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https://hackaday.com/2014/07/16/finally-an-easy-to-make-holder-for-lithium-ion-batteries/ | Finally, An Easy To Make Holder For Lithium Ion Batteries | James Hobson | [
"how-to",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"battery holder",
"lipo",
"lithium",
"lithium battery",
"perfboard"
] | For projects requiring a bit more juice, the mass production of those small rectangular lithium ion batteries for cell phones, cameras and other electronics are extremely useful — the problem is, how do you mount them, short of soldering the terminals in place? With a bit of
perfboard of course!
[Jason] came up with this idea when he was trying to figure out a way to mount small lithium cells for a battery fuel gauge for another one of his projects. He found if you use good quality perfboard you can use a 90 degree male pin header to contact the terminals, and a strip of female pin header as a kind of battery stop at the other end. This allows you to very snugly squeeze the battery in place — you may need to adjust the length of the male pins though in order to fine tune the fit!
Now you can add a nice wire terminal, solder up the connections, and there you have it, an easy to make, extremely useful battery holder! | 35 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1642856",
"author": "janostman",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T23:09:39",
"content": "Eh? Ok?Just solder to the damn thing?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1642876",
"author": "charlie",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T23:... | 1,760,376,134.423657 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/16/the-party-was-bumping-then-the-fire-dragon-showed-up/ | The Party Was Bumping, Then The Fire Dragon Showed Up | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"detroit",
"dragon",
"fire",
"gon kirin",
"Omnicorp",
"party",
"propane",
"rager"
] | Epic Party.
I don’t use that label lightly. After the Red Bull Creation’s day of show and tell was over — winners having been presented with trophies and stuffed with barbecue over at
Bert’s
— people started to trickle into OmniCorp Detroit for the party.
Like all of the best parties we didn’t really see it coming. I grabbed a folding chair on the street out front with a beer in my hand and enjoyed a rotating variety of interesting people to talk with.
[Brian] rolled up riding one of the trophies, a modified toddler’s tricycle that proves his future with a travelling circuit is still viable. They roped off the area and set up huge speakers for the DJ. Then two guys game lumbering down the street sharing the work of hauling a tub full of ice and 12-ounce clear glass bottles with colored liquid inside. Turns out they just opened
a distillery down the street
and decided to donate some vodka infusions for the festivities. Yum!
Upstairs, a couple hundred square feet of area was ringed by a bar (with wide variety of kegs, slushy drinks, and one of those hot dog rollers), couches, a few work benches, a second DJ booth, and a photobooth. We only got one picture before the smoke machine reduced visibility.
Unlike a lot of ragers I’ve been at, it was easy to start up a conversation with just about anyone. Living expenses are so low in Detroit and artists are flocking to the area. This is who made up most of the group. Fascinating people who are working on a multitude of different projects and have stories of building community on their streets while rehabbing houses that cost $1-2.5k to purchase but didn’t come with most of what you’d assume a house should.
Then the fire dragon showed up
Inside was packed and outside was starting to get crowded. Then the fire dragon showed up. Named
Gon KiRin
, it’s the collaboration between [
Teddy Lo
] and [Ryan C. Doyle] who was on Team Detroitus and is artist in residence at
Recycle Here!
, the build venue for the Red Bull Creation.
The beast is built on the frame of a 1960’s dump truck and most of the building materials were found on the sides of the highway. The huge propane tank on the back allows it to breathe fire. I love that three daisy-chained 9-volts and two bare wires are the control mechanism for this. One thing became readily apparent; you don’t stand in front of Gon KiRin while it’s breathing fire.
The crowd piled onto the couches on top of the tail and at either rear hip. The dragons back also bore a continually rotating set of people. After midnight the guests really started to flood in. [Caleb] and I tried to close down the party but a few hours after midnight it didn’t seem to be getting any slower.
Capping off the weekend like this really proves that you need to get your team into next year’s
Red Bull Creation
. I got in the easy way — judges don’t have to stay up for 72 hours building stuff. Despite the sleep deprivation for contestants I didn’t come across anyone who wasn’t having a blast during the build, while goofing off, or trying to stay awake as this party got moving.
Bravo Detroit, you’re now on my short list of best party towns. Who else wants to be added to that list? Hackaday’s going to be in Las Vegas for DEFCON in a few weeks. Anyone know of parties planned that weekend and how we can get in?
The fire-breather “Gon KiRin”
We only got one picture before the fog machine was turned on
Chris and Mike tried out the Omnicorp Photobooth which prints out your photos
Brian Benchoff trys out the team choice trophy — a modified toddler’s tricycle
Behind the driver just before a fireball
Behind the driver during a fireball
Couch on the back above the propane tank
Getting ready to breathe fire
The peasants scatter amidst the wrath
Greg Needel and Caleb Craft riding the dragon
Daylight view of Gon KiRin
Arms are covered in tire treads
Brian training his dragon | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1642604",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T20:19:52",
"content": "This video is private…. Hmmm…..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1642630",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T20:30:... | 1,760,376,134.474996 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/16/non-lethal-electric-chair-brings-the-death-row-experience-home/ | Non-Lethal Electric Chair Brings The Death Row Experience Home | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"electric chair",
"non-lethal electric chair",
"oculus rift",
"virtual reality",
"vr"
] | One of our trusty tipsters named [Arman] wrote in to tell us about this awesome little
Horror VR Hackathon
that sought
to create a non-lethal electric chair
, for a seriously creepy and shocking experience.
[Arman] works in a small prototyping shop, so when a few guys from the local VR group called to ask for help building a non-lethal electric chair, he thought they were joking — until they showed up at the shop! Finally understanding what they really wanted to do, he hooked them up with an EL wire power supply (high voltage AC, low amperage) for their first prototype.
Unfortunately the EL power supply driver took too much juice, so they called [Arman] back the next day to hack together some of those joke gum shockers instead — he hooked them up to an Arduino and they work like a charm.
The experience (sadly, not video recorded) went like this. Brave testers would sit in the chair with the Oculus rift on and they would see that they are in a strange room with a red curtain across the window. After a bit of time passed the curtain would open, revealing an audience of faceless men…
This is about when you realize you’re in death row. ZAP!
[Thanks for sharing Arman!] | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1642363",
"author": "h3ll0_W0rld",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T17:27:54",
"content": "..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1642364",
"author": "h3ll0_W0rld",
"timestamp": "2014-07-16T17:28:34",
"content": "( start rant on... | 1,760,376,134.354569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/beamboarder-lets-you-skate-at-night-wont-blind-oncoming-traffic/ | Beamboarder Lets You Skate At Night; Won’t Blind Oncoming Traffic | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"creen",
"hard drive",
"headlight",
"lithium",
"longboard",
"magnet"
] | Whether you use your longboard as transportation or pleasure riding, night-time sessions can be harrowing if you’re screaming through poorly-lit places.
The Beamboarder
is a solution that is simple to build and easy to throw in a backpack whenever that giant ball of fire is above the horizon.
Boiled down it’s a high-power LED and a Lithium battery. How’s that for a hack? Actually it’s the “garbage” feel of it ([Lyon’s] words, not ours) that makes us smile. An old hard drive with as high of a capacity as possible was raided for parts. That sounded like a joke at first but the point is that early, large drives have bigger magnets inside. You need a really strong one because that’s all that will hold the LED to the front truck of our board. From there it’s a matter of attaching a CREE LED with thermal adhesive and wiring it up to the Lithium pack that has been covered in shrink tube to keep the elements out.
The headlight is under the board, which is courteous to oncoming traffic. Once you pull off this hack we’re sure you’ll want to go further so we suggest
wheels with LED POV displays
and there’s always the option of
going full electric
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1647476",
"author": "zhanxt",
"timestamp": "2014-07-19T00:02:36",
"content": "I like might do something simular to my bike. Minus the fact its aluminum",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1647569",
"author": "nixieguy",
"tim... | 1,760,376,134.147979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/quick-and-dirty-rfid-door-locks-clean-up-nice/ | Quick And Dirty RFID Door Locks Clean Up Nice | Marsh | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"access control",
"arduino",
"ATmega 328",
"door lock",
"parallax",
"relay",
"rfid",
"rfid reader"
] | [Shawn] recently overhauled his access control by
fitting the doors with some RFID readers.
Though the building already had electronic switches in place, unlocking the doors required mashing an aging keypad or pestering someone in an adjacent office to press a button to unlock them for you. [Shawn] tapped into that system by running some wires up into the attic and connecting them to one of two control boxes, each with an ATMega328 inside. Everything functions as you would expect: presenting the right RFID card to the wall-mounted reader sends a signal to the microcontroller, which clicks an accompanying relay that drives the locks.
You may recall [Shawn’s]
RFID phone tag hack from last month
; the addition of the readers is the second act of the project. If you’re looking to recreate this build, you shouldn’t have any trouble sourcing the same Parallax readers or building out
your own Arduino on a stick
, either. Check out a quick walkthrough video after the jump. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1647146",
"author": "notdave",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T20:10:29",
"content": "cool project! its too bad these cards are so trivial to clone (without you detecting it!) i think it would actually be more difficult to steal/clone a physical key!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,376,134.101261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/were-at-hope-x/ | We’re At HOPE X | Brian Benchoff | [
"cons",
"Featured"
] | [
"2600",
"cons",
"hope",
"HOPE X",
"nyc"
] | For the next three days, Hackaday will be live, in the flesh, at Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC. It’s
HOPE X
, the biennial conference for hackers, code crackers, and slackers put on by the awesome folks at
2600
.
Highlights of the event include
a keynote from [Daniel Ellisburg]
,
a video conference with [Edward Snowden]
, and
a whole bunch of other stuff
. Hackaday has a booth (thanks, overlords!) on the mezzanine right with the other vendors, right behind the Club-Mate table.
We’ll be putting up random updates from HOPE the entire weekend. If you’re visiting, stop by and we might have a t-shirt for you. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1646927",
"author": "jlbrian7",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T17:40:52",
"content": "taking the kids to adafruit this weekend to buy a couple of drawdios, but cant afford hopex tickets. :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1646965",
... | 1,760,376,134.248723 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/the-hackaday-prize-rules-change-and-entry-date-extension/ | The Hackaday Prize Rules Update And Entry Date Extension | Mike Szczys | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"rules",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | AMENDMENT TO HACKADAY CONTEST OFFICIAL RULES
Hackaday has been hard at work making sure the requirements to qualify for The Hackaday Prize are well understood. Recently
we published a FAQ
to help answer questions, and we updated
the main contest page
to make information easier to find. We are also publishing a pair of “walkthrough” videos that show just how easy it is meet these requirements. In light of these clarifications, and the availability of these helpful resources, we have decided to extend the deadline for entries from 8/4/14 to 8/20/14, and to make minor changes to a couple of requirements in the Official Rules. Here’s a summary:
Contestants must now complete all requirements for the “Community Vote (Stage 1)” and “Quarterfinals (Stage 2)” by 11:50 P.D.T. on August 20, 2014 (rather than August 4, 2014).
Contestants are no longer required to make one video for the Community Vote stage and another video for the Quarterfinals stage. Instead, only one video – the video described under the “Quarterfinals (Stage 2)” subsection of the Official Rules – is required by the 11:50 P.D.T., August 20, 2014, Quarterfinals deadline.
Build instructions are no longer required at the Quarterfinals stage.
Contestants do not need to post any videos, at any point in the contest, to Hackaday’s YouTube channel (although you still need to upload each video to YouTube or Youku and tag it with the keyword provided in the Rules).
We have amended the Official Rules to reflect these changes. Please
view them here
.
We hope that this will make it easier for you to enter and claim the The Hackaday Prize by showing off your mad electronics skills. You’ve got extra time… get hacking!
As always, If you have any questions about The Hackaday Prize you may contact us directly:
prize@hackaday.com
Thanks, and good luck! | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1646934",
"author": "John Schuch @JohnS_AZ",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T17:43:18",
"content": "Hmm. Okay. Can’t help but feel that that kind of sucks, but, your contest, your rules.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1646949",
"a... | 1,760,376,134.208292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/backyard-brains-controlling-cockroaches-fruit-flys-and-people/ | Backyard Brains: Controlling Cockroaches, Fruit Flys, And People | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"backyard brains",
"cockroach",
"fruit fly",
"neuroscience",
"optogenetics"
] | [Greg Gage] and some of the other crew at Backyard Brains have done a TED talk, had a few successful Kickstarters, and most surprisingly given that pedigree, are actually doing something interesting, fun, and educational. They’re bringing neuroscience to everyone with a series of projects and kits that mutilate cockroaches and send PETA into a tizzy.
[Greg] demonstrated some of his highly modified cockroaches by putting
a small Bluetooth backpack
on one. The roach had previously been ‘prepared’ by attaching small electrodes to each of its two front antennas. The backpack sends a small electrical signal to the antennae every time I swiped the screen of an iPhone. The roach thinks it’s hitting a wall and turns in the direction I’m swiping, turning it into a roboroach. We
seen something like this before
but it never gets old.
Far from being your one stop shop for cockroach torture devices, Backyard Brains also has a fairly impressive lab in the basement of their building filled with grad students and genetically modified organisms. [Cort Thompson] is working with fruit flies genetically modified so a neuron will activate when they’re exposed to a specific pulse of light.
It’s called optogenetics
, and [Cort] has a few of these guys who have an ‘I’m tasting something sweet’ neuron activated when exposed to a pulse of red light.
Of course controlling cockroaches is one thing, and genetically engineering fruit flies is a little more impressive. How about controlling other people? After being hooked up to an EMG box to turn muscle actuation in my arm into static on a speaker, [Greg] asked for a volunteer. [Jason Kridner], the guy behind the BeagleBone, was tagging along with us, and stepped up to have two electrodes attached to his ulnar nerve. With a little bit of circuitry
that is available in the Backyard Brains store
, I was able to control [Jason]’s wrist with my mind. Extraordinarily cool stuff.
There was far too much awesome stuff at Backyard Brains for a video of reasonable length. Not shown includes projects with scorpions, and an improved version of the roboroach that gives a roach a little bit of encouragement to move forward. We’ll put up a ‘cutting room floor’ video of that a bit later. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1646661",
"author": "Ekranoplane",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T14:30:00",
"content": "Too soon, Hackaday. Really you guys are so insensitive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1646677",
"author": "xor x, x",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,134.303037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/thp-entry-atomic-space-time/ | THP Entry: Atomic Space Time | Will Sweatman | [
"gps hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"atomic clock",
"gps",
"pic18f"
] | Accurate time is all around us. Streaming down from satellites thousands of miles in space, UTC time information is at all of our fingertips. You just have to know how to reach out and grab it. [hkdcsf] not only knows how to do this, he does it
in style
.
Tipping his hat into
The Hackaday Prize
contest, [hkdcsf]’s atomic clock is masterfully crafted. Not only does it get time information from GPS satellites, it also has the ability to grab the infomation from the
DCF77 transmitter
. And if ever it’s in a position where neither signal can be found, an RTC crystal keeps the time and date accurate.
His design is based on a PIC18F25K20, and bristles with so many features that it might make you dizzy. So be warned – you might want to be in a seated position before taking a look at this project. [hkdcsf] does a great job at detailing exactly how his clock works, and his efforts to provide this level of detail will surely help other hackers to add similar features to their future projects.
The project featured in this post is an entry in
The Hackaday Prize
. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1646447",
"author": "Jan Paweł 2 jebał małe dzieci",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T12:22:49",
"content": "I see this and I can only think: “Meh. The chinese have done thousans of clocks like that”. Still a cool project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,134.00976 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/homemade-bazooka-has-earned-its-stripes/ | Homemade Bazooka Has Earned Its Stripes | Kristina Panos | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"alpha rocket",
"gun boats",
"PVC",
"pvc-pipe",
"rocket",
"rocket launcher"
] | Many of us dream of launching rockets from our shoulders, but [John] here
actually did something about it
.
This bazooka build started with a 6″ diameter PVC pipe. He mounted a length of 80/20 T-slotted aluminum extrusion to the pipe through a couple of wood blocks. [John] installed rail buttons on some Estes Alpha rockets which slide along nicely inside the T-slot. He welded a PVC cleanout fitting and plug to one end for easy access and gave her a nice paint job.
The ignition is simple: an irresistible red push button is wired to a 9V battery and a pair of alligator clips. [John] loads up a rocket, puts the gators on the wires of an igniter, pushes said button, and Bob’s your uncle. All he needs now is a pair of gun boats. Video of the build and some demonstrations we don’t necessarily recommend are after the jump. | 126 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "1646020",
"author": "A Reader who sometimes posts",
"timestamp": "2014-07-18T08:07:00",
"content": "I wonder what happens when the PVC Pipe breaks when there is a building up pressure inside of it.Ouch….Maybe he needs a safety tie and everything is alright. No worry about anything."... | 1,760,376,134.633836 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/15/raspberry-pi-turns-a-novelty-radio-into-a-real-computer/ | Raspberry Pi Turns A Novelty Radio Into A Real Computer | Adam Fabio | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Case Hack",
"doom",
"dosbox",
"Mini computer",
"raspberry pi"
] | [Strider19] remembers the 90’s, and a great little novelty radio he had back then. Shaped like a computer, the radio was a typical AM/FM affair, with the monitor serving as a speaker. His original radio was long gone, but [Strider19] was able to find a replacement on everyone’s favorite auction site. With the replacement radio in hand, he set his plan in motion: Turning it into an
epic Raspberry Pi Case
.
The Raspberry Pi fit great, but [Strider19’s] 3.5″ composite monitor didn’t quite make it. Following in [Ben Heck’s] footsteps, [Strider19] cut the LCD’s control PCB down to fit the case. A piece of clear polycarbonate protects the fragile LCD from poking fingers. The monitor’s button board, two USB ports, and an external composite input mounted nicely inside the former battery compartment at the rear of the CRT. There’s even enough room back there to hide a USB WiFi adapter.
The Raspi itself fit perfectly into the base of the radio, along with a DC to DC converter, USB hub, real-time clock module, and a whole bunch of wires used to extend the connectors.
The final result is awesome! Thanks to a request on
[Strider19’s] Reddit thread
, we have pictures of
Doom running on a (former) radio
. Even Windows 3.1 runs under DosBox, though it took a bit of tweaking to get the display settings just right. Now [Strider19] just needs to figure out how to turn that tiny keyboard into a working model. We think some old school cell phone keyboard hacking may be in order! | 32 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "1639992",
"author": "krazer",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T17:09:14",
"content": "This is entirely and completely ridiculous, when I saw the picture of the computer sitting next to a real keyboard I almost fell off my chair laughing at the sheer awesomeness of this hack.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,134.797393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/15/judge-spotlight-joe-grand/ | Judge Spotlight: Joe Grand | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"joe grand",
"judge",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | We’ve been fascinated by [Joe Grand] for years. His early talks at DEFCON, and extensive work
designing badges for it
, helped to put the conference on our radar. We’ve seen many pieces of hardware come from his company
Grand Idea Studio
over the years, and of course there was the television show
Prototype This!
which must have been way too awesome for some TV exec to allow it to continue.
We asked [Joe], who is
a judge for The Hackaday Prize
, a few a questions. He sent back
the video response
embedded below. He talks about what he’s doing these days, the hacker community in Boston, shows off some hardware he uses when teaching about security, and much more.
0:56
– Tell us what you’re doing in your professional life these days.
He mentions his
Laser Rangefinder
,
Speech Synthesis
,
RFID Reader/Writer
4:10
– You were a member of the early
L0pht
hacking group. What was that, and are you still in touch with people from that community?
7:30
– You teach people how to reverse engineer hardware at Blackhat and DEFCON. What is that process like?
10:44
– Your background with fast hacking (Prototype This!, conferences, etc.) make you perfect as a judge for The Hackaday Prize. What advice do you have to help contestants pull it together under deadline?
12:44
– We might go as far as calling you the grand master of conference badge designs. What is your process for developing a new badge?
18:10
– What’s your take on Open Design?
19:54
– How has the hardware scene in the Bay Area grown and changed since you’ve been living there?
23:03
– We love your
JTAGulator
(especially the name). Tell us why it’s the perfect tool for The Hackaday Prize?
25:00
– What can people do with their Hackaday Prize entries to impress you? | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1639769",
"author": "Adam Claassen",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T14:38:42",
"content": "That TV show was awsome… It used to be on Netflix, but I guess it got taken down, like all things worth watching on Netflix do at some point.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,376,134.850462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/15/retrotechtacular-atts-hello-machine/ | Retrotechtacular: AT&T’s Hello Machine | Kristina Panos | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"central office",
"ESS",
"ESS mainframe",
"mustache",
"western electric"
] | How many Ma Bell employees does it take to build an ESS mainframe? This week, Retrotechtacular takes you into the more poetic recesses of the AT&T Archive to answer that very question. This wordless 1974 gem is
an 11-minute exploration of the construction and testing of a Western Electric 1ESS
. It begins with circuit board population and ends with lots of testing.
