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https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/modular-multicopter-core-flies-in-multiple-orientations/ | Modular Multicopter Core Flies In Multiple Orientations | Mike Szczys | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"hub",
"pcb",
"quadcopter",
"tricopter"
] | [Ioannis Kedros] claims to be rather new to the game of building multi-rotor drones. You’d never know it looking at his latest creation. Yes, we’re talking about the quadcopter seen here, but it’s the core of the machine that’s so interesting. He came up with
a PCB hub that allows multiple orientations
to be used with the same board. These include tri-copter, and quadcopter with different strut angles for different applications.
The silk screen of the PCB has dotted lines showing the different angles possible for one pair of motor supports. One set makes a perfect “X” for traditional quadcopter flight. Another reduces the angle between front and back struts for higher-performance quad flight, while the last set is intended for a tricopter setup.
We’d recommend taking a look at [Ioannis’] project writeup whether this particular application interests you or not. His design techniques go through all possible manner of checks before placing the PCB order. There is no substitute for this process if you want to avoid getting burnt by silly mistakes. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2189426",
"author": "louisdking",
"timestamp": "2014-11-28T14:57:00",
"content": "pls guys I want to be part of ur project how can I get your close contact.hook me up at WhatsApp num2348133460818. and my BBM pin 24DC2C36.thanks guys",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,375,990.556177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/jaw-dropping-atomic-clock-build/ | Jaw-Dropping Atomic Clock Build | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"atomic clock",
"discrete",
"logic",
"real time clock",
"rubidium frequency standard"
] | You could cruise the Internet bazaars for a talking clock but you’ll never find one as awesome as this. Just look at it… even if it didn’t work it would be awesome.
[Art] certainly lives up to his username. His
Rubidium-standard atomic real-time clock
is surely an example of hardware art. The substrate is a collection of point-to-point soldered perfboard modules. Each laid out meticulously. What does such layout call for? A gorgeous enclosure which doesn’t obscure your view of the components. For this he went with a copper tube frame and a custom fabricated aluminum chassis pan.
For the circuit itself [Art] tells us he wanted to build something akin to the old HP nixie frequency counters so he went with logic chips. The pictures and a few video annotations are the only clues we have for how this works. Hopefully your encouragement in the comments will help prompt him to share more about that.
Oh, and the talking clock part that we referred to earlier? Every minute you get a readout of the time thanks to a PIC playing back audio using [Roman Black’s]
BTc sound compression algorithm
. | 44 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "2187437",
"author": "CJ",
"timestamp": "2014-11-28T00:13:33",
"content": "That thing is f–king beautiful!!! I could stare at the lights all night…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2187476",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,375,990.463339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/keep-tabs-on-passing-jets-with-pi-and-sdr/ | Keep Tabs On Passing Jets With Pi And SDR | Mike Szczys | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"ads-b",
"camera",
"camera gimbal",
"gimbal",
"video"
] | Obviously Software Defined Radio is pretty cool. For a lot of hackers you just need the right project to get you into it. Submitted for your approval is just that project. [Simon Aubury] has been using
a Raspberry Pi and SDR to record video of planes
passing overhead. The components are cheap and most places have planes passing by; this just might be the perfect project.
We’re not just talking static frames with planes passing through them, oh no. Simon used two hobby servos and some brackets to gimbal his Pi camera board. A DVB dongle allows the rig to listen in on the
Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast
(ADS-B) coming from the planes. This system is mandated for most commercial aircraft (deadlines for implementation vary). ADS-B consists of positioning data being broadcast from planes using known frequencies and protocols. Once [Simon] locks onto this data he can accomplish a lot, like keeping the plane in the center of the video, establishing which flight is being recorded, and automatically uploading the footage. With such a marvelously executed build we’re certain we will see more people giving it a try.
[Simon] did a great job with the writeup too. Not only did he include a tl;dr, but drilled down through a project summary and right to the gritty details. Well done documentation is itself worth celebrating! | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2187102",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T21:35:58",
"content": "Nice build! It’s only weakness seems to be rain.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2188224",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-11... | 1,760,375,990.381945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/hackerspace-tours-cambridge-makespace/ | Hackerspace Tours: Cambridge Makespace | Jasmine Brackett | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"cambridge",
"cambridge makespace",
"hackerspace tours",
"uk",
"uk hackerspace"
] | Part of our whirlwind UK visit took us to Cambridge, where we had the joyous opportunity to check out
Cambridge Makespace
. The main space was formerly part of the Institute for Manufacturing Robot Lab at Cambridge University, so it has a long heritage of supporting engineering innovation.
There was some excitement when we turned up, as a second LS6090 PRO Laser Cutter had just been delivered. As one of the most used items in the space, they needed a pair. They were situated in the largest work room which also included soldering stations, co-working areas and some materials/tools storage.
Ahh, new laser cutter smell
Please be gentle
Laser cutter materials
At the space we had arranged to meet [Simon Jelley] and [Mark Mellors], who we recently featured when [Simon] responded to our call for
hoverboard tech in action
(we’ll see more about their projects later). Luckily [Mark] is a Makespace member and gave us the grand tour.
Cambridge Makespace opened it’s doors in March 2013 using grant funding and sponsorship from IdeaSpace, Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), ARM, TTP, Microsoft Research and Cambridge Science Centre. It now boasts around 200 fee paying members who have 24/7 access to the 4000 sqft workshop and event space.
There is a separate machining room which has a large format CNC, Warco mill, lathe, and the usual wood working tools. Each piece of
equipment
in the space has a
tool class
and owners. Tool class red means high risk (to members or the equipment) and a member needs to be trained before use. Orange items pose moderate risk so training is optional, and green is low risk. Owners do basic maintenance and train new members. It all works out quite nicely.
Screen printer and sewing machine
Knitting machine
Tuck shop
The several other rooms include a large classroom/function room, a small sewing/knitting/printing & embossing room, the Cake Space (kitchen) with a large supply of tuck & pot noodle, and quite a lot of corridor which houses racks with member storage boxes.
Wayne Keenan playing against Ben
MeArm obstacle on the Cannybot track
Cannybots – look at them go!
Robert Karpinski’s Battle Bot
Martin De Selincourt’s Stirling Engine
[Brian’s] Blinkenlights and Naughty or nice box
Basebot robot
We saw a lot of great projects from members including a see-thru Stirling engine, battle bots, a
BaseBot
(which will be entered in to
pi-wars
), and [Brian’s] naughty or nice box. Ben spent quite a lot of time playing with the
Cannybot
line following robots that you can play like
Scaletrix
using a gamepad or your smart phone.
Hoverbot can only be tamed by mugs of tea
Hoverbot in flight
Hoverbot
We had also asked [Simon] and [Mark] to bring in some of the projects we had seen on their site like the
Nixie Clock
,
Diamagnetic Magnetic Levitation
, and the
Peggy Station Clock
. However, we were really excited to see the
Hoverbot
in action. For it’s size, it made quite a lot of noise once it got going. They have been refining the design and we’re hoping that we might see a rideable version in the future.
Missing something?
Put your stuff away
Soldering station
Dot Matix
Cult of Done Manifesto
Embossing machine with many heads
Babel fish
Cake Space (AKA the kitchen)
Padauk Nixie Clock
Peggy Station Clock
Diamagnetic Magnetic Levitation
Diamagnetic Magnetic Levitation
Wood workshop
Warco Mill instructions
Wood workshop
Do not be on fire
3D print of Hack Hitchin’s potential space
http://hackhitchin.org.uk/ | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2186831",
"author": "Gordon",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T18:56:38",
"content": "Very inpirational.Hopefully ours will be as good in time.Lots of good ideas for us to look at.http://southlondonmakerspace.org/2014/11/04/week-2-the-get-in/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,375,991.104209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/improving-the-t-962-reflow-oven/ | Improving The T-962 Reflow Oven | Brian Benchoff | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"firmware",
"reflow",
"reflow controller",
"reflow oven",
"T-962",
"tool"
] | The T-962A is a very popular reflow oven available through the usual kinda-shady retail channels. It’s pretty cheap, and therefore popular, and the construction actually isn’t abysmal. The controller for this oven is downright terrible, and [wj]
has been working on a replacement firmware for the horribly broken one
provided with this oven. It’s open source, and the only thing you need to update your oven is a TTL/UART interface.
[WJ] bought his T-962A even after seeing some of the negative reviews that suggested replacing the existing controller and display. This is not in true hacker fashion – there’s already a microcontroller and display on the board.
The new firmware uses the existing hardware and adds a very necessary modification: stock, the oven makes the assumption that the cold-junction of the thermocouples is at 20°C. The controller sits on top of an oven with two TRIACs nearby, so this isn’t the case, making the temperature calibration of the oven slightly terrible.
After poking around the board, [WJ] found an LPC2000-series microcontroller and a spare GPIO pin for a 1-wire temperature sensor. The temperature sensor is placed right next to the terminal block for the thermocouples for proper temperature sensing.
All the details of updating the firmware
appear on a wiki
, and the only thing required to update the firmware is a serial/USB/UART converter. A much better solution than ripping out the controller and replacing it with a custom one. | 172 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "2186483",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T15:24:34",
"content": "VERY nicely done. I’ve seen replacement controllers marketed, and it always seemed like a shame nobody had figured out how to reprogram the built in controller. Bravo!",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,375,991.278315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/hdmi-out-with-a-brick-game-boy/ | HDMI Out With A Brick Game Boy | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"game boy",
"Game Boy LCD",
"hdmi",
"super game boy",
"vga"
] | A few years ago, some vastly clever people figured out how to listen in on the LCD display on the classic brick Game Boy from 1989. There have been marked improvements over the years, including a few people developing VGA out for the classic Game Boy. Now,
the bar has been raised
with an HDMI adapter for the Game Boy, designed in such a way that turns everyone’s favorite battery hog into a portable console.
Your classic beige or cleverly named Color Game Boy is composed of two halves. The rear half contains all the important circuitry – the CPU, cartridge connector, and the rest of the smarts that make the Game Boy game. The front half is fairly simple in comparison, just an LCD and a few buttons. By designing an adapter that goes between these two halves, [Zane] and [Joshua] were able to stuff enough circuitry inside the Game Boy to convert the signals going to the LCD to HDMI. Plug that into your TV, and you have a huge modern version of the
Super Game Boy
, no SNES required.
The HDMIBoy also breaks out the buttons to the classic NES controller connector. With HDMI out and a controller input, the old-school Game Boy become a portable if somehow even more brick-like console. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2186237",
"author": "Frank Cohen",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T12:58:54",
"content": "This is a pretty neat idea, I have a couple old brick Gameboys sitting in a drawer and I’d consider picking one of these up if it wasn’t so pricey. A DIY option would be cool, especially considering t... | 1,760,375,990.508673 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/darth-vader-magic-8-ball/ | Darth Vader Magic 8 Ball | Elliot Williams | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"8-ball",
"animatronic",
"Darth Vader",
"samples"
] | Imagine that your wife likes Darth Vader and wants help making important life choices. (Who doesn’t?) [bithead942] solves both problems in one project by gutting a Lego clock and
making a talking animatronic Darth Vader 8-Ball-style oracle
. Now his wife can simply press Darth’s head and her decision-making is handled by the Dark Side of the Force.
You can see the result in the
video
below the break.
The internals consist mainly of an Arduino Nano, a WTV020SD WAV playback chip, and some swanky servos. [bithead942] took a Dremel to the existing clock interior and found a way to make it all fit. The cloak helped, and the speaker was a good fit for the previous clock’s display.
Then he used IMDB and combed through the Star Wars movies to find Darth Vader quotes that kinda sound like the 8-Ball’s answers. As [bithead942] mentions Darth Vader doesn’t really dwell much on the positive, so finding instances where he says “yes” was hard work. This is in contrast to the
original 8 Ball
which has a brighter outlook than a cheerleader on Prozac, but there’s a reason they call it the Dark Side.
We really like the way the waist and arm servos work together to bring Darth to life. The added oak base with pull-out instruction card not only makes Darth look fancy, but prevents him from falling over when he leans forward to talk. All in all, a really nice build and well written-up with difficulties and their solutions. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2186016",
"author": "Kaj",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T11:03:22",
"content": "Perhaps you should do a find/replace on Darth and replace them with Vader. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2186506",
"author": "Irish",
"times... | 1,760,375,991.686205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/a-16-voice-homebrew-polyphonic-synth/ | A 16-voice Homebrew Polyphonic Synth | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"arm",
"LPC",
"LPC1311",
"m3",
"synth",
"synthesizer"
] | Homebrew synths – generating a waveform in a microcontroller, adding a MIDI interface, and sending everything out to a speaker – are great projects that will teach you a ton about how much you can do with a tiny, low power uC. [Mark]
created what is probably the most powerful homebrew synth
we’ve seen, all while using a relatively low-power microcontroller.
The hardware for this project is an LPC1311 ARM Cortex M3 running at 72 MHz. Turning digital audio into something a speaker can understand is handled by a
Wolfson WM8762
, a stereo 24-bit DAC. Both of these chips can be bought for under one pound in quantity one, something you can’t say about the chips used in olde-tyme synths.
The front panel, shown below, uses 22 pots and two switches to control the waveform, ADSR, filter, volume, and pan. To save pins on the microcontroller, [Mark] used a few analog multiplexers. As far as circuitry goes, it’s a fairly simple setup, with the only truly weird component being the optocoupler for the MIDI input.
The software for the synth is written mostly in assembly. In a previous version where most of the code was written in C, everything was a factor of two slower. Doing all the voice generation in assembly allowed for twice as many simultaneous voices.
It’s a great project, and compared to some of the other synth builds we’ve seen before, [Mark]’s project is at the top of its class. A quick search of the archives says this is probably the most polyphonic homebrew synth we’ve seen, and listening to the sound sample on the project page, it sounds pretty good, to boot. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2185710",
"author": "matseng",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T08:10:40",
"content": "I like the idea of having the analog muxes directly at the frontpanel pcb in order to reduce the number of connections between the pcbs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,375,990.610555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/custom-raspberry-pi-thermostat-controller/ | Custom Raspberry Pi Thermostat Controller | Rick Osgood | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi",
"relays",
"tcpip",
"temperature",
"thermostat",
"web interface"
] | Thermostats can be a pain. They often only look at one sensor in a multi-room home and then set the temperature based on that. The result is one room that’s comfortable and other rooms that are not. Plus, you generally have to get up off the couch to change the temperature. In this day and age, who wants to do that? You could buy an off-the-shelf solution, but sometimes hacking up your own custom hardware is just so much more fun.
[redditseph] did exactly that by
modifying his home thermostat
to be controlled by a Raspberry Pi. The temperature is controlled by a simple web interface that runs on the Pi. This way, [redditseph] can change the temperature from any room in his home using a computer or smart phone. He also built multi-sensor functionality into his design. This means that the Pi can take readings from multiple rooms in the home and use this data to make more intelligent decisions about how to change the temperature.
The Pi needed a way to actually talk to the thermostat. [redditseph] made this work with a relay module. The Pi flips one side of the relays, which then in turn switches the buttons that came built into the thermostat. The Pi is basically just emulating a human pressing buttons. His thermostat had terminal blocks inside, so [redditseph] didn’t have to risk damaging it by soldering anything to it. The end result is a functional design that has a sort of cyberpunk look to it.
[via
Reddit
] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2185227",
"author": "healthy",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T04:13:04",
"content": "dirty, but i guess it works!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2185628",
"author": "hendersonn",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T07:25:43",
"conte... | 1,760,375,990.667983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/anthropomorphizing-microprocessors/ | Anthropomorphizing Microprocessors | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"microprocessor",
"mpu",
"RCA",
"RCA 1802"
] | Vintage microprocessors usually do something, be it just sitting in an idle loop, calculating something, or simply looking cool in a collector’s cabinet. [Lee] has come up with a vastly cooler use for an old microprocessor:
he’s anthropomorphized it
by wiring LEDs up to the address lines and arranged those LEDs into a face. After wiring up the right circuit, the face of LEDs slowly changes expressions, making this tiny little board react to random electronic fluctuations.
The CPU used for this project is the RCA 1802, best known for being the smarts in the COSMAC Elf, a very early microprocessor training computer, but still capable of teaching the basics of computing today, albeit on a processor that isn’t made any more with an instruction set that is barely supported by anything modern.
[Lee] apparently has a lot of these 1802s, and to show off how simple a microcomputer can get, he created the strangest use for a CPU we’ve ever seen. You can’t program this face of LEDs; the data bus is left floating so random values are ‘displayed’ on the face. Only one of the data lines is pulled high. This prevents the data bus from ever being 0x00, the HALT instruction.
If you’re looking for something a little more useful to do with an RCA 1802 MPU, [Lee] also has a COSMAC Elf membership card. It’s a reproduction of the famous COSMAC Elf,
repackaged into a board the size of an Altoid tin
. It has the 1802 onboard, a few switches and blinkenlights, and a parallel port for interacting with peripherals. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2184664",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2014-11-27T00:59:36",
"content": "“The 1802 is being clocked at 1 Hz”…That is a seriously slow processor. I’ve never heard of any CPU that could be slowed down that much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,375,990.901344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/an-engineers-guide-to-cooking-the-perfect-turkey/ | An Engineer’s Guide To Cooking The Perfect Turkey | Sarah Petkus | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"cooking turkey",
"engineering thanksgiving",
"thanksgiving turkey",
"thermo turkey"
] | It’s almost that special time of year again where we all get together and use our families as guinea pigs for new cooking techniques and untested recipes! Some of us are seasoned pros at preparing the big bird of tradition, while others are still experimenting year after year with hopes of nailing the optimal method by chance. [Travis Mikjaniec] approaches this culinary conundrum from an engineer (of aerodynamicist)’s perspective, with the goal of scientifically discerning through simulation the best method to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey; no long term trial and error required.
As the basics of cooking dictate, the rate at which the meat of a turkey will cook is determined by where the hot air is flowing and gathering inside the oven. Areas of the bird subjected to consistent fresh heat will cook faster and are more likely to dry out over time, so it’s important that the hot air is equally dispersed for an evenly cooked, juicy turkey. To figure out the trajectory of the air and the point where it begins to cool down, [Travis] modeled the naked bird in CAD, complete with the hallow cavity within. He then recreated the baking conditions to use in FloEFD, in this case a standard convection oven with a fan located in back. To compare cooking techniques against one another, he ran a series of streamline simulations with combinations of different cooking variables, like how high the bird was lifted off the baking sheet and whether or not the inner cavity had the added thermal mass of stuffing or not. These chaotic diagrams of simulated air flow helped visualize which conditions were conducive for even heating.
If you’re interested in knowing the verdict of [Travis’]
trials with virtual turkeys
, he offers thorough documentation on his investigative blog post. His insight might help improve your cooking game plan for Thanksgiving or teach you something you didn’t know about the aerodynamics of a fifteen pound headless bird… which is something you can talk about while sitting around the table. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2184349",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T21:45:59",
"content": "The situation on the bottom of the bird is actually worse than [Travis] concluded, because he didn’t model the effects of evaporative cooling. You have the juices cooking out of the bird and running to ... | 1,760,375,991.3583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/chicken-powered-pendulum/ | Chicken-powered Pendulum | Elliot Williams | [
"clock hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"chick",
"chicken",
"clock",
"cute",
"escapement",
"mechanical engineering",
"pendulum",
"toy"
] | Every once in a while we get sent a link that’s so cute that we just have to post it. For instance:
this video
from [Ludic Science]. It’s a wind-up chicken toy that kicks a pendulum back and forth. No more, no less.
But before you start screaming “NOT A HACK!” in the comments below, think for a second about what’s going on here. The bird has a spring inside, and a toothed wheel that is jammed and released by the movement of the bird’s foot (an
escapement
mechanism). This makes the whole apparatus very similar to a real pendulum clock.
Heck, the chick toy itself is pretty cool. It’s nose-heavy, so that under normal conditions it would tip forward. But when it’s wound up, tipping forward triggers the escapement and makes it hop, tipping it backward in the process and resetting the trigger. The top-heavy chicken is an inverted pendulum!
And have a look, if you will indulge, at the very nice low-tech way he creates the pivot: a bent piece of wire, run through a short aluminum tube, held in place by a couple of beads. Surely other pivots are lower-friction, but the advantage of using a rod and sleeve like this is that the pendulum motion is constrained to a plane so that it never misses the chicken’s feet.
Our only regret is that he misses (by
that
much) the obvious reference to a “naked chick” at the end of the video. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2177255",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T00:09:17",
"content": "The future of free energy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2177321",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T00:33:02",
... | 1,760,375,991.409181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/simple-thermal-imager-with-a-lepton-module/ | Simple Thermal Imager With A Lepton Module | Ethan Zonca | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"flir",
"Flir lepton",
"thermal camera",
"thermal imaging"
] | [Andrew] designed a
simple thermal imager
using the FLIR Lepton module, an STM32F4 Nucleo development board, and a Gameduino 2 LCD. The whole design is connected using jumper wires, making it easy to duplicate if you happen to have all the parts lying around (who doesn’t have a bunch of thermal imaging modules lying around!?).
The STM32F4 communicates with the Lepton module using a driver that [Andrew] wrote over a 21MHz SPI bus. The driver parses SPI packets and assembles frames as they are received. Images can be mapped to pseudocolor using a couple different color maps that [Andrew] created. His code also supports min/max scaling to map the pseudocolor over the dynamic range present in the image.
Unfortunately the Lepton module that [Andrew]’s design is based is only sold in large quantities. [Andrew] suggests ripping one out of a FLIR ONE iPhone case which are more readily available. We look forward to seeing what others do with these modules once they are a bit easier to buy. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2177057",
"author": "Mateus",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T22:11:30",
"content": "We never know… the avarage person would ask who has a bunch of devboards lying around .-.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2177134",
"author": "gro... | 1,760,375,991.566458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/central-european-computer-collecting/ | Central European Computer Collecting | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"computer",
"computer collecting",
"PMI-80",
"vintage computer",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | During Hackaday’s short trip to Czech, we were lucky enough to run into someone who had recently had one of his projects featured on Hackaday.
It’s [Martin]’s multi-target IDE for 8-bit CPUs
, written entirely in JavaScript, and a full development suite for anything with a 6502, 6800, 6809, Z80, 8080, and 8085. [Martin] was kind enough to sit down and give us the scoop on why he’s interested in old computers, and why he developed his 8-bit IDE project,
ASM80
.
[Martin] grew up in the days of computer magazines, and originally wanted to build his own computer. That plan didn’t work out, but his parents did get him a Speccy in 1986, but the love of old hardware is still there. Over the years, this evolved into computer collecting, with the old ZX Spectrum, an Commodore 64, ORICs, and Acorns rounding out his collection.
As we learned at the Computeum
, there the middle of Europe had computers that just aren’t seen on the English-speaking Internet, and [Martin]’s collection is no exception.
In addition to doing some very cool stuff for some very old computers, [Martin] also donated something to the
Hackaday Hackaspace
. It’s a
PMI-80
, a single board computer made for university computer science students, and basically a KIM-1, but based on a Czechoslovak clone of the Intel 8080 made by
Tesla
. There is 1k of RAM and 1k of ROM on this board, a calculator keypad, and a few seven segment displays. For the time, it was a great ‘student’ computer, and not really rare in Europe, but this is the first one I’ve seen on my side of the Atlantic.
You can see some pics of the PMI-80 below with [Martin]’s interview. [Martin] also promised to write-up a short history of classic central european computers, a subject there isn’t much written about in the anglosphere. We’ll post a link to that when he finishes that up.
PMI-80 | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2176631",
"author": "Grr",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T18:24:52",
"content": "Why doesn’t this website scale to my screen?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2180374",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T16:37:... | 1,760,375,991.513454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/direct-digital-synthesis-dds-explained-by-bil-herd/ | Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) Explained By [Bil Herd] | Bil Herd | [
"Featured",
"hardware",
"how-to",
"Slider"
] | [
"AD9387",
"AD9837",
"autonomous quadcopter",
"cpld",
"dac",
"dds",
"direct digital synthesis",
"electronics",
"fpga",
"frequency generator",
"FSK",
"Look Up Table",
"LUT",
"PSK",
"r2r",
"sine wave"
] | One of the acronyms you may hear thrown around is DDS which stands for Direct Digital Synthesis. DDS can be as simple as taking a digital value — a collection of ones and zeroes — and processing it through a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) circuit. For example, if the digital source is the output of a counter that counts up to a maximum value and resets then the output of the DAC would be a ramp (analog signal) that increases in voltage until it resets back to its starting voltage.
