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https://hackaday.com/2020/06/10/stm32-blue-pill-turned-gpg-security-token/ | STM32 Blue Pill Turned GPG Security Token | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"blue pill",
"GNU Privacy Guard",
"gpg",
"security token",
"stm32",
"Yubikey"
] | Feeling the cost of commercial options like the YubiKey and Nitrokey were too high, [TheStaticTurtle] started researching DIY alternatives. He found an open source project allows the STM32F103 to act as a USB cryptographic token for GNU Privacy Guard, which was a start. All he had to do was
build a suitable device to install it on
.
Blue Pill proof of concept
The first step was to test the software out on the popular “Blue Pill” development board, which [TheStaticTurtle] documents in the write-up should anyone want to give it a try themselves. The ST-Link V2 was already a supported target, so it only took some relatively minor tweaks to get running and add support for a simple push button. The output of
gpg --card-status
showed the device was working as expected, so with the software sorted, it was time to take a closer look at the hardware.
To create his “TurtleAuth” dongle, [TheStaticTurtle] started with the basic layout of the Blue Pill and added in a TTP223E touch control IC. The original Micro USB port was also swapped for a male USB-A connector so the device could be plugged directly into a computer. An upper PCB, containing the status LEDs and touch pad, was then designed so it would fit over the main board as an enclosure of sorts. While the sides are still open, the device looks robust enough to handle life in a laptop bag at least.
While it’s not exactly a common project, this isn’t the first time
we’ve seen somebody spin up their own hardware token
. More evidence of what the dedicated individual can accomplish these days on a relatively limited budget. | 30 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252996",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-06-10T08:08:59",
"content": "Why so big?https://tomu.im/https://hackaday.io/project/167005-femu-an-esp32-wi-fibluetooth-board-in-tomu-form",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "625... | 1,760,373,461.004111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/an-open-hardware-modem-for-the-modern-era/ | An Open Hardware Modem For The Modern Era | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"aes-128",
"afsk",
"analog",
"modem",
"packet radio"
] | Readers of a certain age will no doubt remember the external modems that used to sit next to their computers, with the madly flashing LEDs and cacophony of familiar squeals announcing your impending connection to a realm of infinite possibilities. By comparison, connecting to the Internet these days is about as exciting as flicking on the kitchen light. Perhaps even less so.
But while we don’t use them to connect our devices to the Internet anymore, that doesn’t mean the analog modem is completely without its use. The
OpenModem by [Mark Qvist] is an open hardware and software audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) modem
that recalls some of the charm (and connection speeds) of those early devices.
It’s intended primarily for packet radio communications, and as such is designed to tie into a radio’s Push-to-Talk functionality with a standard 3.5 mm jack connector. Support for AES-128 encryption means it will take a bit more than an RTL-SDR to eavesdrop on your communications. Though if you’re really worried about others listening in, the project page says you could even use the OpenModem over a wired connection as you would have in the old days.
If you just want a simple and reliable way to get a secure AFSK communication link going, the OpenModem looks like it would be a great choice. But more than that, it offers a compelling platform for learning and experimentation. The hardware is compatible with the Arduino IDE, so you can even write your own firmware should you want to spin up your own take on this classic communications device.
The OpenModem is the evolution of
the MicroModem that [Mark] developed years ago
, and it’s clear that the project has come a long way since then. Of course, if you’re more about the look than the underlying technology, you could always just
put a WiFi access point into the case of an old analog modem
.
[Thanks to Boofdas for the tip.] | 39 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252971",
"author": "mm",
"timestamp": "2020-06-10T05:18:37",
"content": "Are radio hams in other countries allowed to use encryption on their ax.25 links?I’m pretty certain it is still not allowed by the UK licence.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,461.40796 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/xilinx-makes-mipi-csi-and-dsi-controller-ip-blocks-free-to-use-with-vivado/ | Xilinx Makes MIPI CSI And DSI Controller IP Blocks Free To Use With Vivado | Maya Posch | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga",
"ip blocks",
"mipi",
"xilinx"
] | If you want to use a display or camera with an FPGA, you will often end up with a MIPI-based solution. As of the Xilinx Vivado 2020.1 release, the MIPI DSI (display serial interface) and CSI (camera serial interface) IP blocks are now bundled with the IDE to be used freely with Xilinx FPGAs.
The
Xilinx MIPI CSI2
receiver block implements the
CSI-2 v1.1
specification, which although a bit older is essentially the same CSI implementation as on the Raspberry Pi boards. This means that it would allow one to use this IP block on an FPGA with many common CSI camera modules out there. The IP block offers a standard
AXI4
interface for connecting up to the rest of a design.
Similarly, the
Xilinx MIPI DSI
transmitter block implements
DSI v1.3
specification. This offers a maximum data rate of 1.5 Gbps, with an AXI4-lite interface to communicate with the rest of the design. Both IP blocks are subject to the
Core license agreement
, which doesn’t appear to preclude it from being used in a specific fashion, whether commercial or personal.
This is not the only way to use MIPI devices with an FPGA, of course. Take for example [Daveshah]’s
CSRIx project on Github
.
Header image: Kwapix /
CC BY-SA 4.0 | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252953",
"author": "Allan-H",
"timestamp": "2020-06-10T02:37:24",
"content": "I find it interesting that the image is of a three decade old FPGA, that wouldn’t be able to fit the MIPI IP even if Vivado could be made to work on it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,373,461.331476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/external-battery-mod-for-action-camera-does-it-non-destructively/ | External Battery Mod For Action Camera Does It Non-destructively | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"14500",
"3d printed",
"Action camera",
"battery contacts",
"dummy battery",
"External Battery",
"SJ4000",
"sjcam"
] | [Facelesstech] owns an SJCAM SJ4000 action camera, but the internal battery was no longer functional. Not wishing to buy a replacement and unwilling to hook up an ungainly USB cable to feed power, the solution was to
design and 3D print an adapter to power the camera from a single rechargeable 14500 sized battery
(which is the same size as an AA cell, and a good match for the width of the camera.)
The adapter works by mimicking the original battery, so the camera never knows the difference. A 3D-printed holder for the 14500 battery (which doubles as a GoPro compatible mount) has an extension the same size and shape of the camera’s original internal battery. The tricky part was interfacing to the power connectors buried inside the camera’s battery bay. For a solution, [Facelesstech] eventually settled on the small connectors harvested from inside a female header, using them to connect to the small blades inside the camera. We broke open a spare female 0.1″ header, shown here, to make it clear where these little pieces come from. The only other battery hardware needed are the contacts for an AA cell, but those are also easy to harvest and reuse.
The
GitHub repository for the project
includes STL files as well as the FreeCAD files for the parts. A video overview is embedded below.
It’s also possible to add an external microphone input to these cameras
, but it’s considerably more involved than external power. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252933",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T23:09:36",
"content": "Shut up and take my money! Just a thought though, he should print a door to hold the battery in, depending on how hard he uses his camera it could pop out and he’d miss a shot. Now I have to print somet... | 1,760,373,461.185146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/lunchbox-cyberdeck-is-a-tasty-build/ | Lunchbox Cyberdeck Is A Tasty Build | Kristina Panos | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"40% keyboard",
"cyberdeck",
"Gherkin",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"toggle switches",
"trackball",
"Zealios"
] | One of our favorite things about the cyberdeck concept has got to be the versatility of this mobile computing medium. Some cyberdecks lean toward making the user into a full-on
Snow Crash
gargoyle, and others are more fold-and-go like laptops.
This discreet deck from [Andres Borray] looks as though it might have a PB&J and a bag of chips inside
.
Instead, there’s a Gherkin. What? For the uninitiated, that’s a handmade
40%
30% mechanical keyboard right there and it’s called the Gherkin. It has more keys than it appears, thanks to layers in the firmware. By long pressing any key on the bottom row, the entire map changes to access stuff like numbers and F keys.
This lunchbox is powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 and uses the official Pi display with the touch input enabled. Even so, there’s a baby trackball right there under the thumbs. [Andres] designed and printed panels for both sides to mount everything, and those files will be available soon along with a more detailed build log.
You can do anything you want with a cyberdeck build — it’s kind of the point. Want to program microcontrollers wherever?
Get your feet wet with a cyberduck
.
Via
reddit | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252903",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T20:41:00",
"content": "It looks so Fisher-Pricey with the red case and yellow accents!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6252905",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2020-... | 1,760,373,460.909417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/the-hackaday-prize-field-ready-is-changing-the-face-of-humanitarian-relief/ | The Hackaday Prize: Field Ready Is Changing The Face Of Humanitarian Relief | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"disaster recovery",
"Dream Team challenge",
"Field Ready",
"manufacturing"
] | It’s one of the enduring images of a humanitarian aid mobilization: military transport planes lined up on runways, ready to receive pallets of every conceivable supply. The cardboard boxes on those shrink-wrapped pallets are filled with everything from baby formula to drinking water, and will join crates filled with the tools and materials needed to shelter, clothe, feed, and heal people in places where civilization has suddenly come into short supply thanks to a disaster, sometimes natural, but often man-made.
What if it didn’t need to be that way? What if, instead of flight after flight of supplies sent in to help rebuild, perhaps just one flight was needed, one stuffed with the tools of our trade: 3D-printers, Arduinos, electronic components, machine tools, and the experts to use them. It certainly wouldn’t make up for the short-term need for food and water, but importing the ability to manufacture the items needed locally would go a long way to repairing infrastructure in the disaster area.
Rethinking disaster response is the core mission of
Field Ready
, one of the groups we’ve partnered with for the 2020 Hackaday Prize. By way of introduction to this non-profit with a potentially world-changing mission, and to help those who are participating in
the 2020 Hackaday Prize challenges
, here’s a little bit about Field Ready — what they do, how they see digital manufacturing fitting into their mission, and where they’re going in the future.
Supply Threads
If the first half of 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that this world lives and dies by supply chains. The term “chain” is perhaps a bit oxymoronic, as it implies strength and stability. But as we’ve all learned, our supply chains are more like threads, easily broken and difficult to mend. The globally distributed supply chain that giveth inexpensive goods en masse can also taketh them away, especially in disaster zones.
It was with these bottlenecks in mind that Field Ready was conceived by Eric James, Dara Dotz, and Nick Haan in 2012. Their idea was to transform the logistics of disaster relief using the power of flexible manufacturing to essentially bring a “build anything” factory to the disaster. Since incorporating and receiving their non-profit status in 2014, they’ve tested their system with field responses to a wide range of humanitarian crises, starting with the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal.
After assessing the ravaged country’s needs, Field Ready helped start up a digital manufacturing lab in Kathmandu to manufacture whatever was needed by the host of aid agencies that flooded into the disaster area. The medical instruments and repair parts that the lab created could have been ordered, but with roads knocked out by the quakes and supply lines frayed, making them on-site was quicker and easier. In 2016, Field Ready made over 5,000 items. In addition, they trained over 600 people how to run the machines in the lab, leaving Nepal with the capacity to continue rebuilding, not to mention leaving them well-positioned to respond to the current COVID-19 crisis by building their own PPE.
The ongoing civil war in Syria provided another chance for Field Ready to innovate. Rescue and recovery operations from buildings collapsed by rockets and artillery are often helped by the use of lifting bags, sturdy flexible bladders that expand when inflated with high-pressure air. Lifting bags can lift the tremendous weight of concrete slabs and steel beams, but they were in short supply in the war-torn nation, so Field Ready created a means to manufacture the airbags from locally sourced materials. They’ve made over 100 bags and distributed them widely; the tools have helped save the lives of seven people so far, and what’s more,
the design is freely available
, so anyone can build a bag and save a life.
The Open Challenges
The Open Challenges of the 2020 Hackaday Prize invite anyone to enter with their ideas for addressing the topics outline by our four non-profit partners. The challenges are based on needs they’ve identified through their work in the field, and designs that address these needs have the potential to make a huge impact on their life-saving efforts and the disaster response efforts of other NGOs. Field Ready has a few highly focused devices in mind.
The first challenge is to produce a reliable, low-cost infusion fluid warmer. Under the best of conditions, medical treatment that involves infusion of fluids is anything but trivial. Intravenous therapy always requires sterile supplies and procedures, which can be difficult to obtain in disaster scenarios, and the venipuncture itself is invasive and prone to infection. But one of the lesser-known risks of infusion therapy is inducing hypothermia by not properly warming the infusion fluids.
To avoid the risk a patient faces when getting a large bolus of cold fluid, fluid warmers are routinely used. By warming the fluid in a controlled and reliable way to nearly body temperature, the risk of hypothermia and bursting of red blood cells, or hemolysis, can be averted. The trouble is, commercial fluid warmers are expensive and hard to come by in austere clinical conditions. The challenge seeks to rectify this with a design for a fluid warmer that can be assembled from readily available parts. Above all, the fluid warmer needs to be designed with safety in mind and with an eye to making it easy to construct by responders who likely will not have experience building medical devices.
In April, Dries Verbruggen experimented with
welding PPE with a defocused laser cutter
. Field Ready seeks a welder design that can be built on scene and produce similar results.
Another device in the Open Challenge is a heat sealer and plastic welder. Such a device has plenty of applications in the medical response space, from sealing sample bags to rapidly creating isolation gowns. We’ve seen hospitals the world over struggle with the latter over the last few months as stockpiles of PPE have dwindled. In a disaster situation, effective PPE could be vanishingly scarce. A heat sealer that could be used as a welder for synthetic textiles like Tyvek and spun polypropylene could allow responders to make isolation gowns, eye shields, and even face masks far faster than they can be printed or sewn.
The final device in Field Ready’s Open Challenge is for a versatile UV wand for curing adhesives. The range of UV-curable resins is vast, covering applications from semiconductor manufacturing to artificial fingernails. In disaster response, the ability to leverage these versatile adhesives is often thwarted by the expense of the UV curing stations needed to cross-link the uncured resin. Anyone accepting this challenge will need to design something that emits UV-A light at levels needed to cure resins, do it from easily sourced materials, and make it versatile enough to fit into many different manufacturing processes.
The Dream Team Challenge
When it comes to tracking products and assuring that customers are getting what they pay for, traditional manufacturers with centralized operations have extensive quality control and quality assurance programs in place. Many manufacturers keep track of products through lot numbers and serial numbers; testing of random samples of a product, designed to elicit any flaws in the manufacturing or assembly process before the product gets to a customer, is a common practice too.
All these things need to be tracked
But for the decentralized manufacturing model that Field Ready applies to its disaster response efforts, traditional QA methods need not apply. Parts often go directly from the bed of a 3D-printer to an end-user, without the benefit of so much as a serial number or even a logo to let people know where the widget was made. This causes problems downstream, not least of which is getting credit for the good work they’re doing. Self-promotion aside, without a label an end-user who needs more of the widget has no idea whom to contact to get another, and someone who experiences a failure of the part has no recourse. The lack of tracing can lead to waste, as Field Ready gets no feedback on what’s working in the field and what needs fixing.
Applications closed today and the selection process is under way to choose three people who will work on Field Ready’s Dream Team over the next two months. They will each receive a monthly stipend of $3,000 to work with the organization on the Dream Team Challenge that aims to fix that lack of traceability. They’re tasked with assembling a quality control system that can be used to track every part made by Field Ready during its emergency response deployments. It will present a huge challenge, since items as small as 3D-printed umbilical clamps for obstetrical use to full-size structures like portable shelters and latrines have to be tracked. Diversity of materials presents another layer of difficulty, as Field Ready uses whatever they can to build the things they need. So any logos, serial numbers, QR codes, or labels need to work with wood, metal, glass, plastic, ceramic, or any other imaginable material, and must be robust enough to last under harsh conditions. Finally, the system needs to be remotely accessible, so that Field Ready can protect their users and continuously improve their offerings.
Let’s Do This!
Whether you made it onto the Dream Team, or prefer to work on one of the Open Challenge projects, Field Ready is positioned to put your efforts to good use. The world isn’t getting any safer, and there will always be a need for someone to step in to offer a helping hand. The less stuff they have to bring with them, the better, and with your help, Field Ready is making good on that vision.
Spend some time learning about the Field Ready challenges through this video Q&A session.
[Featured images: Red Team deployment in South Sudan field printing a water pump fitting; printing medical supplies in the US Virgin Islands with vehicle-powered 3D-printer. Courtesy Field Ready] | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252988",
"author": "Luke",
"timestamp": "2020-06-10T07:31:29",
"content": ">What if, instead of flight after flight of supplies sent in to help rebuild, perhaps just one flight was needed, one stuffed with the tools of our trade: 3D-printers, Arduinos, electronic components, machin... | 1,760,373,460.840267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/bertha-benz-pushed-the-automobile-toward-production/ | Bertha Benz Pushed The Automobile Toward Production | Kristina Panos | [
"Biography",
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"automobile",
"Benz Patent Motorcar",
"brake pads",
"joyride",
"Karl Benz",
"ligroin",
"Mercedez-Benz",
"road trip"
] | Who invented the automobile? The answer depends a little bit on your definition of the word. The first practical gas-powered carriage was built by Karl Benz, who later merged his company with Daimler Motor Group to form Mercedez-Benz.
Karl Benz was a design visionary whose first fascinations were with locomotives and bicycles. His 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen was the first automobile to generate its own power, which was made with a two-stroke engine and transmitted to the rear axle by a pair of chains. He didn’t think it was ready for the road, and he was mostly right.
Bertha Benz, Karl’s wife and business partner, believed in her husband’s invention. She had been there since the beginning, and provided much of the funding for it along the way. If she hadn’t taken it out for a secret, illegal joyride, the Motorwagen may have never left the garage.
From Dowry to Down and Out
Bertha Benz at age 18. Image via
Wikipedia
Cäcilie Bertha Ringer was born into a wealthy family in Pforzheim, Germany, in the spring of 1849. Her father was a carpenter and real estate investor who indulged his young daughter’s wide-eyed interest in the workings of locomotives and other technical things. Because of her father’s position, Bertha was able to get an education beyond the domestic arts, and enjoyed studying the natural sciences most of all.
Bertha grew into a beautiful and clever young woman, and by the age of twenty had many potential suitors from well-off families. But they all seemed to leave her cold. By chance, she and her mother shared a coach one summer day with a poor, disheveled young mechanical engineer named Karl Benz. When he started talking about the horseless carriage he was working on, Bertha fell in love.
Karl had started an iron foundry not long before meeting Bertha, but he had a terrible business partner. Bertha used part of her dowry to buy him out and save the company, which began to produce gas engines. Against her father’s wishes and warnings, they were married within a few years and had five children.
Karl spent the next decade working on his horseless carriage despite a completely disinterested public. Few people were ready to invest in what was essentially a spindly tricycle with a lawnmower engine that ran on lighter fluid. He struggled to market the car to potential investors and buyers who were happy with their horses.
The First Road Trip Was a Joyride
A reenactment of Bertha’s joyride. Image via
Mercedes-Benz
Fortunately for Karl, Bertha believed in her husband’s creation even more than he did. At that point, the Motorwagen had only tooled around for short distances. She knew that it would take a decently long journey to really torture test the thing and figure out its remaining weaknesses. So on August 5th, 1888, she and her two teen-aged sons, Eugen and Richard, took off at dawn on the world’s first road trip without telling Karl or anyone else.
A monument outside the world’s first gas station depicts Bertha’s wild ride in dramatic abstract. Image via
Wikipedia
The trio faced numerous obstacles along the way, but Bertha hacked her way through all of them. The biggest problem was that the car had no fuel tank and only held 4.5L in the carburetor. It ran on ligroin, a type of heavy naphtha distilled from petroleum, which could only be found at pharmacies. So when Bertha and the boys ran out of fuel about 40km (25mi) into the trip, she stopped at a drugstore in Weisloch that is now known as the world’s first gas station.
When the fuel line clogged, Bertha used her hat pin to get it flowing again. At one point an ignition wire shorted, so Bertha sacrificed a garter from her stockings to insulate it.
Eventually the Motorwagen’s wooden brakes began to wear out. She managed to stop at a cobbler to have him fortify them with leather, inventing the first brake pads in the process. They went about 104km (65 mi) in total, arriving at Pforzheim around sunset. Bertha sent Karl a telegram to tell him what she’d done and how it went. She drove back to Mannheim a few days later.
… and It Totally Worked to Sell the Car as a Concept
Bertha and the Motorwagen encountered a lot of attention on their joyride through the countryside. People of all ages gazed in wonder as she passed. Some thought the crazy contraption was a sign of the apocalypse, and others wanted a test ride. From then on, there was enough interest in the automobile to drive it forward.
There’s a short video below that shows a Benz Patent Motorwagen being started and wheeled out to the track. It has a lot of good close-ups of the engine running, and you can see just how much Bertha and the boys would have been thrown around on that road trip.
What Bertha did was risky, dangerous, and downright awesome. She is quite rightfully still being lauded for her accomplishments. The Bertha Benz Memorial Route was established in 2008, and drivers can follow signs outlining her path from Mannheim to Pforzheim. Sounds like a good road trip to us. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252852",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T17:46:26",
"content": "Bore?Stroke?Compression Ratio?Max RPM?MPG?Crankshaft to Axle ratio?Ink Wiring Mimes Juan two no!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6252934",
"aut... | 1,760,373,461.14035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/finding-perfect-part-fits-with-the-goldilocks-approach-and-openscad/ | Finding Perfect Part Fits With The Goldilocks Approach (and OpenSCAD) | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"accuracy",
"goldilocks",
"openscad",
"precision",
"tolerances"
] | There is something to be said for brute force or trial-and-error approaches to problems, especially when finding a solution has an empirical element to it. [Tommy] perceived that to be the case when needing to design and 3D print servo horns that would fit factory servos as closely as possible, and
used OpenSCAD to print a “Goldilocks array” from which it was possible to find a perfect match for his printer
by making the trial and error process much more efficient. By printing one part, [Tommy] could test-fit dozens of options.
What made doing this necessary is the fact that every 3D printer has some variance in how accurately they will reproduce small features and dimensions. A 6.3 mm diameter hole in a CAD model, for example, will not come out as exactly 6.3 mm in a 3D-printed object. It will be off by some amount, but usually consistently so. Therefore, one way around this is to empirically determine which measurements result in a perfect fit, and use those for production on that specific 3D printer.
That’s exactly what [Tommy] did, using OpenSCAD to generate an array of slightly different sizes and shapes. The array gets printed out, servos are test-fitted to them, and whichever option fits best has its dimensions used for production. This concept can be implemented in any number of ways, and OpenSCAD makes a decent option due to its programmatic nature. Interested in OpenSCAD? It will run on nearly any hardware, and
you can get up and running with the basics in probably less than ten minutes
. | 33 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252820",
"author": "kc8rwr",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T15:37:40",
"content": "I generally do sooo many test prints when fitting something new.Why have I never done it this way?Thanks Tommy and Donald!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,373,460.789738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/wireless-tin-can-telephone/ | Wireless Tin Can Telephone | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize"
] | For many kids, the tin-can telephone is a fun science experiment that doesn’t last much longer than it takes to tangle the string around a nearby tree. [Geoff] decided to go a different however,
building a tin-can telephone that’s completely wireless.
The build starts with a hacker favorite, the Arduino Uno. It’s hooked up to an microphone input board which uses the Arduino’s analog input to pick up audio. The Arduino then sends this data out over an NRF24L01+ wireless transceiver, to be picked up by the corresponding tin can receiver at the other end. An LM386 is given amplifier duties, hooked up to a small speaker so the user can hear the incoming audio.
The Arduino Uno is in no way a high-fidelity digital audio platform, but the project does deliver some legible, if scratchy, voice transmission. It also serves as a great way to learn about radio communications and working with digital audio signals. The NRF24L01+ is a great way to add wireless communication to a project, and if you’re looking for more range,
we’ve got that covered, too
. Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by:
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252543",
"author": "GenTooMan",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T18:36:38",
"content": "Just a bit of a correction “[Geoff] decided to go a different however” probably wanted to be “[Geoff] decided to go a different route however”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,461.071127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/vernier-calipers-and-micrometer-screw-gauges-measuring-without-compromise/ | Vernier Calipers And Micrometer Screw Gauges, Measuring Without Compromise | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"metrology",
"micrometer",
"Vernier",
"Vernier caliper"
] | I needed a temperature controller module recently, so off I went to Banggood to order one. As one does I found myself browsing, one thing led to another, and I bought a micrometer screw gauge. While micrometers are pretty expensive devices, reflecting their high precision engineering and construction, this micrometer cost me only about £8, or just under $10, definitely in the spirit of our long-running series of reviewing very cheap tools in search of a diamond in the rough. But perhaps more importantly, this is also the cue for an examination of high precision dimensional measurement. So I’ve assembled a collection of micrometers and vernier calipers of varying quality, and it’s time to dive in and measure some very small things.
Some of you will be metrology enthusiasts with an array of the finest devices available, but I am guessing that many of you will not. The ubiquitous precision measurement device in our community appears to be the digital caliper, a sliding clamp with an LCD display, an instrument that can be had in its most basic form for a very small outlay indeed. For the purposes of this piece though we’re not looking at digital devices but their analogue precursors. If you want a feel for metrology and you’d like some of those heritage tools that parents pass onto their kids then it’s time to learn something about the vernier caliper and the micrometer.
Traditional Metrology In A Digital Age
The business end of a Vernier caliper. The Vernier scale is on the lower part of the sliding jaw.
A Vernier caliper is a graduated sliding clamp usually over 150mm long, with a Vernier scale that allows the reading of fractions of its graduation. It will typically have two sets of jaws for both internal and external measurements, and an extending probe for depth measurements. On the body of the clamp are the millimetres or inches, and on the sliding jaw is a scale graduated in a constant fraction of the main scale. It’s a mathematical trick that allows the user to turn “ten and a bit millimetres” into “10.12 mm”, by working along the Vernier scale until one of the gradations lines up with a gradation on the main scale, and reading the fraction of a millimetre figure from the Vernier scale.
I have a friend with a background in a family business grinding tungsten carbide to a very high precision indeed who jokingly refers to a vernier caliper as “the guessing stick” because its precision is several factors of ten above her working zone, but the ability to add an extra digit and fraction of a digit’s precision to a millimetre reading depending on the Vernier scale in question over the whole relatively long range of the caliper makes it a very useful instrument indeed.
The micrometer scale on the shaft of the gauge.
A micrometer is a G clamp with jaws in its most common form around 25 mm in size, and with a very accurately calibrated screw thread. It has a handle with both a scale in millimetres or inches along its length and a fractional scale on the handle that turns the thread. Using it is a case of closing it on the item to be measured, reading the millimetres from the length scale, and the fractions of a millimetre from the handle scale. A typical micrometer has a precision of a hundredth of a millimetre or a thousandth of an inch, but there are micrometers that combine the two micrometer scales with a Vernier scale round the shaft of the instrument to give an extra fraction of a digit’s precision on top of that. All precision metrology instruments should be taken care of to preserve their calibration, and the micrometer has a ratchet on its end to ensure a constant torque when it is tightened. It should always be tightened using this ratchet, to protect the thread from wear and distortion.
Vernier Caliper Shootout
The selection of calipers under test. Left: sub £1 plastic Vernier caliper, centre: Mitutoyo 530-122 Vernier caliper, right: cheap digital caliper.
I’ve amassed a selection of both for comparison. In the caliper corner are a very cheap (around £5, or $6) digital caliper, another very cheap plastic analogue Vernier caliper, and my Mitutoyo 530-122 Vernier caliper. The former two are my quick measurement tools of choice, when you see a product dimension in one of my Hackaday pieces it will have been measured on one of them. The plastic Vernier caliper has been with me for about twenty years, for its £1 ($1.50 in 2000) purchase price it has been probably the best values I have ever had in a tool. The Mitutoyo is their entry-level model, I seem to remember it cost me around £30 (about $37), and it comes out of its box when I need a precision measurement that I can really trust.
The plastic calipers are both insubstantial, being slightly flexible and lightweight, with jaws that don’t quite meet along their whole length and which have a discernible slight play on them. The digital one claims a 0.1 mm precision while the Vernier one claims a 0.05 mm precision, which I can imagine might be optimistic in both cases due to those jaws. It’s a case of evaluating them based on their use case and cost though, so as long as I am using them as instruments that can knock around in my drawer to take quick millimetre measurements rather than machining nuclear reactor parts, then they are adequate for that task. By contrast it is immediately apparent on picking up the Mitutoyo caliper that it is a much higher quality instrument, being machined from stainless steel it has a much more substantial weight. The overwhelming impression is one of solidity, the jaws meet perfectly and have no discernible play, and the sliding action is smooth but with a constant slight resistance. It has a precision of 0.02 mm, which is considerably more believable than the figure on the plastic calipers.
Having examined the calipers, how do they perform? It’s time to put them through their paces by comparative measurement. I’ve taken some of the items I have to hand, a sheet of printer paper and a bare badge PCB. It’s important to note that all the measurements on this page are the result of repeated tries to ensure a consistent reading, with these instruments it’s easy to secure a poor reading by misaligning the jaws over the item to be measured.
Thickness of paper
PCB (2 sides copper)
PCB (No copper)
Cheap digital caliper
0.0mm
1.6 mm
1.5mm
Plastic caliper
0.1mm
1.55mm
1.40mm
Mitutoyo
0.1mm
1.60mm
1.56mm
Straight away the lower resolution of the cheap digital caliper becomes obvious, as it resolves the copper layers on a PCB to be a whopping 0.1 mm. It’s a surprise that it doesn’t resolve the 0.1 mm sheet of paper as such, but this is likely to be an error induced by the play in the jaws. Likewise the plastic Vernier caliper gives a significantly different reading from the Mitutoyo, probably also due to its inconsistent meeting of its jaws.
Micrometer Shootout
The selection of micrometers on test. Left: Moore & Wright No. 964, centre: Mitutoyo 103-137, right: Daniu £8 micrometer.
Meanwhile aside from my £8 micrometer I’ve borrowed a couple of considerably higher quality instruments, a Mitutoyo 103-137 metric model which sells for about £57 ($70), and a vintage 1960s Moore & Wright No. 964 Imperial model. The latter is no longer made but is I think equivalent to current M&W models costing over £50 ($61). They are both general purpose 0 – 25mm/0 – 1″ workshop micrometers, and their owner has taken care of them so they are in very good condition.
The £8 Daniu-branded micrometer is substantially built, with an enamel-painted drop-forged frame and a machined aluminium micrometer head and ratchet. All is not well in its machining however, as I can see a sliver of light indicating imperfect flatness between its jaws when they are closed, and there is discernible play in its thread. It has a 0.01 mm resolution, but given the not-entirely-flat jaws and the play in the thread I would be inclined to add a significant error bar to this.
You should
NOT
be able to see light between the jaws of a closed micrometer screw gauge!
By comparison both the Mitutoyo and the Moore & Wright have very similar drop-forged frames and machined aluminium heads, but it soon becomes evident where the extra money has been spent. There is no discernible play in either instrument, and their action is smooth with a slightly greater resistance than the cheaper one. The faces of their jaws have been lapped to a mirror finish, and there is no discernible gap between the jaws when they are closed.
Looking at the performance of the micrometers I’ve yet again performed a series of measurements with each. The sheet of paper has been replaced with a hair plucked from my own head, in homage to that lesson in engineering elementary school when you’re told a micrometer can measure a human hair.
Human hair
PCB (2 sides copper)
PCB (No copper)
Daniu
0.02mm
1.59mm
1.54mm
Mitutoyo
0.065mm
*
1.62mm
1.55mm
M&W
0.0025″
*
(0.0635mm)
0.064″ (1.625mm)
0.061″ (1.549mm)
* The extra 0.5 precision comes from judging the reading to be midway between two points.
Straight away we can see that the Mitutoyo and Moore & Wright agree with each other pretty closely, while the Daniu differs significantly on some readings. The play in the thread and not entirely flat jaws make consistent readings difficult, as the reading depends on the alignment of jaws and thread at the distance in question.
