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https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/congratulations-low-power-winners/ | Congratulations Low-Power Winners | Elliot Williams | [
"contests",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [] | Congratulations to the winners of the
2023 Hackaday.io Low Power Contest
! We challenged you to show us how much you could do with how little, and you did not disappoint. Our judges have put their heads together, and thanks to Digi-Key, our contest sponsor, the top three entries will be taking home a $150 gift certificate for yet more hacking supplies.
We saw a great diversity of ideas here, all on the low-power theme. So without further ado…
The Prize Winners
[Christoph]’s
Ultra Low Power RF-Sensor
arose out of necessity. Having just repaired a shower drain, he couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t start leaking again at some point in the future, but couldn’t go ripping up the floor under the shower tray every week to check. He needed a remote moisture sensor that would do the job for a long time with no intervention.
This superb solution combines an Atmel ATmega328P, an HDC1080 humidity sensor, a 433 MHz radio transmitter, and an RTC to keep power consumption super-low when everything else is shut down. Idling at 600 nA total most of the time, taking a reading every 15 minutes, this device should last for 12 years, and it’s been installed and running for five so far, so we’d say that it’s already proven itself very worthy of taking home the prize here.
[BleakyTex]’s
Compact, low-power Geiger counter
is absolutely the lowest power Geiger counter we’ve ever seen and maybe also the cutest. With the ambitious goal of running up to two years on two tiny LR44 batteries and a proven runtime of about six months by now, this is the radiation detector you can take with you every day, should you need to. The key is a custom HV section that’s designed for efficiency and the screen – even today, it’s still hard to beat the low power consumption of the humble LCD screen. All this, and it still makes those satisfying clicks when it’s enabled. [BleakyTex] says he might make a kit from this, and we absolutely hope he does!
[mircemk]’s
Microwatt Pulse Motor
took one of our suggestions in the announcement of the contest and ran with it. This eight-pole handmade electric motor doesn’t actually
do
anything other than spin, but it does that when hooked up to a literal potato. Pulling around 40 mA at 600 mV, it can easily run on solar power with enough power left over to charge up a battery for when the sun doesn’t shine. All of this is made with extremely simple circuitry and parts scavenged from old relays with a sewing needle held up by a magnet for the bearing. This is pure ingenuity and a sweet low-power demo.
Honorable Mentions
We had five honorable mention categories and more than enough awesome projects to go around, but we picked some anyway.
Sensible Sensors: We loved [Discreet Mayor]’s remote MQTT
Long-Range Thermocouple Temp Sensor
used for logging barbecue temperatures. That it could last for up to a year on a battery charge is impressive, but who’s grilling 365 days a year?
Artful Art: We had two nearly identical satellite circuit sculpture builds, and we just couldn’t choose. [Jordan Blanchard]’s
MicroSat Circuit Sculpture
takes pictures and sends them by FTP. It not only looks pretty but it is used to check the overhead conditions in his observatory. [Andrea Console]’s
A little CSK satellite for a bright workstation
is a beautiful and well-thought-out blinker. Both of them are solar and look sweet!
Battery Buster: Which project could go longest on a battery? It’s hard to tell, but [Josh EJ]’s
Calendar Clock 50 Years Battery Life 1 AA Alkaline
certainly has the most ambitious title. We kid. By slowing down the ticks of a clock mechanism, which are already obscenely power-saving, [Josh] estimates 6.2 uA of average current draw. Multiplying that out gets you 55 years on a battery, but at that point, you know the battery will die first. And the thing actually physically moves to boot!
Perpetual Motion: Since we already gave a prize to the pulse motor, a worthy shoutout goes to [JP Gleyzes] and the
Kokot: a low-energy chicken coop door
. This is a solar project that does one job: opening and closing a chicken coop door by day and night. We simply loved the practicality of the project, and since it’s solar, it’s one less thing he has to think about.
How Low? A number of projects did a great job documenting their low power use, but [Capt. Flatus O’Flaherty] (his real name, we presume) not only designed a power-off circuit but tested it well in the
LoRa Dark Star
project. If you’ve got a project that only needs to run intermittently and you want to reduce your overall power budget, definitely check out this work.
LoRA Dark Star
Kokot
Calendar Clock
A little CSK satellite
MicroSat Circuit Sculpture
Long Range Thermocouple
Thanks again to everyone who entered! The Low Power Challenge was a tremendous success. If you haven’t
checked out all the entries
, go do so and mention
your own
favorites down in the comments. We’d love to hear what struck your fancy.
And thanks again to Digi-Key for sponsoring! | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632484",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T19:37:54",
"content": "That Capt. Flatus O’Flaherty is obviously a fake name. WTF?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6632516",
"author": "JanW",
... | 1,760,372,334.077497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/square-wheeled-bike-is-actually-an-amazing-tracked-build/ | Square-Wheeled Bike Is Actually An Amazing Tracked Build | Lewin Day | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"square"
] | The invention of the wheel is considered one of the crowning achievements of early humanity. Squares don’t roll, after all. [The Q] decided to build a square-wheeled bike anyway,
with a neat tracked setup that makes for an awesome visual gag.
The wheels are made out of C-angle steel, making them both stout and incredibly heavy. While they don’t really need the additional structure for strength, they feature spokes which mount a central hub for attaching the “wheels” to a bicycle axle. The squares aren’t designed to roll, though. Instead, they are fitted with gears and rollers, upon which a track made of bicycle chain and tires is fitted. When the rider pedals, this turns the track, propelling the bike along. Cleverly, the track mechanism is neatly hidden by some framing, confusing passers-by.
The riding experience is noisy, thanks to the tracks. There’s also plenty of rolling resistance. It’s unlikely bikes like these will become mainstream transport anytime soon,
nor will you see them at the velodrome.
Regardless, it’s certainly a great way to turn heads at the park. | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632411",
"author": "Smart Tech Tune",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T15:37:41",
"content": "The square-wheeled bike with a tracked setup sounds like a unique visual gag. While it may not be practical for mainstream transport or velodrome racing, it’s definitely an attention-grabbing inve... | 1,760,372,334.650308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/tinkercad-gets-a-move-on/ | Tinkercad Gets A Move On | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"physics",
"simulatation",
"tinkercad"
] | Going to the movies is an experience. But how popular do you think they’d be if you went in, bought your popcorn, picked your seat, and the curtain would rise on a large still photograph? Probably not a great business model. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video is worth at least a million, and that’s why we thought it was awesome that Tinkercad now has
a physics simulator built right in
.
Look for this icon on the top right toolbar.
It all starts with your 3D model or models, of course. Then there’s an apple icon. (Like Newton, not like Steve Jobs.) Once you click it, you are in simulation mode. You can select objects and make them fixed or movable. You can change the material of each part, too, which varies its friction, density, and mass. There is a play button at the bottom. Press it, and you’ll see what happens. You can also share and you have the option of making an MP4 video like the ones below.
We, of course, couldn’t resist. We started with a half-sphere and made it larger. We also rotated it so the flat side was up. We then made a copy that would become the inside of our bowl. Using the ruler tool, we shaved about 2 mm off the length and width (X and Y) of the inner sphere. We also moved it 2 mm up without changing the size.
Using the alignment tools, you can then center the inner piece in the X and Y axis. Change the inner color to a hole and group the objects. This forms a simple bowl shape. Then we moved the workplane to a random part of the inner surface of our bowl and dropped a sphere. Nothing complicated.
The first video shows the simulation of a plastic bowl and a rubber ball, both free to move. You can click the screen to throw random items at your simulation during the run, but we didn’t do that. The video is low resolution but still pretty neat.
What If?
So what if the bowl couldn’t move? That’s easy, just select the bowl and in the property inspector, next to the word “Shape” there is a button that looks like a 2D view of a cylinder rolling down a plane. Click that and it will become a circle surrounded by four arrows. This indicates the bowl is now static. Click it again to go back to making it movable. Just for variety, we made the bowl and ball proper Hackaday colors.
Of Course, There’s More
So that’s what we got with about
five minutes of effort at most
. As you might expect, the people working behind the scenes at Tinkercad have put a bit more effort into demos. Their
marble maze
is pretty impressive.
There are other demos, including a roller coaster made from straws, a Pachinko machine, and a target game where you knock down cans. If you think many of these look like demos from a physics class, you aren’t wrong. Tinkercad has always been geared toward educators and students. However, this has more possibilities than the obvious.
For example, it is a no-brainer for a physics instructor to use this. If you are teaching 3D CAD, it also could be a fun aside. But what about math? There’s a simulation of a Galton board, which demonstrates the central limit theorem nicely. Don’t forget that Tinkercad can do other tricks, too, like circuits, Arduino code, and Lego.
So there are plenty of opportunities to engage kids in creative activities. We can only hope that one day, you’ll be able to build a motorized contraption in the circuit simulator, program the virtual Arduino to sense things in the physical simulation, and control things with motors and actuators, too.
Meanwhile, you can amuse yourself by doing a
domino
setup virtually. If we had a class of students, we’d be starting a virtual Rube Goldberg competition, right away.
Physics
We don’t know how accurate this simulation really is, but it looks good at a casual glance. Of course, it lacks features you’d need to use it over some commercial simulators, but that really isn’t the point. What are you going to simulate? Post a link to your best effort in the comments.
We love simulations, even if Tinkercad isn’t our first choice for
circuit sims
. But just because a simulator runs in the browser
doesn’t mean it’s a toy
. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632401",
"author": "complex shape",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T15:06:08",
"content": "They removed the ability to create shape generators so now it is very limited.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6632434",
"author": "A... | 1,760,372,334.220737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/custom-bluetooth-adapter-brings-1990s-car-phone-back-online/ | Custom Bluetooth Adapter Brings 1990s Car Phone Back Online | Robin Kearey | [
"car hacks",
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"1G",
"bluetooth",
"car phone",
"mitsubishi"
] | [Jeff Lau]’s Mitsubishi 3000GT comes with all the essential features you’d expect in a fancy sports car from 1993: pop-up headlights, movable spoilers, and a fully-functional telephone handset in the center console. The phone was fully functional until North America’s first-generation AMPS cellular network was shut down back in 2008, since then, it hasn’t done much but show “NO SVC” on the display. That is, until [Jeff] decided to build
a Bluetooth adapter that lets it connect to a modern smartphone
.
The easy solution would have been to simply connect the handset’s speaker and microphone to a standard Bluetooth headset, but that would have destroyed the 1990s aesthetic it had going on. So what [Jeff] did instead was construct a plug-in module that hooks up to the phone’s base station in the trunk and communicates directly with all the existing systems. That way, the phone works in exactly the same way it always did: the radio is automatically muted during calls, the buttons on the steering column work as expected, and you can even dial and store numbers using the buttons on the handset.
No modifications required: the BlueTooth module is connected using the factory-installed cabling
It took a lot of reverse-engineering to figure out the technical details of the DiamondTel Model 92 that came with the car as a factory option. [Jeff] helpfully documented all of his findings on the project’s GitHub page, making it easy for anyone with a similar system to implement their own upgrades. The main components of the upgrade kit are a BM62 Bluetooth module that connects to a modern phone, a PIC18F27Q43 microcontroller to implement the car phone’s interface and menus, and several analog chips to process the audio. All of these are mounted on a piece of prototype board and housed in a standard plastic enclosure that neatly fits on top of the existing equipment in the trunk.
While the hardware mod is a pretty neat job already, the real strength of this project is in the software. [Jeff] worked hard to implement all relevant features and mimic the original interface as much as possible, even
using 1G phone test equipment
to simulate incoming calls from the long-gone network. He also added menu features to enable Bluetooth pairing, use voice assistants, and even play games including versions of
Snake
and
Tetris
stripped down to match the handset display’s constraints.
As classic phone conversions go, this is definitely one of the most impressive. [Jeff]’s extensive documentation should come in handy if you’ve got a similar model, but if you don’t, there’s still plenty of ways to
connect modern electronics without defacing your classic ride’s interior
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632335",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T11:13:03",
"content": "Nice protoboard layout !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6632356",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T12:16:21",
"content": "Now this... | 1,760,372,334.365357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/what-can-you-do-with-discarded-fish-aggregation-devices/ | What Can You Do With Discarded Fish Aggregation Devices | Jenny List | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"buoy",
"echo sounder",
"FAD",
"iridium"
] | Often we bring you projects at the end of their trajectory so that you can marvel at a job well done, but sometimes we point you instead to the start of the story. Such is the case with [Brett Smith]’s investigation of discarded fish aggregation buoys, referred to as FADs. These 700-plus dollar devices are deployed in the ocean in the thousands by commercial fishing fleets, and most are not recovered. He’s looking at them from the point of view of
re-using their technology in the marine conservation business
.
His progress has been documented in a series of short YouTube videos, starting with an introduction that we’ve placed below the break. So far he’s gone on to
a complete teardown
, and then
a detailed look at the PCB
. Inside they have a solar charger for a bank of NiCd cells, an echo sounder, a GPS receiver, and an Iridium satellite modem allowing the device to phone home. There’s certainly plenty in there to experiment with, including a few slightly exotic parts, so keep an eye on his channel as we’re sure to see more.
These devices have never made it to Hackaday before, but we have seen
an echo sounder on a surfboard
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632309",
"author": "Josuah Demangeon",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T08:48:36",
"content": "Such a nice project!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_aggregating_deviceIt looks like these are totally passive (harmless even?) toward fishes: not actively sending anything that’d distract them... | 1,760,372,333.973985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/autopsy-of-a-drifting-thumbstick-reveals-all/ | Autopsy Of A Drifting Thumbstick Reveals All | Lewin Day | [
"Games"
] | [
"analog stick",
"controller",
"game controller",
"gaming",
"Joystick",
"Oculus",
"thumbstick",
"vr"
] | Analog sticks have become a core part of modern video game controllers. They also routinely fail or end up drifting, consigning expensive controllers to the garbage. [sjm4306] recently did a repair job on an Oculus VR gaming controller with drifting analog sticks,
and decided to do an autopsy to figure out what actually went wrong.
A microscope reveals gouges in the resistive material, caused by the metal contacts inside the analog stick. This happened via regular use.
The video starts by taking apart the analog joystick itself by prying off the metal case. Inside, we get a look at the many tiny individual components that make up a modern thumbstick. Of most interest, though, are the components that make up the potentiometers within the stick. Investigation revealed that the metal contacts that move with the stick had worn through the resistive coating on the thin plastic membrane in the base of the joystick, creating the frustrating drift problem.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Analog sticks in modern controllers could be manufactured with higher-quality components that don’t wear so easily. After all, it’s hard to imagine a 90s video game controller wearing out as fast as this modern Oculus unit. But
everything is built to a price
, at the end of the day, and that’s just how it goes. Video after the break. | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632268",
"author": "mini",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T06:15:27",
"content": "Funny, I tore down my drifting switch joysticks and the contacts were barely worn. Sure there are marks but they’re faint.Meanwhile my working 3DS circle pad had the carbon peeling off the contacts from wear... | 1,760,372,334.300269 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/theres-cash-in-them-old-solar-panels/ | There’s Cash In Them Old Solar Panels | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"glass",
"landfill",
"metals",
"modules",
"Panels",
"recycling",
"silicon",
"solar",
"value",
"waste"
] | The first solar panels may have rolled out of Bell Labs in the 1950s, with major press around their inconsistent and patchy adoption in the decades that followed, but despite the fanfare they were not been able to compete on a price per kilowatt compared to other methods of power generation until much more recently. Since then the amount of solar farms has increased exponentially, and while generating energy from the sun is much cleaner than most other methods of energy production and contributes no greenhouse gasses in the process there are some concerns with disposal of solar panels as they reach the end of their 30-year lifespan.
Some companies are planning on making money on recycling these old modules
rather than letting them be landfilled.
Typical solar panels are encased in glass and waterproofed, which makes recycling them somewhat of a challenge, but there are a lot of valuable materials in them that are worth recovering, including silver and copper. Even silicon and aluminum are profitable to recover, and these companies have developed specialized (but secret and proprietary) processes to recover them as efficiently as possible. As [Jon Hurdle] notes in the linked article, another major concern with aging panels that recycling solves is that they are often otherwise required to be landfilled as hazardous waste which can be extremely expensive. Recycling can alleviate this cost dramatically.
While there is a certain amount of pearl-clutching going on around solar panels, usually as thinly veiled political opposition from those invested in fossil fuels, we shouldn’t be surprised that plenty of people are springing up to recover the valuable materials that can be harvested from old panels. Solar panels aren’t going away anytime soon, and while the article notes there are only five companies currently certified to recycle solar panels, expect plenty more to spring up in time. In the meantime, make sure you are harvesting the maximum amount of energy from your solar panels while they are still working
by using a maximum power point tracker
. | 82 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632231",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T02:09:34",
"content": "If you are serious about caring about carbon emissions and are not in favor of next-gen nuclear, then you are not serious about caring about carbon emissions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,334.474759 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/the-eyes-have-it-with-this-solid-state-magic-eye/ | The Eyes Have It With This Solid State Magic Eye | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"6E5",
"6T5",
"6U5",
"bar graph",
"led",
"lm3914",
"magic eye"
] | The classic “Magic Eye” tuning indicator was a fantastic piece of vacuum tube technology that graced all kinds of electronic gear for a fair fraction of the 20th century. But despite its prevalence, finding a new-old-stock Magic Eye tube is a tall order these days, especially for the rare versions like the 6T5. No worries, though, since
direct plug-in solid-state replacements for the 6T5
are now a thing, thanks to [Gord Rabjohn].
Readers will be forgiven if this seems a tad familiar, since the current work is based strongly on
[Gord]’s previous Magic Eye work
. But the 6T5 was a unique tube, with a display that looked more like a dilating pupil than the sweeping circle of the more common 6E5 and 6U5 tubes. Luckily, most of the basic circuitry of the previous tubes, which was based on the classic LM391x LED bar graph display chips, could be leveraged for the 6T5 substitute. [Gord] did need to come up with a new display board, which holds 160 green surface-mount LEDs in six concentric rings. He also added a single orange LED to the very center of the display board, to simulate the cheery glow of the original tube’s heater filament.
As seen in the video below, the solid-state circuit lives in the exact same base and glass envelope that the original tube used. The animation is pretty smooth, and the look is quite convincing. The color isn’t quite right, though, but that’s limited by the color of the LEDs. We wonder if a similar circuit using addressable RGB LEDs could get a closer match to the original 6T5 phosphor. Or perhaps just replacing the green LEDs with white ones and tweaking the tint of the diffuser would be an easier approach.
Not that we’re complaining, mind you; the solid-state substitutes came out great!
Thanks to [hackbyte] for the tip. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632207",
"author": "Lee Hart",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T23:32:49",
"content": "Very nice! That orange LED in the center is a nice touch.Did it really need 160 diodes to get each of the rings? I wonder if rectangular LEDs (say 5x2mm) could be used save some parts and make it simple ... | 1,760,372,334.02083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/weird-555-function-generator-uses-feedback/ | Weird 555 Function Generator Uses Feedback | Lewin Day | [
"hardware"
] | [
"555",
"function generator"
] | There are plenty of designs out there for sawtooth and triangle function generators, many of them using the humble 555 IC. Few are readily voltage controlled, making them difficult to work with using a DAC, though.
Enter this useful design posted to EDN!
The nifty design allows both waveshape and amplitude to be controlled via voltage. You could hook up a couple of potentiometers and call it done. Or, even better, you can control these parameters via PWM output from a microcontroller. Handy, no? It’s achieved by a fancy routing that sends feedback from the 555’s output pin to the CV input, instead of the usual design that uses the THR and TRG pins instead. The design also allows the production of both symmetrical and asymmetrical triangle waveforms, and as a bonus, the whole oscillator draws less than 4 mW of power.
If you’re looking for a nifty triangle/sawtooth generator that sits neatly in your otherwise-digital design, this could be for you. Or, you might like to explore the sheer mountain of other 555 hacks
we’ve featured over the years.
We even held
a contest!
If you’ve got new 555 hacks the world needs to see, don’t hesitate to drop them
into the tipsline. | 20 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632168",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T21:42:20",
"content": "Could have been done with a FPGA",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6632184",
"author": "Andre Michael Bryx",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T22:... | 1,760,372,333.908874 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-on-modern-laptops/ | Disabling Intel’s Backdoors On Modern Laptops | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"hap bit",
"IME",
"Intel Management Engine",
"novacustom",
"platform security processor",
"privacy",
"security"
] | Despite some companies making strides with ARM, for the most part, the desktop and laptop space is still dominated by x86 machines. For all their advantages, they have a glaring flaw for anyone concerned with privacy or security in the form of a hardware backdoor that can access virtually any part of the computer even with the power off. AMD calls their system the Platform Security Processor (PSP) and Intel’s is known as the Intel Management Engine (IME).
To fully disable these co-processors a computer from before 2008 is required, but if you need more modern hardware than that which still respects your privacy and security concerns you’ll need to either buy an ARM device, or disable the IME
like NovaCustom has managed to do with their NS51 series laptop
.
NovaCustom specializes in building custom laptops with customizations for various components and specifications to fit their needs, including options for the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, keyboard layout, and other considerations. They favor Coreboot as a bootloader which already goes a long way to eliminating proprietary closed-source software at a fundamental level, but not all Coreboot machines have the IME completely disabled. There are two ways to do this, the HECI method which is better than nothing but not fully trusted, and the HAP bit, which completely disables the IME. NovaCustom is using the HAP bit approach to disable the IME, meaning that although it’s not completely eliminated from the computer, it is turned off in a way that’s at least good enough for computers that the NSA uses.
There are a lot of new computer manufacturers building conscientious hardware nowadays, but (with the notable exception of System76) the IME and PSP seem to be largely ignored by most computing companies we’d otherwise expect to care about an option like this. It’s certainly still an area of concern considering how much power the IME and PSP are given over their host computers, and we have seen
even mainline manufacturers sometimes offer systems with the IME disabled
. The only other options to solve this problem are based around
specific motherboards for 8th and 9th generation Intel desktops
, or you can go way back to hardware from 2008 and
install libreboot to eliminate, rather than disable, the IME
.
Thanks to [Maik] for the tip! | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632126",
"author": "yadack",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T18:44:49",
"content": "> (with the notable exception of System76)And Purism.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6632169",
"author": "Upgrade pi-top [3]",
"tim... | 1,760,372,334.15049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/tech-in-plain-sight-field-guide-to-power-plugs/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Field Guide To Power Plugs | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest"
] | [
"ac",
"mains electricity",
"plugs",
"sockets"
] | It is the bane of worldwide travel: there isn’t just one way to get AC power from the wall. The exact connector — and what you can expect when you plug in — differs from country to country. Even if you stay home, you must account for this if your designs go places and expect to plug into the wall. If you’ve ever looked at a universal adapter, it is full of prongs and pins like a metallic porcupine. Where do all those pins go?
Of course, there are some easy ways to sidestep the whole issue if you don’t need AC power. Much low-power gear now just provides a USB or barrel connector. Then you can use an area-appropriate adapter or charger to power your device. Batteries work, too. But if you need to plug in, you will run into other kinds of plugs.
Switching power supplies have helped. In the old days, many things expected either 125V or 250V and didn’t work with the opposite voltage. Switching power supplies often allow a wide input range or have a switch to select one range or the other. These two voltages will cover almost any situation. If you have something that must have one voltage or the other, you’ll need a transformer — also called a converter — to step the voltage up or down. But most often, these days, you just need an adapter. There are slight variations. For example, some countries supply 100V or 110V, but that usually doesn’t make much difference. You also need to understand if your equipment cares if the AC is 50 Hz or 60 Hz.
Most of the power sockets you’ll find around the world will fall into one of several categories. The categories range from A to N. Even among these, however, there are variations.
Type A
For example, the common type A plug and socket are what Americans call “two prong.” If you live in the US, you’ve probably noticed that the plug is polarized. That is, one pin is slightly wider than the other so the plug can only go in one way. The wide pin is connected to the circuit neutral. The maximum load for this connector is 15A. It is difficult to find type A sockets anymore, other than on cheap extension cords or things like lamps that pass through their electrical connections to a second socket. Type B is far more common and type A plug will fit in a type B socket.
In Japan they also use type A. However, Japanese type A plugs have two blades of equal size. They’ll fit into a US socket, but not the other way around. Type A is also found in most of Central America and the Caribbean. The two pins, of course, are the AC hot and neutral wires. This is also called a NEMA 1-15 connector, although you may have never heard of that. The Japanese version is technically a JIS C 8303 class II. Typical voltage is 125V for the US variant and 100V in Japan, both at 15A. In China, type A sockets carry 220V.
Type B
While a type A plug will fit a type B socket, the reverse case shown here won’t work!
These days it is more common to see type B sockets or what Americans would call a “three prong.” These are used in most of the same countries that use type B and the Japanese plug is slightly different, again. The type B plug has the same two wires as a type A plus a ground lug at the bottom. Because of the orientation, it can only go in one way. In addition, the ground pin is slightly longer, so it will make contact before the other pins and stay in contact longer when removing the plug. It is possible to plug an A plug into a B socket, but there will be no grounding, of course. Also called a NEMA 5-15, this plug is also rated at 15A and like type A, typically carries 110V. The Japanese variant, JIS C 8303 class I carries 100V at 15A.
Type C
Type C Europlug (public domain)
If you’ve been in Europe, you’ve seen type C plugs (CEE 7/16 or CEE 7/17) but the corresponding sockets are not used anymore. Sometimes called a Europlug, they are used in most of Europe with a few notable exceptions (Great Britain, Ireland, Cyprus, and Malta). You can also find them in China and Russia. They are rated to 2.5A (CEE 7/16) or 16A (CEE 7/17) and fit in E, F, J, K, or N sockets. Often, the pins are tapered and flexible to help them fit in various socket configurations. They also fit into some L sockets, but since the high-current L socket has a different spacing, they won’t accept a type C plug. If you had a type C socket, it would fit there, too, but without grounding, these have mostly been replaced. You usually find 250V on these plugs. There are minor variations between countries, and while a British BS 4573 is a type C socket, it won’t accept a Europlug because of different pin sizes. The BS 4573 is an “electric razor” plug meant for plugging into isolation transformers near sinks.
New type H sockets have holes within the slots that allow you to fit a type C plug into the socket. The type O, found in Thailand, can accept a type C, also, but a difference in pin size often causes a loose fit.
Notice that the pins are insulated towards the plug body. This prevents exposed energized conductors while plugging into a compatible socket. The metal parts are only hot when they are covered by the socket. However, the CEE 7/17 plug lacks this insulation and uses fatter pins to increase current for things like hair dryers or vacuum cleaners. Because of the plug body’s shape, these will not fit into a type N socket.
Type D, M
A combo socket that can take a D or M plug. Image by [Shoestring] –
Creative Commons
You’ll find the triangular type D plugs in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Nambia. Sometimes referred to as an “old British plug,” it is found in many countries that were formerly under British control, like Hong Kong and Kenya. However, most countries that used the plug moved to type G, except South Africa which went to type M. Also known as BS 546, the plug was used until the 1940s in Britain, as well. The type D and M variations differ in their pin sizes and are not compatible with each other. Type D can handle up to 5A, and type M can take 15A. There are also 2A and 30A BS 546 connectors.
Type E, F, J, K, L, N, O
The type E, F, J, K, L, and N are all similar to a type C, but the socket has some arrangement for ground. This is similar to how the type B socket has a provision for a ground but can still accept a type A plug. A C plug will mostly fit in any of these sockets, although there are some limitations, especially with the type L socket, which is really two incompatible sockets.
Type E socket with ground pin. (Public domain)
The type E has a male pin that serves as a ground installed at the top as opposed to type K, which has the male ground pin on the plug. Type E are common in parts of France, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland, along with a few other countries. The type K outlets are found in Greenland, Denmark, and some other countries.
Type F outlet/plug (public domain)
The type F found in countries like Algeria, Bosnia, and Iceland, among others has grounding pins on the side. These are sometimes known by a shortened version of their German name, the Schuko plug.
Type J appears in Switzerland and a few other countries. It is often called a “Swiss 3 pin.” The SEV 1011 is rated for 10A and there is a variant that can handle up to 16A. There is also a two-pin plug that can be made to fit in a type J or type C socket. Most often, you’ll find 220V on these connectors. Type K is found in Denmark alongside C or E sockets.
Brazilian type N plug and socket.
CC By-SA 3.0
by [Fasouzafreitas].
Type N is a connector found in Brazil and has a slightly different arrangement for the ground pin which is on the plug. Some parts of the country use 127V and some use 220V. The outlets come in 10A and 20A versions.
Thailand is the home of type O, a 16A 250V connector with ground. a C , E, or F plug will fit in an O socket loosely.
The type L, used in Italy and North Africa, is the odd connector out of the ones that can take a type C plug. These distinctive plugs have a single row of three pins. The 10A version will accept a C plug. However, the 16A version is spaced wrong because, historically, there was a 127V circuit for lights and a 220V circuit for everything else and they used different plugs. In modern times, the sockets often have a figure 8 pattern on the outer holes so they can accept either version of the plug and these will take a type C plug.
Type G
A type G plug (
CC-SA3.0
by [Asim18])
In the UK today, and in about 50 other countries, the type G or
BS 1363
are common. There are three rectangular pins on the plug, forming a triangle. The plug also has a built-in fuse, and the connectors can carry up to 13A at 250V. These appeared in 1947 and replaced the type K in the UK.
The built-in fuse allows homes to utilize “
ring circuits.
” That is, instead of a small number of outlets being fed from a branch leaving a central point like a load panel, all outlets can connect to each other in a ring. This means that the central distribution is simplified, but has a much larger circuit protection device than in a radial system. Therefore, each thing that plugs into the ring needs its own, presumably smaller, fuse.
Type H, I, and More
Dual type I socket (
CC BY-SA 4.0
by [Fredquint])
In Israel, you’ll find 50V at 16 or 10A on type H plugs and sockets. These have a unique triangular arrangement of three pins. Type I is found in Australia, New Zealand as well as China and Argentina. It also has a triangular arrangement of pins, although its pins are fat.
You might think this is everything, but it isn’t. There are also plugs made for electric shavers and endless variations for high-currents or special functions. Then there are connectors for, say, 220V three-phase in the US. Truly a case of the old adage, “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them.”
Resources
Many of the plug and socket pairs cover a lot of countries. The handy map below shows what regions use what (although Thailand’s type O seems to be absent; you’ll find A, B, C, F, and O there). Might come in handy if you need to quickly figure out what kind of plug you are dealing with.
