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https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/mbox-a-childs-mp3-player/ | MBox: A Child’s MP3 Player | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio amplifier",
"hörbert",
"mp3 player"
] | For young children, music is a wonderful and exciting thing — but do you really want them playing with your phone, or worse yet, an iPod? [Arons] decided to make the MBox,
an Arduino powered MP3 player.
He was inspired by
hörbert
, a very similar wooden MP3 player for children. Apparently it’s a great product, but it also costs 239€. We don’t blame him for wanting to make his own.
The MBox follows the same exterior design as hörbert — though we must admit, he could have spiced it up a bit! It uses an Arduino Uno at its core with a Freaduino MP3 music shield, capable of playing all the typical formats like MP3, MIDI, WAV, and even Ogg Vorbis. To amplify the sound he’s using a Mono Audio Amp Breakout board from SparkFun which drives an 8Ω loudspeaker. A mini USB power brick provides the juice, and a 12-digit keypad provides the ability to select music — each number plays from a different directory on the SD card.
[Arons’] daughter loves it, and he probably only spent a fifth of what the real hörbert costs!
[Thanks for the tip Renzo!] | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164137",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2014-01-16T01:30:48",
"content": "+1 for saving 239 euro and keeping the smartphone put away, because once a kid has seen a smartphone its all over. A $40 Microcenter tablet will hardly satisfy an 18 month old, by then they have become resolu... | 1,760,376,338.515385 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/lux-a-100-open-source-camera/ | Lux: A 100% Open Source Camera | Adam Fabio | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"camera",
"diy",
"lux",
"photography"
] | [Kevin Kadooka] recently finished his open source camera.
The Lux Camera
is 100% open source. Lux uses no parts from other cameras – not even a lens! To date we’ve only seen this with achieved with
pinhole cameras
. [Kevin] isn’t new to camera hacking. He was the man behind
the Duo camera
, which had a successful Kickstarter campaign in February of 2013. Duo is a DIY camera, but it still required lenses from Mamiya-Sekor, and a shutter from Seiko. Lux is a different animal. It has a manual focus 65mm f/5.6 Single Element lens. The shutter is [Kevin’s] own
solenoid based leaf shutter design
. Just as in the original shutter, an Arduino controls shutter operation and timing.
The main camera body and many of its parts are 3D printed. [Kevin] got some very nice quality parts from Shapeways 3D printing service. We have to say that some of the assemblies look a bit complex for desktop printers. However since everything is open source, anyone willing to put the time in could adapt them for the average RepRap or Ultimaker. [Kevin] has posted detailed build photos, as well as some photos taken with the Lux on his
flickr stream
. The pictures have a decidedly
holga-esque
look to them, due in part to the single element lens. Even with this limitation, we love the idea of having a
brownie style camera
built completely from scratch. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1164028",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T21:14:22",
"content": "Cool, and once you have made that you need to make your own film,http://www.flickr.com/photos/dark_orange/sets/72157603226919391/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,376,338.769496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/3d-printering-making-a-thing-with-sketchup/ | 3D Printering: Making A Thing With SketchUp | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"Printering",
"sketchup"
] | Imagine for a second it’s the mid-1980s and you’re looking in to desktop publishing setups. Those new LaserJets and LaserWriters are pretty cool, but imagine the desktop publishing world if you couldn’t create your own documents. Yes, it seems absurd to have a printing press that won’t create unique documents.
Now flash forward 30 years to the world of desktop manufacturing and rapid prototyping. There are dozens of repositories for 3D printable objects, but making something of your own design is apparently a dark art and arcane knowledge to everyone buying 3D printers for plastic octopodes and bottle openers.
This week, by popular demand, we’re going to be making a ‘thing’ in
SketchUp Make
. It’s free, easy, and surprisingly versatile despite its limited tool set. Common sense and Google algorithms dictate I link to previous tutorials in this series below:
OpenSCAD
AutoCAD Part I
AutoCAD Part II
Blender Part I
Blender Part II
And now on with the show. You’re gonna want to click the ‘read more’ link.
Our Thing
As with all of these Making A Thing tutorials, we’ll be using this switch base to the right. Click to embiggen.
Last week brought some interesting observations of this thing thanks to a few readers. I shan’t bore you with that now, but I have added a few notes regarding this thing at the bottom of this post.
Setting Things Up
There are two version of SketchUp; SketchUp Pro costs about $600.
SketchUp Make
is freeware and more than capable of building any mechanical part you can imagine.
After installing and launching SketchUp Make, you’ll be asked to choose a template. We can use the “Product Design and Woodworking” template. Amazingly, the folks at SketchUp were kind enough to give us an option between using inches and millimeters. Since our ‘thing’ is in inches, select that template and hit ‘Start using SketchUp.’
Beginning Our Thing
The basic idea behind Sketchup is the ability to draw in two dimensions and use the Push/Pull tool to extrude a shape into the Z axis (or in SketchUp’s case, the blue axis). On the toolbar at the top of the window, select the Circle tool. Click on any point near the intersection of the red, green, and blue lines.
If you followed along with the
AutoCAD tutorial
, making this circle the required size will seem very familiar. To get a circle with a diameter of 2 3/8″, just enter the radius on your keyboard’s keypad. That’s 1 3/16″ for those of you not in the USA, Liberia, or Myanmar.
Our first order of business is making the 3/8″ slot in the ‘big circley part’ of our thing, and drilling out the center. We’ll start with the slot first.
SketchUp has a great snap-to function that we’re about to try out. On the toolbar, grab the pencil or ‘line’ tool. Wave that around the center of the circle and eventually it will snap on the center. Click the center and draw a 3/16″ long line (remember you can enter the measurement on your numpad) along the red axis. Click the center again and draw another line, same length, in the opposite direction. From the ends of these lines, draw straight down, making the slot in our part. Next, pick up the eraser tool. Erase the little bit of the circle’s perimeter between the slot we just drew.
Now for the hole. Select the circle tool, hover over what you think is the center of the big circle and wait for it to snap. Draw a circle with a radius of 1/2″. With the eraser tool and judicious use of the delete key on your keyboard, you’ll have something that looks much like our thing. The only thing left to do is rotate it.
From the Tools menu, select Rotate (or just use the ‘Q’ hotkey). pick a point on the purple area of our part and pick a second point along the green or red axes. Depending on where you clicked you’ll need to enter either 45, 135, 225. or 315 degrees on your keypad.
Continuing On…
Now that the slot is all lined up properly on a 45 degree angle, we can start work on the two little flanges coming off the round part of our thing. The wider flange – except for the fillets on the corners – are left as an exercise to the reader. The same goes with the other side of the part, except for this one little ‘gotcha’ in the design, seen to the right.
If we extend the side of this flange down, it doesn’t intersect at the end of our slot. No worries, really. Just draw the line how you normally would, click on the inside of our slot, and try to ‘extend the line. SketchUp’s snap to is great, and you’ll easily be able to draw a line where you want it. After that, clean it up with the eraser.
Fillets
We need to round over four corners on our thing, all of them on our big, wide flange thingy sticking out of the bottom of our part. First we’ll do the outside corners.
We need a 1/8″ radius on each of these corners. Start by drawing two 1/4″ lines along the sides of our thing. In the .gif above, I added two hash marks where the lines ended. Draw a line between these two endpoints, then draw a 1/8″ radius circle at the midpoint of the hypotenuse of this triangle. Clean up with the eraser and do the same on the other side.
The inside corner is a bit more tricky. If we were using AutoCAD, we would just use the FILLET command to make a perfect fillet on the inside corner. SketchUp isn’t as advanced as AutoCAD, but we can fake it with what we have.
SketchUp has a tool called Offset (hotkey ‘F’) that allows you to ‘trace around’ any object and specify the distance between lines. If we offset a few lines 1/8″ away from our part, wherever they cross is where the center of our 1/8″ fillet should go. Once we know where the center of our fillet is, we can just draw a circle and get a perfect radius on that inside corner. Pretty slick, huh?
Here’s what we end up with, sans the eraser tool:
Extruding Up
Now it’s time to work on the ‘tall’ part of our thing. Off the small flange, draw a 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ rectangle. With the Push/Pull tool, extrude this rectangle up to the center of the through hole, or 1 5/16″ (that’s 7/16″ for the thickness of the base, and another 7/8″ beyond that).
Now, use the circle tool and hover over the midpoint on the top front side of our new 3D solid. Create a circle the width of the rectangle and extrude it backwards half an inch.
Using the same process, you can easily create the drill hole and counterbore on the part. It’s very easy, just use the Push/Pull tool and the eraser.
Wow. Such Thing. Much Dimensions.
There you go. A thing made in SketchUp. All that’s left is to send this model over to your 3D printer. SketchUp doesn’t support exporting to .STL files, though, but that’s a post for the end of this ‘Making A Thing’ series.
That’s it for this installment of Making A Thing, but I would like to say a few things about the part we just made.
Just like the other Making A Thing tutorials, our ‘thing’ is taken out of an 85-year-old drafting textbook, Engineering Drawing (French, 1929). This is the fourth edition of this book and last week I asked if anyone had a first edition (from 1919).
[Jacob] is awesome
and found a first edition, but this part isn’t in it.
Also, for the first time ever, someone noticed these parts I’ve been making have been
terribly wrong.
Look at the width of the thinner flange. It’s one and a half inches across. Now look at the radius of the ‘dome’ on the tall part. That’s 5/8″ radius, or 10/8″ in diameter. Twelve eighths is not equal to ten eighths. That tall part actually has a taper.
In my defense, I would have found that taper if I did the assignment – making a three view drawing – for this part.
Despite these tutorials being seen by tens of thousands of people, [tarasbot] was the only one to pick up on this. He emailed me and now he’s getting a Hackaday t-shirt, some stickers, and whatever swag I can scoop up after the Hackaday party next week. Gonna need your shirt size, [tarasbot].
That’s it for now, next week is Autodesk 123D, and as always your suggestions for what softwares to build a ‘thing’ in are always welcome. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163940",
"author": "Terennnash",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T18:21:54",
"content": "Sketchup is very capable of exporting to STL, all you need is the extension provided separately via the sketchup extension warehouse.google search “sketchup to stl” – the first result links to sketchup... | 1,760,376,338.581923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/androidarduino-face-following-rc-car/ | Android+Arduino – Face Following RC Car | Kevin Darrah | [
"Android Hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"adb",
"android",
"arduino",
"Face detection",
"opencv",
"R/C car"
] | To some of us, hacking an RC Car to simply follow a black line or avoid obstacles is too easy, and we’re sure [Shazin] would agree with that, since he created an
RC Car that follows your face!
The first step to this project was to take control of the RC Car, but instead of hijacking the transmitter, [Shazin] decided to control the car directly. This isn’t any high-end RC Car though, so forget about PWM control. Instead, a single IC (
RX-2
) was found to handle both the RF Receiver and H-Bridges. After a bit of probing, the 4 control lines (forward/back and left/right) were identified and connected to an Arduino.
[Shazin] paired the Arduino with a USB Host Shield and connected it up with his Android phone through the
ADB
(Android Debug Bridge). He then made some modifications to the
OpenCV
Android Face Detection app to send commands to the Arduino based on ‘where’ the Face is detected; if the face is in the right half of the screen, turn right, if not, turn left and go forward.
This is a really interesting project with a lot of potential; we’re just hoping [Shazin] doesn’t have any evil plans for this device like strapping it to a
Tank Drone that locks on to targets
! | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163966",
"author": "Mark Narvidas",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T19:12:58",
"content": "Did the same kind of thing a year ago. Though instead of hacking a toy car I used a paper box and CDs for wheels. Also the Android app was written in Processing. Anyways, all my code is available on... | 1,760,376,338.375842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/ben-krasnow-did-it-all-for-the-perfect-cookie/ | [Ben Krasnow] Did It All For The (Perfect) Cookie | Adam Fabio | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"ben krasnow",
"chocolate chip cookie",
"cookie",
"machine",
"perfect cookie",
"robot"
] | [Ben Krasnow] is on a mission. He’s looking for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. To aid him in this noble endeavor, he’s created the
cookie perfection machine
. From
cleaning with plasma
, to a
DIY CT scanner
, to
ruby lasers
, to
LED contact lenses
, [Ben] has to be one of the most prolific and versatile hackers out there today. What better way to relax after a hard day of hacking than to enjoy a glass of milk and a perfect chocolate chip cookie?
This is actually an update to the machine
we first saw back in 2012
. [Ben] has loaded his machine up with ingredients, and has everything under computer control. The machine will now dispense the exact amount of ingredients specified by the computer, measured by a scale. Everything happens one cookie at a time. The only downside is that the machine doesn’t have a mixer yet. [Ben] has to mix a single cookie’s worth of dough for every data point. His experiments have returned some surprising results. Too little flour actually results in a crisper cookie, as the wetter dough spreads out to a thinner layer. [Ben] also found that adding extra brown sugar also doesn’t result in a more chewy cookie. Even though he’s still in the early experimentation phases, [Ben] mentions that since it’s hard to make a bad chocolate cookie, even his failures taste pretty good.
Thanks [Erwin] | 38 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163760",
"author": "JC",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T12:15:59",
"content": "The machine is newt, the “surprising” is not.http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/shows/good-eats/300f/three-chips-for-sister-marsha.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,376,338.652999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/15/rc-rock-crawler-prepped-to-become-stair-climbing-robot/ | R/C Rock Crawler Prepped To Become Stair Climbing Robot | Adam Fabio | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"crawler",
"robot",
"rock crawler"
] | [Starlino] is working on an
autonomous mobile robot
. Like many before him, he looked to the radio controlled car world for a base frame. He found a good candidate in a rock crawler model called “Mad Torque”. Crawlers have been around for years, but they’ve recently been getting more popular. As always, popularity leads to lower priced entry-level models, which puts this crawler at a reasonable price for a robot frame. As the name implies, rock crawlers are all about crawling. Relatively low speeds, locked differentials, four-wheel drive, and (optional) four-wheel steering.
Of course, [Starlino] had to test drive his frame out before tearing it down to install electronics. As long time R/C modelers ourselves, we can’t blame him. Testing uncovered one major problem. The Mad Torque wasn’t quite mad enough to climb the stairs in his house. The front tires would grab and pull over the first step, but the wheelbase wasn’t quite long enough for the rear wheels to grab hold.
[Starlino’s] solution was to extend the wheelbase. For most 4WD R/C cars or trucks this would be a major problem, as the motors are mounted amidships. An extended wheelbase would mean also extending the drive shafts or belts. This isn’t a problem with rock crawlers. Crawlers need to support huge amounts of suspension articulation. Rather than create complex drive linkages, the common design is to place an electric motor on each axle. This isn’t the greatest idea in terms of
unsprung mass
, but it does make for easy wheelbase changes. [Starlino] found that the design was so modular he could bolt a second chassis up to the original. The new rear chassis bolted to the front at the top shock mounts. An extra set of battery brackets formed a lower brace. The new extended truck was long enough to clear the steps, though it does still struggle a bit, as can be seen in the video. We think larger diameter tires might help a bit here. [Starlino’s] next step is to ditch the R/C unit and give this ‘bot a brain! | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163692",
"author": "Galane",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T09:58:19",
"content": "If he bought two complete ones, make it an 8 wheel crawler with four motors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1163734",
"author": "Lion",
"time... | 1,760,376,339.155527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/your-mouse-is-a-terrible-webcam/ | Your Mouse Is A Terrible Webcam | Brian Benchoff | [
"Android Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ethernet",
"javascript",
"node.js",
"optical mouse",
"webcam"
] | It should come as no surprise your optical mouse contains a very tiny, very low resolution camera. [Franci] decided to take apart one of his old mice and
turn that tiny optical sensor into a webcam
.
Inside [Franci]’s Logitech RX 250 is an ADNS-5020 optical sensor. This three wire SPI device stuffed into an 8-pin package is a 15×15 pixel grayscale image sensor. [Franci] started this project by bringing out the Arduino and Ethernet shield. After soldering a pull-up resistor to the image sensor’s reset pin, connecting the rest of the circuit was as simple as soldering a few wires to the Arduino.
The Arduino sketch sends the image data for each pixel to a computer over a serial connection. A bit of javascript and a touch of HTML takes this pixel data and turns it into a webpage with a live view of whatever is directly under [Franci]’s mouse.
Video of the mousewebcam in action below. | 48 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163574",
"author": "ScottishCaptain",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T06:20:43",
"content": "Um… ok?So he’s using an Arduino with an ethernet shield… But he has to run a daemon on his computer *anyways*, then open a web browser and connect to localhost:8888 to get an image that seems to h... | 1,760,376,339.30226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/refurbishing-a-vibratory-tumbler-with-a-dryer-motor/ | Refurbishing A Vibratory Tumbler With A Dryer Motor | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"eastwood tumbler",
"parts tumbler"
] | [Jake von Slatt] of the Steampunk Workshop is at again, this time
refurbishing a cheap vibratory tumbler
that had died after just one project.
The original Eastwood tumbler looked nice, but obviously didn’t go through much life-cycle testing at the company that designed it. Upon taking it apart, [Jake] discovered that the bearings in the motor were shot — after only a few hours of operation! Because of this he decided to start from scratch, keeping only the bowl, lid, and of course, the tumbling media.
[Jake’s] redesign makes use of Volkswagen brake drums for a very heavy duty base, a custom machined ball bearing plate made out of scrap aluminum, a flexible motor coupling made by welding a heavy spring onto two shafts, some more springs to balance the bowl, and a reclaimed dryer motor. It might not look pretty, but we think it’ll last a wee bit longer than the original.
He’s calling it his latest feat of post-apocalyptic engineering by using only parts on hand, and while we’d have to agree that his use of scrap material is impressive, we’d like to see him be able to power his
rebuilt Bridgeport Mill
off the grid when the apocalypse hits!
As always, he’s made an excellent video describing the project — don’t forget to check it out after the break. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163477",
"author": "mh",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T03:08:56",
"content": "It is way too late. I read the title as “refurbishing a vibrator” and now i sit here kinda unsatisfied…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1163538",
"aut... | 1,760,376,338.69958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/walkalong-heart-glider/ | Walkalong Heart Glider | James Hobson | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Valentines day",
"walk along glider",
"walkalong glider"
] | [Darcy Whyte] is a bit of a paper plane aficionado, so in preparation for this year’s Valentine’s day (that’s one month from today!) he’s created
a flying Walkalong heart glider
you can make yourself!
First off, what’s a Walkalong glider? Well, it’s a type of toy airplane made out of a light material with geometry that allows for a very slow descent — one that can be extended almost indefinitely if you walk behind it to create a slight draft. [Darcy] has made a whole bunch of these in all different shapes and sizes, and even got to
fly them around the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
for a
Walkalong Glider Meetup!
He’s since created the do it yourself Walkalong heart glider which can easily fit inside a card for a very unique Valentine’s memento. It does require a foam cutter to make, but [Darcy] also has plans on his site for a
DIY hot-wire foam cutter
that costs less than $10 to build!
It’s a cute little project — stick around after the break to see how it’s done! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163424",
"author": "static",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T01:21:12",
"content": "A Valentine gift with assembly required, first I seen of that. Even if your sweetheart is a female and on the geek/nerdy side it’s probably advisable that the card containing the glider be attached to bo... | 1,760,376,338.306301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/504-segment-clock/ | 504 Segment Clock | Kevin Darrah | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"7 segment",
"clock",
"display",
"NTP server"
] | Trying to reinvent the clock has been done over and over again, but it’s always fun to see how over-engineered and complex these designs can get. [Bertho’s] last working clock in his house was the built-in clock on the VCR, so he decided it was finally time to build his own
504 Segment clock.
Yep, that’s right, 504 Segments! This clock uses 72 7-Segment displays to tell time. The video after the break shows the clock in action, but time is read by looking at each ring of displays: outer=seconds, middle=minutes, and inner=hour. [Bertho] could’ve just stopped there, but he decided to load the display up with sensors, so hand-waiving can change modes, and brightness can be regulated based on ambient light conditions. And since he has individual control over each segment, he has implemented some pretty cool mind-melting animations. Oh, and did we mention that the display synchronizes with an NTP server?
The display is divided into 4 quadrants, each containing 18 7-Segment displays. The control architecture is interesting because each quadrant is controlled by its own PIC microcontroller, which handles the continuous multiplexing and modulation of the 18 7-Segment displays. A main control board contains another (more powerful) PIC to update the 4 quadrants via a serial bus. This board also handles the Ethernet connection, sensor interface, and local RTC(real time clock). This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Bertho’s] amazing work, so make sure you check out his
useless machine
and
executive decision maker
. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163283",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T21:08:33",
"content": "Is it trying to say 53 seconds in the banner image? :o",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1163287",
"author": "Frank",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,338.449182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/retrotechtacular-the-genesis-of-the-transistor/ | Retrotechtacular: The Genesis Of The Transistor | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"bell labs",
"germanium",
"nobel prize winners",
"silicon",
"transistor"
] | Few births are easy. Even fewer result in a Nobel Prize, and hardly any at all are the work of three men. This
1965 film from the AT&T archives
is a retrospection on the birth of the transistor nine years after its creators, [Walter Brattain], [John Bardeen], and [William Shockley] received a Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery and implementation of the transistor effect.
