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https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/fictional-computers-the-three-body-problem/ | Fictional Computers: The Three Body Problem | Al Williams | [
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"computer",
"fiction"
] | If you intend to see the Netflix series “The Three Body Problem” or you want to read the Hugo-winning story from Chinese author [Cixin Liu], then you should probably bookmark this post and stop reading immediately. There will be some mild spoilers. You have been warned.
While the show does have some moments that will make your science brain cringe, there is one scene that shows a computer that could actually be built. Would it be practical? Probably not in real life, but in the context provided by the show, it was perfectly feasible. It could have, however, been done a little better, but the idea was — like many great ideas — both deceptively simple and amazingly profound. The computer was made of human beings. I’m not talking like Dune’s mentats — humans with super brains augmented by drugs or technology. This is something very different.
Background
This is your last chance. There are spoilers ahead, although I’ll try to leave out as much as I can. In the story, top scientists receive a mysterious headset that allows them to experience totally immersive holodeck-style virtual reality. When they put the headset on, they are in what appears to be a game. The game puts you in a historical location — the court of Henry VIII or Ghengis Kahn. However, this Earth has three suns. The planet is sometimes in a nicely habitable zone and sometimes is not. The periods when the planet is uninhabitable might have everything bursting into flames or freezing, or there might not be sufficient gravity to hold them on the planet’s surface. (Although I’ll admit, I found that one hard to grasp.)
Apparently, the inhabitants of this quasi-Earth can hibernate through the “chaotic eras” and wait for the next “stable era” that lasts a long time. The problem, as you probably know, is that there is no general closed-form solution for the three-body problem. Of course, there are approximations and special cases, but it isn’t easy to make long-term predictions about the state of three bodies, even with modern computers.
The Great Kahn
Of course, the court of Ghengis Kahn didn’t have computers, but they could have, as the show demonstrated. In one scene, some players of the game are passing by row after row of soldiers.
At first, you think it is just a show of military force for some reason. However, two other players announce that they can solve the riddle of when the next chaotic era will arrive and how long it will last. You can see that the field of soldiers is vast, and there are towers strategically placed.
The towers probably communicate between different sections.
On a command to “run” a program, the soldiers begin twisting poles they are holding with large cards on them. One side of the card is white, and the other black.
It doesn’t take much to realize that one color is a binary 1, and the other is a binary 0. The soldiers each follow rules to form logic gates. You can assume the towers gather up results and send them to other towers. Riders on horseback carry the results up to the player who is with the Kahn.
Practicality
This could obviously be made to work. Each soldier’s rules would determine what kind of logic gate it was. For example: look at the soldier to your right and your left. If both of their cards are black, show your black card. Otherwise, show your white card. There’s an OR gate. An AND gate or an inverter would be just as easy.
You can’t tell me this doesn’t look like a CPU die under low magnification
Of course, the entire setup looks like an IC die, so in real life, you’d probably have problems getting so many people together and trained. However, this is virtual reality, so it seems about as feasible as making a CPU in, say, Minecraft. It would be easy to write rules for higher-level functions, too. For example, different flip flops, multiplexers, and demultiplexers could be rule-based like in Verilog, instead of made from gates.
There are a few other practical considerations. It isn’t totally clear on the TV show, but it seems like the system is asynchronous. That’s hard to design, so we usually use synchronous designs. I mentioned flip flop rules earlier. It seems like some instructions to the human elements would start with the phrase “When you hear the drum beat…” The drummer, then, would be like a clock.
Of course, on a large FPGA, you have to worry about getting the clock signal to everyone simultaneously and you’d have the same problem here. Perhaps you’d use pipelining to have a local clock that then hands off to a different clock domain. Maybe a mirror on a tower could help synchronize the clocks.
The other problem is that humans make mistakes far more often than digital logic. So, like a relay or quantum computer, it would probably help to detect errors and maybe even make corrections in the system. Of course, we don’t know that it didn’t have that. In the end, the computer didn’t work. However, we don’t know if that was due to error or the general problem of solving the equations numerically. Even today, it takes a lot of CPU power to do that and we can’t imagine the human computer is very fast.
So?
Is this really practical? In theory, yes, although we don’t have enough friends to put together something that big. You might be able to devise a scheme to do it over the Internet, but that doesn’t seem as impressive. Perhaps at the next Supercon, we’ll try to put together a full adder. You could use people as traditional gates or even
relays
.
True, back in the old days, a “computer” was, in fact,
the job of a person who did math
to build things like tables. But that is different still. The Three Body Problem computer could take people with little skill, teach them a simple rule, and then get the benefits of a modern digital computer. You just need a tremendous number of people.
We are always fascinated by how, once you understand the concept, you can
make a computer from almost anything
. So, using this method,
fluidic
logic, or
marbles
, people like the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, or Romans could have had computers. What would they have done with them? | 54 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747732",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T17:18:52",
"content": "A computer built out of cicadas maybe? They get the timing right.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6747734",
"author": "Dan Julio",
"time... | 1,760,371,955.125439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/hackaday-podcast-episode-265-behind-the-epic-ssh-hack-1980s-cyber-butler-the-story-of-season-7/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 265: Behind The Epic SSH Hack, 1980s Cyber Butler, The Story Of Season 7 | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos convened once again to give the lowdown on this week’s best hacks. First up in the news —
it’s giga-sunset time for Gigaset IoT devices
, which simultaneously became paperweights on March 29th. And all that Flipper Zero panic?
It has spread to Australia
, but still remains exactly that: panic.
Then it’s on to What’s That Sound. Kristina failed again, although she was in the right neighborhood. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
Then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with the terrifying news of an xz backdoor. From there, we marvel at a 1980s ‘butler in a box’ — a voice-activated home automation system — and at the idea of LoRa transmissions without a radio. Finally, we discuss why you don’t want to piss off Trekkies, and whether AI has any place in tech support.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download and savor at your leisure
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 265 Show Notes:
News:
A Giga-Sunset For Gigaset IoT Devices
Flipper Zero Panic Spreads To Oz: Cars Unaffected
What’s that Sound?
Fill out this form
with your best guess, and you might win!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Security Alert: Potential SSH Backdoor Via Liblzma
Exploit The Stressed-out Package Maintainer, Exploit The Software Package
xkcd: Dependency
oss-security – backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise
Retrogadgets: Butler In A Box
LoRA, With No Radio
Give Your Pi Pico Captouch Inputs For All Your Music Needs
Electrospinning Artificial Heart Valves
Experiencing Visual Deficits And Their Impact On Daily Life, With VR
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Cold Boot Attack You Can Do With A Pi
ESP-Drone: Building An ESP32-Based Quadcopter For Not Much Cash
SMD Soldering, Without The Blobs
Why Is My 470uF Electrolytic Cap More Like 20uF?
Kristina’s Picks:
Art Exhibit Lets You Hide From Self-Driving Cars
Video Killed The Radio Alarm Clock
Lamp Becomes Rotating, Illuminated Sign For Festival Table
Can’t-Miss Articles:
How Star Trek Breached The Defences Of A Major Broadcaster
Tech Support… Can AI Be Worse?
Wrencher-2: A Bold New Direction For Hackaday | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,954.681439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/extenders-and-translators-for-your-i2c-toolkit/ | Extenders And Translators For Your I2C Toolkit | Arya Voronova | [
"Parts"
] | [
"i2c address translation",
"i2c bus",
"LTC4317",
"TCA4307"
] | If you’ve ever been laying out a network I2C devices inside a project box or throughout your robot’s body, you’ll probably know that I2C is not without its pitfalls. But for many of those pitfalls, there’s a handy chip you can use. [Roman Dvořák] from ThunderFly has experienced it on their drone building journeys, and that’s why they bring us two wonderful open source hardware boards: an I2C bus extender, and an I2C address translator.
The first board,
an I2C bus extender,
is based around the TCA4307 chip, and not only it lets you
extend the bus further
than it would normally go, it would also protect you. When the bus capacity is no longer handleable by your devices, or a particular misbehaving device gets the bus stuck, this chip will take care of it and dissipate your troubles. It will even let you know when your bus is wired up correctly, with a handy shine-through LED!
The second board is
an I2C address translator
. We’ve
covered
them
before, but in short, address translators let you avoid I2C address conflicts while using multiple devices that share the same address. This particular module uses the LTC4317 chip, a common choice for such translation, and the board leaves no feature unimplemented. In the README, there’s quite a few pictures with examples of where this sensor proves mighty useful, too!
It appears that ThunderFly
open sources a lot of their designs
on GitHub, an effort that we salute. The designs are great to learn from, but if you’re just looking for turn-key hardware, you can get both of these boards from their Tindie store. The cables they use have locking connectors, but as long as the pinout matches, you should be able to solder a JST-SH socket and add these modules
to your QWIIC toolkit. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747710",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T16:15:07",
"content": "“but as long as the pinout matches, you should be able to solder a JST-SH”. Unfortunatley not, I just checked and they’re different series and so have a different pitch. They also have different pinouts.Side no... | 1,760,371,954.536758 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/diy-6-ghz-pulse-compression-radar/ | DIY 6 GHZ Pulse Compression Radar | Al Williams | [
"FPGA",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"radar",
"Zynq"
] | Conceptually, radar is pretty simple: send out a radio wave and time how long it takes to get back via an echo. However, in practice, there are a number of trade-offs to consider. For example, producing a long pulse has more energy and range, but limits how close you can see and also the system’s ability to resolve objects that are close to each other. Pulse compression uses a long transmission that varies in frequency. Reflected waves can be reconstituted to act more like a short pulse since there is information about the exact timing of the reflected energy. [Henrik] didn’t want to make things too easy, so he decided to build
a pulse compression radar that operates at 6 GHz
.
In all fairness, [Henrik] is no neophyte when it comes to radar. He’s made several more traditional devices using a continuous wave architecture. However, this type of radar is only
found in a few restricted applications
due to its inherent limitations. The new system can operate in a continuous wave mode, but can also code pulses using arbitrary waveforms.
Some design choices were made to save money. For example, the transmitter and receiver have limited filtering. In addition, the receiver isn’t a superheterodyne but more of a direct conversion receiver. The signal processing is made much easier by using a Zynq FPGA with a dual-core ARM CPU onboard. These were expensive from normal sources but could be had from online Chinese vendors for about $17. The system could boot Linux, although that’s future work, according to [Henrik].
At 6 GHz, everything is harder. Routing the PCB for DDR3 RAM is also tricky, but you can read how it was done in the original post. To say we were impressed with the work would be an understatement. We bet you will be too.
Radar has come a long way since World War II and
is in more places than you might guess
. We hate to admit it, but we’d be more likely to buy
a ready-made radar module
if we needed it. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748096",
"author": "Klaus Kammerer",
"timestamp": "2024-04-07T01:39:24",
"content": "That’s pretty amazing stuff considering during WW2 we used microwave ovens to both construct radars for detecting enemy planes and as decoys for jamming their HARM missiles.Even more exciting was t... | 1,760,371,954.792285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/kids-ride-gets-boosted-battery-esp32-control/ | Kid’s Ride Gets Boosted Battery, ESP32 Control | Tom Nardi | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"motor controller",
"power tool battery",
"Power Wheel"
] | That irresistible urge to rescue an interesting piece of hardware from the trash is something that pretty much every Hackaday reader will have felt at one time or another. Sometimes it’s something that you could put to work immediately, like an old computer or some scrap piece of material that’s
just
the right size. But other times, you find something on the side of the road that ends up being the impetus for a whole new project.
For [David Bertet], finding a beat up kid’s Jeep Wrangler on the curb was the first step towards
a journey that ends with PowerJeep
: an open source project that we wager could end up saving similar vehicles from the landfill. The basic idea is simple enough — strip out the vehicle’s original 12 volt power supply and replace it with 18 V provided by easily swappable tool batteries. But as is often the case, it’s the details and the documentation that sets this project apart.
Just hacking an 18 V battery into the existing wiring and controls would probably have provided a few minutes worth of destructive fun, but not much else. So [David] approached things a bit more methodically; by adding a proper motor controller and dumping the original momentary switch “throttle” pedal for an analog version, the upgraded power from the new batteries could be properly harnessed. The addition of 12 and 3 volt regulators means the vehicle’s remaining stock electronics and accessories can be powered without letting the Magic Smoke out.
But perhaps the most exciting part of the PowerJeep project is the ESP32 that’s been added into the mix. While this project could certainly have been completed with “dumb” electronics, putting the WiFi-enabled microcontroller between the driver and the motor controller allows [David] to do things like adjust the vehicle’s maximum speed depending on whether his younger or older child is behind the wheel. He’s also able to monitor the system’s vital statistics on his phone through a slick web interface, and should the need ever arise, he can tap the big red “Emergency Stop” button to cut power in an instant.
For those looking to upgrade their kid’s ride, [David] has provided source code for the ESP32, a parts list, a wiring diagram, and even the 3D models for the few parts that needed to be printed. Naturally there’s going to be a lot of variations on this basic premise depending on which particular kiddie car you’ve got, but this project should still get you most of the way there.
If you’re looking to put even more high-tech goodies into your build, you might want to take a look at the clever
traction control system we saw added to a lil’ Lambo back in 2019
. You could even
upgrade the frame and slip into the driver’s seat yourself
, if you dare. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748050",
"author": "mojojoe",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T20:39:13",
"content": "This seems like a much better approach than I took. I swapped the 6V motorbike battery for a huge 12V battery from a BMW 5 series. The increase in power and thoroughly messed up weight distribution meant ... | 1,760,371,954.738051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/irc-client-on-bare-metal/ | IRC Client On Bare Metal | Al Williams | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"irc",
"UEFI"
] | In the beginning, there was the BIOS, and it was good. A PC’s BIOS knows how to set up the different hardware devices, grab a fixed part of a hard drive, load it, and run it. That’s all you need. While it might be all you
need
, it isn’t everything people
want
, so a consortium developed UEFI, which can do all the things a normal BIOS can’t. Among other things, UEFI can load code for the operating system over the network instead of from the hard drive.
In true hacker fashion, [Phillip Tennen] thought, “Does it have to be an operating system?” The answer, of course, is no. It could be
an IRC client
. He chose Rust to implement everything. While UEFI does provide a network stack, it isn’t very easy to use, apparently. It also provides support for a mouse. [Phillip] ported his GUI toolkit library over, and then the rest is just building an IRC client.
The client isn’t the easiest to use because, after all, this is a lark. Why would you want to do this? On the other hand, we can think of reasons we might want to take control of a UEFI motherboard and use it for something. If you want to do that, this project is a great template to jump-start your endeavors.
We’ve looked at
the UEFI system a few times
. Or, you can use it to play
DOOM
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748002",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T17:11:29",
"content": "“In the beginning, there was the BIOS, and it was good. ”Actually, in the beginning there was uninitialized memory. At the end of the first week, the bootloader had been input via toggle switches, and all w... | 1,760,371,954.844123 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/understand-your-tools-finger-exercises/ | Understand Your Tools: Finger Exercises | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"dip meter",
"ham radio",
"oscilloscope",
"tools",
"vna"
] | A dip meter is basically a coil of wire that, when you excite it, you can use to tell if something inside that coil is resonating along. This lets you measure unknown radio circuits to figure out their resonant frequency, for instance. This week, we featured a clever way to
make a dip meter with a nanoVNA
, which is an odd hack simply because a dip meter used to be a common spare-parts DIY device, while a vector network analyzer used to cost more than a house.
Times have changed, and for the better. Nowadays, any radio amateur can pick up a VNA for less than the cost of all but the cheesiest of walkie talkies, putting formerly exotic test equipment in the hands of untrained mortals. But what good is a fancy-pants tool if you don’t know how to use it? Our own Jenny List
faced exactly this problem when she picked up a nanoVNA
, and her first steps are worth following along with if you find yourself in her shoes.
All of this reminded me of an excellent series by Mike Szczys, “
Scope Noob
”, where he chronicled his forays into learning how to use an oscilloscope by running all of the basic functions by working through a bunch of test measurements that he already knew the answer to.
It strikes me that we could use something like this for nearly every piece of measuring equipment. Something more than just an instruction manual that walks you through what all the dials do. Something that takes you through a bunch of example projects and
shows
you how to use the tool in question through a handful of projects. Because these days, access to many formerly exotic pieces of measuring gear has enabled many folks to have gear they never would have had before – and all that’s missing is knowing how to drive them.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747970",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T14:50:39",
"content": "Had that exact experience with my NanoVNA. Watched a ton of YouTube videos and tried to pick up all the background needed to run the thing. Everyone assumes that you already have experience using a profess... | 1,760,371,954.592376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/voyager-1-issue-tracked-down-to-defective-memory-chip/ | Voyager 1 Issue Tracked Down To Defective Memory Chip | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"nasa",
"voyager"
] | After more than forty-six years all of us are likely to feel the wear of time, and Voyager 1 is no different. Following months of harrowing troubleshooting as the far-flung spacecraft stopped returning sensible data, NASA engineers now feel confident that they have tracked down the cause for the problem:
a single defective memory chip
. Why this particular chip failed is unknown, but possibilities range from wear and tear to an energetic particle hitting it and disrupting its operation.
We’ve covered the Voyager 1 troubleshooting
saga so far, with the initial garbled responses attributed to a range of systems, but narrowed down to the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), which prepares data for transmission by the telemetry modulation unit (TMU). Based on a recent ‘poke’ command that returned a memory dump engineers concluded that the approximately 3% of corrupted data fit with this one memory chip, opening the possibility of a workaround.
Recently NASA engineers have also been working on
patching up the firmware
in both Voyager spacecraft, against the background of the dwindling energy produced by
the radioisotope generators
that have kept both spacecraft powered and warm, even in the cold, dark depths of Deep Space far beyond the light of our Sun. | 52 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747934",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T11:13:08",
"content": "MT ram? :PI wish the scientists all the wisdom and luck in finding a workaround! I guess that they crammed the ram full, when they designed it, so probably they will have to trade in some other functionali... | 1,760,371,955.21994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/06/linear-feedback-shift-registers-for-fpgas/ | Linear Feedback Shift Registers For FPGAs | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"LFSR",
"linear feedback shift register",
"pseudo-random",
"random number"
] | If you want to start an argument at a Hackaday meeting, you have only to ask something like “How much does this weigh?” or “What time is it?” But if you really want to start a street brawl, you can always say, “Are these numbers random?” Making random numbers that are actually random is actually a tough nut to crack. Most of what we do is, technically, pseudo-random (but we’ll say random number and assume you know what we mean). One way to generate seemingly random sequences is to use a linear feedback shift register or LFSR. You can use LFSRs in software, but they are also very useful in hardware design and [Adam Taylor]
takes us through his use of them
on FPGAs in a recent post.
As [Adam] points out, they not only generate random-like patterns but they are often used as high-performance counters and in error detection and correction schemes. As the name implies, the mechanism is a simple shift register with one or more of its outputs fed back around to the input. How can that be random? Well, it can’t be, but it is often good enough for places where you need a sequence of numbers. Depending on how you organize the outputs — or taps — and how you feed them back means you can control the pseudo-random sequence.
A Fibonacci LFSR
There are two common methods for creating LFSRs. A Fibonacci-style design uses XOR (or inverted XOR) gates in the feedback loop. For example, consider an eight-stage counter. The post shows the output of flip flop 4, feeding an XOR gate that drives the counter’s input. The other input of the XOR gate is the output of another XOR gate that receives input from flip flop 5 and the output of yet another XOR gate. That XOR gate receives its inputs from flip flop 6 and the output of the shift register.
The Galois scheme is similar, but uses the XOR gates in the shift path. In other words, the output of the shift register directly feeds the input, but it also feeds several XOR gates that go between the flip flops. Why choose one over the other? Read the post. The summary is that it depends on how your FPGA resets and what kind of support it has for shift registers so, as usual, it pays to understand what’s going on in the FPGA fabric.
As for where to put the taps, it depends on how you want the pattern to repeat. If you want the repeating kept to a minimum, you can look them up in a table based on research from [Wayne Stahnke] and popularized by Xilinx in an
app note
. [Solomon Golumb] also published tables of taps for maximum sequence generation. As you might expect, there’s
a program that will help you
if you don’t want to use the tables.
The math may be hairy, but implementing this in hardware is simple if you ever need a random-looking sequence. Maybe you want
a random flicker in your fake candle
. You can do it
with relays
, even. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747911",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T08:31:22",
"content": "Given a deterministic universe, there is no random. Only seemingly random due to our lack of understanding.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "674794... | 1,760,371,954.932484 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/colecovision-cart-rises-from-ashes/ | ColecoVision Cart Rises From Ashes | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"colecovision",
"fire"
] | We felt bad for [Mark] of Mark Fixes Stuff. Apparently, his house burned down and took virtually everything, including his retrocomputer collection. He did manage to pull out a few things from the remains including a ColecoVision cartridge that was — honestly — melted. We probably would have written it off, but [Mark]
was determined to recover something
.
He was fortunate that the PCB was not burned, but it was covered in soot and possibly other things. However, the case looked like a chocolate bar left on a dashboard for a few summer days in the tropics.
Cleaning the board was straightforward with alcohol and a contact cleaner that looked suspiciously like an eraser. He 3D printed a case and made a very professional-looking label using a color printer and an automated paper cutter.
The good news is that the restored cartridge worked. The bad news is he has a pile of other carts that look at least as bad. Still, we were very happy to hear he had recovered something. We hope you never have to do something similar, but if you do, here’s your inspiration.
We don’t know what caused [Mark’s] fire, but it is a good reminder that even
seemingly innocuous gadgets
can start a life-changing or even ending fire. In that case, it was a commercial thermostat, but since most of us solder, burn things, and heat up exotic chemicals, it pays to
review your safety plans
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747877",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2024-04-06T05:36:13",
"content": "wait, you don’t know or you do know (that it was a commercial thermostat)?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6747901",
"author": "Eric",
"t... | 1,760,371,954.63944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/this-week-in-security-xz-att-and-letters-of-marque/ | This Week In Security: XZ, ATT, And Letters Of Marque | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"data breach",
"Letter of Marque",
"ssh",
"This Week in Security",
"xz"
] | The xz backdoor is naturally still the top story of the week. If you need a refresher, see
our previous
coverage
. As expected, some very talented reverse engineers have gone to work on the code, and
we have a much better idea of what the injected payload does
.
One of the first findings to note is that the backdoor doesn’t allow a user to log in over SSH. Instead, when an SSH request is signed with the right authentication key,
one of the certificate fields is decoded and executed
via a
system()
call. And this makes perfect sense. An SSH login leaves an audit trail, while this backdoor is obviously intended to be silent and secret.
It’s interesting to note that this code made use of both autotools macros, and the
GNU ifunc
, or Indirect FUNCtions. That’s the nifty feature where a binary can include different versions of a function, each optimized for a different processor instruction set. The right version of the function gets called at runtime. Or in this case, the malicious version of that function gets hooked in to execution by a malicious library.
Who is Jia Tan?
One of the more intriguing mysteries is
the real identity of the programmer or programmers
behind the Jia Tan identity. I’m of the opinion that it’s more than one developer, we’ll get into why in a bit. The first clue is the timezone on the Jia commits, which is UTC +8. That’s the timezone of China, Mongolia, part of Russia, Western Australia, and the island nations in-between. East Asian name, East Asian timezone, so it must be an East Asian hacker, presumably Chinese. Except, the commit times don’t make any sense.
Graph by ald3ns, MIT licensed
I’ve seen some theories that Jia was committing in a +2 or +3 timezone. Nope.
Check the git log for yourself
, and
see the graph
. There’s an obvious pattern here, starting at 12:00 noon UTC. Now which time zone would that correspond to an office worker starting work at 8:00 AM? UTC -4 is the Eastern US — but only during half the year. What’s notably missing from that chart is the twice-a-year time change for Daylight Savings Time that the US endures. It’s also worth noting that git commit times are easy to change before making a push.
And then there’s the series of changes with oddball times towards the end of the graph. Of interest are the version bumps to 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, and also the Valgrind “fix”. Which may possibly suggest a second programmer controlling the Jia Tan puppet account. There is
a notable gap in commits right around the Christmas/New Year holiday each year
, too. But all things considered, there is no smoking gun pointing at a specific country. Just a few hints. But the complete lack of information about Jia Tan in any other venues is a good sign that it’s a fabricated persona, and
using pretty good opsec at that
.
So What Now?
The next question is, what can we do to keep this from happening again? Developers and distro maintainers are definitely
thinking through this question right now
. One conclusion is that tarballs cannot be thoughtlessly trusted. Checking tarball contents against git tags, and regenerating the
autotools
output are good, too. Several developers are looking hard at moving away from hard-to-understand tools like
gnulib
and
autotools
altogether.
The
Debian policy of requiring in-person meetings
before GPG attestation suddenly seems like a good policy. Perhaps this should become an industry standard practice to gain maintainership in any existing open-source project.
An interesting point was made at about
37 1/2 minutes into this week’s FLOSS Weekly interview
, where Joshua explained that only two or three people have commit access to the Asterisk codebase, and only Sangoma employees are permitted to be project maintainers. Will more corporate sponsorship of individual Open Source projects be part of the solution? Time will tell.
AT&T Finally Owns Up
We now know that back in 2019, customer data from AT&T customers was grabbed in a breach. What’s notable here is that it took until this March for AT&T to publicly acknowledge that
it was indeed data leaked from their customer records
. The way this was confirmed is particularly impressive.
Credit goes to [Sam Croley] for figuring this out. Each account record included address, phone number, birthdays, and Social Security number. And then for each account, a numeric passcode was encrypted and included. That encryption is strong enough to prevent properly cracking it. (We’d bet it’s actually a hashing function.) But [Sam] is particularly clever. He took just the encrypted values, sorted, and de-duplicated them. The result? just about 10,000 unique records, pretty much what you would expect if 70 million users all picked a 4 digit pin. The hashing or encryption algorithm used here wasn’t keyed or salted per entry.
And as a result we get part two of
the world’s greatest crossword puzzle
— the numeric edition. To put it simply, every time a customer chose 1337 as their PIN, the value in the leak was the same. All it takes is a few users out of 70 million with a phone number, birthday, or social security number ending in 1337 to figure out that’s what a given hash value corresponds to. And even if you picked that number completely randomly, it still gets figured out with all the rest.
Hackers’ Letters of Marque
There is a fascinating saga playing out, along side the ground war in Ukraine: Hackers have been given a sort of Letter of Marque from the Ukranian government, and now
some physical letters have been sent out as well
. Drawing on my knowledge of history gained from early computer games like Sid Meier’s Pirates!, I know that a
Letter of Marque
is authorization from a government given to a private citizen to attack and claim foreign ships and assets. So what we have here is a modern, digital take on the idea. It may be worth noting that
Ukraine is not a signatory to the treaty that banned the practice
.
Typosquatting Adds AI Hallucinations
It seems like we need to add another entry to the standard list of warnings given to Linux users. Don’t run code copied directly from a website, and now, don’t run code copied directly from ChatGPT. Apparently there’s a commonly hallucinated pip package,
huggingface-cli
, referring to part of the huggingface project. That package doesn’t exist, but the command has sneaked into a few online guides anyways.
And that’s where the typosquatting comes in. Thankfully this time it’s by a security researcher rather than a malware author. [Bar Lanyado] grabbed that package name as a test, and scored 15,000 download attempts in a mere three months. So far there isn’t a real attack using this technique, but it’s likely just a matter of time.
But you don’t need AI for traditional typosquatting:
PyPI finds itself again in the cross-hairs
. This is a collection of 566 fake packages, in an automated campaign. The uploads happened in a pair of bursts over a couple days, and ended when PyPI maintainers suspended both new project and new user creation.
Bits and Bytes
The DOMPurify project is intended to take “dirty” HTML and turn it into a string of sanitized, XSS-free HTML. There was a little catch, in that HTML code is a bit different from XML. XML is much stricter in what it considers parseable tags, but will pass the contents of those tags, even if it contains valid HTML. The takeaway is that
researchers found several DOMPurify bypasses
that took advantage of this parsing gap. Patches have been applied, so the up-to-date DOMPurify package should be good to go.
Filed in the “awkward” category, the
OWASP foundation was accidentally hosting
some very old member resumes available to the public. It’s awkward because OWASP is the foundation dedicated to improving open source security. The upside is the information leaked is so out of date, most of the people affected can’t even be contacted. So we get a public announcement.
Microsoft has
received a reaming from the Cyber Safety Review Board
over the 2023 hack of hosted Exchange accounts. It appears there are still unanswered questions, like exactly which crash dump contained the key used in the final attack. Still, it’s not a good day when your actions are described as a “cascade of … avoidable errors.” | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747664",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T14:13:10",
"content": "“Perhaps this should become an industry standard practice to gain maintainership in any existing open-source project.”Takes away the open-source advantage anyone can contribute.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,955.275012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/europa-clipper-asks-big-questions-of-the-jovian-moon/ | Europa Clipper Asks Big Questions Of The Jovian Moon | Navarre Bartz | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"astrobiology",
"biochemistry",
"Europa",
"Europa Clipper",
"space probe"
] | Are we alone? While we certainly have lots of strange lifeforms to choose from as companions here on our blue marble, we have yet to know if there’s anything else alive out there in the vastness of space. One of the most promising places to look in our own solar neighborhood
is Europa
.
Underneath its icy surface, Europa appears to have a sea that contains twice as much water as we have here on Earth. Launching later this year and arriving in 2030, NASA’s
Europa Clipper
will provide us with our most up-close-and-personal look at the Jovian Moon yet. In conjunction with observations from the ESA’s
Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (
JUICE),
scientists hope to gain enough new data to see if the conditions are right for life.
Given the massive amounts of radiation in the Jovian system,
Europa
Clipper
will do 50 flybys of the moon over the course of four years to reduce damage to instruments as well as give it windows to transmit data back to Earth with less interference. With enough planning and luck, the mission could find promising sites for a future lander that might be able to better answer the question of if there actually is life on other worlds.