The film is really quite groovy, especially the extreme closeups of wire wrapping and relay construction. The soundtrack is a string-heavy suite that moves you through the phases of bringing up the
1ESS
while drawing parallels to the wires of communication. You may lose count of the punch down blocks and miles of cables, but there are surprisingly few mustaches.
[Thank you, Tijmen 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
. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1639545",
"author": "Nate B",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T11:56:41",
"content": "The amount of wire-wrapping within the individual frames before they’re moved to the site is something I’d forgotten! This was before the days of PCB panels the size of a door, and all the card-to-card bac... | 1,760,376,134.922657 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/15/diy-circuit-boards-look-professional/ | DIY Circuit Boards Look Professional | Rich Bremer | [
"hardware"
] | [
"board etching",
"diy pcb",
"etched PCB",
"solder mask"
] | Making PCBs at home is a great means to get your prototype up and running without having to wait weeks for a professionally made board. Regardless if these prototype boards are milled or etched, they are easily identified as ‘home brew’ due to their ‘unfinished’ appearance. [HomeDIY&Stuff] has put together a little how-to on the process for making
DIY PCBs look a little closer to a professionally manufactured board
.
The process starts out with designing the board in a PCB program. There are a lot of these programs available. Eagle is a popular choice and has a free version available. Once the layout it finalized, the design is printed out on a transparent sheet of plastic. A blank copper-clad PCB board that already has a UV sensitive coating applied are available for purchase and is what is used in this example. The transparency is placed over the PCB blank and then exposed to UV light. The coating on the PCB cures where ever the UV light passes through the open areas of the transparency.
Once the transparency is removed, there is a noticeable difference in coating color where it has cured. This board is now placed in a developer solution that removes the un-cured UV sensitive coating. A Ferric Chloride acid bath then etches away at the now-exposed copper. The cured coating from the previous step protects the copper at the trace locations during the etch process. The result is a board with copper where you want it and none where you don’t. If the board has any through-hole components, this would be the time to drill those holes.
Up to this point the process has been pretty standard for homemade PCBs and the next part is certainly the most interesting but, unfortunately, is also the worst documented step; the solder mask and silk screening. It appears that two silk screens are produced, one for the solder mask and one for the silk screen. The artwork for making the silk screens can be output from the PCB design software. There is no mention of the solder mask material used but oil-based silk screen ink is specified. Although the details are lacking, the photos show that it works pretty well. If you have had any experience with silk screening DIY PCBs, let us know in the comments. | 27 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1639111",
"author": "Nick Leijenhorst",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T08:16:46",
"content": "I’ve been etching for a while now, but I’d love to actually take the time and apply a solder mask to the board… Soldering without solder mask is just a pain sometimes ;)Not sure what the best way... | 1,760,376,135.040091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/thp-entry-polymerase-chain-reaction-cheaper-than-a-hamburger/ | THP Entry: Polymerase Chain Reaction, Cheaper Than A Hamburger | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"dna",
"PCR",
"polymerase chain reaction"
] | Invented 30 years ago, polymerase chain reaction , or PCR, is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. It’s the technique that allows researchers to map genomes, find genetic causes of diseases, create Jurassic Park, and match crime scene DNA to suspects. When PCR was first invented it was extraordinarily expensive, and even today commercial PCR machines cost about the same as a new car. There is an
open source project
for a PCR machine that costs about $600, but for his Hackaday Prize entry, [David] is knocking a few more zeros off that cost
and building a machine for less than the cost of a fast food meal
.
Despite being the work behind a Nobel Prize, PCR is conceptually fairly simple: A strand of DNA is unwound into two strands, an enzyme, or primer, is annealed onto these single strands, and then biochemistry happens, turning those single helix strands of DNA into a complete double helix, ready for the next replication cycle. The key of the PCR technique is getting the enzymes and primers to react. This is only done at a fairly fine range of temperatures, cycling between 90°C, then 60°, then 72°C.
The oldest models of PCR machines used multiple water baths, with newer commercial machines using something that probably justifies their cost. The OpenPCR project uses an aluminum heater block, but [David] is going for a modern twist on the old-school method. He’s trying to figure out how to exploit convection to get local temperature variations in a single vessel. How he’s going to do this is anyone’s guess, but building a PCR machine for $5 is pretty cool.
The project featured in this post is an entry in
The Hackaday Prize
. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1638850",
"author": "zuul",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T06:01:00",
"content": "lolyes you can just stick your DNA and master mix in a tube and put it in hot water and manually increase the temperature then turn it down and do it again and again like 32 times to do PCR..lager margins of... | 1,760,376,134.976767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/door-lock-provides-peace-of-mind-with-real-time-security/ | Door Lock Provides Peace Of Mind With Real-Time Security | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"door lock",
"eeprom",
"hd44780",
"lock"
] | [HSP] got tired of locking his door with a key, so he decided to upgrade to a keypad system which
he’s designed himself.
It uses an Arduino Mega with the standard 44780 display, a standard keypad, and the “key override” (shown above) for fun. The locking mechanism is a standard 12V actuator based lock which was modified to run off of only 7.5V, by softening up the spring inside and running it upside down (as to let gravity help do the work). The whole system draws less than half a watt on standby, and engaging the lock peaks at only 4-7W.
What’s really clever about this design is how he locks it from inside the room. He’s programmed the Arduino to write 1 to address 128 of the EEPROM — at power on it will increment this by 1, and after 5 seconds, it will reset to 1. This means it can detect a quick power cycle, so you can lock the door by turning it off, turning it on for a few seconds, and turning it off and on again — he did this so he didn’t have to make a button or console, or any kind of wireless control on the inside.
Now we know that kind of adds a huge flaw to the overall security of the system… but [HSP] learned his lesson last time he built something “too” secure.
The relay board is inside the box on the wall on the outside, and the lock is only locked with power. This is insecurity by design. This is to keep the casual people out. The door itself is thin wood with cardboard in between. I previously had a lock which was locked on power failure, and the machine (Windows) running it, crashed. I got to climb through the roof window, 7 meters up to get inside without trashing the door, so now I have a little respect for the possibility of failure, and design my systems for the expected threat-level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZj-wPOwu9c | 32 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1638542",
"author": "macw",
"timestamp": "2014-07-15T02:31:38",
"content": "But EEPROM has a finite write life! After 100,000 cycles that address will start to fail. Oh, sure, it may work for a while, but what if he locks his door twice a day and he lives in the same house for 135 y... | 1,760,376,135.123957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/rbcreation/ | Red Bull Creation: Giant Cannons Shooting Salt | Brian Benchoff | [
"contests",
"Featured"
] | [
"cannon",
"detroit",
"detroitus",
"rb creation",
"red bull",
"red bull creation",
"ryan c doyle"
] | Hackaday took a trip to Detroit last weekend for
the Red Bull Creation Contest
. It was a blast, we had a lot of fun, and we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse at seven teams hacking, grinding, sawing, and soldering their way through the 72 hour buildoff.
Team Detroitus started their build with the idea of building a giant air cannon. The theme of the build was ‘reinventing the wheel’, but they apparently didn’t let that get in the way of building a giant double barrel air cannon, filling it with candy and stuffed animals, and shooting it, point blank, at children. I was wanged by a lemon Starburst, but that’s my favorite flavor anyway.
Detroitus getting ready to lift the cannon onto its mobile base
Both barrels installed on the cannon
Single barrel installed early Friday morning
Former NYPD vehicle (parking?) used to haul the cannon
They were running it at about 80 psi. It could have gone to 120. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1638280",
"author": "vosnul",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T23:15:15",
"content": "http://www.hackersthatlooklikecatsthatlooklikehitler.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1638381",
"author": "alfie275",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,135.177879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/the-raspberry-pi-model-b-is-here-again/ | The Raspberry Pi Model B+ Is Here (Again!) | Brian Benchoff | [
"News",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"b",
"Model B+",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi"
] | Depending on who you believe, yesterday someone either broke an NDA or was the lucky recipient of an Element 14 shipping error. Nevertheless, we were lucky enough to
get a glimpse at the new Raspberry Pi Model B+
. Today, everything is live, and
Adafruit has a great teardown
of what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s completely different in this new board.
The biggest question about this new Pi was the CPU: the Broadcom SoC in the models A and B are looking a little long in the tooth right now, and an upgraded CPU would be a very, very welcome addition. There is no change. This is the same 700 MHz Broadcom chip with 512MB of RAM. There will not be a ‘magical, because you’re awesome’ RAM upgrade the original Model B saw early in production, either – there simply aren’t enough address pins in the SoC.
Despite not having an upgraded CPU, there are some neat features that addressed the complaints of the original Pi: The standard sized SD card socket is replaced with a microSD card socket that won’t stick out over the edge of the board. The ports are rearranged, with the analog video out on a TRRS plug with the audio. There are now four USB ports and an Ethernet port
thanks to this chip
, and mounting holes galore: they’re M2.5 holes in a square 58mm wide and 49mm high. Also included in the B+ is a completely redesigned power supply – the jumbo linear regulator is gone, replaced with an all-around better power supply.
The biggest change for anyone looking making a project with the Pi is the expanded GPIO header. This is a 40 pin header, with the ‘top’ pins identical to the original 26 pin header. Yes, all your existing Pi plates/shields/whatevers will still work. The new pins on this header include nine more GPIO pins, the I2S pins for the
Wolfson audio card
, and a pair of pins for an ID EEPROM. Connections to an ID EEPROM have been a feature of the BeagleBone for a while now, and this will allow the Pi to configure the appropriate I/Os and kernel modules at boot, depending on what Pi Plates are attached.
The best part about this is the price – it’s the same as the OG Model B. Using the same case as you old Model A or B is out of the question, but that’s totally what Kickstarter is for, right? You might want to grab one of those, because this is probably going to be the form factor for the upgraded Raspberry Pi 2.0 that will probably be released in a year or two. | 105 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1637993",
"author": "Depot",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T20:05:28",
"content": "Neat. But I had just bought a Raspberry Pi a week ago from Adafruit (hardly anyone else had one in stock). I might ask if I could return it or if it’s just shucks for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,135.391651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/cern-shows-off-new-kicad-module-editor/ | CERN Shows Off New KiCad Module Editor | Eric Evenchick | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cad",
"cern",
"dxf",
"KiCAD",
"pcb"
] | CERN, the people that run a rather large particle collider, have just
announced their most recent contributions
to the KiCad project. This work focused on adding new features to the module editor, which is used to create footprints for parts.
The update includes support for DXF files, which will make it easy to import part drawings, or use external tools for more complex designs. New distribute tools make it easy to space out pads evenly. The copy and paste function now allows you to set a reference point, making it easy to align blocks. Finally, the pad enumeration tool lets you quickly set pin numbers.
CERN has already implemented a new graphics engine for KiCad, and demonstrated a new push and shove routing tool. The
work plan
for CERN’s KiCad contributions shows their long term goals. If you’re interested in what CERN is doing with KiCad, you can check out the
CERN KiCad Developers Team
on Launchpad.
After the break, watch a quick run through of the new features.
[Thanks to dkozel for the tip!] | 38 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1637811",
"author": "JIm B",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T17:53:22",
"content": "Great progress! I have used kicad only once, and on a simple project, but I recognize the huge improvements CERN is making in the router, gui, and now library creation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,135.256603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/how-to-hack-your-way-into-your-own-gated-community/ | How To: Hack Your Way Into Your Own Gated Community | Rich Bremer | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"RF",
"rf remote control",
"rf transmitter"
] | Does your Gated Community make you feel secure due to the remote-controlled gate keeping the riffraff out? Residents of such Gated Communities in Poland are now shaking in fear since [Tomasz] has
hacked into his own neighborhood
by emulating the signal that opens the entrance gate. Shockingly, this only took about 4 hours from start to finish and only about $20 in parts.
Most of these type of systems use RF communication and [Tomasz’s] is no difference. The first step was to record the signal sent out by his remote. A
USB Software Defined Radio transmitter/receiver
coupled with a program called
SDR#
read and recorded the signal without a hitch. [Tomasz] was expecting a serialized communication but after recording and analyzing the signal from several people entering the community it became clear that there was only one code transmitted by everyone’s remote.
Now that he knows the code, [Tomasz] has to figure out a way to send that signal to the receiver. He has done this by making an RF transmitter from just a handful of parts, the meat and potatoes being a Colpitts oscillator and a power amplifier. This simple transmitter is connected to a
DISCOVERY
board that is responsible for the modulation tasks. [Tomasz] was nice enough to make his code available on his site for anyone that is interested in stopping by for a visit. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1637526",
"author": "lja",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T14:38:27",
"content": "Wow, that seems pretty insecure having the same code for everyone?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1637576",
"author": "CaptainClank",
... | 1,760,376,135.783807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/carpool-deville-the-worlds-fastest-hot-tub/ | Carpool DeVille: The World’s Fastest Hot Tub | Eric Evenchick | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"carpool",
"hot tub",
"kickstarter",
"Land speed record",
"mcmaster",
"salt flats"
] | Back in 1996, a group of engineering students at McMaster University set out to build a fully functional hot tub housed in a working car. They chopped up an abandoned 1982 Chevy Malibu and converted it into The Carpool.
That group of students graduated, and began work on the
Carpool DeVille
. Six years later, they’re ready to take it to Bonneville Salt Flats to claim the title of “world’s fastest hot tub.”
There has been some substantial modifications to the vehicle to make the Carpool a reality. A custom fibreglass tub was built to drop into the passenger compartment, and heat exchangers were added to the stock engine system to heat the water. The plumbing and pumps for the tub reside in the truck, while the original V8 engine is up in the front. A custom air suspension system allows them to carry the massive volume of water. There’s even a marine throttle to control gas and brake from the driver’s seat in the tub.
The folks behind the Carpool DeVille ran a Kickstarter to fund their race costs. The campaign is over, but you can still check out the story and pictures of the conversion. Since it was a successful campaign, we’re looking forward to seeing this custom vehicle out on the salt flats. | 27 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1637251",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T11:08:40",
"content": "As I was motivating over the hill, I saw Maybelline in a…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1637267",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-0... | 1,760,376,135.503732 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/14/pulse-generator-tells-your-motors-get-ta-steppin/ | Pulse Generator Tells Your Motors “Get Ta Steppin” | Rich Bremer | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"pulse generator",
"stepper motor",
"stepper motor controller"
] | Stepper motors are great for a bunch of projects; CNC machines, clocks or robots for example. Sometimes when working on a project that does include a stepper motor and driver, it would be nice to test that part of the build without hooking everything up. A pulse generator could be used to complete such a task and [CuteMinds] has put together a
DIY friendly version
tailored specifically for stepper motors. This device makes quick and easy work for testing out those stepper motors.
At the heart of the pulse generator is a 12F675 microchip which looks to the resistance value of a potentiometer to adjust the square wave step signal output from 20hz to 3khz. Just having the step signal would pretty cool but this project goes a little farther. There are 3 sets of headers on the board that allow you to connect either a jumper or switch in order to: 1) turn the power on, 2) enable the stepper driver and 3) select the direction the motor turns. The on-board batteries make this unit portable for remote usage.
If you are itching to make one for yourself, the
Eagle
schematic and board files are available for download at the above link. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1637144",
"author": "David Hartigan",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T10:20:53",
"content": "looks good, i’m thinking about building an all-in-one stepper tester for both 4 and 5 pin steppers and this got me wondering if this would work with the easydriver?",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,135.828899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/open-source-glucose-monitoring-an-the-front-lines-of-innovation/ | Open Source Glucose Monitoring On The Front Lines Of Innovation | Marsh | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"cgm",
"diabetes",
"glucose",
"health monitor",
"open source"
] | [John] is the parent of a diabetic child, and his
efforts to expand the communication options for his son’s CGM (continuous glucose monitor)
have grown into a larger movement:
#wearenotwaiting
.
After receiving a new monitor—a Dexcom G4—[John] set about decoding its communication protocols. The first steps were relatively simple, using a laptop to snag the data from the CGM and storing it on a Google doc which he could access as the day went along. The next step involved connecting the monitor and a cellphone for around-the-clock data gathering. [John] managed to develop an Android app to accomplish just that, and shortly after people began to take notice. Both [Howard Look], the CEO of
Tidepool
, and [Lane Desborough], engineer and father of a child with diabetes, have thrown in their support, leading to further developments such as
Nightscout
, an open source solution for storing CGM data in the cloud.
This project is a victory not only for those with diabetes, but also for the open source community. [John] admits his initial hesitation for developing for the medical device platform: litigation from a corporation could cause devastation for him and his family despite his intentions to merely improve his son’s and others’ quality of life. Those fears have mostly subsided, however, because the project now belongs to both no one and to everyone. It’s community-owned through an open source repository. Check out the overview of [John’s] work for more pictures and links to different parts of the #wearenotwaiting community. | 26 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1636667",
"author": "matseng",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T05:18:59",
"content": "This is definitely cool! Open source health/medical projects are a huge untapped market.Now, if I could get a Ketone -monitor like this I’d be happy as a clam. I keep track of my ketone levels since I’m ... | 1,760,376,135.600402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/lego-drawing-machine-draws-block-shapes-best/ | Lego Drawing Machine Draws Block Shapes Best | Rich Bremer | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"drawing bot",
"drawing robot",
"lego",
"lego robot"
] | Loving to draw but deathly afraid of pen ink, [Marcel] came up with a
little drawing machine
made out of Lego that will do it for him. It’s not a very complicated build but it does have several different components arranged such to complete a task, and that in itself is cool. Oh yeah, just kidding about the “afraid of pen ink” thing.
RC Car Servos are used to drive the pen in the X and Y directions. These servos only have a 180 degree range of motion which is not enough to move the pen very far. To increase the pen’s travel distance, [Marcel] attached a large gear to the servo which rotates a much smaller gear that rides on a rack gear attached to the bed. A Lego hinge takes the place of a Z axis and is used to set the height of the pen that is strapped to the machine via rubber band.
In order to make the machine draw, the user moves an analog joystick. The changing resistance values of the joystick’s potentiometers are measured by an Arduino. The Arduino then moves each servo to the appropriate position using PWM. If you’d like to know how to do this, check out the
Knob Tutorial
.
If you’re not ready to l’eggo your Lego drawing machines, check out this
super complicated creation
or this
arm emulator
that draws the Mona Lisa. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1636505",
"author": "qscdw",
"timestamp": "2014-07-14T03:31:38",
"content": "God I hate hackaday.io… Really I needed to go there to find an external link to the youtube video, a description and to find out the parts list?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,135.873686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/hackaday-links-july-17-2014/ | Hackaday Links: July 13, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"acrylic",
"deal with it",
"fpga",
"server",
"sparkfun",
"sunglasses",
"Teensy 3.1",
"waveform"
] | Don’t like sunglasses?
Deal with it
. They’re the pixeley, retro sunglasses from your favorite animated .GIFs, made real in laser cut acrylic. Points of interest include heat-bent frames made out of a single piece of acrylic.
Remember
this really small FPGA board
? The kickstarter is ending really soon and
they’re upgrading it
(for an additional $30) with a much better FPGA.
Sparkfun
is now hosting the Internet of Things
. They’re giving people a tiny bit of space to push data to,
and you can also deploy your own server
. That’s interesting, and you can expect us doing a full post on this soon.
Need waveforms? [Datanoise] is building a wavetable synthesizer,
and he’s put all his waveforms online
. Now if we could just get a look at the synth…
If you only have $20 to spend on a board, you’ll want to pick up at Teensy 3.1. [Karl]
wrote some bare metal libraries for this awesome board
, and while it’s not as extensive as the standard Arduino libs, it’s more than enough to get most projects off the ground. Included are UARTs, string manipulation tools, support for the periodic interval timers on the chip, and FAT and SD card support. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1636051",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T23:50:17",
"content": "> [Karl] wrote some bare metal libraries for this awesome boardThanks [Karl]. I am actually designing-in a K20 sub family chip and this can’t come at a much better time.I’ll probably need to modify [K... | 1,760,376,135.919125 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/adc-for-raspi-without-using-an-adc/ | ADC For Raspi Without Using An ADC | Will Sweatman | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"adc",
"raspberry pi"
] | With all the amazing and wonderful things a Raspberry Pi can do, it is sorely lacking a dedicated ADC chip. Sure, you can wire up an ADC via SPI or even I2C with a little work, but still. It would be nice to have access to an Analog to Digital converter without having to go through the trouble. Fortunately, [Hussam] has
figured out a way to do just this.
Using a comparator, two resistors, a single capacitor and a few lines of code, [Hussam] managed to get an active ADC working on his Raspberry Pi. He’s using the PWM1 and a passive RC filter to make a DAC. He then uses the comparator along with a ‘ successive approximation algorithm’ to complete the ADC.
