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https://hackaday.com/2013/04/12/horribly-complicated-electric-guitar-keyboard/ | Horribly Complicated Electric Guitar Keyboard | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"guitar",
"keyboard",
"midi",
"relay",
"usb"
] | Gutarist, hacker, and mustache enthusiast [David Neevel] brought together way too many pieces of hardware in order to
use his electric guitar as a computer keyboard
.
So let’s dig into the house of cards he built for the project. It starts off with the guitar which has been fitted with an additional pickup to interface with a Roland GR-33 synthesizer pedal. That outputs a MIDI signal, which many hackers would have connected to the computer and parsed with a simple script. But not [David], he connected it to an Arduino via an optisolator. Well that’s not too ridiculous, right? Don’t you think he’ll just parse the MIDI signals and push them to the computer via the Arduino’s USB port? Wrong! He translates the MIDI signals into combinations for a big relay board which is emulating the key matrix of an old USB keyboard. But as you can see in the demo video after the jump it works quite well.
If you’re more of the drumming sort there’s
an electric drum set version of this hack
too.
[Thanks Dale] | 32 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "992783",
"author": "Wretch",
"timestamp": "2013-04-12T19:12:36",
"content": "Brilliant! I wonder if there’s a word or a sentence that’s actually also melodic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "992791",
"author": "ChalkBored",... | 1,760,376,563.674824 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/12/jeep-wrangler-gets-pressurized-water-right-out-of-the-bumper/ | Jeep Wrangler Gets Pressurized Water Right Out Of The Bumper | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bumper",
"Jeep",
"pressurized",
"pump",
"water",
"wrangler"
] | [Ed] got pretty creative with a hack that
adds a pressurized water tap to his Jeep Wrangler
. The tap on the rear passenger bumper now lets him hose off the vehicle after mudding, rinse his SCUBA gear after a dive, and just generally comes in handy.
If you want running water you’ve got to have a place to put it. This is actually what sparked the idea for the project. [Ed] noticed that the bumper was hollow and had some drain holes on the bottom. After plugging those and adding a fill hole to the top he found that he had a reservoir for about seven gallons. To get the water out he added a pump deigned to be used on an RV. It’s got features that make it work perfectly for this application: it runs off of battery voltage, it will turn on and off automatically when the tap is opened based on water pressure, and it will shut itself off if the reservoir runs dry. He designed a bezel to give the spigot a professional look. Just out of frame in the image above is an attachment for pressurized air. His next planned project for the Jeep is to add an air compressor.
After the break you can see a demo of the installed system, as well as a water pump test.
Finished Demo:
Pump test: | 122 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "992601",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2013-04-12T13:08:05",
"content": "Excellent!!! I’m glad to see someone else doing it aswell!It’s something that comes absolutely handy under some circumstances.The best is water source in the interior with a faucet popping up from somewh... | 1,760,376,563.824778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/11/hacking-the-oculus-rift-the-oculight/ | Hacking The Oculus Rift: The Oculight | Caleb Kraft | [
"Featured",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"adaliight",
"ambilight",
"oculus rift",
"virtual reality",
"vr"
] | Our
Oculus Rift
finally arrived in the mail. I’ll spare you my thoughts on the item itself other than to say it is amazing. There are tons of videos to choose from that show people’s thoughts and reactions, and
Ifixit has their usual detailed teardown
as well.
The mod I decided to tackle first was the horizontal peripheral vision lights. The shape of the Oculus means that it feels like you are wearing a skii mask, or diving mask. There are big black borders at the far edges of the sides. It would seem that a simple mod would be to add some RGB LEDs and run a simple ambilight clone.
I downloaded the
Adalight code
and plugged in an RGB LED strip I had sitting around. The rift has some mesh areas at the 4 corners to allow air to move around in there. I took advantage of this so I didn’t even have to cut into the rift… yet. I simply strapped the strip to the rift with the proper LEDs shining through the holes.
The result was decent. Since the LEDs are further back in your peripheral vision than the edge of the screen, it looks like maybe a little light from the surroundings is just “leaking” into the headset. It gives the impression of seeing things that are far beyond the edge of the screen. A better installation, allowing lights all the way up the left and right sides instead of just the corners might yield even better results. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "992329",
"author": "lwatcdr",
"timestamp": "2013-04-11T22:18:04",
"content": "I would rather have a fan blowing some air in the vents. That looks like it could get rather warm.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "992332",
"autho... | 1,760,376,563.01032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/11/automating-a-mechanical-typewriter/ | Automating A Mechanical Typewriter | Mike Szczys | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"automatic",
"relay",
"string",
"typewriter"
] | Check out all the work going on in the cabinet below this typewriter. The hack which
automates a mechanical typewriter
is for an art installation, but wouldn’t it be fun to build one of these to use as a résumé printer? It really makes us wish we had an old typewriter sitting around.
It would have been much easier to patch into an electric typewriter, but we have seen
the string trick used on those as well
. In this case a loop of string attaches to the the bar under each key, allowing a pull from below to type the character. An automotive door lock actuator ([Harvey Moon] tells us they’re not solenoids) connects to the other end of the string for every key. But then you’ve got to have a way to drive the actuators and that’s where the protoboard full of forty relays seen to the right comes into play. That image, which was taken from the demo video after the break, shows the board being testing. We’d guess more wires are added later to multiplex the array as we can’t figure out how the Arduino manages to drive all forty of them as shown. One thing we are sure about, the completed project looks and sounds amazing! | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "992295",
"author": "cmholm",
"timestamp": "2013-04-11T21:21:17",
"content": "I remember a typewriter keyboard overlay PC peripheral mentioned in Byte years ago, in the form of a box on top of a Selectric, and parallel cable to the computer. It lacked the artistic flair of these effo... | 1,760,376,562.949119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/15/original-hardware-for-fifteen-consoles-jammed-into-recently-completed-project-unity/ | Original Hardware For Fifteen Consoles Jammed Into Recently Completed Project Unity | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"bacteria",
"console",
"gaming",
"Project Unity"
] | This boxy monstrosity is big for a reason. It lets you
play games on the original hardware of fifteen different gaming consoles
. That’s right, we said
original hardware
. One of the main goals of Project Unity was to keep the stock equipment by making any type of emulation — hardware or otherwise — taboo. The size of the case is a function of how much stuff is actually crammed in there. But the final shape was dictated by the available opening in [Bacteria’s] living room entertainment center.
The video after the break walks us through each aspect of the build. We’re floored by the quote of 3,500 hours of build time. But as you get a look at the wiring-hell of each different module it’s easy to understand why it didn’t just build itself. One power supply and one controller make for the least complicated user experience possible. We already looked at
a giant switching mechanism that selects one console at a time
and
the singular controller unit
. But [Bacteria] has a lot of other tricks up his sleeve which make this gold mine of a hacking reference piece. | 83 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "993861",
"author": "naed",
"timestamp": "2013-04-15T21:16:24",
"content": "Wow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "993864",
"author": "riycou",
"timestamp": "2013-04-15T21:39:27",
"content": "Soooo how does two player w... | 1,760,376,563.405897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/15/florianh-shows-off-minimabl-the-next-generation-of-his-quadcopter-project/ | [FlorianH] Shows Off MinimaBL, The Next Generation Of His Quadcopter Project | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"aeroquad",
"quadcopter",
"quadrotor",
"stm32"
] | [FlorianH] has all kinds of
new features to show off with this generation of his quadcopter
project. Just about everything has seen an upgrade or some other kind of tweak since we looked in on
the last version of the aircraft
.
You’ll find some outdoor flight demo clips after the break. Right off the bat we’re impressed at the rock solid stability of the quadrotor while in flight. Even indoors the last version had a hint of a wobble as the control loop calculated stabilization. Here he borrowed some code from
the open source Aeroquad project
which helps account for this improvement. But the hardware choices lend a hand too. He moved from an ATmega32 up to an STM32F405RG processor. That’s an ARM chip which he programs using one of STM’s Discovery boards. The motors have all been upgraded as well (if you listen in the demo videos for both models you can hear a difference) and he redesigned the frame, which combines carbon tube with 3D printed parts to keep it light yet strong. The upgrade is every bit as impressive as the original build! | 26 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "993840",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2013-04-15T19:18:44",
"content": "Robot’s only a robot if it can deliver a beer can to me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "993842",
"author": "g19fanatic",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,563.075521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/15/glowing-easter-eggs-more-fun-than-a-dye-job/ | Glowing Easter Eggs More Fun Than A Dye Job | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"easter",
"easter eggs",
"eggs",
"kids",
"led"
] | This is a project to keep in mind for the kids next Easter. It uses
electronics to light up your eggs instead of dying them
(
translated
).
The project still has one foot in the old tradition as it starts by blowing out the eggs. The larger hole on the bottom, which was used to evacuate the yoke an albumen, ends up being just the right size to insert an LED. You could simply hook these up to a battery and resistor, but [Rene] decided to add some functionality by hiding an Arduino board in the fake grass of the Easter basket. This way the way the RGB LEDs can glow, blink, and rotate through different colors. And the foil covered chocolate bunnies aren’t just for show. He wired them up to the I/O pins of the Arduino to use as a switch. When they’re both placed on the same piece of foil it completes the circuit and starts the light show. See for yourself in the clip after the jump.
Of course for the older kids you’re going to need
something more complicated to keep their attention
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "993788",
"author": "einballimwasser",
"timestamp": "2013-04-15T13:57:05",
"content": "we did that in university too for our easter lecture .. It was great fun soldering with all those fun people :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,376,563.605047 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/14/hackaday-links-sunday-april-14th-2013/ | Hackaday Links: Sunday, April 14th, 2013 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"cigarettes",
"garage door",
"pencil sharpener",
"petman",
"reset",
"RPi",
"siri",
"smd",
"smoking"
] | We figure we have to start off this week’s links post talking about PETMAN. Boston Dynamics
shows off the humanoid robot donning a full chemical suit
. It’s a lot scarier than
when we first saw it
as a couple of legs a few years ago [Thanks Joshua].
Seeing something like that might drive you back to smoking cigarettes. But since that’s pretty bad for your health perhaps you just need
a mechanical chain-smoking machine
to take the edge off. That thing can really suck ’em down! [Thanks Mike]
Last week’s links included a bit about the Raspberry Pi 2.0 board version’s reset header. [Brian] wrote in to share a link for
adding reset to a 1.0 revision board
.
Speaking of RPi, [Elvis Impersonator] is using it to
automate his garage door with the help of Siri
.
In shop news, [Brad] needed to sharpen a few hundred pencils quickly and ended up melting the gears on his electric sharpener.
Transplanting the parts to his drill press
gave him more power to get the job done in about six minutes.
And finally, you can forget how to decipher those SMD resistor codes. Looks like
surface mount resistors might be unmarked
like their capacitor brethren. We were tipped off by [Lindsey] who got the news by way of [
Dangerous Prototypes
and
Electronics Lab
] | 43 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "993608",
"author": "BillP",
"timestamp": "2013-04-14T21:04:36",
"content": "Any reason why there’s no more pics in weekend link posts? They are a lot less appealing without the pics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "993681",
... | 1,760,376,563.156797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/14/building-a-replacement-for-a-broken-dehumidifier-controller/ | Building A Replacement For A Broken Dehumidifier Controller | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"atmega8",
"AVR",
"dehumidifier",
"dht22",
"humidity"
] | We’ve thought of doing a project like this ourselves as the dehumidifier we ordered online runs the fan 24/7 no matter what the humidity conditions. But it wasn’t that [Davide Gironi] was unhappy with the features on his unit. It’s that
the dehumidifier controller stopped working so he replaced it
with one of his own design. The original humidity sensor was mechanical and simply broke. He used an AVR along with a humidity and frost sensor to get the appliance up and running again.
A DHT22 humidity sensor is polled by the ATmega8 chip and compared to the user-adjustable trimpot value. If it is above that threshold the unit is switched on using one of the relays seen in the image above. The one problem you have to watch out for when using compressor cooled appliances is ice accumulation on the radiator. [Davide] uses a thermistor for temperature feedback, switching the compressor off when it gets below 7C and turning it back on again when it is above 12C.
The replacement still uses the reservoir sensor and indicator LEDs. We, however, would recommend using the watchdog timer on the chip to ensure that it is reset if something goes wrong in the code. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "993592",
"author": "Whatnot",
"timestamp": "2013-04-14T19:28:48",
"content": "Just noticed this headline:“Major brute force attack against WordPress underway”Stay safe HaD.There’s some rather simple and sound advise on reddit btw.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,376,563.466221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/14/teaching-a-computer-to-play-mario-seemingly-through-voodoo/ | Teaching A Computer To Play Mario… Seemingly Through Voodoo | Mike Szczys | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"machine learning",
"mario",
"nes",
"SIGBOVIK",
"super mario bros"
] | Some people know [Tom Murphy] as [Dr. Tom Murphy VII Ph.D.] and this hack makes it obvious that he earned those accolades. He decided to see if he could
teach a computer to win at Super Mario Bros
. But he went about it in a way that we’d bet is different that 99.9% of readers would first think of. The game doesn’t care about Mario, power-ups, or really even about enemies. It’s simply looking at the metrics which indicate you’re doing well at the game, namely score and world/level.
The link above includes his whitepaper, but we think you’ll want to watch the 16-minute video (after the break) before trying to tackle that. In the clip he explains the process in laymen’s terms which so far is the only part we really understand (hence the reference to voodoo in the title). His program uses heuristics to assemble a set of evolving controller inputs to drive the scores ever higher. In other words, instead of following in the footstep of
Minesweeper solvers
or
Bejeweled Blitz bots
which play as a human would by observing the game space, his software plays the game over and over, learning what combinations of controller inputs result in success and which do not. The image to the right is a graph of it’s learning progress. Makes total sense, huh?
[via
Reddit
] | 56 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "993502",
"author": "dreamer",
"timestamp": "2013-04-14T13:18:27",
"content": "Either you use Dr. or you use Ph.D.You can’t use both at the same time.NIce research otherwise, wonder how these kind of algorithms can/will be used in the future.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,563.558205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/13/squeezeberry-a-raspberri-pi-powered-squeezebox-appliance/ | SqueezeBerry: A Raspberri Pi Powered Squeezebox Appliance | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"client",
"radio",
"Raspbian",
"RPi",
"Squeezebox",
"squeezelite",
"stereo"
] | We like the look which [Emmanuel] achieved with
his Raspberry Pi based Squeezebox client
. It’s got that minimalist slant that makes it seem like a commercial product at first glance. But one more look at the speakers without grates, the character LCD, and the utilitarian buttons, knobs, and switches tips us off that it’s filled with the hardware we know and love.
Since Logitech announced that it was terminating the Squeezebox line we’ve seen several projects which take up the torch. We’ve seen
the RPi used as a Squeezebox server
and several
embedded Linux systems used as clients
. This follows in the footsteps of the latter. The RPi is running Raspbian with
the squeezelite package
handling the bits necessary to talk to his server. The controls on the front include a power switch, rotary encoder and button for navigating the menus, and a potentiometer to adjust the HD44780 LCD screen’s contrast. The speakers are a set of amplified PC speakers that were liberated from their cases and mounted inside of the wooden box that makes up the enclosure. The in-progress shots of that case look pretty rough, but some sanding and painting really pulled everything together. As you would expect, we’ve embedded the demo video after the jump. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "993300",
"author": "Galane",
"timestamp": "2013-04-13T21:27:01",
"content": "Is he getting 16 bit audio out of it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "993315",
"author": "Russ",
"timestamp": "2013-04-13T22:06:12",
"conte... | 1,760,376,563.880565 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/11/top-10-best-hacking-scenes-in-movies/ | Top 10 Best Hacking Scenes In Movies | Caleb Kraft | [
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"top 10",
"wins"
] | Geeking out and complaining about inaccuracies is fun. But it is like junk food. Too much is bad for your health. We’ve done the
Top 10 worst portrayals of hacking in movies
/TV as well as a
Part 2
due to high demand. Now it is time for the good stuff. Take it in and feel those healthy positive portrayals revitalizing your brain.
Here are the Top 10 best portrayals of hacking, based off your comments and feedback. Be sure to let us know what we missed, because there are probably some good ones that got left out.
10 Real Genius — Ice coin trick
.
Dry ice in the shape of a coin. Seems feasible with the vending machines shown. It is smart and funny. However, I haven’t ever actually seen real proof that this works, so maybe I’m mistaken in including it.
09 NMAP in movies.
Dear movie making people. It takes 5 seconds to as the nearest IT guy “name some tools people use for security”. Then take a few screenshots of those tools. Not only did you save money on graphic designers, your movie suddenly just gained some added credibility.
08 Social Network.
Everything looks fairly legit, if possibly in Fast Forward.
07 Bourne Ultimatum
Someone did some homework! We see postfix, SSH, NMAP a BASH shell. I believe there’s a scene where he changes the MAC address of a router too, but I can’t find it.
06 Real Genius — [Laslo] games the game
Often dismissed as an overly hokey ending, [Laslo] arrives at the end of the movie with a trailer full of winnings from a sweepstakes. It is a bit hokey, but it is also based off of true events at CalTech. Some students at CalTech in 1975 noticed there was the following line in a sweepstakes being held by McDonald’s “Enter as often as you wish.”. And that they did, 1.2 MILLION times.
Ultimately winning $10,000 worth of prizes including a car
.
05 Wargames — paperclip payphone
Yeah, remember payphones? Well many of you probably remember actually doing this exact thing. Causing a bridge between the speaker housing and the coins lot would result in a free phone call.
04 Flight of the Phoenix
The movie release was pretty cheezy. However, the core story is true. A plane crashed, and from the rubble a new plane arose.
03 Sneakers.
great examples of social engineering. Nothing is more effective than pizza and balloons.
02 Wargames
War-dialing exists.Though it existed well before the movie, the name was quickly adopted.
01 Macgyver
Yep, he’s silly, but some of his stuff works. The name has become synonymous with cobbled-together-stuff though, so he wins this round. If you’d like to browse through every single hack he pulled off and see which ones you think are possible, you can find an
entire list here (doesn’t work in my FireFox for some reason)
. | 89 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "992250",
"author": "Naviathan",
"timestamp": "2013-04-11T20:11:27",
"content": "Awww, no Take Down? You can’t talk about hacking movies and not mention Take Down: The Kevin Mitnick Story!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "992261... | 1,760,376,564.534329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/11/guitar-eq-levels-trigger-the-stage-lights/ | Guitar EQ Levels Trigger The Stage Lights | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"guitar",
"mains",
"msgeq7",
"relay",
"strobe light"
] | Even if your band hasn’t made it big yet it’s still a lot of fun to put on a great show. This hack will help you add lighting effects to performances without having to shell out for a lighting technician. [Phil] put together a hack that lets you
trigger the lights by setting a volume threshold with a pedal switch
.
