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https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/amphibious-dragster-drives-on-water/ | Amphibious Dragster Drives On Water | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"amphibious",
"car",
"dragster",
"R/C car",
"rc"
] | Dragsters are typically about peak performance on a tarmac drag strip. [Engineering After Hours] took a different tack, though, building
a radio-controlled amphibious dragster
intended to cross small bodies of water.
The build is based on a Traxxas Raptor RC car. However, it’s been heavily reworked from a pickup-like design to become a dragster with a motor mounted in the rear. It’s also been fitted with a foam underbody to allow it to float when stationary. The rear tires have been replaced with 3D-printed versions with large paddles, which provide propulsion in the water.
Initial tests showed the car struggled to make progress in the water, as the paddle tires tended to drag the rear end deeper under water. The tiny dragster tires up front didn’t help it steer, in water either. Large foam discs were added to the front tires to enable them to act as better rudders.
Fitted with its water tires and foam floatation aids, the car can only drive slowly on land, but [Engineering After Hours] points out this is enough to call it amphibious. It does a better job at skittering around on water, and it was able to cross a local pond at low speed.
We’ve seen some other creative techniques for making amphibious vehicles,
like these crazy star-shaped wheels.
Video after the break. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,494.887549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/simple-plywood-lamp-has-neat-hidden-switch/ | Simple Plywood Lamp Has Neat Hidden Switch | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"lamp",
"microswitch",
"smart lamp",
"smart relay"
] | Shortly after the development of the electric light came the light switch, presumably. Of course, obvious switches are old-hat, and
this neat lamp build from [Giovanni Aggiustatutto] goes with a design that’s altogether more coy.
The lamp itself is a minimalist modern design, with a cube-like body constructed out of plywood. It was easily constructed by simply stacking up several layers of plywood to create the form. Inside the housing, a bulb holder was installed hooked up to a Shelly smart relay to enable the lamp to be used as a smart device. The relay also has a switch input for direct control. This is hooked up to a micro-switch that is tucked into the base. Tilting the lamp to one side triggers the micro-switch and turns the lamp on and off as desired.
Overall, it’s a simple build that is elegant and functional. It eschews switches on the lamp cord and other fussy details, while featuring both smart control and a direct switch as well.
We’ve featured some other great lamps before, too
. Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6533152",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T20:05:59",
"content": "Huh kinda clever. I was expecting some kinda capacitance trick from the thumbnail",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6533154",
"author": "Wells Campbell"... | 1,760,372,494.929349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/madness-or-genius-fdm-printing-with-resin/ | Madness Or Genius? FDM Printing With Resin | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"resin"
] | We aren’t sure what made him think of it, but [Proper Printing] decided to make an
FDM printer lay down resin instead of filament
. Why? We still aren’t sure, but we admire the effort nonetheless. In principle, extruding resin shouldn’t be much different than other liquid things you print like icing or concrete. Then you’d need to UV-cure the viscous liquid quickly. In fact, they wound up making up a paste-like resin using several chemicals and a filler.
Armed with the paste, it would seem like the big obstacles would be over. Instead of part cooling fans, the printer now has two laser heads focused on the print area. Printing in vase mode avoids some problems, but the first few attempts were not very successful.
With a bit of perseverance, the setup did work — for a while. More fine tuning got acceptable results. However, he eventually changed the filler material and got a passable Benchy to print. Nothing to be proud of, but recognizable. Honestly, we were surprised that the laser’s didn’t cure the material still inside the nozzle and cause terrible clogs.
Why put this much effort into doing this? We have no idea. Should you try it? Probably not. Of course, being able to print a paste has its own value. Perhaps delivering glue or solder paste, for example. But you generally won’t need to make tall prints with that kind of material. Then again, we’ve never been opposed to doing something “just because.”
After all, why make a
musical instrument out of a Game Boy
? Why make a
modem with tin cans
? You might as well extrude resin. | 29 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6533120",
"author": "g",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T18:29:17",
"content": "I mean, the reason he is doing it is right there in the video, this is a step towards continuous fiber printing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6534634"... | 1,760,372,494.746172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/tv-repair-by-mail/ | TV Repair By Mail | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"distance learning",
"education",
"TV repair"
] | I don’t think there was ever a correspondence school called the “Close Cover Before Striking School” but since book matches — which used to be a thing when most people smoked — always had that text on them anyway perhaps there should have been. There was a time when electronic magazines, billboards, and even book matches were constantly bombarding us with ads to have a career in electronics. Or computers. Or TV repair. So while we think of distance learning as a new idea, really it is just the evolution of these old correspondence schools which date back quite some time.
How far exactly? Hard to say. There’s evidence of some distance learning going back as far as 1728. In 1837, there was a correspondence course to learn shorthand. By 1858, the University of London started its external program for correspondence work and the University of Chicago had a home study division in 1892. Radio was an early choice of topic, too. In the United States, the United Wireless Telegraph company started a training school — later the Marconi Institute — in 1909. However, it is doubtful that there was any correspondence training going on there until much later.
NRI or National Radio Institute was doing correspondence classes from around 1914. Philo Farnsworth completed an NRI course in radio servicing while in college. There are some older schools, too. ICS — International Correspondence Schools — started in 1890 and still operates as the Penn Foster Career School. DeVry, founded in 1931, is still around as is the Cleveland Institute of Electronics, which has been around since 1934. Of course, many of these changed business models over the years. Some, like National Technical Schools, didn’t make enough changes and went out of business.
Their heyday, though, was the post-World War II days. Veterans were anxious to spend Uncle Sam’s money to get a new career, and many had been trained or exposed to electronics in the service. TV was exploding, too, which further stimulated demand. Thumb through an electronics magazine from those days and you’ll find plenty of ads for these schools.
Today online training is the new correspondence class, but you don’t see much radio and electronics training like this these days. Sure, you can earn an entire EE degree online, but can you learn how to fix a radio?
Marketing
Work in clean conditions!
From a 1920’s NRI course
There’s an old saying in advertising: Don’t sell steak, sell sizzle. These correspondence courses generally targeted people of modest circumstances, out of work or working a dead-end job who wanted to better themselves. Many hinted that more education was the key to being promoted at work, or that you could make money in your own business. One of NRI’s courses from 1924 starts with an image. Note that these men are not outside working in the elements which is a major inducement if you are spending your days working in the sun and the rain.
An NRI promotional booklet
reports, “Many radio experts make $40, $60, $75 a week and more.” Pretty good money in 1935.
As you might expect, the ads overwhelmingly targeted men. Ads ran in electronics magazines, but also in other kinds of magazines the target audience might read about science, mechanics, and other related fields. The ads mostly promised the ability to make money, find a job, start a business, or get a promotion.
Evolution
The early course, like
the one that included the above picture
, were really just electronics books that had quizzes they would grade for you. These were very much like any other electronics book you’ve ever seen. They describe components, schematics, what makes a circuit, Ohm’s law, power calculations. The questions were answered free form and — in this course, at least — didn’t require any higher math. For example, “Name five insulating materials.” and “What is a kilowatt?”
Obviously, there are things we don’t think about too much but were important at the time like spark gaps and motor-generators. Overall, you could probably have found any basic book in your library and done the same thing except they wouldn’t give you a certificate (and if you scored over 90%, you’d be an “honors man.”
By 1938, at least, there was a realization that you needed more hand-on training. The
Radio Servicing Course
from Radio Technical Institute included a Knight Kit receiver from Allied Radio. The regenerative receiver used two 30 tubes. In fact, large chunks of the course came from suppliers like the “Supreme Instruments Corporation of Greenwood, Mississippi.” Presumably, you could buy their oscilloscope and other tools covered in the course.
It also became common to teach a bit of the “the business” in these classes. For example, RTI suggests:
The new profitable field of installing additional extra speakers is open to all servicemen. This type of convenience is wanted by practically all radio owners and should be suggested
on every radio repair call. Most homes have only one radio, in a single room of the house. To hear radio programs in other sectons this radio must be played at volume levels that prove nervewracking to all close to the radio and annoys the neighbors due to the loudness.
A CIE ad shows someone learning digital electronics on a Heathkit trainer
While these courses were little more than books with graded tests, there were some serious training materials produced by NRI. As early as 1930 they had
a 1600-page course
that covered quite a bit of theory and practice. There was even a unit on “radio prospecting” which we might think of today as using metal detectors.
After World War II, soldiers had “GI Bill” money to spend on education and these companies were ready to take it. Radios were more complex than ever and TV also drove demand for people who could install and service electronics. Later, much later, computers were also a consumer item and training companies offered some instruction in basic computer servicing, too.
Kits and Bargains
Kits and equipment turned out to be the big differentiator in classes and the companies often used Heathkit so the student built their own equipment including, often, some form of TV. NRI was known to produce
its own kits
under either its own name or the Conar labels.
For example, a CIE class offered a 5 MHz Heathkit oscilloscope, a 19-inch TV, and a color bar generator. NTS had a similar offering, or you could learn about computers with a Heathkit H8. The NTS ad below from 1977 shows quite a haul of stuff, including a 315 square-inch TV! Keep in mind that a CRT that is 18 inches square has 324 square inches and we would call a 25″ TV.
Lots of equipment and toys for this NTS class
Many times, kits used components left over from other experiments or were themselves experiments. For example, during construction, you might be instructed to leave out a component and demonstrate the effect it had.
There was one bargain basement educational program that advertised quite a bit.
Edu-Kit offered a practical home radio course for under $30.
This included tools and a soldering iron. The course claimed to have you build twelve receivers, three transmitters, a square wave generator, an amplifier, a signal tracer, a signal injector, and a code oscillator. Of course, the trick is, you probably weren’t able to keep them all assembled at the same time or they had multiple purposes. After all, a square wave generator is a signal injector and when connected to a signal tracer/amplifier, would give you a code practice oscillator.
