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https://hackaday.com/2014/05/05/2014-imagine-rit-an-innovation-and-creativity-festival-in-rochester-ny/ | 2014 Imagine RIT: An Innovation And Creativity Festival In Rochester, NY | Nick Conn | [
"cons"
] | [
"imagine rit",
"rochester institute of technology"
] | Every year, the Rochester Institute of Technology hosts
Imagine RIT, an innovation and creativity festival
“that showcases the innovative and creative spirit of RIT students, faculty and staff.” The festival is free to the public and really brings the community together to celebrate technology, science, art, innovation, and creativity! We had the chance to attend this weekend and we had a blast looking at all of the engineering projects on display.
Exhibits for All Ages
Exhibits from the on-campus engineering student clubs.
There are tons of different types of projects being showcased, but many fall within two categories: projects that help people, and projects that get children (and adults) excited about technology and science. The following exhibits are just a small snapshot of the many projects that were particularly exciting for the community.
FLUIDS ARE FUN
: Hydraulic Shock Wave Table. This table was especially fun for the kids. By pushing different shapes through a stream of moving water, they were able to intuitively understand shock waves. This is something easily reproducible at home, so start building!
Tiger Paws
: Meet the Future Mouse. This project, presented by the computer science students, allows you to control your PC by waving your hands in the air, rather than with a mouse. The tennis-like game demo was especially a hit for the young kids, while the older kids really enjoyed navigating through Google Earth with a wave of their hand.
While it is required that Engineering Senior Design projects upload all of their design files and documentation to the
RIT Edge project server
, there are so many other amazing projects that have no online information. If more groups wrote blog posts or
posted build logs
, Imagine RIT would have an even larger impact with the community and online.
Assistive Technologies
Motorized Pediatric Stander
: This Senior Design Project consists of a motorized frame which allows a disabled child to move around their environment in an upright position. What a great concept and a cool device! Learn more about this well-built and well-presented idea on its
project page on Edge
.
Wheelchair Assist
: The main goal of
this augmented wheelchair project
is to “stop the user from rolling back down an incline and to help the user with slowing the chair when moving down a slope.” The secondary goal of this project is to add a generator to the wheelchair that allows charging of cell phones and portable devices.
Manufacturing Technologies
Every university likes to show off their capabilities and what makes them unique. The Brinkman Lab at RIT has some very unique direct write capabilities, but they also have a menagerie of CNC machines, 3D printers, and other devices that were shown off at Imagine RIT. The following photos are of some very cool machinery that students can use to create their class projects, personal projects, and more!
An overview of the tools and machines in the RIT Brinkman Lab.
A water jet cutting machine and a MakerBot Replicator 2x are also available for student projects.
Closing Remarks
This wonderful event happens every year in May and is always a ton of fun. It is an opportunity for the community to
experience the future
at the Rochester Institute of Technology: “On a sundrenched day, with summery temperatures, more than 30,000 people came to campus to tour the more than 400 interactive exhibits that comprised the sixth annual Imagine RIT.”
If you are ever in upstate New York in May, be sure to stop by Imagine RIT! | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1414855",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T17:42:04",
"content": "I was wondering when Hackaday would get around to my home town",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1415152",
"author": "PyroAVR",
"timestamp": "2014-... | 1,760,376,213.039304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/05/building-a-co2-laser-in-a-hardware-store/ | Building A CO2 Laser In A Hardware Store | Brian Benchoff | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"co2 laser",
"DIY laser",
"laser",
"neon",
"neon transformer"
] | Over on the Projects site, [ThunderSqueak] is pushing the bounds of what anyone would call reasonable and is
building a CO2 laser from parts that can be found in any home improvement store
.
Despite being able to cut wood, paper, and a bunch of other everyday materials, a carbon dioxide laser is actually surprisingly simple. All you need to do is fill a tube with CO2, put some mirrors and lenses on each end, and run an electric current through the gas. In practice, though, there’s a lot of extra bits and bobs required for a working laser.
[ThunderSqueak] will need some sort of cooling for his laser, and for that he’s constructed a watercooling jacket out of 2″ PVC. In the end caps, a pair of brass pipe fittings are JB Welded in place, allowing a place for the mirror assembly and lenses.
The mirror mounts are the key component of this build, but the construction method is surprisingly simple. [ThunderSqueak] is using a few brass barbed hose fittings, with washers stuck on one end. The washers are drilled to accept a trio of bolts that will allow the mirrors to be perfectly parallel; anything less and the CO2 won’t lase.
The build isn’t complete yet, but having already built a few lasers, there’s little doubt [ThunderSqueak] will be able to pull this one off as well. | 67 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1414263",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T14:06:00",
"content": "My project list has just been reorganized.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1414279",
"author": "Sheff",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T14:12... | 1,760,376,213.276552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/05/bomb-clock-scares-you-awake/ | Bomb Clock Scares You Awake! | James Hobson | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"bomb clock",
"dynamite clock"
] | What better way to wake up than by fearing your impending explosion if you don’t hit the correct snooze combination! This is the
DEVESTATOR
(
Translated
), [Jacek’s] latest fun project, straight from Poland.
As an avid paintball and airsoft fan, [Jacek] wanted to build a unique clock — so he decided to make his own classic dynamite stick bomb… clock. He’s using a ATmega8 microcontroller at the heart of the project with both a DS1307 RTC and a DS1820 temperature sensor, because just for kicks, the clock also monitors ambient temperature!
To add to the realism of the project he also designed the PCB from scratch using Eagle CAD, which allowed him to make the whole thing look even more threatening. To actually make the PCB he used the laminate
thermal transfer method.
The four buttons on the PCB allow you to scroll through the date, time, temperature, and set alarm times.
Oh and the “dynamite”? Paper towel rolls covered in red tape. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1413888",
"author": "sneftel",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T11:12:39",
"content": "I know it wouldn’t be practical for long-term use, but I really wish that, to disable the alarm, you had to cut the green wire.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,376,212.905168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/05/huge-rgb-ring-light-clock/ | Huge RGB Ring Light Clock | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"mould",
"msp430",
"resin",
"ring light",
"ws2812"
] | After several months of work, [Greg] has completed
one of the most polished LED clocks we’ve ever seen
. It’s based on the WS2812 RGB LEDs, with an interesting PCB that allowed [Greg] to make a huge board without spending a lot of money.
The board is made of five interlocking segments, held together with the connections for power and data. Four of these boards contain only LEDs, but the fifth controller board is loaded up with an MSP430 microcontroller, a few capsense pads for a 1-D touch controller, and programming headers.
Finishing up the soldering, [Greg] had a beautiful LED ring light capable of being programmed as a clock, but no enclosure. A normal plastic case simply wouldn’t do, so [Greg] decided to try something he’d never done before: casting the PCB inside a block of resin.
A circular mold was made out of a piece of MDF and a router, and after some problems with clear resin that just wouldn’t cure, his ring light was embedded in a hard, transparent enclosure. Conveniently stuck in the mold, of course. The MDF had absorbed a little bit of the resin, forcing [Greg] to mill the resin ring free from the wood, with a lot of finish sanding to make the clock pretty.
It’s a clock that demonstrates [Greg]’s copious manufacturing skills, and also his ability to troubleshoot the problems that arose. While he probably won’t be casting things inside an MDF mold anymore, with the right tools [Greg] could easily scale this up for some small-scale manufacturing. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1413467",
"author": "randomcoderdude",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T08:27:25",
"content": "Nice project, I liked reading the build-log.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1414158",
"author": "Myles",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T13... | 1,760,376,212.613367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/termes-termite-inspired-robots/ | TERMES: Termite Inspired Robots | James Hobson | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"termes",
"termite inspired robots"
] | Termites, if you think about it, are actually quite amazing. They are capable of building massive complex structures without direct leadership. The Wyss Institute at Harvard is attempting to create
robots that can act in a similar way.
Typically if you have a robotic assembly line, if one robot goes down, the whole line shuts down. If it’s an assembly line of people, and one person calls in sick — they still manage, because people are adaptable. What the Wyss Institute is researching is how to create robots that can work together, or by themselves, with one goal in mind — in this case, building a 3D structure.
In the following demonstration videos they show off their construction-bots assembling a building using basic building blocks. Each robot is completely independent — unaware of the other robots working the same task. It wouldn’t matter if you had one, or even 10 robots — the end result would be the same.
[via
Hacked Gadgets
] | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1413145",
"author": "Henrik Pedersen",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T06:22:00",
"content": "That robot design is cute and awesome at the same time!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1413398",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,212.838152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/rechargeable-work-lamp-brightens-your-night/ | Rechargeable Work Lamp Brightens Your Night | Rich Bremer | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"portable workshop",
"power tools"
] | Most of us tinkerers will at some point find ourselves needing electrical power in a remote area. Cordless tools are an option, but what if you need more than that? [Garage Monkey San] set out to solve this problem by creating a
portable power station
that has on-board AC outlets, 12v and 5vdc outputs and an integrated spot light.
This project is housed in a plastic ammo case that’s large enough to contain all of the necessary parts and has a convenient carrying handle. The 12vdc sealed lead acid battery power source is kept topped off by a car battery float charger. Light is provided by an LED off road fog lamp mounted to the top of the case that has a small appetite for power, ensuring long battery life. An easy addition at this point was a 12v car accessory outlet which only adds to the versatility of the project.
With 12vdc energy storage, charging and light out of the way [Garage Monkey San] decided to add some AC outlets. Starting with disassembling the off-the-shelf DC to AC inverter, the AC outlet wires were extended and mounted flush in the ammo box. The inverter also happened to have a USB port so that was extended to mount on the case as well, just in case your phone needs a charge out on the job site. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1412663",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-05-05T02:14:05",
"content": "For an extra hundred bucks you could put a 20W solar panel and a charge controller so that it keeps itself charged just by leaving it outside.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,212.737867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/hackaday-links-may-4-2014/ | Hackaday Links: May 4, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"adafruit",
"capacitor",
"Circuit Playground",
"Crashspace",
"electronics",
"flip book",
"Flite Fest",
"flite test",
"hackerspace",
"measurement devices",
"resistors",
"tools",
"vintage"
] | We’ve seen a few builds from the Flite Test guys before, like
a literal flying toaster
,
airsoft guns mounted to planes
, and
giving an electric plane an afterburner
(that actually produced a little extra thrust). Now the Flite Test crew
is gearing up for the Flite Fest
, an all things remote-controlled flight convention in Malvern, Ohio during the last weekend in July. Seems like a pretty cool way to spend spend a weekend.
Unless you get one of those fancy resistor kits where every value has its own compartment in a case or plastic baggie, you’ll soon rue the day your loose resistors become disorganized. [Kirll] has an interesting solution to hundreds of loose resistors:
packaging tape
. If you want a resistor, just grab a pair of scissors.
Okay, these Adafruit “totally not Muppets™” are awesome. The latest video in the Circuit Playground series is titled, “
C is for Capacitor
“. There’s also “
B is for Battery
“, because when life gives you lemons, light up an LED. Here’s
the coloring book
.
A few years ago, a couple of people at the LA Hackerspace Crashspace put together an animated flipbook device – something between a zoetrope and the numbers in those old electromechanical clocks –
and launched a kickstarter
. Now they’re
putting on a show
, presented by Giant Robot, featuring the animated art of dozens of artists.
Vintage electronics? Yes. Vintage
Soviet
electronics?
Here’s 140 pages of pictures
, mostly of old measurement devices. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1412172",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T23:20:23",
"content": "In Soviet Union, you don’t use devices to measure electronics; electronics use devices to measure you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1418451",
... | 1,760,376,212.789763 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/block-noise-listen-to-music/ | Block Noise, Listen To Music | Rich Bremer | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"headphones",
"music",
"noise reduction"
] | Noise-Cancelling Headphones actively cancel external sounds so the listener can hear their media without distraction. They do this by taking external sound waves from an on-board microphone, inverting the audio signal and mixing that with the media audio. The outside sounds and their inverses cancel each other out before reaching the listener’s ears. There is one downside to these types of noise-cancelling headphones, they are very expensive.
[Mike] works in a wood shop and didn’t want to pony up the hundreds of dollars it would cost for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, let alone having such an expensive electronic device in a dusty workshop. The solution?
Make some headphones
that will block out the noise but still allow the comfortable listening of music. This project is simple but effective; inexpensive headphones taken apart and installed in a pair of Industrial Ear Muffs. If you’d like to make your own, [Mike] gives step by step on the above link.
Comment below and let us know your experiences with noise cancelling headphones and any alternatives you’ve come up with. | 37 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1411674",
"author": "IKSDE",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T20:02:25",
"content": "If Pope John Paul II had one of these he wouldn’t be dead now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1411988",
"author": "notabena4us",
"ti... | 1,760,376,212.982082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/restoring-a-violin-with-3d-printed-parts/ | Restoring A Violin With 3D Printed Parts | Adam Fabio | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"antique",
"heriloom",
"Stradivarius",
"violin"
] | Every family has an heirloom. It might be a watch, a book, or a stuffed pet. [Mike’s] family heirloom was an antique violin. Well, not an entire violin. This particular violin consisted of a detached neck, a body, and one tuning peg. As far as [Mike] knows, no living member of his family has heard it played. [Mike] decided to
restore it to playable condition
.
[Mike’s] violin had been brought over to America when his family emigrated from France. The primary reason it has been saved is because it bears the name Stradivarius. Stradivarius copies and tributes are plentiful in the wild. Many of the copies are now antiques and good playing instruments in their own right, though not nearly as revered as the real thing. [Mike’s] first step was to determine if his violin was a real Strad, or a copy. Luckily he was able to get in touch with the caretaker of a real Strad in Milwaukee. It turns out that the label on his violin marks it as a copy. According to the caretaker, genuine Stradivarius instruments were signed directly on the wood. The caretaker was further able to identify that [Mike’s] violin was about 100 years old, and a relatively cheap model for the time.
While it wasn’t a real Stradivarius, the violin was still an important part of [Mike’s] family history, and deserved to be played again. Rather than re-create the missing parts to perfectly match the originals, [Mike] decided to use the resources of the
Milwaukee Makerspace
to create 3D printed parts.
Similar violin parts were scanned at the Makerspace. The final .stl files were sent to Shapeways for printing. [Mike] sent all the parts to a luthier for final fitting and assembly. [Mike’s] family heirloom is no longer an item to be hidden away, but a living breathing instrument for a new generation to enjoy. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1411236",
"author": "dutado",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T17:19:18",
"content": "Now that he has tried it with plastic, he should try to make the parts from wood.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1411237",
"author": "vonskippy",... | 1,760,376,212.690014 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/spin-a-pcb-for-your-most-beloved-sensors/ | Spin A PCB For Your Most Beloved Sensors | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"breakout board",
"pcb",
"prototype",
"sensor"
] | If you follow [Ioannis’] lead you’re going to thank yourself every time you sit down to work on a new prototype. He took all of the sensors which he most commonly uses and
spun one dev board to host them all
.
As long as you’re willing to wait for delivery, the cost of small-run professionally made PCBs has become unbelievably reasonable. That’s really nice when you need to test your layout before exploring larger production. But it also means you can develop your own dirt-cheap yet reliable dev tools. This example combines three sensors which all communicate via I2C:
MPU6050 accelermoter/gyro
BMP085 pressure sensor
SHT10 humidity sensor
Obviously this is a great idea, but key is the cheat sheet which [Ioannis] included on the bottom of the board. It testifies as to which chips are on the board, but also includes the device addresses for the data bus. We’ve adopted the mantra that if a breadboarded prototype is not working, it’s always a hardware problem. For those oft-used parts this should alleviate some of the heartache at your bench.
You could still make something like this without spinning or etching a board. You’ll just have to
be creative with the soldering
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1411027",
"author": "BotherSaidPooh",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T15:27:16",
"content": "Nice idea, he should sell these!Maybe also add some sort of memory on there, would be handy for low power dataloggers etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,213.085992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/listening-to-a-swarm-of-satellites-in-orbit/ | Listening To A Swarm Of Satellites In Orbit | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"kicksat",
"satellite"
] | A few months ago, we heard of a Kickstarter with an amazing goal: give everyone with $300 burning a hole in their pocket their very own satellite orbiting Earth. Time passes, the mothership has been launched, and in just a few short hours, over a hundred of these personal femtosatellites
will be released into low Earth orbit
.
The Kicksat consists of a 3U cubesat that
was recently launched aboard the SpaceX CRS-3 mission
to the International Space Station. Inside this cubesat are over one hundred satellites called Sprites, loaded up with solar cells, magnetometers, a microcontroller and a radio to communicate with ground stations below. The current mission is a proof of concept, but if everything goes as planned, similar satellites can be deployed into the path of incoming asteroids, or whenever a mission calls for a swarm of small smart devices covering a huge area.
Already the Kicksat mothership has been tracked by
a few enterprising amateur radio enthusiasts
but the deployment of the Sprites isn’t scheduled until today at 4:00 PM EDT (20:00 GMT). After that, the Sprites will be on their own, spewing out data and the initials of kickstarter backers to most of the population of Earth.
For anyone worrying about these Sprites causing an ablation cascade or a
Kessler syndrome
, don’t. Orbital decay is a function of surface area and mass, and these extremely lightweight thin rectangles
will burn up in the atmosphere in a few week’s time
. The lack of radiation hardening on the Sprites won’t be a problem, either. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as they’re orbiting well within our wonderful, protective magnetosphere, and there are digital cameras, tablets, and other much more radiation sensitive electronics that have been working perfectly on the ISS for years now.
You can check out the current location of the orbiting Kicksat mothership
on the project website
, read the updates
on the project blog
, or check out
our coverage of the Kicksat program
from last year’s world maker faire in New York. Relevant videos below.
Oh, and if you have a USB TV tuner, a good antenna, LNA, and some experience with SDR,
here’s what you need to listen in
. | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1410549",
"author": "Andrios",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T11:06:12",
"content": "nope.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space/posts/831509",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1410742"... | 1,760,376,213.554583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/cadence-meter-proves-wearable-development-is-all-about-just-doing-it/ | Cadence Meter Proves Wearable Development Is All About Just Doing It | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"cadence",
"exercise",
"Force Sensitive Resistors"
] | The tech involved in the fitness world really empowers athletes, whether they’re serious or not, to improve their performance by providing empirical evidence.
The Striker project focuses on cadence
, which is the frequency of strides when running, or revolutions when pedaling. It uses a force sensitive resistor in the shoe to measure footfalls or power strokes.
The concept behind the device is solid, and there are consumer-grade devices already on the market that are capable of performing the same functions. In fact, a Garmin device is used to help measure the accuracy of the system. But we love to see bootstrapped projects, and this one distinguishes itself not only in finished product, but in the process itself. To us it screams: “What are you waiting for, build a prototype and then iterate!”.
The larger image above shows the earliest working version which is just a piece of fabric that wraps around the forearm to hold a 4-digit 7-segment display. The wire following the arm of the wearer snakes all the way down to the shoe to connect with the force sensor. The image to the right is the first wireless version of the readout. But the project has already seen at least two more versions after this one, mostly using SparkFun components.
We think this is but one example of the kind of stuff we want to see as contenders for
The Hackaday Prize
. The project uses Open Design and it’s arguably a connected device because the sensor and readout connect to each other (but ideally you’d want to add more connectivy to get at the data). The open nature of the build could lead to leaps forward in the technology by affording talented people wider development access. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1410232",
"author": "bad_chicken",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T08:47:44",
"content": "Given the LED display and hand mount, at first I honestly thought this device measures how fast you can… Um-yea, I am childish.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,213.711455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/go-on-a-power-trip-with-powerduino/ | Go On A Power Trip With Powerduino | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"power consumption",
"power efficiency",
"power strip",
"rtc",
"Teensy 3.1"
] | Things don’t always run the way we want them to or operate at the ideal temperature out of the box. Instead of spending extra for power controls that may or may not meet your needs, wouldn’t it make more sense to dial in the ideal level from the source? That’s what [dekuNukem] had in mind when he decided to make
Powerduino, an arduino-compatible programmable power strip
.
With Powerduino, [dekuNukem] can control the electrical consumption of all kinds of things without ever worrying about the irreversible deadliness of mains voltage. It actually uses a Teensy 3.1 which can be programmed with the Arduino IDE through the micro USB connector. He’s really tricked it out to the point of putting Kill A Watt meters to shame. A wi-fi module lets him control any of the outlets from anywhere, and the RTC module lets him make customized schedules for them. Powerduino has an SD card slot for logging energy consumption, and a 20 x 4 LCD screen makes it easy to directly interface with the power strip.
The
Powerduino code
is up on GitHub, and [dekuNukem]’s walkthrough video is after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqnHy5OSVQ | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1406627",
"author": "fanuch",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T08:15:56",
"content": "This is exactly what I was attempting to do but with a radio controlled Arduino. Excellent execution, and it looks really good too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,376,213.621504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/off-road-quad-uses-a-pneumatic-drive/ | Off-Road Quad Uses… A Pneumatic Drive? | James Hobson | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"air quad",
"off-road quad",
"pneumatic engine",
"quad"
] | Now here’s a really cool engineering degree project — a team of students from a university in Vienna have made a pneumatically driven motor —
and fitted it into a quad!
(
Translated
)
The team consists of [Simon Friesacher], [Simon Schedl], [Christoph Sieber] and [Manuel Streith] who all happen to be in the same class as [Maximilian] and [Sebastian] the duo who brought us the
VoLumen display
, and [Max’s]
Ripper CNC!
For their main project, the goal was to create an alternative and innovative motor — one that runs off of compressed air, using firefighter’s air tanks. Once they had that figured out, they decided to have some fun with it and put together the Air Quad. It only has a range of a few kilometers, and doesn’t perform quite as well its original gasoline counterpart, but we have to admit, it’s a very slick proof of concept!
Stick around after the break to see a promotional demo of the Air Quad in action!
Now how hard would it be to turn this into a steam-powered, steam-punk quad? What kind of humidity are SMC pneumatic cylinders designed to withstand… | 35 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "1406165",
"author": "Zane",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T05:06:14",
"content": "Driven by the least efficient means of locomotion ever devised…. Compressed Air!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1407058",
"author": "Dax",
... | 1,760,376,213.9095 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/nsa-technology-goes-open-hardware/ | NSA Technology Goes Open Hardware | Will Sweatman | [
"drone hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"nsa",
"raspberry pi",
"surveillance",
"uav",
"wardriving"
] | When [Edward Snowden] smeared the internet with classified NSA documents, it brought to light the many spying capabilities our government has at its disposal. One the most interesting of these documents is known as the ANT catalog. This 50 page catalog, now available to the public, reads like a mail order form where agents can simply select the technology they want and order it. One of these technologies is called the Sparrow II, and a group of hackers at Hyperion Bristol has attempted to
create their own version
.
The Sparrow II is an aerial surveillance platform designed to map and catalog WiFi access points. Think
wardriving
from a UAV. Now, if you were an NSA agent, you could just order yourself one of these nifty devices from the
ANT catalog
for a measly 6 grand. However, if you’re like most of us, you can use the guidance from Hyperion Bristol to make your own.
