url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/28/the-healing-touch-of-magnetic-tentacles-in-photothermal-lung-cancer-therapy/ | The Healing Touch Of Magnetic Tentacles In Photothermal Lung Cancer Therapy | Maya Posch | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"magnetism",
"tentacles"
] | Of the body’s organs, the lungs are among the trickiest to take a biopsy and treat cancer in, both due to how important they are, as well as due to their inaccessibility. The total respiratory surface within the average human lungs is about 50 to 75 square meters. Maneuvering any kind of instrument down the endless passages to reach a suspicious area, or a cancerous region to treat is nearly impossible. This has so far left much of the lungs inaccessible.
The standard of care for lung cancer is generally surgical: remove parts of the lung tissue. However, a proposed new method using magnetic tentacles may soon provide a more gentle approach, as described in
Nature Engineering Communications
by Giovanni Pittiglio and colleagues
(
press release
).
The tentacles are made out of a silicone substrate with embedded magnets that allow for it to be steered using external magnetic sources. With an embedded laser fiber, the head of the tentacle can be guided to the target area, and the cancerous tissue sublimated using an external laser source. In experiments on cadavers with this system, the researchers found that they could enter 37% deeper into the lungs than with standard equipment. The procedure was also completed with less tissue displacement.
Considering the high fatality rate of lung cancers, the researchers hope that this approach could soon be turned into a viable therapy, as well as for other medical conditions where a gentle tentacle slithering into the patient’s body could effect treatments previously considered to be impossible.
Heading image: Close-up of a magnetic tentacle robot next to a phantom bronchiole (Credit: University of Leeds) | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676758",
"author": "SayWhat?",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T16:31:26",
"content": "This is quite clever and obvious after someone else thought of it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6676763",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timest... | 1,760,372,187.980812 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/28/take-a-peek-at-this-3d-printer/ | Take A PEEK At This 3D Printer | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"exotic filament",
"high temperature print",
"peek"
] | Normally, when you think of PEEK in 3D printing, you think of a part made of PEEK, suitable for lower-temperature plastics. [ND-3D] has a different idea:
printing with PEEK
. You can get the details over on Hackaday.io, and there are a few YouTube videos below. Using a special controller and a halogen lamp, you can modify your own printer to use this exotic material often found in printer hot ends.
Logically, if PEEK is used near the hot end of regular printers, it must need a higher temperature to print. PEEK has a glass transition temperature of about 143 °C and melts at 343 °C. Compare this to PLA, which melts between 150 °C and 180 °C and has a glass transition temperature of only 60 °C.
The cost is reportedly under £200. Contrary to common wisdom, [ND-3D] suggests using an open frame for the printer. You do need precise control of the halogen light. A custom board handles that. The halogen heater wraps around a conventional hot end. Looks like it would keep your shop pretty toasty on a cold morning.
We were looking for more build details, and we hope they are forthcoming. It appears you can buy the boards, but we’d like more information on what makes them different. It isn’t clear to us that it isn’t just control of AC power and a heater, but there isn’t much information about what you have to do differently to work in PEEK or other exotic materials.
We’ve seen other
high-temperature printers
, of course. Not to mention, there is no shortage of high-end
commercial offerings
. | 28 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676614",
"author": "4ndreas",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T08:34:42",
"content": "Actually I worked for a company and we filed a patent for exactly this ( US10946578B2 )",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6676637",
"author":... | 1,760,372,188.102804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/when-does-impedance-matching-a-pcb-trace-become-unavoidable/ | When Does Impedance Matching A PCB Trace Become Unavoidable? | Maya Posch | [
"hardware",
"Science"
] | [
"impedance",
"impedance matching",
"pcb",
"PCB routing",
"route"
] | A common joke in electronics is that every piece of wire and PCB trace is an antenna, with the only difference being whether this was intentional or not. In practical terms, low-frequency wiring is generally considered to be ‘safe’, while higher frequency circuits require special considerations, including impedance (Z) matching. Where the cut-off is between these two types of circuits is not entirely clear, however, with various rules-of-thumb in existence, as [Sebastian]
over at Baltic Lab explains
.
A popular rule is that no
impedance matching
between the trace and load is necessary if the critical length of a PCB trace (l
crit
) is 1/10th of the wavelength (λ). Yet is this rule of thumb correct? Running through a number of calculations it’s obvious that the only case where the length of the PCB trace doesn’t matter is when trace and load impedance are matched.
According to these calculations, the 1/10 rule is not a great pick if your target is a mismatch loss of less than 0.1 dB, with 1/16 being a better rule. Making traces wider on the PCB can be advisable here, but ultimately you have to know what is best for your design, as each project has its own requirements. Even when the calculations look good, that’s no excuse to skip the measurement on the physical board, especially with how variable the dielectric constant of FR4 PCB material can be between different manufacturers and batches.
Heading image: Input impedance plotted as a function of trace impedance for trace lengths of 1/10, 1/16, and 1/20 of a wavelength. (Credit: Baltic Labs) | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676576",
"author": "Mike Massen, Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T05:16:13",
"content": "Good to see, trend to higher frequencies on the march though dimensions smaller too. Guidelines helpful, thanks for posting and nice level of diversity on this forum too, wel... | 1,760,372,188.680816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/the-briny-depths-give-wine-an-edge-but-how/ | The Briny Depths Give Wine An Edge, But How? | Jenny List | [
"cooking hacks",
"Interest"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"fermentation",
"vinyard",
"wine"
] | Though Hackaday scribes have been known to imbibe a few glasses in their time, it’s fair to say that we are not a wine critic site. When a news piece floated by about a company
getting into trouble for illegally submerging crates of wine
though, our ears pricked up. Why are vintners dumping their products in the sea?
Making wine, or indeed any alcoholic beverage, starts with taking a base liquor, be it grape juice, apple juice, barley malt solution, or whatever, and fermenting it with a yeast culture to produce alcohol. The result is a drink that’s intoxicating but rough, and the magic that turns it into a connoisseur’s tipple happens subsequently as it matures. The environment in which the maturation happens has a huge influence on this, which is one of many reasons why wine from the cellar of a medieval chateau tastes better than that from an industrial unit in southern England. The Californian company was attempting to speed up this process by leaving the bottles beneath the waves.
Having
something of an interest in the finer chemical points of the maturation process
we were fascinated by the idea that an undersea maturation can lead to a better wine, and while
the explanations we found online provided an answer involving higher oxygen content
we have to admit to being unsatisfied. The low light and constant temperature we can understand, but the idea that the water pressure might also have a bearing on the final result we’re less satisfied with. The whole point of a wine bottle is that it has an impermeable seal which can take significant pressure differences — see a champagne bottle for an example — and which lets nothing in so the wine can’t spoil. The curiosity of an engineer is not limited only to electronics or machines, so we have to ask whether an underwater maturation system could be replicated in a hackerspace without the need for a diving tender. Can we turn supermarket plonk into something that would fool a somellier? We’re guessing that finding out could result in inebriation.
We’ve visited wine storage here in the past
.
Looking for more wine? Check out our 2016
Hackaday Prize best product winner, vinduino
from [Renier van der Lee].
Header: Bottles, Shipwreck Museum by Oast House Archive,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 61 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676529",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T02:42:08",
"content": "There’s probably nothing particularly good about aging at the bottom of the sea, I’m betting it’s mainly a gimmick to convince people with more money than sense to hand a logically indefensible sum of ... | 1,760,372,188.562488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/hackaday-links-august-27-2023/ | Hackaday Links: August 27, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"am radio",
"autonomous vehicle",
"cruise",
"hackaday links",
"hackathon",
"hazard",
"Maui",
"robotaxi",
"safety",
"spotify",
"transmitter",
"TVCOG",
"welding",
"white noise",
"wildfire"
] | We mentioned
last week
how robotaxi provider Cruise was having a no-good, very bad week, after one of their driverless taxis picked a fight with a semi, and it was revealed that amorous San Franciscans were taking advantage of the privacy afforded by not having a driver in the front seat. It appears that we weren’t the only ones to notice all the bad news, since California’s Department of Motor Vehicles issued an order to the company to cut its robotaxi fleet in half. The regulatory move comes after
a recent Cruise collision with a fire truck
, which injured a passenger in the taxi. Curiously, the DMV order stipulates that Cruise can only operate 50 vehicles during the day, while allowing 150 vehicles at night. We’d have thought the opposite would make more sense, since driving at night is generally more difficult than during daylight hours. But perhaps the logic is that the streets are less crowded at night, whereas daytime is a more target-rich environment.
We’ve been harping on this page over and over about the potential for unintended consequences from the push to remove AM radio from the infotainment systems of modern cars, particularly from electrically noisy EVs. Our position has been that as outmoded and generally unloved as AM radio may be, it still serves the purpose of providing broad access to news and information in the event of an emergency. As if to prove that point, part of the response to the tragic Maui wildfires has been
the deployment of four RadioSTAT AM transmitters
, to keep survivors in Lahaina apprised of the latest relief effort news. The transmitters are basically a shack-in-a-box configuration that can be set up quickly by one person. They’re only around 10 watts, so their range is limited; they’re actually marketed for use with roadside signs that advise you to tune to a certain frequency for traffic or weather information. But this seems like a great alternate use case for them, and a fantastic example of why AM radio really should be considered critical infrastructure.
Speaking of noise, if your listening tastes run to the white (or brown, or pink) variety,
it looked for a while last week like Spotify was not your friend
. The streaming service is apparently not happy with the increasing number of creators whose channels offer nothing but noise, which a lot of people depend on to help manage anxiety, fight tinnitus, or even just mask out background noise to get a good night’s sleep. The company seems to find it hard to turn a profit on content like this, to the tune of a $38 million annual loss. We honestly can’t see why this would be so; at first we thought there might be extra costs for storing such content, since white noise isn’t appreciably compressible. But that seems overly techie, so it probably has a more business-y reason, like rights or royalties. Either way, that’s pretty serious money, enough that the company was seriously considering banning noise channels altogether. For some reason they didn’t, though, so your favorite fans-blowing, waterfall-splashing channels are safe for now.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from our friends at TVCOG, the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, New York. We visited the hackerspace
way back in 2015
and were very impressed with the hybrid model they employed of combining a hackerspace with a tech incubator. So when we got word of
an upcoming TVCOG hackathon
, we just had to get the word out. We can say with great confidence that
TVCOG really knows how to put on a hackathon
, so if you’re going to be in the area the second weekend in October, get yourself over to the Quackenbush Building in downtown Troy and get hacking.
And finally, if like us you’re not a welder, but occasionally try to hot-glue pieces of metal together in the garage, you might want to take a few minutes to watch
a video that’ll scare the pants off you
. “The Top 5 Ways to Die While Welding” is a bit of a
Scared Straight!
intervention that’ll get you thinking before picking up that MIG torch. We were prepared to laugh off most of these warnings, having suffered nothing worse than a few little burns for all our many minutes of welding experience. But no longer — welding is a dangerous business if you don’t respect the tools and use a little common sense. We’ll let you enjoy the decidedly Aussie presentation and make up your own mind about how much of a death trap each proposed scenario actually is, but we’ll tell you this: we’ll always make sure we know
exactly
where the WD-40 can is from now on. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676517",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T00:44:49",
"content": "For those interested, but short on time, a quick summary of the welding risks in the video:– Don’t use brake cleaner.– Always wear gloves.– Don’t weld with wet gloves.– Don’t touch your forehead with the rod... | 1,760,372,188.62264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/card-io-is-a-credit-card-sized-open-source-ecg-monitor/ | Card/IO Is A Credit Card-Sized, Open Source ECG Monitor | Robin Kearey | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"biomedical engineering",
"ecg",
"ESP32-S3"
] | Of all the electrical signals generated by the human body, those coming from the heart are probably the most familiar to the average person. And because it’s also quite simple to implement the required sensors, it makes sense that electrocardiogram (ECG) machines are a popular choice among introductory medical electronics projects. [Dániel Buga], for instance, designed
a compact ECG system the size of a credit card
, cleverly dubbed Card/IO, that clearly demonstrates how to implement a single-lead ECG.
Although obviously not a medical-grade instrument, it still contains all the basic components that make up a proper biosignal sensing system. First, there are the sensing pads, which sense the voltage difference between the user’s two thumbs and simultaneously cancel their common-mode voltage with a technique called
Right Leg Driving
(RLD). The differential signal then goes through a low-pass filter to remove high-frequency noise, after which it enters an ADS1291 ECG analog front-end chip.
The ADS1291 contains a delta-sigma analog-to-digital converter as well as an SPI bus to communicate with the main processor. [Dániel] chose an ESP32-S3, programmed in Rust, to interface with the SPI bus and drive a 1″ OLED display that shows the digitized ECG signal. It also runs the user interface, which is operated using the ECG sensing pads: if you touch them for less than five seconds, the device goes into menu mode and the two pads become buttons to scroll through the different options.
All source code, as well as KiCad files for the board, can be found on the project’s GitHub page. If you’re just getting started in the biosensing field, you might also want check out
this slightly more advanced project
that includes lots of relevant safety information. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676448",
"author": "Anders Nielsen",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T20:33:04",
"content": "Nice project! Guess I have the excuse I need to upgrade to KiCAD 7 – gotta see how the solder-on-daughterboard is done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,188.263807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/text-compression-gets-weirdly-efficient-with-llms/ | Text Compression Gets Weirdly Efficient With LLMs | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"compression",
"LLM",
"lossless compression",
"lossy compression",
"neural network",
"text compression",
"winzip"
] | It used to be that memory and storage space were so precious and so limited of a resource that handling nontrivial amounts of text was a serious problem. Text compression was a highly practical application of computing power.
Today it might be a solved problem, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t attract new or unusual solutions. [Fabrice Bellard] released
ts_zip
which uses Large Language Models (LLM) to attain text compression ratios higher than any other tool can offer.
LLMs are the technology behind
natural language AIs
, and applying them in this way seems effective. The tradeoff? Unlike typical compression tools, the
lossless
decompression part isn’t exactly guaranteed when an LLM is involved. Lossy compression methods are in fact quite useful. JPEG compression, for example, is a good example of discarding data that isn’t readily perceived by humans to make a smaller file, but that isn’t usually applied to text. If you absolutely require lossless compression, [Fabrice] has that covered with
NNCP
, a neural-network powered lossless data compressor.
Do neural networks and LLMs sound far too serious and complicated for your text compression needs? As long as you don’t mind a mild amount of definitely noticeable data loss, check out [Greg Kennedy]’s
Lossy Text Compression
which simply, brilliantly, and amusingly uses a thesaurus instead of some fancy algorithms. Yep, it just swaps longer words for shorter ones. Perhaps not the best solution for every need, but between that and [Fabrice]’s brilliant work we’re confident there’s something for everyone who craves some novelty with their text compression.
[Photo by
Matthew Henry
from
Burst
] | 66 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676391",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T17:10:53",
"content": "Sacré Fabrice ! Après les images, maintenant le texte ! Il a encore cassé Internet :-P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6676967",
"author": "L... | 1,760,372,188.205321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/turning-soviet-electronics-into-a-nixie-tube-clock/ | Turning Soviet Electronics Into A Nixie Tube Clock | Donald Papp | [
"clock hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"clock",
"nixie",
"retro",
"soviet",
"teardown",
"vintage"
] | Sometimes you find something that looks really cool but doesn’t work, but that’s an opportunity to give it a new life. That was the case when [Davis DeWitt] got his hands on
a weird Soviet-era box with four original Nixie tubes inside
. He tears the unit down, shows off the engineering that went into it and explains what it took to give the unit a new life as a clock.
Each digit is housed inside a pluggable unit. If a digit failed, a technician could simply swap it out.
A lot can happen over decades of neglect. That was clear when [Davis] discovered every single bolt had seized in place and had to be carefully drilled out. But Nixie tubes don’t really go bad, so he was hopeful that the process would pay off.
The unit is a modular display of some kind, clearly meant to plug into a larger assembly. Inside the unit, each digit is housed in its own modular plug with a single Nixie tube at the front, a small neon bulb for a decimal point, and a bunch of internal electronics. Bringing up the rear is a card edge connector.
Continues after the break…
Nixie tubes require around 170 V to light up, and they usually have a single anode and ten cathodes, one for each digit. There
are modern driver boards that make Nixie projects a snap
, but [Davis] discovered this unusual device had
dual
-anode tubes. In a dual-anode tube, each cathode — there are five in all, not ten — connects to two digits each. Which of the two lights up is determined by which anode is active. One anode connects to the even numbers, and one to the odd numbers. [Davis] ended up swapping the tubes for single-anode versions and putting the original dual-anode versions somewhere safe.
The result is a sturdy piece of computing history (like
other Soviet-era display components
we have seen) whose original purpose might be lost, but has gained a new life as a functional clock. You can watch [Davis] walk through the whole process in the video embedded just under the page break. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676335",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T14:29:44",
"content": "I’m surprised that a Soviet timer would have English on the face plate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6676353",
... | 1,760,372,188.040176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/explore-ffmpeg-from-the-comfort-of-your-browser/ | Explore FFmpeg From The Comfort Of Your Browser | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"codec",
"compression",
"encoding",
"ffmpeg",
"video",
"web based"
] | If you’re looking to manipulate video, FFmpeg is one of the most powerful tools out there. But with this power comes a considerable degree of complexity, and a learning curve that looks suspiciously like a brick wall. To try and make this incredible tool a bit less obtuse, [Sam Lavigne] has developed a
web interface that lets you play around with FFmpeg’s vast collection of audio and video filters
.
To try out a filter, you just need to select one from the window on the left and it will pop up in the central workspace. Here, the input, output, and any enabled filters will show up as boxes that can be virtually “wired” together. Selecting a filter will populate its options on the right hand side, with sliders and input boxes that allow you to play around with their parameters. When you want to see the final result, just click “Render Preview” and wait a bit.
If there was any downside, it seems like
whatever box the site is running on
the overhead of running in the browser doesn’t provide it a lot of horsepower. Even with the relatively low resolution of the demo videos available, the console output at the top of the page shows FFmpeg sometimes flirts with a processing speed measured in single-digit frames per second. Still, for a filter playground, it gets the job done. Perhaps the best part of the whole tool is that you can then copy your properly formatted command right out of the browser window and into your terminal so you can put it to work on your local files.
FFmpeg is one of those programs you should really be familiar with because it often proves useful in unexpected ways. The ability to manipulate audio and video with just a few keystrokes can really come in handy, and we’ve seen this open-source tool used for everything from
compressing podcasts onto floppy disks
to
overlaying real-time environmental data onto a video stream
. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676280",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T11:07:10",
"content": "I spent a good hour googling how to recode a movie so it had the right playback speed. Somehow I ripped it (from a legally owned DVD) with 25fps, but the movie had to play at 23.94 fps to be the right length... | 1,760,372,188.746311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/linux-on-a-commodore-64/ | Linux On A Commodore 64 | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"linux",
"RISC-V"
] | We are used to seeing Linux running on almost everything, but we were a bit taken aback to see [semu-c64] running
Linux on a Commodore 64
. But between the checked-out user name and the caveat that: “it runs
extremely slowly
and it needs a RAM Expansion Unit”, one can already start piecing together what’s happening here.
The machine running Linux is really a RISC-V32. It just so happens that the CPU is virtual, with the C64 pretending it is a bigger machine. The boot-up appears to take hours, so this is in no way practical, even though the comment is that optimization might be able to get a 10X speed up. It would still be about as slow as you can imagine.
To further add a layer of abstraction, the code hasn’t run yet on real Commodore hardware. Instead, it is running on an emulator. The emulator has “warp” mode to run faster than a real machine, and it is still slow. So think about that before you rush out to volunteer to boot this on your real hardware.
Tricks like this fall into the talking dog category. If a dog can talk, it isn’t that you think it will have something important to say. You just marvel that it can do it at all. Still, we get it. We spend a lot of time doing things at least as pointless. But at least it is fun!
Maybe emulate the
whole thing in VR
? Or maybe write some virtualization code for the C64 so you can emulate a Linux box and a
quantum computer
simultaneously. | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676242",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T08:04:55",
"content": "Could have done it on a ‘555.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6676730",
"author": "Selçuk",
"timestamp": "2023-08-28T16:53:51",
... | 1,760,372,188.326872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/accurate-cycle-counting-on-rp2040-micropython/ | Accurate Cycle Counting On RP2040 MicroPython | Matthew Carlson | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"dma",
"micropython",
"pwm",
"rp2040"
] | The RP2040 is a gorgeous little chip with a well-defined datasheet and a fantastic price tag. Two SDKs are even offered: one based on C and the other MicroPython. More experienced MCU wranglers will likely reach for the C variant, but Python does bring a certain speed when banging out a quick project or proof of concept. Perhaps that’s why [Jeremy Bentham] ported his
RP2040-based vehicle speedometer to MicroPython
.
The two things that make that difficult are that MicroPython tries to be pretty generic, which means some hackery is needed to talk to the low-level hardware, and that MicroPython doesn’t have a reputation for accurate cycle counting. In this case, the low-level hardware is the PWM peripheral. He details the underlying mechanism in
more detail in the C version
. On the RP2040, the PWM module can count pulse edges on an input. However, you must start and stop it accurately to calculate the amount of time captured. From there, it’s just edges divided by time. For this, the DMA system is pulled in. A DMA request can be triggered once the PWM counter rolls over. The other PWM channel acts as a timer, and when the timer expires, the DMA request turns off the counter. This works great for fast signals but is inaccurate for slow signals (below 1kHz). So, a reciprocal or time-interval system is included, where the time between edges is captured instead of counting the number of edges in a period,
What’s interesting here is how the hardware details are wrapped neatly into pico_devices.py. The uctypes module from MicroPython allows access to MMIO devices such as DMA and PWM. The
code is available on GitHub
. Of course, [Jeremy] is no stranger to hacking around on the RP2040, as he has previously
rolled his own WiFi driver for the Pico W
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676211",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T05:28:54",
"content": "To get the best of both worlds (pulse counting and edge counting), you can capture both the number of edges and their timestamps. Then for every time you want an update of the frequency, divide the number of ... | 1,760,372,188.800328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/going-to-extremes-to-block-youtube-ads/ | Going To Extremes To Block YouTube Ads | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"adblock",
"dns",
"google",
"man-in-the-middle",
"network",
"pfsense",
"user experience",
"youtube"
] | Many users of YouTube feel that the quality of the service has been decreasing in recent years — the platform offers up bizarre recommendations, fails to provide relevant search results, and continues to shove an increasing amount of ads into the videos themselves. For shareholders of Google’s parent company, though, this is a feature and not a bug; and since shareholder opinion is valued much more highly than user opinion, the user experience will likely continue to decline. But if you’re willing to put a bit of effort in
you can stop a large chunk of YouTube ads from making it to your own computers and smartphones
.
[Eric] is setting up this adblocking system on his entire network, so running something like Pi-hole on a single-board computer wouldn’t have the performance needed. Instead, he’s installing the
pfSense
router software on a mini PC. To start, [Eric] sets up a pretty effective generic adblocker in pfSense to replace his Pi-hole, which does an excellent job, but YouTube is a different beast when it comes to serving ads especially on Android and iOS apps. One initial attempt to at least reduce ads was to subtly send YouTube traffic through a VPN to a country with fewer ads, in this case Italy, but this solution didn’t pan out long-term.
A few other false starts later, all of which are documented in detail by [Eric] for those following along, and eventually he settled on a solution which is effectively a man-in-the-middle attack between any device on his network and the Google ad servers. His router is still not powerful enough to decode this information on the fly but his trick to get around that is to effectively corrupt the incoming advertising data with a few bad bytes so they aren’t able to be displayed on any devices on the network. It’s an effective and unique solution, and one that Google hopefully won’t be able to patch anytime soon. There are some other ways to improve the miserable stock YouTube experience that we have seen as well,
like bringing back the dislike button
.
Thanks to [Jack] for the tip! | 109 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676177",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T03:11:26",
"content": "Pi-Hole, ublockorigin, noscript, adblocker pro.Different tools for different devices, plus I need protection when I’m away from my home network.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,188.9675 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/gta-6-hacker-found-to-be-teen-with-amazon-fire-stick-in-small-town-hotel-room/ | GTA 6 Hacker Found To Be Teen With Amazon Fire Stick In Small Town Hotel Room | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Amazon Fire",
"bicester",
"Fire stick"
] | International cybercrime, as portrayed by the movies and mass media, is a high-stakes game of shadowy government agencies and state-sponsored hacking groups. Hollywood casting will wheel out a character in a black hoodie and shades, probably carrying a metallic briefcase as they board an executive jet.
These things aren’t supposed to happen in a cheap hotel room in your insignificant hometown, but
the story of a British teen being nabbed leaking the closely guarded details of
Grand Theft Auto 6
in a Travelodge room in Bicester, Oxfordshire
brings the action from the global into the local for a Hackaday scribe. Bicester is a small town best known for a tacky outlet mall and as a commuter dormitory stop on the line to London Marylebone, it’s not exactly Vice City.
The teen in question is one [Arion Kurtaj], breathlessly reported by the BBC as part of the Lapsus$ gang, which is a sensationalist way of talking up a group of kids expert at computer infiltration but seemingly inept at being criminals. After compromising British telcos he was exposed by another group and nabbed by the authorities, before being moved to the hotel for his own safety.
Here the story becomes more interesting for Hackaday readers, because though denied access to a computer he purchased an Amazon Fire stick presumably at the Argos in the Sainsburys next door, and plugged it into the Travelodge TV. Using this he was able to access cloud services, we’re guessing a virtual Linux environment or similar, before continuing to compromise further organisations including Rockstar Games to leak that GTA 6 footage. He’s yet to be sentenced, but we’re guessing that he’ll continue to spend some time at His Majesty’s pleasure.