Cost
Outside of the Edu-Kit, I never found the price of any of these courses. Presumably, the ones with all the kits would have cost quite a bit, especially in adjusted dollars. However, reading between the lines in some of the ads and promotional material, it seems like many of these schools let you pay in installments. Presumably, you’d pay some, get some materials, and then pay some more to get the rest.
Aftermath
Where are these schools now? They still exist, some of them even the same companies. It seems, though, that paradoxically, these distance learning pioneers have become more traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Maybe the death of readily-available kits can be blamed. After all, you could easily deliver coursework via the Internet and collect assignments the same way. It is harder to do the kits, but some of the virtual labs we’ve seen on EdX are pretty impressive.
Of course, the service business isn’t what it used to be either. When you can go to the big box store and replace a bad TV with a much better one for a fairly cheap price, how much will you pay to have it repaired? The economics of repair don’t work well when things get cheaper and better rapidly.
Part of the issue with these schools — particularly the ones that took Federal money for the GI bill or student loans — is that there was a lot of potential for abuse of the system. In 1951, for example, 1,677,000 veterans attended “for profit” schools, yet only 20% of them completed their studies. Many would sign up, get a TV as part of the course, and then drop out. The government tried to crack down without much success. A 1972 GAO report found that 75% of veterans did not complete correspondence courses. By 1992, the government finally took steps to reduce the flow of money available to these schools.
So it wasn’t just one thing that caused these schools to change or perish. It was everything. While I probably wouldn’t spend a few thousand on some books and Heathkits, I would sure plunk down $30 to build 20 radio circuits at home. It feels like the end of this era took something with it. | 49 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6533062",
"author": "lj",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T15:45:40",
"content": "Can somebody explain the “Close Cover Before Striking School” thing for me?I do get the reference to matches (closing the cover before striking a match avoids setting the whole thing on fire, hence the warning... | 1,760,372,495.209399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/tiny-palm-sized-crossbow-build-is-cute-and-dangerous/ | Tiny Palm-Sized Crossbow Build Is Cute And Dangerous | Lewin Day | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"crossbow",
"spring"
] | Crossbows were a major development in the history of weaponry. They enabled lesser-skilled soldiers to shoot arrows at great speed in a compact form-factor. You can now build your own tiny version,
thanks to this creation from [Maciej Nowak].
The main body of the crossbow was cut from a piece of aluminium bar stock, being shaped with an angle grinder. A slot was then machined to mount the crossbar and pulleys. A round piece of aluminium tube serves as a spring holder, and the spring is tensioned via pulling back a length of sailing rope to rest on a latch. The latch is released by a small trigger, just like on a full-size crossbow.
The arrows (or bolts, more typically) were made by machining skewers and giving them hard metal tips cut from nails. This enables them to penetrate apples, and presumably other fruits. They fly straight enough to reliably hit a target from a meter or two away.
We’ve seen other crossbow builds before,
like this one that fires cannonballs!
Just be careful where you aim, and don’t get yourself or anyone else hurt. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6533002",
"author": "666romper",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T12:17:58",
"content": "I hope he scrapped it after making the video. According to polish penal code this is an illegal manufacture of firearms (sic!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,372,495.118079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/17/number-stations-gone-wild/ | Number Stations Gone Wild | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"espionage",
"number stations"
] | [Ringway Manchester] has an interest in numbers stations. These mysterious stations send presumably coded numbers or other coded information. However, it is rare that anyone claims credit for these stations. Normally they operate with military-like precision, adhering to strict operating schedules and sending out their messages error-free. [Ringway] looks at five times when things
didn’t go as planned for these spy stations
.
Perhaps it isn’t surprising, however, as machines have likely replaced human operators. That makes them prone to errors when the computers go awry. Many of the errors are ones of frequency, where two number stations wind up transmitting at once. We suppose spies all use the same few frequencies. Some, however, also had computers go haywire and start going through the alphabet which, of course, could have been part of some secret message protocol, but appeared more likely to be a simple mistake.
We were amused, though, to hear the story of a Czech spy station that not only had a licensed call sign but would send QSL cards to people who reported reception. Perhaps they didn’t get the memo about secrecy!
We’ve listened to
a few number stations
in our time. If you don’t have a suitable antenna, you can always try
hunting them online
. But don’t expect to catch them making any mistakes. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532986",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T10:13:06",
"content": "It´s amazon to be able to hear the store of a Czech station. Proofreading is still a badly lacking feature, for a website having such audience. Readers have to Supply Shame to lame editors, which is annoying.... | 1,760,372,494.803505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/portable-monitor-extension-for-nintendo-switch/ | Portable Monitor Extension For Nintendo Switch | Navarre Bartz | [
"Games",
"handhelds hacks",
"hardware",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"handheld",
"nintendo",
"Nintendo Switch",
"portable",
"portable console"
] | Handheld consoles are always a tradeoff between portability and screen real estate. [Pavlo Khmel] felt that the Nintendo Switch erred too much on the side of portability, and built an extension to
embiggen his Switch
. (YouTube)
[Khmel] repurposed a Dell XPS 12 LCD panel for the heart of this hack and attached it to an LCD controller board to serve as an external monitor for the Switch. A 3D printed enclosure envelops the screen and also contains a battery, speakers, and a dock for the console. Along the top edges, metal rails let you slide in the official Joy-Cons or any number of third party controllers, even those that require a power connection from the Switch.
Since the Switch sees this as being docked, it allows the console to run faster and at higher resolution than if it were in handheld mode. The extension lasts about 5 hours on battery power, and the Switch inside will still be fully charged if you don’t mind being constrained to its small screen while you charge it’s bigger-screened exoskeleton.
Need more portable goodness? Be sure to check out our other
handheld
and
Nintendo Switch hacks
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532970",
"author": "dock",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T08:06:34",
"content": "Next up is to make a matching dock",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6532992",
"author": "_txf_",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T11:22:04",
"content... | 1,760,372,494.845622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/better-sheet-metal-parts-with-chemistry/ | Better Sheet Metal Parts With Chemistry | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"etching",
"photochemical machining"
] | [Applied Science] wanted to make some metal parts with a lot of holes. A service provider charged high tooling costs, so he decided to create his own parts using
photochemical machining
. The process is a lot like creating PC boards, but, of course, there are some differences. You can see the video of the results, below.
Some of the parts could be made in different ways like water jet cutting or even stamping. However, some things — like custom screens — are only really feasible to do with a chemical process like this.
Like PC board etching, you deposit resist on the metal and then use a reactant to eat away the parts you don’t want. Cleaning the metal is essential before putting on the resist. Using water, it is easy to tell if the metal is clean.
There were a few interesting wrinkles to the process. For one thing, the parts are etched in a mesh bag so that as the parts come off the base plate, they stay put in the bag. Some of the equipment is borrowed. For example, a sous vide cooker holds water at a fixed temperature. A cheap laminator adds dry resist film to the metal with a simple modification.
We imagine that any of the normal ways you do PC boards like direct toner transfer would work to set up the resist. However, in this case, [Applied Science] uses tools means for screen printing masks to produce photomasks. The etching tank used was especially impressive and looked like it had the potential to make a huge mess.
The results were tainted a bit because of a problem with the etcher, but they still looked pretty good. If you are already set up to to do PC boards, this probably isn’t a big stretch.
We’ve seen a lot of different ways to approach
chemical machining
although, more commonly, with
electicity
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532975",
"author": "The Gambler",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T09:03:07",
"content": "Neat project and even though it is a completely different process it reminds me of this methodhttps://youtu.be/jEnNMTMZadwhowever one thing i did notice with it and it has descent resolution but somet... | 1,760,372,495.064481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/crazy-bike-frame-made-out-of-147-nuts/ | Crazy Bike Frame Made Out Of 147 Nuts | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike",
"nuts"
] | Bike frames are most commonly made out of steel. If you’ve got money for something nicer though, you might go with something in aluminium or carbon fiber. [The Q] went completely off-the-wall with this build, though,
constructing a bicycle frame out of 147 nuts.
Those forks don’t inspire confidence.
Yes, a variety of nuts in various sizes were laid out and welded together to make the frame. The overall layout is a conventional diamond frame, albeit constructed out of many nuts stuck together rather than with tubes. Notably though, several important areas aren’t made in this way. The front and rear dropouts are made of sheet steel, and the bottom bracket, seat post mount, and headstem are all made of steel tube. After welding, the bike was given an attractive coat of grey paint. It was then laced up with the usual running gear and given a set of chunky mountain bike tires.
We wouldn’t want to push this frame too hard over bumps and jumps. The video only shows the nuts being joined with tack welds, and the front forks look particularly fragile. One suspects a decent shock loading could snap parts of the frame apart. Overall, though, it’s an eye-catching bike that has plenty of easy places to attach a lock. For an ultra-fashionable city-bound cruiser, it would be hard to beat.
We’ve featured some weird and wonderful bikes over the years,
including this tasteful plywood design
. Video after the break. | 39 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532896",
"author": "sudobash1",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T00:18:28",
"content": "No thanks! I like my teeth in my head.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6533113",
"author": "Marketing with your nuts usually doesn't mean... | 1,760,372,495.018947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/pcb-hotplate-has-integrated-heating-element-traces/ | PCB Hotplate Has Integrated Heating Element Traces | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hotplate",
"reflow",
"reflow soldering",
"solder",
"soldering"
] | Normally when we talk about PCBs and hotplates, we’re talking about reflowing solder. In this build from [Arnov Sharma], though,
the PCB itself is the hotplate!
The idea was to create a compact hotplate for easily reflowing small PCBs. To achieve that, [Arnov] designed a board with a thick coil trace that acts as a heating element. The full coil trace has a resistance of 1.9 ohms, and passing electricity through it generates plenty of heat. Running off a 12 volt supply, the mini hotplate is capable of reaching a maximum temperature of 214°C. Higher voltages can push that figure higher.
The board is intended to self-regulate, with an ATtiny13 onboard and a thermistor to measure temperature. However, in the initial design, this feature didn’t quite work properly. Version 2 is intended to include a better temperature sensor and a OLED screen for displaying the current temperature to the user.
