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https://hackaday.com/2023/06/27/wind-to-heat-a-lot-of-hot-air/ | Wind-to-Heat: A Lot Of Hot Air? | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"fluid brake",
"heat",
"Heat pump",
"joule machine",
"water brake",
"wind to heat"
] | Heating is one of the greatest uses of energy in human society today. Where we once burned logs to stave off the brutal winter chill, now we lean on gas and electricity to warm our homes and keep us safe and toasty. In some colder climates, like the UK, heating can make up 60-80% of total domestic energy demands.
However, there are alternative ways to provide heating.
Using wind energy to directly provide heat could be key in this area,
using a variety of interesting methods that could have some unique niche applications.
Conversion
If one headline has become repetitive and boring over the last two years, it’s rising gas and electricity prices. That has left millions around the world paying more than ever to heat their homes. Sustainable sources of energy at the home scale can offset this to a degree, for those that rely on electric heating methods—whether through resisistive means or via heat pumps. Of course, in the coldest of winters, common home solar panels are sadly at their lowest output, providing weak savings at best.
These issues have shed new light on alternative methods of heating homes in a clean, renewable fashion. In particular, wind energy can be used for heating if properly employed. The most obvious solution is indirect, whereby a wind generator provides electricity to run conventional electric heating. However, more interesting are the direct methods, which can be cheaper and more energy efficient in some cases.
Slam On The Brakes!
A diagram of a simple wind-to-heat system relying on a fluid brake. Credit:
Chakirov, Vagapov, 2011
The most intuitive type of wind-to-heat generation is
via a fluid-brake system
, also known as a Joule Machine. This involves a windmill turning a paddle inside a container of fluid, most typically water. The energy captured from the wind stream is essentially dissipated into the fluid by the resistance it poses to the windmill, heating it up. The heated fluid can then be pumped to radiators to deliver heating where it is needed. It’s a simple enough concept, though takes careful engineering to make it work in practice. The key is in properly sizing the windmill and fluid brake to match each other, and to choose the right parameters to heat the fluid to a useful degree. The benefit of this method is that the system converts directly from mechanical energy to heat, bypassing the electrical stage which adds significant expense and complexity. It also saves an extra energy conversion stage which can be beneficial for efficiency.
A fluid-brake windmill is a remarkably simple device, mechanically-speaking. It could have been used for heating in early Industrial times had someone thought up the idea back then. However, they first gained prominence as certain enterprising individuals in Denmark experimented with the technology
in the 1970s.
The country was wracked by the global oil crisis, as it depended on a reliable supply for heating. When oil prices skyrocketed, alternatives quickly became attractive.
It bears noting that this concept is mostly applicable for those in rural areas with space to spare. They’re also places where the wind is likely to be more available. Plus, unlike built-up areas, it’s easier to build a bigger turbine that is more capable. Small or low wind turbines typically perform poorly,
particularly in crowded urban areas
. However, for a rural property with ample space and limited connection to grid utilities, a wind-to-heat device could work well.
Early designs, like this 1974 build by Ricard Matzen and Sonne Kofoed, fitted water brakes at the bottom of the wind turbine’s tower to generate heat. Others, like the LO-FA, fitted a fluid brake right to the turbine at the top, and used the tower as a water storage reservoir. Credit:
Matzen, Kofoed, Institute of Agricultural Techniques
The early Danish design known as the Calorius Type 37 is a good example of a typical wind-to-heat setup. With a 5 m rotor and a 9 m height, it was capable of producing 3.5 kW of heat during a 11 m/s breeze. A pair of these unit would be capable of heating a medium-sized house.
In comparison, the more advanced LO-FA design from the 1980s demonstrated just how potent a wind-to-heat system could be. With a mighty 12-meter rotor on a 20 meter tower, it was capable of generating an estimated 90 kW of heat with wind blowing at 14 m/s. It notably used higher-resistance hydraulic oil for the fluid brake, rather than water in most other designs. The heat was then transferred to water for distribution. With so much heating capacity, the LO-FA could conceivably heat several homes, suggesting large wind-to-heat units could be ideal for off-grid communes or family farms.
Of course, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, so heat storage is often necessary if relying on such systems. The simplest way to do this is to combine a wind-to-heat system with a large tank of water to act as a heat storage reservoir. Dutch systems often relied on storage tanks with 10,000 to 20,000 liters of water on hand. This would provide enough storage to get through cold times with minimal wind with storage taking up roughly the same amount of space as a small swimming pool.
Mechanical Heat Pumps
Conventional air conditioners use heat pumps driven by electric motors. Mechanically driving a heat pump via a wind turbine is possible, and could be a highly efficient way to build a wind-to-heat system. Credit:
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Alternatively, heat pumps can be of great benefit in this area, too. A fluid brake system may convert somewhere up to 90% of the wind energy captured into heat in the fluid. A heat pump, on the other hand, can be 300% efficient or more. This is because rather than converting the wind energy directly into heat, the wind energy is instead moving heat from one place to another instead.
There’s nothing particularly fancy involved in building such a system. One can merely take an existing electrical heat pump, and remove the motor, replacing the mechanical drive with the output of a wind turbine. Some gearing may be required to match the two, but fundamentally, that’s all that is required. This is generally more efficient than using a wind turbine to generate electricity that then turns an electric motor to run the heat pump indirectly.
Wind-to-heat systems relying on heat pumps are even more niche than their fluid-brake cousins. However, early research suggests that they could be a remarkably cheap and efficient way of generating heat
directly from wind energy.
Practical concerns may limit them to use in off-grid communities or other niche applications, but nonetheless, the thermodynamics check out.
Where We Stand
Today, far removed from the oil crisis of the 1970s, direct wind-to-heat generation remains more of a research curiosity than a popular method of warming homes. However, if you’re a university researcher, or working on new concepts for your city’s district heating system, or a rural hacker out on a farm, it may bear examining. For areas with abundant wind availability and high heating demand, wind-to-heat systems could prove useful for keeping everyone toasty and warm in a zero-emissions fashion. | 87 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656450",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-06-27T14:13:08",
"content": ">Of course, the wind doesn’t blow all the timeAnd even more rarely does it blow at 11-14 m/s. The yearly mean wind speed in central and northern Europe revolves around 3 – 3.5 m/s. The power output of a turb... | 1,760,372,254.905739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/27/spindle-upgrade-makes-pocketnc-faster-and-smoother/ | Spindle Upgrade Makes PocketNC Faster And Smoother | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"5-Axis",
"BLDC",
"chatter",
"cnc",
"collet",
"ER-11",
"esc",
"feeds and speeds",
"PocketNC",
"spindle"
] | Conventional wisdom says that rigidity is the name of the game when it comes to machine tool performance. After all, there’s got to be a reason for CNC machines that need specialized rigging companies just to deliver them. But is there perhaps a way for the hobby machinist to cheat a little on that?
From the look of [Ryan]’s
PocketNC spindle upgrade
, it seems like the answer just might be yes.
The PocketNC
, a much-coveted five-axis CNC mill sized for the home shop, has a lot going for it, but as with most things, there are trade-offs. Chief among these is a lack of the usual huge, heavy castings used for CNC machines, which results in the tendency for the cutting tool to chatter or even stall out if you push the speeds and feeds too far. After a good intro to some of the important metrics of machining, such as “material removal rate,” the video below delves into how MRR affects chip load which in turn results in chatter.
The easy fix for chatter, of course, is to take smaller cuts. But [Ryan] decided to increase the spindle speed to take lighter cuts, but to do it really fast. The hardware for this includes a 3,500 KV high-torque brushless DC motor and a custom spindle attachment. The motor is connected to the spindle shaft using pulleys and a drive belt, and the shaft is supported with stout bearings that can be pre-loaded to fight backlash. The end result is three times the stock 10,000 RPM spindle speed, which lets [Ryan] see a 300% increase in cycle time on his PocketNC. And as a bonus, the whole thing requires no permanent modification to the machine and can be easily removed.
We think [Ryan] did a great job breaking this problem down to the essentials and hacking up a low-cost solution to the problem. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656408",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2023-06-27T11:22:39",
"content": "Pocket-NC do offer a couple of 50k RPM spindle options. But I would be surprised if they were inexpensive :-) (They also seem to be air spindles, requiring a compressor)",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,372,254.768807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/27/escalate-the-nerf-arms-race-with-self-firing-missiles/ | Escalate The NERF Arms Race With Self-Firing Missiles | Jenny List | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"nerf",
"nerf dart",
"nerf missile"
] | NERF guns are a toy that appeals to adults and youngsters alike — if you’ve never had the chance to pelt your friends with safe and kid friendly foam darts in a surprise ambush, you haven’t lived. But just as with real-world weapons of the type superpowers put in shows of military strength, there’s an arms race in the world of NERF. Mere darts aren’t enough, and there’s a range of missiles for the bellicose youngster intent on skirting the brink of global foam dart annihilation. These come with a catch though in the shape of a lackluster launcher, and this has prompted [Joel Creates] to create
a self-firing NERF missile with a secondary rocket motor
.
A supercapacitor stores enough energy to light a small scrap of guncotton explosive when sent through a heater coil, and this should be enough to launch the missile. Perhaps this whole video should sit in “Don’t try this at home kids” territory, but try he does, with multiple dead ends along the way. The final try is a secondary rocket motor inside the missile that’s triggered by a micro switch upon leaving the standard NERF launcher. It’s not a resounding success, but we’re sure you’ll agree it’s an entertaining video to get there.
We’ve featured quite a few NERF hacks over the years,
including this large auto-aimer
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656463",
"author": "PEBKAC",
"timestamp": "2023-06-27T15:15:30",
"content": "Can’t deny that it’s cool – but also don’t think anyone in a nerf war would be cool with it.Now a nicer, perhaps revolver style launcher…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,372,254.382874 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/26/get-your-leafy-meats/ | Get Your Leafy Meats | Brian McEvoy | [
"chemistry hacks",
"cooking hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"artificial organism",
"artifishal",
"bioengineering",
"biology",
"decelluralized",
"ghost",
"Leaf",
"mad science",
"non-vegan",
"recelluralized",
"scaffolding",
"spinach"
] | Some of us jokingly refer to our hobbies as “mad science,” but [Justin] from The Thought Emporium could be one Igor away from living up to the jibe. The
latest project
to come out of the YouTube channel, video also after the break, outlines a map for creating an artificial organism in their new lab. The purpose is to test how far a citizen scientist can push the boundary of bioengineering. The stated goal is to create a swimming entity with a skeleton. The Thought Emporium also has a neuron project in the works, hinting at a potential crossover.
The arti
fish
al [sic] organism has themes at the micro and macro scale. [Justin] says, “Cells are like little nano-robots. Mainly in the sense that they just follow their built-in instructions to the best of their ability.” At the multi-cellular level, the goal is to program something to actuate muscle tissue rhythmically to sustain locomotion. The method for creating living parts is decellularization and recellularization, a technique we heard about at
Hackaday Belgrade
.
The Thought Emporium is improving upon its protocol which removes cells from their “scaffolding” to repopulate it with the desired type, muscle in this case. Cellular scaffolds retain the shape of whatever they were, so whatever grows on them determines what they become. Once the technique of turning a leaf into muscle fibers is mastered, the next step will be creating bones with a different cell line that will mineralize the scaffold. Optimizing the processes and combining the results may show the world what is possible with the dedication of citizen bioengineers.
Regenerative medicine
is looking at replacement human-parts with similar techniques. We are eager to see fish that
digest plastic
. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656380",
"author": "MarB",
"timestamp": "2023-06-27T08:12:36",
"content": "Citizen scientists are unfortunately still underestimated. Especially by the scientific community. The biggest advantage that citizen scientists have is their independence.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,254.337719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/26/a-browser-approach-to-parsing/ | A Browser Approach To Parsing | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"parser combinators",
"parsing",
"recursive descent"
] | There are few rites of programmer passage as iconic as writing your first parser. You might want to interpret or compile a scripting language, or you might want to accept natural-language-like commands. You need a parser. [Varunramesh] wants to show you
parser combinators
, a technique used to make practical parsers. But the demonstration using interactive code cells in the web page is nearly as interesting as the technique.
Historically, you parse tokens, and this technique can do that too, but it can also operate directly on character streams if you prefer. The idea is related to recursive descent parsing, where you attempt to parse certain things, and if those things fail, you try again.
There are ways to match in a fuzzy way using Levenshtein distance. That way, if the user enters a typo, you can often recover from it. You could probably implement other schemes for this, too, like soundex, if you were parsing names. These types of parsers do have some limitations, but they are much easier to create, maintain, and debug than traditional parsers.
This is the first part in a series on creating parsers with combinators. Future installments promise to cover abstract syntax trees, error reporting, infix operations, and limiting backtracking. We’ll be interested to read those, too.
If you want some different
parser tutorials
, we got you. The usual tough problem is
algebraic expressions
, although you can always try
RPN
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656369",
"author": "Juan-Chul McDonough",
"timestamp": "2023-06-27T05:33:11",
"content": "Fascinating problem and solution! Looking forward to the series and hoping it eases newcomers spelunking into this rabbit hole.Also just love to see actual CS theory on here, and that’s not (e... | 1,760,372,254.488485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/26/never-drill-in-the-wrong-place-with-this-camera/ | Never Drill In The Wrong Place, With This Camera! | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"microscope",
"pcb",
"pcb drill"
] | It’s fair to say that one of the biggest advances for the electronic constructor over the last decade or so has been the advent of inexpensive small-order PCB manufacture. That said, there are still plenty who etch their own boards, and for them perhaps the most fiddly part of the process comes in drilling holes accurately. It’s to aid in this task that [John McNelly] has created
a camera with a periscope
, to give the drill bit perfect alignment with the hole.
The idea is simple enough, an off-the-shelf all-in-one microscope camera points sideways at a mirror allowing it to look upwards. The viewport is placed under the drill and the crosshairs on the microscope are lined up with the end of the drill. Then the board can be placed on top and the pad lined up with the crosshairs, and a perfectly placed hole can be drilled. It’s a beautiful piece of lateral thinking which we like, as it ends that lottery of slightly off-centre holes. You can see it in glorious portrait-mode action in the video below the break.
Oddly
this isn’t the first PCB drilling microscope we’ve shown you.
but it may well be the more elegant of the two. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656187",
"author": "MartyK'",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26T13:47:48",
"content": "My drill-press has built-in laser cross-hairs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6656207",
"author": "wayt",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26... | 1,760,372,254.279415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/26/how-hardware-testing-got-plugged-into-a-continuous-integration-framework/ | How Hardware Testing Got Plugged Into A Continuous Integration Framework | Donald Papp | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"automated testing",
"ci",
"continuous integration",
"custom",
"embedded",
"testing"
] | The concept of Continuous Integration (CI) is a powerful tool in software development, and it’s not every day we get a look at how someone integrated automated hardware testing into their system. [Michael Orenstein] brought to our attention the
Hardware CI Arena
, a framework for doing exactly that across a variety of host OSes and microcontroller architectures.
The Hardware CI Arena allows testing software across a variety of hardware boards such as Arduino, RP2040, ESP32, and more.
Here’s the reason it exists: while in theory every OS and piece of hardware implements things like USB communications and device discovery in the same way, in practice that is not always the case. For individual projects, the edge cases (or even occasional bugs) are not much of a problem. But when one is developing a software product that aims to work seamlessly across different hardware options, such things get in the way. To provide a reliable experience, one must find and address edge cases.
The
Hardware CI Arena
(
GitHub repository
) was created to allow automated testing to be done across a variety of common OS and hardware configurations. It does this by allowing software-controlled interactions to a bank of actual, physical hardware options. It’s purpose-built for a specific need, but the level of detail and frank discussion of the issues involved is an interesting look at what it took to get this kind of thing up and running.
The value of
automatic hardware testing
with custom rigs is familiar ground to anyone who develops hardware, but tying that idea into a testing and CI framework for a software product expands the idea in a useful way. When it comes to identifying problems, earlier is always better. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656161",
"author": "Snicker Pop Munchies",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26T11:29:20",
"content": "This is brilliant, we need more of these which support other form factors, but so far I like it. Happy that it’s open sourced as well. Would buy one immediately if it were on Tindie.",
"p... | 1,760,372,254.706906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/a-more-conspicuous-computer-assistant/ | A More Conspicuous Computer Assistant | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Art"
] | [
"60s",
"amazon",
"blinkenlights",
"computer",
"display",
"echo",
"leds",
"sci-fi",
"style"
] | Back in the last century, especially in the ’40s to the ’60s, one of the major home decor trends was to install various home appliances, like the television or stereo, into its own piece of furniture. These were usually bulky, awkward, and incredibly heavy. And, since real life inspires art, most of the futuristic sci-fi technology we saw in movies and TV of the time was similarly conspicuous and physical. Not so with modern technology, though, where the trend now is to hide it out of the way and forget it exists. But [dermbrian] wanted some of his modern technology to have some of the mid-century visibility aesthetic
so he made some modifications to his Amazon Echo
.
The Echo itself remains largely unmodified, other than placing it inside a much larger cookie tin with some supporting electronics. For that, [dermbrian] found a relay board with a built-in microphone which switches the relay off when it detects sound so that when the Echo is activated, the sound from its speaker activates the module. From there it drives a series of blinkenlights which mimic the 60s computer aesthetic. Some custom fabrication and light diffusion methods were needed to get it to look just right, and a switch on the outside can disable the mechanism if it is getting triggered by background noise like music from his stereo.
While the appeal of this style may be lost on anyone who wasn’t a fan of the original
Lost in Space
,
Star Trek,
or
Jetsons
, it certainly holds a special significance for those who grew up in that era. It’s certainly not the first project we’ve seen to take a look back at the aesthetics of bygone eras, either. Take a look at
this project which adds lenses to modern displays
to give them the impression of antiquated CRT displays. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656090",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26T05:50:15",
"content": "Dr. Theopolis.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6656127",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26T09:42:35",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,254.662735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/hydrogels-for-bioelectronic-interfaces/ | Hydrogels For Bioelectronic Interfaces | Navarre Bartz | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"bioelectrical",
"biology",
"electrode",
"Electrodermal"
] | Interfacing biological and electrical systems has traditionally been done with metal electrodes, but something flexible can be more biocompatible. One possible option is
3D-printed bioelectric hydrogels
.
Electrically conductive hydrogels based on conducting polymers have mechanical, electrical, and chemical stability properties in a fully organic package that makes them more biocompatible than other systems using metals, ionic salts, or carbon nanomaterials. Researchers have now found a way to formulate bi-continuous conducting polymer hydrogels (BC-CPH) that are a phase-separated system that can be used in a variety of manufacturing techniques including 3D printing.
To make the BC-CPH, a PEDOT:PSS electrical phase and a hydrophilic polyurethane mechanical phase are mixed with an ethanol/water solvent. Since the phase separation occurs in the ink before deposition, when the solvent is evaporated, the two phases remain continuous and interspersed, allowing for high mechanical stability and high electrical conductivity which had previously been properties at odds with each other. This opens up new avenues for printed all-hydrogel bioelectronic interfaces that are more robust and biocompatible than what is currently available.
If you want to try another kind of squishy electrode gel, try
growing it
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656107",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2023-06-26T07:30:14",
"content": "Resistance is futile…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,254.228145 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/hackaday-links-june-25-2023/ | Hackaday Links: June 25, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"Cassini",
"contests",
"dystopia",
"Enceladus",
"Europa",
"exobiology",
"hackaday links",
"handy talkie",
"phosphates",
"RoboCop",
"singapore",
"spurious emissions",
"supercapacitor",
"surplus",
"telepresence",
"uv k5"
] | Is it really a dystopian future if the robots are radio-controlled? That’s what came to mind reading
this article on a police robot out of Singapore
, complete with a breathless headline invoking
Black Mirror
, which is now apparently the standard by which all dystopias are to be judged. Granted, the episode with the robo-dogs was pretty terrifying, but it seems like the Singapore Police Force has a way to go before getting to that level. The bot, which has been fielded at Changi Airport after extensive testing and seems to be completely remote-controlled, is little more than a beefy telepresence robot. At 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) tall, the bot isn’t terribly imposing, although it apparently has a mast that can be jacked up another couple of feet, plus there are lights, sirens, and speakers that can get the message across. Plus cameras, of course; there are always cameras. The idea is to provide extra eyes to supplement foot patrols, plus the potential to cordon off an incident until meatspace officers arrive. The buzzword game here is weak, though; there’s no mention of AI or machine learning at all. We have a feeling that when the robots finally rise up, ones like this will be left serving the drinks.
In our quest to answer the eternal “Are we alone?” question, we’ve wisely concentrated mainly on our little slice of the galaxy. We checked out the Moon, but didn’t find anything there, and things aren’t looking fantastic for evidence of ancient life on Mars either. So, outer planets it is, especially now that there appears to be
evidence of phosphates in the waters of Enceladus
. The satellite of Saturn has long been known to have an icy crust above a liquid water ocean, as well as hydrothermal processes that could potentially power a food chain. Analysis of particles from plumes of water erupting from the ice into space and captured by the Cassini probe revealed five of the six CHNOPS elements — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur — needed for life as we know it. Only phosphorus was missing, until analysis of data collected during Cassini’s leisurely passes through the region of Saturn’s ring system where Enceladus orbits. Calculations suggest that the concentration of phosphates in the oceans of Enceladus is 1,000 times that on Europa, typically thought of as the most likely place to find life outside of Earth.
Another surplus electronics store is calling it quits.
All Electronics
, a 56-year veteran of the Southern California electronics scene, has announced that they’ll be closing their doors by the end of August. We seem to recall getting on their mailing list once many years ago, and getting their catalog in the mail. The variety of stuff they had even back then was impressive, and we remember wishing Van Nuys wasn’t on the other side of the continent from us. So if you’re in the area, perhaps it’ll be worth the drive to see what they’ve got left, and what kind of deals you can score.
In other time-sensitive news, element14 has
an “Experimenting with Supercapacitors Design Challenge”
going on right now that sounds pretty interesting. The focus is on green technology uses for supercapacitors, and you’ve got until July 17 to submit an application idea. They’ll then choose finalists to receive a Cornell-Dubilier supercap kit, which you’ll use to build your design. The prizes are pretty good, with a spectrum analyzer and DC electronic load going to the grand prize winner. Of course, we’ve got
a couple of contests of our own
going on right now, so don’t let this one distract you.
And finally, we got a tip on
this brief but informative video
, which serves as a powerful reminder that you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to amateur radio. Sure, the new Quansheng UV-K5 is all the rage, partly because it can be had for very little money, but mainly because
the transceiver’s firmware can be easily hacked
. The bad news is that the transmitter’s output is a little on the dirty side, to say the least. As ham OH2FTG shows using a spectrum analyzer, while the manufacturer’s claim of 5 Watts output power on the 6-meter band is technically true, it’s only because it’s the sum of the power of all the harmonics that this radio spews across multiple bands. In fact, the second harmonic — which is in the middle of the FM broadcast band, by the way — is about
50 times more powerful
than the fundamental!
Caveat emptor
is always true, but it’s especially important for amateur radio operators, who are expected to police themselves and make sure they’re not filling up the bands with garbage. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656055",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T23:19:19",
"content": "ED-209 has really let himself go.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6656100",
"author": "Andrea Campanella",
"timestamp": "2023-06-... | 1,760,372,254.436266 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/watch-hides-gesture-controls-in-wristband/ | Watch Hides Gesture Controls In Wristband | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"gesture control",
"smartwatch"
] | Over the last five to ten years, smart watches have become fairly ubiquitous, with the Apple Watch being among the most prominent of them. Not everyone wants or needs all of the capabilities of these devices, though; plenty are still opting for simpler devices which only have a few functions built into them. [Josh] has been working on one of these devices but takes a major design cue from their smart counterparts with the
addition of gesture controls for the watch built into the wristband
instead of relying on a more traditional button interface.
The watch hosts most of the functionality of a non-smart digital watch, with a timer, alarms, and a stop watch built-in. To change the time or access any of these functions, a combination of resistive and capacitive touch sensors are built into the wristband near the watch face. The combination of sensors aims to use the benefits of either type of sensor, with the capacitive sensors being used for precision and gesture recognition and the resistive sensors being used for pressure sensitivity. Placing these sensors in the band instead of the watch face improves visibility as well, since the screen won’t be obscured by the user touching the screen.
[Josh] originally intended this type of watch to be used for those with prosthetics or other disabilities which would limit the ability to use standard watch buttons or interact with a touch screen on the watch face itself. The device is working quite well as can be seen in the video linked below, but is still in the prototyping phase and under active development. For finishing up the final versions, we’d recommend
taking a look at the design of these open-source smart watches
for their high quality fit and finish. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,254.941943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/this-camera-does-not-exist/ | This Camera Does Not Exist | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"blender",
"film camera",
"simulation"
] | Blender is a professional-grade 3D-rendering platform and much more, but it suffers sometimes from the just-too-perfect images that rendering produces. You can
tell
, somehow. So just how do you make a perfectly rendered scene look a little more realistic? If you’re [sirrandalot], you take a photograph. But not by taking a picture of your monitor with a camera. Instead,
he’s simulating a colour film camera in extraordinary levels of detail within Blender itself
.
The point of a rendering package is that it simulates light, so it shouldn’t be such a far-fetched idea that it could simulate the behaviour of light in a camera. Starting with a simple pinhole camera he moves on to a meniscus lens, and then creates a compound lens to correct for its imperfections. The development of the camera mirrors that of the progress of real cameras over the 20th century, simulating the film with its three colour-sensitive layers and even the antihalation layer, right down to their differing placements in the focal plane. It’s an absurd level of detail but it serves as both a quick run-down of how a film camera and its film work, and how Blender simulates the behaviour of light.
Finally we see the camera itself, modeled to look like a chunky medium format Instamatic, and some of its virtual photos. We can’t say all of them remove the feel of a rendered image, but they certainly do an extremely effective job of simulating a film photograph. We love this video, take a look at it below the break.
Thanks [Concreted0g] for the tip. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655971",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T17:30:51",
"content": "Amazing work but the grain doesn’t work in realistic way.Film grain isn’t just digital noise (well, usually it is because of the mediocre digitization techniques used). Grain is clumps of silver crystals an... | 1,760,372,255.004684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/a-chess-ai-in-only-4k-of-memory/ | A Chess AI In Only 4K Of Memory | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"ai",
"analysis",
"atari",
"chess",
"engine",
"Stockfish",
"video chess"
] | The first computer to ever beat a reigning chess world champion didn’t do so until 1996 when a supercomputer built by IBM beat Garry Kasparov. But anyone who wasn’t a chess Grandmaster could have been getting beaten by chess programs as early as 1979 when Atari released one of the first ever commercially-available chess video games for the Atari 2600. The game was called Video Chess and despite some quirky gameplay it is quite impressive that it was able to
run on the limited Atari hardware at all as [Oscar] demonstrates
.