They start off with a Raspi, a run-of-the-mill USB WiFi adapter, a Ublox GY-NEO6MV2 GPS Module, and a 1200 mAh battery to power it all. Be sure to check out the link for full details.
Thanks to [Joe] for the tip! | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1405693",
"author": "some letters",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T02:05:59",
"content": "*cough*http://hackaday.com/2011/08/01/wasp-uav-gets-some-new-toys-now-intercepts-your-phone-calls-too/*cough*",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "14... | 1,760,376,213.789289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/japanese-edition-3d-printed-housing/ | Japanese Edition: 3Dプリンターで24時間以内に住宅建設。しかもリサイクル材料を用いたエコ建築。 | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed buildings",
"housing",
"japan",
"translation"
] | by: [Hideyuki Yamamoto] based on
this feature
.
3Dプリンターメーカーが小さくて精度が高いプリンターを開発するのに躍起になっている中でShanghai WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Companyという中国にある会社がオリンピックプールの半分程度の大きさの巨大な3Dプリンターで実験を重ねているとBBCなどは報じている。
http://3dprinterplans.info/3d-printer-plans-news-round-up-for-wednesday-16042014/
縦32m、横10m、高さ6.6mものマンモスプリンターで400m2の平屋一戸建て住宅がプリント出来る。FDM技術によりセメントと建築廃材混合の壁が作られ、その会社によると一軒あたり5000ドル以下で建てられ、１日あたりなんと10戸の製作が可能とのこと。
そのプリンターは数年前に設計され、WinSunが海外から部品を調達し、蘇州工場で組み立てられた。
この会社は街全体の家をプリントする計画を立てており、リサイクル施設を建設するための部材を集めているという。この家は、まずは青島にて販売される予定だ。
FDM技術を使えば軽量で耐久性のある家がプリント可能になる。この手法は間違いなくオランダのKamerMaker社による建築よりも早いであろう。耐久性や安全性に関してはまだまだ改善の余地があると思われるが、安くて短期間に家が建つ可能性が拡がる話題である。
Editorial Note:
This is a Japanese version of a post we ran last week. We will publish a few “Japanese Edition” articles from time to time, with the end goal of featuring more original hacks from Japanese readers. | 68 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "1405466",
"author": "Taniwha",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T00:38:27",
"content": "(remembering all along of course that Shanghai isn’t actually in Japan ….)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1405557",
"author": "Waterjet",
... | 1,760,376,214.336287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/star-wars-training-droid-uses-the-force/ | Star Wars Training Droid Uses The Force | Adam Fabio | [
"contests",
"drone hacks"
] | [
"contest",
"quadcopter",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest",
"star wars",
"Walkera",
"wii",
"wii remote"
] | We all know the scene, Obi-Wan Kenobi gives Luke a helmet with the blast shield down. He tells Luke “Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them. Stretch out with your feelings!” Easy for Obi-Wan to say – he doesn’t have a remote training droid flying around and shooting at him. [Roeland] and his team are working to create a
real-life version of the training droid
for
Hackday’s Sci-Fi contest
.
The training droid in Star Wars may not have had the Force on its side, but it was pretty darn agile in the air. To replicate this, the team started with a standard Walkera Ladybird micro quadcopter. It would have been simple to have a human controlling the drone-turned-droid, but [Roeland and co] wanted a fully computer controlled system. The Ladybird can carry a small payload, but it just doesn’t have the power to lift a computer and sensor suite. The team took a note from the
GRASP Lab
and used an external computer with a camera to control their droid.
Rather than the expensive motion capture system used by the big labs, the team used a pair of Wii Remote controllers for stereo vision. A small IR LED mounted atop the droid made it visible to the Wii Remotes’ cameras. A laptop was employed to calculate the current position of the droid. With the current and desired positions known, the laptop calculated and sent commands to an Arduino, which then translated them for the droid’s controller.
Nice work guys! Now you just have to add the blaster emitters to it! | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1406518",
"author": "Shakipu",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T07:38:48",
"content": "C’mon ! You’re making advertising for a project that is not so incredible (it uses softwares that already exists, with a quadcopter already built). This is not fair for other projects ! This project alrea... | 1,760,376,214.89147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/reading-paper-tapes-from-scratch/ | Reading Paper Tapes From Scratch! | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"paper tape"
] | Feeling a little nostalgic? Dying to read some paper ticker tapes? You
can
do it manually, but that’d take forever! [NeXT] decided to make
a little PCB to help him out.
Having searched for paper tape readers for years, and even getting halfway through building the mechanical portion of it in his high-school tech class, [NeXT] decided to take a serious stab at it — and by golly, it works!
The reason he finally decided to go down this route is because you just can’t buy them (well, for cheap), and even the DIY or hobby ones out there are notoriously slow — what better reason to design it from scratch?
What we love about this hack is its clever reuse of perfboard — it just so happens that the spacing of his paper tape holes line up perfectly with the holes in the perfboard! Don’t you love it when engineers work together with nice, even, standard units? After discovering this it was just a matter of adding some photo-transistors on one side of the perfboard sandwich, and LEDs on the other side. A bit of soldering, some Schmitt triggers, and an Arduino Pro Mini later… and bam you have a serial output of data!
The funny thing is — he does actually have a working ASR33 Teletype reader — but it’s too slow. Maybe we should mail him the secret message Hack42 gave us on paper tape
when we visited them in the Netherlands!
[Thanks John!] | 37 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "1404782",
"author": "Don Wennick (@DonWennick)",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T20:11:00",
"content": "By “nice, even, standard units” are you referring to 2.54mm?Jes’ yanking the chain, awesome hack! I sharpened my computing teeth on ASR33 tapes and 20ma current loop acoustic couplers. A... | 1,760,376,214.070942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/hackaday-space-final-transmission-minecraft-puzzles-explained/ | Hackaday Space: Final Transmission Minecraft Puzzles Explained | Ben Delarre | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ARG",
"major tom",
"minecraft",
"puzzle",
"resistor color code",
"space"
] | This is the last part in our round up of the ARG that we ran throughout April. Just in case you’ve had your head buried in a hole this last week, it was a month-long series of puzzles that lead up to the announcement of the frankly awesome
Hackaday Prize
. During the week we’ve covered
Transmissions 1
,
2
and
3
detailing how we put the puzzles together and the things that went wrong. For the final stage we wanted something a bit different. Throughout the ARG we had been inspired by the book
Ready Player One
, so in this stage we wanted a high score table that people could compete over.
Since we’d managed to get reasonably far ahead of ourselves during Transmission 3 we had just over a week to plan this round. We pitched some ideas around the office for video games we could make with high score tables. None of these really stuck and we soon realized we didn’t have the resources to get the graphic design work done for most games. Someone suggested that we try making a
MUD
themed around a space port with rescue for Major Tom being the last stage. This seemed like a great idea at first and I began work on it using the
RanvierMUD
framework. It soon became clear however that writing all the text for a full featured MUD is actually a massive endeavor and I frankly am not that great of a writer.
Learn the secrets and watch a video tour of the Minecraft world below.
Minecraft
So 5 days before the next transmission was due we still had no idea what we were going to put out. Thankfully [Steve] has kids who are obsessed with Minecraft, and he immediately suggested that we build a Minecraft world. Now there are several Hackaday writers (myself included) who love Minecraft, and to me its the ultimate hacker friendly game. The redstone, the building, and the creativity all resonate strongly with the hacker mindset so this seemed like a perfect fit. There was some concern that all our readers don’t necessarily have copies, but we figured that it was a pretty good bet that most would.
We quickly fleshed out some ideas for what we should build, and started thinking about how we could include a puzzle element and a scoreboard into the game. We tested using the rather cool looking
Galacticraft mod
, but this required client-side modifications that weren’t very simple to install so we had to abandon that. We also thought about doing some kind of meteor chasing, but this seemed a little contrived. In the end we settled on extending the theme from the ARG into the game.
We decided to build models of each of the 5 telescopes we referred to in Transmission 3, along with a rocket and spaceport from which you could launch a ‘rescue’ mission to go find Major Tom who would be housed in
The End
within a space station of some sort. We found a copy of the awesome
Earth 2.0
map created by Lets Lente and decided that we would place all the real world space things we could find into the map. Thankfully [Brian] and [Mike] are mad for Minecraft, so they took over building some of the really big structures. [Brian] did a stellar job on 4 of the big telescopes. [Tom], one of our colleagues at SupplyFrame, and his daughter built the LOFAR array (they also put together a replica of the SupplyFrame office which is really amazingly accurate!).
[Mike] built a spectacular rocket and gantry, and then put together the space station that housed Major Tom. During all this I configured the server, figured out how to protect areas and built a teleporter at the main spawn point. The teleporter could be used to dial in longitude and latitude coordinates from the real world to magically transport you to the locations within the game. This then tied everything nicely back into the clues from the earlier transmissions.
Puzzles
So, that took care of the world (he says…like it was a five-minute job to build all these massive structures). Next up was how do we include a puzzle element into this? Thankfully [Sarah], another SupplyFrame colleague, had that in hand. She took on building out the rest of the space port which housed [Mike’s] rocket, and served as the jumping off point to go find Major Tom. Within this spaceport she hid a series of puzzles which would allow you to gain access to the rocket. It started in one of the hangers, with there being a large number of pressure plates on which you could stand. Each pressure plate was labelled with a resistor ranged number. When you stepped on a pressure plate it would teleport you to the next room, or an ‘incorrect’ room, or out to the exit. In order to progress through the rooms you had to know which sequence of pads to step on in each room. We then hid clues for these at each site around the Minecraft world in the form of resistor color coded blocks at each telescope site. In each room you will find only one pad that corresponds to any of the codes from the blocks in the world so its pretty easy to figure out when you know how.
This worked great, it meant that you had to go look through the coordinates of the telescopes from Transmission 3 and 1, go visit them using the main teleporter at the spawn, read the resistor color code and then head out to the launch site (from Transmission 3) and figure out which code mapped to which room. The puzzles were well designed and they worked, though of course this being Minecraft it seemed that some people simply glitched the world to gain access to the rocket.
Once you were inside the rocket you could drop down a huge hole to fly through a portal and magically end up at the space station in The End where Major Tom was roaming around spouting pithy comments. At the space station there were a number of things you could find and look at but I’ll leave those for the more interested to explore. We’ll be leaving the server up so check the details at the end of the post if you want to check out the world.
Hacking the Scoreboard
So to complete our goals with this transmission we wanted to have a public scoreboard by which everyone could track their progress through the world and so that we could award a prize at the end to the winner. This seemed quite tricky to accomplish at first, Minecraft has a scoreboard system but it doesn’t really have a ‘game’ so has no natural points to be gained, so you have to setup your own. In the end we decided to award points for locations found within the world. By the time we launched we had 10 areas, the 5 telescopes and 5 additional places you could find by luck or persistence. Each location had a stash of points which it would award to each player as they entered the area, the number of points would diminish each time the area was found so this gave us a nice little bit of competition. You can checkout the scoreboard at
http://space.hackaday.io
.
We then wrote a quick bit of code to pull down the scoreboard.dat file from the Minecraft server via FTP every 5 minutes, which was then parsed using the
JNBT library
. This then spat the data out on an API which our scoreboard page pulls down when it renders. A little bit long winded, but we tried using the
JSON API
plugin and that didn’t actually provide access to the output of the scoreboard within Minecraft so this was the fastest way to get this working.
The Final Transmission
We announced the Minecraft server with a little obvious puzzle. We posted the following image on Hackaday:
The numbers encoded on the dials in the image make up the IP address of the server, 50.112.128.47:25565. Once this clue was decoded people started hopping on the server. I think at peak we ended up with 20 or so concurrent users, but overall we had a couple of hundred people visit the server.
Our main concern with running a Minecraft server was the possibility of griefing. We’ve got our pet trolls on Hackaday, but they’re nothing compared to Minecraft griefers! Thankfully we managed to go almost 5 days before any major incident, everyone played nice and explored the world. The puzzle was eventually solved, despite it being possible to glitch around it. Eventually it was clear people would start to run out of things to do, so we decided an exercise in creativity was called for. We setup a big creative area behind the main spawn where people could build what they want, this became the PixelArt contest which we
announced the winners
of yesterday (our beloved [Caleb Kraft] was the judge). We’ve updated that post with a video of the pixel art entries.
This contest went fantastically well, we had loads of entries and they were nearly all stunning. Eventually however the griefers arrived and decided to wash out the creative zone, fill it full of boats, and destroy as much artwork as they could. This was a real shame and some unique pieces were lost. Thankfully however we did manage to save or rebuild most of it. Our sys admins also learnt a valuable lesson: an untested backup process is not a backup!
It’s All Over, Time to Build Stuff IRL
Well that was a very crazy month, and it’s now drawn to a close. Tomorrow we will announce the winners of the ARG and award them their prizes. We’re also going to keep the Minecraft server up for the time being or until it is no longer used, so please feel free to hang out there and build crazy stuff. There will be Hackaday staff popping in every now and then.
If you want to hop onto the server its available at:
minecraft.hackaday.com:25565
There’s some lovely little prizes we’re giving away here, but they’re not
a trip to space
! For that you need to build something real, and rightly so after spending so much time in the virtual world with these puzzles. Get hacking!
Download
Here’s link to
the Hackaday Minecraft world file
filled with all the goodies. The archive is about 3GB. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1404296",
"author": "Sheldon",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T17:13:13",
"content": "Wow, that was quite epic.Loved the write-up as well: “he says…like it was a five-minute job to build all these massive structures” :-)Surely you just have to wave your wand and the HaD pixies make it over... | 1,760,376,214.143162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/this-weekend-hackaday-at-the-southeast-vintage-computer-festival/ | This Weekend: Hackaday At The Southeast Vintage Computer Festival | Marsh | [
"cons"
] | [
"VCF",
"VCF Southeast",
"Vintage Computer Festival"
] | The
Vintage Computer Festival hits Roswell, GA
this weekend for the second year, packed with museum displays dating back to the
Kenbak 1
and hobbyist vintage exhibits. The Apple Pop-Up museum is back as well, along with last year’s popular retro gaming area and a maker-styled kit building area.
Here’s an album
packed with images from last year’s festival, so you know what you’re getting yourself into.
You can check out the
scheduled speakers and workshops here
. While you’re there, look for the short, nerdy guy wearing a Hackaday shirt and I’ll be sure to throw some Hackaday stickers at you. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1410924",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T14:47:15",
"content": "The pop-up museum is very well done, and seeing many of the older computer systems was a treat. It was a little strange to see computers under plexiglass that I have owned in the past. The tic-tac-toe compu... | 1,760,376,213.968679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/circular-saws-in-the-kitchen-good-idea-or-best-idea/ | Circular Saws In The Kitchen, Good Idea Or Best Idea? | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"centrifuge",
"circular saw centrifuge",
"kitchen centrifuge",
"power tools in the kitchen"
] | [Mike Warren] was contemplating risky but exciting projects he could do when he came up with this magnificent contraption. A
centrifuge
made out of an old circular saw!
First question — why? Well if you’re a foody or you enjoy the study of
molecular gastronomy
, bringing a centrifuge to the kitchen can allow for some more technical dishes. It suddenly becomes possible to separate food based on its density, just like how it works in the lab. Practical applications for super fancy dishes — we’re not too sure — but it involves relatively unsafe power tools and food so we felt obliged to share it!
Let’s start off with the generic warning — in fact, [Mike] states this before the Instructable begins:
Do not replicate this project, it is incredibly dangerous!
The project makes use of an old corded circular saw, a few salad bowls, some threaded rod, a few nuts, some binder clips and some metal plates to hold the plastic test tubes. At 4900RPM (the speed of his saw),he’s
calculated his G-Force
to be around 1879G’s. Holy cow. A person passes out at around 10Gs, and a bullet fired from a typical handgun is well over 50,000 — on the extreme end of things, a professional lab ultra-centrifuge can hit over 300,000.
These all of course pale by comparison to the Large Hadron Collider, which can accelerate protons at approximately 190,000,000G’s! And to conclude, this is what happens
when lab centrifuges blow up.
Don’t do it — but do watch the following video and enjoy! | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1403770",
"author": "Tom the Brat",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T14:05:48",
"content": "“Why?” Careful! You’ll loose your geek cred asking questions like that! :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1403977",
"author": "Jonath... | 1,760,376,214.497989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/magsafe-on-an-android-cats-and-dogs-living-together/ | Magsafe On An Android, Cats And Dogs Living Together | Brian Benchoff | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"apple",
"cellphone",
"magsafe",
"power connector"
] | We’re thinking most Hackaday readers have at one time or another been tasked with replacing the power connector in a laptop. Anyone who has done so can easily see the genius behind the Apple Magsafe connector. Since the second gen iPhone, there have been rumors Apple will release a cellphone with the Magsafe connector, a great idea, seeing as how cell phones are thrown around even more than laptops. [Tony] got tired of waiting, and had an Android device anyway, so he decided
to retrofit a Magsafe power adapter to his Note II
.
In the interest of excess, [Tony] is using the absurdly large ZeroLemon 9300mAh battery and case for his device, giving him a lot of room for this hardware mod.
A tiny 3D printed adapter
fits around a slightly modified Magsafe connector, and with a little bit of super glue and solder, the connector is wired up to the charging port.
Of course the charger isn’t a stock Apple power supply; it’s just another Magsafe plug wired into a 5V wall wart. We’re not going to take a guess at what would happen if [Tony] plugged a stock Apple charger into his modded phone, but the mod works perfectly without the danger of ripping a USB port out of his phone. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1403370",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T11:09:54",
"content": "Charger cable of the cellphone is more likely to save cellphone from falling or at least slow down it’s fall as phones are relatively light when compared to laptops… At least in my case…",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,214.733991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/hack-a-camera-win-a-nikon/ | Hack A Camera, Win A Nikon | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"camera",
"make",
"nikon"
] | Several juicy prizes from Nikon are ripe for the plucking. Our friends at
MAKE are hosting a Nikon sponsored challenge
. Grand prize is an Nikon 1 V3 with three extra lenses, and there are two runner-up prizes which offer the same without the extras. They’re basically asking for your best camera hack. Now the submission process is a one-shot deal (no posting and iterating) which may explain why the contest — which started 4/15 and ends 5/13 — only has two entries. Still, we’d love to see a Hackaday reader waltz in and claim the loot.
Need some examples to get you rolling? Connectivity is a fun topic; try
interfacing your camera with something like a Nintendo DS
. Everyone needs to make at least one motion rig
like this Ikea slider
. We can’t stop listing examples without at least one shutter trigger. Here’s
a sound activated one
to capture things that happen extremely quickly.
If you end up winning
make sure to tell us
so we can share in your delight. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1402933",
"author": "eman",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T08:39:59",
"content": "CHDK ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1402960",
"author": "ijgao",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T08:48:32",
"content": "MAKE is a cancer that i... | 1,760,376,214.435491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/sending-open-source-satellites-to-space/ | Sending Open-Source Satellites To Space | Mathieu Stephan | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"cudebug",
"satellite",
"space"
] | An anonymous reader tipped us about two Argentinian satellites (
satellite one
,
satellite two
) that were sent in 2013 to space. What is interesting about them? They are both based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components,
and the team released the framework & flight computer software for their main platform (named cubesat,
GitHub link
).
Gunter’s space page
not only impresses us by showing the quantity of small/amateur satellites sent each month to space, but also lets us know that the hardware source files for CudeBug 1/2 are meant to be released. In the meantime we can only gather that they’re using a Texas Instruments
TMS570
running FreeRTOS. Nevertheless, the two different web pages (in spanish and english) offer us a very interesting glimpse of what it takes to send an electronic project to space and how it later behaves.
You may also be interested in checking out
ArduSat
, a successful kickstarter campaign aimed at sending Arduino experiments in space. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1402828",
"author": "Paul Kocyla (movax)",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T07:56:30",
"content": "Checkout my satellite project on Hackaday. I will make it open and offer a devkit.The launch costs will be reduced again by a factor of 8.The launch costs for a single cubesat are still in the... | 1,760,376,214.65728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/using-the-raspberry-pi-to-see-like-a-bee/ | Using The Raspberry Pi To See Like A Bee | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"infrared",
"ir",
"raspberry pi",
"uv",
"UV filter",
"UV pass filter"
] | The Raspberry Pi board camera has a twin brother known as the NoIR camera, a camera without an infrared blocking filter that allows anyone to take some shots of scenes illuminated with ‘invisible’ IR light, investigate the health of plants, and some other cool stuff. The sensor in this camera isn’t just sensitive to IR light – it goes the other way as well,
allowing some investigations into the UV spectrum
, and showing us what bees and other insects see.
The only problem with examining the UV spectrum with a small camera is that relatively, the camera is much more sensitive to visible and IR than it is to UV. To peer into this strange world, [Oliver] needed a UV pass filter, a filter that only allows UV light through.
By placing the filter between the still life and the camera, [Oliver] was able to shine a deep UV light source and capture the image of a flower in UV. The image above and to the right isn’t what the camera picked up, though – bees cannot see red, so the green channel was shifted to the red, the blue channel to the green, and the UV image was placed where the blue channel once was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gsajzhIPF8 | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1401875",
"author": "nos4a2",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T02:13:21",
"content": "Cool..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1403395",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T11:23:45",
"content": "Yea,... | 1,760,376,214.842248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/hackaday-space-pixel-art-contest/ | Hackaday Space: Pixel Art Contest | Ben Delarre | [
"News"
] | [] | During the Final Transmission — which I’ll post about tomorrow — we decided to open up a creative area on the Minecraft server for people to build whatever they wanted as part of a Pixel Art contest. Today we announce the winners of that art challenge, and assign them their points so that we can draw the overall winner of the Final Transmission. Each winner gets additional points added to their score. These were judged by Hackaday alum [Caleb Kraft] since he hadn’t been involved in the shenanigans up to this point and was, considered unbiased, and has a well-developed
set of art chops
himself. So, here goes…
3rd place : Hack A Tardis
The third place goes to the Dr Who Box by [Marcus1297], entitled ‘Hack a Tardis’. This is a great rendition of the tardis, while its only 2 dimensional it has fine detail, and the beacon beam coming out of the top is a nice finishing touch. Excellent work! [Marcus1297] gets an additional 2.5k points for his score.
2nd place : Nicola Tesla Memorial
Second place goes to [st3al2012] for his stunning Tesla Coil which he dedicated to
Nikola Tesla
. This was picked because the “Art was exceptional”. There’s a lot of detail in there, not only did he build the main structure of the coil complete with the toroidal ring, but he also showed the core components. The spark gap generator, the capacitors and even the AC outlet. There’s a lot of detail and it looks stunning at night. Great job, [st3al2012] you get an extra 5k points for your scoreboard.
1st place : Portal Cube
First place goes to [XDjackieXD] for his quite amazing Portal Cube. [Caleb] declared this the winner saying that the “Art and execution were exemplary”. We have to agree, the cube looks fantastic, but best of all he went to all of the trouble to create “
Want you Gone
” (the ending song from the game) using note blocks positioned inside the cube. Lovely work and he thoroughly deserves the 10k points he has received for this.