The transistor is the result of the study of semiconductors such as germanium. Prior to the research that led directly to the transistor, it was known that the conductivity of semiconductors increases when their temperature is raised. The converse is true for metals such as tungsten. Semiconductor conductivity also increases when they are exposed to light. Another key to their discovery is that when a metal such as copper is in contact with a semiconductor, conductivity is less in one direction than the other. This particular property was exploited in early radio technology as seen in
crystal radios
, for copper oxide rectifiers used in telephony, and for microwave radar in WWII.
After WWII, AT&T’s Bell Labs put a lot of time and research into the study of semiconductors, as their properties weren’t fully understood. Researchers focused on the simplest semiconductors, silicon and germanium, and did so in two areas: bulk properties and surface properties. During this time, [Shockley] proposed
the field effect
, supposing that the electrons near the surface of a semiconductor could be controlled under the influence of an external electric field.
This effect would make for great strides in the field of amplification. [Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley] tested the contact potential of a metal with respect to the surface of a germanium slab. [Brattain] offered that moving the metal conductor across the germanium would produce current flow in a wire connecting the two, and that adding an electrolyte would result in amplification. To experiment, [Bardeen] advocated the model you see below: a piece of germanium with a drop of water for the electrolyte, and a waxed wire penetrating the water to contact the germanium. A second wire makes contact with the water, and both circuits are equipped with a potential.
Sure enough, the current on the left influenced the potential through the waxed point, and they had themselves a working semiconductor amplifier. This experiment was vital to the development of the transistor.
The experiment was not without its problems, however. The water electrolyte evaporated too quickly, so they tried glycol borate. That worked much better, but the circuit wouldn’t amplify above 8Hz. They replaced the electrolyte with a thin wafer of gold and used a contact near the edge of the gold instead of the waxed point. [Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley] dubbed the resulting phenomenon ‘the transistor effect’. Two days before Christmas, 1947, they spoke over the circuit and heard a distinct gain. This arrangement would become the first production line model, known as the
point contact transistor
.
Further research led to the growth of single crystals of germanium, which made the
junction transistor
possible. The
alloy transistor
was developed a few years later, in 1951. These had limited frequency and could only be produced one at a time. In 1954, the diffused base transistor, a high-frequency, high-speed device, was developed.
And this is what was intended all along: an extremely reliable device that could transmit and amplify high-frequency signals at very high speeds and very low power levels. No wonder they won the Nobel Prize.
[Thanks Hernandi]
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
. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163187",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T18:22:22",
"content": "Schottky is not on the original patent. He is a grandstander that jumped into the famous picture. He later developed the silicon transistor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,338.935788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/please-release-your-unused-tickets/ | Please Release Your Unused Tickets | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"live event",
"los angeles",
"meetup",
"party"
] | The Gathering is next Tuesday and we are starting to get excited about it! There is a waiting list of people who would like a ticket.
If you registered for a ticket that you will not be able to to use, please log in and cancel it.
Cancelling your unused ticket will automatically free up a ticket for someone on the waiting list. Cancellation instructions are below. We want to pack the house and making sure no ticket goes unused is important.
Still want to attend? It’s not too late.
Add yourself to the waiting list
.
Ticket Cancellation
Canceling your ticket is simple. Begin by going to
http://ww.eventbrite.com
and clicking login in the upper right:
Next choose “My Tickets” near the center of the top navigation bar:
You should now see “Hackaday Party: LA2014”. Click on “View Order”:
Click on the “Cancel Order” button:
That’s it. Thank you for taking the time to make room for someone who is able to attend! | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163443",
"author": "Jim Bedford",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T02:16:22",
"content": "if only i lived a little closer than kentucky…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1163523",
"author": "ejonesss",
"timestamp": "2014-01-15T0... | 1,760,376,339.740375 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/creating-pcbs-with-3d-resin-printers/ | Creating PCBs With 3D Resin Printers | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"B9 creator",
"form 1",
"Full Spectrum Laser",
"Pegasus Touch",
"resin printer",
"sla",
"stereolithography"
] | The folks over at Full Spectrum Laser are Kickstarting their own 3D printer – a stereolithography machine like the Form 1 and B9 Creator printers. During their testing, they discovered a new application for these SLA printers that should prove to be very useful for the makers and builders using machines –
manufacturing PCBs with UV-sensitized copper clad boards
.
Full Spectrum Laser’s printer – the Pegasus Touch – uses a near UV laser and a galvo system to build objects in UV-curing resin layer by layer. In retrospect it seems pretty obvious a UV laser would expose UV sensitive boards, but this discovery simply reeks of cleverness and is a nice ‘value added’ feature for the Pegasus printer.
The Pegasus printer has a laser spot size of 0.25mm, meaning the separation between traces on Pegasus-produced PCBs will be just under 10 mils. That’s a bit larger than
the limits of laser printer-based PCB fabrication
but far, far less complicated. Making a PCB on an SLA printer is as easy as removing the resin tank and putting a sensitized board on the build platform. Draw some traces with the printer, and in a few minutes you have an exposed board.
We’d really like to see if this technique can also be used with other SLA printers. if anyone out there would like to experiment, be sure to
send the results into the tip line
.
Video from Full Spectrum Laser below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=–hucpe7HG4 | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163094",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T15:33:45",
"content": "In theory, any UV laser 3d printer should be able to do this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1163120",
"author": "Taylorian",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,339.216882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/sega-master-system-on-a-stm32-development-board/ | Sega Master System On A STM32 Development Board | Eric Evenchick | [
"ARM",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"development board",
"sega",
"Sega Master System",
"stm32f429"
] | Some hackers have managed to convert an STM32 development into a Sega Master System emulator. This means Sonic the Hedgehog running on an ARM Cortex-M4.
This hack has a number of parts. First, [Alessandro Rocchegiani] showed off a video of his
Sega Master System emulator
running on the
STM32F429 Discovery
development board. This first version used the on board 2.4″ TFT LCD screen.
[Fabrice] was working with this STM32 Discovery board already. He had
developed an expansion board
that added a number of features to the development kit, including an
R-2R DAC
for video output. When [Fabrice] found out about the Sega Master System emulator, he worked with [Alessandro] and his son [Fabrizio] to get VGA output working. They also added support for the Wii controller using [Fabrice]’s
Wii library
. The result is a
Sega Master System emulator with VGA output
at 640 x 480, with 16 bit color and Wii controller support.
You can watch a video of both the LCD and VGA versions of the hack after the break. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1163035",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T13:17:59",
"content": "Cool project, but nobody is THAT bad at Sonic…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1163088",
"author": "Fabrice Muller",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T15... | 1,760,376,339.45309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/a-simple-led-flashlight-composed-of-a-relay-and-a-magnet/ | A Simple LED Flashlight Composed Of A Relay And A Magnet | Mathieu Stephan | [
"handhelds hacks",
"hardware",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"induction",
"relay"
] | In our tips line we sometimes receive hacks that are amazing just because of their ingenuity. This
relay-powered flashlight
is definitely one of them. It has been named RattleGen by its creator [Berto], who apparently often makes simple hacks used in his everyday life (have a look at his
YouTube channel
).
To understand this hack, you first need to know (in case you didn’t already) that a magnet moving near a conductor (here a coil) induces a voltage at its terminals. This is called
electromagnetic induction
. In the picture you see above, you may distinguish a disassembled relay with a magnet located on the lever’s end. As a ferromagnetic metal is already placed inside the coil, the lever is by default ‘stuck’ in this position. By continuously pressing the latter on its other end, important voltage spikes are created at the coils terminals. [Berto] therefore used a bridge rectifier to transform the AC into DC, and a 1000uF capacitor to smooth the power sent to his super bright LED. A video of the system in action is embedded after the break. | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162176",
"author": "juno",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T12:19:19",
"content": "Enocean uses something similar in their product line. This implementation…http://be.farnell.com/enocean/eco-200/module-electrodynamic-energy-conver/dp/2134178… harvests enough energy from a push button to po... | 1,760,376,339.564976 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/the-face-tracking-confectionery-cannon/ | The Face-Tracking Confectionery Cannon! | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"cannon",
"face tracking",
"marshmellows",
"opencv"
] | A team of mechanical and electrical engineering students at Olin College came up with a very fun semester project —
a pneumatic powered marshmallow cannon that can track faces, and aim for the mouth
!
The device — dubbed the Confectionery Canon — is an impressive mechanical build which required many of Olin College’s manufacturing resources such as the laser cutter, the mill, and the lathe. The majority of the device was made out of acrylic, which was chosen for easy laser cutting, and affordability. Specific aluminum pieces provide strength and were made using mostly scrap found in the shop.
Four servos, a webcam, a solenoid and an Arduino Uno make up the electrical system, which uses Python and OpenCV to track faces (
GitHub
). A PVC tank is used as the pneumatic reservoir, charged with a safety release valve at 30PSI. To fire the cannon, a sprinkler valve is controlled by a beefy solenoid. It currently only has a magazine capacity of 4 large marshmallows, but the team is planning on upgrading soon.
They have put together a great website with tons of information on the project, and following the break is a fun promo video they made for the project — they even got the VP of the college to try it!
In case you haven’t been counting, we’ve shared
over a dozen projects
that have come out of Olin College — and they are all awesome.
A CNC cake decorator
,
a
Wii-mote
controlled go kart
,
a
machine that
hand writes
for you
… | 39 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162064",
"author": "Michael R. (@soegal)",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T09:18:38",
"content": "What kind of bearing do they use for there pan motion?BTW great project!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1162193",
"author": "... | 1,760,376,339.686832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/saving-20000-usd-with-a-single-led/ | Saving $20,000 USD With A Single LED | Adam Fabio | [
"LED Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"backlight",
"fiber optics",
"hvac"
] | [N8Mcnasty] is a HVAC tech who works on some big machines. One of his charges is a
Carrier 19EX Chiller
, rated at 1350 tons of cooling. 1 ton of cooling = 12,000 BTU. This particular chiller contained an odd LCD screen. It used a fiber optic bundle and a halogen light for backlight illumination. The system worked fine for over a decade. Now though, the halogen bulb has begun melting the glue on the fiber bundle, causing a dim display. The display in question shows some very important operating parameters, such as oil temperature, current draw, and process temperatures. Since they couldn’t easily see the display, the machine’s operators weren’t running the machine, placing stress on the other chillers in the building’s physical plant. [N8Mcnasty] tried repairing the bundle, however the glue kept melting.
A replacement display was no longer available, meaning that the entire chiller control system would have to be upgraded to a newer system. The new control system uses different sensors than the old one. This is where things start getting expensive. Replacing the sensors would also require draining the 15-20 gallons of oil, 4500 lbs of R134a refrigerant, and bringing the whole system down for almost two weeks, a $20,000 job. Rather than go this route, [N8Mcnasty] found an alternative. LED’s have come a long way since 1996, when the chiller was built. He simply replaced the halogen bulb with an LED and appropriate resistor. [N8Mcnasty] was even able to reuse the halogen bulb bracket. A bit of heat shrink tube later, and the fix looks like it was a factory option. He’s documented his fix
here on reddit
. | 81 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161988",
"author": "matt",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T06:25:58",
"content": "God you guys are desperate for catchy headlines, and articles in general. Is replacing a halogen bulb with a LED is really worthy of a article?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,339.929379 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/automated-decanting-machine-pairs-wine-with-pi/ | Automated Decanting Machine Pairs Wine With Pi | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"redundancy",
"wine"
] | [Logi.cals], a German software company focused on process, automation, and facilities planning has devised
an automated wine decanting machine
to demonstrate its logi.CAD 3 PLC programming tool.
Sommeliers
use these simple machines to handle heavy, expensive bottles of wine. [Logi.cals] added sensors and a stepper motor to a very nice looking specimen and automated the decanting process with a Raspberry Pi.
The outstanding feature of this design is the built-in redundancy. A pair of micro switches detect the presence of both a bottle and a glass. Failing these, a load cell is there to weigh the bottle, reporting naturally whether one is present. The load cell also plays a part in monitoring the liquid level in the bottle, as do capacitive sensors that register the wine flow. The design also includes strain gauges that measure the weight in the glass as well as the liquid level. To bring it full circle, they also verify that a glass is present.
[Logi.cals] used two expansion boards, the
Quick2Wire interface with an I²C analogue board
and the
PiFace
. The I²C analogue board takes information from the strain gauges over its ADC, and the Quick2Wire communicates with the load cell’s measurement amplifier over the serial connection. The PiFace handles the remaining sensors and the stepper motor, and provides high voltage protection for the Pi.
If you’re fresh out of heavy, expensive bottles of wine but have some cheap ones lying around, you could
use a Pi to make them dance
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snE1DnTyp8w]
[via
adafruit
] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161941",
"author": "klgjag",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T03:23:55",
"content": "Neat machine but I would never want to work in Germany. Their language scares me (I almost get visions of hitler screaming at me). Polish is so much nicer to speak. Also, Białystok, delicious śledzie and o... | 1,760,376,339.506111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/hackaday-links-january-12-2014-2/ | Hackaday Links: January 12, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"digital logic",
"film camera",
"film photography",
"lego",
"legos",
"logic analyzer",
"oscilloscope",
"photography",
"reflow soldering",
"test equipment",
"toaster oven"
] | [Kyle] teaches photography and after being dismayed at the shuttering of film and darkroom programs at schools the world over decided to
create a resource for film photography
. There’s a lot of cool stuff on here like
mixing up a batch of Rodinal developer
with Tylenol, lye, and sodium sulphite, and
assessing flea market film cameras
. There are more tutorials coming that will include setting up a dark room, developing prints, and playing around with large format cameras.
[hifatpeople]
built a binary calculator out of LEGO® bricks or toys
. It started off as a series of logic gates built out of LEGO® bricks or toys in the
LEGO® Digital Designer
. These logic gates were combined into half adders, the half adders combined into full adders, and the full adders combined into a huge plastic calculator. Unfortunately, buying the LEGO® bricks or toys necessary to turn this digital design into a physical model would cost about $1000 using the LEGO® Pick-A-Brick service. Does anyone have a ton of LEGO® Technic® bricks or toys sitting around? We’d love to see this built.
Think you need a PID controller and fancy electronics to do reflow soldering in a toaster oven?
Not so, it seems
. [Sivan] is just using a meter with a thermocouple, a kitchen timer, and a little bit of patience to reflow solder very easily.
The folks at DreamSourceLabs realized a lot of electronic test equipment – from oscilloscopes and logic analyzers to protocol and RF analyzers were all included a sampling circuit.
They designed the DSLogic
that puts a sampler and USB plug on one board, with a whole bunch of different tools connected to a pin header. It’s a pretty cool idea for a modular approach to test equipment.
Adafruit
just released an iDevice game
. It’s a resistor color code game and much more educational than Candy Crush. With a $0.99 coupon for the Adafruit store, it’s effectively free if you’re buying anything at Adafruit anytime soon.
Check out the video
and the awesome adorable component “muppets”. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161869",
"author": "Miff",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T00:11:34",
"content": "Nice avoidance of another Lego/Legos flamewar.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1161885",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,339.614942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/developed-on-hackaday-we-have-pixels/ | Developed On Hackaday: We Have Pixels! | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Featured",
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"developed on hackaday",
"encryption",
"hardware development",
"mooltipass",
"password",
"smartcard"
] | It has been a while since we kept you informed about the current state of the
Mooltipass project
. Well, several days ago we finally received the PCBs we got produced at Seeedstudio. Keep in mind that this first version (shown in the picture above) is only meant to check that the chosen components can suit our needs while our mechanical contributors work on their designs. Moreover, we may add empty footprints for our readers that may want to hack the device.
After a few hours of soldering and a few days of coding, we finally got a basic firmware running. The OLED screen is easily readable and has an amazing contrast (the picture doesn’t do it justice). So far we checked all basic functionalities of the on-board components and it’ll still take a few days/weeks to be certain that we can settle with them. We are therefore starting to ship a few platforms to the firmware developers that want to work on the core functions of the Mooltipass. So if you’re an experienced C developer and have some spare time, you may get onboard by contacting me at mathieu[at]hackaday[dot]com or by joining the
Mooltipass Google Group
.
In a few days we will publish the designs that our mechanical guys came up with and we’ll ask you to let us know which ones are your favorites. Depending on how things will go, we may produce PCBs for several of them to select our final design based on user experience and ease of use. We look forward to hearing your feedback in the comments section below! | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161791",
"author": "CheezburgerBrown",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T21:29:48",
"content": "I initially thought it said MOOTipass and was spillover from 4chan.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1161807",
"author": "vonskippy",
... | 1,760,376,339.812965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/squarewear-2-0-a-wearable-opensource-arduino/ | SquareWear 2.0 A Wearable Opensource Arduino | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"squarewear",
"usbasp",
"V-USB"
] | Are you guys tired of redesigned Arduinos yet? Usually we are, but [Ray] just released the
SquareWear 2.0
, and we have to admit, it’s a pretty slick design.
It’s an update to SquareWear 1.1
which we covered a year ago
. That version made use of a 18F14K50 microcontroller, measured a tiny 1.6″ x 1.6″ and could easily be sewn into wearable
circuits. But after receiving lots of requests to design a new Arduino based board, [Ray] obliged and made v2.0.
The new SquareWear is slightly bigger, measuring in at 1.7″ x 1.7″, but it packs a much bigger and more functional punch — just check out the image schematic above! The only catch is it doesn’t actually have a USB-to-serial chip on-board, which is why [Ray] was able to get the board so small and inexpensive. Instead it simulates USB in the software using the
V-USB
library. That method is much slower but still functional. To perform serial communication through the USB port it uses the onboard USBasp bootloader.
The board also features large through-holes to accommodate sew-able pin pads, making it super easy to integrate this into fabric!
For a complete explanation of the SquareWear 2.0, check out the video after the break. | 37 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161726",
"author": "Lars Schumann",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T18:43:52",
"content": "I still don’t like the idea of having the temperature sensor right next to a heat source (LED)…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1161787",
... | 1,760,376,340.37211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/hydro-the-low-cost-waterjet-cutter/ | Hydro: The Low Cost Waterjet Cutter | James Hobson | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"hobby waterjet cutter",
"water jet",
"waterjet",
"waterjet cutter"
] | Waterjet cutters are generally huge machines, with equally large price tags. But what if there was a hobbyist level waterjet cutter that was actually affordable? Well, for their Senior Design Project at the University of Pennsylvania, [Adam Libert] and his team
made one that could retail for less than $5000.
[Adam] was the lead mechanical designer on this amazing project, and he designed the fully waterproof XY gantry, capable of withstanding the water and abrasive from the cutter. The entire machine is only 2′ x 2′ by about 5′ tall, making it extremely portable and easy to move through doorways — and it runs off of plain old 120VAC and shop air. It is capable of cutting through up to 1/4″ aluminum and 1/8″ steel with a working area of 12″ x 14″ at a tolerance of 0.005″.
Not surprising, the project won the Mechanical Engineering Senior Design competition in 2012 with accolades for outstanding creativity. We weren’t able to find any information on the future plans for this project, but we hope they make it open-source, or even run a crowd-funding campaign for it.
The goal was to create the first ever low-cost, small scale, and easy to use waterjet cutter, and judging by the video, it looks like they did it — stick around after the break to see for yourself. | 103 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162915",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T09:39:24",
"content": "That pump-piston thing is the magic and it’s amazing. It could have a lot of applications.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1163064",
"author": ... | 1,760,376,340.128319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/copper-etching-not-just-for-pcbs/ | Copper Etching: Not Just For PCBs | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"copper art",
"etching",
"etching copper"
] | [Morag Hickman] is an artist who makes use of ferric chloride for something other than etching a PCB. She uses the process to
etch beautiful designs into her jewelry.
[Tortoise Butler] is a small film crew that created this
three and a half minute film on the art of etching copper
, and it is an absolute pleasure to watch. There are no computers, no toner transfers, and she doesn’t even etch on a flat surface. It’s an excellent example of doing something different — why not add etching to finish off a project? If you’ve already done PCBs, it can’t be that hard to do a logo instead!
Anyway, it’s been a while since we’ve shared a handmade hack, and we think this is a great example that deserves the spotlight. Don’t forget to send in your own handmade projects to the tips line!