This concept can be very useful for creating signals for use in a project or as a poor-man’s version of a signal or function generator. With this in mind I set out here to demonstrate some basic waveforms using programmable logic for flexibility, and a small collection of resistors to act as a cheap DAC. In the end I will also demonstrate an off-the-shelf and inexpensive DDS chip that can be used with any of the popular micro-controller boards available that support SPI serial communication.
All of the topics covered in the video are also discussed further after the break.
DDS Demo Hardware
I chose to use Programmable Logic (PL) to build the various circuits as it was quick to configure and didn’t require very much construction while being extremely flexible. It also didn’t require any software programming, IDE, target processor board, etc. This might be an interesting project for you if you are interested in learning or exercising some basic Programmable Logic skills, here I use Altera’s free Quartus II Web version and an inexpensive programmer clone. For the first couple of examples I am using a Complex Programmable Logic Device. (CPLD)
Basic Signal Generation
Altera CPLD DDS
Creating waveforms can also be done with dedicated logic, for example a CD4060 oscillator/counter can be used instead of the PL counter or also a microcontroller with I/O ports could be used. Note that the microcontroller version does better the more assistance it gets from dedicated peripherals such as a timer or a timer/counter that reloads without waiting for the processor to respond and reset it.
DDS Ramp and Square Wave
R/2R Ladder
Here are two waveforms created with a simple counter and resistors organized as an R/2R ladder. As the output of the counter increments in binary, the resulting voltage divider created by the interconnected resistors and outputs creates consistent steps between each of the counts; 256 in this case due to 8 outputs being used. Taking the most significant bit also demonstrates a symmetrical square wave.
Building Different Signals is Easy
If the counter were to count downwards upon reaching its maximum count instead of resetting to zero, then a triangle waveform would be generated. So far that’s three waveforms using just a counter and some resistors.
Triangle Waveform DDS
R/2R Ladder with Comparator
On a slightly different topic, using just some I/O lines, an R/2R ladder, and an analog comparator (ala LM339) a basic type of Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) can be made. Don’t misread this, we were talking about going from digital to analog before but now we’re talking about going from analog to digital.
To describe it simply, a processor or digital counter is connected to the R/2R ladder which is connected to the input of an analog comparator. The voltage to be measured is then connected to the other input of the comparator and then the counter proceeds to count up until the R/2R ladder voltage equals or exceeds the voltage being measured. At that time the comparator trips and the equivalent digital value of the analog voltage being measured is represented by the counter value feeding the R/2R ladder.
Assuming that the voltage to be measured is somewhat stable, the process can be repeated to track the voltage as it (slowly) changes or the count can be reversed until the comparator clears and then reverses. This might be useful for measurements such as monitoring a battery voltage level, etc.
While continuing the use of an adjunctive comparator, a simple voltage to frequency converter can be made by having the counter change directions when the comparator trips. This is not a perfect converter (nothing I do is perfect, life and engineering is a compromise) as very notably the amplitude of the triangle waveform changes in amplitude, but a full voltage square wave would be easy to generate.
Basic Principles for Sine Wave Generation
DDS Sinewave
Finally we can create a sinewave through the addition of a look-up-table that contains the appropriate data to approximate a mathematical sine function. A look-up-table (LUT) is simply a piece of memory such as Read Only Memory (ROM) in series with the data, in our case the incrementing counter represents an incrementing address, and the data output is the result of a pre-calculated Sine table.
For this I have switched to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which has better internal memory and the ability to initialize the memory with the contents of the Sine table I created for the LUT. In the schematic for the interior of my FPGA the LUT can be seen off to the right just in front of the output pins.
FPGA w LUT
Programming Complex Waveforms
One advantage of a Sine wave created by DDS is that it can be generated at a wide range of frequencies and keep its same shape (low distortion).
Just for fun and to demonstrate something that can done easily with DDS I created a non-symmetrical waveform. Looking carefully you can see two cycles of square wave, two of ramp and then two of sine wave. Any waveform that can be “drawn” in memory can be created this way.
Square-ramp-sine
Other DDS Hardware Options
And finally, if you need a DDS without the muss and fuss of making it out of components yourself, there is a selection of DDS components available that are low cost and accurate. Shown here is an Analog Devices 9387 in an evaluation board from the manufacturer. It is SPI serial interface driven and so can be connected to most available single board controllers.
DDS Eval AD9837
Varying the frequency and phase of a signal by microprocessor control is integral to a DDS system. The software that comes with the evaluation the board shows that two frequencies and two phase offsets can be stored allowing
Frequency Shift Keying
(FSK) and
Phase Shift Keying
(PSK) as well as sweeping between two frequencies. This is a useful capability, for example the frequency response of a circuit such as a filter can be observed by sweeping a frequency on the input and then measuring the output on an oscilloscope.
Eval 9837
Go Deeper
If you want to know more about DDS there is a lot of information available on manufacturer’s websites and the Internet. Advanced topics to search for include embedded sub-modulation and use with phase lock loops to reduce phase noise, up-conversion using multipliers, and other synthesis circuits used in RF telecommunications. | 42 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2176258",
"author": "Ross Reed",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T15:15:00",
"content": "I’ve been doing something similar in minecraft. A counter that goes up and down at variable speeds with some processing to add 2 waves together. I also have the ability to shift phase.http://img.photobu... | 1,760,375,991.650849 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/fixing-ghost-touch-in-the-oneplus-one/ | Fixing Ghost Touch In The OnePlus One | Brian Benchoff | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"digitizer",
"OnePlus One",
"repair",
"touch",
"touchscreen"
] | The OnePlus One is the flagship phone killer for 2014, available only by invite, and thus extremely cool. So far it’s a limited production run and there will, of course, be problems with the first few thousand units. When [vantt1] got his One, he noticed a few issues with the touch screen. Some touches wouldn’t be registered, typing was unpredictable, and generally, the touchscreen was unusable. [vantt] had seen this before, though,
so with a complete teardown and a quick fix
he was able to turn this phone into something great.
[vantt] realized the symptoms of a crappy touchscreen
were extremely similar
to an iPad mini that had recently had its digitizer replace. From the Foxconn plant, the digitizer in the iPad mini is well insulated from the aluminium enclosure. When the screen and digitizer are replaced, the cable connecting it to the rest of the iPad can come in contact with the case. This leads to the same symptoms – missed touches, and unpredictable typing.
Figuring the same cure will fix the same symptoms, [vantt] tore apart his OnePlus One and carefully taped off the digitizer flex cable. Reassembling the phone, everything worked beautifully, and without any extra screws in the reassembly process. You can’t do better than that. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2175919",
"author": "BillBrasskey",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T12:42:05",
"content": "Congrats on the fix and for getting it all back together without extra screws (as HaD said). I love the simple tweak fixes like this :) Enjoy your phone!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,375,991.465704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/custom-filaments-with-a-filastruder/ | Custom Filaments With A Filastruder | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing filament",
"abs",
"filament",
"Filastruder",
"masterbatch"
] | A while ago, when 3D printing was the new hotness, a few people looked around and said, ‘our printers are open source, why can’t we just build the machines that make our 3D printing filament?’ There was a $40,000 prize for the first person to build an open source filament extruder, resulting in a few filament fabrication machines being released into the wild. [Rupin] over in the Mumbi hackerspace has one of these filament extruders – a Filastruder – and
decided to take a look at what it could do
.
The experimentations began with a few kilograms of ABS pellets he found at the market, with bags of red, blue, green, and white masterbatch pellets showing up at the Hackerspace. Experimenting with these pellets, [Rupin] was able to create some very nice looking filament that printed well and changed color over the course of a print.
There were a limitations of the process, though: the filastruder has a long melt zone, so colors will invariably mix. If you’re thinking about doing a red to blue transition with filament created on a Filastruder, you’ll end up with a filament with a little bit of red, a little bit of blue, and a lot of a weird purple color. The time to create this filament is also incredibly long; over the course of two days, [Rupin] was able to make about half a kilo of filament.
Still, the results look fantastic, and now that [Rupin] has a source for masterbatch and ABS pellets, he’s able to have a steady supply of custom color filament at the hackerspace. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2175706",
"author": "me",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T10:52:52",
"content": "OMG. So not a hack. Now in the news… Man uses red Car to drive on brown road, in Mumbai, and car gets dirt on it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,375,991.730308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/cairo-hackerspace-gets-a-14-projector/ | Cairo Hackerspace Gets A $14 Projector | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"lcd",
"persentation",
"projector",
"slide projector",
"tft",
"video"
] | The Cairo hackerspace needed a projector for a few presentations during their Internet of Things build night, and of course Friday movie night. They couldn’t afford a real projector, but these are hackers. Of course they’ll be able to come up with something. They did. They found an old slide projector made in West Germany
and turned it into something capable of displaying video
.
The projector in question was a DIA projector that was at least forty years old. They found it during a trip to the Egyptian second-hand market. Other than the projector, the only other required parts were
a 2.5″ TFT display from Adafruit
and a Nokia smartphone.
All LCDs are actually transparent, and if you’ve ever had to deal with a display with a broken backlight, you’ll quickly realize that
any
backlight will work, like the one found in a slide projector. By carefully removing the back cover of the display, the folks at the Cairo hackerspace were able to get a small NTSC display that would easily fit inside their projector.
After that, it was simply a matter of putting the LCD inside the display, getting the focus right, and mounting everything securely. The presentations and movie night were saved, all from a scrap heap challenge. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2175163",
"author": "chuck",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T06:51:10",
"content": "A few years back I built a small still projector made from a high intensity LED flashlight element, a cheap digital picture key chain and one of those business card sized Fresnel magnifiers from the drug st... | 1,760,375,992.158876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/a-simple-runners-gps-logger/ | A Simple Runner’s GPS Logger | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"gps hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"GPS logger",
"logger",
"openstreetmap",
"runner",
"running"
] | [Daniel] received a grant from the University of Minnesota’s ECE Envision Fund and was thus responsible for creating
something.
He built a runner’s GPS logger
, complete with a screen that will show a runner the current distance travelled, the time taken to travel that distance, and nothing else. No start/stop, no pause, nothing. Think of it as a stripped-down GPS logger, a perfect example of a minimum viable product, and a great introduction to getting maps onto a screen with an ARM micro.
The build consists of an LPC1178 ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller, a display, GPS unit, and a battery with not much else stuffed into the CNC milled case. The maps come from
OpenStreetMap
and are stored on a microSD card. Most of the files
are available on GitHub
, and the files for the case design will be uploaded shortly.
The CNC machine [Daniel] used to create the enclosure is a work of art unto itself.
We featured it last year
, and it’s good enough to do PCBs with 10 mil traces. Excellent work, although with that ability, we’re wondering why the PCB for the Runner’s GPS is OSH Park purple. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2174776",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T04:24:00",
"content": ">Excellent work, although with that ability, we’re wondering why the PCB for the Runner’s GPS is OSH Park purple.I’m not sure this is universally the case, but the homemade boards I’ve built, and I’... | 1,760,375,992.09687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/hackaday-links-november-23-2014/ | Hackaday Links: November 23, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"crowdfunding",
"Espruino",
"Espruino Pico",
"gps",
"gps tracker",
"javascript",
"Midwest RepRap Festival",
"mooltipass",
"MRRF",
"OSRC",
"remote control",
"Unity2D",
"velostat"
] | The 2015 Midwest RepRap Festival, a.k.a. the MRRF (pronounced murf)
was just announced a few hours ago
. It will be held in beautiful Goshen, Indiana. Yes, that’s in the middle of nowhere and you’ll learn to dodge Amish buggies when driving around Goshen, but surprisingly there were 1000 people
when we attended last year
. We’ll be there again.
A few activists in St. Petersburg
flushed GPS trackers down the toilet
. These trackers were equipped with radios that would send out their position, and
surprise, surprise,
they ended up in the ocean.
[Stacy] has been tinkering around with Unity2D and decided to make a DDR-style game. She needed a DDR mat, and force sensitive resistors are expensive. What did she end up using?
Velostat, conductive thread, and alligator clips
.
You know the Espruino, the little microcontroller board that’s basically JavaScript on a USB stick?
Yeah, that’s cool
. Now you can do
remote access through a telnet server
letting you write and debug code over the net.
The Open Source RC is a beautiful RC transmitter with buttons and switches everywhere, a real display, and force feedback sticks.
It was a Hackaday Prize entry
, and has had a few crowdfunding campaigns.
Now its hit Indiegogo again
.
Speaking of crowdfunding campaigns,
The Mooltipass
, the designed-on-Hackaday offline password keeper, only has a little less than two weeks until
its crowdfunding campaign ends
. [Mathieu] and the rest of the team are about two-thirds there, with a little more than half of the campaign already over. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2174156",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-11-24T01:48:30",
"content": "St. Petersburg has such beautiful canals, now that I know they’re full of shit they lose their charm. Still good on these guys for showing how shitty (ha, I made a funny) Leningrad’s sewers are.",
"... | 1,760,375,992.199735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/sprite_tms-keyboard-plays-snake/ | [Sprite_TM]’s Keyboard Plays Snake | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"cherry mx",
"Coolermaster",
"firmware",
"firmware update",
"keyboard",
"led",
"mechanical keyboard"
] | Hackaday Prize judge, hacker extraordinaire, and generally awesome dude [Sprite_TM] spends a lot of time at his computer, and that means a lot of time typing on his keyboard. He recently picked up a board with the latest fad in the world of keyboards, a board with individually addressable LEDs. He took this board to work and a colleague jokingly said, ‘You’ve had this keyboard for 24 hours now, and it has a bunch of LEDs and some arrow keys. I’m disappointed you haven’t got Snake running on it yet.” Thus began the quest
to put the one game found on all Nokia phones on a keyboard
.
The keyboard in question is a Coolermaster Quickfire Rapid-I, a board that’s marketed as having an ARM Cortex CPU. Pulling apart the board, [Sprite] found a bunch of MX Browns, some LEDs, and a 72MHz ARM Cortex-M3 with 127k of Flash and 32k of RAM. That’s an incredible amount of processing power for a keyboard, and after finding the SWD port, [Sprite] attempted to dump the Flash. The security bit was set. There was another way, however.
Coolermaster is actively working on the firmware, killing bugs, adding lighting modes, and putting all these updates on their website. The firmware updater is distributed as an executable with US and EU versions; the EU version has another key. Figuring the only difference between these versions would be the firmware itself, [Sprite] got his hands on both versions, did a binary diff, and found only one 16k block of data at the end of the file was different. There’s the firmware. It was XOR encrypted, but that’s obvious if you know what to look for.
The firmware wasn’t complete, though; there were jumps to places outside the code [Sprite] had and a large block looked corrupted. There’s another thing you can do with an executable file: run it. With
USBPcap
running in the background while executing the firmware updater, [Sprite] could read exactly what was happening when the keyboard was updating. With a small executable that gets around the weirdness of the updater, [Sprite] had a backup copy of the keyboard’s firmware. Even if he bricked the keyboard, he could always bring it back to a stock state. It was time to program Snake.
The first part of writing new firmware was finding a place that had some Flash and RAM to store the new code. This wasn’t hard; there was 64k of Flash free and 28K of unused RAM. The calls to the Snake routine were modified from the variables the original firmware had. If, for example, the original keyboard had a call to change the PWM, [Sprite] could change that to the Snake routine.
Snake is fun, but with a huge, powerful ARM in a device that people will just plug into their keyboard, there’s a lot more you can do with a hacked keyboard. Keyloggers and a
BadUSB
are extremely possible, especially with firmware that can be updated from a computer. To counter that, [Sprite] added the requirement for a physical condition in order to enter Flash mode. Now, the firmware will only update for about 10 seconds after pressing the fn+f key combination.
There’s more to playing Snake on a keyboard; Sprite has also written a new lighting mode, a fluid simulation thingy that will surely annoy anyone who can’t touch type. You can see the videos of that below. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2173595",
"author": "Thomas Barth",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T22:05:26",
"content": "I was awaiting the presentation from the event in munich. Isn’t that uploaded?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2173613",
"author": "Br... | 1,760,375,992.427415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/down-the-rabbit-hole-of-stm32-clock-options/ | Down The Rabbit Hole Of STM32 Clock Options | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"arduino christmas lights",
"clock source",
"datasheet",
"stm32",
"STM32F103"
] | Once you venture beyond the tame, comfortable walls of the 8-bit microcontroller world it can feel like you’re stuck in the jungle with a lot of unknown and oft scary hazards jut waiting to pounce. But the truth is that your horizons have expanded exponentially with the acceptable trade-off of increased complexity. That’s a pretty nice problem to have; the limitation becomes how much can you learn.
Here’s a great chance to expand your knowledge of the STM32 by
learning more about the system clock options available
. We’ve been working with STM32 chips for a few years now and still managed to find some interesting tidbits — like the fact that the High Speed External clock source accepts not just square waves but sine and triangle waves as well, and an interesting ‘gotcha’ about avoiding accidental overclocking. [Shawon M. Shahryiar] even covers one of our favorite subjects: watchdog timers (of which there are two different varieties on this chip). Even if this is not your go-to 32-bit chip family, most chips have similar clock source features so this reading will help give you a foothold when reading other datasheets.
There is a clock diagram at the top of that post which is small enough to be unreadable. You can get a better look at the diagram on page 12 of
this datasheet
. Oh, and just to save you the hassle of commenting on it, the chip shown above is not an f103… but it just happened to be sitting on our desk when we started writing. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2173618",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T22:19:21",
"content": "I bought a development board with a STM32FRET6 (from memory). It’s here –http://futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtmlThe supporting documentation that came with it is either in another language or a useless trans... | 1,760,375,992.557285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/icosaledron-a-20-sided-light-up-ball/ | IcosaLEDron: A 20-Sided Light Up Ball | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"ball",
"icosahedron",
"led",
"rgbLED",
"ws2812",
"ws2812b"
] | Tired of balls that are just balls, and not glowing geometric constructions of electronics and wonderment?
Get yourself an IcosaLEDron
, the latest in Platonic solids loaded up with RGB LEDs.
The folks at Afrit Labs wanted a fun, glowy device that would show off the capabilities of IMUs and MEMS accelerometers. They came up with a ball with a circuit board inside and twenty WS2812B RGB LEDs studded around its circumference
The frame of the ball is simply a set of twenty tessellated triangles that can be folded up during assembly. The outer shell of the ball is again printed in one piece, but fabricated out of transparent NinjaFlex, an extraordinarily odd, squishy, and likely indestructible material.
Inside the IcosaLEDron is a PCB loaded up with an ATMega328p, an accelerometer, a LiPo battery charger, and quite a bit of wiring. Once the ball is assembled and locked down, the squishy outer exterior is installed and turned into a throwable plaything.
If 20 sides and 20 LEDs aren’t enough,
how about a an astonishing 386-LED ball
that’s animated and knows its orientation? That’s a project from Null Space Labs, and looking at it in person is hypnotic.
via
Makezine | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2173071",
"author": "Eric Wieser (@EricWieser)",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T17:26:40",
"content": "The ball in that picture is neither a platonic solid nor 20-sided – it has 6 square faces and 32 triangular ones",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,375,992.241624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/using-the-esp8266-as-a-web-enabled-sensor/ | Using The ESP8266 As A Web-enabled Sensor | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"firmware",
"internet of things",
"sensor",
"wifi"
] | A few months ago, the ESP8266 came onto the scene as a cheap way to add WiFi to just about any project that had a spare UART. Since then, a few people have figured out how to get this neat chip running custom firmware, opening the doors to an Internet of Things based around an ESP8266. [Marc] and [Xavi]
just wrote up a quick tutorial
on how to turn the ESP8266 into a WiFi sensor platform that will relay the state of a GPIO pin to the Internet.
If you’re going to replicate this project, you won’t be using the stock firmware on the ESP. Instead of the stock firmware, [Marc] and [Xavi] are using
the Lua-based firmware
that allows for access to a few GPIOs on the device and scripting support to make application development easy. To upload this firmware to the ESP, [Marc] and [Xavi] needed a standard FTDI USB to serial converter, a few AT commands through a terminal program, and a few bits of wire.
The circuit [Marc] and [Xavi] ended up demoing for this tutorial is a simple webpage that’s updated every time a button is pressed. This will be installed in
the door of their hackerspace
in Barcelona, but already they have a great example of the ESP8266 in use. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2172319",
"author": "Mathieu Stephan",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T12:05:04",
"content": "Hang on guys…. My esp8266-03 development board should soon be produced and available.Includes a ft230x USB uart adapter, a button to jump to the bootloader and a breadboard!",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,375,992.503993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/23/cosplaying-as-hal-9000/ | Cosplaying As HAL 9000 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"2001",
"2001: A Space Odyssey",
"cosplay",
"wearable"
] | 2001: A Space Odyssey
is one of the greatest films of all time, but unlike every other masterpiece of SciFi, you’re not going find many people cosplaying as characters from the movie. Going as a monolith to a con would be
hilarious
, but [jacqueslelezard] had an even better idea in mind:
a HAL 9000 costume
.
The costume itself is just bits of painted cardboard, shiny material (we’d go with aluminum tape), some black mosquito netting to see out of, and in a stroke of brilliance, a tablet that will display HAL’s unblinking eye to con attendees. If you’re extraordinarily clever, it might be possible to sample lines from the movie and play them through the tablet. This is, unfortunately, the best way to replicate the voice of HAL, at least until someone gets the money to have [
Douglas Rain
] sit in for some voice work.
The only drawback to the costume is the propensity for the wearer to hit their head on doorways and low thresholds. This problem could be solved simply by increasing the size of the costume, but then you’re back in monolith territory. So, what do you want to be, a murderous computer or a galactic swiss army knife? | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2172010",
"author": "ThunderSqueak",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T09:34:28",
"content": "I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good a... | 1,760,375,992.608681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/scope-noob-probing-alternating-current/ | Scope Noob: Probing Alternating Current | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ac",
"alternating current",
"oscilloscope",
"scope noob",
"wall wart"
] | I finally did it. After years of wanting one (and pushing off projects because I didn’t have one) I finally bought an oscilloscope. Over the years I read and watched a ton of content about how to use a scope, you’d think I would know what I’m doing. Turns out that, like anything, hands-on time with an oscilloscope quickly highlighted the gaping holes in my knowledge. And so we begin this recurring column called
Scope Noob
. Each installment will focus on a different oscilloscope-related topic. This week it’s measuring a test signal and probing Alternating Current.
Measuring a Signal
Hey, measuring signals is what oscilloscopes are all about, right? My very first measurement was, of course, the calibration signal built into the scope. As [Chris Meyer] at Sector67 hackerspace here in Madison put it, you want to make sure you can probe a known signal before venturing into the unknown.
In this case I’m using channel 2. Everything on this scope is color-coded, so the CH2 probe has blue rings on it, the probe jack has a blue channel label, and the trace drawn on the screen is seen in blue. I’m off to a fantastic start!
This scope, a Rigol 1054z, comes with an “auto” button which will detect the signal and adjust the divisions so that the waveform is centered on the display. To me this feels like a shortcut so I made sure to do all of this manually. I started with the “trigger” which is a voltage threshold at which the signal will be displayed on the screen. The menu button brings up options that will let you choose which channel to use as trigger. From there it was just a matter of adjusting the horizontal and vertical resolution and position before using the “cursor” function to measure the wave’s voltage and time.
I played around with the scope a bit more, measuring some PWM signals from a microcontroller. But you want to branch out. Because I don’t have a proper signal generator, the next logical thing to measure is alternating current in my home’s electrical system. I suppose you could call it a built-in sine wave source.
Probing Alternating Current
I sometimes take criticism for never throwing things away. Seven years ago we had a cat water fountain whose motor seized. It was powered by a 12V AC to AC converter seen here. Yep, I kept it and was somehow able to find it again for this project.
Of course at the time I thought I would build a clock that measures mains frequency to keep accurate time. This would have done the trick had I followed through. But for now I’m using it to protect me (and my fancy new scope) from accidental shock. I’ll still get the sine wave I’m looking for but with a source that is only 12V at 200 milliamps.
Don’t measure mains directly unless you have a good reason to do so.
