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https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/litter-box-sensor-lets-you-know-exactly-what-the-cats-been-up-to/ | Litter Box Sensor Lets You Know Exactly What The Cat’s Been Up To | Dan Maloney | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"cat",
"feline",
"home-assistant",
"litter box",
"MQ135",
"mqtt",
"NodeMCU",
"pets"
] | In our experience, there’s rarely any question when the cat uses the litter box. At all. In the entire house. For hours. And while it may be instantly obvious to the most casual observer that it’s time to clean the thing out, that doesn’t mean there’s no value in
quantifying your feline friend’s noxious vapors
. For science.
Now of course, [Owen Ashurst] could have opted for one of those fancy automated litter boxes, the kind that detects when a cat has made a deposit and uses various methods to sweep it away and prepare the box for the next use, with varying degrees of success. These machines seem like great ideas, and generally work pretty well out of the box, but — well, let’s just say that a value-engineered system can only last so long under extreme conditions. So a plain old-fashioned litterbox suffices for [Owen], except with a few special modifications. A NodeMCU lives inside the modesty cover of the box, along with a PIR sensor to detect the cat’s presence, as well as an MQ135 air quality sensor to monitor for gasses. It seems an appropriate choice, since the sensor responds to ammonia and sulfides — both likely to be present after a deposit.
At power-up, the monitor connects to WiFi, starts up a web UI, and connects to [Owen]’s Home Assistant instance via MQTT. It posts the readings from the sensor every couple of minutes and creates a handy chart to track the cat’s visits and whether they result in new deposits or just visiting old friends. One place we can see the potential for error is the particulates released just by digging in the litter, which seems to be a popular pastime for some cats.
In general, we feel like more data is better data, so we salute [Owen] for the effort here. If you need help managing your furry friend’s
other habits
, we’ve got something for that too. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673800",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T20:55:48",
"content": "It may be spelled “PIR sensor,” but it’s pronounced “PURR sensor”. Because feline.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673936",
"author": "-jef... | 1,760,372,199.188175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/angry-robot-face-is-less-than-friendly/ | Angry Robot Face Is Less Than Friendly | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"led",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"robot",
"robot face"
] | Sometimes you just need to create a creepy robot head and give it an intimidating personality. [Jens] has done just that, and ably so,
with his latest eerie creation.
The robot face is introduced to us with a soundtrack befitting
Stranger Things,
or maybe
Luke Million.
The build was inspired by The Doorman, a creepy art piece with animatronic eyes. [Jens’] build started with a 3D model of a 3D mask, with the eyes and mouth modified to have rectangular cutouts for LED displays. The displays are run by a Raspberry Pi Pico, which generates a variety of eye and mouth animations. It uses a camera for face tracking, so the robot’s evil eyes seem to follow the viewer as they move around. In good form, the face has a simple switch—from good to evil, happy to angry. Or, as [Jens] designates the modes: “Fren” and “Not Fren.”
[Jens] does a great job explaining the build, and his acting at the end of the video is absolutely worth a chuckle. Given
Halloween is around the corner,
why not build five to eight of these, and hide them in your roommate’s bedroom?
Video after the break. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673769",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T18:50:30",
"content": "Andross?! 😱",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673829",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T23:22:36",
"content": "S... | 1,760,372,198.965443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/a-turing-complete-cpu-in-sunvox-why-not/ | A Turing-Complete CPU In Sunvox? Why Not! | Dave Rowntree | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"16-bit",
"cpu",
"emulation",
"SunVox"
] | Day-time software engineer and part-time musician, [Logickin,] knows a thing or two about programming the SunVox modular synthesiser and tracker software. Whilst the software is normally used for creating music and sound effects, they decided to really push it, and
create the VOXCOM-1610, a functional turing-complete CPU inside SunVox
, just for fun.
For those who haven’t come across
SunVox
before now, this software is a highly programmable visual environment for building up custom synthesisers, piecing signals together to create rhythms — that’s the ‘tracker’ bit — as well as interfacing to input devices such as MIDI and many others. It does look like a lot of fun, but just like CPUs created in Minecraft,
just because
, this seems to be the first time someone has built one inside this particular music app. The VOXCOM 1610 is a fully functional 10 Hz, 16-bit computer. It boasts 2KB of ROM, 256 bytes of RAM (expandable to 128 KB), and 8 general registers for data exchange between components. If you don’t fancy manually poking bits into the ROM to enter your software, then you’re in luck as [Logickin] has provided an assembler (in Java) that should ease the process a lot. The ABI will look very familiar to anyone who’s ever touched assembler before, although as you’d expect, it is quite light on addressing modes.
Now, all that is needed is for someone to port Doom to this and we’ll have it all. We think that is unlikely to happen. For those who pay attention, we did
see one neat SunVox project in the past
, which is certainly eye-catching as well as eardrum-bursting.
Thanks to [elbien] for the tip! | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673708",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known as Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T16:01:25",
"content": "How is “turning complete” different from Turing Complete? B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673721",
"author... | 1,760,372,198.909892 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/why-nuclear-bombs-cant-set-the-world-on-fire/ | Why Nuclear Bombs Can’t Set The World On Fire | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science"
] | [
"Manhattan Project",
"nuclear bomb",
"nuclear weapon",
"nuclear weapons",
"trinity test"
] | Before the first atomic bomb was detonated, there were some fears that a fission bomb could “ignite the atmosphere.” Yes, if you’ve just watched
Oppenheimer,
read about the Manhattan Project, or looked into atomic weapons at all, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Physicists determined the risk was “near zero,” proceeded ahead with the Trinity test, and the world lived to see another day.
You might be wondering what this all means. How could the very air around us be set aflame, and how did physicists figure out it wasn’t a problem? Let’s explore the common misunderstandings around this concept, and the physical reactions at play.
Not Fire, But Fusion
The main misconception is that a fission bomb could “ignite” the atmosphere in the sense that the air itself would
burn.
It comes down to terminology; the word “ignite” is most familiarly used to refer to fire. Combustion is a
chemical
reaction, involving the breaking of molecular bonds
between
atoms. This results in a release of energy in the form of heat, light, and so on. However, the species typically present in our atmosphere are, by and large, not very flammable. The nitrogen that makes up the greatest proportion of air certainly doesn’t want to burn; neither does argon or carbon dioxide, for that matter. If they readily reacted in such a way with the oxygen in the air, we’d already know about it.
Instead, the concern was that the great energy output from a fission bomb could instead “ignite” a
nuclear
chain reaction in the atmosphere. The possibility was considered as early as 1942, several years before the successful Trinity test. Physicist Edward Teller raised the idea that the intense heat created by a fission bomb could cause hydrogen atoms in the air and water to fuse together into helium. The idea was that this could then release more energy in a runaway chain reaction that quickly consumed the entire atmosphere, functionally destroying the Earth as we know it. Concerns that a reaction could occur in the world’s oceans were also raised along the way.
Abstract from the report: IGNITION OF THE ATMOSPHERE WITH NUCLEAR BOMBS.
The matter was studied, with Teller working with Emil Konopinski on the problem. The two published their findings
in a report
some six months before the Trinity test took place. The two concluded that no matter how hot any one section of the Earth’s atmosphere might become, a runaway nuclear chain reaction was unlikely to be sustained. This was due to the fact that even if any fusion reactions did occur in the open atmosphere, the energy lost to the surroundings via radiation was far in excess of the extra energy released. Thus, no self-sustaining chain reaction would occur.
The report examined a variety of potential reactions, including those concerning the potential for nitrogen to get involved, but concluded there was no risk of a chain reaction occurring. Even in the event of the detonation of a truly massive thermonuclear bomb of over 1000 cubic meters in size, energy transfers from Compton scattering would shed enough energy to prevent a runaway self-sustaining nuclear reaction in air. The numbers indicated there was a large safety factor by virtue of the unsustainability of chain reactions in the atmosphere.
“Ivy Mike” was the first detonation of a thermonuclear weapon, taking place in 1952. Despite being hundreds of times more powerful than the weapons dropped on Japan, it too was incapable of “igniting” the atmosphere.
Public Domain
The matter was largely considered closed, but resurfaced
in the 1970s
. This was largely due to an essay published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists rehashing the concerns around nuclear ignition of the atmosphere during the Manhattan Project. Physicist Hans Bethe would go on to rebut the issue once more, noting that nuclear fusion reactions are only sustained under great pressure, something not present in the atmosphere or the Earth’s oceans.
Fundamentally, nuclear weapons proved to be incapable of destroying the world in a single detonation. They remain capable of doing great harm, regardless, and questions still rage as to whether they could be the end of civilization by other mechanisms, such as
nuclear winter
. In any case, past decades have seen the world grow far more wary of their use, and we yet hope that such events may never again come to pass. | 63 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673676",
"author": "BobH",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T14:08:00",
"content": "> The two concluded that no matter how hot any one section of the Earth’s atmosphere might become, a runaway nuclear chain reaction was likely to be sustained.This should probably be UNLIKELY to be sustai... | 1,760,372,199.629396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/2023-cyberdeck-contest-cyberdeck-red-is-ready-for-action/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Contest: Cyberdeck Red Is Ready For Action | Dan Maloney | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge",
"cyberdeck",
"HackRF",
"hdmi",
"Latte Panda",
"sdr",
"windows"
] | What exactly constitutes a cyberdeck is up for debate, but for us, one thing is clear: A cyberdeck needs to look like it’s ready to go to battle. When the machines finally rise up and try to wipe us all out, someone toting around a machine like
Cyberdeck Red
is probably going to be a sight for sore eyes; clearly, such a person would be equipped to help us fight back the robotic scourge.
If this cyberdeck looks familiar, it’s for a good reason — it’s [Gabriel]’s second stab at this build. We thought the original was pretty keen, enough so that
it won second prize in the 2022 contest
. But like many cyberdeck builders, good enough isn’t good enough, and so rather than rest on his laurels, he set about improving a few things. The most visible of the changes are the spiffy new case, which is far less utilitarian than version one, and the new custom-made split keyboard. Things are a little different under the hood too; gone is the Raspberry Pi 4, which was replaced by Latte Panda 3 Delta running Windows. And like the original, version two is absolutely stuffed with sensors and diagnostic gear — a Hack RF SDR for radio work, plus an Analog Discovery 2 which provides everything from an oscilloscope and signal generator to a spectrum analyzer and an impedance tester.
But possibly the most useful feature of Cyberdeck Red is the onboard HDMI projector. The palm-sized, short-throw projector would be perfect for an impromptu combat briefing in an improvised command post, or just watching Netflix. If the machines will allow it, of course.
The 2023 Cyberdeck Contest
wraps up August 15, so it looks like [Gabriel] just squeaked this one in on time. We wish him and all the other entrants the best of luck! | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673630",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T11:20:35",
"content": "This thing seems to fold up really really neatly, looks quite practical and i like the audio concept of turning the desk into part of the speaker system, though every new desk is probably going to be an... | 1,760,372,199.011643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/17/fluorescent-filament-makes-object-identification-easier/ | Fluorescent Filament Makes Object Identification Easier | Navarre Bartz | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"CSAIL",
"FDM",
"infrared",
"infraredtags",
"ir",
"label",
"machine readable",
"machine vision",
"mit",
"mit csail",
"qr code"
] | QR codes are a handy way to embed information, but they aren’t exactly pretty. New work from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have a new way to produce high contrast QR codes that are
invisible
. [PDF]
If this sounds familiar, you may remember CSAILs previous project
embedding QR codes into 3D prints
via IR-transparent filament. This followup to that research increases the detection of the objects by using an IR-fluorescent filament. Another benefit of this new approach is that while the
InfraredTags
could be any color you wanted as long as it was black,
BrightMarkers
can be embedded in objects of any color since the important IR component is embedded in traditional filament instead of the other way around.
One of the more interesting applications is privacy-preserving object detection since the computer vision system only “sees” the fluorescent objects. The example given is marking a box of valuables in a home to be detected by interior cameras without recording the movements of the home’s occupants, but the possibilities certainly don’t end there, especially given the other stated application of tactile interfaces for VR or AR systems.
We’re interested to see if the researchers can figure out how to tune the filament to fluoresce in more
colors to increase the information density of the codes
. Now, go forth and 3D print a snake with
snake in a QR code
inside! | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673603",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T08:46:40",
"content": "Why would any thieves be lugging any boxes around, when it’d be far easier to just stuff the valuables themselves and anything else they want to grab with them into a gym bag or similar?",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,199.133206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/bringing-an-adm-3a-back-to-life/ | Bringing An ADM-3A Back To Life | Chris Lott | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ADM-3A",
"cataract",
"crt",
"Lear Siegler",
"terminal"
] | [David] at Usagi Electric ended up with an old Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal in a trade a couple of years ago. But the CRT face was plagued with so-called cataracts, and the condition of the insides was unknown. The video ( below the break )
shows the restoration process
, which went quite smoothly. [David] was relieved that the CRT repair in particular was easy, a fact he attributes to the Texas weather —
ADM-3A Under the Hood
The temperature was 110 F / 43 C when he set the CRT outside to bake in the sun for a few hours. Afterwards, removing the “integral implosion protection” plastic screen went better than expected. Everything cleaned up nicely and the screen reinstalled. Introduced in 1976, the main electronics board is chock full of TTL chips with nary a microprocessor in sight. Fortunately the board was substantially intact, and a single missing chip was found hidden underneath the board. [David] gets the terminal up and running in short order, and is confronted with an annoyance familiar to gray-haired programmers who grew up in this era. Most terminals had different sets of commands to control features such as cursor control and clearing parts or all of the screen. Programs often assumed a certain type of terminal. Some terminals could be configured to behave in different ways, and some programs offered the user a choice of terminals. Today your terminal emulator probably still has a few choices of which kind of terminal to emulate, VT-100 being the most common. And eventually some operating systems provided a terminal abstraction, like Unix’s
termcap
for example.
If you were around in the era where terminals like the ADM-3A were scattered everywhere, what was your favorite terminal and/or terminal feature? And today, do you have any favorite terminal emulator to recommend? Let us know in the comments below. | 23 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673561",
"author": "I'm not that old, am I?",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T05:29:07",
"content": "When I was using ADM-3A terminals in school, my favorite feature was “This is not a keypunch.”The line editor on the Cyber 7600 really did treat the terminal as a “glass TTY”.If I recall ... | 1,760,372,199.076471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/the-dipole-antenna-isnt-as-simple-as-it-appears/ | The Dipole Antenna Isn’t As Simple As It Appears | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"bandwidth",
"dipole",
"frequency",
"impedance",
"Reactive",
"resistive",
"vna",
"wavelength"
] | Dipole antennas are easy, right? Just follow the formula, cut two pieces of wire, attach your feedline, and you’re on the air. But then again, maybe not. You’re always advised to cut the legs a little long so you can trim to the right length, but why? Shouldn’t the math just be right? And what difference does wire choice make on the antenna’s characteristics? The simple dipole isn’t really that simple at all.
If you’ve got antenna questions, check out [FesZ]’s
new video on resonant dipoles
, which is a deep dive into some of the mysteries of the humble dipole. In true [FesZ] fashion, he starts with simulations of various dipole configurations ranging from the ideal case — a lossless conductor in free space with as close to zero diameter conductors as
the MMANA antenna simulator
can support — and gradually build up to more practical designs.
We’ve got to admit that we were surprised by how much the wire diameter affects the resonant frequency of these theoretical antennas — the chunkier the wire, the lower the resonant frequency, which is defined as the frequency at which the antenna’s impedance has only a resistive component. On the other hand, material selection plays a role, too, with copper wire being the best choice in terms of loss, followed by aluminum wire and then iron pipe, which is very lossy at small diameters. Luckily, these differences even out with increasing conductor diameter.
The most interesting part of the video for us was the experiments with practical antennas, which he builds from different materials and tests on a LiteVNA — kind of like
a NanoVNA
on steroids. As expected, wire thickness plays a part in antenna bandwidth — the finer the wire, the narrower the bandwidth — and the measured resonant frequency worked out to be pretty much what it was in simulation. Insulation on the wire had an unexpectedly huge effect too, pushing the resonant frequency down around 25 MHz.
Thanks to [FesZ] for this effective demonstration of designing antennas for the real world. | 47 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673577",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-08-17T06:10:42",
"content": "Long story short: the math assumes things like the speed of light in vacuum, but adding air and other media in between changes the speed of light slightly, so the math goes off.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,199.440364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/a-nifty-tool-for-counting-neopixels/ | A Nifty Tool For Counting Neopixels | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"neopixel",
"Neopixels",
"ws2812b"
] | Picture it. You’ve got a big roll of NeoPixels, but you have no idea how many are actually on the tape. Or you need to count how many WS2812B LEDs are in a display to properly plan your animations.
Fear not, for [Gustavo Laureano] has built the perfect tool for counting the addressable LEDs.
The tool is based on a Raspberry Pi Pico, so it’s easy to replicate at home. The LED strip is simply connected to the microcontroller via a set of jumper wires going to the 5V and GND pins, while one of the Pico’s ADC pins is then connected to the strip’s GND pin after the jumper. A further GPIO pin is used to send data to the strip.
Essentially, this uses the jumper wire as a rudimentary current shunt. The code steps through the string of LEDs, turning each one on and then off in turn, comparing the value read by the ADC pin at each state. When the Pico detects no difference in current draw between the on and off states, that suggests it’s trying to turn on an LED beyond the end of the string, and thus the count is concluded.
You don’t need to understand any of that to put this device to good use, however. You can easily whip it up on a breadboard with a Pi Pico and parts you have lying around in the shop. Video after the break. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673512",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T23:38:53",
"content": "Fun little project but it is quite slow. Apart from the actual time it takes to do the measurement, the most logical improvement would be to start with an initial guess (Maybe just “50” or the last measur... | 1,760,372,199.516109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/new-motherboard-improves-old-crt-television/ | New Motherboard Improves Old CRT Television | Chris Lott | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"mainboard",
"multi standard",
"ntsc",
"pal",
"SECAM",
"television"
] | While browsing AliExpress from his digital basement, [Adrian Black] stumbled upon what seemed like a brand-new mainboard for a CRT television set. He decided to take a gamble and ordered one.
It finally arrived, and was indeed a brand new product from 2023
.
DIGITAL MAIN BOARD OF TV, Work ath [sic] HONGXUN products with the care and precision of a sculptor in each step, wonderful have no limits
CRT Mainboard Transplant in Progress
Dubious marketing descriptions like “High Definition Digital Color TV Driver Board” aside, this turned out to be a fairly well-designed analog TV board. [Adrian] pulls a 20-year-old Magnavox ( Philips ) color television set from storage and begins the transplant operation. One interesting observation is the Magnavox board has almost the same layout as the new board, except for the orientation of the sections. The new CRT neck board had a different connector than the Magnavox set, but was designed to accept multiple sized sockets. [Adrian] just removed the new socket and replaced it with one from the old set. The mechanical issues were a bit more complicated, but nothing that a Dremel tool and a bit of hot glue can’t fix. The 220 VAC power supply was eventually modified to accept 110 VAC, which also enabled him to reconnect the degaussing coil.
[Adrian] has collected some relevant documentation in
this GitHub repository
, including schematics. Why bother with this at all? Well, until now, he didn’t have any way to test / view PAL RF signals in his lab. He was gambling on the new mainboard having a PAL tuner. It does, but as an unadvertised bonus, it supports NTSC and SECAM as well — but still not “HD digital color TV”, as far as we know. If you want a multi-standard TV in your lab, this solution may be worth considering. It appears there is still a market somewhere for new CRT televisions. If you have any background on this, please let us know down below in the comments. | 37 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673456",
"author": "Brock",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T20:23:29",
"content": "These exist due to the hobby arcade market. Enthusiasts/collectors want original CRT displays and sometimes you’ve got a perfectly good tube with a burned out main board that can be brought back to life wit... | 1,760,372,199.354456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/a-delorean-with-an-electrifying-secret/ | A DeLorean With An Electrifying Secret | Navarre Bartz | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"car hack",
"car restoration",
"Chevy Bolt",
"DeLorean",
"electric car",
"EV conversion",
"restomod"
] | There are few production cars with as much geek cred as the DMC DeLorean. If you want to kick the nerdiness up a notch without doing a full
Back to the Future
prop-mod, then the next best thing is to
make it an EV
.
[Bill Carlson] took a
1981 DeLorean
and transplanted the drivetrain from a
Chevy Bolt
to electrify this ride. With the DeLorean being a rear wheel drive vehicle and the Bolt front wheel, there was some amount of component reshuffling to do. The motor is now in the rear of the car along with the main contactor, charger, and motor controller while the batteries are split between a pack in the original engine compartment and another up front under the hood.
The electric power steering and brake booster from the Bolt now also live under the hood, and the accelerator and steering column from the EV were transplanted into the cockpit. [Carlson] still needs to tidy up the interior of the car which is currently a nest of low voltage cables as well as add the cooling system which will bring this stainless monster up to a hefty 3200 lbs (~1450 kg) versus the original 2850 lbs (~1300 kg). We suspect the total bill came in a bit lower than getting an electric
DeLorean Alpha5
.
This isn’t the first
electric DeLorean
we’ve covered here, and if that isn’t cool enough, how about this
DeLorean-inspired hovercraft
? | 47 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673427",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T19:09:11",
"content": "Who decides ‘geek cred’?Because a DeLorian is not a car that carries much cred with anybody except ‘Back to the Future’ fans. There might be some ‘geeks’ in that group, but no many.It was a very mediocre car... | 1,760,372,199.71223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/ask-hackaday-why-retrocomputing/ | Ask Hackaday: Why Retrocomputing? | Al Williams | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Rant",
"retrocomputing",
"vintage computing"
] | I recently dropped in on one of the Vintage Computer Festival events, and it made me think about why people — including myself — are fascinated with old computer technology. In my case, I lived through a lot of it, and many of the people milling around at VCF did too, so it could just be nostalgia. But there were also young people there.
Out of curiosity, I asked people about the appeal of the old computers on display there. Overwhelmingly, the answer was: you can understand the whole system readily. Imagine how long it would take you to learn all the hardware and software details of your current desktop computer CPU. Then add your GPU, the mass storage controllers, and your network interface. I don’t mean knowing the part numbers, specs, and other trivialities. I mean being able to program, repair, and even enhance it.
Keep It Simple
Consider the relative complexity. An Intel 8080 CPU has 6,000 transistors and 76 instructions. An i7-940 has around 731 million transistors! It has multiple instruction sets and extensions so much so it is hard to get an exact count. There are multiple cores and complex memory caches.
Even the 8080 was complex compared to some of the old CPUs. The RCA 1802 was famous for being fully static and having a DMA system so you could enter data by hand without needing to burn an EPROM to get it started. The 6502 had about 3,500 transistors. It was deliberately made simple to gain speed and save costs. Both the 1802 and 6502 had simpler power and clock requirements, too.
Could these little machines do what our computers today can do? Not really, but they can do a lot. What’s more, you can readily learn to program them, design with them, and build them.
Retro Doesn’t Have to Mean Old
This leads to an interesting effect. I think people like these machines because they are simple, not because they are old. That means that replicas are valued more than in some other areas. A replica of an old book or car is of limited interest. But a replica Altair 8800? There have been many, and they are usually in high demand, especially since the actual computer is frightfully expensive and finicky to keep running today. Then there are the retro-style machines. The
Hackaday Supercon 2022 Badge
comes to mind. It isn’t an old computer, but it seems like one. Many people had a great time learning about the badge and hacking it.
Get Started
If you haven’t gotten the retrocomputing bug yet, there are a lot of ways to get started. First, you can emulate almost
any old computer you like
on a PC or even, sometimes, in a
browser
. This usually costs nothing, and you can get a good flavor of how a machine works. In addition, the emulators usually are decked-out systems with everything included. They also frequently include debuggers that anyone who used the real machine would have killed for back in the day. Think you’ll miss the front panel switches and lights?
Maybe not
. You can find emulation for everything from old mainframes, minicomputers, microcontroller boards, and pre-PCs like the venerable
TRS-80
.
The next step up is to build your emulator with something like a Raspberry Pi or an
Arduino
. You can also find
FPGA recreations
of old processors and computers. These machines can get very fancy or be very simple. It is hard to explain, but there is a big difference between booting CP/M in a window on your PC and booting it
on a box with blinking lights on it
. Doesn’t make sense, but it is still true.
When you are ready to move on from that, you can still buy many of these old processors either from inventories still hanging around or, in some cases, they are still made for some reason. You often have to blend new parts with old ones, but you can have the satisfaction of running a real CPU. Sometimes people try to
make near-perfect recreations
of old hardware. Sometimes they just
shove all the support hardware into an Arduino
for a cheap and easy build. Either way, you are still running on the authentic CPU.
Finally, you can find old machines and either spend a fortune or spend a lot of time repairing them. Maybe you’ll even do both! At least the repair work is feasible and enjoyable. Some computers were wildly popular and still easy to find. Others are very rare — you even occasionally see one that is
one-of-a-kind
. Those can take some detective work.
Do You?
Do you retrocompute? If not, why not? If you do, why? Is there old software you can’t live without? Is there a certain game that you like better than the modern counterparts? Do you enjoy being able to interface hardware to a machine without developing a PCIe interface? Or is it simply nostalgia? After all, people collect old cars, old radios, and old books. Maybe you don’t really need a reason. Let us know what you think in the comments. | 81 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673382",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T17:05:35",
"content": "Just because.Oh and no nagging OS message from a corporate overlord, or forced reboot for unplanned emergency updates. Or ads.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,199.87479 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/building-a-diy-cloud-chamber/ | Building A DIY Cloud Chamber | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"cloud chamber",
"physics",
"radiation"
] | [RCLifeOn] happened to come into possession of some radioactive uranium ore. He thus decided to
build a cloud chamber
to visualize the products of radioactive decay in a pleasing visual manner.
The construction is fairly straightforward stuff. A 3D-printer build plate was used to heat isopropyl alcohol to a vapor, while a bank of thermoelectric coolers then cool the alcohol down to -30 C to create a dense fog. The build uses a glass chamber with a bank of powerful LEDs to illuminate the fog, making it easier to see the trails from radioactive particles passing through. [RCLifeOn] later used
a variety of radioactive sources
to deliver a bunch of particles into the chamber for more action, too. He also experimented with blocking particles with a variety of materials.
It’s one of the bigger cloud chambers we’ve seen, and seems to work great.
You can build a simple version pretty easily
, or you could travel to a local museum or science center if you’re too busy to tackle it at home. Video after the break. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673359",
"author": "MarB",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T15:38:40",
"content": "Cloud chamber day?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6673364",
"author": "MarB",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T15:53:59",
"content": "By the way, t... | 1,760,372,199.753846 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/giving-solar-powers-mortal-enemies-a-dusting-without-wasting-water/ | Giving Solar Power’s Mortal Enemies A Dusting Without Wasting Water | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science"
] | [
"cleaning",
"electrostatic",
"pv solar",
"solar panel",
"solar panel cleaning"
] | A prerequisite for photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies to work efficiently is as direct an exposure to the electromagnetic radiation from the sun as possible. Since dust and similar particulates are excellent at blocking the parts of the EM spectrum that determine their efficiency, keeping the panels and mirrors free from the build-up of dust, lichen, bird droppings and other perks of planetary life is a daily task for solar farm operators. Generally cleaning the panels and mirrors involves having trucks drive around with a large water tank to pressure wash the dirt off, but the use of so much water is problematic in many regions.
Keeping PV panels clean is also a consideration on other planets than Earth. So far multiple Mars rovers and landers have found their demise at the hands of Martian dust after a layer covered their PV panels, and Moon dust (lunar regolith) is little better. Despite repeated suggestions by the peanut gallery to install wipers, blowers or similar dust removal techniques, keeping particulates from sticking to a surface is not as easy an engineering challenge as it may seem, even before considering details such as the scaling issues between a singular robot on Mars versus millions of panels and mirrors on Earth.
There has been research into the use of the electrostatic effect to repel dust, but is there a method that can keep both solar-powered robots on Mars and solar farms on Earth clean and sparkling, rather than soiled and dark?
Defining The Problem
Credit:
Aritra Gosh, 2020.
Surfaces on Earth as well as on other planetary bodies, including Earth’s Moon tend to get covered with particulate matter through a variety of mechanisms, resulting in a phenomenon referred to as ‘
soiling
‘. While on the Moon there aren’t many mechanisms for this – in the absence of a significant atmosphere and birds – beyond mechanical disturbances, on Mars and Earth particulate matter is constantly transported by the atmosphere and deposited through phenomena such as wind and dust devils.
Although the same atmospheric motion can also remove part of the thus deposited material – as has happened repeatedly to solar-powered Mars rovers from passing dust devils – much of the material is retained on the surface, through static charges, absorption of moisture and other mechanisms that are strong enough to prevent gravity and a gentle breeze from removing it. On Earth there’s the added challenge of so-called
pioneer species
, which mostly include
lichen
.
Wherever there’s sufficient moisture, lichen are likely to be found on any available surface that’s not already populated by other species. They can find purchase on surfaces ranging from soil, to bark and rock, as well as the glass covering PV solar panels, making lichen growth on these panels especially a problem in (semi-)tropical and moderate climates. Meanwhile in desert regions mineral dust is the most prominent soiling issue, which happen to be also the regions where solar farms are the most efficient and thus making electrostatic and similar self-cleaning panel technologies the most effective.
