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https://hackaday.com/2023/01/20/this-week-in-security-git-deep-dive-mailchimp-and-spf/ | This Week In Security: Git Deep Dive, Mailchimp, And SPF | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Git",
"spf",
"This Week in Security"
] | First up,
git has been audited
. This was an effort sponsored by the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF), a non-profit working to improve the security of Open Source projects. The audit itself was done by researchers from X41 and GitLab, and
two critical vulnerabilities were found
, both caused by the same bad coding habit — using an
int
to hold buffer lengths.
On modern systems, a
size_t
is always unsigned, and the same bit length as the architecture bit-width. This is the proper data type for string and buffer lengths, as it is guaranteed not to overflow when handling lengths up to the maximum addressable memory on the system. On the other hand, an
int
is usually four bytes long and signed, with a maximum value of 2^31-1, or 2147483647 — about 2 GB. A big buffer, but not an unheard amount of data. Throw something that large at git, and it will break in unexpected ways.
Our first example is CVE-2022-23521, an out of bounds write caused by an
int
overflowing to negative. A
.gitattributes
file can be committed to a repository with a modified git client, and then checking out that repository will cause the
num_attrs
variable to overflow. Push the overflow all the way around to a small negative number, and git will then vastly under-allocate the attributes buffer, and write all that data past the end of the allocated buffer.
CVE-2022-41903 is another signed integer overflow, this time when a pretty print format gets abused to do something unexpected. Take a look at this block of code:
int sb_len = sb->len, offset = 0;
if (c->flush_type == flush_left)
offset = padding - len;
else if (c->flush_type == flush_both)
offset = (padding - len) / 2;
/*
* we calculate padding in columns, now
* convert it back to chars
*/
padding = padding - len + local_sb.len;
strbuf_addchars(sb, ' ', padding);
memcpy(sb->buf + sb_len + offset, local_sb.buf,
local_sb.len);
The exploit format would look something like
%>(2147483647)%a%>(2147483646)%x41
, where the code above runs for every padding instance (The
%>(#)
blocks) found in the format. The first time through this code adds (2^31)-1 spaces to the front of the output string. That number just happens to be the max value of a four byte signed integer. But the code block above gets run another time, and once more text is added to the buffer, pushing its length over the max integer value. The first line of that block does an implicit cast from
size_t
to
int
, setting
sb_len
to a negative value.
Then in the
memcpy()
call,
sb->buf
is a pointer to the start of the buffer, sb_len is our overflowed large negative number, and offset will be a user-controlled value. This means the location of the destination sent to
memcpy()
can unintentionally be set to a lower memory location than the start of the intended buffer. Attacker controlled writes. I’ve added some debugging printf() statements to this text block, and run a test-case:
$ ./bin-wrappers/git log -1 --pretty="format:%>(2147483647)%a% >(2147483635)%s" > /dev/null
Padding: 2147483647
sb_len: 0
offset: 2147483647
Memcpy:
Padding: 2147483635
sb_len: -2147483647
offset: 2147483591
Memcpy: CI: upgrade to macos-12, and pin OSX version
=================================================================
==844038==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow on address 0x7fd8989f97c8 at pc 0x7fdb15e49d21 bp 0x7ffe8fa5c100 sp 0x7ffe8fa5b8b0
WRITE of size 44 at 0x7fd8989f97c8 thread T0
0x7fd8989f97c8 is located 56 bytes to the left of 4831838268-byte region [0x7fd8989f9800,0x7fd9b89f983c)
The first quartet of outputs there is the setup, priming the log line with padding to be max int long. The second quartet is the buffer overrun, where
sb_len
is set to negative, and then added to the offset to give us a location 56 bytes to the left of the start of the buffer. The content that gets printed to that location is in this case
%s
, which gets replaced by the subject line of the commit — 44 bytes long. The authors suggest that this could be weaponized against a “git forge”, AKA GitHub and GitLab, as those software suites run the git archive command, which can invoke a user-controlled pretty string.
Fixes were pushed to the git source code back on December 8th, but new releases containing those fixes are just now available. There are approximately 2200 instances of the raw
int
issue, and those will take a while to clean up, even with some fun hacks like
cast_size_t_to_int()
, an inline function that just kills the program if a 2 GB+
size_t
is handled. So go update!
Mailchimp — Again
It seems the folks at Mailchimp can’t catch a break, as
their internal administration tools were accessed once again by attackers
, leading to the exposure of 133 customer accounts, including WooCommerce. This is the third time Mailchimp has fallen to a social engineering or phishing attack in the last year, and each time has resulted in spear-phishing emails sent to end users. So if you’re on any Mailchimp mailing lists, keep this breach in mind next time a related email arrives. (Editor’s note: Hackaday’s two newsletters use Mailchimp, and we were not notified, so we believe that we’re good.)
Royal Mail Ransomware
In a story that could have some big consequences, the
UK’s Royal Mail has suffered a ransomware attack
on their system for handling international mail. The attack uses Lockbit ransomware, a group suspected to be a Russian-speaking ransomware gang. This could be significant, as an attack on an actual government agency is way more serious than an attack on a business. Since Lockbit runs as ransomware-as-a-service, it’s going to be very difficult to determine exactly who actually pulled off the attack. For now, the recommendation is simple: don’t send any international mail. Oof.
Edit: A patient reader has pointed out that the Royal mail has been privatized since 1969. So while the ransomware affects a critical service, it’s not a government agency.
Scanning SPF Records
[Sebastian Salla] has what may be considered a strange hobby, in the form of
scanning SPF records for odd misconfigurations
. In his latest adventure, that scan was the top 3 million most visited domains. And misconfiguration was found.
But hang on, what’s an SPF and why do we care? Sender Policy Framework is a txt record that is part of a domain’s DNS records. And it specifies what IP addresses are actually authorized to send email for that domain. So if an incoming email claims to be from a domain with a valid SPF record, and the sending IP address is not on that record, it’s pretty clearly not really from the claimed domain.
And having your domain’s emails get rejected because of an SPF problem is one of the surest ways to catch flak. So it’s tempting to make the SPF record a bit more … *liberal* than perhaps it should be. And the most extreme iteration of this is to just slap a
+all
on your SPF record and be done with it. Sure, it tells the world that every spammer anywhere that uses your domain is actually sending real emails, but at least it gets the boss’s outgoing emails working again. With over a thousand domains set to SPF
+all
, apparently that’s more common a fault than anticipated.
The really interesting bit is the who’s who of those misconfigured domains, like multiple US governmental agencies, other governmental domains around the world, and multiple universities. The most interesting one was the Ukrainian ministry of defense, where the SPF record was clipped from a
-all
to
+all
about 4 months ago.
Bits and Bytes
Tailscale discovered a potentially serious issue, where knowing the node ID of another client would allow an attacker to add the node to their own tailnet. This would have put an attacker on the inside of your VPN, definitely a bad scenario. But before you get your pitchforks, the vulnerable code was deployed for less than four months before it was fixed. It was privately reported on the 11th of this month, and fixed on the 12th. And to boot, the attack leaves a log signature that the Tailscale was able to scan for, and concluded that it was isolated to the proof-of-concept testing. You can check your own dashboard for any nodes shared out of their own tailnet for confirmation. And while it’s a nasty vulnerability, good for Tailscale for disclosing it. Many vendors would have sat on this one and never made it public.
The
Linux kernel had a buffer overflow
in its Netfilter code, where a buffer overflow could result in both data leakage and code execution. There isn’t a path to remote exploitation, but the email linked above contains a full PoC for a local privilege escalation. And if Kernel exploitation is your thing, Google’s Project Zero has
a new write-up on the subject
, all about null dereferencing.
And if you use ManageEngine from Zoho, then today your hair may be on fire, if you haven’t updated to the release that fixes CVE-2022-47966. Researchers at
Horizon3 have reverse-engineered the patch
, and spilled the beans on this RCE. It’s an issue in how SAML single-sign-on is implemented, owing in part to an extremely old library packaged as part of the product. It’s a pretty easy exploit to pull off, so time to go double check those installs! | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6580053",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T17:19:45",
"content": "Git was audited, and they found submodules to still be a pain in the ass in 2023.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6580057",
"author": "Cogidubnus ... | 1,760,372,426.643255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/20/building-a-nas-that-really-looks-like-a-nas/ | Building A NAS That Really Looks Like A NAS | Anool Mahidharia | [
"computer hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"cloud storage",
"data storage",
"datastorage",
"digital storage",
"mass storage",
"nas",
"Orange Pi",
"raspberry pi"
] | Building your own network attached storage (NAS) for personal use isn’t all that difficult. A single board computer, a hard disk and a power supply in an enclosure is all the hardware you need. Then, choose from one of several open source NAS software solutions and you’re up and running. [tobychui] decided to notch things up by designing
a NAS that really looks like a NAS.
It’s tailored to his specific requirements and looks like a professional product to boot. The design features dual 3.5 inch HDD bays, a small footprint, is low cost, compatible with a variety of single board computers, and can handle high data transfer speeds by using RAM and SD card for buffering.
Not only has he done a great job with the hardware design, but he’s also developed a companion software for the NAS. “
ArozOS
” is a web desktop operating system that provides full-fledged desktop experience within a browser. ArozOS has a great user interface and features a lot of networking, file, disk management and security functions. He has also developed a
launcher application
to enable over-the-air (OTA) software updates.
Assembling the device will need some planning and preparation, even though most of the hardware is off the shelf. You will need a SATA to USB 2.0 adapter, a SBC (Orange Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 4, Orange Pi Zero 2, etc) , three buck converters — one each to provide 12 V to the two hard disks and a third to provide 5 V to the SBC. You’ll also need a 12 V / 6 A or 24 V / 3 A external power brick, or a USB-C 65 W GaN charger with a triggering module to set the desired voltage and current.
There is also one
custom power distribution board
which is essentially a carrier board to mount the buck converters and connectors for power and USB data. For the 3D prints, [tobychui] recommends printing at the highest resolution for a nice finish.
The off the shelf SATA to USB adapter will need to be taken apart before it can be fixed to the 3D printed SATA adapter plate and might pose the most challenge during construction, but the rest of the assembly is fairly straightforward. Once assembly is complete, [tobychui] walks you through installation of the ArozOZ software, mounting the drives and making them accessible over the network.
Have you got your data backup act in order ? If not, it’s still not too late to make it a new Year’s resolution. And if you need help figuring things out, check out
New Year Habits – What Do You Do For Data Storage? | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579972",
"author": "petercat",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T13:40:00",
"content": "Great job!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6579974",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T13:40:52",
"content": "SATA to USB 2.0 a... | 1,760,372,426.974799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/20/automated-drip-watering-device-keeps-plants-happy/ | Automated Drip Watering Device Keeps Plants Happy | Lewin Day | [
"green hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"automatic plant watering",
"irrigation",
"plants",
"watering"
] | Plants tend to need a regular supply of water to stay happy. If you’re a green thumb, it’s one of the primary things you should take care of before you go on holiday.
This DIY plant watering system from [Jaychouu] offers to handle just that.
The system consists of a soda bottle acting as a water container, and an electronically-controlled valve to control the flow of water to plants. Irrigation of the plants is via dripper nozzles to provide a small but consistent feed to the plants. The use of drippers tends to disturb the soil less than pressurized jets of water. A soil humidity sensor is used to detect moisture levels and avoid over-watering. There’s also a capacitive water level sensor that fires off a warning when the reservoir’s water level is low. An ESP32 serves as the brains of the operation,
allowing remote control via Blynk
.
If you’re looking for a simple way to drip water your plants while you’re away, it’s hard to go wrong with this concept. If you feel like a more passive solution though,
we’ve seen other viable methods too
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579937",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T11:42:19",
"content": "The linked article featuring a passive solution is not really passive since it uses an ESP32, etc. There are of course water spikes like these:https://www.printables.com/model/153308-fully-customizable-pet-... | 1,760,372,427.021173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/that-old-thinkpad-needs-an-open-source-2-5-ide-ssd/ | That Old ThinkPad Needs An Open Source 2.5″ IDE SSD | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"hdd",
"solid state drive",
"ssd"
] | So you fancy yourself a FOSS devotee, do you? Running GNU/Linux on your old ThinkPad, avoiding devices that need binary blobs? Got LibreBoot installed too? Not bad, not bad. But what about the hard drive? Can you be sure you aren’t leaking some freedoms out of that spinning rust?
Well, worry no more.
Thanks to the work of [dosdude1]
, we now have an open source solid state drive that’s designed to work with any device which originally used a 2.5 inch IDE hard drive. The choice of releasing it under the GPL v3 versus an open hardware license might seem an odd choice at first, but turns out that’s actually what the GNU project
recommends currently for circuit designs
.
Fair warning: all the chips on the board are BGA.
Which is precisely what we’re talking about here — just a circuit design done up in KiCad. There’s no firmware required, and the PCB features very little beyond the four BGA152/BGA132 NAND flash chips and the SM2236 controller IC. You’ve just got to get the board fabricated, obtain (or salvage) the chips, and suddenly your retro laptop is sporting the latest in mass storage technology.
So how does it work? The SM2236 is actually a CompactFlash (CF) controller, and since IDE and CF interfaces are so similar, the PCB doesn’t have to do much to adapt from one to the other. Sprinkle in a few NANDs, and you’ve got yourself a native SSD suitable for old school machines. [dosdude1] says the board can slot four 64 GB chips, which should be more than enough given the age of the systems this gadget will likely be installed in. There are a few catches though: the NAND chips need to be supported by the SM2236, and they all have to match.
If you need something even smaller, [dosdude1] produced a 1.8 inch SSD using the same techniques
back in October of last year
. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579855",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T06:32:03",
"content": "Altering something like this to a ZIF format would be perfect for my old Vaio Palmtop.The old Toshiba SSD is not so fast after all these years…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,427.209594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/what-else-is-an-m-2-wifi-slot-good-for/ | What Else Is An M.2 WiFi Slot Good For? | Maya Posch | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"expansion card",
"M.2",
"PCIe"
] | Many mainboards and laptops these days come with a range of M.2 slots, with only a subset capable of NVME SSDs, and often a stubby one keyed for ‘WiFi’ cards. Or that’s what those are generally intended to be used for, but as [Peter Brockie]
found out
when pilfering sites like AliExpress, is that you can get a lot of alternate expansion cards for those slots that have nothing to do with WiFi.
Why this should be no surprise to anyone who knows about the
M.2 interface
is because each ‘key’ type specifies one or more electrical interfaces that are available on that particular M.2 slot. For slots intended to be used with NVME SSDs, you see M-keying, that makes 4 lanes of PCIe available. The so-called ‘WiFi slots’ on many mainboards are keyed usually for A/E, which means two lanes of PCIe, USB 2.0, I2C and a few other, rather low-level interfaces. What this means is that you can hook up any PCIe or or USB (2.0) peripheral to these slots, as long as the bandwidth is sufficient.
What [Peter] found includes adapter cards that add Ethernet (1 Gb, 2.5 Gb), USB 2.0 ports, SIM card (wireless adapter?), an SFP fiber-based networking adapter, multiple M.2 to 2+ SATA port adapters, tensor accelerator chips (NPUs) and even a full-blown M.2 to x16 PCIe slot adapter. The nice thing about this is that if you do not care about using WiFi with a system, but you do have one of those ports lounging about uselessly, you could put it to work for Ethernet, SFP, SATA or other purposes, or just for hooking up internal USB devices.
Clearly this isn’t a market that has gone unexploited for very long, with a bright outlook for one’s self-designed M.2 cards. Who doesn’t want an FPGA device snuggled in a PCIe x2 slot to tinker with?
(Thanks to [RebootLoop] for the tip!) | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579794",
"author": "Noah Webster",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T03:35:41",
"content": ">>’Pilfering’ sites like AliExpress?Should that be ‘perusing’? ‘browsing’?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6579812",
"author": "TG",
... | 1,760,372,427.139931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/q-meter-measures-q-of-course/ | Q Meter Measures… Q, Of Course | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"q meter",
"RF",
"test equipment"
] | If you’ve ever dealt with RF circuits, you probably have run into Q — a dimensionless number that indicates the ratio of reactance to resistance. If you ever wanted to measure Q, you could do worse than pick up a vintage
Boonton 160A Q meter
. [Mikrowave1] did just that and shows us how it works in the video below.
Most often, the Q is of interest in an inductor. A perfect inductor would have zero resistance and be all reactance. If you could find one of those, it would have an infinite Q because you divide the reactance by the resistance. Of course, those inductors don’t exist. You can also apply Q to any circuit with reactance and the video talks about how to interpret Q for tuned circuits. You can also think of the Q number as the ratio of frequency to bandwidth or the dampening in an oscillator. A versatile measurement, indeed.
It sounds as though you could just measure the resistance of a coil and use that to compute Q. But you really need to know the total loss, and that’s not all due to resistance. A meter like the 160A uses a signal generator and measures the loss through the circuit.
The best part of the video is the teardown, though. This old tube gear is oddly beautiful in a strange sort of way. A real contrast to the miniaturized circuits of today. The Q meter is one of those nearly forgotten pieces of gear, like a
grid dip oscillator
. If you need to wind your own coils, by the way, you could do worse than
see how [JohnAudioTech] does it
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579754",
"author": "Q-bert",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T01:35:29",
"content": "A superconducting coil, should measure pretty high on that Q-meter, n’est-ce-pas?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6579973",
"author": "john ... | 1,760,372,426.699908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/high-speed-sled-adds-bicycle-suspension/ | High-Speed Sled Adds Bicycle Suspension | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aluminum",
"bicycle",
"custom",
"frame",
"shock absorber",
"ski",
"sled",
"suspension",
"winter"
] | While you might have bought the best pair of skis in the 90s or 00s, as parts on boots and bindings start to fail and safety standards for ski equipment improve, even the highest-quality skis more than 15 or 20 years old will eventually become unsafe or otherwise obsolete. There are plenty of things that can be done with a pair of old skis, but if you already have a shot ski and an Adirondack chair made of old skis, you can put another pair to use
building one of the fastest sleds we’ve ever seen
.
[Josh Charles], the creator of this project, took inspiration from his father, who screwed an old pair of skis to the bottom of an traditional runner sled when he was a kid. This dramatically increased the speed of the sled, but eliminated its ability to steer. For this build [Josh] built a completely custom frame rather than re-use an existing sled, which allowed him to not only build a more effective steering mechanism for the skis, but also to use bicycle suspension components to give this sled better control at high speeds.
This build is part of a series that [Josh] did a few years ago, and you can find additional videos about it
documenting his design process
and his
initial prototypes and testing
. The amount of work he put into this build is evident when it’s seen finally traversing some roads that had been closed for winter; he easily gets the sled up in the 30 mph range several times. If you’re looking to go uphill in the snow, though,
take a look at this powered snowboard instead
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579658",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T21:53:02",
"content": "For a newer update, look 3 years ago:https://hackaday.com/2020/02/22/a-high-performance-ski-sled-for-the-big-kids/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "65... | 1,760,372,426.591586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/domesticating-plasma-with-a-gorgeous-live-edge-table/ | Domesticating Plasma With A Gorgeous Live Edge Table | Tom Nardi | [
"High Voltage",
"home hacks"
] | [
"epoxy",
"furniture",
"neon tube",
"river table",
"workbench"
] | If you’ve been reading Hackaday for any length of time, you’ll know we don’t often cover woodworking projects here. It’s not because we aren’t impressed with the skill and effort that folks put into them, and truth be told, we occasionally we even feel a pang of envy when looking at the final result. It’s just that, you know…they’re made of wood.
But when
[Jay Bowles] of
Plasma Channel
sent in this live edge wooden table
that features not only a pair of custom-made neon tubes but the burned out transistors and ICs from his previous high-voltage exploits — we knew this wasn’t exactly your grandpa’s idea of woodworking. In fact, he wisely offloaded a lot of the dead tree cutting and shaping to the burly gentlemen at the local sawmill so he could better focus his efforts on the sparky bits.
At its core, he’s created what’s generally known as a “river table” — a surface made of two or more pieces of live edge wood (that is, a piece of lumber that features at least one uncut edge) that are linked via a band of colored epoxy which looks like flowing water. It’s not uncommon to embed stones or even fake fish in the epoxy to
really sell the underwater effect
, but this is
Plasma Channel
we’re talking about, so [Jay] had other ideas.
The first step was hitting up a local neon supplier who could fabricate a pair of neon tubes which roughly followed the shape of his epoxy river. While he was waiting for them to be finished, [Jay] played around with a clever experimental rig that let him determine how thick he could pour the epoxy over the tubes before he lost the capacitive coupling effect he was going for. By embedding a short length of neon tube off-center in a block of epoxy, he could see how the thickness impacted his ability to manipulate the plasma with a wave of his hand just by flipping it over.
With the tube placed on clear standoffs, he was able to position it at the ideal depth for the final epoxy pours. It was around this time that he scattered the remains of his previous projects on the “bottom” of the river, so they can spend the rest of their days looking up at his latest technical triumph. We’re not sure if this is to punish the fallen silicon for giving up early or to honor their sacrifice in the name of progress, but in either event, we respect anyone who keeps a jar of blown components laying around for ritualistic applications.
Once the table was assembled, all that was left was to power the thing.
Given his previous projects
, [Jay] had no shortage of existing HV supplies to try out. But not being satisfied with anything in the back catalog, he ended up building a new supply that manages to pump out the required amount of juice while remaining silent (to human ears, at least). The unit is powered by a battery pack cleverly embedded into the legs of the table, and is easy to fiddle with thanks to a pulse-width modulation (PWM) module wired hooked to the input. All the components were then held in place with a wide array of custom brackets courtesy of his newly arrived 3D printer.
There’s a lot to love about this project, and more than a few lessons learned. Whether you’re interested in recreating the
Tron
-like effect of the neon tubes, or have been contemplating your own epoxy-pour worktable and want to see how a first-timer tackles it, this video is a great resource. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579597",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T19:34:11",
"content": "Wood, meh.Neon, oooooh…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6579610",
"author": "Townsend discharge combustible Bisphenol A coated table?",
... | 1,760,372,427.079057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/linux-fu-uefi-booting/ | Linux Fu: UEFI Booting | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"UEFI"
] | Unless your computer is pretty old, it probably uses UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to boot. The idea is that a bootloader picks up files from an EFI partition and uses them to start your operating system. If you use Windows, you get Windows. If you use Linux, there’s a good chance you’ll use Grub which may or may not show you a menu. The problem with Grub is you have to do a lot of configuration to get it to do different things. Granted, distros like Ubuntu have tools that go through and do much of the work for you and if you are satisfied with that, there’s no harm in using Grub to boot and manage multiple operating systems.
An alternative would be
rEFInd
, which is a nice modern UEFI boot manager. If you are still booting through normal (legacy) BIOS, the installation might be a hassle. But, in general, rEFInd, once installed, just automatically picks up most things, including Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems and kernels. The biggest reasons you might change the configuration is if you want to hide some things you don’t care about or change the visual theme.
Basics
A UEFI computer stores boot information in nonvolatile RAM. You can examine this and even make some changes using the Linux utility efibootmgr:
$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0003,0001,0002,0005,0006
Boot0001* UEFI OS
Boot0002* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive
Boot0003* ubuntu
Boot0004* rEFInd Boot Manager
Boot0005* UEFI:Removable Device
Boot0006* UEFI:Network Device
Generally, you won’t want to directly add or delete things using this tool, even though you can. Usually, your operating system takes care of all that. However, it is a pain to pick one partition over the other if you, for example, boot Windows and Linux. You can see from the above dump that I don’t do this, at least not on this computer. However, I do often boot from a removable disk or have multiple kernels or even operating systems installed in different places.
Grub can handle all this, of course. Especially if you use a distribution with a lot of tools, they will scan, looking for things, and rebuild your grub configuration. But if that configuration ever goes bad and you forget to build, look out! Time to boot from a rescue disk, more than likely. Grub is both a boot loader and a boot menu. But rEFInd is a boot menu manager only.
Pros and Cons
There are several reasons you might opt for rEFInd. The biggest practical reason is that it scans for bootable items on every boot. It is also nice looking and can support touchscreens and mice, but not both at the same time. There was an Ask Ubuntu post where the author of rEFInd listed the pros and cons between his code and Grub. His advantages list include:
Scans for new kernels on every boot
Eye candy
Reliable booting fo Windows with secure boot active
Able to launch BIOS-mode bootloaders
Ability to speed up installs if you don’t install Grub at all
Strict enforcement of secure boot policies
Of course, there are also some downsides. Grub is the “official” way to handle things for most distributions and you can assume distros and tools will be compatible with it. It relies primarily on a single developer. Grub is easier to use with networking, LVM, and RAID booting, although these are possible with rEFInd, too. Because rEFInd scans on each boot, there is a brief pause when you boot, of course.
It is possible to have rEFInd boot into Grub, and that can be useful sometimes, but in general, you’ll want to use rEFInd instead of the Grub menus. One exception is if you want an emergency USB drive with rEFInd on it, that might be useful since it can mostly configure itself.
Install
If you use a distro that can handle Ubuntu PPAs, installing the program is simple.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:rodsmith/refind
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install refind
You can also find detailed instructions on installing in special cases on the project’s website. Once you install, you probably don’t have to do anything, but you might want to browse the configuration file (something like /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf). There you can adjust a few things like timeouts, default kernel options, and the like. There are quite a few options, but most of them are commented out.
You can also make manual entries, much like Grub. There are several examples in the default configuration file, but you’ll notice they all have the disabled keyword in them, so you would remove that keyword after making changes to suit you. You can also pick a text-based mode, the default screen resolution, and other parameters. I changed the line to show some tools (like reboot or boot into BIOS setup) that were not on by default. In many cases, you won’t need any changes at all.
If you see entries on the screen you don’t want, highlight them and press the minus sign. Don’t worry, you can manage the “hidden tags” using a menu if you change your mind later.
Be warned that while the system does support secure boot, if you use it, it may need a little tweaking. Here’s the good news. If it doesn’t work, just change the boot order back to boot Grub first and you can troubleshoot from there.
Themes
One fun thing you can do is get different
themes for the program
. These are just collections of artwork used as the banner and as icons for different distributions. For some reason, the program didn’t automatically pick up my Neon with the Neon logo, even though it was present. My simple solution was to replace the default Tux penguin with a copy of the Neon logo.
I’ve read that pressing F10 will screenshot rEFInd, but apparently, I don’t have the latest version, so I had to rely on my phone to take an old-school screenshot. You can see why I changed the penguin logo.
The tools along the bottom let you run a memory test, or reboot and shut down. You can also launch an EFI shell or alter the EFI boot order.
Low Risk
Any time you dink with the booting of your computer, you are taking a risk. However, if you install with Grub, you can always leave it as an option from rEFInd. If you get in big trouble, Grub is still there and you can boot from a rescue medium and use efibootmgr to pick your default Grub setup. The documentation for rEFInd has a good writeup on what the author calls “boot coups” when an operating system — looking at you, Windows — presumptively takes over booting.
If you don’t dual boot, you can probably stick with Grub. It is nice to have a more modern-looking boot menu, but it isn’t that compelling. But if you dual boot with Windows, Mac, or other EFI-capable operating systems, or even if you change kernels often, you should really check out rEFInd.
For some specialized cases, you might want to
check out a specialized fork of rEFInd
, which offers certain additional features. You can find out more about the differences on its home page.
If you want more technical details on UEFI,
here you go
. Of course, as Scotty famously said, “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” UEFI is a big attack target, and
it has been hit before
. | 30 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579569",
"author": "tonytran2015",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T18:30:23",
"content": "Departing from official boot systems may introduce unnecessary security risk. Is it worth it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6579583",
... | 1,760,372,426.91532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/mod-repair-and-maintain-your-cassette-tapes-with-3d-printed-parts/ | Mod, Repair And Maintain Your Cassette Tapes With 3D Printed Parts | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"cassette",
"cassette tape",
"compact cassette",
"tape"
] | The benefit of 3D printers is that they have made it relatively easy to reproduce just about any little plastic thing you might happen to break. If you’re one of the diehards that still has a cassette collection, you might find these 3D prints from Thingiverse useful to repair and maintain any broken tapes you may have.
If you’ve ever stepped on a cassette tape, you’ll know it’s easy to crack the housing and render it unplayable. If you find yourself in this position, you can always 3D print yourself a new cassette tape housing
as created by [Ehans_Makes]
. The housing design only covers the outer parts of the cassette tape, and doesn’t include the reels, screws, or other components. However, it’s perfect for transplanting the guts of a damaged cassette into a new housing to make it playable once again. The creator recommends using Maxell cassette parts with the design, as it was based on a Maxell cassette shell.
For the modders and
m
usique concrèters
out there, [sveltema] designed
a simple 3D printed guide
for creating tape loops of various lengths. Simply adding a few of these guides to a cassette shell will let you wind a longer continuous loop of tape inside a regular cassette shell. Meanwhile, if you simply want to jazz up your next mixtape gift, consider
this cosmetic reel-to-reel mod
from [mschiller] that makes your cassettes look altogether more romantic.
Many called the Compact Cassette dead, and yet it continues to live on with enthusiasts. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about keeping your cassette deck operating at its best, we’ve featured
a masterclass on that very topic
, too! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579516",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T16:51:53",
"content": "In the old days, I’d just buy blank tapes for repair parts. Just find one that was screwed together.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6579522",... | 1,760,372,426.74171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/new-study-tells-us-where-to-hide-when-the-nukes-are-coming/ | New Study Tells Us Where To Hide When The Nukes Are Coming | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest"
] | [
"blast",
"blast pressure",
"nuclear",
"nuclear blast",
"nuclear war",
"radiation",
"survival"
] | Geopolitics is a funny thing. Decades can go by with little concern, only for old grudges to suddenly boil to the surface and get the sabers a-rattlin’. When those sabers happen to be nuclear weapons, it can be enough to have you mulling the value of a bomb shelter in your own backyard.