The first steps of getting under the hood of this program involved looking into the mapping of the pieces and the board positions in memory. After analyzing some more of the gameplay, [Oscar] discovered that the game does not use trees and nodes to make decisions, likely due to the memory limitations, but rather simulates the entire game and then analyzes it to determine the next step. When the game detects that there are not many pieces left on the board it can actually increase the amount of analysis it does in order to corner the opposing king, and has some unique algorithms in place to handle things like castling, finishing the game, and determining valid movements.
Originally it was thought that this engine couldn’t fit in the 4K of ROM or work within the 128 bytes of system memory, and that it was optimized for the system after first developing a game with some expanded capabilities. The game also has a reputation for making illegal moves in the higher difficulty settings although [Oscar] couldn’t reproduce these bugs. He also didn’t get into any of the tricks the game employed just to display all of the pieces on the screen. The AI in the Atari game was a feat for its time, but in the modern world the Stockfish open-source chess engine allows for a
much more expanded gameplay experience
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655482",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T20:45:13",
"content": "There was chessfor the KIM-1, 1K of RAM. Microchess by Ken Jennings.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655492",
"author": "Andy Pugh"... | 1,760,372,255.06263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/the-voice-of-gps/ | The Voice Of GPS | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"cospas-sarsat",
"gps"
] | Tuning into a GPS satellite is nothing new. Your phone and your car probably do that multiple times a day. But [dereksgc] has been
listening to GPS voice traffic
. The traffic originates from COSPAS-SARSAT, which is a decades-old international cooperative of 45 nations and agencies that operates a worldwide search and rescue program. You can watch a video about it below.
Nominally, a person in trouble activates a 406 MHz beacon, and any of the 66 satellites that host COSPAS-SARSAT receivers can pick it up and relay information to the appropriate authorities. These beacons are often attached to aircraft or ships, but there are an increasing number of personal beacons used by campers, hikers, and others who might be in danger and out of reach of a cell phone. The first rescue from this system was in 1982. By 2021, 3,632 people were rescued thanks to the system.
The satellites that listen to the beacon frequencies don’t process the signals. They use a transponder that re-transmits anything it hears on a much higher downlink frequency. These transponders are always payloads on other satellites like navigation or weather satellites. But because the transponder doesn’t care what it hears, it sometimes rebroadcasts signals from things other than beacons. We were unclear if these were rogue radios or radios with spurious emissions in the translator’s input range.
The video has practical tips on how to tune in several of the satellites that carry these transponders. Might be a fun weekend project with a software-defined radio.
We’ve seen
homebrew satellite devices
, but none for an emergency beacon — we aren’t sure what the legal aspects of that would be. There are other satellites that
unknowingly host pirate radio stations
, too. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655454",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T18:41:14",
"content": "rouge => rogue?(delete this comment at will)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655477",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T20... | 1,760,372,255.495538 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/et-tu-red-hat/ | Et Tu, Red Hat? | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Linux Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"gpl",
"linux",
"open source",
"red hat"
] | Something odd happened to
git.centos.org
last week. That’s the repository where Red Hat has traditionally published the source code to everything that’s a part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to fulfill
the requirements of the GPL license
. Last week, those packages just stopped flowing. Updates weren’t being published. And finally, Red Hat has published a clear answer to why:
Red Hat has decided to continue to use the Customer Portal to share source code with our partners and customers, while treating CentOS Stream as the venue for collaboration with the community.
Sounds innocuous, but what’s really going on here? Let’s have a look at the Red Hat family: RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora.
RHEL is the enterprise Linux distribution that is Red Hat’s bread and butter. Fedora is RHEL’s upstream distribution, where changes happen fast and things occasionally break. CentOS started off as a community repackaging of RHEL, as allowed under the GPL and other Open Source licenses, for people who liked the stability but didn’t need the software support that you’re paying for when you buy RHEL.
Red Hat took over the reigns of CentOS back in 2014, and then
imposed the transition to CentOS Stream in 2020
, to some consternation. This placed CentOS Stream between the upstream Fedora, and the downstream RHEL. Some people missed the stability of the old CentOS, and in response a handful of efforts spun up to fill the gap, like
Alma Linux
and
Rocky Linux
. These projects took the source from git.centos.org, and rebuilt them into usable community operating systems, staying closer to RHEL in the process.
Red Hat has published a longer statement elaborating on the growth of CentOS Stream, but it ends with an interesting statement: “Red Hat customers and partners can access RHEL sources via the customer and partner portals, in accordance with their subscription agreement.” What exactly is in that subscription agreement? Well according to Alma Linux, “the way we understand it today, Red Hat’s user interface agreements indicate that re-publishing sources acquired through the customer portal would be a violation of those agreements.”
Wait, What?
Yes, this looks like an intentional move from Red Hat to put an end to bug-for-bug compatible RHEL clones. CentOS Stream just isn’t quite the same as RHEL, and there are bugfix patches that land in RHEL and not in CentOS Stream. For what it’s worth, both
Rocky
and
Alma
have put out statements, each affirming their plans to move forward with their respective distros. But there’s obviously a scramble happening, and some uncertainty about what the future holds.
Can Red Hat do this? It’s time to put our legal caps on, remind everyone that we’re not actually lawyers, and take a look at what the licenses actually say. Specifically the
GPL v2
, since the kernel is the heart of the system. So first off, the basic tenant of the GPL is that if you distribute a binary program under the GPL, you must also offer the source code to go with it. What’s really interesting is the stickiness of the GPL, that any derivative works are
also
licensed under the GPL, and you are compelled to make the derivative source code available to anyone using your derivative program. This has been called the viral nature of the GPL, sometimes seen as a flaw, but it’s definitely in the license on purpose.
The GPL does have one more interesting bit, section 6, that stipulates that when a program is distributed, the recipients are automatically licensees, and have the same rights to copy or distribute. This section goes so far as to state, “You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein.” Red Hat is restricting the right of its users to share source code, so it’s imposing further restrictions, right? Somebody call Linus Torvalds, and get him to send a cease-and-desist to Red Hat? Well maybe.
Licenses Don’t Compile
Tip of that hat once again to [Simon Phipps], for the insight that licenses don’t compile down to precise meanings. Personally, I see this as an obvious GPL violation, but I’ve also seen disagreement and reasonable arguments — shout out to [
jspaleta
] for being that reasonable voice — that this isn’t a restriction on copying, it’s just an additional user agreement that terminates access to updates if the code is re-published.
I don’t find this a compelling argument, but it’s likely what Red Hat would argue if this ever came to a court case.
I asked [Simon]
, who has some claim to being a Free and Open Source software expert, his take about the re-publishing restriction. His response? “That, sir, is the big question.”
This
isn’t the first time Red Hat has raised eyebrows with GPL compliance
either. Back in 2011, Red Hat stopped publishing kernel patches in an easy-to-use format, and just dumped the patched kernel in a huge tarball. The nicely formatted patches were available to Red Hat customers, but with the restrictions that they weren’t to be shared in that format. Was that a GPL violation?
It’s less certain, since the patches in question *were* available in the tarball. And more importantly, there was never enough damage done to any one entity to actually provoke a lawsuit over the issue. Another company, Sveasoft,
pulled this trick nearly two decades ago
, and even claimed that the Free Software Foundation signed off on their GPL interpretation. But the upstream developers themselves didn’t buy this at all, and the OpenWRT project publicly sent Sveasoft a notice that their license was revoked due to GPL violations. Wild times. Not all the details of how that played out were made public, but it’s notable that Sveasoft is defunct and forgotten, and
OpenWRT is still thriving and publishing new releases
.
So, where does that leave us? Rocky Linux and Alma Linux are scrambling, putting short term solutions in place, while making hard decisions about their long term futures. Red Hat may or may not change course or make clarifying statements. And the rest of us are waiting to see how things will settle out.
I can’t help but see parallels to the Dungeons and Dragons debacle when
Wizards of the Coasts (WotC) tried to deauthorize the Open Gaming License
, and every other TTRPG publisher had all-time record months as consumers abandoned ship. WotC managed to turn fate around by quickly backpedaling on that licensing decision, making the game even more open than before.
So, do you have a RHEL license, or manage purchasing at some medium or large company? Maybe it’s time to drop Red Hat a note and let them know that you really don’t appreciate their hostility towards their community, or their attempts to bend the GPL into a pretzel. And if Red Hat keeps it up? Well, I hear SLES is great.
But Red Hat’s move does raise concerns about the health of the GPL. GRSecurity has been using the same techniques for years now, and no one has stepped up to challenge that in court. That really leaves us where we started. Do business with and support those that are willing to be good community members. | 94 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655433",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T17:20:37",
"content": "Typical IBM,buy companyMake sorry sighted decisionsPiss off customersKill product",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655443",
"author"... | 1,760,372,255.782476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/hackaday-podcast-224-star-wars-holograms-tricorders-and-other-sensors/ | Hackaday Podcast 224: Star Wars Holograms, Tricorders, And Other Sensors | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Elliot and Al got together to discuss this week’s projects, and you’re invited! You’ll hear news about replaceable batteries in the EU, along with some news about the Hackaday Op Amp Challenge winners and the start of a new contest. This week’s choice hacks ranged from a Star Wars-style volumetric display, navigation using cosmic rays, measuring car speed with microphones, and a crazy 3D printing technique that will blow you away.
There’s plenty more where that came from. Ever tried to land a model rocket vertically? How about building a punched card reader? The can’t miss articles this week cover a thermal camera review and the unintended consequences if AM radio bites the dust.
If you want to read along, the links are below for you to check out. Be sure to leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Click play to get started. Or
download a non-AI-generated (we promise) file for your offline listening pleasure
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 224 Show Notes:
News:
The EU Wants Replaceable Batteries
Op Amp Challenge Results
Jack In: The 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge Starts Now!
What’s that Sound?
[Nick] took the prize out of many correct answers for last week’s sound: a tricorder from Star Trek The Next Generation. Congrats [Nick] and the other 29 hackers who guessed correctly. Tune in next week and test your ear, all for a limited edition Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
A Volumetric Display with a Star Wars Look and Feel
Cosmic Ray Navigation
Using Sonar to Measure Traffic Speeds
GNU Radio Series
Presumably, for something like that, you’d be using…
If Not Ethernet… Remembering ARCNet
History of ARCNet
(thanks to [Ron Dombrowski] for sending that along)
How to Land a Model Rocket Vertically
3D Printering: Treating Filament Like Paint Opens Wild Possibilities
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Bringing Back the Minitel
Sleek Macro Pad Makes 2FA a Little Easier
The Remoteduino Nano is a Tiny IR Remote that’s Truly Universal
Al’s Picks:
Dual Channel POV Display also has Nixie Tubes
Old-school machinery and robots
What’s in a Slip Ring
Punched Cards are in the Cloud with this Arduino
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Review of the Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera
Thermal Camera Reviewed
Radio Apocalypse: Hardening AM Radio Against Disasters | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,255.539226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/commodore-floppy-drive-fixing-chaos/ | Commodore Floppy Drive Fixing Chaos | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"commodore",
"Commodore 1541",
"commodore 1571",
"Commodore 1581",
"floppy drive"
] | One of the best parts of retrocomputing is that you can obtain so many broken systems and peripherals for repairing and other assorted fun. This was the wholesome activity that [Drygol] embarked on recently with a gaggle of Commodore floppy disk drives that he obtained, involving a lot of
cleaning, soldering, calibrating
and other assorted entertainment. This follows cold on the heels of an
earlier repair session
of a stash of Commodore 1541 FDDs.
Testing Commodore FDD head alignment using the 1541 diagnostic cartridge.
As with any such devices, the first thing to do is to clean the heck out of them, to remove forty-odd years of dust and other debris, followed by testing of functionality, replacing dead ICs and the usual round of (electrolytic) capacitor replacement. Retrobrighting gives it that fresh-out-of-packaging look, which leaves just the calibrating of these drives. This procedure is essential to make sure the read/write head is aligned with the tracks on the disks, and is the most fiddly part of the process.
What helps a lot here is the
1541 diagnostic cartridge
by [World of Jani] that displays real-time information on the drive while you are tweaking its speed and head alignment. All you have to do is tweak the speed potentiometer, and adjust the position of the drive motor, which takes a bit of patience and a steady hand. After this repair session a few Mitsumi drives unfortunately remained dead due to busted coils. Despite a valiant repair attempt on the heads by manually rewinding the coils, this remains a topic for a potential part III. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655410",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T15:24:01",
"content": "And if we’re at, let’s fix the drive electronics and install a light barrier for proper track 0 detection.The 1541-C board supports it by default, if I remember correctly.So it’s perhaps better to fix thi... | 1,760,372,255.875521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/this-week-in-security-noauth-minidlna-and-ticket-to-ride/ | This Week In Security: NOAuth, MiniDLNA, And Ticket To Ride | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Fortigate",
"MiniDLNA",
"This Week in Security"
] | There’s
a fun logic flaw in how multiple online services handle OAuth logins
, that abuses Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory service to allow account takeovers. The problem is how a site handles the “Sign In With Microsoft” option, when there’s an existing account under the same email address. This is an irritating problem for an end-user, when a site offers multiple sign-in options. Trying to remember which option was used to set up an account is a struggle, so many services automatically merge accounts.
The problem is that the Microsoft Azure authentication information includes an email address, but Microsoft hasn’t done any verification that the account in question actually controls that address. And in fact, it’s trivial for the Azure admin to change that address at whim. So if the service accepts that email address as authoritative, and auto-merges the accounts, it’s a trivial account takeover. And it’s more than just a theoretical problem, as researchers at descope were able to demonstrate the attack, and have found multiple medium and large services that were vulnerable, as well as at least two authentication providers that themselves were vulnerable to this attack.
Microsoft has pushed updates to the Azure AD service to make the issue easier to avoid, though it seems that the unverified “email” field is still being sent on authentication transactions. There is a new flag, “RemoveUnverifiedEmailClaim” that eliminates the issue, and is enabled by default for new applications. Unfortunately this means that existing vulnerable applications will continue to be vulnerable until fixed on the application side.
MiniDLNA
[Hyprdude] was looking for bugs on his Netgear RAX45, so he pulled the GPL sources and started doing some fuzzing. The application that caught his attention was MiniDLNA, a lightweight media hosting application. It has an HTTP stack, and that’s where a handful of bugs were found. The juicy one,
CVE-2023-33476, is an out-of-bounds (OOB) read and write vulnerability
in the HTTP chunked encoding handling. The HTTP one-liner that crashes a vulnerable instance is a simple
GET /status HTTP/1.0\r\nTransport-Encoding:chunked\r\n\r\nffffff\r\n0\r\n\r\n
.
Now there’s a weird wrinkle here. The RAX45 doesn’t crash when sent this code. Netgear seems to be maintaining a private branch of MiniDLNA that has fixes, and isn’t included in their GPL bundles. That’s almost certainly a GPL violation, unless it’s based solely on the MiniDLNA code developed by Netgear employees. With that discovery made, [hyprdude] turned to the main MiniDLNA code base, and found the vulnerability there. It’s an order of operations error, hidden by a programmer trying to be too smart.
while( (line req_buf + h->req_buflen)) &&
(h->req_chunklen = strtol(line, &endptr, 16) > 0) &&
(endptr != line) )
That while loop is looking for three conditions, that the
line
pointer hasn’t overflowed its output, that there is a value left in the input buffer, and that the
line
pointer hasn’t reached the end of the input. The middle condition is where some programmer was trying too hard, to use the results of the
strtol()
call for the comparison, and also to assign it to the
req_chunklen
variable. But instead, that variable is set to the result of the comparison — either 0 or 1. And since that value is used to iterate through the input, the sanity checking intended to happen here is quite handily sidestepped.
The logic that actually copies the data gets this right:
while ((h->req_chunklen = strtol(chunk, &endptr, 16)) > 0 && (endptr != chunk) )
The extra pair of parenthesis make the value assignment work as intended. But we’ve already sneaked bad data through the filter, meaning that packets are accepted with chunk sizes bigger than the packet itself.
And then in part two, we get
a fantastic walkthrough on how to turn this bug into a working exploit
. The primitive ends up being the ability to slide data from beyond the end of the packet buffer. It requires a bit of creativity, in the form of including whitespace in the HTTP chunks, and then using other HTTP packets to set up a neighboring memory location. Finally, the flaw is used to slide one of those pre-sent packets over a recently free’d memory chunk, corrupting the memory metadata about where to find free chunks. And then the next HTTP packet can be steered to allocated memory, namely the Global Offset Table. Overwrite the location of the
free()
function, pointing it at previous HTTP data, and you’ve got code execution. It’s great work, and the fix has already landed upstream.
Ticket to Ride
France and Germany launched a publicity campaign recently, where they gave away 30,000 free tickets for travel between the two countries. And somewhat predictably, the demand for free tickets DDoS’d the servers. But it turns out,
there were far worse problems
. Like the password reset function, pointing at a non-existent Vercel application. Oops. A kind soul registered that application, and made it a simple test page rather than something malicious.
But it gets better. The campaign intended to give out 30,000 tickets. But what about people still filling out the form when the 30,000th ticket was given out? Yes, they still get tickets, too. That was handled with an emailed link to those few stuck in limbo, allowing them to finish registration. The problem was that the code to initiate that process was left in place — accessible to anyone with a browser’s debug console.
After spending way too much effort trying to find a security contact, our intrepid researchers apparently got word of problems to the right ears, as this secret page was closed. But the ride doesn’t end there, as the API itself would still happily hand out free tickets. After another wild goose chase trying to do security disclosure, that problem *finally* got fixed. No more free tickets.
So armed with this experience, the team took a look at a previous campaign, DiscoverEU. Same concept, different government, but the same agencies doing the implementation. Not vulnerable in the same way, but there was a dashboard discovered through
Certificate Transparency
. Since they were already familiar with the API, why not try using it to create an account? Not only did it work, that account could access the name, email, country, and state of almost 250,000 users. At least they finally knew who to contact for security reports.
Bits and Bytes
There are a trio of
speculative executions attacks against Ethereum
. Unlike speculative execution on a CPU, these issues just manage a Denial of Service attack on the network. Ethereum tries to prevent DOS attacks by charging a small fee for each transaction, but these attacks trade on the insight that invalid transactions don’t actually cost those fees. The first example is a technique to run a chain of 140 minor transactions, that ends in a transaction to a sanctioned entity. A node that honors those sanctions will run through the previous transactions, only to discard the work once the final interaction is discovered. A second technique creates valid-looking transactions, that use up a great deal of memory to process, leading to eviction of other, valid transactions from the client’s memory pool. The last technique manipulates nodes into including transactions with censored entities, which is only caught by other nodes, and can rapidly harm a specific node’s reputation rating.
Researchers have
published a paper on arxiv detailing a Global SMS Positioning system
, which uses the timing of SMS delivery reports to track down the location of receivers. The heavy lifting was done by a machine learning model, and the caveat is that it only really works when there’s a known list of locations where the target is likely to be. Still impressive.
And
Fortigate RCEs are still a thing
, with two more vulnerabilities found recently. At least one has been fixed independently in the latest firmware update. It’s another example of one vulnerability finding leading to several others, as attention is drawn to some new or unexplored possible vector. It’s not entirely clear what the services are intended to do, listening on ports 1050 and 5555. Sadly, it’s probably not related to Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655481",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T20:45:00",
"content": "Important parenthesis?> while( (line req_buf + h->req_buflen)) &&> (h->req_chunklen = strtol(line, &endptr, 16) > 0) &&> (endptr != line) )Isn’t there on too many in the first line?It closes the “whi... | 1,760,372,255.824216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/easy-modifications-for-inexpensive-radios/ | Easy Modifications For Inexpensive Radios | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"BK4819",
"firmware",
"frequency range",
"Quansheng",
"radio",
"uv k5"
] | Over the past decade or so, amateur radio operators have benefited from an influx of inexpensive radios based around a much simpler design than what was typically commercially available, bringing the price of handheld dual-band or GMRS radios to around $20. This makes the hobby much more accessible, but they have generated some controversy as they tend to not perform as well and can generate spurious emissions and other RF interference that a higher quality radio might not create. But one major benefit besides cost is that they’re great for tinkering around, as their simplified design is excellent for modifying.
This experimental firmware upgrade
changes a lot about this Quansheng model.
With the obligatory warning out of the way that modifying a radio may violate various laws or regulations of some localities, it looks like this modified firmware really expands the capabilities of the radio. The chip that is the basis of the radio, the BK4819, has a frequency range of 18-660 MHz and 840-1300 MHz but not all of these frequencies will be allowed with a standard firmware in order to comply with various regulations. However, there’s typically no technical reason that a radio can’t operate on any arbitrary frequency within this range, so opening up the firmware can add a lot of functionality to a radio that might not otherwise be capable.
Some of the other capabilities this modified firmware opens up is the ability to receive in various other modes, such as FM and AM within the range of allowable frequencies. To take a more deep dive on what this firmware allows be sure to check out
the original GitHub project page
as well, and if you’re curious as to why these inexpensive radios often run afoul of radio purists and regulators alike, take a look at
some of the problems others have had in Europe
. | 68 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655341",
"author": "mip",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T11:29:53",
"content": "I just received one of these radios as the price of 14.24€ (regular 19.45€) including shipping (1w from CN to DE) was too good to resist.Firmware update using `k5prog` went flawlessly after some problems: Fir... | 1,760,372,255.649181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/automate-away-the-drudgery-of-cnc-manufacturing/ | Automate Away The Drudgery Of CNC Manufacturing | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"manufacturing",
"plc",
"Pneumatics",
"router",
"work cell"
] | One of the keys to making money with manufacturing is to find something that you can make a lot of. Most small manufacturers have one or two “bread and butter” items that can be cranked out in quantity, which of course has a quality all its own. The problem with that approach, though, is that it runs the risk of being boring. And what better way to avoid that than by automating your high-volume job, with something like
this automated CNC
work cell?
Looks like money.
[Maher Lagha] doesn’t offer too much in the way of build details, but the video below pretty much tells the tale. The high-volume items in this case are customized wooden coasters, the kind a restaurant would buy for their bar or a business would give away as swag. The small 3-axis CNC router at the center of the work cell is the perfect choice for making these — one at a time. With no desire to be tied to the machine all day to load raw stock and unload completed coasters, [Maher] came up with automated towers that hold stacks of pallets. Each pallet, which acts as a fixture for the workpiece through multiple operations, moves from the input stack into the router’s work envelope and to the output stack using a combination of servos and pneumatics. The entire work cell is about a meter on a side and contains everything needed for all the operations, including air for the pneumatics and dust extraction.
Each coaster requires two tools to complete — one for surfacing and one for lettering — and [Maher] has two ways to tackle that. The first is to allow a stack of coasters to go through the first operation, change tools, and switch the roughed-in stock back to the input stack for the second round of machining. The other is just to build another work cell dedicated to lettering, which seems to be in progress. In fact, it looks as if there’s a third work cell in the works in [Maher]’s shop. The coaster business must be pretty good. | 39 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655942",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T14:54:32",
"content": "I had to blow up the photo of the coaster about twice actual size to be able to read the logo. I guess if it gets properly painted, readability will improve.But, a good build!"... | 1,760,372,256.109963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/flying-submarine-documentary-is-a-story-of-defied-assumptions/ | Flying Submarine Documentary Is A Story Of Defied Assumptions | Donald Papp | [
"Biography",
"classic hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aviation",
"bio",
"cold war",
"flying submarine",
"patent",
"submarine",
"submersible"
] | Donald Reid had a passion for applying himself to challenging problems, and in many ways his life’s work was that of developing a prototype submersible aircraft — or flying submarine — for which his son Bruce was a test pilot. [Jesse Moody] brought to our attention
a fantastic documentary he created
(with a short teaser trailer
here
) in which he interviews Bruce, and in the process teaches us all about a story that spanned decades and formed an important part of aviation history. Bruce experienced his share of hair-raising moments while testing the craft, but still has all of his fingers and limbs. Still, in his own words, “you wouldn’t be doing that kind of testing today!”
In many ways, the story revolves around defying assumptions. Without context, a “flying submarine” project might sound like a lone kook’s obsession, but Donald Reid was nothing of the sort. He was a brilliant engineer who was able solve problems by applying his skill and intellect with a laser-like focus. And it turns out that getting a submerged vehicle to successfully transition from waterbound craft to airborne is a source of numerous and novel problems that were not trivial to solve. In fact, these problems
needed
to be solved in order to develop the Tomahawk cruise missile, which is launched by submarine. And that brings us to the lawsuit that bookended it all.
Donald Reid had tried unsuccessfully to get the government interested in his work during the late 50s and 60s. He shared his data, but never got a call back despite clear evidence of work being done in the area. He felt that the later Tomahawk cruise missile — basically a flying mini-submarine — was a direct infringement of his patent. He did, after all, do the hard work of solving the many problems inherent in getting something to transition from underwater to airborne, and the Tomahawk was doing exactly that.
Donald Reid with an early small scale prototype, this one with a small
pulsejet engine
attached.
In the lawsuit, Donald represented himself legally. Again the situation defies assumption; without context one might imagine he was somewhere on the
sovereign citizen
spectrum, filing grievances in between conspiracy theories. In fact, he did so out of necessity — educating himself on law in the process — because no professional lawyer wanted the job of suing the US Government. He took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court as an individual, without the benefit of professional attorneys, which is a rare thing indeed.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him, but it was on such a point that if he had had proper counsel, he very likely would have prevailed. The way patents work in the US can be troublesome for inventors. If an implementation deviates from a written patent in even one way, there is no infringement. For example, if one’s patent states that mechanical energy is stored in a spring and a competitor uses an elastic band instead, there is no infringement. For this reason, patents protect best when they describe an innovation as broadly (and briefly) as possible. In Donald Reid’s case, the government’s position was that there was no infringement because Reid’s work used supplemental buoyancy but the Tomahawk did not. But the patent as written covers
selective
(or optional) buoyancy, a point which Donald’s son Bruce feels could have been addressed had his father had proper representation. But one gets only a single shot when arguing before the Supreme Court, and that was that.
Before the patent lawsuit capped things off, the actual nuts & bolts development of the project had ended after some twelve years of R&D. It was always about proving the concept, and showing that it was possible for a vehicle to transition from submerged to airborne. Donald Reid always felt his work on the Reid RFS-1 was a success because he demonstrated it could be done, however limited the prototypes were in their capabilities. It’s a legit part of aviation history, and after years of neglect, one of the actual models is awaiting restoration.
In perhaps one last defiance of expectations, the story of the flying submarine isn’t just one of rumor and hazy recollection. Bruce was actually there, and a surprisingly good amount of photos and even video exist of the different models and their testing. You can see it all and learn the whole story in the documentary, embedded below. | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655888",
"author": "sgmi",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T12:01:59",
"content": "Inventors and submarines eh? It’s a fine aged milk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655896",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-06-... | 1,760,372,256.189184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/25/exploring-the-anatomy-of-a-linux-kernel-exploit/ | Exploring The Anatomy Of A Linux Kernel Exploit | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"buffer",
"exploit",
"io_uring",
"linux",
"local privilege escalation",
"memory",
"software",
"vulnerability",
"zero-day"
] | A lot of talk and discussion happens anytime a hardware manufacturer releases a new line of faster, more powerful, or more efficient computers. It’s easy to see better and better specifications and assume that’s where all the progress is made. But without improved software and algorithms, often the full potential of the hardware can’t be realized. That’s the reason for the creation of
io_uring
, an improved system call interface in the Linux kernel.