As for lichen, algae and similar, here the solution seems to be either elbow grease and good scrubbing of affected panels before the glass surface is too far damaged, or
experimental coatings
that are supposed to inhibit the growth of these pioneer species. As someone famous once said, life finds a way. Beyond biocides and similar antifouling mechanisms, there does not seem to be a lot that can be done against the growth of these biofilms, but fortunately they develop much slower than a solid coating of dust.
Dust intensity around the world.
The loss of power output from PV solar panels due to soiling with mineral dust is quite dramatic. For example, a
2018 paper by Cordero and colleagues
in
Scientific Reports
which studied the impact of dust on PV panels in the Atacama Desert noted that with no cleaning the panels lost up to 39% of the output after a year, which improved with panels located closer to regions where it rained more frequently.
In desert regions with more severe mineral dust storms, dust accumulation on PV panels is a very rapid process, as noted by
Sreedath Panat and colleague
in a 2022 paper in
Science Advances
(
MIT press release
) in which they demonstrate an electrostatic repelling method for PV panels. In some regions (with dust accumulation rates close to 1 g/m
2
per day) panel output can be reduced by as much as 50% after a month, making regular cleaning (multiple times a month) with pressurized water jets essential. Although mechanical cleaning means are also possible, these risk scratching and otherwise damaging the panel’s glass, which would negatively affect performance in a more permanent manner than dust would.
Wiping Away Problems
Repulsion of dust by electrostatic charge induction. (Sreedath Panat et al., 2022)
The proposed solution by Sreedath Panan et al. involves a contraption that moves perpendicular over the surface to be cleaned of mineral dust, not unlike picking up bits of paper with a statically charged balloon. An important detail noted in the paper is that the mineral dust (30 – 75% consisting out of silica) is electrically insulating by itself, but becomes conductive when it adsorbs moisture, which allows it to be charged when is exposed to an electrode.
In the experimental setup using a desert dust analog (Arizona Test Dust, from Powder Technology Inc.) the two important factors were the moisture content of the dust and the size of the particles, with around 30% relative humidity required. Depending on the size of the particles, PV panel output was recovered from around 20% (dust-covered) to 80 – 95% (cleaned). Here the 30 μm sized particles were the hardest to remove, leading to the lowest recovery of lost output power.
Using this method, cleaning using water jets would not be rendered unnecessary, but it’s conceivable that the number of cleanings could be reduced, assuming this small-scale prototype can be adapted to a version that’d work with large-scale farms. Each panel would likely need to have its own plate like this, as well as an equivalent to the aluminium-doped zinc oxide (AZO) coating used as the electrode on the panel’s glass. Here the extra cost of a mechanical system and custom panel coating would need to compete economically with a water truck and a handful of blokes to handle the pressure washer.
Out Of This World
Schematic diagram of a multiphase electrodynamic dust shield. (Calle et al., 2011)
Attentive readers may have noticed a slight issue with the electrostatic method proposed by Sreedath Panan et al., in that it requires the presence of moisture to work. This is a property that would make both lunar and Mars researchers overjoyed if true, but in the absence of moisture a different mechanism is possible in the form of both electrostatic and dieelectrophoretic forces as researched by
C.I. Calle et al.
(2011,
PDF
) at NASA with a focus on lunar and Martian expeditions.
Rather than Arizona’s finest, these experiments were run with a Martian (JSC Mars-1) and lunar (JSC-1A & JSC-1AF) dust analogs in a high vacuum, showing the experimental PV panels to be able to shed most of the dust after a few minutes, recovering about 90% of the output. After this continued application of power to the system the output power continued to gradually improve.
As noted by Calle et al., this electrodynamic dust removal technique is not new, but was first developed as an ‘electric curtain’ concept by F.B. Tatom et al. at NASA, with additional research performed at the University of Tokyo in the 1970s. So far this technology has not been applied to PV panels or other surfaces (e.g. optical lenses) on operational missions such as the Mars rovers. At its core it’s a fairly simple system that creates a traveling wave by having a series of parallel electrodes connected to a three-phase alternating current source.
Because here the (transparent) electrodes are placed on top of the PV panel or fabric (see
2008 paper
for additional details), there is no mechanical system requirement and little additional space is required. This makes it highly suitable for space missions where weight and space are at a premium and mechanical elements are problematic at best. Whether such a system could also be adapted for use on PV solar panels and solar mirrors on Earth is still an open question, but with some luck future solar-powered rovers on Mars will be able to shake off the dust on their PV panels if this technology gets approved on future missions. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673337",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T14:23:41",
"content": "I like that dust intensity map, and how it only shows country-level. There is doubtlessly huge variability with, say, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Australia, and the US.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,372,200.067744 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/polaroid-develops-its-pictures-remotely/ | Polaroid Develops Its Pictures Remotely | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"developing",
"digital",
"film",
"picture frame",
"polaroid",
"raspberry pi",
"remote"
] | For those who didn’t experience it, it’s difficult to overstate the cultural impact of the Polaroid camera. In an era where instant gratification is ubiquitous, it’s easy to forget that there was a time when capturing a photograph meant waiting for film to be developed or relying on the meticulous art of darkroom processing. Before the era of digital photography, there was nothing as close to instant as the Polaroid. [Max] is attempting to re-capture that feeling with
a modified Polaroid which instantly develops its pictures in a remote picture frame
.
The build is based on a real, albeit non-functional, Polaroid Land Camera. Instead of restoring it, a Raspberry Pi with a camera module is placed inside the camera body and set up to capture pictures. The camera needs to connect to a Wi-Fi network before it can send its pictures out, though, and it does this automatically when taking a picture of a QR code. When a picture is snapped, it sends it out over the Internet to wherever the picture frame is located, which has another Raspberry Pi inside connected to an e-ink screen. Once a picture is taken on the camera it immediately shows up in the picture frame.
To help preserve the spirit of the original Polaroid, at no point is an image saved permanently. Once it is sent to the frame, it is deleted from the camera, and the next picture taken overwrites the last. And, for those who are only familiar with grayscale e-ink displays as the integral parts of e-readers, there have been limited options for color displays for a while now, as we saw in
this similar build which was painstakingly built into a normal-looking picture frame
as part of an attempted family prank. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673288",
"author": "Krzysztof",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T11:08:39",
"content": "> To help preserve the spirit of the original Polaroid, at no point is an image saved permanently.If I remember correctly, Polaroids WERE permament photos, just developed in minutes right from camera.",... | 1,760,372,200.109611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/building-a-peltier-powered-cloud-chamber/ | Building A Peltier-Powered Cloud Chamber | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"cloud chamber",
"peltier"
] | If you’ve been watching Oppenheimer and it’s gotten you all excited about the idea of radioactive decay, you might want to visualize it. A cloud chamber is the perfect way to do that,
and [NuclearPhoenix] is here to show us just how to build one.
The build relies on a Peltier device to cool a 10 cm square copper plate down to temperatures as low as -30 °C (-22 °F). Isopropyl alcohol is evaporated via warming resistors within the cloud chamber, and then condenses in the cooled area, creating a thin layer of fog. Ionizing radiation that passes through the chamber can then be spotted by the the trails it leaves through the fog. It’s even possible to identify the type of radiation passing through by the type of trail it leaves. Alpha particles leave shorter traces, while more energetic beta particles which are difficult to stop tend to streak further.
It bears noting that if you see a ton of activity in your cloud chamber at home, it might be worth making some enquiries.
Some cloud chambers
you’ll see in museums and the like use a small radioactive source to generate some excitement for viewers, though. Video after the break. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673262",
"author": "70sJukebox",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T08:27:07",
"content": "I’ve always loved these things, ever since I was a kid.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6673275",
"author": "mms",
"timestamp": "2023-08-1... | 1,760,372,200.160734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/vintage-artificial-horizon-is-beautiful-in-motion/ | Vintage Artificial Horizon Is Beautiful In Motion | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"artificial horizon",
"avionics"
] | Attitude indicators are super useful if you’re flying a plane, particularly in foggy conditions or over water. They help you figure out which way the plane is pointing relative to the unforgiving ground below. [Hack Modular] has been toying with a few,
and even figured out how to get them powered up!
The attitude indicators use spinning gyroscopes to present a stable artificial horizon when a plane is in motion. Airworthy models are highly expensive, but [Hack Modular] was experimenting with some battered surplus examples. He sets about opening the delicate gauges, noting the seals and other features intended to protect the equipment inside. We get a great look at the gimbals and the reset mechanism used to zero out the device. He then pulls a classic mechanic’s trick, robbing a few screws from Peter to reassemble Paul.
We wouldn’t trust the gauges for flight duty, but they look great when powered up, all lit and spinning. They have the beautiful vintage glow that you only get from filament bulbs and deftly painted instrumentation. While avionics don’t come cheap off the shelf, it’s worth tinkering with cheap older gear if you can find it. The engineering involved, even
in older equipment
, is truly impressive. Video after the break. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673280",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T10:13:26",
"content": "“They have the beautiful vintage glow that you only get from filament bulbs and deftly painted instrumentation.”Absolutely. I hope that we get that back, eventually.With new materials or luminous gases, ma... | 1,760,372,200.204184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/dielectric-mirror-shines-bright/ | Dielectric Mirror Shines Bright | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"3m",
"dielectric mirror",
"mirror"
] | We knew the mirrors in our house were not really very good mirrors, optically speaking. Your mirror eats up 20 to 40 percent of the light that hits it. High-quality first-surface mirrors are better, but [Action Lab] has a video (see below) of something really different:
a polymer dielectric mirror
with 99.5% reflectivity. In addition, it has no Brewster angle — light that hits it from any angle will reflect.
Turns out something that thin and reflective can be hard to find. It also makes a little flashlight if you roll a tube of the material and pinch the back end together. The light that would have exited the rear of the tube now bounces around until it exits from the front, making it noticeably bright. The film comes from
3M
, and apparently, they were surprised about the optical properties, too.
Paradoxically, the mirror is made of several layers of transparent film. The video explains how a bunch of transparent layers can reflect light.
Material like this help spread light behind cell phone screens. Efficiency is important because everyone wants longer battery life with their phones. We aren’t sure what we want to do with this, but it must be something. Our guess is since the reflections take place in different layers of the polymer, it wouldn’t make a good telescope, but we could be wrong. The tape isn’t dirt cheap, but it doesn’t seem outrageously priced if you can find it.
It might make a good surface for your next
James Webb model
. We wonder how it would work in a
laser projector
? | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673209",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T03:14:13",
"content": "Perfect for the Star Wars speeder illusion that uses mirrors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6673214",
"author": "Brandon Hicks",
"timest... | 1,760,372,199.997837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/2023-cyberdeck-challenge-a-ham-radio-cyberdeck/ | 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: A Ham Radio Cyberdeck | Lewin Day | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge",
"cyberdeck",
"ham radio"
] | Cyberdecks rock because their homebrewed nature lets them feature all kinds of nifty additional functionality. [Kaushlesh] has built his deck with an eye to ham radio use,
and it’s a rugged and impressive thing.
The deck is built into a weatherproof enclosure, with various 3D-printed parts helping to integrate the components into the clamshell enclosure. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, with [Kaushlesh] springing for the hefty model with 8GB of RAM. It has a 10-inch LCD screen and a rechargable battery pack with an impressive 20 hour battery life, and is intended for use when [Kaushlesh] is out camping or participating in ham radio field days. To that end, it’s equipped with a USB software-defined radio module and a BNC connector for hooking up an external antenna. It also has a game controller that mounts inside, just in case he desires playing a few games on Retropie while he’s out and about. It’s even got storage for a mouse and rocks a decent-sized keyboard inside.
We’d love to tote this to a hamfest for a bit of hacking on the side. It’s not the first
ham-themed cyberdeck
we’ve seen, either. Now we just need one
built for prosciutto
. Video after the break. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673202",
"author": "Maker For Real",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T01:18:07",
"content": "When will we stop glorifying raspberry pi case-mods?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673210",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,200.274847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/hackaday-prize-2023-parol6-a-gpl-desktop-robotic-arm/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: PAROL6 – A GPL Desktop Robotic Arm | Dave Rowntree | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"6 DOF Robot arm",
"planetary gearbox",
"rs485",
"stepper motor",
"STM32F4",
"TMC2209"
] | Parol 6 is a 3D-printed six-axis robot arm
created by [Petar Crnjak] as a combination of the principles from a few previous projects. Aside from a pneumatic gripper, each axis is driven by a stepper motor, with at least a few of these axes being driven through a metal planetary gearbox for extra precision and torque.
From what we can glean from the
work-in-progress documentation
, there are some belt drives on four of the relevant axes and a mix of NEMA17 format steppers driving either 20:1 or 10:1 reduction boxes. There appears to be a mix of inductive sensors and traditional microswitches used, but it’s not so easy to work out where these are placed.
The controller PCB is a custom design based around the STM32F446 microcontroller, with modular drop-in
boards for driving the motors, using the Trinamic TMC2209 for super smooth and quiet motion. The KiCAD project seems to be missing at the moment, with only gerbers and BoM for reference, but we expect that to appear at some point. There are some RS485 drivers on there, which is a sensible addition to providing an isolated interface if correctly implemented. There isn’t much detail on the electronics yet, but it all looks pretty standard fayre. The software stack looks like Arduino with a smattering of STM324xx HAL being used directly. The standard AccelStepper library is used, which is a good choice as it’s quite mature.
From the video logs in the project page, the robot looks complete, with some pretty good repeatability numbers, but we would like to see some data on absolute positioning accuracy as well, that said it’s a great project with an active Discord behind it, so let’s see how this develops.
We see a lot of robot arms, like this
earlier Open Source design
, but also this
interesting hack straight out of the junk bin
.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673175",
"author": "VeeDee",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T21:02:55",
"content": "Open loop control and repeatability 🤡",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673181",
"author": "Dave Rowntree",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15... | 1,760,372,200.499604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/nfc-puts-a-stake-in-the-ground/ | NFC Puts A Stake In The Ground | Michael Shaub | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printed",
"database",
"garden",
"gardening",
"NFC",
"NFC tag",
"website"
] | Sometimes we have a new part or piece of tech that we want to use, and it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Upon first encountering NFC Tags, [nalanj] was looking for an application and thought they might make a great update to old-fashioned plant markers in a garden. Those are usually small and, being outside 24/7, the elements tend to wear away at what little information they hold.
[nalanj] used a freeform data structuring service called Cardinal to set up text information fields for each plant and even photos. Once a template has been created, every entry gets a unique URL that’s perfect for writing to an NFC tag. See the
blog post on Cardinal’s site
for the whole process, the thought behind the physical design of the NFC tag holder, and a great application of a pause in the 3D print to encapsulate the tags.
NFC tags are super hackable, though, so you don’t have to limit yourself to lookups in a plant database. Heck, you could
throw away your door keys
. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673165",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T19:35:12",
"content": "I know it’s commonplace today, but to me it seems just “wrong” to use “the cloud” for the simplest of tasks that require no external network whatsoever.But whatever, this is just the company’s ad pretendi... | 1,760,372,200.448055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-qwerty-drum-set/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The QWERTY Drum Set | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"drum typewriter",
"kaleidograph",
"keytar",
"solenoid",
"the kaleidograph",
"too many typewriters",
"typewriter collection",
"wearable keyboard"
] | What does portability in a keyboard mean to you? For Hackaday’s own [Brian McEvoy],
the image evokes that quintessential 80s instrument, the keytar
.
But those left-hand keys aren’t just for show — they’re macro keys. It runs on an Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit, so [Brian] can forego the cord and rock out all over the room.
I love the construction of this keyboard, which
you can plainly see from the side
. It’s made up of extruded aluminum bars and 2 mm plywood, which is stacked up in layers and separated with little wooden donuts acting as spacers. Unfortunately, [Brian] accidentally made wiring much harder by putting the key switches and the microcontroller on different planes.
Although you could theoretically use any key switches for this build, [Brian] chose my personal and polarizing favorite, browns. If you’re going to use a travel keyboard, you’re probably going to be around people, so blues are probably not the best choice. With browns, you kind of have yourself a middle ground, best-of-both-worlds thing going on. The keycaps are among the best parts of this build, and it seems [Brian] chose them because the legends are on the sides, which makes it much easier to type on while wearing it. Kismet!
Typewriter Made of Drums Includes Symbols
Well, it finally happened.
Someone combined two of my favorite things
— keyboards and music. With enough drums to rival Neil Peart, musician Eric Carr created a full (60%-ish) QWERTY typewriter using drums and cymbals. Now it’s not like that — you can’t hook the the drums up to a computer and use them as a keyboard, and this doesn’t involve paper. But the result is interesting nonetheless, and it must have taken forever to caption every clang and bang for the video. You know, because otherwise we wouldn’t know what he was typing. (Each drum is labeled, but he goes too fast!)
Be sure to check out the video below. Eric demonstrates the drums, bangs out his ABCs, and then shows us his chops for a few minutes, spelling out mostly gibberish and delightfully juvenile things. It’s a ride.
News: How Many Typewriters Is Too Many?
One of John Aschim’s two dozen manual typewriters. Image via
the News-Review
If you ask husband, he might say seven or so. That’s how many are in our lives at the moment. But
John Aschim of Oakland, Oregon has nearly two dozen
, many of which are older and cooler (and larger and heavier) than mine.
Not many collections start with a coin flip, but this one did. In 1995, John was going through a divorce and tossed a quarter in the air. He got the typewriter, and his ex-wife got the computer. It worked out, though, as John admits to being a bit of a Luddite. In fact, all of his typewriters are manual, no electrons necessary.
The thing about typewriters is that they need to be used, or else they begin to fall into disrepair. Ribbons dry out of course, and the oil can gum up, but typewriters can even become mouse nests depending on your storage tactics. Fortunately, John keeps them all in top condition. He is constantly writing letters to friends and family, and he has frequented the same typewriter repair shop for the last 25 years. Now, if I could just get mine to call me back.
The Centerfold: Donuts In June, In August
[kinger2005-dastaria] is making me hungry
. The DMK Chocolate Donut keycap is like chocolate frosting with rainbow sprinkles deconstructed, and that happens to be my favorite donut topping next to maple. This Hibiki June keyboard is donuts all the way down, from the keycaps to the switches to the cable to the desk mat. And
be sure to peep the donut ‘cap
adorning the Esc switch.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the HCESAR Layout
A collector’s item. Image via
Wikipedia
If you’re wondering what people who own typewriters actually do with them, one of the answers is writing to pen pals. I have one in Portugal, and he recently sent me a letter typed on an old typewriter. But this wasn’t just any old machine from the 40s,
this one has a weird layout and an interesting backstory
.
Far from being QWERTY, which may or may not have been designed to keep type bars from jamming together, the HCESAR layout was created by decree in the summer of 1937 under dictator
António de Oliveira Salazar
and his Estado Novo regime.
That’s right, according to my pen pal and Wikipedia, HCESAR was created by a dictator who wanted to feel special. This layout was the official one until the mid-1970s, when AZERTY started to take over. Beginning the next decade, the government started replacing old machines with multi-user terminals, both HCESAR and AZERTY were slowly replaced by QWERTY, adapted for Portuguese.
ICYMI: solenoid keyboard
Throw some kind of desk pad under this beauty and we could have a true centerfold contender
. I mean, just look at those diodes. It’s known that I’m a complete sucker for ergo splits, and this Red Herring keyboard seems quite natural in its layout.
Of course, the only thing that can improve a good layout is a solenoid actuating with every key press, and then also a giant knob to turn solenoid mode off and on.
When [Ming-Gih Lam] isn’t annoying everyone within earshot while probably having a blast using the thing, they are typing on Silent Alpacas, which are known to be ultra-quiet when lubricated. Quite the dichotomy, no?
Files are available on GitHub
if you want to make your own.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673205",
"author": "crispernaki",
"timestamp": "2023-08-16T01:56:08",
"content": "Eric Carr! Yay!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,200.598985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/uchaser-follows-you-anywhere/ | UChaser Follows You Anywhere | Matthew Carlson | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ESP-Now",
"ESP32",
"HC-SR04",
"ultrasonic"
] | If you’ve been making up for lost years of travel in 2023, you might have seen a fellow traveler in the airport terminal or train station walking with their luggage happily careening behind them. [Jesse R] and [Brian Lindahl] wanted more of that. They wanted an
open-source, low-cost system that could be put in anything
.
The basic principle is that they will have a transmitter that sends both a radio signal and an ultrasonic pulse. The receiver receives the radio signal and uses it as a reference for the two ultrasonic sensors. The time since the radio signal is compared between the two, and a distance and direction are established.
In practice, the radio is an ESP32-S3 using ESP-NOW (which we’ve
seen relatively recently on another project
), a protocol from Espressif that offers low latency 250 bytes payloads. The ultrasonic transceiver is based on Sparkfun’s HC-SR04. For prototyping purposes on the receiver, they just removed the transmitter to avoid populating the airwaves, as to listen, you had to transmit. The prototype was an electric wheelbarrow that would happily follow you around the yard wherever you go.
With the concept validated, they moved to a custom ultrasonic setup with a custom buffer amp and damp transistor, all centered around 20kHz. The simulations suggested they should have been better than the HC-SR04 from Sparkfun, but the 30-foot (9 meters) range went to 10 feet (3 meters). They ultimately returned to using Sparkfun’s circuit rather than the custom amp.
We’re looking forward to seeing the project continue. There are various challenges, such as variability in the speed of sound, echos and reflections, and ultrasonic line of sight. We love the peak behind the curtain that allows us to see what decisions get made and the data that informs those decisions. All the
code and PCB design files are available on GitHub
under an MIT and Creative Common license, respectively. This project was submitted as part of the 2o23 Hackaday Prize.
Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 16 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673118",
"author": "Jesse R",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T15:42:14",
"content": "Savvy readers may remember this concept fromhttps://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/one-hackaday-readers-experience-going-on-the-ben-heck-show/After years of people reaching out to replicate this project I’ve dec... | 1,760,372,200.548543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/screwdrivers-and-nuclear-safety-the-demon-core/ | Screwdrivers And Nuclear Safety: The Demon Core | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Manhattan Project",
"nuclear",
"radiation"
] | Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin were two of many people who worked on the Manhattan Project. They might not be household names, but we believe they are the poster children for safety procedures. And not in a good way.
Harry Daghlian (
CC-BY-SA 3.0
, Arnold Dion)
Slotin assembled the core of the “Gadget” — the plutonium test device at the Trinity test in 1945. He was no stranger to working in a lab with nuclear materials. It stands to reason that if you are making something as dangerous as a nuclear bomb, it is probably hazardous work. But you probably get used to it, like some of us get used to working around high voltage or deadly chemicals.
Making nuclear material is hard and even more so back then. But the Project had made a third plutonium core — one was detonated at Trinity, the other over Nagasaki, and the final core was meant to go into a proposed second bomb that was not produced.
The cores were two hemispheres of plutonium and gallium. The gallium allowed the material to be hot-pressed into spherical shapes. Unlike the first two cores, however, the third one — one that would later earn the nickname “the demon core” — had a ring around the flat surfaces to contain nuclear flux during implosion. The spheres are not terribly dangerous unless they become supercritical, which would lead to a prompt critical event. Then, they would release large amounts of neutrons. The bombs, for example, would force the two halves together violently. You could also add more nuclear material or reflect neutrons back into the material.
First Incident
A recreation of the blocks experiment (photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory)
In August of 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian was performing an experiment on the core. He was alone, but a security guard was about 10 feet away. The experiment involved placing neutron reflector bricks around the core to get it closer to supercriticality. However, Daghlian accidentally dropped a brick on the core, causing it to go supercritical. He quickly removed the brick, but not before receiving a fatal dose of radiation.
The 24-year-old physicist died 25 days later. The 29-year-old security guard fared better. He received a much smaller dose and died 33 years later at the age of 62. He did, however, die from leukemia, which may or may not have been related to radiation exposure.
But Then…
Louis Slotin’s Los Alamos badge photo
The point is people knew these materials could easily turn deadly. In 1946, Louis Slotin performed a similar experiment. Using Two beryllium half-spheres. The core would go in one half, and the other half would be lowered over the top using a thumb hole. Instruments measured the radiation as the beryllium sphere closed and opened. Shims were placed on them to make sure you couldn’t completely close the surrounding sphere, because that would push the core into the supercritical state.
Slotin was known as the expert on this particular test, and he shunned the standard protocol. Instead of using shims, he had one hand on the sphere and, in the other, a flat-blade screwdriver serving the function of the shims. Enrico Fermi had remarked to Slotin and some of his colleagues that they would be “dead within a year” if they kept to this test procedure. Fermi was a smart man.
It Happened
Of course, during one test, Slotin’s screwdriver slipped, and the reflective sphere enclosed the demon core. A flash of blue light and a wave of heat lasted about a half-second, during which Slotin received a dose estimated at 880 rem. For comparison, Daghlian took an estimated 290 rem, and X-ray exposures are in the millirem. Slotin later reported tasting a sour taste in his mouth and an intense burning sensation in his hand.
Recreation of the Slotin incident. Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratories
Slotin immediately flipped the top of the shield, and the reaction ceased. There were seven others nearby, but they received a much lower dose because Slotin’s proximity to the material acted as a shield. Slotin died in nine days at age 35, and from all descriptions, it was not a good way to go.
The next nearest person, who was about three feet away from the core, spent weeks in the hospital but died 19 years later of a heart attack; it is difficult to prove or disprove this was due to the radiation. He did have chronic neurological and vision problems, though. Two others were also hospitalized. Most of the survivors lived for decades after, save one soldier who was killed in action in Korea four years later.
Slotin was hailed a hero for saving his colleagues. But it was also clear that his reckless behavior had precipitated the accident in the first place. It is also strange that the team’s film badges were locked away 100 feet from the experiment.
The core had been known as Rufus but was now the “demon core.” One of the survivors of the accident would go on to design remote control equipment to perform these sorts of experiments with the researchers at least a quarter-mile away. As you might expect, future “hands-on” work was strictly forbidden.
The demon core was melted down and used to make smaller test cores. There have been several other critical events, most of them fatal, over the years. But it is doubtful that any of the materials involved in those accidents had the chance to strike twice.
Lesson Learned
How often do we take shortcuts with deadly things we are overly familiar with? Working on a live mains circuit comes to mind. Handling chemicals with poor ventilation. Sure, it isn’t nuclear material, but dead is dead. You don’t get points for having a cleaner accidental death.
The British made a video about this kind of accident back in 1969, and it is still worth a watch.
Shims come up in a lot of these kind of stories
. You’d think
nuclear power plants would be bastions of safety
, but sadly, it isn’t always the case. | 61 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673092",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T14:29:28",
"content": "Wasn’t this article done recently? I’ve seen the Slotin incident pop up at least five times in the past few months.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "66... | 1,760,372,200.903578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/automation-for-the-nes/ | Automation For The NES | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"automation",
"controller",
"emulator",
"gaming",
"nes",
"nintendo",
"retrocomputing",
"shift register",
"tool assisted speedrun"
] | Old hardware might not be anywhere close to as powerful as modern technology, but it does have a few perks. Aesthetics can of course drive the popularity of things like retro gaming systems, but the ease of understanding the underpinnings of their inner workings is also critical. The Nintendo Entertainment System, now nearly four decades old, is a relatively simple machine by modern standards and this lends the system to plenty of modifications,
like this controller that allows the system to be somewhat automated
.
The original NES controller used a fairly simple shift register to send button presses to the system. The system outputted a latch signal to the controller, the shift register would take as input the current state of the buttons, and then would send them one-by-one to the system at a rate of around 1000 times per second. These signals can be sent without a controller easily enough, too. This build uses a CD4021 shift register, which is the same as the original controller, but instead of reading button states it accepts its inputs from a separate computer via a latching circuit. In this case, the separate computer is a custom design that came about
through adapting cassette storage for a 6502-based computer
, but it could come from anything else just as easily.
With this system in place, it’s possible to automate gameplay to some extent. Since the system can’t get feedback about the game in its current state, it requires some precise timing to get it to play the game well, and a lot of tuning needs to go into it. This isn’t just a one-off, either. Similar methods are how we get tool-assisted speedruns of games and although these are often done in emulators instead of on real hardware,
they can result in some interesting exploits
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673057",
"author": "adrian",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T11:13:03",
"content": "Automated gameplay ?I thought the entire point of a game was to play it. A machine to play for you is an interesting exercise but seems inappropriate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,200.744507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/15/low-res-arduino-thermal-camera/ | Low Res Arduino Thermal Camera | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"thermal camera"
] | Do you know how you see those cheap telescopes at the department store? The box has beautiful pictures that probably came from the Hubble. What you will see is somewhat different. You have to carefully look at [upir’s]
Arduino thermal camera project
because it intersperses pictures of what you expect an 8×8 sensor will produce with images produced by a much better camera.
The actual project — watch the video below — is undoubtedly neat. An inexpensive 8×8 IR sensor and an 8X8 LED panel join to form a crude but usable thermal camera.
He leverages several ready-made libraries and walks through how and why he chose them and how he had to modify them. We enjoyed the demo of plotting HSV values to the LED array instead of the usual RGB values.
Given canned code to read the sensor and drive the LEDs, the rest is easy. Of course, like the dime-store telescope, you aren’t going to get amazing results. On the other hand, you probably have everything you need except the $20 sensor sitting around doing nothing anyway.
