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https://hackaday.com/2014/01/28/3d-printed-netduino-remote-controlled-car/ | 3D Printed Netduino Remote Controlled Car | Marsh | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"3d printed",
"bluetooth",
"netduino",
"remote control",
"windows phone"
] | [Matt] lives in South Africa, where homes have smallish crawlspaces (some only 30cm high!) that he can’t quite squeeze himself into. Even if he could, he probably wouldn’t: they’re apparently vacation homes for the local rats. He did, however, want to explore these spaces to get a better idea what’s going on inside, so he
built a Windows Phone-controlled car with a Netduino and 3D-printed parts.
Such a specialized application requires unique parts, so [Matt] designed and 3D-printed the wheels and frame from scratch. You’ve probably noticed that the wheels aren’t your typical cylinders. The terrain [Matt] faces is sand, so the spiked shape provides better grip. The body’s design required extra attention because it holds the motors, the Netduino, the motor driver, and the battery.
A Bluetooth module connects to the Netduino and allows [Matt] to drive the car with his Windows Phone, and an inexpensive 5V LED board provides some light for those dark corners. How does it see once inside the crawlspace? It looks like [Matt’s] getting to that part. His plan is to simply mount a second phone running Skype and watch the stream. Stick around after the break to see [Matt] use the car to both confuse and excite his dog.
[via
reddit
] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170453",
"author": "pgao",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T12:34:50",
"content": "All you need is a plumbing snake.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1170504",
"author": "ObviouslyEcstaticSouthAfrican",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T... | 1,760,376,325.294472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/28/veronica-gets-a-rom-monitor/ | Veronica Gets A ROM Monitor | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"6502",
"ROM monitor",
"veronica"
] | [Quinn] has been on Veronica, her 6502-based computer for quite a while now, but until very recently it’s been more of an embedded project rather than a fully functional computer. Writing software for Veronica
on
Veronica has been the goal from the start, and finally
[Quinn] can write code from a ROM monitor
.
In its most basic state, a ROM monitor is an extremely simple piece of software. It resides on the ROM of a computer and is the first thing the computer loads on booting, allowing the user to inspect, read, and write to memory locations, writing code in hex, and running it straight from the monitor.
To write the ROM monitor (and a few other programs), [Quinn] is using the awesome
cc65 6502 C compiler
. This comes with a whole bunch of macros that make it easy to read keyboard input, shove bits into her AVR GPU, and writing to memory. The monitor program is loaded onto her ROM chip which is automatically read every time the reset button is pressed.
In the video below, you can see [Quinn] writing a few bits to address $2000 that tell the CPU to output ASCII characters to the display. It’s not much, but it’s the first time [Quinn] has written code for Veronica on Veronica, and should prove to be the beginning of a very interesting system. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170435",
"author": "madmilo",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T10:50:06",
"content": "yey",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1170452",
"author": "Lord Nothing",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T12:24:35",
"content": "thats pretty awes... | 1,760,376,325.436235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/yet-another-diy-camera-slider/ | Yet Another DIY Camera Slider | James Hobson | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera dolly",
"camera slide",
"camera slider",
"diy camera slide"
] | Professional camera gear is expensive, which is probably why there is such a huge DIY field for camera equipment. Here’s another great
DIY camera slider that you can build for cheap
.
Similar to other rigs we’ve seen, the heart of this design makes use of skateboard wheels — they’re cheap, have good bearings, and are easy to mount. He’s created a dolly for them using a T-strap bracket, which is used for wood framing — the wheels mount directly to it without any modification.
What we think is unique about this build are the rails [Shootr] decided to use. They’re U-Post fence posts — strong, rigid, and probably one of the cheapest forms of processed metal you can buy. To hold them together, he’s using a threaded rod with two pieces of 1/2″ square steel tubing, bracing the fence posts. This wedges the dolly in between them with just enough slack to slide smoothly back and forth.
The other method of making a camera slider like this is
using tubular rails
, which also allows you to add a curve in your camera track. And if you’re looking for a precise,
2-axis
camera dolly… you should
check out this one! | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170417",
"author": "PeteOC",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T09:29:27",
"content": "Those wheels are in-line skate wheels rather than skateboard wheels.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1170438",
"author": "Elias",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,325.968039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/low-power-smd-fireflies/ | Low-Power SMD Fireflies | Marsh | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"fireflies",
"firefly",
"reflow",
"reflow soldering",
"smd"
] | [Tyson’s] family went with creating rather than buying Christmas presents last month, which gave him the opportunity to build
some electronic fireflies
for gifts. He drew inspiration from a
similar firefly project we featured last year
, but expanded on the original model by designing dedicated PCBs and housings for each of his firefly pieces.
Although he’d settled on using ATTiny85’s for this project, [Tyson] was fresh out of through-hole versions. He decided to skip the prototyping phase and go right for fabrication, cranking up the laser-jet printer for some
toner-transfer
, which successfully produced 4 functioning boards (and 3 failures).
The fireflies were [Tyson’s] first attempt at SMD soldering, and we’d have to say it’s a job well done; he reflowed each board with a cheap-o heatgun from Harbor Freight.
After some hiccups with fuse programming, [Tyson] got the code uploaded and the fireflies illuminated.
Swing by his site for the nuts and bolts on construction, then snag the project files
here
. (Direct .zip download) | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170310",
"author": "supershwa",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T03:24:27",
"content": "Good newbie project. I haven’t done any SMD soldering yet either, but I think it would have helped to prevent solder bridging by putting flux on the board before adding solder pads. I’m surprised he h... | 1,760,376,325.245899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/measuring-185-%c2%b5%cf%89-in-circuit/ | Measuring 185 µΩ In Circuit | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"microOhm",
"Mooshimeter",
"resistance"
] | To measure resistance, you usually have to take the resistor to be tested out of the circuit, and sometimes that’s impossible. If you’re using a multimeter, measuring very small resistances is difficult to say the least. Combine both these problems – measuring microOhms in-circuit –
and you have a problem that’s perfectly suited for the Mooshimeter
.
Announced just a few weeks ago
, the Mooshimeter is a two-channel multimeter that communicates with your cell phone over Bluetooth. It’s perfect for measuring current and voltage simultaneously, all while being tucked away in some place that’s either dangerous, inaccessible, or mobile.
The Mooshimeter team put together a great example of what can be done with their meter by measuring the resistance of a car battery grounding strap while behind the steering wheel. To do this, they put alligator clips across the grounding cable and clamped on a current meter.
Inside the car, they whipped out their cell phone and looked at the Mooshimeter’s output for the voltage and current measurement. The Mooshi app has an IV curve (with linear regression in the works), so simply dividing the current and voltage gives them the resistance of the battery’s grounding cable.
It’s a very cool and extremely simple demonstration of how cool the Mooshimeter actually is. Video of the demo below. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170276",
"author": "genki",
"timestamp": "2014-01-28T01:25:39",
"content": "I thought milli- has m stuffix and u- stuffix is micro? Title reads micro-ohms but the body reads milli-ohms.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "117030... | 1,760,376,325.497927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/toner-transfer-pcbs-double-sided-with-color-silkscreen/ | Toner Transfer PCBs, Double Sided, With Color Silkscreen | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"etching",
"laminator",
"laser printer",
"pcb",
"toner transfer"
] | Making a few PCBs with the toner transfer method is a well-known technique in the hacker and maker circles. Double-sided PCBs are a little rarer, but still use the same process as their single-sided cousins. [Necromancer] is taking things up a notch and doing something we’ve never seen before –
double-sided PCBs made at home, with color silkscreens, all make with a laser printer
.
For laying down an etch mask, [Necro] is using a Samsung ML-2167 laser printer and the usual toner transfer process; print out the board art and laminate it to some copper board.
The soldermasks use a similar process that’s head-slappingly similar and produces great results: once the board is etched, he prints out the solder mask layer of his board, laminates it, and peels off the paper. It’s so simple the only thing we’re left wondering is why no one thought of it before.
Apart from the potential alignment issues for multiple layers, the only thing missing from this fabrication technique is the ability to do plated through holes. Still, with a laser printer, a laminator, and a little bit of ferric or copper chloride you too can make some very nice boards at home. | 38 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170168",
"author": "mobilewill",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T21:03:46",
"content": "Wow, very impressive. I have wanted to try my hand at PCB at home but these days so easy to get a few boards from places like OSHPark.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,325.812534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/recap-hackadays-first-live-event/ | Recap: Hackaday’s First Live Event | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured"
] | [
"meetup",
"Recap",
"the gathering"
] | Last Tuesday was the first time I know of that Hackaday hosted our own live event. There were some less official get-togethers associated with conferences and things like that. But we threw
The Gathering
to see if readers would rise from their lairs for a chance to interact with one another. We called, you answered, and I had an amazing time. Hackaday packed the place with over four hundred readers, and every conversation I had ended up being a fascinating interaction. Thank you!
[Brian], [Eliot], and [Mike] via [Mike’s] phone an color corrected by [Hefto
[Brian Benchoff] and I returned to our snowy homelands the next morning. Surprisingly this was the first time we had met each other despite working closely on Hackaday for the past several years. I also had the pleasure of meeting [Eliot Phillips] and [Jack Buffington] for the first time. I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to hang out with them, but when you’re trying to say hello to several hundred people you’ve just got to keep moving.
Before I get too wordy I better throw the more tag in here. Join me after the jump for a blow-by-blow of what we did, what sticks out in my mind, and where we’re going next.
What we did
We rented out the
LA Brewing Company
, forced the staff to wear Hackaday shirts all night. Then had fun. What did you expect?
Jolly Wrencher drawn freehand in Laser Graffiti [Photo by Tom Mix via Facebook]
It should not have come as a surprise that readers started showing up about 90 minutes early. In true friendly-hacker fashion the first gentlemen I met walked right in and asked if he could lend a hand setting up. Right on! Despite my nervous agitation the place was ready for the 6pm open. [Ben Delarre] had his Laser Grafitti Rig set up on time. We had envisioned a huge bare wall for the projection surface but that doesn’t actually exist in any bar so we made do with a smaller projection screen. It was still a ton of fun. [Brian] found a place for the Jolly Wrencher flag which is something he made himself. It was hung from the awning on the front of the building. I tried to kill myself hanging posters from a ladder that was just a bit too short. And [Lori], who coordinated everything, got the check-in area arranged, and the swag situated.
Apparently it took forever to get in the door. I’m going to blame the guy checking IDs because I thought we were more than ready to scan tickets or look up names pretty quickly. But by 7:15 most folks were inside. At least the wait for a beer was never very long, which makes up for the delay at the gate. We shushed the masses and cleared out a landing on the stairs to the loft so that I could get the formal remarks under way. This talk included info on where we’re going (see below) but it was nice to break it up with a few lightning talks.
[Brian] spoke about
the HaDuino
; opening almost one bottle of beer before it broke. [Ben] spoke about the trials of putting together Laser Grafitti; he built a great controller but the missing source code was a trial and a topic for a future post. And [CharlieX] and his wife [Kris], both associated with
NullSpaceLabs in LA
, spoke about previous and future LayerOne Conference Badge Hardware.
We raised a glass to the concept of Hackaday and got back to enjoying ourselves. The place stayed pretty full right up until we had to vacate the premises; sometime after 10pm. I managed to escape hangover. Since I was talking with so many people I didn’t get very many opportunities to visit the bartenders. In fact, I never made it up to the loft to try out Laser Grafitti and I’m kind of bummed about it. Next time we may just have to plan to hack together our own large-format projection screen
What sticks out
[CharlieX] gives a closer look at LayerOne Badge hardware
My biggest takeaway from this even is that readers want to help. From the guy who showed up 90 minutes early to the defense industry coder who offered to spearhead a guest post explaining synthetic aperture radar for mortals, everyone seems happy to pitch in to make Hackaday more awesome. Let’s do it! This really is the epitome of a virtual hackerspace. People contribute their expertise and time where they can, we all celebrate success and try to overcome anything less. It doesn’t mean we have to live in the same place, but live events like this really drive home the message that what we do here is enjoyed by all.
People are positive in person.
From the comments you’d expect nasty arguments to break out at The Gathering. But I didn’t experience any of that. In fact, there was one attendee was handing out “Internet Troll” business cards and he seemed to be among the most pleasant of the bunch.
Hackaday spans generations.
There were guests who appeared as young as 6 years old, and others well into retirement who must be making hacking a fun full-time “job”.
We have our own fanboys and that’s okay.
I actually had people come up and tell me they only read what I write and don’t like anything other writers are doing. Luckily I didn’t get the opposite. But one thing I always like to point out… it’s not about me or the rest of the staff.
Hackaday is about the community.
Where we’re going next
This is both a literal and figurative question. Hackaday is growing and so “where are we going?” is a very important question. New faces, new content in the form of guest posts, and the addition of live events might be troubling for some long-term readers. But this blog has grown from the ground up. Everyone brought on as a contributor has been a long-term reader. It’s one of our core values. None of us want to see the awesome go away, and we’re watching the horizon to ensure that we stay on course while covering Fresh Hacks Every Day.
Bags to carry free stuff home
The opportunity to include original content in our weekly rotation is a welcome addition. This helps to make sure we don’t stagnate, and certainly adds value to what we offer. But close analysis will show that we’ve been sticking to a tight goal of featuring at least six gnarly hacks (most of them from readers) each day, leaving about two slots for original content and newsy posts (like this one). We hope that this is a satisfying policy for those who, darn it, just don’t want to see anything change.
We have some opportunities that we have never had before. Although we’ve been working on many things the only one I’m ready to discuss was also revealed at The Gathering. [Brian Benchoff] has some grand ideas for hacks that are difficult, costly, time-consuming, and unlikely to be profitable. In one way or another that describes every project you’ve ever thought was awesome. Don’t worry [Brian], I’m only spilling the beans on one of your endeavors: wire-wrapped 68000 computer. He sent the board files to Seeed Studio in December and they’re back. When
visiting Apex Electronics
he picked up a bunch of wire-wrap sockets and other interesting baubles for the project. It’s designed for a case and the preliminary photos (I think he made the interesting ones blurry on purpose to irk me) are drool-worthy. Think wire-wrapping an entire retro-computer is a big project? It’s nothing compared to some of the other things he has on tap.
Seriously, I couldn’t go. Where’s the next one?
Using NFC cards to vote on the next live event (more on this in another post)
It’s really hard to say where the next one will be. We used this as a test to see if the Hackaday community would actually show up, and you did! Meetups are great, but I’d prefer to do some hacking if we’re going to the trouble to get people together. The first hacking event would most likely be in LA again — as a first test run. But if we can take these to other cities we will.
As far as branching out, what makes the most sense to me is to hit the other large population hub in the US: New York. After that it would be great to do something in the middle like Chicago, or somewhere in Texas. And of course it would be great to have some in Europe. But we haven’t hacked our own money printing system (yet) so this is dreaming pretty big — which we’re not afraid to do.
Here’s a question for you. It could take a long time to organize these events. Do you want us to organize some more spontaneous meet-ups to coincide with other events? For example, having some of the Hackaday staff plan to meet at a bar during DEFCON? Would you come and hang out even if you had to buy your own beer?
[Photos by
Edward de la Torre
unless otherwise noted] | 47 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170096",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T18:09:57",
"content": "On a personal note. Does anyone have mad color-correction skills? I’d love to have somewhat normal color balance onthis mostly-red original imageof Brian, Eliot, and Me. Thanks for any help you can pr... | 1,760,376,325.905282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/flash-game-cartridge-for-the-vic-20/ | Flash Game Cartridge For The VIC-20 | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"ATmega32a",
"expansion port",
"flash",
"game cartridge",
"VIC-20"
] | [Petri]’s first computer was the venerable Commodore VIC-20, predecessor to the Commodore 64. With only 5kB of RAM, a very simple graphics chip, and BASIC, it’s a bare-bones system that’s perfect for a 7-year-old future programmer. [Petri] was trying to figure out something to do with this old computer, and realized the simple schematic would allow him to
recreate those classic VIC-20 cartridges
using modern hardware.
This project began by cracking open a few game cartridges to see what was inside. They’re very simple devices, consisting of a decoupling cap and a ROM chip wired directly to the data and address busses. [Petri] desoldered the ROM and replaced it with a ribbon cable that would give him a clean breadboard to VIC-20 expansion port interface.
Instead of finding a contemporary EEPROM chip to program, [Petri] decided on using a Flash chip. The original cartridge had a 16kB ROM chip, but the smallest parallel Flash chip he could find was 256k. No problem, then; just ignore a few address lines and everything worked out great.
After getting the VIC-20 reading the breadboarded Flash chip, [Petri] started work on a circuit that would program his Flash chip while still attached to the expansion port. With a few buffer chips and an ATMega32a loaded up with Arduino, he’s able to program the Flash chip and turn it over to the VIC-20.
A simple test that toggled the color of the screen as quickly as possible was all that was needed to test the new circuit. Now, [Petri] can finally start on programming some games for his first love. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1170019",
"author": "cooperised",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T15:24:36",
"content": "This is cool.Quick suggetion, the original ROMs were 8k*8, and the Flash is 256k*8, according to the linked site. So how about adding switches to the five additional address lines, and having 32 diffe... | 1,760,376,325.730183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/stop-traffic-in-this-7-mode-led-running-jacket/ | Stop Traffic In This 7-Mode LED Running Jacket | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"ANT protocol",
"led strips",
"safety",
"teensy 2.0"
] | [Miria] was tired of tangling with bicyclists on her nighttime runs. It was obvious to her to illuminate herself, but she thought it would be really cool if the lights responded to her heart rate. The short summary that tipped us off is
over at NYC Resistor
, and [Miria]
gives the gory details
on her blog. The LEDs operate in seven different light modes that increase in speed proportionate to her heart rate.
She started the build around an Arduino but found that the compatible heart rate sensors were mostly optical and gave inaccurate readings. Since she was already using a Garmin GPS watch and heart rate monitor band, she decided to hack into the conversation between the two. Garmin uses
the ANT protocol
for this. While [Miria] found the documentation to be an effective sleeping pill, she also found that SparkFun has an ANT transceiver breakout board. Unfortunately, it’s been discontinued.
[Miria] continued undeterred, using the SparkFun board for prototyping. Her final version uses a Teensy 2.0 and
this ANT transceiver
in place of the ill-fated SparkFun board. She found an
Energizer power pack
that plugs directly into the Teensy and can power both
Adafruit weatherproof LED strips
for about an hour. Look both ways, and check out her demo after the break. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169971",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T12:16:47",
"content": "Might get shot for that jacket in NYC. Handy for the paramedics",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1170023",
"author": "CheezburgerBrown",
... | 1,760,376,325.372567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/27/agnes-roboknit-a-robot-so-creepy-it-even-has-a-facebook-profile/ | Agnes Roboknit: A Robot So Creepy It Even Has A Facebook Profile | James Hobson | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"agnes roboknit",
"andy noyes",
"knitting robot",
"robot knitting"
] | [Andy Noyes] is a British artist-inventor who recently debuted his latest project,
Agnes Roboknit
, at the 2013 Maker Faire U.K. Agnes is a humanoid robot who knits, scares small children, and occasionally looks around as if wondering why her maker condemned her to such a boring existence.
[Andy] wanted her to look human from a distance, but he also wanted to show off her mechanical parts upon closer inspection. She’s almost completely hand-made—down to her homemade gears driven by DC motors and her latex skin cast from plaster casts of real people. He originally planned to have her knit with real needles, but after discovering how difficult it was, [Andy] opted for a knitting loom instead.
He named her after his grandmother, Agnes, although he had hoped to accompany the name with a clever acronym (A.G.N.E.S.) like other classic robots from the 80’s. Stick around after the break to see a fascinating close-up of her weaving away on her loom. The motions are surprisingly simple, but simultaneously mesmerizing.
If you’re in need of a robotic friend,
she also has a Facebook profile. | 33 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169932",
"author": "cooperised",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T09:17:53",
"content": "Very cool, I saw this at the UK Maker Faire. Mesmerising to watch.Just have to add though, “weaving away on her loom”? Her knitting loom? I think that’s unlikely. There’s a big difference between w... | 1,760,376,325.566443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/diy-foam-cutter-makes-it-too-easy/ | DIY Foam Cutter Makes It Too Easy | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"diy foam cutter",
"foam",
"foam cutter"
] | Cutting foam is pretty tricky without a hot wire cutter. Don’t have one? Well, lucky for you, [Darcy Whyte] has a
guide on how to make one
. It takes just over an hour to build, and it costs next to nothing in supplies!
[Darcy] is using an old 9V power wart that he had lying around, but you can probably use any DC power supply. He designed the frame in SketchUp and cut it out with his CNC router, although a saw will work just as well for MDF. A piece of 40 gauge nickel chromium wire was strung taught between two 1/4-20 bolts, with one held back by a spring. The spring acts as a safeguard to prevent snapping the wire during overly aggressive cuts. This may be a simple build, but it does produce a handy tool.
[Darcy] demonstrates cutting foam with his creation in a video after the break. We think he could cut thin plastic with it as well—modify your 3D prints, anyone?—though he may need to crank up the voltage a bit.
If you’re interested in building one yourself, [Darcy] has also provided the
frame templates on his site (SketchUp files). | 39 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169890",
"author": "indiantinker",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T06:08:02",
"content": "Awesome! Got to build this one.. :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1169892",
"author": "BBotany",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T06:16:30",
... | 1,760,376,326.672391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/how-to-stop-grandmas-wheelchair-if-she-goes-out-of-rc-range/ | How To Stop Grandma’s Wheelchair If She Goes Out Of RC Range | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"fail-safe",
"mobility chair",
"relay"
] | Okay, so he doesn’t have Grandma riding in it that we know of, but [zim] recently decided to turn a Jazzy mobility chair into “a radio-controlled platform for mischief”. RC offers more range than wifi or bluetooth, and he was able to find a reasonably priced secondhand radio on Craigslist. However, he found out that in the event of signal loss, the receiver keeps sending the last commands to the speed controller. [zim] didn’t want his 150 lb (68kg) mischief platform getting loose, so
he devised a fail-safe that cuts power to the motor when the signal is lost
.
