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https://hackaday.com/2014/11/03/the-hackaday-prize-the-hacker-behind-the-first-tricorder/ | The Hackaday Prize: The Hacker Behind The First Tricorder | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"Hackaday Prize",
"interview",
"sensor",
"the hackaday prize",
"tricorder"
] | Smartphones are the most common expression of [Gene Roddneberry]’s dream of a small device packed with sensors, but so far, the suite of sensors in the latest and greatest smartphone are only used to tell Uber where to pick you up, or upload pics to an Instagram account. It’s not an ideal situation, but keep in mind the Federation of the 24th century was still transitioning to a post-scarcity economy; we still have about 400 years until angel investors, startups, and accelerators are rendered obsolete.
Until then, [Peter Jansen] has dedicated a few years of his life
to making the Tricorder of the Star Trek universe a reality
. It’s his entry for The Hackaday Prize,
and made it to the finals selection
, giving [Peter] a one in five chance of winning a trip to space.
[Peter]’s entry, the Open Source Science Tricorder or the Arducorder Mini, is loaded down with sensors. With the right software, it’s able to tell [Peter] the health of leaves, how good the shielding is on [Peter]’s CT scanner, push all the data to the web, and provide a way to sense just about anything happening in the environment. You can check out [Peter]’s video for The Hackaday Prize finals below, and an interview after that.
This is your fourth or fifth revision in almost as many years. and the
latest version has a lot of sensors that aren't found in the Mk.I version.
Is this just a function of cost, or are device manufacturers really
pushing out newer and more capable sensors?
You’re right — I think the Arducorder Mini is my seventh or eighth prototype (some of them don’t make the site), which is about one a year since I started designing them. For me it’s very exciting that this is the first “complete” design since the Mark 1, which was built nearly eight years ago — the others were experiments (or learning experiences) in different aspects of design, from designing handheld linux-powered systems, to incorporating different graphical requirements, to experimenting with sensor fusion.
I think the past few years has really been the start of a renaissance in off-the-shelf sensors. What excites me the most isn’t so much slightly smaller sensors or devices with higher resolution, but sensors that come completely out of left field and add embedded capability that simply wasn’t there before. The new microspectrometer that Hamamatsu released this year was a great example of this, as is the Radiation Watch Type 5 (a photodiode-based radiation sensor, which is MUCH smaller than tube based systems). The AMS lightning sensor is also very cool, although because there are few storms where I live, I’ve mostly used it to detect when large electrical items (like the air conditioner) turn on. A few other parts have existed, but the price point or availability hasn’t been accessible — the single-chip inertial measurement units from Invensense that are an order of magnitude less expensive than they were only a few years ago, and the recent low-resolution thermal cameras are great examples of this.
If you could describe what is missing from your tricorder, what would it be?
What sensor is on your wishlist?
Before going into the sensors, after the first design (the Mark 1), each of my “tricorder projects” has examined a different aspect of the design of a pocket-sized handheld multisensor device that I thought was important. The Mark 2 examined beautiful graphics and visualization capabilities, and what it was like to SSH into your handheld instrument to develop code for it. The next iteration tried to be much less expensive and have modular sensor boards, but failed horribly — it was under designed, and far too limited in almost every way (including graphical capabilities). The Mark 4 came about right as smartphones became popular, and asked whether it would be better to pair a small keyfob with a smartphone or tablet instead of having a separate device. On the other end of the spectrum, the projects in the last few years have focused on much more complicated devices, one of them linux powered — but it became clear that I was basically trying to replicate making a smart phone with sensors, which I think isn’t the path to go for two reasons. The first is that I’m not sure the same user model that applies to talking, texting, and playing games applies to massively multimodal sensor data (as many other wonderful features as smartphones have, like incredible visualization and communication capabilities, as well as a large community of developers). The second reason is that even if it were the right user model, I’m a single human being, and smartphones are made by massive companies with hundreds of hardware and software developers. By making this mistake twice, I spent many months developing devices that barely got past showing their first “Hello World” before hitting some critical roadblock in WiFi drivers or graphics processors that would require months of redesign work. It’s terribly disheartening, and I decided to “take a break” and design
the Open Source CT Scanner
as a result. Humility is important, and I definitely was in over my head with an intractable design path, and not making my mistakes cheaply at all. That’s why I liked the development of the Arducorder — a set timeframe from start to finish (5 months) with major milestones along the way, to keep it tractable and exciting.
To the sensor wishlist — a spectrometer and high-energy particle detector have been big on the wish list since the Mark 1, so I’m very excited that those are incorporated. I would love to see a small embedded laser distance measurement tool, as well as a small CCD camera with an integrated framebuffer and an SPI interface. Even 640×480 resolution would be wonderful. There are modules that are inches in size, but it would have to be down to cellphone-camera sized to be small enough to incorporate into the Arducorder.
In the far future, I’d love to see a tiny nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, or miniature versions of other conventional lab tools. The community has also asked for a software defined radio module many times, but I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with RF — I hope that someone will design a sensor board with this, and incorporate it into the Arducorder.
You have a machine that can do an incredible number of measurements, but
for any user, simply knowing what these measurements can tell you is the
limiting factor. Do you see the tricorder as simply a lab you can put in
your pocket, or as something more like a Star Trek tricorder that
automatically tells you what you need to know? Is it a combination?
This is a good question. There really are three components — the hardware and sensors themselves, which are capable of sensing a great many things (individually or in combination), (2) software written by folks with some understanding of those measurements (like scientists or engineers) that interpret them and give you measures, like interpreting the spectrometer wavelengths that correspond with the photochemical reflectivity wavelengths as a measure of leaf health in the video, and then there are (3) the users.
For people who already have some knowledge (or interest) in science, this is a fantastic tool, and it’s beautifully reconfigurable so that you can quickly add to the software (or hardware) to meet new applications. I’m excited to see some of the new tiles that folks come up with!
But there is this fundamental limitation in science, and in math, and statistics, and engineering, that we hammer into undergraduates — but if you’ve never been formally exposed to this material, then you may not know. And it’s that every test, every algorithm, every statistic, has certain assumptions, and if they’re not met, then the answer that comes out is meaningless. If you point a spectrometer at a television and ask it to calculate the photochemical reflection index, it will still give you a number — but if it comes out positive, it doesn’t mean that there is any chlorophyll present — one of the assumptions of the PRI test is that you’re pointing it at a leaf. Similarly, if your data isn’t normally distributed (ie. shaped like a bell curve), then you can’t use many statistics — the numbers they give you will be invalid. We hear about this all the time — people doing bad science, bad statistics. It’s like trying to translate from English to French using Google — if you give it jibberish in, then what you get out may look like French, but it will be similarly meaningless. It’s easy for us to detect this because we use language all the time, but unless you use science (or math…), you might not know jibberish when you see it. And so one of our continual tasks in science education is to teach you to recognize when what you’re seeing is valid, and when it’s not — both so that you can do good science, but also so that you can help others when they’re not (or, detect when someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes).
Believe it or not, I think this is a fantastic thing. I think the most important lesson in science is something incredible and cool that gets the student excited, but the SECOND most important lesson is how to actually do experiments and interpret data. I want people to walk around with these devices and learn more about their worlds, and get excited. And then I want them to point the thermal camera at a metal that’s reflective in the long-IR like aluminum, and ask why they’re seeing a thermal reflection instead of the temperature of the aluminum (and, in turn, learn about emissivity and reflection). And to point the spectrometer at their cat and wonder why it still gives a number (and learn about spectroscopy, and chemical identification). I especially want kids to do this — to learn about the /process/ of good science as doing it. I want this so that they can be good critical thinkers from a young age, and also learn a fluency with these basic processes that will let them be even better scientists than we can be today.
Any scientist will tell you that 90% of science is designing experiments that don’t work out as you’d first planned. I’m a postdoctoral research fellow, which is a fancy title for someone with a PhD who spends a few years doing research before finding a professorship. Most of what I do is design and perform experiments that don’t pan out at first. The difference between me and a novice scientist is that I make many more mistakes than them — but I’m extremely good at making my mistakes cheaply, testing more alternatives far quicker, and recognizing when something is likely a true result, or when a research path is unlikely to pan out. It’s all part of exploration, the scientific and critical thinking process, and it’s wonderful!
Hypothetical, and we're not going to hold you to whatever answer
you give. You win the grand prize, a trip to space or about
$200,000 USD. Which one to you take, and what is your reasoning
for doing so?
What would make a better story, “scientist pays off student loans”, or “scientist releases open source science tricorder, travels to space”?
The Hackaday Prize has already allowed me to cross something off my bucket list — designing and completing a modern open source science tricorder that’s incredibly capable, manufacturable, and that lets folks share their science almost instantly with others. On top of that it’s modular, and through great effort, Arduino compatible, to help make it accessible and tinkerable to a much larger community. And all of this in only five months, from start to finish. I just turned 32, and it’s incredible to think that something I’ve tried to make happen for half my life is now sitting on the desk.
For even longer — as long as I can remember — I’ve wanted to go into space. If space adventurer were a career, I’d take it! (In Canada they select two astronauts only about once a decade, and there are strict age requirements so they can get enough missions out of you to make it worth all the training. I was born in the wrong year!). How often do you get to cross two things off your bucket list? | 38 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2080758",
"author": "drwho8 (@drwho8)",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T15:45:47",
"content": "First you describe the device as used by the crews from Star Trek the next generation. Then you show a publicity still from the original series. The simpler ones were from the original series.",
... | 1,760,376,017.927499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/03/iphone-controlled-daft-punk-helmet/ | IPhone-Controlled Daft Punk Helmet | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"daft punk",
"daft punk helmet",
"led",
"RGB LED",
"ws2811"
] | A few years ago, [Marc] had access to a really big, very expensive 3D printer. Daft Punk helmets were – and still are – extremely cool builds, so with a bit of modeling, [Marc] and his friend [Alex] put together a model and printed out a Daft Punk [Thomas] helmet with the intention of turning it into the keystone of a great costume. A few things got in the way, and the [Thomas] helmet was left on a shelf for a few years.
Fast forward to a few months ago and [Marc] took up the project again
. The result is a 3D printed Daft Punk helmet loaded up with 320 WS2811 LEDs.
The 3D printed helmet was modeled well and printed in polycarbonate, but with any extrusion-based printer, there will be ridges and layers to sand, fill, prime and paint. This task was delegated to another friend, [Shaggy], while [Marc] got busy on the electronics.
The LEDs for the visor and ‘earmuffs’ are WS2811 LEDs, but not the SMD versions we’re so used to seeing. These are 8mm through-hole LEDs mounted in a lasercut piece of acrylic. Control of the LEDs is done with a Teensy 3.1 with
[Paul Stoffregen]’s OctoWS2811 library
. With the matrix wired up, batteries installed, WiFi capability added, and the helmet painted (not chromed; that will probably happen later, though), [Marc] had a copy of the [Thomas] helmet controllable through an iPhone.
If you’d like to check out more of [Marc]’s work, we posted something on his
RGB LED suit
and
pneumatic Star Trek doors
a few years ago.
Video below. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2080335",
"author": "peanutbutterjellytime",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T14:13:00",
"content": "I’m also printing myself a pair of these, been spending hundreds of hours 3d printing, applying Bondo, sanding, bondo, sanding, glazing putty, sanding, bondo, sanding, glazing putty, sanding... | 1,760,376,017.591297 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/03/a-full-ip-webcam-with-a-raspberry-pi/ | A Full IP Webcam With A Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"camera",
"camera sensor",
"dropcam",
"ip webcam",
"raspberry pi",
"webcam"
] | A Dropcam will run you about $150. Price out a Raspberry Pi, camera sensor, and a CCTV camera housing found on eBay, and it starts to look like there may be a cheaper replacement for a Dropcam sitting around on workbenches, if only someone can figure out the software.
[Antoine] did just that
, giving any Raspberry Pi the ability to stream H.264 video over a network.
[Antoine]’s software is based on the
raspivid tool
distributed from the foundation, but that only takes care of capturing and encoding H.264 video from the camera sensor. To add IP camera support, the
Live555 RTSP library
was mixed in and combined to stream video over the Raspi’s network connection.
With a camera dome enclosure from the usual outlets, [Antoine]’s project really starts to look professional. The specs are respectable, too: it can output a 1080 stream, and with a small modification to an Ethernet cord, this webcam has PoE. Future updates include the ability to record videos based on a trigger and possibly a webserver on the Pi for configuration. [Antoine] says he really isn’t up to speed with Javascript, so any help would be appreciated. | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "2079081",
"author": "Scuffles",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T09:23:35",
"content": "Really cool, going to have to play around with this just wish I could figure out where/how to inject a HUD.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2079370"... | 1,760,376,017.996442 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/discovering-the-protocol-in-a-usb-voip-phone/ | Discovering The Protocol In A USB VoIP Phone | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"skype",
"usb",
"USB Driver",
"voip"
] | [Daniel] picked up a cheap USB handset to use with his VoIP provider, and included in the box was a CD with all the software that would make this handset work with Windows. [Daniel] is running Linux on his main battlestation, rendering the included CD worthless. Using the handset under Linux would be a problem; although the speaker and mic worked, the buttons and screen did not. No problem, then:
[Daniel] just played around with the command line until he figured it out
.
The handset presented itself to the Linux box as a soundcard and HID device. The soundcard was obviously the speaker and mic, leaving the buttons and display as the HID device. [Daniel] checked this out by running a hexdump on the HID device and pressed a few buttons. His suspicions were confirmed, and he could easily read the button with a little bit of Python.
With the speaker, mic, and buttons on the handset figured out, [Daniel] turned his attention to the one bit of electronics on the phone he hadn’t yet conquered: the display. After firing some random data at the phone, the display blinked and showed a messy block of pixels, confirming the display was controlled through the HID driver. Loading up
usbsnoop
to see what the original software does to update the screed showed [Daniel] the data format the display accepts, allowing him to control everything in this VoIP phone. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2080496",
"author": "jaromirs",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T14:46:46",
"content": "I like this kind of hacks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2080761",
"author": "SavannahLion",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T15:46:13",
"cont... | 1,760,376,017.633354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/a-watercooled-headlamp-because-why-not/ | A Watercooled Headlamp, Because Why Not? | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"high power LED",
"led",
"water cooling",
"watercooled"
] | There are extremely high powered LEDs out there, and most of the ‘creative’ uses of these are extremely high-powered flashlights, complete with heatsinks, forced air cooling, and beefy power supplies. [Christian] wanted to play around with one of these LEDs, but he wanted something a little more unique.
He chose a headlamp
, a build that is made even more impressive by the fact it is watercooled.
The body of the headlamp was milled out of aluminum, with a space for the LED in the front and channels in the back for coolant. Also in this enclosure are two buttons, a temperature sensor, and a port for the hose that carries the tubes and wires.
This hose connects to a large battery pack that houses four large lithium phosphate batteries and a boost converter built around an Arduino. The pack also houses a pump and reservoir that is able to keep the LED cool even at 130W. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2076758",
"author": "gmatstack",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T02:10:54",
"content": "Is there actually a radiator on the watercooling loop? I can’t see one mentioned and he mentions it gets too hot after a few minutes… surely he didn’t consider one optional?130W is similar (if not more ... | 1,760,376,017.754188 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/hackaday-links-november-2-2014/ | Hackaday Links: November 2, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"capacitors",
"ghostbusters",
"halloween",
"minecraft",
"pantograph",
"pantorouter",
"radial",
"radial engine",
"router",
"server",
"steampunk",
"woodgears"
] | Russians blowing up capacitors
! As we all know, electronics only work because of blue smoke. [kreosan] is releasing this blue smoke from a few hundred caps. Fun times, even if they are a large number of inert tube shields in their collection of caps.
[mayhugh1] over on the home model engine machinist forum
has built an 18 cylinder radial engine
. It’s based on
the Hodgson 9-cylinder radial engine
that has been around for a while. The crank case is machined from a 5″ diameter rod of aluminum. There’s
a Picassa album
of the engine being constructed as well.
[Richard] wanted a Minecraft server, but not just
any
Minecraft server;
this one demanded a custom case
. A grass block was the inspiration, acrylic the medium, and a quad-core Mini-ITX the guts of the project.
Halloween was last Friday, and as always the tip line filled up with costume builds. [
Leif] built a Ghostbusters costume
complete with Muon trap,
[Jeff] printed out some
steampunk
post-apocolyptic goggles
, and
[Green Gentleman] made a death-a-corn
, although we’re struggling to figure out why the last one isn’t called an acorn-‘o-lantern.
[Matthias Wandel], a.k.a. the woodgears.ca dude, is well-known in certain circles for being a wizard of wood. One of the first projects that put him on the map was a pantorouter – a router to cut mortises and tenons. He’s going back to his roots
and building a bigger version
. This version uses models of routers that are available outside North America, and
in the latest video
[Matthias] has it dialed in very well.
The Open Source Remote Control
was an entry for The Hackaday Prize
that didn’t make the final cut.
It’s now an indiegogo project
, and has some really cool tech we can’t wait to see in mainstream RC transmitters. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2076259",
"author": "sarman (@sarman)",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T23:06:48",
"content": "It’s Ukraine guys blowing capacitors=) Some accent nuance.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2077427",
"author": "putin-huylo",
... | 1,760,376,017.69187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/using-cell-phone-screens-with-any-hdmi-interface/ | Using Cell Phone Screens With Any HDMI Interface | Brian Benchoff | [
"FPGA",
"hardware"
] | [
"cell phone",
"cell phone display",
"display",
"dsi",
"hdmi",
"mipi"
] | Thanks to the worldwide proliferation of smartphones, tiny high-resolution displays are common and cheap. Interfacing these displays with anything besides a phone has been a problem. [twl]
has a board that does just that
, converting HDMI to something these displays can understand, and providing a framebuffer so these displays can be written to through small microcontrollers.
[twl] is using a rather large FPGA to handle all the conversion from HDMI to the DSI the display understands. He’s using an Xilinx Spartan-6-SLX9, one of the most hobbyist friendly devices that is able to be hand soldered. Also on the board is a little bit of SDRAM for a framebuffer, HDMI input, and a power supply for the LCD and its backlight.
On the things [twl] has in his ‘to-do’ list, porting Doom to run on a cellphone display is obviously right at the top. He also wants to test the drawing commands for the Arduino side of his board, allowing any board with the suffix ~’ino to paint graphics and text on small, cheap, high-resolution displays. That’s a capability that just doesn’t exist with products twice [twl]’s projected BOM, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
You can check out the demo video of [twl]’s board displaying the output of a Raspberry Pi below. If you look very closely, you’ll notice the boot/default screen for the display adapter is the Hackaday Jolly Wrencher. | 77 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "2075876",
"author": "Jaron",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T21:07:22",
"content": "Dual 4K Oculus rift, here we come :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2075951",
"author": "JJ",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T21:43:24",
... | 1,760,376,018.106491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/inexpensive-avr-programmer-made-from-five-components/ | Inexpensive AVR Programmer Made From Five Components | Rick Osgood | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"attiny45",
"AVR",
"electronics",
"minimalist",
"programmer",
"vusbtiny"
] | If you want to program an AVR chip as inexpensively as possible, then [Ian’s] solution might just be for you. He built an
AVR programmer
using only four components. This design is based on the
vusbtiny
AVR programmer design, with a few components left out.
[Ian’s] design leaves out two of the resistors and two diodes, leaving just four components. These include a 1.5k resistor, a small capacitor, a USB connector, a six pin header, and an ATtiny45. He admits that this may not be exactly up to USB spec, but it does work.
This is one of those projects that is really an exercise in “will it work?” more than anything else. The fact that you need to first program an AVR chip means that this wouldn’t be useful in a pinch, because you would already have to have a working programmer. Nonetheless, it’s always fun to see what can be done with as little as possible. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2075450",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T18:24:15",
"content": "Bad idea to use 5V signals for V-USB as USB signaling is 3.6V max.What might not blows up one computer might not safe for another. What is cheap for your dongle would not be cheap if you blows up your... | 1,760,376,018.174276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/an-esp8266-based-smartmeter/ | An ESP8266 Based Smartmeter | Mathieu Stephan | [
"hardware",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"smartmeter",
"wifi"
] | During these last weeks we’ve been talking a lot about the ESP8266, a $4 microcontroller based Wifi module. As the SDK was recently released by Espressif a lot of cheap Internet of Things applications were made possible.
[Thomas] used one module to make a
simple smartmeter
measuring the active time of his heater together with the outside temperature. He added 2 AT commands starting/stopping the logging process and used one GPIO pin to monitor the heater’s oil pump state. The measurements are then periodically pushed via a TCP connection to his data collecting server, which allows him to generate nice graphs.
In the video embedded below you’ll see [Thomas] demoing his system. On his
hackaday.io project page
he put up a very detailed explanation on how to replicate his awesome project. All the resources he used and create can also be downloaded on the
project’s GitHub page
. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2075076",
"author": "Falense",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T16:23:02",
"content": "Good work!So it begins! *grin*",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2081979",
"author": "bbe",
"timestamp": "2014-11-03T21:18:05",
... | 1,760,376,017.850868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/turning-the-raspberry-into-a-cad-workstation/ | Turning The Raspberry Into A CAD Workstation | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cad",
"cnc",
"Easel",
"g-code",
"gcode",
"raspberry pi",
"shapeoko"
] | Inventables has been working hard on a successor to the extremely popular Shapeoko CNC milling machine, and to bring digital fabrication to the masses, they’ve created
Easel
, possibly the easiest 3D design software you’ll ever use. [Sacha] was trying out the beta version of Easel and mentioned to the dev mailing list he was running his installation on a Raspberry Pi. One of the developers chimed in, and after a bit of back and forth
we now have a workflow to use Easel with the Raspberry Pi
.
Easel is a web app, but since the graphics, design, and g-code generation are handled locally, even the most rudimentary CAD suite would choke the decidedly low power Raspi. Instead, [Sacha] is using the Raspberry to grab 2D and 3D files, turn that into g-code for a machine, and send it off to a Shapeoko router.
Easel doesn’t yet have local sender support that works on Linux, so a separate piece of software is used to shoot the g-code over a serial port to the machine. That’s something that will probably be added in a later version of Easel, making a Raspberry Pi a great way to control router or milling machine. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2074787",
"author": "Jacques1956",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T14:34:54",
"content": "“…she was running hers…”,Sacha De’Angeli is a man",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2075508",
"author": "Harvey Moon",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,017.80246 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/02/a-remote-control-swing-wing-f-14/ | A Remote Control, Swing Wing F-14 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"auto stabilization",
"depron",
"F-14",
"foamie",
"rc",
"RC airplane",
"styrofoam"
] | Anyone can build a remote control airplane with a sheet of foam, some glue, and a handful of servos. Building an F-14, complete with the swing wing mechanism? [Thomas]
found built one that’ll take you right into the danger zone
.
This was [Thomas]’ first go at scratch building a RC airplane, and wanted a lot of electronics inside. His choice of airframe was the venerable F-14 Tomcat, complete with wings that swing out for landing and swing in for high-speed flight. This isn’t just taking off-the-shelf receivers and putting them in a fancy airframe, either: [Thomas\ is reading the PWM signals from the receiver with a small electronics board, mixing the elevons with his own code, and implementing an auto stabilization system with an accelerometer.
Most of the work on the airframe was done by
[Maybz] over on the RCGroups forums
. That’s an impressive thread spanning seven years of posts. [Thomas] doesn’t see his F-14 as an end goal, though: he’s using this as a stepping stone to learn about building unstable planes for a more complex UAV.
Videos below, with a warning to headphone users. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2074641",
"author": "ganzuul",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T13:39:10",
"content": "I have a hard time telling from the guncam footage if the platform is stable or if the pilot is giving a lot of input…The hacker mentions dirigibles in one of the comments on the project page. They could ... | 1,760,376,018.2353 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/delicious-dash-pi-driving-data/ | Delicious Dash Pi Driving Data | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"obd-ii",
"raspberry pi",
"raspi camera"
] | A few weeks ago, [sentdex] described how Python has changed his life. In particular, it has allowed him to mine Bitcoin automatically, teach other people programming, and realize a
full in-car computer for less than $100
using a Raspberry Pi.
It’s based on a model B, which he’s enclosed in a beefy Pi
camera case
that sits on the dash of his Honda S2000. The screen is a $17 internet special with composite in, which keeps the BOM way down. A
3A switch
wired into the ignition ensures that power to the Pi is not rudely interrupted.