[Hussam] mentions that the hack is not new, and this technique has been used before for microcrotrollers that lack a built-in ADC. But we are still impressed with his attention to detail in describing how to do this on a Raspi. Be sure to check out the link for full details, code, and an awesome description on how his algorithm works. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1635766",
"author": "onebiozz",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T20:03:27",
"content": "basically recreating what’s found inside of an ADC chip!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1635769",
"author": "cr0sh",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,135.978589 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-b/ | Introducing The Raspberry Pi B+ | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi"
] | It looks like Element 14 screwed up a single shipment,
because some lucky soul just received an unreleased model of Raspberry Pi
. If you can believe the silkscreen, it’s called the Raspberry Pi Model B+, and while we have no idea what the chipset is, the layout and peripherals look pretty cool.
From the looks of it, this new board features four USB ports, a new, 40-pin GPIO header, and more screw holes that will allow you to secure this to anything. The analog video out is gone, and the SD card connector – a weak point of the original design – might be replaced with a microSD connector. Oh, every Raspi case that has ever been made? They won’t work.
Without booting this Raspi B+ there’s no way of knowing what the chipset is on this new board. The smart money is on the entire SOC being the same: basically, what you’re looking at is the same as a Raspberry Pi Model B, only with a few more ports.
There is no clue when these improved Raspis will be available, but the word “soon™” will probably appear on
the Raspberry Pi blog
shortly.
Thanks [John] for the tip.
EDIT:
[feuerrot] is smarter than me and mirrored all the images
in an imgur album
. | 208 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "1635492",
"author": "Pedram Azimaie",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T17:09:35",
"content": "i think they combined audio and video jack. silkscreen says A/V beside the jack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1635749",
"author"... | 1,760,376,136.581127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/proper-debugging-for-energia-sketches/ | Proper Debugging For Energia Sketches | Eric Evenchick | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"code composer studio",
"debugging",
"energia",
"launchpad",
"msp430",
"texas instruments"
] | Energia is a tool that brings the Arduino and Wiring framework to Texas Instruments’ MSP430 microcontrollers and the MSP430 Launchpad development board. This allows for easy development in an Arduino-like environment while targeting a different microcontroller family.
One problem with Energia and Arduino is the difficulty of debugging. Usually, we’re stuck putting a Serial.println(); and watching the serial port to trace what our program is doing. Other options include blinking LEDs, or using external displays.
Code Composer Studio, TI’s official development tool, allows for line-by-line debugging of applications. You can set breakpoints, watch the value of variables, and step through an application one instruction at a time.
The good news is that the latest version of Code Composer Studio supports importing
Energia sketches
. Once imported, you can step through the code and easily debug your application. This is a huge help to people developing more complex software using Energia, such as libraries.
TI gives us an overview of the new feature in a video after the break.
[Thanks to Adrian for the tip!] | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1635299",
"author": "AnarKIT",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T14:29:52",
"content": "Long story short, TI implements new libraries in their main product, so now you can use the traditional tools with your energia code.Why am I not surprised to see this?One of the big issues with the relea... | 1,760,376,136.352267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/a-fully-mechanical-3d-printer-is-mind-blowing/ | A Fully Mechanical 3D Printer Is Mind Blowing | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"mechanical 3d printer"
] | It’s been a while since we’ve been seriously impressed with a project like this one. [Daniël de Bruin], a student at the Art Academy in Utrecht has just put the final touches on his
mechanical 3D printer.
That’s right.
Mechanical.
No computers, no motors, just the power of gravity. It could have been built 100 years ago.
The machine uses a 15kg weight to power the mechanism — it does need to be reset during the print, but that’s a small price to pay for this kind of mechanical automation.
He uses a type of clay in a paste extruder that slowly deposits the material on the build platform. To program the machine, there is a small guiding mechanism that follows the contour of a bent aluminum wire. This allows you to make any number of symmetrical and circular objects.
[Daniël] says he was inspired to build this machine because he loves 3D printing — but at the same time, he feels like it’s kind of like cheating. Beyond pressing the print button, there’s no real human interaction.
I love technology but how can I reclaim ownership of my work? Perhaps by building the machine that produces the work. Perhaps by physically powering the machine, which I built, that produces the work. in hopes of rediscovering the sense of having created something, I create.
Amazing work [Daniël]! | 60 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "1635058",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T11:28:45",
"content": "aaaah mechanical heaven!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1635060",
"author": "Addidis",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T11:29:40",
"content": "s... | 1,760,376,136.301684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/13/pi-musicbox-0-5-released/ | Pi Musicbox 0.5 Released | Eric Evenchick | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"audio",
"pi musicbox",
"raspberry pi",
"spotify",
"streaming"
] | Have an extra Raspberry Pi kicking around? Pi MusicBox provides a way to quickly turn it into a standalone streaming device that can fetch music from tons of sources. The
latest release of Pi MusicBox
adds a bunch of new features.
We took a look at this software
over a year ago
, and noted that it made streaming Spotify easy, and had support for controlling tracks using
Music Player Daemon
(MPD). The newest release supports AirPlay, DNLA, Google Music, SoundCloud, and several other music sources.
Since the analog audio output on the Pi isn’t great, Pi MusicBox includes support for a variety of USB sound cards. It’s also possible to use the HDMI port for digital audio output, which can be connected into your home theatre system.
If you want to build a standalone music device, this looks like a great place to start. The user community has built a variety of projects that run this software, which are featured on the
Pi MusicBox homepage
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1634845",
"author": "paul",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T08:19:58",
"content": "Whats about a bluetooth A2DP renderer?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1634976",
"author": "eccentricelectron",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T10:17:0... | 1,760,376,136.697984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/independent-wheel-drive-rc-car/ | Independent Wheel Drive R/C Car | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"4wd",
"gyro",
"Independent drive",
"R/C car",
"rc",
"Simulink"
] | The picture above looks like a standard four-wheel drive (4WD) touring car. As one looks closer, a few strange things start to pop out. Where’s the motor? 4 electronic speed controls? What’s going on here? [HammerFET] has created this
independent drive R/C car
(YouTube link) as a research platform for his control system. The car started off life as a standard
Schumacher Mi5
1/10th scale Touring Car. [HammerFET] removed the entire drive system. The motor, differentials, belt drive, and ESC all made for quite a pile of discarded hardware.
He replaced the drive system with 4 Turnigy brushless outrunner motors, installed at the chassis center line. To fit everything together, he had to 3D print new drive cups from stainless steel. The Mi5’s CVD drive shafts had to be cut down, and new carbon fiber suspension towers had to be designed and cut.
The real magic lies in [HammerFET’s] custom control board. He’s using an STM32F4 ARM processor and an InvenSense MPU-6050 IMU which drone pilots have come to know and love. Hall effect sensors mounted above each motor keep track of the wheel speed, much like an ABS ring on a full-scale car.
[HammerFET’s] software is created with MATLAB and SimuLink. He uses SimuLink’s embedded coder plugin to export his model to C, which runs directly on his board. Expensive software packages for sure, but they do make testing control algorithms much simpler. [HammerFET’s]
code is available on Github
.
Since everything is controlled by software, changing the car’s drive system is as simple as tweaking a few values in the code. Front and rear power offset is easily changed. Going from a locked spool to an open differential is as simple as changing a value from 0 to 1. Pushing the differential value past 1 literally overdrives the differential. In a turn, the outer wheel will be driven faster than it would be on a mechanical differential, while the inner wheel is slowed down. Fans of drifting will love this setting!
[HammerFET] is still working on his software, he hopes to implement electronic
torque vectoring
. Interested? Check out the conversation over on his
Reddit thread
. | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1634689",
"author": "roboman2444",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T06:02:22",
"content": "Love the idea. Really cool that he managed to do it on a touring car.Is it still as fast, though?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1635277",
... | 1,760,376,136.650475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/google-cardboard-vr-kit-for-under-15/ | Google Cardboard VR Kit For Under $15 | James Hobson | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"gogle cardboard app",
"google i/o"
] | Craving some virtual reality goodness? Unsure of Oculus after Facebook purchased them? Well — why not
make your own then!
At last weeks
Google I/O conference
, those lucky enough to attend received the
Google Cardboard
VR kit. It’s basically just a piece of cardboard, two lenses, a few magnets, an NFC tag and some velcro — but when you slide your phone into it and download the
Cardboard app
— you have virtual reality, on your phone.
This inspired [Wolfgang] to make his own variation of this, except instead of a phone, it fits a tablet much nicer. It really is just a cardboard box with the lenses glued in place — but it works! Of course you could
3D print a nice housing
— but if you’re super excited to try out some VR apps — cardboard will do the trick as well!
Besides the Cardboard app there’s a few more Android VR applications worth a look —
Tuscany Dive
(explore Tuscany from the comfort of your chair),
ViewR
(a voice controlled experience), and
Dive Volcano VR Demo
(explore a volcano!).
Only trick is finding those pesky lenses… | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1634385",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T02:59:31",
"content": "I hope I’m not the only one that instantly thought of Minecraft…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1634516",
"author": "jdarling",
"tim... | 1,760,376,136.745724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/embedding-wireless-charging-into-your-laptop/ | Embedding Wireless Charging Into Your Laptop | James Hobson | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"chromebook",
"QI",
"qi charger",
"wireless phone charging"
] | Looking for a project to do [Jason Clark] thought it might be fun to integrate a spare wireless
Qi charger into his HP Chromebook 14.
He started by cracking open the Qi charger — it’s held together by adhesive and four phillips screws hiding under the feet pads — all in all, not that difficult to do. Once the plastic is off, the circuit and coil are actually quite small making it an ideal choice for hacking into various things. We’ve seen them stuffed
into Nook’s
,
a heart
, salvaged for a
phone hack…
Anyway, the next step was opening up the Chromebook. The Qi charger requires 5V at 2A to work, which luckily, is the USB 3.0 spec — of which he has two ports in the Chromebook. He identified the 5V supply on the board and soldered in the wires directly — Let there be power!
While the coil and board are fairly small, there’s not that much space underneath the Chromebook’s skin, so [Jason] lengthened the coil wires and located it separately, just below the keyboard. He closed everything up, crossed his fingers and turned the power on. Success!
It’d be cool to do something similar with an RFID reader — then you could have your laptop locked unless you have your
RFID ring with you! | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1634184",
"author": "rexxar",
"timestamp": "2014-07-13T00:40:42",
"content": "That seems like a really inconvenient place for a charging pad, to be honest. You couldn’t use while you’re typing, you’d knock it off with your wrist.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,137.40016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/one-small-step-for-magnification-one-giant-leap-for-home-lens-manufacturing/ | One Small Step For Magnification, One Giant Leap For Home Lens Manufacturing | Rich Bremer | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"lens",
"optics"
] | There are some types of projects that we see quite often here on Hackaday; 3D Printers, Development Boards and Video Game Hardware to name a few. Once in a while we see an optics-based project but those use pre-made lenses. [Peter] felt it was time to give
home lens manufacturing
a shot and sent in a tip about his experience.
The typical lens manufacturing process starts off by taking a piece of glass and manipulating it into a rough lens shape, either by removing material or heating the glass and forming it in a mold. These lens blanks are then lapped using progressively finer grits of abrasives until the final lens shape and surface finish are achieved. The tool used to lap the lens is very specialized and specific to one lens contour shape. This lapping process can be very time consuming (and therefore expensive) depending on the quality and size of the lens being made.
Instead of using very specific tools to make his lens [Peter] wanted to use standard equipment so it was possible to make different lens sizes and shapes in the future. He did this by writing a parametric g-code file that can be used for any basic lens. The desired lens parameters are manually entered as variables in one location of the g-code file after which the machine control software, LinuxCNC, takes the g-code and drives a 3-axis CNC Machine to mill out a rough shape of a lens.
Three millimeter thick acrylic was used in place of glass for this experiment because it is easier to machine than glass. That is not to say there weren’t any problems during the milling process. [Peter] quickly learned that coolant was extremely important in the process. Without it, the acrylic would melt and fill up the flutes of the milling bit resulting in the bit pushing its way through the material rather than cutting through it.
The milling process did not leave a clear finish and required a lot of polishing. After becoming bored of polishing by hand [Peter] tried using a rotor tool… and then burnt a portion of the lens. Lesson learned!
The final lens is not anything special in comparison to commercial lenses but for a first DIY Lens attempt, it is amazing. If you are interested in making your own lenses the g-code file is available at the above link. | 38 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1633818",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T20:18:23",
"content": "With a 6-axis machine and some buffer attachments he could polish it automatically too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1633821",
"author": "w... | 1,760,376,137.337175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/add-a-bluetooth-interface-to-your-kitchen-scale/ | Add A Bluetooth Interface To Your Kitchen Scale | Rick Osgood | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega",
"atmega8",
"bluetooth",
"force meter",
"kitchen scale",
"surface mount"
] | When [Adam] found himself in need of a force meter, he didn’t want to shell out the cash for a high-end model. Instead, he realized he should be able to modify a simple and inexpensive kitchen scale to achieve the
results he desired
.
The kitchen scale [Adam] owned was using all through hole components on a double-sided PCB. He was able to easily identify all of the IC’s and find their datasheets online. After doing some research and probing around with a frequency counter, he realized that one of the IC’s was outputting a frequency who’s pulse width was directly proportional to the amount of weight placed on the scale. He knew he should be able to tap into that signal for his own purposes.
[Adam] created his own custom surface mount PCB, and used an ATMega8 to detect the change in pulse width. He then hooked up a Bluetooth module to transmit the data wirelessly. These components required no more than 5V, but the scale runs from two 3V batteries. Using what he had on hand, [Adam] was able to lower the voltage with just a couple of diodes.
[Adam] managed to cram everything into the original case with little modification. He is now considering writing an Android application to interface with his upgraded kitchen scale. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1633572",
"author": "Darcy InventorArtist",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T17:04:04",
"content": "The Internet of Fat",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1633634",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T17:49:39",... | 1,760,376,136.959031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/bigboy-advance-a-giant-gba-for-big-hands/ | BigBoy Advance, A Giant GBA For Big Hands | James Hobson | [
"classic hacks",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"GBA hack",
"nintendo",
"retrobit"
] | Ever wish Game Boys came in a slightly larger size? [John], aka [Bacteria] of Bacman, decided to try something different with this retro console mod — the
BigBoy.
In case you’re not familiar with the
Bacman website
, it’s a site dedicated to retro video game console modding — and our hacker, [John] is the man behind the scenes. We’ve
shared
plenty
of
their projects
before.
The BigBoy is basically a Game Boy Advance — with an 8″ display. It uses the electronics from a knockoff copy of a RetroBit in a custom case that [John] vacuum formed at home. He sketched out the proposed outline, built a mold out of plastic sheets and hot glue, and created a concrete dummy mold for the vacuum former — meaning if he ever wanted to recreate this project it would be a piece of cake!
After getting all the buttons in place, making small adjustments here and there, he decided to paint the whole thing with some speckled stone paint, which gives it a very unique and robust finish. His build log is quite extensive so if you’re interested, don’t forget to check it out
on the forum. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1633397",
"author": "xbrav",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T14:12:56",
"content": "Interesting choice. Knockoff SNES running a knockoff GBA to SNES adapter. TIL that the GBA ran at 3.3V, whereas the GB/GBC ran at 5 volts, making this adapter incompatible with GB/GBC games.I love how vivid... | 1,760,376,136.791496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/commodore-64-and-nintendo-make-beautiful-music-together-with-syncart/ | Commodore 64 And Nintendo Make Beautiful Music Together With SYNCART | Rick Osgood | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"64",
"commodore",
"cyncart",
"nes",
"nintendo",
"synth",
"synthesizer"
] | [Dan] has been hard at work developing
CYNCART
to get his Commodore 64 and original NES to play together. We’ve seen [Dan’s] handiwork
before
, and it’s pretty clear that he is serious about his chip tunes.
This project starts with something called a
Cynthcart
. The Cynthcart is a Commodore 64 cartridge that allows you to control the computer’s SID chip directly. In effect, it turns your Commodore 64 into a synthesizer. [Dan] realized that the Commodore’s user port sends out simple eight bit values, which happens to match perfectly with the NES’ controller ports. In theory, he should be able to get these two systems communicating with each other.
[Dan] first modified the Cynthcart to send data out of the user port on the Commodore. This data gets sent directly to the NES’ 4021 shift register chip in the second player controller port. The NES runs a program to turn this data into sound on the NES’ audio chip. The first player controller can then be used to modify some other sound settings on the NES. Musical notes are played on the Commodore’s keyboard. This setup can also be used to play music on both systems at the same time. Be sure to watch the video of the system in action below. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1633186",
"author": "timbo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T11:23:49",
"content": "Now that’s a sweet hack! Very creative engineering, bravo.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1633419",
"author": "hackliptik",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,137.1821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/12/whimsical-homemade-wimshurst-machine/ | Whimsical Homemade Wimshurst Machine | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"electrostatic",
"high voltage",
"leyden jar",
"wimshurst",
"wimshurst machine"
] | Got some empty plastic bottles in your recycling bin or cluttering up your desk? Then you’ve got a large portion of the material you need for building your own Wimshurst machine like [Thomas Kim] did. This
demonstration and build video
is one of the many treasures of his YouTube channel. He shows the machine in operation and then spends several real-time minutes showing how he made the heart of it using plastic bottles, the conductive brush from a laser printer, discarded CDs, and a bunch of copper wire. As a bonus, he removes the conductive material and paint from a CD with a homemade taser. As a super special bonus, there’s no EDM soundtrack to this video, just the sounds of productivity.
The
Wimshurst machine
is an electrostatic generator that slightly predates the Tesla coil. It works by passing a charge from one spinning disk to another disk spinning in the opposite direction. When the charge reaches the collecting comb, it is stored in Leyden jars. Finally, it gets discharged in a pretty spark and the cycle begins anew. Once you’re over shocking your friends, use your Wimshurst machine to make an
electrostatic precipitator
.
[Thanks Niklas for sending this in] | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1632894",
"author": "dutado",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T09:12:34",
"content": "In every spindle of CDs/DVDs, there’s a protection disc that is essentially a CD with no reflective layer. Ideal for this job.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,376,137.737845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/astronaut-or-astronot-shipping-is-killing-us-man/ | Astronaut Or Astronot: Shipping Is Killing Us, Man | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [] | We’re busy
trying to get everyone to vote
for their favorite entries in The Hackaday Prize. To encourage this, last week we
gave away a pretty nice oscilloscope
to a random person on hackaday.io,
only because they voted for their favorite projects.
Generous, and the shipping to Brazil is going to murder us.
For this round, we are putting up
a Bukito 3D printer
on the line. To make things extra special, we’re doing this at a little shindig
we’re holding at i3 in Detroit
.
As you can see by the video above, we’re having a great time with great mead. Also, we just gave away a 3D printer.
This is the guy
.
Send you congratulations to his profile. We’ll shoot you an email, [Damian]. Oh, we’re shipping to New Zealand this time. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1633159",
"author": "strevo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T10:59:51",
"content": "being from america, KEEP it up! after years of comments “Oh, I’m not in the USA, I’m ineligible :(”Good job, and keep shipping hard!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,137.582304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/vintage-radio-rocks-with-modern-technology/ | Vintage Radio Rocks With Modern Technology | Will Sweatman | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth"
] | [Madis] had an old
Soviet Russian
Neywa 402 transistor radio sitting on the shelf. It looked cool, but unfortunately that’s about all it did. Built in the 70’s one can only wonder about the past life of the radio. And one can only wonder what the past owner thought about the future of it, if they thought about it at all? Would they have thought that several decades in the future, a hardware hacker would introduce some strange and mysterious technology to breath new life into it? Probably not.
But that’s exactly what happened
.
[Madis] picked up a Bluetooth speaker from Ebay for a whopping $10. And like any good hacker, he immediately took it apart and ditched the original speaker. Wired up to the vintage radio, the Bluetooth receiver can be charged via a USB cable, which neatly tucks away in the back of the case. And with a few taps of his smart phone, he can stream audio to his new vintage Bluetooth speaker.
Though a simple hack, [Madis] does a great job at breathing new life into an antique electronic device. Check out the video after the break for a demonstration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFqyZKsirfY | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1632133",
"author": "kyle",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T02:44:07",
"content": "I’m always disappointed when vintage electronics are scrapped and replaced with newer modules. It would be nice to see new electronics placed into a case made to look vintage.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,137.540797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/an-amazing-diy-single-board-arm-computer-with-bga/ | An Amazing DIY Single Board ARM Computer With BGA | Nick Conn | [
"computer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arm",
"bga",
"linux",
"osh park osh stencils",
"oshpark",
"oshstencils",
"pcb",
"single board computer",
"stencil",
"toaster oven"
] | Typically, you buy a single board Linux computer. [Henrik] had a better idea, build his own
ARM based single board computer
! How did he do it? By not being scared of ball grid array (BGA) ARM processors.
Everyone loves the
Raspberry Pi
and
Beagle Board
, but what is the fun in buying something that you can build? We have a hunch that most of our readers stay clear of BGA chips, and for good reason. Arguably, one of the most important aspects of [Henrik’s] post is that you can easily solder BGAs with cheaply available tools.
