five pin device by the battery connection is likely the charge controller, though it has no discernible markings to give us a positive ID.
Spared No Expense
Considering how little the Wonder Bible is sold for (most retailers have them for $15 – $20 USD), the quality and attention to detail is fairly impressive. For example, the speaker is a hefty unit that is loud and sounds pretty good for its size, and the micro SD slot actually has a spring-loaded action. The battery is also a nice removable 18650 cell instead of a silver pouch hot glued into the case.
The display also appears to be custom manufactured, which surely didn’t come cheap. Readability was likely a top concern when designing the Wonder Bible, and the bright LEDs combined with an almost mirror-finished plastic diffuser makes it easily visible from any angle. Even in bright light, the numbers and icons are vibrant and sharp.
Uncovered, we can see an interesting textured black finish on the module as well as the various icons that will light up as the Wonder Bible operates. But we also see something of a mystery: the USB icon. The manual makes no mention of using the USB port on the device for anything but charging, so what could it be for?
Diving Deeper
After flipping the PCB back over, a close examination confirmed that the USB port’s data lines were indeed connected. Naturally, I plugged it into my computer to see what it would do. The screen instantly lit up and said “PC”, which seemed like a good sign. Even if it was a bit ironic that the dedicated USB icon apparently isn’t used.
A few seconds later, the micro SD card in the device was mounted on my system and I could see all of the MP3 files. This seemed like a handy enough feature, if somewhat unnecessary given the device’s function. After all, it’s not like the content of the Bible is likely to change in the near future and require an update.
Thinking that an examination of the information the Wonder Bible was reporting to the computer might provide some useful clues, I ran
lsusb
to see what the kernel had to say about the hardware:
Well, that’s strange. According to this, the hardware was not only being picked up by the kernel’s USB Mass Storage driver, but it’s also coming up as an audio and an input device. A quick check of my system’s audio settings showed that I could indeed select the Wonder Bible as an audio output, and it did a respectable enough job playing the
ambient electronic music that serves as the de facto soundtrack of Hackaday
.
But what about that Human Interface Device? Looking through
/proc/bus/input/devices
I was able to see the file it was mapped to by the kernel, and the
evtest
program let me examine it and listen for events. This showed that while the device reports that it’s able to provide a standard set of media playback controls, it only chimes in when you press the Back and Forward buttons:
Now
why
it can do all of this is anyone’s guess. A quick search online shows that GEMBIRD makes a number of MP3 playing gadgets, and these functions could simply be hold-overs from whatever device originally carried this chip. It’s also possible, albeit less likely, that there was some PC side software planned that would allow the user to connect their Wonder Bible to the computer to listen to additional content using the device’s familiar controls.
A Bygone Era
Ultimately, the Wonder Bible was a pretty interesting device to take a look at. While the hardware is obviously quite simplistic, it’s much better built than I assumed at first glance. You could probably even argue that it’s overbuilt; there are many obvious cost-cutting measures that could have been taken to reduce the production cost of the Wonder Bible, but the manufacturers have decided to take the high road. The teardown also proved to be a good exercise in working with unknown USB devices and identifying what they’re capable of.
So can you buy a second hand Wonder Bible and load it up with
back episodes of the Hackaday Podcast
? Sure. I’ve done it, and it works fine. You can even navigate through them by typing in the episode numbers on the keypad. But it would be a lot easier to just use your phone. Which in the end is the problem with this piece of hardware: a couple decades ago a surprisingly well made device that could handle hundreds of meticulously organized MP3 files would have been a huge deal, but in 2020 it’s little more than a superfluous gadget. | 91 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256466",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T14:13:50",
"content": "Maybe the USB icon is for usb to go functionality? Reading files from a usb instead of SD?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256574",
"a... | 1,760,373,446.358537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/vulkan-for-the-pi-3/ | Vulkan For The Older Raspberry Pi | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"graphics",
"Videocore IV",
"Vulkan"
] | You’d be forgiven for thinking that the newer Raspberry Pi 4 gets all the love. For instance, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is working on drivers for the GPU to support the Vulkan 3D graphics API.
