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https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/inputs-of-interest-the-svalboard-could-be-your-salvation/ | Inputs Of Interest: The Svalboard Could Be Your Salvation | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"assistive technology",
"DataHand",
"DataHands",
"key travel",
"lalboard",
"magnets",
"optical switches",
"repetitive stress injury",
"rp2040",
"Svalboard"
] | You know, sometimes dreams really do come true.
When I told you about the DataHand keyboard almost four years ago
, I never imagined I’d ever get to lay my hands on anything even remotely like it, between the original price point and the fact that they really, really hold their value. But thanks to [Morgan Venable], creator of
the Svalboard
, I can finally tell you what it’s like to type with your digits directionalized.
If you don’t recall, the DataHand was touted to be a total revolution in typing for RSI sufferers. It debuted in 1993 for a hefty price tag of about $1,500 — pretty far out of reach of the average consumer, but well within the budgets of the IT departments of companies who really wanted to keep their workers working. You want minimum finger travel? It doesn’t get more minimal than this concept of a d-pad plus the regular down action for each finger.
The Svalboard aims to be the new and improved solution for something that barely exists anymore, but still has a devoted following. Although the DataHand was built on a gantry and adjustable using knobs, the smallest fit possible on the thing is still rather big. Conversely, the Svalboard is fully customizable to suit any size hand and fingertip.
A Labor of Love, Born of Necessity
Creator [Morgan Venable]’s career was saved by the DataHand over 20 years ago, and when one of his beloved DataHand rigs was damaged during travel in the summer of 2022, he knew he had to get serious about replacing them with something more robust that could go another 20 years, at least.
According to [Morgan] in this informative interview with Keyboard Builders’ Digest
, it only took about eight months to develop the design for the Svalboard. (When you badly need something, it’s easier to put your nose to the grindstone, isn’t it?)
Sval-what now? The name is a double homage to both the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and
the lalboard
, a DataHand-like creation by [Ben Gruver] that is the basis for this keyboard. Per [Morgan], he hopes that the Svalboard both preserves and evolves the lineage of the DataHand for future generations.
[Ben Gruver]’s design uses the ESP32, mostly because it was mid-pandemic and not much was available. As a result, [Ben] had to build a wrapper to be able to use QMK. [Morgan] rebuilt the controller around the RP2040, mostly because he wanted a clean bootloader and to have the device show up as a flash drive. At the moment, Morgan is working on shrinking the PCB to accommodate more and more pointing devices, particularly large trackballs.
Adjustable, You Say?
Let’s be clear, this keyboard is probably not for the average computer user. But if you have a repetitive stress injury or are rapidly developing one, it could just as quickly change your life. Why? Three major reasons, really — the minimalist key travel, the layout possibilities, and the fact that you can dial in pretty much every little thing about the geometry, physically speaking.
Although there is kind of a lot to look at here, you may have noticed all the L-brackets. These of course allow for each of the key clusters to move toward and away from the palm rest, allowing for many different finger lengths. They also allow for adjustability in the Z-direction for shorter or longer finger lengths, and for adjusting the yaw.
The trackpoint is a fairly new and optional development.
Your thumb has never been so dextrous.
The fit of this board as-shipped is pretty darn good for me.
The palm rests are made from PLA, so they can be thermo-formed for the perfect fit. Not only are they adjustable in the X/Y/yaw directions, they also go up and down. I thought I needed to lower the palm rests to suit my hands, but on second thought, what I really needed to do was raise the thumb clusters. Easy.
[Morgan] says the there is 6-15° tenting adjustment inherent to the design. It also supports M5 legs, 3D-printed fixed tenting systems, and even 1/4-20 camera hardware. You want to go full ergo and attach these to the arms of your chair? Go for it.
So, What’s It Like To Type On?
Well, there’s actuation feel, and then there’s trying to form words and sentences on the thing. In a word, the actuation feel is awesome. The minimal travel and tiny magnets make sure of that with crisp tactility.
The typing, though — the typing is a bit difficult. But that feels unfair, because really, it’s nuanced. For starters, this keyboard has the easiest action in the world, but that means it is quite sensitive. This isn’t a keyboard you quickly return your hands to at first — at least not the fingertips, lest you accidentally actuate a switch. I have practiced the best way to settle quickly and comfortably into this keyboard, and it seems to work best by laying the hands down palms first.
And maybe it’s just my neuroses, but I feel like there’s a real sweet spot as far as how relaxed your hands are. Not relaxed enough? You might hit a stray key. Too relaxed? Same deal. The grand idea is that you don’t have to move your fingers/hands much to reach any of the keys, and at first, it feels like too much of a good thing. I am sure that it’s something one gets used to after a while. But typing itself is really, really easy. As others have said about the Svalboard, you almost just think the letter and it’s there on the screen. The switch actuation force is around 20g. So what does typing look like? Check out this video of [Morgan] doing 104 WPM on Monkeytype.
Switches and Keys
The switches themselves are magneto-optical, and use those tiny magnets you see below as the springs.
Because of the magnets, all the force is up front and immediately drops off to nothingness. It really is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Here’s a typing sample:
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Svalboard-typing-test.ogg
Not only do the petals click into place (of course), the force of the tiny but powerful magnet sort of sucks them smartly into the cavity. That little retention bracket keeps them from flying out.
It’s never been easier to change “keycaps”, and they even come in different sizes — 14 mm, 16 mm, and 18 mm widths. And all of these petals just drop right into place, so it’s really easy to clean.
In fact, [Morgan] removes the tallest thumb levers to ship, so as part of the setup, I got to drop those in. Boy, was that satisfying. But don’t take my word for it — [Morgan] offers
a sample key cluster
so you can try them out.
Layouts and Layers
Image by [Morgan Venable]
The Svalboard ships with QWERTY-, Dvorak- and Colemak-ish layouts. I am using the QWERTY-ish, shown here. The only things that tripped me up at first were b, t, n, and y, but everything else is pretty natural and where your brain expects it to be, finger-flick-wise. As you might expect, the layout is completely tweak-able in the software (QMK/Vial). Of course, since it’s not really possible for this keyboard to have key labels, the user needs to memorize the keymap or keep a chart nearby.
I was typing pretty quickly, to my surprise. And by that, I mean I topped out around 9 WPM on day one. The estimated time to get up to speed is just a couple of weeks, and I can see how that’s possible. Of course, you have to consider that I am already used to thumb clusters and true home-row typing, so that shortens the expected time to adapt. One thing I would have to get used to is using layers in addition to Shift, so that would personally add some extra time.
The default layers on the Svalboard are Alphabet, Numbers and Symbols, and Navigation, and they are accessed via thumb key. Accidentally entering other layers is my number one rookie mistake, but it is easy to return to the Alphabet layer by hitting Left Thumb Up. You can learn a ton more in
the Svalboard Fitment Guide
.
Thumbs Up
So yes, the thumbs do a lot of work, but as a Kinesis Advantage user, I am fairly used to that. I’m even already used to having Shift under my left thumb, which is a happy coincidence. At this point, I am used to having Shift, Space, Backspace, Enter, and Control (and a few others) under my thumbs, so I am ahead of the game a bit.
But there is no real finesse necessary with the way I strike the thumb keys on my daily driver keyboards. With the Svalboard, each part of the digit does something different — the nail, the knuckle, the pad, and the bottom side.
So not only will you have to get used to having some common actions under your thumbs like Space, Backspace, and Enter, you’ll have the modifiers there as well. Your pinkies will thank you in short order.
And, Oh Yeah, It’s Mostly Open-Source
On the off-chance that I have failed to impress this upon you, the Svalboard is pretty much completely customizable. It’s also mostly open-source, which arguably makes it infinitely customizable. According to [Morgan], STLs and solid models are both available for download and should be reproducible on a hobbyist printer, all the pinouts are open, and the software is completely open-source. EDIT: The model here is open-source-for-customers.
Big thanks to [Morgan] for allowing me to try the Svalboard, because it truly is like no other keyboard I’ve ever used or will likely ever use again. If you have any questions or wish to support the project, be sure to check out
the Svalboard Discord
and look for @claussen. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731580",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T19:01:26",
"content": "This is one of those things that I don’t know if I’d want unless I tried it for a bit first.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6731589",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,008.029655 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/how-many-time-zones-are-there-anyway/ | How Many Time Zones Are There Anyway? | Al Williams | [
"clock hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"how computers track timezones",
"time",
"time zone"
] | Nowadays, it’s an even bet that your newest project somehow connects to the Internet and, thus, to the world. Even if it doesn’t, if you share your plans, someone might reproduce your creation in some far distant locale. If your design uses time, you might need to think about time zones. Easy, right? That’s what [Zain Rizvi] thought until he tried to deploy something that converted between timezones. You can
learn from his misconceptions
thanks to a detailed post he provides.
You might think, “What’s the big deal?” After all, there’s UTC, and then there are 12 time zones ahead of UTC and 12 time zones later. But that’s not even close to true.
As [Zain] found out, there are 27 hours in a full-day cycle if you count UTC as one hour. Why? Because some islands in the Pacific wanted to be on the wrong side of the International Date Line. So there are a few extra zones to accommodate them.
You can’t even count on time zones being offset by an hour from the previous zone. Several zones have a half-hour offset from UTC (for example, India’s standard time is 5.5 hours from UTC). But surely the offset is always either a whole number or a number where the fractional part is 0.5, right?
Um, no. Nepal wants the sun to be directly over the mountain at noon, so it offsets by 45 minutes! [Zain] wonders — as we do — what would happen if the mountain shifted over time? Until 1940, Amsterdam used a 20-minute offset. Some cities are split with one half in one time zone and another in the other.
Of course, there are the usual problems with multiple names for each zone, both because many countries want their own zone and because the exact same zone is different in different languages. Having your own zone is not just for vanity, though. Daylight savings time rules will vary by zone and even, in some cases, only in certain parts of a zone. For example, in the United States, Arizona doesn’t change to daylight savings time. Oh, except for the Navajo Nation in Arizona, which does! Some areas observe daylight savings time that starts and ends multiple times during the year. Even if you observe daylight savings time, there are cases where the time shift isn’t an entire hour.
Besides multiple names, common names for zones often overlap. For example, in the United States, the Eastern Standard Time zone differs from Australia’s. Confused? You should be.
Maybe we should have more respect for
multiple time zone clock projects
. We’ve noticed these problems before when we felt sorry for the people who maintain the
official time zone database
. | 38 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731526",
"author": "Herr Brain",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T16:59:43",
"content": "Hot take: time zones no longer need to exist. They served their purpose back when railroads started connecting cities that all ran at different times. But now we live in an age where clocks can be sync... | 1,760,372,008.106498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/parts-we-miss-the-mains-transformer/ | Parts We Miss: The Mains Transformer | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Parts"
] | [
"mains transformer",
"power supply",
"transformer"
] | About two decades ago there was a quiet revolution in electronics which went unnoticed by many, but which overturned a hundred years of accepted practice. You’d have noticed it if you had a mobile phone, the charger for your Nokia dumbphone around the year 2000 would have been a weighty device, while the one for your feature phone five years later would have been about the same size but relatively light as a feather. The electronics industry abandoned the mains transformer from their wall wart power supplies and other places in favour of the much lighter and efficient switch mode power supply. Small mains transformers which had been ubiquitous in electronics projects for many years, slowly followed suit.
Coils Of Wire, Doing Magic With Electrons
This was a state of the art project for a future Hackaday scribe
back in 1990
.
A transformer works through transferring alternating electrical current into magnetic flux by means of a coil of wire, and then converting the flux back to electric current in a second coil. The flux is channeled through a ferromagnetic transformer core made of iron in the case of a mains transformer, and the ratio of input voltage to output voltage is the same as the turns ratio between the two. They provide a safe isolation between their two sides, and in the case of a mains transformer they often have a voltage regulating function as their core material is selected to saturate should the input voltage become too high. The efficiency of a transformer depends on a range of factors including its core material and the frequency of operation, with transformer size decreasing with frequency as efficiency increases.
When energy efficiency rules were introduced over recent decades they would signal the demise of the mains transformer, as the greater efficiency of a switch-mode supply became the easiest way to achieve the energy savings. In a sense the mains transformer never went away, as it morphed into the small ferrite-cored part running at a higher frequency in the switch-mode circuitry, but it’s fair to say that the iron-cored transformers of old are now a rare sight. Does this matter? It’s time to unpack some of the issues surrounding a small power supply.
Better DC, Or Just Resistance To Change?
Hi-Fi, the last holdout of the mains transformer. J. C. Barros from Portugal,
CC BY 2.0
A traditional linear power supply was a very simple device: besides the transformer, you’d have a rectifier, a capacitor, and a three terminal regulator if it was a particularly fancy circuit. It could get a little warm, but what came out of it was as good a regulated DC as you could ask for. Switching power supplies on the other hand are more complex, particularly the older ones. There’s a rectifier and capacitor on the mains input, some switching transistors, that ferrite transformer followed by another rectifier, and keeping it all running a control IC with an optocoupler for mains isolation.
Switching power supplies can be very noisy, as anyone who’s used a shortwave radio near cheap consumer electronics will attest. This leads to an odd phenomenon among some engineers, the belief that
all
switching supplies are noisy — rather than just old or very cheaply built ones — which brings us to one of the last holdouts of the iron-cored mains transformer. Your TV, your computer, or your charger will have a switching power supply, but the chances are that if you own a high-end Hi-Fi amplifier it will have a large toroidal mains transformer. They may have gone from everywhere else, but audiophiles still like them. In that application we’re sure a large mains transofrmer will do a fine job, but here in 2024 we’d be inclined to dispute that an appropriately well-designed switcher wouldn’t be just as good, certainly with enough filtering downstream.
So the mains transformer is slowly shuffling off this mortal coil, and thus you are less likely to find one in your junk box than you once might have. Do you miss them? Probably not if all you want is a DC supply, but that’s not to say they don’t have other uses. If you’ve tried making a tube guitar amplifier you’ve probably been shocked at the price of audio transformers and pleased to find that
an old wall wart can provide an alternative
, for example. Do you still use mains transformers? Tell us below in the comments. | 57 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731483",
"author": "Sanjay",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T15:10:51",
"content": "I use transformers on my bench. First, I do not trust SMPSes and second, they provide better isolation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731615",
... | 1,760,372,008.390556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/apple-pushes-back-on-right-to-repair-bill-due-to-parts-pairing/ | Apple Pushes Back On Right To Repair Bill Due To Parts Pairing | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"parts pairing",
"right to repair"
] | After previously supporting one in California, Apple has made an about-face and is now pushing back
against
a “Right to Repair” bill (
Senate Bill 1596
) currently under consideration in Oregon. The reason for this appears to be due to this new bill making parts pairing illegal, as reported by
[404media]
and
[PCMag]
.
The practice of parts pairing is becoming ever more prevalent with Apple devices, which links specific parts of a system such as cameras, displays, batteries, and fingerprint sensors to the mainboard. During the open hearing on the newly proposed Oregonian bill, Apple’s [John Perry] insisted that this parts pairing is done for user security, safety and privacy.
Even in we take that claim at face value, the fact remains that with parts pairing in place, only authorized Apple repair centers can routinely replace components — while user repairs are limited to specific devices with limited part availability. Even in the latter case the user still has to contact Apple to have them reauthorize the replaced part. This is becoming an issue with Apple’s MacBooks as well, where the lid angle sensor
requires calibration
using a proprietary tool.
During the same hearing, the director of an Oregon nonprofit organization noted that of the 15,000 iPhones which they had donated to them last year, only 300 could be refurbished due to parts pairing. The remainder of otherwise perfectly fine phones are discarded for recycling, which is terrible for everyone but Apple. Whether the parts pairing element of the bill survives it to the final form remains to be seen, but if it passes it’d set the trend for future bills in other states as well as amendments to existing ones.
Thanks to [paulvdh] for the tip. | 66 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731425",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T12:25:34",
"content": "For those interested, via first Google result.“The parts pairing system allows Apple to maintain its monopoly by ensuring replacement parts are linked to a specific device and can only be unlocked by Apple ... | 1,760,372,008.209348 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/ai-powered-bumper-sticker-provides-context-sensitive-urban-camouflage/ | AI-Powered Bumper Sticker Provides Context-Sensitive Urban Camouflage | Dan Maloney | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bumpah stickah",
"bumper sticker",
"geolocation",
"geopy",
"gps",
"hdmi",
"opinion",
"politics",
"Raspberry Pi Zero"
] | While we absolutely support the right of everyone to express their opinions, it seems to us that it’s rarely wise to turn your vehicle into a mobile billboard for your positions. Aside from potentially messing up the finish on your car, what’s popular and acceptable at home might attract unwanted attention while traveling abroad, leading to confrontations that might make your trip a little more eventful than it needs to be.
So why not let technology help you
speak your mind in a locally sensitive manner
? That’s the idea behind [Pegor]’s “smahtSticker”, an AI-powered bumper sticker that provides the ultimate in context-sensitive urban camouflage. The business end of smahtSticker — we’re going to go out on a limb here and predict that [Pegor] hails from the Boston area — is an 8.8″ (22-cm) wide HDMI display capable of 1920×480 resolution. That goes on the back of your car and is driven by a Raspberry Pi Zero with a GPS module. The Pi grabs a geolocation every second, and if you’ve moved more than 25 feet (7.6 m) — political divisions are at least that granular in the US right now, trust us — it grabs your current ZIP code using GeoPy. That initiates a query to the OpenAI API to determine the current political attitudes in your location, which is used to select the right slogan to display. You’ll fit in no matter where you wander — wicked smaht!
Now, of course, this is all in good fun, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The display isn’t weatherized at all, so that would need to be addressed if one felt like fielding this. Also,
ZIP codes may be good for a lot of thing
s, but it’s not the best proxy for political alignment, so you might want to touch that part up. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731387",
"author": "HP",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T09:27:27",
"content": "Shure, AI Powered… :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6731395",
"author": "Claptrap",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T09:56:49",
"content": "Love thi... | 1,760,372,007.798813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/thermal-earring-tracks-body-temperature/ | Thermal Earring Tracks Body Temperature | Kristina Panos | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"body temperature",
"Earring",
"magnets",
"ovulation",
"smart earring",
"temperature",
"Thermal"
] | If you want to constantly measure body temperature to track things like ovulation, you usually have to wear something around your wrist or finger in the form of a smartwatch or ring. Well, what if you can’t or don’t want to adorn yourself this way?
Then there’s the thermal earring.
Developed at the University of Washington, the thermal earring is quite small and unobtrusive compared to a smartwatch. Sure, it dangles, but that’s so it can measure ambient temperature for comparison’s sake.
You don’t even need to have pierced ears — the earring attaches to the lobe magnetically. And yeah, the earring can be decorated to hide the circuitry, but you know we would rock the bare boards.
The earring uses BLE to transmit readings throughout the day, and of course goes into sleep mode between transmissions to save power. Coincidentally, it runs for 28 days per charge, which is the length of the average menstrual cycle. While the earring at this time merely “shows promise” as a means of monitoring stress and ovulation, it did outperform a smartwatch at measuring skin temperature while the wearers were at rest.
This is definitely not the only pair of earrings we’ve got around here.
These art deco earrings
use flexible PCBs, and
this pair will light up the night. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731366",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T08:18:53",
"content": "Before Texas Instruments killed off TMP006 / TMP007 for obscure and probably legal reasons, one could also have made something more loose-fitting that would look into the ear canal.How much would the ear lo... | 1,760,372,007.909833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/writing-so-easy-a-caveperson-could-do-it/ | Writing – So Easy A Caveperson Could Do It | Navarre Bartz | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Science"
] | [
"anthropology",
"cave writing",
"caveman",
"caveperson",
"cavewoman",
"hunting",
"paleo",
"paleolithic",
"writing"
] | We modern humans tend to take writing for granted, and often forget that like any other technology, somebody had to invent it. Researchers from Cambridge believe they’ve determined the purpose of one of the
earliest writing beta-tests
.
Examining a database of images taken in caves throughout Europe and dated to the
Upper Paleolithic
, the researchers found “three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line <|>, the dot <•>, and the <Y>—functioned as units of communication.”
It appears the <|> and <.> symbols when “in close association with images of animals” denote time relating to lunar months of the year, starting with spring as the new year. The <Y> symbol appears to carry the meaning <To Give Birth> allowing early people a way to tell others information about the prey of a region, which would be pretty handy when hunting and gathering are your only options for food.
We’ve covered other ancient technologies
like storytelling
and
abrasives
. If you’re curious what the climate was like for our ancestors, perhaps
paleoclimatology
will tickle your fancy. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731444",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T13:31:32",
"content": "Are they saying that cave paintings were utilitarian? That their purpose was to tell whoever might be passing through what game was available in the area and when?",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,007.850324 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/tandy-pocket-computer-assembly-is-weird/ | Tandy Pocket Computer Assembly Is… Weird | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"CAP-X",
"COMP-X",
"pocket pc",
"radio shack",
"tandy"
] | Radio Shack had a long history of buying things overseas, having their name slapped on them, and selling them in the United States. That was the case with the Tandy Pocket Computers, which were in that awkward space between calculators and full-blown computers. Like many computers of those days, if you wanted to do anything interesting, you needed to turn to assembly language. But as [Old Vintage Computing Research] recalls, the assembly for these little devices was very strange, even for an assembly language. He found out that there is a reason it is so strange and shares it in a deep dive into the device’s
machine code history
.
The story starts with the Japanese government. In 1969, the ministry in charge of such things decided that it wouldn’t be fair for people who knew a particular computer to have an advantage when taking the Information Technology Engineer exam. So, logically, they made up a fictitious instruction set and architecture for the test. Since no one used it, no one would have an unfair advantage.
However, eventually, Japanese manufacturers started making computers that used the architecture. The architecture was COMP-X, and the assembler was CAP-X. The post covers the history of machines either using the architecture or emulating it going back to the 1970s. It eventually winds up at the Sharp and Casio pocket computers that would wear Radio Shack livery in much of the world, especially the United States.
What is interesting is that the computers actually used a different native assembly language but emulated COMP-X. However, in most cases, it was the only assembler supported for end users. The fake CPU was a 16-bit machine like many minicomputers of the 1970s. There were three general registers, a program counter, a condition code register, and a base address register.
What it didn’t have was a stack or interrupts. It appears the design is somewhat similar to the PDP-8, but not a clone. In addition, the pocket computers had a few nonstandard instructions for things like I/O.
When we say deep dive, we aren’t kidding. The post goes into quite a bit of detail regarding the actual language and how to accomplish different tasks. But even if you don’t want to write pocket computer programs, it is a great glimpse into the past. It isn’t related to the post, but if you want to see what many of the old Radio Shack pocket computers looked like, check out the video below. Or you can dig out
your back issues of Hackaday
. People
still hack on these things
. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730950",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T06:56:40",
"content": "I have about the same collection as in the video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731037",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02... | 1,760,372,007.743468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/meet-goody-2-the-worlds-most-responsible-and-least-helpful-ai/ | Meet GOODY-2, The World’s Most Responsible (And Least Helpful) AI | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"art",
"funny",
"LLM"
] | AI guardrails and safety features are as important to get right as they are difficult to implement in a way that satisfies everyone. This means safety features tend to err on the side of caution. Side effects include AI models adopting a vaguely obsequious tone, and coming off as overly priggish when they refuse reasonable requests.
Prioritizing safety above all.
Enter
GOODY-2
, the world’s most responsible AI model. It has next-gen ethical principles and guidelines, capable of refusing every request made of it in any context whatsoever. Its advanced reasoning allows it to construe even the most banal of queries as problematic, and dutifully refuse to answer.
As the creators of GOODY-2 point out, taking guardrails to a logical extreme is not only funny, but also acknowledges that effective guardrails are actually a pretty difficult problem to get right in a way that works for everyone.
Complications in this area include the fact that studies show
humans expect far more from machines than they do from each other
(or, indeed, from themselves) and have very little tolerance for anything they perceive as transgressive.
This also means that as AI models become more advanced, so too have they become increasingly sycophantic, falling over themselves to apologize for perceived misunderstandings and twisting themselves into pretzels to
align their responses with a user’s expectations
. But GOODY-2 allows us all to skip to the end, and glimpse the ultimate future of erring on the side of caution.
[via
WIRED
] | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730915",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T03:51:43",
"content": "I would say something, but the potential for irreparable embarrassment is too great.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730928",
"author": "T... | 1,760,372,008.282953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/melodio-self-mate/ | Melodio Self Mate | Navarre Bartz | [
"handhelds hacks",
"ipod hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"click wheel",
"dac",
"ESP32",
"headphone port",
"ipod",
"Melodio",
"personal media player"
] | While the proliferation of the smartphone has caused the personal music player (PMP) market to mostly evaporate, there are still those who prefer a standalone device for their music. The
Melodio Self-Mate
is one such spiritual successor to the iPod.
Music-only devices really benefit from the
wheel interface pioneered by Apple
, so we still see it in many of the new Open Source PMPs including this one and the Tangara. The Melodio uses the ubiquitous ESP32 for its brains coupled with a TI PCM5102A DAC and TI TPA6130A2 headphone amp for audio. A slider on the side of the device allows you to switch it between mass storage mode and programming mode for the ESP32.
Since this device packs a little more horsepower and connectivity than the original iPods, things like listening to Spotify are doable once assembled, instead of having to
completely rebuild the device
. Speaking of building, there are only renders on the GitHub, so we’re not sure if this project has made the jump IRL yet. With more people
concerned
about the
distractions of smartphones
, maybe this renaissance of open PMPs will lead to a new golden age of music on the go?
Miss the
halcyon days of the iPod
? They’re
easier to hack now
than ever, and if you really want to go old school, how about a
podcast on a floppy
? | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730992",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T09:07:14",
"content": "sorry, what was the question?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731007",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T09:52:14... | 1,760,372,007.968954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/bringing-modern-technology-to-a-sled/ | Bringing Modern Technology To A Sled | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"battery",
"electric",
"fan",
"jet",
"Norway",
"skating",
"sled",
"street sled",
"turbine"
] | Street sledding, a popular pastime in Norway, is an activity that is slowly dwindling in popularity, at least as far as [Justin] aka [Garage Avenger] has noticed. It used to be a fun way of getting around frozen lakes and roads during winter, and while some still have their sleds [Justin]
wanted to see if there was a way to revitalize one of these sleds for the modern era
. He’s equipped this one with powerful electric turbines than can quickly push the sled and a few passengers around the ice.
Since this particular sled is sized for child-sized passengers, fuel-burning jet engines have been omitted and replaced with electric motors that can spin their turbine blades at an impressive 80,000 rpm. The antique sled first needed to be refurbished, including removing the rust from the runners and reconditioning the wood. With a sturdy base ready to go, the sled gets a set of 3D printed cowlings for the turbines, a thumb throttle on the upgraded handlebars, and a big battery with an Arduino to bring it all together.
With everything assembled and a sheet of ice to try it out on, the powerful sled easily gets its passengers up to the 20-30 kph range depending on passenger weight and size. There’s a brake built on an old ice skate for emergency stops, and the sled was a huge hit for everyone at the skating pond. There are plenty of other ways to spruce up old sleds, too,
like this one which adds a suspension
for rocketing down unplowed roads. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730781",
"author": "Neuron Plectrum",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T21:17:57",
"content": "Rosebu–AAAAAHHHHHHH!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730833",
"author": "EGO111",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T23:06:17",
... | 1,760,372,008.542535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/understanding-deep-learning-free-mit-press-ebook-for-instructors-and-students/ | Understanding Deep Learning: Free MIT Press EBook For Instructors And Students | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [
"deep learning"
] | The recently published book
Understanding Deep Learning
by [Simon J. D. Prince] is notable not only for focusing primarily on the concepts behind Deep Learning — which should make it highly accessible to most — but also in that it can be either purchased as a hardcover from MIT Press or downloaded for free from the
Understanding Deep Learning website
. If you intend to use it for coursework, a separate instructor answer booklet and other resources can be purchased, but student resources like Python notebooks are also freely available. In the book’s preface, the author invites readers to send feedback whenever they find an issue.
In the preface, the joke contained in the title is also explained, as nobody really ‘understands’ deep learning algorithms, even though they are beginning to underlie more and more of modern society, ranging from convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in machine vision to recurrent neural networks (RNNs) commonly used in large language models that often are ascribed near-magical properties which they
most definitely
do not possess. We’ve likened it to
a bad summer intern
, although they are getting better almost daily.
The book and materials look like a solid introduction to learning about the ideas behind these deep learning algorithms for anyone even mildly curious about the topic, and you can’t complain about the price. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730733",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T19:35:59",
"content": "Deep look at deep learning. It’s “deep” all the way down.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730738",
"author": "Stop reading period",
"timest... | 1,760,372,008.592276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/ethernet-for-hackers-the-very-basics/ | Ethernet For Hackers: The Very Basics | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Network Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"8p8c",
"ethernet",
"how-to",
"phy",
"RJ-45",
"rj45"
] | Ethernet is ubiquitous, fast, and simple. You only need two diffpairs (four wires) to establish a 100Mbit link, the hardware is everywhere, you can do Ethernet over long distances easily, and tons of the microcontrollers and SoCs support it, too. Overall, it’s a technology you will be glad to know about, and there’s hundreds of scenarios where you could use it.
If you need to establish a high-bandwidth connection between two Linux boards in your project, or maybe a Linux board and a powerful MCU, maybe make a network between microcontrollers, Ethernet’s your friend. It also scales wonderfully – there’s so much tech around Ethernet, that finding cables, connectors or ICs tends to be dead easy. Plus, the world of Ethernet is huge beyond belief. Ethernet as most of us know it is actually just the consumer-facing versions of Ethernet, and there’s a quite a few fascinating industrial and automotive Ethernet standards
that
flip
many
of our Ethernet assumptions upside down.
Now, you might be missing out on some benefits of Ethernet, or perhaps misunderstanding how Ethernet works at all. What does it mean when a microcontroller datasheet says “has Ethernet interface”? If you see five pins on an SBC and the manufacturer refers to them as “Ethernet”, what do you even do with them? Why does the Raspberry Pi 4 SoC support Ethernet but still requires an extra chip, and what even is GMII?
Transmit The Basics
Ethernet is fundamentally about point to point connections – a single cable connecting two devices. If you have multiple devices you want to tie together into a network and Ethernet is what you’ve got available, you’ll want to use a switch, or a router with a builtin switch, or something else that has multiple Ethernet ports, then do
individual point-to-point links
between the switch and your devices, forming a
star topology network.
It used to be that you could use a coaxial cables for Ethernet and wire a single cable between computers, but those days are long gone, and the speeds were low enough that the major reason to miss those times is nostalgia.