Continuing on my adventure I plugged in the wall wart and connected the probe to one of the two wires coming out of it. But wait, what do I do with the probe’s reference clip? I know enough about home electrical to know that one prong of the plug is hot, the other is neutral. The clip itself is basically connected directly to mains ground. Bringing the two together
sounds like a really bad idea
.
This turns out to be a special case for oscilloscopes, and one that prompted me to think about writing this column. Had this been a 3-prong wall wart, connecting the probe’s reference clip to one of the wires would have been a very bad thing. Many 3-prong wall warts reference the mains earth ground on one of the outputs. If that were the case you could simply leave the clip unconnected as the chassis ground of your scope is already connected to mains ground via its own 3-prong power cord and the reference clip is a dead short to that. If you did need to probe AC using the reference clip you need an isolation transformer for your scope. There are bigger implications when probing a board powered from mains which [Dave Jones] does an excellent job of explaining. Make sure you check out his aptly named video:
How NOT to blow up your oscilloscope
.
As I understand it, and I hope you’ll weigh in with a comment below, since the wall wart I’m using has a transformer and no ground plug I’m fine using the ground clip of the probe in this case. Even though I’m clipping it to an AC line, the transformer prevents any kind of short between hot/neutral mains and earth ground (via the probe’s ground clip). What I don’t understand is why it’s okay to connect the transformed side of the 12V AC to mains ground?
At any rate, the screenshots above show my progress through this measurement. I first connected the probe without the ground clip and got the sad-looking trace seen on the left. After conferring with both [Adam Fabio] and [Bil Herd] (who had differing opinions on whether or not I should “float the scope”) I connected the ground clip and was greeted with a beautifully formed sine wave. I’m calling this a success and putting a notch in the old bench to remember it by.
What’s Next?
I don’t want to get too crazy with the first installment of
Scope Noob
so I’ll be ending here for now. I need your guidance for future installments. What interesting quirks of an oscilloscope should a noob like me explore? What are your own questions about scope use? Leave those below and we’ll try to add them to the lineup in the coming weeks.
Homework
For next week I’m working my way through the adventure of rectifying this 12V AC signal into a smoothed DC source. Here you see a teaser of those experiments. I’ve built a full-wave rectifier using just four diodes (1N4001) and will plunk in a hugely-over-spec’d electrolytic capacitor to do the smoothing. If you want to follow along on the adventure you should dig around your parts drawers for these components and give it a try yourself this week. We’ll compare notes in the next post! | 55 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "2183988",
"author": "Kevin K",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T18:15:03",
"content": "Hey Mike, If that scope is anything like the DS2072A then it has a ‘trigger on mains’ function.. which triggers on the 60Hz (or 50Hz) mains voltage coming into the scope! I thought it was an interesting f... | 1,760,375,992.710042 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/easy-and-effective-way-to-measure-pwm-without-a-scope/ | Easy And Effective Way To Measure PWM… Without A Scope! | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"fast fourier transform",
"fft",
"ms paint",
"oscilloscope",
"pwm",
"scope"
] | Sometimes when a project is coming together, you need to cobble a tool together to get it completed. Whether it’s something very involved, like building a 3D printer to fabricate custom parts, or something relatively simple, like wiring a lightbulb and a battery together to create a simple continuity checker, we’ve all had to come up with something on the fly. Despite having access to an oscilloscope, [Brian] aka [schoolie] has come up with his own method for
measuring PWM period and duty cycle without a scope
, just in case there’s ever a PWM emergency!
The system he has come up with is so simple it’s borderline genius. The PWM signal in question is fed through a piezo speaker in parallel with a resistor. The output from the speaker is then sent to an FFT (
fast fourier transform
) app for Android devices, which produces a picture of a waveform. [schoolie] then opens the picture in MS Paint and uses the coordinates of the cursor and a little arithmetic to compute the period and the duty cycle.
For not using a scope, this method is pretty accurate, and only uses two discrete circuit components (the resistor and the speaker). If you’re ever in a pinch with PWM, this is sure to help, and be a whole lot cheaper than finding an oscilloscope! | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2183651",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T15:09:29",
"content": "You could also determine duty cycle with a resistor, capacitor, and multimeter. Period/frequency would be a little trickier.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,375,992.775253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/telepresence-robot-demo-unit-breaks-free-of-its-confinement/ | Telepresence Robot Demo Unit Breaks Free Of Its Confinement | Rick Osgood | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"double robotics",
"escape",
"remote control",
"robot",
"segway",
"tablet",
"telepresence"
] | What happens when you put a telepresence robot online for the world to try out for free? Hilarity of course. Double Robotics is a company that builds telepresence robots. The particular robot in question is kind of like a miniature Segway with a tablet computer on top. The idea is you can control it with your own tablet from a remote location. This robot drives around with your face on the screen, allowing you to almost be somewhere when you can’t (or don’t want to) be there in person.
Double Robotics
decided to make one of these units accessible to the Internet as a public demonstration. Of course, they couldn’t have one of these things just roaming about their facility unrestrained. They ended up keeping it locked in an office. This gives users the ability to drive it around a little bit and get a feel for the robot. Of course it didn’t take long for users to start to wonder how they could break free from their confinement.
One day, a worker left the office door cracked open ever so slightly. A user noticed this and after enough patience and determination, managed to use the robot to get the door opened. It appears as though the office was closed at the time, so no one was around to witness the event. A joy ride ensued and the robot hid its tracks by locking itself back in the room and docking to the charging station.
While this isn’t a hack in the typical sense, this is a perfect example of the hacker mindset. You are given some new technology and explore it to the extent at which you are supposed too. After that, many people would just toss it aside and not give it a second thought. Those with the hacker mindset are different, though. Our next thought is usually, “What
else
can I do with it?” This video demonstrates that in a fun and humorous way. Hopefully the company learns its lesson and puts a leash on that thing.
[via
Reddit
] | 43 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "2183298",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T12:07:55",
"content": "It’s = It is",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2183479",
"author": "bolke",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T13:41:13",
"content": "Is ... | 1,760,375,992.855519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/26/turkey-sous-vide/ | Turkey Sous Vide | Brian Benchoff | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"CC3100",
"launchpad",
"sous-vide",
"ti"
] | It’s time once again for Americans to gorge themselves on hormone-laced meats covered in several sauces and gravies, all of which inexplicably contain corn syrup. It’s also Thanksgiving this Thursday, so there’s that, too. If you have a turkey defrosting somewhere, you’ve probably gone over all your cooking options – the oven, a giant propane-heated pot of peanut oil, and yes, even sous vide. [Trey] over at TI
came up with a great sous vide controller using a few LaunchPad Booster packs
, and surprisingly, he can even cook a turkey.
The basic idea of sous vide is to vacuum pack your protein, put it in a closely-controlled water bath, and cook it so the inside is always the same temperature as the outside. It’s delicious, and it takes a long time. We can automate that, though.
[Trey] is using a USB LaunchPad and
a thermocouple BoosterPack
to monitor the temperature of a water bath. A custom SSR board is wired right into the heater, and a CC3100 provides a network connection to monitor the bird. While the network may seem a bit superfluous, it’s actually a great idea; sous vide takes hours, and you really don’t dote on your warm tub of water. Being able to receive SMS alerts from a sous vide controller is actually a great idea.
With everything wired up, [Trey] tried out his recipe for deep-fried turkey porchetta. From the pictures, it looks great and according to [Trey] it was the juiciest turkey he’s ever had. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2182965",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T09:34:53",
"content": "Warning – sous viding turkey (or chicken) to only 140°F yields meat with an unfamiliar texture. Has a firmness and chewiness to it you’d normally associate with other meats, and encountering it with pou... | 1,760,375,992.959713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/simple-terminal-hack-is-fit-for-hollywood/ | Simple Terminal Hack Is Fit For Hollywood | Rick Osgood | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"alienfx",
"alienware",
"color",
"keyboard",
"laptop",
"led",
"linux",
"rgb",
"simple terminal",
"st",
"terminal",
"xterm"
] | We’ve all seen the cheesy hacker scenes in movies and on TV. Three dimensional file system browsers, computer chip cityscapes, and other ridiculous visualizations to make the dull act of sitting at a keyboard look pretty on the silver screen. While real hackers know those things are often silly and impractical, sometimes we do go out of our way to pretty things up a bit.
Hollywood might be able to learn a thing or two from this latest hack. [Yuri] modified his Linux terminal to
change the color
of the back lights on his laptop’s keyboard. It’s the kind of thing that actually would look good in a modern hacker movie, and [Yuri] is living proof that it’s something that a real-life hacker would actually use!
[Yuri] has been running
Simple Terminal
. The Simple Terminal project aims to build a replacement for the default xterm program that removes all of the unnecessary features and simplifies the source code. It also aims to make your terminal experience prettier. Part of making things prettier means that you can choose the font color for your terminals, and of course each terminal window can have its own color if you so choose.
[Yuri] happens to own an Alienware laptop. This laptop comes with RGB LEDs behind the keyboard, allowing you to light them up just about any color you could ever want. [Yuri] thought it would be cool if his keyboard color matched the font color of his terminal windows. Thanks to AlienFX, he was able to write a simple patch for Simple Terminal that does exactly this. Now whenever he selects a terminal window, the keyboard automatically switches colors to match the text in that window. Be sure to check out the video below. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2182521",
"author": "brynet",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T06:47:50",
"content": "This is visually quite cool as a video and interesting as a project, but I imagine when novelty wears off and the eye strain kicks in.. you’ll go back to a single colour scheme.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,375,992.912874 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/open-sourcing-satellite-telemetry/ | Open Sourcing Satellite Telemetry | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ICE/ISEE",
"ISEE",
"ISEE-3",
"meetup",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"telemetry"
] | Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 was sent on a mission to explore the Earth’s interaction with the sun. Several years later, the spacecraft changed its name to the International Cometary Explorer, sent off to explore orbiting ice balls, and return to Earth earlier this year.
Talking to that spacecraft was a huge undertaking
, with crowdfunding campaigns, excursions to Arecibo, and mountains of work from a team spanning the globe. Commanding the thrusters onboard the satellite didn’t work – there was no pressure in the tanks – but still the ICE mission continues, and one of the lead radio gurus on the team has put up the telemetry parser/display crafted for the reboot project
up on Github
.
The guy behind the backend for the ICE/ISEE reboot project should be well-known to Hackaday readers. He’s the guy
who came up with a Software Defined Radio source block
for a cheap USB TV tuner, waking everyone up to the SDR game.
He’s also played air traffic controller
by sitting out near an airport with a laptop, and has given talks at Black Hat and DEFCON.
The ICE/ISEE-3 telemetry parser/display allows anyone to listen to the recorded telemetry frames from the satellite, check out what was actually going on, and learn how to communicate with a device without a computer that’s rapidly approaching from millions of miles away. He’s even put
some telemetry recordings
up on the Internet to practice.
Although the ICE/ISEE-3 reboot project will have to wait another decade or two until the probe makes its way back to our neck of the woods, [Balint] is taking it in stride an organizing a few Software Defined Radio meetups in the San Fransisco area. He just had the first meetup (Video below) where talks ranging from creating a stereo FM transmitter in GNU radio, a visual introduction to DSP for SDR and SETI signals from the Allen Telescope Array were discussed. There will be another meetup
in a few weeks at Noisbridge
, with some very cool subjects on the roster. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2182284",
"author": "Okian Warrior",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T05:03:36",
"content": "Hey Brian or Mike – regarding your “We’re hiring” post, any chance you could confirm receipt of the applications?I realize you’re probably buried in responses, but E-mails with links (as requested) ... | 1,760,375,993.098147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/ray-tracing-on-an-arduino/ | Ray Tracing On An Arduino | Ethan Zonca | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"c programming",
"Raytracing"
] | [Greg] implemented a
simple ray tracer for Arduino
as a fun exercise and a way to benchmark the processor. He started out with the
Moller-Trumbore
algorithm, a common ray-tracing algorithm that calculates the intersection of a ray with a triangular plane without doing any pre-calculation of the planes. His code supports one static light and one static camera, which is enough to render a simple scene.
[Greg] started out with a small scene composed of a few polygons, but just finished up a scene with 505 vertices, 901 faces, and reflective surfaces (shown above). He made the above render on his PC emulator, but estimates that it would take just over 4 days to render on the Arduino. [Greg]’s project supports multiple bounces of light, which differentiates his ray tracer from some
we’ve covered before
(and which explains why it takes so long to render).
The ray tracer is implemented entirely with double-precision floats. This translates to a ton of software float emulation instructions, since the Arduino doesn’t have a floating-point unit. While this ray tracer can’t render anything near real-time graphics due to the slowness of the microcontroller, it’s still a great proof of concept.
The title image for this post was rendered on a modern PC, taking 263 seconds to complete. The same scene, at 64×64 resolution, was rendered on the Arduino, taking 4008 seconds to complete. That render is below. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2181496",
"author": "janostman",
"timestamp": "2014-11-26T00:09:33",
"content": "Cutting a few corners the ATmega328 can do this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ryBeJAs2I0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2181535",
"au... | 1,760,375,993.178284 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/retrotechtacular-the-construction-of-wooden-propellers/ | Retrotechtacular: The Construction Of Wooden Propellers | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"dagwood",
"glue press",
"laminate",
"NACA",
"nasa",
"prop",
"propeller",
"sitka spruce",
"spruce",
"teamwork",
"wind tunnel"
] | During World War I, the United States felt they were lagging behind Europe in terms of airplane technology. Not to be outdone, Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics [NACA]. They needed to have some very large propellers built for wind tunnel testing. Well, they had no bids, so they set up shop and trained men to
build the propellers themselves in a fantastic display of coordination and teamwork
. This week’s film is a silent journey into [NACA]’s all-human assembly line process for creating these propellers.
Each blade starts with edge-grained Sitka spruce boards that are carefully planed to some top-secret exact thickness. Several boards are glued together on their long edges and dried to about 7% moisture content in the span of five or so days. Once dry, the propeller contours are penciled on from a template and cut out with a band saw.
After about 35 of these laminations have been made, they are stacked and dry-fit against wax covered filler blocks. These blocks are necessary to maintain constant and even pressure throughout the giant press. Next, the laminations are stacked upside down near the press and marked for glue application. Here’s where the process gets really intense: these men have just 15 minutes starting from the time the first bit of glue is applied to get all the laminations covered, stacked, and packed in with filler blocks.
This spruce and glue Dagwood sandwich spends 24 hours under pressure. When the time is up, the filler boards are pried away from the propeller, and the excess glue is scraped away. Next, the corners are roughed off with a rotary sander.
To achieve the aerodynamic ideal, the prop is fitted with ribs every six inches or so down its length, and the thicknesses along it are checked to within 1/100th of an inch. A pair of men pass a saw along the edge of each rib to notch it just so, and then the excess wood is removed with pneumatic planes designed and developed by [NACA] to constantly blow shavings all over the place. Finally, the blade whisperer is called in to check the fairness and make nitpicky markings wherever the wood is high by a thousandth of a hair.
Now the blade is ready to join its brethren in the 10-ton hub. Once all the blades have been hoisted into place, the top surface is machined and the upper hub plate is fitted and bored out. After all of that work, the blades come right back out so that holes can be drilled through them to accommodate the steel sleeves and bars that hold it all together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9UbnJlhrHA
Part two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR3e8waXuWk
Part three:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS-XqOsxBHY
[Thank you to David for sending this in]
Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by
sending in your ideas for future installments
. | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2181115",
"author": "Will Lyon",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T21:14:40",
"content": "Imagine going through all that then cutting in the wrong place or sanding it just a little too much -_-",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2181243",... | 1,760,375,993.341922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/announcing-the-trinket-everyday-carry-contest/ | Announcing The Trinket Everyday Carry Contest | Adam Fabio | [
"contests",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"adafruit",
"contest",
"Every Day Carry",
"Everyday Carry",
"hackaday",
"pocket",
"pocketable",
"Pro",
"Trinket",
"Trinket Everyday Carry",
"trinket pro"
] | Now that we’ve recovered from our Munich party and the awarding of The Hackaday Prize, we’re ready to announce our latest contest. We’ve been having a lot of fun with our Trinket Pro boards, both the 10th anniversary edition and
the new Hackaday.io branded models
. While we were soldering, compiling, and downloading, a contest idea took root. Trinket Pro really excels when used in small projects, the kind which would fit in a pocket. To that end we’re holding the
Trinket Everyday Carry Contest
, a showcase for small, pocketable projects which are useful everyday. ‘Useful everyday’ is a bit of a broad term, and we intended it that way. Tools are useful of course , but so are jewelry pieces. It’s all in the eye of the builder and users. We’re sure our readers will take this and run with it, as they have with our previous contests.
There are some great prizes in store for the entrants, including a brand new Rigol DS1054Z oscilloscope! The top 50 entrants will get custom Trinket Everyday Carry Contest T-shirts. Check out the
contest page for a full list.
We know you all love to procrastinate with your entries, so we’re going to be offering a few perks to those who enter early and update often. Each week, we’ll throw all the entrants who have published at least one project log full of details into a drawing for a special prize from The Hackaday Store. To be considered you must officially submit your project which is accomplished through a drop-down list on the left side of your project page.
Remember, the contest isn’t just about winning a scope, a meter, or any of the other prizes. It’s about creating new Open Hardware designs that nearly anyone can build. So grab those soldering irons, load up those copies of the Arduino IDE, AVR-GCC, or WinAVR, and get hacking!
You can view the
all of the contest entries in this list
. | 47 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2180755",
"author": "Z2h-A6n",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T18:43:32",
"content": "If I was designing something to carry around in a pocket every day I’d skip the relatively bulky breakout board and go straight to the chip (on a custom board if necessary). I’m excited to see what people... | 1,760,375,993.50815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/hackaday-interview-grant-imahara/ | Hackaday Interview: [Grant Imahara] | Mike Szczys | [
"Interviews"
] | [
"electronica",
"grant imahara",
"Industrial Light and Magic",
"lucasfilm",
"mouser",
"mythbusters"
] | We had a chance to interview [
Grant Imahara
] at the 2014 Electronica conference in Munich, Germany. If you don’t recognize [Grant’s] name you’ll probably recognize his face. He’s been on the cast of the television show
Mythbusters
for about 10 years now. We heard recently that he was leaving the show and that’s how we crossed paths with him.
[Grant] has signed on with Mouser Electronics to promote their
Empowering Innovation Together
program. They hosted him on a press junket at their booth and since we have a good relationship with Mouser they offered Hackaday an interview slot.
We had a lot of fun talking to [Grant]. Unfortunately the wireless microphones the Mouser videographer was using were picking up a lot of interference. This didn’t directly affect our recording setup as we were using a handheld voice recorder, but we kept getting interrupted as they tried to figure out the problem. Still, as you can see from the video below, we managed to get all the way through a few questions about [Grant’s] introduction to electronics at a young age, his first job out of school working for Industrial Light and Magic, and his advice to others who want to get into electronics and specifically robots. He mentions his early learning was guided by
the books of Forrest Mims
and that these days learning about electronics is no more than a keyword search away. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2180151",
"author": "Janez D.",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T15:20:14",
"content": "He sounds.. tired.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2180166",
"author": "jouni",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T15:26:25",
"conte... | 1,760,375,993.724354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/better-spi-bus-design/ | Better SPI Bus Design | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"CS",
"MISO",
"MOSI",
"SCK",
"spi",
"Spi library",
"tri-state",
"tri-state buffer"
] | Quick, how do you wire up an SPI bus between a microcontroller and a peripheral? SCK goes to SCK, MISO goes to MISO, and MOSI goes to MOSI, right? Yeah. You’ll need to throw in a chip select pin, but that’s pretty much it. Just wires, and it’ll most likely work. Now add a second device. The naïve solution found in thousands of Arduino tutorials do the same thing; just wires, and it’ll probably work. It’s not that simple, and Mr. Teensy himself, [Paul Stoffregen]
is here to show you why
.
When using multiple SPI devices, a pullup resistor on the chip select lines are a really great idea. Without a pullup, devices will work great when used alone, but will inexplicably fail when used together. It’s not magic; both devices are listening to the bus when only one should be. Putting a pullup on the CS lines keeps everything at the right logic level until a device is actually needed.
How about the MISO line? Most peripherals will disconnect their pins when the chip select signal is active, but there are exceptions. Good luck finding them. There is an easy way to check, though: just connect two resistors so the MISO line floats to a non-logic level when the CS pin is high, and check with a voltmeter. If MISO is driven high or low, you should put a small tri-state buffer in there.
That just covers hardware, and there are a few things you can do in software to reduce the number of conflicts when using more than one SPI device. One of these methods is transactions, or defining the clock rate, setting MSB or LSB first, and the polarity of the clock. Newer versions of the Arduino SPI library support transactions and the setup is very easy. In fact, transaction support in the Arduino library
is something [Paul] worked on himself
, and gets around the problem of having SPI-related code happening in both the main loop of a program and whenever an interrupt hits. Awesome work, and a boon to the Arduino makers around the world. | 58 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "2179611",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T12:17:45",
"content": "Unfortunately, SPI transaction support doesn’t yet seem to be in Arduino mainline. Anyone know when it will be?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,375,993.910209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/25/enhanced-coffee-brewer-knows-how-much-of-a-caffeine-addict-you-are/ | Enhanced Coffee Brewer Knows How Much Of A Caffeine Addict You Are | Sarah Petkus | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"bluetooth coffee brewer",
"coffee pot",
"coffee tracker",
"krohn",
"office coffee tracking"
] | Who should chip in the most to restock the community coffee supply at work is a common point of contention at some offices.
This RFID infused coffee brewer
called Juraduino by [Oliver Krohn] solves the issue at his workplace once and for all by logging how much is being consumed by each person and how often; quite the diplomatic hack.
[Oliver] donated his old Jura Coffee maker to his office with some added hardware cleverly hidden underneath the faceplate of the machine. An Arduino mounted within runs the show, powered through mini USB from the logic unit of the coffee maker itself. Once a co-worker swipes their RFID card over the front of the machine, a real-time clock module stamps when the coffee was requested, and then logs the amount selected by that person on a mini SD card. The data stored is sent via an additional bluetooth module to a custom app [Oliver] created with MIT App Inventor for his phone which displays the information. These details can then be exported in the form of an email addressed to everyone in the office at the end of the week, announcing definitively who can be counted on to restock the bulk of the community supplies.
Though there isn’t a link available with further documentation, [Oliver] mentions in the ‘details’ portion of his video that he’d be happy to share that information with anyone who contacts him regarding the project. You can see the Jura at work below: | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2179003",
"author": "Sascha",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T09:20:22",
"content": "Next step – put an ESP8266 in it and order coffee on your way home :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2186454",
"author": "Oliver",
... | 1,760,375,993.762475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/a-uv-lightbox-for-curing-prints/ | A UV Lightbox For Curing Prints | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"dlp",
"lightbox",
"resin",
"resin printer",
"stl",
"UV curing resin",
"UV LED"
] | With resin printers slowly making their way to hackerspaces and garages the world over, there is a growing need for a place to cure these UV resin prints. No, they don’t come out of the machine fully cured, they come out fully solid. And no, we’re not just leaving them in the sun, because that’s not how we do things around here.
[Christopher]
whipped up a post-cure lightbox
meant to sit underneath his Form 1 printer. It’s made of 1/2″ MDF, with adjustable feet (something the Form 1 lacks), a safety switch to keep the lights off when the door is open, and a motor to rotate the parts around the enclosure.
The light source for this lightbox is 10 meters of ultraviolet LED strips. The LEDs shine somewhere between 395-405nm, the same wavelength as the laser diode found in the Form 1 printer. Other than a bit of wiring for the LEDs, the only complicated part of the build was the motor; [Christopher] bought a 2rpm motor but was sent a 36rpm motor. The vendor was out of 2rpm motors, so a PWM controller was added.
It’s a beautiful build that shows off [Christopher]’s ability to work with MDF. It also looks great sitting underneath his printer, and all his parts are rock solid now. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2178421",
"author": "James Novak",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T06:04:11",
"content": "I wonder if this idea would work by converting an old microwave – it already has the rotating table and time functions :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,375,993.545914 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/hacking-the-crayola-digital-light-designer/ | Hacking The Crayola Digital Light Designer | Ethan Zonca | [
"LED Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"LED display",
"POV",
"rgb",
"toy hack"
] | [Harry] wrote in with his
hack of the Crayola Light Designer
. The Light Designer is a pretty unique toy that lets kids write on a cone-shaped POV display with an infrared light pen. [Harry] cracked one open and discovered it has a spinning assembly with a strip of 32 RGB LEDs for the display and a strip of photodiodes to detect pen position. These were ripe for the hacking.