A script takes the Pi directly into desktop mode when [sentdex] starts the car. His main goals for the project were setting up a dash cam and communicating with the OBD computer. The Pi pulls various data points including the throttle position, and the user moves through the list with the arrow keys of one of those roll-up keyboards.
In the future, he’d like to upgrade it to live graph the throttle position and add a sensor to show the brake position. Be sure to check out the walk-through/demonstration video after the break. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2073378",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T05:35:39",
"content": "Woohoo! Texas!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2073644",
"author": "Scaramouche",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T06:56:57",
"content": "Dashberry... | 1,760,376,018.419809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/making-a-speaker-with-resin-magnets-and-wire/ | Making A Speaker With Resin, Magnets, And Wire | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"resin printer",
"speaker",
"speaker cone",
"stl",
"transducer"
] | A speaker is just about the simplest electronic component possible, just barely more complex than resistors and wire. They’re also highly variable in their properties, either in size, shape, frequency response, and impedance. Obviously, building custom speakers would be of interest to a lot of people, but there aren’t many people out there doing it. [Madaeon] is one of those people.
He created a speaker from scratch
, using nothing but magnets, wire, and a bit of UV curing resin.
The frame of the speaker contains a magnet, and the coil of wire is carefully attached to the 0.1mm thin speaker cone with a bit of UV curing resin. All the parts are available on Thingiverse, but you will need a UV resin printer with a low layer height to print this thing out.
The speaker was built by [madaeon] as a demonstration of what
the printer he built
can do. It’s a fairly standard resin-based 3D printer built around a DLP projector. It’s also cheap, and unlike some other cheap resin-based 3D printers, there’s a reasonable likelihood his will ship within the next few months. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2073090",
"author": "void",
"timestamp": "2014-11-02T03:56:05",
"content": "The simplest? Hardly. I guess it depends on your definition of complexity. A coil interacting with a magnet moving a diaphragm is certainly more complex than say, a resistor, a capacitor, a diode, a …….",
... | 1,760,376,018.626751 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/which-way-are-we-going-concepts-behind-rotary-encoders/ | Which Way Are We Going? Concepts Behind Rotary Encoders | Mike Szczys | [
"how-to"
] | [
"gray code",
"rotary encoder"
] | [Pete] needed a rotary encoder for one of his project so
he set out to build his own
. As the name implies, a rotary encoder measures rotation by encoding “steps” into electrical signals which can be measured by a microcontroller (or used in numerous other ways). Knowing the degrees of movement for each step will allow you to calculate precise distance traveled
in applications like robot wheels
. Or you can simply use the rotating shaft as an input device which navigates menus or settings.
This concept is a good one to understand. We had originally planned to build rotary encoders for the multi-person Duck Hunt at
Hackaday’s 10th Anniversary
but the build-off crew had difficulty getting the system to work. In [Pete’s] case he’s using photointerrupters (apparently the IR beam is easily detected through the white paper but usually these parts would be cut out of the disk). We were using reflectance sensors. Either way there’s a trick to detecting which direction a rotary encoder is turning. We’ll explain that for you after the break.
For ease of understanding we’ve straightened out the encoder wheel to this line of white and black boxes. Each one is a single step of the encoder. To measure direction you need two sensors; a single sensor would detect the same pattern of white and black boxes no matter which direction it was turned.
The two sensors are mounted “out of phase”. They are exactly 1/2 of a step apart. If you look at the image right now, sensor A detects a black box, sensor B would register a white box. Because they are 1/2 step apart, they will never change state at the same time. It will always be one after the other no matter which way the pattern moves.
As long as the current state is known, the next sensor to change will denote the direction the encoder pattern is moving. If you move the pattern itself to the right (the sensors are stationary) the next thing to happen will be sensor B going from white to black. But if you move the pattern to the left, the next thing to happen will be sensor A going from black to white. The pattern of outputs is known
as Gray Code
and can be parsed using a look-up table or with simple logic.
This concept is exceedingly simple if you take the time to boil it down to the core concept and work through what exactly is happening as we have here. That’s the case for most hardware concepts, and it’s well worth seeking out and digging into areas you don’t totally understand. It makes magical and mysterious sensors
like magnetic rotary encoders
easy to understand. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2072318",
"author": "Jeremy Zimmer",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T23:52:09",
"content": "It should also be noted that this is called a quadrature encoder configuration. The Sensor will give 4 pulses (be it “A” or “B”) for each “step” of the encoder disk.",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,018.571662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/arietta-g25-has-us-wondering-where-arm-boards-are-going/ | Arietta G25 Has Us Wondering Where ARM Boards Are Going | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"arietta",
"at91sam9g20",
"doom",
"Embedded Linux",
"g25",
"linux",
"SoC"
] | This tidy little ARM board is
the Arietta G25
. It’s based around an AT91SAM9G25 which is an ARM9 chip running at 400MHz. Paired with the DDR2 RAM (in 128 or 256 meg options) to the left, the board runs Linux and runs it well. After the break you can see
the obligatory running of Doom
. But in this case it doesn’t just run a demo, but is playable from momentary push buttons on a breadboard (props to the Arietta team for using wire wrap for that setup).
See the vertical row of pads between the processor and the SD card slot? That’s a breakout header designed to accept a WiFi module. In at €20-30 based on your RAM choice and just €7 for the WiFi module this board is certainly a contender for any embedded Linux projects. But it does have us wondering, should be thinking of these as ARM boards, or forget the low-level development and just think of them as a Linux machines with plenty of GPIO available?
The 20×2 pin header breaks out a lot of the SAM9’s features. We really like
the interactive pinout posted for this device
. For instance, there are three sets of USB host lines available. But you’ll want to click on each to see that one set is in use for the SD card, and another is used by the WiFi module. The documentation that has been posted for the Arietta G25 is one of its strongest point. Nice work there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lluFY78mW4U
[Thanks Michele] | 40 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2071678",
"author": "Jock Murphy",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T20:10:51",
"content": "I a couple of the older, and slightly less featureful, Aria G25s. They are great boards and Acme does a great job of providing support, and accessories for these amazing little boards. The Aria G25 ... | 1,760,376,018.887462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/the-platinum-catalyst-use-in-a-vintage-lighter/ | The Platinum Catalyst Use In A Vintage Lighter | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"ben krasnow",
"catalyst",
"catalytic converter",
"cigarette lighter",
"hydrogen",
"lighter",
"menthanol",
"platinum",
"platinum black"
] | [Ben Krasnow] has an inimitable knack for choosing the most interesting concepts for his experiments. We’re sure it’s a combination of base knowledge and epic-curiosity. This time around he’s showing off a vintage cigarette lighter whose quirk is not needing to be “struck” to produce a flame. It’s a catalytic lighter that
uses platinum to ignite methanol vapors
.
The concept shown in the video below is
platinum’s catalyst properties
with some types of flammable gasses. The image above shows the cap of the lighter which includes a protective cage around a hunk of fine platinum powder known as platinum black. It is suspended by platinum wire and as the hydrogen passes by the reaction causes the platinum black and wire to glow red-hot.
This simple, quick experiment fills in our own knowledge gaps. We were already familiar with the role that catalytic converters play in automobiles; consuming any unburned hydrocarbons before they exit a vehicle’s exhaust system. We also know the these devices are
targets for thieves
seeking the platinum (and other metals like palladium and rhodium) found inside. Now we know exactly how catalytic converters work and the integral role that platinum plays in the process. All thanks to [Ben’s] demonstration of how this lighter works.
Now, if you wear a platinum wedding band and your hand passes a jet of hydrogen are you likely to get burned? | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2071210",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T17:24:12",
"content": "I’m guessing the larger mass and diameter of the platinum of a wedding ring would conduct heat away, and not reach combustion temperature.But you didn’t say how large of a jet it would be…I suspect the platin... | 1,760,376,018.672403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/fixing-faulty-but-genuine-apple-power-adapters/ | Fixing Faulty But Genuine Apple Power Adapters | Brian Benchoff | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"apple charger",
"Ground",
"outlet",
"power adapter",
"UK plug",
"wall outlet"
] | The standard power adapter for Apple laptops is a work of art. The Magsafe connector has saved more than one laptop owned by the Hackaday crew, and the power brick with interchangeable plugs for different countries is a work of genius. Being a miracle of modern manufacturing doesn’t mean Apple gets it
right
all the time; the UK adapter doesn’t use the ground plug, leading to the power supplies singing at 50 Hz when plugged in. [Gareth] had had enough of the poor design of his charger
and decided to fix it
.
The Apple power adapter has two obvious connections, and another shiny metal disk meant for a connection to Earth. In most of the Apple charger ‘extension cords’, this earth connection is provided by the cord. In the smaller plug adapters – even ones where space is not an issue, like the UK plug – this connection is absent.
To fix this glaring oversight, [Gareth] shoved some aluminum foil where the earth terminal on the plug should go. A hole was drilled through the plug to connect this foil to the Earth socket terminal, and everything was covered up with kneadable epoxy.
No, aluminum foil probably won’t do its actual job of preventing horribleness in the event of an insulation failure or short. It will, however, silence the 50 cycle hum emanating from the power adapter, and that’s good enough for [Gareth]. | 51 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2070527",
"author": "Pedram Azimaie",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T14:07:15",
"content": "“interchangeable plugs for different countries is a work of genius” wait what ?!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2071291",
"author... | 1,760,376,018.813203 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/finding-meteors-satellites-and-star-trails-with-a-raspberry-pi/ | Finding Meteors, Satellites, And Star Trails With A Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"astronomy",
"astrophotography",
"long exposure",
"photography"
] | The Raspberry Pi is an incredibly popular, cheap, and low power computer that also has a nifty camera add-on that is completely programmable. This opens up a log of possibilities for long-exposure photography, and [Jippo] has found the best use so far:
long exposure astrophotography
for capturing meteors, satellites, and star trails.
[Jippo] is using a stock Raspi and camera module with a little bit of custom software written by his friend [Jani Lappalainen] that grabs image data from the camera and saves it either as a time-lapse, or only when something significantly changes. This would include meteors and
Iridium flares
, as well as passing planes, reflections of satellites, and of course long-exposure star trails.
So far, [Jippo] has already captured enough images to amount to a
great
night of skywatching. There’s a great picture of a meteor, a few pictures of satellites reflecting the sun, and some great star trails. The software [Jippo] is using is available on his site along with
a gallery
of his highlight reel. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2070119",
"author": "jack324",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T11:43:17",
"content": "I like that He’s used an rpi for this, if I had the camera module, I probably would have mine out every night doing the same thing. As it is, I currently use a DSLR to do the same thing. Here is a time la... | 1,760,376,018.72705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/01/gearshift-display-for-a-rally-car/ | Gearshift Display For A Rally Car | Brian Benchoff | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"automotive",
"gear",
"gear shift",
"gearbox",
"Rally"
] | [Andrea] was helping out a local rally racing team with their car and was asked to create a device that would display the current gear on a big, bright display. Of course, a device like this already exists, but the team didn’t want to invest the significant resources into a ready-made product. Instead, [Andrea]
was tasked with creating one
.
The device is basically a pot attached to the gear shifter, but in testing, [Andrea] ran into a problem; between reverse and 5th gear, the shifter would turn 360 degrees, meaning these gears were indistinguishable.
The solution to this problem was a calibration procedure for when the driver starts the car. By setting a jumper, the driver puts the car into all gears, sorting out the reading and storing the analog values in the microcontroller’s EEPROM. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2069960",
"author": "hckdcmmnt",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T10:50:36",
"content": "Is the Reverse-5th problem caused by a bad pot? A linear multiturn pot could deal with that.I would also go with shiftUp() and shiftDown() functions on the software side, keeping track of gear sequences... | 1,760,376,018.945108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/halloween-hack-night-at-pololu/ | Halloween Hack Night At Pololu | Sarah Petkus | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"animated shadow box",
"arduino",
"ghost delta",
"halloween",
"Halloween hacks",
"pololu",
"robotic doll",
"zombie fingers"
] | Have some servos and an Arduino lying around? It isn’t too late to get your freaky on! Last night, tech enthusiasts of Las Vegas gathered at Pololu Robotics to show off their hacks for a Halloween flavored edition of their bi-monthly robot club. These projects created by those in the community as well as the Pololu engineers themselves are fun and have a relatively short list of materials. So, if the examples below give you some inspiration, this is permission to Macgyver something together before your big Halloween party tonight…
Impatient Severed Fingers
– [Amanda] came up with a cute use for some mini servos and a zombie hand prop. The five severed fingers were attached to one end of a plastic rod. The other end was mounted to each of five servos which were laid out in the appropriate hand shape and attached to a fixed base. An Arduino running a basic sweep sketch animated the motors at slightly staggered intervals, creating a nice rolling effect. Even with the moving parts exposed this prop would be awesome to have on display, or set the ambiance with its continuous tapping…
Angry Spectral Delta
– [Nathan Bryant] made an actual costume for his delta robot from Robot Army. By attaching a small plastic skull to the end effector and draping a tattered piece of fabric over the rest of the mechanism he effectively transformed the delta into a little ghost with a sassy personality. The head swiftly bobbed about, all while staying parallel to the table… until it intermittently came unhinged and hung limply, which was a nice added effect!
Robotic Exorcism Baby
– This doll could turn its half skeleton, half baby face 180 degrees and then laugh at your fear. By attaching two servo motors together, [Jeremy] was able to create a pan and tilt mechanism which acted as the baby’s contorting neck and chattering jaw. The micro controller sending commands to the motors was hidden modestly under her dress.
Stabby Animated Cardboard Shadowbox –
Among the animatronic devices seen at the event was a shadowbox made by [Brandon] hidden in a dark conference room nearby. When one happened to walk past the seemingly unoccupied space, they’d glimpse the silhouette of an arm stabbing downward with a knife through a windowsill. Being lured in for further investigation you’d find that the shadow was being cast by some colored LEDs through a charmingly simple device. A cutout made from recycled card stock was attached to a single servo. This whole mechanism itself rocked back and forth slightly as the motor moved, which wasn’t intentional but added some realism to the motion of the stabby arm.
There were many interesting projects present last night ranging from remote-controlled skeletal arms to other reactive devices ready to deliver a scare. If you’re interested in knowing more, those made by the Pololu crew are documented on
their blog
. Since video does these projects better justice, you can check out a compilation of clips here: | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,019.036223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/the-r2d2-o-lantern-reddit-doesnt-want-you-to-see/ | The R2D2-‘O-Lantern Reddit Doesn’t Want You To See | Brian Benchoff | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"another pumpkin post",
"halloween",
"jack o lantern",
"projector",
"star wars"
] | The people here at Hackaday aren’t dedicating their entire lives to moderating comments and sending press releases to the circular file; some of us actually have jobs and hobbies. [James Hobson] works at a projector company that was having a pumpkin carving contest today. He came up with the best possible use of a pumpkin projector – a R2D2-‘o-lantern that plays the message from [Leia] to [Obi-Wan Kenobi]. [James] submitted this to reddit, but one of the mods deleted it. We’re much cooler than a few mods and their little empire,
so we’re putting it up here
.
Instead of a knife, [James] used a rather interesting method for carving a pumpkin – a laser cutter. By maxing out the Z height of his laser cutter, he was able to cut a perfect R2D2 graphic on the surface of a pumpkin. No, [James] isn’t removing any of the pumpkin’s skin after the lasering is done, but the result still looks great when backlit.
Inside the pumpkin is a projector playing the famous distress message made from the captured Tantive IV. It’s not entirely accurate – [James] put the projector behind R2’s radar eye and not the holographic projectors, and to project [Leia] in mid-air
he would need something like this
, Still, it’s a great project we expect to see cloned a year or so from now. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2068320",
"author": "Sarah Petkus",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T02:37:36",
"content": "Awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2068376",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T02:51:18",
"content": "Very nice,... | 1,760,376,018.999613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/improving-the-parallax-propeller-in-an-fpga/ | Improving The Parallax Propeller In An FPGA | Brian Benchoff | [
"FPGA",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"emulation",
"fpga",
"open source",
"p8x32a",
"parallax",
"Parallax Propeller",
"propeller"
] | The Parallax Propeller is an interesting chip that doesn’t get a lot of love, but since the entire chip was released as open source, that might be about to change: people are putting this chip inside FPGA and modifying the binaries
to give the chip functions that never existed in the original
.
Last August, Parallax
released the source for the P8X32A
, giving anyone with an FPGA board the ability
to try out the Prop
for their own designs. Since then, a few people have put some time in, cleaning up the files, unscrambling ROM images, fixing bugs, and all the general maintenance that an open source microcontroller core requires.
[Sylwester] has grabbed some of the experimental changes found
on the Parallax forum
and included them as a branch of the Propeller source. There is support for a second 32-bit port, giving the new chip 64 I/O pins, multiply instructions, video generators, hard-coded SD card libraries, and a variant called a microProp that has four cores instead of eight.
You can grab all the updated sources
right here
and load them up on a DE0 Nano FPGA board. If you’re exceptionally lucky and have the Altera DE2-115 dev board, you’ll also be able to run the upcoming Propeller 2. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2064325",
"author": "Jac Goudsmit",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T03:25:40",
"content": "Actually, [Sylwester]’s special features in his git repository at the “right here” link above will only work on the BeMicro CV at this time.As [Sylwester] mentions on his website, I manage a Github r... | 1,760,376,019.339657 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/flaming-jack-o-lanterns-light-up-the-night/ | Flaming Jack-o’-lanterns Light Up The Night | Adam Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"boom",
"concrete",
"gasoline",
"jack o lantern",
"pumpkin"
] | [misterdob] wanted to spice up his Halloween decor, so he built these
flaming concrete jack -o’-lanterns
to decorate his walkway. He started with the classic plastic jack-o’-lanterns that trick-or-treaters have been using to collect candy for years. [misterdob] filled the plastic pumpkins halfway with concrete mix, then dropped in metal coffee cans. He then filled the pumpkins up to the top with concrete, shaking them up a bit to avoid air pockets.
Once the concrete had set, [misterdob] cut away the plastic revealing nearly perfect concrete duplicates. He used acid stain to color his creations – though it looks like he missed a spot or two.
We have to disagree with [misterdob’s] choice of fuels. In fact, we think he was out of his gourd when he picked gasoline for his flaming pumpkins. Seriously though, gasoline is a horrible choice for a fire pot like this for a multitude of reasons. Gas has a particularly foul odor and its fumes are explosive. If a Halloween prankster were to try kicking one of the pumpkins over, not only would they have a broken foot, they’d also be covered in burning gas.
Thankfully, the folks on
[misterdob’s] Reddit thread
had better fuel suggestions – citronella torch cans with lamp oil and wicks, kerosene, or gel fuel would be better suited for these hot pumpkins.
If you still don’t believe how dangerous gas and its fumes can be, check out
this video of a bonfire gone wrong
(language warning). | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2063353",
"author": "Lord Bone",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T23:06:09",
"content": "The incendiary effects combined with broken foot might be considered by some to be a benefit…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2064131",
"... | 1,760,376,019.291261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/piezo-vacuum-pump-for-lightweight-pick-and-place/ | Piezo Vacuum Pump For Lightweight Pick And Place | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"pick and place",
"piezoelectric vacuum",
"vacuum",
"vacuum pump"
] | If you’re building a pick and place machine, or even just a vacuum pen, you’ll need some way to pick up tiny part. This means something that sucks, aquarium tubing, and everything that goes with that. A few months ago, [Wayne] found an interesting device called a Micro Blower that will
blow
small amounts of air from a small, lightweight device. A few modifications later,
and he had a piezoelectric vacuum pump
for picking up tiny parts.
The Micro Blower
[Wayne] found is available on Mouser for about $45, but this device blows. To turn it into something that sucks, he would need to find a way to block up the input side of the pump so it could draw a vacuum. Eventually settling on mounting the blower inside a stack of foam board, [Wanye] glued on a 20 gauge needle and was able to suck up 0603 SMD parts.
The new piezoelectric sucker is extremely light, and the power draw is very reasonable: 18V and 20mA. This would be a great device to mount to
a certain pick and place machine
without having to run vacuum lines through the mechanics of a motion platform. Video below. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2062942",
"author": "charliex",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T20:25:44",
"content": "Irt’s neat, i guess i don’t see much advantage in this over a tube to a remote pump, they’re not that noisy, the motors on my pnp are way noiser than the pump. I’m also curious how much of that vibration... | 1,760,376,019.438337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/hackaday-munich-dj-muallem-workshop-info-and-more/ | Hackaday Munich: DJ Muallem, Workshop Info, And More | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"dj",
"embedded hardw",
"munich",
"party",
"theha",
"workshop"
] | DJ Muallem
If you don’t have your ticket to the Hackaday Prize Party at
Hackaday Munich
you better scramble for one. We are excited to announce that [muallem] is the DJ for the event. He is the driving force behind the music at the
Bob Beaman Club
in Munich and is sure to deliver a set to remember. Don’t take our word for it, we’ve been cranking
his Soundcloud channel
for a couple of days now and it’s hard to wait the two weeks left before the party starts.
Workshop details whether you have a ticket or not
For those able to show up during the afternoon
we have started to post details about the workshops
. One point of confusion has been the All-day tickets versus the Workshop tickets. Here’s a rundown:
Workshop tickets were limited based on the hardware we are able to bring to the event with us.
All day tickets are welcome to participate in the workshops if you bring your own hardware to hack. Of course you are also welcome to come and watch, visit, or work on a completely separate hardware hack of your own!
If you have a ticket you’ll want to check out the details about getting a head start (by pre-loading embedded development software and learning a bit about the challenges). If you don’t have a workshop ticket we’re recommending hardware you can bring in order to participate.
So far we’ve posted about the
Roboto
and
Moog
workshops but will add details about Reverse Engineering and Computer Vision workshops soon!
The Hackaday Prize: Space Trip or Cash?
There has been a brewing debate about whether the winner of
The Hackaday Prize
(who will be revealed live at
Hackaday Munich
) will take the Trip to Space or grab the $196,418 in cash.
Tell us which what you would do and why
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2063017",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T20:59:05",
"content": "Without a doubt – cash. I’m sure someday in the future, real space trips will be available, but not today, and passing up almost $200k for a suborbital hop . . . well I wouldn’t do it (YMMV).",
"pa... | 1,760,376,019.382854 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/reverse-engineering-a-blu-ray-drive-for-laser-graffiti/ | Reverse Engineering A Blu-ray Drive For Laser Graffiti | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"blu-ray",
"drive",
"dvd",
"dvd drive",
"laser",
"reverse engineering"
] | There’s a whole lot of interesting mechanics, optics, and electronics inside a Blu-ray drive, and [scanlime] a.k.a. [Micah Scott] thinks those bits can be reused for some interesting project.
[Micah] is reverse engineering one of these drives
, with the goal of turning it into a source of cheap, open source holograms and laser installations – something these devices were never meant to do. This means reverse engineering the 3 CPUs inside an external Blu-ray drive, making sense of the firmware, and making this drive do whatever [Micah] wants.
When the idea of reverse engineering a Blu-ray drive struck [Micah], she hopped on Amazon
and found the most popular drive out there
. It turns out, this is an excellent drive to reverse engineer – there are multiple firmware updates for this drive, an excellent source for the raw data that would be required to reverse engineer it.
[Micah]’s first effort to reverse engineer the drive seems a little bit odd; she turned the firmware image into a black and white graphic. Figuring out exactly what’s happening in the firmware with that is a fool’s errand, but by looking at the pure black and pure white parts of the graphic, [Micah] was able guess where the bootloader was, and how the firmware image is segmented. In other parts of the code, [Micah] saw thing vertical lines she recognized as ARM code. In another section, thin horizontal black bands revealed code for an 8051. These lines are only a product of how each architecture accesses code, and really only something [Micah] recognizes from doing this a few times before.
The current state of the project
is a backdoor that is able to upload new firmware to the drive. It’s in no way a complete project; only the memory for the ARM processor is running new code, and [Micah] still has no idea what’s going on inside some of the other chips. Still, it’s a start, and the beginning of an open source firmware for a Blu-ray drive.
While [Micah] want’s to use these Blu-ray drives for laser graffiti, there are a number of other slightly more useful reasons for the build. With a DVD drive,
you can hold a red blood cell in suspension
, or use the laser inside
to make graphene
. Video below. | 30 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2062090",
"author": "Xiver1972",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T14:31:44",
"content": "Apparently data visualization is a good tool for reverse engineering software and data.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bM3Gut1hIk",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,019.774424 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/developed-on-hackaday-the-answer-is-below/ | Developed On Hackaday: The Answer Is Below | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"crowdfunding",
"developed on hackaday",
"limpkin",
"mooltipass",
"password",
"password keeper"
] | In one month the
Mooltipass offline password keeper project
will be one year old.