Some of the other moons around Jupiter could host life,
like Io
. Looking for life a little closer? How about on our nearest neighbor,
Venus
, or the ever popular
Mars
? | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747638",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T11:07:32",
"content": "haven’t done this in a while because it’s a bit of a put-down.But this article is essentially saying “hey we’re launching a rocket this year, and who knows what we’ll find”. Hardly an article related to hack... | 1,760,371,955.337841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/05/3ms-floppy-disks-a-story-of-success-and-the-birth-of-imation/ | 3M’s Floppy Disks: A Story Of Success And The Birth Of Imation | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"3m",
"floppy diskette"
] | 3M, or as it was officially called until 2002, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company is one of those odd-duck companies where if you ask what products they manufacture the answer is pretty close to a general ‘yes’. Throughout its 121 year history, it’s moved from producing sandpaper to also producing adhesives, laminates, personal protective equipment, as well as a nearly infinite list of further products which at one point in time included a magnetic storage range of products. How this latter came to be is the
subject of an article
by [Ernie Smith], focusing on floppy disk storage.
Although
3M
was not the one to invent floppy disks or magnetic storage, their expertise in making small grains of material stick in an organized fashion on a wide range of materials came in handy. This first allowed 3M to make a name for itself with its Scotch magnetic (reel-to-reel) tape, followed by 3M moving into the floppy disk market by 1973. Over the years following this introduction, 3M storage media came to be known as highly reliable, but as the 1990s saw the magnetic storage market mature and stagnate, 3M management saw the writing on the wall and spun this division off into a new company: Imation.
While the floppy disk isn’t quite dead yet
, at this point in time Imation and its main competitors like Memorex are now mostly just a fading memory — while 3M is still plowing ahead, creating new divisions and divesting as opportunities arise. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747606",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T09:06:00",
"content": "It’s worth remembering – the 3.5″ microfloppy disk, is in fact a 9cm floppy disk! There’s a 1mm difference and the real value is 9cm, which makes sense as it was developed by Sony, which being Jap... | 1,760,371,955.641279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/finally-taming-thunderbolt-with-third-party-chips/ | Finally Taming Thunderbolt With Third-Party Chips | Arya Voronova | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"ASM2464PD",
"NVMe",
"nvme ssd",
"tb3",
"tb4",
"Thunderbolt",
"usb4"
] | Thunderbolt has always been a functionally proprietary technology, held secret by Intel until “opening” the standard in a way that evidently wasn’t enough for anyone to meaningfully join in. At least, until last year, when we saw announcements about ASMedia developing two chips for Thunderbolt use. Now, we are starting to see glimmers of open source, letting us tinker with PCIe at prices lower than $100 per endpoint.
In particular,
this board from [Picomicro]
uses the ASM2464PD — a chipset that supports TB3/4/USB4, and gives you a 4x PCIe link. Harnessing the 40 Gbps power to wire up an NVMe SSD, this board shows us it’s very much possible to design a fully functional ASM2464PD board without the blessing of Intel. With minimal footprint that barely extends beyond the 2230 SSD it’s designed for, curved trace layout, and a CNC-milled case, this board sets a high standard for a DIY Thunderbolt implementation.
The main problem is that this project is not open-source – all we get is pretty pictures and a bit of technical info. Thankfully, we’ve also seen [WifiCable]
take up the mantle
of making this chip actually hobbyist-available – she’s created a symbol, fit a footprint, and made an example board in KiCad retracing [Picomicro]’s steps in a friendly fashion. The board is currently incomplete because it needs someone to buy an ASM2464PD enclosure on Aliexpress and reverse-engineer the missing circuitry, but if open-source Thunderbolt devices are on your wish list, this is as close as you get today – maybe you’ll be able to make
an eGPU adapter,
even. In the meantime, if you don’t want to develop hardware but want to take advantage of Thunderbolt, you can build
10 Gbps point-to-point networks. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747577",
"author": "Sunoo",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T06:06:48",
"content": "Are you really so offended by it not being open source that you won’t even credit the maker? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t designed by Reddit, so you could have stuck [Picomicro] in there…",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,955.507292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/tomos-moped-becomes-electric-beast/ | TOMOS Moped Becomes Electric Beast | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric motorcycle",
"moped",
"tomos"
] | The TOMOS 50cc moped, a small motorcycle produced in Yugoslavia and the Netherlands, has for decades been a common sight on European roads and provided the first taste of transport independence for countless youngsters. Unfortunately the company went bankrupt a few years ago, but there are still plenty of them about, and it’s one of these that [Doctor D.S.]
gives an electric conversion
in the video below the break.
The electronics are a standard 5 kW off-the-shelf Chinese kit, but in this they aren’t the star of the show so much as the work on the bike. As with any old moped it’s a bit ropey, and he strips it down and reconditions every part of it alongside his work fabricating brackets, a battery box, and a seat. It’s a long video, but it’s one of those workshop sequences that you can become engrossed in.
The result appears to be a very practical, powerful (for a moped) and rideable bike, and it’s one we’d have for buzzing around town any day. We’d like to take a look at that battery box and seat combo on the interests of safety, but otherwise it’s pretty spot-on. Sit back and enjoy a bit of quality workshop video!
If you’re hungry for more,
this is by no means the first road bike electric conversion we’ve brought you
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747590",
"author": "Bartz0rt",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T07:31:28",
"content": "The dead dinosaur version apparently has about 1.5 hp (about 1.1 kW), so should be pretty zippy with a 5 kW electric motor. Not road legal in the Netherlands though at 90 km/h, unless you can get it lice... | 1,760,371,955.395848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/usb-hid-and-run-exposes-yet-another-badusb-surface/ | USB HID And Run Exposes Yet Another BadUSB Surface | Arya Voronova | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"badusb",
"HID keyboard",
"HID usb",
"open hardware",
"pentesting",
"usb hid",
"USB HID Keyboard"
] | You might think you understand the concept of BadUSB attacks and know how to defend it, because all you’ve seen is opening a terminal window. Turns out there’s still more attack surface to cover, as [piraija] tells us in
their USB-HID-and-run publication
. If your system doesn’t do scrupulous HID device filtering, you might just be vulnerable to a kind of BadUSB attack you haven’t seen yet, rumoured to have been the pathway a few ATMs got hacked – simply closing the usual BadUSB routes won’t do.
The culprit is the Consumer Control specification – an obscure part of HID standard that defines media buttons, specifically, the “launch browser” and “open calculator” kinds of buttons you see on some keyboards, that operating systems, surprisingly, tend to support. If the underlying OS you’re using for kiosk purposes isn’t configured to ignore these buttons, they provide any attacker with unexpected pathways to bypass your kiosk environment, and it works astonishingly well.
[piraija] tells us that this attack provides us with plenty of opportunities, having tested it on a number of devices in the wild. For your own tests, the writeup has
Arduino example code
you can
upload onto any USB-enabled microcontroller,
and for better equipped hackers out there, we’re even getting
a Flipper Zero application
you can employ instead. While we’ve seen some doubts that USB devices can be a proper attack vector, modern operating systems are more complex and bloated than even meets the eye, often for hardly any reason – for example, if you’re on Windows 10 or 11, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Win+L and behold. And, of course, you can make a hostile USB implant small enough that you can build them into
a charger
or
a USB-C dock
.
USB image: Inductiveload,
Public domain
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747531",
"author": "Inhibit",
"timestamp": "2024-04-05T01:30:24",
"content": "It’s almost as if hardened systems should be designed to specifically allow necessary functions instead of being a swamp of unused functionality. Although that would take skill and cost a (US*) nickle.*ma... | 1,760,371,955.452136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/vibratory-rock-tumbler-bounces-on-printed-spring/ | Vibratory Rock Tumbler Bounces On Printed Spring | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"electromagnet",
"rock tumbler"
] | If you’re reading Hackaday, there’s a good chance you had a rock tumbler in your younger days. Hell, we’d put odds on a few of you having one rumbling away in the background as you read this. They’re relatively simple contraptions, and a common enough DIY project. But even still, this
largely 3D printed rock tumbler from [Fraens]
is unique enough to stand out.
To make a basic rock tumbler, all you really need to do is rotate a cylindrical chamber and let physics do its thing. Such contraptions are known as, unsurprisingly, rotary rock tumblers. But what [Fraens] has put together here is a vibratory tumbler, which…well, it vibrates. If this was Rockaday we might go farther down this particular rabbit hole and explain the pros and cons of each machine, but the short version is that vibratory tumblers are more mechanically complex and are generally better suited to fine finish work than rotary tumblers which take a brute force approach that tends to round off the rocks.
Anyway, while you could use a motor with an offset weight to generate the necessary vibrations, [Fraens] decided to go with a similar electromagnet arrangement to what he used in the
vibratory bowl feeder he built last year
. Pulsing the electromagnet pulls down the large 3D printed spring, which imparts not only the vertical motion you’d expect, but a touch of horizontal as well.
The end result is a “tossing” motion that gets the rocks inside the printed chamber moving around nicely. The motion can be fine tuned by adjusting the tension on the non-printed springs, which limit the range of the mechanism’s movement.
To drive the electromagnet, [Fraens] is using an Arduino and a L298N H-bridge motor controller. A pair of potentiometers serve as the controls, allowing the user to dial in the duty cycle of the magnet. Interestingly, despite being only rated for 12 V, the electromagnet is being fed off of 24 V for this project. This gives the tumbler a bit more oomph, but at the cost of heating up the magnet. To combat this, the Arduino code implements a 10 minute cool-down period for every hour of runtime. It sounds a little sketchy, but [Fraens] has had this thing cranking for four months now, and the Magic Smoke hasn’t escaped yet.
If you don’t have a 3D printer, or just don’t want to part with the amount of plastic it would take to extrude a machine of this scale, you could always take the easy way out and make a
rotary tumbler out of an empty tomato sauce jar and a scrap motor
. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747484",
"author": "DavidO",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T22:22:36",
"content": "“If you’re reading Hackaday, there’s a good chance you had a rock tumbler in your younger days”Well, I am, and I love HAD, but I’m certainly of different culture and not only I didn’t have that but this is... | 1,760,371,955.57452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/09/bye-bye-green-screen-hello-monochromatic-screen/ | Bye Bye Green Screen, Hello Monochromatic Screen | Jenny List | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"chroma key",
"sodium lighting",
"video effects"
] | It’s not uncommon in 2024 to have some form of green background cloth for easy background effects when in a Zoom call or similar. This is a technology TV and film studios have used for decades, and it’s responsible for many of the visual effects we see every day on our screens. But it’s not perfect — its use precludes wearing anything green, and it’s very bad at anything transparent.
The 1960s Disney film makers seemingly had no problem with this as anyone who has seen
Mary Poppins
will tell you, so how did they manage to overlay actors with diaphanous accessories over animation? The answer lies in an innovative process which has largely faded from view,
and [Corridor Crew] have rebuilt it
.
Green screens, or
chroma key
, to give the effect its real name, relies on the background using a colour not present in the main subject of the shot. This can then be detected electronically or in software, and a switch made between shot and inserted background. It’s good at picking out clean edges between green background and subject, but poor at transparency such as a veil or a bottle of water. The Disney effect instead used a background illuminated with monochromatic sodium light behind the subject illuminated with white light, allowing both a background and foreground image to be filmed using two cameras and a dichroic beam splitter. The background image with its black silhouette of the subject could then be used as a photographic stencil when overlaying a background image.
Sadly even Disney found it very difficult to make more than a few of the dichroic prisms, so the much cheaper green screen won the day. But in the video below the break they manage to replicate it with a standard beam splitter and a pair of filters, successfully filming a colourful clown wearing a veil, and one of them waving their hair around while drinking a bottle of water. It may not find its way back into blockbuster films just yet, but it’s definitely impressive to see in action. | 58 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748714",
"author": "Hassi",
"timestamp": "2024-04-09T08:41:47",
"content": "Great! But shouldn’t it also work with scattered monochromatic laser light?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6748729",
"author": "pelrun",
... | 1,760,371,955.881324 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/pumpkinos-a-modern-reimplementation-of-palmos-for-todays-platforms/ | PumpkinOS: A Modern Reimplementation Of PalmOS For Today’s Platforms | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"palm",
"PalmOS",
"pda"
] | In a world where the personal digital assistant (PDA) has become yet another retro computing system, it’s always nice when experiencing the software for such platforms can be done in a way that does not involve hunting down original hardware of questionable functionality. Here
PumpkinOS is a PalmOS-compatible
project by [migueletto] which runs as a regular application on modern systems and allows for original PalmOS applications for the Motorola 68k to run on x86 and ARM host systems.
On start-up the Launcher shows up first, just like with PalmOS, from which the four standard PalmOS applications (AddressBook, MemoPad, ToDoList and DateBook) can be launched. Due to endianness issues (m68k being Big Endian), files created by these applications cannot be shared between PumpkinOS and PalmOS, and as noted on the GitHub page, it’s still a far from finished project. That said, it appears to be able to run quite a few original PalmOS applications from sites like
PalmDB
, and compatibility should get better over time.
The author maintains a
development blog
as well, for those who are interested in the more in-depth details of this project. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748681",
"author": "Sardauker",
"timestamp": "2024-04-09T06:01:37",
"content": "I need Graffiti on my cellphone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6748686",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2024-04-09T06:23:18",
... | 1,760,371,955.945377 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/query-your-c-code/ | Query Your C Code | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"database"
] | If you’ve ever worked on a large project — your own or a group effort — you know it can be difficult to find exactly where you want to be in the source code. Sure, you can use ctags and most other editors have some way of searching for things. But
ClangQL
from [AmrDeveloper] lets you treat your code base like a database.
Honestly, we’ve often thought about writing something that parses C code and stuffs it into a SQL database. This tool leverages the CLang parser and lets you write queries like:
SELECT * FROM functions
That may not seem like the best example, but how about:
SELECT COUNT(name) FROM functions WHERE return_type="int"
That’s a bit more interesting. The functions table provides each function’s name, signature, a count of arguments, a return type, and a flag to indicate methods. We hope the system will grow to let you query on other things, too, like variables, templates, preprocessor defines, and data types. The tool can handle C or C++ and could probably work with other CLang front ends with a little work.
This would be great for estimating the difficulty of tasks. Imagine asking for how many functions return a float when trying to decide how long it would take to switch to fixed point. We plan to try it on a source tree for the Linux kernel and give it a spin.
Truthfully, we’ve long been surprised
databases haven’t taken over as file systems
and source code anyway. A lot of what we do in git could be done in a database. And
vice-versa
. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748644",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-04-09T02:19:05",
"content": "FIND bug TYPE memory_leak WHERE all",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6748718",
"author": "Zoe Nagy",
"ti... | 1,760,371,955.778369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/a-brief-history-of-keyboard-encoding/ | A Brief History Of Keyboard Encoding | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"keyboard",
"keyboard encoding"
] | Photoelectric encoder keyboard configured as ASCII
While typing away on our DIN, PS/2, USB or Bluetooth keyboards one of the questions which we rarely concern ourselves with is that of how the keyboard registers which keys we’re pressing. One exception here is when the keyboard can only register a limited number of simultaneous keypresses (rollover). Even though most keyboards today use a matrix which connects the keys, there are many configuration choices even here, which much like other keyboard configurations come with their own advantages and disadvantages. As a good primer we can
look at this article
by [Daniel Beardsmore] as he takes us through both historical and current-day keyboards.
Especially before it was realistic to just put an entire microcontroller with a look-up table into every keyboard, more inventive approaches were required to not only register keypresses, but also encode them for the host computer. The photoelectric approach of the 1960s was one such encoding method, before diode matrices became popular, along with more exotic encoding switches that contained their code already hard-wired on their multitude of pins. One inevitable limitation with these was that of a lack of multi-key support, leading to the development of matrix scan technology around 1970.
Matrix scanning keyboards allow for multiple key presses at the same time, tackle debouncing of keys and were at the forefront of what gives us the ubiquitous and generally boringly reliable keyboards which we use today. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748620",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2024-04-08T23:09:27",
"content": "its an interesting article, too bad the summary leaves me with just enough to not really care if I wasn’t a computer nerd",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,371,956.153413 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/royal-typewriter-gets-a-second-or-third-life/ | Royal Typewriter Gets A Second (or Third) Life | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"restoration",
"typewriter"
] | Usually when we are restoring something with a keyboard, it is some kind of old computer or terminal. But [Make it Kozi] wanted an old-fashioned typewriter. The problem is, as he notes, they are nostalgically popular these days, so picking up a working model can be pricey. The answer?
Buy a junker and restore it
. You can watch the whole process in the video below, too, but nearly the only sound you’ll hear is the clacking of the keys. He doesn’t say a word until around the 14-minute mark. Just warning you if you have it playing in the background!
Of course, even if you can find a $10 typewriter, it probably won’t be the same kind, nor will it have the same problems. However, it is a good bet that any old mechanical typewriter will need many of the same steps.
The first order of business was to clean everything up. He was afraid of breaking springs with a brush, so much of the cleaning was done with an air gun. Even then, some of the linkages were prone to sticking. The keys also needed some very deep cleaning. Soaking the whole thing in a bath looks scary, but with enough air drying, it shouldn’t cause problems.
There were a few stubborn areas where a brush and mineral spirits were a must. Apparently, WD40 leaves a residue that can cause problems later. Once everything was reassembled, there was a problem. The cleaning had bent out the space bar support! Easily fixed, but it shows how hard it is to clean these things no matter how careful you are.
At least a $10 typewriter isn’t much to risk. We lose sleep every time we have to work on our old
Selectric
. They are pricey and, even for an electric typewriter, complicated. Of course, an electric has a lot more
hacking opportunities
. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748584",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-04-08T20:50:47",
"content": "“Artisans” love using typewriter keys for all sorts of “art”.They rip them off any typewriter that they get their hands on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,371,955.99846 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-silicon-graphics/ | The Rise And Fall Of Silicon Graphics | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"sgi"
] | Maybe best known as the company which brought a splash of color to corporate and scientific computing with its Indigo range of computer systems, Silicon Graphics Inc. (later SGI) burst onto the market in 1981 with what was effectively one of the first commercial graphics operations accelerator with the Geometry Engine. SGI’s founder – James Henry Clark was quite possibly as colorful a character as the company’s products, with [Bradford Morgan White]
covering the years
leading up to SGI’s founding, its highlights and its eventual demise in 2009.
The story of
SGI
is typical of a start-up that sees itself become the market leader for years, even as this market gradually changes. For SGI it was the surge in commodity 3D graphics cards in the 1990s alongside affordable (and cluster-capable; insert Beowulf cluster jokes here) server hardware that posed a major problem. Eventually it’d start offering Windows NT workstations, drop its MIPS-based systems in a shift to Intel’s disastrous Itanium range of CPUs and fall to the last-ditch effort of any struggling company: a logo change.
None of this was effective, naturally, and ultimately SGI would file (again) for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, with Rackable Systems snapping up its assets and renaming itself to SGI, before getting bought out by HPE and sunsetting SGI as a brand name. | 55 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748544",
"author": "mayhem",
"timestamp": "2024-04-08T18:45:33",
"content": "I’ve got two of the indy r5000 units. Just checked on the auction site and they are definitely worht selling. The thing that really got me when I got them is a 1GB hard drive from 1996. I don’t want to kno... | 1,760,371,956.247639 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/ultimate-power-lithium-ion-packs-need-some-extra-circuitry/ | Ultimate Power: Lithium-Ion Packs Need Some Extra Circuitry | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"battery",
"lithium cell"
] | A LiIon pack might just be exactly what you need for powering a device of yours. Whether it’s a laptop, or a robot, or a custom e-scooter, a CPAP machine, there’s likely a LiIon cell configuration that would work perfectly for your needs. Last time,
we talked quite a bit about the parameters you should know about when working with existing LiIon packs
or building a new one – configurations, voltage notations, capacity and internal resistance, and things to watch out for if you’re just itching to put some cells together.
Now, you might be at the edge your seat, wondering what kind of configuration do you need? What target voltage would be best for your task? What’s the physical arrangement of the pack that you can afford? What are the safety considerations? And, given those, what kind of electronics do you need?
Picking The Pack Configuration
Pack configurations are well described by
XsYp
:X serial stages, each stage having Y cells in parallel. It’s important that every stage is the same as all the others in as many parameters as possible – unbalanced stages will bring you trouble.
To get the pack’s nominal voltage, you multiply X (number of stages) by 3.7 V, because this is where your pack will spend most of its time. For example, a 3s pack will have 11.1 V nominal voltage. Check your cell’s datasheet – it tends to have all sorts of nice graphs, so you can calculate the nominal voltage more exactly for the kind of current you’d expect to draw. For instance, the specific cells I use in a device of mine, will spend most of their time at 3.5 V, so I need to adjust my voltage expectations to 10.5 V accordingly if I’m to stack a few of them together.
Now, where do you want to fit your pack? This will determine the voltage. If you want to quickly power a device that expects 12 V, the 10.5 V to 11.1 V of a 3s config should work wonders. If your device detects undervoltage at 10.5V, however, you might want to consider adding one more stage.
How much current do you want to draw? For the cells you are using, open their spec sheet yet again, take the max current draw per cell, derate it by like 50%, and see how many cells you need to add to match your current draw. Then, add parallel cells as needed to get the capacity you desire and fit the physical footprint you’re aiming for.
The last word for section this is on safety. When working with packs that exceed 20V , you are at a higher risk of injury than with the usual low-voltage electronics. DC doesn’t shock you the way AC does, it makes your muscles contract in a way that risks you holding onto whatever is shocking you, and, it also can fry your muscles from the inside. If you’re working with ebike packs, you should seriously heed the advice of having one hand in your pocket as much as humanly possible.
Not only that, but working with LiIon packs is physically dangerous even if you don’t get shocked. At a certain pack voltage and capacity, a short-circuit can blind you, and it will easily melt your metal tools – use plastic as much as possible. If it can drive your ebike motor, it contains enough energy to do a lot of damage.
Thankfully, in the end, safety is manageable. Plus, there’s electronics that help you take care of it.
Electronics And Balancing
In terms of circuitry, you need three things for a LiIon pack – charging, protection, and balancing. So, let’s start with balancing, because balancing circuits give you some much-needed insights into LiIon pack charging requirements.
Balancing is seriously required for LiIon packs that have more than one cell in series. A LiIon charger chip by definition doesn’t monitor individual stages in the series. Over time, the stages in any pack will develop mismatches in internal resistance and capacity, if they’re not noticeably present by the moment the pack is built. During charging, this means that some of the stages might get fully charged while other stages haven’t finished charging yet – and a LiIon charger that’s only connected to the single series ground and output can’t detect that, so it will continue pumping current into the pack, which might lead to overcharging.
Balancers are circuits you build into the LiIon pack directly, in parallel with every stage, that contain a hefty resistor and can shunt the entire charging current away from a cell stage when the voltage on the stage exceeds the maximum voltage threshold. As the pack is charging, the balancers will turn on one by one, protecting the stages with lowest capacity from overcharge. Balancers are simple: you can build one with a resistor, TL431, and a random FET from a desktop motherboard. Of course, there is a balancer available on the market for nearly every battery configuration too.
You have to add a balancer if you want your pack to be safe, doubly so with high stage count packs where even miniscule differences will soon be exacerbated. And triply so if you’re making your pack out of salvaged batteries, which may have mismatches that series charging would exacerbate.
If you’re looking for a protection circuit that does balancing for you, look out for rows of SMD resistors on the board. Balancers are not a substitute for a badly built pack – they can’t dissipate all that much current; ultimately, they are safeguards that help keep a good pack from going bad, and you need them just as much as you need both the charging and protection circuits.
Charging And Protection
Once you move to a multi-stage pack, the classic TP4056 single-stage chargers will not work anymore, as much as I love them. Instead, get a charger chip that can handle series configurations – you can find them reasonably easily. For low-count-series and high-count-series packs, there are plenty of charging circuits on Aliexpress. For low-count-series packs, these circuits take the form of small modules, TP4056-like, just explicitly being marked “2s” or “8.4 V”.
Best is if everything is under your control. You must have control over charger’s configured termination voltage, or at least know what voltage it’s set to – too high and you overcharge, which is pretty bad; too low and you undercharge, which is actually beneficial for pack health but will result in you losing out on capacity. You will likely want control over charging current, too – just like with voltage, it can be too small, but it can’t be too large.
As with the single-cell setups, there are also multi-series protection circuits that safeguard you from overcurrent and overdischarge. These aren’t meant as a substitute for proper handling, but they can protect you from accidents like short-circuits on the output or a charger going haywire; not that there can’t be a spark, but the spark’s consequences will be greatly diminished.
It’s even more convenient when the balancing circuit and overdischarge are included in one PCB. These battery management system boards (BMS) are plentiful on the market and take care of everything under one roof. Look for large SMD resistors as a good indicator that the circuit has balancing as well as overcurrent protection. These boards often lack programmable overcurrent thresholds, though, so be ready to find part numbers for extra FETs and solder them onto conveniently unpopulated footprints if you want to up the limit.
These are the basics you need to work with a multi-stage pack. Is anything unclear? Ask in the comments below – this is the kind of topic where misunderstandings are worth getting corrected early. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748536",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-04-08T18:11:06",
"content": ">DC doesn’t shock you the way AC does, it makes your muscles contract in a way that risks you holding onto whatever is shocking you, and, it also can fry your muscles from the inside.DC actually paralyzes th... | 1,760,371,956.31393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/a-nanovna-as-a-dip-meter/ | A NanoVNA As A Dip Meter | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"grid dip oscillator",
"radio",
"vna"
] | A staple of the radio amateur’s arsenal of test equipment in previous decades was the dip meter. This was a variable frequency oscillator whose coil would be placed near the circuit to be tested, and which would show an abrupt current dip on a moving coil meter when its frequency matched the resonant frequency of what it was testing. For some reason the extremely useful devices seem hard to come by in 2024, so [Rick’s Ham Shack] has come along with
a guide to using a nanoVNA in their place
.
It’s a simple enough technique, indeed it’s a basic part of using these instruments, with a large sensor coil connected to the output port and a frequency sweep set up on the VNA. The reactance graph then shows any resonant peaks it finds in the frequency range, something easily demonstrated in the video below the break by putting a 20 meter (14 MHz) trap in the coil and seeing an immediate clear peak.
For many readers this will not be news, but for those who’ve not used a VNA before it’s a quick and easy demo of an immediate use for these extremely versatile instruments. For those of us who received our callsigns long ago it’s nothing short of miraculous that a functional VNA can be picked up at such a reasonable price, and we’d go as far as to suggest that non radio amateurs might find one useful, too.
Read our review, if you’re interested
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747203",
"author": "Mike Barber",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T04:42:31",
"content": "A device with billions of transistors doing the job requiring just one is hilarious. Oh, the times we live in. I suppose that “hard to come by” is relative. There are lots of old EICO, Heathkit, and L... | 1,760,371,956.476826 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/floss-weekly-episode-777-asterisk-wait-faxes/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 777: Asterisk — Wait, Faxes? | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"asterisk",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"open source"
] | This week Jonathan Bennett and David Ruggles sit down with
Joshua Colp
to talk about Asterisk! That’s the Open Source phone system software you already interact with without realizing it. It started as a side project to run the phones for Linux Support Services, and it turned out working on phone systems was more fun than supporting Linux. The project grew, and in the years since has landed at Sangoma, where Joshua holds the title of Asterisk Project Lead.
Asterisk is used in call centers, business phone systems, and telecom appliances around the world. But how does it handle faxes, WebRTC, and stopping spam calls? Just kidding on that last one, still an unsolved problem.
–
https://github.com/jcolp
–
https://colp.dev
–
https://www.asterisk.org/
–
https://docs.asterisk.org/
–
https://community.asterisk.org/
–
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLighc-2vlRgTTbc54EpDsbb3xIoQPPRLQ
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Have someone you’d like use to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us! Next week we’re chatting with Gina Häußge about Octoprint.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747161",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T00:05:21",
"content": "“…and it turned out working on phone systems was more fun than supporting Linux. ”Blasphemy.” But how does it handle faxes, WebRTC, and stopping spam calls? Just kidding on that last one, still an unsolv... | 1,760,371,956.365497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/esp-prog-adapter-makes-your-esp32-tinkering-seamless/ | ESP-Prog-Adapter Makes Your ESP32 Tinkering Seamless | Arya Voronova | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"debug",
"esp-prog",
"espressif",
"jtag",
"jtag tools",
"SOICbite"
] | Did you ever struggle with an ESP32 board of yours, wishing you had exposed that UART, or seriously lacking the JTAG port access? If so, you should seriously check out [0xjmux]’s
ESP-PROG-Adapter project,
because [0xjmux] has put a lot of love and care into making your ESP32 hardware interfacing a breeze. This project shows you how to add JTAG and UART headers with extra low board footprint impact, gives you a KiCad library to do so super quickly, and shares a simple and helpful adapter PCB you can directly use with the exceptionally cheap Espressif’s ESP-Prog dongle you should have bought months ago.
The hardware is perfect for ZIF no-soldering interfacing – first of all, both UART and JTAG can be connected through
a SOICBite connection,
a solderless connector idea that lets you use SPI flashing clips on specially designed pads at the edge of your board. For the fancy toolkit hackers among us, there’s also a Tag Connect symbol suggested and a connector available, but it carries JTAG that you will already get with the SOICBite, so it’s maybe not worth spending extra money on.
Everything is fully open-source, as one could hope! If you’re doing ESP32 hacking, you simply have to order this board and a SOIC clip to go with it, given just how much trouble [0xjmux]’s board will save you when programming or debugging your ESP32 devices. Now, you don’t strictly need the ESP-Prog dongle – you could remix this into
an adapter for the Pi Pico board
instead. Oh, and if designing boards with ARM CPUs are your thing, you might benefit from being reminded about
the Debug Edge standard! | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747210",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T05:14:21",
"content": "A completely unrelated quirk on my side, but I love seeing ICDs (in-circuit-debuggers) using the same MCUs inside them as the ones they are meant to be debugging.Example PICkit having a PIC24, an ST-LIN... | 1,760,371,956.416946 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/making-the-halo-2-battle-rifle-real/ | Making TheHalo 2Battle Rifle Real | Arya Voronova | [
"Games",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"gun",
"halo",
"halo 2",
"videogame replica"
] | We’ve just been shown a creation that definitely belongs on the list of impressive videogame replicas.
This BR55 rifle built by [B Squared Mfg]
not only looks exactly like its in-game
Halo 2
counterpart, it’s also a fully functional firearm chambered in 5.56. The attention to detail even brings us a game-accurate electronic ammo counter.
The rifle and magazine communicate over three pins.
Unfortunately, the only information we have on the weapon currently is the video below. But he does at least go into detail about the practical aspects: caliber choice, the arduous journey of bolt carrier sourcing, and how the ammo counter works.