The spinning assembly uses several slip ring connections to send power and data to the spinning assembly. [Harry] connected a logic analyzer to several of the connections to determine which lines were clock, data, and frame select (the strip is split into 2 16-led “frames”). He went on to
reverse-engineer the serial protocol
so he could drive the strips himself.
Instead of reverse-engineering the microcontroller on the product’s PCB, [Harry] decided to use a Leostick (Arduino Leonardo clone) to control the LEDs and spinner. He mounted the Leostick on the shaft of the spinning assembly, and powered it over the slip ring connections. After adding some capacitance to make up for noisy power from the slip rings, [Harry] had the POV display up and running with his own controller. Check out the video after the break to see the hacked POV display in action. | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2180129",
"author": "rue_mohr",
"timestamp": "2014-11-25T15:11:11",
"content": "turning that inside out, interfacing it with a database, and giving it voice control might work for locating parts in the shop.hmmm….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,375,993.819251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/a-4-bit-computer-from-discrete-transistors/ | A 4-bit Computer From Discrete Transistors | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"4-bit",
"computer",
"discrete",
"discrete transistors",
"homebrew computer"
] | Anyone reading this uses computers, and a few very cool people have built their own computer out of chips, [zaphod] is doing something even cooler over on hackaday.io:
he’s building a computer from discrete transistors
.
Building a computer from individual components without chips isn’t something new –
Minecraft
players who aren’t into cheaty command blocks do it all the time, and there have been
a few real-life builds
that have rocked our socks. [zaphod] is following in this hallowed tradition by building a four-bit computer, complete with CPU, RAM, and ROM from transistors, diodes, resistors, wire, and a lot of solder.
The ROM for the computer is just a bunch of 16 DIP switches and 128 diodes, giving this computer 128 bits of storage. the RAM for this project is a bit of a hack – it’s an Arduino, but that’s only because [zaphod] doesn’t want to solder 640 transistors just yet. This setup does have its advantages, though: the entire contents of memory can be dumped to a computer through a serial monitor. The ALU is a 4-bit ripple-carry adder/subtractor, with plans for a comparison unit that will be responsible for JMP.
The project hasn’t been without its problems –
the first design of the demux
for the ROM access logic resulted in a jungle of wires, gates, and connections that [zaphod] couldn’t get a usable signal out of because of the limited gate fan-out of his gates. After looking at the problem, [zaphod] decided to look at how real demuxes were constructed, and eventually hit upon the correct way of doing things – inverters and ANDs.
It’s a beautiful project, and something that [zaphod] has been working for months on. He’s getting close to complete, if you don’t count soldering up the RAM, and already has a crude Larson scanner worked out. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2171785",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T08:00:03",
"content": "8-bits @https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCVT1BtlZn0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2172408",
"author": "null",
"timestamp": "2014-11... | 1,760,375,994.013491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/doing-unsafe-things-with-a-laser-watch/ | Doing Unsafe Things With A Laser Watch | Brian Benchoff | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"laser watch",
"watch"
] | [Pierce Brosnan]-era James Bond had a beautiful Omega wristwatch. Of course as with any Bond gadget, it couldn’t just tell time; it needed to do something else. This watch had a laser, and
[Patrick] figured he could replicate this build
.
This is apretty normal 1.5W laser diode build, stuffed into a wrist-mountable device that will kill balloons. This is really a watch, though: press a button and this thing will tell time.
In the video below, [Patrick] goes over what damage this watch can do. He manages to pop some black balloons, burn holes in a CD case, light a few matches, cut cellotape, and put tiny burn marks in his wall. The battery won’t last long – just a few minutes – but more than enough to propel [Patrick] into Youtube stardom.
There are no plans or tutorials for the build, but the teardown [Patrick] shows is pretty impressive. To stuff a laser diode, battery, and clock into a watch-sized compartment, [Patrick] needed to turn down the metal buttons to fit everything into his watch case.
Because the comments for this post will invariable fill up with concern trolls, we’re just going to say, yes, this is incredibly unsafe, no one should ever do this, and it probably kills puppies. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2171258",
"author": "e",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T03:53:59",
"content": "For the kids playing at home there are some comprehensive online safety guides from many of the universities, i.e.http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/laserguide/sec2.htmwhich are more easily read before permanen... | 1,760,375,993.958082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/serial-surgery-saves-wacom-tablet-from-landfill/ | Serial Surgery Saves Wacom Tablet From Landfill | Kristina Panos | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"intuous",
"tablet",
"Teensy",
"wacom",
"waxbee"
] | Years ago, [Greg] got a Wacom Artpad II graphics tablet through Freecycle. What’s the catch, you ask? The stylus was long gone. When he found out how expensive a direct replacement would be, the tablet was laid to rest in his spare parts box. Fast forward a few years to the era of the phone-tablet hybrid and [Greg]’s subsequent realization that some of them use Wacom stylii. Eight bucks later, he’s in business, except that the tablet is serial. Wacom no longer supports serial tablets, so
he had to convert it to USB
.
With the help of
the WaxBee project
and a Teensy 2.0, he would be able to emulate an Intuous2 tablet by sniffing and re-encoding the packets. Things got a little hairy when he went under the hood to remove the ADM202 TTL-to-RS232 chip with a Dremel—he accidentally gouged some of the pads it sat on as well as a few of the traces. Feeling frustrated, [Greg] took some high-res pictures of the board and posted them to a message board. As it turns out, those pictures helped him recreate the traces and get the tablet running. A little big of glue and tape later, he was in business. [Greg] even gave himself access to reprogram the Teensy. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2170708",
"author": "gregkennedy",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T00:10:38",
"content": "Oh boy, RIP my server…As the write-up states, the real star of this hack is the WaxBee project, which is the Teensy software that interfaces to serial tablets and emulates an Intuos2. Without it, I c... | 1,760,375,994.053011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/solving-arduinos-stk500_getsync-error/ | Solving Arduino’s Stk500_getsync() Error | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"STK500_getsync()",
"troubleshooting"
] | [psgarcha] took a year-old Arduino Uno on an international trip and upon returning found something was wrong. Every time he would try to upload, he would get the dreaded avrdude error, ‘stk500_getsync(): not in sync resp=0x00’. The Rx light would blink a few times during the attempted upload, but the tx light did not. Somehow, something was terribly wrong with the ‘duino, and [psgarcha]
dug deep to figure out why
.
To test the quality of the Arduino’s serial connection, [psgarcha] performed a loopback test; basically a wire plugged into the Tx and Rx pins of the Arduino. Sending a short message through the serial port showed the problem wasn’t the USB cable, the ATmega16u2 on the ‘duino, or any traces on the board. This would require more thought.
The main reason for the error would then be no communication between the computer and the ‘duino, the wrong COM port selected, the wrong board selected in the Arduino text editor, or timing errors or a corrupt bootloader. The first three errors were now out of the question, leaving timing errors and a corrupt bootloader. Troubleshooting then moved on to ordering a new programmer, and still this didn’t work with the broken Uno.
Frustrated with one of the greatest failures to become an Arduino tinkerer, [psgarcha] took a good, long look at the Uno board. He glanced over to an Arduino Mega board. Something looked different. On the Uno, the resonator had blown off. Problem found, at least.
Replacing the blown part with a hilariously large can crystal oscillator, [psgarcha] was back in business. This isn’t how you would fix 99% of getsync() errors, and it’s difficult imagining a situation where a this part would randomly blow, but if you’re ever looking at a nearly intractable problem, you need to start looking at what really
shouldn’t
fail.
Awesome rework, though. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2170182",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T21:16:31",
"content": "Scanned through the link. Looks like a detailed, step-by-step diagnosis. I love those, and will have to read it shortly. But before I do, I gotta ask:HOW exactly does the lid get blown off a resonator... | 1,760,375,994.214702 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/cloning-a-board-from-pictures-on-the-internet/ | Cloning A Board From Pictures On The Internet | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"Ensoniq",
"hard drive",
"scsi",
"synthesizer",
"workstation"
] | [Andrew] was a pretty cool guy in the early 90s with an awesome keyboard synth that did wavetable synthesis, sampling, a sequencer, and an effects processor. This was a strange era for storage; a reasonable amount of Flash memory was unheard of, and floppy disks ruled the land. [Andrew]’s synth, though, had the option to connect SCSI drives. Like all optional add ons for high-end equipment, the current price for the Ensoniq SCSI card is astronomical and
[Andrew] figured he could build one of these cards himself
.
Poking around eBay, [Andrew] found the card in question – just a few passives, some connectors, a voltage regulator, and an odd chip from AMD. This chip was a 33C93A, a SCSI controller, and a trip down the Chinese vendor rabbit hole netted him one for $7. Can’t do better than that.
With
the datasheet for the chip
in hand and a few reasonable assumptions on how the circuit worked, [Andrew] tried to figure draw the schematic. After doing that, he found another hobbyist that had attempted the same project a few years earlier. All the nets were identical, and all that was left to do was sending a board off to the fab.
A quick trip to
Front Panel Express
got [Andrew] a mounting bracket for the card, and after plugging it in to the synth revealed a new option – SCSI.
It worked
, and with an ancient SCSI CD-ROM drive, he had boatloads of offline storage for his synth. Great work, and something we’d love to see more of. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2169783",
"author": "alex89",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T18:41:56",
"content": "That soldering job though ..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2169897",
"author": "ChrisJ",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T19:26:46",
... | 1,760,375,994.266973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/five-dollar-rf-controlled-light-sockets/ | Five Dollar RF Controlled Light Sockets | Brian Benchoff | [
"home hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"315 MHz",
"home automation",
"lamp sockets",
"reverse engineering",
"RF",
"RF controlled"
] | This is tens of thousands of dollars worth of market research I’m about to spill, so buckle up. I have a spreadsheet filled with hundreds of projects and products that are solutions to ‘home automation’ according to their creators. The only common theme? Relays. Home automation is just Internet connected relays tied to mains. You’re welcome.
[Todd] over at Fabricate.io found an interesting home automation appliance on Amazon; a four-pack of remote control light sockets for $20, or what we would call a microcontroller, an RF receiver, and a relay. These lamp sockets are remote-controlled, but each package is limited to four channels. Terrible if you’re trying to outfit a home,
but a wonderful exploration into the world of reverse engineering
.
After cracking one of these sockets open, [Todd] found the usual suspects and a tiny little 8-pin DIP EEPROM. This chip stores a few thousand bits, several of which are tied to the remote control. After dumping the contents of the EEPROM from the entire four-pack of light sockets, [Todd] noticed only one specific value changed. Obviously, this was the channel tied to the remote. No CRC or ‘nothin. It doesn’t get easier than this.
With the new-found knowledge of what each lamp socket was looking for, [Todd] set out to clone the transmitter. Tearing
this
device apart, he found a chip with HS1527 stamped on it.
A quick Googling
revealed this to be an encoder transmitter, with the datasheet showing an output format of a 20-bit code and four data bits. This was a four-channel transmitter, right? That’s where you put each channel. The 20-bit code was interesting but not surprising; you don’t want one remote being able to turn of every other 4-pack of lamp sockets.
With all the relevant documentation, [Todd] set out to do the obvious thing – an Arduino transmitter. This was simply an Arduino and a transmitter in the right frequency, loaded up with bit of carefully crafted code. [Todd] also figured out how to expand his setup to more than four lamp sockets – by changing the 20-bit code, he could make his Arduino pretend to be more than one transmitter.
With Arduino-controlled lamp sockets, the world is [Todd]’s oyster. He can add Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth LE, and whatever trendy web front end he wants to have a perfect home automation setup. It’s actually a pretty impressive build with some great documentation, and is probably the cheapest way to add Arduino/Internet-enabled relays we’ve ever seen. | 46 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2169276",
"author": "andrewjhull",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T15:15:46",
"content": "The protocol sounds similar to the one used in Holtek PIR chips..http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=217828.0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,375,994.366456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/creating-a-scanning-monochromator/ | Creating A Scanning Monochromator | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Monochromator",
"photomultiplier",
"tool",
"wavelength"
] | If you need a specific wavelength of light for research purposes, the naïve way of obtaining that is a white source light, a prism, and a small slit that will move across your own personal Dark Side of the Moon album cover. This is actually a terrible idea; not only won’t you have a reference of exactly what wavelength of light you’re letting through the optical slit, the prism itself will absorb more of one wavelength of light than others.
The solution is a monochromator, a device that performs the same feat of research without all the drawbacks. [Shahriar] got his hands on an old manual monochromator
and decided to turn it into a device that performs automatic scans
.
The key of a monochromator is a diffraction grating, a mirrored surface with many fine parallel grooves arranged in a step pattern. Because of the surface of the diffraction grating, it’s possible to separate light according to its spectrum much like a prism. Unlike a prism, it’s effectively a first surface mirror meaning all wavelengths of light are reflected more or less equally.
By adding a stepper motor to the dial of his monochromator, [Shahriar] was able to automatically scan across the entire range of the device. Inside the monochromator is a photomultiplier tube that samples the incoming light and turns it into a voltage. By sampling this voltage and plotting it with MATLAB, [Shahriar] was able to plot the intensity of every wavelength of light within the range of the device. It’s all expertly explained in the video below. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2169030",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T13:36:40",
"content": "“Unlike a prism, it’s effectively a first surface mirror meaning all wavelengths of light are reflected more or less equally.”This isn’t true and it depends on the ‘Blaze’ of the grating. Also there are r... | 1,760,375,994.533729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/22/hack-summit-a-virtual-dev-conference/ | Hack.summit(); // A Virtual Dev Conference | Kristina Panos | [
"cons"
] | [
"conference",
"developer conference",
"hack summit",
"jon skeet",
"virtual conference"
] | If you’d like to spend four days learning from and picking the brains of a big group of well-known developers and open-source wizards for the low, low cost of absolutely free, keep reading.
The
hack.summit() conference
is a live, global event put on by the fine folks behind real-time programming assistance service
hack.hands()
. From December 1 to December 4, a wide range of speakers will present and answer democratically popularized questions over Crowdcast via Google+ Hangouts. Speakers in attendance include wiki inventor and Design Patterns pioneer [Ward Cunningham], Codeacademy founder [Ryan Bubinski], Google Glass creator [Tom Chi], Python Software Foundation’s [Alex Gaynor], and even the inimitable [Jon Skeet].
The goals for this conference are simple and admirable: to educate developers of all stripes about best practices, to encourage mentorship in the programming community, and to spread the joy of coding by supporting coding non-profits.
You can
register for free
simply by spreading the word through social media, but making a donation to the coding non-profit of your choice is definitely encouraged. There are many to great organizations to choose from such as
CoderDojo
(an easy choice for us). A tidy summary of the event is available at the hack.summit()
FAQ
(PDF). | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2168783",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T11:52:35",
"content": "Register for free if you allow an app to “read tweets on your timeline, see who you follow and follow others, uppdate your profile, post tweets for you”No thanks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,375,994.403388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/a-modern-woodworking-workbench/ | A Modern Woodworking Workbench | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"woodworking",
"woodworking workbench",
"workbench"
] | This is a post about workbenches, but not the benches you’re probably thinking about. Workbenches meant for electronics development are simple matters – just about any flat surface, a few shelves for equipment, and an anti-static mat will be fine for every conceivable use. Workbenches for woodworking are a separate matter entirely. There’s actually quite a bit of history behind the development of the woodworking workbench, but the basic idea is a thick laminated wood top, integrated vices, holes in the work surface for bench dogs, and ergonomics that allow for comfortable use of hand tools. The basic design of these benches hasn’t changed much in several hundred years,
and [Dirk] thought the design was ready for a modern update
.
Yes. This one moves on its own. It’s a robotic woodworking workbench that lifts the workpiece and table up to a comfortable position. The lifting mechanism is a quartet of Acme threaded rods all powered by an Arduino-controlled stepper motor linked together with sprockets and chain. There’s a remote control to raise and lower the bench, and a few batteries tucked behind the mechanics to allow for off-grid operation.
A bench must be sturdy, and this one has clamps on the frame of to clamp the ‘elevator car’ securely to the bench. Leveling casters make this bench mobile, giving [Dirk] the ability to move it around the shop, or from site to site. An integrate face vise and a twin-screw end vise securely hold the workpiece to the table, and a linseed oil finish make scratches and gouges easily repairable.
The majority of the frame is constructed out of birch plywood cut on a CNC, so if you have a Shopbot or other large router available to you at the local hackerspace, building this bench for yourself is a much simpler matter than the mortise and tenon joinery of a more traditional woodworking workbench. If you end up building this bench, be sure to pick up the casters [Dirk] used; this thing weighs 800 pounds. Massive, heavy, and an excellent bench that can be passed down to your grandkids. Video below. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2168184",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T08:35:35",
"content": "Doubles as a saw runoff table, always at the right height.Or make an extra long table to some other surface.Ready for blackout but not EMP. With all the chain it would be simple to add a crank.",
"p... | 1,760,375,994.473644 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/upgrading-a-laminator-for-toner-transfer-pcbs/ | Upgrading A Laminator For Toner Transfer PCBs | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"apache",
"Apache AL13P",
"etched PCB",
"laminator",
"pcb",
"pcb fabrication",
"toner transfer"
] | If you need a circuit board
now
, you’re probably looking at a toner transfer process; all you need to make a PCB is a copper clad board, a laser printer, some special paper, and the usual etching chemicals. The quality of these boards is highly dependant on the quality of transferring toner to the copper, and getting the process right is as much an art as it is a science. A clothes iron is the easy way of transferring the toner to the board, but if you’re looking for repeatability, you’ll probably want a laminator.
Laminators, too, also vary in quality. The king of toner transfer laminators is the Apache AL13P. With four heated rollers and a steel chassis, it’s enough to do some serious heating.
[mosaicmerc] came up with an amazing mod
for his Apache laminator that takes all the guesswork out of the settings, and does it all in one pass for maximum repeatability and PCB quality.
The Apache laminator in question is a beast of a machine that drives four rollers with a synchronous motor and also has a ‘reverse’ button that sends the laminations out the front end of the printer. Stock, a toner transfer PCB would require dozens of passes through the Apache, but [merc]’s mod takes care of everything for you.
The addition that makes this possible is a small board with a PIC12 microcontroller. This microcontroller connects the motor driver board and the display interface together, triggering the reverse button to move the board 5/8″ forward and 1/2″ back, giving the laminator an effective speed reduction of 12:1. This method also has the bonus of not tampering with the motor or control circuitry, and allows for multiple passes in the same run.
With this modification, the Apache AL13P becomes the perfect solution to transferring toner to a piece of copper, with the ability to transfer 10mil traces on 1oz copper. The board also offers some other features like thermal sensor failure shutdown and a cool-down mode that overrides the heater. If you’re looking for an easy way to step up your toner transfer PCBs, you can’t do much better than this mod. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2170923",
"author": "Lindsay Wilson",
"timestamp": "2014-11-23T01:31:40",
"content": "Has anybody thought on using a heat press for toner-transfer instead of a roll laminator? I just bought a cheap one from EBay for doing wood veneering and it’s really near. Small ones are pretty ch... | 1,760,375,994.939882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/were-hiring-3/ | We’re Hiring | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured"
] | [
"hiring",
"jobs",
"writers"
] | The Hackaday crew has done some amazing things this year, and we’re finding ourselves a bit stretched. Want to lend a hand while making some extra dough to plow back into your projects? This is a work-from-home (or wherever you like) position that affords you the opportunity to guide what we cover on Hackaday.com. We hire writers for their judgement, which helps keep our subject matter fresh. But don’t worry, we do have
a very active tips line
from which many of our story leads come.
Contributors are hired as private contractors and paid for each post. You should have the technical expertise to understand the projects you write about, and a passion for the wide range of topics we feature. If you’re interested,
please email our jobs line
and include:
Details about your background (education, employment, etc.) that make you a valuable addition to the team
Links to your blog/project posts/etc. which have been published on the Internet
One example post written in the voice of Hackaday. Include a banner image, 150 words, the link to the project, and any in-links to related and relevant Hackaday features.
Words of encouragement
First off, we won’t be discussing compensation publicly. Want to know what we pay? Send in a successful application and we’ll talk about it.
Secondly, don’t pass up this opportunity. I watched one of these posts go by and waited another year before I saw the next one and applied. Now I’m running the place. Our team is made up of avid readers. If you’re passionate about the stuff you read here and you have a few hours each week to do some writing you need to apply now!
So what are you waiting for? Ladies and Gentlemen, start your applications! | 71 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "2166620",
"author": "borstenhorst",
"timestamp": "2014-11-22T00:11:38",
"content": "To sad I suck at writing.Good luck for those who will give it a try :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2166622",
"author": "borstenhor... | 1,760,375,994.807584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/3ds-homebrew-channel-and-custom-firmware/ | 3DS Homebrew Channel And Custom Firmware | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo DS Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"3ds",
"exploit",
"homebrew",
"homebrew channel",
"Nintendo 3DS",
"Nintendo DS",
"nintendo homebrew"
] | Nintendo has always been very wary about allowing independent and homebrew developers making games for their consoles, and the 3DS is no exception. It’s locked down, and a few 3DS and console hackers have spent years searching for a method that will easily allow anyone to run unsigned code.
That day is finally here
. The exploit is called NINJHAX, and it allows anyone to install the Homebrew Channel, the repository for everything awesome in the world of 3DS homebrew development.
The latest exploit relies on a bit of code in a retail game – Cubic Ninja – to run unsigned code. This game includes a level editor that allows players to share different levels by QR codes and 3DS’ camera. By carefully crafting one of these QR codes, the 3DS gains the ability to run the Homebrew Channel
If this exploit sounds familiar, you’re right. The most common way to open up a Wii for homebrew development
is Smash Stack
, an exploit found in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This exploit also works by modifying custom stages, and opened the door to a wealth of homebrew development for the Wii.
In the video below, [smea] shows off his exploit by starting Cubic Ninja, going to the QR code level editor, then loading up homebrew games. A copy of the game that enables this exploit, Cubic Ninja, is required for this exploit. Last week, you could buy Cubic Ninja for a few dollars on eBay and Amazon. Today, the price has settled around $50, with a few very dumb or very eager people paying up to $300. If you already have the game, you’ll only need to get the homebrew starter kit, generate a QR code, and start installing unsigned code.
All the instructions are available on [smeal]’s site
. | 29 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2166309",
"author": "nyder",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T21:28:40",
"content": "good luck finding Cubic Ninja for less then $50. Was $5 till the announcement came…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2166617",
"author": "Ae... | 1,760,375,996.800671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/hacklet-23-the-groove-tube/ | Hacklet 23 – The Groove Tube | Adam Fabio | [
"classic hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [] | The transistor may rule the electronics world today, but before solid state moved in, vacuum state was king. Tubes, or valves if you’re from Europe, were the only way to fly. Every good hacker knew their triodes from their tetrodes and their pentodes. While technology has moved on, some hackers keep the past alive with tube based projects. This week on the Hacklet, we’re featuring some of the best tube projects on
Hackaday.io
!
We start with [256byteram] and
Tube Television Tennis
. [256byteram] is building an entire Pong style game from tubes, including a CRT to display the game. Displaying anything on a standard television means generating lots of timing signals. [256byteram] is doing this by using multivibrators to create one-shots and flip-flop circuits. Tube Television Tennis is still a work in progress, but [256byteram] already can display a paddle and move it around the screen in both X and Y. This project has already blown our minds!
From [Marcel] comes this great
Low Voltage All-Tube Amplifier
, which we
featured on the blog
earlier this year. [Marcel] does tubes without the danger of high voltage by using the ECL82 tube at 40 volts. The ECL82 incorporates both a triode pentode in one package, making it something of an integrated circuit. Power is provided by transformer while a PY88 tube handles rectifier duties, making this truly an all tube amp. A few passive components complete the design. We can’t wait to fire one up and hear some class A goodness while basking in the warm glow only a tube can create.
No tube article would be complete without some nixies, and [opeRaptor] is here to provide them with
Obsolete Time
, a nixie tube clock! Obsolete Time uses IN-12 Russian nixie tubes, and goes for a minimalist design. Under the hood it’s all modern tech though, including a Bluetooth radio which allows the clock to be set via an Android app.