We hope that our twice a month
Developed on Hackaday series posts
allowed our dear readers to see what are the steps involved in a device’s life, going from idea to prototype to crowdfunding-ready product. The Mooltipass is the fruit of a unique world-wide collaboration around open source, developed by and for security minded people who (for most of them) never saw each other. Relating our progress here enabled us to benefit from our readers’ feedback and make sure that we didn’t miss important wanted features. Contrary to other campaigns that we often debunk on Hackaday, we preferred to wait until we had a beta-tester approved device to move to the crowdfunding stage. Our geekiest readers will therefore find the launch date embedded in this post, other may want to subscribe to our
official Google group
to stay updated. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2061652",
"author": "Legion",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T11:41:40",
"content": "I seeded the idea.And i don’t see my name anywhere. :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2061671",
"author": "Mathieu Stephan",
"times... | 1,760,376,019.494605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/a-graphics-card-for-a-homebrew-computer/ | A Graphics Card For A Homebrew Computer | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"GAL",
"graphics card",
"programmable logic",
"vga",
"z80"
] | One of [aepharta]’s ‘before I die’ projects is a homebrew computer. Not just any computer, mind you, but a fabulous Z80 machine, complete with video out. HDMI and DisplayPort would require far too much of this tiny, 80s-era computer, and it’s getting hard to buy a composite monitor.
This meant it was time to build a VGA video card
from some parts salvaged from old equipment.
When it comes to ancient computers, VGA has fairly demanding requirements; the slowest standard pixel clock is 25.175 MHz, an order of magnitude faster than the CPU clock in early 80s computers. Memory is also an issue, with a 640×480, 4-color image requiring 153600 bytes, or about a quarter of the 640k ‘that should be enough for anybody.’
To cut down on the memory requirements and make everything a nice round in base-2 numbers, [aepharta] decided on a resolution of 512×384. This means about 100k of memory would be required when using 16 colors, and only about 24 kB for monochrome.
The circuit was built from some old programmable logic ICs pulled from a Cisco router. The circuit could have been built from discrete logic chips, but this was much, much simpler. Wiring everything up, [aepharta] got the timing right and was eventually able to put an image on a screen.
After a few minutes, though, the image started wobbling. [aepharta] put his finger on one of the GALs and noticed it was exceptionally hot. A heatsink stopped the wobbling for a few minutes, and a fan stopped it completely. Yes, it’s a 1980s-era graphics card that requires a fan. The card draws about 3W, or about two percent of a modern, high-end graphics card. | 49 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "2061029",
"author": "Generic Human",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T08:19:23",
"content": "Very nice. Reminds me of Steve Chamberlin’s BMOW (I believe he also used GALs in the video circuit). I’d double check the wiring on that one GAL though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,019.573933 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/scare-off-squirrels-and-tweet-about-it-with-the-jack-o-lantern-warning-system/ | Scare Off Squirrels And Tweet About It With The Jack-O’-Lantern Warning System | Theodora Fabio | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"buzzer",
"Halloween hacks",
"jack-o-lanterns",
"piezo",
"PIR sensor",
"spark",
"Spark Core",
"sparkcore",
"squirrel"
] | [Stephpalm] had carved a pumpkin for the first time in two decades. Unfortunately, the neighborhood squirrels were all too pleased with her work and devoured it. Her original goal for the jack-o’-lantern was to have its lights controlled over the internet. These hungry critters inspired another project instead –
The Jack-’o’-Lantern Squirrel Early Warning System
. There have been hacks that have dealt with pesky squirrels before, such as a
trap
and an
automatic water turret
, but they didn’t have the ability to post to social media like this system does.
The system consists of a
Spark Core
, a
passive infrared (PIR) senso
r, and a piezo buzzer. When the motion sensor is triggered the buzzer sounds, scaring away any peckish creatures lurking nearby. [Stephpalm] used an NPN transistor and 1k-Ohm resistor to provide enough current to drive the buzzer. All of these components were connected using jumper wires and a breadboard that sits on top of the pumpkin. As a nod to her original idea, [stephpalm] then created
“Pumpkin Watch Code”
and loaded it into the Core. It posts preset messages to a Twitter account every 45 minutes of inactivity or whenever a pesky squirrel is detected. The messages can be personalized for anyone who wants to make one of these themselves.
We wonder if it would be better to place the breadboard inside the jack-o’-lantern and carve out a couple of holes on top for the PIR sensor’s wires to come out of. That would offer some protection from the elements and prevent it from getting knocked over. We think this project could be adapted for many other uses. After the break, see a video of the system in action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrBXjMlxB38
[via Instructables] | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2069176",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-11-01T07:37:36",
"content": "Now that Halloween is over lets take aim at those bushy tailed tree dwelling rodents.Corny Ferris wheels or a trebuchet to launch them at their lunch break.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,019.714167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/reverse-engineering-the-d-link-wps-pin-algorithm/ | Reverse Engineering The D-Link WPS Pin Algorithm | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"802.11",
"BSSID",
"d-link",
"mac",
"security",
"wifi",
"wireless",
"wps",
"WPS PIN"
] | A router with WPS requires a PIN to allow other devices to connect, and this PIN should be unique to every router and not derived from other easily accessible data found on the router. When [Craig] took a look at the firmware of a D-Link DIR-810L 802.11ac router,
he found exactly the opposite
; the WPS PIN
was
easily decipherable because it was generated entirely from the router’s MAC address and could be reverse engineered by sniffing WiFi.
When [Craig] was taking a look at the disassembled firmware from his router, he noticed a bit of code that accessed the NVRAM used for storing device-specific information like a serial number. This bit of code
wasn’t
retrieving a WPS pin, but the WAN MAC address instead. Instead of being unique to each device and opaque to every other bit of data on the router, the WPS pin was simply generated (with a bit of math) from the MAC address. This means anyone upstream of the router can easily derive the WPS pin of the router, and essentially gives everyone the keys to the castle of this router.
A few years ago, it was discovered the WPS pin was extremely insecure anyway,
able to be brute-forced in a matter of minutes
. There are patches router manufacturers could apply to detect these brute force attacks, closing that vulnerability. [Craig]’s code, though, demonstrates that a very large number of D-Link routers effectively broadcast their WPS PIN to the world. To make things even worse, the BSSID found in every wireless frame is also derived from the WAN MAC address. [Craig] has literally broken WPS on a huge number of D-Link routers, thanks to a single engineer that decided to generate the WPS PIN from the MAC address.
[Craig]
has an incomplete list of routers
that are confirmed affected on his site, along with a list of confirmed unaffected routers. | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2067414",
"author": "Noam Rathaus",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T20:51:17",
"content": "Nicely done",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2067456",
"author": "atheros",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T21:06:43",
"content": "Before I ... | 1,760,376,019.889904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/hacklet-21-halloween-hacks-part-2/ | Hacklet 21 – Halloween Hacks Part 2 | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"Cthulhu",
"hacklet",
"halloween",
"Mass Effect"
] | We asked, you listened!
Last weeks Hacklet
ended with a call for more Halloween themed projects on
Hackaday.io
. Some great hackers uploaded awesome projects, and this week’s Hacklet is all about featuring them. Every one of our featured projects was uploaded to
Hackaday.io
within the last 7 days.
Mass Effect meets Daft Punk in [TwystNeko’s]
5-Day SpeedBuild Mass Effect Armor
. As the name implies, [TwystNeko] built the armor in just 5 days. Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam was used to make most of the costume. Usually EVA foam needs to be sealed. To save time, [TwystNeko] skipped that step, and just brushed on some gold acrylic paint. The actual cuts were based on an online template [TwystNeko] found. To top the armor off, [TwystNeko] used a custom built
Daft Punk Guy Manuel helmet
. Nice!
[Griff] wins for the creepiest project this week with
Rat Bristlebot
. Taking a page from the
Evil Mad Scientist Labs
book, [Griff] built a standard bristlebot based on a toothbrush and a vibrating pager motor. He topped off the bristlebot with a small rubber rat body from the party store. The rat did make the ‘bot move a bit slower, but it still was plenty entertaining for his son. [Griff] plans to use a CdS cell to make the rat appear to scamper when room lights are turned on. Scurrying rats will have us running for the hills for sure!
[MagicWolfi] was created
Pumpkin-O-Chain
to light up Halloween around the house. This build was inspired by [Jeri Ellsworth’s]
motion sensing barbot dress
from 2011. Pumpkin-O-Chain uses the a similar RC delay line with 74HC14 inverters to make the LEDs switch on in sequence. He wanted the delay to be a bit longer than [Jeri’s] though, so he switched to 100K ohm resistors in this build. The result is a nice effect which is triggered when someone passes the PIR motion sensor.
[Petri] got tired of his Jack-o’-lantern candles burning out, so he built his own
Pumpkin Light
. The light made its debut last year with a Teensy 2.0++ running the show. This year, [Petri] decided to go low power and switched to an MSP430 processor on one of TI’s launchpad boards. With plenty of outputs available on the Teensy and the MSP430, [Petri] figured he might as well use and RGB LED. The new improved Jack-o’-lantern can run for hours with no risk of fire.
We c
an’t end this week without mentioning [Griff’s] updated
Crochet Cthulhu Mask
. We featured the mask in
last week’s Hacklet,
and called [Griff] out for an update. Well, the final project is up, and it looks great! We’re sure [Griff’s] son will be raking in the candy this year!
It’s time for trick-or-treating, which means we have to end this episode of The Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of
Hackaday.io! | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2066796",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T17:30:18",
"content": "In the vein of Halloween hacks, here’s a picture frame I made for my 36×60 inch painting of Vigo the Carpathian:http://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/framing-vigo/",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,376,019.816523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/dual-mode-avalanche-and-rf-random-number-generator/ | Dual-mode Avalanche And RF Random Number Generator | Ethan Zonca | [
"hardware"
] | [
"entropy",
"linux",
"random number generator",
"rng",
"usb"
] | [Paul] designed a
new open-hardware RNG
(random number generator) that includes two sources of entropy in a small package. The first source of entropy is a typical avalanche diode circuit, which is formed by a pair of transistors. This circuit creates high-speed random pulses which are sampled by the onboard microcontroller.
What makes this design unique is a second entropy source: a CC2531 RF receiver. The RF receiver continuously skips around channels in the 2.5Ghz band and measures the RF signal level. The least-significant bit of the signal level is captured and used as a source of entropy. The firmware can be configured to use either source of entropy individually, or to combine both. The firmware also supports optionally whitening the entropy byte stream, which evens out the number of 1’s and 0’s without reducing entropy.
The OneRNG uses the USB-CDC profile, so it shows up as a virtual serial port in most modern operating systems. With the
rngd
daemon and a bit of configuration, the OneRNG can feed the system entropy source in Linux. [Paul] also has a good writeup about the
theory behind the entropy generator
which includes images of his schematic. Firmware, drivers, and hardware design files are open-source and are
available for download
. | 28 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2066304",
"author": "planofuji",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T14:37:21",
"content": "Interesting project. I would like to see a lot more test results prior to using this for anything critical however. Ent is a good start, but it needs to be run on multiple independent data sets from d... | 1,760,376,019.954212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/raspberry-pi-brings-new-life-to-some-old-dinosaurs/ | Raspberry Pi Brings New Life To Some Old Dinosaurs | Sarah Petkus | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"animatronic dinosaur",
"dinosaur",
"dinosaur robot",
"isle of wight",
"node-red",
"raspberry pi",
"robotic dinosaur"
] | Reprogramming the behaviors of a person-sized animatronic dinosaur
would have to be among the coolest opportunities to be presented with… This is exactly what [Dr. Lucy Rogers] and a group of fellow techies were tasked to accomplish for the Blackgang Chine park located on the Isle of Wight in the UK.
Before the group arrived, the native dinos didn’t do much else than run a preprogrammed routine when triggered by someone’s presence… which needless to say, lacks the appropriate prehistoric dynamism. Seeing that their dated
wag, wiggle, and roar
response could use a fresh breath of flair, the park’s technical projects coordinator [Mark Butler] began adapting one of the dinosaur’s control boxes to work with a Raspberry Pi. This is when [Lucy] and her group were called upon for a two-day long excursion of play and development. With help and guidance from Raspberry Pi expert, [Neil Ford], the group learned how to use a ‘drag and build’ programing environment called
node-RED
in order to choreograph new movement sequences for two of the smaller dinosaurs provided for use. The visual nature of
node-RED
helped those of the Blackgang staff with little programming experience understand the code at work, which aided in their training. Now they can reprogram the dinosaurs with new actions on the fly if needed.
The Pi in the end turned out to be a cost-effective solution which will give the robot dinosaurs a longer, more fulfilling lifespan to roar and frolic on their island home. Check out this video by [Debbie Davies] to see more…
Thanks Ed, for spotting this one! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2065736",
"author": "Richy Freeway",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T11:32:57",
"content": "*Blackgang ChineHaven’t been over to the Isle of Wight since I were a lad!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2065737",
"author": "Greenaum",
... | 1,760,376,020.095855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/31/a-better-anonabox-with-the-beaglebone-black/ | A Better Anonabox With The Beaglebone Black | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"anonymity",
"anonymize",
"beaglebone",
"beaglebone black",
"Onion",
"security",
"tor"
] | A few weeks ago, Anonabox, the ill-conceived router with custom firmware that would protect you from ‘hackers’ and ‘legitimate governments’ drew the ire of tech media. It was discovered that this was simply an off-the-shelf router with an installation of OpenWrt, and the single common thread in the controversy was that, ‘anyone can build that. This guy isn’t doing anything new.’
Finally, someone who didn’t have the terrible idea of grabbing
another
off the shelf router and putting it up on Kickstarter
is doing just that
. [Adam] didn’t like the shortcomings of the Anonabox and looked at the best practices of staying anonymous online. He created a Tor dongle in response to this with a Beaglebone Black.
Instead of using wireless like the Anonabox and dozens of other projects, [Andy] is using the Beaglebone as a dongle/Ethernet adapter with all data passed to the computer through the USB port. No, it doesn’t protect your entire network; only a single device and only when it’s plugged in.
The installation process is as simple as installing all the relevent software, uninstalling all the cruft, and configuring a browser. [Adam] was able to get 7Mb/sec down and 250kb/sec up through his Tor-ified Ethernet adapter while only using 40% of the BBB’s CPU. | 29 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2065189",
"author": "Atwas911",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T08:33:29",
"content": "Its just too bad that using tor and or linux will get you flagged as a possible domestic terrorist by the NSA. Tor can’t be trusted anyways. The majority of the exit nodes are setup just for the purpose ... | 1,760,376,020.813974 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/push-button-receive-candy-or-death/ | Push Button, Receive Candy (or Death) | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"Arduino Uno",
"candy",
"candy machine",
"cereal dispenser",
"NEMA-17"
] | Will you be handing out candy on Halloween? Maybe you have a party to attend or kids to take around the neighborhood and can’t be home to answer the bell. You don’t want to be The Dark House With No Candy, ’cause that’s a good way to get TP’d. We’re not exactly sure what [Ben]’s catalyst was aside from trying to avoid tempting would-be thieves with an unattended bowl on the porch. Whatever the reason, we’re happy to present
Candy or Death
, his gamified candy (or death)-dispensing machine.
Okay, so it only dispenses candy for now. [Ben] hasn’t quite worked the kinks out of his death ray. He designed it to sit behind a porch-facing window so it can’t be messed with. All trick-or-treaters can do is push the button and take the candy. It’s built around a cereal dispenser that’s modified to be cranked by a piece of round rod driven with a NEMA-17 stepper motor and an Arduino Uno with a motor shield. The candy slides down a length of aluminium rain gutter into a plastic stacking bin, and the whole thing is built into a nice wood frame.
A few adjustments were necessary to keep it from jamming. The dispenser’s hopper uses rubber blades to govern the flow, and he ended up removing a few and trimming the others. [Ben] has an album up of all his
build pics
and put
his code
on the gits. Stick around to see videos of the machine from the front and rear. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2064645",
"author": "nsayer",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31T05:21:01",
"content": "And that is the very best Halloween hack I’ve ever seen.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2064660",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2014-10-31... | 1,760,376,020.144622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/bluetooth-enabled-danger-sign-for-lab/ | Bluetooth-Enabled Danger Sign For Lab | Theodora Fabio | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"bluesmirf",
"bluetooth",
"rn-41",
"sign",
"wireless"
] | [A Raymond] had some free time at work, and decided to spend it on creating
a wireless warning sign
. According to his blog profile, he is a PhD student in Applied Physics. His lab utilizes a high-powered laser system. His job is to use said system, but only after it’s brought online by faculty scientists. The status of the laser system is changed by a manual switchbox that controls the warning signs wired around the lab entrances. Unfortunately, if you were in the upstairs office, you only knew this after running downstairs to check. [A Raymond’s] admitted laziness finally got the better of him – he wanted a sign that displayed the laser’s status from the comfort of the office. He had an old sign he could use, but he wanted a way for it to communicate with the switchbox downstairs. After some thought, he decided Bluetooth was the way to go, using a pair of
BlueSMiRF
Bluetooth modules from Sparkfun and Arduino Uno R3’s.
He constructed a metal box that intercepted the cable from the main switchbox, mounting one BlueSMiRF and Uno into it. Upon learning that the switchbox sends 12V AC signals over three individual status wires, he half-wave rectified the wires and divided their voltages so that the Uno wouldn’t fry. Instead, it determined which status wire that had active voltage. and sent a “g(reen)”, “y(ellow)”, or “r(ed)” signal continuously via Bluetooth. On the receiving end, [A Raymond] gutted the sign and mounted the other BlueSMiRF and Uno into it along with some green, yellow, and red LEDs. The LEDs light up in response to the corresponding Bluetooth signal.
The result is a warning sign that is always up-to-date with the switchbox’s status. We’ve covered projects using Bluetooth before, from
plush birds
to
cameras
– [A Raymond’s] wireless sign is in good company. He notes that it’s “missing” a high pitched whining noise when the “Danger” lights are on. If he decides to add an accompanying (annoying) sound, he couldn’t go wrong
with something like this
. Regardless, we’re sure [A Raymond] is happy that he no longer has to go back and forth between floors before he can use the laser. | 16 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2060556",
"author": "null",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T06:05:19",
"content": "He just needs to make sure that when the signal is lost that it does not display a false status. Fortunately it is easy to check for.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,376,020.220488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/espruino-pico-javascript-on-a-usb-stick/ | Espruino Pico, Javascript On A USB Stick | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Software Development"
] | [
"dev board",
"Espruino",
"javascript",
"STM32F4"
] | There are probably very few official numbers for this, but web developers at least
seem
to outnumber the amount of people who regularly poke pins and registers with C. For them, the embedded world must be a scary and foreboding domain, full of bitwise operations and dynamic types. [Gordon] figured there was another way and built a Javascript interpreter for a microcontroller. The latest board built around this interpreter
is up on Kickstarter
, and its even smaller and more capable than his earlier version.
This isn’t [Gordon]’s first rodeo; last year
he launched the (full-sized) Espruino
, featuring an ARM Cortex M3
and his very own Javascript interpreter
. The large-scale Espruino was a rousing success, and now he’s moving on to a smaller thumb drive-sized footprint for the Pico. The hardware is a bit better, relying on the ARM Cortex M4 STM32F4 with a bit more RAM, and this time the board is slightly cheaper. It still runs the same Javascript interpreter, though, so all the code is exactly what you’d expect.
We haven’t seen many projects using this tiny Javascript of Things, but the new layout does make it fantastically useful. Depending on how the crowd funding campaign turns out, [Gordon] might be adding socket, and USB HID support, along with inline C functions. | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2059833",
"author": "GuyDude",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T02:21:45",
"content": "console.log((function (a) {return “That’s so ” + a + “!”;}(“cute”)))",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2059859",
"author": "Moobooloo",
"timest... | 1,760,376,020.325707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/from-nerf-gun-to-rf-cannon-building-a-movie-prop/ | From Nerf Gun To RF Cannon: Building A Movie Prop | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"flite test",
"rcexplorer",
"rcexplorer.se",
"RF Cannon",
"Rotor DR1"
] | [David Windestål] is back in the USA, and this time he’s armed and dangerous! He’s built an
incredible RF cannon prop
(YouTube link) as part of his drone hunter wardrobe for the
Rotor DR1 series
. [David] is no stranger to Hackaday. We’ve previously seen him
gliding R/C planes from the edge of space
and
building afterburners
as part of the Flite Test crew.
[David’s] drone hunter character is armed with a nasty RF cannon designed to fry drones out of the sky. The hunter can then collect and sell their Arcanum pellet power sources. [David] started with a seriously big Nerf gun. He cut off the front half of the gun and replaced it with a helical antenna. This is the same type of antenna [David] uses in his video ground stations. Coupled with a laser cut wood frame, the coil looks downright dangerous. We’re glad it’s just for show.
[David] added a few more accessories to the gun, including switches, an old heat sink, some wires, and the all-important Arcanum reactor. We seriously love his RF shielded glove, which keeps the hunter’s barrel hand from getting fried. [David] added a layer of copper mesh to a thick chemical resistant glove. He soldered the copper together and added a wire to connect glove and gun. [David] then enlisted the help of DR1 director [Chad Kapper] to paint and weather the gun and shield glove. The results are simply stunning.
We love watching hackers step a bit outside their element and build props like this. They always add a few realistic features that make even the most futuristic sci-fi prop a bit more plausible.
If you haven’t been watching Rotor DR1, check it out! There are three episodes out so far, with more coming each week. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2059899",
"author": "Bpat",
"timestamp": "2014-10-30T02:41:01",
"content": "I’ve been following the series. I think it is a nice change from the norm. Once it is finished, a quick bit of editing will turn it into a full length movie.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,376,020.422252 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/the-hackaday-prize-interview-with-a-chipwhisperer/ | The Hackaday Prize: Interview With A ChipWhisperer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"ChipWhisperer",
"interviews",
"microcontroller",
"power analysis",
"security"
] | Every finalist for The Hackaday Prize has some aspect of it that hasn’t been done before; finding the chemical composition of
everything
with some 3D printed parts is novel, as is building a global network of satellite ground stations with off the shelf components.
[Colin]’s ChipWhisperer, though, has some scary and interesting implications.
By looking inside a microcontroller as its running, the ChipWhisperer is able to verify – or break – security on these chips. It’s also
extremely interesting
and somewhat magical being able to figure out what data a chip is processing simply by looking at its power consumption.
We have no idea who the winner of The Hackaday Prize is yet, and I’m hoping to remain ignorant of that fact
until the party two weeks from now
. Until then, you can read the short interview with [Colin O’Flynn], or check out his five-minute video for the ChipWhisperer below:
How seriously are the backdoors the Chipwhisperer opens taken
in the industry? Are we looking at a huge problem with on-chip
security out there, simply because the tools to investigate
them have been really expensive?
For people who care about security because they directly have money to lose
(think chip & pin credit cards, satellite set-top boxes, etc.) they’ve taken
these problems seriously for a long time. But the majority of embedded
systems work doesn’t fall into that category, and it’s those products which
end up vulnerable. Part of the issue is the design engineers either don’t
know about these attacks. Or the engineers trust the vendors they are buying
from, which sell the crypto libraries, hardware accelerators, or stand-alone
chips as completely bullet-proof systems.
The problem may not be one of fundamental deficiencies in the design of
the crypto, but more the users (i.e. design engineers) don’t fully
understand how “secure” the specific implementation of the crypto is.
If you could give 100 words of advice to embedded designers
implementing
encryption, what would you tell them?
Crypto is not a check-box. Every implementation will be vulnerable, your
question is how secure do I need this to be? If someone is able to determine
the secret key in one device, does this mean they are now able to gain
access to all similar devices? The problems exposed by side-channel analysis
is often made worse by classic mistakes, such as re-using keying material
across multiple devices to make deployment easier, but when the devices
don’t actually require a shared key (think firmware images).
You’ve already said a few people have gotten the files
and
built their own ChipWhisperer. You’re also selling the
complete kit.
Who is buying it? Are we looking at academics,
security researchers,
companies verifying their own hardware,
or just random people who sign their
emails ZeroCool?
Mostly academics so far, although there has also been a few security
researchers and companies too. My intention with the design is for it to be
a learning tool, and about as far from an ‘offensive attack tool’ as I could
reasonable make it. Unless you understand the underlying theory of the
attacks you’ll never have success with them.
What was the reaction from different communities? What was the
response
from security researchers versus the general public?