Stick around after the break to enjoy the film — we recommend watching it full screen and in HD. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162950",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T10:49:11",
"content": "Yawn..There are some questions though:1) what kind of marker can survive “a few hours” in ferric chloride — all that I tried get destroyed within 10 minutes (in hot water bath though)2) what kind of etcha... | 1,760,376,340.296991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/fastening-3d-printed-parts/ | Fastening 3D Printed Parts | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing techniques",
"tapping 3d printed parts"
] | Ever been curious on how to fasten 3D printed parts together? There are lots of ways to do it — but what’s the best way? [Chris Lopez] works in a machine shop and decided to do some testing of
how best to tap 3D printed parts
, so you don’t have to!
The typical ways to add fasteners in 3D printed parts include designing the thread right into the part (only works for big threads), adding a press-fit insert, drilling and tapping it like any other material, inserting a Heli-Coil, or even by using ultrasonic weld inserts. In fact, this
Stratasys blog post
actually goes into some good detail on the pros and cons of each!
But, there’s a much easier way. To tap a hole normally you need to locate it accurately, make a pilot hole with a center drill — ensuring it is straight and true — then drill through with the undersized tap drill, and finally, thread it with a tap. Luckily, your 3D printer takes care of almost all these steps. By simply designing your holes to be the tap drill size you can hand tap fairly strong threads in your 3D printed parts. Just make sure your wall thicknesses and or infill settings are high enough to make sure there is material to engage!
[Chris] also goes into some detail on creating captive nut geometry — but for that you’re going to have to check out his blog. And if you’re interested in another style of fastening 3D printed parts, why not
inset magnets into them
while they are printing? | 23 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162713",
"author": "Raymond Johnson",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T03:13:39",
"content": "I tap these parts all the time. The printing process produces some pretty dense nylon parts. My company has several components 3D printed offsite by independents. So, you could say that we are pri... | 1,760,376,340.963189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/scooby-doo-alarm-clock-repair/ | Scooby-Doo Alarm Clock Repair | Todd Harrison | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"alarm clock",
"clock chip",
"LM8560",
"repair",
"Scooby-Doo"
] | This is more of a hack than a repair which is a good reason for me to feature my
Scooby-Doo alarm clock repair
. I started out trying to simply fix some broken hardware mounts that hold the display and button mechanism within the alarm clock that looks like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Van. During testing I noticed the display was very dim suggesting an unusual current load or other malfunction, plus the alarm was not functional.
One of the coolest features of the alarm was that it made a car honking noise when the alarm was activated. Unfortunately, it turned out that the chip-onboard which produced the honking sound was shorted internally causing some transistor overheating and the dim display. It was impossible to restore functionality of the custom chip-onboard, but lucky for me the data sheets for the LM8560 clock chip revealed that it could directly output a standard alarm beeping sound to a speaker. This required the PCB and some circuitry be configured differently.
In the end the clock’s current load came down to normal parameters, the display was once again bright and the alarm functioned using the standard beeping alarm sound that comes from the LM8560 clock chip. It is sad that the coolness factor of the alarm clock cannot be restored with the honking car sound alarm but my son is quite happy to have his favorite Scooby-Doo alarm clock functioning once again.
The circuit modifications may not have been the cleverest or the best solution, so if you have other suggestions please leave them in the comments below. You can watch the video of the circuit evaluation and repair modifications after the break. | 60 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162589",
"author": "mh",
"timestamp": "2014-01-14T00:12:43",
"content": "It seems like a nice hack, but im slightly annoyed (negatively surprised is perhaps more correct) that you use HAD to post hacks from your own blog. I hope it is not going to become the norm. (I follow HAD for... | 1,760,376,340.471548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/an-arduino-library-for-the-ps4/ | An Arduino Library For The PS4 | Eric Evenchick | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"controllers",
"ps4",
"usb",
"usb host shield"
] | Looking to interface your Arduino with the PS4 controller? [Kristian] has
updated his USB host library
with support for the controller. The library makes it easy to read most of the inputs from the controller. Currently the buttons and joysticks work, and support for the light sensor, rumble, and touchpad is on the way.
To get this working, you will need the
USB Host Shield
for the Arduino and a Bluetooth dongle. Once you have the hardware setup, you can use the library to pair with the controller. When connected, simple function calls will let you read the state of the device.
While this does require some additional hardware to connect, all of the code is open source. If you’re looking to experiment with the PS4 controller yourself, [Kristian]’s work could be a helpful starting point. Of course, all of the source is available on
Github
, and the
example sketch
shows how easy it is to roll the PS4 controller into your own Arduino project. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162509",
"author": "EliTheIceMan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T21:59:53",
"content": "Could you connect the controller directly to a bluetooth module? I wonder if it uses SPP?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1162510",
"... | 1,760,376,340.516816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/software-half-duplex-uart-for-avrs/ | Software Half Duplex UART For AVRs | Eric Evenchick | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"half duplex",
"software uart",
"uart"
] | If you have worked with very low cost microcontroller in the past, such as the ATtiny series from AVR, you’ve probably been stuck without a UART peripheral. The usual answer to this problem is to implement the UART in software. It’s not fast, but it works.
Lets say you’re even more limited on resources, and only have a single pin for UART. [Ralph] created a software library and a small circuit that enables
half duplex UART using only one pin
. With the above circuit, and a 62 byte Arduino compatible library, you can add UART to the tiniest of ATtinys.
In this circuit, the Tx/Rx pin is on the AVR, and the Tx and Rx pins are another device. The circuit relies on the idle state of UART being a logic high signal. When the Tx pin is idle, the transistor stays on. This allows the Tx/Rx pin to pull Rx low when the AVR sends a 0. When the Tx pin sends a 0, the Tx/Rx pin gets pulled low through the diode.
It’s a clever hack, and could definitely help add communication to your next tiny project. | 57 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162363",
"author": "gajiop",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T18:22:28",
"content": "You could use it as a fancy toilet door status indicator.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1162389",
"author": "Sprite_tm",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,340.608763 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/13/tape-measure-vhf-yagi-antenna/ | Tape Measure VHF Yagi Antenna | Todd Harrison | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"beam",
"Fox Hunting",
"ham",
"radio",
"radio direction finding",
"RDF",
"tape measure",
"uhf",
"VHF",
"yagi"
] | Radio direction finding and fox hunting can be great fun and is a popular activity with amateur radio (ham radio) enthusiasts. These antennas are great and are not only good for finding transmitters but also will greatly increase directional distance performance including communicating with satellites and the international space station (ISS).
[jcoman] had a nephew who was interested in learning about amateur radio so [jcoman] figured building and using a
cheap and portable 2 meter band VHF Yagi style beam antenna
would be the perfect activity to captivate the young lad’s interest in the hobby.
His design is based on
[Joe Leggio’s] (WB2HOL) design
with some of his own calculated alterations. We have seen DIY Yagi antenna designs before but what makes this construction so interesting is that the elements come together using bits of cut metal tape measure sections. These tape measure sections allow the Yagi antenna, which is normally a large and cumbersome device, to be easily stowed in a vehicle or backpack. When the antenna is needed, the tape measure sections naturally unfold and function extremely well with a 7 dB directional gain and can be adjusted to get a 1:1 SWR at any desired 2 m frequency.
The other unique feature is that the antenna can be constructed for under $20 if you actually purchase the materials. The cost would be even less if you salvage an old tape measure. You might even have the PVC pipes, hose clamps and wire lying around making the construction nearly free.
We were quite surprised to find that such a popular antenna construction method using tape measure elements had not yet been featured on Hackaday. For completeness this is not the only DIY tape measure Yagi on Instructables so also check out [FN64’s] 2 m band “
Radio Direction Finding Antenna for VHF
” and [manuka’s] 70 cm band “
433 MHz tape measure UHF antenna
” postings. The other Yagi antenna designs featured on Hackaday were “
Building a Yagi Uda Antenna
” and “
Turning an Easter Egg Hunt into a Fox Hunt
” but these designs were not so simple to construct nor as cleverly portable. | 32 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1162259",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2014-01-13T15:33:15",
"content": "I’ve used military radios decades ago whose antennas were technically identical to a tape measure segment, they were unusable during strong winds but simple and effective nonetheless.",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,376,340.681465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/autonomous-quadcopter-fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand/ | Autonomous Quadcopter Fits In The Palm Of Your Hand | James Hobson | [
"drone hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"autonomous quadcopter",
"fpga",
"spartan-6"
] | [Horiken Engineering], which is made up of engineering students at the department of aerospace at the University of Tokyo have developed an
autonomous quadcopter that requires no external control
— and its tiny. By using two cameras and a sonar sensor, the quadcopter is capable of flying by itself due to its ability to process the data from the on-board sensors. To do the complex data processing fast enough to fly, it is using a Cortex-M4 MCU, a Spartan-6 FPGA, and 64MBs of DDRSDRAM. It also has the normal parts of a quadcopter, plus gyros, a 3D printed frame and a 3-axis compass. The following video demonstrates the quadcopter’s tracking ability above a static image (or a way point). The data you see in real-time is only the flight log, as the quadcopter receives no signal — it can only transmit data.
Is this the first step towards Amazon’s fleet of package delivering drones? It’s certainly going to be interesting when quadcopters are a common occurrence in public… | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161671",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T17:00:10",
"content": "Woah monocular realtime camera that can do 3DOF or 6DOF tracking? On a microcontroller? What sorcery is this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1161679",... | 1,760,376,340.834714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/bunnies-open-source-laptop-is-ready-for-production/ | [Bunnie]’s Open Source Laptop Is Ready For Production | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"bunnie",
"laptop",
"Novena"
] | Just over a year ago, [Bunnie Huang] announced he was working on a very ambitious personal project:
a completely open source laptop
. Now, with help from his hardware hacker compatriot [xobs], this laptop named
Novena is nearly complete.
Before setting out on this project, [Bunnie] had some must-have requirements for the design. Most importantly, all the components should be free of NDA encumbrances. This isn’t an easy task; an SoC vendor with documentation sitting around on their servers is rare as hen’s teeth, and Freescale was the only vendor that fit the bill. Secondly, the entire laptop should be entirely open source. [Bunnie] wasn’t able to find an open source GPU, so using hardware video decoding on his laptop requires a binary blob. Software decoding works just fine, though.
Furthermore, this laptop is designed for both security and hardware hacking. Two Ethernet ports (one 1Gbit and the second 100Mbit), a USB OTG port, and a Spartan 6 FPGA put this laptop in a class all by itself. The main board includes 8x analog inputs, 8x digital I/O ports, 8 PWM pins, and a Raspberry Pi-compatible header for some real hardware hackery.
As for the specs of the laptop, they’re respectable for a high-end tablet. The CPU is a Freescale iMX6, a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 running at 1.2 GHz. The RAM is upgradeable to 4GB, an internal SATA-II port will easily accommodate a huge SSD, the ability to use an LCD adapter board to run the 13-inch 2560×1700 LED panel [Bunnie] is using. The power system is intended to be modular, with batteries provided by run-of-the-mill RC Lipo packs. For complete specs,
check out the wiki.
Despite the high price and relatively low performance (compared to i7 laptop) of [Bunnie]’s laptop, there has been a lot of interest in spinning a few thousand boards and sending them off to be pick and placed. There’s going to be a crowd funding campaign for Novena sometime in late February or March based around an “all-in-one PC with a battery” form factor. There’s no exact figure on what the price of a Novena will be, but it goes without saying a lot will be sold regardless.
If you want the latest updates, the best place to go would be the official Novena twitter:
@novenakosagi | 60 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161573",
"author": "ERROR_user_unknown",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T12:09:58",
"content": "What price will the first run be ??",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1161574",
"author": "ERROR_user_unknown",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,340.77821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/12/bicycle-powered-sander/ | Bicycle Powered Sander | James Hobson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"sander"
] | [Andy] does a lot of framing and needed a way to sand down pieces at proper angles. He goes by the moniker [Organikmechanic] on YouTube, and as such is trying to rely less and less on electricity — so he’s created this
hand-powered sander using components from a bicycle
.
His first iteration just used the spindle off of a bicycle wheel as the main axle, but he quickly found it wasn’t rigid enough for the sanding disk. Instead he decided to make use of the entire crankshaft assembly off of an old bicycle. He cut the frame down to size, removed one of the pedals, and shortened the other one to a more useful hand cranking length. The main gear of the bicycle provides a large and sturdy mounting surface for his home-made sanding disk which consists of a large piece of rounded chipboard.
It’s a pretty clever use of recycled parts — but what do you think? Are you environmentally inclined enough to give up your power tools? A full video explanation of the project is after the break. | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161489",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T09:18:33",
"content": "Why didn’t he keep the foot pedals and bicycle gearing system? They would provide a much better sander.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1161560",
... | 1,760,376,340.900252 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/3kw-electric-scooter/ | 3kW Electric Scooter | James Hobson | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric scooter"
] | [Exco] had been playing around with the idea of building an electric scooter for a while now, and over the holidays he decided
to just do it.
Similar to the
motorized long board
we shared last month, this scooter makes use of an RC hobby motor — in this case, a 63mm 3kW brushless outrunner (for a RC plane), coupled with a 100A ESC. He bought the scooter (“kick board”) off eBay for cheap, and spent a few days in the machine shop modifying it. It has better wheels now, and custom milled aluminum brackets for mounting the motor. The drive system uses a belt and pulley with a sliding rail to provide tensioning.
To power it, he bought a bunch of 2.5Ah, 18V LiPo packs on eBay originally from a Makita drill set. He then sorted out the cells, removed the dead ones, and soldered everything together for his own Frankenstein pack to balance them. The final configuration features twenty-one 18650 lithium cells. He even shrink wrapped it, which makes it look relatively professional!
It’s controlled by a push-button potentiometer hooked up to the ESC. Theoretical top speed is about 27km/h @ 1285RPM, and they managed to get it up to 25km/h in a real test. There’s more info over at the
Endless Sphere forum
, and we’ve got two test videos for you after the break.
[Thanks Momo!] | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161413",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T06:37:22",
"content": "Reminds me of combat robot style (think Battle Bots) drives and motors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1161424",
"author": "static",
"times... | 1,760,376,341.026999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/custom-workbench-computer/ | Custom Workbench Computer | James Hobson | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"custom computer case"
] | [Michael Solar] recently bought a house with his wife, and now with his first garage he’s started building his workshop man-cave. First order of business was a workbench — second,
a computer built into it.
He started with an old Dell tower, but found it took too much space underneath the work bench — so he set to downsizing it. Using pine boards he created a stepped wooden enclosure that utilizes the space under the front lip of the work bench. He’s mounted the motherboard using standoff pins and created cutouts in the back for the power supply and outputs. It features three intake and two exhaust fans — currently without filters, although he plans on adding them soon, otherwise he’ll end up with a sawdust filled computer!
It’s a rather simple project, but it gives a great introduction into making your own custom computer case, and provides some handy lessons learned near the end. It might not be a flashy case mod like this
heavy metal computer desk
, but it is certainly functional and robust! | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161324",
"author": "Cade",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T03:09:39",
"content": "need some cable management in there. Some fireproof paint, or even simple elecrostatic grounding will go a long ways if some sawdust gets in there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,341.190211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/giving-a-roomba-internet-connectivity/ | Giving A Roomba Internet Connectivity | Kevin Darrah | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Electric Imp",
"roomba",
"xively"
] | What was supposed to be a fun 1-day build ended up turning into a 3-day journey full of close calls when [Arthur] decided to give his
Roomba Internet Connectivity
.
The Roomba, whom [Arthur] calls Colin, has been in service for a couple of years, and once he got his hands on the
Electric Imp
, he had just the project in mind. With embedded Wi-Fi and a 32-bit processor all in an SD Card form factor, the Electric Imp makes it very easy to add the “Internet of Things” to just about anything you can think of. [Arthur] wanted to gain control of the Roomba, so he tapped into the SCI (
Serial Command Interface
). Now he can read out the Roomba’s on-board sensor data including battery voltage, current draw, and even the temperature.
These are the kind of walk-through’s we love to see, because he did it in real-time, so you get to experience all of the “surprises” along the way. For example, he removed an external charging port to make room for the added components, but that ended up disabling the dock charger. Then he discovered that when the Roomba was charging, the input voltage to the Electric Imp breakout board was too high, so he had to introduce an intermediate voltage regulator. But perhaps the biggest bump in the road was when he accidentally brushed the Electric Imp breakout board along the Roomba’s control board while power was on. Luckily the damage was isolated to just one smoked — a simple FET. The project turned out great, and (today) Colin’s data is actually visible through a public
Xively feed. | 33 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161258",
"author": "Lindsay Wilson",
"timestamp": "2014-01-12T00:46:52",
"content": "Of course everybody remembers that when Ford Prefect had to break in to The Guide’s offices and made a little security robot very happy, he nicknamed it “Colin”.You knew that, right? ‘Course you di... | 1,760,376,341.680467 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/usb-charger-solves-mongolia-electricity-problem/ | USB Charger Solves Mongolia Electricity Problem | James Hobson | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"peltier plate"
] | People living in remote areas of Mongolia do not have access to electricity or gas, and rely on traditional wood stoves for their homes, which are used almost all the time. Many use solar panels to generate some electricity for small tools, but unfortunately there are often times when it is cloudy for days on end. [Chingun Has] saw this problem and created his own clever solution —
a small thermoelectric USB charger
.
[Chingun’s] device features an array of peltier plates inside of an aluminum shroud. The device is designed to sit on top of a stove, or to be strapped onto a stove pipe. When there is a large enough temperature differential between the two sides of a peltier plate, a charge is induced. He’s using a small fan to help cool the other side of the peltier plates. A small control box houses a voltage regulator circuit that provides 5V over USB.
The cool thing about this project is that it is partially the result of [Tony Kim], an MIT professor who traveled to Mongolia to teach students an edX circuits course about a year ago. [Chingun] was one of his students, and this is a great example of a solution to a real-world problem.
An excellent video after the break gives a complete explanation of the project, as detailed by [Chingun] himself — it’s well worth the watch!
[Thanks for the tip Greg!] | 47 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161137",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T21:11:17",
"content": "This will be far more effective if the ‘cool’ side of the peltiers have actual heatsinks to remove the heat. Using them bare will drastically decrease power output since they provide power based on the diffe... | 1,760,376,341.606998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/i-am-the-midnight-message-board-what-messages-at-midnight/ | I Am The Midnight Message Board What Messages At Midnight | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"light graffiti",
"pixel font",
"shift register",
"UV LED"
] | Photoluminescent stars on your bedroom wall or ceiling are pretty cool, though the stationary shapes can become boring. [Adi] felt this way, too. While doodling with a bright white light on some glow in the dark vinyl, it occurred to him that this could make for an interesting display. He set about making
GLO, the midnight message board and RSS display
.
[Adi]’s light writer uses 12 UV LEDs on a linear axis powered by a stepper motor to write RSS headlines, Twitter trends, or custom text on his wall. He finds the slow fade of the text very soothing to fall asleep by, and it’s easy to see why. The LED array imprints a section of a character consisting of a 6×5 bit pattern. The 12 LEDs are split into two groups, so it can write two lines at 45-50 characters each. [Adi] designed his own pixel font for this project, and advises that only upper case letter forms be used.
[Adi]’s write-up is quite admirable and comprehensive. In the circuit build section, he advises that the LEDs must be very close to the vinyl for optimum results, but that they should protrude farther than the shift registers so the chips don’t rub the vinyl. Of course you could
opt for more intense light sources, like laser
. See it in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DID79UI9Ss4] | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1161059",
"author": "Jongscx",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T18:28:27",
"content": "…OMG, paint the entire ceiling in glow paint and use a laser-projector to write messages and draw images.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1161077",
... | 1,760,376,341.268412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/extremely-slick-game-of-life-based-clock/ | Extremely Slick Game Of Life Based Clock | James Hobson | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"game of life"
] | [Matthews] needed a good present to give to his brother-in-law, who just so happens to be a mathematician and programmer. He wanted something functional but equally geeky at the same time, so he decided to try his hand at
making a Game of Life style clock.
He was originally inspired by a
Game of Life Clock we shared a few months ago,
but with a few improvements. First, he wanted a much bigger playing field, so he found a 16×32 RGB LED matrix. Second, he wanted the time to always be visible so it actually works as a functional clock.
At the heart of the device is an Arduino UNO which utilizes a Chronodot RTC module for accurate time keeping. The entire clock is encased in acrylic sheets and it looks extremely good for a home-made project. He designed the case using a site called
MakerCase
, which is a super handy application for designing boxes.
