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https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/rooting-the-nest-thermostat/ | Rooting The Nest Thermostat | Brian Benchoff | [
"home hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"nest",
"nest thermostat",
"rooting",
"ssh"
] | A few months ago, Google bought a $3.2 billion dollar thermostat in the hopes it would pave the way for smart devices in every home. The Nest thermostat itself is actually pretty cool – it’s running Linux with a reasonably capable CPU, and adds WiFi to the mix for some potentially cool applications.
It can also be rooted in under a minute
,
As [cj] explains, the CPU inside the Nest has a Device Firmware Update mode that’s normally used for testing inside the Nest factory. This DFU mode can also be used to modify the device without any restrictions at all.
With a simple shell script, [cj] plugs the Nest into his laptop’s USB port, puts the device into DFU mode, and uploads a two-stage booloader to enable complete control over the Linux-powered thermostat.
As a bonus, the shell script also installs an SSH server and enables a reverse SSH connection to get around most firewalls. This allows anyone to remotely control the Nest thermostat, a wonderful addition to the Nest that doesn’t rely on iPhone apps or a cloud service to remotely control your Internet enabled thermostat.
Video of the rooting process below. | 57 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "1595153",
"author": "jlbrian7",
"timestamp": "2014-06-25T02:08:39",
"content": "https://developer.nest.com/?utm_campaign=developer-annoucement&utm_source=registriaemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=learn-more-buttonI just got an email for their api release today too.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,162.131391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/drones-and-robots-come-out-to-play-at-sparkfuns-6th-annual-autonomous-vehicle-competition/ | Drones And Robots Come Out To Play At Sparkfun’s 6th Annual Autonomous Vehicle Competition | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Autonomous Vehicle Competition",
"avc",
"drone",
"robots",
"sparkfun"
] | Sparkfun Electronics held their 6th annual Autonomous Vehicle Competition last weekend, and this year was bigger than ever before. The action was at Boulder Reservoir in Colorado, but anyone could follow along (with a few technical difficulties) on the YouTube LiveStream.
(Part 1)
, and
(Part 2)
.
The story of the day was Team SHARC’s Troubled Child, which won the ground vehicle doping class. Rather than mess around with miniature cars, Team SHARC built their ‘bot out of a freaking Jeep, a 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer to be exact. Troubled Child had no problem getting around the course. One could say it carried the entire team. Literally – the rest of Team SHARC’s robots are riding along on top of Troubled Child in the picture up there.
There was also plenty of action in the aerial competition. Sir Crash-a-Lot was the first drone to find a watery doom at Boulder Reservoir. The last we saw of it on the stream, the team was looking for some divers.
Aircraft can not be hand launched at the AVC. Not a problem for rotary-winged vehicles, but this rule has led to some interesting solutions for fixed wing aircraft. The disguised “Team Falcon” showed up with an
incredible compressed air launcher
, which used a gallon water jug to fire their delta-winged plane to a clean run. Team Karma550 wasn’t quite as lucky, with their helicopter crashing hard, and throwing up quite a bit of smoke.
We’re still waiting for more detailed results, but if you want the full scores, they are available on
Sparkfun’s AVC scoreboard page
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1594868",
"author": "Pixel Pirate",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T23:18:33",
"content": "It was a fun day, for sure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1594896",
"author": "chris",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T23:34:51",
"conten... | 1,760,376,162.175643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/programmable-logic-i-plapal/ | Programmable Logic I – PLA/PAL | Bil Herd | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"bil herd",
"commodore",
"pal",
"PLA",
"programmable logic"
] | Yeah I am still a little pissed that the competition is still around and we aren’t, and by “we” I mean Commodore Business Machines (CBM). It was Commodore that had the most popular home computer ever in the C64 (27 Million) and it was a team of MOS engineers after all, that had the idea to make a “micro” processor out of a 12 square inch PCB.
MOS Technology in King of Prussia/Norristown
Of course they did work at Motorola at the time and “Mot” did not want anything to do with a reduction of the profit margin on the pie-plate size processor. Of course MOS got sued by Motorola but that was an average Tuesday at MOS/CBM. I absolutely credit CBM with buying the MOS Technologies chip foundry, as together we could make our own processors, graphics chips, sound chips, memory controllers, and programmable logic.
With this arsenal at our call we didn’t have to make compromises the way other companies did such as conforming to the bus spec of an
industrial standard 6845
or having to add extra logic when a custom extra pin would work. We could also make
sprites
.
6502 Design Team (EE Times 1975, archive.archaeology.org)
The compromise we did have to make when designing was cost, and I mean the kind of cost reduction where finding a way to save a dollar ($1USD) saved millions in the production run. I knocked $.90USD out of a transformer one day and I couldn’t focus the rest of the day due to elation.
Cost reduction is a harsh mistress however as you can’t just do it a little some of the time or only when you want to. The mental exercise of multiplying anything times a million was always there, it made it hard to buy lunch — I’d be blocking the lunch line while figuring the cost of a million tuna sandwiches
FOB
Tokyo
To offset stringent cost control we had massive quantity discounts. Calling a local rep to say that we were designing in the recent 16kx4 DRAM was known as “the call”, and inevitably the doorbell would ring 2 minutes after hanging up the phone.
In a rare event we lost our management when [
Mr. Jack Tramiel
] quit and then later ended up at
Atari
— picture the Borg knowing everything Cpt. Picard does. During the time of “no management” a couple of things happened: the number of cases of beer consumed on premises skyrocketed, and the engineering department designed a computer to fill the void without direction from management or marketing, at least for a while.
This meant that the design ultimately came from a piece of grid paper instead of a few dozen meetings discussing customer focus and the cost of a million tuna sandwiches. The shopping list included a memory manager and the biggest PLA we had done to date. It should be noted that no one in chip design says “no” or “we can’t do it” at this stage. That’s because we just don’t yet know. But if the engineer making the requests doesn’t want to later be done in by the laws of physics, he/she had better keep the requests within the realm of “almost doable”.
In the Commodore 64 there was a PLA modeled after the Signetics 82S100 which was a “blown fuse” technology for programming a simple AND-OR array. When I say blown fuse I am not kidding, my memory is that part of the parameters was not to blow the fuse using excessive power as it my “splatter”.
PLA Die C128.com,
Ultimately Commodore and MOS Technologies made their own NMOS version, I won’t say we copied the Signetics part, we just took lots of Polaroids through a microscope and had them mounted to a board. Under the covers we replaced two kinds of fuses, “and term” fuses and “or term”, with a diffusion layer “slug” and also a pre-ohmic contact. It was one-to-one so the code that worked on an 82S100 could be sent over and then someone could run a script to convert. An excellent write up on Commodore’s C64 PLA down by [Thomas ’skoe’ Giesel]
embodied in this PDF
(also
mirrored here
).
The PLA is an AND-OR array meaning that each line of terms that are true — they satisfy the logic of “This and That but Not That over there” — are OR’ed together depending on which output you want to affect. OR’ing is like a dogpile, the chip doesn’t care which of the strings of terms caused the true condition, it just knows that one or more did.
Example of the worksheet engineers used to create logic terms.
We pushed this device for everything it was worth, I had asked for a little over twice the terms which means the array, being twice as big, had twice the resistance and twice the capacitance. This translates to 4 times the RC component. That aside and I also won’t bore with details of how the designer tried to insert a change without telling anybody and shorted all of the input pins to the back bias ring with 2 weeks to go to CES. Simply put we shoved as much into the chip as we could and we wouldn’t have had a viable computer without it. Mass quantity production pricing brought the cost down to pennies and nickels, even after the $2.5million NRE cost to design.
PLA And Or Array
So the PLA was a low cost, high return hit. We smiled. Then we looked at what we call the jungle logic left on the board and our brows furrowed. This collection of gates would be prime candidates for the Programmable Logic Device (PLD) of the day, especially in the area where we were trying to make a 6502 microprocessor play nice with a Z80 microprocessor all while not blowing the DRAM up. It would also have been ideal for the final stages of FCC application where you can only make minimal visible changes to the board without re-submitting. There was no joy in Mudville however, as the price of PLDs was prohibitive at $4-$5USD. Buying large quantities didn’t result in large discounts, just large bills and logistics issues such as programming them. At this point I got my hands on a confidential stock and price sheet and picked the jungle logic from what was already in stock providing there were hundreds of thousands available of any one part.
PLD architecture showing registers and feedback.
What made the PLA powerful was it was relatively fast since the internal array was small, and there was the addition of registers and feedback terms which are the ingredients of State machines (we will discuss Mealy and Moore state machines at a later date.) I believe CBM/MOS did try to do an NMOS version of the PLA but the limitations of the NMOS process limited usability. In the next installment — which will be published early tomorrow — I talk about more modern Complex Programmable Logic Devices and program one from start to finish. Instead of doing gate reduction, the modern devices quite simply allow a designer to implement macro functions at any quantity that simple couldn’t be done otherwise as “jungle logic” would be too slow and error prone.
CPLD Device showing assignments. | 25 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1594652",
"author": "spaceman",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T20:34:02",
"content": "Moar please!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1597948",
"author": "willis",
"timestamp": "2014-06-26T12:51:43",
"content": ... | 1,760,376,161.945798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/developed-on-hackaday-current-status-and-selected-beta-testers/ | Developed On Hackaday: Current Status And Selected Beta Testers | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware"
] | [
"beta testers",
"developed on hackaday",
"limpkin",
"mooltipass",
"password",
"smart card"
] | The Hackaday community is currently working on an offline password keeper, aka
Mooltipass
. The concept behind this product is to minimize the number of ways your passwords can be compromised, while generating and storing long and complex random passwords for the different websites you use daily. The Mooltipass is a standalone device connected through USB and is compatible with all major operating systems on PCs, Macs and Smartphones. More details on the encryption and technical details can be found on our
github repository readme
or by having look at all the articles
we previously published on Hackaday
.
As you can see from our
commit activity
these last weeks have been extremely busy for us. We finally have a firmware that uses all the different libraries that our contributors made but also a chrome plugin and extension that can communicate with our Mooltipass. We’re very happy to say that our system is completely driverless. A video will be published on Hackaday next week showing our current prototype in action as some of the contributors are already using it to store their credentials.
We selected 20 beta testers that will be in charge of providing us with valuable feedback during the final stages of firmware / plugin development. Selection was made based on how many passwords they currently have, which OS they were using but also if they were willing to contribute to the prototype production cost. We expect them to receive their prototypes in less than 2 months as the production funds were wired today.
We think we’ve come a long way since the project was announced last december on Hackaday, thanks to you dear readers. You provided us with valuable feedback and in some cases important github push requests. You’ve been there to make sure that we were designing something that could please most of the (non) tech-savy people out there and we thank you for it. So stay tuned as in a week we will be publishing a video of our first prototype in action!
Want to chat with us? You can join the official
Mooltipass Google Group
or follow us on
Hackaday Projects
. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1594321",
"author": "koa",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T17:13:41",
"content": "What is the carbon footprint of this device?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1594340",
"author": "Gronk",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T17:2... | 1,760,376,162.344191 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/judge-spotlight-limor-ladyada-fried/ | Judge Spotlight: Limor “Ladyada” Fried | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"adafruit",
"judge",
"ladyada",
"limor fried",
"the hackaday prize"
] | We sent off a list of questions, just like every week, and [Ladyada] offered to do
a video response
. How awesome is that? Not only did she answer our questions, but she talked at length for several of them. We’re biased, but her explanation about Adafruit’s manufacturing processes and options for home hackers to get boards spun was a real treat.
Perhaps we should step back for a minute though. In case you don’t know [Limor Fried], aka [Ladyada], is a judge for
The Hackaday Prize
which will award a trip into space and hundreds of other prizes for
hackers who build connected devices that use Open Design
(Open Hardware and Open Source Software). She’s the founder of Adafruit Industries, an MIT double-grad, and all around an awesome engineer!
Check out the video after the break. We’ve included a list of the questions and the timestamps at which they are answered.
As promised, here are the questions:
0:22
– First off, we never know how to address you. Do you go by “Ladyada”, Limor, or something else on a daily basis? Where did the name Ladyada come from?
0:45
– We image studying Engineering at MIT to be as close to an educational playground as you can get. Are there any crazy projects/hackathons/pranks from your time there that you’re willing to share?
1:36
– Adafruit Industries has made a real splash as far as publishing educational content. First of all, thank you! Secondly, how does this play into your business model and why do you think it’s important?
3:13
– The Hackaday Prize has a judging preference for Open Design. Obviously Adafruit shares this virtue, as your products are all open. Can you tell us why you think there are more benefits to being “Open” than not?
4:24
– Making the transition from using dev boards and breakout boards to engineering and populating a single-board project is a huge leap. What advice can you give for people interesting in moving their skills up a level?
6:24
– We’ve noticed a few posts on the Adafruit blog
about new assembly equipment
you have been acquiring. Why is local manufacturing important to you? Where are your boards fabricated and do you have any plans to produce them on-site in the future?
10:48
– Do you still have time for “hobby” electronics projects? Do you have any non-engineering-related hobbies?
12:41
– Can you tell us a little about what the hardware scene in New York City is like?
13:53
– What else is going on in your life?
Thanks so much [Limor] for taking the time to record this interview!
UPDATE 6/25/14:
Here is a transcript of the video, closed captions have also been added on YouTube:
[RADIO BEEPS AND STATIC] Beaming to you from space. It’s me, Ladyada. I am one of the judges for the Hackaday Prize. And Hackaday has sent over a fine list of quality questions that they would like me to answer so that you know the kind of person that’s judging you when you want to go to space. So let’s begin.
First up, where did the name Ladyada come from? Good question, Hackaday. Ladyada was my hacker handle when I was on IRC a lot, wasting my time and also breaking into computers in the ’90s. And since then, I’ve kept that handle. It comes from Lady Ada Lovelace, who was the first programmer and also loved to gamble on horse racing.
Next question. We imagine studying engineering at MIT to be as close to an educational playground as you can get. Are there any crazy projects, hackathon pranks from the time that you were there that you’d be willing to share? Another good question.
Well, my favorite prank that I think that I pulled off personally was getting a Media Lab master’s thesis in engineering by making a cellphone jammer. That was my thesis project. I basically did a thesis about design noir, and personal space, and technologies that help us reclaim personal space.
And I really, really wanted to just build a cellphone jammer. It was a fun little project where you annoy stores into a VCO, and really big RF antennas. You can see them over there on that side.
And I made it so it would fit into a cigarette pack. And this was a project that I personally wanted. I just really wanted a cellphone jammer. And I got a degree out of it. So I think that that was a pretty good hack.
Next question. Adafruit Industries has made a real splash as far as publishing educational content. First of all, thank you. You’re welcome. Secondly, how does this play into your business model, and why do you think it’s important?
That’s true. Adafruit Industries has a lot of tutorials. We have all them right now in the Adafruit Learning System. It used to be in a wiki, which totally sucked.
And then we designed our own content management system that was designed, basically, for me and the people that I hire to write tutorials. And we have like 500 tutorials. We might even be up to 512 tutorials. So we need another bit to store all those tutorials. That’s how many we’ve got.
And they range from every kind of project, from how to blink an LED, to how to make a cellphone jammer– all these ranges of projects from beginner, to intermediate, to advanced. And many of them use Adafruit products. And the way we do it is I basically stock the store with the stuff that I want to build projects with– all kinds of sensors, and amplifiers, and DEV boards, and LEDs, and blinkies, and whatever. And then we do projects that help demonstrate what those components can do.
And we published them on the learning system so our customers have good documentation on how to get started. I think of that as the quick-start guide. Also, what it can do, how to hack it mods, any kind of modification that they want to make to use the project that we’ve designed to make the project that they want.
So I think of it as giving them a leg up on the kind of maker and hacker projects that people want to build. So yeah, I think of Adafruit as basically a tutorial company. And we have this gift shop, which is all the cool electronic components that you can use to build all the tutorials.
Next up. The Hackaday Prize has a judging preference for Open Design. Obviously, Adafruit shares this virtue, as your products are all open. Can you tell us why you think there are more benefits to being open than not?
Yeah, I am really a big proponent of open-source hardware. Also a big proponent of open-source software. I used to do more computer science in software and coding beforehand. Then I moved into hardware, because my wrist started hurting. And now I just have solder teams everywhere.
And open-source hardware is really cool. Because it allows people to share their designs, and firmware, and hardware, and schematic layout with a really big community. And I think that the Adafruit community is so awesome.
And I spent a lot of time engineering stuff. And I have a team including KTOWN and Tony DiCola and others who design really, really great hardware and firmware and software. But there’s nothing better than having a big community to come in and suggest even more stuff.
We get pull requests on our GitHub repos like four or five times a day. And we’ve tried to integrate all these great upgrades, and changes, and bug fixes. We have such a good community in open-source hardware that I think there’s a lot of benefit to joining it. And it’s easy to join. All you have to do is open source something that you made.
OK, next up– making the transition from using DEV boards and break-out boards to engineering and populating a single board project is a huge leap. What advice can you give for people interested in moving their skills up a level?
That’s right. Most makers start with getting off-the-shelf modules, break-out boards, and DEV boards like an Arduino or Arduino Shields. And they cobble together their project. And they get it working. And that’s really cool.
But then they’re like, well, I want something that maybe isn’t available. I want a break-out for a chip that’s not got a break-out already. Or maybe I want to have a custom board that’s extra low power, extra small. And that’s where designing your own circuit board is totally awesome and is a skill that I think everyone should eventually try to get, especially if you’re really interested in electronics.
Well, I always do suggest that people start with break-out boards. And not just like, oh hey, you buy it from Adafruit. You can get break-out boards from all over the place with a range of different sensors, and outputs, and inputs, and displays, and everything.
It just really helps. Because oftentimes, it comes with tutorials or example code. And you can breadboard it and get the layout, at least, of your project right. Because a lot of people have a lot of assumptions about how many pins they’ll need, and how much power it’s going to draw, and how much space it’s going to take, and if there’s going to be interference, or collisions. Or does that sensor even really measure what you think you want to measure?
So getting a break-out is just a good way to prototype your design. And then if the company that you bought your stuff from uses open-source hardware, like Adafruit and others, you can often download the files for those break-out boards, like [? Eagle ?] Cat, or [? Kai ?] Cat, or PCB123, or whatever. And then just copy and paste those designs into your own circuit-board layout using whatever layout software that you use. Or trace it out into your own software.
And by having those files available, it makes it very easy to grab all the pieces that you need to make the custom design you want. So I think just start with something basic– maybe 20 components– and try spinning up your board. We’ll talk about– in a little bit– some suggestions on where to get your PCBs made, as well.
OK, next up. We’ve noticed a few posts on the Adafruit blog about new assembly equipment you’ve been acquiring. Why is local manufacturing important to you? Where are your boards fabricated? And do you have any plans to produce them on site in the future?
Yes, that’s right. I have been acquiring much equipment. Last year around this time, we took a delivery of advanced high-speed flex mounters. It’s a pick-and-place machine from Samsung called the SM481. We had a pick-and-place beforehand. But it was like a pocket pick-and-place– a little mini one, a little apartment-sized one.
This one is much bigger, as you can see me here measuring how big it is with my calipers. It’s very big. It’s more than 6 inches on each side. Comes on a freight truck.
And we put big googly eyes on him. Because well, you’ve got these big googly eyes. What else you going to put them on? And it looks cute, I guess. It’s got these little teeth and tongue sticking out.
And these are the feeders that come in it. And components that you buy on cut tape or reel get loaded into the feeder. And then it gets automatically placed by the machine. The machine’s very, very fast. It places like 30,000 components per hour.
This is a little bit sped up. It’s a little Vine loop thingy like you kids always use. But if does place components very fast and very, very accurately.
And what this means is that I can manufacture more stuff, with finer pitch components, and much higher yields. All this means I can do more stuff, more parts at a lower cost. So we’re actually going to get another one installed this week. This is an SM481, which even though is one digit less than the 42, is actually the upgrade. Yeah, whatever, Samsung. Get with it.
But this machine– same size, but has 10 nozzles to pick up parts instead of 6. That’s about like 25-30% faster. And this will be in line. In our fabrication line there will be a stenciler. We have a Speedline stenciler here. And that’s the machine that squeegees the paste on. So instead of soldering each part, it actually squishes a paste on like a stencil– you can see the stencil there, like a screen print– and puts the paste perfectly onto the circuit board so that every single pad has a little bit of paste on it.
And then the components go into the pick-and-places. And they get all the parts placed on top of the different parts. And then they go in to the oven to be reflowed.
So yeah, it’s a lot of equipment. And it’s really expensive. These cost like $100,000 to $200,000 easily, depending on what extras you get. If you get it used or a demo model, it’s something that would be a little bit cheaper.
But you want to get a really good machine with good training. I think I got a really strong amount of equipment. And we don’t manufacture our own PCBs. Because PCB manufacturers actually requires very, very specialized equipment.
And you have to do 24-hour manufacturing for it to make sense because of the way they would claim the metal. If you don’t have it running 24 hours, it’s very energy consuming. So instead, we get our PCBs made elsewhere.
I don’t know of any electronics in-house manufacturer that also makes their own PCBs. Usually, it’s not unusual to do your own stenciling, pick-and-placing, reflowing, rework, and maybe even do a little soldering and packaging. But it’s unusual to actually make PCBs in house, just because of the chemistry and the metal reclamation– kind of a pain to get all that equipment in.
OK. And next up. Oh sorry, the next question was where do you suggest you get PCBs made? Well, I suggest if you’re in the US to get PCBs made by Advanced Circuits. They actually have a pretty good proto panel thing for like $33 each. And they have a couple deals. And they make really, really excellent-quality circuit boards.
And I think especially if you’re starting out, you want really good-quality PCBs that don’t delaminate easily, that have test, that have really good silk screen. And their silk screen is totally gorgeous. And solder mask– and it’s always perfectly aligned. They do up to mill spec, and 10-layer boards. But they can also do your two-layer boards really easily.
And if you’re starting out, and you want small production quantities, or prototype quantities, also check out OSH Park. They also have a large ecosystem and a website where you can share designs. And they’re also super into open-source hardware, and sharing layouts. And they make those purple PCBs that probably you’ve used or seen somewhere. So check out Laen. He’s got some awesome stuff going on there.
Next up. OK, do you still have time for hobby electronics? Do you have any non-engineering-related hobbies?
That’s right. I do have many non-engineering hobbies, such as engineering, layout, soldering prototypes, testing, writing firmware, reading electronics blogs– all these non-engineering-related hobbies. I actually do spend a lot of my time doing engineering still at Adafruit. But I love it. So it’s cool.
And one of the nice things about having your own company is I actually get to have my personal projects be company projects. Like for example, I really wanted a color Mini Pop project. And here’s Angel demoing the Mini Pop 4, which is a new version of our little Mini Pop kit– a beginning soldering kit for learning how to solder components.
These really popular with people. This one, you can upload images over USB. And it’s color. And it’s cool.
Another project I really wanted– I always wanted when I was a kid, one of those little arcade Froggers. I don’t know if you’re around my age, if you remember those little mini arcade games. But I never got one. But I really wanted one.
So now I got one. And it runs on Raspberry Pi. And it came in all the games. So I can play Pac-Man on it. Yes.
I also love to do weird synthesizer-type music. And I always wanted an open source [? group ?] controller. So now I can make custom ones, like this gigantic 8 by 16 with white LEDs.
And I have a laser cutter that I can play with. And it’s the company’s laser cutter. And I make cool projects on it. And then I’m like, I’ll sell it.
I also have this cool Game Girl Raspberry Pi edition. Let’s see what this is playing. This is playing Zelda right now. But I finally finished Zelda. And I might play Final Fantasy 1 again, or something.
Let’s see. What else do I got here?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. And basically, like any other kind of project that you see. I just love building stuff. And now I get Adafruit to do it for me.
OK, next up. Can you tell us a little bit about the hardware scene in New York City is like? Yeah, New York City is like– when I moved here, it was not considered a super hardwarey place– a lot of finance, and even a little bit of software going on here. But now I actually have a really wide range of hardware start-ups and hardware interests.
We’ve got littleBits. It’s actually only a couple blocks away in SoHo, that’s Ayah Bdeir’s open hardware, like learning electronics company. Check that out. They’ve got this awesome Korg synth project, and a NASA synth project– [? NESSA ?] science projects that you can build with littleBits.
We also have NYC Resistor, which was really big and very early hacker space in the new round of maker hacker spaces, as well as many other Brooklyn, and Manhattan, and Long Island hacker spaces, as well. There’s like four or five of those.
And you also have a really large number of 3D printing stores and companies, as well. There’s actually another 3D printing store that just opened in Midtown this weekend. So I’m going to go check that out. But if you’re into any of this stuff– open hardware, or making, or 3D printing– New York City is the place to be.
OK. Finally, last question. What else is going on in your life? Well, all sorts of things.
Well, I’m working on Circuit Playground, which is the kids half animated, half Muppet show that we’re doing. I actually had my friend, Amanda the Woz Wozniak– no relation– in to do “D is for Diode,” in which she dressed up as a diode and talked about diodes. And it was totally cool. We had some great animations. And it’s a great show.
So we’re up to D. And we’re going to be doing “E for Electronics” next. So check that out.
I’m also, this month, doing a lot of promotion with Made with Code. This is a Google effort. You can see this is me wearing the LED scrolly hat– there’s another project that I always really wanted; I wanted an LED scrolling hat– and an LED umbrella, and talking to some awesome girls at the Made with Code event.
And this is an effort to get young girls– or actually anyone, like you can be a cat– and be interested in making stuff with code. And check out the Made with Code website for more info about that. And share it with someone you love who is interested in maybe learning how to code– a lot of great tutorials and projects.
We also do, every week, a show and tell. You can show up even if you’re not an Adafruit customer. It’s cool. As long as you can get onto the Google+, check out the Hangout at our Google+ page at plus.google.com/+adafruit.
And look for the plus. We say, comment here to get added to our show and tell circle. We do that 7:30 PM every week on Wednesday.
And then right afterwards at 8:00 PM on Wednesday, we do Ask An Engineer, which is a one-hour show about electronics, open-source hardware, all the cool gossip, all the cool products, data sheets, components, you name it. Sometimes we show off a cat photo– all sorts of good stuff. We give away a prize at the end. And that’s on Ustream and YouTube. So there’s a lot of stuff going on here at the Adafruit factory.
Personally, I am working on some cellphone stuff. I want to make really teeny cute little cellphones– those little mini cellphone– using these great all-in-one cell phone chips that are getting onto the market now for wearables, and such. And so I’m going to be doing a lot more cellphone stuff, and remote data access, and actuation. And I think that’s kind of like the internet of things. But I want to make it so it’s super easy, and fun, and useful for makers to do.