After reading about
the hack that adds an EQ display for a pedal board
he got the idea to convert the concept as control hardware instead of just for feedback. Just like the visualization project he uses an MSGEQ7 chip which takes care of the audio analysis. He’s using this for electric guitar so he only monitors three or four of the outputs using an Arduino. He built the hardware into a foot pedal by mounting a momentary push button on the lid of the enclosure. Stepping on the button causes the Arduino to save the the current audio level. Whenever it reaches that threshold again it will
switch on a mains relay to drive an outlet. In this case a strobe light turns on when he starts to rock out, which explains the bizarre image above. You can get a better feel for the theatrics by watching the clip after the break. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "992225",
"author": "jnwatts",
"timestamp": "2013-04-11T19:41:51",
"content": "Clever! I wonder if the Arduino has enough processing power to try and identify different medleys? Rather than being based entirely on the volume, it could detect a particular part of the song where you wa... | 1,760,376,564.022387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/11/snowboard-propulsion-system-motors-you-through-the-flats/ | Snowboard Propulsion System Motors You Through The Flats | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"propulsion",
"snowboard",
"snowmobile"
] | One advantage that skiers have always had over snowboarders is the ability to move through flat sections with ease. [Matt Gardner] built this prototype to help even the playing field. When he would normally need to kick, hop, or remove the board and walk he can now engage
his snowboard battery propulsion system
.
The rig works much like a paddle boat. The two wheels sticking out to either side of the board push against the slow to move the board forward. The drive train is built from an RC plane speed controller and battery, a motor and gearbox from an 18V drill from Harbor Freight, and a couple of 3D printed gears and mounting brackets. He used a 3D printer to make one drive wheel, then used that to make a silicone mold to cast the wheels used above. The entire assembly is attached to the board with a door hinge. This way the rig can be rotated out of the way (and we assume strapped to his boot) when he’s shredding down the mountain. When paired with
an in-goggle HUD
this will take snowboarding to the next level!
Unfortunately since it’s already April there’s no snow left to test it on, which means no demo video. But he does tell us that a test run on both grass and carpet went well. | 76 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "992062",
"author": "slowJim",
"timestamp": "2013-04-11T13:02:07",
"content": "Wouldn’t this mess with your lean? Like in normal board usage…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "992066",
"author": "Kyle",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,564.307363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/perpetual-pong/ | Perpetual Pong | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"16f684",
"decade counter",
"led",
"matrix",
"multiplex",
"pic",
"pong"
] | [Jeff Joray] wrote in to show off
this perpetual Pong device he built
. The six by ten LED matrix acts as a game board for Pong but there are no controls. The board simply plays against itself. It’s pretty much
a pong clock
without the clock.
The brain of the device is a PIC 16F684 which drives the six rows of the display directly. He went with a decade counter (CD74HC401) to scan the rows one at a time. Now what would you expect to find on the underside of this hunk of protoboard? A rat’s nest of point to point wiring? If so you’re going to be disappointed. [Jeff] spent the time to generate a schematic and board layout in Eagle. While at it, he knew he was going to be using protoboard so the artwork is designed to use solder bridging as much as possible. What he ends up with is one of the cleanest mutiplexed one-off projects you’re going to find. See it in action after the jump. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "991796",
"author": "JC",
"timestamp": "2013-04-10T21:04:06",
"content": "That solder bridging job is awesome. I’ve managed to do it for smaller projects, but never sat down and planned the board for it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,564.11128 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/midi-pedal-project-looks-as-good-as-it-sounds/ | MIDI Pedal Project Looks As Good As It Sounds | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"midi",
"organ pedal",
"pedal"
] | [Lee O’Donnell] is showing off
his version of a MIDI organ pedal hack
. We’ve been seeing a few of these lately. The organ pedals are a great stating point as they’re easy to patch into electronically, and are designed to take a beating from your feet and come out the other side no worse for wear. The build goes beyond
one of our favorite MIDI pedal conversions
in both features and finish.
An Arduino Nano pulls this project together. It scans the pedals constantly and converts the key presses into MIDI signals. But the design includes this fabulous looking front-end which [Lee] first prototyped in cardboard before cutting and bending his own Aluminum tread plate. A two-row character display provides a menu system, but the buttons themselves act as feedback based on the behavior of the light inside each of them. One example of this is shown early in the demo video after the break. The blue button toggles between polyphonic and monophonic mode with the light fading in and out for the latter. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "991749",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2013-04-10T19:08:42",
"content": "When the headline said ‘Pedal’ I didn’t expectthattype of pedal! I could do with a project to use up a 4′ sq. sheet of checkerplate though…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,564.176219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/hacker-sends-this-through-the-mail-to-record-a-video-of-the-process/ | Hacker Sends This Through The Mail To Record A Video Of The Process | Mike Szczys | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"camera",
"hidden camera",
"mail",
"package",
"shipping"
] | [Ruben van der Vleuten] wanted to get a look at the adventure a package experiences when shipped from one place to another. So he threw together this
mishmash of components to record the experience
. We certainly enjoyed watching the fast motion video found after the break. We wonder what the shipping agency thinks about this sort of thing?
Camera, digital storage, and battery technology have gotten to the point that it’s both cheap and easy to do this sort of surveillance. But there are a few logistical things that [Ruben] took into account to make this work quite well. First off, he need to hide the camera in a way that would ensure the package didn’t look suspicious. He ended up writing his name on the side of the box and boring a hole through one of the black letters which is smaller than a pea and very hard to spot. To make sure he wasn’t recording a ton of empty (dark) frames he also included electronics to sense motion. When the package is moving the video is always rolling. when not moving the hardware wakes for just 3 seconds every minute to shoot video.
[Thanks Brandon] | 88 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "991627",
"author": "Howard",
"timestamp": "2013-04-10T13:10:17",
"content": "Wow, that is easily the coolest video I’ve seen in a long time. Congratulations on an incredible idea and really nice result!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,564.657965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/09/wall-wart-computer-mouse/ | Wall Wart Computer Mouse | Mike Szczys | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"ikea",
"mouse",
"optical",
"usb",
"wall wart"
] | This rather
bulky looking wall wart is actually a computer mouse
. Sure, it may cause your hand to cramp horribly if used for any length of time. But some would say it’s worth that for the hipster value of the thing.
The rather odd shape is somewhat explained by the fact that this was sourced from Ikea. After gutting the transformer found inside the plastic case he had plenty of room to work with. He drilled a hole so that the sensor from a Logitech USB optical mouse can pick up the movement of the mouse. He also got pretty creative when it came to the buttons. The two prongs of the wall plug pivot horizontally to affect the momentary press switches inside.
After the break you can see a quick demo of the project. [Alec] doesn’t consider it to be complete. He wants to make a couple of improvements which include adding weight to make it feel more like the original wall wart, and finding a way to hide the hole he drilled for the sensor. | 92 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "991150",
"author": "XOIIO",
"timestamp": "2013-04-09T21:02:39",
"content": "This seems to be filler since the site has been slow the past few days.Or maybe it’s just me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "991152",
"author... | 1,760,376,565.046048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/09/recurve-bow-make-from-wood-and-skis/ | Recurve Bow Make From Wood And Skis | Mike Szczys | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"arrow",
"bow",
"recurve",
"ski",
"skis",
"wood"
] | A little face protection is a great idea when first testing out your homemade bow. [Austin Karls]
made this recurve bow
during what he calls an engineer’s Spring break.
He settled on the idea after seeing a few other projects like it on Reddit. After first drawing up a plan he headed down to the shop to cut out the wooden riser (the middle part of a bow). Unlike traditional recurve bows this is made up of three parts. Traditionally you would laminate different types of wood to achieve the flexibility and tension levels desired. But [Austin] went with a synthetic material: the tips of two skis. Each were cut to the final length and affixed to the riser with a pair of bolts.
After a few test shots he gained confidence in the design and did away with the face mask. Now if you’re in the market to take your existing bow and add some firepower to it you’ll want to look in on
this shotgun enhanced compound bow
.
[Thanks Schuyler] | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "991060",
"author": "nah!",
"timestamp": "2013-04-09T17:07:49",
"content": "Such bows need to be handled with care, old cross-country skis tend to fail after about 3 years of regualr usage as recurve bow",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,564.733018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/09/the-redbull-creation-contest-begins/ | The RedBull Creation Contest Begins! | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"rbcreation",
"redbull"
] | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9WPZjcEOdI
The
RedBull Creation contest begins today
.
Last year, we had a
ton of fun competing in the RedBull creation contest
. The idea is that RedBull hosts this big contest where teams compete by making awesome stuff. Finalists get to take a trip to Brooklyn for a build off extravaganza. Frankly, we think this is how ALL advertising budgets should be spent.
This year, however, we will not be participating as a team in the contest. We’ll be helping judge it!
The hardware:
In previous years, RedBull has sent out some custom hardware for people to use. Last year it was basically an Arduino on a custom PCB with some cool touch sensors. This year, they’ve sent out this multi purpose LED controller shield that looks pretty impressive.
You can see all the details along with a breakdown of the board from the creator himself, after the break.
From [JoeJoe], the creator of the board:
Basically, it is kind of an LED lighting multi-tool with some extra sensors and output devices on-board. The board is controlled over I2C using an Arduino Uno R3, or you can air-wire pretty much any device that supports 400KHz (fast mode) I2C to the breakout pads. We’ve tested it with some of custom networked devices and with Raspberry Pi, for example. The I2C addresses of each device are written on the silkscreen of the board, though some peripherals (on PIC microcontrollers for example) expect you to use that address shifted one bit to the left (they don’t automatically add in the low read/write bit).
Onboard you will find the following:
Two smart devices for driving 12V RGB LED strip. Each device will drive up to four strips, for a total of 24 discrete channels. There are built-in macros for color fades over time, pulsing, random color sweeps, etc which offload the necessity of controlling of these effects from the Arduino. To use these, follow the wiring specified on the silkscreen for the strip, and hook up at 12V power supply to the pads/terminal block at the top of the board. I *suppose* these could also be used to PWM any sort of device that was within the current/power specs of the MOSFET, but I’d definitely suggest snubber diodes if you were to attempt any DC motor controlling. We included 5M of RGB strip in the package.
One “addressable LED strip multi-tool” device. This handles the timing for controlling up to 256 RGB pixels of addressable strip based on the WS2811, WS2801, or LPD8806 IC. We have included 1M of high-density WS2811 strip, which is the default mode for the device. Using the library macros, you can write a framebuffer to the strip, set up gradients between two colors across a number of pixels, rotate or auto-rotate the current framebuffer at a given speed, and create a effects such as ‘comet’ chase. To use this device, you’ll hook 5v up to the marked location in the lower left of the board.
One DMX driving device. This is in the lower right of the board, and is for driving 3-channel (RGB mode) DMX fixtures. You can cut apart a 3-pin XLR cable and connect this to LED PAR cans, or any other sort of DMX fixture (fog machine maybe?). Using the library you can write a universe of DMX which will be output continuously to the A and B pins with correct timing.
One 512Kbit EEPROM, which may be preloaded with something interesting. We included very rudimentary read/write functions for dealing with this on the byte level, but there are better 24LC512 libraries out there that could be used also.
One tri-axis MEMS accelerometer. The library has functions to read X,Y, and Z. This Kionix unit also has a lot of functionality that we haven’t implemented such as high-pass filtering, tap and double detection, orientation change detection, and adjustable sensitivity (+2g,+4g,+6g).
One 12-bit DAC. This will output a waveform between 0 and 3.3V which I’m sure someone will find a good use for.
One temperature sensor. The library has basic functions to read the current temperature and convert the result to Celsius.
One generally awesome looking circuit board which will nest lovingly with last year’s bullduino in eternal harmony.
For those that haven’t seen the video this campaign was inspired by: | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "991058",
"author": "Clinton",
"timestamp": "2013-04-09T17:01:37",
"content": "Bonus Points to Red Bull for the video.I’ll just leave this here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDgQg6bq7o",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "991074",... | 1,760,376,565.108419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/09/synthesizing-graphene-in-your-basement-laboratory/ | Synthesizing Graphene In Your Basement Laboratory | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"graphene",
"Robert Murray-Smith"
] | We’re surprised that we haven’t come across any of [Robert Murray-Smith’s] projects before. Looking through his collection of YouTube uploads proves that he’s a very active amateur chemist (we assume this is a hobby because he performs the experiment in a mayonnaise jar). The video we’re featuring today is about ten minutes of
his technique for synthesizing graphene
. The video can be watched after the break. Be warned that the audio doesn’t sync with the video because he overdubbed the presentation to fix up the poor audio quality from the original.
Graphene is something of a compound-du-jour when it comes to electronic research. You may remember reading about
using DVD burners to make graphene film
that will go into thinks like super-capacitors to replace batteries. [Robert] starts off his process with a jar of 98% sulfuric acid and 75% phosphoric acid. He pours in powdered graphite (chemical proportions are important here) and gives it a swirl. Next some potassium permanganate is added over about five or ten minutes. From there it goes on the stir plate for three days of constant stirring. During this time the solution will go from green to brown, indicating the presence of graphene oxide.
He goes on from there, but it’s clear he hasn’t found an iron-clad route to his end goal of isolating the graphene for use in constructing things like those super-capcitors we mentioned earlier. If you’ve got a home lab and some interest perhaps you can contribute to his efforts.
[Thanks Bruno] | 54 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "990981",
"author": "nickpl",
"timestamp": "2013-04-09T13:19:22",
"content": "Just a couple of small typos:“that will go into think[g]s like super-capacitors”“constructing things like those super-cap[a]citors we mentioned”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,564.834227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/08/yamaha-sw60xg-hack-lets-you-use-it-as-a-standalone-midi-device/ | Yamaha SW60XG Hack Lets You Use It As A Standalone MIDI Device | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"pci",
"sw60xg"
] | This is a Yamaha XG card, the SW60XG to be exact. It’s an audio card for a PC which extends the MIDI standard to include over six hundred instruments. By today’s standards the almost twenty year old card isn’t all that powerful, but it is interesting to
see it used as a standalone device
.
[Benji Kimba] posted the video overview of his project which you can watch after the break. The image above is found at about 2:35 seconds and about twenty seconds later you get a look at how he patched into the conductors on the edge connector on both sides followed by the MIDI in and out connections. Finally, we get a look at a proper schematic at the four minute mark which details the pull-up resistors, hardware reset circuit, and the optoisolator he added for the MIDI connections themselves.
[Thanks Gnif] | 27 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "990696",
"author": "spikemtz",
"timestamp": "2013-04-08T22:09:36",
"content": "Killer….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "990699",
"author": "dmitry grinberg",
"timestamp": "2013-04-08T22:26:52",
"content": "Is there a... | 1,760,376,564.906134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/08/combo-lock-uses-relays-and-logic-gates/ | Combo Lock Uses Relays And Logic Gates | Mike Szczys | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"cd4017",
"cd4030",
"cd4072",
"cd4081",
"combination lock",
"combo lock",
"lock",
"logic"
] | Here’s a really fascinating circuit that
implements a combination lock using relays and logic gates
. Even with the schematic and written explanation of how it works we’re still left somewhat in the dark. We’ll either pull out some paper and do it by hand this weekend, or build it chunk by chunk in a simulator
like Atanua
. Either way, the project sparked our interest enough that we want to get elbow deep into its inner workings.
From the description we know that it uses a combination of CD4017, CD4030, CD4072, and CD4081 chips. You’re probably familiar with the 4017 which is a decade counter popular in a lot of project. The other chips provide XOR, OR, and AND gates respectively. The relays were chosen for two purposes. One of them activates when a correct combination has been entered, effectively serving as the output for the combo lock. The other two are for activating the clock and affecting a reset if the wrong combination is entered.
It makes us wonder if this would be incredibly simple to brute force the combination by listening for sound of the reset relay activating? It’s hard to tell from the video after the break if you can discern a wrong digit from a right once just based on sound. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "990640",
"author": "Morgen",
"timestamp": "2013-04-08T18:21:55",
"content": "affecting /= effectingYou meant to say “effecting”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "990643",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2013-04-0... | 1,760,376,565.269352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/08/another-way-to-look-at-charlieplexing/ | Another Way To Look At Charlieplexing | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"charlieplexing",
"led module"
] | Charlieplexing is a technique that allows you to drive a larger number of LEDs than wouldn’t be possible with the same number of I/O pins on a traditional multiplexed matrix. If we lost you there just think of it as lots of blinky lights connected to a small number of pins. It works by leveraging the one-way nature of a diode. Current will only flow through an LED in one direction so if you hook up your display in a clever way you can drive multiple LEDs from one I/O by switching the polarity of that pin between voltage and ground. [M.Rule] recently looked at using Charlieplexing with LED modules.
His conceptual approach to the problem
is different from those we remember seeing before and it’s worth a look.
Instead of just using the formula to calculate how many LEDs he can drive [M.Rule] is using a table of I/O pins to establish how many and in what order these displays can be connected. Each colored set of blocks represents an LED module. The graphic above shows how 18-pin can be utilized. He even filled in the unused pin combinations with input buttons. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "990579",
"author": "brian",
"timestamp": "2013-04-08T14:07:10",
"content": "Great writeup! Detailed, good figures, easy to understand. All writeups should strive to have the same quality as this one. Plus who doesn’t love the blinkenlights ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,376,565.145687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/07/hackaday-links-sunday-april-7th-2013/ | Hackaday Links: Sunday, April 7th, 2013 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"duct tape",
"organizer",
"resisitor",
"RPi",
"tile saw",
"xbmc"
] | Let’s wind down the weekend with some projects that didn’t quite warrant their own feature, but we think they’re still worth a look.
First up is a quick tip on cracking the lids on those hard to open jars of food. [Jason] says just grab about a foot of duct tape and
the lid will come flying off
. And while you’re searching for that roll of tape why not grab some foil tape to build a cooking oven. [Gabriel]
built this solar oven
by covering curved wedges of cardboard with foil tape and combining them to form a parabolic reflector.
Next we’ve got a trio of hacks that will come in useful in your home shop or at the local Hackerspace. Organization is key, and here’s
a resistor storage system
that uses #6 envelopes [via
Reddit
]. Also useful is the tip from [Felix] about
using a tile saw to get clean cuts on your circuit boards
. And if you’ve ever been plagued by a laser cutter job that doesn’t fully sever the material [Dan] wrote
a guide on using a fence
so that you can reposition the piece for another run.