Getting What You Paid For
Having examined both decent and cheap Vernier calipers and micrometers, I’ve established that a decent quality instrument beats a very cheap one. My plastic calipers are fine for the quick millimetric measurements I use them for but maybe not for higher precision work. Unsurprisingly an £8 micrometer doesn’t deliver consistent readings at its claimed resolution but would be adequate at a digit’s less precision. The real story lies in how useful the quality instruments can be even in the age of digital metrology, and that the starting price for a decent one perhaps isn’t as high as you might think.
There’s also another point which is a little frivolous but with which I suspect more than a few readers will identify, and that’s the
feel
of a quality instrument. There are some tools that it’s a pleasure to own, the ones that stay with you for life if you take care of them and which are passed down to your children and eventually as family heirlooms to theirs. It’s with regret that I’m handing back my borrowed micrometers to their owners, and it’s likely I’ll be making space for one of my own in my life before too long. If you understand this and you don’t own a Vernier caliper or a micrometer yet, then something tells me you too may be ordering one or the other pretty soon. | 62 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252526",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T17:12:11",
"content": "I have eschewed the digital caliper for a dial gauge caliper. No batteries, no vernier It always works.I have a gang of micrometers if and when I need greater precision, but I rarely do.",
... | 1,760,373,461.515122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/rapid-prototyping-hack-chat/ | Rapid Prototyping Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"Hack Chat",
"health",
"jpl",
"medical",
"nasa",
"rapid prototyping",
"ventilator"
] | Join us on Wednesday, June 10 at noon Pacific for the
Rapid Prototyping Hack Chat
with
Erika Earl
!
When one thinks of the Jet Propulsion Lab, the NASA lab responsible for such amazing feats of engineering as Mars rovers and galaxy-exploring spacecraft like
Voyager
, one does not necessarily think of it as a hotbed of medical innovation. But when the COVID-19 pandemic started its march around the globe, JPL engineers decided to turn their skills from exploring other worlds to helping keep people alive in this one. Fittingly, the challenge they tackled was perhaps the most technically challenging: to build a ventilator that’s simple enough to be built in large numbers, enough to make a difference to the predicted shortfall, but that does the non-trivial job of keeping people breathing as safely as possible.
The result was
VITAL
, or Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally. It was designed, prototyped, and tested on an incredibly ambitious timetable: 37 days total. That number alone would be shocking enough, but when one adds in the disruptions and disconnection forced on the team of JPL engineers by the sudden need to self-isolate and work remotely that came up in the middle of the design process, it’s a wonder the team was able to get anywhere. But they worked through the technical and managerial issues and delivered a design that has now been
licensed out to eight manufacturers under a no-fee license
.
What does it take to bring something as complex as a ventilator to market in so short a time? To delve into that question, Supply Frame’s Erika Earl, who was part of the VITAL team, will stop by the Hack Chat. We’ll talk to her about being on the JPL team, what the design and prototyping process was like, and how the lessons learned here can apply to any team-based rapid-prototyping effort. You may not be building a ventilator in 37 days, but chances are good you can learn something useful from those who did.
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 10 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. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252912",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T21:08:38",
"content": "Those are some beautiful consoles she has built!(*jealous*)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6253227",
"author": "William Gallant",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,373,461.559145 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/a-50w-speaker-made-of-light-bulbs/ | A 50W Speaker Made Of Light Bulbs | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"incandescent lamp",
"midi"
] | When we think of a speaker, we are likely to imagine a paper cone with a coil of wire somewhere at the bottom of it suspended in a magnetic field. It’s a hundred-plus-year-old technology that has been nearly perfected. The moving coil is not however the only means of turning an electrical current into a sound. A number of components will make a sound when exposed to audio, including to the surprise of [Eric], the humble incandescent light bulb. He discovered when making an addressable driver for them that he could hear the PWM frequency when they lit up, so
he set about harnessing the effect for use as a speaker
.
Using an ESP32 board and with a few false starts due to cheap components, he started with MIDI files and ended up with PWM frequencies. It’s an interesting journey into creating multiple PWM channels from an ESP32, and he details some of his problems along the way. The result is the set of singing light bulbs that can be seen in the video below the break, which he freely admits is probably the most awful 50 W speaker that he could have made. That however is not the point of such an experiment, and we applaud him for doing it.
For more MIDI-based tomfoolery, take a look at
the PCB Tesla coil
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON2g3e08Ow | 27 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252495",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T15:42:12",
"content": "If there’s DC going through the filaments, placement of magnets on the bulb envelopes might make them play a little louder.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,461.616753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/3d-printing-nuclear-reactors-for-fun-and-profit/ | 3D Printing Nuclear Reactors For Fun And Profit | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printing",
"Additive Manufacturing",
"nuclear power"
] | Over the past decades, additive manufacturing (AM, also known as 3D printing) has become increasingly common in manufacturing processes. While immensely helpful in the prototyping of new products by allowing for rapid turn-around times between design and testing, these days additive manufacturing is used more and more often in the production of everything from small production runs of custom enclosures to hard to machine components for rocket engines.
The obvious advantage of additive manufacturing is that they use generic equipment and common materials as input, without requiring expensive molds as in the case of injection molding, or extensive, wasteful machining of raw materials on a lathe, mill, and similar equipment. All of the manufacturing gets reduced to a 3D model as input, one or more input materials, and the actual device that converts the 3D model into a physical component with very limited waste.
In the nuclear power industry, these benefits haven’t gone unnoticed, which has led to 3D printed parts being developed for everything from keeping existing plants running to streamlining spent fuel reprocessing and even the printing of entire nuclear reactors.
Not Your Usual FDM Printer
As anyone who has used a 3D printer that can print PLA, ABS or uses UV-sensitive resin (
SLA
) can attest, it is hard to beat the cost picture of most parts which one can manufacture this way. From replacing a broken nylon cog in a servo to printing a custom enclosure for a new PCB, the process is faster and cheaper than getting it manufactured the traditional way, so long as one requires just a couple of the item at most.
Relativity Space printing their Aeon Engine [via
Vimeo
]
This is where the aerospace industry, from NASA to space industry start-ups, have really warmed up to using additive manufacturing for prototyping and production. When it comes to rocket engines and the countless parts including turbo pumps and valves that make them work, 3D printing is perfect when each prototype engine is different, and a production run is a few hundred a year, as is the case for the
Merlin 1D
engine that powers the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Start-ups
like Relativity Space
reckon that AM
is going to be a game changer
for the space industry.
Of course, at this point we aren’t talking any more about a $2,000 (or less) FDM printer printing out some PLA or ABS parts, or even one of those fancy SLA printers that can cost as much as a new car. In order to print aluminium and even titanium parts, one needs an
SLM
(Selective Laser Melting) printer, or a similar Direct Metal Laser Melting (DMLM) one. This is yet one step beyond
SLS
(Selective Laser Sintering) printers, which do bond the material (e.g. nylon, metal, ceramic or glass), but without melting it.
SLM can be pictured
as SLA printing, except that the printing direction is reversed, with fresh metal powder being added on top of the part that is being printed so that the laser can then melt this powder and add another layer. This happens in a sealed chamber that is filled with an inert gas to prevent oxidation. As one may have guessed, the machines for SLM cost more on the order of an entire house.
For comparison purposes,
the All3DP website lists
how much the standard ‘Benchy’ model costs when printed with various metals:
Metallic Plastic : $22.44 (former “Alumide”, PLA with aluminum)
Stainless Steel: $83.75 (plated, polished)
Bronze: $299.91 (solid, polished)
Silver: $713.47 (solid, mirror polished)
Gold: $87,75 (gold plated, polished)
Gold: $12,540 (solid 18k gold)
Platinum: $27,314 (solid, polished)
Going Nuclear
Going from the thermal inferno that is a rocket engine to the relatively balmy — but possibly more irradiated — environment of a nuclear reactor is a logical leap for AM. While nuclear reactors benefit from economies of scale when they are built in quantity, the past decades have seen said economies practically vanish in nations that used to have a strong nuclear industry, such as the US.
When former nuclear giants like the US and France sought to get back into the game again with the EPR in the case of the latter, and
AP1000
in the case of the former, it is found when the exact same plants are constructed in China (with a strong domestic nuclear industry), both the
AP1000
(4 reactors) and EPR (2 reactors) ended up being connected to the grid years before the first reactors in the nations which designed them are scheduled to do so. Ironically, the US-produced coolant pumps in the AP1000 also
repeatedly proved to be faulty
.
A big issue with any major infrastructure project is that of expertise and the supply chains. When countries regularly construct and maintain nuclear plants, they maintain both supply chains and the expertise required to run them. When a nation ceases to construct new nuclear plants for decades, these supply chains vanish and expertise fades away. While rebuilding the manufacturing capability and skillset for new nuclear plants is possible, this is also the point where considering different, more efficient manufacturing approaches makes sense.
In an effort to once again make the US nuclear industry competitive with nations like Canada, Russia and South Korea, the US Department of Energy tasked Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to lead the
Transformational Challenge Reactor
(TCR) program. It aims to ‘demonstrate a revolutionary approach to deploying new nuclear power systems’. Essentially, the goal is to 3D print as much of a micro reactor as possible, as a demonstration of the possibilities that AM offers here.
Working Out the Details
Together with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), ORNL is working out the many details that such a change in manufacturing brings, especially considering the strict demands for materials that are used in or on a nuclear reactor. Questions such as how AM affects the creep and fatigue properties of such materials, relative to traditionally manufactured parts. Some results of these studies by ANL are
covered in a recent paper
, which gives a good impression of the amount of work that goes into studying the viability of this approach.
ANL has previously published findings on SLM printing and the use of
high-speed x-ray video footage
to capture the finer details of what happens during this process. One major issue they found is that of induced airflow, which causes colder material to get sucked into the molten pool of metal. These spots of colder material end up causing flaws in the final product.
As covered in
the TCR fact sheet
and on the ORNL TCR site, the micro reactor would use TRISO (uranium nitride) fuel particles, an yttrium hydride neutron moderator and the 3D printed core, made from silicon carbide and stainless steel. The reactor would be helium-cooled, which would make it fairly unique, as most current reactor designs use either water, heavy water, or sodium for coolant..
As the TCR program is pretty new (2019
first publication
), it’s hard to gauge the exact progress, or to get a solid feel for what one might expect from it. It might be helpful here to look at what has been accomplished in terms of integrating AM into the nuclear industry so far.
AM In Nuclear Power So Far
At the moment, the only 3D printed components that have made it into nuclear reactors have been fairly simple parts. In 2017, Siemens
replaced
the 108 mm metal impeller in a fire protection pump at the
Krško
power plant in Slovenia with a 3D printed replica. The original manufacturer of the pump had gone out of business since the pump was installed around 1980.
Westinghouse is also working in this area, having recently
installed a 3D printed thimble
plugging device at Unit 1 of Exelon’s Byron. This type of device
holds the fuel rods
as they’re being lowered into the reactor. A big part of this installation is to see what the long-term effect of the reactor environment on the 3D printed material is, compared to the traditionally manufactured components.
Wrapping Up
It is clear that 3D printing has a bright future in manufacturing. For the nuclear industry, it doesn’t just offer a good way to produce replacement parts for a reactor that is over sixty years old with at least half the original suppliers gone or having changed inventory. Along with
a host of other new manufacturing technologies
, it also offers exciting new options when it comes to the new generations of nuclear reactors, whether fission or fusion-based.
From speeding up the prototyping of new reactors and concepts, to the possibility of reactors powering remote communities and future Moon and Mars colonies, without having to rely on a complicated supply chain, there are many obvious benefits. Taking no small part here is the cost picture, as producing a reactor this way should be significantly cheaper, and might enable local manufacturing and assembly.
Obviously, all of this is bad news for people without access to an SLM printer or similar, but who knows, maybe in another ten years or so we’ll all be printing our own rocket engine and fusion reactor components at home. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252487",
"author": "CKnopp",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T14:50:29",
"content": "Coupling this with LightBridge clean fuel is going to a super game changer!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6252488",
"author": "Paul Cohen",
... | 1,760,373,462.321853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/raspberry-pi-plays-a-midi-tune-wherever-you-may-roam/ | Raspberry Pi Plays A MIDI Tune Wherever You May Roam | Sven Gregori | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"fluidsynth",
"korg",
"midi",
"MIDI instrument",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W",
"usb midi"
] | MIDI controller keyboards are great because they let you control any synthesizer you plug them into. The only downside: you need a synthesizer to turn MIDI notes into actual sounds, slightly complicating some summer night campfire serenading. Not for [Geordie] though, who decided to build
the
nanoPi
, a portable, MIDI instrument housing a Raspberry Pi
.
Using a Korg nanoKEY2 USB MIDI controller as base for the device, [Geordie] took it apart and added a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a power bank to, well, power it, and a USB hub to connect a likewise added USB audio interface, as well as the controller itself. As the nanoKEY2 has a naturally slim shape, none of this would ever fit in it, so he designed and 3D printed a frame to extend its height. Rather than wiring everything up internally, he decided to route the power and data cable to the outside and connect them back to the device itself, allowing him to use both the power bank and the controller itself separately if needed.
On the software side, the Pi is running your common open source software synthesizer, Fluidsynth. To control Fluidsynth itself — for example to change the instrument — [Geordie] actually uses the Termius SSH client on his phone, allowing him also to shut down the Pi that way. While Fluidsynth’s built-in MIDI router could alternatively remap the nanoKEY2’s additional buttons, it appears the functionality is limited to messages of the same type, so the buttons’ Control Change messages couldn’t be remapped to the required Program Change messages. Well, there’s always the option to fit some extra buttons if needed. Or maybe you could do something clever in software.
As you may have noticed, the nanoPi doesn’t include any speaker — and considering its size, that’s probably for the best. So while it’s not a fully standalone instrument, it’s a nice, compact device to use with your headphones anywhere you go. And thanks to its flexible wiring, you could also attach any other USB MIDI controller to it, such as
this little woodwind one
, or
the one that plays every pop song ever
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252514",
"author": "Taper Wickel",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T16:23:10",
"content": "Very nice! A beautiful build. Hmm, my NanoKEY had a couple of the plastic keys break — if other parts around it were 3d printed, replacing those mightn’t be as odd.Fluidsynth is pretty flexible, but... | 1,760,373,461.874902 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/a-look-behind-the-canvas-of-the-60-billion-lights-project/ | A Look Behind The Canvas Of The “60 Billion Lights” Project | Maya Posch | [
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"60 billion lights",
"canvas art",
"ws2812b"
] | In May of this year, [Erich Styger] shows his project called “60 Billion Lights” off to the world. Now he has published an update on
the making of this impressive work of art
. As a quick recap,
“60 Billion Lights”
is a canvas art piece, which has 60 dual shaft stepper motors integrated into it. Each stepper motor has forty 24-bit RGB LEDs, making for a total of 60 billion position and light combinations on the entire canvas.
With the dual shaft stepper motors, one can control the position of laser-cut acrylic rods inside each of the forty depressions that make up a unit. Each unit has its WS2812B LEDs positioned around the inside edge.
As the embedded video (after the break) shows, it can be used to create a wide variety of effects. The whole of it is driven by 15 controller boards that run FreeRTOS on an
NXP LPC845
(Cortex-M0+), connected via
RS-485
.
In the ‘Making Of’ video (embedded after the break) and article, more details are shown of the individual components, including the dual shaft stepper motors, stepper motor PCBs, the LED ring PCBs, and countless images of the construction, painting and assembly.
If the original article gave one the impression that this was an easy project, it is this behind the scenes look that gives one a good impression of the full scale. From the countless PCBs, controller boards, wiring, programming to the assembly and testing. Not to mention the painting of the canvas itself, which is an original work. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252425",
"author": "ferckss",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T08:24:49",
"content": "??A FHD display has 35 trillion lights, and the images are more precisely reproduced.1920 * 1080 * 256 * 256 * 256 = 3.47892351E+13.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,461.976867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/hands-free-haptic-braille-display-is-making-waves/ | Hands-Free Haptic Braille Display Is Making Waves | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"braille",
"braille display",
"haptic feedback",
"leap motion controller",
"refreshable Braille display",
"transducer",
"ultrasonic transducer"
] | In the last few months, most of the world’s population has shied away from touching as many public things as possible. Unfortunately, anyone with low vision who relies on Braille signs, relief maps, and audio jacks doesn’t have this luxury — at least not yet.
A group of researchers at Bayreuth University in Germany are most of the way to solving this problem. They’re developing
HaptiRead, a mid-air haptic feedback system
that can be used as a touchless, refreshable display for Braille or 3D shapes. HaptiRead is based on a Stratos Explore development kit that has a field of 256 ultrasonic transducers. When a person approaches the display, a Leap motion sensor can detect their hand from up to 2.5 feet away and start providing information via sound waves. Each focus point is modulated with a different frequency to help differentiate between them.
HaptiRead can display information three ways: constant, which imitates static Braille displays, point by point, and row by row. The researchers claim up to 94% accuracy in trials, with the point by point method in the lead. The system is still a work in progress, as it can only do four cells’ worth of dot combination and needs to do six before it’s ready. Check out the brief explainer video after the break, or
read the group’s paper
[PDF download].
Want to play with refreshable Braille systems?
This open-source display uses Flexinol wire to actuate the dots
.
Thanks for the tip, [Qes]! | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252385",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T05:17:38",
"content": "Looked into Braille displays once as a hobbyist project.The problem is rendering speed. A person reading braille can slide their fingers over text about as fast as a sighted human can read individual lette... | 1,760,373,461.919466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/the-simplest-microwave-receiver/ | The Simplest Microwave Receiver | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"germanium",
"microwave",
"point contact"
] | We are used to microwave receivers requiring complex chipsets and exacting PCB layouts, but as [CHZ-soft] has shown, it does not always have to be that way. With nothing more complex than
a germanium point-contact diode and an oscilloscope
, you can quickly, easily, and cheaply resolve microwave signals, as we are shown with a 2.4GHz wireless mouse.
Of course, there’s nothing new here, what we’re being shown is the very simplest incarnation of a crystal set. It’s a wideband device, with only the length of the wires providing any sort of resonance, but surprisingly
with the addition of a very selective cavity resonator it can be turned into a useful receiver
. Perhaps the most interesting take-away is that the germanium point-contact diode — once a ubiquitous component — has almost entirely disappeared. In most applications it has been supplanted by the Schottky diode, but even those usually don’t quite possess the speed in the point contact’s home ground of radio detection. This is a shame, because there are still some bench-level projects for which they are rather useful.
So if you have a point contact diode and AM radio doesn’t attract, give it a go as a microwave detector. And if the point contact diode has attracted your interest then you may want to read our piece on
Rufus Turner
, who brought us its archetype, the 1N34A.
Via
Hacker News
. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252372",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T02:57:31",
"content": "There’s a book, I think “The Invention that changed the World” about radar development during WWII, and the impact on electronics afterwards.They needed to receive ever higher frequencies, but tubes... | 1,760,373,462.200949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/hackaday-links-june-7-2020/ | Hackaday Links: June 7, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"ads-b",
"airport",
"hackaday links",
"LAX",
"pcb",
"pulse",
"quick-turn",
"refinery",
"RTL-SDR",
"SimCity",
"simulation",
"vibration",
"video"
] | For many of us who were in college at the time, the 1989 release of Will Wright’s classic
SimCity
sounded the death knell of our GPAs. Being able to create virtual worlds and then smite them with a tornado or a
kaiju
attack was the stuff of a procrastinator’s dreams. We always liked the industrial side of the game best, and took great pains in laying out the factory zones, power plants, and seaports. Those of a similar bent will be happy to know that Maxis, the studio behind the game, had a business simulations division, and one of their products was a complete refinery simulator the studio built for Chevron called, unsurprisingly,
SimRefinery
. The game, which bears a striking resemblance to
SimCity
,
has been recovered
and is now
available for download
, which means endless procrastination by playing virtual petrochemical engineer is only a mouse click away.
Speaking of time wasters, we stumbled upon another simulation this week that sucked away a couple of hours of productivity. As
RTL-SDR.com reports
, YouTuber called Information Zulu has
a 24/7 live stream
showing arrivals and departures at Los Angeles International Airport. That may sound boring, but the cameras used to watch the runways are virtual, and the planes are animated based on ADS-B data being scooped up by an RTL-SDR dongle. We pinged Information Zulu and asked for a rundown of the gear behind the system, but never heard back. If we do, we’ll post a full article on what we learned, because the level of detail is amazing. The arriving and departing planes sport the correct livery for the airline, the current weather conditions are shown, taxiing is shown in real time, and there’s even an audio feed from air traffic control.
If you’re looking to gain back a little of the productivity lost to the last two items, Digi-Key might be able to help with their
new PCB Builder service
. All you have to do is upload your gerbers and select your materials, and they’ll give you options for a bunch of different quick-turn fabrication houses. Looks mighty convenient.
Steve Mould dropped
a video
this week about vibration analysis. That might not sound very exciting, but the fascinating bit is how companies are now using motion amplification video techniques to show how and where industrial equipment is moving, even if those motions are too subtle to be seen by the naked eye. It’s frankly terrifying to see how pipes flex and tanks expand and contract, and how pumps and motors move relative to each other. The technique used is similar to the way
a person’s pulse can be detected on a video
by the subtle color change as blood rushes into capillaries. We’d love to see someone tackle a homebrew version of this so we can all see what’s going on around us.
And finally, we want to remind everyone that
the Hackaday Prize is back
, and that you should get your entries going. What’s new this year is the Dream Team challenges, where four worthy non-profits organizations will each assemble a three-person team to work on a specific pain-point in their process.
The application deadline has been extended to June 9
, and there are two $3,000 microgrants, one in June and one in July, for each team member. So look through the design briefs and see if your skills match their needs. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252356",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T23:52:19",
"content": "WARNING: Digi-Key’s prices appear to be marked up! Seeed Fusion, for example, for the default specs Digi-Key fills into their form, is shown as $129. On Seeed’s own site, it’s $103.PCBShopper.com shows the co... | 1,760,373,462.023995 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/build-this-cyberdeck-in-a-cave-with-a-box-of-scraps/ | Build This Cyberdeck In A Cave With A Box Of Scraps | Tom Nardi | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"raspberry pi",
"SmartPi Touch"
] | Desktop 3D printing has been a big enabler for the cyberdeck community, as it’s allowed individuals to create unique frames and enclosures which would have been far more difficult and time consuming to produce using traditional methods. But what if you don’t have access to a well-stocked workspace, and need to do your building with the bare minimum of equipment? In that case,
[ALX] recently put together a minimalistic design
that can be assembled with off-the-shelf components and basic tools.
It’s the ideal cyberdeck for the neophyte, as all the parts are widely available and relatively inexpensive. While it might not be a customized as something with a fully 3D printed frame, we think it nails the look and utility that are the hallmarks of a proper deck.
The key to this build is the SmartiPi Touch case, which puts the Raspberry Pi and touch screen on a hinged panel. These hinges happen to be compatible with GoPro-style mounts, so with a few extension pieces, the panel can be lifted up high enough that it can be folded over the keyboard. The base of the SmartPi Touch case is then attached to the bottom of the keyboard with nothing more exotic than double-sided tape. Here [ALX] is using a Happy Hacking KeyBoard Lite 2, but you could substitute it with whatever you have handy.
On the other hand, if 3D printing out the frame isn’t a problem for you,
this miniature cyberdeck we covered recently could be a great alternative
if you’re looking to get started in the burgeoning world of bespoke mobile computers. | 17 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252328",
"author": "SkinnyV",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T21:42:58",
"content": "I feel I am missing something as I do not realy understand cyberdeck, I mean beside them looking cool. How is it more practical than a small laptop or netbook?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,462.445168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/adjustable-jig-eases-pcb-stencil-alignment-process/ | Adjustable Jig Eases PCB Stencil Alignment Process | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"applicator",
"jig",
"smd",
"solder",
"solder paste",
"stencil"
] | PCB stencils make application of solder paste a snap, but there’s a long, fussy way to go before the paste goes on. You’ve got to come up with some way to accurately align the stencil over the board, which more often than not involves a jury-rigged setup using tape and old PCBs, along with a fair amount of finesse and a dollop of luck.
Luckily, [Valera Perinski] has come up with a better way to deal with stencils.
The Stencil Printer
is a flexible, adjustable alignment jig that reduces the amount of tedious adjustment needed to get things just so. The jig is built mostly from aluminum extrusions and 3D-printed parts, along with a bunch of off-the-shelf hardware. The mechanism has a hinged frame that holds the stencil in a fixed position above a platen, upon which rests the target PCB. The board is held in place by clamps that ride on threaded rods; with the stencil flipped down over the board, the user can finely adjust the relative positions of the board and the stencil, resulting in perfect alignment. The video below is mainly a construction montage, but if you skip to about the 29:00 mark, you’ll see the jig put through its paces.
Granted, such a tool is a lot more work than tape and spare PCBs, but if you do a lot of SMD work, it may be worth the effort. It’s certainly less effort than
a solder-paste dispensing robot
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252288",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T17:54:22",
"content": "Per his other videos, this guy obviously ‘eats his own dogfood’; that is, he actually uses the tooling that he makes.Woof.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,373,462.251249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/crate-ev-motor-hits-market-the-swindon-powertrain/ | Crate EV Motor Hits Market: The Swindon Powertrain | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"crate engine",
"crate motor",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"EV conversion"
] | Last year brought some exciting news from the unlikely quarter of an unexciting industrial estate in the British town of Swindon, the company Swindon Powertrain announced that they’d be marketing an all-in-one electric motor and transmission. Essentially this would be a crate engine for EV conversions, and since it’s pretty small it would be able to be shoehorned into almost any car. So often these announcements later prove to be vapourware, but not in this case, because Swindon Powertrain have announced that
you can now order the HPD as they call it, for delivery in August
. It’s not entirely cheap at £6400 ($7846) exclusive of British VAT sales tax, but when its integrated transmission and differential is taken into consideration it starts to seem more attractive when compared to engineering a random motor onto an internal combustion engine transmission.
They provide
a product page with links to a load of data
, installation information, and even a CAD model, as well as
an ordering page in their webshop
from which you can pay the deposit with the rest presumably payable in August before delivery. There is also a range of optional extras including matched inverters, drive shafts, a limited slip differential, and a coolant pump, which makes the whole ever more attractive as a package. 80kW should be enough to lend sprightly performance to all but the largest of cars, so we’ll expect to see this motor ever more often in years to come.
There is already a thriving home-made EV scene which we don’t expect this unit to displace. Instead it will find a niche at the professional and semi-professional conversion level, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see an aftermarket springing up offering ready made subframes to fit it to popular cars. If it is a success there will inevitably be copies and probably at a lower price, so it could be the start of a wave of very interesting conversion options. We hope that Swindon Powertrain will do well with it, and will manage to stay one step ahead of the upstarts.
You can read our coverage of its announcement and their electric Mini prototype here
.
Thanks [Carl Pickering] for the tip. | 82 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252247",
"author": "Luke",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T14:24:26",
"content": ">80kW should be enough to lend sprightly performance to all but the largest of carsWell, depends on your definition of “large”. 80 kW is pretty much the power of a 1989 Volkswagen Passat, and with 500 pounds... | 1,760,373,462.675042 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/bust-your-own-ghosts-with-a-pke-meter/ | Bust Your Own Ghosts With A PKE Meter | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"ghosts",
"night vision camera",
"paranormal",
"pke meter",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 3B+",
"sense hat",
"spirits in the material world"
] | You know, we wouldn’t be that surprised if aliens or ghosts show up for real before this year is out. If paranormal becomes part of the new normal, it might be nice to have
a PKE meter that can detect spirits
and help get a head start on figuring out what they want from us.
Yes, that’s right — instead of just lighting up whenever ghosts are near, [starscream205]’s meter goes the extra yard and translates spiritual energy into English words that scroll across the LED matrix. Inside is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a sense HAT, which takes spatial and environmental readings and assigns different words based on the results.
Now [starscream205] can go fearlessly into the night, guided by the night vision camera on the end, and watch for ghosts on the screen. Instead of a typical Pi-compatible screen, this is from a car back-up camera system and has been modified to work with the Pi.
We’ve seen a few PKE meters around here before, but
they usually do things such as detect radiation
. It’s nice to see one that’s faithful to the original purpose. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252222",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T12:35:57",
"content": "It’s the ultimate do-nothing box! Now if we could come up with a use for it…But seriously, does taking a picture of a ghost capture its soul?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,462.381167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/sparklines-for-your-esp32-projects/ | Sparklines For Your ESP32 Projects | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"microcontroller",
"sparkline"
] | On a typical microcontroller project we may only have access to a relatively tiny screen. Information display can be a challenge, but it’s one that may be made easier by
[0xPIT]’s ESParklines library for Espressif processors
using the Arduino framework.
A
sparkline
is a simple line graph without annotations (like axes or units) intended to fit within the flow of text. They’re largely associated today with the statistician
Edward Tufte
, and if you’ve not encountered them or Tufte before then we suggest you’ll enjoy educating yourself.
It’s a simple enough library and it comes with example code. Usefully it maintains a data buffer all of its own allowing simple updating, and as well as the examples there is a YouTube video we’ve put below the fold showing graphs evolving as more information is added to them. We’re curious about one thing though, it’s billed as an ESP library, for either the ESP8266 or the ESP32, but we can’t find any ESP-specific code in there and neither could our friendly ESP-guru. Have we missed something? The comments are below if you can shed any light. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252005",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T12:59:39",
"content": "Ooh, that looks nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6252007",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T13:08:38",
"content": "Very... | 1,760,373,462.718102 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/vacuum-dust-collection-with-self-powered-relays/ | Vacuum Dust Collection With Self-Powered Relays | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"current sensor",
"dust collection",
"induction coil",
"relay",
"solid state relay"
] | Like many people with multiple woodworking tools, [Will Stone] wanted to create a centralized dust collection system. But he quickly found that the devil was in the details, as he struggled to find an economic way to automatically kick on the vacuum when one of the tools started up. His final solution might be
one of the most elegant, and surely the cheapest, we’ve ever come across
.
As with other DIY systems we’ve seen over the years, [Will] is using a simple inductive current sensor to detect when AC power is being drawn by one of his tools. But where the similarity stops is that there’s nothing so pedestrian as a microcontroller reading the output of the sensor. He realized that when the coils in the sensor were energized they were putting out about 7 volts AC, which should be more than enough to trigger a relay.
So he threw together a rectifier circuit on a piece of perfboard, using four LEDs in true hacker style. With the addition of a capacitor to smooth out the voltage, this little circuit is able to trip the 40 amp solid state relay controlling power to the vacuum using nothing more than the energy harvested from the sensor’s coil.
Using a current sensor is great when the tools are close enough to all be plugged into the same line, but that doesn’t help the folks with cordless tools or supersized shops. In that case,
you might need to look into a sound-activated system
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251972",
"author": "badangel",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T09:01:27",
"content": "What an ingenious and smart idea ! Nice simple project for this week end ^^",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6251976",
"author": "korneliuszo",
... | 1,760,373,462.845007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/automatic-planet-finder-is-out-of-this-world/ | Automatic Planet Finder Is Out Of This World | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"azimuth",
"compass",
"horizontal coordinate system",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 3",
"stepper motor"
] | When the world is on your shoulders, it can be relaxing to remember that we’re just hairless monkeys hurtling through space on a big rock alongside a lot of other rocks. If you find yourself wondering where exactly the other major rocks are instead of worrying, we think that’s a good sign.
Wherever [snowbiscuit] lives, there’s a large planet finder in a public square somewhere that stopped locating rocks a long time ago. Hungry to watch such a thing in action, [snowbiscuit] built
a great-looking tabletop version
that uses the Horizontal Coordinate System to locate planets. Inside is a Raspberry Pi 3, which queries NASA for azimuth and altitude data and combines that data with a predetermined north reading to point out whatever planet was selected by spinning the printed telescope on top. The telescope itself is non-working, and returns to north after a few seconds to wait for input.