OSH Park
provides the inexpensive high-quality PCBs,
OSH Stencils
provides the inexpensive stencils, and any
toaster oven
allows you to solder even the most difficult of components. Not only does he go over the PCB build, he also discusses the bootloader, u-boot, and how to get Linux running.
Everything worked out very well for [Henrik]. It’s a good thing too, cause we sure wouldn’t want to debug a PCB as complicated as this one. What projects have you built that use a BGA?
Let us know
how it went! | 37 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1631749",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T23:07:27",
"content": "Damn… I’m impressed! Not as much as the hardware, but someone willing to tackle this hardware and know enough about software to get Linux running on it! (I’m a hardware guy, if you couldn’t tell….)",
... | 1,760,376,137.477984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/hamtramck-disneyland/ | Hamtramck Disneyland | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"annoy your neighbors",
"detroit",
"hamtramck disneyland"
] | With a few hours of down time I convinced [Caleb Kraft] to go to
Hamtramck Disneyland
with me. You’ve heard of it, right? I certainly hadn’t. I sounded like gibberish when [Chris Thompson]
suggested it to us
. Just a 10 minute drive away from
Recycle Here!
(where the Red Bull Creation is being held).
Without a street address we never would have found it. The spectacle is simply a house on a normal looking street in Hamtramck, Michigan. We were just a few doors down, creeping down the street, before we spied a flash of color between the houses. Swinging around the corner and into the alley this marvel opened up to us. The work of [Dmytro Szylak] started about twenty years ago. He built and built and built for years, a produced some backyard art that impossible to view without beaming with joy. You won’t spend much time there, but seeing for yourself is worth a few minutes side trip. For those that will never have a chance, here are the pictures I snapped.
Caleb reading the signage
Pretty much everything is anchored to the garage which faces the alley.
Even Old Saint NIck gets included in the action.
Rockets!
Caleb posed for a photo
This is one of at least two ceiling fans repurposed as (non-functional) windmills
The sign high atop the exhibition.
There’s a bizarre helicopter hidden nearer the house
Mike posing near the central part of the build… lots to see here! | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1631529",
"author": "J. Peterson",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T20:32:49",
"content": "Posting this may not have been a kind gesture.Disney lawyers launching in three…two…one…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1631553",
"aut... | 1,760,376,137.636783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/museums-should-be-more-popular-than-theme-parks/ | Museums Should Be More Popular Than Theme Parks | Mike Szczys | [
"Teardown",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"model t",
"The Henry Ford Museum"
] | One of the field trips that we set up as part of our Detroit tour was a trip to
The Henry Ford Museum
. After a rather disappointing first half hour wandering around the static exhibits of nicely polished cars we latched onto the part of the museum that’s starts the serotonin pump for anyone who is engineering-minded. There are amazing displays of early industrialization, including steam engines for factories, early power generators, and examples of early assembly line machinery. We’re going to cover that stuff in depth but editing it all together will take some time.
For now we wanted to give you a quick glimpse at a delightful exhibit of a Model T. You don’t just look at it; every morning the museum staff takes apart the entire vehicle and throughout the day helps museum-goers walk through the process of putting it back together.
Why isn’t this the model to supplant amusement parks? This hands-on work with real equipment — not just a model made to stand up to the masses — is pure gold for occupying curious people of all ages. The interaction with museum staff adds a tangible human element to the institution, and you just might learn something more than history in the process!
[Full Disclosure: The Henry Ford provided Hackaday with free admission — Thank You!] | 29 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1631235",
"author": "gravatarnonsense",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T17:12:55",
"content": "Whats with the sound?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1631267",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T17:35:49... | 1,760,376,137.799725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/the-hacklet-7-midi/ | The Hacklet #7 – MIDI | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"hackaday.io",
"hacklet",
"midi"
] | This week’s Hacklet is all about
Hackaday.io
projects which use MIDI, or
Musical Instrument Digital Interface
for the uninitiated. MIDI was designed from the ground up as an open communications standard for musical instruments. Nearly every major instrument company participated in the design of the standard. MIDI was first demonstrated in January of 1983, with the communications standard document following in August. Hackers, makers, and musicians immediately ran with it, using MIDI to do things the designers never dreamed of.
[Robert’s]
9×9 Pixel Muon Detector/Hodoscope
is a great example of this. [Robert] is using 18 Geiger Muller Tubes to detect cosmic particles, specifically
muons
. The tubes are stacked in two rows which allows him to use coincidence detection. Rather than just plot some graphs or calculate impact probabilities, [Robert] hacked a Korg Nanokey 2 MIDI controller to output MIDI over USB messages corresponding to the detected muons. Check out
his video
to see a sample of the music of the universe!
Next up is [Michele’s]
DIY MPC style MIDI controller
. [Michele] needed a simple low-cost drum controller that wouldn’t wake his neighbors. He loved Akai MPC controllers, so he rolled his own. [Michele] investigated force sensitive resistors but found they were very expensive. At a cost of $8 USD each, his resistors alone would be nearly the cost of a low-end MPC! [Michele] created his own sensitive pads using a sandwich of copper tape and 3M
Velostat
conductive sheets. An HCF4067 routes all the analog lines to a single pin of Teensy 3.0, which then converts the analog resistor outputs to MIDI messages.
[Johan] loves his analog synths, and wanted them to be able to talk MIDI too. He built
MIDI2VC
, a circuit which converts MIDI to 1V/Octave (similar to
CV/Gate
). 1V/Octave is an analog control system used in some early synthesizers, as well as many modern analog creations. Pitches are assigned voltages, and as the name implies, each octave is 1 volt. A4 on the keyboard is represented by 4 volts, while A5 is 5 volts. [Johan] used a Microchip PIC16LF1823 to receive and convert the MIDI signals. The PIC outputs I2C data to an MCP4725 DAC which drives the analog side of the house.
Long before
DMX512
came on the scene, hackers were controlling lights via MIDI. [Artis] continues this with
El Dance
, a wireless system for controlling electroluminescent wire worn by dancers. Similar in function to
[Akiba’s] EL wire system
, [Artis] took a lower cost route and used the venerable NRF24L01 radio module. He added an antenna which gives the modules a range of about 30 meters. The computer running the dance routine’s music sees the transmitter side of the link as a MIDI instrument. Standard note on and off commands activate the EL wire strings.
Our final hack comes from [Jen] who built a
MIDI Vibrator Inductor Synth
. [Jen] performs in an experimental music band called My Wife, with instruments as varied as violins and sewing machines. [Jen] must be a fan of
Van Halen’s Poundcake
as she’s using a similar technique, with a MIDI twist. An Arduino converts MIDI notes to analog values, which are sent to a motor controller board. The motor controller uses PWM to drive a vibrator motor at the frequency of the note being played. Like all DC motors, the vibrator puts out a ton of electromagnetic noise, which is easily picked up by [Jen’s] electric bass.
That’s it for this week’s Hacklet! Tune in next week for more projects from
Hackday.io! | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1631000",
"author": "gregkennedy",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T14:07:00",
"content": "My project didn’t make the zine : (http://hackaday.io/project/192-PIC10F220-MIDI-Controller",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1631168",
"... | 1,760,376,137.690021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/home-made-lightbulb-is-a-fun-proof-of-concept/ | Home Made Lightbulb Is A Fun Proof Of Concept | James Hobson | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"diy lightbulb",
"home made lightbulb"
] | Do you ever look at some of the most classic and world-changing inventions and think, “Darn, I totally could have invented that if I was born 100 years ago!”. Sometimes its a lot of fun to try to recreate these inventions making use of period-accurate materials — like this
jar-based carbon filament light bulb!
The project is made out of simple household materials that you probably already have. A jar, some pencil lead, a clothes hanger, some nuts and bolts, a bit of silicone, piano wire and a bit of JB weld. The only thing you might not have is some compressed CO2 — unless you have a kitchen fire extinguisher, a paintball gun, or one of those home-made pop carbonation machines… Alternatively you can just buy some dry ice and let it sublimate in the bottle before you seal the bulb.
No fancy tools are needed (except for an air nozzle for filling the bulb), and it’s not too difficult to construct. The trickiest part is probably drilling small holes through the screw, but if you choose nice brass screws it’ll be quite easy to do.
Once it’s all assembled, plug it into a car battery and enjoy your inefficient 1-lumen light bulb! Still — pretty fun experiment! | 28 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1630704",
"author": "Addidis",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T11:18:15",
"content": "Now power it with a kart of baghdad batteries , like the ancient aliens guys think the egyptians did. It actually makes sense that the priest’s held tech , like batteries and bulbs for lighting work insid... | 1,760,376,137.862851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/400-diy-cnc-machine-is-surprisingly-simple/ | $400 DIY CNC Machine Is Surprisingly Simple! | James Hobson | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"DIY CNC"
] | Once you go CNC you never go back — they’re just too darn convenient! [Drez20001] shows us how he made one for around $400. Who needs expensive roller bearings when
you can use drawer slides?
That’s right — the majority of the cost of this CNC machine are the things you can’t really get any cheaper — the servos (or steppers), the belts (or leadscrews), and of course the motor controller plus computer interface. Everything else? Plywood, drawer slides, and a bunch of fasteners can be had for next to nothing!
He had wanted to build a CNC for years but was mostly hesitant in doing so due to the cost and apparent complexity of the build, but when he started to look into it seriously, he found it really wasn’t the case! It’s built on the basic gantry system design where the X-axis drives a bridge containing both the Y and Z-axis. It’s not a heavy duty machine by any means (he just has a small dremel-like tool in it right now), but for his purposes it’s more than enough.
One rather creative way he saved a few dollars is with his motor couplers — he’s actually taken rubber gas line and cinched it onto both shafts, which he says works quite well!
If you’re looking to spend a bit more and want a stronger machine, you might want to take a look at
this aluminum variation
we shared a few years ago — same basic idea.
[via
Hackedgadgets
] | 33 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1630435",
"author": "T",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T08:54:17",
"content": "Nice one!I built a machine for around $300 some time ago. I also used rubber hose couplers and they are very strong. My machine lacked end-stops and I thought the rubber hoses would act like stops (I didn’t hol... | 1,760,376,138.187681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/2014-red-bull-creation-is-under-way/ | 2014 Red Bull Creation Is Under Way | Mike Szczys | [
"cons"
] | [
"creation contest",
"rbcreation",
"red bull"
] | We rolled into Detroit this morning and immediately wanted to know what the teams for
the Red Bull Creation
were up to. But first thing’s first, what’s the surprise theme? [Brian Benchoff] caught up with [Tyler Hansen] and [Jason Naumoff] who filled us in. The theme is “Reinvent the Wheel”.
The
seven finalist teams
are competing in a live, non-stop build which started yesterday and continues until tomorrow evening. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1632838",
"author": "static",
"timestamp": "2014-07-12T08:43:20",
"content": "Excuse me if this has been ask and answered previously. Will Hackaday ever again enter the contest itself? With team made up of the current roster of Hackney staff or volunteers from the Hackaday army? ... | 1,760,376,138.27065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/party-ready-mini-led-volume-tower/ | Party Ready Mini LED Volume Tower | Nick Conn | [
"digital audio hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"audio tower",
"comparator",
"led",
"lm3914",
"sound",
"sound level",
"VU meter"
] | There are many very cool visual effects for music, but the best are the kind you build yourself. [Ben’s]
mini LED volume towers
adds some nice bling to your music.
[Ben] was inspired to created this project when he saw a variety of awesome stereo LED towers on YouTube (also referred to as VU meters). We have even
featured
a few VU meters,
one very recently
. [Ben] goes over every detail, including how to test your circuit (a very important part of any project). The schematic is deceptively simple. It is based on the LM3914 display driver IC, a simple chained comparator circuit is used to control the volume bar display. All you really need is a 3D printer to make the base, and you can build this awesome tower.
See the completed towers in action after the break. What next? It would be cool to see a larger tower that displays frequency magnitude! | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1630245",
"author": "Sascha",
"timestamp": "2014-07-11T07:12:18",
"content": "Okay, the self made tower is pretty cool, but I already saw a version using WS2811 LEDs.http://blog.simtronyx.de/stimmungsbeleuchtung-auf-basis-eines-ws2811-rgb-led-strips-einem-arduino-acrylglas-und-ein-p... | 1,760,376,138.234047 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/the-electric-imp-and-an-easy-hackaday-prize-entry/ | The Electric Imp And An Easy Hackaday Prize Entry | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"Electric Imp",
"the hackaday prize"
] | We’re a little under a month until the first cutoff date for The Hackaday Prize, and there have been a few questions we’ve been answering again and again: ‘what does ‘connected’ mean?’ and, ‘do I really have enough time to build something for The Hackaday Prize?’ Lucky for you, [Matt] from Electric Imp put together a very short demo of a sample THP entry.
It’s a ‘HACKING’ light
, kind of like an ‘on air’ light you’d find in a TV or Radio studio.
The idea for the project
came from a tweet to [Matt]
that seemed simple enough to implement. After grabbing an Imp and
a breakout board
, a LED, button, and resistor were wired up, with power supplied over USB. The code for the device was simple enough, and the Imp makes it easy to make that ‘hacking’ button tweet and serve a simple web page.
[Matt] pulled this project together in an afternoon, and although it’s not nearly as complex as the 3D printers, CNC machines, and freakin’ tricorders that are also entered into The Hackaday Prize, it meets all the requirements we’re looking for.
Of course, ‘connected’ is a very broad term, and even if you have a project that communicates with LEDs, a serial connection,
or even pigeons
, it’ll be more than enough to tick that ‘connected’ check box.
There’s still a few weeks until the first cutoff date for The Hackaday Prize,
so get moving
.
[via
Bearded Inventor
] | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1629515",
"author": "Robbo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T23:39:26",
"content": "I’ll admit I threw my _very_ simple project’s hat in the ring just because it was easy enough to hit that submit button, so why not? I’m the first to admit my n00b status so I know I’m not going to be buil... | 1,760,376,138.417376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/vote-or-be-sorry-round-2-of-astronaut-or-not/ | Vote Or Be Sorry — Round 2 Of Astronaut Or Not | Mike Szczys | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"astronaut or not",
"TheHackadayPrize",
"vote",
"voter lottery"
] | Have you voted in
the second round of Astronaut or Not
? You’d better get in there by Friday at 9pm EDT or miss your chance to win a
Bukito Portable 3D Printer
in the voter’s lottery.
You must vote at least once per round to be eligible. At the appointed time we’ll draw a random number and look up to see if that profile on Hackaday.io has voted. If so, winner winner (like
the Rigol scope that was awarded last Friday
). If not, no Bukito for you! This new round just started at the beginning of the week. Your vote quota has been restored, and we tweaked the interface to only show you each project once.
In addition to your own gain, you’re helping us choose which projects deserve a bit of swag. We’re one again sending shirts to the projects who rise to the top of the head-to-head gudgematch.
UPDATE:
To clarify, you must vote in the current round to be eligible for the current voter lottery. Your participation in previous rounds has no bearing on the current round eligibility. | 37 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "1629214",
"author": "xorpunk",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T20:12:15",
"content": "Air born wind turbine or the billionth coil gun ‘hack’…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1629218",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2014-07... | 1,760,376,138.493925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/tom-sachs-builds-his-own-space-program/ | [Tom Sachs] Builds His Own Space Program | Adam Fabio | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"flight sim",
"flight simulator",
"LEM",
"lunar module",
"nasa",
"simulator",
"space"
] | Born in the mid 60’s, [Tom Sachs] has always been fascinated with space, especially the Apollo program. Just like every kid of his generation, [Tom] imagined himself in Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s boots, gazing over the lunar surface. He never gave up that dream, and years later as a successful modern artist, he
built his own space program
.
[Tom Sachs]
is a master of
bricolage
. Taken from the French word for tinkering, Wikipedia defines bricolage as “… the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process.” The term could also describe the junkbox procurement methods we use on many of our own projects.
Both [Tom’s]
2007 lunar program
and his
2012 Mars program
featured his astonishing lunar lander. Built from plywood, found items, and junk, the lander literally made us do a double take the first time we saw it. The attention to detail is incredible. At first glance one could mistake this for a simulator built by NASA themselves. After a few seconds the custom touches start to jump out, such as a “Thank You” garbage door from a fast food restaurant, or a bar stocked with tequila and vodka. The lander’s tools are not just for show either, as the gallery opens with a simulated space mission, which could best be described as a mix of art, improv, and an epic game of make-believe for adults.
[Tom’s] installations also include mission control, which in his Mars piece consisted of a dizzying array of screens, controls and an 80’s boombox. Dressed in the white shirt, thin tie, and horn rimmed glasses we’ve come to associate with NASA engineers of the 60’s, this is where [Tom] works. He truly is the engineer of this mission.
Editor’s Note
[Tom] and the entire hacker community at large have a chance to go to space by entering
The Hackaday Prize
! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1629000",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T17:34:19",
"content": "Very cool, I always wanted to build a replica of skylab as a home.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1629005",
"author": "xkcd1133",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,140.43225 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/thp-hacker-bio-nsted/ | THP Hacker Bio: Nsted | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"bio",
"robot",
"servo",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | Have you ever wanted to build a robot arm, or even a full robot, but were put off by the daunting task of making all of those articulations work?
Moti
could make that a lot easier. The project seeks to produce smart servo motors which can connect and communicate in many different ways. It’s a great idea, so we wanted to know
more about the hacker
behind the project. After the jump you’ll find [nsted’s] answers to our slate of question for this week’s Hacker Bio.
Settlers of Catan (replaced Chess), Trading Stocks, Jogging (new).
I wear a few different hats including teaching, making art projects, building technologies, and running a business.
Building robots, especially modular robots that interact through touch…(eg.
Grapple
)
A specific variable power supply I once knew. Crossing over 7.5 Volts triggered a 40+ Volt spike causing mayhem, confusion and self-doubt for many a day.
OSX – it’s easy and works well.
Weller Soldering Iron – It’s always there for me, like an old friend.
ATmega328p – I like its ubiquity…but I hear ARM calling.
Arduino & C++ – I know many (including HaD) are down on Arduino, but it’s saved me a lot of time over the years.
Moti
Interchangeable 3D printable robot body parts
A robot that can safely and competently wrestle a person
Empathy
Where are the robots already?! I thought by 2014 we’d be surrounded by them. We’re working on
Moti
to help people build more robots, faster. Moti is a kind of standardized robotic module for actuation, sensing, communication and basic computing. It’s meant to take care of the low level tasks so you can focus on the interesting parts of robot design such as bodies, behaviours and applications.
I thought Moti would work well for the Hackaday prize because it’s “connected” in a number of ways. You can control them from browsers, mobile apps, and through various APIs. And you can physically connect them to things…like 3D prints. I also wanted to expose Moti to people, get some feedback, and find future beta-testers.
Yes, PID…and control theory in general, but probably not for a few weeks yet.
Nope
Likes awesome work, will travel.
I hope that we get some feedback from the judges. And thanks! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1629015",
"author": "Jonathan Whitaker",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T17:42:20",
"content": "Loving this idea – get hackers (who often avoid the limelight) some recognition. Props to nsted for coming out of the closet about arduino/ATMega328p :P I too find them so convenient when someth... | 1,760,376,140.654917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/homebrew-nsa-bugs/ | Homebrew NSA Bugs | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"nsa",
"radio",
"sdr",
"security"
] | Thanks to [Edward Snowden] we have a huge, publicly available catalog of the very, very interesting electronic eavesdropping tools the NSA uses. Everything from incredibly complex ARM/FPGA/Flash modules smaller than a penny to machines that can install backdoors in Windows systems from a distance of eight miles are available to the nation’s spooks, and now,
the sufficiently equipped electronic hobbyist can build their own
.
[GBPPR2] has been going through the NSA’s ANT catalog in recent months, building some of the simpler radio-based bugs. The bug linked to above goes by the codename LOUDAUTO, and it’s a relatively simple (and cheap) radar retro-reflector that allows anyone with the hardware to illuminate a simple circuit to get audio back.
Also on [GBPPR2]’s build list is
RAGEMASTER
, a device that fits inside a VGA cable and allows a single VGA color channel to be viewed remotely.
The basic principle behind both of these bugs is retroreflection, described by the NSA as a PHOTOANGLO device. The basic principle behind these devices is a FET in the bug, with an antenna connected to the drain. The PHOTOANGLO illuminates this antenna and the PWM signal sent to the gate of the FET modulates the returned signal. A bit of software defined radio on the receiving end, and you have your very own personal security administration.
It’s all very cool stuff, but there are some entries in the NSA catalog that don’t deal with radio at all. One device, IRATEMONK, installs a backdoor in hard drive controller chips. Interestingly, Hackaday favorite and current Hackaday Prize judge [Sprite_TM]
did something extremely similar
, only without, you know, being really sketchy about it.