At the beginning of every minute starts a new Game of Life which plays over top of the time displayed. Three buttons on the top allow for many adjustments including brightness, timezone, speed, colors, and even edge behavior! To see it in action, stick around after the break. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160981",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T15:58:30",
"content": "This is extremely neat!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1160991",
"author": "Bogdan Marinescu",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T16:13:58",
"conten... | 1,760,376,341.453454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/rex-the-arm-powered-robot-board/ | Rex, The ARM-Powered Robot Board | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"beaglebone",
"Rex",
"robot"
] | There are a million tutorials out there for building a robot with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, but they all suffer from the same problem: neither the ‘duino nor the Raspi are fully integrated solutions that put all the hardware – battery connectors, I/O ports, and everything else on the same board. That’s the problem Rex,
an ARM-powered robot controller
, solves.
The specs for Rex include a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 with
a Video SoC
and DSP core, 512 MB of RAM, USB host port, support for a camera module, and 3.5mm jacks for stereo in and out. On top of that, there’s I2C expansion ports for a servo adapter and an input and output for a 6-12 V battery. Basically, the Rex is something akin to the Beaglebone Black with the hardware optimized for a robotic control system.
Because shipping an ARM board without any software would be rather dull, the guys behind Rex came up with
Alphalem OS
, a Linux distro that includes scripts, sample programs, and an API for interaction with I2C devices. Of course Rex will also run other
robotics operating systems
and the usual Debian/Ubuntu/Whathaveu distros.
It’s an impressive bit of hardware, capable of speech recognition, and machine vision tasks with OpenCV. Combine this with a whole bunch of servos, and Rex can easily become the brains of a nightmarish hexapod robot that responds to your voice and follows you around the room.
You can pick up a Rex
over on the Kickstarter
with delivery due sometime this summer. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160917",
"author": "hemalchevli",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T12:14:38",
"content": "That is a sweet thing!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1160920",
"author": "bobfeg",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T12:22:57",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,341.521282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/11/printer-up-cycled-cnc-machine-uses-more-than-just-the-stepper-motors/ | Printer Up-cycled CNC Machine Uses More Than Just The Stepper Motors | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc conversion"
] | Sometimes you just know from the photo that this is going to be a really cool project. When most people salvage parts from an old printer, they usually chuck the rest. In this case [Shane]
made use of the entire printer to build his CNC machine
.
He started with an old HP 2500C A3 printer, which he had planned to salvage for parts only. While he was taking it apart he realized the chassis would make a great frame for his actual CNC machine! With that in mind he quickly changed his game plan to making each axis inside of the printer.
He’s using regular ball bearing drawer runners for both the X and Z axes, covered with a clever design of aluminum angle to keep any possible chips from jamming them. The Y axis on the other hand makes use of the original shaft runners from the print head carriage. Each axis is driven by threaded rod using recycled stepper motors from the printer.
An Arduino UNO sits at the heart of the project with a Protoneer CNC shield to control the stepper drivers. He’s also included an emergency stop, hold, resume, and cancel buttons for manual control.
It’s a great project, and an amazing example of using what is on hand for a project. Stick around after the break to see a demonstration of it printing!
[Thanks Kruger!] | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160855",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T09:08:09",
"content": "Are those steppers really out of that printer originally? They look rather substantial to have 1 of them in a printer, let alone 3.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,341.751045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/raspberry-pi-tablet-the-pipad/ | Raspberry Pi Tablet — The PiPad | James Hobson | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"raspberry pi tablet",
"tablet"
] | [Michael Castor] wanted a tablet, but not just any tablet. He wanted an all-in-one system running Linux, and he wanted it to look good. So he
made himself a wooden PiPad.
He started the project at the beginning of 2013, and like many of our projects, it took a little while to get some momentum going. He bought most of the components early on but then it got pushed to the back burner. Two weeks before the Maker Faire Bay Area 2013, [Michael] decided he wanted to show it off, and thus began the mad dash to finish it in time.
The build consists of a very nice piece of 1/2″ Baltic birch plywood which was cut to shape using a CNC router. A scrap piece of carbon fiber makes for a stylish but not too flashy back cover — He even managed to get [Eben Upton] to sign it! Inside is a 10,000mAh lithium ion battery, a Raspberry Pi, a cellphone battery charging system and a capacitive touchscreen LCD. Almost all touchscreens run off 12V, but [Michael] managed to find a 5V HDMI to LVDS converter, which works perfectly. The device gets about 6 hours of battery life, which is more than enough for [Michael]. The device looks great, and he’s even made it through airport security with it!
We love seeing unique projects like this — don’t forget to submit your own projects through our Tip line! | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160786",
"author": "gjio",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T06:40:28",
"content": ">PiPadlawsuits coming in 3…2…1…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1160950",
"author": "voxnulla",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T13:38:51",
... | 1,760,376,341.93466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/the-2014-line-of-makerbots/ | The 2014 Line Of MakerBots | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"makerbot",
"makerbot replicator",
"Makerbot replicator mini",
"Makerbot replicator Z18"
] | With the Consumer Electronics Show over, it’s finally time to take a look at
the new line of MakerBot printers
(here’s the
press release
). Unlike MakerBot’s previous offerings with a one size fits all business model, they’re branching out with a product line that can only be described as, ‘regular, small, and large’.
The new MakerBots include
an updated Replicator
that’s just slightly larger than the previous version. It includes Ethernet, an option for WiFi, an on-board camera, and a control panel with a 3.5″ LCD and rotary encoder. This new Replicator will retail for $2900, $700 more than the current Replicator (single extruder).
The other new MakerBots include the stripped down and small
Replicator Mini
. It’s a no-frills machine with a build volume of 10 x 10 x 12.5 cm (~4 x 4 x 5 in) with 200 micron resolution. Also in the new lineup is the
Replicator Z18
, an impressively large printer with a 30.5 x 30.5 x 45.7 cm (12 x 12 x 18 in) build volume, 100 micron resolution, plastic sides for a heated build volume, and all the bells and whistles on the new Replicator. The Mini will sell for $1375 and the Z18 is expected to sell for $6500.
The updated Replicator is available now, and the Mini and Z18 will be available sometime in the next few months. | 85 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160686",
"author": "Bottr",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T03:04:43",
"content": "That heated build chamber is covered by a Stratasys patent, presumably.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1160693",
"author": "Hack Man",
... | 1,760,376,341.879691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/lazing-with-a-ruby/ | Lazing With A Ruby | Brian Benchoff | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"ruby laser"
] | [Ben Krasnow], builder of amazingly complex and technical devices,
is finally starting work on his ruby laser
. He’s been collecting parts for this project for the past few years, but only recently has he started recreating the first visible light laser.
While the design and manufacture of the first ruby laser was astonishingly complex, the basic idea behind it is pretty simple. [Ben]’s laser uses a synthetic ruby rhod with the ends ground optically flat. This rod is placed inside a flash tube. When the flash tube lights up, the rod absorbs the light and re-emits it as a coherent beam for several milliseconds. This beam bounces between two mirrors – one fully reflective and another partially reflective – and emits a constant stream of coherent photons. It’s tremendously more complex than simply connecting a laser diode to a power source, but replicating a build that graced the covers of
Time
and
Newsweek
only fifty years ago is pretty impressive
Right now, [Ben] has most of the mechanical and optical parts of his ruby laser on his workbench. The next step is constructing a huge capacitor bank to charge the flash tube every millisecond or so. What [Ben] will end up using his laser for remains up in the air, but if we come across some erbium or neodymium rods we’ll be sure to send them his way. | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160651",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-01-11T01:10:26",
"content": "Not only is that awesome and we’ll implemented, but it allows me to make a reference to “The Fifth Element”…-But who cares?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,376,342.429908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/a-diskvaccuum-for-obsolete-disk-formats/ | A DiskVaccuum For Obsolete Disk Formats | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"FPGA"
] | [
"Disk drive",
"papilio",
"Papilio Pro"
] | [Jim] has a box of disks for a very old Compucolor II computer, and with bit rot slowly setting in he figured it might be time to dump all those disks to a more permanent format. After reviewing the existing tools to read these disks,
he decided to build his own floppy disk interface
that he calls the DiskVaccuum.
The DiskVaccuum is based on a
Papilio Pro FPGA board
and a few chips worth of level conversion. The FPGA is able to read bits and move the head of the disk with ease, saving everything to the drive of a much more modern computer.
On the USB side of the Papilio board, [Jim] wrote a shell of sorts in Python to capture tracks on the disk, read out the track listing, save an image file, and do all the things a proper DOS should. Right now the project is only for the Compucolor II disk drive, but [Jim] played around with KiCAD enough to create a Papilio-to-disk-drive interface board with connectors for most of the disk drives of this particular vintage. The hope is to generalize the hardware and software to read disks for other systems, including those with 8-inch drives.
[Jim] put up a video describing the hardware and demoing his Python capture utility. You can check that out below. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160542",
"author": "notabena",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T21:17:28",
"content": "+1EXCELLENT!!!May you not seek forever… :^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1160543",
"author": "peter",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T21:17:46",... | 1,760,376,342.062606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/teaching-mario-to-play-pong-and-snake-through-innumerable-exploits/ | Teaching Mario To Play Pong And Snake Through Innumerable Exploits | Adam Fabio | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"masterjun",
"snes",
"super mario world",
"super nintendo",
"TAS",
"Tool assisted speed run"
] | This is the coolest classic Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) hack we’ve seen in quite a while. What you’re seeing is called “
Super Mario World (Total Control)
” by [Masterjun]. Our first recommendation is that you
watch the video
, then come back here for an explanation. Similar to what we saw for
Pokemon Yellow on Gameboy
, [Masterjun] created entire Pong and Snake clones within Super Mario World. He also created a menu and ending screen, along with his trademark smiley face graphic. Even more amazing is that this was unveiled live on a real SNES running an unmodified game cartridge. [Masterjun] actually used dual multitap cables, effectively connecting 8 controllers to a SNES. This gave him enough bandwidth to quickly download his new binary through the controller ports alone.
Welcome to the world of Tool Assisted Speedruns (TAS), where emulators and scripts are used to create high-speed runs through video games. The runners often work frame by frame, painstakingly inputting commands to create the perfect run. Game bugs and glitches are often exploited in these speed runs. In fact, in runs such as this one, the speed run takes second place to showing off the exploit. The output of speed run creation is a script file of control inputs which can be executed on an emulator to “re-run” the TAS at any time. This script can also be saved to a PC or Raspberry Pi and played back into the controller port of a real game system.
A PIC based hardware translator
is used to convert the data to NES or SNES controller format. As one might expect, these scripts run open loop. With no feedback from the running game, they can and do become desynchronized due to differences in console hardware, such as the tolerance of the oscillator crystal. When everything is in sync and does work , the results are awesome. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160436",
"author": "Polaczek",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T18:14:13",
"content": "Haha, wtf did I just watch with the super mario clip.Talk about glitching the hell out of it. Comedy gold!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1160477",... | 1,760,376,341.999872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/a-business-card-that-plays-simon-says/ | A Business Card That Plays Simon Says | Kevin Darrah | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"business card",
"simon says"
] | When your name is Simon and you want to build your own circuit board business card, it makes perfect sense to incorporate a game of Simon Says, and that’s exactly what [Simon] did with his
Business Card
.
You may see a resemblance to the
Engineer’s Emergency Business Card
; that’s because [Simon] took inspiration from that card to build his own. The game of Simon Says is played via 4 low-profile pushbuttons and 4 0805 LEDs. The microcontroller of choice to run the game is an ATtiny45 set up to work with the Arduino IDE. But with only 5 pins available for I/O, [Simon] had to give up 4 pins to the LEDs and configure the remaining pin as an analog input. The buttons are tied into a voltage divider that feeds the analog input, so depending which button is pressed, a different voltage is read in, thus a value from 0 to 1023 determines which button was pressed.
One of the great things about this write-up is that it goes through the process of etching PCBs at home using the toner-transfer method. We’re not sure how many home-etched business cards he’s willing to pass out, but surely whoever does get the card, will never forget his name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEIDmOqVoGk | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160316",
"author": "davedarko",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T15:26:45",
"content": "A- I hardly believe the face was supposed to be negative, but then again I’m in lack of a finished, standalone project to call my own so no pun intended – forgetting the inverting thing is one of my spe... | 1,760,376,342.117089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/a-vibrating-timepiece/ | A Vibrating Timepiece | Marsh | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"clock hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny85",
"clock",
"coin cell",
"rtc",
"watch"
] | It may not look like much, but the above pictured device is [qquuiinn’s] handy little watch that
indicates time through pulsed vibrations
. Perhaps we should refrain from labeling it as a “watch,” however, considering it’s [qquuiinn’s] intention to remove the need to actually look at the thing. Vibrations occur in grandfather clock format, with one long vibration for each hour, accompanied by one, two, or three short pulses for the quarter-hour increments.
The design is straightforward, using an ATTiny85 for the brains along with a few analog components. The vibration motor sticks to the protoboard with some glue, joining the microcontroller, a coin cell battery, and a pushbutton on a small protoboard. The button allows for manual time requests; one press responds with the current time (approximated, probably) in vibrations. The build is a work in progress, and [qquuiinn] acknowledges the lack of an RTC (real-time clock) causes some drift in the timepiece’s accuracy. We suspect, however, that you’d address that problem—twice daily—when you replace the battery: it only lasts ten hours. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160243",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T13:02:25",
"content": "Eeek. he really needs to fix power management on that. Long puse for top of hour short for bottom of the hour. manual gives you more details.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,376,342.215998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/10/drawing-with-legos/ | Drawing With Legos | Marsh | [
"classic hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"automata",
"automaton",
"lego",
"legos"
] | There are a number of elaborate Lego creations out there, but you probably haven’t seen something quite like [Andrew Carol’s]
Lego drawing machine.
He drew inspiration from the film
Hugo
and from automata of the 1800’s, specifically [Jaquet-Droz]’s Draughtsman, which we featured in
a Retrotechtacular article not too long ago.
[Andrew’s] hand-cranked creation is divided into three components: a plotter, an “encoded pen stroke program”—which stores messages in
links of pieces
—and a reader that translates the links into pen strokes. The plotter moves the pen in the Y axis and moves the paper in the X to mark on the page, and also has a simple lift mechanism that temporarily raises the pen on the Z axis to interrupt pen strokes between letters (or drawings).
[Andrew] describes the chain reader by comparing it to a film projector, feeding the message through the mechanism. Although you won’t find a detailed how-to guide explaining the devices’ inner-workings on his site, there are some clues describing basic components and a couple of videos, both of which are embedded below.
[via
Adafruit
and
FastCo
] | 82 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160154",
"author": "Ollie",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T09:28:33",
"content": "Hate to be that guy but to quote Lego themselves:“Please always refer to our products as “LEGO bricks or toys” and not “LEGOS.” By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we a... | 1,760,376,342.549219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/christmas-tweetball/ | Christmas Tweetball | James Hobson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"christmas ornament",
"tweetbal",
"tweetball"
] | The holidays are long over, but we’re still getting a smattering of holiday themed hacks. For this one, the [Han’s] family decided to make a
Christmas bauble that relays their tweets to them!
They call it the Tweetbal which is Dutch for — well — Tweetball! Whenever someone tweets with the hashtag
#tweetbal
it gets displayed on the 20×4 serial LCD display. They’re using an Arduino Uno with an RN-XV WiFly module to receive and send the tweets to the display. A large white plastic ornament ball houses it all secured very firmly with our favorite adhesion method — duct tape. It’s a pretty simple project, but a great holiday hack if we do say so ourselves — plus it could be easily used for non-holiday purposes — like a desktop trinket twitter feed!
Stick around after the break to see its tweeting capabilities in action.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Hans Kerkhoff (@hanskerkhoff)
If that’s a bit too techy for your Christmas tree, why not make some
fancy glowing acrylic ornaments
instead? They’re both bright and shiny!
[Thanks Hans!] | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1160091",
"author": "f1rstman",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T07:00:03",
"content": "This is a great post, but I disagree that the holidays are “long over” – our Christmas tree is still up, and I can’t be the only one! (on that note, I find it bizarre that the huge buildup to Christmas ... | 1,760,376,342.597584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/arduino-ball-throwing-game/ | Arduino Ball Throwing Game | Kevin Darrah | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ball game"
] | Building your own gaming platform is pretty cool on its own, but when the game actually looks like fun to play, well that’s on a different level of cool. [Zippy314] designed an Arduino based game platform as a Christmas present to his son called the
Das Blinken Bonken!
Like all highly addicting games, the gameplay is simple; the player throws a ball at the target board while aiming to hit a specific ‘pad’. As shown in the video after the break, there are many game possibilities with this platform, like trying to hit the illuminated target each time, or just trying to hit all of the pads on the board as fast as possible.
A pad is registered as a ‘hit’ with the help of home-made pressure sensors, which are each constructed in a ‘sandwich’ of
pressure-sensitive conductive sheets.
This is the same material used in
these LED Sneakers
. Since the resistance through the sheet lowers as pressure is applied, a simple voltage divider circuit is used to feed the analog inputs on the Arduino, thus making it very easy to detect a ‘hit’. An I2C 4-Digit 7 Segment display keeps score and displays the game title, while a strip of addressable RGB LEDs give player feedback and other vital gameplay information. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159959",
"author": "Pat Hartl (@pathartl)",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T03:07:47",
"content": "Very cool. I’d cover up that drywall in the back though. Tennis balls don’t weigh much but missing over time could do some damage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,342.647065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/3d-bubble-display/ | 3D Bubble Display | Marsh | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bubble display",
"glycerine",
"refraction",
"refractive index"
] | [Craig Shultz], a mechatronics grad student at Northwestern University, sent us a video of his group’s project from last winter:
a 3D bubble display
. We’ve seen some pretty impressive and innovative bubble displays around here—most recently the
60-tube RGB LED build
—but [Craig’s] is the first we’ve seen that adds some depth to the project.
For the most part, its construction is what you’d expect: an acrylic case enclosing the 4×4 arrangement of tubes, 16 valves 16 individually controlled solenoids, and some small air pumps; all driven by a PIC microcontroller. In the video, however, you’ll have to strain your eyes if you want to see the tubes, which is a clever design choice on [Craig’s] part to showcase the display’s depth. Each of the bubbles was visually separated by pairing glycerin with a tubing material that had a similar
index of refraction
, Pyrex. As a result, the tubes blend seamlessly into the fluid. Check out the video after the break. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159874",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T00:37:13",
"content": "Dat YouTube video stabilization",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1159887",
"author": "Vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2014-01-10T00:59:07",
"co... | 1,760,376,343.251601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/a-simple-and-dirty-bill-of-materials-and-stock-management-utility/ | A Simple (and Dirty) Bill Of Materials And Stock Management Utility | Mathieu Stephan | [
"internet hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Bill of materials",
"digikey",
"excel",
"limpkin",
"Visual Basic"
] | As many readers may already know, when I’m not featuring your projects or
working on the mooltipass
I try to make simple things that may be useful to electronics enthusiasts. My
latest creation is a simple bill of materials generation tool
, which can also do simple stock management. Unfortunately for Linux users, this utility is made using Visual Basic functions in an Excel file.
It works fairly simply: just enter your schematics’ components references in the excel sheet, along with the corresponding Digikey webpage address. Click on the “fetch” button and the script will automatically get all your component characteristics from the internet and tell you the component costs depending on the number of prototypes you want to make. Then click the “sort BoM” button and your BoM will automatically be sorted by component type and value. Another functionality allows you to check that all the components present in your BoM are also present on the (very simple) Kicad generated one. Finally, using another Excel sheet containing your current stock, the Bill of Materials will let you know if you have enough components for the assembly stage. A video of the tool in action is embedded after the break, and you can download the BoM template
here
(.XLSM file) and the corresponding stock file
there
(.XLSM file).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPLJ8kMP0Uo | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159806",
"author": "SYNTRONIKS",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T22:27:53",
"content": "He also uses this for the Easy-Phi project. It is OK in its current state and shows off some really skilled excel scripting and stuff",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,345.498996 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/self-balancing-robots-wobble-but-they-dont-fall-down/ | Self-Balancing Robots Wobble, But They Don’t Fall Down | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"IMU",
"robot",
"Self Balancing Robot"
] | [Trandi] can check ‘build a self-balancing robot’ off of his to-do list. Over a couple of weekends,
he built said robot, and, in his own words, managed not to over-design it
. It even kept the attention of his 2-year-old son for several minutes, and that’s always a plus.
He was originally going to re-purpose one of his son’s RC cars, but didn’t want to risk breaking it. Instead, he designed a triangular 3-D printed chassis to hold a motor and some cogs to fit both the motor shaft and some re-used Meccano wheels. [Trandi]’s design employs an
MPU 6050 6-DOF IMU
for the balancing act and is built on an Arduino Nano clone.