This project is wide open for remixing if you want to make your own. As lovely as it is now, designing around a slip ring would eliminate all those long wires and make it more sleek. Take a peek after the break.
Don’t stop your desktop space toy collection there —
build an ISS-tracking lamp to go with it
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252049",
"author": "Bill rowe",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T16:43:56",
"content": "This is a really spiffy build. The look of the lelescope and mount are great.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6252055",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3... | 1,760,373,462.931047 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/new-microscope-directly-images-protein-atoms/ | New Microscope Directly Images Protein Atoms | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"atoms",
"electron microscope",
"electron microscopy",
"protein"
] | There’s an old joke that you can’t trust atoms — they make up everything. But until fairly recently, there was no real way to see individual atoms. You could infer things about them using X-ray crystallography or measure their pull on tiny probes using atomic force microscopes, but not take a direct image. Until now. Two laboratories recently used
cryo-electron microscopy
to directly image atoms in a protein molecule with a resolution of about 1.2 x 10
-7
millimeters or 1.2 ångströms. The previous record was 1.54 ångströms.
Recent improvements in electron beam technology helped, as did a device that ensures electrons that strike the sample travel at nearly the same speeds. The latter technique resulted in images so clear, researchers could identify individual hydrogen atoms in the apoferritin molecule and the water surrounding it.
For years, the standard way to study protein structure was to form a crystal and study the way that crystal diffracts X-rays. However, some proteins are difficult or even impossible to crystalize. Cryo-electron microscopy doesn’t have this issue. The microscope operator has to flash freeze the sample. A better understanding of protein structure can further research into things such as enzyme action and help scientists develop better drugs.
Computer analysis of the electron emissions is a key part of the technique as well and one of the scientists involved believes that resolutions below 1 ångström are probably not possible for this method with current computing power. In addition, the quality of the image depends partially on the stability of the protein. Apoferritin is highly stable, but some other molecules they tested are not that stable. That means X-ray crystallography will probably remain the method of choice for proteins that will easily crystalize. This is especially true since the cryo-electron microscopy method can take hours or days of data collection to form a complete image.
If you want to know more about how
an electron microscope works
, we’ve talked about that before. If you want to build your own atom-resolving microscope, check out our
survey of builds
. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251944",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T03:47:22",
"content": "Read it again Al, a map is not a direct image. They infer the shape from computation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6252014",
"autho... | 1,760,373,462.787756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/homebrew-coil-winder-makes-toroids-a-snap-to-wind/ | Homebrew Coil Winder Makes Toroids A Snap To Wind | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"choke",
"ferrite",
"magnet wire",
"toroid",
"transformer",
"unun",
"winder",
"winding"
] | Anyone who has ever wound a toroidal coil by hand can tell you that it’s not exactly a fun job. Even with the kinds of coils used in chokes and transformers for ham radio, which generally have relatively few windings, passing all that wire through the toroid time after time is a pain. And woe unto anyone who guesses wrong on how much wire the job will take.
To solve those problems, [Sandeep] came up with
this clever and effective toroid winder
. The idea is to pass a small spool of magnet wire through the toroid’s core while simultaneously rotating the toroid to spread the windings out as evenly as possible. That obviously requires a winding ring that can be opened up to allow the toroid form to be inserted; [Sandeep] chose to make his winding ring out of plywood with a slit in it. Carrying the wire spool, the winding ring rotates on a C-shaped fixture that brackets the toroid, which itself rotates under stepper motor control on a trio of rollers. An Arduino controls the rotation of both motors, controlling the number of windings and their spread on the form. lacking a ferrite core for testing, [Sandeep] used a plywood ring as a stand-in, but the results are satisfying enough to make any manual coil-winder envious.
We love tools like this that make a boring job a snap. Whether it’s
cutting wires for wiring harnesses
or
winding guitar pickups
, tools like these are well worth the time spent to build them. But we suppose when it comes to toroid winding,
one could always cheat
.
[via
r/Arduino
] | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251910",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T23:33:27",
"content": "One has to admire two intersecting hubless wheels.For those with very tiny coils to make, YouTube sent me to:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F01FI52zFg0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,373,462.894885 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/lattice-semiconductor-targets-bitstream-reverse-engineering-in-latest-propel-sdk-license/ | Lattice Semiconductor Targets Bitstream Reverse Engineering In Latest Propel SDK License | Maya Posch | [
"Business",
"FPGA",
"News"
] | [
"fpga",
"lattice",
"ReverseEngineering"
] | The topic of reverse engineering is highly contentious at best when it comes to software and hardware development. Ever since the configuration protocol (bitstream) for Lattice Semiconductor’s iCE40 FPGAs was published in 2015 through reverse engineering efforts, there has been a silent war between proponents of open bitstream protocols and FPGA manufacturers, with the Lattice ECP5’s bitstream format having been largely reverse-engineered at this point.
Update:
About eight hours after this article was published, Lattice Semiconductor
issued a statement
retracting the EULA language that banned bitstream reverse engineering. Please check out
Hackaday’s article about this reversal
.
Most recently, it appears that Lattice has fired a fresh shot across the bow of the open source projects. A
recently discovered
addition to the
Propel SDK
, which contains tools to program and debug Lattice devices, specifically references bitstream reverse engineering. When logged in with an account on the company’s website the user must agree to
the Lattice Propel License Agreement for Lattice Propel 1.0
prior to download. That document includes the following language:
In particular, no right is granted hereunder […] (3) for reverse engineering a bitstream format or other signaling protocol of any Lattice Semiconductor Corporation programmable logic device.
For the uninitiated, this ‘bitstream’ is a binary format that is used by an FPGA to configure its logic elements (LEs), telling it what circuits should be formed inside the FPGA. This bitstream is specific to each particular model of FPGA, and contains detailed information about the internal architecture and functionality of the chip. This also explains the secrecy around said bitstream format: by publishing the specifications of it, one reveals a lot of details about the inner workings that competitors of Lattice (Xilinx, Intel, Microchip, etc.) could use to their advantage.
A bitstream is very different from the binary code produced by a compiler for something like a Cortex-M microcontroller. Having a fixed ISA (e.g. ARMv7a, Thumb/Thumb2) hides the microcontroller implementation details. If these ISAs didn’t exist and instead one would directly program this underlying implementation of the processor, it would also reveal many details of the implementation that ARM would be unhappy to share.
Clauses prohibiting reverse engineering can be found in other parts of Lattice’s terms, such as
the legal notices section of their website
:
You may use any software provided on this website provided that you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the software license agreement(s) accompanying such software. You may not modify, reverse engineer, or disassemble any of the software, except as expressly permitted by the terms of the license agreement for such software.
And the
Lattice Diamond IDE
license (presented when a logged in account attempts to download the software) references underlying algorithms and interface techniques:
2.9. Restrictions: You may not (and may not allow anyone else to): […] (b) decompile, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for any Licensed Product or any underlying algorithms, user interface techniques, or other ideas embodied in a Licensed Product;
But it appears that the Propel license is the first time the company has specifically referenced bitstreams.
Legal Matters
This all leads us back to what ultimately matters in a Court of Law: is
reverse-engineering
legal? The answer to which is muddy at best. In US law, reverse-engineering has a ‘fair use’ exception when it comes to interoperability. This is what enabled the development of non-IBM BIOSes for the first non-IBM PCs, and allowed the Samba project to reimplement the proprietary SMB network sharing protocol.
At issue with FPGAs is that of protocol interoperability: the bitstream is the protocol that the FPGA chip understands. This bitstream can be plain text, or could be encrypted, which would be desirable in the case of high-security applications. Obviously, by having access to the bitstream specification, a user would gain the freedom to create their own tools to interact with the (purchased) hardware.
Essentially, what it comes down to is that this bitstream protocol is not protected by either copyright or patent law. The only part that is truly off-limits is the software and associated documentation as written by the FPGA manufacturers, which are heavily protected by copyright law and NDAs. This means that (
clean-room
) reverse-engineering is fair game, making it a popular target for universities, as
this 2018 paper
on reverse-engineering mostly Xilinx FPGAs demonstrates.
A familiar use of the reverse engineered bitstream is the
open source community’s efforts to build FPGA tools
that do not require the use of proprietary software. This facilitates things like build automation and toolchain portability. The tools are already mature enough to produce valid bitstreams and there are numerous examples of hardware products, such as
ICEBreaker
,
Fomu
,
OrangeCrab
, and even
the 2019 Hackaday Superconference Badge
, all built around Lattice FPGAs that recommend the use of the open source toolchains.
The Old EULA Issue
The fun thing about an end-user license agreement (EULA) is that one can write anything in it that one desires, and since nobody reads those darn things anyway, you’re practically guaranteed to find someone who violates part of the EULA. The less fun part for the EULA creator is that a EULA carries little weight unless backed up by national (or local) law.
To circle back to the original issue of the new phrasing in the Lattice Propel SDK license (EULA). One may note that it doesn’t say anything about reverse-engineering Lattice products being illegal, just that one is not allowed to use these (Propel) tools for said reverse-engineering. One is still free to use other tools, basically.
The core question here is whether one can outlaw the use of software tools for a specific purpose. That’s a much tougher question to answer. There is some precedent there when one considers that for example certain encryption tools
cannot be exported legally
from the US to certain countries, though it should be noted there again that this is due to government laws.
Saying that ‘you cannot use these tools we made for reverse-engineering our products’ does to my knowledge not have any precedence at this point in time. It would, however, be fascinating to see whether Lattice Semiconductor is willing to test this new EULA phrasing in a Court of Law. | 42 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251857",
"author": "juergen",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T20:19:35",
"content": "I just wonder who here is an IP layer to have the knowledge to comment correctly. It is their product – if you do not like the conditions attached – use other FPGAs. In another post somewhere here it was... | 1,760,373,463.051889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/join-the-movement-with-this-mini-cyberdeck/ | Join The Movement With This Mini Cyberdeck | Tom Nardi | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"cyberdeck",
"cyberpunk",
"Pi Zero W",
"portable computer"
] | The global pandemic has given many people a lot more time at home, which has undoubtedly pushed an untold number of projects over the finish line. Unfortunately, it’s also disrupted global commerce and shipping to the point that getting parts can be a lot harder than we’d like. Which is why [facelesstech] decided to
put together this exceptionally mobile cyberdeck out of things he already had laying around
.
Now to be fair, his parts bin is perhaps a bit better stocked for this kind of thing than most. He’s built a couple of Raspberry Pi portables already, so the Pi Zero W, display, and battery management board were already kicking around. He just had to come up with a new 3D printed enclosure that holds it all together with a little bit of cyberpunk flair.
To that end, he’s done an excellent job of documenting the build and has released the STL files for the 3D printed components. All things considered, we’d say this is probably the most approachable cyberdeck design currently available; if you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about with these bespoke little computers, this is an ideal project to get started with.
Keep in mind that the idea of a cyberdeck is to build something custom for yourself, so there’s no need to copy this build exactly. If you’re short on parts, you could forgo the battery powered aspect and just keep it tethered. The superfluous (but very cool) GX12 connectors could certainly be deleted as well, although at serious stylistic cost. You’ll probably need to order the specific keyboard that [facelesstech] designed the lower half of the device around, but it’s common enough that it shouldn’t be hard to track down. No matter which way you take it, this design is a great base to start from.
If you’re looking for something a bit more substantial and have the filament to burn,
you might take a look at the VirtuScope
to fulfill your offset screen needs. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251842",
"author": "Weirdwhit",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T19:13:40",
"content": "One tip to avoid losing style points if you dont have a suitable connector laying around and you dont actually need it to disconnect: just print a GX12 “shell” to slip over the cables. I used somethin... | 1,760,373,462.97608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/smart-home-meets-dumb-terminal/ | Smart Home Meets Dumb Terminal | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"dumb terminal",
"ESP8266",
"Retro WiFi",
"serial terminal",
"smart home"
] | Most smart home products are designed to be controlled from a mobile device, which makes sense since that’s what the average consumer spends most of their day poking around on these days. But you aren’t the average consumer, are you? If you’re looking for a somewhat more tactile experience, then why not
put your smart home dashboard on a vintage serial terminal as [Daniel Karpantschof] did
?
So how do you get the latest and greatest in home automation talking to a serial terminal built before the Internet as we know it? With Python, of course. [Daniel] has some code running on a Linux server that’s actually taking to his various smart home gadgets, which then spits out a simple ASCII user interface that his circa 1976 ADM-3A terminal can handle; complete with a floor plan view of the house that shows the temperature in different rooms.
Naturally, that’s only half the battle. You still need to get that interface onto the terminal. For that, [Daniel] is using
the “Simulant Retro WiFi Modem” that we’ve covered in the past
. An ESP8266 connects to the network and shuffles data over to the target device over serial. It’s all transparent to the terminal itself, so this project could be reproduced with
whatever vintage machine holds a special place in your heart
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252198",
"author": "Nick Sargeant",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T09:31:22",
"content": "Oh, if I had a Lear Siegler I would have to be in there, swapping out the character gen ROM for a code page 850 one, so I could draw boxes on the screen that joined up. I note one thing I have never... | 1,760,373,463.152419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/64-bit-and-a-display-minecraft-computers-10-years-later/ | 64-bit And A Display: Minecraft Computers 10 Years Later | Sven Gregori | [
"computer hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"ALU",
"cpu",
"CPU architecture",
"homebrew cpu",
"minecraft",
"redstone"
] | Some people build their own computer to play games, while others play games to build their own computer. Minecraft is the prime candidate for the latter, and while you can certainly arrange the blocks to make them
look
like a computer, we’re of course talking about replicating the actual functionality of a CPU or parts thereof, and/or external components within the game. Many such creations have spawned in the decade since the first Minecraft-built ALU surfaced, and [Rockfarmor] built a 64-bit specimen to add to that list —
and made a video to showcase it
.
Instead of emulating a common architecture, [Rockfarmor] went for a more home-made approach, and re-used the architecture from
an old school assignment
(in Swedish) as basis. The result is a simple yet fully functional 64-bit CPU with 32 registers, 32kB main memory and a separate 16kB stack. The instruction set mostly contains ALU and branching operations, but also a few special opcodes to control an additional 64×64
pixel
blocks, 64-color display — including drawing circles, lines, and color fills.
More details on the architecture can be found in
its documentation
and in
an older video
(with subpar audio circumstances unfortunately). An additional
time-lapse video of the initial build
is also available, and you will find all of them after break. To simplify development, [Rockfarmor] also wrote a desktop app to program the computer in assembly and upload it straight to the Minecraft version.
As with all computers built in Minecraft, the driving force is
redstone
, which essentially allows
circuit design
within the game, and [Rockfarmor]’s is no difference here. He also uses
command blocks
to avoid the laboriously and slow “wiring” required otherwise, turning it more into a “wireless redstone” circuit.
No doubt, purists will consider this cheating, but another angle would be to see it as Moore’s Law applied to Minecraft computers, considering the computer’s size and speed compared to
the first Minecraft ALU
. Or maybe as the equivalent of microcode in real-world CPUs? Or then, maybe we should just accept and embrace different options and preferences. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252187",
"author": "CKnopp",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T06:19:03",
"content": "But can it run Doom?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6252188",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T06:20:58",
"cont... | 1,760,373,463.095049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/testing-hardware-with-ascii-waveforms/ | Testing Hardware With ASCII Waveforms | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ASCII",
"test",
"testing",
"waveform",
"waveforms"
] | Testing software is — sometimes — easier than testing hardware. After all, you can always create test files and even fake user input before monitoring outputs using common tools. Hardware though, is a bit different. Sometimes it is hard to visualize exactly what’s happening. [Andrew Ray’s] answer?
Produce simulated waveforms using ASCII text
.
The process uses some custom tools written in OCaml, but the code is available for you on
GitHub
. The tool, called
Hardcaml
, allows you to write test benches for hardware — not a new idea for FPGA developers. The output, however, is an ASCII text waveform and common software development tools can check that waveform against the expected output.
You could do the same thing with a Verilog VCD file, of course, but it wouldn’t be as much fun to read. You’d want to use a waveform viewer to really see what’s going on. In fact, we wondered if it would be worth going the other way, to convert the Hardcaml output to VCD so tools you use to diff waveforms would possibly work.
We like
ASCII art
. In fact, we took our own crack at
ASCII CAD
back in 2002. You can even go
3D with your ASCII art
if you like. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252173",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T03:28:07",
"content": "Um, actually…Not ASCII. Probably ISO-8859-1.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6252178",
"author": "Osgeld",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,373,463.225567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/a-diy-electronic-load-with-a-twist/ | A DIY Electronic Load With A Twist | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"atmega328p",
"DC/DC converter",
"electronic load",
"programmable load"
] | If you’re testing a power supply or battery pack, an electronic load is a nice tool to have. By watching the voltage as you crank up the resistance, you can verify the unit’s real-world capabilities quickly and easily. But [Xavier Bourlot] wanted a bit more information than is generally afforded by these devices, so he came up with his own
scratch built load that can measure the voltage at multiple points in the circuit
.
Now at first glance, it might not be obvious why you’d want such a capability. But [Xavier] is looking to do something very specific with this device: analyze the efficiency of DC-DC converters. The idea is that if the electronic load can measure the voltage on both sides of the converter, it can calculate what kind of losses are being incurred.
Could you do this with a multimeter and a traditional electronic load? Sure. But if it’s the kind of thing you’ll be doing a lot of, it’s not hard to see why this method would be preferable.
But even if you ignore the converter analysis capabilities, this looks to be a very useful device to have around the lab. [Xavier] says it can sink more than 5 amps, and handle an input voltage as high as 100 volts. Powered by an ATmega328P, the load is also fully programmable and even features an I2C expansion port that you can use to hang additional hardware or sensors on. The stock firmware is already quite capable, and the list of future enhancements has some very interesting entries such as the ability to log data over serial or to a SD card.
We’ve seen a number of
programmable electronic load projects
over the years,
ranging from Arduino shields
to
VFD equipped units that would be the pride of any hacker’s bench
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252133",
"author": "ajs",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T23:29:17",
"content": "That heatsink!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6252152",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2020-06-07T00:44:26",
"content": "“Could you do this ... | 1,760,373,463.305067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/cheap-party-light-gets-arduino-upgrade/ | Cheap Party Light Gets Arduino Upgrade | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"disco light",
"fastLED",
"led",
"light show"
] | If you’ve got a party coming up and are looking to add a little bit of excitement,
you might be interested in this recent project from [Gav Lewis]
. The build is based on a commercially available party light, but with some upgraded components the final product is brighter and more dynamic than it was stock.
Realistically, [Gav] has changed out almost every component of this light except for the enclosure and the front lens. The original 5 mm LED array was replaced with a new 8×8 WS2812B panel, and the electronics completely replaced with an Arduino Nano. He’s still using the light’s original power supply, but as it only puts out around 4.2 V, he’s added a boost converter to provide a stable 5 V for the new hardware. He also added a small 12 V cooling fan, which he says is basically silent since it’s only getting half its rated voltage.
[Gav] has developed a number of lighting patterns with FastLED that do a good job of emulating what you might see from a much more expensive laser scanner. In the video after the break, you can see how multiple colored beams of light exit the housing at once, projecting patterns on the opposite wall. He says he’s like to restore the device’s original sound activation mode, but as of yet hasn’t gotten the code sorted out.
This project uses a off-the-shelf 8×8 matrix of WS2812B LEDs, but if you ever find yourself needing to piece together your own array from individual LEDs,
we recently covered a great tip for making it a bit easier
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252117",
"author": "rlx",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T21:45:31",
"content": "I’ve got the same thing, also upgraded with an arduino – it does Game of Life.But I’m still using the original LED-panel.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,463.36862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/lattice-drops-eula-clause-forbidding-fpga-bitstream-reverse-engineering/ | Lattice Drops EULA Clause Forbidding FPGA Bitstream Reverse Engineering | Jenny List | [
"Business",
"FPGA",
"News"
] | [
"fpga",
"lattice",
"ReverseEngineering"
] | Yesterday we reported that Lattice Semiconductor had inserted
a clause that restricted the reverse engineering of bitstreams
produced by their FPGA toolchains. Although not explicitly stated, it’s assumed that this was directed toward several projects over the past five years that have created fully open source toolchains by reverse engineering the bitstream protocols of the Lattice ICE40 and ECP5 FPGA architectures. Late yesterday
Lattice made an announcement reversing course
.
To the open source community, thank-you for pointing out a new bitstream usage restriction in the Lattice Propel license. We are excited about the community’s engagement with Lattice devices and our intent is to not hinder the creation of innovative open source FPGA tools.
It’s refreshing then to see this announcement from Lattice Semiconductor. Even more so is the unexpected turn of speed with which they have done so, within a couple of days of it being discovered by the open-source community. We report depressingly often on boneheaded legal moves from corporations intent on curbing open source uses of their products. This announcement from Lattice removes what was an admonition opposing open source toolchains, can we hope that the company will continue yesterday’s gesture and build a more lasting relationship with the open source community?
The underlying point to this story is that in the world of electronics there has long been an understanding that hardware hackers drive product innovation which will later lead to more sales. Texas Instruments would for years supply samples of exotic semiconductors to impecunious students for one example, and maybe you have a base-model Rigol oscilloscope with a tacitly-approved software hack that gives it an extra 50MHz of bandwidth for another.
We can only congratulate Lattice on their recognition that open source use of their products is beneficial for them, and wish that some of the other companies triggering similar stories would see the world in the same way. Try interacting more with your open source fans; they know and love your hardware more than the average user and embracing that could mean a windfall for you down the road. | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252061",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T17:29:14",
"content": "Great news and great story, Jenny. Thanks for sharing. FPGA’s are a bit over my current technical skill set, but I’ll keep Lattice in mind for the future. I HAVE been the beneficiary of a significantly p... | 1,760,373,463.433462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/06/burning-chrome/ | Burning Chrome | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"luggable",
"mechanical keyboard",
"newsletter",
"portable computer"
] | You want a good project that combines multiple disciplines, gives you something useful in the end, and will certainly wow the muggles? Or do you simply need a custom rig with which to “jack in” to “cyberspace”? How about building your own luggable, portable, computer with some style — your own cyberdeck?
Coming to you from the fertile world that William Gibson created in “Neuromancer”, “Count Zero”, and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, cyberdecks were the portable computers that the heroes and anti-heroes roaming the Sprawl would use to connect to what was essentially the Internet. Since we’re already living in the era where large portions of the world are controlled by vast corporations, we spend our entire lives online, and machine intelligence is poised to become sentient, you might as well get building.
We’ve seen a number of
great examples of cyberdeck builds
, and they’re all special in their own way, but there are common features uniting them all. First, you’ll need a screen, a portable computer brain, some batteries, and a nice keyboard. The good news is that all of the above have become eminently available, even inexpensive, in the last few years.
Discipline #1 is that of the case modder. You’re designing
your ideal portable computer
, after all. It’s got to
look
good
, and we don’t mean that black, boxy ThinkPad look. If you’ve got a 3D printer, and maybe a willingness to spray paint, the world is your oyster here.
Discipline #2 is that of the keyboard builder. You’re not going to want to enter the Matrix with anything less than a pleasant typing interface. Again, 3D printing,
laser-cutting
, or
CNC milling your own keyplate
and building yourself a keyboard from scratch is a viable option, but there are tons of Bluetooth and USB keyboard options if you want to cut corners, or find one you really like.
Discipline #3 is the software hacker. Putting together exactly the right set of software, setting up the system to do what you want, and getting that sweet background screen
just right
are the last steps to making yourself at home in Cyberspace.
With so much latitude to introduce your own design ideas into your bespoke luggable, no two will be alike. Mine’s going to have programming ports for every microcontroller I frequently use, a decent speaker, maybe a variable power supply, and probably some reasonable amount of LED bling. What’s going to be on yours?
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
! | 45 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252020",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2020-06-06T14:15:55",
"content": "“If you’ve got a 3D printer, and maybe a willingness to spray paint, the world is your oyster here.”Funny expression, though I’m not sure what it means.My experience with oysters is that I don’t like the tast... | 1,760,373,463.701564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/teardown-the-writer-word-processor/ | Teardown: The Writer Word Processor | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Teardown"
] | [
"education",
"infrared",
"ir",
"word processor",
"Z180",
"z80"
] | For modern students, the spiral notebook has given way to the laptop and the pocket calculator has been supplanted by the smart phone. We’re not just talking about high school and college, either. Today, the education of even grade school children is intrinsically linked with technology. While some might question the wisdom of moving away from the pencil and pad at such a young age, there’s little question that all the kids stuck at home right now due to COVID-19 would have had a much harder time transitioning to remote learning otherwise.
But that certainly wasn’t the case when Advanced Keyboard Technologies released the Writer in 2003. Back then, five years before the first netbooks hit the market, you’d be hard pressed to find a laptop cheap enough to give to a grade school student. In comparison, these small electronic word processors could be purchased for as little as $150. Not only was the initial price low, but the maintenance costs were almost negligible. They ran for hundreds of hours on a standard AA batteries, and didn’t require schools to have any IT staff to manage them. Sure they couldn’t get on the Internet or even run any software, but they would give students a chance to hone their keyboarding skills.
The 1988 precursor to the Writer
In many ways, the Writer could be thought of as
the successor to educational toys like the VTech preComputer 1000
. A device that was simple enough for a child to use, but had enough similarities with a real computer that it has value as a training tool. To that end, the Writer took the concept even farther. It offered ways to check and improve the student’s typing speed, and even featured a simplistic file management system that allowed students to organize their assignments in custom directories.
When computers became cheap enough, devices like this naturally fell to the wayside. But interestingly, the story didn’t end there. It turns out many writers, professional or otherwise, have come to swear by this style of word processor. Easily obtainable on the second hand market, devices like the Alphasmart Neo are prized as a reliable way to capture thoughts on the go. With a battery life measured in weeks and no chance that your writing session will get interrupted by an ill-timed system update, it’s not hard to see why.
So what’s inside one of these educational word processors, and just as importantly, is it worth carrying one around to bang out the Great American Novel? Let’s take one apart and find out.
The Bare Necessities
At the most basic level, the Writer is nothing more than a keyboard, an LCD, and some simple electronics to glue them together. There’s no removable storage, no rechargeable battery, there isn’t even a backlight for the display. You put three AA batteries into the back of it, hit the power button, and within a few seconds you’re writing. All of your work is saved to battery-backed memory, and when it comes time to upload your literary masterpieces to something a bit more capable, the Writer is designed to send the text out over infrared.
So it’s not much of a surprise to see how empty the gadget’s plastic case is. Beyond the aforementioned LCD and keyboard, all of the electronic components fit on a single 75 by 180 millimeter PCB. Incidentally, it should be said that the Writer’s overall dimensions are somewhat smaller than what the adult novelist might expect; designed primarily for use by pre-teens, the keyboard is approximately 90% scale. It’s by no means unusable for fully grown fingers, but it does feel a bit cramped.
Seeing a Familiar Face
When taking apart mass produced hardware, you will more often than not run into bespoke components that were built specifically for that application. When building tens or hundreds of thousands of units, it makes sense to spin up custom sub-assemblies that will save time and money in the long run. But occasionally you run into components that lowly tinkerers and hackers like us would not only recognize, but know how to interface with.
Case in point, the display used on the Writer. From the looks of it, this is a common 40×4 character LCD. The dimensions, mounting hole positions, and even pinout match eBay listings for contemporary modules. It would seem for an easy upgrade you could drop in a new LCD with a backlight, though you’d need to wire up the power for the LEDs separately since the pins aren’t connected on the Writer’s PCB.
Alternately, if you come across a stack of Writers and don’t know what to do with them, you could just salvage the LCDs. Considering how cheap Writers are going for on eBay, the screen itself is likely more valuable than the unit as a whole. Interestingly, we’ve since found out
the same could be said for older radar detectors
.
A Computer By Any Other Name
Up to this point we’ve been talking about the Writer and its ilk as alternatives to traditional computers. But that’s not technically accurate, as the Writer of course does have a microprocessor under the hood. Specifically a ZiLOG Z180, which is a low-power chip that maintains full backwards compatibility with the Z80. According to the datasheet, this chip draws just 10 µA in standby mode.
The Z180 is paired with a CY62138FV30 providing 2 Mbit of SRAM that has a maximum standby current of 5 µA. Between these two power-sipping chips, it’s not hard to see how the Writer manages to squeeze hundreds of hours out of standard alkaline batteries. In fact, it would appear that the 8 Mbit M27C801 EPROM that holds the Writer’s firmware actually consumes more energy than the rest of the diminutive computer combined.
Speaking of which, the keen eyed reader might have spied a suspiciously recent date on the EPROM’s label. Despite the Writer displaying a copyright date of 2003 when booting up, this chip was flashed with version 4.13 of the firmware in May of 2010. While officially a decade into the past at this point, it’s still somewhat surprising to see they were manufacturing these devices for so long.
Looking through the Internet Archive, it seems that Advanced Keyboard Technologies (which alternately called themselves Writer Learning) was still selling the Writer as of November 2013; though at that point
they were on clearance and selling for $99
. The Writer was replaced with the considerably more capable Forte, but by 2016 the website appears to have gone dark and the company presumably folded.
Breaking the Language Barrier
I ended up with a Writer because I was looking for something cheap to give my daughter. It’s usually a safe bet that whatever device is put into her nine year old hands will end up being utterly destroyed, but since these were actually designed for younger operators, I thought they might stand a chance. Plus the price was certainly right; an eBay seller offered me four of them for just $8.
Of course, I soon realized why. To get the documents off of the Writer, the manual says you need to have a proprietary infrared receiver that mimics a USB Human Interface Device: just open up a text editor, hit the “Send to Computer” button the Writer, and watch as it “types” out the file character by character. Certainly sounds easy enough.
Unfortunately, the IR receivers are comparatively very rare. It seems that the Writer was almost always sold as part of a classroom kit that included four IR receivers and 30 word processors. That’s not to say they are completely unavailable, but unless you’re willing to buy the entire classroom pack from an eBay seller, you probably won’t be able to get one. So how do we get the data off of them without the special receiver?
Das blinkenlights coprozessor
Well to start with, it appears that IR transmission is handled by a dedicated PIC16C54C microcontroller instead of the Z180. Tapping into the communications between these two chips could conceivably allow for the data to be siphoned off by something like an ESP8266. Being able to pull documents from the Writer over WiFi would certainly be a compelling upgrade, especially if the device’s normal operation (and battery life) could remain intact.
Now logically you might assume that the Writer is mimicking a IR keyboard, but my experiments so far don’t seem to bear that out. Transmitting a file with a single character in it takes 15 seconds, while a file with 100 characters is blinked out in 16 seconds. Clearly a large amount of header and formatting data must be getting sent in addition to the text, it’s just not clear yet what it is. My next step will be to see if a standard IR receiver can demodulate the signal, and then run that through a logic analyzer to see if anything intelligible comes out the other end.
If somebody can figure out how to put together a receiver, all these cheap Writers on the second hand market would have a new lease on life instead of languishing around in storage. Sounds like a perfect challenge for the Hackaday community. | 61 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252783",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T14:13:40",
"content": "I’d try a Palm, a WinCE handheld or a PIII laptop with IrDA on it. They could use it for HID as there were some devices like the “Palm Universal Keyboard” available.I’ve also seen the header on some ... | 1,760,373,463.801642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/run-your-favorite-8-bit-games-on-an-esp32/ | Run Your Favorite 8-bit Games On An ESP32 | Kerry Scharfglass | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Retrocomputing",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"atari",
"bluetooth",
"composite video",
"controller",
"emulation",
"ESP-32",
"ir",
"ntsc",
"pal",
"PLL",
"Sega Master System",
"videogame",
"wiimote"
] | Here at Hackaday HQ we’re no strangers to vintage game emulation. New versions of old consoles and arcade cabinets frequently make excellent fodder for clever hacks to cram as much functionality as possible into tiny modern microcontrollers. We’ve covered [rossumur]’s hacks before, but
the ESP_8-bit
is a milestone in comprehensive capability. This time, he’s topped himself.