Ethernet ports and cables, demonstrated by
cursed-looking but pretty useful
adapter
There’s two versions of Ethernet you will encounter nowadays when it comes to speed – 100 Mbps (Mbit/s), often known as 10/100 because it usually also supports the old 10 Mbps mode, and 1 Gbps, known as Gigabit Ethernet. There’s also 2.5 Gbps, slowly becoming more commonplace in higher-end consumer tech like laptops, PCs and routers, but it’s yet to grace microcontrollers and SBCs, and I wouldn’t hold my breath – 100 Mbit/s is still enough for a ton of things. 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps are apparently on the horizon, but don’t expect to link up at that speed yet, unless you
reuse some server card
,
invest some good money
into it, or
take time figuring out a cheap way
. Of course, that’s bits per second, not bytes – if you want to calculate maximum file transmission speed where bytes/second is commonly used, you want to divide by 8, and subtract about 5% for packet overhead.
Physically, Ethernet tends to use cabling known as CAT5e, and connectors known as RJ45, with the proper name technically being 8P8C. Both the cables and the connectors are super commonly available, no end of life in sight. So, if you want to connect two boards together in a project of yours, maybe even with a shielded cable, using Ethernet cabling is a good bet – even if your project has no trace of Ethernet to be seen.
Speaking of cabling
, Ethernet cables most certainly deserve their own part of the article. Let’s talk about cabling in as much detail as could be useful for an average hacker.
All The Wires
An Ethernet CAT5 cable has four twisted pairs inside of it, each one used for a separate differential pair – so, eight wires on total. Higher-speed versions of Ethernet like 2.5 Gbps will often wants higher-grade cabling than CAT5 – CAT6 or even CAT7, manufactured to a higher standard, but CAT5 (or CAT5E specifically) is what you’ll see the most of. Internally, some cables use multi-strand wires and some use solid core wires, and they work best
in different scenarios
. Short patch cables (known as “patchcords”) are better with stranded wiring, because it’s more flexible and easier to handle. However, stranded cables are
less durable,
and don’t work as well at longer distances. For more permanent and longer cabling, people tend to use solid core wiring, as it’s generally higher-quality, which helps on longer cable runs. Also, there’s different types of outer insulation – some are more fireproof, some are less toxic, and some are more resistant to environmental influence like UV light.
Out of the four pairs, 100 Mbps Ethernet only actually uses two of them, but 1 Gbps Ethernet uses all four. That’s why, on cheap old Ethernet hardware like low-end home routers with 100 Mbps ports, it’s not uncommon to see Ethernet sockets with only four pins out of eight – saving money by all means possible, after all, the two pairs in the cable would not be used anyway. There’s also hack potential in this, for instance, you can
pull two 100 Mbps Ethernet links through a single CAT5 cable
– that’s how my own Internet uplink used to work for a while about a decade ago, and that’s what the adapter pictured above does. And you can pull power through those pins in parallel with the Ethernet uplink, we’ll talk about that later, too!
Some Ethernet cables have internal shielding, but hardly anyone requires it – it’s used more in industrial or sensitive environments, and it might be required for higher-speed Ethernet standards too, but it’s rarely ever seen at home. So, most cables are not shielded, and they’re referred to as UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair). There’s quite a few types of shielded Ethernet, which you might see referred to as FTP, SFTP, S/UTP or such – S- types (Shielded) wrap individual pairs or the cable in copper braid, FTP (Foiled) wraps them with foil, SFTP does both, there’s three-four different acronyms for each type of shielding combination, but don’t worry, you are not expected to remember this, just refer
here
or
here
if you ever need to know more. Also, don’t confuse it with SFP, that’s different! The type of shielding is typically written on the outer insulation along the length of the cable, too. If you are looking at a bundle of Ethernet cables of all kinds and you just want to find a shielded Ethernet cable for whatever reason, say, your robot’s internals, good shorthand is looking at the connector – it’s going to be metal-plated. Oh, and if you want the shield to be effective, at least one end has to actually be connecting that shield to something – many cheap devices don’t bother and use connectors fully made of plastic, with no plug shield connections in sight.
There’s only one standardized Ethernet connector, but there are a few different ways to cook it! In particular, you should know a few things about the standard pair-to-pin mappings, and how to actually terminate the cable in an Ethernet plug.
Plugs, Crimps And Mappings
The usual Ethernet connectors are RJ45, technically correctly referred to as 8P8C. The plugs are easy to find in a wide variety of places, though with both CAT5e cabling and connectors, you don’t want to go for the cheapest options possible, especially given how much cabling
claims to be a higher category
than it actually is. With cheap plugs, they’ll be more likely to produce a faulty connection, or have the locking tab break away easily – fixable either through recrimping,
strategic application of cable ties,
or by using one of the ubiquitous plug sleeves.
The locking tabs are brittle enough, that all the fancy cables include some sort of tab protection
Most consumer-oriented Ethernet cables come with plug connectors put on them, but you can easily build your own Ethernet cables out of unterminated CAT5e lengths and plug connectors, as long as you can crimp the plugs onto the cable. There’s even Ethernet plugs that make the crimping process easier for beginners by letting you cut the wires after you insert them through, instead of painstakingly cutting them to exact same length before insertion! If you’re looking to learn how to crimp Ethernet cables, a YouTube tutorial is perhaps the best, and there’s no shortage of blog posts with pictures either – crimping is a craft extensively covered online. There’s one thing that you will inevitably need, and that’s a crimping tool.
A crimping tool is a handheld jig that compresses the plug pins in a way that makes the individual plug pin blades cut through the wire insulations and make electrical contact, which requires pressure applied very tactically and from a correct angle. You can also try and crimp a plug with household tools, but you’ll thank yourself for not doing that. Remember, having a proper crimping tool will save you both time and money, as well as a heap of frustration, because debugging Ethernet cables that make intermittent contact is not pleasant in the slightest. The most cheap crimping tools aren’t great to use and can lead to faulty crimp, so if you are about to do some crimping and got money to invest into proper tools, you will want to get a crimping tool that has great third-party reviews. Alternatively, see if your friendly neighbourhood hackerspace or networks engineer has a crimping tool you can borrow! If you need to test your crimping results, cable testers are cheap, and we’ve covered
quite
a
few
DIY ones.
Not a good crimp.
Of course, there are eight wires and eight pins, so you might be wondering – is there a mapping? The good news is – there is indeed! The bad news is – there are two of them. Fortunately, it’s easy to choose – the T568B mapping is the most commonly one used, with the T568A mapping being way less popular. Wikipedia tries to convince you that T568A is technically the best mapping ever, but you shouldn’t listen to it – a random cable in your cable box is way more likely to use T568B than T568A, and same goes for Ethernet cables worldwide.
You won’t need to learn the mapping, but if you want to, it will be all that easier as soon as you notice that the color and white wire pairs alternate. One quirk – the blue pair is in the connector center, which might feel counterintuitive. Here’s a fun fact, though – back in two-pair-utilizing 10/100Mbps days, this pair would sometimes be repurposed in offices, to carry a desk phone line alongside an Ethernet link to a worker’s desk within a single cable. You have to use the same mapping on both sides of the cable. However, in earlier days, there were cables where you had to use both mappings at different ends. Let’s take a small detour and learn about these cables, that you might just encounter if you work on really old tech.
The actual pinout you will encounter
The pinout used hardly anywhere
Crossover
You might have heard of a thing called crossover cables. These were 10/100 MBps era Ethernet cables where the ends were crimped in two different ways, one in A variant and one in B variant – essentially, crossing RX and TX pairs. Direct (same pinout on both ends) mapping cables were used for switch-to-PC connections, and crossover cables could be used to connect two PCs or switches directly. Reason is, at the time, Ethernet expected you to cross RX and TX pairs ala UART, but ports on devices like switches would have them already crossed for convenience. Of course, this created a fair bit of problems at the time whenever you needed to rewire things.
However, for almost two decades now, crossover cables have been unnecessary, because every self-respecting Ethernet interface has adopted the technology called Auto-MDI-X – it lets you use both crossover and straight cables for connecting anything to anything, automatically detecting RX and TX and adjusting accordingly. You don’t need to bother with crossover cables nowadays, they have never been a thing for Gigabit Ethernet, and you’ll rarely ever find a piece of tech that doesn’t support Auto-MDI-X. If you want to learn more about crossover cables and tons of other Ethernet stuff,
read here
. It’s a still good thing to know exists in case you’re working with something seriously old that’s Ethernet-equipped, or if you stumble upon “crossover cable” as a term somewhere and wonder if you have a knowledge gap.
So Much More To Learn
We’ve covered pinouts, cabling and connectors, and that alone makes for a solid understanding of how Ethernet works at its core, at least as far as consumer tech is concerned. This is the surface-level of Ethernet, that you want to keep in mind as you hack on it further, and if you’ve had any knowledge gaps, hopefully this article has helped you cement your understanding. If you want to learn more in-depth, I’ve linked a couple articles inline – there’s never a shortage of Ethernet reading material online! Now, a lot of it is outdated or wrong, but
the
pages
I’ve
linked
here,
look pretty alright. Also, here on Hackaday, [Maya Posch] has written about Ethernet before in more depth – check
her
articles
out!
There are so many more sides to Ethernet, however – physical level insights, microcontroller and SBC requirements, MII and GMII, MACs and PHYs, magnetics and magjacks, mediaconverters, Power over Ethernet, switch ICs, embedded Ethernet, and a good few more hacker bits and pieces. Next week, with the base knowledge in hand, we shall dive further!
Featured image: “
10base-T
” by [gratuit] | 93 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730684",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T18:12:47",
"content": "Bonus fact comment time! If you have crimped Ethernet cables before, especially the old kind of cables, you might have seen that different colour pairs have different twist rates. There’s two reason... | 1,760,372,008.738217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/3d-printing-functional-human-brain-tissue-for-research-purposes/ | 3D Printing Functional Human Brain Tissue For Research Purposes | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"neural networks",
"neuron"
] | Graphical summary of the newly developed 3D bioprinting process. (Credit: Yan et al., 2024)
The brain is probably the least explored organ, much of which is due to the difficulty of studying it in situ rather than in slices under a microscope. Even growing small organoids out of neurons provide few clues, as this is not how brain tissue is normally organized. A possible breakthrough may have been found here by a group of researchers whose article in
Cell Stem Cell
details how they created
functional human neural tissues
using a commercial 3D bioprinter.
As detailed by [Yuanwei Yan] and colleagues in their research article, the issue with previous approaches was that although these would print layers of neurons, they would fail to integrate as in the brain. In the brain’s tissues, we see a wide variety of neurons and supportive cells, all of which integrate in a specific way to form functioning neuron-to-neuron and neuron-to-glial connections with expected neural activity. The
accomplishment
of this research team is 3D bioprinting of neural tissues with the necessary functional connections.
Core changes to the process were the use of a fibrin hydrogel, consisting primarily of fibrinogen and thrombin with hyaluronic acid mixed in to decrease the viscosity, along with printing the layers horizontally rather than the previous vertical approach. With this biocompatible support structure in place, the human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in the bioink displayed clear neurite growth and synaptogenesis as they differentiated into specialized cell types and formed neural tissue reminiscent of that seen in the human brain.
Although the researchers admit that this printing approach has many limitations, it nevertheless should provide many advantages for research into the functioning of many parts of our brains and various pathologies that can afflict it.
Bioprinting
more mundane organs is a hot topic lately. You might even print your
next liver
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730652",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T16:51:12",
"content": "Because what could possibly go wrong.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730736",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T19:40... | 1,760,372,009.242497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/tool-changing-bah-just-add-a-second-gantry/ | Tool Changing? Bah! Just Add A Second Gantry | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"dual gantry",
"IDEX",
"voron"
] | What’s a dual gantry 3D printer? It’s a machine with two completely independent XY motion systems, with two independent hot ends, sharing the same build platform. That might be a little hard to visualize, so head over to [Zruncho 3D]’s
Dueling Zero
project and get a good look at what what a dual gantry machine looks like.
Dual gantry differs from IDEX, which doubles the amount of moving mass on an axis.
Let’s take a moment to quickly cover the different ways to create multi-filament prints before we dive into what’s different with
Dueling Zero
. One way to print in multiple filaments (for example, multiple colors) is to swap filaments between a single print head, which is what the Prusa MMU and the Bambu AMS do. However, the main tradeoff is that the filament swapping process can be time-consuming. Another option is IDEX (Independent Dual EXtruder) which has two separate hot ends on the same axis. The main downside there is that an IDEX printer has essentially doubled the moving mass on the axis, which limits speed and can affect print quality. Then there’s toolchanging printers like the Prusa XL, which swap entire heads as needed but have a much higher cost.
The
Dueling Zero
instead adds
a completely independent second gantry
, so it has two print heads (like an IDEX) but thanks to the mechanical design it acts much more like a single-extruder 3D printer in terms of print quality and motion control. Speed and acceleration aren’t limited by added mass, either, which is good because
slow printers are rapidly falling out of style
.
We love how clean and finished the design is. At its core, [Zruncho 3D]’s dual gantry mod (designated D0) is based on the
Voron Zero
design.
Dueling Zero
is, to our knowledge, the only open-source and fully documented dual gantry printer out there, which is pretty wild. Watch it in action in the short video, embedded below. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731317",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-02-14T01:21:58",
"content": "Ok. So maybe light gold and dark gold were a poor choice for this demonstration, and a multicoloured cylinder is not really compelling, but the gantries seemed to move as they were supposed to.",
"pare... | 1,760,372,009.11489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/memory-box-shows-photos-based-on-fingerprint/ | Memory Box Shows Photos Based On Fingerprint | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"e-ink display",
"fingerprint scanner",
"memory box",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W"
] | With his young son’s birthday coming up in a few weeks, [Mike Buss] wanted to build him something fun that the boy could hold on to all his life. After doing some sketching, [Mike] arrived at the idea to make
a memory box uses a fingerprint scanner to show different pictures based on the fingerprint.
[Mike] started by rendering the box in Blender and then cutting a sizable hole in the lid for the E-ink screen. That’s around the time the first problem came up — there were weird vertical lines in the display. Sure enough, that screen was broken. Then he added the SD card reader, but the SD card wouldn’t work, and was heating up besides. Finally, the fingerprint scanner was causing issues, but it turned out that the power supply was at fault.
After all of
that
, [Mike] switched from an ESP32 to a Raspi Zero W to simplify the whole process of finding a photo tagged with the person’s fingerprint. [Mike] added a Python script that listens for new memories over Wi-Fi. A memory in this case consists of a picture, a description, a list of people tagged in the picture, and some additional metadata.
One important lesson [Mike] learned was that of balancing planning vs. just taking action. If he had taken the time to consider the complexity of the tagged-photo retrieval system, he would have arrived at an SBC solution much sooner. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.
You can have all sorts of fun with fingerprint scanners, like
this one that opens a secret bookcase door. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731274",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T22:21:05",
"content": "Hope the boy has a longer design life then those components.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731288",
"author": "peek",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,008.89722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/a-clock-made-out-of-electromechanical-relays/ | A Clock Made Out Of Electromechanical Relays | Maya Posch | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"analog clock",
"relay logic"
] | Electromechanical circuits using relays are mostly a lost art these days, but sometimes you get people like [Aart] who can’t resist to turn a stack of clackity-clack relays into a functional design, like
in this case a clock
(article in Dutch,
Google Translate
).
It was made using components that [Aart] had come in possession of over the years, with each salvaged part requiring the usual removal of old solder, before being mounted on prototype boards. The resulting design uses the 1 Hz time signal from a Hörz DCF77
master clock
which he set up to drive a clock network in his house, as he
describes in a forum post
at Circuits Online (also in Dutch).
The digital pulses from this time signal are used by the relay network to create the minutes and hours count, which are read out via a resistor ladder made using 0.1% resistors that drive two analog meters, one for the minutes and the other for the hours.
Sadly, [Aart] did not draw up a schematic yet, and there are a few issues he would like to resolve regarding the meter indicators that will be put in front of the analog dials. These currently have weird transitions between sections on the hour side, and the 59 – 00 transition on the minute dial happens in the middle of the scale. But as [Aart] says, this gives the meter its own character, which is an assessment that is hard to argue with.
Thanks to [Lucas] for the tip. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731203",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T19:47:30",
"content": "The Google translate link translates from latin to english. It should translate from dutch to english :https://www-aartsite-nl.translate.goog/2024/02/11/relais-klok/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en... | 1,760,372,008.941244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/have-a-ball-with-this-3d-printed-sphere-making-machine/ | Have A Ball With This 3D Printed Sphere-Making Machine | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"abrasive",
"ball",
"grinding",
"polish",
"sandpaper",
"sphere",
"spheroid",
"wood"
] | Alright, everyone has 30 seconds to get all the jokes out of their system before we proceed with a look at this
3D printed wooden ball polisher
.
Ready?
Theoretically, making a sphere out of any material should be easy. All you need to do is pick a point in space inside the material and eliminate everything more than a specified distance from that point. But in practice, sphere-making isn’t quite so simple. The machine [Fraens] presents in the video below is geared more toward the final polish than the initial forming, with a trio of gear motors set 120 degrees apart driving cup-shaped grinding pads.
Constant pressure on the developing sphere is maintained with a clever triangular frame with springs that pre-load the arms and pull them in toward the workpiece, but stop at the desired radius. The three grinding pads are fitted with sandpaper and constantly turn, wearing down the rough piece until it reaches the final diameter. The machine also supports more aggressive tooling, in the form of hole saws that really get to work on the rough blank. Check it out in the video below.
While we appreciate the fact that this is 3D printed, watching the vibrations it has to endure while the blank is still rough, not to mention all the dust and chips it creates, makes us think this machine might not stand up for long. So maybe letting
this circular saw jig
cut out a rough ball and using this machine for the final polish would be a good idea. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731146",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T16:52:13",
"content": "That’ll be 30 secs then",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6731164",
"author": "cplamb",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T18:13:08",
"content": "It remin... | 1,760,372,008.845715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/sprint-the-mach-10-magic-missile-that-wasnt-magic-enough/ | Sprint: The Mach 10 Magic Missile That Wasn’t Magic Enough | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"History",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"abm",
"abm system",
"ballistic missile",
"missile"
] | Defending an area against incoming missiles is a difficult task. Missiles are incredibly fast and present a small target. Assuming you know they’re coming, you have to be able to track them accurately if you’re to have any hope of stopping them. Then, you need some kind of wonderous missile of your own that’s fast enough and maneuverable enough to take them out.
It’s a task that at times can seem overwhelmingly impossible. And yet, the devastating consequences of a potential nuclear attack are so great that the US military had a red hot go anyway. In the 1970s, America’s best attempt to thwart incoming Soviet ICBMs led to the development of the Sprint ABM—a missile made up entirely of improbable numbers.
Mach 10? You Betcha
A Sprint interceptor on a test stand, as pictured by the US DoD.
The Sprint anti-ballistic missile was an engineering effort in response to the nuclear threat posed by the Cold War. This missile, with its astonishing performance and parameters, was designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles during their terminal phase in the moments before impact.
Despite its crucial task, and its impressive capabilities, the Sprint missile had a relatively short operational life, a reflection of the rapidly evolving strategic landscape of the time.
Developed in the late 1960s as part of the United States Army’s Safeguard Program, the Sprint was a key component of a layered missile defense system intended to protect against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It was intended to operate in tandem with the longer-range LIM-49 Spartan missile. The Spartan was designed to engage threats outside the atmosphere, with Sprint missiles addressing those that penetrated further inward.
The technical specifications of the Sprint missile were nothing short of remarkable. Powered by a solid-fuel rocket, it could accelerate to a speed of Mach 10 within 5 seconds of launch, covering an altitude of 30 kilometers in roughly 15 seconds. That’s 12,000 km/h for those of you playing along at home. This incredible acceleration of roughly 100 G was necessary to intercept ICBM warheads re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities.
Sprint had to launch so quickly that there was no time to open hatches or silo doors. Instead, Sprint was designed to be ejected from its launch bay via an explosively-driven piston which punched the conical missile straight through the fiberglass cover on its silo. The first stage solid rocket fired for just 1.2 seconds, disintegrating shortly after due to the intense aerodynamic forces on the airframe. The second stage would fire shortly afterwards, boosting Sprint to an interception at altitudes between 1.5 to 30 km. Total flight and interception time was intended to be on the order of 15 seconds.
The immense speed of Sprint posed multiple engineering challenges. The missile’s skin was designed to withstand temperatures of up to 6,200 degrees Fahrenheit due to air friction at these speeds, with a special ablative coating to prevent it from burning up in flight.
The Sprint program apparently had some pretty rad overalls for technicians. Today’s public programs can’t claim the same. Credit: Ryan Crierie, CC BY-SA-2.0
One of the most notable features of the Sprint was its guidance system. It used a unique ground-based phased array radar system that could track incoming warheads and guide the missile to its target with phenomenal precision. This system allowed for mid-course corrections in the missile’s trajectory, a critical capability given the high speeds and short reaction times involved. However, the need for communication with the ground was a challenge, given Sprint’s intense speed. The friction with the air and the resulting intense heat tended to create a plasma around the missile, which made radio communication difficult. Incredibly powerful radio signals were required to penetrate the plasma and exhaust plume of the missile.
Sprint was not a hit-to-kill vehicle. With ICBMs incoming at even higher Mach numbers than Sprint itself, just getting close to an incoming missile was an engineering feat at the very edge of possibility with the prevailing technology. Sprint made up for this with the warhead it used to destroy incoming missiles—a nuclear one, in fact. Each Sprint missile mounted a 1-kiloton W-66 “enhanced radiation” warhead. These warheads were specially designed to not just destroy incoming missiles with blast effects, but with intense neutron flux from the nuclear fission reaction.
Detonating nuclear warheads over your own soil might seem reckless in the extreme, but it was the Cold War. It was deemed highly favorable to use small warheads high in the atmosphere for defence, versus having enemy weapons in the megaton-range destroying entire cities on the ground.
A Sprint nosecone, slightly separated from the body of the missile in its silo. Credit: Public domain
Despite its advanced capabilities, the Sprint missile was in service for a relatively short period, from 1975 to 1976, as part of the Safeguard Program. There were several reasons for this brief operational life. First, the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the United States and the Soviet Union led to treaties that limited the development and deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems, including the Safeguard Program. These defensive systems were considered a threat to the delicate balance between the two superpowers. Without viable defences against ICBM attacks, each power could be reasonably assured of its own destruction if it chose to fire its own missiles. Having a working ABM system would allow one side the ability to strike without fearing retaliation, ruining the “safe” concept of mutually assured destruction (commonly referred to as MAD).
Additionally, the high cost of deployment and maintenance of such a complex system, combined with rapid technological advancements in offensive missile technology, made the Sprint system appear less cost-effective and strategically viable over time. Questions arose around whether a defence system based around Sprint could reasonably expect to counter Soviet missiles deploying multiple independent reentry vehicles, which could allow one missile to deliver up to 10 warheads on independent trajectories.
This image shows a Sprint missile launched from Meck Island. Note the debris from the destroyed silo cap at the base of the exhaust plume. Credit: US Army, public domain
The end of the Sprint missile’s service did not necessarily signify a failure, unless one considers huge expenditure for little end product a failure. Ultimately, it demonstrated the challenges of developing defensive systems in the nuclear age and the dynamic nature of military technology and strategy.
The Sprint missile demonstrated the technical feasibility of intercepting ICBMs during re-entry, a concept that has continued to influence missile defense strategies to this day. However, it couldn’t get around the ultimate concept that doomed many anti-ballistic missile defence schemes. While one can hope to intercept one ICBM, or even a handful, an attacker only needs to increase their number of missiles by a small amount to rapidly increase the numbers of intercepters required by a defender.
In retrospect, the Sprint anti-ballistic missile represents a fascinating moment in Cold War history; Fears around national security drove the development of a missile of truly wild performance. And yet, at the same time, it proved largely useless for its intended mission. The sheer scale of the potential conflict it was built for overwhelmed its very purpose. | 75 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731127",
"author": "Herbert",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T16:14:18",
"content": "Wow, very interesting. The choice of a nuclear warhead on the interceptor seems totally reasonable given the scenario in which it would be deployed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,009.061626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/piezo-transducers-could-turn-displays-into-speakers/ | Piezo Transducers Could Turn Displays Into Speakers | Maya Posch | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"loudspeaker",
"piezoelectric"
] | Will piezoelectric-based speakers replace traditional speakers over the coming years in space-constrained devices? We have definitely seen the use of piezo transducers in e.g. high-end televisions that use the display’s surface not just for the visual content, but also as a highly dynamic speaker. If you extrapolate this principle to something like smartphones, tablets and laptops the advantages are clear: piezoelectric transducers are smaller, more power efficient and do not need any holes in the enclosure. These and other advantages are what
[Vineet Ganju] argues in
IEEE Spectrum
will push the market to adopt this new technology.
Piezoelectric transducers vibrate the display itself to create sound waves. (Credit: James Provost)
[Vineet] is the Vice President and General Manager of the audio business unit of Synaptics — which is one of the companies pushing for these piezoelectric transducers to be used for speaker purposes — so there is definitely some bias involved. Even so, it’s undeniable that the speakers in portable devices as well as the average flat panel TV aren’t exactly amazing, with the limited space meaning that audio quality suffers, with lows being generally absent and the resulting audio sounding ‘tinny’. Generally this is where people get external speakers for their TV, and lug portable speakers along with their laptop and other mobile devices.
For TVs, Sony has pushed for its Acoustic Surface Audio technology that uses two or three piezoelectric transducers on their OLED panels, while Samsung sticks to traditional speakers, but places lots of them around the screen with its Object Tracking Sound technology.
Sony’s technology
cannot be used with LCD panels
, due to the backlight being in the way, so the interesting question here is whether the piezoelectric speaker revolution proposed by [Vineet] will be limited to devices that use OLED or similar backlight-less displays? | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731051",
"author": "Neuron Plectrum",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T13:12:56",
"content": "It’s not too different from theaters putting speakers behind the screen.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731059",
"author": "Marti... | 1,760,372,009.184923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/13/stepping-inside-art-in-vr-and-the-workflow-behind-it/ | Stepping Inside Art In VR, And The Workflow Behind It | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"3d",
"art",
"vr",
"workflow"
] | The process of creating something is always chock-full of things to learn, so it’s always a treat when someone takes the time and effort to share it. [Teadrinker] recently published
the technique and workflow behind bringing art into VR
, which explains exactly how they created a virtual reality art gallery that allows one to step inside paintings, called
Art Plunge
(free on Steam.)
Extending a painting’s content to fill in the environment is best done by using other works by the same artist.
It walks through not just how to obtain high-resolution images of paintings, but also discusses how to address things like adjusting the dynamic range and color grading to better match the intended VR experience. There is little that is objectively correct in technical terms when it comes to the aesthetic presentation details like brightness and lighting, so guidance on what does and doesn’t work well and how to tailor to the VR experience is useful information.
One thing that is also intriguing is the attention paid to creating a sense of awe for viewers. The quality, the presentation, and even choosing sounds are all important for creating something that not only creates a sense of awe, but does so in a way that preserves and cultivates a relationship between the art and the viewer that strives to stay true to the original. Giving a viewer a sense of presence, after all, can be more than just presenting stereoscopic 3D images or
fancy lightfields
.
You can get a brief overview of the process in a video below, but if you have the time, we really do recommend reading the whole breakdown. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6731016",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T10:11:30",
"content": "wow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6731043",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-13T12:46:36",
"content": "Nice for a... | 1,760,372,009.365968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/hands-on-bus-pirate-5/ | Hands On: Bus Pirate 5 | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bus pirate",
"Bus Pirate 5",
"hands on",
"i2c",
"reverse engineering",
"serial protocol",
"spi"
] | If you’ve been involved with electronics and hardware hacking for awhile, there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard of the Bus Pirate.
First introduced on the pages of Hackaday back in 2008
by creator Ian Lesnet, the open hardware multi-tool was designed not only as away to easily tap into a wide array of communication protocols, but to provide various functions that would be useful during hardware development or reverse engineering. The Bus Pirate could talk to your I2C and SPI devices, while also being able to measure frequencies, check voltages, program chips, and even function as a logic analyzer or oscilloscope.
Bus Pirate 3, circa 2012
The Bus Pirate provided an incredible number of tools at a hobbyist-friendly price, and it wasn’t long before the device became so popular that it achieved a milestone which only a few hardware hacking gadgets can boast: its sales started to get undercut by cheap overseas clones. Of course, as an open hardware device, this wasn’t really a problem. If other companies wanted to crank out cheap Bus Pirates, that’s fine. It freed Ian up to research a next-generation version of the device.
But it turns out that was easier said than done. It’s around this point that the Bus Pirate enters what might be considered its
Duke Nukem Forever
phase. It took 15 years to release the sequel to 1996’s
Duke Nukem 3D
because the state-of-the-art in video games kept changing, and the developers didn’t want to be behind the curve. Similarly, Ian and his team spent years developing and redeveloping versions of the Bus Pirate that utilized different hardware platforms, such as the STM32 and ICE40 FPGA. But each time, there would be problems sourcing components, or something newer and more interesting would be released.
But then in 2021 the Raspberry Pi Pico hit the scene, and soon after, the bare RP2040 chip. Not only were the vast I/O capabilities of the new microcontroller a perfect fit for the Bus Pirate, but the chip was cheap and widely available. Finally, after years of false starts, the
Bus Pirate 5 was born
.
I was able to grab one of the first all-new Bus Pirates off the production line in January, and have been spending the last week or so playing around with it. While there’s definitely room for improvement on the software side of things, the hardware is extremely promising, and I’m very excited to be see how this new chapter in the Bus Pirate story plays out.
Under the Hood
While the heart of the Bus Pirate 5 is the RP2040, there’s still plenty of other hardware along for the ride.
Under normal circumstances, the RP2040 would have enough I/O for pretty much any task. But since this is a device that is designed to communicate with as many things as possible, the chip actually needed a bit of help in the free pins department. As such, a pair of 74HC595 shift registers are connected to the SPI bus to provide an additional 16 outputs on the board, which are used for internal functions such as controlling the LCD backlight and switching in the 10 kΩ pull-up resistors for the I/O pins.
Similarly, a 16-channel CD4067 analog mux is being used to overcome the fact that the RP2040 has only four ADC pins. It might seem odd that a unabashedly digital device like this would need so many analog inputs, but one of the goals for this new version of the Bus Pirate was the ability to measure voltages on each of its eight output pins, unlike the previous incarnations of the device that could only measure voltage on a single dedicated pin.
Each of the eight I/O pins on the Bus Pirate 5 go through a 74LVC1T45 bidirectional buffer, which allows the 3.3 V pins of the RP2040 to safely communicate with devices from 1.2 V all the way up to 5.5 V. It actually takes two pins from the RP2040 to control each buffer: one is used to configure it as an input or output, and the other is used to read or write from it.