It’s also where [chompie] went to look for exploits
.
The reason for looking here, in a part of the kernel [chompie] had only recently learned about, was twofold. First, because it’s a place where user space applications interact with the kernel, and second because it’s relatively new and that means more opportunities to find bugs. The exploit involves taking advantage of a complicated asynchronous buffer system, specifically at a location where the code confuses a memory location being used by the kernel with one which is supposed to be used for user space.
To actually get this to work as an exploit, though, a much more involved process is needed to make sure the manipulation of these memory addresses results in something actually useful, but it is eventually used to gain local privilege escalation.
More about it can be found in this bug report as well
. Thanks to the fact that Linux is open-source, this bug can quickly be fixed and the patch rolled out to prevent malicious attackers from exploiting it.
Open-source software has plenty of other benefits
besides being inherently more secure, though. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655845",
"author": "pigster6",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T08:19:47",
"content": "Why are you calling this zero-day in 2023? The CVE is from 2021, the article describing the vulnerability as well and the kernel was patched the same year.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,372,255.929375 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/retro-inspired-computer-case-hosts-mechanical-keyboard/ | Retro-Inspired Computer Case Hosts Mechanical Keyboard | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"case",
"keyboard",
"mechanical keyboard",
"Odroid XU4",
"raspberry pi 400",
"retro"
] | During the time in the 1980s when the personal computer was gaining steam as a household fixture, plenty of models shipped with the keyboard built in to the machine itself. This helped reduce costs, lower the physical footprint of the device, and arguably improved aesthetics. But as technology progressed, this type of design fell by the wayside as computers became more modular and configurable. That’s not to say there aren’t any benefits to building a computer like this, though. [jit] is here to show off
this Amiga-inspired computer with its own modern built-in mechanical keyboard
.
Like the Raspberry Pi 400 which is built into its own case, modern computers like this are extremely portable, relatively simple, and space-efficient. But [jit] did not like the uninspired design of the Pi so he was looking to make some improvements. Starting with the keyboard, it boasts a 60% size board with mechanical keys which are backlit by LEDs. Inside the machine is a Odroid XU4 which has a little bit more power (and is often easier to find) than a comparable Raspberry Pi. The case is 3D printed and includes ventilation and support for the addition of various cooling fans, I/O ports, status LEDs, and switches for the computer inside.
Additionally, some modification of the Odroid itself was needed in order to move the various switches to the case, and the build also includes a somewhat customized power supply internally as well. It’s a well-rounded build that captures the spirit of the old computer cases, but takes advantage of a lot of modern technology at the same time. If you want to go all-out with a build like this, though, take a look at this retro-inspired case (with keyboard included) that
manages to get most of a Framework laptop inside
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6656018",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T19:57:52",
"content": "Reminds me of my Laser Compact XT, except i didn’t have the cool RED backlit keyboard. Or the graphics. or the memory. And I ran DOS 3.3",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,372,256.236531 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/a-32-bit-risc-v-cpu-core-in-600-lines-of-c/ | A 32-Bit RISC-V CPU Core In 600 Lines Of C | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ANSI C",
"emulator",
"risc",
"RISC-V"
] | If you have ever wanted to implement a RISC-V CPU core in about 600 lines of C,
you’re in luck
! [mnurzia]’s
rv
project does exactly that, providing a simple two-function API.
Technically, it’s a user-level
RV32IMC
implementation in ANSI C. There are many different possible flavors of
RISC-V
, and in this case is a 32-bit base integer instruction set (RV32I), with multiplication and division extension (M), and compressed instruction set extension (C).
There’s a full instruction list and examples of use on the
GitHub repository
. As for readers wondering what something like RISC-V emulation might be good for, it happens to be the not-so-secret sauce to
running Linux on an RP2040
. | 29 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655801",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T02:33:18",
"content": "I think that’s really cool, albeit not very practical. 32-Bit is dead.https://hackaday.com/2021/06/06/is-32-bits-really-dead/RV64I would make more sense.That being said, the existing emulation code likely ... | 1,760,372,256.303198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/ventbots-are-fans-of-hvac-and-home-automation/ | Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation | Michael Shaub | [
"home hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"3d printing",
"BMP280",
"ESP32",
"esphome",
"home automation",
"home-assistant",
"hvac",
"openscad",
"pc fan",
"smart home",
"temperature sensor"
] | [WJCarpenter] had a common HVAC problem; not all the rooms got to a comfortable temperature when the heater was working to warm up their home. As often happens with HVAC systems, the rooms farthest from the heat source and/or with less insulation needed a boost of heat in the winter and cooling in the summer too. While [WJCarpenter] is a self-reported software person, not a hardware person, you will enjoy going along on the journey to build some very capable vent boosters that require a mix of each.
There’s a great build log on
hackaday.io here
, but for those who need more of a proper set of instructions, there’s a step-by-step guide that should allow even a beginner hardware hacker to complete the project
over on Instructables
. There you’ll find everything you need to build ESPHome controlled, 3D printed, PC fan powered vent boosters. While they can be integrated into Home Assistant, we were interested to learn that ESPHome allows these to run stand-alone too, each using its own temperature and pressure sensor.
The many iterations of hardware and software show, resulting in thoughtful touches like a startup sequence that checks for several compatible temperature sensors and a board layout that accommodates different capacitor lead spacings. Along the way, [WJCarpenter] also graphed the noise level of different fans running at multiple speeds and the pressure sensor readings against the temperatures to see if they could be used as more reliable triggers for the fans. (spoiler, they weren’t) There are a bunch of other tips to find along the way, so we highly recommend going through all that [WJCarpenter] has shared if you want to build your own or just want some tips on how to convert a one-off project to something that a wider audience can adapt to their own needs.
See a video after the break that doesn’t show the whole project but includes footage of the start-up sequence that tests each fan’s tachometer and the customizable ramp-up and ramp-down settings. | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655837",
"author": "Naaa...zghul",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T07:19:21",
"content": "What about a Roomba on Steroids. A Turret with a 2×2 Fan Array on it. A Stronger Battery. Who Rides throught all rooms and regulate the themperature.A Roomba build to rule the Air circulation in the ... | 1,760,372,256.366299 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/electronic-earrings-are-pcb-art-you-can-wear/ | Electronic Earrings Are PCB Art You Can Wear | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Earring",
"jewellery",
"led"
] | If there’s one area of the human anatomy we rarely try to draw the eye, it’s the ears. Nonetheless,
[DIY GUY Chris] has developed some LED earrings that should do exactly that.
The earrings are made using PCBs as the very body of the jewelry itself. The PCBs for each ear play host to eight WS2812 LEDs in a tiny 2020 form factor. The LEDs get their instructions from an ATtiny13-A AVR microcontroller, with some further supporting hardware to get everything playing happily together. Each earring runs off a single CR1220 coin cell, which sits on the obverse side of the earring to stay out of sight. The earrings are programmed with pogo pins to avoid the need for any bulky connectors.
By virtue of the tiny addressable LEDs, the earrings are capable of displaying full RGB colors. [DIY GUY Chris] has programmed the earrings with simple color fades, as well as some fancier chase animations as well.
We’ve seen some great PCB jewelry before, too
. Video after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655768",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T22:25:11",
"content": "I like what he did, but does the circuit/program run the LEDs efficiently?P.s. is the voice on the video synthesized speech?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,372,257.042465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/robodog-goes-free-thanks-to-unofficial-sdk/ | Robodog Goes Free Thanks To Unofficial SDK | Donald Papp | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"mini cheetah",
"MIT mini cheetah",
"python",
"robodog",
"robot",
"sdk"
] | What’s better than a pretty nice legged robot? One with an
alternate SDK version that opens up expensive features, of course
. The author didn’t like that the original SDK only came as pre-compiled binaries restricted to the most expensive models, so rolled up their sleeves and started writing a new one.
The manufacturer’s SDK limits access to programmatic functions, but that needn’t stop
you
.
There are a number of commercially-available robotic quadrupeds that can trace their heritage back to the
MIT Mini Cheetah
design, and one of them is the Unitree Go1 series which sports a distinctive X-shaped sensor cluster on its “face”. The basic models are affordable (as far as robots go, anyway) but Unitree claims only the high-priced EDU model can be controlled via the SDK. Happily, the Free Dog SDK provides a way to do exactly that.
The SDK is a work in progress, but fully usable and allows the user to send various high level and low level commands to the Go1 robots. High level examples include things like telling the robot to perform pushups, turn 90 degrees, or walk. Low level commands are things like specifying exact positions or torque levels for individual limbs. With the new SDK, doing those things programmatically is only a Python script away.
Know any other robots that might be based on the same system? This SDK might work on them, too. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655759",
"author": "SB5K",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T21:40:40",
"content": "Better looking dog than Dr. Who’s K9“Affirmative”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655766",
"author": "NoWay",
"timestamp": "2023-06-2... | 1,760,372,256.905061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/open-source-and-giving-back/ | Open Source And Giving Back | Elliot Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"3d printing",
"newsletter",
"open source",
"Rant"
] | 3D printing YouTuber [Thomas Sanladerer] made a fairly contentious claim in a video about the state of open source hardware and software:
namely that it’s not viable “anymore”
. You can watch his video for more nuance, but the basic claim is that there are so many firms who are reaping the benefits of open designs and code that the people who are actually doing the work can’t afford to make a living anymore.
[Thomas] then goes on to mention a few companies that are patenting their 3DP innovations, and presumably doing well by it, and he then claims that patenting is probably the right way forward from a business standpoint.
The irony that he says this with a Voron 3D printer sitting behind him was not lost on us.
The Voron is
, after all, a very successful open-source 3D printer design. It’s just rock solid, has lots of innovative touches, and an extensive bill of materials. They don’t sell anything, but instead rely on donations from their large community to keep afloat and keep designing.
At the same time, a whole bunch of companies are offering Voron kits – all of the parts that you’d have to source yourself otherwise. While not mass-market, these kit sales presumably also help keep some of the 3D printer enthusiast stores that sell them afloat. Which is all to say: the Voron community is thriving, and a number of folks are earning their livings off of it. And it’s completely open.
When [Thomas] complains that some players in the 3DP business landscape aren’t giving back to the open-source community effort, he’s actually calling out a few large-scale Chinese manufacturers making mass-market machines. These companies aren’t interested in pushing the state of the art forward anyway, rather just selling what they’ve got. And sure, there are a million Creality Enders for every Voron 2 out there. And yes, they reap the benefits of open designs and code. But they’re competing in an entirely different market from the real innovators, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
Let us know what you think. (And if you’re reading this in the newsletter format, head on over to Hackaday on Saturday morning to leave us your comments.)
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
! | 41 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655674",
"author": "RobotToaster",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T14:16:39",
"content": "A lot of creality printers are open sourcehttps://github.com/Creality3DPrinting",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655680",
"author": "m... | 1,760,372,257.120004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/an-open-source-firmware-for-cheap-geiger-counters/ | An Open Source Firmware For Cheap Geiger Counters | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"geiger counter",
"replacement firmware"
] | It is a time-honored tradition: buy some cheap piece of gear and rewrite the firmware to make it work better. [Gissio]
managed to do just that for a cheap FS2011 Geiger counter
. Apparently, the
firmware
will also work with some similar Chinese models, too.
The new firmware boasts an improved UI and multiple measurement units, including Sievert, Rem, and counts per minute or second. You can hold the measurement or compute a dose or average rate. The new firmware also has a host of customizations and can accommodate different tubes.
There are, however, two really key features. First, the new firmware offers about 40% more battery life than the stock version. Second, there is now an onboard nuclear chess game! That way, you can enjoy yourself while you are getting irradiated. There are also a few suggested hardware mods that are optional to improve measurements and increase the buzzer volume, among other things.
If you get a Geiger counter, you might be surprised at what things are
slightly radioactive
. If you don’t need the microcontroller, you can
make a workable counter on the cheap
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655652",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T12:28:44",
"content": "“SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”-WOPR",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655679",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timest... | 1,760,372,256.85395 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/24/fpga-plays-tic-tac-toe/ | FPGA Plays Tic-Tac-Toe | Bryan Cockfield | [
"FPGA",
"Games"
] | [
"fpga",
"logic",
"state machine",
"tic-tac-toe"
] | As computers get more and more powerful and artificial intelligence algorithms improve, few games remain where the best humans can reliably beat their electronic counterparts. In chess this barrier was passed in 2005 with the last human win against a computer, and recently humans lost to computers at go. Simpler games like tic-tac-toe have been solved for all possible positions for a while now, so even a simple computer will always win or tie the game. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing left to learn about these games as [Hayden] demonstrates with
this tic-tac-toe game built entirely on an FPGA
.
[Hayden] is making this as part of a college course on digital design, so it really starts at first principles for working with FPGAs. It’s programmed in Verilog on a Basys 3 board, which also hosts the switches used as the game’s input and handles the VGA video output as well. The build uses state machines to keep track of the moves played on each of the squares, and another state machine to keep track of whether or not the current game has been won. If so, it highlights the winning moves in red, and stops taking further inputs until it is reset. Some more logic ties everything together along with a customized VGA driver to produce the entire gaming experience.
A game like tic-tac-toe is a great way to master the fundamentals of a system like this before moving on to more complex programs, especially on an FPGA platform that might handle a lot of the things we take for granted on more traditional computing systems, such as the video output. If you’re interested in taking more of a deep dive into the world of FPGAs, we
published a primer about them a few years ago
that will get you started. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655606",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T08:17:41",
"content": "‘A strange game.The only winning move is not to play.How about a nice game of chess?’",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655615",
"author": "A... | 1,760,372,256.962331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/gumball-coaster-is-3d-printed-candy-fun/ | Gumball Coaster Is 3D-Printed Candy Fun | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"candy",
"gumball",
"marble run"
] | Marble runs are fun enough on their own, but what if you could eat the marbles? Gumballs are the satisfying answer to that question. To that end,
[Adrian Seeley] whipped up a system for producing gumball runs programmatically for entertainment and candy dispensing purposes.
Track descriptions can be coded via basic instructions outlining a marble run, by typing out the order of straights, turns, and ramps that make up the course. Once created as a JSON file, the track description is processed via Javascript to create a tiled physical representation of the track via OpenSCAD, including all necessary support structures. The pieces can then be 3D printed to create an actual physical gumball run that can be easily assembled.
[Adrian] created a small tabletop “gumcoaster” as a prototype. Even at that size, it took 11 hours to assemble. It served as a trial run ahead of a larger version he hopes to build for a candy store display. We’ve seen some great marble runs before too,
including those created via procedural generation
. Video after the break.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDGg-Q3Ydk | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655655",
"author": "heatgap",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T12:40:14",
"content": "My nephews would dig this great idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6655796",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2023-06-25T01:51:22",
"co... | 1,760,372,256.805665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/ecological-system-dynamics-for-computing/ | Ecological System Dynamics For Computing | Navarre Bartz | [
"computer hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"bacteria",
"biochemistry",
"biocomputing",
"biological neural network",
"biology",
"ecology",
"machine learning",
"recurrent neural network",
"reservoir computing"
] | Some of you may remember that the ship’s computer on
Star Trek: Voyager
contained bioneural gel packs. Researchers have taken us one step closer to a biocomputing future with a study on the potential of
ecological systems for computing
.
Neural networks are a big deal in the world of machine learning, and it turns out that ecological dynamics exhibit many of the same properties.
Reservoir Computing (RC)
is a special type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) that feeds inputs into a fixed-dynamics reservoir black box with training only occurring on the outputs, drastically reducing the computational requirements of the system. With some research now embodying these reservoirs into physical objects like robot arms, the researchers wanted to see if biological systems could be used as computing resources.
Using both simulated and real bacterial populations (
Tetrahymena thermophila
) to respond to temperature stimuli, the researchers showed that ecological system dynamics has the “necessary conditions for computing (e.g. synchronized dynamics in response to the same input sequences) and can make near-future predictions of empirical time series.” Performance is currently lower than other forms of RC, but the researchers believe this will open up an exciting new area of research.
If you’re interested in some other experiments in biocomputing, checkout these
RNA-based logic gates
, this
DNA-based calculator
, or this
fourteen-legged state machine
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655558",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-06-24T03:51:41",
"content": "Maybe debugging this would give insights towards debugging similar black-box, chaotic systems. Other than that I don’t know nothin’",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,257.001293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/ikea-hack-kvart-into-mic-stand/ | IKEA Hack – Kvart Into Mic Stand | Navarre Bartz | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"audio",
"ikea hacks",
"ikea lamp",
"mic",
"mic stand",
"microphone"
] | While audiophiles might spend gazillions of hours finely honing a microphone stand that isolates their equipment from the trials and perturbations of the world, most of us who use a microphone don’t need anything so elaborate. Hackaday contributing editor [Jenny List] hacked together some thrift store finds into a snazzy
adjustable mic setup
as you can see in the video below the break.
Using the flexible neck and clamp of an IKEA Kvart as a base, [Lists]’s mic stand looks like a simple, but exceedingly useful tool. She first removed the lamp, shade, and cord before designing a 3D-printed mount to attach to the lamp’s neck. Since the bolted lamp end of the connection goes straight to an action camera mounting system, we can see this being handy for mounting any number of other things besides microphones. Another 3D-printed mount attaches the Logitech gaming microphone to the action camera connector, and the whole thing can either be bolted together or use a printed pin. All the parts can be found
in a GitHub repository
.
Looking for more microphone hacks? Check out this
DIY ribbon microphone
or the
Ambi-Alice ambisonic mic
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655502",
"author": "Leonardo",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T23:39:03",
"content": "The problem with these types of mounts is that they transmit all the vibrations. In practice, they don’t work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "665... | 1,760,372,257.23739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/powerful-water-pump-is-modular-in-nature/ | Powerful Water Pump Is Modular In Nature | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"pump",
"water pump"
] | If you’ve got one decently powerful DC motor, you could conceivably build a water pump. Gang up ten of them, however, and you could build something considerably more powerful,
as [akashv44] demonstrates.
The design is straightforward, relying on simple impeller pumps driven by RS-775 DC motors. The pump housings and impellers are all 3D printed. They’re designed so that the motor integrates neatly with the pump housing, and so that multiple pumps can easily be ganged up into a single larger unit. [akashv44] demonstrates a build using ten individual pump units with a large manifold, allowing the output of all the pumps to be combined into one single outlet.
The concept is straightforward enough, and running on a 48-volt power supply, it’s clear that the pump can move a significant amount of water. Notably, though, it would be possible to improve significantly with some design changes. Currently, the water path from the pumps must make several 90-degree turns, harming efficiency. We’d love to see the pumps angled nicely into more advanced manifolds which would more smoothly combine the streams together. This would likely result in a far greater output from the system.
In any case,
3D printing pumps is an increasingly popular pastime around here. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655347",
"author": "drall",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T11:58:40",
"content": "It looks like it can move a decent amount of water, but it doesn’t develop a lot of head. Interesting nonetheless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "66... | 1,760,372,257.299289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/will-the-lilium-jet-work-a-deep-dive-into-the-physics-behind-evtol-aircraft/ | Will The Lilium Jet Work? A Deep-Dive Into The Physics Behind EVTOL Aircraft | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"commercial air travel",
"electric aircraft",
"electric airplane",
"eVTOL",
"vtol"
] | The Lilium Jet is a proposed eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft that the German company Lilium GmbH has claimed it will bring to the market ‘soon’, which would made it the first eVTOL aircraft in the world to enter into commercial service. As anyone who has any experience with VTOL knows, it’s a tricky subject to engineer, let alone when you want to do it fully electric. In a
deep-dive video
on the Lilium Jet and
eVTOL
in general, [John Lou] goes through the physics behind VTOL take-off, landing and flight, as well as range and general performance.
It is clear that Lilium’s presented aircraft concept has many issues, some of which are due to new and unproven technologies, while others seem to be founded in over-promising and likely under-delivering. With Lilium having signed a number of contracts to deliver the first Pioneer Edition
Lilium Jets
and commercial service promised by 2025, it’s hard to ignore that the first full prototype of the 7-seater Lilium Jet is supposed to fly this year.
Although as [John] points out in the video, eVTOL is not an impossible concept, it is important to remain realistic about what is physically possible, and not seek to push the boundaries. When the UK introduced its first mass-produced VTOL jet in the form of the Harrier, it too faced an uncomfortable time as bugs got ironed out. As these eVTOL aircraft would be carrying real human passengers, it’s a good place to realize that although you can pick a fight with physics, you will never come out on the winning side.
Hopefully Lilium realizes this too, and these sleek, battery-powered aircraft will truly take to the skies in a few years. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655273",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T05:23:16",
"content": "I was excited about evtol 5-7 years ago. With nothing really flying, just an occasional demo flight and everyone promising next year they will be certified commercial flying aircraft (does FAA part... | 1,760,372,257.184297 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/forgotten-chemical-photography/ | Forgotten Chemical Photography | Bryan Cockfield | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"develop",
"forgotten",
"image",
"large format",
"negative",
"paper",
"photography",
"platinum"
] | Much to the chagrin of Eastman Kodak, the world has moved on from chemical photography into the realm of digital, thanks to the ease of use and high quality of modern digital cameras. There are a few photographers here and there still using darkrooms and various chemical processes to develop film, and the most common of these use some type of chemistry based on silver to transfer images to paper. There are plenty of alternatives to silver, though, each with their unique style and benefits, like
this rarely-used process that develops film using platinum
.
This process, notable for its wide tonal range, delicate highlights, and rich blacks, produces only black and white photographs. But unlike its silver analog, it actually embeds the image into the paper itself rather than holding the image above the paper. This means that photographs developed in this manner are much more resilient and can last for much longer. There are some downsides to this method though, namely that it requires a large format camera and the negatives can’t be modified to produce various sized images in the same ways that other methods allow for. Still, the results of the method are striking for anyone who has seen one of these images in person.
As to why this method isn’t more common, [Matt Locke] describes a somewhat complicated history involving the use of platinum to create commercial fertilizers, which is an identical process to that of the creation of explosives, which were needed in great numbers at the same time this photographic method was gaining in popularity. While the amount of research and development that goes into creating weapons arguably
generates some ancillary benefit for society
, the effects of war can also serve to divert resources away from things like this. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655238",
"author": "Mangus Khan",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T02:38:39",
"content": "Great post…my brother just switched to digital about a year ago. He still talks about the 35mm days. He gave our dad’s K-1000 to our nephew, who’s a pro, he keeps a memento more than uses it.",
"p... | 1,760,372,257.517134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/portable-soldering-station-runs-on-drill-batteries/ | Portable Soldering Station Runs On Drill Batteries | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dewalt",
"drill batteries",
"solder",
"soldering iron"
] | Power tool batteries are a convenient portable power supply for all manner of different things. [Zachary Goode] noticed that Ryobi was using them to power soldering irons, but no such tool existed in the DeWalt range.
Thus, he set about to build such a rig himself.
The build relies on a simple 3D-printed adapter to suck power from a DeWalt drill battery. It’s a little piece of plastic with spade terminals inserted to act as the contacts. Armed with this tool, [Zachary] included it as part of a simple compact portable soldering iron design that relies on the off-the-shelf T12-952 controller board. This allows him to use the rig with a wide variety of common soldering iron handpieces, like his favored Hakko FX-951. The design also features a lithium-ion battery protection circuit of [Zachary]’s own design, to make up for the fact that DeWalt don’t integrate them into their battery packs.
The high power density of lithium rechargeable batteries has led to a proliferation of portable soldering irons in recent years.
Some are even completely handheld
, with no external wires or power supplies to speak of. If you’ve been whipping up your own gear to solder on the go, don’t hesitate to
drop us a line! | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655199",
"author": "Dan (No, the OTHER one)",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T23:43:33",
"content": "Dewalt might steal this idea, and then sue for patent infringement.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655319",
"author": "Up... | 1,760,372,257.590576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/is-this-the-worlds-largest-dot-matrix-printer/ | Is This The World’s Largest Dot Matrix Printer? | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"dot matrix",
"lines",
"paint",
"pavement",
"printer",
"pump",
"solenoid",
"truck",
"water"
] | [RyderCalmDown] was watching a road painting vehicle lay down fresh stripes on the road one day and started thinking about the mechanism that lets it paint stripes in such a precise way. Effectively the system that paints the interspersed lines acts as a dot matrix printer that can only print at a single frequency. With enough of these systems on the same vehicle, and a little bit more fine control of when the solenoids activate and deactivate, [RyderCalmDown] decided to build
this device on the back of his truck which can paint words on a roadway as he drives by
. (Video, embedded below.)
Of course, he’s not using actual paint for this one; that might be prohibitively expensive and likely violate a few laws. Instead he’s using a water-based system which only leaves temporary lettering on the pavement. To accomplish this he’s rigged up a series of solenoids attached to a hitch-mounted cargo rack. A pump delivers water to each of the solenoids, and a series of relays wired to a Raspberry Pi controls the precise timing needed to make sure the device can print readable letters in much the same way a dot matrix printer works. There’s an algorithm running that converts the inputted text to the pattern needed for the dot matrix, and after a little bit of troubleshooting it’s ready for print.
Even though the printer works fairly well, [RyderCalmDown] had a problem thinking of things to write out on the roadways using this system, but it’s an impressive build based around a unique idea nonetheless. Dot matrix printers, despite being mostly obsolete, have a somewhat vintage aesthetic that plenty of people still find desirable and recreate them in plenty of other ways as well, like this
3D printer that was modified to produce dot matrix artwork
. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655164",
"author": "David Beck",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T20:07:49",
"content": "I saw something similar a few years ago. A guy built a self contained cart that used fuel injection valves to write with water. It has a number of text it would print but also printed out a never endin... | 1,760,372,257.693724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/adapter-lets-digital-gamepads-work-on-the-tandy-color-computer/ | Adapter Lets Digital Gamepads Work On The Tandy Color Computer | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"color computer",
"nintendo",
"radioshack",
"tandy"
] | The Tandy Color Computer came with analog joysticks, quite unlike most computers and consoles of the early 1980s. Many games of the era actually worked best with digital input, so [Gadget Reboot] whipped up a converter board
to allow Nintendo gamepads to work with the computer.
The build relies on an
earlier breakout board
that [Gadget Reboot] built in order to read early Nintendo gamepads and output a digital 5 V signal. Meanwhile, the Tandy Color Computer is expecting variable o-5 V signals from the X and Y axis pots in its standard joysticks. To convert the gamepad button presses into voltages for the CoCo, the build uses a CD4066 analogue switch IC. When no controller buttons are pressed, the 4066 is set up to output 2.5 V on both the X and Y axes. Pressing up or down, or left or right on the D-pad, outputs 0 V or 5 V respectively as required. This essentially lets the controller’s D-pad act as a digital joystick for a computer that never actually had one.
It’s a neat hack that might make playing certain games on the Color Computer significantly easier. It’s also just neat to interface a different controller to the old hardware. In the early 80s, computers were simple enough that this could all be achieved with
a minimum of dumb circuitry
.