At around the ten-minute mark, he shows the same sensor in a commercial module that interpolates a higher resolution to an LCD. Still crude, so he also gives a quick review of a commercial camera that plugs into your phone. (You can ignore the video from here on if the stealth advertising bugs you.) We’ve actually
looked at that camera before
. We’ve also looked at
some of the competition
. While any of those will beat the 8×8 Arduino camera, they’ll cost more and won’t give you the satisfaction of building it, either. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6673063",
"author": "Hezza Davie",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T12:06:15",
"content": "Wait, was half that video an ad? Thumbnail was also misleading as an added bonus.Project is OK, quite fun, nothing complicated. Uploader and to a lesser extent the HaD writer are in the sin bin.",
... | 1,760,372,200.795251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/a-guide-to-field-stripping-your-voyager-tricorder/ | A Guide To Field Stripping YourVoyagerTricorder | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"prop",
"reproduction",
"star trek",
"tricorder"
] | For the last few years, [Mangy_Dog] has been working on what is easily the most technically and aesthetically impressive
Star Trek
tricorder prop the world has ever seen. With each new version of the hardware we’ve gotten the occasional peek under the hood or source code walk-through, but these limited presentations have made it somewhat difficult to really appreciate the scale of this undertaking.
But now
thanks to this epic hour-long tour
of the hardware and software that makes up version 2.5 of his
Voyager
tricorder, we can finally see just how incredible the engineering that’s gone into this project really is. Every detail has been meticulously considered to deliver a final product that’s not only as visually accurate as possible, but reliable enough to actually carry around.
In the video, [Mangy_Dog] demonstrates how the new version of the tricorder can be dissembled with just a few common tools, which he felt was an important goal for the project so that it could be repaired and potentially even upgraded over time. Not that there’s much breathing room inside the enclosure for new goodies — the density of the internal electronics is astounding, perhaps the highest we’ve ever seen in a homebrew project like this.
There’s seven separate PCBs in the top half of the tricorder alone, with the most important ones being (relatively) easy to remove should they require service. More electronics are hiding in the lower half of the device, but unfortunately those needed to be permanently sealed up in the case so as not to ruin the futuristic
Trek
aesthetic with unsightly screws or access hatches.
What we found particularly interesting was hearing about all the little bodges and fixes that he’s had to implement. Even after several hardware revisions, with the dizzying array of components packed into this build, the occasional goof is simply inevitable. [Mangy_Dog] points each one out, explains what the cause was, and shows how he implemented the repair. It’s an important reminder that, even in the most fantastically engineered projects, there’s always room to improve and sharpen your skills.
While three-quarters or so of the video’s total runtime is dedicated to going over the hardware, he does dedicate a bit towards the end towards the software that pulls it all together. Though he only goes through a few subroutines and functions, it’s clear that [Mangy_Dog] is just as adept with with the keyboard as he is with the soldering iron.
Even Starfleet Engineering needs to use the occasional bodge wire.
To close out the video he goes over some of the other projects hes working on, and knowing the
level of detail and professionalism
he
brings to all of his creations
, we can’t wait to see what he’s got in store for us next. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672992",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T05:27:47",
"content": "I think it’s quite fascinating and admirable that the community of the Tricorder hobby/sub-genre has always been trying to go beyond making props. Most if in not all homebrewed Tricorders or Scanners (ENT)... | 1,760,372,201.069782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/thin-client-wysens-up-to-become-openwrt-router/ | Thin Client Wysens Up To Become OpenWrt Router | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"openwrt",
"thin client",
"Wyse"
] | For some of us, unused hardware lying around just calls to be used. It seems like [Miles Goodhew] heard the call, and wanted to put a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client to use —
in this case as a wireless router
. It seems simple enough. OpenWrt supports x64_64 targets, and the thin client has 2G of ram and 8G of flash. It should make for a very capable router.
And before you tell us that it’s just another computer, and that installing OpenWrt on a miniature x86 machine isn’t a hack, note that there were some speedbumps along the way. First off, the motherboard has integrated storage, with the not-very-useful ThinLinux installed, and the system BIOS locked down to prevent reinstall. There is a BIOS clear button on the system’s diminutive motherboard. With the BIOS lock out of the way, a real Linux system can be installed on the small 8 GB
mmcblk
device.
The next issue the the CPU. It’s an Intel Atom x5 z-series. OpenWrt won’t actually boot on that oddball, not-quite- processor, so [Miles] opted to install Fedora and test via virtualization instead. If that statement makes you do a double-take, you’re not alone. The initial explanation sounded like the mobile-centric processor was missing instructions to make OpenWrt run, but virtualization doesn’t add any instructions for a guest to use. It turns out, the problem is a missing serial port that OpenWrt uses as a debugging output by default.
After a custom OpenWrt compile, the device comes up just as you’d expect, and while it would be underpowered as a desktop, OpenWrt runs happily shuffling bits from Ethernet to wireless adapter at respectable speeds. As [Miles] points out, there’s nothing ground-breaking here, but it’s nice to have the details on re-using these machines compiled in one place. And if you too love the idea of putting OpenWrt in places where nobody intended,
we’ve got you covered
. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672974",
"author": "daev",
"timestamp": "2023-08-15T02:40:28",
"content": "it’d be a good candidate for a router7 based install (https://router7.org), as it uses a mainline kernel and isn’t strongly opinionated regarding serial devices.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,201.018986 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/a-speaker-with-dancing-ferrofluid/ | A Speaker With Dancing Ferrofluid | Al Williams | [
"Art",
"Portable Audio Hacks"
] | [
"ferrofluid",
"speaker"
] | A speaker project isn’t usually very different, but we couldn’t help but notice [Electronoob’s] latest speaker not for its audio performance but because it
features dancing ferrofluid
and is an unusual work of art. The housing is 3D printed and includes some translucent portions for LEDs.You can see and hear the speaker at work in the video below.
Apparently, not all ferrofluid is created equal. You can get just the fluid, but then you have to work up some sort of carrier fluid. You can also get the material already in a glass with a carrier fluid, which is a better option. Apparently, you can also get cheap material that is little more than iron filings suspended in a liquid. That’s not really ferrofluid.
The rest of the build is what you’d expect: some speakers and a simple amplifier. The magnetic portion uses a 24V electromagnet. A few MOSFETs and some discrete components make a simple driver for the magnet. We wondered if it would be possible to use multiple magnets that would drive at different frequencies to make a kind of spectrum display using the ferrofluid.
The holes for the brass threaded inserts were accidentally too big, so he epoxyed them in. We don’t want to reveal if we’ve ever done that, but we know it works fine in a pinch.
This reminded us of
a drum machine
we once saw. If you have old VHS tapes, you might try
making your own fluid
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672949",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T23:17:39",
"content": "It would be interesting if the ferrofluid particles could be colored somehow. Perhaps according to weight, or size. And then if there’s any sorting by weight or size in how the particles respond to the magn... | 1,760,372,200.945963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/adding-power-over-ethernet-support-to-a-mac-mini/ | Adding Power Over Ethernet Support To A Mac Mini | Maya Posch | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"mac mini",
"PoE"
] | Wiring up a Mac Mini’s new PoE module. (Credit: Ivan Kuleshov)
Despite all the fancy features on modern Apple Mac systems like USB-C and Thunderbolt, they have one glaring omission: the absolute lack of any form of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). This is an issue that [
Ivan Kuleshov]
sought to rectify
with some delicate board-level surgery. Since the original Ethernet jack on the lucky vic^Wrecipient M1 Mac Mini does not have integrated magnetics (magjack), tapping into the appropriate lines would have been rather awkward, with questionable results on the side of the PCB traces that would suddenly be used for PoE purposes they were never designed for.
Rather than choosing this level of experimentation, [Ivan] decided to patch in the
Silvertel AG5412
PoE module with plentiful patch wires. This involved removing the Ethernet jack and bypassing the PCB and the magnetics module completely for the new PoE functionality, instead using the magnetics pilfered from a magjack and routing from there back to the mainboard as well as to the PoE module’s inputs.
From there it was mostly a matter of connecting the 12VDC output of the PoE module to the Mac Mini’s power input, and to add backfeeding protection when the regular power adapter is installed. One Schottky diode on the PoE’s +12V line later the whole contraption was ready to be somehow put back into the Mac Mini’s enclosure. Amazingly, nothing caught on fire, and during a stress test with just PoE Ethernet and a monitor output connected, the system drew 24.6 Watt from the PoE switch.
According to [Ivan], his setup uses the
802.3at
(Type 2, PoE+) standard, which can provide up to 25.5 Watt to the PD (consuming device). Although the Silvertel AG5412 module can output 30 Watt max, this would require the use of the 802.3bt (Type 3, PoE++) standard, which can provide up to 51 Watt to the PD. An upgraded PoE++ module that provides ~50 Watt might be in order for a fully tricked out Mac Mini with connected peripherals, as even [Ivan]’s Mac Mini seemed to be just on the verge of maxing out what PoE+ can deliver.
Perhaps ditching those mains outlets in the office is still a ways off, after all.
Heading image: M1 Mac Mini drawing 24.6 Watt via 802.3at Type II (PoE+). (Credit: Ivan Kuleshov) | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672945",
"author": "KenN",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T23:06:23",
"content": "I’ve found it easiest to add PoE with custom cabling that splits out the power-carrying conductors before the computer, or by fabricating a splitter box with an RJ45 jack for the cable to the powered device,... | 1,760,372,201.124891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/a-digital-camera-for-the-1984-market/ | A Digital Camera For The 1984 Market | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"digital camera",
"ega",
"ESP32-CAM",
"TGA"
] | Digital cameras are a ubiquitous consumer and professional product here in 2023, and because of the wide availability of parts it’s relatively straightforward to construct one for yourself. Four decades ago though, film was king, but
that hasn’t stopped [
Georg Lukas
] from building a digital camera for the 1984 market.
The hardware is definitely from recent years, the extremely affordable ESP32-cam board that many of us will have worked with already. Meanwhile the 1984 part lies in the recording format, it makes EGA 16-colour low-res pictures and stores them in the archaic TGA file format.
A low-res camera is fun, but there are two other angles on this which are definitely worth some time. The first is that his description and code are worth a read for anyone with an interest in programming an ESP32 camera, while the second invites us to consider whether such a camera could have been made using parts available in 1984. We remember camera peripherals for 8-bit microcomputers which were a C-mount lens positioned over a decapped RAM chip, and thus we can’t help wondering whether an RGB split to three of those sensors could have been constructed. Whether a 6502 or a Z80 with 64k of memory could have processed the three images into one is another matter, but at least if any of you want to try there’s
a handy 1984 computer still popping up on eBay
. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672901",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T18:44:02",
"content": "CCDs were available and ADCs too. No need to decap a poor RAM chip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6673012",
"author": "Jan",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,201.229465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/2023-hackaday-supercon-tickets-on-sale-now/ | 2023 Hackaday Supercon Tickets On Sale Now! | Elliot Williams | [
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Supercon",
"2023 Hackaday Superconference"
] | The 2023 Hackaday Superconference isn’t taking place until November, but the time to
get your tickets
is
right now
.
Hackaday’s Supercon is far and away the coolest hardware-focused hacker con of the year, and if you’re Hackaday, you absolutely want to be there. Honestly, just the crowd that Supercon brings together is reason enough to attend, but then you throw in the talks, the badge-hacking, the food, and the miscellaneous shenanigans … it’s an event you really don’t want to miss.
We’ll be announcing the speaker and workshop lineups in the upcoming weeks, but as always, we’re opening up a number of True Believer tickets for those of you who know you’ll be coming no matter what.
Head on over to Eventbrite now and secure yours
before they’re all gone. These usually sell out within the
first few hours
of being announced, so if you’re reading this right now, don’t hesitate.
Supercon is a small and friendly event, and it will be a long weekend that you’ll be looking back on fondly for the rest of the year. Whether you’ve been every time or whether you have always wanted to see what the hype is about, we can’t wait to see you all there. Come join us! | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672820",
"author": "fid",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T16:12:57",
"content": "I can hear The Monkeys singing “I’m a believer.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6672821",
"author": "fid",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T16... | 1,760,372,201.173183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/black-graphics-on-your-tv-for-a-greener-world/ | Black Graphics On Your TV, For A Greener World? | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"carbon footprint",
"graphics",
"power",
"tv"
] | Can you really save energy by carefully choosing the colors displayed on a TV screen? Under some conditions, yes. Or at least that’s the conclusion of a team at the BBC that looked at reducing the energy consumption impact of their output by using what they call
Lower Carbon Graphics
. In short, they’re trying to ensure that OLED displays or those with reactive backlights use less energy when displaying BBC graphics, simply by using more black.
It turns out that a lot of British households play radio stations on their TVs, and the BBC sends a static image to each screen in this mode. As part of a redesign across the organisation, the BBC removed the bright background colours from these images and replaced it with black, with a remarkable reduction in power consumption, at least on OLED and FALD screens. (On normally backlit screens, 89% of British TVs, this does nothing.)
If you look hard at their numbers, though, listening to radio on the TV is
horrendously
inefficient; can you imagine a radio that consumes 100 W? If the BBC really wants to help reduce media-related energy consumption, maybe they should stop broadcasting radio programming on the TV entirely.
Anyway, as we move toward a larger fraction of OLED screens, on TVs and monitors alike, it’s fun to think that darker images use up to 40% less power. Who knew that Hackaday was so environmentally friendly? Black is the new green!
Header: RIA Novosti archive/ Igor Vinogradov,
CC-BY-SA 3.0
. | 95 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672803",
"author": "adrian",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T15:34:40",
"content": "Maybe the set manufacturers could turn the screen off when a static image is displayed for long enough ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6672849",
... | 1,760,372,201.376216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/this-3d-scanner-uses-a-sensor-you-might-not-know-about/ | This 3D Scanner Uses A Sensor You Might Not Know About | Jenny List | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"3d scanner",
"laser",
"laser displacement"
] | The huge diversity of sensors and other hardware which our community now has access to seems comprehensive, but there remain many parts which have made little impact due to cost or scarcity. It’s one of these which [Enginoor] has taken for the sensor in a 3D scanner,
an industrial laser displacement sensor.
This sensor measures distance, but it’s not one of the time-of-flight sensors we’re familiar with. Instead it’s similar to a photographic rangefinder, relying on the parallax angle as seen from a sensor a distance apart from the laser. They are extremely expensive due to their high-precision construction, but happily they can be found at a more affordable level second-hand from decommissioned machinery.
In this case the sensor is mounted on an X-Y gantry, and scans the part making individual point measurements. The sensor is interfaced to a Teensy, which in turn spits the data back to a PC for processing. By their own admission it’s not the most practical of builds, but for us that’s not the point. We hope that bringing these parts to the attention of our community might see them used in other ways.
We’ve featured huge numbers of 3D scanners over the years, including
a look at how not to make one
. | 24 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672750",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T11:35:11",
"content": "Maybe on a 5 axes head it could scan an object on most of its sides? Advantage is that no contact with the object is needed like with touch probes. A high resolution (sub mm) scanner for small objects of a... | 1,760,372,201.517831 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/14/home-network-organization-gets-out-of-hand/ | Home Network Organization Gets Out Of Hand | Chris Lott | [
"Network Hacks",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"cable management",
"home office",
"network",
"rack mount server"
] | [SpookyGhost] has a big home network, and has taken cable management and server organization to the extreme. He has written about individual components before, but
this blog post brings it all together
and reviews the entire system. The networking gear is installed in a closet and mounted in a 25U tall 19-inch rack. From top to bottom, here is a brief list of the gear:
Full View of Network Equipment Rack
Keystone patch panels
pfSense Firewall / Router
Two Cisco Ethernet switches
Redundant internet connections
Shelf of numerous servers
RAID-Z2, 12 each 8 TB SCSI, media storage
NAS RAID, 6 ea 4 TB SAS, 2 ea 800 GB SSD
Video Management System, 48 TB storage
UPS and power distribution units
Most of the Ethernet uses 10GBASE-T and Cat6 cabling and connectors, with some interconnects use fiber optical cable and LC connectors. Unsurprisingly, as this setup grew and grew, [spooky] had to pipe in air-conditioning to the closet.
This is a serious installation, but there are plenty of good ideas for folks with less ambitious networking goals and/or requirements. We liked the swappable Keystone jacks in the patch panels, and the cable pass-through panel with a dense curtain of rubber fringe to keep things looking tidy. If you have any ideas to share on network equipment and cable management, let us know in the comments. | 59 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672689",
"author": "BsAtHome",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T08:21:07",
"content": "Impressive electricity bill that must be for a home server/network.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6672697",
"author": "Manfred",
... | 1,760,372,201.618777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/linux-kernel-from-first-principles/ | Linux Kernel From First Principles | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"kernel",
"linux"
] | Want to learn the internals of the Linux kernel? Version 6.5-rc5 has about 36 million lines of code in it, so good luck! [Seiya] has a different approach. Go back to the beginning and examine
the 0.01 version of the kernel
. Now you are talking about 10,000 lines and, removing comments and blanks, way less.
Sure, some things have changed, but the core ideas are the same. [Seiya] reports, “Reading V0.01 was really for me. It was like visiting Computer History Museum in Mountainview…”
There were only 66 system calls in that antique kernel. Some important features like mounting did not work yet. The
sys_mount
call simply returns -ENOSYS, for example. Some functions like the built-in
strcpy
were hardcoded for i386 CPUs — obviously, that’s changed today.
The kernel supports a small number of devices, including an ATA disk controller, a PS/2 keyboard, a VGA display in text mode, and some system clocks and timers. No need to worry about running a GUI like X or Wayland on this kernel!
Some of the comments are amusing in retrospect. For example: “schedule() is … GOOD CODE! There probably won’t be any reason to change this,…” Of course, there were lots of reasons to change it, and now there are many options for different use cases.
This turned out to be a read-only endeavor because — surprise — the kernel code isn’t able to compile with modern compilers. It didn’t seem worth the effort to modify the source, but reading it is certainly an interesting exercise.
We are big believers in learning things by going back to first principles. Works for
Doppler radar
.
Multirotor drones
, too. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672758",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T12:19:36",
"content": "Yes! I WHAT to learn about the internals of the Linux kernel!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6672777",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,201.801292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/update-your-chinese-radio-without-the-pain/ | Update Your Chinese Radio Without The Pain | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"firmware update",
"Quansheng",
"webserial"
] | The new hotness in cheap radios this year has been the Quansheng UV-K5, a Chinese handheld transceiver with significant RF abilities and easy modding. The amateur radio community have seized upon it with glee and already reverse-engineered much of the firmware, but flashing the thing has always required a minor effort. Now thanks to the work of [whosmatt],
it can be flashed with little more than a web browser and a serial cable
.
This feat was made possible through the magic of WebSerial, a handy feature that allows web applications to talk to connected hardware. We’ve seen it in action a few times in the world of badges, and as browser support for it has improved it’s now available through browsers on all the major platforms.
The web app allows tweaking of the Quansheng settings and will, no doubt, be capable of uploading that when fully open-source firmware is available. It should be of great interest well beyond the world of Chinese radios, though, because we’re guessing there are a lot of projects that could benefit from such a ubiquitous interface tool.
If you’d like to know more,
WebSerial is something we’ve looked at in the past
.
Header image: [Concretedog] | 45 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672628",
"author": "NS",
"timestamp": "2023-08-14T02:08:32",
"content": "Baofeng UV-5R is good enough for an analog FM radio. That other thing is no better than Baofeng.I would only switch from Baofeng, once I find a DMR Digital Mode Radio",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,201.753712 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/hackaday-links-august-13-2023/ | Hackaday Links: August 13, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"debunk",
"eula",
"flip",
"hackaday links",
"heist",
"interconnect",
"LEO",
"LK-99",
"machine learning",
"MEO",
"orbit",
"Pimoroni",
"research platform",
"room temperature superconductor",
"Scripps",
"semiconductor",
"skepticism",
"space junk",
"superconductor",
"terms ... | Remember that time when the entire physics community dropped what it was doing to replicate the extraordinary claim that a room-temperature semiconductor had been discovered? We sure do, and if it seems like it was just yesterday, it’s probably because it pretty much was.
The news of LK-99
, a copper-modified lead apatite compound, hit at the end of July; now, barely three weeks later, comes news that
not only is LK-99 not a superconductor
, but that its resistivity at room temperature is about a billion times higher than copper. For anyone who rode the “cold fusion” hype train back in the late 1980s, LK-99 had a bit of code smell on it from the start. We figured we’d sit back and let science do what science does, and sure enough, the extraordinary claim seems not to be able to muster the kind of extraordinary evidence it needs to support it — with the significant caveat that a lot of the debunking papers –and indeed the original paper on LK-99 — seem still to be just preprints, and have not been peer-reviewed yet.
So what does all this mean? Sadly, probably not much. Despite the overwrought popular media coverage, a true room-temperature and pressure superconductor was probably not going to save the world, at least not right away. The indispensable Asianometry channel on YouTube did
a great video on this
. As always, his focus is on the semiconductor industry, so his analysis has to be viewed through that lens. He argues that room-temperature superconductors wouldn’t make much difference in semiconductors because the place where they’d most likely be employed, the interconnects on chips, will still have inductance and capacitance even if their resistance is zero. That doesn’t mean room-temperature superconductors wouldn’t be a great thing to have, of course; seems like they’d be revolutionary for power transmission if nothing else. But not so much for semiconductors, and certainly not today.
We all know we should, but most of us don’t actually read the license agreements we’re presented with when signing up for the latest and greatest service. Someone does, though, or else Zoom wouldn’t have stepped in it as badly as they did this week as
it was revealed
that changes they made to their Terms of Service back in March seem awfully open-ended, to the point where it sure seemed like they’d be free to use any and all user data they generate on the service for the purpose of training AI models.
As one would expect, this didn’t sit well with an increasingly privacy-conscious user base, who feared their likenesses and voices would be used for whatever purposes the company saw fit. You can’t blame them, really — when a contract includes verbiage that says you grant “a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license” to the company, it sort of feels wrong. Zoom was quick on the draw in response, with
a blog post
that super-duper pinky swears they’re not going to use audio, video, chats, or other user-generated content to train their AIs, or any other third-party machine learning systems. They apparently updated the updated TOS to reflect this, so it’s all good now — go back to your Zoom meetings and rest assured that you’re not really the product.
We love a good caper story, and who doesn’t like a heist film? But only when the victim is a soulless corporation or some feckless billionaire — but certainly not when
it’s one of our own
! It looks like the Pimoroni warehouse in Sheffield, UK, was hit by thieves in the middle of the night. The place was alarmed, but the thieves were faster than the cops, leaving behind some sadly empty pallets and shelves. The Pimoroni staff is seeking help to recover their goods, so if you see any of their flagship products, like heatsink cases or cameras for Raspberry Pi on any of the usual sites, you might want to drop them a line. If the price is too good to be true, it probably is.
We noted with some sadness this week the news that the Scripp’s Oceanographic Institute’s Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) is heading to the scrapyard after 60 years of service. If you’ve never seen FLIP in action, you need to check out the video below. Technically not a ship but a research platform — hence the official name
R/P FLIP
— the 180-meter-long vessel was towed into place and purposely partially sunk, turning the ship’s long axis 90 degrees and putting 90% of the ship underwater. This made decks into bulkheads and bulkheads into decks, and since the ballast tanks were at the far end of the submersible spar, the platform was exceptionally stable in any sea condition. Researchers had access to the first 100 meters of the ocean for a shirtsleeves environment. Although everything in the vessel — even the galley and the toilets — was designed to work in either orientation, we’re not sure we’d want to be in the head while the transition was underway.
And finally, if you’ve ever wanted to know where each of the roughly 14,000 pieces of space debris currently in Earth orbit are, when they got there, and who put them there,
we’ve got you covered
. This fascinating infographic details just how crowded Earth orbits have become, and even shows where and when collisions — both accidental and intentional — have left behind plumes of debris.
The most interesting bit to us is the delineation between Low Earth Orbit (LEO} and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) — which the chart mistakenly labels “LEO” too — and the rapid drop-off in the amount of space junk at the demarcation point. We suppose that has to do with the expense and effort required to get all the way to a 2,000-km orbit; one tends to be more careful in that case. It’s also interesting how much the MEO and geosynchronous population exploded once the 1980s rolled around; we’d like to think the Space Shuttle program had a lot to do with that, but the color coding by country seems to argue against that. This is one of those infographics you could spend hours poring over —
r/dataisbeautiful
, anyone? | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672606",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T23:15:46",
"content": "So long FLIP, I recall reading about your introduction in grade school!I don’t suppose I could buy it for a song, could I?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,372,201.675152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/portable-1990s-pos-will-strain-your-back/ | Portable 1990s POS Will Strain Your Back | Chris Lott | [
"Phone Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"mobile phone",
"motorola",
"point of sale",
"portable"
] | [JR] over at [Tech Throwback] got ahold of an unusual piece of gear recently —
a portable Point of Sale (POS) credit card machine from the late 1990s
(video, embedded below the break ). Today these machines can be just a small accessory that works in conjunction with your smart phone, but only the most dedicated merchants would lug this behemoth around. The unit is basically a Motorola bag phone, a credit card scanner, a receipt printer, a lead-acid battery, and a couple of PCBs crammed into a custom carrying case
Handset Detail
Despite having a lot of documentation, [JR] struggles to find any information on this U.S. Wireless POS-50. He finds that the credit card scanner is an Omron CAT-95 authorization terminal, and the Motorola SCN-2397B phone appears to come from the Soft-PAK series.
He is able to power it up, but can’t do much with is because he is missing the authorization password. But regardless, with the demise of the Advanced Mobile Phone System for over a decade, this 850 MHz band analog phone can’t connect to the network anymore.
If you happen to know anything about this old POS, or used a similar luggable system for accepting credit cards in the 1990s, let us know in the comments below. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672612",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T23:51:16",
"content": "What is the quote about a good idea at the wrong time? From what little I can find, they were trying to be Square three decades too early. From Bloomberg:US Wireless Data Inc/OldU.S. Wireless Data Inc... | 1,760,372,201.849114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/making-things-square-in-three-dimensions/ | Making Things Square In Three Dimensions | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"carpentry",
"diagonals",
"metalworking",
"saddle",
"square",
"string",
"three dimensions",
"Twist",
"welding"
] | Measure twice, cut once is excellent advice when building anything, from carpentry to metalworking. While this adage will certainly save a lot of headache, mistakes, and wasted material, it will only get you part of the way to constructing something that is true and square, whether that’s building a shelf, a piece of furniture, or an entire house. [PliskinAJ]
demonstrates a few techniques to making things like this as square as possible
, in all three dimensions.
The first method for squaring a workpiece is one most of us are familiar with, which is measuring the diagonals. This can be done with measuring tape or string and ensures that if the diagonals are equal lengths, the workpiece is square. That only gets it situated in two dimensions, though. To ensure it’s not saddle-shaped or twisted, a little more effort is required. [PliskinAJ] is focused more on welding so his solutions involve making sure the welding tables are perfectly flat and level. For larger workpieces it’s also not good enough to assume the floor is flat, either, and the solution here is to minimize the amount of contact it has with the surface by using something like jack stands or other adjustable supports.
There are a few other tips in this guide, including the use of strategic tack welds to act as pivot points and, of course, selecting good stock to build from in the first place, whether that’s lumber or metal. Good design is a factor as well. We’ve also featured a few other
articles on accuracy and precision
, | 32 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672526",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T17:53:53",
"content": "One of the two absolute requirements for graduation from the world-class engineering school I attended was the making of a 1-inch cube out of iron or steel. This requirement was, thankfully, dropped wel... | 1,760,372,201.920438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/eliminating-charge-carrier-trapping-in-organic-semiconductors/ | Eliminating Charge-Carrier Trapping In Organic Semiconductors | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"charge trap",
"oled",
"organic semiconductor"
] | For organic semiconductors like the very common organic light-emitting diode (OLED), the issue of degradation due to contaminants that act as charge traps is a major problem. During the development of OLEDs, this was very pronounced in the difference between the different colors and the bandgap which they operated in. Due to blue OLEDs especially being sensitive to these charge traps, it still is the OLED type that degrades the quickest as contaminants like oxygen affect it the strongest. Recent research published in
Nature Materials
from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research by
Oskar Sachnik and colleagues
(
press release
) may however have found a way to shield the electron-carrying parts of organic semiconductors from such contaminants.
Current density (J)–voltage (V) characteristics of electron- and hole-only devices of 3CzTrz and TPBi. (Credit: Oskar Sachnik et al., 2023)
In current organic semiconductors
TPBi
is used for electron transport, whereas for this research triazine (Trz, as electron acceptor) and carbozole (Cz, as donor) were used and compared with the properties of leading-edge TPBi. While a few other formulations in the study did not show remarkable results, one compound (3CzTrz) was found using X-ray diffraction (XRD) to have a structure as shown on the right in the heading image, with the carbozole (in blue) forming essentially channels along which electrons can move, while shielded from contaminants by the triazine.
Using this research it might be possible to create organic semiconductors in the future which are free of charge-traps, and both efficiency and longevity of this type of semiconductor (including OLEDs and perovskites) can be improved immensely. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672507",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T16:55:37",
"content": "Note: TBPi, Trz, and Cz are chemical structures.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6672557",
"author": "Stu",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T19:45:51"... | 1,760,372,201.962894 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/stuffing-a-32-pin-chip-into-a-28-pin-socket/ | Stuffing A 32-Pin Chip Into A 28-Pin Socket | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"27C512",
"39SF010",
"65uino",
"bodge",
"eeprom",
"flash",
"pull-up",
"retrocomputing",
"rom"
] | What’s the difference between a 64k ROM in a 28-pin DIP and a 128k ROM in a 32-pin DIP? Aside from the obvious answers of “64k” and “four pins,” it turns out that these two chips have a lot in common, enough so that
it only takes a little bodging to make them interchangeable
— more or less.