[Brandon Foltz] is also getting into a vacuum state of mind as he takes
Adventures in Hybrid Headphone Amps.
[Brandon] is mixing the best of the old and new worlds by using a 6247 tube as the input stage to an LM386 single chip amplifier. This hybrid is still a work in progress, as [Brandon] is trying to clean up the sound from his LM386.
Hackaday.io update!
Did you know that we’re constantly upgrading
Hackaday.io?
We listen to your input on the
feedback project
, and we’re always adding new features to the site. If you haven’t noticed, you can now send private messages to other users. We’re sure this will help put users in contact with each other, so they can collaborate on even more projects! On the left side of each profile page there is a “Send a private message” button below the hacker’s avatar. You now have better indicators when you have messages or updates too! The private messages and feed icons at the top right of every .io page now have indicators to show how many messages or feed entries you have waiting. These are all based on live data, so they’ll update as you browse the site.
That’s all the time we have for this week’s Hacklet! As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of
Hackaday.io! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2166020",
"author": "syntroniks",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T19:10:40",
"content": "“Now on Hackaday.io” Cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2166043",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T19:20:38",
"content": "... | 1,760,375,996.903796 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/artisanal-vacuum-tubes-hackaday-shows-you-how/ | Artisanal Vacuum Tubes: Hackaday Shows You How | Charles Alexanian | [
"classic hacks",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"high voltage",
"vacuum pump",
"vacuum tube",
"vacuum tube audio",
"vacuum tubes"
] | Homemade Vacuum Tube
About a decade ago I started a strange little journey in my free time that cut a path across electronics manufacturing from over the last century. One morning I decided to find out how the little glowing glass bottles we sometimes call electron tubes worked. Not knowing any better I simply picked up an old copy of the Thomas Register. For those of you generally under 40 that was our version of Google, and resembled a set of 10 yellow pages.
I started calling companies listed under “Electron Tube Manufacturers” until I got a voice on the other end. Most of the numbers would ring to the familiar “this number is no longer in service” message, but in one lucky case I found I was talking to a Mrs. Roni Elsbury, nee Ulmer of M.U. Inc. Her company is one of the only remaining firms still engaged in the production of traditional style vacuum tubes in the U.S. Ever since then I have enjoyed occasional journeys down to her facility to assist her in maintenance of the equipment, work on tooling, and help to solve little engineering challenges that keep this very artisanal process alive. It did not take too many of these trips to realize that this could be distilled down to some very basic tools and processes that could be reproduced in your average garage and that positive, all be it rudimentary results could be had with information widely available on the Internet.
Easy enough to make in your garage
Here is a typical construction process I utilize in my garage. I would like to point out that these processes include glass, thin metal, mica, and sharp tools that all represent cut hazards. Additionally extreme temperature in the form of hand torches, and R.F. induction bombardment are utilized. With all industrial processes extreme care must be taken in any endeavor. I would also like to point out that no mercury or other harmful materials are used in any of these processes. The primary materials are Glass, Nickel, Mica sheet, and tungsten wire.
I.P.A
and acetone are used as cleaners and a very small amount of barium is used in the
getter
.
Spot welder
Typical weld
Nearly all connections within a tube are of a welded variety, and spot welding is the quickest and most economical. I simply modified a cheap store-bought spot welder to accept small diameter welding rods and used a 10 amp Variac to control weld temperature. I connected a spring loaded board to use as a make shift jaw closer pedal.
Above on the right is a typical weld. I use Nickel as it has favorable properties for both vacuum use, and tube electronic characteristics. It also is easy to weld and does not oxidize readily under welding conditions in air, as long as the weld time is kept to a minimum. Also shown here is an exothermic evaporable getter ring. This contains a barium/aluminum alloy that evaporates by applying an induced R.F. heating field and adsorbs gas after the tube has been sealed to maintain a reasonable vacuum level.
View of the internal components
Completed “cage” assembly
To the left is what is called a Cage, with one half of the anode not yet attached. The entire structure is composed of Nickel sheet, wire, and mesh. .015 Clear mica, sheared to shape by a standard office scissor shear is punched by means of an arbor press, a block of wood, and a small steel pin. The anode is a sheet of .010″ Nickel formed around a small block of wood. The grid is made of soft temper nickel mesh that has been formed around a block, and welded to two nickel rods for support. Traditionally
Molybdenum
or nickel plated steel would be used for grid wires, but both materials are hard to work with and weld without special tools. To the right is the completed assembly with the second half of the anode welded to complete the cage.
Putting it all together
Here the Cage has been welded to what is called the Stem and this is turn is called a Mount. The stem is the portion that contains the hermetic glass to metal lead seals and the exhausting tubeulation for connecting the tube to the vacuum system. This particular tube uses a commercially available Stem. They can be made by hand, however is is very difficult to get good results that hold up to use. This is the most demanding and critical part in the tube and there are many electronics glass manufacturers in the U.S. who can provide these parts to drawing, and those who wish to hand craft their own would do well to watch the YouTube videos of Ron Soyland who covers the topic. The tungsten filament is also threaded through the cage and spot welded to the stem leads at this point. This tube uses .0085 diameter 1.5% thoriated tungsten.
Mount and stem fitment check
Here the fit of the Mount to the glass bulb is checked. The mica spacers should come in contact with the glass bulb to minimize vibration in the cage. The next step is to trim the excess bulb material and seal the bulb and mount together. This is done by placing these parts in a specially made lathe with two headstocks that turn in unison. Many shops would have made their own machines as I have done myself. However, in this picture I am using a commercially available Lathe.
Avoiding breakage from thermal shock
In large-scale production, carousel style sealing machines were typical. Generally you would anneal the tube after sealing. Sometimes you can flame anneal the glass without the use of an oven, but this is something that can only come with practice and experience. A better solution is to use borosilicate glasses. These types have greater resistance to thermal shock and are much easier to work with. Unfortunately they are far more expensive as they are typically reserved for extreme use. Large transmitting tubes and vapor style lights typically contain these sorts of glasses to handle extreme temperature variation and not damage the hermetic metal lead in seals.
Evacuation of the tube
The tube is placed into the vacuum system. This image shows a typical compression port containing a compressible gland. A high vacuum pumping system contains a mechanical rotary vane pump backing either an oil vapor diffusion pump or a turbo molecular pump followed by a refrigerated trap, and then the manifold the tubes are connected to. This will also typically contain a Ionization gauge, pictured on the upper portion of the picture. The analog gauge indicates fore pressure on the diffusion pump. Typically diffusion pumps require a fore pressure of 100 Millitor or micron to begin pumping action. One micron equates to 1.32 X 10-6 atmospheres of pressure. The ultimate pressure of a well built single stage diffusion pump with no leaks and a refrigerated trap is well below 1 X 10-7 TORR.
In vacuum tube practice however this is difficult to reproduce and only attainable in very small batches with long bake out times and extreme care. In large volume production if the actual pressure in the tube at tip off (The melting of the exhaust tube and removal from the pump) occurs at a pressure in the 10-4 range it is considered a good vacuum. It is then the responsibility of the barium getter to attain the final operating vacuum level. Higher levels of vacuum require more pumps and better practices than can be covered here.
Pumped tube waiting to have a base installed
The skilled do it yourselfer need not fret. It is possible to have acceptable results for experimental tubes using only a dual stage mechanical rotary vane pump with a refrigerated trap. However, care must be taken that every attempt is made to outgas the tube with R.F. bombardment and baking out the tube in an oven placed over it while on the pump for about an hour at more than twice the expected operating temperature. Your final pressure at seal off should be kept to below 20 micron and a large volume of getter material should be used. Additionally the tube should be flooded with nitrogen or argon gas and heated prior to evacuation to reduce the average quantity of oxygen in the tube. Many of the very first amplifier tubes were of this type. The resultant tube will emit, but ionization current will occur as the anode voltage increases. Typically this sort of “Soft” tube has an upper voltage range of 60 to 90 volts. As soon as a vacuum system is on and the tube being pumped is known to be leak free, the filament is lighted and remains lighted through the remainder of the exhaust process. This keeps gas molecules liberated from other metal parts from condensing on the filament and adds additional heat to remove gas from other surfaces. Shown to the left of the tube is a coil for R.F. induction heating of the internal metal components of the tube while on the pump. This also serves as the heat source to flash the getter, producing the mirrored surface and maintain a proper vacuum pressure. Generally a receiving tube will operate in the 1X10-6 range after the getter has had a chance to sorption the remaining gas in a commercially produced tube.
Conclusion
You have to remember that in the early days of electronics many of these processes were developed by observation of empirical evidence. It was several years before a serious scientific study of thermionic emission was begun in earnest and many important discoveries in the production of these devices were made by individuals working with little more than basic tools. Some of these discoveries were made purely by accident. There is no particular reason one cannot simply pick up where the innovators of the teens and twenties left off before tubes became big business. Don’t forget, Menlo Park was nothing more than a ramshackle building, and [
de Forest
] labored in a dark corner of Federal Telegraph when he developed the Triode. The particular type of tube I build is defiantly crude. Its max plate current is only a few milliamps, it’s gassy, and its gain is pitiful, but it works. It’s a reminder that at one time somebody tried something, they were not really sure how to do it and they had no solid plan of how, but they succeeded. They found a way forward and eventually crafted an entirely new area of science an industry. I think I will go play around in my garage a bit more now.
Resources
There are a few videos and websites on the net that show in excellent detail some of the finer points of tube production.
Take the time to check out [Ron Soyland’s] work on
his website
and
his YouTube channel
.
Here are
some educational films from the heyday of tube production
showing the detailed process.
Here in two parts is the RCA film, Electrons on Parade:
Part 1
,
Part 2
About Charles Alexanian
Charles is production manager at
Alex-Tronix
and also in charge of new product development, but he gets bored easily so he moonlights at
M.U. Incorporated
fixing vacuum pumps and tube test gear. He is also an on call technician for the most downloaded podcast on earth and several recording studios because he hates free time… I mean he really hates it. If he were to ever actually have any free time he would most certainly consume it in one of his many hobbies like: more electronics projects, prospecting, or HAM radio. | 72 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "2165501",
"author": "vic vinegar",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T15:32:09",
"content": "Tube making is beautiful work, and the people who continue to do it really illustrates love of a craft. I came across this recently, it’s a dude who makes nixie tubes by hand.https://www.youtube.com/... | 1,760,375,997.139725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/bluetooth-boombox-for-that-80s-nostalgia/ | Bluetooth Boombox For That 80s Nostalgia | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"boombox",
"music",
"tape deck"
] | Sure, anyone can go buy a bluetooth speaker for their portable music needs. But for something a little more unique, at least in this decade, [Daniel] aka [speedfox] went with an
80s-style boombox and outfitted it with a bluetooth module
.
The retro boombox was delivered with a few scratches and a broken radio, but the tape decks were still in decent shape so it was ready to be hacked. [speedfox] tied the Bluetooth audio output to the tape reader on one of the boombox’s tape decks, but this revealed a problem: the bass was overwhelming the rest of the sound. [speedfox] fixed this by adding a filter which worked until the power was tied in to the Bluetooth module and produced a lot of RF noise in the audio output. THIS problem was finally resolved with an audio transformer on both sides of the stereo signal. Finally!
After putting all of the new electronics in the case (and safely out of the way of the 120V AC input!) [speedfox] now has a classy stereo that’s ready to rock some Run-D.M.C. or Heavy D. He notes that the audio filter could use a little tweaking, and he’d also like to
restore the functionality of the original buttons on the boombox
, but it’s a great start with more functionality than he’d get from something off-the-shelf! | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2161463",
"author": "salec",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T16:02:32",
"content": "Used of the grid, Boomboxes eat D or C batteries too fast. Battery compartment upgraded to Lithium ion chemistry, I presume?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,375,996.686777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/automated-cad-design-for-enclosures/ | Automated CAD Design For Enclosures | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"enclosure design",
"laser",
"Laser cutting",
"openscad"
] | [Jon] a.k.a. [Pedantite] recently added small-scale laser cutting to his business and thought about using that laser cutter to add some value to some of the many project designs he creates. Yes, this means custom laser cut enclosures, but how to go about it? [Jon] loves automation, and that can only mean
automated design of laser cut enclosures
by reading the board files from his project library.
The idea of automating the design of plastic enclosures was to read the design files, figure out the dimensions of the board and where the mounting holes go, and generate a file for the laser cutter. The weapon of choice was OpenSCAD, a design language that can be highly parameterized, read external design files, and spit out proper DXF files for laser cutting.
[Jon] set up his toolchain as a Python script that reads design files, sends parameters off to a .SCAD file, and generates a DXF for the laser cutter. There’s also a bit that generates enough data for Blender to render a 3D image of the finished product, all only from gerbers, a drill file, and a few user variables.
The source for these files haven’t been released yet, but that’s only because it’s in a proof-of-concept stage right now. You can check out an example of a render of one of the cases below. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2161089",
"author": "Phineas T. Cat",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T13:48:15",
"content": "CAD Designcomputer aided design design",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2161193",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2014-11... | 1,760,375,996.738328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/hackerspace-tours-london-hackspace/ | Hackerspace Tours: London Hackspace | Jasmine Brackett | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace tours",
"london",
"london hackspace",
"uk hackerspace"
] | On the way back from Hackaday Munich a couple of us got the chance to stop off in the UK, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to visit
London Hackspace
. With close to 1100 members and more than 6500 sq ft of space over two floors, it has to be one of the largest hackerspaces we’ve seen. [Russ Garrett] and [Jasper Wallis] were kind enough to show us around.
The upstairs lounge area is mixed use. It contains soldering stations, laser cutters, knitting and sewing machines, 3d printers, a massive segmented display, a tuck shop, and beer on tap which they brew on the premises!
They have an ancient Stratasys 3d printer, one of the first commercial machines ever. This of course has now been gutted and replaced with mostly open source components, and now appears to spend most of its life as a storage cupboard!
Downstairs is a large storage area with racked boxes for each member. There’s also a dirty metal shop, a dusty wood shop, and a biohacking lab. We don’t see many labs and were advised to ‘not touch anything’ just to be safe. The
Biohackers
are trying to get certification to do more extreme projects like genetic engineering, we can’t wait to see what they start producing here.
In the metal shop we encountered a fine beardy fellow named [Phil] who was knocking up a set of collapsible mooring points for boats along the nearby canal, this project had popped up out of nowhere from a quick discussion on the google group that morning. This really is the power of a vibrant hackerspace, that a quick discussion in the morning can turn into a working project by the afternoon.
The wood room has all the basic tools, and there’s a wood carving group that meets regularly if you are that way inclined. They need better dust extraction and this will be a topic for a future fundraising drive.
The space also has two 5-axis industrial robot arms that have been donated to the space. These were discarded because someone had lost the cables which apparently cost $5000 to replace. Of course our intrepid hackers just replaced the cable with one they made themselves and are now slowly building out a full control system based on gcode. They’re not quite there yet, but there are long term plans for a CNC machine and plasma cutter based on these arms.
Since the space has so many members, they have become quite organized. There’s an RFID entry card system, a sticker printer, and a clear system of labelling for any projects or things left in the space. They’ve had some problems with storage, but their google group is incredibly active and they stay on top of issues that crop up in the space really quickly. The
wiki
is also very well documented, you can check out the
equipment page
as an example.
There are a number of
weekly, biweekly or monthly events
which include: London 3D, Not Just Arduino, Robotics, Biohacking, Woodwork, Metal working, Music hacking, Amateur Radio Meetings, Lockpicking, and Mind Hackers. If you want to join you are sure to find someone who shares your interests.
Finally out the back of the space is a large area for outdoor projects, these range from 30ft wide geodesic domes made out of PVC, to the massive hydraulic mast antenna the amateur radio enthusiasts are assembling. The backyard pièce de résistance however is the
LHS Bike Shed
, a space ship simulator that we
first featured back in 2013
. It has been much upgraded since then and we got to take her out on a mission courtesy of [Tom Wyatt] and [Charles Yarnold]. Our crew: [Russ] at the helm, [Ben] on engineering, and me on weapons – we put up a good fight, but of course in typical b-movie fashion our hyperspace jump went wrong and we ultimately died in the middle of a Red Dwarf-esque firefight. We had a great time and can highly recommend it if you have the chance.
Welcome to London Hackspace
DNH (Do Not Hack)
Components and soldering station
Ancient stratasys 3d printer
Components and soldering station
Hot wires!
Robot Arms sign for the pub at Electromagnetic Field festival
Tuck Shop
Library
Hackerspace wifi bandwidth monitor
Printer
computer accessories
TILDA MKE featured on Hackaday
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/16/tilda-mke-the-emf-2014-badge/
TILDA MKE featured on Hackaday
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/16/tilda-mke-the-emf-2014-badge/
Uranium glass with geiger tube
To be hacked: this will made to vend components at some point
Laser cutter
Hacked knitting machine
Hacked knitting machine
Heraeus Cytomat incubator
London Biohackspace
London Biohackspace
London Biohackspace
Teacan liquid handling machine
Teacan liquid handling machine
PCB etching tank
Dirty Metal Shop
Hand tools
Metalworking and welding area
Power hacksaw
Wielder
Metal cutting
Dusty Wood Shop
Dusty Wood Shop
Staubli robot arm
More shop tools
Bike repair area
Do not hack! Waiting to be repaired
Brewing
more brewing equipment
Liquid nitrogen
LHS Bikeshed
LHS Bikeshed interior
LHS Bikeshed interior
LHS Bikeshed interior
LHS Bikeshed interior
LHS Bikeshed interior
Droids
Amateur radio group
Hydraulic mast for amateur radio | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2160396",
"author": "matt venn",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T09:37:16",
"content": "Ah London Hackspace – my first introduction to hackspaces. I joined for the laser cutter but it was the members that made me stay! I left London 3 years ago but I still go and visit now and then.",
... | 1,760,375,997.240338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/ester-the-open-source-sls-printer/ | Ester, The Open Source SLS Printer | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"3d printer",
"Ester",
"indiegogo",
"laser sintering",
"sintering",
"sls"
] | Filament printers are here to stay, and in the past year there have been a number of SLA and DLP resin printers that can create objects at mind-boggling high resolutions. Both of these technologies have their place, but printing really complex objects without also printing supports is out of the question.
[Brandon]
has been working to create an open source printer
using a different technology, selective laser sintering. That’s a laser melting tiny particles of
stuff
to create an object. This printer can work with any material that can be turned into a powder and melted by a laser, and also has the neat bonus of printing without any supports.
[Brandon]’s printer, Ester, uses small meltable polyester dust as both a print material and support structure. The object to be printed is created by shining a laser over a bed filled with polyester, drawing one layer, and putting another small layer of material over the previous layer.
The machine is using a diode laser, with a few experiments with a 1 Watt diode providing some very nice parts. The mechanics of the machine were built at [Brandon]’s local TechShop,
and already he has an IndieGoGo
for future development and a $3000 development kit. That’s a bit expensive as far as project printers go, but SLS is an expensive technology to get right; ‘pro’ SLS printers are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2159779",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T06:30:00",
"content": "Does it have or need to operate in a vacuum to produce quality parts?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2159903",
"author": "macona",
... | 1,760,375,996.857265 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/a-raspberry-pi-in-a-game-boy-advance-sp/ | A Raspberry Pi In A Game Boy Advance SP | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Case mod",
"casemod",
"game boy",
"game boy advance",
"GBA SP",
"odroid",
"raspberry",
"raspberry pi"
] | It’s not the biggest use of a Raspberry Pi, but running emulators for old game systems is by far the most visible use of the Pi. In fact, putting Pis inside old game systems has led to a resurgence of case modding not seen since the heyday of the Mini-ITX craze of the early ‘aughts.
You’d think every possible Pi casemod had been done by now, but [frostedfires] is still raising the bar with a Pi casemod
that stuffs a clone of everyone’s favorite credit card sized computer into a Game Boy Advance SP
.
[frostedfires] isn’t using a real Raspi from The Foundataion. Instead, he found the
Odroid W
, a raspi compatible board that’s about half the size of a model B. It still has everything needed to complete the build – analog video out, a reasonable Linux system, and enough processing power to run Quake III. Right now, [frostedfires] has the screen working – that was taken from a car backup camera. Other than that, the only portion of the build left to go is a few buttons.
This is officially the smallest derivative casemod we’ve ever seen. the previous record holder was
the still tiny Game Boy Pocket build
from last summer. That build required heavy modifications to the Model B board, though, so if you’re aiming for a smaller build, the Odroid is the way to go.
Thanks to the
Bacman forums
for yet another great build. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2160211",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T08:35:21",
"content": "Is there room for the controls?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2160417",
"author": "Colin Riley",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T09:48:09",
... | 1,760,375,996.968262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/laser-cut-album-released/ | Laser-cut Album Released | Elliot Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"album",
"ASIC",
"creative commons",
"laser cutter",
"record",
"release"
] | In some alternate universe, where laser cutters and phonographs are more common than MP3 players, it makes a ton of sense to
release laser-cutter files for your band’s new album
(
Translated
). In this universe, it’s wacky and awesome.
The new EP from
ASIC
, alias [Patric] from Fablab Zürich, is out as PDF before it’s out in other forms of digital download, and the
trailer video
(embedded below the break) looks fantastic.
The release draws on
this Instructable
by Amanda Ghassaei to turn the music into PDFs suitable for feeding into a laser cutter, and we think it’s classy that she gets a shout-out on the
label’s release page
. Everything else about the album will be released under a Creative Commons license to boot.
Burning a record is a tough test of your laser printer’s settings and calibration, and [Patric] is still working on optimizing for his Epilog 75 Watt Laser cutter. He promises to post up details as soon as he gets it perfected. Of course, you could just wait a week for the record release like a normal person, but where’s the fun in that? Fire up your lasers.
Thanks to Richard for the tip! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2158090",
"author": "Julian",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T00:06:29",
"content": "But what does it sound like?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2158221",
"author": "joe leach",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T00:50:44",
... | 1,760,375,996.628194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/push-button-receive-bacon/ | Push Button, Receive Bacon. | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"bacon",
"Deconstruction",
"hackerspace",
"laser printer",
"The Rabbit Hole"
] | Members of the Rabbit Hole hackerspace spent the last weekend
competing in The Deconstruction
, a 48 hour hackathon competition. The hackerspace’s theme was “Light it up!”, so members created some awesome projects involving light. The star of the show was their bacon cooking machine. The Rabbit hole made the “Push Button. Receive Bacon” meme real.
A broken laser printer was gutted for its drive train and fuser assembly. Laser printer fusers are essentially hot rollers. The rollers melt toner and fuse it with paper as it passes through the printer. The heat in this case comes from a lamp inside the roller. That lamp also puts out plenty of light, which fit perfectly with the team’s theme.
The Rabbit Hole members wasn’t done though, they also built a pocket-sized infinity mirror from an empty Altoids tin. The bottom of the tin was cut out, and a mirror glued in. A filter from a broken projector made a perfect half silver mirror, and some LEDs completed the project.
The members also built a fandom art piece, consisting of 25 fans connected together in a skull shape. The eye and nose fans were lighted. When the fans were plugged in, they kicked for a few seconds before spinning up. Once they did spin though – there was a mighty wind in the Rabbit Hole.
Click past the break for The Rabbit Hole’s Deconstruction video! | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2157711",
"author": "kuriyeth",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T21:23:07",
"content": "mmm bacon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2157751",
"author": "rootofanegative",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T21:40:07",
"content": "I wond... | 1,760,375,997.314952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/tweet-messages-from-punch-cards/ | Tweet Messages From Punch Cards | Theodora Fabio | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"HID keyboard",
"optical interrupter",
"punch card",
"Teensy 3.1",
"twitter"
] | It all started with a conversation about the early days of computing. The next thing he knew, [Tim Jagenberg’s] colleague gave him a stack of punch cards and a challenge. [Tim] attempted to read them with a mechanical contact and failed. Undeterred, he decided to make a
punch card-to-keyboard interface
using optical parts from disassembled HP print stations. Specifically, he took apart the slotted optical interrupter switches to use their IR-LEDs and photo-transistors. Next, [Tim] drilled holes into two pieces of plastic, gluing the LEDs on one piece of plastic and the photo-transistors on the other. The photo-transistors tell the Teensy 3.1 whenever a hole is detected.
