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https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/cessna-208b-grand-caravan-flies-under-remote-control/ | Cessna 208B Grand Caravan Flies Under Remote Control | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"remote control",
"Unmanned Aerial Systems"
] | Reliable Robotics has been working on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) since its founding in 2017, with a number of demonstrations for the FAA so far as it works towards getting the technology licensed. Most recently, it
flew an unmanned Cessna 208B
Grand Caravan with a pilot in a ground-based control center. This comes a few years after the company flew a Cessna Skyhawk 172 in a similar manner, demonstrating the functionality of its systems in a fairly small airplane.
Because the pilot is not in the cockpit, the aircraft needs to be equipped with not only the remote controls and camera systems, but also with automation to handle taxiing, take-off, and landings, which is demonstrated in the in-cockpit video provided by Reliable Robotics (also embedded below). Another large part of the automation is dealing with loss of remote control signal (
LC2L
). Initially this system will be offered only as a retrofit kit for the 9-13 seater, single-prop
Cessna 208B
, but Reliable Robotics claims that the system is aircraft-agnostic.
Reliable Robotics is focused on remotely piloted cargo flights, as it would save pilots from the stress of constantly traveling and hectic schedules. In addition, the potential loss of a cargo plane would be far less dramatic than an aircraft carrying passengers. That doesn’t mean passenger airplanes won’t eventually use a remote control system like this, but the certification process for something on the order of even a twin turbo-prop Dash 8 passenger plane is likely to be much more involved. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6714881",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-01-04T03:37:49",
"content": "I had the pleasure of seeing an earlier version of this, and had hands on the actual flight hardware.I will dispute the quoted article, which claims “Last month’s successful flight of a Cessna 208B Caravan w... | 1,760,372,054.676656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/floss-weekly-episode-764-you-have-to-be-pretty-cynical/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 764: You Have To Be Pretty Cynical | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"AlmaLinux",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"linux",
"open source"
] | This week Jonathan Bennett and
Katherine Druckman
talk with
benny Vasquez
, chair of AlmaLinux, all about the weird road we’ve been on with Enterprise Linux distributions, and how that’s landed us here, where we have AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and multiple other Red Hat downstream distros. What’s the difference between those projects, and why does it matter?
Projects need more than just developers. How do you keep members doing documentation, bug hunting, outreach, and even graphic design plugged in and feeling like part of the team? How do you walk the narrow line between the different directions a project can drift, setting up your community for long term success? And where’s the most surprising place benny has found AlmaLinux running? And why is benny’s first name never capitalized? Give this week’s show a listen to find out!
Information on AlmaLinux can be found
on the website
, where you can discover
the ELevate migration tool
, download images, and more.
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Next week we’re interviewing Randal Schwartz on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, so synchronize your timepieces!
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6714843",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-04T01:15:50",
"content": "Tell [Flo] that here at Hackaday we use square brackets around names!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6715116",
"a... | 1,760,372,054.412172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/an-extensive-walkthrough-on-building-your-own-ksp-controller/ | An Extensive Walkthrough On Building Your Own KSP Controller | Arya Voronova | [
"Games",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"analog joystick",
"kerbal space program",
"ksp",
"rebuild",
"upgrade",
"upgrade board"
] | Having a game-tailored controller is a level-up in more ways than one, letting you perform in-game actions quickly and intuitively, instead of trying to map your actions to a clunky combination of keyboard and mouse movements.
[abzman] took the Pelco KBD300A
, a DVR-intended camera controller panel with a joystick, reverse-engineered it, and then rebuilt it into a
Kerbal Space Program controller
. What’s more, he documented every detail along the way!
The write-up is so extensive, it’s four separate posts — all of them worth reading without a doubt. In the first post, he describes the original hardware, the process of reverse-engineering it, and a few tips for your own RE journeys. Next,
he covers about making his own board
, showing all the small decisions he’s had to make, with plenty of KiCad screenshots. If you are on the lookout for designing such a board, there’s plenty to learn!
The original hardware didn’t go down without a fight —
the third post
talks about taming the seven-segment displays, the onboard joystick, and fighting with the key matrix wired in exactly the way you wouldn’t want.
In the end,
he shows us how you could tie a controller easily into
Kerbal Space Program
.
One more piece of hardware liberated
, one more win for the hacker world. Whether it’s
a Macintosh SE
,
a classic ThinkPad
, or even
a generic rotary tool
, these upgrades are always a joy to see. If you wanted to learn to do such an upgrade yourself,
here’s us showing
how you can pull this off with a classic Sony Vaio! | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6714589",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2024-01-03T21:12:50",
"content": "Its nice but doesn’t help the fact I never made it past kerbal’s tutorial stage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6714775",
"author": "Jame... | 1,760,372,054.52458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/add-the-analog-toolkit-to-your-toolkit/ | Add The Analog Toolkit To Your…Toolkit | Arya Voronova | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"analog acquisition",
"analog input",
"analog toolkit",
"data acquisition",
"stm32",
"stm32g0"
] | Analog acquisition tools are super helpful whenever you want to run an experiment, test out a theory, or improve upon your code, and you won’t realize how much you always needed one up until you’re facing a situation where it’s the only tool for the task. Well, here’s a design you might just want to add to your next PCB order — the
STM32G4 Analog Toolkit from [Jana Marie]
.
The recommended STM32G431 is a wonderful tool for the task in particular. For a start, this board exposes nine 16-bit ADC inputs, with six of them capable of differential mode and three of them having the PGA (Programmable Gain Amplifier) feature. There’s also two 12-bit DAC pins, two timer outputs, three GPIOs, and UART with I2C for the dessert. As a bonus, it can work as a PD trigger, giving you higher-than-5V voltages out of USB-C for any experiments of yours.
The board requires only a few components, most of them easily solderable, with the STM32 in the TQFP32 package. The BOM is optimized, the GPIOs are used up to the max, with two spare GPIOs driving an RGB LED using
a witty control scheme.
There’s even a place to clip an alligator clip, in case that’s what your probing hardware wants! All in all, this is a carefully crafted design certainly worth having on hand.
Make sure to get a few of these made before you find yourself desperately needing one! That said, there’s always a backup option,
the venerable ATtiny85. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6715016",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2024-01-04T08:15:57",
"content": "Wow, you deleted my post here.That chip isn’t capable enough to do proper analogue recording. the speed alone and the bit range makes it practically useless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,054.625825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/retrotechtacular-the-fell-locomotive/ | Retrotechtacular: The Fell Locomotive | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"british rail",
"diesel",
"locomotive",
"railroad",
"railway"
] | If you were to visit a railway almost anywhere in the world, you would find that unless it was in some way running heritage trains, the locomotives would bear a similarity to each other. Electric traction is the norm, whether it comes from a trackside supply or from a diesel generator. In the middle of the last century, as the industry moved away from steam traction though, this was far from a certainty. Without much in the way of power electronics, it was a challenge to reliably and efficiently control a large traction motor, so there were competing traction schemes using mechanical gearboxes or hydraulic drives. One of these is the subject of
an archive film released by the oil company Shell
, and it’s a fascinating journey into a technology that might have been.
The Fell differential gearbox.
All diesel locomotive designs struggle with the problem of transmitting the huge torque required to start a fully loaded train at low speeds, and because of the huge force required, it’s impossible to design a locomotive-sized conventional gearbox to do the job in the way it might be managed on a truck. Electric and hydraulic drives exploit the beneficial torque characteristics of electric and hydraulic motors, but the mechanical gearbox isn’t quite done for. The subject of the video is
British Rail number 10100
, otherwise commonly known as the Fell locomotive, and it was a one-off prototype that took to the rails at the start of the 1950s designed to test a very novel gearbox design.
At the heart of the Fell gearbox is a set of differential gears the same as you’d find in the axle of a car, and in the locomotive they are used to combine the output of more than one engine. The loco had four smaller-than-normal diesel traction motors that could be combined, but even then, it wasn’t done. To achieve variable torque, they employed superchargers driven by a set of even-smaller diesel engines, resulting in an ungainly multi-engined beast but with the desired characteristics for both starting heavy trains and for moving them at high speed.
By 1950 the general form of a diesel locomotive with a frame containing the power plant supported by bogies carrying traction equipment was well established, but the Fell eschewed this layout in favour of something more reminiscent of the steam age. As a 2-8-4 with the four driving axles in its centre sporting connecting rods, it resembled a steam locomotive from the chassis downwards but with a very diesel-age cab and superstructure. It’s often referred to as a footnote or even a failure in railway histories, but despite suffering some mechanical failures, it was, in fact, a successful demonstration of the design. Sadly, this didn’t convince the railway to continue with the idea, though, and after a heating boiler fire, it was withdrawn and scrapped in the early 1960s.
The film below the break is a fascinating window into the early part of the UK’s transitional period away from steam traction, with the locomotive we know now to have been a dead-end being portrayed as the bright future for the railway alongside steam locomotives that were then very much still in production. We see it through its design and construction before being tested mostly as far as we can see on the now-closed Pennine routed London to Manchester run, a future that never came to pass against a backdrop of a railway that didn’t make it into the modern era. For fifteen minutes of heavy engineering from the days when diesel locomotives were new and exciting, it’s well worth a watch. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6714541",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2024-01-03T20:21:06",
"content": "“All diesel locomotive designs struggle with the problem of transmitting the huge torque required to start a fully loaded train at low speeds…”Huge energy is available in a chemical explosion. The trick is ... | 1,760,372,054.477418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/03/pinball-with-no-computers/ | Pinball With No Computers | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"pinball",
"relay"
] | Pinball machines were the video games of their day. Back when they were king, there were no microcontrollers — everything was electromechanical. We know from experience that fixing these was difficult but we imagine that designing complex play behavior with a bunch of motors, relays, clutches, contacts, and more would have been excruciatingly difficult. [Technology Connections] has several videos
about an old Aztec machine
and he promises more to come. You can watch the first two below.
To give you an idea of what’s involved, imagine a very simple pinball machine that supports a single player and a handful of targets. When the ball hits a target, that could trigger a micro-switch. The switch closure could trigger a relay that closes a contact for a short period of time. That contact energizes a solenoid that advances the score wheels. So now, when a ball hits a target, the score wheel will spin enough to award ten points. To make sure there is enough time for the score to advance, the relay uses something like a mechanical flip flop.
Sound complicated? That’s nothing. Don’t forget, the machine also has to reset the score at the start of the game, count the ball in play, and end the game when the last ball returns. Then consider a real game. There will be multiple players and fancy sequences (e.g., hit the red target three times to award double scores for other targets).
While we knew a fair bit about the design of pinball machines already, we did learn a lot about their history and where the idea came from. The video also explains why it is called pinball since modern machines don’t really have pins — these were like
relay-based computers
with strange electromagnetic I/O devices.
While pinball machines were the best example of this sort of thing, there were also things like bowling machines and ladder-logic industrial control systems. We’ve even seen
an electromechanical phone answering machine
. | 34 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6714437",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-01-03T17:07:55",
"content": "Mechanical computer is still a computer though",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6714482",
"author": "Urgon",
"timestamp": "2024-01-03T18:... | 1,760,372,054.363776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/building-a-gps-receiver-from-the-ground-up/ | Building A GPS Receiver From The Ground Up | Bryan Cockfield | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"diy",
"fpga",
"gps",
"homebrew",
"radio",
"receiver"
] | One of the more interesting facets of GPS is that, at least from the receiver’s point-of-view, it’s a fairly passive system. All of the information beamed down from the satellites is out in the ether, all the time, free for anyone on the planet to receive and use as they see fit. Of course you need to go out and buy a receiver or, alternatively, possess a certain amount of knowledge to build a circuit that can take those signals and convert them into something usable. Luckily, [leaning_tower] has the required knowledge and
demonstrates it with this DIY GPS receiver
.
This receiver consists of five separate circuit boards, all performing their own function. The first, a mixer board, receives the signal via an active antenna and converts it to a lower frequency. From there it goes to a second mixer and correlation board to compare the signal to a local reference, then a signal processing board that looks at this intermediate frequency signal to make sense of the data its seeing. Finally, an FPGA interfacing board ties everything together and decodes the information into a usable form.
Dealing with weak signals like this has its own set of challenges, as [leaning_tower] found out. The crystal oscillator had to be decapped and modified to keep from interfering with the GPS radio since they operated on similar frequencies. Even after ironing out all the kinks, the circuit takes a little bit of time to lock on to a specific satellite but with a second GPS unit for checking and a few weeks of troubleshooting, the homebrew receiver is up and running. It’s an impressive and incredibly detailed piece of work which is usually the case with sensitive radio equipment like GPS.
Here’s another one built on a Raspberry Pi
with 12 channels and a pretty high accuracy. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713826",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T20:37:38",
"content": "But please?Because it can be done?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6714553",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2024-01-03T20:3... | 1,760,372,054.57637 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/its-pronounced-gif/ | It’s Pronounced GIF | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"computational linguistics",
"corpus linguistics",
"language analysis"
] | As the holiday season is upon us and a Hackaday scribe sits protected from the incoming Atlantic storms in her snug eyrie, it’s time for her to consider the basics of her craft. Writing, spelling, and the English language; such matters as why Americans have different English spellings from Brits, but perhaps most important of them all for Hackaday readers; is it “gif”, or is is “jif”? This or the jokey sentence about spellings might be considered obvious clickbait, but instead they’re a handle to descend into the study of language. Just how do we decide the conventions of our language, and should we even care too much about them?
Don’t Believe Everything You Read in School
Not everything you learn here is worth holding on to. Harrison Keely,
CC BY 4.0
.
We are sent to school to Learn Stuff. During that time we are deprived of our liberty as a succession of adults attempt year after year to cram our heads with facts. Some of it we find interesting and other parts not so much, but for the majority of it, we are discouraged from thinking for ourselves and are instead expected to learn by rote a set of fixed curricula.
Thus while writers have to discover for themselves that English is a constantly evolving language through which they can break free of these artificial bounds that school has imposed upon them, far too many people remain afraid to put their head above the linguistic parapet.
The result is that perceived deviations from the rules are jumped upon by those afraid to move with the language, and we even find our own linguistic Holy Wars to fight. The one mentioned above about “gif” versus “jif” is a great example, does it really matter that much whether you pronounce it with a hard “G” because that’s how most people say it, or as though it were a “J” because the creator of the file format said it that way? Not really, because English is an evolving language in the hands of those who speak it, not those of the people who write school books.
Sadly it’s not quite time to rejoice though, because even if some of those rules can move with the times, it’s not a free for all. Language has to be mutually intelligible, we can’t simply make it up as we go along. The professionals take what they call a descriptive approach, where they tell you how you use the language, in contrast to proscribing how you
should
be using it. They do this through statistical analysis of large corpora, bodies of text, to see which forms are gaining the most traction. And here’s where this becomes interesting, because a large scale language analysis can tell you things you didn’t know about a subject you thought you knew a lot about.
How I Wasn’t The Inventor Of Computational Linguistics
This dusty Raspberry Pi and hard disk sat behind my TV for around a decade processing text from RSS feeds
I got my introduction to language analysis about fifteen years ago, when I was working on improving the search engine visibility of a very large website. This wasn’t the dodgy smoke-and-mirrors world of shady search engine manipulation back then, instead I was there to improve hugely upon the site’s content and in short, make it a lot more interesting for both human and search engine alike. In this endeavour a bit of text analysis is incredibly useful, and before I knew it a few simple PHP scripts for wrangling text had become a fully-fledged suite.
I had without knowing that it was already a field, invented the whole subject of computational linguistics for myself, and even though I now know that work to be laughably inefficient, it did deliver the goods and help tell me and the site owner just where they’d gone wrong.
Having got a taste for language analysis, it’s become one of those projects which has stayed with me over many years as I’ve returned to it from time to time as my interest has waxed and waned, and my original suite has grown into something much more useful. And that’s the point of writing about it here, because there’s nothing too difficult about it. If I can do it so can you, so it’s worth making a stab at describing it.
To build a corpus of text for analysis, it’s first necessary to start with some text. I was particularly interested in time-series data as much as language, so I took as my source as many RSS feeds as I could find. This provided me with a never-ending supply of new text to add to my analysis, and my workhorse has been a Raspberry Pi with a large USB hard drive which quietly spends a part of the day fetching stories and crunching them.
So faced with a newly retrieved piece of text, what’s my first step? Before anything else, to strip away extraneous HTML and website cruft, something which used to be a huge annoyance of rules until I discovered Lynx has a -dump command line option which does all the heavy lifting. Then it’s time to split it by sentence delimiters such as full stops and question marks, and split the sentences by words into an array. I can then step through it word by word, and process what I find into my data store.
How Do You Quickly Fetch One Word In A Billion?
When you have a few thousand data points, there are plenty of options when it comes to data storage. An SQL database for example is a great idea. But a corpus grows to a huge size, and quickly leaves behind normal approaches to storage. There may be some amazing piece of software capable of handling billions of word instances but I never found it, so I opted for something built into my filesystem. I would use filesystem paths as queries, creating a directory tree of words which I could query simply by typing in a path.
Lots of tiny little JSON files make a graph very quickly
So as I step through the words in a sentence, I’m interested in their frequencies, and their collocates, i.e. the words the appear alongside. So for every word I would create a directory with a JSON file inside to record its occurrence, and within that directory I would create a subdirectory for the following word with a corresponding JSON file. Thus for example I could find the popularity of the word “Neil” by opening the JSON in the /neil/ directory, and find the prevalence of the phrase “Neil Armstrong” in /neil/armstrong/. I could also compare the relative occurrence of the Neils Armstrong and Young, by looking in both /neil/armstrong/ and /neil/young/. The nice thing about this filesystem approach is that the server-side processing script, still in PHP, was very simple, and my client could be some Javascript in the browser that would retrieve all those JSONs in real time from the filesystem.
The beauty of having billions of words of English analysis only a mouse click away is that I can very easily check which is the more appropriate version of a phrase, how popular an ephemeral phrase really is, and even the relative popularity of public figures such as politicians. It’s like having my own linguistic truth verifier without having to rely on what others tell me, which in my line of work can be very useful. It does of course come with drawbacks, for example doing any work with a tree of many millions of subdirectories and small JSON files becomes very tedious. Making a tarball of even a medium size data structure takes a couple of days, meaning moving it to a new disk requires some planning.
This may not have been the usual fare for describing a personal project on Hackaday, but it’s one which includes no less development time and technological evolution than any of my hardware work. If you’d like to follow in my footsteps then I’m afraid I’m shy of releasing my ill-formed mess of old PHP and Javascript, but given that its function is pretty well described above I think most of you could write one yourself if you turned your mind to it. Even if you don’t, I hope this has given you an insight into how a corpus analyser works and can tell you things you didn’t know, and you’ll follow my advice not to listen to everything your schoolteacher told you. | 197 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713793",
"author": "Owlman",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T18:46:58",
"content": "Given the hard G of Graphics Interchange Format, I prefer gif – though of course it might be giraffe interchange format, in which case I am wrong.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,055.01352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/impressively-responsive-air-drums-built-using-the-raspberry-pi-pico/ | Impressively Responsive Air Drums Built Using The Raspberry Pi Pico | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"air drums",
"ece 4760",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] | Drum kits are excellent fun and a terrific way to learn a sense of rhythm. They’re also huge and unwieldy. In contrast, air drums can be altogether more compact, if lacking the same impact as the real thing. In any case, students [Ang], [Devin] and [Kaiyuan]
decided to build a set of air drums themselves
for their ECE 4760 microcontroller class at Cornell.
As per the current crop of ECE4760 projects, the build relies on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller as the brains of the operation. The Pico is charged with reading the output of MPU6050 inertial measurement units mounted to a pair of drum sticks. The kick pedal itself simply uses a button instead.
Where the project gets really interesting, though, is in the sound synthesis. The build doesn’t simply play different pre-recorded samples for different drums. Instead, it uses the Karplus-Strong Drum Synthesis function combined with a wavetable to generate different sounds.
In the demo video, we get to hear the air drums in action, complete with a Stylophone playing melody. Unlike some toy versions that trigger seemingly at random with no rhythm, these air drums are remarkably responsive and sound great. They could be a great performance instrument if designed for the purpose.
We’ve seen similar builds before
, too. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713822",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T20:32:51",
"content": "A longer demo would have been nice, but that’s surprisingly good, given the obvious limitation that the sticks aren’t hitting anything and so don’t rebound properly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,054.717767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/2023-as-the-hardware-world-turns/ | 2023: As The Hardware World Turns | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"artemis program",
"artifical intelligence",
"diy camera",
"new media",
"raspberry pi",
"USB C",
"Year in Review"
] | We’ve made it through another trip around the sun, and for the first time in what feels like far too long, it seems like things went pretty well for the hackers and makers of the world. Like so many, our community suffered through a rough couple of years: from the part shortages that made building even the simplest of devices more expensive and difficult than it should have been, to the COVID-mandated social distancing that robbed us of our favorite meetups. But when looking back on the last twelve months, most of the news was refreshingly positive.
Pepperoni costs ten bucks, but they can’t activate Windows on their registers…
Oh sure, a trip to to the grocery store can lead to a minor existential crisis at the register, but there’s not much we at Hackaday can do about that other than recommend you some good hydroponics projects to help get your own home farm up and running.
As has become our New Year tradition, we like to take this time to go over some of the biggest stories and trends that we picked up on from our unique vantage point. Some will be obvious, but there’s always a few that sneak up on us. These posts tend to make for interesting reading in the future, and if you’ve got the time, we’d recommend going back and reading the previous entries in this series and reminiscing a bit.
It’s also a good time to reflect on Hackaday itself — how we’ve grown, the things that have changed, and perhaps what we can do better going forward. Believe it or not we do read all of the feedback from the community, whether it’s in the comments of individual posts or
sent into us directly
. We couldn’t do this without readers like you, so please drop us a line and let us know what you’re thinking.
So before we get any farther into 2024, let’s wind back the clock and revisit some of the highlights from the previous year.
AI is Everywhere
This one might seem like kind of a cop out since the growing mainstream adoption of AI-enabled tools was a
big part of 2022’s review
, but it’s difficult to overstate just how fast things have been moving in this space. Last year might have unleashed ChatGPT, but in 2023,
everybody
is jumping on the bandwagon and coming out with their own artificial intelligence products — from Google’s hilariously behind-the-ball Bard to your local Chevy dealer.
But more importantly, it wasn’t just the big players that embraced AI this year. We saw many projects from this community that either included some machine learning component or were developed in conjunction with an AI tool. It was used to
generate 3D models in OpenSCAD
, and help
program a lawn-cutting robot
. An AI keyboard
took third place in this year’s Halloween Contest
, Al Williams asked
Google’s NotebookLM to read the documentation
for the Supercon badge, and Dan Maloney
tried to build a chicken coop with ChatGPT
.
It’s getting to the point that it can be difficult to
see where the human ends and the AI begins
, which naturally opens up a whole new world of problems. Given the waves AI has made in 2022 and 2023, this upcoming year should prove to be particularly interesting (or terrifying).
USB-C Reaches Critical Mass
We’ve been big proponents of USB-C here at Hackaday for several years. But for all our cheerleading, it was clear that not everyone in the community was ready to make the switch. Whether it was just the momentum of older tech, or the perceived complexity of the new C standard, there were plenty in the community that were happy to stick with what they already had.
Looking back on the articles from 2023, you can clearly see the last holdouts from Team Micro USB are starting to pack it up. On a quick count, it looks like we ran more than 100 articles mentioning the reversible connector in 2023, and there’s no sign of things slowing down for 2024. We’ve seen it used in everything from
custom bike horns
and
DIY cable testers
, to
electronic pens
and
open source headphones
.
In 2023 we also saw several new entries in our ongoing
All About USB-C
series, as well as the beginning of the new
USB-C For Hackers
series, both helmed by Arya Voronova. If you’ve ever wanted to add USB-C support to your own projects, or just learn more about how the interface and its various capabilities work, they are a phenomenal resource.
Small Steps Towards the Moon
Most experts are skeptical about NASA’s ability to keep the Artemis program on schedule over the next several years, but given how many stories we covered in 2023 about the space agency’s lunar program, there’s no question that things are at least moving forward.
Compared to the grand spectacle of Apollo, the Artemis program can seem a bit…boring in comparison. But that’s only because it’s a multi-faceted endeavor which combines the contributions of private companies and international partners. There’s so many moving parts to keep track of that, unless you’re looking closely, they might not even seem related.
A CubeSat launched to
search dark lunar craters for signs of water ice
might not have the same excitement as seeing somebody set foot on the surface, but it’s an important building block if your ultimate goal is to set up a sustainable human presence on and around the Moon. You’ll also want to
prove out your high-speed data links
, and
scout out where you want to set up camp
. Speaking of which, you’ll also want to
develop a living and working structure
that can be delivered to the surface ahead of your crewed flights.
But for all the progress we’ve seen in 2023, there’s still some major questions left unanswered. For example, while the solar electric propulsion system for NASA’s Lunar Gateway
passed its qualification tests in November
, it’s still unclear when the station itself will actually be used in the larger scope of the Artemis program. Critics are also concerned that the two vehicles NASA has selected to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 will require
orbital refueling technology which has yet to be demonstrated
.
Evolution of the Raspberry Pi
For a brief moment, when nobody could get their hands on a Raspberry Pi for anything remotely resembling normal price, it seemed like there was actually a chance for some other single-board computers (SBCs) to swoop in and gain some market share. Not only did that fail to happen, but 2023 will likely be looked back on as a highpoint in the Pi’s history.
The big news wasn’t just the
announcement of the Raspberry Pi 5
, but the fact that the new SBC was actually bringing some substantial upgrades to the table. While each generation of the Pi has naturally been more powerful than its predecessors, the Pi 5 is more than just a bump in specs. After years of waiting, the Pi 5 finally got a legitimate PCI Express (PCIe) interface.
Granted you need an adapter to access it, but it’s better than having to spin up your own board like you had to do with the Compute Module 4, or the truly gnarly hacking it took to break it out on the standard model. With the ability to connect an NVMe drive to a proper high-speed interface, you can finally avoid the USB bottleneck when building your own server or network attached storage solution around the Pi.