Public domain map showing electrical plug types
We didn’t use any images from the site, but if you want to see real pictures of pretty much everything, there is the
Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets
, proving that you can, indeed, find almost anything on the Internet. For a more technical and interactive experience, there’s always
the IEC
which helpfully tells you the voltage and frequency to expect, too. How did we arrive at all these plugs? There is some
history
about that. If you want to get up close and personal with a BS1363 (type G)
we can help with that
, too. | 72 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632094",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T17:10:16",
"content": "without grounding, [TYPE C plugs] have mostly been replacedNo they haven’t. There are plenty devices that don’t need grounding and high currents (e.g. TV sets) that use these.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,334.780334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/dual-extrusion-support-without-pva/ | Dual Extrusion Support Without PVA | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"supports"
] | If you have an FDM printer that features multiple hotends or can otherwise switch between different filaments, you’ve surely thought about using the capability to lay down dedicated support material. Historically the filament of choice for this is PVA, since it can be dissolved in water once the print has finished. But if you’ve ever used it, you’ll know it’s not without its own challenges. Luckily, there may be an alternative — [ModBot] had heard that it is possible to use
PLA to support PETG and vice-versa
so he decided to try it. You can see how it works in the video below.
Of course, you can simply use PLA to support PLA and PETG to support PETG. Depending on the supports and slicer settings, though, it can be hard to remove the support after printing cleanly. Slicers have made major improvements in this area, but it still isn’t ideal. Some use HIPS for support, but that requires a solvent to dissolve and is also a bit exotic compared to PLA and PETG.
To illustrate, [ModBot] printed some test articles with the alternate support and did more reference prints using the same material with different parameters. The typical gap slicers use is 0.2 mm, but when using the different materials you can set the gap to zero. For the reference parts he set the gap to zero and 0.1 mm, both closer than you would normally print.
The PLA-only prints were essentially impossible to separate. While the PETG prints separated with tools, the resulting surfaces were ugly, with support residue and scarring. But the prints with two materials and zero gap pulled apart readily with no tools and left a beautiful surface underneath.
If you have the ability to do dual extrusion, this could be a great trick to have in your toolbox. Granted, PVA will still be of interest if you have support buried deep inside some structure where it is physically difficult to get to. Water can go where tweezers can’t. But for supporting large accessible areas, this looks like a game-changer.
Sometimes
automatic supports can use a little help
. There are plenty of supports and best practices for
supports
if you want to fine-tune your process. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632134",
"author": "Shonky",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T18:58:48",
"content": "Do any slicers have the option to make just the top of supports use a different material?Seems like you could save a lot of print (especially if you have a single extruder with a multi feeder setup) and cl... | 1,760,372,334.914107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/low-cost-display-saved-by-rp2040/ | Low-Cost Display Saved By RP2040 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"bit bang",
"color",
"display",
"driver",
"rp2040",
"spi",
"touchscreen",
"waveshare"
] | Anyone looking for components for electronics projects, especially robotics, microcontrollers, and IoT devices, has likely heard of Waveshare. They are additionally well-known suppliers of low-cost displays with a wide range of resolutions, sizes, and capabilities, but as [Dmitry Grinberg] found, they’re not all winners. He thought the price on this 2.8-inch display might outweigh its poor design and lack of documentation, and
documented his process of bringing it up to a much higher standard with a custom driver for it
.
The display is a 320×240 full-color LCD which also has a touchscreen function, but out-of-the-box only provides documentation for sending data to it manually. This makes it slow and, as [Dmitry] puts it, “pure insanity”. His ultimate solution after much poking and prodding was to bit-bang an SPI bus using GPIO on an RP2040 but even this wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been because there are a bunch of other peripherals, like an SD card, which share the bus. Additionally, an interrupt is needed to handle the touchscreen since its default touch system is borderline useless as well, but after everything was neatly stitched together he has a much faster and more versatile driver for this display and is able to fully take advantage of its low price.
For anyone else attracted to the low price of these displays, at least the grunt work is done now if a usable driver is needed to get them up and running. And, if you were curious as to what [Dmitry] is going to use this for, he’s been slowly building up a
PalmOS port
on hardware he’s assembling himself, and this screen is the perfect size and supports a touch interface. We’ll keep up with that project as it progresses, and for some of [Dmitry]’s other wizardry with esoteric displays make sure to see what he’s done with
some inexpensive e-ink displays as well
. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632715",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T16:47:33",
"content": "I don’t really understand all the rant about a SPI-connected display being slow – that’s a normal limitation of choosing SPI over parallel, and the shared bus to touch controller also makes sense if you are s... | 1,760,372,335.132938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/this-week-in-security-queuejumper-js-vm2-escape-and-can-hacking/ | This Week In Security: QueueJumper, JS VM2 Escape, And CAN Hacking | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"can-bus",
"This Week in Security",
"Watering Hole"
] | You may not be familiar with the Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) service, a store and forward sort of inter-process and inter-system communication service. MSMQ has become something of a legacy product, but is still available as an optional component in Windows. And in addition to other enterprise software solutions, Microsoft Exchange turns the service on by default. That’s why it’s a bit spooky that there’s a
one packet Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability
that was just patched in the service.
CVE-2023-21554, also known as QueueJumper, is this unauthenticated RCE with a CVSS score of 9.8. It requires sending a packet to the service on TCP port 1801. The Check Point Research team scanned for listening MSMQ endpoints on the public Internet, and found approximately 360,000 of them. And no doubt far more are listening on internal networks. A one packet exploit is a prime example of a wormable problem, and now that the story has broken, and the patch is available, expect a rapid reverse engineering. Beware, the queue jumpers are coming.
JavaScript VM Escape
The VM2 library is a rather important JavaScript package that sandboxes code, letting a project run untrusted code securely. Or, that’s the idea.
CVE-2023-29017
is an example of how hard sandboxing is to get right. It’s another CVSS 9.8 vulnerability, and this one allows a sandbox escape and code execution.
This one now has public Proof of Concept code, and this package has over 16 million monthly installs, so the attack surface is potentially pretty wide. The flaw is
fixed in version 3.9.15
.
Oldsmar Errata
Remember
the scary hack of the water treatment plant at Oldsmar
? Someone attempted to raise the Sodium Hydroxide levels from a sane 100 ppm up to an unpleasant 11,000 ppm. We even had a bit of fun with the idea that it could have been a watering hole attack on a real watering hole. A few of our more skeptical readers pointed out that the new value felt a bit like a forgotten decimal point, or a fat fingered attempt at a legitimate change.
Well surprise,
it’s beginning to look like the null hypothesis was right
. “[T]hrough the course of the investigation the FBI was not able to confirm that this incident was initiated by a targeted cyber intrusion of Oldsmar.” The city manager made a statement that it may have even been the reporting employee, accidentally banging on the keyboard. So, that’s awkward. Though it suggests a new hobby, similar to trainspotting: Looking for debunked attacks in presentations. This particular non-incident seems to be one of the favorite for government officials to mention when asking for money or pushing for new regulations.
CAN Bus Zero Day
Modern cars are technological marvels. Components that used to be dead simple, like headlights, are now micro computers in their own right, all networked together over a data bus. The traditional data bus is the Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus, though Automotive Ethernet threatens to toss CAN on the heap of legacy technology. That time has not yet come, and most vehicles still have a CAN bus. Which brings us to
the story of [Ian Tabor], a security researcher driving a RAV4
.
That vehicle got vandalized one day, with some trim around the headlight being torn off in a seemingly random act of mayhem. A couple days later, when the car was stolen, it became clear that it wasn’t vandalism at all. The headlight just happens to be an easy place to access the CAN bus. When the car was stolen, it experienced a major system fault, and uploaded a log of what all was broken. Turns out, pretty much all of the connected devices dropped off that CAN bus. That’s an interesting part of what’s going on here.
This vehicle, and many others, use a smart key. It’s a bit of hardware that does a reasonably secure cryptographic handshake via wireless, with the wireless receiver. That receiver, upon validating the key, sends a message across the CAN bus that unlocks the vehicle. Wireless cryptography: good. CAN cryptography? Nonexistant. The hack is self-contained in a $10 hardware kit, that gets punched in to the car’s CAN bus where the headlight connects to it. It first does a DOS attack of sorts, knocking the real key receiver off the bus, and then sends a flurry of spoofed messages, telling the rest of the car that the smart key is present. And as a result, the push-to-start button works without complaint.
This is a zero-day attack that’s ongoing against a bunch of vehicle vendors. The researchers behind this discovery have attempted to report their findings, and have run up against a brick wall trying to do normal responsible disclosure. The research report ends with a request for an auto manufacturer or industry group to reach out and assist with the next steps of research and trying to fix this mess for the various vulnerable vehicles.
Bits and Bytes
How do you confirm that a printer isn’t unintentionally spying on you?
Rooting the printer and doing an audit, of course
. It’s a potential problem that printers save copies of documents to an onboard hard drive, and RedTeam Pentesting wanted to know whether their local printer was guilty of this indiscretion. The hack was to backdoor the printer via the… literal back panel, and finding a serial port. Many embedded devices have a TTL-level serial port, and that port is often not well secured. In this case, the login was
console
, and one of the menu options was
sh mode
. Which of course dropped into a root shell on the device. Oh well. At least they confirmed their documents were properly being erased after printing!
There’s a weird trick with Github account names. When you change your account name, Github is nice enough to put up redirects, so the old URLs still work. But the old name is actually an unused account name, that anyone can use to sign up. And now those redirects go away, or if the new user recreates the repositories, they go to the new code. All is fine, until you realize that sometimes build systems are pointing at old usernames. That’s exactly what [Joren Vrancken] found in the Arch User Repository, as well as for a single package on the official Arch repositories. The attack to take advantage of this quirk is called repo jacking, and it’s worth thinking about if you’re a developer or maintainer of software.
Eve Online saw a heist this week, where the equivalent of
$22,300 was drained from an in-game corporation
. The approach was depressingly similar to a real-world corporate takeover. In this case, [Flam_Hill] managed to get a handful of voting shares, and then applied for membership in the corporation with a couple of accounts. Once accepted, those voting shares granted the right to call for a snap election for CEO. That voting process is open for 72 hours, and because this corp didn’t have a particularly active pool of voters, only the shell accounts cast votes, putting our attacker in complete control. Turns out, that attacker was none other than [Sienna d’Orien], original founder of the corporation, returned from a hiatus to take back his company. Game imitates life indeed.
And finally, Juice Jacking! It sounds like the newest bodybuilding technique of questionable legality, but in fact, it’s a rather old idea for cell phone hacking. Offer free cell phone charging, but secretly use the USB data connection to install malware. It’s such an ongoing problem that the FCC and FBI have recently issued warnings against using untrusted USB charging. Except, no one seems to have actually seen this attack in the wild. And digging a bit into those warnings, the primary source is a District Attorney’s warning, that was later retracted due to no actual cases on record. So let us know, have you ever actually seen a juice jacking attack?
Stop by and charge your phones
@shmoocon
! Courtesy of
@NSAGov
pic.twitter.com/yxIL8mohvi
— Rob Joyce (@RGB_Lights)
January 18, 2019 | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632686",
"author": "grundt",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T15:04:16",
"content": "For anyone else wanting to check for MSMQ: “netstat -abno | findstr 1801”(courtesyhttps://sort.veritas.com/public/documents/vie/7.0/windows/productguides/html/vcs_admin/ch08s13s07.htm)",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,335.185962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/self-cleaning-tech-could-help-solar-panels-keep-efficiency-up/ | Self-Cleaning Tech Could Help Solar Panels Keep Efficiency Up | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"solar",
"solar panel",
"solar panels",
"solar power"
] | Solar panels are a special kind of magic — turning light into useful electrical energy. However, they don’t work nearly as well when they’re covered in dust, dirt, and grime. Conventional solutions involve spraying panels down with pure water, which is expensive and wasteful, or dry scrubbing, which can cause efficiency loss through scratching the panels. However, innovative new methods may offer useful solutions in this area,
as shared by
EETimes.
Researchers at MIT have explored the use of electrostatic methods to remove dust from solar panels. By creating a sufficiently strong electrostatic field, dust particles can be compelled to leap off of solar panels. The cleaning method requires no water and is entirely non-contact. It uses a motor system to pass a charged electrode past the surface of the panels, with the opposite charge applied to the panels themselves. This repels the dust from the panels and onto the moving electrode.
Other methods include the use of special “self-cleaning” glass manufactured with a laser etching technique. The method, referred to as Direct Laser Interference Patterning, or DLIP, creates microscopic features on the order of 300 nm to 30 um on the surface of the glass. The pattern creates a so-called “functional surface” from which dirt simply slides off. The laser-etched pattern has no negative impact on transparency.
If these ideas prove practical, expect them to take off quickly. Commercially viable technologies spread fast in the renewable space, as we’ve seen with
the rapid uptake of floating solar farms in recent years. | 58 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632627",
"author": "Jens Restemeier",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T11:37:04",
"content": "I’m sure I’ve seen self-cleaning glass / solar panel research for quite a few years now. Is there any non-obvious problem that still needs to be solved?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,335.001919 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/its-opposite-day-for-this-novel-wankel/ | It’s Opposite Day For This Novel Wankel Engine | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"design",
"efficiency",
"engine",
"inside-out",
"power-to-weight",
"reliability",
"Wankel"
] | The Wankel engine seems to pop up in surprising places every so often, only to disappear into the ether before someone ultimately resurrects it for a new application and swears to get it right this time. Ultimately they come across the same problems that other Wankels suffered from, namely poor fuel efficiency and issues with reliability. They do have a surprising power-to-weight ratio and a low parts count, though, which is why people keep returning to this well, although this time it seems like most of the problems might have been solved
simply by turning the entire design inside out
.
A traditional Wankel engine has a triangular-shaped rotor that rotates around a central shaft inside an oval-shaped housing. This creates three chambers which continually revolve around inside the engine as the rotor spins. The seals that separate the chambers are notoriously difficult to lubricate and maintain. Instead of using a rotor inside of a chamber, this design called the X-Engine essentially uses a chamber inside of a rotor, meaning that the combustion chamber and the seals stay in fixed locations instead of spinning around. This allows for much better lubrication of the engine and also much higher efficiency. By flipping the design on its head it is able to maintain a low moving parts count, high compression ratio, and small power-to-weight ratio all while improving reliability and performance and adding the ability to directly inject fuel rather than rely on carburetion or other less-ideal methods of fuel delivery that other Wankels require.
Astute internal combustion aficionados will note that this engine is still of a two-stroke design, and thus not likely to fully eliminate the emissions problems with Wankels in a way that is satisfactory to regulators of passenger vehicles. Instead, the company is focusing on military, commercial, and aerospace applications where weight is a key driver of design. We’ve seen time and time again how
the Wankel fails to live up to its promises
though, and we hope that finally someone has cracked the code on one that solves its key issues. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632601",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T08:20:45",
"content": "I was about to comment “Didn’t ‘Liquid Piston’ already do this years ago” then followed the link and realised that this _is_ Liquid Piston.It does seem like a clever design, like the best ever Betamax i... | 1,760,372,335.069774 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/prison-tv-gets-simple-speaker-mod/ | Prison TV Gets Simple Speaker Mod | Lewin Day | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"prison",
"retrofit",
"transparent"
] | American prisons are strict about television use. Typically they’re only to be used with headphones, and their enclosures need to be transparent so they can’t be used to smuggle goods. ClearTech makes TVs that meet these specifications, and when [Steve Pietras] got his hands on just such a unit,
he set about modding it for use in the free world.
Getting into the TV isn’t easy; ClearTech built the units using special security fasteners unlike any we’ve seen before. [Steve] found a way to deal with these, though declines to share his technique in his video. Once inside though, his task is relatively straightforward. He steps through where to install speakers in the TV’s housing, and how to hook them up to the right spots on the main circuit board. With the case closed back up, [Steve] is able to use the TV without headphones, and without the threat of getting shanked by a fellow inmate who
really
doesn’t want to hear
Jeopardy
while they’re trying to read.
It’s not every day we get to look at a piece of obscure hardware like this. We’d never seen a prison TV before, and now we feel like experts on the topic.
Of course, we’re no strangers to esoterica at Hackaday. | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632573",
"author": "Ted",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T06:06:22",
"content": "Is there anyway Steve could stop the drugs and cellphones coming into prisons? I don’t mind my celly watching Maury as much as the other contraband.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,334.853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/electric-volkswagen-adds-rooftop-solar/ | Electric Volkswagen Adds Rooftop Solar | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"auxiliary",
"bus",
"camping",
"electric vehicle",
"i.d. buzz",
"microbus",
"roof",
"solar",
"van",
"volkswagen",
"vw"
] | Volkswagen has continually teased the release of a new Microbus in the same way that Duke Nukem Forever strung us all along in the 00s, but unlike the fated video game it seems as though Volkswagen is finally building a hip new van rather than continually teasing its release year after year. With the clunky name of I.D. Buzz, European drivers can expect to see them later this year while those in the North American market will have to wait until 2024. That release will have a camper-equipped option though,
but you may also want to equip yours with some solar panels as well
.
The German tuning shop ABT is behind this design, which adds 600 watts of solar fixed to the top of the van. The solar roof will generate electricity largely to power the van’s auxiliary systems and is being aimed at those who are looking to outfit this van as a camper and need something to power things like refrigerators, interior lighting, and various electronics while on extended stays. There is also some mention of a 1000 watt option but with the limited space available on the roof may involve a side panel of some sort.
ABT is also noting that this system can be used to extend the driving range and, while technically true, don’t expect to be driving an I.D. Buzz on entirely solar power unless you’re willing to let it sit to charge the battery for days at a time. Like other
solar installations on vehicles we’ve seen from various ingenious builders
, the lack of real estate available on passenger vehicles limits their use largely to auxiliary electrical loads, but it can be possible to
drive a vehicle on solar energy alone
with the right design. | 46 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632556",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-04-14T02:17:53",
"content": "Yes, by offloading (some) auxiliary power drains from the battery, vehicle range could be extended, but that depends on how many power drains the occupants consider necessary v... | 1,760,372,335.374723 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/13/automated-shusher-keeps-conference-loudmouths-in-line/ | Automated Shusher Keeps Conference Loudmouths In Line | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"conference",
"MEMS microphone",
"mp3",
"Nano 33 BLE",
"noise",
"pulse density modulation",
"spl"
] | Few things are more annoying than being at a conference and having an inconsiderate group conducting a vociferous sidebar that drowns out the speaker. More annoying still is the inevitable shushing; nobody likes being either the shusher or the shushed. So why not take the humans out of the loop and automate the chore of keeping the peace?
Such was the challenge presented to [BotBerg] before a recent conference, who came up with
this automated shusher
(
translation
) on short notice. The build is based on the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Deck, a sensor-rich dev board that’s perhaps a little overkill for the job, but hey — you roll with what you’ve got. The board’s MEMS microphone is the sensor used here, which measures the ambient sound pressure level multiple times per second. When the background noise exceeds a potentiometer-set threshold, an MP3 player is triggered to play a sound clip entreating the offenders to pipe down. The whole thing is housed in a playful 3D-printed enclosure shaped like a mouth, which should be sufficient reminder alone to keep yours shut.
This was a quick-and-dirty prototype, of course, and probably could use some refinement. Given the behavior we’ve witnessed at some conferences, we’d say hooking it up to
a Nerf turret gun
would be a justifiable escalation. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632541",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2023-04-13T23:32:28",
"content": "A servo to raise a 3D printed forefinger (and hand) to the 3D printed lips!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6632543",
"author": "The Comment... | 1,760,372,335.237105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/the-uks-st40-spherical-tokamak-achieves-crucial-plasma-temperatures/ | The UK’s ST40 Spherical Tokamak Achieves Crucial Plasma Temperatures | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"green hacks"
] | [
"clean energy",
"Fusion power",
"tokamak"
] | As the race towards the first commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor heats up, the UK-based Tokamak Energy has published a
paper
on its
recent achievements
with its ST40 spherical tokamak. Most notable is the achieving of plasma temperatures of over 100 million Kelvin, which would put this fusion reactor firmly within the range for deuterium-tritium fusion at a rate that would lead credence to the projection made by
Tokamak Energy
about building its first commercial fusion plants in the 2030s.
The ST40 is intended to provide the necessary data to construct the
ST80-HTS
by 2026, which itself would be a testing ground for the first commercial reactor, called the ST-E1, which would be rated at 200 MWe. Although this may seem ambitious, Tokamak Energy didn’t come out of nowhere, but is a spin-of of Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), the UK’s national laboratory for fusion research, which was grounded in 1965, and has been for decades been involved in spherical tokamak research projects like
MAST
and MAST-Upgrade, with STEP as its own design for a commercial fusion reactor.
The advantage offered by
spherical tokamaks
compared to regular tokamaks is that they favor a very compact construction style which puts the magnets very close to the plasma, effectively making them more efficient in retaining the plasma, with less power required to maintain stable plasma. Although this makes the use of super-conducting electromagnets not necessary, it does mean that wear and tear on these magnets is significantly higher. What this does mean is that this type of tokamak can be much cheaper than alternative reactor types, even if they do not scale as well.
Whether or not Tokamak Energy will be the first to achieve commercial nuclear fusion remains to be seen. So far
Commonwealth Fusion’s SPARC
and a whole host of Western and Asian
fusion projects
are vying for that gold medal. | 23 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631857",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T18:54:33",
"content": "Don’t forget about these dudes. The YT video they reference made for a very interesting watch.https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/ending-trenta-operations/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,335.294835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/analog-anoraks-the-op-amp-contest-starts-now/ | Analog Anoraks: The Op Amp Contest Starts Now! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"challenge",
"contest",
"digikey",
"op amps"
] | We thought it was time to give the analog side of Hackaday their chance to shine, and what’s the quintessential analog IC? The op amp! Whether you’re doing tricky signal conditioning, analog computations like it’s 1960, or just making music sound good, op amps are at the heart of many designs.
This contest, starting right now, is your chance to show off
what you can do with a good op amp, or a few.
And for everyone else, here’s your chance to dip your toes into the warm analog waters. Whether you’ve always wanted to build a
Chua’s chaos circuit
or just to
listen to music
, there’s probably an op-amp project that will fit your personal bill. All you have to do to enter is
set up a project on Hackaday.io
, and use the pull-down menu to enter. We welcome shows of op-amp bravado, naturally, but we’re also stoked to see your simple projects that might help our digital friends leave their world of black and white, and enter into the shades of grey.
Thanks to Digi-Key, our sponsor for the challenge, there are three $150 shopping sprees on the line for the winners. And as always, there are some honorable mention categories to help whet your analog whistle, and to give us an excuse to feature a lot of great projects. You’ve got until June 6, to get your entry in, but these aren’t necessarily simple builds, so get going now.
Honorable Mention Categories
Hyper-Precise
: If your project calls for, and realizes, high analog precision, we’ll consider it here. Miniscule offset voltages? Ultra-low input current? Crazy slew rates? Show off your most demanding applications here.
Oddballs
: This is the category for those of you who want to stretch out and try to make op-amps do things that they’re not normally meant to do. We’ve seen them used as motor drivers, for instance. We’ve also seen our share of magic smoke. What’s the strangest op amp circuit? We want to see it.
The Classics
: This category is for the op-amp applications that are the opposite of the oddballs. Standard situations where an op amp fits like a glove. Part of the value here is in showing folks who are new to designing with op amps where their power lies. Of course we expect to see traditional op-amp circuits here, but surprise us!
The Idea Fountain
Inside a NASA-spec op amp
, courtesy of Ken Shirriff
Hard to believe in the digital age, but op amps were once used for math. Multiplication is just voltage gain by any other name, and addition and subtraction are just a matter of picking which pins you use. If you want a real challenge, you can try your hand at an
analog computer
, or take on a simpler challenge:
converting Celsius to Fahrenheit
.
Perhaps the op amp’s natural habitat these days is in audio, and there are no shortage of
great microphone designs
that use them to good effect.
And if you really want to master the op amp, you can always
make your own
.
Need to brush up on your op-amp theory? For the basic intuition,
we really like this video introduction
. Al Williams wrote a great piece on
op amp simulation
, if you don’t like to prototype in solder. And finally, our own Robin Kearey’s piece on
the most superlative op amps
is a must-read.
The Fine Print
All designs must do something with op amps.
All entries must be documented with at least a schematic and a demo of the circuit working. Quality of documentation will be considered by the judges.
All entrants must agree to have the design published on Hackaday.
Employees and contractors of Digi-Key, Supplyframe, Siemens and their immediate family members are ineligible to win, but are still encouraged to enter.
Rules and categories subject to change. Judges’ decisions are final, but we strive to be fair.
So get to work on your op-amp containing project today! We can’t wait to see what you come up with. Thanks again to Digi-Key for sponsoring!
(And if you’re waiting for the announcement of the winners of the Low Power Challenge, come back this time tomorrow!) | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631854",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T18:36:54",
"content": "What’s all this stuff without mentioning RAP about?Five easy Pease’s:Troubleshooting Analog Circuits(1991)Analog Circuits(2008)His treasure troveoeuvrehosted by EDN:https://www.electronicdesign.com/home/cont... | 1,760,372,335.49357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/it-isnt-webassembly-but-it-is-assembly-in-your-browser/ | It Isn’t WebAssembly, But It Is Assembly In Your Browser | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"8086",
"assembly language"
] | You might think assembly language on a PC is passe. After all, we have a host of efficient high-level languages and plenty of resources. But there are times you want to use assembly for some reason. Even if you don’t, the art of writing assembly language is very satisfying for some people — like an intricate logic puzzle. Getting your assembly language fix on a microcontroller is usually pretty simple, but on a PC there are a lot of hoops to jump. So why not use your browser? That’s the point of
this snazzy 8086 assembler and emulator
that runs in your browser. Actually, it is not
native to the browser
, but thanks to WebAssembly, it works fine there, too.
No need to set up strange operating system environments or link to an executable file format. Just write some code, watch it run, and examine all the resulting registers. You can do things using BIOS interrupts, though, so if you want to write to the screen or whatnot, you can do that, too.
The emulation isn’t very fast, but if you are single-stepping or watching, that’s not a bad thing. It does mean you may want to adjust your timing loops, though. We didn’t test our theory, but we expect this is only real mode 8086 emulation because we don’t see any protected mode registers. That’s not a problem, though. For a learning tool, you’d probably want to stick with real mode, anyway. The
GitHub
page has many examples, ranging from a sort to factorials. Just the kind of programs you want for learning about the language.
Why not learn on any of a number of other simulated processors? The 8086 architecture is still dominant, and even though x86_64 isn’t exactly the same, there is a lot of commonalities. Besides, you have to pretend to be an 8086, at least through part of the boot sequence.
If you’d rather compile “real” programs,
it isn’t that hard
. There are some
excellent tutorials
available, too. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631813",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T15:57:17",
"content": "https://daid.github.io/rgbds-live/Here, one for gameboy assembly as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6631817",
"author": "localroger",
"tim... | 1,760,372,335.546694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/a-miniature-mnt-for-every-pocket/ | A Miniature MNT For Every Pocket | Kerry Scharfglass | [
"Featured",
"handhelds hacks",
"Interest",
"laptops hacks",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"cyberdeck open source",
"Kailh chocs",
"laptop",
"libre",
"mechanical keyboard",
"MNT",
"mnt reform",
"review",
"trackball"
] | Last time Hackaday went hands on with a product from German company MNT, it was the Reform laptop; a full size computer with a full feature set and fully open source design. Now they’re back with the same value proposition and feature set crammed into a much more adorable (and colorful!) package with
the MNT Pocket Reform
. If you want the big Reform’s open source philosophy in a body fit for a coat pocket, this might be the computing device for you.
To refresh your memory, MNT is a company that specializes in open source hardware and the software to support it. They are probably best known for
the Reform, their first laptop
. Its marquis feature is a fully open design, from the mechanical components (designed with OSS tools) to the PCBAs (designed with KiCad) to the software (designed with, uh, software). When originally shipped that product packed a DIMM-style System On Module (SOM) with a default configuration containing a quad core NXP i.MX8M Quad and 4GB of RAM, as well as mini PCIe Card and M key m.2 2280 slots on the motherboard for storage and connectivity. That computer was designed to be easily serviceable and included a plethora of full sized ports along with easy to source cylindrical battery cells. The Pocket Reform takes the same intent and channels it into a much smaller package.
Speeds and Feeds
Pocket Reform monolith with Piñatex faux-leather case
Looking at the Pocket Reform side by side with big Reform, the family resemblance is clear. From the smooth bead-blasted finish on the aluminum chassis to the chamfered edges to the squared off profile, you won’t mistake this for anything besides a Reform. And picking it up is no different. The Pocket Reform is so rigid and dense you almost believe someone forgot to machine out the center of this block of billet. The only blemishes are the obviously necessary IO ports on one edge, and slightly different texture on the top lid (more on that in a moment).
Despite its stature the Pocket Reform accepts the same processor SOMs as big Reform. By default it will ship with a newer, souped-up SOM from the same vendor, Boundary Devices. This one will include an I.MX8M Plus with 8 GB RAM and a 128GB EMMC, as well as a possible small overclock. However for the most part the alternative SOMs developed for big Reform will work just as well, such as the Pi 4 compute card adapter. The caveat is that they need to support the correct display interface (for example we were warned the substantially more powerful
LS1028A module
would need an adapter).
For ports, the Pocket sports a somewhat more limited but modern selection; two USB-C (one with Power Delivery to charge the Pocket), micro SD, ix Industrial Ethernet port (adaptable to RJ45), and micro HDMI. These are all exposed on the right edge of the display, while the left side has a blanking plate just waiting for an ambitious hacker to modify. Internally the mainboard has two m.2 slots; one 2280 with PCIe intended for NVMe storage and one 2242 with USB for connectivity, suggesting a cell modem or the like. Non-WWAN wireless connectivity is up to the SOM, with the default Boundary board including WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0. Notable for our post-COVID world is the addition of an onboard mono speaker and mic, two devices missing from the original Reform.
Pop open the magnetically-latched display and fold the screen to a comfortable angle and you’ll discover the cornucopia of IO within. We know our readers are nothing if not input-enthusiasts, so rejoice in the knowledge that even in this reduced form factor low profile Kailh Choc switches carry the mechanical keyboard torch accompanied by a diminutive trackball. MNT says the entire Pocket was sized to match the smallest keyboard they could reasonably ask a user to type on and they got their millimeter’s worth. In our brief fingers-on with the RGB backlit keyboard it was as satisfying as you’d expect for the low profile mechanical Choc switches and seems like it would be a blast to tap away at once you were acclimated to the ortholinear design and compact layout. Though small, the trackball was no slouch either; letting us whip the cursor around with wild abandon as well as position precisely. The only confusion was from the fully remappable “clicking” button layout, but that is easily adjustable to match the user’s preference.
A few final tidbits. The display is sharp at 1920×1200 on a miniscule 7” diagonal footprint, but depending on your eyes high density may not solve small size. Suffice to say that at 310 ppi you can choose freely between less bigger content and more microscopic letters, though if you choose bigger content there may be relatively little of it. And yes Thinkpad fans, the hinges (taken from big Reform) allow the screen to fold open to a fully flat 180º.
The chassis divides batteries and input devices into the bottom half, with display, mainboard, and ports into the top. In our uncalibrated hands it felt well balanced and not likely to tip when used on a flat surface. It’s small enough that it could conceivably be used for handheld thumb typing or gaming, though that would probably require a customized keyboard and input device. Finally the topmost surface on the lid is actually a single blank PCB (note the pleasing raw copper finish on the MNT logo) for easy design customizability or expansion.