Thanks to [AnotherMaker] for the tip! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655155",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T19:12:51",
"content": "Perfect for operating your homemade submersible. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6655428",
"author": "raynard",
"timestamp": "2023-06-23T16... | 1,760,372,257.630687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/ask-hackaday-the-turing-test-is-dead-long-live-the-turing-test/ | Ask Hackaday: The Turing Test Is Dead: Long Live The Turing Test! | Al Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"chatbot",
"turing test"
] | Alan Turing proposed a test for machine intelligence that no longer works. The idea was to have people communicate over a terminal, with another real person and with a computer. If the computer is intelligent, Turing mused, most people will incorrectly identify the computer as a human. Clearly, with the advent of modern chatbots, that test is now broken. Despite the “AI” moniker, chatbots aren’t sentient or even pre-sentient, but they certainly seem that way. An AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, is
proposing a new test
: The AI has to take a $100,000 budget and earn $1,000,000.
We were a little bemused at this. By that measure, most of us aren’t intelligent, either, and it seems like this is a particularly capitalistic idea. We could probably write an Excel script that studied mutual fund performance and pull off the same trick, given enough time for the investment to mature. Is it intelligent? No. Besides, even humans who have demonstrated they can make $1,000,000 often sell their companies and start new ones that fail. How often does the AI have to succeed before we grant it person status?
Alan Turing never imagined chatbots when he proposed his famous test
But all this begs the question: What is the new test for sentience? We don’t have a ready answer, and neither does science fiction. Everything from The Wizard of Oz to Star Trek has dealt with the question of when a robot or a computer is a being and not a machine.
Sentient AI and Pornography
As Justice Stewart famously said about pornography, “I know it when I see it,” perhaps the same is true here. You would be hard-pressed to say that Commander Data from Star Trek was not sentient, despite the ongoing in-story debate. But why? Because he could solve problems? Because he could love others? Because he could grow and change?
This is a slippery slope. Solving problems isn’t enough. You need to solve problems creatively, and that’s tough to define. Dogs love others, but you don’t consider them truly sentient. All sorts of plants and animals grow and change, so that’s not directly it, either.
Claude Shannon Roots for the Machine
Claude Shannon once said that it was clear machines could think because we are machines, and we think. However, it is far from clear that we understand where that indefinable quality comes from. Shannon thought the human brain had about 10
10
neurons, so if we built that many electronic neurons, we’d have a thinking machine. I’m not so sure that’s true.
That could be akin to someone unfamiliar with the concept of a computer saying, “Of course, a motor can do computation because your printer has a motor in it, and it also clearly does computations.” There may be mechanisms at work in our brains we do not yet fully understand. For example, the idea that our brains
may be quantum computers
is enjoying a resurgence, although the idea is still controversial.
IBM and DARPA have been building brain-analog computers for several years as part of project
SyNAPSE
. At last report, there was still no true electronic brain forthcoming.
Over to You
So what do you think? How can we tell if a computer is sentient or just a stochastic parrot? If you can’t tell, does it matter? For that matter, can you prove that any other human being other than yourself isn’t
a clever simulation
? Or, for that matter, can you prove it about yourself? Perhaps we should ask ChatGPT to develop a new Turing test. Or, fearing the implosion of the universe, perhaps not. | 89 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655114",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T17:09:21",
"content": "I actually DO consider a dog – and most, if not all other animals – sentient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655128",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,257.828828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/repairing-a-25000-hp-workstation-to-run-pac-man/ | Repairing A $25,000 HP Workstation To RunPac-Man | Robin Kearey | [
"classic hacks",
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"gpib",
"HP",
"HP9836C",
"workstation"
] | The microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s turned computers from expensive machines aimed at professionals into consumer products found in the average household. But there always remained a market for professional users, who bought equipment that was so far ahead of consumer gear it seemed to belong in a different decade. While a home computer enthusiast in 1981 might fork out a few hundred dollars for an 8-bit machine with 64 KB of memory, a professional could already buy a 32-bit workstation with 2.8 megabytes of RAM for the price of a brand-new sports car. [Tech Tangents] got his hands on one of those machines,
an HP Series 200 9863C from 1981, and managed to get it up and running
.
The machine came in more-or-less working condition. The display cable turned out to be dodgy, but since it was just a straight-through sub-D cable it was easily replaced. Similarly, the two 5.25″ floppy drives were standard Tandon TM100-2As which [Tech Tangents] had some experience in repairing, although these specific units merely needed a thorough cleaning to remove forty years’ worth of dust.
After a thorough scrub of all the internal boards, the machine duly booted from its accompanying BASIC boot disk. [Tech Tangents] got the machine with a few disks containing some basic utilities as well as some graphics demos, which were certainly impressive for their age. Getting the computer to run anything else turned out to be a bit of a headache however: since this was not a mass-market machine, very little software has survived into today’s online archives. And even what little is available is difficult to transfer to the machine, since HP used several floppy formats over the years that are largely incompatible with each other, making disk images useless unless you happen to have the exact same type of floppy drive that they were made on.
One way to solve this issue is to use the HP’s GPIB bus to connect it to a reasonably modern PC with a GPIB interface card, then run a program called
HPDRIVE
that emulates a GPIB hard drive to the old workstation. This worked fine for at least some of the disk images [Tech Tangents] found at the
HP Computer Museum
, allowing him to run a few more graphics demos, including a rather crude version of
Pac-Man
. Games were anyway not high on developers’ priority lists, since this was a computer aimed at serious users who wouldn’t spend $25,000 on a machine just for fun. It’s a neat twist of irony then, that the MAME video game emulator works perfectly fine
emulating some of those ancient HP workstations
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654701",
"author": "Darren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T07:55:40",
"content": "You have a typo in the link – it’s a 9836.HP was still using these in the late 90s as part of a phase noise measurement system in their test & measurement support centre. I recently came across a photo of ... | 1,760,372,257.892524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/blood-pressure-monitor-for-under-1/ | Blood Pressure Monitor For Under $1 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"app",
"blood pressure",
"camera",
"finger",
"flashlight",
"Imaging",
"medical",
"monitor",
"processing",
"smartphone"
] | Medical equipment is not generally known for being inexpensive, with various imaging systems usually weighing in at over a million dollars, and even relatively simpler pieces of technology like digital thermometers, stethoscopes, and pulse oximeters coming in somewhere around $50. As the general pace of technological improvement continues on we expect marginal decreases in costs, but every now and then a revolutionary piece of technology will
drop the cost of something like a blood pressure monitor
by over an order of magnitude.
Typically a blood pressure monitor involves a cuff that pressurizes against a patient’s arm, and measures the physical pressure of the blood as the heart forces blood through the area restricted by the cuff. But there are some ways to measure blood pressure by proxy, instead of directly. This device, a small piece of plastic with a cost of less than a dollar, attaches to a smartphone near the camera sensor and flashlight. By pressing a finger onto the device, the smartphone uses the flashlight and the camera in tandem to measure subtle changes in the skin, which can be processed in an app to approximate blood pressure.
The developers of this technology note that it’s not a one-to-one substitute for a traditional blood pressure monitor, but it is extremely helpful for those who might not be able to afford a normal monitor and who might otherwise go undiagnosed for high blood pressure. Almost half of adults in the US alone have issues relating to blood pressure, so just getting information at all is the hurdle this device is attempting to overcome. And, we’ll count it as a win
any time medical technology becomes more accessible, more inexpensive, or more open-source
. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654651",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T02:20:47",
"content": "And the good news is, once the app records your blood pressure, it will store it on the cloud for insurance companies to track your health.(That’s why I stopped using blood pre... | 1,760,372,258.041542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/modular-keyboard-and-custom-game-controller/ | Modular Keyboard And Custom Game Controller | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"controller",
"customizable",
"flight simulator",
"gamepad",
"gaming",
"hid",
"keyboard",
"modular",
"raspberry pi",
"usb"
] | Most video games, whether on console or PC, have standardized around either a keyboard and mouse or an analog controller of some sort, with very little differences between various offerings from the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or even Valve. This will get most of us through almost all video games, but for those looking to take their gameplay up a notch or who are playing much more complex games, certain specialized controllers are available, but they might not meet everyone’s specific needs.
Thanks to this custom, modular keyboard
anyone should be able to make exactly the controller they need.
The device features a grid of 15 interfaces where modules like buttons, potentiometers, encoders, and joysticks can be placed. Each module can be customized to a significant extent on their own, and they can be placed anywhere on the grid. The modules themselves can be assigned to trigger keyboard presses or gamepad motions depending on the needs of the user. A Raspberry Pi handles the inputs and translates them to the computer, so in that regard it functions no differently than a standard keyboard or gamepad would. Programming is done by sending commands via a USB serial port, with the ability to save various configurations as well.
The modular controller is open-source in terms of hardware and software, with easy assembly using through-hole components and a customizable 3D printed cover for anyone looking to make their own. The project’s creator [Daniel] had flight simulators in mind when designing the device, which often benefit from having more specialized controllers, but any game with lots of specific inputs from Starcraft to League of Legends could benefit from a custom controller or keyboard like this. Flight simulators are more often the targets of specialized and unique controls, though, like
this custom yoke
or
this physical control panel
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654644",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T01:03:30",
"content": "Have Raspberry Pies become so rare R Pi Picos are now mistaken for the original? ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654694",
"author": "Jo... | 1,760,372,257.978758 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/a-volumetric-display-with-a-star-wars-look-and-feel/ | A Volumetric Display With AStar WarsLook And Feel | Dan Maloney | [
"hardware"
] | [
"benq",
"dlp",
"POV",
"sync",
"volumetric",
"voxel"
] | It may not exactly be what [Princess Leia] used to beg [Obi-Wan] for help, but
this
Star Wars
-inspired volumetric display
is still a pretty cool hack, and with plenty of extra points for style.
In some ways, [Maker Mac]’s design is a bit like a 3D printer for images, in that it displays slices of a solid model onto closely spaced planar surfaces. Sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of clever details in this build. The main component is a lightly modified LCD projector, a DLP-based machine with an RGB color wheel. By removing the color wheel from the projector’s optical path and hooking its sync sensor up to the control electronics, [Mac] is able to increase the framerate of the display, at the cost of color, of course. Other optical elements include a mirror to direct the projected images upwards, and a shutter harvested from an old pair of 3D TV glasses.
For the screen, here’s where [Mac]’s design got really clever. Using a pair of 3D-printed compliant mechanisms, the motion from a pair of voice coils harvested from old speakers drives a translucent screen across a vertical distance of about 25 mm. Driven with a sine wave of about 30 Hz, the images from the projector can be synced up to display twelve separate layers across the swept volume. It might seem like a very shallow display, but it looks deeper in the videos below.
[Mac] also put a ton of work into the toolchain to get STL models sliced into images and mapped onto the various layers of the display. As for the
Star Wars
part, that’s pretty much all about the enclosure, and we think [Mac] pretty much nailed it. As he admits himself, a lot of it is just greebling, but the details really sell it. Disguising the USB connection as a mechanical data port was a nice touch, and the weathering and wearing effects work well, too.
We’ve seen
similar displays
before, but the whole combination of clever mechanism, extensive toolchain, and stylish enclosure makes for a nice presentation on this one. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654600",
"author": "NoWay",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T21:05:35",
"content": "looking at 3d on 2d looks 2d.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654603",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T21:18:32",
"content":... | 1,760,372,258.096134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/hackaday-prize-2023-sleek-macro-pad-makes-2fa-a-little-easier/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Sleek Macro Pad Makes 2FA A Little Easier | Dan Maloney | [
"contests",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"2FA",
"cherry mx",
"ESP32-S3",
"Feather",
"ntp",
"RFC 6238",
"salt",
"tft",
"totp",
"two-factor authenication",
"usb hid"
] | We all know the drill when it comes to online security — something you know, and something you have. But when the “something you have” is a two-factor token in a keyfob at the bottom of a backpack, or an app on your phone that’s buried several swipes and taps deep, inconvenience can stand in the way of adding that second level of security. Thankfully,
this “2FA Sidecar”
is the perfect way to lower the barrier to using two-factor authentication.
That’s especially true for a heavy 2FA user like [Matt Perkins], who typically needs to log in and out of multiple 2FA-protected networks during his workday. His Sidecar is similar in design to many of the macro pads we’ve seen, with a row of Cherry MX key switches, a tiny TFT display — part of an ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather — and a USB HID interface. Pressing one of the five keys on the pad generates a new time-based one-time password (TOTP) and sends it over USB as typed keyboard characters; the TOTP is also displayed on the TFT if you prefer to type it in yourself.
As for security, [Matt] took pains to keep things as tight as possible. The ESP32 only connects to network services to keep the time synced up for proper TOTP generation, and to serve up a simple web configuration page so that you can type in the TOTP salts and service name to associate with each key. He also discusses the possibility of protecting the ESP32’s flash memory by burning the e-fuses, as well as the pros and cons of that maneuver. The video below shows the finished project in action.
This is definitely a “use at your own risk” proposition, but we tend to think that in the right physical environment, anything that makes 2FA more convenient is probably a security win. If you need to brush up on the risks and benefits of 2FA, you should probably
start here
.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654630",
"author": "Erik",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T23:27:20",
"content": "This looks neat and all, but if the alternative is a two-factor token “at the bottom of your backpack”, all you need is a lanyard.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,257.939251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/jack-in-the-2023-cyberdeck-challenge-starts-now/ | Jack In, The 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge Starts Now | Tom Nardi | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2023 Cyberdeck Challenge"
] | The modern laptop is truly a masterpiece of engineering, craming an incredible amount of processing power into a thin and lightweight package that can run for hours on its internal batteries, all for just a few hundred bucks. Combine that with the ubiquitous smartphone, and it’s safe to say that the state of mobile computing has never been better.
Despite this, over the last several years we’ve watched cyberdecks go from a few one-off examples to a vibrant community of truly personal computing devices. While there are some exceptions, most of them are larger, more expensive, and less portable than what’s available on the commercial market. But that’s not the point — a cyberdeck should be a reflection of the hacker that built it, not the product of a faceless megacorp.
Which is why we’re excited to officially announce
the 2023 Cyberdeck Challenge
, starting now and running all summer through to August 15th.
Whether it’s a ridiculously over the top wearable that wouldn’t look out of place in a cyberpunk anime or a pocket-sized gadget that you operate with a handful of unlabeled buttons, we want to see it. All we ask is that it be a functional device capable of some useful amount of computing, anything beyond that is up to you. Turn in one of the top three designs, and you’ll earn a $150 USD DigiKey shopping spree, just what you need to pack a few extra bells and whistles into your rig.
Conqueror the Sprawl
Beyond the top three winners, we’ll also be looking for builds which best exemplify the following special categories:
Icebreaker:
While there’s nothing wrong with building a deck for the aesthetic, we’re especially interested in practical builds. Does your deck have some special capabilities that make it stand out from your average laptop?
ROM Construct:
Some of the most impressive decks are the ones that have been customized to the point that they can only realistically be used by their creators. If the average person wouldn’t even know how to turn your deck on, this might be the category for you.
Dex Dealer:
Safely powering a portable cyberdeck can be a challenge, especially as their computational capabilities increase. Decks considered for this category will feature either unique or particularly well implemented power sources, allowing their jockeys to connect to the net wherever they are.
Turing Police:
Artificial intelligence is here to stay, so you might as well make the best of it. This category is for decks that utilize some form of AI, or perhaps were even designed or built with the assistance of an AI.
A Consensual Hallucination
Need some inspiration? We might be a bit shy of the “billions of legitimate operators” that William Gibson imagined in Neuromancer, but there’s
certainly no shortage of cyberdecks here on Hackaday
. While the idea is not to replicate another hacker’s design exactly, browsing through the
incredible entries we saw in last year’s cyberdeck contest should get you on the right track
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654592",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T20:06:10",
"content": "Awesome! Was looking for an excuse to learn more about embedded linux, hope this is it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654612",
"author": "Lee",
... | 1,760,372,258.155499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/punched-cards-are-in-the-cloud-with-this-arduino/ | Punched Cards Are In The Cloud, With This Arduino | Jenny List | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"lisp",
"Punched Card",
"punched card reader"
] | Grizzled veterans of the computing industry will relate stories of submitting projects on stacks of punched cards, something those of us who stored their 8-bit works on audio cassettes could only imagine. But for those who fancy experimenting with the format
it’s still possible to make a basic card reader using LEDs and light sensors
, as [Nino Ivanov] has done using an Arduino Uno as the brains. And these aren’t just for show, each of his cards holds a LISP program that runs in a cloud service.
The Uno does the job of reading, passing its data over its USB serial port to a tablet. On the tablet the serial data is piped to a cloud API to a LISP interpreter. It seems a needlessly complex way to run a factorial program and it’s certainly a little over the top, but on the other hand we love it as a glorious combination of the old and the new. With only 23 characters per card it’s quite an impressive feat to even fit a program on the format, perhaps writing code to fit on minimalist punched cards like this could become a programming challenge in its own right for a generation accustomed to mega-and gigabytes.
If you fancy a go yourself,
this isn’t the first punched card reader we’ve shown you
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654558",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T16:50:35",
"content": "Oh, the dispair of dropping a box of cards with minutes to go before deadline.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654567",
"author": "MartyK",
"ti... | 1,760,372,258.302056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/dingoquadruped-is-a-cheap-canine-like-robot/ | DingoQuadruped Is A Cheap Canine-Like Robot | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"quadruped",
"robot",
"robot dog",
"robotics"
] | Robot humanoids are cool, but also a bit hard to make work as they only have two legs to stand on. Four-legged robots can be a bit more approachable.
The Dingo Quadruped aims to be just such an open-source platform for teaching and experimentation purposes.
The robot is based on the Stanford Pupper, a robot platform
we’ve discussed previously
. It bears a design not dissimilar from the popular Spot robot from Boston Dynamics. Where Spot costs
tens of thousands of dollars
, though, Dingo is far cheaper, intended for cheap production by students and researchers for less than $1,500.
The robot weighs around 3 kg, and is approximately the size of a shoebox. Control over the robot is via a wireless game controller. Each leg uses three high-torque servo motors, which are elegantly placed to reduce the inertia of the leg itself. A Raspberry Pi runs the show, with an Arduino Nano also onboard for interfacing analog sensors or additional hardware. The chassis itself has a highly modular design, with a focus on making it easy to add additional hardware.
If you want to get started experimenting with quadruped robots, the Dingo might just be the perfect platform for you. Video after the break. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654885",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T20:10:00",
"content": "I see a lot of rigid bipeds talking, but not much quadruped action … will it walk or will it blend ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654915",
... | 1,760,372,258.411004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/3d-printed-machine-shows-how-braiding-is-done/ | 3D Printed Machine Shows How Braiding Is Done | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Engineering"
] | [
"braid",
"braiding",
"shuttle",
"spool",
"tensioner",
"thread"
] | If there’s something more fascinating than watching cleverly engineered industrial machines do their work, we don’t know what it could be. And at the top of that list has to be the machines that do braiding. You’ve probably seen them, with spools of thread or wire dancing under and around each other in an endless ballet that somehow manages to weave a perfect braid. It’s kind of magical.
For those who haven’t seen such a thing, now’s your chance, with
this twelve-spool braiding machine
. The building methods that [Fraens] used — mainly 3D printing and laser-cut acrylic — make the workings on this machine plain, even to those of us who never learned to manually braid even three strands. It’s far easier to understand by watching the video below than by trying to describe it, but basically, each vertical supply spool runs along a continuous track around a central point by a series of six meshed gears, passing under each other as they progress around the carousel and forming the braid.
There are a ton of details that go into making this work. Chief among them is the thread tensioning mechanism, which is a lever arm and spring-loaded axle that lives at the very center of each spool. The gears that form the inside-outside tracks are quite clever too, as are the worm-gear-driven takeup reel and output tensioner. We also appreciated the gate used to load the spool carriers into the track.
We can recall a couple of braiding machines before, including
this one made entirely from Lego Technics
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654872",
"author": "David Taylor",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T18:57:42",
"content": "it’s called a maypole machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654916",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T23:46:27",
"... | 1,760,372,258.365601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/congratulations-to-our-op-amp-challenge-winners/ | Congratulations To Our Op-Amp Challenge Winners! | Elliot Williams | [
"contests",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"analog",
"challenge",
"contest",
"op-amp"
] | The real world is analog, and the op-amp is the indispensable building block of many analog circuits. We wanted to give you analog fanatics out there a chance to shine and to encourage our digital brothers and sisters to dip their toes in the murky waters where ones and zeroes define the ends of a spectrum rather than representing the only choice. Hence, we presented the
Op Amp Challenge
. And you did not disappoint!
We received 83 entries, and it was extraordinarily hard to pick the winners. But since we had three $150 DigiKey shopping sprees to give away, our six judges buckled down and picked their favorites. Whether or not you’ve got the Golden Rules of the ideal op-amp tattooed on your arm, you’ll enjoy looking through
all of the projects here
. But without further ado…
The Winners
[Craig]’s
Op Art
is an X-Y voltage generator to plug into an oscilloscope and make classic Lissajous and other spirograph-like images, and it’s all done in analog. Maybe it was his incredible documentation, the nice use of a classic three-op-amp tunable oscillator, or the pun hidden in the title. Whatever the case, it wowed our judges and picked up a deserved place in the top three.
Hearkening back to the pre-digital dinosaur days, [Rainer Glaschick]’s
Flexible Analog Computer
is a modular analog computer prototyping system on a breadboard backplane. Since you have to re-wire up an analog computer for your particular, it’s great that [Rainer] gave us a
bunch of examples on his website
as well, including a lunar lander and classic Lorenz attractor demos.
And there was no way that [Chris]’s
interactive analog LED wave array
wouldn’t place in the top three. It’s a huge 2D analog simulation that runs entirely on op-amps, sensing when your hand moves across any part of its surface and radiating waves out from there. You have to admire the massive scale here, and you simply must check out the video of it in action. Glorious!
Honorable Mentions
We wanted to give you plenty of room to strut your stuff, whether that was making something classic, something entirely off the wall, or something that would fit on the measurement bench at the metrology department. So here’s a quick rundown of just some of the projects that we thought were worth a look.
Hyper Precise
[Mark Omo]’s
LOCKDOWN
is a superb lock-in amplifier design and a great demo and explanation of how one works. Essentially, if the signal you want to measure has a periodic component – sits on a carrier wave – then you can use a lock-in amplifier to “tune in” on just the signal, and the non-periodic noise drops right out. This is an amazing build and a shoo-in for the hyper-precise mention. Plus, what a snazzy circuit board!
[Floydfish]’s ultra-low noise amplifier “
Take a ‘NAP’ and enjoy a moment of silence
” is a classic design, but as is always the case with precision builds, a lot depends on the details of how you do it. Here, a copper-clad cage with Mu-metal shielding is put inside a nicely labeled cookie tin to get the job done. The design pushes the chosen precision op-amp to its limits.
Oddballs
[MaBe42]’s circuit sculpture
Chaotic Lighthouse
struck a chord with our judges, bringing Sprott’s chaos circuit into duty to drive a bunch of LEDs. Make sure you
check out the video
.
Until reading up on [Bruce Land]’s
Model nonlinear biochem reactions using opamps
, we had no idea what a
repressilator
was. And honestly, we’re still not
sure
. But [Bruce] made a purpose-built analog computer to simulate this ring of genes that suppress each other’s expression. Whoah.
And [Jarrett Cigainero]’s
ADS-B on a real RADAR CRT
only uses a little bit of op-amp to go from the DACs to the screen, but we just love the sweet phosphor glow, so we’re going with it.
The Classics
One of the absolute classic op-amp applications is simple signal level scaling, and [David]’s
ultra-low-cost pH amplifier circuit for 3.3V MCUs
is a great example. [Florian Dirnberger]’s nice
Triangle-wave oscillator
gets the job done and is very well documented. [555TechLab] implemented a classic 0 V – 10 V variable voltage reference with
one of the only 741 builds
in the whole contest. And if all this op-amp stuff makes you want to know how they work under the hood, check out [Mitsuru Yamada]’s
CMOS Homemade Operational Amplifier
for a non-traditional take.
Amazing Analog
We haven’t run an analog design contest in years, and we’re guessing that there was a lot of pent-up demand, and we were really floored by the number and quality of entries here. Be sure to check out the
big list of contest entries
because we’re certain you’ll find something else that strikes your particular funny bone. Don’t get me started on the audio effects, for instance!
Congratulations to everyone who entered, especially those who took home a prize. And as always, thanks to DigiKey for sponsoring. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654871",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T18:52:56",
"content": "The winner proudly displaying a bodge wire just makes it better! Congrats to all!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654888",
"author": "Leander... | 1,760,372,258.478782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/no-frills-autonomous-lawnmower-gets-the-job-done/ | No Frills Autonomous Lawnmower Gets The Job Done | Danie Conradie | [
"home hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ardumower",
"ardupilot",
"autonomous lawnmower"
] | [Nathan] needed an autonomous mower to help on the farm, so he
built his own
without breaking the bank. It might not be the prettiest machine, but it’s been keeping his roads, fences and yard clear for over a year. In the video after the break, he gives a detailed breakdown of its build and function.
It’s built around a around a simple angle-iron frame with a normal internal combustion push mower at it’s core. 18″ bicycle-type wheels are mounted at each corner, each side driven by an e-bike motors via long bicycle chains. Nathan had to add some guards around his wheel sprockets to prevent the chains slipping of due to debris.
Al the electronics and the battery is simply mounted on top of the frame, away from the motors to avoid magnetic interference with the compass. The brain of the system is a Pixhawk autopilot with a GPS module running
ArduPilot
, a staple for most of the autonomous
rovers
,
boats
and
aircraft
we’ve seen. The control station is just a Windows laptop running Mission Planner, with a 900 MHz radio link for comms with the mower. [Nathan] also gives a overview of how he uses a spreadsheet to set up waypoints.
This lawnmower’s straightforward design and use of easy-to-find components make it an excellent source of inspiration for anyone looking to build their own functional machine. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654830",
"author": "PEBKAC",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T16:16:41",
"content": "All wheel drive, tank steer, and quite a long wheelbase!I can’t help but think that it’d turn smoother with an actual steering rack (or two wheel tank steer and some casters)",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,260.132218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/in-praise-of-rpn-with-python-or-c/ | In Praise Of RPN (with Python Or C) | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"c++",
"python",
"RPN"
] | HP calculators, slide rules, and Forth all have something in common: reverse polish notation or RPN. Admittedly, slide rules don’t really have RPN, but you work problems on them the same way you do with an RPN calculator. For whatever reason, RPN didn’t really succeed in the general marketplace, and you might wonder why it was ever a thing. The biggest reason is that RPN is very easy to implement compared to working through proper algebraic, or infix, notation. In addition, in the early years of computers and calculators, you didn’t have much to work with, and people were used to using slide rules, so having something that didn’t take a lot of code that matched how users worked anyway was a win-win.
What is RPN?