But those of you with crusty old Pi boards shouldn’t despair. [Martin Thomas], a developer working for Nvidia
has produced a driver in his spare time that brings Vulkan to the Broadcom VideoCore IV
. He’s hailed it as
the first low-level driver for this GPU
, and
shown it running Quake III on a Pi 3
.
Technically it’s not officially Vulkan as it doesn’t have all the required standards conformance, but it’s as near as possible given the limitations of the hardware. Full instructions for building the driver and for installing the Vulkan loader are given in the repository, so it should be possible for tinkerers to have a try. This is likely to be of most interest to gamers as many game engines support Vulkan.
The Pi 4 might be about to take the family further in a 64-bit direction, but this proves that there’s life in the old dogs yet. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256441",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T13:15:41",
"content": "I like how it looks almost as good as Mechwarrior 2 on an S3 Virge.Are Pi 3s really that crusty though? It seems like they’re still cranking them out, or at least some vendors have huge excess invent... | 1,760,373,446.231671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/22/just-how-do-aircraft-transponders-work-anyway/ | Just How Do Aircraft Transponders Work Anyway? | Jenny List | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"aircraft",
"teardown",
"transponder"
] | Most of us will have a hazy idea of how radar works to detect aircraft by listening for reflected radio waves. And we’ll probably also know that while radar can detect aircraft, it’s not the most efficient or useful tool in the hands of an air traffic controller. Aircraft carry transponders so that those on the ground can have a clearer picture of the skies, as each one reports its identity, altitude, and position. [Yeo Kheng Meng] was lucky enough to secure a non-functioning aircraft transponder and do a teardown, and his write-up makes for interesting reading
as he explains their operation before diving into the hardware
.
The 1978 and 1979 date codes on the various integrated circuits and transistors identify it as having been made in 1979, so not having a CPU is not entirely unsurprising given its age. Instead this is a straightforward device that responds to pulse lengths of different timings with sequential bursts of data.
[Yeo Kheng] is mystified by the RF strip and associated components, which look to us like a typical crystal oscillator and frequency multiplier strip from that era, along with some screened boxes that probably contain cavity filters and given that there is also a high voltage power supply present, a tube RF power amplifier. GHz-capable semiconductors were quite exotic in the 1970s, while high-frequency tubes had by then a long history.
It’s evident that the tech behind aircraft transponders has moved on since this unit was built, but one thing’s certain. Hackers in 1978 would have had to go to a lot of work to listen to them and interpret the results, while here in the 21st century
it’s something we do routinely
. | 32 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256421",
"author": "Victor VA3POQ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T09:15:53",
"content": "Funny enough, transponder information, dialed number and altitude is simple enough.Its history goes back to WW2 of the first use of military IFF, Identification Friend or Foe.so that friendly targe... | 1,760,373,446.543193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/21/help-thrust-open-source-satellites-to-the-next-level/ | Help Thrust Open Source Satellites To The Next Level | Jenny List | [
"Space"
] | [
"Applied Ion Syatems",
"electric thruster",
"satellite",
"thruster"
] | To place a satellite in orbit satisfactorily it is necessary not only to hitch a ride on a rocket, but also to put it in the right orbit for its task, and once it is there, to keep it there. With billions of dollars or roubles of investment over six decades of engineering behind them the national space agencies and commercial satellite builders solved these problems long since, but replicating those successes for open source microsatellites still represents a significant engineering challenge. One person working in this field is [Michael Bretti], who is doing sterling work with a shoestring budget on open source electric thrusters for the smallest of satellites, and
he needs your help in crowdfunding a piece of equipment
.
Beware suspiciously cheap eBay vacuum pumps!
As part of his testing he has a vacuum chamber, and when he places a thruster inside it he has to create a space-grade vacuum . This is no easy task, and to achieve it he has two pumps. The first of these, a roughing pump, is
a clapped-out example that has clearly reached the end of its days
, and it is this that he needs your help to replace. His GoFundMe page has a modest target of only $4,200 which should be well within the capabilities of our community in reaching, and in supporting it you will help the much wider small satellite community produce craft that will keep giving us interesting things from space for years to come.