Why Build It Now?
The MNT Pocket Reform’s raw PCB Lid
With the original MNT Reform shipping recently in 2021 and Pocket Reform slated to reuse the core components, we wondered why the time was right to ship this product now. One of the main drivers was accessibility without compromising feature completeness. We will dig into Pocket Reform pricing in more detail but comparable hardware configurations cost about $500 less in Pocket form than in big Reform size. Those savings can be attributed to a mixture of things well summarized as “fewer components and smaller size”. Smaller size means less material used, one big mainboard with everything on it means fewer cable harnesses, and on and on. But the broader point still stands that for a product like this the market isn’t any more crowded now than it was a few years ago.
Like the original MNT Reform, this is a polarizing device. Want something thin and light? That’s not the Pocket Reform (thought it might fit in a generous cargo pants pocket). Care about a screen with the deepest blacks and highest refresh rate? Also not Pocket Reform. Gaming on the go? Retro emulators are probably a great experience, but you won’t be playing AAA shooters. And at a starting price of $899 it is out of impulse buy territory for most people. But not every product needs to appeal to the middle of the bell curve, modern manufacturing accessibility lets companies successfully target the ends of the spectrum to find niche customers who are underserved by other options. MNT is betting that there are enough people looking for a secondary device for distraction free writing on the go or the hard core couch surfing who are drawn to something either more open or just more interesting and are willing to take the leap.
Users and the Future
Pocket Reform with calibrated reference beverage can
As before and above all else, what makes the MNT Reform family stand out to us is openness. If you want a fully libre device which is also an off the shelf commercial product, which you can buy as a fully functional, fully assembled product and use right out of the box, the Reforms are pretty much it. There are other laptops that prioritize repairability, but they don’t provide sources for any of their components and you can’t replicate or modify either their hardware or closed source software yourself. There are single board computers and keyboard cases that run free or mostly free software, but their hardware sources aren’t available either.
Looking at the trajectory of the Reform products so far, we can extrapolate out to what might come next. If the Pocket Reform mainboard and SOMs are compatible, and the input devices are compatible, you can remix them bigger just as easily as smaller. It sounds like MNT is aware that there are untapped users who are interested in large and thin instead of the Pocket’s small but thick. Maybe these users are philosophically aligned with the approach but prioritize portability over the ability to easily expand the device with more modules. If you take the big Reform chassis but swap the trackball and cylindrical battery cells to remove unused space, then drop in a Pocket Reform mainboard (which again, takes the same SOMs) that leaves you with a pretty compelling package. We’re excited to see what MNT has in store for us next. | 35 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631792",
"author": "Patrick Allison",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T14:44:32",
"content": "“If you want a fully libre device”Technically… it isn’t. It’s a compromise in terms of “libre software, but not fully libre hardware” – as in, they really don’t like binary blobs, but the iMX8.M m... | 1,760,372,335.782661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/ibm-selectric-typewriters-finally-get-diy-typeballs/ | IBM Selectric Typewriters Finally Get DIY Typeballs | Bryan Cockfield | [
"classic hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"metal",
"openscad",
"resin",
"restoration",
"Selectric",
"typeball",
"typewriter"
] | IBM’s Selectric line of typewriters were quite popular in the 1960s, thanks in part to an innovation called the
typeball
which allowed for easy font changes on a single machine. Unfortunately, as if often the case when specialized components are involved, it’s an idea that hasn’t aged particularly well. The Selectric typewriters are now around 60 years old and since IBM isn’t making replacement parts, those restoring these machines have had to get somewhat creative
like using a 3D printer to build new typeballs
.
It sounds like it would be a simple, but much like the frustration caused with modern printers, interfacing automated computer systems with real-world objects like paper and ink is not often as straightforward as we would like. The main problem is getting sharp edges on the printed characters which is easy enough with metal but takes some more finesse with a printed plastic surface. For the print, each character is modelled in OpenSCAD and then an automated process generates the 3D support structure that connects the character to the typeball.
This process was easier for certain characters but got more complicated for characters with interior sections or which had a lot of sharp angles and corners. Testing the new part shows promise, although the plastic components will likely not last as long as their metal counterparts. Still, it’s better than nothing.
Regular Hackaday readers may recall that the ability to 3D print replacement Selectric typeballs has been on the community’s mind for years.
When we last covered the concept in 2020
we reasoned that producing them on resin printers might be a viable option, and in the end, that does indeed seem to have been the missing element. In fact, this design is based on that same one we covered previously — it’s just taken this long for
desktop resin 3D printing technology to mature enough. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631714",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T11:32:12",
"content": "Actually the original ones I have seem to be made from metalized plastic. The coating is not that thick to keep them light enough as the acceleration they endure during typing is quite high.",
"pare... | 1,760,372,335.848969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/retired-welding-robot-picks-up-side-hustle-as-cnc-router/ | Retired Welding Robot Picks Up Side Hustle As CNC Router | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"abb",
"arduino",
"articulated",
"cnc",
"Industrial robot",
"rapid",
"s4",
"spindle"
] | Who says you can’t teach an old robot new tricks? Nobody, actually. That saying is about dogs. But it applies to robots too, at least judging by the way this late-90s industrial beast was put to use in a way it was never intended: as
a giant CNC router
.
The machine in question is an ABB IRB6400, a six-axis, floor-mounted industrial machine that had a long career welding at a Eurorail factory in Austria before [Brian Brocken] made its acquaintance. He procured the non-working machine — no word on what he paid for it — and moved the 2-ton paperweight into his shop, itself a non-trivial endeavor. After a good scrubbing, [Brian] tried to get the machine started up. An error prevented the robot controller from booting; luckily, there’s a large community of ABB users, and [Brian] learned that one of the modules in the controller needed replacement.
After fixing that — and swapping out the controller’s long-dead backup batteries, plus replacing the original 1.44 MB floppy drive with a USB drive — he was able to bring the machine back to life. Unfortunately, the limited amount of internal memory made it difficult to use for anything complicated, so [Brian] came up with an application to stream coordinates to the controller over a serial port, allowing for unlimited operation. With that in place, plus a simple spindle mounted to the robot’s wrist with a 3D printed adapter, [Brian] was able to carve foam blocks into complex shapes. The video below shows everything from delivery to first chips — well, dust at least.
This build seems to be a significant escalation from
[Brian]’s previous large-format CNC machine
. He must have something interesting in mind, so stay tuned for details. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631651",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T08:29:53",
"content": "Very jealous.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6631688",
"author": "Skwid",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T09:56:53",
"content": "Nice. I knew a guy ... | 1,760,372,335.903399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/your-multimeter-might-be-lying-to-you/ | Your Multimeter Might Be Lying To You | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"circuit behavior",
"continuity",
"dc",
"ham",
"high frequency",
"multimeter",
"radio",
"short circuit",
"testing",
"tools",
"transformer"
] | Multimeters are indispensable tools when working on electronics. It’s almost impossible to build any but the most basic of circuits without one to test and troubleshoot potential issues, and they make possible a large array of measurement capabilities that are not easily performed otherwise. But when things start getting a little more complex it’s important to know their limitations, specifically around what they will tell you about circuits designed for high frequency. [watersstanton] explains
in this video while troubleshooting an antenna circuit for ham radio
.
The issue that often confuses people new to radio or other high-frequency projects revolves around the continuity testing function found on most multimeters. While useful for testing wiring and making sure connections are solid, they typically only test using DC. When applying AC to the same circuits, inductors start to offer higher impedance and capacitors lower impedance, up to the point that they become open and short circuits respectively. The same happens to transformers, but can also most antennas which often look like short circuits to ground at DC but can offer just enough impedance at their designed frequency to efficiently resonate and send out radio waves.
This can give some confusing readings, such as when testing to make sure that a RF connector isn’t shorted out after soldering it to a coaxial cable for example. If an antenna is connected to the other side, it’s possible a meter will show a short at DC which might indicate a flaw in the soldering of the connector if the user isn’t mindful of this high-frequency impedance. We actually featured
a unique antenna design recently that’s built entirely on a PCB
that would show this DC short but behaves surprisingly well when sending out WiFi signals. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631602",
"author": "Wim",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T05:38:52",
"content": "Click bait :(It’s not lying, ‘you’ just don’t know what you’re doing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631613",
"author": "Urgon",
"tim... | 1,760,372,335.971614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/signed-distance-functions-modeling-in-math/ | Signed Distance Functions: Modeling In Math | Matthew Carlson | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"3d graphics",
"3d modeling",
"animation",
"graphics",
"rendering",
"signed distance function"
] | What if instead of defining a mesh as a series of vertices and edges in a 3D space, you could describe it as a single function? The easiest function would return the signed distance to the closest point (negative meaning you were inside the object). That’s precisely what a signed distance function (SDF) is. A signed distance field (also SDF) is just a voxel grid where the SDF is sampled at each point on the grid. First, we’ll discuss SDFs in 2D and then jump to 3D.
SDFs in 2D
A signed distance function in 2D is more straightforward to reason about so we’ll cover it first. Additionally, it is helpful for font rendering in specific scenarios. [Vassilis] of [Render Diagrams] has a
beautiful demo on two-dimensional SDFs
that covers the basics. The naive technique for rendering is to create a grid and calculate the distance at each point in the grid. If the distance is greater than the size of the grid cell, the pixel is not colored in. Negative values mean the pixel is colored in as the center of the pixel is inside the shape. By increasing the size of the grid, you can get better approximations of the actual shape of the SDF. So, why use this over a more traditional vector approach? The advantage is that the shape is represented by a single formula calculated at many points. Most modern computers are extraordinarily good at calculating the same thing thousands of times with slightly different parameters, often using the GPU.
GLyphy is an
SDF-based text renderer that uses OpenGL ES2 as a shader, as discussed
at Linux conf in 2014
.
Freetype even
merged an SDF renderer
written by [Anuj Verma] back in 2020.
How are SDFs defined? A circle is easy to define as it is the length of the vector to the center minus the circle’s radius. Rectangles are a little more complicated, but [Ronja] has a
handy walkthrough of the concept
. It’s easy to determine the distance from an infinite line with some thickness (T) centered at (0,0). Just take the absolute value of the distance to one of the edges or abs(T – sample_point.x). It would be naive to calculate those two values and then take the length of the resulting vector. This generates incorrect distances inside the shape. Instead, the correct way to do this is to calculate the inside and outside distance and cap them so they don’t flip signs. The rectangle below shows lines representing the distance (red being negative).
Rotations, scaling, and transformations modify the sample point before it is evaluated. This allows some remarkable properties, such as mirroring or repeating infinitely. Merging multiple objects is as easy as taking the minimum between them. An intersection is just a max operation. You can smoothly interpolate between objects by linearly interpolating the distances. Bevels, chamfers, and smooth blending are all trivial with some math. Deriving each of these equations is an exercise left to the reader, but existing videos and articles walk you through each primitive.
We even have an
example SDF on Shadertoy of the Hackaday logo
for you to play with (click on it to see a visualization of the distance). Shadertoy is a playground that allows you to play around with GLSL shader code right in your browser.
SDFs in 3D
Rather than triangles, meshes, or voxels, a 3D SDF is a mathematically defined shape with potentially infinite detail. [Inigo Quilez] created a fantastic
video that details how to paint a beautiful landscape scene
with SDFs, and it is well worth the watch. He also has a
Shadertoy you can play with right in your browser
.
Of course, SDFs have some downsides compared to traditional meshes. Deforming them is tricky and the deformations must be integrated into the actual model. That is, without something like a non-linear deformation space,
as this paper talks about
. Another drawback is that the performance can be significantly slower than rasterization. Large SDFs like
selfie girl
by [Inigo] (seen below) are quite taxing even on large desktop-class GPUs.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/capture.webm
Code-wise, rendering the image
is simpler than you think
,
with a ray marcher fitting in just 135b of WebGL
. Some handy libraries, such as
hg_sdf
, make adding SDFs to the demo scene easier. Since their code is minuscule, they are a common technique, as
we recently covered
. [SimonDev] has an excellent video that explains Ray Marching in a clear, concise manner.
CAD is another common avenue for SDF as it can easily generate complex chamfered and organic shapes that would be hard to describe in a constraint-based system. In particular, booleans become much simpler in an SDF space as compared to a mesh space.
Several projects on GitHub
offer a great developer experience with bells and whistles included. Generally, the
marching cubes algorithm
with an octree is used to turn the SDF into actual mesh geometry for 3D printing.
Conclusion
Signed Distance Functions are incredibly powerful and quite accessible. You can start playing around with them in your
browser
, C++ libraries,
python
, or in a
few different CAD packages
. Why not bring them into a space-constrained environment or start creating some art without modeling anything? | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632083",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T15:00:46",
"content": "> By increasing the size of the gridI think you mean decreasing the size of the grid, or (better) increasing the resolution of the grid.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,336.029786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/the-challenges-of-producing-graphene-in-quantity/ | The Challenges Of Producing Graphene In Quantity | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"flash graphene",
"graphene"
] | We’ve all heard the incredible claims made about graphene and its many promising applications, but so far the wonder-material has been held back by the difficulty of producing it in large quantities. Although small-scale production was demonstrated many years ago using basic Scotch tape, producing grams or even kilograms of it in a scalable industrial process seemed like a pipedream — until recently. As
[Tech Ingredients] demonstrates in a new video
, the technique of flash Joule heating of carbon may enable industrial graphene production.
The production of this flash graphene (FG) was first demonstrated by
Duy X. Luong and colleagues
in a 2020 paper in
Nature
, which describes a fairly straightforward process. In the [Tech Ingredients] demonstration it becomes obvious how easy graphene manufacturing is using this method, requiring nothing more than carbon black as ingredient, along with a capacitor bank, vacuum chamber and a number of reasonably affordable items.
Perhaps best of all is that no refinement or other complicated processes are required to separate the produced graphene from the left-over carbon black and other non-graphene products. Using multiple of these carbon black-filled tubes in parallel, producing graphene could conceivably be scaled up to industrial levels. This would make producing a few kilograms of graphene significantly easier than
coating hard drive platters
with the substance. | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632035",
"author": "5t5yh45yh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T11:25:29",
"content": "and make battery or processor ;-P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6632037",
"author": "justsayin",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T11:32:31",
... | 1,760,372,336.095756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/elegant-evening-dress-sports-servo-actuated-flowers/ | Elegant Evening Dress Sports Servo-Actuated Flowers | Robin Kearey | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"dress",
"flowers",
"servo",
"wearable electronics"
] | There’s been plenty of research into “smart fabrics”, and we’ve seen several projects involving items of clothing with electronics integrated inside. These typically include sensors and simple actuators like LEDS, but there’s no reason you can’t integrate moving electromechanical systems as well. [Rehana Al-Soltane] did just that: she made
an elegant evening dress with flowers that open and close on command
.
It took [Rehana] a bit of experimentation to figure out a floral design that opens and closes smoothly without crumpling the fabric or requiring excessive force to actuate. She finally settled on a plastic sheet sandwiched between two layers of fabric, with pieces of fishing line attached that pull the edges inward. The lines are guided through a tube down the back of the dress, where a servo pulls or releases them.
The mechanical flower can be operated by touch — [Rehana] made one of the other flowers conductive by embedding copper tape between its petals and connected it to the capacitive touch sensor interface of an Atmel microcontroller. The micro is sitting on a custom PCB that’s worn on the hip, with wires going to the servo at the back. You can see how the system operates in the video embedded below.
The dress is [Rehana]’s final project for the famous “
How To Make (almost) Anything
” course at MIT, and required a wide variety of skills: the cable guide was 3D printed, the flower petals were laser cut, the PCB was milled, and the end product was sewn together. [Rehana] has a knack for making electronics-infused clothes and accessories, including
the flexible PCB crown
that she’s wearing in the image above.
https://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.22/Harvard/people/Rehana/images/final/final-project.mp4 | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6632018",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T09:12:33",
"content": "Wow! Well done, a very creative application of simple things, executed brilliantly!It appears to me that men really lack behind in integration of tech with certain fields, especially clothing, emotion, and b... | 1,760,372,336.150943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/portable-msx2-brings-the-fun-on-the-go/ | Portable MSX2 Brings The Fun On The Go | Navarre Bartz | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"luggable computer",
"msx",
"Omega Home Computer",
"portable computer"
] | Something of a rarity in the US, the MSX computer standard was rather popular in other parts of the world but mostly existed in the computer-in-a-keyboard format popular in the 80s. [
Aron Hoekstra aka “nullvalue”
] wanted to build an MSX2 of their own, but decided to build it in a
period-appropriate luggable form factor
.
This build really tries to make the computer as plausibly vintage as possible including an actual CRT for the display instead of using an easier to obtain and package LCD. Computing is accomplished with an Omega Home Computer MSX2 SBC by [
Sergey Kiselev
] which uses components that could have been found when the MSX computers were in production. While 3D printing wasn’t widespread in the 80s, we can assume any of the plastic parts like the internal mounts would have been injection molded instead.
An impressive number of different techniques were used to bring this computer to life including PCB design, 3D printing, CNC, and plenty of soldering. After some troubleshooting on the 50 pin cartridge connector and all the assembly, [
Hoekstra
]’s Mega Omega MSX2 Portable Computer makes for a very impressive reimagining of the MSX platform that feels like a product that might have actually existed at the time.
If you want more MSX hacks, checkout how to
add a Wii Nunchuck
or
PS2 or USB keyboards
to your MSX. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631993",
"author": "Daniel Padilla",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T06:41:17",
"content": "Inspiring! I expect many builds based on this idea that deviates form the standard MSX form factor. nice work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,336.192711 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/using-old-coal-mines-as-cheap-sources-of-geothermal-heat/ | Using Old Coal Mines As Cheap Sources Of Geothermal Heat | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"district heating",
"geothermal energy"
] | For as much old coal mines are a blight upon the face of the Earth, they may have at least one potential positive side-effect. Where the coal mine consists out of tunnels that were drilled deep into the soil, these tend to get flooded by groundwater after the pumps that keep them dry are turned off. Depending on the surrounding rock, this water tends to get not only contaminated, but also warmed up. As the BBC explains in a
recent video
as a follow-up to a
2021 article
, when the water is pumped up for decontamination, it can be run through a heat exchanger in order to provide heat for homes and businesses.
Remediation of mine water at Dawdon mine water treatment scheme (Credit: UK Coal Authority)
With the UK’s
Coal Authority
claiming that about a quarter of homes in the UK are located above coal fields, this might turn centuries of clean-up into an accidental source of low-carbon thermal power. One wine producing company – Durham-based Lanchester Wines – happened to have a large warehouse located right above four layers of flooded mine workings. After sinking a borehole into the murky depths of the old High Main coal seam, they were able to pump water at a balmy 15 °C out of the ground, that combined with a heat pump turned out to be capable of heating the company’s warehouses along with a range of other buildings.
As it turns out, other countries have been following a similar path, with Heerlen in the Netherlands using its old coal mines since 2008 to provide heat to local homes and businesses, along with taking in excess heat from e.g. data centers and storing this into the coal mine’s water. Similarly,
Springhill in Novia Scotia
already began a similar project in 1989, as has Spain’s Asturias region, with the latter starting its first geothermal project in 2018.
At its core, this is another example of
district heating
, which is not a new idea, but in many regions tends to get its thermal energy from fossil fuel plants. It also puts a positive spin on what is at its core an environmental disaster, as
noted
by the BBC. These mines naturally flood, which risks contaminating the local water table with heavy metals and kin, requiring constant pumping up of this water for filtering and disposal. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631969",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T03:39:06",
"content": "15C isn’t exactly warm in the winter but it is better than freezing. Could help quite a bit with the hot water bill too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,372,336.266537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/mag-loop-antenna-has-a-brain/ | Mag Loop Antenna Has A Brain | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"magnetic loop antenna",
"stepper motor"
] | Magnetic loop antennas are great if you are limited on space since they are just a potentially small loop of wire. The problem is, they are sharply tuned. You normally have an adjustment capacitor to tune the antenna to different frequencies. [TekMakerUK] built one with
a motor and an Arduino
that he can tune from an Android phone. You can see more about the project in the video below.
If you want to transmit, the capacitor is often the weak part of the system. Luckily, some old gear yielded a capacitor with multiple sections and enough plate distance to handle the 5W desired. Of course, motor driving a capacitor isn’t a new idea, but this setup is nice since it uses a stepper motor and a rotary encoder.
For now, the control just moves the stepper to a particular position, but long term, there are plans to have presets for each band that the Arduino can set from a single command. You might wonder how the stepper knows where it is since there are no limit switches. It turns out he just stalls the motor and assumes it is at the far limit and then moves it to the other limit (see
initMotor
) in the
GitHub
source code.
Loops are
easy to hide
. This isn’t, of course, the first
remote loop antenna
we’ve covered. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631922",
"author": "Bruce Perens K6BP",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T23:10:02",
"content": "What people don’t always realize is that magnetic loops are about 5% efficient.Michelle Pacquette does a great talk about them, but it doesn’t appear to be archived.Even though it’s 5% efficient... | 1,760,372,336.332031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/truckla-gets-an-open-source-charging-buddy/ | Truckla Gets An Open Source Charging Buddy | Navarre Bartz | [
"car hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"car",
"car mod",
"cybertruck",
"EV charger",
"simone giertz",
"tailgate",
"tesla",
"truck"
] | More than three years have passed since Tesla announced its Cybertruck, and while not a one has been delivered, the first Tesla truck, Truckla, has kept on truckin’. [Simone Giertz] just posted an update of what Truckla has been up to
since it was built
.
[Giertz] and friend’s DIT (do-it-together) truck was
something of an internet sensation
when it was revealed several months before the official Tesla Cybertruck. As with many of our own projects, while it was technically done, it still had some rough edges that kept it from being truly finished, like a lack of proper waterproofing or a tailgate that didn’t fold.
Deciding enough was enough, [Giertz] brought Truckla to [Marcos Ramirez] and [Ross Huber] to fix the waterproofing and broken tailgate while she went to [Viam Labs] to build
Chargla
, an Open Source charging bot for Truckla. The charging bot uses a linear actuator on a rover platform to dock with the charging port and is guided by a computer vision system. Two Raspberry Pis power handle the processing for the operation. We’re anxious to see what’s next in [Giertz]’s quest of “picking up the broken promises of the car world.”
If you want to see some more EV charger hacks, check out this
Arduino-Based charger
and the
J1772 Hydra
. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631965",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2023-04-12T02:57:29",
"content": "No link to the “mating ritual” video?https://www.youtube.com/shorts/alfrNIrv0Sg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631975",
"author": "If an ... | 1,760,372,336.395362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/the-hello-world-of-gpt/ | The Hello World Of GPT? | Al Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"GPT",
"pytorch"
] | Someone wants to learn about Arduino programming. Do you suggest they blink an LED first? Or should they go straight for a 3D laser scanner with galvos, a time-of-flight sensor, and multiple networking options? Most of us need to start with the blinking light and move forward from there. So what if you want to learn about the latest wave of GPT — generative pre-trained transformer — programs? Do you start with a language model that looks at thousands of possible tokens in large contexts? Or should you start with something simple? We think you should start simple, and [Andrej Karpathy] agrees. He has a workbook that makes a
tiny GPT that can predict the next bit in a sequence
. It isn’t any more practical than a blinking LED, but it is a manageable place to start.
The simple example starts with a vocabulary of two. In other words, characters are 1 or 0. It also uses a context size of 3, so it will look at 3 bits and use that to infer the 4th bit. To further simplify things, the examples assume you will always get a fixed-size sequence of tokens, in this case, eight tokens. Then it builds a little from there.
The notebook uses PyTorch to create a GPT, but since you don’t need to understand those details, the code is all collapsed. You can, of course, expand it and see it, but at first, you should probably just assume it works and continue the exercise. You do need to run each block of code in sequence, even if it is collapsed.
The GPT is trained on a small set of data over 50 iterations. There should probably be more training, but this shows how it works, and you can always do more yourself if you are so inclined.
The real value here is to internalize this example and do more yourself. But starting from something manageable can help solidify your understanding. If you want to deepen your understanding of this kind of transformer, you might go back to the
original paper
that started it all.
All this hype over AI GPT-related things is really just… well… hype. But there is something there. We’ve talked about
what it might mean
. The statistical nature of these things, by the way, is exactly the way other software can figure out if
your term paper was written by an AI
. | 73 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631580",
"author": "The Mighty Buzzard",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T03:36:37",
"content": "I’ve NEVER written anything as simple as Hello World or blinking an LED. If my understanding of what’s going on is that terrible, I either read until it’s not or just start writing and learn as... | 1,760,372,336.501292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/my-glasses-hear-everything-im-not-saying/ | My Glasses Hear Everything I’m Not Saying! | Al Williams | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"machine vision",
"voice command",
"voice recognition"
] | There was a time when you saw someone walking down the street talking to no one, they were probably crazy. Now you have to look for a Bluetooth headset. But soon they may just be quietly talking to their glasses. Cornell University researchers have
EchoSpeech
which use sonar-like sensors in a pair of glasses to watch your lips and mouth move. From that data, they can figure out what you are saying, even if you don’t really say it out loud. You can see a video of the glasses below.
There are a few advantages to a method like this. For one thing, you can speak commands even in places where you can’t talk out loud to a microphone. There have been HAL 9000-like attempts to read lips with cameras, but this is power-hungry and video tends to be data intensive.
By comparison, the EchoSpeech uses low-power speakers and transducers to silently collect a modest amount of data. In addition to convenience, this tech could be a real breakthrough for people who can’t speak for some reason but can move their lips and mouth.
We often wondered if Star Trek-style voice command would be a pain in a 25th-century cube farm. EchoSpeech could solve this problem since you don’t actually speak out loud.
Google Glass wasn’t very successful, but this might be viable for some users. Even better if integrated with
some test equipment
. These would be much simpler to hack together than a Google Glass replacement too, and we’ve seen some
simple head-mounted gear
that was actually useful already. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631560",
"author": "Tommy",
"timestamp": "2023-04-11T02:21:38",
"content": "Why does that girl look like she’s being held against her will??",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631573",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly ... | 1,760,372,336.645659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/busting-wireless-esd-wrist-straps-with-ltt-and-electroboom/ | Busting Wireless ESD Wrist Straps With LTT And ElectroBOOM | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"electrostatic discharge",
"esd strap"
] | Nobody likes getting zapped from an electrostatic discharge, no matter whether you’re a fragile ASIC or a bag-of-mostly-salty-water humanoid. To prevent this, ESD wrist straps and similar are essential tools, as they prevent the build-up of a charge on your humanoid’s skin, essentially like a very large electrolyte-filled capacitor. Yet you can buy wireless ESD straps everywhere that are supposed to somehow dissipate this charge into the ether, even though this would seem to undermine the laws of physics that make capacitors work.
In a practical experimentation and assorted
hijinks video
collaboration by [Linus] from Linus Tech Tips and [Mehdi Sadaghdar] from ElectroBOOM put these wireless ESD straps to the test, featuring [Mehdi]’s DIY
Van de Graaff generator
to charge [Linus] up. What is excellently demonstrated in this video is how effective a real ESD strap is, and how the ‘wireless’ version is just a scam that does absolutely nothing to dissipate the charge, being just a waste of a 1 MOhm resistor and what could have been a real ESD strap.
Also covered in the video are what the reason for the resistor in an ESD strap is, and why metal bracelet type ESD straps are not appropriate, for very good reasons.
(Thanks to [hackbyte] for the tip) | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631445",
"author": "robertrapplean",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T20:14:23",
"content": "Very amusing, but he could have avoided the zap by holding a metal bar and using that to touch things. Just sayin’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,372,336.847288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/dyson-hair-dryer-becomes-jet-engine/ | Dyson Hair Dryer Becomes Jet Engine | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"jet engine",
"metal 3d printing"
] | While Dyson makes some good products, they aren’t known for being economical. Case in point: [Integza] spent $500 on a hair dryer. While he does have a fine head of hair, we suspected he wasn’t after it for its intended purpose, and we were right. It turns out he
wanted to make it into a jet engine
! Why? Oh, come on. The fact that you read Hackaday means you don’t need that question answered. Watch the video below to see how it all turned out.
What got [Integza]’s attention was the power of the very small motor. So he immediately, of course, opened it up. The build quality is very impressive, although for $500, shouldn’t it be? While we are sure the Dyson dryer is more robust than our $9 Revlon special, it seems doubtful that it would handle the high temperatures of a jet exhaust. In fact, he’s had plastic meltdown while trying to build a jet before. So this time, he had a different plan.
That plan involved designing a replacement shell for the dryer and having it 3D printed in metal, which may have cost almost as much or more than the dryer. It came out great, though — and some fuel lines and a spark plug later, he was ready to fire it up.
Did it work? You bet. Test equipment was melted accidentally, and eventually, the engine looked like it flamed out. But it generated some very hot exhaust. We’d like to say that no tomatoes were harmed during the production of the video, but we can’t because of our well-developed sense of ethics. Poor tomatoes! We might have used a Mr. Bill doll, but that probably infringes on someone’s copyright.
If you don’t want so much melting, maybe
try water cooling
. If you could make this reliable, the
modification to your car
becomes obvious. | 18 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631439",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T19:57:55",
"content": "Is this one of these crazy projects where wasting an incredible amount of money is part of the draw to watch the video? The horrid expression captured in the “sample” or whatever it is called ... | 1,760,372,336.903152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/supercon-2022-aedan-cullen-is-creating-an-ar-system-to-beat-the-big-boys/ | Supercon 2022: Aedan Cullen Is Creating An AR System To Beat The Big Boys | Maya Posch | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Supercon",
"augmented reality"
] | There’s something very tantalizing about an augmented reality (AR) overlay that can provide information in daily life without having to glance at a smartphone display, even if it’s just for that sci-fi vibe. Creating a system that is both practical and useful is however far from easy, which is where
Aedan Cullen
‘s attempt at creating what he terms a ‘practical augmented reality device’.
In terms of requirements, this device would need to have a visual resolution comparable to that of a smartphone (50 pixels/degree) and with a comparable field of view (20 degrees diagonal). User input would need to be as versatile as a touchscreen, but ‘faster’, along with a battery life of at least 8 hours, and all of this in a package weighing less than 50 grams.
Glass Elephant
When looking at Aedan’s glasses-based prototypes with the single-eye AR experience, it’s hard not to flash back to the
Google Glass
hype of the past, beginning in 2013 with the release of the Explorer Version 1. These ran Android 4.4, and featured a 640 x 360 Himax HX7309
LCoS
display, a 5 MP camera, 1 GB of RAM (2 GB for version 2). Interaction with the user took place both via the touchpad on the side of the device, along with a voice interface.