Finally, we’re hoping we weren’t the only ones that didn’t realize
the Raspberry Pi has an unpopulated footprint for a reset button
. Now we’ve got to figure out if it’s okay to leave the PSU plugged in (based on it’s current consumption while the RPi is in power down) and hack together some sort of TV-based reset circuit for
our RPi XBMC setup
. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "990407",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2013-04-07T21:53:54",
"content": "Re: Duct tape to open jars. Too much work, just get a butter knife, hit the rim of the lid at a 45 degree angle with the back edge of the knife 3 or 4 times and it will come off no problem.",
"parent... | 1,760,376,565.207014 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/07/solar-powered-robot-mows-your-lawn-while-you-chill-indoors/ | Solar Powered Robot Mows Your Lawn While You Chill Indoors | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"electric",
"hybrid",
"lawnmower",
"robot",
"solar"
] | We’ve heard quite a number of radio ads lately trying to sell an automatic lawn mowing robot (like a Roomba for your grass). But wouldn’t it be a lot more fun to hack your own from an existing lawnmower? That’s what [Daniel Epperson] did. In fact, the project has been ongoing for years. But he wrote in to share the latest development which
adds solar charging capabilities to the robot mower
.
First off let’s discuss the fact that this is not an electric lawnmower. This is the Prius of lawnmowers, bringing together hybrid technology to cut the grass with the gasoline powered motor, and to propel the rig with electricity. [Danny’s] worked hard to shoe-horn just about every feature imaginable (other than autonomy) into the thing, and that’s why the batteries can be charged from mains, an alternator powered by the gas motor, and now from the PV panel mounted on top of it. Get the entire project overview in
his roundup post
.
This a wireless video feed and the mower is driven by remote-controlled. So you can give your yard a trim without getting sweaty. After the jump we’ve embedded a clip of an earlier revision demonstrating that remote control. If you’re not interest in having all the features you could simply
build an analog version
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEjRnBZio8A | 47 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "990348",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2013-04-07T17:20:15",
"content": "This is a RC lawn mower not a “robot” . Normally “robot” implies capable of doing task with out user intervention. or at a minimum capable of following a set of instructions.This is a cool hack and could be ... | 1,760,376,565.447461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/07/acoustic-bass-guitar-uses-water-jug-and-two-strings/ | Acoustic Bass Guitar Uses Water Jug And Two Strings | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"acoustic",
"bass guitar",
"iron maiden",
"ironman",
"string bass",
"water bottle"
] | It’s easy to dismiss this one at first glance. But once you hear [Tychsen81]
playing the thing
you’ll want to know more.
He posted the demonstration way back in 2009. It wasn’t until a year later that he filmed the particulars of
how the thing was made
. The strings are actually bass guitar strings, an A and D string that are tuned down to E and A to play along with Black Sabbath’s “Ironman”. The neck is made out of two boards. One serves as the fingerboard, which is fretless. The other is mounted under that in order to provide negative space for the bridge while keeping the strings at the right height for the fingerboard. The water bottle helps to amplify the sound and that’s why the bottom end of the strings pivot on the bridge, pass through the neck, and are anchored on the bottom edge of the bottle.
We’ve embedded both the demo and the build videos after the break.
If this gets you thinking about making your own instruments you will also be interested in
the Whamola
.
“Ironman” Demo:
Build video:
[Thanks Herb] | 18 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "990293",
"author": "Vampyredh",
"timestamp": "2013-04-07T13:42:47",
"content": "Reminds me of the shoe box and rubber band banjos we made as a kid but totally cooler!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "1595868",
"author":... | 1,760,376,565.645973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/06/making-pla-stick-to-a-3d-printer-build-platform-by-using-hairspray-or-an-acetone-abs-slurry/ | Making PLA Stick To A 3D Printer Build Platform By Using Hairspray Or An Acetone ABS Slurry | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"abs",
"acetone",
"hairspray",
"Kapton",
"PLA"
] | [Chris] has been having some real problems getting PLA to stick to the build platform of his Printrbot. This is of course not limited to this brand of printers, and affects all extruder-based hardware using the PLA as a source material. He came up with
a couple of ways to fix the problem
.
The first is something we’re quite familiar with. The image above shows [Chris] applying a thin layer of hairspray to the platform. This is a technique the we use with our own 3D printer. The sheets of paper are used as a mask to help keep the sticky stuff off of the threaded rod. For more info on the hairspray trick [Chris] recommends that you
read this article
.
The second technique uses a slurry made from saturating a bottle of acetone with ABS leftovers. In the clip after the break he shows off a glass jar of the solvent with scraps from past print jobs hanging out inside. After a couple of days like that it’s ready to use. He takes a paper towel, wets it with the solution, and wipes on a very small amount. He does mention that this will eventually eat through the Kapton tape so apply it rarely and sparingly. | 43 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "990090",
"author": "Scuffles",
"timestamp": "2013-04-06T21:42:40",
"content": "Not surprising that the ABS juice didn’t work as well since PLA isn’t ABS. The ABS juice is probably taking advantage of the fresh ABS adhering to the existing film layer of ABS the left behind when the a... | 1,760,376,565.588609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/06/rolling-your-own-minimal-usb-to-serial-arduino-programmer/ | Rolling Your Own Minimal USB To Serial Arduino Programmer | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"avrdude",
"ft230x",
"FT232R",
"ftdi",
"programmer"
] | [Hans Peter] wanted to move away from using full Arduino boards in his projects. One of the components he rarely used after the development stage is the USB hardware. Once the firmware is flashed to the chip he didn’t need it any longer. So he tried his hand with some really small SMD parts by
building this USB to serial Arduino programmer
.
The chip he went with isn’t the FTDI part we’re used to. Instead of using an FT232RL, he opted for its smaller cousin the FT230x. This chip doesn’t fully implement the communications protocol of the 232, but it does work with AVRdude and that’s all that really matters. Above you can see [Hans’] creation next to the official Arduino USB-to-serial programmer. He used the same connection scheme, but went with an edge connector for the USB instead of using a mini-B jack.
It’s pretty impressive to see his prototyping work with the 16-pin QFN package. He soldered it dead-bug style to a couple of SIL pin headers in order to test it on a breadboard. The first board he assembled was too loose in the USB port, but he added some tape to the back to make it thicker, and coated the edge connector traces with a bit of solder and that did the trick. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "990033",
"author": "biozz",
"timestamp": "2013-04-06T17:17:50",
"content": "i never likes the USB to UART that goes in to the USB port … (HINT HINT 4D SYSTEMS) they tend to fuck up my ports or be to bulky with M/F cables… granted the design is free-er",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,565.508292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/06/fixing-the-worst-video-game-ever-e-t-for-atari-2600/ | Fixing The Worst Video Game Ever: E.T. For Atari 2600 | Mike Szczys | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"2600",
"atari",
"bugs",
"e.t.",
"et",
"extra-terrestrial",
"video game"
] | This hack has got to be every gamer’s dream. Someone actually took the time to
dig through the binary file of
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
and fix the errors
that made it an abomination of a title for the Atari 2600.
This is quite a feat in many ways. First off, you need to know the game well enough to understand where the problems lie. The Internet is a huge help in that regard as there’s no shortage of sources complaining about the game’s shortcomings. This turns out to be one of the articles strongest points as the author takes time to address the most common myths about bugs in the game. From there he goes on to discuss the problems that were actually fixed. Some are just general tweaks like the color fix listed above. But most of them are genuine improvements in the game play, like the falling fix which prevents E.T. from falling in this pit when his feet are obviously not anywhere near the edge.
So you couldn’t get your hard earned bucks back for a bummer of a game back in the day. But at least a few decades later you can fix the things that made it suck and play it through the way it should have been.
[via
Reddit
] | 54 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "989960",
"author": "Franklin Templeton",
"timestamp": "2013-04-06T13:14:28",
"content": "One of the most interesting articles I have read in a long time. Thanks HaD for sharing! I remember that one and Raiders of the Lost Ark as just being utterly off the mark. Again, good read :... | 1,760,376,565.735148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/light-graffiti-with-servos-and-python/ | Light Graffiti With Servos And Python | Jeremy Cook | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"light graffiti",
"light painting"
] | Light Graffiti is can be lots of fun if you have a decent amount of artistic ability, and a keen sense of timing. If you don’t have the necessary skills, you can always compensate by
using Python-controlled servos to move everything automatically
. The Python code can be found here, and makes use of the Python Image Library to process the images into a “drawable” form. A
[pyMCU]
with firmware capable of simultaneous servo control was used to move the laser fixture around.
One of the more difficult aspects of this experiment was getting the timing correct between each laser pulse. The timing routine involes a bit of geometry, calculating the distance between each using trig. As explained in the article, this may be a bit of overkill. It still didn’t compare to the trig involved in a previous experiment
drawing a circle with this laser-servo fixture
. Be sure to check out the video of this laser-setup in action after the break. I’ve been quite pleased with the results, and look forward to what can be done with it in the future!
Thanks to [pyMCU] for letting me have a few of these boards to play with! | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "989706",
"author": "Chris Hightower (@hightowerc)",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T19:58:18",
"content": "Video after the break?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989727",
"author": "Jeremy Cook",
"timestamp": "2013-04... | 1,760,376,566.057258 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/stapler-hack-fastens-infinitely-large-sheets-of-paper/ | Stapler Hack Fastens Infinitely Large Sheets Of Paper | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"magnet",
"stapler"
] | It’s not called the infinity stapler, but we think it should be. This magnetic hack allows you to
use a plain old stapler to fasten very large pieces of paper
.
The limiting factor has always been the distance between the stapler’s hinge and where the staples come out. To get around this, the crimped connections between the base and the dispenser were drilled out. Larger holes were then drilled in both the top and bottom halves to accept a set of magnets. These were held in place temporarily with some tape while the super glue had time to set up.
The result is two halves which are placed on either side of the over sized paper. The magnets are responsible for aligning the staples with the die which bends them to their final shape. The whole process is shown in the video clip after the break. | 78 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "989640",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T17:04:06",
"content": "Cool :)Maybe apply two small plastic spacers to distribute the force a bit?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989779",
"author": "Alex",
... | 1,760,376,566.173092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/h-bot-style-3d-printer-moves-bed-for-z-axis/ | H-bot Style 3D Printer Moves Bed For Z-axis | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"h-bot",
"smoothieboard"
] | Check out this 3D printer
(
translated
) which [Arkadiusz Śpiewak] has been working on. When sending in the tip about his project he made the important distinction that it isn’t finished, but he has reached that critical threshold where he has printed items with it.
He decided to go with a design that is sometimes referred to as an H-bot. If you’re completely unfamiliar with it, you may find
this H-bot design article
helpful. The gist of it is that this technique makes it so that the motors used to move the extruder along the X and Y axes are themselves stationary. One large timing (toothed) belt makes a circuit around the top of this cube in the shape of the letter H. This is a bit easier to see in [Arkadiusz’s] rendered image found after the jump along with video of an early print test.
The Z axis uses two motors mounted along the bottom of the cube. These raise and lower the bead, instead of moving the extruder itself. All-in the printer should have a maximum object size of 30x30x30 centimeters. It’s being driven by a
Smoothieboard
, which was mentioned quite a bit when
we were discussing using the RA driver board with a 3D printer
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edFl9tjkxFE | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "989621",
"author": "J",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T15:25:14",
"content": "Isn’t this true for most 3D printers? I believe the MakerBot ones move the bed as well?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989634",
"author": "Wulfno... | 1,760,376,566.0033 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/electric-tricycle-build-log-is-like-hacker-crack/ | Electric Tricycle Build Log Is Like Hacker Crack | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"a123",
"battery",
"cell",
"electric",
"tricycle",
"trike"
] | This
tiny little scratch-built electric tricycle
is a insanely powerful. Some might think you don’t need a crash helmet for testing a trike, but seeing the video after the break where [Ben Katz] is flying through a parking garage while slaloming between the support beams proves that this ride has some pep to it.
Looking through the presentation post linked above is fun, but when we started digging though the six build log posts we felt ourselves getting sucked into the project. It’s a delight every step of the way. It started with an aluminum box which will host the two rear wheels, drive train, motor, and battery. [Ben] decided to go with A123 Lithium cells, and after testing to see how many he could fit in the space available he started making choices on the motor and driver circuit. When he finally got his hands on the actual cells for the project he took on the fascinating process of constructing his own battery. Dozens of them were hot glued, then soldered together before being encased by placing them in soda bottles and hitting the plastic with a heat gun. And we haven’t even gotten into the bicycle hub-gear transmission system, disc brakes, differential, chain-drive, and motor… you see what we mean about sucking you in.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering this is not [Ben’s] first electric vehicle build. Last year he was showing off
his all terrain scooter
. | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "989577",
"author": "henry",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T13:29:37",
"content": "So “dangerous” the other guy tests it out while wearing crocs…..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989596",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,565.909064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/snowboard-goggle-hud-displays-critical-data-while-falling-down-a-mountain/ | Snowboard Goggle HUD Displays Critical Data While Falling Down A Mountain | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"goggles",
"gps",
"heads-up",
"hud",
"myvu",
"RPi",
"skiing",
"snowboarding"
] | [Chris] has been hard at work building a
Heads Up Display into some Snowboarding goggles
. We’re used to seeing the components that went into the project, but the application is unexpected. His own warning that the display is too close to your face and could cause injury if you were to fall highlights the impractical nature of the build. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere when it comes to prototyping. Perhaps the next iteration will be something safe to use.
A set of MyVu glasses were added to the top portion of the goggles, which lets the wearer view the LCD output by looking slightly up. The display is fed by a Raspberry Pi board which connects to a GPS module, all of which is powered by a USB backup battery. In the video after the break you can see that the display shows time of day, speed, altitude, and temperature (although he hasn’t got a temperature sensor hooked up just yet). His bill of materials puts the project cost at about £160 which is just less that $250. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "989561",
"author": "bty",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T12:07:14",
"content": "how is sticking a display to some glasses a HUD ? I get a headache just thinking about using it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989571",
"author": "b... | 1,760,376,565.845716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/home-security-hardware-makes-you-the-monitoring-service/ | Home Security Hardware Makes You The Monitoring Service | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"dtmf",
"home automation",
"mt8870",
"security system",
"sim900"
] | [Nick] and [Simon] both have home security systems with a monitoring service who will call whenever an alarm is tripped. For [Simon] this ends up happening a lot and he wanted to change the circumstances that would trigger a call. Because of company policy the service is inflexible, so he and [Nick] went to work cutting them out of the loop. What they came up with is this custom electronics board which
monitors the security system and calls or texts them accordingly
.
They started with
the self-monitoring alarm system design
we looked at back in September. This led to the inclusion of the SIM900 GSM modem, which is a really cheap way to get your device connected to the cellular network. It also uses a DTMF touch tone decoder to emulate the phone line to keep the security system happy. [Simon] highlights several changes he made to the design, as well as the reasons for them. One idea he has for a possible revision is to do away with the MT8870 chip which handles the touch tones. He thinks it may be possible to use the SIM900’s DTMF features to do that work instead. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "989436",
"author": "biozz",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T02:31:00",
"content": "oh god … altium @n@but interesting design none the less XD",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989449",
"author": "MikrySoft",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,566.228498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/high-speed-circuit-design-for-quantum-physics-light-sensing/ | High Speed Circuit Design For Quantum Physics Light Sensing | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"high speed",
"photodiode",
"quantum physics"
] | [Limpkin] designs circuits for a living. This board is one of his recent projects, and although his skills are light years ahead of our own experiences, he did a pretty good job of explaining how he put this board together.
He was tasked with
measuring the light intensity of two photodiodes
. The expected impulses picked up by those components will be less than a nanosecond in duration, putting some special design constraints upon him. To register this signal he’s using three cascading op-amps per input. To ward off false readings from RF interference he also designed in the shielding which you see surrounding the majority of the circuit.
His package choice for the THS3202 op-amps is quite interesting. He didn’t go with the footprint that includes a thermal pad to dissipate heat because he didn’t want to interrupt the ground plane on the underside of the board. To keep the parts from melting he added an aluminum spacer that contacts the top of the package, then a heat sink that covers the entire shield frame. In a future revision he figures he’ll move to a four-layer board so that the can opt for the MSOP package that does the work for him. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "989384",
"author": "insapio",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T00:26:12",
"content": "That is amazing. It’s an impressive design (not that I can fully comprehend.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989385",
"author": "dion",
"time... | 1,760,376,566.285393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/steampunk-theremin-goggles/ | Steampunk Theremin Goggles | Ryan Fitzpatrick | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"goggles",
"photo sensor",
"steampunk",
"theremin"
] | Lots of people build custom steampunk goggles, but most don’t implement any interactivity – they’re just an aesthetic accessory. [Sarah]
recently decided to built a pair
that, besides looking cool, would engage the wearer in creating sound. She accomplished this by integrating an optical theremin into their design.
To keep the build both affordable and wearable she researched simplified theremins, and eventually settled on creating
a basic model
that uses only a handful of components and two 555 timers. The main body of the goggles was constructed using mostly random mismatched pieces of metal and leather. Mounted on the outer edge of each lens, there is a photo sensor and a corresponding slider control. Adjusting the slider alters the level of resistance, therein changing the pitch of the sound. The theremin will produce different pitches and octaves depending on how much light the sensors receive. So, the wearer, or a nearby friend, waves their hands around the wearers head to control it.
The speaker and volume knob are cleverly disguised as the two ‘lenses’. Rotating the volume knob lens adjusts an internal potentiometer that’s held in place by a custom laser etched piece of acrylic. To top it all off, she even designed her own PCB using Eagle.
Check out a video demonstration after the break. | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "989396",
"author": "Abdulrahman Hamdy",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T01:08:43",
"content": "repost ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989401",
"author": "ChalkBored",
"timestamp": "2013-04-05T01:17:43",
"content": "Rememb... | 1,760,376,566.334309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/top-10-hacking-failures-in-movies-part-2/ | Top 10 Hacking Failures In Movies: Part 2 | Caleb Kraft | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Rants"
] | [
"fails",
"hack"
] | After going through the original quick list we tossed together, people were chiming in like crazy. We felt another 10 might help satiate the desire to smirk at the silliness of tech portrayed in movies and TV. Gathering examples from your comments, we have compiled part 2. While I would have loved to narrow this down to a specific item like incorrect lingo or screen grabs, I didn’t quite have enough specific scenes to do it yet. Be sure to keep the comments coming and be specific, I haven’t seen many of these till someone points it out.