We’ve mentioned his work before
here at Hackaday, and we hope that in time we’ll have a chance to look in more detail at his thrusters. Meanwhile
you can follow along on Twitter
.
Thanks [Bruce Perens K6BP] for
the tip
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256388",
"author": "Bruce Perens K6BP",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T05:56:28",
"content": "We have reached the cost of the pump in our GoFundMe! The community really stepped up, we got three $1000 donations and reached the goal much faster than I expected. If you want to contribute, t... | 1,760,373,446.65055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/21/3d-printing-transmission-line-speakers/ | 3D Printing Transmission Line Speakers | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"speaker",
"Speaker enclosure",
"speakers"
] | Anyone who has played with speakers on the workbench knows the huge difference enclosure design makes to the frequency response of an audio system. Speakerheads spend hours tinkering with designs and calculations, aiming to get the best out of a given set of drivers. [HexiBase] decided to try some experiments of his own,
running into some hurdles along the way.
[Hexibase] aimed to 3D print a compact transmission line design, to suit a pair of 1 1/8″ full-range drivers. Being aware of the benefits of high-resolution resin 3D printing, he set out to print a design taking full advantage of the build volume of his Longer 3D Orange 30 printer. Unfortunately, after much fiddling with slicer settings, the printer turned out to have a fundamental fault, leading to unusable prints.
Undeterred, [Hexibase] switched to using his Longer FDM model instead. Printing out the enclosures in PLA. he noted that the different material will have a slightly altered frequency response than originally intended. Regardless, the final result sounds great, and barring some higher-frequency anomalies, the output correlates well with the mathematical model of expected performance.
3D printers make great tools for budding speaker builders, as they make constructing advanced geometries a cinch.
Of course, you can even try and 3D print the drivers themselves if you’re so inclined
. Video after the break. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256376",
"author": "The Gambler",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T03:46:27",
"content": "finally some love for hexibase and not just the clickbait 3d printer guys on youtube……everyone knows who they are",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,446.592293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/21/hackaday-links-june-21-2020/ | Hackaday Links: June 21, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"cons",
"courses",
"diorama",
"hackaday links",
"HackadayU",
"IBM 1400",
"learning",
"lego",
"mindstorms"
] | When Lego introduced its Mindstorms line in 1998, in a lot of ways it was like a gateway drug into the world of STEM, even though that term wouldn’t be invented for another couple of years. Children and the obsolete children who begat them drooled over the possibility of combining the Lego building system with motors, sensors, and a real computer that was far and away beyond anything that was available at the time. Mindstorms became hugely influential in the early maker scene and was slowly but steadily updated over the decades, culminating with
the recently released Mindstorms Robot Inventor kit
. In the thirteen years since the last release, a lot has changed in the market, and we Hackaday scribes had a discussion this week about the continued relevancy of Mindstorms in a time when cheap servos, microcontrollers, and a bewildering array of sensors can be had for pennies. We wonder what the readers think: is a kit that burns a $360 hole in your pocket still worth it? Sound off below.
Are you looking for a way to productively fill some spare time? Plenty of people are these days, and Hackaday has quite a deal for them:
Hackaday U
! This series of online courses will get you up to speed on a wide range of topics, starting tomorrow with
Matthew Alt’s course on reverse engineering with Ghidra
. Classes meet online once a week for four weeks, with virtual office hours to help you master the topic. Beside reverse engineering, you can learn about
KiCad and FreeCad
,
quantum computing
,
real-time processing of audio and sensor data
, and later in the year, basic circuit theory. We’ve got other courses lined up to fill out the year, but don’t wait — sign up now! Oh, and the best part? It’s on a pay-as-you-wish basis, with all proceeds going to charity. Get smarter, help others while doing it — what’s not to love about that?
Speaking of virtual learning,
the GNU Radio Conference
will be moving online for its 10th anniversary year. And while it’s good news that this and other cons have been able to retool and continue their mission of educating and growing this community, it’s still a bummer that there won’t be a chance to network and participate in all the fun events such cons offer. Or perhaps there will — it seems like
the Wireless Capture the Flag (CTF) event is still going to happen
. Billed as “an immersive plot-driven … competition featuring the GNU Radio framework and many other open-source tools, satellite communications, cryptography, and surreal global landscapes,” it certainly sounds like fun. We’d love to find out exactly how this CTF competition will work.