Despite Google’s push behind the device and accompanying media hype, Google Glass as a consumer device was
a flop
, not in the least due to the rather off-putting $1,500 price tag , leading to it being retargeted to the commercial market with the Enterprise Edition in 2017 and Enterprise Edition 2 in 2019. In 2023 Google discontinued the $999 Enterprise Edition 2, but a
March 2022 teaser
promised a follow-up product with a less ambitious scope. Meanwhile Microsoft’s HoloLens appears to be solid tech, but also priced outside the comfort zone of consumers.
Finally,
Apple is rumored
to be on the verge of releasing their own AR glasses, which would run RealityOS, offer about eight hours of battery life, among a whole host of yet-to-be-confirmed features. Against this backdrop it’s interesting to consider what a hobbyist can tinker together in their own workshop.
Off-The-Shelf AR
The AR prototypes so far.
To be clear, what Aedan is showing off in the presentation is not a ready-to-use device that can compete with whatever Google Glass did and what Apple’s AR glasses may or may not do if they ever end up being released. What his efforts do show off very clearly is that even with modest means, a hobbyist can use off the shell components like the
Sony ECX337A
OLED microdisplay to get a very compact, power efficient and high-resolution (1280 x 960) image source for an AR device.
From ther,e much of the effort was with finding a way to optimize power usage, as the original STM32MP1 with Linux running on the Cortex-A7 side was a bit too power hungry even during idle at 1 W. This led Aedan to a power sipping, presumably more affordable SoC in the form of the Allwinner
D1
-based
sun20iw1
SoC. This features a single XuanTie C906 RV64GCV core on a 22 nm process, and should use less power than the STM32MP1.
In the current iteration of Aedan’s AR prototype, the PCB has moved from the typical bulge on the side as seen with Google Glass to a ‘shelf’ on the front, which makes it protrude more from the forehead but definitely improves the profile when viewing the wearer from the side. It is assumed that as the PCB is further shrunk down, the size of this protrusion can be reduced.
The hardware and its Linux OS is capable of supporting a wide range of interfaces, making it an interesting platform to tinker with, especially with the target price of less than $500 for the whole package. Aedan mentions looking into eye tracking, for instance.
As Aedan himself puts it, even if no usable product emerges from these efforts, for him the biggest return have been the valuable lessons learned from miniaturizing and optimizing such a compact design. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631400",
"author": "Charles Lamb",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T18:23:04",
"content": "“…off the shell components…”? This should please the mollusks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631709",
"author": "ono",
"tim... | 1,760,372,336.698119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/playing-78-rpm-shellac-records-its-not-just-about-speed/ | Playing 78 RPM Shellac Records: It’s Not Just About Speed | Maya Posch | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"78 RPM",
"shellac",
"vinyl records"
] | What is the difference between 78, 45, and 33 RPM records? Obviously most people would say the speed, which of course is true to a degree.
But as [Techmoan] covers in a recent video
, there’s a whole lot more to the playback of 78 RPM records. Especially the older type without so-called ‘microgrooves’. Even if you have a record player that can do 78 RPM speeds, you may have noticed that the sound is poor, with a lot of clicking and popping.
The primary reason for this is that on an average 78 RPM record, the groove containing the sound pattern is 3 mil (thousandth of an inch) wide, whereas the grooves on microgroove and 33/45 RPM records is a mere 1 mil wide. This difference translates into the stylus tip, which is comically undersized for the 3 mil grooves and ends up dragging somewhere in the very bottom of the groove, missing entirely out on the patterns etched higher up on the sides. This is why in the past styluses would often come in the flip-style version, as pictured above.
It’s also possible to purchase the mono, 3 mil styluses today from Audio-Technica and other well-known brands, requiring only to switch the stylus cartridge between playing sessions with different groove sizes. As [Techmoan] demonstrates in the video, the difference between a too small and just right stylus is night and day, but it reveals the second issue with playing records: equalization.
Virtually all records have some kind of equalization applied to the recorded audio, to balance out the imperfections of the recording medium. Upon playback, this effect is inverted, restoring the original signal as much as possible. Since 1954, the de facto standard has been
RIAA equalization
, and this is what the average record preamplifier also assumes you are using. Unfortunately, this means that for many records from around that time and before, the wrong equalization will be applied, as basically every publisher had their own standard.
In the video, [Techmoan] figures out a way to get an affordable way to playback these wide groove, 78 RPM records, and to dodge the RIAA equalization step by tapping directly into the signal from the cartridge. This would likely be a lot easier if one threw more money at the whole thing, but where is the fun in that?
Thanks to [hackbyte] for the tip. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631362",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T16:35:13",
"content": "Years ago I had a slim attractive mono tube preamp with the power amp chassis sitting on the floor. 10 position switches for bass and treble and another 10 position switch with many record brands both i... | 1,760,372,337.223703 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/the-real-john-wick-style-bullet-proof-suit/ | The Real John Wick-Style Bullet Proof Suit | Al Williams | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Fiction",
"Slider"
] | [
"ballistic armor",
"bulletproof",
"john wick",
"kevlar"
] | If you’ve seen the John Wick movies, you’ve probably had to suspend your disbelief about many things, but the bulletproof suits are perhaps the hardest thing to swallow. They look like stylish suits but are impervious to just about anything at any range. What’s more is when you are hit, they seem to absorb all impact with no effect on the wearer at all.
You can keep running, firing, or karate kicking while the suit takes all of the bullets. You can even pull your jacket up over your face if you want to protect that million-dollar smile. Physics, of course, tells us that a suit like this is pretty much impossible. Except that they actually exist. Granted, the real-life suits don’t have the magic physics-defying powers of Mr. Wick’s suit, but if you have the cash, you
can
get a smart-looking suit that protects you from getting killed by a bullet.
Real Life, Part I
In the movies, the suits supposedly have Kevlar in them just like a real piece of ballistic body armor. The problem is, Kevlar is bulky. However, most of the real body armor you see — like a vest on a SWAT team operative — is made from Kevlar or similar ballistic fibers like Twaron, Goldflex, or Dyneema. They also have plates made of metal or ceramic.
People who deal with these don’t like to call them “bulletproof” vests because they are actually “bullet resistant.” A variety of factors can combine to put a hole in the user of even the best armor. It helps to have slower and softer bullets. Ballistic fibers make something akin to a net that absorbs the bullet’s impact and spreads it out.
People who have taken a bullet wearing one of these vests equate it to getting hit with a hammer. They also get a really bad bruise. But you will likely be able to continue whatever you were doing subject to the impact of that imaginary hammer. Of course, a hammer could knock you down, which could cause other injuries or knock the wind out of you. Users report a large round causes extremely sharp pain and will probably stun you for a few seconds. The heat will also sometimes leave a small burn mark, and it is possible to have ruptured internal organs from such a shot. The closer the range, the worse it is for you, as you might expect. You can see some testing on a fake body full of ballistic gel in the video below.
Oddly enough, most bulletproof vests don’t do much against knives. They do make “stab vests,” and if you don’t mind bulk and expense, you can get special “multi-thread” vests. On the other hand, it will protect someone in a car wreck from the steering column.
That’s No Suit!
The problem is, those vests don’t look like Mr. Wick’s wardrobe at all. There are, however, options. The
Hacksmith
– Hackaday alum [James Hobson] — has a prototype Kevlar suit that supposedly cost a little under $100,000 to produce. It isn’t certified but it appears to work, as you can see in the video below.
If you actually want to buy something, you have to give up on Kevlar and go with carbon nanotubes from
Garrison
. We have a feeling if you have to ask the price of this, you probably aren’t going to get one.
I Cannot Change the Laws of Physics, Captain!
The laws of physics don’t change no matter how inconvenient they are. While you might be able to dress like John Wick, we don’t think you are going to take the hailstorm of bullets, blades, and falls that he does in the movies without some serious damage. And if you decide to hold your bulletproof lapel over your face, don’t blame us when the fabric is ripped violently out of your hand on impact.
We aren’t sure if the Garrison tech is 3D printed, but we have seen 3D-printed carbon ballistic shielding. If you think Kevlar only protects against bullets,
ask [Dan Maloney] about that
. | 55 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631332",
"author": "Bigfoot T",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T14:27:07",
"content": "Shoot for the head",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631341",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T14:53:06",
"c... | 1,760,372,336.998149 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/tree-supports-are-pretty-so-why-not-make-them-part-of-the-print/ | Tree Supports Are Pretty, So Why Not Make Them Part Of The Print? | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"generative",
"scaffolding",
"supports",
"tree supports"
] | Here’s an idea that [Nephlonor] shared a couple years ago, but is worth keeping in mind because one never knows when it might come in handy. He 3D printed a marble run track and
kept the generated tree supports
. As you can see in the image above, the track resembles a roller-coaster and the tree supports function as an automatically-generated scaffolding for the whole thing. Clever!
As mentioned, these results are from a couple of years ago; so this idea should work even better nowadays. Tree supports have come a long way since then, and are available in more slicers than just Cura.
Tree supports without an interface layer is easy mode for “generate me some weird-looking scaffolding”
If you’re going to do this, we suggest reducing or eliminating the support interface and distance, which is the spacing between the supports and the rest of the model. The interface makes supports easier to remove, but if one is intending to leave it attached, it makes more sense to have a solid connection.
And while we’re on the topic of misusing supports, we’d like to leave you with one more trick to keep in mind. [Angus] of Maker’s Muse tucked a great idea into one of his videos:
print just the support structure, and use it as a stand for oddly-shaped objects
. Just set the object itself to zero walls and zero infill, and the printer will generate (and print) only the support structure. Choose an attractive angle, and presto! A display stand that fits the object like a glove.
You can watch a brief video of the marble run embedded below. Again, tree supports both look better and are available in more slicers nowadays. Have you tried this? If so we’d love to hear about it, so let us know in the comments! | 5 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631293",
"author": "tiopepe123",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T11:36:36",
"content": "the next iteration is to add a keyboard attached with far magnets to select new routes, stopping points…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631306... | 1,760,372,337.089104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/isd1700-based-lo-fi-sampler/ | ISD1700 Based Lo-Fi Sampler | Matthew Carlson | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"ISD1700",
"music",
"sampler",
"sequencer"
] | Custom music instruments here at Hackaday range from wacky to poignant.
OpnBeat by [Hiro Akihabara]
focuses on something different: simplicity.
There are few buttons, the design and code are optimized to be straightforward and easy to modify, and the interface is slick. Eight musical keys complement three interface keys and a knob. An Arduino Nano powers the main brains of the system but the music generation comes from eight Nuvoton ISD1700s controlled over SPI by the Nano. The beautifully laid-out PCB is 110mm by 180mm (4.33″ by 7″), so cases can easily be printed on smaller FDM printers. All the switches are Cherry MX switches for the beautiful tactile feedback.
The
code, PCB, and 3D case files are all available on GitHub.
We love the thought that went into the design and the focus on making it easy to recreate. It might be quite as cute and simplified as
this twelve-button musical macro pad
, but the two together could make quite the band. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631276",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T10:26:52",
"content": "ISD15100 would give you 48 khz audio.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6631333",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T14:33... | 1,760,372,337.036576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/parallel-computing-on-the-picocray-rp2040-cluster/ | Parallel Computing On The PicoCray RP2040 Cluster | Joseph Long | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"cluster computing",
"cray",
"cray-1",
"mandelbrot",
"parallel computing",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040"
] | [ExtremeElectronics] cleverly demonstrates that if one Raspberry Pi Pico is good, then nine must be awesome. The
PicoCray
project connects multiple Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller modules into a parallel architecture leveraging an
I2C bus
to communicate between nodes.
The same PicoCray code runs on all nodes, but a grounded pin on one of the Pico modules indicates that it is to operate as the controller node. All of the remaining nodes operate as processor nodes. Each processor node implements a random back-off technique to request an address from the controller on the shared bus. After waiting a random amount of time, a processor will check if the bus is being used. If the bus is in use, the processor will go back to waiting. If the bus is not in use, the processor can request an address from the controller.
Once a processor node has an address, it can be sent tasks from the controller node. In the example application, these tasks involve computing elements of the
Mandelbrot Set
. The particular elements to be computed in a given task are allocated by the controller node which then later collects the results from each processor node and aggregates the results for display.
The name for this project is inspired by Seymore Cray. Our
Father of the Supercomputer
biography tells his story including why the Cray-1 Supercomputer was referred to as “the world’s most expensive loveseat.” For even more Cray-1 inspiration, check out this
Raspberry Pi Zero Cluster
. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631209",
"author": "IronMew",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T05:46:52",
"content": "I’m curious – is this actually useful for something, or is it a “because I can” project? That MCU is very versatile, but I wonder if there’s any scenario where this setup is more practical for parallel co... | 1,760,372,337.157708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/holograms-the-future-of-speedy-nanoscale-3d-printing/ | Holograms: The Future Of Speedy Nanoscale 3D Printing? | Dave Rowntree | [
"Science"
] | [
"3d printing",
"dlp",
"hologram",
"Holography",
"micromachining",
"nanoparticles",
"resin printing"
] | 3D printing by painting with light beams on a vat of liquid plastic was once the stuff of science fiction, but now is very much science-fact. More than that, it’s consumer-level technology that we’re almost at the point of being blasé about. Scientists and engineers the world over have been quietly beavering away in their labs on the new hotness, nanoscale 3D printing with varying success. Recently IEESpectrum reports some promising work using
holographic imaging to generate nanoscale structures
at record speed.
Current stereolithography printers make use of UV laser scanned over the bottom of a vat of UV-sensitive liquid
photopolymer resin, which is chemically tweaked to make it sensitive to the UV frequency photons. This is all fine, but as we know, this method is slow and can be of limited resolution, and has been largely superseded by LCD technology. Recent research has focussed on
two-photon lithography
, which uses a resin that is largely transparent to the wavelength of light concerned, but critically, can be polymerized with enough energy density (i.e. the method requires multiple photons to be simultaneously absorbed.) This is achieved by using pulsed-mode lasers to focus to a very tight point, giving the required huge energy density. This tight focus, plus the ability to pass the beam through the vat of liquid allows much tighter image resolution. But it is slow, painfully slow.
The latest idea, from a team of researchers from The Chinese University of Hong King, and a couple of related parties, is to use a DLP micromirror array to produce a holographic image, essentially a thousand tightly focussed and controllable beams all operating in a parallel. And, where there is parallelism, there is an increase in speed. Reported test prints in the special dual-photon resins were produced at up to 54 mm^3 per hour with a maximum 90 um resolution, though likely not at the same time. Some additional interesting results were shown, using a suspension of Iron Oxide nanoparticles, the technique produced micromachines that could be magnetically manipulated. Additionally, by controlling the individual beam powers as the print progressed, up to eleven grey-scale values could be generated, allowing variable material properties to be realized.
Holograms are fun, so here’s a
quick one about DIYing some
for your own amusement. Once you’ve dispatched that, do checkout this post about a
project utilizing tensorflow to predict what a hologram would look
like from only 2D data courtesy of an off-the-shelf camera. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631153",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-04-10T02:36:58",
"content": "Resin as expensive as perfume.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631245",
"author": "makes you go hmmmm....",
"timestamp": "2023-04... | 1,760,372,337.272328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/hackaday-links-april-9-2023/ | Hackaday Links: April 9, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"calipers",
"cryptocurrency",
"easter egg",
"hackaday links",
"heist",
"lunar",
"macOS",
"NFT",
"private key",
"rover",
"stm32",
"theft",
"Visual Studio",
"VS Code",
"wallet"
] | When it comes to cryptocurrency security, what’s the best way to secure the private key? Obviously, the correct answer is to write it on a sticky note and put it on the bezel of your monitor; nobody’ll ever think of looking there. But, if you’re slightly more paranoid, and you have access to a Falcon 9,
you might just choose to send it to the Moon
. That’s what is supposed to happen in a few months’ time, as private firm Lunar Outpost’s MAPP, or Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, heads to the Moon. The goal is to etch the private key of a wallet, cheekily named “Nakamoto_1,” on the rover and fund it with 62 Bitcoins, worth about $1.5 million now. The wallet will be funded by an NFT sale of space-themed electronic art, because apparently the project didn’t have enough Web3.0 buzzwords yet. So whoever visits the lunar rover first gets to claim the contents of the wallet, whatever they happen to be worth at the time. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a human who visits.
Speaking of crypto, it looks like
anyone who owns a Macintosh has a copy of the original Bitcoin whitepaper
. Mac user Andy Baio claims to have made the well-timed discovery of the easter egg while trying to fix his printer. A PDF of Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous whitepaper, entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” is stashed away in an obscure location and may have been used as a test document of some sort. Andy asked around and found a dozen Mac-using friends who confirmed the PDF on their machines too, so it’s probably pretty universal, at least for certain versions of macOS. Why is it there? That’s anyone’s guess.
Also in Apple-adjacent news, while we obviously don’t condone criminal activity, we can’t say we don’t love a good heist story. And
the theft of a half-million dollars worth of iPhones from an Apple store in Washington
certainly bears all the hallmarks of a Hollywood-worthy heist. The caper was obviously well-planned, because the thieves gained entry to the mall-based Apple store through the adjacent store, an espresso machine shop. The burglars pried open the door of the Seattle Coffee Gear store, made their way to the store’s bathroom, and cut a hole in the drywall right next to the toilet. The thieves knew what they were doing, or at least brought a stud finder, because the hole was exactly between two studs and narrowly avoided the plumbing for the toilet. They even made it easy to fix the drywall, which was pretty considerate. Less considerate was making off with 436 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, as was leaving little in the way of evidence.
Good news for STM32 developers who like using Visual Studio Code as an IDE: t
here’s now a VS Code extension for STM32
. The extension adds an item to the activity bar at the left edge of VS Code and allows developers to import STM32Cube projects into VS Code. You can also create new application projects for STM32CubeMX, and clone STM32Cube firmware directly from GitHub. We don’t do a lot — OK, any — STM32 development, but it’s still nice to see more extensions for the VS Code ecosystem.
And finally, if your development tends more toward the hardware side of things, you’ll be happy to learn
a few simple but clever digital caliper tricks from a real machinist
. The machinist in question is Adam the Machinist, who shows us a simple way to measure the center-to-center distance between two equal-sized holes: First, measure the ID of one hole, then zero the calipers, and finally measure the OD-to-OD distance between the holes. The reading will automatically be the center-to-center distance. The other tip involves measuring the depth of a counterbore using a gauge pin. We’re sure these tricks are old news to some, but we found them clever and will keep them in mind for around the shop. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6631004",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2023-04-09T23:21:44",
"content": "What happens if it undergoes a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) at launch or landing. To me it sounds like there will be always backup copy of the private key here on earth, at least until it is in place... | 1,760,372,337.324611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/wolverine-gives-your-python-scripts-the-ability-to-self-heal/ | Wolverine Gives Your Python Scripts The Ability To Self-Heal | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Software Development"
] | [
"ai",
"error correction",
"GPT-4",
"python"
] | [BioBootloader] combined Python and a hefty dose of of AI for a fascinating proof of concept:
self-healing Python scripts
. He shows things working in a video, embedded below the break, but we’ll also describe what happens right here.
The demo Python script is a simple calculator that works from the command line, and [BioBootloader] introduces a few bugs to it. He misspells a variable used as a return value, and deletes the
subtract_numbers(a, b)
function entirely. Running this script by itself simply crashes, but using Wolverine on it has a
very
different outcome.
In a short time, error messages are analyzed, changes proposed, those same changes applied, and the script re-run.
Wolverine is a wrapper that runs the buggy script, captures any error messages, then sends those errors to GPT-4 to ask it what it thinks went wrong with the code. In the demo, GPT-4 correctly identifies the two bugs (even though only one of them directly led to the crash) but that’s not all! Wolverine actually
applies
the proposed changes to the buggy script, and re-runs it. This time around there is still an error… because GPT-4’s previous changes included an out of scope return statement. No problem, because Wolverine once again consults with GPT-4, creates and formats a change, applies it, and re-runs the modified script. This time the script runs successfully and Wolverine’s work is done.
LLMs (Large Language Models) like GPT-4 are “programmed” in natural language, and these instructions are referred to as prompts. A large chunk of what Wolverine does is thanks to a carefully-written prompt, and you can
read it here
to gain some insight into the process. Don’t forget to watch the video demonstration just below if you want to see it all in action.
While AI coding capabilities definitely have their limitations,
some of the questions it raises are becoming more urgent
. Heck, consider that GPT-4 is barely even four weeks old at this writing.
Today I used GPT-4 to make "Wolverine" – it gives your python scripts regenerative healing abilities!
Run your scripts with it and when they crash, GPT-4 edits them and explains what went wrong. Even if you have many bugs it'll repeatedly rerun until everything is fixed
pic.twitter.com/gN0X7pA2M2
— BioBootloader (@bio_bootloader)
March 18, 2023 | 38 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630938",
"author": "Josh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-09T20:54:40",
"content": "Very cool. As an aside: anyone recognize that editor and shell environment? It looks interesting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6630960",
"a... | 1,760,372,337.468533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/intels-iapx-432-gordon-moores-gamble-and-intels-failed-32-bit-cisc/ | Intel’s IAPX 432: Gordon Moore’s Gamble And Intel’s Failed 32-bit CISC | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"iAPX 432"
] | Intel C43201-5 Release 1 chip: Instruction Decoder and Microinstruction Sequencer of iAPX 432 General Data Processor (GDP). The chip is in a 64-contact leadless ceramic QUad Inline Package (QUIP), partially obscured by metal retention clip of the 3M socket.
In a recent
article
on
The Chip Letter
[Babbage] looks at the
Intel iAPX 432
computer architecture. This was an ambitious, hyper-CISC architecture that was Intel’s first 32-bit architecture. As a stack-based architecture, it exposed no registers to the software developer, while providing high-levels pertaining to object-oriented programming, multitasking and garbage collection in hardware.
At the time that the iAPX 432 (originally the 8800) project was proposed, Gordon Moore was CEO of Intel, and thus ultimately signed off on it. Intended as an indirect successor to the successful 8080 (which was followed up by the equally successful 8086), this new architecture was a ‘micro-mainframe’ that would target high-end users that could run Ada and similar modern languages of the early 1980s.
Unfortunately, upon its release in 1981, the iAPX 432 turned out to be excruciatingly slow and poorly optimized, including the provided Ada compiler. The immense complexity of this new architecture meant that the processor itself was split across two ASICs, with the instruction decoding itself being hugely complex, as [Babbage] describes in the article. Features in the architecture that made it very flexible also meant that a lot of transistors were required to implement these, making for an exceedingly bloated design, not unlike the
Intel Itanium
(IA-64) disaster a few decades later.
Although the iAPX 432 was a bridge too far by most metrics, it did mean that Intel performed a lot of R&D on advanced features that would later be used in its i960 and x86 processors. With Intel being hardly a struggling company in 1985 when the iAPX 432 architecture was retired, this meant that despite it being a commercial failure, it still provided an interesting glimpse into an alternate reality where the iAPX 432 would have taken the computer world by storm, rather than x86. | 51 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630877",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2023-04-09T17:06:41",
"content": "You have to crack a few eggs to cook an omelette. And Intel’s later CPUs could even cook the omelette.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6631135",
... | 1,760,372,337.718029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/photoplotting-pcbs-with-a-3d-printer/ | Photoplotting PCBs With A 3D Printer | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"pcb",
"photoplotter"
] | Do you ever wonder why your PCB maker uses Gerber files? It doesn’t have to do with baby food. Gerber was the company that introduced photoplotting. Early machines used a xenon bulb to project shapes from an aperture to plot on a piece of film. You can then use that film for photolithography which has a lot of uses, including making printed circuit boards. [Wil Straver] decided to make his
own photoplotter
using a 3D printer in two dimensions and a UV LED. You can see the results in the video below.
A small 3D printed assembly holds a circuit board, the LED, and a magnet to hold it all to the 3D printer. Of course, an LED is a big large for a PCB trace, so he creates a 0.3 mm aperture by printing a mold and using it to cast epoxy to make the part that contacts the PCB film.
The fan control turns the LED on and off, much as laser cutter mods for 3D printers often do. We noticed he uses standard nuts as heat set inserts, and that seems to work well enough, especially since there isn’t much load on them in this application. There were a few iterations of pinholes and mounts, but the final iteration seems to work well. There is even a method to do double-sided boards.
Of course, with a laser cutter and good focusing, you could
pull the same trick
. Just be aware that some of the “high power” laser modules don’t focus to a dot because of their internal construction. Turns out, there’s more than one way to have
a printer help you with PCB production
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630173",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T20:31:36",
"content": "This is such beautiful Art!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6630181",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T21:01:56",
"content"... | 1,760,372,337.779679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/spice-up-the-humble-16x2-lcd-with-big-digits/ | Spice Up The Humble 16×2 LCD With Big Digits | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"16x2",
"arduino",
"character set",
"digit",
"lcd"
] | The 16×2 LCD display is a classic in the microcontroller world, and for good reason. Add a couple of wires, download a library, mash out a few lines of code, and your project has a user interface. A utilitarian and somewhat boring UI, though, and one that can be hard to read at a distance. So why not spice it up with
these large-type custom fonts
?
As [upir] explains, the trick to getting large fonts on a display that’s normally limited to two rows of 16 characters each lies in the eight custom characters the display allows to be added to its preprogrammed character set. These can store carefully crafted patterns that can then be assembled to make reasonable facsimiles of the ten numerals. Each custom pattern forms one-quarter of the finished numeral, which spans what would normally be a two-by-two character matrix on the display. Yes, there’s a one-pixel wide blank space running horizontally and vertically through each big character, but it’s not that distracting.
Composing the custom patterns, and making sure they’re usable across multiple characters, is the real hack here, and [upir] put a lot of work into that. He started out in Illustrator, but quickly switched to a spreadsheet because it allowed him to easily generate the correct binary numbers to pass to the display for each pattern. It seems to have really let his creative juices flow, too — he came up with 24 different fonts! Our favorite is the one he calls “Tron,” which looks a bit like the magnetic character recognition font on the bottom of bank checks. Everyone remembers checks, right?
Hats off to [upir] for a creative and fun way to spice up the humble 16×2 display. We’d love to see someone pick this up and try a complete alphanumeric character set, although that might be a tall order with only eight custom characters to work with. Then again, if
Bad Apple
on a 16×2
is possible… | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630146",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T18:49:30",
"content": "Nice, using the full lit character (which is in the default character set) as 9th “caracter”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6630162",
"autho... | 1,760,372,337.618769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/share-your-projects-take-pictures/ | Share Your Projects: Take Pictures | Arya Voronova | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"photography"
] | Information is diesel for a hacker’s engine, and it’s fascinating how much can happen when you share what you’re working on. It could be a pretty simple journey – say, you record a video showing you fixing your broken headphones, highlighting a particular trick that works well for you. Someone will see it as an entire collection of information – “if my headphones are broken, the process of fixing them looks like this, and these are the tools I might need”. For a newcomer, you might be leading them to an eye-opening discovery – “if my headphones are broken, it is possible to fix them”.
There’s a few hundred different ways that different hackers use for project information sharing – and my bet is that talking through them will help everyone involved share better and easier. Let’s start talking about pictures – perhaps, the most powerful tool in a hacker’s arsenal. I’ll tell you about all the picture-taking hacks and guidelines I’ve found, go into subjects like picture habits and simple tricks, and even tell you what makes Hackaday writers swoon!
To start with, here’s a picture of someone hotwiring a car. This one picture conveys an entire story, and a strong one.
“This is a car’s interior, and the key mechanism is torn out, with the key mechanism is crucial to making the car start up. Wires are being connected together, and there’s no key in the keyhole. It would seem that the key mechanism has been circumvented. It would also seem that fundamentally, all that the key mechanism does is short wires together.”
Thanks to our natural curiosity, it also immediately raises questions. Part of these questions, you can immediately figure out answers to – they’d be half-rhetorical prompts your mind makes up.
“So… You can jumpstart a car by just touching wires together? Is that just how simple car startup is, on a fundamental level – two wires being shorted together? Should it be any more complicated? And if it’s that simple, how did we secure our cars so that they aren’t hijacked more? Are “start engine” buttons just key mechanisms, repackaged? If it’s gonna cost me $200 to duplicate my car key, could it be easier to buy a new car lock mechanism with a set of keys instead and replace the entire mechanism?”
If you’ve never seen hotwiring, you’re now familiar it thanks to this picture alone. To hotwire a car, you tear out the key slot, then jumper a few of the wires. Now, that’s a seriously old car – in real life, hijacking a car hasn’t been this simple for a long time. There’s tools like the immobilizers, tied into the ECU on a deeper level than two wires; before those, we’ve had a vivid market for remote car alarm mechanisms of various kinds, some more vulnerable than others. Nevertheless, just like many other examples of the physical and cyber- security world, it remains a punchy demonstration of exploiting a weakness, with everything you need to grasp it being conveyed in a single picture.
Flipping Bits
A picture is in a unique position to light up someone else’s neurons. What’s more, pictures do this with unparalleled efficiency. I remember how, in my childhood, I’ve seen such a photo in a book about inventions, describing hotwiring in some context I no longer remember – which helped me go from “cars work, but I don’t quite know how” to “cars are electromechanical creations, and this is how I can map fundamental principles of other areas onto them”. In my own small theory of learning, which I keep in my head, I call such events “bitmasks” – it’s something you create, that interacts with someone else’s brain and creates a new pathway, as if enabling a new brain peripheral which lets us interact with our world in a unique way.
On the opposite side, some pictures refuse to map onto our understanding of the world or improve upon it. What is even happening here?
Pictures are a highly effective kind of bitmask in online world – by now, entire platforms are tailored towards pictures, and on Hackaday too, article has to have a picture with it no matter what. For the offline world, the most effective bitmask is hacker-friendly hardware – just remember an entire generation of hackers raised on 8-bit computers and game consoles. This line of thinking might feel grim as you realize that nowadays, generations are being raised with smartphones, hacker-hostile in many important ways – on the other hand, nowadays we have laptops, single-board computers, and devboards aplenty.
In fact, there’s a low-effort and high-impact way to share your projects by heavily relying on pictures, as long as you’re diligent about snapping a picture every now and then. Once you have a series of photos or pictures that convey your project’s story, post them as an Imgur gallery or Twitter thread, with a caption under each photo that gives the context and any missing detail. A layer or two of your project will be lost in such a way, and you’ll really want to open-source your project where appropriate, negating the loss from the other end. It also doesn’t work for all projects – software projects and certain hardware projects won’t be described as well by a photo gallery. However, this is still an incredibly efficient way of information delivery.
Take All The Pictures
Now, we’ve figured it out, a single picture can be enormously powerful – if well-timed pictures can lead to international scandals, then one of your pictures could no doubt, one day, be instrumental as part of the overall hacker movement. Of course, on average, it’s way more likely that your pictures will make other hackers think, smile, or dream. You might not know which pictures does it, however – you’ll want to learn to take them often, and at just the right moments.
A good way to create a picture-taking habit is to have someone wait for your results. If there’s an audience waiting for you as you hack, you will naturally try to share your project’s crucial moments with them, and take pictures in a way that an outside audience could appreciate, too. It could be a Twitter thread you create as you go through a project, DMs with your friend passionate about some topic, or a Discord channel where folks interested in the same topic hang out.