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone that contributed. The Minecraft server is still up so if you want to take a look at all the art for yourself connect to it at ‘minecraft.hackaday.com’. We have put up
the world and all the plugins used to build it here
. I’ll be releasing the source for the MatrixMiner plugin that I developed for the teleporter display when I get a chance to finish it. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1401792",
"author": "User",
"timestamp": "2014-05-02T01:46:39",
"content": "I don’t think it’s fair to have it only judged by one person. Also would like to be able to see the art without logging into the server.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,214.785724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/roman-headgear-looks-less-silly-with-lots-of-blinky/ | Roman Headgear Looks Less Silly With Lots Of Blinky | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"c++",
"centurion",
"cinder",
"daft punk",
"hat",
"helmet",
"punk",
"ws2812b"
] | Look, it’s not Steam-Punk because the period is way out of whack. And we’ve never seen ourselves as “that guy” at the party. But it would be pretty hard to develop The Centurion Project and
not
take the thing to every festive gathering you could possibly attend.
This sound-reactive helm compels party-going
in a toga-nouveau sort of way.
[Roman] tells us that it started as a movie prop. The first build step was to remove the plume from the top of it. The replacement — seven meters worth of addressable RGB LEDS — looks just enough like an epic mohawk to elicit visions of the punk rock show, with the reactive patterns to make it Daft. The unexpected comes with the FFT generated audio visualizations. They’re grounded on the top side of each of the LED strips. Most would call that upside-down but it ends up being the defining factor in this build. Seriously, watch the demo after the break and just try to make your case that this would have been better the other way around.
As a final note, this project was written using
Cinder
. It’s an Open Source C++ library that we don’t remember hearing about before. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1409928",
"author": "Als Taxi",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T05:42:03",
"content": "The running man reenactment here I come.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1410067",
"author": "A Bryant",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T... | 1,760,376,215.007669 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/jackal-takes-it-to-the-streets/ | Jackal Takes It To The Streets | Adam Fabio | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Self Balancing Unicycle",
"The Jackal"
] | [Nick Thatcher] is becoming the world’s authority on self-balancing unicycles. He’s unveiled
The Jackal, his new single wheel vehicle
. The Jackal is an upgrade to
The Raptor, [Nick’s] 2012 machine
. The wheelbarrow wheel has been replaced with a much more fitting model sourced from a motorcycle. The 19″ motorcycle wheel improved balancing quite a bit. Wheelbarrow wheels were not exactly quality components, so they definitely made balancing the unicycle more difficult.
[Nick] upgraded his power system as well. The Jackal is powered by a 450 Watt 1020z geared motor. The 1020z is often found on scooters imported from the Far East. The motor controller is the same SyRen 50 Amp continuous / 100 Amp peak model used in the Raptor.
The Jackal’s frame has also seen some changes. It’s now sporting quite a bit of machined aluminum as well as [Nick’s] standby PVC. The upgrades have paid off in performance. The Jackal can reach about 20 MPH, however the top safe speed is closer to 15 MPH.
Click past the break to see [Nick] demonstrating The Jackal at Makerfaire UK. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1409530",
"author": "Jacques",
"timestamp": "2014-05-04T02:37:16",
"content": "“[Nick Thatcker] is becoming the world’s authority on self-balancing unicycles.”Not so! Ryno motors will have something commercial to offer soon.http://rynomotors.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,214.948932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/pneumatic-rocket-man/ | Pneumatic Rocket Man | James Hobson | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"boba fet jetpack",
"boba fett",
"jetpack",
"may the 4th",
"pneumatic jetpack"
] | Here’s a fun May the 4th be with you project… A pneumatically powered
Boba Fett jetpack-launching-mannequin!
[Rodger Cleye],
best known
for his crazy
quadrotor projects
, wanted to try experimenting with pneumatic power for a change. He managed to obtain a fire extinguisher which he’s routed through a home-made PVC air delivery system on the back of his faithful test dummy — this time decked out in a complete [Boba Fett] costume.
He’s using a solenoid actuated sprinkler valve to release the pressure which is controlled using an N-FET. An AVR microcontroller sends a 500mS pulse to trigger it, and also handles the remote-controlled launch pad which you can drive around to position [Boba] for the best flight. The solenoid valve is 1″ stepped down to a 1/2″ connection ported into [Boba’s] spine which has a 3/4″ sleeve, acting like a pneumatic piston. Just for fun he’s even included a Boba-CAM to capture the 25+ foot launch from the poor mannequin’s perspective!
[via
Hacked Gadgets
] | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1409114",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T23:32:40",
"content": "Oh the thoughts…. he’s loaded by ramming a pole up his bum.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1409651",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timest... | 1,760,376,215.046659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/ask-hackaday-can-the-lix-3d-printing-pen-actually-work/ | Ask Hackaday: Can The Lix 3D Printing Pen Actually Work? | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"Featured"
] | [
"3d printing",
"3D printing pen",
"in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics",
"Lix"
] | Introducing Lix
, the world’s smallest 3D printing pen that allows you to draw plastic structures in 3D. It’s only been on Kickstarter for a few days now, and already it has garnered close to a million dollars in pledges. An astonishing achievement, especially considering we can prove – with math and physics – that it doesn’t work as advertised. However, we’re wondering if it could work
at all
, so we’re asking the Hackaday community.
The device is powered through a USB 3 port. In the video, the Lix team is using a MacBook Pro. This has a USB port
capable of delivering
900 mA at 5 Volts,
or 4.5 Watts
. Another 3D printing pen, the
3Doodler
, uses a 2A, 12V power adapter, equal to 24 Watts. Considering the 3Doodler
works
, and they both do the same basic thing, there’s something
extremely odd
going on here.
Just as a comparison,
here’s a wirewound resistor
commonly found in the heating element or ‘hot end’ of a 3D printer. It’s a 6.8 Ohm resistor powered at 12 Volts. That’s 21 Watts.
Here’s a heater cartridge
, also found in quite a few hot ends. It sucks down 40 Watts. Once again, the Lix Kickstarter clearly shows the pen extruding filament using only 4.5 Watts of power. Something is really, really fishy here.
Intuition doesn’t hold a candle to math, so let’s figure out exactly why it won’t work.
The computer and USB port used in the Lix promo video. If that isn’t an Apple device that can only supply 900mA at 5 V, I will buy a hat and film myself eating it.
We’re thinking the easiest way to figure out if 4.5 Watts is enough for a 3D printing pen is from a purely thermodynamic analysis: a specific amount of filament goes in, is heated up to its melting point, and is squeezed out of the nozzle. The equation to calculate how much energy is required for a specific temperature change in a system is
Q = cmΔT
, where Q is the amount of energy in Joules, c is the specific heat of ABS (1.3 J/g°K,
source
), m is the mass in grams, and ΔT is the change in temperature. All we need to do now is figure out how fast this pen is extruding, and the mass of that extruded filament.
In this video
, starting at 10 seconds in, you see the Lix extruding about 13 centimeters of filament through the 0.6mm nozzle included with the Lix in five seconds. A little bit of math happens (volume of a cylinder with a height of 13cm and a diameter of 0.06 cm), and we can figure out the Lix is extruding 0.038 grams of filament per second (ABS density of 1.04 g/cc,
source
). This calculation was done by counting pixels and frames, which can be inaccurate, but not by much.
An estimated 0.038 grams of filament extruded per second, a change in temperature of 210°C (20°C room temperature, 230°C extrusion temperature), and a specific heat of ABS of 1.3 J/g°C (
source
) means 10 Joules are required to extrude one second’s worth of filament from the Lix pen.
Since 1 Watt = 1 Joule for 1 second, about 10 Watts are sucked down whenever the Lix is extruding filament. Once again, the Lix can only draw 4.5 Watts from a USB 3 port. The math simply doesn’t work, and no USB 3 powered device can extrude ABS filament that fast. The math is also generous, as it doesn’t consider the phase change of the filament which would require even more energy. I didn’t include this because I can’t find a reference for the heat of fusion for ABS. The math also doesn’t consider losses to the heater block, the air, and a host of other inefficiencies in any real-world device.
But ABS requires a fairly high temperature to extrude. Even though the Lix team claims the pen works with ABS, let’s say they’re using PLA plastic, extruded at 180°C. Doing the math for a ΔT of 160°C means 7.9 Watts are sucked down from a USB 3 port that can only provide 4.5 Watts.
Something is terribly wrong here.
That’s why we’re turning to you and asking the rest of the Hackaday community.
The only way we can figure the Lix actually works is if the extrusion rate is really, really slow. Halving the extrusion rate of PLA to 1.3mm/s gets us into the ballpark of what the Lix power supply can do; that only requires about 4 Watts, leaving enough left over to run the motor and electronics inside the pen. This is exceptionally slow for any plastic extruder – RepRaps can extrude plastic about 50 to 100 times faster. There’s a good bit of evidence the video of the Lix has been sped up dramatically, given the disclaimer, “some of video scenes have accelerated speed” appeared on the Kickstarter sometime between the first and second day of the campaign.
While we know the video is an outright misrepresentation of what any USB 3 powered device can do,
We can’t figure out if the Lix is a viable product.
We’re turning to you. Can you figure out if the Lix pen actually works? All we know is the Lix pen has a 4.5 Watt power supply from a USB 3 port. It’s possible for a USB 3 powered 3D printing pen to work, albeit slowly, but the engineering is difficult and we don’t know if the Lix team has the chops.
* For the hardware heads out there,
yes
, I know there is a USB 3 spec –
the USB Power Delivery Specification
– out there that will supply up to 100 Watts through a USB port. Apple does not support this spec in any of their products, and the Lix Kickstarter video uses a MacBook Pro for power. The maximum amount of current the Lix can draw from a MacBook is 900mA, and the Lix has a power budget of 4.5 Watts. There really is no arguing that fact.
As an aside, this post has inspired us to consider a column on Kickstarters that seem to defy the laws of physics. We’re thinking about calling it Kickherder, as the vast majority of Kickstarter backers for these types of projects are mindless sheep. If you have a better name, leave it in the comments. | 281 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "1408237",
"author": "mojojoe",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T18:32:40",
"content": "I take it we are assuming there is no power storage/supercap arrangement in the pen?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1408249",
"author": "z... | 1,760,376,215.810045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/hackaday-space-the-winners/ | Hackaday Space: The Winners! | Ben Delarre | [
"contests",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ARG",
"prizes"
] | We promise this is the last post about the ARG we ran throughout April to promote The Hackaday Prize. But we’re excited to announce the winners and all the goodies they are going to get!
The Prizes!
Now that the scoreboards are finalized we can announce the overall winners of the Alternate Reality Game and the prizes they will receive!
First, we’re giving away a
Crazyflie Nano quadcopter
to each of the people who were the first to post all the details for the first three Transmissions on the Major Tom profile pages.
Transmission 1 Winner
[
kline
] wins Transmission 1 as he was the first to post all the details from the transmission and did some great work to convert the QR code into an image using Python.
Transmission 2 Winner
[
Tyler Anderson
] wins this round as he was the first to decode the status message from Major Tom.
Transmission 3 Winner
This was a tough one since we know some people got very close to the answer on IRC but were led down rabbit holes instead, however [
Ted
] wins as he was the first to finally locate the launch site longitude and latitude hidden in the audio files.
Final Transmission Winner
Next up we have the winner of the Final Transmission. Someone suggested that when the pixel art contest was over we should 3d print all the entries, so this inspired us to give away a low cost 3d printer that the winner could use to do just that. Therefore we are presenting a
Printrbot Simple Makers Kit
.
This prize goes to the person at the top of the scoreboard and winner of the pixel art contest [
XDjackieXD
]. Congratulations and we expect to see your Portal Cube rendered in plastic sometime soon!
Best Overall Contributor
Finally, since this ARG was a team effort and some people put in outrageous amounts of work we decided we should award a prize for Best Overall Contributor.
This was a hard decision as so many people contributed throughout the month. But we feel that the efforts of [
Emerica
] really stand out, not only was he responsible for figuring out the use of OpenPuff in Transmission 2, he also contributed massively to the Pixel Art Contest and even built a stunning rendition of the Space Needle over the location of Seattle. [Emerica] wins a
Hexy the Hexapod
robot kit for his contribution, we hope to see many creative uses for this little fellow in the coming months.
Mission Complete.
It may be all over, but we just want to say how much fun putting together this ARG has been and how much it has shown the creativity, ingenuity and pure genius that exists in this community.
It was wonderful to watch everyone come together to work things out and the life that has sprung up in the
IRC channel
is really great to see. We hope we can all continue to play and build together as we truly believe there is nothing this community cannot accomplish when we come out of our respective sheds and workshops and work together on something.
Thank you all for participating and good luck in with your entries in
The Hackaday Prize
! | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1408103",
"author": "mikeneiderhauser",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T17:38:01",
"content": "Great job everyone!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1408126",
"author": "Emerica",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T17:48:56",
"content"... | 1,760,376,215.181748 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/3d-printed-stick-shift-handle/ | 3D Printed Stick Shift Handle | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed head",
"3D printed stick shift",
"3d scanning",
"3D scanning and printing"
] | Here’s a silly hack for you guys. Turn your head (or anything else really) into a
stick shift handle!
All jokes about vanity aside, [Haqnmaq] has outlined an excellent Instructable on how to take 3D scans, manipulate them, and make them 3D printer ready. He’s chosen to use a Microsoft Kinect (one of the
cheapest 3D scanners around
) combined with some low-cost 3D software. He’s used both
Skanect
and
Reconstructme
with great success, which both have free (albeit slightly limited) versions. The model he used for his stick shift was actually taken at the
3D Printing Experience
in Chicago.
Anyway, once you’ve gotten your 3D scan turned into a .STL file, it just needs to be imported into
Netfabb Basic
to make any repairs necessary before 3D printing. Find out what size nut your stick shift uses, add a cut extrude into your model (he used Autodesk’s 123D design software to do this), print it off, glue the nut in, and your done!
Regardless of whether or not you want your head shifting the gears, its an excellent introduction to 3D scanning to 3D printing. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1407647",
"author": "Morgen",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T14:18:19",
"content": "Generally “stick shift” implies a manual transmission. Picture depicts an automatic. What you’ve shown here is generally referred to as a “Gear Selector Knob” or “Gear Selector Handle” since it operates ... | 1,760,376,216.443751 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/03/game-boy-vs-electronic-shelf-labels/ | Game Boy Vs. Electronic Shelf Labels | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Electronic shelf label",
"game boy",
"game boy color",
"infrared",
"ir",
"wireless"
] | While they’re probably rare as hen’s teeth in the US, there have been a few major stores around the world that have started rolling out electronic shelf labels for every item in the store. These labels ensure every item on a shelf has the same price as what’s in the store’s computer, and they’re all controlled by an infrared transceiver hanging on the store’s ceiling. After studying one of these base stations, [furrtek] realized they’re wide open if you have the right equipment. The right equipment, it turns out,
is a Game Boy Color
.
The shelf labels in question are controlled by a base station with a decidedly non-standard carrier frequency and a proprietary protocol. IR driver chips found in phones are too slow to communicate with these labels, and old PDAs like Palm Pilots, Zauruses, and Pocket PCs only have an IrDA chip. There is one device that has an active development scene and an IR LED connected directly to a CPU pin, though, so [furrtek] started tinkering around with the hardware.
The Game Boy needed to be overclocked to get the right carrier frequency of 1.25 MHz. With a proof of concept already developed on a FPGA board, [furrtek] started coding for the Game Boy, developing an interface that allows him to change the ‘pages’ of these electronic labels, or display customized data on a particular label.
There’s also a much, much more facepalming implication of this build: these electronic labels’ firmware is able to be updated through IR. All [furrtek] needs is the development tools for the uC inside one of these labels.
There’s a great video [furrtek] put together going over this one. Check that out below. | 38 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1407211",
"author": "v665f6atu3",
"timestamp": "2014-05-03T11:23:54",
"content": "Brian, that video link 404s. Plus, their SSL certificate is sketchy. Plus, WOT labels both the original and the redirected page as non-trustworthy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,215.488419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/a-z80-retro-microcomputer-for-the-papilio-pro-fpga-board/ | A Z80 Retro Microcomputer For The Papilio Pro FPGA Board | Mathieu Stephan | [
"FPGA",
"hardware"
] | [
"fpga",
"papilio",
"z80"
] | [Will]
wrote a 128MHz Z80-based retro microcomputer
which runs on a
Papilio Pro board
. For those who don’t know, the latter is built around a Spartan-6 LX9 FPGA so you may imagine that much work was required to implement all the computer features in VHDL. The T80 CPU core was taken from
opencores
, the
SDRAM controller
was imported from Mike Field’s work but [Will] implemented several additional functions on his own:
– a 4KB paged
Memory Management Unit
to translate the 16-bit (64KB) logical address space into a 26-bit (64MB) physical address space.
– a 16KB direct mapped cache to hide the SDRAM latency, using the FPGA internal block RAM
– a UART interface for external communications
He also ported CP/M-2.2, MP/M-II and UZI (a UNIX system) to the computer. His project is completely open-source and all the source code can be downloaded at the end of [Will]’s write up.
Thanks [hamster] for the tip. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1401337",
"author": "Andrew Baker",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T23:06:43",
"content": "I find this COOL and disturbing at the same time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1401823",
"author": "pcf11",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,216.284454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/eye-tracking-with-the-oculus-rift/ | Eye Tracking With The Oculus Rift | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"eye tracking",
"gaze",
"gaze tracking",
"Oculus",
"oculus rift"
] | There’s a lot you can do with eye and gaze tracking, when it comes to interface design, so when [Diako] got his hands on an Oculus Rift,
there was really only one thing to do
.
Like
a few other solutions
for eye tracking we’ve seen, [Diako] is using a small camera with the IR filter removed to read the shape and location of an eye’s pupil to determine where the user is looking. This did require cutting a small hole near one of the Oculus’ eye cups, but the internal camera works great.
To get a window to the world, if it were, [Diako] slapped another camera onto the front of the Oculus. These two cameras are fed into the same computer, the gaze tracking is overlaid with the image from the front of the headset, and right away the user has a visual indication of where they’re looking.
Yes, using a computer to know where you’re looking may seem like a rather useless build, but stuff like this is used in research and extraordinarily high tech heads up displays. Although he’s not using the motion tracking on the Oculus, if [Diako] were to do so, he’d have the makings of one of the most powerful heads up displays possible. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1400766",
"author": "Dra",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T20:21:29",
"content": "Oh look, someone’s already put together a DIY version of one of the things I’m afraid will most likely be incorporated into the rift itself. Fantastic.This is one feature I’d really rather facebook not get t... | 1,760,376,215.550713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/hackaday-space-transmission-3-puzzles-explained/ | Hackaday Space: Transmission 3 Puzzles Explained | Ben Delarre | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ARG",
"audio",
"encryption",
"openssl",
"puzzle",
"stenography"
] | Yesterday we did a run down of Transmission 2 as part of a series of posts covering the ARG that we ran throughout April. Today I’m going to reveal all the details in Transmission 3, how we put it together and what the answers were.
In classic Hackaday fashion we hadn’t planned any of this, so by this point all our initial ideas we already used up and we were now running out of creativity so it was a real slog to get Transmission 3 out the gate. However we somehow managed it and opened Transmission 3 by
posting a series of 5 images of space telescopes
:
Major Tom also
posted a new page Transmission #3
on his profile with the image below and the text “Confirm launch site”:
Since the last puzzle was solved in just a few hours, and the first in a mere 20 minutes we decided we needed to up the difficulty on this one. We were hoping it would take a few days, which I think would have been about right if a couple of things hadn’t gone completely wrong…
Hidden data
The telescope images are much bigger in file size than they have any right to be. Those of you that noticed this soon discovered that there was a block of data tacked on the end of each file. This is a lovely little trick that takes advantage of the fact that the
JPEG file format
has an End Of Information marker at the end of the file, 0xFF 0xD9. You simply tack on whatever information you want after this byte and the jpg file is magically still valid. You can do this with the copy command on Windows “copy /B file.jpg + file2.whatever > hidden.jpg” or with cat on linux “cat file.jpg file2.whatever >> file.jpg”.
We used the same method to append a Minecraft skin onto the end of the Transmission 3 rocket image, this was just a little easter egg hint towards the following week’s puzzle.
So everyone found the data blocks at the end of the telescope images, giving them 5 binary files but no clue as to what they were. After a little while a couple of people on the IRC channel noticed that the data blocks contained the word ‘Salt’. It became clear that this was
an OpenSSL encoded file
since the first 8 bytes of the file started with the word ‘Salted__’ indicating that the file was
encrypted with a salted password
. The chase for the appropriate decryption methods started to heat up.
People got really ingenious here trying all manner of tools. One person even wrote a script to try to brute force the encryption method using every available option in OpenSSL. Many passwords were tried and everyone worked really hard on this for hours. The files were encoded with OpenSSL using the aes-256-cbc encryption method, the password for which was given out in the hidden data in Transmission 1, “I’m floating in a most peculiar way”, or so we thought. It turned out that when I had encoded these files at the command line on Windows the apostrophe had been swallowed up resulting in the password actually being “Im floating in a most peculiar way”. Thankfully someone tried decoding on Windows eventually and they cracked it, everyone in IRC figured it out from there and soon all 5 files were decoded and discovered to be MP3 files:
1
2
3
4
5
Generating Audio Puzzles
When the MP3s were found the first thing everyone noticed was the little easter egg we hid inside the noise in the video. We were inspired by the
hidden images
that [Aphex Twin] encoded into his release of Windowlicker back in the late 90’s. So of course since we were releasing audio files we just had to encode the Hackaday logo into the audio:
From these spectrographs you can see the Jolly Wrencher very clearly, and you can also see how each file is band pass filtered to a specific set of frequencies.
The images were created using the tool
Coagula
. Using this tool and its basic settings you can import an image and have it converted into an audio file. There’s a few settings to play with but we found that using the ‘Render the image without noise’ option made the best result when played back in various audio players. Using the other option made it very hard to view the image. Once we had the wav files we simply added them as another layer of audio in audacity, this was merged together with a noise track and an audio track from [Brian]. After all the effects were applied we then added hi and lo pass filters to place the audio in a range that was some multiple of the reception range of each telescope. I believe we took each telescopes frequency range and divided it by 250,000 to end up with something in the range of human hearing.
We also added one additional easter egg, we had calculated how long it would take for a radio transmission to go from Major Toms position in orbit to each of the telescopes in the images. 3 of the scopes would never have received the audio, but 2 of them would have. So in the ID3 comment field in the MP3s we added the following information:
Transmission received at T-1090800.0222786265106846
Transmission received at T-1090800.0296872268554892
This indicated the time at which each scope would have received the signal. We had hoped that with this information in hand some enterprising folks would have worked out how to triangulate Major Tom from his orbital inclination, altitude and the longitude/latitude of each of the telescopes. In theory this is still possible, but we’re not exactly sure of the answer ourselves! If anyone out there has a good explanation of how to do this sort of math to figure out where Major Tom was at the time of Transmission 3 then we would love to hear it in the comments.
What on Earth?