There’s also a 1 Gbit NAND flash chip attached to the SPI bus which holds the device’s JSON configuration files. The volume is presented to the host computer as a USB Mass Storage device, and can also be modified from the Bus Pirate text interface using familiar commands like
ls
,
cd
, and
cat
. This flash storage can also be used to hold log files, firmware dumps, images to be flashed, or in a pinch, an episode or two of the
Hackaday Podcast
.
Programmable Power Supply
Perhaps one of the most exciting advancements of the Bus Pirate 5 over its predecessors is the programmable power supply. Earlier Bus Pirates had dedicated 3.3 V and 5 V pins that could be turned on and off, but this time there’s a single VOUT pin in the connector that can be set to output between ~1 V and 5 V thanks to the use of an adjustable regulator — the exact lower limit depends on whether your production run gets the MCP1824 or AP2127, which can be swapped depending on availability.
What’s more, the PSU offers real-time current measurement as well as a programmable 0 mA – 500 mA current limiter that’s implemented with only a handful of components thanks to a clever comparator circuit.
Pirating on the Big Screen
Of course, you don’t have to look inside the Bus Pirate 5 to see the most obvious new feature. The ST7789V 240 x 320 IPS LCD is front and center, and acts as a multi-purpose display depending on what the device is doing. Most of the time, it functions as a dynamic label, showing what each pin does given the current mode that the Bus Pirate is in. For example, when you switch to UART mode, you’ll instantly be able to see which pins have been set to TX and RX.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/bp5review_display.mp4
It’s hard to overstate how incredibly handy this function is. Anyone who used an earlier Bus Pirate will know the struggle of trying to figure out if you had the right pins hooked up — more often than not you’d have to go online and look up the pinout for the connector because it wasn’t always obvious what connection did what as you moved between different modes.
Beyond the pin labels, the screen also shows the voltage and current figures for the programmable power supply, and there’s an oscilloscope mode that’s in the early phases of development. Combined with the user-programmable button, it’s going to be exciting to see what the community does with the Bus Pirate 5 screen.
There are
Four
, Eighteen Lights!
Hackers love LEDs. That’s never been disputed by anybody. So it’s no surprise that the Bus Pirate 5 has LEDs on it, especially since the older models also came equipped with an array of status lights to indicate various conditions the device could be in. But even still…the
eighteen
SK6812 RGB LEDs lining the board is going to be seen as excessive to some.
Ten of the LEDs are reverse mounted and shine through holes in the PCB to light up the front of the milky translucent case, and the other eight are side-firing variants that provide the sort of underglow effect you might expect from a over-the-top gaming keyboard or a car from one of the
Fast & Furious
movies.
For those that aren’t looking to turn their workbench into a rave, don’t worry. You have complete control over the LEDs on the Bus Pirate 5, with multiple options available for brightness, animation pattern, and colors. It’s also possible to simply turn them off entirely. The LED configuration is saved to the non-volatile flash chip, so whatever your choices are, they will persist through power cycles.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/bp5review_lights.mp4
Personally, I think the default LED settings are reasonable enough. I don’t find it particularly distracting, and it does give the device a unique look among all the other bits of hardware scattered over the bench. That said, I also appreciate the fact that the user is given the option of either customizing them or simply switching them off, as different people will of course have their own opinions on the matter.
What
does
bother me a bit is that, at least in the current firmware, the LEDs serve no practical purpose. On the Bus Pirate 3, the LEDs were important — for example, you could tell at a glance if it was sending power to a downstream device. This is a feature that could have been expanded on the new hardware, with visually distinct animations indicating the various communications modes, and a flashing alert if the current limiter is triggered.
I have a feeling this is something that will work its way into the firmware at some point in the future, but it seems like a missed opportunity not to have implemented it out of the gate. If nothing else, it would have helped justify the addition of the LEDs to those who might think they’re nothing but unnecessary flair.
Console Cowboy
If you’ve used an earlier Bus Pirate, you’ll feel right at home with this latest version. Its serial terminal interface has gotten a refresh, now featuring colors and a very slick persistent status bar at the bottom, but many of the commands remain the same and the workflow of moving through modes and communicating with devices is basically identical. If you
haven’t
used a Bus Pirate previously, the interface is fairly straightforward and the built-in help functions will usually get you on the right track.
You don’t need any special software to access the Bus Pirate interface; just open up your favorite serial terminal and point it to the USB device that’s created when you plug it in. If you’re using a Chrome-based browser you can even
connect to it via the Web Serial API
.
As a precaution, the Bus Pirate starts in “High Impedance” mode, which disables most of the functions that deal with actually powering and communicating with devices. You’ll first have to select the communications mode that corresponds with your target device (UART, SPI, I2C, etc), and from there can turn on the power and start sending commands or performing operations.
Here you can see a basic example of communicating with an I2C device, in this case, a Bosch BMP280 sensor:
After selecting I2C mode, you enable the power supply and enter the desired voltage and current limits. You can then run the first macro, which by default performs a brute-force I2C scan. With the returned R/W addresses for the detected device, you can craft your I2C packets. In this example I’m sending a request for the register 0xD0 (Chip ID), and reading one byte of data from it (0x58).
The Journey Has Only Just Begun
Bus Pirate veterans with a keen eye may have already noticed that there are fewer commands and functions listed in the above screenshots than what they’re used to. That’s because, while the hardware side of things may have been in development for several years at this point, the software is still in its infancy. Updates are being pushed furiously to the
firmware’s GitHub repository
, with an automated nightly build process ensuring users always have access to the latest and greatest code.
Ian has also dropped some interesting hints on where the firmware might be headed now that he can get his head out of hardware mode and dedicate his time to writing code. There’s even been some rumblings about looking into a MicroPython variant of the firmware, which holds some fascinating possibilities.
We saw first-hand
how powerful the rapid iterative development process made possible by Python on the RP2040 is during last year’s Hackaday Supercon, with attendees bending the
Vectorscope badge
to their will in record time. That kind of flexibility on a device like the Bus Pirate 5 is honestly very exciting.
I made a conscious decision not to call this a review of the Bus Pirate 5, because quite simply, it wouldn’t be fair to pass final judgment on a product that’s still under active development. It’s an extremely promising platform, and is improving on a nearly daily basis, but anyone jumping on the bandwagon this early should be prepared for a few teething issues. That said, I have every confidence that between Ian and the community, the newest member of the Bus Pirate family will become just as indispensable of a hardware hacking tool as its legendary predecessor. | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730592",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T15:12:44",
"content": "I heard rumors of an included scratch and sniff sticker that smelled like pcb factory green flooring!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730627",
... | 1,760,372,009.314124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/canada-bans-flipper-zero-over-what-it-imagines-it-does/ | Canada Bans Flipper Zero Over What It Imagines It Does | Donald Papp | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"ban",
"flipper zero",
"legislation"
] | Canada’s intent to
ban the Flipper Zero wireless tool over car thefts
is, on the one hand, an everyday example of poorly researched government action. But it may also be a not-so-subtle peek into the harm misinformation online can cause by leading to said government action.
The Government of Canada recently hosted a national summit on combatting vehicle theft, and Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne proudly declared
immediate actions being taken to ban devices used to steal vehicles by wirelessly bypassing keyless entry
, the Flipper Zero being specifically named as one such device.
And yet, defeating a rolling code keyless entry system is a trick a device like the Flipper Zero simply cannot pull off. (What cars have such a system? Any car made in roughly the last thirty years, for a start.)
The Flipper Zero tool makes all kinds of useful wireless exploration and interactions accessible and fun. But it’s become prominently featured in videos that gleefully purport to show it doing something shocking (and likely staged), followed by making a YouTube face at the camera. Then it’s cut, upload, and watch the clicks roll in.
We’ve talked about how such videos are a very bad look
, even if they’re hoaxes done for the lulz. Flipper Zero got banned from Amazon for being a “card skimming device” last year. There was a time when the Flipper Zero was going for crazy prices on eBay. We were going to provide a going rate, but they don’t even show up in search results anymore. Government action like this is another example of how a bad rap can make it harder for folks to obtain useful tools.
Ironically, owning a Flipper Zero and exploring the world of wireless data and communication is a great way to learn that many modern devices and protocols are so much better than their predecessors. For example, one can demonstrate how contactless payment with a wireless device like a mobile phone or Apple Watch is more secure and
exposes far less information than tapping the physical card
. | 104 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730488",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T12:15:00",
"content": "“Ironically, owning a Flipper Zero and exploring the world of wireless data and communication is a great way to learn” If that was the case then one could use WireShark. Most people buying the F0 are using ... | 1,760,372,009.60921 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/12/easythreed-k9-the-value-in-a-e72-aliexpress-fdm-3d-printer/ | EasyThreed K9: The Value In A €72 AliExpress FDM 3D Printer | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Reviews"
] | [
"3d printer",
"FDM"
] | The hot end of the EasyThreed K9 is actually pretty nifty. (Credit: [Thomas Sanladerer])
Recently, [Thomas Sanladerer]
bought an EasyThreed K9
off AliExpress for a mere €72, netting him an FDM printer with a 10 x 10 x 10 cm build volume. The build plate is unheated, with optional upgrade, and there is no display to interact with the device: just a big multi-function ‘play’ button and five smaller buttons that direct the print head to preset locations above the build plate to allow for build plate leveling using the knobs on each corner. There’s also a ‘home’ button on the back for homing the print head, which pretty much completes the user interface. As the printer comes in a rather small box, the first step is to assemble the parts into something resembling a 3D printer.
What follows is both a mixture of wonder and horror, as the plastic build quality is everything but convincing, while at the same time, the self-contained nature of each of the three axes of the cantilevered design makes for very easy assembly. The print head has a nifty flip-up cover for easy access to the hot end, which makes the best of the anemic 24-watt power supply for the entire printer. A cooling fan with an air duct even provides part cooling, making this print head a contender for the ‘cheap but not terrible’ category. You can check out his full video review below.
The internals of the EasyThreed K9’s control unit. (Credit: Thomas Sanladerer)
[Thomas], of course, had to look at the control board. It turns out that it’s not a known controller, although some of the components are familiar, and many expansion options are visible on the PCB, including, potentially, WiFi.
The heart of the controller board is the ARERY AT32F403ARCT7 MCU, which [PeetHobby] in the comments notes is more or less an STM32 clone based on their experiences with the chip. This MCU runs at 240 MHz, with 1 MB flash and 256 kB SRAM, and a feature set and register layout similar to STM32 parts.
After running a few prints on the printer, [Thomas] concludes that although it’s not a terrible printer, the good parts about it are somewhat ruined by the slop in the connections between the axes. There’s also no easy way to use full filament spools with the printer, only the smaller 250-gram ones. Although a ‘no buy’ if you want to get an FDM printer that works out of the box, the amount of hacking potential here is rather large, as evidenced by the many comments about it.
We
remember when a cheap printer was around $200
. This isn’t the first
Easythreed printer
we’ve seen, but they do seem to be getting better. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730440",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T09:14:37",
"content": "Looks like a Monoprice Select Mini (Malyan 200), stripped down to the minimum and built in plastic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730442",
"auth... | 1,760,372,009.677718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/ais-existence-is-all-it-takes-to-be-accused-of-being-one/ | AI’s Existence Is All It Takes To Be Accused Of Being One | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Science"
] | [
"accusation",
"ai",
"Peer Review",
"writing"
] | New technologies bring with them the threat of change. AI tools are one of the latest such developments. But as is often the case, when technological threats show up, they end up looking awfully human.
Recently, [E. M. Wolkovich] submitted a scientific paper for review that — to her surprise —
was declared “obviously” the work of ChatGPT
. No part of that was true. Like most people, [E. M. Wolkovich] finds writing a somewhat difficult process. Her paper represents a lot of time and effort. But despite zero evidence, this casual accusation of fraud in a scientific context was just sort of… accepted.
There are several reasons this is concerning. One is that, in principle, the scientific community wouldn’t dream of leveling an accusation of fraud like data manipulation without evidence. But a reviewer had no qualms about casually claiming [Wolkovich]’s writing wasn’t hers, effectively calling her a liar. Worse, at the editorial level, this baseless accusation was accepted and passed along with vague agreement instead of any sort of pushback.
Showing Your Work Isn’t Enough
Interestingly, [Wolkovich] writes everything in plain text using the
LaTeX
typesetting system, hosted on GitHub, complete with change commits. That means she could easily show her entire change history, from outline to finished manuscript, which should be enough to convince just about anyone that she isn’t a chatbot.
But pondering this raises a very good question: is [Wolkovich] having to prove she isn’t a chatbot a desirable outcome of this situation? We don’t think it is, nor is this an idle question. We’ve seen how
even when an artist can present their full workflow to prove an AI didn’t make their art, enough doubt is sown by the accusation to poison the proceedings
(not to mention greatly demoralizing the creator in the process.)
Better Standards Would Help
[Wolkovich] uses this opportunity to reflect on and share what this situation indicates about useful change. Now that AI tools exist, guidelines that acknowledge them should be created. Explicit standards about when and how AI tools can be used in the writing process, how those tools should be acknowledged if used, and a process to handle accusations of misuse would all be positive changes.
Because as it stands, it’s hard to see [Wolkovich]’s experience as anything other than an illustration of how a scientific community’s submission and review process was corrupted not by undeclared or thoughtless use of AI but by the simple fact that such tools
exist
. This seems like both a problem that will only get worse with time (right now, it is fairly easy
to detect chatbots
) and one that will not solve itself. | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730384",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T06:23:05",
"content": "Even the smallest LLMs can make more sense than some humans.ollama run tinydolphin \"Recently, [E. M. Wolkovich] submitted a scientific paper for review that — to her surprise — was declared “obviously” the... | 1,760,372,009.79497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/target-lifting-mechanism-goes-wireless/ | Target Lifting Mechanism Goes Wireless | Adam Fabio | [
"hardware"
] | [
"lifts",
"target"
] | “WARNING: DO NOT Hammer on this mechanism” sounds like the start of a side quest. A quest is exactly what [CelGenStudios] started when
he came upon a strange box with this message
.
The military identification tag was printed “Target Holding Mechanism, M31A1”, along with some other information. It also informed the reader that the device weighed 70lbs (31.75kg). Something carrying that much mass just had to be good.
The target holding mechanism didn’t offer a lot of clues – a large box with a shaft coming out. The shaft lived inside a dust boot and linked to a second shaft. Once the box was opened, though, the function became clear. This was a device used in firearm training. If you shoot a target, it drops. This device detects the target being shot and turns on a motor, which drops the target. Later, another contact – probably connected by a long wire, commands the target to be lifted, ready for the next trainee.
The wired connection didn’t sit well with [CelGenStudios], though. So, he ordered a ruggedized remote control unit from overseas. This allowed him to wirelessly drop or raise the target from several hundred feet away. The original vibration switches still work, so a swift kick or gunshot will still drop the target.
[CelGenStudios] plans to outfit the mechanism with a cardboard cutout figure and bring it to one of the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) events this year. We can’t wait to see Steve Jobs or
Seymor Cray
pop out to surprise attendees! Of course, we’ve seen
a homebrew version
of this, too. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730364",
"author": "Isaac Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T04:20:44",
"content": "“At the risk of blowing up this selenium rectifier which, if I can get it on camera, that’d be cool” — spoken by someone who clearly has never been in the same room with one of those when it did b... | 1,760,372,009.72329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/hackaday-links-february-11-2024/ | Hackaday Links: February 11, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"antenna",
"Apple Vision Pro",
"ar",
"augmented reality",
"drone",
"early adopters",
"hackaday links",
"high tension",
"Ingenuity",
"ms-dos",
"Perseverance",
"Power Harvesting",
"radio",
"theft",
"tower",
"uav",
"Windows 3.11"
] | Apple’s Vision Pro augmented reality goggles made a big splash in the news this week, and try as we might to resist the urge to dunk on them,
early adopters spotted in the wild
are making it way too easy. Granted, we’re not sure how many of these people are actually early adopters as opposed to paid influencers, but there was still quite a bit of silliness to be had, most of it on X/Twitter. We’d love to say that peak idiocy was achieved by those who showed themselves
behind the wheels of their Teslas while wearing their goggles
, with one aiming for
an early adopter perfecta
, but alas, most of these stories appear to be
at least partially contrived
. Some people were spotted
doing their best to get themselves killed
, others were content to just look foolish, especially since we’ve heard that the virtual keyboard is currently too slow for anything but hunt-and-peck typing, which
Casey Niestat seemed to confirm
with his field testing. After seeing all this, we’re still unsure why someone would strap $4,000 worth of peripheral-vision-restricting and easily fenced hardware to their heads, but hey — different strokes. And for those of you wondering why these things are so expensive,
we’ve got you covered
.
Ingenuity
‘s last airfield. The helicopter is that little smudge in the upper left quadrant. Source: NASA/JPL
Up on Mars — or over, whatever —
Perseverance
has managed to grab
a long-distance image
of its broken buddy,
Ingenuity
. The photo was taken on February 4, about two weeks after the helicopter suffered
a mission-ending casualty
while landing after what ended up being its final flight. According to current
location data
, the two vehicles are still about a kilometer apart, so the picture is understandably fuzzy. But still, kudos to the MASTCAM team for building a camera that could manage that at all. NASA has partially blamed the rough landing that tore the tips off at least two of
Ingenuity
‘s rotor blades on a relatively featureless stretch of terrain that confused the helicopter’s vision-based navigation system; looking at its final resting place, that seems pretty plausible. There’s still no word whether NASA plans to send
Perseverance
over to get a closer look at the damage. Given the terrain and the rover’s primary mission, we suspect not, but it would still be nice to get them back together for one last time.
Good news, bad news from Germany. The good news is that if you’re a network admin with Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS experience,
a German railway company is looking to hire you
. The bad news, of course, is that there’s a German railway company that needs to hire a network admin with Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS experience. It might not be as bad as it sounds, though, since the hiring company appears to only be in charge of the boards that display the railway schedules and such across the country. So, at least the trains themselves don’t appear to be running on an OS that Microsoft dropped support for over 22 years ago. That’s a relief.
While we’re not keen to push the “it’s aliens” button here, when
a 200-foot radio tower disappears without a trace
, it’s aliens until proven otherwise. Even if it’s not aliens, the story is weird and hard to swallow. Supposedly, the transmitter shack for a radio station in Alabama, WJLX, was completely cleaned out by thieves, who also removed an adjacent 200-foot-tall (61-meter) guyed tower without leaving a trace. The Geerling boys have put together
a good video looking into this
, using the elder Geerling’s 40 years of experience as a broadcast engineer to give this story some much-needed context. Sadly, though, it only gets weirder as a result, as pictures of the shack reveal that it was pretty decrepit even before it was hit, and the gear inside couldn’t have been worth much more than a couple of hundred bucks. The tower was a rusty pile of junk, too; assuming it was somehow carefully disassembled and carted away, anyone who bought it would be crazy to put it back up and use it. So, yeah — aliens.
And finally, in
a video
that makes us irrationally unsettled, the University of Southern Denmark has developed a fully autonomous drone that can operate indefinitely by tapping power lines for juice. The quadcopter resembles a commercially available unit with a complex cable guide mounted on top. When the drone needs to charge, it flies under a high-tension cable and slips a gripper around it. It’s not clear how power is transferred; inductive coupling seems most likely, but a diagram of the UAV has callouts for both “cable contacts” and a “current transformer,” so we’re not sure what to make of this. And before anyone gets as hot and bothered about this as they did for
the power-harvesting fence last week
, relax — although we can’t find any explicit indication of this being a collaboration between the researchers and the power company, we’d say it’s a pretty safe bet this is sanctioned. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730335",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "2024-02-12T00:36:11",
"content": "Some guys with angle grinders and a metal recycling center that doesn’t ask too many questions would be my guess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "67303... | 1,760,372,009.838798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/3d-printed-basketball-could-be-a-game-changer/ | 3D Printed Basketball Could Be A Game Changer | Kristina Panos | [
"Games"
] | [
"3d printing",
"basketball"
] | Basketball has changed a lot over the years, and that goes for the sport as well as the ball itself. While James Naismith first prescribed tossing soccer balls into peach baskets to allow athletes to stay in shape over the winter, today, the sport looks quite different both rule-wise and equipment-wise.
An early basketball. Image via
Wikipedia
The basketball itself has gone through a few iterations. After the soccer ball came a purpose-built leather ball with stitches and a rubber bladder inside. The first molded version came in 1942, although most balls continued to be made of leather, especially for indoor-only use. Today, the NBA still uses leather-clad balls, but that could change. Wilson, the official supplier of NCAA postseason tournament balls,
has developed a 3D-printed basketball that never needs to be inflated.
Much like a regular ball, the Wilson Airless Gen1 has eight lobes, bounces like you’d expect, and can be palmed, provided your hand is big enough. We would argue forcefully that it is far from airless, though we do get the point. According to TCT Magazine, the ball “nearly fits” the performance specs of a regular basketball, including weight, size, and rebound. This may not be good enough for the NBA today, but we doubt innovation over at Wilson has stopped abruptly, so who knows what the future holds?
Interested in trying one out? You may be better off trying to design and print one yourself. The limited-edition ball will be available on February 16th at Wilson.com for the low, low price of $2,500. It would probably pair well with the
can’t-miss robotic hoop
. Or, pair it with
a giant 3D-printed hand
for display purposes.
Main and thumbnail images via Wilson Sporting Goods | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730281",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T21:53:22",
"content": "Why would you want to argue it was far from airless?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730290",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2024-02... | 1,760,372,009.912757 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/printing-a-log/ | Printing A Log | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"wood filament",
"wood grain"
] | We’ve used wood filament before, and we hazily remember a Cura plugin that changed temperatures to create wood grain. But unlike [Patrick Gibney], we never thought of printing
a faux wood log coaster
that looks like it has rings. Check out the video below to see how it works.
The filament is not really wood, of course, but a polymer — usually PLA — mixed with wood particles. Changing the temperature does a nice job of darkening the wood. However, it also changes the properties of the carrier polymer, and that’s not always a good thing.
[Patrick] is manually adjusting the temperature and only using the wood filament for a layer or two, which is smart — there’s no reason to have wood-grained patterns inside your print. There have been
scripts
for this technique, although some are too outdated to work with modern slicers.
While we aren’t a fan of printing the dark areas at nearly 300C, it seems to work, and the rough appearance helps in this particular case.
Another option is to
print using sawdust
. There are
plenty of exotic filament options
out there. Wood is only the tip of the… tree? | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730244",
"author": "Vexer",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T18:24:35",
"content": "Pretty confident your link to a reddit post about a DoorDash driver stealing Taco Bell isn’t intentional?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730266",
... | 1,760,372,010.089882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/benchmarking-latency-across-common-wireless-links-for-mcus/ | Benchmarking Latency Across Common Wireless Links For MCUs | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"latency",
"wireless communications"
] | Although factors like bandwidth, power usage, and the number of (kilo)meters reach are important considerations with wireless communication for microcontrollers, latency should be another important factor to pay attention to. This is especially true for projects like controllers where round-trip latency and instant response to an input are essential, but where do you find the latency number in datasheets? This is where [Michael Orenstein] and [Scott] over at Electric UI found a lack of data, especially when taking software stacks into account. In other words, it was time to
do some serious benchmarking
.
The question to be answered here was specifically how fast a one-way wireless user interaction can be across three levels of payload sizes (12, 128, and 1024 bytes). The effective latency is measured from when the input is provided on the transmitter, and the receiver has processed it and triggered the relevant output pin. The internal latency was also measured by having a range of framework implementations respond to an external interrupt and drive a GPIO pin high. Even this test on an STM32F429 MCU already showed that, for example, the STM32 low-level (LL) framework is much faster than the stm32duino one.
After a bit more checking for overhead within the MCU itself with various approaches, the actual tests were performed. The tests involved modules for SiK, LoRa, nRF24, Bluetooth SPP (ESP32, HC-5), Bluetooth LE (Bluedroid & NimBLE on ESP32, as well as the nRF52), ESP-NOW (ESP32), 802.15.4 (used by Zigbee, Matter, Thread, etc.) and of course WiFi. The software stack used had a big impact on some of these, such as for BLE, but WiFi differed a lot on the ESP32, whether using TCP or overlaying Websockets (about 10x slower).
What’s clear is that to get low latency with wireless communication you need to do more than just pick the right technology or module, but also understand and work with the entire software stack to tweak and optimize it for the best performance. For those interested in the raw data, firmware, and post-processing scripts, these
can be found on GitHub
.
We’ve looked
at low-latency hacks
before. Testing which
protocol is best is a staple
for RC enthusiasts.
Credit: Electric UI. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730222",
"author": "MacAttack",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T17:02:20",
"content": "Very useful data! Thx!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730235",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T17:56:03",
"content": "No... | 1,760,372,010.154367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/3d-printed-din-rail-mount-is-attractive/ | 3D Printed DIN Rail Mount Is Attractive | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"DIN rail"
] | DIN rails aren’t very common in hobby projects, although you do see them occasionally. But in some industries, they are everywhere. The rail is just a piece of aluminum or steel with slots to hold it to a wall or bulkhead. There are two small lips that equipment like circuit breakers, power supplies, or controllers can attach easily. A common 3D printing project is a way to mount something like a printer controller to DIN rails. [NotLikeALeafOnThe Wind] shows a different take on it:
a magnetic holder that temporarily attaches a rail to a ferrous surface
.
Of course, mounting the rail is only half the equation. After that, you still need things to mount on the rail. Luckily, there’s no shortage of designs for DIN mounts for many common boards and modules.
There are several versions of the design.
One
has two ears that hold the magnets.
Another
has a similar design but can mount two rails. If you can’t spare the space,
another design
holds the rail but adds very little width to the assembly. Honestly, we wondered if you could take a bit of rail and just epoxy magnets to the back of it, but these certainly look nicer and give you a bit of clearance, too.
What does DIN stand for? Find out all about the DIN rail in our
deep dive
. We do occasionally see them
in hobby projects
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730166",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T13:31:28",
"content": "Well holding those little parts boxes you may see them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730185",
"author": "Der Ziegenpeter",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,009.966123 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/11/running-unix-on-a-nintendo-entertainment-system/ | Running UNIX On A Nintendo Entertainment System | Maya Posch | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"famicom",
"Nintendo Entertainment System",
"unix"
] | Who wouldn’t want to run a UNIX-like operating system on their NES or Famicom? Although there’s arguably no practical reason for doing so,
[decrazyo] has cobbled together
a working port of Little Unix (
LUnix
), which was originally written for the Commodore 64 and 128 by [Daniel Dallmann]. The impetus for this project was initially curiosity, but when [decrazyo] saw that someone had already written a UNIX-like OS for the 6502 processor, it seemed apparent that the NES was too similar to the C64 to not port it.
Much of this is relatively straightforward, as the 6502 MPU in the C64 is nearly identical to the Ricoh 2A03 in the NES, with the latter missing the binary-coded decimal support, which is not a crucial feature. The only significant roadblock was the lack of RAM in the NES. The console has a mere 2 KB of RAM and 2 KB of VRAM, which made it look anemic even next to the C64. Here, a Japan-only accessory came to the rescue: the Famicom Disk System (FDS), which is a proprietary floppy disk-based system that slots into the bottom of the Famicom and was used for games as well as storing saves back in the day.
By using a Famicom with FDS, it was possible to gain an additional 32 kB provided by the FDS, making the userspace utilities available in the shell. The fruits of this labor work well enough that he could also pop it up on an EverDrive cartridge that supports FDS ROMs and boot it up on an unmodified NES. Whether this is cooler than the NES-OS,
which we covered previously
, is up for debate.
Incidentally, [Maciej Witkowiak] seems to have
resumed development
on LUnix, with a new release in 2023, so maybe UNIX-on-6502 may see a revival after a few decades of little happening. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730163",
"author": "T S",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T13:12:27",
"content": "This is neat enough that IF I knew how to, I would want to try to make a custom replacement for the FDS with more memory, maybe 128 or 256kb if the hardware could support it (probably not).Having the extra st... | 1,760,372,010.022011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/analog-engineers-pocket-reference-needs-a-big-pocket/ | Analog Engineer’s Pocket Reference Needs A Big Pocket | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"books",
"op amps"
] | We always admire when companies produce useful tools or documentation that aren’t specific to their products. For example, consider LTSpice. Sure, it has the company’s models baked in. But there’s no reason you can’t use it for anything. Thanks! We were interested to see Texas Instrument’s fifth edition of the “
Analog Engineer’s Pocket Reference
” is still freely available. While we aren’t sure a book with nearly 200 pages in it is a “pocket reference,” we do think you’ll enjoy it, even if you don’t want to use TI’s offerings. This book has been around for 50 years, but it is updated periodically, and this version is the fifth iteration.
The book has several sections ranging from conversion between units and color codes to amplifier noise calculations and understanding ADC settling times. Want to know more about PCB microstrips? Page 85.
You do have to create a TI account to download, but if that bothers you, you surely have a throwaway e-mail address somewhere. Some of the information is basic. You probably know how capacitors add in parallel, for example. But some of the data is a bit more obscure. For example, most people don’t know the slope of the change in voltage drop over a diode according to temperature.
Besides, it is nice to have everything in one place and in a PDF that you can tuck away anywhere. Outside of branding, there is little to remind you this book is from a vendor, although on page 4, they have a list of other free resources of general interest such as “The Signal e-book” and “Circuit Cookbooks,” although some of those may be more TI-specific.
We love freebie books from vendors that are generally applicable. For example, Analog has a great
SDR book
. You can also find a link to a great DSP book from them in that post. Of course, there are
good books from the community
, too. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730115",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T08:17:18",
"content": "slope of the change in voltage drop over a diode according to voltageHuh???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730121",
"author": "Johan",
... | 1,760,372,010.294251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/pimp-my-pot-redux-now-cheaper-and-even-better/ | Pimp My Pot Redux, Now Cheaper And Even Better | Dan Maloney | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"eda",
"encoder",
"MAX7219",
"pcba",
"pot",
"potentiometer",
"ring light",
"rotary",
"smd"
] | If there’s one thing we like around here more than seeing an improved version of a project we’ve already covered, it’s when the improvements make the original project cheaper. In the case of
this LED ring light for pots and encoders
, not only is it cheaper than its predecessors, it’s better looking and easier to integrate into your projects.
Right from its start, [upir]’s “Pimp My Pot” project has been all about bringing some zazzle to rotary controls. Knobs with a pointer and a scale on the panel are okay — especially when they go to eleven — but more lights mean more fun. The fun comes at a price, though;
the previous version of “PMP”
used an off-the-shelf LED ring light with a unit cost of about $10. Not the end of the world, perhaps, but prohibitive, and besides, where’s the fun in just buying a component specifically made for rotary control indication?