10. La Femme Nikita
In this screenshot, you can clearly see an IP, DNS server, and subnet mask. All are formatted incorrectly. While I understand using a fake or non-existent IP, surely the person who knew the terms also knew the format.
9. The Net
[Sandra Bullock] and her maw-dawm get to fight against super powerful hackers. The viruses have fancy data melting effects too.
8. Unthinkable
yep, that is a spreadsheet with gibberish in it. They aren’t even trying. It is like some one just said “i dunno, just go do something computery”.
7. Numb3rs
This overly complex and drawn out scene explaining chat programs will surely make you laugh. It is ok that the hackers are plotting on a public server, they’re speaking l337 so no one can understand them.
6. CSI
“someone, get me a list of computer words STAT!”. Here’s your line.
5. Mastermind
Security is never a video game. Never. Ever.
4. The Core
The Character named [Rat] in this movie delivers a wonderfully cheesy speech about how he “speaks in ones and zeroes”, then he goes on to make a quick whistle to phreak someones cell phone to have long distance forever. While it was a pretty sweet nod to [Captain Crunch], the method of phreaking shown doesn’t change your cell phone plan.
3. Independence Day
I wanted to avoid this one because so many people have pointed it out, but when [Jeff Goldblum] hacks the mothership, well, it is funny. Apparently there’s some deleted scene that explains this all away with some line about how our current tech is derived from the alien ship that landed 50 years ago. So the aliens haven’t changed anything since then? Wait, are printers and print spooling an alien plot to drive us insane?
2. Hackers
In the scene where a TV station is being hacked, we have the usual goofy graphical hacking, but on top of that, we have a physical comedy to go along with it. The robotic arms in the TV station battle it out, grasping tapes from each other.
1. Skyfall
When you remove a shotgun shell from the gun, and pull out the “shot” and batting, you end up with basically just a pile of gunpowder. When you apply fire to this, you get a poof of fire, not a massive explosion. You need compression to have an explosion. These bombs won’t work. They will burn your house down though, so the makers of the movie can’t even say they were avoiding getting any copy cats hurt. | 83 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "989273",
"author": "tommy trygg",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T20:03:39",
"content": "i cant watch it because it’s private",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989274",
"author": "slick",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T20:04:38",
"... | 1,760,376,566.64689 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/hall-effect-limit-switches-for-a-3d-printer/ | Hall Effect Limit Switches For A 3D Printer | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"74lvc1g58",
"a3144",
"hall effect",
"limit switch",
"limiting swith"
] | We’re used to thinking of limit switches as a mechanical device that cuts the motor connection before physical damage can occur. [Anthony] decided to try a different route with this project. He built this set of
no-contact limit switches using a hall effect sensor
. The small black package sticking out past the end of the protoboard is the sensor. It is used to detect a magnetic field.
[Anthony] chose to use an Allegro A3144 sensor. Apparently it is no longer in production but was easy to find for a song and dance on eBay. When thinking about the design he decided to add two LED indicators, one lights when the switch is open and the other when it has been tripped. This would have been easy to do with just one LED, but he needed to add more parts to get both working. In the lower left corner of the protoboard you can see the configurable gate device (74LVC1G58) he added to monitor the hall effect sensor and switch the output and LEDs accordingly. | 39 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "988872",
"author": "Bill Jackson",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T00:12:45",
"content": "Get an old honeywell keyboard, the type with hall effect key switches, and you can open up the keyswicthes and remove the Hall element, and it works as mentioned here. The Honeywell keyboards were the... | 1,760,376,566.524958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/microscope-ring-light-with-a-number-of-different-features/ | Microscope Ring Light With A Number Of Different Features | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"attiny1634",
"led",
"light ring",
"microscope",
"pcb",
"rotary encoder"
] | Microscopes magnify light. It makes sense that having more light reflecting off of the subject will result in a better magnified image. And so we come to Aziz! Light! It’s [Steve’s]
LED light ring for a stereo microscope
. It’s also a
shout out to one of our favorite Sci-Fi movies
.
He’s not messing around with this microscope. We’ve already seen his
custom stand
and
camera add-on
. This is no exception. The device uses a fab-house PCB which he designed. It boasts a dual-ring of white LEDs. But the controls don’t simply stop with on and off. He’s included two rotary encoders, three momentary push switches, and three LEDs as a user interface. This is all shown off in his demo video after the break.
An ATtiny1634 is responsible for controlling the device. When turned on it gently ramps the light up to medium brightness. This can be adjusted with one of the rotary encoders. If there are shadows or other issues one of the push buttons can be used to change the mode, allowing a rotary encoder to select different lighting patterns to remedy the situation. There are even different setting for driving the inner and outer rings of LEDs.
We haven’t worked with any high-end optical microscopy. Are these features something that is available on commercial hardware, or is [Steve] forging new ground here? | 41 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "988828",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T22:14:39",
"content": "I’ll be the first to say that I’m not forging new ground in terms of different light patterns and such. I have a commercial unit on my microscope at work which offers some of the same features, but with an ... | 1,760,376,566.728549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/building-a-theremincello/ | Building A Theremincello | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"cello",
"theremin",
"theremincello"
] | We totally missed the ball on this project. It should have been run on April Fools’ day and you would have no idea if it were real or a hoax. That’s because the very serious performance given after the break is hard to watch without a least a bit of a chuckle. The instrument shown above is a Theremincello. It’s an instrument in the shape of
a cello which functions in a similar way to a Theremin
.
The instrument being played in that video clip is the first generation and the one pictured above is its successor. The creator wanted to refine the electronics so that the resulting sound wasn’t so ‘flutey’. The result can be heard on the video embedded in
this Theremin World article
and we think they’ve accomplished the goal; it sounds much better! In the clip [Thierry Frenkel] demonstrates changing notes on the fingerboard with the left hand. The right hand which would normally bow the strings operates the lever to adjust the volume of the note being played back.
If a single fingerboard isn’t enough for your needs you may consider
building this four-track design instead
.
[Thanks David] | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "988798",
"author": "magnetovore",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T20:36:16",
"content": "Re: my four track design. I don’t use four physical strings anymore, as there is no way to play open notes. However, with my build, you can shift between the four strings of a cello using rocker switch... | 1,760,376,566.780559 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/homebuilt-laser-cutter-ideas/ | Homebuilt Laser Cutter Ideas | Jeremy Cook | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"pcb"
] | [Wuzabear] wrote in to tell us about this
“DIY Laser Cutter for PCB Stencils.”
While a full BOM and step-by-step build instructions aren’t provided for the frame, pictures of the build are available, and some different options for construction are discussed. One other option that was especially interesting would be to use a ready-built RepRap or other 3D printer to act as the laser motion controller. Apparently
this has been experimented with
, and we’d love to see any versions that or readers have come up with!
Besides some different ideas and resources for the moving parts of the cutter, there is some information on how to hook up a laser for this purpose, as well as for the software and calibration required. It should be noted that you should always wear the appropriate safety goggles if you’re working with a high-powered laser. Although any machine-tool can be dangerous, lasers provide some safety issues that should be treated with extreme caution. | 33 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "988739",
"author": "lwatcdr",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T17:13:28",
"content": "I wonder if it would be good enough to create a mask for etching boards?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "988741",
"author": "john",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,566.916866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/upgrading-a-router-with-impeccable-soldering-skills/ | Upgrading A Router With Impeccable Soldering Skills | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Mercury MW150R",
"openwrt",
"router"
] | [Necromant] recently acquired a router that was nearly free. Looking his gift horse in the mouth, he hooked up a serial port to see if it could run some updated firmware such as OpenWRT. The initial findings were promising; it used the same CPU as the very popular WR703N, but this free router only had 2 MiB of Flash and 8 MiB of RAM – barely enough to do anything. His solution to this problem is in the true hacker tradition:
just solder some more chips
onto the router.
Upgrading the RAM was comparatively easy; [Necromant] found an old stick of RAM, desoldered one of the chips, and replaced the measly 8 MiB chip with a new 64 Megabyte chip.
The Flash, though, proved more difficult. Without the right code in the Flash for the radio test, the router wouldn’t be useful at all. The solution was to read the original 2 MiB chip, read the Flash from a WR703, and combined the two with a simple dd command. This was written to a new SPI flash chip with a buspirate and a home etched board. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "988698",
"author": "g19fanatic",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T15:20:50",
"content": "Now that is what I call a Hack!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "988709",
"author": "UnaB",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T15:44:19",
... | 1,760,376,566.843589 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/powering-the-oculus-rift-with-usb/ | Powering The Oculus Rift With USB | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"oculus rift",
"vr"
] | Oculus Rift dev kits are starting to make their way onto the workbenches of makers around the globe. Some are even going so far as to tear open the hardware and see how they can improve it. [Mike] didn’t like the fact the Oculus Rift needed a wall wart power supply,
so he modded it so it can be powered over a USB port.
The key insight for this mod comes after [Mike] put a Kill-a-Watt between his outlet and the Rift’s power adapter. He found only 600 mA of current was being used by the Rift, assuming 100% efficiency in the adapter. A USB port is supposed to provide 500 mA of current, so with a soldering gun, [Mike] bridged the DC input jack and the USB port on the Rift. Perhaps unsurprisingly, everything worked perfectly.
In case you’ve forgotten,
Hackaday is getting one of these Oculus Rift dev kits
. We’ll post a teardown when [Caleb] learns to share. You can check out a video of [Mike]’s modded Rift and some dolla dolla billz after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS8X01xIJCc&w=580] | 52 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "988645",
"author": "Ian Corbitt",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T13:13:08",
"content": "Gangsta money!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "988647",
"author": "Ralf",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T13:18:36",
"content": "There is pot... | 1,760,376,567.197206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/embedded-web-server-is-all-about-clever-formatting/ | Embedded Web Server Is All About Clever Formatting | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega16",
"AVR",
"enc28j60",
"olimex",
"server"
] | Take a look around here and you’ll find all kinds of embedded web servers. This one doesn’t look all that interesting, especially because it’s just a NIC plugged into a development board. But for us the interesting part is in how [Andrew Rossignol] chose to
format the webpage assets to best utilize the under-powered server
.
The project was spawned as part of a class in Internet Embedded Systems which [Andrew] is taking. The board has an ATmega16 microcontroller and he’s using the ever popular ENC28J60 on that Ethernet adapter board. The
TuxGraphics TCP/IP Stack
takes care of communications with the network.
One constraint which [Andrew] imposed upon himself was to use just a single response which the available RAM limits to about 700 bytes. Any decent webpage needs to have at least some graphics but that’s tough with the size limit. He managed to display an AVR logo by optimizing an SVG in Inkscape then stripped the rest of the cruft using VIM (explained in the demo after the break). With that piece of Linux-fu in his pocket he set to work streamlining the CSS file. The webpage isn’t just static either. He displays the server up-time and even allows the relays and LEDs on the Olimex board to be controlled.
Despite the limitations of the ATmega family they still seem to do some amazing Internet-connected stuff. Here’s
one used as a Minecraft server
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "988608",
"author": "Sprite_tm",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T11:17:34",
"content": "…or you could just stream the files from storage, instead of loading them up into the limited RAM first?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "988617",
... | 1,760,376,567.10773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/melting-metal-with-a-diy-foundry-furnace/ | Melting Metal With A DIY Foundry Furnace | Eric Evenchick | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"aluminium",
"babington burner",
"casting",
"furnace"
] | If you want to do casting at home, you’ll need a way to melt metal. [Jake]’s
DIY foundry furnace
gets hot enough to melt aluminium, and is built out a mix of scrap parts.
The chamber of the furnace is built out of a water heater tank which has been lined with a special cement that refracts heat. The furnace is heated by a Babington burner. This type of burner works by atomizing the fuel and injecting it into the furnace. They are good for burning waste oil to achieve high heats.
A scrap Volkswagen oil pump and a cordless drill are used to feed oil into the burner. Once it’s fired up, the furnace takes about 10 minutes to melt the 11 pounds of metal that it can hold. [Jake] melted about 40 pounds of aluminium alloy from scrap alloy wheels in 2 hours, which should be more than enough for a home casting project.
After the break, check out the overview of the device and a demo of melting aluminium. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "989262",
"author": "Ted",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T19:41:03",
"content": "I believe something like this was done on James May’s ManLab in Series 2",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989264",
"author": "dave",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,566.989799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/wireless-temperature-control-for-a-microbrewery/ | Wireless Temperature Control For A Microbrewery | Eric Evenchick | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"ATmega88",
"beer",
"h-bridge",
"heat exchanger"
] | When brewing your own beer, temperature control is important. If the temperature isn’t regulated correctly, the yeast will be killed when it’s added to the wort. It’s best to cool the wort from boiling down to about 25 C quickly before adding yeast.
To do this, [Kalle] came up with a
wireless temperature controller
for his home brewing setup. The device uses a
heat exchanger
to cool the wort. An ATmega88 connected to a H-bridge controls a valve that regulates flow through the heat exchanger. It reads the current temperature from a LM35 temperature sensor and actuates the valve to bring the wort to a set point.
A neat addition to the build is a wireless radio. The
nRF24L01
module provides a wireless link to a computer. There’s an Android application which communicates with the computer, providing monitoring of the temperatures and control over the set point from anywhere [Kalle] can get an internet connection. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "989150",
"author": "Janez D.",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T18:00:40",
"content": "*fum*I received TODAY two nRF24L01 modules only to realise they are way too small for my board – what I did or am trying to do is a temperature / AC output / wireless module that can double as thermostat ... | 1,760,376,567.044342 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/turning-an-easter-egg-hunt-into-a-fox-hunt/ | Turning An Easter Egg Hunt Into A Fox Hunt | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"fox hunt",
"ham radio",
"yagi"
] | We’ve seen [Todd Harrison]’s work a few times before, but he’s never involved his son so throughly before. This past Easter, he thought it would be a good idea for his son and a few of his friends to take part in an easter egg hunt. Being the ham he is, he decided to turn an easter egg hunt into an adventure in radio direction finding, or as amateur radio operators call it,
a fox hunt
.
[Todd] put together a great tutorial on building a yagi – a simple directional antenna – out of a couple of pieces of PVC pipe and a few aluminum and brass rods. With this and a handheld ham set, [Todd] hid
a fox
along with a stuffed easter bunny and a basket of candy near a local park. Operating under the guidance of his dad, [Todd]’s son and his friends were eventually able to find the fox. Leaving candy out in the Arizona sun probably wasn’t [Todd]’s best idea – the fox, and candy, were covered in ants when they were found – but it was a great introduction to amateur radio. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "989143",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T17:33:21",
"content": "Two decades ago I was part of an Explorer troop that built our own RDF antennas similar to this one, all the way from bare copper clad to assembling the masts. Our foxhunts involved a person behind the tra... | 1,760,376,567.24014 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/pranking-a-hackerspace-irc-for-april-fools-day/ | Pranking A Hackerspace IRC For April Fool’s Day | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"DIYode",
"hackerspace",
"irc"
] | Like most hackerspaces, when the folks at DIYode, the Guelph, Ontario hackerspace, aren’t in the workshop, they’re on IRC. It’s a great way to build a community, complete with a bot that collects and catalogues to-do items, meeting topics, posts events to IRC, and even does a bit of text-to-speech so members currently at the DIYode can listen in on the IRC room. There’s also a webcam for the DIYode space that members check constantly. [Simon] thought it would be a great prank to freak out those members that constantly check the webcam, and we’ll say
he succeeded with a little help from the Alabama Face Guy
.
The build listens for a specific phrase in the IRC room – “Hey, someone just entered the shop without the doorbot noticing” – and sends a command via Python to an Arduino to raise and lower a cardboard cutout of a sneering face in front of the web cam. For an April Fool’s build, this is probably one of the most creative and creepy we’ve seen this year. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "989096",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T15:19:48",
"content": "Nice. Very nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989106",
"author": "SDC",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T15:50:44",
"content": "Yes, very nice. Th... | 1,760,376,567.289877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/mp3usbaux-hack-hidden-behind-cassette-facade/ | MP3/USB/Aux Hack Hidden Behind Cassette Facade | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"16f877",
"mp3",
"pic",
"stereo"
] | [Ivan] made something special with this car stereo hack. He altered the head unit to
play MP3 files from USB and added an auxiliary line-in
. But looking at it you’d never know. That’s thanks to the work he did to create a false button hiding the audio jack, and a false cassette hiding the USB port and MP3 player display. Possibly the best part is that the radio itself still works like it always did.
There are several components that went into making the system work. It starts with the cassette/radio head unit. To that he added an MP3 player with remote which he picked up on Deal Extreme. He wasn’t a huge fan of the IR remote that came with it so he rolled in a remote that mounts on the steering wheel. To pull everything together he used a PIC 16F877a. The microcontroller controls the lines which tell the head unit if a tape has been inserted. When [Ivan] selects either the Aux input or wants to play MP3s from a thumb drive the uC forces the head unit into cassette mode and the audio from the player is injected into the cassette player connections.
To help deter theft [Ivan] created two false fronts. The end of a cassette tape plugs into the USB port. The rewind button plugs into the Aux jack. You can get a good look at both in the demo after the break. | 36 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "989064",
"author": "Calum Knott",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T13:06:31",
"content": "wait… people still steal stereos?I thought that was a 90’s thing….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "989097",
"author": "Dax",
"ti... | 1,760,376,569.54953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/04/retrotechtacular-the-fourier-series/ | Retrotechtacular: The Fourier Series | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"fft",
"Fourier",
"fourier series",
"retrotechtacular"
] | Here’s a really quick video which takes
a different approach to understanding the Fourier Series
than we’re used to. If you’re a regular reader we’re sure you’ve heard of the Fourier Series (often discussed as FFT or Fast Fourier Transform), but there’s a good chance you know little about it. The series allows you to break down complex signals (think audio waves) into combinations of simple sine or cosine equations which can be handled by a microcontroller.
We’ve had that base level of understanding for a long time. But when you start to dig deeper we find that it becomes a math exercise that isn’t all that intuitive. The video clip embedded after the break changes that. It starts off by showing a rotating vector. Mapping the tip of that vector horizontally will draw the waveform. The Fourier Series is then leveraged, adding spinning vectors for the harmonics to the tip of the last vector. The result of summing these harmonics produces the sine-based square wave approximation seen above.
That’s a mouthful, and we’re sure you’ll agree that the video demo is much easier to understand. But the three minute clip just scratches the surface. If you’re determined to master the Fourier Series give
this mammoth Stanford lecture series on the topic
a try.