While we don’t like the idea of anyone actually using these devices,
the NSA ANT catalog
is still fertile ground for project ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDlsbNjqBOc | 56 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1628461",
"author": "strevo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T11:40:44",
"content": "Oh great, now I’m on a watch list for coming here. But then again, they’ve probably been watching the trolls here for at least two years. Let us know if you get a take down notice.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,376,140.306504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/10/pi-powered-anti-cat-trap-soaks-felines-and-other-animals/ | Pi-Powered Anti-Cat Trap Soaks Felines And Other Animals | James Hobson | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cat trap",
"PiCam"
] | [Joshua] has a problem with cats. They like pooping in his garden. He decided to take action with this awesome automated and humane
cat trap.
Now just to clarify, he did attempt a few other alternatives before going all out in cat defense – the easiest solution would be to get a cat of his own, but alas, he’s not a cat person.
The system uses a Raspberry Pi in a waterproofed housing with a PiCam. He’s written some rudimentary code to make use of the PiCam Python Library which also allows him to record pre-cat-trapping footage, much for our enjoyment. When motion is sensed, the Pi trips a 24VAC solenoid water valve, which turns on the sprinkler and quickly soaks the intruder.
Stick around after the break for quite a few videos catching the furry little buggers in the act!
As for the cat lover’s out there…
we’ve also covered a dog version
of this which uses an Arduino instead!
[Thanks Doug!] | 52 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1628096",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T08:27:35",
"content": "I’d like to see something more… directional. There’s a lot of spray, for one cat, and most of it misses the target.For generic garden watering systems, splitting your garden into multiple “zones” is a good i... | 1,760,376,140.806494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/a-simple-commodore-64-cart-dumper/ | A Simple Commodore 64 Cart Dumper | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"card dumper",
"cartridge",
"hex",
"rom"
] | While [Rob] was digging around in his garage one day, he ran across an old Commodore 64 cartridge. With no ROM to be found online, he started wondering what was stored in this ancient device. Taking a peek at the bits stored in this cartridge would require dumping the entire thing to a modern computer, and armed with an Arduino,
he created a simple cart dumper
, capable of reading standard 8k cartridges without issue.
The
expansion port for the C64
has a lot of pins corresponding to the control logic inside these old computers, but the only ones [Rob] were really interested in were the eight data lines and the sixteen address lines. With a little bit of code, [Rob] got an Arduino Mega to step through all the address pins and read the corresponding data at that location in memory. This data is then sent over USB to a C app that dumps everything in HEX and text.
While the ROM for just about every C64 game can be found online, [Rob] was unlucky enough to find one that wasn’t. It doesn’t really matter, though, as we don’t know if [Rob] has the 1541 disk drive that makes this cart useful. Still, it’s a good reminder of how useful an Arduino can be when used as an electronic swiss army knife. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1627791",
"author": "Telek",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T05:08:16",
"content": "Nifty indeed – but I am so lost about the editorializing in the last paragraph.Wouldn’t this be a tremendously _lucky_ find? If the ROM was already online, why would one care to dump it again in the first ... | 1,760,376,140.377787 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/upgraded-nerf-gun-keeps-track-of-your-ammo/ | Upgraded Nerf Gun Keeps Track Of Your Ammo | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"nerf gun",
"office warfare"
] | [Paul] and his buddy [Jonathan] recently had a zombie themed Larp event to go to, so in the spirit of making the experience more realistic, they decided
to upgrade their Nerf N-Strike Stryfe gun
.
They started by cracking open the gun and making note of the available space for a few bells and whistles. Luckily, thanks to traditional plastic injection molding practices — there’s lots of room!
Upgrades include a magazine sensor, a jam sensor, a trigger sensor and a voltmeter to make the gun a little bit smarter. A knockoff Arduino Pro Mini takes in all these inputs and outputs it to a 7-segment LED display for easy visibility. Our favorite part is the ammo sensor, which keeps a tally of how many shots you’ve used. It’s simply an IR photo-diode and IR transistor in a Darlington configuration, connected to the GPIO interrupt pin on the fake Arduino.
It’s not an overly complex project, but very nicely executed — Maybe Nerf should adopt something like this in the future! Still waiting on
an automated sentry turret though…
And if you’re curious about ZombieLarp,
you can find out all about it here! | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1627624",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-07-10T03:36:44",
"content": "Simple, but I’ed prefer a count down rather than a count up for rounds, has this man never seen Aliens?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1627940",
... | 1,760,376,140.600512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/a-most-impractical-gear-position-indicator/ | A Most Impractical Gear Position Indicator | Brian Benchoff | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"gear position indicator",
"motorcycle",
"oscilloscope",
"pwm"
] | A few years ago, [Pat] sent in
a really nice gear position indicator
for his Suzuki V-Strom. With a single seven-segment display , a small microcontorller, and wires tied right into the bike’s ECM, it’s more than enough to do its job, and is much cheaper than aftermarket gear indicators. A simple, elegant solution that does one job well. How could this possibly be any better?
‘Better’ is a relative term, and depending on what you’re optimizing for, a more complex solution can easily be superior. [Pat] figured tripling the value of his motorcycle is a worthwhile goal, so
he replaced that seven-segment display with an oscilloscope
. It’s the world’s only oscilloscope based motorcycle gear position indicator, and now [Pat] needs a really, really long extension cord.
Like the earlier, more practical version, This build reads the voltage off the bike’s ECM to determine what gear the bike is in. The current gear is then displayed on a Tek MDO3000 with two PWM pins on a microcontroller. Practical? No, but it does look cool. Video below. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1627151",
"author": "agjpo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T23:41:42",
"content": "I can make a toilet seat position indicator using DS4054 scope but what’s the point?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1627249",
"author": "str... | 1,760,376,140.182388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/servobender-the-electronic-pedal-steel/ | ServoBender, The Electronic Pedal Steel | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"guitar",
"Musical",
"pedal steel",
"servo"
] | You’ve most certainly heard a pedal steel guitar before, most likely in any ‘old’ country song, or more specifically, any country song that doesn’t include the word ‘truck’ in its lyrics. Pedal steels are strange devices, looking somewhat like a 10-string guitar with levers that change the pitch of individual strings. Historically, there have been some attempts to put a detuning mechanism for individual strings in normal electric guitars, but these are somewhat rare and weird.
[Gr4yhound] just nailed it
. He’s come up with the perfect device to emulate a pedal steel in a real guitar, and it sounds really, really good.
The imgur album
for this project goes over the construction of the ServoBender in a bit more detail than the video. Basically, four servos are mounted to a metal plate below the bridge. Each servo has a spring and cam system constructed out of 3D printed parts. The detuning is controlled by an Arduino and a few sustain pedals retrofitted with hall effect sensors. Simple, really, but the effect is astonishing.
[Gra4hound]’s contraption is actually very similar to
a B-Bender
where a guitarist pushes on the neck to raise the pitch of the B string. This setup, though, is completely electronic, infinitely adjustable, and can be expanded to all six strings. Very, very cool, and it makes us wonder what could be done with
one of those freaky robot guitars
, a soldering iron, and a bit of code.
Video below, because you should watch it again. | 39 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1626835",
"author": "Travis K",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T20:19:13",
"content": "Man that is just cool. Very effective mechanical and electronics engineering , so simple. and a great end result.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,376,140.559134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/light-pen-draws-on-led-matrix/ | Light Pen Draws On LED Matrix | Adam Fabio | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"led matrix",
"Light Pen",
"phototransistor"
] | Who needs a 1920×1080 OLED display when you can have an 8×8 matrix of LED goodness? That’s the question [Kathy] asked when she built this
LED matrix light pen project.
It looks simple enough – a 64-LED matrix illuminates as the pen draws shapes. But how does the circuit know which LED is under the pen? Good old fashioned matrix scanning is the answer. Only one LED is lit up at any time.
[Kathy] used a pair of 74LS138 3-to-8 line decoders to scan the matrix. The active low outputs on the ‘138 would be perfect for a common cathode matrix. Of course [Kathy] only had a common anode matrix, so 8 PNP transistors were pressed into service as inverters.
The pen itself is a phototransistor. [Kathy] originally tried a CdS photoresistor, but found it was a bit too slow for matrix scanning. An LM358 op-amp is used to get the signal up to a reasonable level for an Arduino Uno to detect.
The result is impressive for such a simple design. We’d love to see someone use this platform as the start of an epic snake game. | 34 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1626592",
"author": "Brian D (@_i3d)",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T17:05:16",
"content": "I think the next cool iteration of this would be to use the LED pixels as photodiodes, allowing the then LED-tipped pen to be completely independent of the matrix!",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,140.725161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/thp-entry-tome-the-portable-3d-printer/ | THP Entry: TOME, The Portable 3D Printer | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"3d printer",
"portable",
"TOME"
] | Alright, 3D Printers exist. They’re machines you can simply
buy
for a few hundred dollars, set them on your desk, and have them start churning out plastic parts. A little pedestrian, isn’t it? How about something you can take into the field for a client, and print out some new parts
right there
? How about sending a printer to the latest humanitarian crisis? After all, all those humanitarian uses for 3D printers we’ve been hearing about won’t do any good without a 3D printer.
TOME
is [Philip]’s attempt at portabilizing a 3D printer and also his entry into The Hackaday Prize. The preliminary goals for TOME are the ability to print for four hours on a single battery, an auto leveling bed, and an accessible hot end that’s easy to replace.
Already the design for TOME is rather interesting. The astute printer aficionado will notice there is no stepper motor on the X carriage. The task of moving the head in the X axis is taken care of by a stepper in the base, with a square shaft and set of gears moving everything back and forth.
With this odd yet ingenious motor setup, the entire printer is able to collapse in on itself, allowing it to be installed in a waterproof plastic case. That’s something you’re going to need if you’re taking a printer on the road.
The project featured in this post is an entry in
The Hackaday Prize
. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1626370",
"author": "NotArduino",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T14:42:57",
"content": "Not sold on the cantilevered Y-axis…what keeps it from swaying back and forth as well as flexing vertically?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "162... | 1,760,376,140.489603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/the-future-of-distraction-right-in-front-of-your-face/ | The Future Of Distraction, Right In Front Of Your Face | Brian Benchoff | [
"Android Hacks",
"google hacks"
] | [
"Flappy Bird",
"google glass"
] | Say you’re meeting someone new, and instead of communicating like a normal person that wasn’t born in a barn, they play with their phone the entire time. How about a cashier or sales person who is so insufferably distracted with the Facebooks you’d guess they had a side job in the QA department of some developer? All these things will soon be a distant, horrible memory, because
now you can play Flappy Bird on Google Glass
.
[Rich] has had his Glass for a while now, and has been meaning to write an app for it. It took a little bit of inspiration, but when the idea of using the eye sensor to control everyone’s favorite 8-bit bird, everything fell into place. It ended up being an interesting use for the Glass, and something we actually wouldn’t mind trying out.
The bird is controlled by a double blink. In the video below, you can see there might be a little bit of latency depending on how [Rich] put the video together. Better grab that .APK while there’s still time. [Rich] says it’s a free download for anyone who’s already overpaid for a Google Glass. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1626270",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T13:37:25",
"content": "This should be called Flappy Blink.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1626588",
"author": "Cain Benjamin (@Krazeecain)",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,140.852794 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/09/cd-drive-cnc-machine-steals-matt-groenings-job-says-ha-ha/ | CD Drive CNC Machine Steals Matt Groening’s Job, Says ‘Ha Ha’ | Rich Bremer | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"DIY CNC",
"diy CNC machine",
"dvd drive"
] | DIY CNC Machines are fun to build. There are a lot of different designs all over the internet. Some are large and some small. Some are made from new material and others from recycled parts. [Leonardo’s] newest
project
is at the absolute far end of the small and recycled spectra. His CNC Machine is made from CD Drives and can draw a mean Nelson.
First, the CD Drives were disassembled to gain access to the carriages. These were then mounted to a quick and dirty wooden frame. Notice the Y Axis carriage is mounted with bolts and nuts that allow for leveling of the bed, not a bad idea. A Bic pen mounted to the Z axis carriage is responsible for the drawing duties.
[Leonardo] does something a little different for generating his g-code. First he takes a bitmap image and converts it to monochrome using MS Paint. The image is then imported into Cadsoft Eagle and using a modified
import_bmp.ulp
script. The bitmap is converted into what Eagle considers wire traces and then outputted as x and y coordinates for each wire complete with a command for lifting and lowering the pen.
A PC sends the move commands via USB, through a PL2303HX USB-Serial TTL Converter, to a PIC16F628A which, in turn, sends step and direction signals to the three Easy Driver stepper motor drivers. The stepper motor drivers are connected directly to the original CD Drive motors.
Check out the video after the break…. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1625770",
"author": "Rogan",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T08:16:27",
"content": "Nice! I’d like to see the wiring diagram, might be useful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1625835",
"author": "Sheldon",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,141.25924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/old-laptops-modems-and-the-hackaday-retro-edition/ | Old Laptops, Modems, And The Hackaday Retro Edition | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"80c88",
"alptop",
"modem",
"pentium",
"retro edition"
] | We haven’t been getting very many submissions of extremely old computers loading up
the Hackaday Retro Edition
in a while. For shame. Thankfully, [alnwlsn] is here to pick up the slack from the rest of you with his latest accomplishment,
getting two old laptops on the Internet with some old telecom equipment
.
The first is a Toshiba from about 1995, Pentium processor, 12 MB of RAM, and a 10 GB (!) hard drive. [aln] had a PCMICA modem sitting around, and with Windows 95 and IE 5.5, he was able to slowly connect.
Pentium class machines are okay, but the next one – a Zenith Data Systems laptop from about 1987 – is awesome. 80C88 CPU, two 720k floppy drives, and the exact amount of RAM in that quote falsely attributed to [Bill Gates]. [alnwlsn] is connecting with a 28.8k modem, but the serial port only supports up to 9600. It’s a computer so old, even the retro edition’s main page times out.
The about page
, though, loaded fine.
[alnwlsn] used a modem with both of these laptops, but he doesn’t have dial-up or even a landline. This forced him to make his own line simulator that requires plugging in the phone line at the right time, manually ringing a modem connected to another computer, and letting PPP take it from there. It’s a crude circuit, but it works. slow, but it works. Video below. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1625630",
"author": "vv87",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T07:19:29",
"content": "10 Gb is too much for 1995, i think its mistake and correct volume is 1.0 Gb. 10 Gb disks became usual about 1998.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "16258... | 1,760,376,141.026918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/break-your-frames-print-some-new-ones/ | Break Your Frames? Print Some New Ones! | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"123D catch",
"3d printed glasses",
"autodesk",
"Rhino"
] | When [Aaron Porterfield] accidentally broke his glasses frame, he saw it as an opportunity, rather than an unfortunate event. He decided he was going to
design and print new ones
to fit his prescription lenses!
The trickiest part of taking on a project like this is designing the glasses around the pre-existing lenses, because typically, lenses are cut to fit the frame — not vice versa. This is why we’re particularly impressed with the project. [Aaron] was able to 3D scan the lenses using his camera phone and Autodesk’s 123D Catch software (free) to create the lens model! Once he had the lens outline, he scaled it properly by measuring its maximum dimensions with calipers.
Now this is where it gets a bit tricky – designing the frames. [Aaron] is using Rhino to do the design work, and he’s actually laid out the steps quite nicely for anyone who wants to attempt something like this. He describes in detail matching the curvature of the lenses, designing the frame around it, and of course actually fitting the lenses in place.
There is a small caveat to this entire project — The frames were printed on a nice Stratasys polyjet 3D printer — due to the geometry, it might be a bit tricky (or impossible) to print on a traditional hobby FDM machine. Regardless — making your own glasses is some serious geek cred. Nice work [Aaron]! | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1625134",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T02:44:09",
"content": "That’s no real caveat, he used the right tool for the job. I love my fdm 3d printer, but when it comes to designing something like this, I’ve quite often sent off the final product to be printed by shapeways... | 1,760,376,141.893323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/the-crane-game-oculus-style/ | The Crane Game, Oculus Style | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"crane",
"oculus rift",
"opencv",
"toy crane"
] | We’re pretty sure the Hackaday demographic is a a person who sees a giant tower crane lifting beams and girders above a skyline and says, “that would be fun, at least until I have to go to the bathroom.” Realizing the people who own these cranes probably won’t let any regular joe off the street into the cabin, [Thomas] and [screen Name] (see, this is why we have brackets, kids)
built their own miniature version with an Oculus Rift
.
Instead of a crane that is hundreds of feet tall, the guys are using a much smaller version, just over a meter tall, that is remotely controlled through a computer via a serial connection. Just below the small plastic cab is a board with two wide-angle webcams. The video from these cameras are sent to the Oculus so the operator can see the boom swinging around, and the winch unwinding to pick up small objects.
The guys have also added a little bit of OpenCV to add color based object detection. This is somewhat useful, but there’s also an approximation of the distance to an object, something that would be very useful if you don’t have a three-inch tall spotter on the ground.
Video below. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1625046",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T01:58:31",
"content": "“Hey, that toy crane stole my suitcase!” Anyway this does make me wonder how they train real crane operators, do they have a simulator system or just put them in a crane or tell then to go nuts?",
"... | 1,760,376,141.723947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/all-precincts-reporting-next-round-of-voting-is-now/ | All Precincts Reporting — Next Round Of Voting Is Now | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"astronaut or not",
"vote"
] | Check out the vote tally which [Alek] put together (click for a much larger version). We couldn’t be more delighted at how the first round of voting for Astronaut or Not went. With very nearly 50k votes it’s time to start another round.
This is an entirely new round. Your 30 votes have been restored and you must vote at least once in this new round to be eligible for the voter lottery. The theme has also changed; vote for projects whose ideas are
most likely to be used in other projects
. That is to say: is there a core piece of cleverness that, properly explained and modularized, would be extremely extensible? Then vote for that one!
Links to the 15 winners are listed after the break; everyone on this list is getting a T-shirt and some stickers. The same will be true for the next round but we’re changing up the Voter Lottery prize — it’ll be
similarly valuable and desirable
but we’ll save details for this for Thursday. Make sure you vote or risk losing Friday’s lottery!
Congratulations to the first round winners of Astronaut or Not!
$300 Pick and Place / 3D printer
OpenMV
Open Source Science Tricorder
GRID-EYE BLE-capable thermal camera
SatNOGS – Global Network of Ground Stations
LoFi
Simple, low-cost FMCW radar
Project Jarvis – A.I Home Automation & Assistant
CUBEX
PortableSDR
3-In-1 Desktop, CNC and Laser Engraver
open-Spectrometer
TOME – Portable 3D Printer
OSCAR: The Open Screen Adapter
DIY 3D Printable RaspberryPi Raman Spectrometer | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1624582",
"author": "peter korzig",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T21:37:03",
"content": "hackady.io is down",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1625376",
"author": "j0z0r",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T04:46:52",
"c... | 1,760,376,141.663811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/midi-and-vintage-fm-synthesis/ | MIDI And Vintage FM Synthesis | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"ADLIB",
"midi",
"OPL2",
"sound card"
] | Before the days when computers could play and record audio that far surpassed the quality of CDs, sound cards were very, very cool. Most audio chips from the 80s, from the Commodore SID is pretty much a synth on a chip, but you can also find similar setups in ancient ISA sound cards. [Emilio] pulled one of these cards with an ADLIB OPL2 chip on it,
and used a PIC micro to create his very own FM synthesis synth
(IT,
translatatron
, although Google is screwing up the formatting).
The Yamaha YM3812 chip, otherwise known as the OPL2, was a fairly complete synthesizer in a very tiny package using FM synthesis for some very unique sounds. Once [Emilio] had the PIC sending commands to the sound chip, he added MIDI support, allowing him to play this vintage ‘synth on a chip’ with a keyboard instead of a tracker.
Judging from the video below, it sounds great, and that’s with [Emilio] mashing the keys for a simple demo. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1624893",
"author": "Matt Barnett",
"timestamp": "2014-07-09T00:32:48",
"content": "I have a project that I’ve acquired the parts for but put on the back burner, making an OPL3 based synth. The following video is what made me want to pursue it. It’s a take on modern electronic music... | 1,760,376,141.940862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/judge-spotlight-elecia-white/ | Judge Spotlight: Elecia White | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"elecia white",
"judge",
"making embedded systems",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | If you’re a fan of the
Embedded
podcast you know her voice well. If not, you need to
check out the show
! Of course we’re talking about [Elecia White], who spent her recent holiday answering our questions.
She’s an accomplished embedded systems engineer — she literally wrote the book on it. We’re delighted that [Elecia] agreed to lend us her skill and experience as
a judge for The Hackaday Prize
!
We find that embedded engineers come from all manner of backgrounds. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the field?
I majored in a combination of applied computer science and theoretical systems engineering: my classes were all about programming, C, Fourier, and control loops. I had no idea I’d built a major that would be perfect for low level embedded development.
After school, I went to Hewlett-Packard. I was in the network server division, monitoring servers, writing drivers, and getting ever closer to the hardware. I moved over to HP Labs’ BioScience division to do real embedded work, though I didn’t understand that at the time (yay for a hiring manager who did!). Once I made a motor move, well, it was all over for me. I loved having my software touch the physical world. Happily, the environment was great and the electrical engineers were very patient.