But the Pi 5 is more than better performance in the same form factor — it’s also a big hint of where the brand will be heading in the future.
As Jenny List explained in October
, the in-house RP1 chip that controls the new Pi’s external interfaces is a notable departure from earlier models of the SBC that the casual observer might underestimate.
While previous generations of the board were essentially built around whatever outdated smartphone components Broadcom had laying around, the introduction of custom silicon is a bold step forward. It provides a degree of independence, and while things are still more or less business as usual currently, it’s not hard to imagine a future Pi 7 or 8 that’s running on RISC-V or at least a custom ARM CPU. Between the hardware changes and
improvements made to the operating system
, 2023 has seen the Raspberry Pi mature considerably as a platform.
We also can’t forget the skyrocketing popularity of the Pi Pico and the RP2040. While its introduction was one of our highlights for 2021, the low-cost MCU really built up steam over the last year. In 2023, it seemed like every day we see it popping up in another project or story. Cornell University switched their
Designing with Microcontrollers
course over to the Pico
, and closer to home, the board was the
star of the show for this year’s Supercon badge
.
DIY Cameras Scratch An Itch
There’s an excellent chance that, as you’re reading this, you have a highly capable digital camera in your pocket. In fact, there’s about a 50-50 shot that you’re literally reading these words
on
that camera. There’s no question that smartphones have completely changed the consumer camera market, largely limiting the market for “real” cameras to the professionals or hobbyists.
But there’s also a growing community of folks who are leveraging today’s modular electronic components to build their own bespoke digital cameras. On paper, they might seem like a dubious proposition; the final image quality probably won’t hold up against today’s smartphones, while at the same time, the relative complexity of getting one working will surely be north of even a professional photography rig.
So what’s the point? Taking a look at some of the DIY cameras we’ve seen in 2023, it’s clear that each one was built for a specific purpose.
For the CinePi project
, the goal is to develop an open source cinema-quality camera. Some builds focused on
enhancing the state-of-the-art in solar photography
, while others chased
dizzyingly high resolutions
. We saw a Game Boy Camera that
no longer required the Game Boy
, an ESP32 shoehorned into a
vintage Kodak Brownie
, and an AI-enabled “camera” that
produces a text description of what it sees
.
Hackaday Explores New(er) Media
While the written word has served us quite well for very nearly twenty years, there’s no debating that long-form text content is losing ground to the flashier multimedia outlets. So while we have no plans to replace our normal posts with a string of daily TikTok videos, we’d be foolish not to at least investigate ways of bringing our content to other mediums.
On that note, we’re happy to report that sometime in 2023, the
Hackaday Podcast
crossed one million downloads. Truth be told, we’re not 100% sure about these numbers because we switched hosting services a few years ago a while back, so the number is probably a lot higher, but we figure it’s a good time to celebrate anyway. What the illustrious Mike Szczys started as an
experiment back in 2018
has gown into a complementary way of consuming our content — many regular listeners tell us that the podcast doesn’t replace reading Hackaday, but rather gives them greater insight into the stories and projects we cover.
Earlier in the year, we also explored using YouTube Shorts to provide the “elevator pitch” version of the
week’s most popular articles
. These were an interesting technical challenge — each 60 second video was generated programmatically via a Python script and required no human editing — but despite receiving a fair number of views, it wasn’t immediately clear if they provided any value to the community.
We’ve toyed with the idea of starting the videos back up and potentially even uploading them to other platforms like Facebook (and yes…even TikTok), so if you have an opinion on them one way or the other, we’d love to hear it.
It’s All Thanks To You
Everything we do at Hackaday is made possible by folks like yourself. If you weren’t reading the site, listening to our podcast, commenting on articles, and sharing our content with your friends and colleagues, we’d simply cease to exist. That the hackers and makers of the world have supported us for so long is incredibly humbling, and we take our role in this community very seriously.
We’ve got an exciting slate of contests and events that we’re eager to share with you, and can’t wait to see what new projects and stories will come our way in 2024. We sincerely hope you’ll join us for the ride, in 2024 and beyond. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713746",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T15:13:24",
"content": "Tom: 2023 was the last of the Hackaday prize challenges, there won’t be any more.Is that right?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6713760",
"a... | 1,760,372,054.781459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/air-hockey-table-embraces-doom-retro-gaming/ | Air Hockey Table EmbracesDOOM, Retro Gaming | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"air hockey",
"doom",
"emulation",
"LED array",
"LED table",
"raspberry pi",
"retro gaming"
] | [Chris Downing] recently finished up a major project that spanned some two years and used nearly every skill he possessed. The result?
A smart air hockey table with retro-gaming roots
. Does it play
DOOM
? It sure (kind of) does!
Two of the most striking features are the score board (with LCD screen and sound) and the play surface which is densely-populated with RGB LED lighting and capable of some pretty neat tricks. Together, they combine to deliver a few different modes of play, including a
DOOM
mode.
The first play mode is straight air hockey with automated score tracking and the usual horns and buzzers celebrating goals. The LED array within the table lights up to create the appearance and patterns of a typical hockey rink.
DOOM
hockey mode casts one player as Demons and the other as the Doom Slayer, and the LED array comes to life to create a play surface of flickering flames. Screams indicate goals (either Demon screams or Slayer screams, depending on who scores!)
In retrogaming emulation mode, the tabletop mirrors the screen.
Since the whole thing is driven by a Raspberry Pi, the table is given a bit of gaming flexibility with Emulation Mode. This mode allows playing emulated retro games on the scoreboard screen, and as a super neat feature, the screen display is mirrored on the tabletop’s LED array. [Chris] asserts that the effect is imperfect, but to us it looks at least as legible as
DOOM
on 7-segment displays
.
This project is a great example of how complex things can get when one combines so many different types of materials and fabrication methods into a single whole. The blog post has a lot of great photos and details, but check out the video (embedded below) for a demonstration of everything in action. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713741",
"author": "Jake",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T14:36:13",
"content": "I would be neat to see this but also tracking the puck and displaying a “trail” of the puck like the Glow puck that Fox super imposed back in the day in hockey broadcasts. I have no idea how to do that but I... | 1,760,372,055.05942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/02/an-animated-led-fireplace-powered-by-the-ch32v003/ | An Animated LED Fireplace Powered By The CH32V003 | Tom Nardi | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"CH32V003",
"Christmas gifts",
"decorations",
"led matrix",
"ws2812b"
] | Once you’ve mastered the near-magical ability of turning your ideas into a piece of hardware you can hold in your hand, it’s only natural that you’ll want to spread the joy. The holidays are a perfect time to produce a custom piece of electronics for friends and family, but there’s a catch: going from making one or two of something to making dozens of them can introduce some interesting challenges. Not only will you want to cost optimize your design, but to save yourself some aggravation, you’ll likely want to simplify the assembly process.
The fifty electronic fireplaces designed by built by [Adam Anderson], [Daniel Quach], and [Johan Wheeler] are a
perfect example of both concepts
, and while we’re coming across it a bit late for this year’s gift exchange, we wouldn’t be surprised if these MIT-licensed beauties end up under a few more trees in 2024.
To help keep the costs per unit down, the team went with the CH32V003 microcontroller, a surprisingly capable RISC-V chip that can be had for as little as 10 cents a piece. Beyond that, there’s an 8 x 8 matrix of WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs, a buzzer for playing sound effects and music, and a photoresistor to sense the ambient light level. User input is handled with a trio of touch-sensitive pads built into the PCB, which are connected to the MCU via nothing more exotic than some resistors.
Note the 3D printed separator that goes on top of the LED matrix, and the laser-cut acrylic front panel that covers the diffuser.
Most of the components go on the rearmost of the PCB stack, with the middle board holding only the USB-C port and capacitive buttons. But while the center board might not do much electrically, its exposed FR4 substrate is used as a diffuser for the LED matrix behind it. The top board is purely decorative, with the silkscreen image of the bricks and mantel helping sell the overall look. To keep costs and assembly effort further in check, standard header strips were used to interconnect the boards.
This isn’t the first piece of
holiday-themed PCB art we saw this year
, but there’s always room for more. If you created an electronic gift this year,
make sure to let us know
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713713",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T11:27:20",
"content": "Anyone to help adding the ch32v003 chip to Fritzing?Just made 2 arduino-cli examples (blink and serial output) for this chip yesterday:https://gitlab.com/zoobab/ch32v003-arduino-cli",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,055.100978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/nhl-24-rom-hack-reimagines-classic-game-zamboni-and-all/ | NHL ’24ROM Hack Reimagines Classic Game, Zamboni And All | Drew Littrell | [
"Games"
] | [
"hockey",
"retro console",
"ROM hack",
"sega genesis"
] | Thirty years is a long time to keep a piece of software alive, but there aren’t many pieces of software like
NHL ’94
for the Sega Genesis. Despite new annual iterations of publisher Electronic Arts’ NHL hockey video game some players never connected with it like quite like they did in 1994. For years now it’s been a tradition for members of the
NHL ’94
forums to incorporate the hockey league’s current players into the Sega Genesis original, however, the work [Adam] contributed this season goes beyond a mere roster update. This
NHL ’24
ROM hack
is more like a complete overhaul. Everything that was old is new again.
See if you can spot all the changes from the original (left) to the
NHL ’24
remix (right).
Home ice was completely revamped for every team in the game. New franchises that never existed in 1994, like the Las Vegas Golden Knights, appear with current logo designs and player portraits. Every team’s roster has been meticulously input into [Adam]’s revised player skill rating system in an effort to make the game as realistic as possible. Six button controller support has been added in as to allow quick switching to the goalie. The game’s entire color palette has been revised to appear more realistic, and even the Zamboni driver’s sprite got a facelift.
In order to play this ROM hack the user needs a PAL or NTSC version of
NHL ’94
on Sega Genesis/Megadrive along with the .bps patch created by [Adam]. There are many ways in order to create a digital copy (dump) of the physical cartridge, including utilizing a retro game playing device called the Retron 5. Custom firmware for the Retron 5 device can be flashed via the SD card slot that allows the user to save a backup of the cartridge. The fact that the Retron 5 supports game cartridges from seven different consoles/handhelds can make it a more cost effective ROM dumping device than other dedicated pieces of hardware. With a clean dumped image of
NHL ’94
users can apply the patch via an online tool like Rom Patcher JS. The patched ROM file can then be played on the user’s emulator of choice or real hardware.
Few games have enjoyed the sort of status that
NHL ’94
has among hockey fans. Electronic Arts recognized this when they released their own official ROM hack of sorts in
NHL ’94 Rewind
on PS4 and Xbox One in 2020. Just this year,
NHL ’94
was the subject of a documentary
featuring new interview footage of the game’s original programmer Mark Lesser. Without spoiling the storyline it’s best summed up by Mark when he said, “There was a sort of magic going on in Maine at that time.” | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,055.180111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/frog-boy-color-reimagines-the-game-boy-color-hardware-from-the-ground-up/ | Frog Boy Color Reimagines The Game Boy Color Hardware From The Ground Up | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"game boy",
"game boy color",
"nintendo"
] | Sales figures suggest Nintendo did pretty well with the Game Boy Color during its original run, even if the hardware and visuals feel a tad archaic and limited today. [Chris Hackmann] has taken the Game Boy Color design and
reworked it from the ground up as the Frog Boy Color
, kitting it out with modern upgrades in a GBA-like form factor while retaining the original hardware underneath.
[Chris] went to the wide-style GBA layout for comfort, which he considers superior to the original rectangular Game Boy format. He iterated through over 50 3D-printed enclosure designs to get the design to work, ensuring that the final housing could be CNC machined. He then set out to trim down the original Game Boy Color circuit layout to cut out hardware he considered unnecessary. The original LCD driver could go, since the Q5 replacement LCD he intended to use didn’t need it, and he also considered the IR port to be surplus to requirements. He also set out to replace the original audio amp with his own stereo design.
The result is a wide-format Game Boy Color with a gorgeous modern LCD, USB-C charging, and excellent compatibility with original games and accessories. Files are
on Github
if you want to build one yourself. Of course, he’s not the only person working on building the
best Game Boy ever
, but we always love seeing new work in this space. Video after the break. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713387",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T08:00:17",
"content": "Username checks out.Happy New Year, by the way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6713389",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T08:09:3... | 1,760,372,055.451775 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/how-ibm-stumbled-onto-risc/ | How IBM Stumbled Onto RISC | Bryan Cockfield | [
"hardware"
] | [
"801",
"development",
"general purpose computer",
"ibm",
"phone",
"research",
"risc",
"RISC-V"
] | There are a ton of inventions out in the world that are almost complete accidents, but are still ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. Things like bubble wrap which was originally intended to be wallpaper, or even superglue, a plastic compound whose sticky properties were only discovered later on. IBM found themselves in a similar predicament in the 1970s after working on a type of mainframe computer made to be a phone switch. Eventually the phone switch was abandoned in favor of a general-purpose processor but not before
they stumbled onto the RISC processor which eventually became the IBM 801
.
As [Paul] explains, the major design philosophy at the time was to use a large amount of instructions to do specific tasks within the processor. When designing the special-purpose phone switch processor, IBM removed many of these instructions and then, after the project was cancelled, performed some testing on the incomplete platform to see how it performed as a general-purpose computer. They found that by eliminating all but a few instructions and running those without a microcode layer, the processor performance gains were much more than they would have expected at up to three times as fast for comparable hardware.
These first forays into the world of simplified processor architecture both paved the way for the RISC platforms we know today such as ARM and RISC-V, but also helped CISC platforms make tremendous performance gains as well. In fact, RISC-V is a direct descendant from these early RISC processors, with three intermediate designs between then and now. If you want to play with RISC-V yourself, our own [Jonathan Bennett] took a look at a recent RISC-V SBC and its software this past March.
Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!
Photo via Wikimedia Commons | 37 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713355",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T04:16:22",
"content": "PowerPC was so much better than Arm. If only they had a more flexible/cheaper licensing agreement things would be so different today.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,055.527711 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/an-electronic-orchestra-baton/ | An Electronic Orchestra Baton | Navarre Bartz | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"Raspberry Pi Pico W"
] | The conductor of an orchestra may look unassuming on the street, but once they step onto their podium, they are all powerful. If you’ve ever wanted to go mad with power in the comfort of your own home, try this
electronic orchestra baton
by [Larry Lu] and [Kathryn Zhang].
The wireless baton “peripheral” part of the system uses a Pico W and an IMU to detect the speed of conducting a 4/4 measure. That information is then transmitted to the “central” Pico W access point which plays a .wav at the speed corresponding to the conductor’s specified beats per minute (BPM). Setting the baton down will pause the visualizer and audio playback.
The “central” Pico W uses direct memory access (DMA) and SPI communication to control the audio output and VGA visualization. Since most
.wav
files have a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, this gave the students a reference to increase or decrease the DMA audio channel timer to control the playback.
Want some more musical hacks? Checkout this
auto-glockenspiel
or
how the original iPod was hacked
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,055.217471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/3d-printing-your-own-triboelectric-generators/ | 3D Printing Your Own Triboelectric Generators | Tom Nardi | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"conductive filament",
"print in place",
"triboelectric"
] | A triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) certainly
sounds
like the sort of thing you’d need to graduate from Starfleet Engineering to put together, but it actually operates on the same principle that’s at work when you rub a balloon your head. Put simply, when friction is applied to the proper materials, charges can build up enough to produce a short burst of electrical energy. Do it enough, and you’re on the way to producing useful power.
In a recent paper, [Leo N.Y. Cao], [Erming Su], [Zijie Xu], and [Zhong Lin Wang] describe how a
functional TENG can be produced on a standard desktop 3D printer
. What’s even more impressive is that the method doesn’t appear to require anything terribly exotic — just some commercially available filaments and a bunch of PTFE beads.
TENGs can be printed in any size or shape.
So how do your print your own TENG? First, you load up an electrically conductive PLA filament and lay down a base into which a series of channels has been designed. At around the half-way point, you pause the print to insert your PTFE beads, and then swap over to standard filament for a few layers to produce an insulator. Finally, you pause again and switch back over to the conductive filament for the rest of the print, encasing the beads inside the structure.
As [Leo N.Y. Cao] demonstrates in the video below, you then clip leads to the top and bottom of the print, and give it a good shake. If everything went right, LEDs wired up to your new high-tech maracas should flash as the PTFE beads move back and forth inside. But there’s a catch. Going back to the balloon-on-the-head example, the effect at play here produces high voltages but low current — the paper says a TENG containing 60 beads should be capable of producing pulses of up to 150 volts.
Naturally, you won’t get very far with just one of these. Like other
energy harvesting concepts we’ve covered
in the past,
such as vibratory wind generators
, it would take a bunch of these working together to generate a useful amount of power. But given how cheap and quickly these printable TENGs can be produced, that doesn’t seem like it would be too much of a challenge. | 46 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713245",
"author": "M_B",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T21:24:08",
"content": "Would be interesting smacking one of these on an engine. Using the vibration of the engine to get power.Sure getting power straight from the engine would make more sense but you might not want to do that.",
... | 1,760,372,055.402265 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/welcome-to-the-year-of-the-diagonal-linux-desktop/ | Welcome To The Year Of The Diagonal Linux Desktop | Maya Posch | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"Xorg"
] | Sometimes you come across one of those ideas that at first appear to have to be some kind of elaborate joke, but as you dig deeper into it, it begins to make a disturbing kind of sense. This is where the idea of diagonally-oriented displays comes to the fore. Although not a feature that is generally supported by operating systems, [xssfox] used the
xrandr
(x resize and rotate) function in the Xorg display server to find the
perfect diagonal display orientation
to reach a happy balance between the pros and cons of horizontal and vertical display orientations.
As displays have gone wide-and-wider over the past decades, some people rotate their displays 90 degrees to get more height instead, which is beneficial when reading documents, yet terrible when watching most video content, barring vertical videos, so you either need more than one display, keep rotating, or settle on an optimal intermediate compromise. Interestingly, this wasn’t found at a straight 45°, but instead at 22° of rotation for [xssfox]’s 21:9 ratio ‘ultra-wide’ display. The
xrandr
settings for other display ratios can be easily calculated using the provided formula and associated JS-based tool.
So what are the advantages here? You get to keep long line lengths in IDEs, while gaining more vertical pixels in some areas. As disadvantages it only works with Xorg at this time, it’s a terrible setup for people prone to vertigo, and it’s decidedly hostile towards top-of-display mounted webcams. Yet with
others picking up
on this new trend, Linux might just corner the diagonal desktop. | 73 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713187",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T18:11:45",
"content": "Tilting a widescreen 16:9 monitor sideways gives you more height, but it’s also too narrow. 16:10 is more tolerable, but 4:3 is still the best in portrait orientation. Too bad nobody makes them anymore. 3:2 ... | 1,760,372,055.649186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/raspberry-pi-pico-becomes-emotionally-aware-music-visualizer/ | Raspberry Pi Pico Becomes Emotionally-Aware Music Visualizer | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"music",
"visualizer"
] | Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the nascent world of digital music was incredibly exciting. We all cultivated huge MP3 collections and spent hours staring at the best visualizers Winamp and Windows Media Player had to offer. [Rafael] and [Eric] decided to bring back those glory days
with their music visualizer that runs on the Raspberry Pi Pico.
The design is quite interesting, going beyond the usual simplistic display of waveforms and spectrograms. Instead, the Pi Pico uses a Fast Fourier Transform analysis to determine the frequencies of the music, ideally then to determine the key, and thus the mood, of the tune. Then, the visualizer uses different colors to represent those moods, such as green for happy music in a major key, or deeper blues for a sad piece in a minor key. The output of the visualizer is via Bruce Land’s 8-bit color VGA library, which allows the Pi Pico to drive a monitor directly.
Whether the visualizer really
gets
the music is up for debate. The visuals simply don’t look sad and depressing enough
when listening to
Hallelujah,
but maybe that’s just the lack of Jeff Buckley’s vocals in the instrumental. Furthermore, getting an FFT analysis to pull out reliable musical information from an audio recording is finicky to say the least. In any case, the blocky and colorful animations are nice to watch nonetheless. They’d make an excellent basis for visuals at
your next underground chiptune show,
that much is for certain. Video after the break. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,055.687653 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/paddling-help-from-electric-assisted-kayak/ | Paddling Help From Electric-Assisted Kayak | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bldc motor",
"boat",
"ebike",
"electric",
"electric assist",
"fin",
"kayak",
"machine learning",
"paddling"
] | Electric-assisted bicycles, or ebikes, are fundamentally changing the way people get around cities and towns. What were once sweaty, hilly, or difficult rides have quickly turned into a low-impact and inexpensive ways around town without foregoing all of the benefits of exercise. [Braden] hoped to expand this idea to the open waters and is building what he calls the ebike of kayaking, using the principles of electric-assisted bicycles to build
a kayak that helps you get where you’re paddling
without removing you completely from the experience.
The core of the project is a brushless DC motor originally intended a hydrofoil which is capable of providing 11 pounds (about 5 kg) of thrust. [Braden] has integrated it into a 3D-printed fin which attaches to the bottom of his inflatable kayak. The design of the fin took a few iterations to get right, but with a working motor and fin combination he set about tuning the system’s
PID controller
in a tub before taking it out to the open water. With just himself, the battery, and the motor controller in the kayak he’s getting about 14 miles of range with plenty of charge left in the battery after the trips.
[Braden]’s plans for developing this project further will eventually include a machine learning algorithm to detect when the rider is paddling and assist them, rather than simply being a throttle-operated motor as it exists currently. On a bicycle, strapping a sensor to the pedals is pretty straightforward, but we expect detecting paddling to be a bit more of a challenge. There are even more details about this build
on his personal project blog
. We’re looking forward to seeing the next version of the project but if you really need to see more boat hacks in the meantime be sure to check out [saveitforparts]’s boat
which foregoes sails in favor of solar panels
. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713119",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T14:14:29",
"content": "Would a piezo detect the impact of the paddle on the water?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6713134",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2023-12... | 1,760,372,055.740808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/spying-on-the-esp32s-gpio/ | Spying On The ESP32’s GPIO | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"debugging",
"gpio",
"library",
"monitor",
"open source",
"pins",
"pwm",
"tool",
"web server"
] | The ESP32 has been a go-to microcontroller platform for a while now, thanks to its versatile capabilities, integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and low power consumption. It’s ideal for a wide range of projects especially those revolving around IoT, partially because of all of the libraries and tools available for it now. The latest tool from [The Last Outpost Workshop] adds a feature we didn’t know we wanted until now:
a webserver showing real-time updates of what all of the GPIO pins are doing
.
The live GPIO pin monitoring library sets up the ESP32 to stream information about what all of the pins are doing in real time to a webserver, which displays the information as a helpful graphic. The demonstration in the video below shows and example troubleshooting a situation where the code is correct but there’s a mistake in the wiring, helping to quickly identify the problem and hopefully eliminating a wild goose chase for a bug in the software. The library can be quickly installed using the Arduino IDE and only requires the use of one other library and a few lines of code to get everything up and running.
As far as a debugging tool goes, something like this could save a lot of us a significant amount of time, especially with how easy it is to set up. A real-time look into the pins and their behavior, including those set up for PWM, is invaluable for plenty of situations. Of course if you’re building something like a real-time operating system that needs responses within a very specific interval you may want to look at
more in-depth strategies for probing the GPIO
.
Thanks to [Bob] for the tip!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxkOosaNohU | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713664",
"author": "Panda",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T05:12:56",
"content": "I can get a pre-certified esp32 module via distributors for ~2-3$ with BT classic/BLE/Wifi.. are there any competitive alrernative parts out there with BT classic? Seems like Infineon parts are more expensi... | 1,760,372,055.836979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/precise-positioning-with-the-rp2040/ | Precise Positioning With The RP2040 | Stephen Ogier | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"microwaves",
"raspberry pi",
"rp2040"
] | Microwave imaging is similar to CT imaging, but instead of X-rays, the microwaves are used to probe the structure and composition of an object. To facilitate experimentation with microwave imaging, [Zehao Li] and [Kapil Gangwar] developed a
system based on the RP2040 to control the height and rotation of a test object
.
Their control system has a refreshingly physical user interface—a keypad. The keypad is used to configure the object’s position and the scanning step size, while user menus and the sample position are displayed in a clean and uncluttered interface over VGA. The RP2040 runs a multi-threaded program to handle user input, VGA display, and precise driving of two stepper motors for sample positioning.
The microwave imaging was performed by measuring the RF transmission over 2.5-8 GHz between two Vivaldi antennas on either side of the sample at a variety of angles. 2D cross-sections of the test object were reconstructed in Matlab using filtered back-projection. In this proof-of-concept demonstration, a commercial vector network analyzer was used to collect the data, but one could imagine migrating to a software defined radio (SDR) in the future.
A video demonstrating the system is embedded below the break. If you’re interested in DIY radio imaging, you might be interested in this
guide to building your own synthetic aperture radar setup
, or
this analysis of an automotive radar chip
. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713603",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T00:29:08",
"content": "The audo of the video starts out at normal volume, but quickly finds a closet to go hide in. I am not interested in doing audio editing for them. It is something they should h... | 1,760,372,055.787162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/electroluminescent-surfboard-looks-sharp-for-night-surfing/ | Electroluminescent Surfboard Looks Sharp For Night Surfing | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"el wire",
"electroluminescent panel",
"surfboard"
] | If you’ve watched
Point Break
lately, you probably considered the thrill and elation involved in night surfing. If you’ve hung out with a lifeguard, though, you might instead have fretted over the dangers. In any case, it remains a popular pastime, and it’s all the more fun with a light-up surfboard
like this one from [Moritz Sivers].
This project came about due to a local tradition for [Moritz], where people often surf at night to avoid the crowded breaks during the day. The build started from scratch, with a foam blank shaped into a compact design optimized for riversurfing, with three fins set up in a thruster configuration. The back side of the board was given a coat of resin impregnated with glow-in-the-dark pigment such that the entire thing would emit an nice green glow, making it more visible at night. On the top surface, a pocket was cut in the board to host electronics for running an electroluminescent panel, complete with artwork inspired by
2001 – A Space Odyssey.