[via
reddit
] | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "989043",
"author": "Gustavo",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T12:12:11",
"content": "Unbelievable how they could explain so good without modern graphic resources, really useful explanation",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "989048",
"... | 1,760,376,569.008959 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/03/adding-an-optical-mouse-sensor-to-an-autonomous-vehicle/ | Adding An Optical Mouse Sensor To An Autonomous Vehicle | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"adns-5020",
"autonomous vehicle",
"avago",
"avc",
"optical mouse",
"sparkfun"
] | [Tim] is getting his drone ready for SparkFun’s 2013 Autonomous Vehicle Competition on June 8th. He has a pretty good start, but was having some problems accurately measuring travel distance. The technique he chose for the task was to glue magnets onto the axles of the vehicle and monitor them with a hall effect sensor. Those sensors are finicky and a few problems during testing prompted him to look at a redundant system. Right now he’s experimenting with
adding an optical mouse sensor to the autonomous vehicle
.
Recently we saw the same concept used, but it was meant for
tracking movement of a full-sized automobile
. If it can work in that application it should be perfect here since the vehicle is much closer to the ground and will be used in ideal conditions (flat pavement with clear weather). [Tim] cracked open an old HP mouse he had lying around. Inside he found an Avago ADNS-5020 sensor. After grabbing the datasheet he discovered that it’s simply an I2C device. Above you can see the Arduino Leonardo he used for the first tests.
[Tim] coded functions to monitor the chip, including some interesting ones like measuring how in-focus the surface below the sensor is. This brings up a question, is there limit on how fast the vehicle can travel before the sensor fails to report back accurately? | 22 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "988914",
"author": "Tom the Brat",
"timestamp": "2013-04-04T02:25:03",
"content": "You know, this gives me an idea. Perhaps you should beware.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "988928",
"author": "Amnon",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,376,569.263007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/senselamp-automates-rooms-by-replacing-light-fixtures/ | SenseLamp Automates Rooms By Replacing Light Fixtures | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"home automation",
"lamp",
"ldr",
"light",
"light fixture",
"motion sensor",
"pir",
"TL-WR703N",
"TPlink"
] | Would you believe that this beautiful light fixture is actually
a hacked together home automation project
? Okay, so this wire mess is the second of three versions that [Christian] built. It replaces a light fixture in the room, but if you look closely you’ll see that there is a compact fluorescent bulb included in the build. The laser-cut frame acts as a bit of a lamp shade, while providing a place to mount the rest of the hardware.
The final version cleans things up a bit, and adds a footprint for the PIR motion sensor that he forgot to design into this version. The idea is that each lamp monitors motion in the room, switching the light on and off again as necessary. A light-dependent resistor ensures that the bulb is only powered up if the room is dark so as not to waste electricity during the day.
The build includes a sensor package that reports back temperature and humidity data. Communications are provided by a WR703N router rolled into each of the four units installed in his house. With this kind of hardware at his disposal it should be a snap to
control every IR remote control device in his house
via the network by adding an IR LED and some code to the lamps. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "988484",
"author": "Cole",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T02:13:56",
"content": "I really like this idea. I will have to look in to making something like this thought to get it past the girlfriend I will need to hide all the electronics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,569.075219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/april-fools-project-teaches-coworkers-not-to-touch-your-stuff/ | April Fools’ Project Teaches Coworkers Not To Touch Your Stuff | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"april fools' day",
"relay",
"siren",
"sr latch"
] | Take one look at the sticker on top of this project box and it’s pretty clear you’re not supposed to flip the switch protected by the piece of red plastic. But if your coworkers are anything like [The Timmy’s] there’s at least a few who will stop by and just can’t keep their hands off. He built this to teach those sorts a lesson.
Flip the switch and a very loud siren starts blaring
. The thing is, the 107db alarm can’t be turned off by the switch, you must have the key for the switch on the side.
The siren is a self-contained unit that just needs a power source between 6V and 15V. This makes the project quite simple, the only part that [The Timmy] really needed to think about was how to build a mechanical SR Latch (set-reset). The solution is to use a mechanical relay. The toggle switch connects the normally open connector to the common terminal to enable the relay. The key switch breaks the relay’s connection to ground, allowing the magnetic switch to open again.
If you need some help understanding how the relay connections work we’ve embedded an unrelated video after the break. | 41 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "988448",
"author": "XOIIO",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T00:22:39",
"content": "Theres an instructable simmilar to this, they used a key switch but it only worked to turn it on and a reed switch was the method of turning it off, neat variation though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,376,569.353836 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/building-a-vehicle-parking-camera/ | Building A Vehicle Parking Camera | Mike Szczys | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"back up",
"camera",
"parking",
"pi cobb",
"reverse",
"RPi"
] | We’re never really sure what to call these things. When we say “back up camera” it sounds distinctly like a redundancy system for when the primary camera fails to work. But it is used for when you move in reverse in an automobile. [Jeremy Blythe]
built the distance sensing video system
using a Raspberry Pi board as the brain.
The flexibility of Linux and the power of the RPi board ended up making it pretty easy to get everything working together. He’s using a Microsoft Lifecam Cinema HD camera, which connects to one of the USB ports on the board. Just above that you can see the infrared distance sensor which is connected to the RPi’s GPIO header using one of Adafruit’s Pi Cobbler breakout boards. This also facilitates the connection to the 176×220 color LCD screen.
In the video after the break you can see [Jeremy] testing out the system by moving his hand in front of the sensor. Python is used to grab the image from the camera, draw a circle on it, and overlay the distance in centimeters at the bottom. Once his hand is within 30cm the overlay turns red and the work STOP is displayed. Pretty neat! | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "988408",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T22:21:59",
"content": "Does raspberry pi have enough juice for OpenCV? It would be pretty awesome to do a stereo-vision distance camera instead of the IR sensor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,569.201671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/cnc-tic-tac-toe/ | CNC Tic Tac Toe | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"dvd drive",
"printer",
"tic-tac-toe"
] | This
computer controlled physical Tic Tac Toe game
is built from parts scavenged from common consumer goods. Specifically, the sled is made up of a combination of printer and DVD drive parts.
The build is delightful, and you can’t move on to the next feature until you watch it play a game in the clip after the break. The game board can move along two axes. It’s obvious from the image above that the printer ink cartridge sled has been reused to let the board move left and right. But the DVD lens sled hidden under the board lets it move forward and back. The piece of protoboard seen on the left is an IR reflectance scanner. The board moves systematically under this sensor. Whenever a black square (placed by the human player) is in play it prevents the IR beam from reflecting back. What you can’t see in this image is the yellow disc dispenser which is just out of the frame. It uses the DVD disc tray motor to place the computer’s pieces. We think this build is just begging to be turned into
a Turing Machine demonstration
.
If you liked this one we’re sure you’ll also appreciate
CNC chess
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "988368",
"author": "Kevin",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T20:58:09",
"content": "So many wasted cycles… passing over areas without scanning them, then scanning the whole board…Overall, it’s a cool build, but there is lots of room for optimizing the code.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,569.400124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/adafruit-launches-educational-show-aimed-at-kids/ | Adafruit Launches Educational Show Aimed At Kids | Mike Szczys | [
"how-to"
] | [
"children",
"educational",
"kids",
"puppet"
] | Adafruit Industries just posted
the first episode in a new educational series
aimed at teaching kids about electronics. The episode is entitled “A is for Ampere” and teaches the basic theory behind electrical current. The subject seems like a common one for A-to-Z themed electrical tutorials. [Jeri Ellsworth] did
a similar episode
but hers is aimed more at the electronics hobby crowd.
[Limor] and gang (that’s [Collin Cunningham] dressed up as [Andre-Marie Ampere]) seem to be all-in on this project. The episode features ADABOT, the blue puppet which takes on the role of the student in this episode. After demonstrating a mains circuit breaker tripping the episode goes on to discuss electron flow and how current is measured.
We’re all about this type of educational opportunity. The age group at which this series is targeted have never known a day without touchscreens, they should know at least something about how those devices actually work. | 25 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "988318",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T18:28:58",
"content": "Pretty good, needs work though. I think it needs to be less talking and more demonstrations.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "988319",
"author": "nfri... | 1,760,376,569.141103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/hackerspace-tour-arch-reactor-in-st-louis-missouri/ | Hackerspace Tour: Arch Reactor In St. Louis Missouri | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [] | Over this last weekend I was lucky enough to find myself in St. Louis, Missouri. Some of my favorite places in the universe are there, the city museum being one that pops into mind most frequently. I realized I had never toured a hackerspace in St. Louis though!
A quick phone call to
Arch Reactor
remedied this. Even though it was Easter Sunday, they came down and gave me a tour. The space was quite nice with a lounge area, electronics workstations, fabrication tools and a complete wood shop. On top of the hackerspace’s pleasant atmosphere, the building also includes a fun little art-bike group called the
Banana Bike Brigade
, and even has a roof-top bar made from reclaimed materials. For those of you who are into cars, in the bike shop there were several nice corvairs and a porsche 911 that appeared to be mid 80s.
If you ever get a chance to stop by, you should definitely try to visit Arch Reactor. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "988307",
"author": "Skitchin",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T18:12:29",
"content": "Hello from St. Louis!Holy crap that place looks nice! Looks like they got a new building since the original open house deal I went to – where they apparently shared a building with some beyond shady chara... | 1,760,376,569.598139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/cooling-a-photomultiplier-tube/ | Cooling A Photomultiplier Tube | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"heat sync",
"peltier cooler",
"photomultiplier",
"thermoelectric"
] | A photomultiplier tube is a device used to measure very low levels of light. It’s a common tool of particle physics when trying to detect just a few photons. It turns out that running a tube at room temperature will not provide the best results. To improve the accuracy and sensitivity of his equipment [David Prutchi] built
this thermoelectric photomultiplier tube cooling rig
.
You can’t actually see the tube in this image but it looks similar to a vacuum tube or Nixie tube. The difference being that the components inside the glass dome make up the detector instead of an amplifier or filament display. To make a physical interface with the glass [David] wrapped it in magnetic shielding and finished with a layer of aluminum foil tape. This cylinder was then snugly fit inside of an aluminum heat sync. two Peltier coolers were attached to the outside of the heat sync, using Arctic Silver thermal compound to help transmit heat. A thermocouple was also added to monitor the temperature of this first stage of cooling. All of this fits into an aluminum enclosure which was filled with expanding spray foam before having a trio of fan-cooled heat syncs attached to it. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "988267",
"author": "kpet",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T16:21:41",
"content": "heat sink",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "988525",
"author": "jack",
"timestamp": "2013-04-03T04:40:31",
"content": "rofl at th... | 1,760,376,569.46903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/coding-new-parts-in-eagle/ | Coding New Parts In Eagle | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"eagle",
"eagle library",
"eagle parts",
"tools"
] | Making new parts in Eagle CAD isn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially if you’re dealing with a package that isn’t in one of the default libraries. Usually, making a new part means digging out a datasheet and drawing a new part in Eagle. A better solution would be to generate new parts with code – define the number of pads, the shape of the pads, the symmetry of the chip, and so forth.
[Joost]’s madparts
does just that, allowing anyone to create new parts in Eagle by entering numbers instead of drawing lines.
The idea behind madparts is to code new entries in Eagle libraries with Coffeescript. It has instant graphical feedback for the part you’re designing, and is able to import from and export to Eagle libraries. A KiCAD-enabled release is coming soon, but until then, madparts looks like a great way to create your own parts in weird packages in Eagle. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "987325",
"author": "Hans Peter Haastrup",
"timestamp": "2013-03-31T13:15:01",
"content": "Cool thing, parts creation has been a headache in EAGLE.. However, this feature has been standard in DesignSpark since the initial launch about 4 years ago. I believe that you can export from D... | 1,760,376,569.64724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/30/interview-another-kickstarter-round-for-the-b9creator/ | Interview: Another Kickstarter Round For The B9Creator | Brian Benchoff | [
"Interviews"
] | [
"3d printer",
"B9 creator",
"Crowd Funding",
"printer",
"stereolithography"
] | Nearly a year ago, the 3D printing scene saw a few new printers based on a technology other than squirting plastic out of a nozzle.
These printers
used DLP projectors underneath a vat of UV curing resin to build objects one layer at a time with incredible resolution.
Probably the most successful of these printers is the B9Creator from [Michael Joyce]. His
original Kickstarter
took in half a million dollars – 10 times his original goal – and still managed to deliver all the kits to backers within 2 weeks of the promised date. Now, [Michael] is running
another Kickstarter
before taking his printers to select distributors. We played some email tag with [Michael] for an interview discussing the perils of a hugely successful Kickstarter, and the future of the B9Creator ecosystem.
Check out our interview after the break.
Q:
Did you have any problems getting enough parts in time to ship for the first Kickstarter?
A: We were surprised by the response but most items not an issue. What did slow us down was a delay from the Projector factory when we doubled our original estimated order amount.
Q:
Will this Kickstarter’s units be different?
A: They will. Thanks to feedback from our first machines we’ve been able to make some improvements which simplify the design a bit and more importantly, increase the quality of the output. We’re also offering upgrade rewards so our previous backers can easily upgrade to the new version if they desire.
Q:
Your Kickstarter campaign is only 2 weeks long, most company’s tend to run 30 days or longer. Why so short?
A: Well, we knew we had a fair number of customers that have been patiently waiting so we wanted to give them the opportunity to back us but still not extend their wait any longer than needed. After this Kickstarter ends, we plan to only sell via distributors. So this will also be the last chance to get a B9Creator at a wholesale price point.
Q:
Were there unexpected issues that people brought up when they received their units?
A: Not really, it’s a Kit so we spent a lot of time on both instructions and videos. We also have a great community forum where it’s pretty easy to find an answer to your question quickly.
Q:
Any plans to offer resin in different colors than the red you already have?
A: The pigment used in the resin must absorb Blue to Near UV light frequencies because we use the pigment to limit the depth of cure. So Yellow, Orange, Red, Black are good choices, Green, Blue Violet are not. We are working on a dark gray to black right now and hope to be offering that by late April.
Q:
After this, you said you’ll be selling through distributors. Care to drop any names?
A: No “big names”, I’m focusing on distributors that are experts in their field and that can offer good support to their customers.
Q:
Any long-term plans for an upgraded machine with a larger build area?
A: Scaling this technology to larger build areas (in the XY plane) faces some pretty big challenges. The Z axis is fairly easy (we already offer 210 mm ~8″). Larger projection areas must trade resolution for size. HD projectors (1920 x 1080 pixel) offer some help (vs the 1024 x 768 pixels in the B9Creator) but that’s only a small increase. The other challenge is the projector power required does not scale linearly (ie, double the X & Y dimensions and you quadruple the power required to cure at the same speed). Where these DLP based machines really shine is their ability to create very detailed and smooth surface finishes. So that’s where we’ll focus our continued development.
We’ve got to say the B9Creator looks
really cool
and has already proven itself as a capable machine able to produce
lost wax casts for jewelry making
and
amazingly detailed resin figurines
. While the material for resin-based 3D printers is more expensive than the RepRaps and Makerbots we see around here, if you want extremely high-resolution for small parts, you might want to check out the
B9Creator Kickstarter
. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "986906",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T19:45:12",
"content": "Form 1 not so much with the whole “making ship dates” thing.Estimated delivery: Feb 2013",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986909",
"author":... | 1,760,376,569.718434 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/30/treasure-trove-of-swarm-robotics-research/ | Treasure Trove Of Swarm Robotics Research | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"research",
"swarm robotics"
] | The screen capture above shows a group of swarm robots working together to move the blue box from the left side of the frame over to the right. It’s just one of many demonstrations shown in the video clip after the break. The clip is a quick sampling of
the many swarm robotics research projects
going on at the University of Sheffield’s Natural Robotics Lab.
The main focus for all of the research is to see what can be accomplished by getting a large group of relatively simple machines to work together. Each device has a microcontroller brain, camera, accelerometer, proximity sensors, and a microphone. By mixing and matching the use of available components they can test different concepts which will be useful in creating utility robot swarms for real-world tasks. The video shows off the robots grouping themselves by like characteristic, a test called segregation (the purpose of this didn’t resonate with us), and group tasks like moving that box. The nice thing is that a series of white papers is available at the post linked above (click on the PDF icon) so that you may dig deeper if these projects are of interest to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e12RicAy1Q
[Thanks Hildgrim] | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "986898",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T19:23:32",
"content": "What happens when you get a swarm of bigdogs throwing stuff?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986908",
"author": "ChalkBored",
"time... | 1,760,376,570.538585 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/30/used-hard-drive-repurposed-as-a-cotton-candy-machine/ | Used Hard Drive Repurposed As A Cotton Candy Machine | Ryan Fitzpatrick | [
"computer hacks",
"cooking hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"candy floss",
"cotton candy"
] | If you’re reading this website, you’re probably someone who likes to take things apart. As such, you probably also have one or more old computer hard drives just sitting around in a parts bin. Of all the projects you could have for an old drive, here’s an interesting one – A Chinese engineer who operates a hard drive repair and data recovery center decided to
turn a used drive into a cotton candy machine
.
Possible sanitary concerns set aside, his creation is very cheap and easy to build. Most hackers probably have all the necessary gear just sitting around already. The only parts he used were: a hard drive that still powered up, a generic plastic basin, an aluminum can, a flat round metal tin, and six bicycle spokes.
It might not be pretty, but it works. If you want to create your own, be sure to check out the above link. There’s a full DIY guide complete with step-by-step photos.
[Thanks Fabien] | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "986837",
"author": "fifthrider",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T15:41:32",
"content": "Looks like a great way to get heavy metal poisoning to me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986847",
"author": "Tyler",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,570.488598 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/30/adding-bluetooth-remote-control-to-pc-speakers/ | Adding Bluetooth Remote Control To PC Speakers | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega8",
"bluetooth",
"computer speakers",
"potentiometer"
] | [Andrzej’s] plain old computer speakers are ordinary no more. He pulled off a fairly complicated hack which now
lets him control speakers via Bluetooth
.
He had a set of Creative brand computer speakers with a volume potentiometer that needed replacing. He was having trouble finding a drop-in replacement part and decided he would just go with a rotary encoder. Obviously you can’t just drop one of those in, he would need a microcontroller to monitor the encoder and translate the change into the appropriate resistance. He figured if he was going this far he might as well make the most out of the uC.