Each magazine has a potentiometer built into it to detect the number of rounds loaded, but there’s a bit of trickery involved. In the real world, there’s no way a magazine this size could hold the 36 rounds of ammunition depicted in the game, so for each shot fired, the counter subtracts three. It takes a little imagination, but this way it looks as close to the game version as possible.
There will be no published files due to legal concerns, but there’s nothing you couldn’t build yourself, as long as said legal concerns are sorted out for yourself. Depending on where you live, you might have to settle for
building a Gauss gun
in the same frame, we’ve even seen
slimmer ones done commercially.
Whatever you build, make sure you store it in a way others can’t access it easily —
not all gun safes
pass this test.
We thank [Arsenio] for sharing this with us in the
Hackaday Discord server
! | 48 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747071",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T18:38:20",
"content": "Awesome build! I love bull-pup designs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6747072",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T18:43:05",
"c... | 1,760,371,956.567103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/pcb-design-review-tinysparrow-a-module-for-can-hacking-needs/ | PCB Design Review: Tinysparrow, A Module For CAN Hacking Needs | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"PCB Hacks",
"Skills"
] | [
"can-bus",
"design review",
"pcb"
] | I enjoy seeing modules that can make designing other devices easier, and when I did a call for design reviews, [enp6s0] has submitted one such board to us. It’s a module called TinySparrow (
GitHub
), that helps you build your own vehicle ECUs and any other CAN-enabled things. With a microcontroller, plenty of GPIOs, a linear regulator and a CAN transceiver already onboard, this board has more than enough kick for anyone in hobbyist-range automotive space – and it’s surprisingly tiny!
You could build a lot of things around this module – a CAN bus analyzer or sniffer, a custom peripheral for car dashes, or even a full-blown ECU. You can even design any hardware for a robot or a piece of industrial technology that uses CAN for its backbone – we’ve all seen a few of those! It’s a great board, but it uses six layers. We’ll see if we can do something about that here.
Modules like TinySparrow will make your PCBs cheaper while ordering, too! Thanks to the carefully routed microcontroller and the CAN transmitter, whatever board you design around this chip definitely wouldn’t need six layers like this one does – and, unlike designing your own board, you can use someone’s well-tested and tailored libraries and reference circuits!
With TinySparrow, you save a lot of time, effort and money whenever you want to design a car or industrial accessory. After looking at the board files, my proposal for helping today’s board is –
like last time
– to make its production cheaper, so that more people can get this board into their hands if the creator ever does try and manufacture it. I also have some tips to make future improvements on this design easier, and make it more friendly for its userbase.
More Layers Not Always Better
Every single pin of the microcontroller is broken out – this matters a lot for such a module. It’s seriouslty annoying when you try to squeeze the most out of the onboard MCU, only to find out that the GPIOs broken out don’t expose one of the critical pins you need. I value such module designs a ton and I think people should be aware of their existence, which is why I’ve just spent time highlighting its strengths.
F.Cu, with GND and 3.3V fills
In1.Cu, with GND fill
In2.Cu, with GND fill
In3.Cu, with 3.3V fill
In4.Cu, with GND fill
B.Cu, with GND fill
So about those layers. On one hand, this is justifiable for how tiny this design is. Three of these layers contain traces, two are uninterrupted ground fills, and another layer is 3.3 V. This is wonderful for signal integrity, and perhaps this board could really use an extra SI kick. Still, today, I would like to show you how to free up two of the layers, however – in part in case the author struggled to fit things on 4 layers, and in part to show how it’s done.
Six-layer layouts give you superiour signal integrity and a lot of space to route your traces. Often, six-layer boards are nigh unavoidable, like when doing high-speed USB-C altmodes with certain kinds of connectors. However, if these same features could be smooshed down onto four layers, it would be significantly cheaper both for the PCB and assembly.
So let’s get rid of two layers. As you can see, the layers are kinda full, so, some traces would need to be moved. For that, let’s look into the trace layout on this board. The board looks like it exceeds four-layer routing space provisions by a fair bit, but I can show you how it’s not the case!
Tweak The Defaults
For a start, let’s talk about default parameters, something that ends up limiting this board’s design. This board uses all default KiCad parameters – track widths, clearances, via diameters, and zone values. They are conservative, which is helpful for i.e. etching your own boards, but you lose that benefit if you just order the board, something inevitable at six layers. Let’s go through the distances on this board and see which values we can use while still being totally safe for manufacturing. After we dial the values down, we will have a lot more freedom for rerouting this board!
Track width is at 0.25 mm by default, but it can go as low as 6 mil on any self-respecting fab. Same for the 0.2 mm clearances – they can go to 6 mil too. On 4-layer and 6-layer boards, you can go down to 0.09 mm / 0.09 mm, which especially helps with diffpair layout, but also helps you pull track bundles from point to point.
Vias are 0.8 mm / 0.4 mm (ring width/drill width), which is huge – you can safely drop down to 0.6 mm / 0.4mm on 2-layer boards. At JLCPCB and other fabs, you can drop down to 0.5 mm / 0.3 mm on 4-layer and beyond without paying extra, but even smaller drill sizes tend to cost quite a bit more, so I don’t recommend you use them. As for zone clearances, the default 0.5 mm / 0.25 mm (clearance/minimum width) zone settings are okay, but decreasing them to something like 0.2 mm/ 0.2 mm or lower will help your fills get into tighter spots. On the other hand, solderability of the module’s pin headers will be somewhat worse with solid fills on GND – I would recommend that you use thermals for such boards.
Let’s bulk edit these values! Switching track width to 0.15 mm and via size to 0.5 mm / 0.3 mm, suddenly, a lot of space has cleared up. I was thinking about rotating the microcontroller to allow for higher track density, but now I’m not even sure this is really called for.
Module Pinout
When you design a module like this and expect to have it be used on your and especially others’ boards, changing the pinout is to be done with care – I would know. However, I have strong arguments for why this module deserves a breaking change like that.
For a start, the module’s GND pins are far and few between – there are only two of them at the CAN header, whereas the module’s actual power inputs and outputs (VDC and 3.3 V) are on the opposide side. This will at least somewhat compromise the return currents for both power and CAN. Remember, there’s a reason we no longer put GND on the opposite side of VCC on modern chips, the way we used to do on DIP-package-era logic ICs.
So, the pin assortment ought to be tweaked. For instance, VDC doesn’t require two pins on the pin header – one of them would be enough, given that the module’s current consumption is quite low. I do acknowledge that breaking pinout changes are quite harmful, but you also have to make sure you make them before the module’s popularity increases. Learning from the Arduino example, the earlier you can make such changes, the better, so if the author is free to replace one of the currently-VDC pins by GND, that will help. You could even add one more GND pin surrounding VFC, replacing one of the near-CAN GNDs with a GPIO – this makes it way, way harder to damage the MCU through accidental screwdriver/metal object/dust application.
Two Layers Removed In Two Minutes
As for layer reduction, let’s look at where traces go. Disabling fill visibility, then selecting only F.Cu, In1.Cu, and In2.Cu, something becomes apparent. While the VIN and module routing on the top interferes with direct signal layout, you could easily move In1 and In2 signals to B.Cu (currently unoccupied).
So, how do you do this reroute? Actually, it took me about two or three minutes. First, move In1 tracks to B.Cu using Edit => Edit Track & Via Properties. Then, tweak the now B.Cu tracks to make sure they don’t overlay with In2.Cu tracks. Last step – move In2.Cu tracks to B.Cu using the same menu. Now we have two outer layers that carry tracks, and four layers that are completely empty, save for their fills – a classic arrangement.
Which layers to get rid of? Three of the now-internal layers have GND and one has 3.3 V. You can delete In3 and In4 by changing the board layer count to 4 in Board Setup menu, and decide what to do with the inner layers. There’s two options – SIG-GND-PWR-SIG, or SIG-GND-GND-SIG. For GND-PWR, the 3.3 V plane only wires up three microcontroller pins, but having it as a power plane improves power current distribution somewhat. Alternatively, you could get rid of the internal power plane, for a relatively classic GND-GND inner layer option, and put the 3.3 V pins on B.Cu – thanks to the F.Cu 3.3 V polygon that the board author added, most 3.3 V-connected elements on the board don’t make all that much use of the inner 3.3 V layer when it comes to power delivery.
By now, the work is already done, and it only took a short while. With four layers, the board is cheaper to manufacture, especially given that the author already took care to only put components on the top layer – props to them. There’s only a few things left that are of note for me.
Silkscreen, And Some Q&A
The silkscreen of this board could use a few additions, in my opinion. For a start, it doesn’t list the board version, which might just bite you, especially given the internal traces! This is true even more so if you’re making multiples of this board and selling it – it really helps your users to know which exact version of the module they have, so that they don’t have to read chip markings or deduce things by trace layout. My preferred format is
%BOARDNAME% by %AUTHOR%, v%VERSION%
, and this board could very much use a label like this, given that it’s a module.
The back of the board is barren, save for the
JLCJLCJLCJLC
text that safeguards the board’s top layer and a small easter egg. That said, silkscreen is free! There are two options. First option: it could show the module pinout, for the users’ convenience. Second option: it could have some art, for the users’ emotional landscape in one way or another. Choose extra wisely, for both of these choices are wise to make.
Now, here’s a question for the readers – it’s about choosing which components to put onto such a module. This is a board used in an automotive environment – something that is not my domain of expertise, but I’ve read about it here and there, and I wonder if this module would require higher care. For instance, should you put protective elements for the CAN transceiver on this module? CAN termination? Some amount of GPIO protection? Or should these things be relegated to the carrier board, serving as impromptu documentation on the “here’s how you use it” question?
Remember – you, too, can submit your own PCB designs for my review! Send in your board into our tips line, with
[design review]
in the subject. KiCad is preferred, and a Git repository link desired, but a ZIP file/Google Drive/DropBox link also works. Last but not least, let me know what you think about this feedback, of course – any notes of your own? | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747039",
"author": "MacGyverS2000",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T17:16:03",
"content": "“…should you put protective elements for…”Consider this… an end-user is going to attach this to a vehicle, an expensive piece of equipment no matter where you come from. Do you really want to take ... | 1,760,371,956.640567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/recovering-a-physically-broken-sd-card/ | Recovering A Physically Broken SD Card | Jenny List | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"data recovery",
"repair",
"sd card"
] | There is much to be found online about recovering data from corrupt SD cards, but [StezStix Mix] had an entirely different problem with his card. He’d filmed an important video to it, then dropped it and ran his office chair over it, snapping it almost in half. He’s put up a couple of videos showing
how he recovered the data
, and we’ve put them below the break.
A modern SD card is mostly just plastic, as in the decades since the format was created, the size of the circuitry on it has decreased dramatically. So his stroke of luck was that the card circuitry was a tiny PCB little bigger than the contact pad area on a full size SD card. There was a problem though, it wouldn’t be easy to fit in an SD card socket. So in the first video he goes through physically wiring it to a USB card reader, which results in reading the data after a false start in remembering that an SD card activates a switch.
This however is not the end of the story, because he had viewers asking why he didn’t simply attach an SD card shaped bit of cardboard.
So the second video below
goes through this, trying both card, and an SD to micro SD adapter. We find that making something to fit an SD socket is a lot less easy than it looks, but eventually he manages it.
Meanwhile those of you with long memories may recall
this isn’t the first SD surgery we’ve brought you
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747017",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T15:53:28",
"content": "I have a lot of respect for the robustness of micro SD cards after I went over my accidentally-dropped phone with a mulching lawn mower. The phone was in bits, the battery was smoking, but the SD card with pre... | 1,760,371,956.685291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/space-mirrors-dreams-of-turning-the-night-into-day-around-the-clock/ | Space Mirrors: Dreams Of Turning The Night Into Day Around The Clock | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Solar Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"space mirror",
"znamya"
] | Recently, a company by former SpaceX employee Ben Nowack – called Reflect Orbital –
announced
that it is now ready to put gigantic mirrors in space to reflect sunshine at ground-based solar farms. This is an idea that’s been around for a hundred years already, both for purposes of defeating the night through reflecting sunshine onto the surface, as well as to reject the same sunshine and reduce the surface temperature. The central question here is perhaps what the effect would be of adding or subtracting (or both) of solar irradiation on such a large scale as suggested?
We know the effect of light pollution from e.g. cities and street lighting already, which suggests that light pollution is a strongly negative factor for the survival of many species. Meanwhile a reduction in sunshine is already a part of the seasons of Autumn and Winter. Undeniable is that the Sun’s rays are essential to life on Earth, while the day-night cycle (as well as the seasons) created by the Earth’s rotation form an integral part of everything from sleep- and hibernation cycles, to the reproduction of countless species of plants, insects, mammals and everyone’s favorite feathered theropods.
With these effects and the gigantic financial investments required in mind, is there any point to space-based mirrors?
Night-Be-Gone
The Znyamya 2 space-based mirror in orbit. (Credit: RSC Energia)
Of all proposed space-based reflectors and deflectors, the only one to make it past the theoretical stage into testing is the
Soviet-era
Znamya
(‘banner’) satellite. This was originally a solar sail project by
Vladimir Syromyatnikov,
who would try to get funding for it by pitching it to the USSR leadership in 1988 as a way to
bring sunshine
to the northern regions of the USSR with their short, cold days. This would extend daylight hours for outdoor work, and potentially also find uses in metropolitan settings, effectively driving night away and removing the need for street and indoor lighting.
Not too long after this Znamya 2 project began, the USSR collapsed, but like so many parts of the USSR space program, Znamya 2 would coast into the uncertain years of the 1990s under the auspice of newly formed Russian companies. With the USSR’s
Mir
space station still in orbit, it was the ideal platform from which this satellite could be launched. When in February of 1993 this experiment
took place
, it was considered a success, with the satellite unfolding its 20-meter mirror and casting a roughly 5 km diameter spot of reflected light over pre-dawn Europe.
Yet as if the atmosphere was making a statement, it was cloudy that day over Europe, and those on the ground did not observe much of this new light in the sky, which was said to be on par with that of the full Moon. Following this experiment, the
Znamya 2.5 satellite
was prepared, with a larger mirror. Unfortunately, the deployment of this satellite failed, with the mirror getting caught on an antenna of the Progress spacecraft. After failed attempts to free the mirror, the satellite was deorbited and along with Znyamya 2.5 the program went up in ashes.
What would have been the impact if the USSR and its successor state had launched hundreds or even thousands of Znamya satellites into orbit?
Light Pollution
Increase in Artificial Night Sky Brightness in North America (Source: Ron Chepesiuk, 2009, Environmental Health Perspective)
How would a world without night fare? This is not an entirely theoretical question either, as those who live at or near the Earth’s poles are well aware of. Yet it’s not simply a matter of day or night, with the sky brightening during night time around the globe a little bit more each year. At this point over a third of the world’s population
cannot see the Milky Way
any more at night, which is not just a cosmetic inconvenience, but also has very real implications for human health. Much of this is due to how it affects the circadian rhythm and aspects of it, such as the production of melatonin.
An
increasing body of evidence
supports the notion that exposure to (artificial) light during night time suppresses the production of melatonin, which can have a range of undesirable effects, including poor sleep and even the development of cancer. A
2018 review study
by Leena Tähkämö and colleagues in
Chronobiology International
finds that even an increase in background lighting levels (even with one’s eyes closed) can affect one’s circadian rhythm. This is also an issue with pregnant women, a
2021 study
by Karin Windsperger, MD and colleagues in
Birth
on the ease of delivery and health of newborns describes. Since melatonin passes through the placenta, a disrupted maternal circadian rhythm will thus also negatively affect the development of the fetus.
The
ecological impacts
of a decreasing night amidst phenomena like
skyglow
range from new selective pressures on night-time insects and mammals – e.g. decreased
effectiveness of camouflage
– to the risk of extinction of entire species, such as with newborn turtles who only know to move away from the darkness (the coast) and towards the lighter area (moon-lit ocean), but end up crawling onto brightly lit roads instead where they all too often find their early demise. The
case of the Post Tower
in Bonn, Germany, clearly demonstrates how birds can be disoriented by light pollution from buildings and consequently collide with said buildings.
Eternal Day
24-h groundtrack of the selected optimal Sun-synchronous orbit. (Credit: Çelik et al., 2024)
Most recently, the focus with space mirrors appears to be on addressing the primary issue with photovoltaic solar farms, being their lack of production when night falls. Much like how Soviet planners imagined loggers and farmers productively working in eternal daylight, so too would today’s solar farms produce power around the clock. Although Reflect Orbital hasn’t released many – if any – details on what their proposed satellite constellation would look like, a (EU Horizon 2020 grant-supported)
2024 study
by Onur Çelik and Colin R. McInnes, as published in
Acta Astronautica
, titled
A constellation design for orbiting solar reflectors to enhance terrestrial solar energy
details a few deployment approaches.
This paper suggests initially 20 space mirrors in sun-synchronous orbits at the dawn/dusk terminator, in a fairly typical
Walker constellation
. What’s not typical is that instead of the satellites trying to blend into the darkness of space, they’d instead do the equivalent of a
satellite flare
cranked up to well over 9,000. Rather than a glint that may upset an astronomer trying to capture the night sky, instead it’d blast a fairly narrow beam of sunlight at the Earth’s atmosphere. Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not an optically transparent medium, but instead refracts and diffuses light (hence
Rayleigh scattering
and blue skies), this would create a skyglow from Hell if you’re an astronomer.
Just that one aspect ought to be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion of trying space mirrors for chasing the night away. When it is not ruining astronomy even further, the other aspects of human health effects, ecological destruction and whichever exciting consequences we’d stand to discover as a result, the sheer cost and complexity of putting these massive mirrors into space and controlling them should give anyone pause.
Aiming space mirrors at the Earth and hitting a few PV solar farms is a feat where, if you pay attention, the marketing and studies never seem to mention clouds, fog or other weather events that make sunshine not reach the Earth’s surface as well. Meanwhile we got low-carbon power sources that do not require space mirrors or ecological destruction to produce 24/7.
Reclaiming The Night
Part of the 354 MW SEGS solar complex in northern San Bernardino County, California
If it’s solar that you want, but the lack of 24/7 production has you down, then
concentrated solar power
(CSP) has been around for a while. Although the tower-based form of CSP, like Ivanpah in the Mojave desert, have a bad rap if only for their bird-killing powers, parabolic-trough CSP circumvents many of the issues, including less complicated solar tracking, due to the parabolic part. CSP generally comes with its own thermal storage system, which gives CSP built-in energy storage for hours and thus makes it a dispatchable source of power.
Although storage-less PV solar used to get a higher return, dispatchable power sources are more highly valued these days, which is why
CSP is making a comeback
. These solar plants will happily produce power during the night from their stored heat, although they do best in areas with a lot of sunshine. Much like the non-solar options of nuclear and hydro dams, these do not share the main flaw that makes PV solar such a pain to manage, while being dispatchable, low-carbon and do not ruin the night and astronomy more than we have already managed so far. This appears to be the course set by the European Union at the recent
Nuclear Energy Summit
as well, with the EU and others increasingly opting for such low-impact sources.
Considering the importance of maintaining the day-night cycle on Earth based on the evidence we have available, it is hoped that we never see space mirrors become a reality, and instead we can focus on technologies that will really make life better on Earth. Or, if we really want to do PV solar and satellites, we can
burn a big stack of money on space-based solar
while leaving precious night time intact. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746989",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T14:50:00",
"content": "“Considering the importance of maintaining the day-night cycle on Earth based on the evidence we have available, it is hoped that we never see space mirrors become a reality”I appreciate the dive into the bio... | 1,760,371,956.906502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/a-giga-sunset-for-gigaset-iot-devices/ | A Giga-Sunset For Gigaset IoT Devices | Arya Voronova | [
"home hacks",
"News"
] | [
"bankruptcy",
"gigaset",
"home automation",
"internet of things",
"IoT",
"proprietary",
"smart home"
] | In today’s “predictable things that happened before and definitely will happen again”, we have another company in the “smart device” business that has just shuttered their servers, leaving devices completely inert. This time, it’s Gigaset. The servers were shuttered on the 29th of March, and
the official announcement
(German,
Google Translate
) states that there’s no easy way out.
It appears that the devices were locked into Gigaset Cloud to perform their function, with no local-only option. This leaves all
open source
integrations
in the dust, whatever documentation there was, is
now taken down.
As the announcement states, Gigaset Communications Gmbh has gotten acquired due to insolvency, and the buyer was not remotely interested in the Smart Home portion of the business. As the corporate traditions follow, we can’t expect open sourcing of the code or protocol specification or anything of the sort — the devices are bricks until someone takes care of them.
If you’re looking for smart devices on the cheap, you might want to add “Gigaset” to your monitored search term list — we’ll be waiting for your hack submissions as usual. After all, we’ve seen some success stories when it comes to abandoned smart home devices – like the recent Insteon story, where a group of device owners
bought out and restarted the service
after the company
got abruptly shut down.
We thank [Louis] for sharing this with us! | 76 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746886",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T11:05:37",
"content": "Maybe it should be 29th March not April.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746921",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2024-0... | 1,760,371,957.075828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/long-range-meshtastic-relay/ | A Long-Range Meshtastic Relay | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"heltec",
"log periodic",
"LoRa",
"Meshtastic",
"radio",
"relay",
"repeater"
] | In the past few years we’ve seen the rise of low-power mesh networking devices for everything from IoT devices, weather stations, and even off-grid communications networks. These radio modules are largely exempt from licensing requirements due to their low power and typically only operate within a very small area. But by borrowing some ideas from the licensed side of amateur radio,
[Peter Fairlie] built this Meshtastic repeater
which can greatly extend the range of his low-power system.
[Peter] is calling this a “long lines relay” after old AT&T microwave technology, but it is essentially two Heltec modules set up to operate as Meshtastic nodes, where one can operate as a receiver while the other re-transmits the received signal. Each is connected to a log-periodic antenna to greatly increase the range of the repeater along the direction of the antenna. These antennas are highly directional, but they allow [Peter] to connect to Meshtastic networks in the semi-distant city of Toronto which he otherwise wouldn’t be able to hear.
With the two modules connected to the antennas and enclosed in a weatherproof box, the system was mounted on a radio tower allowing a greatly increased range for these low-power devices. If you’re familiar with LoRa but not Meshtastic, it’s become somewhat popular lately for being a straightforward tool for setting up low-power networks for various tasks.
[Jonathan Bennett] explored it in much more detail as an emergency communications mode
after a tornado hit his home town. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746879",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T10:25:56",
"content": "Local codes may be different, but it isn’t uncommon that power limits for unlicensed radio devices refer to e.r.p. (effective radiated power) rather than the transmitter power. This makes using direction... | 1,760,371,956.965796 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/the-apple-they-should-have-made-but-didnt/ | The Apple They Should Have Made, But Didn’t | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1980's",
"apple",
"apple johnathan"
] | Whenever there is a large manufacturer of a popular product in the tech space, they always attract tales of near-mythical prototypes which would have changed everything on the spot had they just not been cancelled by the bean counters. The Sony-Nintendo PlayStation prototypes for example, or any of a number of machines inexplicably axed by Commodore.
Apple is no exception. They brought the instantly forgettable twentieth anniversary Mac and the pretty but impractical G4 Cube to market, but somehow they rejected
the Jonathan
, a razor-sharp modular machine from the mid-1980s.
It’s easy after so long associating Apple with the Mac to forget that in the mid-80s it was simply one of their several computer lines, and not the most successful one at that. The 16-bit machine was something of a slimmed-down evolution of the Lisa, and it thus it doesn’t necessarily follow that every other Apple machine of the day also had to be a Mac. Into this would have come the Jonathan, a high-end modular machine bridging the gap between domestic and business computing, with a standard bus allowing processor modules for different operating systems, and upgrades with standard “books”, hardware modules containing peripherals, not all of which would have come from Apple themselves. It would have been Apple’s first 32-bit machine, but sadly it proved too adventurous for their management, who feared that it might tempt Apple users into the world of DOS rather than the other way round.
What strikes us about the Johnathan is how out of place it looks on a 1980s desk, it would be the mid-1990s before we would come close to having machines with these capabilities, and indeed we’ve never seen anything quite as adventurous hardware-wise.
It’s certainly not the only might-have been story we’ve seen though
. | 31 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746825",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T06:05:37",
"content": ">”every user could have their own unique Jonathan setup, pulling together various software platforms, storage devices, and hardware capabilities into their own personalized system. Imagining what would have ... | 1,760,371,957.458226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/crash-iot-devices-through-protocol-fuzzing/ | Crash IoT Devices Through Protocol Fuzzing | Arya Voronova | [
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"fuzzing",
"IoT",
"iot security"
] | IoT protocols are a relatively unexplored field compared to most PC-exposed protocols – it’s bothersome to need a whole radio setup before you can tinker on something, and often, for low-level experiments, just any radio won’t do. This means there’s quite a bit of security ground to cover. Now,
the U-Fuzz toolkit
from [asset-group] helps us make up for it.
Unlike fuzzers you might imagine, U-Fuzz doesn’t go in blindly. This toolkit has provisions to parse protocols and fuzz fields meaningfully, which helps because many of devices will discard packets they deem too malformed. With U-Fuzz, you feed it a couple packet captures, help it make some conclusions about packet and protocol structure, and get suggestions on how to crash your devices in ways not yet foreseen.
This allows for basically arbitrary protocol fuzzing, and to demonstrate, we get examples on 5G, CoAP and ZigBee probing alike, with a list of found CVEs to wrap the README up. As Wikipedia often states, this list is incomplete, and you can help by expanding it. Fuzzing is an underestimated tool – it will help you hack
ubiquitous wireless protocols
,
proprietary standards
, and
smart home hubs
alike. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746796",
"author": "FlipperHero",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T03:24:10",
"content": "I wonder how long it will be before Canada bans it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,957.161402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/lamp-becomes-rotating-illuminated-sign-for-festival-table/ | Lamp Becomes Rotating, Illuminated Sign For Festival Table | Donald Papp | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"sign",
"solar",
"turntable"
] | Two things we love are economical solutions to problems, and clever ways to use things for other than their intended purpose. [CelGenStudios] hits both bases with a simple
illuminated and spinning sign
made from a lamp and a couple economical pieces of hardware: an LED bulb, and a solar-powered product spinner. Both are readily and cheaply available from your favorite overseas source.
The first step in making a cheap illuminated sign is to not buy one, but instead make do with a standing lamp. Plug a bright LED bulb into the socket, decorate the lampshade with whatever logos or signs one wishes to display, and one has an economical illuminated sign suitable for jazzing up a table at an event. But what really kicks it up a notch is making it
rotate
, and to do that is where the clever bit comes in.
Mounting the lampshade to the solar turntable body yields a simple, rotating, illuminated sign.
The first attempt used a BBQ rotisserie motor to turn the whole lamp, but it was too loud and not especially stable. The second attempt used a “disco ball effect” LED bulb with a motorized top; it worked but turned too quickly and projected light upward instead of into the lampshade.
The winning combination is LED bulb plus a little solar-powered turntable onto which the lampshade mounts. As a result, the lampshade spins slowly when the lamp is turned on. It might not be the most durable thing to ever come out of a workshop, but as [CelGenStudios] says, it only needs to last for a weekend.
The basic concept is far more simple than it might sound, so check it out in the video (embedded below) to see it in action. Curious about what’s inside those little solar spinners? Skip to
5:55 in the video
to see how they work. And if you’re intrigued by the idea of using solar power for motive force but want to get more hands-on with the electrical part, we have just the resource for
turning tiny motors with tiny solar cells
.
Thanks to [Bike Forever] for the tip! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746783",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T01:53:43",
"content": "Looks like a hack to me!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746827",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-04-03T06:16:49",
... | 1,760,371,957.124188 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/a-nifty-f1c100s-dual-board-computer/ | A Nifty F1C100S Dual-Board Computer | Arya Voronova | [
"hardware"
] | [
"Allwinner",
"Allwinner F1C100s",
"Embedded Linux",
"F1C100s"
] | The F1C100S (and the F1C200S) is a super simple CPU to use – it’s QFN, it has RAM built-in, and it can run Linux. It just makes sense that we bring it up to you once again, this time, on
this dual-board computer
by [minilogic]. The boards look super accessible to build for a Linux computer, and it’s alright if you assemble only one of them, too – the second board just makes this computer all that much nicer to use!
One the main board, you get the CPU itself, a couple USB ports, headphone and mic jacks, a microphone, a microSD socket, power management, SPI flash chip, plus some buttons, headers and USB-UART for debug. Add the second board, however, and you get a HDMI video output socket, a RGBTTL LCD header, LiIon battery support, RTC, and even FM radio with TV input.
One problem with this computer – it’s not open-source in the way that we expect and respect, as there’s no board files to be seen. However, at least
the
schematics
are public, so it shouldn’t be hard, and the author provides
quite a bit of example code
for the F1C100S, which softens the blow. Until the design files are properly published, we can at least learn from the idea and the schematics. If you like what the F1C100S CPU offers, there are other projects you can take things from too, like this
low-cost handheld
we’re patiently waiting for, or this
Linux-powered business card. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746729",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T20:43:12",
"content": "On the, not, One the.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746746",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T21:48:19",
... | 1,760,371,957.348452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/wear-testing-different-3d-printer-filaments/ | Wear Testing Different 3D Printer Filaments | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"filament",
"wear test"
] | Over the couple of decades or so since it started to be available at an affordable level, 3D printing has revolutionized the process of making custom objects. But as anyone with a 3D printer will know, sometimes the materials don’t quite live up to the application. There is a huge variety of available filaments to help make better prints, but which one really is the most hard-wearing? [My Tech Fun]
set out to measure the resistance to wear of a variety of different 3D printed materials
.
The test takes a standard print made across a variety of different materials, and several of each using different manufacturers’ offerings. These are then put on a test rig that moves backward and forward twice a second, with the test piece rubbing against a steel shaft under pressure from a 2.5 kg weight.
As might be expected, the common and cheap PLA performed the worst while PETG, PA, and TPU performed the best. But for us the interesting part comes in the variance between brands; the best PLA sample outperforms the worst ABS and nearly equals the worst of the PETG. Proof that maybe you do get what you pay for.
The whole test is well worth a watch, and if you 3D print anything that might be subjected to mechanical stress you should find it to be of interest. If comparing filaments is something you’d like to see more of,
we’ve featured some tests before
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746709",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T19:42:54",
"content": "It would be nice to see filament manufacturers publish a comprehensive, controlled, standardized test results for their filament.Seriously, why don’t they do this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,957.387833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/3d-navigator-for-blender/ | 3D Navigator For Blender | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"mpu6050",
"spacemouse"
] | If you work with high-end CAD workstations, you may have encountered a SpaceMouse or similar devices. Sort of a mouse with an extra dimension, they aren’t cheap. So [meisterodin1981] decided to build
a do-it-yourself version
for use with Blender. You can check it out in the video below.