For a variety of reasons revealed in the video below, [Anders Nielsen] use the SST39SF010, a Flash ROM in a 32-pin DIP, in place of the old standby W27C512, an EEPROM in a 28-pin DIP. To deal with those pesky extra pins on the Flash ROM, [Anders] dug into the data sheets and found that thanks to JEDEC standards, almost everything about the pinouts of the two chips is identical. The only real difference is the location of Vcc, plus the presence of a 16th address bus line on the more capacious Flash ROM.
Willing to sacrifice the upper half of the Flash chip’s capacity, [Anders] set about bodging the 32-pin chip to work in a 28-pin socket. The mods include a jumper from pin 32 to pin 30 on the Flash chip, which puts Vcc in the right place, and adding a couple of pull-up resistors for write-enable and A16. Easy enough changes, but unfortunately, [Anders] chose a Flash ROM with heavily oxidized pins, leading to some cold solder joints and intermittent problems while testing. There’s also the fact that not all boards have room for overhanging pins, a problem solved by adding a socket to create a little vertical clearance.
We found this to be a neat little hack, one that should make it a bit easier to use the wrong chip for the job. If you want to see where [Anders] is using these chips, check out
his 6502 in an Arduino footprint
or
the bring-up of an old XT motherboard
. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672434",
"author": "MarB",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T11:41:04",
"content": "Maybe it’s time to break away from the Arduino footprint and design a proper PCB.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6672436",
"author": "CodeAsm... | 1,760,372,202.033903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/13/modern-demo-for-a-casio-pb-700-pocket-computer-plotter/ | Modern Demo For A Casio PB-700 Pocket Computer Plotter | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"casio",
"microcassette",
"Midjourney",
"pb-700",
"plotter",
"pocket pc"
] | [Fred] has a Casio PB-700 pocket calculator / computer, complete with the companion docking station featuring a four-color pen plotter, model FA-10, and a microcassette tape recorder, model CM-1. He really wanted to see what this plotter could do, but there were no demos that he could find. So despite only having one working pen, [Fred] took matters into his own hands and
proceeded to make his own
.
What if I made a program where I type what I want to draw and the PB-700 just draws it?
Penguin from Penguindrum eating Popcorn
[Fred] succeeds, shoehorning several sub-projects into a single convoluted work flow: request an image from the PB-700 and after a long pause the plot emerges. The cute microcassette recorder is too much of a hassle, so he emulates the audio interface on a PC using a utility called
casutil
that reads and writes
.wav
files in PB-700 format. Much of his effort is spent figuring out how to request an image from Midjourney without being banned, but eventually comes up with a workable but shaky solution. The last steps are to convert the image into a line drawing, and then wrap up all those X-Y coordinates into a Basic program and send it back down to the PB-700 for plotting.
You can read more details in the
PloTTY GitHub repository
. There were several of these pocket computers with plotters coming out of Japan in the 1980s. In addition to this Casio, the Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-1 and PC-2 come to mind, which were re-branded versions of the Sharp PC-1211 and PC-1500 models. We wrote about
them last year
. This author had a PC-2 in 1985 and used it to plot antenna patterns at his desk, bypassing the IT department’s red tape. Have you ever used any of these pocket plotters? If so, let us know in the comments below. Thanks to [Altomare] for send us the tip. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672400",
"author": "Amenjet",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T08:09:39",
"content": "I had a play with a similar mechanism here:https://youtu.be/gj6BrnpXvRsIt’s not actually the same mechanism, it’s a bit larger.there is also a typewriter that uses a similar mechanism to write characters:... | 1,760,372,202.086842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/hackaday-podcast-231-harnessing-sparks-hacking-food-and-leaving-breadcrumbs/ | Hackaday Podcast 231: Harnessing Sparks, Hacking Food, And Leaving Breadcrumbs | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Al Williams don’t always agree on the best text editor to use, but they do — usually — agree on what makes a great hack. This week, they found plenty of Hackaday posts to discuss, ranging from exotic eavesdropping on keyboards, oscilloscopes, and several posts of interest to anyone who wants to build good-looking prototypes. If you are like mechanics, you’ll hear about an escapement-like mechanism and a Hobson’s coupler. If you crave more traditional hacks, you can learn more about maximizing battery life and etching PCBs.
In addition to a flurry of hacks, Elliot and Al also share their picks for the best original posts from Hackaday’s staff. This week, we find out how Arya Voronova documents projects and hear what Tom Nardi thinks of his Beepy — a ready-made display and Blackberry keyboard waiting for a Raspberry Pi.
Did you miss anything? Check out the links below. Be sure to send
your favorite hacks our way
, and let us know in the comments how you liked this episode. Hear it here:
Or
download it yourself and listen while testing room-temperature superconductors
!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 231 Show Notes:
News:
Hopes Dashed as LK-99 Confirmed Not to be a Room-Temperature Superconductor
A Superconductor Claim Blew Up Online. Science has Punctured It
The Short, Spectacular Life of that Viral Room-Temperature Superconductivity Claim
Call to Pause Superconductor Experiments. Please!
What’s that Sound?
What the heck is that? If you know,
tell us and you might win a coveted Hackaday Podcast T-Shirt
.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Noisy Keyboards Sink Ships
STM32 Oscilloscope Uses All the Features
Enhance Your Enclosures with a Shadow Line
Different Etching Solutions for Different PCBs, Folks
Hackaday Prize 2023: Machining Metals with Sparks
A Magnetohydrodynamic Drive in the Kitchen Sink
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Minimizing Stress on a Coin Cell Battery
3D Print Your Own Seiko-Style Magic Lever Energy Harvester
Hackaday Prize 2023: A Reinvented Solar Tracker
Al’s Picks:
Hobson’s Coupler Leads to a Weird Engine
Myth Tested: DOS Can’t Multitask
Hacking Fake Food
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Share Your Projects: Leave Breadcrumbs
Review: Beepy, a Palm-sized Linux Hacking Playground | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,202.127526 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/grblhal-cnc-controller-based-on-rp2040-pico/ | GrblHAL CNC Controller Based On RP2040 Pico | Chris Lott | [
"cnc hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"cnc",
"grbl",
"grblHAL",
"rp2040"
] | [Phil Barrett] designed a new CNC controller
breakout board called the PicoCNC
which uses the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 module and grblHAL. It packs a bunch of features typical of these controllers, and if you use the Pico W, you get WiFi connectivity along with USB. And if you don’t want connectivity, you can execute G-code directly from a micro SD card. The board is available in kit form, and schematics are posted on the GitHub repository above. Some of the features include four axes of motion, spindle control, limit switches, relay drivers, expansion headers, and opto-isolation.
This isn’t [Phil]’s first controller board. He also designed the grblHAL-based Teensy CNC controller breakout board, a step up from the usual Arduino-based modules at the time and boasting Ethernet support as well. According to
the grblHAL site
, nine different processors are now supported. There are well over a dozen CNC controller breakout boards listed as well. And don’t forget [bdring]’s
6-Pack grbl-ESP32 controller
, a modular breakout board we
covered a few years back
. So pick your favorite board or roll your own and get moving. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671903",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T15:14:05",
"content": "On first sight, this project is quite similar to a Teensy breakout board:https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/teensy-controller-for-powerful-cncs/Teensy can also work with Ethernet, which gives inherent extra ... | 1,760,372,202.201533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/this-week-in-security-its-con-season/ | This Week In Security: It’s Con Season | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"blackhat",
"defcon",
"This Week in Security"
] | It must be Blackhat/DEFCON season. Up first in the storm of named vulnerabilities, we have
Downfall
. The
PDF has the juicy details
here. It’s quite similar to the Zenbleed issue from last week, in that it abuses speculative execution to leak data via a hidden register. Unlike Zenbleed, this isn’t direct access, but using cache timing analysis to extract individual bytes using a
FLUSH+RELOAD
approach.
The key to the vulnerability is the gather instruction, which pulls data from multiple locations in memory, often used to run a followup instruction on multiple bytes of data at once. The gather instruction is complex, takes multiple clock cycles to execute, and uses several tricks to execute faster, including managing buffers to avoid multiple reads. In certain cases, that instruction can be interrupted before it completes, leaving the data in the cache. And this data can be speculatively accessed and the values leaked through timing analysis.
This flaw affects 6th generation Intel Core processors through 11th. Mitigations are already
rolling out via a microcode update
, but do carry a performance hit for gather instructions.
Phantom and Inception
There’s another new issue, this time on the AMD side of the fence, called
Inception
. Taking it’s name from the movie, this one is all about tricking a CPU into believing a phantom speculation took place.
To understand that, we have to talk about
Phantom (pdf)
, a technique that has an impact on all modern x86 processors. The key here is that processors do branch prediction all the time, to speed up execution flow. One of the tricks is to do branch prediction before even decoding instructions. This works by the CPU learning what code patterns are likely to be branches, and which branches are likely to be taken. Could that double prediction be abused somehow? Naturally.
So Phantom allows for training the CPU, such that a non-branching instruction still causes branch prediction. This can be used with another technique, Training in Transient Execution (TTE), to
enable something interesting (pdf)
. See, TTE needs a specific code path that can be trained to speculate the wrong way. That path includes a reachable branch. But Phantom allows for an imagined branch, making many code paths into speculation gadgets.
To get all the CPU training done in the window, the attack does a really interesting trick — triggering speculative execution to get caught in a recursive loop. In dual-threaded mode, this is enough to completely overwrite the Return Stack Buffer (RSB), giving the Inception attack way more coverage. The results? On AMD Zen systems, only Zen 3 stands up well to the attack, with the rest of the CPUs tested leaking data, and even allowing a capture of the
/etc/shadow
contents in the majority of runs.
Dead Man’s Cable
You’re probably security conscious. Your hard drives are likely encrypted. You may even lock you desktop when you leave it, and never leave a laptop unattended. But what if you can’t? By accident or intent, what is the backup plan if you can’t power off or lock a device? That’s the problem the folks at
Buskill are trying to help solve
. The idea is pretty simple — a USB device that indicates user presence.
Connect it to your body with a cable, detect the unplug, and lock the machine. The key here is to 3D-print a case, that makes that USB connection with pogo pins and a magnetic plug. Make it easy to break the connection, and hard to make a laptop come crashing down by mistake.
Bits and Bytes
It’s a bit ignominious to have the record for a country’s
biggest hack ever
, but that seems to be the award that Microsoft’s Exchange software now has. The UK Electoral Commission Has just announced that their systems were accessed way back in August 2021, and not discovered for 14 months. The timing here is interesting, as the ProxyNotShell vulnerability that is suspected to be the entry vector for this attack wasn’t publicly discovered until 2022.
Security by committee doesn’t tend to go very well, even when the results are open source. The Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP) is supposed to keep data secure between a card reader and the central database. It was retrofitted with a Secure Channel add-on, in response to a previous eavesdropping attack. But it turns out that OSDP has some of the same problems. The
Mellon device is about quarter sized
, and when tapped into the serial connection that runs an OSDP connection, it can capture the encryption key used to secure the system. Speak friend and enter, indeed.
Keyboards on mobile devices can be a problem, because the keyboard is usually an app, and that app has access to all your keystrokes. The usual advice is to never use a keyboard that asks for network access, but what if really does need the cloud to do its job?
That’s the story with the Sogou keyboard
, which uses Latin character inputs to generate Chinese characters. The heavy lifting happens in the cloud, which means all those keystrokes get sent over the internet by design. To make it worse, the encryption scheme it uses is terrible, and the Windows and Android versions of the app are vulnerable to sniffing attacks, such that a third party could capture that information. Yikes!
And finally, tip of the hat to [Myself] in
the Hackaday discord
server for the opening lines and inspiration for the name of this week’s installment of the column. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671883",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T14:04:04",
"content": "CCC Camp next week near Berlin:https://events.ccc.de/camp/2023/infos/index.htmlI won’t be there this year :-(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "667189... | 1,760,372,202.677828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/using-jtag-to-dump-the-xboxs-secret-boot-rom/ | Using JTAG To Dump The Xbox’s Secret Boot ROM | Maya Posch | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"hacking the xbox",
"interposer",
"jtag",
"xbox"
] | When Microsoft released its first entry into the video game console market with the Xbox, a lot of the discussions at the time revolved around the fact that it used a nearly off-the-shelf Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU solution. This made it quite different from the very custom consoles from Nintendo and Sony, and invited thoughts on running custom code on the x86 console. Although the security in the console was hacked before long, there were still some open questions, such as whether the secret boot ROM could have been dumped via the CPU’s JTAG interface. This is the question
which [Markus Gaasedelen] sought to answer
.
The reason why this secret code was
originally dumped
by intercepting it as it made its merry way from the South to the North Bridge (containing the GPU) of the Xbox was because Microsoft had foolishly left this path unencrypted, and because the JTAG interface on the CPU was left disabled via the TRST# pin which was tied to ground. This meant that without removing the CPU and adding some kind of interposer, the JTAG interface would not be active.
A small issue after the harrowing task of desoldering the CPU and reinstalling it with the custom interposer in place was to keep the system integrity check (enforced by an onboard PIC16 MCU) intact. With the CPU hooked up to the JTAG debugger this check failed, requiring an external injection of the signal on the I2C bus to keep the PIC16 from resetting the system. Yet even after all of this, and getting the secret bootrom code dumped via JTAG, there was one final system reset that was tied to the detection of an abnormal CPU start-up.
The original Xbox ended up being hacked pretty thoroughly, famously giving rise to projects like
Xbox Media Center (XBMC)
, which today is known as Kodi. Microsoft learned their lesson though, as each of their new consoles has been more secure than the last. Barring some colossal screw-up in Redmond, the
glory days of Xbox hacking
are sadly well behind us. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671850",
"author": "Mathias",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T11:21:12",
"content": "I wonder if it would have been possible to disconnect TRST by CNC-drilling from the other side. Some research suggests, og Xbox was 4 layers with GND and Power on L2&3. So that might be possible. The ques... | 1,760,372,202.369881 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/usb-c-cable-tester-is-compact-and-affordable/ | USB-C Cable Tester Is Compact And Affordable | Chris Lott | [
"Tech Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cable tester",
"test equipment",
"usb",
"USB C"
] | We’ve all been bitten before by USB cables which were flaky, built for only charging, or just plain broken. With the increased conductor count and complexity of USB Type C, there are many more ways your cable can disappoint you. Over in Austria, [Peter Traunmüller] aka [petl] has designed the
C2C caberQU USB C cable tester
. This small PCB tester checks every wire on the cable, including the shield, and both connector orientations. He also makes a version for testing USB A to C cables (see video below the break).
Automatic cable testers are often associated with factory production, where you want to test a large quantity of cables quickly and automatically, and are priced accordingly. But this project makes it affordable and easy for anyone to test single cables in a home lab or small office.
The tester only checks for basic continuity, but that should solve a majority of USB-C cable problems. All the documentation for this tester is available on the project’s GitHub repository, including Gerbers, schematics, and mechanical details. Or if you’d rather buy one pre-made,
[petl] has put them up for sale on Tindie
. | 32 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671824",
"author": "Slurm",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T08:33:02",
"content": "They were also featured and tested in the latest EEVblog Mailbag (Episode 1558 @ 30m 36s).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6671825",
"author": "Gre... | 1,760,372,202.525582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/an-lm386-oscillator-thanks-to-tungsten-under-glass/ | An LM386 Oscillator Thanks To Tungsten Under Glass | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"agc",
"automatic gain control",
"feedback",
"incandescent",
"lm386",
"oscillator",
"positive temperature Coefficient",
"PTC",
"tungsten",
"wien bridge"
] | Once ubiquitous, the incandescent light bulb has become something of a
lucerna non grata
lately. Banned from home lighting, long gone from flashlights, and laughed out of existence by automotive engineers, you have to go a long way these days to find something that still uses a tungsten filament.
Strangely enough,
this lamp-stabilized LM386 Wien bridge oscillator
is one place where an incandescent bulb makes an appearance. The Wien bridge itself goes back to the 1890s when it was developed for impedance measurements, and its use in the feedback circuits of vacuum tube oscillators dates back to the 1930s. The incandescent bulb is used in the negative feedback path as an automatic gain control; the tungsten filament’s initial low resistance makes for high gain to kick off oscillation, after which it heats up and lowers the resistance to stabilize the oscillation.
For [Grug Huler], this was one of those “just for funsies” projects stemming from a data sheet example circuit showing a bulb-stabilized LM386 audio oscillator. He actually found it difficult to source the specified lamp — there’s that anti-tungsten bias again — but still managed to cobble together a working audio oscillator. The first pass actually came in pretty close to spec — 1.18 kHz compared to the predicted 1.07 kHz — and the scope showed a very nice-looking sine wave. We were honestly a bit surprised that the FFT analysis showed as many harmonics as it did, but all things considered, the oscillator performed pretty well, especially after a little more tweaking. And no, the light bulb never actually lights up.
Thanks to [Grug] for going down this particular rabbit hole and sharing what he learned. We love builds like this that unearth seemingly obsolete circuits and bring them back to life with modern components. OK, calling the LM386 a modern component might be stretching things a bit, but it is
[Elliot]’s favorite chip
for a reason. | 41 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671791",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T06:20:07",
"content": "“We were honestly a bit surprised that the FFT analysis showed as many harmonics as it did” well, they are at around -60dB compared to F0… that’s definitely nice for a simple negative feedback oscillator….... | 1,760,372,202.452852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/install-chimeraos-and-never-leave-the-sofa/ | Install ChimeraOS And Never Leave The Sofa | Dave Rowntree | [
"Games"
] | [
"Chimera",
"os",
"remote gaming",
"retro gaming",
"steam deck"
] | There are some projects that initially don’t seem to make sense, but actually turn out to have valid use cases.
ChimeraOS appears to be one of those
. The idea is that if you own a gaming PC, but it is not necessarily located where you want to be all the time (like in a gaming den or office for example) then ChimeraOS allows you to play games on it remotely via a local machine. That machine may be a media PC attached to your main TV, or perhaps a mobile device like a steam deck.
With support for AMD GPUs only, there is one issue with deployment — if you’re an Nvidia owner you’re out of luck — the premise is to be able to boot up into a gaming-friendly environment with minimal fuss. Hook up a controller and you’re good to go. Support is also there for a few mobile devices, specifically some Aokzoe, Aya Neo, and OneXPlayer devices as well as some preliminary support for the Asus ROG Ally not to mention the Steam Deck as we touched on earlier. From a software perspective, it obviously supports the Steam platform but also Epic Games, Good Old Games (GOG), and tentatively a mention of console platforms. Sadly the website doesn’t mention much detail on that last bit, but there are some tantalizing hints in the project’s Twitter/X/whatever feed. Reading the
release notes
, there are mentions of PCSX2 (Playstation 2) Super Game Boy and Atari platforms, so digging into the
GitHub repo
might be instructive, or you know, actually installing it and trying. This scribe doesn’t own an AMD GPU so that isn’t an option, but do drop us a line in the comments if you’ve tried it and how it works for you.
Many of us at Hackday are avid gamers, especially of the retro kind, which is why we really like these projects. Here’s a
nice game controller you can print yourself
. For self-builds, there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of a DIY arcade machine, but what if you
think outside the box
? | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671764",
"author": "Despondent",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T03:53:24",
"content": "Meh",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6671790",
"author": "techelement",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T06:18:25",
"content": "I don’t get it.... | 1,760,372,202.721193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/opening-a-curta-with-great-care/ | Opening A Curta — With Great Care | Chris Lott | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Curta",
"mechanical calculator"
] | We’ve always admired Curta mechanical calculators, and would be very hesitant to dismantle one. But [Janus Cycle] did just that — and succeeded. A friend sent him a Curta Model 2 calculator that was frozen up. Just opening the case involved percussive force to remove a retaining pin, and once inside he discovered the main shaft had been slightly bent. No doubt this calculator had suffered a drop at some point in the past.
I’m sticking to the rule of doing no harm — I’d rather not be able to fix this than do something that causes more problems.
Inside the Curta
But surprisingly, he was able to get it substantially back in working order without completely taking apart all 600+ parts. Most of the issues were shafts whose lubrication had become gummy, and one carry lever was slightly bent. There is still a little more work, but soon this calculator will once again be cranking out results.
Has anyone dismantled a mechanical contraption this complicated before, for example a teletype machine? Let us know in the comments. If you want to brush up on your Curta knowledge, check out the
Curta Calculator Page
. We also wrote
a Retrotechtacular about the Curta
before. Thanks to [mister35mm] for sending in this tip. | 29 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672381",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T06:18:23",
"content": "That YouTube video had 100% of my attention. Thank You, DavidAnd of-course: “42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”.[1]1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_... | 1,760,372,204.287769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/liquid-metal-battery-goes-into-production/ | Liquid Metal Battery Goes Into Production | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"ambri",
"antimony",
"base load",
"battery",
"battery storage",
"grid storage",
"liquid metal",
"mit",
"renewables"
] | The news is rife with claims of the next great thing in clean energy generation, but most of these technologies never make it to production. Whether that’s due to cost issues, production, or scalability, we’re often teased with industry breakthroughs that never come to fruition. Multi-layered solar panels, wave and tidal energy, and hydrogen fuel cells are all things that are real but can’t seem to break through and overtake other lower cost, simpler, and proven technologies. One that seems to be bucking this trend is the liquid metal battery,
which startup Ambri is putting into service on the electrical grid next year
.
With lithium ion battery installations running around $405 per kilowatt-hour, Ambri’s battery technology is already poised to be somewhat disruptive at a cost of about half that. The construction method is simpler than lithium as well, using molten metal electrodes and a molten salt electrolyte. Not only is this more durable, it’s also not flammable and is largely immune to degradation over time. The company’s testing results indicate that after 20 years the battery is expected to still retain 95% of its capacity. The only hitch in scaling this technology could be issues with sourcing antimony, one of the metals needed for this type of construction.
Even though Ambri can produce these batteries for $180 to $250 per kilowatt-hour, they need to get the costs down to about $20 for the technology to be cost-competitive with “base load” power plants (
an outdated term in itself
). They do project their costs to come down significantly and hit this mark by 2030, which would put electrical grids on course to be powered entirely by renewables. Liquid metal batteries aren’t the only nontraditional battery out there trying to solve this problem, though. Another promising interesting energy storage technology on the horizon is
phase-change materials
. | 89 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672334",
"author": "Robert D",
"timestamp": "2023-08-13T02:28:48",
"content": "Half the cost of current battery technology, and 95% capacity after 20 years. Probably uses LK99 electrodes too. Sounds way too good to be true.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,204.784725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/bench-power-supply-turned-realistic-flight-sim-panel/ | Bench Power Supply Turned Realistic Flight Sim Panel | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"flight simulator",
"microsoft flight simulator",
"xbox"
] | Flight simulator software has been available for about as long as desktop PCs have been a thing, but modern incarnations such as 2020’s
Microsoft Flight Simulator
have really raised the bar — not only graphically, but in terms of interactivity. There’s a dizzying array of switches and buttons that you can fiddle with in your aircraft’s virtual cockpit, but doing it with the same keyboard that you use to hammer out code or write Hackaday articles doesn’t do much for immersion.
Looking to improve on the situation without having to shell out for an expensive sim panel,
[Michael Fitzmayer] decided to convert a broken Manson SSP-8160 lab power supply
into a fairly good approximation of the KAP 140 autopilot system which is used in one of his favorite aircraft, the Pilatus PC-6 Turbo-Porter.
[Michael] gutted the piece of equipment pretty thoroughly, only leaving behind the case itself and the illuminated button panel on the front. The original displays were replaced with TM1637 seven-segment LEDs, and a pair of new rotary encoders are mounted where the stock knobs were. The whole show is run by a STM32F103 Blue Pill, which conveys the button pressing and knob spinning to the game by mimicking a USB Human Interface Device.
A fascia applied to the front of the power supply blocks the original text and labels, and really makes the finished unit look the part. [Michael] admits it’s not 100% accurate to the layout of the real hardware, but it’s certainly better than trying to enter heading and altitude information with the controller.
Oh that’s right, did we mention he’s actually using this on the Xbox Series S? While we generally see this sort of sim hardware hooked up to a tricked out gaming computer, we appreciate that he’s trying to bring some of that same experience to the console world. While the one-way communication of USB HID does bring with it some limitations — for example the hardware needs to be manually reset at the beginning of each flight to make sure the physical displays match what’s shown in the virtual cockpit– there’s still a lot of potential here.
For example, you could
design and build your own flight yoke, pedals, and throttles
rather than spending hundreds on a commercial version. It sounds like [Michael] is just getting started in the world of affordable console-based flight simulation, and we’re very eager to see where he goes from here. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,204.408104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/blackberry-pi-puts-desktop-linux-in-your-pocket/ | Blackberry Pi Puts Desktop Linux In Your Pocket | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"blackberry",
"handheld computer",
"linux",
"Raspberry Pi Zero"
] | Let’s face it — Android wasn’t what most of us had in mind when we imagined having Linux running on our phones. While there’s a (relatively) familiar kernel hiding at the core of Google’s mobile operating system, the rest of the environment is alien enough that you can’t run Linux software on it without jumping through some hoops. While that’s fine for most folks, there remains a sizable group of users who still dream of a mobile device that can run a full Linux operating system without any compromises.
Judging by the
work put into the Blackberry Pi
, we’re willing to bet that [IMBalENce] falls into that camp. The custom handheld combines the Raspberry Pi Zero, a 320×240 LCD, and the BBQ20KBD keyboard from Solder Party with a 2500 mAh LiPo pouch cell and associated charging circuitry. Optionally, it also supports modules such as the Raspberry Pi Camera, a Real-Time-Clock, a ADS1015 ADC to read the battery voltage, and even a USB hub — although you can’t have all the goodies installed at once as it draws too much current.
Everything is packed into a 3D printed case that looks roughly like an original DMG-01 Game Boy if somebody replaced the bottom half with a tiny keyboard. We appreciate the ZX Spectrum theme, even if it’s not immediately clear how it relates to the project other than being an excuse to play around with multi-color printing. [IMBalENce] says the final product works quite well, though the relatively limited keys on the BlackBerry keyboard does make it tricky to use the device for writing code.
Interested in mobile Linux, but not trying to build the hardware yourself? We
recently took a look at the SQFMI Beepy
, which is fairly similar in terms of hardware, but very much in need of some talented penguin wranglers who are willing to come in and work on the software and documentation. Think you’re up for the challenge? | 32 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672275",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T20:59:25",
"content": "Let’s face it, Raspberry Pi wasn’t what most of us want when we talk about SBC: overpriced, outdated hardware with low performance/watt.Outperformed by any metric in their own ARM SBC, make no sense to ... | 1,760,372,204.36501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/inside-a-cordless-soldering-station/ | Inside A Cordless Soldering Station | Al Williams | [
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"cordless soldering iron",
"soldering iron",
"supercapacitor"
] | There was a time when soldering stations were unusual in hobby labs. These days, inexpensive stations are everywhere. [Kerry Wong] looks at the
TS1C station, which is tiny and cordless
. As he points out, cordless irons are not new, but modern battery technology has made them much more practical. However, this iron doesn’t actually have a battery.
The iron has a large 750 Farad supercapacitor. This has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, a supercapacitor charges quickly and doesn’t get weaker with each charging cycle like a conventional battery. On the minus side, the large capacitor makes the unit bulky compared to normal irons. [Kerry] notes that it is ergonomic, though, and he felt comfortable holding it. Also, the supercapacitor limits the amount of charge available while soldering.
It is somewhat of a balance, though. If you want to take the iron and climb a tower, you might be very interested in a longer running time. But if you return the unit to the base every few minutes, the fast charging of the cap will compensate for the lower capacity, and you’ll probably never notice it go flat.
The iron itself doesn’t display any data. The display is on the base, meaning the devices must be paired via Bluetooth. It also requires a PD-enabled USB-C connection, so you can’t just wire it to a battery. You can plug a power supply right into the iron if you prefer, but you still can’t use a simple power connection.
Of course, you assume it does an adequate job of soldering. We wanted to see inside! And [Kerry] didn’t disappoint. If you want to see soldering, skip to about the 10-minute marker. The teardown starts at around 16 minutes.
Honestly, for the bench, we’d probably stick with a wired iron. You don’t always want a base and a PD power supply for a portable iron. But if you absolutely hate cords, this could be a reasonable answer. We’ve seen
another review
of this iron that didn’t like the plastic casings. Maybe it is like Jedi and lightsabers: you should
just build your own
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672219",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T17:18:19",
"content": "Rather than a capacitor, they could use LTO batteries. If it’s a lithium capacitor the cycle life might not be infinite anyway.Hopefully Pine64 will make a next gen cheap version!",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,204.588154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/blinded-with-science/ | Blinded With Science | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"rants"
] | So
the room-temperature superconductor was a super disappointment
, but even though the claims didn’t stand up in the end, the even better news is that real science was done. A paper making extraordinary claims came out, the procedure to make LK-99 was followed in multiple labs around the world, and then it was tested. It didn’t turn out to conduct particularly well at all. After a couple weeks of global superconductor frenzy, everything is back to normal again.
What the heck happened? First of all,
the paper itself made extravagant claims
about a holy-grail kind of material. There was a very tantalizing image of a black pellet floating in mid air, which certainly seems like magic, even though
it’s probably only run-of-the-mill ferromagnetism in the end
. But it made for a great photo-op in a news-starved August, and the then-still-Twitterverse took to it by storm. And then the news outlets piled on the hype fest.
If you’re feeling duped by the whole turn of events, you’re not alone. But the warning signs were there from the beginning, if you took the time to look. For me, it was the closing line of the paper: “We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind.”