Once everyone had found the audio files they began trying to extract the audio from the noise to decipher the words that were being said. In each track 2 words were spoken. On some of the files this was pretty easy, words like ‘Earth’ and ‘Ground’ were quite easy to distinguish. However it appears that while it was easy for us to figure out what was said it was very very hard for someone who didn’t know what the words were supposed to be. In typical fashion we didn’t have time to test the files on people who weren’t already familiar with them so we ended up making the files far too noisy for anyone to understand. That’s not to say that you all didn’t try really hard, there were some very valiant attempts to clean up the audio and remove the image noise, some more successful than others. In the end I believe all but 3 words were unidentified.
Since it became clear nobody was going to get any closer we decided that we had to help everyone along with this one so we posted out an email to the 1000 or so people who had signed up on April 1st. This email contained the following text:
A signal was received from Major Tom at 00:01 on 15/04/2014, transmission archive available here:
http://hackaday.com/2014/04/15/119822/
A pirate signal was detected on the transmission and has since been removed. Clean transmission data is now available at the following locations:
http://hackaday.s3.amazonaws.com/space/1.mp3
http://hackaday.s3.amazonaws.com/space/2.mp3
http://hackaday.s3.amazonaws.com/space/3.mp3
http://hackaday.s3.amazonaws.com/space/4.mp3
http://hackaday.s3.amazonaws.com/space/5.mp3
Please confirm launch site coordinates.
The links lead to cleaner versions of each file. As soon as these went out we immediately had people responding with the words they could now hear clearly.
“Earth Farad”
“Joule Circuit”
“Amp Gain”
“Electron Capacitor”
“Dielectric Diode”
Codewords
The question then became what did they mean? A lot of ideas were floated around. My favorite by far was the idea that these words were hidden throughout Hackaday posts to create a secret message based on the position of the words in each post, or some other variation therein. I really wish I had come up with that, but sadly it was much simpler.
The first letter of each word mapped to a 0 indexed number where A=0, B=1, C=2 etc. This gave us the following numbers, 45 92 06 42 33. From here it took a while for everyone to guess what these might mean eventually somebody hit on the idea of these numbers being a longitude and latitude, 45.920N 64.233E. This didn’t point to a location of any particular interest, but was quite close to the
Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan. Since the target was a little off the folks on IRC quickly discarded this as an option and moved on to other things. Later on someone more persistent tried every possible combination of the 5 pairs of numbers and plotted them all on a google map from there it became clear that the last two numbers had been reversed and that the correct answer was in fact the Site 1 launch pad (
Gagarin’s Start
) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
We’re really sorry that the guys that first went down this track missed the solution, this was in part our fault in that we had decided to make it harder to find the right coordinates. The intention was to have the numbers scrambled in a random order, but if you rearranged them into the telescope coordinate latitude order then they would point to the correct location. Of course I randomized the coordinates by hand and ended up with the first 3 being in the correct order which made the whole thing a little misleading. Still, brute force wins all and eventually the solution was found.
After the correct coordinates were confirmed and posted to the Transmission 3 page we had Ground Control issue another message to close the round:
Major Tom, this is Ground Control.
Launch site confirmed.
Await rescue mission at T-525600. Suit up!
This time we returned to the T-seconds notation we used in Transmission 1, more confusion, but by now everyone was getting the idea to expect another puzzle each week so it didn’t matter much! The next transmission was to come out a week before the announcement of
The Hackaday Prize
so we decided it needed to be something big and inclusive, but more on that tomorrow.
To Be Continued… | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1400088",
"author": "fhfjcjkej",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T17:16:23",
"content": "I don’t care about your tricks and games. Canonisation od Polish Pope John Paul II is what matters for most od US.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,215.964699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/airchat-the-wireless-mesh-network-from-lulzlabs/ | Airchat, The Wireless Mesh Network From Lulzlabs | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"airchat",
"mesh network",
"packet radio"
] | With the lessons learned from the Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian revolutions, a few hardware and software hackers over at Lulzlabs have taken it upon themselves to create a free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech digital communications protocol that doesn’t deal with expensive, highly-surveilled commercial and government controlled infrastructure.
They call it Airchat
, and it’s an impressive piece of work if you don’t care about silly things like ‘laws’.
Before going any further, we have to say
yes
, this does use amateur radio bands, and
yes,
they’re using (optional) encryption, and
no
, the team behind Airchat isn’t complying with all FCC and other amateur radio rules and regulations. Officially, we have to say the FCC (and similar agencies in other countries) have been granted the power – by the people – to regulate the radio spectrum, and you really shouldn’t disobey them. Notice the phrasing in that last sentence, and draw your own philosophical conclusions.
Airchat uses an off the shelf amateur transmitter, a Yaesu 897D in the example video below although a $30 Chinese handheld radio will do, to create a mesh network between other Airchat users running the same software. The protocol is based on the Lulzpacket, a few bits of information that give the message error correction and a random code to identify the packet. Each node in this mesh network is defined by it’s ability to decrypt messages. There’s no hardware ID, and no plain text transmitter identification. It’s the mesh network you want if you’re under the thumb of an oppressive government.
Airchat has already been used to play chess with people 180 miles away, controlled a 3D printer over 80 miles, and has been used to share pictures and voice chats. It’s still a proof of concept, and the example use cases – NGOs working in Africa, disaster response, and expedition base camps – are noble enough to not dismiss this entirely. | 86 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "1399515",
"author": "Waterjet",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T14:16:11",
"content": "Pretty sure there is no FCC in Egypt?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "2943296",
"author": "sonofthunderboanerges",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,216.151433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall/ | Mirror Mirror On The Wall… | Adam Fabio | [
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Magic Mirror",
"One Way Glass",
"raspberry pi"
] | Who wouldn’t want a mirror that compliments them first thing in the morning? [Michael]’s
Magic Mirror
does this and more. [Michael] got the idea for his mirror during an epic Macy’s shopping trip with his girlfriend. While looking for a
boyfriend chair
, [Michael] noticed a mirror with a lighted sign behind it. Intrigued by the effect, [Michael] realized he could build it – and build it better!
Back at home [Michael] set to work. The Magic Mirror uses a piece of one-way mirror, similar to
infinity mirrors
. Instead of LED’s and another mirror, [Michael] wanted to embed an entire monitor behind the glass. In order to keep the mirror thin, [Michael] needed a monitor with cables exiting toward the side or bottom rather than directly out the back. He found what he was looking for in an Iiyama monitor. Yanking the case off a brand new LCD can be a bit nerve-wracking, but [Michael] pulled it off in pursuit of a thin final product.
Magic Mirror’s frame is built with standard 2×4 lumber. [Michael] had the foresight to include some cooling holes for the heat generated by the monitor. The heavy 6.5Kg final product required a double mounting point.
With a good-looking case, it was time to get some equally good-looking data to display. [Michael] used a Raspberry Pi to drive his display. He switched the Pi’s display mode to portrait and installed Chromium in kiosk mode. The entire mirror is essentially a web page. [Michael] used some simple HTML, CSS and Javascript to pull time and weather data down from various feeds. The page is rendered in a clean Helvetica
Nueve
Neue font with matching icons. A handsome build indeed! | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1398838",
"author": "ka1axy",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T11:11:59",
"content": "I call ’em “guy chairs”. All the better stores have them, and a few of the stores really “get it”, going the whole way with comfy chairs, couches and side tables with magazines. Hey, the more comfortabl... | 1,760,376,216.217203 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/05/01/straw-based-filament/ | Straw Based Filament? | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing filament",
"filament materials",
"straw based filaments",
"straw filament"
] | PLA (polyactic acid) is often toted as one of the most environmentally friendly and safe filaments for consumer printing, since it is derived from corn products — not fossil fuels. But there’s a new contender on the market, and that is a type of
straw-based plastic filament
— which also promises to cost around half as much!
Designed by a Chinese company called Jinghe, the material is made by grinding up various dried crops like wheat, rice, and cotton, which in China is typically burned to get dispose of. The sawdust is then mixed with additives like polypropylene, silane coupling agent, and ethylene bis(stearamide). It is then extruded into a pellets of uniform size to allow for easier processing. From there it can be used for injection molding (melting temperature between 160-180
°
C), or further extruded into filament form. The filament and resulting prints are a woody color with an interesting fiber-like surface finish, with decent part strength.
The company has signed a $320,000 USD contract with the Shantou city government to produce this type of plastic for toys in the European market — If production ramps up, it could well become one of the cheapest filaments available!
We like to cover all these
alternative filaments
as they come out, and there is becoming quite a selection! If you hear of any new materials used for printing, don’t forget to send them in to the
tips line!
[Via
3ders.org
] | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1398299",
"author": "Parko",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T08:15:50",
"content": "Next stop; hemp based filament aka the stuff used to make car panels pre prohibition",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1398388",
"author": "qwe... | 1,760,376,216.031936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/c64-midi-and-flash-cart/ | C64 MIDI And Flash Cart | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore",
"commodore 64",
"midi",
"sid"
] | The SID chip inside the Commodore 64 and 128 is arguably still the gold standard for chip tunes, and the C64 itself still a decent computer for MIDI sequencing. [Frank Buss] realized most of the MIDI cartridges for the Commodore computers are either out of production or severely limited,
so he set out to create his own
.
Unlike the few Commodore MIDI cartridges that are available, [Frank]’s Kerberos has MIDI In, Out, and Thru, controlled by the 6850 ACIA chip, just like the old 80s interfaces. This allows the Kerberos to interface with the old Sequential Circuits, Passport, and Datel software. He’s offering the Kerberos cart up on a
crowdfunding site
, so if you’d like to grab your own, have at it.
Because the Kerberos is also a Flash cart, it also
ships
with some of this software; [Frank] got permission from Steinberg to install their Pro 16 software with the Kerberos.
SID Wizard
is also pre-loaded on the cart, along with a few other fabulous trackers and sequencers. Of course, there’s no requirement for the Flash portion of the cart to only host MIDI and synth software. You can always upload a few games to the cart over a MIDI interface. Video of the Kerberos below. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1397848",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T05:18:08",
"content": "I knew the Kerberos had three heads, but until I saw this logo I didn’t know it also had three ummm…. yeah, I’ll leave it there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,216.337385 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/using-a-thinkpad-keyboard-over-usb/ | Using A ThinkPad Keyboard Over USB | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"Laptop keyboard",
"lenovo",
"lenovo keyboard",
"usb"
] | It doesn’t have buckling springs, Cherry blues, or even the wonderful if forgotten Alps switches, but the keyboard found in ThinkPads has the best keyboard action of any laptop around. They would make a great USB conversion keyboard, but the board to board connector is very hard to find, and no one has yet managed to get the keyboard and track point working as a USB HID device.
Until [rampadc] came along, that is
.
[Rampadc]’s keyboard adapter is built for the ThinkPad T60 keyboard, which is shared between the Lenovo T60, T61, Z60, Z61, R400, R500, T400, T500, and X41 laptops, among many others. The connector is an extremely odd proprietary deal, that can be found through the usual channels for about $5 in quantity 100. On top of this, the keyboard doesn’t have a controller – that’s offloaded to the laptop’s main board. The only electronics in this keyboard is just a matrix. Despite all this, [rampadc] managed to create a breakout board with a decade counter and an SPI GPIO expander.
The board [rampadc] made features one of the proprietary connectors, a few chips, and a receptacle for an Arduino Micro. With just
a little bit of code
, the old keyboard becomes one of the best portable keyboards in existence, and probably a bit cheaper than the official Lenovo USB-bound ThinkPad keyboard.
[rampadc] has a few of the expansion boards available
over on Tindie
should you want to build your own. It’s only cost-effective if you have one of these T60 keyboards sitting around in a junk pile; not a likely situation because these machines just don’t die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDHS0D_EtOc&
; | 31 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1397439",
"author": "kooz",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T03:20:43",
"content": "Reading this post via my trusty T60p. Nice props for a nice machine (and its keyboard). If the ol’ girl ever does kick the bucket, I’ll consider putting this hack to good use!",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,216.526011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/the-hacklet-2/ | The Hacklet #2 | Eric Evenchick | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"3d printer",
"automotive",
"CAN",
"hacklet",
"leds"
] | A
new edition of The Hacklet
is now available It covers some of our favorite stuff going on in the Hackaday Projects community.
In this edition, we round up a few hacks involving cars. There’s Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, vehicle telematics, and tools to hack into your car’s CAN bus. If you’ve ever wanted to clear that pesky check engine light without paying the dealer, or unlock your car with a smart watch, these are worth a look.
Next up are a bunch of LED hacks. This starts with a DIY theater light, then looks at a portable DJ booth, finishing off with our Evil Overlords’ own LED visualization platform.
Finally, we check out a new 3D printer design. This one uses polar coordinates instead of the Cartesian coordinate system that most printers use. This gives it the unique ability to print with multiple extruders at the same time.
Once again, let us know what you think of this edition in the comments. Our goal is to keep you entertained with some of the coolest hacks on the site. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1398634",
"author": "Klingon#2",
"timestamp": "2014-05-01T10:10:58",
"content": "How about making this a rss feed?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,216.37778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/the-zorkduino/ | The Zorkduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"infocom"
] | Zork, the famous Infocom text-based adventure game, is actually quite the technical achievement in software engineering. It’s an amazingly large world to explore, albeit in text form only, running on an interpreter that allows paging, loading, and saving the complete state. All this, built to run on computers with meager amounts of RAM in the late 70s. You might think it would be easy to play Zork on an Arduino, but as [rossum] found out,
that’s easier said than done
(
alternate blog link
)
While most computers that were capable of running Zork had at least 8k of RAM, if not more, the ATMega328 in the Arduino only has 2k of RAM. Those fancy home computers of yore also had built-in video, a keyboard, and most of the time, a disk drive. The Arduino has none of that.
[Rossum] faced this challenge head on, capitalizing on the onboard hardware of the Arduino. Video is generated by using SPI mode on a UART at top speed – 8 MHz. This just shifts out pixels from the video buffer on an SD card. The keyboard is handled like any other PS/2 keyboard project on the Arduino, and audio is generated by toggling a pin at 1000Hz for a keypress, and 3600Hz for SD card access.
The finished product includes a bunch of other Infocom games on the SD card, including
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
, and the ability to run
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
,
the game regarded by many as being better than the book. Video below. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1396603",
"author": "Z00111111",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T23:43:00",
"content": "How can you have a game better than the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy book? I’ve encountered nothing of the genre better than that book yet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,216.65864 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/community-weigh-in-for-sci-fi-contest/ | Community Weigh-In For Sci-Fi Contest | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"community",
"sci-fi contest",
"voting"
] | The entry period for the Sci-Fi Contest ended at mid-night yesterday morning. Now’s the time to weigh-in as ten prizes will be awarded based on the community outpouring for the project.
Go check out all of the projects that were entered
and register your opinion through “Follow Project” and/or “Give a Skull” buttons.
We’re hoping to announce judging decisions for the contest on Thursday, May 8th. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1396587",
"author": "Z00111111",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T23:38:20",
"content": "I haven’t had an opportunity to do more than look at a few of the pictures from the project hosting pages, but the host pages have got to be the best thing that’s happened to HaD, and it’s not bad for t... | 1,760,376,216.856041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/this-is-not-a-camera/ | This Is Not-A-Camera | James Hobson | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"not-a-camera",
"notacamera",
"olivia barr"
] | What’s this? A 2-Dimensional wooden camera cut-out? Nope. We lied — it’s actually a digital camera
squeezed into 1/2″ sheet of walnut
!
[Olivia Barr the Third] originally made this for her 101-year-old grandmother [Olivia Barr the First], who recently got into photography in her late 90’s! [Olivia] wanted to make her a digital camera that was light and easy to use. She succeeded and has started an art project over at
notacamera.tumblr.com
— Spy photography? Kind of?
The small 3″ x 3.5″ camera packs an HD video camera with 16-bit mono audio, and is able to take 1280 x 960 stills. It uses a microSD card, a 3.6v 250mAh battery and has a power button, status LEDs and even a USB port. It was laser cut out of 3 sheets of walnut board and glued together, sandwiching the components in place.
Just for fun, she’s also made a “selfie” version which is laser etched onto a piece of mirror for easy framing of your face. | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1395859",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T20:04:17",
"content": "Head struggling to expand to truly appreciate the entirety of this.(Kudos!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1396003",
"author": "r4k",
... | 1,760,376,216.813058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/hackaday-space-transmission-2-puzzles-explained/ | Hackaday Space: Transmission 2 Puzzles Explained | Ben Delarre | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ARG",
"major tom",
"number station",
"puzzle",
"riddle",
"stenography"
] | So yesterday we gave you
a round up of Transmission 1
which went out on April 1st. We quickly went from having to put something fun together for April 1st to running a full month-long ARG making things very very hectic at SupplyFrame HQ. Let’s take a look at what pearls of data were hidden in the week 2 offerings of the Alternate Reality Game. In case you’ve been stuck somewhere without Internet for a couple of days, the game was a lead up to announcing
The Hackaday Prize
.
Transmission 2 started with the following video appearing at the top of the Hackaday blog:
Major Tom in parallel then posted the following image on a page entitled
Transmission 2
.
Since everyone assumed there was steganography used in the image from the previous transmission we decided we’d use that method to hide some data in this transmission. In order to do this though we needed you to find some keys and the appropriate steganography method to decode the data with. So we decided to hide some clues in the video.
The video was largely made up by our friends over at
IcoEx
, but we wanted to encode some information in it. Inside the video (if you look carefully) are two almost subliminal images hidden in the noise, these are images made famous by [Bob Widlar]. As an additional clue we posted [Alek’s]
epic article about [Bob]
and his infamous career.
Additionally in the video you will hear our very own [Brian Benchoff] reading out a series of numbers in the style of the old school
Number Stations
. The series of numbers in the audio is 921763865 which is the decimal representation of an IP address
54.241.0.25
. If you try to load this in a web server you get a simple response containing the following text:
DO AUTHENTICATION WILL ENCRYPT DO TERMINAL TYPE DO TSPEED DO XDISPLOC DO NEW-ENVIRON DO ENVIRON WILL SUPPRESS GO AHEAD DO ECHO DO LINEMODE DO NAWS WILL STATUS DO LFLOW DO TIMING-MARK
This looks a little odd without line-breaks (which is how it renders in a browser), but is actually the options statements that are issued by a telnet server when you first connect to it. This was enough of a clue that everyone then found the telnet server which gave them the prompt: ‘groundcontrol login:’. The username and password for this was a little obtuse, but was unearthed fairly quickly. It was ‘bob:widlar’ which is pretty obvious when you figure out the subliminal images.
Once into the telnet server you found yourself in a very restricted account with a home folder that contained 2 files and a folder. The folder was a complete red herring, we found the Apollo Guidance Computer source code earlier in the week when looking around for possible puzzle ideas and ended up dumping it into the home folder just for kicks. We had toyed with making you program the AGC using the fabulous
MoonJS
port, but it turned out to be pretty complex and we decided instead to go with something else. We were, however, very impressed at several people who downloaded the source, checked it for differences against the original, and even managed to get it to compile! Hackaday readers once again showing their persistence and ingenuity.
The other two files in the home folder were a file named ‘keyfile’ and a textfile called ‘reminder.txt’. The keyfile contained 3 sets of strings:
9186743BFDA92EE261752C138EBCD
FD332A7F1B1347BAFBA673B13EE3D
2D34FBA5FFBC69D2FBC1C1C25C484
The second file contained the text of the popular song
Puff, the Magic Dragon
written by [Leonard Lipton] and [Peter Yarrow]. This was a hint towards the popular steganographic encryption tool
Open Puff
. With the keys and Open Puff in hand it was possible to figure out that the 3 strings in the keyfile represented the 3 keys you can pass to Open Puff. Once you dialed in the correct settings you were rewarded with a text file containing the following message:
Current Status
Inclination 52.3
Altitude 439km
O2 76.2%
Once a few people had posted this up to the Transmission 2 page we had Ground Control close this round of the puzzle with the message:
Major Tom, this is Ground Control.
Message received.
Rescue mission planned, crew selection progressing.
Next communication at T-18180
This signalled the end of the second transmission, and pointed to the next one which would be at 18180 minutes from the T=0 time. This was a bit of a mistake on my part, as I still didn’t fully understand how to use the T- notation but had read people trying to solve it as minutes so I switched over to minutes this time. This caused a little confusion, but everyone still got there in the end.
I think this stage of the puzzle went really well, a lot of people contributed to the solution, and there were no major mistakes on our part which made everything go much smoother. At this point a community started to sprout around the puzzles and a new Hackaday IRC channel was born on freenode at
##hackaday
. This later become the unofficial home and hangout for people working on the puzzles and has been an awful lot of fun. There were some outrageous coincidences as well, the ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ clue had unexpected relationships with other space things that we didn’t take into account. Some people thought we were referring to the
Dragon spacecraft
developed by SpaceX, others thought it might be a reference to the
Dragon’s head nebula
. These sorts of coincidences kept cropping up throughout the ARG, but I think they added to the fun.
Transmission 3 was where it all started to go a little bit wrong, but that’s a story for another day. See you tomorrow!
To Be Continued… | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1395320",
"author": "Emerica",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T17:24:39",
"content": "I got AGC to compile. Spent an evening learning how the original was made and how it worked. And then had it ready incase it was going to be needed.I got lucky in Google with openpuff and it was a shot in... | 1,760,376,217.240475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/a-masterpiece-of-3d-printed-case-modding-with-an-ouya/ | A Masterpiece Of 3D Printed Case Modding. With An Ouya. | Brian Benchoff | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"Case mod",
"console mod",
"Ouya",
"portable"
] | We’ve seen a few of [Downing]’s portabalized console builds before,
but this one is his first build in over two years
. That’s a lot of time, and since then he’s picked up a lot of great fabrication techniques, making this one of the best looking portables we’ve ever seen. It’s a repackaging of an Ouya, but we won’t hold that against him, it’s still an amazing piece of work.
In the build log
, [Downing] started off this build by using a 3D printed enclosure, carefully milled, filled, and painted to become one of the best one-off console repackagings we’ve ever seen. The speaker and button cutouts were milled out, and an amazing backlit Ouya logo completes the front.
Stuffing the Ouya controller inside a case with a screen, battery, and the console itself presented a challenge: there is no wired Ouya controller. Everything is over Bluetooth. Luckily, the Bluetooth module inside each controller can be desoldered, and slapped on a small breakout board that’s stuffed in the case.
It’s a great build, and in [Downing]’s defense, the Ouya is
kinda
a cool idea. An idea much better suited to a handheld device, anyway. Videos below. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1394745",
"author": "Slegiar",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T14:22:22",
"content": "oh for petes sake, would people just cut it with the snark against Ouya already? every site or critic can’t seem to resist taking a jab at it now.yeah it may not be that good for gaming, but there’s still... | 1,760,376,217.301941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/a-diy-atomic-force-microscope/ | A DIY Atomic Force Microscope | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"atomic force microscope",
"electron microscope",
"microscope"
] | For looking at really small stuff, an optical microscope will only go so far. Looking at things at the nanometer level, though, usually requires some sort of electron microscope, with all the hassle of vacuum chambers and high voltages. There is another way to investigate the domain of the very small: an atomic force microscope. Unlike their electron spewing brothers, they don’t require high voltages or hard vacuums. T
hey can also be built for about $1000
, as [whoand] over on the Instructables shows us.