The moment of excitement in one’s hometown and the sensationalist reporting aside, we can’t help feeling sad that a teen with that level of talent evidently wasn’t given the support and encouragement by Oxfordshire’s education system necessary to put it to better use. Let’s hope when he’s older and wiser the teenage conviction won’t prevent him from having a useful career in the field. | 115 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676142",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T00:10:07",
"content": "Not enough male teachers for these lads to confide in and see as role models. If I knew him I’d have helped him to really shine, but to do so with lawful opportunities. What a waste.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,189.126985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/kitchen-steganography-with-turmeric/ | Kitchen Steganography With Turmeric | Al Williams | [
"Art",
"Science"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"invisibile ink",
"kids",
"SPICE",
"steganography",
"stem"
] | It is a classic rite of passage for nerdy kids to write secret messages using lemon juice. If you somehow missed that, you can’t see the writing until you heat the paper up with, say, an old-fashioned light bulb. If you were a true budding spy, you’d write a boring normal letter with wide spacing and then fill in the blanks between the lines with your important secrets written in juice. This is a form of steganography — encoding secret messages by hiding them in plain sight. [Randomona] shares a different technique that seems to be way cooler than lemon juice using, of all things,
turmeric
. This isn’t like the invisible ink of our childhood.
That’s probably a good thing. We doubt an LED bulb makes enough heat to develop our old secret messages. [Ranomona’s] ink doesn’t use heat, but it uses a developer. That means you must make two preparations: the ink and the developer. The results are amazing, though, as shown in the video below.
The principle relies on turmeric’s ability to act like litmus paper. Normally yellow, it turns red in contact with alkalines. Adding acid makes it yellow again. The ink, then, is any sort of viscous alkaline. For example, [Randomona] uses either baking soda or washing powder mixed with a bit of water. Once dry, your secret is safe!
The idea is to use turmeric and alcohol as a developer. In this case, the alcohol is in the form of hand sanitizer. You can get away with water, too, but the results won’t be nearly as impressive. Once you have both solutions, the rest is all arts and crafts. The post has several ideas for neat projects, including using a yellow marker to create a message that transforms when painted with the developer.
A great project to share with a kid, especially one who might be interested in art or chemistry. We don’t suggest writing your passwords with washing powder, but we wondered if we could hack an inkjet printer to produce blank pages of secret messages.
This is probably easier than
using a UV laser for secret writing
. If you really want secret messages, maybe create an
invisible QR code
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676121",
"author": "Anders Nielsen",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T22:00:28",
"content": "Sending messages to the recipient’s Apache log file using GET variables from a public computer is still a favorite of mine..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,189.415653 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/impulse-buying-a-3040-cnc-machine-what-could-go-wrong/ | Impulse Buying A 3040 CNC Machine, What Could Go Wrong? | Donald Papp | [
"cnc hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"3040",
"bent shafts",
"cnc",
"repair",
"restore",
"router"
] | [joekutz] made an impulse purchase of a CNC machine. It was a 3040 CNC that looked reasonably complete and had an attractive price, what could possibly go wrong? As it happens, [joekutz] really didn’t know what he was in for. Sometimes the price is good, but you pay in other ways. But where some would see defeat, [joekutz] sees an opportunity to
document the restoration
.
Dial indicators are useful tools for measuring how straight some parts aren’t.
The 3040 are
relatively cheap and simple CNC machines
that have been available from a variety of overseas retailers for years. They have 30 cm by 40 cm beds (hence the name) and while there are many variations, they all work about the same. [joekutz] expected that getting his up and running and converted to open source would be a fun weekend project, but it ended up taking far longer than that. In fact, it turns out that the machine was damaged in surprising and unexpected ways.
[joekutz] has a series of videos demonstrating the process of diagnosing and repairing the various things wrong with this device. In the first video,
he dismantles the machine
and discusses the next steps. In the second video, he takes some time to
repair some dial indicators
that will be critical for measuring the various things wrong with the CNC parts. Video number three delves into
finding out the horrible things wrong
with the machine, and the fourth is where repairs begin,
including bending shafts and sanding blocks
back into service.
Those videos are embedded below, and while the machine isn’t quite restored yet, progress is promising. We’ve seen
easy and effective upgrades for such CNC machines
before, but if you happen to be in more of a repair and restore situation, give [joekutz]’s work a look because it might just save you some time and frustration. | 46 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676074",
"author": "jason m",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T17:08:44",
"content": "I had one of those, designed a usb grbl to parallel converter for it and the upgrade to a 6040. Same design just bigger",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,189.767515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/how-do-they-do-that/ | How Do They Do That? | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Rants"
] | [
"hacker ethic",
"hackers",
"sharing"
] | Last week’s Chaos Communication Camp is kinda a big deal: 6,000 hackers all out in a field all need power, food, drink, networking, and of course, sewage in the middle of nowhere. Oh yeah, plus video services on multiple simultaneous stages, custom phone infrastructure, a postal service, and even a diesel train. How is that even possible to run with only volunteers? How do they even
know
how to run something this scale?
My wife asked me this question while we were driving up to Berlin, and the answer is of course the same as it is to “Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice.
But it’s not just practice. It’s also passing down the lessons learned to the next generation, making procedures that are not 100% dependent on the people doing the jobs, but can be passed on to the next volunteer willing to pick up the torch.
And then I was interviewing [Jens Ohlig] and [Mitch Altman] about
the early days of the second wave hackerspaces in America
for the podcast. (Some great interviews – go check it out!) The central story there is essentially the same: the critical missing ingredient that lead to the blossoming of US hackerspaces was simply a set of instructions and design principles – drawing on the experience of established hackerspaces.
Sharing information is a fundamental cornerstone of the hacker ethic, and it gives the next hacker a leg up. Contributes to the global hive mind. And it makes things possible that would otherwise seem impossible. Pushing the hacker state-of-the-art is what Hackaday is all about, and we’re used to thinking of it in terms of a particular microcontroller library, but seeing how the same sharing makes impossible logistics possible was inspirational. Don’t be afraid to start small and iterate – and take good notes.
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
! | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676040",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T14:57:40",
"content": "Human nature includes people that want to have the power and glory in the recognition of others. Your essay shows the folly of putting oneself in a position that excludes coop... | 1,760,372,189.312365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/2023-cyberdeck-challenge-koat0-portable-terminal/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: KOAT0 Portable Terminal | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge",
"cyberdeck",
"raspberry pi",
"vfd"
] | We’ve had cyberdecks as part of the scenery for long enough now that there are a series of common elements that appear across many different builds. The Raspberry Pi, for instance, or the mechanical keyboard, with a 3D printed body. [RobsonCuto]’s KOAT0 Portable Terminal has some of those in a particularly slim and neat design. The orange and grey color scheme is great really pops. Where this deck really shines though, is the display. He’s eschewed LCDs or OLEDs, even CRTs,
and gone for an unusual choice in a dot-matrix VFD
.
The VFD in question is commonly available on AliExpress where it appears to be used for displaying Chinese characters. It’s not an obvious choice for a cyberdeck, so once the tidy-looking case is complete the real challenge in this project becomes how to drive it from the Pi. To that end, he appears to have some kind of text output working but still needs to complete a framebuffer driver. We applaud the effort and we really like the display. We’re curious as to how its meager resolution might best be used in a Linux device.
All in all, this is a ‘deck we’d be happy to use ourselves if it were an option. We particularly like the on-the-arm style of use, and we’re pretty sure it’s the first time we’ve seen one of these displays on these pages. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675996",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T11:30:36",
"content": "Thanks for sharing Jenny! Coud you tag it as part of the ‘deck contest?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6675998",
"author": "OD_1972",
"timestamp... | 1,760,372,189.680206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/26/microsoft-discontinues-kinect-again/ | Microsoft Discontinues Kinect, Again | Donald Papp | [
"Kinect hacks",
"News"
] | [
"azure",
"depth camera",
"discontinued",
"Kinect",
"microsoft"
] | The Kinect is a depth-sensing camera peripheral originally designed as a accessory for the Xbox gaming console, and it quickly found its way into hobbyist and research projects. After a second version, Microsoft abandoned the idea of using it as a motion sensor for gaming and it was discontinued. The technology did however end up evolving as a sensor into what eventually became the Azure Kinect DK (spelling out ‘developer kit’ presumably made the name too long.)
Sadly, it also has now been discontinued
.
The original Kinect was a pretty neat piece of hardware for the price, and a few years ago
we noted that the newest version was considerably smaller and more capable
. It had a depth sensor with selectable field of view for different applications, a high-resolution RGB video camera that integrated with the depth stream, integrated IMU and microphone array, and it worked to leverage machine learning for better processing and easy integration with Azure. It even provided a simple way to sync multiple units together for unified processing of a scene.
In many ways
the Kinect gave us all a glimpse of the future
because at the time, a depth-sensing camera with a synchronized video stream was just not a normal thing to get one’s hands on. It was also one of the first consumer hardware items to contain a microphone array, which allowed it to better record voices, localize them, and isolate them from other noise sources in a room.
It led to many, many projects
and we hope there are still more to come, because Microsoft might not be making them anymore, but they are licensing out the technology to companies who want to build similar devices. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675999",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T11:49:02",
"content": "Could it be that the core patents are expiring soon and soon the global market will be saturated with a glut of cheap clones ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,189.370394 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/bypassing-bitlocker-with-a-logic-analzyer/ | Bypassing Bitlocker With A Logic Analzyer | Dave Rowntree | [
"Security Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"bitlocker",
"dislocker",
"fuse",
"logic analyser",
"spi",
"TPM"
] | Security Engineer [Guillaume Quéré] spends the day penetration testing systems for their employer and has pointed out and successfully exploited a
rather obvious weakness
in the
BitLocker full volume encryption
system, which as the linked article says, allows one to simply sniff the traffic between the discrete TPM chip and CPU via an SPI bus. The way Bitlocker works is to use a private key stored in the TPM chip to encrypt the full volume key that in turn was used to encrypt the volume data. This is all done by low-level device drivers in the Windows kernel and is transparent to the user.
TPM chip pins too small? Just find something else on the bus!
The whole point of BitLocker was to prevent access to data on the secured volume in the event of a physical device theft or loss. Simply pulling the drive and dropping it into a non-secured machine or some other adaptor would not provide any data without the key stored by the TPM. However, since that key must pass as plaintext from the TPM to the CPU during the boot sequence, [Guillaume] shows that it is quite straightforward — with very low-cost tools and free software — to simply locate and sniff out this TPM-to-CPU transaction and decode the datastream and locate the key. Using little more than a cheapo logic analyser hooked up to some conveniently large pins on a nearby flash chip (because the SCK, MISO, and MOSI pins are shared with the TPM) the simple TIS was decoded enough to lock onto the bytes of the TPM frame. This could then be decoded with a
TPM stream decoder web app
, courtesy of the
TPM2-software community group
. The command to look for is the TPM_CC.Unseal which is the request from the CPU to the TPM to send over that key we’re interested in. After that just grabbing and decoding the TPM response frame will immediately reveal the goods.
What you do next is a matter of convenience, but most security and forensics types would already be sitting tight on a low-level disk image file of the target volume. By using the Linux
xxd
command to turn that 32-byte hex dump key into a binary key file, the
dislocker-fuse FUSE module
can create a dynamically decrypted virtual filesystem that you can just mount. If you wanted, you could then write the decrypted volume data to a fresh disk, drop it into a machine, and boot the operating system. You likely couldn’t log in, but as [Guillaume] points out, by overwriting the sticky keys app (sethc.exe) with cmd.exe, you can get to a command prompt just by banging the shift key five times. Good times!
If you actually need TPM support for an older system, in order to install Windows 11 (if you really must) then
you could always just make your own.
Also, since the LPC interface is on many a motherboard, why not leverage it and
use it to hang an ISA bus adaptor
to plug in that old classic Soundblaster card you couldn’t bear to junk? | 27 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675951",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T05:47:20",
"content": "Hmm, old news?https://labs.withsecure.com/publications/sniff-there-leaks-my-bitlocker-key",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675973",
"author":... | 1,760,372,189.627186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/qspice-picks-up-where-ltspice-left-us/ | QSPICE Picks Up Where LTSpice Left Us | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"c++",
"LTSpice",
"Mike Engelhardt",
"mixed-mode",
"power",
"Qorvo",
"simulation",
"SPICE",
"verilog"
] | [Mike Engelhardt] is a name that should be very familiar to the hardcore electronics nerd. [Mike] is the developer responsible for LTSpice, which is quite likely the most widely used spice-compatible simulator in the free software domain. When you move away from digital electronics and the comfort of software with its helpful IDEs and toolchains, and dip a wary toe into the murky grey waters of analog or power electronics, LTSpice is your best friend. And, like all best friends, it’s a bit quirky, but it always has your back. Sadly, LTSpice development seems to have stalled some years ago, but luckily for us [Mike] has
been busy on the successor, QSpice
, under the watchful eye of
Qorvo
.
It does look in its early stages, but from a useability point of view, it’s much improved over LTSpice. Performance is excellent (based on this scribe’s limited testing while mobile.) Gone (thankfully!) is the uncommon verb-noun usage paradigm — replaced with a more usual cut-n-paste flow. Visually it still kind of looks like LTspice in places, but nicer with a clear and uncluttered design that gets straight to the point. Internally, the simulation engine has improved in speed and accuracy, as well as adding native support for modern semiconductor types, such as wide bandgap materials like SiC. Noted is that this updated software has a particular emphasis on power integrity and noise analysis, which are sticky problems that have a big impact on modern high-power systems.
Particularly of interest is native support for behavioral modeling using Verilog and C++, making QSpice a true mixed-mode simulator. This will help speed up many classes of non-trivial simulation, both in terms of simulation time and development time. We really do need to stress that this is a major update on LTSpice, and we will definitely be playing with it a lot in the coming months.
Acquiring a download link requires email details to be sent via
this web form
, but this just takes you
here
. Just saying :) Now all we need is a model converter to import LTSpice schematic/symbol files and we’ll be very happy.
We cover simulation tools and tutorials a fair bit because these are important subjects. Here’s
a little thing about LTSpice
. Then there is the excellent QUCS and related
QUCS studio
. Finally, let’s show a
Python-based simulator
that could be helpful in some situations.
via
eetimes
. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675929",
"author": "Rich Holmes",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T03:04:12",
"content": "It’s a shame it’s Windows only. LTSpice runs under WINE and maybe QSPICE does too, but I’ll hold off on trying until I hear someone more WINE-savvy than I has gotten it to work.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,372,189.477227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/wireless-data-connections-through-light/ | Wireless Data Connections Through Light | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"data transmission",
"led",
"li-fi",
"lighting",
"solar",
"solar cell",
"visible light",
"wireless"
] | When wired networking or data connections can’t be made, for reasons of distance or practicality, various wireless protocols are available to us. Wi-Fi is among the most common, at least as far as networking personal computers is concerned, but other methods such as LoRa or Zigbee are available when data rates are low and distances great. All of these methods share one thing in common, though: their use of radio waves to send data. Using other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum is not out of the question, though, and [mircemk] demonstrates
using light as the medium instead of radio
.
Although this isn’t a new technology (“Li-Fi” was first introduced in 2011) it’s not one that we see often. It does have a few benefits though, including high rates of data transmission. In this system, [mircemk] is using an LED to send the information and a solar cell as the receiver. The LED is connected to a simple analog modulator circuit, which takes an audio signal as its input and sends the data to the light. The solar cell sends its data, with the help of a capacitor, straight to the aux input on a radio which is used to convert the signal back to audio.
Some of the other perks of a system like this are seen here as well. The audio is clear even as the light source and solar cell are separated at a fairly significant distance, perhaps ten meters or so. This might not seem like a lot compared to Wi-Fi, but another perk shown is that this method can be used within existing lighting systems since the modulation is not detectable by the human eye. Outside of a home or office setting, systems like these can also be used to send data much greater distances as well,
as long as the LED is replaced with a laser
. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675898",
"author": "Feinfinger (M-x totally-tame-mode)",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T23:20:57",
"content": "https://hackaday.com/2005/06/13/ronja-optical-data-link/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675901",
"author": "bw... | 1,760,372,189.842948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/rocket-range-australia-1950s-style/ | Rocket Range Australia, 1950s Style | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Space"
] | [
"Australia",
"jindivik",
"test range",
"woomera"
] | The Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia just released a digitized version of a 1957 film documentary on Australia’s rocket research back in the day ( see video below the break ). The
Woomera test range
is an isolated place about 500 km northwest of Adelaide ( 2021 population 132 ) and hosts a small village, an airstrip, and launch facilities. In the Salisbury suburb of Adelaide, a former WW2 munitions factory complex was repurposed as a research center for rockets and long range weapons.
The documentary showcases a wide variety of state-of-the-art technologies from the late 1950s. As ancient as those appear today, a lot of the basic concepts haven’t changed — careful choreography of the launch countdown sequence of events, the antenna and radio systems to receive and store rocket telemetry, photographic records of the rocket in flight, and post-flight analyses of everything to fix problems and improve your designs. They tried to do as much as possible at the Salisbury campus, because as the narrator notes, it’s expensive to work at the distant test range, a concept which is still a consideration today. There’s even a glimpse of the residents’ leisure life in the barren village. It was a different time, to say the least.
We also note the
GAF Jindivik
remote controlled target drone aircraft in one segment, a project that was decades ahead of its time. It’s also interesting that the Jindivik wasn’t flown by direct commands like a traditional RC model airplane we’re familiar with today. Rather, it carried an on-board autopilot which received commands from the pilot on the ground — a subtle distinction but foreshadows the autonomy of modern remotely piloted drones.
If you like technology history, then you should definitely watch this video. You might not remember, but Australia was the third country to launch a satellite into space ( after the USSR and the USA ).
WRESAT
lifted off from the Woomera test site at 2:19 PM on 29 Nov 1967 atop a modified Redstone rocket. And Woomera is once again being used to launch payloads into space, as we covered in
this 2020 article
. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675876",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T20:50:27",
"content": "I can smell the burning Koalas!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675963",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T08:01:27",... | 1,760,372,189.886997 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/hackaday-prize-2023-jumperless-the-jumperless-jumperboard/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Jumperless, The Jumperless Jumperboard | Dave Rowntree | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"CH446Q",
"jumper board",
"KiCAD",
"led",
"python",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"solderless breadboard",
"wokwi"
] | Jumperless is a jumperless breadboard
with multicolored LED visualization of signals in real-time. Sounds like magic? This beautifully executed entry to the 2023 Hackaday Prize by [Kevin Santo Cappuccio] uses a boatload of CH446Q analog switch ICs to perform the interconnect between the Raspberry Pi Pico header and the jumper board (or breadboard if you prefer.)
This will add some significant resistance, but for low currents and digital logic levels, this should not be a major concern. Additionally, there are two DAC channels and four ADC channels to help break out of the digital
world, which could make for some very interesting non-trivial applications.
The visualization of the Pico header signals is solved neatly with a tiny wishbone-shaped PCB that is reverse-mounted to the back of the main board to illuminate upwards. The masking of the labels is done by using copper to mask off the individual signals and solder mask to draw in the legends. This PCB-level hacking is simply wonderful to see. The PCBs are designed with KiCAD, the design files for which you can find
here
. It appears however that [Kevin]
needed to have the spring clips for the jumper board custom-made
, so you’d need to contact them if you needed to get some for a build.
On the software side of things, [Kevin] currently recommends using
Wokwi
, to run the Arduino stack applications and to perform the signal routing to the virtual jumper board. You can follow
how it works internally here
. A
Python-based bridge application
runs on the host computer, which takes care of programming the interconnects as they are constructed, which looking at the demo in the embedded video, appears to ‘just work.’
One word of caution though — the bridge app uses Python requests and Beautiful Soup to scrape the Wowki project page, which could potentially make it vulnerable to getting out-of-sync with updates, so hopefully [Kevin] will keep track of this and keep them in sync.
Need some breadboarding tips?
We got you covered
. Talking of bread,
here’s an 8-bit TTL breadboard-based CPU in a breadbin
.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675859",
"author": "Machsimski",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T19:03:20",
"content": "nice chip for a syntrx kind of arp 2500 synthesizer reissue…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6675892",
"author": "GotNoTime",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,189.939042 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/hackaday-podcast-233-chandrayaan-on-the-moon-cyberdecks-hackerspaces-born-at-a-german-computer-camp/ | Hackaday Podcast 233: Chandrayaan On The Moon, Cyberdecks, Hackerspaces Born At A German Computer Camp | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos experimented with the old adage that brevity is the soul of wit. That’s right; this week, they’re all Quick Hacks, and that’s to make room for a special series of interviews that Elliot recorded at CCCamp with the pillars of US hackerspace creation. This one’s really special, do have a listen.
We still made room for the news this week: India launched Chandrayaan-3, which combines an orbiter, lander, and rover all in one. Then it’s on to the What’s That Sound results show, and while Kristina did not get it right, she did correctly identify it as being used in Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, as did one of the guessers who identified it as the cowbell sound from a Roland 808.
Then it’s on to the (quick) hacks, where we alternated for once just to keep things interesting. This week, Elliot is into 3D printing a clay extruder and then printing pottery with that, z-direction conductive tape, and the humble dipole antenna. Kristina is more into cyberdecks for the young and old, a reusable plant monitor, and 3D printing some cool coasters.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download and savor at your leisure
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 233 Show Notes:
News:
Chandrayaan-3: Historic India Moon mission sends new photos of lunar surface – BBC News
India Launched A Moon Orbiter, Lander, And Rover All In One Shot With Chandrayaan-2
“Hacker space” movement sought for U.S.
Hacker Space Design Patterns
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [Tjørnild] who correctly guessed the cowbell sound from a Roland 808!
As promised,
here’s Whitney
.
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
3D Printing With Clay, Thanks To Custom Extruder
A Mainframe Computer For The Modern Age
Tiny Spheres Hiding In Your Display
Where Did Your PCB Go Wrong? KiRI Knows
Measuring Planck’s Constant (Again)
The Dipole Antenna Isn’t As Simple As It Appears
Kristina’s Picks:
2023 Cyberdeck Contest: Cyberdeck Red Is Ready For Action
3D-Printed Woven Coasters Save Tabletops In Style
2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: Modular Cyberdeck Creation Kit
2023 Hackaday Prize: A Reusable Plant Monitor
2023 Cyberdeck Contest: A Toddler’s Cyberdeck | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675933",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T03:23:23",
"content": "Usually enjoy the podcast immensely and I did like the early things that Elliot and Kristina covered. But have to admit that I felt like the interview went on for a bit too long. Was hard to maintain inte... | 1,760,372,189.98949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/squid-con-brings-joy-to-all/ | Squid-Con Brings Joy To All | Kristina Panos | [
"Games",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"flexure",
"flexures",
"joy-con",
"joy-cons",
"Nintendo Switch"
] | While we’re always happy to see accessibility aids come into fruition, most of them focus on daily tasks, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what about having some fun? That’s the idea behind [Akaki Kuumeri]’s
accessibly-awesome Joy-Con controller, the Squid-Con
, which provides access to every button with just one hand. It even has tripod and AMPS mounts.
The joysticks themselves are controlled with the thumb and pinky, although some of [Akaki]’s beta testers changed it up a bit. That’s okay, because it’s designed to be comfortable in a variety of positions for either hand. As for the ABXY buttons, those are actuated using 3D-printed arms that connect to a central piece which [Akaki] calls the turbine.
But perhaps the coolest part of this project is the flexures that actuate the shoulder buttons (L, R, zL, and zR) on the controllers. It’s a series of four arms that are actuated by bringing the fingers back toward the palm. If all of this sounds confusing, just check out the video after the break.
We love flexures around here, and we’ve seen them in everything from
cat feeding calendars
to
6-DOF positioners
to
completely new kinds of joysticks
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675647",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T02:24:57",
"content": "More accessibility options for people to be able to play video games is a GOOD thing! I also think ALL video games should have the option for button remapping. There’s really no excuse for the lack o... | 1,760,372,190.078872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/hackaday-prize-2023-ubo-project-building-for-builders/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Ubo Project: Building For Builders | Dave Rowntree | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Raspberry Pi",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"amazon echo dot",
"custom PCB",
"google home",
"led",
"raspberry pi",
"resin printing",
"wood veneer"
] | The
Ubo Pod
by [Mehrdad Majzoobi] is a very highly polished extension pack and enclosure for the Raspberry Pi 4, which shows you how far you can go to turn a bare PCB into something that rivals the hardware offerings from Google and others. Gadgets like the Sonos speakers and Amazon or Google’s covert listening devices (aka Echo, Alexa, or whatever they’re branded as) are fun to play with. Still, the difficulty of hacking custom applications into them and god-forbid adding one’s own extension hardware, makes them fairly closed ecosystems. Add in the
concerns of privacy and data security; they look less and less attractive the closer you look. Luckily the Raspberry Pi and its friends have improved the accessibility to the point where it’s positively easy to create whatever you want with whatever hardware you need, and to that end we think [Mehrdad] has done a splendid job.
The custom top PCB sits below the wooden top surface, hosting a central LCD display with push buttons located around it. Also sitting atop are some IR transmitters and receivers as well as RGB LEDs for the ring lighting. This top PCB acts as a RPi hat, and plugs into an RPi4 below, which then attaches to a side board via some PCB-mounted connectors, matching up with the USB and audio connectors. This board seems to act purely as an interconnect and form-factor adaptor allowing interfaces to be presented more conveniently without needing wires. This makes for a very clean construction. Extensive use of resin printing is shown, with lots of nice details of how to solve problems such as LED diffusion and bleeding. Overall, a very slick and well-executed project, that is giving us a few ideas for our own projects.
This type of project is commonplace on these fair pages, like this
DIY smart speaker
for example. With the supply of pi being still a little difficult to deal with, could
you roll your own or get an alternative
? What about
just using your old mobile phone
?
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675622",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T23:42:59",
"content": "Really nice.Too bad you can’t actually BUY a Pi 4 Yeah, I looked, as I do once in a while.It’s half past time for the hobby and business to move on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,190.034173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/impossible-wifi-on-an-ancient-mac-portable/ | Impossible WiFi On An Ancient Mac Portable | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Mac Portable",
"scsi",
"wifi"
] | The Macintosh Portable was possibly one of the coolest computing devices to be seen with back at the end of the 1980s, providing as it did a Mac in a slightly nicer version of the hefty luggable portables of the day than the PC world could offer. Inside was a mere 68000, but it ran Mac OS system 6 and looked light years ahead of any comparable PC in doing so.