We’ve seen
other tiny hotplate builds before, too.
They’re great for smaller projects and for hacking on the go! Video after the break. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532864",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T22:25:09",
"content": "Kind of ironic to use a hotplate to reflow a hotplate PCB. Now if you could make the PCB reflow its own components in some clever way… bootstrap reflower? Who wants to make it first?",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,494.67989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/is-this-the-smallest-cp-m-machine-ever/ | Is This The Smallest CP/M Machine Ever? | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"CP/M",
"rp2040",
"RunCPM"
] | If you had an office word processor in the late 1970s, the chances are it ran Digital Research’s CP/M operating system. IBM went for Microsoft in the 1980s and the once-dominant player fell on hard times, but it survives today as a popular choice on retrocomputer platforms. Even the more compact Z80 systems are a little large for 2022, so
when [Kian Ryan] needed the ultimate in CP/M portability it fell on a more modern piece of silicon
. Hence he’s put it on a tiny RP2040-based board from Pimoroni alongside an Adafruit micro SD card breakout.
The tiny hardware is neat of course, but the real star of the show is the software. Non-CP/M aficionados will be interested to learn about RunCPM, and for this project,
RunCPM 2040
. This provides an emulated environment on a host microcontroller to run CP/M, allowing the operating system to be hosted on easier hardware than some of the original machines.
All this makes for a tiny development machine, but perhaps of more interest would be a machine that’s all-in-one with a display and perhaps a keyboard. The RP2040 is interesting in this case because of those programmable state machines. Could it be made to run a video display alongside RunCPM? We hope someone has a go at writing it. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532839",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T19:45:55",
"content": "Steve Ciarcia had a pretty small system, fitted into a lunchbox with a drive or two.This cheats, no floppy drive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,495.268948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/will-the-fax-machine-ever-stop-singing/ | Will The Fax Machine Ever Stop Singing? | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Phone Hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"facsimile",
"fax",
"fax machine",
"IP telephony",
"Ofcom",
"universal service"
] | Throughout the 80s and 90s, you couldn’t swing a stapler around any size office without hitting a fax machine. But what is it about the fax machine that makes it the subject of so much derision? Is it the beep-boops? The junk faxes? Or do they just seem horribly outdated in the world of cloud storage and thumb drives? Perhaps all of the above is true. While I may be Hackaday’s resident old school office worker et cetera, it may surprise you to learn that I don’t have a fax machine. In fact, the last time I had to fax something, I recall having to give my email address to some website in order to send a single fax for free.
Over across the pond,
the UK government has decided to nix the requirement for fax services
under something called the Universal Service Order (USO) legislation, which essentially ensures that residents all across the UK have access to phone services at a price they can afford. The UK’s Office of Communications, aka Ofcom, have announced recently that they are in agreement with the government. Since the industry is moving away from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to IP telephony, the fax machine won’t work the same way.
Just the Fax
Elisha Gray’s telautograph. Image via
RedOrbit
.
You may already know this, but the facsimile predates the telephone
. At first, faxes traveled over wires, then over radio waves, and then over the telephone system. Now, of course, they tend to travel over the Internet to fax servers and are then distributed to individual computers.
Early fax devices were mechanical and chemical, e.g. Alexander Bain’s electric printing telegraph, which he patented in 1843. Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli invented the Pantelegraph, which gave birth to the first telefax service between Paris and Lyon, France in 1865.
In 1880, Shelford Bidwell built first machine capable of scanning any 2D original without manual plotting. Eight years later, Elisha Gray invented the telautograph, which allowed signatures to be sent over long distances. The next innovation came in 1924, when AT&T sent 15 pictures from Cleveland to New York over the telephone. That same year, RCA invented the forerunner of today’s fax machines, the wireless photoradiogram.
Fax of Life
Ofcom gave concerned citizens one month to state their case before the amendment went into effect. The few proponents who piped up pointed out the still-widespread use of fax machines in the legal, medical, and travel fields. And more importantly, this means that other voice band data applications like telecare alarms for those who need them will no longer be supported. But Ofcom assures that they expect service providers to work with customers in these situations to offer alternatives. And upon investigation into the legal, medical, travel, and energy sectors, Ofcom concluded that “the use of fax was minimal and alternatives are being sought where its use still continues,” noted
Hansard, the official record of Parliamentary debates
.
Interestingly enough, in 2017,
the UK’s National Health Service was reported to be the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines
, with close to 12,000 in operation in 2018. But the purchase of new machines was outlawed in 2019 by the Department of Health and Social Care, who said that existing ones had to be replaced with email by the end of March 2020.
So, is this really the beginning of the end for the fax machine? While we have many ways of sending photos and documents these days, until electronic signatures are widely accepted, maybe, maybe not. Just a few years ago, we saw
an exploit that could remotely execute code via fax
, so they still have the attention of bad actors, too.
Banner image: “
Day Sixty Four – Fax Machine
” by [Yortw]. Thumbnail: “
Boy and Fax Machine
” by Alyssa L. Miller. | 43 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532824",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T18:10:19",
"content": "When I was in rehab in 2019 building up muscle, there was a problem with the fax machine. But I didn’t see it, so wondered if there was still a fax machine, or a comouter, scanner and printer. The... | 1,760,372,495.415329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/getting-to-the-heart-of-a-baofeng/ | Getting To The Heart Of A Baofeng | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"baofeng",
"ham",
"handy talkie",
"SA818",
"sdr",
"transceiver",
"uhf",
"VHF"
] | In amateur radio circles, almost no single piece of equipment serves as more of a magnet for controversy than the humble Baofeng handheld transceiver. It’s understandable — the radio is a shining example of value engineering, with just enough parts to its job while staying just on the edge of FCC rules. And at about $25 a pop, the radios are cheap enough that experimentation is practically a requirement of ownership.
But stripped down as the Baofeng may be, it holds secrets inside that are even more tempting to play with than the radio itself. And who better than [HB9BLA], a guy who has a suspiciously familiar Swiss accent, to
guide us through the RF module at the heart of the Baofeng, the SA818
. For about $8 you can get one of these little marvels off AliExpress and have nearly all the important parts of a VHF or UHF radio — an SDR transceiver, a power amp, and all the glue logic to make it work.
In the video below, [Andreas] puts the SA818 module through its paces with the help of a board that pairs the module with a few accessories, like an audio amp and a low-pass RF filter. With a Raspberry Pi and a Python library to control the module, it’s a decent imitation of the functionality of a Baofeng. But that’s only the beginning. By adding a USB sound card to the Pi, the setup was able to get into every ham’s favorite packet radio system, APRS. There are a ton of other applications for the SA818 modules, some of which [Andreas] mentions at the end of the video. Pocket-sized repeaters, a ridiculously small EchoLink hotspot, and even an AllStar node in an Altoids tin.
Of course, if you want to get in on the fun, you’re going to need an amateur radio license. Don’t worry, it’s easy —
we’ll help you get there
. | 32 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532504",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T21:26:07",
"content": "I used hamradiotestDOTcom and got 100% on my Extra 9 years ago – the only test I ever aced for ham radio. I’m not a shill, but I enjoyed their teaching algorithm so much, I wanted to share it.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,372,495.691366 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/mastodon-comes-to-the-ibm-pc/ | Mastodon Comes To The IBM PC | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"dos",
"javascript",
"mastodon"
] | Elon Musk has bought Twitter for an eye-watering sum, and his live adventures in chaotic mismanagement of a social media company have become a compelling performance for the rest of us. As we munch on our tasty popcorn and enjoy the show, many Twitter users have jumped ship for the open-source alternative Mastodon. It offers much to the escapee including instances tailored to particular communities, but aside from all that it’s got something Twitter never had.
You can now use a Mastodon client on an IBM PC
.
Many of you are no doubt looking askance at us, as you have been Tooting for years from behind the keyboard of a PC. But it’s likely that the PC you’re using is a generic modern x86 machine running an up-to-date operating system such as a GNU/Linux flavour or Microsoft Windows, by contrast here we’re referring to the original, the daddy of them all. Because the client we’re talking about is DOStodon, designed to run on a
real
IBM PC as though it’s the early 1980s again.
Stunt hacks aside, whether or not you fire up DOStodon on a 16-bit machine to get your Fediverse fix, it’s an interesting piece of software because it’s written in Javascript. Which in turn brings us to
DOjS
from the same author, a DOS Javascript canvas with sound. Not everyone will be raring to run their Javascript code on an early 1980s PC, but its existence proves that there’s plenty of life in the old platform yet.
Need more Mastodon on unexpected platforms?
How about the ESP32
?
Header image: Ruben de Rijcke,
CC BY-SA 3.0
, and Jin Nguyen,
AGPL
. | 49 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532440",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T19:50:32",
"content": "…”an up-to-date operating system such as a GNU/Linux flavour, or else Microsoft Windows”TFTFY",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532530",
... | 1,760,372,495.903221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/ev-sales-sticking-point-people-still-want-manual-transmissions/ | EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions | Kristina Panos | [
"car hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"automatic transmission",
"clutch",
"electric cars",
"electriv vehicles",
"evs",
"manual transmission",
"semi-automatic",
"semi-manual"
] | Call me crazy, but I’m ride or die for manual transmissions. I drove enough go-karts and played enough Pole Position as a kid to know that shifting the gears yourself is simply where it’s at when it comes to tooling around in anything that isn’t human-powered. After all,
manuals can be roll-started
. A driver has options other than braking and praying on slippery roads. Any sports car worth its rich Corinthian leather (or whatever) has a manual transmission, right? And you know that Rush’s Red Barchetta ain’t no automatic. Face it, shifting gears is just plain cooler. And it’s not a chore if it gets you more, although
the fuel efficiency thing is a myth at this point
.