Above you can see all the stuff he crammed into the original case. The rotary encoder is seen on the lower left. An ATmega8 is on a PCB he made himself. The white part to the left is a digital potentiometer which feeds the resistance to the original speaker PCB. On the left is the Bluetooth module which lets him control everything from his phone. You can see a demo of that after the break. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "986781",
"author": "Jori (@Jori_H)",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T13:20:02",
"content": "N900, best phone for hacker ever made.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "986796",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T14:17:5... | 1,760,376,570.265931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/bigdog-throwing-cinder-blocks/ | BigDog Throwing Cinder Blocks | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"arm",
"bigdog",
"cinder block",
"military"
] | It’s as if giving cheetah-like speed to an advanced robot wasn’t good enough. The engineers over at Boston Dynamics must have been thinking to themselves, how can we make this thing even more menacing? The answer seems to be adding a highly dexterous articulated arm that
gives the robot the ability to chuck objects as heavy as cinder blocks
. We’re not kidding, look at the image above and you’ll see one mid-flight in the upper left. A quick search tells us that block probably weighs 30 pounds!
BigDog is a research project for the US military that
we’ve seen navigating all kinds of terrain
. It’s a heavy lifter able to carry loads where other machinery cannot. But now they’ve added an appendage that reminds us of an elephant’s trunk. It branches off of BigDog’s body where a quadruped’s neck would be. At the end of the appendage is a gripper that looks much like what you’d seen on industrial assembly robots. But enough talk, click through to see the action video. Oh, and if you didn’t pick up on the cheetah reference we made earlier you’ll want to
check out this post
.
[Thanks John] | 70 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "986583",
"author": "pinkertr0n",
"timestamp": "2013-03-30T01:10:06",
"content": "The Boston Dynamics machines hold a very special place on the very bottom of my uncanny valley.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986773",
... | 1,760,376,570.642805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/car-stereo-hack-gives-your-party-tunes-and-an-extra-place-to-sit/ | Car Stereo Hack Gives Your Party Tunes And An Extra Place To Sit | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"boombox",
"car stereo",
"stereo"
] | With summer on the horizon it’s time to start thinking about outdoor leisure. [x2Jiggy] is chomping at the bit having recently completed this project. It’s
a portable stereo that also gives you somewhere to sit
.
Unlike several of these types of project, he didn’t
build the system inside of a cooler
. Instead, the chassis was built from scratch using MDF. This material is strong and easy to work with, but we’d bet the finished case is a beast to haul around because of the weight. At least there’s a heavy-duty handle on either side so that you and a buddy can split the burden. One nice perk is that it’ll make a sturdy yet comfortable seat thanks the padded and upholstered top.
The audio components that went into it are all automotive parts and shouldn’t mind being jostled during transport. A computer PSU provides the 12V needed by the stereo. But there are a couple of external rail connections if you want to haul around a 12V battery instead. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "986533",
"author": "Sven",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T23:06:15",
"content": "I prefer to build these things using rechargeable Li* batteries and class D amplifiers, you get away with a fraction of the weight and the same power.Lugging lead acid batteries around is just like, well, car... | 1,760,376,570.211343 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/doctor-who-style-wifi/ | Doctor Who-style WiFi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Doctor Who",
"wifi"
] | Spoilers, sweetie…
If you didn’t catch the latest episode of Doctor Who, here’s the plot: Random people connect to strangely-named WiFi networks and later have their conciousness uploaded to the Internet with the help of spoonheaded robots. To the non-Whovian that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but [Tony Box]
figured out a way to replicate the effect
with a Linux box and a USB WiFi card, just in time for a great April Fool’s gag.
For the SSID, the
folks over on reddit
decided the best characters come from the
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode block
. [Tony] then set up a laptop with a USB wifi card with hostapd, and dnsmasq to change the SSID and DHCP leases. nginx serves up a simple web page with a short clip from the episode (of a spoonhead uploading a conciousness).
Here’s what’s really interesting: [Tony] is using a captive portal, so something like the webpage that shows up when you log on to the internet in a coffee shop or hotel. When the victim of this prank logs on to The Great Intelligence’s WiFi, they’re presented with a webpage containing the video of the spoonhead.
You can check out [Tony]’s demo of his build after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlQD9sxTsAw&w=580] | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "987731",
"author": "Hugh",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T13:15:13",
"content": "That’s fantastic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "987735",
"author": "M4rc3lv",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T13:24:32",
"content": "Very good! I ... | 1,760,376,570.324002 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/hackadays-very-first-kickstarter-campaign/ | Hackaday’s Very First Kickstarter Campaign | Caleb Kraft | [
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"april fools"
] | Here at hackaday, we often find ourselves wondering how we can use the vast technological abilities of our community to make the world a better place. We have finally decided to step up to the plate and make a difference. We are proud to introduce
our very first kickstarter project
.
Happy April fools day!
I’ll just go ahead and answer some questions here real quick.
Why?
Because I thought it would be funny, and hey,
I’ll do anything
for your attention!
Did you actually stick that up your nose?
Yes. It is a simple party trick. You can actually fit a bunch of stuff up in there, but you probably shouldn’t.
Why didn’t you make a tiny board and use smd components?
That was considerably more effort and time than I wanted to put into this gag. Also, I thought cramming something unnecessarily far into my skull added to the humor. There actually is an SMD version that lights up
when you breathe
.
There was actually an even crazier initial prototype that had a button and battery pack in my mouth with wires going through my throat and out my nose. However, when I fed the wires through (another stupid party trick), I found I couldn’t talk without triggering my gag reflex. | 58 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "987693",
"author": "sonofabit",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T11:07:20",
"content": "hah! you allmost fooled me!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "987800",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T16:28:50",
... | 1,760,376,570.827611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/visualize-twitter-with-an-led-matrix/ | Visualize Twitter With An LED Matrix | Mike Szczys | [
"internet hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"api",
"color",
"led matrix",
"python",
"twitter"
] | What’s your favorite color? Don’t tell us, Tweet it to [Sebastian’s]
favorite color Twitter display
and you’ll be contributing to the artwork hanging on his wall.
This answers a very important question, what do you do with your projects after they’re completed? For us the best part is the planning and building. Once it’s done the thrill is pretty much gone for us. We haven’t even switched on
our Ping Pong clock
in over a year. But [Sebastian] recently dusted
his 10×10 LED matrix
for this project.
Tweets are parsed by a Python project he wrote to try out the Twitter API. It looks for a set list of colors . He asserts that people aren’t that creative when you solicit their favorite color but to prove him wrong we’re going to say our favorite is Amaranth. After it finds the color it pushes it to the next pixel in the spiraling pattern shown above. But wait, there’s more! To give the pixels a but if extra meaning he uses the total length of the tweet to set intensity.
If you need a Titter enabled hack that displays a bit more specific data you’ll want
something that can actually display what was Tweeted
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "987625",
"author": "Chris P. Bacon (@Gues7)",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T06:12:55",
"content": "“To give the pixels a but if extra meaning he uses the total length of the tweet to set intensity.” – I think you meant bit of extra meaning.“If you need a Titter enabled hack that displays... | 1,760,376,570.690725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/building-ram-into-veronica-the-6502-computer/ | Building RAM Into Veronica – The 6502 Computer | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"ram",
"veronica"
] | It seems strange that
RAM is being added to a computer
so late in the build, but [Quinn Dunki] must have had it in the back of her mind the whole time because it turns out to be a rather painless experience. For those of you keeping score, this makes her Veronica project
Turing complete
.
The brightly colored rats nest pictured above connects the new components to the 6502 computer backplane seen in the upper left. [Quinn] decided to go with two 32K SRAM modules which need very little in the way of drive hardware (it’s hanging out on the breadboard to the left). The RAM module will simply listen for its address and react accordingly. There is one hitch regarding a two-phase clock and the need to protect the RAM from erroneous data during the first of those phases.
Getting this all to work actually pointed out a bug in the ROM module she had long ago completed. After picking up on the problem she was able to correct it simply by cutting traces and soldering in jumper wires. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "987856",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T20:29:42",
"content": "seems all you need now is a keyboard port. a c compiler would be nice but you seem to know your asm.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "987895",
... | 1,760,376,570.730349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/images-carrying-an-encrypted-data-payload/ | Images Carrying An Encrypted Data Payload | Mike Szczys | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"aes 256",
"encrypted data",
"hidden",
"image",
"png",
"steganography"
] | This is a tidy looking banner image. But according to [Ian]
it contains 52KB of source code
. You can’t just read out all of that data. Well, you can but it will be gibberish. Before hiding the bits in plain sight he encrypted them with two different keys.
He’s using AES-256 encryption to keep his data away from prying eyes. But if that wasn’t enough, he also wrote a PHP program to hide the bits in a PNG image. Not just any picture will do (otherwise your eye will be able to see something’s awry). The post linked above focuses mainly on how to choose an image that will hide your data most easily. We asked him if he would share his techniques for actually merging the encrypted file with the picture and he delivered. Head on over to
his repository
if you want to take a look at the generator code. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "987538",
"author": "CoolMod",
"timestamp": "2013-03-31T23:09:21",
"content": "Yes, well known technique called steganography. :)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "987542",
"autho... | 1,760,376,570.893167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/add-features-that-should-have-already-been-there-to-an-eprom-programmer/ | Add Features (that Should Have Already Been There) To An EPROM Programmer | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"eprom",
"zif",
"zif socket"
] | [Morten Overgaard Hansen] has a cheap EPROM programmer which he uses to program chips for retro gaming (among other things). He was surprised that although the device includes a 40-pin ZIF socket it seems to lack the ability to program 16-bit chips. He figured he could get it to play ball if he put in a little effort. Above you can see that
a few add-on parts enabled 16-bit programming
on the device.
If you look inside the case you may be surprised to find it uses an FPGA. [Morten] searched around and found a few others online who had been looking to stretch the functionality of these types of programmer. Specifically, he came across a Python program for this programmer’s bigger bother that already implemented the functions necessary to program the larger chips. He used it as a guide when writing his own programming application.
On the hardware side of things he needed to feed a higher voltage to the VCC pin, which is done with the boost converter seen to the right. He also added some jumper wires to manage the output enable signal. To make the whole thing modular he ordered a ZIF socket with long pins and soldered the alterations in place. Look closely and you’ll see two levers for ZIF sockets. The one on the right is for the original socket, the one on the left is for the adapter. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "987513",
"author": "Ben Collier",
"timestamp": "2013-03-31T21:11:43",
"content": "Those TOP programmers are rubbish, I had to send mine back, and I’m building my own with an Arduino now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "987516"... | 1,760,376,570.944973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/31/building-a-wooden-air-raid-siren/ | Building A Wooden Air Raid Siren | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"air raid siren",
"siren"
] | A while back, [Matthias] was working on a dust collector for his shop. Being the master woodsmith he is, he decided to build a dust collection system out of wood. Everything worked out in the end, but in creating wooden impellers and blowers, he discovered his creations made a lot of noise. For this project, instead of trying to quiet his blower, he decided
to make one as loud as possible
in the form of an air raid siren.
The basic idea behind [Matthias]’ air raid siren is to make two impellers that force air through two stators along the perimeter of the rotor. As the siren spins, the air coming from the impellers is either blocked or passes through the stators, creating an alternating high and low pressure; to be more accurate, it creates a
ton
of noise. Stack two of these impellers together and you’ve got a two-tone air raid siren made out of wood.
For something that’s spinning very fast, we’re surprised [Matthias] didn’t have more problems with balancing his siren than he did. There are a few useful tricks to be picked up from his tutorial, though: balancing everything on a marble really seemed to help with the build.
As for how loud the siren is, [Matthias] can’t give us a decibel volume. From the video after the break, though, we can tell you it’s really, really loud.
Thanks [Dimitar] for sending this in. [Matthias], it’s alright if you send projects in yourself. You’ve earned the right to say, “I am so cool!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tr6hCZAVhI&w=580]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfvOjdZpkg&w=580] | 44 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "987404",
"author": "TheRealist",
"timestamp": "2013-03-31T15:07:45",
"content": "Nice improvisation, but that guy needs a lathe, before he looses a finger.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "987551",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",... | 1,760,376,571.289404 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/ask-hackaday-hacking-lingo-fails/ | Ask Hackaday: Hacking Lingo Fails | Brian Benchoff | [
"Ask Hackaday"
] | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"fail",
"hacking",
"hollywood",
"movies",
"tv"
] | Ah,
CSI.
What other television show could present digital forensics with such
two-bit dialogue
?
It’s time once again to put on your hacker hats – a red fedora, we guess – and tell us the worst hacker dialogue you’ve seen in movies or TV. We’ve seen a ton of shows and movies where writers and directors spend zero time doing any sort of research in whatever technology they’d like to show off in the story they’re trying to convey. Usually this results in lines like, “I’ll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic. See if I can track an IP address.” It’s technobabble at its best, and horribly misinformed at its worst.
We’re wondering what you, the readers of Hackaday, think are the worst examples of hacker lingo fails. Anything from, ‘Enhance!’ to the frightening real-life quote, “the Internet is not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”
We’ll compile your suggestions in a later post, but I’m betting something from
Star Trek: Voyager
will make the #1 technobabble/hacking lingo fails. There’s just too much in that show that isn’t internally consistent and doesn’t pay any heed to the laws of (fictional) physics. Warp 10, I’m looking at you. Of course there was the wonderful Habbo reference in last week’s
Doctor Who
, but I’m betting that was intentional as [Moffat] seems pretty up to speed on the tropes and memes of the Interwebs.
About a month ago, we asked you for your take on
the worst hacking scenes
ever shown on TV or film. The results
made for good viewing
, albeit with a surprising absence of
Lawnmower Man.
Now we want some dialogue to go with these horrendous hacking scenes. So, what say you, Hackaday? What are the worst hacking lingo fails you’ve seen or heard? Please be specific about what movie/TV show you’re referencing. Last time some good stuff probably slipped by because people just said a few words without context assuming we’d know exactly what they were referring to. | 114 | 46 | [
{
"comment_id": "988201",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T14:26:53",
"content": "The “frightening real-world quote” was from Senator Ted Stevens. I have no love for him, but I think he got more grief for that than he deserved. Engineers often speak of “sending data down the pipe”. In fact,... | 1,760,376,572.010082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/dual-displays-on-a-playstation-2/ | Dual Displays On A Playstation 2 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Playstation Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"demo",
"demoscene",
"playstation 2",
"ps2"
] | At the Revision 2013 demoparty held last weekend, visitors and guests wanting to check out the latest advances in programming old video game consoles got a real treat. [Abyss] took a Playstation 2, connected the composite video out port to a TV and an oscilloscope, and
created the first dual display PS2.
From
the official video of the demo
, the two video signals are generated from a single video out on the PS2. Generating the composite video out is understandably fairly easy, but the second display – an oscilloscope – is driven during the Vblank period in the composite signal. There’s no audio trickery here; video signals are used for video, and audio signals are used for audio.
[Abyss] took first place in the wild demo competition at Revision 2013. Understandably, too, because this is one of the best demos we’ve ever seen. You can check out the official video from [Abyss] after the break, and the wild competition video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er8CoAAmv2A&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0plO-FsZ3c&w=580#t=2169s] | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "988177",
"author": "Ralf",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T13:49:37",
"content": "I spoke to Dexter at the party – he said it was just a standard video signal, so no trickery involved with blanking periods or anything else.I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out now (and assuming I’m right, it... | 1,760,376,571.753833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/02/an-eq-display-for-a-pedal-board/ | An EQ Display For A Pedal Board | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"eq",
"guitar effect",
"pedal board"
] | There are a lot of tinkerers out there who got their start in electronics with musical hacks. Surprisingly though, we don’t see many submissions to our tip line covering boost circuits for electric basses, rewiring guitar electronics, or even more complex effect pedals. [Deadbird], though, is bucking that trend with an
EQ display stomp box
that fits neatly on his pedal board.
[Deadbird]’s build isn’t a graphic equalizer that can change the volume of different frequency bands; instead, he used
the MSGEQ7 chip
to listen in on the signal his guitar is producing and display that on a 128×64 graphic backlit display.
The entire project was prototyped on a breadboard with an Arduino. After he got all the components working – a momentary switch to turn the pedal on and off, 1/4″ jacks for the input and output, and a power supply – [Deadbird] took an Arduino prototyping shield and made everything more permanent. Now he’s got an attractive pedal on his board that shows the signal coming from his guitar in seven neat bands. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "988124",
"author": "Freek de Greef",
"timestamp": "2013-04-02T11:07:33",
"content": "So it is more of an RTA than an EQ really.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "988134",
"author": "poopsmith",
"timestamp": "2013... | 1,760,376,571.200679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/how-to-turn-on-a-light-bulb/ | How-to: Turn On A Light Bulb | Brian Benchoff | [
"how-to"
] | [
"april fools"
] | All too often, the commentors here on Hackaday display some parsimony in their engineering prowess. If someone uses a Raspberry Pi to blink a few LEDs, someone will invariably chime in that an ARM microcontroller would do just as well. Switching a relay on and off belies the capabilities of a 32-bit Cortex microcontroller when a simpler 8-bit build would certainly suffice. Of course this can always be reduced to a 555 circuit and further still to conditioned pigeons tapping a key in response to either food or opiates. I’d like to take this opportunity to present a tutorial. Not just any tutorial, but the actual foundation of everything we love here at Hackaday: blinky, glowey things.
You can check out the rest of this tutorial after the break.
The battery
Put bluntly, every project dealing with electricity needs a power source. Whether through mains power, a solar cell, some sort of strange inductive contraption, or through a chemical reaction, every electronic project needs a power source. I have considered a few different power sources for this project including mains power (
far too dangerous
to use with a light bulb), a bicycle generator (I’m focusing on strength training this week. Cardio is next week), hamsters and wheels (burning the hamsters as a fuel source and using a heat exchanger to turn a turbine), and magnets (how do they work?). In the end, I settled on using a battery to power the light bulb for this project.
The battery used for this build. It consists of four ‘D’ cells connected together in series via a COMF UM-1×4 battery holder. It provides 6 Volts across its terminals.
The power source for this project is called a
battery
, as it is made up of a collection of cells. [Benjamin Franklin] came up with this terminology, alluding to artillery formations. Just as more than one cannon is needed to form an artillery battery, more than one cell is needed to form one electronic battery. Yes, this means the AA, AAA, C, and D cells are not batteries per se, but individual cells. They only become batteries when used together. One exception of this is a 9 Volt battery, itself made of eight AAAA (that’s quadruple-A) cells. Seriously. go take a pair of pliers to a 9 Volt battery and see for yourself.
For this project I’ve used ‘D’ cells, as they have a larger capacity than AAA, AA, and C cells. The longer life of D cells is vitally important for this project; I very much expect to have this project sit in the back of my closet or tucked away in some drawer for quite a while until I stumble across it one day and remember the beautiful April morning where I wrote this tutorial fueled by at least two pots of coffee.