For instance, take Discord – it is normally a bad platform for publicly presenting your projects, as it’s a fleeting medium and it’s not searchable – plus, you can’t quite give your friend a thread link if they’re not in the server, and here on Hackaday, we can’t feature a Discord thread either! However, if you’re in a Discord server where a few friends are waiting for you as you hack on something, every time you reach a small milestone, there will be a thought on your mind: “Hold on, others will want to see what I see right now!” Discord will also preserve your pictures indefinitely, so if you ever want to make your project public, you can simply go back in channel history, download the pictures, copy-paste the messages and go the Imgur/Twitter thread route.
Another way is creating a Twitter or Mastodon thread, documenting a project as you go. That’s what a microblog is for, after all. In the same way, this helps you develop a habit of taking pictures when it matters, both reminding you that you need to take a picture every so often, and developing a judgment on when it’s best to do so. With Twitter, the pictures instantly go online to an arbitrarily wide audience, and while Twitter searchability is subpar compared to blogs, it’s still better than a Discord channel, which are closed by default unless a lot of effort is applied.
Take Them Well
Of course, it matters how you take pictures. A picture represents a short story, in a way, so it very much matters that you have all the important parts of the story in shot and visible, and the less-than-important parts stay out. On the bright side – most often, you only need a smartphone to take your pictures, and that’s something you likely already have.
Lighting is perhaps the most important requirement. Say, you’re taking a picture of your PCB in action, with wires attached – a great kind of picture for conveying what you’re hacking on! You need to figure out a way to minimize both shadow and glare in the shot. Depending on how your hacking surface looks, there might be a suitable amount of light for this, or nowhere near enough – you’ll likely move the camera around for a bit as you figure it out.
A 16:9 picture that also can be cropped well into a 1:1 shot – ideal for Hackaday writeup purposes
It helps if you have some light sources at your control. Not all pictures need them – if you’re taking an in-progress picture of your workbench, it’s likely decently well-lit. On the other hand, if you need to take a closeup of a PCB and how things are wired up to it, you’ll want to have an extra light source handy and under your granular control – at my desk, I use a lamp with a bendy neck that I can move around, and in a pinch I use the flashlight function of my second smartphone.
Another important part is the background – for instance, in products, people typically try and go for clean-white. It’s doable – hackers have built light boxes for taking clean-white-background pictures before, and they’re wonderful for when you want things to be perfect. In a pinch, I’ve used a sheet of paper to compromise – and I’ve also learned that it’s not always you need a clean white background for a product picture that sells.
Say, you use a smartphone for your pictures, and you’re trying to do a close up picture of a chip on some PCB. Depending on how fancy it is, you might find that, no matter how close up you move the smartphone, it won’t focus. In this case, it might be actually beneficial to move it away a bit – many smartphones can’t focus too close up, but will happily give you a sharp picture from far away; even if you end up having the entire PCB in the shot, you can always cut it up!
And Bring Them To Us
Here’s a secret if you’re looking to have your project covered on Hackaday! We try to pick a picture that represents your project and also attracts readers to the article. For every article, we need two pictures – one 16:9 for the article page, and one 1:1 for sidebar and social media thumbnail. This means that, while a portrait (vertical) picture might very much work for your project page, it’s more than likely subpar for Hackaday purposes.
If you have more than one picture of the hardware, make sure to add them somewhere we can download them, and in quality better than the one you embed! For instance, having small pictures alongside your GitHub-published writeup is cool, but when we can only download a 400 x 400 thumbnail version of the pic, we can’t really use it.
All in all, having pictures is a huge boost for bringing your project’s essence to others’ attention, a strong amplifier for whatever you’re hacking on. Next time, let’s talk about how we share our projects when it comes to PCBs we create! | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630151",
"author": "JanW",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T19:11:38",
"content": "That’s quite a long artice for saying: take not too sh***y pics of your projects and publish them. It’s what people already do for as long as there’s projects and the internet…",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,337.857643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/hackaday-podcast-213-not-your-grandfathers-grandfather-clock-the-engineering-behind-art-hydrogen-powered-flight/ | Hackaday Podcast 213: Not Your Grandfather’s Grandfather Clock, The Engineering Behind Art, Hydrogen Powered Flight | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they review some of their favorite hacks and projects of the past week. The episode starts with a discussion about the recently announced Artemis II crew, and how their mission compares to the Apollo program of the 1960s and 70s.
From there, the pair theorize as to why Amazon’s family of Echo devices have managed to evade eager hardware hackers, take a look at a very impressive SMD soldering jig created with some fascinating OpenSCAD code, marvel at the intersection of art and electronic design, and wonder aloud where all the cheap motorized satellite dishes are hiding. Stick around for some questionable PCB design ideas, a Raspberry Pi expansion that can read your mind, and the first flight of a (semi) hydrogen-powered aircraft.
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 your own personal copy!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 213 Show Notes:
News:
NASA Names Astronauts to Next Moon Mission
What’s that Sound?
Think you know that sound?
Fill out the form
for a chance to win.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Squeezing Secrets Out Of An Amazon Echo Dot
GitHub – xyzz/amonet: A bootrom exploit for MediaTek devices
Amazon Echo Gets Open Source Brain Transplant
How Has Amazon Managed To Make Hackers Love Alexa?
Don’t Toss That Bulb, It Knows Your Password
A Soft Soldering Jig For Hard Projects
No Wonder These Projects Won the Circuit Sculpture Contest
New Expansion Module Brings Standard Slots To Ancient Laptop
3D Printed Post Modern Grandfather Clock
See Satellites In Broad Daylight With This Sky-Mapping Dish Antenna
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Silkscreen Busy? Put Labels Inside Pads
Truly Flexible Circuits Are A Bit Of A Stretch
A Compact Camera Running Linux? What’s Not To Like!
Tom’s Picks:
Classic Film Camera Goes Digital With Game Boy Tech
Server Network Cards Made Extra Cool
PiEEG Offers Affordable Brain-Computer Interface
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Why A Community Hackerspace Should Be A Vital Part Of Being An Engineering Student
“Makerspace” Trademark Application Rejected
Largest Ever Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plane Takes Flight
NASA Readies New Electric X-Plane For First Flight | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630131",
"author": "derek",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T17:09:26",
"content": "Derek here (maker of the grandfather clock). …You guys really “got it” and made me laugh – you’re right, it’s a clock that’s not really a clock, just a pleasant kinetic sound maker. The other clocks in the ... | 1,760,372,339.926174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/string-operations-the-hardware-way/ | String Operations The Hard(ware) Way | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8086",
"ken shirriff"
] | One of the interesting features of the 8086 back in 1978 was the provision for “string” instructions. These took the form of prefixes that would repeat the next instruction a certain number of times. The next instruction was meant to be one of a few string instructions that operated on memory regions and updated pointers to the memory region with each repeated operation. [Ken Shirriff] examines the 8086 die up close and personal to
explain how the 8086 microcode
pulled this off and it is a great read, as usual.
In general, the string instructions wanted memory pointers in the SI and DI registers and a count in CX. The flags also have a direction bit that determines if the SI and DI registers will increase or decrease on each execution. The repeat prefix could also have conditions on it. In other words, a REP prefix will execute the following string instruction until CX is zero. The REPZ and REPNZ prefixes would do the same but also stop early if the zero flag was set (REPZ) or not set (REPNZ) after each operation. The instructions can work on 8-bit data or 16-bit data and oddly, as [Ken] points out — the microcode is the same either way.
[Ken] does a great job of explaining it all, so we won’t try to repeat it here. But it is more complicated than you’d initially expect. Partially this is because the instruction can be interrupted after any operation. Also, changing the SI and DI registers not only have to account for increment or decrement, but also needs to understand the byte or word size in play. Worse still, an unaligned word had to be broken up into two different accesses. A lot of logic to put in a relatively small amount of silicon.
Even if you never design a microcoded CPU, the discussion is fascinating, and the microphotography is fun to look at, too. We always enjoy [Ken’s] posts on
little CPUs
and
big computers
. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630134",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T17:36:22",
"content": "Interesting read. I’m wondering how many compilers used those instructions, if any. Or they were used only in hand crafted assembly?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,339.591666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/this-week-in-security-cookie-monster-cyberghost-nexx-and-dead-angles/ | This Week In Security: Cookie Monster, CyberGhost, NEXX, And Dead Angles | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"NEXX",
"supply chain attack",
"This Week in Security",
"vpn"
] | “Operation Cookie Monster” ranks as one of the best code names in recent memory. And it’s apropo, given
what exactly went down
. Genesis Market was one of those marketplaces where criminals could buy and sell stolen credentials. This one was a bit extra special.
Websites and services are getting better about detecting logins from unexpected computers. Your Google account suddenly logs in from a new computer, and a two-factor authentication challenge launches. Why? Your browser is missing a cookie indicating you’ve logged in before. But there’s more. Providers have started rolling out smart analytics that check for IP address changes and browser fingerprints. Your mix of time zone, user string, installed fonts, and selected language
make a pretty unique identifier
. So sites like Genesis offer Impersonation-as-a-Service (IMPaaS), which is session hijacking for the modern age.
A victim computer gets owned, and credentials are collected. But so are cookies and a browser fingerprint. Then a criminal buyer logs in, and runs a virtual browser with all that collected data. Run through a proxy to get a IP that is geolocated close enough to the victim, and Mr. Bad Guy has a cloned machine with all accounts intact.
And now back to Operation Cookie Monster, a multi-organization takedown of Genesis. It’s apparently a partial takedown, as the latest word is that the site is still online on the Tor network. But the conventional domains are down, and something like eight million credentials have been captured and added to the Have I Been Pwned database.
Another researcher team, Sector 7, has been working the case with Dutch authorities, and
has some interesting details
. The vector they cover was a fake activation crack for an antivirus product. Ironic. There are several extensions that get installed on the victim computer, and one of the most pernicious is disguised as Google Drive. This extension looks for a Command and Control server, using Bitcoin as DNS. A hardcoded Bitcoin address is polled for its latest transaction, and the receiving address is actually an encoded domain name,
you-rabbit[.]com
as of the latest check.
This extension will look for and rewrite emails that might be warning the victim about compromise. Get an email warning about a cryptocurrency withdrawal? It modifies it in the browser to be a sign-in warning. It also allows Genesis customers to proxy connections through the victim’s browser, bypassing IP address security measures.
Ghost in the VPN
There are a few reasons you might want to use a VPN. Like accessing things inside your network from afar, without opening ports to the wider internet. Or because you’re using public WiFi, and you’re concerned someone may be trying for an ARP poisoning attack. Or maybe even to get an IP that geo-locates to another country. It’s legally dubious, but a VPN with a British endpoint gets you BBC shows, and Netflix is delighted to stream way more anime content with a Japanese IP address.
All that to say, there are some reasons why even Linux users might use a VPN service like CyberGhost. It even has Wireguard support. And unfortunately had some
really severe security issues in the Linux client
. The connection flow contains several HTTPS requests to a CyberGhost API, and one of those connections is done without proper certificate checking. This is fairly common during development, to test the code before the domains and certificates are in place. But that’s no bueno for deployed code, as it gives that hypothetical ARP-poisoning attacker a foothold.
The vulnerable API call just happens to be the one that fetches the Wireguard server details, including address, port, and public key. And it gets way worse, as the wireguard configuration file is populated by a bash command, built by concatenating those details on a template. Without proper sanitization. So that VPN you might use to stay safe on public wifi, had a vulnerability that allowed an attacker on the same untrusted network to execute bash code on your machine during the connection process. Yikes!
The good news is that [mmmd] privately reported the flaws, and CyberGhost took the report seriously, releasing a fixed client in just a handful of weeks. The very bad news is that the client does not have an auto-update feature. So Linux users of CyberGhost desperately need to go check that their client is at least version 1.4.1, and update it if it’s an earlier version.
Pseudo Corporate Email
[Evan Connelly] had some
fun and profit at Tesla’s expense/benefit
. Tesla runs two separate Single Sign On providers,
sso.tesla.com
for insiders, and
auth.tesla.com
for the rest of us. That pair of providers is interesting, and just maybe there’s some weirdness to be found where they overlap. Like registering an old @tesla.com email address with the public SSO provider. Since it didn’t actually require email verification, it was possible to claim the account of a former Tesla employee. With that once-again valid account in hand, all that was left was to discover whether it would actually enable anything interesting. And turns out, the Tesla Retail Tool doesn’t check which SSO provider is being used, and has some hard-coded account names with privileges. Score!
Dead Angles
We’ve covered Acropalypse a couple times, but Trail of Bits has
an interesting take on the problem
and
tool to find similar issues
. Acropolypse is what happens when an image gets cropped, but the file itself isn’t truncated. What ToB observes is that this problem could be generalized, as input bytes that are ignored by a parser, and included in the output. The Polytracker tool successfully tracks the data that ends up in the output file, but outside the PNG image.
The term used for this is “blind spot”, loosely translated from the French “angles morts”, but I much prefer the more literal translation, “dead angles”. It’s a bit of a novel way to look at things, as those dead angles imply some sort of parsing flaw, as well as a way to sneak data through processing. And, in retrospect, the PolyTracker tool does indeed catch the Acropalypse flaw. So it could be interesting to go look for other processing dead angles in other programs.
NEXX
If you happen to be one of the
backers of the NEXX
alarm system, or a user of the NEXX smart garage controller,
you may have a problem
. It turns out, there’s a single universe password shared among all the devices — not to mention that all MQTT messages were being sent to every device and customer. So yes, every NEXX device can be controlled from anywhere in the world, by anyone. So, if you do happen to a NEXX device, it might be time to unplug it for a while.
Though, it looks like SimpalTEK NEXX has pulled the plug on the cloud server that runs the devices. The backstory here is that SimpalTEK is a very small company, and is showing signs of being dormant. [Sam Sabetan] discovered and attempted to report the problems back in January, and received nothing but silence in response. 90 days have passed, so here we are, talking about the issue publicly without any fixes. Additionally, CISA has issued an advisory, due to the severity of the problem, and the non-response from the manufacturer. And now that the story has gone public, the NEXX site has removed pages about the vulnerable devices, and hosted the above notice. Time will tell if a fix ever lands, or if NEXX is yet another startup that fizzled.
3CX Surprise
The 3CX supply chain attack has some surprising wrinkles, and one of the weirdest is the fact that one of the
malicious sideload DLLs is legitimately signed
by Microsoft.
Two malicious DLL files (ffmpeg.dll and d3dcompiler_47.dll) in the compromised desktop app.
One is ffmpeg.dll, which isn't signed
However, d3dcompiler_47.dll is signed by Microsoft when looking at in Windows, which is pretty concerning, even though its been modified.
pic.twitter.com/toKKhyu18y
— Lawrence Abrams (@LawrenceAbrams)
March 30, 2023
Turns out, this exploits CVE-2013-3900, a decade old Windows vulnerability in signature validation. Arbitrary data can be added to the Authenticode signature, without invalidating that signature. Microsoft issued a fix in late 2013, but made it optional, since several vendors actually use this as a feature, to embed information into a binary after signature time. It’s also worth noting that this data doesn’t modify execution unless the application is explicitly programmed to look to this section of the file for data. But in this case, it was a convenient place to stuff data for the attack, protected by the valid signature.
And finally, the
April Android update has a trio of important fixes
, two of which are arbitrary code execution by System upon opening a file. These two seem to have been found by researchers and fixed before being used maliciously. On the other hand, CVE-2022-38181 is a vulnerability in the Mali GPU kernel driver being actively exploited in real-world attacks. There haven’t been many details released about these bugs yet, but it looks like this month’s update is an important one. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630079",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T14:12:33",
"content": "About this VPN-stuff:>releasing a fixed client in just a handful of weeks.That’s a typo i assume, you meant “days”? Because “just a handful of WEEKS” is horribly slow to fix a serious problem…",
"par... | 1,760,372,339.745407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/arbitrary-code-execution-over-radio/ | Arbitrary Code Execution Over Radio | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"APRS",
"attack",
"code execution",
"ham",
"memory",
"radio",
"research",
"security",
"software",
"vulnerability",
"winaprs"
] | Computers connected to networks are constantly threatened by attackers who seek to exploit vulnerabilities wherever they can find them. This risk is particularly high for machines connected to the Internet, but any network connection can be susceptible to attacks. As highlighted by security researcher and consultant [Rick Osgood],
even computers connected to nothing more than a radio can be vulnerable to attacks
if they’re using certain digital modes of communication.
The vulnerability that [Rick] found involves exploiting a flaw in a piece of software called WinAPRS. APRS is a method commonly used in the amateur radio community for sending data over radio, and WinAPRS allows for this functionality on a PC. He specifically sought out this program for vulnerabilities since it is closed-source and hasn’t been updated since 2013. After some analysis, he found a memory bug which was used to manipulate the Extended Instruction Pointer (EIP) register which stores the memory address of the next instruction to be executed by the CPU. This essentially allows for arbitrary code execution on a remote machine via radio.
The exploit was found while using Windows XP because it lacks some of the more modern memory protection features of modern operating systems, but the exploit does still work with Windows 10, just not as reliably and with a bit of extra effort required. It’s a good reminder to use
open-source software when possible
so issues like these can get resolved, and to regularly install security updates when possible. If you’re looking to delve into the world of APRS in more modern times, take a look at
this project which adds APRS to budget transceivers
. Just make sure you get your license first. | 71 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630054",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T12:04:41",
"content": "> It’s a good reminder to use open-source software when possible so issues like these can get resolvedIs it better though?There aren’t that many honest people actively poring over every bit of open source co... | 1,760,372,340.038389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/building-the-ohsillyscope/ | Building The OhSillyScope | Al Williams | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"LED music visualizer",
"music visualization"
] | If you have a Raspberry Pi connected to an LED matrix, you might think about creating a simple oscilloscope. Of course, the Pi isn’t really well-suited for that and neither is an LED matrix, so [Thomas McDonald] decided to create the
OhSillyScope
, instead.
The device isn’t very practical, but it does add some flash to live music performances or it makes a cool music visualizer. The matrix is only 64×64 so you can’t really expect it to match a proper scope. Besides that, it pulls its data from the Pi’s ALSA sound system.
You can find a video of the device on [Thomas’]
Reddit post
and a few additional videos on his Instagram account. Looks like a fun project and it also serves as a nice example if you need to read data from the sound card or drive that particular LED matrix.
We might have opted for
PortAudio
if we had written the same code, but only because it is more portable, which probably doesn’t matter here. Of course, you could also use
GNURadio
and some Python to drive the display. As usual, plenty of ways to solve any given problem. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630040",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T11:00:40",
"content": "I wonder if the raspi could do a realtime audio waterfall spectrum display with an RGB LED panel?I have the parts, but my programming skills are limited to solder….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,339.636093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/tube-amplifier-uses-low-voltage-sips-battery/ | Tube Amplifier Uses Low Voltage, Sips Battery | Bryan Cockfield | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"2P29L",
"2SH27L",
"amp",
"amplifier",
"heater",
"low power",
"low voltage",
"tube",
"vacuum tube"
] | Much like vinyl records, tube amplifiers are still prized for their perceived sound qualities, even though both technologies have been largely replaced otherwise. The major drawback to designing around vacuum tubes, if you can find them at all, is often driving them with the large voltages they often require to heat them to the proper temperatures. There are a small handful of old tubes that need an impressively low voltage to work, though, and [J.G.] has put a few of them to work in
this battery-powered audio tube amplifier
.
The key to the build is the Russian-made 2SH27L battery tubes which are originally designed in Germany for high-frequency applications but can be made to work for audio amplification in a pinch. The power amplifier section also makes use of 2P29L tubes, which have similar characteristics as far as power draw is concerned. Normally, vacuum tubes rely on a resistive heater to eject electrons from a conductive surface, which can involve large amounts of power, but both of these types of tubes are designed to achieve this effect with only 2.2 volts provided to the heaters.
[J.G.] is powering this amplifier with a battery outputting 5V via a USB connection, and driving a fairly standard set of speakers borrowed from a computer. While there aren’t any audio files for us to hear, it certainly looks impressive. And, as it is getting harder and harder to find vacuum tubes nowadays, if you’re determined to build your own amplifier anyway
take a look at this one which uses vacuum tubes built from scratch
. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629998",
"author": "holysnippet",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T07:03:41",
"content": "The project is empty, there are no files or instructions. No photos, diagrams or videos.Is it enough to send an anecdote to be published on HaD? I must be missing something, could someone put a link t... | 1,760,372,340.102556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/chatgpt-powers-a-different-kind-of-logic-analyzer/ | ChatGPT Powers A Different Kind Of Logic Analyzer | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"chatbot",
"ChatGPT",
"logic",
"logical fallacy",
"machine learning",
"speech to text",
"SPP",
"whisper"
] | If you’re hoping that
this AI-powered logic analyzer
will help you quickly debug that wonky digital circuit on your bench with the magic of AI, we’re sorry to disappoint you. But if you’re in luck if you’re in the market for something to help you detect logical fallacies someone spouts in conversation. With the magic of AI, of course.
First, a quick review: logic fallacies are errors in reasoning that lead to the wrong conclusions from a set of observations. Enumerating the kinds of fallacies has become a bit of a cottage industry in this age of fake news and misinformation, to the extent that many of the common fallacies have catchy names like
“Texas Sharpshooter”
or
“No True Scotsman”
. Each fallacy has its own set of characteristics, and while it can be easy to pick some of them out, analyzing speech and finding them all is a tough job.
To make things a little easier, [Matt] threw together a Raspberry Pi with a sound card and microphone for capturing live conversations. He also lists an HDMI audio extractor in the BOM, presumably for capturing audio from TV programs, likely a rich source of fallacies that would be needed for testing. A Rainbow LED hat and a touchscreen round out the UI end of the build. The code is pretty straightforward — audio is captured and saved to a file, which is sent to Whisper for speech-to-text conversion. The text file is then sent to ChatGPT along with a prompt asking the chatbot to find all the logical fallacies in the clip. The code parses the output of ChatGPT and displays which particular fallacies the speaker committed, if any. None were detected in the video below, but we suspect it wouldn’t be long before at least one cropped up.
Hats off to [Matt] for bringing us yet another fun way to use ChatGPT. We’ve seen a few in the short time the chatbot has been in the zeitgeist, including
hitting the airwaves with hams
and even
making video game NPCs more interesting
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629990",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T06:01:56",
"content": "Even lawyers and judges consider “precedents” as valid but when I do it its whataboutism?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6630010",
"auth... | 1,760,372,339.693992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/fast-scanning-bed-leveling/ | Fast Scanning Bed Leveling | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"auto bed leveling",
"surface scanner"
] | The bane of 3D printing is what people commonly call bed leveling. The name is a bit of a misnomer since you aren’t actually getting the bed level but making the bed and the print head parallel. Many modern printers probe the bed at different points using their own nozzle, a contact probe, or a non-contact probe and develop a model of where the bed is at various points. It then moves the head up and down to maintain a constant distance between the head and the bed, so you don’t have to fix any irregularities. [YGK3D] shows off the
Beacon surface scanner
, which is technically a non-contact probe, to do this, but it is very different from the normal inductive or capacitive probes, as you can see in the video below. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see it print because [YGK3D] mounted it too low to get the nozzle down on the bed. However, it did scan the bed, and you can learn a lot about how the device works in the video. If you want to see one actually printing, watch the second, very purple video from [Dre Duvenage].
Generally, the issues with probes are making them repeatable, able to sense the bed, and the speed of probing all the points on the bed. If your bed is relatively flat, you might get away with probing only 3 points so you can understand how the bed is tilted. That won’t help you if your bed has bumps and valleys or even just twists in it. So most people will probe a grid of points.
Like a pixel is to a photograph, more points mean better accuracy. But it also means a lot more time since, traditionally, the printer has to move to each point and then push the sensor down toward the bed. Finding the measurement is most often a two-step process. You move fast to save time, find the bottom, back up a bit, and then find it again slowly to get better accuracy. This is necessary because the sensors don’t tell you how far away the bed is. They tell you you are near the bed or far away. So you have to move from far away to near and then stop.
The Beacon tells you how far the bed is with a claimed resolution of 0.5 microns and can sample at 1 kHz. That means you just stick the probe at some point near the bed and move over the entire bed at up to 500 mm/s, recording the distances you measure along the way. This means you can scan the bed much faster and model thousands of points.
The Beacon uses eddy currents in the bed, so the bed does need to be conductive. The company that makes them recommends bare steel with glue or a PEI coating. The plate has to be at least 400 microns thick and they warn that if you use a steel plate with a laminate, it won’t be able to sense deformations in the laminate itself, only the underlying metal. The probe is lightweight — under 4 grams — and operates up in ambient temperatures up to 110C.
If your bed attaches with magnets, you might wonder if it will affect the sensor. The answer is maybe. The company mentions that large fixed magnets can affect measurement. You can define an exclusion zone in the software, assuming that the magnets don’t eat up too much of the bed. However, the company also notes that the rubber sheet magnets typically found on print beds are actually many tiny magnets and won’t bother the sensor. You also need to mount it away from metal on your print head. The final requirement is to use Klipper since it will support the large number of points created by the sensor.
We used to resist not manually leveling the bed because it wears the printer’s Z axis, but we’ve given up and
embraced it
. We’ve seen
another similar
sensor, but it doesn’t scan — it measures in real-time. | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629942",
"author": "Conor Stewart",
"timestamp": "2023-04-07T00:16:04",
"content": "Even with all the fancy probes now, it is still best to have the bed mostly trammed and just use the probe for warping compensation or if your bed isn’t flat. The probes are great but having the pri... | 1,760,372,339.880019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/reviving-a-legend-mamiya-rb67-repair/ | Reviving A Legend: Mamiya RB67 Repair | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"Mamiya",
"Mamiya RB67"
] | The damaged parts in the camera are circled in red. Original graphic is from the Mamiya service manual.
When it comes to professional medium format analog cameras, the Mamiya RB67 is among the most well-known and loved, ever since its introduction in 1970. Featuring not only support for 120 and 220 film options, but also a folding and ‘chimney’ style view finder and a highly modular body, these are just some reasons that have made it into a popular – if costly – reflex system camera even today. This is one reason why [Anthony Kouttron] chose to
purchase and attempt to repair
a broken camera, in the hopes of not only saving a lot of money, but also to save one of those amazing cameras from the scrap heap.
With the last of these cameras being produced well into 2009 (including the 1990 RB67 Pro-SD model), you’d figure that repairing them would be a snap, but with the world moving towards other (digital) cameras and film formats, most
RB67s
were produced during the 1970s and 1980s, spare parts are hard to come by. What does help is that the
service manual
is readily available, but as [Anthony] found, this is of only limited use.
What the service manual doesn’t tell you, for example, is how to remove the leatherette covering to get to the screws underneath. Here a heat gun and some careful prying with blunt tools did the joy, and uncovered the main issue with the camera: a bent focus rod. As the lucky owner of a lathe, [Anthony] considered milling a new one, but since the origin part was made out of brass, he reckoned the original part could be bent straight again with some care.
With that bit of surgery completed, that just left a definitely busted part: a focus knob. Rather than plastic, these are made out of Bakelite, which is more fragile than plastic, and replacement parts for this camera are more rare than hen’s teeth. Fortunately, the dimensions of the knob could be measured, a replacement knob printed in ABS and the original brass insert reused. Some careful reassembly later, and [Anthony] was in the possession of a fully functional Mamiya RB67 Professional. | 26 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629868",
"author": "now just Bob",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T20:14:38",
"content": "In a previous lifetime I owned a portrait studio and the RB67 was my mainstay camera. The 180mm lens was incredible with both excellent sharpness and exposure corner to corner, as well as offering e... | 1,760,372,339.814444 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/even-amstrad-spectrums-need-their-bugs-fixing/ | Even Amstrad Spectrums Need Their Bugs Fixing | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Amstrad",
"Amstrad Spectrum",
"sinclair",
"ZX spectum"
] | The history of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is one that mirrors the fortunes of the British home computer industry, one of an early 8-bit boom followed by a sharp decline as manufacturers failed to capitalise on the next generation of 16-bit machines.
The grey ZX Spectrum on [Keri Szafir]’s bench
is one that encapsulates that decline perfectly, being one of the first models produced under the ownership of Amstrad after Sir Clive’s company foundered. Amstrad made many improvements to the Spectrum, but as she demonstrates, there are still some fixes needed.
The machine came her way because of a hum from the tape deck circuitry. The read amplifier was picking up electrical noise, and she fixed it without mods to the circuit but with the simple expedient of powering the analogue circuit from the tape motor switch so it only works when needed.
Beyond that, this machine demonstrates another ’80s innovation, the SCART/Peritel AV connector. These first appeared on early-80s French TV sets, but by the later half of the decade had made it to the UK where Amstrad included support for an adapter cable from the DIN socket on the back of their Spectrum. Even then they didn’t get it quite right, and she modifies some links on the board to better support it.
Sinclair were famous for on-board bodges, and even in new ownership continued. There’s a reversed transistor and at least one bodged-on component, but of course, it wouldn’t be a Spectrum without bugs, would it! | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629901",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T22:11:05",
"content": "I’m glad someone stepped to the plate and got the bugs fixing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6630042",
"author": "Keri Szafir",
"times... | 1,760,372,339.547787 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/retrotechtacular-voice-controlled-typewriter-science-project-in-1958/ | Retrotechtacular: Voice Controlled Typewriter Science Project In 1958 | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"Retrotechtacluar",
"voice recognition"
] | Hackaday readers might know [Victor Scheinman] as the pioneer who built some of the first practical robot arms. But what was a kid like that doing in high school? Thanks to a film about the 1958 New York City Science Fair, we know he was building
a
voice-activated typewriter
. Don’t believe it? Watch it yourself below, thanks to [David Hoffman].
Ok, we know. Voice typing is no big deal today, and, frankly, [Victor’s] attempt isn’t going to amaze anyone today. But think about it. It was 1958! All those boat anchor ham radios behind him aren’t antiques. That’s what radios looked like in 1958. Plus, the kid is 16 years old. We’d say he did pretty darn good!
Not that he didn’t continue to do well. His project earned him a spot at MIT, worked for Boeing, NASA, and Stanford. You can read an
interview from 2010
that sums up many of his experiences. In 2016, [Victor] passed away, but his legacy lives on not only in this newsreel footage but in robot arms today that still bear a striking resemblance to his MIT Arm.
The film is not very detailed about exactly how the typewriter worked. But it only recognized letters, and maybe not all 26 letters at that. We have a feeling that analog filters picked up the differences in a few letters (the COND BANK block on the chalkboard) and triggered a solenoid to strike the key. There are two amplifiers feeding that block from one microphone, so maybe there was a bit of a phase delay to pick up two frequencies. Or perhaps one was just an analog threshold trigger to figure out you were actually talking.