[zim] discovered that the receiver returns channel 3 (the throttle) to a preset condition whenever the signal is lost. He used a 24V HVAC relay controlled by an Arduino Nano to sample the PW on channel 3 and shut it off when either the throttle or the signal are cut.
If Grandma is feisty, you could build
this caged-in version with a shopping cart
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvZhDf3FyyM | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169848",
"author": "bthy",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T03:27:42",
"content": "what a terrible writeup. Doesn’t even make sense anymore !Here’s what thy guy wrote :“Further reading informed me that the receiver would return channel 3, typically used for the throttle, to a preset positi... | 1,760,376,326.037989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/hackaday-links-january-26-2014/ | Hackaday Links: January 26, 2014 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"apple II",
"AVR",
"bus pirate",
"bus pirate cable",
"dos",
"kerbal space program",
"lipo",
"overclock",
"source code",
"thermal imaging camera",
"Valentines day"
] | The automotive industry is rolling more and more tech into their offerings. This is great for us because replacement or salvaged parts are great for projects. Here’s one component to look for. [MikesElectricStuff]
tears apart the thermal imaging camera form an Audi
. [via
Hacked Gadgets
]
Give your valentine an analog love note on the big day. [Tom’s]
LED heart chaser design
does it without any coding. It’s a 555 timer with CD4017 decade counter. The nice thing about the setup is a trimpot adjusts the chaser speed.
[Jan] is
overclocking his Arduino to 32 MHz
. For us that’s kind of an “eh” sort of thing. But his statement that you need to use a clock generator because the chip won’t work with an oscillator at that frequency raised an eyebrow. We saw an AVR chip
running from a 32MHz crystal oscillator in the RetroWiz project
from yesterday. So do we have it wrong or does [Jan]? Share your opinion in the comments.
Download a copy of the Apple II DOS source code… legally. Yay for releasing old code into the wild! The Computer History Museum has
the DOS source code and a bunch of interesting history
about it. [via
Dangerous Prototypes
]
While we were prowling around DP for the last link we came across [Ian’s] post on
a new version of Bus Pirate cables
. We’ve got the old rainbow cables which are pretty convenient. But if you’ve used them you’ll agree, hunting for the correct color for each connection isn’t anywhere near a fool-proof method. The new cable uses shrink tube printed with probe labels. They sound like a huge pain to manufacture. But this makes connections a lot easier. In our experience, when it doesn’t work its
always
a hardware problem! Hopefully this will mean fewer botched connections.
Make your tiny LiPo cells last longer. Not capacity wise, but physically. The delicate connections to the monitor PCB break easily, and the plug is really hard to connect and disconnect. [Sean]
shows how
he uses electrical tape for strain relief, and a bit of filing to loosen up the connector.
KerbalEdu: Kerbal Space Program for education. That’s right, you can
play Kerbal as part of school
now. Some may shake their heads at this, but school should be fun. And done right, we think gaming is a perfect way to educate. These initiatives must be the precursor to
A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
method of education
. Right? | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169835",
"author": "IcYhAwK",
"timestamp": "2014-01-27T02:46:49",
"content": "I like the teardown of the audi camera. Would like to score one for myself.And I am happy to see KSP being marketed to teachers as well. Awesomely fun game with lots of math, physics, geometry, etc… Rocke... | 1,760,376,326.08694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/littlebits-little-lathe/ | LittleBits Little Lathe | Todd Harrison | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"crayon",
"lathe",
"LittleBits",
"micro",
"mini"
] | Do you need a practical, useful and fun project for a young hacker who is under your wing? How about letting them get a bit of electronics experience snapping together a
LittleBits little lathe
to customize their crayons. Truthfully, this isn’t much of an electronics hack, but it does make fun use of a
LittleBits motor module
and all those old crayons you might have lying around. You could make this a weekend project to share with the kids, plus you never know what will spark that first interest in a young engineer.
If you’re unfamiliar with LittleBits, they are small electronic modules that magnetically snap together to build larger circuits. The modules are color-coded by functionality with non-reversible magnetic connectors to help the little ones understand how to connect and integrate the modules. These LittleBits kits are great for the young beginner in electronics or just for fun at any age. Individually, the modules are quite expensive, but the parts are well worth the price because children will find the system intuitive to use and the modules are robust in the hands of careless kids. A more cost-effective purchase would be one of the
kits from Adafruit.com
.
In this Instructable, [maxnoble440] demonstrates the little lathe turning a crayon using a variety of tools from the very sharp to the “safe for all ages.” The geared LittleBits motor turns slowly and appears to have enough torque to carve crayons—and possibly clay—packed around a small dowel. To build this project you will need a “little bit” of wood-crafting skill to construct the mini-lathe bed. All the instructions are available in the Instructable as well as a short video, which you can watch after the break below. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169737",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T21:19:33",
"content": "http://www.fuse.uk.com/services/product/productid/16Commercially available.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1169749",
"author": "bluewrait... | 1,760,376,326.202124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/shrinket-the-homebrew-trinket/ | Shrinket, The Homebrew Trinket | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"Trinket"
] | We’ve seen a lot of Trinket builds over the past few months, but so far few people have capitalized on the Trinket’s minimalism. It’s a fairly simple circuit, as far as dev boards go, and with careful planning can be built entirely on perfboard.
That’s what [villeki] did
, with a project he calls Shrinket.
After looking at
the schematic for the Trinket
, [villeki] figured he could best the very small footprint of this ATtiny85 board. To do this, he mounted the uC on the bottom side of the board, bending the pins so they could be easily soldered to the pins. The only real challenge in building this tiny board was the USB connector. To fit this connector on board, the copper pads were carefully scraped off the protoboard and wires run to the zeniers.
The Shrinket is impressively small – only 0.6″x 0.9″ – and a very impressive example of soldering skills. If you’re looking for a project to hone your free-form soldering skills, this is a great way to spend an hour or two. Bonus, you probably already have the parts required (or a reasonable substitute) sitting around. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169673",
"author": "Сергей «Ruddy» Омельченко",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T18:26:15",
"content": "The ugly blobs of excessive solder is another, though not so impressive, example of soldering skills",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,376,326.973059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/copying-objects-in-3d/ | Copying Objects In 3D | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d",
"3D copier",
"floral foam",
"milling",
"photocopier"
] | [Pulse 9] sent in a very interesting project he just finished up at an internship. It’s
a 3D photocopier
that scans an object and then mills said object into floral foam.
The copier is made out of material [Pulse] found sitting around – PVC, drawer slides for the X and Y axes, acrylic for the structure, and broken printer parts for the Z axis.
To scan an object, [Pulse] puts an object down on the bed and scans it with a laser and webcam. The images recorded on the camera are fed into MATLAB. The output from MATLAB is sent over serial to a custom board containing a PIC18F4620 that controls the axis motors. The spindle for this floral foam router is a simple drill; one layer at a time, the drill mills out the unneeded foam which can be sucked up by a vacuum when the object is complete.
Below you’ll find [Pulse]’s demo of his photocopier and a piece the local news did on the project. If anyone is willing to translate that story, feel free to do so in the comments. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169628",
"author": "Dollar Store Junky",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T16:39:31",
"content": "I noticed small pieces of floral foam at the dollar store a couple weeks ago. It’s a potential source.Also of interest was dollar foam poster board. You could laminate that together, or use as-... | 1,760,376,326.142331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/12v-ammo-power-box-keeps-it-retro/ | 12V Ammo Power Box Keeps It Retro | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ammo box battery",
"ammo box power supply",
"ammo can",
"ammo can power box"
] | [Brandon Fiquett] does a lot of amateur radio communications and needed a rugged portable power supply that he could take with him on the road. He decided to
make a 12V power supply out of an antique ammo can
he found at an army surplus store.
The .50 cal ammo box wasn’t in the greatest condition when he picked it up, so he completely sanded it, re-painted it, and lubricated the rubber seal. Inside, he loaded it with four 7.1Ah sealed lead acid batteries, complete with 12V cigarette fused sockets, banana plug jacks, a 5V USB charger and an integrated 12V lead-acid battery charger. The lid also features an LED strip light, and everything is laid out very nicely inside of the box. It looks great, but [Brandon] has a long list of improvements to add, including a solar charge controller, volt and amp meters, and an LED power switch.
Ammo cans make solid project boxes. We’ve seen
countless ammo can speaker setups
, and even a more intricate
ammo can PSU
— though we prefer [Brandon’s] method since all the connections are under the lid, keeping it completely weather proof. | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169561",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T12:40:55",
"content": "I have built a similar power box for amateur radio use, kudos de N2NLQ!Don’t bother with meters or fancy stuff. KISS applies to field stuff to keep it tough.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,327.421195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/26/a-video-vectorscope-oscilloclock/ | A Video Vectorscope Oscilloclock | Eric Evenchick | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"ntsc",
"oscilloclock",
"oscilloscope",
"vectorscope"
] | Back in the days of analog TV, vectorscopes were used to view video signals. [Aaron] has taken an old Tek 520A NTSC vectorscope and converted it into
his newest oscilloclock
.
The scope was originally designed to look at the signal provided by composite video. It draws vectors on a polar plot. By using test patterns such as color bars, you can ensure equipment is creating the correct color output. These scopes were so commonly used that many digital systems still provide a simulated vectorscope for color analysis. Vectorscopes were designed to be left on constantly, which is a good quality for a clock.
[Aaron] has a history of converting oscilloscopes into clocks, which we have
featured in the past
. This build is similar, using his custom control hardware to drive the display. Since analog vectorscopes are pretty much obsolete, you can find them on eBay at low prices, so these oscilloclocks could be relatively cheap to build.
In the write up, you get a teardown of the Tek 520A, showing the modifications made to build the clock. After the break, check out a video of the Tek 520A Oscilloclock. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169509",
"author": "jiog",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T09:40:11",
"content": "You could use this as a fancy toilet door status indicator.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1169541",
"author": "juno",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26... | 1,760,376,326.726924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/repairing-a-plane-in-antarctica/ | Repairing A Plane In Antarctica | James Hobson | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airplane crash",
"airplane repair",
"antarctica",
"plane crash"
] | One of our tipsters just sent us in an amazing story about repairing a plane in Antarctica —
and flying it home!
On December 20, 2012 a Basler BT-67 Turbo 67 (DC-3T) — named Lidia — went down in Antarctica. Thankfully out of its 15 passengers there were no fatalities. For full details on the crash you can check out the
accident description on the Aviation Safety Network.
Lidia was built back in the 1940’s, with its wings apparently put together by Rosie the Riveter herself in 1943. Its virgin flight was in 1944. Today, it is operate(d) as a tour plane, and before the accident it was conducting a tour of the Holtanna Glacier in Antarctica.
The plane sat in the snow for almost a year, before a team came back to repair it and bring it home. The expedition lasted two months, and they brought with them two new engines, a new cockpit, landing gear, and fuselage repair supplies. They’ve shared an incredible slideshow of photos that are available on
Facebook
, or you can stick around after the break to watch a video slideshow of the process.
Can you even begin to imagine repairing a car in Antarctica conditions — let alone a freaking airplane?
[Thanks Vasco!] | 40 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169485",
"author": "Me",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T07:55:23",
"content": "Rosie the riveter herself? Was that any one individual person?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1169601",
... | 1,760,376,327.318985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/help-save-nullspace-labs/ | Help Save Nullspace Labs | Eric Evenchick | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"croudfunding",
"hackerspaces",
"null space labs"
] | A few days ago, the folks at Nullspace Labs in downtown LA got a surprising memo: their building is going to be gutted in a month. With thirty days left, they need money to cover first and last months rent, and help with moving. We can imagine that moving a Hackerspace is no small feat, since they tend to accumulate tons of awesome stuff.
The Hackerspace has started a
crowd funding campaign
, and has posted a call for help. They are looking for money, new members, or help with moving. If you’ve never been, you can check out our
tour of Nullspace Labs
.
It’s tough deciding what Hackerspace news to cover. We can’t run individual features on every tip we get promoting Hackerspace events, developments, crowd funding campaigns, and calls for help. We’re featuring this one because we just visited them, they’re awesome, and they’ve also been the source for many great stories over the years, like
craning in a laser cutter
or
developing a modular LED orb
. So here’s a question for you: Should we be presenting more Hackerspace news that is perhaps only relevant at the local level? If you think we should, how would we present it? There’s the option of doing occasional
links-post
-like roundups. But if you have a better idea we’re all ears. | 54 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169389",
"author": "Jay Pee",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T03:15:03",
"content": "Personally, I care about hackerspaces and what happens to/at them even if I’ve never visited or been a member. Community is the source of our strength.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,326.834043 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/3d-printed-guitar/ | 3D Printed Guitar | Marsh | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printed",
"electric guitar",
"guitar",
"laser sintering",
"selective laser sintering",
"sls"
] | We’re not sure how we missed this one, but it definitely deserves a look. Professor of Mechtronics [Olaf Diegel’s] 3D printer must go to 12, because he’s
printed these incredible electric guitar bodies
. You probably won’t be making your own on your filament printer, however, because [Diegel] uses
SLS (Selective Laser Sintering)
to create the body out of nylon, then he dyes the resulting piece in a two-step process. You can read more about the construction specifics
on his website
.
And, they’re more than just eye-candy: the guitars sound brilliantly metallic. There are more than enough pictures and videos to keep you occupied on the site, where you can
sift through all eight designs
to your heart’s content. You’ll want to keep reading for a couple of videos embedded after the break, which feature some demonstrations of the guitar and comparisons to traditional electric guitars, as well as a brief history of its construction and build process.
[Thanks William] | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169310",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T00:38:10",
"content": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlq5R84TlVw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1169318",
"author": "Vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-01-26T00:59:3... | 1,760,376,327.120523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/reverse-engineering-an-hdmi-extender/ | Reverse Engineering An HDMI Extender | Eric Evenchick | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"hdmi",
"ip",
"packet snifing",
"video capture",
"wireshark"
] | There’s a number of devices out there that extend HDMI over IP. You connect a video source to the transmitter, a display to the receiver, and link the two with a CAT5/5e/6 cable. These cables are much cheaper than HDMI cables, and can run longer distances.
[Daniel] didn’t care about extending HDMI, instead he wanted a low cost HDMI input for his PC. Capture cards are a bit expensive, so he decided to
reverse engineer an IP HDMI extender
.
After connecting a DVD player and TV, he fired up Wireshark and started sniffing the packets. The device was using
IP multicast
on two ports. One of these ports had a high bitrate, and contained JPEG headers. It looked like the video stream was raw
MJPEG
data.
The next step was to write a listener that could sniff the packets and spit the data into a JPEG file. After dealing with some quirks, JPEG images could be saved from the remote device. Some more code was needed to have the computer initiate the streaming, and to extract audio from the second port.
In the end, video capture with the low cost device was possible. [Daniel] also provided a bonus teardown of the device in his writeup. | 63 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169230",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T21:28:00",
"content": "Clever and a decent write up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1169231",
"author": "ejonesss",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T21:28:43",
"cont... | 1,760,376,326.927795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/hackaday-retro-edition-and-retro-roundup/ | Hackaday Retro Edition And Retro Roundup | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"retro edition"
] | About a year and a half ago, We launched the
Hackaday retro edition
, a small off-shoot of the main edition that is written in pure HTML, with no Javascript or any other Web 2.0 cruft. It’s designed so you can load this edition on
any
computer, from an Apple Newton to a Commodore 64. And people
have done just that
.
After a long period of neglect, we’re re-launching the retro edition with a new feature: every hour or so, five random Hackaday pages, going all the way back to
the very first post
will show up on the retro site. Yes, this was a feature we originally planned for the retro site, but now Hackaday has awesome devs working behind the scenes. I mean, they can set up a cron job! It’s amazing!
As always, you’re more than welcome to load our retro site with any vintage hardware, take a picture, and
send it in
. Odds are, we’ll plaster it up in one of these semi-frequent retro roundup posts.
No retro roundup post would be complete without a few examples of people loading the retro edition on old hardware. You can check a few out after the break.
[Greg] had an old Palm LifeDrive sitting around in a drawer and decided to play around with it.
Normally, “newer” Palm devices don’t have a driver for SDHC cards, meaning they’re limited to about 2GB of storage. [Dimitry Grinberg], creator of
Palm Powerups
, wrote a SDHC driver for Palm, allowing anyone to use huge 16 and 32GB cards on these 10-year-old devices.
[Greg] installed this Palm Powerup, tethered the device to his phone, and loaded the retro edition.
How’s
this
for awesome hardware? It’s an IBM PC110 Palmtop, that’s literally a palm top computer; it’s a mere 6″ x 4.5″ x 1.3″, featuring a 4.7″ VGA screen, 260MB drive, up to 20MB of RAM, and a 33MHz 486. Released in the mid-90s, it’s a Japan exclusive. Rare as hen’s teeth, this is, and we have no idea what those candy-colored buttons actually do.
[John B.] happens to have one of these beauties and decided to use the internal 2400 baud modem to load up the retro site.
We love classic all-in-one macs, and
apparently so does [Scott]
. He brought his old Mac SE home from his parents house, and after going through a bag full of old connectors, found a DIN-8 to DB-9 cable and a USB serial adapter. That’s all that’s needed to get a serial connection working with is MacBook.
Because of the SE’s 800k disk drive, [Scott] was unable to get a TCP stack and a System 7 browser. Instead of running software on the SE, he decided to do emulate a terminal session with screen. With a bit of futzing around with baud settings and window sizes, he was able to use Lynx and load up the retro site.
Here’s a really, really old one. It’s [Kyle]’s Compaq Presario 425, produced around 1993. 486 at 25MHz, although it’s since been overclocked to 33MHz.
[Kyle] has put a lot of work into getting this computer on the Internet without using terminal emulation or bridging. There’s a 10MBps Ethernet card inside, along with a Sound Blaster 16. Despite the ancient hardware, we could see this being a somewhat useful machine for retro DOS gaming, using ancient software, or, of course, loading up the retro edition.
[Perry] tells us this isn’t much of a retro submission, but we’d have to disagree. It’s an old ARM-based Linux PDA made by Sharp, 206 MHz with 32 MB of RAM.
That’s all for now. Again, if you manage to dig some retro hardware out of the basement and load up the retro edition,
send it in
.
If you’re wondering how to get your old boxxen up on the Internet, the retro edition also
has a few retrocomputing tutorials
for the Apple II, Classic Mac, and Commodore 64. We’d love to crowdsource a few more tutorials for some more exotic platforms, so if you have the chops write one up and we’ll link to it. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169157",
"author": "Markus Revo (@PugWaffle)",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T18:36:09",
"content": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt4kf-PYy44About the PC110, those aren’t all buttons. One is a thumbstick.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,327.19046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/solar-hot-dog-cooker-does-it-with-parabolic-mirrors/ | Solar Hot Dog Cooker Does It With Parabolic Mirrors | James Hobson | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"hot dog cooker",
"parabolic",
"parabolic cooker",
"parabolic mirror"
] | For a university project [Adam Libert] decided to make his very own parabolic hot dog cooker. Now, we must say, this is a project that could probably be cobbled together in a weekend from scraps, but since it was for a lab, [Adam] decided to go all out —
complete with a perfect laser cut frame.
The objective of the lab was to design a project that can use solar radiation to accomplish a task, and being partial to hot dogs, the hot dog cooker was a natural choice. He designed the parabolic mirror to focus 1/5th of a square meter of sunlight directly at a hot dog. To do this, he laser cut the frame out of MDF, and using tinfoil, toothpicks, and poster paper, assembled the mirror. The whole thing cost less than $5 (ignoring laser time) and can be setup in a matter of minutes.
He determined the heat output of the cooker to be around 10W at the hot dog, which means he was able to bring the hot dog to 150°F in about 10 minutes — which was surprisingly close to his original calculations, because let’s face it, tin foil is hardly an ideal mirror.
Interested in other solar cookers? Why not cover a
satellite dish in foil tape?
Or if you want a quicker-cooked-hot-dog, why not plug it
directly into the wall? | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168582",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T15:17:31",
"content": "Just a smooth shout out for the Fresnel lens mentioned in this Hack-a-Day Links…http://hackaday.com/2013/03/20/hackaday-links-march-20th-2013/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,327.561997 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/sldongle-the-microcontroller-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/ | SLDongle: The Microcontroller Gift That Keeps On Giving | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ATMega88PA",
"dongle",
"USB dongle"
] | It must be nice to be one of [kiu]’s colleagues. Some people pass out chocolates or stress balls at work as Christmas gifts, but [kiu]
made a bunch of SL dongles to introduce his colleagues to the world of microcontrollers
.
The dongles are based on the
ATMega88PA
and work on three levels to provide something for everyone. The no-experience-necessary option is to plug it in to a USB port and admire the light show sequences. If you know enough to be dangerous, you can remotely control the LEDs from a USB host using [kiu]’s sldtool for Linux or Mac. He originally included examples that visualize CPU utilization and ultimately added a Ruby-based departure countdown for the next outbound train at the
nearby
station.
If you’re 1337 enough you can flash your own C or assembly code via USB. Holding down the button during power-up lets you use the dongle as a
USBasp
so it can be flashed with avrdude. [kiu] says the bootloader can’t be unlocked through software and is theoretically unbrickable. Stick around after the break to see the full demo.
[Thanks, kiu] | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168513",
"author": "BiOzZ",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T12:07:45",
"content": "Interesting choices with the typology on this one",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1168531",
"author": "customdev",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,327.374914 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/fun-with-wooden-balls/ | Fun With Wooden Balls | James Hobson | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"diy wood balls",
"wood balls",
"wooden balls"
] | Have you ever found the need to make your own wooden balls for a project? To be frank, we haven’t either! But seriously — how would you do it? Well, lucky for us, Hackaday Alum [Jeremy Cook] has experimented with
a few different methods.
He was originally inspired by this video from [Philip Stephens] who makes them completely by hand
using a hand-made hole saw
. Not wanting to spend hours making a ball, he thought about ways to automate it — well, kind of.
His first attempt was to use a mill and a rudimentary rotary index table consisting of a wood clamp — Hold a wooden dowel in place, hole saw halfway through, rotate in the clamp, repeat times infinity. Eventually you’ll be left with a wooden ball whose sharp edges you can just break off. Not very satisfied with this method, he discovered a Reddit thread on making wooden balls with
a rather ingenious method…
Stick around after the break to see how.