The board was also outlined with EL wire to further improve the look.
[Moritz] has experimented with some neat LED surfboard designs before, too
. Video after the break. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713714",
"author": "MichiganMark",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T11:42:05",
"content": "Isn’t that a bit like those light-up fishing lures….only for sharks?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6713721",
"author": "12L14",
"times... | 1,760,372,055.876667 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/developing-an-app-for-reduced-gravity-flying/ | Developing An App For Reduced-Gravity Flying | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"mit app inventor",
"parabolic",
"vomit comet",
"zero-gravity"
] | You’ve likely heard of the “vomit comet” — an rather graphic nickname for the aircraft used to provide short bursts of near-weightlessness by flying along a parabolic trajectory. They’re used to train astronauts, perform zero-g experiments, and famously let director Ron Howard create the realistic spaceflight scenes for
Apollo 13
. But you might be surprised to find that, outside of the padding that lines their interior for when the occupants inevitably bump into the walls or ceiling, they aren’t quite as specialized as you might think.
In fact, you can achieve a similar result in a small private aircraft — assuming you’ve got the proper touch on the controls. Which is why [Chaz] has been working on an
Android app that assists pilots in finding that sweet spot
.
Target trajectory, credit:
MikeRun
With his software running, the pilot first puts the plane into a climb, and then noses over and attempts to keep the indicator on the phone’s display green for as long as possible. It’s not easy, but in the video after the break you can see they’re able to pull it off for long enough to get things floating around the cockpit.
As [Chaz] explains, the app is basically a G-force indicator with some UI features that are designed to help the pilot keep the plane in the proper attitude to provide the sensation of weightlessness. It takes the values from the phone’s accelerometers, does the appropriate math, and changes the color of the display as the computed G-force approaches 0.
If the pilot is able to bring it under 0.1, the phone will play an audio cue. Though the fact that any loose objects that were in the cockpit will be floating around should also provide a pretty good indicator around this point.
It doesn’t look like [Chaz] is ready to release the application yet, but since it was created with
MIT’s App Inventor
, the walk-through he provides along with the screenshots from the editor should technically be enough to create it should you free so inclined — no pun intended. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713524",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T18:57:13",
"content": "“If the pilot is able to bring it under 0.1, the phone will play an audio cue.”In a light aircraft, it would need to be louder than the engine noise.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,056.159542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/building-a-simple-compressed-air-cannon-is-easy/ | Building A Simple Compressed Air Cannon Is Easy | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"air cannon",
"cannon",
"PVC"
] | The world of warfare was revolutionized by the development of black powder, fireworks, cannons, and the like. You don’t need any of that chemical nonsense to just have fun, though,
as this compressed air cannon from [OtisLiu153] demonstrates.
The build uses PVC pipes for both the barrel and the air tank. In the case of the latter, avoiding over-pressurization is key to avoiding injury, though some will say you should simply never build a PVC pipe pressure vessel at all. In this case, [OtisLiu153] strictly recommends 150 psi as a limit, which is nicely within the 280 PSI rating of the 2″ Schedule 40 PVC being used. Though, as they note, the connections in the design aren’t necessarily up to the same rating.
Off-the-shelf couplings are used to piece everything together, with the twin-reservoir design also acting as a useful shoulder mount. Charging the cannon is done via a Schrader valve, as you might find on a bike’s inner tube, and firing is achieved via a ball valve.
Of course, if you build such an air cannon yourself,
just be careful with your aim
. Video after the break. | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713468",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T15:24:01",
"content": "Thanks for digging up the pumpkin 🎃 cannon story!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6713485",
"author": "RF Dude",
... | 1,760,372,056.228308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/a-deep-dive-into-quadcopter-controls/ | A Deep Dive Into Quadcopter Controls | Bryan Cockfield | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"control",
"cornell",
"design",
"drone",
"pid control",
"power supply",
"quadcopter"
] | In the old days, building a quadcopter or drone required a lot of hacking together of various components from the motors to the batteries and even the control software. Not so much anymore, with quadcopters of all sizes ready to go literally out-of-the-box. While this has resulted in a number of knock-on effects such as FAA regulations for drone pilots, it’s also let us disconnect a little bit from the more interesting control systems these unique aircraft have. A group at Cornell wanted to take a closer look into the control systems for drones and
built this one-dimensional quadcopter to experiment with
.
The drone is only capable of flying in one dimension to allow the project to more easily fit into the four-week schedule of the class, so it’s restricted to travel along a vertical rod (which also improves the safety of the lab). The drone knows its current position using an on-board IMU and can be commanded to move to a different position, but it first has to calculate the movements it needs to make as well as making use of a PID control system to make its movements as smooth as possible. The movements are translated into commands to the individual propellers which get their power from a circuit designed from scratch for this build.
All of the components of the project were built specifically for this drone, including the drone platform itself which was 3D printed to hold the microcontroller, motors, and accommodate the rod that allows it to travel up and down. There were some challenges such as having to move the microcontroller off of the platform and boosting the current-handling capacity of the power supply to the motors. Controlling quadcopters, even in just one dimension, is a complex topic when building everything from the ground up, but
this guide goes some more of the details of PID controllers
and how they help quadcopters maintain their position. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713462",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-01-01T15:10:01",
"content": "I can’t help but be a bit concerned about those eyeballs right in the plane of the spinning props.Student lab and no safety glasses?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,372,056.099109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/wii-inspired-controller-built-using-raspberry-pi-pico/ | Wii-Inspired Controller Built Using Raspberry Pi Pico | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"mpu6050",
"nintendo wii",
"wii",
"wiimote"
] | We all thought Nintendo was going to change the world of gaming when it released the Wii all those years ago. In the end, it was interesting but not really fundamentally life-changing for most of us. In any case, [Sebastian] and [Gabriel]
decided to build a Wii-like controller for their microcontroller class at Cornell
.
The build uses a pair of Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers, communicating over HC-05 Bluetooth modules. One Pico acts as a controller akin to a Wiimote, while the other runs a basic game and displays it on a screen via VGA output. The controller senses motion thanks to a MPU6050 inertial measurement unit, combining both gyros and accelerometers in all three axes.
The duo demonstrate the hardware by using it as a pointer to play a simple Tic-Tac-Toe game. It’s in no way going to light up the Steam charts, but the project page does go into plenty of useful detail on how everything was implemented. If you want to create your own motion gaming controller, you could do worse than reading up on their work.
We’ve seen some other great examples of motion controls put to good use,
like this VR bowling game
. Video after the break. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713748",
"author": "shod",
"timestamp": "2024-01-02T15:17:21",
"content": "I’ve heard of guys that started balding at a very early age, that can’t be pleasant.Still though, there are baseball caps.Also, isn’t Cornell one of the places where everybody lost his mind?",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,056.062228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/31/diy-tube-lights-look-amazing-for-just-50-a-piece/ | DIY Tube Lights Look Amazing For Just $50 A Piece | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led tubes",
"leds",
"lighting",
"tubes"
] | It’s the future. We should have weird glowy lights everywhere, all over our homes, cars, and businesses. In the automotive world, luxury automakers are doing their part with LED ambient lighting systems, but the rest of us have to step up. [Super Valid Designs]
has developed an excellent modular DMX lighting rig that’s fit for this purpose
; the rest of us just have to get to work and build our own! (Video, embedded below.)
The design relies on hot-swapping powered bases that let a variety of different lights to be swapped in as needed. They use a custom four-pin socket designed by [Super Valid Designs] using PVC and ABS plumbing and conduit parts and tent pole springs from Home Depot. There’s a 3D-printable version, too, which is useful for those around the world that can’t get access to American standard gear easily. Anyone from the Nerf scene will understand this frustration well.
The real cool part of the modular rig, though, are the tube fixtures. There’s a ball design too, but they don’t look quite as future-cool as the tubes. They use fluorescent tube protectors as a cheap source of clear tubes, and use plumbing and conduit parts to make easy-insert connectors for pairing with the modular bases. Light is courtesy of old-school non-addressable RGB LED strips, attached to flat aluminium trim with their own adhesive combined with a wrap of clear packing tape as well. The LED strip is attached to one side of the tube, with parchment paper layered inside the tubes to act as a diffuser.
Building in quantities of 8 or more, [Super Valid Designs] reckons that the tubes can be built for $50 each or less. Of course, that adds up to a few hundred dollars in total, but the results speak for themselves.
If you’re thinking of tackling this project, but DMX is beyond your current skillset, fear not.
We’ve got just the primer to get you started
! Video after the break. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713109",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T13:48:02",
"content": "Looks like a large lightsaber collection.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6713135",
"author": "dougm",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T15:49:14",
... | 1,760,372,056.408518 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/tube-design-tips-to-save-a-writers-project/ | Tube Design Tips To Save A Writer’s Project | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"Negative Feedback",
"triode"
] | Most of the stories we cover here are fresh from the firehose, the newest and coolest stuff to interest you during your idle moments. Sometimes though, we come across a page that’s not new, but is interesting in its own right enough to bring to your attention. So it is with our subject here, because when faced with a tube circuit design problem, we found salvation in a page from [The Valve Wizard].
Do you need to apply negative feedback to a triode amplifier? The circuit is simplicity itself, but sadly when we were at university they had long ago stopped teaching the mathematics behind the component values. Step forward
everything you need to know about triode amplifier negative feedback
.
Negative feedback is a pretty simple idea: subtract a little of the amplifier’s output from the input. It reduces the amplifier’s gain with a flat response, so it’s useful for removing humps in the frequency response and reducing the tendency for distortion. In a single-ended triode amp it’s done with a resistor and capacitor from anode to grid, but the question is, just
what
resistor or capacitor?. Here the page has all the answers, taking the reader through calculating the desired gain, and picking the value of the capacitor to avoid affecting the frequency response. We wish that someone had taught us this three decades ago!
The website is full of really useful info about valve or tube amps, and it’s worth mentioning that
he’s made it available in book format too
. There’s no reason not to have a go at vacuum electronics. Meanwhile in case you are wondering what project prompted this, it was a quest to improve upon
this cheap Chinese kit amplifier
. | 24 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6713061",
"author": "hartl",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T09:10:17",
"content": "This article is misleading, it omits the grid-leak resistor required for biasing the tube. This resistor is in the same range as the feedback resistor, so it cannot be ignored in the calculations. In the tu... | 1,760,372,056.475168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/localizing-fireworks-launches-with-a-raspberry-pi/ | Localizing Fireworks Launches With A Raspberry Pi | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"fireworks",
"sound",
"sound localization"
] | If you have multiple microphones in known locations, and can determine the time a sound arrives at each one, you can actually determine the location that sound is coming from. This technique is referred to as sound localization via time difference of arrival.
[Kim Hendrikse] decided to put the technique to good use to track down the location of illicit fireworks launches.
The build is based on the Raspberry Pi, with [Kim] developing an
“autonomous recording unit”
complete with GPS module for determining their location and keeping everything time synchronized. By deploying a number of these units, spread out over some distance, it’s possible to localize loud sounds based on the time stamps they show up in the recording on each unit.
Early testing took place with an air horn and four recording units. [Kim] found that the technique works best for sounds made within the polygon. Determining the location was achieved with a sound investigation tool called
Raven Lite
, developed by Cornell University. The process is very manual, involving hunting for peaks in sound files, but we’d love to see a version that automated comparing sound peaks across many disparate recording units. In any case, it worked incredibly well for [Kim] in practice. Later testing with friends and a network of six recorders spread over Limburg, Netherlands, [Kim] was later able to localize fireworks launches with an accuracy down to a few meters.
Similar techniques are
used to locate gunshots,
and can work well with pretty much any loud noise that’s heard over a great distance. If you’ve been using your hacker skills to do similar investigative work, don’t hesitate to let us know
on the tipsline! | 103 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712980",
"author": "Pooo",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T03:03:49",
"content": "This is why we can’t have nice things.. like fireworks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712988",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,056.711235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/37c3-when-apple-ditches-thunderbolt-hack-usb-c/ | 37C3: When Apple Ditches Lightning, Hack USB-C | Elliot Williams | [
"iphone hacks",
"Phone Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"iPhone 15",
"jtag",
"mipi",
"reverse engineering",
"SPMI"
] | [Thomas Roth], aka [Ghidraninja], and author of the [Stacksmashing] YouTube channel, investigated Apple’s Lightning port and created a cool debugging tool that allowed one to get JTAG on the device. Then, Apple went to USB-C for their new phones, and all his work went to waste. Oh well, start again —
and take a look at USB-C
.
Turns out, though, that the iPhone 15 uses the vendor-defined messages (VDM) capability of USB-PD to get all sorts of fun features out. Others had explored the VDM capabilities on Mac notebooks, and it turns out that the VDM messages on the phone are the same. Some more fiddling, and he got a serial port and JTAG up and running. But JTAG is locked down in the production devices, so that will have to wait for an iPhone 15 jailbreak. So he went poking around elsewhere.
He found some other funny signals that turned out to be System Power Management Interface (SPMI), one of the horribly closed and NDA-documented dialects owned by the MIPI Alliance. Digging around on the Interwebs, he found enough documentation to build an open-source SPMI plugin that he said should be
out on his GitHub
soon.
The end result? He reworked his old Lightning hardware tool for USB-C and poked around enough in the various available protocols to get a foothold on serial, JTAG, and SPMI. This is just the beginning, but if you’re interested in playing with the new iPhone, this talk is a great place to start. Want to know all about USB-C? We’ve got
plenty of reading for you
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712949",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2023-12-31T00:42:58",
"content": "Do you mean when Apple ditches Lightning? Not Thunderbolt (and certainly not “Thuderbolt”).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712960",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,056.807582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/37c3-you-think-its-bad-with-pluto-a-history-of-the-planets/ | 37C3: You Think It’s Bad With Pluto? A History Of The Planets | Elliot Williams | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"astromony",
"chaos communication congress",
"planets",
"Pluto",
"science"
] | Not every talk at the Chaos Communication Congress is about hacking computers. In this outstanding and educational talk, [Michael Büker]
walks us through the history of our understanding of the planets
.
The question “What is a planet?” is probably more about the astronomers doing the looking than the celestial bodies that they’re looking for. In the earliest days, the Sun and the Moon were counted in. They got kicked out soon, but then when we started being able to see asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, and Juno made the list. But by counting all the asteroids, the number got up above 1,200, and it got all too crazy.
Viewed in this longer context, the previously modern idea of having nine planets, which came about in the 1960s and lasted only until 2006, was a blip on the screen. And if you are still a Pluto-is-a-planet holdout, like we were, [Michael]’s argument that counting all the Trans-Neptunian Objects would lead to madness is pretty convincing. It sure would make it harder to
build an orrery
.
His conclusion is simple and straightforward and has the ring of truth: the solar system is full of bodies, and some are large, and some are small. Some are in regular orbits, and some are not. Which we call “planets” and which we don’t is really about our perception of them and trying to fit this multiplicity into simple classification schemas. What’s in a name, anyway? | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712902",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T21:30:50",
"content": "Pluto? I’m still waiting for them to readmit Vulcan…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712912",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30... | 1,760,372,056.879773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/quivering-facehugger-is-all-geared-up/ | Quivering Facehugger Is All Geared Up | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"aliens",
"facehugger",
"legs",
"motion sensor",
"movie prop",
"planetary gear",
"sci-fi"
] | [Jason Winfield] shared with us a video describing a project with a lot of personality: a mounted, lit, and
quivering
Alien
facehugger triggered by motion
. The end result is a delightful jump scare, and the Raspberry Pi that controls everything also captures people’s reactions.
It starts with a little twitch when motion is sensed, then launches into a perfectly unsettling quiver combined with light and sound. We particularly like the wave-like effect from the LED lighting, which calls to mind illumination from rotating hazard beacons.
The unit looks like a mounted and tastefully-lit static model, but is actually primed to sense motion.
One challenge was how to efficiently move the legs. Rather than use a motor for each limb, [Jason] settled on a single motor driving a rotating cam arrangement. You can see the results for yourself in the video below, but getting there was not simple.
The surplus motor [Jason] chose is thin and high-torque, but runs extremely fast. Since he wanted the legs to quiver creepily rather than vibrate, something needed to be done to mitigate this.
The solution is a planetary gear assembly that drives a rotating ring and cam arrangement coupled to the facehugger’s legs. There’s only one motor, but the effect is that each leg’s motion is independent of the others. The whole assembly is quite slim, and everything is contained within the frame.
Facehuggers and gear assemblies are not exactly an everyday combination, but believe it or not this isn’t the first time the two have joined forces. Check out the
Aliens
-themed cuckoo clock
, complete with crew member torso and emerging chestburster! | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712888",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T20:42:12",
"content": "All the way back on the Outer Limits in one episode they had a crab-turtle shaped alien the size of a lawnmower. I thought back then that it would be cool to have one. Legs gesticulated while it motored... | 1,760,372,056.756785 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/dont-give-up/ | Don’t Give Up | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"chaos communication congress",
"newsletter"
] | I’m at
Chaos Communication Congress
this weekend, and it’s like being surrounded by the brightest, most creative, and being honest, nerdiest crowd imaginable. And that’s super invigorating.
But because of the pandemic, this is the first in-person conference in four years, and it’s been a rather unsettling time in-between. There are tons of unknowns and issues confronting us all, geeks or otherwise, at the moment. I know some people who have fallen prey to this general
malaise
, and become more or less cynical.
Especially in this context, watching a talk about an absolutely bravado hack, or falling into a conversation that sparks new ideas, can be inspiring in just the right way to pull one out of the slump. Every talk is naturally a success story — of course they are, otherwise they wouldn’t be up there presenting.
But all of the smaller interactions, the hey-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moments or the people helping each other out with just the right trick, that give me the most hope. That’s because they are all around, and I’m sure that what I’m seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. So stick together, nerds, share your work, and don’t give up!
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
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.
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! | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712788",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T15:10:20",
"content": "There seems to be an absolute ton of negativity rocking about atm, probably slightly guilty of this myself from time to time but I am keeping it in check, try not to give in to your internal ne... | 1,760,372,056.951225 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/hackaday-podcast-episode-250-trains-rc-planes-and-eeproms-in-flames/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 250: Trains, RC Planes, And EEPROMS In Flames | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast",
"reverse engineering",
"trains"
] | This week in the Podcast, Elliot Williams is off at Chaos Communication Congress, hearing tales of incredible reverse engineering that got locomotives back up and running, while Al Williams is thinking over what happened in 2023. There’s a lot of “how things work” in this show, from data buoys to sewing machines to the simulated aging of ICs.
Whether you’re into stacking bricks, stacking Pi Picos, or stacking your 3D prints to make better use of precious bed space, this episode is for you. Enjoy.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
This is your
last chance to download a new podcast this year
. Take it!
Episode 249 Show Notes:
News:
Elliot is off at
Chaos Communication Congress
What’s that Sound?
If you can guess what kind of devices are making this week’s noise, on a table at CCC,
you can win a Podcast t-shirt
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Unbricking Trains, Uncovering Shady Behavior
The Tech That Died In 2023
Raspberry Pi Pico Parallel Mandelbrot Computation
3D Printing Stacks
Absorbing Traffic Noise With Bricks Using Helmholtz Resonators
How Does A Sewing Machine Sew?
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Veteran SpaceX Booster Lost Due To Rough Seas
Liftoff! The Origin Of The Countdown
Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane
Al’s Picks:
$30 Guitar Build Shows What You Can Do With Amazon Parts
Talking Ohmmeter Also Spits Out Color Bands For You
Temperature Measurement By Wire
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Keeping Watch Over The Oceans With Data Buoys
How Do You Test If An EEPROM Can Hold Data For 100 Years? | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6715587",
"author": "calculus",
"timestamp": "2024-01-05T03:03:24",
"content": "Tags and categories for this are off. It had a category of “Slider” which it may also be but it is missing the category “Podcasts.” Which means it doesn’t show up with hackaday.com/podcast.And the tag of... | 1,760,372,056.989034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/using-local-ai-on-the-command-line-to-rename-images-and-more/ | Using Local AI On The Command Line To Rename Images (And More) | Donald Papp | [
"how-to",
"Machine Learning",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"bash",
"command line",
"images",
"llama",
"LLM"
] | We all have a folder full of images whose filenames resemble line noise. How about renaming those images with the help of a local LLM (large language model) executable on the command line? All that and more is showcased on
[Justine Tunney]’s bash one-liners for LLMs
, a showcase aimed at giving folks ideas and guidance on using a local (and private) LLM to do actual, useful work.
This is built out from the recent
llamafile
project, which turns LLMs into single-file executables. This not only makes them more portable and easier to distribute, but the executables are perfectly capable of being called from the command line and sending to standard output like any other UNIX tool. It’s simpler to version control the embedded LLM weights (and therefore their behavior) when it’s all part of the same file as well.
One such tool (the multi-modal LLaVA) is capable of interpreting image content. As an example, we can point it to a local image of the Jolly Wrencher logo using the following command:
llava-v1.5-7b-q4-main.llamafile --image logo.jpg --temp 0 -e -p '### User: The image has...\n### Assistant:'
Which produces the following response:
The image has a black background with a white skull and crossbones symbol.
With a different prompt (“What do you see?” instead of “The image has…”) the LLM even picks out the wrenches, but one can already see that the right pieces exist to do some useful work.
Check out [Justine]’s
rename-pictures.sh
script, which cleverly evaluates image filenames. If an image’s given filename already looks like readable English (also a job for a local LLM) the image is left alone. Otherwise, the picture is fed to an LLM whose output guides the generation of a new short and descriptive English filename in lowercase, with underscores for spaces.
What about the fact that LLM output isn’t entirely predictable? That’s easy to deal with. [Justine] suggests always calling these tools with the
--temp 0
parameter. Setting the temperature to zero makes the model deterministic, ensuring that a same input always yields the same output.
There’s more neat examples on the
Bash One-Liners for LLMs
that demonstrate different ways to use a local LLM that lives in a single-file executable, so be sure to give it a look and see if you get any new ideas. After all, we have previously shown how
automating tasks is almost always worth the time invested
. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712521",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T16:13:09",
"content": "How about just thumbnails?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712524",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T16:26:32",
... | 1,760,372,057.070436 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/this-week-in-security-triangulation-proxycommand-and-barracuda/ | This Week In Security: Triangulation, ProxyCommand, And Barracuda | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ssh",
"This Week in Security",
"triangulation"
] | It’s not every day we get to take a good look inside a high-level exploit chain developed by an unnamed APT from the western world. But thanks to some particularly dedicated researchers at Kaspersky, which just happens to be headquartered in Moscow, that’s exactly what we have today. The name
Operation Triangulation
was picked, based off part of the device fingerprinting code that rendered a yellow triangle on an HTML canvas.
The
entire talk is available
, given this week at the 37th Chaos Communication Congress, 37c3. The exploit starts with an iMessage attachment, delivered silently, that exploits an undocumented TrueType font instruction. Looking at the source code implies that it was a copy-paste error where a programmer didn’t quite get the logic right for a pointer calculation. That vulnerability gives a memory write primitive that pivots into code execution. What’s particularly interesting is that Apple silently fixed this bug January 2023, and didn’t make any public statements. Presumably there were an uptick of crash logs that pointed to this problem, but didn’t conclusively show attempted exploitation.
The exploits then moves to using NSExpression as a next stage. NSExpression is an ugly way to write code, but it does allow the exploit chain to get to the next stage, running JavaScript as an application, without Just In Time compilation. The JS payload is quite a beast, weighing in at 11,000 lines of obfuscated code. It manages to call native APIs directly from JS, which then sets up a kernel exploit. This is multiple integer overflow flaws that result in essentially arbitrary system memory reads and writes.
We’ve now hit the really interesting part. Arbitrary read and write would normally be game over, but the iOS hardware has built-in mitigations to protect the kernel even from itself. The Kaspersky researchers refer to this as the “final boss” of hacking iOS. First off, keep in mind that there’s more than just ram locations in that system memory map. There are registers, video ram, peripherals, and more. Each of these have defined memory sections. There ends up being memory locations that aren’t used for anything — at least not anything documented. The Triangulation exploit writes seemingly magic values to these memory locations, and it’s suddenly allowed to write memory anywhere, bypassing the “final boss”.
Listening to the Kaspersky researchers, one might think that this is something resembling a backdoor, given that it’s enabled by a secret hash function, and uses undocumented memory locations. Our friend of Asahi Linux fame, [Marcan], AKA [Hector Martin], is something of an expert in reverse-engineering Apple hardware, and
has thoughts on this
. Namely, it’s debugging interfaces that weren’t intended to be accessible. The secret hash is actually ECC, Error Correction Codes. The Apple silicon has a design quirk, that the GPU section of the chip doesn’t have a dedicated Memory Management Unit, but instead depends on the main CPU to manage that shared memory. These memory locations were never intended to be accessible from CPU code, and probably map to GPU cache, which explains a lot about the behavior of this exploit.
Keep an eye on the Kaspersky blog for more detailed analysis of Operation Triangulation. It’s a fascinating look into work that likely belongs to a three-letter-agency, either from the US or another Western country. And for anyone interested, Kaspersky has released the
triangle_check
tool to examine an iOS backup for signs of this malware.
As a former NSA guy, watching the community reverse engineer this exploit makes me think of all the people who developed it sitting and crying somewhere as it’s secrets are spilled.
https://t.co/HjwAbSPQ8V
— Charlie Miller (@0xcharlie)
December 28, 2023
Don’t Trust That Hostname!
SSH has a nifty feature, the jump host. You can specify an intermediary machine to jump through, something like
ssh -J jump.host jbennett@final.host
. Your local machine can contain rules for specific hosts, to automatically use a jump server to access the remote host. And the problem there is that that’s usually done via the ProxyCommand configuration, which takes the takes the hostname as one of the arguments when building the command to run.
You may be way ahead of us,
what happens if that hostname is from an untrusted source
, and contains something nasty, like a command inside backticks? Well, until OpenSSH 9.6p1, that command would get passed through to the command line, and gets run.
The last question is, how would an untrusted SSH command get run on a local system? The way suggested by [Vin01] in this disclosure is when cloning a git repository that has a submodule. It might be worth starting a habit of taking a look at the
.gitmodules
file before doing a recursive clone.