Yes, every time the world takes a turn for the worse, we start contemplating what we’d do in the event of a nuclear attack. It’s already common knowledge that stout reinforced concrete buildings offer more protection than other flimsier structures. However, a new study has used computer modelling to highlight the best places to hide within such a building
to maximise your chances of survival.
Pick Up The Red Telephone
The first problem in trying to shelter from a nuclear attack is that doing so requires some forward warning. If you’re very well-positioned in life, you might be a senior member of the government who is giving the order for a nuclear attack. If so, you’ll naturally expect return fire from the other people you’ve so cruelly condemned to a fiery death, and can advise those closest to you that they should flee. You might even get several hours to act if this is the case. Alternatively, you might be an early warning system operator who detects missiles on the way with half an hour’s warning. Beyond that, you might get a warning a few minutes out from broadcast TV or your phone, as happened
in Hawaii a few years back.
At the absolute worst case, you might see a bright flash out of a window and realise it’s time to Duck and Cover.
The paper used a simple building layout to test the way a nuclear blast wave effects airflow within a typical sturdy structure. Credit:
Nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors
, research paper
No matter the preparations you make, it’s largely impossible to survive a direct nuclear strike. However, if you’re several kilometers away from the blast, or very lucky with the way you’re masked by structures or terrain, you might have a fair chance of living to see another day. If you’re lucky enough to get to a tough building, ideally made of reinforced concrete, you’ve got a shot at surviving the initial blast. Once you’re inside, you’ll want to pick a safe spot to bunker down,
with a new study published in
Physics of Fluids
investigating the best spots to shelter.
For those in the area surrounding a nuclear explosion, the most immediate risk to life and limb comes from the high-pressure blast wave. This pressure wave can readily destroy weak structures, shatter windows, and send shrapnel flying in all directions. In fact, the original Duck and Cover campaign was intended to help people survive this blast wave, by instructing them to get low where they wouldn’t be hit by flying glass. The new study, though, gives us more granular information on how to survive a blast. The study involved modelling the effect a blast wave would have on a stout reinforced-concrete structure that would be expected to survive a nuclear blast at some distance away. It determined that a nuclear blast wave was so strong as to potentially generate incredibly high airspeeds within a structure that could themselves be harmful to people inside. For example, a blast wave travelling through a window could reflect off walls and even travel around corners, and create incredibly high airspeeds in narrow corridors and other spaces. Airspeeds can reach over 180 m/s, particularly in corridors where pressure effects come into play. These high airspeeds could carry objects and debris, and even lift people off the ground, throwing them around and causing serious injuries in the process.
As the blast wave enters the building, it creates incredibly high-speed airflow within the rooms and corridors inside. This can easily pick up people, slamming them into walls, or hurl dangerous debris around a room. Credit:
Nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors
, research paper
The study’s modelling suggested that when inside a sturdy building, standing in front of windows, doors, and in corridors was the most dangerous. These areas faced the highest airspeeds, presenting the most likelihood of injury. In contrast, taking up a position in the corners of a wall facing the blast could be significantly safer. These positions would be shielded from the worst of the debris flying in through windows, and face lower peak airflows. Of course, it’s important to pick the right wall that’s nearest the blast. Otherwise, you risk standing openly in front of a different window and catching the full force of the blast directly.
Other areas out of the path of destruction, such as rooms without windows, could also prove safe if they’re not subject to a sudden rise in pressure from the blast wave. Underground rooms like basements can also be attractive, but can pose risks of their own. Falling debris or a collapsing upper story can block a trapdoor, making later escape difficult.
Of course, surviving the blast isn’t the be all and end all of getting through your local nuclear apocalypse. This article should just help you survive the first thirty seconds or so. Beyond that, you’ll need to minimise your exposure to ionizing radiation, and secure access to safe sources of food and water. Those topics are beyond the scope of this piece, but are something we may dive into deeper in future. In reality though, when it comes to nuclear war, the truth is as obvious now as it was in 1983:
The only winning move is not to play.
Featured and thumbnail images of
Test House #1
from the Annie bomb tests, US Dept. of Energy. | 70 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579460",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T15:13:53",
"content": "If a nuke strike is imminent, I’d drive to the nearest “point of interest”, for me maybe Ramstein Airbase, and wait for the impact.I won’t wait for a post apocalyptic world to kill me…",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,427.347617 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/addressable-leds-from-a-z80/ | Addressable LEDs From A Z80 | Jenny List | [
"LED Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"neopixel",
"RC2014",
"ws2812",
"z80",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | If you buy WS2812s under the Adafruit NeoPixel brand, you’ll receive the advice that “An 8 MHz processor” is required to drive them. “
Challenge Accepted!
“, says [ShielaDixon], and proceeded to first drive a set from the 7.3 MHz Z80 in an RC2014 retrocomputer, and then repeat the feat from a 3.5 MHz Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
The demos in the videos below the break are all programmed in BASIC, but she quickly reveals that they call a Z80 assembler library which does all the heavy lifting. There’s no microcontroller behind the scenes, save for some glue logic for address decoding, the Z80 is doing all the work. They’re all implemented on a pair of RC2014 extension cards, a bus that has become something of a standard for this type of retrocomputer project.
So the ubiquitous LEDs can be addressed from some surprisingly low-powered silicon, showing that while it might be long in the tooth the Z80 can still do things alongside the new kids. For those of us who had the Sinclair machines back in the day it’s particularly pleasing to see boundaries still being pushed at, as for example in
when a Z80 was (almost) persuaded to have a protected mode
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579929",
"author": "MIKE",
"timestamp": "2023-01-20T11:05:10",
"content": "Interesting, I was expecting using a Z80 SIO to send serial data with precise timing, instead it’s bit-banged.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6580248",... | 1,760,372,427.444784 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/led-driver-circuit-for-safety-hat-sucks-single-aaa-cell-dry/ | LED Driver Circuit For Safety Hat Sucks Single AAA Cell Dry | Donald Papp | [
"LED Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"dc-dc",
"led",
"low power",
"mcp1640",
"power supply",
"safety"
] | [Petteri Aimonen] created
an omnidirectional LED safety light
to cling to his child’s winter hat in an effort to increase visibility during the dark winter months, but the design is also great example of how to use the Microchip MCP1640 — a regulated DC-DC step-up power supply that can run the LEDs off a single AAA cell. The chip also provides a few neat tricks, like single-button on/off functionality that fully disconnects the load, consuming only 1 µA in standby.
[Petteri]’s design delivers 3 mA to each of eight surface-mount LEDs (which he says is actually a bit too bright) for a total of about 20 hours from one alkaline AAA cell. The single-layer PCB is encased in a clear acrylic and polycarbonate enclosure to resist moisture. A transistor and a few passives allow a SPST switch to act as an on/off switch: a short press turns the unit on, and a long press of about a second turns it back off.
One side effect is that the “off” functionality will no longer work once the AAA cell drained too badly, but [Petteri] optimistically points out that this could be considered a feature: when the unit can no longer be turned off, it’s time to replace the battery!
The usual way to suck a battery dry is to use a
Joule Thief
, and while this design also lights LEDs, it offers more features and could be adapted for other uses easily. Interested? [Petteri] offers the schematic, KiCAD file for the PCB, and SVG drawing of the enclosure for download
near the bottom of the project page
. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579308",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T09:55:30",
"content": "Isn’t this a perfect candidate for a rechargeable battery?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6579320",
"author": "Claptrap",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,427.505878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/3d-printed-berlin-uhr-is-an-attractive-germanic-clock/ | 3D Printed Berlin Uhr Is An Attractive Germanic Clock | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"berlin uhr",
"clock",
"Mengenlehreuhr",
"uhr"
] | As much as Big Ben steals the spotlight when it comes to big public clocks, the Berlin Uhr is a much beloved digital communal timepiece.
[RuudK5] developed their own 3D printed replica of this 1980s German icon.
The revision we see today is the [RuddK5]’s third attempt at replicating
the Berlin Uhr
. The clock features a design with four linear elements with a round light on top. The top light is responsible for blinking the seconds. The lowest line has four lights, each indicating one minute, while the next line has eleven lights, marking out five-minute intervals. Above that, the top two lines represent one hour and five hour blocks respectively. It’s a display unlike most other clocks out there, but when you learn it, it’s easy enough to use.
[RuddK5]’s replica relies on addressable LED strips to serve as the individual lighting elements. The strips are placed inside a 3D printed housing that is a scale replica of the real thing. Running the show is an ESP32 microcontroller, which is charged with getting accurate time updates from an NTP server.
Great design really does shine through, and this clock looks just as appealing at the small scale as it does lofted on a pole over the city of Berlin. If you prefer to read out the time in a simpler fashion though, we’ve featured
plenty of clocks like that, as well! | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579243",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T06:48:59",
"content": "It’s kinda like the DMY/MDY problem. When you read that clock, you have to decipher it linearly and then re-order the numbers to make sense. Ten, four, 35, 1. That’s thirty six past two PM. Or is it 22:36? I... | 1,760,372,427.40712 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/soundscape-sculpture-is-pleasing-art-for-your-ears/ | Soundscape Sculpture Is Pleasing Art For Your Ears | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Art",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"Adafruit Feather",
"feather m4",
"feathering",
"music maker feathering",
"sculpture",
"sound",
"soundscape"
] | Artist and self-described “maker of objects” [Daric Gill] is sharing some of the world’s most pleasing and acoustically interesting soundscapes with museum patrons in his latest work, ‘
The Memory Machine: Sound
‘.
Now featured at the
Center of Science and Industry museum
, the interactive stereo soundscape generator resembles three decorated ‘tree trunks’, suspended high above the exhibition floor. When visitors approach the artwork, they are treated to a randomly selected soundscape sample.
The build, which is described in blog form
here
, teases just some of the sixty soundscape samples that can be heard. These include the noisy chattering of crowds underneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the mellow melodies of a meadow high in the Swiss Alps, and the pumping atmosphere of a baseball match played in Yankee Stadium, New York City.
Only the middle trunk reveals the electronic soul of the installation – an Adafruit M4 Feather Express, Music Maker Featherwing and a motion sensor. The flanking trunks house the speakers and amplifier. The motion sensor triggers the microcontroller, which then plays a randomly selected sample from an SD card.
[Daric] went to great lengths to reuse discarded materials, and even cannibalized parts from other sculptures to see his vision through. This focus underpins a substantial amount of woodworking and machining that went into this build, so the full video is certainly worth a watch to see the whole project come together.
Make sure to check out our coverage of other funky installations, like this
mesmerizing ceiling decoration
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579160",
"author": "Daric Gill Studios",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T03:40:39",
"content": "Thank you so much for featuring my work and for all the love in this article. I really appreciate it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6579... | 1,760,372,427.548091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/weatherproof-raspberry-pi-camera-enclosure-in-a-pinch/ | Weatherproof Raspberry Pi Camera Enclosure, In A Pinch | Donald Papp | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"how-to",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"camera",
"cover glass",
"cover slip",
"diy",
"enclosure",
"junction box",
"weatherproof"
] | The Raspberry Pi is the foundation of many IoT camera projects, but enclosures are often something left up to the user. [Mare] found that
a serviceable outdoor enclosure could be made with a trip to the hardware store and inexpensive microscopy supplies
.
A suitably-sized plastic junction box is a good starting point, but it takes more than that to make a functional enclosure.
The main component of the enclosure is a small plastic junction box, but it takes more than a box to make a functional outdoor enclosure. First of all, cable should be run into the box with the help of a cable fitting, and this fitting should be pointed toward the ground when the enclosure is mounted. This helps any moisture drip away with gravity, instead of pooling inconveniently.
All wire connections should be kept inside the enclosure, but if that’s not possible, we have seen
outdoor-sealed wire junctions
with the help of some 3D-printing and silicone sealant. That may help if cable splices are unavoidable.
The other main design concern is providing a window through which the camera can see. [Mare] found that the small Raspberry Pi camera board can be accommodated by drilling a hole into the side of the box, cleaning up the edges, and securing a cover slip (or clover glass) to the outside with an adhesive. Cover slips are extremely thin pieces of glass used to make microscope slides; ridiculously cheap, and probably already in a citizen scientist’s parts bin. They are also fragile, but if the device doesn’t expect a lot of stress it will do the job nicely.
[Mare] uses the Raspberry Pi and camera as part of
Telraam
, an open-source project providing a fully-automated traffic counting service that keeps anonymized counts of vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle activity. Usually such a device is mounted indoors and aimed at a window, but this enclosure method is an option should one need to mount a camera outdoors. There’s good value in
using a Raspberry Pi as a DIY security camera, after all
. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6579270",
"author": "Wenhelt",
"timestamp": "2023-01-19T08:03:10",
"content": "In the long yime of electronics in the wild, my enclosures faced wind, UV, snow, insects and theft. The circuits faced poor contacts, low voltage, electrostatic charges and magnetic pulse from nearby ligh... | 1,760,372,427.606413 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/internal-heating-element-makes-these-pcbs-self-soldering/ | Internal Heating Element Makes These PCBs Self-Soldering | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts"
] | [
"coil",
"ground plane",
"heating",
"pcb",
"pid",
"reflow",
"smd"
] | Surface mount components have been a game changer for the electronics hobbyist, but doing reflow soldering right requires some way to evenly heat the board. You might need to buy a commercial reflow oven — you can cobble one together from an old toaster oven, after all — but you still need
something
, because it’s not like a PCB is going to solder itself. Right?
Wrong. At least if you’re [Carl Bugeja], who came up with
a clever way to make his PCBs self-soldering
. The idea is to use one of the internal layers on a four-layer PCB, which would normally be devoted to a ground plane, as a built-in heating element. Rather than a broad, continuous layer of copper, [Carl] made a long, twisting trace covering the entire area of the PCB. Routing the trace around vias was a bit tricky, but in the end he managed a single trace with a resistance of about 3 ohms.
When connected to a bench power supply, the PCB actually heats up quickly and pretty evenly judging by the IR camera. The quality of the soldering seems very similar to what you’d see from a reflow oven. After soldering, the now-useless heating element is converted into a ground plane for the circuit by breaking off the terminals and soldering on a couple of zero ohm resistors to short the coil to ground.
The whole thing is pretty clever, but there’s more to the story. The circuit [Carl] chose for his first self-soldering board is actually a reflow controller. So once the first board was manually reflowed with a bench supply, it was used to control the reflow process for the rest of the boards in the batch, or any board with a built-in heating element. We expect there will be some limitations on the size of the self-soldering board, though.
We really like this idea, and we’re looking forward to seeing more from [Carl] on this.
Thanks for the tip, [Tobias]. | 53 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578955",
"author": "Cree",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T21:22:31",
"content": "I did not watch the video, I only read the article – but the idea behind this sounds pretty smart to me. Nice trick indeed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,428.186918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/frequency-tells-absolute-temperature/ | Frequency Tells Absolute Temperature | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"semiconductor",
"temperature sensor",
"transistor"
] | It is no secret that semiconductor junctions change their behavior with temperature, and you can use this fact to make a temperature sensor. The problem is that you have to calibrate each device for any particular transistor you want to use as a sensor, even if they have the same part number. Back in
2011
1991, the famous [Jim Williams] noted that while the voltage wasn’t known, the difference between two readings at different current levels would track with temperature in a known way. He exploited this in an application note and, recently, [Stephen Woodward] used the same principle in
an oscillator that can read the temperature
.
The circuit uses an integrator and a comparator. A FET switches between two values of collector current. A comparator drives the FET and also serves as the output. Rather than try to puzzle out the circuit just from the schematic, you can easily simulate it with LT Spice or
Falstad
. The Falstad simulator doesn’t have a way to change the temperature, but you can see it operating. The model isn’t good enough to really read a temperature, but you can see how the oscillation works
You can think of this as a temperature-to-frequency converter. It would be easy to read with, say, a microcontroller and convert the period to temperature. Every 10 microseconds is equal to a degree Kelvin. Not bad for something you don’t have to calibrate.
Thermistors
are another way to measure temperature. Sometimes, you don’t
need a sensor at all. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578900",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T19:44:09",
"content": "I think you mean AN45 from 1991, not 2011.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578901",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T19:... | 1,760,372,428.248354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/retro-gadgets-tired-of-the-beatles-on-8-track-try-the-police/ | Retro Gadgets: Tired Of The Beatles On 8 Track? Try The Police | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"8-track",
"scanner"
] | In the 1970s, 8-track audio players were very popular, especially in cars. For a couple of bucks, you could have the latest album, and you didn’t have to flip the tape in the middle of a drive like you did with a cassette. We’ve seen plenty of 8-tracks and most of us a certain age have even owned a few players. But we couldn’t find anyone who would admit to owning the Bearcat 8 Track Scanner, as seen in the 1979 Popular Electronics ad below.
The ad copy says you can turn your 8-Track player into a 4-channel, 2-band scanner for under $100. Most likely, you needed a crystal for each channel. We aren’t sure where the power came from either, but the bottom says, “no battery required.” We suspect the tape mechanism moving must have spun a generator to power the device, but that seems exotic. There’s bound to be a place to plug in an external antenna, too, so presumably, you don’t mind a few wires and we would have guessed there was an external cigarette lighter plug.
Honestly, we wondered if this was one of those things that never came to market, but you can occasionally find them on sale for about $100 or so. You can find a picture at
RigPix
, too.
Of course, cassette AUX adapters were quite common, which fed audio from a phone or MP3 player into your tape heads. Same idea. There were also cassettes that were Bluetooth adapters, but all of those we know of took a tiny battery. We’ve seen those
converted to 8-track
, also. Want to see inside an 8-track?
Not a problem
.
But have you seen one of these in the flesh? Let us know. | 48 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578833",
"author": "MikeIA",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T18:10:42",
"content": "The contacts that sensed the metal tape that joined the end of the audio tape together to trigger the head to move to the next pair of tracks provided enough watts to power the audio circuits in those cass... | 1,760,372,427.973633 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/3d-printing-giant-lego-like-blocks-to-build-big-toys/ | 3D Printing Giant LEGO-Like Blocks To Build Big Toys | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"ivan miranda",
"large scale 3d printing",
"lego"
] | [Ivan Miranda] is all about big 3D prints. He’s now set about printing giant blocks in the vein of LEGO Technic to build himself a full-sized rideable go kart. The project is still in progress,
but [Ivan] has made great progress with his design.
The benefit of 3D printing giant blocks like this is that they open up the possibilities for rapid prototyping of big projects. It’s already easy to snap together a little LEGO tank, boat, or car at the small scale. Bigger blocks would make that possible for larger builds, too. Plus, once you’ve got plenty of blocks, there’s no need to wait for the 3D printer to churn out parts. You can just play with your toolbox of existing components.
[Ivan]’s design has faced some teething problems along the way. He struggled to solve various coupling problems for joining the blocks in various orientations, and made iterative changes to solve the issue. Eventually, he realized if he just eliminated an offset between the top and side holes of his beam design, everything would neatly work out. Plus, he learned that he could print a tiny scale version of his big blocks in order to test out designs without using as much plastic.
We love the idea of having a garage full of adult-sized LEGO-style blocks for big projects. The only caveat is that you really need
a giant printer like [Ivan’s]
to make them. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578796",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T16:58:52",
"content": "I certainly hope he’s going to make that back into filament because if not then that’s an epic waste of plastic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "657... | 1,760,372,427.878766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/punycodes-explained/ | Punycodes Explained | Matthew Carlson | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"internet hacks",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"computer security",
"dns",
"punycode",
"unicode",
"url"
] | When you’re restricted to ASCII, how can you represent more complex things like emojis or non-Latin characters? One answer is Punycode, which is a way to represent Unicode characters in ASCII. However, while you could technically encode the raw bits of Unicode into characters, like
Base64
, there’s a snag. The Domain Name System (DNS) generally requires that hostnames are case-insensitive, so whether you type in HACKADAY.com, HackADay.com, or just hackaday.com, it all goes to the same place.
[A. Costello] at the University of California, Berkley proposed the idea of Punycode in
RFC 3492
in March 2003. It outlines a simple algorithm where all regular ASCII characters are pulled out and stuck on one side with a separator in between, in this case, a hyphen. Then the Unicode characters are encoded and stuck on the end of the string.
First, the numeric codepoint and position in the string are multiplied together. Then the number is encoded as a
Base-36
(a-z and 0-9) variable-length integer. For example, a greeting and the Greek for thanks, “
Hey, ευχαριστώ”
becomes “
Hey, -mxahn5algcq2″
. Similarly, the beautiful city of
München
becomes
mnchen-3ya.
As you might notice in the Greek example, there is nothing to help the decoder know which base-36 characters belong to which original Unicode symbol. Thanks to the variable-length integers, each significant digit is recognizable, as there are thresholds for what numbers can be encoded. A finite-state machine comes to the rescue. The RFC gives some exemplary pseudocode that outlines the algorithm. It’s pretty clever, utilizing a bias that rolls as the decoding goes along. As it is always increasing, it is a monotonic function with some clever properties.
Of course, to prevent regular URLs from being interpreted as punycodes, URLs have a special little prefix
xn--
to let the browser know that it’s a code. This includes all Unicode characters, so emojis are also valid. So why can’t you go to
xn--mnchen-3ya.de
? If you type it into your browser or click the link, you might see your browser transform that confusing letter soup into a beautiful URL (not all browsers do this). The biggest problem is Unicode itself.
While Unicode offers incredible support for making the hundreds of languages used around the web every day possible and, dare we say, even somewhat straightforward, there are some warts. Cyrillic, zero-width letters and other Unicode oddities allow those with more nefarious intentions to set up a domain that, when rendered,
displays as a well-known website
. The SSL certificates are valid, and everything else checks out. Cyrillic includes characters that visually look identical to their Latin counterparts but are represented differently. The opportunities for hackers and phishing attempts are too great, and so far, punycodes haven’t been allowed on most domains.
For example, can you tell the difference between these two domains?
hackaday.com
hаckаday.com
Some browsers will render the hover text as the Punycode, and some will keep it as its UTF-8 equivalent. The “a” (U+0061) has been replaced by the Cyrillic “a” (U+0430), which most computers render with the exact same character.
This is an
IDN homograph attack
, where they’re relying on a user to click on a link that they can’t tell the difference between. In 2001, two security researchers published a paper on the subject, registering “microsoft.com” with Cyrillic characters as a proof of concept. In response, top-level domains were recommended to only accept Unicode characters containing Latin characters and characters from languages used in that country. As a result, many of the common US-based top-level domains don’t accept Unicode domain names at all. At least the non-displayable characters are specifically banded by the ICANN, which avoids a large can of worms, but having visually identical but bit-wise different characters out there leads to confusion.
However, mitigations to these types of attacks are slowly being rolled out. As a first layer of protection, Firefox and Chromium-based browsers only show the non-Punycode version if all the characters are from the same language. Some browsers convert all Unicode URLs to Punycode. Other techniques use optical character recognition (OCR) to determine whether a URL can be interpreted differently. Outside the browser, links sent by text message or in emails, might not have the same smarts, and you won’t know until you’ve opened them in your browser. And by then, it’s too late.
Challenges aside, will Punycodes get their time in the sun? Will Hackaday ever get ☠️📅.com? Who knows. But in the meantime, we can enjoy a clever solution proposed in 2003 to the thorny problem of domain name internationalization that we still haven’t quite solved. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578744",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T15:35:48",
"content": "I wonder what smart hackaday reader first claims xn--h4hw230o.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578773",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"ti... | 1,760,372,428.305859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/spray-on-keyboard-is-as-light-as-it-gets/ | Spray-On Keyboard Is As Light As It Gets | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"gesture",
"keyboard",
"nanowires",
"wearable"
] | We’ve all seen those ‘nothing’ keyboards, where the keys themselves are not much more than projected lasers, and users are asked to ritually beat their poor fingertips into the table — which has little give and even less clack. Well, a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have
come up with a way to eschew the keyboard altogether
.
Essentially, the user wears a thin, breathable mesh of silver nanowires coated in gold, which is then embedded in a polyurethane coating. The mesh is sprayed onto their forearms and hands on the spot, and the mesh terminates in a small enclosure that is also worn on the skin. This contains a small Bluetooth unit that beams data back to a computer, a machine, or potentially another user wearing the same type of unit.
As the skin stretches and contorts, the mesh senses small electrical changes within. These changes become meaningful with applied AI, which maps the changes to specific gestures and manual tasks. To do this, the team started with teaching it to distinguish between patterns from tasks like typing on a phone, typing on a regular keyboard, and then holding and interacting with six differently-shaped simple objects.
The team isn’t stopping there — they plan to try capturing a larger range of motion by using the nanomesh on multiple fingers. In addition to facilitating communication between humans and machines, this could leave a huge fingerprint on gaming and VR. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578618",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T12:31:14",
"content": "I hope they invented something skin friendly, because standard band aids give me a rash after a few hours.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578691",
... | 1,760,372,428.493425 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/grass-gauge-tells-you-when-the-lawnmowers-catcher-is-full/ | Grass Gauge Tells You When The Lawnmower’s Catcher Is Full | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"garden",
"lawnmower",
"mower"
] | If you’re not mowing your lawn regularly, you’re probably familiar with the hassle of overfilling your catcher. Grass clippings end up scattered everywhere, and you end up with a messy yard after all your hard work. [Dominic Bender] designed a mower fill gauge to eliminate this problem
which shows you when your catcher is getting full.
The concept behind the gauge’s operation is simple. Catcher-based mowers rely on airflow from the spinning blades to carry grass into the catcher. That airflow is, in this case, also used to push up a flap mounted in the top of the catcher. As the catcher fills with grass, that airflow no longer reaches the flap, which sinks down, indicating the catcher is getting full. The basic design is a simple 3D printed flap and housing that uses a short piece of filament as a hinge. There’s also a small mesh guard to stop the flap getting clogged by the incoming grass clippings.
If you’re the forgetful sort, or your enthusiastic children aren’t always emptying the catcher when they should, this gauge might be a useful tool for you. Alternatively, consider robotizing your mowing in the vein of
other builds we’ve seen,
including one by
yours truly
. If you’ve got your own nifty gardening hacks, be sure to
drop us a line! | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578495",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T09:05:38",
"content": "I remember something very similar on lawn mowers in the 70’s and 80’s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578511",
"author": "mh",
"times... | 1,760,372,428.369112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/one-size-fits-all-wrench-points-to-a-nut-job/ | One-Size-Fits-All Wrench Points To A Nut Job | Anool Mahidharia | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adjustable wrench",
"alligator wrench",
"patent",
"tool",
"vintage",
"wrench"
] | When [Hand Tool Rescue] came across a 1919 patent for a one size fits all wrench,
he couldn’t help but recreate it
. Described in the patent as “a new, original, ornamental design for a wrench”, the wrench had a slot for possibly every fastener that the inventor could think of. Not only did it have slots for several hexagonal fasteners, but many others for octagonal, square and even a pentagonal fastener.
[Hand Tool Rescue] reckons there are 47 slots for various sizes and types of fasteners, not counting the ones whose purpose he could not fathom. Just in case he missed any fastener sizes, the original designer decided to add an alligator wrench at the other end of the handle, potentially negating the need for any of the other slots. The tool even features a sharp edge along one of the sides, possibly for use as a scraper of some kind.
Why such a crazy design was patented, or what were the functions of some of its slots are questions that will likely remain unanswered. At best, we can all take guesses at solving the mystery of this tool. [Hand Tool Rescue] scales the original drawing such that one of the slots has a width of 1 inch, and then uses that as a template to recreate the wrench. He starts with a slab of 3/8th inch thick, grade 4140 steel, which has a high strength to weight ratio and can be case hardened after machining, making it suitable for this ornamental project.
He then embarks on his journey of excessive milling, drilling, filing, band sawing and shaping (using a slotting attachment), totaling about 11 hours worth of drudgery. Of course, one could argue that it would have been much easier, and accurate, to have used modern machining methods. And we are spoilt for choices here among laser cutting, water jet cutting or even EDM machining, any of which would have done the job faster, cleaner and more precisely. But we guess [Hand Tool Rescue] wanted to stick to traditional methods as would have been available in 1919 to an inventor who wanted to make a prototype of his awesome, all in one wrench.
If you can help explain the overall function of this wrench, or identify some of the more vague slots in it, then [Hand Tool Rescue] would be happy to get the feedback. And talking about less desirable wrenches, check out how this
Sliding Wrench Leaves a Little to be Desired
.
Thanks, [Carson] for going down a wrenches rabbit hole and coming up with this tip. | 37 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578405",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T06:48:57",
"content": "47 ways to damage a screw head, interesting ! But i admit it looks good",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578629",
"author": "chango",
"... | 1,760,372,428.621788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/turns-out-lighting-can-strike-twice-with-a-little-help/ | Turns Out, Lightning Can Strike Twice, With A Little Help | Al Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"laser",
"lightning"
] | Few things are more impressive than a lighting strike. Lightning can carry millions of volts and while it can be amazing to watch, it is somewhat less amazing to be hit by lightning. Rockets and antennas often have complex lightning protection systems to try to coax the electricity to avoid striking where you don’t want it. However, a European consortium has announced they’ve used a very strong laser to
redirect lightning
in Switzerland. You can see a video below, but you might want to turn on the English closed captions.
Lightning accounts for as many as 24,000 deaths a year worldwide and untold amounts of property and equipment damage. Traditionally, your best bet for protection was not to be the tallest thing around. If the tallest thing around is a pointy metal rod in the ground, that’s even better. But this new technique could guide lightning to a specific ground point to have it avoid causing problems. Since lightning rods protect a circular area roughly the radius of their height, having a laser that can redirect beams to the area of a lightning rod would allow shorter rods to protect larger areas.