Are you surprised at
how popular your project was?
The biggest reaction has been from embedded engineers, as they have often
been sold on ‘secure because math’ during their design process. They are
using AES-256 for example and assume that means someone attacking the system
would need to physically decap the chip, reset fuse bits, and then read out
Flash memory to get the key. They’d never seen practical demonstrations of
side-channel attacks, only vaguely heard about it.
I am surprised how popular the project was outside of this sphere though! A
lot more people are involved in side-channel power analysis then I first
realized, which is great to learn. I started a web forum with the intention
of trying to collect some of that community, as it would be great to share
research results in a more informal manner.
Hypothetical, and we’re not going to hold you to whatever answer
you give. You win the grand prize, a trip to space or about
$200,000 USD. Which one to you take, and what is your reasoning
for doing so?
The trip to space would be great, but I think I’d have a hell of a time
turning down $200k! There’s no question I’d invest that back into this
project though. I really want to create a lower-cost version of these tools,
and a big part of that is doing a larger production run with more advanced
technology (mounting the FPGA directly on a multi-layer PCB). I’ve avoided
Kickstarter so far as I want this project to remain pretty technical – if I
went the Kickstarter route I’m afraid I’d end up with people who’ve only
ever used an Arduino backing the project, and then get frustrated when I’m
asking them to compile C code. I’ve also avoided trying to get an outside
investor, as they want to scale-back on the open-source/free nature of the
project. I’m also still part-way through a PhD, so can’t get too distracted
as I want to finish that off first!
Either way I’d need to check the tax implications of the prize too – if I
had to pay full Canadian income tax on the prize, I couldn’t afford the trip
to space anyway, even with the offer in the rules of the sponsor covering up
to 20% of the value! Unfortunately practical matters might dictate my
choice. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2058874",
"author": "surfingtheether",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T20:15:31",
"content": "The raman spectro scope is the clear winner out of the top 5. It’s the most applicable to the medical field and the most value as a kit or already assembled for 1/4th the cost of current commercia... | 1,760,376,020.480515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/nikes-with-power-laces-just-in-time-for-next-year/ | Nikes With Power Laces, Just In Time For Next Year | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"back to the future",
"BttF",
"power laces",
"shoe",
"shoes",
"wearable"
] | With the world’s first hoverboard being shown a few days ago, we’re on the verge of the fabulous world of tomorrow from
Back to the Future
. Hoverboards are cool, but there’s a wealth of other cool technology from the far-off year of 2015: Mr. Fusions, inflatable pizza, Dustbusters, and of course, Nikes with power laces.
[Hunter] just built them
, and with the right shoes, to boot.
[Hunter] is using the
BttF
-inspired Nike Air Mag shoes for this build, along with a few bits of electronics – an Arduino pro mini, a force sensing resistor, and a motor. The build began by carving out a notch in the back of the shoe for the electronics. A small bit of fishing line goes around the shoe, providing the power behind the power laces.
A force sensitive resistor under the heel of the insole tells the microcontroller when a foot is inside the shoe, and a rotary encoder on the motor shaft makes sure all the power lace cycles are the same. It’s not quite the same as the shoe seen on screen – the lower laces can’t be replicated and it’s certainly not as fast as the
BttF
shoes, but it does work, and as far as shoelaces are concerned, they work well.
Videos below. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2058416",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T17:21:36",
"content": "Not quite as impressive as the ‘real’ thing.http://youtu.be/liI1E_ZZV5w",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2058438",
"author": "peanutbutterjelly... | 1,760,376,020.385541 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/diy-fpv-goggles-born-from-necessity-of-cheapness/ | DIY FPV Goggles Born From Necessity Of Cheapness | Rich Bremer | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"drone fpv",
"first person view",
"FPV"
] | So now that you’ve built your quadcopter and can fly it without crashing most of the time, what’s next? How about metaphorically hopping into the pilot’s seat with a First Person View setup. Great idea… but the cost of the required gear can be a deal breaker. FPV goggles alone range from the low to high hundreds. [sneaky] was using his laptop screen for his FPV setup and decided to try to make is own
FPV goggles
.
The display is just a small LCD screen that was purchased off eBay. Craft foam board was cut, bent, glued and duct taped to form a box about the same size as the LCD screen which is also secured to the box with duct tape. [sneaky] then cut the opposite side of the box to fit his face before he lined it with 1/2″ weatherstripping foam. Staring at an LCD screen just inches from your face is sure to cause some discomfort. A Fresnel lens inserted in between the user’s eyes and the LCD reduces eye strain to make long flights tolerable. The whole assembly is then held to your noggin via a recycled ski goggle strap.
In the end, [sneaky] likes his new goggles better than his old laptop screen and sun shade setup. The goggles aren’t too heavy and he can wear them comfortably for a while. We’ve seen a DIY FPV goggle setup in the past that uses
individual lenses for each eye
rather than one large Fresnel lens. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2057904",
"author": "cantido",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T14:05:21",
"content": "Hobbyking has a ghetto goggles kit like this. I would personally save up the $400 for a pair of the skyzone googles though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,020.569911 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/a-pair-of-projects-to-scare-the-trick-or-treaters/ | A Pair Of Projects To Scare The Trick-or-Treaters | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"jack-o-latern",
"led",
"motion sensor",
"RC delay line",
"speaker"
] | The countdown is on! There’s only a few days left until Halloween, and if you’re still looking for something to spice up the experience for the kids heading to your door, [MagicWolfi] has just what you need. He’s put together two motion-sensing projects that are sure to startle any trick-or-treater.
The first project is a
chain of LED-lit pumpkins
that are activated by a motion sensor. A set of inverters paired with RC delay lines light up the pumpkins sequentially. They are arranged almost like a strand of Christmas lights and are powered by AA batteries, so in theory they could be expanded to make a strand as long as needed. The project was inspired by a
motion-sensing dress
and works pretty well as a Halloween decoration!
[MagicWolfi] is pairing the LED pumpkins with his second project which uses another
motion sensor to play scary sound effects
. Dubbed the Scare-o-Matic, this device uses a 45-millimeter speaker connected to a SparkFun microSD audio module to produce the scary sound effects. Each time it is triggered it plays a different sound from the list. There are videos and schematics for each of these projects on the project sites if you are interested in recreating any of these before Friday! | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,020.51707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/saintcon-badge-badge-hacking-for-mortals/ | SAINTCON Badge (Badge Hacking For Mortals) | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"cons"
] | [
"badge",
"beginner",
"crypto",
"puzzle",
"saintcon"
] | [Josh] attended his first SAINTCON this weekend before last and had a great time
participating in the badge hacking challenge
.
The 2014
SAINTCON
is only the second time that the conference has been open to the public. They give out conference badges which are just an unpopulated circuit board. This makes a lot of sense if you figure the number of people who
actually
hack their badges at conferences is fairly low. So he headed off to the hardware hacking village to solder on the components by hand — it’s an Arduino clone.
This is merely the start of the puzzle. We really like that
the published badge resources
include a crash course on how to read a schematic. The faq also attests that the staff won’t solder it for you and to get your microcontroller you have to trade in your security screw (nice touch). Once up and running you need to pull up the terminal on the chip and solve the puzzles in the firmware’s menu system. This continues with added hardware for each round: an IR receiver, thermistor, EEPROM, great stuff if you’re new to microcontrollers.
[Josh] mentions that this is nothing compared to the DEFCON badge. Badge hacking at DEFCON is **HARD**; and that’s good. It’s in the top-tier of security conferences and people who start the badge-solving journey expect the challenge. But if you’re not ready for that level of puzzle, DEFCON does have other activities
like Darknet
. That is somewhere in the same ballpark as the SAINTCON badge — much more friendly to those just beginning to developing their crypto and hardware hacking prowess. After all, everyone’s a beginner at some point. If that’s you quit making excuses and dig into something fun like this! | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2053388",
"author": "Noam Rathaus",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T11:54:05",
"content": "Looks great! And challenging",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2054519",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T19:42:15",
... | 1,760,376,021.5343 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/restoring-a-pdp-10-console-panel/ | Restoring A PDP-10 Console Panel | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"beaglebone",
"minicomputer",
"pdp",
"PDP-10",
"pdp-11",
"retrocomputing"
] | The PDP-10 was one of the first computers [Jörg] had gotten his hands on, and there are very, very few people that can deny the beauty of a panel full of buttons, LEDs, dials, and analog meters. When one of the front panels for a PDP-10 showed up on eBay, [Jörg] couldn’t resist; a purchase that would lead him
towards repairing this classic console
and making it functional again with a BeagleBone.
The console [Jörg] picked up is old enough to have voted for more than one Bush administration, and over the years a lot of grime has covered the beautiful acrylic panels. After washing the panel in a bathtub, [Jörg] found the dried panel actually looked worse, like an old, damaged oil painting. This was fixed by carefully scraping off the clear coat over two weeks; an important lesson in preserving these old machines. They’re literally falling apart, even the ones in museums.
With the front panel cleaned, [Jörg] turned his attention to the guts of this panel. The panel was wired up for LEDs, and each of the tiny flashlight bulbs in the pushbuttons were replaced.
The panel was then connected to a BlinkenBone
with a ton of wiring, and the SIMH simulator installed. That turns this console into a complete, working PDP-10, without sucking down kilowatts of power and heating up the room
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Jörg] with a BeagleBone and some old DEC equipment; earlier
he connected the front panel of a PDP-11 variant to one of these adapters
running the same software. | 27 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2052888",
"author": "Datanoise",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T08:51:17",
"content": "I’ve seen Jörg’s PDP-10 Console Panel live and he did some impressive work with that. He as well owns more PDPs (real ones) so it was really fun to play with an old Unix Machine and Punchtapes :)",
... | 1,760,376,020.969795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/flying-wing-project-uses-3d-printing-to-reach-new-heights/ | Flying Wing Project Uses 3D Printing To Reach New Heights | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"electric ducted engines",
"glider",
"uav"
] | A team of engineers from the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield have just put the finishing touches on their 3D printed Flying Wing with electric ducted fan engines —
a mini electric jet so to speak.
Earlier
this year
they had created a completely 3D printed fixed wing UAV, which the new Flying Wing is based off of. Designed specifically for the FDM process, they were able to optimize the design so that all parts could be printed out in 24 hours flat using ABS plastic.
The
new design
also almost exclusively uses FDM technology — however the wings are molded carbon fibre… using a 3D printed mold of course! The original glider weighed 2kg, and with the upgrades to the design, the Flying Wing weighs 3.5kg, with speed capabilities of around 45mph.
To save weight, neither plane has landing or take off gear, so the team had to create a slingshot catapult in order to launch the UAV’s. Also created using FDM components, it’s capable of launching the planes at 12m/s, or around 30mph.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4lrtOc736M
Down the road they hope to double the size of the plane to have a wingspan of around 3 meters, and use miniature gas turbines to take it to new heights, literally!
[Thanks Joseph!] | 58 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "2052382",
"author": "RaptorTech",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T05:36:41",
"content": "Looks sexy, but if kinda flys like a brick. They need some vertical stabs and turbines or simply props instead of edfs. I do think scaling it up will help, however. Also, since there are two edfs, they... | 1,760,376,021.060229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/hybrid-50cc-ultracapacitor-scooter/ | Hybrid 50cc Ultracapacitor Scooter | Elliot Williams | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"50cc",
"diy",
"Hybrid vehicle",
"scooter",
"supercapacitor",
"vehicle"
] | We’re all familiar with hybrid gas-electric cars these days, but how about a hybrid scooter that uses supercapacitors instead of batteries? Our hats are off to [Alex] from
Labs Bell
for the almost entirely-DIY conversion.
The hybrid idea is to drive the vehicle’s wheels with electric motors, but generate the electricity with a normal gasoline engine. This allows the hybrid to control the engine speed almost independently of the wheel motors’ demand for power, allowing the gas engine to run at its most efficient speed and charge up batteries with the extra energy. As an extra bonus, many hybrids also use regenerative braking to recoup some of the energy normally wasted as heat in your brake pads.
[Alex]’s hybrid scooter does all of the above and more. Since the stock vehicle is a 50cc scooter, any increase in acceleration is doubtless welcome. We’d love to see the scooter starting from stop with a full charge. Using supercapacitors as storage instead of batteries is a win for charging efficiency. In urban stop-and-go traffic, the natural habitat of the 50cc scooter, the regenerative braking should help further with gas consumption.
What’s most impressive to us is the completely DIY
hybrid control unit
that takes some simple inputs (wheel speed and throttle position) and controls regenerative braking, the gas engine’s throttle, etc. Since the hybrid control system is currently under development, there’s even a button to switch between different trial algorithms on the fly. Very cool!
Oh yeah, and [Alex] points out the fire extinguisher on-board. He had occasion to use it for his hybrid motorcycle V1. Safety first! | 40 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2051815",
"author": "polobunny",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T02:33:38",
"content": "Well, I’m not sure whether you’re supposed to take or give back his man card.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2051851",
"author": "Hirudi... | 1,760,376,021.130412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/8x8-led-arrays-make-for-one-creepy-animated-pumpkin/ | 8×8 LED Arrays Make For One Creepy Animated Pumpkin | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"jack o lantern",
"MAX7219",
"pumpkin eyes"
] | [Michal Janyst] wrote in to tell us about a little project he made for his nephew in preparation for Halloween –
a jack-o-lantern with facial expressions.
Pumpkin Eyes uses two MAX7219 LED arrays, an Arduino nano, and a USB power supply. Yeah, it’s pretty simple — but after watching the video you’ll probably want to make one too. It’s just so cute! Or creepy. We can’t decide. He’s also thrown up the code on
GitHub for those interested.
Of course, if you want a bit more of an advanced project you could make a
Tetris jack-o-lantern
, featuring a whopping 8×16 array of LEDs embedded directly into the pumpkin… or if you’re a Halloween purist and believe electronics have no place in a pumpkin, the least you could do is
make your jack-o-lantern breath fire.
It’s pretty simple, but extremely effective — so if you’re looking for some last-minute decoration ideas, this might be it! | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2051114",
"author": "Pixel Pirate",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T23:02:46",
"content": "The eyes should be diffused by some orange paper, or something.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2051225",
"author": "Eddie",
"... | 1,760,376,021.175523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/who-will-win-the-hackaday-prize-judging-begins-tonight/ | Who Will Win The Hackaday Prize? Judging Begins Tonight | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"ChipWhisperer",
"judging",
"munich",
"PortableSDR",
"RamanPi",
"SatNOGS",
"the hackaday prize",
"tricorder"
] | It’s been a long road for each of the five finalists; but after tonight they can breathe easy. The last judging round of the
2014 Hackaday Prize
begins at 11:50pm PDT.
Each finalist must finish documenting their project by that time as a cached version of each of the project pages will be sent off to our orbital judges. Joining the panel that judged the semifinal round is [Chris Anderson], CEO of 3D Robotics, founder of DIY Drones, former Editor-in-Chief of
Wired,
and technology visionary.
These nine
are charged with deciding who has built a project cool enough to go to space.
In case you’ve forgotten, the final five projects selected by our team of launch judges are:
ChipWhisperer
, an embedded hardware security research device for hardware penetration testing.
Open Source Science Tricorder
, a realization of science fiction technology made possible by today’s electronics hardware advances.
PortableSDR
, is a compact Software Defined Radio module that was originally designed for Ham Radio operators.
ramanPi
, a 3D printed Raman Spectrometer built around a Raspberry Pi.
SatNOGS
, a global network of satellite ground stations.
The ultimate results of the judging will be revealed
at The Hackaday Prize party we’re holding in Munich
during Electronica 2014. We’re also holding an Embedded Hardware Workshop with Moog synths, robots, hacked routers, computer vision, and a name that’s official-sounding enough to convince your boss to give you the day off work. We hope to see you there! | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2050703",
"author": "Spellchecker",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T20:08:46",
"content": "Wired. Not wire.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2050721",
"author": "Some Guy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T20:15:48",
"content": "The... | 1,760,376,021.237212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/simple-pov-bike-effects-with-ws2811-strips/ | Simple POV Bike Effects With WS2811 Strips | Ethan Zonca | [
"LED Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle pov",
"bike hack",
"led",
"POV",
"ws2811"
] | [Andrew] wrote in with
a new take on the classic persistence of vision bike spoke hack
. While many of these POV setups use
custom PCBs
and discrete LEDs, [Andrew]’s design uses readily available off-the-shelf components: WS2811 LED strips, an Arduino, an Invensense IMU breakout board, and some small LiPo batteries.
[Andrew] also implemented a clever method of controlling his lights. His code detects when the rider taps the brakes in certain patterns, which allows changing between different light patterns. He does note that this method isn’t incredibly reliable due to some issues with his IMU, so now he senses when the rider taps on the handlebars as well.
If you want to build your own bike POV setup, you’re in luck. [Andrew] wrote up detailed instructions that outline the entire build process. He also provides links to sources for each part to make building your own setup even easier. His design is pretty affordable too, coming in at just under $50 per wheel. Check out a video of [Andrew]’s setup in action after the break. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2050292",
"author": "Michał",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T17:37:49",
"content": "I’m working on similar project (no IMU, using hall effect sensors, and I aim to display static images loaded from SD card), there is a problem with Ws2811/2812 – their refresh rate is 400Hz, so with high R... | 1,760,376,021.485337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/29/water-softener-level-detector-keeps-you-out-of-trouble-with-wife/ | Water Softener Level Detector Keeps You Out Of Trouble With Wife | Rich Bremer | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"hot water",
"hot water heater",
"level monitoring",
"system monitor"
] | Some households have water supplies that contain higher than desired levels of minerals. This condition is called
hard water
. There is nothing harmful about hard water but it does leave mineral deposits on pipes and appliances and makes cleaning a little bit more difficult. The solution is to have a water softener system which is basically a tank filled with salt that the household water passes through. This tank has to be refilled about every month and [David] was catching a little flak from his wife because he kept forgetting to fill it. He then set out to do what any great husband would do and built a
Water Softener Monitor
that reports the quantity of salt in the basement tank up to the living quarters.
[David] started thinking that he should test the salinity of the water to determine if salt needed to be added but after thinking about it for a while decided against it because any metal in that salty water would surely corrode. A non-contact approach would be to use an IR distance sensor mounted to the top of the tank and measure the distance to the pile of salt that slowly lowers as it dissolves into the water. In this case, he used a Sharp GP2D12 that can measure accurately from 10 to 80cm.
By itself, the distance sensor wouldn’t do much so [David] made his own PCB Board to hold all the necessary circuit components. The brains behind the operation is an Atmel ATtiny861 20 pin microcontroller. He’s got a lot going on and needed a micro controller with enough pins for all his bells and whistles. Besides sensing the height of the salt pile, the micro controller also outputs the salt quantity level via a 10 LED bar graph which is mounted in a wall plate. At first glance the wall plate looks like a standard light switch cover but it was actually custom cut on a CNC Milling Machine specifically for this project to ensure a perfect fit. Right below the LED bar graph is a photocell. The microcontroller only lights up the LEDs when there is a change in ambient light in the room, whether from a light turning on or a passerby casting a temporary shadow over the sensor. The LEDs will turn off after 3 minutes of non-activity. | 81 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "2056896",
"author": "Dudecallednick",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T08:42:08",
"content": "Tbh, getting a little tired of the husband gets “flak” from wife routine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2057043",
"author": "Miche... | 1,760,376,021.350481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/a-proof-of-concept-flash-cart-for-the-wonderswan/ | A Proof Of Concept Flash Cart For The WonderSwan | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"cpld",
"fpga",
"memory mapper",
"Wonder Swan",
"WonderSwan"
] | Unless you’ve been to Japan or are fairly deep into the retro game collecting, you’ve probably never heard of the WonderSwan. It’s a handheld console, released after the Game Boy Color was beginning to show its age, and a bit before the introduction of the Game Boy Advance. It sold rather well in the only country it was released in, the game library is somewhat impressive, and there are quite a few homebrew games. Actually running these homebrew games is a challenge, though: each WonderSwan has a memory controller that maps the game ROM into the CPU’s memory. Without knowing how this controller chip works, the only way to run a homebrew cartridge is to turn on the machine with a real cart, go to the system menu, and swap the carts out.
It turns out there’s a better solution
, that includes programming CPLDs and looking at the output of a logic analyzer.
The first step towards [Godzil]’s efforts to create a Flash cart for the WonderSwan is to figure out the pinout of the cartridge connector – something that isn’t well documented for a system without a homebrew hardware scene. This was done in the usual way;
with a lot of ribbon cable and patience
This only provided an incomplete picture of how the WonderSwan interfaced with its carts, but after digging up
an official development board
, [Godzil] was able to make sense of all the signals.
After building a breakout board for the cartridge port, [Godzil] connected a DE0 Nano FPGA board and looked at all the signals. With just a little bit of VHDL, the memory controller could be reverse engineered and reimplemented. [Godzil] has his proof of concept working – video below – and the next part of his project will be to turn this into a proper Flash cart. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2056236",
"author": "GuyDude",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T05:10:08",
"content": "the div id=”widget-timer_widget-3-content” is not wide enough to contain div class=”countdowntimer-minutes”, at least on “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0”",
... | 1,760,376,023.218366 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/this-home-made-6-axis-robotic-arm-is-quite-the-looker/ | This Home-Made 6-Axis Robotic Arm Is Quite The Looker | Sarah Petkus | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed gripper",
"6-axis arm",
"aluminum arm",
"arm",
"c++",
"cnc milled arm",
"robotic arm"
] | With a background in software engineering, [Kris Temmerman] decided to make a physical demonstration of his knowledge in the form of a
six axis robotic arm
… the final product is a delicious display of mechanical eye candy.
Built from mostly aluminum stock, [Kris] machined the bulk of his parts with a CNC mill which he picked up for cheap from China. These custom pieces coupled with some hefty stepper motors ensure the arm’s accuracy as it twists freely and slides along the gantry it’s mounted to. Though the majority of the arm is metal, the hand at the end of his robot was built with 3D printed parts and can be switched out with the future attachments [Kris] plans to design. This classic gripper piece is driven separately with its own Arduino brain controlling the individual servos in the fingers.
Each finger includes some load bearing sensors which [Kris] harvested from an old scale so that the gripper can tell whether or not it has a hold of an object without crushing it. To orchestrate the robot’s movement, he wrote some nice looking software in C++ which visualizes the inverse kinematics at work in each point of articulation. For the sake of demonstrating his creation in action, he whipped up a basic demo that can locate and move colored blocks laid at random on a surface. A small camera mounted on the hand determines the orientation of the blocks relative to the machine so that the wrist can rotate itself in the proper alignment in order to pick them up.
[Kris] documented the build of his robot in a fascinating speed video which includes footage of the finished arm in action at the end: | 41 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2055715",
"author": "AMS",
"timestamp": "2014-10-29T02:15:40",
"content": "Every day I am less afraid of our coming robot overlords as it seems that nobody designs robots with position feedback anymore.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,023.397383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/make-flexible-pcbs-with-your-3d-printer/ | Make Flexible PCBs With Your 3D Printer | Adam Fabio | [
"News"
] | [
"3d printer",
"etching",
"ferric chloride",
"flex PCB",
"flexible PCB",
"makerbot",
"Ninjaflex",
"pcb"
] | The last few years have seen great strides in budget printed circuit board manufacturing. These days you can have boards made in a week for only a few dollars a square inch. Flexible PCBs still tend to be rather expensive though. [Mikey77] is changing that by
making flex circuits at home with his 3D printer
. [Mikey77] utilized one of the properties of Ninjaflex Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) filament – it sticks to bare copper!
The TPE filament acts as an etch resist, similar to methods using laser printer toner. For a substrate, [Mikey77] lists 3 options:
.004″ thick “Scissor cut” copper clad
board from Electronics Goldmine
.
002″ thick pure copper polyester taffeta fabric
from lessEMF.com
<.001″ Pyralux material
from Adafruit, which is one of the materials used to make professional flex PCBs.
A bit of spray adhesive will hold the Flex PCB down on the printer’s bed. The only issue is convincing the printer to print a few thousandths of an inch higher than the actual bed level. Rather than change the home position on his Z axis, [Mikey77] used
AutoDesk 123D
to create 3D PCB designs. Each of his .stl files has a “spacer bar”, which sits at the bed level. The actual tracks to be printed are in the air a few thousandths of an inch above the bed – exactly the thickness of the substrate material. The printer prints the spacer bar on the bed, then raises its Z height and prints on the flexible PCB material. We’re sure that forcing the printer to print in mid-air like this would cause some printer software to throw errors, but the system worked for [Mikey77] and his Makerbot.