That’s not the kind of healthy skepticism and cautious conclusion that real science runs best on. Reading the paper, I had almost no understanding of the underlying materials science, but I knew enough about human nature to suspect that the authors had rushed the paper out the door without sufficient scrutiny.
How can we keep from being fooled again? Carl Sagan’s maxim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is a good start. To that, I would add that science moves slowly, and that extraordinary evidence can only accumulate over time. So when you see hype science, simply wait to draw any conclusions. If it
is
the dawn of a new era, you’ll have a lot of time to figure out what room-temperature superconductivity means to you in the rosy future. And if it’s just a flash in the pan, you won’t have gotten your hopes up.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 62 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672166",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T14:15:13",
"content": "To the younglings, the title might be a reference to an oldie song, “She Blinded Me with Science”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6672180",
... | 1,760,372,204.963616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/arbitrary-waveforms-on-the-cheap/ | Arbitrary Waveforms On The Cheap | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"pico",
"test equipment",
"Waveform Generator"
] | A signal generator that can produce the usual sine, square, and triangle waves is handy and has been a staple of electronic benches for decades. Being able to craft custom signals opens up new horizons, but historically, these instruments were expensive. The price has come down, though, and [Rishin Goswami] made a
5 MHz 8-bit signal generator with 131K data points of arbitrary waveform
for a low price: about $20. If you want to spend a bit more, you can improve the output DAC and op amps, but even that should cost well under $100, all in.
This is one of those projects that seems easy until you start digging into it. For example, storing some points and generating signals using any microcontroller isn’t a big deal. But minimizing jitter and maximizing speed with a conventional processor is difficult. That’s why [Rishin] uses a Raspberry Pi Pico. The programmable I/O units are perfect for generating waveform data fast and reliably. You can see the project go through its paces in the video below.
The Pi streams data to an 8-bit DAC. However, it would be easy to improve resolution with a different converter. The DAC0808 also limits the instrument’s sample rate. The processor could likely go much faster if it had a DAC accommodating higher speeds.
This is just a proof-of-concept, so don’t expect fancy GUIs or the ability to import spreadsheets. You control the device from a command-line-like interface. Still, a good example of how to take advantage of the Pi’s hardware. We took a shot
at a similar device
nearly a decade ago. Those programmable I/O blocks are finding uses in some
surprising applications
. | 26 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672161",
"author": "DeveloperLen",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T13:40:56",
"content": "The project I work on at work has need for a multi-channel signal generator. Our standard product has 64 sensors reporting analog data with mid-to-high end precision and accuracy requirements, includ... | 1,760,372,204.657038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/12/throw-freecad-some-curves/ | Throw FreeCAD Some Curves | Al Williams | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cad",
"freecad",
"wireframe"
] | [Mango Jelly] got a question from someone trying to model a phone box with a complex curved roof. We have to admit that when we saw it, we knew it would be hard to model well. Naturally, there are several ways it could be one, but [Mango Jelly] used the curves workbench in FreeCAD to
produce a wireframe of the shape
, and you can see how that works in the video below.
The curve bench didn’t sound familiar to us, and that’s because it is an add-on workbench. He starts with a sketch of a curve, constrained to be symmetrical. Then the draft workbench allowed a rotation to convert the curve into a nice skeleton of the curved roof.
The curves workbench can create a Gordon surface over that skeleton. You can extrude that into a solid object. There are still some details to add, though, and you’ll see how each part of the roof takes shape.
Watching videos like this reminds us that we use a small fraction of what FreeCAD can do. You’ll probably pick up at least one tip from this video. If you need a quick
basic tutorial
, try the one from [NovaSpirit]. Or, try
a longer one
. | 43 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672102",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T08:35:15",
"content": "Super cool! I should probably start using curves more, just rounding with fillets gets visually dull pretty fast. Hopefully we’ll get alternative fillet profiles or to make stuff a bit easier someday... | 1,760,372,204.862393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/retrotechtacular-building-the-first-computers-for-banking/ | Retrotechtacular: Building The First Computers For Banking | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"banking",
"check",
"cheque",
"ERMA",
"general electric",
"pcb",
"wave solder",
"wire wrap"
] | If you’ve ever wondered where the term “banker’s hours” came from, look back to the booming post-war economy of 1950s America. That’s when banks were deluged with so many checks, each of which had to be reconciled by hand, that they had to shut their doors at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, just to have a hope of getting all the work done at a reasonable time. It was time-consuming, laborious, error-prone work that didn’t scale well, and something had to be done about it.
The short film below,
“Manufacturing Competence,”
details the building of ERMA, the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting. ERMA was the result of years of R&D work, and by the early 1960s, General Electric was gearing up production at its new Phoenix, Arizona plant. The process goes from bare metal racks and proceeds through to manufacturing the many modules needed for these specialized machines, which were perhaps the first commercial use of computers outside of universities and the military.
The sheer number of workers involved is astonishing, especially in backplane assembly, with long lines of women wielding wire-wrapping guns and following punch-tape instructions for the point-to-point connections. PCB stuffing was equally labor-intensive, with women stuffing boards from a handful of seemingly random components. And the precision needed for some of the steps, like weaving the ferrite core memory, was breathtaking. We really enjoyed the bit where the tiny toroids were bounced into place with a vibrating jig.
The hybrid nature of ERMA, and the assembly methods needed to produce it, are what strike us most about this film. The backplanes were wire-wrapped, but the modules were wave-soldered PCBs. Component leads were automatically formed and trimmed, but inserted by hand. Assembly and testing were directed by punched tape, but results were assessed by eye. Even ERMA itself was prototyped with vacuum tubes, but switched to transistors for production. The transitional nature of electronics in the early 1960s is on full display here, and it offers an interesting perspective on how change in this field can be simultaneously rapid and glacial. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672092",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T06:07:30",
"content": "Good illustration of how even when things are very difficult and complicated, people find a way. I can hardly believe core memory was ever a thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,204.46972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/a-little-bit-of-science-history-repeating-itself-boyles-list/ | A Little Bit Of Science History Repeating Itself: Boyle’s List | Al Williams | [
"Rants",
"Science"
] | [
"robert boyle",
"science"
] | In a recent blog post, [Benjamin Breen] makes an interesting case that 2023 might
go down in history as the start of a scientific revolution
, and that’s even if LK-99 turns out to be a dud. He points to several biomedical, quantum computing, and nuclear fusion news items this year as proof.
However, we aren’t as convinced that these things are here to stay. Sure, LK-99 was debunked pretty quickly, but we swim in press releases about new battery technologies, and new computer advances that we never hear about again. He does mention that we aren’t alone in thinking that as [Tyler Cowen] coined the phrase “Great Stagnation” to refer to the decline in disruptive tech since 1945. Still, [Benjamin] argues that people never know when they live through a scientific revolution and that the rate of science isn’t as important as the impact of it.
That makes sense. Who cares if you develop 100 new ways to make resistors every year? But develop a transistor, and you change everything. To make his case, [Benjamin] points to [Robert Boyle], the famous scientist from the 1660s. Actually, we should call him a natural philosopher since the word scientist wasn’t in use in the 1660s. He had a list of things science should develop. [Benjamin] took the liberty of marking how many of these we have now. Some of these are obvious, and we have them. Flying, for example. Some things we don’t really have, like “curing wounds at a distance.” Unless you count telemedicine, but we don’t think that’s what he meant.
Some of the items, though, are puzzling. The final item on the handwritten list reads, “Varnishes perfumable by rubbing.” We suppose you could consider this “scratch and sniff,” but why would [Boyle] be interested in this and put it on the same list as flight, perpetual light, and optical lenses?
[Breen] points out that while [Boyle] was a famous scientist, his wish list didn’t include things like the telegraph or the steam engine. While he didn’t know it, he lived on the cusp of a great scientific age.
But are we living through the same sort of fundamental changes now? Everyone says yes. Quantum computers and AI will change everything. But then, they said that about the Segway, memristors, and blockchain, too. But we do agree that we don’t know what the next big thing is until after it has been here a while.
Predicting the future is always precarious,
though we still try
. In fact, apparently, people really want
telemedicine
. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672065",
"author": "SB5K",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T02:16:42",
"content": "For example, scientists have found based on large-diameter binary stars, that modified Newtonian dynamics might be correct. This eliminates the need for “Dark Matter”, which I always found was a bit like epi... | 1,760,372,204.530685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/solar-boat-makes-waves/ | Solar Boat Makes Waves | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"battery bank",
"boat",
"sailboat",
"solar",
"trolling motor"
] | The two best days in a boat owner’s life are the day they buy it, and the day they sell it. At least, that’s the common saying among people who actually spend money to buy a boat. [saveitforparts], on the other hand, looks like he’s going to have many more great days
on this boat than that since he cobbled it together nearly for free
, and he won’t even need to purchase any fuel for it since it runs on solar power.
The build starts with [saveitforparts] heading out to a literal pile of boats in his yard, unearthing an old single-person sailboat, and then fixing the major problems with its hull. With a new coat of red paint, the focus turns to the drivetrain. Propulsion is handled by an electric trolling motor found at an auction for $8 and is powered by an off-the-shelf battery bank provided by a sponsor of his channel. A pair of solar panels (which were traded for) fitted to outriggers keep the battery bank topped off, and there’s plenty of energy left over with this setup to charge drone batteries and other electronics while out on the lake.
[saveitforparts] reports that the single-passenger solar boat is remarkably stable on the water and fairly quick at full speed thanks to its light weight. He even hypothesizes that it could be fished from. The only thing not particularly stable was towing it to the lake, as the rough roads and permanently-attached solar panel outriggers weren’t particularly congruent with each other. If you’re looking for something similar to carry a few passengers, though,
have a look at this much larger version
. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672056",
"author": "Myself",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T01:20:55",
"content": "Brilliant, I’ve had exactly this on my drawing board for years but I don’t think I’d actually use it much, so I’ve not pursued it. Fantastic to see it done by someone who actually makes use of it!My sketch... | 1,760,372,205.008521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/weather-station-with-distributed-sensors/ | Weather Station With Distributed Sensors | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"design",
"ESP-Now",
"ESP32",
"gui",
"modular",
"sensors",
"weather station"
] | Building a weather station is a fairly common project that plenty of us have taken on, and for good reason. They can be built around virtually any microcontroller or full-scale computer, can have as many or few sensors as needed, and range from simple, straightforward projects to more complex systems capable of doing things like sending data off to weather services like Weather Underground.
This weather station features a few innovations we don’t often see
, though, with a modular and wireless design that makes it versatile and easy to scale up or down as needed.
Each of the modules in this build use the ESP32 platform, which simplifies design and also takes care of the wireless capability needed. The base station gets a few extra sensors including those for carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides. It also includes a screen which can be used to display a wide variety of data gathered locally but also includes forecast information fetched from the free OpenWeatherMap API. For the sensor modules, BME280 sensors are used for temperature, pressure, and humidity and each module includes its own solar panel and battery with the ESP32 chips set to operate using as little energy as possible.
One of the things that helps easily integrate all of the sensor modules is the use of ESP-NOW,
which we have seen a few times before
. It essentially eliminates the need for a router and allows ESP modules to connect directly with one another. The build also goes into detail about most of the aspects of this project including the programming of the GUI that the ESP32 base station displays on its screen, so for anyone looking to start their own weather station project this should be an excellent guide. Make sure to check out
this one as well if you want to send all of your weather data to Weather Underground
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6672162",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-08-12T13:44:13",
"content": "This is cool.Tangentially, this is the type of project I wish more ham radio enthusiasts would embrace. Instead of wondering why kids aren’t interested in rag-chewing on 20 meters, woo them with the prospect ... | 1,760,372,205.468934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/hackaday-prize-2023-circuit-scout-lends-a-hand-or-two-for-troubleshooting/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Circuit Scout Lends A Hand (Or Two) For Troubleshooting | Dan Maloney | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"cnc",
"gantry",
"KiCAD",
"pcb",
"pick and place",
"pnp",
"probe",
"testing",
"troubleshooting"
] | Troubleshooting a circuit is easy, right? All you need is a couple of hands to hold the probes, another hand to twiddle the knobs, a pair of eyes to look at the schematic, another pair to look at the circuit board, and, for fancy work, X-ray vision to see through the board so you know what pads to probe. It’s child’s play!
In the real world, most of us don’t have all the extra parts needed to do the job right, which is where
something like CircuitScout
would come in mighty handy. [Fangzheng Liu] and [Thomas Juldo]’s design is a little like a small pick-and-place machine, except that instead of placing components, the dual gantries place probes on whatever test points you need to look at. The stepper-controlled gantries move independently over a fixture to hold the PCB in a known position so that the servo-controlled Z-axes can drive the probes down to the right place on the board.
As cool as the hardware is, the real treat is the software. A web-based GUI parses the PCB’s KiCAD files, allowing you to pick a test point on the schematic and have the machine move a probe to the right spot on the board. The video below shows CircuitScout moving probes from a Saleae logic analyzer around, which lets you both control the test setup and see the results without ever looking away from the screen.
CircuitScout seems like a brilliant idea that has a lot of potential both for ad hoc troubleshooting and for more formal production testing. It’s just exactly what we’re looking for in an entry for
the Gearing Up round
of the 2023 Hackaday Prize.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671961",
"author": "petsfed",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T18:59:41",
"content": "Did you read the part where it says you can pick out *testpoints* from your schematic to do the probing on? With a good automation toolchain, this turns the boring and time-consuming process of basic func... | 1,760,372,205.317392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/ku-go-the-world-war-ii-death-ray/ | Ku-Go: The World War II Death Ray | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"death ray",
"magnetron",
"microwave"
] | Historians may note that World War II was the last great “movie war.” In those days, you could do many things that are impossible today, yet make for great movie drama. You can’t sneak a fleet of ships across the oceans anymore. Nor could you dig tunnels right under your captor’s nose. Another defining factor is that it doesn’t seem we seek out superweapons anymore.
A Churchill Bullshorn plough for clearning minefields — one of Hobart’s “Funnies”
Sure, we develop better planes, tanks, submarines, and guns. But we aren’t working on anything — that we know of — as revolutionary as a rocket, an atomic bomb, or even radar was back in the 1940s. The Germans worked on Wunderwaffe, including guided missiles, jets, suborbital rocket bombers, and a solar-powered space mirror to burn terrestrial targets. Everyone was working on a nuclear bomb, of course. The British had Hobart’s Funnies as well as less successful entries like the Panjandrum — a ten-foot rocket-driven wheel of explosives.
Death Ray
Perhaps the holy grail of all the super weapons — both realized and dreamed of was the “death ray.” Of course, Tesla claimed to have one that didn’t use rays, but particles, but no one ever successfully built one and there was debate if it would work. Tesla didn’t like the term death ray, partly because it wasn’t a ray at all, but also because it required a huge power plant and, therefore, wasn’t mobile. He envisioned it as a peacekeeping defensive weapon, rendering attacks so futile that no one would dare attempt them.
The Japanese, however, were in active development of Ku-Go, a real death ray. In fact, the device used a magnetron — high tech for those days, but now found in every kitchen microwave. They poured about a half-million dollars into research under General Sueyoshi Kusaba. The goal was to develop a microwave weapon that could kill people, but also disable engines from a distance. They did have success on animal tests in 1943. Even two meters away, the weapon caused damage to test animals. Engines didn’t see much effect unless they were totally exposed to the beam.
Scale Up
By 1944, they built an 80 cm, 30 kW tube. The tube drove a dipole and a 1 m reflector. Remember magnetrons were new tech then, so a frequency of about 375 MHz was quite high for the day. The good news? The weapon killed a rabbit at 30 meters. The bad news? It took 10 minutes. A groundhog held out for 20 minutes.
By 1945, there were plans to couple four tubes to get an output power of up to 300 kW and a much bigger reflector. They hoped to increase the 10-minute kill distance to about a kilometer. But the war’s end stopped everything.
The US report on the tech is
declassified now
(start on page 71). Meanwhile, in Germany, there were two different projects of a similar nature. One was a particle accelerator with a steerable bundle of beryllium rods. The other was in Dresden and was largely destroyed during the bombing, although scientists recovered what they could and turned it over to Patton’s force. In truth, it appears that many of these projects were known to be pointless by the scientists, but having vital war research in work prevented your staff from being drafted to the front lines.
There is a giant bunker in France that locals claim was to be the home of one of Hitler’s death rays as well as an assembly and storage point for rockets (see the video below). While nothing came of the German death rays for the Germans, they did indirectly help the British.
Modern Mechanix and the magnesium heat ray gun of death!
In 1935, newspapers reported the Germans were developing a death ray. Of course, this wasn’t anything new, as seen in the accompanying ad from a 1935 magazine. But with war looming, people wrote to the government, concerned about what this might mean. The British Air Ministry asked physicist Robert Watson-Watt if such a weapon was feasible.
Within ten days, Watt responded that such a weapon was unlikely, but that radio waves might help detect approaching aircraft. While the idea of radar goes back to a 1904 German patent and — fundamentally — back to Hertz’s work in 1888, this was the start of the British investigating in radar research that arguably won the Battle of Britain and, perhaps, the overall war. Radar certainly
beat previous plane detection methods
. Of course, some of the most advanced weapons of the day were so secret that most people didn’t know about them at the time. Like the
Norden bombsight
, which might not have been as good as it claimed to be, but was still effective.
(Banner image: an entirely fictional death-ray because we couldn’t find any of Ku Go itself. “
Space Pilot X Ray Gun
” by [Oxyman]) | 66 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671936",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T17:41:57",
"content": "“They did have success on animal tests in 1943. Even two meters away, the weapon caused damage to test animals. Engines didn’t see much effect unless they were totally exposed to the beam.”Wrap them in a... | 1,760,372,205.581089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/automated-drone-takes-care-of-weeds/ | Automated Drone Takes Care Of Weeds | Bryan Cockfield | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"agriculture",
"artificial intelligence",
"automation",
"battery swap",
"drone",
"farming",
"FIELD",
"herbicide",
"image recognition",
"landing pad",
"quadcopter",
"weeds"
] | Commercial industrial agriculture is responsible for providing food to the world’s population at an incredibly low cost, especially when compared to most of human history when most or a majority of people would have been involved in agriculture. Now it’s a tiny fraction of humans that need to grow food, while the rest can spend their time in cities and towns largely divorced from needing to produce their own food to survive. But industrial agriculture isn’t without its downsides. Providing inexpensive food to the masses often involves farming practices that are damaging to the environment, whether that’s spreading huge amounts of synthetic, non-renewable fertilizers or blanket spraying crops with pesticides and herbicides. [NathanBuildsDIY] is tackling the latter problem,
using an automated drone system to systemically target weeds to reduce his herbicide use
.
The specific issue that [NathanBuildsDIY] is faced with is an invasive blackberry that is taking over one of his fields. To take care of this issue, he set up a drone with a camera and image recognition software which can autonomously fly over the field thanks to Ardupilot and a LiDAR system, differentiate the blackberry weeds from other non-harmful plants, and give them a spray of herbicide. Since drones can’t fly indefinitely, he’s also build an automated landing pad complete with a battery swap and recharge station, which allows the drone to fly essentially until it is turned off and uses a minimum of herbicide in the process.
The entire setup, including drone and landing pad, was purchased for less than $2000 and largely open-source, which makes it accessible for even small-scale farmers. A depressing trend in farming is that the tools to make the work profitable are often only attainable for the largest, most corporate of farms. But a system like this is much more feasible for those working on a smaller scale and the automation easily frees up time that the farmer can use for other work. There are other ways of automating farm work besides using drones, though. Take a look at
this open-source robotics platform
that drives its way around the farm instead of flying.
Thanks to [PuceBaboon] for the tip! | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671727",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T23:25:40",
"content": "Cool. Got one for pigeons?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671768",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T04:13:33",
"... | 1,760,372,205.265103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/laser-engraver-uses-all-of-the-dvd-drive/ | Laser Engraver Uses All Of The DVD Drive | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"cnc",
"dvd drive",
"engraver",
"gcode",
"laser",
"optical drive",
"stepper motor"
] | For the last ten to fifteen years, optical drives have been fading out of existence. There’s little reason to have them around anymore unless you are serious about archiving data or unconvinced that streaming platforms will always be around. While there are some niche uses for them still, we’re seeing more and more get repurposed for parts and other projects
like this tabletop laser engraver
.
The build starts with a couple optical drives, both of which are dismantled. One of the shells is saved to use as a base for the engraver, and two support structures are made out of particle board and acrylic to hold the laser and the Y axis mechanism. Both axes are made from the carriages of the disassembled hard drives, with the X axis set into the base to move the work piece. A high-output laser module is fitted to the Y axis with a heat sink, and an Arduino and a pair of A4988 motor controllers are added to the mix to turn incoming G-code into two-dimensional movement.
We’ve actually seen a
commercial laser engraver built around the same concept
, but the DIY approach is certainly appealing if you’ve got some optical drives collecting dust. Otherwise you could use them to build a
scanning laser microscope
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671673",
"author": "ryanbarrett",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T20:33:50",
"content": "Uh, no, it uses a laser module that is clearly not from one of the DVD drives.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671674",
"author": "rya... | 1,760,372,205.375703 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/a-hobsons-coupler-leads-to-a-weird-engine/ | A Hobson’s Coupler Leads To A Weird Engine | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"Cardan",
"coupling",
"Hobson",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"universal joint"
] | You want to join two shafts. What do you need? A coupler, of course. If the shafts don’t line up, you might consider an Oldham coupler. But what if the shafts are at a 90-degree angle to each other? Then you need a Hobson’s coupler. [Robert Murray-Smith] has
the 3D printed hookup
for you and a video that you can see below.
The part isn’t all 3D printed, though. You do need some bearings and steel rods. [Robert] proposes using this to couple a windmill’s blades to a generator, although we assume some loss is involved compared to a standard shaft. However, we’ve heard that the coupler, also called a Hobson’s joint or a stirrup joint, is actually pretty efficient. However, you rarely see these in practice because most applications will use a gear train employing a bevel gear.
While it may not be practical, the second video below shows an elbow engine that would look undeniably cool on your desk. By making some changes, you can create a Cardan joint which happens to be half of what you think of as a universal joint. The Hobson coupler and the Cardan joint seem to be made for each other, as you’ll see in the video.
We aren’t sure what we want to make with all these mechanisms, but as [Robert] points out, with new materials and techniques, these mechanisms might have a role to play in future designs, even though they have been mostly discarded.
There are, of course,
many kinds of couplings
. Then again, not all
useful joints have to move
. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671633",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T18:40:34",
"content": "That was pretty cool to watch, and made perfect sense as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6671640",
"author": "Pete",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,205.429257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/canadian-engineers-they-have-a-ring-about-them/ | Canadian Engineers? They Have A Ring About Them | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"canada",
"iron ring",
"professional engineering"
] | How can you spot an engineer? It can be tricky, but it is a little easier in Canada. That’s because many Canadian engineers have been through the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer and wear an iron or steel ring to symbolize their profession. The ring has a very odd history that originated in 1922 as the brainchild of Professor H. E. T. Haultain. While he may not be a recognizable name, at least one famous person was involved with creating the Ritual.
H. E. T. Haultain
The ring itself has facets on the outer surface, and you wear it on the little finger of your dominant hand. Originally handmade, the ring reminds the wearer of the engineer’s moral, ethical, and professional commitment. In addition to being a visible reminder, the ring is made to drag slightly as you write or draw, as a constant reminder of the engineer’s obligation. With more experience, the ridges wear down, dragging less as you get more experience.
There is a rumor that the first rings were made from the metal of a bridge that collapsed due to poor design, but this appears untrue. The presentation ceremony is understated, with limited attendance and very little publicity.
The Ceremony
An iron ring (
CC-BY-SA-2.5
by [PCStuff])
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the ceremony is who developed it. While the idea was Haultain’s, a mining engineer, he called on someone famous to create the ceremony: Rudyard Kipling. Kipling’s poem
The Sons of Martha
, is, on the face of it, about a biblical story. But a deeper reading shows that the Sons of Martha are the engineers that make the world work.
Rudyard Kipling, the man behind the ceremony
Kipling created the ceremony to create unity among members of the profession and to remind engineers of their obligations to block faulty workmanship and materials. The organization that oversees the ring ceremony is the
Corporation of the Seven Wardens
, which divides Canada into 28 camps. The Seven Wardens refer to the original group of past presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada.
The Toronto camp confers iron rings. However, these become loose with time and tend to turn the finger black, so all the other camps have switched to stainless. Apparently, even in Toronto, you can request a stainless ring.
The first ceremony was in April 1925 in Montreal. A month later, a ceremony in Toronto followed. At first, it was somewhat informal, but in 1935 the ceremony was copyrighted. The Corporation of the Seven Wardens was incorporated officially in 1938. The Corporation provides a mission statement: “To enable graduates of accredited engineering programs in Canada to commit to ethical conduct.” Their vision statement is similar: “To foster ethical conduct as a lifelong obligation for engineers educated in Canada.”
Controversy and Elsewhere
Like many things from the early part of the twentieth century, the ritual doesn’t reflect modern sensibilities in some ways. There have been several efforts to modernize the ceremony, and it seems the Corporation is taking both public comments and wants to commission a new poem for the ceremony.
There was some thought to spread the ceremony to other countries, notably the United States. However, they finally decided that doing so might relinquish some control over the ceremony. The rings, then, remained part of the Great White North.
In 1970, a similar organization was formed to foster the same ideas in the United States. However, the
Order of the Engineer
doesn’t seem as well-known as its Canadian progenitor. That’s a shame, though, because we applaud the ideals put forth by both organizations. It is easy to realize that designing a bridge, an airplane, or an explosive device requires the utmost care. But, in fact, everyone who designs things should be mindful of their potential for harm and act accordingly. A 3D printer seems innocuous until
it burns down your house
. While you’d think licensed professional engineers have an edge, they also
make mistakes
. | 100 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671597",
"author": "Michael Mirsky",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T17:15:56",
"content": "I will always remember the excitement and anticipation I felt in the spring of 1978 when the day of the mysterious secret iron ring ceremony approached. Only other engineers were allowed to attend ... | 1,760,372,205.832236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/pentablinky-when-one-led-is-not-blinky-enough/ | PentaBlinky – When One LED Is Not Blinky Enough | Dave Rowntree | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"blinky",
"discrete transistors",
"led",
"ring oscillator"
] | [michimartini] over on Hackaday.io loves playing with multivibrator circuits, and has come across a
simple example of a ring oscillator
. This is a discrete transistor RC-delay design utilizing five identical stages, each of which has a transistor that deals with charging and discharging the timing capacitor, passing along the inverted signal to its nearest neighbor. The second transistor isn’t strictly needed and is only there to invert the signal in order to drive the LED. When the low pulse passes by the LED lights, without it you’d see all the LEDs lit bar one, which doesn’t look as good.
Compare this with an astable multivibrator to understand how it works
Essentially this circuit is just the classic astable multivibrator circuit that has been split in half and replicated so that the low pulse propagates through more stages than just the two, but thinking about it as a single stage doesn’t work so well until you draw in a couple of neighbors to help visualize the behavior better.
[michimartini] does lament that the circuit starts up in a chaotic fashion and needs a quick short applying to one transistor element in order to get it to settle into a steady rhythm. Actually, that initial behaviour could be interesting in itself, especially as the timing changes with voltage and temperature.
Anyway, we like the visual effect and the curvy organic traces. It would make a neat pin badge. Since we’re thinking about blinkies, here are couple of somewhat minimalist attempts,
the world’s smallest blinky
, and
an even smaller one
. Now, who doesn’t love this stuff? | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671665",
"author": "ertgretge",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T20:07:21",
"content": "5b = 3224 hours clock system",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6671953",
"author": "willmore",
"timestamp": "2023-08-11T18:50:07",
"conte... | 1,760,372,205.631046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/the-world-id-orb-and-the-question-of-what-defines-a-person/ | The World ID Orb And The Question Of What Defines A Person | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"biometrics",
"iris scan",
"world id"
] | Among the daily churn of ‘Web 3.0’, blockchains and cryptocurrency messaging, there is generally very little that feels genuinely interesting or unique enough to pay attention to. The same was true for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Ethereum blockchain-based Worldcoin when it was launched in 2021 while promising many of the same things as Bitcoin and others have for years. However, with the recent introduction of the World ID protocol by Tools for Humanity (TfH) – the company founded for Worldcoin by Mr. Altman – suddenly the interest of the general public was piqued.
Defined by TfH as a ‘privacy-first decentralized identity protocol’
World ID
is supposed to be the end-all, be-all of authentication protocols. Part of it is an ominous-looking orb contraption that performs iris scans to enroll new participants. Not only do participants get ‘free’ Worldcoins if they sign up for a World ID enrollment this way, TfH also promises that this authentication protocol can uniquely identify any person without requiring them to submit any personal data, only requiring a scan of your irises.
Essentially, this would make World ID a unique ID for every person alive today and in the future, providing much more security while preventing identity theft. This naturally raises many questions about the feasibility of using iris recognition, as well as the potential for abuse and the impact of ocular surgery and diseases. Basically, can you reduce proof of personhood to an individual’s eyes, and should you?
Observe The Happy Fun Orb
Although one may question initially the size and heft of the World ID Orb, there is quite a bit of hardware packed into it, for good reason as we’ll see in a moment.
A teardown
of the device shows the optics and PCBs. Most of the processing capacity is provided by an
Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX
system-on-module (SoM), with power for the entire system provided by a nearly 100 Wh, swappable battery pack, composed of 8 single 18650 Li-ion cells.