So yeah, a lot of stuff coming out from Adafruit. So check in with what we’re doing. And of course, enter the Hackaday Prize, which is why we are watching this, of course. The Hackaday Prize will send you to space or many other fabulous prizes. All you have to do is enter on hackaday.com. And I will judge you and maybe shoot you to the moon. | 52 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1594011",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T14:14:23",
"content": "The post header image comes up veeeeery strangely on my white-backgrounded feed reader. Maybe you should have used real black instead of transparent :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,162.435694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/24/the-200-led-ring-clock/ | The 200 LED Ring Clock | Adam Fabio | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"clock",
"RGB LED",
"Ring Clock",
"ws2812"
] | There are LED clocks, and then there are LED clocks that can blind you from 30 paces. [Stiggalicious’s]
LED ring clock
is of the latter variety. 200 WS2812B/Neopixel RGB LEDs drive the ring clock to pupil searing levels. The clock runs on ATMega1284P, with timekeeping handled by an
NXP PCF8563
real-time clock chip. Code is written in Arduino’s wiring language using Adafruit’s Neopixel library.
Building the clock with a single Printed Circuit Board (PCB) would be both expensive and wasteful. [Stiggalicious] cleverly designed his clock to be built with 8 copies of the same PCB. Each board makes up a 45° pie slice of the ring. All 8 PCBs have footprints for the CPU, clock chip, and other various discrete parts, but only the “master” section has these parts populated. 7 “slave” sections simply pass clock, data, power and ground through each LED. He used Seeedstudio’s board service to get 10 copies of his PCB made, just in case there were any mistakes.
[Stiggalicious] rolled the dice by buying exactly the 200 LEDs he needed. Either he got really lucky, or the WS2812 quality testing has improved, because only one LED had a dead blue LED.
If you’d like to find out more, [Stiggalicious] gives plenty of details in his
Reddit thread
. He doesn’t have a webpage setup for the clock but he’s uploaded his
source code
(pastebin link) and
Altium schematic/PCB files
(mega.nz link). We may be a bit biased, but
hackaday.io
would be a perfect spot for this or any other project! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1593705",
"author": "lja",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T11:08:58",
"content": "Looks awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1593947",
"author": "0xfred",
"timestamp": "2014-06-24T13:34:03",
"content": "That’s *very* si... | 1,760,376,162.033456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/tic-tac-clock/ | Tic Tac Clock | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"attiny84",
"charlieplexing",
"led",
"tic tac box"
] | Here’s an excuse to eat a bunch of Tic Tac candies: once the container is empty it makes a nice little enclosure for your next project. This particular offering introduces
a point-to-point clock project that’s a ton of fun
.
[Danny Chouinard] did a lot with very little. You can get the gist of the circuit just by looking at the photos above. it uses a 3×5 Charlieplexed LED display (this is given away by the fact that there’s only a few resistors on the board. A bit difficult to see, but between the resistors and the ATtiny84 there is a clock crystal, and on the back is a little piezo buzzer. The one thing that isn’t completely obvious is the power source. Two AAAA batteries, salvaged from a 9V battery, are able to keep the unit running at an estimated 2 years of moderate use.
The video after the break is worth a look though. It shows the various characters and information that can be flashed on the LED matrix. At first it’s hard to tell that the single user input button is being pressed by [Danny’s] thumb.
If you don’t want to build a clock, there are still plenty of reasons to eat a whole container of these mints. You could
replace them with a PIC programmer
or a
discreet camera
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1590011",
"author": "foolishdane",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T18:32:24",
"content": "The display is not charlieplexed, it’s multiplexed. So no, the few resistors is not equal charlieplexed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "159006... | 1,760,376,161.993295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/wooden-band-saw-fears-its-wood-cutting-brethren/ | Wooden Band Saw Fears Its Wood-Cutting Brethren | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"band saw",
"bandsaw",
"tool hacks"
] | What is cooler than building a
band saw out of wood
? Building two, of course! And that is exactly what [Pekka] did. The first was a small bench top model while the second was a much larger version with the saw blade strung between big 13-3/4 inch wheels. For those who are unfamiliar with band saws, they are tools that have a long thin blade that is routed around rotating wheels. The wheels are spread apart to make the blade taut. Unlike the reciprocating action of a jigsaw, saws-all or scroll saw, the band saw blade continually rotates in one direction. These blades are typically thin making it easy to cut irregular and curved shapes.
The frame of [Pekka’s] larger machine is made from 35mm (~1-3/8″) plywood. This proved to be a sturdy frame material. The previously mentioned wheels were made by gluing pieces of oak together, mounting the assembly on a wood lathe and turning the outer diameter down to size. By using multiple piece of wood to construct the wheels allows the grain direction of each portion to be parallel with the blade. This method of construction ensures any expansion/contraction of the wood is uniform around the wheel. A strip of rubber around the blade’s outer diameter provides the friction required to prevent the blade from slipping.
[Pekka’s] friend was nice enough to turn the flanged axle shafts on his metal lathe. These shafts support the wooded wheels and are mounted in pillow block bearings. The upper pillow blocks are mounted to a sliding support that allows adjusting the tension of the saw blade. [Pekka] was not going to be satisfied with a one-speed band saw so he grabbed a motor he had kicking around that originally came from a wood lathe and already had 4 different sized pulleys mounted on the shaft.
This is a great project that shows what can be done with a little desire and ingenuity. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1589583",
"author": "Addidis",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T14:13:36",
"content": "Be sure to seal it or it will warp quickly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1589880",
"author": "Adrian",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T... | 1,760,376,162.538792 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/cnc-plasma-cutter-build-presented-in-excruciating-detail/ | CNC Plasma Cutter Build Presented In Excruciating Detail | Rich Bremer | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"plasma cutter"
] | If you have been wondering what it takes to build a CNC Plasma Cutter then get ready to look no further. [Desert Fabworks] has documented the trials and tribulations of their
CNC Plasma Cutter
build. Saying it is extremely detailed would be an understatement. They cover everything from choosing components to machine setup.
The group already had a CNC Plasma Cutter that they have outgrown. To justify the new purchase the replacement machine would have to have a few non-negotiable features: 4×8 ft cutting area, torch height control, water table, cutting up to 1/2″ steel and be easy to operate and maintain. For the frame and gantry, they settled on a
Precision Plasma
kit as they felt it was the best value that met their requirements. The electronics package was separate from the frame kit and was provided by
CandCNC
. Among other things, this package included the power supply, stepper motors, stepper drivers and the torch height controller. For the plasma cutter itself [Desert Fabworks] chose a Hypertherm
Powermax65
which can cut up to an inch thick of mild steel and has swappable torches so the main unit can be used for both the CNC table and hand cuts.
One of the more interesting (and maybe overlooked) parts of the build process was the
custom cart
that holds the controls, computer, monitor and plasma cutter. The lid of the cart flips up and exposes the computer monitor mounted to the underside of the lid. The keyboard and mouse reside on a pull-out tray. And to make the cart match the machine, it was powder coated blue.
The assembly wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. A few weeks into using the machine they noticed the X and Y axes were
out of square
. After replacing a suspect component didn’t fix the problem they decide to physically align the gantry. They started by strapping a pen to the torch mount and drawing right angles on a piece of paper. These lines were then compared to a square. When the direction of misalignment was identified the bolts holding the gantry together were loosened, the gantry adjusted by hand, then the bolts were re-tightened. The same drawing test determined if the adjustment was acceptable or not. As you would expect, it took several tries to get the gantry lined up using this method.
[Thanks Brian] | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1589268",
"author": "rshuck",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T11:48:24",
"content": "“then get ready to look no further”Whew. Ok, I am ready now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1589279",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,162.592344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/converting-cts-and-mris-into-printable-objects/ | Converting CTs And MRIs Into Printable Objects | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"ct",
"ct scanner",
"DICOM",
"mesh",
"mri",
"stl"
] | People get CT and MRI scans every day, and when [Oliver] needed some medical diagnostic imaging done, he was sure to ask for the files
so he could turn his skull into a printable 3D object
.
[Oliver] is using three different pieces of software to turn the DICOM images he received from his radiologist into a proper 3D model. The first two,
Seg3D
and
ImageVis3D
, are developed by the University of Utah Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing. Seg3D stitches all of the 2D images from an MRI or CT scan into a proper 3D format. ImageVis3D allows [Oliver] to peel off layers of his flesh, allowing him to export a file of just his skull, or a section of his entire face. The third piece of software,
MeshMixer
, is just a mesh editor and could easily be replaced with MeshLab or Blender.
[Oliver] still has a lot of work to do on the model of his skull – cleaning up the meshes, removing his mandible, and possibly plugging the top of his spinal column if he would ever want to print a really, really awesome mug. All the data is there, though, ready for digital manipulation before sending it off to be printed. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1588830",
"author": "chrisdc",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T08:09:39",
"content": "I’ve used DeVide and 3D Slicer which both can do the first 2 steps mentioned. Trying to get models of bones is relatively easy due to the contrast with surrounding tissue. I’ve tried getting a heart model... | 1,760,376,162.483551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/the-beginning-of-the-age-of-3d-resin-printers/ | The Beginning Of The Age Of 3D Resin Printers | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"3d printer",
"resin printer",
"Sedgwick",
"SLS printer",
"UV resin"
] | For several years now, filament-based plastic printers have ruled the hobbyist market, with a new iteration on squirting plastic appearing on Kickstarter every week. SLA printers, with their higher resolution and historically higher price for raw materials, have sat in the background, waiting for their time to come.
Now, with the Sedgwick printer
now available on Kickstarter
, we may finally be seeing some resin printers make their way into hackerspaces and workshops the world over. Instead of other DLP projector-based resin printer where projector light shines up through the resin tank, the creator of the Sedgwick, [Ron Light] is doing things the old-fashioned way: shining the projector down onto the surface of the resin. He says it’s a simpler method, and given he’s able to ship a Sedgwick kit minus the projector for $600, he might be on to something.
There are a few other resin printers coming on the scene – the
LittleSLA
will soon see its own Kickstarter,
the mUVe 1 is already shipping
, and over on Hackaday Projects,
the OpenExposer
project is coming along nicely. All very good news for anyone who wants higher quality prints easily. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1588575",
"author": "ERROR_user_unknown",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T05:45:48",
"content": "is there any data regarding the characteristics of the printed components . Stress testing and flexibility and uv resistance ? how do they compare with PLA and ABS on a strength level.",
"p... | 1,760,376,162.657021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/better-full-motion-video-on-the-first-pc/ | (Better) Full Motion Video On The First PC | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"8088",
"cga",
"demo",
"demoscene",
"SoundBlaster"
] | Ten years ago, [Trixter] created 8088 Corruption, a demo for the original PC, the IBM 5150, that displayed full motion video using a CGA card and a SoundBlaster. It was hailed as a marvel of the demoscene at the time, garnered tons of hits when it was eventually uploaded to Google Video, and was
even picked up by the nascent Hackaday
.Now, ten years later, and seven years after [Trixter] said full motion video using the
graphics mode
of a CGA adapter was impossible,
he’s improved on his earlier work
. Now, it’s possible to display video at 640×200 resolution at 30 frames per second on a 30-year-old computer.
[Trixter]’s earlier work used the text mode of the CGA adapter, only because the 40×25 character, 16 color mode was the only graphics mode that could be entirely updated every single frame. It’s still one of the high points of the PC demoscene,
but from the original video
, it’s easy to see the limitations.
A while back, [Trixter] said displaying video using his computer’s graphics mode was impossible. He’s had years to think about this statement, and eventually realized he was wrong. Like the developers of modern video codecs, [Trixter] realized you don’t need to change every pixel for every frame: you only need to change the pixels that are different from frame to frame. Obvious, if you think about it, and all [Trixter] needed to do was encode the video in a format that would only change dissimilar pixels from frame to frame, and manage the disk and memory bandwidth.
After reencoding the 10-year-old demo for graphics mode, [Trixter] turned toward his most ambitious demo to date: playing the
‘Bad Apple’ animation
on an 8088. As you can see in the video below, it was a complete success. | 42 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1588117",
"author": "dale",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T02:32:48",
"content": "This helps remind me just how LIMITED the old systems really were, and how much ingenuity went into making some of the software of the time possible.Granted that spirit is still alive today, it just does not... | 1,760,376,162.843539 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/delving-deep-into-high-speed-digital-design/ | Delving Deep Into High Speed Digital Design | Will Sweatman | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"high speed",
"impedance",
"Signals"
] | In high speed digital circuits, fast doesn’t necessarily mean “high clock rate”. [Jack Ganssle] does an
excellent job at explaining
how the transition time of signals in high speed digital circuits is just as important as the speed of the signal itself. When the transition time is large, around 20 nanoseconds, everything is fine. But when you cut it down to just a few nanoseconds, things change. Often you will get a ringing effect caused by impedance mismatch.
As the signal travels down the trace from the driver and hits the receiver, some of the signal will get reflected back toward the driver if the impedance, which is just resistance with a frequency component, does not exactly match. The reflected signal then heads back to the driver where the impedance mismatch will cause another reflection. It goes back and forth, creating the ‘ringing’ you see on the scope.
[Jack Ganssle] goes on to explain how a simple resistor network can help to match the impedance and how these should be used in circuits with fast transition times, especially where you will be taking readings with a scope. As the scope probe itself can introduce impedance and cause the ringing.
In case you didn’t pick up on it, [Jack Ganssle] also happens to be
one of the judges for The Hackaday Prize
. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1587726",
"author": "Jeff Nichols",
"timestamp": "2014-06-22T00:30:08",
"content": "“impedance, which is just resistance with a frequency component” while technically correct in other contexts, is highly misleading in this context. Characteristic impedance of transmission lines is n... | 1,760,376,162.724988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/infrared-controlled-remote-firework-igniter/ | Infrared Controlled Remote Firework Igniter | Rick Osgood | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"cigarette lighter",
"fireworks",
"independence day",
"nano"
] | With Independence Day just around the corner, American hackers are likely to find themselves blowing things up in the name of Independence. It’s all great fun but it can also be dangerous. The standard ignition method of “use a lighter and run away really fast” is not exactly safe. Instead of lighting your fireworks the old-fashioned way, why not follow [Facelesstech’s] example and build your own infrared controlled
remote igniter
?
The first step was to decide how to actually ignite the firework fuse. [Facelesstech] had seen others use a car cigarette lighter for this purpose and he decided to follow in their footsteps. He started by removing the cigarette lighter from his own car and pulling it apart. Only one component was needed for this hack. The main heating element is a small disk with a “stem” on the end. If you apply 12V to the stem and attach the outer edge of the disk to ground, the igniter will quickly become hot.
[Facelesstech] originally thought he could just solder some wires to the device. However, the heating element gets so hot that the solder just melts every time it’s turned on. He then got creative and drilled a hole in a small block of wood that fits the heating element. The element is bolted into the wood and the bolt is used as a conductor for the electrical power.
The heating element is powered via a 12V relay. The relay is controlled by an Arduino Nano. The Nano allows two modes of operation. With the first mode, you simply press a button and the Nano will start a five second timer. The idea is to give you enough time to run to a safe distance before the firework is ignited. This isn’t much different from the old-fashioned method, but it does give you a slightly extended fuse. The second mode is where the project really shines. The Nano is also hooked up to an infrared receiver. This allows [Facelesstech] to press a button on an old television infrared remote control to active the igniter. This is a clever solution because it allows you to get to a safe distance without having to run a long wire. It’s also simple and inexpensive. Be sure to watch the video test of the system below.
[Thanks Dale] | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1587076",
"author": "mjrippe",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T20:47:27",
"content": "Should run off a high amperage battery with voltage tapped off and regulated for arduino. And maybe at least *one* safety interlock?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,163.034772 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/network-controlled-decorative-led-matrix-frame/ | Network Controlled Decorative LED Matrix Frame | Nick Conn | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Arduino Uno",
"ethernet",
"frame",
"html5",
"led",
"led matrix",
"led matrix display",
"neopixel",
"picture frame"
] | There is nothing better than a project that you can put on display for all to see. [Tristan’s] most recent project, a
Decorative LED Matrix Frame
, containing 12×10 big square pixels that can display any color, is really cool.
Having been built around a cheap IKEA photo frame this project is very doable, at least for those of you with a 3D printer. The 3D printer is needed to create the pixel grid, which ends up looking very clean in the final frame. From an electronics perspective, the main components are a set of
Adafruit Neopixel LED strips
, and an
Arduino Uno
with an
Ethernet shield
. The main controller even contains a battery backup for the real time clock (RTC) when the frame is unplugged; a nice touch. Given that the frame is connected to the local network, [Tristan] designed the frame to be controlled by a simple HTML5 interface (code available on
GitHub
). This allows any locally connected device to control the frame.
Be sure to check out the build details, they are very well done. If you are still not convinced how cool this project is, be sure to check out a video of it in action after the break! It makes us wish that you could play
Tetris
on this frame. Very nice job [Tristan]! | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1586618",
"author": "The Bitcoin Entrepreneur",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T17:55:34",
"content": "Is it IP65? Think about what will happen if someone (for example a child or your wife) decides to urinate on this thing. They could get a nasty shock!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,162.983362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/cold-call-pop-in-to-the-freeside-atlanta-hackerspace/ | Cold Call Pop-In To The FreeSide Atlanta Hackerspace | Rich Bremer | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"freeside atlanta",
"hackerspace",
"hackerspace tour"
] | I was recently in Georgia for a for a non-HaD reason. This was my first trip to Georgia and it was hot, really hot, something I’m not too accustomed too. They also have nice condition roads there, something else I’m not accustomed too. I did have some free time while down there so I hopped on hackerspaces.org to see what was around. There were several spaces that were within driving distance but
Freeside Atlanta
was the only one that had an open event while I was available. That was the sole reason for my decision to stop in and I’m glad that happened because I had a great time.
Not long after entering I was greeted by a member, my new pal [Steven], who turned out to be the president of the group. After a quick exchange of pleasantries [Steven] started showing me around. My first impression was that the place was inviting. It seemed pretty big and there was little clutter. There were plenty of tables for working on your project and shelves with parts and components. These spare parts were not piled all over the shelves but were in boxes labeled with what was inside. I liked this because it was neat, tidy and it would be easy to find exactly what you were looking for. I know from experience that keeping this level of organization is hard in a community workshop environment.
Getting back to the tour, I was shown a separate dedicated classroom that holds 16 students, complete with dry erase boards. I passed a bunch of open work areas and tables as we continued into the space. A little further down there was a lounge area with couches and a huge projection screen next to the kitchen where I enjoyed some member-baked cookies. At that point I thought I had seen the entire space, but I was wrong, there was another door along what I thought was the back wall. That is the entrance to the shop area.
The front part of the space was pretty big, the shop was at least as large. I later found out that the entire place is about 5500 sqft. They have a pretty capable wood shop with work benches, a table saw, miter saw, planner, etc, not to mention plenty of hand and power tools. Moving a little further back there is a metal shop complete with mills, lathes and welders. There’s also a little CNC Router for cutting out parts. If this wasn’t enough so far, there’s a CO2 laser cutter, which was my favorite part of the tour….
The laser cutter was the open source
buildlog.net 2.X
. The reason this was my favorite part of the visit is because I got a one-on-one laser workflow lesson using
CAMBAM
to generate g-code from a DXF file, running the g-code through
Mach3
which sends the step/direction/laser signals over to the laser cutter control board via parallel port. We started with cutting cardboard into simpIe shapes but then I got to burn some Roadrunner images into cardboard. My cuts may not have been the most impressive thing in the world but I personally learned a lot and can apply that knowledge in the future. Learning from others is a huge benefit to being part of a hackerspace.
While being shown the laser, I noticed something that now seems so obvious to me: basic instructions posted at the machine. It was just one page long but had general instructions for how to turn on the laser, set it up, run a program and what to do to shut it down. I can see something extremely simple like this being a huge benefit to any hackerspace with an even semi-complicated/expensive piece of equipment. Lesson #2!
With all the learnin’ I received, I was glad that I was able to help at least a little while there. I pitched in with setting up a new work area. The group received some old lab desks. You remember these from high school science class, the hefty wooden cabinets with heavy chemical-resistant stone work surfaces. They fit in with the space well and I’m sure they will get a lot use.
This place has too much going on and I can not cover it all in detail. It’s worth mentioning there is also a 3D Printing area containing 3 working printers that are ready to print out your next project. There is a dedicated room for member project/part storage. I’m positive this helps keep the rest of the common areas free of junk. If you are into Ham Radio or making podcasts, there’s a small room set up for that. While I was there some members were setting up a Media Lab and Bio Lab. From my perspective the members I met were active and engaged in the ‘space. The group has their stuff together, for sure. If you are ever in the area I recommend stopping by.
After getting back home I noticed that Freeside Atlanta has sprung up on HaD quite a few times over the years. [
Caleb Kraft
] and [
Josh Marsh
] have visited in the past. There are also some posts about how Freeside members made an
Infinity Portal
and a
Sunrise Emulating Alarm Clock
.
Machine Shop
Small mill
Classroom area
Wood Shop | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1586122",
"author": "Clayton",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T15:15:24",
"content": "Hey thanks for the enjoyable and thorough write up! Is it possible for you to contact them and get a copy of their laser instructions? I’m working on a CO2 Laser using the same mechanics right now as well... | 1,760,376,163.103952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/meet-the-widgeduino/ | Meet The WIDGEDUINO | Will Sweatman | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [
"arduino",
"widgets"
] | Arduino has made a name for itself by being easy to use and has become an excellent tool for rapid prototyping of an idea. If one wakes up in the middle of the night in a eureka moment and hammers out a contraption – using an Arduino as the brains is about as fast and easy as it gets.
With that said, the
WIDGEDUINO
aims at making this process even faster and easier. Bristling with an array of meters, graphs and data entry widgets, the WIDGEDUINO is sure to be a hit with hackers, makers and engineers alike.
It’s based on the .NET framework and was designed with Visual Studio Windows Presentation Foundation. The user simply writes a sketch using the WIDGEDUINO library, and connects to a PC via serial or Ethernet to gain access to the assortment of awesome widgets.
You can find a
few examples here
. We hope the creators will keep us updated on the progress of this impressive project. Be sure to stick around after the break for a video demonstrating what the WIDGEUINO can do. | 30 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "1585581",
"author": "Le Samourai",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T11:13:44",
"content": "Very nice. See also: ketai + controlP5 libraries for Processing on Android.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1585606",
"author": "lja",
"t... | 1,760,376,163.230085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/21/virtual-physical-reality-with-kintinuous-and-an-oculus-rift/ | Virtual Physical Reality With Kintinuous And An Oculus Rift | Brian Benchoff | [
"Kinect hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"depth sensor",
"IMU",
"Kinect",
"oculus rift",
"virtual reality"
] | The Kinect has long been able to create realistic 3D models of real, physical spaces.
Combining these Kinect-mapped spaces with an Oculus Rift
is something brand new entirely.
[Thomas] and his fellow compatriots within the Kintinuous project are modeling an office space with the old XBox 360 Kinect’s RGB+D sensors. then using an Oculus Rift to inhabit that space. They’re not using the internal IMU in the Oculus to position the camera in the virtual space, either: they’re using live depth sensing from the Kinect to feed the Rift screens.
While Kintinuous is very, very good
at mapping large-scale spaces
, the software itself if locked up behind some copyright concerns the authors and devs don’t have control over. This doesn’t mean the techniques behind Kintinuous are locked up, however: anyone is free to read the papers (
here’s one
,
and another
, PDF of course) and re-implement Kintinuous as an open source project. That’s something that would be really cool, and we’d encourage anyone with a bit of experience with point clouds to give it a shot.
Video below. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1585991",
"author": "Geoff",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T14:19:14",
"content": "I made a similar version with mine a while back, first using Kinect Fusion to map a small space and then just augmenting the live depth feed from the Kinect. It’s quite fun, and you feel much more immersed ... | 1,760,376,163.15601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/goliath-one-drone-to-rule-them-all/ | Goliath: One Drone To Rule Them All | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"drone",
"Goliath",
"multicopter",
"quadcopter",
"the hackaday prize"
] | We see quadcopter projects all the time here on Hackaday, so it takes something special to get our attention. [Peter McCloud] has done just that with
Goliath, a gas powered quadcopter
he’s entered in
The Hackaday Prize
. By gas, we don’t mean a little glow fuel buzzer, We’re talking about a 30 horsepower V-twin lawnmower engine running good old-fashioned gasoline.
Multicopters powered by a single power source present a unique set of problems. Quadcopter propellers need to rotate in opposite directions to avoid the entire craft spinning due to torque action. With individual electric motors that’s as easy as swapping a couple of wires. Not so with a single rotating engine. [Peter] has accomplished this feat with a clever arrangement of single and double-sided belts.
Control is another issue. Generally, central powered multicopters use collective pitch, similar to a helicopter control system. [Peter] has decided to go with high-efficiency fixed pitch blades and a vane system for directional control. Much like
hovercraft
use vanes to steer, Goliath will use vanes to affect its attitude and yaw.
The propellers are works of art in their own right. [Peter] modeled the propellers in CAD using the principles of
blade element theory
, then used a Shopbot style CNC to carve them out of pink insulation foam. Styrofoam alone won’t withstand the 60 lbs each propeller will be supporting, so [Peter] plans to laminate the props in composite cloth. This is the similar to the way many full-scale helicopter rotor blades are assembled.
Goliath’s frame is constructed of
Dexion
style slotted steel angles, and we have to admit, at 240 lbs with engine, it seems like it’s going to be a heavy beast. Big enough to ride at least. Who knows… if the judges like it [Peter] may ride Goliath all the way to space!
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. | 46 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1585025",
"author": "FrankenPC",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T05:19:12",
"content": "I’m really surprised the military hasn’t built these types of devices. Slice N dice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1585435",
"author":... | 1,760,376,163.586109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/super-simple-way-to-re-use-plastic-bottles/ | Super Simple Way To Re-use Plastic Bottles | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"plastic recycling",
"plastic ribbon"
] | One of our tipsters just sent in a fascinatingly simple trick for re-using plastic bottles and turning
them into useful plastic string
. It’s in Russian but between the translated English subtitles and visual demonstration, it’s quite easy to understand.
YouTube DIY survivalist [Адвокат Егоров] makes a lot of really cool tutorial videos on anything from making knives, forming parts with heated PVC pipe, making rings out of coins, or even how to increase the yield of your potato farm (what?). In this one he shows us how to make a very simple jig using a small piece of aluminum extrusion which can slice a plastic bottle into long ribbons which can then be used for many different things.
The jig is adjustable and you can easily produce different widths of the ribbon with ease. Why would you want plastic ribbon? He uses it as twine for tying things (it’s very strong), as well as a grip for his tools — simply by wrapping it around the handle of something tightly, and then using a hot air gun, you can form it in place to create a plastic handle.