First up is the rather slow hole saw method:
But here’s the cooler way to do it. Orbital sander, plus a tube — let the wood bounce around and quickly erode into a perfect sphere! | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168454",
"author": "squeeks",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T09:20:55",
"content": "I always find wood shops interesting, the people who seem to occupy this type of habitat are usually fascinating and will make a large number of their own tools or heavily retrofit existing ones.The lathe... | 1,760,376,327.499215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/arm-debugger-for-nearly-one-dollar/ | ARM Debugger For Nearly One Dollar | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"16f1454",
"arm",
"debugger",
"pic",
"USB to serial"
] | Oh that title is so misleading. But if you squint your eyes and scratch your noggin it’s almost true. Thanks to the hard work of [Peter Lawrence] it is now possible to hack together
an extremely inexpensive CMSIS-DAP ARM debugger
.
Let’s talk about function and we’ll get back to cost later. CMSIS-DAP is a standard that gives you the kind of breakpoint control you expect from a proper debugger. In this case [Peter] implemented the standard using 4k words of space on a PIC 16F1454. This lets it talk to the debug port on ARM chips, and the bootloader (
also written by him
) doubles as a USB-to-UART bridge. Boom, done. OpenOCD (and a couple of other software packages) talks to the PIC and it talks to the ARM. Nice.
Back to the cost question. You can get a 16F1454 for nearly a dollar when you order in quantity. If you cut up an old USB cable, recycle some jumper wire, and already have power and decoupling on hand, you’re in business for nearly one dollar. | 58 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168391",
"author": "xxapp",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T06:27:03",
"content": "flippin sweet",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1168397",
"author": "cpldcpu",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T06:48:17",
"content": "Really cool, I... | 1,760,376,327.928195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/all-terrain-rc-car-has-more-torque-than-your-grandpas-wheelchair/ | All-Terrain RC Car Has More Torque Than Your Grandpa’s Wheelchair | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"R/C car",
"RC robot"
] | [Charles] and his brother have been members of their school’s FIRST robotics team for many years, and using some of the knowledge they acquired during it, they have put together this
awesome all-terrain, super over-powered, RC car — and soon to be robot.
It’s built like a tank using 1″ square steel tubing and custom corner brackets made of 1/8″ thick steel. Heavy duty U-bolts hold the over-sized 5/8″ axles, and everything is driven using #35 roller chain. A large 12V sealed lead acid battery powers two CIMs (FIRST Robotics motor) with the
AndyMark CIMple gearbox
— these give the car tons of torque, and it can even do wheelies!
The really cool part of this project is the method of remote control. He’s using a regular old Xbox controller that an Arduino Uno listens to through a USB host shield and the original Xbox USB receiver. Simple, but totally effective.
The project is not yet complete, and he’s planning on fully equipping it with lights, a larger battery, a roll-cage, a camera system, and some kind of manipulator tool. Check out the test drive video after the break! | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168274",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T01:42:02",
"content": "Awesome use of FIRST parts, I always knew they had potential beyond the annoying cRIOs and PDBs. Is this using Talons or Victors? Or something else entirely?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,376,327.832918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/stealth-camper-van/ | Stealth Camper Van | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"camper",
"stealth",
"van"
] | Sometimes you need to sleep where you’re not supposed to. In this case, [MisterE] wanted to cut the costs associated with his climbing trips. He took a 2001 GMC Savana cargo van and
turned it into a stealthy mobile living space
. The project is from back in 2008 and we almost waved off from featuring it. But when you start to look at all of the creative space-saving solutions in the hack we think you’ll agree it’s worth a look.
Since he’s a climber that means time in the mountains, which can be quite cold. The sides and floor of the van were insulated to about R19 before the build work itself started and there’s a small wall-mounted heater. For comfort, a fouton was a must for sleeping but also for its double use as a sofa. For style the only choice here was bead-board to cover all of the walls. There is a small kitchenette that is mainly just a sink (we’ve seen
running water in vehicles
before). A couple of extra batteries power all of the electronics: audio, laptop, etc. When asked, [MisterE] confirms that he added hidden storage areas for his more pricey gear. Total cost on the project came it at $11,500. About nine for the van and the rest for improvements.
He mentions he blew an inverter because of grounding issues while starting the van. As long as he turns it off before start-up he’s fine. Shouldn’t there be a better way to build protection into this? Please leave a comment after the break and let us know what you’d do differently.
[Thanks Mac] | 84 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168200",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T22:56:25",
"content": "I am betting an inductive kickback from the starter killed the inverter. Put a large diode across the input of the inverter to kill this pulse.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,328.116747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/touring-deezmaker-the-first-good-3d-printer-store-in-the-world/ | Touring Deezmaker, The First *Good* 3D Printer Store In The World | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"bukito",
"Bukobot",
"Deezmaker"
] | When we
visited the Crash Space hackerspace
earlier this week, it came to our attention we were staying mere blocks away from
Deezmaker
, a 3D printer store in beautiful Pasadena that is home base for the Bukobot and Bukito printers, an awful lot of awesome printed plastic things, and [Rich] a.k.a [whosawhatsis], creator of the
RepRap Wallace
and
all this stuff
. Obviously a tour was in order.
Inside Deezmaker is a treasure trove of printed baubles and a fishbowl full of a herringbone planetary gear systems free for the taking. They have printers running all the time, a very nice lab for [whosawhatsis], and enough work space to host a few workshops every week.
In the video below, [Diego], the big cheese of Deezmaker takes us around the shop showing off his wares. [whosawhatsis] also makes an appearance showing off his latest invention, the Bukito printer. It’s a very small and incredibly portable printer that can be powered by batteries. They’re using a 3-cell 5000mAh lipo battery when they take the Bukito camping. I didn’t catch how long the battery lasts, but it’s more than enough to squirt out a few of the gear systems they give away.
Video after the break. | 24 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168156",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T21:23:49",
"content": "You guys hired Jamie from mythbusters to record your videos?! :p",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1168198",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
... | 1,760,376,328.179009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/the-gathering-huge-success/ | The Gathering: Huge Success! | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"live event",
"meetup",
"party"
] | In case you haven’t heard, Hackaday
put on a little shindig
in downtown LA this past Tuesday. It was awesome.
And we had a few very awesome visitors:
[Eliot]
, senior editor of Hackaday for the
first
five years made a showing, as did former co-editor
[Jack Buffington]
. Eminent LA-area hackers came out, including [charliex] of Null Space Labs, the guys from
Deezmaker
, and
the long-haired hippie
who can be found in a few NASA videos for the Curiosity rover.
Aside from the free drinks and the awesome people, there was some really cool tech on display. The mezzanine of the bar had a laser graffiti rig, and everyone who came received a super collectible NFC card that allowed them to vote on what Hackaday is doing for our
next
main event (the quadcopter option won but the vote was non-binding so we’ll keep you updated).
On a personal note, this was one of the few times I’ve interacted with Hackaday readers without the use of a keyboard. You guys are awesome. Thanks for coming out, and if you have any pics from the party, post a link to an album in the comments, or share your stories with us on
Twitter via #HaDLA
,
Google+
, and/or
Facebook
.
Pics below. These were taken by [
Edward de la Torre
]
Waiting in line. Note the jolly wrencher.
Yeah, we have a Skull ‘n Wrenches gobo.
Super special NFC cards for the voting booth
The NFC voting booth
Oh yeah, we’re doing a hackathon thingy
Rube Goldberg
Quad Challenge
Weird Clocks
Laser graffiti laptop
Laser graffiti control box
LASER GRAFFITI
charliex showing off his wares
This guy was an idiot
The hippy guy that controled the Curiosity rover on its way to mars
Packed house | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168098",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T18:23:22",
"content": "Thanks for putting this up,Now, I feel a bit of vicarious joy!(My vote would’ve been for the Rube Goldberg)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1168109",
... | 1,760,376,328.000739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/lidar-with-leds-for-under-100/ | LIDAR With LEDs For Under $100 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"distance sensor",
"led",
"lidar",
"sensor"
] | If you need some sort of distance sensor for your robot, drone, or other project, you have two options: a cheap ultrasonic sensor with limited range, or an expensive laser-based system that’s top of the line.
LIDAR-Lite
fills that gap by stuffing an entire LIDAR module onto a small board.
In traditional LIDAR systems, a laser is used to measure the time of flight for a light beam between the sensor and an object. The very accurate clock and laser module required for this system means LIDAR modules cost at least a few hundred dollars. LIDAR-Lite gets around these problems by blinking a LED with a ‘signature’ and looking for that signature’s return. This tech is packaged inside a SoC that reduces both the cost and size of a traditional laser-based LIDAR system.
As for the LIDAR-Lite specs, it can sense objects out to 40 meters with
5%
95% accuracy, communicates to any microcontroller over an I2C bus, and is small enough to fit inside any project.
Considering the existing solutions for distance measurement for robots and quadcopters, this sensor will certainly make for some very awesome projects.
Edit: One of the guys behind this
posted a link to their spec sheet and a patent
in the comments | 99 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167996",
"author": "Mr Pedantic",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T15:21:03",
"content": "5% accuracy ? (it gets it wrong 95% of the time) or 95% accuracy (it gets it right 95% of the time) or an accuract of +/- 5% … obviously the last one, it just crashd my mental gears when I read it."... | 1,760,376,328.551812 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/avr-barn-door-tracker-for-astrophotography/ | AVR Barn Door Tracker For Astrophotography | Marsh | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"astronomy",
"astrophotography",
"barn door tracker"
] | [ZigZagJoe’s] first foray into astrophotography is
this impressive AVR barn door tracker
, which steps up his night sky photo game without emptying his bank account. If you’ve never heard of astrophotography, you should skim over
its Wikipedia page
and/or
the subreddit
. The idea is to capture images otherwise undetectable by the human eye through longer exposures. Unfortunately, the big ball of rock we all inhabit has a tendency to rotate, which means you need to move the camera to keep the night sky framed up.
Most trackers require precision parts and fabrication, which was out of [ZigZagJoe’s] grasp. Instead, he found a solution with the
Cloudbait Observatory model
, which as best as we can tell looks vaguely similar to the tracker
we featured last year
. Unlike last year’s build—which uses an ATmega32u4 breakout board— [ZigZagJoe’s] tracker uses an ATTiny85 for the brains, running a pre-configured table that determines step rate against time.
You’re probably asking “Where are the pictures?” It seems that [ZigZagJoe] has been plagued by clouds recently, but he promises they are forthcoming. Head over to
his build thread on reddit
for more details on the project’s design and hopefully future posts with some pictures. And swing by
this site
for a bunch of files on building your own. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167958",
"author": "Willaim",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T12:47:16",
"content": "Saver2 — ZigZagJoe? thats awesome man. Neat project on the cheap as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167966",
"author": "Willaim",
... | 1,760,376,328.349969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/23/the-butt-lamp-light-from-where-the-sun-dont-shine/ | The Butt Lamp: Light From Where The Sun Don’t Shine | Adam Fabio | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Butt",
"color organ",
"led",
"light organ",
"msgeq7",
"Rear End",
"RGB LED"
] | [Trent] is one of those guys who can make things happen. A friend of his gifted him a mannequin derriere simply because he knew [Trent] would do something fun with it. “Something fun” turned out to be
sound reactive LED butt
. At first blush, this sounds like just another light organ. This butt has a few tricks up its …. sleeve which warrant a closer look. The light comes from some off the shelf 5050 style RGB LED strip. The controller is [Trent’s] own design. He started with the ever popular
MSGEQ7 7 Band Graphic Equalizer
Display Filter,
a chip we’ve seen before
. The MSGEQ7 performs all the band filtering and outputs 7 analog levels corresponding to the amplitude of the input signal in that band. The outputs are fed into an ATTiny84, which drives the RGB strip through transistors.
The ATTiny84 isn’t just running a PWM loop. At startup, it takes 10 samples from each frequency band. The 10 samples are then averaged, and used to create a noise filter. The noise filter helps to remove any ambient sound or distortions created by the microphone. Each band is then averaged and peak detected. The difference between the peak and the noise is the dynamic range for that band. The ATTiny84 remaps each analog sample to be an 8 bit value fitting within that dynamic range. The last step is to translate the remapped signal values through a gamma lookup table. The gamma table was created to make the bright and dark colors stand out even more. [Trent] says the net result is that snare and kick drum sounds really pop compared to the rest of the music.
Without making this lamp the butt of too many jokes, we’d like to say we love what [Trent] has done. It’s definitely the last word in sound reactive lamps. Click through to see [Trent’s] PCB, and the Butt Lamp in action. | 28 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167893",
"author": "andres",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T09:05:54",
"content": "I laughed pretty hard, oh wow. I love it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1167900",
"author": "BiOzZ",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T09:17:00",
... | 1,760,376,328.67184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/capacitance-measurement-with-the-arduino-uno/ | Capacitance Measurement With The Arduino Uno | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino capacitance meter",
"diy capacitance meter"
] | Have you ever found the need to measure the capacitance of a capacitor? No multimeter handy (for shame)? Well, as it turns out you can actually
measure capacitance using your Arduino Uno
, with no external components, and only ~20 lines of code.
[Jonathan Nethercott] does an excellent job explaining a capacitance test circuit which uses a reference capacitor to calculate the unknown capacitance. He further explains that, with the Arduino Uno, you can remove the reference capacitor from the circuit, and simply use the stray capacitance present in the board and microcontroller, which can be calculated. This results in the test circuit being as simple as plugging in your capacitor to pins A0 and A2.
The code is quite simple: it sends a 5V pulse to the capacitor and measures the voltage on the other side, looping every half second, and outputting the data onto a chart.
It does, however, require calibration. [Jonathan] measured a known capacitor for a baseline, and used that data to calculate the stray capacitance in the Arduino. Once calibrated, he found that you can easily achieve a resolution of about 1% for capacitors between 3.5pF and 225pF, and around 5% for capacitors between 0.5pF and 1300pF —
you can see the results of his analysis here.
He plans on determining the accuracy and linearity too, but he will need some very accurate reference capacitors. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167855",
"author": "Jasper",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T06:35:10",
"content": "Formidable",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167898",
"author": "Sam Twibill",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T09:12:29",
"content":... | 1,760,376,328.414829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/sniffing-and-decoding-bluetooth-le-advertising-packets-and-nrf24l01-comms-for-under-30/ | Sniffing And Decoding Bluetooth LE Advertising Packets And NRF24L01+ Comms. For Under $30 | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"LNB",
"nRF24L01+",
"RTL-SDR"
] | [Omri] just documented his journey to
sniff and decode the protocol used by the popular NRF24L01+ transceiver
off the air for very cheap. As he was designing a mesh network code and needed a way to monitor/debug the overall network performance, [Omri] decided to look for some RF hardware.
We’re sure that most of our readers are familiar with
Software Defined Radio
(SDR), which not so long ago became popular when some engineer discovered hidden registers inside Realtek RTL2832U chip, allowing many DVB-T dongles to be converted into RF listening devices. Unfortunately for [Omri], most of them have a maximum listening frequency of 2.2GHz, while the NRF24L01+ emits at 2.4GHz. The solution? Buy a 2.2-2.4GHz antenna from Aliexpress with a
low-noise block downconverter
(LNB), used for a
Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service
(MMDS). The LNB therefore takes the 2.2-2.4GHz signal and downconverts it to around 400MHz, allowing any RTL-SDR-compatible DVB-T dongle to listen to the NRF communications. A
program
was then written to decode the RF signal and output the sniffed data in realtime. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167801",
"author": "pedro",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T03:03:15",
"content": "SDR is such an amazing thing. I think I’m in love.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167820",
"author": "DainBramage1991",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,328.600461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/gps-engagement-ring-box/ | GPS Engagement Ring Box | Marsh | [
"gps hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"engagement",
"gps",
"stellaris",
"stellaris lauchpad",
"wedding"
] | [James] got engaged recently, in part thanks to his clever
GPS Engagement Ring Box
, and he sent us a brief overview of how he brought this project to life. The exterior of the box is rather simple: one button and an LCD. Upon pressing the button, the LCD would indicate how far it needed to be taken to reach a pre-selected destination. After carrying it to the correct location, the box would open, revealing the ring (and a bit of electronics).
Inside is a GPS antenna and a Stellaris Launchpad, which are powered by three Energizer lithium batteries to ensure the box didn’t run out of juice during the walk. To keep the lid closed, [James] 3D printed a small latch and glued it to the top of the box, which is held in place by a micro servo. Once the box reaches its destination, the microcontroller tells the servo to swing out of the way, and the box can then open. As a failsafe, [James] added a reed switch to trigger an interrupt to open the box regardless of location. It seems this was a wise choice, because the GPS was a bit off and the box didn’t think it was in the correct place.
Swing by his blog for more information on the box’s construction and the wiring. We wish [James] the best and look forward seeing his future hacks; perhaps he’ll come up with some clever ones for the wedding
like our friend Bill Porter
. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167743",
"author": "dmitry grinberg",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T00:08:18",
"content": "cute",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1167747",
"author": "voxnulla",
"timestamp": "2014-01-23T00:19:00",
"content": "I would secr... | 1,760,376,328.733305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/update-from-wayback-avga-reborn-as-retrowiz/ | Update From Wayback: AVGA Reborn As RetroWiz | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega168",
"atmega328",
"AVGA",
"pal",
"retrowiz",
"uzebox",
"vga"
] | This one has been a long time coming. We’re finally seeing an update to [Jaromir’s]
retro gaming platform based around and ATmega chip
. The thing that was novel about it
back in 2009
, and continues to be to this day, is the use of VGA output (PAL) from an AVR chip rather than composite video like most offerings.
Good projects never die and recently he picked the hardware up again, spinning a mostly surface mount board and putting together a new website to feature his work. Above you can see a demo of Commander Keen 4 running on the hardware (video below). He’s also has a rather trippy Super Mario port and adapted [Albert Seward’s] PacMan source for the hardware.
The chip is being clocked at 32MHz with VGA clock running at 19.6608 MHz. This gives him sixteen colors with a resolution of 192×144. He concedes that you get
better resolution out of composite video
, but who needs resolution for retro gaming? | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169112",
"author": "Ralph",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T16:11:44",
"content": "The schematic shows a 32Mhz crystal being used. I wonder if that’s a typo?http://prometheus4.com/retrowiz/images/img/sch.png",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,329.758986 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/bringing-wifi-into-a-mobile-hackerspace/ | Bringing WiFi Into A Mobile Hackerspace | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"mobile hackerspace",
"wifi repeater"
] | [Philipp Protschka] has a pretty awesome mobile hackerspace (MHS) trailer. The only problem? How do you get WiFi
when you’re inside what is basically a Faraday’s cage?
He didn’t think he’d have a problem, since he has a fairly powerful router (Netgear R7000 Nighthawk), not more than 20m from the trailer. But as soon as he shuts the door, he loses all connectivity — he can’t even see his SSID. Leaving the door open a crack results in a signal with a speed of about 54Mbits — not bad, but when it’s cold outside this really isn’t an option.
The solution? Install a WiFi repeater with an external antenna. He’s using a TP link station with two antennas — he’s removed one and hooked it up to a rugged outdoor antenna that gives the MHS a bit of an FBI van look — awesome. With the repeater in place he’s suddenly got access to over 24 SSID’s in the neighborhood from inside! It’ll also be extra handy when travelling because with the extra range it means he’ll be able to hook into local WiFi networks with ease.
He also offers us a pro-tip on surface mounting devices with hole patterns on the back — just make a photocopy of the device, tape the photocopy to the wall and drill it in place! Simple, but ingenious.
Don’t forget to check out
the interior of his MHS! | 47 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169034",
"author": "asdf",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T12:09:10",
"content": "Considering the times we live in, having a van that no signal can penetrate is rather convenient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1170273",
"a... | 1,760,376,329.068292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/25/electric-imp-thermal-printer/ | Electric Imp Thermal Printer | Kevin Darrah | [
"hardware",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Electric Imp",
"thermal printer"
] | If you’re the type of person that doesn’t mind having a pocket/purse full of crumpled receipts, then maybe you should check out this tutorial from [tombrew] on giving a
thermal printer internet-connectivity
.
For some of us, there’s something kind of cool about thermal printers, but it’s probably not the kind of project you’d want to burn a lot of calories on. As a developer over at Electric Imp, [tombrew] agrees with this statement, but since the Electric Imp contains both a
WiFi module and processor built in
, it makes it pretty easy to get your thermal printer printing off the daily weather, stock prices, news headlines, etc… In fact, the claim here is that you could have this project completed before you even finish your morning coffee…
knock on wood!
From a hardware standpoint, the project is pretty straight forward; an Electric Imp with breakout board, thermal printer, and a power supply are pretty much all that’s needed. Local communication between the Electric Imp and the thermal printer is accomplished through a simple serial interface. With the roll-out of the
new Electric Imp IDE
a few months back, we were introduced to ‘Agents’. This is kind of a neat concept, and this tutorial breaks everything down, but basically the agent is server-side code that runs in the ‘ImpCloud’, thus giving your Electric Imp more power and capabilities to deal with complex APIs. Also, handling images (like something you want to print) can take up a ton of memory, so for this project, the agent is used to send down slices of the image you want to print one at a time. This project is just the beginning of what [tombrew] has planned, so we can’t wait to see more insanely detailed tutorials. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1169026",
"author": "nelsontb",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T11:48:10",
"content": "will not develop anything based on a part that will not work without internet connection or is dependent on a third party server, hardware is expensive to design, assemble and deploy (and recall), it’s s... | 1,760,376,328.784596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/diy-curved-display-makes-use-of-cool-thermochromic-properties/ | DIY Curved Display Makes Use Of Cool Thermochromic Properties | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"curved display",
"thermochromic"
] | [Marin Davide] was on a mission. A mission to build
his own curved display screen
, using an Arduino, nichrome wire, and thermochromic liquid crystal ink.
The prototype he’s designed uses a sheet of plastic coated in thermochromic ink, curved on an MDF frame. This particular thermochromic ink turns bright blue when heated to around 27°C.