Once the designs have been printed, the boards are etched with standard etching solutions such as ferric chloride. Be careful though – these thin substrates can etch much faster than regular PCB. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2055147",
"author": "NotArduino",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T23:23:22",
"content": "It’s no longer flexible when you solder parts to it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2056335",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"times... | 1,760,376,023.458533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/retrotechtacular-fire-control-computers-in-navy-ships/ | Retrotechtacular: Fire Control Computers In Navy Ships | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"algebraic computation",
"cam",
"component solver",
"differential",
"fire control",
"fire control computer",
"gear",
"integrator",
"line of sight",
"linear motion",
"mechanical computer",
"navy",
"rack and pinion",
"rotary motion",
"shaft",
"ship",
"spider gear",
"superelevation",
... | Here is a
two-part Navy training film
from 1953 that describes the inner workings of mechanical fire control computers. It covers seven mechanisms: shafts, gears, cams, differentials, component solvers, integrators, and multipliers, and does so in the well-executed fashion typical of the era.
Fire control systems depend on many factors that occur simultaneously, not the least of which are own ship’s speed and course, distance to a target, bearing, the target’s speed and course if not stationary, initial shell velocity, and wind speed and direction.
The mechanisms are introduced with a rack and pinion demonstration in two dimensions. Principally speaking, a shaft carries a value based on revolutions. From this, a system can be geared at different ratios.
Cams take this idea further, transferring a regular motion such as rotation to an irregular motion. They do so using a working surface as input and a follower as output. We are shown how cams change rotary motion to linear motion. While the simplest example is limited to a single revolution, additional revolutions can be obtained by extending the working surface. This is usually done with a ball in a groove.
The film moves on to describe these mechanisms in the context of fire control systems. It does an excellent job of explaining how several different cams take the rotary input of a ship’s speed and deliver it as linear motion to the follower for output to other systems. Most are aptly named based on the type of output delivered; a reciprocal cam’s output is computed as the reciprocal of the input, and a square cam’s output is the square of the input.
A tangent cam’s input is an angle between 40 and 70, and the output is the tangent of that angle. A time of flight cam takes the range as input and gives the time of flight for projectiles. Perhaps the most complicated, the barrel cam takes the advance range and advance elevation of the target and uses them to compute the superelevation of a projectile. It effectively contains an infinite number of cams that each compute a different superelevation. Differentials are explained quite well through a visual breakdown of the bevel gear variety. In these, the end gear pair provides endless racks to the spider gear’s pinion.
Part two opens with component solvers, which solve vector problems for firing upon stationary targets. These provide continuous solutions by forming vector diagrams based on own ship’s speed and bearing to the target at any given point. The solver calculates the speed vector relative to line of sight with a groove cam, and uses two slotted racks to compute the range rate along the line of sight and the bearing rate perpendicular to the line of sight.
Disc-type integrators are used for range keeping where the present range equals the algebraic sum of the initial range and the range change. The disc integrator continuously computes the range change and outputs it to a differential, which along with the initial range computes the present range. It does this using a time disc and the range rate output sent from the component solver. The mechanism operates like a variable gear with infinite ratios.
Finally, multipliers are used to multiply two continuously changing values, either or both of which may be positive or negative. This device is quite mesmerizing, if we may say so. The rack type described consists of two input racks at right angles to each other, an output rack, and a stationary pin that helps determine the zero point. Both input racks move along the scale and provide the product of the two inputs on the output rack.
Even though these systems were heavy, had a large footprint, and required a lot of power, there is much to be said for their elegance and reliability.
[Thank you to Barron 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
. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2054394",
"author": "Milo",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T18:43:42",
"content": "wtf, i saw this already",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2054453",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T18:44:05",
... | 1,760,376,023.627988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/new-to-the-store-bulbdial-clock-and-free-shipping-option/ | New To The Store: Bulbdial Clock And Free Shipping Option | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured"
] | [
"bulbdial",
"emsl",
"hackaday store",
"shipping",
"store"
] | New to the Hackaday Store today is
the Bulbdial Clock
by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. I’ve had my eye on this kit for years and finally pulled the trigger after visiting [Lenore] and [Windell] at their shop a few weeks back. Assembling the beautifully-engineered kit was a delight, and I have a handful of hacks I’d like to try out — some of which I mentioned in the product description.
Free shipping based on order price
We always listen to what the Hackaday community has to say. After receiving several requests for better international shipping prices we came up with a way to ease the pain for orders no matter where they are headed. All domestic orders totaling $25 or more now receive free shipping. All international orders totaling $50 or more now receive free shipping.
Is there anything else you’d like to see different about the store? How about a hackable product you think we should stock? We’re listening via
the store contact form
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2054230",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T17:49:58",
"content": "Depending on where your are, that $50 might be over your import limit and might cost you import duty + handling charges and causes delay. You win some, then you lose some.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,023.793545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/adventures-in-hackerspacing-ga-techs-invention-studio/ | Adventures In Hackerspacing: GA Tech’s Invention Studio | Marsh | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"adventures in hackerspacing",
"ga tech",
"georgia tech",
"hackerspace",
"invention studio",
"makerspace"
] | We feature hacker/makerspaces of all kinds here at Hackaday, and these days, encountering a hackerspace at a college or university isn’t uncommon. School-backed spaces are often mildly impressive, too, with plenty of room and better-than-most equipment.
Georgia Tech’s Invention Studio
, however, is different. This space is nothing short of staggering.
Once you’ve walked past the wall of commercial-grade 3D printers lining the entryway, you’ll find yourself in the Electro-lounge, a general meeting and hangout room with some basic tools. Each room beyond has a specific purpose, and is packed full of equipment. We aren’t just going on a tour, though, because this is Adventures in Hackerspacing. Click through the break for a behind-the-scenes look at how this hackerspace provides a top-rate experience for its makers and how Invention Studio thrives with an entirely student-run leadership.
This wasn’t my first trip to Invention Studio, but it was the first where I had time to sit and chat at length with some of the students and with my friend [
Chad Ramey
]: Computer Science major,
fusion reactor operator
, Invention Studio president, and all-around nice guy.
On the table in the Electro-lounge is a 3D printer model that I don’t recognize. [Chad] explains that manufacturers will sometimes send Invention Studio their prototypes because the students at Tech will drive them until the steppers fall off. There are few places that can provide that kind of continuous use and supply meaningful, technical feedback: the space accommodates hundreds of students during the school year and 3D printers are perhaps the most popular piece of equipment.
3D printing room. Most working, a couple not…
I follow [Chad] further into the depths of Invention Studio and into a room dedicated to consumer 3D printers, where printing ABS or PLA is free of cost to the student. [Chad] affectionately refers to this room as the Wild West of the Invention Studio, where students with good intentions but a lack of experience often break things. That’s okay, though. Tech has enough printers that anything short of a natural disaster wouldn’t inhibit their production capabilities, and allowing the students to fail helps foster a community of hackers who work to resurrect the devices together, leaving everyone with a better understanding of the printers.
The Invention Studio ULI’s armband.
Although Invention Studio has some faculty oversight (grant writing and fundraising, ensuring safety standards) the space is otherwise entirely student-run. The system centers around ULI’s, University Lab Instructors, who volunteer their time to supervise the various sections of the space. Anyone associated with the university has access to Invention Studio during regular hours, and at least 3 ULI’s are on duty during this time. Each wears an identifying armband.
Prospective ULI’s must first attend an introductory meeting to learn basic procedures and rules. after which they complete a competency check via an online document. ULI’s must volunteer a minimum of 3 hours per week. In return, however, they receive the keys to the kingdom and can use the facilities any time. Not literal keys, though; this is Georgia Tech. Access control is through NFC used by the Student IDs, but it’s a proprietary NFC standard rather than the typical RFID, which limits how the students can use the devices. For now, access to any given room happens through faculty request.
Some ULI’s naturally gravitate toward a particular interest and become “masters” of those areas—or, in the case of 3D printing, “masochists.” For these students, making is a consuming part of their lives, and they spend a lot of time around the shop, helping maintain their given area and provide some more advanced guidance.
Each tool has an acrylic silhouette for easy replacing.
[Chad] leads me out of the 3D printer room and through the rest of the Studio. We pass through the wood shop, which has a large CNC router and a slew of tools carefully organized along the wall—very cleverly, I should say. Each tool has its own piece of acrylic cut into the form of the tool’s silhouette and mounted on the wall behind it, to simplify the re-shelving process. Back near the entrance we encounter rows of sticker-laden lockers: personal storage is yet another ULI perk.
Who doesn’t want a waterjet?
A massive waterjet shares a room with a couple of laser cutters and a small kiln. Students don’t enjoy the same Wild-West-Freedom to tinker with these larger, more expensive devices as they would the consumer-grade 3D printers, and any malfunctions—although industrial equipment is less likely to break down than the RepRaps—are handled through the manufacturer. That doesn’t mean students are discouraged from using the equipment. Countless components are carved out of all types of material for everything from business cards to electric vehicles.
CNC lathes and more.
[Chad] has to turn the lights on in the last room he shows me. Inside is a fabricator’s dream space, packed wall-to-wall with CNC mills and CNC lathes. The room is unoccupied, however, and although Invention Studio isn’t busy at the moment, these machines don’t see as much use as I expected. 3D printing, as [Chad] explains, has stolen much of the attention away from other manufacturing techniques, but the occasional ambitious student will resist the urge to melt plastic and fire up one of these impressive machines instead.
Charles Padgham, one of many Invention Studioers, poses with
some of his work.
If you’re looking for a hacker/maker-friendly college, Georgia Tech is hard to beat. Even during the slower hours of my visit I encountered at least five students actively tinkering away at a variety of projects. As a space, Invention Studio is one of the best I’ve seen: self-sustaining, student-run, welcoming and bustling with people who just love to make. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2053689",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T14:08:50",
"content": "Oooo an entry level Omax waterjet. Nice. Not something you often see at makerspaces.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2053733",
"author": "0n37w0... | 1,760,376,023.685356 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/ask-hackaday-sequences-of-sequences/ | Ask Hackaday: Sequences Of Sequences | Will Sweatman | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"invariant representation",
"PalmPilot"
] | In a
previous article
, we talked about the idea of the invariant representation and theorized different ways of implementing such an idea in silicon. The hypothetical example of identifying a song without knowledge of pitch or form was used to help create a foundation to support the end goal – to identify real world objects and events without the need of predefined templates. Such a task is possible if one can separate the parts of real world data that changes from that which does not. By only looking at the parts of the data that doesn’t change, or are invariant, one can identify real world events with superior accuracy compared to a template based system.
Consider a friend’s face. Imagine they were sitting in front of you, and their face took up most of your visual space. Your brain identifies the face as your friend without trouble. Now imagine you were in a crowded nightclub, and you were looking for the same friend. You catch a glimpse of her from several yards away, and your brain ID’s the face without trouble. Almost as easily as it did when she was sitting in front of you.
I want you to think about the raw data coming off the eye and going into the brain during both scenarios. The two sets of data would be completely different. Yet your brain is able to find a commonality between the two events. How? It can do this because the data that makes up the memory of your friend’s face is stored in an invariant form. There is no template of your friend’s face in your brain. It only stores the parts that do not change – such as the distance between the eyes, the distance between the eye and the nose, or the ear and the mouth. The shape her hairline makes on her forehead. These types of data points do not change with distance, lighting conditions or other ‘noise’.
One can argue over the specifics of how the brain does this. True or not true, the idea of the invariant representation is a powerful one, and implementing such an idea in silicon is a worthy goal. Read on as we continue to explore this idea in ever deeper detail.
if someone can figure this out, it would be a monumental step forward in computer technology
If we could stick a sensor in different areas of you brain during both scenarios, we would find an interesting pattern. The part of the cortex that is connected directly to the eye is called V1. As one would expect, the neuron firing in this area is changing rapidly and in completely different patterns between seeing your friend’s face up close and seeing it in the night club.
But a peculiar thing happens if we put the probe in the area of the visual cortex known as IT. The patterns are stable, slow changing and very similar to each other. Your brain has somehow identified the invariant representation of your friend’s face in the IT area, from the raw, fast changing data coming from the V1 area.
It does this through a hierarchy. Information flows up the hierarchy, and back down, as we will learn in the next article.
The Hierarchy
It has been long known that the visual cortex is laid out in a hierarchy. The neurons in V1 fire when certain line segments appear in the visual field. One set of neurons might fire if it sees a horizontal line, while another set will fire when it sees a line at, say, 45 degrees. V2 cells will fire when it sees shapes like circles, boxes and star shapes. It’s not until you get to IT, that you will see cells firing for things like a car, tree or face.
These are fast changing, low level patterns transitioning into slow changing, high level patterns. The cortex forms sequences of sequences, or invariant representations of other invariant representations as information climbs the cortical hierarchy.
This is our goal – to identify a tree, car or any real world object by forming an invariant representation of it, and doing so in a hierarchical form. This is not easy, and has never been successfully demonstrated before. If someone can figure this out, it would be a monumental step forward in computer technology.
Modeling [Hawkin’s] Theory in Silicon
Each level of the hierarchy only has three jobs – to identify repeating patterns, assign these patterns a name, and pass that name onto the next level in the hierarchy.
The primary tier (like V1) sees the pattern 10100101 repeating often. So it gives it a name of 56a and passes only that name to the next level. The next level sees the pattern of 34a, 56a and 12a repeating often. So it gives this pattern the name of 866b and passes only that name to the next level up. That level sees the pattern 845b, 567b, 866b and 435b repeating often. So it gives it a name 7656d and passes it up. This process continues until a steady invariant representation is formed of the real world object.
Let’s work through an example of identifying a simple shape, such as a square. Imagine that whenever a horizontal line is in the field of view of our camera, the pattern 11011101 appears on our ADC. We see this pattern a lot over a period of time, as the square stays in the field of view. So we assign it the name 6A, and pass it up to Tier Three of the hierarchy. The same process takes place for the other three lines of the square.
It is critical to understand that the ONLY thing Tier Three sees are the names passed up from Tier 4. Now, Tier Three does mostly the same thing Tier 4 did – find repeating patterns, give them a name, and pass that name up to Tier 2. It notices that names’ 27B and 76B occur together often, so it assigns the pattern a name of 322C and passes it up to Tier Two. This process gets repeated until the invariant representation of the square is created.
Let this sink in, and in the next article we will explore the roll of feedback in the hierarchy, and how it can be
theoretically
combined with prediction to create an artificial intelligence.
None of this is possible however, without getting the theory onto hardware and into code. Now the onus is on you. How would you
program an Arduino to
implement this theory in hardware and software? | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2049758",
"author": "lageos",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T14:22:11",
"content": "Very interesting series, keep rolling!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2049777",
"author": "NotArduino",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T14:28:28",
... | 1,760,376,023.857345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/the-solution-to-the-10th-anniversary-code/ | The Solution To The 10th Anniversary Code | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"1o57",
"caesar cipher",
"Cipher",
"code",
"crypto",
"crypto challenge"
] | A few weeks ago, [1o57], a.k.a. [Ryan Clarke] gave a talk about puzzles, DEFCON, and turning crypto puzzles into an art form
at our 10th anniversary party
. Ever the trickster, [1o57] included a crypto challenge in his talk, and a few days after our little shindig, nobody had yet solved the puzzle. Finally,
someone bothered to sit down and figure it out
. We don’t know what [tahnok] won, but as [1o57] said, solving it is its own reward.
Some of the slides in the presentation had a few characters sitting off to the side for no apparent reason. [tahnok] put these together and came up with:
DOXIYLDCYVDKIKNKUMKRYDNBYGONYMNXOC
In cases like this, you might try a
Caesar cipher
, or just shifting characters to the left or right a certain number of places. Since [1o57] noted this was the
tenth
anniversary of Hackaday, [tahnok] tried that first:
TENYOBTSOLTAYADAKCAHOTDROWEDOCDNES
It doesn’t look like much, but that’s only because the string is backwards. Tricky, tricky. tricky. With instructions to send a codeword to an email address, [tahnok] now needed to find a code word. There was one picture [1o57] put up on twitter that was still an unsolved part of the puzzle:
With no idea what these little stickmen are, he scoured google with variants of ‘stickmen code’ and ‘semaphore’ until he hit upon the
Sherlock Holmes
story,
The Adventure of the Dancing Men.
It’s a simple substitution cypher, translated to, “codeword psychobilly ciphers”
And that’s the entire puzzle. As far as we know, this took about a month to solve, and compared to the DEFCON challenges, was fairly simple. [1o57] will probably chime in down in the comments to tell everyone how many people have picked up on the clues and sent an email. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2049400",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T11:57:14",
"content": "Dear me, if you didn’t immediately recognise the “stick men” code then you are indeed not well read…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2049808",
... | 1,760,376,023.323435 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/27/the-proto-buildbar-is-exactly-what-it-sounds-like-and-it-sounds-awesome/ | The Proto BuildBar Is Exactly What It Sounds Like, And It Sounds Awesome | James Hobson | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"Makerspace Pub",
"Proto Buildbar",
"world's largest claw"
] | People of Dayton, Ohio have a new reason to get excited with the opening of what is perhaps the
world’s first Bar/Makerspace.
Called the Proto BuildBar, it’s kind of a cross between a 3D printing lab, a makerspace, and a cafe. Hang out, drink, eat, 3D print — sounds like most hacker spaces we’ve been to, but this might just be the first one with a cafe being it’s main business model!
It’s even home to the World’s Largest Claw game, or so they claim.
It has just opened, with a recent press event on Thursday, which was
covered by a local news blog.
While Dayton has long since been called a technology hub (what with Boeing and other high tech companies in the area), opening the Proto Buildbar is hoped to bring new life to the surrounding area!
For more information on Proto BuildBar (including hours of operation), you can
check it out on Facebook.
[Thanks Load.Nikon!] | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2048748",
"author": "n1elkyfan",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T08:20:02",
"content": "This place sounds awesome. Can’t wait to check it out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2048882",
"author": "Legion",
"timestamp": "2014-10... | 1,760,376,023.27039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/self-replicating-skateboard-what/ | Self Replicating Skateboard…. What?!?!? | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"CNC router",
"longboard",
"shapeoko",
"skateboard"
] | [Bart] and company over at Pumping Station One make a lot of skateboard decks. They wanted to build a CNC Router that was not only portable but had a size that was optimized for cutting skateboard decks. The project got a little out of hand and the CNC Router ended up
also being a skateboard
! As crazy as that sounds, the craziest part may be that they built it in just one night.
The project started off with some stock Shapeoko 2 parts. Achieving the deck-cutting size required shortening the X Axis and tripling the length of the Y Axis resulting in a 250 x 1200mm work envelope. The DC spindle used accepts ER16 collets and has a fully variable speed control. The stand alone selectable 24/48 volt power supply has a neat DIY handle to ease transportation. Even though the router itself has skateboard trucks, it also has a handle at the front so it’s easy to grab and drag behind you.
The guys that built this admit that, as a skateboard, it is kind of crappy. They do go on to mention that a 230lb dude was able to ride it without incident. As a project, however, they hit their goals on the head, ending up with an easily-transportable dedicated skateboard-deck-making CNC Router. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2048204",
"author": "twerkoff",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T05:58:08",
"content": "All the best maker stories contain, “and it got a little out of hand, and…”. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2048217",
"author": "HaHa"... | 1,760,376,023.737249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/star-gate-led-clock-has-plenty-of-pizazz/ | Star Gate LED Clock Has Plenty Of Pizazz | James Hobson | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"star gate",
"star gate sg1",
"ws2812"
] | [David Hopkins] has finally finished off his
Star Gate LED clock over on Hackaday.io
and it looks fantastic.
We originally featured his progress with the project in
Hacklet 18 – Tick Tock, it’s Time for Clocks
, and we’re happy to say it’s finally complete. The clock features 60 WS2812 LEDs to simulate the Star Gate’s chevrons — and to tell the time. Under the hood is an RTC, an Arduino Nano, an LDR and even an hourly ‘chime’. Did we mention it also automatically dims at night?
What we’re almost more impressed with is the build quality, which [David] doesn’t actually mention how he did it — regardless, it looks great! Stick around after the break to see a video of it in action, so you can really appreciate the clock’s capabilities.
We still think the
Bacon Alarm Clock
is one of our favorite ways of waking up though. Although if you’re in a hurry diffusing
a bomb clock
might be more effective… | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2047696",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T02:59:30",
"content": "Nice build but really really really needs the toilet flushing animation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2048888",
"author": "Sheldon",
... | 1,760,376,023.89718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/hackaday-links-bsapedwlovktub-ybkab/ | Hackaday Links: BSAPEDWLOVKTUB.YBKAB | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"apple",
"arduino",
"arm",
"enigma",
"flying toasters",
"midi",
"modelling synth",
"oled",
"retro edition",
"test equipment",
"voltage standard"
] | Here’s something that’s just a design study, but
[Ivan]’s Apple IIe phone
is a work of art. You’re not fitting a CRT in there, but
someone
out there has a 3D printer, an old LCD, and a GSM module. Make it happen. See also:
the Frog Design Apple phone
.
A few days ago we posted something on an old ‘286 machine that was able to load up the
Hackaday retro site
. For a few people, this was the first they’ve heard about our CSS and Javascript-less edition designed specifically for old computers. They dragged out some hardware, and [WTH]
pulled up the site on a Dell Axim
.It’s actually somewhat impressive that these machines have SD cards…
[Arduino Enigma]
created a touchscreen Enigma machine
. Why haven’t we seen an Arduino Colossus yet?
The crew at Adafruit now have a
Flying Toaster OLED
, which means we now have flying toaster bitmaps for all your OLED/graphic display projects.
[Ian] had an old rackmount programmable voltage standard. This was the
remote
programmable voltage standard, without front panel controls.
No problem, just get an Arduino, shift register, and a few buttons
. Video
right here
.
A few months ago, [Jan]
released a neat device
that stuffs a modelling synth inside a MIDI plug.
He’s selling them now
, and we’d love to see a few videos of this. | 18 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2047013",
"author": "Derek Peavey",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T23:04:43",
"content": "The CRT from an old Sony Watchman could fit. It’s black and white, though, not black and green.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2047467",
... | 1,760,376,024.399962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/super-smash-bros-gets-a-revamp-with-the-microsoft-kinect/ | Super Smash Bros Gets A Revamp With The Microsoft Kinect | James Hobson | [
"Kinect hacks"
] | [
"Kinect",
"opencv",
"smash bros",
"super smash",
"Super Smash Bros."
] | [Eric] just sent in this awesome Kinect hack that he and a few friends worked on. Playing
Super Smash Bros with a Kinect.
The system makes use of two Kinects, and three PCs. The first Kinect records each individual players moves, while the second Kinect watches both players “fight” each other. The first PC runs an Nintendo 64 emulator to play the game.
The second PC runs a camera with OpenCV to add another cool but perhaps unnecessary feature, you see, even the character selection is a physical process, adding to the idea of playing the entire game with your body. A glass table allows players to set their 3D printed token onto the glass, effectively placing it on the character they would like to use.
And when the match ends, a windshield wiper knocks off the losing player’s token from the table.
The third PC is responsible for running both Kinects, which then has to send the resulting commands back to first PC over a TCP connection for input into the game.
They
introduced it to the public
at MHacks Fall 2014, a hacking competition sponsored by Dell and Intel. Video Below.
We all saw the recent post about playing
Super Mario Bros using a Kinect
, which begs the question, why haven’t more games been converted? Well… aside from the fact they are extremely difficult to play using your body… | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2047784",
"author": "Jacob",
"timestamp": "2014-10-27T03:20:58",
"content": "Just an fyi, that’s Super Smash Brothers for the N64, not Super Mario Bros (Original NES)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2048868",
"author": "Legi... | 1,760,376,024.167267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/the-chronodevfd-wristwatch/ | The ChronodeVFD Wristwatch | Marsh | [
"clock hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"vacuum fluorescent display",
"vfd",
"vfd display",
"watch",
"wristwatch"
] | Not just another steampunk fashion statement, [Johngineer’s]
ChronodeVFD wristwatch
is as intricate as it is beautiful. Sure, we’ve seen our share of VFD builds (and if you want a crash course in vacuum fluorescent displays, check out
Fran’s video
from earlier this year) but we seldom see them as portable timepieces, much less ones this striking.
The ChronodeVFD uses a IVL2-7/5 display tube, which in addition to being small and low-current is also flat rather than rounded, and features a transparent backing. [Johngineer] made a custom board based around an AtMega88 and a
Maxim DS3231 RTC
(real time clock): the latter he admits is a bit expensive, but no one complains about left-overs that simplify your design.