Again, the video is in Russian, but you can translate the subtitles — it kind of helps.
It reminds us of the hack
using ketchup bottles for a flexible dust hose for your CNC!
[Thanks Keith!] | 42 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "1584771",
"author": "bluewraith",
"timestamp": "2014-06-21T02:08:04",
"content": "I stopped caring what the video was originally about and instead enjoyed the subtitles even better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1584778",
... | 1,760,376,163.702374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/autonomous-balloon-popping/ | Autonomous Balloon Popping | Eric Evenchick | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"arducopter",
"drone",
"odroid",
"opencv",
"python",
"sparkfun avc"
] | Taking on an autonomous vehicle challenge, [Randy] put together this
drone which can locate and pop balloons
. It’s been assembled for this year’s
Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition
, which will challenge entrants to locate and pop
99 luftbaloons
red balloons without human intervention.
The main controller for this robot is the
Pixhawk
, which runs a
modified version
of the
ArduCopter
firmware. These modifications enable the Pixhawk to receive commands from an
Odroid U3
computer module. The Odroid uses a webcam to take images, and then processes them using OpenCV. It tries to locate large red objects and fly towards them.
The vision processing and control code on the Odroid was developed using
MAVProxy
and
Drone API
. This allows for all the custom code to be developed using Python.
The Sparkfun AVC takes place tomorrow — June 21st in Boulder, Colorado. You can still
register to spectate
for free. We’re hoping [Randy]’s drone is up to the task, and based on the video after the break, it should be able to complete this challenge. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1584555",
"author": "Bruce (@Broo2)",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T23:59:45",
"content": "lol- let’s hope it doesn’t come up behind someone wearing a ski mask one day..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1584669",
"author": "... | 1,760,376,163.391276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/reverse-engineering-lcd-displays/ | Reverse Engineering LCD Displays | Eric Evenchick | [
"Parts"
] | [
"ATmega88",
"lcd",
"micros 2700",
"pos terminal",
"reverse engineering"
] | Over at DorkbotPDX in Portland, a member showed up with a stack of large LCD displays from point of sale terminals. [Paul] took it upon himself to
reverse engineer the displays
so that they can be recycled in future projects.
The control circuit for this LCD resides on a rather large PCB with quite a variety of components. The board was reduced to three main components: an MSM6255 display controller, a 32k RAM chip which is used as the framebuffer, and a tri-state driver.
With all the unneeded components out of the way, a custom board based around an ATmega88 MCU was added. This board was soldered in to interface with the LCD controller’s bus. This allows data to be written from the 128k flash ROM on the custom board into the frame buffer. Once this is done, the display controller will display the data on the LCD.
Now that data could be written, [Paul] figured out the correct configuration for the display controller. That was the final piece in getting images to show up correctly on the display. If you happen to find some old Micros 2700 POS terminals, [Paul]’s detailed write-up will help you scavenge the displays. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1584106",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T20:23:34",
"content": "http://andybrown.me.uk/wk/Those guys and that guy should talk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1584113",
"author": "Paul Stoffregen",
"times... | 1,760,376,163.742232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/hacklet-4/ | Hacklet #4 — PCB Tools And Wristwatches | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Digital Watches",
"hackaday.io",
"hacklet",
"PCB mill",
"pick and place",
"pnp",
"watches"
] | The Hackaday Prize is heating up! When we set up the prize, we expected to see some incredible entries, and you guys haven’t let us down. Projects like
SatNOGS
, which aims to create a global network of satellite ground stations, or
OpenMV
, a low-cost Python powered vision module, are seriously blowing us away.
We’re starting to
give away some prizes through community voting
and there’s still plenty of time for you to enter. Check out
The Hackaday Prize
page for the full details.
Low Cost Printed Circuit Board Tools
We’ve seen mills, lathes, CNC machines and 3D printers, but if there is any device that gets a hardware hacker’s attention, it’s a pick and place machine. In the PCB industry these machines pick up thousands of parts every hour, perfectly placing them on printed circuit boards. The downside is they’re incredibly expensive. The cheapest Chinese machines without vision start in the $4000 USD price range.
[Neil] aims to break down those price barriers with a
$300 Pick and Place Machine that doubles as a 3D printer
. He’s using delta 3D printer hardware to do it, and he’s throwing in everything! OpenCV based vision, multiple tool heads, reel and tray pick up, [Neil] has covered all the major points. He can’t do it alone though, so he’s looking for help. Check it out, and give him a hand (or a skull)!
A low-cost pick and place machine will need printed circuit boards to work on. Not to worry, [shlonkin] has you covered with his
PCB mill for under $10
. Built from recycled printers, an Arduino, and host software written in processing, [shlonkin] has already posted impressive
photos of boards his machine has milled
. The main problem [shlonkin] has run into is longevity with plastic parts.
In his most recent update
, he’s looking for ideas. Can you help him?
Digital Watches
Anyone will tell you that digital watches are a pretty neat idea. With the era of smartwatches upon us, more than one hacker has delved into building their own timepiece. We’re happy to report that most of them even tell time.
[Walltech] has gone all out to create the ultimate watch. His
OLED Smart Watch 6.0
is the culmination of years of work. The watch features a 1.5” OLED display, an SD card slot, and a vibrator motor. It has Bluetooth 4.0 to connect to the world, and an Atmel ATmega32u4 as its brain. A 500mAh battery will power the watch for 18-24 hours per charge.
[Walltech] plans to make it do everything from SMS and email notifications to music streaming. Don’t see a feature you want? Add it! Smart Watch 6.0 Is completely open source, so you can hop into the code and hack away!
On the other side of the spectrum is [askoog89’s]
Tilt Touch Time
, which utilizes those awesome bubble LED displays some of us remember from the 70’s. The retro look is only 3D printed skin deep though, as [askoog89] is using an ATtiny2313 processor. Atmel’s Qtouch is providing the capacitive touch sensing, while a tilt sensor helps Tilt Touch Time live up to its name. [Askoog89] has submitted his watch to The Hackaday Prize, so he’s trying to figure out a way to use the touch sensor to sync time with a PC. If that doesn’t work out, we bet those bubble LEDs would make great light sensors for some monitor-blink-sync action.
Fallout fans have seen plenty of PIP boys here on Hackaday, but have you seen
[jara’s] PIP Watch?
This Personal Information Panel is going big on size but low on power with a 3 inch e-ink display. [Jara] is using an STM32F101 ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, so he’s got plenty of processing power at his disposal. He’s connecting to the world through a Bluetooth serial link. All he needs is a Geiger counter, and he’s good to go!
That’s it for this week’s Hacklet, stay tuned for next week when we bring you more of what’s happening at
Hackaday.io
! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1584076",
"author": "Als Taxi",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T20:09:27",
"content": "Neil, I wish you good luck dude. If you can make a pickNplace + 3D printer at that price point you are my hero.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1587... | 1,760,376,163.630904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/pwn-your-gopro-scripting-wifi-and-bus-hacking/ | Pwn Your GoPro: Scripting, WiFi, And Bus Hacking | Jeremy Cook | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Featured",
"how-to"
] | [
"GoPro"
] | GoPro cameras come out of the box with a huge set of features. Most people will be satisfied, or possibly even overwhelmed by the available options, but if you’re able to do some of these hacks, you’ll be able to expand your camera’s capabilities even more. They can, however, void your warranty, so as with most hacking, do these at your own risk.
Scripting with Autoexec.ash
By far the simplest way to extend your GoPro’s capabilities is by placing a text file in your GoPro camera’s root folder called Autoexec.ash. You can download a number of scripts on
chernowee.com
, which should be very easy to modify per [Konrad’s] insights. Use of these scripts is quite powerful, and one can modify elements of the camera from simply blinking the LEDs, to changing video capture properties, to many other useful settings.
You can check these out on his page, or here’s
his Github account
if you prefer that method. He’s quick to point out that this will void your warranty, so proceed with caution. Although tempting to try, I don’t (yet) have a pressing situation that “stock” GoPro features don’t address. The risk may be small, but for me the reward is almost nonexistent.
Hacking over WiFi
If writing a script to reside on your GoPro isn’t really your style, or feels too risky, you can always use a script on your computer to control the camera.
[Adrian] did just that
, writing a Python script to control the time lapse frequency beyond the “stock” 60 seconds. There are many more commands that can be done over WiFi with a similar scripting technique, which [Korad] his listed on his
GitHub page here
.
Also outlined on [Adrian’s] page is that it’s actually pretty simple to log on to your GoPro with a computer and browse around. This type of “hacking” would be something interesting for even the most time-constricted “script kiddies.”
This WiFi script comes
via Reddit
, which claims it is not hacking… Go ahead, feel free to write “not a hack” in the comments!
BacPac Bus Hack
In case you weren’t impressed enough with 14-year-old [Konrad’s] Autoexec.ash hacking, or his list of WiFi commands, he also lists the functions of the pins on the
BacPac connectors on his site
(and disassembled one, as seen in the first picture). I had never really thought about using this as an access point for more buttons or outputs, but naturally, there is a lot of IO capability running out through this port.
One could imagine hooking up an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to this bus, and controlling the camera through it. Especially given the RGB video output pins, it’s hard not to think of the interesting hacks that could come from this type of control. If you’ve ween working on some BacPac hacks already
we want to hear about it
!
DIY Mounting Options
Switching gears, probably my favorite class of GoPro “hacks” is the DIY ways that people come up with to mount them. Among the most useful, and simplest, is the kitchen timer GoPro mount. We’ve featured a couple of interesting models, including this
excellent mount using Ikea parts
. Here’s
one that I made
using a different style timer with a magnetic base, leading to some unique mounting possibilities.
On the more extreme end, you could launch your
GoPro into the air with a slingshot
, or there’s always the single-GoPro bullet-time rotation hack. [HAD] alum [Caleb] demonstrates this
quite successfully here
, but you might have also seen this excellent effect using a
ceiling fan, and fireworks
. Everything is better with fire!
Mounting + Software = Extra Awesome
Finally, if you “happen” to have 6 GoPro cameras, a 3D
printer to make the mount
, and
software to stitch the video together
, you can create an incredible
spherical panorama video
. Watching the results below makes me feel like I’m about to fall off of the earth into space, but it’s hard not to keep looking! [Via
Reddit
]
[vimeo 90312869 w=500 h=281]
Jeremy Cook is a manufacturing engineer with 10 years experience as his full-time profession, and has a BSME from Clemson University. Outside of work he’s an avid maker and experimenter, working on everything from hobby CNC machinery, to light graffiti, and even the occasional DIY musical instrument. When he’s not busy creating (or destroying) something, you can find him on Twitter
@JeremySCook | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1583418",
"author": "Lol lol",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T14:44:40",
"content": "Why this huge advertisement for GoPro? At least make it the same length as everything else on the front page.You should be better than this Hackaday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,163.801835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/adding-spindle-direction-and-coolant-control-to-your-cnc-machine/ | Adding Spindle Direction And Coolant Control To Your CNC Machine | Rich Bremer | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"CNC router"
] | [Peter] is back at it, again modding his CNC3020 router. This time he’s adding a
coolant system and spindle direction control
. If you have ever tried cutting plexiglass using a mill, router or even a band saw, then you know it is common for those plastic chips to melt together and form a crusty trail of goobers directly behind the cutting tool. Turning down the spindle speed helps a little but the intent of the coolant system is to eliminate the globular mess all together.
It appears the coolant flow is open loop, meaning the initial coolant reservoir is not replenished automatically. The coolant starts in a container and is moved via a pump through a silicone hose. At the end of the hose there is a nozzle mounted to the Z axis which points the coolant stream at the tool bit. The nozzle is plastic and made from a re-purposed and modified flux application container. [Peter] took advantage of the machine’s bed being made of slotted extruded aluminum. The bed catches the coolant which then travels down the channels to the front of the machine where it is collected in a custom made bin. The parts of this plexi bin were actually cut out using this machine! Gravity then drains the contents of this bin into another container residing at a lower altitude.
Believe it or not, the control boards for these relativity inexpensive CNC machines have a bunch of hidden features. One of them is a connection for spindle direction, it’s even silkscreened as such on the PCB. [Peter] tapped into these points on the control board and connected them to a custom made relay board of his own design. This board holds a SPST relay for the coolant pump and a DPDT relay for reversing the polarity on the spindle.
With the new board in place and wired up, both the spindle direction and coolant can be controlled via g-code commands courtesy of
LinuxCNC
. If you have a CNC3020 or CNC3040 router and would like to improve it’s capability, check out [Peter’s] previous projects;
Power Supply Upgrade
,
PWM Spindle Control and Limit Switches
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1583313",
"author": "Kawa (@uemil)",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T13:45:48",
"content": "If the only reason ti add the mod is cutting plexiglass, then it’s useless. I have the exact same CNC mill, using it mainly to cut 4mm thick plexi, using single flute 3.175mm cuttter, nice chips, no... | 1,760,376,163.850723 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/20/the-ultimate-tiny-altimeter/ | The Ultimate Tiny Altimeter | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"altimeter",
"altitude sensor",
"pressure sensor",
"seven segmemt"
] | While traditionally a project geared more toward the model rocket crowd, a lot of people are flying quadcopters these days, and knowing the altitude your RC aircraft reached is a nice thing to know. [Will] came up with
a very nice, very small, and very lightweight altimeter
that’s perfect for strapping to microquads, their bigger brothers, and of course model rockets. As a nice bonus, it also looks really cool with an exceedingly retro HP bubble display.
The components used in this tiny altimeter include a MEMS altitude and pressure sensor, HP bubble display featuring four seven-segment LEDs, an Arduino Pro Mini, and a tiny 40 mAh LiPo capable of powering the whole contraption for hours.
In the video below, [Will] shows off the functions of his altimeter, sending it aloft on a quadcopter to about 100 ft. There are settings for displaying the minimum, maximum, and delta altitudes, all accessed with a single button.
While it’s not the most feature packed altimeter out there, it’s still much better than commercial offerings available for the model rocket crowd. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1582988",
"author": "Kemp",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T10:39:24",
"content": "I may have missed something here (possibly as I haven’t done anything with RC planes myself). This is an altimeter designed to be mounted on an RC plane and fly around… where you can’t see the display. I get... | 1,760,376,163.901546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/beaglebone-blacks-still-not-available-heres-blue-steel/ | BeagleBone Blacks Still Not Available, Here’s Blue Steel | Brian Benchoff | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"beaglebone",
"beaglebone black",
"Blue Steel",
"The files are in the computer"
] | The BeagleBone Black has been featured in an improbable number of awesome project, ranging from driving thousands of LEDs for a video display, to 3D printer controller boards. There’s a lot you can do with a tiny Linux board that’s much more powerful than the Raspberry Pi – if you can find one, that is. The BeagleBone Black has been out of stock everywhere for months now, with little sign of when distributors will receive some new stock.
Luckily, the BeagleBone Black is open source. Anyone can make them.
Finally, someone did
. It’s called Blue Steel, and notwithstanding the inevitable
Zoolander
references, it’s pretty much the same as the BeagleBone Black we all know and love.
There are a few differences between Blue Steel and the BeagleBone Black: Blue Steel doesn’t have an HDMI output, and the 4GB of on-board Flash featured on the BeagleBone isn’t found on Blue Steel. Still, it has the same processor, same amount of RAM, and the same connectors found in the BeagleBone Black.
You can
pre-order Blue Steel here
, with the boards eventually shipping at the end of the month. It’s the same price as the BeagleBone Black, not ideal considering the missing HDMI port and Flash storage. Still, you can actually buy it now, something you can’t say about the BeagleBone. | 63 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1582288",
"author": "Johnbot",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T05:21:38",
"content": "I’ll wait for Magnum; I hear it’s gonna blow us all away.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1583137",
"author": "illuminaughtyboutique",
... | 1,760,376,163.999129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/oculus-rift-head-tracking-the-ultimate-drone-experience/ | Oculus Rift + Head Tracking = The Ultimate Drone Experience | James Hobson | [
"drone hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"drone fpv",
"oculus fpv",
"oculus rift"
] | What happens when you strap a stereoscopic camera onto a drone and transmit the video feed
directly to your Oculus Rift?
A pretty amazing experience, that’s what!
Several students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology recently finished a term project dubbed Oculus FPV. In it, [Erik Hals], [Jacob Prescott], [Mats Svensson], and [Mads Wilthil] succeeded in combining virtual reality, a head mounted display, and a UAV for a great result.
Drones with cameras are the next big step in search and rescue, remote inspection, and many other use cases in other environments that are typically inaccessible for a human to poke around. What we really like about this project is they also mounted the stereoscopic cameras on a gimbal, allowing for full head movement — this means the pilot can “park” (read “hover”) his drone in remote locations, and then look around, without having to worry about performing complex aerial acrobatics to get the right camera angle.
This
isn’t the first time
we’ve seen something like this done, but at least the hardware has gotten quite a bit smaller!
[Thanks aRez!] | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1580199",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T05:23:05",
"content": "Nice response time",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1580354",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T07:02:26",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,164.211524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/roll-with-dicebot-the-tweeting-dice-roller/ | Roll With Dicebot, The Tweeting Dice Roller | Adam Fabio | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dice",
"twitter"
] | [David] modernized a 1920’s dice rolling game to bring us
DiceBot, a twitter enabled dice rolling robot
. DiceBot started with an antique dice tin. The original tin was human controlled. Pushing a button on the side of the tin would spin the bottom, rolling the dice.
It’s a bit hard to push a button from across the world, so [David] added a small motor to spin the tin. He connected the motor to a simple L298 motor driver chip, and wired that up to a Raspberry Pi. The Pi runs a few custom Ruby scripts which get it on the internet and connect to the Twitter API.
Operation is pretty straightforward. A tweet to @IntrideaDiceBot with the hashtag #RollTheDice will cause the Dicebot to spin up the dice. Once things have settled, DiceBot captures an image with its Raspberry Pi camera. The dice values are checked using OpenCV. The results are then tweeted back, and displayed on DiceBot’s
results page
.
For more DiceBot, check out
[David’s] flickr stream
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1579991",
"author": "Z00111111",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T03:02:04",
"content": "haha cool.It’d be kinda cool if you could watch it spin the dice live, but I imagine that wouldn’t be very data-usage friendly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,376,164.145911 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/i2c-from-your-vga-port/ | I2C From Your VGA Port | Eric Evenchick | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"breakout",
"i2c",
"vga"
] | VGA, DVI, and HDMI ports use Display Data Channel (DDC) to communicate with connected displays. This allows displays to be plug and play. However, DDC is based on I2C, which is used in all kinds of electronics. To take advantage of this I2C port on nearly every computer, [Josef] built a
VGA to I2C breakout
.
This breakout is based on an older article about
building a $0.25 I2C adapter
. This adapter hijacks specific lines from the video port, and convinces the kernel it’s a standard I2C device. Once this is done, applications such as
i2c-tools
can be used to interact with the port.
[Josef] decided to go for overkill with this project. By putting an ATmega328 on the board, control for GPIOs and LEDs could be added. Level shifters for I2C were added so it can be used with lower voltage devices. The end product is an I2C adapter, GPIOs, and LEDs that can be controlled directly from the Linux kernel through an unused video port. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1579649",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T23:24:41",
"content": "Who has unused video ports?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1579689",
"author": "Dissy",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T23:54:52",
"... | 1,760,376,164.493856 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/3d-printing-directly-onto-your-ipad-screen/ | 3D Printing Directly Onto Your IPad Screen | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"corning",
"gorilla glass",
"gorilla glass print bed"
] | Corning’s Gorilla Glass is very scratch resistant, shatter resistant, heat resistant, and even flexible material — it’s actually a perfect candidate to be used as a print bed material. The only problem is it’s not typically sold outside of consumer products, but that’s when [cvbrg] realized
an iPad’s replacement screen would fit his maker-bot perfectly.
One of the biggest problems people encounter with 3D printing usually involves the print bed. Sometimes the prints don’t stick, the edges peel, or it even gets stuck on there too well when it’s done! A popular solution is a borosilicate glass bed, which typically helps with adhesion and surface finish — but again, sometimes the prints don’t want to come off! Sometimes parts can even tear up pieces of the glass bed when you’re trying to remove them. People usually counteract this with Kapton tape, which can become a headache in its own right — trying to apply it bubble free, tearing it, doing it all over again…
Using an iPad’s screen (only about $15 on eBay), means you can hack and jab at the print bed all you want without fear of breaking it – It even has a bit of flex to it to help pry your parts off. Did we mention it also has a very uniform flatness, good thermal conductivity, and resistant to pretty much all solvents?
Unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as just buying one and attaching it to your build plate with binder clips. It actually has two layers of glass, the second one having something to do with the capacitive touch sensing — but unfortunately, it’s very brittle and prone to cracking. It must be removed before you can use the gorilla glass by itself. This can be done using an exacto blade as a chisel, and when it’s all done, cleaned with acetone. But according to [cvbrg] it’s well worth the effort. | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1579388",
"author": "Joee",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T20:08:02",
"content": "This is the first legitimate use of an iPad I have seen",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1579400",
"author": "woutervddn",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,164.717245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/thp-entry-etch-a-cnc/ | THP Entry: Etch-A-CNC | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"cnc",
"CNC mill",
"CNC router",
"etch a sketch",
"g-code",
"rotary encoder",
"shapeo"
] | CNC machines have been around for decades, but only recently have small desktop routers, 3D printers, and laser cutters brought G code to the tabletop. Obviously, this is a teaching opportunity, and if you’re trying to get kids interested in the inner workings of machines that build things, you can’t begin with obtuse codes understood only by machines and CNC operators.
[johnyang] is building his own CNC controller based on something just about every kid is already familiar with:
the Etch A Sketch
. He’s retrofitted a small, travel size Etch A Sketch with an LCD, buttons, rotary encoders, and a Raspberry Pi to turn this primitive drawing toy into a machine that generates G code for a Shapeoko 2 CNC mill.
The user interface for this CNC controller is as similar to the Etch A Sketch as [johnyang] can make it – two rotary encoders draw a shape on the LCD, and G code is generated from the drawn shape. Adding a third dimension is a bit of a challenge – it looks like two buttons take care of the up and down movement of the spindle. Still, [johnyang] plans to add the definitive Etch A Sketch feature – holding it upside down and shaking it will reset the CNC to its original state.
There are a few videos of [johnyang]’s progress. You can check those out below.
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. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1579249",
"author": "SavannahLion",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T17:53:09",
"content": "This is cool but….I never seem to have the hand eye coordination to make the fabled perfect circle and I’ve been playing with Etch-A-Sketches for years.Can’t do it with a mouse either so….",
"par... | 1,760,376,164.828001 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/rc-plane-flies-with-a-cockpit-view/ | R/C Plane Flies With A Cockpit View | Adam Fabio | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"first person view",
"FPV",
"radio control",
"rc plane",
"sUAS"
] | That’s not a jet jockey making a low altitude turn up there. In fact, the pilot has his feet planted firmly on the ground. [Reliku] has
built a radio controlled BAE Hawk
which is flown via
First Person View (FPV)
. FPV models often have a small camera mounted on the exterior of the craft. This camera gives a great field of view, but it isn’t exactly how full scale planes are flown.
[Reliku] took it to the next level by creating a scale cockpit for his plane. The cockpit is accurate to the real
BAE Hawk T2
, and features back lit simulated screens. Even the pilot got the FPV treatment. Micro servos move the pilot’s right hand in response to aileron and elevator inputs from the radio control system. The pilot’s head has been replaced with the FPV camera, which is mounted on a pan tilt unit. Pan and tilt are controlled by a head tracking system attached to [Reliku’s] video goggles. The entire experience is very immersive.
All this is built into a
Hobbyking BAE Hawk
Electric Ducted Fan (EDF) model, so space is at a premium. Even with the Hawk’s relatively large cockpit, [Reliku] found he was tight on space. While attempting to keep the cockpit scale from the pilot’s view, he found he was barely able to fit a single seat cockpit into a space designed for two! Adding all these modifications to a plane and still keeping the model flyable was not easy, as displayed by [Reliku’s]
earlier attempt with an F-16
.
The ends do justify the means though, as the final model looks great. We’d love to see those static cockpit displays replaced with small LCD or OLED panels for an even more realistic experience! | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1578967",
"author": "novice hacker",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T14:13:04",
"content": "But if space is already tight, would there be room for the LCD plus whatever hw to drive the screen? How about using augmented reality to overlay the cockpit screens on the video feed to his goggles... | 1,760,376,164.420393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/the-sega-mega-drive-dev-kit/ | The Sega Mega Drive Dev Kit | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"mega drive",
"sega",
"sega genesis",
"sega mega drive"
] | While most homebrew video game development has focused on the original NES, Atari consoles, and has produced a few SNES games, there is another console out there that hasn’t seen much love. Sega’s classic console, the Genesis or Mega Drive, depending on where you’re from, was an extremely capable machine with amazing capabilities for its time. [Chris] figured the Mega Drive would make a good target for an all-in-one development kit, and with a lot of work
he managed to put one together
.
The standard cartridge for the Genesis or Mega Drive is just a simple ROM chip wired directly into the console’s address space. [Chris] took a cheap FPGA and some dual port ram to create a seamless interface between the modern world and the inside of this ancient console, allowing him to load every Mega Drive game off an SD card, as well as use modern tools to modify old games, or even create new ones.
To demonstrate his dev kit
, [Chris] took a copy of Sonic 1, and using the debugger and GDB, gave himself infinite lives. It’s a very cool demonstration, searching through all the commands executed by the Megadrive CPU with the standard Linux debugging tools.Going through the trace, [Chris] found the instruction that decremented that value representing Sonics lives, replaced it with NOPs, in effect giving himself infinite lives. This is a lot like how the Game Genie works, only using much, much better tools.
Of course a USB dev kit wouldn’t be much use if it could only modify existing games. The real power of [Chris]’ work comes from being able to develop your own demos, games, and homebrew apps.
[Chris] needed to write a small homebrew Mega Drive app for the ROM loader portion of his dev kit using
SGDK
.
Disassembling his own code
with the dev kit, he was able to take a look at the instructions, and potentially even modify his loader.
It’s a really impressive technical accomplishment, and something that could be a boon to the extremely small homebrew scene for the Mega Drive. All the boards, code, and everything else are available over
on [Chris]’ github
, with the entire project
written up on hackaday.io
.