Everyone needs a way to unwind, and sometimes the best way to do that is to throw yourself into a project of such intricacy and delicate work that you’re forced into an almost meditative state by it. We’ve seen beautiful examples of that with the wonderful circuit sculptures of
Mohit Bhoite
and
Jiří Praus
, but here’s something that almost defies belief:
a painstakingly detailed diorama of a vintage IBM data center
. Created by the aptly named [minatua], each piece of this sculpture is a work of art in its own right and represents the “big iron” of the 1400 series of computers from the early 1960s. The level of detail is phenomenal — the green and white striped fanfold paper coming out of the 1403 line printer has tiny characters printed on it, and on the 729 tape drives, the reels spin and the lights flash. It’s incredible, all the more so because there don’t appear to be any 3D-printed parts — everything is scratch built from raw materials. Check it out.
As you can imagine, the Hackaday tip line attracts a fair number of ideas of the scientifically marginal variety. Although we’re not too fond of spammers, we try to be kind to everyone who bothers to send us a tip, but with a skeptical eye when terms like “free energy” come across. Still, we found
this video touting to Nikola Tesla’s free energy secrets
worth passing on. It’s just how we roll.
And finally, aside from being the first full day of summer, today is Father’s Day. We just want to say Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, both those that inspired and guided us as we were growing up, and those who are currently passing the torch to the next generation. It’s not easy to do sometimes, but tackling a project with a kid is immensely important work, and hats off to all the dads who make the time for it. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256341",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2020-06-21T23:21:34",
"content": "THe LEGO materials are still of great value. The only thing that ever came close was Fischer-Technik, and that was priced even higher. Which is why I would say that the LEGO is obsoleting (is that a ... | 1,760,373,446.845804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/wifi-networks-turned-targets-in-this-pocket-game/ | WiFi Networks Turned Targets In This Pocket Game | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"handheld game",
"oled",
"wifi scanner"
] | Looking for a way to make his warwalking sessions a bit more interactive, [Roni Bandini] has come up with an interesting way to
gamify the discovery of new WiFi networks
. Using a Heltec WiFi Kit 8, which integrates an OLED screen and ESP8266, this pocket-sized device picks up wireless networks and uses their signal strength and encryption type as elements of the game.
After selecting which network they want to play against, a target is placed on the screen. The distance between the target and the player is determined by signal strength, and how much damage the target can take correlates to how strong its encryption is. As you can see in the video after the break, gameplay is a bit reminiscent of
Scorched Earth
, where the player needs to adjust the angle of their artillery to hit distant targets.
The Heltec board is attached to a 3D printed front panel, which fits neatly into an Altoids tin. The controls consist of a button and a potentiometer, and with the addition of a battery pack salvaged from an old cell phone, this little device is ready to do battle wherever you roam.
While this is just a fun diversion for the time being, [Roni] says it wouldn’t take much to actual log networks to a file and generate some statistics about their strength and encryption type. If the idea of a portable WiFi scanning companion seems interesting,
you should definitely check out the Pwnagotchi project
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256462",
"author": "Angelo Quisito IV",
"timestamp": "2020-06-22T13:58:35",
"content": "Love this !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,446.790686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/chasing-a-long-obsolete-tube/ | Chasing A Long-Obsolete Tube | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"capacitor microphone",
"Neumann U47",
"pentode",
"tube",
"VF14"
] | Regular readers will know that here at Hackaday we have a penchant for poking fun at the more silly end of the audiophile world, with its dubious accessories and purple prose. It’s worth remembering though that this is not representative of the whole discipline of audio design, indeed the quest for perfect audio reproduction contains plenty of complex engineering problems.
We’re indebted to [macsimski] then for sending us a link to a page from Phaedrus Audio from a year or two ago,
in which they discuss the history of an unusual pentode tube
used as an impedance converter in a series of legendary post-war microphones. It’s unlikely that you’ll have a Neumann U47 or U48 broadcast microphone on your bench, but even so the story behind their design is one that should fascinate anyone.