The VFD runs off a Maxim MAX6920 12-bit shift register and is powered by a single alkaline AA battery. A rechargable NiMH would have been preferable, but the lower nominal voltage meant lower efficiency for his boost converters and less current for the VFD. [Johngineer] won’t get much more than 6-10 hours of life, but ultimately the ChronodeVFD is a costume piece not meant for daily wear. Swing by his blog for a number of high-res photos and further details on how he built the brass tubing “roll cage” enclosure as well as the mounts for the leather strap. | 47 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "2046382",
"author": "spacecoyote",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T17:12:01",
"content": "Can’t wait to see the dot matrix smartwatch version…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2046383",
"author": "CyberScann",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,024.347811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/mobile-soldering-workstation-sets-up-quickly-lets-you-get-to-work/ | Mobile Soldering Workstation Sets Up Quickly, Lets You Get To Work | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"soldering",
"soldering station"
] | Who here hasn’t put off soldering up a project because pulling out and setting up all your soldering gear is a pain? A lot of hobbyists don’t have a dedicated workbench for such activities and their gear may even be packed away somewhere inconvenient. [laxap] has come up with a solution using a plastic toolbox as a base for his
Mobile Soldering Workstation
.
[laxap] started with a regular off the shelf toolbox that has a lid and three drawers on the bottom. Although the Weller soldering iron base fit nicely in the bottom drawer, it did necessitate ditching the middle drawer for clearance. The compartmentalized top drawer is unmodified and holds parts and supplies in an orderly fashion.
Lifting up the lid of the box reveals a removable tray, which as intended, is a great spot to store tools such as a multimeter and wire strippers. The area under the removable tray is reserved for a power strip and power cord storage. A hole drilled in the side of the toolbox allows quick access to the power strip’s plug, a quick pull out and plug in is all that is necessary to get this workstation powered up.
That front flip up panel was made specifically for this project. Not only does it help keep the drawers from sliding open during transport, it also holds a lamp to aid in seeing what you’re doing! A bent aluminum strip acts as a latch to keep the panel in position.
It’s a pretty simple idea but it certainly gets the job done and makes soldering a whole bunch more convenient. If you like mobile workbenches, you may want to check out this
all-wooden shelf style
or one that features
integrated solderless breadboards
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2046026",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T14:18:05",
"content": "Nice!I always enjoy seeing how people modify stuff up to fit their work space or style.Very cool!Maybe another cutout right there where the soldering iron will most assuredly contact and melt the fro... | 1,760,376,024.270408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/simple-led-project-to-spice-up-your-halloween-party/ | Simple LED Project To Spice Up Your Halloween Party | Rick Osgood | [
"LED Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"colors",
"halloween",
"internet enabled",
"jack o lantern",
"led",
"lights",
"pumpkin",
"python",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi",
"rgb",
"web"
] | [Paul’s] project is a great example of how you can take a simple project and turn it into something more interesting. He built himself a
jack-o-lantern
with an Internet controlled RGB LED embedded inside.
[Paul] first wired up an RGB LED to a Raspberry Pi. He was sure to wire up each color using a 100ohm resistor to prevent the LED from burning out. The web interface was written in Python. The interface is pretty simple. It consists of three text fields. The user enters a value between 0 and 255 for each of the three LED colors. The program then lights up the LED accordingly.
[Paul] realized he would need a diffuser for the LED in order to really see the blended colors properly. Instead of using a common solution like a ping-pong ball, he opted to get festive and use a plastic jack-o-lantern. [Paul] removed the original incandescent bulb from the lantern and mounted the LED inside instead. The inside of the pumpkin is painted white, so it easily diffuses the light. The result is a jack-o-lantern that glows different colors as defined by his party guests. Be sure to check out the demonstration video below. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2045844",
"author": "Just Harry",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T12:28:27",
"content": "Raspberry is overkill I think. I would try attiny85 + batteries + bluetooth module to make it portable and simpler.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,024.210385 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/26/walkman-esque-human-interface-device/ | Walkman-esque Human Interface Device | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"atmega8",
"hid",
"human interface device",
"keyboard",
"multimedia",
"usb"
] | Cheap keyboards never come with extra buttons, and for [Pengu MC] this was simply unacceptable. Rather than go out and buy a nice keyboard, a microcontroller was found in the parts drawer and put to work building this
USB multimedia button human interface device
that has the added bonus of looking like an old-school Walkman.
The functions that [Pengu MC] wants don’t require their own drivers. All of the buttons on this device are part of the USB standard for keyboards: reverse, forward, play/pause, and volume. This simplifies the software side quite a bit, but [Pengu MC] still wrote his own HID descriptors, tied all of the buttons to the microcontroller, and put it in a custom-printed enclosure.
If you’re looking to build your own similar device, the
Arduino Leonardo, Micro, or Due
have this functionality built in, since the USB controller is integrated on the chip with everything else. Some of the older Arduinos can be programmed to do
the same thing
as well! And, with any of these projects, you can emulate any keypress that is available, not just the multimedia buttons. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2045310",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T08:17:59",
"content": "I’ve browsed through the arduino library documentation and can’t find any reference to how you send the media keys using their libraries. Can someone help me with a link to where they talk about that?",
... | 1,760,376,024.451054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/meet-j-deite-quarter-the-4-foot-tall-transformer/ | Meet J-Deite Quarter, The 4-Foot-Tall Transformer | Theodora Fabio | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bipedal robot",
"car",
"robot",
"transformers",
"walking robot"
] | There’s just something about the idea of robots turning into everyday objects that fascinates us all. It seems Japan outdoes the world in that category, and the J-Deite project is no exception.
J-Deite Quarter
is the first transforming robot to come from the collaborative project between [Kenji Ishida] of Brave Robotics, [Watur Yoshizaki] of Asratec Corp., and Tomy Co. Ltd. If
Brave Robotics sounds familiar
, that’s because this isn’t the first transforming robot [Kenji Ishida] has produced, nor the first
featured on Hackaday
.
The J-Deite Quarter weighs 77lbs (35kg) and can run for an hour on a single battery charge. It’s joints are powered by Futaba servos. It is controlled by the proprietary V-SIDO OS designed by [Watur Yoshizaki]. As a robot, it stands at 4.25 feet (1.3m). It walks at a rather slow speed of 0.6mph (1km/hr). It has several points of articulation; it can bend its arms and flex its fingers. In less than 30 seconds, the robot transforms into an equally long two-seat sports car with a maximum speed of just over 6mph (10km/hr). Overall, the J-Deite Quarter is no speed demon, but it is noteworthy for being functional in both forms.
The web site has a cute backstory featuring a green meteorite that allows the “real” J-Deiter to communicate with the developers trying to create a robot in its image. Along with the video, it resembles a marketing ploy for a toy, which could explain Tomy’s involvement. After all, Tomy, along with Hasbro, developed the original Transformers toy line. Unfortunately, the J-Deiter Quarter is just a prototype, with no plans for mass production at this time. Instead, the project’s focus is on making a bigger and better J-Deiter. There are plans for a J-Deiter Half (8-foot-tall) to be developed by 2016, with the final goal of creating a 16-foot-tall transforming robot by 2020.
Enjoy the video that shows what J-Deite Quarter is capable of (with added sound effects, of course) after the break. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden hankering to watch some Transformers and Voltron cartoons.
[via
SimpleBotics
] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2045405",
"author": "Niek",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T09:03:57",
"content": "Oh, /that/ kind of transformer",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2053266",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-10-28T11:08:41",
... | 1,760,376,024.551564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/mehdis-shocking-stun-gun-tutorial/ | [Mehdi’s] Shocking Stun Gun Tutorial | Theodora Fabio | [
"classic hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"ignition",
"LC circuit",
"relay",
"spark gap",
"stun gun"
] | [Mehdi Sadaghdar] never lets little things like fire, shocks, or singed fingers get in the way of his projects. His latest is a tutorial on
making a simple electroshock device
. A stun weapon creates a very high voltage, and is used in law enforcement to temporarily disable a person. [Mehdi] stresses repeatedly to not use this on anyone. If you do, he won’t like you anymore. Of course, if you’ve seen any of
his previous videos
, you know he’ll
shock himself
and set something on fire before the project is complete.
To create his stunner, [Mehdi] used a car ignition to produce a high voltage. The igniton coil, which is a specialized transformer, allowed him to generate the >10000V output needed for the stunner. The coil has a 60:1 ratio and is powered by a 12V DC supply. Since a coil is a short at DC, the system only creates a high voltage pulse when power is disconnected. However, the pulse was too short to create a satisfying arc. [Mehdi] added a capacitor, creating an
LC circuit
that oscillates as the charge decays, creating a nicer spark. He then used an RC circuit and a relay to create a simple oscillating switch. For the finishing touch, he created a spark gap on the secondary of the transformer with two nails. In typical [Mehdi] fashion, he nearly fried his digital caliper in the process.
The end result is a nice spark that warms the cockles of [Mehdi’s] fibrillating heart. We commend him for being such a brave masochist in the name of science. Check out his tutorial after the break! | 25 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "2044529",
"author": "lel",
"timestamp": "2014-10-26T02:17:15",
"content": "This reminds me of that kid in school that would do all sorts of horrible things to get the other kids to laugh at him because he was so desperate for attention. I always felt bad when he would eat something... | 1,760,376,024.509968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/capacitive-garage-door-opener-hides-behind-your-dash/ | Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash | Rick Osgood | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"automobile",
"capacitive touch",
"car",
"dashboard",
"discrete",
"door",
"garage",
"opener"
] | [Pyrow] wanted to upgrade his garage door opener remote. It worked just fine, but changing those tiny batteries out can be an inconvenience. Plus, the remote control was taking up valuable storage space and would always rattle around while driving. [Pyrow] decided to make use of an Omron E2K-F10MC2 capacitive touch sensor to
fix these issues
.
[Pyrow’s] circuit still makes use of the original remote control. He just added some of his own components to get it to do what he wanted. The circuit is powered by the car’s battery, so it never needs a battery replacement. The circuit is protected with a fuse and the power is regulated to prevent electrical spikes from burning up the original remote control. The actual circuit is pretty simple and uses mostly discrete components. It’s all soldered onto proto board to keep it together. He only had to solder to three places on the original remote control in order to provide power and simulate a button press.
Next, [Pyrow] took his dash apart. He used double-sided tape to attach the touch sensor to the back of the dash. After securing the electronics in place with tape, he now has a working hidden garage door opener. Full schematics are available in the writeup linked above. Also, be sure to watch the demonstration video below. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "2044127",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T23:19:36",
"content": "Batteries in remote controls last how long? Years? How long does it take to change them out? 5 minutes, tops? How long did it take to prototype this up and install it? How many times could they have simp... | 1,760,376,024.673494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/steam-carnival-hacker-preview-day/ | STEAM Carnival Hacker Preview Day | Ben Delarre | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arcade",
"arcade game",
"game",
"twobitcircus"
] | Last week we
wrote about the guys over at TwoBitCircus
and their upcoming STEAM Carnival. This Thursday we managed to make it down to the Hacker Preview day where they showed us all the toys and games that will be exhibited over the weekend.
The preview day went pretty well until the evening, when unexpected power problems occurred and the site lost power for a little while. But this is why you have a preview day right? Organizer [Brent Bushnell] even commented that he should have put a BETA badge on the ticket. Thankfully the outage coincided with the food truck arriving so everyone stopped for a burger.
Sadly all the fire based pieces were not active on the preview day since they didn’t have the appropriate safety measures in place yet, but they did get to show us most of their games. My personal favorites were the Hobby Horse Racing, and the Laser Foosball.
Here’s a quick run down of some of the stand out pieces.
Hobby Horse Racing
This consisted of 5 hobby horses made from old saw horses! Each horse contained an accelerometer on a microcontroller board, connected to a PC over USB. There was a simple push button on the right rear side of each horse so you could spur your mare on to a win!
The use of saw horses really made this for me.
Human Meteors
The name threw me for a minute, but this is actually a giant game of Asteroids projected on the floor using a laser projector.
There’s a Wiimote strapped to the front of the chair which is used for detecting movement and acts as your fire button.
Laser Foosball
This was produced by one of TwoBitCircus’s intrepid interns. The idea is simple and genius at the same time. You rotate the mirrors to redirect laser beams to make it into your opponent’s goal. Some of the mirrors have blocking panels on them enabling you to play defence, but obviously this impacts your offense too.
Giant Hexacade
This six player game involves moving giant trackballs around to control your characters in a number of different video games projected onto the floor. Each controller is a 30″ exercise ball on 3 rollers, with an inverted optical mouse below.
Treadmill Synthesizer
A scrolling felt score lets you add velcro backed dots to play notes in a constantly rolling player piano style synthesizer. OpenCV and a webcam are used to track the position and color of the notes which is then converted into output by the synthesizer.
Punching Bag?
We didn’t catch the official name for this, but we had fun with it anyway. It takes a snapshot of you when you punch the dummy.
This makes for an awful lot of weird and amusing faces.
Laser Burst
In this game you would throw balls at the laser projected bubbles on the display. A Microsoft Kinect would track the balls and then award you points appropriately. Using a Kinect meant you could actually track multiple balls at a time. This went down incredibly well with the kids.
There were a lot more interactives at the event. Some were non-operational for the evening, like the Reubens Tube hooked up to a theremin, the Immolation Dunk Tank and the Laser Maze. Others were working but we just got distracted by other shiny things, like the re-imagining of Musical Chairs, Giant Wacky Wire and the Intel Edison based game of tag!
If you’re in the LA area this weekend (25th-26th October) then I highly recommend you checkout the
STEAM Carnival
. Use the code HACKADAY for a $5 discount! If LA is too far for you then stay tuned to
TwoBitCircus
since they’re hoping to bring this digital circus on a tour of the USA soon.
Pedal powered fine dining.
Giant trackball marble maze
Sculptures from cut up steel bars
Really pretty metalwork
The Hexacade popular as ever
Morph into a celebrity
Twister crossed with whackamole
Airsoft cannon!
An interesting sequencer
Laser Burst
Hobby Horse Racing
Giant Wacky Wire!
This thing was scary
A cross between tempest and whackamole
Intel Edison based Tag controllers
NAO robot from Aldebaran
Close up of your eye anyone?
Treadmill Synthesizer
Strobe frozen water
Collaborative giant PinBall!
Not sure what this was
Musical Chairs
Pendulums! | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2040052",
"author": "Rollyn01",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T00:49:33",
"content": "I’m loving the Laser Foosball idea. Makes me think of how optical computers can possibly work… but more fun. Any chance for a document on how it was built?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,376,024.61234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/dottie-the-flip-dot-clock/ | Dottie The Flip Dot Clock | Elliot Williams | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"art",
"chimes",
"clock",
"flip dot display",
"overkill",
"solderless breadboard"
] | What is it that we like so much about inefficient, noisy clocks made with inappropriate technology? Answer the question for yourself by watching the video (below) that [David Henshaw] sent us of
Dottie, the flip-dot clock.
But besides the piece itself, we really like the progression in the build log, from “how am I going to do this?” to a boxed-up, finished project.
Another stunning aspect of this build is just how nice an acrylic case and a raft of cleverly written software can make a project look. You’d never guess from the front that the back-side was an (incredible) rat’s nest of breadboards and Ethernet wires. Those random switching patterns make you forget all the wiring.
And the servo-steered, solenoid-driven chimes are simply sweet. We’re sure that we’d love to hear them in real life.
We tracked down the
referenced electronics.stackexchange post
with the circuit diagram, and we’re guessing that the diodes actually allow a simplification of the driver circuit. Perhaps our readers will be up for the challenge. Not that we’d be in any hurry to even touch those breadboards… | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2039312",
"author": "florinc",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T20:10:27",
"content": "The few times I saw these flip dot displays on ebay, they were prohibitively expensive (>$400), especially considering they were salvaged from old buses.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,376,024.828293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/hacklet-20-halloween-hacks/ | Hacklet 20 – Halloween Hacks | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Cthulhu",
"hacklet",
"halloween",
"iron man",
"LittleBits"
] | Hey, did you know that
Hackaday.io
is continuously being updated and improved? One of the coolest features this week is the new LaTeX based equation editor. That’s right, you can now put symbols, equations, and all sorts of other LaTeX goodies into your posts. Check out [Brian Benchoff’s]
LaTeX demo project
for more information.
Every holiday is a season for hacks, but Halloween has to be one of the best. From costumes to decorations, there are just tons of opportunities for great projects. We know that with an
entire week
left before the big day, most of you are still working on your projects. However a few early bird hackers already have Halloween themed projects up on
Hackaday.io
. We’re featuring them here – on the Hacklet!
[philmajestic] is in the Halloween spirit with his
AVR Halloween Pumpkin
. [Phil] created a motion activated Jack-o’-lantern with an ATmega328 as its brain. The AVR monitors a PIR motion sensor. When motion is detected, it flashes Jack’s LED eyes and plays spooky sound files from a WTV-020-16sd audio player. This is a great example of how a bit of work can create something cooler and infinitely more flexible than a store-bought decoration. Nice work [Phil]!
The littleBits crew have been working overtime on Halloween hacks this year. We definitely like their
Halloween Creepy Portrait
. A motion trigger, a servo, and a few glue bits are all it take to turn a regular portrait into a creepy one. When the motion detector is triggered, the servo moves a paper behind the portrait’s eyes. The replacement eyes look like some sort of demon or cat. Definitely enough to give us nightmares!
[jeromekelty] helped his friend [Greg] build an incredible
Animatronic Iron Man MKIII suit
. The suit features RFID tags which trigger suit features. Since we’re talking about an Iron Man suit, “features” are things like shoulder rockets, boot thrusters, and a helmet that lifts up to reveal “Tony Stark”. No less than four Arduinos handle the various I/O’s. The suit even features an Adafruit WaveShield for authentic sounds! The electronics are just one piece of the puzzle here. [Greg] is a card-carrying member of the Replica Prop Forum. His MKIII suit is incredibly detailed. We especially like the weathering and battle damage!
Finally, [Griff’s] son is going to be wearing a
Crochet Cthulhu Mask, with Arduino controlled tentacles
for Halloween this year. [Griff] is an experienced crochet hobbiest. He’s mixing his love of needlework with his love of electronics to build the animated Cthulhu mask for his 4-year-old son. The mask is based on a free crochet pattern from ravelry, though [Griff] is making quite a few changes to support his application. The mask will be smaller to fit a 4-year-old, and will contain servos to move the tentacles. We haven’t heard from [Griff] in a while, so if you see him, tell him to post an update on the mask!
If you haven’t started working on your Halloween hacks, get busy! But don’t forget to upload them to
Hackaday.io!
If we get enough, we’ll run a second Hacklet with even more great projects. Until then, you can check out our
Halloween Projects List!
That’s about it for this frightful episode The Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of
Hackaday.io
! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "2039253",
"author": "Ty Tower",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T19:46:29",
"content": "I’m bloody fed up with this HAD self flagellation . Its a pain in the groin . You may have bought the site but wake up . You are driving your customers away in droves.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,376,024.874529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/ftdi-screws-up-backs-down/ | FTDI Screws Up, Backs Down | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"FT232",
"ftdi",
"FTDI232",
"microsoft",
"serial",
"uart",
"usb"
] | A few days ago we learned chip maker FTDI
was doing some rather shady things
with a new driver released on Windows Update. The new driver worked perfectly for real FTDI chips, but for counterfeit chips – and there are a lot of them – the USB PID was set to 0, rendering them inoperable with any computer. Now, a few days later, we know exactly what happened,
and FTDI is backing down
; the driver has been removed from Windows Update, and an updated driver will be released next week. A PC won’t be able to communicate with a counterfeit chip with the new driver, but at least it won’t soft-brick the chip.
Microsoft has since released a statement and rolled back two versions of the FTDI driver to prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. The affected versions of the FTDI driver are 2.11.0 and 2.12.0, released on August 26, 2014. The latest version of the driver that does not have this chip bricking functionality is 2.10.0.0, released on January 27th. If you’re affected by the latest driver, rolling back the driver through the Device Manager to 2.10.0.0 will prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. You might want to find a copy of the 2.10.0 driver; this will likely be the last version of the FTDI driver to work with counterfeit chips.
Thanks to the efforts of [marcan]
over on the EEVblog forums
, we know exactly how the earlier FTDI driver worked to brick counterfeit devices:
[marcan] disassembled the FTDI driver and found the source of the brick and some clever coding. The coding exploits differences found in the silicon of counterfeit chips compared to the legit ones. In the small snippet of code decompiled by [marcan], the FTDI driver does nothing for legit chips, but writes 0 and value to make the EEPROM checksum match to counterfeit chips. It’s an
extremely
clever bit of code, but also clear evidence FTDI is intentionally bricking counterfeit devices.
A new FTDI driver, presumably one that will tell you a chip is fake without bricking it, will be released next week. While not an ideal outcome for everyone, at least the problem of drivers intentionally bricking devices is behind us. | 252 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "2038219",
"author": "asdf_the_3rd",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T14:05:47",
"content": "Out of curiosity, where/in what devices are counterfeit chips found in?I’m assuming that 90% of computer users didn’t notice this or it didn’t affect them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,025.667012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/building-a-magnetic-levitating-quadcopter/ | Building A Magnetic Levitating Quadcopter | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"halbach array",
"hoverboard",
"Magnetic levitation",
"magnetics"
] | Three days ago on October 21, 2014 it was announced to the world the
Back to the Future
hoverboard was real. It’s a Kickstarter, of course, and it’s trending towards a $5 Million dollar payday for the creator. Surprisingly for a project with this much marketing genius, it’s a real, existing device
and there’s even a patent
. From the patent, we’re able to glean a few details of how this hoverboard/magnetic levitation device works, and in
our post on the initial coverage
, we said we’d be giving away some goodies to the first person who can clone this magnetic levitation device and put it up on hackaday.io.
[jellmeister] just won the prize
. It’s somewhat cheating, as he’s had his prototype hoverboard working in July, and demoed a more advanced ‘upside-down quadcopter’ device at the Brighton Mini Maker Faire in September. Good on ‘ya [jelly]. You’re getting a gift card
for the hackaday store
.
Like the Kickstarter hoverboard, [jelly] is using an array of magnets rotating in a frame above a non-ferrous metal. For the initial test, eight neodymium magnets were arranged in a frame, suspended over 3/4″ aluminum plate, and spun up with a drill. With just this simple test, [jelly] was able to achieve 2kg of lift at 1cm and 1kg of lift at 1 inch of separation. This test also provided some valuable insight on what the magnets do to the aluminum or copper; the 3kg aluminum plate was nearly spinning, meaning if this device were to be used on small plates, counter-rotating pairs of magnetic lifters would need to be used.
The test rig then advanced to two pairs of rotors with standard hobby brushless motors, but stability was a problem; the magnetic rotors provided enough lift, but it would quickly fall over. To solve this problem, [jellmeister] took a standard quadcopter configuration, replaced the props with magnetic rotors, and successfully hovered it above a sheet of aluminum at the Brighton Maker Faire.
Since [jellmeister] has actually
built
one of these magnetically levitating hoverboards, he has a lot more data about how they work than an embargoed press release. The magnetic rotor hoverboard
will
work on aluminum as well as copper, but [jell] suspects the Kickstarter hoverboard may be operating right at the edge of its performance, necessitating the more efficient copper half pipe. The thickness of the non-ferrous plate also makes a difference, with better performance found using thicker plates. No, you bojo, hoverboards don’t work on salt water,
even if you have pow-ah.
So there ‘ya go. That’s how you build a freakin’ hoverboard. [jellmeister]’s design is a little crude and using a
Halbach array
for the magnetic rotors should improve efficiency. Using a 3D printed rotor design is a stroke of genius, and we’ll expect a few more quad-magnetic-levitating-things to hit the tip line in short order.
Demos of [jellmeister]’s work below.
Oh. These things need a name. I humbly submit the term ‘Bojo’ to refer to any device that levitates though rotating magnets and eddy currents. | 82 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "2037694",
"author": "ganzuul",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T11:30:51",
"content": "If I remember my physics correctly, it’ll lose lift if it heats up the aluminium. Anyone care to corroborate?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "20377... | 1,760,376,025.347223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/huddlelamp-turns-multiple-tablets-into-single-desktop/ | HuddleLamp Turns Multiple Tablets Into Single Desktop | Elliot Williams | [
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"human computer interaction",
"tablet",
"virtual display"
] | Imagine you’ve got a bunch of people sitting around a table with their various mobile display devices, and you want these devices to act together. Maybe you’d like them to be peepholes into a single larger display, revealing different sections of the display as you move them around the table. Or maybe you want to be able to drag and drop across these devices with finger gestures.