Videos below. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1578829",
"author": "ChopSueyAR",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T12:30:02",
"content": "Any DIY projects like this for NES or SNES (project files, schematics, code, BoM)?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1579199",
"author": "... | 1,760,376,164.54925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/clever-re-purposing-of-a-power-drill-results-in-a-mini-wood-lathe/ | Clever Re-purposing Of A Power Drill Results In A Mini Wood Lathe | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"lathe",
"mini lathe",
"wood lathe"
] | Ever use a lathe? No? Neither had [Jack Hauweling], but that didn’t stop him from
building his own and learning how
!
Lathes are a lot of fun, especially for small wood working projects. Using mostly wood and a few small pieces of hardware, [Jack] was able to build one in an afternoon that works quite well!
He’s using a cheap corded power drill to drive the work piece, but what we really like is how he made the spur center and spur live center out of a few pieces of threaded rod and a standoff. It’s a simple system that lets him secure the work piece fairly easily simply by tightening the threaded shaft of the live center.
In the video after the break he goes through the entire build process and even shows off his first attempts at using the lathe — he actually was able to make a very nice tool grip on his third try!
Too much work? Well, you
could always print it…
Personally we prefer
this giant treadle powered wood lathe
though, if your going to go to that much effort.
[Thanks Jeremy!] | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1581907",
"author": "Darcy InventorArtist",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T02:20:00",
"content": "Great project. I’m curious if the stationary tail stock rubs against the wood causing much heat. It sure doesn’t look like a problem in the video but could that eventually burn the wood or ca... | 1,760,376,164.778744 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/thp-hacker-bio-infinityis/ | THP Hacker Bio: Infinityis | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"scanning electron micro",
"sem",
"water",
"water fountain",
"ws2812b"
] | That profile picture is full of pure joy! Meet [
infinityis
], aka [David Hoelscher] — don’t worry, we’re not revealing his secret identity; he posted his real name on his profile page.
His entry for
The Hackaday Prize
is a functional show piece to greet guests when they step into his home. His
Waterfall Wall
will serve as a way to separate the living space from the entryway. The top portion of it is a water feature which will be edge-lit with LEDs whose color will be controlled wirelessly. The bottom part of the wall will provide some storage space.
Join us after the break to find out more about [David], and check out his THP video for
a brief introduction to his Waterfall Wall
.
Gaming. When I’m with siblings and/or parents, we’ll play board games (Ticket to Ride, Catan), card games (Flux, Munchkin), or party games (Mafia/The Resistance, Telestrations, Wits and Wagers). I also enjoy playing video games; even though my brother and I live hours apart, we keep in touch regularly when we play games on Steam (Dota2, TF2). When it’s just me by myself though, I like to create by writing software, designing circuit boards, and making physical objects.
I am an Electrical Engineer curious enough to invade the domains of mechanical, software, and systems engineering. I work for a large corporation, and my wife and I own
a fledgling startup called Designer Circuits
.
Debugging. Whenever there is a bewildering hardware or software problem, I love the process of iteratively breaking down the problem by generating and testing hypotheses to isolate the root cause(s). I always end up learning many new things that help me generate more creative solutions in the future.
It would definitely be some sort of cooking appliance. First, we own a toaster that gets more and more off-kilter as time goes on; one side heats too much and the other side too little. It constantly
reminds me of this Calvin and Hobbes comic
. Second, there is a microwave at work designed to enrage hungry people: it does not respond to any buttons except “clear” or “start” if the previous user opened the door before the timer finished counting down. If I try to press “cook time” then it just sits there and ignores me as though it has no idea what I want it to do. So to answer the question…what would I do? I’d bat two pieces of equipment at the same time.
For hacking purposes: Linux. With a wide array of free and open source software tools, along with the ability to scale from the tiniest of processors to massive server farms, it is like a breath of fresh air in that you *know* that it is possible to achieve what you want to do with it.
My initial thought was a high performance oscilloscope with a big touchscreen, lots of buttons/controls, and high voltage differential probes, but….after further reflection I think my favorite is a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). When I would see SEM images in research papers or science textbooks, I assumed that such incredible magnification is a privilege reserved for…well…researchers and textbook authors. I’ve actually been fortunate enough to work with a SEM and it was just as amazing as I’d hoped it could be. The experience was even better than I suspected because you can actually pan/zoom around the sample in real-time and perform spectral analyses, which was not obvious from the textbook pictures. [
Image
CC BY-SA 2.5
]
At the risk of betraying my analog/power roots, I’m torn between a microcontroller and an FPGA. I really like the MSP430 for the incredible performance/price ratio and low power consumption. But there was also a particular Altera Cyclone FPGA in my life (you know who you are!) that was incredible to design with: it was basically like a tiny electronics factory. I could dedicate some logic cells to perform simple arithmetic operations, some others to handle communication protocols, and still others to implement multiple Z-transformed digital compensation networks—and all of it operated concurrently and deterministically in a time-bound manner. [
FPGA Image
]
Python. While the ubiquity and utility of C is undisputable, and I understand why VHDL is the way it is, I feel that the readability, dynamic typing, and interpreted nature of Python is a really good fit for the way I like to work.
Weighted Dominoes
– My mom requested that I make her some dominoes that wouldn’t fall over so easily when the table is bumped. I started (but haven’t finished) a design for a thin-walled/hollow domino that is partially filled with small tungsten beads. This would result in a low center of gravity that would help keep dominoes from tipping over, regardless of orientation.
Autonomous Frostbite Lawnmower
– Knowing that cold freezing temperatures can kill plant life, or cause localized frostbite for people, I think it would be interesting to use the concept in an autonomous lawnmower. Specifically, a controlled grass height would be maintained by an autonomous robot that freezes any plant matter above a prescribed height. The freezing could be done through either a small, cold surface or a jet of cold compressed gases (like the icy jet produced by a can of compressed air turned upside-down). This approach seems like it would be quieter, more efficient, and less dangerous than creating autonomous robots that wield spinning blades.
Write a Book (or Books)
– I feel it would be somewhat selfish to go through life collecting unique experiences and knowledge without taking the time to give something meaningful back to the collective body of human knowledge. Helping others learn can be a very rewarding experience, especially when you know first-hand how hard the journey can be without the help. Also, my wife and I have talked about writing fiction together, which would be an interesting experience.
How to critically evaluate information. So many pitfalls in life can be avoided simply by continuing to ask questions when things don’t make sense, recognizing the patterns (and inconsistencies) that surround us, and having the courage to act based on independently-drawn logical conclusions.
The front door of our home opens into a room that we decided to use for homeschooling our kids. We wanted a way to visually and physically block off the room while still letting natural sunlight through. We also wanted shelves for the school materials/activities. We looked into various options and decided that glass with a translucent film would work nicely above custom-built shelves. We considered putting plants and soil at the bottom of the glass, or maybe an aquarium, but discarded those ideas on account of the maintenance and incompatibility with a housecat. By instead working toward a waterfall wall with LED illumination, it should provide a pleasant ambiance through soothing water sounds and controllable mood lighting. It also gave me an excuse to use my Raspberry Pi for more than a basic Linux server, get more practice programming the MSP430, and experiment with some low cost wireless modules.
I think one of the most challenging parts of this project will be coming up with an elegant user interface for doing interesting things with a strand of LEDs. Setting all the LEDs to a single color or individually setting each LED to a particular non-time-varying color will be a necessary foundational step. Beyond that, my hope is to come up with an intuitive user interface for real-time manipulation of the LEDs, and/or a simple method of inputting algorithms to generate moving patterns. I welcome any suggestions for how to design such an interface. [
Image Source
]
A Hoverboard powered by hexcopters. I know the Hoverboard of Back To The Future II and III fame isn’t practical from an implementation standpoint, but if budget weren’t an issue, it seems that a functional equivalent could be constructed with a board suspended by an overhead fleet of quad/hex/octocopters. A critically damped feedback control loop would use range sensors on the bottom of the board to maintain an ideal distance from the ground. As far as mobility goes, lightweight construction and programming the fleet actively to respond to board movement (measured via accelerometer) would help offset the increased mass.
It’s ok to be different.
Everyone has the potential to create. Some people stop challenging themselves or learning new things because of failure (or even just fear of failure). In many cases, the cost of failure is far smaller than what people imagine it to be. Learning new things is hard and prone to failure because all new concepts are foreign concepts until after they are known. Trying something new will always be hard because uncertain paths before us tend to be full of setbacks, twists and turns, and uncertainty about whether they will even lead to success. But it is the “discovery” aspects of both learning and creating that makes them such worthwhile endeavors. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1582839",
"author": "schobi",
"timestamp": "2014-06-20T09:41:20",
"content": "I’m lost on the purpose of this waterfall. It seems to be noisy, the water will get dirty (might need filters and UV desinfection?).There is however a similar concept for cooling and dehumidifying the air:... | 1,760,376,164.879334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/the-analog-swiss-army-knife/ | The Analog Swiss Army Knife | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"dac",
"MAX11300"
] | While FPGAs get all the credit for being the hip new thing, they are inherently digital devices. Without a proper ADC and DAC, you won’t be delving into the analog domain with your programmable logic.
Maxim has just put out a chip that does just that
: an analog swiss army knife with 20 pins that are configurable as analog to digital converter, digital to analog converters, GPIO, or any mix of the above.
The MAX11300 includes twenty IO ports, each capable of becoming an ADC, DAC, or GPIO, with pairs of ports capable of being configured as a logic level translator or an analog switch. The ADCs and DACs are 12-bit, with input and output ranges from -10V to +10V.
As a nice little bonus, the chip is controlled over SPI, making this an interesting device for a small “do anything analog” tool we’re sure will hit Tindie or Seeed Studio before the year is out. Luckily for whoever would create such a device, Maxim has a nice GUI for configuring each of the 20 pins on their chip, Of course Maxim already offers an evaluation kit for the MAX11300. It’s $100 USD and is Windows only.
The MAX11300 is available in either 40-pin TQFN or 48-pin TQFP packages (with the larger, easier to solder TQFP shipping later) for about $5.80 USD in quantity 1000,
or $11.37 in quantity one
.Video below showing off the MAX11300 reading and writing analog values to a few pins, and a good look at the configuration software. | 33 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1581427",
"author": "SOMEBOoDY!!!",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T20:11:17",
"content": "Mmmm, time to sample a few of these!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1581428",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T20:11:22",
... | 1,760,376,164.955038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/astronaut-or-not-your-vote-matters/ | Astronaut Or Not! Your Vote Matters. | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"astronaut or not",
"community voting",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | You know that little contest we’re running?
The one that sends a grand prize winner into SPACE
!
We’re happy to announce that community voting for The Hackaday Prize starts today. It’s an interface that we’ve been calling
Astronaut or Not!
We have hundreds of prizes to give away and this is your chance to decide who some of them go to.
Best Project Concept
This week we’re voting on the best project concept. Don’t vote on projects based on how much work they have done or how many pictures there are, pick the ones that have
the potential
to be the the best project. We’ll be sending shirts to the top 10 projects voted on over the next few days.
We don’t want this to be purely a popularity contest, so we’re shaking things up a bit. Instead of voting for a particular project we’re pairing the entries in random head-to-head match-ups, with Hackaday readers deciding the ultimate ranking. Check out the contenders, learn a bit about each project, then choose the one you think is more worthy of The Hackaday Prize.
Submit your entry now to be included!
Astronaut or Not isn’t going to decide the top prizes, all entries will still be reviewed by our various judging panels. We are planning to give away different prizes with each round of voting. So make sure you post your entry right away to get in on these giveaways!
Vote Now
Entering your project is easy, just
take a look at this video on the topic
.
Full details can be found on
The Hackaday Prize page
.
Explore all of the entries
so far. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1581282",
"author": "Eccentric Electron",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T18:08:01",
"content": "You community proof-reader says Bzzzzzt :”Be we are planning to…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1581310",
"author": "Xyroze",
... | 1,760,376,165.00329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/this-useless-machine-now-plays-with-fire/ | This Useless Machine Now Plays With Fire | James Hobson | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"useless box",
"useless candle",
"useless candle machine",
"useless machine"
] | Useless machines are a lot of fun, if not just a little overdone. Looking for a new twist, [bd594] decided to try making one that integrates a candle —
it works quite well!
While not quite as impressive as some of [bd594’s] previous projects, like his rendition of
Bohemian Rhapsody on old school computer equipment
, we like how he used regular DC motors in this design, instead of servos (the easy way).
A PICAXE14M2 microcontroller controls the H-Bridge responsible for the geared DC motors (taken from a Mac floppy drive), and a light sensor checks for the flame. He’s also made use of some NPN transistors to invert some logic levels to show you if you’re running low on I/O pins, its always possible to incorporate some other discrete components like a transistor to achieve your design.
Among others, some great alternative spins on the “useless machine” include the
moody useless machine
, an
even more useless machine
(featuring 8 switches!),
a pull-string version
, and even a rather ridiculous
elevator button pressing useless machine!
Stick around to see this one put out the candle (
Caution: Very exciting
). | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1581024",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T14:20:35",
"content": "Nice! Though, a suggestion for an upgrade: cut out a portion of the bottom of the candle holder and put a more sensitive light sensor facing up, though the semi-transparent wax, so one can’t tell how the can... | 1,760,376,165.07498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/knitted-circuit-board-lends-flexibility-to-e-textiles/ | Knitted Circuit Board Lends Flexibility To E-Textiles | Kristina Panos | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"blinky lights",
"bus wire",
"knitting",
"stockinette"
] | What could be better than sewing a circuit into wearable fabric? How about rolling your own circuit-ready knits? Chicago-based artist and assistant professor [Jesse] has done just that by
perfecting a method for knitting solderable circuit boards
.
This can be done by hand or with a knitting machine. The basic idea is that 2-3 strands of 34-36AWG bus wire are knitted into mercerized cotton yarn in rows, mimicking a piece of stripboard. Once the knitting is blocked and the component layout chosen, the floating bus wire strands between the rows are cut as you would cut unneeded stripboard traces. When it’s all done, [Jesse] used iron-on backing to protect her skin from scratches and lead transfer.
Her tutorial covers a simple LED circuit with a battery and a sliding switch, though she describes in detail how this can be expanded for more complex circuitry and offers good suggestions for working with different components. She also advocates feeding the bus wire from a spool rack to maintain tension and recommends stretching a piece of nylon stocking over the spool to keep it from unfurling all over the place.
This is the most aesthetically appealing e-textile work we’ve seen since
this electro-embroidery piece
or
this blinky LED necklace
, and it’s fascinating to watch the e-textile world unfold. Watch [Jesse]’s short videos after the break where she demonstrates a simple blinky knit as well as a lovely pulsing heart collar. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1580755",
"author": "RoboMonkey",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T11:16:01",
"content": "I know someone who can do the knitting anyway….Think I’ll see if she’s interested.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1580954",
"author": "fartfa... | 1,760,376,165.208232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/19/miter-saw-stop-saves-time-and-aggravation/ | Miter Saw Stop Saves Time And Aggravation | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Circular saw",
"miter saw",
"sawstop",
"tool"
] | Miter saws are great tools for cutting pieces of wood at a variety of angles. If you have ever cut a really long piece on a miter saw there is no doubt you’ve either propped up the extended end on a pile of scrap wood or asked someone to hold the dangling piece so you could get an accurate cut. Doing either is a little hokey and is a general pain in the butt.
[Kram242] started a project that could eliminate these problems and also provides a solution to consistent length cuts of multiple pieces. It’s an
adjustable stop
that is sure to make miter saw cuts much less annoying.
The rig is extremely simple and consists of a piece of aluminum extrusion, v-wheel carriage and lever-actuated clamp. The movable carriage lets the operator quickly position the stop to ensure the wood is cut at the appropriate location. This stop also makes it easy to cut several pieces of wood to the exact same length.
If we had to make any suggestions for improvements it would be to add supports to the carriage that emulate the saw bed and backstop as well as an
adhesive measuring tape
guide. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1580743",
"author": "Sasha",
"timestamp": "2014-06-19T11:10:38",
"content": "How is this even remotely connected with electronics?If you don’t have enough material then don’t post anything, better than posting trash.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,165.279347 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/a-robots-favourite-pen/ | A Robot’s Favourite Pen | Eric Evenchick | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"drawbot",
"pen",
"robot",
"writing"
] | Some people are very picky about their pens. Entire forums exist to discuss the topic of pen superiority. However, it comes down to a personal choice. Some people like gel while others prefer ballpoint.
[Jens] built a drawing robot that produces drawings like the one seen here. It uses several linkages connected to two stepper motors, which give fine control over the pen. With the robot working [Jens] set out to find the
best pen for robotic drawing
.
Seven pens were tested on the machine, each drawing the same pattern. [Jens] found that gel and rollerball pens work the best on the robot, and started examining the performance of each.
The pens all performed differently, but two winners were chosen to use in the machine. The Pentel Energel Deluxe RTX and the Pilot G-2 07 beat out the competition since they maintained good lines at high speeds.
If you’re looking to build a drawing robot, [Jens]’ research should help you pick the best pen for your application. For inspiration, a video of the robot in action is waiting after the break. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1576647",
"author": "ulvi",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T11:21:04",
"content": "So that is what they call “pen testing”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1576728",
"author": "neon22",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T12:05:43",
"c... | 1,760,376,165.424358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/birdly-the-virtual-reality-simulator-guaranteed-to-wear-you-out/ | Birdly, The Virtual Reality Simulator Guaranteed To Wear You Out | James Hobson | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"bird simulator",
"birdly"
] | Have you ever dreamed of being able to fly like a bird? Sadly, we’re just too heavy with our solid bones and fatty tissues – but now there’s
a simulator called Birdly
which will give you the experience you crave!
The Swiss team, consisting of [Max Rheiner], [Fabien Troxler], [Thomas Tobler] and [Thomas Erdin] wanted to build a simulator never done before – one that will simulate flapping your wings and actually flying around. They’re using the Oculus Rift to complete the visual experience, and a rather unique simulator chair that you lie face down on. It features two mechanical wings that you strap your hands into, with gas springs to provide resistance – sensors measure the stroke and power of your “flap”, relaying the information to the computer in order to control your virtual wings. You can also lean in any direction, allowing for fancy bird acrobatics.
A large fan directly mounted off the front helps to make the experience feel even more real, as you fly around in the virtual world. They say it also includes olfactoric feedback, which presents different scents to you, representative of where you are in the virtual world — we’re not too sure how that works, but it sounds pretty awesome!
[via
Reddit
] | 32 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1576367",
"author": "Rareș Mirică",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T08:05:34",
"content": "Flappy birds sim!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1576389",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T08:25:29",
... | 1,760,376,165.496156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/attiny84-powered-minimalist-led-clock/ | ATtiny84 Powered Minimalist LED Clock | Rich Bremer | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"attiny84",
"LED clock"
] | We feature a lot of clock builds on HaD, and the reason is that they are cool. Even simple ones are cool. Not everyone can say they built a clock. [Chris] took a ride on the DIY Clock train and came up with this
LED-based clock
that is controlled by an ATtiny84 chip.
The clock has 24 LEDs total, 1 for each hour and 1 for every 5 minute increment. The 24 LEDs are arranged in 2 concentric rings. To display the hour, both LEDs at the same angle are lit up. To show the minutes, just the inner LED is lit. The main image above shows 6:40.
If you are familiar with the ATtiny84 you know that it only has 12 in/out pins, which is significantly less than the amount of LEDs that need controlling. [Chris] decided to use some 74HC595 shift registers to increase the IO pins on the ATtiny. The entire build is installed on a protoboard with quite a bit of point-to-point wiring. A simple tinted plastic case finishes the project and gives it a modern look.
[Chris] made the code for his clock available in case any readers are interested in making one. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1576192",
"author": "Figureitout",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T05:48:57",
"content": "You can actually get pretty lost thinking about clocks and time…Especially when thinking about a “clock signal” and where the original control comes from.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,165.370462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/reflow-oven-controller-with-graphic-lcd/ | Reflow Oven Controller With Graphic LCD | Nick Conn | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino pro micro",
"arduino reflow soldering",
"graphic lcd",
"reflow oven",
"smd",
"surface mount"
] | A reflow oven is one of the most useful tools you will ever have, and if you haven’t built one yet, now is as good a time as any. [0xPIT’s]
Arduino based reflow oven controller
with a graphic LCD is one of the nicest reflow controllers we’ve seen.
Having a reflow oven opens up a world of possibilities. All of those impossible to solder surface mount devices are now easier than ever. Built around the
Arduino Pro Micro
and an
Adafruit TFT color LCD
, this project is very straight forward. You can either make your own controller PCB, or use [0xPIT’s] design. His design is built around two solid state relays, one for the heating elements and one for the convection fan. “The software uses
PID control
of the heater and fan output for improved temperature stability.” The project write-up is also on github, so be sure to scroll down and take a look at the README.
All you need to do is build
any
of the
laser
cutters and
pick
and
place
machines that we have
featured
over the years, and you too can have a complete surface mount assembly line! | 32 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1575807",
"author": "Some Jerk",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T02:06:18",
"content": "Wow, that looks fantastic!Here I am with a toaster oven and a stopwatch. ( ._.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1576054",
"author": "Nova... | 1,760,376,166.009255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/heating-up-a-printrbots-bed/ | Heating Up A Printrbot’s Bed | Eric Evenchick | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"controls",
"heated bed",
"marlin",
"pid"
] | Heated beds for 3D printers help reduce the amount of curling and warping of parts. The warping happens when the part cools and contracts. The heated bed keeps the part warm for the entire print and reduces the warping.
As an upgrade to her Printrbot, [Erin]
added a heated bed
. The first plan was to DIY one using Nichrome wire, but heated beds are available at low cost. They’re basically just a PCB with a long trace that acts as a resistor. She added a thermistor to monitor temperature and allow for accurate control.
The Printrbot heated bed worked, but didn’t heat up quite quick enough. [Erin] was quick to scratch off the solder mask and solder new leads onto the board. This converted the board into two parallel resistors, halving the resistance and doubling the power.
This version heated up very quickly, but didn’t have a steady heat. The simple control that was being used was insufficient, and a PID controller was needed. This type of control loop helps deal with problems such as oscillations.
The Printrbot’s firmware is based on
Marlin
, which has PID support disabled by default. After rebuilding the code and flashing, the PID gains could be adjusted using g-codes. With the values tuned, [Erin]’s printer was holding steady heat, and can now print ABS and PLA with minimal warping. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1575583",
"author": "Ross Gert",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T23:30:38",
"content": "She could have just bought the 3DP Aftermarket’s PB Metal “Stick ‘n Print” Bed for the printrbot simple metal. I use it all the time!http://3dpaftermarket.bigcartel.com/product/printrbot-metal-bundle",
... | 1,760,376,165.643657 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/cypress-launches-5-arm-dev-board/ | Cypress Launches $5 ARM Dev Board | Eric Evenchick | [
"hardware"
] | [
"cypress",
"dev board",
"PSoC",
"psoc 4"
] | We do love new development boards at Hackaday, and it’s always nice to see companies providing cheap tools for their products. For those needing a cheap ARM solution, Cypress has just released a
PSoC based board
that’ll cost you less than $5.
There’s two main ICs on the development board. The first is the target: an ARM Cortex M0+ based PSoC 4 MCU. The second is a
CY7C65211
USB bridge. This device is communicates with the target’s built in bootloader for flashing code.
The bridge can also be configured to talk UART, GPIO, I2C or SPI. If you need a USB to serial converter, this part of the board could be worth $5 alone.
The PSoC 4 target happens to be similar to the one our own [Bil Herd] used in his
Introduction to PSoC
video. If you’re looking to get into PSoC, [Bil] provides a good introduction to what makes these chips unique, and how to get started. | 73 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "1575255",
"author": "Sobachatina",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T20:04:17",
"content": "No link? Ok. I guess I’ll go find it myself.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1575256",
"author": "Sobachatina",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T... | 1,760,376,166.117659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/from-300w-to-10w-a-led-lighting-solution/ | From 300W To 10W — A LED Lighting Solution | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"LED floor lamp",
"LED lamp"
] | Halogen lights are great — they produce lots of bright warm light, but they suck a lot of juice to run. [Sven] had found a nice floor lamp years ago that was in pretty rough shape — his wife redecorated it, and he fixed it up, but between the 300W power consumption and the lack of a dimmer circuit (this thing was
bright!
), he knew
he had to upgrade.
Like we recommend for all projects, [Sven] started by setting some goals for the conversion. He wanted to keep the warm light color tone, produce over 700lm, allow for dimming via remote, and work with presence detection.
He sourced a 10W power LED which requires 12V @950mA to run, which almost stumped him as it turns out there aren’t many LED drivers of that specification even available! Luckily, he managed to find one from China that wasn’t too large and would fit in the lamp cover with the other components. He found a large heat sink for the LED, and for safety, has even wired it up with a temperature sensor to his Arduino in order to shut it down if it gets too hot. The Arduino also provides the dimming circuit and remote control capabilities.
[Sven] admits that the end result isn’t that pretty, but lucky for him, it stands about 6′ tall so no one can see the jumble of wires and components inside! This is also only the first iteration, as he plans on upgrading it further — as it turns out, 700lm isn’t quite enough. | 32 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1575041",
"author": "strevo",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T17:19:11",
"content": "to be fair, the 300w bulb PRODUCES MORE LUMENS BY A LONG SHOT – OVER 5000 LUMENS! so a better comparison would be 60 watts worth of those LEDs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,165.725315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/seeker-hats-find-each-other-with-directional-leds/ | Seeker Hats Find Each Other With Directional LEDs | James Hobson | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"gps hat",
"seeker hat"
] | [John Petersen] created a very cool piece of wearable technology for him and his son. Eager to explore the Maker Fair, but not eager to lose his son in the crowds, he’s come up with the
Seeker Hat
— a kind of auto-locating GPS hat which always points towards the other.
It’s a clever setup that makes use of a GPS module, a microprocessor, a xBee wireless chip, a compass, and LEDs to light the way. The GPS determines the hat’s approximate location, the xBee transmits it to the other hat, the digital compasses determine the directions of both hats, and the microprocessor figures out the azimuth, resulting in a difference in trajectory of the two — a strip of LEDs, like landing lights, direct you in the right direction.
In the future, [John] wants to create a mesh network so more than two hats can participate, and maybe even make a handheld “locator” device as well, instead of a hat — but the biggest problem he faced was that his son would turn off his hat. Kids. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1578591",
"author": "k",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T09:23:14",
"content": "Here’s a quick way to calculate azimuth using a small microcontroller:http://robots-everywhere.com/portfolio/math/fastatan2_integer.htm",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,165.782243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/designing-the-second-version-of-my-business-card/ | Designing The Second Version Of My Business Card | Mathieu Stephan | [
"hardware"
] | [
"business card",
"limpkin"
] | At the end of the month my contract with my current employer (no, not Hackaday) will end. With the interviews starting to line up I therefore thought it’d be a nice opportunity to design the
PCB business card
you can see in the picture above.