[Trandi] is controlling the motor with an
L293D
, which has built-in flyback diodes to minimize spikes. He found that the Nano clone was not powerful enough to handle everything, so he added an L7805CV voltage regulator. After the break, watch [Trandi]’s cute bot tool around on various types of terrain, with and without a payload.
Don’t have an IMU lying around? You don’t really need one to build a self-balancing bot, as
this IR-based lilliputian bot will demonstrate
.
[via
Dangerous Prototypes
] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159776",
"author": "Sharklasers",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T21:50:17",
"content": "is there a reason for temperature sensor bit of the code or is that just a leftover?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1159881",
"author"... | 1,760,376,345.418187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/fail-of-the-week-frying-fets-with-500ma/ | Fail Of The Week: Frying FETs With 500mA | Mike Szczys | [
"Fail of the Week",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"fail of the week",
"fet",
"mosfet",
"oscillate"
] | When [Simon] fried his 3A rated FET with just 500mA of current he wrote it off to an inability of the SOT23 package to dissipate the heat without a heatsink. For the next iteration of the project he upgraded to a 12A rated part. Luckily he decided to test the circuit one more time before sending his board off for fab. He threw
together this constant current load test
which led him to discover his failure.
The switching circuit, which was for
his home security system project
that we’ve seen at least twice, worked just fine up to 500mA. But when he drove it above that threshold the package quickly warmed up. It got so hot that it actually reflowed its solder joints! The problem has to do with oscillation, but even with further testing he couldn’t get the FET to reliably shut off all the way. Take a look at his fail write-up linked at the top and then let us know some possible remedies for the situation.
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. | 31 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159664",
"author": "popeiler",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T18:12:55",
"content": "Interesting writeup. One minor thing though- I highly recommend avoiding four-way junctions in schematics. Altium in particular has an issue where one of the four wires can be 0.00001 mils off grid from ... | 1,760,376,345.672455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/designing-simulating-and-testing-a-simple-radio-duty-cycling-protocol-for-contiki/ | Designing, Simulating And Testing A Simple Radio Duty-Cycling Protocol For Contiki | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"contiki",
"cooja",
"msp430",
"rdc"
] | A few days ago we featured [Marcus]’
Contiki port to the TI Launchpad
,
Contiki
being an open source operating system dedicated to the Internet of Things created by [Adam Dunkels] at the SICS in Sweden. Part of [Marcus]’ work involved designing a
simple radio duty-cycling protocol
that achieves 3% idle listening duty cycle while allowing for an average 65ms latency with no prior contact or synchronization.
As a few readers may already know, it takes quite a lot of power for a wireless device to listen/send data. A platform therefore needs to have an algorithm that minimizes power consumption while allowing a (regular) planned data transfer. After creating his protocol named SimpleRDC, [Marcus] first simulated it using the Cooja simulator in order to check that it could perform as desired. He then implemented a real life test and checked the protocol’s performance by sniffing the SPI lines connecting his MSP430 to the wireless module and by monitoring the platform power consumption with his oscilloscope and a shunt resistor. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159574",
"author": "Rey Jean-Philippe",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T15:13:06",
"content": "Great to see some Contiki news on Hackaday!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,345.098528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/a-transparent-7-segment-display/ | A Transparent 7-Segment Display | Marsh | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"7 segment",
"acrylic",
"edge-lit",
"transparent display"
] | Though [Connor] labels it as a work in progress, we’re pretty impressed with how polished his
transparent 7-segment display
looks. It’s also deceptively simple.
The build uses a stack of seven different acrylic panes, one in front of the other, each with a different segment engraved onto its face. The assembly of panes sits on a small mount which is placed over seven rows of LEDs, with 5 LEDs per row. [Connor] left an air gap between each of the seven individual acrylic panes to clearly distinguish which was lit and to match the separation of the LED rows. To display a number, he simply illuminates the appropriate LED rows, which scatter light across the engraved part without spilling over into another pane.
You can find a brief overview and some schematics on [Connor’s] website, and stick around for the video demonstration below. We’ve featured [Connor’s] work before; if you missed his LCD data transfer hack
you should check it out
!
[Thanks Thomas] | 40 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159489",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T12:20:30",
"content": "LIttle suggestion: Put a reflective surface in the borders of the acrylic. This will keep more light bouncing inside the acrylic and increase the brightness of the digits.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,345.052175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/09/oliver-the-programmable-cooking-robot/ | OliveR The Programmable Cooking Robot | James Hobson | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"cooking robot"
] | [Oak Robotics] is putting the finishing touches on their
programmable cooking robot named OliveR.
It’s not about to make you a souffle (but where did it get the milk?), but it does aim to take the boring parts out of cooking — namely the tedious stirring, adjusting temperatures and the timing of ingredients. While that does make it significantly less impressive than the original title suggests, the team has a blog running of
successful recipes
— They’ve made some excellent chicken curry, Korean beef, and even
Jambalaya!
The team is currently looking for beta testers, and while we’re not too sure what this even entails, you can certainly send them an email and find out! To see a demonstration of OliveR’s cooking skills, hang around after the break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv86zCZHSp0
OliveR is cool and all, but personally we prefer the
Wafflemeister3000
which can cook 5 waffles at a time in 3 minutes flat, for a whopping 90Wfl/h! | 46 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159406",
"author": "Hans",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T09:17:51",
"content": "There actually is a ‘Cooking-Robot’ on the market since the 1970s –https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermomix",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1159808",
... | 1,760,376,345.363912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/from-epaper-badge-to-weather-station/ | From EPaper Badge To Weather Station | Eric Evenchick | [
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"BADGEr",
"epaper",
"ereader",
"ohsummit",
"repaper",
"weather"
] | [Jeremy Blum] converted his 2013 Open Hardware Summit badge, also known as the BADGEr, into an
ePaper weather station
. We’ve looked at the 2013 OHS badge
in the past
, and the included
open source RePaper display
makes it an interesting platform to hack.
To fetch weather data, the badge is connected to a Raspberry Pi using an FTDI cable. A Python script uses the
Python Weather API
to poll for weather data. It then sends a series of commands to the BADGEr using
pySerial
which selects the correct image, and inserts the current weather data. Finally, a cronjob is used to run the script periodically, providing regular weather updates.
If you happen to have one of the badges, [Jeremy] has provided all of the files you’ll need to build your own weather station on
Github
. Otherwise, you can take a look at the RePaper project and
WyoLum’s eReader Arduino Library
to build your own ePaper project. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159434",
"author": "Ian Johnson",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T10:29:20",
"content": "No, It’s not a weather station. The badge is being used as a display for a embedded device which is accessing weather information online. Come on Engadget – read the pages you link to, not just the pa... | 1,760,376,345.144118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/a-blindingly-bright-larson-scanner/ | A Blindingly Bright Larson Scanner | Marsh | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"larson scanner"
] | This hulking monument to illumination is [DJJules’s] 6-foot-long
Ultimate Larson Scanner
. If you’re scratching your head in confusion, the Larson Scanner is the ever-popular scrolling LEDs
seen on KITT
(the car) from
Knight Rider
and
on Cylons
in
Battlestar Galactica
(1978), named after
the creator of the series
.
[DJJules’s] iteration consists of sixteen 10W LEDs, each mounted on a heat sink which bolt on to a 6′ long piece of angle aluminum sourced from a local hardware store. He used a basic MOSFET constant current driver for each LED, attaching the MOSFETS to the heat sink with 4-40 screws. Each LED module then connects to a TLC5940 LED driver breakout board from
Sparkfun
, which plugs into an Arduino Pro Mini.
Check out the Instructables page for the source code and other important details, including safely powering the build (the LEDs can draw around 1A each), then grab your sunglasses and stick around for a quick video below. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159200",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-01-09T00:05:37",
"content": "Holy snappin’ crap, mount that thing on a car!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1159206",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2014... | 1,760,376,345.277601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/a-tiny-clock-with-a-retro-display/ | A Tiny Clock With A Retro Display | Mathieu Stephan | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"16 segment display",
"clock",
"msp430"
] | After having ported Contiki to his TI Launchpad platform, [Marcus] was eager to do something with it. He therefore
built a simple clock
with a vintage
HPDL-1414
“smart four-character 16-segment alphanumeric display” and a msp430g2553.
The result that you can see above is powered over USB, includes a 3.3V LDO linear voltage regulator as well as a button, a LED, a crystal, and several passive components. Fortunately enough, the 5V-powered HPDL-1414 display accepts 3.3V logic at its inputs, avoiding the need for level translators.
The clock program is running on the ported Contiki 2.6 that you can find on his
Github repository
. [Marcus] is considering using a vibration motor to buzz every 20 minutes during work hours as a reminder for the 20-20-20 rule to battle eye fatigue: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. A video of the system in action is embedded after the break. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1159088",
"author": "notabena",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T21:05:59",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1159099",
"author": "zuul",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T21:24:21",
"content": "cool",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,376,345.20739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/3d-printering-making-a-thing-with-blender-part-ii/ | 3D Printering: Making A Thing With Blender, Part II | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"blender",
"mesh editing"
] | So you have a 3D printer and need to print something of your own design. That’s a problem if you don’t know how to create and edit 3D objects. In this post, we’re
continuing our previous misadventures with Blender
by making a ‘thing’ torn from a very old book on drafting.
Previously, we’ve made the same part in other 3D design packages. Here’s some links to those other ‘Making a Thing’ posts:
OpenSCAD
AutoCAD Part I
AutoCAD Part II
Blender Part I
We’ve already done half the work to make a ‘thing’ in Blender, so now it’s time to finish the job. Check out the rest of the tutorial below.
Our Thing
To the right is the ‘thing’ we’re making for all these 3D Printering tutorials. It’s taken out of the 4th edition of
Engineering Drawing
(French, 1929, p. 105). Yep, it’s an 85-year-old drawing with fractional inches. It serves our purpose, though: a template with which to make something with a 3D CAD package.
By the way, if anyone out there has a 1st edition of
Engineering Drawing
, I’d love to see if this object actually goes all the way back to the 1911 volume.
The Curse of Blender & What We’ve Done So Far
In
the first part of this tutorial
, I said using Blender to create a simple mechanical object like our ‘thing’ is akin to using a bulldozer to build a sandcastle. I’m still standing by that assessment. If you want to make precise mechanical parts,
don’t use Blender.
Blender is a tool for organic and sculptural forms. Want to print out a plastic tree? Blender is a great tool. Want to model some Greek and Roman statuaries? Blender is a great tool. Need a part for a mechanical device? Don’t use Blender. It’s not the right tool for the job.
In the first part of this tutorial, we took a look at the idea behind Blender – mesh editing – and how to interact with vertices, edges, and faces to make a thing. With all the introductory stuff out of the way, it’s time to finish the job.
More Building Of A Thing
To the right is where we left off with the last part of this tutorial. It’s basically just a washer, but the dimensions are correct for the thing we’re making. There are a few things we need to do before this ‘thing’ is done though:
Add the 3/8″ slot on this washer
Add the 2 3/4″ wide flange thingy
Add the 1 1/2″ wide flange
Build the mounting bracket with the countersunk hole
Not too bad, and we can do these piecemeal.
Adding the 3/8″ Slot
The first order of business is going into
object
mode and creating a cube with Add -> Mesh -> Cube on the top menu. With the rotate and scale commands on the right hand toolbar, manually set your cube to be 3/8″ in the X and Y axes, and 7/16″ in the Z axis. Then rotate it 45 degrees around the Z axis. You should end up with something like the pic to the left.
Using the
extrude
command (hotkey ‘E’), pull one face of the cube through our washer/cylinder. It doesn’t really matter how far, because now we’re going to do something amazing: Boolean operations.
By this point you should have two objects in your top right hand toolbar: A cube and a cylinder. Now we’re going to subtract the cube from the cylinder using a modifier.
Click on the little wrench icon seen above and select Add Modifier. Select Boolean and you’ll see something that looks like the pic to the right.
In Blender, you can do Boolean operations like Union, Subtract, and Intersect. There are, however, a few limitations. Each Boolean operation only divides up faces and edges, meaning you need to go in and manually delete all the extraneous edges after the operation. Also, the Subtract operation doesn’t put in the missing faces we’ll see once we subtract out the cube.
Subtract the cube from our cylinder. After deleting a whole bunch of faces and edges, and creating the ‘inside’ of our 3/8″ slot, we get something that looks like this:
It’s not perfect, but there it is. There are still a few holes in this mesh, but we can fix those later.
Adding The Flanges
Our thing has two flanges coming off the ‘washer with the slot’ we just made. To create the flange that’s 2 3/4″ wide, Add a cube mesh in
object
mode and play around with the Scale (hotkey ‘S’) and translate tools. The left hand toolbar will allow you to move and scale this cube into something resembling the larger flange on our ‘thing’. After that it’s a simple matter of doing another Boolean operation (this time ‘Union’) and making something that looks something like this:
That looks just about right for the first flange, but we’re missing the radii on a few corners. That’s not a problem, though, because the
Bevel tool
exists.
In Edit mode, select one of the outside corners of our new flange. Hit CTRL-B and you’ll be able to set the radius of the bevel with your mouse and the number of segments of the bevel with the scroll wheel. No, you can’t specify a radius, which is just a tiny part of what makes Blender terrible for mechanical design.
Now, extrude two faces of our cylinder out (we’ve completely given up on dimensional accuracy, if you haven’t noticed), and bevel two edges on your new extrusion. In the end you should have something that looks like this:
That’s close enough to the orthographic drawing of our ‘thing’. Yes, there are holes in the mesh but we can fix those later.
The other flange is easily constructed in the same manner as the first.
Putting that dome and counterbore in
The last bit of our ‘thing’ to build is the weird rounded part with the hole and counterbore up top. Start by extruding our second flange up the necessary amount. Next, create a cylinder in
object
mode and Boolean-ing the two together. After deleting the faces on the cylinder, you’ll end up with something like this:
There’s one thing left to do: put a 7/16″ hole through the faces we just deleted, and put a 7/8″ counterbore on that hole. Basically, we’re making another torus/washer-type object. Check out
the first part of this Blender tutorial
for instructions on how to do that.
Finishing off the second cylinder/counterbore, we could call this part somewhat complete. Here’s what we ended up with:
This isn’t to say this part is ready to head over to a printer, though: there are still a few holes in our mesh which will crash any slicing program. This can be fixed with
MeshLab
, but that’s a tutorial for another time.
Well that’s over with.
That’s how you make a ‘thing’ in Blender. It’s not pretty, but you can do it. Once again, I need to reiterate that Blender was the wrong tool for this job. If you’re making objects to put in a video game, Blender is a great tool. If you’re doing something that could be considered digital sculpture, Blender is a great tool. If you’re making something with straight lines, dimensional parts, and precise angles, you can do far better with one of a hundred different CAD packages.
Concerning next week’s tutorial, it’s a tossup between Solidworks or Sketchup. If you have a preference one way or another (or even a third option), leave a note in the comments. | 49 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158965",
"author": "ahb",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T18:31:48",
"content": "I really enjoy working with FreeCAD on a daily basis. It is Open-Source, has a nice Python API, is fully parametric and supports many formats for import and export.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,345.774002 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/mooshimeter-the-why-didnt-i-think-of-that-multimeter/ | Mooshimeter: The ‘Why Didn’t I Think Of That’ Multimeter | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Mooshimeter",
"multimeter"
] | Despite how useful multimeters are, there are a lot of limitations you just don’t think about because they’re the way electronic measurement has always been done. Want to measure voltage and current simultaneously? Better get two meters. Measuring something in a dangerous, inaccessible, or mobile place? You could rig up a camera system to show the meter’s display on a monitor, you know.
Mooshimeter
is the better way of doing things. It’s a multichannel multimeter that communicates with your cell phone over a Bluetooth connection. With two channels. the Mooshimeter makes it easy to graph voltage against current to plot a beautiful IV curve on your smart phone. Being a wireless multimeter means you can stick the Mooshi inside a robot and get instantaneous feedback of how hard you’re driving your motors.
Far from being a two-trick pony, the Mooshimeter is actually a pretty good multimeter by itself. It can handle 600V and 10A with 24 bits of resolution.
Here are the complete specs
. The Mooshimeter is
available for preorder here
for $100 USD. | 110 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158780",
"author": "arminb",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T15:04:24",
"content": "yes, yes, it’s ein Muschimeter",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1158953",
"author": "LK",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T18:20:53",
... | 1,760,376,346.070977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/ride-captain-ride-aboard-your-arduino-controlled-autopiloted-sailboat/ | Ride, Captain, Ride Aboard Your Arduino-Controlled Autopiloted Sailboat | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"gps hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"dc motor",
"hall effect sensor",
"motor controller",
"sailboat"
] | [Jack], a mechanical engineer, loom builder, and avid sailor wanted an autopilot system for his 1983 Robert Perry Nordic 40 sailboat with more modern capabilities than the one it came with. He knew a PC-based solution would work, but it was a bit out of reach. Once his son showed him an Arduino, though, he was on his way. He sallied forth and built
this Arduino-based autopilot system
for his sloop, the Wile E. Coyote.
He’s using two Arduino Megas. One is solely for the GPS, and the other controls everything else. [Jack]’s autopilot has three modes. In the one he calls knob steering, a potentiometer drives the existing hydraulic pump, which he controls with a
Polulu Qik serial DC motor controller
. In compass steering mode, a
Pololu IMU
locks in the heading to steer (HTS). GPS mode uses a predetermined waypoint, and sets the course to steer (CTS) to the same bearing as the waypoint.
[Jack]’s system also uses cross track error (XTE) correction to calculate a new HTS when necessary. He has fantastic documentation and several Fritzing and Arduino files available on
Dropbox
.
Autopilot sailboat rigs must be all the rage right now.
We just saw a different one
back in November.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nA6wo9PXls
[Thanks Jeremy] | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158687",
"author": "Terry R",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T12:06:11",
"content": "why would a mechanical engineer seemingly use a cardboard box as an enclosure?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1158760",
"author": "Polymat... | 1,760,376,345.837089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/08/clever-reed-switch-catches-thief/ | Clever Reed Switch Catches Thief | James Hobson | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"dslr",
"intervalometer",
"security system"
] | When [Abhimanyu Kumar] noticed money going missing from his small bookshop, he decided to
set up a little trap to catch the thief.
The problem was that the bookshop’s money was stored inside a cupboard in their house (back end of the shop), which meant that the culprit was likely one of their own employees. They already have a CCTV system installed in the actual store, and although he could simply add another camera in the house, [Abhimanyu] didn’t really want to do that.
He instead devised a simple security trap: dubbed the Jugaad Security System. In Hindi, Jugaad quite literally means “hack”. He added a small magnetic reed switch to the cupboard where the money is stored—well,
was
stored—which is then linked directly to an intervalometer. This then connects to an inconspicuous DSLR sitting on one of the work benches. He aimed the camera at the cupboard and, in case the lights are out when the system is tripped, set it to an extremely high ISO.
Three days later, during an especially busy day at the store, the camera snagged a few images of their would-be thief. Unfortunately, it was one of their own employees. A quick call to the police later and the thief confessed, returning the stolen money. Needless to say, they fired him. | 58 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158634",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T09:57:45",
"content": "Nailed one scumbag, nice work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1158637",
"author": "polossatik",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T10:01:11",
"c... | 1,760,376,345.929896 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/porting-contiki-to-the-ti-msp430-launchpad/ | Porting Contiki To The TI MSP430 Launchpad | Mathieu Stephan | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"6lowpan",
"contiki",
"launchpad",
"msp430"
] | For many years
Contiki
has been one of the main choices when it came to choosing an IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks stack (aka
6LoWPAN
). It is developed by a world-wide team of developers with contributions from Atmel, Cisco, ETH, etc… and
is open source
. As most platforms to which Contiki has been ported are quite expensive, [Marcus] decided to
bring the operating system to the TI Launchpad
. For our readers that don’t know, the latter is based on a msp430g2452/2553 microcontroller, which only have 256/512 bytes of RAM and 16kB of ROM. As a side note, Contiki typically requires 10k RAM and 30k ROM.
[Marcus] therefore had to remove several features from Contiki: queue-buffering, energy estimation and regrettably uIP. His test setup (shown above) uses the TI CC2500 radio that can be found for less than $2 on Aliexpress, for which he wrote radio drivers from scratch. He also coded his own radio duty-cicling layer, as the one included in Contiki was too big. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158563",
"author": "jpnorair",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T06:45:56",
"content": "The new MSP430F5529 launchpad is much better suited for running Contiki. Thingsquare seems to be partnering with TI, so if Contiki is what you want, then it seems like an easy decision to go with the la... | 1,760,376,346.318843 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/paintball-pistol-turned-sniper-rifle/ | Paintball Pistol Turned Sniper Rifle | James Hobson | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed paintball gun",
"paintball gun"
] | There’s a huge price discrepancy between paintball pistols and paintball sniper rifles. So the [Fresh-Prints-of-3D] decided to
print himself an sniper upgrade kit.