If you haven’t encountered RPN before, it is an easy way to express math without ambiguity. For example, what’s 5 + 3 * 6? It’s 23 and not 48. By order of operations you know that you have to multiply before you add, even if you wrote down the multiplication second. You have to read through the whole equation before you can get started with math, and if you want to force the other result, you’ll need parentheses.
With RPN, there is no ambiguity depending on secret rules or parentheses, nor is there any reason to remember things unnecessarily. For instance, to calculate our example you have to read all the way through once to figure out that you have to multiply first, then you need to remember that is pending and add the 5. With RPN, you go left to right, and every time you see an operator, you act on it and move on. With RPN, you would write
3 6 * 5 +
.
While HP calculators were the most common place to encounter RPN, it wasn’t the only place. Friden calculators had it, too. Some early computers and calculators supported it but didn’t name it. Some Soviet-era calculators used it, too, including the famous Elektronika B3-34, which was featured in a science fiction story in a Soviet magazine aimed at young people in 1985. The story set problems that had to be worked on the calculator.
How to Do Algebraic
It is illustrative to see how complex it is to do algebraic expressions the “normal” way. The usual method is to use two stacks and a precedence table. The steps are:
1. Grab a token
2. If the token is a number, push it on the value stack.
3. If the token is an operator, check to see if it is lower in precedence than the top of the operator stack (e.g., this is a plus sign, and the top of the stack is for multiplication). If so, do the indicated operation from the top of the stack, update the value stack, and then repeat this step.
4. Once the current operator is higher in precedence than the top of the operator stack, push it on the operator stack.
5. Repeat all steps until you are done, and then work through whatever is left on the stack.
Usually, you have a low precedence start marker and a high precedence end marker that are fake tokens. Open parenthesis is also high precedence. After that, you have the operators in their usual order. So consider (5+2) + 6*3. If you add the start and end markers (I’ll use []), you get [(5+2)+6*3].
After processing the first plus sign, the operator stack will contain: [(+, and the value stack will have 5 (and, soon, 5 2). The close parenthesis will cause 5+2 to calculate and remove the opening match. So then the value stack will have 7, and the operator stack will be empty except for the start marker.
When you read the end marker, the value stack will be 7 6 3, and the operator stack will be [+ *. Since the end marker is higher than everything else, step 3 will cause it first to compute 6*3, leaving the stacks to contain 7 18 and [+. Another pass through step 3 leaves 25 and [ which matches the ], and the operation is complete.
While this isn’t that hard, it does take two stacks and a table. The stacks can be arbitrarily long, although in practice, that isn’t necessary. But it still seems like a lot of work.
Python RPN
Processing RPN, on the other hand, is easy. If you see a number, push it on the value stack. If you see an operator, pop off enough stuff from the stack, do the operation, and put the result back on the stack. In Python, this is very simple (see the entire code on this
gist
):
# parse an RPN string and execute it
def parse(self,s):
tokens=s.split()
for token in tokens:
try:
num=float(token)
rpn.push(num)
except ValueError:
if token=="x" or token=="X": # exchange top of stack
exchange()
elif token=="?": # dump stack
self.dump()
elif token=="+":
rpn.add()
elif token=='-':
rpn.sub()
elif token=="*":
rpn.mul()
elif token=="/":
rpn.div()
elif token[0]=="!":
self.vars[token[1:]]=self.peek() # store tos in var
elif token[0]=="@":
self.push(self.vars[token[1:]]) # push var to tos
else:
raise Exception("Unknown operator or number:" + token)
This handles the four basic math functions and a few special operators to exchange the two top stack elements or display the stack. It can also store named variables
(!somevar
) and use them again later (
@somevar
). Prefer C? There is a simple version in the
gist
, also.
Why Not?
If you need to represent math in a program, you might consider RPN. It is fast to write and easy on resources. Of course, you can just as easily make the infix algorithm spit out RPN code instead of doing the work itself, but there isn’t much benefit to that unless you are writing a compiler. Going the other way is possible, too, but a little harder.
Then again, if you don’t mind having a lot more power and you are using Python, you might think about using
eval(
) for infix notation. However, since it can execute anything Python, that’s not the right answer for all programs, especially not those that process user input. Not to mention, that’s notoriously hard to do in compiled languages like C.
Some pretty beefy computer/calculators
used RPN
. Or, you can
homebrew
one. | 39 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654789",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T14:19:35",
"content": "Its Friden, not Frieden.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654838",
"author": "Al Williams",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T16:45:10",
... | 1,760,372,260.486387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/fuel-cell-turns-pet-and-carbon-dioxide-into-useful-chemicals/ | Fuel Cell Turns PET And Carbon Dioxide Into Useful Chemicals | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"carbon dioxide",
"carbon sequestration",
"pet",
"syngas"
] | The University of Cambridge has a novel fuel cell design that can grab CO
2
from the atmosphere or industrial processes and, combined with waste PET plastic, provides syngas and glycolic acid, a product used in some cosmetics. You can
read about the device in a recent paper
.
The strange juxtaposition of CO
2
and PET is no accident. The processes work together with solar energy. There is no external voltage required, but the cell operates as a photocell to produce electricity from the solar energy. Removing both CO
2
and waste plastic from the environment is a good thing.
Syngas is hydrogen and carbon monoxide and finds use in producing methanol and ammonia. It also will work as a fuel that can replace gasoline when gasoline isn’t available. It has a few other uses, like reducing iron ore to sponge iron and even converting methanol to gasoline.
The technology has a ways to go to operate at scale, and we doubt this will ever be a consumer item since you are unlikely to need syngas or glycolic acid in your home or vehicle. But it still is a promising technique to reduce both greenhouse gas and plastic waste in one swoop.
We’ve looked at other ways to grab carbon dioxide and
make it useful
. If you want to make your own syngas, there are
other ways to do it
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654744",
"author": "Grawp",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T11:27:59",
"content": "We have had the ability to go from CO2, water and electricity (with no other consumable) to methane/gasoline/kerosine/ for almost a century. No PET needed.For example not so recent HELMETH project demonstra... | 1,760,372,260.348775 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/how-to-land-a-model-rocket-vertically/ | How To Land A Model Rocket Vertically | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"model rocket",
"rocket",
"vertical landing"
] | Perhaps most readers will remember when they saw the first SpaceX demonstration of a rocket stage landing vertically on the pad under control. It’s something of a shock to be reminded that their first suborbital demonstration “hops” were around a decade ago, and how quickly what was once so special has become commonplace. We’re now in the era of the more complex model rockets having the same capability, with [BPS.space] managing it last year, and now [TTS Aerospace] sharing
a video showing how they achieved the same feat
.
The basics of the system revolve around a directed rocket nozzle, but to make it work is a lot more complex than simply hooking up a flight controller and calling it good. The steps in arriving at a landable rocket are examined, with plenty of failures shown along the way. Even the legs are more complex than they might appear, having to combine lightness, ease of unfurling under the power of elastic, and enough strength and give to survive a rough landing.
Those of us from countries where model rocketry is a highly licensed activity can only look on in envy at these projects, and we look forward to seeing where this avenue leads next.
We covered the [BPS.space] rocket last year, should you be interested
. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654703",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2023-06-21T08:16:26",
"content": "“The basics of the system revolve around a directed rocket nozzle”Well, technically, to revolve, you have to direct at least two rocket nozzles.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,260.405845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/dual-channel-pov-display-also-has-nixie-tubes/ | Dual Channel POV Display Also Has Nixie Tubes | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"POV display",
"steampunk"
] | What’s a
tachyscope
? According to [Daniel Ross], it is an animated display from an alternate timeline circa 1880. The
real ones
, of course, didn’t have LEDs and microcontrollers. The control unit looks like an old-timey radio, complete with Nixie tubes. The spinning part has blue and white LEDs, each accepting data from one of two serial ports. You can select to see data from one port, the other, or both. You can see the amazing contraption in the video below.
The LEDs are surface mounted and placed inside a glass test tube. Each display has its own processor. The project appears to have a PCB, but it is just a piece of fiberglass with a color print on top of it and holes drilled with a rotary tool. The board has no actual conductors — everything is point-to-point wiring. The base of the unit is old cookware. The
slip ring
is pretty interesting, too. It uses an old video tape head, D-cell batteries cut up, and contacts from a relay.
You might remember [Daniel] from his steampunk
Victorian computer project
, including a punk teletype and a magic eye tube. If you want some
theory on these kinds of displays
, we can help. If you just want a simple display, it
doesn’t have to cost much
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655136",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T18:24:19",
"content": "Contraction -> contraption?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6655171",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T20:38:01",
"content": "“he... | 1,760,372,260.295483 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/china-plans-its-own-megaconstellation-to-challenge-starlink/ | China Plans Its Own Megaconstellation To Challenge Starlink | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"china",
"guowang",
"gw",
"military",
"satellite internet",
"Satellites",
"Starlink"
] | Satellite internet used to be a woeful thing. Early networks relied on satellites in geostationary orbits, with high latency and minimal bandwidth keeping user demand low. That was until Starlink came along, and provided high-speed, low-latency internet access using a fleet of thousands of satellites in Low Earth orbit.
Starlink has already ruffled feathers due to concerns around
light pollution
and
space junk
in particular. Now, it appears that
China may be readying its own competing constellation
to avoid being crowded out of low orbits by the increasingly-popular service.
Getting Crowded
SpaceX has pioneered mass-launch systems to deliver 52 Starlink satellites into orbit on a single mission. Such scale is key to getting thousands of satellites in the air in a quick and affordable manner.
SpaceX
Starlink’s plans to launch on the order of 42,000 satellites has Chinese authorities concerned. In response, the country has reportedly developed its own domestic plan to launch 12,992 satellites under a project codenamed “Guowang” or “GW”, according to a professor at the People’s Liberation Army Space Engineering University quoted by
the
South China Morning Press.
The satellites would form the basis of China’s own national satellite internet network, akin to the efforts by SpaceX and
OneWeb
. According to
Space News,
the new network will absorb earlier plans by various Chinese space contractors to create a unified national network. One of the project’s alleged aims is to secure space for Chinese satellites in low orbits before Starlink satellites occupy the area. The news comes from a paper published in a Chinese journal concerning potential anti-Starlink efforts in space. Furthermore, the paper proposes that satellites in the GW constellation could be equipped with “anti-Starlink” payloads, such as to surveil the operation of Starlink satellites at close range.
The paper noted that there were concerns that the high number of satellites planned for the Starlink constellation could overwhelm China’s efforts to monitor and track their activity. Researchers highlighted fears that Starlink satellites could be used as maneuverable weapons to strike targets in orbit, or to surveil the space environment. It bears noting that Starlink was primarily developed as a civilian communications system, though it does have significant military applications like most communications systems do. By sheer virtue of their extreme number and their manuverability, Starlink satellites pose a risk that others simply don’t. SpaceX has also been contracted by the US to develop military satellites, further raising the hackles of foreign countries.
It’s this reasoning that prompted researchers to explore potential countermeasures
to disrupt or suppress Starlink satellites in orbit.
In a military sense, current anti-satellite countermeasures simply wouldn’t be practical to destroy a megaconstellation of over 40,000 satellites. Using current missiles for the job would create enough space junk to seriously frustrate a wide range of space operations, recalling
the dreaded Kessler syndrome.
Instead, however, if another country had its own fleet of thousands of satellites in similar orbits with appropriate countermeasures, it may be better placed to disrupt their operation in other ways. Research efforts into anti-Starlink countermeasures are in their early stages, and anything truly valuable is likely classified. However, it’s nonetheless worth noting that Chinese scientists are exploring how best the GW constellation could counter the perceived military threat of Starlink.
Civilian Concerns
Starlink has already raised multiple issues – like light trails – that only become apparent when you launch thousands of satellites. China now hopes to do the same.
NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/CTIO/AURA/DELVE, CC-BY-SA-4.0
The GW satellites would consist of a variety of sub constellations operating from 500 to 1,145 kilometers in altitude, in inclinations from 30 to 85 degrees. That’s right in the realm of Starlink’s operational region, which operates three shells of satellites in orbits around 340, 550, and 1,110 kilometers. Starlink currently operates in the Ku, Ka, and E bands, while China’s satellites could yet use a range of different frequencies for communication. Private Chinese space firms have been testing satellites operating in Q, V, and Ka bands, but it is unclear if this work plays a role in the GW project.
The prospect of yet another megaconstellation of satellites also raises new risks for space safety. Recent years have already seen Starlink satellites
narrowly pass a Chinese space station,
and further incidents would be expected as satellite numbers increase. Presently, efforts to limit space junk and orbital debris haven’t come to much, and multiple countries and companies throwing tens thousands of satellites into orbit will only make things worse. Traffic management will also be key to deconflicting potential collisions before they occur. New strategies and technologies may be key in this regard. As it stands, keeping tens of thousands of satellites from hitting each other could overwhelm ground controllers tasked with the job.
Fundamentally, the world is entering a new kind of space race. There’s plenty of orbital real estate up for grabs right now. There is also money to be made by those who can supply high-speed bandwith to civilian and military users around the globe. Chinese interests naturally want a piece of the action, and the military research apparatus is also cognisant of the threat these new systems pose. In much the same way that multiple countries proliferated
a range of satellite positioning systems
, we’re now seeing the same happen with low-earth orbit internet. | 39 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655058",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T14:07:51",
"content": "Lessens less chances of them tampering with Starlink. Although the “great firewall from space” might be a problem.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,260.655944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/the-many-robots-that-ventured-into-the-chernobyl-npp-4-reactor/ | The Many Robots That Ventured Into The Chernobyl NPP #4 Reactor | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Chernobyl",
"Chornobyl",
"remote controlled robot"
] | Before the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP, spelled ‘Chornobyl’ in Ukrainian) disaster in 1986, there had been little need for radiation-resistant robots to venture into high-risk zones.
The MF-2 Joker, also used for clearing debris at the Chernobyl NPP #4 disaster site.
Yet in the aftermath of the massive steam explosion at the #4 reactor that ripped the building apart — and spread radioactive material across the USSR and Europe — such robots were badly needed to explore and provide clean-up services. The robots which were developed and deployed in a rush are the subject of a
recent video
by [The Chornobyl Family].
While some robots were more successful than others, with the MF-2 remote mine handling robot suffering electronic breakdowns, gradually the robots became more refined. As over the years the tasks shifted from disaster management to clean-up and management of the now entombed #4 reactor, so too did the robots. TR-4 and TR-5 were two of the later robots that were developed to take samples of material within the stricken reactor, with many more generations to follow.
The video also reveals the fate of many of these robots. Some are buried in a radioactive disposal site, others are found on the Pripyat terrain, whether set up as a tourist piece, or buried in shrubbery. What’s beyond doubt is that it are these robots that provided invaluable help and saved countless lives, thanks to the engineers behind them. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6655046",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T13:35:52",
"content": "Robodescendents are going to look upon this bit of history and wonder where all the humans went.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655135",
... | 1,760,372,260.250005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/22/inside-digital-calipers/ | Inside Digital Calipers | Al Williams | [
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"caliper",
"capacitive sensing"
] | If you do any kind of machining, 3D printing, or PCB layout, you probably have at least considered buying a pair of calipers. Old-fashioned ones had a dial and were mechanical devices, but lately, digital ones have become quite affordable. We keep meaning to tear a set of ours apart to see what’s inside, but thanks to [learnelectronics],
we don’t have to
— the video below provides a fascinating look at what’s inside a cheap pair of Harbor Freight calipers.
Honestly, it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to figure out how far down a bar you are. The trick is the caliper has to be super accurate. Oddly enough, the cheap calipers examined use capacitors as a sensing element.
There is a long flexible PCB stuck to the sliding part with conductive pads. The display unit is also a printed circuit and manages the battery, the display, and the other half of the capacitive sensor. If you want a more detailed explanation of how the sensor actually works, check out
capsense.com
. If you note, the pattern on the sliding part has traces that look like a square wave, and half have a different phase than the other half. These are the sine plates and the cosine plates. A 100 kHz signal flows through the capacitor, and it is possible to read the direction of travel and the amount of travel easily.
The calipers are very accurate,
but it’s possible to improve
them. A more practical project is to make them
communicate with the outside world
. | 51 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654982",
"author": "daveboltman",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T08:26:01",
"content": "Thanks! Now I don’t have to pull mine apart 😁",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6655088",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-0... | 1,760,372,260.74332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/a-pico-based-zx-spectrum-emulator/ | A Pico-Based ZX Spectrum Emulator | Lewin Day | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"handheld",
"pi pico",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"spectrum",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | The ZX Spectrum was a popular computer of the 8-bit era. Now, it’s possible to emulate this machine on a microcontroller so cheap that it’s literally been given away on the front cover of magazines.
Yes, we’re talking about the Pico ZX Spectrum project.
The project consists of all the necessary code to emulate a ZX Spectrum upon the hardware of the RP2040 microcontroller that makes up
the Raspberry Pi Pico
. The community has then taken this code and run with it, using it as the basis for all manner of different ZX Spectrum builds. If so desired, you can go barebones and use the Pico to run a ZX Spectrum off a breadboard with
HDMI video output
. Alternatively, you can build something like
the PicoZX from [Bobricius].
The handheld computer features a PCB-based housing, along with an LCD and an integrated keyboard. Other configurations support features like USB keyboards, VGA outputs, and working sound output.
It’s great to see a classic 8-bit computer reimagined in all kinds of new tribute form factors. The Spectrum was always beloved for its neat all-in-one design, and there are several modern remixes that riff on that theme. The fact that they can all be powered by a
cheap single-board microcontroller
is all the more astounding. Video after the break. | 23 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654981",
"author": "Marian",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T08:22:23",
"content": "The project from the picture looks like it achieved something I tought was absolutely impossible:Building a computer with a worse keyboard than the original Spectrum.:-)A ZX Spectrum was my first computer.... | 1,760,372,260.195448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/an-unexpected-upset-in-ev-charging-standards/ | An Unexpected Upset In EV Charging Standards | Navarre Bartz | [
"car hacks",
"News"
] | [
"CCS",
"chademo",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"EV charger",
"standards",
"tesla"
] | Last November, Tesla open-sourced parts of its charging infrastructure, not-so-humbly unveiling it as the North American Charging Standard (NACS). It’s finally taking off with
a number of manufacturers
signing on.
Companies launching “standards” based on their previously proprietary technology in opposition to an established alternative usually leads to
standards proliferation
. However, with recent announcements from Ford, GM, and Rivian that they would begin supporting NACS in their vehicles, it seems a new dominant standard is supplanting CCS (and the all-but-dead CHAdeMO) in North America.
As Tesla already has the most extensive charging network on the continent and has begun opening it up for other EVs, it makes sense that other marques would want to support NACS, if nothing else to satiate customer demand for a dead-simple charging experience. Dongles are annoying enough for plugging in an external monitor. Having to mess with one while handling high-power electrical connections is less than ideal, to say the least.
If you want to add NACS to your own EV project, the
standard is here
. We’ve discussed
some of the different standards
before as well as work toward
wirelessly charging EVs
(besides the inductive charger on the EV1). It certainly seems like the time to get in on the ground floor of an EV charging empire with an
army of Charglas
. | 52 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654934",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T03:00:22",
"content": "Since it’s been brewing for months an involves wide collaboration and apparently no proprietary lock in, I am failing so see why it’s either unexpected or an upset.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,260.57477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/21/fpga-breakout-board-for-dip-package-shenanigans/ | FPGA Breakout Board For DIP Package Shenanigans | Lewin Day | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"breadboard",
"breakout board",
"fpga"
] | FPGAs are supremely flexible and powerful devices. However, they usually come in QFP or BGA packages that are altogether difficult for hobbyists to play with. The DIP-FPGA breakout board aims to solve that problem by using a carrier PCB
to put an advanced chip in a friendlier form factor.
The board itself fits a DIP-20 form factor when soldered up with regular-pitch pin headers. It features a MachXO2-1200HC FPGA from Lattice Semiconductor. That’s the same chip as used on similar the TinyFPGA A2. With 18 GPIO, a DIP-20 layout is just about enough pins to take care of business. It’s intended specifically for use on breadboards or via regular IC sockets. There’s also a six-pin programming port laid out on the board that you can use with pogo pins or header connectors as you desire.
If you want to do some fancy signal stuff in an easy-to-prototype form factor, this could be the setup for you. If you want to buy one ready-made, they’re
available on Tindie
for the curious. In the meantime, consider whether
this beefy FPGA Arduino concept
could also propel your next project to greater heights. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654922",
"author": "Todd",
"timestamp": "2023-06-22T00:39:12",
"content": "Looks quite a bit like the Digilent Cmod boards. My favorite form-factor for playing with FPGAs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654952",
"author"... | 1,760,372,260.808393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/the-remoteduino-nano-is-a-tiny-ir-remote-thats-truly-universal/ | The Remoteduino Nano Is A Tiny IR Remote That’s Truly Universal | Robin Kearey | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"atmega328p",
"infrared",
"remote control",
"universal remote"
] | Universal remotes are extremely convenient if they work correctly. But setting them up can be quite a hassle: often, you need to browse through long lists of TV models, key in the codes on the remote with just a blinking LED as confirmation, and then pray that the manufacturer included the correct codes for all your equipment. IR isn’t a very complicated technology, however, so it’s perfectly possible to roll your own universal remote, as [sjm4306] shows in
his latest project, the Remoteduino Nano
. It’s a fully programmable IR remote that gives you maximum flexibility when emulating the codes for those obscure A/V systems scattered around your home.
The remote runs on an ATmega328p in a tiny QFN package, which drives a standard 5 mm IR LED through a transistor. Eight buttons are available to the user, which can be freely mapped to any desired code. A five-pin header is included to program the ATmega through its serial port. However, this was mainly done to help debug – a user who only needs to program the device once would typically use a pogo-pin-based adapter instead.
Currently, codes can only be programmed through the serial port, but there’s also an IR receiver present that can be used to copy codes from an existing remote. [sjm4306] hasn’t implemented this feature in software yet, but will probably do so in a future update of the project’s Arduino sketch. If you’re impatient, you can also have a go at it yourself since all code and the board’s Gerber files are freely available for download.
Its tiny size makes the Remoteduino Nano a convenient tool to keep in your drawer if you like to tinker with A/V systems and keep losing those remotes. The Nano is actually an improved version of
the original Remoteduino project
that [sjm4306] developed a couple of years ago. The problem of a truly universal remote is
one that dates back several decades
, however. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654164",
"author": "Future Bob",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T05:37:25",
"content": "I would love to see his implementation of the receiver IR. There does not seem to be a good drop in library for reading old remotes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,261.279921 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/too-much-git-try-gitless/ | Too Much Git? Try Gitless | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"development",
"Git",
"gitless",
"learn",
"open source",
"simplified",
"software",
"version control"
] | Git has been a powerful tool for software development and version control since the mid ’00s, gaining widespread popularity since then. Originally built by none other than Linus Torvalds for handling Linux kernel development, it’s branched out for use with all kinds of other projects. That being said, it is not the easiest thing to learn how to use, with tons of options, abstract ideas, and non-linear workflows to keep track of. So if you’re new to the system or don’t need all of its vast swath of features, you might want to try out
an alternative like Gitless
.
Thanks to the fact that the original Git is open source, it’s free to modify and use as any user sees fit, and there are plenty of options available. This one aims to simplify many of the features found in the original Git, implementing a tracking system which somewhat automates commits. It also includes a simplified branching system, making it easier to switch between branches and keep better track of all that’s happening in a project. The command line interface is simplified as well, and the entire system is backwards-compatible with Git which means that if you find yourself needing some of the more advanced tools it’s possible to switch between them with relative ease.
For those of us keeping track of our own software projects, who don’t necessarily need the full feature set that the original Git has to offer, this could be a powerful tool that decreases the steep learning curve that Git is known for. It’s definitely a system work diving into, though, regardless of whichever implementation you choose. It’s an effective tool for everything from complex, professional projects to
small hobby projects on the Arduino
. | 48 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654135",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T02:38:32",
"content": "If only Ann and Nancy had been born a little later, maybe we would have had “Gitless”! :-)https://youtu.be/BnI9MdpaMjA",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,261.415576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/hackaday-links-june-18-2023/ | Hackaday Links: June 18, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"architecture",
"Betelgeuse",
"calculator",
"carrier",
"colocation",
"conversion",
"fractional",
"fusion",
"hackaday links",
"imperial",
"infrastructure",
"metric",
"One Wilshire",
"retrocomputer",
"Supernova",
"telecom"
] | Will it or won’t it? That’s the question much on the minds of astronomers, astrophysicists, and the astro-adjacent this week as
Betelgeuse continued its pattern of mysterious behavior
that might portend a supernova sometime soon. You’ll recall that the red giant star in the constellation Orion went through a “great dimming” event back in 2019, where its brightness dipped to 60% of its normal intensity. That was taken as a sign that perhaps the star was getting ready to explode — or rather, that the light from whatever happened to the star 548 years ago finally reached us — and was much anticipated by skywatchers, yours truly included. As it turned out, the dimming was likely caused by Betelgeuse belching forth an immense plume of dust, temporarily obscuring our view of its light. Disappointing.
Those who gave up on the hope of seeing a supernova might have done so too fast, though, because now, the star seems to be swinging the other way and brightening. It briefly became the brightest star in Orion, nearly outshining nearby Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. So what does all this on-again, off-again business mean?
According to Dr. Becky,
a new study — not yet peer-reviewed, so proceed with caution — suggests that the star could go supernova in the next few decades. The evidence for this is completely unrelated to the great dimming event, but by analyzing the star’s long history of variable brightness. The data suggest that Betelgeuse has entered the carbon fusion phase of its life, a period that only lasts on the scale of a hundred years for a star that size. So we could be in for the ultimate fireworks show, which would leave us with a star brighter than the full moon that’s visible even in daylight. And who doesn’t want to see something like that?
Last week, we shared a wonderfully detailed diorama celebrating the 1983 movie
WarGames
, which featured the room where David Lightman nearly started World War III. The attention to detail was spectacular, especially for the tiny model IMSAI 8080 computer, complete with paddle switches and blinkenlights. It was a reminder of the time before the ubiquitous beige box crop of PCs, when machines had a soul, or at least a style. We’re reminded of this fact by
this pictorial guide to computer history
, which shows machines going back to the 1940s. If you can think of an important machine, it’s in this collection, along with some great computer-centric quotes. It’s not clear how photographer James Ball got such beautiful shots, but hats off to him for the effort.
At the risk of starting
yet another war
about metric vs. imperial/traditional/stone age measurement systems, we’ll just stipulate up front on this one that everyone else in the world is right, and we here in the US are wrong. Fine, you win. But, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop using our hogsheads and furlongs anytime soon, especially in the shop, where a lot of us have invested tons of money in fractional-inch tooling. Which is why we were happy to see
this online converter
that automatically finds the six fractional and letter-size drills that correspond to a given metric drill size. The really handy part is that the error is shown too, so you can judge when close enough is close enough. One quibble, though: We’ve never heard of a “1/5th” or “7/9th” drill bit. The fractional system may be screwy, but at least we keep out denominators to powers of two.