Instead of shooting light or electrons at an object and picking up the reflections, an atomic force microscope drags a very, very tiny stylus across an object. This stylus is attached to a probe that will reflect laser light off of it into a photosensor, eventually rendering an image on a display. [whoand] is using a laser diode and pickup unit from a DVD-ROM drive for the optical pickup unit, a frame made from soldered together PCBs, and a few piezos to vibrate the probe.
The probes themselves are incredible pieces of engineering with a tip size of a few nanometers. They’re consumable, and expensive, ranging from $20 to $500 per probe. Still, with these probes, [whoand] can look at the pits in a CD or DVD, measure the surface of an eraser, or check out the particulate matter floating around in the atmosphere in Beijing.
Thanks [Rob] for the tip. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1391441",
"author": "ejonesss",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T15:15:37",
"content": "maybe built for even less1. the cd player deck you can get from any junk cd player (unless you need new laser) even then the players are very cheap usually double digits.2. unless you need specific value... | 1,760,376,217.059208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/solderless-tag-connect-for-flashing-routers/ | Solderless Pogo-Pins For Flashing Routers | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"tag connector",
"tp-link",
"WR740N",
"WR741ND"
] | Low-cost wireless routers are a dime a dozen these days — but what happens if you need to flash the firmware? Normally you’d have to solder in a serial connection in order to access it, but [Luka Mustafa] had another idea —
pogo-pins!
It’s actually quite easy to make a small PCB with pogo-pins and then use a 3D printed bracket or alignment jig in order to make connection. They currently only have designs for a few TP-Links (WR740 and WR741ND) on their
GitHub
, but more will be added soon. They’ve also included instructions on how to restore firmware on any of these devices with their handy-dandy pogo-pin PCB.
[Luka] is one of the guys behind
IRNAS
(the acronym is in Slovenian), a non-profit open-source company that makes lots of
cool projects
. They believe in open-source and sharing technology in order to empower the world.
And if you’ve royally bricked your router it could be possible
to unbrick it with a Raspberry Pi! | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1390979",
"author": "ejonesss",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T11:19:34",
"content": "and the good part you dont void the warrantyprovided there are no external visible tamper detectors like stickers or glue in the seams.they have to look to the solder points on the board.if you should bo... | 1,760,376,216.975877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/a-simple-programmable-electronic-load-using-the-arduino/ | A Simple Programmable Electronic Load Using The Arduino | Nick Conn | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"constant current",
"constant current source",
"constant load",
"constant power",
"constant resistance",
"dac",
"electronic load",
"load"
] | Some projects are both educational and useful. We believe that [Jasper’s] Arduino based
electronic load
is one of those project.
[Jasper’s] electronic load can not only act as a constant current load, but also as a constant power and constant resistive load as well. The versatile device has been designed for up to 30V, 5A, and 15W. It was based on a constant current source that is controlled by a DAC hooked up to the Arduino. By measuring both the resulting voltage and current of the load, the system can dynamically adapt to achieve constancy. While we have seen
other Arduino based constant loads
before, [Jasper’s] is very simple and straight forward compartively. [Jasper] also includes both the schematic and Arduino code, making it very easy to reproduce.
There are tons of uses for a voltage controlled
current source
, and this project is a great way to get started with building one. It is an especially great project for putting together your knowledge of MOSFET theory and opamp theory! | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1390789",
"author": "arachnidster",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T09:49:51",
"content": "Nice project! It’s worth pointing out that while constant current mode is implemented with a hardware feedback loop, constant power and resistance modes require software feedback.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,376,217.365941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/replicator-1-receives-a-pid-controlled-heated-chamber/ | Replicator 1 Receives A PID Controlled Heated Chamber | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"heated build enclosure",
"heated enclosure",
"makerbot",
"pid control",
"replicator 1"
] | Improving 3D print quality is a bit of a black magic — there are tons of little tweaks you can do to your printer to help it, but in the end you’re just going to have to try
everything.
Adding a
heated build enclosure
however is one of those things almost guaranteed to improve the print quality of ABS parts!
And for good reason too — heated build enclosures are one of the outstanding
“patented 3D printing technologies”
—
It’s why you don’t see any consumer printers with that feature. Anyway, [Bryan] just sent us his upgrade to his Makerbot Replicator 1, and it’s a pretty slick system. His goal was to add the heated enclosure to the printer as unobtrusively as possible — no need for people to think his printer is an even bigger fire hazard!
What we like about [Bryan’s] build is that he makes use of a PID controller which allows him to set the build chamber temperature to anything he wants (+/- 1 degree). He’s also decided to use a high quality heater that is actually designed for heating enclosures, making it a much safer upgrade than just throwing in a little heater element with a fan to help spread it around. One thing to note about heated build chambers though — you have to make sure you don’t fry your electronics or steppers! [Bryan’s] has used reflective insulation to help keep the heat in the chamber only, and has added heat sinks onto all of the steppers.
And if you’re more of a RepRap kind of printer,
we’ve got you covered too! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1393044",
"author": "soundman98",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T04:05:03",
"content": "woudn’t adding heatsinks to some of the stepper motors change the weight placed on the gantry and affect the quality of the print?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,219.22242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/profiling-an-arduino/ | Profiling An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"debugging",
"profiling"
] | In proper, high-dollar embedded development environments – and quite a few free and open source ones, as well – you get really cool features like debugging, emulation, and profiling. The Arduino IDE doesn’t feature any of these bells a whistles, so figuring out how much time is spent in one section of code is nigh impossible. [William]
came up with a clever solution to this problem
, and while it doesn’t tell you exactly how much time is spent on a specific line of code, it’s still a good enough tool to be a great help in optimization.
[William]’s solution is to create a ‘bin’ for arbitrary chunks of code – one for each subroutine or deeply nested loop. When the profiler run, you end up with a histogram of how much time is spent per block of code. This is done with an interrupt that runs at about 1 kHz, with macros sprinkled around the code. Each time the interrupt ticks, the macro runs and increases a counter by one. Let the sketch run for a minute or so, and you get an idea of how much time is spent in a specific area of code.
It’s a bit of a kludge, but when you’re dealing with extremely minimal tools, any sort of help in debugging is sorely needed and greatly appreciated. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1390220",
"author": "Robert Getzner",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T06:11:54",
"content": "I still prefer to toggle some digital pins before/after critical code and check runtime on the oscilloscope. Of course an Oscilloscope is some luxury when working with Arduino….",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,376,219.277116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/cheap-under-cabinet-lights-reimagined-as-photography-lighting/ | Cheap Under-Cabinet Lights Reimagined As Photography Lighting | Rich Bremer | [
"how-to"
] | [
"camera",
"lights",
"photography"
] | Professional photography lighting can be expensive. Sometimes the professional photographer may not want (or need) to spend the big bucks on lighting. [Alex] is one of those folks. He needed a specialized light source and instead of going out and buying some, he
made exactly what he needed
out of components unlikely to be found in a photography studio.
The project started off with some off the shelf $12 Home Depot under-cabinet lights. Foam core board was attached to the sides of each light to adjust the beam’s width. Opening and closing these foam flaps allow the light beam to be adjusted to ensure the perfect shot. The entire assembly was then taped to long, thin pieces of wood. The wood’s sole purpose is to facilitate mounting of the light.
This project is a low-buck as you can get and the results are exactly what [Alex] was looking for. The moral of the story is that a little ingenuity goes a long way and great results don’t have to be expensive. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1389656",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T02:14:48",
"content": "Slits of light are cool. The subject won’t mind the colour balance, may even look great. Florescent lights are poor colour light, and hard to correct in editing. Remove tape when done or face goo and pa... | 1,760,376,219.328236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/isee-3-dream-team-needs-your-help/ | ISEE-3 Dream Team Needs Your Help | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ICE/ISEE-3",
"ISEE-3",
"nasa",
"space"
] | The mission to save ISEE-3 has is underway. The ISEE-3 Reboot Project has
posted a crowdfunding campaign on Rockethub.
When we
first covered the ISEE-3
story no one had heard from it since 2008. Since then
AMSAT-DL, an amateur radio group in Germany has received signals
from the probe.
The ISEE-3 Reboot Project is being managed by [Dennis Wingo] and [Keith Cowing], the same two men who spearheaded the effort to
recover NASA’s Lunar Orbiter images
from
old magnetic tapes
. They did most of their work using restored 1960’s equipment in a vacant McDonald’s.
The goal of the ISEE Reboot Project is to return ISEE-3 to its original Earth/Sun
Lagrange point
L1 orbit. Once safely back in orbit, it will be used for STEM education, amateur radio solar predictions, and for science about the sun. In
[Dennis Wingo’s] own words
If we can do this, we will have an open source, publicly accessible satellite data stream of the first open source satellite above Low Earth Orbit.
[Wingo] and [Cowing] aren’t alone in this effort; they are working with a venerable dream team. In addition to getting the nod from NASA, the team also has the help of [Dr. Robert Farquhar], the orbital dynamics guru who originally designed ISEE-3’s comet intercept orbit . [Farquhar] has an extremely personal reason to participate in this project. In 1982 he “borrowed” the satellite to go comet hunting. Once that mission was complete,
he promised to give ISEE-3 back
. [Dr. Farquhar] and his team designed the maneuvers required to bring ISEE-3 back to L1 orbit back in the 1980’s. This includes a breathtaking moon flyby at an altitude of less than 50 km. Seriously, we want to see this guy’s KSP missions.
Communicating with the ISEE-3 is going to take some serious power and antenna gain. The project has this in the form of a
21 meter dish
at Moorehead State University in Kentucky, USA, and the
Arecibo Observatory
. Arecibo should be
well-known to our readers by now
. Moorehead and Arecibo have both received signals from ISEE-3. The reboot project team is also working directly with the AMSAT-DL team in Germany.
If this effort seems a bit rushed, that’s because time is very short. To implement [Dr. Farquhar’s] plan, ISEE-3 must fire its thrusters by late June 2014. In just two months the team needs to create software to implement ISEE-3’s communications protocols, obtain and install transmitters at Moorehead and Aricibo, and send some basic commands to the craft. Only then can they begin to ascertain ISEE-3’s overall health in preparation for a thruster burn.
If the ISEE-3 Reboot Project succeeds, we’ll have an accessible satellite well outside of low Earth orbit. If it fails, Issac Newton will remain at the helm. ISEE-3 will fly right past Earth, not to be seen again until August 2029.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJw3XsmJIUs | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1388841",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T20:27:01",
"content": "” In just two months the team needs to create software” … And yet they’re not asking for coders, rocket scientists, or any other technical help, they just want cash…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,219.388473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/finally-a-desktop-cnc-machine-with-a-real-spindle/ | Finally, A Desktop CNC Machine With A Real Spindle | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"CNC mill",
"desktop mill",
"mill",
"Nomad",
"router"
] | While cheap hobby CNC mills and routers are great machines that allow you to build things a 3D printer just can’t handle, they do have their limitations. They’re usually powered by a Dremel or other rotary tool, so speed control of the spindle via Gcode is nigh impossible. They’re also usually built with a piece of plywood as the bed – cheap, but not high on repeatability.
The Nomad CNC mill fixes these problems
, and manages to look good and be pretty cheap, to boot.
Instead of using a Dremel or other rotary tool to cut materials, the Nomad team is using a brushless DC motor connected to a real spindle. With a few certain motors, this allows for closed loop control of the spindle; Sending S4000 Gcode to the mill will spin the spindle at 4000 RPM, and S6000 runs the spindle at 6000 RPM, whether it’s going through foam or aluminum. This is something you just can’t do with the Dremel or DeWalt rotary tools found in most desktop mills and routers.
Along with a proper spindle, the Nomad also features homing switches, a tool length probe, and a few included fixtures that make two-sided machining – the kind you need it you’re going to machine a two-layer PCB – possible, and pretty simple, too. The softwares controlling the mill are Carbide Motion and MeshCAM, a pretty popular and well put together CNC controller. Of course the mill itself speaks Gcode, so it will work with open source CNC software.
It’s all a very slick and well put together package. Below you can find a video of the Nomad milling out a Hackaday logo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifs2vF5CT9w | 91 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1394240",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T11:29:38",
"content": "A stepper motor driving the bit? What is this madness?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1394290",
"author": "Brenden",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,219.59118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/umotio-an-arduino-compatible-3d-gesture-controller/ | UMotio: An Arduino Compatible 3D Gesture Controller | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"3d gesture",
"gesture recognition",
"umotio"
] | The Mooltipass project USB code contributor [Tom] and his friend [Ignatius] recently launched their Indiegogo campaign: meet the 3D gesture controller
uMotio
(Indiegogo link). As [Tom] has been spending much of his personal time helping the Mooltipass community, we figured that a nice way to thank him would be to try making their great open project one step closer to a disseminated product.
As you can see in the video embedded after the break, the uMotio is a plug and play system (detected as a USB HID joystick & keyboard with a CDC port) that can be used in many different scenarios: gaming, computer control, domotics, music, etc… The platform is based around an ATMega32u4 and the
much discussed
MGC3130
3D tracking and gesture controller. This allows a 0 to 15cm detection range with a resolution of up to 150dpi. uMotio is Arduino compatible so adapting it to your particular project can be done in no time especially using its dedicated expansion header and libraries. The uMotio blue even integrates an internal Li-ion battery and a Bluetooth Low Energy module.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4TGDb1Fyg | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1393674",
"author": "hemalchevli",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T08:32:40",
"content": "I like this better ootsidebox(dot)com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1393919",
"author": "Mathieu Stephan",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,219.452287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/handmade-acrylic-skeleton-clock-is-an-impressive-feat-of-scroll-sawing/ | Handmade Acrylic Skeleton Clock Is An Impressive Feat Of Scroll Sawing | James Hobson | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"skeleton clock"
] | For one of his mechanical engineering school projects, [Ben Murton] decided to design and build a clock from scratch — and while it may look like it was laser cut…
He cut it out all by hand.
It’s a cross between the mechanical workings of an old Grandfather clock and a
Skeleton clock
— the goal was to have all movements visible to see how the clock operates. He designed it using Autodesk Inventor, and has provided the
files online for anyone to use
— He notes it would be especially easy to make if you have a laser cutter or CNC router!
Anyway, the clock is made out of 3mm thick acrylic, 5mm brass shafts, nylon string, some heavy weights (lead), and some nuts and screws. After printing out his CAD templates, [Ben] carefully used a scroll saw to cut out
every
gear and linkage — We’re impressed.
Perhaps the most impressive part of this is that he opted for a gravity driven clock instead of just throwing a stepper and microcontroller on the back — it’s nice to see purely mechanical projects are still being done! | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1393210",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T05:17:24",
"content": "“After printing out his CAD templates, [Ben] carefully used a scroll saw to cut out every gear and linkage — We’re impressed.”…uhhh“Because Autodesk Inventor was used to design the clock, all the files neede... | 1,760,376,219.09382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/attiny85-data-acquisition/ | ATtiny85 Data Acquisition | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"data acquisition",
"V-USB"
] | The folks at Ivmech recently had a need for some new hardware. They needed a small, cheap device able to sense some analog values, toggle a few digital pins, and log everything to a computer.
What they came up
with is the IViny, an extremely small data acquisition device built around the ATtiny85, capable of logging data to a computer.
The IViny features two digital channels and two 10 bit analog channels, just like you’d find in any ATtiny85 project. Power is supplied over USB, and a connection to a computer is provided by V-USB. There’s also
a pretty cool Python app
that goes along with the project able to plot the analog inputs and control the digital I/O on the device.
It’s not exactly a fast device – the firmware only supports 100 samples per second, but an upcoming firmware upgrade will improve that. Still, if you ever need to read some analog values or toggle a few pins on the cheap, it’s a nice little USB Swiss army knife to have. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1392837",
"author": "bobfeg",
"timestamp": "2014-04-30T02:48:14",
"content": "Nice project. I just love the tiny85 and the tiny84.So cheap, so simple, and yet able to do so much.Just a lot of fun to play with :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,219.16532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/droning-on-the-anatomy-of-a-drone/ | Droning On: The Anatomy Of A Drone | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"brushless motor",
"Droning On",
"multicopter",
"quadcopter"
] | These last few weeks I’ve been ordering parts for the Hackaday Testbed, a basic quadcopter to be used here at Hackaday. The top question I see when surfing multicopter forums is “What should I buy”. Which frame, motors, props, speed controller, and batteries are best? There aren’t easy answers to these questions with respect to larger quads (300mm or more) . There are a myriad of options, and dozens of vendors to choose from.
Advice was simple in the pre-internet days of R/C planes and helicopters: just head down to your local hobby shop, and see what lines they carry. Hook up with a local club and you’ll have some buddies to teach you to fly. This advice still holds true to a certain extent. Some hobby shops carry the DJI and Blade lines of multicopters. However, their flight control systems are closed source. If you really want to dig in and adjust parameters, you have to either buy a combo package with an open source flight control system, or buy every part separately. Unfortunately, very few local hobby shops can afford to stock individual parts at that level.
In the online world there are several “big” vendors. The classic names in the USA have always been
Tower Hobbies
and
Horizon Hobby
. Some new US-based companies are
All e RC
and
ReadyMadeRC
. Several Chinese companies, including
HobbyKing
and
RcTimer
, maintain warehouses in several parts of the world. I’m only listing a few of the big names here. If I’ve left out your favorite site, drop some info in the comments section.
The killer with many of these companies is supply. A popular component will often go out of stock with no hint as to when it will be available again. When it comes to single parts like batteries, it’s easy to just order a different size. But what about motors or speed controls? These components need to be matched on a multicopter. Changing one for a different model means changing all of them, so it pays to buy a spare or two when ordering! Click past the break for a breakdown of some multicopter parts.
Motors
Power systems have been a tough problem since the early days of radio controlled planes. Picking the right power system is a lot like picking the correct microcontroller or op-amp for a circuit design. There are a seemingly endless number of parameters to be taken into account. Once you break it down though, it isn’t too hard.
Motor part numbers are often encoded in terms of stator or can sizes. A DJI 2212 motor means it has a 22mm diameter stator which is 12mm tall. This isn’t a hard and fast rule though, so don’t live by it. The first and foremost parameter in a motor is KV –
Thousands of
RPM per Volt. Theoretically, an 800KV motor will turn 800 RPM on a 1V power source. A 14.8V 4S LiPo battery will spin the motor at 11,840 RPM. It’s important to remember that this is a no load rating. The motor’s RPM will drop significantly when it’s spinning a prop.
The next number to look at is the voltage the motor is rated at. Sometimes this value is represented in volts, and sometimes in cells, which usually refers to the 3.7V nominal voltage of LIPO cells. A motor capable of handling a voltage of 4S means it’s good for 4 LiPo cells in series, or 14.8V.
For the Hackaday Testbed, I went with the
NTM Prop Drive 28-30S 800KV / 300W motor
. These motors are low cost, and should have plenty of power for our quadcopter.
Speed Controls:
In the old days, R/C plane throttles were controlled by a servo moving a switch. It was full throttle or nothing. Thankfully those days are gone, and we have cheap MOSFETs around to give us digitally controlled throttles for our brushless motors. Speed controls are generally rated by maximum voltage and current. Figuring out which to buy is simply a matter of matching one to the motor you plan to use. Sometimes manufacturers overstate their speed control’s capabilities. Therefore, it’s often a good idea to leave a bit of overhead, lest you let out the magic smoke.
One more parameter to look at is SimonK firmware. Simon Kirby figured out that many cheap speed controls were running Atmel microcontrollers. He reverse engineered a few boards and wrote his own
open source firmware
with features like soft start, calibration, and easy parameter updates. Make sure the speed control you choose is compatible with SimonK firmware. Even if it is compatible, check how easy it is to flash the controller. Some controllers have easily accessible testpoints, others require soldering directly to the micrcontroller.
For the Hackaday Testbed, I went with the
HobbyKing Blue Series 30Amp controller
.
Batteries:
Much like speed controls, batteries will depend on the current and voltage requirements of the prop and motor combination. Lithium Polymer battery packs are sold with three basic parameters: Cell count, capacity, and maximum current. Size and weight are also important – don’t buy a battery so big your quadcopter can’t lift it!
3S and 4S batteries are common in multicopters these days. Maximum current is usually stated in therms of “C”, or the capacity of the battery. A 4000mAh battery with a rating of 45C is stating that it can supply 4 amps for 1 hour, or a maximum current of 180 Amps. It goes without saying that drawing 180 Amps is not a good idea for the overall longevity of the battery.
For the Hackaday Testbed I went with
Zippy 35C constant / 45C burst 4S 4500 LiPos.
Propellers:
Multicopter Propellers can confuse even veteran pilots. Props are rated with two numbers. 9×6, 8×4, or 10×4.7 are all common propeller sizes. But what does it all mean?
The first number is diameter. The second number is pitch. Diameter is simple. A 10×4.7 propeller will have a diameter of 10 inches. Pitch is a bit harder. The pitch number of a propeller describes how far the propeller will move forward in a single revolution. If you spin a 10×4.7 propeller it will theoretically pull your plane (or quadcopter) forward 4.7 inches. A 10×6 propeller would pull forward 6 inches. Things get even more complex – how different is a 10×4.7 vs a 9×6? The answer is not much.
For the Hackaday Testbed, I’m going to test several propellers, starting with a conservative 10×4.7.
Simulating the drive system:
While propeller and overall drive system performance can be
calculated by hand
, a computer can be a big help. There are several software packages available to aid with propeller and drive system selection.
eCalc
is a website based calculator with a free trial and a subscription pay version. Make sure you select the correct calculator, as they have different versions for planes, helicopters, electric ducted fans, and multicopters. A second option is
MotoCalc
, which is downloadable software. MotoCalc also has a time limited trial. Freeware options are
PropCalc
and
DriveCalc
.
Nothing beats real world tests though. Years ago, the
Astro Wattmeter
created a small revolution in the market. The Wattmeter plugs inline with the battery and measures total current draw and voltage of the drive system. From these values it can calculate power, mAh used/remaining and several other values. One thing to remember is that a propeller will perform differently on a test bench (Static thrust) vs in the air (dynamic thrust). To this end, there are on-board Wattmeter style systems which can either send telemetry data back, or store it for later download.
If I only had a frame
Multicopter frames come in a multitude of shapes and sizes. The most basic difference between them is the number of motors they carry. Tricopters use three motors in a “Y” formation. A servo tilts the motor at the bottom of the Y to achieve yaw control. One nicety of the tricopter configuration is that all propellers turn in the same direction.This means standard airplane props can be used all around.
Moving up the chain is the quadcopter, which uses four motors and props. Quads (and all sizes beyond tricopters) use matched sets of clockwise and counterclockwise rotating propellers. When all four motors are rotating at the same rate, yaw due to
torque effect
is canceled out. Increasing throttle to one set of motors while decreasing to throttle on the other set allows for yaw control.