But we aren’t sure. In a eulogy written by [Victor’s] friend [Harvey Cohen], we can
read
:
For this purpose he adapted electromagnets to actuate the keys of a manual typewriter. The user spoke into a microphone, and the signal was classified (as A, B, C, … etc) by analogue circuity. This was in 1959… Understandably — this project won for Vic a Science Prize — and entry into MIT…In discussions I once had with Vic he reported the (analogue) algorithms he devised were in fact essentially the same as were then being developed in the early AI Labs.
So maybe there was more to it than we thought. But, regardless, it was quite an accomplishment.
A 2016 attempt at
doing something similar
has the benefit of nearly 60 years of progress behind it. If you don’t mind sharing your speech with Google or Amazon, such a project now is
downright simple
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629816",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T17:51:42",
"content": "Is that the same year Lee Felsenstein had a scince fair project? I can’t remember what, but there’s a photo, I think in Fire in the Valley.That was before he was at Berkeley, and Community Memory."... | 1,760,372,340.218209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/08/mechanical-gif-animates-with-the-power-of-magnets/ | Mechanical GIF Animates With The Power Of Magnets | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"animation",
"avionics",
"Muybridge",
"rack and pinion",
"RAF",
"relay"
] | It doesn’t matter how you pronounce it, because whichever way you choose to say “GIF” is guaranteed to cheese off about half the people listening. Such is the state of our polarized world, we suppose, but there’s one thing we all can agree on — that
a mechanical GIF is a pretty cool thing
.
What’s even better about this thing is that [Mitch], aka [Hack Modular], put some very interesting old aircraft hardware to use to make it. He came upon a set of cockpit indicators from a Cold War-era RAF airplane — sorry, “aeroplane” — that used a magnetically driven rack and pinion to swivel a set of prism-shaped pieces to one of three positions. Which of the three symbols displayed depended on which faces were turned toward the pilot; they were highly visible displays that were also satisfyingly clicky.
After a teardown in which [Mitch] briefly discusses the mechanism behind these displays, he set about customizing the graphics. Rather than the boring RAF defaults, he chose three frames from the famous
Horse in Motion
proto-motion picture by [Eadweard Muybridge]. After attaching vertical strips from each frame to the three sides of each prism, [Mitch] came up with a driver for the display; he could have used a 555, but more fittingly chose series-connected relays to do the job. Capacitors slow down the switching cascade and the frame rate; a rotary switch selects different caps to make the horse appear to be walking, trotting, cantering, or galloping — yes, we know they’re each physically distinct motions, but work with us here.
The whole thing looks — and sounds — great mounted in a nice plastic enclosure. The video below shows it in action, and we find it pretty amazing the amount of information that can be conveyed with just three frames. And we’re surprised we’ve never seen these displays before; they seem like something [Fran Blanche] or [Curious Marc] would love. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630474",
"author": "Mechenger",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T19:06:49",
"content": "That’s fun!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6630486",
"author": "solipso",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T19:32:22",
"content": "I do not lik... | 1,760,372,340.272055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/08/design-for-people/ | Design For People | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"newsletter"
] | We all make things. Sometimes we make things for ourselves, sometimes for the broader hacker community, and sometimes we make things for normal folks. It’s this last category where it gets tricky, and critical. I was reminded of all of this watching
Chris Combs’ excellent Supercon 2022 talk
on how to make it as an artist.
“But I’m not making art!” I hear you say? About half of Chris’ talk is about how he makes his tech art worry-free for galleries to install, and that essentially means making it normie-proof – making sure it runs as soon as the power is turned on, day in, day out, without hacker intervention, because venues hate having you on site to debug. As Tom joked in the podcast, it’s a little bit like designing for space: it’s a strange environment, you can’t send out repair teams, and it has to have failsafes that make sure it works.
What is striking about the talk is that there is a common core of practices that make our hardware projects more reliable, whatever their destination. Things like having a watchdog that’ll reboot if it goes wrong, designing for modularity whenever possible, building in hanging or mounting options if that’s relevant, and writing up at least a simple, single-page info sheet with everything that you need to know to keep it running. Of course with art, aesthetics matters more than usual. Or does it?
So suppose you’re making a thing for a normal person, that must run without your babysitting. What is the common core of precautionary design steps you take?
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
! | 52 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630363",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T15:07:32",
"content": "Label things! the buttons! What it even is…!Make sure that every wire is secure – give it a good shake and drop it a few times to see UFM anything is loose.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,372,340.365281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/08/your-fuji-digital-camera-is-hackable/ | Your Fuji Digital Camera Is Hackable | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"Fuji",
"ThreadX"
] | There was a time when a digital camera was a surprisingly simple affair whose on-board processor didn’t have much in the way of smarts beyond what was needed to grab an image from the sensor and compress it onto some storage. But as they gained more features, over time cameras acquired all the trappings of a fully-fledged computer in their own right, including full-fat operating systems and the accompanying hackability opportunities.
Prominent among camera manufacturers are Fujifilm, whose cameras it turns out
have plenty of hacking possibilities
. There’s something of a community about them, with all their work appearing in
a GitHub repository
, and a cracking April Fool in which
a Fujifilm camera appears able to be coaxed into running
DOOM
.
Correction:
We’ve since heard from creator [Daniel] who assures us that not only was the
DOOM
hack very much real, but that he’s released the instructions on
how to run the classic shooter on your own Fujfilm X-A2
.
Fujifilm cameras past 2017 or so run the
ThreadX
real-time operating system on a variety of ARM SoCs, with an SQLite data store for camera settings and some custom software controlling the camera hardware. The hackability comes through patching firmware updates, and aside from manipulating the built-in scripting language and accessing the SQLite database, can include code execution.
Don’t have a Fujifilm?
They’re not the only hackable camera to be found
. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630323",
"author": "Billy Bob",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T12:48:02",
"content": "How can you make such a post without mentioning CHDK? SMH….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6630443",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2023... | 1,760,372,340.467854 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/08/reactivating-a-harris-rf-130-urt-23-transmitter/ | Reactivating A Harris RF-130 URT-23 Transmitter | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"ham radio",
"harris",
"navy"
] | If you enjoy old military hardware, you probably know that Harris made quite a few heavy-duty pieces of radio gear.
[K6YIC] picked up a nice example
: the Harris RF-130 URT-23. These were frequently used in the Navy and some other service branches to communicate in a variety of modes on HF. The entire set included an exciter, an amplifier, an antenna tuner, and a power supply and, in its usual configuration, can output up to a kilowatt. The transmitter needs some work, and he’s done three videos on the transmitter already. He’s planning on several more, but there’s already a lot to see if you enjoy this older gear. You can see the first three below and you’ll probably want to watch them all, but if you want to jump right to the tear down, you can start with the second video.
You can find the
Navy manual for the unit online
, dated back to 1975. It’s hard to imagine how much things have changed in 50 years. These radios use light bulbs and weigh almost 500 pounds. [Daniel] had to get his shop wired for 220 V just to run the beast.
It is amusing that some of this old tube equipment had a counter to tell you how many hours the tubes inside had been operating so you could replace them before they were expected to fail. To keep things cool, there’s a very noisy 11,000 RPM fan. The two ceramic final amplifier tubes weigh over 1.5 pounds each!
The third video shows the initial power up. Like computers, if you remember when equipment was like this, today’s lightweight machines seem like toys. Of course, everything works better these days, so we won’t complain. But there’s something about having a big substantial piece of gear with all the requisite knobs, switches, meters, and everything else.
We can’t wait to see the rest of the restoration and to hear this noble radio on the air again. You can tell that [Daniel] loves this kind of gear and you can pick up a lot of tips and lingo watching the videos. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630295",
"author": "dendad",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T09:27:26",
"content": "The only Harris transmitters I have worked on were the 100KW AM Harris transmitters at Radio Australia, Shepparton. They were fun to learn as they were unlike the old AWA “normal” transmitters in that the ... | 1,760,372,340.522349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/pi-microcontroller-still-runs-a-webserver/ | Pi Microcontroller Still Runs A Webserver | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"dynamic",
"html",
"microcontroller",
"pi pico",
"pico",
"python",
"raspberry pi",
"STATIC",
"web server"
] | At first glance, the Raspberry Pi Pico might seem like a bit of a black sheep when compared to the other offerings from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. While most of the rest of their lineup can run Linux environments with full desktops, the Pico is largely limited to microcontroller duties in exchange for much smaller price tags and footprints. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be coerced into doing some of the things we might want a mainline Pi to do,
like run a web server
.
The project can run a static web page simply by providing the Pico with the project code available on
the GitHub page
and the HTML that you’d like the Pico to serve. It can be more than a static web page though, as it is also capable of running Python commands through the web interface as well. The server can pass commands from the web server and back as well, allowing for control of various projects though a browser interface. In theory this could be much simpler than building a physical user interface for a project instead by offloading all of this control onto the web server instead.
The project not only supports the RP2040-based Raspberry Pi Pico but can also be implemented on other WiFi-enabled microcontroller boards like the ESP8266 and ESP32. Having something like this on hand could greatly streamline smaller projects without having to reach for a more powerful (and more expensive) single-board computer like a Pi 3 or 4. We’ve seen some other builds on these boards capable of
not only running HTML and CSS renderers, but supporting some image formats as well
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630268",
"author": "Ffr",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T05:51:36",
"content": "Microdot is also worth to check out",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6630329",
"author": "william payne (@william45994166)",
"timestamp": "2023-04... | 1,760,372,340.574975 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/the-sounds-emitted-by-plants-are-real-but-they-are-still-not-talking/ | The Sounds Emitted By Plants Are Real But They Are Still Not Talking | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"botany",
"plants",
"sounds"
] | A recent
paper
published by
researchers
at the university of Tel Aviv in
Cell
on the sounds they captured from ‘stressed’ plants had parts of the internet abuzz with what this meant, with some suggesting that this was an early April Fools prank. The fun part here is the news item is not that plants make noise, but rather that this was the first time (apparently) that the noise made by plants was captured by microphones placed at some distance from a variety of plants.
This research is based on previous studies dating back decades, such as Tyree and Sperry who
reported
(PDF) in 1989 on the vulnerability of the plant
xylem
(water transporting tissue) to cavitation and embolism. Since the xylem’s function is to carry water and dissolved nutrients to the upper parts of the plant, having air bubbles form would be a negative thing for the plant’s survival. When and how cavitation occurs in the xylem is relevant as it directly impacts how well plants grow.
During these studies, it was reported that the cavitation phenomenon creates an audible click, with a number of methods to record the (ultrasonic) energy produced described by Cochard et al. in a 2013 review article in the
Journal of Experimental Botany
. Here it is noted that in order to measure the noise of cavitation a sensor is generally clamped to a leaf or stem, which obviously poses scaling issues.
In the Tel Aviv study by Itzhak Khait et al., machine-learning was used to improve the detection of ultrasonic sounds from the study’s plants. With cavitation increasing when a plant is water-stressed or damaged, the ultrasonic noise from an affected plant would therefore also serve as an identifiable characteristic, which is something which this study confirmed.
The potential use here is to detect signs of water-stressed plants and damage from insects and other pests in greenhouses and similar settings, allowing for a number of microphones to pick up the signs of trouble without the need for a visual inspection. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630239",
"author": "SB5K",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T02:09:21",
"content": "I thought the plants were saying “Feed me, Seymour! I’m a mean green momma from outer space!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6630242",
"author": "O... | 1,760,372,340.714336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/riding-the-rails-by-ebike/ | Riding The Rails By Ebike | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"califorina",
"ebike",
"electric",
"exploration",
"history",
"outriggers",
"rail",
"railroad",
"train"
] | As most developed countries around the world continue to modernize their transportation infrastructure with passenger rail, countries in North America have been abandoning railroads for over a century now, assuming that just one more lane will finally solve their traffic problems. Essentially the only upside to the abandonment of railroads has been that it’s possible to build some unique vehicles to explore these tracks and the beautiful yet desolate areas they reach, and [Cam Engineering]
is using an ebike to do that along the coast of central California
.
Since his vehicle only has two wheels, he has designed a custom outrigger system consisting of a front guide that leads the front wheel and keeps the bike on the tracks, and a rear support arm which allows the bike to lean slightly against the outside rail. Both outriggers retract to convenient positions when using the vehicle as a bike instead of a rail cart, and it’s quite the impressive bike at that. Details are sparse on the bicycle itself but it seems to be a custom frame built around fairly large battery and possibly 2000W or more of power in a rear hub motor. Without the pedals and bicycle drivetrain it would almost certainly make a capable electric motorcycle from the way it performs in the video below.
There are some other interesting details about this project as well, like the use of the drone as a gimballed camera mount on his outrigger which allows for some interesting camera shots a GoPro might not have been able to do as easily. He also goes into a lot of detail about the history of the rail and the central California coast for any history buffs out there. For anyone thinking this build looks a little familiar, it’s actually another iteration of
his previous non-electric rail bicycle we featured in the past
. | 42 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6630227",
"author": "John McHugh",
"timestamp": "2023-04-08T00:14:27",
"content": "A couple of decades ago, we lived in Pittsburgh, Pa. There were many miles of abandoned rail lines north of us. At that time I looked into building a “rail bike” and found that there was an active co... | 1,760,372,340.79579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/forget-chatgpt-and-play-rock-paper-scissors-with-yourself-instead/ | Forget ChatGPT And Play Rock-Paper-Scissors With Yourself Instead | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"ChatGPT",
"rock paper scissors"
] | This isn’t like the cool AI everyone’s getting caught up with these days, but we’re sure it will make a
fun party gimmick
nonetheless.
The premise of [CrazyScience]’s game is really simple, with three servos connected to labels that display rock, paper, and scissors, respectively. The game code is written to pick a label to display at random. Furthermore, an ultrasonic distance sensor detects when the player has moved their hand close to the game, indicating the player has chosen a hand and is challenging the game. The result of the game is decided by the player, so we imagine you could pretend you never lost and no one would know.
It would be cool to see the game support multiple players, keep score, or
make sure you can never win
. And you’ll probably want to add the randomSeed function in the code too. But that seems like a version two problem.
The only thing left to do is
add some AI since that’s all we’re doing nowadays
. But maybe you’re the type to enjoy the simple 8-bit pleasures instead. If you ask us though, we’d rather play with friends. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629783",
"author": "Jan Praegert",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T15:38:49",
"content": "There is a nice drinking game (German style including Jägermeister) with RPS…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKR9e4WNvSY",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,372,340.838899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/if-they-fire-the-nukes-will-they-even-work/ | If They Fire The Nukes, Will They Even Work? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Misc Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"a-bomb",
"h-bomb",
"nuclear",
"nuclear weapon",
"nuclear weapons"
] | 2022 was a harrowing year in a long line of harrowing years. A brutal war in Europe raised the prospect of nuclear war as the leaders behind the invasion rattled sabers and made thinly veiled threats to use weapons of mass destruction. And all this as we’re still working our way through the fallout of a global pandemic.
Those hot-headed threats raise an interesting question, however. Decades have passed since either Russia or the United States ran a live nuclear weapons test. Given that,
would the nukes even work if they were fired in anger?
Check and Test
The Trinity nuclear test was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, but sadly not the last. Credit: USDE, public domain
If there’s one thing engineers like to do, it’s to test things. It’s all well and good to draw something up on paper or put it together in the lab. But until you’ve switched it on and made it do its thing, it’s hard to know if it’s going to act as expected.
The problem with nuclear weapons is that testing them is a nasty business. It tends to leave giant craters in the landscape,
and pumps radioactive dust into the atmosphere
to spread over neighbouring populations. For this reason, most countries signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned all nuclear weapons testing save for that done underground. This later expanded into the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, formed in 1996, that nevertheless has never officially come into effect due to several holdout states.
Treaty or no treaty, nuclear weapons tests have become exceedingly rare in recent decades. The last atmospheric test was held by China in 1980, while North Korea has executed nuclear tests as recently as 2017. When it comes to the major players on today’s world stage, the US executed its last underground nuclear test in 1992, and the Soviet Union in 1990. China is known to have last ran a test in 1996, while India and Pakistan both ran tests in 1998.
The US held its last live nuclear weapons test in 1992, as part of Operation Julin. Credit: LANL, public domain
Thus far, though, we’ve only discussed the testing of nuclear warheads themselves. Testing of complete
nuclear weapons systems
is even rarer. Nuclear weapons are often intended for delivery by missiles, but the weapons have rarely been tested and fired as complete assemblies. The US, Soviet Union, and China ran minimal tests in this regard in the 1960s. However, since then, those tests have not been repeated. Furthermore, no live test of an nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile has ever taken place. That’s often put down to the risk involved. When the warhead is on the ground, you can press a button and be pretty confident on where it’s going to end up. When the warhead is on the end of a rocket, there’s always the risk that it could end up somewhere inconvenient, or that the rocket could blow up on the pad. Unlike a static weapon test, there can be very deadly consequences of a nuclear missile test gone wrong, so they simply don’t happen.
The complicated political status of nuclear weapons creates other problems, too. Production of nuclear weapons largely stalled out after the frenzied build-up of the Cold War era. As countries worked to slim down their warhead stockpiles, there was no need to keep factories running, and many were shut down. This has caused problems for those charged with maintaining decades-old weapons. Delicate mechanical mechanisms can foul up or wear out over time, explosive components can falter, while electronic components have a limited lifespan, too. In a nuclear weapon, perfect performance and timing is critical. It doesn’t take much to spoil a weapon’s yield if a component isn’t operating perfectly.
In the US in particular, this came into focus in the early 2000s. There was a crisis as weapons technicians realized they no longer had a supply of a classified material called FOGBANK, which was crucial to US nuclear weapons. Worse, the records of the material’s production were sparse, the original facility had closed down, and many staff were no longer around to recall how it was done. It took many years and tens of millions of dollars for the National Nuclear Security Administration to reproduce the material.
This creates an unnerving situation when contemplating the nuclear militaries of the world. They’re armed with untested warheads of mass destruction mounted upon weapons systems that they haven’t been fully tested with.
ICBMs with multiple independent re-entry vehicles are the mainstay of land-based nuclear attack forces. Despite this, ICBMs have never been tested with live warheads. Credit: USAF, US Army, public domain
Two things give military commanders confidence that their weapons will still set enemy cities aglow if ever called upon. The first is regular maintenance. Nuclear weapons are, in a way, much like the truck parked up at your aunt’s farm. Leave it in a shed unattended for 20 years, and it’s unlikely to start when you jump in and turn the key. Alternatively, start it up every few months, and give it regular care and attention, and you can be relatively confident that it will roar into life when needed.
The second aspect is one of simulation. Engineers and physicists have incredibly advanced simulations of nuclear phenomena which are used to model the performance of weapon components when they can’t be tested. Simulation isn’t a perfect science, of course, but the physics of nuclear weapons is relatively well understood by those in the know. This is also aided by the immutability of the laws of physics. The behavior of atoms undergoing fission and fusion is the same today as it was back in 1945. If you build and maintain the weapons to the same specification as they were designed, they should perform in the same way they did many decades ago.
It’s nice to think that even if the button was pressed, the nuclear weapons fired would fail to annihilate the world as we know it. Unfortunately, it’s likely not the case. Even at a 50% failure rate, a full-scale nuclear war would ultimately destroy society as we know it. As for nuclear weapons that “fizzle” and fail to detonate as expected, they can still cause great harm. Such a failure is still likely to spread radioactive material over a great area, and cause serious casualties. We can’t rely on incompetence to save the world from nuclear war.
Ultimately, ideally we’ll never know if the world’s nuclear arsenals are as potent as their owners say they are. On the amphitheatre of mutually assured destruction, of course, the perceived threat of the weapons on paper is the most important thing, anyway. Regardless, these untested weapons remain sitting in bunkers around the world, waiting for the call that must never come. | 146 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629770",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T14:44:58",
"content": "Its important to remember a few things in regards to “A brutal war in Europe raised the prospect of nuclear war as the leaders behind the invasion rattled sabers and made thinly veiled threats to use weap... | 1,760,372,341.079138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/finding-paths-with-water-is-a-mazing/ | Finding Paths With Water Is A-Mazing | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"fluidics",
"maze"
] | We aren’t sure if it qualifies as fluidic logic, but [Steve Mould] was inspired by a simulation of water flowing through a maze and decided to
build some actual mazes and watch water flowing through them
. It turns out there are several physical effects in play, and you can see [Steve] discuss them in the video below.
The maze, of course, has to be oriented so that water flows into the top and flows out of the bottom. Without much thought, you’d think that the water just goes to the bottom and then fills up. Eventually, the part that is open at the bottom will have water coming out, right? Turns out it isn’t that simple.
A combination of air pressure and surface tension conspire to make the water do better than expected. Not that it perfectly solves it, but it doesn’t just fill up the entire maze, either. Even more interesting is that once the water has found the bottom, changing the water color will clearly show the path through the maze since nearly all of the new colored water will follow the flow path.
Practical? We can’t think of why. But it is a great think piece on how water flows and what sort of forces can affect it.
[Steve] is no stranger to making
water work out algorithms
, something called
fluidic logic
. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629735",
"author": "juergenUK",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T12:21:21",
"content": "Really amazing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6629738",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T12:27:30",
"content": "I’m not su... | 1,760,372,340.894492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/06/printing-antennas-on-circuit-boards/ | Printing Antennas On Circuit Boards | Bryan Cockfield | [
"PCB Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"2.4 ghz",
"antenna",
"Coax",
"microwave",
"pcb",
"printed",
"radio",
"wi-fi",
"yagi",
"yagi-uda"
] | Yagi-Uda antennas, or simply “Yagis”, are directional antennas that focus radio waves to increase gain, meaning that the radio waves can travel further in that direction for a given transmitter power. Anyone might recognize an old TV antenna on a roof that uses this type of antenna, but they can be used to increase the gain of an antenna at any frequency. This one is designed to operate within the frequencies allotted to WiFi and as a result is so small that
the entire antenna can be printed directly on a PCB
.
The antenna consists of what is effectively a dipole antenna, sandwiched in between a reflector and three directors. The reflector and directors are passive elements in that they interact with the radio wave to focus it in a specific direction, but the only thing actually powered is the dipole in the middle. It looks almost like a short circuit at first but thanks to the high frequencies involved in this band, will still function like any other dipole antenna would. [IMSAI Guy], who created the video linked above which goes over these details also analyzed the performance of this antenna and found it to be fairly impressive as a WiFi antenna, but he did make a few changes to the board for some other minor improvements in performance.
The creator of these antennas,
[WA5VJB] aka [Kent Britain]
is an antenna builder based in Texas who has developed a few unique styles of antennas produced in non-traditional ways. Besides this small Yagi, there are other microwave antennas available for direction-finding, some wide-band antennas, and log-periodic antennas that look similar to Yagi antennas but are fundamentally different designs. But if you’re looking to simply extend your home’s WiFi range you might not need any of these, as
Yagi antennas for home routers can be a lot simpler than you ever imagined
. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629699",
"author": "hardsoftlucid",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T08:14:20",
"content": "looks more like a mono-pole though",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629709",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T09:54... | 1,760,372,341.131808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/no-home-cinema-is-complete-without-a-motorized-projector/ | No Home Cinema Is Complete Without A Motorized Projector | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"home theatre",
"projector",
"scissor lift"
] | In the home of the future, everything is automated. Some of us are already there, in dwellings fully tricked-out with IoT and smart home devices. But they don’t somehow look as
futuristic
as a home in which everything is
motorized
. We don’t know whether this was the intention, but we certainly get a futuristic vibe from [Sam Baker]’s home cinema projector mount. It’s no mere bracket, instead on command the projector
descends from concealment in the ceiling on a custom scissor lift mechanism
.
A scissor lift is a simple enough mechanism, but since he was 3D printing one that had to withstand the weight of the projector, it took him a while to get it right. Even the lead screw which drives it is also printed, turned by a stepper motor. As the brains of the unit needn’t be particularly accomplished, an Arduino Nano does the job well enough.
It’s fair to say that his projector isn’t the heaviest of models, but the result glides smoothly down from the ceiling for a perfect home cinema experience. We like it. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629733",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T11:56:54",
"content": "Even with my high rooms of 3,3m the postion of the bemer about 20cm below the ceiling is perfect for viewing. I never missed any lift. The beamer is of course mounted upside down so it projects the image d... | 1,760,372,341.173449 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/opening-up-asic-design/ | Opening Up ASIC Design | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ASIC",
"circuit",
"design",
"ic",
"integrated circuit",
"memory",
"openram",
"ram",
"sram",
"tool"
] | The odds are that if you’ve heard about application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) at all, it’s in the context of cryptocurrency mining. For some currencies, the only way to efficiently mine them anymore is to build computers so single-purposed they can’t do anything else. But an ASIC is a handy tool to develop for plenty of embedded applications where efficiency is a key design goal. Building integrated circuits isn’t particularly straightforward or open, though, so
you’ll need some tools to develop them such as OpenRAM
.
Designing the working memory of a purpose-built computing system is a surprisingly complex task which OpenRAM seeks to demystify a bit. Built in Python, it can help a designer handle routing models, power modeling, timing, and plenty of other considerations when building static RAM modules within integrated circuits. Other tools for taking care of this step of IC design are proprietary, so this is one step on the way to a completely open toolchain that anyone can use to start building their own ASIC.
This tool is relatively new and while
we mentioned it briefly in an article back in February
, it’s worth taking a look at for anyone who needs more than something like an FPGA might offer and who also wants to use an open-source tool. Be sure to take a look at
the project’s GitHub page
for more detailed information as well. There are
open-source toolchains
if you plan on sticking with your FPGA of choice, though. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629677",
"author": "Bill Gates",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T03:34:32",
"content": "Nice! SRAM compilers are a huge deal.Now we need some DFT tools, scan insertion, drc checking, ATPG, compression, etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,341.215151 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/rp2040-and-5v-logic-best-friends-this-fx9000p-confirms/ | RP2040 And 5V Logic – Best Friends? This FX9000P Confirms! | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"5V tolerant",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040"
] | Over the years, we’ve seen some modern microcontrollers turn out to be 5V-tolerant – now,
RP2040 joins the crowd
. Half a year ago, when we covered
an ISA card based on a Pi Pico,
[Eben Upton]
left a comment
saying that RP2040 is, technically, 5V tolerant for GPIO input purposes. The datasheets don’t state this because the reality of 5V tolerance isn’t the same as for natively 5V-tolerant chips – for instance, it doesn’t extend all the way to 5.5V for it to be ‘legally’ 5V-tolerant, as in, what 5V tolerance typically means when mentioned in a datasheet.
Having read that comment, [Andrew Menadue] has set out to test-drive the RP2040 GPIO capabilities, in a perfectly suited real-world scenario. He’s working with retro tech like Z80-era computers, using RP2040 boards for substituting entire RAM and ROM chips that have died in his FX9000P. Not only do the RP2040-driven replacements work wonders, using RP2040 boards also turns out to be way cheaper than sourcing replacements for chips long out of production!
Previously, [Andrew] used level shifter chips for interfacing the RP2040 with 5V systems, but he’s rebuilt a few designs of his without level shifters for the sake of this experiment. Now, he reports that, so far, those boards have been running long-term without problems. Together with [Eben]’s comment, this instills confidence in us when it comes to our RP2040 forays and 5V inputs.
There are
a number of important caveats to this, that you should read up on.
Some major points – certain GPIOs (like ADC ones) can’t take it, the GPIOs aren’t 5V-tolerant when set to output, and you shouldn’t feed the GPIOs 5V when the RP2040’s VDDIO is not powered up. [Andrew] points out one such case himself – one board of his has shed all level shifters except for the 8-bit address bus, which is driven by either the CPU or the RP2040 at different times, and that would result in 5V on an output-set GPIO when contention happens. All in all, if you’re working with 5V logic and your application is more hacking than business-critical stuff, you can shed the level shifters, too.
In the video, [Andrew] also shows some cool RP2040-based IC substitute boards – there’s
followup
videos
on
his channel
and
a GitHub repo
if you’d like to learn more about them! All in all, this is a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one, making quick Pi Pico hacks even quicker, and a few RP2040 projects even easier to build – for instance, who knows, maybe
that Pico-powered ISA card
can shed its CPLD. It’s nice when we get an under-the-table statement with a technical elaboration – otherwise, we might need to break out the curve tracer, like
[Avian] did when confirming the ESP8266 5V tolerance. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629657",
"author": "Conor Stewart",
"timestamp": "2023-04-06T01:08:02",
"content": "I’m surprised they didn’t just make the GPIO 5 V tolerant. Some other microcontrollers like STM32 manage it. The rp2040 is meant for hobbyists and a lot of hobbyists level components still use 5 V."... | 1,760,372,341.516993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/a-soft-soldering-jig-for-hard-projects/ | A Soft Soldering Jig For Hard Projects | Matthew Carlson | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"custom tool",
"openscad",
"silicone"
] | We’ve seen some absolutely gorgeous freeform circuit sculptures. There’s a mystic quality to taking what has normally been hidden away for safety and reliability reasons and putting it on display for everyone to see. Of course, creating these unique circuit sculptures takes considerable time and effort. [Inne] created
several silicone soldering jigs to help with these tricky joints
.
While a vice or helping hands is crucial for many joints, when dealing with tiny SMD components and exacting angles, you need something a little more specialized. Double-sided tape is often recommended, but heat ruins the adhesive and SMD components like to stick to soldering iron tips. Since silicone tends to be heat resistant, it makes a decent material for soldering on. [Inne] uses a city analogy with the cups for soldering called plazas, each with a hole (called a manhole) leading to a foot-switch vacuum pump to keep parts in place. The
OpenSCAD code is available on GitHub
under a GPLv3 license. It generates a two-part mold that you can cast in A-8/A-15 silicone.
It’s a clever project that makes it far easier to
assemble gorgeous circuit sculptures
. We love the design and thought that went into it, particularly the naming scheme as we often find appropriately naming variables in OpenSCAD quickly becomes difficult. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629595",
"author": "J",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T20:41:56",
"content": "This. Is. AMAZING. I need to get this now",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6629617",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T21:45:03",
"cont... | 1,760,372,341.353256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/tempus-nectit-a-diy-knitting-clock-with-instructions/ | Tempus Nectit, A DIY Knitting Clock With Instructions | Navarre Bartz | [
"clock hacks",
"home hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"clock",
"fiber arts",
"knitting",
"knitting clock",
"raspberry pi",
"scarf",
"stepper motor",
"textiles",
"time",
"yarn",
"yarn work"
] | We’re no strangers to unusual clocks here at Hackaday, and some of our favorites make time a little more tangible like
[Kyle Rankin]’s knitting clock
.
Inspired by our coverage of
[Siren Elise Wilhelmsen]’s knitting clock
, [Rankin] decided to build one of his own. Since details on the build from the original artist were sparse, he had to reverse engineer how the device worked. He identified that a knitting clock is essentially a knitting machine with a stepper motor replacing the hand crank.