You can imagine then my horror at the idea that someday within my lifetime, most cars will be twist-and-go electric go-karts. As the age of the combustion engine appears to draw to a close (no, seriously this time), there’s just one thing keeping the door open —
marked enthusiasm for manual transmissions
. From Audi to the Nissan Z, automakers report that the take rate for manual transmissions is quite high in the US, despite the death knell that has been tolling for two decades or so. Two models of Honda Civic are manual-only. This phenomenon isn’t restricted to sports cars, either — the 2022 Ford Bronco comes in a seven-speed manual, and has seen a take rate over 20%.
The Soullessness of a New Machine
The EV just seems so soulless to me, and I know I’m not alone in this. In a regular car, you’re just more in tune with what’s going on. There are sights and smells. Noises galore. I’m not saying that EVs don’t have their sensory landmarks, I just believe they are a different breed. Not a new breed, of course — electric cars have been around almost as long as combustion models. But obviously, the landscape is changing and has been for about 20 years now.
We don’t wax lyrical about paddle shifters as we do about manual gearboxes. — Henry Catchpole, automotive journalist
Electric cars may be powerful and have a ton of instantly available torque, but it’s just not the same experience. There’s no engagement, no feeling like you are one with the car. And besides, how often are you out there redlining your engine or testing the 0-60? Oh, never? That’s what I thought.
Realistically, those things don’t matter unless you’re a professional driver on a closed course. As Bob Sorokanich, editor-in-chief of Jalopnik said, “Tesla has the quickest car on the market — just floor the accelerator and hang on. It doesn’t take any driver skill.”
Now, doesn’t that just about sum it up? ‘Doesn’t take any driver skill’. Shouldn’t it, though? In the hundred and thirty or so years of the automobile, the one thing we haven’t managed to make safer is our interactions with each other on the road. Sure, we have speed limits now, and roll cages, and seat belts. But we’re all more distracted than ever, and we’re all still mostly human. So, does driving really need to be a place of convenience? I think not. | 258 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532369",
"author": "notspam",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T18:12:51",
"content": "“the take rate for manual transmissions is quite high in the US”?Really? You would be lucky to find a new car in the US/Canada with manual transmission. The majority of the population can barely drive an ... | 1,760,372,496.209478 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/blender-builds-lego-models/ | Blender Builds LEGO Models | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d",
"blender",
"geometry nodes",
"instance attributes",
"lego",
"model"
] | Blender is a free and open source computer graphics package that’s used in the production of everything from video games to feature films. Now,
as demonstrated by [Joey Carlino]
, the popular program can even be used to convert models into LEGO.
This new feature available in Blender 3.4 allows for the use of instance attributes in a way that a large number of points on a model can be created without causing undue strain on (and possible crashing of) the software. Essentially, an existing model is split into discrete points at specific intervals. The spacing of the intervals is set to be exactly that of LEGO bricks, which gives the model the low-resolution look of a real LEGO set. From there, a model brick is created and placed at each of these points, and then colors can be transferred to the bricks individually.
The demonstration that [Joey] uses is converting a beach ball model to LEGO, but using these tools on other models delivers some striking results. He goes over a lot of the details on how to create these, and it would only be a short step from there to ordering the bricks themselves. Or, using these models and
sending them over to a 3D printer
straight from Blender itself. Not bad for free software! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532358",
"author": "RMog",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T17:41:19",
"content": "It looks neat, but unless I’m missing something – and from the obvious seam lines it doesn’t look like I am – I can’t imagine the person who did this has ever put together a real LEGO model before.Something ... | 1,760,372,495.529984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/the-blood-factory-new-research-may-open-the-door-to-artificial-blood/ | The Blood Factory: New Research May Open The Door To Artificial Blood | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"anemia",
"artificial blood",
"blood",
"erythrocytes",
"hematopoiesis",
"medicine",
"stem cell",
"transfusion"
] | There were news stories afoot this week with somewhat breathless headlines that suggested a medical breakthrough was at hand:
“In a 1st, two people receive transfusions of lab-grown blood cells.”
A headline like that certainly catches the eye, especially as the holidays approach and the inevitable calls for increased blood donations that always seem to happen this time of year as the supply gets pinched. Does a headline like that mean that someone is working on completely artificial blood?
As always with this sort of thing, the answer is a mixed bag. Yes, a team in the UK has transfused two patients with a small amount of lab-grown red blood cells, and it’s the first time that particular procedure has been performed. But while the headline is technically correct, the amount transfused was very small, so the day when lab-grown whole blood transfusions replace donated blood isn’t exactly here yet. But the details of what was done and why it was attempted are the really interesting part here, and it’s worth a deep dive because it does potentially point the way to a future where totally synthetic blood may be a real thing.
Growing Up Red
To understand what’s being done in this trial, which is called “Recovery and survival of stem cell originated red cells”, or
RESTORE
, we have to look into the process of blood formation in some detail. The journey from a single cell type to whole blood filled with a balance of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and myriad other specialized cells and factors, is called hematopoiesis. It’s an immensely complex and tightly regulated process, but it all begins with the simplest and in some ways the most important cells in the body: stem cells, which are undifferentiated cells that can make an essentially unlimited number of copies of themselves.
Many branches, but one starting point. A simplified view of hematopoiesis. Source:
CCCOnline
, CC BY-SA 4.0
The stem cell at the root of hematopoiesis is called a hemocytoblast. In adults, hemocytoblasts are located mainly in the bone marrow, particularly in the sternum, the vertebral bodies, the ribs, and the wings of the pelvis bones. In response to the presence or absence of certain growth factors, hemocytoblasts undergo a series of divisions that result in increasingly differentiated cells with specialized functions. While some hemocytoblasts end up going down a branch that leads to the various types of cells that make up our immune system — the leukocytes, or white blood cells — others begin a process of differentiation into cells specialized for the transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide: the red blood cells (RBCs), also called erythrocytes.
In the process of differentiation, or erythropoiesis, the stem cells undergo a dramatic transformation in both size and shape. The developing red blood cells get smaller and start to take on their characteristic biconcave disc shape. Genes that code for heme proteins start to get expressed, and the developing erythrocytes start to turn red as the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin accumulates in the cytoplasm. Eventually, the nucleus that was present in the stem cell, which has been shrinking during the whole differentiation process, is ejected from the immature erythrocyte, leaving a small bag of hemoglobin and not much more.
The immature red blood cells at this stage are called reticulocytes. At this point they migrate from the marrow and into circulation, where they mature into erythrocytes in a couple of days. Reticulocytes make up about 1% of the RBCs in a healthy patient at any given time, with the other 99% being a mixed population of ages up to about four months. When they get that old the RBCs are too damaged to do their job, so they are removed from circulation and recycled by the spleen, with the elemental iron from their hemoglobin recycled for the next round of erythropoiesis.
Baby Blood Cells
In a healthy adult, erythropoiesis is a prodigiously productive process; even though it takes three weeks to go from stem cell to reticulocyte, the marrow puts something like 200 billion new RBCs into circulation every day. This ability to quickly rebuild our stock of RBCs is the key to blood donation; typically, blood donors completely recover from the donation of half a liter of whole blood within 20 days or so. As a result of this rapid recycling, blood donation has become an absolutely critical life-saving tool, used to treat a huge range of diseases and disorders.
Photomicrograph of erythrocytes. Source: by Drs. Noguchi, Rodgers, and Schechter of NIDDK, National Institutes of Health. Public domain.
But, as life-saving as whole blood transfusions may be, there can be complications. Red blood cells carry protein factors on their surface — the familiar “ABO” groupings — that can, even when carefully typed and cross-matched, eventually raise an immune reaction in the recipient. This tends to be most prevalent in frequent blood recipients, particularly in those with anemias like sickle cell anemia or thalassemia, or with clotting disorders like hemophilia.
One way to potentially get around the issue of developing what essentially amounts to a “blood allergy” is to increase the time between transfusions, and that’s exactly what the RESTORE trial is looking at. Rather than transfusing whole blood containing RBCs with a wide range of ages, they want to be able to transfuse patients with blood where every RBC is exactly the same age and brand new. That way, hypothetically at least, the transfused RBCs would survive for their full 120-day lifespan, rather than being retired continuously starting from nearly the moment of transfusion.
The first step in exploring how useful lab-grown blood is in treating diseases is to make some blood. While there hasn’t been a paper published from the RESTORE trial yet,
in vitro erythropoiesis
has been a pretty standard lab procedure for decades. Methods vary, but from the description given by the RESTORE team, it’s likely that they’re isolating and amplifying the small number of hematopoietic stem cells that circulate in the blood along with mature cells. These cells have antibodies on their surface that mature red blood cells lack, and that fact can be used to isolate them from the rest of the cells. A small population of stem cells can then be grown up in the appropriate growth medium.
To turn the stem cells into RBCs, the culture can be treated with erythropoietin, a protein that’s normally secreted by the kidneys. Erythropoietin, or EPO, is secreted when the body senses low blood oxygen; the body responds by stimulating the differentiation of stem cells into RBCs, to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. EPO gained fame in the 1990s as a performance-enhancing drug when used by athletes, particularly cyclists, to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of their blood.
For the RESTORE study, whole blood is obtained from healthy donors, stem cells are purified from the whole blood, and RBCs are cultured. Some of the whole blood is also set aside as a control. Both batches of blood are then labeled with a mildly radioactive tracer. On the donor side, healthy volunteers are given a very small transfusion — just a few milliliters — of the cultured blood. They’ll be followed over the next four months, with samples of their blood being analyzed to see how many of the cultured RBCs remain. After all the cultured blood has been cleared out, the experiment is repeated with the donated blood.
If all goes well, the RESTORE team will transfuse a total of ten volunteers. They expect that the cultured RBCs will last longer in circulation than the whole blood transfusion; if so, this may open the door to improved therapies for patients in need of frequent blood transfusions. There’s a lot of ground to cover before that, of course, not least of which is scaling up a method that can currently produce enough cultured RBCs for one person.