To display digits, he’s created tiny segments of the 7-segment display by wrapping the nichrome wire around pieces of cardboard, which then have been glued to the back of the display. Each of these is controlled separately from his Arduino Mega. He muses that you could also make a rudimentary dot matrix display with this — it would be interesting to see what kind of resolution you could obtain!
To see more photos check out the original DesignNews post linked above. We’re not sure why the bulk of the details are
only available in this PDF
. If we’re just missing a direct link to the original project page let us know in the comments and we’ll update the post.
Interested in more thermochromic black magic? How about these awesome
temperature sensitive photos?
Or what about a digital clock face,
illuminated by heating resistors? | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168896",
"author": "cheapskate",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T04:02:05",
"content": "What about instead of just a 7 segment display, actually shaping each individual number out nixie-tube style?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "11... | 1,760,376,328.981739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/hackphx-winter-2014-hackathon-winners/ | HackPhx Winter 2014 Hackathon Winners | Todd Harrison | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Hackerspaces",
"iphone hacks",
"Virtual Reality",
"Wearable Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"earrings",
"HachPhx",
"hackathon",
"heatsync labs",
"morse code",
"oled",
"ping",
"wearable",
"xadow"
] | The
HackPhx Winter 2014 hackathon
was held at Heatsync Labs hackerspace in Mesa, Arizona, USA. The advertised theme was “Arduino Wearables”. Participating attendees were randomly placed on teams evenly distributed by their disclosed skills across all teams. There were 10 teams with 4 to 5 members per team competing for two winning spots.
Each team had to build an amazing wearable project utilizing the secret ingredient which was
Seedstudio’s Arduino-compatible Xadow wearable platform
and add-ons. The Xadow is similar to the Arduino Leonardo and participants used an Arduino cross compatibility and
pin mapping chart
to assist in development.
Top prize was the Judges’ prizes for the best completed and documented Xadow wearable team project. The second prize was the Jury’s prize given to the team project that the other teams liked the most regardless of event criteria.
Read more about the winning teams and watch their presentations after the break.
I was already planning on attending the hackathon. When I mentioned this to the Hackaday team they also put me on assignment to film and write about the winning teams. Full disclosure: I couldn’t resist signing up as a team member for some hacking fun.
No team members had experience using the Xadow platform so the playing field was quite level. The range of Xadow add-ons was extensive, but teams could only blindly select from a bucket of donated Xadow add-on modules such as OLED display, LED arrays, motors, accelerometers, GPS, NFC and BLE. Bartering between teams was encouraged as teams developed their final project plans.
The event really began the night before the hackathon with a 4 hour meet and greet to divide into teams and finalize hardware trades. The real event started at 8 am the next morning and lasted for 12 straight hours of mad hacking using any tools and supplies available at Heatsync Labs. Heatsync Labs provided experienced volunteers to assist teams that needed to use lab equipment such as the Laser cutter, 3D printers, welders, metal lathes or any power tools.
All team code, photos and final documentation had to be uploaded to
each team’s GitHub repository
before judging started at 8 pm.
Morse code Jelly Friend Earrings
Flashing HackPhx in Morse code
Controller and Bluetooth reciever module hidden in necklace
After the smoke cleared the Judges’ winner was Team 8 with “Morse Code Earrings”. This really was an amazing wearable hack especially if you take into account they scrapped their first project and started over on the winning project halfway through the hackathon. Team 8 utilized the Xadow Bluetooth LE module to send text messages from a phone to a stealth receiving necklace containing an Xadow which modulated the message in Morse code over flashing “Jelly Friend” LED earrings. The earrings were also made by Team 8 using clear acrylic laser cut in the shape of jellyfish and having a base of LEDs and some old Christmas tree fiber-optic lighting parts. The big advantage to having such decorative communication is to send SOS requests to nearby girlfriends when you find yourself entangled in scary company. Or to
scream
covertly flash profanity at your boss.
Team 8 members:
Mattie Finney – GossamerLights
James Brooks – pyrobrooks
Nate Plamondon – meznak
Brett Warner – brettwarner
Experiencing a new reality
The OLED display attached to the back of the head unit
How the user sees the OLED display in the 2 reflecting mirrors
Team 4 with “Over 9000” won the Jury’s prize. This prize winner was picked by all the other teams and I must say my team members were amazing; yes I was on Team 4. My team members were extremely talented at learning this new hardware platform. Almost effortlessly, and with time to spare, they quickly integrated the hardware, code and bits of scrap into a wearable head mounted heads-up Google Glass style interactive and fully functioning augmented reality head unit. I say “they” because I only worked on the glove unit and cabling. The glove unit retrieves distance measurements in feet and inches from a Parallax ultrasonic ping sensor mounted on the back of the glove and is cabled into the back of the head unit.
The project name comes from the accelerometer output mounted in the head unit. Once the accelerometer’s power unit output tops 9000 all the LEDs on the side will turn red indicating max power level activity. This power unit value along with distance measurements to objects in front of the glove unit are internally reflected into the wearer’s right eye from an OLED display mounted at the back of the head unit. If the glove detects objects closer than 3 feet, a front mounted red LED also lights to warn innocent bystanders. The back of the head unit is prewired for jacking in auxiliary off board sensors and equipment to simplify integration and assimilation.
Team 4 members:
Chad Tech – ChadCS
Joe Fleming – w33ble
Doug Sheridan – dsherida
Todd Harrison – toddfun | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168942",
"author": "Rollyn01",
"timestamp": "2014-01-25T06:41:06",
"content": "If I didn’t know any better, I’d say those earrings were straight out of PAC-Man. Anyhow, I like it.P.S. Liking the girl even more. Cute and have brains… I think I’m in….",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,329.629367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/minicomputers-on-microcontrollers/ | Minicomputers On Microcontrollers | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"ATMega2560",
"AVR",
"DEC",
"digital",
"pdp-11"
] | Developed in the very late 60s and through the 70s, the PDP-11 series of minicomputers was quite possibly the single most important computer ever created. The first widely distributed versions of Unix and C were developed on the PDP-11, and it’s hardware influence can be found in everything from the Motorola 68000 to the MSP430.
When [Dave Cheney] saw the recent 8086 simulator written in 4kB of C code, he realized simulating entire computer systems doesn’t actually require a whole lot of resources outside a big chunk of memory. Armed with an Arduino Mega clone, he set out on one of the coolest projects we’ve seen in a while:
simulating a PDP-11 on an AVR.
[Dave] used an ATMega2560-powered Arduino Mega clone with an Ethernet module for the hardware of this build. Attached to it is a shield filled up with a pair of RAM chips that expand relatively limited amount of RAM on the ‘Mega.
So far, [Dave] has his simulated system booting Unix V6 off an SD card. For PDP-11 storage, he’s also simulating an RK05 disk drive, a massive 14 inch platter containing 2.5 Megabytes of data. Compared to the original PDP-11/40, [Dave] estimates his machine is about 10 times slower. Still, an original 11/40 system fills multiple server racks, and the most common installations consume several kilowatts of power. The Arduino Mega can fit in a pocket and can be powered over USB.
Future developments for this system include improving the accuracy of the simulator, running more advanced operating systems and the DEC diagnostic programs, and possibly speeding up the simulation. We’d suggest adding some switches and blinkenlights on an additional shield, but that’s just us.
All the code can be found on
[Dave]’s git
, with a description of his SPI RAM shield coming shortly. | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168754",
"author": "F",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T21:17:27",
"content": "It runs slower than slower than shit.(an homage to RSTS/E)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1168837",
"author": "Charlie Springer",
"times... | 1,760,376,329.217678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/24/adventures-in-hackerspacing-an-interview-with-chris-boden-of-the-geek-group/ | Adventures In Hackerspacing: An Interview With Chris Boden Of The Geek Group | Adam Fabio | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace",
"high voltage",
"interviews",
"The Geek Group"
] | There are some big hackerspaces out there.
And then there’s The Geek Group.
It takes a certain chutzpah to convert a 43,000 foot former YMCA into a hackerspace. And an epic hackerspace it is, complete with 5 axis CNC machines, 3d printers, and of course, giant robots romping through a forest of Tesla coils. The Geek Group has performed live demos in front of thousands of people over the years, and inspired tens of thousands more via the internet. You don’t work this big without having some big adventures, and The Geek Group is no exception. They’ve been through roof leaks, gas pipe breaks, surprise tax bills and angry neighbors. They’ve also been dealing with their current adventure, fire.
Unless you’ve been under a rock the last few weeks, you’ve probably read about the recent fire, and ensuing cleanup at The Geek Group labs.
We’ve covered the fire
and
its cause
here on Hackaday, with no small amount of drama in our comments section. There is a small but vocal minority who don’t have many good things to say. Accusations of cults, safety violations, and tax evasion often fly. While some groups would take this lying down, the geek group put on their flame proof suits and wade through the comments. None more vocally than [Chris Boden], the president, CEO and founder.
DISCLAIMER:
The interview contains questionable content and some profanity (which we’ve altered as
grawlix
). We have posted the transcript as it was captured, which includes some spelling and grammar issues. Please consider these things before clicking through to the interview itself.
Chris Boden at his command console.
Are any of the accusations true? Is The Geek Group a cult? Finding out for sure would involve a trip to Grand Rapids Michigan, which is a bit outside Hackaday’s budget. However, The Geek Group is more than just their facility. They maintain a strong internet presence with their YouTube videos,
Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) channel, and live video stream. Chris runs twice daily shows where he streams video and talks to the group on IRC. It was during one of these shows that I entered the IRC room and said hello. Nearly immediately I found myself pulled into an impromptu interview, with me on IRC and Chris on live Video. The mixed format was a bit awkward, but we managed to get it done.
My first question to Chris concerned the future of The Geek Group.
[Adam]
Chris, what [is] your ultimate vision for the geek group
[Chris]
My ultimate vision for the geek group is to build a non-profit hackerspace concept similar in structure to the girl scouts. I want to have a college style campus without all the extra structure. I mean every hackerspace has an electronics lab, we have an electronics lab. But I want to have a large-scale high voltage lab. a 20,000 square foot building specifically dedicated to high voltage. A 20,000 to 30,000 square foot building specifically dedicated to vehicular sciences. It’s infrastructure. It’s all about infrastructure.
Just to clear the air, I had to ask him the cult accusations, some of which may be traced back to
this tongue in cheek video from 2009
.
[Adam]
just for the record, are you running a cult?
[Chris]
As far as I know no. If we could run a cult I probably would. I’d want virgins and slaves though. One a more serious note, If I’m running a cult it’s the most disorganized, irreverent cult in the history of mankind because nobody does what I tell them.
If we’re evading taxes than I’m the worst tax evader in history because I mail a check to them every month, and they know my address.
We then moved onto the subject which first brought me into the IRC, the fire in the high voltage laboratory.
[Adam]
On the subject of the rotary spark gap that started this all. Hindsight is 20/20, but one screw? Did they back out over the years?
[Chris]
None of the other screws were loose. We’d never had a problem with them working loose before and we’d run that gap for 10 or 15 years. We’d changed the electrodes a couple of times, but it’s never been a worry or a problem. It happened, it’s something we have to worry about in the future. We’re certainly going to change our rotor design. We chose to play with dangerous things. It’s high voltage physics. This s**t will kill you the moment you don’t respect it. We go as safe as we can, but we’re not gods, we f**k up. It’s really easy on shows like Mythbusters, where if they f**k up you’ll never see it. When we f**k up we show it. That’s why we made the video and said ‘Hey guys, we had a fire, we f**ked up’. It’s important to show people science is about making mistakes. Science is about ‘hey we’re going to try this thing, and maybe it will work, or maybe we’ll f**k up real bad.’ But it happens. You say ‘ok that sucked lets not do that again. and you go on, and you do it better the next time’. The blog is a behind the scenes look, I try really hard to do the right thing, but some days we eat it. We make screwups all the time, and we’re going to make a lot more.
[Adam]
With the fire and knowing that high voltage is dangerous – how do you keep the public reasonably safe during demos?
[Chris]
The first level of safety is the cage itself. We take the minimum safe distance for the cage and then multiply that by about three. The public never enters the cage when anything is armed. Operating any of the big systems like Gemini or Thumper requires a key. Every system has multiple redundant safety interlocks, so they can’t just spring to life. Each of these systems fails safe. The High voltage lab has its own grounding system separate from the building’s ground. 12 ground rods are interconnected with heavy gauge copper wire. Other systems include the fire extinguishers, the fireproof aspect of the room itself, the HVAC fire alarm and cutoff, and the emergency stop switch which kills all power to the room. Planned systems include the fire suppression system and an evacuation fan. When the fan is installed we’ll be able to change the entire atmosphere of the room in about a minute and a half. We make a lot of smoke in that room sometimes even when we’re not trying to burn the building down. The room is a workshop 90% of the time. 10% of the time it’s a showpiece. As such we have to have safety systems for both.
[Adam]
Do you have manual lathes and mills? One thing I personally hate is seeing the machining skills of generations past dying off and being lost as CNC comes in. CNC is great, don’t get me wrong. but it would be great to see some old timers passing skills to the next generation.
[Chris]
We do have manual lathes and mills both in wood and metal. That is a big thing for us – it’s great to learn the CNC stuff, which we’re doing a video series on. But basic craftsmanship is a big part of what we do here.
[Adam]
I’ve been in meetings, and sat at tables asking for donations. How the hell do you negotiate all those wonderful toys?
[Chris]
I sit at a lot of those tables, that’s how I do it. 90% of my job does not appear in the blog. I sit at a lot of tables, and spend a lot of face time with people. I give hundreds of tours every month. It’s a nonstop thing, and it’s a lot of begging. It’s a lot of ‘no’s’. For every ‘yes’ you see on the videos there were five ‘no’s’ ahead of it. We hear a lot more ‘yes’ now because we have a lot more to offer. We’ve got a really solid reputation. A lot of people know who we are, and we’ve got a very powerful megaphone. People want to showcase their products on our channel. We know who we’re talking to we know what we’re asking for, we make sure it’s relevant. The real secret to it is perseverance. I have an amazing team of brilliant people who do a lot of research and make sure we waste as little time as possible. The IRC is a huge help here. Before I walk into a meeting I know who I’m talking to – they’re vetted, I know what they like, I know what they do, everything.
[Adam]
You definitely have a great crew. Liz, Doogie, Batman, Kidwell, Are there any others we don’t get to see?
[Chris]
There are a lot of people who you don’t really see on the blog. Vicky is almost never on the blog. Mum might have been in one blog. These people don’t want to be in the public eye because they see the hell that I catch, and they don’t want it. I don’t want them to suffer like that. There are a lot of people who exist very much behind the scenes, and this place wouldn’t’ work without them. I owe everything I am to these people. I am exceedingly grateful for everything that they do here. The people involved with this company, who know the truth who see what really goes on here day-to-day, are the most ardent supporters of it. The more people learn about the truth about who I really am, what I’m really like, The more they want to be a part of it. The more they want to support it. That tells me I’m doing something right.
The Geek Group IRC is also huge for us. The IRC, which only averages 100 or so people, donated over $74,000 USD last year. That’s amazing – these are not wealthy people. You should see the percentage of donations that come in at $5 or $20. $100 is a big donation to us. Yet we raised $74,000 just from the IRC. That’s staggering. Normal hackerspaces don’t’ work like this. We’re the only hackerspace that has to file the IRS 990 long form. That’s how big we’ve grown, and we’ve done it fast.
[Adam]
How many kVA are you planning for the next tesla coil?
[Chris]
It’s really limited to the size of the room. If we keep the same room, it’s probably a maximum of 200kVA. If we rebuild the high voltage lab, we’d be looking at a 50 foot ceiling, so the power levels would go up significantly. I can tell you that the next totally separate Tesla coil project will be a big outdoor coil called project Zeus. Zeus will about 500kVA. You’ll be able to safely stand inside the top load while it is operating. I’ve already got the power supply sitting here ready to go.
So there you have it. At face value it seems that everything is on the up and up. No cults, no tax evasion. While I can’t be 100% sure of The Geek Group’s motivations without visiting in person, it does seem that they are providing a great resource to the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. When you play with large high voltage projects, the danger levels ramp up to incredible levels. History has proven that high voltage displays can be done safely for the public, from
The Boston Museum of Science Van De Graaff
Generator to
ArcAttack
, to The Geek Group themselves. | 65 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1168653",
"author": "Michelle",
"timestamp": "2014-01-24T18:11:39",
"content": "Like usual, Boden exhibits a general lack of wit; instead, replacing it almost entirely with a volatile mix of childish arrogance. This group needs a new figurehead.If their board of trustees can’t see t... | 1,760,376,330.220022 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/snapchat-person-verification-defeated-in-100-lines-of-code/ | Snapchat Person Verification Defeated In <100 Lines Of Code | James Hobson | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"FLANN matching",
"snapchat",
"snapchat person verification",
"snapchat security",
"SURF keypoints"
] | [Steven Hickson] woke up this morning to an article about the new person verification system Snapchat has implemented. Thirty minutes later
he cracked it to be solved by a computer
, in less than 100 lines of code (
GitHub
).
First a little background. About a month ago, 4.6 million Snapchat users had their information
compromised by a security hole.
In an attempt to bump up security, Snapchat has implemented
a new person verification method
to ensure new accounts aren’t created by computers.
The method? Picking out a white ghost from a series of nine images. Kind of like a cute, less annoying Captcha. The problem? It’s a terrible way to prove you are a person. It took [Steven] only 30 minutes to write a program that uses simple thresholding, SURF keypoints and FLANN matching to find the ghost. In his tests, he’s found the ghost with 100% accuracy. He also muses that there is an even more efficient way to do it, he was just too lazy to do it.
Nice try Snapchat. | 53 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167657",
"author": "Simon",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T21:10:24",
"content": "Is it still financially viable to farm out captchas to real people in some third world country?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167666",
"au... | 1,760,376,329.328869 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/3d-printering-making-a-thing-in-autodesk-123d/ | 3D Printering: Making A Thing In Autodesk 123D | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"123d",
"123D Design",
"3D Printering",
"autodesk",
"Autodesk 123D"
] | In the continuing battle against 3D printers used exclusively for fabricating plastic octopodes and useless trinkets, here’s yet another installment of a Making A Thing tutorial. If you’ve ever wanted to make one single object in multiple 3D design softwares, this is for you.
Previously, we’ve built a ‘thing’ in a few different 3D modeling programs, including:
OpenSCAD
AutoCAD Part I
AutoCAD Part II
Blender Part I
Blender Part II
SketchUp
See that ‘Read more…’ link below? You might want to click that.
Our Thing
Like all of these Making A Thing tutorials, we’re using this switch base, torn from the pages of an 85-year-old textbook on Engineering Drawing.
Thanks to me being an idiot, we’re not making an
exact
copy of this switch base. In the graphic to the right, there’s a slight taper to the vertical flange on this switch base. I’m not one to change these tutorials in mid-stream though, and the finished product will be close enough.
Starting Up, or, Holy Crap, What’s With All These 123D Products?
If you head on over to the Autodesk 123D page,
you’ll see a ton of related products
in Autodesk’s line of freeware modeling and design softwares. The
Make
app is basically a slicer that turns 3D objects into something akin to those die-cut plywood dinosaur models you built as a kid.
Catch
turns a camera into a 3D scanner.
Sculpt
is an iDevice app that’s probably far less useful than it is cool.
Design
is what we’re after. It’s a full-featured piece of 3D design software that allows you to create objects for your 3D printer.
123D Design is available as a web app, an iDevice app, or as a free download for Mac and PC. I’m using the PC version, so if you’re following along,
go here and download your copy
. Install it, and you’ll end up with the screen below:
First things first. Since our ‘thing’ was designed in fractional inches, we’ll need to change 123D’s units to inches. Do that by clicking on the Units button in the bottom right hand corner.
If you’ve used AutoCAD before, you’ll find the UI for 123D Design is extremely similar. On the right side of the screen, there are buttons for pan, orbit, zoom, and fit, just like in AutoCAD. Also, in the top right hand corner is the ‘view cube’, allowing you to rotate the window around and fix it to a top, bottom, front, back, left, or right view. Double click on the top of the cube and 123D will orient the window so we can make our thing in two dimensions first, then extrude them into the Z dimension.
Making A Thing
At the top toolbar, you’ll see the Sketch tool. From there, select Circle and draw a 1-inch circle. Then, draw a 2 3/8″ circle on the same center. Just as in AutoCAD, you can simply type a number on your keypad and 123D will make the circle that size. Unlike AutoCAD – and just about every other drafting program ever – the number you type in 123D will be the
diameter
, not the radius. I find this a little more user friendly than typing in a radius, and if anyone has some insight into that UX decision, I’d love to hear it.
Now for another tool. From the Sketch menu, select Polyline. Draw two lines starting from the centers of the circle, both 1.25″ long, one at 0 degrees, and another at 135 degrees. From the bottom of the 0 degree line, sketch a rectangle 1 3/8″ by 5/16″. Using the mirror tool, mirror this rectangle along the 0 degree line.
The fillet and trim lines work just like they do in AutoCAD. Put a 1/8″ radius fillet on the outer corners of the rectangles we just laid down.
Now For The Slot
We already have a line going through the center of where the slot on our thing should go. Under the Sketch menu, there’s an Offset tool. Select the Offset tool, click the slots center line, and offset it 3/16″. Just like in AutoCAD, we can use the Trim command to clean everything up. Adding the other flange, you should have something that looks like the pic to the right.
Under the Modify tab on the top toolbar, select Extrude. Pull the main part of our switch base up 7/16″, and the other weird flange part up 21/16″. Once you’re in 3D-land, you can use the Fillet command under the Modify tab to put our inside fillets in. Just select the inside corner between the ‘washer’ and ‘wide flange’ parts, and set a fillet radius of 0.125″ By now, your part should look something like this:
Putting A Top On It
After clicking on the ‘Front’ of the ‘view cube’, put a series of concentric circles on the top of the flange. After that, play with the view cube until you’re in some sort of comfortable isometric or orthographic view and extrude those circles until you have something resembling our ‘thing.