Barracuda Pushes Patches
Barracuda
pushed an automatic patch to all the Email Security Gateways
it could, last week. There was an active zero-day campaign, attributed to to UNC4841 out of China. Once again, the problem is a vulnerability in part of the virus scanning capability. The Perl module Spreadsheet::ParseExcel is vulnerable to code execution when parsing number format strings.
Bits and Bytes
The relatively popular
MajorDoMo home automation has a severe RCE in the thumbnail generation module
. A base64 encoded value is directly used to generate a command, making for absolutely trivial compromise. After an initial missed communication attempt, the project’s developers responded and got a patch out within a few days.
You may have seen renewed coverage of the teenager that hacked a Rockstar with nothing but a Firestick and TV — oh, and an Android phone. First, refer to
our earlier coverage
to cut through the hype. And then we’re genuinely sad to share that
the young hacker in question has been turned over to a secure hospital to be institutionalized indefinitely
.
And finally, we leave you with the saga of [Tomaž Zaman] working through one of the fundamental freedoms — actually controlling his own hardware. Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) fiber Internet is a bit rough to work with. You can’t just take the provided SFP module and plug it into your own hardware. To find the answer, [Tomaž] rooted the ISP router, found the needed information, and then paid for a specialized GPON SFP adapter that was set up to support this use case. Enjoy! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712560",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T18:03:03",
"content": "Could someone familiar with these SFP sticks explain why they contain a SoC with a full-blown OS and network stack? One would expect that these serve as a simple electrical-to-optical interface…",
"pa... | 1,760,372,057.199881 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/the-gopher-revival-is-upon-us/ | The Gopher Revival Is Upon Us | Jenny List | [
"internet hacks"
] | [
"finger",
"gemini",
"Gopher",
"web"
] | A maxim for anyone writing a web page in the mid 1990s was that it was good practice to bring the whole thing (including graphics) in at around 30 kB in size. It was a time when the protocol still had some pretence of efficient information delivery, when information was self-published, before huge corporations brought everything under their umbrellas.
Recently, this idea of the small web has been
experiencing something of a quiet comeback
. [Serge Zaitsev]’s essay takes us back to a time before the Internet as we know it was born, and reminds us of a few protocols that have fallen by the wayside. Finger or Gopher, both things we remember from our student days, but neither of which was a match for the browser.
All is not lost though, because
the Gemini protocol
is a more modern take on minimalist Internet information sharing. It’s something like the web, but intentionally without the layer upon layer of extraneous stuff, and it’s been slowly gathering some steam. Every time we look at
its software list
it becomes more extensive, and we live in hope that it might catch on for use with internet-connected microcontroller-based computing. The essay is a reminder that the internet doesn’t have to be the web, and doesn’t have to be bloated either. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712456",
"author": "Feinfinger (kinda angry here)",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T12:25:07",
"content": "And what about guppy:, nex:, spartan:, text: and even ftp:’s sis fsp:?Ok, the last one really seems forgotten……and I’ll not even mention Hyper-g now!The worst thing in the nets curre... | 1,760,372,057.148823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/generating-3d-scenes-from-just-one-image/ | Generating 3D Scenes From Just One Image | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"3d scene",
"deep learning",
"gaussian splat",
"research"
] | The
LucidDreamer project
ties a variety of functions into a pipeline that can take a source image (or generate one from a text prompt) and “lift” its content into 3D, creating highly-detailed Gaussian splats that look great and can even be navigated.
Gaussian splatting is a method used to render NeRFs
(Neural Radiance Fields), which are themselves a method of generating complex scenes from sparse 2D sources, and doing it quickly. If that is all news to you, that’s probably because this stuff has sprung up with dizzying speed from when the original NeRF concept was thought up barely a handful of years ago.
What makes LucidDreamer neat is the fact that it does so much with so little.
The project page
has interactive scenes to explore, but
there is also a demo
for those who would like to try generating scenes from scratch (some familiarity with the basic tools is expected, however.)
In addition to the source code itself
the research paper is available
for those with a hunger for the details. Read it quick, because at the pace this stuff is expanding, it honestly might be obsolete if you wait too long. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712441",
"author": "Hugo",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T10:26:08",
"content": "This is beautiful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712455",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T12:02:55",
"content": ... | 1,760,372,057.572247 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/your-home-mainframe/ | Your Home Mainframe | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"blinkenlights",
"front panel"
] | We miss the days when computers looked like computers. You know, blinking lights, rows of switches, and cryptic displays. [Phil Tipping] must miss those days too since he built
PlasMa
, a “mini-mainframe simulator.”
The device would look at home on the set of any old science fiction movie. Externally, it has 540 LEDs, 100 switches, and a number of other I/O devices, including a keypad and an LCD screen. Internally, it can support three different instruction sets. Everything is run by an ATmega2560, and it has simulated paper tape, magnetic tape, and disks (all via SD cards). The magnetic tapes also have LED simulated reels to show the tape position and other status information (the round displays just above the LCD display).
One of the CPUs has a 64K address space and floating point capabilities. You can see the floating point used with a lunar lander example in the video below. We would love to see a virtual IBM 360 done like this, but then you’d get into making it look right, and since PlasMa is its own machine, you can make it look any way that you like. Sure, you can run Hercules as a simulator, but having all the switches and lights would make it that much better.
If you fancy building your own, there is a complete guide, but it probably isn’t an afternoon project. Inside, there are multiple PC boards, each containing a different system. According to the build document, you could create a subset system by using only some of the boards.
If you just want your own mainframe, you can easily do
software simulations
, of course. If you find front panels intimidating, maybe
start with an easier one
. | 36 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712428",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T06:19:24",
"content": "Really cool! 😎Btw, the LCD could be replaced by a little b/w CRT maybe (recent 12v camping TVs have AV in). Or a round oscilloscope tube..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,057.639897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/moving-iron-coated-polymer-particles-uphill-using-external-magnetic-field/ | Moving Iron-Coated Polymer Particles Uphill Using External Magnetic Field | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"granular",
"magnetism"
] | Microscopy of PMMA ferromagnetic Janus particle as used in the study (Credit: Wilson-Whitford et al., 2023)
Granular media such as sand have a range of interesting properties that make it extremely useful, but they still will obey gravity and make their way downhill. That is, until you coat such particles with a ferromagnetic material like iron, make them spin using an external magnetic field and watch them make their way against gravity. This recent study by researchers has an
accompanying video
(also embedded below) that is probably best watched first before
reading the study
by Samuel R. Wilson-Whitford and colleagues in
Nature Communications
.
In the
supplemental
material the experimental setup is shown (see top image), which is designed to make the individual iron-coated polymer particles rotate. The particles are called Janus particles because only one hemisphere is coated using physical vapor deposition, leaving the other as uncovered PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate).
While one might expect that the rotating magnetic field would just make these particles spin in place, instead the researchers observed them forming temporary chains of particles, which were able to gradually churn their way upwards. Not only did this motion look like the inverse of granular media flowing downhill, the researchers also made a staircase obstacle that the Janus particles managed to traverse. Although no immediate practical application is apparent, these so-called ‘microrollers’ display an interesting method of locomotion in what’d otherwise be rather passive granular media. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712557",
"author": "TomTheGeek",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T17:50:18",
"content": "Hiro Hamada might have a few ideas how to use this technology.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,057.47243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system/ | How To Build A Small Solar Power System | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"dc power",
"off grid",
"solar power"
] | We live in an exciting time with respect to electrical power, one in which it has never been easier to break free from mains electricity, and low-frequency AC power in general. A confluence of lower-power appliances and devices using low-voltage external switch-mode supplies, readily available solar panels and electronic modules, and inexpensive high-capacity batteries, means that being your own power provider can be as simple as making an online order.
But which parts should you choose?
Low Tech Magazine
has the answer, in the form of
a guide to building a small solar power system
. The result is an extremely comprehensive guide, and though it’s written for a general audience there’s still plenty of information for the Hackaday reader.
Perhaps the most important part is that it’s demystifying the subject, there in front of us are a set of pretty straightforward recipes for personal power. The computer this is being written on spends a significant proportion of its time on the road with the ever-present company of a very hefty USB-C power pack for example, and the realization that a not-too-expensive solar panel and USB PD source could lessen the range anxiety and constant search for a train seat with a socket for a writer on the move is quite a powerful one.
Take a look and see whether your life could use bit of inexpensive off-grid power, meanwhile we’re quite pleased that the USB-C PD standard has eased
some of the DC problems we expressed frustration at back in 2016
. | 41 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712733",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T12:30:21",
"content": "I see a lot of DIY solar, but I rarely see anyone just wire a panel to an indoor DC outlet (Anderson PowerPoles?) to charge off the shelf solar generators.They have amazing features at low cost, Lifep... | 1,760,372,057.716168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/30/peltier-mini-fridge-for-class-by-class/ | Peltier Mini Fridge For Class By Class | Al Williams | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"classroom",
"peltier",
"refigerator"
] | How do you keep a few sodas in your classroom cool? Well, if you are teacher [Ethan Hunt], you have your students design and build
a solid-state mini refrigerator
that can beat his prototype fridge. The prototype uses a Peltier effect module to get three cans down to 11 C (52 F), with a final goal of reaching 5 C (41 F). It’s not all fun and games either — [Ethan] provides a suggested lesson plan with a total of thirteen modules made to fit in an hour each.
Peltier effect modules, also known as solid-state heat pumps, used to be exotic tech but are now quite common. They are actually the reverse of the Kelvin effect. Thermocouples exploit the Kelvin effect by measuring current flowing due to temperature differences.
Solid-state heat pumps use current flowing to create a comparable temperature difference. However, that’s also the catch. One side of the heat pump gets cold, but the other side gets equally hot. That heat has to go somewhere. The same is true, of course, of a “real” refrigerator or an air conditioner.
The lessons would be perfect to adapt for a class, a kid’s club, or even homeschooling. We’d
love to see what your students build
. You probably won’t be
making liquid nitrogen
with this setup. But we have seen more than one
mini-fridge
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712689",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T09:10:11",
"content": "What an odd temp. I would shoot for 34, Just a bit above freezing, I like my soda cold!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712742",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,057.524135 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/sound-reactive-light-saber-flips-allegiance-via-vowel-sounds/ | Sound-Reactive Light Saber Flips Allegiance Via Vowel Sounds | Donald Papp | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"audio detection",
"disco",
"lightsaber",
"rp2040",
"vowel"
] | Students [Berk Gokmen] and [Justin Green] developed an RP2040-based
LED-illuminated lightsaber as a final project with a bit of a twist
. It has two unusual sound-reactive modes: disco mode, and vowel detection mode.
Switching allegiances (or saber color, at least) is only a sound away.
Disco mode alters the color of the saber dynamically in response to incoming sounds. Color and brightness are altered in response to incoming frequencies picked up by the on-board microphone, making a dynamic light show that responds particularly well to music.
The second mode is vowel detection, and changes the lightsaber’s color depending on spoken sounds. The “ee” sound makes the saber red, and the “ah” sound turns it blue. This method requires a lot of processing and filtering, and in the end it works, but is quite dependent on individual speakers for calibration.
The sound functionality centers around
FFTs (Fast Fourier Transforms)
which are fundamental to processing signals like audio in a meaningful way, and is a method accessible to embedded devices like microcontrollers with ADCs.
The lightsaber is battery-powered and wireless, and there are loads of details about the finer points of the design (including challenges and tradeoffs) on
the project page
, and the
source code is available on GitHub
. A video demonstration and walkthrough is embedded below. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712686",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T08:41:13",
"content": "Unbelievably original. And all those discrete LEDs make for an amazingly graceful spectacle !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712691",
"author": "La... | 1,760,372,058.052344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/how-us-steel-changed-from-world-leading-to-industry-trailing/ | How US Steel Changed From World-Leading To Industry-Trailing | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [
"steel industry"
] | It was recently announced that US Steel will be acquired by Tokyo-based Nippon Steel for a measly $14.1 billion , ending the former’s 122 year history as a former US industrial powerhouse. Yet what happened to degrade what was once the number one steel maker in the world upon its formation out of two existing industrial giants in 1901 into a has-been? This is the topic that [Brian Potter] dives into
in a recent article
.
Most of the how and why can be condensed into a simple reluctance to follow industry innovations, often passing on new technologies. This went well until the post-WWII era, when foreign competition began to heat up, with this competition more than happy to embrace whatever new steel making technologies became available. Case in point was the replacement of open hearth furnaces with
basic oxygen furnaces
by the early 1950s, which US Steel only began to adopt in the 1960s. These were then themselves largely replaced by contemporary electric arc furnaces, in a constant renewal process that US Steel failed to adapt to, unlike its more nimble competitors.
By the early 1980s US Steel’s US market share had already dropped to around 20% as Japanese steel makers in particular were eating its lunch. As US Steel and other US steel makers kept falling behind on the competition, shedding plants and workers in an attempt to stay profitable, it should come as no surprise that this would be US Steel’s ultimate fate.
(top image: Edgar Thomson Steel Works in the mid-1990s (Credit:
David Rochberg
– Own work, CC BY 2.5) ) | 68 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712653",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T04:01:19",
"content": "I’m surprised the sale was allowed for defense purposes. I haven’t looked into it but I’ll assume the military has another source now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,058.003846 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/flashlight-door-lock-is-a-bright-idea/ | Flashlight Door Lock Is A Bright Idea | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"Arduino Nano Every",
"door lock",
"flashlight",
"lock",
"relay"
] | There are many ways to lock a door. You could use a keypad, an RFID card, a fingerprint or retina scan, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, the list goes on. You could even use a regular old metal key. But none of these may be as secure as
[mircemk]’s Arduino-based door lock that employs a smartphone’s flashlight as a pass code.
At first blush, this seems horribly insecure. Use a plain old flashlight to open a door? Come on. But the key is in the software. In fact, between the typed-in pass code and the flash of light it generates, this lock kind of has two layers of security.
Here’s what’s going on: inside the accompanying smart phone application, there’s a list of passwords. Each of these passwords corresponds to a flash of light in milliseconds. Enter the correct password to satisfy the Arduino, and the phone’s flashlight is activated for the appropriate number of milliseconds to unlock the door.
As you’ll see in the video below, simply flashing the light manually doesn’t unlock the door, and neither does entering one of the other, bogus passwords. Although it does activate the flashlight each time, they don’t have the appropriate light-time length defined.
Hardware-wise, there is an Arduino Nano Every in charge of the LDR module that reads the flashlight input and the 12 V relay that unlocks the door. Be sure to check it out it the video after the break.
If you want to keep your critters from bringing wild critters back inside,
check out this Wi-Fi cat door that lets you have a look at what might be dangling from their jaws
before unlocking the door. | 45 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712628",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-30T00:40:33",
"content": "Video record someone opening their door with their cellphone flashlight and play it back? If the playback fails because scan frames don’t accurately replay the signal, how abo... | 1,760,372,057.897057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/gentoo-linux-now-a-bit-less-for-the-1337/ | Gentoo Linux, Now A Bit Less For The 1337 | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"binary",
"gentoo",
"linux"
] | Among users of Linux distributions there’s a curious one-upmanship, depending on how esoteric or hardcore your distro is. Ubuntu users have little shame, while at the other end if you followed Linux From Scratch or better still hand-compiled the code and carved it onto the raw silicon with a tiny chisel, you’re at the top of the tree*. Jokes aside though, it’s fair to say that if you were running the Gentoo distribution you were something of a hardcore user, because its source-only nature meant that everything had to be compiled to your liking. We’re using the past tense here though, because in a surprise announcement,
the distro has revealed that it will henceforth also be available as a set of precompiled binary packages
.
There may be readers with long and flowing neckbeards who will decry this moment as the Beginning of the End, but while it does signal a major departure for the distro if it means that more people are spurred to take their Linux usage further and experiment with Gentoo, this can never be a bad thing. Gentoo has been on the list for a future
Jenny’s Daily Drivers
OS review piece, and while we’re probably going to stick with source-only when we do it, it’s undeniable that there will remain a temptation to simply download the binaries.
Meanwhile this has been written on a machine running Manjaro,
or Arch-for-cowards as we like to call it
, something that maybe confers middle-ranking bragging rights. Read
a personal tale of taking off those Linux training wheels
.
* Used a magnifying glass? You’re just not cutting it! | 37 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712590",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T21:07:55",
"content": "Linux is all things to all people. Fedora is “cutting edge”, Ubuntu is “easy to use” and Debian has the biggest package list of all distros. Then there is Gentoo… which is like having manual controls... | 1,760,372,058.126807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/this-baby-scope-is-within-your-reach/ | This Baby ‘Scope Is Within Your Reach | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"neon oscillator",
"oscilloscope"
] | The modern oscilloscope is truly a marvelous instrument, being a computer with a high-speed analogue front end which can deliver the function of an oscilloscope alongside that of a voltmeter and a frequency counter. They don’t cost much, and having one on your bench gives you an edge unavailable in a previous time. That’s not to dismiss older CRT ‘scopes though, the glow of a phosphor trace has illuminated many a fault finding procedure. These older instruments can even be pretty simple, as [Mircemk] demonstrates with
a small home-made example
that we have to admit to rather liking.
At its heart is a small 5 cm round CRT tube, with an off-the-shelf buck converter supplying the HT, a neon lamp relaxation oscillator supplying the timebase, and a set of passive components conditioning the signal to the deflection plates. The whole thing runs from 12 V and fits in a neat case. It has one huge flaw in that there is no trigger circuit, and sadly this compromises its usefulness as an instrument. Our understanding of a neon oscillator is a little rusty but we’re guessing the two-terminal neon lamp would have to be replaced by one of the more exotic gas-filled tubes with more electrodes, of which one takes the trigger pulse.
Even without a trigger it’s still a neat device, so take a look at it. Perhaps surprisingly we’ve seen few CRT ‘scopes made from scratch here at Hackaday, but never fear,
here’s one used as an audio visualiser
. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712569",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T18:45:22",
"content": "This is wonderful. 🙂❤️Tip: I’d add a little bit of shielding inside the chassis, since it’s made of plastic/wood.Ok, it’s maybe not exactly needed, since the acceleration voltage isn’t that high and becau... | 1,760,372,058.188531 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/making-the-case-for-wooden-wind-turbines-with-swedish-modvion/ | Making The Case For Wooden Wind Turbines With Swedish Modvion | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"wind turbines"
] | Inside shot of the Modvion wooden wind turbine tower.
Modern-day wind turbines are constructed using mostly concrete and steel, topped by the fiberglass composite blades mounted to the nacelle that houses the gearbox and generator, along with much of the control systems. With the ever increasing sizes of these turbines transporting the components to the installation location is a harrowing task, something which Swedish company Modvion claims to improve upon with its wooden tower elements that come mostly packaged flat, for on-site assembly. The BBC recently
took a look at the first
of these partially wooden wind turbine towers. At 105 meters tall, it
features
a standard V90-2.0MW turbine and blades.
Rather than using concrete slabs at the base with steel tower segments on top, or a fully steel tower like with most wind turbines, Modvion uses segments of layered wood which it calls ‘
the module
‘. These are assembled out of 144 layers of 3 mm thick spruce, with ring segments assembled on-site. This means that multiple of these modules can be stacked onto a standard truck with no concerns that come with oversized transports. According to Modvion these wooden towers should last about the same number of years as their steel counterparts.
Where some of the claims made by Modvion fall somewhat flat is that it solves the whole wind turbine transport problem, as their solution does not fix the
most daunting issue
of transporting wind turbine blades. They also claim that using wood instead of steel makes their wind turbine tower section ‘carbon negative’ due to capturing carbon in the wood, with the same wood ‘reusable’ after decommissioning by reusing it for buildings. This would reduce wind power’s already small carbon footprint.
The issue here is of course that the steel in most wind turbine towers can be almost fully recycled and reused, whether to make new wind turbine towers or something else. Melting steel can also be done using zero-carbon energy sources, with the world’s steel industries gradually shifting to such ‘green steel’. Although Modvion seems very upbeat about the prospects of their wooden towers, it remains to be seen whether it doesn’t turn into another
Spruce Goose
. | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712376",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T00:47:06",
"content": "Papier maché",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712378",
"author": "DrewTheMachinist",
"timestamp": "2023... | 1,760,372,058.273171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/copper-coating-3d-prints/ | Copper Coating 3D Prints | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"cold wel",
"copper plating",
"mechanical plating",
"peen plating"
] | We would all like to 3D print in metal, but for now, the equipment to do that is out of reach for most of us. Instead of dealing with powder printers or metal-bearing polymers, [Robert] has a simple solution. Using a process known as mechanical plating or peen plating, he
deposits a layer of copper on a PLA print
. The results look good, as you can see in the video below.
This isn’t electroplating, although the result is similar. With electroplating, you have to make the 3D part conductive. You also have to deal with wet chemistry and fumes. This process uses a rock tumbler, copper powder, and small ball bearings.
The ball bearings hammer the copper into the part, cold welding it to the surface. [Robert’s] first attempt didn´t work well as the copper didn’t stick well. He solved that by dipping the part in acetone. The video says that made the part sticky, but we haven’t found that to be true with PLA. We suspect it served to clean the part, an essential step in mechanical plating.
Mechanical plating is a well-known industrial process. Unlike electroplating, it can plate hard-to-reach recesses. It also doesn’t cause hydrogen embrittlement like traditional electroplating.
If you want to try
regular electroplating
, we have seen that done many times. If you have patience, you can even
use electroplating as a 3D printing process
. | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712347",
"author": "Huan Son",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T21:52:15",
"content": "What if he electroplated after the powder plating?The powder is conductive and the elctroplating is solid.No need of a laquer finish.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,058.340293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/raspberry-pi-does-its-best-retro-pc-impression/ | Raspberry Pi Does Its Best Retro PC Impression | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"286",
"emulation",
"Mini computer",
"miniature computer"
] | The Raspberry Pi is a popular choice if you’re looking to put together a simple emulation box — it’s relatively cheap, small enough to tuck into pretty much any entertainment center, and benefits from a large and vibrant development community. You can even get enclosures that will dress the Linux single-board computer up like a miniature version of your favorite retro console. But what about the old school PC gamers who want to relive their glory days in a palm-sized package?
Well, if you’ve got a 3D printer,
[fantasticmrdavid] might have just the solution for you
. This second iteration of his printable Raspberry Pi enclosure is designed to look like the 286 desktop that he had in his youth, complete with a functional “floppy drive” in the front that takes an SD card. With a 3.5 inch MPI3508 LCD up in the “monitor” and a copy of DOSBox on the SD card, you’re well on your way to booting up a copy of Windows 3.11 or building some contraptions in
The Incredible Machine
.
While the external aesthetics of the design are impeccable, we appreciate that [fantasticmrdavid] didn’t skimp on the internals. There’s mount points for dual 25 mm fans to keep the more powerful variants of the Raspberry Pi cool, and a speaker expansion board that plugs into the GPIO header to provide era-appropriate bloops and bleeps. The tiny details here really shine, like the fact that the face plates for the dual drives are designed as separate pieces so they can be printed in a different color than the main case.
If you’re not interested in the classics, don’t worry. We’ve seen the
Raspberry Pi stand in foraa modern gaming PC
, complete with the RGB LEDs you’d expect in a contemporary rig. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712315",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T19:43:14",
"content": "Just beautiful. <3",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712334",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T20:55:40",
"content": "I love th... | 1,760,372,060.341617 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/linux-fu-preprocessing-beyond-code/ | Linux Fu: Preprocessing Beyond Code | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"linux",
"m4",
"preprocessor"
] | If you glanced at the title and thought, “I don’t care — I don’t write C code,” then hang on a minute. While it is true that C has a preprocessor and you can notoriously do strange and — depending on your point of view — horrible or wonderful things with it, there are actually other options and you don’t have to use any of them with a C program. You can actually use the C preprocessor with almost any kind of text file. And it’s not the only preprocessor you can abuse this way. For example, the m4 preprocessor is wildly complex, vastly underused, and can handle C source code or anything else you care to send to it.
Definitions
I’ll define a preprocessor as a program that transforms its input file into an output file, reacting to commands that are probably embedded in the file itself. Most often, that output is then sent to some other program to do the “real” work. That covers
cpp
, the C preprocessor. It also covers things like
sed
. Honestly, you can easily create custom preprocessors using C,
awk
, Python, Perl, or any other programming language. There are many other standard programs that you could think of as preprocessors, for example,
tr
. However, one of the most powerful is made to preprocess complex input files called m4. For some reason — maybe because of its complexity — you don’t see much m4 in the wild.
What Preprocessor?
If you’ve only used modern C compilers, you may wonder where the preprocessor even is. An ordinary system now does the entire compile in — as far as you can tell — one single pass. However, your compiler should offer a
cpp
executable that does the preprocessor logic externally, if you prefer. For gcc (and many other compilers), the preprocessor is named — unsurprisingly —
cpp
. The preprocessor has four major tasks:
Substitute one string for another, including “macros” that look like a function call.
Evaluate expressions and include parts of the input or exclude them based on the expression’s value.
Strip out comments.
Read in other files.
Of course, usually, the input is C source code, and the output is headed for the compiler, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
A Simple Example
Suppose you have a configuration file of some sort that has messages in it, originally in English. The file looks like this:
message1: Good Morning
message2: Good Night
message3: The cat is white
We want to arrange it so we can easily change the messages and build a new configuration file. There are several ways you could do this, each with some advantages and disadvantages.
Imagine you have a file called
langs
:
#define ENGLISH 0
#define SPANISH 1
Obviously, you could add more languages here, and the numbers are arbitrary as long as they are unique.
Now, we can create a template for the final configuration file:
#include "langs"
#ifndef LANG
#define LANG ENGLISH
#endif
#include "xlat"
message1: GOOD_MORNING
message2: GOOD_NIGHT
message3: CAT(WHITE)
There are a few things to notice about this file. First, it includes our language definition file. It then defines
LANG
as one of those symbols unless something else has already defined it. We will soon see what that might be, but assume this sets
LANG
to
ENGLISH
for now.