Back in 1989 it wasn’t even the norm for a computer to have built-in Ethernet, and WiFi was still a gleam in the eye of some Dutch engineers, so how has [Joshua Stein] managed
to get his Mac Portable on a wireless network
here in 2023? The answer contains a few surprises.
When seeing a WiFi upgrade for a classic retrocomputer the usual expectation is that it’s done
by emulating a modem connection to the Internet over a serial port
. But this wireless network card is a bit different, it’s a real network card capable of being used for much more than just connecting to the Internet.
We have to admit to not knowing that there were SCSI Ethernet interfaces back in the day, and it’s one of these that he’s created. He’s building on a decade’s work in producing disk emulators for the SCSI bus, and he’s taken the code for a Raspberry Pi Pico version and adapted the SCSI driver part to interface with the onboard WiFi on a Pico W. Altogether it’s a beautiful piece of work, and you can color us impressed. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675586",
"author": "Steve Gunnell",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T22:06:59",
"content": "Dutch engineers? Wasn’t WiFi developed by Australian engineers at CSIRO?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675623",
"author": "Chris",... | 1,760,372,190.365897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/making-electricity-at-the-south-pole/ | Making Electricity At The South Pole | Chris Lott | [
"Engineering",
"Science"
] | [
"antarctica",
"harsh climate",
"McMurdo",
"Power Distribution",
"South Pole"
] | In case you’ve ever wondered how the South Pole research stations are powered, then a recent
blog post,
South Pole Electrical Infrastructure
by anonymous IT engineer [brr] is for you. Among the many issues covered, let’s look at how the electricity is made and, spoiler alert, how the specially formulated AN8 fuel blend is transported to the generators.
The main source of power is a trio of Caterpillar 3512B diesel generator sets, de-rated to 750 kW each due to the high altitude and the special fuel mixture. Unsurprisingly, all the fuel must be imported to Antarctica, a horribly inefficient endeavor. Fuel arrives initially at
McMurdo Station
harbor by tanker ship. From there, it can be sent to the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
in one of two ways. The
Lockheed LC-130
is a modified C-130 Hercules cargo plane developed in the 1950s specifically to support polar operations. It is the least efficient method, consuming 1.33 kg to transport 1 kg of fuel. Alternatively, fuel can be dragged by tractors via the
South Pole Overland Traverse (SPoT)
, a 1600 km
highway
over compacted snow and ice. The trek takes about 40 days and only consumes 0.56 kg of fuel for every 1 kg, which is much better than air.
Really the only thing interesting about the electrical grid here is how uninteresting it is. The majority of what I’ve written here could apply to
any
commercial facility or small generating plant, anywhere in the United States. It’s only interesting because of where it’s used.
World’s Southernmost Flush Toilet Inside the Power Plant
Besides using diesel-electric generator sets, other approaches to making power are/have been used. A nuclear station was in operation from 1962 to 1972 but was shut down for safety reasons after developing cracks and leaks. The Ross Island Wind Farm has been operating for over ten years and will soon be upgraded.
All this is just the tip of the iceberg — [brr] describes how fuel is stored on-site, the electrical distribution system, and various emergency measures that keep everyone alive and warm when things go wrong.
There’s more here than you probably need to know, but it is a fascinating description complete with explanatory photographs and links to supporting research papers. Check it out if you are at all interested in operations in extreme and unforgiving climates. | 78 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675528",
"author": "Nerd Nerd",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T19:00:50",
"content": "“There’s more here than you probably need to know”Bwahahahahaha!!!When has that ever stopped any of us? 🤓Anyway, fascinating stuff, and “brr” is such a brilliant pseudonym.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,190.552495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/smart-garbage-trucks-help-with-street-maintenance/ | Smart Garbage Trucks Help With Street Maintenance | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Original Art"
] | [
"ai",
"cities",
"computer vision",
"Monitoring",
"surveillance",
"urban planning"
] | If you’ve ever had trouble with a footpath, bus stop, or other piece of urban infrastructure, you probably know the hassles of dealing with a local council. It can be incredibly difficult just to track down the right avenue to report issues, let alone get them sorted in a timely fashion.
In the suburban streets of one Australian city, though, that’s changing somewhat.
New smart garbage trucks are becoming instruments of infrastructure surveillance
, serving a dual purpose that could reshape urban management. Naturally, though, this new technology raises issues around ethics and privacy.
Trucks With Eyes
One of the garbage trucks operating in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Credit: Swinburne University, Brimbank City Council
The new technology is known as the Mobile IoT-RoadBot. It’s the kind of buzzword soup that could only be cooked up by committee. Thus, it’s no surprise that the project was a collaborative effort between Swinburne University and Brimbank City Council. At the heart of this system are high-resolution cameras affixed to garbage trucks. As these vehicles traverse the city, they continuously stream video data of their surroundings. This data is then subjected to analysis by AI algorithms, designed to detect and identify anomalies like damaged road signs and battered bus shelters.
During a two-week trial in Melbourne’s western suburbs, the system transmitted video data over the 5G mobile network. Realistically, though, the project would function just fine with lesser infrastructure, too. Over a 9 hour shift, a single truck would stream roughly 5 GB of data, a rate that even 3G cellular networks could readily achieve. The fleet of 11 trucks covered a roughly 123 square-kilometer area during the period of the trial.
The key value of this technology is that it gives Brimbank City Council a continuously-updated picture of the state of its physical infrastructure. Instead of waiting for reports from aggrieved residents, it regularly gets updates as to the state of the city every time a garbage truck heads out on its route. The system is capable of automatically identifying the location of damaged assets in need of repair. It’s easy to imagine the system being set up to automatically task maintenance teams to tackle problems as they arise.
There’s an undeniable efficiency in leveraging garbage trucks, which are already navigating the streets, thereby eliminating the need for dedicated inspection teams. I This not only streamlines the process but reduces redundancy. Moreover, with the immediacy of real-time data analysis, issues are addressed faster, ensuring swift and efficient upkeep of the city’s infrastructure. This offers the opportunity to solve issues before they are even raised by locals irate about their crumbling playground or missing bus stop. Plus, from a financial perspective, less reliance on inspection crews equates to tangible savings, making the entire process more cost-effective.
I Love Big Brother
Yet, for all its merits, the technology doesn’t come without concerns. Central to these apprehensions is the phenomenon of ‘scope creep,’ where data is used beyond its initial intended purpose. As these omnipresent cameras capture everything in their vicinity, they unintentionally amass data, such as vehicle number plates or images of unsuspecting pedestrians. This data, once captured, is ripe for the picking. Just as authorities have leapt on Ring cameras and other home cameras as a source of intelligence, it’s easy to assume the same would be true here.
Regular trash pickups provide a neat opportunity for councils to conduct regular inspections of city infrastructure. Credit: Swinburne University, Brimbank City Council
That could be a bridge too far for some. By and large, humans in the developed world have become used to ever-present surveillance in public spaces, such as supermarkets, shopping malls, and public parks. Having surveillance cameras regularly running through residential neighbourhoods is another thing entirely. Many would prefer their activities at home go uncaptured, even from the street. At the same time, someone with a lost pet or stolen bike might be champing at the bit to use the footage for their own benefit. The positive use cases are as numerous as the negative ones. The problem is, once the technology is implemented and the data is captured, the genie is out of the bottle. The data will be used as authorities decide is appropriate. That’s seldom in line with any one individual’s opinion of what’s right.
The research paper considers this factor, and lays out a deep and rich framework for ethical use of AI. It’s valuable work, though as always, is subject to human foibles. As much as a system’s designers might aim to avoid scope creep and misuse of their technology, and even codify those aims on paper, ultimately, humans will do what humans will do.
In conclusion, the project shows the potential of simple machine learning systems to automate humdrum everyday tasks. It’s easy to see that any council would appreciate the value of such a system. However, it also serves as a potent reminder of the need to tread carefully, ensuring that in our quest for government efficiency, we don’t compromise on ethics or privacy. Whether any local government can claim to achieve that is yet to be seen. | 42 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675476",
"author": "Charles Lamb",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T17:17:00",
"content": "The cameras don’t see anything the trash collectors don’t see. They just extract different information from what they see.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,190.312926 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/an-open-source-mobile-phone-based-on-the-esp32/ | An Open Source Mobile Phone Based On The ESP32 | Jenny List | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"open-source smartphone",
"smartphone"
] | As microcontrollers become ever faster and cheaper, something we’ve been expecting has been an open source smartphone based not upon a high-end chip, but on a cheap commodity one. In the electronic badge arena we’ve come pretty close, but perhaps it’s left to [Gabriel Rochet] to deliver the first one that brings everything together.
His Paxo phone is now on version 4
, and while the French-language website link stubbornly resists translation with Google translate, English speakers can find a description of its capabilities
along with the software in a GitHub repository
.
The hardware
is surprisingly straightforward, with a resistive touch screen and a PCB featuring power management, an ESP32 main processor, and a GSM module. The 2G connectivity may not be the fastest, or even available in your country, but otherwise the feature set looks more than reasonable for a basic mobile phone.
We like this project a lot, because as we said it starts to deliver on the promise of the
2018 EMF badge
and the
2022 MCH badge
. We think the former badge’s designers might find something of interest in it. | 34 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675449",
"author": "spaceminions",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T15:34:47",
"content": "This one?https://hackaday.com/2023/08/03/open-source-cell-phone-based-on-esp32/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675451",
"author": "F... | 1,760,372,190.433387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/india-makes-history-with-chandrayaan-3-landing/ | India Makes History With Chandrayaan-3 Landing | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Chandrayaan ISRO",
"moon",
"space exploration"
] | Yesterday, the
Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft
performed a powered soft-landing on the Moon, officially making India the fourth country to achieve a controlled descent to the lunar surface. Up to this point, only the United States, China, and the Soviet Union could boast successful landings on our nearest celestial neighbor.
Chandrayaan-3 Packed for Launch
What’s more, Chandrayaan-3 has positioned itself closer to the Moon’s south pole than any other mission in history. This area is of great interest to scientists, as there is evidence that deep craters in the polar region contain considerable deposits of frozen water. At the same time, the polar highlands receive almost constant sunlight, making it the perfect location to install solar arrays. These factors make the Moon’s south pole an ideal candidate for a future human outpost, and Chandrayaan-3 is just one of several robotic craft that will explore this area in the coming years.
But as is usually the case with space exploration, the success of Chandrayaan-3 didn’t come easy, or quickly. The ISRO started the Chandrayaan program in 2003, and launched the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008. The craft successfully entered lunar orbit and surveyed the surface using a wide array of instruments, many of which were provided by foreign space agencies such as NASA and the ESA. In 2019 the far more ambitious
Chandrayaan-2 mission was launched
, which included a lander and small rover. While the orbiter component of Chandrayaan-2 was a complete success, the lander crashed into the Moon’s surface and was destroyed.
With Chandrayaan-3 now safely on the surface of the Moon, there’s much work to be done in the coming days. The planned mission lifetime for both the lander and rover is a single lunar day, which equals just about two weeks here on Earth. After that, the vehicles will be plunged into a long stretch of frigid darkness which they likely won’t survive.
Lander Lessons
The lander component of Chandrayaan-3, known as
Vikram
, measures approximately 2 meters (6.5 feet) on each side and has a total mass of 1749.86 kilograms (3857 pounds). The design is very similar to that of its 2019 predecessor, but ISRO made several modifications to improve not only the reliability and accuracy of the onboard systems, but the structural strength of the lander itself.
One of the most obvious changes is the arrangement of its rocket engines. On Chandrayaan-2, the lander had one central fixed-thrust engine, and four variable thrust engines on the periphery with vectoring capability. The idea was that the center engine would do most of the work to slow the craft down, while the outer engines would provide attitude control. Unfortunately, this arrangement proved sluggish during the previous landing attempt.
For Chandrayaan-3, ISRO engineers removed the central rocket engine and improved the vectoring ability of the four outer engines. This allowed the new lander to more rapidly adjust its attitude in the final moments before touchdown. The new lander also featured an upgraded Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV) that was able to provide more accurate positional data during descent.
While the lander’s primary function is arguably to deliver the mission’s rover, it does feature onboard scientific payloads of its own. This includes Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE), which will study the temperature of the lunar surface, the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) which aims to detect quakes within the Moon’s interior, and the Langmuir Probe (LP) to measure near-surface plasma density.
Rover Do-Over
While the crash of Chandrayaan-2 resulted in modifications being made to the lander, there was no reason to believe the mission’s rover wouldn’t have worked as expected if it had been deployed. As such, the six-wheeled
Pragyan
rover on Chandrayaan-3 is identical to its predecessor, down to the same scientific payloads.
Outwardly similar to NASA’s
Sojourner
Mars rover,
Pragyan
has a mass of 26 kg (57 lbs) and measures roughly 92 cm (3 feet) by 75 cm (2.4 feet). It features stereoscopic vision thanks to a pair of one megapixel monochromatic NAVCAMs mounted on the front of the vehicle, which provides ground controllers with a digital elevation model of the terrain ahead.
Each of the six wheels that make up the rocker-bogie suspension system has its own independent brushless DC motor for redundancy, and can propel the rover at a rate of one centimeter per second. Since the rover uses the lander as a communication relay, it’s expected to remain within a 500 meter (1640 feet) radius of the landing site for the duration of its mission.
In terms of science hardware, the rover is carrying a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) and the Alpha Particle Induced X-ray Spectroscope (APXS). Both devices will be used to determine the elemental composition of the lunar soil and any rocks the rover encounters. While it’s hoped that
Pragyan
will be able to find and directly examine frozen water on the lunar surface, there’s obviously an element of chance involved, especially given the mission’s relatively brief operational period. As such, the mission will achieve its scientific goals even if it doesn’t encounter any ice.
One Small Step
Over the next two weeks, we should expect a flurry of images from the ISRO as
Pragyan
explores the landing site. And we’ll see twice as many if the rover manages to identify frozen water. With Chandrayaan-3, India has demonstrated to the world that they’ve become a major player in space, a victory that’s all the more impressive just days after
Russia’s failed attempt at putting their own lander on the Moon
.
But this isn’t the end of India’s lunar ambitions. Planning is already underway for Chandrayaan-4, which will be a joint mission with Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launching sometime between 2026 and 2028. The mission will utilize a larger lander that’s capable of bringing at least 350 kg (770 lb) of hardware to the lunar surface, and a rover that features a drill for collecting sub-surface samples. It’s also expected that the the mission will demonstrate techniques for surviving the long lunar night, which will be critical for long-term exploration.
Between Chandrayaan-4 and the other landers
currently slated to touchdown around the Moon’s south pole
before the end of the decade, this is an exceptionally exciting period of international space cooperation. If all goes according to plan, these robotic vanguards will play a key role in
establishing humanity’s long-awaited lunar outpost
. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675424",
"author": ")(()))(())>",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T14:06:03",
"content": "I wonder if future Moon rovers will be based on Star 266 chassis. It’s very durable and could do the job much better than yet another soapbox.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,372,190.79586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/privacy-and-photography-we-need-to-talk/ | Privacy And Photography, We Need To Talk | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Interest",
"Rants"
] | [
"coc",
"hacker culture",
"photography"
] | One of the fun aspects of our global community is that there are plenty of events at which we can meet up, hang out, and do cool stuff together. They may be in a Las Vegas convention center, a slightly muddy field in England, or a bar in Berlin, but those of us with a consuming interest in technology and making things have a habit of finding each other. Our events all have their own cultures which make each one slightly different from others.
The German events, for example, seem very political to my eyes — with earnest blue-haired young women seeking to make their mark as activists, while the British ones are a little more laid-back and full of middle-aged engineers seeking the bar. There are some cultural things which go beyond the superficial though and extend into the way the events are run, and it’s one of these which I think it’s time we had a chat about.
Our Community Takes Privacy Seriously
The relevant section about photography in the
SHA2017
code of conduct.
The hacker community differs from the general public in many ways, one of which is that we tend to have a much greater understanding of privacy in the online age. The Average Joe will happily sign up to the latest social media craze without a care in the world, while we quickly identify it as a huge data slurp in which the end user is the product rather than the customer.
The work of privacy activists in our community in spotting privacy overreaches may pass unnoticed by outsiders, but over the years
it’s scored some big wins that benefit everyone
. Part of this interest in privacy appears at our events; it’s very much not done to take a photograph of someone at a hacker event without their consent. This will usually be clearly stated in the code of conduct, and thus if taking a picture featuring someone it’s imperative to make damn sure they’re OK with it.
As a Hackaday journalist, I carry a camera with me. Sometimes more than one: digital, 35 mm, and more recently a hare-brained foray into Super 8. I take a lot of photos at events, because I try to capture the things I think you the readers would like to see. My main interest lies in the hacks, with a lesser one in eye-catching lighting or other spectacles. I always ask permission if a picture might have an identifiable person in it, and sometimes people will say no and either I don’t take the pic, or they obligingly move out of shot while I do. It’s the way this works at our events.
When Privacy Turns To Abuse, That’s Bad
I caught quite a lot of grief for taking this intentionally unfocused picture at a hacker camp a few years ago. Canon EOS M100 on a tripod pointing upwards at hanging lights in a darkened field. WTF.
Over quite a few years now I have taken some abuse at our community’s events, for taking photographs of inanimate objects such as light shows, for asking nicely if I can photograph a scene, or sometimes simply for having a camera in the first place. That’s not cool, it’s well out of order, and I think It’s time we had a chat about it. What’s acceptable behaviour and what isn’t for both photographer and random hacker, and then perhaps to dig a little deeper and take a look at why it matters in the first place.
There are many reasons why somebody might not wish to be photographed at a hacker event, I am guessing that there might be people who wouldn’t wish their employers to know what they do in their spare time just to note one example. There are also people who like being somewhere in which constant surveillance isn’t a thing, and there are probably even a few tinfoil-hat-wearers who believe that The Man sends agents with cameras to document their daily lives. Into this come journalists, and knowing first-hand just how badly large-circulation media can malign a group,
I can see exactly why the camps themselves want to restrict photography
. Here at Hackaday we get some trust at events because of who we are, but when representing Hackaday behind a camera we’re all acutely aware that such a reputation is hard-won but easily lost.
If Your Idea Of Being A Hacker Is This, Stop.
You just aren’t one of the in crowd if you don’t dress like this. David Whelan,
CC0
.
Over the years though I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that there’s another slice of people, and by my observation they also seem to conceal among them the most zealous denouncers of on-site photography. Those are the people who wish to be part of the in-crowd so much that take on board any aspects they find of what they perceive as hacker culture. A decade or two ago one might have seen them using excessive 1337 h4xxx0r-speak in their writing. These are the kind of people who will deride someone for not being a “real” hacker if their field is hardware not infosec, and I have to ask myself whether there is more of the performative than the legitimate in their reactions to anyone with a camera.
The bottom line is this: Our events have a photography restriction for a reason. It’s fantastic to spend a little bit of time outside of the
panopticon
, and we are also protective of our image as a community in the face of news outlets with the wrong agenda. This is why it’s important that photographers ask before taking pictures of people, and this is, as they say on Mandalor, the Way. So if you’re a camp attendee you have the power not to be photographed without consent, but as always along with power comes responsibility not to abuse it. After all, the whole field of privacy activism is about curbing the abuse of power. | 41 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675831",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T17:28:08",
"content": "And your point is? Technical people meet to enjoy a day or two away from corporate world of perfectly staged photographs and fake smiles. If you disagree then don’t participate.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,190.88108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/patching-together-logic-gates/ | Patching Together Logic Gates | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ATMega4809",
"digital logic",
"educational",
"logic",
"logic gate",
"microcontroller",
"teaching tool"
] | The digital world offers many advantages over its analog relatives, the use of boolean logic among them. Some of the functions, like NOT, OR, and AND are fairly straightforward and line up nicely with their linguistic counterparts. Others are more elusive, like XOR and NAND. For those just getting their start in digital logic,
this teaching tool allows different logic gates to be wired together with patch cables
.
While [David] first thought to use 74-series logic circuits directly, a much more versatile solution was to use configurable custom logic — a feature found in AVR DA-series microcontrollers that allows for the creation of custom logic circuits without the need for external hardware or complex programming. He went with an ATmega4809 which is capable of supporting twelve gates which are depicted graphically on the board, where the patch cables can be connected between inputs and outputs from a set of switches on the left to another set of LEDs on the right. The microcontroller continually polls for connections, applies the correct logic via a lookup table, and lights the appropriate LED.
Even with only twelve gates, the amount of real-world analogs that can be created with this teaching tool are numerous and varied, from simple things like displaying traffic light patterns in the correct order to implementing a binary adder. It’s an excellent way to get started in digital logic or understanding gates, and much simpler than dealing with 74-series chips on a breadboard like many of us might have done,
but those logic chips can be powerful tools to have on hand
even in the modern world of microcontrollers. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675809",
"author": "john",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T16:20:18",
"content": "Beautiful, great tool for teaching.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6675830",
"author": "fdufnews",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T17:25:48",
"con... | 1,760,372,190.604187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/this-week-in-security-winrar-dns-disco-and-no-silver-bullets/ | This Week In Security: WinRAR, DNS Disco, And No Silver Bullets | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"captive portal",
"dns",
"mTLS",
"This Week in Security",
"WinRAR"
] | So what does WinRAR, day trading, and Visual Basic have in common? If you guessed “elaborate malware campaign aimed at investment brokers”, then you win the Internet for the day. This work comes from Group-IB, another cybersecurity company with a research team. They were researching a malware known as DarkMe, and
found an attack on WinRAR being used in the wild
, using malicious ZIP files being spread on a series of web forums for traders.
Among the interesting tidbits of the story, apparently at least one of those forums locked down the users spreading the malicious files, and they promptly broke into the forum’s back-end and unlocked their accounts. The vulnerability itself is interesting, too. A rigged zip file is created with identically named image file and folder containing a script. The user tries to open the image, but because the zip is malformed, the WinRAR function gets confused and opens the script instead.
Based on a user’s story from one of those forums, it appears that the end goal was to break into the brokers’ trading accounts, and funnel money into attacker accounts. The one documented case only lost $2 worth of dogecoin.
There was
one more vulnerability found in WinRAR
, an issue when processing malicious recovery volumes. This can lead to code execution due to a memory access error.
Both issues were fixed with release 6.23
, so if you still have a WinRAR install kicking around, make sure it’s up to date!
Panic at the DNS Disco
Captive portals are a security problem
. Apparently. The story here is the ISP in Belarus uses
SORM
equipment, which allows for targeted surveillance and even HTTP traffic rewriting. And that HTTP traffic manipulation is where this gets interesting.
When you jump on the hotel/coffeeshop/hospital wifi, there’s usually a captive portal — a page with terms and conditions you must agree to before you can reach the internet. In the old days, this was just a simple DNS redirect, so the first web page you tried to pull up would land you here. When it became standard for every web page to support HTTPS, suddenly that model no longer worked. If the captive portal tried to redirect the HTTPS connection, it would trigger a security error in the browser. And if the connection just allowed port 443 traffic to flow unmolested, many users would never see the portal page at all.
The way most of those portals now work is that your OS pulls up an unencrypted web page, like
http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt
in the case of Microsoft Windows. If that page is redirected, the OS knows there’s a portal, and can display it for the user. But in this case, the ISP was selectively redirecting that DNS lookup, and sending targeted users to a fake Microsoft web page. Because the portal check has to use unencrypted HTTP, the fake page can get away with it too, even using a
microsoft.com
url.
That page shows a fake Windows update, and running the “installer” infects the target computer with Disco malware. Disco and it’s sibling malware, Nightclub, do the things you expect, like file exfiltration, system monitoring, and more. This malware campaign seems to be selective in targeting, with the known victims so far being embassy computers.
mTLS — Not a Silver Bullet
Years ago, I was involved in a working group for a new security solution, and one of the leaders was a true believer in mutual TLS as a solution for security woes. The idea is that not only would the server have a signed certificate, but the connecting client would, too. If each device trusted the other’s certificate, the connection completes and the protected service can be accessed. Sounds great, but
there are some gotchas
.
The first issue to be aware of is that unless you specify otherwise, any certificate signed by a trusted host will be trusted. Your mTLS solution can be defeated by a free Let’s Encrypt certificate. Probably not what you had in mind. But that can be fixed by managing what root certificates the server trusts.
Through the years there have been some other problems to keep in mind, like CVE-2023-2422, an attack that includes multiple certificates, with the sender certificate not actually being signed. Because the first certificate in the packet is trusted, the entire collection of certs are trusted.
And then the most fun attack is the revocation chain. A client authentication certificate can include a link to a revocation server, and in many cases the authentication server will follow the link. Even if that’s after the certificate is checked, there’s still quite the opportunity for a Server-Side Request Forgery. In one case, this scenario could even leak a server-side password to an arbitrary endpoint. Yikes. Follow the link for the full rundown.
NVMe — New Vulnerabilities Made easy
From Cyberark we have
a walkthrough of using CppCheck to find a null pointer deference
in the Linux kernel’s NVMe driver. In the code itself, the problem is an error handling
if
block, where a struct pointer is set to null, and then the program execution exits the block as if the check succeeded. It proceeds to try to write a log message, containing a member of that struct.
That would be a really minor issue, except for the existence of NVMe over TCP. The next step was triggering the system crash over the network, which works, but requires an authenticated host. But with a bit of manipulation, it is possible to reach this code unauthenticated with a malicious NVMe connection packet. Not great! Thankfully this one was found and fixed within a month, all taken care of on the kernel mailing list.
Bits and Bytes
Android apps use compression for distribution, and
it’s possible to use some obscure compression settings to defeat anti-malware scanners
. Another approach is to include files with names longer than 256 bytes. And apparently the Android Manifest XML and String pool header can be manipulated to crash inspection tools, and still install on an Android phone. Nifty.