Note the Extrude tool has pseudo-Boolean operations for it in a drop-down menu to the right of where you input your dimensions. 123D is a little weird in how it decides to extrude parts into other parts; my advice is just to play around with this option until you get something approximately right.
When you’re done, you’ll have this, our thing, ready to be exported to an .STL file and sent to a 3D printer:
That’s it for Autodesk 123D. If you have a suggestion on what software to cover next in this tutorial series, I’m all ears.
I’d also like to thank [tarasbot] for taking it upon himself to suggest the 123D tutorial, and for doing a write-up which this tutorial was heavily based on. Also,
he made this thing!
With the right taper! | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167601",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T18:22:39",
"content": "FreeCAD, FreeCAD or FreeCAD would be my suggestions!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167609",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
"timesta... | 1,760,376,329.574642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/interactive-globe-is-awesome-for-google-earth/ | Interactive Globe Is Awesome For Google Earth | James Hobson | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"globe projector",
"interactive globe",
"touch screen globe",
"touchscreen globe"
] | Time to brush up on your Portuguese if you want to learn how to
build your own interactive globe!
Or we guess we could use
Google translate…
This project was originally presented at
Campus Party
2012: an annual, week-long technology festival running 24 hours a day that features LAN parties, a hackathon, conferences, and more. It all started back in 1997 in Madrid, Spain. Today, there are now Campus Parties being held in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the USA, Ecuador, and Germany.
The team that created it—[Araujo, Barmak, Teo, Duprat, and Silva]—has now decided to give back to the community and share a tutorial on how make your very own. The globe uses a short throw projector, a mirror, a series of infrared lights, a modified PS3 Eye camera, and an acrylic dome with projector screen paint on the inside. The touchscreen works by the IR light being reflected off of your hand on contact, which is then picked up by the PS3 Eye camera that has had its IR filter removed.
Unless you can find a suitable acrylic dome, it is, unfortunately, rather expensive to make. They had to have one manufactured. Stick around after the break to see how it works!
[Thanks Rafael!] | 27 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167516",
"author": "naroom",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T15:10:31",
"content": "You can get an acrylic dome of those dimensions for about $30.http://plastichemisphere.net/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167528",
"autho... | 1,760,376,329.702098 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/body-of-a-trinket-soul-of-a-digispark/ | Body Of A Trinket, Soul Of A Digispark | Adam Fabio | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"adafruit",
"arduino",
"bootloader",
"Digispark",
"digiStump",
"firmware",
"Trinket"
] | Adafruit’s Trinket and digiStump’s Digispark board are rather close cousins. Both use an ATtiny85 microcontroller, both have USB functionality, and both play nice with the Arduino IDE. [Ray] is a fan of both boards, but he likes the Trinket hardware a bit better. He also prefers the Digispark libraries and ecosystem. As such, he did the only logical thing:
he turned his Trinket into a Digispark
. Step 1 was to get rid of that pesky reset button. Trinket uses Pin 1/PB5 for reset, while Digispark retains it as an I/O pin. [Ray] removed and gutted the reset button, but elected to leave its metal shell on the board.
The next step was where things can get a bit dicey: flashing the Trinket with the Digispark firmware and fuses. [Ray] is quick to note that once flashed to Digispark firmware, the Trinket can’t restore itself back to stock. A high voltage programmer (aka device programmer) will be needed. The flashing process itself is quite a bit easier than a standard Trinket firmware flash. [Ray] uses the firmware upload tool from the
Micronucleus
project. Micronucleus has a 60 second polling period, which any Trinket veteran will tell you is a wonderful thing. No more pressing the button and hoping you start the download before everything times out! Once the Trinket is running Digispark firmware, it’s now open to a whole new set of libraries and software. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167425",
"author": "mh",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T12:08:28",
"content": "This is nice (or “this is a hack!”) I like when people ‘ports’ software to more hardware (or coerce hardware to use a different software than it was meant to). endresult being more choice in soft/hardware for ... | 1,760,376,329.390988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/22/cfl-bugzapper-battery-operated-camping-light/ | CFL + Bugzapper = Battery Operated Camping Light | Kevin Darrah | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"bugzapper",
"cfl"
] | Knowing different ways of generating light is a great skill to have, so go ahead and add this one to your arsenal by combining a
Bugzapper with a CFL Light Bulb
.
Sure a CFL(Compact Fluorescent Lamp) works just fine on its own if you have AC mains, but what we’re talking about here is getting the light bulb to work off of a single D battery. We featured a similar hack a few months back by using a
Joule-Thief
to get the high voltage for the fluorescent tube, but if you can’t get your hands on discrete components, [Jan] shows us another way by gutting a tennis racket bugzapper for its booster board. Knowing that the bugzapper steps up the 3V to about 2000V, he decided to see if that same circuit would run off a single 1.5V D battery and achieve the voltage required to drive a CFL tube. After carefully removing the electronics from the CFL housing, [Jan] was able to directly connect the booster board to the electrode wires of the fluorescent tube, and voila; he now has a D-Battery operated camp light that has a run time of over 200 hours.
It would be interesting to see how this hack compares to the Joule-Thief method in terms of brightness and run-time. Before you go and scrap the parts out of the CFL light bulb, make sure you check out this detailed
breakdown of popular CFL light bulbs
. | 51 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167355",
"author": "Dutado",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T09:24:44",
"content": "It’s spelled voila, not viola.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167372",
"author": "ino",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T09:51:52",
... | 1,760,376,329.850298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/apex-electronics-your-souce-for-oscilloscopes-and-drop-tanks/ | Apex Electronics, Your Souce For Oscilloscopes And Drop Tanks | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Apex Electronics",
"electronic surplus",
"surplus"
] | While some of the Hackaday crew is in LA for
The Gathering
, we decided to make a trip out to
Apex Electronics
, easily the oldest and largest electronics surplus store on the west coast.
Inside Apex, everything is stacked to the 20-foot ceiling with
any
electronic component you can imagine. Want a shopping cart full of huge capacitors? Awesome. Tube sockets? Done. Any kind of wire imaginable? That takes up two aisles. Test equipment abounds as well with oscilloscopes, signal analyzers and function generators, multimeters, and even a pair of cockpit voice recorders.
There’s also an outside yard at Apex containing at least two airplanes (one is a Cessna 150 that’s crying out to be made into a flight simulator), yet more test equipment, tons of video equipment, a few aircraft drop tanks, and enough aluminum extrusion to build anything.
If you’re wondering how fair the prices are at Apex, I picked up a grab bag assortment of wire wrap sockets (including a few 64-pin DIPs) that would cost $100 through the usual eBay/Chinese retailers for only $5. [Mike] picked up some stepper motors, proto boards, a pound of standoffs, and a dozen some vintage 7-segment displays for $20. No clue how much the test equipment costs, but from what we’ve seen the prices are
low
.
We’re not the first EE/Hacker Blog/Vlog to visit Apex. [Dave Jones]
made the trek a few years ago
and posted an awesome video. Below you’ll find a ton of pictures from our trip.
Cockpit voice recorder. They had two.
Mint in box 5 1/4″ disks!
Awesome valve
Soooo much wire | 72 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167290",
"author": "wb6odn",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T06:56:44",
"content": "+1My resource lab… :^)Been going there for over 40 plus years… The Best of the BEST!!!You would be surprised by how many Radio & TV stations are on the air because of them.",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,330.630828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/final-key-a-mooltipass-like-device/ | Final Key : A Mooltipass-like Device | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"aes",
"mooltipass",
"usb"
] | Since the Hackaday community started working on our offline password keeper, Mooltipass, we’ve received several similar projects in our tips line. The
Final Key
may be the most professional looking one yet. Similarly to
the Mooltipass
, it is based on an Atmel ATMega32U4 but only includes one button and one LED, all enclosed in a 3D printed case.
The Final Key is connected to the host computer via USB and is enumerated as a composite Communication Device / HID Keyboard, requiring windows-based devices to install drivers. AES-256 encrypted passwords are stored on the device and can only be accessed once the button has been pressed and the correct 256 bit password has been presented through the command line interface. Credentials management and access is also done through the latter. Unfortunately, the Arduino source code can’t be found on [cyberstalker]’s website, so if you see interesting features that you would like to be integrated in Mooltipass you may send us a message to our
Google Group
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167220",
"author": "Will Lyon",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T03:10:46",
"content": "Looks like the basic white plastic from Shapeways. I just had a part printed in the same material and has a sandstone-like feel to it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,376,332.595586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/chachka-a-trinket-clone/ | Chachka: A Trinket Clone | Kristina Panos | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny85",
"trinket clone",
"V-USB"
] | Why would you clone something as cheap as the adafruit Trinket? Well, because you can, of course. And that’s exactly why [Ray]
started to build a clone
two days after his Trinket came in the mail. He encourages you to support adafruit by buying at least one Trinket before attempting a clone, and we agree. Besides, you’ll be able to use the support forum with a clear conscience.
[Ray]’s design uses an 1800Ω pull-up resistor rather than the
1500Ω in the Trinket
. He made this change based on
his experience with V-USB
and the ATtiny85. He has
a lot more information on his build
on the Arduino forum. Check out a short video of Chachka responding to a Sony-esque remote control after the break.
Need an application for your Trinket clone? Check out
this incredibly well-built USB volume knob
.
https://plus.google.com/102478464615720596560/posts/EDQ5pT2fXdq
[Thanks, Ray!] | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166398",
"author": "Alexander Rossie",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T09:55:55",
"content": "Opening paragraph got me a bit hot and heavy for bondage, dominance and FOSS.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1166401",
"author": "Gregg... | 1,760,376,332.348164 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/diy-scroll-saw/ | DIY Scroll Saw | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"diy scrollsaw",
"sewing machine hack"
] | Scroll saws are super handy tools, but it’s sometimes hard to justify buying one for a single project. So why not make
it
your project? [SDX42] shows us how, using a…wait a second,
is that an old sewing machine?
First a little back story. He picked up an old sewing machine that had been thrown out by its previous owner: they said it didn’t work right. He took it anyway and decided to fix it up. He encountered two problems. First, it turned out to be a lot harder to fix than he first imagined. Second, he realized he had no use for a sewing machine. What he did need, however, was a scroll saw.
A sewing machine is actually fairly similar to a scroll saw. They both work by converting rotary movement into linear reciprocation. The only difference is the layout. [SDX42] flipped the mechanism upside down and built a scroll saw frame on top of the stripped-down sewing machine. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but we’ll let him explain it to you in the video after the break.
[via
Go Repairs
] | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166379",
"author": "Galane",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T08:54:54",
"content": "A scroll saw uses two parallel arms, holding the blade in tension. Here’s an example of a DIY buildhttp://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-scroll-saw-using-only-upcycledfree-mater/and anotherhttp://lumberjo... | 1,760,376,332.937262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/diy-pipe-freezing-kit/ | DIY Pipe Freezing Kit | James Hobson | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"diy freezing kit",
"diy pipe freezing",
"water pipe freezing"
] | Have you ever needed to freeze a water pipe to do a quick plumbing job without shutting off all the water? It’s actually a fairly common practice for contractors, except they use a rather expensive tool to do it. As it turns out, there’s actually a
fairly cheap and easy DIY solution
you can do with minimal supplies or experience.
[Go Repairs] shows us that all you need is some pipe insulation (or a large sponge), a plastic bag, two zip-ties, and a air duster can. Wrap the insulation and plastic bag around the pipe, and zip-tie it in place. Holding the air duster can upside down, release the majority of the contents into the insulation. Congratulations, you’ve just frozen your pipe.
It works by exploiting the properties of a compressed gas — in this case tetrafluoroethane — the “air” in the air duster.
When this gas is under pressure it exists as both a liquid and a gas in the can. When you spray the can normally, you’re just getting the gas out — but if you hold the can upside down, the liquid comes out instead. Because liquid tetrafluoroethane can’t exist at atmospheric pressure as a liquid, it boils instantly as it leaves the can. This causes an extreme temperature drop in the surroundings due to the endothermic reaction occurring.
For a complete explanation, check out the video below. | 64 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166252",
"author": "Joshua C",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T03:26:17",
"content": "Cooling something by evaporative cooling is _not_ an endothermic reaction. To have an endothermic reaction, you have to have a reaction! Evaporating a pressurized liquid a chemical reaction does not mak... | 1,760,376,332.865678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/hackaday-links-january-19-2014/ | Hackaday Links: January 19, 2014 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"555 timer",
"bom",
"DeLorean",
"Music box",
"point and shoot",
"tiva"
] | [Nick] wrote in to tell us about his first blog post. He’s showing off
a PWM LED driver he build around a 555 timer
. This project uses a lot of basics; some 555 experience, PCB etching, and surface mount soldering. We’d like to know more about the blue substrate on his circuit board!
After seeing
the BOM spreadsheet with KiCAD integration
a couple of weeks back, [Vassilis] sent in a link to
his own Excel-based Bill of Materials helper
. We’re wondering if anyone has a similar tool that will work with Open Office?
While we’re on the topic of downloadable documents, here’s
a reference PDF for all types of DC measurements
. The collection is a free offering from Keithley. [Thanks Buddy]
Since you’re brushing up on your knowledge you may also be interested in
a free online microcontroller course offered by UT Austin
. They’re targeting the Tiva C Launchpad as the dev board for the class.
This website seems to be a little creepy, but
the teardrop shaped 3D printed music box
which is being shown off is actually rather neat.
Hackaday Alum [Phil Burgess] threw together
a point and shoot camera for Adafruit
. It’s a Raspberry Pi, camera board, touchscreen display, and USB battery all rubber banded together. The processing power of the RPi is used to add image processing effects which are
shown off in the demo video
.
We don’t own a DeLorean. If we did, we’d probably follow the lead of Queen’s University Belfast and
turn it into and electric vehicle
. [Thanks Jake]
The 3D photocopiers are coming. Here’s a hacked together proof-of-concept from [Marcelo Ruiz]. After laser scanning
the part is milled from floral foam
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166229",
"author": "omegacs",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T01:54:51",
"content": "I spent quite some time trying to find a way to get OpenOffice to make arbitrary HTTP connections and ended up having to do a system() call (or whatever they call it) from “BASIC” and write a script that ... | 1,760,376,332.399865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/making-a-20db-low-noise-amplifier-for-a-400mhz-radio/ | Making A 20dB Low Noise Amplifier For A 400MHz Radio | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"LNA",
"low noise amplifier",
"RF"
] | [Will] recently tipped us about a
400MHz Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) module
he made. His detailed write-up starts by explaining the theory behind an amplifying chain. Assuming a 50 Ohm antenna system receives a -70dBm signal, the total peak to peak voltage would be less than 200uV (.0002 volts). If the first amplifying stage doesn’t consist of an LNA, then the added noise would later be amplified by the other elements of your system.
[Will] then detailed how he picked his LNA on Digikey, mainly by looking for one that had a less than 1dB
Noise Figure
. His final choice was the Sky65047: a small budget-priced 0.4-3.0GHz low noise amplifier with a theoretical gain of 20dB at 400MHz. He made the PCB you can see in the picture above, removing the soldermask on the signal path in order to lower the
permitivity
. Because of a few mistakes present in the application note, it took [Will] quite a while to get his platform up and running with a 20dB gain but a 4.5dB NF. He also measured the input return loss using a directional coupler, which ended up being quite close to the datasheet’s 14dB number. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166174",
"author": "camerin",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T21:08:16",
"content": "Sorry the wording on this post is making me cringe. A return loss of 14dB would be terrible. I would imply that more power is returning from the amplifier then you are putting in, by more the n 10 times."... | 1,760,376,332.46697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/dallas-makerspace-tour/ | Dallas Makerspace Tour | Marsh | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace",
"hackerspace tour",
"hackerspace tours",
"makerspace"
] | [Paul] sent us
this video tour of the Dallas Makerspace
made by member [Andrew Floyd], who walks us around and provides narration for a very impressive space. Once inside
the 6000 sq ft facility
, he takes us past the entrance lounge and into the electronics room, which has more electronics component storage than visible wall space, and down the hall to show off some laser-cut and 3d-printed creations.
Every makerspace has its specialties, and the Dallas gang shows off their awesome darkroom (complete with creepy,
lurking Nic Cage
) and blacksmith/forge work areas. They even have bi-weekly blacksmithing classes from a local master blacksmith. The space has since expanded, conquering their next-door-neighbors to expand project storage, add a biolab, a second classroom, a conference room, and more.
Enjoy the video after the break, and then head over to their website for more info:
dallasmakerspace.org
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166140",
"author": "Bertho",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T19:08:33",
"content": "dallasmakerspace.org: “Please enable JavaScript to view this website.”No thanks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1166167",
"author": "blujay... | 1,760,376,332.287339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/three-axis-position-indicator-with-digital-calipers/ | Three Axis Position Indicator With Digital Calipers | Mathieu Stephan | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"basic",
"calipers",
"CNC milling"
] | [Malte] just finished a little project for his Wabeco F1200 milling machine: a
compact external display for three digital sliding calipers
(
Translated
from German). As you may have already guessed, [Malte] was lucky enough to be able to fit disassembled calipers onto the machine and use them for positioning. Before embarking on this adventure, he noticed that there were similar projects present on the internet, but all of the calipers used had different data interfaces and protocols. The calipers that [Malte] bought have a mini USB connector, even though the interface itself isn’t USB. As he couldn’t find any information on that interface, he turned to his oscilloscope to decode the protocol.
[Malte] then built an AVR-based platform that reads out the three calipers and shows the position data on the dot matrix LCD shown above. The AVR firmware is written in a mixture of Basic and assembler language. The source code, schematics, and other resources can be downloaded from the project’s web page. We are impressed on the professional aspect of the final result. | 22 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166109",
"author": "gannon",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T17:53:46",
"content": "Nice! Really good looking setup.I have one set of modified calipers mounted to the cross slide on my lathe so far and one on the tailstock. It’s really nice to have the linear encoders rather than rotary e... | 1,760,376,332.771317 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/the-piboy/ | The PiBoy | James Hobson | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"game boy raspberry pi",
"gameboy",
"piboy"
] | What do you do with a broken Gameboy, a 3″ LCD, a pile of wires, a USB SNES controller, a 32gb SD card, and a Raspberry Pi? You make a
pocket emulator, of course!
[Anton] decided he wanted to build an emulator awhile ago. He had a few specific goals in mind: it had to be hand-held, portable, child safe, and usable without a keyboard. He started by stripping the broken Gameboy down to its external shell, then removing all of the internal plastic mounting features with a hot soldering iron. Next was the challenge of fitting everything into the case and powering it. Because his 3″ LCD runs off 12V, [Anton] needed a way to get 5V to the Pi. Lucky for him, it turned out that his LCD’s controller board had a 5V test point/expansion pin-out!
From there it was just a matter of reusing the original Gameboy’s speaker, closing up the case, and loading the emulator! As always, there’s a demo video after the break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g_dsTWL8EA
Looking for other Raspberry Pi-based emulators? How about kicking it old school with an
Atari 2600?
Too old? Okay, how about
a rather normal looking SNES
with its slot sealed shut? | 22 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166752",
"author": "Figureitout",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T03:22:12",
"content": "This is cool. Got a lot of gameboys I want to get in and try some hacks on and just got a megamanX2 and X3 for SNES for christmas. Need to fix my original NES; but going to be very careful…classic e... | 1,760,376,332.53865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/the-gathering-approacheth/ | The Gathering Approacheth | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"LA2014"
] | UPDATE 1/21/14 3:20pm:
We’re sold out! See you at the party!
Here are directions!
Doors open at 6!
UPDATE 1/21/14 11:40am:
If you want to attend
get on the short waiting list
. There’s a very good chance you’ll still get a ticket!
UPDATE 1/21/14 6:30am:
There are still a handful of tickets available.
Get yours now
.
The plans are made, the free T-shirts are folded, and we’ve giving our livers those last few hours off so that we’re ready for the frothy goodness when the beer starts to flow. Of course we’re talking about Hackaday’s Gathering in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening. Regular readers in the area already have their tickets; we’re sold out and you can’t get in the door without them. If you’re slow on the uptake you still might get lucky and score yourself a returned ticket.
Despite your preconceived notions about our readership, they’re actually very polite. We gave out all 500 tickets, but have seen a number of those cancelled as people realize they can’t make it. Thank you for
cancelling your unused tickets
!
The ones that have been returned have gone right out the door again. As I’m writing this the waiting list is just in the single-digits, so
put yourself on the waiting list
and watch your inbox! | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166720",
"author": "mh",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T02:17:18",
"content": "I hope you guys have a lot of fun. Even if this means I will have less people to argue^Wdiscuss with for a while :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "11668... | 1,760,376,332.99223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/touring-null-space-labs-another-la-hackerspace/ | Touring Null Space Labs, Another LA Hackerspace | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspaces",
"LA hackerspace",
"null space labs"
] | Null Space Labs
prides itself on being the only hackerspace that’s not saving the world. Instead, they focus on more important matters such as
repairing an industrial pick and place machine
,
hoisting laser cutters through third story windows
, and generally being extremely awesome. Since some of the Hackaday crew is in LA, we decided to check in on the folks at Null Space, and they graciously granted us a tour.
It’s not an overstatement that Null Space is better stocked than any university EE lab. They have at least four million electronic components, and they honestly have no idea how many different types of components they have. As for tools, a 22 GHz spectrum analyzer and 2 GHz scope are tucked away behind a direct to garment printer. A gigantic laser printer, pro 3D printer, PCB milling and through-hole plating stations, and pick and place machine are just a few more of the fun toys available to Null Space members.
In the video below, [M] walks us through the main electronics work area, filled to the brim with tools and storage cabinets. After that, [arko] shows off the PCB mill and the back room with reels of parts strewn asunder.
“Food” Table
Quadcopter test jig | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166679",
"author": "Stuky",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T00:13:27",
"content": "Video is set to private :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1166682",
"author": "pcf11",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T00:20:34",
"content": "I h... | 1,760,376,333.12755 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/a-quick-and-simple-filament-joiner-for-multi-color-prints/ | A Quick And Simple Filament Joiner For Multi-Color Prints | Adam Fabio | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"Filament Joint",
"makerbot",
"MultiColor Prints",
"reprap"
] | [Malcolm] was having a grand time with his new 3D printer. He was getting tired of monochromatic prints, though. Not having a machine with multiple extruders, he went looking for a way to join pieces of filament. There were a few designs on Thingiverse, but they required milled parts that he didn’t have the tools to recreate. Rather than invest in a mill, [Malcolm] decided to
build his own filament joiner
. He started by raiding his wife’s hair care tools. His first test was a curling iron. It had the heat, but lacked a good surface to join the filament. [Malcolm’s] next test was a ceramic hair straightener, which he found to be the perfect tool.