The Future of Synthetic Blood
But could a similar process one day result in completely lab-grown whole blood? Possibly, but whole blood is far more complex than just RBCs, and learning to grow large quantities of it is likely to be orders of magnitude more difficult. What would make this possible is the initial stem cell: the hemocytoblast. Since every cell in whole blood descends from that one cell type, it should be possible to grow whole blood completely in vitro. This doesn’t mean that the process would be entirely synthetic, of course. Those stem cells have to come from somewhere, and the most obvious source would be human donors. That begs the question of why you’d bother with the in vitro steps at all; if you’ve got to get a donation, just get whole blood and be done with it, right?
While that’s true, there would be significant benefits to turning donated stem cells into artificial whole blood. The main advantage is that since stem cells are essentially immortal, a single donation could potentially generate an unlimited amount of whole blood. This could be of great benefit anywhere the pool of potential blood donors is limited, but there still may be demand for blood in an emergency — think space travel. And even if generating whole blood from a stem cell culture never proves to be possible, being able to scale up erythrocyte production and mix it with donated plasma could be tremendously valuable — thanks to
plasmapheresis
, plasma can be donated much more often than whole blood.
The day when human whole blood donations are no longer needed will probably never come, and if it does it’s a long way off. But the fact that the RESTORE trial has managed to grow even the few milliliters of blood needed to do their initial experiments is exciting news. Not only might this trial result in tangible benefits to patients in need right now, but it may also open the door to unlimited whole blood on demand. | 37 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532308",
"author": "ian",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T15:09:25",
"content": "Can Androids donate artificial blood?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6533150",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2022-11-17T19:57:33",
... | 1,760,372,495.820884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/new-part-day-the-smallest-batteries-you-have-ever-seen/ | New Part Day: The Smallest Batteries You Have Ever Seen | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"battery",
"energy harvesting",
"solid-state battery"
] | We’re used to some pretty small batteries in miniaturized electronics, thanks to the manufacture of lithium-polymer pouch cells. But they’re still pretty big, and they’re hardly the most stable power storage solution. The French company ITEN may have an answer for designers of micro-power devices though,
in the form of a range of tiny surface-mount solid-state rechargeable lithium batteries
. These come in a range of capacities from 0.1 mAh to 0.5 mAh, and in a 3.2 by 2.5 mm package look very much like any other slightly larger SMD chip component.
These devices are most likely to be found in applications such as remote wireless sensors, where they can store the energy from a small solar cell or similar to produce the burst of power required to transmit a packet of data as well as the tiny current required to keep things ticking over. The solid state chemistry should provide a long life and lack of leaks. For now they have some evaluation kits on offer, and unless we missed something, no full data sheet. We’d be particularly interested to learn about their temperature sensitivity when it comes to soldering, as we’ve taken to heart the warnings about soldering to more traditional lithium cells.
Via
CNX Software
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532255",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T12:04:13",
"content": "How would these be attached then? Spot welding like regular battery packs are built?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532261",
"author": "@f4gr... | 1,760,372,495.746604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/shrinking-the-xbox-360/ | Shrinking The XBox 360 | Navarre Bartz | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"console hacking",
"diy handheld",
"handheld",
"microsoft",
"portable building",
"portable xbox",
"portable xbox 360",
"xbox 360"
] | One of the coolest things in the retro gaming scene is making desktop consoles into portables. [Millomaker] is building an XBox 360 handheld, and the first step is
shrinking the console’s motherboard
.
Most 360 portables up to this point have been
laptop-shaped
instead of something
handheld
, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to miniaturize the console further. [Millomaker]’s cut seems to be the most successful so far, shrinking the device’s motherboard down to the size of its old competitor, the Wii.
In the video (in French with available auto-translation) below the break, you can get the full harrowing journey during which several 360s sacrificed their motherboards for the cause despite [Millomaker]’s meticulous testing between component removals. This is truly an awesome mod, and we’re glad that the video shows not only the successes, but also the missteps on the way. It wouldn’t really be a hack if it was smooth sailing, would it?
For more fun with handhelds, check out the
Sprig Open Source Handheld
, a
Portable PS2
, or this
Handheld Linux Computer
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532275",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T13:20:12",
"content": "And one of these days I’ll find time to try to understand why when I plugged an xbox connect into my Xbox 360S the magic smoke was released.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,495.944907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/reverse-engineering-reveals-ev-charger-has-a-sense-of-security/ | Reverse Engineering Reveals EV Charger Has A Sense Of Security | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"ARM Cortex-A7",
"charger",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"jtag",
"NAND flash",
"reverse engineering",
"teardown",
"uart"
] | As more and more electric vehicles penetrate the market, there’s going to have to be a proportional rise in the number of charging stations that are built into parking garages, apartment complexes, and even private homes. And the more that happens, the more chargers we’re going to start seeing where security is at best an afterthought in their design.
But as
this EV charger teardown and reverse engineering
shows, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. The charger is a
Zaptec Pro
station that can do up to 22 kW, and the analysis was done by [Harrison Sand] and [Andreas Claesson]. These are just the kinds of chargers that will likely be widely installed over the next decade, and there’s surprisingly little to them. [Harrison] and [Andreas] found a pair of PCBs, one for the power electronics and one for the control circuits. The latter supports a number of connectivity options, like 4G, WiFi, and Bluetooth, plus some RFID and powerline communications. There are two microcontrollers, a PIC and an ARM Cortex-A7.
Despite the ARM chip, the board seemed to lack an obvious JTAG port, and while some unpopulated pads did end up having a UART line, there was no shell access possible. An on-board micro SD card slot seemed an obvious target for attack, and some of the Linux images they tried yielded at least a partial boot-up, but without knowing the specific hardware configuration on the board, that’s just shooting in the dark. That’s when the NAND flash chip was popped off the board to dump the firmware, which allowed them to extract the devicetree and build a custom bootloader to finally own root.
The article has a lot of fascinating details on the exploit and what they discovered after getting in, like the fact that even if you had the factory-set Bluetooth PIN, you wouldn’t be able to get free charging. So overall, a pretty good security setup, even if they were able to get in by dumping the firmware. This all reminds us a little of
the smart meter reverse engineering
our friend [Hash] has been doing, in terms of both methodology and results.
Thanks to [Thinkerer] for the tip. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532806",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T16:58:06",
"content": "Interesting, nice to see an internet connected device where security was actually at least considered in how it operates…Dumping the firmware leading to getting in to me is a good thing, as the whole th... | 1,760,372,496.256835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/interview-stuart-semple-on-pantone-freetone-colour-and-open-source/ | Interview: Stuart Semple On Pantone, Freetone, Colour, And Open Source | Jenny List | [
"Art",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"adobe",
"art",
"colour",
"Freetone",
"gimp",
"Pantone",
"photoshop",
"pigment"
] | We recently covered
the removal of Pantone colour support from the Adobe cloud products
, with the two companies now expecting artists and designers to pay an extra subscription for a Pantone plugin or face losing their Pantone-coloured work to a sea of black blocks. Our coverage focused on our community, and on how the absurdity of a commercial entity attempting to assert ownership over colours would have no effect on us with our triple-byte RGB values.
Interview With An Artist And Pigment Activist
The palette that could start a revolution.
It’s fair to say though that in our focus on hardware hackers and open source enthusiasts, we missed its effect on artists and designers. To rectify this omission we needed to step outside our field and talk to an artist, and in that context there’s an obvious person to interview.
Stuart Semple
is probably one of the more famous contemporary British artists, but in relation to this story it’s his activism over the issue of colours and intellectual property that makes him an authority. He’s drawn attention to the issue by releasing his own art materials in colours that directly challenge those which companies have tried to claim for themselves, and is perhaps best known in our community for
challenging Anish Kapoor’s exclusive licence for VantaBlack
, the so-called “world’s blackest pigment”.
Most recently in response to the Adobe/Pantone controversy he’s released
Freetone
, a free plugin for the Adobe suite that in the words from its web page contains
“1280 Liberated colours are extremely Pantoneish and reminiscent of those found in the most iconic colour book of all time. In fact it’s been argued that they are indistinguishable from those behind the Adobe paywall”.
I had a phone conversation with him, in which he explained why Freetone had come into being.
Hackaday
I understand Pantone is something used by designers, so I’ve worked for companies in the past where the designer would specify a Pantone index and it would appear on the screen, on the printed box, and on everything else identically. But why why do you as an artist use Pantone?
Art, activism, and a very red pigment.
Stuart
Well, I use it in lots of ways. So I make a lot of screen prints as part of my art. So you know, if I’m working with a screen printer, I want to know that the print that they make of my work is the colour that I want it to be, so Pantone’s really useful for me for that.
But also, even with within the paints, so I just did a thing where I made some paints,
which actually uses the blood of gay men
. It was really important to me that the colour of the paint matched the colour of actual blood. So I was working with a lot of people, we’ve been collaborating, and I was working with some friends in New York on it, and we needed a common language.
The red I was talking about was the red they were talking about, and Pantone is super useful for that. In fact, it’s the go-to for that. I just did
a record cover for Placebo
, the band, that was produced for me by someone that prints, so I had to tell them what spot colours I wanted. So I had to tell them Pantone references, it’s the language they understand.
Hackaday
So my next question relates to Freetone. Obviously, as as you’ve distributed it, it’s a Adobe plugin. How does it solve the problem? Because obviously, I can specify a Freetone colour, and anybody else with Freetone can tell yes, that’s that colour. But how do I then go to a printer who buys his inks with Pantone specifications and map one to the other?
The Pantone swatch book which you’ll see in the hands of artists and designers everywhere. Céréales Killer
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
Stuart
How it works is, if you download Freetone, you’ll find colours in there, and one of them will be called Sempletone 648C. Well, it’s exactly the same as Pantone 648C. If you do your work on the screen, use the Freetones, and then when you send it to the printer, it’s actually blatantly obvious to anyone that 648C is clearly apparent. If you’ve got the Pantone fan book and you look at the colours, it’s the same. 846C in mine is the same as 846C in the fan, in the Pantone book. I’d like to see them try and argue that they own it, but I don’t think they do in the name or the Pantone trademark, but these are Sempletones with a number. So I think it’s gonna be hard.