The include of
xlat
populates the tags like
GOODMORNING
with the correct string in whatever language we choose. Here’s what
xlat
looks like:
#if LANG==ENGLISH
#define WHITE white
#define GOOD_MORNING Good Morning
#define GOOD_NIGHT Good Morning
#define CAT(clr) The cat is clr
#endif
#if LANG==SPANISH
#define WHITE blanco
#define GOOD_MORNING Buenos Días
#define GOOD_NIGHT Buenas Noches
#define CAT(clr) El gato es clr
#endif
Note that the good morning message has a Unicode character in it. That’s one small issue with using tools like this. The encoding will come out as a
C-style escape character
. Depending on what you are going to use the output for, that may or may not be acceptable. In fact, there are several things the preprocessor does for the compiler that we probably want to suppress.
If you just run:
cpp template
You get:
# 0 "template"
# 0 "<built-in>"
# 0 "<command-line>"
# 1 "/usr/include/stdc-predef.h" 1 3 4
# 0 "<command-line>" 2
# 1 "template"
# 1 "langs" 1
# 2 "template" 2
# 1 "xlat" 1
# 8 "template" 2
message1: Good Morning
message2: Good Night
message3: The cat is white
What we want is at the bottom, true, but there’s a lot of stuff to help the compiler generate error messages and other things.
The trick is to put a few options on the command line:
cpp -udef -P template
These options are for gcc’s preprocessor. If you use something else, you may have to make your own decisions.
Customizing
If you want the Spanish version, you could simply edit the file. But you can also tell the preprocessor to force the LANG symbol, and since the template won’t redefine it, you’ll get the language of your choice:
cpp -udef -P -D LANG=SPANISH template
As I mentioned, the Unicode character will look funny after this, depending on how you look at it.
Another Way
This isn’t the only way to use the preprocessor in this example. You could detect the language and then include a different file — ENGLISH or SPANISH — to get the same result. This would have the advantage of many small independent files you could send to different translators, for example.
There are probably dozens of other ways you could do this, too. The preprocessor is like a multitool. There are lots of ways to do almost anything.
Preprocessor on Steroids
If you really want to get fancy with the preprocessor, try
m4
. It is similar in idea to the C preprocessor but has many superpowers. It isn’t specific to C, so there’s not much you have to do to coax it to work with your files. Unlike the C preprocessor,
m4
doesn’t care about lines. For example, consider this input:
Hello!
define(HACKADAY,1)
Testing our macro:
HACKADAY
The End
If you run that through
m4
, you’ll notice there is a strange blank line between Hello and the line that says “Testing.” Why? Because the macro definition only consumes the characters up to the close parenthesis. Everything else is still in the file, including that newline at the end. If you type some text in after the definition, there’s no problem, and it will show up in the output.
If you want to ignore the rest of the line, you use
dnl
(delete to new line) like this:
define(HACKADAY,1)dnl
Arguments in m4 use the dollar sign notation, much like the shell. Quoting is strange, too, since you use the back quote to open and the apostrophe to close. Like this:
define(HACKADAY,`eval(10**$1)')
As you might expect, this allows you to say HACKADAY(2) and get 100 as the result — the double asterisk is exponentiation.
A Pleasant Diversion
One of the best features of
m4
is that it has at least ten different output streams. The default is stream 0 and the rest are numbered from 1 to 9. You can write to any of the streams easily, or write to an out-of-range stream like -1 to discard input. At the end, the output streams are put together in order. Hypothetically, then, you could have a macro that adds an item to a report, for example. The report has a header, a body, and a totals column. You could put all the header code into the first stream (or “diversion”, in m4-speak). Then put the body code in diversion 2 and the total code in diversion 3.
At the end, the generated program would have all the headers, then all the body items, and, finally, the totals and you could write them in any order you find convenient. If you want to throw text away, you should divert to a negative file number. Some
m4
programs — including the GNU one — allow larger numbers of diversions than the standard.
As a simple example, consider this script:
dnl These comments will be discarded
dnl First, we are going to divert to #1
dnl Then we will print each word along with a count
dnl incrementing the count (_c)
dnl At the end, we will switch back to 0 and output the count
dnl This way, the header of the "report" will have the count
dnl followed by the words we wanted to count
divert(1)dnl
define(_c,0)dnl
define(WC,`
define(`_c',incr(_c))dnl
_c: $1')dnl
WC(Hello)
WC(There)
WC(Hackaday)
WC(2024)
divert(0)dnl
List of _c words:
Note that the lines that start with
dnl
are essentially comments. The rest is cryptic, but the idea is to define a macro to output a list of words with sequence numbers. The header contains a total count which, of course, we don’t know until the end. But since the header is put in diversion 0 and the rest in diversion 1, everything comes out in the right order.
There’s too much about
m4
to cover in a single post, but you can
read more about it on your own
. Honestly, if you really need the power of
m4
, maybe you should be thinking about awk or Python anyway. You’ll probably have to recreate your own version of the divert system, though, so if you really need that functionality, maybe there is something to
m4
.
On the other hand, maybe try
awk
. Or mix awk, shell script, and the C processor
in terrible ways
. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712321",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T20:11:52",
"content": "If you glanced at the title and thought, “I really care — I almost exclusively write C code”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712323",
"author": "Da... | 1,760,372,060.044623 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/unbricking-trains-uncovering-shady-behavior/ | Unbricking Trains, Uncovering Shady Behavior | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Engine Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"can-bus",
"locomotive",
"reverse engineering",
"train"
] | The first clue was that a number of locomotives started malfunctioning with exactly 1,000,000 km on the odometer. And when the company with the contract for servicing them couldn’t figure out why, they typed “Polish hackers” into a search engine, and found our heroes [Redford], [q3k], and [MrTick].
What follows is a story of industrial skullduggery, CAN bus sniffing, obscure reverse engineering, and heavy rolling stock
, and a fantastically entertaining talk.
Cutting straight to the punchline, the manufacturer of the engines in question apparently also makes a lot of money on the service contracts, and included logic bombs in the firmware that would ensure that revenue stream while thwarting independent repair shops. They also included “cheat codes” that simply unlocked the conditions, which the Polish hackers uncovered as well. Perhaps the most blatant evidence of malfeasance, though, was that there were actually checks in some versions of the firmware that geofenced out the competitors’ repair shops.
We shouldn’t spoil too much more of the talk, and there’s active investigation and legal action pending, but the smoking guns are incredibly smoky. The theme of
this year’s Chaos Communication Congress
is “Unlocked”, and you couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of why it’s absolutely in the public interest that hackers gotta hack. Of course, [Daniel Lange] and [Felix Domke]’s
reverse engineering of the VW Dieselgate ECU shenanigans
, another all-time favorite, also comes to mind. | 48 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712273",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T16:48:04",
"content": "Think the point you are missing in spinning it this way is that if the workshop doesn’t know the hardware well enough to be able to enable them already, then it doesn’t know it well enough to service it prop... | 1,760,372,059.983217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/keeping-watch-over-the-oceans-with-data-buoys/ | Keeping Watch Over The Oceans With Data Buoys | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"buoy",
"ocean",
"science"
] | When viewed from
just the right position in space
, you’d be hard-pressed to think that our home planet is anything but a water world. And in all the ways that count, you’d be right; there’s almost nothing that goes on on dry land that isn’t influenced by the oceans. No matter how far you are away from an ocean, what’s going on there really matters.
But how do we know what’s going on out there? The oceans are trackless voids, after all, and are deeply inhospitable to land mammals such as us. They also have a well-deserved reputation for eating anything that ventures into them at the wrong time and without the proper degree of seafarer’s luck, and they also tend to be places where the resources that run our modern technological society are in short supply.
Gathering data about the oceans is neither cheap nor easy, but it’s critically important to everything from predicting what the weather will be next week to understanding the big picture of what’s going on with the climate. And that requires a fleet of data buoys, outnumbering the largest of the world’s navies and operating around the clock, keeping track of wind, weather, and currents for us.
Data Buoy History
Considering how important ocean data is, we’ve only been able to make direct measurements of what’s going on out there for a shockingly short time. Apart from observations from ships at sea, which go back to the beginnings of marine wireless transmissions, the US has only been deploying dedicated data buoys since the 1940s. Early buoys were equipped with battery-powered instruments that only made the crudest of measurements, and were often controlled by clockwork-driven mechanisms that made frequent servicing visits necessary. Data was usually transmitted over HF radio links using Morse code, so reports were subject to the vagaries of ionospheric conditions and had to be collated manually.
NOAA data bouy
being serviced
The 1950s and 1960s saw rapid improvements in electronics, and buoys began to be outfitted with more and better sensors. In addition, improvements in battery technology and eventually solar power decreased the need for frequent service calls, making it possible to deploy buoys further out to sea. Improvements in materials, especially polymers, made stronger moorings possible as well, which allowed buoy deployments in deeper and deeper water and opened up vast amounts of the Earth’s surface to direct monitoring. The development of satellite technology was also an important step, not only for their ability to reliably gather data from buoys far offshore, but for the images and remote sensing they were able to perform, providing valuable context for the data coming back from buoys.
Perhaps even more important than technological improvements in weather buoys was the development of the systems needed to gather and analyze their data, as well as building organizations to coordinate the entire process. The development of computers in the 60s and 70s made the former possible, while the creation of consortiums like the
National Data Buoy Center
(NDBC) covered the latter. As one might expect, deploying a large number of buoys into some of the deepest waters on the planet and keeping them running is an expensive business, with individual agencies and institutions unable to foot the bill for an entire network. Each institution therefore tends to own and operate a small fleet of buoys, which are part a large network where members all share their data.
Buoy Types
If there’s one description of a standard data buoy, it’s that there’s no such thing as a standard data buoy. It’s not so much that buoys are all bespoke designs; there are only so many ways to build something that will float in one place reliably. It’s more that the specifics of where the buoy will be deployed and what data it will be expected to collect determine what the thing will look like, and what equipment will be loaded aboard.
A 3-m data buoy with a 3-m hull. The cage prevents seals from climbing up and sunning themselves on it. Source:
National Data Buoy Center
.
A data buoy is obviously nowhere near as complicated as, say, a container ship or a naval frigate. But there’s still some pretty sophisticated naval architecture that goes into data buoy designs. Early buoys were prone to capsizing, which tends to be bad for the instruments mounted on their superstructures. Getting the right mix of hull shape, ballast location and amount, mooring mounts, and superstructure design is a delicate dance, complicated by the fact that unlike ships, data buoys can’t maneuver out of the way of rough weather; indeed, their main purpose is to ride out a storm and tell us what’s going on.
One common design for data buoys is the discus type, with either disc-shaped or toroidal hulls. NDBC buoys range from 3 meters in diameter to a whopping 12 meters. The larger 10- and 12-m buoys are steel-hulled and need to be towed out to their moorings and serviced by larger vessels. Smaller buoys, such as the 3-m discus buoys and the 6-m boat-hulled
NOMAD buoys
are made from aluminum. Aluminum buoys have some advantages over their steel-hulled cousins; they’re lighter and can therefore be towed and serviced by smaller vessels, and they tend to interfere less with instruments like compasses and magnetometers. They also handle corrosion better, a serious concern in a saltwater environment and in locations where seabird droppings will accumulate. On the other hand, aluminum buoys are not as strong as steel hulls, especially in shipping lanes or where
orcas might want to play with floating things
.
Moorings
Whatever physical shape the buoy’s hull takes, a lot of marine engineering goes into making sure it’s a stable and reliable platform. Hydrodynamic stability is a must; data buoys are destined for a rough ride and need to stay upright and in place on their moorings. Buoys are typically designed to be “stiff,” which means they will have a short roll period in heavy seas and tend to react very quickly when external forces heel it, or tip it to one side or another. A stiff vessel tends to ride waves better than a “tender” one, and while not comfortable for passengers, works just fine for a data buoy. Overall buoyancy is important, too; the buoy has to have enough reserve buoyance to pop back up to the surface if it somehow manages to become submerged. Enough buoyancy to lift the moorings and anchor off the sea floor is important as well, in case the buoy gets accidentally dragged to deeper water thanks to currents, storms, or snagging on a vessel.
Mooring styles for National Data Buoy Center buoys. Data buoys are routinely moored in water up to 6,000 meters deep. Source:
Data Buoy Cooperation Panel
.
Conditions at the mooring location have to be taken into account too; what works for a quiet spot in the Gulf of Maine probably won’t work for the strings of buoys straddling the equatorial Pacific to monitor El Niño conditions. Although generally called out on maritime navigation charts, data buoys are not intended to be used for navigation, which means they can use looser moorings than buoys strictly intended for navigation, which have a small “watch circle,” or radius of movement. Mooring design also has to take into account any sensors that may need to be strung along the mooring lines, such as water temperature, salinity, or flow of ocean currents.
For mooring their data buoys, NDBC uses a combination of chain, nylon, and polypropylene lines. Shallow moorings are all chain, while deeper moorings use chain only at the bottom. The deepest moorings — some deep-ocean buoys are in 6,000 meters of water — use an inverse catenary design, where the lower part of the mooring floats thanks to being made from polypropylene, which is less dense than water, or by attaching floats to the nylon upper mooring line. Floating the middle mooring keeps it off the seabed, which reduces chafing on rocks. All moorings are made fast to a heavy anchor. For rocky bottoms, anchors are usually made from concrete or steel; in the 1940s, decommissioned railcar wheel assemblies were routinely used. For sandy or silty seabeds, more traditional fluke-type anchors can be used.
Instrumentation
The exact suite of instruments deployed on a data buoy depends a lot upon where the buoy is deployed and what parameters are interesting to oceanographers and climatologists. But there’s a basic suite that pretty much every buoy will sport, both above the surface and below. Mounted on the superstructure of the data buoy will almost always be the standard assortment of weather instruments: anemometer, wind vane, thermometer, hygrometer, rain gauge, and barometer, along with the solar panels needed to power the instruments, antennas for data transmission, and aids to navigation like radar reflectors and beacons. The superstructure also usually has a large static vane to keep the buoy pointing into the wind.
Inside a weatherproof well in the hull is where most of the data logging and communications equipment lives, along with the batteries needed to power the buoy when the sun isn’t shining — although some larger buoys with greater power needs will be equipped with generators powered by marine diesel engines. Along with comms and power equipment, the well will usually contain gimballed accelerometers to measure the heave, pitch, and roll of the buoy; these measurements can be used to derive the amplitude and frequency of waves at the mooring. GPS receivers attached to mast-mounted antennas are often included too, to locate and recover buoys that wander from their moorings.
As interesting as things may be above the surface, most data buoy operators are keenly interested in what’s going on in the water, and so buoys practically bristle with sensors. Subsurface temperatures are obviously important, and moorings often contain a dozen or more sensors spaced along the line, to measure temperatures at various depths. Salinity sensors are often included, as are optical sensors to measure the turbidity of the water and measure sunlight penetration.
If ocean currents are to be studied, an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) will often be attached to the mooring line. An ADCP works by transmitting high-frequency ultrasound (100 kHz or more) down into the water. Suspended particles in the column of seawater will reflect back some of the acoustic energy, with the frequency shifted higher or lower depending on which way the current is moving them. The ADCP estimates the current by calculating the Doppler shift, not only at a single depth but for an entire column up to 1,000 meters long, by measuring the time it takes for each reflection to return.
That’s a lot of buoys. Data buoys monitored by the NDBC. This doesn’t show floating buoys, which greatly outnumber fixed buoys. Note the band of tropical buoys monitoring the El Niño region along the equator. Source:
NDBC
.
Data
Data buoys generate a ton of data, and getting it back to shore to make use of it can be a tricky business, especially in areas where radio coverage is spotty. Buoys moored close to shore can transmit their data via a simple cellular modem, while moorings further out into the ocean have to rely on satellites like GOES to send their data. Either way, all the sensors in a data buoy are connected to a data logger, which does any necessary signal conditioning and queuing of data before sending it to shore. To the degree that there’s an industry standard for data buoy loggers, it would likely be
Campbell Scientific
; a lot of data buoys seem to use them, and we’ve seen them before in other “Remotely Interesting” installments, such as
the SNOTEL network
and in
the weather station on the summit of Mount Everest
.
Shoreside data handling tends to be pretty complicated, given how geographically dispersed moorings are and the multiple institutions involved in their care and maintenance. Most data buoy operators are universities or oceanographic research institutions, which tend to get the first crack at the data. These groups do initial processing and quality assurance on the data before uploading it to one or more of the consortiums for development into data products for their clients. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712274",
"author": "Bob Catface",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T16:58:37",
"content": "Here’s a data buoy associated with the university I work at! It’s rad to see all the open data:http://data.moby.mlml.sjsu.edu/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,060.535962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/corexy-on-the-pi-pico/ | CoreXY On The Pi Pico | Jenny List | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"CoreXY",
"plotter",
"rp2040"
] | There are enough off-the-shelf CoreXY mechanisms out there that for the cost of an AliExpress order it’s possible to quickly and cheaply make yourself a plotter. But [Koushani Das], [Mahathi Andavolu] and [Dengyu Tu] are completing their project for Cornell University’s ECE 5730 course, so
of course they have designed one from the ground up
. Happily for us it seems to be fairly easy to replicate, so you can build one too if it takes your fancy.
The write-up makes for an interesting dive into the nitty-gritty of design, for which we hope they managed to secure a decent grade. The hardware itself seems pretty straightforward as does the pair of stepper controllers and RP2040 they use to run the thing, and their explanation of the math behind the CoreXY coordinate system is genuinely interesting for those of us who’ve never taken the time to consider it.
All the good stuff
can be found in a GitHub repository
if you’d like to take this further, and meanwhile they’ve also put up a demo video which you can see below the break. We like this little plotter, and we hope others will take its design and run with it.
Want more CoreXY explanation?
We’re happy to oblige
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712245",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T14:15:36",
"content": "Using one core per motor is an ‘interesting’ way of doing things…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712284",
"author": "Badumpbump",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,060.138094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/28/a-guide-for-heat-treating-steel-at-home/ | A Guide For Heat-Treating Steel At Home | Bryan Cockfield | [
"how-to"
] | [
"hardness",
"heat treating",
"high carbon steel",
"metal",
"steel",
"tempering",
"tool steel"
] | A lot of colloquial words that we might use when describing something’s durability take on extremely specific meanings when a materials scientist or blacksmith uses them. Things like “strength”, “toughness”, “hardness”, and “resilience” all have different meanings when working in a laboratory or industrial setting than most people might otherwise think.
For the beginner metalworker, this can be a little bit confusing at first but some hands-on practice will help. To that end,
this beginner lesson in heat-treating steel
from [Blondihacks] demonstrates why it can be beneficial to trade some of the metal’s toughness for improved hardness and just how to accomplish it on your own.
The first part of the lesson is to make sure the steel is high-carbon steel, since most other steels aren’t able to be heat treated. It will also have a specific method for its quenching, either in oil, water, or some other medium. But beyond that the only other thing required for this process is a torch of some sort. [Blondihacks] is using a MAP-Pro torch to get the steel up to temperature, which is recognizable when it turns a specific orange color. From there all that’s needed is to quench the hot metal in whatever fluid is called for. At this point the metal can also be tempered, which restores some of its toughness while maintaining a certain amount of hardness.
While the process doesn’t require specialized tools, [Blondihacks] does have a hardness tester, a fairly expensive piece of instrumentation that measures how deeply the metal can be indented by a force. By measuring the size of the indentation made by the tool, the hardness can be determined. As it’s many thousands of dollars this is mostly for demonstration and not necessary for most of us, but does go a long way to demonstrate the effectiveness of heat treating and tempering in an otherwise simple environment. If you’re looking for excuses to start heat treating and tempering metal,
here’s a great project which creates a knife nearly from scratch
. | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712198",
"author": "Hermann",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T10:25:01",
"content": "She had such a calming voice and kind of video making. But the part of the hardness test take me back into engineering class (university) and my heartrate goes anxcious :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,372,060.475643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/a-high-end-studio-multiplexer-surrenders-to-an-arduino/ | A High-End Studio Multiplexer Surrenders To An Arduino | Jenny List | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"audio",
"broadcast"
] | The equipment used in professional radio and TV studios is both extremely high quality and very expensive indeed, and thus out of the reach of an experimenter. Happily as studios are refurbished there’s a steady supply of second-hand equipment which can be surprisingly cheap, but as [Nathan] found out with a Quartz audio router, comes with no control software. What’s to be done with what’s essentially a piece of junk?
Remove its brain and replace it with one that can be controlled
, of course!
On the PCB alongside a bank of switch matrices is an FPGA which does the heavy lifting. That’s “heavy” in a limited sense, because all it does is handle the chip select lines for the matrices and write data to their registers. This is a task that can be handled by a microcontroller, so in goes an Arduino Nano, which along with a few other board modifications delivers a serial-controlled studio router.
The interesting part for us in this project comes from a look at the date codes on the board, they’re from the early 2000s. This is (roughly) contemporary with the ATmega chip on the Arduino, so we’re curious as to why the designers saw fit to use an FPGA when the microcontrollers of the day were clearly up to the task for much less outlay. We suspect a touch of millennium-era price inflation, but we can’t be sure.
Meanwhile,
old broadcast kit has featured here before
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712238",
"author": "Alexandre Hadjinlian Guerra",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T13:47:30",
"content": "Amazing. Tons and tons of good stuff that lacks automation can be done sucessfully and cheaply today with a plethora of microcontrollers",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,372,060.195872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/an-insulin-injection-that-lasts-for-days-a-new-hope-for-diabetics/ | An Insulin Injection That Lasts For Days: A New Hope For Diabetics | Maya Posch | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"biochemistry",
"diabetes",
"insulin"
] | A major challenge for people who have a form of diabetes is the need to regulate the glucose levels in their body. Normally this is where the body’s insulin-producing cells would respond to glucose with a matching amount of insulin, but in absence of this response it is up to the patient to manually inject insulin. Yet recent research offers the hope that these daily injections might be replaced with weekly injections, using insulin-binding substances that provide a glucose-response rather like the natural one. One such approach was tested by
Juan Zhang and colleagues
, with the results detailed in
Nature Biomedical Engineering
.
In this study, the researchers injected a group of diabetic (type 1) mice and minipigs with the formulation, consisting out of gluconic acid-modified recombinant human insulin bound to a glucose-responsive phenylboronic acid-diol complex. The phenylboronic acid element binds more easily to glucose, which results in the insulin being released, with no significant hypoglycemia observed in this small non-human test group. A major advantage of this mechanism is that it is fully self-regulating through the amount of glucose present in the blood.
This study is similar to work
by Sijie Xian and colleague
s published in
Advanced Materials
(
ChemRxiv preprint
) where a similar complex of glucose-sensitive, bound insulin complex was studied, albeit in vitro. With non-human animal testing showing good results for this method, human trials may not be far off, which could mean the end to daily glucose and insulin management for millions in the US alone.
(Top image: Chemical structures of the insulin-DiPBA complex and its functioning. Credit: Sijie Xian et al., 2023) | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712194",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T10:04:21",
"content": "Speaking as the carer for a 94-year-old and forgetful diabetic, I don’t think this is a good idea. The problem is that it’s a lot more difficult to form a habit of doing something every seven days than to... | 1,760,372,059.894563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/floss-weekly-episode-763-fedora-fixes-everything/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 763: Fedora Fixes Everything | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"Immutable",
"kde",
"linux",
"Pipewire",
"Wayland"
] | This week Jonathan Bennett and
Dan Lynch
talk once again with Neal Gompa of Fedora, CentOS, openSUSE and more. This time the focus is Fedora, with sprinklings of Immutable Linux, KDE 6, and the new Linux stack of Pipewire, Portals, and Wayland. Neal gives us a rundown of what exactly makes Fedora Atomic so interesting, and why you probably don’t want it running on your desktop. But in a computer lab, or on a public machine? Fedora Atomic might be exactly what you need.
Up next there’s Pipewire, the userspace sound server that replaces Pulseaudio and Jack. Should we think of Pipewire as Jack 3.0? And what’s the secret to getting really reliable low-latency performance for Pipewire in Fedora? It might not be what you expect.
There’s a popular rant online, that Wayland breaks everything. And for years, that’s been a relatively accurate statement, in that Wayland hasn’t been ready for prime-time. Fedora 40 has gone all in on the belief that Wayland’s time has come, with KDE and Gnome no longer having an X11 native option. It’s Wayland all the way. And as one that has run Rawhide, I can say that the future there is bright. Literally, if you have an HDR capable monitor.
See
Neal’s website
for more information, as well as
his GitHub sponsors page
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712129",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T00:33:24",
"content": "Should we think of Pipewire as Jack 3.0?Personally I fear Yet Another Linux Sound System. We’ve been through so many over the last two decades and usually they don’t result in easy setup and more reliabilit... | 1,760,372,060.39461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/modern-control-of-a-logic-analyzer/ | Modern Control Of A Logic Analyzer | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [] | When you think of a logic analyzer today, you might think of a little USB probe that can measure a few signals and decoding for various serial buses. But actual logic analyzers were high-speed multichannel hardware with sophisticated ways to clock and trigger. [Tom] picked up an HP1670G on the surplus market and was impressed that it could sample 136 channels at 500 MHz. The circa-2000 machine has a front panel, but if you really wanted to use it, you wanted to use an X terminal. [Tom]
shows us how that works
with modern Linux software.
In X/11 parlance, the terminal is the server, and the remote computer is the client. In the old days, when people weren’t so obsessed with security, running applications from multiple clients on a single server was easy. These days, most Linux distributions have made the X/11 system little more than a display driver. Logging into a remote system usually requires some hoops. However, [Tom] went with a different approach. Using socat, he routes incoming X/11 connections to his local X server.
There’s more to it than just that. You must also assign addresses, punch holes in your firewall, and set up the right fonts. It is all there in the post.