It is made of two PCBs soldered together, the bottom one containing the SMD components while the top one only has holes to let most of them pass through. The design was mainly inspired by the first version we
already featured on Hackaday
although the microcontroller was changed for the (costly) ATMega32u4 and the top PCB was slightly milled so the LEDs may shine through the FR4. The LEDs are connected in groups of 2 (total of 8 groups) to PWM channels and a hidden flash memory allows the card to be recognized as an external 2MB storage using the LUFA library. All source files may be downloaded on my website. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1578448",
"author": "onebiozz",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T07:28:32",
"content": "I tried something similar after i saw something like this on a hacked gadgets some years ago, after making 25 i quickly realized that government contractors and large companies are rather hesitant about ... | 1,760,376,165.936516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/triggering-remote-fireworks-with-an-arduino-and-an-android/ | Triggering Remote Fireworks With An Arduino And An Android | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"fireworks",
"mosfet",
"nichrome"
] | With Canada day and Independence day fast approaching, some makers are looking towards setting up their own fireworks to shoot off in celebration – sure you could use a match or lighter… or you could
crack out your trusty Arduino and a cellphone!
(
translated
)
To ignite the fuse, [Oscar] is using a short length of Nichrome wire which is controlled via a Mosfet by the Arduino. To control the Arduino he’s using
ArduDroid
with a Bluetooth module. The app lets you trigger the various digital and analog outputs, and send and receive data.
Stick around to see a few different demonstration videos of the circuit, testing, and launching some little bottle rockets!
Alternatively, if you need more fireworks
you can build a much larger (wired) setup
that makes use of resistors burning out to light the fuses.
And as always, make sure you’re launching fireworks where it is legal – many cities have various laws that may change when there is a holiday weekend. Always check first! | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1578291",
"author": "blackeyeddog (@blackeyeddog)",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T05:47:28",
"content": "IEDuino!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1578567",
"author": "AK4XX",
"timestamp": "2014-06-18T08:58:19",
... | 1,760,376,168.270857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/gaming-keyboard-features-incredible-workmanship/ | Gaming Keyboard Features Incredible Workmanship | James Hobson | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"integrated keyboard",
"keyboard desk",
"wooden keyboard"
] | Hello people, look at your keyboard, now back to this one, now back to your keyboard, now back to us. Sadly, your keyboard isn’t this one, but if you’re handy with wood
and
metalwork, it
could look like this one!
This incredible keyboard was made with the blood, sweat, and tears of [Kurt Plubell], an architectural draftsman. He began a few years ago when he hung up his T-square and started using CAD for his work. His biggest complaint about CAD? Ergonomics! His setup slowly evolved as he was determined to find the most comfortable way to work. First, a keyboard and a trackball. Then, a keyboard, a trackball, and a left-handed mouse. Then, an ergonomic keyboard on a desk mounted tray (and trackball + mouse) — he still wasn’t satisfied. Thus began his journey into a fully customized setup.
He started with the
ErgoDox keyboard
, which is a two-part ergonomic keyboard. He ordered the aluminum version, which isn’t quite as nicely finished as you would think — but we doubt the manufacturer was expecting its consumers to be taking it apart and integrating it into something else. A lot of sandpaper, die grinding and polishing later, and it had a much nicer finish.
The keyboard was built up using wood and MDF, and finally finished with a very nice wood veneer, giving a very executive finish to the project. He’s integrated four arcade buttons and a Kensington track ball in the very middle — and of course, being a true typist, his keys have no markings.
[via
Reddit
] | 46 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1577740",
"author": "pcf11",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T23:16:13",
"content": "I’m handy with wood, and metal work, but I’ve better things to build. To me keyboards are disposable items. Keyboards get crapped up, they out and out break, interfaces have changed no less than three times... | 1,760,376,168.090216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/judge-spotlight-sprite_tm/ | Judge Spotlight: Sprite_TM | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [] | His friends call him [Jeroen], but everyone else on the Internet
knows this god of hacks and mods as [Sprite_TM]
. He’s done everything from
hacking hard drive controllers
to
making the best computer ever made even better
. As one of the preeminent hardware hackers around, we’re proud to have [Sprite] as a judge in The Hackaday Prize, and happy to interview him on his thoughts on connected devices, the cloud-based Internet of Things, and his process of opening up black box devices for some sometimes subtle modifications.
You’re well known for your highly technical electronic hacks on your
blog SpritesMods. What about the professional side of your life, what kind
of projects keep you busy there?
I’m a software developer for a big broadcasting equipment manufacturer. Every now and then a hardware project comes along and I try to grab those too.
I know you were involved with the Observe, Hack, Make Festival in
2013. Can you tell us your experience at this event and any others you’ve
attended in Europe (CCC, etc.)?
All the CCCs plus the summer festivals (OHM2013, Hacking At Random etc) are all pretty fun. The atmosphere is laid back and all kinds of spontaneous workshops, get-togethers etc seem to crop up. It’s awesome to get to see people you usually only meet on IRC and make new friends because you happen to share an interest in the same bit of hardware.
Also, the talks tend to be pretty good and diverse. You get deep stuff like hacking SIM-cards and cracking random hardware interspersed with talks about food hacking, political talks and random stuff like talks about guerilla knitting and fun things like Hackers Jeopardy.
Your talk at OHM2013 was about
Hard Drive Hacking
and your write-up makes that adventure look easy. Do you have a gut instinct for these things or is it always a grind to reverse engineer a system like this?
It depends. The steps are usually quite similar: get a feel for the system, be it a hard disk or a router or something, figure out how it works by poking around or disassembling binaries, make the changes you need, make sure the changes stay after a reboot. The steps themselves can be a grind: I’ve sweated way longer over the disassemblies of the hard disk firmware than I originally thought I would. That’s mostly because making sense of whatever runs in a system can be pretty easy or a big challenge: for example a Linux system with lots of business logic written in shell script will be a breeze compared to the dense and big ARM binaries that are on UI-less devices like hard disks.
Do you have any advice for other hackers who are trying to figure out
what’s going on inside of a “black box” system?
Well, I can name some obvious steps like looking for JTAG or a serial port here, but I’m going to go more meta. Try to read up on how other people hack stuff. For example: if you read up on how the previous-generation consoles have been cracked, you can learn a lot about glitching, faulty encryption, et cetera. The same thing goes for
articles detailing how router flaws are found
: it teaches you how to reverse engineer in a Linux context, which can be different from something like an OS-less hard disk. Also, look up the recordings of talks given at hacker and security conferences that discuss breaking the security of embedded devices: if any, it has helped me a fair bit with getting to know all the tools of the trade.
How did you first get into programming?
According to current standards, in the bad way. I started out programming on my dads Macintosh Plus, using Microsoft Basic. Later, I got myself an old XT so I could develop in QBasic. After a few iterations of upgrading my PC, I switched over to Visual Basic;
one of the very first projects on my site
was actually one of the last things I wrote in it. When I went to university, I became sensible and installed Linux, only to then move to PHP as my language of choice… After a while, I finally saw the light and now I do most of my non-web stuff in C or C++.
My embedded programming took a similar route: next to the messing with a parallel port that was common at the time, I also had a 80C52-BASIC board I could program. I then moved on to assembly: at first for the PIC (16C84) and for my GameBoy. I even managed to combine some things by writing a BASIC-compiler that could output Z80 code for the GameBoy, in Visual Basic. Later on, when Atmel released one of their first AVRs, I moved to that: in contrast to the cramped architecture of the PIC16 series, the AVR architecture coded like a dream. I now code mostly in C for the AVR and ARM platforms if I need something small or hard-realtime, and I use whatever Linux can run on for other embedded things.
What made you decide to become a software developer?
I don’t think I ever made the conscious choice to get into electronics or computers. I just always liked them and over the years, I became good enough at it to try and develop a career in them. I happened to come across a mostly-software job at a company I liked first when I went looking for work, so now I’m officially a software developer.
The Hackaday Prize calls for the next evolution of connected devices.
Is there anything particular that you’d like to see as part of that
connectedness?
One of the things I hoped for but is coming really close nowadays is the cheap-as-chips tiny Linux systems. With a HLK-RM04 (which is flashable to run OpenWRT), the
VoCore
and other small boards, this seems to actually happen. The nice thing about this is that it makes it very easy to connect whatever to a standard WiFi-network: just plug in one of those modules, connect a WiFi-antenna to it and hook it up to whatever you’re controlling. On the software side, write a small daemon that can talk a standardized protocol like JSON-over-HTTP or SNMP or whatever to make the functionality accessible and all of a sudden you have an Internet-connected device, all without using proprietary stuff like Z-wave or home-brew protocols you’d get with using e.g. NRF24L01s.
One of the thing I don’t really like is the cloud-based solutions some companies offer. Things like If-This-Then-That and the Electric Imp may seem pretty great, but won’t work when your Internet is out. Also, when the company for whatever reason shuts down the servers, you have bits of hardware and code you wrote that now are completely useless. I’d like it more when open standards are used, combined with open-source tools to control it all. An infrastructure like that could work like xmpp does: there are existing servers where you can get an account, but if you want to manage everything yourself you can install the software on your home server.
Speaking of connected,
you once hacked a router
to unlock its crippled features. What are your thoughts on the practice of
crippling devices for sale at a lower price?
Ideologically, I don’t know. Economically, it makes sense to strip features in software to differentiate the markets, but on the other hand it kind of irks me that in practice the hardware can do more than the software allows.
In practice, however, most the software-crippled things can be upgraded to their more-capable version by flipping a bit or performing a software upgrade. As a hacker, it means more features for less money, and I can’t really complain about that.
Why should companies use Open Design rather than following closed
practices like the “crippling” mentioned above?
Especially with technical devices, it tends to create a lot of goodwill in the community of tech-heads and geeks/hackers. We know that if something is open, we can expect some cool things from the community, and we also know that if we’re missing a feature, worst case we can solder it on ourselves. Less technical: we also know that if somehow your company goes tits-up or decides to cease support for the thing we bought, we can always count on our fellow hackers for bugfixes and new features.
The fun part is: if you can get the techs to like your project, you suddenly will make more sales than only those people. Usually, we are the ones that will advise our non-technical peers on what to buy. If we like what you do, word of mouth will make certain you will get a lot more sales.
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. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1577587",
"author": "BotherSaidPooh",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T21:11:40",
"content": "Also well known for making keyring digital picture frames into small monitor screens.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1577626",
"author": ... | 1,760,376,167.786663 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/autonomous-plane-flying-across-the-usa/ | Autonomous Plane Flying Across The USA | Brian Benchoff | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"cross country",
"drone",
"flying wing",
"MyGeekShow",
"uav"
] | Somewhere between San Diego and South Carolina is an unmanned aerial vehicle
attempting to make the first autonomous flight across the United States
. The plane is electric and requires a landing and battery swap every hour or so, however the MyGeekShow guys are so far the only non-military entity to attempt such an ambitious flight.
The plane making the multiple flights is a
Raptor 140
capable of cruising at 75 kph for about an hour before requiring a battery swap. Ground control is an RV, loaded up with LCDs and radios; as long as the RV is within a kilometer or so of the plane, the guys should be able to have a constant telemetry link.
Already the guys at MyGeekShow have pulled off
a 52 km autonomous flight
, following their flying wing in a car. Even though a hard landing
required swapping out the carbon fiber spar for an aluminum one
, the plane making the truly cross-country flight is still in good condition, ready to land on a South Carolina beach within a week.
You can follow the trip
on the MyGeekShow Twitter
. The guys are pulling off an incredible amount of updates and even a few live streams from the mobile command station.
UPDATE:
It crashed
. Tip stalls aren’t your friend, and undercambered wings exist. Good try, though. | 28 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1577245",
"author": "Sparky",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T17:07:31",
"content": "Update – Already broke it bad enough they’re going home. LOL.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1577249",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,167.929791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/17/the-unity-candle-with-a-30-foot-flame/ | The Unity ‘Candle’ With A 30 Foot Flame | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"fireball",
"poofer",
"pyrotechnics",
"unity candle",
"wedding"
] | [Quinn]’s friends were getting married, and while the couple wanted something like a ‘unity candle’ ceremony, they though simple candles were entirely unimpressive and ultimately not very entertaining for the guests.
They decided a unity fireball
would be a much better representation of their relationship, and were lucky enough to have a good friend that could build one.
The design of [Quinn]’s unity candle consisted of a control box with two key switches, a giant button, and the gigantic propane fueled candle set well back from the bride, groom, and guests at the ceremony. The candle itself releases the entire contents of an accumulator tank over a hot surface igniter, creating a thirty foot fireball without a visible pilot light, or the loud jet-like sound you would get from a traditional ‘poofer’.
As with all giant fireballs in front of an audience, safety was of the highest concern. [Quinn] didn’t use a full propane tank for this build, instead, a new, purged, and never used tank was used as an accumulator, storing just enough propane for one giant fireball. All the valves, regulators, and plumbing were rated for LP, and [Quinn] even
filled out the proper forms
and got the local fire department to sign off on it. It’s safer than [Caleb]’s
Mario fire flower
, but you still shouldn’t try this at home.
Video of the ceremony below. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1577022",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2014-06-17T14:49:48",
"content": "This is amazing! I’ve always been unimpressed with the unity candle thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1577049",
"author": "jon",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,168.153859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/thp-entry-digital-gauges-for-everything-automotive/ | THP Entry: Digital Gauges For Everything Automotive | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"automotive",
"Boost gauge",
"dashboard",
"ecu",
"turbo"
] | Way back in 2007, someone on a VW TDI forum came up with a new boost gauge project. At the time, it was a remarkable feat of engineering, capable of displaying the manifold pressure on a tiny OLED on the dashboard. No project has yet reached this caliber since. [Digital Corpus] is revisiting the project, making it his own, adding a few upgrades,
and entering it into the Hackaday Prize
.
The D-DAQ, as [Digital] calls his new project is using an absolute pressure sensor, unlike its predecessor. This gives the turbo gauge a much larger range than the original project, and also allows the D-DAQ to measure partial vacuum in non-diesel turbos.
In addition, the D-DAQ has a much wider scope than the original project, and as such will function as much more than a simple boost gauge. [Digital] sees the D-DAQ as being a complete performance monitor and logger, capable of tracking the exhaust gas temperature, battery voltage, and just about anything else with 10 analog pins. Data will be saved to a MicroSD card, and instead of a single display, the D-DAQ will feature three 160×128 OLEDs.
It’s certainly not what you’d expect from a Hackaday Prize entry, but with these features, it’s very possible the D-DAQ could be a successful product
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. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1574841",
"author": "zingzing",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T14:50:49",
"content": "Let me get up off the porch for a second…Ah, engine sensors! Can’t say enough about properly shielding your toys and filtering the inputs through RLC networks with zener protection. Automotive use is a p... | 1,760,376,167.858056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/the-rotary-cell-phone/ | The Rotary Cell Phone | Brian Benchoff | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"cell phone",
"GSM module",
"lpc810",
"nxp",
"rotary dial",
"rotary phone"
] | It’s happened. It’s finally happened. In a move that has hipsters donning their good flannel and breaking out that case of Genesee they were saving for a special occasion,
the rotary cell phone is now a reality
.
[Jaromir] created this astonishingly retro future device as an entry for the
NXP LPC810 challenge
, a contest to do the most with an ARM Cortex M0+ microcontroller in an 8-pin package. Having only six I/O pins for controlling a GSM module, display a few buttons, and the fancy rotary dial meant [Jaromir] needed to expand his I/O some way. He chose a shift register to handle the buttons and display in a somewhat impressive demonstration of using a shift register as both an input and output expander at the same time.
From the videos [Jaromir] uploaded, the rotary cell phone isn’t ready for Think Geek to do a production run quite yet. He needs to enter the PIN for the SIM card, AT commands for the GSM module, and is, of course, a horrible method of user input for the younglings who have only seen rotary phones in old movies. That being said, it’s a rotary cell phone running on an 8-pin microcontroller. What more do you want?
Videos of this awesome this truly awesome phone in action below. If you’d like to build your own – and why wouldn’t you – all the files are available
on [Jaromir]’s git | 30 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1574535",
"author": "Tired Juan",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T11:42:11",
"content": "What’s sad is, I was thinking of modding an old cellphone to do this. Now that someone has done it, it seems pointless (/hipster) lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,167.998044 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/16/the-bluetooth-ipod-controller-for-android/ | The Bluetooth IPod Controller For Android | Brian Benchoff | [
"Android Hacks",
"ipod hacks"
] | [
"ipod",
"ipod remote"
] | By now, just about everyone in the industrialized world has a broken iPod with a cracked screen, a battery that won’t charge, or one that’s simply sitting in a drawer somewhere. The iPod is still a great way to store music, though, and [Trevor] came up with a way
to control its playback with an Android device
, showing the song name, playlists, and everything else with an Arduino and a cheap Bluetooth adapter
With the right resistance on a specific pin on the 30-pin dock connector, iPods will send the track name, and playlists over a serial connection, as well as respond to play, pause, skip, and volume commands. There hasn’t been much work towards implementing the copious amount of documentation of this iPod accessory mode in small microcontroller projects, but with a little bit of work, [Trevor] managed to replicate the usual iPod dock commands with an Arduino.
Using an HC-05 Bluetooth module, it’s possible to get this iPod-connected Arduino to relay data to and from an Android device
with a small app
. The circuit is simple, the app is free, and if you have an iPod with an old battery or cracked screen, it can still work as a music storage device. Not bad, [Trevor]. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1574312",
"author": "Bob Dole",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T09:18:15",
"content": "Lol what is it with scrubs these days?Breadboard and a full arduino, make a PCB or at the very least use protoboard your lazy people",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,167.733004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/laser-cut-miter-joints/ | Laser Cut Miter Joints | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"joinery",
"laser",
"laser cutter"
] | Every project deserves its own laser cut enclosure, of course, but the most common method of joinery – an overabundance of mortises and tenons, and if you’re lucky, a bit of kerf bending – is a little unsightly. Until tastes in industrial design change to accommodate this simple but primitive method of joining two laser cut panels together at an angle takes hold, the search will continue for a better way to cut acrylic and plywood on a laser cutter. The folks at Just Add Sharks might have a solution to this problem, though:
miter joints with a laser cutter
.
Instead of the slots and tabs of the usual method of constructing laser cut enclosures, miter joints produce a nearly seamless method of joining two perpendicular panels. The key, of course, is cutting a 45° bevel at the joint and gluing or fastening the pieces together. Just Add Sharks is doing this with a laser cut jig that holds a plywood or acrylic piece at a 45° angle to the laser beam. Yes, it’s only one cut per pass, but after adjusting the depth of cut to 1.4 times the thickness of the material, miter joints are easy.
Using a laser for miter joints isn’t limited to 45°, either. There are a few examples of an octahedron and icosahedron. Of course fastening these mitered panels together will be a challenge, but that’s what clamps and glue are for. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1574085",
"author": "Tyler",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T06:52:30",
"content": "I can’t wait until people discover fasteners.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1574139",
"author": "Torque",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T... | 1,760,376,168.325451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/hackaday-links-june-15-2014/ | Hackaday Links: June 15, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"arcade",
"game boy",
"ISEE-3",
"leds",
"mame",
"satellite dish",
"scanning electron microscope",
"sem"
] | Love the classic brick Game Boy, but hate the low-contrast LCD, terrible battery life, and the inability to play Pokemon Emerald?
This one’s just for you
. It’s the ultimate DMG Game Boy – a Game Boy Advance SP stuffed (is it stuffed if it’s taking up
more
room?) into the classic Game Boy enclosure.
Forum thread
.
Zooming in to a microchip
. It starts off with a DSLR and ends up on a scanning electron microscope. This is an older chip, and the CPU you’re using right now probably has much smaller features.
Every movie and every TV show set in space invariably has space helmets with LEDs pointing towards the face. Think how annoying that would be for an astronaut.
Here’s how you add LEDs to a space helmet
for a nice theatrical effect. Just don’t use it on a real EVA.
Everyone’s favorite crowdfunded space probe
can apparently be detected with an 8-foot dish
. That’s the same size as an old C-band dish, a.k.a West Virginia wildflowers. We know some of you have one of these out there, so go make a ~2GHz feed horn, grab a USB TV dongle, write it up, and send it in.
Alright, MAME cabinets. Say you want to go old-school and have a CRT. Some arcade games use a vertically oriented display, while other, slightly more modern games use a horizontally mounted display. How do you fix this?
Get a big bearing, of course
. This one allows a 19″ CRT to be rotated 90 degrees – all you need, really, if you’re switching between Pacman and Mortal Kombat.
Hey mechanical keyboard enthusiasts!
Here’s some Hackaday Cherry MX keycaps
. Informal interest check in the comments below. Suggestions welcome. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1573545",
"author": "healthy",
"timestamp": "2014-06-16T00:52:01",
"content": "rotating arcade monitor is brilliant. crt or nothing when it comes to retro gaming.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1573716",
"author": "J... | 1,760,376,168.20867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/the-relay-based-mouse-emulator/ | The Relay-Based Mouse Emulator | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"macro",
"mouse",
"mouse macro",
"relay"
] | [Nixie]’s job involves using some test software that requires moving a mouse around, clicking a few buttons, checking if everything is okay, and repeating the process over and over again. This is obviously a solution for some keyboard macros, but in a fit of sadistic spite, the test software requires someone to move a mouse around the screen. What is [Nixie] to do?
Make a mouse emulator
and automate the whole thing, of course.
The Memulator, as [Nixie] calls the device, is the latest in a series of devices to increase productivity when testing. The first version
was the mouse tumor
, an odd-looking device that simply switched off the LED for an optical mouse, keeping the cursor in one spot while [Nixie] hammered a button repeatedly.
The second version
is more advanced, capable of moving the cursor around the screen, all without doing an iota of USB programming: [Nixie] is simply using a resistive touch pad, some relays and a few pots to turn buttons into cursor movements. It’s such a simple solution it almost feels wrong.
There’s some interesting tech here, nonetheless. For some reason, [Nixie] has a few cases of old, can-shaped soviet-era relays in this build. While using such cool, awesome old components in such a useful and productive build seems odd, if you’re trying to fix ancient software that’s so obviously broken, you might as well go whole hog and build something that will make someone in twenty years scratch their head.
Vertical video of the Memulator below. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1573194",
"author": "sf",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T20:07:58",
"content": "Interesting solution for situations where you can’t install macro recorder software (often changed PCs, embedded OS, no rights to install software)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,168.539924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/a-motion-activated-ac-switching-circuit-using-mostly-discreet-components/ | A Motion Activated AC Switching Circuit Using Mostly Discrete Components | Rick Osgood | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"555",
"analog",
"christmas",
"discreet",
"forrest mims",
"lights",
"motion sensor",
"pir",
"relay",
"timer"
] | If you’ve ever dealt with a brightly lit Christmas tree, you might understand the frustration of having to crawl underneath the tree to turn the lights on and off. [brmarcum] feel’s your pain. He’s developed his own motion activated
AC switching circuit
to turn the lights on and off automatically. A motion sensor ensures that the lights are only on when there are people around to actually see the lights. The circuit also has an adjustable timer so [brmarcum] can change the length of time that the lights stay on.
The project is split into several different pieces. This makes the building and debugging of the circuit easier. The mains power is first run through a transformer to lower the voltage by a factor of 10. What remains is then filtered and regulated to 9VDC. [brmarcum] is using a Parallax PIR sensor which requires 4.5V. Therefore, the 9V signal is then lowered once more using a voltage divider circuit.
When the PIR sensor is triggered, it activates the timer circuit. The timer circuit is driven by a 555 timer. The circuit itself was originally borrowed from a classic
Forrest Mims
book, though it was slightly modified to accommodate the PIR sensor. The original push-button trigger was removed and replaced with the signal from the PIR sensor. The only problem is that the circuit was expecting a low signal as the trigger and the PIR sensor outputs a high signal. [brmarcum] resolved this problem with an NPN BJT to invert the signal. Once the timer is triggered, it flips on a relay that allows the mains electricity to flow through to the lights.
[brmarcum] soldered the entire circuit onto a piece of protoboard. The final product was then mounted securely inside of an insulated plastic case. This allows him to mount the circuit safely underneath the Christmas tree skirt. The PIR sensor is kept external to the enclosure and wired up into the tree itself. This allows the sensor to still detect motion in the room while the rest of the circuit is hidden away.
[via
Reddit
] | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1573030",
"author": "ARob",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T18:06:11",
"content": "A resistor divider network is really bad way of stepping down voltage to power devices. At the simplest, a zener diode would be better. Of course a linear regulator would be much better.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,376,168.597699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/the-worst-e-reader-ever/ | The Worst E-Reader Ever | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"e-reader",
"oled",
"PIC24",
"usb"
] | Over on the Projects site
, [Jaromir] has created a tiny device with an OLED display, three buttons, and a USB port for storing text files, be it for saving a shopping list, a cheat sheet, or the most unusable e-reader ever made.
The front of the device is simply a 96×32 pixel OLED and three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘open/close’. The reverse side is where the magic happens with a PIC24 microcontroller that sets up a file system on the chip, allowing [Jaromir] to write 64kB of data on what is actually a Flash drive with a pitiful capacity. Text files are viewable on the OLED, with the video below showing the front page of Wikipedia being displayed in a glorious 16×4 text mode.
It’s not a very useful device by any means, but for some reason it’s garnered a lot of skulls and followers over on Hackaday Projects. In response to that, [Jaromir] is working on version two with a new PCB and a design for a 3D printed case. Not bad for what [Jaromir] himself describes as worse than just about any phone or tablet. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1571023",
"author": "Vis1-0N",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T17:44:50",
"content": "MCU – CheckOLED – CheckUSB – CheckFAT FileSystem – CheckLiIon Battery + Charger – CheckDIY PCB Design, SMD design – CheckNo Ardiuno – CheckMaybe not very useful but you could base a complete course or boo... | 1,760,376,168.67037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/the-first-arduino-radar-shield/ | The First Arduino Radar Shield | Gregory L. Charvat | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"arduino",
"radar",
"radar shield"
] | The very first fully operational radar Arduino shield
was recently demonstrated at Bay area Maker Faire
. It was built by [Daniel] and [David], both undergrads at UC Davis.
Many have talked about doing this, some have even prototyped pieces of it, but these undergrad college students pulled it off. This is the result from Prof. ‘Leo’ Liu’s
full-semester senior design course
based on the
MIT Coffee Can radar short course
, which has been going on for 2 years now.
Next year this course will have 30 students
, showing the world the interest and market-for project based learning.