And finally, we stumbled across
a video
that highlights perhaps the most important building in the United States. The White House? The Pentagon? The NSA Utah Data Center? No, it’s One Wilshire Boulevard, an aggressively unattractive building in Los Angeles that is neither the first building on Wilshire Boulevard nor even actually on that road. But despite its appearance and confusing address, One Wilshire is home to some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. It’s a “carrier hotel,” a building that houses the infrastructure for major telecom carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, as well as international carriers. There are also data centers for big players like Amazon, Google, and Netflix inside the dumpy 1960s skyscraper. The reason everyone wants in on One Wilshire is that it allows all these systems to easily interconnect to each other, plus it’s pretty close to the landings for a bunch of undersea cables. It’s an interesting look at a vital piece of Internet infrastructure. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654099",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T00:19:31",
"content": "As far as drill bits are concerned, I get confused about which bit size for a pilot hole before tapping threads. I have seen mixtures of decimal, Fractional, and other sizes, s... | 1,760,372,261.874287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/marvin-minskys-2500-logo-computer/ | Marvin Minsky’s 2500 Logo Computer | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"logo",
"marvin minsky",
"turtle"
] | [Prof. Marvin Minsky] is a very well-known figure in the field of computing, having co-founded the MIT AI lab, published extensively on AI and computational intelligence, and, let’s not forget, inventing the confocal microscope and, of course, the useless machine. But did you know he also was a co-developer of the first Logo “turtle,” and developed a computer intended to run Logo applications in an educational environment? After dredging some PDP-10 tapes owned by the MIT Media Lab,
the original schematics for his machine
, the Turtle Terminal TT2500 (a reference to the target price of $2500, in 1970 terms), are now available for you to examine.
Behold the TT2500. You want one, don’t you?
The machine itself was created in an interesting way; by affixing discrete socketed TTL chips to a large panel, some three hundred or so, the interconnect was performed automatically using a computer-controlled wiring machine that read the design from magnetic tape. The 2500 used 16-bit user-definable instructions read from a tiny 4k control store. Instruction microcode was read from a 1k microcode store backed up with 64k of RAM. Unusually, it sported a dual display configuration, with one text display and a second vector display for rendering real-time graphics. The machine was intended to run the Logo programming language developed by [Seymour Papert] and others, but this was impossible due to its tiny control store. Instead, it became a display terminal for a connected computer with sufficient resources. You can read more about this fascinating period of time in AI, the life of [
Minsky
], and others in
this New Yorker article
.
[Lars Brinkhoff] has created a simulation of the TT2500 running atop a PDP11/45 emulator, a demo of which can be seen below. What a fun story! We
covered the passing of the great man back in 2016
, which is well worth another read, we reckon. If you want to relive the useless machine, we’ve seen them ranging from the
simple
to the
complex
.
Thanks to [Stephen ] for the tip! | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654046",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T20:37:32",
"content": "Logo’s a hugely underrated language — underneath the turtle graphics it’s basically a stealth Lisp. It was done a huge disservice by all the 8-bit microcomputer ports that weren’t really powerful enou... | 1,760,372,261.654484 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/better-antennas-via-annealing-simulated/ | Better Antennas Via Annealing (Simulated) | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antennas",
"simulated annealing"
] | If you want to simulate a tic-tac-toe game, that’s easy. You can evaluate every possible move in a reasonable amount of time. Simulating antennas, however, is much harder. [Rosrislav] has been experimenting with using simulated annealing to
iterate antenna designs
, and he shares his progress in a recent blog post.
For many problems, it simply isn’t possible to try all possible inputs to determine what provides the “best” result. Instead of trying every single input or set of inputs, you can try random ones and discard all but the best guesses. Then you make small changes and try again. The only problem is that the algorithm may lock in on a “local maximum” — that is, a relatively high value that isn’t the highest because it forms a peak that isn’t the highest peak. Or, if you are looking for a minimum, you may lock on to a local minimum — same thing.
To combat that, simulated annealing works like annealing a metal. The simulation employs a temperature that cools over time. The higher the temperature, the more likely large changes to the input are to occur.
The Python program uses the PyNEC package to provide simulation. The program sets up random antenna lengths and finds the projected gain, attempting to optimize for maximum gain.
The post is long on code and short on details, so you will probably want to read the Python source to see exactly what it is doing. But it could probably serve as a template to do other simulated annealing simulations for other antennas or anything you had a simulation engine to evaluate.
Several techniques allow you to optimize things that are too hard to search exhaustively, and we’ve talked about simulated annealing and
genetic algorithms
before. However, lately, we’ve been more interested in
annealing 3D prints
. | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654000",
"author": "Davidmh",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T17:47:06",
"content": "Scipy has a lot of general purpose optimisation routines that are a bit more advanced than SA. Basin hopping or Differential Evolution often perform better, specially if you have the CPU cycles to spare.T... | 1,760,372,261.609058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/a-simple-guide-to-bit-banged-i2c-on-the-6502/ | A Simple Guide To Bit Banged I2C On The 6502 | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"6532",
"bit banging",
"i2c",
"OLED SSD1306",
"riot"
] | We covered [Anders Nielsen]’s 65duino project a short while ago, and
now he’s back with an update video
showing some more details of bit-banging I
2
C using plain old 6502 assembly language.
Obviously, with such a simple system, there is no dedicated I
2
C interface hardware, so the programmer must take care of all the details of the I
2
C protocol in software, bit-banging it out to the peripheral and reading back the response one bit at a time.
The first detail to concern us will be the I
2
C addresses of the devices being connected to the bus and how low-level bit manipulation is used to turn the 7-bit I
2
C address into the byte being bit-banged. As [Anders] shows
, setting a bit is simply a logical-OR operation, and resetting a bit is a simple logical-AND operation using the inversion (or one’s complement) bit to reset to form a bitmask. As many will already know, this process is necessary to code for a read or a write I
2
C operation. A further detail is that I
2
C uses an open-collector connection scheme, which means that no device on the bus may drive the bus to logical high; instead, they must release the drive by going to the high impedance state, and an external pull-up resistor will pull the bus high. The 6532 RIOT chip (used for I/O on the 65unio) does not have tristate control but instead uses a data direction register (DDR) to allow a pin to be an input. This will do the job just fine, albeit with slightly odd-looking code, until you know what’s going on.
From there, it’s a straightforward matter to write subroutines that generate the I
2
C start, stop, and NACK conditions that are required to write to the SSD1306-based OLED to get it to do something we can observe. From these basic roots, through higher-level subroutines, a complete OLED library in assembly can be constructed. We shall sit tight and await where [Anders] goes next with this!
We see I
2
C-connected things all the time, like this
neat ATtiny85-based I
2
C peripheral
, and whilst we’re talking about the SSD1306 OLED display controller, here’s a hack that shows just
how much you can push your luck with the I
2
C spec
and get some crazy frame rates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7q0P9-wszM | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653951",
"author": "Wibble",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T14:13:11",
"content": "Takes me back to 6502 bit banging on the i2c interface to philips teletext tuner modules to provide real time news feeds via serial :-) Really cool at the time!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,261.325421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/detecting-meteors-with-sdr/ | Detecting Meteors With SDR | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"ham radio",
"meteor"
] | The simplest way to look for meteors is to go outside at night and look up — but it’s not terribly effective. Fortunately, there’s a better way: radio. With a software-defined radio and a little know-how from [Tech Minds], you can
easily find them
, as you can see in the video below.
This uses the UK meteor beacon we’ve looked at before. The beacon pushes an RF signal out so you can read the reflections from meteors. If you are too far from the beacon, you may need a special antenna or you might have to find another beacon altogether. We know of the Graves radar in France and we have to wonder if you couldn’t use some commercial transmitter with a little experimentation.
[Tech Minds] has some practical tips to share if you want to try doing it yourself. If you want to see what a detected meteor looks like, you can visit the UK beacon’s
gallery page
.
We saw another presentation on the
UK beacon
earlier this year. Using commercial transmitters sounds like it might be easy, but
apparently, it isn’t
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653932",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T12:54:41",
"content": "Meteor Scatter was used by trucking companies in the latter 1980s to track their trucks/trailers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,261.543864 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/cottonization-making-hemp-and-flax-fibers-into-the-better-cotton/ | Cottonization: Making Hemp And Flax Fibers Into The Better Cotton | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"bast fiber",
"cottonization",
"flax",
"hemp"
] | These days it’s hard to imagine that fabrics were ever made out of anything other than cotton or synthetic fibers, yet it wasn’t too long ago that hemp and flax-based fabrics — linen — were the rule rather than the exception. Cotton production has for centuries had the major disadvantages of requiring a lot of water and pesticides, and harvesting the cotton was very labor-intensive, making cotton rather expensive. In order to make separating the cotton fibers from the seed easier, improved versions of the
cotton gin
(‘cotton engine’) were developed, with the 19th century’s industrial revolution enabling a fully automated version.
What makes cotton attractive is the ease of processing these fibers, which are part of the seed pod. These fibers are 25 mm – 60 mm long, 12 μm – 45 μm fine fibers that can be pulled off the seeds and spun into yarn or whatever else is needed for the final product, much like wool. Hemp and flax fibers, in contrast, are extracted from the plant stem in the form of bast fibers. Rather than being pure cellulose, these fibers are mostly a mixture of cellulose, lignin, hemicellulose and pectin, which provide the plant with rigidity, but also makes these fibers coarse and stiff.
The main purpose of cottonization is to remove as much of these non-cellulosic components as possible, leaving mostly pure cellulose fibers that not only match the handleability of cotton fibers, but are also generally more durable. Yet cottonization used to be a long and tedious process, which made bast fiber-based textiles expensive. Fortunately, the
steam explosion cottonization
method that we’ll be looking at here may be one of the methods by which the market will be blown open for these green and durable fibers.
King Cotton?
Fluffy cotton puffs (by
Kimberly Vardeman
CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Cotton is somewhat unique in that the plants have always been present in the Old and New World, where civilizations began first using them for fabric many
thousands of years
ago.
Gossypium barbadense
was the cotton species domesticated for this purpose in America, and
Gossypium herbaceum
in Africa and India. Cotton fabric samples have been found in archeological digs dating back to 6,000 BCE in what is now Peru, and 5,000 BCE in the Kingdom of Kush (today’s Sudan) as well as in Mehrgarh, located in what is Pakistan today.
Although cotton was much prized, it didn’t become a commodity in Europe until the trade with the Arabic world began, which is also where the English name and that in other European languages comes from: قطن (
qutn
or
qutun
). By the time of the Renaissance, this European appetite for cotton led to a rapid increase in imports via the newly opened sea trade, and ultimately to the rise of an 18th century upstart nation called ‘the United States of America’ that would dominate the cotton market during the 19th century.
The enormity of the
global cotton market
would lead to massive economic consequences in Europe when the US Civil War began and disrupted cotton exports for years, although the ‘
King Cotton
‘ strategy that the Confederate South leaned on ultimately backfired, when rather than assist the Confederates with weapons, the European nations instead went elsewhere for their cotton, such as Egypt, Brazil and India. After the US Civil War in 1865, cotton production in the US would resume, though not at the same levels as previously.
Flax, hemp, and other
bast fibers
continued to be used even during the heyday of cheap cotton, until the 20th century saw widespread bans of the hemp plant
Cannabis sativa
, because of a cannabinoid called tetrahydrocannabinol (
THC
). THC (in its Delta-9 form) is one of three cannabinoids that are classified as
psychotropic substances
by the UN. Although THC is only significantly present in some cultivars, these bans impacted industrial hemp as well, and to this day heavily restricts the growing of hemp for fibers, oil, and more. Many nations only resumed growing hemp in the 1990s.
Today, China dominates global production of
hemp
, and France is the largest producer in Europe. Concerns over the water and pesticide usage involved with cotton production are gradually increasing the need for a cheap way to use bast fibers from hemp and other plants that have a significantly
lower environmental footprint
.
Explosions And Ashes
Flax stem cross-section:
1. pith
2. protoxylem
3. xylem II
4. phloem I
5. Sclerenchyma (bast fibre)
6. cortex
7. epidermis
The stem of hemp, flax and similar plants consists of a number of structures, each possessing properties that combine to provide the plant with the ability to transport water and nutrients, as well as the rigidity to stay upright. This stability is a function of the
sclerenchyma
, the layer, marked as
5
in the image, that we’re interested in when we want to extract fibers for use in textiles and more. To get at the bast fiber, cellulose must be separated from the other plant constituents with as little extra effort as possible.
The traditional way to separate these bast fibers from the rest of the stem is using a process called
retting
. During this process the already cut stem is exposed to moisture and micro-organisms that swell up and degrade much of the internal structure. After drying, the now brittle stems are broken, followed by separation of the woody fragments (
shives
) and mostly intact fibers.
In a 2017 paper by Thibaud Sauvageon and colleagues in
Textile Research Journal
titled
Toward the cottonization of hemp fibers by steam explosion:
Defibration and morphological characterization
, and a 2020 paper by Maria Moussa et al. in
Industrial Crops and Products
titled
Toward the cottonization of hemp fibers by steam explosion.
Flame-retardant fibers
, steam explosion (SE) is presented as a viable route to large-scale commercialization, with SE also increasing the thermal stability of the resulting hemp fiber.
A
2023 review paper
by K. Palanikumar et al. titled
Targeted Pre-Treatment of Hemp Fibers and the Effect on Mechanical Properties of Polymer Composites
in the journal
Fibers
compares the different bast fiber treatments. These include mechanical, chemical and thermal means, with SE providing the best balance between resulting fiber quality, economics and process complexity. Retting and mechanical separation is imprecise and can lead to significant defects in the produced fibers, while chemical treatments that remove the non-cellulosic components do work, but require the use of strong chemicals like alkali or sodium sulfate that produce undesirable waste products which require further processing before disposal.
Chemical composition of (A) hemp fiber raw material in wt.% and the chemical composition after wet oxidation and hydrothermal treatment, (B) steam-exploded hemp fibers (with and without impregnation) and untreated fibers in wt.%.
Steam explosion treatment of bast fibers requires as input only a source of power and high-pressure equipment: the material is first impregnated with water before being loaded into the SE vessel where it is heated to nearly 200 °C for a few minutes. Following this the pressure in the vessel is suddenly dropped, causing a steam explosion within the saturated fibers. The resulting separated fibers can then be separated and dried before further processing.
A big advantage of this approach is that it uses relatively little water, no harsh chemicals or expensive enzymes, produces high-quality fibers of lengths that are comparable to cotton fibers, and lends itself well to scaling up to industrial levels with modest equipment and consumable requirements. The current trend in the industry would seem to suggest that this is the approach that we’re likely to see pursued in the future, and which may make cottonized hemp and flax fibers serious competition for the cotton industry for the first time since the 19th century.
But There’s More
Although the sturdy nature of plants like hemp, their fast growing rate and their modest water demands should already make them favorites, another convenient feature of hemp is that it can grow on even on heavily contaminated soils, with no significant impact on growing rate, plant height or quality of the fibers, providing a valuable
phytoremediation
service for e.g. former mining sites, or
arsenic-laced
former cotton fields. Although this sounds like it may render the plant matter too contaminated for use, the metals do not become part of the fiber or seeds.
A
recent study
by Rabab Husain and colleagues (
PLoS One
, 2019) investigated the response of
Cannabis sativa
L. to being grown in soil obtained from heavily contaminated former coal mines in Pennsylvania. They found that the heavy metals absorbed by the plants collected in the leaves, with nickel, lead and cadmium being most prevalent in the samples examined, while arsenic and mercury in the soil didn’t get absorbed in significant amounts. This makes growing hemp on these soils an attractive option, along with other
hyperaccumulators
that can take care of arsenic, without compromising hemp grown in this soils for textile production.
Will we truly say farewell to cotton before long? That’s still very much an open question, but with these recent advances in processing bast fibers, it would seem at least reasonable to state that King Cotton’s reign at the very least is facing tumultuous seas ahead.
If you’re feeling adventurous and wish to experiment with steam explosion treatment yourself, you can give something like a
popcorn cannon
a try. Although these devices are mostly used for explosive food preparation, they could be convinced to ‘pop’ some bast fibers as well, if one were so inclined. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654544",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T14:53:53",
"content": "For the alternative using reclaimed cotton and wood pulp, see Lyocell. It’s uses less toxic chemicals than rayon and has superior properties compared to real cotton.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyocell",
... | 1,760,372,261.762789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/cosmic-ray-navigation/ | Cosmic Ray Navigation | Al Williams | [
"gps hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"cosmic ray",
"gps",
"muon",
"navigation"
] | GPS is a handy modern gadget — until you go inside, underground, or underwater. Japanese researchers want to build a GPS-like system with a twist. It uses cosmic ray muons, which can easily penetrate buildings to create high-precision navigation systems. You can read about it in
their recent paper.
The technology goes by MUWNS or wireless muometric navigation system — quite a mouthful.
With GPS, satellites with well-known positions beam a signal that allows location determination. However, those signals are relatively weak radio waves. In this new technique, the reference points are also placed in well-understood positions, but instead of sending a signal, they detect cosmic rays and relay information about what it detects to receivers.
The receivers also pick up cosmic rays, and by determining the differences in detection, very precise navigation is possible. Like GPS, you need a well-synchronized clock and a way for the reference receivers to communicate with the receiver.
Muons penetrate deeper than other particles because of their greater mass. Cosmic rays form secondary muons in the atmosphere. About 10,000 muons reach every square meter of our planet at any minute. In reality, the cosmic ray impacts atoms in the atmosphere and creates pions which decay rapidly into muons. The muon lifetime is short, but time dilation means that a short life traveling at 99% of the speed of light seems much longer on Earth and this allows them to reach deep underground before they expire.
Detecting muons
might not be as hard as you think. Even a Raspberry Pi can
do it
. | 19 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654504",
"author": "Mathias",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T11:28:32",
"content": "If you can determine the direction of the Muons, can you use that detector as a kind of sextant under water?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "665452... | 1,760,372,261.816468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/creating-lithography-free-photonic-reprogrammable-circuits/ | Creating Lithography-Free Photonic Reprogrammable Circuits | Maya Posch | [
"FPGA",
"Science"
] | [
"photonics"
] | The field of photonics has seen significant advances during the past decades, to the point where it is now an integral part of high-speed, international communications. For general processing photonics is currently less common, but is the subject of significant research. Unlike most photonic circuits which are formed using patterns etched into semiconductor mask using lithography, purely light-based circuits are a tantalizing possibility. This is the focus of a
recent paper
(
press release
,
ResearchGate
) in
Nature Photonics
by [Tianwei Wu] and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania.
What is somewhat puzzling is that despite the lofty claims of this being ‘the first time’ that such an FPGA-like device has been created for photonics, this is far from the case, as evidenced by e.g. a
2017 paper by [Kaichen Dong] and colleagues
(
full article PDF
) in
Advanced Materials.
Here the researchers used a slab of vanadium dioxide (VO
2
) with a laser to heat sections to above 68 °C where the material transitions from an insulating to a metallic phase and remains that way until the temperature is lowered again. The μm-sized features that can be created in this manner allow for a wide range of photonic devices to be created.
A rewritable metacanvas. a) Schematic of laser writing different photonic operator patterns on a metacanvas. b) Temperature-dependent resistance of a VO2 film. c) Optical images from writing and erasing process on the metacanvas. . d) Diagram showing the mathematical matrix (F) is compiled onto a metacanvas in the form of a photonic operator for manipulation of light waveform. e) Schematic of a metacanvas programmed as a beam steerer with a steering angle ϕ. (Credit: Dong et al., 2018)
What does appear to be different with the photonic system presented by [Wu] et al. is that it uses a more traditional 2D approach, with a slab of InGaAsP on which the laser pattern is projected. Whether it is more versatile than other approaches remains to be seen, with the use of fully photonic processors in our computers still a long while off, never mind photonics-accelerated machine learning applications. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654554",
"author": "Brian Byrne",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T16:20:21",
"content": "Is this in fact programmable matter or the beginnings of it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654933",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,261.69855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/whats-in-a-slip-ring/ | What’s In A Slip Ring? | Jenny List | [
"Parts",
"Teardown"
] | [
"bearing",
"rotating part",
"slip ring"
] | We know that when
[Big Clive] puts up another video
, the chances are we’re in for another fascinating look into a piece of tech on his bench. The latest is a slip ring assembly, and he gives it a teardown to reveal its secrets.
For most of us, the only place we encounter a slip ring is in some electric motors or alternators when it provides a connection via a conductive ring and a graphite brush from a fixed component to a rotating one. But they also appear as components in their own right wherever a rotating assembly needs an electrical contact, and it’s one of these that [Clive] has on his bench. It’s a compact unit with an impressive six conductors, and its manufacturer boldly claims that it’s good for mains voltages. We’re going with the verdict in the video below the break. That’s wishful thinking, given the size of the unit.
Inside is a rotor with six brass rings and a couple of decent little bearings, while the other half of the unit is a set of gold-plated spring contacts. There is extensive use of potting, and the verdict is that this is a surprisingly good quality component for the eBay price. We look forward to our community finding inventive uses for them. Having a ready-made unit
sure beats making your own
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654479",
"author": "Redguy",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T08:33:31",
"content": "I’ve looked at these before, they seem.to be ok, especially for their price. But they are of limited use because there is no hole through them for an axle. They need to end mounted.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,372,261.930991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/using-trash-to-keep-plastic-trash-out-of-oceans-by-kabooming-them/ | Using Trash To Keep Plastic Trash Out Of Oceans By Kabooming Them | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"kaboom",
"plastic pollution"
] | For a few years now, [Richard] of Tropical Ocean Cleanup fame has been working hard to clean the Philippines of the plastic trash that litters everything, and washes down the canals and rivers into the ocean. Using nothing but what is essentially trash – old car tires, rope and empty soda bottles – he creates ‘kabooms’ that prevent this trash floating in the canals from polluting the beaches, kill wildlife and gather in the oceans. In a
recent video
he covers how he creates these systems, and the basics of how they are installed.
We
previously covered
[Richard]’s efforts, and although these kabooms have received a few tweaks along the way, the basic principle has remained the same. The empty bottles provides the buoyancy, while the tires are excellent structural elements that can take a beating from the weather and debris. Some of the kabooms are lashed together with rope, while for other types holes are drilled into the tires using a hole saw, all of which help to create a self-supporting trash capture system that can be installed easily with a group of volunteers.
Fetching the thus captured trash is still a bit of a struggle, requiring a fair bit of manual labor, nets and boats from local fishermen when they have some spare time, but the effect is very much noticeable on the nearby beaches. In addition to these trash capturing kabooms, [Richard] also promotes trash collecting at schools, organizes trash pick-up events and trash collecting points, to raise local awareness of the need to keep plastic trash out of the environment and burn pits. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654442",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-20T02:29:02",
"content": "Grass roots effort, not corrupted by government funding or laws.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654532",
"aut... | 1,760,372,261.972866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/bringing-back-the-minitel/ | Bringing Back The Minitel | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"France",
"Minitel",
"networking",
"phone",
"restoration",
"retrocomputing",
"telecom"
] | If you didn’t live in France in the 80s or 90s, it’s likely you missed out on one of the most successful computer networks in existence prior to the modern Internet. Known as Minitel, it was an online service available over existing phone lines that offered a connected computer terminal for users to do most things we associate with the modern world, such as booking travel, viewing news, looking up phone numbers, and plenty of other useful activities. While a lot of the original system was never archived, there are
still some efforts to restore some of its original functionality like this MiniMit
.
The build requires either an original or a recreation of a Minitel terminal in all its 80s glory, but pairs an ESP32 to support modern network connectivity. The ESP32 interfaces with the Minitel’s DIN socket and provides it with a translation layer between WiFi and the networking type that it would have originally expected to see from the telephone lines. Two of the original developers of Minitel are working on restoring some of the services that would have been available originally as well, which means that the entire system is being redeveloped and not just the original hardware.
We’ve mentioned that this system was first implemented in the 80s, but the surprising thing is that even well after broadband Internet would have been available to most people in France, the Minitel system still had widespread use, not being fully deactivated until 2012. They remain popular as inspiration for other projects as well, like
this one which was brought a little more up-to-date
with the help of a modern display and Raspberry Pi. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654417",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T23:37:28",
"content": "Welcome to the club!https://i.imgur.com/UvczV0N.jpg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654420",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,262.459741 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/smart-sphere-or-magnetic-magic/ | Smart Sphere Or Magnetic Magic | Brian McEvoy | [
"how-to",
"Toy Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ball bearing",
"ball bot",
"bb",
"BB-8",
"desktop toy",
"illusion",
"inductive charger",
"line follower",
"line following robot",
"linefollowing",
"Marblevator"
] | Sometimes a coworker sees something on your desk, and they have to ask, “Where can I get one of those?” and that has to be one of the greatest compliments to a maker. [Greg Zumwalt] nailed it with his “
Marblevator Line Follower
.” Roboticists will immediately recognize a black line on a white surface, but this uses hidden mechanics instead of light/dark sensors. Check out the video after the break to see the secrets, or keep
bearing
with us.
Inside the cylinder is a battery, charging circuit, inductive receiving coil, and a motor turning a magnet-laden arm beneath the cap. The overall effect is an illusion to convince people that the marble has a mind of its own. You can pick up the cylinder, and it keeps moving as expected from an autonomous bot. The black line is actually a groove, so the bearing follows a curvy course without any extra movements from the magnets within. The two-tone look is super-clean, but the whimsy of a “smart bearing” makes this an all-a
round
winner.
“Marblevator Line Follower” is not the first
Marblevator
we featured, and we love our
bouncing-bearing baubles
and
music-making machines
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654392",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T21:25:48",
"content": "Video should use RATT’s “Round and Round” ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654418",
"author": "capo mafia",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T23:39:1... | 1,760,372,262.300708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/behind-the-x86-pipeline-curtain/ | Behind The X86 Pipeline Curtain | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"risc",
"x86"
] | We’ve often heard that modern x86 CPUs don’t really execute x86 instructions. Instead, they decode them into RISC instructions that are easier to schedule, pipeline, and execute. But we never really looked into that statement to see if it is true. [Fanael] did, though, and the
results are very interesting
.
The post starts with a very simple loop containing four instructions. In a typical RISC CPU — RISC-V — the same loop requires six instructions. However, a modern CPU is likely to do much more than just blindly convert one instruction set to another.
The reason is that CPUs aim to increase the number of operations performed on a clock cycle (on average). There are many ways to maximize instructions per clock. One way to do this is pipelining, where you execute instructions in multiple phases. For example, you can load an instruction while decoding a second instruction and executing a third instruction.
There is a problem, though. Suppose you will add three numbers and then increment a counter within a loop, and the three numbers don’t depend on the counter. In a classic pipeline, you must wait for the additions to finish before you can increase the counter and continue the loop. But with an out-of-order pipeline, the CPU could figure out that it could do the increment in parallel with the additions. To further improve parallel operation, register renaming can allow the CPU to place results in a temporary register that you can commit or discard later.
The P6 from 1995 was the first x86 that did out-of-order execution. This CPU does, in fact, convert x86 instructions to RISC instructions. However, the Pentium M had micro-operation fusion which allowed the CPU to treat some operations as pairs, and each subsequent architecture diverged further and further from the model of the P6.