He started with the classic Tippman 98 Custom
pistol , which is a tried and true industry standard when it comes to reliable paintball guns. Using Sketchup he designed a side loading hopper adapter, a fixed stock, a magazine adapter, various brackets, and even a bipod fore-grip. He then printed the parts out at his local hackerspace; Innovatrix Labs, which is in Northeastern Pennsylvania. A Portabee 3D printer was used for some of the first prototypes but the final parts were all printed on a large MendleMax2 which has a build area large enough for the entire fixed stock!
The best part? He’s only been using SketchUp for a few months. Once the design and build is completely finalized he might release it under a CC license.
It just goes to show that 3D printers are really breaking down various markets of overpriced plastic components — 3D printers only print trinkets? Pfft.
[Via
Reddit
] | 43 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158460",
"author": "daler",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T03:28:43",
"content": "It looks nice, but I’m assuming he went with form over function. That long barrel doesn’t make it more accurate, and is going to be a PITA when moving through the woods.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,346.516198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/homemade-polariscope-is-super-easy-to-make/ | Homemade Polariscope Is Super Easy To Make | James Hobson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"lexan",
"polarized"
] | [Abhimanyu Kumar] was watching YouTube videos one day when he came across something called a Polariscope — After learning how it worked, he discovered you can
make your own using household items!
First off, what is a Polariscope? Well, put simply, it is a device that can show you the photoelasticity of a clear specimen, which can reveal the stress distribution in the material! And it is actually really easy to make one.
All you need to build your own is:
A polarized light source (any modern LCD monitor)
A transparent specimen (plastic cutlery, glass statues, plastic you can bend, etc)
A circular polarizing filter (the cheap 3D glasses you didn’t return at the theater)
Then just place the objects in the order shown in the diagram and start snapping some photos. This would be really cool for checking stress concentrations in a project — provided you are using some Lexan or acrylic! | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158407",
"author": "rj",
"timestamp": "2014-01-08T01:58:26",
"content": "Surely a circular polarizer wouldn’t actually work here? Circular polarizers don’t do anything visible to planar polarized light; it’s why you can see your cell phone while wearing the more expensive 3D glasse... | 1,760,376,346.258114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/controlling-cheap-awesome-christmas-lights/ | Controlling Cheap, Awesome Christmas Lights | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"christmas lights"
] | [James] was wandering around Walgreens after Christmas and found something very interesting – RGB LED Christmas lights that were individually addressable. At $6.50 for a strand of 15 lights,
he just had to buy a few and figure out the control protocol.
After all, who can turn down a big, cheap, controllable RGB LED strip?
The packaging for these lights – apparently manufactured by
BriteStar
– includes a ‘try me’ button that cycles through different light patterns. This button is what initially tipped [James] off to the fact the lights on this strand could be individually controllable. Opening up one of the lights, he found exactly what he wanted: an epoxy blob, two wires for power, and three wires for the signaling.
After checking out this light with a scope and logic analyzer, [James] realized there was a very, very simple protocol going on. Essentially, the entire string functioned as a gigantic shift register, taking the values for one light and pushing it down the string. In looking at the protocol, [James] also discovered] these lights support 16 levels of brightness. Yep, RGB LED Christmas Lights with PWM for under $7. Can’t beat that.
[James] wrote an Arduino library to control these strings and
put it up on Github
. While your local Walgreens has probably already hidden these lights away in the back of the store, it might be worth asking around to see if they have any left. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158269",
"author": "Pablo",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T21:13:40",
"content": "It looks like these are individually addressable single LEDs, rather than addressable RGB pixels. Just FYI before you raid Walgreens.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,346.429689 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/retrotechtacular-tube-amplifiers/ | Retrotechtacular: Tube Amplifiers | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"amplifier",
"film",
"reel",
"us army",
"vacuum tube"
] | It’s hard to beat this vintage reel for learning about
how vacuum tube amplifiers work
. It was put together by the US Army in 1963 (if we’re reading the MCMLXIII in the title slide correctly). If you have a basic understanding of electronics you’ll appreciate at least the first half of the video, but even the most learned of radio enthusiasts will find something of interest as they make their way through the 30-minute presentation.
The instruction begins with a description of how a carbon microphone works, how that is fed to a transformer, and then into the amplifier. The first stage of the tube amp is a voltage amplifier and you’ll get a very thorough demo of the input voltage swing and how that affects the output. We really like it that the reel discusses getting data from the tube manual, but also shows how to measure cut-off and saturation voltage for yourself. From there it’s off to the races with the different tube applications used to make class A, B, and C amplifiers. This quickly moves onto a discussion of the pros and cons of each amplifier type. See for yourself after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCr4Y7ypLA
[Thanks Elliot]
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
. | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158203",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T19:16:13",
"content": "Reminds me of a JFET amp.b.t.w. I was born in MCMLXIII.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1158275",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,346.58593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/delta-laser-engraver-uses-inkscape-for-g-code/ | Delta Laser Engraver Uses Inkscape For G-Code | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"diy laser cutter",
"inkscape"
] | [Z LeHericy] has a SeeMe CNC Rostock Max 3D printer, and a 2W WickedLasers Spyder Artic blue laser. Naturally,
he had to try strapping them together.
Most of our homemade
laser engravers featured here
use recycled DVD burner diodes, and while they certainly work, they leave a bit to be desired… Well, if you want more power, let us introduce the Class 4
Artic Spyder 2W blue laser
from WickedLasers — a company that sells super high-powered lasers to anyone who can afford them — because that’s a great idea!
Safety concerns aside — wear your darn laser goggles! This pair can etch wood and leather quite well. He’s been using it to etch celtic knots onto pieces of leather. To do this he’s used Inkscape to convert a .BMP of the knot into a vector image, and then using the G-Code tools included with Inkscape he can create a tool path for the printer.
The finished leather looks awesome — Stick around after the break to see the laser in action!
[Via
Hacked Gadgets
] | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1158040",
"author": "zaprodk",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T15:16:47",
"content": "Can anyone enlighten me, why anyone would use an blue laser for this purpose, and not an infrared laser? Not much of the 2 watts is absorbed, when using the blue light …",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,376,346.379003 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/acoustic-delay-line-memory/ | Acoustic Delay Line Memory | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"delay line",
"delay line memory",
"logic",
"memory"
] | Back in the olden days when computers were both analog and digital, making RAM was actually very hard. Without transistors, the only purely electronic means of building a memory system was vacuum tubes; It could have been done, but for any appreciable amount of RAM means an insane amount of tubes, power, and high failure rates.
One of the solutions for early RAM was something called a delay line. This device used ultrasonic transducers to send a pulse through a medium (usually mercury filled tubes heated to 40°C) and reads it out at the other end. The time between the pulse being sent and received is just enough to serve as a very large, small capacity RAM.
Heated tubes filled with hundreds of pounds of mercury isn’t something you’d want sitting around for a simple electronics project. You can, however,
build one out of a Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab
, a speaker, and a microphone.
[Joe] designed his delay line using an op-amp to amplify the train of acoustic pulses traveling through the air. A compactor picks up these pulses and sends them into a flip-flop. A decade counter and oscillator provide the timing of the pulses and a way to put each bit in the delay line. When a button on the electronics lab is pressed, a ‘tick’ is sent into the speaker where it travels across [Joe]’s basement, into the microphone, and back into the circuit.
The entire setup is able to store ten bits of information in the air, with the data conveniently visualized on an oscilloscope. It’s not a practical way to store data in any way, shape, or form, but it is an interesting peek into the world before digital everything.
Video below. | 48 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157922",
"author": "Louis Charles Bruckner",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T12:34:43",
"content": "If you can find an old 1980’s VHS VCR there are quartz pizo delay lines in some of the video PCB’S it is a long rectangular device usually has a black base with a blue top plastic case. I ... | 1,760,376,346.697051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/07/intel-edison-a-desktop-from-1998-in-an-sd-card/ | Intel Edison: A Desktop From 1998 In An SD Card | Brian Benchoff | [
"News"
] | [
"ces",
"intel",
"Intel Edison",
"Quark SoC"
] | According to the barrage of press releases hitting the Hackaday tip line, the Consumer Electronics Show is upon us with announcements of amazing new technologies such as jackets with a cell phone pocket, alarm clocks with Bluetooth, and iPhone cases with a kickstand. What an age to live in.
Among the more interesting announcements at CES
is the Intel Edison
, a tiny device that combines a dual core Intel SoC with ‘a Pentium instruction set’, WiFi and Bluetooth adapter, and some amount of storage into an SD card form factor. Apart from that, little else is known about the Intel Edison and the only other primary source for this announcement appears to be
Intel CEO [Brian Krzanich]’s CES keynote address.
The Edison will be able to run Linux, ‘other operating systems’, and will support
Wolfram
, the Mathematica-esque programming language where
everything
is a data type. Edison will also have an app store. Because that’s a thing now, apparently.
If you can’t wait for Edison to be released sometime in the middle of 2014, we’d suggest you check out the
Intel Galileo
. It’s an Arduino compatible board based on the same Quark SoC found in the Edison but in a significantly more convenient form factor. The Galileo doesn’t have on board WiFi or Bluetooth, but at least you don’t have to wait for the release of the Edison and the complications of a purpose-built breakout board for whatever application you’re thinking of. | 86 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157835",
"author": "ERROR_user_unknown",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T09:22:47",
"content": "is there pictures of the other side of this or am i just missing something obvious ?? I want to see the pin out configuration is it the same as real sd card ?? also i would be have been more im... | 1,760,376,347.470768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/keeping-the-family-off-the-net-with-an-undocumented-backdoor/ | Keeping The Family Off The Net With An Undocumented Backdoor | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"backdoor",
"reverse engineering",
"router",
"WAG200G"
] | When [Eloi] was home for Christmas, he faced one of the most difficult problems man has ever faced: his entire family, equipped with smartphones and laptops, siphoning all the Internet through a 1Mb/s connection. For any technically minded person, the fix for this problem is to limit the bandwith for all those Facebook and Twitter-heads, while leaving [Eloi]’s battlestation unaffected. [Eloi] had originally set up the Linksys WAG200G router in the family home a few years ago but had since forgotten the overly complex admin password. No worries, then, because apparently the WAG200G is open as wide as a barn door
with a completely undocumented backdoor
.
Without the password to the admin panel of the router, [Eloi] needed a way in. After pointing nmap at the router, he found an undocumented service running on port 32764. Googling this observation resulted in a lot of speculation, so the only option was to download the router’s firmware, look for the service, and figure out a way in.
[Eloi] eventually got a shell on the router and wrote a very short Python script to automate the process for all WAG200G routers. As for where this backdoor came from, it appears a SerComm device on the router is responsible. This means a whole bunch of routers with this specific SerComm module also have this backdoor, and we’d assume anything with a service running on port 32764 is suspect.
If you’re looking for a fix for this backdoor, your best bet is probably installing OpenWRT or Tomato. The
OpenWAG200 project
, an open firmware specifically designed for [Eloi]’s router, still has this vulnerability, though. | 33 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157761",
"author": "Chris Redskin Nakturnal",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T06:24:08",
"content": "wouldn’t it have made more sense to just do a 30-30-30 reset?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1158064",
"author": "Sasha",
... | 1,760,376,346.942527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/overhauling-an-ic-programmer/ | Overhauling An IC Programmer | Eric Evenchick | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"eprom",
"programmer",
"vintage",
"willem"
] | [NeXT] needed an EPROM programmer to work with chips from vintage computers. Starting with a low cost programmer, he built this
custom IC programmer
to handle all of his programming needs.
The device is based on the Willem 5.0e programmer. [NeXT] was not satisfied with the device, noting that it had to be carefully isolated from metal surfaces during use and required setting many annoying jumpers.
To solve these problems, he started off by dismantling the programmer. The IC sockets were moved to a daughter board, which could be mounted cleanly into the metal enclosure. Replacing the jumpers was a bit more complicated, a combination of toggle and rotary switches were chosen to make changing settings easier.
Soldering the boards together looks like it was not an easy task, with 200 solder joints needed to connect the sockets and switches. After debugging some shorts and dead connections, [NeXT] managed to finish the 1.5 year project right before his Christmas deadline. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157692",
"author": "M Lange (@errorad)",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T03:19:22",
"content": "Shiny!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1157709",
"author": "cantido",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T03:44:13",
"content": "Crazy am... | 1,760,376,346.869566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/green-light-lego-red-light-stop/ | Green Light LEGO, Red Light Stop | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"duct tape",
"led",
"lego",
"Technic"
] | Master LEGO craftsman [Baron von Brunk] had the same childhood passions as a lot of us—LEGO (obviously), Transformers, and Nintendo. But he also harbored a passion for traffic lights and road signs. His latest offering,
a fully functional LEGO traffic light
, is some pretty fantastic plastic. You might recall that we featured [Baron von Brunk]’s
LEGO mosaic lamps
a few weeks ago. This project is that one on steroids.
The body is made of 1700+ LEGO and Technic pieces. [Baron von Brunk] was kind enough to provide his LDD file, though he says it should be considered a rough guide to construction. The red, yellow, and green 1×1 areas are each lit with a
48-SMD LED floodlight bulb
. Colored lights are available, but he used the solid white variety for greater luminescence. The lights are driven by
a traffic light controller
typically used for model railroads.
[Baron von Brunk] ended up lining the inside with black 1x1s and metallic reflective duct tape to keep the light from leaking out of the masonry. He used some Technic bricks on the rear door to form hinges, and Technic pins to hold the LED lamps. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157679",
"author": "Z00111111",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T02:58:46",
"content": "That’s really pretty!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1157815",
"author": "kommune78",
"timestamp": "2014-01-07T08:31:20",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,346.987793 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/current-limiting-diode-use-and-tutorial/ | Current Limiting Diode Use And Tutorial | Todd Harrison | [
"LED Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"backlighting",
"constant current",
"current limiting diode",
"LCD backlight repair",
"repair"
] | Not that this happens often, but what do you do when faced with a repair where you don’t know the power source but you do know you have to drive LED backlighting? When faced with this dilemma [Eric Wasatonic’s] solution was to design for ambiguity. In this interesting hack repair [Eric] needed to
restore backlighting for an old car stereo LCD display
. First he guaranteed he was working with a DC power source by inserting a small full-wave bridge rectifier. Then knowing he needed 4 mA to power each LED for backlighting he used some 1978 vintage current limiting diodes designed to pass 2mA each regardless of voltage source, within limits of course.
Sure this is a simple hack repair but worthy of being included in anyone’s bag of tricks. Like most hacks there is always knowledge to be gained. [Eric]
shares a second video where he uses a curve tracer
and some datasheets to understand how these old parts actually tick. These old 1N5305 current limiting diode regulators are simply constructed from a JFET with an internal feedback resistor to its gate which maintains a fixed current output. To demonstrate the simplicity of such a component, [Eric] constructs a current limiting circuit using a JFET and feedback potentiometer then confirms the functionality on a curve tracer. His fabricated simulation circuit worked perfectly.
There was a little money to be made with this repair which is always an added bonus, and the recipient never reported back with any problems so the fix is assumed successful. You can watch the two videos linked after the break, plus it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what could have been done differently given the same circumstances. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157479",
"author": "SparkyGSX",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T21:27:21",
"content": "Instead of these exotic current limiting diodes, he could have used a current source or current sink consisting of an PNP or NPN transistor respectively, a (zener) diodes, and 2 resistors. It’s obviousl... | 1,760,376,347.051364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/come-build-the-hackaday-community/ | Hackaday: The Gathering | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"live event",
"los angeles",
"meetup",
"party"
] | 1/21/14 – Downtown LA
Come one, come all to a party with [Brian], me, and the Hackaday readers who live in the Los Angeles area. Tickets are free, as is the beer, food, t-shirts, stickers, and other swag which you won’t find out about unless you show up in person.
This is the first official live Hackaday meetup and is open to all ages. During the summer we talked about making Hackaday a virtual hackerspace, and this event is one part of that initiative. We’ll let you in on some stuff we’ve been planning, but in return I expect you to tell us your thoughts on how the Hackaday community can get bigger and better. We’re also using the attendance at this event to judge if we should host more live events (possibly in other cities too). So if you’re in LA
get your ticket now
and make sure your friends do the same!
UPDATE 3:
Get your name on the waiting list…
It took just over 24 hours to give away all 450 tickets. But never fear, you can still add your name to the waiting list by going to the link above. If anyone who already registered changes their mind they can release their ticket and it will be offered to whomever is on the top of the waiting list.
UPDATE 2:
Holy cow, we blew through 300 tickets. But we’ve released more. Get yours now, then keep reading below.
What a wild ride! My original plan was to offer Early Bird Tickets for one week, then release more if we needed them after that. But we blew through all 300 in about ten hours. This is going to be awesome. We really do want to pack the house so I’ve released the addition 150 “hold” tickets. There’s no difference in the tickets, but this really is all we have left so get yours NOW!
UPDATE 1:
Just over 3 hours and we’ve given away well over 100 tickets! | 83 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157309",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T18:09:49",
"content": "I’ve been hard at work on a little piece of custom hardware to show off at the party. Prototype is done, as is the firmware. I just need to move it from breadboard to a hunk of acrylic and do the sold... | 1,760,376,347.269248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/geek-group-fire-upate/ | Geek Group Fire Update | Adam Fabio | [
"News"
] | [
"fire",
"Soot",
"The Geek Group"
] | The Geek Group is in the process of cleaning up after their fire. Their small capacitor/spark gap room sustained the most damage, with the interior nearly completely incinerated, along with some structural damage to the walls and roof. The gap room was isolated from the much larger high voltage lab by red plastic welding curtain. The curtain was fire-retardant, but when it did finally burn, it was extremely sooty. With the curtain burning, soot covered the high voltage lab. The rest of the building escaped fire damage, but nearly all of it is covered in a fine layer of soot. The group has been and are attacking the soot problem head on, with shop-vacs, rags, and elbow grease. Several of their sponsors have also promised supplies to cover the remediation.
[Chris] and [Paul] have also been doing some sleuthing as to the root cause of the fire. While the cause will never be known beyond a shadow of a doubt, they have a pretty good idea of the chain of events. Gemini, the group’s 200 kVA Tesla coil had been run about 1/2 hour before smoke was detected. The fire was concentrated in Gemini’s spark gap room. Close inspection of the rotary spark gap showed that the stationary electrodes all seemed to have sustained a mechanical impact. It appears that either while the gap was running, or as it was spinning down, one of the flying electrodes moved enough to impact the stationary electrodes. These electrodes are 3/8″ and 1/2″ tungsten, and often glowed white-hot while the gap was in operation. One set screw held each electrode in to the 12″ rotor. The set screw of one flying electrode was found to be loose, and the electrode it retained probably impacted the stationary electrodes. It’s not a far leap to guess that hot metal from these impacts could have landed in the capacitor array, smoldered, and eventually caught aflame.
A single loose screw most likely caused the entire chain of events leading up to the fire. [Chris] and [Paul] had
observed the spark gap throwing out hot bits of metal even during normal operation
, and had planned an encapsulation box. However, disaster struck before it was built. This is not to say that The Geek Group operates an unsafe shop. The important thing here is that no one was hurt. Everyone in the building was evacuated quickly and safely.
A quick note about the comments – we know The Geek Group and [Chris] tend to be polarizing topics. However, we’d like to
at
try to keep the comments constructive. | 167 | 49 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157140",
"author": "Lucas van Beneden",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T15:05:20",
"content": "How much is the damage cost in total? Will they rebuild the geek group?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1157423",
"author": "rtkw... | 1,760,376,347.747549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/doggy-dvr-alarm-sensor/ | Doggy DVR Alarm Sensor | James Hobson | [
"home hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"dog collar hack",
"wireless dog collar"
] | [Martin] lives in a small village about 25km from his job in a major city. Occasionally his home alarm system will trip and he will rush home to make sure everything is okay. So he decided to buy a DVR system instead… and he turned his
dog’s collar into one of the main sensors.
As you may know, DVR’s also have sensor inputs in addition to loads of video cameras. These can be very handy to tell you other things that a small video clip will not, such as moisture, humidity, temperature etc. [Martin’s] DVR has 8 sensor inputs which he has configured to be the normally open type of sensors. By using a Sharp 817 optocoupler and a
Funky v3 wireless module
he made one of the sensor inputs wireless.