Check out the high res ranging demo, where a wider band chirp was used to amazing results. Video below. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1570848",
"author": "DainBramage1991",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T15:22:43",
"content": "Very cool, just be sure to operate within the laws of whatever jurisdiction you live in, as any application of active radar involves transmitting RF.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,376,168.892295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/home-made-miter-saw-is-not-completely-dangerous/ | Home Made Miter Saw Is Not Completely Dangerous | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"chop saw",
"tool hacks"
] | If the term ‘home made miter saw’ instantly instills frightening images of severed limbs into your head, you’re not alone. A quick internet search will yield some pretty hokey tool builds, we’ve even featured a few here on hackaday. This saw is different. [Pekka] made a
pretty cool saw
for cutting very accurate angles in wood.
This saw was purpose built with one goal in mind: cutting wood that will be glued together for use in segmented turning. Segmented turning is shaping a piece of wood stock that is composed of many different types of wood. This results in a very visually interesting product.
Most of the saw is made from plywood. The hinge and supports for the arbor are beefy off-the-shelf pillow blocks. A 3-phase motor with speed control transmits power to the arbor via a belt. Belt tension is adjusted by sliding the motor further back along the motor mount base. [Pekka] took care so that the entire pivoting assembly was nearly balanced adding to the ease of use.Typical miter saws rotate the blade to achieve different angles of cuts. This design rotates the saw fence.
For safety there are a pair of polycarbonate blade guards and a micro switch on the handle that won’t let the saw start unless it is depressed. The micro switch has a secondary function also, when let go it applies an electronic brake to the motor so that the spinning blade does not touch the work piece when lifting the blade back up. | 43 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1570568",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T11:14:44",
"content": "I will just pre-empt the predictable responses by saying don’t build this it is unsafe – spend hundreds on a commercial model because if you don’t you might cut your little pinky – poor pet…",
"parent... | 1,760,376,169.182167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/an-arm-based-dsp-modelling-synth/ | An ARM-Based DSP Modelling Synth | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"analog synth",
"dsp"
] | The great analog synths of Moog, Oberheim, Sequential Circuits, and more modern version from Doepfer are renouned for their sound, the sheer majesty of a rack full of knobs and plugs, and of course the price. Analog synths are simply expensive to build, and given that aficionados even scoff at digitally controlled oscillators, require a lot of engineering to build.
[Jan]’s DSP-G1
isn’t like those analog synths – it uses microcontrollers and DSP to generate its bleeps and boops. It is, however, extremely cheap and sounds close enough to the real thing that it could easily find a home between a few euroracks and CV keyboards.
The heart of the DSP-G1 is a micro from NXP modeling an analog synthesizer with 15 digitally controlled oscillators with Sine, Triangle, Pulse and Saw outputs, a low frequency oscillator, two envelope filters, and a low pass filter, or about the same accouterments you would find in a MiniMoog or other vintage synth from the 70s. Since this is basically a synth on an NXP LPC-810, [Jan] has packaged it in something akin to a MIDI to 3.5mm cable adapter: Plug a MIDI keyboard into one end, an amp into the other, and you have a synth smaller than the
MIDI Vampire
, an already impossibly small music creation tool.
[Jan] has a few more versions of his little DSP device with varying amounts of knobs
available on his indiegogo campaign
. The DSP-Gplug is the star of the show, though, provided you already have a MIDI keyboard with a few knobs for the required CC messages. Videos and sound demos below.
[soundcloud url=”
https://soundcloud.com/dspsynth/dsparp”%5D
[soundcloud url=”
https://soundcloud.com/dspsynth/samplenhold”%5D
[soundcloud url=”
https://soundcloud.com/dspsynth/singlesaw”%5D | 42 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1570291",
"author": "Ijon_Tichi",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T08:12:55",
"content": "AWESOME!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1571765",
"author": "Dan Fruzzetti",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T02:59:35",
"con... | 1,760,376,169.102631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/do-you-have-any-idea-how-fast-your-blender-was-going/ | Do You Have Any Idea How Fast Your Blender Was Going? | Adam Fabio | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"blender",
"rpm",
"stroboscope",
"u",
"will it blend"
] | Some people really love their smoothies. We mean really, really, love smoothies and everything about making them, especially the blenders. [Adam] is a big fan of blenders, and wanted to verify that his Vitamix blenders ran as fast as the manufacturer claimed. So he built not one, but
two speed measuring setups
. Scientific blender measurement method requires one to cross check their results to be sure, right?
Measuring the speed of a blender is all about the RPM. Appropriately, [Adam’s] first measurement tool was an LED based stroboscope.
Stroboscopes
have been around for hundreds of years, and are a great way to measure how fast an object is rotating. Just adjust the speed of a flashing light until the rotating object appears frozen. The number of blinks per second is then equal to the Rotations Per Second (RPS) of the object being measured.Multiply by 60 seconds, and you’ve got RPM. [Adam] used an Arduino as the brains behind his stroboscope. He wired a dial up on his breadboard, and used it to adjust the flash rate of an LED. Since this was a quick hack, [Adam] skipped the display and just used the Arduino’s USB output to display speed measurements on his laptop.
There are possibilities for error with stroboscopes. [Adam] discovered that if the stroboscope was flashing at a multiple of the blade’s rotation speed, the blades would appear frozen, and he’d get an erroneous RPM value. Thankfully, [Adam’s] Vitamix had asymmetric blades, which made the test a bit easier. He calculated his blades to be spinning at 380 RPS, or 23,000 RPM. Not satisfied with his results, [Adam] brought out Audacity, and ran a spectral analysis of the blender in operation. He found a peak at 378Hz, which was pretty darn close to his previous measurement. Since the blender has a 4 inch blade this all works out to a blade tip speed right around the claimed value of 270 MPH. We’re glad [Adam] found an answer to his blender questions, but our personal favorite blender hack still has to be the
V8 blender created by the Top Gear crew
. [via HackerNews] | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1569958",
"author": "janostman",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T05:06:46",
"content": "Do you think this is fun?Measuring the RPM of a blender?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1570264",
"author": "robotto",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,169.0197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/finally-someone-has-found-the-any-key/ | Finally, Someone Has Found The Any Key | Will Sweatman | [
"ARM"
] | [
"diy usb interface",
"HID usb",
"ti launchpad"
] | “Where’s the any key?” Well, it’s
right here
. After running into trouble with the STM platform, [lukasz.iwaszkiewicz] went with the Texas Instrument C Series Launchpad to construct his “Any Key” HID device. He was able to make use of the
TI TM4C123G LaunchPad’s
extensive USB library which is laid out into four tiers – the very top tier being Device Class API. This gives the programmer the ability to implement simple devices with just a few lines of code. [lukasz.iwaszkiewicz] points out that ST does not have this option available.
The Any Key uses a host PC program that allows the user to enter keystrokes into a virtual keyboard. This information is then passed to the Any Key device. When it is pressed, it will push the recorded keystrokes back to the host PC. Simple, but effective!
The project is completely open source, and all files and code are available. Be sure to check out the video after the break demonstrating the Any Key in action.
[youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeLo8d0pDmI&w=560&h=315%5D | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1569737",
"author": "daewootech",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T02:32:07",
"content": "Just make it say Reboot -r and it should fix most problems, lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1569868",
"author": "Gabe",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,168.958158 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/faster-benchmarks-with-slower-hardware/ | Faster Benchmarks With Slower Hardware | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bus pirate",
"flash",
"flashing",
"rom",
"spi",
"uISP"
] | The Bus Pirate is a cheap, simple, Swiss army knife of electronic prototyping, capable of programming FPGAs, and writing to Flash memory. The uISP is possibly the most minimal way of programming Atmel chips over USB, using less than $5 in components. Although the uISP is using a slower chip and bit-banging the USB protocol,
it turns out it’s actually faster when operating as a programmer for SPI Flash memories
.
Most of [Necromancer]’s work involves flashing routers and the like, and he found the Bus Pirate was far too slow for his liking – he was spending the better part of four minutes to write a 2 MiB SPI Flash. Figuring he couldn’t do much worse, he wrote two firmwares for the uISP to put some data on a Flash chip, one a serial programmer, the other a much more optimized version.
Although the ATMega in the uISP is running at about half the speed as the PIC in the Bus Pirate, [Necromancer] found the optimized firmware takes nearly half the time to write to an 8 MiB Flash chip than the Bus Pirate.
It’s an impressive accomplishment, considering the Bus Pirate has a dedicated USB to serial chip, the uISP is bitbanging its USB connection, and the BP is running with a much faster clock. [Necro] thinks the problem with the Bus Pirate is the fact the bandwidth is capped to 115200 bps, or a maximum throughput of 14 kiB/s. Getting rid of this handicap and optimizing the delay loop makes the cheaper device faster. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1569434",
"author": "Matthew Holmes (@ingmar_spergman)",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T23:20:37",
"content": "So the atmel uses a RISC design while the PIC uses a CISC design. While the atmel chips usually do one instruction per clock cycle the PIC takes four cycle to do an instruction.... | 1,760,376,169.239998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/pigates-validates-your-concert-tickets/ | PiGates Validates Your Concert Tickets | Adam Fabio | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"concert ticket",
"PiGlow",
"raspberry pi",
"rfid",
"ticket"
] | [Seph] works for a company that handles ticketing for concerts and special events. One of his primary tasks is to check for counterfeit tickets at the gates of an event. Depending on the venue, this can be mag-stripes, bar codes, or one of several breeds of RFID. Until recently, netbooks coupled with USB readers performed the task. The netbooks weren’t a great solution though – they were expensive, relatively fragile, and took up more space than necessary.
[Seph] had a better idea. He created a
ticket validation system using a Raspberry Pi
. The Pi sits in a translucent case with a
PiGlow
RGB LED board. A USB reader (in this case a bar code reader) plugs into one of the Pi’s USB ports. These readers can operate in several modes, including keyboard emulation, which [Seph] chose because it wouldn’t require any driver work.
Using PiGates is so simple even a drummer could handle it. Normally the Pi glows blue. When a ticket is scanned, [Seph’s] python script reads the code and verifies it against an online database.If the ticket is valid, the Pi will glow green. A counterfeit ticket is indicated by flashing red LEDs.
Click past the break for more on PiGates.
[Seph’s] company tested the system at an event over Memorial Day weekend. PiGates was a huge success. His company is now planning to replace all their netbooks with PiGates systems.
If you’d like to read more about PiGates, check out [Seph’s]
thread over on Reddit. | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1572708",
"author": "rewolff",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T14:16:32",
"content": "And I was waiting for the movie to show him checking a valid card and seeing the leds flash green….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1572777",
... | 1,760,376,169.311426 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/easily-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-an-fm-transmitter/ | Easily Turn Your Raspberry Pi Into An FM Transmitter | Rick Osgood | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"c++",
"fm",
"ham",
"radio",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi",
"transmitter"
] | Have you ever wanted to be your own radio DJ? [Kevin] has made it easier than ever with his Raspberry Pi
FM Transmitter program
. The program is written in C. [Kevin] has made source code is available along with a compiled binary.
PIFM allows you to load up any audio file and specify a frequency to transmit. The program will then use PWM to modulate the audio sample through the Pi’s GPIO4 pin. [Kevin] claims that the RasPi alone will only transmit around a 10 cm distance. He says that making a simple antenna out of a jumper wire can increase the distance to around 100 meters. All you have to do is hook up the wire to the GPIO4 pin to drastically increase the range.
The legality of such a transmitter will vary from place to place, so be sure to check out your local regulations before you go transmitting audio on regulated frequencies. If this kind of thing is interesting to you, you may want to investigate ham radio. It’s not all Morse code and old fogies. Some people claim it’s a
hacker’s paradise
.
[via
Reddit
] | 41 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1572472",
"author": "leomcmartin",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T11:12:35",
"content": "I’ve done this with the Raspberry Pi, and even with no antenna I can send a signal from one end of my house to the other quite happily, and with a half-wave dipole I can push that to approximately 120... | 1,760,376,169.386206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/simple-hack-puts-an-rfid-tag-inside-your-mobile-phone/ | Simple Hack Puts An RFID Tag Inside Your Mobile Phone | Rick Osgood | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"acetone",
"card",
"iphone",
"phone",
"rfid",
"security"
] | RFID security systems have become quite common these days. Many corporations now use RFID cards, or badges, in place of physical keys. It’s not hard to understand why. They easily fit inside of a standard wallet, they require no power source, and the keys can be revoked with a few keystrokes. No need to change the locks, no need to collect keys from everyone.
[Shawn] recently set up one of these systems for his own office, but he found that the RFID cards were just a bit too bulky for his liking. He thought it would be really neat if he could just
use his cell phone
to open the doors, since he always carries it anyways. He tried searching for a cell phone case that contained an RFID tag but wasn’t able to come up with anything at the time. His solution was to do it himself.
[Shawn] first needed to get the RFID tag out of the plastic card without damaging the chip or antenna coil. He knew that acetone can be used to melt away certain types of plastic and rubber, and figured he might as well try it out with the RFID card. He placed the card in a beaker and covered it with acetone. He then sealed the beaker in a plastic bag to help prevent the acetone from evaporating.
After around 45 minutes of soaking, [Shawn] was able to peel the plastic layers off of the electronics. He was left with a tiny RFID chip and a large, flat copper coil. He removed the cover from the back of his iPhone 4S and taped the chip and coil to the inside of the phone. There was enough room for him to seal the whole thing back up underneath the original cover.
Even though the phone has multiple radios, they don’t seem to cause any noticeable interference. [Shawn] can now just hold his phone up to the RFID readers and open the door, instead of having to carry an extra card around. Looking at his phone, you would never even know he modified it.
[Thanks Thief Dark] | 36 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1572284",
"author": "jdschuitemaker",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T08:36:08",
"content": "Wondering why he didn’t just put an RFID sticker in the cover of his phone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1572302",
"author": "JRD... | 1,760,376,169.509963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/hard-drive-clock-is-simple-and-elegant/ | Hard Drive Clock Is Simple And Elegant | Rick Osgood | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"atmega328",
"binary clock",
"ds1307",
"hard drive",
"real time clock",
"upcycle"
] | [Aaron] has been wanting to build his own
binary desk clock
for a while now. This was his first clock project, so he decided to keep it simple and have it simply display the time. No alarms, bells, or whistles.
The electronics are relatively simple. [Aaron] decided to use on of the ATMega328 chips he had lying around that already had the Arduino boot loader burned into them. He first built his own Arduino board on a breadboard and then re-built it on a piece of protoboard as a more permanent solution. The Arduino gets the time from a real-time clock (RTC) module and then displays it using an array of blue and green LED’s. The whole thing is powered using a spare 9V wall wort power supply.
[Aaron] chose to use the DS1307 RTC module to keep time. This will ensure that the time is kept accurately over along period of time. The RTC module has its own built-in battery, which means that if [Aaron’s] clock should ever lose power the clock will still remember the time. The RTC battery can theoretically last for up to ten years.
[Aaron] got creative for his clock enclosure, upcycling an old hard drive. All of the hard drive guts were removed and replaced with his own electronics. The front cover had 13 holes drilled out for the LED’s. There are six green LED’s to display the hour, and seven blue LED’s for the minute. The LED’s were wired up as common cathode. Since the hard drive cover is conductive, [Aaron] covered both sides of his circuit board with electrical tape and hot glue to prevent any short circuits. The end result is an elegant binary clock that any geek would be proud of. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1572098",
"author": "David Carver",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T05:51:53",
"content": "This is very similar to my build a few months ago.http://shortcircuitprojects.blogspot.com/2013/12/arduino-powered-alarm-clock.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,169.437081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/the-small-cheap-minispartan6/ | The Small & Cheap MiniSpartan6+ | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"fpga",
"Scarab",
"Spartan6"
] | There have been quite a few boards put out in recent months with an FPGA, some RAM, Flash, and a bunch of I/O, the working theory being FPGAs are the new hotness, ready to steal the crown from Arduino and put a programmable logic development board in the hands of millions. We’re not so sure that’s going to happen. but
Scarab Hardware’s miniSpartan6+ board
does look pretty nice, and has more than enough on board to serve as anyone’s first FPGA platform. It’s also one of the first FPGA boards we’ve seen that is breadboard friendly. Nice touch.
This tiny board features a Spartan6 LX9 FPGA, with just under 10,000 logic cells. An FPGA platform is useless without some sort of IDE, so the Scarab Hardware folks have taken the
Mojo IDE
, improved the GUI, added a few libraries, and rolled everything up into a ‘not the Arduino IDE, but as simple and better’ platform.
Right now, the crowdfunding campaign for the miniSpartan6+ is well over 200% funded with a little less than a month to go. The stretch goals the team have in mind – a very likely probability, given what they’re asking – include a faster FPGA, a higher resolution ADC, and support for HDMI input and output. That last bit – HDMI input – will allow anyone to do some cool things like
overlaying video with HDMI
for a pretty reasonable cost. | 59 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1571718",
"author": "FrankenPC",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T02:24:55",
"content": "I went for it. This is the perfect excuse for me to get into the FPGA world.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1572046",
"author": "Ayush"... | 1,760,376,169.717953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/tennis-ball-launcher-has-puppies-running-the-100m-dash/ | Tennis Ball Launcher Has Puppies Running The 100m Dash | James Hobson | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ball launcher",
"bungee cord",
"slingshot",
"tennis ball launcher"
] | [Brian] from 24 Hour Engineer has a friend with arthritis who can’t easily play ball with his new puppy — so [Brian] stepped in and
built him this awesome tennis ball launcher.
You see, most tennis ball launchers require a solid flick of the wrist, and since just plain old throwing it is out of the question too, [Brian] had to make him something powerful and easy to use. After sketching out some designs he came up with the basic concept that eventually became what is pictured above.
The frame is made of 2″ PVC pipe, which serves two purposes, support, and safety. The bungee cord launching system is actually contained within the pipe, keeping it out of the way, and free from catching on anything during firing. A pair of pulleys mounted at the cord opening ensure the cord doesn’t wear out.
What we really like is the trigger mechanism [Brian] made out of some carefully cut wood, a steel corner brace and a few nuts and bolts. It’s a simple mechanism that provides leverage and an easy way to release the bungee cord.
Now we know what you’re all thinking — how is a guy with arthritis suppose to load this thing? Well, it’s actually foot loaded: stand it up straight, put your foot on the ball harness, and step down until it clicks into the trigger mechanism. It’s similar to loading a crossbow backwards… which you would never do for obvious reasons. Still, we feel the tennis ball has rather low risk associated with it compared to a sharpened steel bolt…
If you want to build your own, [Brian’s] laid out everything you need to know on his site, with plans to turn it into an Instructable at some point — there’s even
more
info
via his build log
.
You could also
build an electric version
if you’re feeling particularly lazy. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1571590",
"author": "Colecoman1982",
"timestamp": "2014-06-15T00:50:30",
"content": "That’s pretty awesome. This is the seconds time in a week or two I’ve seen something like this. The last one was a automatic one. It was simple enough that they were able to train the dog to relo... | 1,760,376,169.773929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/14/repurpose-an-old-crt-computer-monitor-as-a-high-voltage-science-project-power-supply/ | Repurpose An Old CRT Computer Monitor As A High Voltage Science Project Power Supply | Todd Harrison | [
"classic hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"crt",
"high voltage",
"high voltage power supply",
"ionocraft"
] | Finally somebody has found a good use for all those old CRT computer monitors finding their way to the landfills. [Steven Dufresne] from Rimstar.org steps us through a very simple
conversion of a CRT computer monitor into a high-voltage power supply
. Sure you can make a few small sparks but this conversion is also useful for many science projects. [Steve] uses the monitor power supply to demonstrate powering an ionocraft in his video, a classic science experiment using high voltage.
The conversion is just as simple as you would think. You need to safely discharge the TV tube, cut the cup off the high voltage anode cable and reroute it to a mounting bracket outside the monitor. The system needs to be earth grounded so [Steve] connects up a couple of ground cables. One ground cable for the project and one for a safety discharge rod. It’s really that simple and once wired up to a science project you have 25kV volts at your disposal by simply turning on the monitor. You don’t want to produce a lot of large sparks with this conversion because it will destroy the parts inside the monitor. The 240K Ohm 2 watt resistor [Steve] added will help keep those discharges to a minimum and protect the monitor from being destroyed.
Yes this is dangerous but when you’re working with high-voltage science experiments danger is something you deal with correctly. This isn’t the safest way to get high-voltage but if you have to hack something together for a project this will get you there and [Steve] is quite cautious including warning people of the dangers and how to safely discharge your experiment and the power supply after every use. This isn’t the first high-voltage power supply that [Steve] has constructed; we featured his
home-built 30kV power supply
in the past, which is a more conventional way to build a HV power supply using a doubler or tripler circuit. Join us after the break to watch the video. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1571223",
"author": "notabena4us",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T20:19:31",
"content": "+1…Absolutely Shocking ;^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1571374",
"author": "Jeff M",
"timestamp": "2014-06-14T22:05:28",
"conten... | 1,760,376,169.9302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/3d-printed-trays-for-your-pick-and-place-machine/ | 3D Printed Trays For Your Pick And Place Machine | Adam Fabio | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"MakerGear",
"pick and place",
"smt",
"soldering"
] | Pick and Place machines are one of the double-edged swords of electronics.They build your boards fast, but if you don’t have everything setup perfectly, they’ll quickly make a mess. A pick and place can’t grab a resistor from a pile and place it – so far only humans can pull that one off. They need parts organized and oriented in reels or trays.
[Parker Dillmann] had to load some parts, but didn’t have a tray for them,
so he 3D printed his own.
[Parker] works at a small assembly house in Texas. He’s working on a
top secret design
which includes FFC connectors. Unfortunately, the connectors shipped in pick and place unfriendly tubes rather than reels. If he couldn’t find a tray, [Parker] would have to hand place those connectors as a second operation, which would increase the time to build each board and leave more chances for mistakes.
Rather than place each part by hand, [Parker] got in touch with his friend
[Chris Kraft]
who is something of a 3D printing guru. [Chris] confirmed that a 3D printed tray would be possible, though the PLA he prints with was not static safe. That was fine for the connectors, but [Parker] was hoping to save some tray space by putting his PSOC4 chips in the printed tray as well.
[Parker] used SketchUp to design a tray that would fit his Madell DP2006-2 pick and place. He left .15mm clearance around the parts – just enough to cover any inaccuracies during printing, but not enough to throw off parts placement. He sent the STL file over to [Chris] who used
Simplify3D
to a create a Gcode file. [Chris] printed the tray at .2 mm layer height on his
MakerGear M2
printer, and the results looked great. Would they be good enough for the pick and place machine?
[Parker] received the printed trays in the mail and loaded them with parts. The pick and place had no problem finding and placing the connectors, making this job a huge success. [Parker] even left room for the PSOC4 chips.He plans to paint the tray with anti-static paint before giving them at try.
We really like this story – it’s a perfect example of how 3D printers can speed up processes in manufacturing. Now that the basic design is done, creating new trays is a snap. Nice work [Parker] and [Chris]! | 37 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1567446",
"author": "Bryan",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T23:26:58",
"content": "I think I stumbled on this here… from the pick & place project… (not PLA I know) but ABS anti-static (conductive as in black (actively dissipates) not pink (type of plastic that doesn’t produce much static ... | 1,760,376,169.879081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/thp-hacker-bio/ | THP Hacker Bio: Bradley Worley | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interviews",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"magnetic resonance",
"nuclear magnetic resonance",
"proton procession magnetometer"
] | Somehow we picked two people in a row who are working on lab equipment as part of
The Hackaday Prize
. This is just a coincidence; we’re picking hackers who we think will be quite interesting to learn about.
Meet [
Bradley Worley
]. His contest entry is
PyPPM
, a Proton Precession Magnetometer which will be used for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiments. The “Py” at the beginning reflects the use of the Python API for control.
Let’s see what he’s all about:
I do a bit of everything… guitar, swimming, programming, and the like. But mainly electronics. I started playing with transistor audio circuits in college, and cut my teeth on vacuum tube audio when I had a chance to repurpose an old Eico 460 oscilloscope into a guitar amp. From there, it was on to Nixie tubes, 8-bit micros, etc… I love it all. [
Image Source
]
I’m an analytical biochemistry graduate student at the University of Nebraska. Most of my work revolves around
multivariate statistics
.
Learning. To learn how something works, I have to build it, or at least peer inside it: I accidentally broke my parents’ video camera as a kid, and within thirty minutes I was already asking to take it apart…
I’m the honorary sysadmin for my research group, which means I had to keep an eight-year-old Beowulf cluster from giving up the magic smoke. One day, I took the main node off the rack for a drive upgrade, and it stopped POST’ing. I almost grabbed a wrench right then…
OS/2 Warp. (Ha! Just kidding, I’m a GNU/Linux guy.)
I had an Agilent MSO-X
2000-series oscilloscope
for a year, and had to sell it for rent money. Not a day goes by when I don’t miss that beautiful, beautiful scope…
I’m a bit of a hipster when it comes to the AVR 8-bit micro: I designed for it before Arduino was cool… ;)
I always joke that my native language is C, but I’m decent at English too. Python is a close second.
This list changes daily, and picking just three is nearly impossible, but here goes:
The one true headphone amp: USB 2.0 Asynchronous Audio on an FPGA, 24/192 R/2R DAC, CFB output opamps, the works. Only then could I ever justify buying a pair of Senny HD-800 cans!
An all-discrete self-oscillating class-D audio amplifier, just for grins and giggles.
1969 Corvette Stingray: But not just any ‘ray, it’d have to be a long-term fixer-upper.
Communication. You can be the most brilliant person on Earth, but if you can’t communicate your ideas clearly, it’s moot.
I love nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and I want to share that love by making NMR experiments easily accessible to the hacker/maker community.
The toughest parts of my project come at the interface of the chemistry/physics happening in the sample and the engineering happening in the circuit. For example, designing magnetic field gradient coils (and driving those coils) for low-field NMR systems isn’t particularly well-documented… Any practical advice on the best amplifier topologies for controlling the current flowing through a beefy inductor would be greatly appreciated.
Image
by Jeff Dahl; CC BY-SA 3.0
A
mass spectrometer
, for sure. The engineering in such a piece of instrumentation is phenomenal.
Seriously, in just five words?
I’ve been a Hackaday addict for years now, so getting featured because of THP is pretty awesome. Hi mom! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1568994",
"author": "fl@c@",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T17:06:13",
"content": "This looks like a really fascinating project… can’t wait to see how it goes!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1569008",
"author": "fl@c@",
... | 1,760,376,170.134934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/call-a-cell-phone-find-a-tent/ | Call A Cell Phone, Find A Tent | Brian Benchoff | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"cellphone",
"festival",
"remote trigger"
] | Finding your tent at a music festival is a tricky endeavor – not only are there miles and miles of tents exactly like yours, you most likely have a few beers or other substances in you that affect your sense of space and/or time. [James]
came up with a great solution to finding your tent
by illuminating it with Christmas lights and a cell phone.