There isn’t much the ESP 8-bit won’t do. It can emulate three popular consoles, complete with ROM selection menus (with menu bloops). Don’t worry about building a controller, just connect any old (HID compliant) Bluetooth Classic keyboard or WiiMote you have at hand. Or if that doesn’t do it, a selection of IR devices ranging from joysticks from the Atari Flashback 4 to Apple TV remotes are compatible. Connect analog audio and composite video and the device is ready to go.
The system provides this impressive capability with an absolute minimum of components. Often a schematic is too complex to fit into a short post, but we’ll reproduce this one here to give you a sense for what we’re talking about. Come back when you’ve refreshed your
Art of Electronics
and have a complete understanding of the hardware at work. We never cease to be amazed at the amount of capability available in modern “hobbyist” components. With such a short BOM this thing can be put together by anyone with an ESP-32-
anything.
There’s one more hack worth noting; the clever way [rossumur] gets full color NTSC composite video from a very busy microcontroller. They note that NTSC can be finicky and requires an extremely stable high speed reference clock as a foundation. [rossumur] discovered that the ESP-32 includes a PLL designed for audio work (the “APLL”) which conveniently supports fractional components, allowing it to be trimmed to within an inch of the desired frequency. The
full description is included in the GitHub
page for the project and includes detailed background of various efforts to get color NTSC video (including the names of a couple hackers you might recognize from these pages). | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252768",
"author": "Syl20",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T13:15:18",
"content": "Glad to see you back in business Rossum!Always loved your stuff with the AVR, and now with the ESP32 this is getting even more impressive!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,463.517567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/solving-buyers-remorse-with-a-rotary-tool-and-soldering-iron/ | Solving Buyer’s Remorse With A Rotary Tool And Soldering Iron | Sven Gregori | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"dremel",
"laptop charger",
"rotary tool",
"USB C",
"USB-PD"
] | At this point, it’s pretty clear that USB-C has become the new standard connector for an increasing amount of applications, but predominantly charging. Even Apple is on board this time, and thanks to backwards compatibility, you don’t have to abandon devices using the older standards you may prefer for their simplicity or superior lint-resilience either. For [Mat] on the other hand, it’s USB-C all the way nowadays. Yet back in the day when he bought his laptop, he had the price tag convince him otherwise, and has come to regret it, as all the convenience of a slim design is cancelled out by dragging a bulky charger for the laptop’s proprietary charging port along.
Well, as the saying goes for situations like this: love it, leave it, or
get out the tools and rework that sucker
. Lucky enough, the original charger provides 20 V, which matches nicely the USB power delivery (PD) specification, and after opening up the laptop, [Mat] was happy to see that the interior provided enough room to fit the USB-C module he was planning to use. Even better, the charging port itself was a standalone component attached to a cable, so no modifications to the mainboard were necessary. Once the USB-C module was soldered to that same cable, the only thing left to do was carving a bigger hole on the laptop case, and saying good bye to the obsoleted charger.
The downside is of course the lack of actual USB functionality with that shiny new charging port, but that was never the goal here anyway. With more and more USB-C devices popping up, it’s also no surprise that we’ve seen
modifications like this
before, and
not only with laptops
. In case you’re thinking of upgrading one of your own devices to USB-C, and
do
wish for actual USB functionality,
don’t worry, we got you covered as well
. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252729",
"author": "Max Siegieda (@CampGareth)",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T09:06:02",
"content": "My laptop with a barrel jack charger is still under warranty so rather than cut it up I’ve bought a small USB C to barrel jack adapter. “USB PD Trigger” was the keyword to search for, p... | 1,760,373,463.855954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/unique-strandbeest-stands-tall-with-line-of-legs/ | Unique Strandbeest Stands Tall With Line Of Legs | Tom Nardi | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"2 wheel robot",
"robot walker",
"Self Balancing Robot",
"strandbeest"
] | Multiple rows of intricately articulated legs are the defining characteristic of the Strandbeest, but [James Bruton] wondered if he could reduce that down to a single row
using the same principles at work in a self-balancing two wheeled robot
. While it’s perhaps a bit early to call his experiments a complete success, the first tentative steps taken by his (relatively) svelte Strandbeest certainly look promising.
Initially the robot only had two pairs of legs, but in testing [James] found this arrangement to be a bit unstable. By bringing the total count to four legs per side and improving the counterweight arrangement, the bot has been able to walk the length of the workshop. Unfortunately, an issue with the leg design seems to be preventing the Strandbeest from taking any backward steps.
Normally this wouldn’t be that big of a problem, but in this case it’s keeping the Strandbeest from being able to self-balance while standing still. In other words, the robot needs to keep moving forward or it will fall over. Still, [James] thinks the idea has promise and wants to continue experimenting with the bot in a larger area.
Specifically, he wants to see if the dual-motor robot can turn by varying the speed the two sets of legs are running at. If it can walk in a tight enough circle, it could keep right on marching until the power runs down. Sounds more than a little nightmarish to us, but we’d still like to see it.
Reader’s may recall [James] from this other another robotic projects,
such as the phenomenal OpenDog
. We don’t know where his obsession of legged robots comes from, but we certainly aren’t complaining. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252790",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T14:28:11",
"content": "I think possibly the issue is with feedback and design. If the machine was built to have the weight over the centre of gravity without the counterweight and it had sensors on the feet themselves, it would ... | 1,760,373,463.895805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/displaying-html-interfaces-and-managing-network-nodes-in-space/ | Displaying HTML Interfaces And Managing Network Nodes… In Space! | Roger Cheng | [
"Space"
] | [
"Crew Dragon",
"dragon",
"Falcon 9",
"Space Software",
"spaceflight",
"SpaceX",
"Starlink"
] | The touchscreen interface aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon is just one of its many differences from past space vehicles, but those big screens make an outsized visual impact. Gone are panels filled with indicator needles in gauges, or endless rows of toggle switches. It looked much like web interaction on everyday tablets for good reason: what we see is HTML and JavaScript rendered by the same software core underlying Google’s Chrome browser. This and many other details were covered in a Reddit
Ask Me Anything
with members of the SpaceX software team
.
Various outlets have mentioned Chromium in this context, but without answering the obvious follow-up question: how deep does Chromium go? In this AMA we learn it does not go very deep at all. Chromium is only the UI rendering engine, their fault tolerant flight software interaction is elsewhere. Components such as Chromium are isolated to help keep system behavior predictable, so a frozen tab won’t crash the capsule. Somewhat surprisingly they don’t use a specialized real-time operating system, but instead a lightly customized Linux built with
PREEMPT_RT patches
for better real-time behavior.
In addition to Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule, this AMA also covered software work for Starlink which offered interesting contrasts in design tradeoffs. Because there are so many satellites (and even more being launched) loss of individual spacecraft is not a mission failure. This gives them elbow room for rapid iteration, treating the constellation more like racks of servers in a datacenter instead of typical satellite operations. Where the Crew Dragon code has been frozen for several months, Starlink code is updated rapidly. Quickly enough that by the time newly launched Starlink satellites reach orbit, their code has usually fallen behind the rest of the constellation.
Finally there are a few scattered answers outside of space bound code. Their ground support displays (visible in Hawthorne mission control room) are built with LabVIEW. They also confirmed that contrary to some claims, the
SpaceX ISS docking simulator
isn’t actually running the same code as Crew Dragon. Ah well.
Anyone interested in what it takes to write software for space would enjoy reading through these and other details in the AMA. And since it had a convenient side effect of serving as a recruiting event, there are plenty of invitations to apply if anyone has ambitions to join the team. We certainly can’t deny the attraction of helping to write the
next chapter in human spaceflight
.
[Photo credit:
SpaceX
] | 44 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252660",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-09T02:08:47",
"content": "* INNN SPAAAAACCCELast time I encountered LabVIEW it was running on Windows 3.1 or is it a different Labview? As I recall it was kinda tied to some expensive data acquisition boards, so as PCs got le... | 1,760,373,463.972093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/circuit-sculpture-clock-goes-pew-pew/ | Circuit Sculpture Clock Goes Pew Pew | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"circuit sculputure",
"clock",
"freeform"
] | Freeform circuit sculptures are a perfect example of the realm where electronic meets art. While many of these objects only serve aesthetic purposes, [Zachary Goode]’s
X-Wing clock satisfies both form and function
.
He makes no secret of the fact that his project was inspired by the works of Mohit Bhoite,
one of our favorite freeform circuit artists
. In particular, he wanted to make an X-Wing version of Mohit’s
Tie Fighter Clock
.
After sketching out the design in Fusion360, he printed out a paper stencil for each part to help him bend the pieces into the right shape. Next, he assembled the wireframe by soldering before mounting the electronics, an Arduino Nano, DS3231 RTC module, and OLED display. For special effects, he added a speaker that randomly plays engine and laser sounds and some Blinkenlights.
He also decided to include some woodworking in his project by making a walnut base which includes the USB cable for power supply and two slide switches. The latter enable him to disable the sound effects and switch to daylight saving time.
Considering that this is his first foray into freeform circuits the result is astonishingly beautiful. If you share our love for these intricate objects be sure to check out our
compilation of equally appealing circuit sculptures
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252941",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2020-06-10T00:10:04",
"content": "Functional art at it’s best. Thanks for sharing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,464.006087 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/uv-phone-sanitizer-shows-the-power-of-modern-diy/ | UV Phone Sanitizer Shows The Power Of Modern DIY | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"seven segment LED",
"UV LED",
"UV-C"
] | Editor’s Update:
According to the schematic for this project,
SST-10-UV-A130-F405-00
(PDF) LEDs are used which produce 405nm UV-A light.
The manufacturer
, Luminus, does not recommend that part for disinfection or sterilization. Luminus sells UV-C LEDs for that purpose, generating 275-285nm. After publication the part number used was changed to and American Opto
L933-UV265-2-20
which is a UV-C LED producing 265-278nm.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on the hacking and making scene, though it hasn’t been all bad. Sure, shipping on average is taking a lot longer than we’d like when ordering parts, but otherwise being stuck at home has given many people far more time to work on their projects than they would have had otherwise. In some cases, it’s also been a reminder of just how far we’ve come in terms of what the dedicated individual is capable of producing within the confines of their own home.
As a perfect example, take a look at
this UV sanitizer box built by [Md Raz]
. Looking for a way to quickly and easily kill germs on smartphones and other small devices, he used the considerable capabilities afforded to the modern hacker to produce a professional-looking device in far less time than it would have if he had to outsource things like PCB manufacturing or injection molding.
Inside the 3D printed enclosure is an array of SMD UV-C LEDs that, according to the manufacturer’s specs, will destroy viruses and bacteria in 5 minutes. To make sure the LEDs are given enough time to do their job, [Md] is using an ATtiny85 to control the countdown and a seven segment display to let the user know how much longer they have to wait. All the electronics are held on PCBs produced with a BotFactory SV2 desktop PCB printer, but for those of us with somewhat more
limited
budgets, a mill or even
a modified laser engraver could be used
to produce similar boards.
With everything going on,
there’s understandably been increased demand for germicidal lights
. But unfortunately,
some unscrupulous manufacturers are trying to take advantage of the situation
. Being able to select the LEDs for this device based on their specifications is arguably just as important as how quickly it was produced. Though we’d still
advise a position of “trust, but verify” when it comes to UV-C
. | 94 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6252564",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T20:04:19",
"content": "WAITone PCB for 2 lonely LEDs ???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6252565",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2020-06-08T20:06:30",
... | 1,760,373,464.15906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/ancient-history-of-the-phone-jack/ | Ancient History Of The Phone Jack | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"cord board",
"cordboard",
"phone jack",
"phone pulg",
"telephone switchboard"
] | While watching a video about old radios from the 1920s, a phone jack popped up. The host mentioned that phone jacks are super old and he wondered what was their origin. I always assumed they had something to do with the telephone system, and that’s right, but I had no idea how old they really are and how they’ve evolved. Turns out the venerable plug goes back to at least 1878.
Keep in mind, I’m talking about the good old fashioned 1/4″ phone jack with two wires. Over time, the jack and plug have spawned different versions with more wires and — particularly — smaller dimensions. The headphone jack that
many smartphone makers are dropping
is a direct descendant of that old phone jack. But a mono cable like you would see connecting an electric guitar or another mono source would be right at home connected to a 1900s switchboard. Let’s take a look at the origins of a design that’s almost 150 years old and still in use.
A Connector Design for the Long Haul
There’s some debate over which switchboard was the first in operation. But in Boston or Connecticut, the year was around 1877 or 1878 and it used something recognizable as a phone plug. The word jack wasn’t in use yet, though. That came from
Charles Scribner’s patent of a “spring jack”
that allows the plug to open a switch contact. Some later documents also call it a jackknife switch, apparently since the plug is somewhat like a pocket knife. The advancement made life at the switchboard easier and is also the mechanism radios use to disconnect the speaker when you plug in headphones.
Scribner would go on to get more patents related to the plug, and
the 1893 patent drawing
looks like a modern plug and jack. As you might expect, all of these patents were assigned to the phone company.
From Mono to Stereo
The plug is simplicity itself. Just two conducting cylinders with a small insulating ring keeping them apart. The shape of the tip pushes a spring-loaded retainer. As long as the plug and the jack have roughly the same idea of where the insulating ring is, everything will be fine.
Of course, there was some variation in early designs, but the rounded tip quickly gained favor and would work with most jacks. The fact that the phone company was the primary source for these for decades made sure things were compatible, too. Not that they didn’t find wide application for headphones and even in the military.
Of course, later, it was common to see a third ring to handle stereo audio. At first, the stereo plugs were given a sharper tip so it would be possible to build jacks that would not accept a mono plug. After all, plugging a mono cable into a stereo jack will short the right channel to ground. However, this was unworkable in practice and for many years now, mono and stereo plugs have the same sharper profile that originally meant stereo.
The Twenty-First Century and Beyond
RCA or “Phono” Plugs
RJ11 “Registered Jack” Connectors
We still have both the original phone jack and variants of all sorts. Until recently, most cell phones had a small variant of the phone jack with four conductors for a headset —
usually known as TRRS for tip-ring-ring-sleeve
. Many still do, at least for now. The phone company’s “cord board” probably would be unrecognizable to Scribner, but he could still find some of his plugs at the local guitar store.
It doesn’t help that many people call a “registered jack” (like an RJ-11 or RJ-45) a phone jack. Then there’s the “phono” plug and jack — which I’ve always called RCA connectors. Just remember the next time you plug in those high-end headphones, the plug in your hand has way over a century of heritage.
Of course, switchboards became much rarer with the
ability to dial your own calls
. Then came the
answering machine
. | 67 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251793",
"author": "Richard Chorlton-North",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T17:28:07",
"content": "More years ago than I care to remember I happened upon a variation that was a bloody nuisance!I had a Framus Star-Bass, and the non-replaceable jack socket wasn’t the 1/4″ I thought was com... | 1,760,373,464.366049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/hackaday-podcast-070-memory-bump-strontium-rain-sentient-solder-smoke-and-botting-browsers/ | Hackaday Podcast 070: Memory Bump, Strontium Rain, Sentient Solder Smoke, And Botting Browsers | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"audio encoding",
"credit card",
"crystal radio",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"mold making",
"nuclear testing",
"python",
"raspberry pi",
"smart card",
"solder smoke"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys bubble sort a sample set of amazing hacks from the past week. Who has even used the smart chip from an old credit card as a functional component in their own circuit? This guy. There’s something scientifically devious about the way solder smoke heat-seeks to your nostrils. There’s more than one way to strip 16-bit audio down to five. And those nuclear tests from the 40s, 50s, and 60s? Those are still affecting how science takes measurements of all sorts of things in the world.
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 070 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Raspberry Pi 4 Gets Its 8 Gigs
Latest Raspberry Pi OS update – May 2020 – Raspberry Pi
Linux Fu: Raspberry Pi Desktop Headless
DLT one – A Damn Linux Tablet!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Why Does Solder Smoke Always Find Your Face?
Job Application Script Automates The Boring Stuff With Python
Beautiful Soup: We called him Tortoise because he taught us.
Selenium with Python — Selenium Python Bindings 2 documentation
Bots That Snag The Hottest Fashion While Breaking Social Trust In Commerce
finalphoenix – Rise of the Hypebots Scripting Streetwear – DEF CON 27 Conference
Arduino Drums Bring The Noise, No MIDI Required
μ-law algorithm – Wikipedia
Comment from Mike Lima on 4-bit ADPCM
Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation – Wikipedia
Credit Card Chip Used To Make Crystal Radio
Remotely Navigate The Apocalypse In Mid-Century Style
Cast Metal From Prints To Solidify Childhood Memories
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Dual-Wielding Robot Carves 3D Shapes From Foam With Warped Wire
Python Is All You’ll Ever Need In This Linux Distro
RC Lawn Mower Keeps The Grass Greener On Your Side Of The Fence
Mike’s Picks:
A Dual Screen Luggable With Integrated RTL-SDR
Inputs Of Interest: ErgoDox Post-Mortem
Building One Test Fixture To Rule Them All
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Books You Should Read: The Design Of Everyday Things
How Science Adapted To The Aftermath Of Cold War Nuke Tests
Low Background Steel — So Hot Right Now | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,464.198054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/turning-a-microkorg-into-a-microkorg-s-with-this-speaker-mod/ | Turning A MicroKORG Into A MicroKORG S With This Speaker Mod | Maya Posch | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"microkorg",
"synthesizer",
"vocoder"
] | When [Michael Wessel] bought his MicroKORG synthesizer/vocoder, he felt less than amused when two years later the MicroKORG S was released, with the ‘S’ standing for ‘sound’, apparently, for the 2+1 speaker system that was added to it. Undeterred, [Michael] figured out that both synthesizers are similar enough that one could likely add a similar speaker system
to the original MicroKORG
.
The similarities between the two products become apparent when one compares the
original
with its
successor
, with the latter seemingly mostly adding said speakers and more presets, along with a snazzy new exterior. (Although the 1970s styling of the original may have more fans.) As the embedded video shows, this mod is fairly clean.
At the core of this mod is a
PAM8403
-based class D amplifier board. The PAM8403 is a 3 W audio amplifier, originally produced by Power Analog Microelectronics (now Diodes). While not an amazing amplifier, it lends itself well for battery-powered applications like the MicroKORG. Rounding out the build is a 7805 linear regulator to get 5 V for the PAM8403, a few filter capacitors, a switch to turn the speakers on/off, and of course the speakers.
Although there’s quite a bit of space in the enclosure, most speakers tend to be large enough that this can be a bit of a squeeze. [Michael] found some low-profile 20 W full-range speakers that seem to work well for this purpose. To finish wiring this up, all it takes is a hole saw and a way to get the audio output from the MicroKORG.
In this mod, [Michael] opted to get the audio from the output jack on the back, but for a cleaner result it probably could be wired straight into the on-board header. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251780",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T16:26:01",
"content": "It might just be my browser, but I don’t see any difference clicking between the “original” link and “successor” links.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,373,464.247651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/this-week-in-security-exim-apple-sign-in-cursed-wallpaper-and-nuclear-secrets/ | This Week In Security: Exim, Apple Sign-in, Cursed Wallpaper, And Nuclear Secrets | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Exim",
"ios",
"This Week in Security"
] | So first off, remember
the Unc0ver vulnerability/jailbreak from last week
? In the 13.5.1 iOS release, the underlying flaw was fixed, closing the jailbreak. If you intend to jailbreak your iOS device, make sure not to install this update. That said, the normal warning applies: Be very careful about running out-of-date software.
Apple Sign In
An exploit in Apple’s web authentication protocol was
fixed in the past week
. Sign In With Apple is similar to OAuth, and allows using an Apple account to sign in to other sites and services. Under the hood, a JSON Web Token (JWT) gets generated and passed around, in order to confirm the user’s identity. In theory, this scheme even allows authentication without disclosing the user’s email address.
So what could go wrong? Apparently a simple request for a JWT that’s signed with Apple’s public key will automatically be approved. Yeah, it was that bad. Any account linked to an Apple ID could be trivially compromised. It was fixed this past week, after being found and reported by [Bhavuk Jain].
The Cursed Wallpaper
So when someone posts an image on twitter, and warns everyone to *never* use it as your phone wallpaper, what’s the logical thing to do? Apparently it’s only appropriate to immediately set it as your phone’s wallpaper, and then complain that it renders your phone unusable. So what’s going on?
The image in question uses a special color-space that the Android UI isn’t equipped to handle. That particular picture has a color value over 255, which is out of bounds, causing a crash in the UI. Once the Android UI has crashed, it’s impossible to change the wallpaper, leading to a crash loop. A few users were able to switch out their wallpapers in the few moments between crashes, but the surest way to clean up the mess is to manually remove the image using something like TWRP.
Exim and CVE-2019-10149
This vulnerability is one that keeps on giving. We
talked about CVE-2019-10149
just about a year ago. This week, the NSA published a warning (
PDF
) that certain state actors are actively exploiting this Exim bug.
For a quick refresher, the Exim mail server is
the most popular mail server on the net
. CVE-2019-10149 is a clever exploit that tricks a vulnerable server into trying to send an email to a specially crafted address, hosted at a malicious mail server. When the target machine tries to send a bounceback message, the malicious server sends a byte every four minutes, forcing the connection to stay open for a week. This strategy ensures that the vulnerable code is hit. When the message is finally sent, the payload embedded in the email address is evaluated and executed.
The NSA warning specifies the Russian GRU as the culprit, acting under the name Sandworm. There’s likely quite the story behind how the current attacks were discovered to be of Russian origin. As none of the indicators of compromise are directly tied to the GRU, we’ll just have to take the NSA’s word for it, but of course they’re not going to make public how they get their counter-intel either.
In further GRU news, the
UK has officially attributed
to them a series of attacks on the country of Georgia. These attacks shut down the Georgian power grid, encrypted hard drives (ransomware), and directly damaged financial systems. And just last month,
the German government attributed hacks on their parliament
to one particular GRU officer: Dmitriy Badin.
Attributing cyber attacks to a particular actor is always tricky, especially when savvy foreign intelligence agencies which don’t want to get caught are behind the work, but the fact that multiple government agencies are converging on the same conclusions is more persuasive. The German evidence, collected over five years and pointing to a particular agent, is particularly so.
Stolen Nuclear Missile Secrets?
Our final story comes from Sky News, who breaks the news that
Westech International was hit with a ransomware attack
. As you may have guessed, this section’s title is
Betteridge’s Law
in action, albeit ironically.
So what really happened, and why is the “nuclear secrets” angle almost certainly bunk? First off, Westech isn’t a huge engineering firm, and they haven’t worked on designing any nuclear weapons systems. Go to their website, and look at the contracts they have and services they offer. Telecommunications, maintenance, and logistics planning.
Secondly, we know that the ransomware attack hit the machines doing their payroll. Classified information is subject to a strict set of rules in the US. It’s only to be kept and used in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Computers containing classified information are never to be connected to the unsecure network. There is even a dedicated Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) that is only for secure communications and only accessible from a SCIF. All this to say, if a ransomware attack can ex-filtrate data back to an attacker, then somebody royally messed up in a way that often leads to jail time. It’s a long way from payroll to nuclear secrets.
Rooting Your AT&T Gateway
[Andrew Dupuis] had an Arris Fiber Gateway provided by AT&T, and like many a hacker, he wasn’t satisfied. Before we dive all the way into the rabbit-hole, we should point out that AT&T is charging $10 a month for this device, and refuses to let their customers use their own hardware instead. [Andrew] believes that this probably violates FCC rules. In any case, he wanted to run his own gateway instead of being locked into AT&T’s. The fiber connection uses 802.1x security on the physical connection, which also serves to lock customers into the official hardware. If a user could extract the 802.1x certificates, they could replace the official AT&T gateway with their own hardware, which is
the point of the writeup
.
The exploit itself starts with a firmware downgrade, back to a version that still contains the vulnerability. The vulnerability? A REST server intended for troubleshooting and debugging. A bit of work later, and the hardware is rooted, with a telnet server just waiting for you. It shouldn’t be very surprising, the OS under the hood is a standard embedded Linux. The first order of business is to disable the auto-update function, to avoid getting locked back out of the device.
[Andrew] explains how to properly secure the gateway, and re-tune it for better performance, good ideas if you intend to continue using it in your network. The real goal here is extracting the certificates. I’m not sure how much of a surprise it should be, but it seems that every device uses the same security certificates, and [Andrew] was kind enough to share the copy he extracted.
[Andrew] sent this in on the Hackaday Tipline. If you have research to share, or came across something you think we should cover, be sure to let us know about it! | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251759",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T14:42:37",
"content": "Dang!Now I want to use that image as my phone’s wallpaper!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6251823",
"author": "Barefoot",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,464.484868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/tic-tac-toe-implemented-in-single-call-to-printf/ | Tic-Tac-Toe Implemented In Single Call To Printf() | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"games",
"IOCCC",
"obfuscated",
"printf",
"tic-tac-toe",
"turing complete"
] | [Nicholas Carlini] programmed a C implementation of two-player Tic Tac Toe,
and he did it in a single call to
printf()
. The arguments for that single function call get mind-bendingly complex, so it may come as no surprise that it was written for
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest
(IOCCC).
Most of us are aware that
printf()
is one of those functions that is considerably more complex under the hood, and capable of far more, than it may appear to be. But did you know that it is capable of Turing-complete computation?
[Nicholas] clearly steps through the theory, so give it a read. In short, a maze of arguments handles the logic of the game while an embedded
scanf()
reads user input, and printing the game board is always preceded by an escape code to clear the screen.
[Nicholas] is certainly no stranger to in-depth understandings; we’ve seen his work before in
demonstrating how to fool speech recognition with hidden commands
, including a powerful example showing how two virtually identical-sounding audio files transcribe entirely differently. | 34 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251713",
"author": "Maiden",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T11:24:32",
"content": "i like the license text:LICENSEThis program is clearly some groundbreaking achievement the likes of which have never been seen before. Therefore, if you would like to use this program in anything, it’s lic... | 1,760,373,464.436527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/how-did-they-get-sampled-sounds-from-an-sn76489-8-bit-sound-chip/ | How Did They Get Sampled Sounds From An SN76489 8-bit Sound Chip? | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"audio",
"BBC Micro",
"SN76489"
] | If you were lucky and had well-off parents in the early 1980s, your home computer had a sound chip on board and could make music. There were a variety of chips on the market that combined in some form the tone generators and noise sources of a synthesiser, but without the digital-to-analogue converters of later sound chips designed for sampled audio. They gave birth to chiptune music, but that was all they were made to do. The essence of a hack lies in making something perform in a way it was never intended to, and some game developers for the Acorn BBC Micro had its SN76489 producing sampled audio when it should never have been possible. How did they do it?
It’s a topic [Chris Evans] has investigated thoroughly, and his write-up makes for a fascinating explanation
.
So, how can a set of audio tone generators be turned into a sampled audio player, and how can it be done when the CPU is a relatively puny 6502? There’s no processor bandwidth for clever Fourier transform tricks, and 1980s tech isn’t set up for high data bandwidths. The answer lies in making best use of the controls the chip does offer, namely frequency and volume of a tone. A single cycle of a tone can be given a volume, and thus can be treated as a single sample of an unintended DAC. By using a tone frequency well above the audio range a suitable sample frequency can be found, and thus an audio stream can be played. The write-up has links to some examples in an emulator, and while they’re hardly hi-fi they’re better than you might expect for the hardware involved. Still, even at that they don’t approach
this amazing 48kHz playback on a Commodore 64
.
Header: SN76489, on a Colecovision console motherboard. Evan-Amos /
Public domain
. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251745",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T14:02:56",
"content": "“The essence of a hack lies in making something perform in a way it was never intended to,”Well, it you are hacking your oscilloscope (e.g. Rigol) to release the functions intended for higher paying customers... | 1,760,373,464.731145 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/nintendos-gba-dev-board-could-pass-for-modern-diy/ | Nintendo’s GBA Dev Board Could Pass For Modern DIY | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"development kit",
"game boy",
"game boy advance",
"gba"
] | When the Game Boy Advance came on the scene in 2001, it was a pretty big deal. The 32-bit handheld represented the single biggest upgrade the iconic Game Boy line had ever received, not only in terms of raw processing power, but overall design. It would set the state-of-the-art in portable gaming for years, and Nintendo was eager to get developers on board.
Which could explain why the official GBA development kit,
recently shown off by [Hard4Games]
, looks like something that was built in a hackerspace. It’s pretty common for console development systems to look more like boxy 1990s computers than the sleek injection molded units that eventually take up residence under your television, but they don’t often come in the form of a bare PCB. It seems that Nintendo was in such a rush to get an early version of their latest handheld’s guts out to developers that they couldn’t even take the time to get a sheet metal case stamped out for it.
The development board doesn’t like later GBA games.
All of the principle parts of the final GBA are here, and as demonstrated in the video after the break, the board even plays commercially released games. Though [Hard4Games] did find that some titles from the later part of the handheld’s life had unusual graphical glitches; hinting that there are likely some low-level differences that don’t manifest themselves unless the developer was really digging deep to squeeze out all the performance they could.
The board also lacks support for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, though this is not wholly surprising. When an older game was inserted into a GBA, the cartridge would physically depress a switch that enabled a special 8080-based coprocessor that existed solely for backwards compatibility. Adding that hardware to a development board would have made it more expensive and added no practical benefit. That said, [Hard4Games] does point out that there appears to be a unpopulated area of the board where the backwards compatibility switch could have been mounted.
Hackers have always been enamored with the Game Boy
, so it’s fitting to see that the official development kit for the final entry into that storied line of handhelds looked a lot like something they could build themselves. If anyone feels inclined to build their own “deconstructed” GBA in this style,
you know where to find us
.
[Thanks to NeoTechni for the tip.] | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251669",
"author": "R to the H",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T05:41:14",
"content": "Just to get out in front of the potential mud-slinging regarding the “special 8080-based coprocessor” statement from the article: No, it’s not particularly special, and no, it’s not exactly 8080-based.... | 1,760,373,464.671151 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/palms-mini-mobile-phone-becomes-bike-phone/ | Palm’s Mini-Mobile Phone Becomes Bike Phone | Donald Papp | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"companion phone",
"palm"
] | The mini-mobile phone [Jim Yang] got his hands on deserves a bit of background. Palm had the concept of a
companion
mobile phone, and this manifested itself in late 2018 as a cute palm-sized smartphone that one could carry around when one didn’t wish to haul along their “real” phone. This smaller and simpler phone was originally intended to share the same mobile number as one’s primary phone (though it has since been made able to work as a standalone device.)
[Jim]’s device, in use as a bike-mounted smartphone.
[Jim]
got his hands on a refurbished Palm PVG100, rooted it, and shared some pictures of the internal components
. The phone was not carrier-locked, but getting it up and running was still a bit more complex than plugging in a SIM card. For example, voice calls worked fine but to gain access to mobile data on the Three UK mobile network required updating the Access Point Name (APN) settings. [Jim] also rooted the Android-based phone and describes how he removed Verizon bloatware.
Palm’s
companion phone
idea hasn’t really caught on in a commercial sense, but in a way, [Jim] is validating the concept. After getting it up and running, he attached it to his bike with a custom mount to enjoy the benefits of having a mobile phone along without actually risking his primary device.
In case you’re wondering, this
Palm
is indeed the same Palm that launched the
PalmPilot
in 1996,
whose distinctive folding keyboard accessory has shown up in past hacks
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251636",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-06-05T02:37:08",
"content": "Heh, I just kept all the ones I upgraded from… plus I could throw my SIM in the cheapo smert watch for an evening, it’s stellar 8 hour battery life might be good enough for that.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,373,466.433177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/contactless-doorbell-built-to-avoid-coronavirus/ | Contactless Doorbell Built To Avoid Coronavirus | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"doorbell",
"ultrasonic",
"ultrasonic distance sensor",
"ultrasonic sensor",
"ultrasound"
] | It’s often said that necessity breeds creativity, and during a global pandemic such words have proved truer than ever. Realising the common doorbell could be a potential surface transmission point for coronavirus,
[CasperHuang] whipped up a quick build.