It takes us back to the period immediately following the Second World War, when German electricity supplies were varied and unreliable, and radio receivers designed for them required new tubes from the manufacturers. Among these was the VF14, with an unusual high-voltage heater designed such that two of them could be connected in series across the supply. This and its compact shape prompted its selection for the professional microphones, even though its performance was so poor that only a third of the production passed the performance test.
Since it passed out of production in the early 1950s the remaining components are extremely rare, and the majority of those surviving do not meet the performance characteristics of the microphone. The Phaedrus write-up goes into significant technical detail which should be of note to anyone with an interest in tubes, and ends up with their reason for it all, a plug-in hardware simulation of the original tube’s properties. Vintage capacitor microphones may be out of the ordinary for Hackaday, but it’s still a good read.
For a bit more on capacitor microphones
it’s worth a look at our dive into electrets
.
Header image: JacoTen /
CC BY-SA 3.0 | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256160",
"author": "ellisgl",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T21:18:50",
"content": "As time goes on JFETs are starting to disappear too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6256196",
"author": "2ftg",
"timestamp": "2020... | 1,760,373,446.698995 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/great-badge-concept-a-geiger-counter-for-wifi-deauthentication-frames/ | Great Badge Concept: A “Geiger Counter” For WiFi Deauthentication Frames | Donald Papp | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"deauth attack",
"Deauthentication",
"defcon",
"geiger",
"geiger counter",
"telephreak",
"wifi"
] | [Nick Price] had a wonderful concept for a DEFCON badge:
a device that worked a lot like a directional Geiger counter, but chirped at detecting WiFi deauthentication packets
instead of radiation. That’s a wild idea and it somehow slipped past us last year. Why detect such a thing? Well, the
WiFi deauth attack
is a kind of invisible toxicity, effectively jamming wireless communications by forcing users to be constantly tied up with authentication, and this device would detect it.
A few things were harder than expected, however. To make the device directional, [Nick] designed and built a PCB Yagi antenna but it wasn’t practical. Not only was it far too big, it would also have required going to four layers on a PCB that was already expensive. The solution he settled on — inspired by a friend’s joke about just dropping the badge into a Pringles can — was to surround the PCB omni antenna with a copper pipe end cap from the plumbing section of any hardware store. [Nick] figured that soldering that to the ground plane should result in a simple, cheap, and attractive directional antenna mod. Did it work? We’ll all have to wait and see.
Sadly, [Nick] wasn’t able to finish in time for last year’s DEFCON. Hardware revisions mounted, and fabrication times for his specialized PCB were longer than usual. Worse news is that
this year’s is cancelled
, or rather is going virtual, which means he’s going to have to deauth himself. The good news is that now he’s got another 12-month extension. Watch the brief video of the functional prototype, embedded below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWmiI62Fp3Q
The Geiger counter might be vintage hardware, but it has an endurance and appeal that is undeniable. It’s also been brought into the modern hobbyist era with
this touchscreen-enabled unit with a beautiful enclosure and slick UI
. | 15 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256107",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T17:51:18",
"content": "There HAS to be a better word for that. Or coin one now. Retract Frame. Cast-off Frame. Anything but deauthentificationing! (This is orders of magnitude worse than edge case and use case).",
"paren... | 1,760,373,446.750972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/seeing-code-the-widescreen-rant/ | Seeing Code: The Widescreen Rant | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"code style",
"holy war",
"linux",
"newsletter",
"Rant",
"terminal"
] | A couple of weeks ago, Linus Torvalds
laid down the law
, in a particularly Linusesque sort of way. In a software community where tabs vs. spaces can start religious wars, saying that 80-character-wide code was obsolete was, to some, utter heresy. For more background on how we got here, read [Sven Gregori]’s
history piece on Hackaday
, and you’ll learn that sliced bread and the 80-character IBM punch card both made their debut in July, 1928. But I digress.
When I look at a codebase, I like to see its
structure
, and I’m not alone. That’s one of the reasons for the
Linux Kernel style guide’s
ridiculously wide 8-character tabs. Combined with a trend for variable names becoming more and more descriptive, which I take to be a good thing, and monitors’ aspect ratios growing seemingly without end, which I don’t, the 80-column width seems like a relic from the long-gone era of the VT-220.