The basic idea of [James]’ build is having Christmas light flicker whenever he calls a phone. One feature in nearly every phone that can be exploited to accomplish this task is the backlight turning on when a call is received. Add a phototransistor, a little bit of circuitry, and some Christmas lights, and you have a fully functioning tent finder.
[James]’ circuit is a simple relay driving the Christmas lights, triggered by a phone right on top of the phototransistor. It’s a simple circuit that can be built on a piece of veroboard, and with a few pieces of plastic forming the enclosure, provides a reasonably bulletproof device that will survive the rigors of a music festival. As a bonus, there’s no need to modify the phone to trigger a remote circuit. Video of the device in action below. | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1566881",
"author": "hfiennes2",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T17:04:55",
"content": "10 years earlier…http://www.zdnet.com/orange-sms-glow-tent-wows-glastonbury-goers-3040145784/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1567037",
"... | 1,760,376,170.208932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/net-neutrality-fcc-hack-is-a-speed-bump-on-the-internet-fast-lane/ | Net Neutrality: FCC Hack Is A Speed Bump On The Internet Fast Lane | Rick Osgood | [
"Rants",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"comcast",
"fcc",
"level 3",
"net neutrality",
"netflix",
"nginx",
"open internet",
"script"
] | Net neutrality is one of those topics we’ve been hearing more and more about in recent years. The basic idea of net neutrality is that all Internet traffic should be treated equally no matter what. It shouldn’t matter if it’s email, web sites, or streaming video. It shouldn’t matter if the traffic is coming from Wikipedia, Netflix, Youtube, etc. It shouldn’t matter which Internet Service Provider you choose. This is the way the Internet has worked since it’s inception. Of course, not everyone agrees that this is how things should stay. We didn’t always have the technology to filter and classify traffic. Now that it’s here, some believe that we should be able to classify internet traffic and treat it differently based on that classification.
It seems like much of the tech savvy community argues that net neutrality is a “given right” of the Internet. They believe that it’s the way the Internet has always been, and always should be. The other side of the argument is generally lobbied by Internet service providers. They argue that ISP’s have the right to classify Internet traffic that flows through their equipment and treat it differently if they so choose. As for everyone else, just about everyone these days relies on the Internet for business, banking, and entertainment but many of those people have no idea how the Internet works, nor do they really care. It’s like the electricity in their home or the engine in their car. As long as it’s working properly that’s all that matters to them. If they can check Facebook on their phone while watching Breaking Bad on Netflix in full HD, why should they care how that stuff gets prioritized? It work’s doesn’t it?
The Internet backbone
Why is this even a topic for discussion? If the “open Internet” has been working fine since it’s inception, why are we even discussing this now? To understand the problem, it helps to first understand the basic concept of the “Internet backbone”. The Internet is roughly made up of three different tiers of service provider. Consumers purchase their Internet service from a tier 3 provider such as Comcast or Verizon. These tier 3 providers in turn purchase their Internet service from a tier 1 provider such as Level 3. The tier 1 providers are connected to each other and make up the Internet backbone.
Peering arrangements
While you might pay your ISP $55 per month for a 30Mbps connection, your ISP is “peered” with some tier 1 provider for a much, much faster connection. Their connection has to handle all of the Internet traffic for all of its users at the same time. These peering arrangements vary based on the particular situation, but often times neither company pays the other as long as the traffic getting sent back and forth is roughly equal. If one company was sending much more information than they were receiving, that company would likely pay the other a fee.
Other service companies, such as Netflix, pay an ISP for access to the Internet just like we do as consumers. They would pay a tier 1 or 2 provider for a bigger and more stable connection than your average home user has, though. A company like Netflix would have to purchase their own Internet connection that is fast enough to stream video to all of its users at the same time. The home user just needs a connection fast enough to stream their one video at a time.
The key thing to remember is that everybody pays some kind of ISP for access to this global entity we called “The Internet”. If you pay an ISP, you get online and you can talk to everyone else.
Comcast vs. Netflix
With Internet speeds getting faster and faster all the time, consumers are demanding more and more content. Some ISP’s claim to be struggling to keep up with the demand. A good example of this can be seen with the recent Comcast vs. Netflix battle. Comcast is a major cable television and Internet provider in the United States. For many people, it’s the only realistic option for Internet access in their area. Satellite is too unreliable for them, 4G is not fast enough, etc. It’s also important to note that in the United States, most people only have access to one cable provider in their region. If they decide that cable is the best option for Internet access, they are stuck with whichever provider happens to be in their region. Thus, many people find themselves “stuck” as Comcast customers.
Last year, many Comcast customers noticed a quality reduction in their streaming Netflix video content. This didn’t start happening until just last year. So what changed? Was Comcast slowing down Netflix on purpose? According to Comcast, that was not the case. Comcast has stated that they had a peering arrangement with their ISP, Level 3. Level 3 was sending roughly twice as much traffic into Comcast’s network as Comcast was sending back. Up until recently, the two companies considered this fair and neither was paying the other any fees
Content Delivery Networks
Then something changed that somehow caused Netflix to start working slowly on Comcast’s network. Netflix used to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service through a company called Akamai. Akamai has distributed centers all over the world that can more easily send the large quantities of data that Netflix users demand. Since Akamai was sending so much data into Comcast’s network, they had their own peering arrangement with Comcast where they paid Comcast a fee to handle the large traffic load. This is a standard Internet practice. The diagram below helps illustrate what this might look like. The wider arrows represent more bandwidth.
This is where things get interesting. Level 3 (Comcast’s ISP) is not only an ISP, but they also offer CDN services that compete with Akamai. Last year, Level 3 won the contract with Netflix to start hosting and distributing Netflix’s content. As a result, Akamai no longer hosts Netflix content and therefore does not have to pay Comcast the same high fees that it used to have to pay. At the same time, the connection that Comcast already had with Level 3 became overloaded with Netflix traffic. Suddenly the reality of the network connection no longer matched the terms of the Comcast/Level 3 peering agreement.
The only way to fix this problem is for Comcast to upgrade their infrastructure to support the new load coming from Level 3. This of course costs a lot of money. Normal industry practice would be for Comcast to change the peering agreement so that Level 3 would now pay a fee to Comcast, which would help support the cost of the new infrastructure changes. This is the equivalent of Comcast charging Akamai. However the two couldn’t come to an agreement, and Level 3 claimed that Comcast was singling out Netflix traffic and was therefore violating principles of Net neutrality.
Netflix eventually got tired of waiting around and purchased new connections directly from Comcast. These network connections give Netflix a direct connection to Comcast customers, bypassing Level 3 all together. In essence, Netflix is now paying Comcast directly to handle their large traffic load.
Shortly after the new direct connections were setup, Comcast customers unsurprisingly noticed a great increase in video quality coming from Netflix. The below graph illustrates how Netflix speed dropped suddenly for Comcast customers around October 2013, and then spiked back up significantly after January 2014 once Netflix purchased direct connections to Comcast.
How this relates to Net Neutrality
On the surface, it
looks
like Comcast is requiring Netflix to pay for faster access to Comcast subscribers. That is the distilled essence of the current net neutrality debate. Should ISP’s be allowed to offer priority access to certain types of traffic, people, or companies? Comcast argues that this is not a net neutrality issue because they are not actively throttling Netflix traffic. In their eyes, Netflix was clogging up the connection and the backbone provider was violating the peering arrangement. They just wanted to work out a new agreement that was reasonable.
One might argue that Comcast customers pay for access to the Internet as a single entity. Therefore, they should be able to stream Netflix all day, every day if that’s how they choose to use their connection. If Comcast offers every single subscriber a 30Mbps connection, shouldn’t their customers be able to use that connection however they see fit? Does it really matter if all the data is flowing in or out?
The other side of the argument is also clear. Peering arrangements were agreed upon and then changed. These arrangements have always worked a certain way, and now it seems as though companies are questioning that practice.
Life in the fast lane
The most recent entry in the net neutrality saga involves what people are calling the “Internet Fast Lane”. This United States’ FCC proposal would allow for broadband ISP’s to offer up faster connections for companies willing to pay more. This is very similar to what is happening with Netflix. On the surface, it sounds like maybe it’s a win-win situation. Companies get to pay more money to have faster access to the customers of various ISPs, and the ISP doesn’t have to continually pay to upgrade their infrastructure to support all this different content.
The downsides are not as obvious to most people. For one, there are ethical issues at play. Comcast is not only an ISP, they are also a cable television provider. They also own NBC Universal, which produces television content. Comcast also is part owner of Hulu, a streaming media service. Clearly Comcast is, to some degree, a competitor of Netflix. So now how does this look? One might think that Comcast took advantage of the situation in order to hurt their competitor. Why should Comcast care if Netflix is slow? This would give more incentive for Netflix customers to purchase cable TV service through Comcast, or use a different Comcast service such as Hulu. There isn’t any clear evidence that this was happening, but you can’t help but wonder. Even if this was not actually an attempt to attack a competitor, what’s stopping other companies from doing exactly that? An “Internet fast lane” may unintentionally permit ISP’s to hurt their competitors in a similar manner.
This also may be bad for competition. This deal with Netflix and Comcast has set a precedence for others to follow suit. Once the Comcast deal went through, Verizon stepped up to the plate and the two companies signed a similar deal. If this trend continues, we may find that only some ISP’s will carry high quality Netflix content whereas others without these special deals will not. The result is that consumers may have to choose their ISP not only based on which has the best quality Internet connection, but also which has the best quality Netflix connection. You can bet that it’s the smaller ISP’s that will suffer, resulting in less competition in a market where competition is already severely lacking. A “fast lane” law may end up supporting this type of Internet.
There’s another way in which the “fast lane” can be bad for competition. A giant company like Netflix might be able to afford to pay for “fast lane” service, but what about a new start-up? Imagine if a new Netflix competitor wanted to start-up but couldn’t afford to pay for all of these fast lane fees to all of the various ISP’s? They might never even get off the ground. Competition is good for the consumer, so we need to make sure the rules foster competition and not hinder it.
How is this a hack?
This is where [Kyledrake] comes in. He sits proudly on the pro net neutrality side of the argument. Rather than simply add more complaints to the ever growing pile, he decided to make a more powerful statement. [Kyledrake] wrote a
custom Nginx script
that throttles certain users visiting his own web server down to a crawl at 28.8kbps. The catch? His web server only throttles traffic coming from
known FCC IP addresses
. The desired result is that users browsing his website from FCC networks will experience a slow connection. Nobody else will notice a difference.
Now, [Kyledrake] is a reasonable man. He just wants to ensure that the FCC is paying for their share of [Kyledrake’s] bandwidth. Therefore he is offering to put the FCC into their own “fast lane” service for a nominal fee of $1000 per year. He is calling this “
The Ferengi Plan
“.
[Kyledrake] hopes that more Internet users will start using the script and follow suit. It’s obvious what [Kyledrake] is doing here. He’s trying to show the FCC the downsides of this “fast lane” proposal in a very direct way. It obviously can be abused, but the question is will it be? Will there be protections in place to prevent this abuse? Will those protections actually be enforced?
Lingering questions
We’re curious to hear what Hackaday readers think about this whole net neutrality thing. There are many questions here and not all of them have obvious right and wrong answers. There’s a lot of hypothetical grey areas that muddy the waters. Here are some questions to get everyone thinking.
Should ISP’s be allowed to throttle web traffic as they see fit?
Should ISP’s just pay for their own infrastructure upgrades to support their own subscribers?
Is this “fast lane” proposal a good idea? A bad one?
Do you have any other ideas on how to keep things fair for everyone?
The Internet is an international entity. Should government just stay out of it?
You also may want to check out the
FCC’s comments system
. You can leave them a comment in regards to many FCC proposals. Feel free to leave them a comment letting them know how you feel about this issue. | 99 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "1566635",
"author": "Anybodysguess",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T14:15:31",
"content": "So, when will HaD integrate this script?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1566769",
"author": "Simon Brown",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,170.814178 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/the-development-of-a-lightweight-wireless-protocol/ | The Development Of A Lightweight Wireless Protocol | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"microcontroller",
"NRF905",
"protocol",
"wireless",
"wireless protocol"
] | [Texane] had been thinking about how to monitor the state of his garage door from a remote place. The door itself isn’t around any power outlets, and is a few floors away from where his server would be located in his apartment. This presented a few design challenges – namely, the sensor itself should have a wireless connection to the server, and being low power would be a great idea. This led to the development of a
minimalist framework for wireless communication
that allows a sensor to run for weeks without a battery swap.
The wireless protocol itself is based on a simple key value pair; each individual sensor, coupled with a NRF905 radio, has passes an address, a key, and a value. There are allowances for checksums and acknowledgement,
but as the PDF says
, this is a very minimal protocol.
With the software out of the way, [Texane] turned to the hardware. The microcontroller is a simple Arduino clone, paired with a radio and a coin cell on a small board. The micro spends most of its time in a low power state, with the sensor, in this case a reed switch, tied to an interrupt pin.
There was a problem with the power consumption of the radio, though: when the short 17-byte message was transmitting, there was a significant voltage drop. This was okay with a fully charged battery, but with a partially drained coin cell, the possibility of brownouts was high. A big cap in parallel was enough to offset this voltage drop.
It’s still a little expensive for an all-in-one home automation and monitoring system, but developing a functional wireless protocol and the hardware to go with it is no small feat. It’s actually a great piece of kit that [Texane] is sure to find a few uses for. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1566347",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T11:16:44",
"content": "If the coin cell was too small, why not use alkaline AAs? That board area in the picture is screaming “4xAA cells” in a side-by-side battery holder. In the Fine Article the total area is even bigger.",
... | 1,760,376,170.085328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/ecstatic-computation-exploring-technoshamanism-with-virtual-reality/ | Ecstatic Computation: Exploring Technoshamanism With Virtual Reality | James Hobson | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"Kinect",
"Oculus",
"oculus rift",
"technoshamanism",
"VR spirt journey"
] | Here’s a really clever use for the Oculus Rift —
Ecstatic Computation
, a virtual reality spirit journey.
[Michael Allison] began his university career as an artist and musician… and somehow down the line, became a Technoshaman. His thesis, presented at ITP 2014, is on computational art, virtual reality, cognitive psychology and his research on various religious, spiritual and scientific methods that try to explain the relationship between our bodies, minds and the universe itself.
Using virtual reality, Ecstatic Computation is a ritual that explores the merging of consciousness and quantum energy in the physio-chemical registration of state within the computer’s memory. The moment when human and computer become one; the moment when thought becomes bit and electrons become ideas.
Sound crazy? Maybe — but check out the video demonstrations after the break. To create this experience he’s using an Oculus Rift, a Microsoft Kinect, a fan, a small keyboard and of course a computer to render it all. During the participant’s journey, [Michael] leads them in flight, passing through a quantum tunnel, merging with quantum energy inside of state registration within the computer’s memory and finally ending by falling into infinity.
All the graphics and effects are generated on the fly using GLSL generation using a robust graphics rendered called Smolder which he wrote himself, which is built on top of
Cinder
.
And an in-depth explanation of the project and his thesis by [Michael] himself: | 62 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "1566060",
"author": "lja",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T08:12:21",
"content": "I think I might add some of these keywords to ad block",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1566062",
"author": "fiveseven",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T... | 1,760,376,170.310731 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/soap-drama-another-go-at-crowdfunding/ | SOAP Drama: Another Go At Crowdfunding | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"802.11ac",
"crowdfunding",
"indiegogo",
"kickstarter",
"soap",
"SOAP router"
] | SOAP, the people behind
what was initially a sketchy Kickstarter
that turned into
something reasonable
is having another go at
crowdfunding their touchscreen router with every radio imaginable
. This time, however, they’ve crossed all their ts and dotted all their lowercase js to turn what was a very…. odd Kickstarter into something really cool.
The original specs of the SOAP router were impressive – basically, a touchscreen tablet with an ARM Cortex A9, USB 3.0, 802.11ac, gigabit LAN, and every radio module you could imagine. The goal, of course, being a completely open, hackable home automation system capable of talking to Zigbee and Z Wave, and X10 modules, all while being an easy to configure 802.11ac router with a touchscreen. It’s a great idea, and considering you could spend $200 on an ac router alone, without all the radio modules and touchscreen.
Judging from the updates to
the original Kickstarter
, the SOAP guys have come a long way in three months. They’ve moved away from a custom-designed iMX6 board to a Congatec System on Module in a move that could be described as the smartest move in the history of Kickstarter-funded consumer electronics. They’ve also fixed the Ethernet bandwidth limitation of the iMX6, although there’s no word on how that works.
To be fair, the SOAP Kickstarter should be studied by business students as the exact opposite of how you should run a Kickstarter. When the project first went up, there were inconsistencies that ranged from not having a functional prototype to lifting images from unrelated open source projects. In the past three months, though, it looks like the team has managed to pull something together. Whether or not the SOAP router will see the light of day remains to be seen, but the team is now in a much better position than they were three months ago. | 73 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "1565768",
"author": "cactuardotnet",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T05:17:49",
"content": "It didn’t get funded because it’s a stupid idea",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1566436",
"author": "Tony",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,170.554182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/tempo-keeping-drummer-leaves-viking-ship-now-inspires-pedallers/ | Tempo Keeping Drummer Leaves Viking Ship, Now Inspires Pedallers | Rich Bremer | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bike",
"drum machine",
"midi",
"MIDI drum"
] | [Serdef] wrote in to tell us about a project he has recently created. It’s a
drum beat generator
that changes tempo depending on how fast you pedal your bike. This flies directly in the face of using music to keep your pedal timing consistent and up to speed.
The project started out with a
tap-tempo drum rhythm pedal
that [Serdef] had previously built. This device will generate a drum beat at a tempo corosponding with the time between 2 input signals. This type of device allows someone, say a guitarist, to quickly and easily specify the speed of the drumbeat that they are playing along with.
With the meat and potatoes of the project already figured out, the next part was to make the speed of the bike trigger the tempo of the drum beat. For the signal input, a magnet mounted on the wheel triggers a reed switch mounted on the bike fork once per wheel revolution. This is the same method of information gathering that a bicycle speedometer/odometer uses.
The business part of this project includes an Arduino that measures the speed of the wheel via the magnetic switch, adjusts the speed of the drum beat, and then sends the drum beat to a synthesizer via MIDI protocol. The synthesizer converts the MIDI signal into drum sounds amplified through a powered speaker that the rider can hear. The entire system is powered by a 9v battery and housed in a project box strapped to the bike’s handlebars.
All of the design files and Arduino code are available via [Serdef’s] excellent write up on hackaday.io in case you’re interested in making one for yourself. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1569212",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T20:15:22",
"content": "Yes! Too many cyclists pedal like a rabbit. Hard and fast then rest repeat, often too far from the seat. Their seat is too low.I wish this is the way the click track worked in modern recording. Since th... | 1,760,376,170.365747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/openvr-building-an-oculus-rift-for-only-150/ | OpenVR: Building An Oculus Rift For Only $150 | James Hobson | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"oculus rift"
] | The Oculus Rift is a really cool piece of kit, but with its future held in the grasp of Facebook, who knows what it’ll become now. So why not just
build your own?
When the Oculus first came out [Ahmet] was instantly intrigued — he began researching virtual reality and the experience offered by the Oculus — but curiosity alone wasn’t enough for the $300 price tag. He held off until he had a useful purpose for it, and as it turns out he did — he builds and flies multicopters, for which an FPV setup would be super handy!
Other FPV setups cost close to $300 as well, so getting a device with more features just makes sense. Promptly after realizing this, he faced the Maker’s Dilemma:
Buy it, or build it?
To test the waters, he decided to order some aspheric lenses to do some quick tests with a smart phone and a ghetto cardboard box setup — the results were surprisingly good. No turning back now!
The hardware consists of:
5.6″ 1280×800 LCD
3D printed enclosure
12V power adapter
USB to TTL
50mm aspheric lenses (5X zoom)
Arduino Mini Pro
GY-85 9DOF IMU
Various wires, foam padding, and glue
The majority of the cost here is in the LCD, with everything else being pretty inexpensive. Once it’s all built (details on his blog), it is time to get the software,
downloaded right off of GitHub.
The rest is pretty self-explanatory — just take a look at the results! We’re even tempted to build one now. Videos below.
We’ve seen other
DIY Oculus setups before
, but they just seem to keep getting better! | 39 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1569021",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T17:24:52",
"content": "FPV is inherently mono, so why two lenses and stereo headset? Its just lost resolution at this point.Are stereo optics easier?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,376,170.444108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/nyc-resistor-interactive-show-2014/ | NYC Resistor Heats Up The Big Apple With The 2014 Interactive Show | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackerspaces",
"News"
] | [
"art",
"Ballet",
"Interactive Show",
"itp",
"ITP Tish",
"nyc resistor",
"nyu"
] | Behind a nondescript loading dock in Brooklyn stands a normal looking brick building. Go up 3 narrow flights of stairs – you’ll find yourself at the door to the awesome known as
NYC Resistor
. Last Saturday, NYC Resistor held their 5th Interactive Show, and Hackaday was there! Much like the city it calls home, the Interactive Show is a melting pot. This particular pot is filled with NYC Resistor members (and the public) showing off their projects,
NYU’s Tish School ITP
students displaying their interactive art, and a good heaping portion of old fashioned hacker partying.
The first thing I was struck by was the building. They have a great space up there in Brooklyn. A late 1800’s era loft which started life as a section of
The Federal Brewing Company
. Between the old brickwork, patchwork tin ceiling, Devo Posters, and LEDs, it’s got all the mad scientist lab charm one would expect from such a space.
The event itself took place in two rooms. The front room had the DJ, along with dimmed lighting. When I heard the thumping music, I figured I’d see the typical DJ lights and strobes. I couldn’t have been more wrong! There was no need for that here; [Trammell Hudson’s] LED projects provided more than enough blinkenlights for the entire room.
Making my way through the crowd watching two players compete at snake on the
Megascroller
, I found myself in the back room, where most of the projects were on display.
[Daniel Luxemburg] was first up, with his
leap-lifx,
a Leap Motion based controller for LIFX RGB LED lightbulbs. Olivia Barr had her
Not A Camera
on display. Hopefully she found the selfies I left on there by now.
Next to the cameras was Olivia Barr’s
Spank Strength Test
(YouTube link). A bodystocking-adorned mannequin used aft mounted sensors to measure the strength of a spank. The results were of course displayed on LEDs ascending the front of the outfit.
Tucked in the corner of the front room was one of the standouts of the entire event.
Subway Stories
is the creation of [
Alon Chitayat
] and [
Jeff Ong
]. The user dons headphones and interacts with the piece using two levers on a metal box. One lever accelerates the train, while the other zooms in on the riders. As each rider passes into view, you can hear their thoughts through the headphones. Ambient subway sounds fill in the background. The experience was incredibly immersive. Who hasn’t ridden on the subway and wondered what that guy in the corner was thinking? An Arduino converted the lever input to serial, which was fed to a computer running the sketch on Processing. The audio was handled by Max/Msp.
About halfway through the evening, everyone was gathered in the front room for a demonstration by the Brooklyn Ballet. Two dancers showed off outfits created as part of a
collaboration between the Ballet and NYC Resistor members
[Nick and Sayaka Vermeer], [Olivia Barr], and [William Ward]. One of the ballerinas worked a Snowfall Tutu – a white tutu with accelerometer-controlled white LEDs create a snowfall effect in response to the dancer’s movements.
Popping artist [Mike “Supreme” Fields] showed off his Pexel Shirt. Loaded with LEDs, [Mike] has complete control of the shirt by moving muscle groups. An accelerometer in each pectoral muscle flashes LEDs on his chest, while accelerometers at his wrists send streaks of light up his arms.
Once the dance portion of the evening was over, I made my way back to the bar, where I sampled a homebrew created for the event by NYCR members [Travis Collins] and [Matt Joyce] In addition to the beer itself, they built a dual tap kegerator out of a 1950’s era Leonard refrigerator.
Skillfully located next to the bar was [Sophi Kravitz], with an updated version of her
HeartBeat Boombox
. This version included an updated front panel and a sleeker overall design.
I ran into [Amit Klein], who was showing off
Mimi The Magic Mirror
. Powered by a quad core i.mx6 WandBoard running Android, the mirror was showing off demos of helping people with their morning routine. It also ran a demo where users could watch an animation and mimic the motion. The mirror would then display the original animation with video of the user just below it.
Just about this time a crowd was gathering in the font room, which could only mean one thing – Mario was up and running on the Megascroller.
Mario in the round
turned out to be quite a fun party game, with cheers for every successfully captured castle. My personal best was about halfway through the board before Mario got ahead of me, and ran straight into a goomba.
As the wee hours of the morning approached, the crowd was waning, but the NYC Resistor members were still going strong. I headed out into the city, refreshed from seeing some of the best minds are still at work. I’d like to thank [Adam Mayer] and the rest of the NYC Resistor crew for their hospitality during a great night. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1568882",
"author": "streivo",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T15:32:21",
"content": "This space is the only hackerspace I’ve ever been to that actively tries to attract women – as explained to me by the head honcho.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,170.865736 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/thp-entry-satnogs/ | THP Entry: SatNOGS | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"cubesat",
"satellite",
"satellite tracking",
"SatNOGS",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio"
] | Here’s an interesting thought: it’s possible to build a cubesat for perhaps ten thousand dollars, and hitch a ride on a launch for free thanks to a NASA outreach program.
Tracking
that satellite along its entire orbit would require dozens of ground stations, all equipped with antennas, USB TV tuners, and a connection to the Internet. It’s actually more expensive to build and launch a cubesat than it costs to build a network of ground stations to get reasonably real-time telemetry from a cubesat. The future is awesome and weird, it seems.
This is the observation the guys behind SatNOGS have made. They’re developing a platform for
a completely open source ground station network
, with the idea being people an institutions along every longitude and latitude would build a simple satellite tracking antenna mount, connect it to the Internet, and become part of an open source Near Space Network, capable of receiving telemetry from any one of the small cubesats whizzing around in low earth orbit.
Despite being what is probably one of the most ambitious and far-reaching projects in open source hardware, the design of the system is relatively simple:
the hardware
is a 3D printed alt-az mount, capable of pointing a pair of antennas anywhere in the sky.
The stepper motor driver board
is based on the Arduino, and the computer running each antenna node is powered by a BeagleBone Black or a WR703N router. The antenna receiver is, of course, an RTL-SDR dongle, capable of listening to all the common cubesat bands. Even
the software
is derived from open source projects. Tracking a satellite across the sky can be calculated with GPredict, and the team is working on an observation scheduling and management system that combines multiple ground stations for coverage across the globe.