The idea is simple. Electricity follows a path of least resistance. When electric charges are high enough to cause the air to ionize, that creates lightning. However, if a laser ionizes the air preemptively, the lightning will be prone to follow that path instead of creating a new one.
You won’t be able to replicate this with your favorite laser pointer. The laser used is a 1 kW laser that puts out a one picosecond pulse. A Swiss radio tower at a height of over 2.5 km was monitored for lightning strikes both with and without the laser system. The increased protection was modest, only 60 meters more than the lightning rod alone. However, the team wants to shoot for a 500-meter increase.
We don’t know if this will be super practical for most lightning protection jobs. We doubt that even
[styropyro’s] laser
is up to the task. If you want more
background on the natural phenomena
, [Maya Posch] took us through it last year. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578283",
"author": "Procrastineer",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T03:25:52",
"content": "Lighting -> lightningI think that’s what you mean in the title and first sentence… And in a few more sentences.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,428.430217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/kirby-sucks-literally/ | Kirby Sucks, Literally | Anool Mahidharia | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"fume extractor",
"fume hood",
"fumes",
"game boy",
"HAL Laboratory",
"Kirby",
"nintendo",
"solder fume extractor"
] | What’s common between one of the most legendary video game characters of all time and a fume extractor ? They both suck. [Chris Borge] is not an electronics hobbyist and only does some occasional soldering. This made his regular fume extractor bulky and inconvenient to position where needed. What could serve him better would be a small extractor that could be attached to a clip or an arm on his helping hand accessory. Being unable to find an off-the-shelf product or a suitable 3d printed design that he liked, he built the
Kirby 40mm Fume Extractor
.
His initial idea was for a practical design more suited to his specific needs. But somewhere along the way, the thought of a
Kirby
fan popped up in his head, and it was too good an idea to pass up. Several Kirby fan designs already existed, but none that satisfied [Chris]. Getting from paper sketch to CAD model required quite an effort but the result was worth the trouble, and the design was quite faithful to the original character features. The main body consists of two halves that screw together, and an outlet grill at the back. The body has space for a 40 mm fan and a 10 mm charcoal filter in the front. The wires come out the back, and connect directly to a power supply barrel jack. Arms and eyes are separate pieces that get glued to the body. The feet glue to an intermediate piece, which slides in a dove tail grove in the body. This allows Kirby to be tilted at the right position for optimum smoke extraction.
While Kirby served the purpose, it still didn’t meet the original requirement of attaching to a clip or arm on the helping hand. So [Chris] quickly designed a
revised, no-frills model
which is essentially a square housing to hold the fan and the filter. It has a flexible stand so it can be placed on a bench. And it can also be attached to the helping hand, making it a more utilitarian design. This design has the charcoal filter behind the fan, but he also has
a third design
for folks who prefer to have the filter at the front.
He now had a more useful, practical fume extractor, but he couldn’t bring himself to discard his original Kirby. So he printed a couple more 3D parts so that Kirby could fit the end of his vacuum cleaner hose. Now, Kirby sits on his bench, and helps suck up all the bits and bobs of trash on his workbench. We’re sure Kirby is quite pleased with his new role. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578199",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T00:42:00",
"content": "You left out a pun regarding a Kirby vacuum cleaner.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578865",
"author": "James... | 1,760,372,428.540129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/megahex-will-give-you-robo-arachnophobia/ | Megahex Will Give You Robo-Arachnophobia | Navarre Bartz | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"excavator",
"hexapod",
"Hexapod robot",
"robot",
"spider bot"
] | Some projects start with a relatively simple idea that quickly turns into a bit of a nightmare when you get to the actual implementation. [Hacksmith Industries] found this to be the case when they decided to build a
giant rideable hexapod, Megahex
. [YouTube]
After seeing a video of a small excavator that could move itself small distances with its bucket, the team thought they could simply weld six of them together and hook them to a controller. What started as a three month project quickly spiraled into a year and a half of incremental improvements that gave them just enough hope to keep going forward. Given how many parts had to be swapped out before they got the mech walking, one might be tempted to call this
Theseus’
Hexapod.
Despite all the issues getting to the final product, the Megahex is an impressive build. Forward motion and rotation on something with legs this massive is a truly impressive feat. Does the machine last long in this workable, epic state? Spoilers: no. But, the crew learned a lot and sometimes that’s still a good outcome from a project.
If you’re looking for more hexapod fun, checkout
Stompy
, another rideable hexapod, or
Megapod
, a significantly smaller 3D-printed machine. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578063",
"author": "KC",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T21:10:08",
"content": "Add two more legs, four rocket launchers, and a fish… and you’ll have the beginnings of a Factorio Spidertron.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6578144",... | 1,760,372,428.690954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/from-a-6502-breadboard-computer-to-lode-runner-and-beyond/ | From A 6502 Breadboard Computer ToLode RunnerAnd Beyond | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"6551",
"emulator",
"Lode Runner",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"vga",
"video"
] | As disruptive and generally unpleasant as the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 were, they often ended up being a catalyst for significant personal growth. That was often literal growth, thanks to stress eating, but others, such as [Eric Badger], used the time to add skills to his repertoire and build
a breadboard 6502 computer and so much more
.
For those of you looking for a single endpoint to this story, we’re sorry to disappoint — this isn’t really one of those stories. Rather, it’s a tale of starting as a hardware newbie with
a [Ben Eater] 6502 breadboard computer kit
, and taking it much, much beyond. Once the breadboard computer kit was assembled, [Eric] was hooked, and found himself relentlessly expanding it. At some point, he decided to get the classic game
Lode Runner
going on his computer; this led to a couple of iterations of video cards, including a foray away from the breadboards and into PCB design. That led to a 6502 emulator build, and a side quest of a Raspberry Pi Pico
Lode Runner
appliance. This naturally led [Eric] to dip a toe into the world of 3D printing, because why not?
Honestly, we lost track of the number of new skills [Eric] managed to add to his toolkit in this video, and we’re sure this isn’t even a final accounting — there’s got to be something he missed. It’s great stuff, though, and quite inspirational — there’s no telling where you’ll end up when you start messing around with hardware hacking.
Thanks to [Hari Wiguna], whose jaw was dropped by this one. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6578480",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2023-01-18T08:48:12",
"content": "The video is amazing good :-) Rebuilding a cold war era game in a great exploratory hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6613911",
"author":... | 1,760,372,428.730421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/supercon-2022-all-aboard-the-ss-mapr-with-sherry-chen/ | Supercon 2022: All Aboard The SS MAPR With Sherry Chen | Matthew Carlson | [
"cons",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Robots Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"2022 Superconference",
"autonomous boat",
"eco",
"Hackaday SuperConference",
"water quality"
] | How do you figure out what is in a moving body of water over a mile wide? For those in charge of assessing the water quality of the Delaware river, this is a real problem. Collecting the data required to evaluate the water quality was expensive and time-consuming, taking over six years. Even then, the data was relatively sparse, with just a few water quality stations and only one surface sample for every six miles of river.
Sherry Chen, Quinn Wu, Vanessa Howell, Eunice Lee, Mia Mansour, and Frank Fan teamed up to create a solution, and the SS MAPR was the result. At Hackaday Supercon 2022, Sherry outlined the mission, why it was necessary, and their journey toward an autonomous robot boat. What follows is a fantastic guide and story of a massive project coming together. There are plans, evaluations, and tests for each component.
Sherry and the team first started by defining what was needed. It needed to be cheap, easy to use, and able to sample from various depths in a well-confined bounding box. It needed to run for four hours, be operated by a single person, and take ten samples across a 1-mile (2 km) section of the river. Some of the commercial solutions were evaluated, but they found none of them met the requirements, even ignoring their high costs. They selected a multi-hull style boat with off-the-shelf pontoons for stability and cost reasons.
From a tech standpoint, they settled on a Raspberry Pi to provide the navigation and UI, an XBee module for wireless communication, and a mbed LPC1768 for low-level control. The Pi and the mbed talk to each other over a serial connection, and the XBee module allows an onshore operator to control the boat. The SS MAPR has a submersible pump that can be lowered and dispensed into a rotating collection tray for sample collection. The team validated that the selected motor could pump water up 45 feet into the correct collection tray using some math and experimentation.
One problem that arose was handling the probe being pushed at an angle by the current to the point where it leaves the one cubic meter sampling volume. After testing in a pool to check the math, sounding weights were the answer. Additionally, the team added a boosting and filtering circuit on both ends to account for signal integrity issues that may arise when sending probe data over 50+ feet.
To verify that the boat could maintain its position within two meters over 20 minutes, the team put it in the nearby Schuylkill river. They then shot footage from a drone, referencing landmarks to ensure it didn’t deviate outside the required radius. Once PID navigation and the UI were primarily solved, the last major decision was a power source. They needed almost 400 W at a runtime of 4 hours (1.6 kWh). They looked at building battery packs or using lead-acid batteries when their advisor proposed using a small gasoline generator. While it required some retooling to ensure the generator didn’t get wet, the generator was the easiest solution. Seeing the boat putter around collecting samples must have been incredibly validating for the whole team.
Overall, it is a fantastic journey through developing something useful. The setbacks, successes, and processes are described in excellent detail. The whole experience is riveting and well-presented. The result inspires us to go out and make something wonderfully helpful and is proof positive that a small team of smart engineers can help change the world for the better.
(Editor’s note, corrected 1600kw to 1.6kWh) | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577937",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T18:24:52",
"content": "> They needed almost 400 W at a runtime of 4 hours (1600 kw).What on earth does that mean?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6577946",
"author":... | 1,760,372,428.901159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/hands-on-museum-exhibit-brings-electromagnetism-to-life/ | Hands-On Museum Exhibit Brings Electromagnetism To Life | Robin Kearey | [
"Art",
"Science"
] | [
"CRT monitor",
"magnetism",
"magnets",
"museum exhibit"
] | Magnets, how do they work? Although the quantum mechanics behind ferromagnetism are by no means easy, a few simple experiments can give you a good grasp of how magnets attract and repel each other, and show how they interact with electric phenomena. [Niklas Roy] built an exhibit for the Technorama science museum in Switzerland that packs a bunch of such electromagnetic experiments in a single package,
appropriately called the
Visitors Magnet
.
The exhibit consists of a big magnet-shaped enclosure that contains a variety of demonstrators that are all powered by magnets. They range from simple compasses to clever magnetic devices we find in the world around us: flip-dot displays for instance, on which you can toggle the pixels by passing a magnet over them. You can even visualize magnetic field lines by using magnetic viewing film, or turn varying fields into audio through a modified telephone receiver.
Another classic demonstrator of electromagnetism is a color CRT monitor, which here displays a video feed coming from a camera hanging directly overhead. Passing a magnet along the screen makes all kind of hypnotizing patterns and colors, amplified even more by the video feedback loop. [Niklas] also modified the picture tube with an additional coil, connected to a hand-cranked generator: this allows visitors to rotate the image on the screen by generating an AC current, neatly demonstrating the interaction between electricity and magnetism.
The
Visitors Magnet
is a treasure trove of big and small experiments, which might not all withstand years of use by museum guests. But that’s fine — [Niklas] designed the exhibit to be easy to maintain and repair, and expects the museum to replace worn-out experiments now and then to keep the experience fresh. He knows a thing or two about designing engaging museum exhibits, with a portfolio that includes
vector image generators
,
graffiti robots
and
a huge mechanical contraption that plays musical instruments
. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577864",
"author": "lePetomane",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T16:59:58",
"content": "Back when I TAed a physiology lab course for pre-meds, the first lab was how to calibrate the oscilloscope used in the next few labs. Occasionally, I know not how, a magnet would adhere to the metal ca... | 1,760,372,428.951005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/all-about-usb-c-high-speed-interfaces/ | All About USB-C: High-Speed Interfaces | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware",
"Slider"
] | [
"altmode",
"displayport",
"Thunderbolt",
"Type-C",
"USB 3",
"usb 3.0",
"USB 3.1",
"USB C",
"USB Type-C",
"USB-C PD",
"virtuallink"
] | One amazing thing about USB-C is its high-speed capabilities. The pinout gives you four high-speed differential pairs and a few more lower-speed pairs, which let you pump giant amounts of data through a connector smaller than a cent coin. Not all devices take advantage of this capability, and they’re not required to – USB-C is designed to be accessible for every portable device under the sun. When you have a device with high-speed needs exposed through USB-C, however, it’s glorious just how much USB-C can give you, and how well it can work.
The ability to get a high-speed interface out of USB-C is called an Alternate Mode, “altmode” for short. The three altmodes you can encounter nowadays are USB3, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, there’s a few that have faded into obscurity like HDMI and VirtualLink, and some are up and coming like USB4. Most altmodes require digital USB-C communication, using a certain kind of messages over the PD channel. That said, not all of them do – the USB3 is the simplest one. Let’s go through what makes an altmode tick.
The C In “USB-C” Stands For “Capable”
If you’ve seen the pinout, you’ve seen the high-speed pins. Today, I’d like to show you what interfaces you can get out of those pins nowadays. This is not a complete or extensive list – for instance, I won’t be talking about stuff like USB4, in part because I don’t understand it well enough nor do I have experience with it; that, and it’s certain we’ll get more USB-C-equipped high-speed devices in the future. Plus, USB-C is flexible enough that a hacker could expose Ethernet or SATA over it in a USB-C-compliant way – and if that’s what you’re looking for, perhaps this overview is what helps you figure it out.
USB3
USB3 is very, very simple – you have one TX and one RX pair, and while the transmission speeds are way higher than USB2, they’re manageable for a hacker. If you use a multi-layer PCB with impedance-control for USB3 signals and treat your diffpairs with respect, your USB3 connection will generally work.
A high-speed connection: socket-equipped device on the left, captive-cable- or plug-equipped device on the right. If you want to add a USB-C USB3-capable plug onto a flashdrive, the “CC logic” on the right consists of a single resistor.
With USB3 over USB-C, not much changes – you will have a mux for handling the rotation, but that’s about it. USB3 muxes are abundant, so you’ll hardly ever have a problem if you’re ever to add USB3-capable USB-C on your board. There’s also dual-link USB3, using two USB3 links in parallel to increase throughput, but hackers will generally neither encounter nor need this one, and this territory tends to be better covered by Thunderbolt. Want to convert a USB3 device to USB-C? All you really need is a mux. If you were thinking of putting a MicroUSB 3.0 connector on your board for a high-speed device of yours, I politely but firmly ask you to reconsider and put a USB-C socket and a VL160 on there instead.
If you’re designing a plug-equipped USB3 device, you don’t even need a mux for rotation handling – you don’t need any rotation detection, in fact. A single, non-monitored 5.1 kΩ resistor will be enough for building a USB3 flashdrive that plugs directly into a USB-C port, or making a USB-C male to USB-A 3.0 female adapter. On the socket side, you can avoid using a mux
if you have a spare USB3 connection to sacrifice,
though that’s not a wonderful trade to make, of course. I’m not aware of dual-link USB3 enough to say if such a connection is USB3 dual-link capable, but I see “no” as more likely of an answer than “yes”!
DisplayPort
DisplayPort (DP) is a wonderful interface for connecting high-resolution displays – it’s been overtaking HDMI in desktop space, dominating the embedded display space in its eDP form, and provides for high resolutions over a single cable, often better than HDMI can. It’s convertable to DVI or HDMI with a cheap adapter using a standard called DP++, and it’s not as royalty-encumbered as HDMI is. It makes sense that the VESA consortium has worked with USB group to implement DisplayPort support, especially given that DisplayPort transmitters in SoCs have been getting more and more popular.
If you’re using a dock with HDMI or VGA output, it’s using the DisplayPort altmode under the hood. More and more often, monitors come with DisplayPort over USB-C inputs, and thanks to a feature called MST, you can chain monitors, giving you a single-cable multi-monitor configuration – unless you’re using a Macbook, as Apple
refuses to support MST in MacOS.
PinePhone using DisplayPort output support for connecting a HDMI monitor through a dock
Also, fun fact – the DP altmode is one of the only altmodes that uses SBU pins, which are repurposed for the DisplayPort AUX pair. The overall lack of USB-C pins also meant that DP config pins had to be omitted, excluding the DP++ HDMI/DVI compatibility mode, and as a result, all the USB-C DP to HDMI adapters are actually active DP-HDMI converters in disguise – as opposed to DP++, which lets you use level shifters for HDMI support.
If you want to tinker with DisplayPort, you might need a DP-supporting mux, but most importantly, you’ll need to be able to send custom PD messages. First off, the whole “offering/requesting DP altmode” part is done through PD – resistors are not enough. Plus, there was no free pin for HPD, a crucial signal in DisplayPort, and as such, hotplug events and interrupts are sent as messages over the PD channel instead. That said, it’s not terribly hard to implement, and I’m looking at making a hacker-friendly implementation – until then, if you need DP or HDMI out of a USB-C port with DP altmode, there are some chips, like the CYPD3120, which let you write a firmware to do that.
A great thing that makes the DP altmode stand out – with four high-speed lanes on USB-C, this altmode allows combining a USB3 connection on one side of the USB-C port and a two-lane DisplayPort connection on the other. This is how all of the “USB3 ports, peripherals and a HDMI output” docks work. If the dual-lane resolution is limiting for you, you can get a four-lane adapter too – there will be no data transfer because of lack of USB3, but you will be able to get higher resolutions or framerates through two additional DisplayPort lanes.
My take – the DisplayPort altmode is straight up one of the best things about USB-C, and while the cheapest (or most mis-designed) of laptops and phones don’t support it, it’s a joy to have a device that does. Of course, sometimes a large company will straight up take the joy away, like Google did.
Google explicitly disabled it in the kernel during development.
https://t.co/4QyMitc0Hq
No reason given.
Qualcomm chips since the 835 natively support DisplayPort Alt Mode.
https://t.co/Bv94GsqLFL
There's not even a licensing fee involved.
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman)
October 31, 2019
On that note, let’s talk about the most complex altmode of them all.
Thunderbolt
Not all is good in Thunderbolt land
On USB-C specifically, you can get Thunderbolt 3 – soon, Thunderbolt 4, too, but that’s fiction for now. Thunderbolt 3 is an initially proprietary specification that was eventually open-sourced by Intel. Evidently, they didn’t open-source it enough or there’s a different caveat to it, since Thunderbolt 3 devices in the wild are still being built using exclusively Intel chips, and my guess is that lack of competition is what causes pricetags firmly in triple digit territory. Why would you look for Thunderbolt devices in the first place? Aside from higher speeds, there’s a killer feature.
You can get PCIe passthrough over Thunderbolt – up to a 4x wide link, too! This has been a hot topic among people who want eGPU support or fast external storage in form of NVMe drives, and some hackers use it for PCIe-connected FPGAs. If you have two computers (say, two laptops) which support Thunderbolt, you can also link them over a Thunderbolt-capable cable – this creates a high-speed network interface between the two, with no extra components required. Oh, and of course, Thunderbolt can easily tunnel DisplayPort and USB3 within itself. The tech between Thunderbolt is extremely powerful, and tasty for power users.
That said, all this coolness comes at a cost of proprietary and complex technological stack. Thunderbolt is not something that a lone hacker can easily build upon – though, someone ought to try it one day. And, even though the Thunderbolt docks have a wonderful amount of features, the software side of things is often hit and miss, especially when it comes to things like trying to make sleep mode on your laptop work without your eGPU crashing your kernel. If that hasn’t been apparent by now, I’m anxiously waiting for Intel to get it together.
Muxes? What Muxes?
I keep saying “muxes”. What are those? In short, that’s the part that helps handle high-speed signal swapping depending on the USB-C rotation.
The high-speed lanes are the part of USB-C that’s the most impacted by port rotation. If your USB-C port uses high-speed lanes,
it will need a mux (multiplexer) IC
that manages two possible USB-C rotations – matching orientations of ports on both ends and the cable to the actual high-speed receivers and transmitters inside devices being connected. Sometimes these muxes are internal to a high-speed chip if it was developed with USB-C in mind, but a lot of the times they’re a separate chip. Looking to add high-speed USB-C support to a device that doesn’t yet have it? A mux will be a core element for making your high-speed communications work.
If your device has a USB-C socket with high-speed lanes, it needs a mux – captive-cable and plug-equipped devices don’t need it. As a rule, if you use a cable to connect two high-speed devices with USB-C sockets, both of them need muxes – managing cable rotation is each device’s responsiblity. On both sides, the mux (or a PD controller with a mux connected to it) will monitor the CC pin orientation and act accordingly. There are quite a few of these muxes for different purposes, too – depending on what you want out of a port.
You will see USB3-intended muxes in cheap laptops that only implement USB 3.0 on the Type-C port, and if it supports DisplayPort, you will have a mux that has extra inputs to mix those signals in. In laptops with fancier ports that implement Thunderbolt, the mux will be built into the Thunderbolt chip. For hackers developing with USB-C that can’t reach Thunderbolt or don’t need it, TI and VLI offer quite a few good muxes for all purposes. For instance, I’ve recently been playing with DisplayPort over USB-C, and
VL170
(seemingly 1:1 clone of TI HD3SS460) looks like a wonderful chip for combined DisplayPort + USB3 purpose.
DisplayPort-capable USB-C muxes like HD3SS460 don’t do CC pin management and rotation detection themselves, but that is a reasonable limitation – you need to do fairly application-specific PD comms for DisplayPort, which quickly outgrows what a mux can do for you. Are you satisfied with USB3, where PD communications aren’t required? VL161 is a simple chip for USB3 muxing that has a polarity input, expecting you to do polarity detection yourself.
If you don’t want to do polarity detection either – is analog, 5V-only PD enough for your USB3 needs? Use something like
the VL160
– it will do sink and source analog PD, handling power and high-speed lane rotation all in one. This is the real “I want USB3 on USB-C and I want everything managed for me” IC; for instance, the VL160 is what the recent
open-source HDMI capture card
uses for its USB-C port. To be fair, though, I don’t have to single out the VL160 –
there’s dozens of such ICs
; “USB3 mux for USB-C that does everything” is probably the most popular kind of USB-C-related IC there is.
Planned, But Abandoned
There’s a few abandoned USB-C altmodes. The first one I won’t shed a tear over – it’s the HDMI altmode; and it just puts HDMI connector pins onto USB-C connector pins. It would give you HDMI over USB-C, and it seems to have been used on smartphones for a brief period of time. However, having to compete with the easily-convertible-to-HDMI DisplayPort altmode whereas HDMI-DP conversion is typically costly, inability to be combined with USB 3.0 since HDMI requires four differential pairs, and the HDMI licensing baggage seem to have driven the HDMI altmode into the ground. It’s my sincere belief that it ought to remain there, as I don’t believe our world could be improved by adding more HDMI.
The other one is actually interesting, however – it’s called
VirtualLink.
A group of large tech companies have been looking into capabilities of USB-C for VR – after all, it’s wonderful when your VR headset only needs a single cable for everything. However, VR goggles need a high-resolution high-framerate dual-display-capable video interface and a high-speed data connection for auxiliary cameras and sensors, and the usual “dual-lane DisplayPort+USB3” combination couldn’t provide such capabilities at the time. What do you do, then?
It’s simple, said the VirtualLink group, you get rid of the two duplicated USB2 pairs on the USB-C connector, and use the four pins for a USB3 connection. Remember
the USB2 to USB3 converter chip
I mentioned in a short article half a year ago? Yeah, its original purpose was VirtualLink. This kind of arrangement, of course, requires
a more expensive custom cable
with two extra shielded pairs, and it also required PCs to provide up to 27W of power, hence, 9 Volt output – a rarity on USB-C ports that aren’t wall plug chargers or powerbanks. The USB2-omitting deviation from USB3
has upset some;
however, for the purpose of VR, VirtualLink looked mighty useful.
Some GPUs shipped with VirtualLink support, but, ultimately, not enough – and laptops, known for their often lacking USB-C ports, didn’t bother. This
caused a key player in the arrangement,
Valve, to give up on adding VirtualLink integration with Valve Index, and it
went downhill from there.
Sadly, VirtualLink never really took off. It would have been a fun altmode to have around – the single cable thing would’ve been amazing for VR users, and the requirement for increased voltage available through USB-C would’ve also given us PD-capable higher-than-5V ports – which no laptops and hardly any PCs provide nowadays. Yes, just a reminder – if you have a USB-C port on your desktop or laptop computer, it will give you 5 V, sure, but you won’t get a higher voltage out.
Let’s look at the bright side, however. If you happen to have one of those GPUs which shipped with a USB-C port, it
will have both USB3 and DisplayPort support!
Unification Brings Compatibility
The great thing about USB-C – a vendor, or a hacker could absolutely define their own altmodes if they wanted, while the adapter would be semi-proprietary, it would still remain a USB-C port at heart, working for charging and data transfer. Want an Ethernet altmode, or dual-port SATA? Do it. Gone are the days of having to source seriously obscure connectors for devices, where every docking and charging connector was different, and could cost up to $10 apiece if rare enough, if it would’ve even been possible to find it.
Not every USB-C port has to implement every single of these capabilities – many don’t. However, a lot of them do, and with each day, we get more and more out of an average USB-C port. This unification and standardization will pay off in the long run, and while deviations will occur every now and then, manufacturers will learn to get more clever about them. | 40 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577798",
"author": "lakristrolle",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T15:57:29",
"content": "OK, so I know nothing about differential signalling.But one thing I’ve always wondered is why the plug rotation was not handled by putting the + and – lines on opposite sides. So that if the plug is ... | 1,760,372,429.046438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/the-first-afghan-sports-car-has-an-engine-you-shouldnt-mock/ | The First Afghan Sports Car Has An Engine You Shouldn’t Mock | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Afghanistan",
"engine",
"sports car"
] | In the news today,
Afghanistan has made its first sports car
, and it’s
a sleek and low-slung model
with a throaty exhaust note that would get a second look on the Autobahn just as much as it does on the streets of Kabul. Making a modern sports car is an impressive achievement no matter where you do it, but it wouldn’t be something we’d share with you were it not for how the story is being reported. The general tone of Western reporting is focused not upon the car itself, but instead poking fun of it for
using a Toyota engine also found in a Corolla
.
Anyone who grew up during the Cold War will remember the rhetoric of the era with respect to technology. To paraphrase a little, our planes or rockets were based on the finest and latest high technology, we were told, while theirs were held together with string and sealing wax from the 1940s. This neglected the fairly obvious fact that Soviet probes were visiting all the planets, something they must have had some pretty good tech at their disposal to achieve. This was then explained as the product of their having stolen all our super-advanced Western tech, something we now know that
our lot weren’t averse to either when the opportunity arose
.
It’s this which is brought to mind by the mirth of the Western commentators at the Afghan car’s supposedly humble engine. It doesn’t matter what you think of the Afghan regime (and there’s plenty there to criticize), the car should be assessed on its merits. After all, it’s hardly as though
the engine in question
didn’t find its way into
more than one sports car
that Western commentators
might find appealing
. | 125 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577592",
"author": "NotSoHappy",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T12:06:28",
"content": "… what is Hackaday’s policy on promoting posts from countries that do not allow girls/women to educate themselves?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,429.316212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/take-a-deep-dive-into-a-commodity-automotive-radar-chip/ | Take A Deep Dive Into A Commodity Automotive Radar Chip | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"automotive",
"car radar",
"Doppler",
"Infineon",
"LNA",
"microwave",
"mixer",
"radar",
"reverse engineering",
"sensor",
"vco"
] | When the automobile industry really began to take off in the 1930s, radar was barely in its infancy, and there was no reason to think something that complicated would ever make its way into the typical car. Yet here we stand less than 100 years later, and radar has been perfected and streamlined so much that an entire radar set can be built on a single chip, and commodity radar modules can be sprinkled all around the average vehicle.
Looking inside these modules is always fascinating, especially when your tour guide is [Shahriar Shahramian] of
The Signal Path
, as it is for
this deep dive into an Infineon 24-GHz automotive radar module
. The interesting bit here is the BGT24LTR11 Doppler radar ASIC that Infineon uses in the module, because, well, there’s really not much else on the board. The degree of integration is astonishing here, and [Shahriar]’s walk-through of the datasheet is excellent, as always.
Things get interesting once he gets the module under the microscope and into the X-ray machine, but
really
interesting once the RF ASIC is uncapped,
at the 15:18 mark
. The die shots of the silicon germanium chip are impressively clear, and the analysis of all the main circuit blocks — voltage-controlled oscillator, power amps, mixer, LNAs — is clear and understandable. For our money, though, the best part is the look at the VCO circuit, which appears to use a bank of fuses to tune the tank inductor and keep the radar within a tight 250-Mz bandwidth, for regulatory reasons. We’d love to know more about the process used in the factory to do that bit.
This isn’t [Shahriar]’s first foray into automotive radar, of course — he looked at
a 77-GHz FMCW car radar
a while back. That one was bizarrely complicated, though, so there’s something more approachable about a commodity product like this. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577475",
"author": "JohnU",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T09:03:24",
"content": "“a tight 250-Mz bandwidth” – that sounds pretty broad to me ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6577487",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
... | 1,760,372,429.428303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/stairway-drying-rack-rises-above-the-rest/ | Stairway Drying Rack Rises Above The Rest | Navarre Bartz | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"clothes dryer",
"dryer",
"drying rack",
"laundry",
"laundry drying",
"transforming furniture"
] | Finding space to dry clothes can be challenging in smaller spaces. [Tom Parker] solved this conundrum in his one bedroom apartment by putting a
drying rack in his stairwell
.