It is an interesting look behind the curtain. Modern computers are
very complicated internally
. If you want a detailed look at
pipelining
, we can help with that too. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654369",
"author": "combinatorylogic",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T19:49:15",
"content": "Depends on how one define what RISC is. If you define separate load/store as RISC – then indeed mu-ops in all modern CPUs, x86 included, are RISC – OoO cannot even work otherwise.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,372,262.247567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-mouse-cropad/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Mouse-cropad | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"dyeing keycaps",
"keycap dyeing",
"keycaps",
"macro pad",
"macropad",
"mousecropad"
] | Okay, so you built a macropad or even a keyboard. What now? Well, most people use some kind of mouse to go along with it, but no one uses
a mouse like this creation by [Joe_Scotto]
.
This is the mouse no one asked for, and yet I think it’s pretty awesome for something that’s supposed to be a joke. Maybe it’s in the great execution, I don’t know. I will ignore the suggestion that MX Browns are part of the joke, however. *
cries in OG tactility
*
Essentially, this is a macropad that uses QMK mouse keys to emulate a mouse. The build itself couldn’t be more straightforward — it’s six MX browns wired up to six pins on a Pico, and they all share a common ground. Keep the joke going by commissioning one from [Joe] or
building it yourself
.
Via [
r/cyberdeck
]
News: Microsoft Discontinues Natural Keyboard
Image via
Wikipedia
It’s often people’s first ergonomic keyboard — some variation of Microsoft’s Natural keyboard, that 90s split that took up so much real estate on the desk with it’s built-in wrist rest.
I’ll admit that despite using one for years at the office, I went back to whatever clicky rectangles I could get from the IT department. Then came the pain, and I got a Logitech Wave. Then came the surgery, and the Kinesis Advantage.
Well, now it seems that after 30 years and several ergonomic models,
Microsoft are exiting the keyboard game
. While I don’t personally understand why when there are so many fans, [Jeff Atwood] believes it’s because keyboards are exploding in popularity and tons of people are building their own. While that may be true, there are legions of normies trying to stave off carpal and cubital tunnel syndrome and have absolutely no interest in building anything, much less a keyboard. So, get these things while they’re hot, I guess.
The Centerfold: Hobbies, a Family Photo
Sometimes one expensive hobby leads to another, and other times they just happily co-exist in people’s lives from some early point. One such Venn diagram centers on mechanical keyboards, headphones, and nice pens, and of course there’s a subreddit for that particular trinity.
That’s where this is from
.
Although there isn’t a lot of detail, I can tell you that that is an Alice-like keyboard called
the Jabberwocky
from [nopunin10did]. And that’s an iPod classic 5/5.5 with some kind of mods. And don’t those headphones look comfy, whatever they may be?
Look, it’s a centerfold. Do you really need a lot of detail, or can you just appreciate it for what it is? I sure would like to know what desk pad that is, though.
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 Hall Braille Typewriter
Once upon a time, Braille typists used a stylus and a writing board to impress dots on paper. The page would then have to be flipped over to read.
Then, in 1892, Frank H. Hall, superintendent of a school for the blind,
invented a Braille typewriter
that would change everything. It had six keys that could be pressed in any combination, and the paper was embossed from the back, meaning that the typist could read what they’d written as they went along. Typists could now average 30-60 words per minute, a drastic improvement over the stylus and writing board.
Hall’s typewriter buoyed along the six-dot Braille scheme, eventually replacing
the eight-dot Kleidograph system
. Never intending to profit from the invention, Hall didn’t patent it and charged $1 over the manufacturing cost of $10.
ICYMI: Dyeing for the Right Color Keycaps
It seems like there are a literal ton of keycap colorways out there, but there will probably never be enough to please everyone. So why not
dye your own keycaps?
It’s really not that difficult, and only takes a minimal setup. Just be sure you have a sacrificial pot to dye them in.
All it really requires is Rit dye in whatever colors you need to make up the right shade, some PBT keycaps, and some dish soap. I am very interested to see whether they darken over time from finger oils, so I’ll probably have to make some of my 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
. | 12 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654335",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T17:38:03",
"content": "“ergonomic keyboard”I use them at work and at home. I had to, as my wrists started to get sore after a day at work many years ago now. As soon as I went to the ergonomic keyboard — all is well. At work ... | 1,760,372,262.404956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/diy-picosatellites-hack-chat/ | DIY Picosatellites Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, June 21 at noon Pacific for the
DIY Picosatellites Hack Chat
with
Nathaniel Evry
!
Building a satellite and putting it in orbit was until very recently something only a nation had the resources to accomplish, and even then only a select few. Oh sure, there were a few amateur satellites that somehow managed to get built on a shoestring budget and hitch a ride into space, and while their stories are deservedly the stuff of legends, satellite construction took a very long time to be democratized.
Fast forward a half-dozen or so decades, and things have changed dramatically. Satellite launches are still complex affairs — it’s still rocket science, after all — but the advent of the CubeSat format and the increased tempo of launches, both national and commercial, has pushed the barriers to private, low-budget launches way, way down. So much so, in fact, that the phrase “space startup” is no longer something to snicker about.
One such group of space entrepreneurs is
Quub, Inc.
, a small company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania which is looking to build and fly a constellation of microsatellites to monitor Earth’s environment in real-time. They’re building sats and signing launch deals using consumer-grade technology and modularized construction, and we’re lucky enough to have Nathaniel Evry, their Chief Research Officer, stop by the Hack Chat. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to build hardware that can stand the rigors of launch and then perform a task in space, you’ll want to tune in for this one.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 21 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654310",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T16:43:05",
"content": "Quite a few amateurs have been launching picoballoons with various telemetry functions that can be easily monitored by anyone. Most don’t stay up long, but some have completed several circumnavigations of ... | 1,760,372,262.345074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/rock-tumbler-doubles-as-ice-cream-maker/ | Rock Tumbler Doubles As Ice Cream Maker | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"grinder",
"ice",
"ice cream",
"national geographic",
"rock",
"stones",
"tool",
"tumbler"
] | When working with limited space or even with limited funding, finding a tool that can do many things for less space or cost than its separate counterparts is a tempting option. The most common downside is that these tools often can’t perform as well as the single-purpose tools they replace, with the obvious example being a pocket-sized multitool or Swiss Army knife. Even things like combination drill and driver tools, adjustable crescent wrenches, or even a kitchen stand mixer can’t quite perform as well as their dedicated counterparts. So when we find a tool that can do two things equally well,
like this rock tumbler that can also make a delicious bowl of ice cream
, it’s definitely noteworthy.
The project comes to us by way of [North_Stordeur] whose main goal was to create a delicious bowl of ice cream but was deterred by the cost of purpose-built ice cream makers. Making ice cream isn’t a particularly complex process, though, and [North_Stordeur ] realized that grinding down ice for ice cream shares similarities with tumbling and polishing rocks. Normally, the rocks to be polished are placed in a drum with grit and a liquid, then the drum is placed on the tumbler and spun, which causes the rocks to bounce around inside the drum with the grit and smooth out relatively quickly. Replacing sugar for grit, ice for rocks, and milk for the liquid, the ice eventually is worn all the way down, creating an excellent bowl of ice cream.
Truly, the only downside we could see with a build like this is that the drum in the National Geographic rock tumbler that [North_Stordeur] chose for this project looks like it would only make a single serving at a time. However, with picky eaters around who like their own additions to ice cream, this might be a perk as everyone can make exactly the style they like with their own choice of flavors. It’s an excellent discovery for anyone already grinding and polishing rocks or someone who has
already built a DIY ball mill
for any number of other uses. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654287",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T15:29:54",
"content": "I’d worry that the grit from tumbling would land in the ice cream.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654294",
"author": "come2",
... | 1,760,372,262.506492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/review-infiray-p2-pro-thermal-camera/ | Review: InfiRay P2 Pro Thermal Camera | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Reviews",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"InfiRay",
"review",
"thermal camera"
] | It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Hackaday is constantly hounded by companies that want us to review their latest and greatest gadget. After all, getting us to post about their product is cheaper, easier, and arguably more effective than trying to come up with their own ad campaign. But if you’ve been with us for awhile, you’ll also know that in-house reviews aren’t something we actually do very often.
The reason is simple: we’re only interested in devices or products that offer something useful or unique to this community. As such, the vast majority of these offers get ignored. I’ll give you an example. For whatever reason, multiple companies have been trying desperately to send me electric bikes with five-figure price tags this year. But since there’s no obvious way to turn that into useful content for the readers of Hackaday, I’m still stuck pedaling myself around like it’s the 1900s. I kid of course…I haven’t dared to get on a bike in a decade.
So I don’t mind telling you that, when InfiRay contacted me about
reviewing their P2 Pro thermal camera
, the email very nearly went into the trash. We’ve seen these kind of phone-based thermal cameras before, and it seemed to be more of the same. But after taking a close look at the specs, accessories, and claims laid out in the marketing material, I thought this one might be worth checking out first-hand.
Getting Up Close and Personal
So what makes the P2 Pro thermal camera different from so many of the others on the market? Put simply, the combination of the sensor’s (relatively) high 256 x 192 resolution and the addition of a magnetically-attached macro lens means the camera is uniquely suited for close inspection of PCBs. Indeed, the website boasts the device is able to clearly observe individual 0201 SMD resistors on a board.
While so many of these cameras are intended for things like finding cold spots in your house, or identifying the hottest components in a car’s engine bay, the P2 Pro is a much better tool for the sort of close-up delicate work the average Hackaday reader is likely to be doing. Of course, at the same time, it can still do anything those lower resolution models are capable of. So even if you’re not looking for shorted components on SMD boards every day, there’s still plenty of applications for the camera in other fields and hobbies.
That said, the ergonomics of the device aren’t necessarily ideal for closeup work. The P2 Pro is extremely small — about 28 x 18 mm — and it’s very easy to block its view with your own hand while trying to position the phone properly. It works a bit better when the phone is upside down and your USB-C port is on the top, but of course that ends up being awkward for its own reasons.
InfiRay must have seen this issue coming, as they include a USB-C extension cable in the box that lets you maneuver the camera separately. Thanks in no small part to the simplistic shape of the camera, it only took a few lines in OpenSCAD to put together a 3D printed mount that let me screw the camera onto a standard tripod. This improves the usability of the product to the point that I’d love to see InfiRay offer an official version.
The P2 Pro also operates at 25 frames per second (FPS), which is notably higher than some of the cheaper models on the market. Gradual temperature changes show up smoothly, and watching heat propagate through an object is as mesmerizing as it is useful. In the following clip, I’m passing a couple volts through a 0805 resistor, and you can see clearly see how the heat generated by the resistor is pulled away by the wires once the current stops flowing.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/p2pro_resistor2.mp4
Great Hardware, So-So Software
Note
: As I’m using the Android version of the P2 Pro, the following only applies to Google’s OS. There is a separate iPhone version of the camera and a companion iOS application, but as I haven’t used it I can’t say for sure what the experience is like.
There’s honestly nothing bad I can say about the P2 Pro hardware itself — it feels solidly built, it performs great, and even the box it comes in has a nice presentation. The software on the other hand, while serviceable, could use a similar level of polish.
Getting the Android application to recognize the camera sometimes requires you to unplug it a few times, and I did experience a couple instances where the image from the camera locked up and required the application to be restarted. I also had problems recording videos from inside the application itself, and in the end had to use Android’s built-in screen capture capability to get the video posted above.
Other than the glitches, the software is overall pretty good. The interface is simple, and there are several nice features like the ability to change color schemes and a “picture-in-picture” mode that places the view from the phone’s camera over that of the thermal camera. Keep in mind that how well the two perspectives match is going to depend on the camera layout of the device you’re using it on.
There’s plenty of configuration and calibration options, but all the defaults seemed to work fine and I never needed to fiddle with anything. Still, it’s always good to have those advanced features and settings should you need them.
Incidentally, for anyone who might be curious, the P2 Pro was picked up as a standard USB video device when I plugged it into both my Linux desktop and Chromebook. Obviously you don’t get any of the advanced configuration options, and it’s the raw 256×192@25 FPS B&W video feed with no fancy upscaling like the app must be doing, but at least it works out of the box and could be useful for all sorts of projects.
An Outsourced Teardown
Those who’ve read my previous reviews are probably wondering when I’m going to get to pulling apart the P2 Pro and checking out what’s inside. But this time I’m going to have to take a pass. Its tiny case is held together with some kind of adhesive, and to tell you the truth, I’d rather not destroy the thing if I can help it.
But if you really must know what is looks like inside, mikeselectricstuff actually took the plunge on his channel a few months back. Unsurprisingly there’s not a lot going on inside the tiny gadget outside the camera board itself, though it is clever how they separated the interface out to its own board so they could easily produce USB-C and Lightning versions.
Thermal Gallery
Because it seems like the kind of thing you’d like to see in a review of a thermal camera, here are a random selection of images I’ve taken with the device over the last week or so.
The Verdict
In the end, I have to admit that the P2 Pro really impressed me. Not only does the resolution, frame rate, and macro lens make it an excellent tool for diagnosing hardware of all shapes and sizes– it’s just a whole lot of fun to look at the world through this device. I’d like to see the Android software get tightened up here and there, but I never ran into any issues that were big enough to prevent me from recommending the product to others.
At $299 USD the InfiRay P2 Pro is priced to compete with similar devices from FLIR, while at the same time offering higher specs in key areas. Consider the FLIR ONE Pro, which would set you back $420, yet only offers 160×120 resolution and is considerably larger and heavier. There are of course cheaper thermal camera options out there,
but from what we’ve seen
, they’re often more of a novelty than a useful tool. If you’ve been considering adding a thermal camera to your toolbox but were put off by the price-performance ratio of what was on the market previously, the P2 Pro might just be what you’ve been waiting for. | 65 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654273",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T14:25:53",
"content": "Thanks, hackaday. May the price-hiking begin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6654299",
"author": "okto",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T15... | 1,760,372,262.880526 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/using-sonar-to-measure-traffic-speeds/ | Using Sonar To Measure Traffic Speeds | Bryan Cockfield | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"microphone",
"radar",
"sonar",
"sound",
"speed",
"time correlation",
"vehicle"
] | One of the most common ways of measuring the speed of a vehicle is by using radar, which typically involves generating radio waves, directing them at a moving vehicle, and measuring the various ways that they return to the device. This is a tried-and-true method, but can be expensive and technically complex. [GeeDub] wanted an easier way of measuring vehicles passing by his home, so he
switched to using sonar instead to measure speeds
based on the sounds the cars generate themselves.
The method he is using is similar to passive sonar in submarines, which can locate objects underwater based on the sounds they produce. After a false start attempting to measure Doppler shift, he switched to time correlation using two microphones, essentially using stereo audio input to detect subtle differences in arrival times of various sounds to detect the positions of passing vehicles. Doing this fast enough and extrapolating the data gathered, speed information can be calculated. For the data gathering and calculation, [GeeDub] is using a Raspberry Pi to help keep costs down, and some further configuration of the microphones and their power supplies were also needed to ensure quality audio was gathered.
With the system in place in a window, it detected around 9,000 vehicles over a three-day period. The software generates a normal distribution of vehicle speeds for this time, with the distribution centered on around 35 MPH, slightly above the posted speed limit of 30. As long as there’s a clear line of sight to the road using this system it’s just as effective as
some other passive systems we’ve seen to measure vehicle speed
. Of course,
active speed measurement systems
are not out of the realm of possibility if you’re willing to spend a little more. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654240",
"author": "Monsonite",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T11:58:44",
"content": "This is such a neat project. I live in a narrow, residential street, with a 30mph limit, but the street is used as a rat-run, by drivers who habitually exceed the 30mph limit.Some arrogant drivers look ... | 1,760,372,262.568522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/19/teardown-of-an-aircraft-video-symbol-generator/ | Teardown Of An Aircraft Video Symbol Generator | Dave Rowntree | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"avionics",
"british airways",
"Intel 8086",
"radiation hardening",
"teardown",
"video",
"zilog z180"
] | [Adrian Smith] recently
scored an avionics module taken from a British Aerospace 146 airliner
and ripped it open for our viewing pleasure. This particular aircraft was designed in the early 1980s when the electronics used to feed the various displays in the cockpit were very different from modern designs. This particular box is called a ‘symbol generator’ and is used to generate the various real-time video feeds that are sent to the cockpit display units. Various instruments, for example, the weather radar, feed into it, and it then reformats the video if needed, mixing in any required additional display.
Top view of the symbol generator instrument rack
There are many gold-plated chips on these boards, which indicates these may be radiation-hardened versions of familiar devices, most of which are 54xx series logic. 54xx series logic is essentially the same functionally as the corresponding 74xx series, except for the much wider operating temperature range mandated by military and, by extension, commercial aviation needs. The main CPU board appears to be based around the Intel 8086, with some Zilog Z180 compatible processors used on the two video display controller boards. We noted the Zilog Z0853604, which is their counter/timer/GPIO chip. Obviously, there are many custom ASICs produced by Honeywell as well as other special order items that you’ll never find the datasheet for. Now there’s a challenge!
Finally, we note the standard 400 Hz avionics-standard power supply, which, as some may know, is the standard operating frequency for the AC power system used within modern aircraft systems. The higher frequency (compared to 50 or 60 Hz) means the magnetic components can be physically smaller and, therefore, lighter for a given power handling capability.
We see a lot of avionics teardowns, likely because they’re fascinating. Here’s
some more British military gear
, an interesting
RF distance measuring box
from the 1970s, and finally, some brave soul
building their own avionics gear
. What could possibly go wrong? | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6654214",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T08:55:31",
"content": "I like this kind of content.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6654223",
"author": "Martina",
"timestamp": "2023-06-19T09:55:26",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,262.716856 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/hackaday-podcast-223-smoking-smart-meter-489-megapixels-and-unshredding-documents/ | Hackaday Podcast 223: Smoking Smart Meter, 489 Megapixels, And Unshredding Documents | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Elliot’s back from vacation, and Dan stepped into the virtual podcast studio with him to uncover all the hacks he missed while hiking in Italy. There was a lot to miss, what with a smart meter getting snuffed by a Flipper Zero — or was it? How about a half-gigapixel camera built out of an old scanner, or a sonar-aimed turret gun? We also looked at a couple of projects that did things the hard way, like a TV test pattern generator that was clearly a labor of love, and an all-transistor HP frequency counter. More plastic welding? Hey, a fix is a fix! Plus, we’ll dive into why all those Alexas are just gathering dust, and look at the really, REALLY hard problems involved in restoring shredded documents.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download
a long series of ones and zeroes that, when appropriately interpreted, sound like two people talking about nerdy stuff
!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 223 Show Notes:
News:
They Used To Be A Big Shot, Now Eagle Is No More
Join Hackaday’s virtual ham radio club on Discord!
What’s that Sound?
If you think you know what this week’s sound was,
enter here
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Using FreeCAD To Replace OEM Parts
Free CAD Academy – YouTube
Escape from the claws of the corporate CAD overlords – with FreeCAD! – YouTube
Flipper Zero “Smoking” A Smart Meter Is A Bad Look For Hardware Hackers
Remoticon 2021 // Hash Salehi Outsmarts His Smart Meter
A 489 Megapixel Camera For Not A Lot
Do Not Attempt Disassembly: Analog Wizardry In A 1960s Counter
Arduino-Powered Missile System Uses Ultrasound To Aim
Good Vibrations: Giving The HC-SR04 A Brain Transplant
Measuring Air Flow With Ultrasonic Sensors
El Cheapo Phased-Array Sonar
Octosonar Is 8X Better Than Monosonar
Dual Sensor Echo Locator Gives High Accuracy At Low Cost
I forgot one of the best phased-array explainers of all time:
Bend It Like (Sonar) Beacon With A Phased Array
Recreating An Analog TV Test Pattern
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
BIOS POST Card Built Using Raspberry Pi Pico
Blind Camera: Visualizing A Scene From Its Sounds Alone
Cheap USB Sniffer Has Wireshark Interface
Dan’s Picks:
Plastic Welding Revisited
A Peek Inside A 747 Fuel Gauge
Magnetic Bubble Memory Brought To Life On Heathkit
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Why Did The Home Assistant Future Not Quite Work The Way It Was Supposed To?
Spy Tech: Unshredding Documents | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653503",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T22:38:14",
"content": "Not seeing it on Google Podcasts.Episode 222 is latest one on there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6653562",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
... | 1,760,372,262.762813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/ikea-lack-table-becomes-extremely-affordable-diy-copy-stand/ | IKEA LACK Table Becomes Extremely Affordable DIY Copy Stand | Donald Papp | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"copy stand",
"diy",
"ikea",
"photography"
] | A copy stand is a tool used to capture images of photos, artwork, books, and things of a similar nature. It holds a camera perpendicular to a large and flat surface, upon which the subject rests.
A threaded rod provides effective vertical adjustment.
They are handy, but there’s no need to spend a lot when [BlandPasta]’s
DIY copy stand based on a cheap IKEA LACK table
can be turned into an economical afternoon project with the help of simple hardware and a few 3D printed parts.
The main structure comes from a mixture of parts from two LACK tables: one small and one normal-sized. A tabletop is used as the bed, and the square legs make up the structural parts with the help of some printed pieces. A threaded rod combined with some captive hardware provides a way to adjust the camera up and down with a crank, while one can manually slide the horizontal camera mount as needed to frame the subject appropriately.
This is a clever remix of IKEA parts, and the somewhat matte white finish of the LACK complements photography well.
Adding some DIY LED lighting
is about all it takes to get a perfectly serviceable copy stand that won’t break the bank. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653438",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T15:47:32",
"content": "Making your own copy stand is cool, but making one out of a generally accessible table and some 3-D printed parts as well as making the instructions and files available is awesome!",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,262.932913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/this-week-in-security-acme-sh-leaking-leds-and-android-apps/ | This Week In Security: ACME.sh, Leaking LEDs, And Android Apps | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"Acme",
"bitwarden",
"This Week in Security"
] | Let’s Encrypt has made an enormous difference to the landscape of the web. The protocol used for authenticating and receiving certificates, ACME, has spawned quite a few clients of various flavors. Some are written in Rust, some in Python or Go, and a few in straight Bash shell script. One of those last ones,
acme.sh
, was doing something odd when talking to a particular “Certificate Authority”, HiCA
. This pseudo-CA only supports
acme.sh
, and now we know why. The folks behind HiCA found an RCE exploit in
acme.sh
, and decided to use that exploit to do certificate issuance with more “flexability”. Oof.
The nuts and bolts here is that HiCA was working as a CA-in-the-Middle, wrapping other CA’s authentication services. Those services don’t support ACME authentication at all, and HiCA used the
acme.sh
vulnerability to put the authentication token in the place SSL.com expected to find it. So, just a good community member offering a service that ACME doesn’t quite support, right?
Well, maybe not so innocent. The way it appears this works, is that the end user sends a certificate request to HiCA. HiCA takes that information, and initiates a certificate request off to SSL.com. SSL.com sends back a challenge, and HiCA embeds that challenge in the RCE and sends it to the end user. The end user’s machine triggers the RCE, which pushes the challenge token to the well-known location, and bypasses the ACME protection against exactly this sort of CA-in-the-middle situation.
The last piece of the authentication process is that the signing server reaches out over HTTP to the domain being signed, and looks for the token to be there. Once found, it sends the signed certificates to HiCA, who then forward them on to the end user. And that’s the problem. HiCA has access to the key of every SSL cert they handled. This doesn’t allow encryption, but these keys could be used to impersonate or even launch MitM attacks against those domains. There’s no evidence that HiCA was actually capturing or using those keys, but this company was abusing an RCE to put itself in the position to have that ability.
The takeaway is twofold. First, as an end user, only use reputable CAs. And second, ACME clients need to be hardened against potentially malicious CAs. The fact that HiCA only supported the one ACME client was what led to this discovery, and should have been a warning flag to anyone using the service.
Leaking LEDs
Side channel attacks are always interesting, particularly when they don’t require compromise of the target device to be usable. Malware that can bridge an air gap by blinking an LED is boring. But a technique to sniff data from an LED,
just because different processor instructions change the power state of the system
? That’s interesting.
The researchers behind the work refer to it as
video-based cryptanalysis
, and it contains a few really fascinating tricks. The idea is to take over an IP camera that has Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) capabilities, and zoom all the way in, centered up on the target device’s LED. Then, by turning the framerate to max, and the shutter speed to as fast as possible, the camera is pushed into using a rolling shutter, meaning that each row of pixels are queried in order, with a bit of delay between. If you don’t care about resolution, then this gives a dramatically increased effective framerate — high enough to catch the changes in LED brightness that correspond to cryptographic processing.
It’s interesting and exciting, but to steal a smart card’s secret key, the camera needs to record 10,500 signing operations. When it was being constantly used for signatures, this still took 65 minutes of footage, and would be *much* slower in a real world attack. Should you put black tape over all your LEDs? The real solution, of course, is cryptographic code that uses constant-time and constant-power routines.
Bitwarden Desktop for Windows
Bitwarden on Windows uses the Windows Credential Manager for unlocking the vault, mainly so Windows Hello can be used. Turns out,
that wasn’t a good approach
, as the Windows API will hand over the biometric master key even without a Windows Hello authentication. The conclusion is that a malicious application running on the machine could access the locked database. Not great. Thankfully, 2023.4.0 has some fixes to address this, but if this weakness matters to you, it’s quite important to turn on the option to require a password on first login.
Android Apps Hiding Malware
Bitdefender turned on a new feature in their Mobile Security platform, what they call Anomaly Detection. And
promptly discovered a whopping 60,000 unique malicious apps
on Android phones around the world. This isn’t a case of malware showing up on the official Play Store, these are all direct APK downloads.
The apps all claimed to be something useful, like a cracked game or modded app. But in each case, the app is actually nameless and lacks an icon. Upon install, a bogus error is shown, and the user is prompted to “uninstall”. Naturally, the app isn’t uninstalled, it’s just invisible and forgotten about. If that sounds familiar, go to your list of installed apps, and look for a nameless app with an all-white icon.
Once installed, these apps will sleep for a few hours, and then show full-screen ads from time to time. Just enough to make a little ad revenue money, but not enough to tip off an unwary user that something is off.
Bits and Bytes
VMWare has recently
fixed a series of issues in their Aria Operations for Networks
product. A
post on a couple of those issues from Summoning Team
is instructive. The foot-in-the-door is a regular expressions issue in an nginx rule, and seems to be tracked as CVE-2023-20889. Using a doctored URL, an internal endpoint can be reached, that is not intended for external access. From there, CVE-2023-20887 is a command injection flaw that allows arbitrary execution. A
ll three flaws are fixed by KB92684
.
Fortinet has
released an update for the Fortigate devices
, fixing CVE-2023-27997. This is a pre-auth RCE in the SSL-VPN service. And unfortunately, it appears that
it’s already being exploited in the wild
. This one is nasty, with all of 500,000 deployed Fortigate firewalls — so long as they have the SSL VPN exposed. Buckle up, and get to patching.