Avanti
patched a couple serious problems in Avalanche
, their mobile device management system. The flaws allowed for authentication bypass for the administrator portal. In what appears to be a patch bypass,
yet another flaw has been found
allowing an attacker to bypass authentication. This one, unfortunately, was found in-the-wild. It seems that several customer deployments were exposing this admin portal to the broader Internet, and those deployments have been compromised.
And finally, if you have an install of Juniper Junos OS, be aware of
an attack chain that achieves preAuth RCE
. This one starts with attacker controlled environment variables, in what is likely an iteration on the Shellshock vulnerability. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676127",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2023-08-26T22:32:43",
"content": "NSA ordered that no binaries shall exist along with their apps in ~1982 software requirements sent to Sandia National Laboratories.OSs used in security-related apps a bad idea for reason that unce... | 1,760,372,190.920985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/rpdot-the-rp2040-dev-board-barely-bigger-than-the-chip/ | RPDot: The RP2040 Dev Board Barely Bigger Than The Chip | Dan Maloney | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"0201",
"breakout",
"dev board",
"ldo",
"microcontroller",
"rp2040",
"smd"
] | Is
[William Herr]’s RPDot
actually the world’s smallest RP2040 dev board? We can’t say for sure, but at 10 mm on a side, we’d say it has a pretty good shot at the record.
Not that it really matters, mind you — the technical feat of building a fully functional dev board that’s only 3 mm longer on each side than the main chip is the kind of stuff we love to see. [William] says he took inspiration from the [SolderParty]
RP2040 Stamp
, which at one inch (25.4 mm) on a side is gigantic compared to the RPDot. Getting the RP2040 and all the support components, which include an 8MB QSPI Flash chip, a 3V3 LDO, a handful of 0201 passives, and even a pair of pushbuttons, required quite a lot of design tweaking. He started his PCB design as a four-layer board; while six layers would have made things easier, the budget wouldn’t allow such extravagance for a prototype. Still, he somehow managed to stuff everything in the allotted space and send the designs off — only to get back defective boards.
After reordering from a different vendor, the real fun began. Most of the components went on the front side of the board and were reflowed using a hot plate. The RP2040 itself needed to go on the back side, which required gentle hot air reflow so as not to disrupt the other side of the board. The results look pretty good, although those castellated edges look a little worse for the wear. Still, for someone who only ever worked with 0402 components before, it’s pretty impressive.
[William] says he’s going to open-source the designs as well as make some available for sale. We’ll be looking out for those and other developments, but for now, it’s just pretty cool to see such SMD heroics. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675735",
"author": "adrian",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T11:21:48",
"content": "Impressively compact.However, I see the castellated edges as a way to connect the ‘difficult’ parts of a design onto a cheap, low-tech pcb that connects external project-specific parts like leds and connec... | 1,760,372,190.99209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/next-gen-autopilot-puts-a-robot-at-the-controls/ | Next-Gen Autopilot Puts A Robot At The Controls | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airplane",
"artificial intelligence",
"Autopilot",
"aviation",
"ChatGPT",
"robot",
"robotics"
] | While the concept of automotive “autopilots” are still in their infancy, pretty much any aircraft larger than an ultralight will have some mechanism to at least hold a fixed course and altitude. Typically the autopilot system is built into the airplane’s controls, but
this new system replaces the pilot themselves
in a manner reminiscent of the movie
Airplane
.
The robot pilot, known as PIBOT, uses both AI and robotics technology to fly the airplane without altering the aircraft. Unlike a normal autopilot system, this one can be fed the aircraft’s manuals in natural language, understand them, and use that information to fly the airplane. That includes operating any of the aircraft’s cockpit controls, not just the control column and pedal assembly. Supposedly, the autopilot can handle everything from takeoff to landing, and operate capably during heavy turbulence.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) research team that built the machine hopes that it will pave the way for more advanced autopilot systems, and although this one has only been tested in simulators so far it shows enormous promise, and even has certain capabilities that go far beyond human pilots’ abilities including the ability to remember a much wider variety of charts. The team also hopes to eventually migrate the technology to the land, especially military vehicles,
although we’ve seen how challenging that can be already
. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675707",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T08:33:05",
"content": "Otto pilot is coming:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMhYl74vw2c",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675759",
"author": "WonkoTheSaneUK",
... | 1,760,372,191.046187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/flexure-pcb-actuators-made-before-your-very-eyes/ | Flexure PCB Actuators Made Before Your Very Eyes | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"Carl Bugeja",
"flexure joint",
"magnetic actuator",
"pcb actuator"
] | When we see something from [Carl Bugeja], we expect to see flexible PCBs and magnets being pushed to do unexpected things. His latest video in which he
designs a set of PCB actuators using flexure joints
certainly doesn’t fail to please.
His intent is to create a simple actuator in which a magnet is placed over a coil, and moves upward within the confines of he flexure which surrounds it. And rather than try individual designs one after the other he’s created a huge all-in-one test array of different flexure actuators, each having a slightly different design and construction to whichever one is next to it. There are plenty of magnet flips as he tests them, and using this approach he’s quickly able to eliminate the designs which work less well.
To give an idea how these actuators might be best used, he tried them in a few applications. Their lifting force is relatively tiny, but he found them possibly suitable for a haptic feedback device. Of particular interest is that as the structure is a PCB it’s relatively straightforward to run a line to the magnet and turn it into a touch sensor. The idea of an all in one sensor and haptic feedback component is rather appealing, we think.
If you’ve not seen Carl’s work before,
we’ve encountered him many times over the years
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675684",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T06:15:16",
"content": "Ah. Reports that include information about the failures as well as the successes. Almost like … Science!Very valuable and interesting. Keep it up!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,191.091172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/supremely-tough-glass-performs-under-pressure/ | Supremely-tough Glass Performs Under Pressure | Donald Papp | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"glass",
"materials engineering",
"oxide glass"
] | There’s some nifty research from the University of Bayreuth, together with partners in China and the U.S., on
creating supremely tough aluminosilicate glass
that boasts an unusual structure. The image above represents regular glass structure on the left, and the paracrystalline structure on the right.
Aluminosilicate, which contains silicon, aluminum, boron and oxygen, is a type of oxide glass. Oxide glasses are a group to which borosilicate and other common glasses belong. Structurally speaking, these glasses all have a relatively disordered internal structure. They’re known for their clarity, but not especially their durability.
One thing scientists have learned over time is that unusual things tend to happen under high pressures. In this case, researchers discovered temperatures around 1000°C and pressures between 10 and 15 gigapascals (a tremendous but not absurd amount of pressure) caused silicon, aluminum, boron and oxygen atoms to group together in a way that is clearly not fully crystallized, but is still different from the usual irregular structure of glass. This paracrystallization remains even after pressure and temperatures drop.
What does this mean? It means a toughness never before recorded in oxide glasses, and it doesn’t even really affect how clear the glass is. When subjected to forces that would normally cause cracks or fractures, these stresses are instead absorbed by the paracrystalline structures, which themselves transform back into the amorphous, random structure more usually seen in glass. Check out the research paper
Toughening oxide glasses through paracrystallization
to learn more.
Despite the name, aluminosilicate glass isn’t
transparent aluminum
. This may not be something one will do in a home workshop anytime soon, but it’s still pretty nifty. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675646",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-25T02:14:57",
"content": "“They’re known for their clarity, but not especially their durability.”I thought Pyrex[tm] was borosilicate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,191.153076 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/wooden-cnc-sculpture-displays-conways-game-of-life/ | Wooden CNC Sculpture Displays Conway’sGame Of Life | Robin Kearey | [
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"CNC machined",
"conways game of life",
"LED display",
"lens"
] | Conway’s
Game of Life
has been the object of fascination for computer hobbyists for decades. Watching the generations tick by is mesmerizing to watch, but programming the data structure and implementing the rules is also a rewarding experience, especially if you’re just getting acquainted with a new computing platform. Just as rewarding can be creating a nice piece of hardware to run the game on, as [SandwichRising] has just done: check out his
beautiful wooden
Game of Life
implementation
.
The main part of his Game is a piece of poplar wood that was CNC routed to produce an 8×8 display adorned with neat chain-like shapes. The display consists of standard 5 mm green LEDs, but they’re not the things you see poking out the front of the wooden frame. Instead, what you’re seeing are 64 lenses made out of epoxy. [SandwichRising] first covered the holes with tape, then poured green epoxy into each one and waited for it to harden. He then took off the tape and applied a drop of UV-cured epoxy on top to create a lens.
All the LEDs are mounted on PCB strips that are hooked up to a central bus going to the main ATmega328P microcontroller sitting on a separate piece of PCB. Whenever the system is powered on, the game is set to a random state determined by noise, after which the simulation begins. On such a small field it’s pretty common for the game to end up in a stable state or a regular oscillation, which is why the ATmega keeps track of the last few dozen states to determine if this has happened, and if so, reset the game to a random state again.
The source code, as well as .STL files for the PCBs and the frame, are available in the project’s GitHub repository. If woodworking isn’t your thing, there’s plenty of other ways to make neat
Game of Life
displays, such as
inside an alarm clock
, with
lots of LEDS under a coffee table
, or even with
a giant flip-dot display
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6676371",
"author": "seth___b___",
"timestamp": "2023-08-27T16:11:32",
"content": "Life is a game that set off a chain reaction in my mind, leading to studying programming theory, mathematics, video game design. Conways contributions are unique in that they inspire us to pursue kno... | 1,760,372,191.193397 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/24/doppler-speed-sensor-puts-fft-and-agc-to-work/ | Doppler Speed Sensor Puts FFT And AGC To Work | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ACG",
"CDM324",
"Doppler",
"fast fourier transform",
"fft",
"MAX9814",
"radar",
"STM32F031"
] | Some people hate to revisit projects that are done and dusted. We get that; it’s a little like reading a book you’ve already read when there are so many others to choose from. But rereading a book sometimes reveals subtle nuances you missed the first time around, and revisiting projects can be much the same, as with
this new and improved Doppler radar speed sensor
.
We seem to have been remiss in writing up
[Limpkin]’s last go-around with the CDM324 microwave module
, a 24-GHz transceiver that you can pick up on the cheap from the usual sources, but we’ve featured this handy little module in plenty of
other projects
. [Limpkin]’s current project uses the same module to create a Doppler speed sensor, but with a little more sophistication all around. Whereas the original used a simple comparator to output a square wave that’s proportional to the Doppler shift and displayed the speed on a simple terminal session, version two takes a different tack.
First, [Limpkin] opted to implement the whole sensor in hardware. The front end is quite different — an op-amp with 84 dB of gain followed by an automatic gain control (AGC) stage built from a MAX9814 microphone preamp. Extraction of the speed from the module output is left to an STM32F301 running an FFT algorithm on the signal coming out of the analog circuit, which essentially picks out the biggest peak in the spectrum and calculates the Doppler shift from that, displaying the results on an LCD display.
Of course, as a [Limpkin] project, there’s a lot more to it than just that. The write-up is very detailed, going down a few enjoyable rabbit holes like characterizing the amplification chain and diving into the details of Johnson-Nyquist noise to chase down stray oscillations. There’s some great stuff here, and it’s well worth a deep read; there’s also the video below that lets you see (and hear) what’s going on. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675401",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T11:04:15",
"content": "The module is CDM324, not CM324. I googled it and was just finding out about a Panamanian airline’s flight.It’s really interesting how the audio representation of the doppler data of the train passing sou... | 1,760,372,191.237279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/this-car-has-wooden-performance/ | This Car Has Wooden Performance | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"car",
"chassi",
"chassis",
"farm hacks",
"lada"
] | If you were to take a look at the car parked closest to where you are sitting, there’s an overwhelming probability that its main structural parts are made of steel. A few might be aluminium and fewer still composite materials, but by and large that’s it for automotive structures. This hasn’t stopped the inventive Russians at [Garage 54] from experimenting though, and in their latest they’ve made a car with a chassis made of wood. Not carefully sawn and assembled wooden structural components, oh no.
These are wooden tree trunks and branches
.
Of course it’s an opportunity for them to run wild on their very successful schtick of the crazy Eastern European YouTuber, but behind that it’s entertaining to watch how they adapt a drive train — taken we’re guessing from the FIAT 124-derived Zhiguli, or Lada as most of us would know it — to such an unconventional chassis. A lot of wire binding is used, and even then the car has a lot of the flexible about it. We’re not so sure about the differential without oil or indeed the front suspension that appears to be developing a lean, but they do manage to take it out of the forest and onto the road.
Are unconventional and definitely-not-road-legal motors your thing?
Here’s another, courtesy of some Dutch lads
. | 40 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675368",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T06:01:42",
"content": "Stick shift.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675371",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T06:47:19",
"content":... | 1,760,372,191.404841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/custom-font-generation-means-boss-embossing/ | Custom Font Generation Means Boss Embossing | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"custom font",
"Esperanto",
"label maker",
"labelmaker"
] | [Attoparsec] loves learning languages, but says they have a hard time retaining anything. We find that hard to believe given the number of tongues that [Attoparsec] was able to translate into embossing plastic. That’s right,
this project is about making custom font wheels for an embosser
, formerly known as a label maker.
If you think this seems like a finicky and perhaps lengthy mission to undertake, you’re right. In case you’re unfamiliar, ye olde embosser uses both a positive and a negative of each glyph in order to impress the sticky-backed plastic strip. It all started when [Attoparsec] found out about the Dymo 1595, which comes with font wheels for both
Japanese hiragana and katakana
in addition to English.
After sacrificing the English wheel, it was time to model the wheel part itself. That was easy enough, but the characters themselves were another story. Because of how the thing works, the negative has to be bigger than the positive to provide enough room for the tape. After trying to achieve the right draft angle on the characters in several CAD packages, [Attoparsec] was told that it should be fairly easy in OpenSCAD, and it was.
Printing in resin took about five hours to do both wheels at once. Once [Attoparsec] had the workflow down, they were off to the races. In this video alone, they made Old English, Esperanto, the International Phonetic Alphabet, an alphabet created by playwright George Bernard Shaw, Palm Pilot input script, and of course, Tolkein’s Tengwar. Be sure to check out the video after the break.
Tired of turning the wheel of your embosser to make labels?
Automate the process with a stepper motor or two
.
Thanks to [smellsofbikes] and [Jonas] for the tip! | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675318",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T02:05:34",
"content": "And from the Title Photo, I thought he was making replacement daisy wheels.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675585",
... | 1,760,372,191.460958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/pen-plotter-uses-polar-coordinates/ | Pen Plotter Uses Polar Coordinates | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"cartesian",
"cnc",
"pen plotter",
"plotter",
"polar",
"polar coordinates"
] | To keep track of a location in a two-dimensional space, two measurements are needed. Most of the time, we would naturally think to do this by the Cartesian method, measuring position along one axis and then again along a second axis. But this isn’t the only way of keeping track of position. Polar coordinates, where the distance from the origin and an angle are used as the two measurements, works just as well, and sometimes can be a preferred method.
This pen plotter tosses the expected Cartesian methodology we would typically expect in favor of this polar system
.
The first prototype that [André] built was a good proof of concept. A pen attached to a movable carriage on a single rotating arm produced passable drawings, but as all prototypes go this one needed some refinement. Limit switches at the ends of the table, as well as within the arm, served to orient the plotter so that it didn’t manually need to be zeroed out every time. A linear actuator was added to give finer control over the pen’s pressure on the table, and finally an encoder was added to the base of the plotter to more accurately correct positional errors in the rotating arm mechanism.
With everything said and done, the polar coordinate plotter seems to work just as well as its Cartesian cousins might, orienting it like this has some advantages as well. Specifically, it is more adapted to drawing curves or circles than an X-Y device might be able to,
like we saw with this similar sand-drawing plotter
. Also, if allowed to rotate its entire 360-degree reach instead of just the 90 degrees shown in the video, a machine like this could theoretically reach a wider workspace more easily than other plotters. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675322",
"author": "Da",
"timestamp": "2023-08-24T02:20:31",
"content": "I have to say that I like this idea a lot. I wondered why no one tried to overcome the polarizing difficulty involved in part coordinates for a plotter. I am now inspired to investigate how to do it myself.",... | 1,760,372,191.651594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/diy-pan-and-tilt-camera-mount/ | DIY Pan And Tilt Camera Mount | Bryan Cockfield | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"ESP32",
"open source",
"pan and tilt",
"photography",
"remote"
] | Pan and tilt mounts have a number of uses that can increase the functionality of various types of cameras. Security cameras can use them to adjust the field of view remotely, astronomers can use them as telescope mounts to accurately track celestial objects, and of course photographers and videographers can use them to add dynamic elements to shots. But getting the slow, smooth, and reliable movement isn’t as simple as slapping some servos on a tripod. So unless you want to break the bank for a commercial mount,
this DIY pan and tilt mount might be the way to go
.
The mount is built largely out of 3D printed parts and a few fairly common motors, belts, pulleys, and bearings. The movements are controlled using stepper motors, and there are two additional systems built in so that focus and zoom can be controlled through the system as well. The software controlling it all is open-source and available
on GitHub
, and controls the mount remotely through a network connection. It’s also designed to use the readily-available ESP32 chip, making it overall fairly adaptable.
The system doesn’t slouch on features, either. It can move from one point to another with various programmable speeds, has a key sequencer for more complex movements, and can accommodate the needs of stop motion animators as well. It’s an impressive build that should be accessible to plenty of photographers with a 3D printer and the right parts, but photography and astronomy aren’t the only reasons to use a pan and tilt mount.
Check out this one that brings some sunlight to a shaded room
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675273",
"author": "come2",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T21:11:47",
"content": "It is very polished and professionally-design, so much it seems overengineered, considering the number of features (there is even PoE). I may be wrong, but without a demonstration footage, I fear that the s... | 1,760,372,191.77892 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/2023-cyberdeck-challenge-cybertapedeck/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: CyberTapeDeck | Tom Nardi | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge",
"cassette deck",
"tape deck"
] | There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to picking an enclosure for your cyberdeck project: you either repurpose the carcass of some commercially produced gadget, or you build a new case yourself. The former can lead to some very impressive results, especially if your donor device is suitably vintage, but the latter is far more flexible as the design will be based on your specific parameters.
But for the
CyberTapeDeck
, [Matthew] decided to take a hybrid approach. The final product certainly
looks
like it’s built into a 1980s portable tape deck, but on closer inspection, you’ll note that the whole thing is actually 3D printed. The replica doesn’t just nail the aesthetics — it also includes the features you’d expect from the real thing, including an extendable handle and functional buttons which the internal Raspberry Pi 3 sees as a macropad thanks to an Arduino Pro Micro.
A seven inch LCD stands in for the tape door, and while it unfortunately doesn’t look like [Matthew] was able to replicate the opening mechanism to angle the display, you can at least stand the whole thing on its end to provide a more comfortable viewing experience.
[Matthew] says one of the intended purposes for this cyberdeck is to get his son excited about working with electronics and programming, so in a particularly nice touch, he’s mounted a terminal block over the “speaker” that ties into the Pi’s GPIO pins. This provides a convenient interface for experimenting on the go, without getting tangled up in exposed wiring.
We appreciate that [Matthew] has released the STL files for all of the printed parts, because even though it makes a great cyberdeck, the
design is begging to house a faux-retro media player
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675288",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T22:37:52",
"content": "” he’s mounted a terminal block over the “speaker” ”And that was the reason for the uncanny Valley when I saw it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,372,192.021606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/linux-fu-the-old-school-terminal/ | Linux Fu: The Old School Terminal | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"linux",
"retrocomputing"
] | Maybe you have a vintage old-school computer. Maybe you have a replica. Maybe you just want to run SIMH and relive the glory days of CP/M or VMS. The problem is, it looks kind of silly to have CP/M running in your beautiful X11 terminal window full of 3D animations, opacity effects, and special fonts. You could buy an old CRT monitor. That would be cool, too, because on a modern screen, you don’t get scan lines and all the crummy artifacts that go along with an electron beam and phosphor display device. Or you can grab retro-cool-term.
Star Trek on CP/M
Even if you don’t have an old computer, the program will work fine to simply run your shell for everyday use. Confound the youngsters when they see your terminal with scan lines and CRT jitter updating the latest packages.
What Is It?
If you want a shell in a GUI, you used to use xterm, although most people use something more modern. I use Konsole, but some like RXVT or whatever terminal your distro favors.
Cool-retro-term
is just a replacement for this. By default, it only opens a shell prompt.
What makes it special is its nice emulation of a real CRT. You can adjust it, too, or pick from some predefined profiles that look like different terminals. You should be able to install it with your package manager, or you can get a recent version from GitHub. You can also find it in places like the
Snap store
, if you are into that sort of thing.
An amber theme
Basic listings look better in green!
Scan lines on an LCD
What Isn’t It?
You are all set if you want to run your Linux machine with a nostalgic terminal or an emulator like SIMH. But if you want to connect to your Altair replica or your KIM-1, you’ll need a serial port terminal program to run inside cool-retro-term. This shouldn’t be a GUI program — you want it to run inside the terminal. I suggest Minicom, but there are many choices, including picocom or
tio
.
The capabilities, in that case, are totally up to the serial terminal. Cool-retro-term is just the display. If you are connecting to real old hardware, look for programs with handshaking options and the ability to throttle their speed. That old computer might have a 9600 baud port, but it also might not expect to have to process at full speed all the time like it will if you try to send over an entire file.
This is such a problem, by the way, that I wrote a
Minicom plugin
that you may have seen if you ever tried AmForth or worked much with the COSMAC Elf. It transfers files one byte at a time and waits for the remote computer to echo the character as a form of handshaking. It can also wait at the end of each line for a prompt to keep you from overrunning the old computer.
Effects and Problems
Once you get bored with the default profiles, there are plenty of options for configuring the screen how you like. You can control basic things like brightness and contrast. You can set the margin and how much the “screen” curves. Want phosphor burn in or a scanning raster line? No problem.
Some of the raster options are a bit impractical for real work, and you may want to find the cleanest font if you plan to really use it as more than a conversation piece.
Since I run it under KDE, the default option screens are
unreadable
if you use any kind of custom theme. The answer — or at least one answer — is to set the following environment variable:
QT_QUICK_CONTROLS_STYLE=Material cool-retro-term
The resulting settings display will be ugly but readable.
Making it Easy
I always forget how to launch the program for my various retrocomputers, so I make shell scripts to manage it. That’s a good place to set the style environment, too, if needed. Here’s one of my scripts:
#!/bin/bash
PORT=/dev/ttyACM0
if [ ! -z "$1" ]; then PORT="$1"; fi
exec cool-retro-term --workdir "$HOME" -p Altair -e minicom -m -c on -D "$PORT" altair
This means I have a profile called Altair in cool-retro-term and another one called altair for Minicom. The minicom settings will have the baud rate, the word wrap settings, and other special items like my custom file upload filters.
While it would be fun to pick up an old ADM-3 terminal, they aren’t cheap, and you have to keep them working. (I actually do have an old
ADDS terminal
.) But with cool-retro-term, you can have a near-authentic experience with very little effort.
Don’t have an old CP/M machine?
Make one for $4
. Or set up SIMH, which is easier than you
think, thanks to some docker images
. | 40 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675215",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T17:27:22",
"content": "Must try it. By the way, if you an find a Philips 150T4 it has composite intput. I use one with Apple II, OSI Challenger, etc. And yes, I set it to green.https://www.download.p4c.philips.com/files/1/15... | 1,760,372,191.738632 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/improving-a-kodak-film-digitizer/ | Improving A Kodak Film Digitizer | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"8mm",
"film digitiser",
"firmware",
"kodak",
"super 8"
] | Despite the near-complete collapse of its ecosystem in the face of portable videocassette camcorders in the 1980s, somehow the 8 mm format, smallest of the movie films, has survived the decades. There’s a special aura around an 8 mm image which electronic recordings don’t replicate, plus for film makers there’s an attraction to working with real film. Unsurprisingly almost all of the devices used with 8 mm film have ceased to be manufactured, but a few items escaped the cut. It’s still possible to buy an 8 mm digitizer for example, and it’s one of these with a Kodak brand that [Mac84] has. Unsatisfied with its image quality,
he’s set about tinkering with its firmware
to give it some video adjustment possibilities and remove its artifact-prone artificial sharpening.
Helped by the device having a handy EEPROM from which to extract the code, he was able to recover the firmware intact. From here on he was in luck, because the digitizer’s Novatek CPU is shared with some dash cams and this had spawned a hacker scene. From there he was able to find the relevant area and adjust those settings, and after a few false starts, re-flash it to the device.
The results can be seen in the video below the break, and perhaps reveal much about what we expect from an image in the digital age. The sharpened images look good, until we see untampered versions which are closer to the original.
If you don’t have a Kodak scanner
you can always build one yourself
, and meanwhile like many people we are still wondering what happened to
that new Super 8 camera they announced in 2018 but never released
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675233",
"author": "Charles Lamb",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T18:49:02",
"content": "Here is the link to the tinkerdifferent posthttps://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/modding-the-kodak-reels-8mm-film-digitizer-firmware-hack.2897/. That is an excellent hack. Looking at those videos I wo... | 1,760,372,191.82549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/sharkskin-coating-reduces-airliner-fuel-use-emissions/ | Sharkskin Coating Reduces Airliner Fuel Use, Emissions | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"aerodynamic",
"aerodynamics",
"aerospace",
"air travel",
"airline",
"airliner",
"flow",
"planes",
"shark skin",
"sharkskin"
] | The aviation industry is always seeking advancements to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The former is due to the never-ending quest for profit, while the latter helps airlines maintain their social license to operate. Less cynically, more efficient technologies are better for the environment, too.
One of the latest innovations in this space is a new sharkskin-like film applied to airliners to help cut drag. Inspired by nature itself, it’s a surface treatment technology that mimics the unique characteristics of sharkskin to enhance aircraft efficiency. Even better, it’s already in commercial service!
From The Ocean To The Sky
The riblets, as seen on the scales, or “denticles,” of a shark’s skin. The riblets are the ridges seen here, aligned left-to-right. Credit:
Pascal Deynat/Odontobase, CC BY-SA 3.0
Nature often holds the keys to groundbreaking technological advancements. What it has figured out over millions of years can teach us a lot today. In this regard, the shark has skin unlike any other marine creature. Evolution has bestowed upon it a somewhat rough and ribbed skin. This complex natural structure is credited with reducing drag as the shark navigates through water.