On the other end of the Funky wireless setup is a Kinder Surprise shell attached to his dog’s collar. In addition to the wireless module, it also contains a rudimentary 2-axis shock sensor consisting of a small spring that floats over a metal pin — when moved violently (when the dog is running about) it makes contact and [Martin’s] DVR alerts him by email and sends him pictures from the system.
He suspects he’ll be getting lots of pictures of the dog getting spooked by cats wandering by. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1157098",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T13:40:24",
"content": "“DVR’s also have sensor inputs” you mean the alarm contact closure. I have never seen a DVR with a sensor input, only 1 or more contact closures to trigger recording when the alarm goes off.What model... | 1,760,376,347.146432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/automatic-antenna-tuner/ | Automatic Antenna Tuner | Eric Evenchick | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antennas",
"arduino",
"RF",
"swr",
"tuning"
] | To get the best power transfer into an antenna, tuning is required. This process uses a load to match the transmission line to the antenna, which controls the standing wave ratio (SWR).
[k3ng] built his own
automatic antenna tuner
. First, it measures the SWR of the line by using a
tandem match coupler
. This device allows the forward and reflected signals on the line to be extracted. They are buffered and fed into an Arduino for sampling. Using this data, the device can calculate the SWR. The RF signal is also divided and sampled to measure frequency.
To automate tuning, an Arduino switches a bank of capacitors and inductors in and out of the circuit. By varying the load, it can find the ideal matching for the given antenna and frequency. Once it does, the settings are stored in EEPROM so that they can be recalled later.
After the break, check out a video of the tuner clicking its relays and matching a load.
[RichV] | 48 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156929",
"author": "Alan Yates",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T09:08:25",
"content": "Nice job. I like the coloured backlight too. You could compute and display the antenna impedance too, which might be quite useful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,348.192545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/the-most-beautiful-floppy-disk-jukebox-ever/ | The Most Beautiful Floppy Disk Jukebox Ever | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"floppy drive",
"jukebox",
"midi",
"stepper motor"
] | Playing music on floppy drives is something that has been done to death. [kiu]’s
RumbleRail is something else entirely.
Yes, it’s still a collection of floppy drives playing MIDI files, but the engineering and build quality that went into this build puts it in a class by itself.
Instead of the usual assemblage of wires, power cords, and circuits that accompany most musical floppy drive builds, [kiu]’s is an exercise in precision and modularity. Each of the eight floppy drives are connected to its own driver with an ATMega16 microcontroller on board. The microcontrollers in these driver boards receive orders from the command board over an I2C bus. Since everything on the RumbleRail is modular, and the fact [kiu] is using DIP switches to set the I2C address of each board, this build could theoretically be expanded to 127 voices, or 127 individual floppy drives each playing their part of a MIDI file.
The RumbleRail can also operate in a standalone mode without the need for a separate computer feeding it data. MIDI files can be loaded off an SD card by the main controller board, and decode them for the floppy drivers.
If you’d like to build your own RumbleRail, all the board files, schematics, and firmware are up on
[kiu]’s git
. There are, of course, a few videos below of the floppy jukebox in action. | 22 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156859",
"author": "supershwa",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T06:13:14",
"content": "Slicker than snot! Finally – something to do with these old floppy drives!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1156861",
"author": "notabena... | 1,760,376,347.329709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/wireless-thermostat/ | Wireless Thermostat | Kevin Darrah | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"home automation",
"magic mote",
"thermostat"
] | The thermostat in [Tom’s] 100-year-old house is two floors up from where the furnace is located, so a broken wire in the wall was just the catalyst needed to design a
wireless thermostat.
The system is based on a customized PCB [Tom] designed called the
Magic Mote
. The board contains an MSP430 microcontroller, a low power NRF24l01+ wireless transceiver, and various sensor interfaces. The wireless thermostat project uses two of these boards; one monitors the temperature on the second floor and the other controls the furnace in the basement.
The temperature sensing is done using a DHT22/AM2303 temperature and humidity sensor, which is a convenient choice, since the part is calibrated and handles the analog digital conversion; you just need one digital pin to retrieve the temp/humidity data. To control the furnace, [Tom] used the local 24VAC and a latching relay to drive the heater signal. The 24VAC also powers the board, so a door-bell transformer steps the voltage down to something more usable; about 11VAC or so, which is then rectified, filtered, and regulated down to what the control electronics like to see (3.3V/5V).
This project is actually still in the early stages of what [Tom] has planned; a network of sensors and appliances with a beagle bone base station. We can’t wait to see what’s next for this project; maybe we’ll even see some voice control, like in this epic
Siri controlled home automation project.
[via
Dangerous Prototypes
] | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156764",
"author": "Crump",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T03:23:54",
"content": "This is a solid hack. Problem encountered, problem solved. Case closed, why can’t you guys just leave it at that? Almost every post has some remark about how you’d rather have seen some piece accomplished o... | 1,760,376,347.54094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/hackaday-links-january-5-2014/ | Hackaday Links: January 5, 2014 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"aircrack",
"aircrack-ng",
"breadboarding",
"hackaday links",
"iphone",
"QI",
"Sega Master System",
"stm32",
"tube radio",
"vintage radio",
"wifi",
"wireless charging"
] | While we can’t condone the actual use of this device, [Husam]’s
portable WiFi jammer
is actually pretty cool. It uses a Raspberry Pi and an
Aircrack-ng
compatible dongle to spam the airwaves with deauth packets. The entire device is packaged in a neat box with an Arduino-controlled LCD and RGB LEDs. Check out an
imgur gallery here
.
You can pick up a wireless phone charger real cheap from any of the usual internet outlets, but try finding one that’s also a phone stand.
[Malcolm] created his own
. He used a Qi charger
from DealExtreme
and attached it to a 3D printed phone stand.
A while back, [John] noticed an old tube radio in an antique store. No, he didn’t replace the guts with a Raspberry Pi and an SD card full of MP3s.
He just brought it back to working condition.
After fixing the wiring (no ground cord on these old things), repairing the speaker cone, putting some new twine on the tuner and replacing the caps, [John] has himself a new old radio.
Here’s a video of the complete refurbishment
.
Here’s a Sega Master System (pretty much a Game Gear)
running on an STM32 dev board
. Also included are some ROMs for some classic games – Sonic the Hedgehog, Castle of Illusion, and The Lion King. If you have
this STM Discovery board
you can
grab the emulator right here
.
[Spencer] wanted a longer battery life in his iPhone, so he did what any engineering student would do:
he put another battery in parallel.
Breadboarding something with an AVR or MAX232?
Print out some of these stickers
and make sure you get the pinouts right. Thanks, [Marius]. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156700",
"author": "polossatik",
"timestamp": "2014-01-06T00:32:44",
"content": "just fyi: the cheapest for eu is at farnell, the STM32F429I is 32€ with shipping .",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1156701",
"author": "thevac... | 1,760,376,348.107456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/mustachioed-rover-simultaneously-manly-adorable/ | Mustachioed Rover Simultaneously Manly, Adorable | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Adafruit trinket",
"Arduino micro",
"autonomous rover",
"flexy bracelets",
"rover",
"ultrasonic distance sensor"
] | [Rick], an Adafruit learning system contributor, is excited by the implications of STEM’s reach into K-12 education. He was inspired to design
Red Rover, a low-cost robot
that can be easily replicated by anyone with access to a 3-D printer.
This adorable autonomous rover is based on the
adafruit Trinket microcontroller
, but will also rove under the power of an
Arduino micro
. It really is quite simple—the Trinket drives two continuous rotation micro servos and pretty much any flavor of rangefinder you like. [Rick] tested it with
Parallax PING)))
,
Maxbotix
, and
Grove
sensors, and they all worked just fine.
What’s truly awesome about Red Rover are the track treads. [Rick] initially experimented with
flexible filament
. While he had good results, it was not a cost-effective solution. What you see in the picture and the short video after the break are actually
rubber bracelets from Oriental Trading
.
The plastic part count comes in at seven, all of which can be printed together at once. [Rick]’s gallery includes both small and large chassis and three different servo mounts. The Red Rover guide builds on other adafruit guides for
Trinket general use
,
servo modification
, and
Trinket-specific servo control
.
Update
: Added [Rick]’s demo video after the break!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw5I9pKP2Uo&start=923]
https://vine.co/v/hP3qJW9AOMt
[thanks Phil] | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156589",
"author": "Matt Mastracci",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T21:03:49",
"content": "“micro servers” -> “micro servos”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1156678",
"author": "Kristina Panos",
"timestamp": "2014-0... | 1,760,376,347.972059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/image-sensor-for-filling-wine-bottles/ | Image Sensor For Filling Wine Bottles | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"bottling line",
"image sensor",
"linear CCD"
] | A wine bottling company in New Zealand got in touch with [Boz] to solve a problem. They needed a way to automatically determine if a wine bottle was filled or not.
What he came up with
is a very simple yet very effective fill level sensor that can scan thousands of bottles an hour.
There were a few design decisions that went into the construction of this wine bottle sensor. [Boz] could have used a VGA camera sensor, but given the speed of the bottling line (half a meter per second), pushing all those pixels to a computer and doing real-time image analysis would be difficult. [Boz] settled on a much simpler solution – a 1×128 linear CCD analog image sensor. With a PIC microcontroller, this allows the device to check multiple bottles per second, calculate if the bottle is full or not (or overfilled), and send a ‘pass’ or ‘reject’ signal to the rest of the line.
The rest of the assembly is fairly straightforward with an LED backlight providing the illumination for the CCD and a Bluetooth transmitter for checking out the machine’s settings. On the bottling line, the device has 99% accuracy for both red wines in dark bottles and whites in green bottles. You can take a gander of this device in action on a New Zealand bottling line below. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156511",
"author": "Hans Peter",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T18:45:05",
"content": "great work! I’ve been doing some work with that sensor chip to make a filament inspection system for 3d printers..just got stuck on the lens setup. Thanks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,347.90705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/retro-chaser-sign-lights-up-your-life/ | Retro Chaser Sign Lights Up Your Life | Adam Fabio | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Incandescent light bulb",
"las vegas",
"sign"
] | [Gnsart] builds props often used in the film industry. He’s created an amazing
retro Vegas style light chaser sign
. The sign was started as a job a few years ago. While [Gnsart] could handle the physical assembly, the cost of a mechanical light chaser pushed the project over budget. The sign project was cancelled back then, but he never forgot it.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. [Gnsart] happened upon the Arduino community. He realized that with an Arduino Uno and a commonly available relay board, he could finally build the sign. He started with some leftover cedar fence pickets. The pickets were glued up and then cut into an arrow shape. The holes for the lights were then laid out and drilled with a paddle bit. [Gnsart] wanted the wood to look a bit aged, so he created an ebonizing stain. 0000 steel wool, submerged and allowed to rust in vinegar for a few days, created a liquid which was perfect for the task. The solution is brushed on and removed just like stain, resulting in an aged wood. We’ve seen this technique used before with tea, stain, and other materials to achieve the desired effect.
[Gnsart] then built his edging. 22 gauge steel sheet metal was bent to fit the outline in a bending brake. The steel sheet was stapled to the wood, then spot welded to create one continuous piece. Finally, the light sockets were installed and wired up to the Arduino. [Gnsart] first experimented with mechanical relays, and while we love the sound, we’re not sure how long they’d last. He wisely decided to go with solid state relays for the final implementation. The result speaks for itself. LEDs are great – but there is just something about the warm glow of low-wattage incandescent lights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbCvZrJXJxM | 47 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156415",
"author": "peanutbutterjellytime",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T15:05:28",
"content": "I love this, relays aren’t a long term solution for this, but for people like us we’ll get enough clicks to satisfy ourselves.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,348.525816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/the-berkeley-tricorder-is-now-open-source/ | The Berkeley Tricorder Is Now Open Source! | James Hobson | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"berkeley tricorder",
"health monitor"
] | [Reza Naima] has just released the designs for his
Berkeley Tricorder
for the public to use. He’s been designing it since 2007 as his thesis work for his PhD, and since he’s done now (Congrats!), he decided to let it grow by making it open source!
We covered it almost 7 years ago now when
it was in its first prototype form
, and it has come a long way since then. The latest version features an electromyogram (EMG), an electrocardiograph (ECG), a bioimpedance spectrometer, a pulse oximeter, an accelerometer, and all the data is recorded to a micro SD card or sent via bluetooth to a tablet or smart phone for data visualization.
He’s released it in hopes that other researchers can utilize the hardware in their own research, hopefully springing up a community of people interested in non-invasive health monitoring. With any luck, the development of the Berkeley Tricorder will continue, and maybe some day, can truly live up to its name!
Unfortunately there’s no new video showing off the latest iteration, but we’ve attached the original video after the break, which gives a good narrative on the device by [Reza] himself. | 32 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156329",
"author": "Hadi",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T12:11:58",
"content": "bother to say what the fuck is Berkeley Tricoder?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1156585",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-01-... | 1,760,376,348.041233 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/05/testing-the-limits-of-home-pcb-etching/ | Testing The Limits Of Home PCB Etching | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"6502",
"homebrew",
"pcb",
"PCB etching",
"quinn dunki",
"veronica"
] | [Quinn Dunki]’s Veronica, a homebrew computer based on the 6502 CPU, is coming along quite nicely.
She’s just finished the input board
that gives Veronica inputs for a keyboard and two old Nintendo gamepads. [Quinn] is building this computer all by her lonesome, including etching all the PCBs. She’s gotten very, very good at etching her own boards, but this input board did inspire
a few facepalming moments
.
In an earlier post, [Quinn]
went over her PCB etching capabilities
. As demonstrated by the pic above, she’s able to print 16 mil traces with 5 mil separation. This is just about as good as you can get with homebrew PCBs, but it’s not without its problems.
[Quinn]
is using a photographic process
for her boards where two copies of a mask is printed on an acetate sheet, doubled up, and laid down on a pre-sensitized copper board. The requirement for two layers of toner was found by experience – with only one layer of toner blocking UV light, [Quinn] got some terrible pitting on her traces and ground planes.
Two photographic masks means the masks must be precisely aligned.
This example
shows what happens when the acetate sheets are ever so slightly misaligned. With a 5 mil gap between traces, [Quinn] needs to align the masks to within ±2.5 mils; difficult to do by eye, and very hard once you factor in flexing and clamping them down to the copper board.
Even when this process goes perfectly, [Quinn] is pushing the limits of a laser printer. When printing at 600 dpi, the pixels of the print are about 1.5 mils. While GIMP, printer drivers, and the printer itself have some fancy software to help with the interpolation, [Quinn] is still
seeing ‘bumps’ on the edges of perfectly aligned parts
. This is one of those things that really makes you step back and realize how amazing fabbing PCBs at home actually is.
With most of the hardware for Veronica out of the way, it’s just about time for [Quinn] to start programming her baby. We’re not expecting a full-blown operating system and compiler, but those NES gamepads are probably crying out for some use. | 70 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156228",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T09:12:02",
"content": "5 mil is seriously good even for pre-sensitised boards. Especially with doubled artworks, Quinn’s hands must be a lot steadier than mine to align those two artworks so precisely.I use dry film and single t... | 1,760,376,348.295021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/international-obfuscated-c-code-contest-winners-posted/ | International Obfuscated C Code Contest Winners Posted | Brian Benchoff | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"IOCCC",
"obfuscated c code",
"Obfuscated C Code Contest"
] | The International Obfuscated C Contest – the contest to create the most useful, useless, or unique program in absolutely unreadable C code –
has just posted the winners of the 2013 contest
.
Of the entries of note, a few really stand out. The pic at the top of this post, for instance, comes courtesy of
this submission
. It’s an iterative ray tracer stuck inside an infinite loop that, when left running overnight, is able to produce amazing renders.
An IOCCC contest wouldn’t be complete without some ASCII art C code, and
this entry fits the bill
. It’s
a Tetris painting tool
that creates images made out of tetronomoes. Each image is built up one line at a time from the bottom up, using Tetris’ lack of physics to create a picture out of un-cleared lines.
One of the most impressive entries for this (last?) year’s contest is
a tiny 8086 PC emulator/virtual machine
written in only 4043 bytes of code. It’s a fully functional 80s-era PC emulator that can run vintage copies of AutoCAD, Windows, Lotus 1-2-3, and SimCity.
All the submissions are awesome, but like any IOCCC contest, there aren’t actually any winners. Or they’re all winners. The Obfuscated rules aren’t very clear in that regard. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156287",
"author": "Ryan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T10:31:46",
"content": "“absolutely unreadable C code”I should probably enter some of my works",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1156362",
"author": "Kris Lee",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,348.342957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/ninja-machining-skills-produced-this-glow-plug-extruder/ | Ninja-Drillpress-Skills Produced This Glow Plug Extruder | James Hobson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"glow plug extruder"
] | Still looking to make your own 3D printer? Don’t have many tools or a big budget? Well, [Adam Kemp] has just the hack for you —
a DIY extruder that can be made with only a drill press and a few hand tools.
First, a little background. [Adam] loves the nitty gritty side of 3D printing, so he’s managed to build his own printer almost completely out of recycled parts from printers, scanners, etc. Unfortunately, there’s not much of an option when it comes to the extruder. Almost all designs online feature 3D printed parts. Not wanting to admit defeat, he came up with this clever
glow plug extruder design.
As you can imagine, it requires a lot of drilling, and it would be a heck of a lot easier on a mill — but that’s not the point here. He even goes into detail on how to hob the extruder feed wheel using nothing but a tap, a drill press, some skateboard bearings, and a few washers and nuts.
The entire guide is great, so if you want to feel like MacGyver for a few hours and you need a good extruder, try it out!
To see the extruder in action, stick around after the break.
[Via
Reddit
] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156092",
"author": "Rupin Chheda",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T03:54:37",
"content": "The design of this printer is unique. I suppose a design like this lends itself to a much larger print base? It appears to be that the x and y movements are not constricted by the frame.This extruder... | 1,760,376,348.386708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/build-a-simple-audio-amp/ | Build A Simple Audio Amp | Adam Fabio | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"amp",
"amplifier",
"audio amplifier",
"gaincard",
"gainclone",
"lm3886"
] | [Ynze] has built an
audio amplifier that looks and sounds great
. His amplifier uses a National Instruments (now TI) LM3886 Overture series 68 Watt power amp. The LM3886 places [Ynze’s] amp squarely in the “Gainclone” catagory.
Gainclone or Chipamp
are terms long used by the DIY community to describe audio amps based upon highly integrated semiconductor amplifiers. The Gainclone name stems from the original Gaincard audio amplifier sold by 47 labs. The Gaincard used less than $100 USD of parts when it was introduced in 1999. It sounded good enough to command a $3300 USD price tag on the audiophile market. The low parts count and simple construction spawned the audio DIY community to build their own versions of the Gaincard. Hundreds of variants exist now, and wading through the different versions can be a bit of a daunting task. [Ynze] found a basic design that works, and built from there.
One of the interesting things about [Ynze’s] amp, as well as many of the Gainclones, is the fact that they use no circuit board. All wiring is done point to point. resistors are soldered directly to the pins of the amplifier chip. This can be some tricky soldering for beginners, but several PCB kits are available. [Ynze] built his amp in two cases. One case holds the power supply, and the other contains the amplifier itself. [Ynze] is using a large toroid transformer to drop his local 230V mains down to +25V and -25V. The amplifier circuit itself is simple – a few discrete components surround the LM3886 and it’s heat sink. [Ynze] also did some very nice carpentry work on his wood chassis. The resulting amp looks like it’s right out of the 1960’s – but hides 1990’s electronics inside. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1156050",
"author": "bryan",
"timestamp": "2014-01-05T02:29:43",
"content": "for more info, go over to diyaudio.comthere is a forum devoted entirely to chip-amps.while the CA’s are nice little amps, this is hardly a ‘hack’ anymore. but then, I bet there are many who have not heard ... | 1,760,376,348.440942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/interfacing-with-the-htc-desire-display-and-its-touch-panel/ | Interfacing With The HTC Desire Display And Its Touch Panel | Mathieu Stephan | [
"contests",
"hardware"
] | [
"oled",
"rgb565",
"stm32f429",
"touch screen"
] | Part of [Linas]’ submission to last year’s Cypress Smarter Life Challenge involved
using the HTC Desire display and its touch screen
. This particular phone includes a full-color
active-matrix OLED
(AMOLED) display that has a 3.7″ diagonal and a 480×800 resolution, resulting in a 252ppi pixel density. Using a MSO2024B oscilloscope, [Linas] originally started his adventure with the touchscreen by sniffing the I2C signals. As some math was required to extract the data, he later found the HTC Desire source code and included it on his STM32F429 (so much for reverse engineering!).