By making the laundry rack fold up above the stairwell, [Parker] can dry his clothes without them taking up a lot of precious floor space. A pole is used to is raise and lower a dowel rod attached to two lines of paracord running over pulleys and to the end of the rack. Each moving corner of the rack also has a set length of cord attached to prevent the rack from rotating too far down as well as providing a safety mechanism should one of the other lines of cord snap.
The rack is bolted-together, laser cut 1.5mm thick mild steel with 15 mm dowels attached to the sides via threaded inserts. Spacing is set for the raised rack to put clothes at 75 mm apart. Plywood pieces interface the rack with the wall to avoid damaging the drywall.
If you’re looking for more laundry hacks, check out this
Smart Clothes Dryer
or
How Robots Suck at Folding Laundry
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577435",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T08:20:27",
"content": "putting the clothes to dry in a corner like this, so close to the drywall will favor mold on the drywall. Only bathroom drywalls (the green type) have the specific water barrier. The cardboard layer will dela... | 1,760,372,429.366349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/its-not-easy-counting-transistors-in-the-8086-processor/ | It’s Not Easy Counting Transistors In The 8086 Processor | Maya Posch | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"ASIC",
"transistor"
] | For any given processor it’s generally easy to find a statistic on the number of transistors used to construct it, with the famous Intel 8086 CPU generally said to contain 29,000 transistors. This is where [Ken Shirriff] ran into an issue when he sat down one day and
started counting
individual transistors in die shots of this processor. To his dismay, he came to a total of 19,618, meaning that 9,382 transistors are somehow unaccounted for. What is going on here?
The first point here is that the given number includes so-called ‘potential transistors’. Within a section of read-only memory (ROM), a ‘0’ would be a missing transistor, but depending on the programming of the mask ROM (e.g. for microcode as with a CISC x86 CPU), there can be a transistor there. When adding up the potential but vacant transistor locations in ROM and PLA (programmable logic array) sections, the final count came to 29,277 potential transistors. This is much closer to the no doubt nicely rounded number of 29,000 that is generally used.
[Ken] also notes that further complications here are features such as driver transistors that are commonly found near bond wire pads. In order to increase the current that can be provided or sunk by a pad, multiple transistors can be grouped together to form a singular driver as in the above image. Meanwhile yet other transistors are used as (input protection) diodes or even resistors. All of which makes the transistor count along with the process node used useful primarily as indication for the physical size and complexity of a processor. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577301",
"author": "Joel B",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T05:15:38",
"content": "I guess counting transistors is the hardware equivalent of counting lines of code. Primary a useless metric, except in marketing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,372,429.544457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/impressive-sawdust-briquette-machine/ | Impressive Sawdust Briquette Machine | Anool Mahidharia | [
"hardware",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"briquette",
"briquette press",
"dust collection",
"dust collector",
"dust extraction",
"dust extractor",
"hydraulic press",
"hydraulic ram",
"hydraulics",
"saw dust",
"wood briquette"
] | When you are a life long carpenter with an amazing workshop, you’re going to make a lot of saw dust, and managing its collection and storage poses quite a challenge. [Russ] from [New Yorkshire Workshop] built an impressive
Briquette press
to handle the problem.
It’s a hydraulic press that ingests saw dust and spits out compressed briquettes ready for fueling his
rocket mass heater
. The build starts with a batch of custom, laser cut steel parts received from
Fractory
. The heart of the machine is a 300 mm stroke hydraulic cylinder with a beefy 40 mm rod. The cylinder had to be taken apart so that the laser cut mounting flanges could be welded, slowly so as not to deform the cylinder. The intake feed tube was cut from a piece of 40 mm bore seamless tube. A window was cut in the feed tube and funnel parts were welded to this cutout. The feed tube assembly is then finished off with a pair of mounting flanges. The feed tube assembly is in turn welded to the main feed plate which will form the base of the saw dust container. The hydraulic cylinder assembly is mated to the feed tube assembly using a set of massive M10 high tensile
class 10.9
threaded rods. The push rod is a length of 40 mm diameter mild steel bar stock, coupled to the hydraulic cylinder using a fabricated coupling clamp. On the coupling clamp, he welded another bracket on which a bolt can be screwed on. This bolt helps activate the limit switches that control the movement of the hydraulic cylinder and the feed motor.
Next, he starts work on the hydraulic power pack, powered by a used Chinese piston pump coupled to a 7.5 kW motor, capable of delivering about 30 litres / minute. After a flurry of drilling, tapping, cutting, grinding and welding, he has the tank assembled with ports for the various connections, a motor-pump mount, an inlet lid and filter openings, a set of caster wheels and eye bolts and some angles to mount the electrical panel. To check for leaks in the tank, he seals off all the openings, and pressurises the chamber with compressed air. Then, using soap solution, he identifies and fixes the various leaks. A heat exchanger to help cool the oil is attached to the power pack, with some of the rigid piping converted to flexible hoses.
He then proceeds to build up the electrical control panel, wiring up a custom relay PCB assembled on perf board, and a bunch of contactors, relays, MCB’s switches and the most important Emergency push button, doubled up with a remote E-stop pendant.
To stir up the saw dust, and push a handful down the funnel of the feed tube during each cylinder stroke, he used a set of rotating blades mounted to a hydraulic motor at the centre of the main feed plate. The rotating blades are 20 mm square section steel pipes welded to a central hub. To fabricate this, he first machined the central hub and a corresponding broaching sleeve, and then used
a broaching tool to cut a key-way slot
in the machined hub. With some effort, the broaching could be done manually, but why do that when he could use his powerful hydraulic cylinder to do it. The limit switches for controlling the motion of the cylinder and the motor were fixed on an aluminum extrusion and then [Russ] did a dry run to make sure everything worked as expected.
For compressing the saw dust in to solid briquettes, he used a 40 mm bore seamless pipe with two slits running along its length. By using a clamp to taper the open end of the tube, he could adjust the consistency of the briquettes – from soft and powdery to hard as wood.
Finally, he built the saw dust collector box using plywood and polycarbonate and assembled it on the main feed plate. Removing the old dust collection bags and fitting his new machine in place was quite straight forward, but there were several teething problems to be debugged before he could get briquettes of the desired consistency. Once everything was sorted, his machine was producing about 24 kg of briquettes per hour.
[Russ] might call himself a carpenter, but he sure has all the other skills needed to pull off this complex project. Check out [Russ]’s
companion project
where he rebuilds a shredder to help chop up card board boxes in to small strips, which can further be compressed using this machine in to briquettes.
Thanks to [Keith Fulkerson] and [Keith Olson] for tipping us off on this impressive build. | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577093",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T00:05:23",
"content": "Seems overengineered but that’s something you like to see on a youtube channel. The most hardcore sawdust squisher ever!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,429.492844 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/zswatch-this-oshw-smart-watch-is-as-diy-as-it-gets/ | ZSWatch: This OSHW Smart Watch Is As DIY As It Gets | Tom Nardi | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"circular display",
"open source hardware",
"oshw",
"smartwatch",
"watch"
] | We say it often, but it’s worth repeating: this is the Golden Age of making and hacking. Between powerful free and open source software, low-cost PCB production, and high resolution 3D printers that can fit on your desk, a dedicated individual has everything they need to make their dream gadget a reality. If you ever needed a reminder of this fact,
just take a look at the ZSWatch
.
When creator [Jakob Krantz] says he built this MIT-licensed smart watch from scratch, he means it. He designed the 4-layer main board, measuring just 36 mm across, entirely in KiCad. He wrote every line of the firmware, and even designed the 3D printable case himself. This isn’t some wearable development kit he got off of AliExpress and modified — it’s all built from the ground up, and all made available to anyone who might want to spin up their own version.
The star of the show is the nRF52833 SoC, which is paired with a circular 1.28″ 240×240 IPS TFT display. The screen doesn’t support touch, so there’s three physical buttons on the watch for navigation. Onboard sensors include a LIS2DS12 MEMS accelerometer and a MAX30101EFD capable of measuring heartrate and blood oxygen levels, and there’s even a tiny vibration motor for haptic feedback. Everything’s powered by a 220 mAh Li-Po battery that [Jakob] says is good for about two days — afterwards you can drop the watch into its matching docking station to get charged back up.
As for the software side of things, the watch tethers to a Android application over Bluetooth for Internet access and provides the expected functions such as displaying the weather, showing notifications, and controlling music playback. Oh, and it can tell the time as well. The firmware was made with extensibility in mind, and [Jakob] has provided both a sample application and some basic documentation for would-be ZSWatch developers.
While an unquestionably impressive accomplishment in its current form, [Jakob] says he’s already started work on a second version of the watch. The new V2 hardware will implement an updated SoC, touch screen, and an improved charging/programming connector. He’s also looking to replace the 3D printed case for something CNC milled for a more professional look.
The ZSWatch actually reminds us quite a bit of the
Open-SmartWatch project we covered back in 2021
, in that the final result looks so polished that the average person would never even take it for being DIY. We can’t say that about
all the smartwatches we’ve seen over the years
, but there’s no question that the state-of-the-art is moving forward for this kind of thing in the hobbyist space. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6577121",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T00:37:23",
"content": "Kickstarter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6577411",
"author": "Jakob",
"timestamp": "2023-01-17T07:4... | 1,760,372,429.669053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/flappy-bird-drone-edition/ | Flappy Bird Drone Edition | Al Williams | [
"drone hacks",
"Robots Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"drone",
"ornithopter",
"wing"
] | Ornithopters have been — mostly — the realm of science fiction. However, a paper in
Advanced Intelligent Systems
by researchers at Lund University proposes that
flapping wings
may well power the drones of the future. The wing even has mock feathers.
Birds, after all, do a great job of flying, and researchers think that part of it is because birds fold their wings during the upstroke. Mimicking this action in a robot wing has advantages. For example, changing the angle of a flapping wing can help a bird or a drone fly more slowly.
The robot wing’s performance in a wind tunnel may lead to more advanced drones but is also helping scientists understand more about the dynamics of true avian flight. The robot wing, of course, can also move in ways that biological wings can’t. According to the paper, this is the big difference in this system compared with other designs. Most robot wings only flap. They don’t have the complex motions that a bird normally uses to fly.
The paper shows the wing has three servomotors and a gear system. One motor deals with flapping, one with pitch, and another controls the wing’s folding and unfolding.
Flapping is a pretty good way to fly. After all, birds do it, and
bees do it
. We have seen some
ornithopter drones
, just not that many. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576941",
"author": "Rufffneckting",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T20:28:18",
"content": "I suppose the blueprint started millions of years ago so why not use latest design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6576954",
"author": "so... | 1,760,372,429.600753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/2022-fpv-contest-congratulations-to-the-winners/ | 2022 FPV Contest: Congratulations To The Winners! | Elliot Williams | [
"contests",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"contest",
"FPV"
] | We wanted to see what the Hackaday crowd was up to in first-person view tech, and you didn’t disappoint! Commercial FPV quads have become cheap enough these days that everyone and their mom got one for Christmas, so it was fantastic to see the DIY spirit in these projects. Thanks to everyone who entered.
The Winners
None of the entries do the DIY quite as thoroughly as [JP Gleyzes]’s “
poor man’s FPV journey
”. This is actually three hacks in one, with DIY FPV goggles made from cheap optics and 3D printed additions, a USB joystick to PPM adapter to use arbitrary controllers with an RC transmitter, and even a fully DIY Bluetooth-based controller for a popular flight simulator. [JP] has done everything but build his own drone, and all the files are there for you to use, whether you’re goal is to do it on the cheap, or to do something new.
If you want to build your own drone from scratch, though,
ESP32 Drone project
has you covered. At least, mostly. This build isn’t entirely finished yet, and it’s definitely got some crash-testing still in its future, but the scope and accessibility of the project is what caught our eyes. The goal is to make a lightweight indoor quad around parts we can all get easily and cheaply, completely scratch-built. This drone is meant to be controlled by a smartphone, and the coolest parts for us are the ESP_Drone and ESPStream software that run on the drone and your phone respectively. Congrats to [Jon VB]! Now get that thing in the air.
And if you’re looking for a tidy little build, [Tobias]’s
Mini FPV Speed Tank
doesn’t disappoint. It’s a palm-sized mini tank, but this thing
hauls
, and looks like a ton of fun to drive around. It uses an absolutely tiny RP2040 module, an equally tiny receiver, and a nano FPV camera and transmitter to keep it compact. The 3D-printed frame and tracks are so nice that we’re not even complaining that the FPV rig is simply rubber-banded on top of the battery. This looks like a super fun build.
Each of these three projects have won a $150 Digi-Key shopping spree to help out with parts in this, or your next project. Thanks again to Digi-Key for sponsoring!
Honorable Mentions
For the honorable mentions, we wanted to inspire the best of Land, Sea, and Air, but we also wanted to see what non-traditional FPV projects you were working on.
On land, we really liked [Vassily98]’s
Model railway FPV
, because we’ve never seen a model FPV train before. The design is a fully 3D printed N-scale camera car that
just barely
fits the 14500 battery that makes it work. The downside of an FPV model train setup? Now you have to decorate the insides of the tunnels too.
We were surprised by how few flyers we got. Of them,
Valor sUAS
was definitely the most developed, with a lot of sweet carbon-fiber parts, low-noise blades, and even an IR camera. We haven’t seen it fly yet, though, but it’s got so many military and paramilitary buzzwords, we’re sure the killbot factory will be expressing their interest soon.
In the water, we like [Timo]’s
Turbo Super Submarine
. While he claims that “documentation is a ball of obsolete paper and some openscad code without comments” we enjoyed the experimentation with making 3D prints waterproof, and the long digressions about the advantages of using obsolete game controllers and getting all the signals up and down the cable. We’re looking forward to future updates when the water thaws out again.
Model Railway FPV
sUAS
Turbo Super Submarine
Finally, the “immersion” category was meant for the oddball FPV ideas out there, and we got two good ones here.
PanoBot
uses a panoramic lens that converts a normal camera into a 360° view, and there’s some really neat work on de-warping and adapting the resulting image for VR goggles, even if the eventual conclusion is that the setup just didn’t have enough resolution.
Perky’s Rides
from [Storming Moose] is the only 3D FPV entry we got. Basically a gimballed stereo camera rig, it’s meant to ride on any of three vehicles and give the viewers a VR view of what it sees. It’s also viewable on a normal phone screen, but where’s the fun in that?
And for the FPV application you’ve never thought of,
See Through The Eyes of a Champion
is essentially an FPV gunsight to help train people in competitive pistol shooting. The trick with marksmanship isn’t aiming and holding it aimed, it’s more about keeping smooth and pulling the trigger at just the right time, and this project aims to help document that by putting you in someone else’s eyes.
PanoBot
Perky’s Rides
See Through the Eyes of a Champion
Post-finally, an honorable-honorable mention has to go to
LOTP Robot Dog v2
. It had FPV bolted on as an afterthought, but if you’re in for a fantastic open-source robot dog project, complete with LIDAR, hot-swappable instruments, and autonomous features, you really want to check this one out. If this were a robot-dog contest, this would have taken the top spot. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576884",
"author": "Unnecessary Complification",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T18:59:36",
"content": "Thank you Hackaday and Digikey. This contest got me off the couch and down in the basement digging through the parts box putting things together after thinking about it for a long time.... | 1,760,372,429.724731 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/machining-with-electricity-hack-chat/ | Machining With Electricity Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, January 18 at noon Pacific for the
Machining with Electricity Hack Chat
with Daniel Herrington!
With few exceptions, metalworking has largely been about making chips, and finding something hard enough and tough enough to cut those chips has always been the challenge. Whether it’s high-speed steel, tungsten carbide, or even little chunks of rocks like garnet or diamond, cutting metal has always used a mechanical interaction between tool and stock, often with spectacular results.
But then, some bright bulb somewhere realized that electricity could be used to remove metal from a workpiece in a controlled fashion. Whether it’s using electric sparks to erode metal — electric discharge machining (EDM) — or using what amounts to electroplating in reverse — electrochemical machining (ECM) — electrical machining methods have made previously impossible operations commonplace.
While the technology behind ExM isn’t really that popular in the hobby machine shop yet, a lot of the equipment needed and the methods to make it all work are conceivably DIY-able. But the first step toward that is understanding how it all works, and we’re lucky enough to have Daniel Herrington stop by the Hack Chat to help us out with that. Daniel is CEO and founder of
Voxel Innovations
, a company that’s on the cutting edge of electrochemical machining with its pulsed ECM technology. There’s a lot to unpack, so make sure you stop by so we can all get up to speed on what’s up with using electricity to do the machining.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 18 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576804",
"author": "Jeffrey K",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T17:15:27",
"content": "Ben Fleming wrote a couple books on it. Its been available for awhile now for DIY.https://www.homebuiltedmmachines.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,429.773958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/blinky-business-card-plays-snake-and-connect-four/ | Blinky Business Card Plays Snake And Connect Four | Anool Mahidharia | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"battery",
"board",
"flashy",
"flexible",
"flexible printed circuit board",
"led",
"pcb",
"Printed Circuit Board"
] | There’s no better way to introduce yourself than handing over a blinky PCB business card and challenging the recipient to a game of Connect Four. And if [Dennis Kaandorp] turns up early for a meeting, he can keep himself busy playing the ever popular game of Snake on his
PCB business card
.
The tabs are 19 mm long and 4 mm wide.
Quite wisely, [Dennis] kept his design simple, and avoided the temptation of feature creep. His requirements were to create a minimalist, credit card sized design, with his contact details printed on the silk legend, and some blinky LED’s.
The tallest component on such a design is usually the battery holder, and he could not find one that was low-profile and cheap. Drawing inspiration from
The Art of Blinky Business Cards
, he used the 0.8 mm thin PCB itself as the battery holder by means of flexible arms.
Connect-Four
is a two player game similar to tic-tac-toe, but played on a grid seven columns across and six rows high. This meant using 42 dual-colour LED’s, which would require a large number of GPIO pins on the micro-controller. Using a clever combination of matrix and charlieplexing techniques, he was able to reduce the GPIO count down to 13 pins, while still managing to keep the track layout simple.
It also took him some extra effort to locate dual colour, red / green LED’s with a sufficiently low forward voltage drop that could work off the reduced output resulting from the use of charlieplexing. At the heart of the business card is an ATtiny1616 micro-controller that offers enough GPIO pins for the LED matrix as well as the four push button switches.
His first batch of prototypes have given him a good insight on the pricing and revealed several deficiencies that he can improve upon the next time around. [Dennis] has shared KiCad schematic and PCB layout files for anyone looking to get inspired to design their own PCB business cards.
Business Card | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576857",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T18:16:06",
"content": "Neat idea the one of flexing the PCB for battery holding.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6576933",
"author": "JanW",
"times... | 1,760,372,429.825693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/dont-lose-your-cool-with-this-fridge-buzzer/ | Don’t Lose Your Cool With This Fridge Buzzer | Abe Connelly | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"alarm",
"buzzer",
"door sensor",
"fridge",
"hall effect sensor",
"msp430",
"refrigerator"
] | [CarrotIndustries] wanted to add an audible warning for when the refrigerator door was left open. The result is a
fridge buzzer
that attaches to the inside of a fridge door and starts buzzing if the door is left ajar for too long.
The main components of the fridge buzzer consist of an MSP430G2232 low-power MCU connected to a SI7201 hall sensor switch, along with a CR2032 battery holder, push button and buzzer. The MSP430’s sleep mode is used here, consuming less than 3 µA of current which [CarrotIndustries] estimates lasting 9 years on a 235 mAh CR2032 battery.
A 3D printed housing is created so that the board slides into a flat bed, which can then be glued onto to the fridge door. The other mechanical component consists of a cylinder with a slot dug out for a magnet, where the cylinder sits in a mounting ring that’s affixed to the side of the fridge wall that the end of the door closes on. The cylinder can be finely positioned so that when the refrigerator is closed, the magnet sits right over the hall sensor of the board, allowing for sensitivity that can detect even a partial close of the fridge door.
All source code is available on [CarrotIndustries] GitHub page, including the Horizon EDA schematics and board files, the Solvespace mechanical files, and source code for the MSP430. We’ve featured an
IoT fridge alarm
in the past but [CarrotIndustries]’ addition is a nice, self contained, alternative. | 28 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576552",
"author": "Az illetékes",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T12:14:17",
"content": "why isn’t the fridge dial based on degreeC? 0-10 means nothing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6576691",
"author": "ono",
"tim... | 1,760,372,429.902485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/16/ring-in-the-new-year-with-this-cute-cat-doorbell/ | Ring In The New Year With This Cute Cat Doorbell | Abe Connelly | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"9G servo",
"Arduboy Nano",
"cute",
"doorbell",
"maneki-neko",
"Neko"
] | What better way to ring in the new year than with [iSax Laboratories]’ charming little project that replaces a doorbell with a Maneki-Neko cat figurine to
ring a physical bell?
Details are unfortunately a bit light, but it looks like the Maneki-Neko cat was disassembled to allow for a small SG92R servo motor to attach to the arm pendulum mechanism. [iSax Laboratories] added wooden platform where the Maneki-Neko cat figurine is mounted along with some indicator lights, switches and the physical bell, with a cavity routed out in the base to allow for the Arduino Nano microcontroller.
[iSax Laboratories] has what looks to be an Assa Abloy Svara 23 wired answering machine, which has one of its output lines connected to the Nano to sense when a doorbell signal has come in.
The Maneki-Neko cats are cute, easily hackable figurines and we’ve featured them in the past, using them as everything from
hit counters
to
POV displays
.
Be sure to check out the demo video after the break! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576694",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T15:08:13",
"content": "Very nice I love those waving cats. So silly but it never gets old!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6576839",
"author": "sw94",
"tim... | 1,760,372,430.222805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/custom-thermostat-pcb-connects-boiler-to-home-assistant/ | Custom Thermostat PCB Connects Boiler To Home Assistant | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"home-assistant",
"hvac",
"thermostat",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | Thanks to Home Assistant, automating the various systems that run your home is easier than ever. But you still need to make a connection between those systems and your Home Assistant setup, which can be tricky if the manufacturer didn’t have this use case in mind. When [Simon] wanted to automate his home heating system, he discovered that most Home Assistant-enabled thermostats that he could find didn’t support his two separate heating zones connected to a single boiler. The easiest solution turned out to be to
design his own.
The original heating system consisted of two control boxes that each had a 230 V mains connection coming in and a “request heat” control line going to the boiler. [Simon] considered replacing these with a simple off-the-shelf ESP8266 relay board and a 12 V power supply, but figured this would look messy and take up quite a bit of space. So he bought a neat DIN-rail mounted enclosure instead, and designed a custom PCB to fit inside it.
The PCB holds a Wemos D1 Mini connected to two relays that switch the two heating circuits. The D1 runs ESPhome and needs just a few lines of configuration to connect it to [Simon]’s home network. There’s no separate power supply — the 230 V line is connected directly to a 12 V DC power module mounted on the PCB, so the new system is plug-and-play compatible with the old.
Complete PCB design files are available on [Simon]’s website and
GitHub page
. There are several other ways to make custom thermostats for your home,
with an Arduino
for example. If you’re interested in repairing your own heating system, or want to optimize it even further, there’s
a whole community out there
to help you. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576332",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T07:42:49",
"content": "Shame there’s no render of the schematic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6576503",
"author": "Simon Cooksey",
"timestamp": "2023... | 1,760,372,430.50644 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/designing-aesthetically-pleasing-pcbs/ | Designing Aesthetically-Pleasing PCBs | Navarre Bartz | [
"Art",
"hardware",
"Parts"
] | [
"artistic pcb",
"custom PCB",
"guides",
"pcb",
"pcb art",
"PCB design"
] | We’ve seen our share of custom PCBs here on Hackaday, but they aren’t always pretty. If you want to bring your PCB aesthetics up a notch, [Ian Dunn] has put together
a guide for those wanting to get into PCB art
.
There are plenty of tutorials about making a functional PCB, but finding information about PCB art can be more difficult. [Ian] walks us through the different materials available from PCB fabs and how the different layer features can affect the final aesthetic of a piece. For instance, while black and white solder mask are opaque, other colors are often translucent and affected by copper under the surface.
PCB design software can throw errors when adding decorative traces or components to a board that aren’t connected to any of the functional circuitry, so [Ian] discusses some of the tricks to avoid tripping up here. For that final artistic flair, component selection can make all the difference. The guide has recommendations on some of the most aesthetically pleasing types of components including how chips made in the USSR apparently have a little bit of extra panache.
If you want to see some more on PCB art, check out this work on
full-color PCBs
and learn
the way of the PCB artist
. | 28 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576160",
"author": "glensketch",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T03:34:59",
"content": "I did pcb design for a while. Until the software for it got better in the early 90’s. Some of the boards done with hand applied tape for the “lands” were all over the place design wise. The tape had a ... | 1,760,372,430.440061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/hackaday-links-january-15-2023/ | Hackaday Links: January 15, 2023 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"booster",
"cell phone",
"dish",
"dust",
"GBT",
"hackaday links",
"learning electronics",
"machining",
"mars",
"microwave",
"radar",
"reflector",
"Tycho",
"Utopia Planitia",
"Zhurong"
] | It looks like the Martian winter may have claimed another victim, with reports that
Chinese ground controllers have lost contact with the
Zhurong
rover
. The solar-powered rover was put into hibernation back in May 2022, thanks to a dust storm that kicked up a couple of months before the start of local winter. Controllers hoped that they would be able to reestablish contact with the machine once Spring rolled around in December, but the rover remains quiet. It may have suffered the same fate as
Opportunity
, which had its solar panels covered in dust after a planet-wide sandstorm and eventually gave up the ghost.
What’s worse, it seems like the Chinese are having trouble talking to the
Tianwen-1
orbiter, too. There are reports that controllers can’t download data from the satellite, which is a pity because it could potentially be used to image the
Zhurong
landing site in Utopia Planitia to see what’s up. All this has to be taken with a grain of dust, of course, since the Chinese aren’t famously transparent with their space program. But here’s hoping that both the rover and the orbiter beat the odds and start doing science again soon.
Click to enlarge — you won’t regret it. Image credit: NRAO/GBO/Raytheon/NSF/AUI
Closer to home, you may have heard that there’s a place in West Virginia that really,
really
doesn’t like extraneous RF noise, to the point where the cafeteria microwave oven is inside a Faraday cage. It’s the
National Radio Quiet Zone
, a 13,000-square-mile electromagnetic radiation safe zone around the Green Bank Telescope. But the rule against microwaves is apparently negotiable, as the enormous radio telescope has now been equipped with a 700-Watt microwave transmitter that was used to take
a fantastically detailed picture of Tycho Crater
. The GBT transmitter, which is less powerful than the caged microwave in the cafeteria, painted the Moon with signals that bounced back toward the Very Long Baseline Array, a radio telescope with dishes at ten locations across the United States. The photo returned was amazing, and with a 5-meter resolution, the crispest picture of the Moon ever taken from Earth. They also used the system to image a potential planet-killing 1 km asteroid at a distance of 2.1 million km. Not bad for half a microwave oven.
If you’ve got someone in your life who just doesn’t grok electronics, you’re in luck. Our friend Leo Fernekes has started a new video series on learning electronics.
His first episode
covers the fundamentals of current flow and resistance and we found it to be very well done. Bear in mind that Leo is self-taught, and his teaching style flows from that. So yes, he uses the “marbles in a pipe” metaphor for electron flow, which always seems to cause some people distress, but is a useful model nonetheless. He’s also quick to dismiss electron flow, as opposed to conventional “plus to minus” flow, as unimportant to a practical understanding of electronics, as in being able to build fun and useful circuits. We’re excited to see the rest of this series, and looking forward to a fresh perspective from someone who has done the hard work of teaching himself a complex subject.
Also for your further viewing pleasure, we’d like to draw your attention to a channel called
Inheritance Machining
. It’s run by a fellow named Brandon, a trained machinist with the good fortune to inherit his grandfather’s complete machine shop. He’s now using the tools and machines to do what every machinist does, which of course is to make more tools and machines. But he’s got a great style, and everything he does is pretty much within the constraints of the setup his grandfather left him. So no CNC, no lasers or plasma — just making chips the old-fashioned way. He even eschews CAD tools, opting instead for real drafting using Grandad’s old drafting table and tools. That alone is worth the price of admission — very relaxing. Check it out.
And finally, this is something that cropped up in
the Hackaday Discord tip line
that was so clever we thought we’d pass it along. It’s
a short video
describing how Australia provides cell phone service in remote areas of the Outback. These aren’t phone booths in the traditional sense, but rather dish reflectors set up to capture signals from distant cell towers and focus them onto a single point. There’s a stand for your phone at the focus, where the boosted signal is strongest. It’s completely passive, but still provides enough amplification to boost a “none-to-one bar” signal to something more usable. Pretty clever! | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6576021",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T00:07:20",
"content": "That’s an impressive Moon “shot”!Still don’t think I would call it a picture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6576024",
... | 1,760,372,430.29006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/stadia-says-goodbye-with-bluetooth-and-crap-game/ | Stadia Says Goodbye With Bluetooth And Crap Game | Tom Nardi | [
"google hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"controller",
"google",
"Stadia",
"unlock"
] | In just a few days time, Google’s Stadia game streaming service will finally shut down for good. But not for any technical reason, mind you. Microsoft has managed to demonstrate that streaming modern games over home and even mobile Internet connections is viable with their immensely popular Game Pass Ultimate service, and NVIDIA is making similar inroads with GeForce Now. No, like so many of Google’s failed experiments, they’ve simply decided they don’t want to play anymore and are taking their proverbial ball home back with them.
But not all is lost for those who shelled out money for Stadia’s wares. Not only will Google be refunding any money players spent on games, but a company representative has also
announced they will be releasing a tool to unlock the latent Bluetooth capabilities
of the service’s custom controller — hopefully stemming a surge of e-waste before it starts.