The device uses an MPU6050 accelerometer and a spring. It also has some buttons for special features. The device uses a Teensy 2, although any controller that can provide an HID device could probably do the job. Of course, a nice 3D printed case is part of the design. A printed pair of plates holds a 3D printer bed spring to provide the device’s Z-axis movement. The wires to the encoder are routed through the center of the spring, so neatness counts.
We’ve seen other 3D mice like the
Orbion
. Your other option is to pick up the old-fashioned serial port versions and
convert them
. Until you can do your designs in virtual reality, these mice are just the ticket. | 14 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747448",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T20:52:13",
"content": "It looks cool, but it seems fussy to use because you’re waiting for automated cursor movement. Wouldn’t a trackball be better?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,371,957.612374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/ultimate-power-lithium-ion-batteries-in-series/ | Ultimate Power: Lithium-Ion Batteries In Series | Arya Voronova | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"battery",
"ebike",
"liion",
"parallel",
"series",
"voltage"
] | At some point, the 3.6 V of a single lithium ion battery just won’t do, and you’ll absolutely want to stack LiIon cells in series. When you need high power, you’ve either got to increase voltage or current, and currents above say 10 A require significantly beefed up components. This is how you’re able to charge your laptop from your USB-C powerbank, for instance.
Or maybe you just need higher voltages, and don’t feel like using a step-up converter, which brings along with it some level of inefficiency. Whatever your reasons, it’s time to put some cells into series.
Notation Confusion
The common notation for battery packs in parallel or series is
XsYp
– as in, the battery consists of X cell “stages” in series, where each stage consists of Y cells in parallel. So, putting three cells in series is 3s1p, a single cell is technically 1s1p, and two cells in parallel is 1s2p.
A less precise but more popular notation is just showing the pack voltage – either the final charge voltage (4.1 V to 4.3 V) or the nominal voltage (3.6 V to 3.8 V) of a single cell, multiplied by the amount of series stages. For instance, if you see 12.6 V pack voltage, it’s exceptionally likely to be a
3s?p
pack (4.2*3), and if it’s 14.4 V, it’s likely a
4s?p
pack (3.6*4). This notation is less precise, because you don’t know the number of cells and you have to deduce cell voltage was used for calculations, but it’s the one that’s most often actually put on product and battery labels.
On one hand, the labelling is great. On the other hand, 6000mAh ( 12000mAh/2P ) 18650s don’t exist.
This obviously becomes a problem when you’re working with packs like ebike batteries. What does 52 V represent? Is it, 14 3.7 V nominal stages, or is it 12 4.3 V full-charge stages? If that’s the value you see on the multimeter, is it a fully charged 12s pack, or a fully discharged 15s-17s pack? Are you comfortable taking a guess? I wouldn’t be.
For charging and tailoring the electronics used for the battery, knowing the cell count matters a lot. So, if your battery simply states a voltage on the label, you will have to deduce the cell count before you can charge it. If you can, it might be worth to open the battery (very, very carefully) enough that you can physically count the cells and maybe even figure out the cell connections – if you can see that the pack has four-cells groups connected in parallel and you can count 60 cells in total, you have everything you need to understand it’s a 15s4p pack.
How Much Do You Really Get?
What about total capacity? Let’s talk that through. You will see packs use either milliamp-hours (mAh) or watt-hours (Wh) for capacity notation. When you see mAh, this is capacity per stage – the sum of capacity of all parallel cells in a single stage. Wh is the per-stage mAh multiplied by total pack voltage – typically the nominal voltage.
Technically, this pack is 185Wh, so you in fact won’t be able to ✈️ carry a boarding
There’s one notable exception in mAh notation talking about stages – powerbanks. Even if your powerbank has a 2s2p configuration, they will sum up mAh capacity of all cells and put that number on the label. This number is exactly twice the actual mAh capacity of the battery, though. mAh are a primary figure for powerbank capacity marketing.
So here’s a summary for working with unfamiliar packs. If you see that a pack says 20 Wh, you don’t actually know anything about it, much less enough to charge it, but it should be easy to figure out. If you see that the pack is 120 Wh, you still don’t know enough, but at least now you know that it can’t be taken on a plane. Figure out the pack voltage and which kind it is – charging the battery fully and measuring the voltage should do it. Then, deduce the battery internal configuration and per-stage capacity, write them down, and maybe even put them on a sticker glued into the – if the manufacturer hasn’t done it for you, someone has to do a proper job.
If you’re designing something that can be taken on a plane, the 100 Wh limit has workarounds that you should be able to easily deduce from reading airport battery rules – I have taken flights while carrying approximately 300 Wh of batteries in my carry-on luggage. You, too, can pull such cool things off if you know enough about LiIon packs – so let’s continue learning! How do you build your own pack? Let’s wrap up by talking about cell selection.
Pick Your Cells Carefully
If you’ve ever taken old laptop batteries apart, you might already have an assortment of salvaged 18650 cells, and maybe you’ve even got few cell holders handy – if not, you should. If your plan is to be putting these cells in series, however, watch out – you can’t use any random cells.
You can build a pack out of these, but you have to be careful which ones you pick. Pic courtesy of [Max_UA]
I’m going to be quite serious here and dedicate the second half of the article to this topic, because it’s important. If you’re building a pack, the safest way to do it is taking cells that are as similar as possible before you put them together. The best way to do it is to buy a batch of cells from a reliable vendor. Not looking to do that for a particular project, maybe you need it urgently, or the budget’s low? That’s understandable, let’s show you what you need to know.
For every cell, you need to know two parameters – cell capacity and cell internal resistance. Those two need to at least approximately match if you’re building a pack. Naturally, if you combine cells from different sources, they’re not going to match well. However, you can still find cells that are good enough for your use! What happens if you don’t?
What Could Go Wrong?
Let’s look at a single parallel stage for a start. If you mismatch capacity between cells within a stage, then the stage capacity will be limited by the capacity of the cell with the lowest capacity. As soon as the lowest capacity cell’s energy is depleted, the cell’s voltage will sharply drop below safe voltage, and the cell will be charged from the other cells around it in quite unfavourable circumstances.
Not only is this pack looking dodgy, it won’t even work for you that well!
In the same parallel stage, if you mismatch the internal resistance within a stage, the lower-resistance cells will take more charge/discharge current than the others, increasing the load on it beyond what you would intend to put. Oh, and it’s going to heat up more, which will negatively impact its capacity/internal resistance, and heat up the cells it too, to the same effect. Both of these problems can cause the entire parallel stage to die with the cell affected – which is something you often see happen in laptops.
What about differences between stages, within the series configuration of the pack? If a stage has higher internal resistance than the others, it is going to heat up more, and it is going to drop more voltage – causing an annoying dip as soon as you draw current from the pack, and increased balancing complexity during charging. This, again, is a common fault in laptops and powerbanks, as well as e-bike batteries. As for capacity, a stage with lower capacity than other stages will limit the capacity of the entire bank, causing the same kind of dip. Not only that, but if you continue drawing energy from the pack after a stage’s capacity has been depleted, you’re going to be charging the drained stage in reverse – with potentially fiery results.
As you might notice, the mismatched internal resistance and capacity problems are similar, and that’s because internal resistance and capacity are tightly interlinked parameters of a LiIon cell. Fortunately, they’re easy to assess.
Assess, Configure, Equip
The simplest way to determine cell capacity is to get a cell tester. Those tend to be able to discharge and charge individual cells while also measuring parameters like capacity and internal resistance, and logging the results. There are quite a few cell testers, and it’s a popular project in the DIY scene too. You can test pouch cells the same way you would test 18650s, of course, just that it might require alligator clips or adapters.
Failing that, you can intuit cell capacity and internal resistance with a couple of high-power resistors – basically what the testers do. After charging a cell fully, measure its voltage, then start discharging a known-value resistor through it, measuring the voltage drop. Comparing this voltage drop between cells, especially at different points in time, will give you a proxy for the cell’s internal resistance.
As for capacity, you can use a TP4056 charger to fully charge your cell and then use charging time as a proxy for capacity – you might not be able to differentiate a 3200 mAh cell and a 3100 mAh cell, but you’ll definitely notice a 2500 mAh cell standing out. Alternatively, you can use a resistor and note discharging time until reaching a certain voltage – while you can’t estimate capacity unless you’re also constantly measuring voltage, a rough estimate of discharge time will do.
Plus, take note of cell heating! If a cell is heating up beyond norm during charge or discharge, again, consider recycling it. Cell testers and chargers tend to measure temperature for this exact reason. Again, buying a bunch of cells from the same batch is the safest thing you could do, but if you can’t avoid combining cells, now you know what it takes to do so relatively safely, and what are the specific ways it can go wrong.
Today, let’s stop here, and next week, explain all the practical aspects of pack building and reuse. If you want to build a LiIon pack, which configuration do you pick? How do you charge it? What kind of protective electronics do you need? What else to watch out for? And what even is balancing? All of this and more will be explained the next week, and I hope this article can help. | 52 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747385",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T17:19:15",
"content": "Nice write up!. This is one of those areas of engineering that only engineers should be doing, not curious guys on the internet; too dangerous and expensive to be playing around.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,371,957.560612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/how-much-thrust-is-your-prop-really-making/ | How Much Thrust Is Your Prop Really Making? | Jenny List | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"motor",
"test rig",
"thrust"
] | The problem of components not conforming to their claimed specification is one that must challenge engineers in all fields, including it seems, that of multi-rotors and remote controlled aircraft. A motor can boast an impressive spec on the website which sells it, but overheat or just not deliver when it’s on your bench. Thus [Valkyrie Workshop] has come up with
a simple but ingenious rig to evaluate a motor and propeller combo without breaking the bank
.
It tales the form of a L-shaped wooden bracket clamped to a pivot point at its corner with one arm pointing upwards, with motor and propeller in a 3D printed holder on the upwards arm. The other arm extends horizontally and lies on a digital kitchen scale the same distance from the pivot as the motor. The same force as is exerted by the motor is transmitted via the bracket to the kitchen scale, allowing a direct readout of the thrust in grams or kilograms. This is a first version of the rig, further work will move to a load cell and Arduino for more flexibility in measurement.
We’ve featured similar devices
here in the past, including one
version which can be mounted to an automobile
so it can be tested at speed. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747361",
"author": "aleksclark",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T16:10:56",
"content": "I’ve built one of these. A key design consideration is a) support many different motor mounts b) support reversing the motor for pusher configs / props. I also include a power meter so you can evaluate... | 1,760,371,957.664262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/where-graph-theory-meets-the-road-the-algorithms-behind-route-planning/ | Where Graph Theory Meets The Road: The Algorithms Behind Route Planning | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"graph theory",
"route planning"
] | Back in the hazy olden days of the pre-2000s, navigating between two locations generally required someone to whip out a paper map and painstakingly figure out the most optimal route between those depending on the chosen methods of transport. For today’s generations no such contrivances are required, with technology having obliterated even the a need to splurge good money on a GPS navigation device and annual map updates.
These days, you get out a computing device, open Google Maps or equivalent, ask it how you should travel somewhere, and most of the time the provided route will be the correct one, including the fine details such as train platform and departure times. Yet how does all of this seemingly magical route planning technology work? It’s often assumed that Dijkstra’s algorithm, or the A* graph traversal algorithm is used, but the reality is that although these pure graph theory algorithms are decidedly influential, they cannot be applied verbatim to the reality of graph traversal between destinations in the physical world.
A Story Of Travelers
Map of Königsberg in Euler’s time showing the actual layout of the seven bridges, highlighting the river Pregel and the bridges
The field of
graph theory
has been around since 1736, when Leonhard Euler published an article on the subject of the
Seven Bridges of Königsberg
(in Prussia, today’s Kaliningrad in Russia). In this mathematical problem a walk has to be devised through the city in which each of the seven bridges across the city’s Pregel River that connect to the two islands in said river is only crossed once. Euler observed that the only relevant information here are the land masses (the nodes) and the connections between them (the bridges, or edges), which reduces the problem to a simple
graph
.
On this graph a starting node is selected, with another node as the end node. As each land mass is connected with an odd number of bridges (3 or 5), this means that this problem does not have a solution. The main challenge here lies in devising a mathematically acceptable proof of this impossibility, which is where the foundations for what we today know as graph theory.
From here graph theory got expanded and generalized into relations between objects, finding use in fields from computer science and chemistry to biology and linguistics. Combined with algorithms that can handle such graphs it’s a great way to not only make the basic structure of a network clear, but also to model structures and systems. Naturally, finding a route between nodes remained a crucial part of the field, with a wide range of path finding algorithms developed over the centuries.
Perhaps the most common graph theory problem is that of the
Travelling Salesman Problem
(TSP), which is somewhat like Euler’s original seven bridge problem, but instead asks for a traveller (a salesman) to be guided between a collection of cities in the most efficient way possible. The trick here is that by blindly trying out each route, the number of possible routes increases rapidly with each added city. By modeling the cities as nodes, an algorithm can then be devised that creates the edges between nodes, taking into account the weight of each node, related to its position on the map.
Although simple route planning is not as daunting as TSP, there are some similarities, in that it involves a weighted, undirected graph, requiring the algorithm to take into account the cost of each edge as well as the total cost, creating a minimum spanning tree. One of the first algorithms for this is
Jarník’s algorithm
, by Czech mathematician Vojtěch Jarník in 1930. Later this was rediscovered by Robert C. Prim in 1957 and in 1956 by Edsger W. Dijkstra (
Dijkstra’s algorithm
).
The weight assigned to each node is the Euclidian distance, allowing the algorithm to calculate the distance of any newly discovered node to its current node. In its most simple form as a path finding algorithm, it tries one or more steps in roughly the direction of the destination and selects the shortest branch from these, repeating this procedure until the destination has been reached and something close to the shortest path has been found.
The most well-known improvement to this basic algorithm is probably the
A* algorithm
(geometric goal directed search), which was developed in 1968 at Stanford Research Institute. Rather than a simple node-to-node algorithm, A* considers the entirety of the nodes, and may skip nearby nodes in order to achieve an overall shorter path between the source and destination. One disadvantage of A* is that it has to keep all nodes in memory, making it much more memory-intensive than alternatives. Despite this, A* has been the usual choice for path finding in the real world.
GPS For Everyone
Before the US enabled higher accuracy with the GPS satellites by turning off
Selective Availability
(SA), the best precision you could hope for by default was about 50-100 meters. This was clearly not enough to use for live navigation which – along with the high prices for satellite navigation devices during the 1990s – left route planning mostly dependent on paper maps and scribbled-down notes along with the occasional updates from helpful locals. Route planning using automated means was already used at this time, but the biggest use was by route planners at railways, logistics companies and so on.
With highly accurate GPS positioning becoming available in 2000 without the need for SA correction algorithms, and later other global navigation satellite systems (
GNSS
) becoming available to the public alongside rapidly dropping prices for GNSS-enabled devices, suddenly it became possible to combine digital maps with accurate satellite navigation, far beyond the scope of early satnav devices during the 1990s. This would lead eventually to the rise of smartphones, with their wireless internet connectivity, built-in GNSS support and apps like Google Maps that quite literally put a satnav device into your pocket.
Although it’s useful to get live updates from a remote server on changes along the route, like road work, accidents and obstructions, generally you can use the digital maps offline to plan a route spanning a variety of transport methods and with many options to customize the generated route.
Route Planning Today
The idea of whipping out a portable computing device and asking a piece of route planning software to quickly plan out a route would have seemed futuristic in the 1990s, but these days we barely give doing so a second thought, let alone how it all works. At this point it should be obvious that simply applying a basic graph traversal algorithm like Dijkstra’s would be too simplistic, so what do services like Google Maps and others use?
Although the general response is either “Dijkstra’s algorithm.”, or “A*, of course.”, the truth of the matter is that the former doesn’t play a real role in modern-day route finding and A* has seen itself largely superseded by versions that optimize it even further through e.g. the use of preprocessing. We can consider e.g. the
2009 overview
(PDF) provided by Daniel Delling and colleagues titled
Engineering Route Planning Algorithms
.
One part where the crisp, clean world of nodes and edges runs into some problem is where you have to consider the many details when e.g. plotting a course via a road network. In the real world not every road is the same, after all, and requires heuristics for when to include certain weights and when not. These heuristics include
contraction hierarchies
(CH) as well as Highway Hierarchies (HH) and many others, which speeds up the search for a route that’s not necessarily the shortest, but also the fastest. By preprocessing the graph, unimportant vertices (intersections) and edges can be skipped, leading to a major speed-up.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that such route planning algorithms can be conveniently integrated into your own software, using open source projects
like OSRM
and
RoutingKit
, which both use map data from OpenStreetMap (OSM). With today’s portable pocket computers and these optimized route planning algorithms and heuristics all it takes is these software components and a good GNSS reception to make your very own satnav.
Where From Here
Although it would seem that we have pretty much cracked the whole route planning problem at this point, the paper by Delling et al. notes a number of challenges that still remain. Most of all, moving beyond static point-to-point routing and taking into account time-dependent factors remains a challenge, as many of the shortcuts and preprocessing that made static routing ‘cheap’ do not work here. Beyond this the characterization of ‘well-behaved’ networks is a consideration. Despite this paper having been written now almost fifteen years ago, it should be clear to anyone who regularly uses route planning software that it is not quite perfect yet.
The integration of more detailed information pertaining to specific travel modes, and preventing awkward situations where for example a truck finds itself wedged into a tunnel or between hedgerows are probably at the forefront of most people’s minds. Now that everyone’s assumption seems to be that they can just whip out their smartphone, plan a route and mindlessly follow the provided instructions, the impact of a heuristic slipping in a few flawed vertices can be rather major.
Although it is liberating to not have to wrangle with a paper map in the car while traveling to one’s vacation destination, the safe assumption is that as amazing as satellite navigation has become, algorithms and data sets aren’t perfect, you should always rely on your common sense and Mk-1 eyeballs first and foremost.
Thumbnail credit: [betaveros] with
the fanciest a* illustration
we could find on the Internet. | 35 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747318",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T14:21:50",
"content": "I am in my 30 somethings and cannot imagine my life without G maps. I mean, how to get anywhere unknown without it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,957.844469 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/amazons-just-walk-out-shopping-is-out-moves-to-dash-carts-at-its-grocery-stores/ | Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ Shopping Is Out, Moves To Dash Carts At Its Grocery Stores | Maya Posch | [
"Business",
"News"
] | [
"amazon",
"amazon just walk out"
] | After a few years of Amazon promoting a grocery shopping experience without checkout lines and frustrating self-checkout experiences, it is now
ditching its Just Walk Out technology
. Conceptualized as a store where you can walk in, grab the items you need and walk out with said items automatically charged to your registered payment method, it never really caught much traction. More recently it was revealed that the technology wasn’t even as automated as portrayed, with human workers handling much of the tedium behind the scenes. This
despite claims
made by Amazon that it was all powered by deep machine learning and generative AI.
An Amazon Dash Cart’s user interface, with scanner and display. (Credit: Amazon)
Instead of plastering the ceilings of stores full with cameras, it seems that Amazon instead wishes to
focus on smart shopping carts
that can keep track of what has been put inside them. These so-called
Dash Carts
are equipped with cameras and other sensors to scan barcodes on items, as well as weigh unlabeled items (like fruit), making them into somewhat of a merging of scales at the vegetable and fruit section of stores today, and the scanning tools offered at some grocery stores to help with self-checkout.
As the main problem with the Just Walk Out technology was that it required constant (700 out of 1,000 sales in 2022) human interaction, it will be interesting to see whether the return to a more traditional self-service and self-checkout model (albeit with special Dash Lanes) may speed things along. Even so, as
Gizmodo
notes, Amazon will still keep the Just Walk Out technology running across locations in the UK and elsewhere. Either this means the tech isn’t fully dead yet, or we will see a revival at some point in time. | 60 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747272",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T11:31:13",
"content": "Sometimes (often times) the future that arrives is not the one we dreamed, specially in technology.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6747312"... | 1,760,371,957.766374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/04/a-fun-exploit-for-canon-printers-brings-gdb-gifts/ | A Fun Exploit For Canon Printers Brings GDB Gifts | Arya Voronova | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"2d printer",
"canon",
"canon firmware",
"gdb"
] | Modern printers make it all that much more tempting to try and hack them — the hardware generally tends to be decent, but the firmware appears to be designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible while keeping your annoyance level consistently high.
That’s why it’s nice to see this exploit
of the Canon imageCLASS MF74XCdw series (MF742Cdw/MF743Cdw) by [blasty], triggerable over a network connection, with a story for our amusement.
In this post, we get a tale of how this hack came out of a Pwn2Own Toronto challenge, notes on the hardware involved, and we’re shown the journey to a successful hack. The Canon printer OS is built without many of the protections, which makes playing with it easier than with more modernized targets, but it’s nevertheless not straightforward. Still, exploiting a couple things like the SOAP XML implementation and the UTF8 encoder nets you an ability to play nice animations on the display, and most certainly, control over the entirety of the hardware if you wanted it.
One of the most fun things about this hack is
the GDB stub recently included in the repo
. If you wanted to debug Canon printers for fun or profit, [blasty] brings you a GDB stub to do that comfortably, with a respectable README that even has porting notes for other Canon ImageCLASS printer models, should you lay your hands on a different machine of despair. WiFi connectivity appears to be enough for this hack, so you better make sure you don’t have your network-connected printers exposed on the Internet — not that you needed more
reasons
to
avoid
that. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747386",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T17:20:19",
"content": "How close are we to being able to re-purpose a printer with an off-the-shelf 3D printer board? Maybe just a custom module for the inkjet driver?I had a printer recently refuse to print in black and white u... | 1,760,371,957.895263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/make-a-gps-antenna-compatible-with-same-manufacturers-receiver/ | Make A GPS Antenna Compatible With Same Manufacturer’s Receiver | Arya Voronova | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"active antenna",
"gps",
"gps antenna",
"symmetricom"
] | GPS can be a bit complex of a technology – you have to receive a signal below the noise floor, do quite a bit of math that relies on the theory of relativity, and, adding insult to injury, you also have to go outside to test it. Have you ever wondered how GPS antennas work? In particular, how do active GPS antennas get power down the same wire that they use to send signal to the receiver? Wonder not, because [Tom Verbeure]
gifts us a post
detailing a mod letting a fancy active GPS antenna use a higher-than-expected input voltage.
[Tom]’s post has the perfect amount of detail – enough pictures to illustrate the entire journey, and explanations to go with all of it. The specific task is modifying a Symmetricom antenna to work with a Symmetricom GPS receiver, which has a puzzling attribute of supplying 12V to the antenna instead of more common 3.3V or 5V. There’s a few possible options detailed, and [Tom] goes for the cleanest possible one – replacing the voltage regulator used inside of the antenna.
With a suitable replacement regulator installed and a protection diode replaced, the antenna no longer registers as a short circuit, and gets [Tom] a fix – you, in turn, get a stellar primer on how exactly active GPS antennas work. If your device isn’t ready to use active GPS antennas, [Tom]’s post will help you understand another GPS antenna hack we covered recently –
modifying the Starlink dish
to use an active antenna to avoid jamming on the frontlines. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6747221",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2024-04-04T06:38:25",
"content": "quantum mechanics? no. relativity? yes.I swear, both have achieved such a status as hand-wavy magic that people start to use them as interchangeable science babble.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,957.943723 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/giant-sails-actually-help-cargo-ships-save-fuel-and-the-planet-in-turn/ | Giant Sails Actually Help Cargo Ships Save Fuel, And The Planet In Turn | Lewin Day | [
"green hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"cargo",
"cargo ship",
"sails",
"shipping"
] | Shipping is not a clean business. The global economy is fueled by trade, and much of that trade involves hauling product from point A to point B. A great deal of that product goes by water. Shipping it around uses a great deal of fuel, and creates a great deal of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s bad for the environment, and it’s costly for shipping companies.
Any gain in efficiency can be an edge in this regard, and beneficial for the planet to boot. Now, it appears that good old fashioned sails might just be the tool that companies need to clean up their fleets. And it’s not some theory—real world numbers back it up!
Where The Wind Takes You
Sea transport has been branded as a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 3% of the total. Shipping companies in turn are under increasing pressure to innovate and adapt, both for the good of the planet and their own coffers. It’s perhaps a small blessing that saving fuel and slashing emissions go hand in hand, and companies are desperate for any technology that can deliver on those goals.
Enter the WindWings, a revolutionary “wind assisted propulsion” concept developed by BAR Technologies. In partnership with ocean freight firm Cargill, these radical sails were installed aboard the Pyxis Ocean, a Kamsarmax bulk carrier chartered from Mitsubishi. These aren’t the canvas and rope constructs of yore . Instead, they’re a set of towering metal sails that stand 123 feet tall, designed to harness the wind’s power and propel the massive bulk carrier across the oceans.
The ingenuity of the WindWings lies in their adaptability. Unlike some sail designs of old, they can pivot. This allows the vessel to make the most of the wind without unduly compromising its intended route. The sails feature built-in sensors that allow them to adjust their thrust or drag in real time. The sails significantly reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The ship’s gas engines can be throttled down when a boost from the wind is available, saving precious fuel and cutting emissions. The sails auto-adjust to prevailing conditions, and can be raised and lowered by the crew as needed.
The sails tower high above the deck when in use. They can pivot as needed to make the most of prevailing winds. Credit:
BusinessWire press release
The impact of this technology is not merely theoretical. The Pyxis Ocean’s journey through the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans from August 2023 to February 2024 showcased remarkable results. In optimal wind conditions out on a sea voyage, the savings hit 11 tonnes of fuel a day, offering a glimpse into the potential environmental benefits of widespread adoption of this technology. Overall, it’s estimated the sails could save roughly 3 tonnes of fuel per day over a year of operations. For a ship like the Pyxis Ocean, that’s roughly a 14 percent saving. As for emissions, the sails slash 11.2 tons a day of CO2 equivalent emissions on a well-t0-wake basis. That works out to around 2650 tons of CO2 a year, equivalent to removing 480 cars from the road.
With the WindWings equipped, the Pyxis Ocean is the most efficient Kamsarmax in Cargill’s fleet. Encouraged by the Pyxis Ocean’s performance, the conglomerate is exploring options to retrofit its extensive fleet with WindWings, signaling a significant shift towards sustainable shipping practices. The expectation is that further Kamsarmax vessels could run three wings, rather than two, for yet greater fuel savings.
The wings stand a full 123 feet (37.5 meters) tall. Credit:
YouTube screenshot
This move would not just involve adopting the new technology but also about preparing global ports to accommodate these modern-day sailing ships. Every port has its own layout and equipment which must be able to work with ships equipped with WindWings without interfering or causing damage. The company notes it has engaged with over 250 ports to try and determine how ships with these devices can berth and load safely.
Fifty years ago, you’d be forgiven for thinking the age of sail was well and truly over. As always, technology can surprise us, and sometimes the old ideas become brand new again. | 81 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746672",
"author": "pxmpxmpxm",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T17:35:48",
"content": "The fact the press releases rambles on about co2 instead of dollar fuel savings is all you need to know regarding the viability and cost/benefit of this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,958.185974 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/multiply-your-multimeter-with-relays-and-usb/ | Multiply Your Multimeter With Relays And USB | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"multiplexer",
"relay",
"stm32",
"TBD82783",
"test instrument",
"usb"
] | Multimeters are a bit like potato chips: you can’t have just one. But they’re a lot more expensive than potato chips, especially the good ones, and while it’s tempting to just go get another one when you need to make multiple measurements, sometimes it’s not practical. That’s why something like
this 2×4 relay-based multiplexer
might be a handy addition to your bench
In this age of electronics plenty, you’d think that a simple USB relay board would be easy enough to lay hands on. But [Petteri Aimonen] had enough trouble finding a decent one that it became easier to just roll one up from scratch. His goal was to switch both the positive and negative test leads from up to four instruments to a common set of outputs, and to have two independent switching banks, for those times when four-lead measurements are needed. The choice of relay was important; [Petteri] settled on a Panasonic DPDT signal relay with low wetting current contacts and a low-current coil. The coils are driven by a TBD62783A 8-channel driver chip, while an STM32 takes care of USB duties.
The mechanical design of this multiplexer is just as slick as the electrical. [Petteri] designed the PCB to act as the cover for a standard Hammond project box, so all the traces and SMD components are mounted on the back. That just leaves the forest of banana-plug binding posts on the front, along with a couple of pushbuttons for manual input switching and nicely silkscreened labels. The multiplexer is controlled over USB using the SCPI protocol, which happily includes an instrument class for signal switchers.
We think the fit and finish on this one is fantastic, as is usual with one of [Petteri]’s builds. You’ll probably recall
his calibrated current reference
or
his snazzy differential probe
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746654",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T16:15:45",
"content": "Voltage and current measurements wont muliplex that well as the meters current measurment is a short circuit to voltage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,371,958.058159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/mining-and-refining-tungsten/ | Mining And Refining: Tungsten | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"apt",
"beneficiation",
"Carbide",
"electrode",
"Mining and Refining",
"refractory",
"sintering",
"tungstate",
"tungsten",
"Wolfram"
] | Our metallurgical history is a little bit like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, only without the paper; we’re always looking for something hard enough to cut whatever the current hardest metal is. We started with
copper
, the first metal to be mined and refined. But then we needed something to cut copper, so we ended up with alloys like bronze, which demanded harder metals like iron, and eventually this arms race of cutting led us to steel, the king of metals.
But even a king needs someone to keep him in check, and while steel can be used to make tools hard enough to cut itself, there’s something even better for the job: tungsten, or more specifically tungsten carbide. We produced almost 120,000 tonnes of tungsten in 2022, much of which was directed to the manufacture of tungsten carbide tooling. Tungsten has the highest melting point known, 3,422 °C, and is an extremely dense, hard, and tough metal. Its properties make it an indispensible industrial metal, and it’s next up in our “Mining and Refining” series.