After spending many hours searching for the AMOLED display and controller datasheets, [Linas] resorted to pay a company to get the resources he needed. He produced a custom-made PCB to provide the display with the required voltages, as well as offering a 0.1″ connector to interface with it. A RGB565 interface is used to communicate with the screen so only 65k out of the 16 million colors are used. You may download all the program files and datasheets in [Linas] write-up. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155847",
"author": "daryldee",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T21:36:39",
"content": "Good Job!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1155890",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T23:02:46",
"content": "Unfortunately t... | 1,760,376,348.746676 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/a-guitar-from-an-old-tin-box/ | A Guitar From An Old Tin Box | Adam Fabio | [
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"cigar box guitar",
"guitar",
"instrument",
"luthier",
"music",
"tymkrs"
] | [Atdiy and Whisker], collectively known as [The Tymkrs] have been busy honing their luthier skills. They’ve created a 10 part YouTube series about the construction of their
new cigar box guitar
. Instead of a cigar box though, they’ve substituted a 1920’s tin cigarette box. The Omar Cigarette company gave “Project Omar” it’s name. Like [Tymkrs]
previous guitar
, Omar is a three string affair. The neck was cut from Black Palm, which really shined when polished with a mixture of orange oil and beeswax. They also threw in a couple of new tricks on this build. Omar is an electric guitar, with a pickup custom wound by [
Bob Harrison
].
Omar also has frets, which creates a whole new set of complications. Frets are generally installed by cutting slits in the guitar neck with a fret saw. Rather than buy a new tool, [Tymkrs] created a simple jig for their mini table saw. The jig held the guitar neck perpendicular with the saw blade. This made quick work of the many fret slits to be cut. Installed frets must also be dressed and leveled, which is a time-consuming process.
The tin cigarette box also created a new set of problems. The thin tin proved to be a bit on the weak side when the strings were tightened down. A bit too much pressure on the box while playing would cause notes to bend, much like the
tremolo or whammy bar
on a standard electric guitar. [Tymkrs] were able to counteract this by adding bracing inside, and a couple of black palm braces to the back of the box.
Hum was also a problem. When [Tymkrs] first plugged in, they found they had more 60Hz mains hum than signal from their strings. Omar uses a classic
single coil guitar pickup
. Single coils will pick up noise from any magnetic field, including the field created by the studio electrical system. A
humbucking pickup
uses two coils to counteract this effect. Humbuckers also have a slightly different tone than single coils. [Tymkrs] wanted to stick with their single coil tone, so they counteracted the hum by raising the pickup closer to the strings. Higher pickups receive more signal from the strings, so this is basically a free signal to noise ratio improvement. They also grounded the entire tin box, along with Omar’s metal tail stock. The final build sounds great, as evidenced by the jam session toward the end of Video 10. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155780",
"author": "vpoko",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T19:50:48",
"content": "That’s pretty cool. I’ve seen a few homemade guitars, but it’s usually just the bodies that are homemade, the neck being purchased.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,376,348.596615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/frans-leds-nixies-and-vfds/ | [Fran]’s LEDs, Nixies, And VFDs. | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"classic",
"led",
"nixie",
"vfd",
"vintage"
] | With a love of blinky and glowey things, [Fran] has collected a lot of electronic display devices over the years. Now she’s doing a few teardowns and tutorials on some of her (and our) favorite parts:
LEDs
and
VFD and Nixie tubes
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that someone with
hardware from a Saturn V flight computer
also has a whole lot of vintage components, but we’re just surprised at how complete [Fran]’s collection is. She has one of the very first commercial LEDs ever made. It’s a very tiny red LED made by Monsanto (yes,
that
company) packaged in a very odd lead-and-cup package.
Also in her LED collection is a strange Western Electric part that’s green, but not the green you expect from an LED. This LED is more of an emerald color – not
this color
, but more like the green you get with a CMYK process. It would be really cool to see one of these put in a package with red, green, and blue LED, and could have some interesting applications considering the color space of an RGB LED.
Apart from her LEDs, [Fran] also has a huge collection of VFD and Nixie tubes. Despite the beliefs of eBay sellers, these two technologies are not the same: VFDs are true vacuum tubes with a phosphorescent coating and work something like a CRT turned inside out. Nixies, on the other hand, are filled with a gas (usually neon) that turns to plasma when current flows through one of the digits. [Fran] has a ton of VFDs and Nixies – mostly military surplus – and sent a few over to [Dave Jones] for him to fool around with.
It’s all very cool stuff and a great lead-in to what we hear [Fran] will be looking at next: electroluminescent displays found in the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Videos below. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155617",
"author": "tintin",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T16:37:27",
"content": "“When you’re feeling down, and life seems pointless, happiness is a ten-pound bag of seven-segment LEDs.”Oh gosh I love it and also makes me think how weird it might seem for a non-LED lover ah ah! Will lo... | 1,760,376,349.158217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/recliner-sofa-given-the-power-of-the-pi/ | Recliner Sofa Given The Power Of The Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"recliner",
"relay",
"sofa"
] | If you go to buy a sofa these days you’ll not only be greeted with the option of one or more reclining positions, but a fully modern unit comes with motorized reclining. That simply wasn’t convenient enough for [Nicki] and [Kevin] who wanted to control the feature from a smartphone rather than a physical interface (buttons) on the side of the furniture. What resulted is the PiSofa,
a Raspberry Pi connected to the furniture’s electronics
with the help of a relay board.
This is most certainly a hack, but no doubt one with a lot of finesse. Check out that white PCB. That’s right, it’s a factory spun board to keep things nice and neat. They went with one of our favorite tricks by housing everything inside of a food storage container. After some Ruby coding the Pi now has complete control of the sofa. We’re not overstating this. It literally is the only way to control it because the original buttons no longer work. But that’s okay, turns out not only does it work with their smartphones, but with a [Kevin’s] Pebble watch as well.
We can’t think of any past hacks that specifically targeted the couch. But here’s
a hammock that you can drive down the street
. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155470",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T13:02:51",
"content": "Because reaching down to control the seat that you are already sitting on was waaaay too easy.We need electronics…lots of it.Kudos on the puzzling yet obviously successful project.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,376,349.095549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/04/building-a-raspberry-pi-digital-photo-frame/ | Building A Raspberry PI Digital Photo Frame | Kevin Darrah | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"photo frame",
"picture frame",
"raspberry pi"
] | Digital photo frames aren’t very interesting on their own these days, but building one with a Raspberry Pi and strapping it with a bunch of useful features just might motivate you to check out this tutorial on building a
‘living’ digital photo frame.
This is [Samuel’s] first project with the Raspberry Pi, so he decided to build a digital photo frame that has the ability to download random pictures from his Flicker account and display them in a slideshow format. With all that extra IO on the Raspi, it was easy to incorporate a status LED and PIR sensor. When motion is detected by the PIR sensor, the photo frame is enabled; after 60 seconds of no movement, the photo frame is disabled by turning off the monitor port.
We love finding detailed write-ups like this because there is so much useful information in here like using the Flicker API, GPIO control, image handling, how to configure scripts to run on boot-up, and even some great troubleshooting code. If you’d rather ditch the Raspi altogether and take things down a few levels, check out this
PIC based 100% DIY digital picture frame. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155486",
"author": "ameyring",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T13:23:50",
"content": "Nice write-up! Even if I don’t so this exact project, it’ll give me pointers to websites like ladyada’s on new things to try!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,376,349.260057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/03/arcade-briefcase-the-briefcade/ | Arcade Briefcase (the Briefcade) | James Hobson | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arcade machine",
"briefcade",
"PiMame"
] | [Travis Reynolds] is part of an arcade club at work — the only problem? He’s the only one with an arcade machine, so they always end up at his place. So he decided to
make his own portable, arcade briefcase
to take to the office.
It all started with a quick trip to Goodwill where he found a beautiful maroon briefcase from the 80’s, for only $5! He then took apart a spare LCD monitor he had sitting around, and it worked incredibly well in his favor. He was able to reuse the LCD’s internal mounting brackets to secure it to the briefcase, and the video cables were just long enough to reach the Raspberry Pi.
The next problem he faced was the joystick height. He picked a Sanwa style joystick which is fairly small, but even that was too tall for the briefcase. So unfortunately, he needs to remove the ball of the joystick before closing the case. After testing out the proposed button layout, he cut a plywood mounting plate to hold everything in place. A bit of black spray paint later plus a power connector through the side of the case, and it’s complete!
He’s running Shea Silverman’s PiMame, which has an easy to use menu, quick setup, and great support. It’s an awesome project, and very well documented in case you’re itching to do something similar — I know we are!
Of course, if you have the space,
a coffee table arcade machine is pretty sweet too…
[Thanks Brendan!] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155168",
"author": "mrasmus",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T06:30:29",
"content": "I’d encourage him to take a look at the Link from Phreak Mods –http://www.phreakmods.com/products/the-linkIt’s a detachable joystick shaft that replaces a JLF’s shaft with a two-part, springed-collar-secu... | 1,760,376,348.926583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/03/key-cutting-with-a-cnc-mill/ | Key Cutting With A CNC Mill | James Hobson | [
"lockpicking hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"key",
"key cutting",
"key milling",
"schlage key"
] | Keys cost like what, $2 to copy at a locksmith? But where’s the fun in that? Here’s an easy way
to cut your own keys using a CNC mill!
[Bolsterman] now “
works”
for a real estate company that rents out various properties. Whenever someone moves out, the locks need to be changed ASAP. They use Schlage locks, which can be re-keyed to any pin combination. New keys are typically cut with a punch or a key cutting machine — he actually had one years ago, but got rid of it. Not wanting to buy a new one for his new job at the real estate company, he decided to see how hard it would be to turn his small desktop CNC into his own personal key cutting machine.
All it took for [Bolsterman] to turn his mill into a key cutting machine was a 3/8th 90° countersink bit with the end ground to a flat approximately 0.055″ across (0.035″ is the width of a factory key, but a bit of leeway makes it easier to make the key). Then you simply zero the mill off of the shoulder of the key, and using the handy Schlage pin chart (included in the original link), cut the grooves!
To automate all of this, [Torrie Fischer] created a python script for generating the GCode for keys based on [Bolsterman’s] technique — it’s hosted over at
Noisebridge’s Wiki
— check it out!
But if all that seems like too much effort, you could just
print a new key instead… | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "1155049",
"author": "Willy Doyle",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T04:02:37",
"content": "I’m not sure where you’ve been buying keys, but the hardware store on the island where I live is notoriously expensive and I’ve never paid more than 75¢ for a standard key or $1 for the fancy brass ve... | 1,760,376,349.326725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/03/phototransistor-based-eye-tracking/ | PhotoTransistor Based Eye-Tracking | Kevin Darrah | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"eye",
"eye tracking",
"mouse"
] | The applications of eye-tracking devices are endless, which is why we always get excited to see new techniques in measuring the absolute position of the human eye. Cornell students [Michael and John] took on an interesting approach for their final project and designed a
phototransistor based eye-tracking system.
We can definitely see the potential of this project, but for their first prototype, the system relies on both eye-tracking and head movement to fully control a mouse pointer. An end-product design was in mind, so the system consists of both a pair of custom 3D printed glasses and a wireless receiver; thus avoiding the need to be tethered to the computer under control . The horizontal position of the mouse pointer is controlled via the infrared eye tracking mechanism, consisting of an Infrared LED positioned above the eye and two phototransistors located on each side of the eye. The measured analog data from the phototransistors determine the eye’s horizontal position. The vertical movement of the mouse pointer is controlled with the help of a 3-axis gyroscope mounted to the glasses. The effectiveness of a simple infrared LED/phototransistor to detect eye movement is impressive, because similar projects we’ve seen have
been camera based
. We understand how final project deadlines can be, so we hope [Michael and John] continue past the deadline with this one. It would be great to see if the absolute position (horizontal and vertical) of the eye can be tracked entirely with the phototransistor technique. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "1154914",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"timestamp": "2014-01-04T01:31:57",
"content": "Since they’ve included a “3-axis” gyro there, why not use it for both vertical and horizontal positioning of the mouse cursor? And use the IR eye tracker for other stuff like enabling the movement o... | 1,760,376,349.209232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/03/build-an-audio-spectrum-analyzer-the-analog-way/ | Build An Audio Spectrum Analyzer The Analog Way | Adam Fabio | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"audio",
"classic",
"spectrum analyzer"
] | [Ryan] wanted a spectrum analyzer for his audio equipment. Rather than grab a micro,
he did it the analog way
. [Ryan] designed a 10 band audio spectrum analyzer. This means that he needs 10 band-pass filters. As the name implies, a
band-pass filter
will only allow signals with frequency of a selected band to pass. Signals with frequency above or below the filter’s passband will be attenuated. The band-pass itself is constructed from a high pass and a low pass filter. [Ryan] used simple resistor capacitor (RC) filters to implement his design.
All those discrete components would quickly attenuate [Ryan’s] input signal, so each stage uses two op-amps. The first stage is a buffer for each band. The second op-amp, located after the band-pass filters, is configured as a
non-inverting amplifier
. These amplifiers boost the individual band signals before they leave the board. [Ryan] even added an “energy filler” mode. In normal mode, the analyzer’s output will exactly follow the input signal. In “energy filler” (AKA peak detect) mode, the output will display the signal peaks, with a slow decay down to the input signal. The energy filler mode is created by using an n-channel FET to store charge in an electrolytic capacitor.
Have we mentioned that for 10 bands, all this circuitry had to be built 10 times? Not to mention input buffering circuitry. With all this done, [Ryan] still has to build the output portion of the analyzer: 160 blue LEDs and their associated drive circuitry. Going “all analog” may seem crazy in this day and age of high-speed micro controllers and FFTs, but the simple fact is that these circuits work, and work well. The only thing to fear is perf board solder shorts. We think debugging those is half the fun. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "1154721",
"author": "Code Asm",
"timestamp": "2014-01-03T21:10:02",
"content": "I wonder if this is the best (cheap also) way to do this. because I need to rework his notes (all images) to make a schematic again to make my own. anyone suggestions ?",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,376,349.382103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2014/01/03/3d-printering-making-a-thing-in-blender-part-i/ | 3D Printering: Making A Thing In Blender, Part I | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"3d printing",
"blender",
"cad"
] | In case you weren’t aware, having a 3D printer is nothing like owning a real-life Star Trek replicator. For one, replicators are usually found on Federation starships and not hype trains. Secondly, the details of how replicated objects are designed in the 24th century is an issue completely left unexplored by TNG, and DS9, and only a minor plot point in a few
Voyager
episodes. Of the most likely possibilities, though, it appears replicated objects are either initially created by ‘scanning’ them with a teleporter, or commanding the ship’s computer to conjure something out of the hologrid.
No, with your own 3D printer, if you want a unique object you actually have to design it yourself. Without a holodeck. Using your
hands
to move a
mouse
and
keyboard.
Savages.
This series of ‘Making a Thing’ tutorials aims to fix that. With this post, we’re taking a look at
Blender
, an amazing 3D modeling and animation package.
Because we still haven’t figured out the best way to combine multiple blog posts together as a single resource − we’re working on that, though − here’s the links to the previous “Making a Thing” posts:
OpenSCAD
AutoCAD Part I
AutoCAD Part II
This list is sure to grow thanks to your suggestions on what 3D modeling software to feature, but for now let’s make a thing in Blender.
Our Thing
To the right is the part we’ll be designing in Blender. Just like the OpenSCAD and AutoCAD tutorials, we’re using the same object, a weird switch base thing taken from a 90-year-old book on drafting. You can click to embiggen that.
A Word About Blender
Blender is designed as a 3D animation suite. You know the old mid-90s Pixar short films? You can make those with Blender easily. Using Blender to design a small object to send to a 3D printer is like using a bulldozer to build a sand castle. You can do it, but it’s overkill.
Ideally, Blender should be used for objects that aren’t mechanical in nature. If you’re designing a gearbox for an RC car, don’t use Blender. If you’re making a replica of the
Antikythera mechanism
, don’t use Blender. If, however, you’re designing something more sculptural – a Pietà, for instance – Blender is a great tool.
Despite Blender being complete overkill for this simple part, and the fact Blender isn’t well suited for designing mechanical parts anyway, a lot of people asked for a Blender tutorial. Who am I to argue with the commentors on Hackaday?
Starting Up
Installing Blender is left as an exercise to the reader. Do that
here
. When you first start Blender you’ll see the following screen that includes a cube, a camera (the pyramid-looking thing), and lamp. This is the default starting screen and we don’t need any of these objects. On your right hand toolbar, go to your Scene tab (at the top of the toolbar), right-click the cube, camera, and lamp, and delete them.
Meshes
Now that we have a blank canvas, we can start designing our part. Since this part of this tutorial is already halfway done, we’re only going to design the ‘washer’ part of our thing – the circle with a 3/8″ slot.
Instead of editing solids like OpenSCAD and AutoCAD, Blender does things entirely differently. It uses
meshes
,
or collections of vertices (points in 3D space), edges (lines between two vertices), and faces (polygons made of edges) to define an object. We can start building our thing by making a cylinder mesh. From the top menu bar, select Add -> Mesh -> Cylinder and left click. A cylinder will appear at coordinates 0,0,0 in your scene.
After you’ve done this, you’ll see an ‘Add Cylinder’ window on your left hand toolbar. This window allows you to edit the number of vertices, the radius, and the depth of the cylinder. Now is a good of a time as any to start editing our part, so make the radius of the cylinder 1.1875 (one half of the 2 3/8″ diameter of our part), and the depth 0.4375.
By the way, yes, I am regretting using a part from a 100-year-old drafting textbook right about now.
Here’s what we end up with:
That’s making a very primitive object in Blender. To make anything useful, though, we need to go into
edit
mode.
At the bottom of your Blender window, you’ll find a menu that will change how you can interact with Blender. Right now we’re in Object mode, which allows for the creation of meshes, surfaces, cameras, and lamps. To edit our object we need to be in…. Edit mode. Click on the little pull-down menu and change over. Doing this allows us to edit all the vertices, edges, and faces of our object. Here’s the cylinder we just created with all these selected:
Hit the ‘A’ key on your keyboard to deselect everything. Now the cylinder is gray.
Now we need to put a hole in this part of our thing. If we were modeling with solids, we would simply create another cylinder, smaller than the one we have now, and subtract it from our current model. We’re not working with solids, though; we need to create the faces of our objects without Boolean operations.
To create the hole in this part of our thing, select the top face of the cylinder and with the ALT+F keyboard combo, select inset faces with the tool tip pop up thingy. Insetting a face allows us to create a new top and bottom for this cylinder that will correspond to the exact sized hole we need.
When you enable the Inset Faces command, the size of the hole you’re creating is dependant on how far you move your mouse; not great for something we’re creating from precise measurements. On the left hand toolbar, though, you can enter the thickness we want.
Here’s how the math goes, if you’re wondering. The ‘cylinder’ of our part is 2 3/8″ in diameter, and we want a 1″ diameter hole in the middle. Subtract 1 inch from 2.375 and you get 1.375. Since the thickness of this face is in reality a radius, divide 1.375 by two and you’ll get the number we want. I truly hate decimal inches.
After deleting the top part of our hole, flip the part over in Blender and do the same thing to the other circular face of our part. You’ll end up with something like this:
Now all we need to do is join up the top and bottom faces.
On the toolbar where you selected Edit Mode, you’ll see a set of three buttons. One is a cube with a vertex highlighted, one is a cube with an edge selected, and the other is a cube with a face selected. Any ideas what these buttons do?
Instead of individually selecting each of these edges on the inside of our part and creating 36 individual faces, we’re going to do something much simpler. Holding down the ALT key, select one of the inside edges with the right mouse button. This enables
edge loop selection
. Now, on the mesh tools toolbar (left side), hit
Extrude
and press the ‘Z’ key on your keyboard to lock your mouse input to one axis of movement.
Again on the right toolbar, you’ll see a trio of boxes labeled ‘Vector’. This is how far Blender will extrude our…. extrusion in the X, Y, and Z axis. We want to extrude this edge 7/16″ (or 0.4375 decimal inches in the negative Z direction. That’s easy enough.
Here’s what we end up with when that’s done
. Yes, it took me one thousand words to describe how to create a washer in Blender.
So what did you just learn?
As far as the creation of our ‘thing’ in Blender, we didn’t get very far. There’s still flanges and holes and round overs to do, but this is only part one of this Blender tutorial. Hopefully this served as a good introduction to Blender’s meshes and editing those mesh’s faces and edges.
See you here again next week! | 52 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "1154591",
"author": "camerin",
"timestamp": "2014-01-03T18:32:53",
"content": "One time i designed a part in blender… then i realized that the tool is about as user friendly as herpes. It can work if you know the ~1,000,000 hot keys and really only want it to look right. I concur th... | 1,760,376,349.484749 |
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