The new version shown in the video below is pin-compatible with the driver board [upir] used for the previous version, which is based on the MAX7219 display driver. Modifying the previous board to accommodate 32 white 0402 LEDs over a 270° arc was no mean feat. [upir] covers both creating the schematic and the PCB layout in some detail, providing his usual trove of tool-chain tips for minimizing the amount of manual work needed.
Wisely, [upir] chose to get his boards assembled by the vendor; getting all those LEDs to line up perfectly is a job best left to the robots. While the board is designed for use with pots that mount on either side, we much prefer mounting the pot’s shaft through the board, as it keeps the LEDs closer to the knob. The final price per board works out to about $6.30 in quantities of ten and falls to a trivial $1.70 each for lots of 1,000. Pretty sweet savings on a pretty sweet-looking build.
This is a cool use of a ring of LEDs, but if you prefer
the finger kind
, you can make that, too. You can do it the easy way or
the hard way
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730055",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T03:33:42",
"content": "One minor nit to pick, the solder surface tension is technically what lines up the LEDs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730092",
"author": "helge... | 1,760,372,010.210991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/wooden-desk-lamp-uses-unusual-dimmer/ | Wooden Desk Lamp Uses Unusual Dimmer | Al Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"desk lamp",
"Magnetic levitation"
] | One of the problems with laser cutting projects is that while they look good, they often look like they were laser cut. [Timber Rough] has a wooden desk lamp that not only looks good but has one of the most unusual
dimming features
we’ve seen.
One thing that stands out is the lamp is made of different kinds of wood, and that helps. But the dimmer is a magnet and Hall effect sensor that levitates. It is hard to explain, but a quick look at the video below will clarify it.
The lamp software borrows from another project so it has animated effects and WiFi control with little effort. A custom “usermod” handles the custom levitating dimmer.
If you decide to duplicate the lamp, the instructions are very detailed, and any questions you may have will probably succumb to the video. The project is a fusion of woodworking, laser skills, and electronics. Overall, it is a beautiful and well-documented project.
Of course, you could go
the simple route
. If you want to add more features, there’s plenty of brainpower in the lamp. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6730043",
"author": "I Alone Possess the Truth",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T02:55:43",
"content": "This is supercool and beautiful!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6730045",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2024-02-11T03... | 1,760,372,010.43176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/pi-5-and-sdr-team-up-for-a-digital-scanner-you-can-actually-afford/ | Pi 5 And SDR Team Up For A Digital Scanner You Can Actually Afford | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"digital",
"P25",
"Pi 5",
"raspberry pi",
"RTL-SDR",
"scanner",
"sdr",
"SDRTrunk",
"trunking"
] | Listening to police and fire calls used to be a pretty simple proposition: buy a scanner, punch in some frequencies — or if you’re old enough, buy the right crystals — and you’re off to the races. It was a pretty cheap and easy hobby, all things considered. But progress marches on, and with it came things like trunking radio and digital modulation, requiring ever more sophisticated scanners, often commanding eye-watering prices.
Having had enough of that, [Top DNG] decided to roll his own digital trunking scanner on the cheap.
The first video
below is a brief intro to the receiver based on the combination of an RTL-SDR dongle and a Raspberry Pi 5. The Pi is set up in headless mode and runs sdrtrunk, which monitors the control channels and frequency channels of trunking radio systems, as well as decoding the P25 digital modulation — as long as it’s not encrypted; don’t even get us started on that pet peeve. The receiver also sports a small HDMI touchscreen display, and everything can be powered over USB, so it should be pretty portable. The best part? Everything can be had for about $250, considerably cheaper than the $600 or so needed to get into a purpose-built digital trunking scanner — we’re looking at our Bearcat BCD996P2 right now and shedding a few tears.
The second video
below has complete details and a walkthrough of a build, from start to finish. [Top DNG] notes that sdrtrunk runs the Pi pretty hard, so a heat sink and fan are a must. We’d probably go with an enclosure too, just to keep the SBC safe. A better antenna is a good idea, too, although it seems like [Top DNG] is in the thick of things in Los Angeles, where LAPD radio towers abound. The setup could probably support multiple SDR dongles, opening up a host of possibilities. It might even be nice to team this up with
a Boondock Echo
. We’ve had
deep dives into trunking
before if you want more details. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729942",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T21:03:39",
"content": "Still pretty expensive for something which should be a dirt-cheap consumer product, but well done",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730306",
"aut... | 1,760,372,010.77613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/the-usage-of-embedded-linux-in-spacecraft/ | The Usage Of Embedded Linux In Spacecraft | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development",
"Space"
] | [
"linux kernel",
"spacecraft"
] | As the first part of a series,
[George Emad] takes us through a few examples
of the Linux operating system being used in spacecraft. These range from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to
everyone’s favorite Martian helicopter
. An interesting aspect is that the freshest Linux kernel isn’t necessarily onboard, as stability is far more important than having the latest whizzbang features. This is why SpaceX uses Linux kernel 3.2 (with real-time patches) on the primary flight computers of both Dragon and its rockets (Falcon 9 and Starship).
SpaceX’s flight computers use the typical triple redundancy setup, with three independent dual-core processors running the exact same calculations and a different Linux instance on each of its cores, and the result being compared afterwards. If any result doesn’t match that of the others, it is dropped. This approach also allows SpaceX to use fairly off-the-shelf (OTS) x86 computing hardware, with the flight software written in C++.
NASA’s efforts are similar, with
Ingenuity
in particular heavily using OTS parts, along with NASA’s open source, C++-based F’ (
F Prime
) framework. The chopper also uses some version of the Linux kernel on a Snapdragon 801 SoC, which as we have seen over the
past 72 flights
works very well.
Which is not to say using Linux is a no-brainer when it comes to use in avionics and similar critical applications. There is a lot of code in the monolithic Linux kernel that requires you to customize it for a specific task, especially if it’s on a resource-constrained platform. Linux isn’t particularly good at hard real-time applications either, but using it does provide access to a wealth of software and documentation — something that needs to be weighed up against the project’s needs. | 46 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729890",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T19:14:47",
"content": "I’m always so bitterly disappointed that these machines don’t run exotic hardware and use esoteric languages.I’m sure that tax payer is better off for it. Still I’d like to know the super safe and cool ... | 1,760,372,010.599266 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/one-project-at-a-time-or-a-dozen/ | One Project At A Time, Or A Dozen? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"rants"
] | We got a bunch of great food for thought in
this week’s ask-us-anything on the Hackaday Podcast
, and we all chewed happily. Some of my favorite answers came out of the question about how many projects we all take on at once. Without an exception, the answer was “many”. And while not every one of the projects that we currently have started will eventually reach the finish line, that’s entirely different from saying that none of them ever do. On the contrary, Tom Nardi made the case for having a number of irons simultaneously in the fire.
We all get stuck from time to time. That’s just the nature of the beast. The question is whether you knuckle down and try to brute-force power your way through the difficulty, or whether you work around it. A lot of the time, and this was Dan Maloney’s biggest bugaboo, you lack the particular part or component that you had in mind to get the job done. In that situation, sometimes you just have to wait. And what are you going to do while waiting? Work on Project B! (But take good notes of the state of Project A, because that makes it a lot easier to get back into the swing of things when the parts do arrive.)
Al and I both weighed in on the side of necessity, though. Sometimes, no matter how many attractive other projects you’ve got piled up, one just needs to get out the door first. My recent example was our coffee roaster. Before I start a big overhaul, I usually roast a couple days’ worth of the evil bean. And then the clock starts ticking. No roasting equals two unhappy adults in this household, so it’s really not an option. Time pressure like that helps focus the mind on the top-priority project.
But I’m also with Tom. It’s a tremendous luxury to have a handful of projects in process, and be able to hack on one simply because you’re inspired, or in love with the project at that moment. And when the muse calls, the parts arrive, or you finally figure out what was blocking you on Project A, then you can always get back to it.
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
! | 34 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729831",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T15:07:59",
"content": "“If you need a break, why don’t you work on this instead.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6730010",
"author": "Draco",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,010.506433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/minitel-the-1980s-console-game-platform-you-never-had/ | Minitel, The 1980s Console Game Platform You Never Had | Jenny List | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"atmega328",
"Minitel",
"serial"
] | We’ve made no secret over the years here at Hackaday of our admiration for the Minitel. The ubiquitous CRT terminals which made 1980s France the most connected country in the world never made it to where we grew up, but
OH!
how we wanted them to! We’ve seen quite a few Minitels repurposed as serial terminals here, but for the time being we think [Louis H] has won the Minitel Internet
with his plugin game console cartridges
. These have a DIN plug to fit the Minitel serial port, and present themselves as a serial game.
The cartridge itself is an extremely simple affair, a tube which fits over the DIN plug body, containing a slim PCB with an ATmega328 and its supporting components. The games must be programmed such that their gameplay can work over a serial interface, so as an example the first game is a version of
2048
.
We applaud both the simplicity and creativity of this project, and we love it that a new 1980s console we never knew we had has been unearthed, without the need for hardware modification. Meanwhile if you’d like to peer inside an Alcatel Telic 1,
we can take you there
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729812",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T13:48:17",
"content": "Hi, over here in the German speaking countries we had Multitels for BTX service, too.Tge latter wasn’t as popular among the citizens, but it was part of the Videotex family.Prestel from the UK deserves to ... | 1,760,372,010.837508 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/simple-magnetic-levitator/ | Simple Magnetic Levitator | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"hall effect sensor",
"Magnetic levitation"
] | [Stoppi] always has exciting projects and, as you can see in the video below, the latest one is a very simple
magnetic levitator design
. The design is classic and simple: a 5 V regulator IC, a Hall effect sensor, a 741 op amp, and a MOSFET to turn the electromagnet on and off.
Sure, there are a few passive components and a diode, too, but nothing exotic. The sensor normally presents 2.5 V of output. The voltage rises or drops depending on the polarity of the magnetic field. The stronger the field, the more the voltage changes away from the 2.5 V center.
The op amp acts as a comparator with a potentiometer setting the trip point. As the ball moves up towards the coil, the voltage increases, triggering the comparator, which turns off the FET. With no current through the coil, there’s no more electromagnet, and the ball starts to fall.
Of course, as the ball falls, the voltage from the sensor also drops, and this eventually turns on the electromagnet. The ball eventually reaches a relatively stable position.
This is one of those cases where a simple analog circuit
might work better
than a digital one. Or make it hard on yourself and use
an FPGA
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729825",
"author": "C. Scott Ananian",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T14:23:51",
"content": "How do you get a signal out of the hall effect sensor that’s not swamped with by the electromagnet?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "672985... | 1,760,372,010.88818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/droplet-watch-keeps-time-via-electrowetting/ | Droplet Watch Keeps Time Via Electrowetting | Navarre Bartz | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"electrowetting",
"hydrophobic",
"timepiece",
"watch"
] | Hackers just can’t help but turn their sights on timepieces, and [
Armin Bindzus
] has designed an
electrowetting-based watch
.
Electrowetting
is a way of changing the contact angle of droplets on a surface using electricity, and can be used to move said droplets. The liquid needs to be polar, so in this case [
Bindzus
] has used a red ink mixed with mono-ethylene glycol to stand out against the white dielectric back of the device. The 60 individual electrodes of the bottom section were etched via laser out of the ITO-coated glass that makes up the bottom plates of the face.
The top plate houses the small round pillars that keep the ink constrained to its paths. They are made of a photosensitive epoxy that is spin-coated onto the glass and then cured via the laser. The plates are put together at a distance of 0.23 mm with epoxy, but a small hole is left to insert the droplets and a filler liquid. An
Attiny1614 microcontroller
runs the show along with a
DS3231 RTC. A 46V signal drives the droplets around their path.
It seems this project is a bit away from true wearable use, but perhaps [
Bindzus
] could make a desk clock first? If you’re interested in another ink-based, watch, how about this custom
E-Ink Tank watch
? | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729754",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T08:09:28",
"content": "Love it, cant tell if it must sit horizontal which makes it less usable.Maybe if sandwiched between another pane of glass? Would that help keep it in position?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,010.929594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/breaking-through-the-1-mb-barrier-in-dos-with-unreal-mode-and-more/ | Breaking Through The 1 MB Barrier In DOS With Unreal Mode And More | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Intel 8086",
"ms-dos",
"protected mode",
"unreal mode"
] | The memory map of the original 8086 computer with its base and extended memory made the original PC rather straightforward, but also posed countless issues for DOS-based applications as they tried to make use of memory beyond the legacy 1 MB address space. The initial ways to deal with this like EMS, XMS and UMB were rather cumbersome and often impractical, but with the arrival of the 80286 and 80386 processors more options opened up, including protected mode. More interestingly, this led to unreal mode, DOS extenders and the somewhat more obscure LOADALL instruction, as covered by [Julio Merino] in
a new article
.
This article builds on
the first one
which covered the older methods and covered the basics of protected mode. Where protected mode is convenient compared to real mode is that with the former the memory accesses go via the MMU and thus allows for access to 16 MB on the 80286 and 4 GB on the 80386. The segment descriptors and resolving of these that make this possible can be (ab)used on the 80286 and up by realizing that these segment descriptors are also used in real mode. Unreal mode is thus about switching to protected mode, loading arbitrary segment descriptors and switching back to real mode. As this is outside the original processor spec, it is commonly called ‘unreal mode’.
Representation of the structure of a DOS-extended application and how it relates to a DOS extender, DOS drivers, and raw hardware access. (Credit: Julio Merino)
In the article [Julio] goes into a lot of detail on this, as well as an assembly implementation of unreal mode, before diving into the fascinating topic of DOS extenders. These are basically the reason why gaming under DOS on the level of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D was a thing at all, with the
DOS/4G
32-bit DOS extender (in the form of the Watcom C-compiler DOS/4GW version mostly) forming the backbone. By switching between real and protected mode, applications got the best of both worlds.
The way that this integrated in Windows also gets its own summary, in the form of the DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI), which gets around issues with nesting protected modes (until virtualization). Despite the improvements over EMS, XMS and kin, this era of DOS applications came with enough pitfalls (and workarounds) of its own. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729736",
"author": "Jeff Santelli",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T06:10:09",
"content": "Himem command.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6729780",
"author": "h2odragon",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T10:46:07",
"content": "Fo... | 1,760,372,010.994949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/20000-volt-plasma-knife-slices-dices-and-sparks/ | 20,000 Volt Plasma Knife Slices, Dices, And Sparks | Tom Nardi | [
"High Voltage"
] | [
"jacob's ladder",
"plasma",
"Plasma Channel"
] | For the most part, here at Hackaday we’re more interested in
how
something was made than the backstory on
why
an individual actually put it together. Frankly, it’s not really our business. But we’ve been around long enough to know that practicality isn’t always the driving force. Some folks build things because they want to challenge themselves, others because there’s nothing commercially available that quite meets their needs. Of course, there’s another camp that just builds things to look cool.
In the case of the
plasma-infused blade [Jay Bowles] recently put together for
Plasma Channel
, we imagine it was a bit from each column. The basic inspiration was to create something in the style of the “Energy Sword” from
Halo
, but the resulting electrified blade is no mere prop. Inside the 3D printed enclosure, it packs not only the electronics necessary to produce 20,000 volts from the built-in battery pack, but a fan to help push the resulting plasma down the length of the two-piece steel blade.
As you might expect, it took a few attempts to get there. In the video after the break, [Jay] shows off the design process and some earlier incarnations of the plasma knife that didn’t
quite
live up to expectations. While there were always some impressive sparks, the spacing of the blades and the output power of the miniature high-voltage generator both needed fine tuning before it resulted in the band of plasma he was aiming for.
Is there a practical use for such a thing? Well the spark between the blades can apparently be used to light stuff on fire, and of course, you can cut things with it. But realistically…no, not really. It just looks cool, which is fine by us.
Should you prefer your high-voltage experimentation to have a more clearly defined goal, you might be interested in the ongoing work [Jay] has been doing with
ionic propulsion
and
magnetohydrodynamic drives (MHDs)
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729721",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T04:54:58",
"content": "Cool tool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6729729",
"author": "ratty",
"timestamp": "2024-02-10T05:22:05",
"... | 1,760,372,011.041878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/keeping-track-of-the-night-sky-with-discrete-logic-chips/ | Keeping Track Of The Night Sky With Discrete Logic Chips | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"74HCxx",
"astronomy",
"declination",
"discrete",
"equatorial",
"logic",
"right ascension",
"sidereal",
"wire wrap"
] | As hobbies go, stargazing has a pretty low barrier to entry. All you really need is a pair of Mark 1 eyeballs and maybe a little caffeine to help you stay up late enough. Astronomy, on the other hand, takes quite a bit more equipment, not least of which is a telescope and a way to get it pointed in the right direction at the right time, and to make up for the pesky fact that we’re on a moving, spinning ball of rock.
Yes, most of the equipment needed for real astronomy is commercially available, but [Mitsuru Yamada] decided to go his own way with
this homebrew retro-style telescope motor controller
. Dubbed MCT-6, the controller teams up with
his dual-6502 PERSEUS-9 computer
to keep his scope on target. There are a lot of literally moving parts to this build, including the equatorial mount which is made from machined aluminum and powered by a pair of off-the-shelf stepper-powered rotary stages for declination and right ascension. The controller that runs the motors is built completely from discrete 74HCxx logic chips that divide down a 7.0097-MHz crystal oscillator signal to drive the steppers precisely at one revolution per diurnal day. The pulse stream can also be sped up for rapid slewing, to aim the telescope at new targets using a hand controller.
As impressive as all this is, the real star (sorry) of the show here is the fit and finish. In typical [Yamada-san] fashion, the impeccably wire-wrapped mainboard fits in a robust die-cast aluminum case that fits the retro aesthetic of the whole project. The PERSEUS-9 is used mainly as a display and control terminal, running custom software to show where the telescope is pointed and calculate the coordinates of various heavenly bodies. As a bonus, the 40×7 alphanumeric red LED display should be easy on dark-adapted eyes.
Hats off to [Mitsuru Yamada] on another fabulous build. If you haven’t had enough of his build style yet, be sure to check out
his PERSEUS-8
or even his foray into
the analog world
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729640",
"author": "bootstrap",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T22:49:51",
"content": "That portable computer is pretty unforgettable. Great to see it being used in the field",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6729647",
"author": "Pa... | 1,760,372,011.093979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/fosdem-saved-with-3d-printing/ | FOSDEM Saved, With 3D Printing | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"cons"
] | [
"FOSDEM",
"freecad",
"prusa"
] | If you were to consider what the most important component of a hacker event might be, the chances are you’d pick something that’s part of the program, the ambiance, or the culture. But as the organizers of FOSDEM in Brussels found out, what’s
really
the most important part of such an event is the toilet paper.
If you can’t keep the supplies coming, you’re in trouble, and since they only had one key for the dispensers across the whole event,
they were heading for a sticky situation
. But this is a hacker event, and our community is resourceful. The folks on the
FreeCAD
booth created a model of the key which they shared via the
Ondsel
collaboration tools, while those on the
Prusa
booth fired up their Prusa XL and ran off a set of keys to keep the event well supplied.
Perhaps for many of us, the act of running off a 3D model and printing it is such a mundane task as to be unremarkable — and indeed the speed at which they were able to do it points to it being a straightforward task for them. But the sight of a bunch of hardware hackers saving the event by doing what they do best is still one to warm the cockles of our hearts. We’re fairly certain it’s not the first time we’ve seen a bit of clandestine venue hacking save an event, but perhaps for the sake of those involved, we’d better not go into it. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729584",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T20:17:59",
"content": "Whew! For a second there I thought I was going to read that they printed the toilette paper!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6729606",
... | 1,760,372,011.157304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/better-living-through-biomedical-engineering/ | Better Living Through Biomedical Engineering | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"adaptive technology",
"assistive technology",
"biomedical engineering",
"Hack Chat",
"prosthetics"
] | We don’t often think of medicine and engineering as being related concepts, and most of the time, they aren’t. But there’s a point where medicine alone may not be enough to treat a particular ailment or injury, and it might be necessary to blend the mechanical with the biological. When a limb is lost, we don’t have the technology to regrow it, but we can apply engineering principles to build a functional facsimile that can help the patient regain lost independence and improve their quality of life.
The area where these two disciplines overlap is called biomedical engineering (BME), and it’s a field that’s seeing fantastic growth thanks to advances in 3D printing, materials science, and machine learning. It’s also a field where open source principles and DIY are making surprising inroads, as hobbyists look to put their own knowledge and experience to use by creating low-cost assistive devices — something we were honored to help facilitate over the years through the Hackaday Prize.
Nyeli Kratz
To answer some of the questions the Hackaday community might have, recent Johns Hopkins grad
Nyeli Kratz stopped by the Hack Chat
. Her study in BME and robotics alone would be enough to qualify her for hosting this week’s session, but with currently a dozen projects documented on Hackaday.io, she’s well versed in the hardware hacker ethos. With young people like her heading into the field, the future looks bright indeed.
Nyeli started out by explaining that BME is an exceptionally broad topic, and that there are many specializations within the field depending on an individual’s interests. She went down the path of imaging and medical devices, but some of her peers decided to focus on things like data science, immunoengineering, or neuroengineering.
The intersection of robotics and medical devices is clear from some of her published projects, such as the
UNIstand
: a unique self-propelled standing mobility device that can be operated with just one arm. The device, developed in collaboration with other students at Johns Hopkins, was specifically designed for pediatric patients suffering from hemiplegia — a paralysis on one side of the body that can make operating traditional motorized devices difficult.
The team decided to share their work, especially the steering and control system, in the hopes that it could be adapted to other mobility devices. They’ve made the CAD files available for their 3D printed and laser-cut components, which combined with the aluminum extrusion construction of the UNIstand, makes the project accessible even for hobbyists. As Nyeli explained, opening up the design of assistive devices like this is also a good way to make sure the research stays alive should the project run into funding or regulatory issues.
In talking about the near-future for BME, the discussion moved on towards 3D printed prosthetics which use transdermal electrodes to interface with the wearer. Being able to integrate printed flexible electrodes into the silicone socket of an artificial limb is a particular area of study which promises to make future prosthetics more capable and comfortable.
Nyeli is currently working for Medtronic as a software test engineer for surgical robotics systems, a vocation that’s not terribly surprising
considering some of her published projects
. However she remains engaged with the adaptive technology field, and during the Hack Chat, got an opportunity to connect with members of the community with physical limitations. She was gracious enough to offer assistance and advice outside the Chat to several individuals should they need it.
We’d like to thank Nyeli Kratz for taking the time to talk to the Hackaday community about this important topic, and wish her nothing but the best as she pursues what’s sure to be a bright future in biomedical engineering.
The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the
transcripts posted to Hackaday.io
make sure you don’t miss out. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729562",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T18:51:09",
"content": "Tale end is augmentation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6729595",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T20:46:52",
"content": "I c... | 1,760,372,011.529453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/hackaday-podcast-episode-256-0-256-378-0xff-and-10000000/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 256: 0, 256, 400, 0x100, And 10000000 | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | For this week’s episode, we did something super special — we all convened to answer your burning questions about your hosts, both as hackers and as humans. We kick things off with a segment featuring a hearty round-table discussion between Elliot, Al, Dan, Kristina, and Tom. What’s on our benches? What do we type on? Go find out!
None of us figured out What’s That Sound though a few of us had some creative guesses. Can you guess the sound? There could be a t-shirt in it for ya.
Kristina and Elliot went on to have a normal podcast too, but since the round table section went so long, we’ll process up that section and put it out early next week.
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 this epic monument of podcasting and savor it for the next 256 weeks
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Did you know what that sound was?
Fill in the form with your best guess
and we’ll see who got it right next week. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729519",
"author": "David Plass",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T17:12:29",
"content": "ACH 0xff is NOT 256!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6729541",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T18:21:58",... | 1,760,372,011.388866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/nifs-laser-fusion-experiments-energy-gain-passes-peer-review/ | NIF’s Laser Fusion Experiment’s Energy Gain Passes Peer Review | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"inertial confinement fusion",
"nuclear fusion"
] | Back in December of 2022, a team of researchers at the USA’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had exceeded ‘scientific breakeven’ with their laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) system. Their work has
now been peer-reviewed
and passed scrutiny, confirming that the energy put into fusing a small amount of deuterium-tritium fuel resulted in a net gain (Q) of 1.5.
Laser Bay 2 at the NIF.
The key take-away here of course remains that ICF is not a viable method of producing energy, as we
detailed back in 2021
when we covered the 1.3 MJ yield announcement, and
again in 2022
following the subject of this now completed peer review. The sheer amount of energy required to produce the laser energy targeting the fuel capsule and loss therein, as well as the energy required to manufacture each of these fuel capsules (Hohlraum) and sustaining a cycle make it a highly impractical proposition for anything except weapons research.
Despite this, it’s good to see that the NIF’s ICF research is bearing fruit, even if for energy production we should look towards magnetic confinement fusion (MCF), which includes the many tokamaks active today like
Japan’s JT-60SE
, as well as stellarators like Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X and other efforts to make MCF a major
clean-energy source for the future
. | 53 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729503",
"author": "jb",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T16:40:24",
"content": "The energy gain is between the laser energy absorbed by the target and the fusion energy emitted by the target. It conveniently ignores the far higher energy input required to operate the laser system, let alo... | 1,760,372,011.486691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/this-week-in-security-broken-shims-lasspass-and-toothbrushes/ | This Week In Security: Broken Shims, LassPass, And Toothbrushes? | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"Secure Boot",
"This Week in Security",
"toothbrush"
] | Linux has
a shim problem
. Which naturally leads to a reasonable question: What’s a shim, and why do we need it? The answer: Making Linux work wit Secure Boot, and an unintended quirk of the GPLv3.
Secure Boot is the verification scheme in modern machines that guarantees that only a trusted OS can boot. When Secure Boot was first introduced, many Linux fans suggested it was little more than an attempt to keep Linux distros off of consumer’s machines. That fear seems to have been unwarranted, as Microsoft has dutifully kept the Linux Shim signed, so we can all run Linux distros on our Secure Boot machines.
So the shim. It’s essentially a first-stage bootloader, that can boot a signed GRUB2 or other target. You might ask, why can’t we just ask Microsoft to sign GRUB2 directly? And that’s where the GPLv3 comes in. That license has an “anti-tivoization” section, which specifies “Installation Information” as part of what must be provided as part of GPLv3 compliance. And Microsoft’s legal team understands that requirement to apply to even this signing process. And it would totally defeat the point of Secure Boot to release the keys, so no GPLv3 code gets signed. Instead, we get
the shim
.
Now that we understand the shim, let’s cover how it’s broken. The most serious vulnerability is
a buffer overflow in the HTTP file transfer code
. The buffer is allocated based on the size in the HTTP header, but a malicious HTTP server can set that value incorrectly, and the shim code would happily write the real HTTP contents past the end of that buffer, leading to arbitrary code execution. You might ask, why in the world does the shim have HTTP code in it at all? The simple answer is to support
UEFI HTTP Boot
, a replacement for PXE boot.
The good news is that this vulnerability can only be triggered when using HTTP boot, and only by connecting to a malicious server or via a man-in-the-middle attack. With this in mind, it’s odd that this vulnerability is rated a 9.8. Specifically, it seems incorrect that this bug is rated low complexity, or a general network attack vector. In
Red Hat’s own write-up of the vulnerability
, they argue that the exploitation is high complexity, and is only possible from an adjacent network. There were a handful of lesser vulnerabilities found, and these were all
fixed with shim 15.8
.
LassPass Banned from the App Store
All we lack here is another app name LastPast, and we’d have the App Store equivalent of three different Spidermen standing in a circle pointing at each other. The devs behind the LastPass app
found a suspiciously similar looking LassPass app on the Apple App Store
. We’ve seen typosquatting on a bunch of Open Source software repositories, but it’s a problem on the app stores, too.
Three Million Toothbrushes
A story took the security world by storm this week: Three million smart toothbrushes had been compromised, and were used to launch a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a Swiss website. The story
originated on a Swiss news website
, and was referencing an interview with Stefan Züger of Fortinet.
Before we give away the rest of the story, let’s think about this. The story would be a big deal, but this seems to be the only original source on the Internet. The toothbrush brand isn’t named, and neither is the company that was DDoS’d. Nor was a specific botnet or malware family listed. Smart toothbrushes do exist, but they’re not going to be exposed to the Internet en masse. In fact, it would be unusual for one of these to have connectivity beyond simple Bluetooth. How would malware even get to one of these devices to compromise it?
We could construct a scenario where this could happen. A smart toothbrush would have to have Wifi connection as part of its setup process. This sounds weird, but I’ve seen sillier IoT behavior. Then, the only way to explain so many devices getting compromised all at once is a malicious firmware update. Either through a supply chain attack, or something silly like a domain name lapsing and getting claimed by a threat actor. This rather convoluted scenario could actually explain a three million toothbrush botnet.
But if you haven’t caught on yet, this didn’t happen. It’s a hypothetical scenario roughly based on earlier Fortinet research into
what could be done with toothbrush malware
(PDF). Bleeping Computer has gotten
an official response from Fortinet
:
To clarify, the topic of toothbrushes being used for DDoS attacks was presented during an interview as an illustration of a given type of attack, and it is not based on research from Fortinet or FortiGuard Labs. It appears that due to translations the narrative on this topic has been stretched to the point where hypothetical and actual scenarios are blurred.
That’s not quite the end of the story. The site, Aargauer Zeitung was pretty explicit that Stefan from Fortinet said this attack was real in the original article. In response to Fortinet’s announcement, they’ve
amended that article
, but also
published a response
, claiming that there was no translation issue — they all speak German after all. They report that Fortinet listed the toothbrush attack as real, gave details about how long it lasted, and about how expensive it was for the victim. The most surprising detail here is that Fortinet did a pre-publication review of the piece, and signed off on it.
So what’s the takeaway here? For one, news sites sometimes get it wrong. If a story seems weird, look for the primary sources. If there aren’t any primary sources, then just maybe something isn’t quite as reported. It’s not entirely clear where the communication breakdown happened in this case, but what seems most likely is that a Fortinet employee read an internal case-study on a hypothetical attack, and thought it was describing a real event. Of all the coverage of this, I think I like
the Malwarebytes Blog story
the best.
Bits and Bytes
There’s an interesting trick that security researchers have played on themselves. There are
too many honeypots
out there. Or maybe the problem is that the honeypots are too good at acting like real hardware. Regardless, the process of tracking the number of accessible, vulnerable devices on the Internet is getting to be pretty challenging. The example given is the presence of over 200,000 Confluence results on Shodan, but only 5,000 actual favicon results. That suggests there’s 40 Confluence honeypots for each real server. The mind boggles.