Moving beyond the basic multicopter types, we have the hexacopters and octocopters. The advantage to Hex and Octo format is of course more power! Hexes and Octos can lift more, and in some cases can keep flying if a single motor fails. Hexactopers can be laid out with six arms from a central point, or they can be in the Y-6 formation. Y-6 is essentially a tricopter with stacked counter rotating props at each point of the “Y”. Similarly octocopters can be an 8 pointed star, or an X-8 formation. Y-6 and X-8 formations offer reduced weight due to less arms, however stacked propellers are always somewhat less efficient than two propellers operating in clean air.
Another decision to make is materials. In this case the sky is basically the limit. Multicopter frames can be as simple as a couple of crossed sticks or as complex as interlocking plates with tubes of woven carbon fiber. Kits can be purchased, or designs can be hand made. If you’re scratch building, the local hardware store is often a great source of parts. I’ve seen everything from towel rod to PVC pipe pressed into service as part of a multicopter frame.
The Hackaday Testbed will have a few frames, but I’m starting out with an
aluminum and fiberglass model from HobbyKing
.
Flight Control System:
Stay tuned for this one. Flight control and radio control systems will get their own columns. Suffice it to say, we’re going to try several, starting with the
MultiWii
and the
KK2 multicopter
boards.
Wow, this turned out to be quite the long post. Until next time, keep on Droning On!
Title Photo by [Alexander Glinz] | 42 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1392356",
"author": "greenbacks",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T23:12:47",
"content": "I got a hex carbon fiber frame with flip flight controller, just need the time to put that bad boy together.By my estimates should be able to lift at least 6 kg payload.;)",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,219.675451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/what-if-you-experienced-lag-in-real-life/ | What If You Experienced Lag In Real Life? | James Hobson | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"game lag",
"oculus rift",
"real life lag"
] | If you’re a gamer, lag is one of your worst enemies. But what would it be like if you
experienced lag in real life?
Imagine how frustrating that would be!
Introducing Living With Lag — a cute experiment put on by an internet provider called Ume. Using an Oculus Rift development kit, a Raspberry Pi, noise cancelling headphones and a webcam, Ume’s thrown together a fun social experiment. The webcam captures both audio and video and repeats it to the Oculus Rift via the Pi at a variable delay to show the effects of slow internet speeds.
They attempt four different scenarios. Ping pong is pretty much impossible. Dance class is just embarrassing. And attempting to cook or eat is absolutely hilarious. They even try bowling, which also proves more difficult than you could imagine!
Stick around to see for yourself.
In the end it’s still a commercial, but heck — good job Ume!
[Thanks Brandon!] | 52 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1392026",
"author": "Tadpole",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T20:18:15",
"content": "And the hack is?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1392052",
"author": "Spork",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T20:29:44",
"content"... | 1,760,376,219.760973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/29/hackaday-space-transmission-1/ | Hackaday Space: Transmission 1 | Ben Delarre | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ARG",
"major tom",
"puzzle",
"riddle"
] | Phew, what a month!
As most of you by now are probably sick of hearing, we ran a series of puzzles throughout April in the run up to the announcement of
The Hackaday Prize
. We had a lot of fun putting this together, and a great many of you pitched in and tried to solve the problems we presented. In all we were very impressed at the community spirit that came out of these challenges, so we thought we would do a write up of what was in the puzzles, how we built them, and the fantastic solutions that you all came up with.
We’ll be doing these as a series of posts this week since they’re quite long, for details on Transmission 1 keep reading after the break.
Transmission 1
It was Friday March 28th at the SupplyFrame office when somebody realised that April 1st was coming up. A haphazard brainstorming session was conducted and threw up some ideas. A version of the arcade classic
Breakout
but with Arduinos for blocks was suggested (
and built
– thanks Mike!). A game of Space Invaders with Hackaday logos as the invaders was another well received idea. It wasn’t long before someone suggested we launch The Hackaday Prize on April 1st. This seemed a little crazy since we wanted you all to take it seriously, but we settled on teasing the contest with a video.
The design team that were working on the launch video for the contest gave us some ideas, and some video material we ended up using in Transmission 2. But we wanted something that would look great full screen on any monitor. So I spent a manic weekend getting to grips with WebGL shaders and THREE.js and somehow managed to put together the
awesomeness you all got to see
. The frankly
horrendous source code is available here
, please don’t judge this was done in no time with little to no experience with the tools used!
Terminal
I realised I needed a loading screen so that we could pre-cache the video, so I quickly put together the little fake terminal. A friend of mine provided
the content
for the terminal, and our
ARG
was born (completely unintentionally…).
In this transmission were several pieces of hidden information. The first was a series of coordinates which referred to space telescopes around the world. There were 5 telescopes, these were the
Arecibo observatory
in Puerto Rico, the
NRAO Very Large Array
in New Mexico, the
RATAN-600
in Russia, the
Effelsberg Radio Telescope
in Germany, and the
LOFAR array
in the Netherlands.
Hidden Messages
The second piece of encoded information was the following series of characters:
49 27 6d 20 66 6c 6f 61 74 69 6e 67 20 69 6e 20 61
20 6d 6f 73 74 20 70 65 63 75 6c 69 61 72 20 77 61
79
This was a simple translation of ASCII characters into hexadecimal and encoded the string “I’m floating in a most peculiar way” which is a quote from the song
Space Oddity
by David Bowie. Finally the last block of information was a QR code that had been converted from an image, into a series of 1’s and 0’s indicating the pixels that were light and dark. If you squint at it just right you can see it. This QR code leads to the url for a profile we setup on
Hackaday Projects
.
We needed a name for the profile and
Major Tom
was the first one that popped into my head. I must have been listening to the song earlier in the week, so the Bowie references all came about quite accidentally, the profile image we glitched deliberately just because it looked cooler everyone assumed this meant something but that was great as it gave us ideas for the next set of puzzles. This profile was where we then conducted the rest of the ARG and served as a great place for everyone to start collaborating on the puzzles.
After some people had found all of the above we had our user
Ground Control
post a message to indicate this stage of the ARG was over and that we would commence the next part in T-518400. This was seconds since the last transmission so was 6 days away. Honestly we made a mistake here and used the ‘T-‘ notation incorrectly, not specifying a unit and I think we even managed to get the time wrong. Such mistakes were pretty common throughout the ARG but honestly doing this all last minute I’m surprised we managed to pull as much of it together as we did!
Everyone did a spectacular job on this part of the puzzle, it was all solved in around half an hour, but the number of different ways people got there was amazing. We had people writing code to convert the QR code strings into pixels and generating an actual image from them. Other people imported it into Google Spreadsheets or Excel and did conditional formatting to make the code usable on a mobile phone. Then there were all the dead ends people went down, looking for steganographic encoding on the profile images, even going so far as to try using 3d specs on the images! Amazing stuff, and actually helped serve as inspiration for Transmission 2 which we will follow up with tomorrow!
To Be Continued… | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1391792",
"author": "Emerica",
"timestamp": "2014-04-29T18:08:24",
"content": "Kudos :)I wrote php to create an image with gd and the scale it up.I didn’t have to squint, looking at the page about 7-10ft away, you can clearly see the boxes :)That quote in “I’m floating in a most pe... | 1,760,376,219.946988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/robotartist-draws-what-it-sees/ | Roboartist Draws What It Sees | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"AX-12",
"bluetooth",
"edge detection",
"HC-06",
"ink",
"paper",
"plotter",
"roboartist",
"servo"
] | The perfect balance of simplicity and complexity have been struck with this automated artist.
The Roboartist is a vector drawing robot
project which [Niazangels], [Maxarjun], and [Ashwin] have been documenting for the last few days. The killer feature of the build is the ability to process what is seen through a webcam so that it may be sketched as ink on paper by the robotic arm.
The arm itself has four stages, and as you can see in the video below, remarkably little slop. The remaining slight wiggle is just enough to make the images seem as if they were not printed to perfection, and we like that effect!
Above is a still of Roboartist working on a portrait of [Heath Ledger] in his role as Joker from
The Dark Knight
.
The image import feature was used for this. It runs a tweaked version of the
Canny Edge Detector
to determine where the pen strokes go. This is an alternative to capturing the subject through the webcam. For now MATLAB is part of the software chain, but future work seeks to upgrade to more Open Source tools. The hardware itself uses an Arduino Mega to take input via USB or Bluetooth and drives the quartet of servo motors accordingly.
In addition to the LEDs you can see around the perimeter of the acrylic drawing surface, there are also rows of RGB strips below. The software runs a filter for the under lighting in order to compliment the lines on the paper. This is why there is a violet hue that fades out toward one side of the drawing.
Roboartist would be a fantastic office art piece; you can parade the VIPs in front of its camera as they come in for meetings and present them with a sketch as they depart!
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNjaRLj1WhA&w=580] | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1388530",
"author": "Turtlewithahat",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T17:40:28",
"content": "Today i learned a printer is an artist",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1388633",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-04-2... | 1,760,376,220.001139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/the-hackaday-prize-you-build-open-hardware-we-send-you-to-space/ | The Hackaday Prize: You Build Open Hardware, We Send You To Space | Mike Szczys | [
"contests",
"Featured",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"open design",
"open hardware",
"open source software",
"prize",
"space",
"TheHackadayPrize"
] | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh5yzP4ZINA&w=580]
For weeks we’ve been teasing you that something BIG was coming. This is it. Six months from now one hardware hacker will claim
The Hackaday Prize
and in doing so, secure the grand prize of
a trip into space
.
You have the skills, the technology, and the tenacity to win this. Even if you don’t take the top spot there’s loot in it for more than one winner. To further entice you, there are
eyebrow-raising prizes for all five of the top finishers
, and hundreds of other rewards for those that build something impressive. You can win this… you just need to take the leap and give it your all.
Wait, what?
We want the next evolution of connected devices to happen now and we want it to be Open. Why shouldn’t Hackaday be the biggest cheerleader, encourager, and
enabler for the cause of Open Hardware
?
Build a piece of hardware
that moves past the rut of “Internet-enabled refrigerators” and billion dollar thermostats (we couldn’t resist). Think big, come up with a piece of hardware that has the potential to change the lives of many. Or just build something silly and fun. But do it at a high level, and share your work. We’re not disqualifying entries that don’t share their secrets, but we are giving a strong judging preference on just how open each design will be.
It’s no secret that Hackaday is in favor of
Open Design
. The benefits of Open Hardware and Open Source software are vast for all of society. Stop banging your head against the same wall that has already been broken down by another engineer who posted the solution for all to see. Learn new skills by reading the code of masters and studying the design files of successful products. But for this to happen, the Openness must grow.
You’ll Be in Good Hands
We like to think we know a thing or two about this stuff. But for a trip into space Hackaday reached out and
recruited remarkable people to judge your work
. So far, the panel includes: (alphabetical order) Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Jack Ganssle, Joe Grand, Bunnie Huang, Dave Jones, Ian Lesnet, Sprite_TM, and Elecia White are all on board. We expect a few others to join and will update as that happens. If you know them or
follow them on social media
, please reach out and say thank you. We’re both honored and lucky to have them for The Hackaday Prize.
Hackaday Needs Your Help!
Obviously we need to you to enter the contest and build something awesome. But we
really
need your help getting the word out too. For one thing, this is a great way to encourage more Open Design in the projects and products we see. But wouldn’t it be awesome to see The Hackaday Prize as a recurring challenge? It all hinges on the success of the program we launched this morning.
Please publicize
http://hackaday.io/prize
in as many ways possible. Call in favors from your friends who work in media, post it to your blog, Tweet about it until your fingers bleed, post on Reddit, Facebook, MySpace (kidding…), and anywhere else that will let you sing the praises of the awesomeness that is this initiative. The the hashtag #TheHackadayPrize and let’s see how far we can get with this thing!
You have the heartfelt thanks from all of the Hackaday crew for anything you can do to share the message. Thank you! Now get hacking. | 166 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "1388006",
"author": "Caleb Kraft",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T14:06:09",
"content": "OH. MY. GOD.oh my god oh my god oh my god… this is awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1388011",
"author": "messmaker",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,220.382981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/opensource-rhinobot-is-well-suited-for-hacking-and-sumo-robotics/ | Opensource RhinoBOT Is Well Suited For Hacking And Sumo-Robotics! | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"printed robot",
"rhinobot",
"sumo bot",
"sumobot"
] | The RhinoBOT is an open source and 3D printed robot that is fun to build and easy to expand. It can be used for educational purposes or
even as a sumobot!
[Miguel Carro] runs a DIY robotics blog at
bq.com
(Spanish —
Translated
) to help teach kids about robotics using a fun cartoon character named Andy. He’s released all the design files for his latest printbot, the
RhinoBOT on thingiverse.com
. Using an Arduino UNO, an IR sensor, two rotational servos, an LED, batteries and a few pieces of hardware, you can build your very own RhinoBOT! That is — if you have a 3D printer.
The fun doesn’t stop there though, as [Miguel’s] also created a phone app to let you control your RhinoBOT wirelessly! And since not all the outputs on the UNO are used, y0u can add extra functionality with a bit of creativity — how about being able to move that dozer! To see what it can do, and to start thinking about what
you
could do with it, stick around after the break to see it in action!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RgC5rzKug
For another style of 3D printed robot —
how about a self-balancing one? | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1387696",
"author": "madefrutos",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T11:30:03",
"content": "Nice! :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1387792",
"author": "jiogea",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T12:11:04",
"content": "That wouldn’t l... | 1,760,376,220.049534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/28/flying-robots-jam-out-in-a-robotic-orchestra/ | Flying Robots Jam Out In A Robotic Orchestra | James Hobson | [
"drone hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"flying robots",
"hexrotor",
"hexrotors",
"KMel"
] | [KMel Robotics] is at it again, this time stealing our hearts with a
flying robotic orchestra
. It’s an amazing feat of technology and music combined.
We first saw something like this with the swarm playing the
James Bond theme
, which was impressive in itself — the orchestra has just become a bit more advanced with this latest piece.
Most of the instruments are playable by adding weighted levers with special landing pads for the hexrotors to bounce off of, but we think our favorite instrument is the stringed one — another robot adjusts the tension of the wire to change the pitch, much like a tremolo on a guitar. Couple this with an electric amp and you have some very sleek sounds.
Another instrument of note are the drums, which use a deconstructed and hacked together piano action to play the notes. Stick around to hear the sounds of our new robotic overlords!
They’ve also done an incredibly
impressive light show using quadrotors and mirrors!
[Via
Hacked Gadgets
] | 8 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1387357",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T08:19:25",
"content": "Amazing little flyers. Was worried about the noises coming from the rotors, but I guess they managed to edit those out :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,376,220.100468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/a-small-replacement-for-large-programming-headers/ | A Small Replacement For Large Programming Headers | Nick Conn | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"connector",
"header",
"icp",
"Pogo pin",
"pogoplug",
"programmer"
] | No matter how small you make your embedded projects, you still need a way to program the MCU. Standard programming headers can be annoyingly large for those very small projects. [Danny] wrote in to tell us how we can
save room on our PCB designs
using special spring loaded connectors, rather than large headers.
There are so many small embedded development systems, such as the
Trinket
that still rely on standard headers. Reducing the size of the programming headers and interface headers is an issue that deserves more attention than it currently receives. Based on
Tag-Connect
, a proprietary connector built around pogo-style pins, your PCB does not actually require any on-board mating connector. The PCB footprint simply has test-pads that connect with the pogo-pins and holes that allow for a rock solid connection. While the Tag-Connect header is a bit expensive (it costs about $34), you only need to buy it once.
It would be great to see even smaller Tag-Connect cables. Do you have a similar solution? What about something even smaller and more compact?
Write in
to tell us about any ultra-compact connector solutions you have been using! | 73 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "1386982",
"author": "Chris E.",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T05:09:09",
"content": "How about a good ol’ fashioned edge connector?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1387037",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2014-04-2... | 1,760,376,220.207383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/send-wireless-txt-between-two-ti-calculators/ | Send Wireless TXT Between Two TI Calculators | Will Sweatman | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"cornell",
"Cornell University",
"graphing calculator",
"ti calc",
"wireless"
] | One day while sitting in class in a Cornell University schoolroom, [Will] and [Michael] thought how cool it would be to send text messages to each other via their Texas Instruments calculators. Connecting the two serial ports with a serial cable was out of the question. So they decided to develop a
wireless link
that would work for both TI-83 and TI-84 calculators.
The system is powered by a pair of ATmega644’s and two
Radiotronix RF Modules
that creates a wireless link between the two serial ports. The serial ports are 3 wire ports, which can be used for several things, including acting as a
TV out port
. [Will] and [Michael] reverse engineered the port’s protocol and did an excellent job at explaining it in full detail. Because they are dealing with the lowest level of the physical protocol, there is no need for them to deal with higher levels like checksums, header packets, ext.
Be sure to stick around after the break to see a video of the project in action. It’s quite slow for today’s standards. If you have any ideas on how to speed it up, be sure to let everyone know in the comments. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1386664",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2014-04-28T02:12:26",
"content": "What about wireless connection to your laptop runing text interface to wolfram alpha, google and jabber? :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1386... | 1,760,376,220.603419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/hackaday-links-april-27-2014/ | Hackaday Links: April 27, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"arduino",
"Banana Pi",
"jewelry",
"laser",
"raspberry pi",
"supercap",
"supercapacitors",
"synth",
"synthesizer"
] | The HackFFM hackerspace in Frankfurt finally got their CO2 laser up and running, and the folks there were looking for something to engrave. They realized the labels on IC packages are commonly laser engraved,
so they made a DIP-sized Arduino
. The pins are labelled just as they would be on an Arduino, and a few SMD components dead bugged onto the pins provide all the required circuitry.
Video here
.
A few
years
ago
, we heard [David Mellis] built a DIY cell phone for an MIT Media Lab thingy. Apparently it’s making the blog rounds again
thanks to the Raspi cell phone
we featured yesterday.
Here’s the Arduino cell phone again
. Honestly we’d prefer the minimalist DIY Nokia inspired version.
The Raspberry Pi is now a form factor,
with the HummingBoard, a Freescale i.MX6-powered clone
, being released soon. There’s another form factor compatible platform out there, the
Banana Pi
, and you can actually buy it now. It’s an ARM A20 dual core running at 1GHz, Gig of RAM, and Gigabit Ethernet for about $60. That SATA port is really, really cool, too.
[Richard] has been working on a solar-powered sun jar this winter
and now he’s done
. The design uses two small solar panels to charge up two 500F (!) supercapacitors. There’s a very cool and very small supercap charging circuit in there, and unless this thing is placed in a very dark closet, it’ll probably keep running forever. Or until something breaks.
Here’s something awesome for the synth heads out there:
it’s an analog modeling synthesizer
currently on Indiegogo. Three DCOs, 18dB lowpass filter, 2 envelopes and an LFO, for all that classic Moog, Oberheim, and Roland goodness. It’s also pretty cheap at $120 USD. We really don’t get enough synth and musical builds here at Hackaday, so if you’re working on something, send it in.
A glass-based PCB?
Sure. Here’s [Masataka Joei] put gold and silver on a piece of glass, masked off a few decorative shapes, and sandblasted the excess electrum away. [Masataka] is using it for jewelery, but the mind races once you realize you could solder stuff to it. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1386442",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T23:53:45",
"content": "Sun Jar – are people so brain addled these days that they can’t read a page or two instead of sitting thru a mind numbing 12 minutes to get the build story?HaD – please stop promoting projects that can’... | 1,760,376,220.448175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/hacking-manufacturing-ordering-a-custom-heatsink-from-china/ | Hacking Manufacturing: Ordering A Custom Heatsink From China | Adam Fabio | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Arachnid Labs",
"china",
"Far East",
"heatsink",
"overseas Manufacturing",
"Re:Load Pro"
] | Building a one-off hack is fun. But what happens when people like your hack so much they want to buy it? As many of us have discovered, going from prototype to product can be a frustrating, tedious, and often expensive process. [Nick] at Arachnid labs has documented the process of
manufacturing a custom heatsink in China
.
While designing the
Re:Load Pro
, [Nick] discovered that there were no enclosures with integrated heatsinks which suited his application. Rather than design an entire case from scratch, [Nick] used an aluminum extrusion. This is a common technique in the electronics world, and literally thousands of extrusion profiles are available. The problem was the heatsink. Only a custom part would fit the bill, so [Nick] created a CAD drawing detailing his design. Much like the case, the heatsink was an aluminum extrusion. The custom nature of the heatsink meant that [Nick] would need to pay mold/tooling costs as well as satisfy minimum orders.
[Nick] headed off to Alibaba.com and requested quotes from several custom extrusion houses. He received tooling quotes between $500 USD and $1300 USD. Price per unit ranged from $1.85 USD each to $3.50 USD in quantity. The tooling costs are non refundable, so it really pays to get the design right the first time.
[Nick] ended up picking a manufacturer on the lower end of the price spectrum, but not the lowest bidder. Before he placed his order, he asked the manufacturer to send him their own drawing of the heatsink. This may sound like double work, but it’s an extremely important step to verify that the manufacturer completely understands the design.
When everything looked good, [Nick] placed his order and waited for samples. The waiting was the hardest part. Thanks to the Chinese New Year it was over a month before [Nick’s] sample parts arrived. The samples looked great, so [Nick] is ready to go into full-scale production of the Re:Load Pro heatsinks. | 34 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1386199",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T20:59:42",
"content": "Why not just modify a exciting one ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1386218",
"author": "Kris",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T21:13:37",
... | 1,760,376,220.531116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/hackaday-retro-edition-hackadaying-at-300-baud/ | Hackaday Retro Edition: Hackadaying At 300 Baud | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"baud",
"modem",
"retro edition"
] | For a bottom of the barrel website
like our retro edition
, there’s little reason to have a fast Internet connection. Even the fastest hands in the land can barely type faster than 300 baud. The problem with low-speed connections is the overhead involved, as [Pierre] discovered when
he dug out an acoustic modem from the ’80s
and loaded up our retro site.
While this isn’t the first modem ever made – that’s 1960s tech – but it does operate at the same speed – 300 bits per second, or slower than you reading this sentence. [Pierre] stuck a desk phone into the modem’s cups, plugged it in to a phone line simulator, and connected to a Raspberry Pi equipped with another modem. From there, it was pretty easy to set up a terminal at 300 baud.
A serial connection isn’t a connection to the Internet, however, and at 300 baud, PPP is nearly impossible. The overhead of encapsulating packets is just that high. SLIP is a much better choice to send IP packets over a slow serial connection, but [Pierre]’s mac doesn’t include the proper tools.
[Pierre] ended up using the serial connection between his Mac and Raspi with Zterm. From there, Lynx and Bob’s your uncle.
There’s an unsurprisingly long video of [Pierre] loading up the retro site below, as well an unsurprisingly long video of speedtest.net running at 56k. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1385907",
"author": "Biomed",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T18:03:52",
"content": "Made a lot of money building these for ppl back in ’80-83. Finding acoustic couplers was the big hurdle, made my own boards and rest of parts were easy to find. Also remember being threatened with a broom ... | 1,760,376,220.667467 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/galvanic-isolated-ftdi-saves-your-computer/ | Galvanic Isolated FTDI Board Saves Your USB Ports | Adam Fabio | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Galvanic Isolation",
"Isolation",
"optocoupler"
] | We work with some dangerous circuits in the pursuit of cool hacks. High voltage, high current, all demand some respect. We can protect our bodies easily enough, but what about that fancy new laptop or Macbook? [David] is here to help with his
isolated versatile FTDI circuit.