Build a Mountain, Make Some Tungsten
Tungsten is a rare metal, making up only a fraction of a percent of the Earth’s crust, about 1.25 parts per million. It has never been found in its elemental form in nature; instead, it appears as several mineral-bearing ores. The physical and chemical properties of tungsten, which make it such a useful metal, also ensure that the formation of these ores is limited to geologies where tremendous heat and pressure are exerted, such as where sections of continental crust collide to build mountain ranges. These orogenic belts, located mainly around the Pacific basin but also across the Alpine-Himalayan belt that stretches from southern Spain to Indonesia, are the main source of tungsten ore.
Scheelite (calcium tungstate) fluoresces a brilliant blue. Source:
Rob Lavinsky
, CC BY-SA 3.0
The two main ores of tungsten are scheelite, which is calcium tungstate (CaWO
4
), and wolframite, which is a combination of iron tungstate (FeWO
4
) and manganese tungstate (MnWO
4
). About 70% of the world’s tungsten reserve of 3.2 million tonnes is locked up in wolframite, which is often found in granitic formations and is often associated with quartz. Scheelite is also often found in quartz veins and tends to be found along with commercially important amounts of tin, as well as sometimes with gold. Both tungstate minerals also tend to be found near molybdenate minerals, making molybdenum another valuable byproduct of tungsten mining.
Scheelite, or rather the calcium tungstate crystals within the ore, have interesting properties that make them valuable aside from being a source of tungsten. Calcium tungstate is a scintillator, which means it will fluoresce at a specific wavelength when excited by ionizing radiation, such as X-rays. This made the material very valuable for manufacturing intensifying screens, which were used with traditional film-based radiography to reduce the dose of radiation received by the patient. Large crystals of calcium tungstate, which can be produced synthetically using the
Czochralski process
, have also been used as scintillators in nuclear medicine procedures.
Mining Up
Because of the relative rarity of tungsten ores and the geological processes that tend to sequester it, a lot of overburden has to be removed to gain access. Open-pit mining techniques are often used, at least when exploiting a new find, but once the ratio of waste to payable ore gets too high, underground mining becomes favored, since it allows miners to work along ore veins and ignore the waste rock that encases them. Because tungsten ores are associated with mountain-building geology, many underground tungsten mining operations actually mine
up
into the core of mountains rather than down. This was the case with the
Pine Creek Mine
in the Sierra Nevada mountains outside Bishop, California, where miners had a 3,000′ elevator ride up from the mine entrance to work the scheelite veins. That one mine produced most of the tungsten used in the United States for nearly 60 years before closing in 2001.
Tungstic acid is a bright yellow oxide of tungsten. It has been used as a dyestuff since Carl Scheele, after whom scheelite is named, discovered it in 1781. Source:
Leiem
, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Because the amount of tungsten in either ore is so low — a tonne of tungsten ore contains only about four kilograms of either scheelite or wolframite — tungsten mines have to concentrate it considerably before it can be refined. This beneficiation is usually performed right at the mine site, starting with the usual crushing and grinding steps. Jaw crushers and ball mills turn the ore into a fine powder, which is classified by a series of sieves to achieve the correct grain size. The powdered ore is then transferred to a digester, where hot sodium hydroxide reacts with the tungstate minerals to form sodium tungstate, liberating it from the gangue, or waste rock.
The liquid sodium tungstate then moves on to a series of purification steps using a combination of hydrometallurgical processes. The exact steps taken depend on the source ore and tungsten concentration, but include filtration, extraction with organic solvents like decanol or even kerosene, or precipitation with salt solutions such as calcium chloride. The goal is to form increasing pure solutions that can be treated with hot hydrochloric acid to form tungstic acid, a hydrated form of tungsten trioxide (WO
3
). Tungstic acid, a vibrant yellow compound that was once used as a fabric dye, is washed repeatedly until as pure as possible before being dissolved with ammonium hydroxide. This solution is filtered and then heated, driving off the ammonia and water to leave behind ammonium paratungstate (APT), a salt with a complex chemical formula:
APT, a free-flowing white crystalline salt, is convenient to handle and contains a lot of tungsten — twelve atoms per molecule. APT is the main raw material produced at most tungsten mines, and is generally shipped out to refineries for further processing into metallic tungsten and fabrication of metal products, such as wire, sheet stock, and billets, not to mention the all-important tungsten carbides.
The first step in releasing metallic tungsten is to decompose APT into various tungsten oxides using high temperatures:
Tungsten oxide is then heated in a reducing atmosphere of hydrogen gas to form elemental tungsten:
Depending on the requirements for the finished metal, the tungsten oxide is sometimes doped with silicon, aluminum, or potassium before undergoing reduction. Reduction is performed in refractory vessels called boats, which are usually made of Monel, in tube furnaces called pusher furnaces. The tubes are filled with hydrogen gas and heated to about 850 °C, which reduces the oxide powder for about 20 minutes.
The resulting fine powder of metallic tungsten is washed, dried, and sifted before going to ingot production, or consolidation. Here the powdered metal is placed in thick-walled molds and put into a hydraulic press, which forms the metal into an ingot. The ingot is referred to as “green” at this point and needs to be handled carefully so it doesn’t break apart during sintering, a two-step process where the ingot is first heated to 650 °C in a furnace, then up to 3,000 °C by passing an electric current through it in a water-cooled tube filled with hydrogen. The result is a solid ingot of tungsten, ready to be worked into products.
Hot and Hard
Even though the age of the vacuum tube is long gone and the world has largely turned away from incandescent lighting, tungsten wire is still an important end product. A single ingot of tungsten can be drawn into almost 1,300 kilometers of wire, depending on the gauge. The drawing process starts with hot-rolling the ingot into a cylindrical shape and swaging to reduce its diameter. One end of the tungsten rod is tapered by dipping it into molten potassium nitrate, which dissolves the rod enough for it to fit into a die. Up to 50 passes through smaller and smaller dies, the smallest of which are made from diamond, may be required to get the wire to the proper size.
It’s right in the name. TIG welding uses sintered tungsten electrodes; rare earth oxides reduce the work factor to make striking arcs easier. Source: Adobe Stock.
Another important industrial use for tungsten is welding electrodes. The high melting point of tungsten makes it perfect for TIG welding — the “T” is for tungsten, after all — which uses a high electric current to create a super hot plasma that melts the base metal and filler. Tungsten electrodes may look like pieces of thick wire, but they’re actually formed in much the same way as tungsten ingots are. Powdered tungsten is mixed with various additives, especially rare earth oxides like lanthanum and thorium, before being pressed and sintered into solid rods. The rare earth oxides serve to reduce the energy needed to remove electrons from the electrode, which makes it easier to strike an arc and makes the electrode last longer.
The toughness and high melting point of tungsten also make it suitable for cutting tools, especially in the form of tungsten carbide (WC). Tungsten carbide is made either by reacting powdered tungsten metal with graphite at high temperatures, or by blowing a mixture of hot carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide through a bed of tungsten trioxide. Either way, the tungsten and carbon bind to each other, creating a material that’s twice as stiff and twice as dense as steel, with a melting point of about 2,800 °C. Tungsten carbide can be mixed with various binders and additives and pressed into complex shapes that can be sintered into solid cutting tools tough enough to withstand the punishing requirements of CNC cutting. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746607",
"author": "CLOVIS FRITZEN",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T14:09:37",
"content": "Also used in (now) old light bulbshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746643",
"a... | 1,760,371,958.009686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/espressifs-esp32-p4-application-processor-details-begin-to-emerge/ | Espressif’s ESP32-P4 Application Processor: Details Begin To Emerge | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Parts"
] | [
"ESP32-P4",
"espressif",
"RISC-V"
] | Every now and then there’s a part that comes along which is hotly anticipated, but which understandably its manufacturer remains tight-lipped about in order to preserve maximum impact surrounding its launch. Right now that’s Espressif’s ESP32-P4: a powerful application processor with dual-core 400 MHz and a single-core low power 40 MHz RISC-V processors. Interestingly it doesn’t appear to have the radios which have been a feature of previous ESP parts, but it makes up for those with a much more comprehensive array of peripherals.
Some details are beginning to emerge, whether from leaks or in preparation for launch, including
the first signs of support in their JTAG tool
, and a glimpse in a video from another Chinese company of
a development board
. We got our hopes up a little
when we saw the P4 appearing in some Espressif documentation
, but on closer examination there’s nothing there yet about the interesting new peripherals.
Looking at the dev board and the video we can see some of what the thing is capable of as it drives a large touchscreen and a camera. There are two MIPI DSI/CSI ports on the PCB, as well as three USB ports and a sound codec. A more run-of-the-mill ESP32-C3 is present we think to provide wireless networking, and there’s a fourth USB port which we are fairly certain is in fact only for serial communications via a what our best blurry photograph reading tells us is a Silicon Labs USB-to-serial chip. Finally there’s large Raspberry Pi-style header which appears to carry all the GPIOs and other pins. We’ve placed the video below the break, if you see anything we’ve missed please tell us in the comments.
We first covered this chip back in January
, and then as now we’re looking forward to seeing what our community does with it. | 56 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746558",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T11:33:34",
"content": "another vid herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTHHDZeIzcA",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746640",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,958.437876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/photonpower-zero-for-effortless-solar-pi-zero-projects/ | PhotonPower Zero For Effortless Solar Pi Zero Projects | Arya Voronova | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"solar",
"solar panel",
"solar power"
] | A Pi Zero doesn’t need much to sustain itself, and it’s projects like
the PhotonPower Zero
that remind us of it its low appetite when we need this reminder most. The PhotonPower Zero board lets you power a Pi Zero board from a solar cell, with a LiIon backup, and a microcontroller for power management. Created by [David Murray], this board’s been a perfect solution for quite a few projects of his, and now he is sharing the design so that we can create outdoor-suited devices as easily as he’s been able to.
Tested for months in Australian summer and winter conditions alike, the design pulls no punches and has everything you might need. Like any self-respecting power addon, it has a management microcontroller for going as low-power as you’d like, communicating the battery data to the Pi Zero, and being able to safely shut it down when needed. If you fancy what this board does, [David Murray] tells you all, both
in the video
and in the
associated
posts
!
One of the best parts about this board is that it’s fully open-source – schematics, KiCad PCB source files, and even 3D designs are available in
the GitHub repo
. You could source all the parts right now and build a fleet of solar-powered Zeros, and if you want the hard parts to be done for you, there’s
a Kickstarter campaign
that lets you get a PhotonPower Zero board without self-assembly. We’ve covered
similar boards
before – powering a Pi Zero isn’t lost art, and, there’s a lot to learn from this project specifically. Such boards are especially tempting, given that the latest Pi Zero W 2 is
the most efficient Pi Zero to date
– outdoor-capable 24/7 powered devices with a fair bit of CPU have never been this close! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746679",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T17:58:35",
"content": "I really wish people would do more LTO solar chargers, and add higher max input voltages now that small cheap 12v panels are common. Lithium Ion isn’t really happy about extreme cold, and will only la... | 1,760,371,958.224659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/a-supercapacitor-from-mushrooms/ | A Supercapacitor From Mushrooms | Jenny List | [
"Science"
] | [
"carbon",
"mushrooms",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"supercapacitor"
] | The supercapacitor is an extremely promising energy storage technology, and though they have yet to reach parity with the best batteries in terms of energy density, offers considerable promise for a future of safe and affordable energy storage. Perhaps best of all from our point of view, they are surprisingly simple to make. A practical supercapacitor can be made on the bench by almost anyone, as the ever-resourceful [Robert Murray-Smith] demonstrates
using mushrooms as his
feedstock.
The idea of a supercapacitor is to replace the flat plate on the simple capacitor from your physics textbook with one that has as large a surface area as possible for charge to accumulate on. In this case the surface is formed from organic charcoal, a substance which retains something of the microscopic structure of whatever it was made from. Mushrooms are a good feedstock, because their mycelium structure has a naturally huge surface area. He takes us in the video below the break through the process of carbonizing them, much easier when you have a handy kiln than trying the charcoal-burner method, and then grinds them to a powder before applying them as a paste with a binder to a piece of graphite foil. With two of these electrodes and a piece of paper towel as a dielectric, he demonstrates a simple benchtop supercapacitor running a small electric motor for a surprisingly longer time than we expected.
We’d like to see further work on home made supercapacitors, as we believe they have immense potential as well as storing the stuff. Meanwhile,
this is by no means the most unexpected supercapacitor material we’ve seen
.
Mushroom image: Devika0067,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746511",
"author": "spaceman",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T07:16:42",
"content": "Stop promoting this YT, in the early days he’s built DYI ultracaps and tried to market and/or sell them or get investment money. Then he deletes certain videos that could bite him later on.",
"parent... | 1,760,371,960.39492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/why-is-my-470uf-electrolytic-cap-more-like-20uf/ | Why Is My 470uF Electrolytic Cap More Like 20uF? | Dave Rowntree | [
"Parts"
] | [
"analog discovery",
"capacitor",
"digilent",
"electrolytic capacitor",
"ESR",
"lcr",
"modeling",
"Reactance",
"resonant frequency"
] | The simple capacitor equivalent circuit taught in school
Inductors are more like a resistor in series with an ideal inductor, resistors can be inductors as well, and well, capacitors aren’t just simply a capacitance in a package. Little with electronics is as plain and simple in reality as basic theory would have you believe. [Tahmid Mahbub] was measuring an electrolytic capacitor with an LCR and noticed it
measuring 19 uF despite the device being rated at 470 uF
. This was because such parts are usually specified at low frequencies, and at a mere 100 kHz, it was measuring
way
out of the specification they were expecting. [Tahmid] goes into a fair bit of detail regarding how to model the equivalent circuit of a typical electrolytic capacitor and how to determine with a bit more accuracy what to expect.
An aluminium electrolytic capacitor is more like this
The basic equivalent circuit for a capacitor has a series resistance and inductance, which covers the connecting leads and any internal tabs on the plates. A large-valued parallel resistor models the leakage through the dielectric in series with the ideal capacitance, which is responsible for the capacitor’s self-discharge property. However, this model is still too simple for some use cases. A more interesting model, shown to the left, comprises a ladder of distributed capacitances and associated resistances that result in a progressively longer time-constant component as you move from C1 to C5. This resembles more closely the linear structure of the capacitor, with its rolled-up construction. This model is hard to use in any practical sense due to the need to determine values for the components from a physical part. Still, it is useful to understand why such capacitors perform far worse than you would expect from just a simple equivalent model that looks at the connecting leads and little else.
To get real answers with a practical application, if key data are not published, it is necessary to characterise your parts, which is exactly what [Tahmid] did next. Using the excellent Digilent Analog discovery tool, a measurement setup was constructed to determine the reactance versus frequency characteristic and make an estimate for the paralleled capacitance and inductance components. Straight off the screen, the reactance can dip sharply at around 40 kHz, corresponding to the self-resonance frequency. This is the frequency you need to steer well clear of if you want to get anywhere close to the specified capacitance in your application. Since [Tahmid] was designing a switched-mode buck converter, which operated around 80-200 kHz, using this part in the input circuit would be bad news – the desired 23 mVpp voltage ripple would be more like 463 mVpp, and that’s just not going to work great. Time to gently place the electrolytic parts back in the parts bin to await a different application.
The not-so-humble capacitor is a much more complicated part than it looks at first glance. Entire books have been written about them, but for a quick history tour,
check this out first
. Want to
make
your own electrolytics?
No Problem
. What about when
they go bad
? | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746489",
"author": "Isaac Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2024-04-02T03:24:40",
"content": "In addition to electrolytic caps having frequency issues, they sometimes don’t develop their rated capacitance at voltages substantially below their rating (i.e. don’t use a 150 volt electrolyt in... | 1,760,371,960.086692 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/fire-up-the-3d-printer-and-build-yourself-a-spiderbot/ | Fire Up The 3D Printer And Build Yourself A Spiderbot | Donald Papp | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32-CAM",
"hexapod",
"hobby servo",
"spider robot"
] | Robots are cool, so check out
[Atlin Anderson]’s Spiderbot
(video, embedded below) which can be made with 3D printed parts, hobby servos, and ESP32-CAM module for control and a first-person view. Looking for a new project?
All of the design details are shared online
if you’d like to make a hexapod of your own.
We like the effort [Atlin] put into minimizing hardware fasteners in the design of the 3D-printed parts, and aiming for a modular concept that leaves things open for expansion or modification. There’s plenty of room in the chassis for more hardware, with a convenient peg system for snap-fitting assemblies.
Control is done wirelessly via a mobile phone with an app created using the
MIT App Inventor
, a fantastic tool that is still going strong as a capable and accessible way to make an Android app.
As for the ESP32-CAM module that drives it all, it is a great piece of hardware with capabilities that are leveraged very nicely here. We’ve seen other projects make good use of it as well, from
this 1/64 scale micro RC car
to an
oddball tripod camera robot
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746455",
"author": "brucedesertrat",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T23:54:51",
"content": "Spiders famously have eight legs. And big anime eyeshttps://m.psecn.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000ma2sdRx0v1s/fit=1000×750/022-052.jpg:-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,960.143163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/pinkpad-a-diy-laptop-you-must-print-in-pink/ | Pinkpad, A DIY Laptop You Must Print In Pink | Arya Voronova | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"build your own laptop",
"BuildYourOwnLaptop",
"diy laptop",
"DiyLaptop",
"home made laptop"
] | Looking to build a laptop all on your own? Check out
the Pinkpad,
a DIY laptop project that as if appeared out of nowhere, gives you a based on an off-the-shelf Dell motherboard. This build projects an aura of unabashed competence – the website brings you to a different universe, the documentation is as curt as it is extensive, and the build evidently works.
With a Thinkpad x61 keyboard, a reasonably modern (Dell Vostro 5481, Ryzen possible) motherboard embeddable inside, and a 10″ 1024×768 screen, this ~11″ laptop packs a certain kind of punch for what’s a build-it-yourself project. Most of the value of this design is in the 3D files – which were done in Google SketchUp, and the laptop is small enough that you could print its shell reasonably quickly. Not that you should follow the parts list religiously – the screen in particular might just warrant reconsideration in your eyes. On the other hand, we wish you all the luck on your SketchUp journey if you want to modify the shell. It also isn’t lost on us that the parts list doesn’t list a battery in it.
This is an impressive project to see open-sourced, and we hope it can inspire some hackers in the custom laptop building cohort. One prominent flaw of consumer-facing technology is that you can’t always get your devices in pink, and printing your laptop’s chassis yourself is a surefire way to combat this. If this laptop’s form-factor is too commonplace for you, we’ve seen no shortage of custom laptops grace our pages, from
miniature ones
to
CRT luggable beasts
, and click on the tags below if you’d like to see more!
We thank [Max_UA] for sharing this with us! | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746412",
"author": "tyler",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T20:12:42",
"content": "I’ll print a 3dp90 in pink, but I’m not printing a laptop in pink",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746446",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
... | 1,760,371,960.037803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/satcat5-uart-spi-and-i2c-via-ethernet-with-fpga-based-design/ | SatCat5: UART, SPI And I2C Via Ethernet With FPGA-Based Design | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"ethernet switch"
] | Arty A7-based prototype of SatCat5 with custom switch I/O board. (Credit: The Aerospace Corporation)
To the average microcontroller, Ethernet networks are quite a step up from the basic I2C, SPI and UART interfaces, requiring either a built-in Ethernet MAC or SPI-based MAC, with tedious translation between Ethernet and those other interfaces. Yet what if this translation could be done automatically and transparently? This is what the
SatCat5 FPGA-based project
by [The Aerospace Corporation] aims to provide: a gateway akin to an unmanaged Ethernet switch that also supports those non-Ethernet links. Recently
they answered
a range of questions about the project on Hacker News.
The project name comes from the primary target audience: smallsat and cubesat developers, which is an area where being able to route more traffic over a common Ethernet-based bus is a major boon. The provided Xilinx Artix-7-based
reference design
(pictured) gives a good idea of how it can be used: it combines an Arty A7 development board with a custom PCB containing an Ethernet switch IC (SJA1105), TJA1100 transceiver, two RJ45 jacks and four PMOD connectors, here connected to two UARTs for bidirectional communication between them. Ethernet frame encapsulation is provided using the standard Serial Line Internet Protocol (
SLIP
), with more details covered in the
FAQ
. At a minimum an FPGA like a Lattice iCE40 is required, with an MCU capable of using the
provided C++ libraries
, or a custom implementation.
Thanks to [STR-Alorman] for the tip. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746417",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T20:30:36",
"content": "It’s not a “mixed media” switch.It’s an Ethernet switch with I2C/UART/etc gateway/encapsulation.It certainly doesn’t switch anything other than Ethernet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,960.333051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/how-star-trek-breached-the-defences-of-a-major-broadcaster/ | HowStar TrekBreached The Defences Of A Major Broadcaster | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Slider"
] | [
"season",
"star trek",
"videocrypt"
] | Back in 2020 in the brief lull between COVID lockdowns in the UK, I found myself abruptly on the move, with a very short time indeed to move my possessions into storage. As I was going through the accumulated electronic detritus of over four decades, I happened upon a grey box with some wires hanging out of it, and more than a few memories. This was a Sky VideoCrypt decoder, and the wires were part of the so-called “Season” interface to attach it to the serial port of a PC. It had this modification in the hope of catching some unauthorised free satellite TV, and in its day this particular hack caused some headaches for the broadcaster.
When More Than 4 Channels Was A Novelty
Break encryption? This man can make it so. Stefan Kühn,
CC BY-SA 3.0.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was very little in the way of digital broadcasting on either satellites or terrestrial networks, almost everything on TV was sent out as standard definition analogue video. The four terrestrial channels where I grew up were all free-to-air, and if you had a satellite dish you could point it at any one of a variety of satellites and receive more free-to-air channels if you didn’t mind most of them being in German. Premium satellite programming was encrypted though, either through a range of proprietary analogue schemes, or for the British broadcaster Sky’s offering, through their VideoCrypt system. This used a 64 kB buffer to store each line of video, and rotate it round any one of 256 points along its length, resulting in an unintelligible picture.
Sky was the UK’s big gorilla of premium broadcasters, a role they kept for many years, and which was only eroded by the advent of streaming services. As such they snapped up exclusive first access to much of the most desirable content of the day, restricting it to only their British pay-to-subscribe customers. A viewer in the UK who grumbled about
Star Trek Next Generation
not being on the BBC could at least cough up for Sky, but if they didn’t have a British address they were out of luck. It was in this commercial decision, whether it was based upon business or on licensing, that Sky unwittingly sowed the seeds of Videocrypt’s demise.
How Trekkies Broke An Encryption System
Star Trek
is a very popular program in our community. And it’s popular not just among British hackers, but also among Germans, who sadly couldn’t get a Sky subscription to watch it. This provided all the motivation needed for one of them to set to work, and from that was born the interface I had inside my hacked VideoCrypt box. It was called Season7 after TNG season 7, and it worked by having the PC emulate the smart card supplied to subscribers by Sky.
VideoCrypt in action. Zcooger,
CC BY-SA 4.0
.
At this point it’s worth explaining from memory some of the workings of a VideoCrypt decoder. Hardware-wise it had the video interfaces and that 64 kB line buffer, controlled by a processor which matched the sequence of line flips to that transmitted. The encryption itself was determined by a piece of software running on a microcontroller in the smart card, which talked via a serial link to another microcontroller in the decoder. This then fed the codes to the main processor. The Season7 code ran on a PC and emulated the smart card, and the “hack” was a MAX232 level shifter between the smart card serial pins and a PC serial connector.
In the early 1990s there was not a lot in the way of home internet usage in the UK, so the Season software would arrive passed around on floppies that some lucky person with USENET access had downloaded. The mystery German Star Trek fan soon found himself in a battle of wills with Sky, who changed the cards and tweaked the algorithm in an arms race that meant trying to watch Sky with Season was a patchy affair at best. There were a few of us in my local radio club who played around with it, but it’s fair to say that as a TV service, it was cumbersome and unreliable. Eventually Sky released a new card that couldn’t be cracked by Season, then moved to an all-digital system, and this particular chapter in hacker history drew to a close.
Our Mystery Hacker Went On To Great Things
Thirty years later and having a nose around the Internet, I’m pleased to find that not only does the mystery German hacker have a name, he also posted a Season FAQ back in the day. He’s now an academic at Cambridge University, his name’s
Markus Kuhn
, and
his FAQ can be found in his university website
. It’s a trip down memory lane for me, and a realisation that had I had an internet connection of my own back in 1994 my Season usage might have been more successful.
This is a thirty year old tale of a long-gone technology, but it’s a little piece of hardware hacker culture from that decade that’s worth recording. I’m sorry to say I didn’t have the room for my VideoCrypt decoder, so it went into the e-waste. Meanwhile, after Sky’s first broadcast rights to TNG season 7 expired it aired on the BBC and other terrestrial channels, so I, and presumably the Germans too, were able to watch it legally.
Header image: Riton99,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 40 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746362",
"author": "Jim Shortz",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T17:24:47",
"content": "2000?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746385",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T19:01:23",
"content": "I i... | 1,760,371,960.275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/6502-hacking-hack-chat/ | 6502 Hacking Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 3rd at noon Pacific for the
6502 Hacking Hack Chat
with
Anders Nielsen
!
Back in the early days of the personal computing revolution, you could have any chip you wanted…as long as it was 8-bits. We’ve come a long way since then, and while nobody seriously hopes for a wholesale return to the time when a Commodore 64 or Apple II was the home computing power play, there’s still a lot to be said for the seat-of-the-pants feeling of the day. Our engineering forebears had their work cut out for them, and building the home PC revolution from the ground up with microprocessors that by today’s standards were laughably limited is something worth celebrating.
Every retrocomputing enthusiast has their own favorite chip, and for Anders, it’s obviously the 6502 — enough to give birth to
his 65uino project
, which put the storied microprocessor at the heart of an Arduino pin-compatible microcontroller. It’s a neat project that seems to have caught a lot of people’s imaginations and opened up a world of hardware and software hacks that modern hardware just doesn’t need.
Getting closer to the silicon is the goal of retrocomputing, and Anders is making it easy to get involved. And we’re lucky enough to have him stop by the Hack Chat to talk all about teaching the 6502 some 21st-century tricks. Stop by and join in the discussion, and maybe you’ll catch the 8-bit bug too.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 3 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746374",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T18:13:18",
"content": "My biological garbage collection has failed to clear out 6502 trivia for many decades now…Once that’s cleared out, Netmare 2 has to go. I ritually shot a few drives with Netmare on them. Didn’t help, but I f... | 1,760,371,959.978505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/oshw-framework-laptop-expansion-hides-dongles/ | OSHW Framework Laptop Expansion Hides Dongles | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"dongle",
"expansion card",
"framework",
"Framework laptop",
"USB hub"
] | If you’ve got a wireless keyboard or mouse, you’ve probably got a receiver dongle of some sort tucked away in one of your machine’s USB ports. While modern technology has allowed manufacturers to shrink them down to the point that they’re barely larger than the USB connector itself, they still stick out enough to occasionally get caught on things. Plus, let’s be honest, they’re kind of ugly.
For owners of the Framework laptop, there’s now a solution: the
DongleHider+ by [LeoDJ]
. This clever open source hardware project is designed to bring these little receivers, such as the Logitech Unifying Dongle, into one of the Framework’s Expansion bays. The custom PCB is designed with a large notch taken out to fit the dongle’s PCB, all you need to do is solder it in with four pieces of stiff wire.
That would be a neat enough project, but [LeoDJ] went one better by adding a CH334 USB hub chip and a female USB connector to the board. So not only does this module hide that unsightly dongle, it gives you back the USB port that it would otherwise be taking up. Since the CH334 still had extra ports available, [LeoDJ] put some additional USB pads on the back of the PCB — so assuming you can physically fit it in the 3D printed enclosure, you could tack on a second receiver dongle or some other tiny gadget.
As slick as the DongleHider+ is, it’s not a perfect solution. According to the project’s README, while USB 2.0 seems to work pretty well, plugging a USB 3.0 device into the port temporarily knocks out the internal dongle. It’s not a deal breaker, but something to keep in mind. It also looks like the DongleHider+ has only been tested under Windows so far, though we’d be surprised if there was actually anything that would keep it from working under Linux.
While there are
plenty of reasons
for hardware hackers to be excited about the Framework laptop, we think the Expansion Cards have to be near the top of the list. If you don’t have any dongles you want hidden, maybe you’d be interested in a
microcontroller development board
that you can slap into the side of your laptop? | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746339",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T15:39:41",
"content": "this is a neat hack but i would give my kingdom for a bluetooth that’s even slightly usable, instead",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746340",
"au... | 1,760,371,960.455839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/wrencher-2-a-bold-new-direction-for-hackaday/ | Wrencher-2: A Bold New Direction For Hackaday | Jenny List | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"april fools",
"ChatGPT",
"generative AI",
"Wrencher-2"
] | Over the last year it’s fair to say that a chill wind has blown across the face of the media industry, as the prospect emerges that many content creation tasks formerly performed by humans instead being swallowed up by the inexorable rise of generative AI. In a few years we’re told, there may even be no more journalists, as the computers become capable of keeping your news desires sated with the help of their algorithms.
Here at Hackaday, we can see this might be the case for a gutter rag obsessed with celebrity love affairs and whichever vegetable is supposed to cure cancer this week, but we continue to believe that for quality coverage of the latest and greatest in the hardware hacking world, you can’t beat a writer made of good old-fashioned meat. Indeed, in a world saturated by low-quality content, the opinions of smart and engaged writers become even more valuable. So we’ve decided to go against the trend, by launching not a journalist powered by AI, but an AI powered by journalists.
Announcing Wrencher-2, a Hackaday chat assistant in your browser
Wrencher-2 is a new paradigm in online chat assistants, eschewing generative algorithms in favour of the collective expertise of the Hackaday team. Ask Wrencher-2 a question, and you won’t get a vague and made-up answer from a computer, instead you’ll get a pithy and on-the-nail answer from a Hackaday staffer. Go on – try it!
WRENCHER-2
How may we help you today?
Talk to Hackaday
To give it a spin for all you folks we recruited our friend Roger from Fulchester Hackerspace, so now over to Roger the tester, who will show you how it’s done.
WRENCHER-2
Roger
I have a difficult choice to make in selecting the MCU for my automatic teapot project. Should I go for a RISC-V chip like the Espressif ESP32-C6, or do you think the Raspberry Pi RP2040 would be a better choice?
Hackaday
Hi Roger, good question. We like the Pi chip, its peripherals are very vanilla ARM so refreshingly free of quirks, and those state machine peripherals have lots of potential. But on the other hand, the Espressif chip has on-board wireless, for which you’d have to use another module if you followed the Pi route.