The build eschews the typical pushbutton we’re all familiar with. Instead, it relies on an ultrasonic distance sensor to detect a hand (or foot) waved in front of the door. An Arduino Leonardo runs the show, sounding a buzzer when the ultrasonic sensor is triggered. In order to avoid modifying the apartment door, the build is housed in a pair of cardboard boxes, taped to the base of the door, with wires passing underneath.
It’s a tidy way to handle contactless deliveries. We imagine little touches like this may become far more common in future design, as the world learns lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Every little bit helps, after all. Video after the break. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251600",
"author": "Douglas Miller",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T23:20:09",
"content": "I like my way better. Just be so anti-social people don’t even dare to try to push the button. As a backup, I put out a sign that says ‘If you don’t KNOW that you are welcome here, you’re NOT. I’d ... | 1,760,373,466.479312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/cnc-scroll-saw-makes-promising-first-cuts/ | CNC Scroll Saw Makes Promising First Cuts | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"CNC woodworking",
"scroll saw",
"woodworking"
] | When we talk about CNC machines, we almost invariably mean a computer controlled router. Naturally you can do other forms of automated cutting, say using a laser or a water jet, but what about adding computer control to other types of saws? [Andrew Consroe] recently put together
a postmortem video about this experimental CNC scroll saw
. While he never quite got it working reliably, we think his approach is absolutely fascinating and hope this isn’t the last we see of the idea.
Those who’ve used a scroll saw in the past might immediately see the challenge of this build: while a router bit or laser beam can cut in any direction, a scroll saw blade can only cut in one. If you tried to make a sharp turn on a scroll saw, you’ll just snap the fragile blade right off. To work around this limitation, [Andrew] came up with the brilliant rotary table that can be seen in the video after the break.
By combining motion of the gantry with table rotation, he’s able to keep the blade from ever making too tight a turn. Or at least, that’s the theory. While the machine works well enough with a marker mounted in place of the blade, [Andrew] says he never got it to the point it could reliably make cuts. It sounds like positioning errors would compound until the machine ended up moving the work piece in such a way that would snap the blade. Still, the concept definitely works; towards the end of the video he shows off a couple of pieces that were successfully cut on his machine before it threw the blade.
While we’ve actually seen DIY scroll saws in the past
, this is the first computer controlled one to ever grace the pages of Hackaday. While some will no doubt argue that there’s no sense building one of these
now that laser cutters have reached affordable prices
, we absolutely love this design and how much thought went into it. At the very least, we figure this it the beefiest doodle-drawing robot ever constructed. | 41 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251526",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T20:11:46",
"content": "When _I_ talk about CNC machines I nearly always mean a mill or a lathe (and I talk about CNC machines more than most)But, I think this is an interesting idea, but think it might have been better to rot... | 1,760,373,466.771535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/day-clock-monitors-air-quality-of-the-great-indoors/ | Day Clock Monitors Air Quality Of The Great Indoors | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks",
"how-to",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"air quality",
"co2",
"day clock",
"ESP32",
"json",
"lockdown life",
"xml"
] | As the world settles into this pandemic, some things are still difficult to mentally reckon, such as the day of the week. We featured a printed day clock a few months ago that used a large pointer to provide this basic psyche-grounding information. In the years since then, [Jeff Thieleke] whipped up
a feature-rich remix that adds indoor air quality readings and a lot more
.
Like [phreakmonkey]’s original day tripper, an ESP32 takes care of figuring out what day it is and moves a 9 g servo accordingly. [Jeff] wanted a little more visual action, so the pointer moves a tad bit every hour. A temperature/humidity sensor and a separate CO₂ sensor output their readings to an LCD screen mounted under the pointer. Since [Jeff] is keeping this across the basement workshop from the bench, the data is also available from a web server running on the ESP32 via XML and JSON, and the day clock can get OTA updates.
Need a little more specificity than just eyeballing a pointer?
Here’s a New Times clock that gives slightly more detail
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251540",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T20:44:20",
"content": "The writer(s) continue to have the same problem with significant digits, accuracy, and resolution; seehttps://hackaday.com/2018/06/03/6-weather-station-goes-where-you-do/",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,373,466.377697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/netbooks-the-form-factor-time-forgot/ | Netbooks: The Form Factor Time Forgot | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"laptops hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ipad",
"laptop",
"netbook",
"netbooks",
"tablet",
"tablets"
] | Long ago, before smartphones were ubiquitous and children in restaurants were quieted with awful games on iPads, there was a beautiful moment. A moment in which the end user could purchase, at a bargain price, an x86 computer in a compact, portable shell. In 2007, the netbook was born, and took the world by storm – only to suddenly vanish a few years later. What exactly was it that made netbooks so great, and where did they go?
A Beautiful Combination
An Asus EEE PC shown here running Linux. You could run anything on them! Because they were real, full-fat computers. No locked down chipsets or BIOS. Just good, clean, x86 fun.
The first machine to kick off the craze was the Asus EEE PC 701, inspired by
the One Laptop Per Child project
. Packing a 700Mhz Celeron processor, a small 7″ LCD screen, and a 4 GB SSD, it was available with Linux or Windows XP installed from the factory. With this model, Asus seemed to find a market that Toshiba never quite hit with their Libretto machines a decade earlier. The advent of the wireless network and an ever-more exciting Internet suddenly made a tiny, toteable laptop attractive, whereas previously it would have just been a painful machine to do work on. The name “netbook” was no accident, highlighting the popular use case — a lightweight, portable machine that’s perfect for web browsing and casual tasks.
But the netbook was more than the sum of its parts. Battery life was in excess of 3 hours, and the CPU was a full-fat x86 processor. This wasn’t a machine that required users to run special cut-down software or compromise on usage. Anything you could run on an average, low-spec PC, you could run on this, too. USB and VGA out were available, along with WiFi, so presentations were easy and getting files on and off was a cinch. It bears remembering, too, that back in the Windows XP days, it was easy to share files across a network without clicking through 7 different permissions tabs and typing in your password 19 times.
Netbook sales in 2008, as a proportion of total laptop sales.
The netbook was the perfect machine for the moment. It took full advantage of modern hardware advances, and created a highly usable machine for the important job of surfing the web all day, chatting to your friends. Later models began to push the envelope, with screens pushing out to 9 and later 10 inches, packing more storage, and even featuring battery lives up to 6 hours. Back in 2008, these were crazy numbers, and having less than 20GB of storage wasn’t a liability like it is today. Finally, there was the price. Low-tier models could be had for under $300. The buying public loved it, and sales shot through the roof. In July 2008, netbooks made up just 1% of total laptop sales. By December, they had almost a fifth of the market.
However, netbooks quickly became a victim of their own success. Hardware manufacturers didn’t appreciate them cutting into sales of higher-end models which came with larger profit margins. Microsoft and Intel began to put pressure on manufacturers to limit specifications.
Windows 7 licencing costs were jacked up for any machine with a screen size over 10.1 inches
, killing off a series of larger netbooks that had edged towards 12″ screens. Microsoft also floated the idea of a cut-back Windows 7 Starter edition, limited to running just 3 programs at a time. At the same time, as manufacturers sought to compete on features, prices for higher-end models began to rise, outside of the original cheap-and-cheerful brief the netbook originally had.
In the end, the real death knell for the netbook came in the form of the iPad. For the vast majority of users, what they wanted was a simple, cheap internet machine to run Facebook and browse the web. As tablet sales grew, netbook sales fell off a cliff. Trapped between a new competitor and vendors keen to block them out of the market, the netbooks quickly disappeared. In their place, subnotebooks and ultrabooks stormed in – with much larger models at over three times the price point. By 2012,
the netbook was effectively dead.
Irreplaceable For The Power User
While the average user found themselves better served by a basic tablet than a tiny laptop, it’s the power users that lost the most when the netbook was killed. There’s great charm and utility in a laptop that can be easily carried with one hand without risk of being dropped or tipping over. Despite the diminutive size, many netbooks packed competent keyboards; I was easily hitting 100 words per minute on an early EEE PC 901. Combined with multiple USB ports and a full Windows install, it made an excellent portable development machine.
A netbook could be carried around in the field, and interface with all manner of hardware. Being a full-fat x86 computer, it ran IDEs, programmed Arduinos, and connected to the Web, all in one neat package. Precisely none of these things can be achieved as easily with a tablet. There are plenty of Bluetooth keyboards and adapter dongles and special apps for working with hardware, but tablets simply can’t compete with a real computer for doing real work. For a hardware hacker on the go, it was a glorious tool. And, at such a low price, it was accessible to everyone — even a broke university student.
Thankfully, hope is on the horizon. The hardware market is a different place in 2020, and the netbook concept has once again shown viability to manufacturers. To qualify as a true netbook, a machine must hold true to the original values that made them great. Machines running a mobile OS, ARM processor (although that may change in the near future as OSes continue to ramp up support), or have other software limitations are not worthy to wear the name. Compact size and low price are also key attributes.
ASUS’s early netbooks boasted great battery life. Other notebooks have caught up in recent years, but 10 years from the Vivobook is nothing to sniff at.
Models like the
HP Stream
and
ASUS VivoBook
pick up where netbooks left off. Packing just 4GB of RAM and low-end CPUs, they’re not powerful machines – but they’re not supposed to be. They’re a real computer for under $300 USD, shipping with Windows 10 S. This is an “app store” version of Windows, but can be upgraded to full WIndows 10 at no cost. With under 100GB of storage, you won’t want to load these down with all your photos, videos, and applications. But, with many of us leaving all that in the cloud anyway, it won’t hold you back.
The main competitor holding back the netbook from true glory is no longer the tablet, but the Chromebook. Running a special Linux-based OS crafted by Google, these machines are intended to be lightweight web browsers, and little more. Rather than running local apps, they’re designed to work almost solely in the cloud, with a browser-based app framework. The platform has become widely popular at the bottom end of the laptop market, crowding out the possibilities of a full netbook resurgence. They do, of course, have a hardcore Linux following that happily scrap ChromeOS for a Linux install or run them side-by-side with a healthy dose of workarounds to suit the hardware. This is where a lot of the netbook aficionados ended up when the netbook hardware standard became scarce.
An Eye To The Future
It’s unlikely that we’ll see netbooks return to the prominence they once held for those four amazing years at the turn of the last decade. The average user looking for a social media machine is best served by tablets or cut-down Chromebooks. This leaves powerusers as the primary market for the netbook, and many with larger pocketbooks will simply opt for a more powerful ultrabook instead. Pour one out for the college students, who will have to mortgage their beat-up Corolla, or else lug a bulky 15″ clunker over to their capstone project to figure out how they let the smoke out. For now, netbooks remain sleeping — may they one day rise again. | 172 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251455",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T17:12:49",
"content": "Aww man, just remembered I have two of these in the back of my closet.There go my next few days of free time ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6251458",... | 1,760,373,467.010729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/rotary-controller-dials-in-pc-volume/ | Rotary Controller Dials In PC Volume | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"electromechanical",
"rotary dial",
"trimline",
"volume control"
] | As wonderful as mechanical keyboards are, most of the pre-fab and group buy models out there have zero media controls. If you want rotary encoders and OLED screens to show what function layer you’re working in, you’ll probably have to build your own keyboard from the ground up.
Hackaday alum [Cameron Coward] got around this problem by building
an electromechanical buddy for his keyboard that works as a volume control
. Now that we don’t rely on them to make phone calls, rotary dials are a fun throwback to a time that seems simpler based on its robust and rudimentary technology. This one is from a lovely burnt orange Bell Trimline phone, which was peak rotary dial and one of the idea’s last gasps before tone dialing took over completely.
Operationally speaking, [Cameron] is reading in the dial’s pulses with an Arduino Nano and using a Python script to monitor the serial connection and translate the pulses to volume control. We like that this is isn’t a volume knob in the traditional sense — it’s a game of percentages. Dialing ‘2’ gives 20% volume across all programs, and ‘8’ raises it to 80% of maximum. Need to mute? Just dial ‘0’, and you’ll begin to understand why people wanted to move on from rotary dialing. It won’t take
that
long, but it’s not instant. Check out the demo after the break.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a rotary dial used to control volume, but that’s one of the minor selling points of
this rotary cell phone
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251461",
"author": "keithfromcanada",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T17:25:07",
"content": "You want aREALretro keyboard? Replace the numeric keypad with one of these. :grin:",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6251501",
"aut... | 1,760,373,466.531706 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/3d-printering-sticky-resin-prints-and-how-to-fix-them/ | 3D Printering: Sticky Resin Prints And How To Fix Them | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"curing",
"part washing",
"resin",
"sla",
"sticky prints",
"uv"
] | After going through all the trouble of printing a part in resin, discovering it feels sticky or tacky to the touch is pretty unwelcome. Giving the model some extra ultraviolet (UV) curing seems like it
should
fix the problem, but it probably does not. So, what can be done?
The best thing to do with a sticky print is to immediately re-wash it in clean isopropyl alcohol (IPA) before the UV present in ambient light cures stray resin. If the part remains sticky after it is dry, more aggressive steps can be taken.
We’ll get into those more extreme procedures shortly, but first let’s understand a bit more about how resin works, then look at how that applies to preventing and removing tacky surfaces on finished prints.
How Resin Cures, and the Need to Wash
The resin used in stereolithography (SLA) is a syrupy liquid that is UV-cured, meaning it hardens when exposed to the right wavelength of light. But this process is not a perfectly binary one where all exposed resin becomes completely solid, while unexposed resin remains equally and totally liquid. It happens in degrees, and taking advantage of this is indeed part of how SLA printers operate.
In the SLA process, objects are created one slice at a time, and each slice is a thin layer of resin selectively exposed to UV so that it becomes hard. But this curing process is not always driven to absolute completion. Some of the resin in a layer remains in what is called a
green
state, which can be thought of as solid but not fully cured. This gives the next layer something to bond to. Each subsequent layer bonds with the previous one, and the UV hardens not just the current layer, but also further cures previous ones as the UV penetrates into the model.
The result of this process is a solid object with no distinct layers that is also covered in uncured resin from the build tank. This excess resin needs to be rinsed away with a solvent, usually isopropyl alcohol (IPA). Some resins get additional curing time by
placing them in a UV cure box
(or in a pinch, left in sunlight.)
Ideally this process results in a perfectly clean part, but this is not always the case. Uncured resin progressively contaminates the IPA used to wash parts, and it clings to some spots on a model more than others. Just as with hands, incomplete washing is asking for trouble.
Left-Behind Resin Makes Sticky Prints
If enough uncured (or partly-cured) resin is left behind after part washing, it contaminates a print’s surface and makes it sticky. This happens in one or both of the following ways:
The IPA used to wash parts is dirty.
The more parts are washed in a quantity of IPA, the higher the concentration of resin in the IPA becomes. Parts washed in this IPA get coated with a thin layer of diluted resin. The alcohol evaporates, and the resin is left behind. If the concentration is high enough, the part is sticky. Not all resins are alike, and
Formlabs
uses their own proprietary resins, but
according to them, when IPA’s resin concentration reaches 5% to 10%, parts may feel tacky
.
Part washing was incomplete.
In general, uncured resin clings more stubbornly to a textured surface. A wash process that reliably rinses resin off a smooth print might not be sufficient to fully remove resin from a print with nooks, crannies, or recessed features.
If the concentration of resin diluted in IPA is too high, the whole part will feel uniformly sticky. If the problem is resin left behind in problem spots, only those areas will feel sticky.
I’ll discuss prevention of sticky prints first, then explain how to salvage a stubbornly-sticky print.
Stopping Sticky Prints in the First Place
The following will help minimize the risk of leaving uncured or partially-cured resin on a print by helping ensure better part washing, and more efficient use of IPA.
Wash The Part Twice, Using Separate Bins
Homemade part washer using plastic bin and a cheap magnetic stirrer.
Instead of using only one container of IPA to wash parts, use two separate ones. One is exclusively for an initial washing. After the initial wash — during which most of the resin will be rinsed off — transfer the print directly to the second bin for a final cleaning. The IPA in the second bin will stay cleaner for longer, and do a better job of getting the part clean.
This process also uses less IPA in the long run, compared to a single wash bin of IPA that must be changed out whenever the resin concentration gets too high. With two bins, the primary wash IPA does get dirtier faster, but even “dirty” IPA can do a good job of removing the bulk of uncured resin from a fresh print. The IPA in the second bin, reserved only for finishing, also lasts longer because it has less resin to deal with. When the time comes to refresh the alcohol, use the IPA from the secondary bin as the new primary wash.
Simple containers with lids that can be sealed make good wash bins. Agitation of the IPA, either by shaking the container gently or by stirring, makes washing much more effective.
Target Problem Parts For Extra Washing
Simple wash bottle, operated by squeezing with one hand.
Some part geometries are simply harder to get clean. Troublesome features include:
Pockets, recesses, or textured areas.
IPA will flow poorly in and around such features, and uncured resin will tend to stick.
Tubes, holes or similar internal features
where IPA flow is restricted.
Areas of very dense supports
can prevent easy flow of IPA to parts of the model.
Parts can get some extra washing by:
Allowing more wash time than usual.
Agitating the wash. Automatic part washers stir the IPA to accomplish this.
Rinsing with a wash bottle filled with clean IPA.
Different resins have different properties as well: some are easier and some are harder to rinse away. A process that works for some parts and resins may not be sufficient for others.
It may be tempting to give parts a very generous amount of time to soak to ensure a better rinse, but this can invite other problems if carried too far. As prints soak in IPA, they absorb the alcohol and will begin to swell. Over-soaking a part may result in a poor surface finish, or damage fine features.
Compensate for Dirty IPA with Longer Wash Times
In general, the “dirtier” the IPA is, the longer the part should be washed to compensate. But this only works to a certain extent; if IPA contains a high enough concentration of diluted resin, parts will always come out sticky. When this happens, it’s time for fresh IPA. In the meantime, giving a part a final rinse in clean IPA will do the trick, even if it’s just from a wash bottle.
Keep a Wash Bottle Handy
If you don’t own one, you should. They can be used with one hand and are great for getting IPA into specific places, and in controlled amounts.
Fixing a Stubbornly Sticky Print
The inner surface of this object remained slightly tacky despite agitated washing and additional curing. Brushing and rinsing with clean IPA was needed to remove the residue, which clung stubbornly to the small recesses.
If prevention has failed, it may be tempting to banish the model to a UV cure box (or leave it out in sunlight) for extra UV exposure in an effort to harden the sticky layer on the surface. In my experience, doing this has never given a satisfactory result. What has reliably worked for me is the following process:
If possible, re-wash a sticky part immediately in clean IPA before any residual resin cures in ambient light. Allow the print to dry, and see if the problem is solved.
If the part is still sticky, rinse again with clean IPA and brush with a soft and maneuverable brush such as a toothbrush. This will scrub away any stubborn, partially-cured resin clinging to the surface. Focus on problem areas, and rinse both the brush and the part frequently.
Give a final rinse in clean IPA, and allow the part to dry. If it remains tacky, repeat the brushing process.
What Else Works?
Ultrasonic cleaning using a clean IPA bath is another possible method of getting into the nooks and crannies of a print, and may be useful for delicate parts that cannot tolerate a brush, but I haven’t personally had to resort to this. What has worked for you? Any tools or methods that have been particularly helpful? Share your favorite techniques in the comments. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251426",
"author": "Arlo",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T15:17:55",
"content": "I have a possibly helpful tip!Oxygen inhibits the full cure of SLA or DLP resin. If you haven’t exposed your green state part to a cure box or sunlight yet try one of the following after cleaning:– Put your ... | 1,760,373,466.857581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/a-pocket-retro-computer-anyone-can-build/ | A Pocket Retro Computer Anyone Can Build | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8-bit computers",
"atmega328",
"basic",
"qwerty",
"retro",
"sh1106"
] | Not satisfied with any of the DIY retro computer kits on the market, [Leonardo Leoni] decided to make his own. Built using only the finest through-hole technology and powered by the ATmega328 microcontroller,
his diminutive 8-bit computer is easy to build and even easier to develop for
. Whether you’re looking to hone your BASIC skills or play some Zork on the bus, this little computer looks like a great project for anyone who has a soft spot for computing’s simpler days.
All things considered, using this tiny machine looks like it would be relatively pleasant. [Leonardo] is using a common SH1106 OLED display, and there’s a full QWERTY keyboard (with number row) done up with tactile momentary buttons. There’s very few passive components involved in the build, which is sure to be appealing to new players; especially after they’ve finished soldering all those switches to the board.
On the software side, [Leonardo] says he leaned heavily on open source projects to get his machine up and running. Beyond the hardware drivers for things like the display, he specifically calls out the Tiny Basic and Tiny Lisp Computer projects for their code. If small-scale programming isn’t your style, the machine is compatible with the Arduino IDE so you can easily throw something else on it.
If you’ve ever dreamed of a QWERTY Arduboy
, this might be your chance.
From the way [Leonardo] describes the computer, which he calls the Cobalt 3, we get the impression a commercial kit might be in the cards. We hope the community shows enough interest to make it happen. After all, not everyone was able to make it to
Hackaday Belgrade 2018 to get their own pocket retro computer
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251358",
"author": "Daniel X",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T12:27:52",
"content": "Diminutive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6251359",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T12:31:08",
"content": "“we get the i... | 1,760,373,466.698371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/04/adding-wifi-to-black-magic-for-wireless-gdb-action/ | Adding WiFi To Black Magic For Wireless GDB Action | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"black magic",
"black magic probe",
"debugging",
"gdb"
] | [Thoquz] wrote to us about an interesting GitHub project by [Valmantas Palikša] involving the porting of the
Black Magic firmware to ESP8266
. For those who are unaware,
Black Magic Probe
is firmware along with a range of
official and third-party boards
that targets the debugging of Cortex-M and Cortex-A MCUs and SoCs.
With this blackmagic-espidf project, one can use any ESP8266 board that has at least 2 MB of Flash program storage, though 1 MB should be possible if OTA updated are disabled. After flashing the firmware to the ESP8266 board, the GDB server can be reached on TCP port 2022 and UDP 2023, with a serial port available via TCP/23, UDP2323, or via the physical TX0/RX0 pins on the ESP8266.
The target board to be debugged is hooked up by default to GPIO0 (SWDIO) and GPIO2 (SWCLK) for Serial Wire Debugging, though JTAG is also said to be supported. If set up properly, next one should be able to pop into a fresh remote GDB session:
If you don’t want the WiFi, you can
buy a wired one, or just roll your own from any STM32 board
that you’ve got kicking around. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251317",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T08:22:33",
"content": "Noob question: what’s the advantage of this over target-specific debuggers or generic jtag/swd debuggers?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6251323",
... | 1,760,373,466.579288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/tiny-laser-cutter-puts-micro-steppers-to-work/ | Tiny Laser Cutter Puts Micro Steppers To Work | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"diode",
"dvd",
"ESP32",
"laser",
"laser cutter",
"led",
"linear drive",
"stepper"
] | The influx of cheap laser cutters from China has been a boon to the maker movement, if at the cost of a lot of tinkering to just get the thing to work. So some people just prefer to roll their own, figuring that starting from scratch means you get exactly what you want. And apparently what [Mike Rankin] wanted was
a really, really small laser cutter
.
The ESP32 Burninator, as [Mike] lovingly calls his creation, is small enough to be in danger of being misplaced accidentally. The stage relies on tiny stepper-actuated linear drives,
available on the cheap from AliExpress
. The entire mechanical structure is two PCBs — a vertical piece that holds the ESP32, an OLED display, the X-axis motor, and the driver for the laser, which comes from an old DVD burner; a smaller bottom board holds the Y-axis and the stage. “Stage” is actually a rather grand term for the postage-stamp-sized working area of this cutter, but the video below shows that it does indeed cut black paper.
The cuts are a bit wonky, but this is surely to be expected given the running gear, and we like it regardless. It sort of reminds us of that
resin 3D-printer small enough to fit in a Christmas ornament
that [Sean Hodgins] did a while back. We’d suggest not trying to hang this on a tree, though. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251285",
"author": "yetihehe",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T06:06:24",
"content": "Yay, resolution: ~10μm, backlash: ~500μm. I wonder where that backlash came from, is it from mechanism or from stage mounting?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,373,466.644107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/machine-learning-takes-the-embarrassment-out-of-videoconference-wardrobe-malfunctions/ | Machine Learning Takes The Embarrassment Out Of Videoconference Wardrobe Malfunctions | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"cnn",
"convolutional neural network",
"Jetson Nano",
"machine learning",
"telecommuting",
"videoconference"
] | Telecommuters: tired of the constant embarrassment of showing up to video conferences wearing nothing but your underwear? Save the humiliation and all those pesky trips down to HR with
Safe Meeting
, the new system that uses the power of artificial intelligence to turn off your camera if you forget that casual Friday isn’t supposed to be
that
casual.
The following infomercial is brought to you by [Nick Bild], who says the whole thing is tongue-in-cheek but we sense a certain degree of “necessity is the mother of invention” here. It’s true that the sudden throng of remote-work newbies certainly increases the chance of videoconference mishaps and the resulting mortification, so whatever the impetus, Safe Meeting seems like a great idea. It uses a Pi cam connected to a Jetson Nano to capture images of you during videoconferences, which are conducted over another camera. The stream is classified by a convolutional neural net (CNN) that determines whether it can see your underwear. If it can, it makes a REST API call to the conferencing app to turn off the camera. The video below shows it in action, and that it douses the camera quickly enough to spare your modesty.
We shudder to think about how [Nick] developed an underwear-specific training set, but we applaud him for doing so and coming up with a neat application for machine learning. He’s been doing some fun work in this space lately, from
monitoring where surfaces have been touched
to
a 6502-based gesture recognition system
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251248",
"author": "Josh",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T02:35:30",
"content": "“sudden thong of remote-work newbies”A little Freudian slip?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6251249",
"author": "Josh",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,373,467.061944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/fighter-jets-gyro-stays-upright-before-it-self-destructs/ | Fighter Jet’s Gyro Stays Upright Before It Self-Destructs | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"hardware",
"Teardown"
] | [
"attitude indicator",
"avionics",
"fighter jet",
"gyroscope"
] | Aviation instruments are highly interesting pieces of engineering, and it is quite satisfying to watch the often over-engineered mechanisms behind them. If you are into that sort of thing it is worthwhile to check out [Erik Baigar]’s video where he
explains the working principle of the attitude indicator from a Tornado jet
.
The attitude indicator or artificial horizon of an airplane is one of the most important instruments, especially during poor sight. The ADI42-124 used in the Tornado jet is completely standalone and only needs a DC power supply which is why [Erik Baigar] can show it off while standing on his balcony. At the heart of this instrument is a gyroscope which consists of a spinning disc attached to a gimbal mount. Due to the conservation of angular momentum, the spin axis will always keep its orientation when the instrument is rotated. However, mechanical gyroscopes tend to drift over time and therefore include a mechanism to keep the spin axis upright with respect to the direction of gravity. The ADI42-124 uses an entirely mechanical mechanism for this based on free swiveling weights. Forget everything we said earlier about overengineering as [Erik Baigar] also uncovers a fatal design flaw which leads to the instrument’s self-destruction as shown in the picture here. Unfortunately, this will render most of the units you can buy on eBay useless.
Be sure to check out [Erik Baigar]’s
webpage
which is nerd paradise for vintage computer and avionics fans or watch
another gyroscope teardown
.
Video after the break.
https://youtu.be/LXfvJ7EXbik | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251222",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T23:14:46",
"content": "What do they do when it fouls up? Tape a bottle of whisky to the dash like in Cutter’s Goose?I would tend to think though that units turning up on eBay might well be rejected stock.",
"parent_id"... | 1,760,373,467.457982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/when-a-bike-sharing-startup-goes-away-what-do-you-do-with-the-bikes/ | When A Bike Sharing Startup Goes Away, What Do You Do With The Bikes? | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bike",
"bike lock",
"nRF51822",
"ofo"
] | Part of the detritus of many cities over the last few years has been the ubiquitous bicycles and scooters of the various companies that offer them for hourly hire via a smartphone app. They’re annoying when left randomly on pavements by their users, and they sometimes appear to outnumber riders many times over. In 2018 for many cities outside China they became a little less numerous, as the Chinese bike sharing service Ofo contracted its operations and pulled its distinctive yellow machines from the streets. A couple of years later those Ofo bikes that were sold off or simply abandoned by the company and never recovered are still with us. They can be used if their lock is dismantled, but to do that is to ignore the potential of the lock. [Aladds]
has written a firmware for Ofo locks that allows them to be unlocked by a code entered upon its buttons
.
Onboard the lock are an nRF51822, 4G radio, and of course the lock mechanism itself. The battery is likely to be flat by now, and though he doesn’t tell us what it is it’s worth our pointing out that similar designs sometimes use hazardous LiSOCl2 chemistry which any hacker should be very cautious with. He gives us full instructions for finding the programming connections for the chip, which can either have its stock firmware downloaded for examination, or be wiped for insertion of the new version. To show the code in action there is also a short YouTube video that we’ve put below the break. Meanwhile
we’ve peered inside an Ofo lock before
, back in 2018.
Ofo bike image: Popolon /
CC BY-SA 4.0 | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251193",
"author": "bluecat57",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T21:02:15",
"content": "Throw them in a pile and leave them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6251194",
"author": "MIKE",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T21:06:44",
"c... | 1,760,373,467.515534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/hackaday-prize-and-ucpla-are-driving-assistive-technology-forward/ | Hackaday Prize And UCPLA Are Driving Assistive Technology Forward | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2020 Hackaday Prize",
"assistive technology",
"cerebral palsy",
"dementia",
"disability",
"Joystick",
"United Cerebral Palsy LA"
] | Take a second to imagine all the people in your life. Your family, friends, coworkers. Your buddies down at the hackerspace, and anyone you chat with on IO and over the airwaves. Statistically speaking, one in four of these people has a disability of some kind, and needs help doing everyday things that you might not think twice about — simple things like opening doors or interacting with computers. Or maybe that one in four is you.
For the past 75 years,
United Cerebral Palsy of LA
(UCPLA) have been helping people with various developmental and intellectual disabilities to live independently with dignity. They work directly with members of the disabled community to develop assistive technology that is both affordable and dependable.
UCPLA helps the disabled community with everything from employment to providing a creative outlet
, and gives them the tools to do these things and more. Their mission is to help people be as independent as possible so they can feel good about themselves and enjoy a life without limits.
The people behind this non-profit are all about inclusion, access, and opportunity, and this is why we are proud to partner with UCPLA for
the 2020 Hackaday Prize
. With the world in upheaval, there is no better time to build a better future for everyone. You never know when you might need assistive technology. In addition to the open challenge that calls for everyone to work on a design, this year there is also a Dream Team challenge which offers a $3,000 per month stipend over the next two months to work on a team addressing one specific challenge.
Apply for that asap
!
What kind of challenges has UCPLA outlined for the Hackaday Prize? Let’s dive in and find out, and we’ll also hear from the UCPLA team in a Q&A video at the end of the article.
Assistive Technology Needs Your Help
UCPLA’s technology designer and Hackaday Prize mentor Aragna Ker knows all about what goes into a successful piece of assistive tech, and he’ll be around to help with any questions you might have. Aragna designs all kinds of adaptive equipment for UCPLA that allows people to work with computers and do other jobs, cook for themselves, and be creative with a paintbrush or a piece of chalk. The biggest insight he’s learned is that designing for natural movement is key. Assistive tech should always be an extension of natural movement, and never work against it.
Cerebral palsy affects a person’s movement, posture, and balance. Symptoms of cerebral palsy differ from person to person, but most have to do with limited muscle control. Depending on their physical ability, a person might be using this technology with their hands, feet, head, or even their elbows to do anything from opening restroom doors to painting pictures.