The splicing process is simple. Start with a hot iron, then lay two pieces of filament on top of the short end of the iron. They soften quickly and melt together. [Malcolm’s] real trick is to slightly pull the joint once the two pieces have joined. Pulling causes the filament to stretch, slightly reducing the diameter of the joint. A thinner joint helps prevent extruder jams as the joint passes through. This method works great for PLA. We’d love to see if it works for ABS as well.
Click past the break for an example piece and for [Malcom’s] instructional video. | 26 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166623",
"author": "f15sim",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T21:21:26",
"content": "Very clever. It’s a shame my wife would kill me and leave my body in a ditch if I ever tried this with her flat iron. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,376,333.065952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/developed-on-hackaday-the-designs/ | Developed On Hackaday: The Designs | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware"
] | [
"developed on hackaday",
"encryption",
"hardware development",
"mooltipass",
"password",
"smartcard"
] | We know that many of our readers have been impatiently waiting to discover what the Hackaday community-developed
offline password keeper project
will look like. Today we present you several designs that our mechanical contributors came up with and we will ask you to give your opinion about them. Obviously these are just preliminary cases that may evolve along the way, but we will only produce the electronics for the designs you prefer.
All the designs are embedded after the break, with a multiple-choices poll to express your interest. You may also want to join the
Mooltipass Google Group
in case you’d want to talk about the designs in more depth or meet their creators. On the firmware side, I just finished soldering many mooltipass prototypes that will be shipped in the coming days to our firmware developers. As you may have noticed, this project is gaining speed!
[Louis]’ design 1 :
This design revolves around an injection molded bottom part and a tinted acrylic top that would be laser cut. The two parts would be held together using large bolts on top of the acrylic top plate going into (or through) the bottom part. The large hardware could also protrude a little and might help in protecting the acrylic top part from scratches. [Louis] feels like the large hardware makes it look sturdy and secure. The acrylic top plate would allow users to see inside the device and would also protect the screen. Due to the acrylic on top of the screen we would have to rely on something other than the touchscreen for user input, in this case a rotary encoder. This design would mimic the feel of a safe. Using a metal extrusion as the body of the device would have been nice but would have required machining in order to fit the card slot and USB cable, leading to a higher case cost. And here is a 3D render:
[Louis]’s design 2:
Similar design to his previous one, still using an injection molded base with a translucent top. Only this time, it’s a bit smaller overall but a bit larger to accommodate a capacitive sensor strip below the screen. There’s also a bit of a tilt angle on this one like a desktop keyboard making it easier to view the screen and interact with the device. As with the previous design, the USB cable and smart card would be inserted in the back.
[Louis]’s design 3 :
Here’s a bit of a weirder one. If the device is heavily reliant on a browser extension, it might be possible to operate it without the use of a screen on the device. In this case, the body would be injection molded plastic and the bottom would be translucent laser cut acrylic. This would allow you to faintly see inside the device to make sure nothing has been tampered with. It could also allow a bright RGB led to make the base of the device glow. [Louis] could imagine that the browser extension could make a request for a password then the base would light up red and you have 3 seconds to press the button to authenticate and it would fade out in green to let you know it worked. [Louis] is really not sure how feasible this would be but he is throwing it out there anyways…
[Joe]’s design 1 :
The idea was that a hinged USB plug could also serve to secure this design to a bag or keychain. But [Joe] concedes this may be well out of budget.
[Joe]’s design 2 :
[Joe]’s impression was that we were struggling to implement the touch screen within budget, so buttons and/or capacitive sensors could be a cheaper alternative. Having buttons or capacitive sensing near the screen would allow the UI to display the function of the button at the edge of the screen. Hence the buttons could have different functions depending on context. Crucially, if the buttons are this large the user would be able to touch different parts of the capacitive strip to enter a code made up of numeric digits 0-9. If the capacitive touch sensors could form part of the PCB [Joe] thought this would be quite a cheap way to implement user input.
[Joe]’s design 3 :
As you may have guessed, this design would have capacitive touch slider on the top/bottom and capacitive buttons on the left/right. Several concerns were expressed that having a USB connector may not be safe for the device when plugged into a laptop.
[Andy]’s design :
This design is intended to be a touchscreen only device, but could be modified to capacitive input with sliders on either side (top/bottom) of the display. The thing that [Andy] likes about this design is the horizontal axis of symmetry. For a laptop user, the device could be used on either side with a short usb cable straight to the port. The display would be flipped in software.
[Josh]’s
design :
The two things [Josh] didn’t get a chance to sketch are: the USB port along one of the short sides, and the cap-touch regions. A pair of auxiliary PCBs could provide 4 cap-touch buttons along the left side of the screen, and a “slider” region along the right side.
[Olivier]’s design
:
This is a touch-only design composed of two elements: one base and one credit card sized case. Magnets would be included within the base to keep the Mooltipass from moving.
So what do our dear Hackaday readers think? Please vote for your favorites designs below! And if you subscribe to the
Mooltipass Google Group
, you may want to enable email notifications to stay updated… there’s a great discussion happening, in which we’re trying to settle on the license we should use for the final firmware. | 34 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166566",
"author": "Niek",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T18:04:56",
"content": "I think both Andy’s and Olivier’s designs are pretty cool looking",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1166633",
"author": "ARM",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,333.288641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/touring-crashspace-the-la-hackerspace/ | Touring Crashspace, The LA Hackerspace | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace",
"LA hackerspace"
] | In case you’re not up to speed with the most recent happenings at Hackaday,
we’re partying in LA tomorrow
. This means visiting all the local hackerspaces and begging for a tour. First up is
Crash Space
, an awesome hackerspace that uses Starsong, the soldering iron alicorn shown above as a mascot.
Inside Crash Space are the usual Hackerspace compliment of tables, projectors, whiteboards, and more recycled computers than you can shake several IDE cables at. When we rolled up to Crash Space, they were just finishing up their weekly 3D printing workshop, replete with a Mendel Max, The Printer Which Shall Not Be Named, and a pair of printers from
Deezmaker
, a company started by one of Crash Space’s members.
For anyone wanting to roll their sleeves up and get dirty, all the action starts in the back of the building. There, they have a laser cutter, an ancient lathe and mill, drill press, and even a project that will become a vacuum former.
The folks at Crash Space were kind enough to show off their workshop for a video, viewable below along with a few pics of the space buzzing with activity.
Brian and Daryll pose with Sparkles
Carlyn gave us some Limoncello she made herself
The CrashSpace crew with Mike | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166513",
"author": "genki",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T15:30:35",
"content": "That’s one hot unicorn ;) Someone loves My Little Pony",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1166522",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,333.203847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/happy-birthday-son-heres-your-very-own-claw-machine/ | Happy Birthday, Son. Here’s Your Very Own Claw Machine | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"claw machine",
"father of the year",
"pic",
"PIC16F870",
"robot"
] | If [Will Baden] is in the running for Father of the Year, he’s a shoe-in. His son requested a robot-themed birthday party, so [Will] did what any superhero father would do and
built him a toy claw machine
.
[Will] harvested many of the parts from copy machines: both the 5V and 24V power supplies, the limit switches, 2/3 of the motors, and the 24V solenoid coil in the claw. The carriage is from a commercial printer. He made many of the mounts, including the ones holding the 3 stepper motors from Pololu.
A
PIC16F870
is running the show. [Will] programmed it in assembly using Timer2 for stepper pulsing and RB0 interrupt to drop the claw when the button is pushed. He also added a WDT to get out of code trouble if needed. The claw’s solenoid is driven by a
ULN2001A Darlington array
. [Will] put a kickback diode on the coil so the pulses don’t go farther than they need to. He formed the fingers of the claw by bending pieces of brake line.
Not your kind of claw? Check out
these incredible Wolverine claws
!
[Thanks, Will] | 32 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166448",
"author": "Nawar",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T12:37:28",
"content": "Very cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1166452",
"author": "Hal H",
"timestamp": "2014-01-20T12:49:12",
"content": "Wow. Pic and assembl... | 1,760,376,333.448251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/microcorruption-embedded-ctf/ | Microcorruption Embedded CTF | Eric Evenchick | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ctf",
"debugger",
"disassembly",
"embedded security",
"matasano"
] | The folks at Matasano Security and Square have teamed up to build an online capture the flag (CTF) competition. The
Microcorruption CTF
focuses on embedded security and challenges players to reverse engineer a fictional “Lockitall LockIT Pro” lock system.
Each level places you in a debugging environment with a disassembly listing, live memory view, register view, and debugging console. You can set breakpoints, step through code, and modify registers like in a real debugging environment. Your goal is to figure out how to bypass the lock to collect bearer bonds.
While the device and motive may be fictional, the assembly is actual MSP430 code. The debugger is similar to GDB connected to a remote target using OpenOCD. There’s even
a manual
(PDF) to help you get up to speed with writing MSP430 code for the device.
This CTF looks like a great introduction to embedded security, and doesn’t require buying real hardware. It even includes a full tutorial to get you started. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165564",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T17:05:13",
"content": "Sounds a lot like a game I used to play around 2000 on a telnet server called drill.hackerslab.org (RIP) mostly about finding setuid scripts and TCP packet forging and things like that (to progress from the... | 1,760,376,333.500796 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/sucking-pic-firmware-out-of-an-old-apc-battery-backup/ | Sucking PIC Firmware Out Of An Old APC Battery Backup | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"18F452",
"apc",
"firmware",
"pic",
"reverse engineering",
"ups"
] | Looking at this huge Uninterruptible Power Supply we are a little envious. It’s meant to hang on the wall of a utility room and power your critical devices. [Radek Hvizdos] has had it in service for quite some time, and when he started thinking of replacing the internal battery he decided to see if he could also extend the functionality. To do so he needed to get at the firmware of the chip controlling the device. And so began his adventure of
dumping the firmware from the read-protected PIC 18F452
.
The challenge of dumping code from a write-protected chip is in itself a fun project. But [Radek] was actually interested in fixing bugs and adding features. The wishlist feature we’d be most interested in is a kind of triage for shutting down devices as the internal battery starts to run low. Nice! But starting from scratch with the firmware is a no-go. You can see the two places where he connected to the PCB. The upper is for using a PIC programmer. The lower is an I2C connection used to dump the EEPROM with an improvised Bus Pirate.
In the end it was improper lock bit settings that opened the door to grabbing the firmware. The bootloader section of the PIC is not locked, and neither is the ability to read from FLASH at run-time. These two combined allowed him to write his own code which, when flashed to the bootloader section, dumps the rest of the firmware so that it may be combined into a complete file afterward. Since posting this fascinating article he has made
a follow-up about disassembling the code
. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165467",
"author": "afpjafiop",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T12:46:37",
"content": "He could’ve hacked this thing into a toilet door status indicator.Also, LiPo batteries would be better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1165518",... | 1,760,376,333.570681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/sniffing-wired-garage-door-opener-signals/ | Sniffing Wired Garage Door Opener Signals | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"garage door",
"garage door opener",
"remote control"
] | In addition to being something fun to do with an oscilloscope, this could be a valuable time-saver for anyone looking to tap into the wired communications on a garage door opener. If you own an older model you might be scratching your head. But newer units have more than just one button operation, usually extending to at least two extra buttons that control the lights on the motor unit and lock out wireless control. A quick probing turned up
the communication scheme used by the button unit
mounted next to the door into the house.
We’ve patched into our own garage door
using a simple relay to interface with a microcontroller
which will still work for opening and closing the door But if you’re looking for extended control you need to spoof one of the timing signals detailed in this post. We like the stated examples for future hacks: building a better wired button unit, or adding some type of RFID integration. We could see this approach for hacking in motion light control for door openers that don’t have it.
[Thanks Victor] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165428",
"author": "Boot",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T10:40:54",
"content": "when i was a crane driver, i also worked on tower cranes. one day i was buiding up the crane when a garage door in the same street openend. It was because the crane send out com signal on 7 frequencies. luc... | 1,760,376,334.215978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/mephisto-iii-internet-radio/ | Mephisto III Internet Radio | Kristina Panos | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"internet radio",
"JavaFX",
"oak",
"raspberry pi"
] | Avid Hackaday reader [Matthias] told us he takes a lot of inspiration from our site. That’s quite a compliment, because his work is both inspiring and beautiful. [Matthias] wanted to build a UI using JavaFX, so he made
a really nice-looking Raspberry Pi-based Internet radio
. We featured his
previous radio build
a few months ago when he modified an old Bakelite unit.
The Mephisto III is enclosed in a handsome oak cabinet built by [Matthias]’ father. Like his previous build, this one uses the Google Music interface to play MP3s and streams radio from the web. He also added weather and a clock, which is a nice touch. In addition to the Raspi and a USB WLAN stick, [Matthias] is using two relays. One relay powers the amplifier and the other enables the display. [Matthias] is impressed with the JavaFX API, but found that the performance of the Raspberry Pi is insufficient for smooth multithreading. He considered switching to a BeagleBone Black, but it has no component out.
If you want to be able to listen to vinyl, too, check out
this killer media center
. If you have lost your taste for Pi, build yourself
a web radio from a tiny router
.
[Thanks Matthias] | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165411",
"author": "bkubicek",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T09:40:28",
"content": "Antenne Vorarlberg. You gotta be kidding me. Somebody who listens to that also drinks Mohrenbräu :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1165502",
... | 1,760,376,333.958859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/20-gpsglonassbeidou-receiver/ | $20 GPS/GLONASS/Beidou Receiver | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"gps hacks"
] | [
"Beidou",
"glonass",
"gps",
"NavSpark"
] | Sticking a GPS module in a project has been a common occurrence for a while now, whether it be for a reverse geocache or for a drone telemetry system. These GPS modules are expensive, though, and they
only
listen in on GPS satellites – not the Russian GLONASS satellites or the Chinese Beidou satellites.
NavSpark has the capability to listen to all these positioning systems,
all while being an Arduino-compatible board that costs about $20.
Inside the NavSpark is a 32-bit microcontroller core (no, not ARM.
LEON
) with 1 MB of Flash 212kB of RAM, and a whole lot of horsepower. Tacked onto this core is a GPS unit that’s capable of listening in on GPS, GPS and GLONASS, or GPS and Beidou signals.
On paper, it’s an extremely impressive board for any application that needs any sort of global positioning and a powerful microcontroller. There’s also the option of using two of these boards and active antennas to capture carrier phase information, bringing the accuracy of this setup down to a few centimeters. Very cool, indeed.
Thanks [Steve] for sending this in. | 46 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165303",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T04:20:29",
"content": "This is great! I need to start checking Indiegogo once in a while.Anyone know what the software ecosystem is like for this LEON architecture? GCC or otherwise free tools would be preferred, of course."... | 1,760,376,333.679353 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/magic-morse-arduino-trainer/ | Magic Morse Arduino Trainer | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"morse",
"morse code"
] | Magic Morse is a mathematical algorithm that [Ray Burnette] wrote a few years ago to make it easy to send and receive Morse code. When he first wrote it, he designed it for a PIC, but since then he has re-written it to use as
a training program for the Arduino platform.
It can run on the Uno, Nano, Pro Micro, or even home-brew Arduino boards. He’s demonstrating the program with a Nokia 5110 LCD, but has also included code for the typical 2×16 LCD displays. The
Magic Morse algorithm
is copyrighted, but he has released the Arduino code as open source in an effort to get people using Morse code once again — it is pretty awesome.
So how does it work? The algorithm assigns weights to the “dits” and “dahs” as received — when there is a longer pause, the algorithm creates a pointer which calls the character out of an array stored in the EEPROM. He’s included an example of this in Excel on his page.
Now you have no excuses about learning Morse code! Oh and if you don’t have a fancy telegraph key (the switch), [Ray’s] also published a handy method of
making your own Morse code key out of popsicle sticks and magnets. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165208",
"author": "notabena",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T00:08:02",
"content": "QRZ73’s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1165211",
"author": "Steve Blandford",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T00:12:50",
"content": "I love th... | 1,760,376,334.024562 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/1-coin-cell-charger/ | $1 Coin Cell Charger | James Hobson | [
"green hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"battery charger",
"TP4056"
] | Sure, coin cells usually last a long time — but do you really want to buy new ones and throw the old ones out? The LiR2032 coin cell is a rechargeable lithium battery, for which you can
build a charger at around $1.
The 5 minute hack starts with a TP4056 lithium charging circuit, which is a great DIY board designed to charge high-capacity cells at about 1A. Luckily, it is pretty easy to modify the board to charge lower capacity batteries. It’s just a matter of replacing resistor R4, and a little bit of soldering!
The official
TP4056 datasheet
even tells you the range of resistors to use (page 3). [Tom] went below that range and found a 33KΩ will result in about a 50mA output — this results in a full (and safe) charge of the LiR2032 in just over an hour.
To finish up the hack he soldered a piece of strip board to the charging header, and attached a coin cell holder. Not bad for a buck. Now what if you added a few resistors and a dip switch too? It’d be pretty easy to make an all in one lithium charger! | 46 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165136",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T21:25:53",
"content": "Actually the LiR2032 has a capacitance around 40mA and the recommended current for charging safely lithium cells should be 80% or less of their capacity. 35mA is the maximum safe charging current for LiR20... | 1,760,376,333.912737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/make-me-a-drink-drinkmo/ | Make Me A Drink, Drinkmo. | James Hobson | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"barbot",
"cabe atwell",
"drink mixing robot",
"drinkmotizer"
] | [Cabe Atwell’s] latest project is a work of art. Let us introduce the Drinkmotizer:
a Raspberry Pi Drink Mixing Robot.
As [Cabe] says, almost every engineer has a drink-mixing robot on their project todo list. We’d probably have to agree; they’re functional, cool, and useful at parties.
You need the Drinkmotizer at your party… At some point, dexterity for drink mixing is lost at a gathering.
Drinkmo is your designated, sober, mixologist.
Your enabler.
Your friend.
Drinkmo works by rotating a long leadscrew that moves the mixing glass from bottle to bottle. The entire setup is made using aluminum extrusion, and is by nature, completely expandable. On the top shelf are gravity fed shot dispensers, controlled by 12VDC car lock actuators. The chaser station (at the end, on the right) works differently. The chaser bottle is actually pressurized by a paintball gun tank and dispensed using a solenoid valve. We hope he’s got a pressure regulator in there, considering the pressure capacity of paintball tanks can range from anywhere from 1000-3000PSI!
The entire system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian, and [Cabe] is using Tkinter for the GUI of the program. He’s got tons of info on the original forum post linked above (including the schematic!), and if you stick around after the break, there’s a very well produced video of Drinkmo in all its glory. | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167173",
"author": "blujay42",
"timestamp": "2014-01-22T00:18:56",
"content": "It’s pretty loud!It’s nice to see someone make a drink mixing machine and actually put booze in it though!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1167185",... | 1,760,376,334.08577 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/educational-circuit-box-for-young-aspiring-hackers/ | Educational Circuit Box For Young Aspiring Hackers | James Hobson | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"educational circuit box",
"kids"
] | Here’s a great idea: an
Educational Circuit Box
you can make to get kids interested in electronics! What looks like a boring project box with wires sticking out might just become a box of wonder and curiosity for young ones.
[Fileark] built this for his son, and has happily shared it on his blog for others to recreate. As you can probably guess from the picture, it makes use of a project box, LEDs, buttons, switches, and female header pins. Using the included breadboard jumpers picked up off of eBay, it allows your kid to learn about circuits by plugging in different components and seeing what happens.
The majority of the parts he used were salvaged from scrap electronics he had laying about. It’s a great way to turn e-waste into something fun and educational for kids! For more information about the project, stick around after the break to see [Fileark] explain (and his son demonstrate!) it in a video.
Fun fact—the YouTube URL of the video ends in “aww”! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167122",
"author": "Greenaum",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T22:21:00",
"content": "When I was veryvery little, probably 4 or 5, my grandad made me my “burglar alarm” as a birthday present. Best present I ever got! It was some pegboard (the pressed board with lots of holes in it), with ... | 1,760,376,334.136745 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/retrotechtacular-how-a-bicycle-is-made/ | Retrotechtacular: How A Bicycle Is Made | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"bicycle",
"hand assembly",
"retrotechtacular",
"steel"
] | Does your bicycle master boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb? If it was built by the
Raleigh Bicycle Company
, it ought to. This week’s Retrotechtacular is a 1945-era look into
the start-to-finish production of a standard bicycle
. At the time of filming, Raleigh had already been producing bicycles for nearly 60 years.
The film centers on a boy and his father discussing the purchase of a bicycle in the drawing office of the plant where a bicycle begins its life. The
penny-farthing
gets a brief mention so that the modern “safety model”—wherein the rider sits balanced between two wheels of equal size—can be compared. The pair are speaking with the chief designer about the model and the father inquires as to their manufacturing process.
We are given the complete story from frame to forks and from hubs to handlebars. The frame is forged from high-quality steel whose mettle is tested both with heat and with a strain much greater than it will receive in manufacture or use. It is formed from long pieces that are rolled into tubes, flame sealed at the joint, and cut to length. The frame pieces are connected with brackets, which are formed from a single piece of steel. This process is particularly interesting.
The brackets begin as a flat piece of metal. This piece is shaped into a bowl, and then the bowl is drawn into the shape of a
Collins glass
. Bumps are raised in the next process, which eventually are pierced and then shaped into an open cylinder much like a piece of pottery is hollowed on a wheel. This way there are no joints, just a single piece of strong, lightweight, dependable steel.
To make them even stronger, they are pressed in a jig. Then, the tubes that make up the frame are added and pegged through the bracket. The entire frame goes into a furnace for final tempering and is then cooled and cleaned. The extraneous brass from the braising process is removed, and the frame is electroplated.