Our computers are often wired directly into the circuits we’re hacking on. In days past that might have been a parallel or serial port. Today it’s almost always USB, specifically serial over USB. USB has some safety features built-in, such as current limiting. However, it isn’t too hard to blow up a USB port, or even a motherboard with high voltage.
Galvanic isolation
is a method of removing any electrical connection between two circuits. Connections can still be made through optical, magnetic, or capacitive methods, just to name a few. One of the simplest methods of galvanic isolation is the humble optocoupler.
Isolating a high-speed USB connection can get somewhat complex. [David] wisely chose to isolate things on the serial side of the FTDI USB to serial converter. He started with SparkFun’s open source
FTDI Basic Breakout
. Galvanic isolation is through either an Analog Devices
ADuM 1402
or
ADuM 5402
. The 1402 needs a bit of power on the isolated side, while the 5402 includes an isolated DC/DC converter to provide up to 60mA.
[David] didn’t just stop at galvanic isolation. He also added ESD protection, over current protection, and multiple options which can be selected when the board is built. Nice work [David]! Now we don’t have to worry about our laptop frying when
we’re blowing up wires
. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1385515",
"author": "Sven",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T14:05:23",
"content": "“what about that fancy new laptop or Macbook?”A Macbook isn’t a laptop?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1385565",
"author": "F",
"time... | 1,760,376,220.743323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/backyard-roller-coaster-family-physics-and-fun/ | Backyard Roller Coaster – Family, Physics And Fun | Jasmine Brackett | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"backyard rollercoaster",
"diy rollercoaster",
"PVC",
"rollercoaster"
] | This week we have been in touch with [Will Pemble], Geek Dad. After a visit to Magic Mountain in early 2013, his son [Lyle] asked “Why don’t we build our own rollercoaster, Dad?”. [Will] couldn’t think of a single reason why not. This was the start of the
CoasterDad Project
. Excited by the challenge of building a Backyard Roller Coaster, [Will] also thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to teach [Lyle] about physics. Family, Fun, and Physics – what could be better?
The track is made from parallel PVC pipes on a lumber frame, similar to the one we saw for the
Manpowered PVC rollercoaster
, but it is more varied and looks a lot sturdier. [Will] is now working on mark II of the cart made from a steel frame with skateboard wheels and has independent axles. He is planning to add a pedal mechanism with freewheel, so you can get a little extra oomph on the rises.
In [Will’s] great videos you can get a front row seat on the coaster and see that even though it is fairly compact it has enough rises, troughs and turns to keep you entertained. It may not be quite as exciting as
[Jon Iver’s] homemade rollercoaster
, but when finished, the rider will be able go round and round self-propelled to their heart’s content, or till they puke, whichever comes first. [Will] also explains the theory and practicalities behind making a strong, safe, but really fun coaster. Don’t miss the videos after the fold.
Have you made a backyard roller coaster, or are thinking about building one? Have you got any questions about [Will’s] roller coaster build? He’s up for making a video to answer some of them, so please leave questions for him in the comments below. We will post the video later on.
The video below contains a time lapse of the steel wheel build | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1385262",
"author": "ferdinand de beus (@junkonwheels)",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T11:20:43",
"content": "nice someone can play roller coaster tycoon backyard style now how awesome is your daddy that make this for his kids everytime I see a backyard roller coaster there are better an... | 1,760,376,221.036991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/27/sci-fi-contest-roundup-alien-autopsy-and-jacking-on/ | Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: Alien Autopsy And Jacking On | Brian Benchoff | [
"contests"
] | [
"futurama",
"operation",
"raspberry pi",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest"
] | There’s still a few days left
in our sci-fi contest
, and unless you really pull out the stops today, it might be too late to get your entry in. Even though the contest is wrapping up, a lot of projects are wrapping things up and posting their finished projects. Here’s a few good ones.
These puns are awesome
The folks at the LVL1 hackerspace had the idea of making a life-sized game of Operation. This plan changed when someone at the hackerspace had the great idea of
making it an alien autopsy
. The game play remains the same, but this time the puns are awesome.
The play field is a life-sized alien, stuffed with metal-lined holes that set off a buzzer whenever the modified hemostat touches the side. Inside these holes are incredible puns that include, “Farscraped knee”, “Phantom Tentacle”, a “Tattoine removal”, “Jeffries Tuberculosis”, “HALatosis, “Babelfish in the Ear”, and “Grabthar’s Hammertoe”
The hackerspace took their alien autopsy game to the Louisville 2013 Mini Maker Faire where it was a huge hit. We’re thinking some of the puns were a little too obscure for the general population, but the attention to detail is impressive; there’s a 3D print of Pilot from Farscape. Awesome.
Jacking On
In the
Futurama
universe, immoral robots get their fun by “Jacking On”, or supplanting their 6502-based CPUs with a ton of electricity. This is contraindicated by Bender’s operational manual, but a robot needs his fix, right?
[RodolpheH] and [pierrep]
are building one of these jack dispensers
, but instead of simply supplying a whole lot of electricity through a jack, they’re creating a Raspi-powered wireless audio streaming device. Plug some speakers into the jack, connect to the Raspi, and you’ve got a very cool audio system on your hands.
The team is going all out with the design of their jack dispenser, using random bits of plastic stuff for the enclosure and a USB-powered plasma ball for the top. It impresses random strangers, and that’s the only thing that’s important, right? | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1385212",
"author": "Dr. Lazarus",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T10:48:36",
"content": "By Grabthar’s Hammer, by the Suns of Walvan, what a game!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1386117",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,220.793513 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/26/improved-thermocouples-on-a-microcontroller/ | Improved Thermocouples On A Microcontroller | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"k-type thermocouple",
"thermocouple"
] | If you’re reading a thermocouple with one of those fancy schmancy SPI thermocouple amplifiers, this one isn’t for you. If, however, you’re still going through those old-school analog thermocouple amplifiers like the AD595, [miceuz] has just the thing for you. He’s come up with
a library for embedded devices
that reads the temperature of a k-type thermocouple with
+- 0.03°C of accuracy.
As with anything dealing with natural phenomena, the voltage generate by the bimetallic junction of a thermocouple probe is decidedly non-linear. This is a problem when dealing with embedded devices, as that would mean using floating point arithmetic, greatly increasing the amount of code. [micuez] found the NIST tables for a K-type thermocouple and interpolates the actual temperature of the thermocouple probe from the NIST data. The usual way of measuring thermocouples – a polynomial unction of some sort – has an error of about 0.06°C. [miceuz]’s library has an error of less than half that, all while using less code.
The library doesn’t support temperatures below zero, but this is still a work in progress. Still, if you’re looking for a very accurate library for a forge, crock pot sous vide build, or a toaster oven reflow controller, you can’t do better than [miceuz]’s work. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1384745",
"author": "Radoslav Kolev",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T06:26:55",
"content": "The library converts K thermocouple voltage to temperature within +/- 0.03°C, actually measuring temperature with that accuracy is quite another thing. How much noise/error due to the amplifier? H... | 1,760,376,221.097282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/26/playing-tetris-on-an-oscilloscope/ | Playing Tetris On An Oscilloscope | James Hobson | [
"hardware",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"easter egg",
"HP 54600B",
"oscilloscope",
"oscilloscope game",
"tetris"
] | Have engineers stopped putting Easter eggs into technology lately? It’s always been a fun way to connect with your more advanced customer base (i.e. hackers) — anyway, here’s a great Easter egg you can find on the
Hewlett Packard 54600B Oscilloscop — Tetris!
[RaffttaM] discovered this trick when a coworker let him know that one of the oscilloscopes in the lab had the hidden feature. A little fiddling later and a game of Tetris was revealed. If you press the Print/Utility button on the 54600B oscilloscope, followed by pressing the second and third button below the screen at the same time, you can launch the game!
Another cool embedded Easter egg is in the Game Boy Printer — If you hold the feed button during power up it spits out a Mario themed image! One of our readers even managed to
hack the printer to show the Hack a Day Logo instead!
Do you know of any more modern tech with cool (and sneaky!) Easter eggs? Let us know by
sending in a tip!
[Thanks Gregory!] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1384326",
"author": "kittan",
"timestamp": "2014-04-27T02:19:59",
"content": "Just checked on my old 54600A, works on that model as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1384431",
"author": "Pierce Jensen",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,220.961871 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/nes-cartridge-hack-makes-great-novelty-gift/ | NES Cartridge Hack Makes Great Novelty Gift | Will Sweatman | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Musical Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"nintendo",
"nintendo connector",
"nokia",
"rtttl"
] | Most all of us recall the Blinking Screen of Death on original NES systems. This was caused by a bad connection between the cartridge and the NES cartridge connector. For whatever reason, it became a very popular idea to give a quick blow down the cartridge, even though this didn’t really help. [Dale] decided to play on this annoying problem by making the
NES Blow Cart!
Inspired by a previous
cartridge hack
, [Dale] mounted a custom made circuit sporting the ever popular ATtiny85 in a Super Mario / Duck Hunt cartridge. A small microphone sits where the original cartridge connector was, along with the on/off switch and program header. A quick blow triggers the ATtiny85 to play a song.
The most difficult part for [Dale] was to figure out how to get the ATtiny to play “music”. This was solved with the discovery of a library called
Rtttl
. This allowed him to take old Nokia Super Mario and Zelda ringtones and get them on the Attiny85. All files, including the rtttl library are available on his
github
. Be sure to stick around after the break for a video of the project in action.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTKbzFRwih0&w=560&h=315%5D | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1381303",
"author": "Karl",
"timestamp": "2014-04-26T02:08:56",
"content": "The blinking was caused by the CIC copy protection/license enforcement chip. If the CIC in the NES didn’t complete a handshake with the cartridge in a certain amount of time, it would reset the system.Blowin... | 1,760,376,221.152916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/interactive-led-beer-pong-table-has-more-features-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at/ | Interactive LED Beer Pong Table Has More Features Than You Can Shake A Stick At | James Hobson | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"beer pong",
"beer pong table",
"LED beer pong"
] | Holy cow. The amount of detail and functionality that went into this
Interactive LED Beer Pong Table
is absolutely incredible.
The table features 384 individually controlled RGB LEDs, covered with a 2′ x 8′ Lexan sheet to protect them from spills. Each cup holder (pod) contains an additional 4 RGB LEDs and an IR sensor that can detect whether or not the cup is in place — if it is removed, the IR sensor triggers an animation on either the 32 x 12 LED grid across the middle of the table or the other pods.
The rings of LEDs on the outside edge act as VU meters and pulse to the music in different animation patterns. What is really impressive is that [Jeff] also included a ping pong ball washer — A water reservoir connects under the table between the two LED rings at either end. When you put the ball into one, it gets sucked underneath and pops out the other side clean!
You seriously have to see the video of this thing in action.
Oh and if you have no idea what a beer pong table is…
here are the rules
. The basic premise is you try to throw your ping pong ball into the opposite teams cup — if you succeed, they have to drink that cup and take it off of the table. Whoever sinks the most cups wins.
We’ve
covered
lots of
beer pong
tables
before
, but it really seems like [Jeff] has taken the cake with this one! | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1381012",
"author": "Rick Pezzner",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T23:25:25",
"content": "I think you need oneSent from my Pezz-iPhone>",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1381302",
"author": "my2c",
"timestamp": "2014-04-26T02:08... | 1,760,376,221.20426 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/overengineering-a-usb-hub/ | Overengineering A USB Hub | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"peripheral",
"USB hub"
] | Like many of us, I’m sure, [Nick] doesn’t like digging around behind his computer case for a spare USB port and ended up buying a small USB hub for his desk. The hub worked perfectly, but then [Nick] realized an Ethernet port would be a nice addition. And a DC power supply. Then feature creep set in.
What [Nick] ended up building is
a monstrosity of a desk hub
with two 24V, 5V, 3.3V 50 Watt DC outputs on banana plugs, a five-port USB hub, four-port Ethernet switch, three mains sockets, 32 digital I/Os, UART, SPI, and I2C ports, a 24×4 LCD or displaying DC current usage and serial input, cooling fans, and a buzzer just or kicks.
The case is constructed out of 6mm laser cut acrylic, and the electronics are admittedly a bit messy. That said, this box
does
seem very useful and even plays the theme from
Mario Brothers
, as seen in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR7Cn8UQNE | 39 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "1380635",
"author": "thoriumbr",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T20:07:26",
"content": "Calling this “USB hub” is like saying a RasPi is a calculator…Electronics can be messy inside, but the outside is very nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,376,221.348789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/building-a-software-defined-radio-with-a-teensy/ | Building A Software Defined Radio With A Teensy | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"Teensy",
"Teensy 3.0"
] | [Rich, VE3MKC] has been wanting to get into Software Defined Radio for a while now, but didn’t want to go the usual PC route. He initially thought the Raspberry Pi would be the best platform for a small, embedded device that could manipulate audio, but after discovering the ARM-powered Teensy 3.0,
had an entirely different project in mind
.
[Rich] is using a
SoftRock SDR
to take RF from an antenna and downconvert it into the audio range. Doing DSP for SDR is fairly computationally intensive, but he found a Teensy 3.0 with
the audio adapter board
was more than up to the task.
So far, [Rich] is running the audio from the SoftRock to the Teensy where the audio is digitized and multiplied with a VFO, sent through a filter and then sent to the output of the headphone jack to a speaker. The volume pot on the audio adapter board is used to tune the VFO, something [Rich] be replacing with a proper encoder sometime in the future.
In the videos below, you can see [Rich] listening in on a contest with a tiny TFT display showing everybody on the air. It’s a very cool build, and even though it’s still very early in development, there’s still a whole lot of CPU cycles for the Teensy to do some very cool stuff. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1380447",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T18:39:37",
"content": "I really wish I could wrap my head around dsp coding… it feels like it’s just out of reach to me. This is the kind of project that reminds me of that. But, in the meantime, it will be fascinating to follow it... | 1,760,376,221.270832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/a-tutorial-on-linux-for-real-time-tasks/ | A Tutorial On Using Linux For Real-Time Tasks | Adam Fabio | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"deterministic",
"linux",
"raspberry pi",
"real-time",
"RTLinux",
"stepper motor"
] | [Andreas] has created this
tutorial on real-time (RT) tasks in Linux
. At first blush that sounds like a rather dry topic, but [Andreas] makes things interesting by giving us some real-world demos using a Raspberry Pi and a stepper motor. Driving a stepper motor requires relatively accurate timing. Attempting to use a desktop operating system for a task like this is generally ill-advised. Accurate timing is best left to a separate microcontroller. This is why we often see the
Raspi paired with an Arduino
here on Hackaday. The rationale behind this is not often explained.
[Andreas] connects a common low-cost 28BYJ-48 geared stepper motor with a ULN2003 driver board to a Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. These motors originally saw use moving the louvers of air conditioners. In general, they get the job done, but aren’t exactly high quality. [Andreas] uses a simple program to pulse the pins in the correct order to spin the motor. Using an oscilloscope, a split screen display, and a camera on the stepper motor, [Andreas] walks us through several common timing hazards, and how to avoid them.
The most telling hazard is shown last. While running his stepper program, [Andreas] runs a second program which allocates lots of memory. Eventually, Linux swaps out the stepper program’s memory, causing the stepper motor to stop spinning for a couple of seconds. All is not lost though, as the swapping can be prevented with an mlockall() call.
The take away from this is that Linux is not a hard real-time operating system. With a few tricks and extensions, it can do some soft real-time tasks. The best solution is to either use an
operating system designed for real-time
operation, or offload real-time operations to a separate controller. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1379842",
"author": "cdsteinkuehler",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T14:07:52",
"content": "Other options include mixing a real-time OS micro-kernel with Linux (like Xenomai or RTAI), or using the PREEMPT_RT patches for the Linux kernel. Xenomai is readily available for the Pi and severa... | 1,760,376,222.01141 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/3d-printed-hydrofoil-boat-rc-flies/ | 3D Printed Hydrofoil Boat RC Flies | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"hydrofoil",
"rc hydrofoil"
] | [Wersy] has been trying out different designs for 3D printed RC boats — his latest is a
hydrofoil!
He’s using a high power RC plane out-runner motor, which he found is simply…
too powerful.
It would cause his
first boat
to flip and sink if he opened the throttle up too much! To counter this — and make full use of his motor — he’s made new two boats; a
hydrofoil
, and a
dual-hulled air(?) boat
.
He based the hydrofoil’s profile off of
NACA 63-412
, a typical profile for sailboat hydro foils like
the Moth
. What he found was it’s still extremely difficult to get the right balance between the pitch of the wings, and the throttle output to hit a steady condition for driving smoothly. It works, but it will still needs a few more iterations!
His other solution, a quasi-jet engine-dual-hulled-boat is pretty fun too — he’s 3D printed a large impeller for his motor, and strapped it in between two of his boats! It’s quite a bit more stable to drive, and looks pretty unique!
Stick around after the break to see both of them in action.
[Thanks Jotham!] | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1379619",
"author": "scorinth",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T11:55:04",
"content": "Even the simplest successful submerged hydrofoils have some kind of pitch/height feedback to adjust the lift of the foils. If he gets it working well with that design and no active stabilization, I’ll be... | 1,760,376,221.482588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/25/sci-fi-contest-roundup-i-am-iron-man/ | Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: I Am Iron Man | Brian Benchoff | [
"contests"
] | [
"arc reactor",
"iron man",
"iron man suit",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest"
] | Back when
Iron Man 2
and
The Avengers
were out in theaters, the Hackaday tip line couldn’t go a week without an arc reactor build being submitted. In keeping with the Internet’s fascination with blinkey glowey things, we expected a huge influx of arc reactors for
our Sci-Fi contest
. We were pleasantly surprised: all the submissions from the Marvel universe are top-notch, and the two Iron Man entries we have are simply amazing.
Motorized Helmet
[James Bruton] is working on a replica of the Iron Man movie helmet, complete with a motorized face plate, light up eyes, and an OLED display for a reasonable facsimile of the horribly unrealistic on-screen heads-up display.
While a few bits and bobs of the mechanics were 3D printed, [James] is making the majority of the helmet just as how the on-screen version was made. The helmet was first carved out of sheet foam, then molded and cast into very strong rigid fiberglass. [James]
put up a great tutorial series
on how he did this and other parts of his Iron Man costume.
Anamatronic
The other Iron Man costume
from [jeromekelty] and [Greg Hatter] doesn’t stop at just the helmet. They’re doing everything: shoulder-mounted rocket pods, hip pods, forearm missiles, back flaps, and boots with a satisfying electronic
kerthunk
sounding with every step.
Inside the custom molded suit are at least four Arduinos, four XBees, an Adafruit WaveShield, and at least 20 servos for all of the Iron Man suit components. The mechanics are actuated via RFID with a tag in a glove; when the wearer waves their hand over some part of the suit, one of the mechanical features are activated.
It’s impressive to say the least, and one of the best documented projects we’ve seen in the Sci-Fi contest.
There’s still time to put together your own Sci-Fi project for the contest. Grab your soldering iron and fiberglass resin, because there’s some seriously great prizes up for grabs. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1379353",
"author": "Shakipu",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T09:33:31",
"content": "It’s wonderful to see what can be done with fiberglass. I regret I don’t know how to work with fiberglass, this would be so practical for our project :/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,221.399445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/an-high-speed-logic-gate-board-for-the-easy-phi-project/ | A High-Speed Logic Gate Board For The Easy-Phi Project | Mathieu Stephan | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"Easy-phi",
"high speed",
"KiCAD",
"limpkin",
"logic function",
"open source"
] | A (long) while ago I presented you the
Easy-phi project
, which aims at building a simple, cheap but intelligent rack-based open hardware/software platform for hobbyists. With this project, you simply have a rack to which you add cards (like the one shown above) that perform the functions you want.
During these last months my team has been finishing the design and production of several different boards so I’ll start showing them off during these next weeks. Today I present you the
High Speed Logic Gate Board
, a quantum-physicist requested easy-phi module that can perform logic AND/OR functions at <2GHz speeds. This quite technical write-up is mainly about the constraints that high-speed signals pose for schematics design but is also about the techniques that are used for HS signals termination and monitoring. I hope, however, it’ll give our readers a nice overview of what the insides of a high-speed system may look like. All the files used for this board may be found on the official
GitHub repository
. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1378820",
"author": "synth",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T05:05:24",
"content": "“An High-Speed” ?an hero.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1378906",
"author": "StinkySteve",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T06:05:21",
"content":... | 1,760,376,221.538276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/hexdrake-a-low-cost-2-dof-hexapod/ | HexDrake — A Low Cost 2-DOF Hexapod | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"hexapod",
"Hexapod robot",
"hexdrake"
] | [David’s] been making robots since he was 16. After conquering the basics, he wanted to build something a bit more interesting than a simple wheeled-robot — he wanted to buy a hexapod but they were too expensive — so he decided to
design his own low-cost version!
It’s made out of hand-cut wood, SG90 servos, an Arduino and a 16-channel servo controller. A 2.4GHz remote control sends commands to the Arduino which then communicates to the USC servo controller, allowing for intricate control of the 14 servos that make up the HexDrake.
He’s also added a few LED arrays for the eyes of his robot, which in the future will be animated to give expression to his little hexapod.
It’s an extremely well built little bot, and [David’s] made a very in-depth
Instructable
for anyone who would like to follow in his footsteps. Stick around after the break to see it scurry around!
For something a bit scarier and bigger,
check out this 16lb beast of a Hexapod!
No where near low-cost though… | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1378373",
"author": "Felipe Kautzmann (@felipekm)",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T02:14:20",
"content": "Just awesome :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1378575",
"author": "TechnoMan",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T03:44:28",
... | 1,760,376,221.635779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/building-el-displays-on-a-pcb/ | Building EL Displays On A PCB | Brian Benchoff | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"el",
"EL panel",
"el wire",
"electroluminescence",
"electroluminescent",
"pcb"
] | Elecrolumiscent displays have seen a huge swing in popularity recently, but only in limited forms like EL wire or flat EL panels. You can, of course, cut and bend these wires and panels to suit any purpose, but custom shaped EL displays are just the bee’s knees. They’re not hard to fabricate, either: with cheap custom PCBs,
all it takes to make custom EL panels is just a few chemicals
.
[Nick]’s method of fabricating custom EL displays uses an exposed copper layer on a PCB you’d pick up from OSHpark or any of the random board houses in China. The process consists of designing a display – be it a few letters, pixels, or a seven-segment arrangement. The display ‘stack’ is a layer of painted-on dialectric, a phospor, and finally a translucent conductive ink that connects the display segments to ground. It looks like an extremely easy process, and from the pictures it looks like [Nick] is making some EL displays of reasonable quality.