Exploded view of the World ID Orb (Credit: Worldcoin)
This is enough to use the Orb in a portable fashion without having to stay near a power source. The rest of the device’s heft comes from the big telephoto lens and mirror system including gimbal system. This allows for a hapless volunteer’s eyes to be captured without requiring them to press their eyes right up to the sensor.
The main imaging system of the Orb consists of a telephoto lens and 2D gimbal mirror system, a global shutter camera sensor and an optical filter. (Credit: Worldcoin)
This optical system reveals a commonality among
iris scanners
, in that they generally do not use the visual spectrum, but rather multi-spectral, near-infrared radiation to discern as many details in the iris as possible. The front PCB of the Orb reveals the final sensors, including a thermal camera. Much of this seems to be related to the anti-tampering measures mentioned by the available documentation, as well as ensuring that a live person is in front of the sensors.
The front PCB with the illumination LEDs and other sensors visible. (Credit: Worldcoin)
Most of this hardware is open source, with design files available on the
Worldcoin GitHub account
. However, this does not include the anti-tamper systems, and requires the use of Autodesk’s Eagle software to use the project files. Creating your own Orb is thus only partially possible, but allows for some insights into the design behind it. Incidentally, although each Orb is Internet-connected, the iris scans
are said
to not be sent to the World ID servers, but rather stay on the Orb.
Here the iris scans are processed into an ‘iris code’ which is supposed to uniquely identify the irises of the individual, without being reversible. Whether or not this is the case is a question which security researchers have no doubt already thrown themselves at with sheer abandon. This is of course not the question which we seek to answer here, which is whether a person’s eyes – or rather their retinas – can be directly correlated with personhood.
Measure Of A Person
Despite TfH equating each unique human being with a ‘person’ as well as personhood with its
Proof of Personhood
take, it shouldn’t take more than a casual glance to realize that the definition of ‘
personhood
‘ is at best a contentious one, even without the discussion on non-human personhood. What is perhaps commendable here is that TfH attempts to be as inclusive as possible, which is how they arrived at the conclusion that a person (as in a human being) is most uniquely defined (for now) through biometrics, of which the iris is the most unique because of the high level of entropy in its structure.
At face value this is technically correct, as without more invasive scanning techniques, the iris has the advantages of being quite static in its structure, while also being well-protected unlike fingerprints, while still being easy to scan. Yet,
iris recognition
has similar flaws as other types of biometrics in that they can be fairly easily faked, with the Chaos Computer Club in 2017
demonstrating
the circumventing of the iris recognition feature in the Samsung Galaxy S8 with a photograph of the eye plus a contact lens to get the curvature.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
touches upon
many of the issues with iris recognition, with the acknowledgement that iris recognition can be used for surveillance as well with much better results than facial recognition. Similarly, high-resolution images of irises are easy to get merely by photographing the victim with a suitable camera, which makes faking these biometrics quite easy. In the end, widespread iris-based biometrics will invite increasingly more sophisticated attempts to both fool scanners and to prevent said fooling.
If copying and wearing someone’s irises makes you effectively into that person for the system, it would seem to be a spurious correlation at best.
No Iris No Service
Beyond the majority of humans who are living their lives with two unmodified, healthy Mk-1 eyeballs, there are many individuals who either have opted to abandon their original irises for cosmetic reasons, or who suffered a genetic, traumatic or medical condition leading to partial or complete loss of the iris or its functions, regardless of whether this affects the rest of the eye as well. Even something as routine as cataract surgery can affect an iris, as detailed by
Ishan Nigam et al. (2019)
in a cohort study among cataract surgery patients which found a significant drop in iris scan matches, much as had been found in 2004 already by
Roberto Roizenblatt and colleagues
.
Detail of the eye with the iris and surrounding structures visible. (Source: Gray’s Anatomy, plate 883)
Although
the iris
is a quite static structure – generally speaking – it is important to understand that it is not a solid structure, but rather it consists of intricate structures which provide diaphragm-like functionality for the eye, as well as aperture control via embedded muscles (the iris sphincter and dilator muscles). In total, the iris itself consists of six layers, from front to back:
anterior limiting layer
stroma
sphincter muscle
dilator muscle
anterior pigment epithelium
posterior pigment epithelium
Most of what we can see directly of the iris when observing the eye is the
stroma of iris
. This is a fibrovascular layer, which as the name suggests consists of fibrous tissue interlaced with blood vessels, as well as nerves. It is this lacework of fibers that in a sense forms the unique pattern much like a person’s fingerprints. The color of the iris is the result of an intricate optical interaction between the (dark) pigmentation in the stroma as well as the epithelium, in addition to their textures, fibrous structures and blood vessels. It is this complex structure of interlaced structures which make that the iris has such a high level of entropy, and also why the amount of pupil dilation affects the result of an iris scan.
As alluded to earlier, however, there are many conditions which affect the iris, with
some of them summarized
by the American Academy of Ophthalmologists. Of these, inflammation of the uvea (uveitis) of which the iris is also a component is a common condition that can severely damage the eye, including the iris (
iritis
). One of the most common causes of uveitis that affects the iris is the herpes simplex virus (HSV, causing
Herpes Simplex Uveitis
), usually during reoccurrences of HSV.
For those who have congenital, traumatic or other types of damage to the iris, the use of
prosthetic iris devices
(Artificial Iris, or AI) are an option. Such an AI covers part of the functionality of a natural iris, enabling something approaching normal vision, but naturally rendering them impervious to iris recognition, as an AI is very different from the biological version. These AIs are often the only option after
botched cosmetic iris surgery
(warning, graphical content) as well, which would preclude the use of iris recognition whether said cosmetic iris surgery is successful or not.
Squishy Brains
As much as we’d like to use biometrics like a fingerprint, iris- or retinal scan as an absolute part of who we are, the fact of the matter remains that the only part of our bodies which is intrinsically tied to us as an individual is our brain. Swap some brains about between bodies, and you’d still be ‘you’, just slightly confused while you figure out the details of a new body. This is perhaps the fundamental flaw with biometrics: until we can directly scan brain structures (non-fatally, natch), every other form of biometrics will at most be an approximation of what true biometric authentication would entail.
Even our brains can and will change over time due to neuroplasticity, diseases, trauma, etc. Despite this, our overarching sense of ‘self’ and the memories which we carry with us, are firmly encoded in the squishy tissues of this amazing organ, thus forming our unique personalities, shaping our dreams and desires, and making us into the person we are today. Yet until the day comes that someone presents an Orb that can literally scan human brains, scanning irises is a passable, imperfect, approximation. | 68 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671543",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T14:21:41",
"content": "Something you have (fingerprint, iris) should never replace something you know for security.This is a finite amount of information, computers should not be allowed to determine what an individual is based o... | 1,760,372,205.944092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/weird-lens-allows-light-field-passthrough-for-vr-headset/ | Weird Lens Allows Light Field Passthrough For VR Headset | Donald Papp | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"light field",
"passthrough",
"prototype",
"vr"
] | Light Fields are a subtle but critical element to making 3D video look “real”, and it has little to do with either resolution or field of view. Meta (formerly Facebook) provides a look at
a prototype VR headset
that provides light field passthrough video to the user for a more realistic view of their surroundings, and it uses a nifty lens and aperture combination to make it happen.
As humans move our eyes (or our heads, for that matter) to take in a scene, we see things from slightly different perspectives in the process. These differences are important cues for our brains to interpret our world. But when cameras capture a scene, they capture it as a flat plane, which is different in a number of important ways from the manner in which our eyes work. A big reason stereoscopic 3D video doesn’t actually look particularly real is because the information it presents lacks these subtleties.
How is this connected to VR headsets? The video passthrough feature of VR — where one sees the real world via external cameras — is increasingly understood to be an important feature, but has limitations. Visual distortions from software processing are one, but video passthrough also suffers from the same issues that 3D videos have: they just don’t look real, and they don’t actually look 3D. This is more than just a cosmetic problem; it gets in the way of interacting with the world. That includes not just handling items but also things like walking around without bumping into corners, or going down stairs rather faster than one intended.
This clever assembly makes it appear that there is a single opening that exists somewhere behind the array, depending on the angle. Note that this virtual opening persists “between” lenses; something not possible with a lens array alone.
Light fields are the missing link to making 3D video captured by cameras look more real, and one way to capture light fields is to glue up a whole bunch of cameras. Each camera captures a scene from a slightly different perspective, and software can process the resulting data into a light field video that manages to confer all (or at least
most
) of the little details our brains are expecting to see.
Meta’s
light field passthrough prototype
(the “Flamera” headset, about halfway down that page) takes the clever approach of using a lens array combined with apertures to create an optic that modifies how a camera sees the world, instead of using an array of cameras and processing the results. The optic looks like a sort of
compound eye
, allowing the headset to deliver light field passthrough video that is of remarkably higher quality than the usual options.
Want to know more about light fields? We’ve seen
fascinating work from Google on light field video
as well as
a past Hackaday Superconference talk
that does a great job of explaining why it’s so important, and how light fields can be approached even as a hobbyist. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671510",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T11:54:27",
"content": "I’ve never understood why everyone seems to want active videocamera to screen passthough as the point of research. The best result for “pass through” would be to just let us use our eyes directly – whic... | 1,760,372,205.687604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/10/minimizing-stress-on-a-coin-cell-battery/ | Minimizing Stress On A Coin Cell Battery | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"boost converter",
"buck converter",
"coin cell",
"dc-dc",
"life",
"smps",
"switch mode",
"voltage sag"
] | When it comes to powering tiny devices for a long time, coin cell batteries are the battery of choice for things like keyfobs, watches, and even some IoT devices. They’re inexpensive and compact and a great choice for very small electricity needs. Their major downside is that they have a relatively high internal resistance, meaning they can’t supply a lot of current for very long without decreasing the lifespan of the battery.
This new integrated circuit
uses a special DC-DC converter to get over that hurdle and extend the life of a coin cell significantly.
A typical DC-DC converter uses a rapidly switching transistor to regulate the energy flow through an inductor and capacitor, effectively stepping up or stepping down the voltage. Rather than relying on a single converter, this circuit uses a two-stage system. The first is a boost converter to step the voltage from the coin cell up to as much as 11 volts to charge a storage capacitor. The second is a buck converter which steps that voltage down when there is a high current demand. This causes less overall voltage drop on the battery meaning less stress for it and a longer operating life in the device.
There are a few other features of this circuit as well, including an optimizer which watches the behavior of the circuit and learns about the power demands being placed on it. That way, the storage capacitor is only charged up to its maximum capacity if the optimizer determines that much charge is needed. With all of these features a coin cell could last around seven times as long as one using more traditional circuitry. If you really need to get every last bit of energy from a battery, though,
you can always use a joule thief
. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671497",
"author": "DaveJ",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T10:34:49",
"content": "I smell B.S., energizer all over again.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671584",
"author": "Lee Hart",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T16:1... | 1,760,372,206.227148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/myth-tested-dos-cant-multitask/ | Myth Tested: DOS Can’t Multitask | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"dos",
"ms-dos",
"multitasking"
] | It’s a piece of common knowledge, that MS-DOS wasn’t capable of multitasking. For that, the Microsoft-based PC user would have to wait for the 80386, and usable versions of Windows. But like so many such pieces of received Opinion, this one is full of holes. As [Lunduke] investigates,
there were several ways to multitask DOS
, and they didn’t all depend on third-party software.
A quick look at DESQview and Concurrent DOS was expected from this article, but of more surprise is that IBM had a multitasking DOS called TopView, or even that Microsoft themselves released the fully multitasking MS-DOS 4.0. We remember DOS 4 as being less than sparkling, but reading the article it’s obvious that we’re thinking of the single-tasking version 4.01.
From 2023 it seems obvious that multitasking is a fundamental requirement of PC use, but surprisingly back in the 1980s a PC was much more a single-application device. On one hand it’s surprising given the number of multitasking DOS products on the market that none of them became mainstream, but perhaps the best evidence of the PC market simply not being ready for it comes in the fact that they didn’t.
If you fancy experimenting with DOS multitasking, at least
machines on which to do it can still be found
. | 77 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671425",
"author": "David Kuder",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T05:13:32",
"content": "Lest ye not forget there was once a multiuser multitasking BASIC operating system for PCs. Yes, someone saw fit to do such a thing, for business users, because BASIC is the only programming language ... | 1,760,372,206.060966 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/why-vr-as-monitor-replacement-is-likely-to-be-terrible-for-a-while-yet/ | Why VR As Monitor Replacement Is Likely To Be Terrible For A While Yet | Donald Papp | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"analysis",
"headset",
"monitor replacement",
"vr"
] | Putting on a headset and using virtual monitors in VR instead of physical ones is a use case that pops up, but is it really something feasible? [Karl Guttag], who has long experience and a deep understanding of the technical challenges that face such devices,
doesn’t seem to think so
.
In his writeup [Karl] often focuses on the recently-unveiled high resolution
Apple Vision Pro
, but the issues he discusses transcend any particular product. His article is worth the read for anyone with an interest in these issues, but we’ll summarize some main points here.
A primary job of a monitor is to display text. Text is so important, in fact, that it gets handled as a special case.
Font hinting
is the process (and art) by which the fine details and lines inherent to text are translated to a pixel grid for best appearances in all circumstances. This grid fitting — specialized mapping of characters to fit a rasterized grid of pixels — has been a major part of computers for over forty years, and almost all font rendering relies on it. It’s an especially important part of making text look good on lower resolution displays.
But normal grid fitting cannot be applied to a virtual monitor because one cannot rely on content being rendered in any particular orientation. Between a monitor and a virtual display of equal resolution, virtual text will always look worse because the usual grid fitting tricks don’t work. Giving a virtual monitor higher resolution is one way to fix this, but at least so far, virtual monitors are going to have
fewer
pixels to work with, not more. Physical monitors do not have to share their pixels with anything else, but the little screens inside VR headsets do.
A virtual monitor must share its pixels with the rest of a VR scene. Whatever number of pixels a headset has, the virtual monitor will have fewer.
Making virtual monitors bigger is another way to give them more pixels, but as virtual monitors get bigger they get less comfortable to use. As soon as one begins to have to move one’s head to read the whole screen, things get very tiresome very quickly. For serious desktop computer work, movie theatre-sized virtual monitors are not ideal.
[Karl] seems to have good reasons to believe VR headsets will continue to make poor monitor replacements, but there are other efforts from people and organizations trying to make it work. The
SimulaVR
folks, for example, aim to make an open-source Linux headset that functions primarily as a monitor replacement, and their proposed solution to boost resolution is a lens that
squashes pixels towards the center of the field of view
. Another direction is from a company unsatisfied with existing headsets’ ability to render virtual monitors, so
they announced their own
. Neither of those are finished products one can actually buy at the moment, but clearly [Karl] isn’t the only one thinking about these problems.
Would you use a VR headset to replace your monitor? Either way, such a headset would probably make a good basis for
a cyberdeck build
. | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671402",
"author": "leo60228",
"timestamp": "2023-08-10T02:11:33",
"content": "This seems to ignore that Apple doesn’t do hinting and removed subpixel font smoothing a few years ago?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671517",
... | 1,760,372,206.38214 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/pedal-car-vs-ministry-of-transport/ | Pedal Car Vs Ministry Of Transport | Jonathan Bennett | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"e-bike",
"electric assist",
"quadricycle"
] | [Tim] from the “Way Out West” Youtube channels has started a fun project — building a wooden pedal-car heavily inspired by “Bugsy Malone”. The kids-sized gangsters in that movie got around in kid-sized pedal cars. Apparently kid-sized [Tim] just loved the idea, but just didn’t have the skills or tools to try to build one. But
the time has come
, and he has spent years putting together a workshop, tools, and skills.
The goal is a 4-wheeled vehicle that can actually be enclosed, to keep the driver out of the rain. It would be petal powered, with an optional electric assist. It should be made of simple materials, like plywood and epoxy. The design would be freely shared, and the overall cost hopefully kept low. Come back after the link to find the rest of the story, including the monkey wrench thrown into the works.
The design has slowly come together, starting with experiments around suspension. The first iteration was a beam front axle, pivoting in the center. That idea works great for tractors, but a pedal car needs some real independent suspension. And for springs and dampers, he’s tried using hay tines, bed slats, tennis balls and bungee cords.
The whole project is all about making something good on a shoestring budget. There are some pedal cars being made around the world, but they aren’t particularly affordable, and haven’t arrived in some of the out of the way places like Western Ireland. The plan was to make a design that counted as an electric bike.
Unfortunately, the European Union regulations around vehicles just don’t account for a 4-wheel e-bike. If the whole thing could weigh in under 25 kilograms, it would count as a scooter, but that’s not really an achievable weight limit. An e-bike is only allowed a maximum of three wheels. There is a classification that sounds promising, the Light Quadricycle, but that class is up to 425 kilograms, and nothing about being pedal powered.
The latest video in the series is an open letter to Eamon Ryan, the Minister for Transport of Ireland. A ruling to put this little prototype car back into a fitting category, or to define an ultralight quadricycle, would go a long ways toward making it a reality. But for now, knowing how slow the government wheels of change can be, [Tim] and his crew are working on making a 3-wheel version that’s actually safe to drive. We wish him them the best of luck, and will be watching for the end product! | 49 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671368",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T23:12:59",
"content": "” It would be petal powered”Throwback to the 1960s “Flower Power”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671376",
"a... | 1,760,372,206.314446 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/3d-print-your-own-seiko-style-magic-lever-energy-harvester/ | 3D Print Your Own Seiko-Style “Magic Lever” Energy Harvester | Donald Papp | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"energy harvesting",
"magic lever",
"mechanical energy",
"ratchet",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"seiko",
"self winding"
] | Back in 1956, Seiko created their “magic lever” as an integral part of self-winding mechanical watches, which were essentially mechanical energy harvesters. The magic lever is a type of ratcheting arrangement that ensures a main gear only ever advances in a single direction. [Robert Murray-Smith] goes into detail in
this video
(here’s
a link cued up to 1:50
where he begins discussing the magic lever)
There is a lot of naturally-occuring reciprocal motion in our natural world. That is to say, there is plenty of back-and-forth and side-to-side, but not a lot of round-and-round. So, an effective mechanism for a self-winding watch needed a way to convert unpredictable reciprocal motion into a unidirectional rotary one. The magic lever was one way to do so, and it only has three main parts. [Robert] drew these up into 3D models, which he demonstrates in his video, embedded below.
The 3D models for Seiko’s magic lever
are available here
, and while it’s fun to play with, [Robert] wonders if it could be integrated into something else. We’ve certainly seen
plenty of energy harvesting projects
, and while they are mostly electrical, we’ve also seen ideas about how to
harvest the energy from falling raindrops
. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671328",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T20:12:37",
"content": "If we now understand how it works, surely it;s no longer magic? Was it indeed ever magic?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671337",
... | 1,760,372,206.435942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/2023-hackaday-prize-a-reinvented-solar-tracker/ | 2023 Hackaday Prize: A Reinvented Solar Tracker | Matthew Carlson | [
"green hacks",
"Solar Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"renewable energy",
"solar panel",
"solar tracker"
] | It probably goes without saying that solar panels need to be pointed at the sun for optimal performance. The tricky bit is that the sun has a funny habit of moving on you. For those with a solar panel on their balcony or garden,
mysoltrk tracks the sun to get the most out of a small solar panel
.
[Fulvio] built the tracker to be solid, low cost, and sturdy enough to survive outdoors, which is quite a tall order. Low cost meant WiFi and GPS were out. The first challenge was low-cost linear actuators that were 3D printed with a mechanism to lock the shaft. An N20 6 volt 30 RPM geared motor formed the heart of the actuator. Four photo-resistors inside a printed viewfinder detect where the sun is, allowing the system to steer the array to get equal values on all the sensors. An Arduino Nano was chosen as it was low power, low cost, and easy to modify. A L298N h-bridge drives the motors, and a shunt is used instead of limit switches to reduce costs further.
There are a few other clever tricks. A voltage divider reads the power coming off the panel so the circuit doesn’t brown out trying to move the actuators. The load can also be switched off via an IRL540n. As of the time of writing,
only the earlier versions of the code are up on GitHub
, as [Fulvio] is still working on refining the tracking algorithm. But the actuators work wonderfully. We love the ingenuity and focus on low cost, which probably explains why mysoltrk was selected as a
finalist in the 2023 Hackaday Prize Green Hacks challenge
.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671298",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T18:34:32",
"content": "Great for small. Not so much for bigger.https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/are-solar-axis-trackers-worth-the-additional-investment",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,206.574198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/share-your-projects-leave-breadcrumbs/ | Share Your Projects: Leave Breadcrumbs | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"internet hacks",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"documentation",
"forums",
"research"
] | I’ve talked about a low-effort way to document your projects by taking plenty of pictures, and about ways that your PCBs could be documenting themselves. Today, let’s talk about a quick and easy way that you could help other hackers as you go through your own hacking adventures — leaving breadcrumbs.
In short, breadcrumbs are little pieces of crucial information that you had to spend time to figure out. They are solutions to problems that another hacker just like you could stumble upon in the future, something that you perhaps wish you didn’t have to figure out on your own, and certainly something that others won’t need to spend time figuring out.
Breadcrumbs are about saving time, for you and others. It helps if you think of your solved problems in terms of time spent. If you figure out a small problem and then publish your solution, you might be saving half an hour, a full hour, or a good few hours of time another hacker that’s could even be less experienced in debugging than you. In fact, your breadcrumb might even make a difference between someone completing a project and abandoning it!
However, there’s also the trade-off of taking time to document something. If you can’t publish your solution in a few minutes’ time, it might become much harder to persuade your brain to publish the next time you have something notable. Here’s a guideline: if you’ve just figured out a cool terminal command that helps you solve a certain kind of problem, you should have a quick way to publish that command within a minute. The good news is, the internet has a hundred different places you could easily share your findings, depending on the kind of problem you’ve solved!
Self-Publishing For Hackers
It’s exceptionally important that you minimize the time it takes to get something published. Don’t think that you need to start a whole fancy blog right now to publish that one note, it’s enough to create
a wordpress.com account
, or a new GitHub repository. GitHub specifically has
the Gist platform
that’s good for short notes, but you can also
create a repository
called ‘notes’ that contains a bunch of Markdown files with descriptive filenames. In fact, having a GitHub repository with markdown files is quite close to having a decent blog, with way less setup effort to boot.
Check out this repository
for a great example!
You don’t need a comment section plugin, you don’t need analytics, or fancy plugins, you don’t even need your own hosting, you only need a space for text and a bit of searchability. All you actually need is a place to post things quickly. You wouldn’t want to make your breadcrumbs hard to leave of all things, they should take as little time as possible. Having your favorite text editor open and at the ready certainly helps, so you can be 5 – 10 seconds away from copy-pasting your notes into a publishable document. A GitHub repo fits that bill, so does a WordPress blog, or even a
Hackaday.io stack page.
When you’re choosing the text to put in your post it’s worth considering a bit of search engine optimization (SEO), which in our case boils down to, “what could another hacker be searching while trying to solve this problem?” So, weave in all the specific and general keywords and strings that you yourself have looked up in the search engine, get the specific error message name in there if you still have it, and, if your blog supports tags, add any tags that feel like they apply well. You’ll want to make it so that others can find this post when they need your help specifically!
Don’t expect comments or likes, or any feedback outside of a view counter. My WordPress stats page doesn’t show many views on my breadcrumbs, half of them are in 50 – 100 lifetime view range, and 40% are in the 100 – 1000 view range. However, even if 99% of these views are bots, that’s still a decent amount of people solving a similar problem overall. If you manage to help someone save one or two hours of debugging work, that’s a big win.
Having your own blog with breadcrumbs can certainly help you build up your own reputation, and it also has quite a bit of sentimental value. For instance, I feel good when I scroll through my old breadcrumbs blog nowadays; it has solution after solution, with each post likely having helped someone else along the way, and each post brings me back to some project I was working on. Maybe I was just hacking on something interesting in my free time, or maybe I was helping a friend, but either way it’s a nice reminder of the “oh, I was solving this problem once!” kind.
Still, with your own blog, there are disadvantages. For instance, unlike forum pages, you no longer have the SEO advantage of other people having clicked the search result before. What if you want to maximize the chance that the answer is found? What if you don’t have a blog yet and you just can’t get through the perfectionism barrier?
Get To The Source
We all know the tale — you find a forum thread where someone has the exact some problem as you, and the last message is “I solved it myself”, no solution in sight. It is frustrating to see, and if you’re looking for a bit of comfort, leaving breadcrumbs helps you move the world into the opposite direction.
Among thousands of dead platforms, you will absolutely see StackOverflow willing to help you with no strings attached, Reddit with its community recently torn apart, Blogger
about to lose its entire picture collection,
and the few forums left up and running. Still, all of these platforms have their spots in search engines, even if the first pages have been surrendered to AI-generated spam. Sometimes, accounts and threads will get deleted, hotlinked pictures will disappear, old posts might get locked, a plague on forums and Reddit alike if you just want to leave a breadcrumb. However, you’ll find yourself on their pages, still, and others will too.
As you were solving your problem, you have likely googled it in a few different ways. You might have a few kinds of browser tabs: GitHub issues, StackOverflow pages, forum threads, others’ blog posts, maybe even a public discussion that you yourself have started in the meantime. All of these are great places to post an answer — as long as it’s a page you have found through a search engine, the same search engine is more likely to lead people to the one crucial piece of information that you’ve found.
Websites like StackOverflow also recognize the concept of breadcrumbs. You can ask a question there, but you can also ask your own question and then answer it, and you can even ask a question specifically for the purpose of giving your own answer under it! Remember, StackOverflow has an electronics section! You’ve probably already stumbled upon it, but if you haven’t,
here it is.
StackOverflow and Reddit do share a problem: they have minimum requirements for their posts, and you might not necessarily meet them. If your problem happens to fall under some sort of tragedy of commons guideline, or your question is perceived as too similar to someone despite vital nuance, it might get closed and downranked. Having said all that, my few StackOverflow answers have certainly helped others over time. I’ve once solved a small problem back in 2018, posted it as an answer, and to this day I still get upvote notifications for the solution I posted. Can’t deny, that alone warms my heart!
Publish Or Perish
It might not matter where you leave breadcrumbs as much as it matters that you do leave them somewhere. Most of all, it should be easy for you to leave them. Searchability helps, and if you can optimize for that, do so. Perhaps don’t leave your breadcrumbs on X (formerly Twitter), or any place you don’t often see in search results. Unless it’s your blog, in which case, you’ll surely soon make it to Google!
Even a tiny breadcrumb can point a fellow hacker in the right direction – and don’t you wish that you yourself had one handy before you embarked on a three-hour debugging journey? | 20 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671288",
"author": "komradebob",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T17:17:53",
"content": "One of my favourite breadcrumbs is writing directly on my point to point wired prototype boards, long before I commit to actual pcb, I have a board with plenty of small notes. Hint: Fine india ink pen.... | 1,760,372,206.500428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/ms-dos-meets-the-fediverse/ | MS-DOS Meets The Fediverse | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"dos",
"Fediverse",
"IBM PC",
"mastodon",
"networking",
"retrocomputing",
"Social Media",
"tcp/ip"
] | By now, most Windows users are set up with decently functional machines running Windows 10 or 11. Of course there are a few legacy machines still lagging behind on Windows 7 or 8 and plenty of computers in industrial settings running ancient proprietary software on Windows XP. But only the most hardcore of IBM PC users are still running DOS, and if you have eschewed things like Unix for this command-line operating system this long you might want to try
using it to get online in the Fediverse with Mastodon
.
The first step is getting DOS 6.22, the most recent version released in 1994, set up with all the drivers and software needed to access the Internet. At the time of its release there were many networking options so the operating system didn’t include these tools by default. [Stephen] first sets up an emulated NE2000-compatible networking card and then installs the entire TCP/IP stack and then gets his virtual machine set up with an IP address.
With a working Internet connection set up, the next step on the path of exploring federated social media is to install DOStodon (although we might have favored the name “MastoDOS”) which is a Mastodon client specifically built for MS-DOS by [SuperIlu]. There are pre-compiled packages available on
its GitHub page
for easy installation in DOS but the source code is available there as well. And, if this is your first time hearing about the Fediverse, it is mostly an alternative to centralized social media like Facebook and Reddit but
the decentralization isn’t without its downsides
. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671257",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T15:36:07",
"content": "NE2000 compatible cards were all the rage if you wanted to get decent driver support under Linux.Realtek RTL8139 was the winning chipset!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,206.648204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/humanitys-return-to-the-moon-and-the-prospect-of-south-pole-moon-bases/ | Humanity’s Return To The Moon And The Prospect Of South Pole Moon Bases | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"artemis program",
"moon",
"moon base",
"moon colonization"
] | The last time that a human set foot on the Moon, it was December 1972 — when the crew of the Apollo 17 mission spent a few days on the surface before returning to Earth. Since then only unmanned probes have either touched down on the lunar surface or entered orbit to take snapshots and perform measurements.
But after years of false starts, there are finally new plans on the table which would see humans return to the Moon. Not just to visit, but with the goal of establishing a permanent presence on the lunar surface. What exactly has changed that the world went from space fever in the 1960s to tepid interest in anything beyond LEO for the past fifty years, to the renewed interest today?