Do whimsical embedded challenges ever come to mind? For instance, do you ever flip on the TV and think to yourself: “some day I’m going to reprogram the uC and write something that works!”?
Yes, absolutely. Though, I tend to have much larger ideas than I have time for.
For example, a while ago, I heard a Radio Lab
episode
about how different animals see colors differently. That led me to the many ways animals see differently. For example, did you know that guinea pigs see more slowly than we do? Where our retinas see about 8.75 Mbits/s, theirs only transfer about a tenth that. They have fast and slow cells that respond to different visual stimuli. But what would it be like to see through their eyes? Blocky? Slow? With edge detect on all the time? [
1
]
On the other hand, birds see much faster than we do: things that are just a blur to us are visible to them. Some animals see IR, some see UV. All of these other things could be demonstrated with a processor, a camera, maybe some sensors laid out in a grid pattern overlaying the view from the camera… (and some software (also copious free time)).
So, um, yes. One little thing can set me off and I get on a tangent. I’m a bit of a dev-kit hoarder so when I combine “what should I try on this dev kit” with “what have I been pondering”, I can get lost for days.
PS Don’t get me started on the gear in the recent spate of superhero movies.
We enjoyed the section of your book
Making Embedded Systems
which covers self-test and unit tests. Do you always build from the start with testing in mind or do you still get bit and have to go back after the fact to add testing routines?
Ideally, I write tests first because they act partially as requirements definition: what should this function do? Though, I tend to do it in short back and forth bursts, breaking down a problem into manageable pieces.
Professionally, it is almost always going back because I usually work on initial designs or on end-of-project-must-ship-now fixing, I seldom get to see a project start-to-finish. Though if I get ownership of a module, I try to do testing right.
Personally, I am often hacking things together and am not always a good, disciplined engineer with that. Projects that I’ve been poking at for a long time tend to have better tests because I keep rebuilding the hardware and software, needing to verify modules. But the projects that I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, well, sometimes it is fun to just hack something together knowing that it might not work tomorrow.
Do you have any advice for managing your professional schedule and still maintaining some type of personal life?
As an engineer, manager, and director, I constantly felt the pressure to work more hours. However, my brain gets tired; the work in hour 50 of a week would probably take ten minutes in hour 2 of the next week. Working long hours for weeks on end makes me extremely ineffective. But I’m not good at figuring out what people expect and there is always something else that needs to be done.
Contracting is good for me because I get paid for the hours I work and don’t feel (very) guilty about unfinished tasks. If I’m frustrated and want to take a break at 3pm, it doesn’t matter as long as I still get things done. That was probably always true but I felt a lot of pressure to be at my desk all the time. Now, I can set expectations for how many hours I allot to a client each week and what I expect to get done in that time, everyone seems happy.
I have a clearer division between personal life and work and a more realistic balance. Though, I write this on the morning of the 4th of July while waiting for cross compilers to build… maybe my advice is not, um, good. Next question?
The Hackaday Prize requires all entries to be Connected Devices. Are there any data transfer protocols that you love using with microcontrollers? What are they and why do they make your development process easier?
While the connected requirement is neat, there are so many ways to implement it so I hope no one gets stuck on it. This is one area where, unless you are building a new communication method, it is easier to buy a good solution than make one yourself.
I admit to some partiality to
Electric Imp
. They’ve got a lot of the cloud based system ready for you, making an LED that lights from URL takes about ten minutes, making a button that tweets takes less than another ten.
I guess my favorite data protocols are ones with standards, ones that I didn’t invent or don’t have to puzzle out. If it has a Wikipedia page, I like it.
Are there any communications protocols that make you cringe in horror?
Not even
CAN
.
Wait… Yes, I have a horror of hidden ones, those that you can’t get to the signals on the protoboard. Debugging without access is painful.
Do you approach writing Open Source code differently? Or in other words: are you cleaner with your code and comments if it’s more likely that others will see your code?
A little. I wanted to say no: I try to write clean code always, I always believe my code will be read. However, for open source, I see the audience as me minus ten years of experience. But for industry code, I see the audience as me plus one year of forgetfulness. Since the intended audience is different, my Open Source code tends to be more wordy in the comments.
Tell us about your non-engineering-related hobbies.
I read a lot, both fiction and nonfiction. You asked about whimsical ideas, I read
Kraken
, a great book about squid and octopus, which brought up the point of how to test such alien intelligences. That still tickles my brain.
I read the fascinating
Thinking, Fast and Slow
; I think if I wanted to build an AI that acted like people do, I’d implement the chapters of that book as library modules. It would be a fascinating project.
Science fiction is a great way to loosen up creative ideas: what did the author think would be a problem in a hundred (or thousand) years? Other forms of fiction are great for seeing how other people view problems. While I hide it reasonably well for whole minutes at a time, I’m kind of socially inept so when I read fiction, I also tend to see it as tools for helping me interact with people in different situations.
I also garden and watch more TV that I should admit.
What else is going on in your life?
There is our podcast,
Embedded
. That is fun and strange, focused on people building gadgets of all sorts. I’ve met so many interesting people and gotten such a great response. I started out wanting to know what podcasting was all about. One thing led to another and now, a year later, I find myself being a Hackaday judge.
How can entries curry your favor when it comes to judging? Is there any type of entry you would love to see?
Many engineers often have internalized this idea of once “I’ve done it, it is easy”. Sometimes it leads us to assume everyone knows what we are talking about (because, of course, it was easy so everyone else already knows about it).
We get into the trap of documenting for experts instead of average (or beginners). I don’t think the experts need the docs as much as someone new does.
My advice: document it for another discipline. If your background is hardware, imagine a software person is going to read it. I don’t need to be condescended to, but I do need patience. Tell me what tools you used, maybe link to your favorite intro to the tool (if you’ve got one). Tell me how you made it but also tell me how I can make it.
Also, tell me why you made it. I love enthusiasm.
The Hackaday Prize
challenges you to build the future of connected devices. Build the best and claim a trip into space or one of hundreds of other prizes. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1624212",
"author": "cantido",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T17:14:58",
"content": ">she literally wrote the book on it.s/the/a/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1624250",
"author": "AlanH",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T... | 1,760,376,141.586918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/go-vintage-learn-to-repair-and-restore-mechanical-pocket-and-wrist-watches/ | Go Vintage! Learn To Repair And Restore Mechanical Pocket And Wrist Watches. | Gregory L. Charvat | [
"clock hacks",
"Featured",
"how-to"
] | [
"clock",
"pocket watch",
"repair",
"restore",
"watch",
"wristwatch"
] | Until recently, watches have been entirely mechanical where each wheel, gear, and mechanism representing a milestone in our understanding of precision manufacturing and timekeeping.
One of the very first watches, created by a locksmith.
Today it is nearly impossible to find watchmakers to service or repair vintage mechanical pocket and wristwatches, so we have to do it ourselves. Learn to repair vintage mechanical watches. You can do this and we’ll show you how.
They tick, mechanical watches have a pulse.
First created in the 16th century by locksmiths
, these early watches could only resolve time down to the hour and for this reason displayed time with only one hour hand.
By the 18th century
fusee technology
enabled watches to achieve accuracies to within seconds.
Fusee wheel and chain, which is in effect a continuously variable transmission to provide constant torque as spring barrel unwinds.
The
Waltham Watch Co
. was the first to democratize portable time keeping by developing a process to mass produce high quality watches that were extremely accurate. Prices were equivalent to a MacBook or an iPad in today’s money. The American watch industry led the way in developing a world-class product that with a little maintenance, could last forever.
American Waltham Watch Factory
Example of a Waltham Pocket Watch
But ladies’ watches were pushing the bounds of what was possible, at the cutting edge of small. Ladies’ watches led to the development of the (smaller than a pocket watch) wrist watches.
Evolution of the ladies pocket watch to wrist watch. Manufacturing techniques were pushed to their limits in making small watches.
Widespread adaptation of wrist watches occurred in the 1930’s. Although less accurate than pocket watches, wrist watches were significantly more convenient. The swiss lead the way in post-war wrist watch technology.
A hobby where you must do it yourself
You must be able to clean and repair your own watch if you want to go vintage. Watchmakers are a dying breed, if you can find one expect to pay $200-$400 to get your watch repaired. Besides, most of the fun is being able to wear something you repaired yourself. Pop your watch open at parties and explain how it works to your friends.
There is no such thing as ‘over wound,’ what actually happens is dirt and grime builds up on the bearings so that wheels (gears actually, the gears are referred to as wheels) can not turn as freely, preventing the movement from running. The movement is geared up significantly from the winding spring (spring barrel) where one turn of the spring barrel causes hundreds of turns of the second hand. Unfortunately with such gearing there is very little torque at the second hand. For this reason the slightest bit of dirt and grime in the bearings throughout the gear train causes a movement to stop running. Most of the time when you buy a broken mechanical watch all it needs is to be cleaned and oiled. But this is not as easy as it seems, you must completely tear down your watch movement, clean each little part, reassemble and oil it.
Where to learn
This video will show you how a modern watch works starting with the spring barrel down to the balance wheel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508-rmdY4jQ
To learn watch repair read the manual,
US ARMY TM9-1575
(PDF). In World War II numerous manuals like this were written to train any 18-year-old to learn advanced skills in a short period of time.
Cleaning and oiling
To make it run again you will have to completely take it apart, clean its mechanical parts and plates in an ultrasonic cleaner, and oil as you put it back together following the procedure in TM9-1575.
Taking apart a Waltham Riverside Pocket Watch
Parts set out to dry after cleaning
Waltham Riverside pocket watch after cleaning and oiling.
Elgin Mens wristwatch drying after cleaning, all parts shown disassembled.
Elgin men’s wrist watch during disassembly.
More disassembly.
Step by step how-to videos
For videos of watch repairs and cleanings of all types of pocket and wrist watches, check out
this YouTube channel on watch repair
.
How to take apart (be prepared for a very interesting commentary):
Re-assembly is time-consuming and this is often where things break. In this video, [bunnspecial] completes re-assembly in 33 min, which is very quick. Here’s how to reassemble after cleaning (again, another colorful commentary):
Tools you will need
Get a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers; good ones from the US, Swiss, or French made, not Chinese made ones. Screws in vintage watches are tougher than the screw driver tips, cheap screwdrivers will disintegrate quickly.
Movement holder
Oilers
Toothpicks.
Watch oil
Ultrasonic cleaner
Cleaning solution and rinse
Jeweler’s tweezers, non magnetic
Demagnetizer
Other small tools you probably already have.
Start your collection
You can buy vintage watches at antique shops or on ebay, they are not too expensive. Expect to pay $50-100 for a serviceable American men’s pocket watch (Waltham, Elgin) and slightly more for a high end American pocket watch (Hamilton, Hampton, Illinois). $10-100 for a vintage wrist watch, depending on style and condition. Key issue you must look for is a good balance staff. One way to test for this is to take a toothpick and touch the balance wheel and observe if it moves freely, if so then you should be able to service the watch. Also, if the watch runs somewhat and stops it likely has a good balance staff.
Join the community
Need help or want to learn more, take classes, and goto meet-ups? Join the
NAWCC
and seek answers to your questions on their forums.
Grandpa’s heirloom watch
Do not restore a watch that has a great deal of meaning to you. Expect to damage or permanently break your first one or two pocket watches and about half of your first wristwatches. Even as you get better at this I would not recommend cleaning a high-end Chrono. If you can’t live with yourself if you break or damage it then don’t restore it yourself, have a pro do it. Unfortunately watch repair shops are few and far between these days and most can not handle the complexity of a vintage mechanical movement. The best one I’ve worked with is just north of Detroit,
J&W Watch and Clock Repair
. These guys are so old school they do not even have a website, so you’ll have to call them up and mail it in.
You can do this
Watch repair is a fascinating hobby, one of the few that is actually worth doing yourself. There is nothing more satisfying than taking apart a dead movement, making repairs and cleaning, then seeing it run again. Express yourself, wear vintage, make a connection with history and always have a story at the next social gathering explaining how these little machines work.
Gregory L. Charvat
, Ph.D is author of
Small and Short-Range Radar Systems
,
visiting research scientist at Camera Culture Group Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, co-founder of Hyperfine Research Inc. and
Butterfly Network Inc.
, 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 from September 2007 to November 2011, 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 received a great deal of 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 Antennas and Propagation Society Boston Chapter from 2010-2011. | 70 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "1624012",
"author": "gaga",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T14:38:32",
"content": "Mechanical watches are lame, the same thing can be done with a basic ATtiny chip or Arduino.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1624153",
"author... | 1,760,376,141.835505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/the-homebrew-xbox-360-and-ps3-portable/ | The Homebrew XBox 360 And PS3 Portable | Brian Benchoff | [
"Playstation Hacks",
"Portable Video Hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"portable",
"ps3",
"ps4",
"xbone",
"xbox",
"xbox one"
] | For the past few years now, [Downing] has been working on the dream of all console modders – a console made in the last ten years made portable. He’s spend a lot of time on the effort, and now thanks to a commission,
he’s finally done it
. Not just one console, either: this thing makes both the Xbox 360 and PS3 a handheld, battery-powered device thanks to some awesome wireless tech and a great deal of skill.
A few months ago, [Downing] and friends [Hailrazer] and [RDC] started a Kickstarter for the Cross Plane, a portable device that uses a wireless HDMI transmitter to offload the heavy and hot parts of running a game to a console, while the display and controls are kept portable. That Kickstarter didn’t see the success [Downing] was looking for, but that didn’t stop one enthusiastic supporter from commissioning a piece.
The display in the Cross Plane is a 7″ HD display, and the latency on the WHDMI transmitter is just about 1ms – basically unnoticeable. The controls on the front of the portable are wired to ‘controller packs’ that plug into the back, one for Xbox and one for PS3. The build quality is immaculate, and if you’ve ever wanted to know how to expertly finish a 3D printed part so it looks like it came off an assembly line, you should probably
check out the build log
.
Video walkthrough below. | 23 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1623834",
"author": "Pedro",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T12:17:19",
"content": "so basically it’s just a monitor with a wireless display adapter plus a controller all in a fancy package. the “hack” is only the enclosure. the rest is just plug and play.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,141.53321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/08/basic-ikea-wall-light-turned-smart-and-colorful/ | Basic IKEA Wall Light Turned Smart And Colorful! | James Hobson | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ikea",
"LED wall light",
"sunrise light"
] | [Daniel Grießhaber] just finished his latest electronics project and we love it. He’s taken a cheap IKEA wall/ceiling light and completely revamped
it with RGB LEDs and intelligent control
!
The light he used is called the
LOCK
, and is a mere 1.79
€ or about $4 USD. It has lots of room inside and a nice frosted glass dish which results in some excellent color diffusion. He’s designed a nice big circular PCB to mount inside off of the original mounting points. To do this, he used Eagle software to create the circuit and his trusty desktop CNC to mill out the pattern.
To control the lights he used an old ATMega8 board he had lying around, with the Arduino IDE and WS2812 Library. He’s outlined all the parts, diagrams and program sketches you’ll need to make your own over on
GitHub.
Unfortunately the LEDs aren’t quite as bright as he hoped so it can’t be used to replace a regular room light — instead he plans on turning this project into sunrise timing light in one of the bedrooms — still pretty cool! | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1623417",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T09:50:06",
"content": "How many CFL’s and LED’s that screw in will burn out in these fixtures?It looks like a typical incandescent legacy enclosed fixture, a oven with light.Make the lights do UFO effects, it looks like one."... | 1,760,376,141.472133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/android-doorbell-notifier/ | Android Doorbell Notifier | Eric Evenchick | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"hotplugd",
"netgear",
"openwrt",
"python",
"sl4a"
] | It’s always unfortunate to find a FedEx tag on your door saying you missed a delivery; especially when you were home the whole time. After having this problem a few times [Lee] decided to rig up a
doorbell notifier for his Android phone
.
[Lee]’s doorbell uses a 10 VAC supply to ring a chime. To reduce modifications to the doorbell, he added an integrated rectifier and a PNP transistor. The rectifier drives the transistor when the bell rings, and pulls a line to ground.
An old Netgear router running
OpenWRT
senses this on a GPIO pin.
Hotplugd
is used to run a script when the button push is detected.
The software is
discussed in a separate post
. The router runs a simple UDP server written in C. The phone polls this server periodically using
SL4A
: a Python scripting layer for the Android platform. To put it all together, hotplugd sends a UNIX signal to the UDP server when the doorbell is pushed. Once the phone polls the server a notification will appear, and [Lee] can pick up his package without delay. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1623048",
"author": "gmatstack",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T05:49:02",
"content": "What you’d want in Australia, however, is a motion sensor by the door. Australia Post seem to have a habit of pre-filling out all the “we missed you” cards and just dropping them at your door… if you no... | 1,760,376,142.014634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/vu-meter-record-player-lights-it-up/ | VU Meter Record Player Lights It Up | James Hobson | [
"LED Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"VU meter"
] | [Michaël Duerinckx] was given a turntable for his last birthday from his fiancée — since then he’s started collecting records like nobodies business. But about a month ago he started itching to do an electronics project — he decided to
upgrade his record player to include a VU Meter!
As he began designing he soon realized he didn’t have all the tools he needed to do this project right — a perfect excuse to go check out his local makerspace,
SoMakeIt
!
He started prototyping the VU Meter on a breadboard, and opened up the record player – it was like this thing was made to be hacked. Two free connections off the power supply to power his circuit, bingo!
After figuring out all the connections and testing it off of the record player he finally had a design that worked. It was time to make his very own PCB for it. He’s uploaded the schematic to
GitHub
in case anyone is interested in doing something similar on their own. Using SoMakeIt’s facilities, and with help from a fellow maker [Dave], [Michaël] was able to etch a PCB to his design, populate it, and test it successfully. Now he just had to drill some holes into his record player and install the LEDs.
Speaking of VU Meters, have you ever seen one
this large? | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1622712",
"author": "Mister X",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T02:19:42",
"content": "Very refined install, nice job, and I’m glad he addressed the full-on LED’s in the sample video above, as it needed some attenuation.Oh, I shouldn’t have looked at the opened up turntable in the build ar... | 1,760,376,142.064027 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/detroit-meetup-this-friday/ | Detroit Meetup This Friday | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"detroit",
"meetup"
] | The plans are made, the swag has shipped, are you going to show up or what? Friday night at 8pm we’re having
a Hackaday Meetup at i3 Detroit
. That link is how you get your free ticket.
You can come for the hacking, the leisure time, or just to score a free shirt and enough stickers to avoid actually repainting that 1991 POS you call a car.
i3
is offering up their facilities for those that want to work on projects or just hang out. They share a roof with
B Nektar
so there are an amazing array for tasty beverages available (part of the reason we’re calling this an 18+ event). There’s even talk of parking a food truck out front for the night but they’re still working on that.
Bring some hardware to show off and see if you can keep up with the yarns that [Brian Benchoff], [Chris Gammell], and [Mike Szczys] are known to spin. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1622691",
"author": "Caleb Kraft",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T02:03:56",
"content": "oh hey… I’ll be there too!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1622697",
"author": "Joseph",
"timestamp": "2014-07-08T02:08:51",
"content... | 1,760,376,142.113493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/diy-oled-smart-watch/ | DIY OLED Smart Watch | Nick Conn | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"bluetooth low energy",
"diy smart watch",
"magnetometer",
"oled",
"smart watch",
"usb",
"usb hid"
] | What is better than making your own smart watch? Making one with an OLED display. This is exactly what [Jared] set out to do with his
DIY OLED smart watch
, which combines an impressive build with some pretty cool hardware.
When building a DIY smart watch, getting the hardware right is arguably the hardest part. After a few iterations, [Jared’s] OLED smart watch is all packaged up and looks great! The firmware for his watch can communicate with the PC via USB HID (requiring no drivers), contains a “watch face” for telling time, includes an integrated calendar, and support for an accelerometer. His post also includes all of the firmware and goes into some build details. With the recent popularity of
smart watches
and
wearable
electronics, we really love seeing functional DIY versions. This is just the beginning. In the future, [Jared] plans on adding Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a magnetometer, a smart sleep based alarm clock, and more! So be sure to look at his
two
older
posts
and keep an eye on this project as it unfolds. It is a very promising smart watch!
With
Android L
including support for smart watches (in the near future), it would be amazing to see
DIY watches
(such as this one) modified to run the new mobile OS. How great would it be to have an open hardware platform running such a powerful (open source-ish) OS? the possibilities are endless! | 48 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1622394",
"author": "Whatnot",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T23:10:18",
"content": "The modern definition of ‘smart’ is ‘spying on you for the government and big corporations’, so perhaps for our own projects not going for that angle another word should be used.MCU watches, integrated wa... | 1,760,376,142.603326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/connect-4-robot-taunts-you-before-kicking-your-butt/ | Connect 4 Robot Taunts You Before Kicking Your Butt | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"connect 4",
"connect 4 robot"
] | [Patrick McCabe] is a student at MIT and for his final project in his Microcomputer Project Laboratory course he decided
to build a clever Connect 4 Robot.