[Nick]’s work was inspired by the grand poobah of homebrew electrolumiscent displays,
[Jeri Ellsworth]
, who managed to make a similar EL pixel on a PCB. [Nick]’s display looks great, though, and with a little work some custom segment displays should be very possible. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1378002",
"author": "dmcbeing",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T23:51:59",
"content": "Wow amazing.But!I believe you could even make a pixel display with a double sided board where pixels would be vias.Then on one side would connect rows and the other side the columns,instant EL pixel disp... | 1,760,376,221.958447 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/sphere-morphing-hexabot-takes-on-the-wilderness/ | Sphere Morphing Hexabot Takes On The Wilderness | James Hobson | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"hexabot",
"morphex",
"spherebot"
] | [Zenta’s] sphere morphing hexabot, the MorpHex, continues to impress us. He’s just released a video showing it off —
by having it roll down a hill!
We’ve been following the MorpHex
since 2011
, and it really is an
amazing project
— especially when it started to
roll around on its own!
In this latest update, [Zenta] was trying to get a good outdoor test video, as he’s never seen a hexapod robot
roll
down a hill. The video (and rolling) goes smoothly until about 3 minutes 36 seconds in, when the MorpHex experiences a catastrophic inner body servo failure!
Surprisingly, it didn’t fail during its tumble down the hill, but when it was just walking around afterwards. [Zenta] attributes it to a poor quality servo and had bad feelings about it breaking previously. Not fixing it earlier resulted in having to spend 10 hours of his Easter holiday taking Morphex apart and repairing it! Just goes to show… don’t wait until it’s too late to fix something!
And the clip of when the inner body servo fails:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wI5IgUFe2g
[Thanks Joel!] | 16 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1377520",
"author": "CaptainClank",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T20:09:05",
"content": "When can I buy one?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1377601",
"author": "Kevin Ochs",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T20:37:42",
... | 1,760,376,222.646164 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/simple-hack-creates-an-inverted-watch-display/ | Simple Hack Creates An Inverted Watch Display | Adam Fabio | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"casio",
"G-Shock",
"lcd",
"wrist watch"
] | Sometimes you have to bust out the wayback machine to find a good hack. Back in 2008, [Brian] performed this awesome
negative display hack
on his classic Casio G-Shock watch. The G-Shock, like most digital watches, uses a twisted nematic LCD. All
Liquid Crystal Displays
are made up of a layer cake of polarizers, glass, and liquid crystal. In non touchscreen displays, the top layer is a sheet of polarizing film glued down with an optical quality adhesive.
[Brian] disassembled his watch to reveal the LCD panel. Removing the glued down polarizing film can be a difficult task. Pull too hard and the thin glass layers will crack, rendering the display useless. After some patient work with an X-acto knife [Brian] was able to remove the film.
Much like the
privacy monitor hack
, the naked watch appeared to be off. Holding a sheet of linear polarizing film between the watch and the viewer reveals the time. If the film is rotated 90 degrees, the entire screen is color inverted. [Brian] liked the aesthetics of the inverted screen, so he glued down his polarizing film in the offset position. After reassembly, [Brian’s] “customized” watch was ready to wear.
[Via
Hacker News
] | 42 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1377045",
"author": "matguy",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T17:07:20",
"content": "I used to do this in elementary school all the time, back in the 80’s. (I was quite the nerd, though I have a feeling I’m in good company, here.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,222.593717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/measuring-light-with-chipkit/ | Measuring Light With ChipKIT | Will Sweatman | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"chipkit",
"light sensing",
"measuring light",
"pic32"
] | How does one go about measuring the amount of light in a given area? With a Light Meter of course! Maintaining proper lighting levels can be very important in places like schools, hospitals and even your own workbench.
[Raj] over at Embedded Labs has put together an excellent tutorial on how to construct your very own
light meter
based upon the chipKIT platform. The chipKIT Uno32 is similar to Arduino, but boasts a much more powerful PIC32MX320F128 microcontroller. We’ve seen projects that feature the
chipKIT Uno
(pdf warning) here before. From
playing pong
to hosting several
temperature sensors
, it’s certainly a versatile platform.
The light meter uses an I/O shield and communicates to a
BH1750FVI digital light sensor
via I2C. The firmware divides the raw data coming off the sensor by a constant, and displays the light intensity data on an OLED display in Lux, foot-candles, and Watts/m^2 units. Be sure to check out the tutorial for full schematics and source. | 18 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1376703",
"author": "jioaeg",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T14:48:57",
"content": "PIC is a no-go for me. I will not buy closed-source programmers (pickit). I’ll stick with my good old ATmega 8.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1376... | 1,760,376,221.888613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/sci-fi-contest-roundup-star-trek/ | Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: Star Trek | James Hobson | [
"contests"
] | [
"communicator badge",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest",
"star trek",
"tricorder"
] | Ah yes, how could we miss Star Trek? To be honest, we’re surprised there aren’t
more
entries of Star Trek related projects in our
Sci-Fi Contest!
Star Fleet Communicator Badge
There’s actually no info on this project yet, but we have to admit — it’s a pretty cool (albeit nerdy) concept. They want to fit a Bluetooth headset with a loudspeaker into a
Star Fleet Communicator Badge
, activated by tapping on it gently.
Just don’t wear a red shirt with it…
Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Pinball Machine
This ones a really cool hack. A team of four have taken a 1978 Bally Star Trek Pinball machine, and converted it into a
Star Trek Mirror Universe Pinball machine
based on the TOS episode
Mirror, Mirror
where Kirk and his crew are transported to a parallel (mirrored) universe!
Notable features include the custom CNC machined table with custom artwork, a Nixie tube score board, and that
they’ve made the design open source!
Minus copyrighted artwork of course…
JJ Tricorder
The
JJ Tricorder
, named after its team [Julia] and [Jaromir] is planned out to look just like the
SR-580 type Tricorder
— except its going to be backed with 21st century technology.
The main goal of the project is to have it be able to detect and analyse electromagnetic, geographic and environmental parameters. There’s lots of inspiration for it, like the
now-open-source Berkeley Tricorder
or the
Tricorder Project itself!
Still haven’t entered the contest? Don’t worry —
there’s still time
for you to put an awesome Sci-Fi project together to win some crazy cool prizes! It just needs to be done and documented by April 29, 2014! | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1376385",
"author": "Haku",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T12:39:18",
"content": "On the Tricorder front, two of my multimeters are sort of similiar in design. I have a Metrix MTX3282 and a MTX3283.http://www.conrad-electronic.co.uk/medias/global/ce/1000_1999/1200/1220/1220/122070_RB_00_F... | 1,760,376,222.119551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/sci-fi-contest-roundup-science-nonfiction/ | Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: Science Nonfiction | Brian Benchoff | [
"contests"
] | [
"hexapod",
"robot",
"robot suspension",
"rocker-bogie",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest"
] | Yep, we have
a Sci-Fi contest
on our hands, with a week to go until entries are due. There are amazing prizes for the best Sci-Fi build, but in the spirit of the Internet, a few teams have elected to put together a science nonfiction project. We won’t hold that against them, because these builds are really, really cool.
Rockin’ bogie, man
First up in the ‘real life science fiction’ category is
an adorable little rocker bogie robot
designed and built by a team at MADspace, the Eindhoven Hackerspace.
A rocker bogie suspension is rather unique in that it can be used to drive over obstacles twice the size of the wheels, has a zero turning radius, and is found on every rover that has ever gone to Mars. The suspension system has articulated rockers on each side of the chassis , with pivoting wheels at each of the four corners of the robot. While this type of suspension can’t go very fast, it can go just about anywhere.
The team loaded up their bot with a Raspberry Pi, a pair of webcams, 20Ah of batteries, gyro, and a web interface. The suspension works beautifully, and most of the parts are 3D printable. Very cool. There’s a pair of videos with this bot in action below.
Spider bot. Just add two more legs.
Continuing on with the science nonfiction theme of this post is
a cute little hexapod walker
reminiscent of designs that have been proposed to visit the moon and asteroids.
This is a rather unique hexapod, controlled entirely with 12 PWM channels on an ATMega1284. Although each leg only has two degrees of freedom (the software has support for 3 DOF, though) the movement is surprisingly smooth. It’s an inexpensive build, too, with 5 gram servos providing all the power to the legs. Video below. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1378755",
"author": "fm`",
"timestamp": "2014-04-25T04:43:32",
"content": "Now make a hexapod with a rocker-bogie suspension. Save two servos by putting them on the rocker joints instead of each leg.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,222.071406 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/need-an-idea-for-your-next-kickstarter-check-out-this-kickstarter/ | Need An Idea For Your Next Kickstarter? Check Out This Kickstarter! | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"meta",
"recursion",
"see also: recursion"
] | Kickstarter has become the most powerful force in kickstarting new hardware projects, video games, documentaries, and board games, and now everyone wants a piece of the action. The problem obviously isn’t product development and engineering; you can just conjure that up with a little bit of Photoshop and some good PR. The only you really need for a good Kickstarter is an idea, and
META is just the tool for the job
. It’s the Arduino-powered Motivational Electronic Text Adviser, the perfect device to generate the next big idea in the world of crowdfunding.
The Arduino-powered META includes three buttons and an Arduino-controlled LCD display. Press a button, and the next big hardware project to wash across the blogs faster than the announcement of a campaign for a $300 3D printer will appear on the screen.
Because META is Arduino-compatible, it’s compatible with existing Arduino sketches. This makes turning the META into the next home automated Bluetooth low energy 4.0 internet of things a snap. Because this is open hardware the laser cut enclosure can easily be upgraded to an RGB LED 3D printer robotic drone bluetooth boombox.
If Kickstarters aren’t your thing, there’s also a
cloud-based META
that will generate ideas in the mobile app browser cloud. Bitcoin. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1372347",
"author": "Jag",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T09:16:46",
"content": "Apparently I’m kickstarting the Self-Balancing Hands-Free Cardboard Fish Tank for Cats. You just can’t make this up, honestly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,222.448395 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/i2s-audio-and-spi-display-with-an-ethernet-module/ | I2S Audio And SPI Display With An Ethernet Module | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"ethernet",
"HLK-RM04",
"I2S",
"router",
"Router module",
"wifi"
] | [kgsws] is working on a small project that requires some audio and a display of some sort. While this project can be easily completed with a bigish microcontroller or ARM board, he’s taking a much simpler route: the entire project
is built around a cheap router module
, giving this project amazing expandability for a very meager price.
The router module in question is the
HLK-RM04
from Hi-Link, commonly found via the usual Chinese resellers for about $25. On board this module is a UART, Ethernet, and a WiFi adapter along with a few GPIO pins for interfacing with the outside world.
[kgsws] is using the native SPI pins on this module to control the clock and data lines for the tiny LCD, with a GPIO pin toggling the chip select. I2S audio is also implemented, decoded with an 8-bit DAC, the MCP4801.
It’s an extremely inexpensive solution for putting audio and video in a project, and since this board has Ethernet, WiFi, and a few more GPIO pins, it’s can do much more than whatever [kgsws] is planning next. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1372367",
"author": "pyrofer",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T09:24:15",
"content": "Are you using openwrt as the image on these? If so how did you flash it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1372472",
"author": "sushihangover... | 1,760,376,222.386515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/22/electromagnetic-spiderman-webshooter-railgun-grappling-hook/ | Electromagnetic Spiderman Webshooter Railgun / Grappling Hook | James Hobson | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"rail gun",
"real webshooter",
"spiderman rail gun",
"spiderman webshooter",
"webshooter"
] | As technology continues to advance, make-believe props and technology from movies are coming closer and closer to reality. [Patrick Priebe] has managed to put together
a working Spiderman Webshooter
with the help of electromagnets!
He’s built a tiny coil gun that puts out 100 Joules of energy using a 350V capacitor bank, which straps cleanly to his wrist over top of a Spiderman costume glove. It makes the classic high-pitched hum as it charges, and launches a small barbed brass arrow capable of skewering Styrofoam.
He didn’t stop there though! He’s created a handy little winch using a small high-powered brushless motor with an ESC. A weighted disk acts as a flywheel to increase the pulling power of the fishing line, and he’s built it on a pivot so when you launch it, the fishing line just slips off the end without resistance. To engage, you flip it back perpendicular to the line and turn on the motor.
This isn’t his first ridiculously cool gadget either — remember his
1kW Laser Pulse pistol?
Or how about the
1W Iron Man Repulsor beam?
[Thanks Tom!] | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1371617",
"author": "DK007",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T05:17:09",
"content": "It’s a coil gun by the way not a rail gun :) cool build",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1373297",
"author": "Greenaum",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,223.163608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/22/hummingboard-the-vastly-more-powerful-raspi/ | HummingBoard, The Vastly More Powerful Raspi | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arm",
"HummingBoard",
"i.MX6",
"linux",
"raspberry pi"
] | The Raspberry Pi has been around for a while now, and while many boards that hope to take the Pi’s place at the top of the single board ARM Linux food chain, not one has yet succeeded. Finally,
there may be a true contender to the throne
. It’s called the HummingBoard, and packs a surprising amount of power and connectivity into the same size and shape as the venerable Raspberry Pi.
The HummingBoard uses a Freescale i.MX6 quad core processor running at 1GHz with a Vivante GC2000 GPU. There’s 2GB of RAM, microSD card slot, mSATA connector, Gigabit Ethernet, a BCM4329 WiFi and Bluetooth module, a real-time clock, and IR receiver. There’s also all the usual Raspberry Pi flair, with a 26 pin GPIO connector, CSI camera connector, DSI LCD connector, stereo out, as well as the usual HDMI and analog video.
The company behind the HummingBoard, SolidRun, hasn’t put a retail price on the board, nor have they set a launch date. You can, however,
enter a contest to win a HummingBoard
with the deadline this Friday. Winners will be announced in early May, so
maybe
the HummingBoard will be officially launched sometime around then.
It’s an amazing board with more than enough power to rival the extremely powerful BeagleBone Black, with the added bonus of being compatible with so many of those Raspberry Pi accessories we all love dearly. | 76 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1371044",
"author": "quantumman42",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T02:20:44",
"content": "I suspect that it will come in at ~$129.99 given it appears to have the same specs as the CuBox-i4Pro which they sell for that price.http://cubox-i.com/products/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,376,223.015136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/22/sci-fi-contest-roundup-doctor-who/ | Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: Doctor Who | James Hobson | [
"contests"
] | [
"Doctor Who",
"dr. who",
"sci-fi",
"sci-fi contest"
] | What’s a
Sci-Fi contest
without entries from the longest running sci-fi TV show,
Doctor Who
?
Sonic Screwdriver Door Lock
Ah yes, the
iconic
Sonic Screwdriver, able to get the Doctor out of almost any jam — with style.
Started this project over a year ago, [Daniel] figured a Sci-Fi contest was a good enough excuse to
get around to finishing it
.
Using a Raspberry Pi and a microphone, the lock unlocks when the python script detects a sound signature that matches previously recorded Sonic Screwdriver’s hums — meaning friends with novelty Sonic Screwdrivers can join in the fun too — if he lets them.
When the correct sound sample FFT is detected, the door is unlocked using a transistor that is connected to an electronic door strike. When completed you’ll be able to show off your true Whovian nature, and impress your friends!
Head Tracking Augmented Reality Police Box
Inspired by the augmented reality
TARDIS that is actually bigger on the inside
, [Mike] and his wife are working on creating one that doesn’t need a smart phone to enjoy.
Instead it uses head tracking and an LCD inside the door to create the illusion of a cavernous inside!
A head tracking Tardis!
A webcam tracks your head’s position, which then changes the perspective of the interior of the TARDIS on the LCD — we’re getting giddy just thinking about it!
EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!!!
While there isn’t too much information on this project, [th3c4rd] is planning on creating a
Doctor Who Voice Modulator
which will allow you to sound like your favorite villains with the press of a button!
Using a ring modulator for the effect, [th3c4rd] plans on making his own, since commercial ones will run you upwards of $200!
He’s still looking for a team-mate for the project so if you’re interested in helping out, get in touch!
Still haven’t entered the contest? Don’t worry —
there’s still time
for you to put an awesome Sci-Fi project together to win some crazy cool prizes! | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1370682",
"author": "Smonson",
"timestamp": "2014-04-22T23:25:34",
"content": "As for ring modulation, the Jaycar kit runs your voice through an op-amp with a square-wave on the other input. Unfortunately you have to pay $2.50 to see the schematic, if you don’t own the book.http://w... | 1,760,376,222.692301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/22/2048-embedded-edition/ | 2048: Embedded Edition | Kristina Panos | [
"ARM",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"2048",
"embedded",
"gameduino 2",
"Nucleo"
] | How ’bout that 2048 game? Pretty addictive, huh? Almost as addictive as embedded systems are, at least if you’re [Andrew]. Armed (pun intended) with a Nucleo F4 and a Gameduino 2 shield, he decided to have a go at making
an embedded version
of the popular tile pusher web game.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Nucleo boards from STMicroelectronics, check out
our post on the Nucleo family
from a couple of months ago. The Gameduino 2 shield ships with a 4.3″ touchscreen driven by an FT800 GPU EVE. [Andrew] wrote his own driver for it and his blog post goes into great detail about its programming model and the SPI read, write, and command functions he wrote. Full code is available from
[Andrew]’s repo
.
He started by generating a blank screen based on clues found in the Gameduino 2 source. Pretty soon he had rendered a rectangle and then a full 2048 board. A minor difference between [Andrew]’s creation and the original is that his always creates new tiles as ‘2’ while the web game cranks out the occasional ‘4’.
We were unable to embed [Andrew]’s gameplay videos, but you’ll find two on his blog. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1370724",
"author": "Pixel Pirate",
"timestamp": "2014-04-22T23:56:16",
"content": "Well… I know what I must now make…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1370999",
"author": "Joel",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T02:03:07",
"... | 1,760,376,222.804262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/24/diy-multimeter-arduino-sold-seperately/ | DIY Multimeter, Arduino Sold Seperately | Rich Bremer | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"digital multimeter",
"multimeter"
] | You can’t argue that Arduinos are extremely popular with the maker/hacker community. Some would say that there is certainly no shortage of projects to make using them. [Milen] thought otherwise and felt it was time to create an
Arduino-based multimeter
.
At the heart of this project is a common Arduino Uno. The additional parts were kept to a minimum in order to keep down the overall cost and project complexity. The finished product can measure voltage from 0-100v, amperage up to 500mA and resistance between 0-250 kohm. If you need to check for continuity, it can do that too.
All of the parts required to make the multimeter fit on a shield that plugs directly into the Arduino. Banana plugs allow for attaching test leads. The measurement values are displayed on an LCD screen and/or (if connected) to the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor. If only using the serial monitor, the LCD screen can be omitted to save a few bucks.
If you would like to build one for yourself, the above link has detailed instructions, schematics and a bill of material. The best bang-for-the-buck multimeter available is still the
Harbor Freight Special
that you can usually get for free with purchase.
[Thanks Karl] | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1375863",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T09:22:50",
"content": "Separately…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1376870",
"author": "supershwa",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T15:55:14",
"content":... | 1,760,376,222.757224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/super-shoes-lead-the-way/ | Super Shoes Lead The Way | Adam Fabio | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"Smart Shoes",
"Wearables"
] | Many of us spend so much time looking down at our phones that we miss the world all around us. [Dhairya] hopes to change that with
Super Shoes
, a pair of enhanced insoles that let your toes do the navigating while you enjoy the sights. Each insole has a Bluetooth radio and a microcontroller. Three coin cell vibrator motors act as an output device under the small toes, while a capacitive touch pad under the big toe handles input. Careful positioning of the electronics keeps the foam insoles flexible.
Using the shoes is as simple as walking around. Say you needed walking directions. You would set the destination on your smartphone. The shoes would then tie in to your smartphone’s GPS and maps application. From there, it’s simply a matter of following your toes. If the toes on your left foot vibrate, turn left. Vibration on the right foot indicates a right turn. When your destination is at hand, both feet will vibrate rapidly to celebrate.
[Dhairya] envisions a cloud service called ShoeCentral which will store a database of the user’s likes and dislikes. Based upon this data, ShoeCentral will guide the user to new restaurants or places they may like. All of this and hands free? Where do we sign up? | 38 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1375394",
"author": "Honus",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T05:14:03",
"content": "That is a very interesting project. I can’t tell you how many people I see every day that walk around staring down at their phones, completely clueless as to what is going on around them.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,376,222.901363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/digispark-pro-the-bigger-smaller-dev-board/ | Digispark Pro, The Bigger Smaller Dev Board | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"ATtiny167",
"attiny85",
"Digispark"
] | There has recently been a huge influx of extremely small dev board based on the ATtiny85. This small 8-pin microcontroller is able to run most Arduino sketches, and the small size and low price of these dev boards means they have been extremely popular. The Digispark was among the first of these small boards, and now the creator is releasing a newer, bigger version
dubbed the Digispark Pro
.
The new board isn’t based on the ‘tiny85, but rather the ATtiny167. This larger, 20-pin chip adds 10 more I/O pins, and a real hardware SPI interface, but the best features come with the Digispark Pro package. There’s real USB programming, device emulation, and serial over USB this time, and the ability to use the Arduino serial monitor, something not found in the original Digispark.
There are also a few more shields this time around, with WiFi and Bluetooth shields available as additional rewards. Without the shields, the Digi Pro is cheap, and only $2 more per board than the original Digispark. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1374998",
"author": "joee",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T02:14:13",
"content": "We need to start making smaller headers!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1376221",
"author": "diaaak",
"timestamp": "2014-04-24T11:41:... | 1,760,376,223.093507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/04/23/black-mirror-black-hole-kill-your-television/ | Black Mirror, Black Hole: Kill Your Television | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"ir",
"pink floyd",
"raspberry pi",
"stb",
"time management",
"tv"
] | Would you believe that some people think the internet is a time waster? Well, not at this particular address of course, but we can think of some other sites that are absolute rabbit holes without so much as a rousing game of croquet at the bottom. If you need help achieving what Tim Ferriss dubbed a Low Information Diet, there are browser extensions that will block your access to sites that keep you from getting things done. [Ivan’s girlfriend] has taken this time management tack seriously and even created a simple web page that states “Don’t Waste Your Time!” that will show if she tries to get to Facebook.
There’s one small problem with all this, and it’s been around for a long time. [Ivan’s girlfriend] still watches TV. Out of love and respect for her goals,
he decided to prank her by blocking her TV viewing
. In a delightful twist, the TV will display her own web page to her after 30 seconds.
They have digital and analog TVs, so he had to set up both in order to cover his bases. The digital TV is a monitor fed from a set-top box with HDMI out. As the STB can only be controlled via IR remote, [Ivan] used an HDMI switch to change from the STB input to a Raspi that will display the reprimanding web page and play Pink Floyd’s “
Time
“.
The analog TV took slightly more doing. He put a Raspi on the AV input, but connected it from the inside so nothing looked suspicious. The Raspi checks the TV status every second and switches to the Pi once the TV is on. Same deal: judgmental web page, Pink Floyd. The beauty part is that both of [Ivan]’s setups also record her reaction; the digital TV uses a dash camera and the analog uses an Android phone. Check out [Ivan]’s tour of the analog TV Pi after the break.
If you or [Ivan’s girlfriend] need even more time management help, there’s always
the roll-your-own-Pomodoro timer
. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1374601",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-04-23T23:13:54",
"content": "Ultimate evil genius level, modulate the signal on all channels so that she still has control over the TV, but the screen is everywhere…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,223.311446 |
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