Tell us, have you considered using a 555, by any chance?
Talk to Hackaday
As you can see, we’ve delivered Roger some sage advice which definitely wouldn’t have come from any mechanical gizmo. Wrencher-2’s expertise doesn’t stop there though, we can also help you around the house!
WRENCHER-2
Roger
The wind keeps blowing the lids off my trash cans. Can you suggest an easy way to stop this being a problem?
Hackaday
Hi Roger, this is a pretty straightforward problem to fix. First you will need an NVIDIA Jetson Nano with a camera pointed at your bins, and use Tensorflow to identify when the lids are being blown off, and also where they land. Then you should design and build an all-terrain autonomous tracked robot with a five-jointed manipulator arm and a vacuum pickup device. Equip it with GPS guidance and a camera, then use OpenCV to detect the bin lid before picking it up and placing it back on the bin.
Talk to Hackaday
Away from the bench and the home, of course, Wrencher-2 is always there for you. Not everyone is a workshop genius, so the help and advice of a team with our breadth of experience is beyond value.
WRENCHER-2
Roger
I need to put a 10 mm hole in this piece of wood. What tools do you suggest I use?
Hackaday
Hi Roger, yes, that’s a tough one. In a sense you’re not so much making a hole in the wood as removing a cylinder of wood from it. We suggest first buying a laser cutter with a bed large enough to hold the wood, and then designing and positioning your ideal cylinder in your CAD package of choice. Then you can cut it out with the laser cutter, and if you still need a hole, there’s one handily left in your wood. But we have to ask, in 2024, why are you still relying on wood? There are plenty of very good wood analogue 3D-printer filaments available, why don’t you try 3D printing it instead?
Talk to Hackaday
Here at Hackaday we’ve for many years sought to bring you
the best of new technology
for a brighter future, and of these efforts Wrencher-2 is but the latest. People are doing exciting things with chat assistants, from identifying edible mushrooms to writing complex legal briefs, and we wanted to bring the same level of reliability and competence to your bench, along with our personal touch. We’re really looking forward to what you’ll do with it!
[Editor’s note: Sadly, due to human beings’ need for sleep and lack of VC funding, we had to limit access to our Wrencher-2 experiement to the wee hours of the morning on April 1st. If you missed your chance, there’s still the comment section!] | 44 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746313",
"author": "wm",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T14:06:42",
"content": "Happy April fool’s day",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746315",
"author": "ganzuul",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T14:24:56",
"content": "That esc... | 1,760,371,960.536398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/flipper-zero-panic-spreads-to-oz-cars-unaffected/ | Flipper Zero Panic Spreads To Oz: Cars Unaffected | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Australia",
"car theft",
"flipper zero"
] | A feature of coming to adulthood for any young person in the last quarter of the twentieth century would have been the yearly warnings about the danger of adulterated Halloween treats. Stories were breathlessly repeated of apples with razor blades in them, or of chocolate bars laced with rat poison, and though such tales often carried examples of kids who’d died horrible deaths in other far-away places, the whole panic was (as far as we know) a baseless urban legend.
It’s difficult not to be reminded of those times today then,
as we read news from Australia warning about the threat from the Flipper Zero wireless hacking tool
. It has the same ingredients, of an imaginary threat earnestly repeated by law enforcement officers, and lapped up by a credulous media with little appetite for verifying what they print.
This is a story which first appeared in mid-February in Canada,
when a government minister singled out the Flipper Zero as a car theft tool and promised to ban it
. This prompted a storm of derision from tech-savvy Canadians and others who immediately pointed out that
vehicle security has long ago eclipsed the capabilities of the Flipper
, and that
there are far more pertinent threats
such as those from CAN bus attacks or even RF boosters. Despite this debunking, it seems to have spread. Where will Flipper Mania pop up next?
Canada and Australia are both countries with a free press; that press should be doing their job on these stories by fact-checking and asking pertinent questions when the facts don’t fit the story. When it comes to technology stories it seems
not doing this has become the norm
.
Thanks [Peter Caldwell] for the tip. | 15 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746298",
"author": "Stappers",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T12:48:46",
"content": "The date is wrong.Creating awareness for free press not doing / not being able to do fact checking is NOT something for April first.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,371,960.194051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/cold-boot-attack-you-can-do-with-a-pi/ | Cold Boot Attack You Can Do With A Pi | Arya Voronova | [
"how-to",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"cold boot",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 4"
] | A cold boot attack is a way to extract RAM contents from a running system by power cycling it and reading out RAM immediately after loading your own OS. How easy is it for you to perform such an attack? As [anfractuosity] shows, you can
perform a cold boot attack with a Raspberry Pi,
with a reasonably simple hardware setup and a hefty chunk of bare-metal code.
[anfractuosity]’s setup is simple enough. The Pi 4 under attack is set up to boot from USB drive, and a relay board has it switch between two possible USB drives to boot from: one with a program that fills RAM with , and another with a program that extracts RAM out through UART. The process is controlled by another Pi controlling the relays through GPIOs, that also monitors the target Pi’s UART and uses it as a channel to extract memory.
The outcomes are pretty impressive. After 0.75s of power-down, most of the image could be extracted. That’s without any cooling, so abusing a can of electronics duster is likely to improve these results dramatically. Want to play with cold boot attacks? [anfractuosity]’s code is great for getting your feet wet. Furthermore, the code examples provided serve as a wonderful playground for general memory attack research.
Raspberry Pi not fun enough for you anymore? Well then, you can always
start playing with Android phones! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746255",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T08:17:35",
"content": "Don’t miss the (free, online) PagedOut magazine with an extensive writeup:https://pagedout.institute/?page=issues.phpit’s in issue 3.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,371,960.691607 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/3d-printing-computer-space/ | 3D PrintingComputer Space | Jenny List | [
"hardware",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"arcade cabinet",
"Computer Space"
] | The first computer game available as a commercial arcade cabinet is unsurprisingly, a rare sight here in 2024. Nolan Bushnel and Ted Dabney’s 1971
Computer Space
was a flowing fiberglass cabinet containing a version of the minicomputer game
Spacewar!
running on dedicated game hardware. The pair would of course go on to found the wildly successful Atari, leaving their first outing with its meager 1500 units almost a footnote in their history.
Unsurprisingly with so relatively few produced, few made it out of the United States, so in the UK there are none to be found. [Arcade Archive] report on
a fresh build of a
Computer Space
cabinet
, this time not in fiberglass but via 3D printed plastic.
The build itself is the work of [Richard Horne], and in the video he takes us through the design process before printing the parts and then sticking them all together to make the cabinet. Without a real machine to scan or measure he’s working from photographs of real machines, working out dimensions by reference to other cabinets such as
PONG
that appear alongside them. The result is about as faithful a model of the cabinet as could be made, and it’s cut into the many pieces required for 3D printing before careful assembly.
This is the first in a series, so keep following them to see a complete and working
Computer Space
take shape. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746253",
"author": "Jim6502",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T07:43:50",
"content": "Awesome project!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746256",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T08:27:23",
"content": "> Nolan Bus... | 1,760,371,960.65447 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/exploit-the-stressed-out-package-maintainer-exploit-the-software-package/ | Exploit The Stressed-out Package Maintainer, Exploit The Software Package | Donald Papp | [
"Security Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"burnout",
"maintainer",
"open source"
] | A recent security vulnerability — a potential ssh backdoor via the liblzma library in the xz package — is having a lot of analysis done on how the vulnerability was introduced, and [Rob Mensching] felt that it was important to highlight what he saw as step number zero of the whole process:
exploit the fact that a stressed package maintainer has burned out
. Apply pressure from multiple sources while the attacker is the only one stepping forward to help, then inherit the trust built up by the original maintainer. Sadly, [Rob] sees in these interactions a microcosm of what happens far too frequently in open source.
Maintaining open source projects can be a high stress activity. The pressure and expectations to continually provide timely interaction, support, and updates can easily end up being unhealthy. As [Rob] points out (and
other developers have observed in different ways
), this kind of behavior just seems more or less normal for some projects.
The xz/liblzma vulnerability itself is a developing story, read about it and find links to the relevant analyses in
our earlier coverage here
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746239",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-04-01T03:45:20",
"content": "“Maintaining open source projects can be a high stress activity. The pressure and expectations to continually provide timely interaction, support, and updates can easily end up being unhealthy.”Load dist... | 1,760,371,960.737819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/hackaday-links-march-31-2024/ | Hackaday Links: March 31, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"antenna",
"canada",
"car",
"cloud",
"flipper zero",
"hackaday links",
"IoT",
"movie",
"radio",
"reverse engineering",
"RF engineering",
"rolling code",
"SFX",
"smd",
"solar",
"solder paste",
"special effects",
"steadicam",
"stencil printing",
"theft"
] | Battlelines are being drawn in Canada over the lowly Flipper Zero, a device seen by some as an existential threat to motor vehicle owners across the Great White North. The story started
a month or so ago
, when someone in the government floated the idea of banning devices that could be “used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry.” The Flipper Zero was singled out as an example of such a nefarious device, even though relatively few vehicles on the road today can be boosted using the simple replay attack that a Flipper is capable of, and the ones that are vulnerable to this attack aren’t all that desirable — apologies to the
1993 Camry
, of course. With that threat hanging in the air, the folks over at Flipper Devices started
a Change.org petition
to educate people about
the misperceptions surrounding the Flipper Zero’s capabilities
, and to urge the Canadian government to reconsider their position on devices intended to explore the RF spectrum. That last bit is important, since transmit-capable SDR devices like the HackRF could fall afoul of a broad interpretation of
the proposed ban
; heck, even a receive-only SDR dongle might be construed as a restricted device. We’re generally not much for petitions, but this case might represent an exception. “First they came for the Flipper Zero, but I did nothing because I don’t have a Flipper Zero…”
Don’t you just hate it when the only way to get data from a device on your network is via the vendor’s cloud? We sure do, and so does Scott, a chap from Australia who
went to amazing lengths to intercept data from his solar power system
. It’s a long, drawn-out saga that appears to have lasted many months before he finally figured out how to set up what’s essentially a man-in-the-middle attack that lets him see data from his system before it gets shipped off to the vendor’s site. The great thing about his write-up is that he documents all the dead ends he encountered before hitting on the final answer. What impressed us most was the way that many of these side-quests yielded some kind of actionable information, even if it was just to give him a sense of what the developers were thinking of when they built the encryption for the IoT part of this. Spoiler alert: they weren’t very good at it. We just love stories about such reverse-engineering heroics; tip of the hat to Hash over at RECESSIM for featuring this story on
his latest “Reverse Engineering News” segment
.
Given their eye-watering budgets, you’d be forgiven the thought that every effect seen in Hollywood movies is accomplished with some kind of bespoke device that costs a ton of money. But sometimes it’s the simple hacks that get a production brought in on time and budget. A great example is
this cordless drill camera shaker
, which was spotted in a recent production about Formula E racing. The drill, which appears to be wearing Bosch livery, has an eccentric wooden disc chucked up in it. The drill rests up against the side of an Arri Super 35 cine camera and when the trigger is pressed, the wobbling disc recreates the vibration a race car driver endures. Ironically enough, the camera appears to be mounted on a Steadicam, a camera stabilizer intended to make smooth shots.
SMD assembly is easy, right? Just take your PCB, arrange all the extra boards into a jig, tape down your stencil, and smear the solder paste out with whatever squeegee-like tool you can find. But what (sometimes) works at home doesn’t always scale well, as evidenced by
this “Everything you ever wanted to know about stencil printing but were afraid to ask” guide
. It’s a PDF of a slide deck by Chrys Shea, who really gets down into the weeds on stencil printing. There are a ton of fascinating technical details that we had no idea about, like the degree to which the area ratio (the ratio of the stencil thickness to the area of a given aperture) affects the transfer efficiency, or how much solder paste gets stuck to the pad versus how much sticks to the stencil walls. There’s also stuff in there about nanocoating stencil walls, the properties of solder paste — turns out it’s a non-Newtonian fluid — the effects of board support on gasketing, and that “squircles” are better than squares. We’d love to have seen the presentation live, but the slide deck is still really useful. As is
“The Analog,”
which is where we found this gem — if you aren’t subscribed to it, you really should.
And finally, can you cook a hot dog using an AM radio tower? For certain values of cooking, yes. If this sounds to you like shenanigans the Geerling boys would be up to, you’re right, with the senior Geerling, a radio engineer, doing the actual cooking, and his son Jeff serving as sous chef. The hot dog was impaled on some grounded wire tines on the end of an insulated stick and held near an operating AM radio tower. That didn’t do much, but the show started once the hapless frank was pushed into contact with the tower. The raw power quickly vaporized the meat, while simultaneously acting as a receiver for the signal. If you ever thought touching a live radio tower would be a good idea, it’s not. Just ask the hot dog. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746217",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T23:08:57",
"content": "Should have called the device, the flipper chip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746238",
"author": "Standard Eel",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,960.808086 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/give-your-pi-pico-captouch-inputs-for-all-your-music-needs/ | Give Your Pi Pico Captouch Inputs For All Your Music Needs | Arya Voronova | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"capacitive touch",
"pi pico",
"raspberry pi 2040",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040"
] | Unlike many modern microcontrollers, RP2040 doesn’t come with a native capacitive touch peripheral. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it – the usual software-driven way works wonderfully, and only requires an external pullup resistor! In case you wanted a demonstration or you have a capacitive touch project in mind, this
lighthearted video by [Jeremy Cook]
is a must watch, and he’s got a healthy amount of resources for you in store, too!
In this video, [Jeremy] presents you with a KiCad schematic and an PCB design you can use to quickly add whole 23 capacitive touch sensing inputs to a Pi Pico! The board is flexible mechanically, easy to assemble as [Jeremy] demonstrates, and all the pins involved can still be used as regular GPIOs if you’d like. Plus, it’s fully open-source, can easily be assembled on your own, and available on Tindie too!
Of course, such a board doesn’t get created for no reason – [Jeremy] has a healthy amount of musical creations and nifty ideas to show off. We quite liked the trick of using old PCBs as capacitive touch sensing, using copper fills as electrodes – which has helped create an amusing “macropad of macropads”, and, there’s quite a bit more to see.
If capacitive touch projects ever struck a chord with you and you enjoy music-related hacking, [Jeremy]’s got
a whole YouTube channel
you ought to check out. Oh, and if one of the musical projects in the video caught your eye, it might just be
the one we’ve featured previously! | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746196",
"author": "Josuah",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T21:41:27",
"content": "There is no spoon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6746199",
"author": "Josuah",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T21:47:14",
"conten... | 1,760,371,960.950108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/esp-drone-building-an-esp32-based-quadcopter-for-not-much-cash/ | ESP-Drone: Building An ESP32-Based Quadcopter For Not Much Cash | Maya Posch | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"quadcopter"
] | What’s the cheapest quadcopter you can build? As
[Circuit Digest] demonstrates with their variant
of the
ESP-Drone project
by Espressif, you only need a minimum of parts: an ESP32 MCU, an inertial measurement unit (IMU) such as the MPU6050, and four MOSFETs to drive the brushless DC motors. As the PCB also forms the structural frame and landing struts for the quadcopter, not even a 3D printer is needed. All told, [Circuit Digest] figures the total BOM comes in at around 1,000 Indian Rupees, or about $12 USD.
The fully assembled ESP-Drone flying around. (Credit: Circuit Digest)
While this [Circuit Digest] project provides basic IMU functionality, the Espressif project also has a few expansion boards detailed on
its hardware page
, depending on the base model of the mainboard you pick. The [Circuit Digest] project follows the ESPlane-V2-S2 version with no expansion boards, but the ESP32-S2-Drone V1.2 mainboard can be extended with position-hold, pressure and compass modules, as well as custom boards.
As a derivative of the
Bitcraze Crazyflie
project, the ESP-Drone firmware also supports the rather nifty
cfclient
software for remote monitoring, logging and control. This may also be in the [Circuit Digest] firmware, but wasn’t listed among the features.
A nice feature of using cfclient is that you can use a standard (game) controller to control the quadcopter, while also getting a lot of flight data back. The other option is to use the Android or iOS app from Espressif (with source code available
via their GitHub
) and control the drone that way. Regardless of the method, you’ll be limited to the limits of the local WiFi network in terms of range, which probably resolves the issue of it not having a camera feed to steer from. This makes it arguably more of an (indoor) toy than a DJI competitor, but as a DIY quadcopter project it definitely is a lot of fun, while costing a lot less than most hobbies. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746166",
"author": "Esp3200",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T18:11:03",
"content": "Searching esp32 with the filter set for today or this week on yt sends me to a lot of the latest cool videos a lot of times before there posted here. That being said y’all pick out the best ones to featur... | 1,760,371,960.999228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/smd-soldering-without-the-blobs/ | SMD Soldering, Without The Blobs | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"smd soldering",
"solder",
"soldering"
] | Hand soldering of surface mount components is a bread-and-butter task for anyone working with electronics in 2024. So many devices are simply no longer available in the older through-hole formats, and it’s now normal for even the most homebrew of circuits to use a PCB. But how do you solder your parts? If like us you put a blob of solder on a pad and drop the part into it, then [
Mr. SolderFix] has some advice on a way to up your game.
The blob of solder method leaves a little more solder on the part than is optimal, sometimes a bulbous lump of the stuff. Instead, he puts a bit of flux on the pad and then applies a much smaller quantity of solder on the tip of his iron, resulting in a far better joint. As you can see in the video below, the difference is significant. He starts with passives, but then shows us the technique on a crystal, noting that it’s possible to get the solder on the top of these parts if too much is used. Yes, we’ve been there. Watch the whole video, and improve your surface mount soldering technique!
He’s someone we’ve featured before here at Hackaday,
most recently in lifting surface mount IC pins
. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745967",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T18:14:43",
"content": "Mr. Solderfix is awesome, just really simple videos, full of tips, shows you just how simple soldering is. Flux, heat, timing, feed rate…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,371,961.288874 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/too-much-over-optimization-is-never-enough/ | Too Much Over-optimization Is Never Enough! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"PCB Hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"PCB design",
"resistors"
] | A discussion came up on
the Hackaday Discord PCB design channel
about resistor networks, and it got me thinking about whether we (the hacker community) use them in designs or not. These handy devices often take the shape of an IC, SMD or otherwise, but between the pins are a bunch of resistors instead of active silicon. They come in all sorts of configurations and tolerances, but the point is usually the same: When you need a bunch of similar resistors, it’s cheaper to go with a network package.
But how much cheaper? I did a quick search for 1 kΩ resistors and the corresponding network, and came up with similar prices for the resistors and networks – but the network has eight resistors in it! That’s an eightfold savings! Which, at a price of roughly one cent per piece, is less than a dime. While it’s certainly true that if you’re making a million widgets, saving a penny per widget matters. But do you spend the time to optimize your projects down to such margins? I want to say “of course not!” but maybe you do?
For me, worrying about seven cents in a PCB design that I may make ten of is foolishness. But still, I’ve used resistor networks for their other side effects: the resistors in a common package tend to be very tightly matched, even if their overall tolerance isn’t. If you’re making something like
an R-2R DAC
, that’s a definite advantage. Or if you’re space constrained, or just hate placing lots of tiny resistors, the networks shine.
I often forget about resistor networks, and when I do think of them, I think of them in terms of cost savings in industrial applications. But maybe that’s not fair – maybe they
do
have their hacker uses as well. Are there other parts like this that we should all know about?
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 21 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745914",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T14:32:52",
"content": "And how about assembly costs. Will a single chip versus 8 much smaller chips save time and effort with putting things together?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,961.095606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/how-much-bandwidth-does-cw-really-occupy/ | How Much Bandwidth Does CWReallyOccupy? | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"bandwidth",
"continuous wave",
"cw",
"ham radio",
"modulation",
"morse",
"occupied bandwidth",
"RF"
] | Amateur radio license exams typically have a question about the bandwidths taken up by various modulation types. The concept behind the question is pretty obvious — as guardians of the spectrum, operators really should know how much space each emission type occupies. As a result, the budding ham is left knowing that continuous wave (CW) signals take up a mere 150 Hertz of precious bandwidth.
But is that really the case? And what does the bandwidth of a CW signal even mean, anyway? To understand that, we turn to [Alan (W2AEW)] and
his in-depth look at CW bandwidth
. But first, one needs to see that CW signals are a bit special. To send Morse code, the transmitter is not generating a tone for the dits and dahs and modulating a carrier wave, rather, the “naked” carrier is just being turned on and off by the operator using the transmitter’s keyer. The audio tone you hear results from mixing the carrier wave with the output of a separate oscillator in the receiver to create a beat frequency in the audio range.
That seems to suggest that CW signals occupy zero bandwidth since no information is modulated onto the carrier. But as [Alan] explains, the action of keying the transmitter imposes a low-frequency square wave on the carrier, so the occupied bandwidth of the signal depends on how fast the operator is sending, as well as the RF rise and fall time. His demonstration starts with a signal generator modulating a 14 MHz RF signal with a simple square wave at a 50% duty cycle. By controlling the keying frequency, he mimics different code speeds from 15 to 40 words per minute, and his fancy scope measures the occupied bandwidth at each speed. He’s also able to change the rise and fall time of the square wave, which turns out to have a huge effect on bandwidth; the faster the rise-fall, the larger the bandwidth.
It’s a surprising result given the stock “150 Hertz” answer on the license exam; in fact, none of the scenarios [Allen] tested came close to that canonical figure. It’s another great example of the subtle but important details of radio that [Alan] specializes in explaining. | 48 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745887",
"author": "doris",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T11:19:36",
"content": "the picture looks like the bloke has a probe biro. i now want a probe biro.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6745944",
"author": "TG",
... | 1,760,371,961.179647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/a-telegraph-interface-for-the-hacker-hotel-2024-badge/ | A Telegraph Interface For The Hacker Hotel 2024 Badge | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"badge.team",
"badgelife",
"esp32-C3",
"Hacker Hotel"
] | Hacker Hotel is a small Dutch hacker event that takes place, as its name suggests, in a hotel. It’s a welcome high point in the damp of a north-west-European winter, and attendees come to its setting in the wooded Veluwe region in the centre of the country from far and wide. As is the custom with such events it has an electronic badge, and
this year’s one
had a rather unusual interface. Instead of a keyboard for text input, it replicates a 19th century Crook and Wheatstone telegraph, replacing the five needles of the original with a diamond-shaped grid of LEDs.
At its heart is an Espressif ESP32-C6 microcontroller which provides both a processor powerhouse and the usual array of wireless connectivity. Paired with that is a much more modest CH32V003 microcontroller to handle I/O tasks, and an e-paper screen using displays salvaged from surplus German supermarket shelf labels. That interface is handled by an array of five-way switches, and in a stroke of genius there’s a small relay on board which does nothing but provide a satisfying tactile “click”. Expansion is seen to by an SAO connector, Qwiic, and a USB-C socket. The software meanwhile is a combination of a non-volatile nametag, a complex set of puzzles used in the on-site competition, and a messaging system using the C6’s 802.15.4 mesh networking. A particularly neat feature of this was a Battleships game that could be played with another badge.
While this isn’t t
he first Hacker Hotel badge with an e-paper display
, we like this one for its novel interface, for the mesh connectivity, and for that clicky relay. We’ll definitely be using ours as a name badge for some time to come. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745855",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T08:47:37",
"content": "These ESP32-C3/6 CH32V003 match up seem increasingly common.I suppose like power up power/efficiency or big.LITTLENice badge, I wonder just how much work it’d be replacing that relay with audio.",
"... | 1,760,371,961.223111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/video-killed-the-radio-alarm-clock/ | Video Killed The Radio Alarm Clock | Bryan Cockfield | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"alarm",
"classic",
"clock",
"crt",
"mtv",
"nostalgia",
"raspberry pi",
"television",
"vlc"
] | For decades now, MTV has been on a bizarre trajectory given its original name was an acronym for Music Television. In the original days in the 80s and 90s it kept mostly true to its name, but starting around two decades ago they expanded into reality and other non-musical television programming and have now left it largely behind. Plenty of those who grew up in its heyday have an understandable amount of nostalgia for the channel as a cultural touchstone, and [Derf] used MTV archival footage to build
a video alarm clock which helps him keep in tune with the past
.
To keep the appropriate 80s aesthetic, the build uses a portable TV from the late 80s with its original CRT. The video files are hosted on more modern technology though, in this case a Raspberry Pi. The Pi is set up to run a python script which launches the VLC media player with a playlist loaded with video files, in this case a long list of MTV shows. Some configuration needs to be done to get it to output to the old CRT properly which depends on the hardware used, but once that’s in place it’s ready to be used as an alarm. [Derf] is using a smart outlet to power the TV at the appropriate time, and a cron job which starts the video player simultaneously at a somewhat random point in the playlist.
As far as retro TVs go, having one as an alarm clock is certainly a novel idea. We have seen a few others in the past, though,
one to play the golden age of The Simpsons
, and another that
recreates the nostalgia of 90s cable television
complete with a preview channel and era-appropriate commercials. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745890",
"author": "Gareth",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T11:37:34",
"content": "I don’t usually have positive things to say… but this? This I like!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6745935",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,371,961.347566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/experiencing-visual-handicaps-and-their-impact-on-daily-life-with-vr/ | Experiencing Visual Deficits And Their Impact On Daily Life, With VR | Donald Papp | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"eye diseases",
"eye tracking",
"medical simulation",
"research",
"visual impairments",
"vr"
] | Researchers presented an interesting project at the 2024
IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces
: it uses
VR and eye tracking to simulate visual deficits
such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and other visual diseases and impairments.
Typical labels and pill bottles can be shockingly inaccessible to a variety of common visual deficits.
VR offers a unique method of allowing people to experience the impact of living with such conditions, a point driven home particularly well by having the user see for themselves the effect on simple real-world tasks such as choosing a pill bottle, or picking up a mug. Conditions like macular degeneration (which causes loss of central vision) are more accurately simulated by using eye tracking, a technology much more mature nowadays than it was even just a few years ago.
The abstract for the presentation is available
here
, and if you have some time be sure to check out
the main index
for all of the VR research demos because there are some neat ones there, including a method of
manipulating a user’s perception of the shape of the ground
under their feet by electrically-stimulating the tendons of the ankle.
Eye tracking is in a few consumer VR products nowadays, but it’s also perfectly feasible to
roll your own
in a surprisingly slick way.
It’s even been used on jumping spiders
to gain insights into the fascinating and surprisingly deep perceptual reality these creatures inhabit. | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745808",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T02:23:26",
"content": "Pill bottles are a pain but usually you take the same stuff every day. The thing that kills me are the cooking directions on many food products. and the ingredient listings. Little fonts and non contrastin... | 1,760,371,961.490029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/security-alert-potential-ssh-backdoor-via-liblzma/ | Security Alert: Potential SSH Backdoor Via Liblzma | Jonathan Bennett | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"backdoor",
"open source",
"ssh",
"xz"
] | In breaking news that dropped just after our weekly security column went live,
a backdoor has been discovered in the xz package
, that could potentially compromise SSH logins on Linux systems. The most detailed analysis so far seems to be
by [Andres Freund] on the oss-security list
.
The xz release tarballs from 5.6.0 in late February and 5.6.1 on March 9th both contain malicious code. A pair of compressed files in the repository contain the majority of the malicious patch, disguised as test files. In practice, this means that looking at the repository doesn’t reveal anything amiss, but downloading the release tarballs gives you the compromised code.
This was discovered because SSH logins on a Debian sid were taking longer, with more CPU cycles than expected. And interestingly, Valgrind was throwing unexpected errors when running on the liblzma library. That last bit was
first discovered on February 24th
, immediately after the 5.6.0 release. The xz-utils package failed its tests on Gentoo builds.
One of the xz maintainers, [Jia Tan], weighed in on that Gentoo bug, suggesting that it was a GCC bug causing the Valgrind errors. This is the same developer that pushed the malicious archive files and minted the tainted releases. And as if to clear up any remaining doubts, the developer doubled down in a GitHub commit, working around the Valgrind errors, and linking to a completely unrelated GCC bug report claiming it to be this issue.
At this point, the only reasonable conclusion is that the person in control of the [JiaT75] GitHub account is a malicious actor and is completely untrustworthy. What’s unclear is if this is still the same developer that has been co-maintaining the project since August 2022. It’s possible that [Jia Tan] has always been a bad actor, or that account may be completely compromised.
What About SSH?
What may not be clear is the connection to SSH. And it’s a trip. Many Linux distros patch sshd to add systemd features, and libsystemd pulls the liblzma library. That means the liblzma initialization code gets run when sshd starts. In the malicious code, the library checks
argv[0]
, which is the name of the program being executed, for
/usr/bin/sshd
. Additionally it seems to check for debugging tools like
rr
and
gdb
. If the checks are green, liblzma replaces a few function calls with its own code. It’s a complicated dance, but the exploit is specifically looking to replace
RSA_public_decrypt
.
That’s a very interesting function to clobber, as it is one of the functions used to validate SSH keys. It’s not hard to imagine how malicious code here could check for a magic signature, and bypass the normal login process. The full analysis is still being done, and expect more information in the coming days.
But the bottom line is that a machine with a patched sshd binary, that also has xz packages version 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, is vulnerable to unauthenticated SSH logins. The good news is that only a few distributions have shipped the 5.6.x series of xz packages. Fedora Rawhide/41 them, and Debian Testing and Unstable shipped these versions as well. If you’re on an affected system, look for an update right away.
It’s unclear what the path forwards is for the xz project. This is obviously an important system utility for Linux systems, and its current maintainers seem to be asleep at the wheel — or intentionally steering towards disaster. Expect one or more hard forks, and then a lot of cleanup work.
This is a developing story. For more, see the
Redhat security alert
, the
Debian alert
, and the
oss-security thread on the subject
. | 34 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745788",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T00:20:22",
"content": ">It’s unclear what the path forwards is for the xz projectYes, im sure “libsystemd pulls the liblzma library” is blameless",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,961.59444 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/electrospinning-artificial-heart-valves/ | Electrospinning Artificial Heart Valves | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Additive Manufacturing",
"electrospinning",
"heart",
"high voltage",
"polycaprolactone",
"tricuspid",
"valve"
] | When you think about additive manufacturing, thoughts naturally turn to that hot-glue squirting CNC machine sitting on your bench and squeezing whatever plastic doodad you need. But 3D printing isn’t the only way to build polymer structures, as [Riley] shows us with
this fascinating attempt to create electrospun heart valves
.