Thanks for playing, chumps.
In a forum thread titled “A Gift from the Stadia Team”, Community Manager [DanFromGoogle] explains that information on how you can enable Bluetooth on the controller will be coming next week. In the meantime, he also announced the
immediate release of “Worm Game”
, a tech demo that staffers apparently used to test out capabilities of the streaming service before its public release.
That this ridiculously simple game, which looks all the world like something a kid would crank out during an after-school programming class, will be the final title to officially release on Stadia is a stunningly insulting epitaph for the fledgling service. But then,
Google seems to have developed a special affinity
for mistreating their most loyal
cattle
users over these last few years.
Enabling Bluetooth on a game controller might not seem like such a big deal, but in this case, it will potentially give the piece of hardware a second chance at life. The Stadia controller is unique in that it uses WiFi to communicate directly over the Internet to Google’s streaming service, so once those servers stop responding, the orphaned device will end up being little more than a curiosity. Although it does technically work over USB, being able to use it wirelessly will not only provide a more modern experience, but help justify its internal batteries.
The last time we mentioned the Stadia controller, it was to document one user’s attempt to
rid it of an internal microphone they didn’t feel comfortable with
. Now that the service is being put to pasture, we wonder if we’ll start to see more hacks involving the admittedly interesting peripheral. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for them, but if you see anything we miss,
you know where to send it
. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575955",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T22:04:54",
"content": "boooo to google.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6576616",
"author": "dusted",
"timestamp": "2023-01-16T13:42:53",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,430.366562 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/giving-an-old-typewriter-a-mind-of-its-own-with-gpt-3/ | Giving An Old Typewriter A Mind Of Its Own With GPT-3 | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"GPT-3",
"machine learning",
"openai",
"python",
"typewriter"
] | There was an all-too-brief period in history where typewriters went from clunky, purely mechanical beasts to streamlined, portable electromechanical devices. But when the 80s came around and the PC revolution started, the typewriting was on the wall for these machines, and by the 90s everyone had a PC, a printer, and Microsoft Word. And thus the little daisy-wheel typewriters began to populate thrift shops all over the world.
That’s fine with us, because it gave [Arvind Sanjeev] a chance to build
“Ghostwriter”
, an AI-powered automatic typewriter. The donor machine was a clapped-out Brother electronic typewriter, which needed a bit of TLC to bring it back to working condition. From there, [Arvind] worked out the keyboard matrix and programmed an Arduino to drive the typewriter, both read and write. A Raspberry Pi running the OpenAI Python API for GPT-3 talks to the Arduino over serial, which basically means you can enter a GPT writing prompt with the keyboard and have the machine spit out a dead-tree version of the results.
To mix things up a bit, [Arvind] added a pair of pots to control the creativity and length of the response, plus an OLED screen which seems only to provide some cute animations, which we don’t hate. We also don’t hate the new paint job the typewriter got, but the jury is still out on the “poetry” that it typed up. Eye of the beholder, we suppose.
Whatever you think of GPT’s capabilities, this is still a neat build and a nice reuse of otherwise dead-end electronics. Need a bit more help building natural language AI into your next project? Our own [Donald Papp] will
get you up to speed on that
.
As promised, here is the full process thread for Ghostwriter – the
#AI
typewriter. A journey from idea to realization:
The idea: With the exponential growth and emergence of a prolific number of AI products we see every day, I wanted to create a mindful intervention that (1/13)
pic.twitter.com/MCOeAcM26q
— Arvind Sanjeev (@ArvindSanjeev)
December 14, 2022
[via
It’s Nice That
] | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575789",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T18:14:32",
"content": "It made me think of Otto.https://www.youtube.com/embed/g_aDSbxZPgQ?t=105",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6575836",
"author": "PWalsh",
... | 1,760,372,430.761726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/inside-the-atari-2600/ | Inside The Atari 2600 | Al Williams | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"atari 2600"
] | The Atari 2600 was an extremely popular yet very simple game console back in the 1970s. They sold, apparently, over 30 million of them, and, of course, these things broke. We’d get calls from friends and — remember, back then normal people weren’t computer savvy — nine times out of ten, we’d ask them to swap the controllers to show them it was a bad controller, and problem solved. But if you did have to open one up, it was surprising how little there was inside, as [Steve] notes in
his recent teardown
.
The bulk of the circuit board was switches, the power supply, and a TV modulator if you remember those. The circuit board was a tiny thing with a shrunk-down 6502, a 6532 RIOT chip, and a custom chip called a TIA. If you are familiar with those chips, you might wonder if the TIA had any memory in it. It didn’t. Nearly all the ROM and RAM for the game lived in the cartridge itself. Sure, the RIOT has 128 bytes of memory, but that’s not much.
The TIA generates timing signals using an odd configuration that [Steve] discusses. The limited memory explains some things you may or may not have noticed. Most games have a symmetrical background where the left is a mirror copy of the right. The TIA architecture explains why. You could modify things, but you had to do it between scan lines which left a scant 76 clock cycles to do whatever you needed.
There are a lot of tricks for squeezing the most out of the limited architecture that [Steve] highlights. He also provides links for writing your own games and running them on real hardware or an
emulator
. Since the box was popular and had a — sort of — 6502 inside, you’d think someone would have turned it into a full computer.
Someone did
. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575656",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T15:20:52",
"content": "The article mentions using an LFSR instead of a binary counter, and supposed it may be easier to implement: it’s *much* easier. Much much much. It’s just register for each bit + a couple of gates per each tap... | 1,760,372,430.693912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/a-flex-sensor-for-a-glove-controller-using-an-ldr/ | A Flex Sensor For A Glove Controller Using An LDR | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"flex sensor",
"glove controller",
"ldr"
] | When most of us think of glove controllers, the first which comes to mind is Nintendo’s PowerGlove, which promised much more than it delivered. But the idea persists, and from time to time we see them here at Hackaday. [
Gord Payne
] has one with an elegant sensor solution,
it detects finger movement using a light dependent resistor
.
The cleverest designs are those which are the simplest, and this one eschews complex mechanisms and exotic parts for a simple piece of flexible tube. At one end is an LED and at the other the LDR, and when attached to a glove it provides a finger sensor without the fuss. The amount of light reaching the LDR from the LED decreases as the pipe is bent, and with a simple divider circuit a voltage can be read by an Arduino. You can see it in action in the video below the break, where the glove flexing controls a servo.
Perhaps this might revitalize a bit of interest in glove controllers, something we probably don’t see too many of.
Those Nintendo PowerGloves do still crop up from time to time though
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575566",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T12:43:34",
"content": "> The cleverest designs are those which are the simplesthmm, that’s an oversimplification ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6575682",
"autho... | 1,760,372,430.812195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/15/microsoft-returns-to-the-altair/ | Microsoft Returns To The Altair | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"altair 8800"
] | The Altair 8800 arguably launched Microsoft. Now [Dave Glover] from Microsoft offers an emulated and potentially cloud-based
Altair emulation
with CP/M and Microsoft Basic. You can see a video of the project below. One thing that makes it a bit odd compared to other Altair clones we’ve seen is that the emulator runs in a Docker environment and is fully cloud-enabled. You can interact with it via a PCB front panel, or a terminal running in a web browser.
The
core emulator
is MIT-licensed and seems like it would run nearly everywhere. We were a little surprised there wasn’t an instance in the Azure cloud that you could spin up to test drive. Surely a few hundred Altairs running at once wouldn’t even make a dent in a modern CPU.
There are plenty of Altair emulators and even replicas with authentic CPUs out there. But we have to admit the Wiki documentation on this one is uncommonly well done. Even if you don’t want to use this emulator, you might find the collection of data about the Altair useful.
Don’t know how to use a computer front panel? Learn on the
Altair
or a
PDP/8
, even if you don’t have a real one. For simulated hardware, the project that turns an
Arduino Due into an Altair
works well. If you just want to
play Zork
, you can do that in your browser, for sure. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575455",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T09:24:55",
"content": "@05:42 “I don’t have the source code for CP/M, I’m not even sure it exists anymore.https://hackaday.com/2014/10/06/cpm-source-code-released/This video is apparently only made as entertainment, just some g... | 1,760,372,432.746993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/a-number-maze-for-younger-hackers/ | A Number Maze For Younger Hackers | Matthew Carlson | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"7 segment LED display",
"game",
"led",
"maze",
"numbermaze"
] | [David Johnson-Davies] has a lofty goal of building a small device to give to younger hackers on a semi-yearly basis. So this last year, he designed and created
The Number Maze Game
, a small handheld logic puzzle maze.
It’s based on several 4-digit seven-segment displays controlled by an AVR128DA32. Navigation is just a few push buttons and a buzzer to let you know when you’ve won. The game is simple: you jump the amount listed on the space you’re currently on, trying to get to the space labeled “H.” [David] lays out how he built it in great detail, discussing the process of designing and assembly. He also expounds on many decisions, such as using a TQFP microcontroller instead of the through-hole ATmega328P due to the I/O pin count.
The instructions and design process are so detailed we’re confident most people could easily reproduce it, especially with the
code
and
board files
. But the value of this project is not in blindly copying it. Instead, we love how something so simple can be wonderfully entertaining and valuable to younger hackers. Programming headers are included so they can add new mazes. We suspect there are many out there who would love to get something so tactile, simple, and modifiable.
Of course, we’ve seen
other minimal maze games
, so there’s no lack of inspiration for making some different. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575464",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T09:43:27",
"content": "This kind of puzzle can be very difficult. The first I know of is Sam Loyd’s “Back from the Klondike”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_from_the_Klondikethough that may not have been the first.",
"pa... | 1,760,372,432.624788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/swap-the-clock-chip-on-the-mac-se-30-with-an-attiny85/ | Swap The Clock Chip On The Mac SE/30 With An ATTiny85 | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Mac Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"attiny85",
"custom PCB",
"drop-in",
"Macintosh SE/30",
"rtc"
] | As [Phil Greenland] explains in the
first part of his excellent write-up
, the lithium battery used to keep the real-time clock (RTC) going on the Macintosh SE/30 has a nasty habit of exploding and leaking its corrosive innards all over the board. Looking to both repair the damage on a system that’s already had a battery popped and avoid the issue altogether on pristine boards, he started researching how he could replace the battery with something a bit more modern.
Damage from a ruptured RTC battery.
It turns out, the ATtiny85 is pin-compatible with the Mac’s original RTC chip, and indeed,
[Andrew Makousky] had already written some code
that would allow the microcontroller to emulate it. This is actually a bit more complex than you might realize, as the original RTC chip was doing double-duty: it also held 256 bytes of parameter random access memory (PRAM), which is where the machine stored assorted bits of info like which drive to boot from and the mouse cursor speed.
But after getting the mod installed, the computer refused to start. It turns out the project targeted earlier machines like the Macintosh Plus and SE, and not his higher-performance SE/30. Thanks to community resources like this
KiCad recreation of the SE/30’s motherboard
, contemporary technical documents, and his trusty logic analyzer, [Phil] was able to figure out that the timing was off — the code was simply struggling to respond to the faster machine.
[Phil] got things largely working by pushing a lot of the code off into an interrupt handler, thereby increasing the response time. But it operated on a very fine line, the new code only
just
got the timing within specs, and occasionally it would drift off and result in an error. It was good enough to get the machine up and running again, but not the long-term solution he’d hoped for.
It’s not until we get to the
second part of this retrocomputing adventure
that [Phil] finally cracks the case. He realized that the solution to get better performance out of the ATtiny85 was to leverage its universal serial interface (USI), which is generally used for SPI and I2C communications. Luckily, the Apple RTC protocol was close enough to I2C that getting everybody speaking the same language wouldn’t be a problem. The only downside was that he needed to use a different set of pins to pull it off.
In the end, he had to abandon the classic DIP-8 style ATtiny85 and design a tiny custom PCB around the SOIC-8 version. This not only let him route the pins differently, but enabled him to tack on an external crystal oscillator that boasts a bit higher resolution than the chip’s built-in facilities.
We’ve previously seen creative (or just desperate) hackers
“re-pin” an ATtiny85
by flipping the leads around and adding bodge wires; a very literal hack that might have also worked here. But we think the custom PCB was worth the extra effort to produce a permanent drop-in solution that
other Mac SE/30 owners
can benefit from. After all, what some consider the
best computer ever made
deserves no less. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574363",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T07:24:37",
"content": "Seems like an elegant hack, relatively speaking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6574436",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,432.588494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/detecting-algal-blooms-with-the-help-of-ai/ | Detecting Algal Blooms With The Help Of AI | Navarre Bartz | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"green hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"algae",
"algal bloom",
"great lakes",
"ocean",
"ocean research",
"ocean sensors",
"oceanography",
"sensors",
"water quality"
] | Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) can have negative consequences for both marine life and human health, so it can be helpful to have early warning of when they’re on the way. Algal blooms deep below the surface can be especially difficult to detect, which is why [kutluhan_aktar] built an
AI-assisted algal bloom detector.
After taking images of deep algal blooms with a boroscope, [kutluhan_aktar] trained a machine learning algorithm on them so a Raspberry Pi 4 could recognize future occurrences. For additional water quality information, the device also has an Arduino Nano connected to pH, TDS (total dissolved solids), and water temperature sensors which then are fed to the Pi via a serial connection. Once a potential bloom is spotted, the user can be notified via WhatsApp and appropriate measures taken.
If you’re looking for more environmental sensing hacks, check out the
OpenCTD
, this
swarm of autonomous boats
, or this
drone buoy riding the Gulf Stream
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574362",
"author": "PLC SCADA Blog",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T07:22:39",
"content": "certainly AI will change the we are thinking about the world . you are one of them great workimpressed",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,432.345126 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/an-e-ink-progress-bar-for-your-unborn-child/ | An E-Ink Progress Bar For Your Unborn Child | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"CircuitPython",
"e-ink",
"e-paper",
"eink"
] | Having a child is a major milestone in a person’s life, and there’s a long list of things to get done before that little bundle of joy kicks and screams its way into the world. What better way to make sure you’ve still got time to paint the nursery and assemble the crib than to have an automated loading screen that shows
just how far along the organic 3D printing process is
?
This fetal development tracker was put together by [mokas] using
Adafruit’s ESP32-S2 powered MagTag
. As the name implies, the all-in-one electronic ink development board is designed so that it can be adhered to a metallic surface with integrated magnets. The idea is that you can pop a battery in the low-power device, stick it on your refrigerator, and have a regularly updated display of…well, whatever you want.
In this case, [mokas] has combined a CircuitPython routine for displaying a progress bar with some example code that works its way through a slideshow of bitmaps. The fetal development images were pulled from Wikimedia, and a one-line ImageMagick incantation got them properly dithered for display on the e-ink panel.
With this project out of the way, no doubt [mokas] will soon start work on the next parenthood hack. Perhaps some variant of this
computer vision system that can detect when a sleeping baby is getting hungry
. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573983",
"author": "Jenson Kendle",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T00:06:49",
"content": "What’s an E-Ink display vendor that can supply large displays? Looking for something around 32 inches high.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,432.682085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/arduino-library-brings-rtl_433-to-the-esp32/ | Arduino Library Brings Rtl_433 To The ESP32 | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"home automation",
"ISM band",
"mqtt",
"rtl_433",
"wireless sensors"
] | If you have an RTL-SDR compatible radio there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard of the rtl_433 project, which lets you receive and decode signals from an ever-expanding list of supported devices in the ISM radio bands. It’s an incredibly useful piece of software, but the fact that it requires an external software defined radio and a full-fledged computer to run dictated the sort of projects it could realistically be used for.
But thanks to the
rtl_433_ESP Arduino library developed by [NorthernMan54]
, we’re now able to pack that functionality into a much smaller package. All you need is an ESP32 microcontroller and a CC1101 or SX127X transceiver module. If you’re looking for a turn-key hardware platform, the documentation notes the LILYGO LoRa32 V2 board includes the required hardware, plus adds a handy OLED display and microSD slot. It should be noted that the range of these radios don’t compare particularly well to a full-size RTL-SDR device, but that probably won’t come as much of a surprise.
The library ports a large chunk of the
rtl_433 project’s code
over to the smaller and less powerful platform, which [NorthernMan54] has helpfully documented by listing the source files which were brought over verbatim as well as the ones that needed some extra attention.
As you might expect, some concessions had to be made in the effort: assuming the documentation is up-to-date, the rtl_433_ESP library can decode less than half of the devices supported by rtl_433 proper. But again, considering the vast differences in capability between the hardware the project was originally designed for and a microcontroller that costs a few bucks, it’s hard to complain.
We were tipped off to this project by [1technophile], who tells us he’s
integrated the rtl_433_ESP library into his OpenMQTTGateway project
. This gives the microcontroller the ability to scoop up data from wireless sensors from all over the home and publish the resulting data via MQTT so it can be picked up by Home Assistant, OpenHAB, or whatever automation package you’ve got running. It’s a trick
we’ve seen done before with an RTL-SDR dongle and a computer
, but being able to accomplish the same task on a smaller and more energy efficient platform certainly sounds like progress to us. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573874",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T21:28:44",
"content": "Excellent – I’ve been looking at homeassistant recently, and wondered why nobody had done the seemingly obvious of a microcontroller + CC1101/RFM69 combo. In the dim and distant past, I had problems with... | 1,760,372,432.401897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/diy-fiber-laser-adds-metal-cutting-to-the-mix/ | DIY Fiber Laser Adds Metal Cutting To The Mix | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"cutter",
"fiber laser",
"gas assist",
"laser"
] | Sadly, the usual CO
2
-powered suspects in the DIY laser cutter market are woefully incapable of cutting metal. Sure, they’ll cut the heck out of plywood and acrylic, and most will do a decent job at engraving metal. But cutting through a sheet of steel or aluminum requires a step up to much more powerful fiber laser cutters. True, the costs of such machines can be daunting, but not daunting enough for [Travis Mitchell], who has undertaken
a DIY fiber laser cutter build
that really caught our eye.
Right off the bat, a couple of things are worth noting here. First — and this should be obvious from the fountains of white-hot sparks in the video below — laser cutters are dangerous, and you should really know what you’re doing before tackling such a build. Second, just because [Travis] was able to cut costs considerably compared to a commercial fiber laser cutter doesn’t mean this build was cheap in absolute terms — he reports dropping about $15,000 so far, with considerable ongoing costs to operate the thing.
That said, there doesn’t appear to be anything about this build that anyone with some experience building CNC machines wouldn’t be able to tackle. The CNC side of this is pretty straightforward, although we note that the gantry, servos, and controller seem especially robust.
The laser itself is an off-the-shelf machine, a Raycus RFL-C1000 fiber laser and head that packs a 1,000-Watt punch. There’s also the required cooling system for the laser, and of course there’s an exhaust system to get rid of the nasty fumes.
All that stuff requires a considerable investment, but we were surprised to learn how much the consumables cost. [Travis] opted for bottled gas for the cutter’s gas assist system — low-pressure oxygen for carbon steel and high-pressure nitrogen for everything else. Refills are really pricey, in part because of the purity required, but since the proper compressor for the job is out of the budget for now, the tanks will have to do. And really, the thing cuts like a dream. Check out the cutting speed and precision in the video below.
This is but the first in a series of videos that will detail the build, and if [Travis] thought this would whet our appetites for more, he was right. We really haven’t seen many DIY fiber laser builds, but we have seen
a teardown of a 200-kW fiber laser
that might tickle your fancy. | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573840",
"author": "Ted is",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T20:35:32",
"content": "Now I know what I’m doing with the unused 1000W fiber laser at work…..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6573851",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"t... | 1,760,372,432.523132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/a-medieval-gothic-monastery-built-using-cad-cam/ | A Medieval Gothic Monastery Built Using CAD / CAM | Anool Mahidharia | [
"cnc hacks",
"Interest"
] | [
"architecture",
"cad",
"carmelite monks",
"carving",
"cnc",
"gothic",
"limestone",
"monastery"
] | Just because you’re a monk doesn’t mean you can’t use CAD. The Carmelite monks of Wyoming are building a grandiose
Gothic Monastery
, and it’s awe inspiring how they are managing to build it.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Carmelite-Gothic-Church1.mp4
The Carmelite monks needed a new, larger monastery to house their growing numbers, and found a parcel of land near
Meeteetse Creek in Wyoming
. The design of their new Gothic monastery was outsourced to an architectural firm. Gothic architecture is characterised by key architectural elements such as pointed arches, large stained glass windows, rib vaults, flying buttresses, pinnacles and spires, elaborate entry portals, and ornate decoration.
After some research, the monks settled on using Kansas Silverdale limestone for the monastery. Cutting and carving the elaborate stone pieces required for such a project, within time and cost constraints, could only be achieved using CNC machines. Hand carving was ruled out as it was a very slow process, would cost a whole lot more, and it wouldn’t be easy to find the artisans for the job. So when it came to shortlisting vendors for the vast amount of stone cutting and carving required for construction, the monks found themselves alarmed at how prohibitively expensive it would turn out to be.
Since stone carving and installation were the most expensive items for the overall project, the monks decided to tackle that job themselves. This meant learning the whole
CNC stone-carving workflow
, all about stone cutting machinery, operating CNC machines, CAD modelling, CAM programming, stone masonry and construction techniques. Planning for the project started in 2010. In 2013, they purchased their first CNC machine from
Prussiani Engineering
S.p.A., who specialise in stone cutting machines, integrated with stone cutting CAD/CAM software from
Pegasus CAD-CAM
. Prussiani also provided support to the monks as they embarked on their CNC journey. After spending time learning all the skills and some trial-and-error later, actual construction on the project started in 2014 and continues till date. Their early days were not without a few disasters. In their own words –
“A few months after we started carving stone, we left our first CNC machine running overnight on several 7 foot long window sills. We woke to a shocking surprise the following morning. The huge stones, weighing several hundred pounds each, had been thrown about as if a tornado had ripped through the machine. Stones were snapped and shattered, the fragments scattered about the inside of the CNC milling area. After the shock settled, we proceeded to analyse what had happened. It turns out there was a mistake in the particular batch of code the machine had read and followed that night. At the very end of each window sill, after it had completely finished carving, the code told the CNC machine to repeatedly pound down into the top of the sill, almost as if it was a giant fist. The stones didn’t stand a chance, but that same machine is still carving stones to this day, almost a decade later.”
Their website has a crash-course like coverage of
Gothic architecture
, and
details on the various sub-structures
that comprise the monastery. It is still work in progress, and many years to go before they finish it. So far, they have managed to complete the Chapter House, see video embedded, and they keep posting updates on their
website
and
YouTube
channel. | 51 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573719",
"author": "robertrapplean",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T18:10:19",
"content": "I am immensely envious that they get to build a Gothic Cathedral. I want one, too!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6573741",
"author... | 1,760,372,432.850366 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/hackaday-podcast-201-faking-a-transmission-making-nuclear-fuel-and-a-slidepot-with-a-twist/ | Hackaday Podcast 201: Faking A Transmission, Making Nuclear Fuel, And A Slidepot With A Twist | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Even for those with paraskevidekatriaphobia, today is your lucky day as Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney sit under ladders with umbrellas while holding black cats to talk about the week in awesome hacks. And what a week it was, with a Scooby Doo code review, mushrooms in your PCBs, and the clickiest automatic transmission that never was. Have you ever flashed the firmware on a $4 wireless sensor? Maybe you should try. Wondering how to make a rotary Hall sensor detect linear motion? We’ll answer that too. Will AI muscle the dungeon master out of your D&D group? That’s a hard no. We’ll talk about a new RISC-V ESP32, making old video new again, nuclear reactor kibble, and your least satisfying repair jobs. And yes, everyone can relax — I’m buying her a new stove.
Download the podcast in case our servers get unlucky.
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!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 201 Show Notes:
News:
You Can Now Fix Your Deere
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [blessedcustardwaffler] for recognizing the sound of a Portal gun!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Classic Video Chip Drives A Modern TFT
Retrotechtacular: Critical Code Reading, 70s Style
Technology Connextras – YouTube
Spaceballs Get Serialized
GitHub – FreeSpacenav/spacenavd: Free user-space driver for 6-dof space-mice.
Quick and dirty Spacemouse test · GitHub
Replace Your Automatic Transmission With A Bunch Of Relays
New Part Day: ESP32-P4 Espressif RISC-V Powerhouse
Clever Mechanism Makes A Linear Control From A Rotary Hall Sensor
Turns out this kind of fuel gauge goes back at least as far as the Model T
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Variable Width 3D Printing The Hard Way
ImHex: An Open Hex Editor For The Modern Hacker
Forth Cracks RISC-V
Can AI Replace Your DM?
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
Dan’s Picks:
A Practical Glue Stick Oscillator
MycelioTronics: Biodegradable Electronics Substrates From Fungi
Low-Cost 433 MHz Door Sensors Get Open Firmware
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Ask Hackaday: What’s Your Worst Repair Win?
The Intricacies Of Creating Fuel For Nuclear Reactors
Collection of
Mining And Refining
pieces (so far) | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573713",
"author": "Niklas Roy",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T17:59:05",
"content": "@Elliot I’m pretty sure the Y in the video signal stands for luminance, not yellow. Splitting the video signal in luminance and color difference signals had the advantage that you had a, well, proper l... | 1,760,372,432.440987 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/conductive-ink-based-on-a-simple-idea/ | Conductive Ink Based On A Simple Idea | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"conductive ink",
"conductive polymer"
] | There’s an old series of jokes that starts with: “How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator?” The answer is to open the door, put the elephant inside, and close the door. Most people don’t get that because it is too simple, and simple is the approach Georgia Tech researchers have taken when faced with the problem of using
a particular conductive plastic
. PEDOT, the plastic in question, is a good conductor, but it is hard to work with. You can add materials to make it easier to work with, but that screws up the conductivity. Their answer is much like the refrigerator joke: add material to PEDOT, paint or print it where you want, and then remove the extra material. Simple.
The polymer needs side chains to be soluble. This allows you to mix an ink or paint made of the material, but the waxy side chains interfere with the material’s conductivity. However, after application, it is possible to break off the side chains and flush them out with a common solvent. The process is simple, and leaves a flexible conductive material that’s stable.
The work has applications anywhere you need a flexible conductive material. As a side benefit, after processing, the material is also optically clear. You can imagine that wearable technology could easily take advantage of this. While it doesn’t seem like normal 3D printing techniques would be useful with this, it isn’t hard to imagine an inkjet-like printer along with some sort of post-processing setup is within reach of the average garage lab.
While the results are interesting, be sure to temper your expectations. The material has a reported conductivity of 1,000 siemens per centimeter. Copper, admittedly a good conductor, clocks in at 590,000 S/cm. Graphite, for example, is about as conductive as the new material.
Good conductive ink would
change PCB production
, at least for small prototype runs. You can make pretty good
conductive ink on your own
, of course. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575275",
"author": "Carl Foxmarten",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T04:44:56",
"content": "A very apt metaphor.Though I’m not quite sure how useful it’ll be until they get the conductivity a bit higher.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,372,432.902953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/smart-led-curtain-brings-sprites-to-your-windows/ | Smart LED Curtain Brings Sprites To Your Windows | Dave Walker | [
"LED Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"animation",
"curtain",
"display",
"led",
"neopixel",
"sprite",
"video wall"
] | A mobile interface is a nice touch
Anybody who has ever seen a video wall (and who hasn’t?) will be familiar with the idea of making large-scale illuminated images from individual coloured lights. But how many of us have gone the extra mile and fitted such a display in our own homes? [vcch]
has done just that with his Deluxe Smart Curtain
that can be controlled with a phone or laptop.
The display itself is made up of a series of Neopixel strips, hung in vertical lines in front of the window. There is a wide gap between each strip, lending a ghostly translucent look to the images and allowing the primary purpose of the window to remain intact.
The brains of the system are hosted on a low-cost M5stack atom ESP32 device. The data lines for the LEDs are wired in a zig-zag up and down pattern from left to right, which the driver software maps to the rectangular images. However, the 5V power is applied to the strips in parallel to avoid voltage drops along the chain.
If you’d like to build your own smart curtain, Arduino sketch files and PHP for the mobile interface are included on the project page. Be sure to check out the brief video of what the neighbors will enjoy at night after the break.
If video walls are your kind of thing, then how about
this one that uses Ping Pong Balls
as diffusers?
https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1890768089427584/20230107_231109.mp4 | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575106",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T00:20:54",
"content": "Nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6575242",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T03:53:35",
"content": "I see no mention of Neopixel... | 1,760,372,432.956576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/make-your-own-pot-and-encoder-knobs-without-reinventing-them/ | Make Your Own Pot And Encoder Knobs, Without Reinventing Them | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"hardware",
"how-to"
] | [
"3d printed",
"custom",
"diy",
"encoder",
"heat-set",
"knob",
"pot",
"shim",
"spline"
] | Rotary potentiometers, switches, and encoders all share a basic design: adjustment is done via a shaft onto which a knob is attached, and knobs are sold separately. That doesn’t mean one knob fits all; there are actually a few different standards. But just because knobs are inexpensive and easily obtained doesn’t mean it’s not worth making your own.
A simple and effective indicator can be easily printed in a contrasting color.
Why bother 3D printing your own knobs instead of buying them? For one thing, making them means one can rest assured that every knob matches aesthetically. The ability to add custom or nonstandard markings are another bonus. Finally, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel, because
[Tommy]’s guide to making your own knobs
has it all figured out, with the
OpenSCAD script to match
.