The only criteria for the project was that you have to use the Cypress PSOC 5LP kit along with a 8051 micro-controller or equivalent (programmed in the same assembly language as the PSOC). All in all, [Patrick] had 5 weeks to work on the project.
He’s using a regular old Connect 4 game along with an assortment of custom parts. A stepper motor drives the token carriage back and forth across a 15″ aluminum channel using a timing belt. A servo releases the tokens, and all the other components, brackets, and other pieces were either made with his very own UP Mini 3D printer, or out of acrylic using the school’s laser cutter. It’s an extremely clean and well thought out build, and he’s actually uploaded all the custom part files (in SolidWorks format) online, for others to build their own.
It’s pretty quick, too! | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621962",
"author": "James S. (@StripeyType)",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T20:19:55",
"content": "Very cool! Extremely polished!My friend Joe and I built something very like this when I was an undergrad in 2005 which used a laptop and a webcam to detect board state (and cheating!) and ... | 1,760,376,142.406224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/thp-entry-a-digital-large-format-camera/ | THP Entry: A Digital Large Format Camera | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"camera",
"CCD",
"large format",
"large format camera",
"line sensor",
"linear CCD"
] | Click to embiggen. It’s seriously worth it.
After 20 or so years of development, digital cameras may soon be superior to film in almost every way, but there are a few niches where film cameras reign supreme. Large format cameras, for example, are able to produce amazing images, but short of renting one for thousands of dollars a day, you’ll probably never get your hands on one. For his entry to The Hackaday Prize, [Jimmy.c..alzen] decided to build
a
digital
large format camera
, using an interesting device you don’t see used very often these days – a linear CCD.
[Jimmy]’s camera is built around a
TAOS TS1412S
, a linear CCD that is able to capture a line of light 1536 pixels across. The analog values are clocked out from this chip in sequence, going straight into an Arduino Due for processing, saving, and displaying on a small screen.
Inside the camera, the sensor is on a pair of rails and driven across the focal plane with the help of a stepper motor. The effect is something like the
flatbed scanner to camera conversions
we’ve seen in the past, but [Jimmy] is able to adjust the exposure of the camera simply by changing the integration time of the sensor. He can also change the delay between scanning each column of pixels, making for some really cool long-exposure photography techniques; one side of an image could be captured at noon, while the other side could be from a beautiful sunset. That’s something you just can’t do otherwise without significant digital manipulation outside the camera.
The project featured in this post is an entry in
The Hackaday Prize
. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes. | 50 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621608",
"author": "jtl",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T17:15:52",
"content": "Neat. I’ve always mused about things like this, as I have a large format 4×5 camera. The film is expensive, and developing it is a pain (although at least I have all the materials.) With the right scanner an... | 1,760,376,142.714769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/droning-on-pid-controllers-and-bullet-connectors/ | Droning On: PID Controllers And Bullet Connectors | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Bullet connector",
"drone",
"Droning On",
"multicopter",
"PID loop",
"plane",
"quadcopter"
] | Not all drones are multirotors – Posing in our title photo are
Maynard Hill
and Cyrus Abdollahi. Maynard’s plane,
TAM5 aka The Spirit of Butts Farm
, is the smallest aircraft to make a
transatlantic flight
(YouTube link). Retracing the path of
Alcock and Brown
from Newfoundland to Ireland, the 6 pound (dry weight) model made the trip in just under 39 hours. All this happened in 2003, and was the cap on a lifetime of achievements for Hill. These are the types of pursuits that will be banned in the USA if the
FAA restrictions
go into effect.
Flight Controllers
Quite a few of you thought the Naze32 was left out of last column’s flight controller roundup. I hear you loud and clear! I’ll add the Naze to the controllers which will be tested on The Hackaday Testbed. The hard part is finding the darn things! I currently have an Acro Naze32 on its way to Droning On HQ. If I can find a full version, I’ll add that.
PID Controllers Deep Dive
I’ve gotten a few questions on Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers, so it is worth diving in a bit deeper to explain what a PID controller is. PID controllers are often found in process controls managing parameters like temperature, humidity, or product flow rate. The algorithm was initially designed in the late 1800’s as a method of controlling the helm of large naval ships. In fixed wing drones, PID keeps the plane’s wings level and on course. In multicopters, PID loops control heading, but they also provide the stable flight which allows the quadcopter to fly in the first place. A full explanation of PID loops would be beyond the scope of a single article, but let’s try a 10,000 foot explanation.
P: This is the “Present” parameter. P Has the most influence on the behavior of the aircraft. If the wind blows your quadcopter from level flight into a 30 degree right bank, P is the term which will immediately take action to level the quad out. If the P value is too high, The quadcopter will overshoot level flight and start banking the other way. In fact, way too high a P value can cause a quadcopter to shake as it oscillates or “hunts” for level. Too Low a P value? the quadcopter will be very slow to react, and may never quite reach level flight again.
I: This the “Past” parameter. The I term dampens the overshoot and oscillations of the P term, and avoids the tendency of P to settle above or below the set point. Just like with P, too high an I term can lead to oscillation.
D: This is the “Future” parameter, and has the smallest impact on the behavior of the aircraft. In fact, some flight controllers leave it out entirely. If P and I are approaching a set point too quickly, overshoot is likely to occur. D slows things down before the overshoot happens.
So why do multicopter pilots dread PID tuning? Quite simply, it’s a tedious process. Couple a new pilot and an unproven aircraft with un-tuned PID values, and you have a recipe for frustration – and broken propellers. Things get even more complex when you consider the fact that there are at least 3 sets of PID variables to be tuned – Pitch, Roll, and Yaw. Some flight controllers now support multiple PID values depending on the style of flight. Want your plane or multicopter to fly around like a hotrod? You need a totally different set of PID values than a docile trainer craft. Rolf Bakke (KapteinKUK himself)
made a video
illustrating how multicopters behave when tuning PID values. You can easily see how a quad can go from “drunk” to “angry bee” with just a few value tweaks. All this is coming together with The Hackaday Testbed, which will help me in posting a few PID tuning videos of my own.
Hackaday Testbed Update
As for the testbed itself, it’s nearly complete! You can follow the progress on my Hackaday Projects Page. Most of the assembly has been relatively straightforward. though of course there are always a few snags. It seems I always forget something when ordering up parts for
a build. In this case it was 2.5mm banana plugs and motor mounting screws.
The Hobbyking motors attach to the frame with 3mm screws. The problem is that there really is no way to know how long the screws should be until you have the motors, mounting plates and drone frame on hand. I have a bunch of 3mm screws of various lengths, and thankfully there were enough screws of the correct length to mount the motors. Murphy is always at my side, as I accidentally grabbed a screw that was 1mm too long and, you guessed it, screwed right into the windings of the motor. Doh! Thankfully I had spares.
Bullet connectors can be a real pain to solder. There are some jigs out there which help, but I’ve always found myself going back to the old “helping hands” alligator clips. Bullets tend to use lower gauge wire than we’re used to with regular electronics. 14, 12, even 8 gauge wires are used on R/C aircraft. A low power soldering iron with a surface mount tip just won’t cut it. Those irons just doesn’t have the thermal mass to get the connectors up to soldering temperature. This is one of those places where a decent 40 watt or better Weller iron (yes, the kind that plugs right in the wall) can be a godsend. I’m using an Metcal iron here, with a wide flat tip.
Bare bullet connectors and alligator clips can also create a problem – the metal clips create even more thermal mass. Years back an old-timer showed me a trick to handle this. Slip a piece of silicone R/C plane fuel tubing on the bullet, and then clip the helping hands onto the tube. The tube will act as insulation between the bullet and the clip. Silicone can easily withstand the temperatures of soldering. I’ve also used the silicone tube on the jaws themselves – though eventually the jaws will cut the soft tubing.
That’s about it for this edition Droning on! Until next time, keep ’em flying!
Title photo credit Cyrus Abdollahi. | 30 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621379",
"author": "strevo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T14:18:42",
"content": "nice silicone sleeve trick, I always had an issue not with heat, but with the alligator clips pinching the barrel connector out while full of liquid solder.Another thing I do differently, I simply hold the... | 1,760,376,142.787157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/ask-hackaday-global-energy-transmission-can-it-work/ | Ask Hackaday: Global Energy Transmission – Can It Work? | Will Sweatman | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"classic hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"Nikola Tesla",
"Wireless power"
] | Atop a small mountain in Colorado Springs sat the small, makeshift laboratory of Nikola Tesla. He chose this location because the air was thinner, and therefor more conductive. Tesla had come to believe that he could use the Earth as a conductor, and use it to send electrical power without the need for wires. Though some facts are forever lost, it is said that on a clear, moonless night, Tesla flipped the switch that fed millions of volts into a large coil that towered high into the air. He cackled maniacally as an eerie blue corona formed around the crackling instruments, while some 200 florescent bulbs began to glow over 25 miles away.
A magnificent feat took place in the hills of Colorado that night. A feat that surely would change the world in how it harnessed electricity. A feat that if brought to its full potential, could provide wireless power to every point on the globe. A feat that took place almost one hundred and twenty years ago…
J.P. Morgan, who was locked in a battle with John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to see who had the largest private parts, probably cared little about the implications of Tesla’s big idea of wireless power transmission when he contacted him. After reading a page out of Century Magazine about the experiment, Morgan took interest in its profitability and offered Tesla some much needed funding.
This brings us to the well known Wardenclyffe Tower, which was built on Long Island, NY in 1901. Tesla told Morgan that he could transmit information all the way to Europe. Long story short – it didn’t work. Some guy across the pond by the name of Guglielmo Marconi, while making use of some 17 of Telsa’s patents, made the worlds first functioning radio. And at a cost far cheaper than Tesla’s tower.
So here we are, a century later, and two Russian engineers want to do what
Nikola Tesla could not
. What we want to know is:
is it possible
. They claim that it is, of course. They’ve already made some headway with a small amount of funding. Now they want to build it. Build it again. They want to build another “Wardenclyffe Tower” with modern technology, including an Arduino. The original tower was over 60 tons. Theirs will only be two tons. They say they can put these towers all over the world, and get wireless power to the global population. But will it work?
So break out your calculators and physics books. We want to know –
is it possible
?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4fJWE3rnt4 | 177 | 45 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621110",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T11:07:47",
"content": "Slight bit of editorialising with the cackling and blue glow, perhaps? ;)I like the use of a shot from The Prestige, though. That’s a truly excellent movie.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,143.302982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/07/visualize-vroom-with-this-rgb-led-tachometer/ | Visualize Vroom With This RGB LED Tachometer | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"arduino pro mini",
"ford fiesta",
"neopixel",
"neopixel ring",
"OBD2 port",
"OpenXC",
"tachometer"
] | [Pete Mills] recently bought the all-new Ford Fiesta, which offers impressive fuel economy over that of his Jeep. He soon figured out that he has real time access to a wealth of engine and chassis data through Ford’s OpenXC platform and used it to build
blueShift, a neopixel tachometer
. The car already has a tach, but this one is more visual, can be seen in periphery, and is just plain fun.
In case you hadn’t heard, the
OpenXC platform
is Ford’s consumer key to the kingdom of OBD2 treasures. It unlocks the magic through its Vehicle Interface, which plugs into the OBD2 port and translates the CAN bus messages to OpenXC format. These messages are packaged into JSON format and can be sent over Bluetooth or Ethernet/Wi-Fi to an Android, Python, or iOS device.
[Pete] went with Bluetooth and used a BlueSMiRF with an Arduino Pro Mini. He derives power from the car’s on-board USB port, but has future plans to use the OpenXC VI port. blueShift reads the RPM data and displays a green trail as the engine revs up. At the peak revolution, it shows a red LED. This one is sticky and will persist for the lesser of three seconds or the time elapsed to a new positive RPM. [Pete] is also reading the headlight status of the car. As soon as they come on, the RGB LEDs dim to avoid blinding him at night.
[Pete] wanted to make an enclosure more finished-looking than a Tupperware box. He nearly detoured into 3D-printer design, but ended up putting together a Prusa i3v and came up with
this RAM mount-compatible enclosure
. His fantastic write-up and code are on his blog, but you can make the jump to see a short demo and a full explanation video. You can also make
smart brake lights
or even
create art
with OpenXC.
Demo video of blueShift:
Full explanation: | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621051",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T10:36:53",
"content": "Instead of using bluetooth, use a standard ODB-II interface you get power and the data in rs232 form from the ODB-II port.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,142.829614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/the-raspi-gameboy-for-the-rest-of-us/ | The Raspi GameBoy For The Rest Of Us | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"game boy",
"mame",
"raspberry pi",
"RetroPi"
] | We’ve seen quite a few casemods that stuff a Raspberry Pi into a Game Boy with all the required to turn it into a very cool portable Pi and retro gaming device. Most of these builds use a modified 20-year-old Game Boy for the enclosure, and if you have an attachment to your old green screened friend, you might not want to cut it up for a Pi project. [Noe] over at Adafruit has a solution –
a 3D printed Game Boy enclosure
that turns a Pi and TFT screen into a barely pocketable Raspberry Pi, with all the buttons and batteries required for taking an installation of RetroPi on the road.
The PiGRRL, as this build is called, uses the
Adafruit touchscreen TFT kit
for the Pi, effectively turning the Pi into a very tiny tablet. This allows for normal desktop interaction with the Pi, and it’s also small enough to fit in the smallest of enclosures.
The 3D printed enclosure
is the star of the show here, allowing complete access to most of the Pi’s ports, while allowing enough space in the rest of the enclosure for a largish battery, charging circuit, and buttons taken from an SNES controller.
The end result is a very usable portable Pi that just happens to be in the perfect form factor for loading up a few ROMs and playing some classic video games. Video below. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1621248",
"author": "NESHomebrew",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T12:49:08",
"content": "Arg… that button layout doesn’t look comfortable at all. Other than that, it looks pretty good!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1621655",
... | 1,760,376,142.873639 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/project-sentinel-a-bipedal-walking-robot/ | Project Sentinel — A Bipedal Walking Robot | James Hobson | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bipedal",
"bipedal robot",
"walking robot"
] | [Ye Guan] has always been fascinated by walking robots — so he decided to build his own. It’s called
Project Sentinel
, and he’s loosely based the design off of the Sentinel Walker from Warhammer 40K, and the two-legged AT-AT walker from Star Wars.
Both of these robots are based off of a bird’s walking style. Scientifically this is called the digitgrade walking style, which means they stand and walk on their digits (toes) — this typically allows them to move more quickly and quietly than most other animals.
[Ye] has managed to achieve this for his project using 8 servo motors, balancing the center of mass directly above the feet. Think about it like a reverse pendulum, which is supported by the servos torque and balanced by a gyroscope. He plans to have it fully autonomous with sensor feedback.
It’s not done yet, but he’s already released all the
CAD files
and
a nice build log
for anyone to attempt it themselves — we’re excited to see the final product. Just take a look at it walking in place after the break!
[via
HackedGadgets
] | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1620261",
"author": "ErichK",
"timestamp": "2014-07-07T02:14:29",
"content": "Two legged walker from Star Wars was AT-ST. AT-AT has four legs :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1620266",
"author": "Matthew Holmes (@ing... | 1,760,376,143.01205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/hackaday-links-july-6-2014/ | Hackaday Links: July 6, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"crowdfunding",
"fiberglass",
"hackaday links",
"hair",
"resin",
"yes"
] | Power for your breadboards
. It’s a USB connector, a 3.3V voltage regulator, and a few pins that plug into the rails of a breadboard.
“Have you seen those ‘Portable battery chargers for smartphones?’ Well the idea of the device is based on it ,
but the difference here is the internet part
.” That’s a direct quote from this Indiegogo campaign. It’s funny because I don’t remember losing my damn mind recently. Wait. It’s $200. Yep. Yep. Definitely lost my mind there.
Putting the Internet on a USB stick not weird enough?
Hair Highways
. Yep, human hair. It’s just embedding human hair into resin, cutting everything up into plates, and assembling these plates into decorative objects. As a structural material, it’s probably only as strong as the resin itself, but with enough hair set in layers perpendicular to each other, it would be the same idea as fiberglass. Only made out of hair.
Tesla
is building a $30,000 car
and Harley is
building an electric motorcycle
. The marketing line for the bike will probably be something like, “living life on your own terms, 50 miles at a time”.
PixelClock
? It’s a 64×64 array of red LEDs built to be a clock, and low-resolution display.
It looks blindingly bright
in the video, something that’s hard to do with red LEDs. | 43 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1620018",
"author": "strevo",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T23:21:01",
"content": "those PCB power supplies have been around for the last 4 years!:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Breadboard-Power-Supply-Module-5V-3-3V-For-Arduino-No-Breadboard-/371094529396?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5666f52... | 1,760,376,143.090671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/mains-power-detector-for-a-thing-for-internet/ | Mains Power Detector For A Thing For Internet | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"mains",
"mains detection",
"RLC"
] | The Internet of Things is fast approaching, and although no one can tell us what that actually
is
, we do know it has something to do with being able to control appliances and lights or something. Being able to control something is nice, but being able to tell if a mains-connected appliance is on or not is just as valuable. [Shane]
has a really simple circuit
he’s been working on to do just that: tell if something connected to mains is on or not, and relay that information over a wireless link.
There are two basic parts of [Shane]’s circuit – an RLC circuit that detects current flowing through a wire, This circuit is then fed into an instrumentation amplifier constructed from three op-amps. The output of this goes through a diode and straight to the ADC of a microcontroller, ready for transmission to whatever radio setup your local thingnet will have.
It’s an extremely simple circuit and something that could probably be made with less than a dollar’s worth of parts you could find in a component drawer. [Shane] has a great demo of this circuit connected to a microcontroller, you can check that out below. | 38 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1619789",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T20:05:25",
"content": "Neon light and photo resistor seems up to the task, safety and most bird kill per shot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1619824",
"author... | 1,760,376,142.947351 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/piles-of-foam-with-a-hot-wire-slicer/ | Piles Of Foam With A Hot Wire Slicer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"foam",
"hot wire foam cutter",
"hot-wire",
"nichrome"
] | There are a million things you can do with foam, from some very impressive RC airplanes, all the way up to full-scale planes you can fly off into the wild blue yonder. Cutting foam, though, that’s a problem, and your best option is usually a hot wire foam cutter.
[Darcy] put up some plans for a very nice bow cutter
, but there’s also some experimentation for a foam slicer – a hot wire machine that takes a foam part and slices it like a smokehouse ham.
The bow-style cutter features laser cut parts, a pair of 1/4-20 bolts, a power supply, and about a foot of nichrome wire. It’s the bare minimum for cutting foam, but it seems to work really, really well.
The hot wire foam slicer is a much more interesting contraption, capable of making multiple thin sheets out of foam. Basically, it’s a laser cut tray with a bolt hole pattern running along the sides. Put two bolts along the side, loop some nichrome wire around the screw flights, and you have a way to cut foam in thicknesses of about 1/20th of an inch. Great if you’re trying to skin a model in very thin depron, or you just can’t find the right thickness of foam for your project. | 23 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1619768",
"author": "pcf11",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T19:40:54",
"content": "Why is everything laser cut today? Don’t people own hand power tools anymore? If someone couldn’t cut this out with a jigsaw then I feel sorry for them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,143.358745 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/two-weeks-to-hope-x-and-were-going/ | Two Weeks To HOPE X, And We’re Going | Brian Benchoff | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"hope",
"HOPE conference",
"HOPE X",
"security"
] | In a little less than two weeks,
the biannual HOPE conference
in NYC will be in full swing. Attendance is more than likely to put you on
a list
somewhere, so of course we’ll be setting up shop, enjoying the sights and sounds, and throwing swag at hundreds of attendees.
Highlights of HOPE X include
a keynote from [Daniel Ellisburg]
,
a video conference with [Edward Snowden]
,
a Q&A with the EFF
, a talk
I’ll certainly be attending
, and the always popular talk on social engineering
headed up by [Emmanuel Goldstein]
.
As with all our extracurriculars, Hackaday will be giving out some swag (200+ tshirts, stickers, and THP goodies), and manning a vendor booth. Look for the eight foot Hackaday flag held up with duct tape. We’ll also be doing the usual video and blog thing from HOPE, for all of you who can’t attend thanks to your company’s security reviews, and some super secret things I can’t believe the overlords signed off on.
In other 2600 news,
they ain’t doin too good
, with tens of thousands of dollars of debt thanks to rather crappy legal stuff with their distributors.
Buying a ticket
would help the 2600 guys out, as would buying July’s issue (
also on Kindle
). | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1619434",
"author": "Jim Turner",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T14:41:32",
"content": "is there a way to read the kindle version on windows?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1636596",
"author": "shay",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,143.456937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/stealing-wifi-from-led-lightbulbs/ | Stealing WiFi From LED Lightbulbs | Eric Evenchick | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"6lowpan",
"aes",
"busblaster",
"ida",
"internet of things",
"lightbulb",
"openocd",
"wifi"
] | Back in 2012, the LIFX light bulb launched on Kickstarter, and was quite successful. This wireless LED lightbulb uses a combination of WiFi and 6LoWPAN to create a network of lightbulbs within your house. Context Information Security
took a look into these devices
, and found some security issues.