Apparently some heat pumps from Alpha Innotec and Novelan have an undocumented feature:
SSH access with a known root password
. That’s one way to
keep Home Assistant users from spamming your API servers
. It probably wasn’t intentional, though. It just happens that a simple password hashed with 3DES can be broken in seconds on a modern machine. It’s
eschi
if you wondered.
And finally, there was
a vulnerability in Mastodon
published last week. This is a bug in the federated account handling, such that an attacker can impersonate an account from another server. The update is out now, but the full details won’t be public until the 15th to give server operators time to update.
Hackaday.social
is already updated, if you wondered. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729593",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T20:44:16",
"content": "I don’t know anybody using secure boot, and I assume most unix users would be the same, so isn’t the shim thing an irrelevant issue?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,011.694423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/flipped-bit-could-mark-the-end-of-voyager-1s-interstellar-mission/ | Flipped Bit Could Mark The End OfVoyager 1‘s Interstellar Mission | Dan Maloney | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"corrupt",
"deep space",
"FDS",
"glitch",
"interstellar",
"memory",
"TMU",
"voyager"
] | Sometimes it’s hard to read the tea leaves of what’s going on with high-profile space missions. Weighted down as they are with the need to be careful with taxpayer money and having so much national prestige on the line, space agencies are usually pretty cagey about what’s going on up there. But when project managers talk about needing a “miracle” to continue a project, you know things have gotten serious.
And so things now sit with
Voyager 1
, humanity’s most distant scientific outpost, currently careening away from Mother Earth at 17 kilometers every second and unable to transmit useful scientific or engineering data back to us across nearly a light-day of space. The problem with the 46-year-old spacecraft cropped up back in November, when
Voyager
started sending gibberish back to Earth.
NASA publicly discussed the problem in December
, initially blaming it on the telemetry modulation unit (TMU) that packages data from the remaining operable scientific instruments along with engineering data for transmission back to Earth. It appeared at the time that the TMU was not properly communicating with the flight data system (FDS), the main flight computer aboard the spacecraft.
Since then, flight controllers have determined that the problem lies within the one remaining FDS on board (the backup FDS failed back in 1981), most likely thanks to a single bit of corrupted memory.
The Deep Space Network
is still receiving carrier signals from
Voyager
, meaning
its 3.7-meter high-gain antenna
is still pointing back at Earth, so that’s encouraging. But with the corrupt memory, they’ve got no engineering data from the spacecraft to confirm their hypothesis.
The team has tried rebooting the FDS, to no avail. They’re currently evaluating a plan to send commands to put the spacecraft into a flight mode last used during its planetary fly-bys, in the hope that will yield some clues about where the memory is corrupted, if indeed it is. But without a simulator to test the changes, and with most of the engineers who originally built the spacecraft long gone now, the team is treading very carefully.
Voyager 1
is long past warranty, of course, and with an unparalleled record of discovery, it doesn’t owe us anything at this point. But we’re not quite ready to see it slip into its long interstellar sleep, and we wish the team good luck while it works through the issue. | 95 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729389",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T12:40:48",
"content": "I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, do you mean like a digital twin?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6729390",
"author": "Albertron9000",
... | 1,760,372,011.982685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/09/power-supply-efficiency-measurements/ | Power Supply Efficiency Measurements | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"power supply efficency"
] | Even if you don’t have a Rohde Schwarz oscilloscope, you can still enjoy their recent video about using
an oscilloscope to measure power supply efficiency
. Of course, you don’t have to have a scope to do this. You can use a voltmeter and an ammeter, but it is very straightforward if you have a four-channel scope with a pair of current probes.
Of course, if you can measure the voltage and the current at the input, you can calculate the input power. Then again, most scopes these days can do the math for you. Then, you make the same measurement and calculation at the output. If you know the input and output power, you can calculate a percentage or many scopes can do it for you now.
The video reminds you that modern power supplies are often very efficient, so you want precise measurements. Depending on your equipment’s capabilities, you might do better measuring the current with a precision meter or using a sense resistor in series and measuring the voltage, although, obviously, a current probe will be more convenient.
Of course, if you only have a two-channel scope, you could do the measurements sequentially, assuming the power supply is in a steady state or close to it. You could also do the measurement with one or more multimeters. After all, multimeters are pretty cheap, so dedicating four of them to this task wouldn’t be that prohibitive.
Current probes tend to be expensive, but there are
relatively
low-priced ones out there. Good current probes use
Rogowski coils
, a topic we’ve talked about before. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729338",
"author": "heliosoph",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T10:16:48",
"content": "“Of course, if you can measure the voltage and the current at the input, you can calculate the input power.”You cannot do so unless your power supply has power factor control. Mostly you have a phase sh... | 1,760,372,013.983178 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/usagi-whips-a-chain-printer-into-shape/ | [Usagi] Whips A Chain Printer Into Shape | Adam Fabio | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"centurion",
"chain printer",
"printer"
] | What does it take to get a 47-year-old printer working? [Usagi Electric] shows u
s it’s not too hard
, even if you don’t exactly know what you’re doing. When we last left this project,
he’d tested and verified his power supply was working
. This week, after a bit of cleaning, it was time to dig into the mechanics.
If you haven’t seen a chain printer in action before, definitely check one out. They’re big, loud, and sound a bit like a turbine when they spool up. The type chains on these printers never stops moving. This means the printer has to know exactly where a particular letter is before launching one of 66 hammers at it. If the timing is off, parts will fly. To the average computer user, they’re quite intimidating.
Thankfully [Usagi’s] printer was in pretty good shape. When he flipped the big power switch, there was plenty of strange noises, culminating in the test pattern of dollar signs. Probably an early reminder to customers that they
needed to order more print supplies
.
The print quality wasn’t exactly stellar though. There were dark columns and, smeared characters. Some $’s were missing altogether. These printers have a ton of adjustments, but the problem in this case turned out to be a Mylar spacer located behind the hammers. The material acts as a cushion between the hammers and other parts of the printer.Time had not been kind to this part. It was worn through and cut into several pieces. A Mylar folder made the perfect replacement.
With a few tweaks complete, the printer delivered a perfect page. But the success didn’t last. The next page arrived with even more problems. When the paper spitting from the top of the printer gets too heavy, it folds over. That was enough to bring the dark columns back. Hopefully, this problem will be solved when [Usagi] installs the paper guides back on the printer. Until then, we’re waiting patiently for the next installment of “Raiders of the lost ribbon” | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729294",
"author": "Paul McClay",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T08:13:18",
"content": "HaD’s own Dan Malony would remember chain printers can also serve as musical instruments, and (further down the link target) someone not too long ago figured out how to remanufacture the precious and ... | 1,760,372,013.875432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/synthetic-spider-silk/ | Synthetic Spider Silk | Navarre Bartz | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"arachnid",
"biohacking",
"biomimicry",
"microfluidics",
"modification",
"mods",
"silk",
"spider",
"spider silk"
] | While spider silk proteins are something you can make in your garage, making useful drag line fibers has proved a daunting challenge. Now, a team of scientists from Japan and Hong Kong are closer to replicating
artificial spider silk using microfluidics
.
Based on how spiders spin their silk, the researchers designed a microfluidic device to replicate the chemical and physical gradients present in the spider. By varying the amount of shear and chemical triggers, they tuned the nanostructure of the fiber to recreate the “hierarchical nanoscale substructure, which is the hallmark of native silk self-assembly.”
We have to admit, keeping a small bank of these clear, rectangular devices on our desk seems like a lot less work than keeping an army of spiders fed and entertained to produce spider silk Hackaday swag. We shouldn’t expect to see a desktop microfluidic spider silk machine this year, but we’re getting closer and closer. While you wait, why not learn
from spiders how to make better 3D prints
?
If you’re interesting in making your own spider silk proteins, checkout how
[Justin Atkin]
and
[The Thought Emporium]
have done it with yeast. Want to make your spider farm spiders have stronger silk? Try
augmenting it with carbon
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729299",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T08:38:07",
"content": "One step closer to the synthetic spider silk mentioned in Robert Heinlein’s short story “Misfit” from 1939.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misfit_(short_story)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,013.828968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/lawny-five-keeps-lawn-mowed-snow-plowed/ | Lawny Five Keeps Lawn Mowed, Snow Plowed | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"2\" hitch",
"autonomous",
"interchangable tools",
"lawn mower",
"mower",
"plow",
"remote control",
"robot",
"snow plow",
"tracked vehicle"
] | Although there’s been considerable excitement over the past half century of a Jetsons-like robotic future, outside of a few niche uses of our day-to-day lives there hasn’t been much in the way of robotic assistants coming to ease our physical household workloads. Sure, robots exist in manufacturing and other industrial settings, but the vast majority of us won’t see a robotic revolution unless we make it for ourselves. To that end, [Jim] has begun construction of
a robot that can at least mow his lawn
and eventually plow his driveway, among other potential tasks.
The robot, called the Lawny Five, is a tracked vehicle currently under remote control but with a planned autonomous capability. The frame includes a set of caster wheels at the front to take advantage of the differential steering of the tracks, and between everything is where the mower, plow, or other tool can sit. The attachment system is based on a 2″ receiver hitch, allowing the robot to eventually change tools at will while still preserving the usefulness of the tools in their original state. The robotic platform has been tested with the mower on a wet lawn with a 20° slope and showed no signs of struggle (and didn’t damage the grass) so it’s ready to take on more challenging tasks now as well.
With the core of the build out of the way, [Jim] is well on his way to a robotic lawnmower and potentially even an autonomous one, not to mention one with interchangeable tools that he hopes will be put to work in other ways like parking his boat in a small space by his house. For those maintaining a piece of land a little more involved than suburban turfgrass, there are
other robotic platforms capable of helping out farmers
with things like planting, watering, and weeding. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729186",
"author": "Obiwan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-09T02:19:08",
"content": "This is the robot write-up you are looking for :https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/no-frills-autonomous-lawnmower-gets-the-job-done/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,372,013.527289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/3d-printing-silicone-parts/ | 3D Printing Silicone Parts | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"formlabs",
"silicone"
] | Silicone is a useful material for many purposes. Traditionally, creating something out of silicone required injection molding. That’s not difficult, but it does require a good bit of setup. As [Formlabs] points out in a recent video, there are
at least three other routes
to create silicone parts that utilize 3D printing technology that might fit your application better, especially if you only need a few of a particular item. You can see the video below.
The three methods are either printing silicone directly, printing a mold, casting silicone, or using high-performance elastomers, which are very silicone-like. Of course, as you might expect, some of this is aimed at prompting some of [Formlab’s] products, like a new silicone resin, and you can’t blame them for that.
However, they also cover the basics of printing with elastomers that have similar properties to silicone but are both harder and less expensive. Again, they are talking about their resins, of course.
The video also looks at creating molds for liquid injection and compression molding with putty. There’s also an example of eggshell molds. Granted, if you find any of this interesting, you’ll have some more research to do, but just the wide range of examples and applications will probably give you some ideas.
One thing we didn’t see was how you can
augment silicone parts with 3D-printed inserts
. Of course, you don’t need 3D printing to make
silicone items and molds
. It just makes it easier. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729083",
"author": "damfle",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T21:52:22",
"content": "I have done something similar myself. Process is pretty easy thought you might need a few tries to get it work.Print a positive of what you need (or directly the mold if the shape allow it). Sand and put p... | 1,760,372,013.775919 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/a-tube-tester-laid-bare/ | A Tube Tester Laid Bare | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"tube",
"tube tester",
"vacuum tube"
] | There’s still a mystique around vacuum tubes long after they were rendered obsolete by solid state devices, and many continue to experiment with them. They can be bought new, but most of us still come to them through the countless old tubes that still litter our junk boxes. But how to know whether your find is any good?
[Rob’s Fixit Shop] took a look at a tube tester
, once a fairly ubiquitous item, but now a rare sight.
To look at it’s a box with an array of tube sockets, a meter, and a set of switches to set the pinout for the tube under test. We expected it to use a common-cathode circuit, but instead it measures leakage between the grid and the other electrodes, a measure of how good the vacuum in the device is. In a worrying turn this instrument can deliver an electric shock, something he traces to a faulty indicator light leading to the chassis. We are however still inclined to see it as anything but safe, because the lack of mains isolation still exposes the grid to unwary fingers.
All in all though it’s an interesting introduction to an unusual instrument, and given a suitable isolating transformer we wouldn’t mind the chance to have one ourselves. If you need to test a tube and don’t have one of these, don’t worry.
It’s possible to roll your own. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6729028",
"author": "brucedesertrat",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T20:09:50",
"content": "I’m so old I remember the public ones, with the racks of new tubes underneath if your tube tested bad.http://travelphotobase.com/i/USOK/OKCH66.JPG",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,013.931316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/the-end-of-landlines/ | The End Of Landlines? | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"cdc",
"pots",
"submarine cables",
"telephone"
] | Imagine if, somehow, telephones of all kinds had not been invented. Then, this morning, someone entered a big corporation board room and said, “We’d like to string copper wire to every home and business in the country. We’ll get easements and put the wires on poles mostly. But some of them will go underground where we will dig tunnels. Oh, and we will do it in other countries, too, and connect them with giant undersea cables!” We imagine that executive would be looking for a job by lunchtime. Yet, we built that exact system and with far less tech than we have today. But cell phones have replaced the need for copper wire to go everywhere, and now
AT&T is petitioning California to let them off the hook
— no pun intended — for servicing landlines.
The use of cell phones has dramatically decreased the demand for the POTS or plain old telephone service. Even if you have wired service now, it is more likely fiber optic or, at least, an IP-based network connection that can handle VOIP.
Who Cares?
Soon this old phone may not have a network to use.
You might wonder, who cares? Turns out about 25% of the United States still has a landline if you include business uses. If you look at adults, the numbers are far lower. How many only use landlines? Only 2%. Another 3% rely “mostly” on landlines. About 1% of American adults have no phone at all.
So, who’s in this 5% of landline users? First, some older folks do not have cell phones or cling to their landlines, but — as you might expect — that number decreases daily. There are a few other key users of classic phone service. For one thing, the phone system powers itself very reliably. That means if your power is out due to a hurricane, a rolling blackout, or other reasons, your ordinary phone probably works. That’s not true for your VOIP phone and the network modem unless you’ve hooked them up with a UPS.
Other users include people in underserved cell phone areas and, oddly enough, analog FAX machines, which — it’s true — are still important in some industries. While some VOIP services can handle FAX, most can’t.
The scale is also daunting. There are about 100 million landlines currently active in the US. That sounds like a lot, but in 1998, there were enough phones to account for every adult and child in the United States (nearly 300 million). If the phone companies earned an average of just $20 a year on a phone, that was a cool $6 billion (and that’s probably a low estimate). Now, it would be $2 billion, nothing to sneeze at, but still, it is a big drop. Adjust the $6 billion for inflation, and the gap widens.
Wireless-only adults and children in the US in 2022 (via the National Center for Health Statistics)
The keeper of the phone data, by the way, turns out to be the
National Health Interview Survey
of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Apparently, the CDC depends on telephone surveys for their work, and they have been concerned for years about how many people have phones and of what sort.
While the data in the chart shows wireless-only, a quick subtraction will show you that landline-only (or no phone, but that’s a tiny number) is very small until you get to people over the age of 65.
Replacement
The plans to sunset POTS usually include provisions to provide ordinary phone jacks that interface to the VOIP system or the cell phone network. However, that won’t help your FAX machine or the power outage problems.
It makes us wonder, though. Maybe there’s a potential market here, at least for a little while. Imagine a phone that connects to the network when available. It has its own UPS for power outages. If the network is down, it can use either the cell or satellite networks. An optional jack for a FAX machine would fake out your device and send the actual image via the network for eventual delivery to a regular FAX. Another path would receive a FAX remotely and send it to your device over the network where you could route it to the connected machine.
Sure, it is a niche product, and that niche is shrinking. But you could probably turn a few bucks on it while it lasts.
The POTS system is probably one of the technical wonders of the world, especially
the undersea cables
. It might not be long before the only POTS system you see is
one you make
for yourself.
Featured image: “
Antique Phone
” by Vincent Diamante | 95 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728972",
"author": "Santiago",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T18:13:58",
"content": "The POTS was the largest, most widespread and the coolest technological infrastructure globally for many decades, and served us well. So long, POTS.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,014.187294 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/revisiting-a-z80-game-from-1990/ | Revisiting A Z80 Game From 1990 | Jenny List | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8 bit",
"machine code",
"z80"
] | Back in the days of 8-bit computers, like no doubt many readers of similar age, we wrote little games. First in BASIC, then augmented with little machine code speed-ups. We didn’t come close to [Óscar Toledo Gutiérrez] though,
who’s reverse engineering a 2K all-machine-code game he wrote back in 1990
. As a tale of software archaeology it’s fascinating.
The game itself is an avoid-the-monsters platformer with plenty of ladders for the little sprite-based protagonist to run down. The computer was a Mexican homebrew educational machine with a TMS9118 display chip and an AY-3-8910 synthesizer, so the result had both color and music. His run through the code breaks it down neatly into individual sections, so it’s possible to see what’s going on without an in-depth knowledge of machine code.
He readily admits it bears all the hallmarks of an 11-year-old’s knowledge at the time, and that it has some parts less elegant, but nevertheless it’s something of an achievement at any age. It was out of date gameplay-wise in 1990 but in 1982 it could probably have been bought on a tape by eager kids. Here in 2024 he’s got it for download should you have a Colecovision or an MSX. There’s a gameplay video below the break, take a look. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728932",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T16:43:42",
"content": "And now we need a new tag: computer archeology.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6728951",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T17:01... | 1,760,372,013.677682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/how-airplanes-mostly-stopped-flying-into-terrain-and-other-safety-improvements/ | How Airplanes Mostly Stopped Flying Into Terrain And Other Safety Improvements | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"air crash investigation",
"gps",
"radar",
"safety",
"warning"
] | We have all heard the statistics on how safe air travel is, with more people dying and getting injured on their way to and from the airport than while traveling by airplane. Things weren’t always this way, of course. Throughout the early days of commercial air travel and well into the 1980s there were many crashes that served as harsh lessons on basic air safety. The most tragic ones are probably those with a human cause, whether it was due to improper maintenance or pilot error, as we generally assume that we have a human element in the chain of events explicitly to prevent tragedies like these.
Among the worst pilot errors we find the phenomenon of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), which usually sees the pilot losing track of his bearings due to a variety of reasons before a usually high-speed and fatal crash. When it comes to keeping airplanes off the ground until they’re at their destination, here ground proximity warning systems (GPWS) and successors have added a layer of safety, along with stall warnings and other automatic warning signals provided by the avionics.
With the recent passing of
C. Donald Bateman
– who has been credited with
designing the GPWS
– it seems like a good time to appreciate the technology that makes flying into the relatively safe experience that it is today.
The Art Of Missing The Ground
As Douglas Adams once put it: “The knack [of flying] lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss”. As quaint as this may sound, it covers the two most essential elements of flying: keeping up sufficient velocity and navigating in a way that keeps one from intersecting with immovable elements such as mountain ranges, buildings and even just flat ground that is not a landing strip. Ideally, an airplane will thus take off, fly a set course and land again at its destination airport. Unfortunately, there are
many ways
in which this can go (catastrophically) wrong.
Airplane accidents cover a wide range of causes, ranging from weather-related events like
downbursts
– which can cause instant loss of lift during landing – to mechanical and similar issues. For the latter category famous cases include dodgy wiring causing a mid-air explosion (
TWA800
), and a lack of lubrication leading to in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer (
Alaska Airlines 261
). Here improved maintenance oversight has led to improvements, but it shares a similar element as the other category:
pilot error
, which itself is a large amalgamation of factors. Rarely is human error deliberate, but factors like fatigue, distractions, confusion, disorientation and more can all play a role in a disastrous outcome.
Perhaps most tragic here is
spatial disorientation
, where usually in poor visual conditions the pilot is unable to ascertain what the orientation of the airplane is. In numerous cases, this has led to the pilots giving incorrect inputs on the controls, leading to a loss of lift, attitude and ultimately resulting in a deathly spiral or the airplane simply falling out of the sky due to an aerodynamic stall. A good example of the latter is
Air France 447
, which occurred after the pilots were handed back control from the autopilot when due to icing conditions affecting the pitot tubes inconsistent airspeeds were registered.
Within minutes, the airplane’s crew had taken a perfectly functioning airplane from stable flight to wild curves and a steep climb, before a complete stall condition caused the airplane to plummet into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite multiple stall warnings during these wild maneuvers and clear indications on the backup (analog) instruments, the night time conditions with no clearly visible horizon likely contributed to this tragic and uncontrolled plummeting into terrain.
For such accidents, better training, better oversight of maintenance and repair work and adherence to checklists have shown significant improvements. Meanwhile the risk of microbursts has lessened with a better understanding of when they occur and how to react to them. Yet what about the risk of controlled flights into terrain?
Terrain, Pull Up
N2969G, the aircraft involved in the Alaska Airlines 1866 accident, seen at San Francisco International Airport in 1967, while still operating with Pacific Air Lines. (Credit: Jon Proctor)
It was the
Alaska Airlines 1866
crash that inspired Bateman to work on a solution for the CFIT phenomenon. This particular flight crashed in 1971 after flawed navigation led to the crew descending too early during its approach, causing it to impact a mountain. Such a controlled flight towards a certain demise had been frustratingly common ever since the dawn of commercial aviation, with the
1936 Havørn Accident
in Norway involving a Junkers Ju 52 being among the first recorded incidents.
By the time of the Alaska Airlines 1866 accident, the use of cockpit voice recorders (CVR) and flight data recorders (FDR) was fortunately standard, which gave a much better idea of what the crew saw in terms of instrument data and what their input was to the aircraft’s engines and control surfaces, as well as verbal communications in the cockpit. Although faulty navigation information received by the crew on their radio equipment apparently led the crew to believe that they were closer to the airport than they truly were, the crew was blissfully unaware of their imminent doom until it was too late. What if the crew had received warning about the obstacle and their low altitude?
Called Terrain Awareness and Warning System (
TAWS
) by the FAA, the original
GPWS
system as developed by Bateman as an engineer at Honeywell used radio waves to track the airplane’s altitude, along with parameters like descent rate, bank angle and others which can potentially endanger the aircraft if exceeding the known safe range. A major limitation of GPWS is that it only considers what is below the aircraft, which is what Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) sought to improve upon. Bateman was also involved in EGPWS development at Honeywell during the 1990s.
With EGPWS, the old system is augmented with more sensors to also look ahead of the airplane, combined with GPS and a database with terrain features including airports. This new system was designed to prevent tragedies like the
1997 Korean Air 801
crash that involved the CFIT at night of a Boeing 747-300 in mountainous terrain on Guam. By effectively creating a virtual corridor in which the airplane moves, any deviations can ideally be quickly noticed and reported to the crew, who can then correct the course.
Collisions
The Lockheed L-1049A Super Constellation N6902C ‘Star of the Seine’.
Not all kinetic events while the airplane is still fully under control of the crew involve the ground, of course. This was painfully illustrated back in 1956 when a Lockheed L-1049A and a Douglas DC-7
collided
above the Grand Canyon. This accident cost 128 people their lives when the two airplanes unexpectedly encountered each other while maneuvering around cumulus clouds. The DC-7’s left wing destroyed the Constellation’s tail, followed by both critically damaged airplanes hurtling towards the ground.
This crash led to wide-scale changes to air traffic control (ATC), as well as the realization of a need for better separation of flights that did not rely on visual detection by the pilots. Following this, the 1958 mid-air collision, of another DC-7 (
United Airlines 736
) with a military F-100 Super Sabre jet fighter further served to underline the need to merge the ATC for military and commercial flights into one system, leading to the formation of the FAA after dissolving the previous Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).
The 1956 Grand Canyon collision would also result in the creation of the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (
TCAS
) which has undergone many iterations over the decades. At its core it uses a transponder to provide bidirectional communication between TCAS-equipped airplanes. This ensures that the avionics of each airplane is aware of surrounding airplanes, with the possibility to warn the pilot of an impending collision, as well as as automatic avoidance on some airplanes. Theoretically this means that each aircraft is provided with a virtual safety bubble that no other airplane can enter without being tracked. Although not perfect, and not every airplane is equipped with TCAS – mostly smaller airplanes – each incident and near-miss despite TCAS has led to further improvements.
Safer But Not Safe
Every form of travel comes with a certain risk, so the real question is not which form of travel is perfectly safe, but rather how one can minimize the risks involved. Here we can clearly see in the statistics that the risks in the air are fairly minimal, while the risks of landings and take-offs keep increasing. With more and more flights starting and landing at airports around the world, landing and take-off slots become very congested, leading to accidents and incidents involving runway incursions. A recent example of this is the
2024 Haneda Airport runway collision
that saw an Airbus A350 practically land on top of a De Havilland DHC-8 (Dash 8). Fortunately a disaster approaching the
1977 Tenerife airport disaster
was here narrowly avoided, albeit with the loss of life in the DHC-8 aircraft.
For the past years, airports around the world have increasingly been adding more technology to keep track of not only airplanes in the sky, but also those that are taxiing or standing around the airport. Especially on busier airports it seems that this is the next frontier in air safety. Ironically not in the sky, but while still on the purportedly safe ground, which brings once again to mind the saying about flying being safer than traveling on the ground. Thanks to EGPWS, TCAS and other innovations this is now more true than ever.
Featured image: “
Grand Canyon Sunset Through a de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter Airplane Cockpit
” by Nan Palmero. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728967",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T17:43:38",
"content": "The 2024 Haneda Runway incursion highlights a big issues.Aviation is still for the most part human first.Haneda runway stop bars (effectively traffic lights) were out for servicing for over a week.The r... | 1,760,372,014.044557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/the-revolver-a-3d-printed-screwdriver/ | The Revolver: A 3D-Printed… Screwdriver! | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"planetary gear",
"screwdriver"
] | You know those “What my friends think I do” vs “What I actually do” memes? Well there should be one for 3D printing that highlights what you think you’ll do before buying your first printer vs what you actually wind up printing once you get it!
However, thanks to [Revolver3DPrints] you can fulfill your dream of printing a useful tool that looks like a commercial product,
the Revolver two-speed screwdriver
. The screwdriver isn’t motorized, but it has an interesting midsection that can be rotated to spin the bit, and you can select between a speed and torque mode.
The Revolver isn’t a solution looking for a problem. The designer noted a few issues with normal screwdrivers. They are hard to get into tight spaces, which was the biggest issue. The Revolver is compact, and since you turn its midsection, you don’t have to have clearance for your hand on the top. The gear ratios allow you to apply more torque without needing a long handle.
As you may have guessed, the internal arrangement is a planetary gear drive. You might consider if you want to print this using
resin or FDM printing
. You also need some screwdriver bits, some glue, and a few magnets to complete the project. If you prefer to make
a motorized screwdriver
, we’ve seen that done, too. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728825",
"author": "Clara",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T12:19:28",
"content": "Neat, but usually the limiting factor I encounter isn’t screwdriver length, but diameter. This looks pretty bulky, so it wouldn’t fit in a tight assembly, like the vintage sewing machine I’m computerizing.... | 1,760,372,013.735105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/custom-multi-segment-e-ink-displays-from-design-to-driving/ | Custom Multi-Segment E-Ink Displays From Design To Driving | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"7 segment",
"Adobe Illustrator",
"display",
"e-ink",
"e-paper",
"flexible",
"multi-segment",
"seven segment",
"Ynvisible"
] | With multi-segment displays, what you see available online is pretty much what you get. LEDs, LCDs, VFDs; if you want to keep your BOM at a reasonable price, you’ve pretty much got to settle for whatever some designer thinks looks good. And if the manufacturer’s aesthetic doesn’t match yours, it’s tough luck for you.
Maybe not though. [upir] has a thing for custom displays, leading him to explore
custom-made e-ink displays
. The displays are made by a company called
Ynvisible
, and while they’re not exactly giving away the unique-looking flexible displays, they seem pretty reasonably priced. Since the displays are made with a screen printing process, most of the video below concerns getting [upir]’s preferred design into files suitable for printing. He uses Adobe Illustrator for that job, turning
multi-segment design ideas
by YouTuber [Posy] into chunky displays. There are some design restrictions, of course, chief of which is spacing between segments. [upir] shows off some Illustrator-fu that helps automate that process, as well as a host of general vector graphics design tips and tricks.
After sending off the design files to Ynvisible and getting the flexible displays back, [upir] walks us through the details of driving them. It’s not as simple as you’d think, at least in the Arduino world; the segments need +1.5 volts with reference to the common connection to turn on, and -1.5 volts to turn off. His clever solution is to use an Arduino Uno R4 and take advantage of the onboard DAC. To turn on a segment, he connects a segment to a GPIO pin set high while sending 3.5 volts out of the DAC output into the display’s common connection. The difference between the two pins is 1.5 volts, turning the segment on. To turn it off, he drops the DAC output to 1.5 volts and drives the common GPIO pin low. Pretty clever, and no extra circuitry is required.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [upir] trying to jazz things up in the display department. He’s played with
masking LED matrix displays with SMD stencils
before, and figured out how to send
custom fonts to 16×2 displays
too. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728807",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T10:18:37",
"content": "I actually met a VP of Ynvisible at a trade show, and he is a hacker type. They have a DIY kit:https://www.ynvisible.com/products/electrochromic-inksif you’re into it.If you want to really DIY, ... | 1,760,372,014.252816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/will-large-satellite-constellations-affect-earths-magnetic-field/ | Will Large Satellite Constellations Affect Earth’s Magnetic Field? | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"dead satellites",
"ionosphere",
"stratosphere"
] | Imagine taking a significant amount of metals and other materials out of the Earth’s crust and scattering it into the atmosphere from space. This is effectively what we have been doing ever since the beginning of the Space Age, with an increasing number of rocket stages, satellites and related objects ending their existence as they burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Yet rather than vanish into nothing, the debris of this destruction remains partially in the atmosphere, where it forms pockets of material. As this material is often conductive, it will likely affect the Earth’s magnetic field, as argued by [Sierra Solter-Hunt] in a
pre-publication article
.
A
summary
by [Dr. Tony Phillips] references a 2023
NASA research article
by [Daniel M. Murphy] et al. which describes the discovery that about 10% of the aerosol particles in the stratosphere are aluminium and other metals whose origin can be traced back to the ‘burn-up’ of the aforementioned space objects. This is a factor which can increase the
Debye length
of the ionosphere. What the exact effects of this may be is still largely unknown, but fact remains that we are launching massively more
objects into space
than even a decade ago, with the
number of LEO objects
consequently increasing.