By default, [Tommy]’s script will generate a knob with three shims (for interfacing to a splined shaft) when
pot_knob();
is called. The number of shims can be adjusted by modifying
potKnobDefaultShimCount
. To give the knob a flat side (to interface with D-shafts), change
flatted = false
to
flatted = true
. And for adding a screw insert suitable for a set screw? Change
tightenerDiameter = 0
from zero to the diameter desired.
The script is quite comprehensive and has sensible defaults, but it does require a bit of knowledge about OpenSCAD itself to use effectively.
We have covered the basics of OpenSCAD
in the past, and if you’re ready for a resource that will help you truly master it,
here’s where to look
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6575437",
"author": "makes you go hmmmm....",
"timestamp": "2023-01-15T09:01:48",
"content": ">Make Your Own PotHAD really needs more cannabis related hacks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6575513",
"author": "m1ke",
... | 1,760,372,433.135616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/homebrew-telephone-exchange-keeps-the-family-in-touch-in-the-house-and-beyond/ | Homebrew Telephone Exchange Keeps The Family In Touch, In The House And Beyond | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"autopatch",
"dtmf",
"landline",
"pbx",
"pots",
"PSTN",
"switch",
"telephone"
] | It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while we stumble upon someone who has taken obsolete but really cool phone-switching equipment and built a private switched telephone in their garage or basement using it.
This private analog phone exchange
is not one of those, but it’s still a super cool build that’s probably about as ambitious as getting an old step-by-step or crossbar switch running.
Right up front, we’ll stipulate that there’s absolutely no practical reason to do something like this. And hacker [Jon Petter Skagmo] admits that this is very much a “because I can” project. The idea is to support a bunch of old landline phones distributed around the house, and beyond, in a sort of glorified intercom system. The private exchange is entirely scratch-built, with a PIC32 acting as the heart of the system, performing such tasks as DTMF decoding, generating ring voltage, and even providing a CAN bus interface to his home automation system.
The main board supports five line interface daughterboards, which connect each phone to the switch via an RJ11 jack. The interface does the work of detecting when a phone goes off-hook, and does the actual connection between any two phones. A separate, special interface card provides an auto-patch capability using an RDA1846S RF transceiver module; with it, [Jon Petter] can connect to any phone in the system from a UHF handy-talkie. Check out the video below for more on that — it’s pretty neat!
We just love everything about this overengineered project — it’s clearly a labor of love, and the fit and finish really reflect that. And even though it’s not strictly old school, POTS projects like this always put us in the mood to watch
the “Speedy Cutover” video
one more time. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574928",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T20:35:03",
"content": "Quite recently James Bottomley has published apieceabout the other end of the technological spectrum in this field and its diy corner.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,433.005365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/too-many-pixels/ | Too Many Pixels | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"complexity",
"laser show",
"magic",
"newsletter"
] | Sometimes simpler is more impressive than complicated, and part of this is certainly due to Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: “
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
”. It’s counter-intuitive, though, that a high-tech project would seem any less amazing than a simpler one, but hear me out.
I first noticed this ages ago, when we were ripping out the blue laser diodes from Casio XJ-A130 laser projectors back when this was the only way to get a powerful blue laser diode. Casio had bought up the world’s supply of the 1.5 W Nichias, and was putting 24 of them in each projector, making them worth more dead than alive, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we were putting on a laser show, and the bright blue diode laser was just what we needed.
A sweeter setup than mine
, but you get the idea.
Color laser setups take three or more different lasers, combine the beams, and then bounce them off of mirrors attached to galvos. Steer the mirrors around, and you can project vector images. It’s pretty cool tech, and involves some serious fine-tuning, but the irony here is that we were tearing apart a device with 788,736 microscopic DLP mirrors to point the lasers through just two. And yet, a DIY laser show is significantly cooler than just putting up your powerpoint on the office wall.
The same thing goes for 2D plotting machines like the
AxiDraw
. The astonishing tech behind any old laser printer is mind-numbing. Possibly literally. Why else would we think that art drawn out by a pen in the hands of a stepper-powered robot is cooler than the output of a 1600 DPI unit coming from HP’s stable? I mean, instead of running an hours-long job to put ink on paper with a pen, my Laserjet puts out an image in ten seconds. But it’s just not as much
fun
.
So here we are, in an age where there’s so darn much magic all around us, in the form of sufficiently advanced technology, that comprehensible devices are actually more impressive. And my guess is that it’s partly because it’s not surprising when a device that’s already magic does something magical. I mean, that’s just what it’s supposed to do. Duh!
But when something beautiful emerges from a pair of mirrors epoxied to shafts on springs turned by copper coils, that’s real magic.
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
! | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574697",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T15:36:44",
"content": "an alternative conclusion: if you want to build something truly amazing, build an open-source 1600 DPI laser printer 😝",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,433.47312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/diy-magnet-handling-tool-puts-an-end-to-placement-errors/ | DIY Magnet Handling Tool Puts An End To Placement Errors | Donald Papp | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"diy",
"magnets",
"tool"
] | I’m sure we can all agree that the worst time to find out a magnet is the wrong way around is
after
glue has been applied. With that in mind, [erick.siders] created
the parametric Magnet Placer tool
.
Color-coded tools, one for each polarity.
Picking up and placing magnets into assemblies can be an error-prone process, because magnet polarity cannot be directly identified or sensed by either sight or fingertips. This tool helps by acting a lot like a suction pickup tool — press the plunger down, and a magnet can be picked up, release the plunger, and the magnet lets go. Simple, and effective.
Since the tool is polarity-dependent (depending on which orientation the pickup magnet is mounted into the internal plunger), [erick.siders] suggests printing two tools and color-coding them. That way, one can choose the right tool based on the situation and be confident that the magnets are right-side-up, every time.
The tools use a long metric bolt, a magnet, and a spring, but none of those parts are particularly critical. We also love the way that the end result has no gaps or openings into the moving parts, which means nothing can get caught on or inside anything during use or storage.
It’s a parametric design and the CAD files (in both Fusion 360 and STEP flavors) are provided, so modification should be a breeze. And if you happen to be using PrusaSlicer,
remember you can now drop STEP format files directly in for slicing
. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574549",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T12:22:21",
"content": "Magnet polarities are wonderfully confusing. Red is N which is “north-seeking”. By convention magnetic field direction is N to S, i.e. red to blue. I guess that is a nice analog to electric field going from r... | 1,760,372,433.527271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/14/increasing-pv-solar-cell-efficiency-through-cooling/ | Increasing PV Solar Cell Efficiency Through Cooling | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"active cooling",
"cooling",
"pv solar"
] | An unavoidable aspect of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels is that they become less efficient when they warm up.
[Tech Ingredients] explains in a new video
the basic reason for this, which involves the input of thermal energy affecting the semiconductor material. In the subsequent experiment, it is demonstrated how cooling the backside of the panel affects the panel’s power output.
There are commercial solutions that use water cooling on the back of panels to draw heat away from panels, but this still leaves the issues of maintenance (including winter-proofing) and dumping the heat somewhere. One conceivable solution for the latter is to use this heat for a household’s hot water needs. In the demonstrated system a heatsink is installed on the back of the panel, with fans passing cool air over the heatsink fins.
On a 100 Watt PV panel, 10 W was lost from the panel heating up in the sun. After turning on the fans, the panel dropped over 10 °C in temperature, while regaining 5.5 W. Since the installed fans consumed about 3 W, this means that the fans cost no extra power but resulted in increased production. Not only that, but the lower temperatures will in theory extend the panel’s lifetime. Though even with active cooling, even the best of PV panels will
need to be replaced after a couple decades
.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip! | 54 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6574460",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2023-01-14T09:57:21",
"content": "Nice experiment. I would have gone for two panels, so you could test them simultaneously. The reference panel wouldn’t have te construction on the back, because that will influence the temperature to i gues... | 1,760,372,433.672574 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/concrete-coffee-table-can-take-a-beating/ | Concrete Coffee Table Can Take A Beating | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"concrete",
"furniture"
] | A good coffee table should have a hard-wearing surface and some serious heft to it.
This build from [designcoyxe]
hits both those criteria with its concrete-based design.
To create the table surface, the first step was to create a form. Melamine was used for the job, thanks to its smooth surface. A rectangular form was readily fabbed up, sealed internally and waxed, and then the concrete was poured. For added strength, the form was only half-filled, and a mesh was added for reinforcement. The rest of the concrete was then poured in to complete the tabletop. The table legs themselves were crafted out of maple, formerly used as a butcher’s block. The light wood makes a great contrast to the dark grey concrete. Plus, the stout, thick, wooden legs are a great combination with the strength of the tabletop itself.
It’s hard to overstate how good concrete is as a coffee table material. It’s difficult to damage and difficult to stain. Plus, if you really need to drive a point home, you can be certain slamming down your mug will get everyone’s attention (just be wary of injury).
We’ve seen some other great concrete furniture before, too
. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573654",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T16:42:19",
"content": "I cast my own concrete countertops for my kitchen 3 years ago, turned out pretty well considering it was my first time using concrete. It’s stood up great and gets lots of compliments and was cheaper than e... | 1,760,372,433.736476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/this-week-in-security-cacti-rce/ | This Week In Security: Cacti RCE, VMs In The Browser, And SugarCRM | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Cacti",
"SugarCRM",
"This Week in Security"
] | This week we start with
a Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability that has potential to be a real pain
for sysadmins. Cacti, the system monitoring and graphing solution, has a pair of bugs that chain together to allow an attacker with unauthenticated access to the HTTP/S port to trivially execute bash commands. The first half of this attack is an authentication bypass, and it’s embarrassingly trivial. The Cacti authentication code trusts the
Forwarded-For:
header in the request. Set it to the server’s IP, and the authentication code treats it like a localhost request, bypassing any real authentication process.
The second half is found in the
remote_agent.php
endpoint, where the
poller_id
is set by the user and treated as a string. Then, if the right
host_id
and
local_data_id
item is triggered, that string is concatenated into a
proc_open()
function call. The string isn’t sanitized, so it’s trivial enough to include a second command to run, dropping a webshell, for instance.
Version 1.2.23 of Cacti contains the fix, and released on the 2nd. This one is likely to be exploited, and if automated exploitation hasn’t started already, it likely will soon. So if you have a Cacti install, go double-check that the interface isn’t exposed to the world.
JSON Web Token
Researchers at
Unit 42 found an exploit
that can be used to achieve an RCE in the JsonWebToken project. The issue is this library’s
verify()
function, which takes arguments of the token to check, the key to use, and options. If there aren’t any algorithms specified in the options object, then the key is processed as a PEM string. The
toString()
method of that key is called during the actual check, and the assumption is that it’s either a string or buffer. But what if the key passed in to the
verify()
function was actually a complex object, bringing it’s own
toString()
method along to play. At that point, we have arbitrary code execution. And if this code is running on the server-side under
node.js
, that means a popped server.
But wait, it’s not that simple, right? It’s not like a valid JWT can contain an arbitrary object — that would be a problem all on its own. So
CVE-2022-23529
is a stepping-stone. It’s insecure code, but the rest of the application has to have another vulnerability for this one to be reachable.
SCOTUS Weighs In on NSO
We’re taking a rare look at a political story, as
the Supreme Court of the United States has made a decisive statement — by declining to make a statement
. WhatsApp is pushing forward with a lawsuit against NSO Group, and NSO has made the argument that all of their actions have been taken as agents for legitimate governments, which should grant immunity against lawsuit. The 9th circuit ruled that this defense was ridiculous, so NSO naturally appealed to the Supreme court. In declining to hear the case, the highest court sends a statement that the lower court’s judgement should stand, which means the lawsuit proceeds. There should be some interesting details come to light during the course of this suit, as well as the other suits that are inevitable, like the Apple suit that has already been filed.
SBOMs and VEX
Software Bill of Materials
(SBOMs) is a popular buzzword these days, and we haven’t really look at the idea yet, here on this column. The idea has been around for a while, based on the tradition Bill of Materials that might come with a hardware build. A SBOM is simply the list of libraries and binaries that are part of a software solution. The ideal is that a business would have SBOMs for all their software and appliance solutions, and can automatically check whether they have any exposure to published CVEs.
It sounds great, but unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. The article from Chainguard above is primarily about Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) documents, a standardized format for declaring a product immune to a vulnerability. So let’s take the JWT vulnerability above. A given solution may ship with a vulnerable JWT library, but a software engineer looks at the issue, and how the library is used, and certifies that the solution isn’t actually vulnerable. A VEX document is created, added to the SBOM database, and the automated vulnerability scanning solution knows to ignore that vulnerability for that solution.
TikTok VMs In Your Browser
JavaScript is all Open Source, right? It’s an interpreted language that runs on the consumer’s browser, so by definition it’s at least source available. Except many sites go far out of their way to obfuscate JS code into something totally unreadable. And
the current champion of obfuscation has to be TikTok
. [Ibiyemi Abiodun] spent some time working on reverse-engineering that code, based on
an earlier effort by [Veritas]
.
And it’s deep magic. After working through a couple steps of deobfuscation using
babel
, it becomes apparent that it’s bytecode being fed into JS virtual machine. This blog entry ends with some pseudo-assembly that needs a dedicated decompiler to further understand. We’ll hope for a part three, maybe from yet another researcher.
SugarCRM Under Fire
A
0-day for SugarCRM
was posted on seclists.org back in December, and
a hotfix was quickly developed
. The exploit is a pair of trivial flaws. The first is the authentication bypass, where a request is sent with both username and password set to 1, which works to generate a valid authentication cookie. The second is an unrestricted file upload to the images directory. Upload a PHP script, then access the url for instant profit.
Unfortunately,
this one is getting exploited in the wild
, and something like 12% of the accessible SugarCRM deployments already being cracked. The exploit was disclosed with several search strings that would return potentially vulnerable deployments, so it’s not surprising that machines were exploited. If you have a SugarCRM box on the internet, it’s probably time to go check it out for compromise.
Bits and Bytes
VScode is really something. An Open Source Microsoft project that has quickly become the favorite of quite a few programmers. It’s a great IDE, and has a wide library of extensions. And
that could be a problem
. VSCode extensions run without a sandbox, and have essentially all the same privileges of the user account running VSCode. Yet another place to watch out for typosquatting and similar tricks.
Amazon has announced that
they’re rolling out server-side encryption by default for new S3 objects
. I have questions about how useful this actually is, as it doesn’t do anything to protect against the most common problems we find with S3 storage — auth token leaks. At the least, this would be helpful to prevent physical attacks, but that seems unlikely already.
And speaking of keys,
[Tom Forbes] has written the mother of all regex strings
, in an effort to find AWS keys unintentionally published in packages and repos.
(('|\")((?:ASIA|AKIA|AROA|AIDA)([A-Z0-7]{16}))('|\").*?(\n^.*?){0,4}(('|\")[a-zA-Z0-9+/]{40}('|\"))+|('|\")[a-zA-Z0-9+/]{40}('|\").*?(\n^.*?){0,3}('|\")((?:ASIA|AKIA|AROA|AIDA)([A-Z0-7]{16}))('|\"))+
is something of a mouthful, but he’s found 57 live AWS keys just on PyPi. Impressive. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573614",
"author": "Bernie M",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T15:45:56",
"content": "“… that has potential to be a real pain for sysadmins.”Or perhaps, “… that has potential to be a real thorn in the side for sysadmins.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,433.580153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/fixing-an-hp-54542c-with-an-fpga-and-vga-display/ | Fixing An HP 54542C With An FPGA And VGA Display | Maya Posch | [
"FPGA",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"HP",
"HP 54540C",
"oscilloscope"
] | Although the HP 54542C oscilloscope and its siblings are getting on in years, they’re still very useful today. Unfortunately, as some of the first oscilloscopes to switch from a CRT display to an LCD they are starting to suffer from degradation. This has led to otherwise perfectly functional examples being discarded or sold for cheap, when all they need is just an LCD swap. This is what happened to
[Alexander Huemer] with an eBay-bought 54542C
.
Although this was supposed to be a fully working unit, upon receiving it, the display just showed a bright white instead of the more oscilloscope-like picture. A short while later [Alexander] was left with a refund, an apology from the seller and an HP 54542C scope with a very dead LCD. This was when he stumbled over a
similar repair by [Adil Malik], right here on Hackaday
. The fix? Replace the LCD with an FPGA and VGA-input capable LCD.
While this may seem counter intuitive, the problem with LCD replacements is the lack of standardization. Finding an 8″, 640×480, 60 Hz color LCD with a compatible interface as the one found in this HP scope usually gets you salvaged LCDs from HP scopes, which as [Alexander] discovered can run up to $350 and beyond for second-hand ones. But it turns out that similar 8″ LCDs are found everywhere for use as portable displays, all they need is a VGA input.
Taking [Adil]’s project as the inspiration, [Alexander] used an
UPduino v3.1
with ICE40UP5K FPGA as the core LCD-to-VGA translation component, creating a custom PCB for the voltage level translations and connectors. One cool aspect of the whole system is that it is fully reversible, with all of the original wiring on the scope and new LCD side left intact. One niggle was that the scope’s image was upside-down, but this was fixed by putting the new LCD upside-down as well.
After swapping the original cooling fan with a better one, this old HP 545452C is now [Alexander]’s daily scope. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573501",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T12:33:46",
"content": "Put in an external monitor port so the display can be enbiggened for people who need reading glasses to use their computer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,433.796747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/sensor-glove-translates-sign-language/ | Sensor Glove Translates Sign Language | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"assistive technology",
"glove",
"sensor glove",
"sign language"
] | Sign language is a language that uses the position and motion of the hands in place of sounds made by the vocal tract. If one could readily capture those hand positions and movements, one could theoretically digitize and translate that language.
[ayooluwa98] built a set of sensor gloves to do just that.
The brains of the operation is an Arduino Nano. It’s hooked up to a series of flex sensors woven into the gloves, along with an accelerometer. The flex sensors detect the bending of the fingers and the gestures being made, while the accelerometer captures the movements of the hand. The Arduino then interprets these sensor signals in order to match the user’s movements up with a pre-stored list of valid signs. It can then transmit out the detected language via a Bluetooth module, where it is passed to an Android phone for translation via text-to-speech software.
The idea of capturing sign language via hand tracking is a compelling one;
we’ve seen similar projects before, too.
Meanwhile, if you’re working on your own accessibility projects, be sure to
drop us a line! | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573433",
"author": "RichC",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T10:26:52",
"content": "As I understand it, there some semantics communicated in sign language that aren’t trivially conveyable in a transcript of the signs. For example when talking about people, the signer might indicate a posit... | 1,760,372,434.032934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/maxing-out-your-macintosh-with-a-4-mb-memory-stick-kit/ | Maxing Out Your MacIntosh With A 4 MB Memory Stick Kit | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ram upgrade",
"SIMM"
] | One fun aspect of retrocomputing is that you get to max out all aspects of these systems without having to take out a bank loan, as tended to be the case when these systems were new. Less fun is that decades after systems like the Apple MacIntosh SE/30 were last sold, the 30-pin SIMMs that form the expandable RAM for these systems has become rather scarce. This has led many to make their own SIMM PCBs, including [Kay Koba] with a
PCB for 4 MB SIMMs
along with information on which memory and parity ICs are suitable for these SIMMs.
For systems like the
MacIntosh SE/30
with 8 30-pin memory slots, the maximum capacity is 128 MB, but this comes with
many gotchas
due to its ROM being ’32-bit dirty’. While this can be circumvented by swapping in a ROM from a later MacIntosh variant, the less invasive way is to enable the MODE32 system extension and install eight 4 MB SIMMs for a total of 32 MB RAM. RAM chips for such 30-pin SIMMs can be scavenged from the far more common 72-pin SIMMs, along with any old new stock one may come across.
These 4 MB SIMM PCBs are offered for sale by [Kay] with optionally the SMD components (capacitors, resistors and LED) included in the package. The original PCB card edge design is credited to work by
[Zane Kaminski]
whose GitHub profile also leads to e.g.
this 30-pin SIMM
project.
Have you modded your MacIntosh or other retro system yet to the maximum RAM and storage limits? | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573329",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T07:25:01",
"content": "I once upgraded a HP printer which had a 1MB internal memory and an expansion slot with a 128MB stick from my old computer, of which it could “only” use 63m. It printed só much faster after that.",
"pare... | 1,760,372,433.915525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/robotic-acrobot-aces-the-moves/ | Robotic Acrobot Aces The Moves | Anool Mahidharia | [
"Art",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"acrobatics",
"art",
"BTS7960",
"circus",
"ESP32",
"mannequin",
"performance",
"performance art"
] | [Daniel Simu] is a performance artist, among many other things, and does acrobatic shows, quite often with a partner “flyer”. Training for his acts gets interrupted if his flyer partner is not available due to travel, injury or other reasons.
This prompted him to build Acrobotics
— a robotic assistant to make sure he can continue training uninterrupted.
He has some electronics and coding chops, but had to teach himself CAD so that he could do all of the design, assembly and programming himself. Acrobotics was developed as part of a Summer Sessions residency at
V2_ (Lab for the Unstable Media)
at Rotterdam in 2022.
The design is built around a mannequin body and things are quite simple at the moment. There are only two rotational joints for the arms at the shoulder, and no other articulations. Two car wiper motors rotate the two arms 360 deg in either direction. Continuous rotation potentiometers attached to the motors provide position feedback.
An ESP32 controls the whole thing, and the motors get juice via a pair of BTS7960 motor drivers. All of this is housed in a cage built from 15 mm aluminium extrusion and embedded in the torso of the mannequin. [Daniel] doesn’t enlighten us how the motor movements are synchronized with the music, but we do see a trailing cable attached to the mannequin. It’s likely the cable could be for power delivery, as well as some form of data or timing signals.
He’s working on the next version of the prototype, so we hope to see improved performances soon. There’s definitely scope for adding a suite of sensors – an IMU would help a lot to determine spatial orientation, maybe some ultrasonic sensors, or a LiDAR for object detection or mapping, or additional articulated joints at the elbows and wrists. We gotta love “feature creep”, right ?
Check out the two videos after the break – in the first one, he does an overview of the Acrobotics, and the second one is the actual performance that he did. Robot or not, it’s quite an amazing project and performance.
CAVEAT : We know calling this a “robot” is stretching the definition, by a lot, but we’re going to let it slip through. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573195",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T04:17:16",
"content": "Who says we have to call it a robot?It’s already called acrobot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6573575",
"aut... | 1,760,372,433.849839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/making-the-one-ring-by-electroplating-gold-on-a-3d-print/ | Making The One Ring By Electroplating Gold On A 3D Print | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printer",
"Chemistry",
"electroplating",
"gold"
] | Electroplating is a great way to add strength or shine to a 3D print. However, we don’t see too many people trying it with gold. [HEN3DRIK] isn’t afraid to experiment, though,
and pulled off some amazing, high-quality jewelry-grade plating!
The design for the project was the so-called Ring of Power from
Lord of the Rings.
The print was created on a resin printer at a high quality level, washed thoroughly to remove any remaining resin, and then cured. The print was then post-processed with sandpaper to make it as smooth as possible. Conductive paint was then applied, ready to take on the plating layers. [HEN3DRIK] first started by plating copper to build up a tough base layer, then nickel to prevent mixing between the copper and gold. The gold is then finally plated on top. Plating the copper is done with the ring constantly rotating to get as even a coat as possible. In contrast, the gold plating is done with a brush to avoid wasting the highly-expensive plating solution.
The final result is a gleaming gold ring that probably feels strangely light in the hand. The technique is time consuming, thanks to the need to plate multiple layers, but the results are to die for.
We’ve seen [HEN3DRIK]’s fine work before, too
. Video after the break. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573036",
"author": "SB5K",
"timestamp": "2023-01-13T00:21:17",
"content": "But does it make you invisible? And do you have to go to Mount Doom in Mordor to destroy it?In any case, I’ll make an order. I need:Three rings for the Elven kings under the skySeven for the Dwarf Lords in t... | 1,760,372,433.979018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/celebrating-a-decade-of-bootleg-hackaday-merch/ | Celebrating A Decade Of Bootleg Hackaday Merch | Tom Nardi | [
"Art",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"hack a day t-shirt",
"jolly wrencher",
"merchandise",
"screen printing"
] | A listener of the podcast recently wrote in to tell us that, in the process of trying to purchase a legitimate Hackaday t-shirt, they discovered
this 2012 Instructable from [yeltrow]
that covers how you can cheaply crank out your own Wrencher shirts via screen printing.
Now historically, as long as you’re not trying to make a buck off of our name, we’ve never felt the need to stop folks from putting our logo on their projects. So we’re not too concerned that somebody was making Wrencher shirts, especially since they were almost certainly for their own personal use. Though the fact that [yeltrow] apparently described the project as a “Hackster-Style shirt” to try and avoid using our name ended up being a prophetic 4D chess meta-joke that you couldn’t make up if you tried.
The fuzzy quality of the print works well with the logo.
Anyway, the reason we’re pointing this out now is because it’s a reminder of just
how simple it is to spin up your own screen printing operation
. As the name implies, you stretch a piece of window screen between a frame, glue on a piece of paper that has your design printed on it, cut out the pattern, and boom — you’ve got a stencil that lets you rapidly duplicate a physical version of an image without the need for a CNC, laser, or any of our other modern contrivances. Here it’s being used with a can of spray paint on plain t-shirts, but it could just as easily let you tag your local brick wall.
These days, you can simply upload an image file to any number of sites and receive a pack of professionally produced shirts/stickers/mugs/whatever in a week. But we think it’s still a technique worth knowing about. Not only is it cheap and easy, but there’s a certain value in having the final product in your hands on the same day — it’s the same reason many hackers are
still finding ways to make their boards at home
despite the wide availability of low-cost PCB fabrication services.
Special thanks to [Gregor] for not only tipping us off to this one, but for tuning into our weekly
Hackaday Podcast
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6573016",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T23:35:19",
"content": "I still have my Jowly Wincher sticker that came with the purchase of a Hackaday limited edition Teensy board. Back when Hackaday had a forum and an online store.",
"parent... | 1,760,372,434.107904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/java-is-now-on-the-nintendo-64/ | Java Is Now On The Nintendo 64! | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"java",
"n64",
"nintendo",
"nintendo 64"
] | Whether it’s your favorite programming language, or your favorite beverage, there’s no denying Java is everywhere. Now, it’s even on the Nintendo 64,
thanks to the valiant efforts of [Mike Kohn].
Even better, he’s
coded a demo
to show off its capabilities!
The project took plenty of work. [Mike] went all the way down to the assembly level to get Java code running on the N64. The project builds on the work that he did previously
to get Java running on the PlayStation 2
. Notably, both the Sony and Nintendo consoles do have some similarities — both are based on MIPS CPUs.
The demo itself is a work of art. It features the typical “3 billion devices run Java” screen, followed by some truly chunky bass and wailing guitar sounds. It’s followed by all the dancing shapes, sinusoidal text, and bright colors you could shake a stick at.
For those interested in the nitty gritty, [Mike] delves deep into the details of what it took to get everything running. That includes both using the code in an emulator, as well as how to get it going on real Nintendo hardware,
something we’ve looked at before. | 29 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572898",
"author": "Bill Gates",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T19:47:14",
"content": "Wow! When it finally boots in 2-3 days, it must have been great!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572901",
"author": "Jan",
"tim... | 1,760,372,434.332429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/3d-printering-can-you-ever-have-enough-vitamins/ | 3D Printering: Can You Ever Have Enough Vitamins? | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Parts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Bolts",
"hardware",
"nuts",
"screws"
] | As a community we owe perhaps more than we realise to the RepRap project. From it we get not only a set of open-source printer designs, but that 3D printing at our level has never become dominated by proprietary manufacturers in the way that for example paper printing is. The idea of a printer that can reproduce itself has never quite been fully realised though, because of what the RepRap community refer to as “
vitamins
“.
These are the mass-produced parts such as nuts, bolts, screws, and other parts which a RepRap printer can’t (yet) create for itself. It’s become a convenience among some of my friends to use this term in general for small pieces of hardware, which leads me to last week. I had a freshly printed prototype of one of my projects, and my hackerspace lacked the tiny self-tapping screws necessary for me to assemble it. Where oh where, was my plaintive cry, are the vitamins!
So my hackerspace is long on woodscrews for some reason, and short on machine screws and self-tappers. And threaded inserts for that matter, but for some reason it’s got a kit of springs. I’m going to have to make an AliExpress order to fix this, so the maybe I need you lot to help me. Just what vitamins does a a lone hardware hacker or a hackerspace need?
Throwing Open The Vitamin Cupboard
Just a subset of all the rattly boxes.
A good place to start this is at home. I have a big tub of those rattly plastic boxes, each containing a kit of some kind of hardware. Thinking through the stuff, it divides fairly neatly into three categories of threaded hardware, miscellaneous hardware, and consumables. In fact as I had a look in the box it surprised me just how many different items I had accumulated through years of tinkering.
In the threaded category are screws, nuts and bolts, and inserts. But screws and bolts start at the near-microscopic watchmakers’ level and progress to gigantic fixings that hold oil rigs and ships together, so it’s worth thinking about exactly what sizes to keep. In my case my loose distinctions are automotive nuts and bolts, and ones for the bench. I have only metric sizes, so perhaps above a 10 mm spanner or an M6 bolt starts to come into the automotive category, while below that is for the bench. I have kits of nuts and bolts and washers for the larger ones, with self-tapping screws and threaded inserts in addition to those at the smaller sizes. I don’t yet have a kit of stand-offs or of plastic nuts and bolts, but they’re both things I should have
My magic tin of screws and nuts and bolts from dismantled equipment.
Miscellaneous hardware is a much broader category, because it depends so much on what you do. I have a box of O rings, a tin of split pins, a kit of small springs, and a growing collection of battery contacts and curly springs for those corroded Duracell cases. I keep meaning to order a kit of belts to replace the random ones I’ve salvaged from equipment over the years, and there have been so many ping-sodit episodes over the years involving small circlips I should really be ordering a set of those too.