[Tim] developed an interpreter on the Teensy that reads the punch card according to
IBM model 029 keypunch
codes. The Teensy enumerates as a USB keyboard when connected to a computer. As a punch card is read, the Teensy outputs the decoded characters as key presses. When a punch card has been completely read, an ‘Enter’ key press is transmitted. Tweeting the punch cards is no more complicated than typing the text yourself. Naturally, the first message posted on Twitter from the stack of punch cards was “Hello World!” [Tim’s] binary and source code is available for download on
Github
.
We’ve enjoyed covering the
backstory of the punch card
and a previous project
reading these cards using a digital camera setup
. It’s always interesting to see the clever ways people use current technology and can-do attitude to read data from obsolete systems that would otherwise be lost. We wonder what is on the rest of those punch cards? Let’s hope [Tim] has more
punch card tweets
soon! | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2165094",
"author": "aifesteves",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T12:07:46",
"content": "You’ll need a punch card writer, though…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2165869",
"author": "F",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T18:13... | 1,760,375,997.383622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/speaker-cabinet-boom-box-build/ | Speaker Cabinet Boom Box Build | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"amp",
"boom box",
"Deal Extreme",
"mp3",
"pentawatt",
"speaker",
"tda2030"
] | When you get that itch to build something, it’s difficult to stop unless you achieve a feeling of accomplishment. And that’s how it was with [Rohit’s] boombox build.
He started out with a failing stereo.
He figured he could build a replacement himself
that played digital media but his attempts at mating microcontrollers and SD cards was thwarted. His backup plan was to hit DX for a cheap player and he was not disappointed. The faceplate he found has slots for USB and SD card, 7-segment displays for feedback, and both buttons and a remote for control. But this little player is meant to feed an amplifier. Why buy one when you can build one?
[Rohit] chose ST Micro’s little AMP called the TDA2030 in a
Pentawatt package
(this name for a zig-zag in-line package is new to us). We couldn’t find stocked chips from the usual suspects but there are distributors with singles in the $3.50-5 range. [Rohit] tried running it without a heat sink and it gets hot fast! If anyone has opinions on this choice of chip (or alternatives) we’d love to hear them.
But we digress. With an amp taken care of he moved onto sourcing speakers. A bit of repair work on an upright set got them working again. The bulky speaker box has more than enough room for the amp and front-end, both of which are pretty tiny. The result is a standalone music player that he can be proud of having hacked it together himself. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2164669",
"author": "hardwerker",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T09:18:28",
"content": "PENTAWATT is a registered trade mark by STM:http://trademarks.justia.com/734/68/pentawatt-73468075.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2164700",
... | 1,760,375,997.559011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/diy-head-mounted-display-based-on-movie-based-on-stephen-king-story/ | DIY Head Mounted Display Based On Movie Based On Stephen King Story | Rich Bremer | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"FPV",
"head mounted display",
"oculus rift"
] | Ever since [will1384] watched “The Lawnmower Man” as a wee lad, he’s been interested in virtual reality. He has been messing around with it for years and even had a VictorMaxx Stuntmaster, one of the first available head mounted displays. Years later, the Oculus Rift came out and [will1384] wanted to try it out but the $350 price tag put it just out of his price range for a discretionary purchase. He then did what most of us HaD readers would do, try
building one himself
, and with a goal for doing it for around $100.
The main display is a 7″ LCD with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels and has a mini HDMI input. Some DIY head mounted display projects out on the ‘web use ski goggles or some sort of elastic strap to hold the display to the wearer’s head. [will1384] took a more industrial approach, literally. He used the head mounting system from a welding helmet. This not only has an adjustable band but also has a top strap to prevent the entire contraption from sliding down. Three-dimensional parts were printed out to secure the LCD to the welding helmet parts while at the same time creating a duct to block out external light.
Inside the goggles are a pair of 5x Loupe lenses mounted between the user’s eyes and the LCD screen. These were made to be adjustable so that the wearer can dial them in for the most comfortable viewing experience. The remote mounted to the top strap may look a little out-of-place but it is actually being used to capture head movement. In addition to a standard wireless remote, it is also an air mouse with internal gyroscopes. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2163999",
"author": "Jag",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T06:05:02",
"content": "Hooray for air mice!I actually used to strap a WiiMote to my head for FPS gaming with friends. Looked dorky as fuck but worked damn well, and was hella fun to program.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,375,997.854693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/open-source-laser-shooting-simulator/ | Open-Source Laser Shooting Simulator | Ethan Zonca | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"airsoft gun",
"marksmanship",
"shooting simulator",
"simulator"
] | Looking to practice your marksmanship skills at home? Check out the homeLESS (Home LasEr Shooting Simulator), an
open-source tool for marksmanship practice
. [Laabicz] developed this system as a cheaper alternative to commercial laser shooting simulators, which are just as simple but very expensive.
[Laabicz]’s simulator primarily uses modified airsoft pistols that are fitted with batteries (installed in the magazine) and a laser in the chamber. Any gun can be used with the system as long as you can figure out how to attach a laser and trigger switch. To power the laser, a small capacitor is charged from batteries when the trigger switch is off. Once the trigger is pressed, the
capacitor discharges through the laser
and makes a short pulse of light.
The simulator is written in Processing and requires a projector and a webcam. The Processing sketch projects configurable moving targets on a screen or wall, and the webcam detects when a laser is triggered over any of the targets. The software supports multiple target types (including moving targets) and is quite configurable. Check out the video after the break to see the system in use. | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "2163642",
"author": "Gumnos",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T04:09:16",
"content": "Half expected to see that annoying Duck Hunt dog pop up :)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1QCbXCezNc",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2165534",
... | 1,760,375,997.790546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/hello-kitty-night-light-gets-flashy-upgrades/ | Hello Kitty Night Light Gets Flashy Upgrades | Sarah Petkus | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"hello kitty",
"hello kitty pillow",
"McDougall",
"night light",
"pillow upgrade",
"star light projector"
] | See something in the world that sucks? As a person with hacker prowess, you view this sucky thing as a challenge to come up with an improvement and in some cases, an improvement that extends beyond what’s truly necessary but
is just plain cool
. This is what maker and father [Dan McDougall] did with his daughter’s
light projecting Hello Kitty pillow
.
As a thing whose one purpose was to shine bright starry patterns on a child’s wall at night, the pillow failed miserably. [Dan] Wondered why his daughter’s toy couldn’t live up to reasonable expectations all while sucking batteries dry, so he opened the large pink plastic casing in the center of the pillow to find a rather minimal board driving three very dim LEDs. The LEDs that faded on and off to create mixtures of different colors weren’t even red, green and blue either. The makers of the toy used yellow instead of the slightly more expensive blue color. Having none of this, [Dan] replaced these sad innards with an Arduino Pro Mini which he programmed to drive an old salvaged speaker and three bright RGB LEDs borrowed from the end of a light strip. For the unnecessary but cool part, he used the additional pins of the Arduino micro-controller to add four touch sensitive buttons on the outside of the pink casing. These small capacitive tiles made from copper tape activate sound and change the color of the LEDs when touched, making the pillow a lot more reactive than it was before.
The Arduino Mini board and the added components fit nicely inside the original pink casing of the pillow when all was soldered up and finished. With threefold ultra bright LEDs and a super strobe mode, his daughter’s Hello Kitty pillow is more of a disco ball than a night light now… but we doubt she will complain about the cool additions. To see the pillow in action and hear more about the upgrades you can check out [Dan’s] video below: | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2162657",
"author": "TheRegnirps",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T00:12:41",
"content": "Can we get a descriptive term or phrase beside “powered by” when talking about he kind of logic in a design? From the last year worth of HaD I get the impression we don’t need power plants, just a pil... | 1,760,375,997.512346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/the-trompe-loeil-menorah/ | The Trompe-l’œil Menorah | Brian Benchoff | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"hannuka",
"led",
"Menor",
"stipplegen",
"stippling",
"traveling",
"travelling salesman problem",
"voronoi"
] | Hanukkah decorations have been up in stores since before Halloween, and that means it’s time for electronic Menorahs with blinking LEDs, controllers, and if you’re really good, a real-time clock with support for the Jewish calendar. [Windell] over at Evil Mad Scientist
just outdid himself with the Mega Menorah 9000
. It’s a flat PCB with nine LEDs, but it uses stippling and a trompe-l’œil effect to make it appear three-dimensional.
Making a 2D object look three-dimensional isn’t that hard – you just need the right shading. A few years ago, [Evil Mad Scientist] created StippleGen, a library to turn images into something that can be easily reproduced with
the EggBot CNC plotter.
It’s actually quite impressive; there are Voronoi diagrams and travelling salesmen problems, all to draw on eggs. The library can be used for much more, like properly shading a PCB so that it looks three-dimensional.
The Mega Menorah 9000 is surprisingly large, at about 7.5″ wide. It’s powered by an ATtiny85 loaded up with the Adafruit Trinket firmware, making it a truly USB enabled Menorah. While it may just be a soldering kit, it is a
fantastic
looking PCB, something we’d like to see some more examples of in the future. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2163808",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-11-21T05:06:06",
"content": "The much used and out of date Model 2000 does not apply here.The calender is much older than that!It’s 5775! Notice the symmetry in the numbers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,375,997.701221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/20/a-usb-controlled-pov-light-stick/ | A USB-Controlled POV Light Stick | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"allpixel"
] | Wanting to showcase their USB LED strip controller,
the folks at Maniacal Labs built a POV LED stick this weekend
. Yes, it’s pretty much the same as any other POV LED display you’ve seen; set a camera for a long exposure, wave the POV light stick around, and get a cool pixely image in mid-air. This build is a little different, though: it’s controlled over WiFi with a Raspberry Pi connected to a WiFi network.
The USB LED strip controller in question
is the AllPixel
, a small board that controls NeoPixels, WS2801, LDP8806, and a bunch of other LED strip controllers over USB. The Stick used for this project consisted of two meters of LPD8806 LEDs, giving 96 pixels of horizontal resolution. A big battery and Raspberry Pi rounds out the rest of the electronics.
Building a LED POV display isn’t that much different from building a LED matrix display; all you have to do is break up the image into individual columns and display them sequentially. To do this, the Maniacal Labs folks whipped up a LEDPOV class that does just that. To get the images, just open the shutter on a camera, wave the stick around, and if you get it right, you’ll have a great pixely image of nyan cat or the rainbow wrencher. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2162004",
"author": "Edward",
"timestamp": "2014-11-20T19:32:39",
"content": "This new web theme for Hackaday is a Hackaday FAIL.Text too big. Less information and fewer hacks per page.Everyone should realize that sometimes change is NOT for the better. See Vista, Windows ME, New ... | 1,760,375,997.949359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/hackerspace-tours-muccc/ | Hackerspace Tours: MuCCC | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"ccc",
"Chaos Computer Club",
"munich"
] | Our trip to Germany wouldn’t be complete without a trip to a proper European hackerspace, and
the Munich Chaos Computer Club
was more than accommodating in allowing us to invade their space.
Before even walking in the door, you’re greeted with one of the coolest displays you’ve ever seen. Half of the front of their building
is a gigantic flipdot display
. It’s astonishing in person, and although no dots were flipped during our visit, we can imagine the noise would be deafening. Simply awesome.
Walking in the door, you’re greeted with the general meeting area, conference room, couches, and a Twilight Zone pinball machine. The machine didn’t quite work when we arrived, but within five minutes, [Sprite_TM] was behind the backglass and had everything fixed within an hour.
The back room and basement have the usual assortment of tools – a 3D printer, CNC, lathe, and electronics workbench. If you need a key made, head to the basement. You’ll also find an ATM in the basement. The story with that is that the news station in Munich wanted to do a story on how easy it was to get USB access to the Windows system in an ATM. The station couldn’t do it – but they faked it – and put the ATM up on eBay. Not much money later, the ATM found its way to the space’s basement.
MuCCC is more than just a space with tools, though: in the european hackerspace tradition, there are frequent presentations and talks that would fit in at an academic conference. Last Tuesday, [nicolas]
presented a few techniques to protect cryptographic keys from physical integrity attacks
, i.e. an evil maid attack or a SWAT team invading your router closet. It’s a daemon that listens to an AVR loaded up with sensors through a GPIO pin. If there is physical intrusion in the device – barometric pressure or light – keys resident in memory can be erased.
You can check out a gallery of pics from the space below.
The stores of Club Mate. There was also a vending machine.
Components
Flip dot display in a junk box.
Iambic keyer
This test equipment was donated, but it’s still amazingly good
No, that’s not a Darwin. It’s close, though, and the only printer of this design I’ve seen at a hackersapce
Keys
There’s an ATM in the basement. Apparently, a news station in Munich bought an ATM to demonstrate how easy it is to crack. The news station couldn’t crack it. It was then sold on eBay and wound up at the space. Yes, you can now play Solitaire on it.
Good
[Sprite_TM] came into the space and found a broken Twilight Zone game. 30 minutes later, it was fixed.
ARRL handbook in Germany. Okay.
Twilight Zone
Outside of the space. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2153584",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T22:10:34",
"content": "Impressive place.Naturally my eyes landed on the IC-9100 first. Yep, I’m a radio nerd.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2153601",
"autho... | 1,760,375,998.282599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/retrotechtacular-the-long-arduous-birth-of-a-tank/ | Retrotechtacular: The (Long, Arduous) Birth Of A Tank | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"tank",
"tank development",
"tenacity",
"tensile strength",
"terrain",
"topography"
] | Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the United States Army provided regular status reports to both its interior members and the American public through a half-hour documentary television show called
The Big Picture
. Since the program was produced by the government, every episode immediately entered the public domain. This particular report tells
the story of the T-48 project
that culminated in the 90mm M48 Patton tank.
The film opens by providing a brief history of tanks and the lessons learned about them between WWI and the Korean War. The Army sought a more robust vehicle that could handle a wide variety of climates and terrain, and so the process of information gathering began. After a series of meetings at the Pentagon in which all parties involved explored every facet, the project was approved, and a manila folder was officially designated to the project and labeled accordingly.
We then tour the R&D facility where new tank materials and components are developed and tested. It is here that the drive gears are put through their paces on a torsion machine. Air cleaners are pitted against each other to decide which can filter out the finest dust and sand. After careful analysis, different tank shell materials are test welded together with various, well-documented electrodes, and these panels are taken outside so their welds can be directly fired upon.
Many of the parts are tensile-tested on a machine that can press or squeeze with 400 thousand pounds of pressure. The turret tester rocks and shakes the unit to ensure the gun won’t fall off as its tank traverses hill and valley. Seemingly, each of the 85k parts that will eventually comprise the production M48 Patton is tested to the gills. Even the leather that will cover the driver’s seat is pitted against equipment designed to age and abrade.
At this point, a project engineer saunters in to the scene to direct the production of scale models. Once approved, a full-size engineering prototype is put together and tested within an inch of its molecules. This includes driving it to a cold testing warehouse where men in suits behind glass expose it to -65°F and verify that it starts without a block heater.
Tank prototypes are performance tested at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Simulated field conditions include a 60% slope, a wavy road, and a large bathtub. The vehicles must prove themselves on all kinds of hills, swamps, marshes, and bogs. Finally, a few pilot models are made for tactical testing. Once fully approved, mass production can begin. The film estimates that on average, some three to six years elapse between conception and delivery of a new model of tank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQZKu0mmRGk
Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by
sending in your ideas for future installments
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2153115",
"author": "superUnknown",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T18:17:47",
"content": "Cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2153276",
"author": "r4k",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T19:27:59",
"content": "Relevant #1https://... | 1,760,375,998.026558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/running-debian-on-a-graphing-calculator/ | Running Debian On A Graphing Calculator | Eric Evenchick | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"debian",
"debootstrap",
"linux",
"ndless",
"qemu",
"ti-nspire"
] | While the ubiquitous TI-83 still runs off an ancient Zilog Z80 processor, the newer TI-Nspire series of graphing calculators uses modern ARM devices. [Ivoah] managed to get
Debian Linux running on a TI-Nspire
calculator, and has written a guide explaining how it’s done.
The process uses
Ndless
, a jailbreak which allows code to run at a low level on the device. Ndless also includes a full SDK, emulator, and debugger for developing apps. In this case, Ndless is used to load the Linux kernel.
The root filesystem is built on a PC using
debootstrap
and the
QEMU
ARM emulator. This allows you to install whatever packages are needed via apt, before transitioning to the calculator itself.
With the root filesystem on a USB flash drive, Ndless runs the Linux loader, which starts the kernel, mounts the root filesystem, and boots in to a Debian system in about two minutes. As the video after the break demonstrates, this leaves you with a shell on the calculator. We’re not exactly sure what to do with Linux on a graphing calculator, but it is a neat demonstration. | 47 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2152610",
"author": "Luís Outeiro",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T15:08:43",
"content": "I’ve seen this before… A guy even connected a wifi dongle through otg and had text based internet",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2246834",
... | 1,760,375,998.435309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/ | Thalmic Labs Shuts Down Free Developer Access Update: It’s Back Again | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"firmware downgrade",
"muscle sensor",
"Myo",
"myoelectric"
] | The Thalmic Myo is an electronic arm band with an IMU and myoelectric sensors, able to measure the orientation and muscle movements of an arm. This device has uses ranging from prosthetics to
Minority Report
-style user interfaces. Thalmic is also a Y Combinator company, with $15 million in funding and tech press gushing over the possible uses of this futuristic device. Truly, a remarkable story for the future of user interfaces and pseudo-medical devices that can get around most FDA regulations.
A few months ago, Thalmic released a firmware update to the Myo
that blocks raw access to the myoelectric sensors
. Anyone wanting to develop for the Myo now needs to submit an application and pay Thalmic and their investors a pound of flesh – up to $5000 for academic institutions. The current version of the firmware only provides access to IMU data and ‘gestures’ – not the raw muscle data that would be invaluable when researching RSI detection, amputee prosthetics, or a hundred other ideas floating around the Thalmic forums.
Thalmic
started their company
with the idea that an open SDK would be best for the community, with access to the raw sensor data available in all but the latest version of the firmware. A few firmware revisions ago, Thalmic removed access to this raw data,
breaking a number of open source projects
that would be used for researchers or anyone experimenting with the Thalmic Myo. Luckily, someone smart enough to look at version numbers has come up with
an open library to read the raw sensor data
. It works well, and the official position of Thalmic is that raw sensor data will be unavailable in the future. If you want to develop something with the Myo, this library just saved your butt.
Thalmic
will have an official statement
on access to raw sensor data soon.
Quick aside, but if you want to see how nearly every form of media is crooked, try submitting this to Hacker News and look at the
Thalmic investors
. Edit: don’t bother, we’re blacklisted or something.
Update:
Thalmic has updated their policy
, and will be releasing a firmware version that gives access to the raw EMG sensor data later on. The reasons for getting rid of the raw sensor data is twofold:
Battery life. Streaming raw data out of the armband takes a lot of power. Apparently figuring out ‘gestures’ on the uC and sending
those
saves power.
User experience. EMG data differs from person to person and is hard to interpret. | 56 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2152188",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T12:20:59",
"content": "According to the linked thread, they locked down the firmware “to improve battery life”. I’d love to know how that works.“Quick aside, but if you want to see how nearly every form of media is crooked... | 1,760,375,998.15599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/harmonic-analyzer-mechanical-fourier-computer/ | Harmonic Analyzer Mechanical Fourier Computer | Elliot Williams | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"Engineer Guy",
"Fourier",
"mechanical calculator",
"michelson"
] | If you’re into mechanical devices or Fourier series (or both!), you’ve got some serious YouTubing to do.
[The Engineer Guy] has posted up a series of four videos (
Introduction
,
Synthesis
,
Analysis
, and
Operation
) that demonstrate the operation and theory behind a 100-year-old machine that does Fourier analysis and synthesis with gears, cams, rocker-arms, and springs.
In
Synthesis
, [The Engineer Guy] explains how the machine creates an arbitrary waveform from its twenty Fourier components. In retrospect, if you’re up on your Fourier synthesis, it’s pretty obvious. Gears turn at precise ratios to each other to create the relative frequencies, and circles turning trace out sine or cosine waves easily enough. But the mechanical spring-weighted summation mechanism blew our mind, and watching the machine do its thing is mesmerizing.
In
Analysis
everything runs in reverse. [The Engineer Guy] sets some sample points — a square wave — into the machine and it spits out the Fourier coefficients. If you don’t have a good intuitive feel for the duality implied by Fourier analysis and synthesis, go through the video from 1:50 to 2:20 again. For good measure, [The Engineer Guy] then puts the resulting coefficient estimates back into the machine, and you get to watch a bunch of gears and springs churn out a pretty good square wave. Truly amazing.
The fact that the machine was designed by [Albert Michelson], of
Michelson-Morley experiment
fame, adds some star power. [The Engineer Guy] is selling a book documenting the machine, and his
video about the book
is probably worth your time as well. And if you still haven’t gotten enough sine-wavey goodness, watch the
bonus track
where he runs the machine in slow-mo: pure mechano-mathematical hotness! | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2151686",
"author": "Dudecallednick",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T09:19:53",
"content": "This is easily the coolest thing I’ve seen today!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2151723",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2014-... | 1,760,375,998.51714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/super-smash-bros-on-a-calculator/ | Super Smash Bros On A Calculator | Bryan Cockfield | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"calculator",
"global calcnet",
"graphing calculator",
"smash bros",
"ti-83",
"ti-84",
"z80"
] | Move over, BlockDude! There’s a new calculator game in town. [Hayleia] and a few other programmers have been hard at work on
a clone of Super Smash Bros for graphing calculators
that is sure to keep you busy in your next calculus class.
The game, called Smash Bros Open, is based on the Nintendo fighting game and is written specifically for monochrome z80 calculators (the TI-83 and TI-84 being the most ubiquitous of these). The game runs in 6 MHz mode with a simple background, or it can run in 15 MHz mode with a more complicated background. The programmers intend for the game to be open source, so that anyone can add anything to the games that they want, with the hopes of making the game true to its namesake.
Anyone who is looking to download a copy of this should know that Smash Bros Open is currently a work-in-progress. Right now both players need to play on the same calculator (with different keys), and Fox is the only playable character. The programmers hope to resolve the two player issue by using a second calculator as a game pad, or by linking the two calculators using
Global CalcNet
. As for the other characters, those can be added by others based on the existing code which is available on the project’s forum post!
Thanks to [Chris] for the tip. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2151186",
"author": "gdogg",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T06:14:52",
"content": "Awesome. I wish I knew in highschool there was a way to program my ti83 that wasn’t through their basic interpreter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,375,998.696474 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/because-you-cant-go-to-germany-without-seeing-model-trains/ | Because You Can’t Go To Germany Without Seeing Model Trains | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace",
"model train",
"siemens"
] | As with all our extracurricular adventures, we needed to visit a few hackerspaces while in Munich. The first one was
MCSM/Make Things Munich
, formerly the
Siemens
Club for model engines. We’ve been to a few hackerspaces and have the passport stamps to prove it, and we can say without a doubt this space is unique.
MCSM was a hackerspace before the concept of hackerspaces existed. Originally, this was the Siemens Club for Model Engines, filled with engineers from the Siemens plant tinkering with model trains, model boats, and models of anything that moves. One of the members that guided us through the space, [Carlos Morra] told us when he joined, he alone dropped the average age of the space’s membership by a decade.
Inside the space, you’ll find the usual tools and equipment – lathes, CNC mills, an electronics workbench, and a bunch of old but still valuable equipment. Most of this equipment was salvaged from the Siemens plant. The organization for this space, though, cannot be compared to anything I’ve ever seen. There are floor to ceiling cabinets filled with everything you can imagine, all carefully indexed and sorted.
Of course, being formerly called the Model Engine club, there will be an immense train layout. I counted at least five gauges of track in two sprawling layouts, one of which was easily 15 square meters. It’s a true hackerspace built from a model train club, how can it get better than that?
Pictures below.
Carlos and Patrick
The space’s library
Random meters
Our Community Manager
Proxxon tools. High quality, and made in Germany
Siemens also made keyboards…
Guess the gauges! | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2150967",
"author": "toodlestech",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T04:59:26",
"content": "Since there’s no place for feedback this is going here:I don’t want to rage from the HackADay changes but there really is too much text on the screen on the main page. Having the ability to see three ... | 1,760,375,998.644418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/interview-with-a-printer/ | Interview With A Printer | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Interviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"i3",
"i4",
"interview",
"makerbot",
"prusa",
"prusa mendel",
"reprap",
"RepRap Project"
] | The Hackaday European tour continues, this time in Prague with
Josef Průša
(
Google translate
), core developer in the RepRap project, feature at all the Maker Faires and cons, and creator of his namesake, the Prusa Mendel and i3 printers.