The LIFX system has a master bulb. This is the only bulb which connects to WiFi, and it sends all commands out to the remaining bulbs over 6LoWPAN. To keep the network up, any bulb can become a master if required. This means the WiFi credentials need to be shared between all the bulbs.
Looking into the protocol, an encrypted binary blob containing WiFi credentials was found. This binary could easily be recovered using an
AVR Raven
evaluation kit, but was not readable since it was encrypted.
After cracking a bulb apart, they found JTAG headers on the main board. A
BusBlaster
and
OpenOCD
were used to communicate with the chip. This allowed the firmware to be dumped.
Using
IDA Pro
, they determined that AES was being used to encrypt the WiFi credentials. With a bit more work, the key and initialization vector was extracted. With this information, WiFi credentials sent over the air could be decrypted.
The good news is that LIFX fixed this issue. Now they generate an encryption key based on WiFi credentials, preventing a globally unique key from being used.
[via
reddit
] | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1619313",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T13:05:50",
"content": "Very enlightening!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1619463",
"author": "cde",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T15:01:00",
"con... | 1,760,376,143.834884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/another-ball-sucking-machine-leaves-you-wanting-more/ | Another Ball Sucking Machine Leaves You Wanting More | Rich Bremer | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ball pit",
"vacuum"
] | [Niklas] told us about his newest art project that he is calling a
Pneumatic Sponge Ball Accelerator
. This isn’t a home workshop type of project, it is a full fledged art exhibit displayed at the Tschumi Pavilion in Groningen / The Netherlands. One-thousand black sponge balls move from a big glass ball-reservoir bubble to another via a 150 meter long track of clear plastic tubing. The balls move up to an impressive 4 meters a second. Admirers of the installation can operate the machine and its airflow from outside the pavilion by pressing their hand up to a touch sensor installed on the wall of the exhibit.
All of the ball movement is powered by an ordinary home vacuum. Since it would be a short display if all the balls traveled in one direction, ending up in just one of the glass bubbles, [Niklas] came up with a simple yet functional valve that reverses the flow of air in the tube. This is done by a rotatable disk with two holes in it. Depending on its position, it connects one of the two bubble to the vacuum, leaving the other vented to outside atmosphere. Since the vacuum side of the path is low pressure and the ambient atmosphere is relative high pressure, the air travels towards the vacuum bringing the foam balls with it. No balls get sucked into the vacuum because the outlet tube is at the top of each bubble.
Find two videos after the break, they are well worth watching.
Are you wondering what it would be like to travel through this contraption? Wonder no longer as this video provides a first person point of view thanks to a tiny camera stuffed inside a custom foam-covered capsule:
We’ve previously covered a
ball sucking machine
here on Hackaday that [Niklas] acknowledges was partial inspiration for his project. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1615531",
"author": "Simon Moore",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T16:09:50",
"content": "Was that title entirely necessary? :P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1616009",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04... | 1,760,376,143.887361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/astronaut-or-astronot-givin-away-scopes/ | Astronaut Or Astronot: Givin’ Away Scopes | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"contest",
"oscilloscope",
"the hackaday prize"
] | [youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9vnZLlHIU]
Remember how we said we’d give away an oscilloscope to a random person on hackaday.io
if they have voted on projects for The Hackaday Prize
? Last week we tried that
and no one won
. This week we tried it and no one won. Then, because we’re awesome, we picked another person at random on Hackaday.io. [Rafael] is the winner, with a very nice oscilloscope heading to his doorstep. We’re going to need some contact info,
hacker no. 13951
, and if anyone has any advice on sending expensive electronics to Brazil, I think we’re going to need it.
We’re doing this again next week,
so head on over to hackaday.io and vote
. Also, pay no attention to the people who say voting is too hard and complicated and ill planned:
they are wrong
, and if you suck up enough the Prime Overlord will command that t-shirts and stickers be sent out to you. | 52 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1615447",
"author": "flare",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T15:16:06",
"content": "As one who worked for a FedEx Hub for years. I can confidently say that they handle package better than the alternatives. Which means you should expect it to be thrown no less than 5 feet.. and multiple tim... | 1,760,376,144.255824 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/tis-new-family-of-wifi-chips/ | TI’s New Family Of WiFi Chips | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"arm",
"CC3000",
"CC3100",
"CC3200",
"wifi"
] | Texas Instruments’ CC3000 WiFi chip is the darling of everyone producing the latest and greatest Internet of Thing, and it’s not much of a surprise: In quantity, these chips are only $10 a piece. That’s a lot less expensive than the WiFi options a year ago. Now, TI is coming out with
a few new modules to their WiFi module family
, including one that includes an ARM micro.
The CC3000 has found a home
in booster packs
, breakout boards for the Arduino, and
Spark
,
who are actually some pretty cool dudes
.Still, the CC3000 has a few shortcomings; 802.11n isn’t available, and it would be really cool if the CC3000 had a web server on it.
The newest chips add these features and a whole lot more. [Valkyrie]
got his hands on a CC3100Boost board
and was pleased to find all the files for the webserver can be completely replaced. Here’s your Internet of Things, people. The CC3200 is even better, with a built-in ARM Cortex M4 with ADCs, a ton of GPIOs, an SD card interface, and even a parallel port for a camera. If you’re looking to pull a hardware startup out of your hat, you might want to plan your Kickstarter around this chip.
It’s all very cool stuff, and although the bare chips aren’t available yet, you can get
an eval module from TI
, with an FCC certified module with the crystals and antenna coming later this year. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1615377",
"author": "Frank Buss",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T14:29:10",
"content": "Nice, but if $10 is for WiFi only, how much does the chip cost with integrated CPU? And why is it so expensive, even in quantities? On eBay I can get a WiFi USB dongle for EUR 2.36, free shipping.",
... | 1,760,376,144.122083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/angry-birds-sentry-gun-has-pigs-flying/ | Angry Birds Sentry Gun Has Pigs Flying | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"sentry gun"
] | [Farlei Heinen] has a C programming class at school. Not wanting to do another boring cookie-cutter project out of the textbook, he decided to do something different — he’s built
an Arduino controlled sentry gun
!
It consists of two parts: The sentry gun itself and a sonar detection tower which can tell if you’ve successfully knocked down the pigs or not. He’s using an Arduino Mega at the heart of the project, which controls the servos and reads information off of the sonar sensors.
The sentry gun uses two servo motors to control up and down, and left and right. The loading mechanism is manual, using elastic bands to launch the projectile. The firing mechanism however is a micro (9g) servo, which can release the elastic and shoot the projectile. The target is an Angry Birds toy play set made for kids.
It’s a pretty cool project, and [Farlei] has even released the source code for it if you’re interested in building your own — check it out in action, after the break! | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1615293",
"author": "Isaac S.",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T13:31:51",
"content": "Does HaD get submissions of sentry guns with, well, real guns? There must be someone out there giving an arduino a license to kill.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,143.923601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/solderdoodle-is-an-open-source-usb-rechargable-soldering-iron/ | Solderdoodle Is An Open Source, USB Rechargable Soldering Iron | Rick Osgood | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"kickstarter",
"lion",
"rechargable",
"solderdoodle",
"soldering",
"soldering iron",
"usb"
] | Battery powered soldering irons are nothing new, but what about a soldering iron that can recharge via USB? [Solarcycle] realized that it might be handy to be able to recharge a portable soldering iron using such a ubiquitous connector and power source, so he developed the
Solderdoodle
.
The core component of the Solderdoodle is a Weller BP645 Soldering Iron. The heating element is removed from the Weller and placed into a custom case. The case is designed to be 3d printed. The STL files for the case are available if you want to make your own.
The Solderdoodle does away with large, disposable batteries and replaces them with a lithium ion battery pack. The battery contains no built-in protection circuitry in order to save space. Instead, this circuit is added later. [Solarcycle] appears to be using a circuit of his own design. The schematic and Gerber’s are available on his
website
.
The Instructable walks through all of the steps to build one of these yourself if you are so inclined. If you don’t have the spare time, you can fund the project’s
Kickstarter
and pre-order a production model. It’s always great to see a new commercial product with an open design.
[via
Reddit
] | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1614779",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T08:17:21",
"content": "Open source design uses a propriety tip. The old Whal cordless iron had two screws for the tip, a secure connection. This looks like a trouble prone coaxial connection not up to the high amperage. I hav... | 1,760,376,144.943078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/03/dont-blink-ken-or-the-weeping-barbie-will-get-you/ | Don’t Blink, Ken… Or The Weeping Barbie Will Get You | Rick Osgood | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"barbie",
"dolls",
"dr. who",
"weeping angel"
] | That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel. Have fun with that.
Barbie dolls have been around since 1959, but never before have they been this terrifying. [anthropolywog] decided to kick the creepy factor up a notch by modifying some poor, defenseless Barbie dolls into
weeping angels
.
If you aren’t familiar with the weeping angel concept, you probably don’t watch Dr. Who. The weeping angel episode, titled “
Blink
“, is now considered a classic Dr. Who episode. The basic premise is that some creepy, weeping stone statues can move only when no one is looking at them. Even closing your eyes for a moment to blink is enough to get them to move. It’s actually quite terrifying, but also awesome.
[anthropolywog] started by purchasing several ordinary Barbie dolls. She then cut off all of the arms at the elbow. This is because the Barbie arms do not normally bend at the elbow, and this was required to get that classic weeping angel pose. The hair was glued up into a bun, similar to the weeping angels from the show. The Barbies were then hot glued to wooden stands to make it easier to work on them.
Crinkle cotton fabric was then cut into a simple dress shape and draped over the dolls. The entire doll was then sprayed with a mixture of Elmer’s glue and water. This stiffens up the fabric and makes the whole thing look more statuesque.
The most complicated part was the wings. [anthropolywog] hand-made the wings from cardboard and craft feathers. This process took several hours of work in order to get something that would look right.
The dolls were primed for paint separately from the wings. The wings were then attached, and the whole doll was painted with “natural stone” textured spray paint. The final touch was to re-draw the faded eyes and mouths with a fine tipped permanent marker. You can see in the photo that the result turned out very well.
[via
Reddit
] | 43 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "1614463",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T05:11:47",
"content": "Did I miss the hack here? I thought that this was an animatronic doll that would move when you are not looking at it, but I don’t see any electronics in this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,376,144.053473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/03/diy-headphone-tube-amp-builds-on-existing-design/ | DIY Headphone Tube Amp Builds On Existing Design | Rich Bremer | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"headphone amp",
"tube amp",
"tubeamplifier"
] | [Simon] wrote in to tell us about a
headphone tube amp
that he just built. It is based on schematics at
diyaudioprojects.com
that were actually featured on
Hackaday
in the past. [Simon’s] design adds an on board regulated power supply and a volume control for the input. Effort was made to keep the PCB single sided to facilitate making this at home.
The 12AU7 is popular due to its ruggedness and tolerance for low operational voltages. This amp design uses a plate voltage of 12, although the 12AU7 can handle up to about 330. Since the 12AU7 is of the Twin Triode variety, one tube can be used to amplify both a left and right audio channel.
The case for the amplifier is laser cut plywood. The top piece is kerfed so that it can bend around the radii of the front and rear panels. The top also has a hole cut in it to allow the tube to peek out through.The pieces look nice but, unfortunately, he doesn’t show the case and amp in an assembled state.
If you’re interested in building one of these, [Simon] made all of the Eagle and Case files available. The total cost of the project was £25, about $43 US. To learn more about how tube amplifiers work, check out this
Retrotechtacular
from earlier in the year. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1614477",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-07-04T05:20:52",
"content": "Transistor or FET amp with a tube gain stage. It quacks solid state!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1615749",
"author": "igor",
... | 1,760,376,144.174162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/06/c64-emulator-for-the-arduino-due/ | C64 Emulator For The Arduino Due | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"basic",
"c64",
"commodore",
"EHBasic",
"emulator"
] | Almost a year ago, [miker00lz]
started a thread on the Arduino forums
telling everyone about a 6502 emulator and BASIC interpreter he wrote for an Arduino Uno. The chip inside the Uno isn’t a powerhouse by any means, and with only 2KB of RAM it’s far less capable than just about any computer from the 70s. Arduino works on a lot of different chips, though, and after a few months, [Jan] turned an Arduino Due
into a Commodore 64 emulator
.
[Jan]’s code isn’t limited to the DUE, and can be used with any chip with enough memory. If you’re feeling fancy, you can connect a TFT display for all the vintage goodness of PETSCII graphics, all while running a faster BASIC than the very stripped down EHBASIC.
Because the emulator is using software to talk to the outside world, it should be possible to use this project to interface with the cooler chips found in Commodore machines – SIDs for one, but also the cartridge port for some vintage Ethernet goodness. It’s not even limited to Commodore machines, either: the POKEY chips found in Atari 8-bit micros are seriously underutilized in the chiptune and demoscene, and having modern hardware to play with these chips couldn’t hurt in the slightest. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1619057",
"author": "Jacek",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T09:50:57",
"content": "10 PRINT “A$S”20 GOTO 10RUNWho did NOT do it in the past?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "3395798",
"author": "Mads Daugbjerg",
"time... | 1,760,376,144.309079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/overwriting-a-protected-avr-bootloader/ | Overwriting A Protected AVR Bootloader | Eric Evenchick | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"AVR",
"bootloader",
"code security",
"fignation"
] | A bootloader is typically used to update application code on a microcontroller. It receives the new program from a host, writes it to flash, verifies the program is valid, and resets the microcontroller. Perhaps the most ubiquitous example is the Arduino bootloader which allows you to load code without an AVR programmer.
The bootloader resides in a special part of memory, which is protected. On the AVR, it isn’t possible to write to the bootloader memory from the application code. This is to prevent you from accidentally breaking the bootloader and bricking the device.
However, it can be useful to write to the bootloader memory. The best example would be when you need to update the bootloader itself. To accomplish this, [Julz] found a workaround that
defeats the AVR bootloader protection
.
The challenge was to find a way to execute the Store Program Memory (spm) instruction, which can only be executed by the bootloader. [Julz] managed to make use of the spm instruction in the existing bootloader by counting cycles and modifying registers at the right time.
Using this technique, which [Julz] calls BootJacker, the
Fignition 8 bit computer
could have its bootloader updated. However, this technique would likely allow you to modify most bootloaders on AVR devices. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1618760",
"author": "Joseph Chiu",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T06:31:15",
"content": "Bravo. A nice and simple exploit!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1618790",
"author": "Mathieu Stephan",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T06:48:... | 1,760,376,144.35283 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/gatling-gun-styled-water-pistol-made-out-of-sugru/ | Gatling Gun Styled Water Pistol Made Out Of… Sugru? | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Sugru",
"water pistol"
] | We admit it – we’re suckers for clever advertising of a product. The company behind Sugru, everyone’s favorite self-setting-rubber-fix-it material commissioned this awesome
gatling gun styled water pistol
, and it’s actually quite impressive.
Designed by [Alex Bygrave]
, he was instructed to build the gun out of as many standard hardware store parts as possible — and as much Sugru as he could. It’s been used to make all the seals, connections, and even the pistons, and while we can’t tell if it leaks anywhere, it’s still pretty impressive.
Unlike a normal water pistol, this one is powered by compressed CO2 canisters like the ones used for welding — meaning the pressures are much higher than a typical super soaker as well!
19Stick around after the break to see it in action – tested on the staff of Sugru themselves!
We’re not too sure if the home-made version of Sugru, called
Oogoo
, would be able to stand up to the same kind of torture the Sugru sees in this project. Speaking of which, can you actually buy Sugru locally yet?
[via
Make
] | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1618418",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T02:27:51",
"content": "Need to rev that badboy up a bit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1618459",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T02:48:29",
"conte... | 1,760,376,145.202643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/the-disintegrated-op-amp/ | The Disintegrated Op Amp | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"analog",
"component",
"discrete",
"linear",
"opamp"
] | By now we’ve all seen the ‘Three Fives’ kit from Evil Mad Scientist, a very large clone of the 555 timer built from individual transistors and resistors. You can do a lot more in the analog world with discrete parts, and
[Shane]’s SevenFortyFun is no exception
: it’s a kit with a board, transistors, and resistors making a very large clone of the classic 741 op-amp, with all the parts laid bard instead of encapsulated in a brick of plastic.
[Shane] was inspired by the analog greats – [Bob Pease], [Jim Williams], and of course [Bob Widlar], and
short of mowing his lawn with goats
, the easiest way to get a feel for analog design was to build some analog circuits out of individual components.
[Shane] has a few more kits in mind: a linear dropout and switching regulators are on the top of the list, as is something like the
Three Fives kit
, likely to be used to blink giant LEDs. | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1618118",
"author": "Sikei",
"timestamp": "2014-07-05T23:13:17",
"content": "laid bard*",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1618848",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-07-06T07:21:33",
"content": "T... | 1,760,376,144.864817 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/hackaday-reader-david-wins-a-camera-from-make-and-nikon/ | Hackaday Reader [David] Wins A Camera From Make And Nikon | Adam Fabio | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"contest",
"make",
"make magazine",
"nikon",
"time-lapse"
] | [David Schwarz] whipped up this
moving time-lapse camera rig
and won himself a sweet Nikon setup. You might remember our post about the
Nikon Make:The Shot Challenge
. [David] saw our post, and started thinking about what he wanted to enter. Like a true engineer, he finally came up with his idea with just 3 days left in the contest.
[David] wanted to build a moving time-lapse rig, but he didn’t have the aluminum extrusion rails typically used to build one. He did have some strong rope though, as well as a beefy DC motor with a built-in encoder. [David] mounted a very wide gear on the shaft of the motor, then looped the rope around the gear and two idler pulleys to ensure the gear would have a good bite on the rope. The motor is controlled by an Arduino, which also monitors the encoder to make sure the carriage doesn’t move too far between shots.
[
David] built and tested his rig over a weekend. On Monday morning, he gave the rig its first run. The video came out pretty good, but he knew he could get a better shot. That’s when Murphy struck. The motor and controller on his rig decided to give up the ghost. With the contest deadline less than 24 hours away, [David] burned the midnight oil and replaced his motor and controller.
Tuesday morning, [David] pulled out his trump card – a trip to
Tally Lake
in Montana, USA. The equipment worked perfectly, and nature was cooperating too. The trees, lake, and the shadows on the mountains in the background made for an incredible shot. Once the time-lapse photos were in the can, [David] rushed home, stitched and stabilized the resulting video. He submitted his winning entry with just 2 hours to spare.
Click past the break for more on [David’s] time-lapse rig, and to see his final video.
There was some stiff competition, entries like [Matt’s]
mirror-less camera based 8mm film converter
and [Pat’s]
Arduino powered flash sequencer
gave him a real run for his money. In the end though, the time-lapse rig won. We want to congratulate [David] on winning Make and Nikon’s contest. We love seeing members of the Hackaday community setting the bar for competitions everywhere. We’re also sending [David] a Hackaday t-shirt and some other goodies. Hopefully he’s already working on an entry for
The Hackaday Prize
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1617975",
"author": "Finn Goodwin",
"timestamp": "2014-07-05T21:54:46",
"content": "I feel like this sort of setup could work much better on an aluminum ladder. At least where I live everyone seems to own about 5 of the bloody things, and it would eliminate the twitch he was getting... | 1,760,376,144.788891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/electric-solder-paste-dispenser-speeds-up-reflow-prep/ | Electric Solder Paste Dispenser Speeds Up Reflow Prep | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"solder paste"
] | [Geir Andersen] of Let’s Make Robots has been venturing deeper and deeper into the wonderful world of surface mounted devices, which as you know, can be tricky to solder! Not wanting to shell out a few hundred for a professional solder paste dispenser (and air compressor), [Geir] decided to
build his own.
It allows him to use a standard syringe for solder paste, which can easily be refilled using
this technique
. The professional dispensers use air pressure to control the flow of the paste, but [Geir] decided to go the all-electric route instead. He’s hooked up a small stepper motor to a threaded shaft which can push the plunger up and down the syringe.
Couple that with a few 3D printed parts for the housing, a nicely designed PCB, and bam you have yourself a super handy solder paste dispenser! He’s even included a small potentiometer on the board to change the speed of the motor. It might not be quite as accurate as a professional one, but as you can see in the video after the break it seems to work great for [Geir’s] purposes.
[Thanks Jan!] | 34 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1617612",
"author": "samuelclay",
"timestamp": "2014-07-05T17:20:50",
"content": "This looks awesome! I’ve never heard of an electric solder paste dispenser before. What are some good expensive ones? I’d like to compare to what’s out there and would love a recommendation before I tr... | 1,760,376,145.011124 |
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