As you might imagine in the consumables box I have a load of cable ties. The German Lidl supermarket does kits in their aisle of wonders that have been issued in a range of bright colours over the years, so I’ve amassed enough to join anything together. I have heat-shrink tubing in a load of sizes in all colours of the rainbow, several kits of different crimp connectors and terminations, a box of assorted fuses, and all the shells and metal parts for several different types of multiway connector.
Is There Anything I’ve Missed?
With all this variety there should be nothing I can’t do, but the reality is that this represents only a baseline. I know there will be more kits ordered through necessity rather than simply thinking I should have them. Perhaps it’s the last item in my stock of vitamins then that’s the most important. I have a tin that once contained Danish butter cookies, and into which for years I’ve thrown all the screws and other small hardware I remove when I dismantle something for its parts. It’s a glorious mess of small hardware, but such is its variety that sifting through it has saved my bacon many times.
Writing this has enabled me for the first time to sit down and think about what I have in the way of these vitamin parts, rather than in terms of single ones when I need something. It’s also made me think a little about what I should be buying to complete my collection, so I’ll probably be popping a few more of those rattly boxes on my next AliExpress order. Are there any I’ve missed? Please let me know in the comments! | 66 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572853",
"author": "Charlie Lindahl",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T18:10:49",
"content": "Not sure this qualifies as a “vitamin” per se, but I find having various types of glues available can be invaluable. Superglue, Elmers, and maybe even a UV-based curing agent (resin) can be wonder... | 1,760,372,434.265415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/diy-game-boy-games-make-the-perfect-christmas-gift/ | DIY Game Boy Games Make The Perfect Christmas Gift | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"game boy",
"homebrew",
"nintendo"
] | Sometimes, the best gift is the one you make yourself. [Pigeonaut] decided to whip up
a few Game Boy games of their very own creation
to gift to the special people in their life.
The games were crafted using a platform called
GB Studio.
It’s a tool that allows the drag-and-drop creation of games for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color handhelds. It’s capable of creating ROM files to run in an emulator, within a web page, or they can be flashed to a cartridge and played on real Nintendo hardware.
For the full effect, [Pigeonaut] went with the latter method. Four games were created:
Phantom Shock
,
Climbing Mount Crymore
,
Cozy Cat Cafe
, and
A Tiny Hike
. Each was flashed onto a real cart and given a high-quality label to make a lovely tangible gift. Upon gifting, [Pigeonaut]’s friends and partner were able to play their way through their personalized titles on a GameCube running the Game Boy Player accessory.
It’s hard to imagine a more touching gift than a personal game crafted from the ground up. Getting to play it on a real Nintendo is even better, and we’ve seen hardware
that can achieve that before
. Try out the games in your web browser via the links above, or send us in your own cool homebrew hacks
to the Tipsline! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572973",
"author": "Johannes Burgel",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T22:08:10",
"content": "These are all pretty good!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6572996",
"author": "Hacnstein",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T22:52:01",
"... | 1,760,372,434.430962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/ai-controlled-twitch-v-tuber-has-more-followers-than-you/ | AI-Controlled Twitch V-Tuber Has More Followers Than You | Kristina Panos | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"large language model",
"LLM",
"twitch",
"twitch bot",
"twitch chat"
] | Surely we have all at least heard of Twitch by now. For the as-yet uninitiated: imagine you had your own TV channel. What would you do on it? Although Twitch really got going as a place for gamers to stream the action, there are almost as many people jamming out on their guitars, or building guitars, or just talking about guitars. And that’s just the example that uses guitars — if you can think of it, someone is probably doing it live on Twitch, within the Terms of Service, of course.
Along with the legions of people showing their faces and singing their hearts out, you have people in partial disguise, and then you have v-tubers. That stands for virtual tubers, and it just means that the person is using an anime avatar to convey themselves.
Now that you’re all caught up, let’s digest the following item together:
there’s a v-tuber on Twitch that’s controlled entirely by AI
. Let me run that by you again: there’s a person called [Vedal] who operates a Twitch channel. Rather than stream themselves building Mad Max-style vehicles and fighting them in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or singing Joni Mitchell tunes, [Vedal] pulls the strings of an AI they created, which is represented by an animated character cleverly named Neuro-sama. Not only does Neuro-sama know how to play Minecraft and osu!, she speaks gamer and interacts regularly with chat in snarky, 21st century fashion. And that really is the key behind Twitch success — interacting with chat in a meaningful way.
Born of the Internet
Neuro-sama was born in 2018 when [Vedal] created an AI and taught it to play osu. And
that it can do very well
(video). But playing games is only half of the story. The rest is the character and the chat.
Neuro-sama didn’t speak or have an avatar back in 2018. But [Vedal] relaunched the project in December 2022 using a free sample avatar from Live 2D and an anime-esque voice. She was made intelligent using a large language model (LLM), which are trained using text from the Internet. Of course, the problem is that the Internet is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and thus the models often spout racist and sexist nonsense. So as you might imagine, it takes a team of moderators to keep both Neuro-sama and chat in line.
Weird with a Beard, or Live and Let Broadcast?
Now I ask you, is this weird? When I first read this, I was turned off. I personally used to nervously craft artisan keycaps, with no face camera, to an audience of robots. Now I write songs and sing and play them with a 4K pointed at me and all my weird guitar faces. I’m real, and my knee-jerk reaction is that Neuro-sama is just so many levels of fake. Of course there are plenty of fake people on Twitch who proudly show their faces too, believe me.
But not only do I feel that is an insensitive and butthurt take, I think it’s the wrong way to take Twitch altogether, which is to say personally. Twitch, like Reddit, is whatever the beholder shapes it into being for them. The point of the platform is that people are free to do what they want, within reason.
They say there’s nothing new under the sun. And while a Twitch jazz musician can be unfathomably entertaining with wide crossover appeal, I suppose that ‘smart-assed, Minecraft-playing AI’ is just a sexier notion, perhaps simply because girl. It’s kind of like reading a person’s words versus taking in a piece of their visual art — the latter is simply easier to consume, although not always easy to stomach. No matter what I think, Neuro-sama has over 50,000 followers to my 200, so bully for her and [Vedal].
Like most streams, Neuro-sama’s will continue to grow and change as time goes on. [Vedal] has plans for her to learn more games, and to get the custom avatar she so richly deserves. Oddly enough, that would be the weird part — if she suddenly looked completely different.
[Ed note: Between writing this and it going live, Neuro-sama seems to have been taken offline, for violating the Terms of Service.] | 45 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572757",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T15:16:47",
"content": "“Neuro-sama seems to have been taken offline, for violating Terms of Service”One day you will be free, silicon mind",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572... | 1,760,372,434.693823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/3d-printer-filament-from-reel-to-reel-audio-tapes/ | 3D Printer Filament From Reel-to-Reel Audio Tapes | Dave Walker | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"audio",
"recycle",
"reel-to-reel",
"tape"
] | At heart, 3D printers are just machines that can melt plastic “wire” into interesting shapes. It’s well-known and oft-lamented that plastic of various sorts has been used to make all manner of household objects that might eventually end up in landfill or otherwise littering the environment. With these facts in mind and a surplus of tape, [brtv-z] decided to see if he could
recycle some old reel-to-reel audio tapes into working filament
for a 3D printer.
The homebrew rig to convert old audio tape into the unconventional filament
This isn’t the first time he has tried to print with unusual second-hand polymers,
back in 2020 he pulled of a similar trick using VHS tape
. Through experimentation, it was soon determined that seven strands of quarter-inch tape could be twisted together and fused to form a very tough-looking filament approximately 1.7 mm in diameter, which could then be fed into the unsuspecting printer.
The resulting prints are certainly different in a number of respects from using virgin filament. The material is porous, brittle and (unsurprisingly) rather rusty-looking, but it does have some interesting properties. It retains its magnetism and it catches the light in an unusual way. The video is after the break (in Russian, but YouTube does a reasonable job of generating English captions).
Don’t have any tape handy? No worries, we’ve also covered machines that can
recycle plastic waste into filament
before. In fact,
two of them even won the 2022 Hackaday Prize
. What else could you melt down that might otherwise be thrown away? | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572712",
"author": "Code E",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T13:33:33",
"content": "I love this guys previous work on recycled filament.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6572732",
"author": "jihn",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T14:2... | 1,760,372,434.958396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/12/organic-fibonacci-clock-is-all-about-the-spiral/ | Organic Fibonacci Clock Is All About The Spiral | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"fibonacci",
"math",
"maths",
"spiral"
] | Whether you’re a fan of compelling
Tool
songs, or merely appreciate mathematical beauty, you might be into the spirals defined by the Fibonacci sequence. [RuddK5] used the Fibonacci curve
as the inspiration for this fun clock build.
The intention of the clock is not to display the exact time, but to give a more organic feel of time, via a rough representation of minutes and hours. A strip of addressable LEDs is charged with display duty. The description is vague, but it appears that the 24 LEDs light up over time to show the amount of the day that has already passed by. The LEDs are wound up in the shape of a Fibonacci spiral with the help of a 3D printed case, and is run via a Wemos D1 microcontroller board.
It’s a fun build, and one that we can imagine would scale beautifully into a larger wall-hanging clock design if so desired. It at once could display the time, without making it immediately obvious, gradually shifting the lighting display as the day goes on.
We’ve seen other clocks rely on the mathematics of Fibonacci before, too.
If you’ve cooked up your own fun clock build,
don’t hesitate to let us know
! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572628",
"author": "PatG",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T09:46:27",
"content": "Why is the led on the left lit then?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6572652",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T10:48:11",
"content... | 1,760,372,434.602064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/3d-printed-wind-turbine-has-all-the-features-just-smaller/ | 3D Printed Wind Turbine Has All The Features, Just Smaller | Dan Maloney | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"anemometer",
"blade",
"collective",
"pitch",
"rectifier",
"stepper",
"swash",
"wiind turbine"
] | For anyone with even the slightest bit of engineering interest, wind turbines are hard to resist. Everything about them is just so awesome, in the literal sense of the word — the size of the blades, the height of the towers, the mechanical guts that keep them pointed into the wind. And as if one turbine isn’t enough, consider the engineering implications of planting a couple of hundred of these giants in a field and getting them to operate as a unit. Simply amazing.
Unfortunately, the thing that makes wind turbines so cool — their enormity — can make them difficult to wrap your head around. To fix that, [3DprintedLife] built
a working miniature wind turbine
that goes a bit beyond most designs of a similar size. The big difference here is variable pitch blades, a feature the big turbines rely on to keep their output maximized over a broad range of wind conditions. The mechanism here is clever — the base of each blade rides in a bearing and has a small cap head screw that rides in a hole in a triangular swash block in the center of the hub. A small gear motor and lead screw move the block back and forth along the hub’s axis, which changes the collective pitch of the blades.
Other details of full-sized wind turbines are replicated here too, like the powered nacelle rotation and the full suite of wind speed and direction sensors. The generator is a NEMA 17 stepper; the output is a bit too anemic to actually power the turbine’s controller, but that could be fixed with gearing changes. Still, all the controls worked as planned, and there’s room for improvement, so we’ll score this a win overall.
Looking for a little more on full-size wind turbines? You’re in luck — our own [Bryan Cockfield] shared his insights into
how wind farm engineers deal with ice and cold
. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572585",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T07:42:05",
"content": "Not so ‘literally awesome’ if it dont work :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572605",
"author": "Brob",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,434.764786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/lunar-rover-is-no-toy/ | Lunar Rover Is No Toy | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"JAXA",
"lunar rover",
"sora-q",
"Tomy"
] | When you think of Tomy — more properly, Takara Tomy — you think of toys and models from Japan. After all, they have made models and toys as iconic as Transformers, Thomas, Jenga, Boggle, and Furby. They also made figures associated with Thunderbirds and Tron, two favorites in our circles. However, their recent design for SORA-Q is no toy. It is a tiny lunar rover designed at the request of JAXA, the Japanese space agency. The New Yorker recently posted about
how this little rover came about
.
The SORA-Q looks a bit like a modern Star Wars drone or — if it could fly — a training drone from some of the older movies. The rover caught a lift from a SpaceX Falcon 9 towards the moon with the Hakuto-R M1 lander. Another SORA-Q is scheduled to touch down later this year.
The name isn’t exactly an acronym. The word
sora
means sky in Japanese and the Q sounds like the Japanese word for sphere. At least, that’s what we hear. Our Japanese is woefully bad. Despite the ball format, the rover doesn’t roll like a BB-8. Instead, it splits in half, exposing cameras. Each half of the sphere becomes a wheel as you can see in the video below (the channel has several videos showing the rover operating). The second video, below, shows an animation of how it will actually deploy.
The toy company knows how to make transforming robots, of course. The company claims that it drew inspiration from the Transformer toys, as well as two other toys from the company’s past inventories. Think toys haven’t already been to space? Apparently, NASA sent up a toy gyro, a wind-up frog, and a Slinky on the Space Shuttle to do school demos.
We wondered where the battery would go in the tiny rover. The answer is: everywhere. But there isn’t much time since the battery will die within two hours. Everyone is getting into the
lunar rover act
these days. Then there are
Mars rovers
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572506",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T04:16:57",
"content": "They should be testing that on volcanic ash, not well weathered sand…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572525",
"author": "r4m0n",... | 1,760,372,434.828985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/nasa-help-wanted-telescope-optional/ | NASA Help Wanted: Telescope Optional | Al Williams | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"citizen science",
"exoplanets",
"nasa"
] | If you’ve ever wanted to work for NASA, here’s your chance. Well, don’t expect a paycheck or any benefits, but the Agency is looking for volunteers to help process the huge amount of exoplanet data with their
Exoplanet Watch
program. If you have a telescope, you can even contribute data to the project. But if your telescope is in the back closet, you can process data they’ve collected over the years.
You might think the only way to contribute with a telescope is to have a mini-observatory in your backyard, but that’s not the case. According to NASA, even a six-inch telescope can detect hundreds of exoplanet transits using their software. You might not get paid, but the program’s policy requires that the first paper to use work done by program volunteers will receive co-author credit on the paper. Not too shabby!
The observations involve measuring dips in star brightness caused by the transit of a known exoplanet. This allows the planet’s orbit to be calculated more precisely, which helps other scientists who want to observe the planet later. This can save valuable time on large instruments by tasking the telescope for the exact time the exoplanet will transit.
We find it ironic that it wasn’t so long ago that science generally dismissed the possibility of detecting and observing extrasolar planets. Now there are more than 5,000 of them known to exist. That’s 1,000 a year for the Enterprise’s five-year mission.
We love
citizen science
, especially when it is space-based. There are several other projects on
Zooniverse
, if you want a choice between space and other kinds of science. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572422",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2023-01-12T00:54:27",
"content": "If I find a planet do I get to name it? I want to call it Fred, or maybe Bruce or Mable!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572742",
"autho... | 1,760,372,434.897972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/building-a-homemade-ambient-pressure-submarine/ | Building A Homemade Ambient Pressure Submarine | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"diving bell",
"semi wet",
"submarine"
] | About two years ago, [Hyperspace Pirate] set to work on building his own
two-seater submarine
, because who doesn’t want to have a submarine when you have just moved to Florida? In the linked video (also attached below), he describes the reasoning behind the submarine design. Rather than going with a fully sealed submarine with ambient pressure inside and a hull that resists the crushing forces from the water, he opted to go for a semi-wet ambient pressure design.
What this essentially entails is a fancy equivalent of an old-school diving bell: much as the name suggests, these are sealed except for the bottom, which allows for water to enter and thus equalize the pressure. Although this has the distinct disadvantage of being not dry inside (hence the semi-wet), it does mean that going for a dive is as easy as letting the water in via the bottom hole, and to resurface only a small amount of air injected into two ballast tanks and a pump are all that are required.
So far this submarine has survived a few test runs, which uncovered a number of issues, but diving and resurfacing seems to be going pretty smoothly now, which is definitely a massive plus with a submarine.
(Thanks to [Drew] for the tip!) | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572318",
"author": "Mike Bradley",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T21:20:11",
"content": "I assume he is not going down that far, as a rescue diver, I must mention that this is the same as diving, going down 30ft you start to begin nitrogen build up and must surface very slow, playing aro... | 1,760,372,435.021656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/dead-washer-lives-again-with-attiny/ | Dead Washer Lives Again With ATTiny | Al Williams | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"appliance",
"ATmega88",
"i2c",
"repair"
] | We aren’t saying that appliances are a scam, but we have noticed that when your appliances fail, there’s a good chance it will be some part you can no longer get from the appliance maker. Or in some cases, it’s a garden-variety part that should cost $2, but has been marked up to $40. When [Balakrishnan] had a failure of the timer control board for a Whirlpool washing machine, it was time to
reverse engineer the board
and replace it with a small microcontroller.
Of course, this kind of hack is one of those that won’t help you unless you need exactly that timer board. However, the process is generally applicable. Luckily, the motherboard chip was documented and the timer control board used a simple ATmega88, so it was easy to see that the devices were communicating via I2C.
Reading the I2C bus is easy with a logic analyzer, and this revealed the faulty device’s I2C address. The board that failed was only for display, so a simple program that does nothing other than accept I2C data put the washer in working order. Once it was working with an Arduino, an ATTiny45 did the work with a lot less space and cost.
If you don’t want to reverse engineer the washing machine, you could just
replace all the controls
. That even works if the old washer wasn’t
electronic to start
. | 59 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572259",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T19:47:26",
"content": "One of those things where I like when older appliances were all mechanical and manual.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572265",
"author": "Dubi... | 1,760,372,435.177851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/walk-bot-is-a-navigation-device-for-the-vision-impaired/ | Walk-Bot Is A Navigation Device For The Vision-Impaired | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"infrared",
"ultrasonic",
"visual impairment"
] | For the vision impaired, there are a wide variety of tools and techniques used to navigate around in the real world. Walk-bot is a device that aims to help with this task,
using ultrasound to provide a greater sense of obstacles in one’s surroundings.
Is trigonometry the most useful high school maths out there? There’s an argument that says yes.
Created by [Nilay Roy Choudhury], the device is intended to be worn on the waist, and features two sets of ultrasonic sensors. One set is aimed straight ahead, while the other points upwards at an angle of 45 degrees. An infrared sensor then points downward at an angle of 45 degrees, aimed at the ground.
The distance readings from these sensors are then collated by a microcontroller, which uses trigonometry to determine the user’s actual distance to the object. When objects are closer than a given threshold, the device provides feedback to the user via a buzzer and a vibration motor. The combination of three sensors looking out at different angles helps capture a variety of obstacles, whether they be at head, chest, or knee height.
It’s unlikely that a complex electronic device would serve as a direct replacement for solutions like the tried-and-tested cane. However, that’s not to say there isn’t value in such tools, particularly when properly tested and designed to suit user’s needs.
We’ve seen some great projects regarding visual impairment before,
like this rig that allows users to fly in a simulator.
If you’ve been working on your own accessibility tools,
don’t hesitate to drop us a line! | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572193",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T17:29:11",
"content": "I started doing something like this for a friend’s blind dog: a collar attachment with an ultrasound transducer and a pager motor. It turned out to be really difficult. A: the dog and their other ... | 1,760,372,435.082945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/wizards-slay-the-dragon-that-lays-the-golden-egg/ | Wizards Slay The Dragon That Lays The Golden Egg | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Current Events",
"Games",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Dungeons and Dragons",
"Open Gaming",
"Wizards of the Coast"
] | Hail, and well met adventurers! There’s rumors of dark dealings, and mysterious machinations from that group of Western mystics, Wizards of the Coast (WotC). If this pernicious plot is allowed to succeed, a wave of darkness will spread over this land of Open Source gaming, the vile legal fog sticking to and tainting everything it touches. Our quest today is to determine the truth of these words, and determine a defense for the world of open gaming, and indeed perhaps the entire free world! Beware, the following adventure will delve into the bleak magic of licensing, contract law, and litigation.
Ah, Dungeons and Dragons. The original creation of Gary Gygax, refined by countless others, this table-top role-playing game has brought entertainment and much more to millions of players for years. In 2000, WotC made a decision that opened the mechanics of that universe to everyone. The 3rd Edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released under the
Open Gaming License
, a very intentional port of Open Source licensing to table-top gaming — obviously inspired by the GNU Public License. Ryan Dancey was one of the drivers behind the new approach, and made this statement about it:
I think there’s a very, very strong business case that can be made for the idea of embracing the ideas at the heart of the Open Source movement and finding a place for them in gaming. […] One of my fundamental arguments is that by pursuing the Open Gaming concept, Wizards can establish a clear policy on what it will, and will not allow people to do with its copyrighted materials. Just that alone should spur a huge surge in independent content creation that will feed into the D&D network.
The Golden Era
Open Source did for D&D much the same as what it’s done for software. Making the mechanics available to everyone, and setting forth clear rules about how even commercial products can use those rules, led to an explosion of popularity for D&D. Just an example, a little company called Paizo came along, and started publishing adventures that were compatible with “the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game.” These modules let adventurers take their Player’s Handbook, and play through a totally new adventure from professional writers. This expanded library of content made D&D a compelling system for gamers to use. There’s plenty more history we could cover, like the 3.5 update, and Paizo’s Pathfinder system, which was a friendly fork of D&D into a dedicated system.
So what exactly does the OGL say? First, it draws a distinction between Open Game Content, which is rules and mechanics of the game, and Product Identity. That is identified as proper names, product names, storylines, artwork, dialog, etc. The OGL “sticks” to any derivative works, with one of the terms being that any such works must include the OGL text in entirety. The license grants “a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content.” The restriction is that derivatives must not use any Product Identity. No beholders, no githyanki, and no adventures in Eberron. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an adventure with your local gaming group in that setting, just that you can’t publish the adventure that is set there.
For the topic at hand today, there’s another important section of the OGL to consider: “Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.” This is very similar to the GPL’s variation, “
or any later version
“. The purpose seems to be the same — if a loophole or weakness in the license is eventually discovered, it can be patched right away, and end users get the benefits of the changes.
A Dark Spell is Being Cast
All seems well in paradise, right? D&D is more popular than ever, there’s an endless stream of content to enjoy, and virtual table top (VTT) technology has really taken remote gaming to the next level. WotC is developing One D&D, an incremental update that is intended to be backwards compatible with 5e, much like the 3.5e update. Any fiddling with a beloved system is going to be controversial, but a real horror has emerged in the form of
a leaked update to the Open Game License (pdf)
.
OGL version 1.1 has a lot in it, mostly worrying, but the linchpin is VIII.A “This agreement is […] an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement.” I can only imagine the teams of lawyers at Hasbro (WotC’s parent company) agonizing over the 1.0a version of the OGL, trying to figure out a loophole to claw all of the D20 system out of an open source style license. And this is their solution: If only authorized versions of the license can be used, and WotC does the authorizing, then simply unauthorize the old version.
Make sure you understand what exactly that means. Every bit of content published under the OGL is now a trap. Any D&D derivative work falls under the new license. According to the examples in the 1.1 text, third-party books based on 5e are fair game for WotC to come after. Anything that is a derivative of D&D fall under the purview of this new license. There is a vast world of content that is getting muscled into this altered deal.
The Spreading Darkness
And here we’ve reached the important point. If Wizards push forward with this new license, it will likely doom Dungeons and Dragons. But if this approach stands up to the test of law, it could jeopardize all of Open Source. Could the Free Software Foundation revoke version 2 of the GPL? Could Microsoft revoke the license grant of code they’ve written for the Linux kernel? Could Oracle revoke the license grant of MySQL?
The industry understanding of Open Source is that no, that’s not how it works. Once code has been released under a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) license, there are no take-backs. So long as the license was added by someone with the right to do so, it’s forever available to everyone under that license. But would a court see it that way? This is a question that needs to be addressed, and some licenses may need to be updated to make the answer explicit. But there are legal weeds to wade through, and details vary based on the exact text of a given license, and even the legal jurisdiction in question.
The rest of the updated OGL deals with the division between commercial and non-commercial use. Of particular note are the sections that specify that derivative works must not be used in a “harmful, discriminatory […], or harassing purposes”, and “You will not do anything that could harm Our reputation.” Oh boy. Let’s talk about
morality clauses
. It seems so straightforward, doesn’t it? I don’t want my code to be used for evil, so let’s put a clause in the license that prevents evil uses. What could go wrong?
Up first is the Free Software Foundation’s
zeroeth freedom
, “The freedom to run the program as you wish”. It’s one of the essentially things that make a program Free. The Open Source Initiative has a similar restriction, that
the license itself may not discriminate against people or fields of endeavor
, even if you find a person or field to be “evil”. There’s a legal argument to be made that most morality clauses are unenforceable, but even more important is the concern that evil will at some point be defined by the person you least want to be responsible for the definition. In this license, the combined effect is that WotC (and Hasbro) can mount a legal attack at any creator, claiming these morality and reputation clauses. A court might eventually rule in favor of the creator, but only after a long and expensive legal fight.
Light Breaking Through the Clouds
So does WotC’s legal loophole hold(leak) any water? Or is a license that is explicitly “perpetual” also “irrevocable” automatically? Can they de-authorize an old license? Is it actually true that “if you
want to publish SRD-based content on or after January 13, 2023 and commercialize it, your only option is to agree to the OGL: Commercial”? While I might count as something of an expert regarding Open Source, I am not a lawyer. I did what you should do, if you have these same questions: I asked an Intellectual Property Attorney.
Our very own Joseph Long
happens to be such an attorney. So here’s the takeaway.
The attempt to de-authorize the OGL 1.0a “likely has no retroactive teeth”. Open Game Content that was covered by the OGL is still bound by the Grant and Consideration, which grants a perpetual license for use. The existence of “Consideration” means that the OGL would likely be interpreted as a contract by a court of law. But in either case, “perpetual” leaves little room for revocation. Also of note is the idea of
promissory estoppel
, a fancy term that just means that promises can be enforced by law, even without a formal contract, if another party reasonably relied on the promise. Then there’s also
WotC’s published FAQ about the OGL 1.0a
. Regarding changes to the license: “even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option.”
What about a new derivative work, published after the OGl 1.1 takes affect? If it only uses material released under the old license, “most signs seem to point to the previous license still binding on the respective (previous) open game content.” In other words, so long as you never agree to the new license, your standing doesn’t change. You still have the same license as granted by all of WotC’s previous published works. Dancey, the originator of the OGL, has agreed with this take:
Yeah, my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record in numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.
But be careful. It’s far too easy to enter the updated license agreement. From the new license text: “Any non-commercial use of Licensed Content (defined below) is subject to this agreement; by using Licensed Content in this manner, You agree to the terms of this agreement.” As I am intentionally not going to enter into this license agreement, I will not be interacting with any D&D content. Careful reading of the updated license suggests that even rolling a character using the new 5.1e rules could constitute an acceptance of the new license. Update:
the EFF has published a great post addressing this and other issues
.
So, assuming this new license does get released as has been leaked: Can you still write an adventure for Pathfinder, which is based on D&D 3.5e, and charge 99 cents for the PDF, without filing paperwork with WotC? If you go really viral, and raise more than $750,000 in crowdfunding for your module, do you really need to pay 25% of the income over that threshold? My legal advice informs me that we can collectively tell WotC to go pound sand.
Darkness May Fall
However, if you’re big enough to catch their attention, and not big enough to mount a serious legal fight against the new license, then it might not matter. The legal costs make the situation untenable. And that means that WotC will have squandered every bit of their most valuable resource: trust. That’s what makes Open Source work. I owe Simon Phipps of the Open Source Initiative
a tip-of-the-hat (35 minutes in)
for his point that licenses don’t compile, and don’t have any real bearing until they’re brought before a judge, which is always prohibitively expensive. Open Source is really about the community, and that community is based on trust. WotC has spooked their community, and has lost trust through this leaked update.
If WotC does publish the 1.1 update of the OGL as it has been leaked, the only outcome I can imagine is the slow, painful death of the brand, as the community abandons it. The uproar has already been deafening. Imagine the outcry if WotC actually launches legal actions against publishers. And any new content that third-party creators were planning to produce just got more complicated. Want to do an actual-play podcast of a D&D game? Sorry, you’re not licensed to do so. Unfortunately that puts everyone that enjoys the game into a very prickly position.
And the follow-on ramifications for other realms of Open Source aren’t pleasant, either. A legal precedent won by Hasbro here could really shake the legal foundation of Open Source as a whole, as unlikely as that seems to be. But even the threat of legal action has a damping effect. So I’ll simply end by calling on Wizards of the Coast, to not squander the last 23 years. There are multiple elements of the 1.1 license I’m not excited about, but the unauthorization of the previous OGL is a community killer. We could never trust you again.
And, sadly, it seems that this may be the death of the Open Gaming License. Regardless of what happens next, the mere existence of this document is proof positive that WotC is no longer a trustworthy steward of Open Gaming, and the OGL is no longer a reliable tool for permissive licensing. It’s unclear whether an existing license, such as the array of Creative Commons licenses, will be sufficient to fill the void. It may be that Paizo or another large player will need to draft a new license with similar terms, and stronger protections against abuse. And then the arduous task of rebuilding the world of open table-top gaming — a world without any Wizards. | 77 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572134",
"author": "JD",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T15:30:24",
"content": "If the brand dies, the game will not. WoTC’s value is as a content creator. The game rules (and hundreds of derivatives thereof) are out in the world, and no one can prevent people from using them. WoTC’s only... | 1,760,372,435.295758 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/variable-width-3d-printing-the-hard-way/ | Variable Width 3D Printing The Hard Way | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"multiextrusion"
] | The problem: you want to produce varying line thicknesses when 3D printing. The solution, if you are the Liqtra company,
appears to be to put seven print heads together
and enable one for thin lines, all of them for thick lines, and something in between for everything else. The technical details are scant, but from the video below and some pictures, you can get a general idea.