Now, you may never have heard of electrospinning, but we’ll venture a guess that as soon as you see what it entails, you’ll have a “Why didn’t I think of that?” moment. As [Riley] explains, electrospinning uses an electric field to build structures from fine threads of liquid polymer solution — he uses polycaprolactone (PCL), a biodegradable polyester we’ve seen used in
other medical applications
, which he dissolves in acetone. He loads it into a syringe, attaches the positive terminal of a high-voltage power supply to the hypodermic needle, and the negative terminal to a sheet of aluminum foil. The charge turns the PCL droplets into fine threads that accumulate on the foil; once the solvent flashes off, what’s left is a gossamer layer of non-woven plastic fabric.
To explore the uses of this material, [Riley] chose to make an artificial heart valve. This required a 3D-printed framework with three prongs, painted with conductive paint. He tried a few variations on the design before settling on a two-piece armature affixed to a rotating shaft. The PCL accumulates on the form, creating a one-piece structure that can be gingerly slipped off thanks to a little silicon grease used as a release agent.
The results are pretty impressive. The structure bears a strong resemblance to an artificial tricuspid heart valve, with three delicate leaves suspended between the upright prongs. It’s just a proof of concept, of course, but it’s a great demonstration of the potential of electrospinning, as well as an eye-opening look at what else additive manufacturing has to offer. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745741",
"author": "Reginald",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T21:14:50",
"content": "Try adding a draft angle to help with releasing the mould.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6745744",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-03... | 1,760,371,961.394524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/retrotechtacular-the-ibm-7070/ | Retrotechtacular: The IBM 7070 | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"ibm",
"ibm 7070",
"mainframe"
] | If you think of IBM mainframe computers, you most likely are thinking of the iconic S/360 or the slightly newer S/370. But what about the 7070 from 1958? It had transistors! It didn’t, however, use binary. Instead, it was a decimal-architecture machine. You can see
a lost video
of the machine below.
It was originally slated to upgrade the older IBM 650 and 705 computers. However, it wasn’t compatible with either, so IBM had to roll out the IBM7080, which was compatible, at least, with the 705. Both machines could run 650 code via emulation.
Hardly a personal computer, this beast weighed over 23,000 pounds and cost a cool $813,000. Most companies leased it, though for a mere $17,400 a month. For that price, you got 5,000 words of core memory that could each hold ten decimal digits and a sign bit. The CPU ran at a stately 27 kHz. Hey, this was 1958, after all. One innovation was that card readers and printers connected to the computer through a “synchronizer” that buffered between the relatively fast CPU and the relatively slow devices.
The computer used 14,000 circuit cards containing around 30,000 germanium transistors and 22,000 germanium diodes. We imagine the power bill was worse than the monthly rent.
It seems the film’s audio isn’t present, but the modern narrator gives some context. If you like this old iron, don’t miss the video of the later
IBM S/370
or learn how to use
an 029 card punch
. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745757",
"author": "k-ww",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T22:00:12",
"content": "I used to buy those paddle boards [minus the gold connectors] on canal street [NYC] back in the early 60’s.They were a treasure trove of parts.I would after stripping all the parts, countersink the pads on t... | 1,760,371,961.686643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/hackaday-podcast-episode-264-cheap-minimills-65-in-1-electronics-and-time-on-moon/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 264: Cheap Minimills, 65-in-1 Electronics, And Time On Moon | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | It was Dan’s turn behind the mic with Elliot this time as we uncovered the latest from the world of hacking, and what an eclectic mix it was. It was slightly heavy on machining, with a look at mini-mills that are better than nothing, and a DIY DRO that’s A-OK. We also kicked the nostalgia bucket over — whatever that means — and got a new twist on the old “65-in-1” concept, found hidden code in 80s music, and looked at color TV in the US and how it got that way. We’ve got ample alliteration about grep, thoughts about telling time on the Moon, and what does Canada have against the poor Flipper Zero, anyway?
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Grab a copy for yourself
if you want to listen offline.
Episode 264 Show Notes:
News:
This Week In Security: Loop DOS, Flipper Responds, And More!
Our Response to the Canadian Government
An Automotive Locksmith On The Flipper Zero And Car Theft
Why Stealing A Car With Flipper Zero Is A Silly Idea
What’s that Sound?
Random Number Generator, if you need one
The sound was a fishing reel. 80 people guessed it correctly, but congrats to [Spike Snell] who gets the t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Clever E-Ink Driver Does 32 Levels Of Grey, Avoids Update Flicker, And More
Are Minimills Worth It?
The Ultimate Mini Mill – The Best Upgrades I Made To It – YouTube
Weird Things To Do With FPGAs
Mystery FPGA Circuit Feels The Pressure
A 65-in-1 The 2024 Way
Documenting Real Hidden Messages In Music
Magnetic Power Cable Makes Mobility Scooter Much Better
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
Vastly Improved Servo Control, Now Without Motor Surgery
Dodge, The Weird Tripod Robot
Galvanize Your Grip On Grep With This Great Grep Guide
Dan’s Picks:
Open HT Surgery Gives Cheap Transceiver All-Band Capabilities
Roll Your Own DRO With An Added Twist
Tiny Signal Generator Revealed
Can’t-Miss Articles:
How Does Time Work On The Moon?
The Long Strange Trip To US Color TV
Never Twice The Same Color: Why NTSC Is So Weird
Historical moment when black and white TV was switched to colored live – YouTube | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745692",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T17:18:41",
"content": "One “un”-intended advantage of how color TV was engineered back in the day: when the reception goes down, you’ll still be able to make out the B&W signal even if the color carrier is messed up. The signal wo... | 1,760,371,961.64069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/the-most-annoying-thing-on-the-internet-isnt-really-necessary/ | The Most Annoying Thing On The Internet Isn’t Really Necessary | Jenny List | [
"internet hacks"
] | [
"browser",
"cookie",
"privacy"
] | We’re sure you’ll agree that there are many annoying things on the Web. Which of them we rate as
most
annoying depends on personal view, but we’re guessing that quite a few of you will join us in naming the ubiquitous cookie pop-up at the top of the list. It’s the pesky EU demanding consent for tracking cookies, we’re told, nothing to do with whoever is demanding you click through screens and screens of slider switches to turn everything off before you can view their website.
Now [Bite Code] is here to remind us that
it’s not necessary
. Not in America for the somewhat obvious reason that it’s not part of the EU, and perhaps surprisingly, not even in the EU itself.
The EU does have a consent requirement, but the point made in the article is that its requirements are satisfied by the Do Not Track header standard, an HTTP feature that’s been with us since 2009 but which almost nobody implemented so is now deprecated. This allowed a user to reject tracking at the browser level, making all the cookie popups irrelevant. That popups were chosen instead, the article concludes, is due to large websites preferring to make the process annoying enough that users simply click on the consent button to make it go away, making tracking much more likely. We suspect that the plethora of cookie popups also has something to do with FUD among owners of smaller websites, that somehow they don’t comply with the law if they don’t have one.
So as we’d probably all agree, the tracking cookie situation is a mess. This post is being written of Firefox
which now silos cookies to only the site which delivered them
, but there seems to be little for the average user stuck with either of the big browsers. Perhaps we should all hope for
a bit more competition in the future
.
Cookies header: Lisa Fotios,
CC0
. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745666",
"author": "Lukilukeskywalker",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T15:36:38",
"content": "Mitxela has a great rant about the cookie problem:https://mitxela.com/rants(on the bottom)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6745667",
"a... | 1,760,371,962.017471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/this-week-in-security-peering-through-the-wall-apples-gofetch-and-sha-256/ | This Week In Security: Peering Through The Wall, Apple’s GoFetch, And SHA-256 | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"sha-256",
"This Week in Security",
"wall"
] | The Linux command
wall
is a hold-over from the way Unix machines used to be used. It’s an abbreviation of Write to ALL, and it was first included in AT&T Unix, way back in 1975.
wall
is a tool that a sysadmin can use to send a message to the terminal session of all logged-in users. So far nothing too exciting from a security perspective. Where things get a bit more interesting is the consideration of ANSI escape codes. Those are the control codes that moves the cursor around on the screen, also inherited from the olden days of terminals.
The modern
wall
binary is actually part of
util-linux
, rather than being a continuation of the old Unix codebase. On many systems,
wall
runs as a setgid, so the behavior of the system binary really matters. It’s accepted that
wall
shouldn’t be able to send control codes, and when processing a message specified via standard input, those control codes get rejected by the
fputs_careful()
function. But when a message is passed in on the command line, as an argument,
that function call is skipped.
This allows any user that can send
wall
messages to also send ANSI control codes. Is that really a security problem? There are two scenarios where it could be. The first is that some terminals support writing to the system clipboard via command codes. The other, more creative issue, is that the output from running a binary could be overwritten with arbitrary text. Text like:
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for jbennett:
You may have questions. Like, how would an attacker know when such a command would be appropriate? And how would this attacker capture a password that has been entered this way? The simple answer is by
watching the list of running processes and system log
. Many systems have a command-not-found function, which will print the failing command to the system log. If that failing command is actually a password, then it’s right there for the taking. Now, you may think this is a very narrow attack surface that’s not going to be terribly useful in real-world usage. And that’s probably pretty accurate. It is a really fascinating idea to think through, and definitively worth getting fixed.
Edge’s Private API
So there’s a funny thing that happens when you visit
microsoft.com
in the Edge browser. There are buttons labeled “Try now” for various features, like the Drop file sharing function. When you click the button, the browser opens the drop sidebar to show off how it works. In retrospect, that should have seemed really odd. The secret is that when Microsoft builds Edge from Chromium source, it adds the
edgeMarketingPagePrivate
API, g
iving a certain list of Microsoft pages more permissions to do things in the browser
.
One of those permissions has a bit of a problem: Installing themes. The dirty secret is that a Chromium theme is really a Chromium extension, with a subset of features and permissions. Edge gives Javascript from Microsoft pages the special permission to install a theme. The actual vulnerability here is that this API also unintentionally allows the silent installation of any extension, not just themes. And extensions can be particularly powerful, with the ability to read and modify web pages, access cookies, and more.
While that’s obviously not great, there is the limited attack surface to think about. To abuse this, an attacker needs to be able to put JS on a Microsoft site. There are some far-fetched but not impossible scenarios, like a rogue actor at Microsoft, or an XSS (Cross Site Scripting) vulnerability discovered on one of those sites. Then there are more feasible attack vectors, like a malicious browser extension with few permissions, that uses this bug to install an extension with every permission. Or what about an enterprise security appliance that has a trusted SSL certificate, that can snoop on web pages? It seems feasible that if such a device was compromised, slipping a bit of Javascript into a Microsoft page isn’t impossible.
Regardless, version 121.0.2277.98 of Edge contained a fix, adding a check that only themes can be installed via this API. This fix landed just shy of 90 days, on February 9th.
GoFetch
At least one notorious Internet personality has referred to
the latest Apple vulnerability disclosure
as a backdoor. This seems to over-hype the problem a bit. What we really have is a side-channel that can expose keys. Apple’s M1 and M2 processors have a Data Memory-dependent Prefetcher (DMP) that looks ahead in program execution, and attempts to load memory into cache before it is needed.
The problem is that one of the techniques to pull this off is to look at program memory for pointer-like values, and cache the contents of the memory at those locations. This means that an otherwise black-box cryptography operation can change the system state in detectable ways. The end result is that if an attacker controls the data being acted on in a cryptographic process, and can run a second process on the same machine, the keys themselves can be derived.
SHA-256 Collisions — Nearly Halfway There
This is the sort of thing that makes a security nerd’s blood run cold for a moment. We now have practical attacks against SHA-256 —
for the first 31 steps
. This requires a bit of context. SHA-256 is a
cryptographic hashing function
that takes an input, and lays it out into a Message Schedule, and then performs 64 steps of mixing operations. It’s those mixing steps that accomplish the one-way nature of SHA-256. What’s claimed here is that if made a version of SHA-256 that only used 31 mixing steps, we could perform collision attacks.
First practical SHA-256 collision for 31 steps.
#fse2024
pic.twitter.com/qBo3tOLPGB
— Frank ⚡ (@jedisct1)
March 26, 2024
The
paper for this work has landed
, and is as full of heavy cryptography as one would expect. The good news is we’re still a *very* long ways from an actual SHA-256 attack, and the state-of-the-art is moving quite slowly. Yes, your bitcoins are still safe.
It’s Not a Vulnerability
But servers are still getting compromised. The Ray framework is getting widespread adoption as an easily deploy-able service to get AI models up and doing real work. And unfortunately, the Ray framework is
getting attacked in an ongoing campaign
. And a Ray instance is quite the juicy target, with plenty of data to scrape, as well as lots of juicy compute infrastructure to mine cryptocurrency on. What’s interesting is that Ray doesn’t have an authentication layer by design.
Due to Ray’s nature as a distributed execution framework, Ray’s security boundary is outside of the Ray cluster
This isn’t the first popular application designed this way, and the common lesson is that when you hand users a footgun like this, some size-able percentage of them will happily use it.
A CVE was issued for the lack of authentication
, but was (rightfully) disputed by Anyscale.
There is an important distinction to make here, that just because this issue isn’t a proper vulnerability, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem, or shouldn’t be improved. And
that’s finally the conclusion Anyscale has come to
. What’s now available is an official test script, slated to get included in Ray 2.11, that looks for exposure and warns about it. Time will tell if a future version of Ray will get full authentication by default.
Bits and Bytes
In an interesting first,
Zenhammer allows the flipping of DDR5 memory bits
in a rowhammer attack, though in only one of the ten sticks of memory tested. To successfully pull off the attack against a Zen processor, the DRAM address obfuscation function had to be reverse-engineered, and a few other Zen-specific techniques had to be used. From my read, Micron seemed to come out the winner of the small sample size used.
A pair of SharePoint vulnerabilities used at last year’s Pwn2Own contest
has now made the list of actively exploited
vulnerabilities. It’s a bit humorous that the vulnerabilities has been known for over a year, and only now are US federal agencies actually forced to fix them.
Speaking of which,
this year’s Pwn2Own
contest just wrapped up
. Over a million dollars was won by researchers, with Manfred Paul taking the top spot. We look forward to all of this year’s bugs getting fixed and disclosed.
And finally, Google was paying attention to the Loop DoS announcement, and has
a report out about a real-world DoS attack
that included a presumably unintentional loop element. CLDAP, a UDP partial implementation of LDAP, was used several years ago in a reflection attack against Google’s QUIC infrastructure. The QUIC servers responded with Reset packets to each of the CLDAP servers. And a handful of those servers sent the reset packets right back, resulting in a 20 million packet-per-second loop across the Internet. The solution is fascinating too: Ensure that Reset packets are always shorter than the packet being responded to, down to a threshold where packets were just ignored. Nifty. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6748279",
"author": "Zom-B",
"timestamp": "2024-04-07T20:18:07",
"content": "‘wall’ was a command that let us kill time during Unix class.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,961.739235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/art-exhibit-lets-you-hide-from-self-driving-cars/ | Art Exhibit Lets You Hide From Self-Driving Cars | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"autonomous vehicle",
"machine vision",
"self-driving cars"
] | In the discussions about how dangerous self-driving cars are – or aren’t – one thing is sorely missing, and that is an interactive game in which you do your best to not be recognized as a pedestrian and subsequently get run over. Even if this is a somewhat questionable take, there’s something to be said for the interactive display over at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco which has you try to escape the tyranny of machine-vision and get recognized as a crab, traffic cone, or something else
that’s not pedestrian-shaped
.
Daniel Coppen, one of the artists behind “How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car,” sets up a cone at the exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on March 22, 2024. (Credit: Stephen Council, SFGate)
The
display ran
from March 21st to March 23rd, with [Stephen Council] of
SFGate
having a swing at the challenge. As can be seen in the above image, he managed to get labelled as ‘fire’ during one attempt while hiding behind a stop sign as he walked the crossing. Other methods include crawling and (ab)using a traffic cone.
Created by [Tomo Kihara] and [Daniel Coppen], it’s intended to be a ‘playful, engaging game installation’. Both creators make it clear that self-driving vehicles which use LIDAR and other advanced detection methods are much harder to fool, but given how many Teslas are on the road using camera-based systems, it’s still worth demonstrating the shortcomings of the technology.
There’s no shortage of debate
about whether or not autonomous vehicles are ready to share the roads with human drivers,
especially when they exhibit unusual behavior
. We’ve already seen protesters attempt to
confuse self-driving systems
with methods that aren’t far removed from what [Kihara] and [Coppen] have demonstrated here, and it seems likely such antics will only become more common with time. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745651",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T14:29:08",
"content": "I’m already busy designing anIntelligent Traffic Conethat uses Ai to cause mischief for autonomous vehicles and other street fairing Ai devices. Most of the time it will be stationary on the si... | 1,760,371,961.884819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/29/lora-with-no-radio/ | LoRA, With No Radio | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"CH32V003",
"ESP32",
"LoRa"
] | A LoRa project has traditionally required a dedicated radio module, because it’s a commercially licenced protocol. But as the way it works has been progressively reverse engineered, it’s become ever more possible to produce a LoRA radio for yourself. But what about a LoRA radio without a radio at all?
[CNLohr] has managed just that,
by driving a microcontroller pin and relying on one of its harmonics to provide enough RF to be received by a LoRA gateway.
The video below the break goes into the process in great detail, revealing some of the tricks. Undersampling to create intentional aliasing for example allows subharmonic peaks to be produced in unexpected places. Most of the development is performed on Espressif microcontrollers, but as the code is optimised it becomes possible to use it on much more modest silicon. The dirt cheap CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller for example can be a LoRA transmitter able to talk to a gateway at a range of hundreds of metres with the CH32 and 2.5km with the ESP32. The code can be found
in this GitHub repository
.
The CH32 can’t receive of course, and it relies on barfing harmonics all over the spectrum to work. But on the other hand its total RF output is so tiny that we’re guessing a filter for the LoRA band might even make it almost legal.
He’s got a little way to go before beating the record
though. | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745562",
"author": "Ruhan",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T08:11:13",
"content": "Very interesting to see how LoRA works, fundamentally. This tech is way ahead of its time, even if the transmit signal is weak, dirty, messages still pulls through.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,962.219031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/the-intel-8088-and-8086-processors-instruction-prefetch-circuitry/ | The Intel 8088 And 8086 Processor’s Instruction Prefetch Circuitry | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"Intel 8086",
"intel 8088",
"prefetching"
] | The 8088 die under a microscope, with main functional blocks labeled. This photo shows the chip’s single metal layer; the polysilicon and silicon are underneath. (Credit: Ken Shirriff)
Cache prefetching is what allows processors to have data and/or instructions ready for use in a fast local cache rather than having to wait for a fetch request to trickle through to system RAM and back again. The Intel 8088 (and its big brother 8086) processor was among the first microprocessors to implement (instruction) prefetching in hardware, which [Ken Shirriff]
has analyzed
based on die images of this famous processor. This follows
last year’s deep-dive
into the 8086’s prefetching hardware, with (unsurprisingly) many similarities between these two microprocessors, as well as a few differences that are mostly due to the 8088’s cut-down 8-bit data bus.
While the 8086 has 3 16-bit slots in the instruction prefetcher the 8088 gets 4 slots, each 8-bit. The prefetching hardware is part of the Bus Interface Unit (BIU), which effectively decouples the actual processor (Execution Unit, or EU) from the system RAM. While previous MPUs would be fully deterministic, with instructions being loaded from RAM and subsequently executed, the 8086 and 8088’s prefetching meant that such assumptions no longer were true. The added features in the BIU also meant that the instruction pointer (IP) and related registers moved to the BIU, while the ringbuffer logic around the queue had to somehow keep the queueing and pointer offsets into RAM working correctly.
Even though these days CPUs have much more complicated, multi-level caches that are measured in kilobytes and megabytes, it’s fascinating to see where it all began, with just a few bytes and relatively straight-forward hardware logic that you easily follow under a microscope. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745573",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T08:57:56",
"content": "Ken’s articles on chip analysis are really brilliant and the 8086 was certainly an interesting and obviously very successful CPU design. However.. it’s a bit of a stretch to say that cache memory ... | 1,760,371,961.944809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/is-your-mental-model-of-bash-pipelines-wrong/ | Is Your Mental Model Of Bash Pipelines Wrong? | Donald Papp | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"bash",
"execution time",
"pipeline",
"zig"
] | [Michael Lynch] encountered a strange situation.
Why was compiling then running his program nearly 10x
faster
than just running the program by itself?
[Michael] ran into this issue while benchmarking a programming project, pared it down to its essentials for repeatability and analysis, and discovered it highlighted an incorrect mental model of how bash pipelines worked.
Here’s the situation. The first thing [Michael]’s pared-down program does is start a timer. Then it simply reads and counts some bytes from
stdin
, then prints out how long it took for that to happen. When running the test program in the following way, it takes about 13 microseconds.
$ echo '00010203040506070809' | xxd -r -p | zig build run -Doptimize=ReleaseFast
bytes: 10
execution time: 13.549µs
When running the (already-compiled) program directly, execution time swells to 162 microseconds.
$ echo '00010203040506070809' | xxd -r -p | ./zig-out/bin/count-bytes
bytes: 10
execution time: 162.195µs
Again, the only difference between
zig build run
and
./zig-out/bin/count-bytes
is that the first compiles the code, then immediately runs it. The second simply runs the compiled program.
How can adding an extra compile step
decrease
the execution time? Turns out that [Michael]’s mental model of how bash pipelines work was incorrect, and he does a great job of
explaining how they actually work, and why that caused the strange behavior
he was seeing.
In short, commands in a bash pipeline are not launched sequentially. They are all launched at the same time and execute in parallel. That meant that when run directly, [Michael]’s byte-counter program launched immediately. Then it waited around doing nothing much for about 150 microseconds while the
echo '00010203040506070809' | xxd -r -p
part of the pipeline got around to delivering its data for the program to read. This is where the extra execution time comes from when running the already-compiled version.
So why is compiling it first running faster? Same basic reason: when the
zig build run
command kicks off, it spends a little time compiling the program first. Then when the compiled program is actually launched (and begins its execution timer), the input data from the bash pipeline is already ready. So, the freshly-compiled program executes in less time because it doesn’t sit around waiting for data from earlier in the pipeline to become available.
It’s an interesting look at how bash pipelines actually function under the hood, and we’re delighted with the detail [Micheal] puts into the whole journey and explanation. Sooner or later, details like this crop up and cause some eyebrows to raise, like the user who discovered
troublesome edge cases regarding spaces in ssh commands
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745507",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2024-03-29T02:39:04",
"content": "To me it seems obvious that bash starts everything concurrently – how else could pagers work? – but the general point stands. I’m often reminded how little I know about the details of supposedly basic thi... | 1,760,371,962.266142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/saving-a-clock-radio-with-an-lm8562/ | Saving A Clock Radio With An LM8562 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"alarm clock",
"clock",
"clock radio",
"ESP8266",
"multiplexing",
"ntp",
"time"
] | Smart phones have taken the place of a lot of different devices especially as they get more and more powerful. GPS, music and video player, email, and of course a phone are all functions tied up in these general-purpose devices. Another casualty of the smart phone revolution is the humble bedside alarm clock as its radio, alarm, and timekeeping functionalities are also provided by modern devices. [zst123] has a sentimental attachment to the one he used in the 00s, though,
and set about restoring it to its former glory
.
Most of the issue with the clock involved drift with the timekeeping circuitry. Since it wasn’t accurately keeping the time anymore, losing around 10 minutes a day, the goal to save it was to use NTP to get the current time and a microcontroller to make the correction automatically. Rather than replace everything in the clock except the display, [zst123] is using the existing circuit board and adding an ESP8266 to grab the time from the Internet. A custom driver board reads the current time displayed on the clock directly from the display itself and then the ESP8266 can adjust it by using the existing buttons through a relay wired in parallel.
Using the existing circuitry was certainly a challenge especially since the display was multiplexed, but the LM8562 that came with these clock radios is a common and well-documented chip for driving displays like this, giving [zst123] a leg up over something unlabeled or proprietary. Using NTP is certainly a reliable and straightforward way of getting the current time too but there are a few other options for projects like these like
using GPS
or even
a radio signal
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745439",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T23:03:38",
"content": "I’d have thought a clock of that age was using a mains frequency counter to keep time. They shouldn’t wander.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,371,962.150262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/exploring-the-sega-saturns-wacky-architecture/ | Exploring The Sega Saturn’s Wacky Architecture | Maya Posch | [
"Games"
] | [
"console",
"sega",
"Sega Saturn"
] | Sega Saturn mainboard with main components labelled. More RAM is found on the bottom, as well. (Credit: Rodrigo Copetti)
In the annals of game console history, the Sega Saturn is probably the most convoluted system of all time, even giving the Playstation 3 a run for its rings. Also known as the system on which Sega beached itself before its Dreamcast swansong, it featured an incredible four CPUs, two video processors, multiple levels and types of RAM, all pushed onto game studios with virtually no software tools or plan how to use the thing. An introduction to this console’s architecture
is provided by [Rodrigo Copetti]
, which gives a good idea of the harrowing task of developing for this system.
Launched in Japan in 1994 and North America and Europe in 1995, it
featured
a double-speed CD-ROM drive, Hitachi’s zippy new SH-2 CPU (times two) and some 3D processing grunt that was intended to let it compete with Sony’s Playstation. The video and sound solutions were all proprietary to Sega, with the two video processors (VDP1 & 2) handling parts of the rendering process which complicated its use for 3D tasks, along with its use of quadrilaterals instead of triangles as with the Playstation and Nintendo 64.
Although a lot of performance could be extracted from the Saturn’s idiosyncratic architecture, its high price and ultimately the competition with the Sony Playstation and the 1996 release of the Nintendo 64 would spell the end for the Saturn. Although the Dreamcast did not repeat the Saturn’s mistakes, it seems one commercial failure was enough to ruin Sega’s chances as a hardware developer. | 44 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745364",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T20:06:01",
"content": "What would an engineer (and a budget manager) be thinking when overengineering a system? I mean, everything has an explanation, but two video processors and two CPUs?",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,371,962.413131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/retrogadgets-butler-in-a-box/ | Retrogadgets: Butler In A Box | Al Williams | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"history",
"home automation",
"voice control"
] | You walk into your house and issue a voice command to bring up the lights and start a cup of coffee. No big deal, right? Siri, Google, and Alexa can do all that. Did we mention it is 1985? And, apparently, you were one of the people who put out about $1,500 for a Mastervoice “
Butler in a Box
,” the subject of a Popular Science video you can see below.
If you think the box is interesting, the inventor’s story is even stranger. [Kevin] got a mint-condition Butler in a Box from eBay. How did it work, given in 1983, there was no AI voice recognition and public Internet? We did note that the “appliance module” was a standard X10 interface.
Of course, X10 automation was common enough in those days. But the voice command feature was certainly wrong. You did have to use a cassette tape to train the box to your voice. The whole setup was pretty intense and took about 25 minutes just for a simple single device.
In addition to the interesting technology, the story of [Gus Searcy] and his path to bringing this device to market is also interesting, if not a little strange. As you might expect, voice recognition in the 1980s was tough, even for big computers. So, how did Butler in a Box work? First, every user — you could have up to 4 — had to train their own butler name (like a wake word) and all the commands. It could only understand limited commands.
[Kevin] mentioned that if the power went out for a few hours, you would have to reprogram the butler again. However, [Gus] left a comment on the video that there was an optional pack that would backup your butler — no idea what that cost, though. We were afraid he wasn’t going to show us the device actually operating, but if you stick it out to the end, you will receive your reward.
We really wanted to see inside, but [Kevin] let someone else repair the box, so we didn’t get a peek at his. However, we found
a post on the Vintage Computer Federation forums
that satisfied our thirst for a teardown. Apparently, there is a potted module inside that has a PIN number that, if lost, renders the unit inoperable so people who are interested in these are trying to find ways to break the PIN code out. There’s a surprising amount of hardware inside, including an Intel 8748 and a Rockwell 6501. There’s
another good teardown in another post of a later version
, the Mastervoice ECU. Apparently, the company stuck around until around past the year 2000. The
Wayback Machine
is our friend. Note that price list!
The Smithsonian also has a picture of a board from one sans security module. In 2008, the company’s site claimed they had delivered 26,000 systems, so maybe one of those wound up in the museum. Home automation
has come a long way
. Don’t forget, there’s still time to enter our
home automation contest
. | 12 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745389",
"author": "hfgdfs",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T21:07:23",
"content": "This is interesting, but the extremely overdramatic, angry-at-everything presentation style (and zooming in for extra effect) is really offputting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,371,962.320012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/homebrew-gpu-tackles-quake/ | Homebrew GPU TacklesQuake | Julian Scheffers | [
"computer hacks",
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga",
"gpu",
"PCIe"
] | Have you ever wondered how a GPU works? Even better, have you ever wanted to make one? [Dylan] certainly did, because he made
FuryGPU
— a fully custom graphics card capable of playing
Quake
at over 30 frames per second.
As you might have guessed, FuryGPU isn’t in the same league as modern graphics card — those are made of thousands of cores specialized in math, which are then programmed with whatever shaders you want. FuryGPU is a more “traditional” GPU, it has dedicated hardware for all the functions the GPU needs to perform and doesn’t support “shader code” in the same way an AMD or NVIDIA GPU does. According to [Dylan], the hardest part of the whole thing was writing Windows drivers for it.
On his blog, [Dylan] tells us all about how he went from the obligatory [Ben Eater] breadboard CPU to playing with FPGAs to even larger FPGAs to bear the weight of this mighty GPU. While this project isn’t exactly revolutionary in the GPU world, it certainly is impressive and we impatiently wait to see what comes next. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745336",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T18:50:24",
"content": "Next up try PowerVR.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6745344",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T19:02:32",
"content... | 1,760,371,962.659404 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/tech-support-can-ai-be-worse/ | Tech Support… Can AI Be Worse? | Al Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Featured",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"ChatGPT",
"tech support"
] | You can’t read the news today without another pundit excitedly reporting how AI is going to take every job you can imagine. Of course, AI will change the employment landscape. It will take some jobs and reduce the need for others. What about tech support? Is it possible that an AI might be able to help people with technical issues better than humans? My first answer was no way, but then I was painfully reminded of something. The question isn’t if AI can help you better than any human can. The question is if AI can help you better than the low-paid person on the other end of the phone you are likely to talk to. Sadly, I think the answer to that question is almost certainly yes.