Hackaday
My next question is probably getting more into the technology of it all. Do you think it will be possible to replace Pantone’s service completely? So if you took every Sempletone colour and threw it at a spectrometer and published the spectrum, would you then be able to say to an ink manufacturer or similar, here are the full technical details rather than just a colour, and does your paint correspond to this spectrum? I’m curious how far you could push open source in this line.
The PySpectrometer project, something for anyone with an interest in colour.
Stuart
That’s really cool. I love it. Like, if you could just give them that spectral data, and if they’ve got a spectrometer they could measure it a their end. But there’s nothing that advanced at the moment, a lot of action is done by eye still. My answer is, I don’t see why not if there was a cool enough device. I don’t know if the spectrometer would be good enough to match it. I don’t see why not, I don’t see why you couldn’t publish the data. But it would have to be the whole spectral information and not just like an RGB value.
(
At this point the interview digressed for a moment into a discussion of open-source spectrometers such as
the Raspberry Pi project we featured recently,
as Stuart’s lament was that a spectrometer can be an extremely expensive instrument. It isn’t the job of an interviewer to lead their interviewee so we’re skipping this part of the transcript, however I think we can all look forward to whatever uses Stuart makes of an affordable spectrometer. We’ll pick up the interview at the next question.
)
This widely shared screenshot represents the destruction of past work.
Hackaday
One of the real problems with the whole Adobe suite, and this has happened in world as well with for instance the Autodesk CAD packages, is that they have gone into the cloud and become software as a subscription. So I understand completely, the frustration of artists at suddenly being told they have to pay an extra subscription to keep their Pantone support, and I’m particularly shocked to find that Photoshop isn’t just displaying black pixels over Pantone colours, I’m told it’s wiping out the Pantone information on saving. Do you think that anything in the open source software ecosystem comes close to replacing proprietary products like the Adobe suite for you as an artist?
Stuart
Yes, 100%, there’s loads of stuff. I think open source is just the answer, I believe in freedom. And freedom means freedom to express yourself and freedom to own the thing and tweet the thing and change the thing and all the rest of it. So yeah, 100%. I think there’s actually better things than Photoshop, the problem we’ve got is that Adobe have the industry stranglehold. And if you want to work with someone, you have to be talking that language. And that’s still the problem. It’s like an operating system, but it’s got the monopoly.
So there are other things, for instance, on a Mac, there’s something called
Pixelmator
, which is as good as Photoshop in my opinion, I use it every day. It’s not free, but you buy it once, and that’s it, free updates. Like software used to be. And there are other things, like GIMP is amazing. It’s awesome, but it doesn’t really replace Photoshop.
We all like using GIMP, perhaps other people could learn to love it too. (
gimp.org
)
Hackaday
Here at Hackaday we can make noises about how wouldn’t it be great if the developers of GIMP or other software could stick Freetone into their products, because they don’t have Pantone as it’s licensed?
Stuart
Yeah, that’d be a dream, wouldn’t it? I mean, why not? I made it for everybody. As far as I’m concerned, it’s out there, use it, change it. incorporate it, the more people the better, I think.
A lot of people use GIMP, and it’s good. Really good open source stuff that always has been. We know the future is in the open source stuff, proprietary stuff just won’t last, it’s just not adaptable. It’s putting greed and profits above the user, it can’t work. There’s no freedom in it.
Hackaday
To me the most egregious thing is that as I understand it they will delete the Pantone information from your PSD. This really shocked me.
Stuart
They’re literally holding it hostage. It’s like 20 quid, or delete from your work, which is, wow. They’re not giving me anything, anyway. I’m renting the software, paying to use the software every month, it’s not free. And the licence fee is a lot. We’re already spending hundreds and hundreds a year on this software, probably about 800 quid a year. Another 20 quid, just to pen the work we make before. I mean, it’s our work! It’s pure corporate greed, isn’t it.
Hackaday
Thank you very much for the interview.
As we wrapped up, I asked him about his
Black 3.0 pigment
, produced as a reaction to VantaBlack and Anish Kapoor. I was curious whether it might have a specially good infra-red response for headsinks or solar collectors, but sadly he informed me that it’s primarily a visual colour for artists. It’s very cool stuff, incredibly black, and I really want to get some to play with, but probably no better than a rattle can for heat purposes. Never mind, an engineer’s curiosity satisfied.
What’s Next, For Both Artists And Engineers?
Could
SwatchBooker
hold the answer?
Following the interview, it’s worth looking at the Freetone project from our side of the table as well as his. If we as a community would like to ensure that colours do not become ever more proprietary, then it is probably on us to ensure that where appropriate it is supported within our sphere. GIMP support for instance would at a stroke make open source software an easier choice for millions of artists and designers, and could I think be done relatively easily through its existing palette support. There’s
SwatchBooker
which appears to perform the necessary interchange, and I found the
ASE2GIMP
project which imports Adobe palettes into GIMP, but sadly I couldn’t make it work here. If GIMP shipped with a Freetone palette built-in, would that be too much of a development task to contemplate?
From Stuart’s side, having sat down and played with Freetone, if there’s one thing I could ask him it would be to release it as more than just an Adobe plugin, and to give it an open source licence. As it stands it’s a binary available for no charge through his web shop, I think that releasing it as a straightforward list, perhaps even as simple as a CSV file, would make it so much more accessible to developers. And coupled with an open source licence that allowed them to include it within their software, I think it would be unstopable. We’re not open source licence nerds here at Hackaday, but I’m guessing something that does the same for a palette as a library licence such as the LGPL does for libraries would be appropriate.
In our world we’re wrapped up in electronics and code, and it’s sometimes easy to forget that the work we do reaches way beyond our workbenches. If you’ve spent enough time in a hackerspace you’ll know that art and engineering are almost the two sides of the same coin, so it’s pleasing to find such a moment of crossover. Let’s hope Freetone support can find its way into the open source movement, and together we can keep the tentacles of yet another IP land grab at bay. | 73 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532775",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T15:07:26",
"content": "Pirating adobe has always been a better user experience than buying it—excluding the expense factor. They make you pay to get screwed. Eventually they’ll merge with autodesk, that’ll be fun.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,372,496.370661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/bringing-the-hinge-to-a-1990s-game-boy/ | Bringing The Hinge To A 1990s Game Boy | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"console mod",
"game boy",
"Game Boy Advance SP",
"Game Boy pocket"
] | The new hotness in mobile phones is it seems a hinge, and an ever-so-fragile flexible LCD display. There’s nothing new in a hinge of course, a couple of decades ago they were all the rage in feature phones, and of course Nintendo got in on the act with the ever-so-cute Game Boy Advance SP. This hinged design caught the attention of [Allison Parrish], who has brought it to an earlier generation of Game Boy with
the Game Boy Pocket SP
. It’s a late-1990s Game Boy Pocket whose PCB has been carefully cut in half, in a custom case that looks for all the world like the hinged case of the Advance SP.
The case is a neat bit of CAD work very nicely 3D printed and fitted with a set of Advance SP hinges, but perhaps the neatest part of this build is the se of a set of flexible PCBs to connect the two halves of the unit together. This looks for all the world as though it came this way from the factory, which is an achievement above many console mods.
The whole thing is a little lumpy compared to the SP to make space for the Pocket’s full-size cartridge, but not so much as to make it ugly. Any 1990s kid with one of these would have been the envy of all their classmates!
You may not be surprised to know that
this isn’t the first respin of a Nintendo console into an SP-style case
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532759",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T14:22:56",
"content": "Very nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6532773",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T15:02:05",
"content": "To me it looks al... | 1,760,372,496.470227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/16/listen-to-64-mhz-at-once/ | Listen To 64 MHz At Once | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"sdr",
"software-defined radio"
] | We imagine that if [Tech Minds] told us he was listening to the HF bands, we might ask him which one? His reply might just be “All of them.” That’s thanks to the
RX-888 MKII SDR
he reviewed which delivers a 64 MHz window on the radio spectrum. You can catch the video review, below.
These are not especially inexpensive, but with that bandwidth and 16-bit resolution, it is worth it if you need that kind of horsepower. There is a separate input for VHF signals 64-1700 MHz where the bandwidth is only 10 MHz, but still.
Of course, making a very wideband front end for something like this is non-trivial, so we wonder how the performance is compared to similar-priced units with less bandwidth. On the other hand, it does seem to work well enough in the video. The software used limited the test to a 32 MHz bandwidth, which is still plenty.
Speaking of software, we noticed that the developers of SatDump and SDR++ are not happy with the
state of the software for the RX-888
. We aren’t sure if this remains a problem, but the device seemed to work well on the video, at least.
There are many options now when it comes to higher-end SDRs. We like the
Pluto
for both transmitting and receiving. Of course, the
RTL-SDR
kind of started everything with hobby SDR, but you can’t expect that much bandwidth with one of those. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532726",
"author": "Eeald",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T11:31:20",
"content": "He did. Watch the vid.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532795",
"author": "None",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T15:46:02",
"conte... | 1,760,372,496.43054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/digitize-your-slide-deck-with-this-arduino-powered-slide-carousel/ | Digitize Your Slide Deck With This Arduino-Powered Slide Carousel | Robin Kearey | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"35 mm",
"photographic slide",
"slide carousel",
"slide digitizer"
] | If you’re above a certain age, you probably remember the atmosphere of a pre-Powerpoint 35 mm slide show. The wobbly screen being unrolled, the darkened room, the soft hum of the projector’s fan, the slightly grainy picture on the screen and that unmistakable click-whoosh-clack sound as the projector loaded the next slide. Nowadays you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone willing to set up a screen and darken the room just to watch a few photos, so if you still have any slides lying around you’ll probably want to digitize them. If you’ve also kept your projector then this doesn’t even have to be that difficult, as [Scott Lawrence]
shows in his latest project
.