Two major components of sharkskin play into this role. The first is a complex interaction with
the passive way the shark’s scales respond to water flows
. The second is the “riblet” features on the scales of the shark’s skin. This feature has been explored as a potential drag-saving tool for everything from swimsuits to cars. Riblets are essentially like small keels on the skin, which are aligned with the flow direction of the water flowing over the shark’s body.
Typically, you’d expect the extra wetted surface area created by the riblets to increase drag, but they do quite the opposite. The mechanisms are still not fully understood, but
research has revealed some of the secrets involved.
Under typical turbulent flow during swimming, vortices form above the riblet surface, only interacting with the tips of them. This leaves a lower-velocity channel in the valleys between the riblets, reducing sheer stresses in the fluid in this area over the majority of the riblet surface. As a whole, vortex translation across the skin surface is also reduced by the riblet structures. This reduces turbulence overall by virtue of reducing vortexes bursting, tangling, and otherwise negatively interacting with each other.
Commercialization
Lufthansa expects to make major savings by using the AeroSHARK film. Credit: Lufthansa Cleantech Hub
Engineers at Lufthansa Technik and BASF saw an opportunity to translate the hydrodynamic marvel of riblets into the aerospace realm. The result of that work is AeroSHARK, an adhesive riblet film designed to reduce fuel consumption, and in turn, emissions from aircraft.
This innovative film, though subtle in appearance, is poised to make a significant difference in the aviation world. The surface of AeroSHARK boasts millions of prism-shaped “riblets”, each no more than 50 micrometers high, or approximately 2/1000ths of an inch. When applied to an aircraft, this film emulates the drag-reducing properties of sharkskin.
Its potential benefits are substantial. Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS), having recognized the promising nature of this technology, calculated that by applying 950 square meters of this film to a Boeing 777-300ER in specific patterns aligned with the airflow, fuel consumption could be reduced by 1.1 percent. SWISS will apply the film to its full fleet of twelve Boeing 777-300ERs, and expects a total annual reduction of 4,800 tons of jet fuel and a corresponding decrease of approximately 15,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Workers applying the film to a Lufthansa aircraft. Credit: Lufthansa Cleantech Hub
Similarly, Lufthansa has announced its plans to integrate AeroSHARK into its entire cargo freight fleet, including ten Boeing 777s. This move is estimated to save 3,700 tons of jet fuel and prevent 11,700 tons of CO2 emissions annually. It’s believed the film could be slightly more effective on cargo aircraft, which don’t have rows of passenger windows to work around.
Obviously, to go into commercial service, the AeroSHARK film has to be able to withstand the rigors of the flight environment. The film is reportedly resilient against weather extremes, UV radiation, and the considerable temperature and pressure fluctuations encountered during long-haul flights. Moreover, when applied to wing surfaces, the flow modification can even aid in generating extra lift, further increasing an aircraft’s performance.
Future work to refine the technology is ongoing, particularly with regards to expanding its application to other aircraft types. Initial calculations suggest that with further development, AeroSHARK could cut CO2 emissions by up to three percent.
The key will be whether or not the material will hold up over time and maintain its performance in real world use, where grit and grime could threaten its performance potential. If the material does work in practice, and doesn’t create undue maintenance hassles, expect it to quickly become popular with airlines across the globe. The idea of a 1 percent saving in fuel costs for the upfront price of some sticky film is one that no airline could ignore. | 66 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675152",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T14:08:07",
"content": "Great article, very interesting! Just a heads up though, I think there’s a mistake in sentence two. Unless I’m completely missing the joke, the former “latter” should be the “former”.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,192.130524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/guitar-distortion-with-diodes-in-code-not-hardware/ | Guitar Distortion With Diodes In Code, Not Hardware | Dan Maloney | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"algorithm",
"arduino giga",
"clipping",
"dac",
"disode theory",
"distortion",
"effects",
"guitar",
"pedal",
"Shockley"
] | Guitarists will do just about anything to get just the right sound out of their setup, including purposely introducing all manner of distortion into the signal. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works, at least when it’s done right. But what exactly is going on with the signal? And is there a way to simulate it? Of course there is, and all it takes is
a little math and some Arduino code
.
Now, there are a lot of different techniques for modifying the signal from an electric guitar, but perhaps the simplest is the humble diode clipping circuit. It just uses an op-amp with antiparallel diodes either in series in the feedback loop or shunting the output to ground. The diodes clip the tops and bottoms off of the sine waves, turning them into something closer to a square wave, adding those extra harmonics that really fatten the sound. It’s a simple hack that’s easy to implement in hardware, enough so that distortion pedals galore are commercially available.
In the video below, [Sebastian] explains that this distortion is also pretty easy to reproduce algorithmically. He breaks down the math behind this, which is actually pretty approachable — a step function with a linear part, a quadratic section, and a hard-clipping function. He also derives a second, natural exponent step function from the Schockley diode equation that is less computationally demanding. To implement these models, [Sebastian] chose an Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi, using an ADC to digitize the guitar signal and devoting a DAC to each of the two algorithms. Each distortion effect has its own charms; we prefer the harsher step function over the exponential algorithm, but different strokes.
Kudos to [Sebastian] for this easy-to-understand treatment of what could otherwise be a difficult subject to digest. We didn’t really expect that a guitar distortion pedal would lead down the rabbit hole to diode theory and digital signal processing, but we’re glad it did. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675144",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T13:41:44",
"content": ">The diodes clip the tops and bottoms off of the sine wavesCoincidentally, the same diode distortion filter can be used to make a pretty good sine wave oscillator for simple analog synths.You start with an i... | 1,760,372,191.971057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/23/wooden-wide-angle-wonder-wows-world/ | Wooden Wide-Angle Wonder Wows World | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"3.5mm",
"film camera",
"home made camera",
"wooden camera"
] | An old-fashioned film camera can be an extremely simple device to make, in that as little as a cardboard box with a pin hole in it will suffice. But that simplicity at heart leaves endless scope for further work, and a home-made camera can be every bit as much a highly-engineered object of beauty as its commercial stablemate. A great example comes from [Aaron Cré], whose desire for something close to a Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera
led him to build his own equivalent out of wood
.
The video below the break shows in detail how the wooden case is crafted, and how a lens mount ring sawn from a lens adapter is mounted on the front of it. He’s skipped making all the tiresome parts of the camera associated with winding and film transport and instead taken them from a cheap plastic snapshot camera. The original aspect ratio is stretched by cutting the guts of the snapshot camera apart, and extended to make a 75 mm long negative which also exposes over the sprocket holes.
The final camera is carefully finished to the point at which it really looks the part as well as taking those striking wide-angle photographs. We’re not photography buffs enough to identify the lens and shutter combination he’s using, but we can’t help envying him the results. Fancy making your own 35 mm camera too?
Here’s another, in case you need inspiration
. | 9 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675140",
"author": "spaceminions",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T13:19:18",
"content": "From description, lens is a Rodenstock 45mm f/4.5 Apo-Grandagon. It says it’s made for 6×9; but if used on that format, it would somewhat resemble an imaginary 20mm f/2 on a 35mm format. That said, t... | 1,760,372,192.171709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/slr-to-dslr-conversion-becomes-full-camera/ | SLR To DSLR Conversion Becomes Full Camera | Bryan Cockfield | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"CCD",
"digital camera",
"full frame",
"i.mx",
"image sensor",
"kodak",
"open source"
] | At least as far as the inner workings are concerned, there’s not a whole lot of difference between an single-lens reflex (SLR) camera that uses film and a digital SLR (DSLR) camera that uses an electronic sensor except the method for capturing the image. So adding the digital image sensor to a formerly analog camera like this seemed like an interesting project for [Wenting Zhang]. But this camera ballooned a little further than that as he found himself instead
building a complete, full-frame digital camera nearly from scratch
.
The camera uses a full-frame design and even though the project originally began around the SLR mechanism, in the end [Wenting] decided not to keep this complex system in place. Instead, to keep the design simple and more accessible a mirrorless design is used with an electronic viewfinder system. It’s also passive M lens mount, meaning that plenty of manual lenses will be available for this camera without having to completely re-invent the wheel.
As far as the sensor goes, [Wenting] wanted something relatively user-friendly with datasheets available so he turned to industrial cameras to find something suitable, settling on a Kodak charge-coupled device (CCD) for the sensor paired with an i.MX processor. All of the electronics have publicly-available datasheets which is important for this open-source design. There’s a lot more work that went into this build than just picking parts and 3D printing a case, though, and we’d definitely recommend anyone interested to check out the video below for how this was all done. And, for those who want to go back to the beginnings of this project and take a different path,
it’s definitely possible to convert an analog SLR to a digital one
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675111",
"author": "Madaeon",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T08:58:36",
"content": "Wow! Impressive!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6675124",
"author": "marco",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T11:27:11",
"content": "open docume... | 1,760,372,193.983421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/laforge-demystifies-esim/ | LaForge Demystifies ESIM | Elliot Williams | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"cons"
] | [
"cell phon",
"eSIM",
"security",
"sim"
] | This talk at Chaos Communications Camp 2023 is probably
everything you want to know about eSIM technology
, in just under an hour. And it’s surprisingly complicated. If you’ve never dug into SIMs before, you should
check out our intro to eSIMs
first to get your feet wet, but once you’re done, come back and watch [LaForge]’s talk.
In short, the “e” stands for “embedded”, and the eSIM is a self-contained computer that virtualises everything that goes on inside your plain-old SIM card and more. All of the secrets that used to be in a SIM card are stored as data on an eSIM. This flexibility means that there are three different types of eSIM, for machine-to-machine, consumer, and IoT purposes. Because the secret data inside the eSIM is in the end just data, it needs to be cryptographically signed, and the relevant difference between the three flavors boils down to three different chains of trust.
Whichever eSIM you use, it has to be signed by the GSM Alliance at the end of the day, and that takes up the bulk of the talk time in the end, and in the excellent Q&A period at the end where the hackers who’ve obviously been listening hard start trying to poke holes in the authentication chain. If you’re into device security, or telephony, or both, this talk will open your eyes to a whole new, tremendously complex, playground. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675112",
"author": "steves",
"timestamp": "2023-08-23T09:01:11",
"content": "Back in my day we’d capitalise the first letter of proper nouns and leave the rest alone, except for acronyms which would generally be all capitals. It was much easier back then.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,193.730516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/little-ionic-thruster-blows-out-candles-with-ease/ | Little Ionic Thruster Blows Out Candles With Ease | Donald Papp | [
"High Voltage"
] | [
"electric wind",
"high voltage",
"ion thruster",
"ionic wind"
] | Want to generate some thrust by way of an exposed high voltage discharge that looks great when you turn down the lights? [Integza] has
a video showing how to do exactly that
with some simple components. His little thruster manages to blow out candles at surprising distances before being pressed into service propelling a model boat.
Here’s how it works:
ionic wind
is generated when a strong enough electric field causes nearby air to ionize, for example from sharp tips of a conductor carrying a high enough voltage. This discharge creates ionized air molecules with an electrical charge matching the polarity of the nearby conductor. Because matching polarities repel one another, the small cloud of ionized air molecules are repelled from both the nearby conductor, as well as from each other.
The result is a wind-like force from a device with no moving parts, and if the parts are structured right, it’ll blow out a candle with ease. [Integza] attached a cheap DC high-voltage transformer to a nickel strip cut into sharp points and rolled into a circlet. The other half of the thruster — in contrast to the thin crown of sharp points — is a smooth ring shaped a little like a thruster nozzle.
3D models of the parts are available online
should you wish to try it yourself without all the trial and error of trying to optimize.
In an effort to minimize mass, [Integza] electroplates a 3D-printed version of the large ring with great results, spraying it with graphite first to make it conductive.
Cheap and safe copper electroplating
is entirely within the reach of hobbyists, and the resulting unit does a pretty nice job. You can watch it in action in the video, embedded below. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675057",
"author": "Lee Stella",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T23:06:45",
"content": "If I apply this to make a huge ion table fan, will it be harmful to my health when I use it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675059",
"... | 1,760,372,194.054168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/3d-printing-with-clay-thanks-to-custom-extruder/ | 3D Printing With Clay, Thanks To Custom Extruder | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"3d printing",
"clay",
"extruder",
"paste extruder"
] | When it comes to 3D printing clay, there are a lot of challenges to be met. An extruder capable of pushing clay is critical, and [davidsfeir] has
an updated version suitable for an Ender 3 printer
. This extruder is based on earlier designs aimed at delta printers, but making one compatible with an Ender 3 helps keep things accessible.
Lightly pressurized clay comes in via the clear tube. Air escapes out the top (motor side) while an auger homogenizes the clay and pushes it out the nozzle.
What’s special about a paste extruder that can push clay? For one thing, clay can’t be stored on a spool, so it gets fed into the extruder via a hose with the help of air pressure. From there, the clay is actually extruded with the help of an auger that takes care of pushing the clay down through the nozzle. The extruder also needs a way to deal with inevitable air bubbles, which it does by allowing air to escape out the narrow space at the top of the assembly while clay gets fed downward.
[davidsfeir] was greatly inspired by the work of clay-printing pioneers
[Piotr Waśniowski]
and his
de-airing clay extruder
, and
[Jonathan Keep]
, who has documented 3D printing with clay comprehensively
in a freely-available PDF
. You can check out more of
[david]’s designs on his Instagram page
.
There are so many different aspects to printing with clay or clay-like materials that almost every part is ripe for innovation. For example, we’ve seen
wild patterns result from sticking a thumping subwoofer under a print bed
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675038",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T20:56:18",
"content": "Now I can print a key engine in ceramic!Who needs metal?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675039",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
... | 1,760,372,194.266496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/start-your-semiconductor-fab-with-this-diy-tube-furnace/ | Start Your Semiconductor Fab With This DIY Tube Furnace | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"alumina ceramic",
"arduino",
"fab",
"nichrome",
"pid",
"Quartz",
"semiconductor",
"silicon",
"sodium silicate",
"ssr",
"tube furnace"
] | Most of us are content to get our semiconductors from the usual sources, happily abstracting away the complexity locked within those little epoxy blobs. But eventually, you might get the itch to roll your own semiconductors, in which case you’ll need to start gearing up. And one of the first tools you’ll need is likely to be something like
this DIY tube furnace
.
For the uninitiated, [ProjectsInFlight] helpfully explains in the video below just what a tube furnace is and why you’d need one to start working with semiconductors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a tube furnace is just a tube that gets really, really hot — like 1,200° C. In addition to the extreme heat, commercial furnaces are often set up to seal off the ends of the tube to create specific conditions within, such as an inert gas atmosphere or even a vacuum. The combination of heat and atmospheric control allows the budding fabricator to transform silicon wafers using chemical and physical processes.
[ProjectsInFlight]’s tube furnace started with a length of heat-resistant quartz glass tubing and a small tub of sodium silicate refractory cement, from the plumbing section of any home store. The tube was given a thin coat of cement and dried in a low oven before wrapping it with nichrome wire. The wrapped tube got another, thicker layer of silicate cement and an insulating wrap of alumina ceramic wool before applying power to cure everything at 1,000° C. The cured tube then went into a custom-built sheet steel enclosure with plenty of extra insulation, along with an Arduino and a solid-state relay to control the furnace. The video below concludes with testing the furnace by growing a silicon dioxide coating on a scrap of silicon wafer. This was helped along by the injection of a few whisps of water vapor while ramping the furnace temperature up, and the results are easily visible.
[ProjectsInFlight] still needs to add seals to the tube to control the atmosphere in there, an upgrade we’ll be on the lookout for. It’s already a great start, although it might take a while to catch up to
our friend [Sam Zeloof]
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675054",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T22:35:08",
"content": "At least [Sam Zeloof] has left a trail of bread crumbs for others to follow.I consider this hack to be incremental to playing the field with the big guys.",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,372,193.815333 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/2023-cyberdeck-challenge-modular-cyberdeck-creation-kit/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: Modular Cyberdeck Creation Kit | Brian McEvoy | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge",
"3D printed parts",
"cyberdeck",
"off the shelf",
"OTS",
"steam deck"
] | We were fortunate to run into [Sp4m] at DEFCON31 and
see his Modular Cyberdeck Creation Kit
in person. In fact, he was wearing it around the hallways like a rogue decker in search of fellow runners. Holding the unit feels like a serious tool because of its weight, mainly from the battery. Everything hangs from a single-point sling on a metal handle, probably from the cabinetry aisle, and we could move silently and comfortably. The sling is firearm-rated, which is appropriate since he has a printed Weaver rail on top. It just needs a flashlight/laser combo.
[Sp4m] aims to create printable parts that combine any on-hand materials into a usable cyberdeck. In this iteration, he uses a wired Apple keyboard and trackpad he found in the trash, so we have to assume he works in IT. Most of the trackpad is covered, but enough is accessible to scroll and maneuver the mouse, saving almost six inches. The Steam deck is the current head but is removable so that this hardware collection can work for many USB-C tablets without fuss.
The eye-catching white/orange is no accident and may earn it a top spot in the Icebreaker category of the 2023 Cyberdeck Contest. The judges are currently deliberating, so keep an eye out for an announcement about the winners shortly. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6675045",
"author": "Tony Moncter",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T21:46:39",
"content": "Clearly not a single point sling given the two clips used to secure it to the handle",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675193",
"author... | 1,760,372,194.214718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/decompiling-sonic-runners/ | DecompilingSonic Runners | Matthew Carlson | [
"Games",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"c sharp",
"decompile",
"Ghidra",
"GLSL",
"hsl",
"sonic",
"unity",
"unity engine"
] | Usually, when you hear about games being decompiled and rebuilt, the games are often decades-old relics, loving and saved from the ravages of time. [MattKC] recently
set out to decompile the 2015 game
Sonic Runners
.
The game was a 2D endless runner released on mobile platforms. Despite getting praise for the gameplay, it received mixed reviews for the pop-up ads and pay-to-play elements. A little over a year later, the game was discontinued. However, the game required a constant online connection, so once the servers were offline, it rendered the over five million downloads unplayable.
A team of developers worked to
reverse engineer the server
, and with a little bit of binary hacking, the client could be patched to connect to a community-hosted server instead. However, as phones with notched displays came out and suggestions for improvements stacked up, the community realized a new client would bring immense benefits. Compared to many decompilation projects,
Sonic Runners
was pretty easy as it uses Unity, which means most of the code is in C#. Unfortunately, the build of Unity used by the game is from 2012, meaning many of the tools designed for much later versions of Unity were inoperable.
However, one native code library called UnmanagedProcess was designed to confuse reverse engineering efforts. The library handled AES encryption and communication with the server. Luckily, the library was a later addition, and earlier versions of its functions still lingered in the C# code. Since an open source server already existed, it was trivial to validate the changes. Additionally, all the shaders were in OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL), which meant rewriting them in High-Level Shading Language (HLSL) and checking that they matched the original GLSL when building for Android.
Now the client has new game modes, no ads, and a proper offline mode. The community continues adding new features and refining the game, which is very satisfying. If you’re curious about reverse engineering,
[Matthew Alt] can help you get started
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674982",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T17:01:32",
"content": "If you know how to decompile, then everything is open source!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6675010",
"author": "a",
"timest... | 1,760,372,193.77569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/liberte-egalite-fraternite-france-loses-its-marbles-on-internet-censorship/ | Liberté, égalité, Fraternité: France Loses Its Marbles On Internet Censorship | Jenny List | [
"Current Events",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"censorship",
"France",
"malware",
"spyware"
] | Over the years we’ve covered a lot of attempts by relatively clueless governments and politicians to enact think-of-the-children internet censorship or surveillance legislation, but there’s a law from France in the works which we think has the potential to be one of the most sinister we’ve seen yet.
It flew under our radar so we’re grateful to [0x1b5b] for bringing it to our attention, and it concerns
a proposal to force browser vendors to incorporate French government censorship and spyware software in their products
. We’re sure that most of our readers will understand the implications of this, but for anyone not versed in online privacy and censorship this is a level of intrusion not even attempted by China in its state surveillance programme. Perhaps most surprisingly in a European country
whose people have an often-fractious relationship with their government
, very few French citizens seem to be aware of it or what it means.
It’s likely that if they push this law through it will cause significant consternation over the rest of the European continent. We’d expect those European countries with less liberty-focused governments to enthusiastically jump on the bandwagon, and we’d also expect the European hacker community to respond with a plethora of ways for their French cousins to evade the snooping eyes of Paris. We have little confidence in the wisdom of the EU parliament in Brussels when it comes to ill-thought-out laws though, so we hope this doesn’t portend a future dark day for all Europeans. We find it very sad to see in any case, because France on the whole isn’t
that kind of place
.
Header image: Pierre Blaché
CC0
. | 77 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674894",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T11:13:01",
"content": "If there is anything I would want integrated in a browser, then it is to tell each website that I do not want the cookie shit, do not want to be bothered with those daily annoying popups, and combined wit... | 1,760,372,194.175973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/random-access-memory-from-a-rotating-drum-in-a-bendix-g15/ | Random Access Memory From A Rotating Drum In A Bendix G15 | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Bendix",
"Random-access memory",
"rotating drum"
] | When it’s the 1950s and you are tasked to design a computer system that features not only CPU registers but also a certain amount of RAM, you do not have a lot of options. At this point in time, discrete logic was the rule, and magnetic core memory still fairly new and rather expensive. This is where the rotating drum comes in, which is somewhat like a cross between an old-style cylinder record and a hard drive. In a recent [Usagi Electric] video, a
1950s Bendix G15 system is demonstrated
, which features such a rotating drum device, alongside both tube-based circuits and newfangled diode-based circuitry.
Simplified diagram of a rotating drum random access memory unit, showing the read-erase-write process as the drum spins.
This particular unit was borrowed from the System Source museum, with the intent to restore it to a working condition. Part of this process involved figuring out the circuitry, which was made easy by the circuit schematic drawings that came with the original machine. According to the official brochure by the manufacturer, the ‘short lines’ that are intended for the CPU registers, the access time was less than 1 millisecond, which is pretty darn fast considering the era and the discrete CPU’s clock speed.
For the drum itself, however, popping the cover off the unit showed that it had suffered some damage that had resulted in the multiple heads contacting the surface. Despite this disappointment, it’s not the end of the restoration, however. The museum has one more Bendix G15 standing around, with a rotating drum unit that looks to be in mint condition. The damaged magnetic coating on the other rotating drum may conceivably be resurfaced, which if successful could provide new hope to a lot of retro systems out there that also use magnetic media, whether in drum or disk format. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674870",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T08:40:30",
"content": "No discussion of drum memory is complete without a link to the “Story of Mel”. (The computer he worked on was even mentioned in the linked video). It gives some insight into how drum memory computers wo... | 1,760,372,193.896108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/where-did-your-pcb-go-wrong-kiri-knows/ | Where Did Your PCB Go Wrong? KiRI Knows | Matthew Carlson | [
"PCB Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"plotgitsch"
] | When working on a PCB design in KiCad, it’s helpful that the files are all text and can easily be checked into Git or other source control. However, stepping back through the revisions to determine where precisely a trace got routed wrong can be tricky. [Leandro] started with a simple script that exported the KiCad project to an image for inspection — over time it grew into a
full-blown visual diff tool named KiCad Revision Inspector (KiRI)
.
The primary mechanism exports the revisions of a KiCad 5, 6, or 7 project to SVG, which can then be compared via a handy
onion skin view
. As this is a tool written for those using KiCad, shortcuts are a huge part of the experience. A command line interface generates artifacts to view the diff in any web browser. As these outputs have the KiRI tooling baked in, it is relatively easy to archive the output as a build artifact and allow easy access to review design changes.
For the long-time reader, you might remember back in 2018 talked about another
diffing tool called plotgitsch
(which this KiRI uses for KiCad 5 projects). KiCad has grown significantly in the last five years. It might be time to update our tips
to utilize Git better for your PCB designs
.
Thanks to [Marcel] for sending this one in. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674836",
"author": "T.T.",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T05:28:43",
"content": "I literally found this earlier today. I’ll be giving it a try soon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674849",
"author": ".",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,193.936461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/looking-back-on-30-years-of-debian/ | Looking Back On 30 Years Of Debian | Maya Posch | [
"Linux Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"debian"
] | The early history of Linux is a rather murky period to most, long before the era of glitzy marketing and proclamations of ‘the Linux desktop’ being the next hot thing. This was also the era when the first Linux distributions were born, as the Linux kernel never came as a whole OS package – unlike the BSDs – which necessitated others to package it with the elements that make up kernel and user space, such as the GNU tools.
One of these original distributions was Debian, which this month
celebrates its 30th birthday
. Its entire history, starting with the initial 0.01 release is
covered in great detail
on the Debian website. After the first release of the Linux kernel in 1991, it would take until August of 1993 when [Ian Murdock] embarked on the Debian project, sponsored by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation. This was a pretty rough period, with much of 1994 spent figuring out the basics of the system, the package manager and establishing a release system.
After [Ian Murdock] left the Debian project, [Bruce Perens] would follow in his footsteps, with
Debian 1.1
(“Buzz”) being the
first release
in the 1.x series on June 17th of 1996. This and each successive release would feature a character name from the ‘Toy Story’ movie alongside the increase in its version number. Notable is that ‘Sid’ is the name for the (rolling release) unstable branch, indicating the volatile nature of this branch, matching the destructive nature of the Sid character in Toy Story.
This year we saw the release of Debian 12 (“Bookworm”), with no sign of the project letting up after celebrating such a notable milestone. Interesting is also how many
Debian-derived distributions
exist today, with Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Raspberry Pi OS (previously Raspbian) ) being among the most well-known, yet existing alongside some of the original distribution lineages like Slackware and Red Hat. Although the Linux ecosystem is not as small and cozy as it was in the 1990s, it would seem that there is plenty of room for Debian to remain a solid foundation for most things Linux and FOSS operating systems.