In Linus’ missive, we learn that he runs terminals at 100 x 50, and frequently drags them out to a screen-filling 142 x 76. (Amateur! I write this to you now on 187 x 48.) When you’re running this wide, it doesn’t make any sense to line-wrap argument lists, even if you’re using Hungarian notation.
And yet, change is painful. I’ve had to re-format code to meet 73-column restrictions for a book, only to discover that my inline comments were too verbose. Removing even an artificial restriction like the 80-column limit will have real effects. I write longer paragraphs, for instance, on a wider screen.
I see a few good things to come out of this, though. If single thoughts can be expressed on single lines, it makes the shape of the code better reflect its function. Getting rid of pointless wrapping takes up less vertical space, which is at a premium on today’s cinematic monitors. And if it makes inline comments better (I know, another holy war!) or facilitates better variable naming, it will have been worth it.
But any way you slice it, we’re no longer typing on the old
80-character Hazeltine
. It’s high time for our coding style and practice to catch up.
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
! | 114 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256047",
"author": "ChipMaster",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T14:48:59",
"content": "Sooo many comments on that other article you just needed to open a fresh place for them to keep them coming. ;-) I’ll oblige. Speak for yourself. I still regularly end up on 80×25 physical screens. It ... | 1,760,373,447.054665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/smartglove-helps-cyclists-be-seen/ | Smartglove Helps Cyclists Be Seen | Lewin Day | [
"News"
] | [] | Cyclists share the road with other vehicles, often leading to problems when drivers fail to see or respect the rider’s space. To try and alleviate these issues,
[Matlek] built the Smartglove to help cyclists communicate their intentions to other road users.
The project consists of a glove fitted with an Arduino Nano 33 BLE sense, featuring Bluetooth and motion sensing on board. Combined with TinyML machine learning code, the Arduino is able to sense hand gestures from the rider. These gestures are then interpreted, and relevant messages displayed on an LED screen worn on the rider’s back. Flicking the wrist left and right flashes indicators that the user is about to change direction, while a rearward flick flashes a warning that the user is braking.
It’s a tidy way to integrate vehicle-style lighting into a simple interface for cycling. This has benefits, particularly at night, for allowing other road users to see a cyclist and understand their intentions on the road. Of course, if you really want to be noticed,
this bike boombox could also be a big help.
Video after the break. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6256015",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T11:54:35",
"content": "Neat, think some of the lighting options might need some work though for clarity.In my experience it won’t solve the problem at all though – car drivers don’t want to see two wheelers no matter how neon... | 1,760,373,446.905419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/20/key-that-morse-with-little-more-than-your-laptop/ | Key That Morse With Little More Than Your Laptop | Jenny List | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"cw",
"laptop",
"lid switch",
"morse"
] | If you look at the computer in front of you, it will have an array of input devices. A keyboard and mouse, a touch screen, maybe a microphone, or even a gamepad. Each of them will have its moment to shine, and you’ll probably have put some effort into their selection. But when it comes to a computer, almost anything connected to it can be an input device in some form, as long as it provides some form of machine readable parameter.
Consider your laptop: it knows when its lid is closed such that it can put itself to sleep. Even that can be used as an input device with a little ingenuity, as [veggiedefender] has done with “
open and shut
“, a Morse keyer using opening and closing the laptop lid as its key.
The software for GNU/Linux distributions is a surprisingly accessible set of shell scripts that attach themselves to ACPI events surrounding the lid switch. In use it seems a little cumbersome, but we suspect its real value is not in repeatedly slammin the lid to produce Morse text input. Instead with many lid switches being magnetic reed switches an operator could simply wear a ring with a magnet and tap out their text every bit as quickly as they could using a traditional key.
We like the idea, and could see it being popular among radio amateurs. It’s a theme we’ve visited before
with a more traditional key
, and if you’d love to try but don’t know any Morse then
perhaps this may help you learn
.
Thanks [Kickaxe] for the tip.