[Scott] made a setup to directly connect a DLSR, in this case a Nikon D70, to a Kodak 760 slide carousel. The attachment is made through a 3D-printed adapter that fits onto the Nikon’s macro lens on one side and slides snugly into the carousel’s lens slot on the other. The adapter also holds an IR transmitter which is aimed at the camera’s receiver, in order to trigger its remote shutter release function.
The carousel’s original light source was replaced with a compact LED studio light, which allows for precise brightness control and of course remains nice and cool compared to the original incandescent bulb. The light, camera and carousel motor are all controlled through a central user interface driven by an Arduino Leonardo which can automatically advance the carousel and instruct the camera to take a picture, thereby taking the hard work out of digitizing huge stacks of slides.
[Scott] plans to make the software and STL files available on GitHub soon, so anyone can go ahead and turn their projector into a digitizer. If you’ve misplaced your projector however,
a simple 3D-printed slide adapter for your camera
also works for small slide decks. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532666",
"author": "Dustin Kerr (@duk242)",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T06:19:40",
"content": "Why not just use a scanner with the slide attachments?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532686",
"author": "Chris",
"... | 1,760,372,496.710731 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/rapid-prototyping-to-measure-turbidity-in-rapids/ | Rapid Prototyping To Measure Turbidity In Rapids | Abe Connelly | [
"Science"
] | [
"environmental monitoring",
"ESP32",
"ir led",
"turbidity",
"water",
"water sensor"
] | [RiverTechJess] is in the process of getting a PhD in environmental engineering and has devoted a chapter to creating a turbidity sensor for river network monitoring. Environmental sensing benefits from being able to measure accurately and frequently, so providing low cost devices helps get more data and excuse the occasional device loss that’s bound to happen when deploying electronics out in the wild. Towards this end, [RiverTechJess] has created a
low cost turbidity sensor
that rivals the more expensive alternatives in cost and accuracy.
The turbidity sensor is designed to be at least partially submerged allowing for the LED and light sensors to be be able to take measurements. [RiverTechJess] has made a 3D printed prototype to test the design, allowing for rapid experimentation and deployment of the sensors to work out issues. The 3D printed enclosure prototype uses rubber o-rings and “vacuum grease” to provide a watertight seal. An ESP32 microcontroller is used to store logged data on an SD card and drive the TSHG6200 850nm infrared LED and the two TSL237S-LF sensors.
The resulting
paper
on the turbidity sensor, in addition to the
blogs of the process
, provide a wealth of data that show what goes into developing and calibrating a device that is meant to be used for environmental monitoring. All source code is available on
GitHub
and development continues on a
newer revision
of the turbidity sensor with updated electronics and hardware.
We’re no strangers to water sensors and we’ve seen devices from
internet connected water pollution monitors
to small
handheld potable water detectors
.
Video after the break! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532646",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T05:02:40",
"content": "“has created a low cost turbidity sensor that rivals the more expensive alternatives in cost and accuracy.”so, is it low cost or is it expensive? :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,372,496.758427 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/15/wearable-sensor-trained-to-count-coughs/ | Wearable Sensor Trained To Count Coughs | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"audio",
"ble",
"copd",
"cough",
"data",
"machine learning",
"medical",
"TinyML"
] | There are plenty of problems that are easy for humans to solve, but are almost impossibly difficult for computers. Even though it seems that with modern computing power being what it is we should be able to solve a lot of these problems, things like identifying objects in images remains fairly difficult. Similarly, identifying specific sounds within audio samples remains problematic, and as [Eivind] found, is holding up a lot of medical research to boot. To solve one specific problem
he created a system for counting coughs of medical patients
.
This was built with the idea of helping people with
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Most of the existing methods for studying the disease and treating patients with it involves manually counting the number of coughs on an audio recording. While there are some software solutions to this problem to save some time, this device seeks to identify coughs in real time as they happen. It does this by training a model using tinyML to identify coughs and reject cough-like sounds. Everything runs on an Arduino Nano with BLE for communication.
While the only data the model has been trained on are sounds from [Eivind], the existing prototypes do seem to show promise. With more sound data this could be a powerful tool for patients with this disease. And, even though this uses machine learning on a small platform, we have seen before
that Arudinos are plenty capable of being effective machine learning solutions
with the right tools on board. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532600",
"author": "Maximum climb counter?",
"timestamp": "2022-11-16T01:21:27",
"content": "Not downplaying this work at all (though surprised an Arduino Nano is that effective given the more limited hardware) but as a side note, just curious if there is an adult, err, version of ... | 1,760,372,496.796281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/a-single-board-computer-from-a-tv/ | A Single Board Computer From A TV | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"SBC",
"smart tv"
] | It is an annoyance for some members of our community, that it has become almost impossible to buy a TV that’s not a so-called “smart” TV. These units contain a computer as well as the display, and it boots into a locked-down OS with a user interface and a load of streaming apps. Can anything be done with them other than what their manufacturers intended? [Nina Kalinina] has managed it,
taking the mainboard from a discarded LCD TV and liberating the ARM Linux board within
.
On the board are all the inputs you’d expect from a TV, along with Ethernet, and a couple of extra USB ports hidden in the WiFi interface. There’s a UART available on the SCART connector, and accessing the U-boot menu is achieved by the unusual means of sending a character to the infrared port using a Palm Pilot. Surprisingly the device tree in the Flash was editable, so with the Linux OS accessed, the board was revealed as having a dual-core Novatek SoC.
This is reminiscent of the days when the new hotness was dragging
a Linux box out of a home router
, and just as those were quickly eclipsed by inexpensive boards such as the Raspberry Pi, so might these TV boards meet the same fate. If, however, they can be made to drive a screen with something more useful than the TV interface then that might change, as who wouldn’t want to make an old smart TV a bit more useful? | 38 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532185",
"author": "heatgap",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T06:44:11",
"content": "Still looks like it’s a long ways off from playing Crysis.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532211",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,496.648496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/pretty-petite-picolibc-powers-processors/ | Pretty Petite Picolibc Powers Processors | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"libc",
"newlib",
"standard library"
] | Many times when someone tells you that language X is “better” at something they really mean that it has better built-in libraries for that task. Java is a great example. The language isn’t all that different from C++ outside of garbage collection and multiple inheritance, but the standard libraries are super powerful, especially for networking. Even C relies on a library to provide a lot of functions people think of as part of the language —
printf
, for example. That’s not really part of the C language, but just part of the standard library. When you are writing for a tiny processor, the choice of library is critical and [Keith Packard] offers you one choice:
picolibc
.
The library has its genesis from two other diminutive libraries: Newlib and the AVR version of libc. It provides support for ARC, ARM, i386, m68k, MIPS, MSP430, Nios II, PPC, RISC-V, Sparc64, x86_64, and the ESP8266/ESP32.
There is documentation for how to graft the library into your projects. That includes a few APIs that it expects from the operating environment. There are also documents on how the library uses thread local storage, locking, and other technical details.
Is it better than other choices? That’s not for us to say. You’ll have to build it on your exact platform and make your own comparisons. However, it is a viable candidate and since it is based on
newlib
, it should be fairly stable. You can debate if you should use
printf
, or not. Or you can just
lean into it
. But you can also use other parts of the library without delving into
printf
.
Even if you don’t need a tiny library, sometimes reading through library code for your chosen target can be illuminating. For example, how would you write an efficient
strchr
function? Now,
look how they did it
. Portability is the devil here since you could probably do even better with some CPU-specific instructions like AVX2 or SSE.
Title graphic courtesy [Priscilla Du Preez] | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532162",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T04:49:19",
"content": "If all you want is printf() etc. for the Arduino IDE (I don’t consider the Arduino IDE v2.x stable yet but I suspect this will work with it too):* LibPrintf by Embedded Artistryhttps://github.com/embeddedar... | 1,760,372,496.892728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/generating-two-factor-authentication-codes-with-a-commodore-64/ | Generating Two-Factor Authentication Codes With A Commodore 64 | Robin Kearey | [
"classic hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"2FA",
"commodore 64",
"Commodore SX-64",
"hardware token"
] | If you’ve used a corporate VPN or an online-banking system in the past fifteen years or so, chances are you’ve got a few of those little authenticator key fobs lying around, still displaying a new code every 30 seconds. Today such one-time codes are typically sent to you by text message or generated by a dedicated smartphone app, which is convenient but a bit boring. If you miss having a dedicated piece of hardware for your login codes, then we’ve got good news for you: [Cameron Kaiser] has managed
to turn a Commodore SX-64 into a two-factor authenticator
. Unlike a key fob that’s one gadget you’re not likely to lose, and any thief would probably need to spend quite some time figuring out how to operate it.
The SX-64, if you’re not familiar, is the portable version of the venerable Commodore 64. Weighing in at more than 10 kg it’s not quite a MacBook Air, but it does come with a built-in color monitor and 5.25″ floppy drive. The CPU is an 8-bit 6510 running at about 1 MHz, and as you might imagine it was not a trivial task to implement cryptographic routines on it. Working directly from the definitions in
RFC 6238
, [Cameron] first determined all the necessary bits: an SHA-1 hasher, an HMAC generator and several routines to manipulate dates and times.
The SHA-1 algorithm and HMAC functions might seem complex, but in the end they boil down to performing addition, subtraction and several bitwise logical functions on 32-bit numbers. Lots of steps if you can only work with eight bits at a time, but nothing that even a 6510 can’t do in a reasonable amount of time, especially when running carefully hand-crafted assembly code.
Working with dates and times turned out to be more complicated. The few real-time clock add-ons that were available for the Commodore 64 series all return the time directly in human-readable format: great for everyday use but not so great for calculations that require Unix time. Converting between the two involves lots of multiplication and division, which takes forever if you don’t have a hardware multiplier. [Cameron]’s blog post is full of detail on how to optimize calculations on constrained hardware, and is an interesting read even if you’re working with modern processors.
The end result of the exercise looks almost exactly like a typical authentication app on your smartphone, including that annoying countdown bar. If you’re looking for a slightly more compact solution,
you can do the same thing on an ESP32
. Need a refresher on two-factor authentication techniques?