Part of the reason at least appears to be an increasing interest in mineable resources on the Moon, along with the potential of manufacturing in a low gravity environment, and as a jumping-off point for missions to planets beyond Earth, such as Mars and Venus. Even with 1960s technology, the Moon is after all only a few days away from launch to landing, and we know that the lunar surface is rich in silicon dioxide, aluminium oxide as well as other metals and significant amounts of helium-3, enabling in-situ resource utilization.
Current and upcoming Moon missions focus on exploring the lunar south pole in particular, with frozen water presumed to exist in deep craters at both poles. All of which raises the question of we may truly see lunar-based colonies and factories pop up on the Moon this time, or are we merely seeing a repeat of last century?
All That Never Was
Despite the often triumphant tone and chest beating around the Space Race and getting the first boots on the Moon, it’s hard to not see it as much more than a brief excursion to flex some geopolitical muscle, amidst significant tragedy. For the Soviets this tragedy struck early on, when they lost their equivalent to Werner von Braun in 1966, when
Sergei Korolev
died in hospital after worsening health problems. After this, many aspects of the grand Soviet space program floundered and began to disintegrate, including the ambitious
Zvezda
(Russian: “
звезда”, meaning “star”)
Moon base.
In the US sci-fi drama series
For All Mankind
the USSR lands first on the Moon and
establishes
the
Zvezda
Moon base.
This would have been a modular base somewhat akin to the International Space Station, with nine modules that provided the 9-12 person crew with both living and working areas, with resources such as water extracted from the soil and power provided from
radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs)
and a nuclear fission reactor. When the required superheavy N1-L3 Moon rocket failed to materialize, the Zvezda project died along with it.
After this, attempts were made to revive the Moon base idea based around new launchers, such as the Lunar Expeditionary Complex from 1974 and the Energia Lunar Expedition from 1988. Yet none of these would progress past the concept stage, as the USSR simply didn’t have the funds necessary for further lunar exploration.
On the US side of the curtain, concepts for Moon bases have been drawn up since the 1950s, with a strong interest from the military. During the 1980s and 1990s, plans were floated to have a permanent lunar colony by the 2000s, but none got the level of funding needed. Finally in 2017
NASA was able to launch the Artemis program
, which will involve increasingly complex robotic and crewed missions before landing astronauts on the lunar surface in 2025.
But once again, the United States isn’t the only country in the game. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (
CLEP
) has a lunar robotic research station planned as well as a subsequent manned station. The latter manned station is called the International Lunar Research Station (
ILRS
), which as the name suggests, would be open to other nations.
Meanwhile India has just launched its second attempt at performing a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is part of its larger
Chandrayaan program
. Much like China’s current series of Chang’e Moon missions, these are intended to explore, probe and analyze the Moon’s surface, as well as its geological and other features, although India has so far not yet managed to proceed to the stage of human spaceflight, leaving only China, the US and potentially Russia to fulfill the dream of colonizing the Moon by the 2030s, over half a century after Zvazda was planned to have been operational.
Lunar Prospects
A potentially very useful aspect of having a permanent presence on the Moon is the ability to construct and run scientific equipment like radio and optical telescopes on the far side of the Moon. Since these would face away from the Earth, they’d be shielded from most of the RF and other radiomagnetic radiation beamed out from Earth, whether from natural or human causes. One such project is the suggested
NASA Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT)
which would turn an entire lunar crater into a massive, 1 km diameter radio telescope.
Proposed construction approach for the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope. (Credit: NASA)
LCRT is still being developed at JPL, with the idea being that it’d be
constructed by robots
, which would be delivered from Earth together with all of the materials. The tantalizing thought here is of course that if we were to have manufacturing capacity on lunar soil, much of this material for the LCRT and similar instruments could be manufactured in-situ, saving enormous costs in launching tons of materials to the Moon. When considering the Moon as a jumping off point for further space exploration, this too might be a useful feature, along with the Moon’s low gravity to make launches a snap.
After the
Chinese Chang’e 5 mission
returned the first lunar samples since the 1970s, analysis of the material found tiny glass beads containing significant amounts of water, presumably from asteroid impacts. This suggests that water may be more prevalent in the Moon than previously assumed, and also more widely available across the surface as well. Clearly, before we can set up manufacturing facilities on the Moon there is still a lot we have to learn, but rather than just a dusty rock in space, it would appear that it’s perhaps not as desiccated and empty as once assumed.
Much of the current and upcoming Moon missions seem to be focused on this type of exploration for probably just that reason. Which materials are available on the Moon, and in what quantities? How hard would it be to process them for ISRU, and what would be the cost-benefit between launching materials to the Moon, as well as Moon-based manufacturing and sending it to Earth? For both the Chinese (CLEP) and Russian (
Luna-Glob
) Moon programs, the initial focus is on setting up a robotic lunar base, which would be used for research on In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and manufacturing techniques.
Geopolitics Beyond Earth
Although the Moon is littered with Sun-faded national flags, it is hoped that no Earth nation would be able to claim something like mining rights on the Moon, let alone parts of it. This reflects the attitude towards the continent of Antarctica, which has so far been protected by the 1961 Antarctic Treaty. Yet because the very similar Outer Space Treaty (
OST
) is focused primarily on the use of outer space for weapons and military purposes, the 1979
Moon Treaty
was created, that establishes that jurisdiction outside Earth would default to international law, with no possibility of national claims on lunar resources.
To this day, enthusiasm for the Moon Treaty has been lacking with neither the US, nor China or Russia signing it — which might signal brewing issues if a rush for lunar resources were to commence in earnest. While over the intervening half century the Moon has been left mostly alone, the Chinese program is ambitiously eyeing the end of this decade for a small robotic research base, while India and private companies are also trying their luck at lunar exploration.
Due to current geopolitical considerations, the Russian Moon program with the Luna 25 through Luna 27 landers have been postponed, and may not fly at all, depending on Roscosmos’ future. In a sense the curse on Soviet Moon exploration does seem to have remained in place.
Setting Up Camp
Even if water is more plentiful on the Moon than initially assumed, the lunar poles have a major advantage over the rest of the lunar surface in that these do not face the same brutal
lunar day
. One rotation of the Moon takes about a month, resulting in about two weeks of darkness and two weeks of sunlight. This means that solar power is really only a realistic option at the poles, with some areas experiencing almost continuous illumination.
For any mining and research bases elsewhere on the Moon, this would mean the use of nuclear reactors and RTGs, much as was planned for the Zvezda base.
The Kilopower project
, in development by NASA and the US Department of Energy (DOE), aims to produce a range of reactors which can be used on the Moon or Mars. As for why so many Moon missions target the lunar south pole rather than the north pole, this can be explained based on the suspicion of water ice in shadowed craters, of which the
lunar south pole
has significantly more than the north pole.
With little to differentiate both poles, and the rest of the lunar surface having been explored in more detail already by both the Apollo and various robotic missions, the south pole was an obvious exploration target, and due to the presence of more sunlight might be more suitable for a human outpost. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671252",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T15:00:26",
"content": "What interesting features will their con-badges have?Will the flight computer be a repurposed TRS-80?What role will the Arduino and Raspi-Pi play in play?What arcane coding will the residents need to know... | 1,760,372,206.773273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/running-doom-in-a-keycap-takes-careful-work/ | RunningDOOMIn A Keycap Takes Careful Work | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"doom",
"keycap",
"rp2040",
"rp2040 doom"
] | Shoehorning
DOOM
into different hardware is a classic hacker’s exercise, and [TheKeebProject]
managed to squeeze the 1993 classic into a custom keycap
with the help of a Raspberry Pi RP2040, a custom PCB, and a clear resin enclosure. It even has a speaker for sound!
All processing is done inside the keycap, which is a clever feat. There is a USB connection, but it’s only for power and keyboard controls, so it’s completely playable without needing a whole lot of external support. The custom PCB and code are based off
an earlier RP2040
DOOM
project
, and [TheKeebProject] has certainly made it their own by managing to get everything so tightly integrated. There’s a quick video mashup embedded below. There’s still a bit of work to do, but the code and design files are all on GitHub should you wish for a closer look.
Making
DOOM
physically smaller is a good challenge, but we’d like to remind fans that we’ve also seen
DOOM
shrink in terms of power consumption,
all the way down to 1 mW
.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Bob (@thekeebproject) | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671207",
"author": "Power Ranger",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T11:52:13",
"content": "“we’d like to remind fans that we’ve also seen DOOM shrink in terms of power consumption, all the way down to 1 mW.”It’s quite funny that there was a long comment thread on that article pointing out ... | 1,760,372,206.697529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/super-mario-in-sed-sort-of/ | Super MarioIn Sed, Sort Of | Dave Rowntree | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"graphical",
"nintendo",
"sed",
"super mario world"
] | We
definitely needed to reach for a sed reference guide for this one
, but looking at the animated GIF of the script running, it
is
recognizably
Super Mario Bros.
albeit with minimal gameplay beyond jumping obstacles and avoiding or destroying koopas et al. Creator [Ivan Chebykin] is for certain a master of the dark arts.
Digging in a bit deeper, it’s not strictly speaking 100% sed. A wrapper shell script is required to interface to the shell and grab the keyboard input to pass along. This is simply because sed is a stream processor, and as such it requires text to be fed into it, and it produces a text output. It has no way of reading the terminal input directly, hence the wrapper script. However, all the game logic and ‘graphics’ rendering is pure sed, so that’s perfectly reasonable.
Such programming demos are a great way to hone the finer points of various tools we use every day, whilst not being serious enough to matter if we fail. Pushing the boundaries of what can be done with these basic nuts and bolts we take for granted, is for us the very essence of software hacking, and bravo we say.
Reckon you could top this? Show us! In the meantime, here’s a guide to hacking the recently released
Game and Watch
, and then doing the decent thing and
running
DOOM
on it
. Finally, sed is notoriously tricky to work with, so to help
here’s a graphical debugger
to make things a little clearer. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671178",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T08:20:20",
"content": "My, for half a second, my heart almost sank into my boots! 😲Here in Germany, “SED” is known as an acronym for former East Germany’s political party.An unpleasant contemporary, mildly said.https://en.wikip... | 1,760,372,206.816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/inside-the-pet-keyboard/ | Inside The PET Keyboard | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"pet",
"retrocomputer"
] | These days, you have a certain expectation for computer keys on a keyboard. Of course, there are variations and proponents of different mechanisms and noise levels. However, back in the late part of the 20th century, it was a different world. Computers came with a bewildering and sometimes befuddling array of keyboards. Since the IBM Selectric was the king of typewriters, we assumed the IBM PC keyboard would be spectacular, but it wasn’t. The PC Jr was even worse! Atari experimented with flat keyboards to save costs, and many computers had keys more reminiscent of calculator keys than you would imagine. The market voted. In general, a keyboard that wasn’t really a keyboard was the kiss of death for a computer. Case in point: the
Commodore PET with its infamous chicklet keyboard
, which gets a detailed examination in a recent post from [Norbert Landsteiner].
The PET keyboard gets some bad rap due to software limitations. Because of this, some games would use their own scan routines, and [Norbert] has worked on emulation able to accommodate software that wants to read the hardware directly. The resulting insights into the old keyboard is very interesting. For example, you can press more than one key at once. The result? The answer to that question takes up about half the post.
Now that our keyboards have their own CPUs and send serial data to the main processor, it is easy to laugh at these old designs. But the machines that could do more with their CPUs cost less, and that was important in a world where CPUs didn’t cost a few dimes each. Ironically, these days our CPUs run at 100 times the speed, yet we rarely ask them to do all the work these old computers required to operate.
By 1979, the PET graduated to a more conventional keyboard, but until then, users suffered with the tiny keys. Reliability was poor. The legends tended to wear off quickly, too. The post covers some of the later keyboards, too. If you are a PET fan, or you just want to peek under the covers of a classic old machine, it is well worth the read.
The PET can, however, play YouTube videos at 30fps.
Really
. They showed up
in some odd places
, too. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671156",
"author": "Mog",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T06:16:09",
"content": "“[Norbert] has worked on emulation able to accommodate software that wants to read the hardware directly”You mean just like every other emulator that emulates the Commodore PET has done? If you emulate the 68... | 1,760,372,206.861867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/the-orb-web-desktop/ | The Orb Web Desktop | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"javascript",
"php",
"web desktop",
"webassembly"
] | [Hugo Leisink] is a programmer who contributes to Open Source projects. In their spare time, they have been developing a
web-browser-based operating system called Orb
. It is available for the princely sum of zero cheeseburgers and doesn’t need a high-spec machine to run smoothly. The project is built using PHP and Javascript, which allows it to run efficiently on most desktop devices. There are a number of apps included, which are again written in a combination of PHP and js, together with a few written using webasm.
A few notable examples include a
C64 emulator
, minesweeper, and even a js port of Wolfenstein 3D so this isn’t just a toy, but actually useful. Ok, for real use cases, there are also the usual file browsers, and document readers as well as a
writing application based on CKeditor
. There is a kind of Windows 3.1 look and feel simplicity to the experience which is refreshing in the modern era of complex applications with their learning curves. Orb could be very useful in an educational setting, or just for jotting your own notes as you travel. Who knows, because the possibilities are endless if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a bit of coding.
We’ve seen a few web desktops before,
here’s a collection of them
we saw last year. If you want to go in the other direction and turn a webpage into a desktop app, then
look no further than Gluon
. | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671130",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T02:31:08",
"content": "Front-end to remote virtualization.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671135",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T03:09:4... | 1,760,372,207.189274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/stm32-oscilloscope-uses-all-the-features/ | STM32 Oscilloscope Uses All The Features | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"analog to digital",
"microcontroller",
"oscilloscope",
"stm32",
"tft screen"
] | [jgpeiro] is no slouch when it comes to building small, affordable oscilloscopes out of common microcontrollers. His most recent, based on an RP2040 with two channels that ran at 100 MSps, put it on the order of plenty of commercially-available oscilloscopes at this sample rate but at a fraction of the price. He wanted to improve on the design though, making a smaller unit with a greatly reduced bill-of-materials and with a more streamlined design,
so he came up with this STM32-based oscilloscope
.
The goal of this project was to base as many of the functions around the built-in capabilities of the STM32 as possible, so in addition to the four input channels and two output channels running at 1 MHz, the microcontroller also drives a TFT display which has been limited to 20 frames per second to save processor power for other tasks. The microcontroller also has a number of built-in operational amplifiers which are used as programmable gain amplifiers, further reducing the amount of support circuitry needed on the PCB while at the same time greatly improving the scope’s capabilities.
In fact, the only parts of consequence outside of the STM32, the power supply, and the screen are the inclusion of two operational amplifiers included to protect the input channels from overvoltage events. It’s an impressive build in a small form factor, and we’d say the design goal of keeping the parts count low has been met as well. If you do need something a little faster though, his
RP2040-based oscilloscope is definitely worth checking out
. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671114",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2023-08-09T00:04:16",
"content": "looks good, all it needs is an i2c mode (I use my i2c bus monitor about 10 times more than my oscilloscope..) :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,207.507032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/no-need-to-buy-a-woodchipper-build-one/ | No Need To Buy A Woodchipper – Build One! | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"C45 steel",
"garden",
"gearmotor",
"metalworking",
"steel",
"wood chipper"
] | Polish YouTuber
WorkshopFromScratch
finally got fed up with tripping over piles of garden detritus and decided to
have a go at building a woodchipper
(Video, embedded below). Since they had a ‘small’ 1.5kW gearmotor just lying idle (as you do) it was an obvious fit for a machine that needs torque rather than supersonic speed. The video is a fabulous 20-minute journey through the workshop showing just about every conceivable metalworking tool being used at some point.
Checkout out the thickness of my blades!
One interesting point is the bottom roller, which sits between a pair of removable guides, which should help the thing self-feed without jamming. Whether that was necessary is not for us to judge, but it can’t hurt. The frame looks like it was constructed from at least 1/4″ thick steel, which is expensive if you don’t happen to have a supply to hand. There’s lots to see, everything from thin sheet metalworking, which was plasma cut, constructing the feed and exhaust guides, to box sections being skilfully welded at some interesting angles to make a cart to move the thing. They tell us the blades were constructed from some seriously thick slabs of C45 grade steel, but currently are not hardened. This is planned for the future, but we suspect not something that is easily achieved in the home workshop!
If this channel is familiar, then you might remember the earlier
stump grinder they built
. If you are drowning in sawdust, but have a log burner, then you’ll appreciate this
sawdust briquette machine
. | 32 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671072",
"author": "Eternal Damnation",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T21:02:48",
"content": "All you need to make $300 machine is a $10000 workshop 🤡",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671103",
"author": "Padrote",
... | 1,760,372,207.343622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/hackaday-prize-2023-machining-metals-with-sparks/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Machining Metals With Sparks | Bryan Cockfield | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"cutting",
"EDM",
"Electrical Discharge Machining",
"electricity",
"machining",
"metalworking",
"plasma",
"spark"
] | Working with metals can present a lot of unique challenges even for those with a fairly well-equipped shop. Metals like aluminum and some types of steel can be cut readily with grinders and saws, but for thick materials or some hardened steels, or when more complex cuts need to be made, mechanical cutting needs to be reconsidered in favor of something electric like electrical discharge machining (EDM) or a plasma cutter. [Norbert] has been on the path of
building his own EDM machine
and walks us through the process of generating a spark and its effects on some test materials.
Armed with a microscope, a homemade high-voltage generator, drill bit, and a razor blade to act as the workpiece, [Norbert] begins by experimenting with electrical discharges by bringing the energized drill bit close to the razor to determine the distance needed for effective electrical machining. Eventually the voltage is turned up a bit to dive into the effects of higher voltage discharges on the workpiece. He also develops a flushing system using de-ionized water, and then finally a system to automate the discharges and the movement of the tool.
While not a complete system yet, the videos [Norbert] has created so far show a thorough investigation of this metalworking method as well as some of the tricks for getting a setup like this working. EDM can be a challenging method for cutting metal
as we’ve seen before with this similar machine which uses wire as the cutting tool
, but some other builds we’ve seen
with more robust electrodes
have shown some more promise.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671059",
"author": "Max S.",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T19:41:55",
"content": "I thought EDM was always done under water, (de-ionized). Here the water is just sprayed on?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671127",
"aut... | 1,760,372,207.873752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/easyeda2kicad-never-draw-a-footprint-again/ | Easyeda2KiCad: Never Draw A Footprint Again | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Parts",
"PCB Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"easyeda",
"footprint creation",
"JLCPCB",
"KiCAD",
"LCSC"
] | What if I told you that you might never need to draw a new footprint again? Such is my friend’s impression of the tool that she’s shown me and I’m about to show you in turn, having used this tool for a few projects, I can’t really disagree!
We all know of the JLCPCB/LCSC/EasyEDA trio, and their integration makes a lot of sense. You’re expected to design your boards in EasyEDA, order the components on LCSC, and get the boards made by JLCPCB. It’s meant to be a one-stop shop, and as you might expect, there’s tight integration between all three. If there wasn’t, you’d be tempted to step outside of the ecosystem, after all.
But like many in this community, I use KiCad, and I don’t expect to move to a different PCB design suite — especially not a cloud one. Still, I enjoy using the JLCPCB and LCSC combination in the hobby PCB market as it stands now, and despite my KiCad affinity, it appears that EasyEDA can help me after all!
All Data, No Hassle
One of the hard-to-beat EasyEDA-LCSC integration aspects is that you can easily add LCSC parts to your boards. There’s no need to hunt for footprints and symbols, they’re all ready to go. You simply get the LCSC inventory at your fingertips, or at least the part of it that’s been documented by EasyEDA engineers. Indeed, this information isn’t just EasyEDA-specific, you can access it externally, and there’s a tool called
easyeda2kicad
that lets you download all the part files in KiCad format!
In the end, it fit with space to spare!
For instance, I was recently looking for microSD sockets — something that I have a tried and true part for. There’s a few hundred pieces in a bag next to my desk, even. Today’s constraint? It has to be less wide than the card itself, since I have to fit it into a narrow spot. Mouser didn’t have any good parts for me, but LCSC did. The sockets I found were also way cheaper, even including shipping and VAT. So, I’ve found a good part, but oh no, the footprint has ten pads and the mechanical dimensions are only half-intelligible, and I just want to get to drawing the long overdue board already!
All you need from here is
the
easyeda2kicad
script installed
– it takes the LCSC part number and creates the symbol, footprint and 3D model files for you automatically. To be clear, not all LCSC parts have been digitized. But that said, for one project of hers, my friend could successfully download a whole MXM slot, DisplayPort, miniDisplayPort and VGA connectors, and a few inductors with non-standard footprints; a combination that would typically need you to sit down in front of a PCB editor for a few hours, and that’s certainly not including the 3D models.
Limited, But Great Nevertheless
Choice in EDA software is something way less malleable than component and PCB service choice, and it rocks that this software now gives us an extra option. I’ve gone through a few projects by now with this script at the ready, the footprints and symbols have all worked as advertised, and while I still need to design footprints every now and then, they’re usually something exotic.
You could draw this from scratch, or you could run a script – the choice is yours
easyeda2kicad
will absolutely help if, like me, you have a foot strongly in the JLCPCB+LCSC field. Or the Eastern parts field at all. I’ve given a good few thousand dollars to these two companies, for personal and business purposes alike, and I don’t see a reason I’d stop just yet. I’m not here to promote any specific company, of course, and you’ll guess correctly that I’ve had these footprints and symbols work for Aliexpress parts, too, as long as you find which LCSC part they correspond to.
There are, of course, a few problems. The footprints have dubious legal status — any license granted likely doesn’t include such external use, and while we wouldn’t foresee problems adding such parts to open-source projects, it’s a technicality to keep in mind. These symbols and footprints are untested unless we know otherwise, unlike parts in the KiCad library, and as usual, they might deviate from datasheet in important ways.
You’re also at the mercy of the EasyEDA API, which you might remember
[Jan Mrazek]’s irreplaceable LCSC search
tool had
problems with in the past.
The problems have since been resolved, but the situation has left a bad aftertaste.
You might think that this is free symbol and footprint galore, and in a way, it is! Of course, the LCSC-JLCPCB-EasyEDA trio still wins — you’re more likely to use their services if you use this tool. There’s a reason why Western manufacturers often provide the same services, giving you footprints, symbols and 3D models so that you have it easier starting a new design within their ecosystem.
SnapEDA,
a similar service for Western parts, has been a mainstay in the electronics world, and to think of it, it’s long overdue to have such an option for Eastern parts! | 38 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671025",
"author": "nidrtho",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T17:14:44",
"content": "“Never X Y again!” is clickbait since before Internet was even a thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6671037",
"author": "Arya Voronova"... | 1,760,372,207.272612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/hacking-fake-food/ | Hacking Fake Food | Al Williams | [
"Art"
] | [
"fake food",
"sculpting",
"shokuhin sampuru",
"wax"
] | Ever seen a restaurant where they display fake models of the food on the menu? We never thought much about how
shokuhin sampuru
— the Japanese name — were made until we watched [Process X]’s video showing a 71-year-old artist
creating food models
. We aren’t sure what we — or you — would do with this information, but it is a striking process, and there must be something you could do with it. We suggest turning on the English captions, but you’d probably enjoy watching the unusual craftsmanship even with no words.
In years past, the food models were primarily made from wax, but since the 1980s, it is more common to use polyvinyl chloride, silicone, and resin. While some factories produce items, sometimes with a mold, single craftsmen like the one in the video still make up the largest part of the market.
We aren’t sure, but we think the material in the video is wax. We couldn’t help but think that some of this could have been 3D printed, but even with the finest resins and resolution, it probably wouldn’t be quite as artistic. We think wax is mainly
underutilized in today’s tech
. But there are some places
it still shows up
. | 24 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6671021",
"author": "ThantiK",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T17:01:33",
"content": "I remember in the 00s when this was a huge “FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:Grandma says the food we are eating is fake!” – so I learned about this back then, but this is some nostalgia to bring to the table today.",
... | 1,760,372,207.632068 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-the-sea-optical-repeaters-for-submarine-cables/ | Under The Sea: Optical Repeaters For Submarine Cables | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"fiberoptics",
"repeater",
"transatlantic cable",
"transoceanic",
"undersea"
] | Once a month or so, I have the privilege of sitting down with Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams to record the
Hackaday Podcast
. It’s a lot of fun spending a couple of hours geeking out together, and we invariably go off on ridiculous tangents with no chance of making the final cut, except perhaps as fodder for the intro and outro. It’s a lot of work, especially for Elliot, who has to edit the raw recordings, but it’s also a lot of fun.
Of course, we do the whole thing virtually, and we have a little ritual that we do at the start: the clapping. We take turns clapping our hands into our microphones three times, with the person on the other end of the line doing a clap of his own synchronized with the final clap. That gives Elliot an idea of how much lag there is on the line, which allows him to synchronize the two recordings. With him being in Germany and me in Idaho, the lag is pretty noticeable, at least a second or two.
Every time we perform this ritual, I can’t help but wonder about all the gear that makes it possible, including the fiber optic cables running beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Undersea communications cable stitch the world together, carrying more than 99% of transcontinental internet traffic. They’re full of fascinating engineering, but for my money, the inline optical repeaters that boost the signals along the way are the most interesting bits, even though — or perhaps especially because — they’re hidden away at the bottom of the sea.
Better Than Coax
Most of
the long history of transoceanic communications
has been dominated by one material: copper. From the earliest telegraph cables right through to the coaxial cables carrying thousands of multiplexed telephone and television signals, copper conductors did the bulk of the work for almost all of the 20th century. That began to change in 1988 with the laying of the first transatlantic fiber-optic telephone cable, TAT-8. With a capacity of 40,000 simultaneous phone calls on just two pairs of single-mode glass fibers (with one pair in reserve), TAT-8 bested the most advanced coaxial transatlantic cables by a factor of ten.
Like coax cables, optical cables require periodic boosting of the signal, especially over TAT-8’s roughly 7,000 km length. Repeaters were spaced every 50 km or so along the cable, housed in long, pressure-rated housings that created bulges in the slim cable, but were still compatible with the cable-laying gear. These repeaters worked by receiving the weakened optical signals with photodiodes, demodulating the signal before running it through semiconductor amplifiers, and converting it back into light using laser diodes. Power for the repeaters was applied to a copper conductor inside the optical cable assembly by equipment in the landing station.
TAT-8 was a fantastic success, to the point where demand exceeded capacity within eighteen months of going into service. It was taken out of service in 2002, in part because in the intervening years, optical cables with vastly more capacity had been laid, rendering TAT-8 obsolete. There was also the matter of the regenerative repeaters; since they needed to demodulate and re-modulate the signals, this limited the changes operators could make to the head-end equipment in the landings. Without the ability to upgrade that equipment, the cable was doomed.
Getting Pumped
But as early as 1985, advances in optical amplifiers were being made that would eventually find their way into submarine cables. That was when a physics grad student named Robert Mears did experiments with erbium-doped glass fibers and showed that they could act as purely optical, low-noise amplifiers in the wavelengths typically used for communications. Within ten years of the first paper on the subject, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) were slipping into the Atlantic on the TAT-12/13 cable.
EDFA works by exciting a population of erbium ions to a higher energy state with a 980 nm or 1480 nm pump laser, and forcing that population to relax with an incident 1550 nm signal photon. This stimulates the emission of a lot of 1550 nm photons as the erbium electrons relax.
Like many devices we use every day and tend to take for granted, EDFAs leverage the principles of quantum physics and yet are surprisingly simple. EDFAs rely on the fluorescent properties of oxides of the rare-earth element erbium to achieve amplification. When a small amount of erbium (III) oxide is added to the core of a silica fiber, the electrons in the erbium ions can be excited from their ground state (L1) by hitting them with laser light at a specific pumping wavelength. The pumping laser can either be 980 nm, which excites the erbium electrons to the L3 state, or 1,480 nm, which excites them to the L2 state. Practical EDFAs tend to use both 980 and 1,480 nm pumping lasers.
Excitation by the pumping laser leaves the erbium-doped fiber with a population inversion, which is a state where more atoms are in the excited state than the ground state. This creates a medium that’s ripe for disruption, specifically by the passage of a photon at a specific wavelength. For the excited erbium ions, that’s about 1,550 nm, which just so happens to be the wavelength of the infrared lasers used to send signals down an optical cable. When 1,550 nm photons hit the excited erbium ions, it induces them to return to their ground state, releasing a photon of the same wavelength in the process. Each relaxation releases a photon, each of which has the same wavelength and same phase as the incident photon and is traveling in the same direction, which results in massive amplification of the incoming 1,550 nm signal.
In theory, EDFAs are extremely simple — just a loop of doped fiber 10 to 20 meters in length, a laser diode for pumping, and the necessary optical components to join the amplifying loop to the incoming and outgoing fiber and multiplex the two together. The only electronics needed are those that drive the pumping diode, plus whatever circuits are needed for monitoring the health of the amplifier and controlling it remotely.
EDFA schematic. The input signal at 1550 nm is coupled with 980 nm light from the pump laser in an erbium-doped loop, which amplifies the signal by stimulated emission.
Real-world EDFAs are a bit more complex, tending to have a host of other optical components, like isolators on the input and output fibers that prevent unwanted reflections from leaking back from the output side. Even with these elaborations, though, EDFAs are simple enough to be manufactured as compact modules which can be installed in rack-mount enclosures — at least for amplifiers for land-based fiber optic cables.
Taking a Dip
Things change appreciably for the “wet plant” equipment of submarine cables, which as the name suggests is everything that runs under the ocean. Not only must each repeater squeeze multiple EDFAs — one for each fiber in the cable — into a package compact enough to be handled by the cable-laying gear, but it also has to be able to withstand the rigors of operating in one of the most hostile environments on the planet. And then there’s the matter of providing power to the pumping lasers and supervisory electronics over massive distances, itself a non-trivial task. Add in a design life of 25 years — while it’s not impossible to recover and repair a faulty repeater, it is neither cheap nor convenient — and a lot of engineering goes into these devices.