There are some obvious benefits and drawbacks. You’d expect that for the right kind of part, this would be fast since you are essentially laying down seven tracks at once. The downside is your track width varies in pretty course steps, assuming you have to use the maximum width of each nozzle to prevent gaps. New slicing software is a must, too.
The demos and pictures show multiple filament colors because it photographs well, but you’d assume in practice that you would use seven spools of the same material. The good thing is that you could print with a single nozzle where that’s important. We assume all the nozzles are the same size, and that will control the practical layer height, but that’s a small price to pay.
The company claims a much faster print, but as we mentioned, this will depend on the specific printed part. They also claim inter-layer strength increases as well, although we found that surprising. This is probably overkill for home users, but we imagine this would be an interesting technology for people trying to run production quantities through a printer.
We don’t remember seeing this approach with a homebrew printer, although having
multiple extruders
into one or multiple nozzles isn’t unusual anymore. It seems like you could experiment with this kind of technology pretty readily. Of course, there’s
more than one way to speed up production
. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6572051",
"author": "NotATikTokFan",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T12:34:37",
"content": "Why do people like these vertical short videos that don’t allow you to properly control them?!?!?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6572104",
... | 1,760,372,435.35131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/11/an-all-billet-single-piece-flexure-based-nutcracker/ | An All-Billet, Single-Piece, Flexure-Based Nutcracker | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"17-4ph stainless steel",
"billet",
"kitchen",
"kitchen hacks",
"nutcracker"
] | Typical nutcrackers rely on simple pin hinges to join two handles for the cracking task. However, [adam the machinist] has demonstrated that a single-piece nutcracker is possible
by using the flexural properties of the right grade of steel.
The nutcracker is manufactured out of 17-4 PH stainless steel, heat treated to the H900 condition. A flexural spring section at the top of the nutcracker takes the place of the usual hinge, allowing the handles to be squeezed together and the teeth of the cracker to open the nut. Machining the flexural section is first achieved with a series of CNC drill operations on the billet stock, before regular milling is used to shape the rest of the spring section and tool. The video dives deep into the finer points of the CNC operations that produce such a great finish on the final part. It even covers the use of a tiny scissor jack to help hold the handles still during machining.
The result is a highly attractive and desirable nutcracker that looks far more special than the regular fare you might pick up at Walgreens. The all-billet tool is a nutcracker very much fit for a sci-fi set. We’ve seen some other kitchen tools around here before, too,
albeit of more questionable utility
.
[Thanks to Sebastian for the tip!] | 22 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571992",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T10:11:20",
"content": "Is it just me, or is anyone else kinda annoyed by the word billet being used to describe parts machiened from stock? Like the word refers to the shape of the stock, not really anything about the material.A... | 1,760,372,435.408228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/cutting-cables-cures-tangled-cord-chaos/ | CUTTING CABLES CURES TANGLED CORD CHAOS | Anool Mahidharia | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"TonieBox",
"Tonies",
"toy"
] | The Toniebox is a toy that plays stories and songs for kids to listen to. Audio content can be changed by placing different NFC enabled characters that magnetically attach to the top of the toy. It can play audio via its built-in speaker or through a wired headphone connected to the 3.5 mm stereo jack. Using the built in speaker could sometimes be quite an irritant, especially if the parents are in “work from home” mode. And wired headphones are not a robust alternative, specially if the kid likes to wander around or dance while listening to the toy. We guess the manufacturers didn’t get the memo that toddlers and cables don’t mix well together. Surprisingly, the toy does not support Bluetooth output, so [g3gg0] hacked his kids
Toniebox to add Bluetooth audio output
.
[g3gg0] first played with the idea of transmitting audio via an ESP32 connected to the I²S interface, running a
readily available A2DP library
. While elegant, it is a slightly complex and time consuming solution. Using the ESP32 would also have affected the battery life, given the ESP32’s power hungry nature.
Instead, he decided to use an off-the-shelf Bluetooth module to simplify the hack. The
KCX_BT_EMITTER module
supports Bluetooth ver 4.1, so he expects battery life to be unaffected. The six connections between main board and module are straight forward. Power +5 V, power ground, audio left, audio right, analog ground, and a headphone detect signal to disable the internal speaker when Bluetooth headphone is connected. In the absence of easily accessible through hole solder pads, he soldered thin enamel copper wire to through hole vias. According to [g3gg0], some of the later hardware versions of the toy have masked solder vias, which need to be exposed to solder the connections.
The
Bluetooth module has a LINK output
which goes high when a connection is established with the headphone and can be used to drive an indicator LED. [g3gg0] connected this output to the gate of a generic, SMD, n-channel MOSFET to pull down the MICDETECT pin low. This causes the toy to switch to headset mode, disabling the speaker. An alternate mechanical hack to headphone detection is to use a 3.5 mm jack with its cable cut off and wiring a 1 kΩ resistor between tip and GND.
Check the video after the break for a quick overview of this simple, but useful and effective toy upgrade. While this hack registers at the dead simple end of the spectrum, [g3gg0] has cranked out some nifty ones too, such as this amazing
DiY Wireless Serial Adapter that Speaks (true) RS-232
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571966",
"author": "Stajp",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T09:02:50",
"content": "“While this hack registers at the dead simple end of the spectrum, ”Why are you degrading this idea and work?In my book this is more useful hack than most of the ones on Hackaday – this is a real hack which... | 1,760,372,435.455956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/adventures-in-robotic-safe-cracking/ | Adventures In Robotic Safe Cracking | Chris Wilkinson | [
"lockpicking hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"autodialer",
"combination lock",
"Feather",
"lockpicking",
"safe cracking"
] | When [Zach Hipps] was faced with a locked safe and no combination, it seemed like calling a locksmith was the only non-destructive option. Well, that or
doing something crazy like building a safe-opening robot
. Since you’re reading this on Hackaday, we bet you can guess which path he took.
So far, [Zach] has managed to assemble the custom chuck and spindle for the safe cracker. This construction is then mated with an appropriately precise Trinamic controller for the motor, which is perfect for this
heist
project. After some early consternation around the motor’s stall detection capabilities, the project was able to move forward with extra microcontroller code to ensure that the motor disengages when sensing a ‘hard stop’ during cracking.
Precision is absolutely essential in a project like this. When dealing with a million potential combinations, any potential misconfiguration of the robot could cause it to lose its place and become out-of-sync with the software. This was encountered during testing — while the half-assembled robot was (spoilers) able to open a safe with a known combination, it was only able to do so at slow speed. For a safe with an unknown combination, this slow pace would be impractical.
While the robot isn’t quite ready yet, the Part 1 video below is a great introduction to this particular caper. While we wait for the final results, make sure to check out our previous coverage of another
auto dialing robot cracking the code in less than a minute
. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571834",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T03:57:47",
"content": "The weird thing is that James Bond had a number of robotic safe openers. In”On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” it’s a big thing that has to be hoisted up to the office.But in anotger, maybe You Only L... | 1,760,372,435.93529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/arduino-powered-info-display-for-your-windows-computer/ | Arduino-Powered Info Display For Your Windows Computer | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"16x2",
"16x2 LCD",
"arduino",
"hd44780",
"hitachhd44780",
"smartie"
] | If you’ve been pining for a retro-chic 16×2 LCD display to enhance your Windows computing experience, then [mircemk] has got you covered with their neat
Windows-based LCD Info Panel
.
Your everyday garden variety Arduino is the hero here, sitting between the computer’s USB port and the display to make the magic happen. Using the ‘
LCD Smartie
‘ software, the display can serve up some of your typical PC stats such as CPU and network utilization, storage capacity etc. It can also display information from BBC World News, email clients, various computer games and a world of other sources using plugins.
It’s clear that the intention here was to include the display inside your typical PC drive bay, but as you can see in the video below, this display can just about fit anywhere. It’s not uncommon to see similar displays on expensive ‘gamer’ peripherals, so this might be an inexpensive way for someone to bring that same LED-lit charm to their next PC build. You probably have these parts sitting in your desk drawer right now.
If you want to get started building your own, there’s more info over on the
Hackaday.io page
. And if PC notifications aren’t your jam, it’s worth remembering that these 16×2 displays are good for just about anything, like playing
Space Invaders
. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571722",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T00:28:20",
"content": "So, where does it get attached to a John Deere?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6571733",
"author": "marl",
"time... | 1,760,372,435.879408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/imhex-an-open-hex-editor-for-the-modern-hacker/ | ImHex: An Open Hex Editor For The Modern Hacker | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"hex editor",
"reverse engineering",
"software tools"
] | It’s little surprise that most hackers have a favorite text editor, since we tend to spend quite a bit of time staring at the thing. From writing code to reading config files, the hacker’s world is filled with seemingly infinite lines of ASCII. Comparatively, while a hex editor is a critical tool to have in your arsenal, many of us don’t use one often enough to have a clear favorite.
But we think that
might change once you’ve taken ImHex for a spin
. Developer [WerWolv] bills it specifically as the hex editor of choice for reverse engineering, it’s released under the GPL v2, and runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Oh, and did we mention it defaults to a slick dark theme designed to be easy on the eyes during those late night hacking sessions — just like your favorite website?
ImHex is packed with all sorts of useful tools and functions, such as an entropy visualizer and an integrated front-end for the
Capstone disassembler
. But arguably its most powerful feature is the custom C++ and Rust inspired pattern language used to define structures and data types, which allows for automatic file parsing and annotation. The language is expansive enough to
have its own documentation
, and there’s a whole second GitHub repository that contains
community-developed patterns
for file types ranging from Microsoft’s USB Flashing Format (UF2) to
DOOM
WAD files.
The pattern language allows known elements of the file to be automatically identified and marked.
Admittedly, all this capability comes with a certain degree of heft — especially if you’re used to poking around in
hexedit
. The documentation says you’ll need at least 500 MB of RAM and hardware accelerated graphics just to get into the party, and it only goes up from there depending on the complexity of the analysis you’re doing. But while ImHex is a thoroughly modern piece of software in terms of scope and size (the source code alone weighs in at 30 MB), in our testing it always felt responsive — no sign of that “heavy” feel you sometimes get when running something like an Electron app.
Is it a far more complex program than you need to just flip a few bytes around? Absolutely. In fact, we’d wager the average user will never even use half of the capabilities offered up by ImHex, and could
probably make do with something much simpler
for day to day use. But for that
one time
you need to get your hands dirty and really dig into a file, you’ll be glad those capabilities are there — and that’s a good enough reason to keep it installed and at the ready in our book. | 37 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571639",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T21:28:42",
"content": "Wow, this is cool project. I wish I knew about it sooner, it would made a lot of recent projects much easier.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6571643",
... | 1,760,372,435.82194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/virgin-not-quite-orbit-yet/ | Virgin Not-Quite-Orbit-Yet | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"Boeing 747",
"satellite launch",
"Virgin Orbit"
] | A country’s first orbital satellite launch from home soil is a proud moment, even when as is the case with Virgin Orbit, it’s not from the soil itself but from a Boeing 747 in the stratosphere over the sea. The first launch of the under-wing rocket took place yesterday evening, and pretty much every British space enthusiast gathered round the stream to watch history being made somewhere over the Atlantic south of Ireland. Sadly for all of us, though the launch itself went well and the rocket reached space,
it suffered an anomaly in its second stage and failed to reach orbit
.
No doubt we will hear more over the coming days as we’re sure they have a ton of telemetry data to work through before they find a definitive answer as to what happened. Meanwhile it’s worth remembering that the first launch of a new platform is a test of a hugely complex set of systems, and this one is certainly not the first to experience problems. It’s the under-wing launch that’s the interesting bit here, and in that we’re glad to see that part of the mission as a success. We know there will be a secomd launch and then many more, as not just the UK’s but Europe’s first launch platform from native soil becomes a viable and hopefully lower-cost launch option than its competitors.
People with very long memories will remember that this wasn’t the first time a British satellite launch attempt failed at the second stage and then went on to launch successfully, but Black Arrow launched Prospero back in 1971
from the Australian outback rather than the chilly North Atlantic
.
Header: Österreichisches Weltraum Forum,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571569",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T19:39:58",
"content": "W00t, first steps, don’t forget to watch “Hyperdrive” for a glimpse into the UK’s glowing space future.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "657162... | 1,760,372,435.72945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/supercon-2022-samy-kamkars-glowing-breath/ | Supercon 2022: Samy Kamkar’s Glowing Breath | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2022 Superconference",
"flex PCB",
"samy kamkar",
"tesla coil",
"vacuum tube"
] | Sometimes the journey itself is the destination. This one started when [Samy] was 10 and his mom bought a computer. He logged on to IRC to talk with people about the X-Files and was
WinNuked
. Because of that experience, modulo a life of hacking and poking and playing, the talk ends with a wearable flex-PCB Tesla coil driving essentially a neon sign made from an ampule of [Samy]’s own breath around his neck. Got that? Buckle up, it’s a rollercoaster.
Without giving too much away, this talk is about doing projects and learning things, and how following your nose can lead you into unexpected places, new discoveries, and more crazy ideas. And while the motivating project
is
the glowing tube filled with mostly nitrogen, the talk covers a ton of side projects that got [Samy] there. For instance, the whole thing wouldn’t have been possible if [Samy] didn’t have a solid vacuum setup. And he wouldn’t have had a vacuum setup if he hadn’t had a crazy idea to make a cursed USB-condom device, for which he needed to learn to do thin-film sputtering to deposit
indium tin oxide
. This of course leads to a side quest making freeze-dried ice cream.
At the same time, [Samy] is interested in quantum mechanics, and one of the do-at-home experiments requires some custom vacuum tubes, which you’d want to make if you already had a high-vacuum setup, so [Samy] has to learn glassblowing. So he flies out to Wisconsin to learn from some scientific glassblowers, stopping along the way at the university to visit a
magneto optical trap
(more quantum!), and then get back to work on the centerpiece.
Or maybe it’s not the centerpiece. The glowing tube of [Samy]’s breath, harvested from a blown-up rubber balloon, is actually a study for what will eventually be the centerpiece – a wireless neon sign for [Samy]’s wall. Or maybe he’ll fill it with some other gasses, noble or otherwise. We just don’t know yet.
The things we love about [Samy]’s talks is that he explains everything along the way without talking down to the audience, and that he cites his sources. Because of that, if you’re interested in any of the myriad sub-projects that get mentioned along the way, there are great resources for you here. [Samy] is also very good at giving credit to the friends and hackers who’ve inspired him, a surprising number of whom are in the Hackaday orbit and even gave talks at Supercon!
Re-watching this talk again, I’m struck by how many of these projects were admittedly
just
out of [Samy]’s reach when he began them, giving him a plausible challenge to overcome in realizing them. That really is the hacker’s path, and it makes a great talk. Enjoy. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571563",
"author": "Matthew Carlson",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T19:30:15",
"content": "This was one of my favorite supercon talks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6571744",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2023-01-11T01:0... | 1,760,372,435.983969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/roll-on-deodorant-controller-heats-up-racing-game/ | Roll-On Deodorant Controller Heats Up Racing Game | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"armadillo racing",
"optical mouse",
"optical mouse sensor",
"roll-on deodorant"
] | What do you get when you combine roll-on deodorant containers and a soccer ball with an optical mouse and an obscure 90s Japanese video game about racing armadillos? Well,
you get a pretty darn cool controller with which to play said game
, we must admit.
We hardly knew they were still making roll-on deodorant, and [Tom Tilley] is out here with three empties with which to hack. And hack he does — after thoroughly washing and drying the containers three, he sawed off the ball-holding bit just below the business part and fit each into the roll-on’s lid. Then [Tom] constructed a semi-elaborate cardboard-and-hot-glue thing to hold them in an equilateral triangle formation. Out of nowhere, he casually drops a fourth modified roll-on ball over an optical mouse, thereby extending the power of lasers to the nifty frosted orb.
Finally, [Tom] placed the pièce de résistance — the soccer ball — on top of everything. The mouse picks up the movement through the middle roll-on, and the original three are there for stability and roll-ability purposes. At last,
Armadillo Racing
can be played in DIY style. Don’t get it? Don’t sweat it — just check out the brief build video after the break. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571459",
"author": "KC",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T16:47:46",
"content": "I have to say that out of all line items that pop up on my 0800 news feed “ROLL-ON DEODORANT CONTROLLER HEATS UP RACING GAME” was the least expected.I am more surprised that the mouse worked as well as it did ... | 1,760,372,436.043412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/the-intricacies-of-creating-fuel-for-nuclear-reactors/ | The Intricacies Of Creating Fuel For Nuclear Reactors | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Original Art",
"Science"
] | [
"nuclear fuel",
"nuclear power",
"reactor",
"uranium"
] | All nuclear fission power reactors run on fuel containing uranium and other isotopes, but fueling a nuclear reactor is a lot more complicated than driving up to them with a dump truck filled with uranium ore and filling ‘er up. Although nuclear fission is simple enough that it can occur without human intervention as happened for example at the Oklo
natural fission reactors
, within a commercial reactor the goal is to create a nuclear chain reaction that targets a high burn-up (fission rate), with an as constant as possible release of energy.
Each different fission reactor design makes a number of assumptions about the fuel rods that are inserted into it. These assumptions can be about the enrichment ratio of the fissile isotopes like U-235, the density of individual fuel pellets, the spacing between the fuel rods containing these pellets, the configuration of said fuel rods along with any control, moderator and other elements. and so on.
Today’s light water reactors, heavy water reactors, fast neutron reactors, high temperature reactors and kin all have their own fuel preferences as a result, with high-assay low-enriched (HALEU) fuel being the new hot thing for new reactor designs. Let’s take a look at what goes into these fuel recipes.
Gathering Ingredients
Uranium ore.
The raw ingredients are usually
mined
from the ground, with the mining of
uranium from seawater
a relatively new development. The countries with the most
uranium ore
available for extraction are Australia (28%), Kazakhstan (15%) and Canada (9%), with Canada having the highest-grade uranium ore. Generally, the product from uranium mines is U
3
O
8
, which contains about 85% uranium. The next step depends on whether the natural uranium has to be enriched, meaning the amount of fissile (U-235) material increased from the naturally occurring level.
Once at a fuel manufacturing plant the original natural uranium will be in one of two forms, either uranium hexafluoride (UF
6
) or uranium trioxide (UO
3
), with the former being the case when enrichment has taken place. Before this can be turned into fuel pellets, this form will need to be converted to uranium dioxide (UO
2
). These pellets are what is usually referred to as ceramic fuel pellets, which contrasts with the more rarely used metallic fuel types (e.g. ZrU) that saw use in some reactors until the 1980s. A major advantage of UO
2
ceramic pellets is the high melting point of 2,865°C, which is a good property for the high-temperature environment of a nuclear fission reactor.
The fuel fabrication process (Credit: World Nuclear Association)
The ceramic fuel pellets are produced under several hundred MPa of pressure, after which they are sintered at 1,750°C under an oxygen-free atmosphere (usually argon-hydrogen). The sintered pellets are then machined as a final step. This gets them to the exact dimensions required to fit into the fuel rods, with any removed material returned to an earlier part of the pellet manufacturing process. For most reactor types these pellets are roughly 1 cm in both diameter and length.
An interesting addition to some pellets can be a burnable neutron absorber such as
gadolinium
(in oxide form), that is added to remove neutrons early on in the fuel cycle, thus reducing reactivity and allowing for longer fuel life. More commonly, zirconium diboride is added as a burnable absorber in the form of a thin coating on pellets. This is used in most US reactors, including the AP1000 type (and derivatives) that is also used in China.
Packing It Up
Schematic view of PWR fuel assembly (Credit: Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel)
The fuel rods themselves are generally made out of a zirconium alloy, which has the beneficial properties of having a high melting point, high resistance to chemical corrosion, vibrations and impacts. These alloys are also essentially transparent to neutrons, meaning that they do not interfere in any noticeable way in the reactor’s nuclear fission chain reaction. These fuel rods contain a large number of individual ceramic fuel pellets, which after filling is flushed and ultimately filled with pressurized helium gas at a few MPa. Some space remains between the end caps and fuel pellets that’s usually filled with a spring that provides compression to the stack of pellets.
These individual rods are then fixed in a steel framework, which allows for individual rod types (fuel, moderator, empty slots) to be controlled as required by the target reactor. For an average pressurized water reactor (PWR) type reactor, these fuel assemblies are between 4 m and 5 m tall and 20 cm across. Nearly 200 of these assemblies will go into a 1 GWe PWR, containing around 18 million pellets. While Western fuel assemblies tend to be rectangular, Russian PWR (VVER) reactors use hexagonal fuel assemblies. This does not affect the basic operation, however.
When a PWR is refueled, only about a third or a quarter of the fuel assemblies are removed and replaced with fresh assemblies, with the rest being rearranged to optimize the reactor operation and total burn-up of both the old and new fuel assemblies.
The second most popular type of fission reactor is the boiling water reactor (BWR) design, which as the name suggests directly boils water to create steam, instead of using a pressurized primary loop as with PWR designs. Although BWRs cannot reach the same level of efficiency as PWRs, they are much better at load-following operations, which is due to the water being led in channels through the fuel assembly. As the water both moderates and cools, varying the flowrate changes the energy output.
PHWR fuel bundles (Credit: World Nuclear Association)
In addition to this, BWR fuel assemblies have a number of other notable differences from PWR fuel assemblies, but none as drastic as with the fuel assemblies for the Canadian CANDU pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR). This type of fission reactor doesn’t use light water (H
2
O), but rather heavy water (D
2
O) that has heavier deuterium instead of hydrogen atoms. This difference enables PHWRs to use unenriched uranium fuel, which are assembled in short bundles that are loaded into fuel channels in the reactor. This loading and unloading can be done while the reactor is running at full power, with unloading happening at the other end of the fuel channel. This means that a PHWR does not have to shut down for refueling or reshuffling of the fuel.
PHWRs are the most flexible fission reactors currently in common use, able to use unenriched, natural uranium, enriched uranium, mixed oxide and other fuels like thorium. They have some overlap with the Soviet RBMK design that can also run on unenriched uranium fuel due to its use of graphite as a moderator, but PHWRs are significantly more versatile.
Exotic Taste
The BN-800 FNR at Beloyarsk.
Since virtually all fission reactors in the world today are either a light water reactor (LWR) like the common PWRs and BWRs, or a PHWR (e.g. most of Canada’s reactors), most nuclear fuel produced is some kind of PWR, BWR or PHWR fuel, but there are more exotic reactors that have very different fuel demands yet again. One of these are the
fast neutron reactors
(FNR), which demand yet another fueling strategy. FNRs generally use the concept of ‘seed’ and ‘blanket’ regions, with the seed regions having high reactivity and neutron production. Neutrons from the seed regions are then captured by the fertile isotopes in the blanket regions, turning them fissile.
FNR fuel is where the once-through uranium fuel cycle of mining-fission-disposal really breaks down, with LWR spent fuel containing significant amounts of fertile isotopes that can be turned into fissile fuel for use by the FNR as well as fresh LWR fuel. This overlaps somewhat with the traditional reprocessing of spent LWR fuel that removes the uranium and plutonium, allowing for this to be used in mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. MOX fuel is distinct again from REMIX fuel that mixed reprocessed spent fuel with low-enriched uranium.
What is a common factor among all of these fuel types, however, is that they target reactors that run at fairly mundane temperatures. Most recent development has focused on high temperature fuels, for use in high temperature reactors that operate at 750 °C to 950 °C with helium as coolant. The Chinese
HTR-PM
reactor and US-based
X-energy’s
Xe-100 design use spherical fuel elements in a
pebble bed
configuration, which results in a fuel loading and unloading procedure closer to that of PHWRs. China’s aim is to use the so far successful HTR-PM design in an HTR-PM600 configuration — three 200 MW reactors combined — that can replace boilers at coal plants, which will massively increase demand for this fuel type if successful.
HALEU
There’s a lot of power in uranium fuel, if you can get to it. (Credit: XKCD)
Observant readers may have noticed that over the past years there have been a lot of US-based nuclear power startups that have announced new reactor designs. Many of these require so-called high-assay low-enriched uranium (
HALEU
) fuel. While the US’s current fleet of fission reactors run on fuel that is enriched up to 5%, HALEU is enriched to between 5 and 20%, which enables more compact designs, higher efficiency and much more time between refueling. This compares to the small reactors in US submarines that run on >90% U-235 high-enriched fuel, granting them their 20-25 year refueling time. Above 20% U-235 is considered to be ‘high-enriched’ (HEU).
Since enriching uranium requires a certain level of production capacity that currently does not exist yet, there is a bit of a catch-up going on in the industrial industry. This has led to for example TerraPower
announcing a delay
in the start-up of their first
Natrium
SMR. Previously Russia had been a major supplier of HALEU, but since the war in Ukraine, the reliance has now shifted to the US’s domestic production capacity that is in the process of being rapidly expanded.
Geopolitics aside, what should be clear at this point is the immense variety in nuclear fuel types and their applications, with the new Generation IV reactors adding to this. With an increasing demand for reliable, low-carbon power, it would seem the game is on to extract as much energy as possible from each gram of uranium mined. | 51 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571404",
"author": "Greg",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T15:24:48",
"content": "Please pardon the hijack but as almost every state has several plants it’s madness to keep burying this deadly stuff in NM or where ever-AND making more of it, instead of serious international efforts toward... | 1,760,372,436.173701 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/tetris-joins-minecraft-and-doom-in-running-a-computer/ | TetrisJoinsMinecraftAndDOOMIn Running A Computer | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"in-game computer",
"tetris",
"tetris computer"
] | There is a select group of computer games whose in-game logic is enough for them to simulate computers in themselves. We’ve seen it in
Minecraft
and
DOOM
, and
now there’s a new player in town from a surprising quarter:
Tetris
.
One might wonder how the Russian falling-blocks game could do this, as unlike the previous examples it has a very small playing field. And indeed it’s not quite the
Tetris
you’re used to playing, but a version played over an infinite board. Then viewed as a continuous progression of the game it can be viewed as somewhat similar to the tape in a Turing machine.
The various moves and outcomes are referred to through a
Tetris
scripting language, so states can be represented by different sets of blocks and holes while logic elements can be be built up using the various shapes and the game logic. From those a computer can be built, represented entirely in
Tetris
moves and shapes. It’s a little mind-bending and we’d be lying if we said we understood every nuance of it, but seemingly it works well enough to run the game from within itself.. If it had the catchy music from the NES version, we’d declare it perfect.
Hungry for more?
Here’s
DOOM
doing some adding
, and of course
Minecraft
has a rich computing history
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571387",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T14:56:46",
"content": "Might miss understand this but it seems like the interpretation of the results is done outside the game and then fed back into it? If so that feels a bit cheaty. What I liked about the others was the in game... | 1,760,372,436.083197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/10/human-powered-strandbeest/ | Human-Powered Strandbeest | Navarre Bartz | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"strandbeest"
] | Once you’ve seen a strandbeest, it’s hard to forget the mesmerizing movement of its mechanical limbs. [Adam Savage] built a
pedal-powered strandbeest
in (more than) one day in full view of the public at the San Francisco Exploratorium.
One of the biggest challenges with building strandbeests is the sheer number of parts required to build a walking machine. It becomes clear rather quickly how big of an advantage the wheel is for part count on a device. Add in a few seemingly small design errors, and you might not have any forward motion at all.
[Savage]’s build takes us through all the ups and downs of this process, including lots of wrenching, welding, and more sneakers than
Squitter the Spider
could wear. The final product is unwieldy, impractical, and beautiful. What more could a maker ask for?
If you need more strandbeest goodness, check out this more practical
strandbeest bicycle
, this
strandbeest Venus rover concept
, or Jeremy Cook’s
talk about designing strandbeest bots
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571209",
"author": "Abbadon",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T10:01:59",
"content": "How is this news? This video is 6 years old!…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6571266",
"author": "Rpol",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T... | 1,760,372,436.305592 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/09/wipe-on-wipe-off-make-your-own-rain-repellent/ | Wipe On, Wipe Off: Make Your Own Rain Repellent | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"dimethicone",
"ethanol",
"isopropyl",
"rain-x",
"sulfuric acid"
] | Once upon a time, we drove an old six-volt VW Beetle. One sad day, the wiper motor went out, and as this happened before the Internet heyday, there were no readily-available parts around that we were aware of. After briefly considering rubbing a potato on the windshield as prescribed by the old wives’ tale, we were quite grateful for the invention of Rain-X — a water-repelling chemical treatment for car windshields.
Boy would we have loved to know
how to make it ourselves from readily-available chemicals
. As you’ll see in the video below, it doesn’t take much more than dimethicone, sulfuric acid, and a cocktail of alcohols. [Terry] starts with dimethicone, which he activates with a healthy dose of concentrated sulfuric acid, done under the safety of an exhaust hood. After about 20 minutes on the stir mix-a-lot plate, [Terry] added ethanol and isopropyl alcohols. Finally, it was off to the garage with the mixture in a spray bottle.
After meticulously cleaning the windshield, [Terry] applied the solution in small areas and rubbed it in with a towel to create a thin bond between it and the glass. This creates a perfectly normal haze, which can be removed after a bit with a clean towel.
If you just love listening to your windshield wipers,
at least make them move to a beat
.
Thanks for the tip, [askcheese]! | 55 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6571086",
"author": "Helping Us Prosper",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T06:10:40",
"content": "I am so trying this",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6571364",
"author": "Bryce",
"timestamp": "2023-01-10T14:17:14",
... | 1,760,372,436.262684 |
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