Heading image: Debian Buzz (1.1) running under Bochs. (Credit:
Thomas Stewart
) | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674805",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T02:12:24",
"content": "Happy Anniversary Debian!(Sad that Ian isn’t with us)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674864",
"author": "JaK"... | 1,760,372,194.594934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/a-mainframe-computer-for-the-modern-age/ | A Mainframe Computer For The Modern Age | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"direct programming",
"hardware",
"mainframe",
"memory",
"mini mainframe",
"panel",
"registers",
"retro"
] | The era of mainframe computers and directly programming machines with switches is long past, but plenty of us look back on that era with a certain nostalgia. Getting that close to the hardware and knowing precisely what’s going on is becoming a little bit of a lost art. That’s why [Phil]
took it upon himself to build this homage to the mainframe computer of the 70s
, which all but disappeared when PCs and microcontrollers took over the scene decades ago.
The machine, known as PlasMa, is not a recreation of any specific computer but instead looks to recreate the feel of computers of this era in a more manageable size. [Phil]
built the entire machine from scratch
, and it can be programmed directly using toggle switches to input values into registers and memory. Programs can be run or single-stepped, and breakpoints can be set for debugging. The internal workings of the machine, including the program counter, instruction register, accumulator, and work registers, are visible in binary lights. Front panel switches let you control those same items.
The computer also hosts three different microcodes, each providing a unique instruction set. Two are based on computers from Princeton, Toy-A, and Toy-B, used as teaching tools. The third is a more advanced instruction set that allows using things like emulated peripherals, including storage devices. If you want to build one or just follow along as the machine is constructed, programmed, and used, [Phil] has a
series of videos demonstrating its functionality
, and he’s made everything open-source for those more curious. It’s a great way to get a grasp on the fundamentals of computing, and the only way we could think of to get even more into the inner workings of a machine like this is to
build something like a relay computer
. | 50 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674765",
"author": "Nircable.com",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T23:13:14",
"content": "look so vintage and traditional for this era.. nice blog bro",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674777",
"author": "DrWeirEventHorizon",
"... | 1,760,372,194.401672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/an-effects-pedal-for-keyboards-and-mice/ | An Effects Pedal For Keyboards (and Mice) | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"dsp",
"effects",
"keyboard",
"mouse",
"music",
"pedal",
"signal processing",
"usb"
] | Effects pedals for musical instruments like electric guitars can really expand a musician’s range with the instrument. Adding things like distortion, echo, and reverb at the push of a button can really transform the sound of a guitar and add depth to a performance. But [Guy] wondered why these effects should be limited to analog signals such as those from musical instruments, and set about to apply a number of effects to the use of computer keyboards and mice with
this HID effects pedal
.
The mouse is perhaps the closer of the two to an analog device, so the translations from the effects pedal are somewhat intuitive. Reverb causes movements in the mouse to take a little bit of extra time before coming to a stop, which gives it the effect of “coasting”. Distortion can add randomness to the overall mouse movements, but it can also be turned down and even reversed, acting instead as a noise filter and smoothing out mouse movements. There’s also a looper, which can replay mouse movements indefinitely and a crossover, which allows the mouse to act as a keyboard.
For the keyboard, included effects are a tremolo, which modulates between upper- and lower-case at certain intervals; echo, which repeats keypresses; and a pitch-shift which outputs a “higher” character in the alphabet above whichever one has been pressed. Like the mouse, there’s also a crossover mode which allows the keyboard to be used as a mouse.
The device looks and feels like an effects pedal for a guitar would, with a RP2040 inside to intercept HID information, do the signal processing, and then output the result to the computer. And, while [Guy] admits this was a fun project with not many practical uses, there are a couple handy ones including potentially the distortion effect to smooth out mouse inputs for those with neuromuscular disorders or the mouse looper to act as a mouse jiggler for
those with micromanaging employers
. It’s also reprogrammable, and as we’ve seen since time immemorial
having a programmable foot keyboard
can be extremely handy for certain workflows. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674725",
"author": "qetyuoiuytreu",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T20:16:47",
"content": "Best so far for WSAD 3d shooters!Great hack after long time for me!Perfect!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674728",
"author": "Scarlett",... | 1,760,372,194.539527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/2023-hackaday-prize-two-bee-or-more-bee-swarm-detection/ | 2023 Hackaday Prize: Two Bee Or More Bee Swarm Detection | Matthew Carlson | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"green hacks"
] | [
"artifical intelligence",
"bee",
"beekeeping",
"LoRa",
"xgboost"
] | In the bustling world of bees, swarming is the ultimate game of real estate shuffle. When a hive gets too crowded or craves a change of scenery, colonies scout out swarms for a new hive. [Captain Flatus O’Flaherty] is a beekeeper trying to capture more native honey bees, and a
custom LoRa-enabled capture hive
helps him do that.
A catch hive, perched high and mighty, lures scouting as potential new homes. If selected, a swarm of over a thousand bees can move in, where [Flatus]’s detector comes in. Many catch hives are scattered around, and manually checking them is difficult. While the breath of one bee is hard to see, a thousand bees produce enough CO2 to be detected by a sensor. A
custom PCB with a solar-powered +30dB LoRa radio
measures CO2 and reports back. The PCB contains an ESP32 D4 and a 1-watt Ebyte E22-400M30S LoRa module. If the CO2 levels are still elevated at nightfall, [Flatus] can be pretty confident a swarm has moved in.
Using the data collected, he massaged it to create a dataset suitable for training on XGBoost. With weather data and other conditions, the model tries to predict when a swarm is more or less likely to happen. Apis Mellifera (the local honeybee around [Flatus]) loves sun-kissed, warm, humid afternoons with little wind.
We’ve seen
beehive monitors before
and love exploring what the data could be used for—video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674696",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T19:03:14",
"content": "Congrats, it’s an original project.I wonder why a 1W module has been chosen. Pictures of the installation show an antenna on a wooden pole. So getting enough height should be no problem here.The range... | 1,760,372,194.801861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/luna-25s-demise-raising-fundamental-questions-about-russias-space-program/ | Luna 25’s Demise: Raising Fundamental Questions About Russia’s Space Program | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"luna 25",
"Moon landing"
] | The recent news that Russia’s Luna 25 Moon lander had made
an unexpected lithobraking detour
into the Moon’s surface, rather than the expected soft touchdown was met by a variety of responses, ranging from dismay to outright glee, much of it on account of current geopolitical considerations. Yet politics aside, the failure of this mission casts another shadow on the prospects of Russia’s attempts to revive the Soviet space program after a string of failures, including its ill-fated
Mars 96
and
Fobos-Grunt
Mars missions, the latter of which also destroyed China’s first Mars orbiter (
Yinghuo-1
) and ignited China’s independent Mars program.
To this day, only three nations have managed to land on the Moon in a controlled fashion: the US, China, and the Soviet Union. India may soon join this illustrious list if its
Chandrayaan-3
mission’s
Vikram
lander dodges the
many pitfalls of soft touchdowns
on the Moon’s surface. While Roscosmos has already started internal investigation, it does cast significant doubt on the viability of the Russian
Luna-Glob
(‘Lunar Sphere’) lunar exploration program.
Will Russia manage to pick up where the Soviet Union left off in 1976 with the Luna 24 lunar sample return mission?
Post-Space Race
The period of the 1950s leading into the 1970s was one of breakneck innovations and experimentation as one first after the other got achieved. Here the USSR outperformed the US
on many accounts
, achieving the first artificial satellite, first lunar spacecraft and orbiter, first human spaceflight and first spacewalk. As the USSR suffered setbacks with its N1 heavy rocket, however, it had to relent the first manned flights to the Moon, instead shifting its attention to more robotic flights to Mars (first soft touchdown on Mars with
Mars 3
), the Moon (Luna 16’s first robotic sample return mission) and the highly notable soft touchdowns on Venus with the
Venera
landers.
During the 1970s, the USSR developed a range of
highly successful space stations
with the
Salyut
program that led to the modular space station
Mir
and the successor
Mir 2
, the latter of which became known as the International Space Station (ISS). The irony of this is perhaps that although we refer to the ‘Russian section’ of the ISS, it’s effectively a Soviet-built core (the
Zvezda
module being the Soviet-era
Mir 2
core module), with the additional modules following Soviet designs including the Soviet-designed auto-docking system.
So if the ‘Russian space station’ is really just a Soviet space station with a different flag glued on top of the old Soviet one, what does this tell us about Russia’s Martian and Lunar programs? In how far are they different from their Soviet predecessors, when Roscosmos has insisted on following the same internal designations for the Luna 25 and future planned missions?
The Luna 25 Lander
Model of the Luna 24 Moon lander.
The last
Luna
program mission happened in 1976, with not only the fall of the Soviet Union throwing a spanner in the works since then, but also a few generations of new engineers earning their degree and retiring since then, not to mention the many who found employment outside of Russia. For the
Luna-Glob
program this essentially meant having to start from scratch, using old paper drawings and possibly fuzzy recollections from whoever once worked at the same
NPO Lavochkin
aerospace company that manufactured Luna 9 through 24, as well as the ill-fated Luna 25.
If we compare
Luna 24
with
Luna 25
, we can get some idea of in how far it is a continuation rather than a pale imitation. The former had a launch mass of 5,800 kg compared to the latter’s 1,750 kg, with Luna 24 featuring the sample return stage (weighing 520 kg), sample collection system and some basic scientific instruments plus a video camera.
Schematic view of the Lunar 25 and its components (Credit: Roscosmos)
Meanwhile the Luna 25 probe had a 30 kg payload of various scientific instruments that can analyze scooped up lunar regolith, as well as a range of other aspects of the lunar surface. These include a laser mass analyzer assisted by an infrared spectrometer to determine the components in the lunar regolith, a neutron-based scanning tool to analyze the regolith in-situ, plus multiple instruments to study the lunar exosphere (very thin atmosphere), all packed together as a miracle of modern miniaturization compared to the state of the art back in the 1970s, when unreliable singular transistors led to the loss of many Soviet spacecraft.
The Luna 25 spacecraft also would seem to share many characteristics with its Soviet-era predecessor, which would seem to include the propulsion system that’s supposed to guide the craft into a suitable landing orbit. Unfortunately, based on the comments made by Roscosmos it would seem that either a string of incorrect trajectory adjustment commands were sent to the spacecraft, or some kind of malfunction occurred which led to its unfortunate lithobraking course. Clearly, even if it’s proven Soviet technology with a modern payload strapped to it, it is not immune to what at this point in time could be a simple human error or conceivably an assembly error, not unlike what happened to the manned
Soyuz MS-10
launch to the ISS in 2018 that nearly killed both crew members due to an apparent assembly error.
Too Little Too Late?
Perhaps the optimistic take on this failure is that by avoiding sending wrong commands to the lander it could just work next time. The problem is that Luna 25 already took many years longer than originally scheduled, to the point where
ESA dropped cooperation with Roscosmos
and pulled an instrument off the lander. Meanwhile the Luna 26 orbiter (tentatively 2027) and Luna 27 lander (tentatively 2028) are likely to be pushed back while Roscosmos considers a possible replacement for Luna 25. Yet the major question is whether it matters at all, considering that China has seemingly leap-frogged Russia.
China’s Lunar Exploration Program
began in 2007 with the Chang’e 1 orbiter, followed by the Chang’e 2 orbiter in 2010. Since then the Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu 1 rover touched down softly on the lunar surface in 2013. Subsequently
Chang’e 4
landed in 2018 on the far side of the Moon as a world’s first, along with its
Yutu 2
rover, both of which are still active today. The Chang’e 5 sample return mission was a complete success in 2020, which will be followed up by the Chang’e 6 sample return mission in 2024 and the 2026
Chang’e 7
mission featuring an orbiter, lander, rover and a hopping probe, all focused on the Moon’s south pole, which is the
target of many current and upcoming
Moon missions.
All of these are in preparation for the Chang’e 8 mission that is intended to launch in 2028 and which should feature a robotic laboratory to attempt in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and other experiments prior to a manned Moon mission and attempts to establish a Moon base. Also of note is that while Russia’s Moon program has been largely cut off from the international scientific community, China’s program features international payloads, such as the German Lunar Lander Neutron and Dosimetry experiment on Chang’e 4. The fruits of this cooperation can be found in publications such as Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, with this
2022 paper by Zigong Xu and colleagues
providing insights on primary and albedo protons on the far side of the Moon.
Similarly, the Swedish
LINA-XSAN payload was also pulled
from Luna 25 and flew on Chang’e 4 instead.
Eyes On India
Although it’s never wise to count one’s chickens before all fragile eggs have landed safely on lunar regolith, there’s a good chance that India’s Moon program will bear fruit starting with Chandrayaan-3 this month, paving the road for a new era of Moon exploration in which China, India and private companies will be most firmly represented. It is highly likely that ESA and NASA will cooperate with these programs, providing scientific instruments that can thus make their way to the lunar surface in absence of a relevant European or North-American Moon program.
In this regard Luna 25 could be seen as the last bitter-sweet hurrah to the once proud Soviet engineering prowess that formed such a fundamental foundation for space today, including the seeds that would go on to form the Chinese and Indian space programs. If it are those respective Moon programs that can thus be considered the true spiritual successors of the Soviet space program, then Luna 25 was the definite sign that the last embers of the Soviet space program within the borders of the Russian Federation have now turned cold.
Heading image:
A Soyuz-2.1b rocket booster with a Fregat upper stage and the Luna 25 lunar lander blasts off from a launchpad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia. | 79 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674697",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T19:09:14",
"content": "That wasn’t a crash, they heard there was a Ukrainian restaurant there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674862",
"author": "JohnU",
... | 1,760,372,195.376947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/mass-production-3d-printing-hack-chat/ | Mass Production 3D Printing Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, August 23 at noon Pacific for the
Mass Production 3D Printing Hack Chat
with Gabe Bentz!
We’ll take a wild guess and say that right now, within arm’s length of wherever you’re reading this, there’s something that was produced by injection molding. Look around; it’s there someplace, and whatever it is, thousands or perhaps millions of other identical artifacts were produced along with it, all by squeezing hot plastic into intricately machined metal tools.
It’s not much of an overstatement to say that, for good or for ill, the world is made from injection-molded plastic. But not every product can support the often considerable up-front costs associated with injection molding. The tooling needed is often remarkably complicated and correspondingly expensive, and running the machines that actually do the molding is expensive and highly specialized. Unless you’re committed to making a lot of parts, injection molding might just be out of your league.
But does that mean that medium-sized runs of parts are out of luck? Not at all! Gabe Bentz, founder and CEO of
Slant 3D
, is passionate about filling the manufacturing void where injection molding is prohibitive, either by virtue of start-up costs or because the part design is just not possible to manufacture. His massive print farms are busy day in and day out cranking out parts for customers that otherwise couldn’t be made. So if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to run a print farm, and what kinds of design considerations make a part a candidate for mass production by 3D printing, drop by the chat and we’ll see what he has to tell us.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, August 23 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 13 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674679",
"author": "DavidO",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T18:09:41",
"content": "Fun fact: The head picture is from Prusa’s farm in Prague, Czechia:https://stock.adobe.com/it/images/prusa-research-3d-printing-farm-in-prague-czech-republic/301117847I thought Slant 3D use their own, not ... | 1,760,372,195.115073 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/resin-printer-temperature-mods-and-continuous-ipa-filtration/ | Resin Printer Temperature Mods And Continuous IPA Filtration | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D resin printer",
"IPA"
] | Two essential parts to producing successful resin 3D prints: keeping resin at its optimal temperature and lots and lots of IPA to clean the printed parts with after printing. Unfortunately, most consumer MSLA printers do not come with a resin tray heater, and tossing out IPA after every cleaning session because of some resin contamination is both wasteful and somewhat expensive. These are two things that can be fixed in a number of ways, with [Nick Wilson]
going for the ‘crank it to 11’ option
, using a high-tech, fully integrated solution for both problems.
The vat with IPA is kept clean through the use of a diaphragm pump that circulates the alcohol through two filter stages, one for larger — up to 5 micrometer — particulates and one for smaller 0.5-micrometer junk. A 405 nm LED lighting section before the filters is intended to cure any resin in the IPA, theoretically leaving the IPA squeaky clean by the time it’s returned to the vat.
For the resin tray heater, a more straightforward 12V 150 Watt silicone heater strip is stuck to the outside edge of the metal resin tray, along with a temperature-controlled relay that toggles the heater strip on and off until the resin reaches the desired temperature. None of these are necessarily expensive solutions, but they can be incredibly useful if you do a fair amount of resin printing. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674638",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T15:49:14",
"content": "I remember seeing this, or something like this on Reddit a while ago. It’s a really nice setup, but one important question was unknown: “How many KG of resin can the filter clean before you have to replace ... | 1,760,372,195.062257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/the-clathrate-gun-hypothesis-unearthing-puzzles-of-warming-events-past/ | The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: Unearthing Puzzles Of Warming Events Past | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"clathrate gun",
"climate change",
"global warming",
"greenhouse effect",
"greenhouse gases",
"methane"
] | As the Earth continues to warm at a worrying rate, scientists continue to work to understand the processes and mechanisms at play. Amidst the myriad of climate-related theories and discussions, the clathrate gun hypothesis stands out not only for its intriguing name but for the profound implications it might have on our understanding of global warming events.
Delving into this hypothesis is akin to reading a detective novel written by Mother Earth, with clues hidden deep beneath the ocean and Arctic ice. It’s a great example of how scientists attempt to predict the future by unpicking the mysteries of the past.
Methane Storage of a Sort
A methane clathrate block found in sediment off Oregon, USA. Credit:
Wusel007, CC BY-SA 3.0
To understand the hypothesis, one must first understand what “clathrate” is. Methane clathrate, as it is formally known, is a type of water ice that contains a great deal of methane trapped within its crystal structure. Residing deep beneath the ocean under the sediments of the seafloor and terrestrial permafrosts, these icy compounds are like nature’s time capsules, storing methane for potentially millions of years.
The core of the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis revolves around a relatively simple idea. As Earth’s temperature rises due to various factors, these ice-like clathrate deposits could become destabilized. This destabilization might lead to the sudden release of significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Given that methane is over 25 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a century, such a sudden injection could theoretically lead to rapid spikes in global temperatures.
Geologic records indicate that clathrate-derived methane releases might have played a role in past warming events. It’s suggested that releases of methane from clathrate storage could have helped end a cold period 650 million years ago, commonly referred to as Snowball Earth. Some scientists believe a large methane release from clathrates might have also been a factor in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Occurring around 55.5 million years ago, the precise duration of the event is unclear, however it’s believed that global temperatures raised by a massive 5-8 °C after a huge carbon release into the atmosphere over approximately 20,000 to 50,000 years. The overall warm period lasted approximately 200,000 years in total.
There are fears that methane released by warmer global temperatures could lead to a runaway warming scenario. Shallow stores of methane trapped in permafrost are of primary concern, as methane clathrate trapped deep in the seabed is expected to take thousands of years to respond to changes in global temperatures.
Of course, it’s essential to differentiate between the potential and the probable. While there is a vast amount of methane trapped in clathrates, not all of it is vulnerable to release. The clathrates in the deepest parts of the oceans are likely safe due to the intense pressures keeping them stable. It’s the shallower deposits, especially in the Arctic, that are of concern.
Scientists have observed methane plumes rising from the seafloor in some Arctic regions. While alarming, it’s still unclear how much of this is directly due to human-induced climate change or if it’s part of a longer, natural cycle. It’s also important to note that the methane must reach the atmosphere to have a warming effect on the Earth. Current studies suggest that methane from clathrates isn’t getting there just yet.
Recent research involved looking
at the isotopic signatures of oceanic methane.
Results suggest that while ancient stores of methane are being released from the seafloor, they’re not reaching surface waters. Instead, it appears that the gas is instead dissolving in the water where it may be being broken down by oceanic microbes. These microbes release carbon dioxide, which is both less potent as a greenhouse gas and capable of being stored in other ways in the ocean.
For now, it appears that the clathrate gun is not
the leading runaway warming scenario we need to worry about
. Regardless, the main challenge lies in predicting future behavior. There’s no doubt that a massive release of clathrate-trapped methane would have dire climatic consequences. However, the timeline and magnitude of such a release remain topics of ongoing research.
The Bigger Picture
The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis provides a vivid illustration of the intricate, interconnected systems that govern our planet’s climate. While it is just one of many factors influencing global temperatures, its potential impact underscores the importance of continued research and monitoring.
Understanding and predicting the behavior of clathrates in a warming world will not only inform climate models but also help humanity prepare for and perhaps mitigate the consequences of rapid climate change events. As always, with scientific exploration, each answer uncovers more questions, and the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis is no exception. Uncovering puzzles like these helps scientists better understand the way our climate works, and how to best focus new research efforts going forward. | 36 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674630",
"author": "MmmDee",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T15:02:58",
"content": "Great article regarding a topic on which I was previously unaware. One might caution you that providing an alternate source of global warming (other than man-made) might be considered heresy by many.",
... | 1,760,372,194.990893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/adding-mmio-ram-on-the-rp2040/ | Adding MMIO RAM On The RP2040 | Matthew Carlson | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"QSPI",
"rp2040",
"ssi",
"xip"
] | [Dmitry Grinberg] is an adept tinkerer who wanted a much larger RAM space on his Raspberry Pi 2040 (RP2040) than the measly 264kb on-board SRAM. The chip does support 16MB of off-flash memory via a QSPI bus, but this must be accessed explicitly rather than being memory mapped. With clever trickery involving XIP (Execute in Place),
Dmitry mapped 8MB of external QSPI RAM into the address space
.
XIP mode allows the chip to fetch data on-demand from an external chip and place it into RP2040 caches mapped at 0x10xxxxxx. The RP2040, although incredibly versatile, has a limitation – it can only perform read and execute operations in its XIP mode. The first step to solving this was to get data from persistent storage to RAM on boot. Armed with a dual-OR gate IC, an inverter, and two resistors, [Dmitry] can toggle the nCS pin that selects between flash and RAM. A first-stage bootloader copies the program from flash to RAM, then sets up XIP mode and launches into a second-stage loader.
Of course, glitches couldn’t resist making an appearance. The RP2040’s GPIO IP block doesn’t reset properly, so the nCS pin doesn’t go back to selecting flash after reset. For [Dmitry], it wasn’t a problem as he used an I2C IO expander and made the troublesome pin dance to his tune.
The next step was to write changes back to RAM when the cache was flushed. This is where the MPU (Memory Protection Unit) gets abused. Usually, a write to 0x10xxxxxx will flush the cache line. When a write happens, the MPU can trigger a hard fault by marking that region as read-only. The handler emulates the write instruction and flushes the cache line. From a high level, it seems pretty straightforward, but there are 127 different types of write instructions for ARMv6M. While most code is read-heavy rather than write-heavy, performance is still a concern. Luckily for him,
memcpy
clocked in at 36 Mbit/s at stock clock rates, a commendable achievement given the inherent challenges.
[Dmitry’s] groundbreaking code is accessible for download on his website under a BSD-2 license, allowing others to explore the potential of vast amounts of RAM on the RP2040 microcontroller. This innovative approach opens doors to all sorts of creative possibilities. Despite being a partial ARMv6 emulator, this
isn’t the first emulator we’ve seen on RP2040, as this RISC-V emulator attests
. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674597",
"author": "haaad",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T11:53:30",
"content": "nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674603",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T13:05:34",
"content": "So basically the XIP can... | 1,760,372,194.859989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/building-a-hydraulic-lego-excavator-using-standard-pneumatic-cylinders/ | Building A Hydraulic Lego Excavator Using Standard Pneumatic Cylinders | Maya Posch | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"hydraulics",
"lego"
] | Everyone already knows that Lego Technic is pretty rad when it comes to existing, pre-made kits, but there’s also quite a bit of hacking potential left. One such area is the lack of hydraulics in Lego Technic, an egregious oversight that [Brick Technology] simply had to correct. His effort results in a partially hydraulic, fully
remote-controlled excavator
. Rather than a traditional gear hydraulic pump as you’d expect in a real-life excavator, a custom peristaltic pump is used to move the fluid to the hydraulic cylinders (rams for our British and Oceanic friends).
The undercarriage is (sadly) purely electrical, with a slip-ring providing power to the electric final drives in the tracks, enabling it to spin around endlessly without limitations. Where the hydraulics come into play is in the excavator’s arm, with two hydraulic lift cylinders on the boom, one cylinder to control the stick, and a final cylinder to control the bucket. Rather than a hydraulic switch, the setup is simplified by using a single peristaltic pump per cylinder circuit.
Remote control and power are provided using the rather chonky
BuWizz 3.0 Pro
, which offers a wireless control link (here controlled using
BrickController 2
on Android). Although original Lego cylinders were used, these are only intended for pneumatics, where it’s hoped that the used mixture of water and windscreen wiper fluid will prevent corrosion.
(Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip) | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674589",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T10:46:32",
"content": "So, who’s going to be “that guy” and point out that Lego did a whole range of pneumatic sets?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_pneumatics",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,194.914668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/2023-hackaday-prize-a-reusable-plant-monitor/ | 2023 Hackaday Prize: A Reusable Plant Monitor | Matthew Carlson | [
"green hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"ESP32-S3",
"homeassistant",
"indoor plants",
"solar"
] | [Ovidiu] cares for their house plants, trying to dial in the perfect soil humidity and light levels. However, many cheap monitors tend to rust after a few weeks of sitting in a damp, slightly acidic environment. By creating a
custom plant monitor with a removable probe
, not only can [Ovidiu] integrate better with their Home Assistant setup, but it will also be less wasteful.
The build starts with an ESP32-S3, a TP4056 charging circuit, a small e-ink display, and an AHT20 IC for air humidity and temperature. The ESP32 reads the probe using the capacitance measuring devices for touchpads built into the chip. Or course, a 450mAh battery provides a battery life of about 11 days. The probe is just a bare PCB with a connector at the top, making them cheap and easy to swap. They included pads on the probe for a thermistor for reading soil temperature, but this is optional. A handsome 3D-printed case wraps it all up nicely.