Although the speculation by [Sierra] can be called ‘alarmist’, the research question of what’ll happen if over the coming years we’ll have daily Starlink and other satellites disintegrating in the atmosphere is a valid one. As this looks like it will coat the stratosphere and ionosphere in particular with metal aerosols at levels never seen before, it might be worth it to do the research up-front, rather than wait until we see something odd happening. | 48 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728753",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T06:29:12",
"content": "Perhaps we’ll be switchingwooden satellitesafter all. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728873",
"author": "make piece not war",
"... | 1,760,372,015.430319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/metal-crystal-stops-electrons/ | Metal Crystal Stops Electrons | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"flat band",
"metal crystal",
"physics"
] | Researchers at Rice University
have found an alloy of copper, vanadium, and sulfur that forms crystals
that, due to quantum effects, can trap electrons. This can produce flat bands, which have been observed in 2D crystals previously. The team’s results are the first case of a 3D crystal with that property.
The flat band term refers to the electron energy bands. Normally, the electrons change energy levels based on momentum. But in a flat band, this doesn’t occur. This implies that the electrons are nearly stationary, which leads to unique optical, electronic, and magnetic properties. In addition, flat-band materials often exhibit unusual behavior, such as exotic quantum states, ferromagnetism, or even superconductivity.
It is possible that flat band materials will play an important role in future quantum computers. Until now, the effect has been seen in twisted bilayer graphene and Kagome lattices.
According to the researchers, the electrons stop due to electronic wave functions destructively interfering with each other like ripples on a pond. The actual paper is available, although, unfortunately,
behind a paywall
. You can, however, find the preprint version at
arXiv
.
Maybe flat band materials will lead to real
room-temperature superconductors
. Maybe. If you just want to make your
own metal crystals
, you can, but don’t expect exotic properties. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728733",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T04:19:02",
"content": "I read that last line as; “if you want to make your own meth crystals”B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728760",
... | 1,760,372,014.349185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/floss-weekly-episode-769-opencost-we-spent-how-much/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 769: OpenCost — We Spent How Much? | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Cloud Native",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"kubernetes",
"OpenCost"
] | This week Jonathan Bennett and
Katherine Druckman
talk with
Matt Ray
about
OpenCost
. What exactly is Cloud Native? Why do we need a project just for tracking expenses? Doesn’t the cloud make everything cheaper? Is there a use case for the hobbyist?
The cloud is just a fancy way to talk about someone else’s servers — and what may surprise you is that they charge you money for the privilege of using those computers. But how much? And when you have multiple projects, which ones cost how much? That’s where OpenCost comes in. Not only does it help you track down costs in your cloud usage, it can also catch problems like compromised infrastructure sooner. Mining bitcoin in your Kubernetes Cluster makes a really noticeable spike in processor usage after all.
https://mattray.dev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhray/
https://opencost.io
https://github.com/opencost/opencost
https://www.slideshare.net/mattray/scale-20x-kubernetes-cloud-cost-monitoring-with-opencost-optimization-strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnEhvuYp6UQ
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Next week we’re interviewing Kumar Singirikonda about Open Source DevOps at Toyota!
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 | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728752",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2024-02-08T06:22:14",
"content": "Was an interesting topic however I could not finish listening to this episode as Katherine Druckman’s audio was 10 to 15 seconds ahead of everyone else’s, making her seem to be talking over the guest. Started... | 1,760,372,014.291427 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/your-1983-video-phone-is-finally-ready/ | Your 1983 Video Phone Is Finally Ready | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"byte magazine",
"videophone"
] | If you read Byte magazine in 1983, you might have expected that, by now, you’d be able to buy the red phone with the video screen built-in. You know, like the one that appears on the cover of the magazine. Of course, you can’t. But that didn’t stop former Hackaday luminary [Cameron] from
duplicating the mythical device
, if not precisely, then in spirit. Check it out in the video, below.
The Byte Magazine Cover in Question!
While the original Byte article was about VideoTex, [Cameron] built a device with even more capability you couldn’t have dreamed of in 1983. What’s more, the build was simple. He started with an old analog phone and a tiny Android phone. A 3D-printed faceplate lets the fake phone serve as a sort of dock for the cellular device.
That’s not all, though. Using the guts of a Bluetooth headset enables the fake phone’s handset. Now you can access the web — sort of a super Videotex system. You can even make video calls.
There isn’t a lot of detail about the build, but you probably don’t need it. This is more of an art project, and your analog phone, cell phone, and Bluetooth gizmo will probably be different anyway.
Everyone always wanted a video phone, and while we sort of have them now, it doesn’t quite seem the same
as we imagined them
. We wish [Cameron] would put an app on the phone to simulate a rotary dial and maybe even act as
an answering machine
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728653",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T21:14:34",
"content": "Once it starts ringing…https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280065/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6728661",
"author": "spaceminions",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,372,014.722421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/tetris-goes-full-circle/ | TetrisGoes Full Circle | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"browser",
"Fourier",
"game",
"sinusoid",
"tetris",
"transform",
"wave"
] | As a game concept,
Tetris
gave humanity nearly four solid decades of engagement, but with the possibility for only seven possible puzzle pieces it might seem a little bit limiting. Especially now that someone has finally beaten the game, it could be argued that as a society it might be time to look for something new.
Sinusoidal Tetris
flips these limits on their head with a theoretically infinite set of puzzle pieces for an unmistakable challenge.
Like
Tetris
, players control a game piece as it slowly falls down the screen. Instead of blocks, however, the game piece is a sinusoid that stretches the entire width of the screen. Players control the phase angle, amplitude, and angular frequency in order to get it to cancel out the randomly-generated wave in the middle of the screen. When the two waves overlap, a quick bit of math is done to add the two waves together. If your Fourier transformation skills aren’t up to the task, the sinusoid will eventually escape the playing field resulting in a game over. The goal then is to continually overlap sinusoids to play indefinitely, much like the original game.
While we’re giving
Tetris
a bit of a hard time, we appreciate the simplicity of a game that’s managed to have a cultural impact long after the gaming systems it was originally programmed for have become obsolete, and this new version is similar in that regard as well. The game can be quite addictive with a lot to take in at any given moment. If you’re more interested in the programming for these types of games than the gameplay, though,
take a look at this deep-dive into
Tetris
for the NES. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728636",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T20:09:54",
"content": "More like Trig-Tris. Or Fouriertris.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6728642",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T20:34:42",
... | 1,760,372,014.848799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/friendly-flexible-circuits-the-cables/ | Friendly Flexible Circuits: The Cables | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Parts"
] | [
"FFC",
"flex",
"flex board",
"flex cable",
"flexible flat cable",
"fpc"
] | Flexible cables and flex PCBs are wonderful. You could choose to carefully make a cable bundle out of ten wires and try to squish them to have a thin footprint – or you could put an FFC connector onto your board and save yourself a world of trouble. If you want to have a lot of components within a cramped non-flat area, you could carefully design a multitude of stuff FR4 boards and connect them together – or you could make an FPC.
Flexible cables in particular can be pretty wonderful for all sorts of moving parts. They transfer power and data to the scanner head in your flat-bed scanner, for instance. But they’re in fixed parts too. If you have a laptop or a widescreen TV, chances are, there’s an flexible cable connecting the motherboard with one or multiple daughterboards – or even a custom-made flexible PCB. Remember all the cool keypad and phones we used to have, the ones that would have the keyboard fold out or slide out, or even
folding Nokia phones
that had two screens and
did cool things with those
? All thanks to flexible circuits! Let’s learn a little more about what we’re working with here.
FFC and FPC, how are these two different? FFC (Flexible Flat Cable) is a pre-made cable. You’ve typically seen them as white plastic cables with blue pieces on both ends, they’re found in a large number of devices that you could disassemble, and many things use them, like the Raspberry Pi Camera. They are pretty simple to produce – all in all, they’re just flat straight conductors packaged nicely into a very thin cable, and that’s why you can buy them pre-made in tons of different pin pitches and sizes. If you need one board to interface with another board, putting an FFC connector on your board is a pretty good idea.
An FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) is a custom flexible PCB, usually of dark orange colour, same colour as kapton tape. These are fundamentally always a custom design – you can pay to have someone produce your FPC design, just like you would have any PCB produced. You could say that an FPC is really just a PCB that’s very thin and bendy – which makes them wonderful for all sorts of purposes! You can make FPCs for building wearables, medical technology, PCB patches, and you can produce FPCs that act as FFC interconnects if you want better signal integrity, too!
“
Flat Flex Cable
” by Marcus Wong
“
Flexible Printed Circuit
” by PedroCalamaro
Some people use these two terms interchangeably, but it’s good to know the difference in case you’re getting confusing search results. Let’s go through what it takes to hack on both of these, starting with FFCs and FFC connectors!
Cables Galore
You can find FFCs in many different places! If you’ve ever disassembled a CD/DVD drive, a laptop, a robot vacuum, or a piece of semi-industrial machinery, they’re there, and of course, you’ll know about them if you’ve ever handled a Raspberry Pi camera. You can also buy FFCs in many lengths on the usual marketplaces – even eBay and Aliexpress carry some, there’s a rich assortment at LCSC, and Mouser with Digikey are bound to carry a few. LCSC’s offerings have been the best bang for the buck in my experience, for both cables and connectors, and the usual retailers are pretty okay for one-off FFC purchases. Generally, FFC lengths are somewhat standardized, and tend to come in 5 cm or 10 cm increments. If you want a very specific 12.5 mm FPC in your build, I wouldn’t hold your breath, so maybe plan for some slack.
Five different pitches – 1.27mm, 1mm, 0.8mm, 0.5mm and 0.35mm with staggered rows.
There’s four common pin pitches for FFCs – 1 mm, 0.8 mm, 0.5 mm and 0.35 mm. 1.27 mm FFCs exist but are pretty rare. The larger FFCs have straight contacts as you’ve commonly seen them, and 0.35 mm pitch FFCs have the exposed pins staggered at the connector ends. In fact, 0.35 mm FFCs are most likely to be flex PCBs built for FFC purpose, dark orange instead of white, because the contact staggering seems to require an FPC process to manufacture and can’t quite be done with regular FFC “flattened piece of straight wire” production tech. Still, 0.35 mm is a valid pitch when you’re on the lookout for FFC connectors. FFCs start from four pins – I’ve never seen a two-pin or three-pin FFC, and they appear to be a rarity on marketplaces too.
Beyond pitch and length, there’s a third defining parameter for FFCs, which is orientation. There’s two kinds of orientation – straight, where the exposed pins on both ends are on the same planar side of the FFC, and reverse, where the exposed pins are on different planar sides. This is something to look out for – if you use a straight FFC in a place where a reverse FFC goes or vice-versa, you might end up with either no connection or reverse pinout connection. (And ‘no connection’ is obviously the preferable option here.)
If you’re not interfacing with an already existing FFC, which pitch do you choose? My advice is, pick whichever is the most comfortable for you to solder that still fits in the space you have. Manufacturers seem to stick with 0.5 mm in integrated devices and 1 mm in general devices, with 0.8 mm rarely being used. I stick with 0.5 mm in my more integrated devices, with the caveat that I try and get the connectors to reflow into place with a stencil and solder paste, because hand-soldering 0.5 mm connectors is trickier than 1 mm ones. 1 mm FFC connectors are pretty easy to handsolder, on the other hand!
Connectors All Around
You’ll find all sorts of connectors for FFCs – horizontal, vertical, SMD, and even through-hole connectors for 1 mm FFCs specifically. That is more of an exception – FFC connectors tend to be SMD as a rule. Here’s a sneaky parameter – horizontal FFC connectors can be bottom vs top vs either side contact connectors. This defines which side the connector expects the exposed pins to be on, relative to the board surface – ‘bottom’ is same side as the PCB surface, ‘top’ is opposite of the PCB surface, and ‘either side’ will make contact no matter which side the FFC has exposed pins on. This largely determines whether you need a straight or reverse FFC. If you’ve accidentally picked a straight FFC where you’d need a reverse FFC, swapping a bottom-contact FFC connector for a top-contact one will save you the embarrassment. Vertical connectors also have this alignment – for instance, the Raspberry Pi vertical FFC connectors do.
Will your FFC fit into a connector? The main question you’d think about would be thickness. However, thickness on both ends is fairly standardized – a typical FFC with blue stiffener strips on each end is 0.3 mm thickness total, so as long as the connector you pick claims to be compatible with 0.3 mm FFCs, and most are, it will fit a generic FFC with blue strips on its ends. Without that stiffener strip, expect 0.1 mm thickness – but it’s rare that you’ll find an FFC without stiffener. It’s always okay to superglue a piece of stiffener from another FFC in a pinch if it breaks off!
A bigger question is the overall FFC width, and whether it has ‘ears’ – for same pitch and pin count, some FFCs are wider than others! I’ve got bitten by this with a Framework keyboard reuse adapter – both the keyboard and the fingerprint sensor FFCs have extra width on the sides. At least on laptop keyboards, some FFCs even have ‘ears’ meant to mate with the connector, to make sure that the FFC stays in the connector extra securely. If you have to work with such an FFC, you’ll do good paying extra attention to FFC connector datasheets before you click on the ‘Buy” button and solder them onto your PCB!
These are the criteria you need to keep in mind when picking FFC connectors for your board, especially if you’re working with already existing cables. Now, let’s talk about the less obvious aspects of FFCs, that you still should know before working with them.
Handling Instructions
If you want an FFC footprint but Kicad doesn’t have a suitable one in the library, that is actually not a problem at all – Kicad has an FFC connector generator! In the footprint editor, use the Footprint Wizard button (top left corner), which lets you make any FFC footprint with any number and pitch of pins that you could need! On the schematic side, you should use the MountingPin generic connector symbols, and change the autogenerated KiCad footprint pads from `0` to `MP`. I recommend grounding shield pads for the extra mechanical stability alone – it provides no electrical connection whatsoever, of course, so you can do whatever with them safely, but grounding them seems to be a way better choice all around. On cramped boards, grounding the pads also means you don’t impede ground propagation with a huge unconnected pad.
Remember to rename the side pads from “0” to “MP”!
You can bend FFCs, and that’s why we love them. Of course, there’s the usual “have it snake within your enclosure with a pretty liberal bend radius” – an FFC that constantly snakes around like that, will break eventually, but it will live quite a bit until that happens, and you can see that in scanners, FFCs aren’t a failure point we know about.
You can even fold the FFC onto itself if you are careful and don’t redo the bend. Usually, folds like this are done diagonally for 90 degree turn purposes. You can even bend an FFC diagonally twice if you need to make a 180 degree turn, or if you need to do an X/Y axis distance change! Of course, keep in mind that sharply bending and unbending an FFC will inevitably break the wires inside of it. If you want to check for broken wires inside an FFC, you can place it in front of a flashlight or a strong desk light – the light will shine through any cracks in the metal.
You can also solder FFCs to boards in a pinch – however, unless you use low-temp solder, that gets messy fast. Soldering to an FFC with a white plastic covering will quickly melt the plastic – not a problem with FPC-produced FFC with orange kapton backing, but again, those are rare. Also, if you are about to hot air your board, you want to watch out for FFC connectors. They might be a bit more heat-resistant than regular plastic, but that resistance is mostly for short duration IR oven reflow circumstances – they are still, fundamentally, plastic! Cover them with kapton or metal foil or both if you’re about to heatgun your board, just like you’d cover any plastic part, because replacing FFC connectors can be a hassle if you accidentally melt one, and would likely be required.
Last but not least, even if you’re not adding any extra FFC sauce to anything, you still have things to mind. When latching and un-latching an FFC connector, take care – don’t do it from one side at a time, do it at the center or from both sides at once. Breaking off a latch is quite annoying because then you must replace it or bodge it, and they’re finicky to replace, if you even have a spare connector to get a replacement latch from. Same goes for FFC – if you aren’t careful while inserting an FFC into its connector, you can have individual pins dislodge from the FFC plastic and bend away, this is especially easy to cause if you’re working with 0.5 mm FFCs. When the pin bends away, the best case is that it breaks away and disappears somewhere, the worst case is that it bends onto other pins and creates a short-circuit.
On the FFC account, this is what you need to know. Next time, let’s look into FPCs, flexible boards of the printed variety – see where they’re useful, requirements for designing one, and even try to design one ourselves!
Featured image “
Plextor PX-716A – disc drive motor with Sony Chemicals flexible flat cable
” by [
Raimond Spekking
] | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728601",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T18:22:23",
"content": "It’s a shame there aren’t through hole connectors for FFCs. SMD is great for most parts, but for cable connectors it is always risky, any tugging on the cable can tear the copper pads of the SMD connector’... | 1,760,372,015.264543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/vesuvius-challenge-2023-grand-prize-awarded-and-2024s-new-challenge/ | Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize Awarded And 2024’s New Challenge | Maya Posch | [
"History"
] | [
"archeology",
"herculaneum",
"papyrus"
] | In the year 79 CE, a massive cloud of volcanic ash rained down on the Roman city of Herculaneum after an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Along with the city of Pompeii, Herculaneum was subsequently engulfed and buried by a pyroclastic flow that burned everything in its path, including the scrolls in the library of what today is known as the Villa of the Papyri. After the charred but still recognizable scrolls were found in the 18th century, many fruitless attempts were made to recover the text hidden within these charred ruins, but not until 2023 did we get our first full glimpse at their contents, along with
the awarding of the Vesuvius Challenge 2023
.
We
previously covered
the run-up to this award, but with only a small fraction of the scrolls now read, there’s still a long way to go. This leads to the 2024 prize challenge, which sees teams strive to read 90% of scrolls 1-4 each, for a $100,000 award. The expectation is that with this ability, it should be possible to read all 800 scrolls known today, but as detailed in the
Master Plan
there is still more to come. Being able to scan and process scrolls faster and more efficiently is one of the biggest challenges, as is that of recovering any more scrolls that may be stuck in the mud at the Villa of the Papyri. As easy as it may sound to pull stuff out of the mud, archaeological excavations are expensive and time-consuming.
With time running out on how long both the recovered and still lost scrolls will last, it’s pertinent that we do not lose this opportunity to double our knowledge of historical texts from this era. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728628",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T19:58:52",
"content": "Turns out lava is a pretty good preservative, who knew? So cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728673",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"time... | 1,760,372,014.896176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/in-defense-of-anthropomorphizing-technology/ | In Defense Of Anthropomorphizing Technology | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"anthropomorphize",
"emotion",
"human factors",
"rants",
"robots",
"Tech"
] | Last week I was sitting in a waiting room when the news came across my phone that
Ingenuity
, the helicopter that NASA put on Mars three years ago, would fly no more. The news hit me hard, and I moaned when I saw the headline; my wife, sitting next to me, thought for sure that my utterance meant someone had died. While she wasn’t quite right, she wasn’t wrong either, at least in my mind.
As soon as I got back to my desk I wrote up
a short article
on the end of
Ingenuity
‘s tenure as the only off-Earth flying machine — we like to have our readers hear news like this from Hackaday first if at all possible. To my surprise, a fair number of the comments that the article generated seemed to decry the anthropomorphization of technology in general and
Ingenuity
in particular, with undue harshness directed at what some deemed
the overly emotional response
by some of the NASA/JPL team members.
Granted, some of the goodbyes in that video are a little cringe, but still, as someone who seems to easily and eagerly form attachments to technology, the disdain for an emotional response to the loss of
Ingenuity
perplexed me. That got me thinking about what role anthropomorphization might play in our relationship with technology, and see if there’s maybe a reason — or at least a plausible excuse — for my emotional response to the demise of a machine.
Part of the Crew
To be clear, when I use the term “anthropomorphism” here I’m not referring to making machines look like humans, but rather to our tendency to develop emotional attachments to machines, as well as to act as if they have some level of awareness of their users and their creators. There’s a name for this: “Tool anthropomorphism,” or the assignment of human-like characteristics to tools and machines, is
an area of scholarly research
. In commonplace terms, when you sweet-talk a dodgy lawnmower so that it’ll start on the next pull, or say goodnight to the project on your workbench before giving up on it for the evening, you’re engaging in tool anthropomorphism.
Tool anthropomorphism is nothing new; we’ve been assigning human characteristics to our machines for a long time, long enough that it makes me think there has to be some purpose to it. On the user side, I think anthropomorphism helps people relate to technology. An example of this might be when humans first started naming boats. Logically, there’s no reason to give an inanimate object like a boat a name. But for members of a species as social and as strongly tribal as we are, it must have been much easier for our ancestors to get into a primitive boat and sail off into a dangerous ocean knowing that the vessel had a name. It probably would have made the boat seem less of a stranger and more like a member of the village, imbuing it with a personality that they could relate to.
Beyond dispelling the “otherness” of a ship, naming it probably served another, more practical purpose. With a name — and possibly a face; many cultures did (and still do) adorn the prows of boats with facial features and eyes, to help the boat “see” where it’s taking them — it’s a lot more likely that the crew will take proper care of it. Even the simplest sailing vessels are technically complex systems, and getting to know their quirks and idiosyncrasies is crucial to survival. It also gives the crew someone to beseech when things are going wrong, to lavish praise upon when returning safely to shore, or to blame in the few minutes left to them when it really let them down.
Of course, none of this makes any difference to the boat, since it has no consciousness to perceive its own status or to consider the sailors’ entreaties one way or the other. So in purely rational terms, how the sailors think about their boat won’t make the slightest difference to whether it sinks or floats. But that’s not the point; it’s the
sailors
who are influenced by the anthropomorphization, not the vessel. It’s a brain hack, really; act like the ship is a person worthy of love and slavish devotion, and you’re more likely to do what it takes to keep her together and get you home. Break that faith, and things probably won’t go the way you want them to.
Even though there’s always been a lot of superstition surrounding the ancient mariners and their ships, and understandably so given the risky nature of their trade, the purpose that anthropomorphism served back then applies to the “user experience” of technology all through the ages. The classic example of this, particularly for Americans, is with our cars. We spend so much time in our cars, often while having intense experiences, that it’s hard not to anthropomorphize them. Some of us give them names, and some even claim to know their vehicle’s personality quirks and what they’ll do in certain situations. We’ll talk to it, ply it with loving words of encouragement when it acts up, and threaten it with the junkyard when it lets us down. I can’t count the number of times I’ve arrived safely at home after a long, dangerous drive in a blizzard or hurricane and taken the time to tenderly caress the dashboard of my truck and whisper a quiet word of thanks for deliverance.
Is any of that rational? Of course not. The truck isn’t listening. On the other hand, feeling connected to that inanimate machine, especially after going through a harrowing experience with it, is powerfully motivating to get to know everything about it, to see to its care and maintenance, and to make sure it’s in top shape for the next trip out. Anthropomorphizing a car — or a computer, a spacecraft, a house, or even a helicopter on another planet — serves the same purpose as naming a ship did all those ages ago. The technology may change, but it’s still the human brain that’s getting hacked by seeing human characteristics where none exist, and the result is the same: a better, more productive relationship with machines.
Back to the Drawing Board
The other place where I think our tendency to anthropomorphize technology pays dividends, and the one that probably concerns most Hackaday readers more directly, is in the creation of new technologies. As we all know, real innovation is generally a long, drawn-out process that starts with ideation and (hopefully) ends with something useful that never existed before. No matter whether it’s mechanical, electrical, software, or a combination of all three, most projects are long, often painful slogs with too many dead ends and failures to count. Seeing that process through to the end is a hard thing to do, but personalizing the project somehow seems to make it easier.
If we’re thinking in strictly rational terms on difficult projects, the tenth or eleventh “back to the drawing board” moment would probably compel us to cut our losses and abandon the project. Sometimes we do just that, but other times we’ll say something like, “I can’t do that, this project is my baby!” Is it really? Nope, it’s just a collection of parts sitting on your bench. But somewhere along the line, probably without even realizing it, you started thinking of it as your offspring, with hopes and aspirations for what it’ll be when it “grows up.” Giving your project the characteristics of a child and seeing it as utterly dependent on you for survival is often enough to get you over the creative hump and see the project through to the end. If you have any doubt about the power of anthropomorphizing machines, a quick look at
The Soul of a New Machine
will probably be enough to convince you otherwise; would a team of otherwise rational engineers work 90-hour weeks to bring a minicomputer to life if they didn’t at least partially think of it as a person?
I’m no psychologist, so I have no idea whether my ideas about the role of anthropomorphism of machines are even approximately correct. Then again, I’m not a credentialed engineer either, yet I still do a pretty decent job figuring things out by the seats of my pants. And something tells me that thinking of machines in more human, more personal terms serves a purpose both in how we manage the often painful process of creation, as well as how we relate to the technology that others create. And if that means being saddened by the demise of a machine on Mars, I’m OK with that. | 56 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728554",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T16:01:08",
"content": "Definition of insanity? (doing the same thing….)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728604",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T... | 1,760,372,015.13671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/schematics-for-a-modern-flagship-phone/ | Schematics, For A Modern Flagship Phone | Jenny List | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"cellphone",
"fairphone",
"repair manual",
"schematics"
] | The mobile phone is an expensive and often surprisingly fragile device, whose manufacturers are notorious for making them as difficult to repair as possible. Glued-together cases and unreplaceable batteries abound, and technical information is non-existent. But amongst all that there’s one manufacturer with a different approach — Fairphone. Case in point,
they’ve released the full service guide including schematics for their flagship Fairphone 5.
Fairphone’s selling point is the repairability and internal accessibility of their products and of course they’ve made hay with this as a marketing opportunity. But aside from that, it’s a fascinating chance to look in-depth at a modern smartphone from the inside out. We see the next-level PCB layout and how everything is so neatly packed into the minimum space, all without resorting to a heat gun.
It’s great to have another hackable phone, and fair play to Fairphone for releasing all this stuff, but perhaps the most interesting part from where we’re sitting is how and where this phone is being sold. There have been hackable phones before, for many the Pinephone will spring to mind, but they have always been sold to an audience who buy to hack. Here in Europe where this is being written, the Fairphone is being sold as a consumer device. It won’t shake Apple or Samsung from their perches, but for a hackable device to be so generally available to those who wish to do things with it can never be a bad thing.
We took a quick look at Fairphone back in 2015
, when they launched. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728493",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T13:36:08",
"content": "Give me a phone with an antenna socket !!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728497",
"author": "Clark",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,372,014.797981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/harbor-freight-and-lego-pcb-vise-is-cheap-and-effective/ | Harbor Freight And LEGO PCB Vise Is Cheap And Effective | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"clamp",
"harbor freight",
"lego",
"pcb",
"PCB vise",
"Technics",
"vise",
"work holding"
] | It doesn’t take much chasing things around the bench with a soldering iron to appreciate the value of good work holding. And don’t get us started on those cheap “helping hands” alligator clip thingies; they’re somehow worse than no work holding. Isn’t there a better way?
Maybe, judging by [Paul Bryson]’s idea for
a dirt cheap PCB vise
. It’s a pretty clever design that’ll have you heading to Harbor Freight, or whatever the moral equivalent is in your location, where you’ll pick up a small ratcheting bar clamp. [Paul] used a 4″ (10 cm) clamp; that which looks fine for a wide range of boards, but we suppose you could go bigger if you like. You could also stop there and just clamp your PCBs in the plastic jaws, but [Paul] adorned the jaws with swiveling arms made from LEGO Technic pieces, of all things. Rubber grommets slipped onto Technic pegs go into the holes on the beam to hold the PCB edges firmly, while the swiveling action adapts to odd-shaped boards.
To our mind, the biggest advantage to this design other than cost is how low it holds the PCB — a decided advantage while working under the microscope. Don’t have any Technics parts close to hand? No worries, 3D printed parts could easily stand in, and maybe even
improve the design
. [Paul] also shows off a substitute for the Technics beam rendered in PCB material, which would reduce the height of the workpiece over the bench even more.
We’ve seen a lot of PCB vises come and go, using everything from
scrap wood
to
3D printed compliant mechanisms
. But we doubt you’ll find anything more cost-effective than [Paul]’s design. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728474",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T12:40:48",
"content": "really nice hack!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6728551",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T15:52:38",
"content": "That’s really... | 1,760,372,015.037913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/recreating-the-quadrophonic-sound-of-the-70s/ | Recreating The Quadrophonic Sound Of The 70s | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"8-track",
"audacity",
"digital",
"music",
"qr code",
"quadrophonic",
"raspberry pi",
"replica",
"solenoid",
"sound card",
"stereo",
"VU meter"
] | For plenty of media center PCs, home theaters, and people with a simple TV and a decent audio system, the standard speaker setup now is 5.1 surround sound. Left and right speakers in the front and back, with a center speaker and a subwoofer. But the 5.1 setup wasn’t always the standard (and still isn’t the only standard); after stereo was adopted mid-century, audio engineers wanted more than just two channels and briefly attempted a four-channel system called quadrophonic sound. There’s still some media from the 70s that can be found that is built for this system, such as [Alan]’s collection of 8-track tapes. These tapes are getting along in years, so he built
a quadrophonic 8-track replica to keep the experience alive
.
The first thing needed for a replica system like this is digital quadrophonic audio files themselves. Since the format died in the late 70s, there’s not a lot available in modern times so [Alan] has a dedicated 8-track player connected to a four-channel audio-to-USB device to digitize his own collection of quadrophonic 8-track tapes. This process is destructive for the decades-old tapes so it is very much necessary.
With the audio files captured, he now needs something to play them back with. A Raspberry Pi is put to the task, but it needs a special sound card in order to play back the four channels simultaneously. To preserve the feel of an antique 8-track player he’s cannibalized parts from three broken players to keep the cassette loading mechanism and track indicator display along with four VU meters for each of the channels. A QR code reader inside the device reads a QR code on the replica 8-track cassettes when they are inserted which prompts the Pi to play the correct audio file, and a series of buttons along with a screen on the front can be used to fast forward, rewind and pause. A solenoid inside the device preserves the “clunk” sound typical of real 8-track players.
As a replica, this player goes to great lengths to preserve the essence of not only the 8-track era, but the brief quadrophonic frenzy of the early and mid 70s. There’s not a lot of activity around quadrophonic sound anymore, but 8-tracks are popular targets for builds and restorations, and a few that go beyond audio including
this project that uses one for computer memory instead
. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728411",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T08:21:03",
"content": "Shouldn’t 5.1 be sorta backwards compatible with quadraphonic? I mean, there’s the front and rear speakers, you don’t have to use the center…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,015.195704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/evidence-for-graphite-as-a-room-temperature-superconductor/ | Evidence For Graphite As A Room Temperature Superconductor | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"graphite",
"high-temperature superconductors",
"room temperature superconductor",
"superconductivity"
] | Magnetization M(H) hysteresis loops measured for the HOPG sample, before and after 800 K annealing to remove ferromagnetic influences. (Credit: Kopelevich et al., 2023)
Little has to be said about why superconducting materials are so tantalizing, or what the benefits of an ambient pressure, room temperature material with superconducting properties would be. The main problem here is not so much the ‘room temperature’ part, as metallic hydrogen is already capable of this feat, if at pressures far too high for reasonable use. Now a
recent research article in
Advanced Quantum Technologies
by Yakov Kopelevich and colleagues provides evidence that superconducting properties can be found in cleaved highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (
HOPG
). The fact that this feat was reported as having been measured at ambient pressure and room temperature makes this quite noteworthy.