And remember MOVEit? That seems to be
the gift that keeps on giving
, as multiple government agencies have reportedly been hit with breaches related to that software. Agencies are confident that there won’t be “significant impacts” as a result of these attacks. Time will tell. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653934",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T13:10:22",
"content": "So I can download an app from the official Play Store that has spyware, or download an app from another website that has malware…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,372,263.122569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/persistence-pays-in-ti-99-4a-cassette-tape-data-recovery/ | Persistence Pays In TI-99/4A Cassette Tape Data Recovery | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"audacity",
"audio",
"cassette",
"checksum",
"FSK",
"recovery",
"retrocomputing",
"tape",
"TI-99/4A"
] | In the three or four decades since storing programs on audio cassettes has been relevant, a lot of irreplaceable personal computing history has been lost to the ravages of time and the sub-optimal conditions in the attics and basements where tapes have been stored. Luckily, over that time we’ve developed a lot of tools and techniques that might make it possible to recover some of these ancient treasures. But as [Noel] shows us,
recovering data from cassette tapes is a tricky business
.
His case study for the video below is a tape from a TI-99/4A that won’t load. A quick look in Audacity at the audio waveform seems to show the problem — an area of severely attenuated signal. Unfortunately, no amount of boosting and filtering did the trick, so [Noel] had to dig a bit deeper. It turns out that the TI tape interface standard, with its redundant data structure, was somewhat to blame for the inability to read this particular tape. As [Noel] explains, each 64-bit data record is recorded to tape twice, along with a header and a checksum. If neither record decodes correctly, then tape playback just stops.
Luckily, someone who had already run into this problem spun up a Windows program to help. CS1er — our guess would be “Ceaser” — takes WAV file input and loads each record, simply flagging the bad ones instead of just bailing out. [Noel] used the program to analyze multiple recordings of the same data and eventually got enough good records to reassemble the original program, a game called
Dogfight
— or was it
Gogfight
? Either way, he managed to get most of the data off the tape, and since it was a BASIC program, it was pretty easy to figure out the missing bytes by inspection.
[Noel]’s experience will no doubt be music to the ears of the TI aficionados out there. Of which we’ve seen plenty, from
the TI-99 demoscene
to
running Java on one
, and whatever
this magnificent thing
is. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653378",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T11:27:17",
"content": "The running java on a TI link is a repeat of the previous link to the megademo.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6653393",
"author": "johnr... | 1,760,372,262.983163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/these-illusions-celebrate-exploiting-human-senses/ | These Illusions Celebrate Exploiting Human Senses | Donald Papp | [
"Art"
] | [
"art",
"illusion"
] | Illusions are perceptual experiences that do not match physical reality, and the
2023 Illusion of the Year contest
produced a variety of nifty ones that are worth checking out. A video for each is embedded below the break, but we’ll briefly explain each as well.
Some of the visual illusions play with perspective. One such example happens to be the contest winner:
Platform 9 3/4
has a LEGO car appear to drive directly through a wall. It happens so quickly it’s difficult to say what happened at all!
Another good one is the
Tower of Cubes
, which appears as two stacks of normal-looking hollow cubes, but some of the cubes are in fact
truly
bizarre shapes when seen from the side. This is a bit reminiscent of the
ambiguous cylinder illusion
by Japanese mathematician and artist [Kokichi Sugihara].
Cornelia
is representative of the
hollow face illusion
, in which a concave face is perceived as a normal convex one. (Interestingly this illusion is used to help diagnose schizophrenia, as sufferers overwhelmingly fail to perceive the illusion.)
The
Accelerando Illusion
is similar to (but differs from) an auditory effect known as the Risset Rhythm by composer
Jean-Claude Risset
. It exploits ambiguities in sound to create a dense musical arrangement that sounds as though it is constantly increasing in tempo.
The
Buddha’s Ear Illusion
creates the illusion of feeling as though one’s earlobe is being stretched out to an absurd length, and brings to mind the broader concept of
body transfer illusion
.
While it didn’t appear into the contest, we just can’t resist bringing up the
Thermal Grill Illusion
, in which one perceives a painful burning sensation from touching a set of alternating hot and cold elements. Even though the temperatures of the individual elements are actually quite mild, the temperature differential plays strange tricks on perception.
A video of each of the contest’s entries is embedded below, and they all explain exactly what’s going on for each one, so take a few minutes and give them a watch. Do you have a favorite illusion of your own? Share it in the comments!
[via
IFLScience
] | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653382",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T11:57:19",
"content": "My favourite illusion is the checker shadow illusion.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusionWe think our vision is what our retinas detect, but our retinas would know the chess squares are the... | 1,760,372,263.079093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/15/hack-club-grants-encourage-open-source-pcb-designs-by-teens/ | Hack Club Grants Encourage Open Source PCB Designs By Teens | Joseph Long | [
"hardware",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"grants",
"open source hardware",
"printed circuit boards",
"STEM education",
"students"
] | [Hack Club] is a nonprofit network of coder and maker clubs for teenage high school students around the world. With an impressive reach boasting clubs in about 400 schools, they serve approximately 10,000 students. Their
OnBoard
program asserts, “Circuit boards are magical. You design one, we’ll print it!”
Any teenage high school student can apply for a [Hack Club] OnBoard Grant to have their Printed Circuit Board design fabricated into real hardware. The process starts by designing a PCB using any tool that can generate Gerber files. The student then publishes their design on
GitHub
and submits the Gerber files to a PCB manufacturer.
A screenshot from the board house showing the completed design upload and production cost is the main requirement of the grant application. If approved, the grant provides up to $100 to cover PCB manufacturing costs.
OnBoard encourages collaboration, community, and friends. Designers can share their projects and progress with [Hack Club] teens around the world. Those who are working on, or have completed, their own circuit board designs can share support and encouragement with their peers.
Example hardware projects from [Hack Club] include
Sprig
, an open-source handheld game console based on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. Teen makers can explore the example OnBoard projects and then it’s… three, two, one, go! | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653359",
"author": "Mark Garton",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T09:29:59",
"content": "In the UK teenagers under 18 are banned from buying tools in case they injure themselves so have a problem doing practical hobby interests like electronics or model making etc so are restricted to loo... | 1,760,372,263.024146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/15/the-fake-moon-landing-quarantine/ | The Fake Moon Landing Quarantine | Al Williams | [
"Space"
] | [
"apollo",
"nasa",
"space"
] | We aren’t much into theories denying the moon landing around here, but [Dagomar Degroot], an associate professor at Georgetown University, asserts that the Apollo 11 quarantine efforts
were bogus
. Realistically, we think today that the chance of infection from the moon, of all places, is low. So claiming it was successful is like paying for a service that prevents elephants from falling through your chimney. Sure, it worked — there hasn’t been a single elephant!
According to [Degroot], the priority was to protect the astronauts and the mission, and most of the engineering money and effort went towards that risk reduction. The — admittedly low — danger of some alien plague wiping out life on Earth wasn’t given the same priority.
We honestly don’t find that very surprising. First, only on Star Trek and similar works of fiction is alien life so compatible with ours. We strongly suspect that alien life, when we find it, won’t really like the taste of us and vice versa. Besides that, even with what we have learned recently about the hardiness of life on Earth, the idea that life exists on the Moon seems pretty farfetched. We suspect people understood that in the 1960s, too, and simply went through the motions to quell fears from anxious bosses, politicos, and the general public.
It turns out if there is life on the Moon, we probably
brought it there ourselves
. If there are moon microbes, maybe that would solve our
lunar power problems
. | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653282",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2023-06-16T02:13:23",
"content": "There was some worry.Mike Collins said multiple times, it was a good thing to go to the moon and return, but it could have been the worst thing.Tongue in cheek mostly.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,263.204634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/18/learning-x86_64-assembly-by-building-a-gui-from-scratch/ | Learning X86_64 Assembly By Building A GUI From Scratch | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"gui",
"X windows",
"x11",
"x86_64"
] | Some professional coders are absolutely adamant that learning to program in assembly language in these modern times is simply a waste of time, and this post is not for them. This is for the rest of us, who still think there is value in knowing at a low level what is going on, a deeper appreciation can be developed. [Philippe Gaultier] was certainly in this latter camp and
figured the best way to learn was to work on a substantial project
.
Now, there are some valid reasons to write directly in assembler; for example hand-crafting unusual code sequences for creating software exploits would be hindered by an optimising compiler. Creating code optimised for speed and size is unlikely to be among those reasons, as doing a better job than a modern compiler would be a considerable challenge. Some folks would follow the tried and trusted route and work towards getting a “hello world!” output to the console or a serial port, but not [Philippe]. This project aimed to get a full-custom GUI application running as a client to the X11 server running atop Linux, but the theory should be good for any *nix OS.
Hello World! In X11!
The first part of the process was to create a valid ELF executable that Linux would work with. Using nasm to assemble and the standard linker, only a few X86_64 instructions are needed to create a tiny executable that just exits cleanly. Next, we learn how to manipulate the stack in order to set up a non-trivial system call that sends some text to the system STDOUT.
To perform any GUI actions, we must remember that X11 is a network-orientated system, where our executable will be a client connected via a socket. In the simple case, we just connect the locally created socket to the server path for the local X server, which is just a matter of populating the
sockaddr_un
data structure on the stack and calling the
connect()
system call.
Now the connection is made, we can follow the usual X11 route of creating client ids, then allocating resources using them. Next, fonts are opened, and a graphical context is created to use it to create a window. Finally, after mapping the window, something will be visible to draw into with subsequent commands. X11 is a low-level GUI system, so there are quite a few steps to create even the most simple drawable object, but this also makes it quite simple to understand and thus quite suited to such a project.
We applaud [Phillip] for the fabulous documentation of this learning hack and can’t wait to see what’s next in store!
Not too long ago,
we covered Snowdrop OS
, which is written entirely in X86 assembly, and we also found out a thing or two about
some oddball X86 instructions
. We’ve also done our own
Linux assembly primer
. | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653866",
"author": "Graham",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T09:03:36",
"content": "I disagree with the comment about speed and modern compilers. We coded in assembler and could beat the compiler even a high optimization levels. An example is a routine with multiple exit points. The comp... | 1,760,372,263.449112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/if-not-ethernet/ | If Not Ethernet… | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"networking",
"retrocomputing"
] | It is hard to imagine today, but there was a time when there were several competing network technologies. There was Ethernet, of course. But you could also find token ring, DEC Net, EcoNet, and ARCNet. If you’ve never dug into ARCNet, [Retrobytes] has a
comprehensive history
you can watch that will explain it all.
Like token ring, ARCNet used a token-passing scheme to allow each station on the network to take turns sending data. Unlike token ring and Ethernet, the hardware setup was much less expensive. Along the way, you get a brief history of the Intel 8008 CPU, which, arguably, started the personal computer revolution.
Like most networking products of the day, ARCNet was proprietary. However, by the late 1980s, open standards were the rage, and Ethernet took advantage. Up until Ethernet was able to ride on twisted pairs, however, it was more expensive and less flexible than ARCNet.
The standard used RG-62/U coax and either passive or active hubs in a star configuration. The coax could be up to 2,000 feet away, so very large networks were feasible. It was also possible to share the coax with analog videoconferencing.
Looking back, ARCNet had a lot to recommend it, but we know that Ethernet would win the day. But [Retrobytes] explains what happened and why.
If you missed “old-style Ethernet,” we
can show you how it worked
. Or, check out
EcoNet
, which was popular in British schools. | 65 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653830",
"author": "David Lang",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T05:33:27",
"content": "Arcnet also allowed longer cable runs and was more forgiving in the cabling than ethernet, but significantly slower.(this was in the pre-switch days where your entire ethernet network, end-to-end, was ... | 1,760,372,263.929738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/ham-pairs-nicely-with-gmrs/ | Ham Pairs Nicely With GMRS | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"2m",
"70cm",
"amateur",
"fcc",
"gmrs",
"ham",
"radio",
"repeater"
] | Ignoring all of the regulations, band allocations, and “best amateur practices,” there’s no real fundamental difference between the frequencies allocated to the Family Radio Service (FRS), the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS), and the two-meter and 70-centimeter bands allocated to licensed ham radio operators. The radio waves propagate over relatively short distances, don’t typically experience any skip, and are used for similar activities. The only major difference between these (at least in the Americas or ITU region 2) is the licenses you must hold to operate on the specific bands. This means that even though radios are prohibited by rule from operating across these bands, it’s often not too difficult to find radios that will do it anyway.
[Greg], aka [K4HSM], was experimenting with a TIDRADIO H8 meant for GMRS, which in North America is a service used for short-range two-way communication. No exams are required, but a license is still needed. GMRS also allows for the use of repeaters, making it more effective than the unlicensed FRS. GMRS radios, this one included, often can receive or scan frequencies they can’t transmit on, but in this case, the limits on transmitting are fairly easy to circumvent. While it isn’t allowed when programming the radio over Bluetooth, [K4HSM] found that programming it from the keypad directly will allow transmitting on the ham bands and uses it to contact his local two-meter and 70-cm repeaters as a proof-of-concept.
The surprising thing about this isn’t so much that the radio is physically capable of operating this way. What’s surprising is that this takes basically no physical modifications at all, and as far as we can tell, that violates at least one FCC rule. Whether or not that rule makes any sense is up for debate, and it’s not likely the FCC will break down your door for doing this
since they have bigger fish to fry
, but we’d definitely caution that it’s not technically legal to operate this way. | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653791",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T02:19:13",
"content": "Veeerrrrryyyy interesting!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6653805",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As... | 1,760,372,263.371444 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/intel-to-ship-quantum-chip/ | Intel To Ship Quantum Chip | Al Williams | [
"computer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"quantum computing",
"qubit"
] | In a world of 32-bit and 64-bit processors, it might surprise you to learn that Intel is releasing a 12-bit chip. Oh, wait, we mean
12-qubit
. That makes more sense. Code named Tunnel Falls, the chip uses tiny silicon spin quantum bits, which Intel says are more advantageous than other schemes for encoding qubits. There’s a video about the device below.
It is a “research chip” and will be available to universities that might not be able to produce their own hardware. You probably aren’t going to find them listed on your favorite online reseller. Besides, the chip isn’t going to be usable on a breadboard. It is still going to take a lot of support to get it running.
Intel claims the silicon qubit technology is a million times smaller than other qubit types. The size is on the order of a device transistor — 50 nanometers square — simplifying things and allowing denser devices. In silicon spin qubits, information resides in the up or down spin of a single electron.
Of course, even Intel isn’t suggesting that 12 qubits are enough for a game-changing quantum computer, but you do have to start somewhere. This chip may enable more researchers to test the technology and will undoubtedly help Intel accelerate its research to the next step.
There is a lot of talk that silicon is the way to go for scalable quantum computing. It makes you wonder if there’s
anything silicon can’t do?
You can
access
today’s limited quantum computers in the proverbial cloud. | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653777",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2023-06-18T00:25:34",
"content": "To be clear, what I got from the article is that Intel’s qubit solution is fermion half-odd spin(the particle attribute) measurement of a silicon atom(or a group of atoms with coherence) in a containment ... | 1,760,372,263.585698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/3d-printering-treating-filament-like-paint-opens-wild-possibilities/ | 3D Printering: Treating Filament Like Paint Opens Wild Possibilities | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"3d printed",
"filament blending",
"filament painting",
"hueforge",
"lithophane"
] | New angles and concepts in 3D printing are always welcome, and we haven’t seen anything
quite
like [Horn & Rhode]’s
3D prints that do not look anything like 3D prints
, accomplished with an experimental tool called
HueForge
. The concept behind it is simple (though not easy), and the results can be striking when applied correctly.
3D prints that
really
don’t look 3D-printed.
The idea is this: colored, melted filament is, in a sense, not that different from colored paint. Both come in various colors, are applied in thin layers, and blend into new colors when they do so. When applied correctly, striking imagery can emerge. An example is shown here, but there are several more both on the
HueForge
project page as well as
models on Printables
.
Instead of the 3D printer producing a 3D object, the printer creates a (mostly) flat image similar in structure to a
lithophane
. But unlike a lithophane, these blend colors in clever and effective ways by printing extremely thin layers in highly precise ways.
Doing this effectively requires a software tool to plan the color changes and predict how the outcome will look. It all relies on the fact that even solid-color filaments are not actually completely opaque — not when printed at a layer height of 0.08 mm, anyway — and colors will, as a result, blend into one another when layered. That’s how a model like the one shown here can get away with only a few filament changes.
Of course, this process is far from being completely automated. Good results require a solid amount of manual effort, and the transmissivity of one’s particular filament choices plays a tremendous role in how colors will actually blend. That’s where the
FilaScope
comes in: a tool to more or less objectively measure how well (or how poorly) a given filament transmits light. The results plug into the
HueForge
software to better simulate results and plan filament changes.
Print result, showing results of filament blending.
Tilted to catch the light, giving an idea of how the print is structured.
When done well, it’s possible to create things that look nothing at all like what we have come to expect 3D-printed things to look. The cameo proof-of-concept model is
available here
if you’d like to try it for yourself, and there’s also an
Aztec-style carving
that gives a convincing illusion of depth.
[Horn & Rhode] point out that this concept is still searching for a right-sounding name. Front-lit lithophane? Reverse lithophane? Filament painting? Color-blended bas-relief? If you have a better idea, we urge you not to keep it to yourself because [Horn & Rhode] absolutely want to hear from you. | 27 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653745",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T21:38:15",
"content": "Why does the one on the left so…. GOOD while the one on the right… meh?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6653746",
"author": "Thovth... | 1,760,372,263.519938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/get-back-your-replaceable-batteries-thanks-to-the-eu/ | Get Back Your Replaceable Batteries, Thanks To The EU | Jenny List | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"eu",
"European Union",
"smartphone battery"
] | The world’s tech companies must harbour a hearty dislike for the European Union because when the many cogs of its bureaucracies turn, they find themselves with little choice but to follow or risk losing access to a huge and affluent market. There are a few areas of technology that don’t have some concessions to EU rules in their manufacturing process, and if a common charging connector or right to repair weren’t enough, they’re back for another clash with the mobile phone industry. If you hanker for the days of replaceable mobile phone batteries, you’re in luck because
an EU Parliament vote has approved a set of rules covering batteries among which will be a requirement for replaceable cells in portable appliances
.
We expect that the phone manufacturers will drag their feet just as some of them have over charger ports, but the greater ease of maintenance, as well as extra longevity for phones, can only be a good thing. There are a few other measures in the package, and one of them caught our eye, the introduction of a battery passport for larger industrial and EV batteries. There’s little more information in the press release, but we hope that it doesn’t inhibit their exploitation by people in our community when introduced.
We look forward to seeing more replaceable battery models appear in due course, meanwhile, you can read some of
our coverage of the EU’s right-to-repair measures
.
Header: Andy Melton, USA,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 125 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653686",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T17:09:54",
"content": "I’m sure many people’s responses will be “but I like my super-thin phone” but honestly if the only thing this accomplishes is getting rid of manufacturers gluing down those easy-to-bend lithium ion internal b... | 1,760,372,263.831515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/get-in-over-your-head/ | Get In Over Your Head! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"newsletter"
] | When you talk to hackers who’ve just finished an epic project, they’ll often start off with a very familiar refrain: “I had no idea what I was getting into.” And maybe they’ll even follow up with the traditional second line “If I knew how hard this was going to be, I probably wouldn’t have tried.” And that’s from people who have just
finished
wiping the sweat from their brow.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you
do
get in over your head and take on more than you can chew. But let’s be honest, how often does that really happen relative to how many projects end up looking easy at first, and then end up teaching you a lot along the way, often the hard way? If you’re like me, the latter happens more than the former, and I don’t think I’m particularly clever.
Instead, it’s just the nature of learning. In the beginning, you don’t know something, so you don’t realize how difficult it is, hence the first classic line. And of course it’s going to be hard, because learning is always hard. If you knew it already, it would be easier, but it wouldn’t be learning!
Whether you get through or not depends on your own stubbornness and of course the nature of the hurdles. But whether you learn or not depends entirely on you not knowing what you’re doing in the first place.
Pay good attention to the second line in the post-hack couplet, and heed its advice. Starting off on something that you don’t already know how to do provides you with a fearlessness, and the courage to try something that you might not have otherwise dared. It’s good to get in over your head sometimes. That’s where you learn, and those are the audacious projects that end up being the most successful.
Or they end up as horrendous failures, but we’re crossing our fingers for you. Be brave! And if you can’t be brave, be incompletely informed.
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
.
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You should sign up
! | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653632",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T14:19:58",
"content": "Lately I’ve completed many of my projects, as opposed to earlier days when I’d frequently let feature creep get the best of me.The beauty of my main hobby, home automation is that it’s very modular and y... | 1,760,372,264.085839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/kinefox-tracks-wildlife-for-a-lifetime/ | Kinefox Tracks Wildlife For A Lifetime | Navarre Bartz | [
"hardware",
"Science"
] | [
"energy harvester",
"gps tracker",
"MSG32 energy harvester",
"sensors",
"sigfox",
"wildlife",
"wildlife conservation"
] | Radio trackers have become an important part of studying the movements of wildlife, but keeping one running for the life of an animal has been challenging. Researchers have now developed a way to let wildlife recharge trackers
via their movements
.
With trackers limited to less than 5% of an animal’s total mass to prevent limitations to the their movement, it can be especially difficult to fit trackers with an appropriately-sized battery pack to last a lifetime. Some trackers have been fitted with solar cells, but besides issues with robustness, many animals are nocturnal or live in dimly-lit spaces making this solution less than ideal. Previous experiments with kinetically-charged trackers were quite bulky.
The Kinefox wildlife tracking system uses an 18 g, Kinetron MSG32 kinetic energy harvesting mechanism to power the GPS and accelerometer. Similar to the mechanical systems found in
automatic winding watches
, this energy harvester uses a pendulum glued to a ferromagnetic ring which generates power as it moves around a copper coil. Power is stored in a Li-ion capacitor rated for 20,000 charge/discharge cycles to ensure better longevity than would be afforded by a Li-ion battery. Data is transmitted via Sigfox to a cloud-based database for easy access.
If you want to build one to track your own pets, the files and BOM are
available on GitHub
. We’ve featured other animal trackers before for
cats
and
dogs
which are probably also applicable to bison. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653598",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T11:52:11",
"content": "I suppose a nuclear-powered device was not considered.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6653605",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,263.983519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/17/clock-project-doesnt-require-a-decision/ | Clock Project Doesn’t Require A Decision | Al Williams | [
"clock hacks"
] | [] | You decide to build a clock. The first thing you have you determine if it is going to be digital or analog. Or is it? If you build [
Ivanek240267]’s clock
, you can have both.
The digital portion uses an OLED display. The analog portion contains two rings of smart LEDs. The WiFi configuration is always an issue in projects like this, and this clock also offers options. In addition, the
Raspberry Pi Pico-based clock
also sets itself via NTP.
You can, of course, compile the WiFi credentials into the code, and assuming you don’t plan on changing networks, that’s fine. But if you’re in a more dynamic situation, the clock can also read its configuration from a memory card.
The analog clock uses colors. The green LEDs represent quarter hours. The blue LEDs are for minutes, while the red ones are full hours. Of course, reading the OLED doesn’t require any special interpretation.
When debugging, the timing doesn’t drive the smart LEDs. That means if you need to work on that part of the code, you won’t be able to count on debugging support.
We’ve mentioned before that
digital clocks are all analog
, anyway. If you want to use fewer LEDs, you can
get by with only five
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653578",
"author": "Chiron",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T09:15:06",
"content": "Great clock, but a ring of LEDs is hardly an analog display.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6653727",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,372,264.032511 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/your-iphone-cant-do-what-this-wince-device-can/ | Your IPhone Can’t Do What This WinCE Device Can! | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"HP",
"Journada",
"WinCE"
] | Most of us probably now have a smartphone, an extremely capable pocket computer — even if sometimes its abilities are disguised a little by its manufacturer. There are many contenders to the crown of first smartphone, but in that discussion it’s often forgotten that the first generally available such devices weren’t phones at all, but PDAs, or Personal Digital Assistants. The fancier ones blurred the line between PDA and laptop and were the forerunner devices to netbooks, and it’s one of these that [Remy] is putting through its paces. He makes the bold claim that it can do things the iPhone can’t, and while the two devices are in no way comparable he’s right on one point.
His HP Journada 720 can host a development environment, while the iPhone can’t
.
The HP was something of a turn-of-the-millennium object of desire, being a palmtop computer with a half-decent keyboard a 640×240 pixel TFT display, and 32 MB of RAM alongside its 206 MHz Intel StrongARM CPU. Its Windows CE OS wasn’t quite the desktop Windows of the day, but it was close enough to be appealing for the ’90s exec who had everything. Astoundingly it has more than one Linux distro that can run on it with some level of modernity, which is where he’s able to make the claim about the iPhone being inferior.
We remember the Journada clamshell series from back in the day, though by our recollection the battery life would plummet if any attempt was made to use the PCMCIA slot. It was only one of several similar platforms offering a mini-laptop experience, and we feel it’s sad that there are so few similar machines today. Perhaps we’ll keep an eye out for one and relive the ’90s ourselves. | 44 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653547",
"author": "Ale",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T05:35:58",
"content": "Some of those machines had a reset button too…Some others had a 640×480 screen, MIPS, SH-3",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6653549",
"author": "jpa",... | 1,760,372,264.167114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/16/reliable-3d-printing-with-ceramic-slurry/ | Reliable 3D Printing With Ceramic Slurry | Bryan Cockfield | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"ceramic",
"curing",
"infrared",
"research",
"support structures",
"ultraviolet",
"university"
] | 3D printing is at its most accessible (and most affordable) when printing in various plastics or resin. Printers of this sort are available for less than the cost of plenty of common power tools. Printing in materials other than plastic, though, can be a bit more involved. There are printers now for various metals and even concrete, but these can be orders of magnitude more expensive than their plastic cousins. And then there are materials which haven’t really materialized into a viable 3D printing system. Ceramic is one of those, and while there are some printers that can print in ceramic,
this latest printer makes some excellent strides in the technology
.
Existing technology for printing in ceramic uses a type of ceramic slurry as the print medium, and then curing it with ultraviolet light to solidify the material. The problem with ultraviolet light is that it doesn’t penetrate particularly far into the slurry, only meaningfully curing the outside portions. This can lead to problems, especially around support structures, with the viability of the prints. The key improvement that the team at Jiangnan University made was using near-infrared light to cure the prints instead, allowing the energy to penetrate much further into the material for better curing. This also greatly reduces or eliminates the need for supports in the print.
The paper about the method is available
in full at Nature
, documenting all of the details surrounding this new system. It may be a while until this method is available to a wider audience, though. If you can get by with a print material that’s a little less exotic, it’s not too hard to get a metal 3D printer,
as long as you are familiar with a bit of electrochemistry
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6653554",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2023-06-17T06:55:55",
"content": "If you want to ensure the fired ceramic 3D print is non-porous, apply a coating of glaze to it then fire it after firing the 3D print the first time. Do not just dunk the item in a tub of liquid gl... | 1,760,372,264.208541 |
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