HuddleLamp
lets you do all this.
How does it work? Basically, a 3D camera sits above the tabletop, and watches for your mobile displays and your hands. Through the magic of machine vision, a server sends the right images to each screen in the group. (The “lamp” in HuddleLamp is a table lamp arranged above the space with a 3D camera built into it.)
A really nice touch is that the authors also provide JavaScript objects that you can embed into web apps to enable devices to join the group without downloading special software. A new device will flash an identifying pattern that the computer vision routine will recognize. Once that’s done, the server starts sending the correct parts of the overall display to the new device.
The video, below the break, demonstrates the possible interactions.
If you want to dig deeper into how it all works together, download their paper (in PDF) and give it a read. It goes into detail about some of the design choices needed for screen detection and how the depth data from the 3D camera can be integrated with the normal image stream. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2037326",
"author": "ino",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T09:59:15",
"content": "That’s very nice, also I fail to see a real use to it.Someone ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2037524",
"author": "Lasse Bierstrom",
... | 1,760,376,025.105362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/a-complete-c64-system-emulated-on-an-stm32/ | A Complete C64 System, Emulated On An STM32 | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"emulation",
"stm32",
"STM32F4"
] | The Commodore 64 is the worlds bestselling computer, and we’re pretty sure most programmers and engineers above a certain age owe at least some of their career to this brown/beige keyboard that’s also a computer. These engineers are all grown up now, and it’s about time for a few remakes. [Jeri Ellisworth] owes her success to her version, there are innumerable pieces of the C64 circuit floating around for various microcontrollers, and
now [Mathias] has emulated everything
(except the SID, that’s still black magic) in a single ARM microcontroller.
On the project page, [Mathais]
goes over the capabilities of his board
. It uses the STM32F4, overclocked to 235 MHz. There’s a display controller for a 7″ 800×480 TFT, and 4GB of memory for a library of C64 games. Without the display, the entire project is just a bit bigger than a business card. With the display, it’s effectively a C64 tablet, keyboard not included.
This is a direct emulation of the C64, down to individual opcodes in the 6510 CPU of the original. Everything in the original system is emulated, from the VIC, CIAs and VIAs, serial ports, and even the CPU of the 1541 disk drive. The only thing
not
emulated is the SID chip. That cherished chip sits on a ZIF socket for the amazement of onlookers.
You can check out some images of the build
here
, or the video demo below. | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "2036274",
"author": "ScottishCaptain",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T05:42:52",
"content": "Good on him for leaving the SID alone.Even if you could emulate it (which you can), I don’t know why you’d want to. This is actually a really nice build, therefore, cue the “but that’s too profess... | 1,760,376,025.185945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/using-kinect-to-play-super-mario-bros-3-on-nes-ensures-quick-death/ | Using Kinect To Play Super Mario Bros 3 On NES Ensures Quick Death | Rich Bremer | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"Kinect",
"Kinect v2",
"nes controller",
"NES hack",
"nintendo"
] | Why do only the new game consoles get all the cool peripherals? Being a man of action, [Paul] set out to change that. He had a Kinect V2 and an original Nintendo and thought it would be fun to get the
two to work together
.
Thinking it would be easiest to emulate a standard controller, [Paul] surfed the ‘net a bit until he found an excellent
article
that explained how the NES controller works. It turns out that besides the buttons, there’s only one shift register chip and some pull up resistors in the controller. Instead of soldering leads to a cannibalized NES controller, he decided to stick another shift register and some resistors down on a breadboard with a controller cable connected directly to the chip.
An Arduino is used to emulate the buttons presses. The Arduino is running the Firmata sketch that allows toggling of the Arduino pins from a host computer. That host computer runs an application that [Paul] wrote himself using the Kinect V2 SDK that converts the gestures of the player into controller commands which then tells the Arduino which buttons to ‘push’. This is definitely a pretty interesting and involved project, even if the video does make it look very challenging to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser and the Koopalings!
If you’d like to help the project or just build one for yourself, check out the source files on the
Kinect4NES
GitHub page. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "2043681",
"author": "supershwa",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T20:19:23",
"content": "Jump, Jump, Crouch, Crouch, strafe left, strafe right, strafe left, strafe right, raise left hand, raise right hand, punch",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,376,025.395738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/harrison-krixs-marriott-chariot/ | [Harrison Krix’s] Marriott Chariot | Marsh | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Atlanta Mini Maker Faire",
"electric",
"electric vehicle",
"go-kart",
"gokart",
"harrison krix",
"mini maker faire",
"power racing series",
"Power Wheels",
"power wheels racing"
] | Atlanta’s Mini Maker Faire had plenty of booths to keep visitors busy, but the largest spectacle by far was the racetrack smack-dab in the middle, and you’d be hard pressed to find a more eye-catching contender than [Harrison Krix’s] vehicle:
the Marriott Chariot.
If [Krix’s] name looks familiar, that’s because he’s the master artisan behind
Volpin Props
, and is responsible for such favorites as the
Futurama
Holophonor
replica and the
Daft Punk helmet
. (Actually, he
made the other one
, too).
The Chariot is yet another competitor in the
Power Racing Series
, an event that
keeps
popping up
here on Hackaday. [Krix] drew inspiration from
this Jeep build
we featured earlier in the summer, and went to work sourcing an old plastic body to get started. The frame is 16 gauge square tubing, with a custom motor mount machined from 3/16 steel. After welding the chassis together, [Krix] chopped up a small bicycle to snag its head tube and headset bearings. A pair of sealed lead acid batteries fit horizontally in the frame, providing a slightly lower center of gravity.
[Krix] has a keen eye for precision and his build journal shows each step of his meticulous process. But, you ask, why “Marriott Chariot?” and why does the car look like someone threw up a kaleidoscope? Read on beyond the break, dear reader, to learn the Chariot’s origin and to see a video of it winding around the track.
Unless you’re a Dragon*Con attendee or an Atlanta native, you’re probably scratching your head at the color choices for the car and for [Krix’s] ludicrous jacket. They’re the hilarious continuation of [Krix’s] costumes from a previous Dragon*Con, which pays tribute to the Atlanta Marriott Marquis’s iconic carpet.
Team [Krix]—which includes [Harrison] and his wife, [Emily], piloted the
Chariot throughout the weekend. Although tires were blown and transponders were lost, the [Krixes] claimed a number of medals at the Atlanta Mini Maker Faire’s exhibition, winning second place in the first race and first place in both the second race and in the endurance competition. Now, enjoy this brief video of the Chariot’s trial run in its full hotel-camo glory: | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2043586",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T19:41:38",
"content": "Gawd that’s an annoying GIF.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2044093",
"author": "mjrippe",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T23:05:00",
... | 1,760,376,025.2327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/a-compact-underwater-vehicle-the-nanoseeker/ | A Compact Underwater Vehicle: The Nanoseeker | Ethan Zonca | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous vehicle",
"auv",
"underwater"
] | The
Nanoseeker
is a compact underwater vehicle in a torpedo-like form factor. [John] designed the Nanoseeker as completely enclosed vehicle: both the thruster and the control fins are all housed within the diameter of the tube. The thruster is ducted with vents on the sides and control fins integrated into the back of the duct assembly.
[John] designed a compact PCB to drive the vehicle, which includes an STM32F4 alongside several sensors. An MPU-9150 provides IMU functionality and two dual motor driver ICs from TI control the throttle and the control fins. [John] also added a Bluetooth radio for remote control functionality. For those who want a closer look, an
image of the schematic
is up on his blog.
The board is running
MicroPython
, which is a small Python implementation optimized for microcontrollers. Although [John]’s hardware platform looks great, he’s still getting started on his software. We look forward to seeing how his project develops, as his project is one of the smallest underwater vehicles we’ve seen.
[via
Dangerous Prototypes
] | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "2042737",
"author": "andrew",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T14:08:51",
"content": "Does Bluetooth work underwater?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2043815",
"author": "Jon Hylands",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T20:57:54... | 1,760,376,025.73892 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/an-sdk-for-the-esp8266-wifi-chip/ | An SDK For The ESP8266 WiFi Chip | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"LX106",
"sdk",
"virtualbox",
"wifi"
] | The ESP8266 is a chip that turned a lot of heads recently, stuffing a WiFi radio, TCP/IP stack, and all the required bits to get a microcontroller on the Internet into a tiny, $5 module. It’s an interesting chip, not only because it’s a UART to WiFi module, allowing nearly
anything
to get on the Internet for $5, but because there’s a user-programmable microcontroller in this board. If only we had an SDK or a few libraries…
The ESP8266 SDK is finally here
. A complete SDK for the ESP8266 was just posted to the Expressif forums,
along with a VirtualBox image
with Ubuntu that includes GCC for the LX106 core used in this module.
Included in the SDK are sources for an SSL, JSON, and lwIP library, making this a solution for pretty much everything you would need to do with an Internet of Things thing. As far as LX106 core is concerned, there’s example code for using the spare pins on this board as GPIOs, I2C and SPI busses, and a UART.
This turns the ESP8266 into something much better than a UART to WiFi module; now you can create a Internet of Things thing with just $5 in hardware. We’d love to see some examples, so put those up on
hackaday.io
and send them in to the tip line. | 70 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "2042397",
"author": "Squonk42",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T12:10:35",
"content": "I must say that this is a clever move from Espressif ,and a very good news for all hackers!By escaping the common industry practice of ignoring small developers and preventing them access to the required... | 1,760,376,026.021233 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/25/use-a-cheap-pin-diode-as-a-geiger-counter/ | Use A Cheap PIN Diode As A Geiger Counter | Elliot Williams | [
"how-to"
] | [
"diy",
"GeigerCounter",
"PIN diode",
"radiation meter"
] | After the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, radiation measurement became newly relevant for a lot of people. Geiger-Müller tubes, previously a curiosity, became simultaneously important and scarce.
Opengeiger.de
(
English-language version here
) has complete instructions for making a Geiger counter without a
Geiger-Müller tube
. Instead, this counter uses a
PIN photodiode
and some carefully chosen operational amplifiers. The total cost of such a device is significantly cheaper than the alternative: under $1 for the diode and around $5 for the rest. And since the PIN photodiode in question is used in many other devices, it’s not a niche component like a Geiger tube is.
The secret sauce is in component selection and tuning. Opengeiger uses the BPW34 diode because it is relatively common and has a large surface area, but also because it has a very low capacitance when reverse-biased. The first-stage opamp choice is also fairly critical. Considering that an average gamma radiation event produces only around 10 nanoamps for about 50 microseconds, a lot of amplification (100,000x), low noise, and high bandwidth are a must.
If you want to get started with this project, you could first browse through the
explanation
(PDF) to get an overview of the project’s goals,
read up on all the technical considerations
(PDF) or just head straight for the
DIY instructions for the “Stuttgarter Geigerle”
(PDF, schematic is on the last page). All of the documentation is chock-full of relevant references and totally worth the read. | 51 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "2041618",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T08:39:42",
"content": "Maxim posted a similar AN about year ago:http://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/2236",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2041719",
... | 1,760,376,025.91979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/flowpaw-the-bear-paw-of-electronics-education/ | FlowPaw, The Bear Paw Of Electronics Education | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"FlowPaw",
"FlowStone",
"graphical programming",
"ruby"
] | If the astonishing success of littleBits is any indication, there’s a huge market for ‘intro to electronics’ products that are much more capable than the classic Radio Shack ‘springs and components stuck to cardboard’ kits or even the very successful littleBits.
FlowPaw is the latest entry in this space
, combining the sensor module paradigm of littleBits with a largish microcontroller, digital and analog pins, and a great programming interface.
The big innovation in the FlowPaw
is the FlowStone programming language
. It’s a graphical programming language that allows young creators to connect blocks, modules, and functions together with virtual wires, but also allows the editing of different modules with Ruby. Best of both worlds, there.
The FlowPaw kickstarter includes rewards for just the FlowStone software, or the FlowPaw electronics board with a bunch of modules. Already, the team has LED, relay, accelerometer, buzzer, and capacitive touch sensors, along with a Bluetooth and
speech recognition module
. They’re working on a few more advanced modules for GPS, pressure, DC motor control, and RFID as well. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2040746",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T05:06:15",
"content": "None of these “learn microcontroller” kits/boards seem to offer much in the way of wrong polarity protection, over current to pin protection, etc. Isn’t that exactly the type of things lay or learning op... | 1,760,376,026.06757 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/using-excel-to-watch-movies-at-work/ | Using Excel To Watch Movies At Work | Marsh | [
"Security Hacks",
"Software Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"excel",
"macros",
"media player",
"spreadsheet",
"vba",
"Visual Basic"
] | The Excel subreddit exploded earlier this week when redditor [AyrA_ch] shared his custom spreadsheet that allowed him to
play video files on a locked-down work computer.
How locked down? With no access to Windows Media Player and IE7 as the only browser (all plugins disabled, no HTML5), Excel became the unlikely hero to cure a 3-hour boredom stint.
Behind the cascade of rectangles and in the land of the Excel macro, [AyrA_ch] took advantage of the program’s
VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications) functions to circumvent the computer’s restrictions. Although VBA typically serves the more-complex-than-usual macro, it can also invoke some Windows API commands, one of which calls Windows Media Player. The Excel file includes a working playlist and some rudimentary controls: play, pause, stop, etc. as well as an inspired pie chart countdown timer.
As clever as this hack is, the best feature is much more subtle: tricking in-house big brother. [AyrA_ch]’s computer ran an application to monitor process usage, but any videos played through the spreadsheet were attributed to Excel, ensuring the process usage stayed on target. You can download it for yourself
over on GitHub. | 39 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "2040252",
"author": "gregkennedy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-25T02:15:48",
"content": "Monitoring process usage at work? That sounds particularly draconian.Actually, I remember Wal-mart doing such a thing. They also kept track of every website you visited, and your boss checked in onc... | 1,760,376,026.136107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/build-a-better-something-during-the-deconstruction-2014/ | Build A Better Something During The Deconstruction 2014 | Kristina Panos | [
"contests"
] | [
"contest",
"creation contest",
"the deconstruction"
] | Couldn’t make it to Detroit for the Red Bull Creation Contest? Its founder, [Jason Naumoff], has a separate event called
The Deconstruction
and 2014 marks the second year of this lively, worldwide competition.
The Deconstruction is taking place November 14-16th and will be broadcast live online. That’s right, you can participate from anywhere in the world, and your team’s progress will be live streamed from The Omni Commons in Oakland, CA. Registration began October 16th and the friendly competition is absolutely free to enter.
Creativity is the name of this game. The idea is to build something awesome using what you already have access to, including teamwork skills. Ideally, what you build will be a deconstruction of something you’d like to see rethought, though there is no stated topic. There are no age limits, no boundaries, and very few rules. A number of
great
things
came out of last year’s event, more of which you can check out at their site. What are you waiting for? Go show the world how you’d make it better. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "2035706",
"author": "YourIEEEmom",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T02:24:16",
"content": "I suggest you all take a moment and tinker for 48 hours, you just never know what will be made. Just make sure you use a prop cage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,026.1726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/another-internet-of-things-board-but-this-one-has-lisp/ | Another Internet Of Things Board (But This One Has Lisp) | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"dev board",
"internet of things",
"lisp",
"router"
] | Using routers as dev boards has been a long and cherished tradition in the circles we frequent, and finally design houses in China are taking notice. There have been a few ‘Internet of Things’ boards in recent months that have taken the SoC found in low-end routers, packaged the on a board with USB, some GPIOs, and a fair bit of memory and called it a dev board.
The ZERO Plus
is not an exception to this trend, but it does include a very interesting feature when it comes to the development environment: this one uses Lisp as its native language.
The Zero Plus is pretty much what you would expect from a router SoC being transplanted to an Internet of Things board: it uses the
Ralink RT5350
SoC, giving it 802.11b/g/n, has 32MB of RAM, 8 or 16 M of Flash, I2C, I2S, SPI, USB, two UARTs, and 14 GPIOs. There is support for a webcam, temperature and humidity sensor, displays, and Arduino via a breakout board that appears to contain a standard, DIP-sized ATMega328,
All of that could be found in dozens of other boards, though. What really sets this one apart is the Lisp development environment. Programming the Zero is exactly as elegant as you would expect, with a ‘toggle a LED according to what time it is’ program looking something like this:
(define LED_On (lambda ()(dev.gpio 11 "out" 1)))
(define LED_Off (lambda ()(dev.gpio 11 "out" 0)))
(define CurrentTime? (lambda ()
(int (time.strftime "%H" (time.localtime (time.time))))))
(define Night?
(lambda ()
(and
(> ( CurrentTime? ) 16) (< ( CurrentTime? ) 23)
)
)
)
(if (Night?) (LED_On) (LED_Off)
Dev boards built around somewhat more esoteric programming language isn’t anything new; The
Espruino
brings Javascript to ARM microcontrollers, and
the MicroPython project
is an astonishing undertaking
and successful Kickstarter
that brings the BASIC for the 21st century to the embedded world. Lisp, though… I don’t think anyone expected that. It’s a great way to differentiate your product, though. | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2035238",
"author": "Lucas",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T23:48:42",
"content": "That unrequited paren is killing me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2035281",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2014-10-24T00:06:44",
... | 1,760,376,026.299026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/i-love-the-smell-of-rocket-candy-in-the-morning/ | I Love The Smell Of Rocket Candy In The Morning | Adam Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"amateur rocketry",
"Estes",
"rocket",
"Rocket Candy",
"Rocket Motor"
] | [Grant Thompson aka “The King of Random”] has created a great tutorial on
making sugar rocket motors.
[Grant] is using a fuel based on potassium nitrate and sugar. Known as
Rocket Candy or R-Candy
in the amateur rocket community, various forms of this mixture
have been used for decades
. In fact, this is similar to one of the mixtures
[Homer Hickam]
and friends used to build rockets in his novel
Rocket Boys
.
[Grant] bought a cheap blender from the thrift store, which he used to grind his ingredients. You probably won’t want to use this blender for food after it’s been full of KNO3-based stump remover. The blender made quick work of grinding down the KNO3 to a fine powder. [Grant] then added in powdered sugar and carefully mixed the two by shaking,
not
by running the blender.
A 5″ length of schedule 40 PVC pipe made the rocket motor casing. The rocket motor’s end caps are made from ground clay cat litter. [Grant] rams the layers with a wooden dowel and hammer. First a top cap of clay, then the rocket fuel, then a bottom cap also of clay. With all the layers in place, he hand drilled a hole through the bottom cap and the entire fuel layer. Drilling all the way through turns the motor into a core burning rocket. The entire fuel cylinder burns away from the inside out, with more surface area than burning the end alone.
[Grant] tested his rocket motor at a remote location. We probably would have gone with an electric igniter rather than a fireworks style fuse, but the end result is the same. The rocket motor performed admirably, blasting up to over 2000 feet in altitude.
It goes without saying that working with solid rocket fuel isn’t something to be taken lightly. Something as simple as an air gap in the fuel could lead to a
CATO
, turning this rocket motor into a pipe bomb. We echo [Grant’s] suggestion to search for local amateur rocket clubs before trying this one at home. | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "2034686",
"author": "Testy",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T20:22:51",
"content": "Rable Rable explosives in pvc rable rable… This is cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2034738",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timesta... | 1,760,376,026.240746 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/destroy-your-volkswagon-touch-adapter-for-bluetooths-sake/ | Destroy Your Volkswagen Touch Adapter For Bluetooth’s Sake | Elliot Williams | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"a2dp",
"bluetooth",
"car",
"disable",
"voice adapter",
"volkswagen"
] | [Mansour]’s Volkswagen Polo has a touch-screen adapter with voice recognition to control a bunch of the car’s features, but he wanted it gone.
Voice control of your car sounds like a great thing, right? Well, the touch adapter blocked other Bluetooth devices from connecting directly to the car, and prevented him from streaming music from his phone while he’s connecting it through the adapter. But if you simply throw the adapter away, the car won’t connect to any Bluetooth devices.
So what options are left? Other than a couple of expensive or complicated options, [Mansour] decided to open up the device and
desolder the Bluetooth chip and antenna
. Admittedly, it’s not the deepest hack in the world, but we’ve gotta give [Mansour] credit for taking the technology into his own hands.
Disabling unwanted functionality is not uncommon these days. Who hasn’t stuck tape over their laptop’s camera or kept an RFID card in a Faraday wallet? What other devices have you had to “break” in order to make them work for you? | 52 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "2034165",
"author": "Pixel Pirate",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T17:27:30",
"content": "Honestly, the whole tape over the camera thing is ridiculous. Of the few people who could do it, why would they? And what would they get from it, a picture of your face? I find it ridiculous that peo... | 1,760,376,026.790535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/fail-of-the-week-project-frosty-mug-is-merely-chilly/ | Fail Of The Week: Project Frosty Mug Is Merely Chilly | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"diet sun drop",
"fail",
"frosty mug fever",
"peltier",
"thermoelectric"
] | Like many of us, [C] enjoys an ice-cold, refreshing soda while coding. Driven by a strong desire to keep a soda ice-cold indefinitely without using ice, [C] started
Project Frosty Mug
.
[C]’s stated goal is to keep a 20oz plastic bottle of soda at ~35F indefinitely while it sits in a room temperature environment. He started with a
thermoelectric unit
to cool an aluminium disc, like a cold coaster. Builds one and two made him realize that dealing with the generated heat was a big issue: it got so hot that it deformed the PLA frame. [C] also realized that bottom-only cooling wasn’t going to get the job done.
This project is now in its
third build
, which is pictured above. As you can see, it’s more
koozie
than coaster. That 3-D printed holster is lined with aluminium sheeting. Another flat piece covers the opening and attaches to the cooling element. A beefy CPU heat sink does its best, and a couple of U-brackets hold it all together.
[C]’s tested it with a glass bottle of Diet Sun Drop chilled to 38F. After 30 minutes in an ambient temperature of ~70F, the soda measured 45F. [C] lamented having not used a control bottle for comparison and reports that the power supply became quite warm. [C] isn’t going to give up that easily. Do you have any ideas for the fourth build?
Editor’s Note
: This is one of the last Fail of the Week tips we have stored up. If you want to see the series continue on a weekly basis, we need help finding more documented fails! Please look back through your projects and document the ones that didn’t go quite right. We also encourage you to send in links to other fails you’ve found. Just
drop the links in our tips line
. Thanks!
Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Thursday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and
sending us a link to the story
— or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels. | 62 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "2033683",
"author": "Telimektar",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T14:11:12",
"content": "Where is heat isolation box?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2033803",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T14:58:29",
... | 1,760,376,026.896551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/turning-the-defcon-badge-into-a-bitcoin-miner/ | Turning The DEFCON Badge Into A Bitcoin Miner | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"bitcoin mining",
"defcon",
"DEFCON badge",
"mining",
"propeller",
"SHA256"
] | The DEFCON badge this year was an impressive piece of hardware, complete with mind-bending puzzles, cap sense buttons, LEDs, and of course a Parallax Propeller. [mike] thought a chip as cool as the Propeller should be put to better use than just sitting around until next year so he turned it
into a Bitcoin miner, netting him an astonishing 40 hashes per second
.
Mining Bitcoins on hardware that doesn’t have much processing power to begin with (at least compared to the FPGAs and ASIC miners commonly used) meant [mike] would have to find some interesting ways to compute the SHA256 hashes that mining requires. He turned to
RetroMiner
, the Bitcoin miner made for an original Nintendo. Like the NES miner, [mike] is offloading the communication with the Bitcoin network to a host computer, but all of the actual math is handled by a single core on the Propeller.
Saving one core for communication with the host computer, a DEFCON badge could conceivably manage 280 hashes/second, meaning the processing power of all the badges made for DEFCON is about equal to a seven-year-old graphics card. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "2033468",
"author": "asdf_the_3rd",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T12:49:00",
"content": "FPGAs aren’t used for mining anymore. Hell, even ASICs are getting obsolete at their current speed/price ratios.You need about 2,5 Th to make one Bitcoin a month.Just for fun, to get that speed with ... | 1,760,376,026.701243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/hackaday-retro-edition-a-286-on-the-internet/ | Hackaday Retro Edition: A 286 On The Internet | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"286",
"80286",
"hackaday retro edition",
"retro edition"
] | While not an issue now with our 64 bit (more accurately 48- or 52-bit) processors, there was a time when 32 bits of addressing space was impossibly large. For several decades, 4 Gigabytes of memory would be the absolute ceiling, and something only madmen or the protagonist of
Pi
would have to deal with. This convention began, at least for the Intel/PC world, with the 386. Earlier processors like the 8086 and the 286 were quite capable for their time, but doing anything modern with them, especially getting on the Internet, is a quixotic endeavor beyond comparison.