Using a Raspberry Pi with an Adafruit motor hat connected to a stepper motor and a 3D printed motor adapter, [Rankin] was able to drive the knitting machine to do a complete round of knitting every twelve hours. By marking one of the knitting pegs as an hour hand, the clock works as a traditional clock in addition to its year-long knitting task. [Rankin] says he still has some fine tuning to work on, but that he’s happy to have had the chance to combine so many of his interests into a single project.
If you’re looking for more knitting hacks, check out this
knitted keyboard instrument
or a
knitted circuit board
.
https://kylerank.in/tempus_nectit/VID_20230318_093939.mp4 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6674868",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2023-08-22T08:37:34",
"content": "The write-up in the first link superb. Much, much better than a Youtube video. Thank you, [Kyle Rankin]!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,341.295207 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/retrotechtacular-solder-like-its-1944/ | Retrotechtacular: Solder Like Its 1944! | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"Retrotechtacluar",
"soldering"
] | When we first saw this 1944 US Office of Education film about hand soldering, we figured it might still have some good information. Well, perhaps it does, but the 1944 soldering was with a giant iron, and the work looked more like metal bricks than anything we’ve soldered lately. Of course, the physics is all the same, but some of the terminology, like “sweating in” isn’t anything we’ve heard before, although we have heard of sweat soldering.
They do show some electronic soldering on components, including some interesting-looking coils. But the irons look more like a bad science fiction movie’s idea of a lightsaber. The solder is equally huge, of course.
If it Smells Like Bacon…
We liked the soldering iron holder with a magnifier — or maybe it is just a piece of shield glass — that the lady in the movie uses. It would have made a perfect vent hood, too, but in 1944 we are guessing you were encouraged to sniff the fumes. They mention not letting wire fly into your eye, but they didn’t cover safety glasses until well after that part. Not a word about lead safety, either.
The tip on the iron is bigger than most of the screwdrivers on our bench. Other than the scale, we didn’t find much to disagree with in the film. After all, soldering is soldering regardless of the size of the solder joints. Of course, the real excitement comes at the end when they start using a flame to do some bulk soldering of some enclosures.
To the Stars!
If you want a perspective from a decade or so later, check out the NASA soldering film from 1958, entitled “Above and Beyond” that
we’ve seen before
. You get to follow Harry who, “Oh yes, he’s a ham radio operator.” We aren’t metallurgy experts, but we think, by now, someone
understands why solder alloy melts at a lower temperature
than its constituent metals.
We’ll warn you, you might see yourself in some of the bad examples which, luckily, aren’t exemplified by our ham radio friend Harry. The soldering irons and tools used look a bit more familiar in this video, including a vintage pair of
thermal strippers
.
If you think these videos are at the dawn of soldering, you might be surprised. Apparently, humans have been soldering at least
as far back as 205 BC
. | 37 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629540",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T17:11:55",
"content": "Periscope Film is a treasure trove. So much beautiful & ridiculous old military and industrial gadgetry. Lovely standard broadcasting accent narration. Hand-painted title cards. Glad that channel exists",
... | 1,760,372,341.591703 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/typewriter-mashup-becomes-120-year-old-teletype/ | Typewriter Mashup Becomes 120-Year-Old Teletype | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"steampunk",
"teletype",
"typewriter"
] | Vintage typewriters can be beautiful and elegant devices. But there’s a limit to their value if, as with the 1903 Remington owned by [Daniel Ross], they are fire-damaged and have a seized mechanism. What did he do with what was essentially a piece of scrap metal? Produce an unholy mashup of the vintage machine and a 1988 Sharp daisy wheel typewriter to make
a steampunk-style teletype
, of course!
Stripping down both machines was evidently no easy task, and the result he’s achieved has the Sharp’s printer mechanism at 90 degrees to its original orientation sitting below the roller in the space once occupied by the Remington’s type bars. We’re sad to see that the keyboard on the older machine appears to be inoperable, but on the other hand each letter does light up as it’s typed.
Meanwhile at the electronics side the components from the Sharp have been transferred to a custom PCB, and the whole can be driven from a 300-baud serial line. As can be seen from the video below the break, the result is an unholy love-child of two typewriters that could scarcely be more different, but somehow it works to make an impressive whole.
If this project looks a little familiar to Hackaday readers, it’s because we’ve mentioned it in passing before. It’s hooked up to his COSMAC Elf retrocomputer, and
we saw it in passing a couple of years ago at a much earlier stage of construction
before the custom PCB and light-up keyboard. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629510",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T15:41:13",
"content": "People wou ld use typewriters as keyboards, for CW or RTTY. Though I recall none used for printing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629523"... | 1,760,372,341.721756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/how-tattoos-interact-with-the-immune-system-could-have-impacts-for-vaccines/ | How Tattoos Interact With The Immune System Could Have Impacts For Vaccines | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Medical Hacks",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"immune",
"immune system",
"immunology",
"ink",
"macrophage",
"macrophages",
"tattoo",
"vaccine"
] | Tattoos are an interesting technology. They’re a way of marking patterns and designs on the skin that can last for years or decades. All this, despite the fact that our skin sloughs off on a regular basis!
As it turns out, tattoos actually have a deep and complex interaction with our immune system, which hold some of the secrets regarding their longevity. New research has unveiled more insight into
how the body responds when we get inked up.
Not Going Anywhere
As we all know, if you draw something on your skin with a pen, paint, or marker, it will eventually come off in a few days or so. Tattoos, on the other hand, are far more longer lasting. The basic theory of tattooing is simple. Rather than putting ink on the epidermis (the upper layer of skin), it is instead inserted into the underlying upper dermis. There, the ink is free from the day-to-day sloughing off of skin. A properly-performed tattoo can last a lifetime, and beyond, in the case of the oldest identified tattooed individual
from 3250 BC
.
Normally, when foreign particles are introduced into the body, the immune system responds to destroy them. In the case of tattoos, though, the story is more interesting. As it turns out, our immune system does respond immediately when a tattoo is first inked. Cells swarm the damaged area of epidermis and dermis to try and deal with the invader. However, when these cells, called macrophages, interact with tattoo pigments, there’s a problem. The pigment particles cannot readily be broken down by the enzymes carried by the macrophage. Instead, the pigments remain stuck inside the macrophage until it eventually dies off and falls apart after a few days or weeks. Then, the pigment particle is ingested by another macrophage and the process begins again. Conveniently, just like skin, macrophages aren’t very opaque. This means we can still see the tattoo pigments even as they’re being swallowed and released over and over again.
“
Cisco tattoo
” by Mitch Barrie
Thankfully, macrophages don’t move around much at all, meaning that tattoos tend to stay where we put them. However, this process of death and reingestion is thought to be behind why tattoos tend to get a little fuzzy around the edges over time.
It’s also an important factor around how tattoo removal works. Laser tattoo removal treatments break down pigment particles into smaller pieces which can more readily be disposed of by macrophages. This process is why tattoo removal isn’t instant. Instead, the pigment particles are broken down into fragments, and macrophages in the skin then take a few weeks to remove the debris. This process is called phagocytosis, with the debris eventually making its way out of the dermis via the lymphatic system.
Some scientists are investigating whether temporarily inhibiting macrophage function
could speed up tattoo removal
. Normally, the lasers kill macrophages holding pigment particles, only for the pigment to be gobbled up by another macrophage shortly after. Instead, if the pigment was instead left exposed, it could be more easily broken down by the laser into smaller particles, ready to drain away via the lymphatic system.
Other research is ongoing as to the broader effects of tattoos on the immune system. Some studies have found that heavily-inked individuals actually have more antibodies circulating in the blood than those without tattoos. It’s led some to theorize that a tattoo could have a “priming” effect, acting as a long-term, low-level workout for the immune system. However, the immune system is complicated, and having more antibodies is not necessarily the same as having a more capable immune system. Research is ongoing as to what role tattoos could play in this area.
Perhaps most compelling, though, is that tattoo techniques could prove useful for interacting with our immune system more directly. Presently, most vaccines are injected deep into the muscle. Since these areas are not exposed to the outside world, the human body has very few immune cells in these areas. Thus, it can take time for the body to build an immune response to vaccines delivered via the intramuscular route. In comparison, the skin is full of immune cells as one of our first lines of defence.
A vaccine delivery device was developed based on the design of a common tattoo machine.
Credit: Research paper
Providing vaccines with intradermal injections is possible, but current medical techniques in this area have some drawbacks. The techniques require significant training, and getting the injection wrong can spoil the effectiveness of the vaccine. However, tattoo techniques are all about reliably delivering material into the skin. Inspired by those techniques, researchers created
their own tattoo-gun-like vaccine delivery system
capable of making 100 microinjections in the skin per second. Early results have been good, using DNA vaccines for their ease of production. The hope is that a device can be developed to reliably deliver controlled vaccine doses intradermally, to generate a strong immune response quickly and efficiently.
Overall, as researchers learn more about tattoos, they’re learning more about the immune system and the human body as well. This knowledge may yet serve humanity well as we seek to tackle issues like autoimmune diseases and fight against difficult viruses and the threat of superbugs. In the meantime, next time you’re on the bench getting inked and you’re short on small talk, you can always have a great chat about macrophages with your friendly local tattoo artist.
Banner image: “
Gogo Tattoo Machine
” by Franki2001 | 40 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629482",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T14:13:59",
"content": "oh that’s fascinating, thank you",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629483",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T14:... | 1,760,372,341.457882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/classic-film-camera-goes-digital-with-game-boy-tech/ | Classic Film Camera Goes Digital With Game Boy Tech | Robin Kearey | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"cmos image sensor",
"film camera",
"game boy camera",
"Holga"
] | Despite having been technologically obsolete for a decade or two, analog photography is still practiced by hobbyists and artists to achieve a particular aesthetic. One might imagine a similar thing happening with early digital cameras, and indeed it has: the Game Boy Camera has seen use in dozens of projects. [Michael Fitzmayer] however decided to combine the worlds of analog and early digital photography by equipping a
Holga with the image sensor from a Game Boy Camera
.
The Holga, if you’re not familiar, is a cheap film camera from the 1980s that has achieved something of a cult following among retro-photography enthusiasts. By equipping it with the sensor from what was one of the first mass-market digital cameras, [Michael] has created a rather unusual digital point-and-shoot. The user interface is as simple as can be: a single button to take a photo, and nothing else. There’s no screen to check your work — just as with film, you’ll have to wait for the pictures to come back from the lab.
The sensor used in the Game Boy Camera is a Mitsubishi M64282FP, which is a 128 x 128 pixel monochrome CMOS unit. [Michael] hooked it up to an STM32F401 microcontroller, which reads out the sensor data and stores it on an SD card in the form of a bitmap image.
With no film roll present, the Holga has plenty of space for all the electronics and a battery. The original lens turned out to be a poor fit for the image sensor, but with a bit of tweaking the Game Boy optics fit in its place without significantly altering the camera’s appearance.
[Michael] helpfully documented the design process and shared all source code on his GitHub page. Holgas shouldn’t be hard to find to find, but if none are available in your area you can just
roll your own
. The Game Boy Camera is actually one of the most versatile cameras out there, having been used for everything from
video conferencing
to
astrophotography
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629607",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T21:26:46",
"content": "Wouldn’t it be simpler to just use a Pi camera module, I mean from a supply point, GameBoy cameras have to be getting rare?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,341.776772 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/a-nor-gate-for-an-alu/ | A NOR Gate For An ALU? | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"ALU",
"discrete cpu",
"forth",
"NOR-gate"
] | If you know anything about he design of a CPU, you’ll probably be able to identify that a critical component of all CPUs is the Arithmetic Logic Unit, or ALU. This is a collection of gates that can do a selection of binary operations, and which depending on the capabilities of the computer, can be a complex component. It’s a surprise then to find that a working CPU can be made with just a single NOR gate — which is what is at the heart of [Dennis Kuschel]’s
My4th single board discrete logic computer
. It’s the latest in a series of machines from him using the NOR ALU technique, and it replaces hardware complexity with extra software to perform complex operations.
Aside from a refreshingly simple and understandable circuit, it has 32k of RAM and a 32k EPROM, of which about 9k is microcode and the rest program. It’s called My4th because it has a Forth interpreter on board, and it has I2C and digital I/O as well as a serial port for its console.
This will never be a fast computer, but the fact that it computes at all is ts charm. In 2023 there are very few machines about that can be understood in their entirety, so this one is rather special
even if it’s not the first 1-bit ALU we’ve seen
.
Thanks [Ken Boak] for the tip. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629441",
"author": "Nowhere",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T09:13:05",
"content": "“It’s a surprise then to find that a working CPU can be made with just a single NOR gate”Typo. s/CPU/AlU/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629447",... | 1,760,372,341.901647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/upgrade-your-voodoo-with-more-memory/ | Upgrade Your Voodoo With More Memory | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"3dfx",
"piggyback",
"vga"
] | In 1996, the 3Dfx VooDoo VGA chipset changed computer graphics forever. Because of the high cost of memory, most of the boards had only 4 MB of memory — which seemed a lot back then. However, the chipset could actually handle up to 8 MB. [Bits and Bolts] couldn’t stand that his board only had 4 MB, so he did what any good hacker would do: he figured out
how to add the missing memory!
The mod has been done before using the “piggyback” technique, where you solder the new RAM chips on the old chips and bend out a few pins out to directly wire them to chip selects elsewhere on the board. [Bits and Bolts] didn’t want to try that, so instead, he developed a PCB that slips over the chip using a socket.
Of course, this presumes the chips have enough clearance between them to fit the sockets. In addition, the board is pretty specific to a particular VGA board because each board has different memory chip layouts. The sockets also had plastic support structures that blocked the insertion, so a little surgery removed them.
The board can add more memory to either the frame buffer or the texture mapping memory. There are jumpers to set up, which you want to do.
While we’ve seen piggybacking done a few times — we’ve even done it ourselves — we haven’t thought of using a socket instead of just soldering on top of the memory. You still have to do the tiny soldering to graft the chip select, but that’s much easier than soldering each and every memory pin. Obviously, you need to lay the board out and place the sockets precisely so everything fits together. It looks easy on the video, but at the end, he shows some of the things that didn’t go so well. But in the end, it worked, and it worked well.
It
isn’t that hard to build a VGA
, but the trick is performance, and that’s what the
3Dfx chips
provided. Not that you can’t
do it in Excel
, but it will probably be slower. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629414",
"author": "big F",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T06:35:37",
"content": "This got me thinking, how many old things that use memory do I have that could actually run more ram than the manufacturer deemed it necessary to fit. All those memory controllers and chip sets not living ... | 1,760,372,341.837154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/reshoring-vacuum-tube-manufacturing-one-tube-at-a-time/ | Reshoring Vacuum Tube Manufacturing, One Tube At A Time | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts"
] | [
"12AX7",
"300B",
"amplifier",
"audiophile",
"guitar",
"thermionic",
"triode",
"vacuum tube",
"valves"
] | For most of us, vacuum tubes haven’t appeared in any of our schematics or BOMs in — well, ever. Once mass-manufacturing made reliable transistors cheap enough for hobbyists, vacuum tubes became pretty passe, and it wasn’t long before the once mighty US tube industry was decimated, leaving the few remaining tube enthusiasts to ferret out caches of old stock, or even seek new tubes from overseas manufacturers.
However, all that may change if [Charles Whitener] succeeds in
reshoring at least part of the US vacuum tube manufacturing base
. He seems to have made a good start, having purchased the Western Electric brand from AT&T and some of its remaining vacuum tube manufacturing equipment back in 1995. Since then, he has been on a talent hunt, locating as many people as possible who have experience in the tube business to help him gear back up.
The new Western Electric
, now located in Rossville, Georgia, is currently manufacturing 300B power triodes and marketing them as a premium product aimed primarily at the audiophile market. A matched pair of tubes in a cherry wood presentation case will set you back about $1,500, so they’re not for everyone. But it seems like the company is using the premium tubes to bankroll the production of more mainstream tubes, like the 12AX7 dual triode that’s expected to launch this summer, along with a host of other tubes. These will all be aimed at a much broader market: professional audio gear and guitar amps, which have long coveted the sound that they swear only tubes can provide.
It’s good to see someone putting effort into rebuilding an industry, even if it is for most purposes an obsolete one. It reminds us a bit of
[Dalibor Farney]’s Nixie tube factory
, and that’s a good thing. | 64 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629369",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T02:25:28",
"content": "So, now, who’s going to re-shore audio transformer manufacturing?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629380",
"author": "Miroslav",
"tim... | 1,760,372,342.065171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/xiaomi-scooter-firmware-hacking-gets-hands-on/ | Xiaomi Scooter Firmware Hacking Gets Hands-On | Arya Voronova | [
"Security Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric scooter",
"escooter",
"firmware hacking",
"Firmware modding",
"scooter",
"scooter hacking",
"xiaomi"
] | Scooter hacking is wonderful – you get to create a better scooter from a pre-made scooter platform, and sometimes you can do that purely through firmware modifications. Typically, hackers have been uploading firmware using Bluetooth OTA methods, and at some point, we’ve seen the always-popular Xiaomi scooters starting to get locked down. Today, we see [Daljeet Nandha] from [RoboCoffee]
continue the research of the new Xiaomi scooter realities,
where he finds that SWD flashing is way more of a viable avenue that we might’ve expected.
[Daljeet] starts with
an introductory post
about the recent generation of Xiaomi scooters manufactured by Brightway – specifically, Xiaomi Electric Scooter 3 Lite, 4 (Canada) and 4 Pro. He’s found that the pairing procedure has had its security greatly improved, with a crypto coprocessor chip added into the equation – the usual OTA way of firmware mods is, indeed, closed off. Still, he gives us a breakdown of the scooter’s overall architecture, with a trove of information like register maps, UART captures, firmware analysis and hardware pictures. Then, it’s time to probe the chips involved in making the scooter tick.
Both the dashboard chip (“BLE”) and the ECU chip (“MCU”) have an SWD interface exposed, and that’s where [Daljeet] hits the jackpot – neither of them enable the usual tinkering-disrupting mechanisms like firmware readback protection or encryption – things typically switched on as part of routine pre-product-release checklist. The firmware updates are useful, too – while they are signed, they are not encrypted, making it trivial to decompile them for any firmware experiments of yours. What’s more, [Daljeet] has also verified that the BLE firmware, responsible for most of the scooter’s logic, can be modified and flashed back!
No doubt, this is a great start for anyone looking for a scooter platform to hack upon firmware-wise. While the SWD flashing required raises the bar for modification,
as [Daljeet] has found last year
, it’s not much of a barrier – nowadays
even a Pi Pico
can act as an SWD adapter. Xiaomi has its hands in many markets, and hackers keep up – in case scooters aren’t your cup of tea, you can make another one in
a hacked Xiaomi kettle,
making sure it’s just the right temperature with help of
a hacked Xiaomi thermometer. | 18 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629354",
"author": "casainho",
"timestamp": "2023-04-05T00:55:03",
"content": "I think the best way is to replace the motor controller with VESC + DIY board with ESP32 running a Python firmware to implement the EScooter logic application. Also, add own DIY display with another ESP3... | 1,760,372,341.964646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/3d-printed-post-modern-grandfather-clock/ | 3D Printed Post Modern Grandfather Clock | Matthew Carlson | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"anchor escapement",
"grandfather clock",
"modern"
] | Projects can often spiral, not down or up, but out. For [Derek] he started playing around with a 3D printed escapement mechanism and thought it was a wonderful bit of engineering. But with a simple drum and weight, it only had a runtime of a few minutes. What started as a simple “can I make it run longer”
spiraled into a full-blown beautiful grandfather clock
.
A gear drive, a ratcheted winding sprocket, and a ball chain gave the clock about one hundred minutes of runtime. Adding a recharging mechanism was fairly straightforward. The weight automatically rewinds with the help of an ESP32, a motor, and some limit switches. While an ESP32 is absolutely overkill for this simple project, it was cheap and on hand. A quick hall effect sensor to detect the pendulum passing made it into a proper clock. Considering it’s a printed plastic clock, losing only 2-3 seconds per day is incredibly good. The whole thing is wrapped in a gorgeous wood case with a distinct design.
Surprisingly, everything was designed in OpenSCAD and Blender. [Derek] includes some great tips such as cleaning out the ball bearings to make them run smoother and suggestions on how to make a plastic clock move without binding. Clock making is a complex and sometimes arcane art, which
makes watching the process all the more interesting
. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629255",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T20:09:19",
"content": "Very cool proof of concept but 100 minutes of run time? We have a not even fancy cucko clock from Germany that uses weights and runs for several days, would be a week maybe if we mounted it higher up (the w... | 1,760,372,342.223642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/silkscreen-busy-put-labels-inside-pads/ | Silkscreen Busy? Put Labels Inside Pads | Arya Voronova | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"gerber",
"text-in-pad"
] | When making a PCB informative and self-documenting, there’s often just not enough space to silkscreen all the labels you want, and slowly but surely, you collect a set of tricks: using different through-hole pad shapes to denote ground or power pins, standardized pinouts for connectors, your own signal name shortening notations, and so on.
What if you have some large-ish signal pads on your board, and having the signal names on silkscreen just isn’t good enough? In this case, here’s a new trick for your toolkit: [Christoph] from [MakerProbe] shows us how he
puts text directly inside the copper pads.
What you need is a set of Gerber files and a Python script. Technically, this ought to work with any PCB EDA, with [Christoph] using KiCad. You need to put the to-be-subtracted signal names on their very own layer, export Gerber files without features like aperture macros, then run the script. You’ll get a new copper layer as a result, it’s that simple. We also get a set of tips on what kinds of pads suit best and how to prepare them — and fancy-looking real-life examples. You get higher resolution than for on-silkscreen text, solderability isn’t impacted, and the labels are even visible after desoldering wires from the pads. What’s not to like?
Over on Twitter, [Makerprobe] have been doing things like 0201 tombstoning and BGA yield research – we say they’re
worth a follow
if you’d like to see someone pushing PCB boundaries! Innovative PCB design methods and tricks have a special spot in our hearts, what’s with things like this
Tux-emblazoned desktop motherboard
that’s also a guide on PCB aesthetics, and there’s a whole lot more you can do to
make your PCBs pretty
while preserving and even improving functionality. From
turning rigid PCBs flexible
to
hiding components inside a PCB stack,
there’s plenty of opportunities that we are yet to extract out of PCB world, and it’s lovely to see one more technique we can make use of.
Tutorial: Text-in-pad with gerber_combine
https://t.co/5eFwHXIzcR
@hackadayio
@oshpark
@AislerHQ
#electronics
#kicad
pic.twitter.com/c50js9Q5BH
— Makerprobe (@makerprobe)
March 24, 2023 | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629251",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T20:00:19",
"content": "I remember I saw marking flags look like resisitors, but just a wire with PVC labels soldered into PCB.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6629267",
"au... | 1,760,372,342.123709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/supercon-2022-chris-combs-reveals-his-art-world-compatibility-layer/ | Supercon 2022: Chris Combs Reveals His Art-World Compatibility Layer | Anool Mahidharia | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Supercon",
"art",
"Hackaday Supercon",
"Supercon 2022",
"supercon video"
] | [Chris Combs] is a full time artist who loves using technology to create unique art projects and has been building blinky artwork since about a decade now. In his 2022 Supercon talk “
Art-World Compatibility Layer: How to Hang and Sell Your Blinky Goodness as Art
” (Slides, PDF), [Chris] takes us behind the scenes and shows us how to turn our blinky doodads in to coveted art works. There is a big difference between a project that just works, and a work of art, and it’s the attention to small details that differentiates the two.
Just like the field of engineering and technology, the art world has its own jargon and requires knowledge of essential skills that make it intimidating to newcomers. It’s not very easy to define what makes an artwork “art” or even “Art”, and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish if you are looking at a child’s scrawls or a master’s brushstrokes. But there are a few distinguishing requirements that a piece of artwork, particularly one revolving around the use of technology, must meet.
What People Expect From Artwork
One important feature a technical artwork must have is the ability to turn on as soon as it is plugged in, without requiring any further user intervention. [Chris] recommends that it should be plug and play and this might require “not” using a power button if you can get away with it.
An artwork can be hung on a wall, or placed on a tabletop, pedestal or on the floor. A wall hanging artwork requires special hardware for mounting. One easy method is to use a taut wire to hang it from a wall hook. There are several options available for wired mounting, and [Chris] gives a nice rundown of their pros and cons. Another option for wall mounting is by using keyhole slots. You can use metal screw-on plates or add your own CNC or 3D printed slot plates. Sometimes, art galleries will have an exotic hanging system, but with some hacking, it ought to be possible to adapt either a wired mount or keyhole slots to work with them.
If your artwork runs software, then make sure that it never needs a software upgrade. People don’t expect software bugs in their artwork. This means ensuring your code is robust, and any bugs that surface later can hopefully be attributed as features. Dependence on a network connection is another challenge, so it is best to avoid using it. If a network connection is essential, then ensure that the configuration process is easy and foolproof.
Besides the artwork, accessories such as power supply, connectors, and cables need special attention too. Cables need to be offered in multiple colors and lengths. For power connections, barrel sockets and jacks are a good choice, but it is essential to include reverse polarity protection to avoid losing all the magic smoke if someone connects a power supply with inverted polarity. Using the widely available USB-C connector breakout boards is another great alternative, specially since USB-C cables are available in all kinds of colors and it’s possible to negotiate voltage and current requirements as desired. Finally, be careful with the choice of power supply provided with your artwork. An artwork is expected to last a really long time, and the power supply must be easily replaceable. There are quite a number of additional expectations that an artwork must comply with, and [Chris] covers those in the next part of his talk.
Making It Reliable
Artwork ought to function reliably for a long time. This requires special attention to design, construction and choice of materials and parts. For example, on the electronics hardware, it helps to add all the protection you can think of, such as surge suppression MOV’s, PTC thermal fuses, TVS diodes on signal connections and reverse polarity protection on the power input.
Making the software reliable requires some special effort too. If you are using a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi, make sure to implement a read only file system, or minimise writes to the file system. Simulate various error conditions such as a file system that bloats due to temp and log files, and confirm that your software is able to recover gracefully. Consider how your system reacts to loss of network or failure of an RTC module or maybe a timer overflow in a microcontroller.
What A Venue Expects From The Artist
A venue or gallery will expect your artwork to have a title, a list of the main visible materials used, date of creation, dimensions and batch size or edition size. When corresponding about the artwork, you will also need to share clear photographs, a short biography and an artist’s statement about the artwork. [Chris] offers useful and relevant tips covering all of these requirements.
During the last part of his talk, [Chris] covers the important aspect of marketing and selling your artwork. Manually scouting for venues and finding upcoming shows can be tedious and time consuming, so he shows us some nifty methods of automating the task. He recommends using a combination of RSS feeds, web scraping, and filtering email newsletters to identify target keywords, and then collating all the data in a task tracker which reminds you when it’s time to apply.
Despite using all of these methods, [Chris] has had an acceptance rate of just 15%. So if you plan to walk down this path to artistic glory, be prepared to face lots of rejection letters. [Chris]’s tips and techniques ought to be useful to the growing number of hacker-artists we have seen in recent years who create stunning pieces of technical artwork but find it difficult to make a mark in the art circuit. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629210",
"author": "Myself",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T17:54:06",
"content": "It may also help to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary of art-wankery, better known as International Art English. There’s a fantastic article by that name (and various rebuttals to it), which are wor... | 1,760,372,342.170353 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/new-expansion-module-brings-standard-slots-to-ancient-laptop/ | New Expansion Module Brings Standard Slots To Ancient Laptop | Robin Kearey | [
"laptops hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"expansion card",
"ISA slot",
"laptop",
"Sharp PC-4600"
] | Upgrading and repairing vintage laptops is often a challenge — even if their basic hardware is compatible with ordinary PCs, they often use nonstandard components and connectors due to space constraints. The Sharp PC-4600 series from the late 1980s is a case in point: although it comes with standard serial and parallel ports, the only other external interface is a mysterious connector labelled EXPBUS on the back of the case. [Steven George] has been diving into the details of this port and managed to design
a module to turn it into a pair of standard ISA ports
.
Apparently, no peripherals were ever released for the EXPBUS port, so reverse-engineering an existing module was out of the question. [Steven] did stumble upon a service manual for the PC-4600 however, and as it turned out, the connector carried all the signals present in an 8-bit ISA bus. Turning it into something useful was simply a matter of designing an adapter board with the EXPBUS connector on one side and regular ISA slots on the other.
The board also has an external power connector, to avoid overloading the laptop’s internal power supply, as well as a couple of buffer capacitors to smooth out the power rails. [Steven] tested the expansion board with a network adapter and a sound card, and it appears to be functioning well. It should be noted that only the +5 V power rail is available by default, so if any cards need +12 V or any negative rail, those should be provided externally.
Gerber files for this project are available on [Steven]’s website, so if you’ve got one of these machines lying around, now might be the time to upgrade it. This isn’t the first expansion for the PC-4600 series that [Steven] developed, either: he also designed
an external floppy drive adapter
that should ease data transfer with other PCs.
It’s great to see how the hacker community keeps classic portables like this one alive: one day it might also need
a broken screen replaced
or
a dodgy power supply repaired
. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629194",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T16:58:02",
"content": "as a long-term reader of Hackaday, I highly recommend also reading the article. if it helps, you have to scroll down from where the headline is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,342.275576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/the-liquid-trees-of-belgrade-the-facts-behind-the-furore/ | The Liquid Trees Of Belgrade: The Facts Behind The Furore | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"air pollution",
"algae",
"bioreactor",
"carbon dioxide",
"climate change",
"microalgae",
"pollution"
] | Historically, nature has used trees to turn carbon dioxide back into oxygen for use by living creatures. The trees play a vital role in the carbon cycle, and have done so for millennia. Recently, humans have thrown things off a bit by getting rid of lots of trees and digging up a lot more carbon.
While great efforts are underway to replenish the world’s tree stocks, Belgrade has gone in a different direction,
creating artificial “liquid trees” to capture carbon dioxide instead
. This has spawned wild cries of dystopia and that the devices are an affront to nature. Let’s sidestep the hysteria and look at what’s actually going on.
Green Goop
It’s perhaps understandable why the so-called “Liquid Trees” have caused so much consternation. Much of that may be down to their futuristic, cyberpunk aesthetic. The devices consist of eerie green fluid in a transparent tank, lit from inside. They looks like something straight out of science-fiction, which naturally leads people to connect with the scary tropes of such media.
The layout of the Liquid3 bioreactor.
Credit: Liquid3
In reality, though, the devices serve a real and positive purpose. The photo-bioreactors, as they are technically known, are air quality control devices built specifically to suit the urban environment. Inside the tank, microalgae is grown in 600 liters of water, using CO
2
from the atmosphere combined with photosynthesis to produce oxygen and biomass. One
LIQUID3 bioreactor
is capable of replacing one 10-year-old adult tree, or a full 200 m
2
of lawn. This is of huge benefit, as the bioreactors can be built and installed far more quickly, and start processing polluted air immediately.