[Prusa]’s involvement with the RepRap project started with a
RepRap Mendel
, the second iteration of RepRap hardware, but the first popular and easy to build version. [Jo] found the Mendel rather difficult to build, so he loaded OpenSCAD and started to design his own version of the hardware. This version became the de facto standard RepRap for a few years, with many inspired by and derivative printers making their way to hackerspaces and workshops around the world.
The first Prusa printer, derived from the RepRap Mendel.
A few years ago, [Prusa] was one of the first to make a complete break with the traditional ‘threaded rod and nut’ construction of RepRaps with the introduction of the
Prusa i3
. This was the first model that had a metal plate as the frame, another feature that would be seen in dozens of other models. It’s not something that was without controversy, either; using a metal plate for the frame doesn’t allow for as much self-replication, something that’s a core value of the RepRap project. That didn’t matter to the community; the Prusa i3 or a similar design is
the third most popular printer
on 3Dhubs.
The first Prusa printer showing off its Makerbot heritage
What’s the future of the Prusa name? There is an i4 in the works, and I’m pretty sure that’s all I can tell you. Someone already bought the
Prusai4 domain
, so there
may
be a name change.
In the interview below, [Prusa] goes over his involvement with the RepRap project, his business, what he considers to be the latest advances in 3D printing for the past year, what the worst things about the 3D printing scene is (it’s Kickstarter), the state of the RepRap project, and thoughts on SLS, DLP, and SLA printing technologies. Video below. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2157257",
"author": "kingofl337",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T18:02:50",
"content": "This video is Private…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2157413",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T19:16:22",
... | 1,760,375,999.047006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/programmable-lithium-charger-shield-for-arduino/ | Programmable Lithium Charger Shield For Arduino | Marsh | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino shield",
"batteries",
"battery",
"charger",
"charging",
"lcd",
"Li-ion",
"lipoly",
"lithium",
"LT1510",
"shield"
] | Surely you need yet another way to charge your lithium batteries—perhaps you can sate your desperation with this programmable multi (or single) cell
lithium charger shield for the Arduino
?! Okay, so you’re not
hurting
for another method of juicing up your batteries. If you’re a regular around these parts of the interwebs, you’ll recall the
lithium charging guide
and that
rather incredible, near-encyclopedic rundown of both batteries and chargers
, which likely kept your charging needs under control.
That said, this shield by Electro-Labs might be the perfect transition for the die-hard-‘duino fanatic looking to migrate to tougher projects. The build features an LCD and four-button interface to fiddle with settings, and is based around an LT1510 constant current/constant voltage charger IC. You can find the schematic, bill of materials, code, and PCB design on the Electro-Labs webpage, as well as a brief rundown explaining how the circuit works. Still want to add on the design? Throw in
one of these Li-ion holders
for quick battery swapping action.
[via
Embedded Lab
] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2156990",
"author": "ka1axy",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T15:28:04",
"content": "I have had excellent results with the $50 chinese “everything” chargers sold at hobby sites. They come under various names, but they all seem to be the same inside. They allow you to set chemistry (Li, ... | 1,760,375,998.748183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/rtl-sdr-as-a-spectrum-analyzer/ | RTL SDR As A Spectrum Analyzer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"RTL-SDR",
"software-defined radio",
"spectrum analyzer",
"test equipment"
] | RTL-SDR, the USB TV tuner turned software-defined radio is an amazing device, capable of listening to nearly anything from 25MHz to 1750MHz, fits in your pocket, and costs about $20. Even more astonishing is that
it’s also a kinda-okay spectrum analyzer
. [Kerry D. Wong] tested out one of these USB TV tuner, and the results are exactly what you would expect: it lacks a little precision, and sampling bandwidth is only a tiny bit terrible, but it does work.
A stock USB TV tuner doesn’t come with a connector that would normally be used for spectrum analysis. A BNC connector can be easily attached, as can a terminator to match the 75Ω impedance of the SDR. This isn’t really necessary; the frequencies being measured are low enough that you can get away without one.
As far as software goes, [Kerry] first pulled out the usual suspects of the SDR world;
rtlsdr-scanner
distorted the measured spectrum, as did a lot of other SDR receivers.
Gqrx SDR
was the first one that worked well, but the king of this repurposing of USB TV tuners was
OSMOCOM
. There’s a huge number of tools for spectrum analysis right out of the box with this package.
How did the RTL SDR fare as a spectrum analyzer? Feeding some stuff in from a signal generator, [Kerry] discovered the LO in the RTL SDR was off by a hair. Also, OSMOCOM only measures amplitude in dB, not the dBm found in every other spectrum analyzer ever made. By measuring a 0 dBm signal whatever value displayed can be shifted up or down.
So, does it work? Yes, it does. If, for some reason, you need a spectrum analyzer
now,
can you use this? Yep. Pretty cool. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2156495",
"author": "Denis Periša",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T12:06:52",
"content": "you just wanted to listen to tetra devices, admit it ;D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2156591",
"author": "Abhi",
"timestamp... | 1,760,375,998.813461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/measuring-the-length-of-ws2812-strips/ | Measuring The Length Of WS2812 Strips | Ethan Zonca | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"addressable",
"attiny",
"led strip",
"ws2812"
] | [Tim] discovered a simple way to measure the
length of WS2812 addressable LED strips from a microcontroller
. This is great for any project that can have an arbitrary length of addressable LED strip attached to it.
The simplest (and perhaps most reliable) way to measure strip length is by feeding the serial output pin of the end of the strip back to the microcontroller. The microcontroller keeps clocking bits into the strip until it receives data from the end of the strip. [Tim] didn’t want to run an additional signal to the end of his strip, so he found another solution.
[Tim] used the ADC of his microcontroller (an ATtiny) to measure supply voltage droop as LEDs are turned on. Each LED draws around 60mA at full brightness, so [Tim] sequentially turned on each LED and watched the ADC for slight voltage changes. If the voltage changed, there must be an LED at that address. [Tim] does note that this method is extremely dependent on the power supply used and only works on short strips. Check out his blog post for more details. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2156078",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T09:47:57",
"content": "It should be possible to extended this for arbitrary strip lengths by turning on only one LED (or maybe 2 or 3 for an easier to detect voltage drop) at a time and letting the lit LED(s) travel down the strip... | 1,760,375,998.86626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/extreme-repair-of-an-all-in-one-pc/ | Extreme Repair Of An All-in-One PC | Adam Fabio | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"AIO",
"all-in-one",
"gun",
"lenovo",
"pc",
"solder"
] | While browsing a local auction site, [Viktor] found himself bidding on a beat up Lenovo A600 all-in-one PC. He bid around $50 and won. Then came the hard part –
actually making the thing work
. The front glass was cracked, but the LCD was thankfully unharmed. The heat pipes looked like they had been attacked with monkey wrenches. The superIO chip’s pins were mangled, and worst of all, the
MXM video card
was dead.
The first order of business was to fix the superIO chip’s pins and a few nearby discrete components which had been knocked off their pads. Once that was done, [Viktor] was actually able to get the computer to boot into Linux from a USB flash drive. The next step was bringing up the display. [Viktor] only needed a coding station, so in addition to being dead, the video accelerator on the MXM wasn’t very useful to him. The Lenovo’s motherboard was designed to support video on an MXM card or internal video. Switching over meant changing some driver settings and moving a few components, including a rather large LVDS connector for the display itself. A difficult task, compounded by the fact that [Viktor’s] soldering tools were a pair of soldering guns that would be better suited to fixing the bodywork on a ’57 Chevy. He was able to fashion a hot wire setup of sorts, and moved the connector over. When he was done, only one tiny solder bridge remained!
The end result is a new coding battle station for [Viktor] and a computer which was a basket case is saved from the landfill. If you like this hack, check out [Viktor’s]
low power PSU
, or his
1 wire network
! | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2155589",
"author": "Jonathan Whitaker",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T07:05:46",
"content": "Until quite recently, all I had to solder with was a 200W soldering gun. This dude deserves some serious respect!! Absolutely amazing what he’s managed with some beat-up old tools. Nice hack!",
... | 1,760,375,999.095389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/nutclough-circuit-board-design-is-stylishly-amplified/ | ‘Nutclough’ Circuit Board Design Is Stylishly Amplified | Sarah Petkus | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"audio amplifier",
"boldport",
"calrec",
"circuit art",
"nutclough",
"pcb art",
"saar drimer"
] | Though there is nothing wrong with the raw functionality of a plain rectangular PCB, boards that work an edge of aesthetic flare into their layout leave a lasting impression on those who see them. This is the philosophy of circuit artist [Saar Drimer] of Boldport, and the reason why he was commissioned by Calrec Audio to create the look for their anniversary edition amplifier kit. We’ve seen
project’s by [Saar]
before and this
‘Nutclough18’ amplifier
is another great example of his artistic handy work.
For the special occasion of their 50th anniversary, Calrec Audio contacted [Saar] requesting he create something a bit more enticing than their standard rectangular design from previous years. With their schematic as a starting point, [Saar] used cardboard to mock-up a few of his ideas in order to get a feel for the placement of the components. Several renditions later, [Saar] decided to implement the exact proportions of the company’s iconic Apollo desk into the heart of the design as an added nod back to the company itself. In the negative space between the lines of the Apollo desk there is a small perforated piece depicting the mill where the Calrec offices are located. The image of the mill makes use of different combinations of copper, silk and solder mask either absent or present to create shading and depth as the light passes through the board. This small piece that would have otherwise been removed as scrap can be snapped off from the body of the PCB and used as a commemorative keychain.
With the battery and speaker mounted behind the completed circuit board, [Saar’s] design succeeds in being a unique memento with a stylish appeal. There is a complete case study with detailed documentation on the Nutclough from cardboard to product on the
Boldport website
. Here you can also see some other examples of their gorgeous circuit art, or checkout their
opensource software
to help in designing your own alternative PCBs. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2154629",
"author": "bl",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T03:37:31",
"content": "those wavy lines will make great rfi/emi antennae ;(then again, this isn’t a high performance amp, so it probably doesn’t matter too much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,375,999.210571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/using-midi-and-magnets-to-produce-tones-with-tines/ | Using MIDI And Magnets To Produce Tones With Tines | Sarah Petkus | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"acoustic",
"electromagnet",
"electromagnetism",
"midi",
"pipe organ",
"steinke",
"tine",
"tine organ"
] | Normally you’d expect the sound of a pipe organ to come from something gigantic. [Matthew Steinke] managed to squeeze all of that rich melodic depth into an
acoustic device the size of a toaster
(YouTube link) which uses electromagnetism to create its familiar sound.
[Matthew ’s] instrument has a series of thin vertical tines, each coupled with a small MIDI controlled electromagnet. As the magnet pulses with modulation at a specific frequency, the pull and release of the tine causes it to resonate continuously with a particular tone. The
Tine Organ
is capable of producing 20 chromatic notes in full polyphony starting in middle C and can be used as an attachment to a standard keyboard or a synthesizer app on a smart phone. The classic style body of the instrument is made out of mahogany and babinga and houses the soundboard as well as the mini microcontroller responsible for receiving the MIDI and regulating the software oscillators sending voltage to the magnets.
[Matthew’s] creation is as interesting to look at as it is to listen to, so I’d recommend checking out the video below to hear the awesome sound it produces: | 18 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2153894",
"author": "RoyTheReaper",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T00:37:49",
"content": "That’s really awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2153898",
"author": "carcanhol",
"timestamp": "2014-11-19T00:38:40",
"content... | 1,760,375,999.269822 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/play-music-on-a-high-voltage-keyboard/ | Play Music On A High Voltage Keyboard | Adam Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"flyback",
"flyback transformer",
"high voltage",
"neon"
] | [Matt] works at a neon sign power supply company. When a vendor error left him with quite a few defective high voltage transformers, he couldn’t bring himself to toss them in the bin. [Matt] was able to fix the transformers well enough to work, and the idea for a
high voltage keyboard
began to brew. Unfortunately, the original transformers were not up to the task of creating a musical arc. At that point the project had taken on a life of its own. Matt grabbed some higher power transformers and started building.
The keyboard has 25 keys, each connected to an individual high voltage circuit with its own spark gap. The HV circuit is based upon a
IR2153D self-oscillating half-bridge driver.
(PDF link). The 2153D is modulated by a good old-fashioned 555 timer chip. No micros in this design, folks! The output of the IR2153D switches a pair of N-channel MOSFETS which drive the flyback transformers.
[Matt] created 25 copies of his circuit and built them up on individual PCBs. He assembled everything on a wooden board shaped roughly like a grand piano. The final project looks great – though [Matt] admittedly has no musical ability, so we can’t hear AC/DC flying out of those spark gaps just yet.
If you do want to hear sparks playing music, check out the
OneTesla project
we saw at MakerFaire NY 2013. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2149813",
"author": "peanutbutterjellytime",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T00:19:38",
"content": "this is amazing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2152398",
"author": "Ross Jacobs",
"timestamp": "2014-11-18T13:53:01"... | 1,760,375,999.323032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/sand-cast-banana-for-scale-is-so-metal/ | Sand Cast Banana For Scale Is So Metal | Theodora Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"aluminum sand casting",
"banana",
"banana for scale",
"reddit"
] | If you’ve been on Reddit over the past year, you’ve likely encountered the “banana for scale” meme. [BFG121] felt that the size variation of bananas would not do – there needed to be a standard. He decided to make a
metal banana out of re-purposed aluminum
. He created his own furnace out of everyday objects including a hair dryer, metal bucket, cement, fire clay, and sand. [BFG121] used a typical banana as the reference for his sand casting mold. After melting the aluminum in his homemade furnace, he poured it into the empty mold, making sure there was an extra hole for the displaced air to escape. The end result is a perfect replica of a banana. [BFG121] made two aluminum bananas, and stamped each one with a serial number. One was given to Imgur headquarters while the
other was auctioned on eBay
. The
winning bid
(#39) was $67 USD, a very good ROI.
If you want to learn more about metal casting, check out
myfordboy’s channel on YouTube
. You can also see an example of the “banana for scale” in this
Hackaday article about a giant spirograph
. Our only suggestion to [BFG121] is to send some to
ASTM
,
NIST,
and
BIPM
!
[via
Reddit
] | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2149417",
"author": "Tom the Brat",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T21:23:59",
"content": "Hmm. I thought the standard banana was a Dole.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2149440",
"author": "mikemac",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T2... | 1,760,375,999.438131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/raspicommplus-an-expansion-board-for-expansion-boards/ | RasPiCommPlus, An Expansion Board For Expansion Boards | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cpld",
"crowdfunding",
"gpio",
"gps",
"gsm",
"indiegogo",
"module",
"raspberry pi"
] | The easiest way to connect a GSM module to a Raspberry Pi would be to buy a breakout module, install some software, and connect to a mobile network with a Pi. Need GPS, too? That’s a whole other module, with different software. The guys behind RasPiCommPlus are working on a better solution –
a breakout board for breakout boards
that takes care of plugging a ton of modules into a Pi and sorts out the kernel drivers to make interfacing with these modules easy.
Right now, the team has a GPS and GSM module, digital in and out modules, an analog input module, and RS-232 and -485 modules. They’re working on some cool additions to the lineup, including a breakout for Sharp memory displays, a 9-axis IMU, a stepper motor driver, and a 1-wire breakout module.
Some of the RasPiCommPlus team showed up to the Hackaday Munich party and were kind enough to sit down for a demo video. You can check that out below. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2148972",
"author": "null",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T18:18:52",
"content": "Wouldn’t bandwidth be an issue? I recall reading that it is not possible to have mid to high speed interfaces through the rpi gpio pins.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,375,999.859728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/ask-hackaday-not-your-mothers-feedback/ | Ask Hackaday: Not Your Mother’s Feedback | Will Sweatman | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"invariant representation",
"PalmPilot"
] | Imagine you were walking down a beach, and you came across some driftwood resting against a pile of stones. You see it in the distance, and your brain has no trouble figuring out what you’re looking at. You see driftwood and rocks – you can clearly distinguish between the two objects without a second thought.
Think about the raw data entering the brain. The textures of the rocks and the driftwood are similar. The colors are similar. The irregular shapes are similar. Thus the raw data entering the brain’s V1 area for both objects must be similar as well. Now think about the borders that separate the pieces of driftwood from the edges of the rocks. From a raw data perspective, there is no border, and likewise no separation because the two objects are so similar. But yet your brain can clearly see a rock and a piece of driftwood – two distinctly different objects. So how does the brain do this? How does it so easily differentiate between the two? If the raw data on either side of the border separating the wood and the rocks is the same, then there must be an outside influence determining where that border is. Jeff Hawkins believes this outside influence is a very special and most interesting type of feedback. Read on as we explain and attempt to implement this form of feedback in our hierarchical structure of invariant representations.
Now, this is not your mother’s feedback we’re talking about here. We’re not simply injecting part of the output back into the input like a neural network would do. Because we are working with a hierarchy of patterns, the feedback must take place between the hierarchical levels. Basically, each level is a child to the parent levels above it. A parent level can “adjust” what the child level below it is actually seeing to accommodate what it predicts it (the parent level) should be seeing.
Each level of the hierarchy is constantly trying to predict what the next pattern will be. On the very low level, these are just lines and edges. But near the top, the constant prediction of high level patterns can act as a base for intelligence. While this is only one of many theories on how the brain does this, replicating this type of hierarchical feedback in silicon should be possible. But it’s not going to be easy. Let’s walk through a simplified example that continues off our previous work of forming an invariant representation of a basic shape. But this time, we shall apply hierarchical feedback.
Finding Structure with Prediction
In our
previous example
of forming an invariant representation of a square, raw binary data was taken into the model through Tier 4. Tier 4’s job was to find repeating binary sequences, give that sequence a name, and pass that name up to Tier 3. Tier 3’s job was to find repeating patterns of names, give the group of repeating patterns another name, and pass that other name up to Tier 2. This process repeats until the invariant representation of a square is formed at the top most tier.
This works in a fixed, unchanging environment with no other shapes or lines to confuse our model. But what happens if we attempt to replicate the rock/driftwood problem by placing our square alongside many other similar shapes? This is where feedback becomes necessary. If we are unable to distinguish between a single side of our square and the side of an adjoining triangle, then we must use stored invariant patterns of the square higher up in the hierarchy to determine what we are seeing. So how do we do this.
The Power of Variability
Each name that a Tier outputs will need an “adjustment” variable, with that variable controlled by the Tiers above it. For instance, imagine Tier 2 sees the pattern 115 & 125 repeat often, and it gives it a name of 240, and passes that name to Tier 1. Fast forward in time, and imagine the name of “115” once again comes across the registers of Tier 2. It can predict with a certain percentage that the next name it should see is a “125”. But say the name coming in is closer to a “123”. Tier 2 will adjust what Tier 3 is seeing by changing the “w” variable of the Tier 4 output, so that it now passes to Tier 3 what is needed for Tier 2 to meet its prediction.
This type of feedback occurs between all stages of the hierarchy. It’s why you can see both driftwood and rock laying together as clearly as you could see an orange basketball laying in their midst. While little to no feedback would be needed to identify the basketball, the majority of what you see of the rock and wood is actually just feedback based upon individual invariant representations of a rock and a tree branch. Likewise, we cannot see a single line of the square next to a line of a triangle – for the data coming off the ADC for these two lines is identical. The two shapes can only be separated by feedback from higher up in the hierarchy.
Keep in mind that this simple example of a working hierarchy is just that – simplified. To operate in the real world, a working hierarchy would consist of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Tiers – each with individual inputs that could reach into the hundreds of thousands. Luckily for you, the entire concept can be emulated in software. With FPGAs, gigabytes of RAM and CPUs that can run billions of cycles in a single second, all of which are available to you, what are you waiting for? Can you write a program that takes the torrent of data off the ADC and configure it into a hierarchy with feedback? How would you even start? Show us your rough draft pseudo code. | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "2148570",
"author": "Zing",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T15:26:22",
"content": "laying in their mist.laying in their midst.Sorry:)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2148631",
"author": "zuul",
"timestamp": "2014-11-1... | 1,760,375,999.73614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/first-ever-poughkeepsie-mini-maker-faire/ | First Ever Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire | Rich Bremer | [
"cons"
] | [
"makerfaire",
"mini maker faire"
] | This past Saturday was the first
Mini Maker Faire held in Poughkeepsie
, NY. Although it was the first in the area, the event went extremely well having over 60 makers and countless attendees. It was held at the Poughkeepsie Day School and made use of a large percentage of the indoor area.
Ninth graders of the hosting school [Liam], [Johnson] and [Matt] were proudly displaying some of their projects. One of which was a robotic hand controlled by a glove the user wears. Flex sensors sewn into the glove detect how much each finger is bent. That information is read by an Arduino which then commands 5 independent servos to pull string ligaments to bend the fingers of the 3D printed robotic hand. The kids give credit to this
Instructable
which was the inspiration for their desire to build such a project.
No Maker Faire would be complete without some 3D printers. On hand was a
father/son team
that built a Mini Kossel. The design is simple and elegant, and apparently assembly is no problem for even the youngest maker. 3D printing guru [Ed] was on hand with his MakerGear M2 to show some practical uses for 3D printers. They are not just for making Yoda heads! [Ed] also gave a presentation on the matter, explaining why 3D printing is important and useful to people, even the common non-techno-nerd consumer.
[Nina] and [Steve] were showing off their robotic cars. Most of the frame parts are 3D printable. There is an Arduino and bluetooth module on board that allows a smartphone to connect to the vehicle to allow remote control. The phone app was written with
MIT App Inventor
and allows the user to control the vehicle by pressing arrow keys, tilting the phone and even by spoken commands. They created this project to help people get started with Arduino or for people looking to move up from Lego Mindstorms. Check out a video of what goes into the assembly of this robotic car
here
.
Little ones weren’t left out of the mix either, they could have jumped around in an inflatable bounce house or, if feeling creative, could build a fort (or whatever) out of Bloxes. These cardboard boxes have interlocking features on all sides so that they can be stuck together to create walls, furniture, a spaceship or whatever a young mind images. Eco-friendly kids could also help save the planet by making an Invasive Reindeer. These reindeer aren’t invasive themselves but are made from an invasive species of tree, Ailanthus. By using these plants as raw material, it not only helps the local ecosystem but also creates a neat little reindeer for mom to display this coming Christmas.
Teachers [Dave] and [Aaron] from FDR High School were displaying a CNC Router that their students had built. The frame may look a little cobbled together but that is what the group loves about it! They made it from pieces and parts that were readily available or lying around the shop (yes, this school still has a shop). For linear bearings and lead screws, they turned to
CNC RouterParts
who offer a unique bearing system that rides on plate steel. Having seen it first hand, one must say it does work pretty darn well. The system is very rigid, with that large cantilevered router not causing any problems with the machine’s movement. The team is using a Gecko
G540
motor control and running the machine with
LinuxCNC
.
Multi-rotors? Yeah, those were there also. There was even an obstacle course for little hand-sized quads to fly though. As an observer, it looked like an extreme challenge and those who made it through certainly deserve kudos. The
Mid Hudson Model Masters
were present with their RC Airplanes and multi-rotors. They had several RC Simulators set up that anyone could try out and they also gave an outdoor demonstration of their RC aircraft.
Overall, the Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire was an awesome event and certainly worth attending. We’re looking forward to next year’s!
Mini Kossel
Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire
POV bike wheel
Invasive Reindeer
Try out the Oculus
Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire
Loom
Mid Hudson Model Masters
Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire
Poughkeepsie Mini Maker Faire
Weird Interactive Monster
Lego Robot
Ultimaker | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2148294",
"author": "Nathaniel Poate (@Roboteernat)",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T13:11:18",
"content": "Flex sensor robotic arm… sounds familiar… heres a brief writeup of my one (self promotion)http://www.roboteernat.co.uk/animatronics/robot-hand/tho well done for the 9th graders!",
... | 1,760,375,999.970481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/17/larson-scanner-namesake-glen-larson-passes-away/ | Larson Scanner Namesake [Glen Larson] Passes Away | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"battlestar galactica",
"evil mad scientist laboratories",
"glen larson",
"larson scanner"
] | [Glen A. Larson]
passed away on Friday at the age of 77
. He may be most widely recognized for being a producer of the original
Battlestar Galactica, Magnum, P.I.
and
Knight Rider
television series’. But for us his association with a row of LEDs which illuminates in a back and forth pattern will always be his legacy.