[Caulser] over on the Vintage Computer Forums
has done just that
. He recently acquired a Zenith Data Systems 286 system and loaded up what is quickly becoming the litmus test for old computers on the Internet:
the Hackaday retro edition
When he first received the system, it was loaded up with a rather generous (for the time) 4MB of RAM. The 20MB hard drive was dead, but with a little fiddling about with the BIOS, [Caulser] was able to get the system working with an old Quantum IDE hard drive.
There’s no Windows or even Linux for this machine, so the system is just running MS DOS 5a, mTCP, Arachne, and the relevant drivers for the NIC (that has RJ45 and BNC connectors). After upgrading the RAM to 8MB, the box performs reasonably well without any pesky ads, and given the websites he visited, he’s not dealing with any overwrought Javascript or CSS, either.
Pics of the system below.
If you have an old computer sitting around, try to load
our retro site
with it. Take a few pictures, and we’ll put it up in one of our Retro Roundups | 72 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "2032682",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T08:53:42",
"content": "Soon, I’ll have a Slimsport 286 project working toward this goal. I’ll probably follow his procedures as a basis.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "20... | 1,760,376,027.00925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/now-lets-see-the-worlds-largest-arduino/ | Now Let’s See The World’s Largest Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"attiny",
"attiny85",
"smallest arduino"
] | A few days ago we saw what would have been a killer Kickstarter a few years ago. It was
the smallest conceivable ATtiny85 microcontroller board
, with resistors, diodes, a USB connector, and eight pins for plugging into a breadboard. It’s a shame this design wasn’t around for the great Arduino Minification of Kickstarter in late 2011; it would have
easily
netted a few hundred thousand dollars, a TED talk, and a TechCrunch biopic.
[AtomSoftTech]
has thrown his gauntlet down and created an
even smaller
‘tiny85 board
. it measures 0.4in by 0.3in, including the passives, reset switch, and USB connector. To put that in perspective, the PDIP package of the ‘tiny85 measures 0.4 x 0.4. How is [Atom] getting away with this? Cheating, splitting the circuit onto two stacked boards, or knowing the right components, depending on how you look at it.
[Atom] is using a few interesting components in this build.
The USB connector
is a surface mount
vertical
part, making the USB cord stick out the top of this uC board.
The reset button
is extremely small as well, sticking out of the interior layer of the PCB sandwich.
[AtomSoft]
has the project up on OSH Park
($1.55 for three. How cool is that?), and we assume he’ll be selling the official World’s Smallest Arduino-compatible board at Tindie in time. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "2032021",
"author": "Mike Lu",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T05:06:36",
"content": "For the world’s largest Arduino, how about one made entirely out of discrete components? It would cost a fortune to design and build…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,027.3921 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/how-to-reverse-engineer-featuring-the-rigol-ds1054z/ | How To Reverse Engineer, Featuring The Rigol DS1054Z | Brian Benchoff | [
"how-to",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"reverse engineering",
"rigol",
"Rigol 1054Z",
"Rigol DS1052E"
] | For a few years now, the Rigol DS1052E has been the unofficial My First Oscilloscope™. It’s cheap, it’s good enough for most projects, and there have been a number hacks and mods for this very popular scope to give it twice as much bandwidth and other interesting tools. The 1052E is a bit long in the tooth and Rigol has just released the long-awaited update, the DS1054Z. It’s a four-channel scope, has a bigger screen, more bells and whistles, and
only costs $50 more than the six-year-old 1052E.
Basically, if you’re in the market for a cheap, usable oscilloscope, scratch the ~52E off your list and replace it with the ~54Z.
With four channels of input, [Dave Jones] was wondering how the engineers at Rigol managed to stuff two additional front ends into the scope while still meeting the magic price point of $400. This means it’s time for [Dave] to
reverse engineer the 1054Z
, and give everyone on the Internet a glimpse at how a real engineer tears apart the worth of other engineers.
The first thing [Dave] does once the board is out of the enclosure is taking a nice, clear, and in-focus picture of both sides of the board. These pictures are edited, turned into a line drawing, and printed out on a transparency sheet. This way, both sides of the board can be viewed at once, allowing for a few dry erase marker to highlight the traces and signals.
Unless your voyage on the sea of reverse engineering takes you to the island of despair and desoldering individual components, you’ll be measuring the values of individual components in circuit. For this, you’ll want a low-voltage ohms function on your meter; if you’re putting too much voltage through a component, you’ll probably turn on some silicon in the circuit, and your measurements will be crap. Luckily, [Dave] shows a way to test if your meter will work for this kind of work; you’ll need another meter.
From there, it’s basically looking at datasheets and drawing a schematic of the circuit; inputs go at the left, outputs at the right, ground is at the bottom, and positive rails are at the top. It’s harder than it sounds – most of [Dave]’s expertise in this area is just pattern recognition. It’s one thing to reverse engineer a circuit through brute force, but knowing the why and how of how the circuit works makes things
much
easier. | 50 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "2031536",
"author": "Robert Buroman",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T02:34:36",
"content": "Dave Jones a ‘real engineer’ ?As someone pointed out on here a while back, this is a ‘man’ who is incapable of recognizing a simple full-wave rectifier when he sees one. Something which even a fir... | 1,760,376,027.262143 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/whats-next-on-the-raspberry-pi-front/ | What’s Next On The Raspberry Pi Front | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Pi-Top",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi B+",
"raspberry pi hat",
"raspberry pi home automation"
] | Raspberry Pi founder [Eben Upton]
recently sat in an uncomfortable chair in London
to discuss all things Pi. Having sold about four million units over the last 2.5 years, he feels the future is bright for his original vision of inspiring and helping kids to learn programming.
[Eben] is quite pleased with the
Pi-Top
, a B+ based laptop kit that’s
pulling in backers
left and right while completely unaffiliated with the Pi foundation. The kit includes a 13.3″ HD LCD screen, keyboard, trackpad, and an injection molded case, though you can print your own with the included STL files. Kits start at $249 without a Pi and $285 with a B+ included. Robot and home automation HATs are also available separately or bundled with the Pi-Top kit.
The most exciting news is that the $600,000 spent on DSI connectors for those four million Raspis is about to pay off. [Eben] hopes that an official touchscreen will be available for purchase before the end of 2014 or in early 2015. He showed off a 7″ capacitive touch panel that will attach to a display board stacked on a Pi, effectively turning it into a tablet.
[Eben] said that they will not be making a Model C and instead are working on revision A+. He hopes to make an official announcement in the near future.
Finally, [Eben] discussed the importance of community, which played a large part in the birth and evolution of the Pi. He also spoke of
Pi Academy
, a sort of professional workshop for teachers in the UK who’ve recently been tasked with teaching computer science as demanded by
changes in the mandatory UK school curriculum
. He hopes that these 2-day seminars will help educators achieve the high expectations recently laid out for students to achieve by age ten. | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "2030976",
"author": "Fritoeata",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T23:29:38",
"content": "Finally! A DSI monitor…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2031104",
"author": "CJ",
"timestamp": "2014-10-23T00:16:34",
"content": "“He s... | 1,760,376,027.324871 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/giving-life-to-an-undead-baby-doll/ | Giving Life To An Undead Baby Doll | Sarah Petkus | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"animatronic zombie",
"doll zombie",
"robot zombie",
"robotic doll",
"robotic zombie",
"undead",
"undead doll"
] | If carving a pumpkin this month is too passé for you, take a shot at [Jason Suter’s] instructable and build an
animatronic legless zombie child
that will surely creep out anyone who has a fear of dolls or other vacant-faced toy babies.
Beginning with a sacrificial doll, [Jason] dismembers all of the limbs and head from the torso in order to make room for the robotic upgrades. The servo motors which animate the new wooden dowel bones are mounted to a chassis cut with a CNC machine. [Jason’s] instructions include some nice diagrams demonstrating how the points of articulation at the shoulders and elbows work in conjunction to produce different flavors of crawling and dragging.
To top it off, the head is attached to its own mounting plate with tendons that rock back and forth in a miserable undead sort-of fashion. As an added nicety, he explains how to install a bluetooth module into the circuitry so he can tweak and upload his example code to the Arduino brain remotely without needing to get his hands near it. There is of course some additional melting, painting, and doll torture required to achieve that rough-up undead look… but that’s all just icing on top of a well executed piece of animatronics.
In his video [Jason] gives us an overview of his zombie’s build and also shows it in action: | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2030829",
"author": "Anon Blue",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T22:41:40",
"content": "Very nice!Suggestions. Blood & guts on the hair since we don’t see the zombie face when it draging itself along.Moaning, gargling zombie sounds timed with the servos to hide those servo sounds somewhat.... | 1,760,376,027.049983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/ | Watch That Windows Update: FTDI Drivers Are Killing Fake Chips | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"232",
"FT232",
"FT232R",
"ftdi",
"serial"
] | The FTDI FT232 chip is found in thousands of electronic baubles, from Arduinos to test equipment, and more than a few bits of consumer electronics. It’s a simple chip, converting USB to a serial port, but very useful and probably one of the most cloned pieces of silicon on Earth. Thanks to a recent Windows update,
all those fake FTDI chips are at risk of being bricked.
This isn’t a case where fake FTDI chips won’t work if plugged into a machine running the newest FTDI driver; the latest driver
bricks
the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with
any
computer.
Reports of problems with FTDI chips
surfaced early this month
, with an explanation of the behavior showing up in
an EEVblog forum thread
. The new driver for these chips from FTDI, delivered through a recent Windows update, reprograms the USB PID to 0, something Windows, Linux, and OS X don’t like. This renders the chip inaccessible from any OS, effectively bricking any device that happens to have one of these fake FTDI serial chips.
Because the FTDI USB to UART chip is so incredibly common, the market is flooded with clones and counterfeits. it’s very hard to tell the difference between the real and fake versions by looking at the package, but a look at the silicon
reveals vast differences
. The new driver for the FT232 exploits these differences, reprogramming it so it won’t work with existing drivers. It’s a bold strategy to cut down on silicon counterfeiters on the part of FTDI. A
reasonable
company would go after the manufacturers of fake chips, not the consumers who are most likely unaware they have a fake chip.
The workaround for this driver update is to download the FT232 config
tool from the FTDI website
on a WinXP or Linux box, change the PID of the fake chip, and never using the new driver on a modern Windows system. There will surely be an automated tool to fix these chips automatically, but until then, take a good look at what Windows Update is installing – it’s very hard to tell if your devices have a fake FTDI chip by just looking at them. | 587 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "2029560",
"author": "lja",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T17:10:18",
"content": "Probably a good idea in the long run.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2030279",
"author": "MNHS",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T19:57:46",
... | 1,760,376,027.974401 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/function-generator-with-zero-cpu-cycles/ | Function Generator With Zero CPU Cycles | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"audio synthesis",
"direct digital synthesis",
"dma",
"function generator",
"pic32",
"sine wave"
] | No one is sitting around their workbench trying to come up with the next great oscilloscope or multimeter, but function generators still remain one of the pieces of test equipment anyone – even someone with an Arduino starter pack – can build at home. Most of these function generators aren’t very good; you’re lucky if you can get a sine wave above the audio spectrum. [Bruce Land] had the idea to play around with DMA channels on a PIC32 and ended up with
a function generator that uses zero CPU cycles
. It’s perfect for a homebrew function generator build, or even a very cool audio synthesizer.
The main obstacles to generating a good sine wave at high frequencies are a high sample rate and an accurate DAC. For homebrew function generators, it’s usually the sample rate that’s terrible; it’s hard pushing bits out a port that fast. By using the DMA channel on a PIC32, [Bruce] can shove arbitrary waveforms out of the chip without using any CPU cycles. By writing a sine wave, or any other wave for that matter, to memory, the PIC32 will just spit them out and leave the CPU to do more important work.
[Bruce] was able to generate a great-looking sine wave up to 200 kHz, and the highest amplitude of the harmonics was about 40db below the fundamental up to 100 kHz. That’s a
spectacular
sine wave, and the perfect basis for a DIY function generator build. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "2029194",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T15:21:43",
"content": "The zero CPU cycles assumes that the frequency of sine wave you want is an integer number of sample periods long, so will cause issues if you want an arbitrary frequency output.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,027.463795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/baby-quadruped-robot-learning-to-walk/ | Baby Quadruped Robot, Learning To Walk | Rich Bremer | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"quadruped",
"robot",
"walking robot"
] | We’ve all seen videos of those crazy Boston Dynamics running quadruped robots that can reach up to 28 mph. Those things are amazing and it’s almost impossible to imagine how to even start building one. [Max] loves his robots and wanted to build a quadruped but, being a robot hobbyist, didn’t have the serious cash needed to make an extravagant robot like those of Boston Dynamics. Instead he started bridging the gap by designing a
quadruped robot
that is a little bit slower and tons cheaper.
[Max] designed all of the mechanical parts himself. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different materials, he decided that the frame would be made from 5mm acrylic sheet. The main body of the robot has acrylic ribs that are spaced apart by threaded rods. Twelve RC servos make up all of the joints, 3 in each leg. Notice in this photo how there is one servo that immediately rotates another servo. To support the other side of the rotating servo, [Max] epoxied on a T-nut, stuck in a short length of threaded rod which is then supported in the frame by a ball bearing. Simple and effective! The upper portions of the legs are also made from acrylic sheet and the lower legs are from a cheap camera tripod. Rubber feet ensure a slip resistant stance.
All of the servos are controlled by an Arduino Mega. [Max] is currently writing a sketch that will perform the complex math and determine coordinated servo motions for movements us humans take for granted, like ‘walk forward’. As you can see in the videos, [Max’s] robot won’t be catching the Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah any time soon but he is off to a great start.
Future plans for this project include bluetooth control and integrating the ultrasonic sensor proactively installed in the ‘head’ of the robot. Check out the videos after the break. [Max] is looking for some feedback on his project. We here at HaD think this needs a great name. Let’s hear some suggestions in the comments… | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2028503",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2014-10-22T11:08:23",
"content": "He might has a need for the Pixy (CMUcam5) in the head enclosure:http://charmedlabs.com/default/?page_id=211",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "2028627... | 1,760,376,027.511407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/20/think-before-you-measure-old-test-gear-and-why-it-is-awesome/ | Think Before You Measure – Old Test Gear And Why It Is Awesome | Gregory L. Charvat | [
"Featured",
"how-to",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hamvention",
"test equipment"
] | Good, workable test gear is key to enabling our hobby. In this post we will discuss where to procure it at rock-bottom prices, what to look for, how to fix it, and how to tailor your laboratory practices around gear that may not be reliable.
We are lucky to be living in an era with plentiful high-quality test gear. Since the Second World War, surplus test gear has been in abundance at low costs enabling hobbyists, innovators, and academics to experiment and build great things. If you are willing to think before you measure you can save serious amounts of money and have a professional laboratory in your home.
Where to buy
The obvious answer is eBay, but the deals on test equipment are at the hamfests. Don’t be fooled by the name. Hamfests sell much more than amateur radio equipment. Hamfests are swap meets where hobbyists trade electronics of all kinds. Check out the
ARRL hamfest calendar
to find the next local one near you! I suggest you arrive early, however. The culture of hamfests tends to favor showing up as soon as the doors open and leaving about two hours before the official end. The early bird gets the worm!
Photos from a local hamfest showing an abundance of test gear (photos courtesy of Scott Pastor KC8KBK).
You will have to go to a number of hamfests before you will find everything you need. Patience is key. Just keep going to hamfests and eventually you will find it or something close. If you need it now you can pay more on eBay and equip yourself very quickly.
Of course there is the mother of all hamfests, the
Dayton Hamvention
. As I’ve heard many times, if you can’t find it at Dayton you don’t need it.
Dayton Hamvention is the mother of all hamventions. I’ve been told that if you can’t find it here then you don’t need it.
The size of the Dayton Hamvention is difficult to describe in words, but from the sky, the massive number of trunk sales (where test gear is typically located) is clearly shown on the left side of the road (photo from
http://destinationdayton.net/aerial.jpg
).
What to look for – brands & eras of quality
If you are looking for a scope then buy a Tektronics brand, any era. Some of the ‘TV Repairman’ scopes are not bad either. I’ve had good luck with my Heath-Zenith from the late ‘80’s. If the scope is not a Tek or an HP then judge the equipment based on cleanliness. If it’s very clean then it’s worth a try; if dirty then buy two and one will likely work!
With old scopes, if you’re not sure one will work then buy two! (photo courtesy of Scott Pastor KC8KBK)
My Heath-Zentih scope with a BK function generator, have been very reliable and useful for nearly two decades. A Tek 468, work-horse analog and digital storage (dual mode) scope.
For everything else, buy Hewlett-Packard whenever possible. In my experience, tube HP signal generators from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s tend to be very reliable. To no surprise, when you pop the covers off one they seem to be built to some very high specification. Some of the more complex gear from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s can be difficult to service, requiring difficult-to-find card extenders and such. I only buy this gear if it’s clean, and I try to get two whenever possible.
Two HP RF signal generators, all tube from the 1950’s, work perfectly well and attenuators/power output still accurate (enough).
Generally speaking, if you must get any particular piece of gear try to buy two to spread your risk. Expect hamfest test gear to work 60-70% of the time.
If you need a spectrum analyzer, suggest the 141T mainframe-based systems like this one who’s plug-ins cover 10MHz to 18 GHz!
Fix it or replace it?
Over time your working test gear will break down. You can either replace it or fix it yourself. This is simply a trade of time for cost. More time spent maintaining your gear, the less you will pay out of pocket to procure and keep your lab running. While in graduate school, my policy was to spend no more than 3 hours repairing the equipment, and if I exceeded this time without any tangible progress I would replace it. My current approach is to buy used gear at hamfests and run it until it dies. If it dies I replace it with another used piece of gear. To make up for the gap in time replacing the equipment, all of my gear has overlapping capability so I’m never without the right instrument for the job.
There are
groups
dedicated to the repair and restoration of Tektronics scopes and probably others for HP gear too.
For some tube gear such as the Heathkit and other lower-end TV and radio repair gear, you can just use the
antique radio repair procedures
previously discussed – Making old Heathkit and other old gear very repairable for many decades to come.
Examples of TV/radio repairman or hobbyist vacuum tube signal generators, clearly one of these has been re-capped (photo courtesy of Scott Pastor KC8KBK).
Think before you measure – some guidelines for using old gear
Trust nothing! When using old test gear of any type you must tailor your measurement procedures so that you are always verifying. When your circuit is not behaving as expected, the first thing you should do is verify power (all voltages and ground), verify cables, verify outputs of test gear, and verify inputs are working on your test gear. Don’t let a loose BNC input connector on your hamfest scope or a bad test cable fool you into thinking that your amplifier is dead. This is a basic trouble shooting skill extended to your measurement setup (many of you may already do this intuitively).
Example – a microwave laboratory
Microwave test gear is not cheap. Starting in high school, I began to procure test gear, anything at first, and slowly upgraded to better, more reliable equipment over time. This laboratory began turning out serious projects culminating in my
PhD thesis
, which included two Synthetic Aperture Radar rail imaging systems and a near-field phased array.
This lab
continues to support all of my work both as a hobbyist and professional. As you can see it is supplied with gear from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and the newest stuff is from the 80’s.
My basement microwave laboratory from high school in late 90’s, through grad school, to present day.
Prices, based on what I’ve previously bought and observed
The heavier it is the cheaper it is, for example tube RF signal generators in working condition typically fetch <$100.
Good scopes (Tek brand, 50-100 MHz of bandwidth 2 or more channels) range from $50-$200. Higher the bandwidth the more the scope will fetch, although i once bought an old sampling scope with 2.5 GHz of bandwidth for $100.
Function generators can fetch $20-$50.
Good spectrum analyzers, such as ones based on the HP 141T mainframe, run about $400-$1200 in working condition.
HP microwave signal generators go for $300 and up.
Bench supplies, such as lower power HP Harrison types, $20-$50 each.
Good digital Voltmeters, such as Fluke or Simpson 260’s, $20-$50.
Summary
We live in a world full of old test gear and all we have to do is think before we measure. Tackle increasingly more complicated array of projects. Don’t wait until you can visit a friend or go into work to measure something. Instead, have in-house capabilities. Visit your local hamfest and build up a professional lab in your basement or garage today!
References
ARRL hamfest calendar
Dayton Hamvention 2015
Acknowledgement
My cousin,
Juliet Hurley
, MBA, MSF, MAC for type-editing this post.
Author bio
Gregory L. Charvat
, is the author of
Small and Short-Range Radar Systems
, co-founder of Hyperfine Research Inc., Butterfly Network Inc. (both of which are
4combinator
companies), visiting research scientist at Camera Culture Group Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, editor of the
Gregory L. Charvat Series on Practical Approaches to Electrical Engineering
, and guest commentator on CNN, CBS, Sky News, and others. He was a technical staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where his work on through-wall radar won best paper at the 2010 MSS Tri-Services Radar Symposium and is an MIT Office of the Provost 2011 research highlight. He has taught short radar courses at MIT where his Build a Small Radar course was the top-ranked MIT professional education course in 2011 and has become widely adopted by other universities, laboratories, and private organizations. Starting at an Early Age, Greg developed numerous radar systems, rail SAR imaging sensors, phased array radar systems; holds several patents; and has developed many other sensors and radio and audio equipment. He has authored numerous publications and has received press for his work. Greg earned a Ph.D in electrical engineering in 2007, MSEE in 2003, and BSEE in 2002 from Michigan State University, and is a senior member of the IEEE where he served on the steering committee for the 2010, 2013, and 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and Technology and chaired the IEEE AP-S Boston Chapter from 2010-2011. | 49 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "2019965",
"author": "Backwoods Engineer",
"timestamp": "2014-10-20T14:29:49",
"content": "In before the “this is not a hack” crowd, but applause for old test gear. I’ve owned some of the HP microwave generators shown in the pictures. You’re not going to get 6 digits of frequency a... | 1,760,376,028.244592 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/10/20/a-single-pixel-color-digital-camera/ | A Single Pixel, Color Digital Camera | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital cameras hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"camera",
"digital camera",
"Radon transform",
"single pixel",
"single pixel camera"
] | [Ben] has written all sorts of code and algorithms to filter, sort, and convolute images, and also a few gadgets that were meant to be photographed. One project that hasn’t added a notch to his soldering iron was a camera. The easiest way to go about resolving this problem would be to find some cardboard and duct tape and built a pinhole camera. [Ben] wanted a digital camera. Not any digital camera,
but a
color
digital camera
, and didn’t want to deal with pixel arrays or lenses. Impossible, you say? Not when you have a bunch of integral transforms in your tool belt.
[Ben] is only using a single light sensor that outputs RGB values for his camera – no lenses are found anywhere. If, however, you scan a scene multiple times with this sensor, each time blocking a portion of the sensor’s field of view, you could reconstruct a rudimentary, low-resolution image from just a single light sensor. If you scan and rotate this ‘blocking arm’ across the sensor’s field of view, reconstructing the image is called a
Radon transform
, something [Ben] has used a few times in his studies.
[Ben]’s camera consists of the
Adafruit RGB light sensor
, an Arduino, a microSD card, a few servos, and a bunch of printed parts. The servos are used to scan and rotate the ‘blocking arm’ across the sensor for each image. The output of the sensor is saved to the SD card and moved over to the computer for post-processing.
After getting all the pixel data to his laptop, [Ben] plotted the raw data. The first few pictures were of a point source of light – a lamp in his workspace. This resulted in exactly what he expected, a wave-like line on an otherwise blank field. The resulting transformation kinda looked like the reference picture, but for better results, [Ben] turned his camera to more natural scenes. Pointing his single pixel camera out the window resulted in an image that looked like it was taken underwater, through a piece of glass smeared with Vaseline. Still, it worked remarkably well for a single pixel camera. Taking his camera to the great outdoors provided an even better reconstructed scene, due in no small part to the great landscapes [Ben] has access to. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "2019576",
"author": "PlasmaWombat",
"timestamp": "2014-10-20T12:41:54",
"content": "I had a similar idea, but instead of servos I planned to use an lcd screen. Switching on (or off, depending how you look at it) a pixel at a time across a rectangular matrix would hopefully move the ... | 1,760,376,028.042089 |
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