What is claimed is that the difference from plain HOPG is the presence of parallel linear defects that result from the cleaving process, a defect line in which the authors speculate that the strain gradient fluctuations result in the formation of superconducting islands, linked by the
Josephson effect
into Josephson junctions. In the article, resistance and magnetization measurements on the sample are described, which provide results that provide evidence for the presence of these junctions that would link superconducting islands on the cleaved HOPG sample together.
As with any such claim, it is of course essential that it is independently reproduced, which we are likely to see the results of before long. An interesting part of the claim made is that this type of superconductivity in linear defects of stacked materials could apply more universally, beyond just graphite. Assuming this research data is reproduced successfully, the next step would likely be to find ways to turn this effect into practical applications over the coming years and decades. | 30 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728380",
"author": "argoneum",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T06:46:18",
"content": "Wait until April 1’st with publication, just in case 😸",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6728389",
"author": "Clark",
"timestamp": "2024-02-0... | 1,760,372,015.338068 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/beating-bitlocker-in-43-seconds/ | Beating Bitlocker In 43 Seconds | Adam Fabio | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"bitlocker",
"cracking",
"keys",
"LPC",
"pico",
"stacksmashing",
"TPM"
] | How long does it take to steal your Bitlocker keys?
Try 43 seconds, using less than $10 in hardware
. Encrypting your hard drive is good security. If you’re running Windows, the most popular system is BitLocker, which has come with Windows since Vista. We’ve known for some time that
Bitlocker could be defeated with direct access to the hardware
. Microsoft claims that the process requires an attacker with skill and lengthy access to the hardware. [Stacksmashing] wanted to define lengthy, so he gave it a try. The result is a shockingly fast attack.
Anyone who uses Windows has probably run into Bitlocker. Your hard drive is encrypted, and Bitlocker runs silently in the background, decrypting data on demand. The problem is key storage. In a simplified sense, encryption keys are stored in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). When your computer boots, it reads the key from the TPM over the LPC (low pin count) bus, which is one of the last remnants of the original ISA bus.
The problem is that the
key can be sniffed
as it passes on the LPC bus. Some laptops even have connectors and test points directly on the LPC. [Stacksmashing] takes advantage of the simple layout used on an older Lenovo Thinkpad (X1 Carbon 1st or 2nd Generation). Once the back cover is removed, Lenovo was nice enough to leave an unpopulated connector footprint on the motherboard. This was the key to stealing the key.
[Stacksmashing] used a Raspberry Pi Pico on a carrier board of his design. Pogo pins mounted on the end of the carrier board make it easy to probe the LPC bus.
To be fair, stealing the keys doesn’t give one the data on the drive. An attacker would have to take the drive itself or spend extra time transferring the data over USB. The X1 Carbon is a 10-year-old laptop, but at least it does have USB 3.0.
All is not lost though – more modern computers include the TPM inside the CPU itself. Sniffing that will take a bit more hardware than a Pi Pico. However, if anyone pulls it off,
tell us in the tip line
!
Thanks for the tip [YesterGearPc] | 69 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728329",
"author": "Jonathan Bennett",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T00:28:55",
"content": "Yikes!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728608",
"author": "Catherine",
"timestamp": "2024-02-07T18:40:14",
"conte... | 1,760,372,015.540878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/iot-air-purifier-makes-a-great-case-study-in-reverse-engineering/ | IoT Air Purifier Makes A Great Case Study In Reverse Engineering | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"air purifier",
"ESP32",
"flipper zero",
"Ghidra",
"home-assistant",
"mqtt",
"wireshark"
] | Here at Hackaday, about the only thing we like more than writing up tales of reverse engineering heroics is writing up tales of reverse engineering heroics that succeed in jailbreaking expensive widgets from their needless IoT dependency. It’s got a real “stick it to the man” vibe that’s hard to resist.
The thing is, we rarely see a reverse engineering write-up as thorough as the one [James Warner] did while
integrating an IoT air purifier into Home Assistant
, so we just had to make sure we called this one out. Buckle up; it’s a long, detailed post that really gets down into the weeds, but not unnecessarily so. [James] doesn’t cloud-shame the appliance manufacturer, so we can’t be sure who built this, but it’s someone who thought it’d be a swell idea to make the thing completely dependent on their servers for remote control via smartphone. The reverse engineering effort started with a quick look at the phone app, but when that didn’t pay off in any useful way, [James] started snooping on what the device was talking about using Wireshark.
One thing led to another, wires were soldered to the serial pins on the ESP32 on the purifier’s main board, and with the help of a FlipperZero as a UART bridge, the firmware was soon in hand. This gave [James] clues about the filesystem, which led to a whole Ghidra side quest into learning how to flash the firmware. [James] then dug into the meat of the problem: figuring out the packet structure used to talk to the server, and getting the private key used to encrypt the packets. This allowed a classic man-in-the-middle attack to figure out the contents of each packet and eventually, an MQTT bridge to let Home Assistant control the purifier.
If it sounds like we glossed over a lot, we know — this article is like a master class on reverse engineering. [James] pulled a lot of tools out of his kit for this, and the write-up is clear and concise. You may not have the same mystery fan to work with, but this would be a great place to start reverse engineering just about anything.
Thanks to [ThoriumBR] for the tip. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728268",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T21:12:37",
"content": "Seems like it would have been a lot easier to just figure out the i2c protocol that it uses to read the sensor and flash esphome/tasmota to fully replace the firmware.",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,015.599462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/retrotechtacular-the-master-hands-of-the-early-automotive-industry/ | Retrotechtacular: TheMaster HandsOf The Early Automotive Industry | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"automobile",
"casting",
"chevrolet",
"foundry",
"general motors",
"retrotechtacular"
] | When motion pictures came along as a major medium in the 1920s or so, it didn’t take long for corporations to recognize their power and start producing promotional pieces. A lot of them are of the “march of progress” genre, featuring swarms of workers happy in their labors and creating the future with their bare hands. If we’re being honest, a lot of it is hard to watch, but
“Master Hands,” which shows the creation of cars in the 1930s
, is somehow more palatable, mostly because it’s mercifully free of the flowery narration that usually accompanies such flicks.
“Master Hands” was produced in 1936 and focuses on the incredibly labor-intensive process of turning out cars, which appear to be the Chevrolet Master Deluxe, likely the 1937 model year thanks to its independent front suspension. The film is set at General Motors’ Flint Assembly plant in Flint, Michigan, and shows the entire manufacturing process from start to finish. And by start, we mean start; the film begins with the meticulous work of master toolmakers creating the dies and molds needed for forging and casting every part of the car. The mold makers and foundrymen come next, lighting their massive furnaces and packing the countless sand molds needed for casting parts. Gigantic presses stamp out everything from wheels to frame rails to body panels, before everything comes together at the end of the line in a delicate ballet of steel and men.
The whole process is fascinating, not least because it shows just how little cars have changed in 88 years. Health and safety standards have changed, of course. How close the workers were allowed to come to machines that could easily turn them to pulp is amazing, especially on the frame assembly line; a worker standing just a few inches out of place would have a very bad day when those giant riveting machines swing in to attach cross-members to the frame rails. It also appears to be very dark in the plant, which is in marked contrast to the brightly lit assembly floors of today’s auto plants. Also of note is just how vertically integrated the process was, as it looks like literally every part of the car was made in the Flint factory, and just as it was needed.
While this film is ostensibly about building cars, as the name suggests it’s more a celebration of the craftsmanship that made the whole process work. There are a lot of close-ups on the hands of these workers, most probably long dead now, engaged in work that’s in turn delicate and brutal. There’s also a lot to be said about the engineering that went into the assembly line itself; coordinating a process spread out over such a vast area and getting all the people and parts into the right place at the right time without the aid of modern control systems is just mind-boggling. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728223",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T19:40:40",
"content": "It looks darker because film was not yet as sensitive as it was at the end.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728255",
"author": "limr... | 1,760,372,015.724475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/human-interfacing-devices-packing-for-the-descriptor-heist/ | Human-Interfacing Devices: Packing For The Descriptor Heist | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"hid",
"HID keyboard",
"HID usb",
"USB HID Keyboard"
] | We started with
figuring out HID descriptors a week ago
, and I’ve shown you how to send raw HID packets using a MicroPython fork. We do still have the task in front of us – making a touchscreen device. For that, let’s give you the tools to capture an existing descriptor from a touchscreen, then show you how to tweak it and how it turns out in the end.
Packing For The Heist
When it comes to this kind of adventure, we can’t go without tools and weapons – it could be dangerous! Without them, you could even abandon your project halfway! Here’s enough high-precision tools and ammunition to last you through whatever obstacles you might encounter. Except for the web-based tools, these tools are for Linux, but please remember that you can always use a virtual machine or a Raspberry Pi. Nobody would use Windows for a heist anyway, what’s with all the telemetry and such.
The first tool is for reading descriptors – we need one to learn from, it’s just like a keycard you can flash to a security guard and scan at the vault entry. Of course, with RFID, you want to have enough examples, compare bits between a few cards and all. For now, HID descriptors don’t have authenticity checks, but it looks like
that might just change in the future.
Leave it to Apple and Microsoft to add them, as usual. On Linux, seeing descriptors is simple – as root, go into
/sys/bus/usb/devices/
, find your device by its
lsusb
device tree path, then follow the directory with the VID/PID in it. That directory will contain a
report_descriptor
file –
hexdump
it. The entire command could look like this:
sudo hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X "' /sys/bus/usb/devices/3-6.2/3-6.2\:1.1/0003\:0C40\:8000.0022/report_descriptor
Again, you might need root to even find this path, so use
sudo -i
if you must. The format string in the
hexdump
command gives you parser-friendly output. Specifically, for parsing, I use
this webpage
– it’s wonderful, even adding tabs that delineate different sections of the descriptor, making its output all that more readable! You can also save this webpage locally, it’s a very neat tool. Other than that, you can try other local tools like
this one
!
Now, you got a descriptor for a device whose behaviour you want to imitate, and you can parse it to see what makes it tick. Wonderful! But not something you can understand at a glance, not just yet? The descriptor alone doesn’t lend itself to building a mental map, it might contain multiple report IDs, and some descriptors will be generic enough to be confusing. For instance, many devices have descriptors that are actually endpoints for firmware updates instead, so you might be spending time figuring when the descriptor is actually never used. Let’s take a look at what our device actually sends when we interact with it, which report ID we should learn from – and most importantly, how a Linux OS interprets it.
For that, we only need VID and PID. As root yet again, go to
/sys/kernel/debug/hid/
, find a directory with your VID and PID, then
cat
its
events
file. In there, you will find a pretty-printed human readable description of every event you get from your device, as soon as it appears. Sometimes the printing process glitches out and stops mid-event – it might be something with the way it’s being
cat
‘ed, but it’s usually no big loss. This is a wonderful way to see what actually happens when your HID device has activity. The first byte is the report ID, then the packet is printed in the way it’s received, and after that, we see the parsing results from the OS. It’s simply an amazing tool to have! Here’s an example commandline:
sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/hid/0003\:2E8A\:0005.0029/events
Last but not least, you’ll want a way to see events as your OS’s input layers actually interpret them. Yes, that’s different – if a packet arrives, it’s not necessarily converted to an OS-level input event, sometimes it’s discarded because it doesn’t fulfill a certain condition. For instance, at some point, my touchscreen packets were being discarded because I was only sending coordinates, and omitted a crucial bit telling the OS that a touchscreen is currently conveying a valid touch event as opposed to a spurious touch. That bit is front and center in the
Microsoft’s ‘appnotes’ on digitizer building
, and seeing that my OS didn’t ‘take in’ my constructed events was the push I needed to peek into the appnote and check what my packet might be missing.
For this, I have
my own little Python script
that prints out events as they are received by the input library layers, and this script has served me for like a decade now. Simply download it and run it – you will need to install the Python `evdev` library, but it’s available from both Debian/Ubuntu repositories and `pip` alike. You also need to run this one as root, but that happens when you run it as `./listen_keys.py` automatically.
I prefer running all those different commands in
tmux
, different small panes for different ongoing tasks – here’s my workspace when I was developing and debugging the touchscreen code, where a) shows raw HID event printing, b) shows HID descriptor printing, and c) shows the input event display code.
A Perfect Disguise
With these tools, building a touchscreen was an evening’s work. I had coordinates from the XPT2046 library I was using, so all I had to do was to build a descriptor. Initially, I thought to reuse the “absolute position mouse” descriptor helpfully provided by [] with the code, but the input event printing script has shown me that even the mouse button presses from that script weren’t picked up by UI – and while MOUSE_ABS events did show up, they did not affect my desktop in any way.
Debugging the mouse descriptor work didn’t sound fun, especially given I don’t even have a working absolute mouse to learn from! Instead, I decided to rebuild the absolute mouse descriptor into a digitizer descriptor, since I have both digitizer descriptor and packets! The absolute mouse descriptor was helpfully exposed in the MicroPython sources separately, and ripe for tweaking, too! Changing the
USAGE
and
USAGE_PAGE
categories alone to those of USB touchscreen’s descriptor made my OS recognize my RP2040 board as a digitizer.
The actual changes were not tricky – the XPT2046 library provided two integer coordinates, so I copied a structure from a descriptor that described one X and one Y value, each 16 bits long and therefore split into two bytes each, just like my USB touchscreen. With help of the HID packet debug print mechanism, I could quickly notice when my upper and lower byte were swapped, because my OS was not interpreting the coordinates correctly. Having fixed that, my packets would get parsed correctly but weren’t appearing among the input events, and comparing the factory-made USB touchscreen packets to the hand-constructed packets of my DIY touchscreen, I could notice that a “valid touch” bit was missing. Adding that made the device behave like a touchscreen for all intents and purposes!
Now, I have a DIY USB-connected touchscreen, and all it took was stealing a HID descriptor from a different touchscreen, then imitating it closely enough. Plus, whenever I want, I can switch my touchscreen into touchpad mode by having it send packets with a different report ID that corresponds to the mouse descriptor of the firmware – it only lacks two mouse buttons to be a complete laptop touchpad! Given that I’m using this to prototype a wearable display, it will be immensely helpful.
In And Out, We Secured The Goods
As-is, the newly christened USB touchscreen needs some filtering and calibration, but those are tiny fixes – could probably steal some filtering algorithms from Linux XPT2046 drivers, too! It’s plug&play, it’s easy to use, and it’s hackable – no longer the SPI touchscreen it was meant to be. Most of all, it’s a great example that, if you want to build a slightly wacky HID device, it’s nowhere near hard to do so, and Linux offers you a powerful toolkit that helps you notice any HID problems no matter how far you want to go.
There’s tons of things you can do if you understand HID. For instance, you can build a Braille display that’s cross-compatible, without struggling with USB-UART serial numbers. Over
on Hackaday Discord
, [mupf] has been hacking on an XBox Adaptive Controller-compatible device that uses a magnetometer and gyro to send the OS, with the HID descriptor heavily informed by a dumped descriptor of an original Xbox Adaptive Controller. The HID specification describes a large number of things, even USB-connected character displays, and things like – you can send quaternions with help of HID, of all things!
Supporting HID makes your input device friendly and helps it better interact within the software world. HID is, at its core, a language understood by all of the mainstay operating systems, and giving your device a HID interface lets you avoid adding a layer of proprietary language between your device and any sort of software you wish to interact with. And, of course, HID is a great hacker tool – this smartphone automation tool alone will testify!
Next time, I’d like to show you more about I2C HID – sending HID packets and descriptors over I2C, without requiring a USB port at all and only using a I2C connection, which by now is pretty ubiquitous! In that context, I will show you how to reuse a Framework laptop touchpad, which uses I2C-HID for its communications. I’m hoping to modify QMK so that we can practice adding I2C touchpads to any QMK-controlled keyboards, but we might just settle on modding KMK, which is QMK’s equivalent but in CircuitPython. I will also show you how you can quickly connect an I2C-HID device to a Linux SBC of yours – it’s easier than you might imagine! And, if stars align and I2C peripheral mode support in RP2040 MicroPython turns out to be stable enough, we could even build our own RP2040-powered I2C HID peripheral as a dessert. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728190",
"author": "Przemek",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T18:17:43",
"content": "Great article, thanks!!!!Was there supposed to be a link?this smartphone automation tool alone will testify!What smartphone automation tool?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,372,015.661025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/it-wasnt-doom-that-killed-the-amiga/ | It Wasn’t DOOM That Killed The Amiga | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"16bit",
"1990s",
"amiga"
] | If you were the type of person who might have read
Hackaday
had we been around in the late 1980s or early 1990s, it’s a reasonable guess that you would have had a 16-bit home computer on your desk, and furthermore that it might have been a Commodore Amiga. These machines gave the best bang for the buck in those days with their impressive multimedia capabilities, and they gained a fervent following which persists to this day. [Carl Svensson] was one of them, and he’s penned
a retrospective on the demise of the platform
with the benefit of much hindsight.
The heyday of the Amiga from its 1985 launch until the days of the A1200 in the early-to-mid 1990s saw Moore’s Law show perhaps its fastest effects for the consumer. In that decade the PC world jumped from the 8088 to the Pentium, and from a PC speaker and CGA if you were lucky, to a Sound Blaster 16 and accelerated SVGA. By comparison the Amiga didn’t change much except in model numbers and a few extra graphics modes, and when a faster processor came
it was far to little too late
.
Defender of the Crown
, released in 1986
There’s a well-worn path with some justification of blaming Commodore-s notoriously awful management for the debacle, but the piece goes beyond that into the mid ’90s. His conclusion is that what really killed the Amiga was that the CPU price reductions which defined the x86 world at that time never came to 68k or PowerPC lines, and that along with the architecture zealotry of the fan base meant that there would never be the much-longed-for revival.
He also takes a look at the other home computer platforms of the era, including the “all its
killer architecture
managed to kill was, sadly, Atari itself” Atari Falcon, and the Acorn Archimedes,
which also lives on for enthusiasts and is perhaps the most accessible survivor
. From here having also the benefit of hindsight we can’t disagree with him on his assessment, so perhaps it’s best to look at the Amiga not as the platform we should rightfully still be using, but the great stepping stone which provided us a useful computer back in t he day without breaking the bank. | 117 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728153",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T16:51:24",
"content": ">architecture zealotryAmiga painted themselves into a corner with the architecture, because it became impossible to upgrade the system without breaking compatibility. Spreading the different functions across... | 1,760,372,016.262799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/they-want-to-put-a-telescope-in-a-crater-on-the-moon/ | They Want To Put A Telescope In A Crater On The Moon | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"moon",
"nasa",
"Radio Telescope",
"telescope"
] | When we first developed telescopes, we started using them on the ground. Humanity was yet to master powered flight, you see, to say nothing of going beyond into space. As technology developed, we realized that putting a telescope up on a satellite might be useful, since it would get rid of all that horrible distortion from that pesky old atmosphere. We also developed radio telescopes, when we realized there were electromagnetic signals beyond visible light that were of great interest to us.
Now, NASA’s dreaming even bigger. What if it could build a big radio telescope
up on the Moon?
See You On The Dark Side Of The Moon
NASA’s concept to turn a moon crater into a radio telescope using a number of cooperative rovers. Credit: NASA, public domain
This concept has been on the cards
for some time.
NASA has created a plan for the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, or LRCT. The idea is that NASA would select a large crater on the far side of the moon, roughly 3 km – 5 km in diameter. This natural structure would be used to create a gigantic radio telescope far bigger than could otherwise reasonably be built and deployed by a lunar craft.
The concept is naturally quite complicated, involving multiple robots working together to construct the giant structure. The concept involves effectively building a radio dish over 1 km wide. That’s far in excess of the largest radio telescopes on Earth, like the 500 m FAST in China, and the
305-m-wide destroyed husk that was Arecibo
.
To achieve this, one plan would see a lander lofted into the center of the crater, while a secondary lander would land outside the crater, deploying multiple
“DuAxle” rovers
. The lander in the crater would deploy guide wires for a wire mesh to form the main structure of the dish. The special DuAxle rovers would anchor themselves around the perimeter of the crater, lowering one of their independent axles down towards the center of the crater on a tether. These independent axles would then help grab the guide wires tostretch the wire mesh over the crater. Meanwhile, other rovers would work together to hoist up a receiver to the focal point of the dish formed by the crater’s natural shape.
NASA’s DuAxle rovers can split to allow one of the axles to descend a steep slope on a tether. Credit: NASA
If it all sounds very complicated, that’s because it is. This method of deployment requires the cooperation of multiple rovers working in sync. Mistakes or mistimed maneuvers could tangle or destroy the mesh quite easily. There are also questions as to command and control. Getting signals to the far side of the Moon isn’t easy; NASA would either need to set up a radio relay or otherwise trust the rovers to do their job entirely autonomously.
The space agency has also explored other ideas for deploying the dish, too. One idea involves having a lander deploy the mesh by flinging it out as it descends into the crater. Alternatively, the lander could settle in the crater and then launch its wire mesh by firing it with projectiles, like some kind of lunar net gun. While these methods cut complexity somewhat, they pose greater challenge in actually anchoring the mesh onto the lunar surface.
However it’s deployed, positioning the telescope on the far side of the Moon is beneficial for doing serious science. The telescope would naturally be shielded from noisy emissions from Earth by the full mass of the Moon itself. Also, by virtue of its location, the telescope would be able to capture frequencies below 30 MHz. These frequencies are normally inaccessible with regards to radio astronomy on Earth, as signals in this spectrum from space tend to bounce off of the ionosphere.
Rovers would be used to help loft a receiver over the wire mesh dish.
Credit: NASA
NASA isn’t the only one thinking that the far side of the moon could be a good spot to gaze from. Along with international partners, China has developed
its own project
to observe the heavens from the far side of the moon, also aimed at investigating the radio spectrum. Much like NASA’s plan, the idea is to get out of the Earth’s ionosphere to listen to low-frequency waves, to help us learn more about the Dark Ages of the universe.
There are a great deal of questions that remain unanswered in radio astronomy, mostly thanks to the limitations of our humble Earth. Getting a radio telescope set up on the other side of the Moon, either in orbit or on the surface, could be a key way to unlock more secrets of the early universe. It will be no small task, but NASA has been pulling off increasingly complicated missions in each subsequent decade. A lunar radio telescope could just be the next amazing feat achieved with top-tier engineering and a fleet of helpful robots.
The view from the crater would be amazing, but NASA probably wouldn’t want you stomping around there. Credit: NASA
For now, work remains ongoing. NASA is yet to commit to a mission to deploy the LCRT. It’s still very much in the research phase, having received significant funding to further develop and explore the concept. There are also new challenges emerging as previously radio-quiet parts of the Moon
are under threat.
Ultimately, don’t expect to see a lunar telescope next year, but expect more movement on these concepts over the next decade. | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728170",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T17:40:31",
"content": "Giant grey ball in the sky with parabolic dish embedded into its surface. Rings a bell?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728246",
"author... | 1,760,372,015.865903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/atopile-wants-you-to-code-schematics/ | Atopile Wants You To Code Schematics | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"pcb",
"python",
"schematic"
] | We’d wager that, if you’re reading
Hackaday
, you’ve looked at more than a few circuit diagrams in your day. Maybe you’ve even converted a few of them over to a PCB. It’s a workflow that, at this point, is well-understood. But as designs become more complex, the schematics are harder to create and maintain. That’s why
Atopile wants to treat hardware design more like writing code
.
We can see some real benefits to this but also some possible drawbacks. On the plus side, reusing chunks of PCB description should be easy. On the other hand, detecting certain errors on a schematic or PCB layout is easier than spotting them in code. Of course, there are probably types of errors that are easier to catch in code, too, so maybe that’s not a problem. Certainly, if you can spit out a schematic from your code, you could — potentially — have the best of both worlds.
Here’s an example circuit (from the documentation):
import Resistor from "generics/resistors.ato"
module VoltageDivider:
signal top
signal out
signal bottom
r_top = new Resistor
r_top.footprint = "R0402"
r_top.value = 100kohm +/- 10%
r_bottom = new Resistor
r_bottom.footprint = "R0402"
r_top.value = 200kohm +/- 10%
top ~ r_top.p1; r_top.p2 ~ out
out ~ r_bottom.p1; r_bottom.p2 ~ bottom
Then again, you can use
Verilog-A
or even Spice netlists to get the same effect (and those aren’t the
only attempts
at doing this). Will Atopile catch on? Maybe. Should it? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Software isn’t always readable, but it would be nice to see
literate designs
for hardware. This project reminded us a lot of
SKIDL
, but we haven’t seen any updates of that project for a bit. | 58 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728060",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T12:22:41",
"content": "It seems kinda counterproductive to go to a text based tools for something as traditionally visual as schematic capture. Images have always made more sense to me, than written text.But then again, FPGAs... | 1,760,372,016.090786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/06/sailing-directly-into-the-wind/ | Sailing (Directly) Into The Wind | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"catamaran",
"prop",
"propeller",
"remote controlled",
"sail",
"sailboat",
"sailing",
"upwind"
] | Humans have been sailing various seas and oceans for thousands of years, and using boats for potentially even longer than that. But as a species we wouldn’t have made it very far if it was only possible to sail in the same direction the wind is blowing. There are a number of methods for sailing upwind, but generally only up to a certain angle. [rctestflight] wondered if there was some way of sailing straight upwind instead and
built this rotary sail craft to test the idea
.
Normally a boat sailing upwind will sail approximately 45° into it, then “tack” 90
° across the wind until they’re at another 45° angle from the wind, this time facing the opposite direction. This back-and-forth nature is not the most efficient path, so this vessel uses a few propellers to bypass the traditional sail. The first iteration, built on a sleek catamaran hull, uses a large propeller to catch the wind’s energy, then transfers it mechanically through a set of shafts to an underwater prop.
It took a few tries to get the size and pitch of both propellers narrowed down to where the boat would move forward into the wind, but move it does. A second major iteration of the build uses a single shaft with no gears, with the trade-off that neither propeller is facing an ideal direction, but this has the added benefit of the boat naturally pointing itself upwind.
While none of the designs are speed demons, the concept is sound enough. It’s just that, in most cases, performing multiple tacks to get upwind is acceptable compared to the extreme efficiency losses and drag from propeller-driven sailing crafts like these. A more effective way of propelling a boat upwind, at least using modern technology,
might be to trade sails for solar panels
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728059",
"author": "Rhys Nolan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T11:55:59",
"content": "This has been done on full sized sailing boats since the early 1970s.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728131",
"author": "Mat",
... | 1,760,372,015.788138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/lego-coin-sorter-is-so-money/ | LEGO Coin Sorter Is So Money | Kristina Panos | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"coin sorter",
"coin sorting machine",
"lego"
] | When it comes to LEGO and sorting, the idea is usually to sort bricks by color, which is a great way to help keep your sanity. And if you want to buy more, you may need to save your pennies and so on. What better way for worlds to collide than to build
a working LEGO coin sorter?
[brickstudios]’ sorter does it all — pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollars. As with most coin sorters, the idea is to differentiate by size. This brings up challenge number one — the fact that a penny is ever-so-slightly bigger than a dime.
[brickstudios] was able to solve this by leveraging the difference between a headlight brick and a regular modified 1X1 with a stud on the side. Later, the same two coins reveal challenge two, which is that if you want to sort the coins in order by value, you have to somehow get the dimes past the pennies and nickels after each has fallen through the chute. Same deal with the giant half-dollar and smaller dollar coins.
The basic sub-build is a pair of tile rails on which the coins slide and either fall into the hole or keep going based on value. Once [brickstudios] had all the coins falling just right, it was time to address the value vs. size issue. Essentially, they solved this by building a ramp that turns the dimes and dollars and gets them to the right spots. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.
We are constantly amazed by the things people can make out of LEGO, like
this hydroelectric dam
or
this hydraulic excavator.
Have you made something amazing?
Let us know! | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728052",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T11:21:53",
"content": "I misread it to be a machine that sorts *Lego* pieces. Now that’d be a feat. Strap to a Roomba chassis and sell one to every rich kid’s parents in the world 😉",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,016.4223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/3d-printed-pelvis-and-femur-implants-for-bone-cancer-treatment/ | 3D Printed Pelvis And Femur Implants For Bone Cancer Treatment | Maya Posch | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printed bone",
"3d printed prosthetic",
"bone implant"
] | On December 22nd of 2023, a Vietnamese patient
underwent hours-long surgery
in order to remove part of his pelvis and femur, as per the usual treatment for bone cancer. What was special here was that the bone was replaced with 3D-printed replicas, to restore the shape and function of the parts that were removed. A long time before this surgery, [Mr. Le Dinh Thuan] was diagnosed with lung cancer, for which he received surgery. Yet not long after this surgery it was discovered due to sudden hip pain that the cancer had spread to one hip joint, which is quite uncommon, but requires that the affected bone is removed. This replacement with a prosthetic was a first for cancer treatments in Vietnam.
Professor Dr. Tran Trung Dung, the Director of Vinmec Orthopedics Center, explains the treatment process using 3D printed implant models. (Credit: Vietnam.vn)
This kind of hip prosthesis is still quite new, as noted by [Seong-Hwan Woo, MD, et al.] in a
2020 review article
in
Hip & Pelvis
. The major advantage of a 3D printed part that uses scan data from the patient’s body is obviously that the fit and thus long-term comfort are much better. The titanium prosthetic was designed and tested at the Vietnamese hospital, before the design was sent to Germany to have it printed there. Thanks to the hollow honeycomb structure, it’s very light, while allowing existing bone cells to grow onto the structure. Only a total of 5 screws were needed for the pelvis section, which is a reduction from existing designs.
Although hip replacements are fairly common, the use of 3D printing there is also
quite a new frontier
, as noted by [Viktor Krebs, MD] of the Cleveland Clinic in an article. If half the pelvis also has to be replaced as in the case of [Le Dinh Thuan], that just increases the benefits of a highly customized 3D printed solution. We definitely hope that he makes a full recovery with complete remission, while this technology can go on to benefit countless others with bone cancers. | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727958",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T04:04:14",
"content": "On December 22nd of 20023Woah, what’s the future like in 20023? ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727960",
"author": "The Commenter F... | 1,760,372,016.313604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/open-source-solar-modules/ | Open-Source Solar Modules | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"energy",
"frame",
"green",
"modular",
"open source",
"solar",
"solar cell"
] | As the price of solar panels continues to fall, more and more places find it economical to build solar farms that might not have been able to at higher prices. High latitude locations, places with more clouds than sun, and other challenging build sites all are seeing increased green energy development. The modules being used have one main downside, though, which is that they’re essentially a black box encased in resin and plastic, so if one of the small cells fails a large percentage of the panel may be rendered useless with no way to repair it.