To further extend the battery, [Ovidiu] added a small solar panel via the header they left on the top of the project for expansion. All the
code, schematics, and STL files are up on GitHub
for your perusal. Of course, this isn’t the
first project we’ve seen that uses swappable capacitive probes,
but we love seeing people continue to iterate on good ideas.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674555",
"author": "Calin",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T05:22:01",
"content": "Speaking of plant sensors with removable capacitive soil probe, I have made a homeassistant compatible sensor just like this that runs one year on replaceable CR2032 batteries. You can check it out here if ... | 1,760,372,195.199941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/tiny-spheres-hiding-in-your-display/ | Tiny Spheres Hiding In Your Display | Adam Fabio | [
"hardware"
] | [
"anisotropic conductive film",
"conductive tape",
"lcd"
] | Liquid crystal and Organic LED displays have revolutionized portable computing. They’re also made of glass. Which presents a problem: How do we get electrical signals from fiberglass circuit boards to the glass displays? The answer is
double-sided adhesive tape
. But we’re not talking about packing tape here. As [Breakingtaps] explains, this tape has a trick up its sleeve.
The magic is that the tape conducts only in the vertical plane. Even more so, any two conducting sections of the tape are insulated from each other. How does it do that? Magic
beans
balls, of course!
The tape and adhesive are insulators. Embedded in the adhesive are tiny spheres. The spheres are made of plastic and coated with metal. When the tape (also known as ACF or Anisotropic Conductive Film) is pressed between a PCB with conductors and glass, a few spheres are squished down between the layers. Electrical signals pass between the squished spheres, allowing an image to be displayed on the glass screen. The final step uses heat and pressure to bond the adhesive and cure it. You can also get the material in paste form if you don’t like the tape.
The system works so well that it can be used for connections from a silicon chip directly to the glass. This is how many display controllers are mounted right to the module — definitely an improvement on the
rubber strips used on LCDs of the past
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674533",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-08-21T02:07:01",
"content": "Pretty ingenious solution. I bet whoever came up with that was pleased.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674535",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,195.154136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/hackaday-links-august-20-2023/ | Hackaday Links: August 20, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ansi",
"bomb scare",
"CME",
"coronal mass ejection",
"DEF CON",
"escape",
"exploit",
"hackaday links",
"helicopter",
"IMU",
"Ingenuity",
"mars",
"navigation",
"robotaxi",
"san francisco",
"self-driving",
"should have used a 555"
] | In some ways, we’ve become a little jaded when it comes to news from Mars, which almost always has to do with the
Ingenuity
helicopter completing yet another successful flight. And so it was with
the report of flight number 54 — almost
. It turns out that the previous flight, which was conducted on July 22, suffered a glitch that cut the flight short by forcing an immediate landing. We had either completely missed that in the news, or NASA wasn’t forthcoming with the news, perhaps until they knew more. But the details of the error are interesting and appear related to
a glitch that happened 46 flights before
, way back in May of 2021, that involves dropped frames from the video coming from the helicopter’s down-facing navigational camera. When this first cropped up back on flight six, it was only a couple of missed frames that nearly crashed the craft, thanks to confusion between the video stream and the inertial data. Flight engineers updated the aircraft’s software to allow for a little more flexibility with dropped frames, which worked perfectly up until the aborted flight 53.
The report doesn’t say how many frames were dropped this time, but it was more than the threshold that was added in the software update, which triggered the “LAND_NOW” program — which clearly deserves the all-caps treatment — to run and forced the helicopter down to safety. They’re still giving the machine a thorough checkup, including flight 54, a brief “up-and-down” hop to generate data the team can use to find out what was going on. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this —
Ingenuity
doesn’t owe us anything at this point, but we’d sure hate to say goodbye right now.
Speaking of diagnostics, San Francisco’s fleet of robotaxis seems to be much in the news lately, and sadly, not much of it seems to be good. First, we spotted
a report
of an autonomous Chevy Bolt EV from ride-hailing company Cruise running very afoul of a semi-truck (presumably ICE and human-driven) in a most embarrassing way. The semi seems to have been trying to negotiate a left turn from a main thoroughfare onto a narrower side street, which often requires the driver to swing very wide to the right and basically block the entire roadway briefly. The robotaxi apparently was having none of this, though, and plunged right on, only to be smooshed by the trailer. Now, we’re not saying that this wouldn’t have happened if a human had been driving the Bolt — accidents like this happen all the time. But this seems like one of those edge cases where human emotions, namely the fear of large, heavy things moving close to you, would tend to keep a human driver at a safe distance until the truck completed the questionably legal turn. It’s hard to see how you can program the same sense of self-preservation into autonomous vehicles, and it seems like we may be seeing the results of that here.
Also from San Francisco come reports of
people hailing driverless taxis for something other than the ride
. We’ll let you read the article, but it seems safe to say that, despite having huge windows and cameras all over the place, some people feel like the lack of a human driver in the front seat and a couple of minutes to spare is all the excuse you need to get freaky. So next time you decide to hail a robotaxi, maybe bring along some wet wipes.
We ran across an interesting article on a talk that came from
the bomb-scare-shortened DEF CON
last week on
the risks of ANSI escape sequences
. If you’re unfamiliar with ANSI escapes, they make things like text highlighting on command lines possible. They’re immensely useful because they increase the legibility of an otherwise monochrome terminal session by giving you visual clues that make things stand out from the wall-of-text look. But being simple ASCII character sequences, it’s possible to craft an exploit that will insert ANSI escapes into a system’s log files and have arbitrary code executed when an admin runs the log through something like
cat
or
grep
. We’re not sure how practical this attack would be, or if there are any examples of ANSI escape exploits in the wild, but it does sound pretty devious.
Finally, here are two cool videos for your enjoyment. The first is
a graphical representation of a coronal mass ejection (CME)
in 2014 and how it interacted with different spacecraft as it blasted out from the Sun and into space. The CME started on October 14 and was detected by instruments aboard spacecraft sprinkled across the solar system from Venus to Pluto within a matter of months. The passing wave of charged particles also interacted with the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, and eventually even managed to catch up with
Voyager 2
by March. That last one is a little humbling — after all,
Voyager 2
left Earth in 1977, and the Sun caught up to it in just 153 days.
And
finally
finally — shoulda used a 555, and they did:
But does it bother anyone else that they’ve got this poor chip walking backward? | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674505",
"author": "Marc",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T23:41:25",
"content": "ANSI (or in this case pre-ANSI) escape sequences were discovered to be a vulnerability 50 years ago, when I was in college. The school had a PDP-10 timesharing system that originally had an ASR-33 for the s... | 1,760,372,195.253241 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/only-8-chips-make-a-cpu/ | Only 8 Chips Make A CPU | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"homebrew cpu",
"serial CPU",
"ttl"
] | We’re no stranger to homemade CPUs on these pages, but we think that [Jiri Stepanovsky]’s 16-bit serial CPU might be a little special. Why?
It has an astonishingly low chip count, with only 8 ICs in total
. How on earth does he do it?
While a traditional TTL CPU has a relatively high chip count due to a parallel data bus, registers, and discrete ALU, this one takes a few shortcuts by opting for a one-bit serial bus with serial memory chips and an EPROM serving as a look-up-table ALU. Perhaps the most interesting result of this architecture is that it also allows the CPU to dispense with registers, like the Texas Instruments 16-bit chips back in the day. They all live in memory. You can see it below the break in action, streaming a video to a Nokia-style LCD.
Such a CPU would indeed have been unlikely to have been made back in the day due to the prohibitive cost of buying and programming such a large EPROM. However, old computers like the EDSAC also used a serial data path and mercury delay line memory to manage complexity. But for a solid-state CPU in 2023, we think the design is innovative. We think it would be challenging to reduce the chip count further — and no, we’re not counting designs that use a microcontroller to replicate a block of circuitry; that’s cheating — but we’re sure that somewhere there’s a designer with ideas for slimming the design further.
Thanks to [Ken Boak] for the tip. | 61 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674464",
"author": "Steve Casselman",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T20:39:07",
"content": "Put it in an FPGA.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674497",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T22:44:04",
"... | 1,760,372,195.476165 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/a-bubble-machine-built-from-scrap/ | A Bubble Machine Built From Scrap | Al Williams | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"bubble machine",
"diy",
"maker",
"school project"
] | Not every project has to be an AI-powered particle accelerator using lasers. Sometimes simple projects can be very satisfying, and a simple project can be a great gateway to introduce a friend or a child to our hacker ways. That’s why we noticed [Crazy Science’s]
bubble machine
upcycled from a CD and a water bottle. It isn’t likely to figure in anyone’s Ph.D. dissertation any time soon, but that isn’t the point
Once you see the pictures, you can probably figure out how to build it. For extra points, consider scrounging everything from stuff you already have. We were curious about drilling holes in the CD as we’d imagine they’d crack with an ordinary drill bit. Apparently, a soldering iron will pierce the disk, but we would advise doing that in a well-ventilated area.
You can also 3D print a wheel if you prefer. We imagine you could get artistic with the wheel, making holes of different sizes or decorating the wheel for a particular theme. There are plenty of other additions you could try. LED lighting or even a laser or two, if you must. Perhaps make the motor start on some stimulus like a motion sensor or sound.
A great rainy day project to share with a kid. Making projects with or for kids is a blast, and what kid doesn’t like something their
friends can’t buy in the store
? This would be a great Tinkercad and 3D printing project for a kid or a class. Probably better to have them running a printer than a table saw.
Then again
… | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674436",
"author": "FunnyThingsButWritten",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T17:33:53",
"content": "Secretly, deep down inside, you DO want this project to be an AI-powered particle accelerator using lasers.“There are plenty of other additions you could try. LED lighting or even a laser or... | 1,760,372,195.519007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/open-source-waterwheel/ | Open Source Waterwheel | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"generator",
"hydro power",
"hydroelectric",
"hydroelectricity",
"hydropower",
"off grid",
"off the grid",
"water",
"water wheel",
"water-powered"
] | Here in the West, power going out is an unusual event. But in more remote regions like the Himalayas, reliable electricity isn’t a given. A group of local craftspeople, researchers, and operators in Nepal have worked together to devise a
modular waterwheel system
.
Based on a 20-30 cm-wide bucket module consisting of only four galvanized steel components, the wheels can be easily built and deployed using resources and tools that are easy to find anywhere in the world. Current test devices generate between 120 and 1,400 Watts of power, depending on the device’s size.
A software tool was also developed that takes the head and flow rate of a location as inputs to calculate the dimensions of the optimal wheel and expected power output for an installation. This lets communities find ideal sites for power generation and calculate the expected costs.
We’ve covered a few other DIY hydropower setups, from
repurposed washing machines
to
custom scratch builds
. | 28 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674423",
"author": "toms106",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T16:22:24",
"content": "Circa 1985, a Japanese NGO provided small hydro generators to the Annapurna region. It provided enough for lighting but unfortunately caused fires. The survivors stopped using electric lights.",
"pare... | 1,760,372,195.803566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/roboagent-gets-its-mt-act-together/ | RoboAgent Gets Its MT-ACT Together | Michael Shaub | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"News",
"Robots Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"Carnegie Mellon University",
"computer vision",
"generalization",
"kitchen",
"kitchen hacks",
"machine learning",
"meta",
"research",
"research project",
"robot",
"robot arm",
"training data",
"trajectory"
] | Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shared a pre-print paper on generalized robot training within a small “practical data budget.” The team developed a system that breaks movement tasks into 12 “skills” (e.g., pick, place, slide, wipe) that can be combined to create new and complex trajectories within at least somewhat novel scenarios, called MT-ACT: Multi-Task Action Chunking Transformer. The authors write:
Trained merely on 7500 trajectories, we are demonstrating a universal RoboAgent that can exhibit a diverse set of 12 non-trivial manipulation skills (beyond picking/pushing, including articulated object manipulation and object re-orientation) across 38 tasks and can generalize them to 100s of diverse unseen scenarios (involving unseen objects, unseen tasks, and to completely unseen kitchens). RoboAgent can also evolve its capabilities with new experiences.
We are impressed that even with what may seem like minor variations in a kitchen scene to us, their model successfully adapts despite object location, lighting, background texture, and particularly novel object changes that would surely baffle most vision-based systems. After all, there’s a reason that most robots still do just repetitive tasks in locked cages.
One of the tools RoboAgent uses to complete novel tasks is the
previously covered SAM (Segment Anything Model)
from Meta. That and the modular approach to generalizing tasks seem more successful than trying to train systems for every possible variable. Learn more and find freely available datasets at the project’s
GitHub site
, the
PDF pre-print research paper
, and check out the video below. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674380",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T11:11:04",
"content": "Can it pass butter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674390",
"author": "victor",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T12:20:48",
"content": "Why the ... | 1,760,372,195.740459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/20/3d-printed-woven-coasters-save-tabletops-in-style/ | 3D-Printed Woven Coasters Save Tabletops In Style | Kristina Panos | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"basket weaving",
"coaster",
"stake and strand",
"weaving",
"weaving PLA"
] | When regular people think of 3D printing, they likely imagine semi-newfangled objects like twisty vases and useless trinkets. But there is so much more to 3D printing, as
[andrei.erdei]’s printed, woven coasters
demonstrate.
The design is based on the stake and strand basket weaving technique, which uses rigid strips called stakes in one direction and thinner strips called strands in the other. Since the flexibility of PLA is questionable, [andrei] printed the stakes already bent in a square wave pattern that accommodates the strands fairly easily. To tie the coasters together and make them look more polished and commercial, [andrei]
designed a holder
as well.
The awesome thing about this technique is that you can do so much with it, like varying the stakes’ widths or making them diagonal instead of square. [andrei] designed these in Tinkercad using Codeblocks; of
course, they are open source
. Be sure to check out the assembly video after the break. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674386",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T12:09:18",
"content": "Awesomely interesting topic, from the greatest writer here.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674400",
"author": "mnsirh",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,195.968683 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/modeling-a-guitar-for-circuit-simulation/ | Modeling A Guitar For Circuit Simulation | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"circuit",
"effects",
"equivalent circuit",
"guitar",
"model",
"music",
"numerical solution",
"simulation",
"SPICE"
] | Guitar effects have come a long way from the jangly, unaltered sounds of the 1950s when rock and roll started picking up steam. Starting in large part with [Jimi Hendrix] in the 60s, the number of available effects available to guitarists snowballed in the following decades step-by-step with the burgeoning electronics industry. Now, there are tons of effects, from simple analog devices that would have been familiar to [Hendrix] to complex, far-reaching, digital effects available to anyone with a computer. Another thing available to modern guitarists is
the ability to model these effects and guitars in circuit simulators, as [Iain] does
.
[Ian] plays a Fender Stratocaster, but in order to build effects pedals and amplifiers for it with the exact desired sound, he needed a way to model its equivalent circuit. For a simple DC circuit, this isn’t too difficult since it just requires measuring the resistance, capacitance, and inductance of the overall circuit and can be done with something as simple as a multimeter. But for something with the wide frequency range of a guitar, a little bit more effort needs to go into creating an accurate model. [Iain] is using an Analog Discovery as a vector network analyzer to get all of the raw data he needs for the model before moving on to some in-depth calculations.
[Iain] takes us through all of the methods of figuring out the equivalent impedance of his guitar and its cabling using simple methods capable of being done largely by hand and more advanced techniques like finding numerical solutions. By analyzing the impedance of the pickup, tone and volume controls, and cable, this deep dive into the complexities of building an accurate equivalent circuit model for his guitar could be replicated by anyone else looking to build effects for their specific guitars. If you’re looking for a more digital solution, though, we’ve seen some impressive effects built
using other tools unavailable to guitarists in days of yore, such as MIDI and the Raspberry Pi
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674357",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T08:24:00",
"content": "The most impressive guitar effect is undoubtedly distortion and feedback and can be easily achieved by turning your Marshall stack up to 11 and standing right in front of it with guitar in hand... | 1,760,372,196.078661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/off-grid-radio-also-repairable-off-grid/ | Off-Grid Radio Also Repairable Off-Grid | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur",
"arduino",
"atmega328p",
"ham",
"low power",
"parts drawer",
"QRP",
"radio",
"scamp",
"through hole"
] | Low-power radios, often referred to in the amateur radio community as QRP radios, have experienced a resurgence in popularity lately. Blame it on certain parts of the hobby become more popular, like Parks on the Air (POTA) or Summits on the Air (SOTA). These are events where a radio operator operates off-grid at remote parks or mountaintops. These QRP rigs are a practical and portable way to make contacts. You would think that a five- or ten-watt rig running on batteries would be simple. Surprisingly, they can be enormously complex and expensive. That’s why [Dr. Daniel Marks] built
the RFBitBanger
, a QRP radio designed to not only be usable off-grid but to be built and maintained off-grid as well.
The radio accomplishes this goal by being built out of as many standard off-the-shelf components as possible. It eschews modern surface-mount components in favor of the much more accessible through-hole parts, including the ATMEGA328P at the center of the build. A PCB design is also available, but it can be built on perf board nearly as easily. The radio supports any mode a QRP operator might use, including CW, SSB, RTTY, and a new mode designed explicitly for this radio called SCAMP which is a low bandwidth, low SNR digital mode built into the Arduino-based firmware. It’s a single-band radio, but any band between 20 and 80 meters can be selected with pluggable filters.
As far as bomb-proof radios go, we can’t imagine a better way to live out an apocalypse than with a radio like this. As long as there’s a well-stocked parts drawer around, this radio could theoretically reach around the world without worrying about warranty claims, expensive parts, or even a company going out of business or not stocking parts for old radios anymore. There’s also
more information about this build at the Open Research Institute
for those interested. And, if you’re wondering how useful any radio could be using only five watts of transmitter power,
take a look at this in-depth look at QRP radio operation
.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674338",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T03:41:42",
"content": "Off the shelf parts … from where digikey and Amazon? I haven’t seen a local electronics supplier in 15 years and I live in a town full of recording studios that need constant repair to their sometimes 30 ye... | 1,760,372,195.923972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/measuring-plancks-constant-again/ | Measuring Planck’s Constant (Again) | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"meaurement",
"physics",
"planck's constant"
] | There are many well-known physical constants, but it always interests us when someone can approximately measure them using equipment you probably have. We could pretend it is because we want to help kids do science projects, but who are we really kidding? It is just the cool factor. [Stoppi] shows us
several neat ways to measure Planck’s constant
(German language,
Google Translate link
) using things like LEDs, solar cells, and common test equipment. If you don’t want to translate the web page, you can also see the setup and the math behind it in the video below.
If complex math triggers you, this might not be the video for you. The particular test in the video does require a very low current measurement, but that’s not very hard to arrange these days. There are actually several methods covered in the post, and one of them uses one of those familiar “component testers” that has an Atmel CPU, a socket, and an LCD. These can measure the forward current of LEDs, and if you know the wavelength of the LED, you can determine the constant. There’s even a custom device that integrates several LEDs to do the job.
The method in the video is actually the fourth method in the post, using a light bulb and a solar cell. That method uses an optical bandpass filter. The experiment used two different ones and the 785 nm filter provided a good estimate (5.62×10
-34
vs the actual accepted value of 6.626×10
-34
). While 5.6 vs 6.6 might not seem that close, note that this is an extremely small number, so being off 1×10
-34
isn’t very much.
The custom box method was even closer. The single LED and component tester methods were fairly close but off by a bit more. The custom box reminded us of another custom instrument for this purpose, the Star Trekesque named “
photon energy array
.” The
other method we’ve seen used Lego
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674163",
"author": "Zellers",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T05:52:50",
"content": "What if I don’t ‘need’ to translate the page ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674179",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19... | 1,760,372,195.850878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/a-6502-overlay-debugger/ | A 6502 Overlay Debugger | Chris Lott | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"breadboard",
"debugger",
"in-circuit debugger"
] | Retired hardware engineer [Plasmode] recently took on the challenge of building a debugger for the 6502 designed to sit atop the microprocessor while seated in a solder less breadboard. The result is the
Diagnostic Overlay for W65C02 Breadboard
, consisting of 128 kB SRAM and a 1250-gate CPLD. Except being 0.8 in wide, the overlay debugger is otherwise the same size as the 6502’s 40-pin DIP package, so it doesn’t overhang other portions of your circuit.
Being an initial concept prototype, [Plasmode] mounted the chips dead-bug style on perf board — a process he himself found tiring. If he builds additional debuggers, presumably he will consider making a PCB.
The prototype was constructed using point-to-point soldering with 30-ga wire wrap wire. It was all done under the inspection microscope. There are not many connections, but they are rather tedious so I can only do a dozen or so wires per session. It took me 2 days and several hours total to finish the prototype board.
This design is based on the
CRC65 Frugal 6502 Single Board Computer
, of course omitting the 6502 itself. Instead of a physical ROM memory chip, he implemented a 64-byte boot loader inside the CPLD and a serial port. This lets him to bootstrap the system over the serial port. He plans on expanding this to include other DIP-packaged retro microprocessors in the future. Check out his Hackaday.io project page ( above ). If you want to dig deeper, he posted
the schematics here
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674174",
"author": "Thomas Anderson",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T07:07:05",
"content": "There’s a problem with the blue wire",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674178",
"author": "Raster",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19... | 1,760,372,196.020934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/transforming-a-keyboard-to-a-mouse-in-software/ | Transforming A Keyboard To A Mouse In Software | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"keyboard",
"libevdev",
"linux",
"mouse"
] | You’ve probably heard the old saying that if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck… So when is a keyboard a mouse? When software makes it quack like a mouse — that is, if mice quacked. [Blackle Mori] took a cheap USB keypad and, using the libevdev Linux system,
made it impersonate a mouse
.
The code on
GitHub
isn’t complex, but the details can take some time to get right. The code takes over all input events from the device. [Blackle] dumped out events sent from the keypad, but the stock evtest program would probably have done just as well.
Armed with the knowledge of what events belong to what keys, it is simple to replace them with messages that generally come from a mouse. This involves creating a virtual device that takes a surprisingly large number of lines of code, but none are particularly difficult to understand.
There are a few neat tricks that aren’t directly related. For example, [Blackle] wanted to have some keys launch programs. However, grabbing ownership of the keyboard requires you to run as root. You don’t want to launch your browser as root. Not only is it unsafe, but you’ll have the wrong configuration files. Luckily, Linux capabilities let it work the way you would like.
Overall, it is a neat approachable example of a technique you could use for many things. It isn’t hard to imagine a microcontroller on a serial port feeding mouse and keyboard events to the computer using a scheme like this. Sure, if you have the right USB micro, you could emulate a HID device, but that’s not always possible or desirable.
You never know
what you might want to connect to a modern PC
. Maybe even something
as simple as a foot pedal
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674068",
"author": "sgdfm",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T20:09:09",
"content": "IIRC Windows had that feature since forever, it’s enabled somwehre in accessibility settings and can be toggled on/off with NumLock key. Another way would be to use AutoHotkey script.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,372,196.122908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/smart-doorbell-focuses-on-privacy/ | Smart Doorbell Focuses On Privacy | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"doorbell",
"ESP32",
"home automation",
"phot",
"privacy",
"SnapShot",
"usb"
] | As handy as having a smart doorbell is, with its ability to remotely see who’s at the front door from anywhere with an Internet connection, the off-the-shelf units are not typically known for keeping user privacy as a top priority. Even if their cloud storage systems were perfectly secure (which is not a wise assumption to make) they have been known to give governmental agencies and police free reign to view the videos whenever they like. Unfortunately if you take privacy seriously,
you might need to implement your own smart doorbell yourself
.
The project uses an ESP32-CAM board as the doorbell’s core, paired with a momentary push button and all housed inside a 3D-printed enclosure. [Tristam] provides a step-by-step guide, including printing the enclosure, configuring the ESP32-CAM to work with the popular open-source home automation system ESPHome, handling doorbell notifications automatically, and wiring the components. There are plenty of other optional components that can be added to this system as well, including things like LED lighting for better nighttime imaging.
[Tristam] isn’t much of a fan of having his home automation connected to the Internet, so the device eschews wireless connections and batteries in favor of a ten-meter USB cable connected to it from a remote machine. As far as privacy goes, this is probably the best of all worlds as long as your home network isn’t doing anything crazy like exposing ports to the broader Internet. It also doesn’t need to be set up to continuously stream video either; this implementation only takes a snapshot when the doorbell button is actually pressed. Of course,
with a few upgrades to the ESP circuitry it is certainly possible to use these chips to capture video
if you prefer.
Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip! | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674085",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T21:22:52",
"content": "Honest question: if its a doorbell cam, what would the privacy issues be? It not like its in your bedroom.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674091... | 1,760,372,196.174253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/a-quarter-century-of-the-imac/ | A Quarter Century Of The IMac | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"25 years",
"apple",
"imac"
] | Growing older as an engineer turns out to be a succession of moments in which technologies and devices which you somehow still imagine to be cool or exciting, reveal themselves in fact to be obsolete, indeed,
old
. Such a moment comes today, with the25th anniversary of the most iconic of 1990s computers, Apple’s
iMac
. The translucent all-in-one machine was and remains more than simply yet another shiny Mac, it’s probably the single most influential home computer ever. A bold statement to be sure, but take a look at the computer you’re reading this on, indeed at all your electronic devices here in 2023, before you dismiss it.
Any colour you want, as long as it’s beige. Leon Brooks,
Public domain
.
Computers in the 1990s were beige and boring. Breathtakingly so, a festival of the generic. If you had a PC it came in the same beige box as every single other PC, the only thing breaking the monotony being one of those LED 7-segment fake-MHz displays. Apple computers took the beige and ran with it, their PowerMac range being merely a smoother-fronted version of all those beige-box PCs. This was the period following the departure of Steve Jobs during which the company famously lost its way, and the Bondi blue Jonny Ive-designed iMac was the signature product of his triumphant return.