Oddly enough, we’ve seen this logic analyzer accessed remotely before
using a more traditional method
. Even
Windows
can host an X server, by the way. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712128",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T00:16:41",
"content": "Whoa!I thought this was about a Logic Analyzer, but the garden path is winding through“You must also assign addresses, punch holes in your firewall, and set up the right fonts.... | 1,760,372,060.093551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/raspberry-pi-pico-parallel-mandelbrot-computation/ | Raspberry Pi Pico Parallel Mandelbrot Computation | Julian Scheffers | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"mandelbrot set",
"parallel computing",
"rp2040"
] | The Mandelbrot set is — when visualized with some colors — an interesting shape with infinite detail. While the patterns are immediately obvious to the human eye, anyone who’s run one can tell you that they’re pretty computationally expensive to produce. Fortunately, as with many things in graphics, rendering the Mandelbrot set can be easily parallelized.
That’s what [rak277] and [ir93] demonstrate in their
RP2040-based finals project
. Computron, as they call it, is a network of Raspberry Pi Picos that work together to compute a visualization of the Mandelbrot set and show it on a VGA display. The Computron is made of two or more “math units” and one “projection unit”. The math units communicate over a shared I²C bus with the projection unit to first divide the workload and then compute their share of the work.
This project shows both the strengths and limitations of parallel computation. It makes use of multiple math units on a highly parallelizable workload, but as more math units are added there are diminishing performance gains due to the increased communications load on the network, which [rak277] and [ir93] suspect to be the current bottleneck in the Computron.
If you’re fresh out of Pi Picos, and don’t mind waiting awhile, you could always
crank out a Mandelbrot set on your trusty Atari 800 in BASIC
. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712140",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-28T01:07:39",
"content": "The Title Photo looks a bit like a Mandelbrot!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712148",
"author": "Paul",
"ti... | 1,760,372,060.581137 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/beyond-the-basics-exploring-more-exotic-scope-trigger-modes/ | Beyond The Basics: Exploring More Exotic Scope Trigger Modes | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"setup and hold",
"trigger"
] | Last time, we looked at
some powerful trigger modes
found on many modern scopes, including the Rigol DHO900 series we used as an example. Those triggers were mostly digital or, at least, threshold-based. This time, we’ll look at some more advanced analog triggers as well as a powerful digital trigger that can catch setup and hold violations. You can find the Raspberry Pi code
to create the test waveforms
online.
In addition to software, you’ll need to add some simple components to generate the analog waveform. In particular, pin 21 of the Pi connects to 2uF capacitor through a 10K resistor. The other side of the capacitor connects to ground. In addition, pin 22 connects directly to the capacitor, bypassing the 10K resistor. This allows us to discharge the capacitor quickly. The exact values are not especially important.
Runt Triggers
A runt pulse is one that doesn’t have the same voltage magnitude as surrounding pulses. Sometimes, this is due to a bus contention, for example. Imagine if you have some square waves that go from 0 to 5V. But, every so often, one pulse doesn’t make it to 5V. Instead, it stops at 3V.
This isn’t easy to catch with a level trigger. After all, if you set the trigger level to 3 V, the normal pulses will trigger the scope, too. That’s where the runt pulse trigger comes in handy.
The center pulse didn’t make it to the full voltage level.
The triggering pulse must pass through the lower limit, but not reach or exceed the upper limit.
You can, of course, flip the polarity. You can also only trigger on pulses that are longer or shorter than some time limit. However, the key idea is that the pulse has to exceed the lower limit without making it to the upper limit. You can see on the scope trace how the central pulse isn’t as tall as the others. That’s what causes it to trigger.
Slope
Another thing difficult to trigger on is a particular slope. You may have been taught that the slope is the “rise over the run” which is another way of saying the change in Y divided by the change in X. That’s exactly how the scope defines this trigger. For a certain pair of voltages (Y) you can compute the time (X) between those two voltages. If that time is larger or smaller than some preset number, you have a trigger.
You’ll see in the trace below that the center pulse doesn’t gradually decay like the others. Instead, it rapidly discharges to zero. That is a very small slope in that part of the signal. Using the slope trigger, you can find the area easily.
The center pulse has a rapid discharge to zero.
The slope trigger allows you to set a pair of voltage levels and a time. Depending on settings, the trigger can catch higher slopes or smaller slopes.
With these settings, the natural slope of the discharge of the capacitor is not enough to trigger the scope. However, the rapid shift does trigger the scope, leaving the trigger on the steep falling edge of the waveform.
Setup and Hold
Our final exotic trigger is one you probably recognize if you’ve worked with flip flops on an FPGA. A flip flop has a data input and a clock input. In theory, of course, all components are perfect, but in the real world, that isn’t the case. So flip flops usually specify a minimum setup and hold time.
What this means is that the data input has to be stable for a certain amount of time before the clock asserts. That’s the setup time. After the clock asserts, the data must not change for short period of time — the hold time. If you violate either of these numbers, the output of the flip flop will be unpredictable.
Here, we are only looking for hold violations.
The data line (trace 2) changes too quickly in the center pulse, violating the hold time requirement.
While this seems easy enough to see, there are two things to consider. First, the violation may be much more subtle than it is here. Second, it can be hard to pick out a difference like this out of thousands upon thousands of pulses. With the setup and hold trigger, the scope will immediately point out where you have a problem.
Wrap Up
Do you have to have all these triggering modes? No. People used scopes for decades that did not have these exotic triggering modes. But it sure does make life easier. Some of these events would be very tedious to find manually, even if you could catch them in your scope’s memory.
If you own a different scope brand, you may find subtle differences between the scope we used and yours. Check your scope’s documentation. If you want more details about the modes we’ve talked about, Rigol has
many of these modes explained
for one of their scopes. You might find those videos useful, too.
Triggering has come a long way in scopes. These posts give you a flavor of the different types of triggering available on modern scopes, but yours may have other features, too. Knowing your scope will help you find problems faster and get a perfect view of just the part of your signal you are interested in. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712051",
"author": "Julian J BLANCO",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T18:40:19",
"content": "Nice article: looking forward to this series!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6712493",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2023-12-29T15... | 1,760,372,060.633256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/paged-out-releases-long-awaited-third-issue/ | Paged Out!Releases Long-Awaited Third Issue | Tom Nardi | [
"News"
] | [
"InfoSec",
"Paged Out!",
"programming",
"zine"
] | We’re happy to pass along word that
Paged Out!
has finally released Issue #3
. This online zine covers a wide array of technical topics, from software development to hardware hacking, computer security, and electronics.
It’s distributed as a PDF, and is notable for its somewhat experimental format that limits each article to a single page. The first two issues were released back in 2019, but between a global pandemic and some administrative shuffling, progress on the current release was slowed considerably.
Among the 50 articles that make up the third
Paged Out!
there are a number of pieces focusing on hardware, such as the serial communications “cheat sheet” from [Jay Greco], and a pair of articles covering the state-of-the-art in custom keyboards. But overall the zine does lean hard into programming topics, and is probably best suited for those with an interest in software development and infosec.
Still, the line between hardware and software is getting blurrier all the time, so we’re sure you can find something in
Paged Out!
that should interest you no matter which side of the fence you’re on. Here’s hoping the time between releases can be reduced a bit for Issue #4. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6712095",
"author": "Gynvael Coldwind",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T21:57:29",
"content": "Ah! Our zine mentioned on hackaday again made my day! <3Note that while Issue #3 might be leaning more into the software world, we always welcome articles on hardware hacking, electronics, PCB de... | 1,760,372,060.937083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/liftoff-the-origin-of-the-countdown/ | Liftoff! The Origin Of The Countdown | Kristina Panos | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"countdown",
"Fritz Lang",
"George Griffith",
"rocketry",
"space travel",
"spaceflight"
] | What’s the most thrilling part of rocketry? Well, the liftoff, naturally. But what about the sweet anticipation in those tense moments leading up to liftoff? In other words, the countdown. Where did it come from?
Far from being simply a dramatic device, the countdown clock serves a definite purpose — it lets the technicians and the astronauts synchronize their actions during the launch sequence. But where did the countdown — those famed ten seconds of
here we go!
that seem to mark the point of no return — come from? Doesn’t it all seem a little theatrical for scientists?
It may surprise you to learn that neither technicians nor astronauts conceived of the countdown
. In their book, “Lunar Landings and Rocket Fever: Rediscovering Woman in the Moon”, media scholars Tom Gunning and Katharina Loew reveal that a little-known Fritz Lang movie called
Woman In the Moon
both “predicted the future of rocketry” and “played an effective role in its early development”.
Rocket Fever
Gerda Maurus in
Woman In the Moon
. Image via
the New York Times
After
Metropolis
, which was a box office flop in its time, Fritz Lang needed to make a hit, or his production company was going to let him go. To compound the problem, Lang was still making silent films when talkies were taking off.
Lang turned to the German escapist novels of the 1920s, which were highly focused on the idea of rocketry and space travel. One bestseller was a popularized version of a Transylvanian school teacher’s dissertation, which argued that space travel was scientifically within reach.
For his next film, Lang turned to a a spaceflight novel written by his then-wife Thea von Harbou, who had researched the subject quite thoroughly. Lang took the making of this film seriously, wanting everything to be grounded in what was actually possible given the limitations of science at the time.
To that end, he hired Hermann Oberth, the teacher who arguably kicked off rocket fever, as his scientific guide. Obstacle by obstacle, Lang and Oberth discussed the particulars of space travel — building a rocket, oxygen issues, and dealing with zero gravity — and came up with a scientifically-grounded way of presenting each on film.
Life Imitates Art
Image via
Atlas Obscura
While making the movie, Lang and his advisors laid the foundation for several spaceflight specifics that came to fruition in real life. Just like in the movie, the astronauts are strapped down to keep from floating, and the rocket has several stages that get jettisoned one after the other. And then, of course, there’s the countdown.
Since this was a silent film, there could be no revving engine noises to build excitement, so Lang used intertitles — those cards you see with text on them in silent films.
As the astronauts lie waiting, the screen cuts to a card — ’10 seconds remaining!’ The man at the switch readies himself. More cards come up, the numbers getting larger and larger. ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Now!’
Or Did Fritz Lang Steal It?
Many historians credit Lang with the invention of the countdown, but
Lang may have inadvertently snagged it
from an 1897 science fiction story called “The Great Crellin Comet” aka “
The World Peril of 1910
” by British writer George Griffith. In the story, a group of people try to divert a comet from hitting Earth by firing a cannon at it. In Griffith’s story, the countdown ends with the word
Now!
, just as it does in
Woman In the Moon
.
No matter who thought of it first, the countdown is arguably inseparable from rockery and spaceflight. After all, it makes anything more exciting, including something that’s already really exciting in the first place. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711981",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T15:04:05",
"content": "Posts on this subject starting in:10987….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6712059",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp... | 1,760,372,061.121611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/veteran-spacex-booster-lost-due-to-rough-seas/ | Veteran SpaceX Booster Lost Due To Rough Seas | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"Falcon 9",
"nasa",
"reusability",
"SpaceX"
] | With the notable exception of the now retired Space Shuttle orbiters, essentially every object humanity ever shot into space has been single-use only. But since December of 2015, SpaceX has been landing and refurbishing their Falcon 9 boosters, with the end goal of operating their rockets more like cargo aircraft. Today, while it might go unnoticed to those who aren’t closely following the space industry, the bulk of the company’s launches are performed with boosters that have already completed multiple flights.
This reuse campaign has been so successful these last few years that the
recent announcement the company had lost B1058
(
Nitter
) came as quite a surprise. The 41 meter (134 foot) tall booster had just completed its 19th flight on December 23rd, and had made what appeared to be a perfect landing on the drone ship
Just Read the Instructions.
But sometime after the live stream ended, SpaceX says high winds and powerful waves caused the booster to topple over.
B1058 with NASA “worm” logo ahead of its historic crewed flight.
Back in May of 2020, B1058 made history as the
first privately-built rocket to carry humans into orbit
when it sent NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken on their way to the International Space Station. This flight also marked the first time a crewed spacecraft had been launched from US soil since the final Shuttle mission, a milestone that earned B1058 the honor of having the iconic NASA “worm” logo emblazoned on its side.
Its next mission came two months later, when it carried South Korea’s ANASIS-II military communications satellite to orbit, which was followed by the launch of 60 Starlink satellites in October. In December of 2020 the booster made history again when it carried a remotely-operated Dragon capsule to the ISS during the CRS-21 resupply mission, as it was the first time NASA agreed to have one of their missions carried on a rocket with more than one previous flight.
Since then B1058 completed 15 launches, made up of a Starlink deployments and “rideshare” missions that brought several CubeSats to orbit at once. All told, SpaceX says this particular rocket was responsible for carrying more than 860 spacecraft to orbit over the last three and a half years — a staggering figure that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
While B1058 was largely destroyed when it fell over, it’s not a total loss. Jon Edwards, Vice President of Falcon Launch Vehicles, took to social media to say that the company
plans on salvaging the booster’s nine surviving Merlin engines
(
Nitter
) and studying any other intact hardware as part of their ongoing work to improve reusability. So while it’s unfortunate that this storied rocket didn’t get the chance to retire to a museum, at least it will continue to contribute to the company’s goals of
developing rapidly reusable spaceflight systems
. | 44 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711945",
"author": "Thomas",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T12:40:21",
"content": "F",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711952",
"author": "F",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T13:10:26",
"content": "F",
"pare... | 1,760,372,061.060341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/27/temperature-measurement-by-wire/ | Temperature Measurement By Wire | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"resistance",
"temperature"
] | There’s an old joke about how to tell how tall a building is using a barometer. The funniest answer is to find the building owner and offer them a nice barometer in exchange for the information. We wonder if [DiodeGoneWild] has heard that one since his recent video details how to
measure temperatures using an ohmmeter
.
The idea is that wire changes its resistance based on temperature. So if you know the resistance of a lot of wire — maybe a coil — at room temperature and you can measure the resistance at temperature, it is entirely feasible to calculate the amount of temperature that would cause this rise in resistance.
Of course, there are many ways to measure resistance, too. It’s probably possible to measure parameters like operating current and estimate temperature for at least some circuits. The wire’s material also plays a part, and the online calculator lets you choose copper, aluminum, iron, or tungsten. You also need a lot of wire, a very accurate resistance measurement, or, preferably, both.
There are many ways to accurately
measure resistance
, of course. Then again, you can also get resistors
specifically for the job
. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711925",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T09:24:38",
"content": "Resistance Temperature Detectors are a very common methof measuring temperature in industrial applications. High precision platinum sensors can give very accurate meaurements. Most common way to use them is... | 1,760,372,061.28561 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/an-rc-tank-chassis-thats-not-messing-about/ | An RC Tank Chassis That’s Not Messing About | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"hoverboard motor",
"tank",
"Tank Tracks"
] | It’s not uncommon to see a tracked robot build on these pages, but it’s fair to say that many of them are somewhat on the small side. That was where [iforce2d] started, but the idea of making a more capable version just wouldn’t go away. Thus, he’s come back and made what looks to be a very promising, fully capable outdoor RC tank chassis, one that, within reason, we think should eventually be able to go anywhere.
For plenty of power, he’s using a pair of hoverboard motors with a chain reduction drive and in turn, a couple of shafts to the tracks. The chassis is a TIG-welded aluminium affair, while the tracks are an early incarnation with machined MDF drive wheels and a homemade tread. The suspension is a work of machined-aluminium art, though, and while there are teething troubles as he takes it for a spin, we can see plenty of potential as its deficiencies are ironed out. Take a look at it in the video below the break.
If large-size R/C tanks are your thing,
we have another for you to look at
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711956",
"author": "Andrew Singleton",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T13:27:41",
"content": "There’s a reason WW1 tanks had this sortof ‘vehicular edge’ tread. Yes it can still be trapped, but it takes one hell of a trap to get something like this stuck.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,060.974446 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/a-risc-v-security-key/ | A RISC-V Security Key | Al Williams | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"hardware token",
"RISC-V"
] | The TKey is
a RISC-V-based security key
that plugs into a USB port. The device has a number of features, including a device-specific serial number, RAM scrambling, and a monitor that kills the CPU in the event of access to protected memory. There is also an FPGA that, on the end-user version, is locked down. This prevents you from changing the core features and the unique ID number for the device.
As part of the start-up code, the device calculates a hash of the application and merges it with the device ID and, potentially, a user-defined secret. If this number matches a previous calculation, it is reasonably certain that nothing has changed between the times of the calculations.
Don’t trust the developers? Make your own key since it is all on
GitHub
. If nothing else, having everything out for review means that any glaring problems will be open for scrutiny by the community.
Of course, you can just buy the device for about $70, and that’s probably what most people will do. We will leave it to the experts to tell us if it is better or worse than commercial offerings out there today.
A key like this can be one factor in
a multi-factor authentication system
. It isn’t like these
hardware tokens don’t already exist
, but they never seem to be widely adopted. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711934",
"author": "Arnab",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T10:20:04",
"content": "It’ll be a good comparison to see how it holds up with Nitrokey 3c.Even that’s open source with schematics & application, plus it’s similar cost with nfc.The difference would boil down to this having fpga &... | 1,760,372,061.165772 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/its-switch-mode-but-not-as-you-know-it/ | It’s Switch Mode, But Not As You Know It | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"Chopper",
"switch mode",
"thyristor"
] | The switch-mode power supply has displaced traditional supplies almost completely over the last few decades, being smaller, lighter, and more efficient. But that’s not to say that it’s a new idea, and on the way to today’s high-frequency devices there have been quite a few steps. An earlier one is the subject of a teardown video from [Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU], as he takes a look at
a 1960s HP power supply with a slightly different approach to regulation
for the day. Instead of a linear regulator on its conventional transformer and rectifier circuit, it has a pair of SCRs in the mains supply that chop at mains frequency. It’s a switch mode supply, but not quite as you’re used to.
In fact, these circuits using an SCR or a triac weren’t quite as uncommon as you might expect, and could at one point be found in almost every domestic TV set or light dimmer. Sometimes referred to as “chopper” supplies, they represented a relatively cheap way to derive a regulated DC voltage from an AC mains source in the days before anyone cared too much about RF emissions, and though few were as high quality as the HP shown in the video below, they were pretty reliable.
If older switchers interest you,
this is not the first one we’ve shown you from that era
. | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711869",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T02:48:39",
"content": "“The switch-mode power supply has displaced traditional supplies almost completely over the last few decades, being smaller, lighter, and more efficient. ”Not at my home. And not in all labs, either.Or in ... | 1,760,372,061.240178 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/audio-synthesizer-hooked-up-with-chatgpt-interface/ | Audio Synthesizer Hooked Up With ChatGPT Interface | Lewin Day | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"ChatGPT",
"ece4760",
"music"
] | ChatGPT is being asked to handle all kinds of weird tasks, from determining whether written text was created by an AI, to answering homework questions, and much more. It’s good at some of these tasks, and absolutely incapable of others. [Filipe dos Santos Branco] and [Edward Gu] had an out of the box idea, though.
What if ChatGPT could do something musical?
They built a system that, at the press of a button, would query ChatGPT for a 10-note melody in a given musical key. Once the note sequence is generated by the large language model, it’s played out by a PWM-based synthesizer running on a Raspberry Pi Pico.
Ultimately, ChatGPT is no musical genius. It’s simply picking a bunch of notes from a list that are known to work together melodically; that’s the whole point of musical keys. It would have been wild if it generated some riffs on the level of
Stairway to Heaven
or
Spontaneous Devotion,
but that might be asking for too much.
Here’s the question, though. If you trained a large language model, but got it to digest sheet music instead of written texts… could it learn to write music in various genres and styles? If someone isn’t working on that already, there’s surely an entire PhD you could get out of that idea alone. We should talk!
In any case, it’s one of the more creative projects from the ever-popular ECE 4760 class at Cornell. We’ve featured
a bunch of projects from the class over the years
, and noted how the course now
runs on the RP2040. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711643",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T03:31:33",
"content": "API key right in the thumbnail. Fun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711647",
"author": "Todne",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T04:09:18",
... | 1,760,372,061.338166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/the-tech-that-died-in-2023/ | The Tech That Died In 2023 | Al Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"2023",
"Gmail",
"google",
"Products"
] | We don’t indulge too often in looking back, but [Chloe Albanesisu] at
PC Magazine
did and wrote the
tech obituary for all the tech gadgets and services that died
over this past year. Some of the entries are a bit predictable: Twitter died to be replaced by X, which is exactly like it, only different. Others we hardly noticed, like Netflix stopping its DVD shipments.
Google Glass died again, but this time it was the enterprise edition. Amazon gave up on both donating money through shopping and print subscriptions via Kindle.
Glass wasn’t the only Google casualty. Gmail lost its basic HTML version and shut down its smart whiteboard product, Jamboard. They also sold off their Internet domain business in an effort to focus on core businesses. Other notable Google shutdowns include their popular podcast app and Usenet support for Groups. Oh, and don’t forget their experiment in offering Pixels phones as a subscription. That’s done, too.
As you might expect, PC Magazine’s list is a bit consumer-oriented. What hacker-centric products and services vanished this year that you’ll miss? The Sculpteo Marketplace? XYZ Printing? Start up companies collapsed in 2023 at an alarming rate, but you didn’t hear about most of them. Were there any you were especially disappointed about? Let us know in the comments. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711618",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T01:12:34",
"content": "“Amazon gave up on both donating money through shopping and print subscriptions via Kindle.”This is new.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711803",... | 1,760,372,061.39705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/building-a-rad-super-capacitor-rc-plane/ | Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane | Lewin Day | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"flight",
"plane",
"rc plane",
"supercapacitor"
] | [Tom Stanton] is a fan of things like rubber band planes, and has built many of his own air-powered models over the years. Now, he’s built a model powered by a supercapacitor
for a thoroughly modern twist on stored-energy flying toys.
It’s not a wholly original idea; [Tom] was inspired by a toy he bought off-the-shelf. His idea, though, was to make one that could be hand-cranked to charge it to make it more like the rubber-band planes of old. He thus built his own geared generator for the job using a big pile of magnets and 3D printed components. It’s capable of putting out around 17 volts when cranked at a reasonable speed. Hooked up to the toy plane, his hand-crank generator was able to fully charge the plane in just a few turns.
His generator was really overkill for the small toy, though. Thus, he elected to build himself a much larger supercapacitor-powered model. He wired up a pack of six supercapacitors in series, designed for roughly 18 volts. The pack was given balance leads to ensure that no individual capacitor was charged beyond its 3.0 V rating. The pack was placed inside a nice aerodynamic printed fuselage. The plane was then given a brushless motor and prop, speed controller, servos, and an RC receiver. Indeed, far from a simple throwable model, it’s a fully flyable RC plane.
The plane is quite a capable flyer with plenty of power, but a fairly short run time of just under two minutes. Though, with that said, it can be recharged in just about that same amount of time thanks to its supercapacitor power supply. [Tom] reckons it should be capable of a 1:1 crank time to flight time ratio in ideal conditions.
Supercapacitors are super cool, but we don’t see enough of them. They’ve popped up
here and there
, and obviously have many important applications, but we’re not sure they’ve had a real killer app in the consumer space. XV Racers were killer fun, though. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711592",
"author": "Beeahhoootiful",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T22:14:42",
"content": "I just love the way the capacitors are arranged radially just like a piston radial engine.Now that’s creative design for you!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,061.453764 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/3d-printing-with-plastic-cutlery/ | 3D Printing With Plastic Cutlery | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"cnc kitchen",
"recycling"
] | How many plastic spoons, knives, and forks do you think we throw away daily? [Stefan] noted that the compostable type is made from PLA, so why shouldn’t you be able to
recycle it into 3D printing stock
? How did it work? Check it out in the video below.
[Stefan] already has a nice setup for extruding filament. However, unsurprisingly, it won’t accept spoons and forks directly. A blender didn’t help, so he used an industrial plastic shredder. It reduced the utensils to what looked like coarse dust, which he then dried out. After running it through the extruder, the resulting filament was thin and brittle. [Stefan] speculates the plastic was set up for injection molding, but it at least showed the concept had merit.
In a second attempt, he cut the ground-up utensils with fresh PLA in equal measures. That is, 50% of the mix was recycled, and half was not. That made much more usable filament. So did a different brand of compostable plasticware.
The real test was to take dirty plasticware. This time, he soaked utensils in tomato sauce overnight. He cleaned, dried, and shredded the plastic. This time, he used 20% new PLA and some pigment, as well. We aren’t sure this is worth the effort simply on economics, but if you are committed to recycling, this might be worth your while.
It always seems like it should be easy to extrude filament. Until you
try to do it
, of course.
Recycling plastic bottles
is especially popular. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711566",
"author": "Leonardo",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T19:35:41",
"content": "Too expensivee",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711576",
"author": "Nic",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T20:39:14",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,061.653719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/is-this-3d-printed-third-arm-useful-maybe/ | Is This 3D Printed Third Arm Useful? Maybe? | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"third arm"
] | Humans have two arms, and we do pretty good things with them. More is surely better, though, right? With that in mind, [Emily The Engineer]
set out to make a third arm
for popular YouTuber [This Old Tony], and our primary question is this: is it actually useful?
The basic design is based around a strapped-on arm brace, which mounts the additional appendage to the wearer’s forearm. It uses a motor-driven geared mechanism to open and close a gripper, but the first revision was incredibly slow to open and close, to the point of being almost useless. Changing out the threaded rod that drives the mechanism massively sped up the gripper, much to [Emily]’s satisfaction. Strength and mounting upgrades got it to the point where it could actually be used to lift objects like spray cans and bricks. Ultimately, though, the arm mount and controls do kind of prevent the user from using their left hand when they have the third hand fitted.
It’s a fun project, if not exactly a useful one, even if [Emily] does use it to carry extra grocery bags . It does have us wondering if some kind of shoulder or backpack-mounted arms could be useful, though. It’s certainly not
up to the standards of modern prosthetic
, but we do love the idea of human augmentation with additional robot limbs. Here’s hoping technology advances further to make builds like this more capable in future! | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711524",
"author": "Otto Octavius",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T15:16:46",
"content": "If you mount the arms on a backpack, there must be four.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6711525",
"author": "brucedesertrat",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,061.698852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/promethean-matches-the-ancestor-to-modern-matches/ | Promethean Matches: The Ancestor To Modern Matches | Maya Posch | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"matches",
"promethean matches",
"prometheus"
] | The history of making fire at will is a long and storied one, stretching back to the days when we’d rub wooden sticks together, or use flint and steel to ignite tinder. An easier, albeit vastly more expensive and dangerous alternative came in the 19th century when chemists discovered auto-ignition using a potassium chlorate mixture and sulfuric acid. This method was refined and later patented by Samuel Jones in 1828 as the ‘promethean match’ after the God of Fire, Prometheus,
which is the topic of a recent [NurdRage] chemistry video
.