A bicycle’s front fork is made similarly, but because it must absorb more shocks from quagmire, it has to be stronger and is formed as a single piece. After it is furnace-strengthened, both it and the frame are polished with emery cloth and on emery wheels so that the enamel will stick
smoothly
and
evenly. The frame and forks are then rustproofed and dip-enameled for luster.
The kid is particularly interested in handlebar construction. These are shaped and bent to a set design on a machine, plated in a bath, and polished to a weatherproof shine. Fenders—or mud guards as they are called here—are formed in one fell swoop from strips of steel. The pedal cranks, chain wheel, and hubs are next. Pedal cranks are forged and cut and the various holes are bored and threaded. A special milky fluid cools and lubricates them afterward. Chain wheels are made from a piece of flat steel that undergoes a few pressings and turn it into a nice filigree. The pedal cranks are fitted to the gear wheel, and the hubs get grease-packed bearings.
Spokes are made on a single machine that cuts, hooks, and threads them. They are fitted first to the hub and then attached to the rim. The spoked wheels are tested for trueness, and any loose spokes are tightened. After this, tires and tubes are fitted to the rims.
The bicycle parts are finally ready for the assembly line, quality checks, and final adjustments. We return once again to the chief designer’s office, where he concludes that quality materials and constant checks throughout the process make for a bicycle that is second to none.
[Thanks, Luis]
Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by
sending in your ideas for future installments
. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167039",
"author": "Greg Kennedy",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T18:05:50",
"content": "Got a Raleigh roadie from the 1980s. I love it, great bike : )",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1167114",
"author": "ChalkBored",
... | 1,760,376,334.283363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/a-meccano-pinball-machine/ | A Meccano Pinball Machine | Eric Evenchick | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"meccano",
"mechanical",
"pinball"
] | This pinball table is almost entirely out of Meccano Construction Set parts. [Brian Leach]’s
Meccano Pinball Machine
features a digit counter, a kick out hole, flippers, and a timer.
The digit counter is likely the most complex part of the build. By sending it an electrical signal, either the ones, tens, or hundreds digit can be incremented. The electrical signal engages an electromagnet, which connects a motor to the wheel to increment the score. A mechanism ensures the next digit is incremented when a digit rolls over from 9 to 0, and allows the counter to be zeroed.
Rolling the ball over the set of rollover switches increments the score. A mechanism is used to ensure that the switch will trigger with a small weight. Arcing was an issue, which was reduced by adding a
snubber
to suppress the transient.
The pinball machine was demoed at the
South East London Meccano Club
, and is a great demonstration of what can be built with the construction kit. After the break, check out a video of the pinball machine. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1167038",
"author": "charliex",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T18:02:01",
"content": "that’s great, meccano started me in robotics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1167048",
"author": "Edward",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T18:31:0... | 1,760,376,334.40041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/finding-the-fix-for-a-dimmed-27-imac-screen/ | Finding The Fix For A Dimmed 27″ IMac Screen | Marsh | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"27\" imac",
"brightness",
"dimmed display",
"imac",
"lcd"
] | Like many with a 27″ iMac, [Gerry’s] been experiencing some screen brightness issues. According to him, Apple’s been largely ignoring the problem and the community’s outcry, which led to [Kaos2k]
poking around inside to hack together a fix
. It’s a solution clearly born from trial and error; [Kaos2k’s]
initial post
on the issue simply recommending “applying pressure” to the panel itself, which would sometimes cause the dim screen to spring back to life.
It turns out that heat (or stress, or something) from the screen causes the solder joints to weaken on the board where a 6-pin connector hooks up, dimming the screen to eye-strain levels. Some Mac users
are suing over it
, because the problem tends to show up just outside of the warranty window and affects a large number of people. [Kaos2k], however, provided the much needed solution for those looking to get the fix over with: just solder the cable directly to the board. Our tipster, [Gerry],
has documented his experiences over at his blog
, and was kind enough to make a step-by-step video of the repair, which you can see after the break. | 29 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166911",
"author": "Kaos2K",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T12:17:49",
"content": "Oh! Thanks to your website and to Gerry for covering the issue. The more people will know about the problem, the better.Regards.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,376,334.352875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/21/gamecube-robot-is-more-than-meets-the-eye/ | Gamecube Robot Is More Than Meets The Eye | Adam Fabio | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"gamecube",
"nintendo",
"rc",
"robot"
] | [Joshua] had his old Gamecube kicking around. Rather than let it gather dust, he took it into the machine shop at Harvey Mudd College and
used its body as the shell of a mobile robot.
With a bit of thought, it turns out that you can fit quite a lot inside the rather small Gamecube case. [Joshua] started with a couple of R/C plane style brushless outrunner motors. These motors generally give more torque and spin slower than their inrunner counterparts. Several thousand RPM was still too fast to directly drive the LEGO tires though. He needed a gear reduction.
Gears and tight spaces usually send people running for the
SDP/SI
website. We’ve used SDP/SI parts before, and have found that they make incredibly accurate gears and assemblies. Things can get pricey, however, when you’re buying two of everything. In search of a solution a bit more within his college-student-budget, [Joshua] looked at radio control servos. R/C servos have some rather strong output gears, especially the metal gear variety. Even with strong gears, parts do break in crashes, so replacement gear sets are available and cheap. [Joshua] settled on gears made for Hitec servos. His next problem was finding a pinion gear for his motors. That turned out to be easy, as 64 pitch gears commonly used in RC cars mesh with metric servo gears. The final results are great. His robot has tons of torque and plenty of speed to zip around. The only thing it’s missing is a brain. Videos after the break. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166897",
"author": "eldorel",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T11:45:25",
"content": "The only thing it’s missing is a brain.He’s controlling it with an RC remote and it has no internal logic circuitry.It looks like a nice remote control car build, but its not a robot.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,376,334.45923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/20/people-of-southampton-unite-theres-a-new-makerspace-in-town/ | People Of Southampton Unite! There’s A New Makerspace In Town! | James Hobson | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"so make it makerspace",
"somakeit",
"uk hackerspace",
"uk southampton makerspace"
] | The UK Southampton Makerspace,
So Make It
, has just
moved into its first dedicated space
, and are holding a grand opening on February 1st!
They have officially been around since early 2013, when they shared a 500sqft space in the back of a bicycle shop warehouse. It wasn’t much, but it was a pretty good temporary home. Toward the end of 2013, they realized they were big enough to justify a private space and decided to try crowd funding. They were
fairly successful
in raising the startup cash.
Let all of us from Hack a Day (and you!) be the first to congratulate So Make It on acquiring their own private space!
Do we have any Southampton readers in our midst? If so, stick around after the break for full details from So Make It on when and where you can join in the festivities!
It’s our sincere pleasure to announce that we will be holding the Grand Opening of our first dedicated space
:
On
1st February 2014 at 2pm
(please arrive from 1pm)
At
Southampton Makerspace,
Unit K6, Liners’ Industrial Estate,
Freemantle,
Southampton SO15 3FQ
Join Us! | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166845",
"author": "blargyblarg",
"timestamp": "2014-01-21T08:36:05",
"content": "Southampton here, didnt know there was a hackspace at all, going to have to get in touch with these guys!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "11668... | 1,760,376,334.526568 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/reviving-a-stubborn-laptop-battery/ | Reviving A Stubborn Laptop Battery | James Hobson | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"battery charger",
"battery fix",
"laptop battery fix",
"panasonic toughbook"
] | We’ve all gotten bored of certain toys and left them on the shelf for months on end. But what do you do when this prolonged period kills the batteries? Well if you’re [Andrew] you take apart the battery pack and
bring it back to life!
[Andrew] picked up one of
those Panasonic Toughbooks
awhile back and although it’s hardly a top of the line laptop specs-wise, it does have some pretty cool features: it’s shock-proof, splash-proof, and extreme-temperature-proof. It even had a touch screen before touchscreens were cool. Despite its durability, however, the laptop was left to sit for a bit too long, and the battery pack no longer accepted a charge.
[Andrew] quickly disassembled the battery pack and began measuring the cells with his trusty multimeter, assuming just one cell had gone bad. Curiously though, no cells reported 0V. What he did find was that each cell and sub-pack reported 2.95V, which is 0.05V below the “safe operating limits” of typical lithium ion cells.
Figuring he had nothing to lose he tried his luck by giving the cells a direct boost with his bench-top power supply. He supplied the entire pack with a constant voltage of 12V for about 3 minutes while monitoring the current, and stopped charging once they each reached 3.2v. He then put it back together and the battery pack suddenly accepted a charge from the laptop once again!
We realize this won’t always work for a dead laptop battery, but hey, what do you have to lose? | 42 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165990",
"author": "A Bryant",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T12:21:01",
"content": "This is the norm trick for Li-on and Li-po’s and has saved me a few £$£ on these odd shaped equipment batteries.On the PSP you need to bypass the charge controller to boost the cell back to life!",
"... | 1,760,376,334.982029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/19/an-elegant-kegerator-for-less-than-100/ | An Elegant Kegerator For Less Than $100 | James Hobson | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"kegerator"
] | Looking for a fun weekend project? How about
making your very own kegerator
for about $100? Well, minus the keg of course.
First you’ll need a run of the mill mini-bar fridge. These can be had for free if you prowl student neighborhoods at the end of a semester; it’s amazing what you can find being thrown out. Next you’ll have to modify it a bit: remove the shelving and pop a hole in the top. The trickiest part is building the top out of wood, although [jypuckett] shows us that it’s really not that difficult, and wood stain is your friend!
The most expensive part of the build is probably going to be the fittings, hoses, and tap, but that’s a small price to pay for your very own kegerator.
While it’s not quite as fancy as this
over-engineered kegerator
, the
six-tap freezer chest kegerator
, or as vintage as this
1950’s General Electric
fridge
kegerator
, it is a great example of making one for cheap, that works,
and
looks good.
It also raises the question: if it’s this easy to make, why haven’t you made one yet?! | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1166064",
"author": "Scant Detail",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T15:50:02",
"content": "So where does the $100 come from? How much is the tank and regulator? Those details were ignored in this “$100” fantasy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,376,334.684357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/the-tiniest-sd-card-locker/ | The Tiniest SD Card Locker | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"sd",
"sd card",
"SD card locker"
] | In case you weren’t aware, that little ‘write protect’ switch on your SD cards probably doesn’t do anything. It’s only a switch, really, and if an SD card reader doesn’t bother to send that signal to your computer, it’s completely ineffective. Then there’s the question of your OS actually doing something with that write protect signal.
The better way to go about write protecting an SD card is using the TMP_WRITE_PROTECT bit on the SD card’s controller. [Nephiel]
came up with an amazingly small device to set that bit
, with the entire circuit fitting inside an old Playstation memory card.
[Nephiel] based his project on [Karl Lunt]’s
SD Card Locker
we saw late last year. [Karl]’s SD Locker uses an ATMega328 microcontroller, a pair of AA batteries, and an SD card socket to perform the bit toggling. This is still a very small device that fits inside an Altoids tin, but [Nephiel] thought he could make it smaller.
The new and improved version uses an ATTiny85 for SPI access to the SD card. A single button and LED serves as the user interface: with the LED off, the SD card is writable. Press the button, the card is locked, and the LED lights up. | 45 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165874",
"author": "Thomas Ryan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T06:06:33",
"content": "I might be missing something here but if someone is intent on modifying data on your card that was locked couldn’t they use a device exactly like this reset the TMP_WRITE_PROTECT bit.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,376,334.905103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/0-19-leagues-under-the-sea/ | 0.19 Leagues Under The Sea | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"robot",
"rov",
"submarine",
"Underwater ROV"
] | [Doug] and [Kay] have been building a steel 70-foot sailboat for the last few years, and since it’s a little too cold to work outside their home/shop in Oklahoma, they’re bringing their projects inside for the winter. Until it warms up a bit, they’re working on an underwater ROV capable of diving to 3000 feet below the waves, maneuvering on the ocean floor, and sending video and side-scan sonar back to their homebuilt ship.
Like [Doug] and [Kay]’s adventures in shipbuilding, they’re documenting the entire build process of ROV construction via YouTube videos.
The first video
covers the construction of a pressure vessel out of a huge piece of 10″ ID, half inch wall steel pipe. The design of the ROV will look somewhat like a torpedo, towed by the ship with cameras pointing in all directions.
For communication with the surface
everything is passing over a single Cat5 cable. They’re using an Ethernet extender that uses a twisted wire pair to bring Ethernet to the ocean bottom. With that,
a few IP webcams relay video up to the ship
and a simple Arduino setup allows for control of the ships thrusters.
The thrusters? Instead of an expensive custom solution they’re using off the shelf brushless motors for RC cars and planes. By potting the coils of a brushless outrunner motor, [Doug] and [Kay]
found this solution makes an awful lot of sense
; it’s cheap, fairly reliable, doesn’t require a whole lot of engineering, and most importantly cheap.
Bunch of videos below, or just check out [Doug] and [Kay]’s progress
on their slightly out-of-date blog
. | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165832",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T03:47:00",
"content": "FromWikipedia; emphasis mine:“The title refers to the distance traveled while under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over eight times the diameter of Earth.”Definitely watching these la... | 1,760,376,335.642062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/peristaltic-pump-moves-fluids-uphill-both-ways/ | Peristaltic Pump Moves Fluids Uphill Both Ways | Kristina Panos | [
"Beer Hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"apocalypse",
"peristaltic pump",
"pump",
"springform cake pan"
] | Here’s a skill we should all probably have for after the apocalypse—the ability to
build a cheap peristaltic pump
that can transport highly viscous fluids, chunky fluids, or just plain water from point A to point B with no priming necessary. That’s exactly what [Jack Ruby] has done with some fairly common items.
He started with a
springform cake pan
from a thrift store, the kind where the bottom drops out like that centripetal force ride at the carnival. He’s using 2″ casters from Harbor Freight mounted to a block of wood. The casters go round and squeeze fluid through the hose, which is a nice length of heat-resistant silicone from a local homebrew shop. He’s currently using a drill to run the pump, but intends to attach a motor in the future.
[Jack]’s write-up is very thorough and amusing. Stick around to see the pump in action as well as a complete tour. You can also
pump colored goo
if you’re out of beer materials. | 44 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165738",
"author": "iohngio",
"timestamp": "2014-01-19T00:07:47",
"content": "Nice! You will be able to pump sewage after apocalypse. It misses out one thing – internet connectivity via RasPi.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,376,335.059569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/usb-datalogging-with-arduino-using-v-usb/ | USB Datalogging With Arduino Using V-USB | Kevin Darrah | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"datalogger",
"DataLogging",
"excel",
"usb",
"V-USB"
] | Adding USB functionality to your Arduino projects used to be a pain, but thankfully, the V-USB project came along and gave your ATMEGA328 the ability to control the USB lines directly and mimic simple (low-speed) USB peripherals. [Ray] shows an implementation of the V-USB project by logging the status of the
Arduino’s I/O pins to an open Excel spreadsheet
V-USB (
Virtual USB
) is especially useful for those of us who build
standalone Arduino
projects with the ATMEGA328. Unlike the Arduino Leonardo and its ATMEGA32U4, the ATMEGA328 does not have a built-in USB controller. The circuit required to tie into the USB lines is made up of just a few basic components, and [Ray] provides a reference schematic and BOM to get you started. The Arduino is programmed to mimic a keyboard, so the datalogging is achieved by allowing the Arduino to ‘type’ the data into an open Excel spreadsheet. In this example, the status of 8 digital pins and all 6 Analog Input pins are logged.
For those of you who prefer the PIC microcontroller and are in a similar position of not having a built-in USB controller, there is the
16FUSB project
to help you out. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165722",
"author": "aegip",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T23:39:06",
"content": "Awesome! Now you can log state of your toilet doors with a simple ATmega. Great hack!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1165733",
"author": "Squirrel... | 1,760,376,335.210665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/18/move-over-google-nest-open-source-thermostat-is-heating-up-the-internet-of-things/ | Move Over, Google Nest: Open Source Thermostat Is Heating Up The Internet Of Things | Kristina Panos | [
"home hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"led matrix",
"nest",
"thermostat"
] | In the wake of Google’s purchase of connected devices interest Nest, the gents at [Spark]
set about to making one in roughly a day
and for a fraction of the cost it took Nest to build their initial offering. [Spark]’s aim is to put connected devices within reach of the average consumer, and The Next Big Thing within the reach of the average entrepreneur.
The brain is, of course, [Spark]’s own
Spark Core wi-fi dev board
. The display is made of three
adafruit 8×8 LED matrices
driven over I²C. Also on the bus is a combination temperature and humidity sensor, the
Honeywell HumidIcon
. They added some status LEDs for the furnace and the fan, and a
Panasonic PIR motion detector
to judge whether you are home. The attractive enclosure is made of two CNC-milled wood rings. The face plate, mounting plate, and connection from the twistable wood ring to the potentiometer is laser-cut acrylic.
[Spark]’s intent is for this, like the Nest, to be a learning thermostat for the purpose of increasing energy efficiency over time, so they’ve built a web interface with a very simple UI. The interface also displays historical data, which is always nice. This project is
entirely open source
and totally awesome.
If you have an old Android phone lying around, you could make
this open source Android thermostat
.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/blog.spark.io/finalproduct.mp4
[Thanks, Zach] | 25 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165592",
"author": "Rasputin",
"timestamp": "2014-01-18T18:26:46",
"content": "Will it have Nest’s security failures and fanboy-markup price tag?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1165594",
"author": "ASte4",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,335.53186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/the-pioneering-lifestyle-in-low-earth-orbit/ | The Pioneering Lifestyle In Low Earth Orbit | Ed Van Cise (NASA Flight Director) | [
"Featured",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"international space station",
"iss"
] | The first element of the
International Space Station
(ISS) launched over fifteen years ago, on November 20, 1998. For more than thirteen years at least two human beings have been continually living off the surface of our planet. Assembly of the Space Station is now complete. It is being utilized by its crews and scientists from around the world to execute its primary mission –
scientific investigations
that can only be accomplished in the microgravity environment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO). As with any structure, items age, wear out, or break and need to be repaired. What could be rather “simple” repairs on Earth can become much more complex in zero gravity. In some cases, “necessity becomes the mother of invention.”
A Frontier Outpost
The
world-class laboratory
that is the Space Station is, in numerous ways, a frontier outpost, similar to the forts (military and civil) established in the Westward expansion of the United States. The ISS orbits a “mere” 420 km (260 miles) above the surface of the planet. That’s about the same distance as between Houston and Dallas, Texas. However it’s not the distance from other human centers of civilization that make it an outpost or a frontier. Instead, it is the fact that those 420 km are straight up above our heads. The ISS, a structure assembled in orbit to be roughly the size of an
American football field
, must not only survive but thrive in conditions unlike any other human-occupied structure. The facility needs to not only meet human needs for living but also provide the laboratory capabilities for science and research, both inside and outside the Space Station.
For the most part, the Space Station meets these requirements extremely well. However, just as on Earth, problems do occur. At times software or hardware does not function correctly because it wasn’t or couldn’t be tested in the unique environment of LEO. For example, there are
life support systems
that have never been widely used on Earth. Even though these systems are essential in either keeping the crew alive or the facility running, operating the systems themselves is a scientific experiment. In cases where this equipment stops working, the problems need to be fixed in order for the mission to continue and for the ISS to stay viable. In the worst case scenario, not fixing the problem could mean bringing the crews home and permanently ending the ISS mission.
As previous generations explored our planet and pushed the boundaries of civilization they learned to adapt and to learn from the circumstances that surrounded them in order to survive and even thrive. When the wheel on the covered wagon broke, it had to be fixed then and there; there was no real alternative if the pioneers wanted to get to their next destination. Utilizing that same manner of pioneering ingenuity and resourcefulness today allows us to formulate problem solving strategies for our orbital frontier outpost.
The ISS is equipped with as many spare parts as storage space allows. However, like the early pioneers and explorers, we cannot carry multiple spares for everything. For some things, we can rely on
shipments from home
. But as with all outposts, resupply missions are not cheap, easy, quick to schedule, or 100% reliable. For an example from the 1800s, if the grindstone of your mill in frontier Texas broke, you could order another one from St. Louis or points East, but it was very expensive and its arrival was months away and never truly assured. Whether waiting for a replacement or not, often on the frontier they tried to fix what they had using what they had on hand. Similarly on the Space Station, in many cases we must use the materials we have on hand to develop our own in-situ solution, or ‘hack.’ One advantage we have with the ISS that previous explorers did not is that there is almost continuous communication with hundreds of experts back “home” to assist in developing those creative ideas and solutions. Imagine Western pioneers having instant communication with support teams on the US East Coast; the telegraph and telephone clearly revolutionized the concept of a ‘remote support team.’
A History of Space Hacks
Unforeseen situations and problems arise despite the best efforts of those involved. It is these types of challenging moments and situations where human ingenuity and resourcefulness both onboard the ISS and in control centers around the world rise to the occasion and find a solution. This extremely high level of creativity facilitated the creation of the
CO2 scrubber solution for Apollo 13
, the cuff link repair of a ripped ISS solar array (see Sidebar below), and using a
toothbrush on a spacewalk
to install a stubborn but critical ISS power supply box.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski assesses his repair work of a torn ISS solar array during the STS-120 mission. During the spacewalk he cut a snagged wire and installed homemade stabilizers (cuff links) designed to strengthen the array’s structure in the vicinity of the damage.
While there are numerous cargo resupply options for ISS, the need for on-site unique and ingenious recovery solutions will continue to be necessary, and may even increase in frequency as the Space Station ages. With every one of these successful recoveries we not only allow ISS to continue its mission but learn new insights and techniques to help future designers and explorers as they continue to push the boundary of our frontier
beyond
the relative safety of Low Earth Orbit.
Sidebar: Cuff links?