That’s enough pretending to have drunk the Apple Kool-Aid for one article, so why are we marking this anniversary? The answer lies not in the iMac’s hardware, though its 233MHz PowerPC G3 and ATI graphics driving a 15″ CRT were no slouch for the day, nor even in its forsaking of all their previous proprietary interfaces for USB. Instead it’s the design influence of this machine, as it ushered in a new era of technological devices whose ethos lay around how they might be used rather than in simply showering the interface with features. At the time the iMac spawned a brief fashion for translucent blue in everything from peripherals to steam irons, but in the quarter century since your devices have changed immeasurably in its wake. We still don’t like that weird round mouse though.
Header image: Rama,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 39 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674003",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T17:05:28",
"content": "Touchscreen iMac.https://youtu.be/oZGswRH4wbM",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674008",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18... | 1,760,372,196.256181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/609896/ | Hackaday Podcast Ep 232: Chaos Communications Camp Placeholder Edition | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [] | Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams is off at
Chaos Communications Camp
, and Assistant Editor Tom Nardi is off on vacation, so there’s no real podcast this week.
If you need something to watch,
let us suggest the talks
!
Or listen to our pathetic excuses here:
Honestly, you’d be better off not downloading this one.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674057",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T19:13:50",
"content": ":-(Now what am I supposed to listen to on my Friday evening commute?Safe travels and happy vacationing wishes to the guys.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,196.296346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/cooling-off-the-bus-stop/ | Cooling Off The Bus Stop | Navarre Bartz | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bus stop",
"climate change",
"cooling",
"public transportation",
"radiant cooling",
"temperature",
"thermal regulation"
] | If you’ve taken the bus in the summer, you know it can get hot while you wait on your ride, even if there is a roof over the stop. Researchers at the University of Seville have devised a way to
keep you cooler
while you wait.
As temperatures around the world get warmer due to climate change, keeping cool in the summer is increasingly not just a matter of comfort. For the prototype in a climate-controlled chamber, 500L of water were cooled with a chiller and used as a thermal reservoir to reduce temps in the bus stop during the day. Pumps circulate the water through panels when a rider approaches the stop, cooling the space by ~8˚C (~14˚F) over a 20 minute period. Pumps for the system and lighting for the stop will be powered via solar panels and keep the system self-contained.
The amount of cooling offered by the system can be controlled by the flow rate of the water. The researchers plan to use
Falling-Film radiant cooling
in the outdoor version to replace the chiller to cool the water at night. They also say the system can be used for radiant heating in the winter, so it isn’t just for hot climates.
If you want to know how to
survive a wet bulb event
or want a better way to
determine your bus route
, we’ve got you covered there too.
[via
Electrek
] | 49 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673986",
"author": "mrsh",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T16:27:09",
"content": "There’s an easier solution: do not use pubic transport. Ride a bicycle or drive a car.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673993",
"author": "sp... | 1,760,372,196.484819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/the-mysterious-case-of-the-disappearing-inventor/ | The Mysterious Case Of The Disappearing Inventor | Navarre Bartz | [
"News",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"history",
"solar cell",
"solar panel"
] | When combing through the history of technological innovation, we often find that pinning down a given inventor of something can be tricky. [Foeke Postma] at Bellingcat shows us that even the Smithsonian can get it wrong when
given faulty information
.
The mystery in question is the disappearance of inventor [George Cove] from a photograph of his solar panel system from 1909 and its reuse as evidence of the first photovoltaic solar panel by another inventor, [Charles Fritts], around 1884. Questions
first arose about this image in 2021
, but whether this was an example of photo manipulation was merely speculation at the time.
[Postma] walks us through his forensic process to deduce the answer via image and records analysis. Evidence points to this being another photo taken shortly after the first, where the inventor had stepped out-of-frame. The photo was later misattributed in the writing on its reverse, and that error propagated all the way to the Smithsonian. We recommend heading over to the article if you want some tips for doing image analysis of your own.
If you want to dig further into the past, how about some
primitive materials science
? Sometimes the time is just right for something, and it
crops up in many different places
. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674325",
"author": "Giovanni",
"timestamp": "2023-08-20T00:50:21",
"content": "The article is very technical, so it is fairly easy to miss some of the subtle things I have inferred.As was customary in the early 1900s, many photographers waiting on a long exposure would most likely ... | 1,760,372,196.546522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/linux-running-on-not-a-lot/ | Linux, Running On Not A Lot | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"linux",
"microcontroller"
] | There are many possible answers to the question of what the lowest-powered hardware on which Linux could run might be, but it’s usually a pre-requisite for a Linux-capable platform to have a memory management unit, or MMU. That’s not the whole story though, because there are microcontroller-focused variants of the kernel which don’t require an MMU, including one for the Xtensa cores found on many Espressif chips.
It’s this that [Naveen] is using to produce a computer
which may not be the Linux computer with the lowest processor power, but could be the one consuming the least electrical power.
The result is definitely not a Linux powerhouse, but with its Arduino-sourced ESP32 board stacked on an UNO and I2C keyboard and display, it’s an extremely lightweight device. The question remains, though, is it more than a curiosity, and to what can it do? The chief advantage it has over its competitors such as the Raspberry Pi Zero comes in low power consumption, but can its cut-down Linux offer as much as a full-fat version? We are guessing that some commenters below will know the answer.
If you’re curious about the Xtensa version of Linux,
it can be found here
, | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674275",
"author": "Jack Dansen",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T20:18:18",
"content": "Reminds me of those rootable SD cards with wifi that allow sharing pictures from a camera that turned out to be running linux. Those have to be in the running for lowest power, lowest hardware linux.... | 1,760,372,196.692902 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/off-grid-ev-charging/ | Off-Grid EV Charging | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"charger",
"charging",
"electric vehicle",
"ESP32",
"ev",
"green",
"lithium iron phosphate",
"photovoltaic",
"solar panels"
] | There are plenty of reasons to install solar panels on one’s home. Reducing electric bills, reducing carbon footprint, or simply being in a location without electric service are all fairly common. While some of those might be true for [Dominic], he had another motivating factor. He wanted to install a charger for his electric vehicles but upgrading the electric service at his house would have been prohibitively expensive. So rather than dig up a bunch of his neighbors’ gardens to run a new service wire in
he built this off-grid setup instead
.
Hooking up solar panels to a battery and charge controller is usually not too hard, but getting enough energy to charge an EV out of a system all at once is more challenging. The system is based on several 550W solar modules which all charge a lithium iron phosphate battery. The battery can output 100 A DC at 48 V which gives more than enough power to charge an EV. However there were some problems getting this much power through an inverter. His first choice let out the magic smoke when it was connected, and it wasn’t until he settled on a Growatt inverter capable of outputting 3.5 kW that the system really started to take shape.
All of this is fairly straightforward, but there’s an extra touch here that makes this project noteworthy. [Dominic] wanted to balance incoming power from the photovoltaic system to the current demands from the EVs to put less strain on the battery. An ESP32 was programmed to only send as much power to the EVs as the solar system is producing at any given time, and also includes some extra logic to make sure the battery doesn’t drain itself from the idle power requirements of the inverter. Right now the system works well but the true test will be when it goes through its first winter.
Even though solar panels are more efficient at colder temperatures
, if the amount of sunlight or the angle of the panels aren’t ideal there is generally much less production. | 41 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674248",
"author": "Doug Leppard",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T18:13:42",
"content": "I have solar now at the house. But may build a homestead in the near future. So I will follow this with interest.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,196.624804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/chaos-and-camping/ | Chaos And Camping | Elliot Williams | [
"cons"
] | [
"camp",
"chaos communications camp",
"hacker culture"
] | In a field somewhere north of Berlin right now, around 5,500 hackers and their family members are blinking, coding, building, giving talks, and simply hanging out. Once every four years, the German hacker scene gathers and gets burned by the day star, despite the ample warnings to apply copious sunscreen.
CCCamp is a must-attend-it-to-get-it type event,
but it’s also chock-full of talks on numerous stages
, and these you can see from the comfort of your own home without even getting a mosquito bite! We loved [Harald Welte]’s
complete guide to the mysterious world of eSIMS
, for instance.
What’s most amazing about Camp, though, is that it brings together hackers of all ages and interests. Someone with a tape-measure direction-finding radio, probably participating in the foxhunt, just walked behind another group learning yoga. There is UV tape art and a stinky diesel train. Old greybeards mingle with kids, all playing with the bubble machines. Two folks are playing bocce with old hard drives. I think one camp was working on an autonomous model boat.
Everyone brings what they’re interested in, shares it, and helps anyone else get started if they’re interested. It’s a hacker paradise, even if just for a few days every four years.
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
! | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674240",
"author": "Nuit",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T16:58:01",
"content": "Do not forget the mch or Sha in Denmark, which is also every 4 years but exactly opposite timing to cccamp :) that’s how you can have his awesomeness every 2 years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,196.982962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/new-take-on-the-camera-obscura-brings-paris-indoors/ | New Take On The Camera Obscura Brings Paris Indoors | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"camera obscura",
"Dove prism",
"Eiffel Tower",
"Paris",
"pinhole",
"prism"
] | We haven’t checked, but we’ll go out on a limb here and say this is the first project we’ve featured with a BOM that includes “an apartment in Paris with a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower.” We suppose there are other places in the world where
a giant camera obscura
like this would work too, but you’ve got to admit that the view is pretty spectacular.
Of course, a camera obscura is really just a dark room — that’s literally what it means in Latin — with a small aperture to admit light from the outside world. This projects an inverted image on the opposite wall, which must have looked absolutely magical to pre-technical people and honestly is still pretty stunning today. Either way, it’s a low-tech way of seeing the world in a different light. [Mathieu Stern] decided his camera obscura would turn the traditional design on its head. Literally — he wanted an upright image. Luckily, he found a supplier that makes
special optics for camera obscura
that do just that. It looks like the optic uses
a Dove prism
to invert the image, or in this case to turn it back into an upright image.
The real hack here was finding the perfect place with just the right view of the Eiffel Tower — not at all an easy task in a medieval city where streets go where they will and buildings tend to block the sightlines. [Mathieu] eventually managed to find just the right place. With a little aluminum foil to make the rented room really obscura and some strategically positioned sheets to improve the projection surface, he was able to project some beautiful images of the landmark and surrounding cityscape in a panorama on the apartment walls. The video below has some stills and time-lapse sequences that are pretty breathtaking.
We’ve seen other camera obscura before, including
this mobile version
which may have made things easier for [Mathieu], at the price of giving up a lot of the charm. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674215",
"author": "NotMyName",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T13:32:59",
"content": "See alsohttps://youtu.be/AIVH6LmBvt4?t=125",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6674218",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T13:39:21",
... | 1,760,372,196.739354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/a-time-lapse-film-not-a-time-lapse-video/ | A Time-Lapse Film, Not A Time-Lapse Video | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"16mm",
"bolex",
"film",
"timelapse"
] | We’re used to time-lapse photography being merely a feature of our smartphone camera app, but of course it has its origins in film. A movie camera would be triggered frame by frame at fixed intervals, with the result being the timelapse. A dead art, you might wonder, were it not for [Kevin Santo Cappuccio],
who is capturing his work in timelapse on 16mm film, with a vintage Bolex camera
.
For those of us with a penchant for film the camera alone makes it worth a second look, but the actuation mechanism is at the heart of the project. It uses a slightly unusual but nevertheless strangely ubiquitous actuator, in the form of a car door central locking actuator. This in turn is triggered by an Arduino Nano, and he has the ultimate dream of using a 16mm film timelapse as part of a fully-16mm submission video for the Hackaday prize.
We think it’s a pity that more film-based projects don’t end up on these pages, so we’re very pleased indeed to see this one. If you’re curious about the other side of the 16mm system, well
we’ve introduced you to the inner workings of a projector before
, too. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674209",
"author": "adrian",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T12:51:39",
"content": "It’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing it. I’ve seen another unusual Bolex experiment :http://tomwilkinson.com/sculpture/gallery_work/bike_bolex.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,372,196.878552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/an-odd-home-computer-from-the-1980s/ | An Odd Home Computer From The 1980s | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"CP/M",
"Cromemco",
"S100"
] | If you were around when the Altair 8800 was king, you might remember the name Cromemco. They were an early vendor of add-ons for the Altair, along with companies like Godbout and Morrow. The company was mostly famous for a very crude digital camera for the Altair and a similarly-crude graphics interface card. They graduated into building S-100 bus computers. Like many similar companies, they could taste the upcoming home PC market, and they wanted a piece of it. Their answer? The
$1,800 C-10 Cromemco Personal Computer
, and you can see [Vintage Geek’s] thoughts on the odd machine in the video below.
The system ran CP/M and, like many similar systems, got lost in the rush to get the IBM PC. Compared to other computers of the time, the C-10 was compact. The keyboard layout seems odd today, but there wasn’t really much standardization in those days.
The video doesn’t feature as much of a teardown of the machine down as we would have liked, but there were a few peeks inside the monitor. They first tried powering up the computer live on the video. The screen lit up but didn’t show anything legible. We wish they had eased the voltage up on the old machine since we are reasonably certain the power supply capacitors are shot. With luck, they didn’t fry any of the components. But we hope they will get it running soon.
We didn’t remember the Cromemco C-10, but that’s not totally surprising. There were many computers that came and went during that time, from the
Sol-20
to the
nameless prototypes that never made it to market
. If you want to see what a
webcam looked like in 1975
, be our guest. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674164",
"author": "Thomas Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2023-08-19T06:04:07",
"content": "It was a funny time ln the early 80s. The z80 and 68000 were going multi user with mp/m and early unix like (cromix?). Even Ohio Scientific had a multi user is for the 6502 (os/65u).Then came th... | 1,760,372,196.93299 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/this-week-in-security-tunnelcrack-mutant-and-not-discord/ | This Week In Security: TunnelCrack, Mutant, And Not Discord | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"Mutant",
"This Week in Security",
"TunnelCrack"
] | Up first is
a clever attack against VPNs
, using some clever DNS and routing tricks. The technique is known as TunnelCrack (
PDF
), and every VPN tested was vulnerable to one of the two attacks, on at least one supported platform.
The first attack assumes an attacker is on the same network as the victim, and works by manipulating the victim’s routing tables. How? DHCP. We’re used to DHCP giving out local network addresses, but there’s nothing to prevent giving a client a fully routable address. Now here’s the trick: Many VPN clients make an exception for traffic sent to the local network. An attacker just hands out an address and subnet telling the victim machine that the entire Internet is on the local network. The attacker can capture all that traffic, route it correctly, and the VPN user doesn’t know the difference.
The mitigation is to disable local network access while the VPN is connected. Many clients do this, at least on some platforms. It was interesting to see that on iOS every tested app was vulnerable to this data leaking attack, and nearly every one of them on the macOS. It appears that the iOS API for working with VPNs has only recently introduced a control for how to handle local network traffic, leading to the abysmal results.
The second attack moves that attacker out of the local network, and somewhere on the network path, able to capture traffic and mess with DNS. Keep in mind that once a VPN is established, DNS traffic should flow though the VPN, but there is a narrow window to cause grief — when the VPN client does the DNS resolution to find the VPN server IP address. Now keep in mind, that is an attack pattern that VPNs are designed to handle. Any VPN client worth its salt authenticates the VPN server it’s connecting to. The problem is that most VPN clients also have a rule, that traffic sent to the connected VPN server is exempt from being encrypted by the VPN.
The attack is to spoof the VPN DNS to point at the Internet address that will receive the traffic you want to capture. Let’s just say you know my VPN server is at vpns.example.com, and you want to capture my connection to Hackaday. Hackaday uses the IP
192.0.66.96
. So you spoof the vpns.example.com DNS request, and tell my VPN client that it should connect to
192.0.66.96
. Then, because you are on the network path, you can redirect those VPN packets to the real VPN server. But when I connect to Hackaday on purpose, the destination IP matches the VPN IP, and some clients will just send that traffic outside the VPN.
The twofold solution is to use one of the various secure DNS extensions, like DNSSEC or DoH, and then to write VPN clients that can keep track of which connections are VPN traffic, and which are not. For those wondering, our favorite VPN technology, Wireguard, fared well on the test. On Linux and Android, it got a perfect score, and only the macOS and iOS versions really had a problem, allowing local network traffic to escape the VPN.
Decipher the Mutant, Capture the Flag
[Vikrant] put together
a Capture the Flag (CTF) entry for AppSec Village
at DEF CON this year. It was based around the Mutant language, which is an attempt at compiling code into an encrypted state, to keep it secure and hard to reverse-engineer. The problem with those obscured-code ideas is that there has to be a way to disentangle that code in order to run it.
The way to solve this challenge was to borrow code from the official Mutant compiler, and build a deobfuscator using the official code. That’s not to say it’s an easy challenge, but it’s not clear that Mutant will do a whole lot to actually improve security. But as a project, it’s a lot of fun, and makes for a great CTF challenge.
The Other Discord
760,000 user records have leaked from Discord.io
. That’s a bunch of usernames, email addresses, and password hashes from the Discord.io service, which is completely separate from the Discord web site. Discord.io is a third party service that provides customized Discord invites. And while it’s no fun that this information escaped, at least it wasn’t the Discord user database. That would be just about all of us.
Bits and Bytes
Nmap is great for scanning for machines and open ports. The only down side is… it’s kinda slow.
This irritated [Joshua] enough to dig into why
— and how to fix it. It turns out nmap is being slow on purpose. There is something to be said for not DOS’ing the scan target after all. If it’s just too slow for your tastes too, it turns out the solution is a tweaked value in
service_scan.h
and a recompile. Now you know.
Apple has joined the ranks of OS vendors that now include anti-malware scanners in their OS. On macOS, that’s XProtect Remediator (XPR). And if you’ve ever checked up on what XPR is doing on a Mac machine,
you may find it a bit odd
. Apple has picked some unique names for the malware XPRD is looking for, so you’ll see log messages like
FloppyFlipper NoThreatDetected status_code 20
. Silly name, but all is well. The other message to know about is
BadPluginServiceSignature
, which sounds terrible, but just means that the XPR definitions have been updates, and the scanning services are restarting to grab the new definitions.
And if you didn’t make Black Hat this year, you can join in some of the fun a bit late, as
the slides from various presentations have been released
. Those will have to hold us over for now, though keep an eye on
the Black Hat Youtube channel
, to eventually get the talk recordings, too. And if you see something in there that we missed, let us know about it! | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673985",
"author": "xnopasaranx",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T16:17:53",
"content": "Regarding the discord.io leak: it will be “all” of us, when FOSS project keep on using that platform. It’s a proprietary mess, invented for gamers. I will never understand why hackers use this, as it ... | 1,760,372,197.04398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/data-recovery-in-the-woodshed/ | Data Recovery In The Woodshed | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"data recovery"
] | A 1TB drive fails. How do you recover the data? If you are like us, you imagine a high-tech lab with serious-looking technicians and engineers. [John Graham-Cumming]
managed it in his woodworking shop
. Granted, it was a solid-state drive, so a clean room wasn’t necessary, but we still found it an unexpected story.
[John’s] gaming rig had two Seagate Firecuda 530 SSDs and decided not to boot. A quick analysis found one of the drives failed — it happens. However, the drive showed some signs of life after cooling off. A 30-minute trip to the freezer made the drive work again until it got warm again.
Suspecting a bad solder joint, [John] applied pressure to the board and got it working. The problem is you don’t want to have a death grip on your SSD while you copy a terabyte of data from it. The answer? A woodworking clamp applies pressure in just the right place. Are you worried about excess heat build-up? A carpenter’s square makes a good heat sink, apparently.
Like all the best stories, this one had a happy ending with complete data recovery. Even better, a bit of hot air reflow restored the drive to fully working status again.
Our usual data recovery efforts
take more wire than woodworking
. Depending on your media, if freezing doesn’t work,
maybe try an oven
. | 26 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673941",
"author": "Bill Gates",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T13:15:21",
"content": "Would not trust that drive for anything but temp storage. Great outcome of the story mind you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6674186",
... | 1,760,372,197.108807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/over-the-top-programmable-resistor-looks-the-part-and-performs/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Over-the-Top Programmable Resistor Looks The Part And Performs | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"decade",
"metrology",
"precision",
"programmable",
"resistor",
"scpi",
"stm32"
] | Every once in a while we get wind of a project that we’re reluctant to write up for the simple reason that it looks too good to be true. Not that projects need to be messy to be authentic, mind you, but there are some that are just so finished and professional looking that it gives us a bit of pause.
[Sebastian]’s programmable precision resistor
is a shining example of such a project
While [Sebastian] describes this as “a glorified decade resistance box,” and technically that’s exactly right — at its heart it’s just a bunch of precision resistors being switched into networks to achieve a specific overall resistance — there’s a lot more going on here than just that. The project write-up, which has been rolling out slowly over the last month or so, has a lot of detail on different topologies that could have been used — [Sebastian] settled on a switched series network that only requires six relays per decade while also minimizing the contribution of relay contact resistance to the network. Speaking of which, there’s a detailed discussion on that subject, plus temperature compensation, power ratings, and how the various decades are linked together.
For as much that’s interesting about what’s under the hood, we’d be remiss to not spend a little time praising the exterior of this instrument. [Sebastian] appears to have spared no expense to make this look like a commercial product, from the rack-mount enclosure to the HP-esque front panel. The UI is all discrete pushbuttons and knobs with a long string of 16-segment LEDs — no fancy touch-screens here. The panel layout isn’t overly busy, and looks like it would be easy to use with some practice. We’d love to hear how the front and rear panel overlays were designed, too; maybe in a future project update.
This honestly looks like an instrument that you’d pay a princely sum to Keithley or H-P to own, at least back in the late 1990s or so. Kudos to [Sebastian] for the attention to detail here.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673903",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T08:46:16",
"content": "Would genuinely have had trouble working out that’s not a commercial product, amazing.The only thing that gives it away is the interior of the case (the PCBs etc, totally professional) and even then small ru... | 1,760,372,197.314646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/2023-cyberdeck-contest-a-toddlers-cyberdeck/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Contest: A Toddler’s Cyberdeck | Dave Rowntree | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Arduino Mega 2560",
"ChatGPT",
"cyberdeck",
"portable"
] | [Josh] has a child and what do children like more than stuffing random things into their mouths? Pushing buttons, twiddling knobs, and yanking things of course! So [Josh] did what any self-respecting hacker would do and
built his little man a custom cyberdeck
.
The build follows the usual route of some electronics wedged into a pelican-style waterproof case — which is a good choice for this particular owner — a repurposed all-in-one LCD video player in the lid and a bunch of switches in the base. The player is apparently a V100-base SBC the likes of which are used in shops for those annoying looping promotional videos, but it doesn’t really matter if all it’s doing is being a focus point.
There is no connection from the base to the ‘display’ but that doesn’t matter here. The base is the fun part, with lots of old-school toggle switches and rotary knobs to play with and a load of LEDs to flash in mysterious ways. The guts of this are controlled via an Arduino Mega 2560, with copious amounts of hot glue on display in true hacker style. On the coding side of things, [Josh] used ChatGPT to produce the code from
his prompting
and
Wokwi
to simulate it before deployment to the hardware. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673883",
"author": "Kade",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T06:14:29",
"content": "What a fun and awesome project, well executed!! I thought about doing something similar, but instead of doing all the button/switch wiring I would integrate an IR receiver and an old (but real) remote contro... | 1,760,372,197.149303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/china-may-have-a-new-submarine-tracking-technology/ | China May Have A New Submarine Tracking Technology | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"elf",
"submarine"
] | Submarines have always been about stealth; that’s always been the whole point of putting them underwater. Tracking them can be difficult, even to this day, but
China may have a new technique to help in this endeavour
, as reported by the
South China Morning Post.
Nuclear missile subs are nicknamed “boomers,” and can spend months underwater. Tracking them is of prime concern to many countries around the world.
US Navy
The news comes from a study published in a Chinese journal, regarding detection of the most advanced American submarines. The stealthiest examples use all kinds of sophisticated systems to damp vibrations and reduce acoustic signatures to make detection as hard as possible. However, a new type of magnetic detector could change all that.
A research team used computer simulations to determine whether nuclear-powered submarines could be detected via the bubbles produced when cruising at high speed underwater. When these bubbles inevitably collapse, it can apparently produce a detectable signal that is orders of magnitude higher than the sensitivity of the best magnetic anomaly detectors. The signal is found on the order of 34.19 to 49.94 Hz, deep in the ELF range, according to researchers.
This could yet create another arms race, as submarine designers begin designing vessels to reduce bubble shedding at speed. Or, for all we know, this is already a well-known principle in the high-stakes world of submarine surveillance and combat. If you’re in the know,
please don’t reveal any classified information
in the comments section. It’s not worth your job or ours! If you recreate such a detector at home in a non-treasonous manner, though, don’t hesitate to
let us know
! | 69 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673844",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T02:07:28",
"content": "“A research team used computer simulations ”oh yeah, wake me up when they confront their made-up data with reality.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,197.261138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/hackaday-prize-2023-universal-tensile-testing-machine/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Universal Tensile Testing Machine | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"material",
"material testing",
"materials",
"tensile testing"
] | Material testing is important in big industry, where manufacturers must be able to trust the properties of the raw materials they’re using. The rest of us generally take a supplier’s word for it that they’re giving us what we’ve paid for. However, you could always take on material testing yourself
with the Universal Tensile Testing Machine from [Xieshi Zhang].
Unlike a six-figure industrial machine, this build is much more affordable, costing on the order of $300 to build. It uses an Arduino to read a tensile strain gauge, and is capable of applying up to a kilonewton of force. To achieve this, it uses a NEMA 17 stepper motor driving a lead screw to apply tensile strain or compression to the specimen under test. The test fixture is assembled from 3D-printed components, and built on top of a piece of aluminium extrusion.
Fundamentally, it’s a smaller version of a machine most engineering undergraduates will see in a materials lab experiment. It could be highly useful for anyone wanting to experiment with 3D printed structures; it would be more than capable of testing various filaments and infill types for their tensile and compression performance. Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673919",
"author": "Esef",
"timestamp": "2023-08-18T11:11:35",
"content": "Looks like the micro version of the big beastie we used in TSM240 (something something and materials). Would be great to get these into some high school stem labs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,197.356981 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.