Each person has their individual abilities and preferences, so try to design with scalability in mind. Take the case of this paintbrush holder that attaches to your foot. Considerations need to be made for the way a user’s wheelchair is positioned — it could be upright, reclined, or somewhere in between.
Assistive tech comes with some general challenges, too. Much of the commercial technology that UCPLA is looking to improve upon is not only expensive, closed-source, and difficult to get, but it’s clunky and, quite frankly, completely uncool looking with limited color choices. Some things that should be sturdy, like joysticks, are anything but. The worst part is that many disabled people are on government assistance, and have very little money left over each month for technology after buying the necessities.
The Time Is Now
The Hackaday community are no strangers when it comes to designing and building awesome assistive technology. We’ve seen you do amazing things in this realm in past years of the prize as well as in your everyday projects. We need you to put those skills to the test and come up with sturdy, scalable, cool-looking tech that everyone would want to use.
Open Call Challenge
BOSI
is a set of open-source Bluetooth switches that can be used with a variety of devices and platforms.
FLipmouse
is designed to be used with either the fingers or the mouth through a sip ‘n puff interface.
clunke button
was designed to replace wired commercial AT buttons that are prohibitively expensive.
The
UCPLA Open Call Challenge
is your chance to redesign existing adaptive tools to be open-source and more affordable. These tools include workstations, camera tripods that mount onto wheelchairs, and input devices like trackballs and joysticks. Here’s
the full design brief for this challenge
(PDF) to help get you started.
If you need inspiration, check out these three assistive tech Hackaday Prize entries from years past that we’ve highlighted. They are each an example of input devices that combine the advancements of small or medium scale manufacturing over the past decade, designed to meet specific needs.
A big problem with designing assistive technology is that securing funding for good ideas usually carries a high burden of proving all the R&D has already been done. Imagine the benefit If we could create a huge open source library of designs that had been researched, prototyped, tested, and well-documented. It could supercharge the effort make quality custom interfaces more widely available and at a lower cost to the people who need them the most. That is part of the mission of this open call challenge.
UCPLA Dream Team Challenge
The
application deadline for the Dream Team Challenge has been extended
to June 9th. Twelve members spread across four teams will each receive a $3,000 per month stipend to work on a special challenge over the next two months. The UCPLA team’s task will be to build a universal wireless remote control that can connect to any piece of technology a person might encounter in their daily lives, and help them make choices quickly and easily without assistance. Ideally, this remote would have the ability to toggle instantly between devices.
We know this challenge sounds wildly open-ended, and it sort of is in some ways. Part of what makes this a challenge is the creative restrictions — this remote needs to operate using only joysticks, touch pads, and large, sturdy buttons. In selecting the team, UCPLA is looking for creative thinkers who can deal with open-ended challenges, and are willing to take an open approach to designing these tools. We can’t wait to see what the team can do!
It’s easy to take your physical independence for granted. But without it, you don’t have much power, and you don’t get a lot of choices. Let’s make a better future for everyone, regardless of ability.
Begin your Hackaday Prize entry today
!
The
Hackaday
Prize2020
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251255",
"author": "msat",
"timestamp": "2020-06-04T03:03:57",
"content": "A worthy cause!Tablets/computers are cheap and can support numerous communication protocols. Presumably eye tracking can be made cheap as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
... | 1,760,373,467.333875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/surviving-the-pandemic-as-a-hacker-peering-behind-the-mask/ | Surviving The Pandemic As A Hacker: Peering Behind The Mask | Jenny List | [
"Current Events",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"masks",
"PPE"
] | We’re now several months into the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with most parts of the world falling somewhere on the lockdown/social distancing/opening up path.
It’s fair to say now that while the medical emergency has not passed, the level of knowledge about it has changed significantly. When communities were fighting to slow the initial spead, the focus was on solving the problem of medical protection gear and other equipment shortages at all costs with some interesting yet possibly hazardous solutions. Now the focus has moved towards protecting the general public when they do need to venture out, and as society learns to get life moving again with safety measures in place.
So, we all need masks of some sort. What type to do you need? Is one type better than another? And how do we all get them when everyone suddenly needs what was once a somewhat niche item?
Masks Offer Basic Protection for Everyone in Public Areas
It’s rather sickening to look at the quantity of droplets expelled by a sneeze. James Gathany /
Public domain
Some parts of the world are coming to terms with the effects of long term lockdown, while others are beginning to contemplate how they might start moving back towards some kind of normality. The issue of mask wearing a practical one,
because there are indications that it will slow the spread of the disease
.
When considering face masks, it’s important to start by defining what a mask for the general public should be, and what it is trying to achieve. This is not the same breed as the masks worn by intensive care staff where the primary intention is to protect the wearer by filtering the virus from an atmosphere heavily contaminated with it, instead it is a mask intended to be worn in environments where only a few people may be spreading the virus (with the pesky detail of not knowing who those few people are).
The goal of masks is to reduce the chances of transmission by infected droplets. It’s an idea wittily illustrated in the “
Urine Test
” meme, that such a mask will not guarantee your escape from the virus but it should significantly reduce the odds of its transmission. We’re told that these odds tilt further against the virus the more people in an environment wear a mask, and since it’s a relatively easy step to take it’s one that everyone should be taking as a courtesy to your fellow humans.
We’re Makers, Yes… But You Can Learn a Lot From Commercial Masks
In our community the first thought turns invariably towards making our own and indeed that’s part of the official advice in many territories, but before we go there it’s worth considering the commercial alternatives. These normally use a composite design featuring multiple layers of fabric for comfort and filtration, with the main filter layer(s) being of a blown fabric rather than a woven one.
A variety of commercial masks, left to right: FFP3 industrial dust mask, T32610-2016 surgical-style mask, very cheap unrated single layer dust mask.
If you have a supply of the top-spec medical masks then you’re all set, but since pandemic demand has caused a supply shortage that’s a luxury most of us can’t claim and shouldn’t be taking from the professionals who need them anyway. We will often have an array of other masks to hand as dust protection in the workshop, and among these can be found some surprisingly good protection for our application. The key is in the rating which should be printed on the box or the outside of the mask, but to decode what it means will sometimes require a bit of digging into the world of international standards.
Assuming that you didn’t buy from the cheapest seller on AliExpress and your mask isn’t counterfeit, you may encounter US standards (N95 etc), EU standards (EN149, FFP etc.), or Chinese standards (T3210-2016 etc.). These deal among other properties with the mask’s particulate filtration ability both in terms of particle size and percentage removal, and with the breathing force required to make air pass through them. Happily our requirement for a droplet-catcher does not require the most stringent of standards. As an aside, the official versions of all the above mentioned standards seem all to be behind very expensive paywalls. It’s not difficult to find them online through your search engine though.
Tearing Down Some Masks
Five layers in this FFP3 dust mask.
So casting around the commercial masks we have to hand here brings out a pair of dust masks and a surgical style mask that admirably illustrate the range on offer. An FFP3 dust mask is a European-rated rough equivalent of those N95 surgical masks in industrial form, and it feels thick between finger and thumb. Despite having probably the best available filtration, our FFP3 is not suitable as virus protection because it manages exhalation through a non-return valve that would release droplets into the atmosphere.
Taking the used FFP3 mask from my overall pocket that has protected me from dust during several woodwork machining sessions at MK Makerspace and cutting it open, it is revealed as having five non-woven layers including a thick and fluffy one and a very dense one. When compressed with a micrometer screw gauge its thickness is a relatively substantial 0.94mm.
Three layers in this T32610-2016 surgical-style mask.
The next mask up for dissection is a Chinese-manufactured three-layer surgical mask with T3210-2016 spec, whose box clearly states that it isn’t a medical device. That warning sounds concerning but in this case it isn’t; masks to that particular standard are intended to be worn by the general public and not by medical staff. In fact this mask is purpose-made as everyday-life dust and droplet-catching PPE, so is just the job. Cutting it open reveals three layers with the middle filter layer being a dense non-woven fabric, and the micrometer reveals it to have a svelte 0.28mm compressed thickness.
The final mask is another dust mask, a Silverline single-layer mask from a pack I bought for showing people round a dusty church tower. It’s a single layer of 0.45mm thick stiff blown-polymer fabric moulded into a mask shape, and its packaging has the ominous warning that it does not offer rated protection to the wearer. It was very cheap indeed and just about adequate for the purpose I bought it for, but I have to admit I’d be happier with more than its very basic level of protection during the pandemic.
With steamed up glasses and an unruly lockdown hairstyle, illustrating the importance of a good seal round the nose.
All three masks feature a piece of stiff wire or metal strip above the nose designed to fit the contours of the bridge of the nose and clamp shut any gaps through which breath can escape. It’s easy to tell whether they are effective if you wear glasses, because they will immediately steam up if damp air from your breath escapes. Of the three it was the disposable surgical-style mask that did the worst job of this, the FFP3 had a very sturdy plastic and wire tape that lets nothing through and the cheap unrated mask has a metal strip, but the surgical-style mask’s single piece of thin wire simply isn’t up to the job.
I’ve worn all three for extended periods of time to test them, and while driving into town for a prescription wearing this one I had to stop and take it off as the risk of not seeing where I was going became too great. This can be mitigated with folded-up kitchen towel to plug the gaps or even medical tape to secure it, but such things rapidly become very annoying.
As for the fogging, there is
some advice out there
for this as well. Using dish soap that does not have lotion in it, or say that it’s for sensitive skin will work. Apply to the inside of the lens, let sit a bit, then buff it until clear. The same is said to work with shaving cream although I’ve yet to try either method.
Freedom To Be Uninfected
What’s to be gained from this insight into masks and their construction? In the first instance, it pays to be educated and informed when finding a mask for yourself. Over the past few months I’ve been offered the chance to buy masks from everyone from my PCB supplier through the local tool shop to my stationery provider, alongside any number of unsolicited emails. It’s a confusing marketplace with traps for the unwary that with luck will have become a little clearer.
In the next part of this series I will look at home made mask design and demonstrate how I have made masks of my own. Dust off your sewing machine, that article will be out next week. | 30 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251119",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T17:09:41",
"content": "Good write up Jenny. In fact your problem is one I keep colliding with. No matter what style I wear I have to take the time to clean my specs. And it gets worse with the ones that are largely used out ther... | 1,760,373,467.404038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/arduino-car-hud-does-the-job/ | Arduino Car HUD Does The Job | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"head-up display",
"heads up display",
"hud"
] | Many cars these days come with a basic Heads Up Display, or HUD. Typically, these display speed, though some also throw in a tachometer or navigational graphics too. Of course, if your car doesn’t have one of these stock,
hacking in your own is always an option
.
[PowerBroker2] developed this HUD in a somewhat circuitous way, but it’s effective nonetheless. An ELM327 Bluetooth OBD-II reader is hooked up to the car, collecting data on speed and RPM. This data is passed to an ESP-32 and Teensy 3.5. From reading the code, it appears the Teensy is responsible for logging data from the CAN bus on an SD card, and running a small OLED display. The ESP32 is then charged with running the LED display that actually forms the HUD. It’s then combined with a 3D-printed housing, some plexiglass, and reflective windshield film to complete the effect.
It’s a build that probably packs in more hardware than is strictly needed to get the job done, but it does indeed get the job done.
Other builds we’ve seen use LED strips as a quick and tidy way to get the job done.
Video after the break. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251095",
"author": "datacarrierdetect",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T16:07:31",
"content": "Never experienced a HUD before, but I’d expect a few things as improvements: the image seems to be focused on the near plane (simple mirror reflection), it would be ideal if the focus point was... | 1,760,373,467.180751 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/fords-powershift-debacle/ | Ford’s Powershift Debacle | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"car",
"car hacks",
"ford",
"transmission"
] | In the automotive world, change is a constant, and if you’re not keeping up, you’re falling behind. New technologies and methodologies are key to gaining an edge in the market, and companies invest billions each year trying to find the next big thing, or even the next minor incremental improvement.
In just such a quest, Ford Motor Company decided to explore an alternative to the traditional automatic gearbox, aiming for greater fuel efficiency in their small cars. On paper, there were gains to be had. Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan.
The Concept
The dual-clutch gearbox promised fuel economy improvements, as well as lighter weight and easier assembly.
The traditional torque-converter based automatic gearbox was a game-changer for the automotive world. With the advent of the self-shifting transmission, drivers had one less complex skill to learn, and cars became much less taxing to drive, particularly in high-traffic, slow-speed environments. However,
the fluidic coupling of an automatic transmission
isn’t as efficient as simple meshing gears, a tradeoff that harms fuel efficiency. To get around this, Ford instead decided to create a dual-clutch automated manual transmission for its small cars.
Dual-clutch transmissions use a pair of clutches, one for odd-numbered gears, and another for even numbered gears. As the car accelerates in one gear, the transmission can preselect the next gear, and then engage the opposite clutch while slowly disengaging the other. This allows for nearly-instantaneous shifting while maintaining torque output to the driven wheels for the duration of the shift. Finding their first road application in high-performance supercars in the 90s, the technology has slowly trickled down to cheaper vehicles over time. Most dual-clutches, particularly those for high-torque applications, use a wet clutch system, where the clutch plates are bathed in oil.
Ford wished to maximise fuel efficiency
, and instead chose to go with a dry clutch system. The dry clutch eliminates pumping losses from the oil in the transmission.
The Problems
What in the world are you thinking going with a dry clutch?
With an eye firmly fixed on improving fuel economy numbers, the Powershift transmission was pushed through development, to be installed on the 2011 Fiesta and 2012 Focus models. In the lead up to production, problems were already apparent to Ford engineers,
who were struggling to calibrate the transmission’s computer controls to allow the vehicles to drive smoothly and safely.
An email sent prior to the launch of the 2012 Ford Focus featuring the Powershift transmission, indicating Ford engineers were well aware of problems prior to cars going on sale. Source:
Detroit Free Press
Early pre-production testers had issues with launches from a stop and shift quality. Often, vehicles would lurch violently when taking off from traffic lights, or shudder under power. Efforts were made to solve the problems in software, with tricks used to modulate the clutch engagement to try and better control the torque delivery. Unfortunately, none of the fixes stuck. The dry clutch system faced fundamental problems, with the inconsistent friction coefficient making it difficult to program the transmission controller in a way that could keep things running smoothly.
In a parallel to another automotive engineering disaster,
the Takata airbag fiasco,
Ford were well aware of the issues with the transmission prior to launch. In one document presented to court, a product development engineer emailed colleagues outlining issues with the transmission’s performance. Launches were a particular issue, with the email being sent just six months prior to launch of the first Focus models to feature the transmission.
Cars fitted with the Powershift transmission would often suddenly shift into neutral, causing dangerous situations for drivers.
Despite this, the company pressed on, and millions of vehicles were sold with the Powershift transmission fitted. In a short period, complaints began to flood into the NHTSA. Particularly of concern was the tendency to suddenly shift into neutral when there was a loss of communication or other fault with transmission components. This behaviour was not considered as inherently dangerous by Ford, as the driver would still have full control over steering and braking systems.
In the face of this complacency, incidents continued to stack up. Cars returned to dealerships time and again for repair, with no proper fix available. Crashes began to implicate the Powershift transmission. Drivers reported cars lurching forward in parking lots into stationary objects, to being rear-ended due to a sudden loss of drive on the highway.
Several fatal accidents have been attributed to the transmission by victim’s families
. However, due to the complex nature of the incidents involving a loss of control, proving this as a definitive cause has been difficult. Ford have declined to accept the allegations in these cases.
The Cost
With millions of vehicles fitted with the Powershift transmission, the inevitable result was a series of lawsuits against Ford. Class actions were undertaken in the
United States,
Australia,
and
Canada.
In many cases, Ford initially declined to offer refunds or replacement vehicles at no cost,
leading to a backlash from regulators.
Eventually, Ford elected to settle in most cases,
with warranties extended for Fiesta and Focus models fitted with the affected transmissions.
The fallout was a massive reputational hit to Ford, with following models of the Fiesta and Focus returning to a standard torque-converter based automatic transmission. The high cost of repeated transmission repairs also weighed on Ford in warranty costs, estimated to be to the tune of $700 million.
One wonders whether the cost of a late-stage switch back to a more traditional automatic gearbox would have been cheaper in the long run. In addition to causing less inconvenience and heartache to customers, the lower warranty costs and improved reputational standing are worth considering. It’s likely that Ford has had a stern, hard look at internal policies in the years since to determine just why such a defective transmission was allowed through to production. As always, it pays to get your quality assurance out of the way early, before sending millions of defects down the production line and out into the world. | 203 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251058",
"author": "monsonite",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T14:57:05",
"content": "Only driven automatic transmission when I travel to the USA and get a rental car. Back home in UK – driven manual (stick shift) since 1982.Fluid torque converter is probably the most inefficient device... | 1,760,373,467.998292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/a-dual-screen-luggable-with-integrated-rtl-sdr/ | A Dual Screen Luggable With Integrated RTL-SDR | Tom Nardi | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"luggable",
"mechanical keyboard",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"RTL-SDR",
"voronoi"
] | It’s been fascinating to watch the development of bespoke mobile computers go from a few sheets of foam board and a Raspberry Pi into hardware that looks like it’s actually been transported here from an alternate reality. Granted a Raspberry Pi is more often than not still onboard, but the overall design and construction techniques of these
very
personal computers has improved by leaps and bounds.
The latest of these cyberdecks,
a dual screen “luggable” reminiscent of classic computers like the Compaq Portable
or Kaypro, comes our way from [dapperrogue]. Powered by the Raspberry Pi 4 and featuring a scratch-built mechanical keyboard to perfectly fit the machines’s specific dimensions, this is easily one of the more practical builds we’ve seen. As visually striking as they may be, few would argue that the small offset display that seems characteristic of most decks are ideal from a usability standpoint.
While the keyboard plate was milled out on a CNC, [dapperrogue] says the design of the HDPE body panels and rear polycarbonate viewing window were simple enough they could be done by hand on a band saw. The PETG internal frame uses a Voronoi pattern that not only reduces the amount of time and material required to print it, but maximizes airflow. The fact that it looks like some kind of alien biological life form only helps the retro-futuristic aesthetics.
There’s still plenty of room inside the enclosure, which is good, as [dapperrogue] says there’s more goodies to come. Adding internal battery power is a logical next step, and
now that the Pi 4 can boot to external drives
, and SSD is also on the list of future upgrades.
For readers who might be getting a sense of déjà vu from this project, [dapperrogue] notes this design was inspired by
the phenomenal Reviiser that [Dave Estes] released earlier this year
. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6251010",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T12:14:19",
"content": "Looking really nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6251021",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T13:03:41",
"content": "Compa... | 1,760,373,467.697678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/dual-wielding-robot-carves-3d-shapes-from-foam-with-warped-wire/ | Dual-Wielding Robot Carves 3D Shapes From Foam With Warped Wire | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"cutter",
"expanded polystyrene",
"foam",
"hot-wire",
"kinematics",
"robot",
"styrofoam",
"YuMi"
] | “Every block of expanded polystyrene foam has a statue inside it and it is the task of the dual-arm hot wire-wielding robot to discover it.” — [Michelangelo], probably.
Be prepared to have your mind blown by
this dual-wielding hot-wire 3D foam cutter
(PDF). We’ve all seen simple hot-wire cutters before, whether they be
manual-feed cutters
or
CNC-controlled like a 3D-printer
. The idea is to pass current through a wire to heat it up just enough to melt a path as it’s guided through a block of polystyrene foam. Compared to cutting with a knife or a saw, hot-wire cuts are smooth as silk and produces mercifully little of that styrofoam detritus that gets all over your workspace.
But hot-wire cutters can’t do much other than to make straight cuts, since the wire must be kept taut. “RoboCut”, though, as [Simon Duenser] and his colleagues at ETH Zurich call their creation, suffers from no such limitations. Using an ABB YuMi, a dual-arm collaborative robot, they devised a method of making controlled curved cuts through foam by using a 1-mm thick deformable rod rather than a limp and floppy wire for the cutting tool. The robot has seven degrees of freedom on each arm, and there’s only so much the rod can deform before being permanently damaged, so the kinematics involved are far from trivial. Each pass through the foam is calculated to remove as much material as possible, and multiple passes are needed to creep up on the final design.
The video below shows the mesmerizing sweeps needed to release the Stanford bunny trapped within the foam, as well as other common 3D test models. We’re not sure it’s something easily recreated by the home-gamer, but it sure is fun to watch.
Thanks to [Itay Ramot] for the tip.
[via
Gizmodo
] | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250968",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T08:24:02",
"content": "This is rather marvellous.It seems that it would be well suited to making boat hulls, as it seems to be using a spline (in the original boatbuilding sense) albeit one with only two control points. (Actu... | 1,760,373,467.577582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/remotely-navigate-the-apocalypse-in-mid-century-style/ | Remotely Navigate The Apocalypse In Mid-Century Style | Kristina Panos | [
"Art",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"apocalypse ride",
"Electronic Speed Controller",
"R/C car",
"suburban assault vehicle",
"tank treads"
] | One of the few positives to come of this pandemic is that the restrictive nature of scarcity can be a boon to creativity. Plus, the doom and gloom of it all is causing people to loosen up and do things they never felt free enough to do before in the demanding world of the before times.
For example, [ossum] makes R/C vehicles on commission to exacting standards, but took a break from perfection to build
this remote control hellscape-faring van
by the seat of his pants. It’s quite a resourceful build that combines pieces from previous projects with a few standard R/C parts and a handful of clever hacks.
The body is a test print of a 1957 Chevy Suburban van that [ossum] made for someone a few years back. It’s mounted on a scrap metal chassis and moves on printed tank treads designed for a different vehicle.
Since glass is a liability in an apocalypse (and because [ossum] doesn’t have a resin printer yet), the windows have fortified coverings that are printed, patina’d, and detailed with tiny rivet heads.
As far as hacks go, our favorite has to be the clothespin steering. [ossum] only had one electronic speed controller, so he used a servo to actuate a pair of spring-loaded clips, alternating between the two to move the tank-van. There’s a short video after the break that shows the rack and clothes-pinion steering, and it’s loaded up right after a brief demo of the van.
We realize that everyone’s apocalyptic needs are different, but there’s more than enough here to get you started. Don’t have access to enough R/C parts?
Gear boxes and drive shafts can be printed, too
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250955",
"author": "epicyclo",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T07:37:49",
"content": "Some folk are truly talented with imagination. That model needs a full size version. :)I love how the most popular versions of the Apocalypse nearly always include sufficient fuel to run gas guzzlers tho... | 1,760,373,467.635096 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/scientific-calculator-whipped-up-in-python/ | Scientific Calculator Whipped Up In Python | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"graphic calculator",
"graphing calculator",
"python",
"Scientific Calculator"
] | Scientific calculators were invaluable to most of us through high school and college, freeing us from the yoke of using tables to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions. Once out in the real world, it’s no longer necessary to use an education board approved device to do your maths – you can do it all on your PC instead. For those keen to do so,
[AstusRush]’s latest Python work may be just the ticket!
Far exceeding the capabilities of the usual calculator apps, there’s plenty of useful features under the hood. Particularly exciting is the LaTeX display, which shows equations in textbook-quality human-readable format. There’s also a graphing suite, and capability to handle matricies and vectors. LAN chat is implemented too, useful for working in teams.
It’s a useful tool that may suit better than a full-fat MATLAB install, particularly at the low, low price of free. This is one calculator that
CASIO will have to keep their nose out of! | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250914",
"author": "mm",
"timestamp": "2020-06-03T02:30:10",
"content": "Casio will issue a take down notice if you keep saying calculator…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250925",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,373,467.76498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/original-xbox-gets-the-steam-overhaul/ | Original Xbox Gets The Steam Overhaul | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Games",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"gaming pc",
"mini-itx",
"Steam Link",
"xbox"
] | When Microsoft released the original Xbox, it deviated from the design of traditional game consoles in that it used several off-the-shelf computer components. The fact that Microsoft would want their game console to resemble a PC isn’t particularly surprising in hindsight, but we doubt anyone at Redmond ever imagined
folks like [Ryan Walmsley] would be cramming in full-fledged computers nearly 20 years later
.
[Ryan] tells us he was looking for a way to play some older games from the early 2000s, and thought it was a good opportunity to put together a quiet set-top computer. The final hardware is more than capable of running older titles, and can even be used with Steam Link to stream newer content from his primary gaming computer.
Even with a diminutive Gigabyte GA-H81N Mini ITX motherboard, things are pretty tight inside the Xbox. Fairly tight wire management was required to prevent any airflow obstructions, especially since [Ryan] decided to put the system’s 80 watt laptop-style power supply inside the case. While this made the build a bit more complicated, it does make the final product a lot cleaner and makes it feel just that much more like a proper game console.
Benchmarks show the machine has decent performance, all things considered. [Ryan] says there are some potential upgrades down the line, but as with most gaming PC builds, cost is the limiting factor. Until he’s ready to spend the cash on revamping the internals, he says that streaming newer games over the the network has been working great.
For those looking for a slightly more modern alternative to this project,
we’ve also seen a gaming PC shoehorned into an Xbox 360
with similarly impressive results. | 28 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250884",
"author": "PEBKAC",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T23:06:31",
"content": "Just dropping in here to blow some minds:It’s called an Xbox because it’s a box for running DirectX.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6250896",
... | 1,760,373,468.06541 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/arduino-drums-bring-the-noise-no-midi-required/ | Arduino Drums Bring The Noise, No MIDI Required | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"drum kit",
"electronic music",
"midi",
"synthesizer"
] | When looking through existing Arduino drum kit projects, [joekutz] noticed that most of them just used the microcontroller as an input for an existing MIDI device. That’s fine if you’re just looking to build your own hardware interface, but he wondered if it would be possible to
forgo the MIDI device completely and actually generate the audio internally
.
To be sure, this is a lot to ask of an 8-bit microcontroller, which is probably why nobody does it this way. But [joekutz] wasn’t giving up without a fight. One of the trickiest aspects was storing the samples: the 8-bit, 11.025 KHz mono WAV files ultimately had to be converted into C data arrays with a custom Python script.
Unfortunately, since the samples are essentially part of the drum’s source code, he says distributing the firmware is something of a problem. Though it sounds as though there might be a solution to this soon for those who want to play along at home.
But don’t get the impression that this project is just software. Check out the custom impact sensors lovingly crafted from popsicle sticks and metal cut from soda cans, which have been mated with sections cut out of old DVD-Rs. Actually getting the beats out of the Arduino required the addition of a R2R DAC circuit and a TDA2822 amplifier. In the video after the break, you can hear the results for yourself.
[joekutz] is no stranger to homebrew electronic instruments. When we last heard from him, he was
turning a very pink keyboard into his own personal circuit bending playground
. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250840",
"author": "Steven Clark",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T20:25:45",
"content": "No LFSR?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250878",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T22:40:15",
"content": "This rocks! Lo... | 1,760,373,468.122015 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/social-distancing-headgear-for-the-futuristically-inclined/ | Social Distancing Headgear For The Futuristically Inclined | Jenny List | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"social distancing",
"ultrasonic"
] | Those of you with an eye to classic cinema will remember 1985’s
Back To The Future
, and particularly its scientist character Dr. Emmett Brown. When the protagonist Marty McFly finds himself in 1955, on his first meeting with they younger Dr. Brown the latter is wearing an experimental helmet designed to read thoughts. It doesn’t work, but it’s an aesthetic we’re reminded of in [Håkan Lidbo]’s
Corona Hat
, a social distancing tool that incorporates distance sensors into a piece of headgear.
The device is simple enough, half of a globe fitted with a set of car reversing sensors and the battery from an autonomous vacuum cleaner. It’s sprayed a bright orange, and worn on the head as he walks around town in the video below the break. It beeps any time something or somebody gets too close, and as far as we can see it’s effective in what it does. We are not so sure about the look though, to us as well as Emmett Brown it’s a little too reminiscent of the character
Sheev
in the 2005
Dukes of Hazzard
movie who wore an armadillo’s armour as a hat. Perhaps more conventional headgear as a basis might gain it a few fewer askance looks.
This isn’t the first ultrasonic social distancing sensor we’ve seen
. Probably the most noteworthy project in this arena though has to be
the one with the high voltage
that scares more with its bark than its bite.
Thanks [Måns Almered] for the tip! | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250816",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T18:50:44",
"content": "If I saw someone wearing this I would give them a wide berth. So it may work even without the sensors and electronics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,468.424857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/inputs-of-interest-ergodox-post-mortem/ | Inputs Of Interest: ErgoDox Post-Mortem | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"diodes",
"diy keyboard",
"ergodox",
"keyboard",
"mechnical keyboard",
"mistakes were made",
"smd soldering",
"trrs"
] | In the last installment, I told you I was building an open-source, split, ortholinear keyboard called the ErgoDox. I’m doing this because although I totally love my Kinesis Advantage, it has made me want to crack my knuckles and explore the world of split keyboards. Apparently there are several of you who want to do the same, as evidenced by your interest in the
I’m Building an ErgoDox!
project on IO. Thank you!
Well boys and girls, the dust has settled, the soldering iron has cooled, and the keycaps are in place. The ErgoDox is built and working. Now that it’s all said and done, let me tell you how it went. Spoiler alert: not great. But I got through it, and it keyboards just like it’s supposed to. I’m gonna lay this journey out as it happened, step by step, so you can live vicariously through my experience.
My big blue pile of fail.
Ode to Diodes
It all starts with the diodes. Every switch gets a diode because of
the way keyboard controllers work to detect key presses
. When every switch has a diode, there should never be any unintended keystrokes on the screen, a problem known as ghosting. You should also be able to press as many keys as you want at the same time, and they will all register correctly with none missed. If your keyboard does this, it has n-key rollover.
I could have had this keyboard done so much sooner if I had just calmly set aside the SMD diodes that came with my components kit and used through-hole from the start. But no, I had to try soldering 76 of them by hand without solder paste. It went pretty well considering my chisel tip and .32 diameter solder. Continuity checks indicated that I hadn’t managed to fry any of them with heat. But then I started to worry that they just weren’t well-soldered. And why start a build with 152 possible points of failure?
I got through one and a half boards worth before I talked myself into switching to through-hole. I’m glad I did, because I don’t mind soldering THT at all, and diodes are cheap in either form. And you know what else? The clear bodies of through-hole diodes just add to the a e s t h e t i c. Yeah, let’s go with that.
Flip. The Boards. Over.
I wish I could insert siren emoji around this section. Because if you take anything at all away from this story, it should be this part. Remember back in the first post when I said that the PCBs for both halves are exactly the same, and that you use one side for the left hand and one side for the right?
Once the diodes are soldered, it’s of the utmost importance that you flip the boards over and swap them before moving on, because all the other components go on the other side. And I knew this going in. I watched
this build video
several times before I started, and even wrote down all the steps, including a note about what side of which board the components are supposed to be. And I still messed it up.
Bonus mistake in the first step: the diodes aren’t oriented the same way on both PCBs, because they’re two sides of the same PCB.
What can I say? I was in soldering mode, and excited to move on from the diodes. It was late at night. My notes with all the steps where I had FLIP BOARDS OVER explicitly written down were in another room, and I was too glued to the chair to get them.
Besides, I’d been over my notes and watched that build video about five times. By the time I realized what I was doing, I’d already soldered all five resistors and both TRRS jacks on the wrong side. The resistors were no big deal, but the TRRS jacks were impossible to desolder without ruining them, or the boards, or both.
So my words of wisdom to you are this: get four pieces of masking or other low-tack tape and label your boards explicitly. Don’t even call them ‘top’ and ‘bottom’, because those designations change. Write something like ‘LH switch insert side’ and ‘LH diode insert side’ to really drive the point home. Do yourself a favor and place these directly over the LEFT HAND and RIGHT HAND labels on the silkscreen.
The Rest of the Components
So at this point, I had covered one and a half boards with SMD diodes of questionable utility. When I decided to go through-hole, I de-soldered the half board, cleaned it up, and reused it. After I failed to flip the boards, I had two boards full of THT diodes, each with its TRRS jack on the wrong side. Fortunately, I had a total of five boards to work with when I started. I was now down to the last two.