When we heard about his passing we figured that we would hear about his invention of the Larson Scanner but that was not the case. A bit of research turned up a pretty interesting
Wikipedia bio page
. He has origins in a music group call
The Four Preps
and actually composed or collaborated on a number of television theme songs among other notable accomplishments. But nothing about electronics. Did this man of many hats actually invent the hardware for the Larson Scanner used as the Cylon Eye and on the front of K.I.T.T., or does it simply share his name?
Evil Mad Scientist Labs claims to have
coined the term Larson Scanner
. [Lenore Edman] confirmed to us that EMSL did indeed start the term which is used to name their electronics kit and directed us to [Andrew Probert] who
lists effects for the TV series on his portfolio
. We’ve reached out to him for more information but had not heard back at the time of publishing. We’ll update this post as details emerge. In the mean time, if you have any insight please leave it below including the source of the information.
If you are not aware, a Larson Scanner is so interesting because the pattern calls for a fading trail of LEDs. It is not simply a fully illuminated pixel moving back and forth but includes dimmed pixels after the brightest one has passed. This is an excellent programming challenge for those just getting into embedded development.
Those interested in learning more about [Gary] may find
this lengthy video interview
of interest. Otherwise it’s time for the
collection of links
to
past Larson Scanner
projects
which we’ve covered
.
[Thanks Bruce] | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2147765",
"author": "iojga",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T10:00:10",
"content": "No companion cube for him lol.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2148087",
"author": "George Graves",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T11:50:58",
"co... | 1,760,376,000.305823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/bridging-networks-with-the-flip-of-a-switch/ | Bridging Networks With The Flip Of A Switch | Brian Benchoff | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"bridge",
"ethernet",
"router",
"TL-WR703N",
"wifi",
"WR703N"
] | The TP-Link TL-WR703n is the WRT54G for the modern era – extremely hackable, cheap, and available just about everywhere. Loaded up with OpenWRT, it’s capable of bridging networks: turning Ethernet into WiFi and vice versa. This requires reconfiguring the router, and after doing this enough times,
[Martin] was looking for a better solution
. The SOC inside the WR703n has two exposed GPIO pins, allowing [Martin] to choose between WiFi access point or client and between bridged or NAT/DHCP.
According to
the OpenWRT wiki
, there are a few GPIOs available, and after connecting these pins to a DIP switch, [Martin] could access these switches through the firmware. The hard part of this build is building the script to change the settings when the system boots. This script looks at the state of the GPIOs and changes the WiFi into client or access point mode and tries not to muck about with the DHCP somewhere off in the cloud. Yes, we just used cloud in its proper context.
The only other hardware to complete this build was a simple USB to serial converter that should be shoved into the corner of everyone’s workbench. Not bad for an extremely minimal soldering and configuration required for a something that’s extremely useful. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2147918",
"author": "Pedro",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T10:51:59",
"content": "150mb/s? modern era? lol woot?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2148113",
"author": "GotNoTime",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T11:58:33",
"conten... | 1,760,376,000.180948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/self-balancing-vehicle-inspired-by-bicycles-of-yesteryear/ | Self Balancing Vehicle Inspired By Bicycles Of Yesteryear | Rich Bremer | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric bicycle",
"electric vehicle",
"home-made segway"
] | [XenonJohn] is not a newcomer to the world of self balancing vehicles. He was part of the
Medicycle
team and a semifinalist for The Hackaday Prize. Working on the Medicycle had exposed some opportunities for improvement of the design, the most significant being the single wide wheel supporting the vehicle and rider. The unicycle design was more difficult to learn to ride than that of a two-wheeled nature. [XenonJohn] wanted to make an improved self balancer and this
new one
will have two wheels that are independently controlled.
Although the finished product looks like it started with a bike frame, the self-balancer’s frame is actually completely custom. The handlebars and banana seat were purchased new as aftermarket parts for old-style bicycles. Powering the two wheels is a pair of 24v brushed motors, conveniently each one came with a 6:1 reduction gearbox pre-installed. The wheels are a complete compilation of parts not intended to go together. The BMX bike rims were laced to mountain bike front hubs. The hubs have provisions for a disk brake but [XenonJohn] mounted a large toothed pulley there instead. A belt then connects the drive motor gearboxes to the pulleys completing the drive train.
The LiFePO4 battery kit was purchased off eBay and puts out 24v and 15AH using eight cells. These batteries alone were a hefty percentage of the projects cost, costing nearly $300. Controlling the vehicle is an Arduino Mega that makes use of the FreeSix IMU library. The Mega receives inputs via I2C from a Sparkfun SEN-10121 board that contains both accelerometers and gyroscopes along with turn switches connected to the ‘brake’ levers on the handlebars. The Arduino then sends commands to the 25 amp Sabertooth motor controllers to keep you balanced as you buzz around town.
Video below. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2146375",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T03:41:39",
"content": "This is just awesome!If it could go faster it would be great to race them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2146388",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"ti... | 1,760,376,000.42655 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/hackaday-links-november-16-2014/ | Hackaday Links: November 16, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"arm",
"Bleen",
"DSP-G1",
"indiegogo",
"raspberry pi",
"reset",
"retrogaming",
"spark",
"Spark photon"
] | There have been a few people asking us to do our full teardown of a crowdfunding campaign,
this time for Bleen
. We’ll get to that, but here’s the TL;DR version: 208 people just threw money away, and right now Indiegogo is ~$3000 richer for doing nothing.
Insipired by
a Hacklet
, [Chris] documented
his retro console build.
He started out like most people do with a Raspberry Pi, but found emulating newer consoles like the N64 consumed too much processor time. He moved his build over to custom-assembled hardware with an AMD Micro-ATX board, a drive, and a USB gamepad. It’s beautiful, and much, much more powerful than a Raspberry Pi.
SD card in your Pi died? Of course it did. The problem is you’re not shutting down your Pi correctly. [satya]
whipped up a quick project to fix that
. One button, a bit of Python, and a shell script is all you need for a one-button shutdown for your Raspberry Pi.
A while ago, [Jan]
built an ARM-based modeling MIDI synth
that sounds a lot like the old Junos of the 80s. It’s build around the
one
8-pin DIP ARM that’s being manufactured, placed between a MIDI jack and a 1/4″ jack. That’s pretty much all the components. [Gritty]
plugged it into a Teensy that’s connected to a sequencer
. It sounds awesome.
Everyone loves the Spark Core – there are a few floating around the office here. Now there’s a new Spark.
It’s called the Photon
, and they’re packaging it as a module. There’s an STM32F2 microcontroller and a BCM43362 Wi-Fi transceiver packaged in a nice, FCC certified module. Very cool. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2145424",
"author": "Tango",
"timestamp": "2014-11-17T00:15:20",
"content": "“…with a metasurface which projects the images that coming from the space-time light modulator.” – From an image on the Bleen page.It’s not that you deserve to lose $200 if you funded that… but maybe you do... | 1,760,376,000.562387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/the-computeum-one-of-the-biggest-computer-museums-in-germany/ | The Computeum, One Of The Biggest Computer Museums In Germany | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"Computeum",
"Hackaday Munich",
"vintage compuer",
"vintage computers"
] | QWERTZ Everywhere
I cannot say in words how perfect the venue for our Hackaday Munich party was. Not only was there a gigantic collection of vintage video games
just around the corner
, there was also a
freaking warehouse
full of mainframes, tubes, transistors, and some of the old retrocomputers you may have used in the 80s and 90s.
It’s called the Computeum
, and without a doubt it is one of the most complete computer museums in Germany. There are fantastic computer museums in the states, but these don’t hold a candle to the pure amount of big iron and silicon found at the Computeum.
ACI-90, a machine that executes Pascal P-code *directly*, without an interpreter
The Computeum isn’t so much a museum as it is a warehouse loaded to the gills with crates filled with old computers. Open one crate, and you’ll find some Timex Sinclairs, all peripherals included. Open another crate and you’ll see a VT-220 and
an ADM
terminal. It’s crazy, and the only person who knows what’s in all these boxes is the tour guide, [Hans Franke].
Plain ‘ol Commodore PET. [Hans] has serial no. 1 at home.
The Computeum is a personal project for [Hans]. For years now, he’s been collecting computer oddities, and he’s a completest. There’s an Commodore SX-64, a pretty common machine you can pick up on ebay for about $100. What’s interesting about [Hans]’ machine? It’s orange. This is a rebadge of the SX-64 for some company in Europe doing industrial work.
A Dietz 600
Being from Germany, [Hans] is of course a little more interested in the German and other European manufacturers. You won’t find an IBM System/360 here – that’s a kilometer away at the Deutsches Museum. You
will
find a few German IBM System/370 and /390 compatible systems from Germany, Czech, and countries even further east.
Gallery of a few interesting pieces below, along with a video of the unofficial tour [Hans] gave during the party.
Oh, the Computeum is looking for a space to put all this gear on display. Yes, a warehouse filled with about 200 pallets and a bunch of mainframes on the floor is now the extent of the museum. If you know of anyway to help, drop [Hans] an email or leave a note in the comments. If there’s ever a crowdfunding campaign, we’ll put sure to put a post up.
For the brits
Plain ‘ol Commodore PET. [Hans] has serial no. 1 at home.
This is either 1 or 2 kiloBITS of core memory
A terminal of some kind
A Dietz 600
A card punch
Operating the card punch
WackyWit, a Pac Man board game
A rebadged Commodore SX-64
A Real Dual-Trace scope
Building a computer with wires
ACI-90, a machine that executes Pascal P-code *directly*, without an interpreter
I shot a short tour of the warehouse with [Hans] before the gigantic group tour, but my microphone crapped out. [Thomas Barth] took the group tour with a few dozen other Hackaday fans. Here’s that video. Some of it is in English: | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2145081",
"author": "aifesteves",
"timestamp": "2014-11-16T21:49:02",
"content": "Wasn’t in Munich they had a bunch of Crays and Cybers running inside a warehouse in a military camp?You could login and play around with the systems… Maybe it would be an interesting place to put the c... | 1,760,376,000.673482 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/an-extremely-tiny-5-8ghz-fpv-transmitter/ | An Extremely Tiny 5.8GHz FPV Transmitter | Brian Benchoff | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"5.8GHz",
"camera",
"drone",
"FPV",
"NTSC camera",
"RC airplane"
] | Flying RC aircraft with a first person view is the latest and greatest thing in the hobby. In a fact that I’m sure will be shocking to 90% of people, you don’t need to buy a Phantom quad fly FPV. The guys at Flite Test
show how you can build a tiny 5.8GHz FPV transmitter
for under $100.
The parts used for this build are pretty much jelly bean parts at this point, but [Peter] at Flite Test is going for extremely lightweight parts for this build. He found an NTSC board camera that only weighs 1g and added a wide-angle lens. The transmitter is a tiny 200mW module that only weighs about 2g.
Why are the Flite Test crew going for small and light FPV setups? They just launched a new line of planes
that can be built from a single piece of foam board
. If you have a small micro quad, you can easily add FPV to it with this rig. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2144535",
"author": "Yarr",
"timestamp": "2014-11-16T18:15:37",
"content": "“He found an NTSC board camera that only weights 1g” – should be “weighs”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2144588",
"author": "wormzi",
"timest... | 1,760,376,000.77341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/the-future-of-the-internet-of-things/ | The Future Of The Internet Of Things | Brian Benchoff | [
"News",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"internet of things",
"IoT",
"LoRa",
"microchip"
] | When buying anything, you’re going to have a choice: good, fast, or cheap. Pick any two. A plumber will fix a drain good and fast, but it won’t be cheap. The skeezy guy you can call will fix a drain fast and cheap, but it won’t be good.
Such it is with radios. You can have long-range (good), high bandwidth (fast), or a low price (cheap). Pick any two. The Internet of Things demands a cheap, long-range radio module, but until now this really hasn’t existed. At Electronica last week, Microchip demoed their IoT solution,
the LoRa
. This module has a 15km (rural) or ~3km (heavy urban) range, works for a year on two AAA batteries, and is very cheap. Bandwidth? That’s crap, but you’re not streaming videos to your shoe.
The LoRa uses a bit of frequency somewhere below 1GHz to communicate with a base station. This base station serves as a bridge for these chips and devices to the Internet. You don’t have the range of WiFi or Bluetooth, either: For the duration of Electronica, the entire eastern half of Munich was covered by exactly six base stations. One base station handled the city center.
This isn’t a first of its kind device –
a few folks in Cambridge are working on Weightless
, a similar small & cheap radio with terrible bandwidth that communicates with base stations. Weightless is the only protocol so far that isn’t proprietary, but TI, Sigfox, Semtech, and a whole lot of other companies are pouring money into devices like this. This is a huge market, and you simply would not believe the amount of time, engineering, and money that is going into these systems.
Is Microchip’s LoRa the future of the Internet of Things? That’s something for the market to decide. However, GSM will never be low power or cheap, WiFi will never be low power enough, and Bluetooth will never have the range. In a few years, something like LoRa will be found in all those Things for Internet we haven’t been able to build until now.
Here’s a link
to the devices in Munich that are still around a base station. My device is 1A 37 64. Find me. | 81 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "2144162",
"author": "atomsoft",
"timestamp": "2014-11-16T15:34:54",
"content": "The bad thing with good range is getting SECURITY to a MAX. You must have your system secure because anyone can try to hack from within that range and if its a wide/far/long range you’d probably never fi... | 1,760,376,001.147415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/100-diy-intervalometer-is-100-awesome/ | 100% DIY Intervalometer Is 100% Awesome | Kristina Panos | [
"ARM"
] | [
"custom enclosure",
"dslr",
"intervalometer",
"lightning",
"long exposure",
"STM32F100"
] | It’s easy to tell from
this process documentary
that [Nagyizee] is not one to settle for prefabricated anything. He could have just bought some off-the-shelf DSLR intervalometer, but that would mean interfacing with someone else’s design through cold, soulless plastic.
[Nagyizee] wanted a one-of-a-kind tool built from the ground up. In addition to a timer, he was in the market for a light sensor and sound detection. He chose an STM32F100 ARM Cortex M3 running at 8MHz in the name of power efficiency and started designing the UI and firmware. A custom graphic library for the OLED display streamlines it even further. Once the schematic was finalized, [Nagyizee] devised a stylish and ergonomic wooden case to be milled with a tiny
Proxxon F70.
With the enclosure decisions out of the way, he etched and drilled the PCB and placed the components. The light sensor needed a lens and a prism, so he made one from a 10mm LED body. Not one to miss a detail, [Nagyizee] also turned some buttons, hand painted them, and made a scroll wheel. He ends the video with
a demonstration
that proves it is quite capable. In addition to standard cable release mode, it handles long exposure times, sequential shooting, and capture on light, shadow, or sound. But wait, there’s more: [Nagyizee]’s creation combines modes with ease and grace.
[Thanks for sending this in, Martin] | 14 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2143917",
"author": "me",
"timestamp": "2014-11-16T13:51:06",
"content": "That’s some ridiculously neat and well-thought out work. If it wasn’t made of wood, I’d have thought it’d just come out of the factory. I’m amazed at how much thought’s gone into what is, in essence, a relativ... | 1,760,376,001.486655 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/bricked-raspberry-pi-displays-history/ | Bricked Raspberry Pi Displays History | Adam Fabio | [
"News",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"Aker Brygge",
"dlp",
"Norway",
"Oslo",
"raspberry pi"
] | [eN0Rm’s] Raspberry Pis are much more than just another brick in the wall. He’s used the popular embedded Linux platform to
build several small rear projection screens in a brick wall
(Imgur link). Brick shaped metal enclosures were mortared into the wall of the building. Each rear projection screen is illuminated by a DLP projector which sits inside the metal enclosure. The Raspberry Pis sit on a shelf below all this. The bricks are in a building in the
Aker Brygge
section of Oslo, Norway, and show historical facts and short videos about the local area.
[eN0Rm] could have used a PC for this task, the price for a low-end PC with a few graphics cards probably wouldn’t have been much more expensive than several Raspberry Pi’s with cases. However, this system has to just work, and a PC would represent a single point of failure. Even if one Raspberry Pi goes down, the others will continue running.
The current installation is rather messy, but it’s just a test setup. [eN0Rm] has already been taken to task for the lack of cable management in his
Reddit thread
. As [eNoRm] says – first get it working, then make it pretty. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2143371",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2014-11-16T10:14:44",
"content": "Those DLP projectors must have cost a healthy amount.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2143386",
"author": "BotherSaidPooh",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,001.733205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/15/hand-machined-companion-cube-can-be-destroyed-and-rebuilt/ | Hand-Machined Companion Cube Can Be Destroyed And Rebuilt | Theodora Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"companion cube",
"dykem",
"glados",
"lathe",
"mill",
"portal"
] | [Michael Gainer] is a big fan of Portal, and it shows in the
Weighted Companion Cube
he made. [Michael] hand-machined the many pieces that comprise the Cube’s body and medallions out of 6061 aluminum. Dykem was used to transfer the marks for accurate machining, and the color is powder-coated to a heat tolerance of 400F. A CNC was used to make the distinctive hearts. [Michael] notes the irony was “very Portal” in having them cut by a heartless machine when everything else was done manually. The attention to detail is striking, the level of design more so when [Michael] proceeds to incinerate the poor Companion Cube with a brush burner. In the video shown at the link above, the Cube falls apart as the glue holding it together melts. When all is said and done, just grab more glue to bring that Cube back to its six-sided glory. Repeat to your heart’s content. Huge success! We have to be honest, after seeing all those pieces, we aren’t sure we’d want to do this very often. Companion Cubes have been
featured
in
various
iterations
on
Hackaday
before
, but they were never built with the idea of repeatedly destroying and rebuilding them. This novel take would make GlaDOS proud.
[Michael] has plans to put an Android device inside it with some light and temperature sensors. He wants to give it a voice resembling Portal’s turrets so it can whine when it needs to be charged or scream when it’s too hot or cold. He dubs this next project the “Overly Attached Weighted Companion Cube.” It wouldn’t be a good idea to incinerate this upcoming version, though we’d probably be inclined to if it demanded so much of our attention! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2140028",
"author": "Kaaaaaaaaaaaang",
"timestamp": "2014-11-15T12:21:58",
"content": "I followed the first link and… WOW!Does anyone really use google+ ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2140635",
"author": "criznach",... | 1,760,376,001.802004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/14/powering-your-f-16-with-an-arduino/ | Powering Your F-16 With An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"Air Force",
"F-16"
] | What do you do when you have an F-16 sitting around, and want to have some blinking navigation lights? We know of exactly one way to blink a light, and apparently so does [Dr. Craig Hollabaugh]. When asked to help restore an F-16 for the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in New Mexico, [Craig]
pulled out the only tool
that should ever be used to blink navigation lights on an air superiority fighter.
[Craig]’s friend was working on getting an F-16 restored for the Nuclear Museum, and like anyone with sufficient curiosity, asked how hard it would be to get the navigation lights working again. [Craig] figured an Arduino would do the trick, and with the addition of a shield loaded up with a few mosfets, the nav lights on an old F-16 would come to life once again.
The board doesn’t just blink lights on and off. Since [Craig] is using LEDs, the isn’t the nice dimming glow you’d see turning a normal incandescent light off and on repeatedly. To emulate that, [Craig] is copying Newton’s law of cooling with a PWM pin. The results are fantastic – at the unveiling with both New Mexico senators and a Brigadier General, everything went off without a hitch. You can see the unveiling video below, along with a few videos from [Craig]’s build log. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2139115",
"author": "Will Sweatman",
"timestamp": "2014-11-15T07:16:51",
"content": "Yea well it’s all a bunch of fun and games ’till someone powers an F-16 with an Arduino.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2140449",
"a... | 1,760,376,002.32057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/14/phoenard-a-prototyping-gadget/ | Phoenard, A Prototyping Gadget | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"AVR",
"flash",
"handheld",
"kickstarter",
"phoenard"
] | The Hackaday Prize party wasn’t just about the five finalists; actually, there were more THP entries in attendance –
All Yarns Are Beautiful
,
OpenExposer
,
M.A.R.S.
, a 3D scanner, and a few more that I’m forgetting – than actual finalists. In addition, a number of people brought projects that had never seen the light of day, like
[Ralf] and [Pamungkas]’ Phoenard.
Phoenard is a Kickstarter project the guys launched
at
the prize party, something they could attend as a little side trip after manning the ‘maker’ part of the Atmel booth at Electronica. They’ve come up with a tiny handheld device that can only be described as a ‘gadget’. It has a touchscreen, a battery, an MegaAVR, a few connectors, and not much else. What makes this project cool is how they’re running their applications. A bootloader sits on the AVR, but all the applications – everything from a GSM phone to an MP3 player – lives on a microSD card.
The Phoenard guys have come up with a few expansion modules for Bluetooth LE, GSM, GPS, and all the usual cool modules. Plugging one of these modules into the back of the device adds capability, and if that isn’t enough, there’s an old 30-pin iPhone connector on the bottom ready to accept a prototyping board.
Video of these guys below. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2138389",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2014-11-15T03:18:22",
"content": "Yes, you could try to run byte code or re-FLASH your AVR from SD just to get around Atmel’s limitation of distinct/disjoint code space vs data space. (von neumann without a way to get around it in har... | 1,760,376,002.575754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/14/a-z80-micro-tv-clock/ | A Z80 Micro TV Clock | Eric Evenchick | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino-tvout",
"cpm",
"homebrew computer",
"ntsc",
"Sony Watchman",
"z80"
] | As an adventure in computer history, [Len] built up a clock. The
Z80 Micro TV Clock
brings together a homebrew computer and three Micro TVs into a rather large timepiece.
The computer powering the clock runs the
CP/M
operating system. This OS was eventually released as open source software, and a variety of homebrew computer projects have implemented it. This clock is based on an existing
breadboard CP/M machine
, which includes schematics and software.
With an OS running, [Len] got a text editor and C compiler working. Now custom software could be written for the device. Software was written to interact with a Maxim
DS12885
Real Time Clock, which keeps the time, and to output the time to the display controllers.
The Micro TVs in this build are Sony Watchman displays featuring a 2″ CRT. The devices had no video input port, so [Len] ripped them open and started poking around. The NTSC signal was found by probing the board and looking for the right waveform.
To drive the TVs from CP/M, a custom video driver was built. This uses three relatively modern ATmega328P microcontrollers and the
arduino-tvout
library. All of these components are brought together on a stand made from wood and copper tubing, making it a functional as a desk top clock | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2137814",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2014-11-15T00:32:50",
"content": "There’s something about the strange anachronistic combination of technologies that appeals to me. CP/M, Arduino, old analog TVs, new ATmega processors, all held together with a frame soldered out of copp... | 1,760,376,002.517064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/14/photographing-a-display-controller/ | Photographing A Display Controller Die | Eric Evenchick | [
"hardware",
"Teardown"
] | [
"darktable",
"decapping",
"die photo",
"PCD8544",
"photography"
] | Who doesn’t like integrated circuit porn? After pulling a PCD8544 display controller from an old Nokia phone, [whitequark] disrobed it and took the
first public die shot
.
As we’ve seen in the past, removing a die from its packaging can be a challenge. It typically involves nasty things like
boiling acid
. Like many display controllers, the PCD8544 isn’t fully encapsulated in a package. Instead, it is epoxied to a glass substrate.
Removing the glass proved to be difficult. [whitequark] tried a hot plate, a hot air gun, sulphuric acid, and sodium hydroxide with no success. Then the heat was turned up using
MAPP gas
, which burned the epoxy away.
After some cleaning with isopropanol, the die was ready for its photoshoot. This was done using a standard 30 mm macro lens. Photo processing was done in
darktable
, an open source photography tool and RAW processor.
[whitequark] plans to take closer photos in the future using more powerful magnification. These high resolution die photos can be useful for a number of things, including
finding fake chips
and
reverse engineering retro hardware
. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2137451",
"author": "starhawk",
"timestamp": "2014-11-14T22:13:13",
"content": "A, uh, note about the website. Can we make the blog the main page again? I suppose I could stand the rest of the, er, “facelift” (read: ridiculously anonymizing effects of a bland WordPress setup) if we ... | 1,760,376,002.77069 |
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