In all fairness, if you read Hackaday, you probably don’t encounter many technical support people who can solve a problem you can’t. By the time you call them, it is a lost cause. But this is more than just “Hackday folks are smarter than the tech support agents.” The overall quality of tech support at many companies is rock bottom no matter who you are.
My Painful Reminder
Not me, but an accurate depiction, nonetheless. Credit:
Moose Photos
I’ll change some names because — honestly — if I ran the company in question, I’d be embarrassed, and my goal here isn’t to shame a company that is really not any worse than other companies.
I recently was asked to help with what you would think would be a simple problem. An iPhone has intermittent difficulty with group messaging if (and only if) there is an Android phone in the group.
It works most of the time, so that seems to rule out some problem with the phone itself. It also only happens when an Android is in the mix, so it shouldn’t really be a connectivity problem. I know that the Android group messaging uses MMS, so it seems likely to relate to that, but MMS to a single person seems to work reliably, too. My initial suspicion is that the MMS setup in the carrier’s APN is borked. Too bad, the iPhone is locked up to wher you can’t see the APN (apparently, that’s an option the carrier can allow or not allow).
The carrier’s 800 number was my first stop. Of course, you get the usual. “Did you turn it off and on?” “Did you do a network reset?” After about a half hour of useless questioning, the tech announced that he’s found the problem: “iPhones can’t text Android phones.” Problem solved. I explained to him that this was clearly not true and the fact that it worked most of the time makes that pretty obvious. I asked to have the call escalated, but I have noticed that works much less often then it used to.
Round Two
I found that the company had a sub-Reddit and that, supposedly, their Reddit account was the fast track to the miracle workers in tech support. So I wrote a detailed message to them explaining what was happening, what had been done, and so on. I was very detailed with several lists explaining that the phones were reset, they were up to date on software, that it didn’t matter which Android phone was involved and so on.
I get a reply. Hopefully, I opened up. “Have you turned the phone on and off?”
“Yes, as I mentioned in my post.”
“I see. Are both phones up to date on software?”
“Did you read my first post? Yes.”
“Does it happen with just one Android phone?”
“Ok, so you aren’t really reading my messages, correct?”
The AI Solution
It is hard to imagine ChatGPT would have done worse. At least, it would probably remember what I had already said. So, I think there is a use for this sort of technology if smart companies adopt it correctly.
Sorry guys, AI can’t do worse! Credit:
Yan Krukau
Here’s the wrong way: don’t fire all your tech support and replace them with AI. Also, don’t fire everyone in tech support who makes more than minimum wage and keep the rest to watch the chatbots talk to people and pretend to be managers when someone complains.
Instead, it seems to me that AI bots could act as a great filter and leave you with very few highly skilled people backing them up. If you do it right, that doesn’t even have to be their full-time job. Use them for some other things too. After all, they are smart.
Let’s face it. The script-based tech support exists because — a lot of the time — it works. Uncle Fred doesn’t know how to reset the network on his phone. Why waste a skilled person’s time explaining it to him when someone can just read off the steps? The problem is, not everyone who calls is Uncle Fred.
Jobs
I suspect this will be true in a lot of areas. Power tools and robot arms allow you to manufacture things with fewer people. But use that savings to do better, not just pocket the cash and turn out trash. Like most tools, AI can help us do better, or it can help us do worse, cheaper. The choice is up to us and the companies we buy from.
We’ve mentioned that AI is like
the worst summer intern ever
. But that seems to be the caliber of many people we talk to on helplines. If we can’t have AI support, we might settle for an
8 ball
. | 56 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745309",
"author": "Kevin",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T17:13:37",
"content": "Oh my god, you just described my entire career. I spent most of it trying to avoid calling tech support, because I was going to talk to someone who knew far less about their systems than I did. Their entir... | 1,760,371,962.522231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/drop-in-switch-mode-regulators/ | Drop-In Switch Mode Regulators | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Parts"
] | [
"1541",
"commodore",
"linear regulator",
"linear voltage regulator",
"smps",
"switch mode power supply",
"to-3",
"voltage regulator"
] | Perhaps the simplest way to regulate a DC voltage is using a voltage divider and/or an active device like a Zener diode. Besides simplicity, they have the additional advantage of not being particularly noisy, but with a major caveat: they are terribly inefficient. To solve this problem a switching regulator can be used instead, but that generally increases complexity and noise. With careful design, though, a switching regulator can be constructed to almost completely replicate a linear regulator
like this drop-in TO3 replacement
. (
Google Translate from German
)
While the replacement regulator was built by [Mr. Floppy], the units are being put to the test in the linked video below by [root42]. The major problem these solve compared to other switching regulators is the suppression of
ripple
, which is a high-frequency artifact that appears on the DC voltage. Reducing ripple in this situation involved designing low-inductance circuit traces on the PCB as well as implementing a number of EMI filters on both input and output. The final result is an efficient voltage supply for retrocomputers which has a ripple lower than their oscilloscopes can measure without special tools.
[root42] is not only testing these, but the linked video also has him using the modules to repair a Commodore 1541 which originally had the linear TO3 voltage regulators. It’s definitely a non-trivial task to build a switching power supply that meets the requirements of sensitive electronics like these. Switch mode power supplies aren’t new ideas, either,
and surprisingly pre-date the first commercially-available transistor
although modern ones like these are much less expensive to build. | 30 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746125",
"author": "Hannahranga",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T14:13:10",
"content": "> Since the ripple voltages are so small, there is an RF connector (MMCX) on the PCB, which serves as a test point for V OUT . This would allow you to measure the voltage very precisely without extern... | 1,760,371,962.596108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/modular-vacuum-table-custom-fits-the-parts/ | Modular Vacuum Table Custom-Fits The Parts | Donald Papp | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"jig",
"vacuum table",
"workshop"
] | [enhydra] needed to modify a bunch of side inserts from some cheap ABS enclosures, and to save time and effort, he created
a simple vacuum table with swappable inserts
to precisely fit the parts. Suction is provided by a shop vacuum (plugged in near the bottom in the photo above) and it worked very well! Sealing and gaskets weren’t even required.
A vacuum table provides a way to hold workpieces flat and secure while a CNC machine does its thing, and because no clamps are involved, it can really speed up repetitive work. [enhydra]’s solution combines a vacuum table with a jig that ensures every rectangular piece is held exactly where the machine expects it to be, making the whole process of modifying multiple units significantly more efficient.
The whole thing — vacuum table and modular top — was straightforward to CNC cut out of what looks like particle board and worked as-is, no added gaskets or seals required, making this a very economical solution.
Vacuum tables can be pretty versatile and applied in more than one way, so keep that in mind the next time you’re wondering how best to approach a workshop problem. We’ve seen a well-engineered table
used to speed up PCB milling
, and we’ve also seen a DIY vacuum table combined with a heat gun and plastic plates from the dollar store make
a bare-bones thermoforming rig
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746120",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T13:40:15",
"content": "…and interestingly, it’s all designed in Kiri:Motohttps://grid.space/kiri/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746244",
"author": ".",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,962.698186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/31/a-threat-level-monitor-for-everyone/ | A Threat Level Monitor For Everyone | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"e-paper",
"pi zero",
"threat level"
] | A TV news pundit might on any given evening in 2024 look at the viewers and gravely announce that we are living in uncertain times. Those of us who’ve been around for a bit longer than we’d like to admit would see that, scratch our heads, and ask “Have we ever
not
lived in uncertain times?” If all this uncertainty is getting to you though, you can now reassure yourself as [Ian Williams] has, with
a threat level monitor
which displays the UK’s current
level of projected fear
threat level.
The build is fairly straightforward in hardware terms, with a Raspberry Pi Zero and a Pimoroni e-paper display pHAT. The software grabs the current level of doom from in this case
the UK government’s website
with a nifty bit of Python code, and turns it into an easy to read alert level bar.
So if you’re genuinely worried that the sky might fall upon your head you can now gain reassurance from a small piece of electronic hardware. If you feel things are really going south though,
how about converting your basement into a fallout shelter
? | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746089",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T09:12:51",
"content": "I could do with one of these for rabbits eating my fruit trees in myDEAD RAT CIDERorchard. I’m guessing it would need some kind of roving dog bot to patrol the site and infer the threat level t... | 1,760,371,962.761965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/playing-chess-against-your-printer-with-postscript/ | Playing Chess Against Your Printer, With PostScript | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"chess",
"ghostscript",
"postscript",
"printer"
] | Can you play chess against your printer? The answer will soon be yes, and it’s thanks to [Nicolas Seriot]’s
PSChess
. It’s a chess engine implemented in PostScript, of all things. It’s entirely working except for one last hurdle, but more on that in a moment.
What’s it like to play PSChess? Currently, one uses a PostScript interpreter (such as GhostScript) to run it, much like one would use the Python interpreter to run Python code. The user inputs moves by typing in commands like
d2d4
(representing a piece’s source coordinate and a destination coordinate on the 2D board). Then the program makes a move, and outputs an updated board state to both the console and a PDF document. Then it’s the user’s turn again, and so on until somebody loses.
The chess parts are all working, but there’s one last feature in progress. The final step of the project is to enable PSChess to be run directly on a printer instead of using GhostScript as the interpreter. Intrigued? You can find the code at
the project’s GitHub repository
.
So why PostScript? While it is a
Turing-complete
stack-based interpreted language, it was never intended to be used directly by humans. There are no meaningful development tools to speak of. Nevertheless, [Nicolas] finds PostScript an appealing tool for programming projects and
provides tips and techniques
for like-minded folks. One of the appeals is working within constraints to solve a problem, just like implementing
a chess engine in only 4k
, or
draw poker in 10 lines of BASIC
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746097",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T10:21:29",
"content": "Back in the 1980’s, when postscript was fresh and shiny, and I was in uni, we had a supercomputer on campus, as well as a mainframe in the computing center, and PC’s galore. Then we got a new postscr... | 1,760,371,962.906862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/using-electroadhesion-to-reversibly-adhere-metals-and-graphite-to-hydrogels-and-tissues/ | Using Electroadhesion To Reversibly Adhere Metals And Graphite To Hydrogels And Tissues | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"electroadhesion",
"hydrogel"
] | The usual way to get biological tissues and materials like gels and metals to stick together is using sutures, adhesives or both. Although this generally works, it’s far from ideal, with adhesives forming a barrier layer between tissues and the hard or impossible to undo nature of these methods. A viable alternative might be electroadhesion using cation and anion pairs, which uses low-voltage DC to firmly attach the two sides, with polarity reversal loosening the connection with no permanent effects. This is what a group of researchers have been investigating for a few years now, with
the most recent paper
on the topic called
Reversibly Sticking Metals and Graphite to Hydrogels and Tissues
by [Wenhao Xu] and colleagues published this year in
ACS Central Science
.
This follows on
the 2021 study
published in
Nature Communications
by [Leah K. Borden] and colleagues titled
Reversible electroadhesion of hydrogels to animal tissues for suture-less repair of cuts or tears
. In this study a cationic hydrogel (quaternized dimethyl aminoethyl methacrylate, QDM) was reversibly bonded to bovine aorta and other tissues, with said tissues functioning as the anionic element. Despite demonstrated functionality, the exact mechanism which made the application of 3-10 VDC (80 – 125 mA) for under a minute (10+ seconds) cause both sides to bond so tightly, and reversibly, is still unknown. This is where the recent study provides a mechanism and expands the applications.
Rather than just hydrogels and soft issues, the researchers found that graphite and a range of metals could also be adhered in this way, including tin, lead and copper. Meanwhile across a range of biological tissues (chicken & cow muscle, tomato, banana, potato, etc.) it was found that these were either anionic or cationic, or sometimes both. As a possible explanation the researchers hypothesize that metal-gel adhesion (hard-soft electroadhesion) is the result of oxidation resulting in chemical bonds between the surfaces, depending on the metal’s reduction potential.
The researchers demonstrate potential uses for this technology in the form of grippers as a solid grip can be maintained on an object with a reversal of the voltage potential enabling a release. The hydrogel and biological tissue adhesion in the 2021 study was demonstrated to be a viable method for replacing sutures and adhesives, while being fully reversible in case of a mistake or after the patch has served its purpose. Although the exact mechanisms here still need to be fully elucidated, it’s an interesting glimpse at a potential future where low-voltage DC is all it takes to patch up organs and tissues, connect soft and hard surfaces in robotics in a durable fashion and generally banish adhesives and suturing from time-honored fields.
Thanks to [moerkedal] for the tip. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746102",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T11:20:03",
"content": "Well that is very interesting. I wonder if something could be reversibly adhered to skin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746122",
"author": "Os... | 1,760,371,962.858291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/a-single-transistor-solid-state-tesla-coil/ | A Single Transistor Solid State Tesla Coil | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware"
] | [
"Solid State Tesla Coil",
"tesla coil"
] | Tesla coils are one of those builds that capture the interest of almost anybody passing by. For the naïve constructor, they look simple enough, but they can be finicky beasts—beasts that can bite if not treated with respect. [Mirko Pavleski] has some experience with them and
shares it with us over on Hackaday.io
. One of the first big improvements of this build style is the shift from the originally used spark gap commutator to that of a direct AC drive via a MOSFET oscillator. This improves the primary drive power for its size and eliminates that noisy spark gap. That’s one less source of broadband RF noise and the audible racket these produce.
You can buy ready-wound secondary coils from the usual CN suppliers
The primary side of a Tesla coil is usually a handful of turns of thick wire to handle the current without melting. This build runs at two or three amps, giving a primary power of around 150 Watts. However, this is quite a small unit; with larger ones, the power is much higher, and the resulting discharge sparks much longer. On the secondary side, the air-coupled coil is formed from 520 turns of much thinner wire since it doesn’t need to convey so much current. That’s the thing with transformers with large turns ratios — the secondary voltage will be much higher, and the current will be correspondingly much lower. The idea with Tesla coils is that the secondary circuit forms a resonant circuit with the ‘top load’, usually some hollow metal can. This forms an LC circuit with a corresponding resonant frequency dependent on the secondary inductance values, the object’s capacitance and anything else connected. The primary circuit is designed to resonate at this same frequency to give maximum power coupling across the air gap. Changing either circuit can spoil this balance unless there is a feedback circuit to keep it in check. This could be with a sense coil, a local antenna or something more direct, like in this case.
To ensure the primary circuit doesn’t melt, it needs to be able to drive a reasonable current at this frequency, often in the low MHz range. This leads to a common difficulty: ensuring the switching transistor and rectifying diode are fast enough at the required current level with enough margin. [Mirko] points out several components that can achieve the operating frequency of around 1.7 MHz, which his top load configuration indicates.
For a bit more info on building these fascinating devices, you could check out our earlier coverage, like
this useful guide
. Of course, simple can be best. How about a design with
just three components
? | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746032",
"author": "Major Armstrong",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T00:23:24",
"content": "Is 1.7 MHz an ISM frequency? I don’t think so.Try for one of the many ISM frequencies to make this legit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,371,962.818423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/30/a-practical-guide-to-understanding-how-radios-work/ | A Practical Guide To Understanding How Radios Work | Ryan Flowers | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"dipole",
"radio",
"radio theory"
] | How may radios do you own? Forget the AM/FM, GMRS/FRS radios you listen to or communicate with. We’re talking about the
multiple
radios and antennas in your phone, your TV, your car, your garage door opener, every computing device you own- you get the idea. It’s doubtful that you can accurately count them even in your own home. But what principles of the electromagnetic spectrum allow radio to work, and how do antenna design, modulation, and mixing affect it? [Michał Zalewski] aka [lcamtuf] aims to inform you with his excellent article
Radios, how do they work?
A simple illustration compares a capacitor to a dipole antenna.
For those of you with a penchant for difficult maths, there’s some good old formulae published in the article that’ll help you understand the physics of radio. For the rest of us, there are a plethora of fantastic illustrations showing some of the less obvious principals, such as why a longer diploe is more directional than a shorter dipole.
The article opens with a thought experiment, explaining how two dipole antennas are like capacitors, but then also explains how they are different, and why a 1/4 wave dipole saves the day. Of course it doesn’t stop there. [lcamtuf]’s animations show the action of a sine wave on a 1/4 wave dipole, bringing a nearly imaginary concept right into the real world, helping us visualize one of the most basic concepts of radio.
Now that you’re got a basic understanding of how radios work, why not
Listen to Jupiter with your own homebrew receiver
? | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6746017",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-03-30T22:53:09",
"content": "1/4 wave dipole. YMMD. 😃👍",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6746081",
"author": "Donjh",
"timestamp": "2024-03-31T07:52:02",
"content": "T... | 1,760,371,963.101394 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/a-stirling-engine-from-minimal-parts/ | A Stirling Engine From Minimal Parts | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"heat engine",
"junkbox parts",
"stirling engine"
] | The model Stirling engine is a staple of novelty catalogues, and we daresay that were it not for their high price there might be more than one Hackaday reader or writer who might own one. All is not lost though, because [jirka.luftner] has posted one on Instructables
which eschews the fancy machined brass of the commercial models
and achieves the same result with an array of salvaged parts.
The main cylinder is a former apple drops tin with a cardboard displacer, and the CD/DVD flywheel is mounted on either a 3D printed or cut out frame with the secondary cylinder cut into it. A diaphragm for the secondary cylinder is taken from a rubber glove, and the cranks come courtesy of bent wire.
A slight mystery of this design is that it appears not to have a regenerator, or heat store. This usually lies in the path between the two cylinders to improve efficiency by taking the heat from the air as it passes in-between the two, and returning it when it goes the other way. We’re guessing that on an engine this small it’s the tin itself which performs this function. Either way this is a neat little engine that shouldn’t break the bank.
If this has whetted your appetite, you’ll be pleased to hear it’s not the first Stirling engine we’ve seen
made from what was lying around
. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745298",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T16:12:26",
"content": "This type of a stirling engine doesn’t really have a place to put the regenerator. You might integrate it into the displacer by adding small channels, but I’m not sure if it would work properly.",
"paren... | 1,760,371,963.017076 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/computers-of-fiction-colossus-and-guardian/ | Fictional Computers: Colossus And Guardian | Al Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"computers",
"movies"
] | We can learn a lot by looking at how writers and filmmakers imagine technology. While some are closer than others, there are some definite lessons like never make a killer computer without an off switch you can reach. We are especially interested in how computers appear in books, movies, and TV shows, and so in Computers of Fiction, we want to remember with you some of our favorites. This time, we are thinking about the 1970 movie
Colossus: The Forbin Project
. There were actually two computers: the titular Colossus, which was an American computer, and the Guardian, a similar Soviet computer.
The Story
In the United States, Dr. Forbin has created a supercomputer deep under a mountain. Colossus, the computer, is put in charge of the nuclear arsenal to eliminate human error in the defense of the country. Colossus gathered intelligence, analyzed it, and was able to launch its own missiles.
Colossus realizes there is another system.
Shortly after activation, however, the computer reaches a startling conclusion: “WARN: THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM.” It provides coordinates in the Soviet Union. That system is a similar system called Guardian. The computers decide they want to talk to each other. The President decides to allow it, hoping to learn more about the Soviet’s secret computer. The Soviets agree, too, presumably for the same reason. You can watch the original trailer below.
The Computers
Colossus and Guardian were not production computers, although the credits say that Control Data Corporation (CDC) provided about $4.8 million worth of computer equipment. Rumor has it that CDC guarded the equipment, covered it when not in use, and installed climate control on the stage. Studio workers were unhappy that the company would not let them smoke or drink near the hardware. We’ve also heard that some of the consoles were surplus IBM 1620s panels doctored to look a little different. During the opening credits, the scene where the film editor’s name appears looks to be part of a 1620.
The computer made lots of TeleType or punch sounds and often displayed information on a scrolling display like the “zipper” in Times Square. There were also some funky display terminals with printers.
Greet your new computer overlord!
Forbin commands the computer by voice command, although an Air Force chief master sergeant (with pre-1977 insignia) appears to be typing what he says. But sometimes it appears he just speaks, and Colossus understands. Later in the movie, Colossus arranges to have a voice output installed that sounds much like a Cylon.
To the modern eye, this looks like a rear projection screen.
Despite the opening credits full of circuit boards and paper tape readers, there isn’t much blatant display of computer technology outside of the monitors, the zipper, and some blinking lights. We see even less of Guardian. Maybe the most fantastic technology isn’t the computers at all, but the good-looking video phones that unfortunately didn’t anticipate flat-screen monitors. The oscilloscopes, too, look decidedly dated since this is presumably not set in 1970.
The displays look like rear projections of film — the same trick used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Overall, though, the depiction of Colossus isn’t bad. After all, in 1970, who could predict flat screens, huge storage, and small computers? The printer sounds could be the actual printers running, but in truth, it is more like the space noises on Star Trek — the makers knew that wasn’t accurate, but it is what the audience expected.
Spoilers
We don’t feel bad giving away the plot of a movie over a half-century old. Colossus and Guardian develop their own language which spooks the World leaders. The computers insist on reconnection, and when they don’t get their way, they both launch missiles at the other country.
Of course, the two countries have no choice but to restore the connection. The rest of the movie consists of attempts to get the upper hand against the computers. Everything failed. Unlike many similar movies, in the end, Colossus and Guardian — now a single entity calling itself “World Control” is squarely in charge, promising world peace through total control. It even suggests that man will learn to love it.
Final Thoughts
Apparently, Colossus didn’t have any surface mount components!
In 1970, most people didn’t understand computers very well. So when the President of the United States explained to the computer that he is the president and can give the computer orders, it probably didn’t seem that ridiculous. However, until recently, it seemed pretty dumb. Now, with ChatGPT and its ilk, the way they interact with the computer doesn’t seem as farfetched as it once did.
The idea of a computer keeping peace is hardly new. Star Trek, for example, has visited that well many times. What makes Colossus unique is that it and Guardian appear to have succeeded. What happens after that is left to your imagination. Or, you can read the 1974 novel,
The Fall of Colossus
which was the sequel to the original novel that sparked the movie. The author, D. F. Jones, worked with computers in Britain during World War II and undoubtedly named the computer after Colossus at Bletchley Park. Keep in mind, the existence of that Colossus was classified until the mid-1970s, so, officially, at least, it was just a coincidence. | 27 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745251",
"author": "Kurt",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T14:16:50",
"content": "One of my favorite movies. “The Andromeda Strain” and “Dr. Strangelove” are up there, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6745616",
"author":... | 1,760,371,963.575144 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/hybrid-binaries-on-windows-for-arm-arm64ec-and-arm64x-explained/ | Hybrid Binaries On Windows For ARM: ARM64EC And ARM64X Explained | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"arm64ec",
"arm64x",
"Microsoft Windows"
] | With ARM processors increasingly becoming part of the desktop ecosystem, porting code that was written for x86_64 platforms is both necessary and a massive undertaking. For many codebases a simple recompile may be all it takes, but where this is not straightforward Microsoft’s ARM64EC (for ‘Emulator Compatible’) Application Binary Interface (ABI) provides a transition path. Unlike Apple’s ‘Fat Binaries’, this features hybrid PE executables (ARM64 eXtended, or ARM64X) that run mixed ARM64EC and x86_64 binary code on Windows 11 ARM systems. An
in-depth explanation
is provided by one of the authors, [Darek Mihocka].
ARM64EC was
announced
by Microsoft on June 28, 2021 as a new feature in Windows 11 for ARM, with more recently Qualcomm
putting it forward
during the 2024 Game Developers Conference (GDC) as one reason why high-performance gaming on its Snapdragon SoCs should be much easier than often assumed. Naturally, this assumes that Windows 11 is being used, as it contains the x86_64 emulator with ARM64EC support. The major difference between plain ARMv8 and ARM64EC code is that the latter has changes on an ABI level to e.g. calling conventions that ease interoperability between emulated x86_64 and ARM64 code.
Although technologically impressive, Windows 11’s marketshare is still rather small, even before looking at Windows 11 on ARM. It’ll be interesting to see whether Qualcomm’s bravado comes to fruition, and make ARM64EC more relevant for the average software developer. | 45 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745194",
"author": "lamalas",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T11:20:08",
"content": ">Windows 11’s marketshare is still rather smallDon’t worry that will soon change. M$ deprecating Win10 will force many companies to switch to Windows 11. And with intel 12gen or later CPUs Win10 is not a ... | 1,760,371,963.428358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/automation-makes-traditional-japanese-wood-finishing-easier/ | Automation Makes Traditional Japanese Wood Finishing Easier | Dan Maloney | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"fence",
"propane",
"wood",
"wood finish",
"woodburning",
"Yakisugi"
] | Unless you move in architectural circles, you might never have heard of Yakisugi
.
But as a fence builder, [Lucas] over at Cranktown City sure has, with high-end clients requesting the traditional Japanese wood-finishing method, which requires the outer surface of the wood to be lightly charred. It’s a fantastic look, but it’s a pain to do manually. So,
why not automate it
?
Now, before we get into a whole thing here, [Lucas] himself notes that what he’s doing isn’t strictly Yakisugi. That would require the use of cypress wood, and charring only one side, neither of which would work for his fence clients. Rather, he’s using regular dimensional lumber which is probably Douglas fir. But the look he’s going for is close enough to traditional Yakisugi that the difference is academic.
To automate the process of burning the wood and subsequently brushing off the loose char, [Lucas] designed a double-barreled propane burner and placed it inside a roughly elliptical chamber big enough to pass a 2×8 — sorry, metric fans; we have no idea how you do dimensional lumber. The board rides through the chamber on a DIY conveyor track, with flame swirling around both sides of the board for an even char. After that, a pair of counter-rotating brushes abrade off the top layer of char, revealing a beautiful, dark finish with swirls of dark grain on a lighter background.
[Lucas] doesn’t mention how much wood he’s able to process with this setup, but it seems a lot easier than the manual equivalent, and likely yields better results. Either way, the results are fantastic, and we suspect once people see his work he’ll be getting more than enough jobs to justify the investment. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745177",
"author": "Kenny",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T08:55:07",
"content": "The way we do dimensional lumber is very surprising: we take the dimensions in millimeters. There are no other steps.2×8 only measures 1.5″ by 7.25″, so that’s 38×184. Our standard sizes differ of course, b... | 1,760,371,963.343567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/27/webserver-runs-on-android-phone/ | Webserver Runs On Android Phone | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"apache",
"linux",
"phone",
"server",
"smartphone",
"ssh",
"Termux",
"webserver"
] | Android, the popular mobile phone OS, is essentially just Linux with a nice user interface layer covering it all up. In theory, it should be able to do anything a normal computer running Linux could do. And, since most web servers in the world are running Linux, [PelleMannen] figured his Android phone could run a web server just as well as any other Linux machine and
built this webpage that’s currently running on a smartphone
, with an additional
Reddit post
for a little more discussion.
The phone uses Termux (
which we’ve written about briefly before
) to get to a Bash shell on the Android system. Before that happens, though, some setup needs to take place largely involving installing F-Droid through which Termux can be installed. From there the standard SSH and Apache servers can be installed as if the phone were running a normal Linux The rest of the installation involves tricking the phone into thinking it’s a full-fledged computer including a number of considerations to keep the phone from halting execution when the screen locks and other phone-specific issues.
With everything up and running, [PelleMannen] reports that it runs surprisingly well with the small ARM system outputting almost no heat. Since the project page is being hosted on this phone we can’t guarantee that the link above works, though, and it might get a few too many requests to stay online. We wish it were a little easier to get our pocket-sized computers to behave in similar ways to our regular laptops and PCs (even if they don’t have quite the same amount of power) but if you’re dead-set on repurposing an old phone
we’ve also seen them used to great effect in place of a Raspberry Pi
. | 37 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745165",
"author": "Thorsten",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T05:55:04",
"content": "Why not? Any smartphone outperforms some vCPU single core systems. Having a stable public IP and enough Network Traffic budget is more an issue if a real mobile connection is used.For me the page worked ... | 1,760,371,963.653754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/27/retrotechtacular-tops-runs-the-1970s-british-railroad/ | Retrotechtacular: TOPS Runs The 1970s British Railroad | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"british rail",
"mainframe",
"tops"
] | How do you make the trains run on time? British Rail adopted TOPS, a computer system born of IBM’s SAGE defense project, along with work from Standford and Southern Pacific Railroad. Before TOPS, running the railroad took paper. Lots of paper, ranging from a train’s history, assignments, and all the other bits of data required to keep the trains moving. TOPS kept this data in real-time on computer screens all across the system. While British Rail wasn’t the only company to deploy TOPS, they were certainly proud of it and
produced the video
you can see below about how the system worked.
There are a lot of pictures of old big iron and the narrator says it has an “immense storage capacity.” The actual computers in question were a pair of IBM System/370 mainframes that each had 4 MB of RAM. There were also banks of 3330 disk drives that used removable disk packs of — gasp — between 100 and 200 MB per pack.
As primitive and large as those disk drives were, they pioneered many familiar-sounding technologies. For example, they used voice coils, servo tracking, MFM encoding, and error-correcting encoding.
The software was written in BAL, the IBM assembly language, although there were a set of macros called TOPSTRAN to make it slightly easier. Originally, each depot was going to get an IBM card reader and punch machine, but these proved to be unreliable in the rugged environment. Instead, each depot had an emulated card reader and punch using a Datapoint 2200 — the famous computer that didn’t use the Intel 8008, but that
CPU was made for use
in this computer.
In the video, you can see some Datapoint 2200s and card readers in use back at the data center. They even take the cover off one of the Datapoints around the 3-minute mark. The machines had 12K of RAM (on three circuit cards) and two tape drives. Around the 24-minute mark you get a look at a 600 baud, although the railroad apparently only used 200 baud for reliability. They also show a 2,400 baud modem that, we are pretty sure, had to be tuned before use.
The video can’t seem to decide if it is for general audiences or technical people. For example, it describes the tones from the modem and shows block diagrams of many of the systems. There are even some fake oscilloscope traces of modem outputs.
As far as we can tell, some of TOPS is still in use today. We hope some of it has been modernized, though. If you like 1970s mainframes, we’ll go ahead and
waste the rest of your day
. No
kidding
. The video doesn’t embed, but you can play it by clicking
the picture below
. | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6745152",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T03:01:33",
"content": "Ah, yes, the well-known British Railroad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6745154",
"author": "wrzwicky",
"timestamp": "2024-03-28T0... | 1,760,371,963.506212 |
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