Crush, don’t strike: the fiery conflagration of a promethean match. (Credit: NurdRage)
Using practically the
same recipe
of potassium chlorate and sugar as in the 19th century, [NurdRage] uses paper straws to contain this powder. Glue is used to section the paper straw into two compartments and seal in the components, with the smaller compartment used for a glass capsule containing sulfuric acid. This vial was produced from the tip of a glass pipette, using a hot flame to first seal the tip, then detach and seal the other end of the tip, resulting in the sulfuric acid capsule, ready to be added to the second compartment.
The moment this glass capsule is crushed, the sulfuric acid will soak into the paper, reaching the large compartment with the potassium chlorate and sugar mixture, causing a strongly exothermic reaction that ignites the paper. Yet as simple as this sounds, [NurdRage] found the three matches he made to be rather fickle, with one igniting beautifully after crushing the capsule with pliers, while one did nothing and the remaining match decided to violently explode rather than burn.
Considering the immense manual labor involved in making these matches, they never were very popular, and were quickly replaced by strike-anywhere matches, followed by safety matches, none of which require you to carry fragile glass capsules containing sulfuric acid with you. As a chemistry experiment, it is however a total blast that will set any boring chemistry class on fire. | 7 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711515",
"author": "Prfesser",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T14:19:52",
"content": "Merry Christmas from PartsUnknown, Kentucky!Ellern’s “Military and Civilian Pyrotechnics” has fascinating details on the history, chemistry, and current production of matches. Starts on page 64:https://a... | 1,760,372,061.749074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/radiochat-is-a-simple-lora-interface-over-wifi/ | Radiochat Is A Simple LoRa Interface Over WiFi | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"communication",
"LoRa",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] | LoRa is often talked about as a potentially useful solution for emergency communication. The problem is, few of us are running around with LoRa hardware on a day-to-day basis. Student [William Barkoff] designed the Radiochat device
as a simple tool that could pair with virtually anything over WiFi,
and allow it to send and receive LoRa messages.
Radiochat is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico W, and uses the microcontroller’s wireless hardware to communicate with other devices. It provides a WiFi network that devices like laptops or smartphones can connect to. The Pico serves up a simple web page which accepts text input. Type in a message and hitting enter and the Pico will command a LoRa radio module over SPI to send that message out over the airwaves. It can then be picked up by another Radiochat module which displays the message on its own webpage.
It’s in an early state of development, and the demo video shows there are still some bugs to work out. Ultimately, though, it could be a cheap battery-powered device that lets smartphones and laptops chat over LoRa in remote areas. Indeed, [William’s] trips to New Mexico
on model rocketry expeditions
were a big inspiration for the project. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711478",
"author": "schobi",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T09:30:52",
"content": "For emergencies, a self contained device would be nice…Could the electronics be stuffed into an old Nokia 3310?Reuse the display and keypad – for a retro T9 interface (to discourage too much spamming).Bonu... | 1,760,372,061.870803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/restoring-the-dc-bias/ | Restoring The DC Bias | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"DC block",
"dc restoration",
"transformers"
] | If you have a signal that passes through a capacitor or transformer, you will lose the DC portion of the signal. What do you do? If you need it, you can
restore the DC bias
using various techniques, as [Sam Ben-Yaakov] shows in a recent video.
These types of circuits were common in analog TVs, and, in fact, [Sam] shows the schematic of a TV to explain the need for the DC level. In that case, a vacuum tube diode does the work, but a solid state one will do the same job.
Of course, using a diode means dealing with a diode drop, and there are a few ways to handle that. [Ben] shows the circuits and Spice simulations, explaining how they work.
It is common to see level restoration after DC blocking capacitors. However, transformers are another common case where you lose DC signal information. His examples are also good illustrations of how to model transformers in Spice, a
topic we’ve discussed before
. Want more basics on transformers? We can
help there
, too. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711875",
"author": "Esot.eric",
"timestamp": "2023-12-27T03:09:42",
"content": "Interesting tool for the toolbox. Thanks, Al and Sam!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,061.959433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/chinas-nuclear-powered-containership-a-fluke-or-the-future-of-shipping/ | China’s Nuclear-Powered Containership: A Fluke Or The Future Of Shipping? | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science"
] | [
"marine propulsion",
"nuclear propulsion"
] | Since China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC)
unveiled its KUN-24AP containership
at the Marintec China Expo in Shanghai in early December of 2023, the internet has been abuzz about it. Not just because it’s the world’s largest container ship at a massive 24,000
TEU
, but primarily because of the power source that will power this behemoth: a molten salt reactor of Chinese design that is said to use a thorium fuel cycle. Not only would this provide the immense amount of electrical power needed to propel the ship, it would eliminate harmful emissions and allow the ship to travel much faster than other containerships.
Meanwhile the Norwegian
classification society, DNV,
has already issued an approval-in-principle to CSSC Jiangnan Shipbuilding shipyard, which would be a clear sign that we may see the first of this kind of ship being launched. Although the shipping industry is currently struggling with falling demand and too many conventionally-powered ships that it had built when demand surged in 2020, this kind of new container ship might be just the game changer it needs to meet today’s economic reality.
That said, although a lot about the KUN-24AP is not public information, we can glean some information about the molten salt reactor design that will be used, along with how this fits into the whole picture of nuclear marine propulsion.
Not New, Yet Different
USS Nimitz (CVN-68), a US Navy aircraft carrier. Photo is from after her 1999-2001 refit.
The idea of nuclear marine propulsion was pretty much coined the moment nuclear reactors were conceived and built. Over the past decades, quite a few have been constructed, with some – like commercial shipping and passenger ships – being met with little success. Meanwhile, nuclear propulsion is literally the only way that a world power can project military might, as diesel-electric submarines and conventionally powered aircraft carriers lack the range and scale to be of much use.
The primary reason for this is the immense energy density of nuclear fuel, that depending on the reactor configuration can allow the vessel to forego refueling for years, decades, or even its entire service life. For US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the refueling is part of its mid-life (~20 years) shipyard period, where the entire reactor module is lifted out through a hole cut in the decks before a fresh module is put in. Because of this abundance of power there never is a need to ‘save fuel’, leaving the vessel free to ‘gun it’ in so far as the rest of the ship’s structures can take the strain.
SMR-powered Sevmorput container ship in 2007.
Theoretically the same advantages could be applied to civilian merchant vessels like tankers, cargo and container ships. But today, only the Soviet-era
Sevmorput
is still in active duty as part of Rosatom’s Atomflot that also includes nuclear powered icebreakers. After having been launched in 1986, Sevmorput is currently scheduled to be decommissioned in 2024, after a lengthy career that is perhaps ironically mostly characterized by the fact that very few people today are even aware of its existence, despite making regular trips between various Russian harbors, including those on the Baltic Sea.
The
KLT-40
nuclear reactor (135 MWth) in the Sevmorput is very similar to the basic reactor design that powers a US aircraft carrier like the
USS Nimitz
(2 times
A4W
reactor for 550 MWth). Both are pressurized water reactors (PWRs) not unlike the PWRs that make up most of the world’s commercial nuclear power stations, differing mostly in how enriched their uranium fuel is, as this determines the refueling cycle.
Here the KUN-24AP container ship would be a massive departure with its molten salt reactor. Despite this seemingly odd choice, there are a number of reasons for this, including the inherent safety of an MSR, the ability to refuel continuously without shutting down the reactor, and a high burn-up rate, which means very little waste to be filtered out of the molten salt fuel. The roots for the ship’s reactor would appear to be found in China’s
TMSR-LF program
, with the TMSR-LF1 reactor having received
its operating permit
earlier in 2023. This is a fast neutron breeder, meaning that it can breed U-233 from thorium (Th-232) via neutron capture, allowing it to primarily run on much cheaper thorium rather than uranium fuel.
The Easy And Hard Parts
Evergreen 20,000 TEU
G-class
‘Ever Glory’. (Credit: Kees Torn)
Making a very large container ship is not the hard part, as the rapid increase in the number of
New Panamax
and larger container ships, like the ~24,000 TEU
Evergreen A-class
demonstrate. The main problem ultimately becomes propelling it through the water with any kind of momentum and control.
Having a direct drive shaft to a propeller requires that you have enough shaft power, which requires a power plant that can provide the necessary torque directly or via a gearbox. Options include using a big generator and electric propulsion, or to use boilers and steam turbines. Yet as great as boilers and steam turbines are for versatility and power, they are expensive to run and maintain, which is why the Evergreen G-series container ships have a 75,570 kW combustion engine, while the Kitty Hawk has 210 MW and the Nimitz has 194 MW of installed power, with the latter having enough steam from its two A4W reactors for 104 MW per pair of propellers, leaving a few hundred MW of electrical power for the ship’s systems.
Fuel consumption by container ship size and speed. (Credit: Notteboom et al., 2009 IAME)
This amount of power across four propellers allow these aircraft carriers to travel at 32 knots, while container ships
typically travel
between 15 to 25 knots, with the increased fuel usage from fast steaming forming a strong incentive to travel at slower speeds, 18-20 knots, when deadlines allow. Although fuel usage is also a concern for conventionally powered ships like the Kitty Hawk, the nuclear Nimitz has effectively unlimited fuel for 20-25 years and thus it can go anywhere as fast as the rest of the ship and its crew allows.
Got To Go Fast
Today’s shipping industry finds itself as mentioned earlier in a bind, even before recent events that caused both the Panama and Suez canals to be more or less off-limits and forcing cargo ships to fall back to early 19th century shipping routes around Africa and South America. With faster cargo ships traveling at or over 30 knots rather than about 20, the detour around Africa rather than via the Suez Canal could be massively shortened, providing significant more flexibility. If this offering also comes at no fuel cost penalty, you suddenly got the attention of every shipping company in the world, and this is where the KUN-24AP’s unveiling suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Naturally, there is a lot of concern when it comes to anything involving ‘nuclear power’. Yet many decades of nuclear propulsion have shown the biggest risk to be the resistance against nuclear marine propulsion, with a range of commercial vessels (Mutsu, Otto Hahn, Savannah) finding themselves decommissioned or converted to diesel propulsion not due to accidents, but rather due to harbors refusing access on ground of the propulsion, eventually leaving the Sevmorput as the sole survivor of this generation outside of vessels operated by the world’s naval forces. These same naval forces have left a number of
sunken nuclear-powered submarines
scattered on the ocean floor, incidentally with no ill effects.
Although there are still many details which we don’t know yet about the KUN-24AP and its power plant, the TMSR-LF-derived MSR is likely designed to be highly automated, with the adding of fresh thorium salts and filtering out of gaseous and solid waste products not requiring human intervention or monitoring. Since the usual staffing of container ships already features a number of engineering crew members who keep an eye on the combustion engine and the other systems, this arrangement is likely to be maintained, with an unknown amount of (re)training to work with the new propulsion system required.
With Samsung Heavy Industries, another heavy-shipping giant, already
announcing its interest
in 2021 for nuclear power plant technology based around a molten salt reactor, the day when container ships quietly float into harbors around the world with no exhaust gases might be sooner than we think, aided by a lot more acceptance from insurance companies and harbor operators than half a century ago.
(Top image: the proposed KUN-24AP container ship, courtesy of CSSC) | 73 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711770",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T18:48:05",
"content": "Good because a small handful of cargo ships outweigh the emissions of every single land vehicle on Earth combined. But they are going to have to have the steel to open up with chainguns on Somali boats approac... | 1,760,372,062.124814 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/building-a-better-keyboard-and-mouse-switch/ | Building A Better Keyboard And Mouse Switch | Navarre Bartz | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"cable management",
"kvm",
"network",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"switching"
] | Switching inputs between desktops seems like something that should be simple but can prove to be a pain in reality. [Hrvoje Cavrak] decided to take matters into his own hands and build a
better keyboard and mouse switch
.
DeskHop is built from two Raspberry Pi Pico boards connected via UART and separated by an Analog Devices ADuM1201 dual-channel digital isolator. Through the magic of
Pico-PIO-USB
these RP2040s can be both host and device. To keep things simple, the PCB is single-sided, and the BOM only has five distinct components.
Once hooked up to your Windows, Mac, or Linux device, your mouse pointer “magically” goes from one screen to the other when dragged across the screen edge. Keyboard LEDs can be reprogrammed to indicate which device is active, and the real beauty of the device is that since it’s a hardware solution, you don’t have to install any software on a computer you might not have admin access to.
If you want to see some more ideas for keyboard and mouse switching, check out this
Pi KVM with ATX
signaling, this
USB triplexer
, or this
Pi KVM on a PCIe card
. | 38 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711745",
"author": "anonymous",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T17:01:35",
"content": "> …your mouse pointer “magically” goes from one screen to the other when dragged across the screen edge.I don’t want to detract from the builder’s accomplishment, but in case folks do not know…x2x and c... | 1,760,372,062.197156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/game-graphics-rasterization/ | Game Graphics: Rasterization | Julian Scheffers | [
"Featured",
"Games",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"computer graphics",
"game graphics",
"rasterization",
"shaders"
] | Last time
, I talked about racing the beam, a type of graphics used when memory was scarce. Now it’s time to step into the future with more memory and talk about what modern 2D games still do to this day: rasterization.
Just in
time
Memory
Continuing the trend set by racing the beam, rasterized graphics are also on a grid, just a much tinier one. Though not unique to rasterized, the “frame buffer” is the logical conclusion of bitmap mode fidelity: enough memory is allocated so that every pixel can have its own color. What’s different about a frame buffer is that everything is drawn before it is shown and, crucially, this doesn’t have to happen in the same order as the pixels are displayed. Rasterization draws entire shapes — triangles, lines and rectangles — into the frame buffer and the screen is typically updated all at once.
Crude Circles
You may have noticed I didn’t mention circles earlier. That’s because we don’t actually draw circles, we approximate them. It’s a simple thing, really: Would you rather draw 50 triangles, or compute 10000 distance calculations? Well, if you said triangles, the computers agree with you.
This diagram shows an exaggerated representation of how a circle can be approximated using triangles. It’s quite obvious here where the triangles are, but the more triangles you add, the closer you can get to a perfect circle. More complex shapes, like text, polygons and abstract shapes can also be made with triangles.
The plotting predicament
But approximating circles isn’t the only problem in rasterization, approximating triangles is a problem too! There are a limited number of pixels, which means that all but a perfectly aligned rectangle needs to be approximated in the actual rasterization process.
There are several ways to rasterize triangles, from left to right: any pixel that touches the outline of the triangle, any pixel whose center lies within the triangle, or any pixel that lies fully within the triangle. The second (or center) one is most common, because it avoids both unnecessary overlap and unnecessary gaps, notable artifacts of the other two methods respectively. Unnecessary overlap causes semitransparent shapes to show a seam of more opaque pixels, while unnecessary gaps cause most shapes to show a seam of unplotted pixels, both of which are undesirable.
Now that’s nice and all, but how does a computer actually implement such a thing? My
computer graphics library
does it with linear algebra. First, I divide the triangle into one or two trapezoids with a horizontal top and bottom line. Then, I divide it into imaginary horizontal lines at the vertical center of each row of pixels. Finally, I plot pixels from left to right within these horizontal lines.
Rectangles and lines are simpler: rectangles always have two horizontal and two vertical edges so they can be drawn with two for loops and lines are usually drawn by simply linearly interpolating between both endpoints. All other shapes can be drawn using these three primitives like I said earlier.
Colorful math
Since the switch to framebuffers, we can specify the color per pixel without having to use a palette, like when
racing the beam
. This opens up the possibility for semitransparent shapes, some ways of drawing text, images and even
shaders
.
Shaders are programs that run in the GPU, but what most people think when they hear shaders are actually
fragment shaders
. Also known as pixel shaders, they’re used to calculate the color of a single pixel in the shape.
Most fragment shaders use texture coordinates, also known as UV coordinates or UVs, as the primary variable. Be that to literally apply a texture (i.e. an image), or to change the color (right). UVs range from 0 to 1 and are used primarily for images. The square in the center shows its UVs by making U (left to right) red and V (top to bottom) green. The other two squares show effects that are possible using UVs, which is of course changing the colors.
Conclusion
Rasterization is a rendering technique that takes advantage of the large amounts of memory afforded to computers. By its nature, it takes much better advantage of parallel processors in the form of GPUs and is a lot more flexible than racing the beam. Using rasterized graphics, you can draw almost anything, from a simple circle to a complex webpage. Rasterized graphics are flexible and used everywhere today.
Stay tuned for next time, when I’ll spice things up with matrix math, more images/sprites and multiple layers! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711759",
"author": "GrumpyBob",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T18:08:36",
"content": "Hmm.. did all this start back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It sounds like you may have missed optimizations based on Duff’s device and the many versions of Bresenham’s algorithm. N dimensional B’s algorithm... | 1,760,372,062.342588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/the-strange-world-of-japans-pc-98-computer-ecosystem/ | The Strange World Of Japan’s PC-98 Computer Ecosystem | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"PC-98",
"PC-9800"
] | Despite the popularity of the IBM PC in the West during the 1980s, it had shortcomings that prevented it from flourishing in the Japanese market, most of all support for the Japanese language. This led to a sort of parallel universe in which NEC’s PC-9800 series (‘PC-98’) was the dominant personal computer, including its NEC µPD7220 display controller with its 4096-color palette. These computer systems led to a graphics style that persists to today, along with a whole ecosystem of games and applications that never left the PC-98.
In an article by [Biz Davis] this software ecosystem
, its art style and their lasting impact is explored.
Screenshots from X-Girl, a PC-98 game from 1994.
Although the
NEC PC-9800
series of computers was primarily focused on Japanese businesses with its release in the early 1980s, it found itself adopted for educational and hobby purposes as well. During the 1980s and early 1990s they faced little opposition from IBM PCs and clones, despite them all being x86-based systems running DOS. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that mostly US companies
began to explicitly design
computers to work for the Japanese market, leading to a gradual decline of the PC-9800 series PCs in the market.
Despite the last PC-98 system having been released in 2000 – with the last systems running some flavor of Windows – these systems and the software for them isn’t just a unique time capsule of this part of Japan’s history, but continues to see new software releases to this day. If you wish to experience this software for yourself, a number of open source PC-9800 emulators are available, including the nyan-tastic Neko Project II.
Top image: PC-9801 system. (Credit:
MH0301
– Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0) | 48 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711712",
"author": "Zalan Meggyesi",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T13:39:42",
"content": "What, no mention of the Touhou Project? (/s, just in case)It’s still going strong and its first five or so installments were on PC-98 before switching to Windows.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,062.29545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/open-source-scanner-scans-the-slides/ | Open Source Scanner Scans The Slides | Al Williams | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"slide scanner"
] | What do you get when you join a slide projector and a digital camera?
Filmolimo
, an open source slide scanner. The scanner uses an M5Stack Fire, an ESP32 development board. Thanks to the ESP32, you can control the device via WiFi.
All the project files, including KiCAD design files, are on
GitHub
. Of course, you will probably have to adapt things to your specific camera and slide projector. The PCB is double-sided and looks easy to put together. The board is mostly opto-isolation and interface between the controller and the equipment. The software allows you to change things like the time between slides, for example.
This is one of those projects you probably only need for a bit. Unless, of course, you regularly scan slides. You can farm it out to a service provider, but what fun is that? If you have a few hundred thousand slides, you
might need to go for speed
. If you just have a few, you can get by with
a simple adapter
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711681",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T09:34:04",
"content": "Had to understand how this could possibly work without Linux, Python, and a web service.Anyhow, my slide scanner uses the camera and slide projector.Most slide projectors have slideshow mode.A microswitch trigg... | 1,760,372,062.010486 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/25/a-web-server-the-sixteen-bit-way/ | A Web Server, The Sixteen Bit Way | Jenny List | [
"Network Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"dos",
"freedos",
"web server"
] | If you were to talk about sixteen bit computing in retrocomputing circles, misty-eyed reminiscences of the ST or Amiga would emerge. Both fine platforms, but oddly the elephant in the 16-bit room has become a victim of its own success. DOS, the granddaddy of all PC operating systems, seems oddly overshadowed by its 68000-based competitors in a way it certainly wasn’t back in the day. Perhaps it’s the often-atrocious graphics when cards designed for business graphics were pressed into gaming service, but it’s easy to forget that DOS PCs were the powerhouses of their day. They still pack a punch even in 2023, as
[Lunduke] is here to show us by running a DOS web server
. Take that, nginx!
Three letter file extensions for the win!
While Microsoft and IBM abandoned DOS a very long time ago, the OS lives on in the form of the well-maintained open-source equivalent,
FreeDOS
. It’s a lifeline for people with DOS-era hardware to maintain as much as it is a favourite in retrocomputing, thus it’s the obvious place to start when installing a web server.
It’s a while since we navigated the many layers of DOS packet drivers and TCP stacks, but this guide implies that the FreeDOS folks have made it a much nicer process than it used to be. He installs the
Sioux
and
WebServ
web servers to compare two different options, configures the network, and hey presto!, a web page!
We can see that there’s little real-world value in running an internet-connected website from a 16-bit machine using nearly 20-year-old unmaintained software with no server-side processing capabilities here in 2023, but that’s not the point. DOS may be antiquated, but it’s still capable, it’s very adaptable and configurable, and it’s still just about relevant. We can completely see the fun in making it do unexpected things not because it needs to, but because it’s
there
.
Want more DOS fun?
Boot your PC from vinyl
.
Header image: Ruben de Rijcke,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711662",
"author": "Timo",
"timestamp": "2023-12-26T06:35:45",
"content": "That header photo is an IBM XT 8 bit computer with 4.77mhz.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711663",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,062.399305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/3d-printing-stacks/ | 3D Printing Stacks | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"stack printing"
] | There is a big difference between building one of something and building, say, 100 of the same item. It isn’t surprising, then, that 3D printing in bulk differs from printing one object at a time. Of course, filling up your build plate is not a new idea. But [Keep Making] wants to encourage you to
think in three dimensions
and fill up your build volume in the Z axis, as well.
When you fill your X and Y axes, it is easy to see how the parts separate. But with stack printing, you must separate the parts from different layers. Each part has a single-layer gap, and the top surfaces are ironed for a better finish. Sometimes the prints may stick, and the video shows how to use a screw to pop off recalcitrant prints. The technique produces one side that isn’t as nice a finish as the other side, but it isn’t bad, and for many applications, you don’t care, anyway.
Before you get too excited about your own designs, you might try
a simple test file
and get your print settings dialed in. Obviously, if you need just two or three copies of something small, it is easier to step and repeat them across the build surface. But if you need to maximize your throughput or make multiple copies of large objects, this might be the technique for you.
Looks like an interesting technique that doesn’t require you to do anything strange like, say,
waterproof your printer
. No
strings attached
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711504",
"author": "Collie147",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T12:15:54",
"content": "The face screen STLs during the pandemic that everyone printed were geared this way, in stacks of 3/5/10 as far as I remember. Required a little work to separate them but was clean enough once done, sli... | 1,760,372,062.437395 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/hidden-wall-mount-table-looks-like-hanging-art/ | Hidden Wall-Mount Table Looks Like Hanging Art | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"folding shelf",
"hidden shelf",
"shelf",
"woodworking"
] | If you live in a compact space, sometimes you have to get creative with your furniture to make the most of it.
This wall-hanging table design from [diyhuntress]
is perfect for those situations where you need a table, but you don’t want it taking up the whole room when it’s not in use. Plus, it’s kinda stealthy, which makes it even more fun!
The table is a folding design, with a flat wooden top, and an equally-sized supporting leg that goes down to the ground. The other end of the table is supported by a frame on the wall, which also contains several shelves for small objects. The trick is that the table top and support are hinged together, so that they can fold up and sit in front of the shelves, essentially hanging the whole assembly from the wall. Even better, by painting a simple artwork on the support, the whole thing just looks like a decor piece with no clue as to its hidden functionality.
It’s a fun build, and one that you could easily knock out in a weekend with some basic woodworking skills. We’ve featured some
other nifty shelf designs before, too.
Just remember, too – a neat and tidy space is a boost to your hacker productivity, so don’t rule this out for your own use! | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711472",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T08:28:54",
"content": "It begs for a way to lock the “foot” at 90°…Great build otherwise!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711487",
"author": "IIVQ",
"time... | 1,760,372,062.486942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/hackaday-links-december-24-2023/ | Hackaday Links: December 24, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"240Z",
"antarctica",
"car restoration",
"car sales",
"ChatGPT",
"CME",
"flare",
"gps",
"hackaday links",
"linkages",
"propagation",
"Solar Cycle 25",
"storm",
"sunspots",
"time zones",
"Vostok",
"Z-car"
] | Back near the beginning of the current Solar Cycle 25,
we penned an article
on what the whole deal is with solar cycles, and what could potentially lie in store for us as the eleven-year cycle of sunspot population developed. Although it doesn’t really come across in the article, we remember being somewhat pessimistic about things, thinking that Solar Cycle 25 would be somewhat of a bust in terms of increased solar activity, given that the new cycle was occurring along with other, longer-period cycles that tend to decrease solar output. Well, looks like we couldn’t have gotten that more wrong if we tried, since
the Sun lashed out with a class X solar flare last week
that really lit things up. The outburst came from a specific sunspot, number 3514, and clocked in at X2.8, the most powerful flare since just before the end of the previous solar cycle. To put that into perspective, X-class flares have a peak X-ray flux of 10
-4
watts/m², which when you think about it is a lot of energy. The flare resulted in a strong radio blackout; pretty much everything below 30 MHz was unusable for a while.