Header image: Raimond Spekking /
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255985",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T08:27:45",
"content": "Old news",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6255987",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T08:37:23",
"content": "Sorry, mu... | 1,760,373,447.107344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/19/plantm-if-you-gotm-and-keepm-alive/ | Plant’m If You Got’m And Keep’m Alive | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"automated plant care",
"lm35",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"soil moisture sensor",
"water pump"
] | Having a few plants around is a great way to liven up your living and/or working space. They look nice, you get to watch them grow and change, and some types of plants can actively improve the room’s air quality. But let’s face it — even the easy ones require a baseline level of care that can easily fall by the wayside. After all, the poor things can’t scream out for water or get up and find a sunnier spot for themselves.
[Ine Hocedez] was tired of watching her plants die and not knowing why. The two main culprits involve water and light, though there can be other issues like soil pH and bugs.
It’s easy to get the balance wrong, so why not automate everything?
Plant’m is a complete, portable package that [Ine] designed for a school project. A soil moisture sensor dictates the watering schedule via Raspberry Pi, and water is automatically pumped from an elevated tank.
The lamp is meant to supplement the sunlight, not replace it. But that’s the real beauty of this botanical box — [Ine] can just pick it up and try a different spot if the plant droops or shows burnt spots.
Got the sunlight part down for your plant, but can’t remember to water it?
Re-purpose an old Keurig and give it an automatic drip
. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255965",
"author": "Vinalon",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T05:45:48",
"content": "Awesome – agricultural projects are always great to see.One issue with Pis is that the cost can grow to be expensive once you get a green thumb and decide to keep more than one plant alive at a time.They ... | 1,760,373,447.15627 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/19/learn-quantum-computing-with-spaced-repetition/ | Learn Quantum Computing With Spaced Repetition | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"quantum computing",
"spaced repetition",
"tutorial"
] | Everyone learns differently, but cognitive research shows that you tend to remember things better if you use spaced repetition. That is, you learn something, then after a period, you are tested. If you still remember, you get tested again later with a longer interval between tests. If you get it wrong, you get tested earlier. That’s the idea behind [Andy Matuschak ‘s]and [Michael Nielsen’s]
quantum computing tutorial
. You answer questions embedded in the text. You answer to yourself, so there’s no scoring. However, once you click to reveal the answer, you report if you got the answer correct or not, and the system schedules you for retest based on your report.
Does it work? We don’t know, but we have heard that spaced repetition is good for learning languages, among other things. We suspect that like most learning methods, it works better for some people than others.
The series of essays are reasonably technical and assume you understand linear algebra, complex numbers, and Boolean logic. Of course, there are links to help you pick up any of those you lack. Honestly, those topics will help you in lots of other areas, too, so if you don’t already have those in your tool belt, it wouldn’t hurt to follow some of the links.
If you want to play with quantum computing, we like
Quirk
. There are also quantum computers you can use for real from
IBM
, although you’ll run out of gates pretty quickly. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255994",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T09:40:22",
"content": "Microsoft’s Q# is also reasonably easy to install on Debian and integrates well with Jupyter.I’m a fan of Katas and there are also Quantum Katas which you can repeat to hammer the lessons home.Katas a... | 1,760,373,447.246931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/19/scanning-analog-film-for-the-last-time/ | Scanning Analog Film For The Last Time | Lewin Day | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"dslr",
"film scanner",
"scanner"
] | Film cameras are capable of great resolution, and for a long time were superior in this regard to their digital successors. However, it’s now possible to store digital copies of analog images in superior detail, so [Jan] built a rig to
scan their photos for the last time.
The general idea is to take a high enough resolution scan of film negatives or slides, such that there is no need to rescan the images when technology moves forward. To achieve this, [Jan] decided to employ a DSLR to photograph the materials in question. To do this quickly and accurately, with minimal fuss, special lens hoods were 3D printed to hold slides in perfect register in front of the lens. With a flash to provide even light, the results are excellent. Film negatives proved harder, requiring a carefully designed transport mechanism to avoid damaging the fragile materials. With some perseverance, the final tool worked well.