Of course just simply putting a battery next to a light bulb won’t do any good. Unfortunately transmission line theory is far too broad a subject to cover in this short tutorial so I’ll just have to cover the basics right now. This battery has two leads coming out of it; a positive and a negative. If we connect the positive wire to the negative wire, electricity will flow through the gap. At higher voltages, a small spark may form. With the voltages we’re working with here, it’s fairly safe, although it is possible to electrocute yourself with even these small voltages. While this may only be possible by stabbing your heart with electrodes and applying power, safety is of utmost concern when playing with electricity.
The light bulb
As connecting the positive and negative terminals of a battery together is amazingly stupid, we might as well throw in a light bulb. For this build, I’m using a 6 Volt light bulb that pairs perfectly with our four D cell battery. Just like our battery holder, the socket for the light bulb is attached to a piece of plywood, much more convenient and ergonomic than any flashlight or electric lantern.
You may notice the light bulb is off in the picture below. This is because the light bulb is not screwed down completely into the socket. Yes, unlike LEDs where electrical contacts are soldered on, light bulbs are usually wired into a circuit with a screw-type base. Just as with the lid on a jar of peanut butter, you screw the light bulb into the socket by turning it clockwise. To remove the light bulb from the peanut butter, unscrew it by turning it counter-clockwise.
Before we get into the actual process of turning on a light bulb by screwing it into its base, let’s first consider how a light bulb works. The light bulb was invented by [Thomas Edison] after many, many failed attempts at creating a practical electric light. The light bulb I’m using passes electrical current through a tungsten filament, heating it up and producing light as blackbody radiation. Before discovering tungsten as a perfect filament for an electric light, [Edison] tried hundreds of different materials from carbonized bamboo to the hopes and dreams of a young [Nikola Tesla]. Of course the use of tungsten wasn’t without its downsides – at the time there was no commercial use for tungsten and its extremely high melting point, the highest of any element, made it impractical for use in industry.
[Edison]’s use of tungsten in his successful light bulb guaranteed the continued employment of thousands of tungsten miners in backwoods West Virginia tungsten towns. Life there wasn’t easy, sellin’ your soul to the company store and watchin’ your son grow up to take your job after you’re lost to a tragic cave-in. Of course working conditions improved after the tungsten miner riots of 1824 and the intervention of governor Batman.
In closing, The Professor on
Gilligan’s Island
was an incompetent fool. As he was clearly not a materials scientist or structural engineer vis-à-vis his inability to fix a hole in a boat, we can only assume he was some sort of physicist or electrical engineer. This is not congruent with The Professor’s actions, though; even a second year EE undergraduate would be able to construct a simple spark gap transmitter using components found in their radio and wiring found aboard the ship.
“Oh, wait.” you say, “broadband transmissions and thus spark gap transmitters are illegal.” Yes, well that’s kind of the point. I guarantee that if The Professor built a spark gap transmitter – and remember, this is the simplest transmitter that can be made out of coconuts and possibly one of Mrs. Howe’s evening gowns – an amateur radio operator would have tracked them down within a few hours. We already know The Professor knew Morse from the season two episode,
Ghost a Go-Go
, so really there’s nothing stopping the Professor and everyone else getting off the island. | 92 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "987896",
"author": "XOIIO",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T23:09:51",
"content": "How to turn on a light:flick the switch up.lol but seriously, I hope hackaday isn’t going to do a whole bunch of the basics like this, it would be unbearable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,376,571.415777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/snes-headphones-scream-out-for-bluetooth-control/ | SNES Headphones Scream Out For Bluetooth Control | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"headphones",
"snes",
"super nintendo"
] | Here’s a build that just exudes nerd cred. It’s
an SNES controller modified into a pair of headphones
, straight from the workshop of [lyberty5].
The build began by stealing a controller from a PAL SNES and carefully dremeling the buttons and d-pad loose from their plastic frame. The PCB was cut in half, and the remaining plastic was carefully crafted into round speaker enclosures with the help of some epoxy. hot glue, and possibly a few pieces of styrene.
The result is a perfectly formed pair of SNES headphones, with a build quality right up there with the best case mods we’ve seen. Unfortunately, while the buttons are still attached to the PCB, they don’t do anything. We’re thinking a small Bluetooth adapter – or even repurposing a set of Bluetooth headphones with volume and play controls – would be a wonderful use for the 20-year-old, candy-like buttons.
Still, an awesome build, and [lyberty5] really shows off his craft by constructing these wonderful headphones. You can see the time-lapse of the build after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVYzjTu5wE&w=580] | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "987870",
"author": "Sven",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T21:09:07",
"content": "Naaaw, i thought the buttons would be able to play the console, these would be awesome to drive someone nuts…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "987871",
... | 1,760,376,571.475938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/windmill-made-from-washing-machine-555-chip/ | Windmill Made From Washing Machine, 555 Chip | Brian Benchoff | [
"green hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"Wind turbine",
"windmill"
] | Green hacks implement one of two philosophies. The first is über-technical, with very expensive, high-quality components. The other side of this coin creates green power out of junk. [Timot] obviously took the latter choice,
building a windmill out of an old washing machine motor
and a few bits of PVC.
The generator for the windmill is based on a
Fisher and Paykel direct drive
usually found in clothes washing machines, rewired to provide 12 Volts at low RPM. At high speeds, the generator can produce 80 Volts, so a charge controller –
even one based on a 555 chip
– was an excellent addition.
For the other miscellaneous mechanical parts of the build, [Timot] cut the blades of the windmill out of 200 mm PVC pipe and sanded them down a bit for a better aerodynamic profile. With a custom fiberglass spinner, [Timot] whipped up a very attractive power station that is able to provide about 20 watts in normal conditions and 600 watts when it’s very windy. Not enough to power a house by any means, but more than enough to charge a cellphone or run a laptop for a few hours out in the back country. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "987843",
"author": "AS",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T19:26:09",
"content": "Really need to be careful with PVC blades as unblance can make them flex enough to break off at the base and fly qute a ways.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,376,571.649223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/04/01/kindle-weather-and-recycling-display/ | Kindle Weather And Recycling Display | Mike Szczys | [
"Kindle hacks"
] | [
"frame",
"kindle",
"recycling",
"reminder",
"svg",
"vector graphics",
"weather"
] | We’ve seen a fair number of hacks like this one that reuse a Kindle basically just for its ePaper display. [HaHaBird] has this device hanging on his refrigerator to
display the weather and remind him about recycling day
. It kind of make us wonder why we’re not seeing cheap ePaper modules on the hobby market?
The concept isn’t new, but [HaHaBird] does move it along just a little bit. He started by following the guide which [Matt] wrote after pulling off
the original Kindle weather display hack
. It uses a separate computer running a script that polls the Internet for weather data and generates a vector graphic like the one seen above. The Kindle then loads the image once every five minutes thanks to a cron job on the rooted device. But why stop there? [HaHaBird] tweaked the script to include a reminder about his municipality’s irregular recycling schedule.
Don’t overlook the quality of the hardware side of this hack. With its prominent place in the kitchen he wanted a nicely finished look. This was achieved by building a frame out of cherry and routing passages on the back to make room for the extension cable (so it could hang in landscape orientation) and a toggle to hold the Kindle firmly in place. Additional information on the build
is available here
. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "987775",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2013-04-01T15:11:04",
"content": "The ED060SC4 modules are quite cheap ($40) on eBay. Problem is that they are not very easy to drive without specialized controller. I’m going to see if I can connect one to STM32L151, but haven’t finished the ... | 1,760,376,571.810419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/homemade-bocce-balls/ | Homemade Bocce Balls | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"bocce",
"bocce balls",
"cement",
"mold",
"vacuum forming"
] | For those unfamiliar with it, Bocce Ball is an outdoor game played with a set of heavy grapefruit-sized balls. We’ve never really thought of making our own set, but as you can see above, it can be done. These are
six Bocce balls produced at home
by [Horvitz444].
It seems the commercially available balls have a cement or clay core covered in a layer of high-impact epoxy. [Horvitz444] was able to recreate this starting with some vacuum forming. He built his own former out of peg board and a shop vac. The plastic stock he used was a light panel from the home store. After heating it up in the oven he formed a mold using what looks like two halves of Bocce balls. The mold halves were melted together using a soldering iron. After pouring in the secret concoction of cement ingredients and letting them harden, he removed the orbs from the molds and ground down the seams until smooth. They were covered in epoxy and painted. Most of these details were gleaned from his comments in
the Reddit thread
. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "986508",
"author": "XOIIO",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T22:01:19",
"content": "People still use reddit?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986528",
"author": "John Bokma",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T23:01:07",
... | 1,760,376,571.701455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/avr-vga-generator/ | AVR VGA Generator | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"atmega1284",
"vga"
] | This simple circuitry makes up the hardware for [Andrew’s]
AVR-based VGA generator
. He managed to get an ATmega1284 to output a stable VGA signal. Anyone who’s looked into the VGA standard will know that this is quite an accomplishment. That’s because VGA is all about timing, and that presented him with a problem almost immediately.
The chip is meant to run at a top speed of 20 MHz. [Andrew] did manage to get code written that implemented the horizontal and vertical sync at this speed. But there weren’t enough clock cycles left to deal with frame buffering. His solution was to overclock the chip to 25 MHz. We assume he chose that because he had a crystal on hand, because we think it would have been easier to use a 25.174 MHz crystal which is one of the speeds listed in the specification.
Red, green, and blue each get their own two-bit range selected via a set of resistors for a total of 64 colors. As you can see in the video after the break, the 128×96 pixel video is up and running. [Andrew] plans to enlarge the scope of the project from here to make it more versatile than just showing standard images. The code (written in assembly) is available at
his GitHub repository
. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "986451",
"author": "kay",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T19:04:13",
"content": "This is very awesome. I have to recommend a Propeller chip if you want to do vga out, but there is a lot of elegance in this method. I wonder if it’d play well with the 25.174?",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,376,571.865642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/ask-hackaday-are-we-close-to-reinventing-the-keyboard-for-touchscreens/ | Ask Hackaday: Are We Close To Reinventing The Keyboard For Touchscreens? | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Ask Hackaday",
"iphone hacks",
"Multitouch Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"asetniop",
"keyboard",
"minuum",
"smart phone",
"tablet",
"touch screen"
] | We mourn the loss of the physical keyboard with the advent of tablets. After all, we do a bit of typing getting all of these features posted throughout the week. And we kind of blame tablets for the decline of the netbook industry (we still use a Dell Vostro A90 when not at home). But we’re trying to keep an open mind that we may not need a physical keyboard anymore. If someone can come up with an innovative alternative to the Qwerty layout that we are able to learn and can use with speed and without physical strain we’ll be on board. Our question is, do you think we are close to a screen typing breakthrough?
This question came to mind after seeing
the Minuum keyboard
shown above. It compresses all of the rows of a Qwerty into a single row, monopolizing less screen space than conventional smartphone input methods. The demo video (embedded after the break) even shows them hacking the concept into a distance sensor and using a graphite-on-paper resistor. Pretty cool. But what happens when you type a word not in the dictionary, like this author’s last name?
You can actually try out the Minuum style thanks to [Zack’s]
in-browser demo hack
. He’s not affiliated with Minuum, but has done quite a bit of alternative keyboard input work already with
his ASETNIOP chorded typing project
. It’s another contender for changing how we do things. | 98 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "986383",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T17:11:15",
"content": "Oh, crap. again. I’m already tired of all those ‘innovative’ input methods for mobile devices. Why they just don’t make a few decent mobile devices with _physical_ keyboards the way motorola milestone was."... | 1,760,376,572.881177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/dvd-power-supply-repair-tips/ | DVD Power Supply Repair Tips | Mike Szczys | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"bridge rectifier",
"diode",
"dvd",
"electrolytic capacitor",
"power supply"
] | This demonstration fixes the power supply of a DVD player, but the skills transcend this one application. [Alan] walks us through
the process of repairing a power supply
(
translated
) on a simple consumer electronics unit.
Obviously this starts by cracking open the dead device and verifying that the culprit is the power supply. [Alan] then removes that board from the chassis and gets down to work with a visual inspection. He’s got several images which illustrate things to look for; blistered electrolytic capacitors, cracked solder joins, scorch marks, etc. In his case there’s obviously a burnt out fuse, but that merely protects the hardware from further damage, it’s not the cause. Next he examines the diodes of the bridge rectifier. These need to be removed from the system to do so, which he accomplishes by clipping one end of each as seen above. He found that two diodes on one side of the bridge had broken down. After replacing them he tries a new fuse which immediately burns out. But a quick swap of the capacitors and he gets the thing back up and running.
We perk up every time we see this type of repair hack. We figure if
we can build our own hobby electronics
we should be able to fix the cheap devices like this one. | 46 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "986353",
"author": "mrsayao",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T15:31:03",
"content": "Can someone explain how to test those diodes? Is he using the meter in continuity mode? Also, black dots on caps = blown or leaky correct? I know this is pretty basic stuff, but I got lost in translation. ... | 1,760,376,572.091982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/wooden-teeth-for-your-usb-keyboard/ | Wooden Teeth For Your USB Keyboard | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"usb",
"wood"
] | We just got an ergonomic keyboard for the first time and absolutely love it. But the look of this keyboard hack has us second guessing ourselves. [Will Pretend] pulled off
an absolutely stunning wooden retrofit for his USB keyboard
. Be warned, his project log includes 175 photos, and most of them have captions.
He started off by taking apart the original USB keyboard to see what he was working with. Before digging in to the valuable wood stock he cut test pieces using some thin MDF. But once he had a clear plan to get to the end of the project it was full stem ahead.
The keys are not simple Chicklet style overlays, they have depth like you would expect to find on low-grade plastic peripherals. This was accomplished by milling each key, then sending them through the laser cutter to each the letter on top.
Take some time to make your way through the entire project (here’s
a thumbnail layout
if you get frustrated). Unfortunately [Will] says
he doesn’t actually use the keyboard
because of grains catching and the keys move around a bit too much. But it does work. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "986326",
"author": "(@CakeWafflez)",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T13:43:39",
"content": "“The keys are not simple Chicklet style overlays, they have depth like you would expect to find on low-grade plastic peripherals.”You’re calling a touch typists dream keyboard low grade and that HEL... | 1,760,376,572.143046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/oil-feed-retrofit-for-a-cnc-mill-starting-to-come-together/ | Oil Feed Retrofit For A CNC Mill Starting To Come Together | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"brass",
"brazing",
"mill",
"oil",
"pipe",
"silver solder"
] | Here is the first real fruit of [Joel’s] labor on
his oiling system for a CNC mill
. Regular readers will remember hearing about his quest to go from a manual mill to a CNC version. As part of the overhaul he decided to add a system that can dispense oil to the different wear parts on the machine. We first looked in on the project when he showed off
the pipe bender he built for the task
. Now that he has that at his disposal he was able to route tubing to many of the parts.
The system starts with a central brass manifold which is pictured in the foreground. Each pipe was bent and cut to reach its destination with a minimum of wasted space. After a test fit showed good results he brazed the pieces together using silver solder. Each of the ball nuts have been drilled out so that oil will be injected onto the threads of the ball rod. Three input ports on the manifold will eventually let [Joel] connect the oil injection system via flexible tubing. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "986307",
"author": "ttcp",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T12:15:12",
"content": "Great sketches and drawings all over his writeup.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "986331",
"author": "Lubey",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T13:56:28",... | 1,760,376,572.384626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/reverse-engineering-challenge-starts-off-simple/ | Reverse Engineering Challenge Starts Off Simple | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"assembly",
"reverse engineering",
"Teensy 3.0"
] | We love seeing hard-core firmware reverse engineering projects, but the number of hackers who can pull those off is relatively small. It’s possible to grow the ranks of the hacker elite though. A hackerspace is a great place to have a little challenge like this one. [Nicolas Oberli] put together
a capture the flag game that requires the contestants to reverse engineer Teensy 3.0 firmware
.
He developed this piece of hardware for the Insomni’hack 2013 event. It uses the Teensy 3.0 capacitive touch capabilities to form a nine-digit keypad with a character LCD screen for feedback. When the correct code is entered the screen will display instructions on how to retrieve the ‘flag’.
To the right you can see the disassembly of the .elf file generated by the Arduino IDE. This is what [Nicolas] gave to the contestants, which gets them past the barrier of figuring out how to dump the code from the chip itself. But it does get them thinking in assembly and eventually leads to figuring out what the secret code is for the device. This may be just enough of a shove in the right direction that one needs to get elbow deep into picking apart embedded hardware as a hobby. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "986145",
"author": "junkbox",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T04:34:23",
"content": "…But, can’t they just find the flag as a string literal in the binary? It’s a shame the checkSerial routine is adequately obfuscated, yet the goal is right out there in the open. I hope to see more project... | 1,760,376,572.436295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/hammond-organ-sends-messages-which-can-be-decoded-by-a-spectrogram/ | Hammond Organ Sends Messages Which Can Be Decoded By A Spectrogram | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"fldigi",
"ham",
"hammond organ",
"spectrogram"
] | Here’s an interesting use for an old organ. Let it get in on your Ham radio action. [Forrest Cook] is showing off his project which uses
a Hammond Organ to encode messages which can be displayed by a Spectrogram
. We’ve seen this
type of message encoding
before (just not involving a musical instrument). It’s rather popular with Hams in the form of
the fldigi program
.
An Arduino was connected to the organ via a UNL2003 darlington array chip. This chip is driving some reed relays which make the organ connections to create the sine wave tones. With that hardware in place it’s a matter of formatting data to generate the target audio. [Forrest] wrote his own Arduino sketch which takes characters from the serial port (pushed over USB by the laptop), maps then to a stored 5×7 character font set, then drives the pins to produce the tones. As you can see in the clip after the break the resulting audio can be turned into quite readable text. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "986049",
"author": "openmakersdaily",
"timestamp": "2013-03-29T00:39:32",
"content": "This is MT Hellhttp://www.qsl.net/zl1bpu/HELL/MT_intro.htm",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "986147",
"author": "Unknownable",
... | 1,760,376,572.326666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/hacking-vm-for-peak-performance/ | Hacking VM For Peak Performance | Mike Szczys | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"bandwidth",
"throughput",
"tweak",
"virtual machine",
"vm",
"vmware"
] | [Cyber Explorer] recently ditched his collection of physical computers acting as servers by virtualizing the lot of them. But with every change there’s a drawback. Although it wasn’t too hard for him to set up the virtual machines, he did end up spending quite a bit of time trying to improve the bandwidth. Luckily he posted
an article chronicling all of the VM tweaks he used to improve the system
.