Why on Earth (off Earth?) would astronauts need to install cuff links in a solar array? The P6 truss component of ISS was launched on
STS-97
(ISS 4A) in November 2000. It contains two sets of solar arrays and provided power for the US Segment of ISS. It was “temporarily” mounted on top of ISS, on the Z1 truss. When the large truss ‘backbone’ of ISS was assembled later, the P6 arrays needed to be retracted so the arrays “down below” on the larger truss did not contact the P6 arrays “up above.” The arrays were retracted on missions
STS-116
(12A.1) and
STS-117
(13A), both in 2006. That’s 6 years after they were deployed. The arrays (each blanket being the size of a basketball court) folded up accordion style and went back into their very small blanket boxes. On
STS-120
(10A) in October 2007, the P6 truss was detached from the Z1 truss and moved to the extreme port side of the ISS, where it was connected to the P5 truss which completed construction of the ISS truss elements.
All that remained was to redeploy the P6 solar arrays and generate power. Those blankets, however, after being deployed in the atomic oxygen environment of Low Earth Orbit for 6 years, and then folded up for 1 year, did not unfold gently and neatly. Unfortunately, a couple of the panels stuck together and even though deployment of these basketball-court-sized arrays was done very slowly and gently, a couple of the
hinge lines on one of the blankets tore
.
It is hard to see in the photos but there are actually a few guide wires that run the length of the solar array from top to bottom to assist keeping the array “straight” as it deploys and retracts. These wires go through grommets in each section of each blanket. Our clever In Flight Maintenance team developed some tools that used materials already on ISS, including wire and zipties, to create ‘cuff links’ that interfaced with those grommets and essentially put the blankets all
back to where they needed to be
.
Today, in early 2014, the P6 solar arrays continue to do exceptionally well. The cuff link repair remains intact. We periodically have the crew take images of all of the solar arrays to allow for inspection for damage or degradation. There are, as yet, no issues or problems noted with the cuff link repair hack. The P6 arrays, the oldest on the US Segment, continue to output power just as well as their siblings.
Close up view of one of the torn solar array blankets on the P6 truss.
Additional resources:
How to
Spot The Station
when it flies overhead
NASA Article on
The Toothbrush Hack
AIAA Article “
Supportability Concepts for Long-Duration Human Exploration Missions
,” which I helped co-author
Flight Director Ed Van Cise
Ed has been serving as a NASA Flight Director for the International Space Station since January 2010, selected as part of the Flight Director Class of 2009. His call sign is “Carbon Flight” and can be found on Twitter at
@Carbon_Flight
. As a Flight Director, Ed’s major assignments have included working the STS-131 ISS Assembly mission in 2010, leading the ISS Increment 28 mission in 2011, and leading the HTV-4 ISS resupply mission in 2013. Ed was also the Lead Flight Director for 3 spacewalks, 2 in 2012 and 1 in 2013. Ed’s next major assignment is leading the ISS Increment 41 mission in Fall 2014. | 91 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165061",
"author": "Sheldon",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T18:17:56",
"content": "Great post.I wish we got to hear more about the hacks as, while everyone hears about the Apollo 13, even the smaller ones I think are a great inspiration (using an electric toothbrush!). I can’t help but ... | 1,760,376,335.340045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/nixie-ify-me-necklace/ | Nixie-ify Me Necklace | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dieselpunk",
"nixie",
"nixie necklace",
"nixie tube"
] | [Armilar] wanted to cheer up his friend who was going through a rough spot at the time — she really likes Dieselpunk, so he decided to improvise a Dieselpunk themed photo shoot for her. We’re assuming they had other costumes and props, but [Armilar] had this idea to
make a nixie tube pendant
for a while, he’d just have to expedite the build process to have it ready!
What he managed to whip up the day of the shoot looks amazing considering the time involved, if not just a little bit ill-advised. There may or may not be 200VAC running around his friend’s neck.
He’s using an electroluminescent driver rated for 5VDC to 100VAC, over-powered to 12VDC, resulting in about 200VAC, which is just enough to make the nixie glow a nice warm orange. In an effort to minimize the size of the pendant, he had to keep the battery and driver hanging off the back of the necklace.
It was a bit unsafe, but the shoot went off without a hitch thankfully. Fast forward a few months and [Armilar] decided to try redesigning it so it could actually be worn on a regular basis, without fear of electrocution.
He discovered that you can use a flash bulb transformer at about a 50% duty cycle to reduce the audible whine it gives off. The one he found was smaller than his fingernail, meaning he could also design it right into the pendant. His new pendant (while not completely finished yet) now only has 3.5V running around his neck.
200VAC wouldn’t hurt
that
much… would it? | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164986",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T15:12:32",
"content": "There is no need to overvoltage the driver as you can use a voltagedoubler to rectify the AC output with diodes and caps.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_doubler",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,376,335.395583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/piddybot-a-self-balancing-teaching-tool/ | PIDDYBOT – A Self Balancing Teaching Tool | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"inverted pendulum",
"pid control"
] | We’re sure that most Hackaday readers are already familiar with the inverted pendulum system, which basically consists of a pendulum having its center of mass above its pivot point. Most applications (like the one we are going to describe) limit the pendulum to 1 degree of freedom by affixing the pole (or circuit board here) to an axis of rotation. The overall system is therefore inherently unstable and must be actively balanced in order to remain upright.
[Sean] created the
piddybot
, a tiny balancing robot aimed to teach the basics of
PID control
by trying to get the robot to stand still. More interestingly, the Proportional / Integral / Derivative values can directly be adjusted using the three on-board potentiometers. This will allow users to get the feel of each parameter’s impact on the robot behavior. The piddybot is based around the Arduino nano, a custom PCB, 2x 26:1 geared motors, one 1A dual motor driver board, a six degrees of freedom
Inertial Measurement Unit
, 2 batteries and finally a 3D printed body. You can check out a video of the robot in action after the break.
This project stems from
a non-PID self balancer
which [Sean] hacked together in September. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164943",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T13:19:01",
"content": "Looks great to me!I think i will make one in the future as well!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1164971",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,335.446112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/17/heres-pi-in-your-eye/ | Here’s Pi In Your Eye – HUD Goggles | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"head mounted display",
"Project Xanadu",
"raspberry pi",
"snow crash",
"wearable computing",
"zzstructure"
] | [John Ohno] has found what is perhaps the best possible use for steampunk goggles: framing a
monocular display for a Raspberry Pi-based wearable computer
. [John]’s eventual goal for the computer is a zzstructure-based personal organizer and general notifier. We covered
[John]’s zzstructure emulator
to our great delight in July 2011. Go ahead and check that out, because it’s awesome. We’ll wait here.
[John] has been interested in wearable computing for some time, but is unimpressed with Google Glass. He had read up on turning head-mounted displays into monocular devices and recognized a great opportunity when his friend gave him most of an
Adafruit display
. With some steampunk goggles he’d bought at an anime convention, he started on the path to becoming a Gargoyle. He encountered a few problems along the way, namely SD card fail, display output issues, and general keep-the-parts-together stuff, but came out smelling like a rose.
[John] has ideas for future input additions such as simple infrared eye tracking, the addition of a chording keyboard
,
and implementing a motorized glove for haptic learning.
Want to make your own wearable display but have an aversion to steampunk? Check out
this homebrew solution
with (mostly) 3-D printed frames. And it has servos!
[Thanks John] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1165033",
"author": "Vicary",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T17:07:56",
"content": "Reblogged this onVic's slice of Pi.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1165112",
"author": "LK",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T20:34:26",
"content... | 1,760,376,335.578519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/built-in-coffee-table-lightbox/ | Built-in Coffee Table Lightbox | Marsh | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"coffee table",
"leds",
"light box",
"lightbox"
] | [Flyingpuppy] sent us this tip about her cleverly-concealed
pull-out lightbox drawer
. Her resolution for the new year was to make more art, so she filled this coffee table with art supplies and decided she’d draw while relaxing in front of the television. She also wanted a
lightbox
nearby, which originally involved hacking the entire tabletop with some acrylic, but she eventually opted for a simpler build: and it’s portable, too! The drawer’s lights are battery-powered, so you can pull the entire thing out of the table and drag it onto your lap, if that makes drawing more comfortable.
[Flyingpuppy] sourced seven inexpensive LED units from her local dollar store, which she mounted to the back of the drawer with some screws. The rest of the drawer was lined with white foam board, the bottom section angled to bounce light up onto the acrylic drawing surface. Because she needs to open the case to manually flip on the lights, she secured the acrylic top magnetically, gluing a magnet to the underside of the foam board and affixing a small piece of steel to the acrylic. A simple tug on the steel bit frees the surface, providing access underneath. Stick around for a video below. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164863",
"author": "mh",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T09:13:02",
"content": "In my (limited) experience with turning drawers upside down for having more working space when i was a kid. be sure the drawers/table is of a certain sturdines/quality, because otherwise you will have a really... | 1,760,376,335.694771 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/axcut-an-open-source-laser-cutter/ | AxCut: An Open Source Laser Cutter | Marsh | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printed",
"diy laser cutter",
"laser cutter"
] | If you’ve always wanted a laser cutter and you have £1500 lying around (approx. $2500 as of today) — and you have access to a 3D printer — then you’ll want to take a look at [Damian’s]
open source laser cutter: axCut.
The project has evolved over the last few months from some mockups in OpenSCAD to a working prototype.
You’ll want to dig through his blog posts as well as
his YouTube channel
for all the juicy details, but from what we can gather, [Damian] is on the home stretch. The current implementation includes a 40W CO2 laser with functioning laser control and an impressively quiet watercooling system. Although the build’s wiring remains a bit of a tangle, the prototype cuts (almost) as expected. His next hurdle is ironing out the air assist, which should prevent some fire hazard issues and keep the lens free of debris.
Check out a couple of videos after the break, and if you’re interested in getting into laser cutting but want to start smaller,
have a look at the MicroSlice
from a few months ago. | 47 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164743",
"author": "Insider",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T03:30:00",
"content": "Pretty impressive. I have always wanted a laser cutter and look forward to reviewing your Open source data to determine if I also want to make one. Thanks for sharing.Mike",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,376,336.019607 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/retro-modern-nixie-clock/ | Retro Modern Nixie Clock | James Hobson | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"atmega48",
"nixie clock",
"nixie tube",
"nixie tubes",
"retro nixie clock"
] | [Reboots] is a humble hacker who enjoys nixie tubes. So when he saw an old General Electric battery charger for sale at a hamfest, he thought:
“that case would make a nice clock…”
He was first exposed to nixie tube clocks a few years ago when his brother gave him a DIY nixie clock kit from [Peter Jensen’s] website
TubeClock.com
— it was an easy build, and worked very well. It also introduced him to a unique driver for nixie tubes, an
HV5622
high-voltage shift register made by Supertex inc. Compared to the traditional (and rare) 74141 nixie driver chips or discrete transistor drivers, the HV5622 is much smaller, requires less microcontroller I/O’s, and is not as picky when it comes to powering it.
The nixie tubes he chose for the project came from a lot sale on eBay, Russian surplus IN-12 tubes. He even managed to find an
english datasheet
for them!
Having decided on the nixie tube, driver, and case, he now needed a reliable power supply.
Threeneuron’s design
fit the bill nicely, however it ended up being a bit noisy under load, but [Reboots] notes that the TubeClock kit used a free-running transistor oscillator, which was in fact even louder under load!
From there it was a matter of testing the tubes, prototyping some PCBs, and programming the ATmega48. Simple, right? Nixie’s are never that simple. But lucky for us, [Reboots] has an amazing build write up on his site, so if you’re interested in learning more,
take a look!
Oh, and if you’re looking for a really unique nixie clock —
why not build one without a PCB entirely?
Just don’t touch the high voltage lines… | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164678",
"author": "ChalkBored",
"timestamp": "2014-01-17T00:27:08",
"content": "That looks really nice.Only question is why the green LEDs, when red would have matched the nixies and the enclosure?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,376,335.935362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/making-a-variable-rf-signal-sampler/ | Making A Variable RF Signal Sampler | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"capacitive coupling",
"frequency attenuation",
"signal sampler"
] | One of [Brian]’s hobbies is Amateur Ham radio, in which it is usually required to check that the transmitted signals are within specifications. As it isn’t safe to connect the radio’s output directly to measuring equipment due to the high voltages involved, [Brian] made
his own dedicated RF signal sampler
. It works by using
capacitive coupling
between the signal you wish to sample and a high impedance output. The latter can then safely be connected to an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer for monitoring.
In the picture you see above, the air gap between the core signal conductor and the output plays the role of a capacitor. By adjusting its length you can therefore vary the output signal’s voltage range. The sampler is built using a die-cast aluminium enclosure which is 52x38x27mm. As you may have guessed, due to the case geometry the output attenuation will depend on the signal’s frequency. [Brian] tested the unit using a 30MHz signal generator and printed
this frequency attenuation graph
while also varying the air gap. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164609",
"author": "stijn",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T21:27:26",
"content": "The frequency attenuation chart is rubbish. It becomes constant at very low frequencies, where the capacitive coupling becomes so small that it can be neglected. The attenuation chart should show a response... | 1,760,376,335.87793 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/fail-of-the-week-color-meter-for-adjusting-leds/ | Fail Of The Week: Color Meter For Adjusting LEDs | Mike Szczys | [
"Fail of the Week",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"adjd-s371-qr999",
"avago",
"color meter",
"color sensor",
"fail of the week"
] | [John Peterson] answered our call to document your hacks by discussing what he learned while building this color meter. He conceived the project as a way to precisely match the color output of LEDs driven with a PWM signal. The thought was that it could sample an LED’s output, then use that data to calculate values necessary to match the color of other LEDs. This is a good idea when using LEDs of different types, but even diodes from the same production line can show variations in color output.
Of course this project wouldn’t be featured as a Fail of the Week if it worked as he had expected. It turns out the sensor that he used, an Avago ADJD-S371-QR999 on a SparkFun breakout board, takes very quick color readings. This is great for solid objects, but not great for a light source being switched on and off like the PWM LEDs.
We like it that [John] posted
a list of lesson learned on the project
. The real fail is in trying to use this particular sensor, but we figure there must be some way to get meaningful data through sampling. Check out
the page for the retired sensor
which also includes a link to the datasheet. Can you think of a firmware hack which would allow this hardware to sample so that the PWM value could be extrapolated through averaging or other calculations? Let us know in the comments.
Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Wednesday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and
sending us a link to the story
— or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164536",
"author": "CyberJon",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T18:21:57",
"content": "Why not put a cap on the pwm lines to smooth the flashing?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1164556",
"author": "John",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,336.497834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/build-a-cheap-airplane-ads-b-radio-receiving-tracking-station/ | Build A Cheap Airplane ADS-B Radio Receiving Tracking Station | Todd Harrison | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"airplane tracking",
"gps",
"ham",
"radio",
"sdr",
"tracking"
] | Do you have commercial or general aviation flying over your home or near your home? Would you like to know more about these airplanes: identity, heading, speed, altitude and maybe GPS data along with even more information? Well then [Rich Osgood] has just the project for you and it’s not that expensive to set up. [Rick] demonstrates using a cheap USB dongle European TV tuner style SDR (software defined radio) tuner that you can get for under $30 to
listen in on the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcas (ADS-B)
(dead link, try
the Internet Archive version
) 1090 MHz mode “S” or 978 MHz mode “UAT” signals being regularly transmitted from these aircraft.
He steps us through configuring the radio to use a better antenna for improved reception then walks through detailed software installation and set up to control the radio receiver as well as pushing the final decoded data to mapping software. This looks like a fascinating and fun project if you live near commercial airways. You won’t need a license for this hack because you’re only listening and not transmitting, plus these are open channels which are legal to receive.
There are some frequencies you are not legally allowed to eavesdrop on—private communications for residential wireless telephones and cellular frequencies to name just a few (
Code of Federal Regulations Title 47, Part 15.9
). So remember you do have to be careful and stay within legal frequencies even if your equipment is not restricted from such reception. Also note that just because you have a legal right to intercept conversations or data on some frequencies it could be illegal to publicly share the intercepted content or any details on the reception or decoding (just saying for the record).
We wonder if [Rick] could partner with [G. Eric Rogers] to upgrade [Eric’s]
motorized telescope airplane tracking system
to extrapolate the radio telemeter data into vector data so his Arduino can track without relying on a video feed. That merger might just get them both on a short TSA list.
Join us after the break for some extra informational links and to watch the video on setup, installation and usage of this cheap airplane tracking rig.
Wikipedia has
more details on ADS-B
and the rtl-sdr.com sight has an excellent posting on “
RTL-SDR Tutorial: Cheap ADS-B Aircraft RADAR
” which includes how to build your own antenna for the 1090 MHz frequency | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164474",
"author": "bemis",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T16:36:23",
"content": "Wasn’t this in QST magazine a couple of months back?I’ve been meaning to build one, seems like a fun project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1164488",... | 1,760,376,336.28824 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/cheap-free-mirror-replacement-for-your-co2-laser/ | Cheap (Free?) Mirror Replacement For Your CO2 Laser | James Hobson | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"co2 laser mirrors",
"hard drive mirrors",
"hdd mirrors",
"replacement laser mirrors"
] | You know what’s expensive? Those little tiny little mirrors used in laser cutters — and they don’t last forever either! What if we told you it’s possible to
make your own for free, using a broken hard drive?
[Tim Wehr] read about using
HDD platters as mirrors on BuildLog.net
, and decided to try it out for himself to see how well they work. He quickly salvaged an old hard drive and removed the ever so shiny platters. Using a few pieces of wood he clamped the platter and then cut circles out of it using a metal hole saw — the edges are a bit rough, so we’d recommend you invest in a diamond hole saw if you’re planning on trying this.
Some denatured alcohol polishing later and a bit of filing on the edges, and he had a replacement mirror. He then performed two tests using both the original and the HDD mirror on his CO2 laser. Almost identical cutting power. In fact, [Tim] muses that the HDD mirror looks like it cut slightly better even! Not bad!
[Thanks Riva!] | 30 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164366",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T12:44:48",
"content": "I used to work in an optics research laboratory, it was a fairly common practice to use HDD plates as replacement first-surface mirrors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,336.669515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/16/hackintosh-mac-pro-replica-using-a-trash-can/ | Hackintosh Mac Pro Replica Using A Trash Can | James Hobson | [
"computer hacks",
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"hackintosh",
"mac pro",
"mac pro hack"
] | An anonymous German case modder decided to poke fun at the new Mac Pro… by making his own
Hackintosh Pro
out of a trash can!
For whatever reason the German forum it spawned in is a little bit secretive, but [Dschijn] of tonymacx86.com got permission to share the build on the creator’s behalf — and it is absolutely glorious.
The beautiful exterior is a
Authentics Lunar 6L trash can
, painted a vibrant pink — complete with a fake Apple logo. Inside is a Gigabyte Mini ITX motherboard, a Haswell i3 processor, a Radeon 7750, an SSD, a HDD, an ATX power supply, and an undisclosed amount of RAM. True to the Mac Pro, it features a central airflow design, with a fancy hand-crafted intake grate on the bottom.
While its technical specs fail to impress, it is remarkably similar in size to the real deal, varying by just under an inch.
[via
Ars Technica
] | 68 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164299",
"author": "oh2fnx",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T09:19:07",
"content": "I think it looks better than Apple’s design.;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1164571",
"author": "notabena",
"timestamp": "2014-0... | 1,760,376,336.599966 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/a-light-up-dress-for-a-new-years-dance-party/ | A Light-Up Dress For A New Year’s Dance Party | Marsh | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"FLORA",
"rgb",
"RGB LED",
"wearable"
] | Don’t let the above picture’s lack of blinking colors fool you,
the light-up dress [Sam] fashioned for his girlfriend
is rather eye-catching; we’d just rather talk about it than edit the gifs he’s provided. [Sam’s] been a busy guy. His last project was a Raspberry Pi digital photo frame,
which we featured just over a week ago
, but wearable hacks allow him to combine his favored hobbies of sewing and electronics.
If you’re looking to get started with wearable electronics, then this project provides a great entry point. The bulk of the build is what you’d expect: some
individually-addressable RGB LEDs
, the ever-popular
FLORA board
from Adafruit, and a simple battery holder. [Sam] decided to only use around 40 of the LEDs, but the strips come 60 to a meter, so he simply tucked the extra away inside the dress and set his desired limits in the software, which will allow him to preserve the entire strip for future projects. If you’ve ever attempted a wearable hack, you’re probably familiar with how delicate the connections can be and how easily the slightest bend in the wiring can leave you stranded. Most opt for a conductive thread solution, but [Sam] tried something different and used 30 AWG wire, which was thin enough to be sewn into the fabric. As an added bonus, the 30 AWG wire is insulated, which permits him to run the wires close to (or perhaps over) each other while avoiding shorts. [Sam’s] guide is detailed and approachable, so head over to his project page if you think you’ve caught wearables fever, and check out his GitHub
for the source code. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164237",
"author": "mram",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T06:20:24",
"content": "No… this post can’t be published without a video…. pleeeease correct it!! It’s all about moving lights… Anyway it looks really amazing! If you do with Intel you can win the wearable challenge",
"parent_... | 1,760,376,336.22053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/miniscule-line-follower/ | Miniscule Line-Follower | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"attiny45",
"gp2s04",
"reflective sensor"
] | Building line following robots is fun and easy. Building a line-follower that is this tiny is a different story. The surprising thing for us is that despite how it looks, this robot whose name is Rizeh doesn’t use wheels to get around. [Naghi Sotoudeh]
built the line-follower using two vibrating motors
, with needles (not shown above) making three points of contact with the ground.
His website is a little sparse, but hit the downloads page to get a PDF file that serves as the build log. We also downloaded the 32 second demo video which is worth it. The magic-marker track that the bot is circumnavigating isn’t any bigger than the palm of your hand!
Onboard the diy PCB you’ll find two GP2S04 IR reflectance sensors which detect the black line on a white paper. The power-up sequence spends a few seconds calibrating these sensors. Speaking of power, [Naghi] went with a lithium polymer cell from a Bluetooth headset. At the heart of it all is an ATtiny45 which uses its hardware PWM capabilities to drive the two motors.
Of course line-followers rank up there with
self-balancers
as our favorite robot projects. But by far the ones we love the most are
the speed-run maze solvers
. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164168",
"author": "pjoga",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T03:11:15",
"content": "The PDF is infected with trojan.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1164189",
"author": "jrr",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T04:03:02",
... | 1,760,376,336.429395 |
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