It’s a tidy way of digitally archiving analog photos, and with the resolution of modern cameras, one needn’t worry about lost resolution. We’ve seen mechanised builds for handling other formats too,
such as this 8mm scanner.
Video after the break. | 44 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255927",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-19T23:09:18",
"content": "Now pack them away carefully so they can get rescanned again for the last time in 30 years time when the digital formats you used have bitrotted or need unobtanium hardware or software.",
"parent... | 1,760,373,447.374583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/19/vintage-keyboard-gets-the-qmk-treatment/ | Vintage Keyboard Gets The QMK Treatment | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"compaq",
"custom keyboard",
"keyboard",
"QMK",
"teensy 2.0"
] | While nobody could deny that computing technology has some a long way in the last few decades, there are many out there who believe peak keyboard was sometime before the turn of the new millennium. They prefer the look, feel, and especially the sounds, of those classic keyboards to what passes for an input device these days. So much so that it’s not uncommon to see one of these old mammoths get freshened up and pushed into service with a modern computer.
Which is exactly
what [Juan Pablo Kutianski] has done with his Compaq MX-11800
. This keyboard, which is actually a branded version of the Cherry G80-11800, really stands out in a crowd. With an integrated trackball and a two-row arrangement for the function keys, it’s not hard to see why he’d want to show it off. But while the hardware itself was solid, the features and capabilities of this old school keyboard left something to be desired.
The solution was to replace the keyboard’s original electronics with a Teensy++2.0 running the popular QMK firmware. This not only made the keyboard USB, but allowed [Juan] to tweak things such as the trackball sensitivity and add in support for layers and macros. All of which can be managed through VIA, a graphical configuration tool for QMK.
As we’ve seen in so many projects, the combination of QMK running on the Teensy is a powerful tool for getting the most out of your keyboard. Whether breathing new life into a vintage piece of hardware or
creating something truly custom like our very own [Kristina Panos] recently did
, it’s definitely something to keep in mind if you’re considering any keyboard hacking. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255935",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-06-20T00:09:27",
"content": "^^^ They[ It’s nice to see HaD keeps old traditions alive. ]",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6255946",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,373,447.301189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/19/message-in-a-bottle-bicycle-trailer-on-a-mission/ | Message In A Bottle: Bicycle Trailer On A Mission | Sven Gregori | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike trailer",
"graffiti",
"solenoid",
"trailer"
] | Graffiti is a controversial subject, and whether you see it as art or vandalism usually depends where and how you come across it. From the scribbled tag on a house wall, to highly sophisticated murals, they tend to have one thing in common though: making a statement — whether that’s political, showing appreciation, or a simple “I was here”. [Sagarrabanana] had his own statement to make, but chose a less permanent way to express himself with his type of graffiti.
Unhappy about the lack of dedicated cycle lanes in his area, he built
an automatic, Arduino-controlled water dispensing bicycle trailer
, writing his message on every street he rides on. The build is
documented in a video
, and
shown in action in another one
— which are both in Spanish (and also embedded after the break), but pictures are worth their thousand words in any language.
Inspired by
persistence of vision
(POV), where moving LEDs sync up their blinking to give the illusion of a static image, [Sagarrabanana] transformed the concept to water on a road using an array of solenoids attached to a water tank. Each solenoid is controlled by a relay, and a predefined font determines when to switch each relay — the same way pixels on a display would be set on or off, except small amounts of water are squirted out as the bicycle is moving along. The message itself is received via serial Bluetooth module, and can be easily modified for example from a phone. To adjust the water dispensing to the cycling speed, the whole system is synced to a magnetic switch mounted to one of the trailer’s wheels, so you could theoretically take it also with you on a run.
Time will tell if [Sagarrabanana]’s mission has the success he hopes for, but there’s no doubt the trailer will attract attention anywhere he goes. Well, we wish him all the best to get the message through without requiring a too drastic alternative as writing medium. Although, we’ve seen
a graffiti robot that uses chalk spray
in the past, so there’s certainly room for a not-too-permanent upgrade if needed. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6255880",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-19T18:56:29",
"content": "Cool, but hard to read, not talking about language barrier either. I just hope that the people he is trying to reach are also following him around with a drone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,373,447.448405 |
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