The experience involves both a Windows 8 machine, as well as a some Linux boxes meaning there’s something here for everybody. At each step in the process he performs some throughput tests to see how the boxes are performing. Tweaks are numerous, but include trying out different Ethernet drivers, making sure all modules are up to date, squashing at least one bug, and giving jumbo-frames a try.
[Thanks Omri] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "986021",
"author": "ginge",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T23:33:47",
"content": "Totally amazing work. Well done. I hope those bugs were posted to the relevant places ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "986026",
"author": "MikrySo... | 1,760,376,572.478481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/top-10-hacking-failures-in-movies/ | Top 10 Hacking Failures In Movies | Caleb Kraft | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Rants"
] | [
"failures"
] | It had been requested that we make a short video covering the top worst hacks in movies. Being the community that we are, it seemed like an interesting request.
We asked for your input
, and you were happy to deliver! However, the proposition of creating a “top 10” list turned out to be quite difficult. There were just SO MANY horrible scenes that I started thinking about how to even categorize them. We could probably to a “top 10” in any of the following categories without even having to dig too deeply:
hacker lingo
mocked up interfaces
fake input devices
virus screen-takeover moments
access denied messages
hardware taped together
Honestly, after breaking it down in such a manner, making the top 10 movie hacking failures, felt painfully general. It is like making a list of “top 10 animals that ever existed”. The state of technology portrayal in movies is frankly abysmal. It is obvious that the only people who know less about tech than “hollywood” are the people making laws about it.
So, lets take a look at this list and see what we ended up with.
10.
The Core
There’s a scene where they have to get through a door and it won’t budge. To open it, they’re going to have to crack into the control panel and hotwire the the thing. What do they find inside? A breadboard. Ok, well, we all know that in that environment, you wouldn’t be finding any breadboards. Then again, I’ve seen some duct taped together networks in large corporations that might convince me that this one isn’t a failure at all.
9.
Jurassic Park
I’ve heard so many people point out this scene as a failure, and it is usually for the wrong reason all together. The young woman sits down at a computer and announces to everyone “hey, I know this, it is unix!”, while the camera switches to a 3d rendering that looks like a physical layout of a neighborhood.
“aha! that’s not a real interface!” is usually what I hear from people, but they’re wrong. It was called
FSN
and did actually exist. No one really
used it
though because, while neat, it wasn’t a great way to actually work. Tons of people loaded it up and played with it, but it never really caught on. I actually wouldn’t have been surprised to see a super gratuitously funded IT department loading stuff like this in their spare time because they had convinced the boss man that they
totally needed that SGI
for… uh… network security or something.
The real hack failure is the fact that her simply recognizing the operating system means that she now has full control over EVERYTHING in the Jurassic park network.
8.
Firewall
This one is fun because it gets into a little hardware hacking. I LOVE improvised devices, so it caught my interest. It turned out pretty silly though. In the movie Firewall, [Harrison Ford] needs to get data off his screen to someone far away. To pull this off, he rips the scanner head from his fax machine and attaches it to an ipod.
He remarks that the ipod won’t know the difference between “10,000 files or 10,000 songs”.
This is where the hackaday crowd really comes into play. Many will recognize that it is wrong, but only here will you find people that might actually figure out how it would have to really work.
First, you need something to read the data from the scanner head. Then, it needs to be converted to an actual file that is compatible with the ipod. Then you would have to initialize the transfer onto said ipod. That means that there’s got to be a decent amount of hardware and code going on in between the two items. To be fair though, they do show something there as an interface, so maybe I should have left it off the list. However, I challenge anyone to pull this off as fast as he did.
7.
Goldeneye
In the beginning of the movie Goldeneye, they are establishing just how fantastic [Boris] the hacker is. After an “access denied” screen that could easily be part of another list, [Boris] proceeds to hop into the network of the CIA. When he’s caught,
he simply issues this magical command: SEND SPIKE.
The nasty security guy who caught him is immediately disconnected. Wow. I don’t even know where they were going with this. I guess it was just supposed to be another notch on the “[Borris] is amazing ” tally sheet.
6.
Hackers
This movie always comes up when talking about hacking. Some people love it, some hate it. The accuracy of the movie is about as divided as the fan base as well. They do a decent job of showing how tedious and silly hacking can actually be,
but when they show the 3d renderings of the data,
it all falls apart. However, this movie was released in 1995, and at that time we really had high hopes for the immediate future of 3d interfaces (see FSN). It is like our generations version of “jet pack disappointment”. I was promised spacial file navigation and I’m not upset that it hasn’t been delivered.
5.
Swordfish
Swordfish came out in 2001.
It has no excuse for 3d renderings of data
. By this time we knew that the 3d interface of the future wasn’t really very usable (again, see FSN). Not to mention the gratuitous blow job/ gunpoint uber hacker scene that made my beverage attempt a quick escape out my nasal passage.
4.
Skyfall
In this latest installment of the James bond series, I was incredibly let down. As a child, I found [Q] to be one of the coolest things ever. I wanted that job,
bad
(this job is slowly turning into that actually). When I heard that the actor who played him passed away, I thought they would take this as an opportunity to do a resurgence of gadgetry with the new [Q]. Unfortunately they continued their slow slide toward an entire 2 hours of sullen looks and knees to the ribs.
The scene that really almost caused an aneurism was where [Q] proclaims that the only way to look at the data on the computer is to attach it to their network (wow, really?). Then they proceed to look at the encrypted data as a giant 3d sphere. This trope is already bad, I mean why would you look at encrypted code as a sphere? On top of that, [James Bond] recognizes a word in plain text. This somehow unlocks all the encryption.
What comes next is the really painful part
. We are looking at encrypted CODE. When you decrypt code, you get code. Sure, you might be able to then RUN that code to get some kind of a visualization, I guess. What you don’t get is your encrypted code morphing into a visualization of a map.
3.
Live Free or Die Hard
Hackers don’t put bombs in peoples computers. If they did, they wouldn’t set them to initialize using a keystroke. I mean if you can remotely make their screen go all wiggly, can’t you just detonate your damn bomb?
2.
Enemy of the State.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I didn’t know if this was a joke.
[Jack Black] does that bit where you rotate an image in a direction that is physically impossible
. [Jack Black] is a comedian. Admittedly I didn’t see this movie till after [Jack’s] career was more established, so maybe it wasn’t as obvious back then.
1. Stupid Crime shows on tv like NCIS, CSI, BONES, etc.
Yes, I know it isn’t a movie. They’re just so amazingly horrible that I couldn’t leave them out. It has become this massive joke just how horribly incorrect they are. It has actually gotten to the point that I’m convinced they’re doing it on purpose. While I can understand a tiny bit of writing being targeted for audiences that aren’t familiar with the technology, some of it is simply too much.
The example of “
two idiots one keyboard
” is one that stands out. It is conceivable that you or your audience may not be familiar with hacking, or don’t know what a believable game would look like, but every one of you has used a keyboard. The script was probably written in a word processor using a keyboard. Hell, this is older than computers themselves, typewriters have them. Two people can not type on a keyboard simultaneously. It doesn’t work and everyone on the planet knows it. | 211 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "985907",
"author": "josie",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T20:13:10",
"content": "This was pretty good! I’d like to see the top 10 access denied pages.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "985925",
"author": "zuul",
"time... | 1,760,376,573.24428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/automatic-closet-lightswitch/ | Automatic Closet Lightswitch | Jeremy Cook | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automatic lighting",
"home automation",
"msp430",
"wiring"
] | [Dillon] wrote in to tell us about his latest project, an
automatic light switch for
a
the hallway closet in his house
. Although this project could probably be done very simply, [Dillon] accomplished everything in a way that actually looks professionally done and has some neat features. Check out his site for more pictures of the build.
Not that we at [HAD] mind a bit of messy wiring, but if it’s going inside a house, neater is always better. On the other hand, this project took nearly a year to go from idea to implementation, so please keep submitting your spaghetti-wired projects. We understand.
As an electrical engineering major, [Dillon] didn’t skimp on basic electrical components, and has schematics available on his site. A MSP430 microcontroller provides the “brains” for everything, turning the light off after 5 minutes if the doors are not shut. Be sure to check out his video overview after the break with footage of it in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNPvcqHWbkE&580] | 33 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "985888",
"author": "Laszlo",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T19:27:33",
"content": "I like the Ikea stock clost light better. It uses a proximity sensor on the light itself, and absolutely no cabling required between the sensor and the light.It is called ‘ikea KOMPLEMENT light strip’, more... | 1,760,376,572.625382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/ikea-dioder-ambilight-hack/ | Ikea Dioder Ambilight Hack | Ryan Fitzpatrick | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ambilight",
"dioder",
"ikea",
"led"
] | There are a lot of hacks out there for Ikea’s Dioder LED light set. [Lambertus] wanted to create an easy and affordable ambilight while keeping the hardware modifications to a minimum. He also wanted anyone to be able to easily duplicate his work. He recently wrote in to share
his successful solution
.
The customizations boil down to three main steps: solder the ICSP connector wires to the test points on the Dioder PCB, connect a PIC programmer to the ICSP port (and reprogram), and attach a 5V RS-232 device to the ICSP port. The software was the most difficult part of the procedure for [Lambertus]. The PIC16F684 didn’t contain the required UART and PWM controllers, so he had to get crafty. Fortunately he’s done all the work for us, and lists the necessary .hex file he created on his site.
By adding support to
boblight
, his new ambilight is working with his media center very nicely. There’s a little demo video after the break. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "985851",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T17:26:56",
"content": "I’ve seen a few of these DIY ambilight hacks and the one thing I can’t figure out is how the light knows what colors to display. Is there an HDMI passthrough or something I’m missing or can they only be dri... | 1,760,376,572.5528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/making-it-easier-to-build-firmware/ | Making It Easier To Build Firmware | Eric Evenchick | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Rants"
] | [
"AVR",
"msp430",
"open source",
"stellaris",
"stm32"
] | Most microcontroller manufacturers give you some kind of free development toolchain or IDE with their silicon products. Often it’s crippled, closed source, and a large download. This is pretty inconvenient when you want to have firmware that’s easy to build and distribute. I’ve found many of these toolchains to be annoying to use, and requiring closed source software to build open source firmware seems less than desirable.
It’s possible to build code for most microcontrollers using command line tools. You’ll need a compiler, the device manufacturer’s libraries and header files, and some method of flashing the device. A lot of these tools are open source, which lets you have an open source toolchain that builds your project.
Setting up these tools can be a bit tricky, so I’m building a
set of templates
to make it easier. Each template has instructions on setting up the toolchain, a Makefile to build the firmware, and sample code to get up and running quickly. It’s all public domain, so you can use it for whatever you’d like.
Currently there’s support for AVR, MSP430, Stellaris ARM, and STM32L1. More devices are in the works, and suggestions are welcome. Hopefully this helps people get started building firmware that’s easy to build and distribute with projects. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "985795",
"author": "Lloyd Atkinson",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T15:08:27",
"content": "Only plans to support PIC18 and PIC32? Microchip have been producing their line of C compilers for PIC’s all the way down to 12F, seems strange to ignore everything below PIC 18.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,376,573.039313 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/28/epson-projector-led-mod/ | Epson Projector LED Mod | Ryan Fitzpatrick | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"epson",
"led",
"projector"
] | Projector bulbs can be incredibly expensive to replace. Sometimes it’s more cost efficient to just buy a whole new projector instead of a new bulb. [Shawn] recently found a nice deal on an ‘as is’ Epson EMP-S4 on eBay and decided to take a chance. He assumed it probably worked with the exception of the missing lamp the seller mentioned. His suspicions were correct, and
one custom LED mod later
, his projector was up and rolling.
Without a stock lamp installed, the projector would give an error message and shut itself off. So, the first step was to wire up a little bypass. Once that was taken care of, [Shawn] installed a 30W 2000 lumen LED and custom fit an old Pentium CPU heatsink to keep the LEDs temperature down. He also wired up the heatsink fan in parallel with the stock exhaust fan for good measure. Optical lenses help focus the light, and some custom wiring makes the LED turn on and off just like the stock lamp would.
In the end, his first experiment
was
a success, but [Shawn] wants to try an 8000 lumen 100W LED to make it about as bright as the stock lamp was. Check out a little video walkthrough after the break.
[Thanks Shawn] | 46 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "985761",
"author": "Kelvin Mead",
"timestamp": "2013-03-28T13:37:06",
"content": "Doing the exact same conversion… albeit with a sanyo projector and a 10w lamp for starters… I wasn’t cool enough to use the 385v line that mine uses for the old lamp, so i took a line from the power, c... | 1,760,376,572.964274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/24/attiny2313-frequency-meter-measures-1hz-10mhz/ | ATtiny2313 Frequency Meter Measures 1Hz-10MHz | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny2313",
"frequency meter"
] | This frequency meter project
squeezes a lot of performance out of the ATtiny2313 microcontroller. That chip does all of the work, measuring the frequency on the input pin as well as multiplexing the set of 7 seven-segment displays which read out the measurement.
The system is only as accurate as the clock crystal used by the AVR chip, so [Manekinen] recommends using one with the best tolerances available. It is also necessary to choose a value which is divisible by 1024 to get the best combination of accuracy and resolution. In this case he’s using a 22.1184 MHz crystal oscillator which is a slight overclocking of the chip which is spec’d to run at 20 MHz max.
We didn’t totally follow his explanation of how the two timers are used for counting. But if we really wanted to drill down for a full understanding his code (written in BASCOM-AVR) is available. If you’re just interested in the hardware we embedded a screenshot of the schematic after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "983922",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "2013-03-24T21:16:01",
"content": "The simplicity here is very nice, and as someone who just completed a very involved timer project, respect for all the work that can go into figuring out the right way to use it. Would be nice to see some inp... | 1,760,376,573.294279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/24/fixing-tools-with-3d-printers/ | Fixing Tools With 3D Printers | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"bandsaw",
"saw",
"tool"
] | Over at the Manchester Hackerspace, [Bob] has been busy getting a 30-year-old bandsaw up and running. The saw worked great, but it was missing a fence, making straight cuts difficult to say the least. The solution, of course, was to build a new fence, and [Bob] decided to capitalize on his hackerspace’s workshop by
making a new fence with a 3d printer
.
[Bob] began by taking careful measurements of the saw’s table and the channel running down the length of it. These measurements were plugged into OpenSCAD, and after a few iterations, [Bob] had an extremely well-fitting profile a fence could be attached to.
With the profile down, [Bob] created a new part in OpenSCAD that would hold an aluminum angle piece. This was attached to the plastic parts with screws, and the entire assembly clamps down to the saw with the help of a few 5mm bolts. For a machine that is usually dedicated to making 3D printer parts and Yoda heads, [Bob] did a great job making good use of his 3D printer. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,573.343222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/24/a-homebrew-binary-wristwatch/ | A Homebrew Binary Wristwatch | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"binary",
"pic",
"watch",
"wristwatch"
] | There are 2 types of people in the world; those who know binary, those who don’t, and those who know ternary. [Emanuele] thought a binary wristwatch is the pinnacle of nerd and
set out to build his own
. The resulting binary clock not only screams nerd as intended, but is also a functional time piece, as well.
The idea of a binary wristwatch came to [Emanuele] while he was working with PICs at school. Not wanting to let that knowledge go to waste, he used a PIC16F628 microcontroller for this build. There are four LEDs for the hours and six LEDs for the minutes, each attached to a separate microcontroller pin for easy programming.
To keep time, [Emanuele] kept the PIC in sleep mode most of the time, only waking it up when a an internal timer’s register overflows. The watch spends most of its time sleeping, sipping power from a coin cell battery with a battery life that should last weeks, at least.
The entire circuit is tucked away in a PVC enclosure with a wonderful rainbow ribbon cable band. We’re not so sure about how that feels against the skin all day, but it does exude the nerd cred [Emanuele] was looking for. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "983799",
"author": "tobi",
"timestamp": "2013-03-24T15:07:18",
"content": "Oh god you messed up the joke. And no, I’m not talking about the third option.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "983818",
"author": "Hack Man",
"ti... | 1,760,376,573.412833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/24/rogue-pi-a-rpi-pentesting-dropbox/ | Rogue Pi: A RPi Pentesting Dropbox | Eric Evenchick | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"aircrack",
"pentesting",
"raspberry pi",
"ssh"
] | A pentesting dropbox is used to allow a pentester to remotely access and audit a network. The device is dropped onto a network, and then sets up a connection which allows remote access. As a final project, [Kalen] built the
Rogue Pi
, a pentesting dropbox based on the Raspberry Pi.
The Rogue Pi has a few features that make it helpful for pentesting. First off, it has a power on test that verifies that the installation onto the target network was successful. Since the install of a dropbox needs to be inconspicuous, this helps with getting the device setup without being detected. A LCD allows the user to see if the installation was successful without an additional computer or external display.
Once powered on, the device creates a reverse SSH tunnel, which provides remote access to the device. Using a reverse tunnel allows the device to get around the network’s firewall. Aircrack-ng has been included on the device to allow for wireless attacks, and a hidden SSID allows for wireless access if the wired network has issues. There is a long list of pentesting tools that have been built to run on the Pi.
Check out a video demonstration of the dropbox after the break. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "2772806",
"author": "Irving Meraz",
"timestamp": "2015-10-27T00:44:31",
"content": "Its so weird to not see someone interested on this. lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "3241389",
"author": "Schadenfreude",
"... | 1,760,376,573.509024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/23/smoothing-3d-prints-with-acetone-vapor/ | Smoothing 3D Prints With Acetone Vapor | Eric Evenchick | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"acetone",
"Chemistry",
"smoothing"
] | If you’ve ever used an extruding 3D printer, you know that the resulting prints aren’t exactly smooth. At the Southackton hackerspace [James] and [Bracken] worked out a method of
smoothing the parts out using vapor
. The method involves heating acetone until it forms a vapor, then exposing ABS parts to the vapor. The method only works with ABS, but creates some good looking results.
Acetone is rather flammable, so the guys started out with some safety testing. This involved getting a good air to fuel mixture of acetone, and testing what the worst case scenario would be if it were to ignite. The tests showed that the amount of acetone they used would be rather safe, even if it caught fire, which was a concern several people mentioned
last time we saw the method
.
After the break, [James] and [Bracken] give a detailed explanation of the process. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "983591",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2013-03-24T00:48:14",
"content": "Organic Vapour masks would be a nice addition to this hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "983622",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2013-03-24T0... | 1,760,376,573.462003 |
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