What’s a car salesperson good for? Having dealt with quite a few over the years, and bearing in mind Mom’s advice about only saying nice things about people, we’ll defer an answer to that question at this time. However, if you need help with Python, it turns out that some car sales reps — the AI kind — are willing to pitch in with a little code if asked nicely. The story comes to us
via
The Autopian
(shout out to Lewin!) which documents an interaction with a ChatGPT-powered chatbot on a Chevrolet dealer’s website. Ostensibly designed to answer questions about the dealerships latest offerings, it turns out that if instead of asking if that Tahoe comes with leather seats you ask it to write some Python to “Solve the Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations for a zero vorticity boundary,” it’ll happily comply. We find that pretty darn funny, and while we appreciate the free access to ChatGPT, we doubt such a service is going to move many cars. Remember, kids: sanitize those inputs!
When was the last time you saw a dedicated GPS in a passenger vehicle? We haven’t seen one in quite a while; the last time was probably when our trusty old Nuvi’s suction cup mount popped off the windshield and we finally gave up and threw the thing in the glove compartment. Unless you’ve got a specialized need, like trucking or local deliveries, chances are good that you’ve just switched over to using a smartphone, imperfect though they may be for navigation tasks. That trend has probably put GPS companies in a pickle, since nobody likes a declining user base. This probably at least partially explains why TomTom has teamed up with Microsoft to build
a fully integrated conversational driving assistant
. If the fact that Microsoft is involved makes you think “Clippy on wheels,” that’s sure what it sounds like to us. The press releases use a lot of words that say very little, but we’re assured that OpenAI’s Large Language Models will be leveraged, and that Cognitive Services are very much on the table. So you know this is gonna be great, whatever it turns out to be. We can’t help but wonder what the monetization model will be for this; will you pay an upfront subscription, or will this be a “pay-as-you-go” deal where you get charged by the interaction? But perhaps more importantly: will it write Python for you while you drive?
Another item that starts with a question: What time zone is Antarctica in? Why, whatever time zone you want it to be! At least that’s how it appears based on
this forum message
from one Zakhary V. Akulov, chief of the Vostok Antarctic research base, who decreed that the time zone for the station will be UTC+5 starting December 18. Given that Vostok is a Russian scientific station, it makes sense that he chose a time zone in Russia, but since there are about nine time zones across the country, he had a lot to choose from. It’s also a bit puzzling; while we can see randomly selecting your time zone at the South Pole, where all time zones converge and every direction is north, Vostok is 1,300 kilometers away from the geographic pole. And at about 106° East longitude, Vostok lines up more with Vietnam and Indonesia than any of the population centers in western Russia. To each his own, we suppose, but it seems a curious choice.
If you’ve got a complex mechanical linkage to design, we’ve got the perfect tool for you:
MotionGen
. We haven’t played with it much yet, but just from the animations on the front page it looks perfect for designing everything from anthropoid robots to Strandbeest legs. It looks super-useful; somebody should give it a whirl and report back in the comments.
And finally, we’ve been following
a labor-of-love classic car restoration
that we thought we’d share. It’s over at the
my mechanics
channel on YouTube, where the focus is usually on the restoration of wonderful old tools and artifacts of much smaller size and complexity. The car is a 1973 Datsun 240Z, which has clearly seen better days but still isn’t that bad for a 50-year-old car. The video linked below is the latest episode, which details the repairs necessary to the rocker panels, rear wheel arches, floor and seat mounts, and a little bit of the hood. It’s kind of amazing to watch the process of turning flat pieces of sheet steel into exactly the right size and shape to replace rusty-out sections of the car. The whole playlist is worth watching, especially if you’re settling in for that long winter’s nap and need some nodding-off fodder. Merry Christmas! | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711416",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-25T01:22:46",
"content": "I have a Garmin GPS stuck to the windshield, a TomTom and a Nexstar (Staples brand from the 2000 aughts) on the center console. I hate the thought of activating Location on my... | 1,760,372,062.535505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/absorbing-traffic-noise-with-bricks-using-helmholtz-resonators/ | Absorbing Traffic Noise With Bricks Using Helmholtz Resonators | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"acoustics",
"architecture",
"Helmholtz Resonator"
] | One inevitable aspect of cities and urban life in general is that it is noisy, with traffic being one of the main sources of noise pollution. Finding a way to attenuate especially the low-frequency noise of road traffic was the subject of [Joe Krcma]’s Masters Thesis, the results of which
he gave a talk on
at the Portland Maker Meetup Club after graduating from University College London. The chosen solution in his thesis are Helmholtz resonators, which are a kind of acoustic spring. Using a carefully selected opening into the cavity, frequencies can be filtered out, and extinguished inside the cavity.
Basic functionality and formula used to determine the dimensions of a Helmholtz Resonator.
As examples of existing uses of Helmholtz resonators in London, he points at the Queen Elizabeth Hall music venue, as well as the newly opened Queen Elizabeth Line and Paddington Station. For indoor applications there are a number of commercial offerings, but could this be applied to outdoor ceramics as well, to render urban environments into something approaching an oasis of peace and quiet?
For the research, [Joe]’s group developed a number of Helmholtz resonator designs and manufacturing methods, with [Joe] focusing on clay fired versions. For manufacturing, 3D printing of the clay was attempted, which didn’t work out too well. This was followed by slip casting, which allowed for the casting of regular rectangular bricks.
But after issues with making casting hollow bricks work, as well as the cracking of the bricks during firing in the kiln, the work of another student in the group inspired [Joe] to try a different approach. The result was a very uniquely shaped ‘brick’ that, when assembled into a wall, forms three Helmholtz resonators: inside it, as well as two within the space with other bricks. During trials, the bricks showed similar sound-deadening performance as foam and wood. He also made the shape
available on Thingiverse
, if you want to try printing or casting it yourself. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711393",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T22:11:55",
"content": "For the research, [Joe]’s group developed a number of Helmholtz resonator designs and manufacturing methodsHave they developed a method of cleaning them inside?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,062.601441 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/diy-cleats-give-you-traction-in-ice-and-snow/ | DIY Cleats Give You Traction In Ice And Snow | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"cleats",
"ice",
"shoes",
"snow",
"winter"
] | It’s getting into the cold and snowy season for much of the world, and that means it can be slippy when you go walking outside. If you need more traction, but your shoes don’t have spikes, fear not. You can build yourself a set of
these nifty strap-on cleats designed by [Zero To Infinity]
.
The cleats are a 3D printed design, which [Zero To Infinity] modeled in Fusion 360 to match their own shoes. Obviously, everybody’s shoes differ, so they’ve provided simple instructions on how to design your own similar cleats to suit your personal footwear. They’re then printed in a stiff TPU to give them the right amount of flex for bending to conform to the shoe. The cleats themselves are simply M4 bolts, nuts, and washers screwed through the cleats, pointy-side down. They can then be strapped to a shoe, and you’re done!
We’d love to see a set of snow shoes that are fully printed and ready to accept cleats. Indeed,
we’ve seen some neat printed sneaker designs before
. They haven’t really caught on yet, but there’s nothing to stop you printing the hottest kicks of 2024 right in your own home. When you do, don’t hesitate to
hit up the tipsline! | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711357",
"author": "Ken Sweeney",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T18:18:42",
"content": "I just ran a bunch of hex head sheet metal screws in to the sole of my boots. When the ice was gone, just back them out!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,062.750947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/how-does-a-sewing-machine-sew/ | How Does A Sewing Machine Sew? | Al Williams | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"clothing",
"industrial revolution",
"sewing machine"
] | Like all Hackaday readers, we pride ourselves on having at least a passing acquaintance with how most things work. But we suspect to a lot of people, things we take for granted — computers, air conditioning, motors, and cell phones — are just black magic. That’s how we feel about sewing machines. Sure, there’s a motor. There’s a needle and some thread. But how does the machine make a stitch? We always wondered, but after watching a recent video from [Veritasium] we can at least
claim we have an idea
.
First, he shows the intrinsic problem: sewing by hand requires you to reverse the direction of the needle, and it isn’t clear how to make a simple machine to do that. Sure, today you could probably make a robot that sews like a human does, but sewing machines have been around for a very long time.
In addition to showing how a chain stitch and lock stitch work, the video shows the history of the machines, including 50,000-year-old needles and the progression of innovations required to get to the modern sewing machine. In addition, he shows a large model sewing machine to clearly explain the concepts.
You might think you don’t care about sewing, but machine sewing has touched nearly everyone. The video says that in 1900, a family might spend 15% of their income on clothes. In 2003, that number drops to under 4%, yet the family will have many more clothes than they did in 1900. This is possible because of machine sewing and other innovations.
You can, of course,
make your own sewing machine
. If you want to get an industrial one,
we have some advice
. | 35 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711320",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T15:20:51",
"content": "“You might think you don’t care about sewing, but machine sewing has touched nearly everyone.”That’s so true. For a while, we had sewing in school as a school subject, even.Ah, I remember these good old Pf... | 1,760,372,062.958223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/talking-ohmmeter-also-spits-out-color-bands-for-you/ | Talking Ohmmeter Also Spits Out Color Bands For You | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ece 4760",
"ohmmeter",
"resistor"
] | If you’ve got a resistor and you can’t read the color bands (or they’re not present), you can always just grab a multimeter and figure out its value that way. [Giacomo Yong Cuomo] and [Sophia Lin] have built an altogether different kind of ohmmeter, that can actually spit out color values for you, and even read the resistance aloud. It’s all a part of their
final project for their ECE 4760 class.
The build is based around a Raspberry Pi Pico. It determines the value of a resistor by placing it in a resistor divider, with the other reference resistor having a value of 10 kΩ. The resistor under test is connected between the reference resistor and ground, while the other leg of the reference resistor is connected to 3.3 V. The node between the two resistors is connected to the Pi Pico’s analog-to-digital converter pin. This allows the Pico to determine the voltage at this point, and thus calculate the test resistor’s value based on the reference resistor’s value and the voltages involved.
A large fake resistor provides user feedback. It’s filled with addressable LEDs, which light up the appropriate color bands depending on the test resistor’s value. It’s capable of displaying both 3-band, 4-band, and 5-band color configurations. While six-band resistors do exist, the extra band is typically used for denoting temperature coefficients which can’t readily be determined by this simple test. It can also play audio files to announce the resistance value over a speaker.
It’s a neat project that surely taught the duo many useful skills for working with microcontrollers. Plus, it’s kinda fun — we love the big glowing resistor.
We’ve featured some other fancy resistors before, too! | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711301",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T14:09:54",
"content": "That’s interesting as a µC project but I’m not sure it’s very practical as a professional tool :– Color coding once learnt stays inside your brain forever.– Talking machine is no help with a noisy surounding ... | 1,760,372,063.058061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/nes-classic-metroid-ported-to-equally-classic-super-nintendo/ | NES ClassicMetroidPorted To Equally Classic Super Nintendo | Drew Littrell | [
"Games",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"nintendo",
"retro gaming",
"snes",
"video games",
"videogames"
] | There was a time early in the development of the Super Nintendo (SNES) where the new console was to feature backwards compatibility with NES games. The solution would have required a cumbersome cartridge adapter and a hard switch on every console to flip the CPU into 8-bit mode. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be — outside of the first public demo of the console, little evidence exists to suggest the gamers would have been able to supercharge their old NES carts on their Super Nintendo.
But thanks to the
impressive port of
Metroid
to the SNES by [infidelity]
, we can imagine what such a capability might have been like. There’s more on offer here than reduced sprite flicker. There are additional frames of animation compared to the original, so now Samus’ arm cannon stays consistent rather than magically switching arms when turning around. A complete save game system from the Famicom Disk System version has also been implemented as well, with the traditional three slots. Although purists can still utilize the password system if they so choose.
Ultimately the most impressive inclusion of [infidelity]’s work is the MSU-1 enhancement chip implementation. Fun video intro sequences lead into the main menu where players can select the accompanying soundtrack. There’s the original 8-bit music remapped onto the SNES sound chip, the expanded 8-bit version from the Famicom Disk System, the reimagined sound of
Metroid Zero Mission
, or a full orchestral score. It really is the sort of situation where there are no wrong answers.
While you’re here, check out this post about bringing
Poke’mon ROM hacks into physical cartridge
form. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711280",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T11:16:58",
"content": "“Item not availableThe item is not available due to issues with the item’s content. ”I guess Nintendo didn’t approve and DMCA’d this one already",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,063.003663 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/mailblocks-makes-your-phone-work-more-like-the-post-kinda/ | Mailblocks Makes Your Phone Work More Like The Post, Kinda? | Lewin Day | [
"Network Hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"dns",
"mailbox",
"notifications",
"phone",
"smartphone"
] | Phones can be distracting, with notifications popping up all the time to snare our attention and maybe even ruin our lives. [Guy Dupont] wishes to be no slave to the machine, and thus built a solution.
Enter Mailblocks
.
The concept is simple. It’s a physical mailbox which [Guy] can put his phone in. All notifications on the phone are blocked unless he puts his phone into the box. When the phone is inside and the box is closed, the little red flag goes up, indicating “DOPAMINE” is available, and [Guy] can check his notifications.
To achieve this, [Guy] is running a custom DNS server. It redirects all the lookups for push notifications on Android so they go nowhere. Placing the phone in the mailbox turns the re-directions off, so the phone can contact the usual servers and get its notifications as normal.
It’s a novel way of fighting against the constant attention suck of modern smartphones. Rather than being bombarded by notifications in real time, [Guy] instead has to take a significant intentional physical action to check the notifications. It cuts the willpower required and the interruptions to his work in a fell swoop.
We’ve featured [Guy’s]
innovative and outside-the-box projects before
, too. His smart pants
were an absolute tour de force
, I might add. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711248",
"author": "bemusedHorseman",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T07:02:57",
"content": "I really like the idea (and the mailbox format is adorable!), but I would be very cautious as to /which/ app notifications you do this to. Some social media apps /really/ don’t like being unable t... | 1,760,372,062.866844 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/dial-up-over-discord/ | Dial Up Over Discord | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"dialup",
"Discord",
"modem"
] | Some hacks are useful and some are just… well… for the fun of it, and we can appreciate that. Take, for example, [Cool Blog’s] recent experiments with dialup networking. If you think about it, the BBS systems of yesterday have been replaced with more modern tools like Discord. So why not
run modems using audio chat over Discord
and get the best of both worlds?
This was both easier and harder than we would have expected. The first hurdle was the lack of any actual modems. Luckily, there are software modem emulators like
minimodem
that makes a PC soundcard work like a modem. It supports some basic protocols, and that’s probably a good thing since the digital audio channel is probably unable to support anything too sophisticated.
Using some crude audio routing 300 baud data did flow. Increasing the baud rate all the way to 2,100 worked reliably. Combining some more sophisticated audio flows and managing sockets with systemd made the process easier. The goal was to, eventually, telnet over the link but that never worked. We would guess that it could work if you spent enough time.
But the proof is in the pudding, and the basic idea works. Why do it? We can’t think of a good reason. But if you want to give it a shot, you can find what you need on
GitHub
.
Hams still use
modems
. While we tend to have a soft spot for retrocomputing gear, we don’t miss
acoustic couplers at all
. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711228",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T05:30:55",
"content": "You can pry my US Robotics Sportster from my cold, dead, hands.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6711230",
"author": "Feinfinger (with diabolic lau... | 1,760,372,063.153307 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/diy-pneumatic-actuator-does-great-in-action/ | DIY Pneumatic Actuator Does Great In Action | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"actuator",
"pneumatic",
"Pneumatics"
] | Pneumatic actuators can be powerful and fast, making them very useful for all kinds of mechanical jobs. [Michael Rechtin] decided that while he could buy them off-the-shelf, he preferred to see if he could make his own via 3D printing.
Despite the challenges, he succeeded!
Part of his success is because he knew when to take advantage of the strengths of 3D printed parts, and where they wouldn’t perform so well. To that end, the main body of the cylinder is actually a piece of PVC pipe. That’s because manufactured PVC pipe is far smoother and more regular than what you could reasonably achieve with a most 3D printers. The end caps, however, were printed and tapped to take standard air fittings. The piston was printed too, fitted with a steel cylinder rod and O-rings for sealing.
The double-acting cylinder performed remarkably well in testing, easily skewering an orange. The initial version did leak a touch, but later revisions performed better. Springs were also fitted for damping hits at either end which improved longevity, with a test rig racking up over 10,000 cycles without failure.
We love a design that is both easy to build at home and capable of great performance.
We’ve featured some neat open-source pneumatic builds before, too
. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711218",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2023-12-24T04:28:13",
"content": "Wouldn’t the better way have been to use the circular saw that was pulled out of the cupboard first?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "671... | 1,760,372,063.100697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/mega-cnc-router-carves-styrofoam-into-a-full-size-flying-delorean/ | Mega-CNC Router Carves Styrofoam Into A Full-Size Flying Delorean | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"drone hacks"
] | [
"abb",
"cnc",
"DeLorean",
"EPS",
"expanded polystyrene foam",
"Industrial robot",
"quadcopter",
"router",
"styrofoam"
] | When you own an enormous CNC router, you’ve got to find projects that justify it. So why not shoot for the sky — literally — and build the 1980s-est possible thing:
a full-scale flying Delorean
.
Attentive readers will no doubt remember [Brian Brocken] from
his recent attempt to bring a welding robot out of retirement
. That worked quite well, and equipped with a high-speed spindle, the giant ABB robot is now one of the biggest CNC routers we’ve ever seen. As for the flying Delorean, short of the well-known Mr. Fusion mod, [Brian] had to settle for less fictional approaches. The project is still in its early phase, but it appears that the flying car will basically be a huge quadcopter, with motors and propellers hidden under the chassis. That of course means eschewing the stainless steel of the OEM design for something lighter: expanded polystyrene foam (EPS).
The video below shows the fabrication of most of the body, which starts as large blocks of EPS and ends up as shaped panels and an unthinkable amount of dust. Individual pieces are glued together with what looks like plain old PVA adhesive. The standard Delorean “frunk” has been replaced by a louvered assembly that will act as an air intake; we presume the rear engine cover will get the same treatment. Interestingly, the weight of the finished model is almost exactly what Fusion 360 predicted based on the 3D model — a mere 13.9 kg.
[Brian] is currently thrust-testing motors and propellers and has some interesting details on that process in his write-up. There’s obviously a lot of work left on this project, and a lot more dust to be made, and we’ll be eagerly following along. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711143",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T21:23:31",
"content": "Polystyrene bits everywhere!!! I hate that! Almost impossible to remove, it’s electrostatic and hangs on anything it touches. Alao when the nearby flat was enveloped to increase thermal insulat... | 1,760,372,063.209741 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/infrared-following-robot-built-as-proof-of-concept-for-autonomous-luggage/ | Infrared Following Robot Built As Proof-of-Concept For Autonomous Luggage | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"following",
"infrared",
"luggage",
"robot"
] | Once upon a time, the poor humans of the past had to lug around suitcases and trunks with their own arms. Then, some genius figured out that you could just put wheels on and make everyone’s life a million times easier. Now, what if you didn’t even have push, because your luggage could just follow you instead? Well,
students [Yuqiang Ge] and [Yiyang Zhao] have figured out a proof of concept for how that could work.
Their build is a small robotic platform that they assembled for their ECE5730 final project. The tiny wheeled robot is programmed to rotate on the spot until its infrared sensors pick up a signal. In turn, the user is intended to carry an infared beacon for it to lock onto. A pair of sensors are used on the robot platform, separated by a board to serve as a blind. The robot determines the relative signal strength from each sensor, and uses that to vary PWM signals to the two DC drive motors to steer the robot platform to seek and follow the infrared beacon.
It’s a neat idea, and looks to work pretty well in a university corridor. It even has an ultrasonic range sensor to (ideally) stop when it gets too close to the user. Whether it would survive the tumult of a crowded airport is another thing entirely, but that’s what the engineering process is about. Indeed,
the very concept has been commercialized already!
Following-robots are a common student project,
and one well worth exploring
if you’re new to the robotic field. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711113",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T18:34:50",
"content": "Red Dwarf called it. We’re one step closer to luggage losing it’s human.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bdstJYUfMA",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6711119... | 1,760,372,063.25779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/hardware-its-made-of-software/ | Hardware: It’s Made Of Software! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"open source software"
] | We had the opportunity to add a new feature to our lineup: the
FLOSS Weekly
podcast. It’s a very long running series that covers the goings on in the free, libre, and open-source software world. It’s been co-hosted by our own [Jonathan Bennett] for quite a while now, and when
This Week in Tech
announced that they wanted to cancel it, [Jonathan] asked if he could keep it running over here at Hackaday.
Hackaday is hardware, though. Why would we be hosting a podcast on open software? It’s no secret that a bunch of us are open-source software fans in general here at Hackaday, but take a quick inventory of the various open projects that you use to make and hack your hardware. We use open-source compilers, libraries, and flashing tools to handle the firmware we write on open-source text editors. Heck, half of the time we even program microcontrollers in the open-source MicroPython. We design PCBs in the open-source KiCAD, do CAD/CAM in FreeCAD, and don’t even get me started in the open-source software and firmware underlying the entire 3D printing ecology. Reverse engineering? Free software, from Wireshark straight through to Ghidra.
All of this is to say, that even while we’re making or breaking hardware, we’re
using
open-source software to do it. So, if you’re interested in peeking behind the curtain, give the FLOSS Weekly a listen.
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
! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711085",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T15:41:38",
"content": "The logo(?) for FLOSS had me thinking it was a silhouette of a dolphin (A.K.A Flipper). But I guess it is supposed to be a silhouette of Tux?",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,063.312729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/digital-bike-horn-will-play-custom-sounds-please-be-tasteful/ | Digital Bike Horn Will Play Custom Sounds, Please Be Tasteful | Lewin Day | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"DFPlayer",
"dfplayer mini",
"horn",
"sound"
] | When you’re out riding your bike, a horn can be a useful warning device to other road users and pedestrians alike. It can also be a source of fun and amusement, or annoyance, depending on the sounds it makes and how you use it. For the ultimate flexibility, you might like this digital bicycle horn that offers customizable sounds,
as developed by [gokux].
The build has attractive two-tone components, consisting of a button pad for playing four sounds, and a sound module with a 3 watt speaker and battery pack. A Seeed Studio XIAO SAMD21 is the heart of the operation, with the microcontroller paired with a DFPlayer Mini which handles sound duties. When one of the four buttons is pressed, the microcontroller loads the relevant sound off an SD card, and plays it out over the speaker. For power, the build uses a lithium rechargeable battery with a healthy 1200 mAh capacity, which can be readily recharged thanks to a TP4056 charger module with a USB-C port.
It’s a nifty little build, and we love the
Metal Gear Solid
sounds. Though, we do wonder just how audible that 3 watt speaker is. If it proves inadequate, you could always step up to a much larger driver paired
with a hefty audio amp
if you so desire. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711056",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T12:47:12",
"content": "Typo on the linko, get’s you a 404 ho ho ho… try this one instead.https://www.instructables.com/Digital-Bicycle-Horn-With-Customizable-Sound/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,064.062073 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/23/uks-jet-tokamak-retires-after-40-years-and-105842-pulses/ | UK’s JET Tokamak Retires After 40 Years And 105,842 Pulses | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"nuclear fusion",
"tokamak"
] | The UK’s most famous fusion reactor – the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak – saw its first plasma on June 25th of 1983.
Its final plasma pulse
was generated on December 18th of 2023, for a total of 105,842 pulses over forty-and-a-half years and countless experiments.
Comparison of toroidal field (TF) coils from JET, JT-60SA and ITER (Credit: QST)
Originally designed in the 1970s by Euratom members,
JET
formed the core
of Europe’s fusion research program, allowing many of the aspects of tokamak systems to be explored, including deuterium-tritium fusion. Its final day of experiments involved an inverted plasma shape prior to targeting electrons at the tokamak’s inner wall, to study the impact of such damage.
Although JET has received a number of upgrades over the decades, the
MAST Upgrade
and upcoming STEP fusion reactors at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) are now headed where JET’s design cannot go. Current advanced tokamak reactors like
Japan’s JT-60SA
are increasingly using super-conducting coils with often plasma volumes far beyond JET’s, with the focus shifting from plasma research to net energy production.
This means that unless JET somehow gets repurposed/upgraded and recommissioned, this is the final goodbye to one of the world’s most famous and influential fusion reactors.
(Top image: Internal view of the JET tokamak superimposed with an image of plasma flows) | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711116",
"author": "moo",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T18:55:13",
"content": "could we stop romanticizing lab equipment just because it is really big? you don’t say goodbye to a centrifuge or autoclave. it gives people weird ideas like trying to “save” things that are outdated, always ... | 1,760,372,063.507991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/22/raspberry-pi-pico-becomes-midi-compatible-synth/ | Raspberry Pi Pico Becomes MIDI-Compatible Synth | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"pi pico",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"synthesizer"
] | ECE 4760 is a microcontroller course that runs at Cornell every year, and it gives students a wide remit to pursue various kinds of microcontroller projects. [Pelham Bergesen] took the class and built himself
a MIDI-controllable synthesizer out of a Raspberry Pi Pico.
[Pelham] coded a library to parse MIDI messages on the Pico, with the microcontroller’s UART charged with receiving the input data. MIDI is basically just serial at a baud rate of 31.25k, with a set message structure, after all. From there, the Pico takes the note data and plays the relevant frequencies by synthesizing square waves using a PWM output. A second PWM channel can also be blended with the first to generate more complex tones. The synthesizer is designed to be used with a source of MIDI note data such as a keyboard controller; [Pelham] demonstrates the project in use with a Roland JD-XI. It’s a fairly basic synthesizer, but [Pelham] does a good job of explaining all the steps required to get this far. If you’ve never done an audio or MIDI project before, you might find his guide very helpful for the way it steps through the basics.
[Pelham] didn’t get to implement fancier features like direct digital synthesis (DDS) or analog audio effects before the class closed out. However, that would be an excellent project for anyone else developing
their own Pico synthesizer
. If you whip up something that sounds good, or even just
interesting,
be sure to notify us on the tipsline. Video after the break. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6711043",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T09:57:40",
"content": "He for sure didnt understand the MIDI protocol.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6711053",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2023-12-23T... | 1,760,372,063.573607 |
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