The rest of the build went pretty well. After the diodes come the five resistors. Then the I/O expansion chip and its little capacitor buddy on the slave side, followed by the TRRS jacks, the Teensy, and the mini-USB extension from the Teensy to the edge of the board. The rest is easy compared to wiring up the mini-USB extender.
Hello, World?
It might look nice, but it’s just plain wrong. Also, this wire is way too stiff for the application. I ended up using stranded wire with a silicone jacket.
I didn’t expect it to work perfectly the first time, but I thought it would at least do
something
. In retrospect, I should have done the first test with bona fide USB and TRRS cables, but I was excited about the ones I’d made.
The Teensy should go into blink mode, but it did nothing at all. I had it plugged into a powered USB hub with individual switches for each port, and my first clue was that the port’s light went off when it was supposed to come on. I unplugged the USB extender and found that I must have had the mini-USB diagram rotated 180° or something, because only one of the wires was in the right place.
After I fixed that and switched to a factory-made USB cable, I tried again. Both halves of the keyboard worked, but not for very long. I tried all the mini-USB cables in the house, bought three new ones, and got the same weird results. I also tried different circumstances, like leaving the slave half disconnected, turning off all other HID (I have a
lot
of HID plugged in) and then bypassing the hub altogether. It still didn’t work reliably.
Make sure those conductors are socially distanced.
Unstable Cable
When I finished making the TRRS cable, I tested continuity across the four conductors and everything checked out. One morning I found a mini-USB cable with a
ferrite bead
and figured, why not try it? I put both halves on the desk, but didn’t connect them together. It worked the first time, so I turned the USB port off and on a couple of times, and yanked and replaced the plug itself a few times for good measure. Every time, the three layer-indicating LEDs came on and it worked fine.
Then I plugged the TRRS cable I made into the master half, and the Teensy rebooted. A-ha! Finally, I decided to go get the only other TRRS I have — the aux cable from my car. When I plugged that one in, the Teensy didn’t react, so I did some more testing. It was at this point that I realized my mistake: not cross-checking all the conductors, as in holding a probe to the tip on one end, and probing both rings and the sleeve of the other end. And that was exactly the problem. After beep testing to confirm, I unscrewed one end of the cable and found three of the four conductors were touching. Making your own cables is fun, but it isn’t easy, and it’s an opportunity to add bugs.
It’s exciting to build tools — you want to keep going because it’s fun, but you also want to be done so you can use the thing. This paradox can lead to problems. There were times I wanted to break the boards in half, but I’m glad I kept at it. Even if I don’t end up using this keyboard much, I have something much better than a standard rectangle to use while I hot rod the Kinesis. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250795",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T17:06:25",
"content": "Ergo (therefore) dox (documents)Therefore, it’s about time you documented this!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250797",
"author": "PointyOintmen... | 1,760,373,468.349657 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/an-open-source-hdmi-implementation-for-fpgas/ | An Open Source HDMI Implementation For FPGAs | Lewin Day | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"dvi",
"dvi-d",
"fpga",
"hdmi"
] | With some clever hacks and fast IO work, it’s possible to get your average garden-variety microcontroller to output some form of video. Old analog standards like composite and VGA are just slow enough that it’s possible to bitbash one’s way to success. If you’re serious about video work, however, you’ll want something more capable. For those use cases, [purisame]’s got what you need –
an open source HDMI implementation for FPGAs.
Unlike other free and open source projects in this space, [purisame] has eschewed simply outputting compatible DVI signals on the port. This implementation is pure HDMI 1.4b, enabling the extended capabilities this brings, like combined video and audio streams. Thus far, it’s been tested on Xilinx and Altera platforms, though it may be compatible with Lattice, too.
In addition to the code, [purisame] breaks down options for those looking at going into production with an HDMI device. Licencing the technology for sale can be a fraught area, so a lawyer is recommended if you’re heading to market. Oh, and funnily enough, if your really do want to do HDMI on an Arduino,
there’s a shield for that, too
. Natch! | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250757",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T15:48:11",
"content": "“Licencing the technology for sale can be a fraught area, so a lawyer is recommended if you’re heading to market.”Always have a lawyer on your shoulder while coding.This is what the current patent system r... | 1,760,373,468.289932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/how-science-adapted-to-the-aftermath-of-cold-war-nuke-tests/ | How Science Adapted To The Aftermath Of Cold War Nuke Tests | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"dark matter",
"ionizing radiation",
"nuclear testing",
"radiocarbon dating",
"radioisotope"
] | Current global events have demonstrated that we do not live in the most stable of times. Still, most of us 90’s kids are probably glad that we did not have to endure the political shakiness of the Cold War era when people were living in constant fear of nuclear Armageddon. Nuclear weapons tests were common during this period as the United States and the Soviet Union invested heavily to increase the quality and quantity of their warheads in the race for nuclear supremacy.
Even though the political situation stabilized after the fall of the Soviet Union, the consequences of the vast amount of nuclear tests conducted back then are still noticeable today. Besides the devastating effects on human health and the environment, this period also leaves some implications for science which are not always negative.
A Not So Brief History of Nuclear Testing
Nuclear tests conducted worldwide by year
Credit:
CT24BTO
The first nuclear test was famously conducted under the codename
Trinity
by the United States in July 1945 as part of the Manhattan Project. The second country to follow was the Soviet Union in 1949, then the UK in 1952, France in 1960, and China in 1964. This was followed by countries like India, Pakistan, and most recently North Korea. In total over 2,100 nuclear tests have been carried out until today with an estimated total yield of about 540 megatons. The majority of these tests were carried out by the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War with as many as 178 nuclear explosions in the year 1962 alone.
In 1963, after having exploded hundreds of nuclear bombs above ground for the past 18 years, politicians finally concluded that they were done poisoning the atmosphere with radioactivity and ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). Since then, all forms of nuclear tests were prohibited except for those conducted underground. This underground testing was only banned in 1996 by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which finally prohibits all nuclear explosions on Earth.
A nuclear explosion produces a vast amount of radioactive isotopes. These are either direct fission products or originate from the activation of other materials by thermal neutrons. In atmospheric tests, the radioactive material is propelled into the upper atmosphere before it comes down as nuclear fallout. The table below shows some of the radionuclides produced by nuclear testing that have an implication for scientific research.
Isotope
Half-life
Origin
Co-60
5 years
activation
Kr-85
10.8 years
fission
Sr-90
29 years
fission
Cs-137
30 years
fission
C-14
5,700 years
activation
Bomb Pulse Dating
The relative concentration of atmospheric C-14 in the southern and northern hemispheres.
Credit:
Hokanomono
An interesting example of a radionuclide is C-14 which is also naturally produced in the atmosphere when neutrons generated by cosmic rays get absorbed by nitrogen atoms. The C-14 then combines with oxygen to form radioactive CO2.
Since a nuclear explosion floods the atmosphere with thermal neutrons it also generates C-14 through the same mechanism. As this figure shows, the C-14 concentration in the northern hemisphere was almost doubled by nuclear testing until the PTBT was signed. Luckily, the artificially produced C-14 poses no health risk and has a useful application in radiocarbon dating. Classical radiocarbon dating only works for very old organic materials since it is built on the principle that the C-14/C-12 ratio slowly decreases according to the C-14 half-life after an organism has died. Bomb pulse dating instead looks at biological samples from the nuclear testing era and compares their amount of C-14 with the decreasing atmospheric abundance of the bomb pulse. With this method, it has been possible to
determine the age of unidentified bodies
and
study the regeneration of neuronal cells
.
Detecting Fake Wine with Cs-137
The activity of Cs-137 over time in Bordeaux wines.
Credit:
CENBG
A similar dating method exists for Cs-137, an isotope that poses one of the greatest health risks of all fallout products due to its long half-life and chemical properties. Cs-137 is almost purely man-made and can be found in trace amounts in soil, plants, and animals all around the world where it has been distributed by nuclear weapons and accidents. As Cs-137 emits gamma-rays that can penetrate closed containers it can be detected non-destructively and has been used to
identify the authenticity of wine bottles
. Obviously, a wine which has been bottled before 1945 should not contain any Cs-137. Older wines can be dated by comparing their activity with the reference curve shown on the left.
Man-made Radioactivity Obscures Dark Matter Signal
The radioisotopes generated by nuclear testing did not all benefit Science. For some fields in physics, like the search for dark matter, the detection of neutrinos, or the search for rare nuclear decays, the unwanted background radiation from our legacy of nuclear testing gets in the way.
The
XENON-1T/nT
experiment, for example, is aiming at the detection of dark matter using a giant detector filled with liquid xenon. Commercially available xenon contains trace amounts of krypton at the ppm level and therefore also the fission product Kr-85. As the signal from the beta decay of Kr-85 interferes with the potential dark matter signal, the xenon first has to be purified to sub ppt levels with a special two-story-high distillation column. Another pesty background for rare event searches comes from Co-60 present in post-World War II steel. Before a detector is built one usually conducts extensive screening campaigns to identify
steel with low Co-60 contamination
, know as low background steel.
Nuclear Explosions Increase Rainfall
Researchers recently showed that
nuclear weapon tests also had a significant influence on the distribution of rainfall
. For their study, they were looking at weather data between 1962-64 from research stations in Scotland and the UK. It was shown that the Sr-90 released into the atmosphere during nuclear weapons tests significantly increased the air conductivity through ionization. The excess charge encouraged the formation of raindrops and lead to visibly thicker clouds and an average increase in rainfall of 24% on days with higher radioactivity. These findings help to better understand the role of electric charge in cloud formation with possible future applications in geoengineering.
The period of heavy nuclear testing certainly left their mark on our world. Naturally, we should not put scientists again in the situation where they try to find the silver lining in having the earth radioactively contaminated. | 33 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250740",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T15:12:29",
"content": "When I see the byline for this article, I wonder who was victorious in the battle to decide the final content,Moritz, or Sivers?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,468.509415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/diying-a-vr-headset-for-cheap/ | DIYing A VR Headset For Cheap | Lewin Day | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"vr",
"vr headset"
] | VR has been developing rapidly over the past decade, but headsets and associated equipment remain expensive. Without a killer app, the technology has yet to become ubiquitous in homes around the world. Wanting to experiment without a huge investment,
[jamesvdberg] whipped up a low-cost headset for under $100 USD.
The build relies on Google-Cardboard-style optics, which are typically designed to work with a smartphone as the display. Instead, an 800×480 display intended for use with the Raspberry Pi is installed, hooked up over HDMI. An MPU6050 IMU is then installed to monitor the headset’s movements, hooked up to an Arduino Micro that passes this information to the attached PC. The rest of the build simply consists of cable management and power supply to all the hardware. It’s important to get this right, so that one doesn’t get tangled up by the umbilical when playing.
While it won’t outperform a commercial unit, the device nevertheless offers stereoscopic VR at a low cost. For a very cheap and accessible VR experience that’s compatible with the PC, it’s hard to beat.
Others have done similar work too.
Video after the break. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250712",
"author": "David Kuder",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T13:39:47",
"content": "There are dual 1440×1440 IPS displays on ebay including the HDMI to dual mipi controller for around $100. There are also some higher res 2:1 aspect ratio panels meant for car rearview mirrors in that... | 1,760,373,468.560169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/02/fusion-for-stm32-development-board-with-debugging-and-programming-via-wifi/ | Fusion For STM32: Development Board With Debugging And Programming Via WiFi | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"fusion for stm32",
"mikroe",
"MikroElektronika",
"stm32"
] | Clearly profiling itself as the Lamborghini or Ferrari of the STM32 development board world, MikroElektronika’s current (8th) revision of their Fusion development board
was released last year
with support for not only flashing but also debugging the attached STM32 MCU via the onboard WiFi module. The Serbian company’s pricing for the bare board without
MCU modules
or any other peripherals appears to be around 300 USD/Euro. Additional MCU boards cost between $28 – $60 each.
As
the official product page
explains, the board is combined with the CodeGrip software to manage the board either via USB-C (driver-free) – which also allows one to configure the WiFi option – and via WiFi. Peripheral boards are added via the 5 onboard
MikroBUS
expansion slots, either with existing boards, or custom MikroBUS boards. The power supply is also onboard, powered via USB, a barrel jack connector, or an external battery.
The use of WiFi to connect to the board would allow for it to be easily managed and debugged when it’s in a less convenient location than one’s desk, which would seem like a major boon.
Obviously it’s not a cheap board, and the MCU cards each cost about as much as a Nucleo or Discovery board from ST would cost, making it hard to justify purchasing it for anything but a professional environment. However, the tantalizing thing here is probably that so much of the design details are available, from the expansion bus to
the pin-out and schematic of the MCU cards
(
STM32F767ZG version
).
The MCU cards use the
Hirose FX10A-168S-SV
and
FX10A-168P-SV(71)
connectors, all readily available. This opens the possibility of developing compatible MCU cards. An MCU card template project can for example
be found here
. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250653",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T08:13:39",
"content": "I can see some benefit to debugging over wifi, but I don’t see myself using an off-the-shelf development board inside a on-site application where I can’t just use a regular USB cable.A more practical idea ... | 1,760,373,468.620419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/credit-card-chip-used-to-make-crystal-radio/ | Credit Card Chip Used To Make Crystal Radio | Lewin Day | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"credit card",
"crystal radio",
"radio"
] | Perhaps the simplest radio one can build is the crystal radio. Using a diode as a detector, the design generally uses less than 10 components and no battery, getting its power to run from the radio signal itself. [Billy Cheung] decided to build a crystal radio using a rather unconventional detector –
the smart chip in a common credit card.
This is possible because the smart chip on many credit cards contains a diode. It’s then a simple matter of hooking up the right pads on the credit card to the rest of a crystal radio circuit, and you’re all set. Of course, [Billy] goes the whole hog, building the entire radio on a single credit card. Other cards are cut up to create bobbins for winding coils to form a variable inductor, used to tune the radio. Doing this allows for a much cleaner, thinner design, rather than using a variable capacitor which is comparatively hard to find. Turning the dial allows stations to be tuned in, and with a high impedance earbud hooked up, you’re listening to AM radio. Oh, and don’t forget an antenna!
[Billy] breaks down the details for anyone wishing to replicate the feat, going so far as to wind the coils in real time in his Youtube video.
Cutting templates and other details are available on Github
. While it’s not going to be the most replicated hack, as it requires the destruction of a credit card to achieve, we love the ingenuity. And, if society does collapse, we’ll all have a great source of diodes when the ATMs have all become useless. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Zane Atkins for the tip!] | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250628",
"author": "RobHeffo",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T05:53:59",
"content": "That’s cool. My dad was just asking the other day on building a Crystal Radio.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250631",
"author": "AnonRadio",
... | 1,760,373,468.674457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/python-is-all-youll-ever-need-in-this-linux-distro/ | Python Is All You’ll Ever Need In This Linux Distro | Sven Gregori | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux distro",
"pygame",
"python",
"qemu",
"user space"
] | Choosing the perfect Linux distribution that satisfies your personal needs and likings can be an impossible task, and oftentimes requires a hint of Stockholm syndrome as compromise. In extreme cases, you might end up just rolling your own distro. But while frustration is always a great incentive for change, for [Josh Moore] it was rather curiosity and playful interest that led him to create
snakeware, a Linux distribution where the entire user space not only runs on Python, but
is
Python
.
Imagine you would boot your Linux system, and instead of the shell of your choice, you would be greeted by an interactive Python interpreter, and everything you do on the system will be within the realms of that interpreter — that’s the gist of snakeware. Now, this might sound rather limiting at first, but keep in mind we’re talking about Python here, a language known for its versatility, with an abundance of packages that get things done quick and easy, which is exactly what [Josh] is aiming for. To get an idea of that, snakeware also includes
snakewm
, a graphical user interface written with pygame that bundles a couple of simple applications as demonstration, including a terminal to execute Python one-liners.
Note that this is merely a proof of concept at this stage, but [Josh] is inviting everyone to contribute and extend his creation. If you want to give it a go without building the entire system,
the GitHub repository has a prebuilt image
to run in QEMU, and the window manager will run as regular Python application on your normal system, too. To get just a quick glimpse of it, check the demo video after the break.
Sure, die-hard Linux enthusiasts will hardly accept a distribution without their favorite shell and preferable language, but hey, at least it gets by without
systemd
. And while snakeware probably won’t compete with more established distributions in the near future, it’s certainly an interesting concept that embraces thinking outside the box and trying something different. It would definitely fit well
on a business card
. | 32 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250596",
"author": "eternityforest",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T02:11:57",
"content": "I switched my default shell to xonsh a long time ago! I would love to see python finally replace bash on at least some systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,468.90399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/the-easiest-way-to-put-your-doorbell-on-the-internet/ | The Easiest Way To Put Your Doorbell On The Internet | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"current sensor",
"door bell",
"doorbell",
"home automation",
"induction",
"transformer"
] | Thanks to low-cost WiFi enabled microcontrollers such as the ESP8266 and ESP32, it’s never been a better time to roll your own smart home system. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t daunting for new players. If you’re looking for an easy first project, putting your old school doorbell on the Internet of Things is a great start, but even here there’s some debate about how to proceed.
Most people stumble when they get to the point where they have to connect their low-voltage microcontroller up to the relatively beefy transformer that drives a standard doorbell. We’ve seen a number of clever methods to make this connection safely, but
this tip from [AnotherMaker] is probably the easiest and safest way you’re likely to come across
.
His solution only requires an inductive current sensor, which can be had for less than $1 from the usual overseas suppliers. One leg of the doorbell circuit is passed through the center of this sensor, and the sensor itself is connected up to your microcontroller of choice (here, and ESP32). The rest is software, which [AnotherMaker] explains in the video after the break. With the addition of a little debounce code, your microcontroller can reliably determine when somebody is out there jabbing the bell button; what you do with this information after that is up to you.
If you’re worried this method is
too
easy
you could always try it with an optocoupler
, or maybe
convert the low-voltage AC to something your microcontroller can handle
. | 39 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250558",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T23:40:46",
"content": "Why not use a dpst button? That sounds easier to me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6250563",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,373,468.768791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/cast-metal-from-prints-to-solidify-childhood-memories/ | Cast Metal From Prints To Solidify Childhood Memories | Kristina Panos | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"3d printing",
"aluminum sand casting",
"funnel cake",
"rosette cookies",
"sand casting"
] | As far as the hacker’s toolbox goes, the 3D printer is way up there in terms of utility. Sure, it takes time to learn the ins and outs of designing, slicing, and extruding, but after that, the world is pretty much your additive oyster. Follow those design dreams, or use it to replace the things that break. The icing on the cake? You can chase those dreams into other materials,
because 3D prints can be used to cast metal
.
[RetroTech Journal] wanted to fry up some rosette cookies, a Scandinavian delight from his youth that look a lot like fancy, personal funnel cakes. They’re made with special aluminium irons that shape the dough while it fries, as opposed to the jumbled chaos that is funnel cake.
Rosette irons come in a few traditional shapes, but once you get tired of those, it’s up to you to cast them in aluminium. And how would you go about doing that? By creating a firmly-packed sand mold using a mounted 3D print.
In the endlessly entertaining video after the break, [RetroTech Journal] takes you through the entire process from CAD to cookies. It has everything you could possibly want: LEGO stop-motion, claymation, a little bit of cooking, and a whole lot of knowledge. We can’t wait to see what comes next.
We’ve seen quite a few sand casting projects over the years, but
this lathe is among the most useful
. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250511",
"author": "g2-c133535210f76855393e13f95c9684ee",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T20:17:26",
"content": "Is there any reason a CNC routed or waterjet cut piece of plate wouldn’t work as a rosette iron? All the ones I can see online specify cast, I’m wondering of that’s down to cos... | 1,760,373,468.837189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/rc-lawn-mower-keeps-the-grass-greener-on-your-side-of-the-fence/ | RC Lawn Mower Keeps The Grass Greener On Your Side Of The Fence | Sven Gregori | [
"green hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"alternator",
"arduino",
"electric wheelchair",
"lawn mower",
"mower",
"rc",
"rc lawnmower",
"remote controlled",
"wheelchair mower"
] | For some people, mowing the lawn is a dreaded chore that leads to thoughts of pouring a concrete slab over the yard and painting it green. Others see it as the perfect occasion to spend a sunny afternoon outside. And then there are those without the luxury of having a preference on the subject in the first place. [elliotmade] for example has a friend who’s sitting in a wheelchair, and would normally have to rely on others to maintain his lawn and form an opinion on the enjoyability of the task. So to retain his friend’s independence,
he decided to build him a remote-controlled lawn mower
.
After putting together an initial proof of concept that’s been successfully in use for a few years now, [elliotmade] saw some room for improvement and thought it was time for an upgrade. Liberating the drive section of an electric wheelchair, he welded a frame around it to house the battery and the mower itself, and added an alternator to charge the battery directly from the mower’s engine. An RC receiver that connects to the motor driver is controlled by an Arduino, as well as a pair of relays to switch both the ignition and an electric starter that eliminates the need for cord pulling. Topping it off with a camera, the garden chores are now comfortably tackled from a distance, without any issues of depth perception.
Remote-controlling a sharp-bladed machine most certainly requires a few additional safety considerations, and it seems that [elliotmade] thought this out pretty well, so failure on any of the involved parts won’t have fatal consequences. However, judging from the demo video embedded after break, the garden in question might not be the best environment
to turn this into a GPS-assisted, autonomous mower
in the future. But then again, RC vehicles are fun as they are,
regardless of their shape or size
. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250464",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T18:39:37",
"content": "“For some people, mowing the lawn is a dreaded chore that leads to thoughts of pouring a concrete slab over the yard and painting it green. ”Plow up, and plant something less in need of maintenance.Or pl... | 1,760,373,469.306652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/linux-fu-raspberry-pi-desktop-headless/ | Linux Fu: Raspberry Pi Desktop Headless | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"kde",
"linux",
"raspberry pi",
"x11",
"xephyr",
"xnest"
] | It seems to me there are two camps when it comes to the Raspberry Pi. Some people use them as little PCs or even laptops with a keyboard and screen connected. But many of us use them as cheap Linux servers. I’m in the latter camp. I have probably had an HDMI plug in a Pi only two or three times if you don’t count my media streaming boxes. You can even set them up headless as long as you have an Ethernet cable or are willing to edit the SD card before you boot the machine for the first time.
However, with the Raspberry Pi 4, I wanted to get to a desktop without fishing up a spare monitor. I’ll show you two ways to get a full graphical KDE desktop running with nothing more than a network connection.
The same principle applies to most other desktop environments, but I am using KDE and Ubuntu on the Pi, even though something lighter would probably perform better. But before we get there, let’s talk about how X11 has had a big identity crisis over the years.
The Plan
There are many ways to remotely access X programs, many of which are rarely used today. However, for this purpose, we are going to use SSH tunneling along with some special tricks to get the entire desktop running. It is easy to just run a single X program over SSH, and you’ve probably done that often. If so, you can skip to the next section.
If you haven’t done SSH tunneling before, don’t worry; it is easy. When you start
ssh
to the Pi, just include the
-X
or
-Y
option. You can also configure that in the
ssh
config file (
ForwardX11 yes
or
ForwardX11Trusted yes
) so you don’t have to type it in all the time. The SSH programs also have to be configured to allow that, but that’s usually the default behavior.
Consider this command.
ssh -X me@mypi.local konsole &
That would run
konsole
on your Pi, but the screen appears on your main machine. That’s fine, but it isn’t the entire desktop experience. Plus, some programs really expect support from other services that a desktop environment like KDE starts. So the trick is how to start the desktop?
The Tunneling Desktop
If you want to start a modern version of KDE, you can run
startplasma-x11
. The obvious thing to do is to try that over an SSH connection with X forwarding. That won’t work, though. Your screen is already managed by something else — maybe even KDE.
The trick is to create a new X server just for the Raspberry Pi. While you could start a new server, it is easier to create a fake server that lives in a window on your main server’s screen. There are two ways to do this:
Xnest
and
Xephyr
.
Xnest
is very old and creates a simple server with very few features. It depends on the host X server for most functions.
Xephyr
is more modern. It provides lots of modern features no matter what the host server provides. It basically uses the host server as a frame buffer.
Of course, this all assumes you have the KDE desktop installed on the Pi. A simple
apt install
for
kubuntu-desktop
will take care of that if you haven’t done it already.
Using XNest
The trick to
XNest
is that it creates a new server that just happens to draw on the original server — they are nested. There are a lot of options, but usually, it is sufficient to just run the program with a new (unused) display number.
Xnest :11
Notice the first X is uppercase. You might want to set the size:
Xnest --geometry 800x600 :11
You could run this on your local machine or from the Pi. As long as you have X tunneling set on your SSH connection, it won’t matter. But there’s still a problem.
Try running:
DISPLAY=:11 startplasma-x11
Most likely, it will start a few things and will appear to work. But at some point, you’ll get a fatal error and nothing will happen. The problem revolves around trying to render on the remote GPU. This may not be a problem with some lightweight desktops, but KDE stops.
The trick is you need to set one environment variable to tell Qt not to try to do hardware rendering:
QMLSCENE_DEVICE=softwarecontext startplasma-x11
That does the trick and now you can have a full KDE desktop running on the Pi and showing on your main monitor! You aren’t going to want to watch videos on it or play games, but otherwise it is perfectly serviceable.
I wrapped it all up in a script:
#!/bin/bash
Xnest -geometry 3840x2050 :2 &
export QMLSCENE_DEVICE=softwarecontext
DISPLAY=:2 startplasma-x11 &
Or a bit fancier:
#!/bin/bash
X="${1:-1024}"
Y="${2:-768}"
S="${3:2}"
Xnest -geometry ${X}x${Y} :$S &
export QMLSCENE_DEVICE=softwarecontext
DISPLAY=:$S startplasma-x11 &
Using Xephyr
Xephyr isn’t usually installed and you may have to look for what package it is on your operating system. For Ubuntu, the package is
xserver-xephyr
. For some reason, running it on the Pi just caused the program to stall and do nothing — at least on my setup. However, in theory, you should be able to use it as a replacement for Xnest.
What I did instead was created the server on my local machine and then asked the Pi to use it. So:
Xephyr :1 -screen 1200x720 -resizeable &
DISPLAY=:1 ssh -X ubuntu@192.168.1.39 "QMLSCENE_DEVICE=softwarecontext startplasma-x11" &
This works, but it is very slow.
Xephyr
does a lot of work on its own, so the
Xnest
solution is faster.
The X That Was
When X11 started, it had a grand plan. From your login screen you should be able to log into any computer you had access to. Then, you should be able to run programs on your screen from any computer, not just the one you were using as your main computer. This still works, sort of. However, most Linux distributions aren’t really set up to take full advantage of it.
The trick to how things were supposed to be is the DISPLAY variable. That sets where the X clients (programs) connect to an X server (your screen). You can set that to be remote. For example:
DISPLAY=mydesktop.local:0 konsole
In theory, that should have much the same effect, but that assumes your network is open on ports around 9000 and that your Xserver is open or there is a peer authentication scheme set up.
In fact, you can take many greeters (the program that you give your user name and password to) and reconfigure them to listen for network connections and create network connections to other machines, just like the X11 designers intended. But most distributions have that turned off and I’m not even sure if some of the newer greeters offer that option at all.
In modern usage the X11 system has turned into a quasi-display driver for your monitor, and that’s sad. X has so many capabilities that about 90% of the Linux world do not use. (Recalling that 88.35% of all statistics are made up on the spot.)
If you want to try setting it up the old way, have a look at
xhost
,
xauth
, and be prepared to change your X server start up to remove the flag that prevents it from listening to TCP sockets. It can be done. Of course, security over the network might not be what you want. Tunneling over SSH solves that in a single line, though.
The Solution
Even after all this work, I’m still just going to log into my Pi from the command line for most jobs. I might include X11 forwarding so I can run the odd program on my desktop. However, for the times you really want to work with the entire desktop, the
Xnest
solution works well enough.
Xephyr
was slow. I’m not sure if it would have been faster if it had run on the Pi, but that never worked for me. I suspect it is some interaction with the NVidia display drivers, but I didn’t track it down.
Meanwhile, if you do try this, consider making the window as large as you can and parking it on a virtual desktop. This is a neat solution since you can flip desktops to access the Pi or your regular computer. Add another desktop with VirtualBox running Windows and you have the operating system trifecta. If you use Wayland, this may still work using
Xwayland
, but I haven’t tested it out.
If you really want to replace your desktop with a Pi, you might want to
consider this trial
. Or maybe you’d prefer
a laptop
. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250438",
"author": "Kyle K",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T17:21:21",
"content": "I am curious about what application required KDE to be running in the background.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250439",
"author": "scott.tx",
... | 1,760,373,469.155468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/physical-security-hack-chat-with-deviant-ollam/ | Physical Security Hack Chat With Deviant Ollam | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"access control",
"door",
"elevator",
"Hack Chat",
"lock picking",
"lockpicking",
"penetration testing",
"physical security",
"rfid",
"social engineering"
] | Join us on Wednesday, June 3 at noon Pacific for the
Physical Security Hack Chat
with
Deviant Ollam
!
You can throw as many resources as possible into securing your systems — patch every vulnerability religiously, train all your users, monitor their traffic, eliminate every conceivable side-channel attack, or even totally air-gap your system — but it all amounts to exactly zero if somebody leaves a door propped open. Or if you’ve put a $5 padlock on a critical gate. Or if your RFID access control system is easily hacked. Ignore details like that and you’re just inviting trouble in.
Once the black-hats are on the inside, their job becomes orders of magnitude easier. Nothing beats hands-on access to a system when it comes to compromising it, and even if the attacker isn’t directly interfacing with your system, having him or her on the inside makes social engineering attacks that much simpler. System security starts with physical security, and physical security starts with understanding how to keep the doors locked.
To help us dig into that,
Deviant Ollam
will stop by the Hack Chat. Deviant works as a physical security consultant and he’s a fixture on the security con circuit and denizen of many lockpicking villages. He’s well-versed in what it takes to keep hardware safe from unauthorized visits or to keep it from disappearing entirely. From CCTV systems to elevator hacks to just about every possible way to defeat a locked door, Deviant has quite a bag of physical security tricks, and he’ll share his insights on keeping stuff safe in a dangerous world.
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 3 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": "6250844",
"author": "Anti",
"timestamp": "2020-06-02T20:44:07",
"content": "Some of the best links ever posted on Hack-a-day ! Will enjoy watching later the recording of the even…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,469.009041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/why-does-solder-smoke-always-find-your-face/ | Why Does Solder Smoke Always Find Your Face? | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"smoke",
"solder fumes",
"solder smoke",
"soldering iron"
] | For some of us the smell of rosin soldering flux vaporizing from the tip of an iron as a project takes shape is as evocative as the scent of a rose on a summer’s day. We’ve certainly breathed enough of it over the years, as it invariably goes from the piece of work directly into the face of the person doing the soldering. This is something that has evidently troubled [AlphaPhoenix], who
has gone to extravagant lengths to research the problem
using planar laser illumination and a home-made (and possibly hazardous) smoke generator.
He starts with a variety of hypotheses with everything from a human-heat-driven air vortex to the Coandă effect, but draws a blank with each one as he models them using cardboard cut-outs and boxes as well as himself. Finally he has the light bulb moment and discovers that the key to the mystery lies in his arms coming across the bench to hold both iron and solder. They close off an area of lower-pressure dead space which draws the air current containing the smoke towards it, and straight into his face. It’s something that can be combated with a small fan or perhaps
a fume extractor
, as despite some video trickery we have yet to master soldering iron telekinesis. | 38 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250385",
"author": "problemchild68",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T15:08:10",
"content": "Here’s me thinking it was the soldering iron is in your hands attached to you body and head which is right over the work because you are soldering some P1$$ ant component to the board. Obviously th... | 1,760,373,469.07903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/nasas-long-delayed-return-to-human-spaceflight/ | NASA’s Long-Delayed Return To Human Spaceflight | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Crew Dragon",
"dragon",
"international space station",
"nasa",
"spaceflight",
"SpaceX"
] | With the launch of the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, the United States has achieved something it hasn’t done in nearly a decade: put a human into low Earth orbit with a domestic booster and vehicle. It was a lapse in capability that stretched on far longer than anyone inside or outside of NASA could have imagined. Through a series of delays and program cancellations, the same agency that put boot prints on the Moon and built the iconic Space Shuttle had been forced to rely on Russia to carry its astronauts into space since 2011.