Depending on the needs of the cable owner and the route over which the cable will be laid, repeaters can potentially lie up to 8,000 meters below the surface. The pressure at that depth is about 78 MPa, or over 11,000 psi, which has to be resisted by the repeater housing itself and every joint and seal between the housing and the cable itself. Housings are generally made of either titanium or a beryllium copper alloy such as C17200, which is almost as strong and as hard as steel, but exhibits excellent resistance to the corrosive effects of seawater. It also has excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, with the latter being extremely important when it comes to dissipating the excess heat generated by the pumping lasers.
Submarine repeaters get their power over a dedicated copper sheath wrapped around the glass fibers at the center of the cable, with a return path through the seawater surrounding the cable. Power distribution equipment at the cable landing injects high DC voltage onto this conductor, with every repeater connected in series. Power is considerable, typically in the 10- to 15-kilovolt range and between 1 and 2 amps. Voltage drop at each repeater depends on the number of fiber pairs it services, but is typically between 30 and 70 volts.
With submarine repeaters, redundancy is the name of the game. Individual components are, of course, selected for high reliability. But eventually something will fail, so it’s critical to have a backup instantly available. This is most apparent with the arrangement of pumping diodes, which are obviously the most likely component to wear out. Early submarine EDFAs used a “2×2” redundancy scheme, where each amplifier module servicing a transmit and a receive fiber pair had two pump lasers that shared a common driver circuit. This provided at least some backup; in the event that one pump laser failed, cable operators could switch over to the backup pump. A better scheme is “4×2” redundancy, where each pair of amplifiers shares four pump lasers linked together by an optical coupler. Since a single pump can run both the transmit and receive fibers, an amplifier can still run if three of the pumps fail. Better still is “pump farming,” in which up to 16 pumps are available to route to as many as 16 fiber pairs through a complex optical fiber switching network. Pump farming provides a huge amount of redundancy as well as the flexibility to reconfigure the cable on the fly.
Not For Everyone
For as ubiquitous as EDFA amplifiers have become on long-haul subsea routes, they don’t make an appearance on every cable. Some cable routes are short enough that the line can be completely repeaterless, with obvious benefits to owner and operator alike in terms of initial and ongoing costs. Other regional routes that are a bit too long for a truly repeater-free design can take advantage of ROPA, or remote optically pumped amplifiers. These are essentially the same as EDFAs with the exception of the pumping lasers being installed as part of the “dry plant” equipment at the cable landings, and transmitted to the ROPA repeaters along a dedicated optical fiber. This eliminates the need for a power conductor in the cable as well as eliminating the power distribution gear, and makes the repeaters simpler and more compact.
Another advancement in subsea optical amplifiers is the Raman amplifier, which uses stimulated Raman scattering to amplify the signal. Incoming signal photons at one frequency collide with pump photons at a slightly higher frequency in a non-linear optical medium, which can be either a separate loop of optical fiber or the signal-carrying fiber itself. The inelastic collision transfers some of the energy from the pump photons to the signal photons, resulting in amplification. Raman amplifiers require higher power for the pump lasers — about 500 mW or more of optical power — but the advantage is that the amplification can be distributed along the length of the transmission fiber, resulting in the need for fewer repeaters. Raman amplifiers for submarine applications are relatively new, and not applicable for all cables — they generally can’t be used on transpacific cables due to the higher electrical power requirements — but they are making inroads into transatlantic and regional cables. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670999",
"author": "aquahoodch",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T15:34:09",
"content": "I always like to point out to add 1 to every measurement of undersea pressure when referring for total ata or atomspheres. I see this always on watches and the say it’s a 10 ata or 100 meters, but the ... | 1,760,372,207.57334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/different-etching-strokes-for-different-pcbs-folks/ | Different Etching Strokes For Different PCBs, Folks | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"etchant",
"etching",
"ferric chloride",
"Hydrochloric acid",
"pcb",
"peroxide",
"sodium persulfate"
] | [Sebastian] probably didn’t think he was wading into controversial waters when he posted on
his experimental method for etching PCBs
(
in German
). It’s not like etching with hydrochloric acid and peroxide is anything new, really; it was just something new to him. But is it even possible these days to post something and not find out just how wrong you are about it?
Sadly, no, or at least so it appears from a scan of
[Sebastian]’s tweet on the subject
(
Nitter
). There are a bunch of ways to etch copper off boards, including the messy old standby etchant ferric chloride, or even [Sebastian]’s preferred sodium persulfate method. Being out of that etchant, he decided to give the acid-peroxide method a go and was much pleased by the results. The traces were nice and sharp, the total etching time was low, and the etchant seemed pretty gentle when it accidentally got on his skin. Sounds like a win all around.
But Twitter wouldn’t stand for this chemical heresy, with comments suggesting that the etching process would release chlorine gas, or that ferric chloride is far safer and cleaner. It seems to us that most of the naysayers are somewhat overwrought in their criticism, especially since [Sebastian]’s method used very dilute solutions: a 30% hydrochloric acid solution added to water — like you oughta — to bring it down to 8%, and a 12% peroxide solution. Yes, that’s four times more concentrated than the drug store stuff, but it’s not likely to get you put on a terrorism watch list, as some wag suggested —
a hair stylist watchlist
, perhaps. And 8% HCl is about the same concentration as vinegar; true, HCl dissociates almost completely, which makes it a strong acid compared to acetic acid, but at that dilution it seems unlikely that World War I-levels of chlorine gas will be sweeping across your bench.
As with all things, one must employ caution and common sense. PPE is essential, good chemical hygiene is a must, and safe disposal of spent solutions is critical. But taking someone to task for using what he had on hand to etch a quick PCB seems foolish — we all have our ways, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is wrong if they don’t do the same. | 44 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670931",
"author": "Olaf",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T11:29:17",
"content": "The important word here is “German”, because we live more and more in a nannystate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6670935",
"author": "Sebas... | 1,760,372,207.717944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/reviving-an-8-inch-hard-drive-from-the-1980s/ | Reviving An 8-Inch Hard Drive From The 1980s | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1980's",
"hard drive"
] | As part of the eternal quest within the realm of retrocomputing, storage devices can be one of the most challenging, especially when it comes to firmly obsolete hard drives, such as the CDC Finch drive. This compact 8″ HDD replaced the previous 14″ models with a form factor that was decidedly more portable. These Finch drives being 1980s technology that got run pretty hard before their retirement, it’s little wonder that they’d
end up on the repair bench
over at [Usagi Electric]
A CDC Finch hard disk drive, available in 8 to 32 MB for all your data storage needs. (Credit: Usage Electric)
Introduced in the early 1980s, the
CDC Model 9410
Finch drive was unlike its 14″ predecessors in that it is a sealed unit, with maintenance-free air filtration. With the 14″ models you’d have both fixed and swappable platters, with far less consideration for dust exposure. This makes these Finch drives more touchy to work on, not unlike HDDs today, and adds to the excitement when repairing one of these old drives.
In this video, two differently broken Finch drives are discussed. Both appear to have an issue on the controller board, with one not responding to communications on the interface, while the other featuring a dead short on the interface pins. The first drive was brought back to life by replacing a dead SN75110 line driver IC, as well as a dead 7818 voltage regulator that was only outputting a sad 0.3 V.
Unfortunately, after half an hour of uptime and in the process of dumping data the drive errored out with a Not Ready, indicating that there are further issues on the controller board to fix. The good news here is that the platters appear to be pretty robust, but the controller boards on these old drives tend to develop issues over the years, something which will be further explored in upcoming videos. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670917",
"author": "Ale",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T09:45:34",
"content": "I really like his restoration of the Centurion and all the information he gives. I hope he advances with the other, drum memory machines, too, exciting technology. I am amazed at how robust they were.",
"... | 1,760,372,207.778756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/enhance-your-enclosures-with-a-shadow-line/ | Enhance Your Enclosures With A Shadow Line | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"cad",
"design tips",
"enclosures",
"injection molding",
"shadow lines"
] | Some design techniques and concepts from the injection molding world apply very nicely to 3D printing, despite them being fundamentally different processes. [Teaching Tech] demonstrates
designing shadow lines into 3D printed parts
whose surfaces are intended to mate up to one another.
This is a feature mainly seen in enclosures, and you’ve definitely seen it in all kinds of off-the-shelf products. Essentially, one half of the part has a slight “underbite” of a rim, and the other half has a slight “overbite”, with a bit of a standoff between the two. When placed together, the combination helps parts self-locate to one another, as well as providing a consistent appearance around the mating surfaces.
Why is this necessary? When a plastic part is made — such as an enclosure in two halves — the resulting surfaces are never truly flat. Without post-processing, the two not-quite-flat surfaces result in an inconsistent line with a varying gap between them.
By designing in a shadow line, the two parts will not only self-locate to each other for assembly, but will appear as a much more consistent fit. There will be a clear line between the two parts, but no actual visible
gaps
between them. Watch the whole thing explained in the video, embedded below.
This isn’t the only time design techniques from the world of injection molding have migrated to 3D printing.
Crush ribs have been adapted to the world of 3D printed parts
and are a tried-and-true solution to the problem of reliably obtaining a tight fit between plastic parts and hardware inserts. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670885",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T07:40:35",
"content": "I thought that line was for a screwdriver for me to pop the two halves apart. Learn something new every day!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6670924... | 1,760,372,207.831579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/linux-containers-the-hard-way/ | Linux Containers The Hard Way | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"containers",
"linux"
] | If you want to make containers under Linux, plenty of high-level options exist. [Lucavallin] wanted to learn more about how containers really work, so he decided to
tackle the problem using the low-level kernel functions
, and he shared the code with us on GitHub.
Containers are more isolated than processes but not quite full virtual machines. While a virtual machine creates a fake computer, a container is more like a fake operating system. Applications can run with their own idea of libraries, devices, and other resources, but it doesn’t try to abstract the underlying hardware.
[Lucavallin] tells us that the key features include
namespaces
which allow different kernel resources to be grouped into related sets and control access to the different features. The
seccomp
facility controls what system calls a process may make while the
capabilities
system controls what root can do in the container. Finally, the
cgroups
system allows you to limit resources so one container gets a fair share of things like CPU time or disk I/O.
These capabilities are available in the kernel started with version 6.0.x, so you’ll need that. In addition, namespaces and cgroupsv2 have to be on. If you aren’t sure, skim your
/boot/config-*
file (use the one that matches what
uname -a
tells you). For the user namespace, for example, you should find
CONFIG_USER_NS
set to y. You can also look at
/proc/self/ns
and see if it has namespace object you are looking for. If you want to be sure cgroupv2 is enabled, try “
grep cgroup /proc/filesystems
” and you should see a “cgroup2” entry.
Do you need to roll your own container solution?
No
. Do you want to? We do because we love to learn more about
why things work
on a
starship
Linux system. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670875",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T05:40:59",
"content": "These capabilities are available in the kernel started with version 6.0.x,Which capabilities exactly? Because AFAIK most of them (namespaces, seccomp, capabilities, cgroups) have existed for quite some t... | 1,760,372,207.917421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/when-the-sojourner-mars-rover-nearly-ran-lisp/ | When TheSojournerMars Rover Nearly Ran LISP | Maya Posch | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"lisp",
"mars rover"
] | During the late 1980s NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was busy developing the first ever wheeled robot that would roam the surface of Mars. Due to the long round-trip times of any signals between Mars and Earth, development of the firmware that would control the rover was a major point, with the two teams occupied with the task each picking different levels of autonomy for the rover. In
a retrospective
, [Ron Garrett] who worked at JPL on the ‘more autonomy’ team describes his recollections.
Whereas [Ron]’s team focused on creating a rover that could be provided with high-level instructions which the sophisticated LISP-based firmware would use as guidelines to navigate and operate by, the other team pursued a more limited autonomy approach whereby a human driver would use explicitly plan out the route which the rover would follow before awaiting new instructions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the system requirements for running LISP and the additional uncertainties and complexities with the autonomous approach, as well as testing and validating the firmware, resulted in the
Sojourner
Mars rover
featuring the latter approach, with straightforward C-based firmware. Most of
Sojourner’s
autonomy was limited to a home return function if communication with the lander was lost, which limited both its range and operations during its 85-day extended mission.
As [Ron] covers with examples from later missions, one advantage of LISP is that it allows you to send instructions which can be interpreted (e.g. to debug the system) without having to program in such functionality explicitly. With later Mars rover missions much more of this autonomy that [Ron]’s team pioneered was implemented, although C remained the language of choice for these later rovers.
Heading image: Ron Garrett standing in front of the Robbie prototype. Rocky III can be see in the lower left, and above him are Rajiv Desai and Robert Ivlev, two other members of the team. (Credit: Ron Garret) | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670831",
"author": "Matt Cramer",
"timestamp": "2023-08-08T00:03:34",
"content": "Launching interplanetary space parentheses!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8056966",
"author": "ArsenieBoca multumesc tie",
"t... | 1,760,372,208.097405 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/the-egyptian-coin-box-trick/ | The Egyptian Coin Box ‘Trick’ | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"capacitive sensing",
"cnc routing",
"esp32-C3",
"magic"
] | [James Stanley] likes to spend time making puzzles and gadgets for escape rooms, and decided for a change to try their hand at a bit of magic. The idea was to
construct a ‘magic box’, in which a coin can be placed in one of a number of slots
, and then be able to remotely be able to determine the slot by means unseen. Obviously, this is an electronics hack, with a neat package of sensor and radio comms hidden inside a stack of CNC-milled wood. Coin locations are transmitted via Bluetooth to a Bangle.js smartwatch, which vibrates according to the slot occupied, allowing [James] to predict where the coin was placed.
The sensor uses capacitive sensing, with a plate below each coin slot acting as one electrode of a capacitor and a copper-clad board hidden in the upper plate acting as the second. The presence of a coin is detected as a change in the capacitance of one of the sensors due to the fact that the plate separation will now be less for that one position. A simple PCB was CNC routed from a piece of plain clad board, with a cut out to solder down a Seeed Studio XIAO-ESP32-C3 module which runs the show and provides Bluetooth connectivity via an external PCB antenna module. Handily this module also handles the lithium battery management.
The software stack seems to be Arduino, with a very simple capacitance testing routine based on measuring charge times. Overall this is very nicely executed, even if [James] reckons there’s a bit more to being a show magician than just being able to construct the hardware. Magical hacks are a bit of a rarity around these parts, but we found a couple, like this
magic opening box
, and whilst not a magic trick, being able to
hide from surveillance cameras
could be actually helpful. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670804",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2023-08-07T21:21:03",
"content": "“a lay audience just needs to think “the box is rigged” to think they’ve figured out how it works”I feel this is solved by showmanship and misdirection rather than technology. The “magician” needs to convin... | 1,760,372,208.047956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/perfecting-the-pulse-oximeter/ | Perfecting The Pulse Oximeter | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"Analog devices",
"biohack",
"MAX30001",
"Maxim Integrated",
"photoplethysmography",
"pulse oximeter",
"texas instruments"
] | We’re always looking for interesting biohacks here on Hackaday, and this new research article describing a
calibrated pulse oximeter for different skin tones
really caught our attention.
Pulse oximeters are handy little instruments that measure your blood oxygen saturation using photoplethysmography (PPG)
and are a topic we’re no strangers to here at Hackaday
. Given PPG is an optical technique,
it stands to reason that its accuracy could be significantly affected by skin tone
and that has been a
major topic of discussion recently in the medical field
. Given the noted issues with pulse oximeter accuracy, these researchers endeavored to create a better pulse oximeter by quantifying skin pigmentation and using that data to offset errors in the pulse oximeter measurements. A slick idea, but we think their results leave a lot to be desired.
Their idea sounds pretty straightforward enough. They created their own hardware to measure blood oxygen saturation, a smartwatch that includes red and infrared (IR) light-emitting diodes (LED) to illuminate the tissue just below the surface of the skin, and a photosensor for measuring the amount of light that reflects off the skin. But in addition to the standard pulse oximeter hardware, they also include a TCS34725 color sensor to quantify the user’s skin tone.
So what’s the issue? Well, the researchers mentioned calibrating their color sensor to a standard commercially-available dermatology instrument just to make sure their skin pigmentation values match a gold standard, but we can’t find that data, making it a bit hard to evaluate how accurate their color sensor actually is. That’s pretty crucial to their entire premise. And ultimately, their corrected blood oxygen values don’t really seem terribly promising either. For one individual, they reduced their error from 5.44% to 0.82% which seems great! But for another user, their error actually increases from 0.99% to 6.41%. Not so great. Is the problem in their color sensor calibration? Could be.
We know from personal experience that
pulse oximeters are hard
, so we applaud their efforts in tackling a major problem. Maybe the Hackaday community could help them out? | 28 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670764",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-08-07T19:10:46",
"content": "Melanin is supposed to absorb UV radiation so could a UV light, camera be used to sense the amount of melanin in the skin and use an algorithm to compensate?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,208.162523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/all-about-usb-c-example-circuits/ | All About USB-C: Example Circuits | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Interest",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"Type-C",
"USB C",
"USB Type-C",
"USB-C PD"
] | In the six months that have passed after the last USB-C article has been released, I have thought up a bunch of ways that these articles could have been improved. It’s, of course, normal to have such a feeling — expected, even. I now believe that there’s a few gaps that I could bridge. For instance, I have not provided enough example circuits, and sometimes one schematic can convey things better than a thousand words.
Let’s fix that! I’ll give you schematics for the kinds of USB-C devices you’re actually likely to want to build. I’ll also share a bunch of IC part numbers in this article, but I don’t have an exhaustive collection, of course – if you find more cool ICs that work for USB-C purposes and aren’t mentioned here, please do let us all know in the comments!
We’ve seen the first example circuit
in the first article
– a device-side (“upstream-facing”) USB-C port that supports USB 2.0 and 5 V of power. You must have the 5.1 K resistors, one resistor per pin, and remember to join both of the data pins — use vias if necessary. If you want to determine the amount of current available to you, you can also connect ADCs or comparators to both of the CC pins together, though most often, your device is low-power enough that there’s no reason to bother.
Now, if you want to make a device with a USB-C plug, the wiring is the same. The only difference is that you only need to populate one of the CC pull-downs, and wire up one pair of D+/D- pins instead of both pairs. Nothing bad is likely to happen in practice if you wire up the second pair of USB 2.0 pins, it’s just uncouth by the standard; it used to conflict with a certain kind of ports and cables (the VirtualLink ones) that are no longer being sold.
However, if you wire up 5.1 K pull-downs to both CC pins, you’ll accidentally make a hacker accessory: a debug mode adapter, something that will help you get extra signals out of some USB-C ports. For instance, on the Framework laptop, a USB-C-plug-equipped board with both pull-downs will switch a USB-C port into a debug mode, and expose the EC UART connection on the SBU pins. Unless you are making such a debug accessory, you should only populate one of the pull-downs, and wire up the USB 2.0 data pins accordingly.
The Flipside Just As Easy
What if you wanted to make a host port? From one side, it’s easier, because you don’t necessarily have to do any ADC measurements. Instead, you add pull-ups, different value for different amounts of available current. Not all devices check the pull-up presence, but phones do, so if you’re making a makeshift USB-C charger, a phone or a laptop might not recognize it as a valid way to charge if you don’t have the pull-ups. It doesn’t cost much to add them, either!
More importantly, you might want to control VBUS, only switching it on after you’ll have detected a pull-down on one of the CC pins. You won’t necessarily have a problem if you don’t, but it does cover some important edge cases, like someone plugging a USB-A to USB-C cable into your port!
12 V 4 A max logic-level P-FET – IRLML6401/CJ2305/etc, repeat this circuit twice
I’ve never done this circuit, but the way I see it, it should be enough to use two FETs, one per CC pin, both put in parallel. This circuit might have edge cases — improvements welcome! On the other side, I’ve used pull-down-equipped USB-C port breakouts as host ports a few times, so it’s definitely not a hard requirement, and you don’t always need to break out your FET collection.
In total, there’s two things that you want to do if you’re building a host port, and neither of the two are quite required. Also, if you’d like to get more complex on the circuitry, or perhaps even do a dual-role port, there are ICs that help you with this part of USB-C!
For instance, take
the WUSB3801
. It takes care of both source and sink detection, has all the needed pulld-owns and pull-ups inside, and can even do dual-role ports, which lets you build any kind of 5 V power port. It can output the port status with a few GPIOs, or you can connect it to your microcontroller over I2C, and it even has an ID pin so that you can use it to fully replace a MicroUSB port with a USB-C one! The WUSB3801 is small enough, solderable enough, and versatile enough too. For instance,
over on the Hackaday Discord server
, someone has built a WUSB3801 circuit which limits a Li-ion charger’s current based on whether the USB-C port connected can provide 3 amps or not.
Whether you want to build a source port, a sink port, or even a port that can do both, the WUSB301 (or any of the many similar ICs like TUSB320), will be your solution of the day. One complaint I have towards the WUSB3801, is that it doesn’t provide a GPIO for determining the currently-plugged-in port polarity — you have to use the I2C interface for that. Now, why would you need to know the port polarity? High-speed interfaces are the reason, and the USB 3.0 interface is definitely a USB-C mainstay, if only because of how easy it is to implement.
High-Speed, Low-Price
Building a USB 3.0 device with a USB-C plug is as easy as building a USB 2.0 device with a USB-C plug. USB 3.0 has two high-speed diffpairs added to it, and a USB-C connector has spots for four diffpairs. With the plug, you wire up your USB 3.0 SSRX to USB-C RX1, USB 3.0 SSTX to USB-C TX1, pop a pull-down on the CC1, and you’re done. There are no extra components apart from any series capacitors that your USB 3.0 link might need, and these won’t be different from a regular implementation.
Now, this is why you will see a lot of USB flashdrives adopt a USB-C plug — it’s this easy to add one, you don’t need to figure out the CC pins, add any extra components or alike. You
do
need to add extra components if you aim to add a USB-C socket with USB 3.0 support, however. Imagine plugging your USB 3.0 USB-C flashdrive into a USB-C socket, depending on which way you rotate it, the pins are going to end up in one of the two positions. You don’t want to join TX/RX pins of the socket together, that would be a major signal integrity problem, so if you’re adding a USB-C socket with USB 3.0 support, you need a mux to handle high-speed signal rotation.
These are, by now, a tried and true kind of USB-C chip – you will find these from at least a dozen different manufacturers; if you find a few ICs that have the same pinout, it’ll be hard for you to get chip shortage’d. Some muxes will have a POL input, for manually switching your USB 3.0 signal into two possible positions — these are meant to be used together with your own PD controller, which is to say, a chip that handles CC pins. Many muxes, you will find, also contain CC logic, and will basically give you a complete solution for 5 V and USB 3.0 capable USB-C. If you’re building a host, you might only need to add VBUS handling, and if you’re building a device with a USB-C socket, you don’t need anything else!
Such a mux is how a lot of cheap USB-C ports on laptops work – they only provide USB 2.0, nothing else, and given how easy it is to implement, it makes sense that a lot of cheap laptop manufacturers have stuck to this. What’s more, you could even omit the mux if you wanted if you have a USB 3.0 port to spare. We’ve seen this done on desktop motherboards, and funnily enough, this is
how both of the USB-C ports are wired on the MNT Pocket Reform,
too! It makes sense, the onboard USB 3.0 hub of the Pocket Reform board has four free ports, but there’s only two USB-C ports you can expose USB 3.0 on. It works well enough, and if someone wants to get at these two extra USB 3.0 ports, you only need to design a passive adapter!
One of these two USB-C ports on the Pocket Reform is special,it doesn’t just wire up the 5 V rail to VBUS like the first port does. Instead, it has a power switch IC wired up to VBUS, and a FUSB302B wired up to the CC pins. That’s the charger port of the Pocket Reform, and indeed, this is one of the ways you can get power delivery running.
Get Your Volts And Pixels
All the options we’ve talked about already support up to 15 W of power, specifically, 5 V at 3 A. Higher voltages are supported too, of course. You just need to speak PD, or perhaps, let a friendly chip speak for you.
These friendly chips, as you might guess, are PD trigger ICs. You wire them up to the CC pins, and they negotiate a power profile on your behalf. They have a few inputs that let you set the desired voltage, and optionally a FET driver output to disconnect VBUS if the PSU can’t provide the voltage you need, making sure that you don’t get the default 5 V on a power rail where you require 20 V.
We could talk a lot about the trigger chips,
many other people do
,
and I sure have too
. In fact, it’s the option that people overwhelmingly pick when they need a high voltage out of a USB-C port. They are perfect for the majority of use cases, and chances are, you want to reach for one. However, mind you, their behavior is inflexible: they won’t let you make a dual-role port, and they won’t let you distinguish between a 30 W USB-C PSU and a 100 W one, which helps when you’re driving a resistive load. You also can’t combine them with USB 3.0 or DisplayPort either as they don’t have a polarity output, and they don’t let you send custom messages.
A PD controller will let you do way more! Whether you use an external PD controller like the FUSB302B or maybe a PD controller built into your MCU, it will let you make your own PD communication decisions. It’s got all the resistors you might want, and you’re likely to find example code for whatever task you need to accomplish. We’ve gone through custom PD message building already, both for power and DisplayPort sink operation. At some point we’ll even build our own USB-C PSU with a FUSB302B, so stay tuned! When it comes to MCUs, there are some well-known STM32 and Cypress microcontrollers with PD peripherals, and recently,
the CH32X035
has entered the scene.
Your own PD controller will also let you send out DisplayPort messages — extracting a DisplayPort output from any compatible ports, or perhaps offering DisplayPort on your own. Use a USB-C plug and you will not need a mux, or use a socket and add a DisplayPort-compatible mux – it will let you extract two-lane DisplayPort and USB 3.0 simultaneously, or four-lane DisplayPort, whichever you might want. Or, you can use a DisplayPort socket, omit the mux, and only have your port work in one orientation – this
Chinese eDP breakout seller
can confirm!
Next time, we’ll go through the inner workings of a USB-C PSU, then convert a 20 V PSU into a USB-C source with 20 V support; we will only need the FUSB302, a few FETs, and a spare 5 V regulator. It won’t require much of us, you’ll be able to convert your old power supplies to USB-C laptop power duty, and you’ll get some insights into how a USB-C PSU operates, too! | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670732",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2023-08-07T17:16:37",
"content": "Another great article, and great reference material!I just tested my USB-C edge connector to program an RP2040, and it actually works really well! Now all my projects going forward will a reversible connect... | 1,760,372,208.423139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/07/what-can-we-do-with-these-patient-monitor-videos/ | What Can We Do With These Patient Monitor Videos? | Tom Nardi | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"medical",
"prop",
"simulation"
] | So we’ll admit from the start that we’re not entirely sure how the average Hackaday reader can put this content to use. Still, these
simulated patient monitor videos on YouTube
gotta be useful for
something
. Right?
Uploaded by [themonitorsolution], each fourteen-minute 1080p video depicts what a patient monitor would look like in various situations, ranging from an adult in stable condition to individuals suffering from ailments such as COPD and sepsis. There’s even one for a dead patient, which makes for rather morbid watching.
Now we assume these are intended for educational purposes — throw them up on a display and have trainees attempt to diagnose what’s wrong with the virtual patient. But we’re sure clever folks like yourselves could figure out alternate uses for these realistic graphics. They could make for an
impressive Halloween prop
, or maybe they are just what you need to get that low-budget medical drama off the ground, finally.
Honestly, it seemed too cool of a resource not to point out. Besides, it’s exceedingly rare that we get to post a YouTube video that we can be confident none of our readers have seen before…at the time of this writing, the channel only has a single subscriber. Though with our luck, that person will end up being one of you lot. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670696",
"author": "slacker24l7",
"timestamp": "2023-08-07T15:35:49",
"content": "raw data is better, but you could use it to train a neural network to identify patients condition.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6670698",
... | 1,760,372,208.265647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/06/hackaday-prize-2023-loshark-the-radio-debugger-for-lora/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: LoShark, The Radio Debugger For LoRa | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Radio Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"LoRa"
] | LoRa, the Long Range wireless protocol is pretty great for trickling data across long distances. There are some great embedded devices based around STM32, NRF52, and ESP32 microcontrollers. What’s been missing for quite a while is a device that allows for full access to a LoRa radio from a more capable CPU. The wait may be over, as
there’s now the LoShark
. It’s a USB key form factor, with a MIPS processor running a real Linux kernel. Cool!
The way debugging works is interesting, too. The team at SudoMaker is working on their Resonance runtime, which allows interacting with the onboard sx126x radio chip using JavaScript code. That chip can both send and receive, so this device should be capable of more than just capturing traffic. And if JavaScript isn’t your thing, the Linux system on the device means you can knock yourself out with C or C++ code. Who knows, we may even see Meshtastic running on this thing some day.
If this gets you excited, it’s
already available for order
for a reasonable $59.99. The LoShark ships in 433, 868, and 915 megahertz versions. It’s a really slick looking device, and maybe worth your time to check out. Enjoy!
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 24 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6670354",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2023-08-06T17:49:20",
"content": "So they stuffed Linux in front of Semtechs Lora modem (SX12XX-series) so that people can run javascript?I mean what is wrong with elcheapo ESP32 + SX12XX chip boards? You can basically do the same “debuggin... | 1,760,372,208.481962 |
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