It’s a great idea, crowdsourcing satellite tracking from people around the globe, and something that could be used by hundreds of institutions lucky enough to launch a small cube of electronics into orbit.
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. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1568629",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T12:21:03",
"content": "If you’re just pulling telemetry from LEO, a quadrifilar helix would be a more cost-effective antenna… even crossed horizontal dipoles phased at 90 degrees. it eliminates the problems associated with cros... | 1,760,376,170.914394 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/13/ol-painless-paintball-mini-gun-packs-a-mean-punch/ | ‘Ol Painless Paintball Mini-gun Packs A Mean Punch | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"mini-gun",
"ol painless",
"paintball mini-gun"
] | Remember Predator? Of course you do. This is [Corsae’s] personal paintball gun rendition of one of the guns from it,
‘Ol Painless.
It’s a beautiful piece of work with countless man-hours going into its creation. At the core is an off-the-shelf EGO 08 paintball gun with a 20″ barrel. The barrel spacers are made out of MDF, cut by hand using a jigsaw with a barrel guide. The guide itself was made on a CNC router — too bad he couldn’t use it for everything! Each barrel is a thick-walled aluminum tube, carefully fit into the guides, and spray painted matte black for a clean finish. Sadly, they are only for aesthetics, as the paint balls shoot out through the central barrel only.
Not to worry though — while the paint balls may not come out of the barrels, the whole thing spins menacingly, which brings us to our favorite part of the project — the electronics. With help from his friend he designed a custom Arduino shield to control the motor, status LEDs and solenoid trigger. It’s fairly basic, but cool nonetheless. It features some wire connectors, diodes, an LED and the motor driver. Since the PCB fabrication cost included screen printing, he even threw on a mini-gun logo.
He’s done great job documenting the entire project in a photo gallery, with lots of notes along the way — stick around after the break to see a video of it shredding up the field.
Now all he needs to do is throw it onto an
automated turret…
[via
Reddit
] | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1568464",
"author": "Dutch",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T10:30:17",
"content": "Not to take away from the guys creativity and skill in building it, but all the adjectives to describe it ? come on, it’s still just *one* live barrel. Airsoft makes a full functioning version of an M-134 t... | 1,760,376,170.991715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/midi-melodies-make-moody-milieu/ | MIDI Melodies Make Moody Milieu | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"cat-assisted hacks",
"Edison bulbs",
"ipMIDI",
"ssr"
] | In this beautiful, well-documented, cat-assisted hack, [capricorn1] adds visual dimension to his impressive piano skills by
using his keyboard’s MIDI output to drive Edison bulbs
.
He hung them from a rod of electrical conduit pipe and threaded the wires through it to a DB25 connector. The lights are controlled by an Arduino Mega plus a custom shield with an optocoupler to handle zero cross detection. He happened to already have a board with 12 SSRs on it from another project. All of the electronics are in a re-purposed switch box—the switches control four different modes: classic, velocity, scrolling, and automatic. You’ll see the scrolling mode in the video after the jump.
[capricorn1] used a small sampling of the Arduino MIDI Library, namely the note on/off functions and the control change function to handle his sustain pedal. He’s listed the
full code
for the project, which includes usage of the
ipMIDI module
for automation over WiFi.
If you don’t have a MIDI keyboard or any Edison bulbs, you could make a
MIDI floor piano
. You’re required to play both “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul” on it, though. Those are like the Hello, World for floor pianos. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1568338",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T08:26:26",
"content": "Video does something and then wants to download, stop, no way, end.There is a workspace just started in town that has a bunch of these lights hanging just the same way. They don’t animate. MatchBOX is t... | 1,760,376,171.043418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/12/3d-printed-portal-turret-searches-and-destroys/ | 3D Printed Portal Turret Searches And Destroys | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"portal",
"portal turret",
"working portal turret"
] | Ah yes, Portal — one of the most iconic puzzle games from this past decade by Valve. [Yvo] just put the finishing touches on his fully 3D printed, working,
Portal Turret.
Well — it doesn’t have guns — but it does just about everything else!
This intricate prop replica has attention to detail written all over it. [Yvo’s] carefully designed it to actuate as close to the video game model as possible. Its eye and arms move, has a targeting laser and even features a camera for color based object tracking. You can also play around with it using a joystick — but it’s much more fun to leave on autonomous mode.
Because the whole thing is 3D printed, [Yvo] has also
made up an Instructable
for making your own, and according to him, it’s not that hard to build! This isn’t his first rodeo either, if you remember the awesome GlaDOS
we shared last year
— that’s his too.
Portal is a long time favorite here at Hack a Day, heck, we even
made our own working Portal Gun once! | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1567780",
"author": "Dorl",
"timestamp": "2014-06-13T02:19:55",
"content": "I was very dissapointed that the arms can’t sit flush to the body",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1567832",
"author": "Ryan Mitchell",
... | 1,760,376,171.091014 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/better-lasing-with-pulses/ | Better Lasing With Pulses | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"epilog",
"Full Spectrum Laser",
"laser",
"laser cutter",
"ppm",
"RAMPS"
] | The folks at the Lansing, Michigan hackerspace built themselves a 40 Watt laser cutter. It’s an awesome machine capable of cutting plywood and acrylic, and is even powered by a RAMPS board, something normally found in 3D printers. They wanted a little more power out of their 40 Watt tube, though, and found
pulsing the laser was the best way to do that
.
Unlike the fancy Epilog and Full Spectrum Laser machines, the Buildlog.net 2.x laser cutter found in the Lansing Hackerspace didn’t use Pulse-Per-Inch (PPI) control until very recently. When a laser tube is turned on, the output power of the laser is much higher – nearly double the set value – for a few milliseconds. By pulsing the laser in 2-3 ms bursts, it’s possible to have a higher effective output from a laser, and has the nice added benefit of keeping the laser cooler. The only problem, then, is figuring out how to pulse the laser as a function of the distance traveled.
To do this, the laser cutter must accurately know the position of the laser head at all times. This could be done with encoders, which would require a new solution for each controller board. Since laser cutters are usually driven by stepper motors controlled with step and direction signals, a much better solution would be to count these signals coming from the CNC computer before it goes to the RAMPS driver, and turn the laser on and off as it moves around the bed.
A few tests were done using various PPI settings, each one inch long, shown in the pic above. At 200 PPI, the laser creates a continuous line, and at higher PPI settings, the lines are smoother, but get progressively wider. The difference between PPI settings and having the laser constantly on is subtle, but it’s there; it’s not quite the difference between an axe and a scalpel, but it is a bit like the difference between a scalpel and a steak knife.
It’s an impressive build for sure, and something that brings what is essentially a homebrew laser cutter a lot closer to the quality of cutters costing thousands of dollars. Awesome work. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1565363",
"author": "pw700z",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T02:17:08",
"content": "Ben Jackson (cited in the article) and others did a bunch of great work getting LinuxCNC / EMC2 working to pulse the laser. Some interesting links I could find if you wanted to explore:http://www.cnczone.... | 1,760,376,171.154069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/dslr-gives-exposure-to-3d-light-traces/ | DSLR Gives Exposure To 3D Light Traces | Kristina Panos | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"delta printer",
"led",
"long exposure",
"sparklers"
] | We’ve all twirled sparklers around in the darkness to write fleeting circles and figure eights with the light they give. Some of us have done it with the glowing end of a cigarette, too. Hackaday Projects user [ekaggrat] went a step further,
painting with an LED
mounted on the print head of his newly built 3DR Delta and capturing the LED’s path with a DSLR camera set for long exposure.
He started by creating a mesh model. From there, he converted it slices and G-code in Grasshopper. The LED is connected to pin D11/servo pin 1 on the RAMPS board. [ekaggrat] used the M42 G-code extension toggle the pin and write the slice lines with light. He has future plans to use an RGB LED, and we hope he shares that on the Projects site as well.
While this isn’t
the most advanced light painting setup we’ve seen
, it’s still pretty awesome and far more accessible. There is
more information
on his site, and you can
grab the G-code from his repo
. Stick around to see a video of the process. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1565185",
"author": "Velli",
"timestamp": "2014-06-12T00:29:44",
"content": "So this takes an image created on a flat computer monitor and creates…a flat digital image.Save some time and take a screencap?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,376,171.20687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/wind-powered-strandbeest-could-roam-the-land-indefinitely/ | Wind Powered Strandbeest Could Roam The Land Indefinitely | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"strand beest",
"strandbeest"
] | We have to admit, Strandbeests are one of our favorite mechanical inventions of recent years — many-legged, life-like mechanisms that walk around? Awesome. [Eric] wanted to design something really cool — so he decided to
build a turbine attachment
for [Theo Jansen’s] Strandbeest — the AG5 & AG7 models specifically.
If you’re not familiar, the
Strandbeest
is a mechanical contraption that actually walks around. It’s been developed by [Theo Jansen] for years and has been built in
many variations
by
other people
over the years. [Theo] even gave a TED talk on it
back in 2007
.
The very idea of the Strandbeest is to have it move by itself with autonomy — no electronics allowed! [Theo] has designed a
propeller attachment
for one of his 3D printable Strandbeests to do this, but [Eric] wanted to take it a step further. He’s designed a more functional wind turbine that sits on top of the Strandbeest, allowing wind from any direction to cause it to walk.
What we really love about [Eric’s] Instructable is that he’s gone through the entire design process, showing how he learned what he needed to know (he doesn’t have any kind of engineering background), and how he broke it down into smaller chunks to be more manageable. Just goes to show if you set your mind to something — you can do it! | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1564822",
"author": "JeeCee",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T20:16:05",
"content": "To teach some Dutch to the HaD community: the plural of Strandbeest (which means “beach animal”) is Strandbeesten ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,376,171.267714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/thp-entry-the-improved-open-source-tricorder/ | THP Entry: The Improved Open Source Tricorder | Brian Benchoff | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"Hackaday Prize",
"oled",
"radiation detector",
"sensor",
"spectrometer",
"The Hackaday",
"tricorder",
"wifi"
] | Since [Gene Roddenberry] traveled back in time from the 23rd century, the idea of a small, portable device has wound its way through the social consciousness, eventually turning into things like smartphones, PDAs, and all the other technological gadgetry of modern life. A few years ago, [Peter Jansen] started
The Tricorder Project
, the start of the ultimate expression of [Mr. Roddneberry]’s electronic swiss army knife. Now [Peter]
is building a better, smaller version
for The Hackaday Prize.
[Peter]’s first tricorders borrowed their design heavily from
The Next Generation
props with a fold-out section, two displays, and a bulky front packed to the gills with sensors and detectors. Accurate if you’re cosplaying, but not the most practical in terms of interface and human factors consideration. These constraints led [Peter]
to completely redesign his tricorder
, disregarding the painted wooden blocks found on
Enterprise
and putting all the electronics in a more usable form factor.
A muse of sorts was found in the
Radiation Watch
, a tiny, handheld Geiger counter meant as an add-on to smartphones. [Peter] envisions a small ~1.5″ OLED display on top, a capacitive sensing wheel in the middle, and a swipe bar at the bottom. Basically, it looks like a 1st gen iPod nano, but much, much more useful.
Plans for what to put in this improved tricorder include temperature, humidity, pressure, and gas sensors, a 3-axis magnetometer, x-ray and gamma ray detectors, a polarimeter, colorimeter, spectrometer, 9-axis IMU, a microphone, a lightning sensor, and WiFi courtesy of TI’s CC3000 module. Also included is something akin to a
nuclear event detector
; if it still exists, there has been no nuclear event.
It’s an astonishing array of technology packed into an extremely small enclosure – impressive for something that is essentially a homebrew device.Even if it doesn’t win the Hackaday Prize, it’s still an ambitious attempt at putting data collection and science in everyone’s pocket – just like in Star Trek.
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. | 27 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1564600",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T17:07:09",
"content": "This is really wild… and a most logical evolutionary step from the existing tricorder designs. Would love to hear what some of the TNG folks think of this!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,376,171.33399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/adventures-in-hackerspacing-hackyard-athens-part-i/ | Adventures In Hackerspacing: Hackyard Athens, Part I | Marsh | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"adventures in hackerspacing",
"hackerspace",
"Hackyard Athens"
] | It’s funny how quickly it can all come together. If there’s a hackerspace or makerspace in your area, I hope you’ve gone by to see what it’s like. If there isn’t, you can always start your own…
That notion seems so simple, doesn’t it? Round up a few like-minded folks, find a space—any space—shove them and some equipment into it. Two years of attempted round-ups and shove-ins, however, is enough to discourage the most passionate of would-be hackerspacers. By all predictions, the effort to start a hackerspace in Athens, GA was a marathon, a gradual advance culminating in a hard-earned workspace. But that’s not what happened.
Hackyard Athens
erupted into being.
In only one week.
Don’t mistake that summary as an attempt at bragging: it’s not. I’m still baffled how we got here. It’s a declaration of befuddlement, though no one’s complaining. In this episode of
Adventures in Hackerspacing
, I’ll detail a space’s earliest beginning stages, up to the launch of the space itself.
I started this column to document the formation of a hackerspace in my town, but never felt there was enough content to share. Who wants to hear about hours of bi-weekly meetings at a sports bar that, after a year, amounted to a few acquaintances and unfulfilled hopes and dreams? Instead, I turned to my friends at
Freeside Atlanta
for a two part behind-the-scenes conversation (
Part I
&
Part II
, if you missed them). If I had nothing to report about the Athens scene, at least I could get some guidance from a successful space and relay their experiences to Hackaday readers.
Meetups at the Bar
Meanwhile, I teamed up with an engineering friend and held casual meetings at a local bar. The plan involved rallying interest through
a Meetup group
and convening twice a month to discuss projects and problems. The result was largely a success, fielding around 10-15 people each time, though a few approached numbers around 25-30. These kind of events offer a low-pressure, friendly social environment: it’s easy to lure someone for a casual evening out. Freeside grew out of similar meetups at a bar in Atlanta (though you could hardly compare the Athens group to
DEFCON404’s
seemingly ceaseless dedication to regular, quality meetings).
Despite the relative ease of attracting like-minded individuals to your evening out, there are a few problems with meeting in bars and restaurants. The seating arrangements tend to restrict how many people you can chat with, and anyone sharing a project ends up surrounded by a small cluster while others behind them strain to listen. You’re also guaranteed at least three interruptions—orders placed, orders arrive, orders paid for—the severity of which varies depending on the establishment.
You also don’t own the space. Any show-and-tell items or projects must be carted in, and there’s little opportunity to work together unless you decide to hang out later. The natural progression, we thought, was to encourage our fellow attendees to come together and found a hackerspace. The idea was well-received. The result was a disaster.
Never try to start a hackerspace in a college town around Thanksgiving. We knew attendance would slide as the holiday approached, but we made a poor decision by introducing space options a few weeks prior. My friend and I had scouted potential locations, taken some pictures, and worked out a few numbers. When we presented our findings at the next meeting, the holiday spirit had eaten away at our group’s momentum. Attendance didn’t slide, it plummeted. Our hackerspace pitch reached an audience of 5 rather than 30, and some had reservations about paying a monthly fee to use a space. By the time Thanksgiving was over, the university was in the midst of final exams, followed immediately by winter break and the slew of holidays that accompany it.
A new year and two sparsely populated meetings later, it was dead.
Hackathons and New Communities
I didn’t want to give up, but I also didn’t want to lead another charge without first taking a break and reconsidering the approach. When a friend told me about another local group that was trying start a hackerspace, I was relieved. After reaching out to the folks in charge, I learned that this group was being helped along by
FourAthens
, a non-profit organization that supports the local tech community. Though the hackerspace group was just starting, they had—through their association with FourAthens—an established community from which to draw interest, and access to event space.
The plan was to hold a monthly hackathon event that would pull in a crowd and get people making. The format for the hackathon was relatively unrestricted: no topic limitations, and pre-planning was allowed, but the entire challenge took place over just four hours. In contrast to the bar/restaurant meetings, the hackathon was much more engaging and more fun, and still drew a crowd. At least 40 people came to the first one, although only 15-20 participated. This new approach looked good.
After a few months went by, however, the hackathon format revealed some underlying problems. Four hours isn’t much time. If you want to complete an impressive hack, you need to devote a decent chunk of your week to some pre-planning. When you show up, though, you’re “that guy.” The one who has barrels full of stuff, amassed from days preparing. You aren’t hacking, you’re assembling.
The alternative is what I call the “Boy Scout” approach: bring all your equipment and components, team up with a new friend, and come up with a project on the spot. You usually don’t finish.
The event was less of a community experience and more of a public demonstration.
The four-hour format also limited options for first-timers. It’s difficult for an outsider to jump into hardware hacking when the extent of his or her experience with electronics is charging a cell phone. Newcomers were too intimidated, and experienced hackers were too busy. The event was less of a community experience and more of a public demonstration. Like watching a belligerent renaissance faire glassblower who avoids eye contact and mutters obscenities while rushing around an impromptu workshop, eyed by a crowd wondering why the frantic man is bleeding. And, worse still, why doesn’t he care?
The subsequent hackathons turned into interview sessions. Relatively little was made anymore. Instead, we explained stuff to curious-yet-distanced visitors. As the evening pushed on and the 4-hour competition drew to a close, fewer and fewer hackers had anything to show for it. I
like
the hackathon format, but it wasn’t a good fit for a group struggling to exist. Interest and numbers waned. Similarly, the quest for a permanent space also stagnated. It felt like another dead end.
The Hackyard
When I said Hackyard Athens exploded into being, I was a bit hyperbolic. The community had been prodded from different directions for several months (or years, depending on who you were), and there was a foundation of interested parties.
A handful of us decided to try something different, and split off to establish the Hackyard. The plan? Bootstrap it. Scavenge enough money to rent something. Anything. Within a week, we had moved into a space and filled it with cool stuff. The Hackyard’s location—the same offices as the local tech incubator—guarantees plenty of foot traffic passing by and wondering what’s going on. Hackyard currently holds regular open house nights every Thursday, which gives these newcomers an opportunity to meet us in a low-stress (for both sides) environment.
If I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that overlapping skillsets aren’t very useful at the beginning. Those initial meetings were chock full of nerds, but no one had any clue how to handle a non-profit organization. The four of us who founded Hackyard Athens, however, were the perfect blend of software, hardware, graphics, web, and business experience. That, and we’re all good friends. Except [Tommy] with his stupid hat.
Look for the next episode as the space grows!
Turned out to be a great hangout space.
Me pretending to work on the printer.
Not too cramped, still productive!
A mere instant before [Jordan] takes a Nerf dart to the face | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1564440",
"author": "pcf11",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T14:50:57",
"content": "That’s what I did. I started my own hackerspace. It is called my garage. No 3D printer yet, or laser cutter, but what the hey?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,171.755581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/open-source-electric-car-carben-produces-no-carbon/ | Open Source Electric Car, CarBEN, Produces No Carbon | Rich Bremer | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"car",
"electric car"
] | Raise your hand if you have designed and built a full size car…. Nobody? Doing so would be a huge task considering car manufactures have thousands of people involved with designing and building a car model. Eager beaver [Neil] has stepped up and taken on that challenge. He’s started an open source project he’s calling the
CarBEN
.
The plan is for the car to hold 5 people comfortably while being just a tad larger than a Scion xA. The body is made of foam and will be covered with fiberglass. The car is designed in a shape that tapers in towards the rear of the car and has features like a smooth underside and covered wheels to create a low coefficient of drag. The goal is for this beauty to get 300-400 miles per charge with an
Miles Per Gallon Equivalent
of over 224.
So far, the body is the only portion complete but that is still a pretty significant accomplishment in itself. [Neil] designed the car body in Sketch Up and then divided the model into slices. He used a CNC Router to cut each individual slice out of sheets of foam. Then those slices were glued together and the exposed edges sanded to make a smooth shape. The process is documented extremely well on [Neil’s]
site
.
It appears the project has stalled a little or [Neil] just hasn’t updated the documentation of the project recently. Either way, we think this is a great project and look forward to seeing it progress. | 74 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1564146",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T11:27:48",
"content": "I’m imagining a foam cooler attached to a frame, covered in a fiberglass shell.Now I’m imagining what would happen to it with the least little impact.Now I’m imagining the surviving members of the fa... | 1,760,376,171.697182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/11/bicycle-wheel-bow-has-plenty-of-kick/ | Bicycle Wheel Bow Has Plenty Of Kick | James Hobson | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle wheel bow"
] | Here’s a clever way to recycle and reuse an old bicycle wheel! [Darren] came up with this idea a while ago, and unable to find any mention of it on the internet, he decided to make his own — He calls it the
Bike Wheel Bow.
Now technically it may look like a bow, but it’s actually more of a bow-like-sling-shot, as it relies on stretch of the string (which is rubber tubing) instead of the bow itself — regardless though, it’s a cool piece of kit.
[Darren] chopped up a bicycle wheel, removed the spokes, and was left with a nice semi circle. Using regular old eyelets he installed them around the perimeter giving it a bit of a compound bow look. He’s using rubber medical tubing with a section of bicycle inner-tube in the middle which provides a fold, allowing you to shoot arrows without knocks. You can use the inner-tube for the whole thing, but it’s not as powerful.
For a bow made out of almost entirely recycled parts, it’s pretty good — he’s even made an arrow rest using the hub and a bent spoke. The only caveat to the design is the rubber tends to stick on the eyelets — it’s best to lube them up a bit before shooting. Alternatively a few $1 pulleys might work even better!
If you’re looking for a more traditional home-made bow build,
why not use a pair of cross country skis?
Or if you’re alone in the woods,
make one completely from scratch! | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1563871",
"author": "Tetra",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T08:32:09",
"content": "Interesting article,O really like it, though arrows have “Nocks” not Knocks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1563874",
"author": "Tetra",
"time... | 1,760,376,171.577761 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/10/digital-pinball-with-force-feedback/ | Digital Pinball With Force Feedback | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"knocker",
"mame",
"pinball",
"pinball machine",
"pinmame",
"solenoid",
"virtual pinball"
] | Hang around Hackaday long enough and you’ll hear about MAME, and all the other ways to emulate vintage arcade machines on a computer. The builds are usually fantastic, with real arcade buttons, MDF cabinets, and side graphics with just the right retro flair to make any connoisseur of ancient video games happy. MAME is only emulating old video games, though, and not physical systems like the
digital pinball system [ronnied] put up on the Projects site
.
[ronnied] was inspired by a real life, full-size White Water pinball machine at his previous job, and decided it was high time for him to acquire – somehow – a pinball machine of his own. He had a spare computer sitting around, an old 16:9 monitor for the main playfield, and was donated a smaller 4:3 monitor for the backglass. With an MDF cabinet, PinMAME, and a little bit of work, [ronnied] had his own machine capable of recreating hundreds of classic machines.
The build didn’t stop at just a few arcade buttons and a screen; [ronnied] added a 3-axis accelerometer for a tilt mechanism, solenoids and a plunger torn from a real pinball machine for a more realistic interface, and a Williams knocker for a very loud bit of haptic feedback.
We’ve seen solenoids, buzzers, and knockers in pinball emulators before
, and the vibrations and buzzing that comes with these electromechanical add ons make all the difference; without them, it’s pretty much the same as playing a pinball emulator on a computer. With them, it’s pretty easy to convince yourself you’re playing a real machine.
Videos of the mechanisms below. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1563707",
"author": "the gambler",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T06:49:05",
"content": "I have to applaud the work here and also being able to make past games available to those unable to find or afford them. Great work.however the pinball snob inside me hates this ;)",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,376,171.799194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/10/give-aging-technology-a-chance/ | Give Aging Technology A Chance | James Hobson | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"handspring",
"PDA hack",
"pda robot arm"
] | In our rush to develop new projects, a lot of the time we jump the gun and order new Arduinos and microprocessors, when with a bit of ingenuity you can recycle old tech for new purposes. [Eric Wiemers] has a Lynxmotion robot arm and needed a way to control it — sure he could use an Arduino or something… or he could try to
make use of his trusty PDA
that never left his side, well, 10 years ago anyway!
In 2001, Handspring released the Visor Neo — an affordable PDA competitor to the Palm Pilot. It had a super fast 33MHz processor, a whole 8MB of RAM and a 16 bit grayscale screen with a whopping 160 x 160 pixels. [Eric] was lucky enough to get his hands on one a year after it came out. Fast forward today and PDA’s are pretty much obsolete due to smart phones — but [Eric] didn’t want to just chuck it, it still worked after all!
At first he thought of just practicing coding and writing some apps for it — but let’s be honest, he’d never use it instead of his smart phone. He dug a bit deeper and discovered it was actually capable of serial output — this realization opened up a world of possibilities! Using a spare charging cradle, he tapped into the serial connections and added a Molex connector to allow him to hook it up to his Lynxmotion. He wrote his own control app with a GUI which means he can now control the robot arm without needing to drag around his laptop — success!
Think twice before throwing out your old tech. Perhaps that disused piece of junk can have a second chance in your next DIY project. | 21 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1563257",
"author": "cr0sh",
"timestamp": "2014-06-11T02:13:02",
"content": "> Think twice before throwing out your old techMy problem isn’t throwing out my old tech (I keep everything!) – my real problem is buying old tech.The last serious piece I purchased was a Rhino XR-1.Maybe I... | 1,760,376,171.970616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/06/10/640x480-vga-on-an-arduino/ | 640×480 VGA On An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"640x480",
"arduino",
"atmega",
"overclocking",
"the eye cant see 60fps",
"vga"
] | There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples around the Intertubes of an Arduino generating a VGA video output. The Arduino isn’t the fastest chip by far, and so far, all of these VGA generation techniques have peaked out at lower resolutions if you want to control individual pixels.[PK] has
an interesting technique to generate 640×480 VGA
at 60 frames per second without overclocking. It’s hacky, it’s ugly, but surprisingly, it actually works.
The VGA standard of 640×480 @ 60 fps requires pixels to be clocked out at 25.175 MHz, and the ATMega chips found in Arduinos top out at 20 MHz. [PK] wanted to generate VGA signals without overclocking, He did this by
doubling the clock frequency with digital logic
. The ATMega generates a clock, an inverter delays that clock so it is 90 degrees out of phase, and the two clocks are XORed, doubling clock output of the micro. It produces a very ugly square wave at 32 MHz – an error of 27% compared to the VGA spec. Somehow it still works.
With a hilariously out of spec clock, the rest of the project was pulled together from
[Nick Gammon]’s VGA library
, a 16×16 font set, and
a project from [lft]
. Video below. | 45 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1562908",
"author": "k",
"timestamp": "2014-06-10T23:09:10",
"content": "That’s really nice if I don’t have a Parallax Propeller around (not snark, the Arduino is easier to buy locally).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1562983",... | 1,760,376,172.050438 |
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