NASA would still be waiting to launch its own astronauts had they relied on America’s traditional aerospace giants to get the job done. The
inaugural flight of the Boeing CST-100 “Starliner” to the International Space Station in December was an embarrassing failure
that came perilously close to losing the unmanned capsule. A later investigation found that sloppy software development and inconsistent testing had caused at least two major failures during the mission, which ultimately had to be cut short as the vehicle couldn’t even reach the altitude of the ISS, to say nothing of making a docking attempt. NASA and Boeing have since agreed to attempt another test of the CST-100 sometime before the end of the year,
though a delay into 2021 seems almost inevitable due to the global pandemic
.
But America’s slow return to human spaceflight can’t be blamed on the CST-100, or even Boeing, for that matter. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA has been hindered by politics and indecisiveness. With a constantly evolving mandate from the White House, the agency’s human spaceflight program has struggled to make significant progress towards any one goal.
Post-Shuttle Plans
It’s often been said that the Space Shuttle was canceled without plans for a clear replacement, but the truth is quite a bit more complex than that.
Less than a year after
Columbia
was tragically lost in 2003
, President George W. Bush released his
Vision for Space Exploration
plan which would put NASA on a path to retiring the aging Shuttle fleet while retaining America’s launch capabilities and global lead in space exploration.
The plan directed NASA to complete primary construction of the International Space Station by 2010, at which point the Space Shuttle’s primary mission would be completed and the program could be wound down. Simultaneously, NASA was to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle: a more traditional capsule that would be able to carry American astronauts to the Station, the Moon, and potentially even Mars. Test flights of this relatively simple vehicle were to begin by 2008, allowing sufficient time to bring it up to operational status by the time the Shuttle had flown its last Station assembly mission.
Space Shuttle
Columbia
A key goal of the
Vision for Space Exploration
was the separation of crew and cargo. The Space Shuttle was an attempt to combine a crew transportation vehicle and heavy-lift booster into one reusable package, but the end result was a vehicle that never truly excelled at either task. It was too large and complex to merely ferry personnel to the International Space Station, but at the same time, its unique design and operational parameters limited the types of payloads it could realistically carry.
Put simply, the White House felt the Space Shuttle was a failed experiment that had not only cost the lives of fourteen American astronauts, but consumed too much of NASA’s budget and resources. The
Vision for Space Exploration
aimed to put NASA back on a safer and more sustainable path, with the eventual goal of leaving Earth orbit behind and returning to the Moon by 2020.
The Constellation Program
In response to the President Bush’s
Vision for Space Exploration
, NASA developed the Constellation program in 2005. It consisted of two separate rocket boosters, one intended to carry a human-rated spacecraft, and the other a heavy-lift vehicle that had eight times the cargo capacity of the Space Shuttle. Under the new program, large spacecraft bound for the Moon or Mars would be launched ahead of time on the larger rocket, and its crew would ride to space in the smaller rocket and meet up with it in orbit.
Ares I-X launches on October 28, 2009
The program also called for the development of the Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander, both of which would be heavily influenced by their Apollo-era counterparts. There were even plans to use a modernized version of the Rocketdyne J-2 engine used on the Saturn V rocket, though modern safety requirements lead to this idea being dropped fairly early on.
Unfortunately, the Constellation program was plagued with delays and cost overruns. Part of the problem was that NASA still had to fund and operate the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, which put an enormous strain on the agency. Taking money and engineers away from the Shuttle program while it was still carrying astronauts could have lead to another disaster, so it’s little surprise that Constellation was never a top priority.
In 2009, NASA performed a test flight of the Ares I-X, a prototype of the human-rated booster rocket designed to carry the Orion capsule into low Earth orbit. While the flight was a success, it would be the only piece of Constellation hardware to ever fly. With inert mock-ups standing in for the upper stage and crew capsule, the incomplete Ares I-X ultimately became a symbol of how little progress the Constellation program had actually made since its inception.
Commercial Crew Takes Over
By this point the White House was now occupied by President Barack Obama, and as is often the case when the Administration changes hands, the new leadership was looking to cut costs and streamline operations. Reviews ordered by President Obama concluded that completing the Constellation program would cost at least $150 billion dollars, and even then, a return to the Moon or a mission to Mars in the foreseeable future was unlikely. Based on these findings and what he called a “lack of innovation”, he officially canceled the program in 2010; a year before the Space Shuttle was scheduled to make its final flight.
Looking for a more modern and agile approach to delivering cargo and crew to low Earth orbit, the Obama Administration made a hard push for involving commercial operators into NASA’s operations. Money was specifically allocated for the new Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, which was tasked with finding companies that could design, build, and operate their own human-rated spacecraft.
Dream Chaser prototype during testing.
Boeing’s CST-100 was among the first wave of vehicles to receive funding through the CCDev program, as was Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spaceplane. As a contingency, development of the Orion crew capsule would be allowed to continue should NASA’s new commercial partners fail to produce a workable vehicle.
With the retirement of the Space Shuttle looming, it was clear that America would have to rely on Russia’s spacecraft to bring astronauts to the International Space Station, but this was seen as a temporary measure.
When the second phase of the CCDev program started in 2011, Boeing was confident the CST-100 could begin crewed test flights in 2014, and NASA believed Orion would be ready for operational flights to the ISS by 2016.
Dragon Rising
While NASA and its traditional aerospace partners were dealing with the realities of going back to the drawing board for a human-rated spacecraft, SpaceX had already put their Dragon capsule into low Earth orbit with a homegrown booster and were preparing for their first cargo mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX had been awarded funds through the cargo-only version of CCDev, known as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), and was quickly making a name for themselves.
By 2012, SpaceX had already sent a Dragon to the ISS.
So when the third phase of CCDev opened up in 2012, SpaceX was considerably ahead of the game. Not only was a version of their proposed spacecraft complete and already flying, but they were unique among all the CCDev entries in that they had also developed their own booster rocket to carry their vehicle into space. This vertical integration was not only the key to SpaceX’s vastly reduced operating expenses, but enabled a rapid iterative design process that their competitors simply couldn’t match.
NASA officially selected SpaceX as one of their Commercial Crew partners in 2014, and they were awarded $2.6 billion to develop a modified version of their Dragon cargo capsule for crewed missions with the expectation that they could have it tested and certified by 2017.
But the company still had to fulfill their cargo obligations under the COTS contact, which combined with the normal
setbacks and delays that are to be expected when developing a human-rated spacecraft
, pushed the first test flight of the new Crew Dragon to 2019.
Beginning of a New Era
Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle was officially announced, its nebulous replacement was perpetually a few years away from making its first flight. But even with an eight year head start, by the time
Atlantis
rolled to a stop for the last time, NASA had nothing to show for all the time and money spent chasing paper rockets. Despite over a decade of development, the CST-100 and Orion still haven’t started operational flights. The traditional aerospace industry failed to answer the call.
Behnken and Hurley aboard Crew Dragon
By carrying astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley into space, SpaceX has officially brought a difficult chapter in NASA’s history to a close. It not only marks the end of the agency’s reliance on foreign hardware to conduct its human spaceflight mission, but proves that the old ways aren’t set in stone.
The dark horse soundly beat the entrenched giants, and the democratization of space has never been closer. It’s hard to predict what the next decade of human spaceflight will look like, but there’s no question it’s going to be a lot more exciting than the previous one. | 55 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250375",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T14:41:10",
"content": "This shows disadvantages of short-term planning and lack of focus.At any rate, my congratulations to USA on finally launching their own human spacecraft again. This will hopefully heat up things, and cau... | 1,760,373,469.444791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/easy-internet-for-retro-computers-with-the-pimodem/ | Easy Internet For Retro Computers With The PiModem | Lewin Day | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"modem",
"Pi Zero W",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W"
] | Retro computers are great, but what really makes a computer special is how many other computers it can talk to. It’s all about the network! Often, getting these vintage rigs online requires a significant investment in dusty old network cards from eBay and hunting down long-corrupted driver discs to lace everything together.
A more modern alternative is to use something like PiModem to do the job instead.
PiModem consists of using a Raspberry Pi Zero W to emulate a serial modem, providing older systems with a link to the outside world. This involves setting up the Pi to use its hardware serial port to communicate with the computer in question. A level shifter is usually required, as well as a small hack to enable hardware flow control where necessary. It’s then a simple matter of using
tcpser
and
pppd
so you can talk to telnet BBSs and the wider Internet at large.
It’s a tidy hack that makes getting an old machine online much cheaper and easier than using hardware of the era.
We’ve seen similar work before, too! | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250328",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T11:09:52",
"content": "I think HaD also covered the similar DreamPihttps://segaretro.org/DreamPiWhich is a porject to let Dreamcasts back online through dialup. I think the main prize was allowing Phantasy Star Online (whic... | 1,760,373,469.512834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/01/a-home-made-dumper-youd-swear-came-from-a-factory/ | A Home Made Dumper You’d Swear Came From A Factory | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dump truck",
"Honda engine",
"hydraulic transmission",
"metalworking",
"scratch built"
] | When it comes to YouTube videos, there’s little we like more than some good quality workshop action, watching someone in command of their tools craft a machine from raw materials with an amazing result.
It’s something [Workshop From Scratch] delivers with his homemade mini dumper
, in which he makes a small dump-truck from scratch with a result that looks as though he’d bought it factory-made from his agricultural supplier.
At its heart is a substantial chassis made from welded together double box section tube, to which he’s bolted a second-hand hydraulic transmission of the type you would find on larger walk-behind groundskeeping machinery. At the back is a front steering axle from a mobility scooter, that pivots on a bearing and wheel hub from a Ford Mondeo to ensure stability on rough ground. There is a platform for the operator to stand on as the little Honda 4-stroke engine moves it around. The bucket is plasma cut and welded, and it’s safe to say that his welding ability exceeds ours.
The result is a machine that looks to be very useful, and dare we admit it, one we wouldn’t mind having a go on.
It may not be as powerful as this electric home-built dump truck
, but we like it. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250336",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T11:47:57",
"content": "I needed something just like that while I was racking leaves and taking them to our compost pile on the weekend",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "62503... | 1,760,373,469.347501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/31/pulling-data-from-news-feed-telemetry/ | Pulling Data From News Feed Telemetry | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"gnu radio",
"telemetry"
] | We are used to seeing shots from TV news helicopters every day, they are part of the backdrop to life in the 21st century. But so often we hear them overlaid with studio commentary, so it’s interesting to hear that their raw audio contains telemetry. It caught the attention of [proto17], who took some audio pulled from a news helicopter video
and subjected it to a thorough investigation to retrieve the data
.
The write-up is at a very in-depth level, and while there’s an admission that some of the steps could have been performed more easily with ready-made tools, its point is to go through all steps at a low level. So the action largely takes place in GNU Radio, in which we see the process of identifying the signal and shifting it downwards in frequency before deducing its baud rate to retrieve its contents. The story’s not over though, because we then delve into some ASCII tricks to identify the packet frames, before finally retrieving the data itself. It still doesn’t tell you what the data contains, but it’s a fascinating process getting there nonetheless.
It’s easy to forget that GNU Radio has signal processing capabilities far beyond radio, but
it was the subject of a fascinating Superconference talk
. We even jumped on the bandwagon in the non-foolish part of
our April Fool this year
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250280",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T05:13:42",
"content": "Reminds me of this older post:https://hackaday.com/2014/02/02/decoding-news-helicopter-signals-on-youtube/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250294",
... | 1,760,373,469.551608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/31/receive-analog-video-radio-signals-from-scratch/ | Receive Analog Video Radio Signals From Scratch | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"demodulation",
"radio",
"receive",
"RTL-SDR",
"sdr",
"signal",
"software",
"software-defined radio",
"video"
] | If you’ve been on the RTL-SDR forums lately you may have seen that a lot of work has been going into the DragonOS software. This is a software-defined radio group that has seen a lot of effort put into a purpose-built Debian-based Linux distribution that can do a lot of SDR out of the box. The latest and most exciting project coming from them involves a method for
using the software to receive and demodulate analog video
.
[Aaron]’s video (linked below) demonstrates using a particular piece of software called
SigDigger
to analyze an incoming analog video stream from a drone using a HackRF. (Of course any incoming analog signal could be used, it doesn’t need to be a drone.) The software shows the various active frequency ranges, allows a user to narrow in on one and then start demodulating it. While it has to be dialed in just right to get anything that doesn’t look like snow, [Aaron] is able to get recognizable results in just a few minutes.
Getting something like this to work completely in software is an impressive feat, especially considering that all of the software used here is free. Granted, this wouldn’t be as easy for a digital signal like most TV stations broadcast, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. In case you missed the release of DragonOS,
we covered it a few weeks ago
and it’s only gotten better since then, with this project just as one example. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250257",
"author": "Ryan",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T02:52:38",
"content": "Let’s say you want to transmit VHF and/or UHF video… Any projects around that?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6250324",
"author": "sig_rf",
... | 1,760,373,469.641938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/creating-surreal-short-films-from-machine-learning/ | Creating Surreal Short Films From Machine Learning | Sharon Lin | [
"Machine Learning",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"cnn",
"GANs",
"neural style transfer"
] | Ever since we first saw the nightmarish artwork produced by Google DeepDream and the ridiculous faux paintings produced from neural style transfer, we’ve been aware of the ways machine learning can be applied to visual art. With commercially available trained models and automated pipelines for generating images from relatively small training sets, it’s now possible for developers without theoretical knowledge of machine learning to easily generate images, provided they have sufficient access to GPUs. Filmmaker [Kira Bursky] took this a step further, creating a
surreal short film
that features characters and textures produced from image sets.
She began with about 150 photos of her face, 200 photos of film locations, 4600 photos of past film productions, and 100 drawings as the main datasets.
via [Kira Bursky]
Using GAN models for nebulas, faces, and skyscrapers in RunwayML, she found the results from training her face set disintegrated, realistic, and painterly. Many of the images continue to evoke aspects of her original face with distortions, although whether that is the model identifying a feature common to skyscrapers and faces or our own bias towards facial recognition is up to the viewer.
On the other hand, the results of training the film set photos on models of faces and bedrooms produced abstract textures and “surreal and eerie faces like a fever dream”. Perhaps, unlike the familiar anchors of facial features, it’s the lack of recognizable characteristics in the transformed images that gives them such a surreal feel.
[Kira] certainly uses these results to her advantage, brainstorming a concept for a short film that revolves around her main character experiencing nightmares. Although her objective was to use her results to convey a series of emotionally striking scenes, the models she uses to produce these scenes are also quite interesting.
She started off by using the
MiDaS
model, created by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich and Intel, for generating monocular depth maps. The results associated levels inside of an image with their appropriate depth in relation to one another. She also used the
MASK R-CNN
for masking out the backgrounds in generated faces and combined her generated images in Photoshop to create the main character for her short film.
via [Vox]
In order to simulate the character walking, she used the
Liquid Warping GAN
, a framework for human motion imitation and appearance transfer, created by a team from ShanghaiTech University and Tencent AI Lab. This allowed her to take her original images and synthesize results from reference poses of herself going through the motions of walking by using a 3D body mesh recovery module. Later on, she applied similar techniques for motion tracking on her faces, running them through the
First Order Motion Model
to simulate different emotions. She went on to join her facial movements with her character using After Effects.
Bringing the results together, she animated a 3D camera blur using the depth map videos to create a less disorienting result by providing anchor points for the viewers and creating a displacement map to heighten the sense of depth and movement within the scenes. In After Effects, she also overlaid dust and film grain effects to give the final result a crisper look. The result is a surprisingly cinematic film entirely made of images and videos generated from machine learning models. With the help of the depth adjustments, it almost looks like something that you might see in a nightmare.
Check out the result below: | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249822",
"author": "daqq",
"timestamp": "2020-05-30T05:49:23",
"content": "This is your brain on drugs!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6249825",
"author": "tweepy",
"timestamp": "2020-05-30T06:23:56",
... | 1,760,373,469.604176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/wifi-goes-open/ | WiFi Goes Open | Al Williams | [
"FPGA",
"Linux Hacks",
"Radio Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"fpga",
"openwifi",
"SoC",
"verilog",
"wifi",
"xilinx"
] | For most people, adding WiFi to a project means grabbing something like an ESP8266 or an ESP32. But if you are developing your own design on an FPGA, that means adding another package. If you are targeting Linux, the OpenWifi project has a good start at providing WiFi in Verilog. There are examples for many development boards and advice for porting to your own target on
GitHub
. You can also see one of the developers, [Xianjun Jiao], demonstrate the whole thing in the video below.
The demo uses a Xilinx Zynq, so the Linux backend runs on the Arm processor that is on the same chip as the FPGA doing the software-defined radio. We’ll warn you that this project is not for the faint of heart. If you want to understand the code, you’ll have to dig into a lot of WiFi trivia.
The good news though is that a lot of the higher-level functions fall to the generic Linux drivers. Other than a user-space control program, OpenWiFi only provides a driver and an FPGA configuration. All of the higher details occur in the Linux WiFi system that can talk to many different chipsets.
The team didn’t produce any hardware but used multiple FPGA development boards that were commercially available. It’s fair to say that if you really wanted to add WiFi to a project and you weren’t making many copies of it, there are easier ways. But even if you aren’t targeting a custom ASIC with WiFi, reading the Verilog and understanding the code can teach you a lot about WiFi internals.
If you need something simpler to get started on FPGAs, try
our bootcamp
. Don’t think you need to know WiFi internals? Maybe. But maybe you want to know what kind of
attacks
you might have to guard against, too. | 21 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249791",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2020-05-30T02:21:24",
"content": "Could it run on an ECP5? You can get those ECP5 light controlling boards with 25 LUTs for 20EUR.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6250089",
"... | 1,760,373,469.697953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/build-your-own-grid-tie-inverter/ | Build Your Own Grid Tie Inverter | Al Williams | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"DC to AC",
"grid tie inverter",
"h-bridge",
"inverter",
"power-line"
] | Inverters that convert DC into AC are pretty commonplace, some cars even have standard AC receptacles in them for you to plug in your favorite appliance. However, there’s a particular type of inverter called a grid tie inverter that allows you not only to make AC, but also inject it back through an AC outlet to power other devices in conjunction with the normal AC service. Why? Maybe you want to use your own generator or solar power. In some cases, the power company will pay you if you produce more power than you consume. Maybe you just want to know you can do it. That seems to be the motivation behind
[fotherby’s] build
, which is quite substantial.
The setup only handles about 60 watts, but it does all the functions you need: DC to AC conversion as well as phase and voltage matching. Actually, just converting DC to AC is almost trivial if you don’t care about the waveform. But in this case, you do care that you can create an AC signal to match the one already on the line.
The project is simplified by the use of a STM32F407 board which has some nice high-speed A/D as well as a TI H-bridge board. Another simplification was the use of a transformer, so the inverter only has to create 40V. This is a non-trivial and somewhat dangerous project. However, [fotherby] provides a lot of detail and theory, so even if you don’t want to build it, you might enjoy looking over the work.
Speaking of safety, the system detects if the utility voltage looks bad and if it is, the system shuts down the inverter. This helps prevent islanding — where a utility or electrician thinks a circuit is not live, but voltage is coming from another source.
Overall, this was a very interesting project, especially if you aren’t usually dealing with the power line. Obviously, if you wanted to do this in
North America
, you’d need some modifications. No matter where you are if you attempt this we suggest you review some
safety guidelines
. | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249761",
"author": "Craig Hollabaugh",
"timestamp": "2020-05-29T23:20:19",
"content": "Glad you mentioned islanding. Thanks for the post.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6249778",
"author": "Linework",
"timest... | 1,760,373,469.776844 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/cheap-speakers-sound-good-with-easy-open-baffle-design/ | Cheap Speakers Sound Good With Easy Open Baffle Design | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"enclosure",
"speaker",
"Speaker enclosure"
] | If you’ve spent any time around audio gear at all, you’ll know that enclosure design is as critical as the speaker drivers themselves. [Frank Olson] demonstrates this ably,
with his open baffle design for some cheap off-the-shelf speakers.
[Frank]’s aim was to do a comparison between using no enclosure, and an open baffle design, with a pair of 2″ full-range speakers. These drivers are nothing special; just a low-cost part that you’d find in any cheap set of computer speakers. [Frank] screws the drivers into a thin, flat wooden board, and then adds a supporting strut to allow the speakers to stand on their own.
The comparison makes it clear that even this basic baffle design makes a big difference to perceived sound quality. Bass is fuller, and the sound is far improved thanks to the baffle blocking out of phase sounds from the rear of the speaker.
It’s a technique that could prove useful to anyone quickly trying to rig up an audio setup for the workshop or makerspace out of leftover parts. We’ve featured similar projects before that espouse
the benefit of enclosure design when using even very affordable speakers.
Video after the break. | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249711",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-05-29T20:06:13",
"content": "I’ve often found a simple thin open sided sandwich, made from a ridged sound reflective material, seems to do pretty well to amplify the sound from a small speaker and bring out the depth of sound.",
"... | 1,760,373,469.841571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/tarot-machine-flips-through-fates-rolodex/ | Tarot Machine Flips Through Fate’s Rolodex | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino mega",
"microstepping",
"split flap",
"split-flap display",
"stepper motor",
"tarot"
] | Were tarot card readers deemed non-essential in your part of the world (and do you think they saw it coming?) More than ever, we all need diversions that are for entertainment purposes only. And what better basis for entertainment than
a mystical fortune-telling robot that can read your tarot cards?
This fantastic-looking ‘bot stands on the shoulders of
[Scott Bezak]’s trailblazing method for easy DIY split-flap displays
. Push the rather inviting-looking button on the top, and the flaps start flipping around to find your fortune. Once the fates have aligned, a thermal printer on the front spits out an image of your card along with an interpretation.
It’s obvious that [i_mozy] put quite a lot of effort into this slick machine, and we think the stickers look especially great. All the details of physical tarot card readings are accounted for, including a random number to decide the card’s position, and LEDs to represent the card’s element. Suspend your disbelief and check out the demo/promo video after the break.
Split-flap displays are a great choice no matter what you want to show. We’ve seen them used to display everything from
the weather
to
the current Spotify track
.
Via
r/duino | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249682",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2020-05-29T18:40:10",
"content": "“More than ever, we all need diversions that are for entertainment purposes only.”Hey, tarot card’s don’t come without a price. If you want to make a deal with the devil go for it.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,469.883911 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/books-you-should-read-the-design-of-everyday-things/ | Books You Should Read: The Design Of Everyday Things | Sonya Vasquez | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest"
] | [
"books you should read",
"design",
"Don Norman"
] | With everything from APIs to Raspberry Pis making it even easier for us to create and share objects shaped by personal whim, it’s high time that Don Norman’s sage design advice falls on not just the design student, but the hardware hacker and DIY enthusiast too. Grab yourself a coffee and a free weekend, and settle into the psychology of people-struggling-how-to-use-that-widget-they-just-purchased in
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
.
Who’s to blame for a door that opens
with a pull
when everything about how it looks says it should open
with a push
? In Don Norman’s world, it’s not you; its the designer. Enter a world where blame is inverted and mistakes can be critically categorized. Norman takes us example by example showing us how common items in the world poorly serve the needs of their user, mainly because the designer simply ignores key aspects of our humanity. This book is a crisp, concise overview of human psychology when applied to engaging with things combined with a language of ideas to help us apply this psychology to better interactions. (And it reads like butter!)
Opening Up to the Language of Design
What’s an
affordance
, you might ask? Well, simply put, it’s a way that an object can be used by a human. How about a
signifier
? That’s a communication “signposting” scheme that object uses to suggest to you how it should be used. If that sounds a bit fluffy, just think about the last time you tried to push open a door that needed to be pulled.
Something
about that door was suggesting that you could push it open, but it couldn’t! It “fooled” you because all the object’s
signifiers
were telling you otherwise.
But Don Norman goes beyond a vocabulary that inverts our understanding of how we engage with objects and gives us another fresh perspective on how we make mistakes with out devices. Once again, these errors aren’t something to be ashamed of, but are categorizable interactions with our devices that, once understood, can be designed to accommodate or designed out altogether. Errors actually come in two large categories:
mistakes
and
slips
.
Mistakes
are, by and large, errors in planning, and
slips
are errors of action. Have you ever set your alarm for 7
PM
when you meant
AM
? That’s a slip. Or perhaps you forget some items on your grocery trip? That’s a mistake But there are actually multiple subcategories, each clearly explained with examples from real life, often accompanied by disastrous consequences that may have been preventable with different design choices. Norman’s language for understanding mistakes is precise. And with this precision, we too can unpack everyday “mistakes” into a systematic way that lets us understand why they happened and how to mitigate or prevent them.
Here lies the power of the book. It’s a grammar book, one that teaches us the language of designers. Armed with the grammar of design, we can start to see the choices of designers and start making some thoughtful design choices ourselves.
A Refreshing New Look
Once you read this book, I’ll warn you. Though you may be armed with a new language, be careful with your criticism when you re-enter the world beyond that comfy armchair and empty coffee cup. Yes, in a way, this new vocabulary feels like a clever way to point a finger at “bad design.” And sure; with these new words and clearly articulated descriptions, we can do that. But let Don Norman do the blaming for you. This book is already riddled with examples of bad design drawing from either history or Norman’s personal experience. Instead, let’s put it to good use.
The Design of Everyday Things
is an opportunity for us as creators to reflect on how we communicate, how we suggest experiences, to the people who use our creations. So let’s make sure those experiences are good ones.
Side Note: the Revised and Expanded Edition of this book reads very differently from the original edition released way back in 1988. I strongly suggest finding the latest version if you can help it since so many of the examples have been brought up to speed with our times. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6249654",
"author": "smerrett79",
"timestamp": "2020-05-29T17:24:36",
"content": "Yes, great book. Especially if you are involved in requirements setting or management – not just design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6249655",... | 1,760,373,470.050825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/hackaday-podcast-069-calculator-controversy-socketing-soic-metal-on-the-moon-and-basking-in-bench-tools/ | Hackaday Podcast 069: Calculator Controversy, Socketing SOIC, Metal On The Moon, And Basking In Bench Tools | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"3d printer",
"casio",
"copper clad",
"dmca",
"electronics lab",
"Embedded Linux",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"joy-cons",
"Masten Space Systems",
"nabaztag",
"Nintendo Switch",
"thermochromic"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams march to the beat of the hardware hacking drum as they recount the greatest hacks to hit the ‘net this week. First up: Casio stepped in it with a spurious DMCA takedown notice. There’s a finite matrix of resistors that form a glorious clock now on display at CERN. Will a patio paver solve your 3D printer noise problems? And if you ever build with copper clad, you can’t miss this speedrun of priceless prototyping protips.
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 069 Show Notes:
New This Week:
DMCA Takedown Issued Over Casio Code That Wasn’t
21st Century Cheating: WiFi In A Calculator
dmca/2020-05-20-Casio.md at master · github/dmca · GitHub
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Matrix Of Resistors Forms The Hot Hands Behind This Thermochromic Analog Clock
Other displays shown off on balu’s YouTube channel
Poking Around Inside Of A Linux Security Camera
Creating a Wireshark dissector in Lua – part 1 (the basics)
binvis.io
Mastering Embedded Linux, Part 1: Concepts • &> /dev/null
Joy-Con Mod Gives Nintendo Switch Touchpad Control
GlidePoint Circle Trackpads — Cirque Corporation
Bricking Your 3D Printer, In A Good Way
How Cheap Can A 3D Printer Get? The Anet A8
Ironclad Tips For Copper-Clad Prototyping
Cutting Islands Into Copper-clad PCBs With A Drill
A Ham Radio Receiver, Manhattan Style
A DIY Electronics Lab You Can Show Off With Pride
KSA-2 thumbwheels
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
Conduit, Birdhouse, And Skateboard Become Giant Pen Plotter
ZRAM Boosts Raspberry Pi Performance
From Zero To LED Cube In Less Than Seven Months
Elliot’s Picks:
Improving 3D Printed Supports With A Marker
Boot Your Pi Over USB
Rocking Out On A Limb With LE STRUM
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Masten Moon Rocket Has Landing Pad, Will Travel
Teardown: Nabaztag | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,469.93652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/05/31/hackaday-links-may-31-2020/ | Hackaday Links: May 31, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"altair 8800",
"Covid-19",
"CP/M",
"economy",
"gigatron",
"hackaday links",
"model",
"mRNA vaccine",
"public policy",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"retrocomputing",
"SARS-CoV-2"
] | We begin with sad news indeed as we mark
the passing of Marcel van Kervinck
on Monday. The name might not ring a bell, but his project,
the Gigatron TTL computer
, certainly will. We did
a deep dive on the microprocessor-less computer
a while back, and Marcel was a regular at conferences and on the Gigatron forums, supporting users and extending what the computer can do. He was pretty candid about his health issues, and I’ll add that when I approached him a few weeks ago out of the blue about perhaps doing a Hack Chat about Gigatron, he was brutally honest about how little time he had left and that he wouldn’t make it that long. I was blown away by the grace and courage he displayed. His co-conspirator Walter Belger will carry on the Gigatron mission, including joining us for a Hack Chat on June 24. In the meantime, this might be a great time to pick up a Gigatron kit before they’re all sold out and get busy soldering all those delicious through-hole TTL chips.
May of 2020 is the month that never seems to end, and as the world’s focus seems to shift away from the immediate public health aspects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to the long-term economic impact of the response to it, we happened across
a very interesting article on just that topic
. Mike Robbins from the Circuit Lab has modeled the economic impact of the pandemic using analog circuit simulations. He models people as charges and the flow of people between diseases states as currents; the model has capacitors to store the charge and allow him to measure voltages and filters that model the time delays needed for public policy changes to be adopted. It’s a fascinating mashup of engineering and policy.
You can play with the model online,
tweak parameters, and see what you come up with.
One of the things that the above model makes clear is that waiting to fully reopen the economy until a vaccine is ready is a long and dangerous game. But there has at least been some progress on that front, as Massachusetts biotech firm Moderna
announced success in Phase 1 clinical trials
of its novel mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. It’s important to temper expectations here; Phase 1 trials are only the beginning of human testing, aimed at determining the highest treatment dose that won’t cause serious side effects. Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials are much more involved, so there’s a long way to go before the vaccine, mRNA-1273, is ready for use. If you need to brush up on how these new vaccines work, check out
our handy guide to mRNA vaccines
.
In happier news, the “moar memory” version of the Raspberry Pi 4 is now on sale.
Eben Upton announced
that the 8GB version of the Pi 4 is now available for $75. The upgrade was apparently delayed by the lack of an 8GB LPDDR SDRAM chip in a package that would work in the Pi manufacturing process. They’ve also released
a beta of a 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS
, if you’re interested in a bleeding-edge flex.
And finally, for those who missed the first wave of the computer revolution and never had a blinkenlight machine, you can at least partially scratch that itch with
this Internet-connected Altair 8800
. Jesse Downing has written a queueing system that allows users to connect to the machine via ssh and use Microsoft BASIC 5.0 on CP/M. Need to see those glorious front panels lights do their thing? Jesse has kindly set up a
live stream
for that, with an overlay of the current console output. It’s a great way to relive your misspent youth, or to get a taste of what computing was like when soldering skills were a barrier to entry. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6250220",
"author": "Anna",
"timestamp": "2020-06-01T00:27:10",
"content": "I met Marcel at VCF PNW last year and played Tetris on his Gigatron. Very sad to hear about this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6250235",
"author"... | 1,760,373,470.251481 |
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