Like trees, the devices are solar-powered, with panels on top to capture light and turn it into electricity. Built-in lighting allows the microalgae to photosynthesize year round, even in the dimmer winter months. There’s also a pump which captures polluted air and bubbles it up through the water to feed the algae. The LIQUID3 bioreactors are built with an eye to civic duty, as well. They’re constructed to also serve as city benches, while also providing a power outlet for charging mobile phones.
There’s a pleasing glow to the bioreactor when powered up at night.
Credit: YouTube/UNDPSerbia
The bioreactors are well-suited to the built environment of Belgrade, Serbia. The city is subject to significant air quality issues, with high PM2.5 counts by virtue of two neighbouring coal power stations. Serbia as a whole records 175 pollution related deaths per 100,000 people, making it Europe’s worst performer by this metric. It’s also 33rd in the world for having the
worst air quality
. Anecdotally, activists complain of pollution so bad that it can be readily detected by sight, smell, or taste during the worst periods. If you were in Beijing in the winter of 2015/2016, you’d be familiar with the flavor.
Much of the uproar towards the devices is misguided. The bioreactors aren’t intended to replace urban trees with scary-looking machines. Instead, they’re designed to slot into spaces where growing a tree is impractical. Plus, the microalgae bioreactors offer efficiencies that trees and grasses simply can’t match. Microalgae can be capable of removing CO
2
at a rate
10 to 50 times faster
than even mature trees, to boot. Once grown, the microalgae can be harvested and used as a potent fertilizer, as well.
As valuable as efforts like the
Trillion Trees project
may be, there’s something to be said for the sheer practicality of building compact bioreactors. The fact that they start capturing useful amounts of carbon dioxide from day one is just a further mark in their favour. As the world struggles against rising carbon levels in the atmosphere, expect to see bioreactors like these proliferate in cities around the world. They may just be a key weapon in the fight against climate change, while also transforming our urban spaces into the futuristic cityscapes science-fiction had promised us. | 126 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629150",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T14:16:56",
"content": "No analysis of the CO2 released during manufacturing? I’ll pull my own numbers then, 1-2 tons of CO2 during manufacturing seems reasonable estimate, and maybe 100 kg captured per year. So let’s hope these are... | 1,760,372,342.659901 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/open-source-faceid-with-realsense/ | Open-Source FaceID With RealSense | Arya Voronova | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"depth camera",
"depth sensing",
"face recognition",
"Intel RealSense",
"Realsense"
] | RealSense cameras have been a fascinating piece of tech from Intel — we’ve seen a number of cool applications in the hacker world, from robots to smart appliances. Unfortunately Intel did discontinue parts of the RealSense lineup at one point, specifically the LiDAR and face tracking-tailored models. Apparently, these haven’t been popular, and we haven’t seen these in hacks either. Until now, that is. [Lina] brings us a real-world application for the RealSense face tracking cameras,
a FaceID application for Linux.
The project is as simple as it sounds: if the camera’s built-in face recognition module recognizes you, your lockscreen is unlocked. With the target being Linux, it has to tie into the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) subsystem for authentication, and of course, there’s a PAM module for RealSense to go with it, aptly named
pam_sauron
. This module is written in Zig, a modern C-like language, so it’s both a good example of how to create your own PAM integrations, and a path towards doing that in a different language for once. As usual, there’s TODOs, like improving the UX and taking advantage of some security features RealSense cameras have, but it’s nevertheless a fun and self-sufficient application for one of the F4XX-series RealSense cameras in case you happen to own one.
Ever since
the introduction of RealSense
we’ve seen these cameras used in robotics and
3D scanning
, thanks at least in part due to
their ability to be used in Linux
. Thankfully, Intel only
discontinued
the less popular RealSense cameras, which didn’t affect the main RealSense lineup, and the hacker-beloved depth cameras are still available for all of our projects. Wondering about the tech behind it? Here’s a
teardown of a RealSense camera
module intended for laptop use. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629128",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T12:42:35",
"content": "PAM is an archaic system that should die as soon as possible. It was made by and for mad scientists, without a single active neuron. Since its inception 40 years ago, it’s still not able to propose 2 si... | 1,760,372,342.495465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/04/cp-m-6502-style/ | CP/M 6502-Style | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"CP/M",
"retrocomputing"
] | There are projects you create to share with the world, but there are also those you do just because you want something for yourself. Lucky for us, [Dietrich-L]’s 30-year-long project to create
CPM-65
, a CP/M-like OS for the 6502, has become both.
[Dietrich-L] does admit that the documentation is “sparse” and “for my personal needs.” Still, the OS has most of what you’d expect and runs well on the target system, a heavily-modified Elektor Junior with 57 kB of RAM. The disk structure is compatible with CP/M, although the Transient Program Area (TPA) apparently starts at $200, which is a bit different from a typical CP/M. Apparently, the system uses some low memory which necessitated the relocation. Just in case you were hoping, CPM-65 doesn’t emulate an 8080 system, so you can’t run normal CP/M programs. You just get a similar operating environment and tools.
The 31 commands listed include an assembler, BASIC, Forth, an editor, and some disk tools, along with a debugger. Xmodem is available, too. Everything is written in assembly for the CPM-65 assembler, so bootstrapping could be an issue if you need to make any changes.
Speaking of changes, there is some documentation in the docs sub-directory, including the layout of [Dietrich-L]’s system, which would be handy if you were trying to run this on your own hardware. You’ll also find basic commands for the editor, details of the assembler, and some other documents.
[Dietrich-L] notes that he was unaware when he started the project that there were other similar projects.
DOS/65
(which has a port for the Commodore 64),
OUP/M
(which hasn’t been updated since 1983), and
CPM65
(apparently no relation, but very impressive), which appeared in 2022.
If you need a
6502 computer
, grab a breadboard, although adding the disk drive is an exercise left to the reader. Or, grab
an FPGA
but expect more work.
Thanks [Stephen Walters] for the tip! | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629094",
"author": "jalnl",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T08:52:57",
"content": "“Apparently, the system uses some low memory which necessitated the relocation” – Erm, no, it’s a 6502, so the first 256 bytes is the zero page, and the second 256 bytes is the stack :D.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,342.707139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/truly-flexible-circuits-are-a-bit-of-a-stretch/ | Truly Flexible Circuits Are A Bit Of A Stretch | Michael Shaub | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"conductive ink",
"flexible PCB",
"material science",
"panasonic",
"stretchable",
"University of Coimbra"
] | Flexible PCBs have become increasingly common in both commercial devices and DIY projects, but
Panasonic’s new stretchable, clear substrate for electrical circuits called Beyolex
takes things a step further. The material is superior to existing stretchable films like silicone, TPU, or PDMS due to its high heat tolerance (over 160° C) for the purposes of sintering printable circuit traces.
But, a flexible substrate isn’t very useful for electronics without some conductive traces. Copper and silver inks make for good electrical circuits on stretchable films, and are even solderable, but increase resistance each time they are stretched. Recently, a team out of the University of Coimbra in Portugal has developed a liquid metal ink that can stretch without the resistance issues of existing inks, making it a promising pair with Panasonic’s substrate. There’s also certain environmental benefits of printing circuits in this manner over traditional etching and even milling, as you’re only putting conductive materials where needed.
After the break, check out Panasonic’s earlier videos showing some of their demo circuits that include a stretchable NFC antenna harvesting electricity even while submerged in water and an LED matrix performing while being, bent, rolled, and stretched. We’re excited to see where this technology leads and when we hackers will be able to create our own stretchable projects.
A great many flexible PCB projects have graced Hackaday, from
early experiments
to sophisticated
flexible PCB projects
. Heck, we had a whole
Flexible PCB Contest
with some awesome flexible projects. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629108",
"author": "John7",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T10:36:23",
"content": "Disco era is soo coming back !!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6629168",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T15:02:55",
"conte... | 1,760,372,342.751649 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/machine-learning-helps-electron-microscopy/ | Machine Learning Helps Electron Microscopy | Al Williams | [
"Machine Learning",
"Science"
] | [
"electron microscope",
"machine learning",
"stem"
] | Machine learning is supposed to help us do everything these days, so why not electron microscopy? A team from Ireland has done just that and published their results
using machine learning to enhance STEM
— scanning transmission electron microscopy. The result is important because it targets a very particular use case — low dose STEM.
The problem is that to get high resolutions, you typically need to use high electron doses. However, bombarding a delicate, often biological, subject with high-energy electrons may change what you are looking at and damage the sample. But using reduced electron dosages results in a poor image due to Poisson noise. The new technique learns how to compensate for the noise and produce a better-quality image even at low dosages.
The processing doesn’t require human intervention and is fast enough to work in real time. It is hard for us to interpret the tiny features in the scans presented in the paper, but you can see that the standard Gaussian filter doesn’t work as well. The original dots appear “fat” after filtering. The new technique highlights the tiny dots and reduces the noise between them. This is one of those things that a human can do so easily, but traditional computer techniques don’t always provide great results.
You have to wonder what other signal processing could improve with machine learning. Of course, you want to be sure you aren’t making up data that isn’t there. It wouldn’t do to teach a CAT scan computer that everyone needs an expensive surgical procedure. That would never happen, right?
In electronic work, we usually are using SEM that detects secondary electron emissions because it is hard to shoot an electron through an electronic component. But STEM is a cool technology that can evens show
the shadows of atoms
. We keep hoping someone will come up with
a homebrew design
that would be easy to replicate, but — so far — it is still a pretty big journey to get an electron microscope in your home lab. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629047",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T03:22:21",
"content": "I wouldn’t call that an image enhancement as much as an image interpretation or analysis, it is the “opinion” of the neural network.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,342.943414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/an-ultra-low-power-dash-cam/ | An Ultra Low Power Dash Cam | Matthew Carlson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"dash cam",
"low power",
"power regul"
] | Dash cameras are handy as they provide a video recording of interactions on the road. However, their utility comes from the fact that they are always recording while driving. This always-on means power draw. [Kuzysk] took it upon himself to
cut that power draw by a factor of almost 70x
.
He found his existing dash cam from MiVue consumed 3.5mA in idle which works out to be a whole amp-hour every 12 days. The custom version takes just 50uA which means it will draw an amp-hour in two years. The brains of the chip are formed by an ATmega328 and an LM2596M, which is a simple step-down regulator. Interestingly, [Kuzysk] purchased clones and original chips and found that the cheaper clones had a lower switching frequency but a much lower power draw. Programming an Arduino bootloader onto the board is fairly straightforward and [Kuzysk] kindly provides his code. It can detect the ACC voltage that’s on when the engine is on and is powered by a permanent 12v connection to the battery.
Overall it’s a straightforward hack that goes through rolling your own Arduino, optimizing for low power, and putting it all together into a polished project. Perhaps for the next version, he can use the
ATmega to control a cheaper camera and make it smart
.
Thanks to [Microchip makes] and [Abe] for the tip! | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6629000",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T23:36:10",
"content": "Got a broken link to instructables.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6629004",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T23:45:02",
"conte... | 1,760,372,342.895781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/server-network-cards-made-extra-cool/ | Server Network Cards Made Extra Cool | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"pci",
"pci express",
"PCI-E",
"PCIe"
] | Using cheap and powerful server expansion cards in your desktop builds is a tempting option for many hackers. Of course, they don’t always fit mechanically or work perfectly; for instance, some server-purpose cards are designed for intense amounts of cooling that servers come with, and will overheat inside a relatively calm desktop case. Having encountered such a network card, [Chris] has
developed
and
brought
us the PCIce – a PCIe card that’s a holder and a controller for a 80mm fan.
The card gets fan 12V from the PCIe slot, and there’s an ATTiny to control the fan’s speed, letting you cycle through speeds with a single button press and displaying the current speed through LEDs. There’s a great amount of polish put into this card – from making it mechanically feature-complete with all the fancy fasteners, to longevity-oriented firmware that even makes sure to notice if the EEPROM-stored settings ever get corrupted. At the moment, the schematics and the ATTiny firmware are open-source, [Chris] has promised to publish hardware files after polishing them, and has also manufactured a batch of PCIce cards for sale.
When it comes to making use of cheap server-purpose cards, a cooling solution is good to see – we’ve generally seen adapters from proprietary form-factors, like
this FlexLOM adapter
from [TobleMiner] to make use of cheap high-throughput network cards with slightly differing mechanical dimensions and pinouts. Every batch of decommissioned server cards has some potential with only a slight hitch or two, and it’s reassuring to see hackers make their eBay finds really work for them. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6628959",
"author": "philosiraptor117",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T21:15:06",
"content": "this thing blows.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6628988",
"author": "Flawless",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T22:58:15",
... | 1,760,372,343.006517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/a-compact-camera-running-linux-whats-not-to-like/ | A Compact Camera Running Linux? What’s Not To Like! | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"samsung",
"samsung NX"
] | One of the devices swallowed up by the smartphone for the average person is the handheld camera, to the extent that the youngsters are reported to be now rediscovering 20-year-old digital cameras for their retro cool factor. Cameras aren’t completely dead though, as a mirrorless compact or a DSLR should still blow the socks off a phone in competent hands. They’ve been around long enough to be plentiful secondhand, which makes
[Georg Lukas]’ look at a ten-year-old range of models from Samsung
worth a second look. Why has a deep dive into old cameras caught our eye? These cameras run Linux, in the form of Samsung’s
Tizen
distribution.
His interest in the range comes from owning one since 2014, and it’s in his earlier series of posts on hacking that camera that we find some of the potential it offers. Aside from the amusement that
it runs an unprotected X server
, getting to
a root shell
is fairly straightforward
as we covered at the time
, and it turns out to be
a very hackable device
.
Cameras follow a Gartner hype cycle-like curve in the popularity stakes, so for example the must-have bridge cameras and compact cameras of the late-2000s are now second-hand-store bargains. Given that mirrorless cameras such as the Samsung are now fairly long in the tooth, it’s likely that they too will fall into a pit of affordability before too long. One to look out for, perhaps. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6628925",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T19:05:59",
"content": "Can it run DOOM?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6629038",
"author": "Corom",
"timestamp": "2023-04-04T01:42:35",
"content": "T... | 1,760,372,343.071609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/largest-ever-hydrogen-fuel-cell-plane-takes-flight/ | Largest Ever Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plane Takes Flight | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"flight",
"fuel cell",
"fuel cells",
"hydrogen",
"hydrogen fuel cell"
] | In the automotive world, batteries are quickly becoming the energy source of the future. For heavier-duty tasks, though, they simply don’t cut the mustard. Their energy density, being a small fraction of that of liquid fuels, just can’t get the job done. In areas like these, hydrogen holds some promise as a cleaner fuel of the future.
Universal Hydrogen
hopes that hydrogen will do for aviation what batteries can’t. The company has been developing flight-ready fuel cells for this exact purpose, and has begun test flights towards that very goal.
Sky Hydrogen
It’s only recently that battery technology has advanced enough to build decent, usable electric cars. Even still, just getting a few hundred miles of range out of an aerodynamic sedan typically takes over a thousand pounds of batteries. For aircraft, which are significantly more power hungry than cars, batteries simply aren’t a viable power source. Hydrogen, however, could be a viable alternative, as it has an energy density on a par with fossil fuels. It can be burned in
internal combustion engines and jet engines
, just like fossil fuels, generating no carbon dioxide output and a minimal but measurable amount of nitrogen oxides. Even better, it can be used to produce electrical energy with only water as a byproduct, by using a fuel cell.
Hydrogen is much comparable in energy density to fossil fuels, in both weight and volume. Batteries fare far worse by comparison. Note, however, that this comparison is of the fuel itself, and does not take into account storage infrastructure like the tanks required to maintain hydrogen at the correct temperature and pressure.
For this reason, Universal Hydrogen has been working towards its first major test of fuel cell flight. The company recently completed taxi testing in February, which helped to secure a special airworthiness certificate for its experimental De Havilland Canada Dash 8-300 test aircraft. With that in hand, it was able to pursue the first flight in a planned two-year series of tests.
Traditionally, the Dash 8-300 is a regional turboprop airliner, capable of carrying approximately 50 passengers, depending on configuration. In this case, however, Universal Hydrogen heavily modified the plane, replacing one of its engines with an electric motor from aviation company MagniX. The motor was supplied with electricity from a megawatt-class hydrogen fuel cell, while the plane was also outfitted with two hydrogen tanks carrying a total of 30 kg of fuel.
The modified Dash 8-300 built by Universal Hydrogen.
Credit: Universal Hydrogen, press site
For its first live test, the plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, took to the skies for a fifteen minute flight. It reached an altitude of 3,500 feet above sea level. The fuel cell provided up to 800 kW of electricity during the flight, with water vapor the only output to the atmosphere. Approximately 16 kg of fuel was used in the test.
Of course, aviation is a famously conservative business, hence why the aircraft only ran a single hydrogen-powered motor at this early stage. The Dash 8’s other standard Pratt and Whitney turboprop ran during the flight. However, at one stage, the crew throttled down the turboprop to near-minimum, and the plane flew almost entirely on fuel-cell power alone. For now, the test flights are a low-stakes demo of hydrogen aviation. However, it’s important to collect data in tests like these, in order to get the hydrogen powertrains to the point that they can be certified as flight-ready components.
A Path Forward
While it’s early days yet, Universal Hydrogen has a clear plan for the future of hydrogen in aviation. Its testing doesn’t just serve to demonstrate a hydrogen-powered propulsion system, but also the company’s ideas around how it thinks hydrogen aircraft will be fueled, too.
Universal Hydrogen doesn’t plan for airports to install new hydrogen fuel tanks and refuelling infrastructure. Instead, it employs its own “hydrogen modules” on its aircraft. These standardized modules are essentially large hydrogen cartridges, which the company likens to Nespresso pods. The idea is that they can readily be managed by existing airport freight and logistics infrastructure. The modules can simply be loaded into the fuselage of a plane and hooked up onboard. The way the company sees it, this methodology means every airport around the world is automatically “hydrogen ready.”
Having the fuelling question figured out is key to Universal Hydrogen’s future goals, too. The company already has almost 250 orders from 16 customers on its books to retrofit existing aircraft with its hydrogen powertrain technology. The company expects to begin delivering on these orders, worth over $1 billion, as soon as 2025. That may be a lofty goal given that the company hasn’t yet secured wide-ranging approvals for its technology just yet. However, it’s a major show of faith from established airlines that the company’s order book is already overflowing.
Questions Remain
While the first test flight was a success, there’s still plenty of hurdles for Universal Hydrogen to overcome. The company must secure approvals from the FAA and other relevant authorities around the world for its technology. To achieve this, it must demonstrate that the hardware is up to the fastidious reliability standards expected in the aviation world.
Beyond that, it must also work on the problems surrounding hydrogen storage, transport, and production. The company’s modules are a great idea, but their current solutions will need scaling to tackle anything beyond the shortest flights. Hydrogen may be energy dense when it comes to weight, but by volume, it’s only a quarter as dense as jet fuel. This could impact negatively on payloads for hydrogen-powered planes. Production is an issue too. Running hydrogen through a fuel cell may be clean, but producing the hydrogen can be quite a dirty process in itself.
Green hydrogen production methods
using clean electricity are key to making it a more sustainable option than digging up more dinosaur juice.
It seems unlikely
hydrogen will take off as a mainstream automotive fuel. Despite this, batteries still don’t offer a viable solution for heavy-duty applications like
trucks
,
trains
, and
planes
. Until something better comes along, hydrogen is likely still the best bet to clean up the emissions from these industries. It’s just going to take plenty of grunt work and engineering to make that a reality in the decade or two to come. | 72 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6628905",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T17:36:30",
"content": ">Hydrogen may be energy dense when it comes to weight, but by volume, it’s only a quarter as dense as jet fuel.Liquid hydrogen, that is. It raises the question, how do you keep the fuel pods filled up and wa... | 1,760,372,343.181717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/pieeg-offers-affordable-brain-computer-interface/ | PiEEG Offers Affordable Brain-Computer Interface | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"biosignals",
"brain-computer interface",
"eeg"
] | One day in the future, we may interact with our electronic devices not with physical input or even voice commands, but simply by thinking about what we want to do. Such brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), combined with machine learning, could allow us to turn our ideas into reality faster and with less effort than ever before — imagine being able to produce a PCB design simply by thinking about how the completed circuit would work. Of course as an assistive technology, BCIs would be nothing less than life-changing for many.
Today BCIs are in their infancy, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for hackers and makers to experiment with the concept. [Ildar Rakhmatulin] has been working on low-cost open source BCIs for years, and
with the recent release of his PiEEG on Crowd Supply
, thinks he’s finally found an affordable solution that will let individuals experiment with this cutting edge technology.
Implemented as a shield that can be connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, the PiEEG features 8 channels for connecting wet or dry electrodes that can measure biosignals such as those used in electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and electrocardiography (ECG). With the electrodes connected, reading these biosignals is as easy as running a Python script. While primarily designed for neuroscience experimentation, [Ildar] says the device is also useful for learning more about signal processing, filters, and machine learning.
At the time of this writing the Crowd Supply campaign had already hit 300% of its goal, and with a production plan in place that should put hardware in backer’s hands before the end of the year, it looks like we won’t have to wait too long before we see what the community can do with this hardware. While the hardware seems locked in, [Ildar] says work on software examples and documentation is ongoing on the
project’s GitHub repository
. This already includes instructions on how to
make your own dry electrode EEG measurement hat
, and a Python script that allows the user to
operate a remotely controlled toy by blinking
.
We’ve seen
open hardware projects designed for biosignal measurement
in the past, and we’ve even seen
some commercial devices that can be used to collect this data
. But the PiEEG is one of the more promising projects we’ve seen in this field, as it provides a turn-key platform for not just data acquisition but hardware interfacing. Now all you’ve got to do is find a Raspberry Pi to plug the thing into… | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6628899",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T16:48:57",
"content": "On the overall subject of a brain-computer interface, while this has the potential to provide all manner of benefits, particularly for disabled people, I have no doubt that there will be some requirement to ... | 1,760,372,343.231319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/self-healing-concrete-what-ancient-roman-concrete-can-teach-us/ | Self-Healing Concrete: What Ancient Roman Concrete Can Teach Us | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"cement",
"concrete",
"roman concrete"
] | Concrete is an incredibly useful and versatile building material on which not only today’s societies, but also the ancient Roman Empire was built. To this day
Roman concrete
structures can be found in mundane locations such as harbors, but also the
Pantheon
in Rome, which to this day forms the largest unreinforced concrete dome in existence at 43.3 meters diameter, and is in excellent condition despite being being nearly 1,900 years old.
Even as the Roman Empire fell and receded into what became the Byzantine – also known as the
Eastern Roman
– Empire and the world around these last remnants of Roman architecture changed and changed again, all of these concrete structures remained despite knowledge of how to construct structures like them being lost to the ages. Perhaps the most astounding thing is that even today our concrete isn’t nearly as durable, despite modern inventions such as reinforcing with rebar.
Reverse-engineering ancient Roman concrete has for decades now been the source of intense study and debate, with a
recent paper
by Linda M. Seymour and colleagues adding an important clue to the puzzle. Could so-called ‘hot mixing’, with pockets of reactive lime clasts inside the cured concrete provide self-healing properties?
Concrete Recipes
At the core of modern concrete as well as mortar lies
cement
: this is the binder that is mixed with additional ingredients such as sand and gravel to turn it into concrete. Although each type of cement starts with
calcium carbonate
(CaCO
3
), the way this base material is processed and mixed determines how it cures, and what other material properties will be exhibited. The most basic type is called non-hydraulic cement, which starts off by firing the calcium carbonate (also called limestone), which produces calcium oxide and carbon dioxide:
CaCO
3
→ CaO + CO
2
CaO is commonly called
quicklime
, as well as burnt lime. In the next step, this quicklime is mixed with water to ‘slake’ it:
CaO + H
2
O → Ca(OH)
2
When the resulting
calcium hydroxide
is then exposed to carbon dioxide, the cement will begin to set:
Ca(OH)
2
+ CO
2
→ CaCO
3
+ H
2
O
At atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, this is a very slow process and, thus, generally not very practical for construction. Common cement types such as
Portland cement
are, therefore, hydraulic cement, which sets by reacting with the clinker minerals that are part of the mixture. Portland cement is a fine powder which consists of at least two-thirds of calcium silicates, primarily
alite
(
Ca
3
SiO
5
) and
belite
(Ca
2
SiO
4
), along with additional silicates and aluminates.
The initial step of producing hydraulic cement is the same as for non-hydraulic cement, with the firing of calcium carbonate:
CaCO
3
→ CaO + CO
2
The next step is where things get interesting, as the resulting calcium oxide reacts with the silicates and aluminates:
2 CaO + SiO
2
→ 2 CaO · SiO
2
3 CaO + SiO
2
→ 3 CaO · SiO
2
3 CaO + Al2O
3
→ CaO · Al
2
O
3
Finally, the oxides (calcium oxide, aluminium oxide and ferric oxide from e.g.,
brownmillerite
) react to form the final hydraulic cement mixture:
4CaO + Al
2
O
3
+ Fe
2
O
3
→ 4 CaO · Al
2
O
3
· Fe
2
O
3
At its core, this is the recipe which any hydraulic cement uses, whether it’s so-called ‘
Roman cement
‘, Portland cement, or Ancient Roman cement. When used to create
concrete
, this cement is mixed with aggregate, usually small rocks, stones, and sand. Upon adding water to this mixture, the hydration process will cause the cement to set without the addition of carbon dioxide.
Sands Of Time
Degraded concrete and rusted, exposed reinforcement bar (rebar) on Welland River bridge of the Queen Elizabeth Way in Niagara Falls, Ontario. (Credit: Achim Hering)
As with all building materials, concrete is also subject to many influences that
degrade
it over time. Some types of damage include mechanical and chemical sources, including oxide jacking and bulk fractures that chip away the material or causes cracks. Other types of damage are due to the metal rebar inserted to reinforce the concrete, with the corrosion of this rebar and subsequent volumetric expansion resulting in the concrete being destroyed from inside. Having cracks form in the concrete that allow moisture to seep in to reach not only the rebar, but also freeze during winters further work to limit the lifespan of modern concrete.
Preventing and repairing this type of damage has been the subject of much research the past decades, with a range of approaches attempted, including manual repair of visible cracks using cement, epoxy or resins. Even so, modern-day concrete is subject to rapid degradation due to the merciless effects of exposure to the effects of water. Considering the almost pristine condition of so much Ancient Roman concrete that survived over a thousand years of exposure to weather and the elements, this has obviously raised many questions.
Ancient Concrete
The ancient Romans were not the only ones who knew about and used concrete, with the ancient Greek also using the building material, even if not in quite the same amounts. One aspect about Roman concrete that we were already aware of was their use of
pozzolan
, specifically
pozzolana
such as volcanic ash. These are naturally rich silicates and aluminates, and a big reason behind the discovery of hydraulic cement by Roman engineers.
Since modern-day cements like Portland cement also include either natural or artificial pozzolans, their presence as ingredients can not be the sole reason. What other secrets have made it so that cracks and fractures haven’t shattered this ancient concrete into fine dust? For answers to this, the researchers of this
recent study
turned to a small former Roman settlement called Privernum in Italy.
The Roman concrete test samples came from the archaeological site of Privernum, near Rome, Italy (A), and shown as a photogrammetry-based three-dimensional reconstruction (B). The architectural mortar samples were collected from the bordering concrete city wall (C). Large-area EDS mapping of a fracture surface (D) reveals the calcium-rich (red), aluminum-rich (blue), silicon-rich (green), and sulfur-rich (yellow) regions of the mortar. Further imaging of polished cross-sections (E) shows aggregate-scale relict lime clasts within the mortar (the large red features denoted by asterisks). The colored arrows in (E) denote the pore-bordering rings visible in the EDS data that are rich in calcium (red) or sulfur (yellow), which are enlarged at right to show additional detail. Photo credits (B and C): Roberto Scalesse and Gianfranco Quaranta, Associazione AREA3, Italy.
By taking samples of the concrete city wall of Privernum and studying its composition, they found that they saw pockets of calcium oxide, which was a feature that had been previously mostly dismissed as probably not relevant or just an artifact of the primitive methods used two-thousand years ago to make concrete. The theory that Linda M. Seymour and colleagues wanted to test here, however, was that these pockets of calcium oxide were not only there on purpose but that the engineers who created these mixtures likely knew what they were doing.
The Experiment
In order to test this theory, the researchers created batches of concrete inspired by their analysis of the Privernum samples, featuring Portland cement, pulverized fly ash, sand, and water. Across these batches, a varying amount of quicklime was added, and each batch cast into cylindrical molds. After curing for 28 days, the cured samples were compared with the Privernum samples, with the bright white of the lime clasts clearly visible in both. To test that it are these pockets of quicklime which enable the self-healing properties, the cured samples were split longitudinally and inserted into a flow circuit with 0.5 mm distance between the fractured sides of each sample.
After casting, the Roman-inspired hot-mixed concrete samples were mechanically fractured and then re-mated (with a gap of 0.5 ± 0.1 mm) and preconditioned for the crack-healing studies. (Credit: Seymour et al., 2023)
In this flow circuit, water was constantly forced through the fracture in each sample, with the flow rate measured. After an initial flow rate of 10 to 30 liters/hour, depending on the sample, after thirty days, the flow rate in the samples with the lime clasts was reduced to practically zero, whereas the flowrate in the regular concrete mix samples without the clasts had remained essentially unchanged.
The results of this experiment showed that the calcium from the lime clasts had likely interacted with the remaining free pozzolanic material to form fresh crystallization that is capable of healing fractures. These experimental results are indicated to match the analysis performed on the Roman mortars of the tomb of Caecilia Metella where a similar microcrack filling had been reported.
Vivat Romanorum Architectus
Despite so much of the engineering knowledge of Ancient Roman times having been lost over the past few thousand years, the gathered body of evidence on Ancient Roman concrete would seem to show unequivocally that self-healing concrete through the mixing in of coarse quicklime was the standard way in which such concrete was made. How this came to be, or which engineers first invented it will probably never be known, but it does appear to be a technique that can be applied to our modern-day concrete without question.
Linda Seymour and her colleagues considered this option and created a second mixture using coarse aggregates and a superplasticizer. Here the main concern was the shrinkage rate, which is mainly a factor of the setting process. The outcome here was that there was less than 1% difference between the drying shrinkage of regular and experimental concrete after a year, making it a potentially commercially viable concrete mix.
Whether we will see commercial concrete being poured using newly formulated cement mixtures based on this research remains an open question, but considering the benefits of having concrete structures that can outlast entire civilizations – both in terms of reducing the carbon dioxide output of the cement industry and a sharp reduction in the maintenance and replacement of concrete structures – it would be curious indeed if we did not.
(Heading image: “
Inside the Pantheon
” by Macrons on Wikimedia Commons) | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6628870",
"author": "PeteSahat",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T14:08:53",
"content": "Never heard of carbon carbonate…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6628885",
"author": "Art Mezins",
"timestamp": "2023-04-03T15:37... | 1,760,372,343.304377 |
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