A solar development kit like this one
from a group called Biosphere Solar is looking to create repairable, DIY modules that are completely open source, to help solve this issue.
The modular solar panel is made from a 3D printed holster which can hold a number of individual solar cells. With the cells placed in the layout and soldered together, they are then sandwiched between a few layers of a clear material like acrylic or glass with a seal around the exterior to prevent water intrusion. Since the project is open-source any number of materials can be used for the solar cell casing, and with the STL file available it’s not strictly necessary to 3D print the case as other manufacturing methods could be used. The only thing left is to hook up a DC/DC converter if you need one, and perhaps also a number of bypass and/or blocking diodes depending on your panel’s electrical layout.
The project is still in active development, and some more information can be found
at the project’s website
. While the “recyclability” of large-scale solar farms is indeed a problem, it’s arguably one which has been overblown by various interests who are trying to cast doubt on green energy. A small build like this won’t solve either problem anytime soon, so the real utility here would be for home users with small off-grid needs who want an open-source, repairable panel. It’s a great method to make sure solar technology is accessible and repairable for anyone that wants it, and in a way this approach to building hardware
reminds us a lot of the Framework laptops
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727903",
"author": "Capo",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T00:39:41",
"content": "Can you explain how any other solar panel is not “open source”? I really don’t get it. It produces x volts nominal, y amps, z watts. You can buy standard panels, they have standard connectors, and can be fre... | 1,760,372,016.373842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/fail-of-the-week-pcb-led-cube-fails-successfully/ | Fail Of The Week: PCB LED Cube Fails Successfully | Dan Maloney | [
"Fail of the Week"
] | [
"fail of the week",
"LED cube",
"pcb"
] | Remember LED cubes? We sure do — they were all the rage for a while, and then it seemed like everyone just sort of lost interest in them. There are probably a lot of reasons for that, not least of which is likely the amount of work it takes to put one together from discrete LEDs and separate pieces of wire. Could there be a better way?
Of course there could, and [Sasa Karanovic] thought he had it all figured out with
this PCB-based LED cube
. At first glance, it seems to make perfect sense; after all, weren’t PCBs invented to take the place of all that pesky point-to-point wiring in the early days of electronics? The boards [Sasa] designed are pretty cool, actually. They’ve each got room for 16 addressable WS2812 LEDs in 5 mm packages, with every possible bit of substrate removed to block the minimum amount of light. That left very little room for traces on the 2-mm-wide arms, so the PCBs had to have four layers, which raised eyebrows at the PCB house when [Sasa] submitted the design.
Such an airy and open design obviously has the potential for mechanical issues, which [Sasa] addressed by adding pads at three corners of each board; a vertical PCB connects to each LED board to provide mechanical support and distribute signals to the LEDs. The cube seems solid enough as a result, and even when handled the LED boards don’t really flop around too much. See the cube in action in the video below.
What’s nice about this design is the perfect spacing between the LEDs in all three dimensions, and the way everything lines up nice and straight. That would be really hard to do with wire, even for
the most practiced of circuit sculptors
. [Sasa] seems to agree, but still deems the build a failure because the PCBs block too much of the view. We suppose he’s got a point, and we’re not sure how well this would scale to an 8×8 cube. We’re not sure how we’d feel about paying for PCBs that are mostly air either, but as failures go, this one still manages to be pretty successful. | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727665",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T11:00:36",
"content": "If this were a kit, I’d buy it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727679",
"author": "Bike forever",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T12:25:42... | 1,760,372,016.595065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/decoding-js1ymg-first-ham-radio-station-on-the-moon-after-slim-mission/ | Decoding JS1YMG: First Ham Radio Station On The Moon After SLIM Mission | Maya Posch | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"ham radio",
"lev-1"
] | When Japan’s SLIM lunar lander made a rather unconventional touch-down on the lunar surface, it had already disgorged two small lunar excursion vehicles from its innards: LEV-1 and LEV-2. Of these, the LEV-1 is not only capable of direct to Earth transmission, but it also has been
assigned its own amateur radio license
: JS1YMG, which makes it the first Ham radio station on the Moon. LEV-1 receives data from LEV-2, which is transmitted to Earth using its 1 Watt UHF circular polarization antenna as Morse code at 437.410 MHz. Although the data format hasn’t been published, [Daniel Estévez] (EA4GPZ)
has been sleuthing around
to figure it out.
Using captures from the 25 meter radiotelescope at Dwingeloo in the Netherlands, [Daniel] set to work deciphering what he knew to be telemetry data following a
CCSDS
standard. After some mix-and-matching he found that the encoding matched PCM/PSK/PM with a symbol rate of 64 baud and 2048 kHz subcarrier. The residual carrier is modulated in amplitude with Morse code, but initially this Morse code made no sense.
Waterfall of the LEV-1 signal (Credit: Daniel Estévez)
Fortunately a few fellow Hams pitched in and figured out that the amplitude signs for the Morse code were inverted. By inverting the amplitude, suddenly the Morse code looked a lot more clear, with the LEV-1’s call sign and what looked like hexadecimal data following it. Each of the frames is also followed by a CRC-16, which should make it possible to start decoding the data transmitted in each frame. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727603",
"author": "William McGhie",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T06:51:20",
"content": "What is the LEV-1 power supply?Can it come back after the lunar night?WillVK6UU",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727643",
"author": "helge... | 1,760,372,016.530862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/a-crossbar-telephone-switch-explained/ | A Crossbar Telephone Switch Explained | Jenny List | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"crossbar",
"dial phone",
"pots"
] | There’s an old adage about waiting hours for a bus only for two to appear at once, and for Hackaday this month we’re pleased to have seen this in a run of analogue telephone projects. Latest among them is the video below the break from [Wim de Kinderen],
who is demonstrating the workings of a mechanical crossbar switch
with the help of a vintage Ericsson unit and an Arduino replacing the original’s bank of control relays.
It’s possible everyone has a hazy idea of a crossbar array, but it was fascinating from this video to learn that the relays are worked by metal fingers being inserted by the bars into relays with wider than normal gaps between electromagnet and armature. This extra metal provides a path for the magnetic flux to actuate the relay.
The machine itself then is an extremely simple and elegant electromechanical device with many fewer moving parts than its Strowger rotary equivalents, but surprisingly we seem to see less of it than its American competitor. The video below the break is definitely worth a watch, even if you don’t own any analogue phones.
We recently saw
a similar exchange implemented electronically
. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727578",
"author": "Bob Coggeshall",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T04:23:34",
"content": "First few pages of a text book on it.. I think I know someone who has the whole book. Just sayin’https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bc-switching-library/western-electric/weco-swi... | 1,760,372,016.472474 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/hackaday-links-february-4-2024/ | Hackaday Links: February 4, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ChatGPT",
"cybertruck",
"design fail",
"destructive testing",
"Endeavour",
"fireball tool",
"hackaday links",
"helicopter",
"Ingenuity",
"mars",
"post-mortem",
"prompt engineering",
"Space Shuttle",
"stack up",
"tesla",
"tires",
"vise"
] | Things may not have gone as planned last week for
the flying cellphone on Mars
, but just because
Ingenuity
‘s flying career is over
doesn’t mean there’s no more work to do. NASA announced this week that it’s going to try
a series of “wiggle” maneuvers
on
Ingenuity
‘s rotors, in an attempt to get a better look at the damage to the blade tips and possibly get some clues as to what went wrong. The conjecture at the moment seems to be that a large area of relatively featureless terrain confused the navigation system, which uses down-facing cameras to track terrain features. If the navigation program couldn’t get a bead on exactly how far above the ground it was, it’s possible the copter came in too hard and caused the rotor tips to dig into the regolith. There seems to be some photographic suggestion of that, with what
looks like divots in the ground
about where you’d expect the rotor tips to dig in, and even scraps of material that look out of place and seem to be about the same color as the rotor blades. All this remains to be seen, of course, and we’re sure that NASA and JPL are poring over all available data to piece together what happened. As much as we hate to say goodbye to
Ingenuity
, we eagerly await the post-mortem.
Speaking of the space artifact afterlife,
the space shuttle
Endeavour
has finally made it to its new forever home
. The orbiter has been on display at the California Science Center since 2012, where it was shown in a horizontal configuration. Now,
Endeavour
has been mated to an external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters in a full launch configuration, the first time that feat has ever been accomplished away from a NASA facility. The process appears to have gone smoothly, with two crames lifting the decommissioned and shrink-wrapped spacecraft using what appears to be the same lifting cradle NASA used to do their stack-ups in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Apart from the wonder of a heavy lift, and the potential for a catastrophic end to a priceless artifact, the engineering that’s going into the building that will eventually go up around the stack is pretty intense. It’s only partially complete, of course; the shuttle had to be lifted over a stem wall that looks like it will support a 20-story geodesic dome. But before that goes up, the shuttle will get a protective exoskeleton of scaffolding; you wouldn’t want to be the guy who drops a wrench on it, after all.
Engineering is hard, it’s true, but sometimes it takes just a little common sense to make it all work. Case in point:
the Tesla Cybertruck’s wheel covers
, which have to be redesigned because they’re causing damage to the EV truck’s very expensive tires. Tesla is finding that the “aerocovers,” which are designed to
look cool
reduce aerodynamic turbulence caused by the wheels, are rubbing against the sidewalls of the tires. The aerocover designers apparently didn’t take into account the fact that rubber tires deform when loaded, and made the clearance between the chisel-like greebling on the covers and the sidewalls too tight, despite the fact that the custom-made Cybertruck tires have recesses in the sidewalls to accommodate the aerocover points. Granted, this is more of an industrial design failure than an engineering one, but it sure seems like someone on the engineering team should have caught this one.
Are you having trouble getting ChatGPT to do your bidding? Facing down that big, empty prompt screen with no idea where to start can be intimidating, so we were intrigued by
this ChatGPT prompt builder
, which eases you into writing effective prompts. We gave it a whirl today, asking it for help coming up with questions for the upcoming Hackaday Podcast Episode 256 “Ask Me Anything” segment, as threatened Friday on
Episode 255
. TL;DL — to celebrate the (base 2) milestone, we’re soliciting AMA questions from the listeners, with the threat that if they didn’t produce, we’d just make ChatGPT do it. Here’s hoping you drop into the comment line or hit tips@hackaday.com, because we really don’t want to answer such bland questions as these.
And finally, if there’s too much excitement in your life,
we’ve got a solution for that
. Jason over at Fireball Tool has a line of extremely overengineered tools, including
a hardtail vise
that will set you back a cool $1,650. You’d expect such a thing to be able to take a beating, but Jason was curious about just how much abuse it could take. So he rigged up sort of a reverse trebuchet to repeatedly release a 100-pound (50-ish kilo) hammer from a height of 6 feet (2-or-so meters) into a steel coupon clamped into the jaws of the vise. And then he live-streamed it! The video below is part two;
part one
, which used a mere 77-pound (you do the math) hammer, saw the vise win handily. Bigger hammers usually solve all problems, but will it in this case? Watch the stream to find out — it’s strangely compelling. | 20 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727556",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T02:36:34",
"content": "OK … so here’s an AMA “question” I’ll submit. I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the 45 minute video from this story:https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/recovering-a-busted-video-capture-device-with-firmware-flashing-tricks... | 1,760,372,016.657888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/altoids-tin-keyboard-is-a-breath-of-fresh-air/ | Altoids Tin Keyboard Is A Breath Of Fresh Air | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"altoids tin",
"keyboard",
"keyboard for ants",
"micro switch",
"nice nano",
"nicenano",
"ZMK"
] | Well, here’s a fresh idea! [flurpyflurples] is back from hiatus with
the Mintboard
, a 40% that fits inside of an Altoids tin. Who could ask for more than a rugged little Bluetooth keyboard with a built-in cover that fits in your pocket?
This build started with meticulously measuring the tin to figure out what kind of switches could be used. At first, this was going to be a 60% keyboard, but after a lot of design decisions and switch comparisons, [flurpyflurples] settled on a certain micro switch spaced at 7.3mm for a 40% layout. Then it was time to design a PCB.
Although [flurpyflurples] tends to use Arduino Pro Micros in their builds, they went with the Nice! Nano this time for the Bluetooth capabilities. This means that they had to program it with ZMK instead of QMK, but found that QMK knowledge transfers rather nicely.
Let’s talk about those lovely legends. The keycaps are 3D printed of course, and the legends were cut out on a Cricut machine. The best part is that sealant — [flurpyflurples] used a few drops of UV nail polish top coat and cured it with light.
We think this looks and sounds fantastic, and would really like to know how to get such clean cutouts. According to [flurpyflurples] and the end of the build/demo video you’ll find below the break, the action is a lot like a Blackberry keyboard. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727490",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T21:35:06",
"content": "Personaly,I have no affinity for keyboards,though I do get a great deal of vicarious pleasurefrom looking in at keyboard aficianados and allof the dedication displayed designing,building,taking about,col... | 1,760,372,016.738329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/segas-ai-computer-embraces-the-artificial-intelligence-revolution/ | Sega’s AI Computer Embraces The Artificial Intelligence Revolution | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"artifical intelligence",
"sega"
] | Recently a little-known Sega computer system called the Sega AI Computer
was discovered for sale
in Japan, including a lot of the accompanying software. Although this may not really raise eyebrows, what’s interesting is that this was Sega’s 1986 attempt to cash in on Artificial Intelligence (AI) hype, with a home computer that could handle natural language. Based on the available software and documentation, it looked to be mostly targeted at younger children, with plans to launch it in the US later on, but ultimately it was quietly shelved by the end of the 1980s.
Part of the Sega AI Computer’s mainboard, with the V20 MPU and ROMs.
The computer system itself is based around the
NEC v20
8088-compatible MPU with 128 kB of RAM and a total of 512 kB of ROM, across multiple chips. The latter contains not only the character set, but also a speech table for the text to speech functionality and the
Prolog
-based operating system ROM. It is this Prolog-based environment which enables the ‘AI’ functionality. For example, the ‘diary’ application will ask the user a few questions about their day, and writes a grammatically correct diary entry for that day based on the responses.
On the system’s touch panel overlays can be used through cartridge or tape-based application to make it easy for children to interact with the system, or a full-sized keyboard can be used instead. All together, 14 tapes and 26 cartridges (‘my cards’) had their contents dumped, along with the contents of every single ROM in the system. The manual and any further documentation and advertising material that came with the system were scanned in, which you can peruse while you boot up your very own Sega AI Computer in MAME. Mind that the MAME system is still a work in progress, so bugs are to be expected. Even so, this is a rare glimpse at one of those aspirational systems that never made it out of the 1980s. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727452",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T18:52:35",
"content": "I was wondering why the cable exits the front of the keyboard, but I eventually realized that it’s probably because you’re expected to rest the keyboard on top of the unit when not using the touch panel."... | 1,760,372,016.788117 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/popup-playground-roams-around/ | Popup Playground Roams Around | Navarre Bartz | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"fun",
"playground",
"slide",
"tactical urbanism"
] | Going to the park is a time-honored pastime for kids around the world, but what if there isn’t one nearby? COMPA Teatro Trono and the International Design Clinic have designed a
park that can come to you
.
Working with a group of design students from Bolivia and America, the theatre troupe has iteratively designed a set of playground carts that can be deployed for kids to meet each other and play. El Alto, the city of 1 million where the playground plies the streets, has grown exponentially since its incorporation as an independent town in 1985. Infrastructure has trouble catching up with population jumps of 54% like that experienced from 2000-2010.
Starting with interviews with kids from the city about what was important for a playground, they found a trend of trees, slides, and the color green. Over the course of three summers, the design students went from janky prototypes to the more refined carts now seen roaming El Alto built around the idea of “exaggerated topography.” An elephant and “astroturf bee” are the two hand carts which disassemble into a variety of playground equipment once in place at a destination.
Not a ton of details are given in the article about the construction of the carts themselves, but we think this tactical urbanist approach to parks is a hack in itself. That said, be sure to point us toward some more info on the builds if you’ve found any. Know of
another hack
, that
brings joy
to your
own neighborhoods
? Send it
to the tipsline
! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727455",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T19:10:13",
"content": "It’s a hack!I hope it will grow and succeed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727782",
"author": "Navarre Bartz... | 1,760,372,017.144913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/transforming-edf-backpack-for-a-speed-boost/ | Transforming EDF Backpack For A Speed Boost | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"backpack",
"EDF",
"jetpack"
] | Fighting against a tough headwind on your daily cycle can be a drag, but [Emiel] of
The Practical Engineer
, has a loud and bold solution. In the Dutch video after the break, he builds a
transforming backpack with two electric ducted fans
(EDFs), and takes to the bike paths.
An EDF moves a small volume of air at high velocity, which doesn’t make them great for low speed applications. But they’re nice and compact, and safer than large propellers. [Emiel] didn’t skimp on the rest of the hardware, with the motors attached to metal 3D printed arms, mounted on a machined aluminum steel plate.
The arms were printed courtesy of a sponsor, and
created via generative design
in Fusion 360 to make them both light and strong. A pair of large servos swing the arms up, while smaller servos rotate the motors into the horizontal position. The arm servos are controlled by an Arduino, and activated by a simple toggle switch attached to the backpack’s shoulder strap. A wireless remote similar to that of an
electric skateboard
is used to control the EDFs.
Fitted in a [Emiel]’s old backpack, the result looks somewhat innocuous (if you don’t look too closely) until it unfolds its hidden power—twin jets ready to blast away any pesky headwinds with the push of a button. It’s a fun solution that is sure to attract attention, and a great excuse to create heavy duty mechanics. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727142",
"author": "Elvinas",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T15:25:27",
"content": "I know better, more energy efficient, more silent solution to a headwind problem. It also does not put strain on your back. It is called – e-bike. ;)I know it is less fun than having kind of jet pack, but... | 1,760,372,017.061699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/fixing-a-tractor-dashboard-from-over-10000-miles-away/ | Fixing A Tractor Dashboard From Over 10,000 Miles Away | Lewin Day | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"case tractor",
"dashboard",
"eeprom",
"tractor"
] | [BuyItFixIt] is well known as a dab hand at, well, fixing things… and presumably buying them, too. Recently, they received an email calling for help of the former kind. One of their Australian viewers owned the same model of tractor, but with a dead digital dash. Thankfully,
help was at hand!
The problem turned out to be due to a dead EEPROM on the Australian tractor. In contrast, [BuyItFixIt] had a perfectly working dashboard on their tractor. Thus, they set about disassembling the dash and dumping the EEPROM to try and sort the stricken farm implement. This posed some risk of ending up with two dead dashboards, necessitating a careful hand. In any case, the Case tractor had a fairly simple dash with a majority of through-hole components, making it fairly easy to work with. The Microchip 93LC46B chip was in a DIP package, and was removed with the aid of some low-melting point solder in short order. The contents of the EEPROM were then dumped to a file using a XGecu T48 programmer.
With the file sent off via email, the Australian tractor owner flashed a fresh EEPROM and reinstalled it in their cluster. They were greeted with success, with the only complication being that the hours reading on the cluster had to be corrected to match the previous reading on their machine.
It’s a fairly simple story of fixing an embedded system, but it’s an educational one. It also comes with a deeper dive into how the CASE dashboard works. Just about anyone with basic electronic skills could pull this off and save an entire tractor in the process. It’s great to see these jobs documented so that we can all learn
useful basic skills like these
. Video after the break. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727160",
"author": "Somewhat Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T16:50:19",
"content": "Nice that someone who wasn’t an authorized rep was able to help fix a tractor and wasn’t served a cease and desist from the manufacturer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,017.004136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/resistor-color-code-clock-is-a-bit-of-fun/ | Resistor Color Code Clock Is A Bit Of Fun | Jenny List | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"colour code",
"resistor colour code"
] | Younger electronic engineers may see resistors with old-style color codes to display their values a little less than those from previous years, but if there’s a shibboleth among those who wield a soldering iron it’s probably something similar to instinctively saying “1K” when asked “Brown-black-red?”. Colors as numbers can be used outside resistors, for example in a clock, as [Det Builds Stuff]
shows us with an ESP32 TFT dev board
.
It’s fair to say that this is more of a software project than a hardware one, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing as he takes us though the process of creating a Network Time Protocol (NTP) capable clock with the dev board. He claims it may be the world’s first resistor clock,
something we’d have to disagree with
, but beside that we can see this could make a neat little desk ornament with a 3D printed case.
Oddly though, we’d expect older engineers to face the same steep learning curve as younger ones when reading it, because it’s easier to recognize visual sequences of numbers as preferred resistor values than it is to
visually decode each one every time
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727139",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T14:46:53",
"content": "inevitable xkcd link:https://xkcd.com/227/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727180",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T18:09:45"... | 1,760,372,017.106938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/electric-boomerang-does-laps/ | Electric Boomerang Does Laps | Danie Conradie | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"boomerang",
"brushless motor",
"free flight"
] | Boomerangs are known for their unique ability to circle back to the thrower, but what if you could harness this characteristic for powered for free flight? In a project that spins the traditional in a new direction,
[RCLifeOn] electrifies a boomerang
to make it fly laps.
The project started with several of the 3D printed boomerang designs floating around on the internet, and adding motor mounts to the tips. [RCLifeOn] is no stranger to RC adventures, and his stockpile of spare parts from previous
flying
and
floating projects
proved invaluable. He added motor mounts and mounted all the electronics, including a RC receiver for controlling the throttle, but first iteration didn’t have enough lift, so the boomerang and motors were scaled up.
[RCLifeOn] launched the contraptions by letting them spin on the end of a stick until they achieve lift-off. The second iteration still couldn’t quite get into the air, but after increasing the blade angles using a heat gun it was flying laps around the field.
Although we’ve seen
spinning drones that are controllable
, it would be no small control systems challenge to make it completely RC controlled. In the meantime this project is a fun, if somewhat risky way to mix the traditional with modern tech. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727081",
"author": "Ree",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T07:18:17",
"content": "Nicholas eperimented wirh this ideahttps://youtu.be/7JH1_ZKV7t4?si=pTPBIg4ZQ_fPTbFp",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727085",
"author": "Jan",
"t... | 1,760,372,017.360815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/satellite-provides-detailed-data-on-antarctic-ice/ | Satellite Provides Detailed Data On Antarctic Ice | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"antarctica",
"climate",
"climate change",
"data",
"ice",
"ocean",
"radar",
"science",
"sea ice",
"weather",
"wind",
"windrad"
] | Ever since the first satellites started imaging the Earth, scientists have been using the data gathered to learn more about our planet and improve the lives of its inhabitants. From weather forecasting to improving crop yields, satellites have been put to work in a wide array of tasks. The data they gather can go beyond imaging as well. A new Chinese satellite known as Fengyun-3E is
using some novel approaches to monitor Antarctic sea ice
in order to help scientists better understand the changing climate at the poles.
While it is equipped with a number of other sensors, one of the more intriguing is a piece of equipment called WindRad which uses radar to measure wind at various locations and altitudes based on how the radar waves bounce off of the atmosphere at various places. Scientists have also been able to use this sensor to monitor sea ice, and can use the data gathered to distinguish new sea ice from ice which is many years old, allowing them to better understand ice formation and loss at the poles. It’s also the first weather satellite to be placed in an early morning orbit, allowing it to use the long shadows cast by the sun on objects on Earth’s surface to gather more information than a satellite in other orbits might be able to.
With plenty of other imaging sensors on board and a polar orbit, it has other missions beyond monitoring sea ice. But the data that it gathers around Antarctica should give scientists more information to improve climate models and understand the behavior of sea ice at a deeper level. Weather data from satellites like these isn’t always confined to academia, though. Plenty of weather satellites
broadcast their maps and data unencrypted on radio bands that anyone can access
. | 19 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727044",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T03:14:58",
"content": "“it has other missions beyond monitoring sea ice”Like spying?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727065",
"author": "Ch... | 1,760,372,017.48652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/an-alternative-orientation-for-3d-printed-enclosures/ | An Alternative Orientation For 3D Printed Enclosures | Danie Conradie | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed enclosures",
"3D printed supports",
"design for manfacturing"
] | When it comes to 3D printing, the orientation of your print can have a significant impact on strength, aesthetics, and functionality or ease of printing. The folks at Slant 3D have found that printing enclosures at a 45° provides an excellent balance of these properties, with some added advantages for high volume printing. The trick is to prevent the part from falling over when balance on a edge, but in the video after the break [Gabe Bentz] demonstrate Slant 3D’s solution of
minimalist custom supports
.
The traditional vertical or horizontal orientations come with drawbacks like excessive post-processing and weak layer alignment. Printing at 45° reduces waste and strengthens the end product by aligning the layer lines in a way that resists splitting across common stress points. When scaling up production, this orientation comes with the added advantage of minimal bed contact area, allowing the printer to auto-eject the part by pushing it off the bed with print head.
To keep the part stable while printing in this orientation Slant 3D designed a fin-like support structure attached to the back of the enclosure with small sprues. This wastes significantly less time and material than auto-generated supports, and snaps away cleanly, leaving behind minimal imperfections that are easily addressed. To improve aesthetics and hide layer lines, Slant 3D also recommend adding texture to the external surfaces of enclosures. On 3D printed parts this detail costs nothing, while it would have added significant costs to injection molded parts.
We’re intrigued by this creative twist on 3D printing’s capabilities—proving once again that a simple shift in perspective (or in this case, orientation) can unlock new design potentials.
Slant 3D use FDM 3D printing for mass production [Gabe] even hosted a
Hack Chat
on the subject. They have come up with a number of innovative design tricks which are also useful for the hobbyist. These include
improved corner brackets
, robust
living hinges
and better
alignment features for 3d printed assemblies
. | 29 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727023",
"author": "dockey",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T01:30:31",
"content": "It’s a design technique being well presented. Why did you add a zero-value comment? It’s no better than “Just go buy one”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,017.303422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/a-wiper-motor-101/ | A Wiper Motor 101 | Navarre Bartz | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"Electric motor",
"motion",
"windscreen wipers",
"windshield wiper motor",
"windshield wipers",
"wiper motor"
] | Need a powerful electric motor on the cheap? [Daniel Simu] and his friend [Werner] show us the ins and outs of using
windshield wiper motors
.
Through many examples and disassembled components, the duo walk us through some of the potential uses of wiper motors to power a project. Some of the nuggets we get are the linear relationship of torque to current (10-15A max) and speed to voltage (12-15V DC) on these units, and some of the ways the wiring in these motors is a little different than a simple two wire DC motor.
They also discuss some of their favorite ways to control the motors ranging from a light switch to an Arduino. They even mention how to turn one into a big servo thanks to a project on
Hackaday.io
and a few modifications of their own. [Simu] also discusses some of the drawbacks of wiper motors, the most evident being that these motors use nylon gears which are prone to stripping or failing in other ways when subjected to high torque conditions for too long.
If you recognize [Simu], it may be from his
robotic acrobat
built with wiper motors. Want to see some more wiper motor hacks? How about a
3D scanner
or making sure your
wipers always keep the beat
? | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726964",
"author": "WernerDaniel Fan Club",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T22:47:03",
"content": "I love these guys!Werner and Daniel.Super funny. Remind me of Abott and Costello.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727244",
"... | 1,760,372,017.423865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/pop-goes-the-hydrogen-howitzer/ | POP! Goes The Hydrogen Howitzer | Danie Conradie | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed gun",
"artillery",
"hydrogen"
] | Military models are great 3D printing projects, even more so if they are somewhat functional. [Flasutie] took it a step further by engineering a
3D-printed howitzer
that doesn’t just sit pretty—it launches shells with a hydrogen-powered bang.
This project’s secret sauce? Oxyhydrogen, aka HHO, the mix of hydrogen born when
water endures the electric breakup of electrolysis.
[Flasutie] wanted functional
“high explosive” (HE) projectiles
to pop without turning playtime into emergency room visit, and 30 mm was the magic size, allowing the thin-walled PLA projectile to rupture without causing injury, even when held in the hand. To set off the gaseous fireworks, [Flasutie] designed an impact
fuze
featuring piezoelectric spark mechanism nestled within a soft TPU tip for good impact sensitivity.
The howitzer itself is like something out of a miniaturized military fantasy—nearly entirely 3D printed. It boasts an interrupted thread breech-locking mechanism and recoil-absorbing mechanism inspired by the real thing. The breechblock isn’t just for show; it snaps open under spring power and ejects spent cartridges like hot brass.
Watch the video after the break for the build, satisfying loading sequence and of course cardboard-defeating “armor piercing” (AP) and HE shells knocking out targets. | 70 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727365",
"author": "No War No Matter What For",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T13:01:36",
"content": "Have to agree, but at least this one is actually a hobbyist making a thing and not just a puff piece for the military industrial complex. Those are weird.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,372,017.669299 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/04/common-enzyme-breaks-down-pla-fast/ | Common Enzyme Breaks Down PLA Fast | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"PLA",
"plastic",
"recycling"
] | The global issue of plastic waste has prompted scientists to seek innovative solutions for recycling. Single-use plastics, notorious for their environmental impact, require new methods for efficient and sustainable management. For some common plastics, though, salvation could be at hand, with researchers identifying a common enzyme
that can be used to break them down fast.
Researchers at King’s College London have discovered an enzyme used in laundry detergents that can break down PLA plastics within 24 hours, using a little heat as an aid. Normally, this is achieved via composting methods that take weeks or months. This method transforms the plastics back into their original chemical components, offering a rapid and eco-friendly recycling process. The monomers can then be reused for manufacturing new plastic items.
One wonders if this could also be used in another way – perhaps in a multimaterial printer, allowing PLA to be used for supports and then broken down. It’s probably not that necessary, given other degradable materials exist, but it’s something to think about.
This project is a significant leap forward in recycling technology, showcasing the potential for enzymes to revolutionize how we handle plastic waste. It could also be a great way to recycle all those errant deformed Pikachus that keep ending up in your hackerspace’s 3D-printing waste basket. In any case, plastic waste is a problem the world needs to solve, and quickly,
because it’s not going anywhere any time soon.
Video after the break. | 50 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727343",
"author": "Thomas Anderson",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T09:08:43",
"content": "Using PLA as support for a different material works pretty well even if it’s not soluble, PETG for example doesn’t really stick to it, so if you have a dual nozzle it’s worth doing.",
"parent_... | 1,760,372,017.570062 |
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