We’ve got you covered
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532146",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T01:29:12",
"content": "A 10kg seed seems a little heavy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532148",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T02:4... | 1,760,372,496.848982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/lego-race-car-simulator-is-like-a-mechanical-arcade-game/ | LEGO Race Car Simulator Is Like A Mechanical Arcade Game | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"race car",
"race car game"
] | We’ve all played some variant of that simple old racing video game. It’s the one that involves swerving around cars in front without crashing, as the pace steadily increases further. [Dr. Engine]
has recreated that very game in the physical world
, with the help of LEGO Technic.
The design uses what appears to be a LEGO tank tread to create a treadmill for a LEGO car. The initial design is hand-cranked, but [Dr. Engine] soon upgrades this with a motor. The wide treadmill is then fitted with a steering wheel. This steers the car laterally along the treadmill via a simple pulley system. From there, it was a simple job of adding gearbox to change the speed of the treadmill, and obstacles for the car to dodge. Double-sided table affixed small die-cast cars to the track to fit the theme of the build.
It’s great fun watching the car buck and weave over the undulating track, and we’d certainly love to compete with friends for the high score. We’ve seen similar builds before, too, like this
all-LEGO suspension dyno
. Video after the break.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFF3Rhq8uWM | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532137",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-11-15T00:34:41",
"content": "I like it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6532145",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-1... | 1,760,372,497.065665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/automatic-lens-cover-helps-cameras-cover-space-launches/ | Automatic Lens Cover Helps Cameras Cover Space Launches | Lewin Day | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"automatic lens cover",
"camera",
"digital camera",
"lens cap",
"lens cover"
] | Shooting space launches often requires the use of remote cameras for safety reasons. However, that means there’s no photographer on hand to wipe lenses down if they happen to get condensation from the prevailing weather conditions. [Michael Baylor] was having issues with atmospheric moisture interfering with his launch shots,
so built a custom automatic lens cap to help solve the issue.
The design is simple, consisting of a large shutter that pivots to cover the camera lens when photos aren’t being taken, controlled by an impressively-beefy servo. Not only does the automatic cap protect the lens from condensation prior to the moment of launch, it also closes to cover the lens as the rocket leaves the frame. This protects the lens from all the dust and debris flying its way, kicked up by the rocket exhaust on takeoff.
[Michael] found that the lens cap easily outperformed his usual anti-condensation solution. While his camera with the auto-cap shot mostly-clean pics, another camera fitted with 18-hour handwarmers suffered significantly from condensation. The plan is to add just a little heat to the auto-cap setup to stave off condensation for good, even when shooting at pads like Vandenburg, California.
Details on the build are slim, but the basic concept is all there. Throw together a servo with some 3D-printed components and a microcontroller and you can build a setup custom-tailored to your own rig and use case. If you find yourself needing a capable long-range camera remote, too,
we’ve seen those before as well
! Video after the break.
First test of the actuated lens cap is a big success! There is a tiny bit of condensation on the lens, but my other camera at this spot with multiple hand warmers is way worse. Lens cap camera did not have any heaters or warmers.
https://t.co/lAZDJvUqv4
pic.twitter.com/13bEDd6PmM
— Michael Baylor (@nextspaceflight)
November 10, 2022
[Thanks to chgowiz for the tip!] | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6532067",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T20:27:14",
"content": "If you are going to have an actively powered lens cover perhaps this is one of those rare occasions a peltier module for the heating also makes sense – not only does it radiate heat to the part you want... | 1,760,372,497.115645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/colecovision-barn-find-gets-wireless-makeover/ | ColecoVision Barn Find Gets Wireless Makeover | Robin Kearey | [
"classic hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"barn find",
"colecovision",
"repair",
"wireless controller"
] | Few things are more satisfying than finding an old, forgotten piece of technology somewhere and bringing it back to life. And while it’s great to see a rare sports car or an Apollo Flight Computer being restored, even not-very-successful game consoles from the 1980s can make for some great repair stories. Just look at how [Discreet Mayor] describes his
restoration and modification efforts on a ColecoVision that he literally found in a barn
.
Given that the ColecoVision was on the market between 1982 and 1985, we can assume that [Discreet Mayor]’s console had been sitting on a shelf for at least three decades, and the machine was definitely showing its age. Several components had failed due to corrosion, including the clock crystal, a 7400 series logic chip and a capacitor in the power supply, but since these are all standard components it was rather straightforward to replace them.
The controllers however were sadly beyond repair. Replacing them with standard joysticks wasn’t really an option because the ColecoVision controllers included a numeric keypad, which was mainly used to select game options. Making something completely new was the way to go, and [Discreet Mayor] decided to go for a wireless system while he was at it. After all, he had already developed a
modular wireless IoT system based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
, which turned out to be a perfect fit for this system.
[Discreet Mayor] built a simple joystick-plus-fire-button setup on a piece of MDF and equipped it with his IoT transmitter. Instead of adding a replacement numeric keypad he decided to use the joystick to simulate the most commonly-used buttons: “right” for “1”, “down” for “2” and so on. The receiver module uses digital switches to mimic keypresses to the console’s input port. The end result might look a bit hacky, but the console is fully functional again and runs its games just like it did over thirty years ago.
We’ve seen several projects that add
wireless controllers
to
a variety of classic consoles
. If you’ve got a ColecoVision that turns out to be beyond salvaging, you can always just
build your own from scratch
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,497.154604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/on-getting-a-computers-attention-and-striking-up-a-conversation/ | On Getting A Computer’s Attention And Striking Up A Conversation | Maya Posch | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Machine Learning",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"speech recognition",
"virtual assistant"
] | With the rise in voice-driven virtual assistants over the years, the sight of people talking to various electrical devices in public and in private has become rather commonplace. While such voice-driven interfaces are decidedly useful for a range of situations, they also come with complications. One of these are the trigger phrases or wake words that voice assistants listen to when in standby. Much like in Star Trek, where uttering ‘Computer’ would get the computer’s attention, so do we have our ‘Siri’, ‘Cortana’ and a range of custom trigger phrases that enable the voice interface.
Unlike in Star Trek, however, our virtual assistants do not know when we really desire to interact. Unable to distinguish context, they’ll happily respond to someone on TV mentioning their trigger phrase. This possibly followed by a ludicrous purchase order or other mischief. The realization here is the complexity of voice-based interfaces, while still lacking any sense of self-awareness or intelligence.
Another issue is that the process of voice recognition itself is very resource-intensive, which limits the amount of processing that can be performed on the local device. This usually leads to the voice assistants like
Siri
,
Alexa
,
Cortana
and others processing recorded voices in a data center, with obvious privacy implications.
Just Say My Name
Radio Rex, a delightful 1920s toy for young and old (Credit: Emre Sevinç)
The idea of a trigger word that activates a system is an old one, with one of the first known practical examples being roughly a hundred years old. This came in the form of a toy called
Radio Rex
, which featured a robot dog that would sit in its little dog house until its name was called. At the moment it’d hop outside to greet the person calling it.
The way that this was implemented was simple and rather limited courtesy of available technologies in the 1910s and 1920s. Essentially it used the acoustic energy of a
formant
corresponding roughly to the vowel [eh] in ‘Rex’. As
noted by some
, an issue with Radio Rex is that it is tuned for 500 Hz, which would be the [eh] vowel when spoken by an (average) adult male voice.
This tragically meant that for children and women Rex would usually refuse to come out of its dog house, unless they used a different vowel that matched the 500 Hz frequency range for their vocal range. Even then they were likely to run into the other major issue with this toy, namely that of the sheer acoustic pressure required. Essentially this meant that some yelling might be required to make Rex move.
What is interesting about this toy is that in many ways ol’ Rex isn’t too different from how modern-day Siri and friends work. The trigger word that wakes them up from standby is less crudely interpreted, using a microphone and signal processing hardware and software rather than a mechanical contraption, but the effect is the same. In the low-power trigger search mode the assistant’s software constantly compares the incoming sound samples’ formants for a match with the sound signature of the predefined trigger word(s).
Once a match has been detected and the mechanism kicks into gear, the assistant will pop out of its digital house as it switches to its full voice processing mode. At this stage a stand-alone assistant – as one might find in e.g. older cars – may use a simple Hidden Markov Model (
HMM
) to try and piece together the intent of the user. Such a model is generally trained on a fairly simple vocabulary model. Such a model will be specific to a particular language and often a regional accent and/or dialect to increase accuracy.
Too Big For The Dog House
The internals of the Radio Rex toy. (Credit: Emre Sevinç)
While it would be nice to run the entire natural language processing routine on the same system, the fact of the matter is that
speech recognition
remains very resource-intensive. Not just in terms of processing power, as even an HMM-based approach has to sift through thousands of probabilistic paths per utterance, but also in terms of memory. Depending on the vocabulary of the assistant, the in-memory model can range from dozens of megabytes to multiple gigabytes or even terabytes. This would obviously be rather impractical on the latest whizbang gadget, smartphone or smart TV, which is why this processing is generally moved to a data center.
When accuracy is considered to be even more of a priority – such as with the Google assistant when it gets asked a complex query – the HMM approach is usually ditched for the newer Long Short-Term Memory (
LSTM
) approach. Although LSTM-based RNNs deal much better with longer phrases, they also come with much higher processing and memory usage requirements.
With the current state-of-the-art in speech recognition moving towards ever more complex neural network models, it would seem unlikely that such system requirements will be overtaken by technological progress.
As a reference point of what a basic lower-end system on the level of a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi might be capable of with speech recognition, we can look at a project like
CMU Sphinx
, developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The version that is aimed at embedded systems is called PocketSphinx, and like its bigger versions uses an HMM-based approach. In the Spinx FAQ
it’s mentioned
explicitly that large vocabularies won’t work on SBCs like the Raspberry Pi due to the limited RAM and CPU power on these platforms.
When you limit the vocabulary to around a thousand words, however, the model may just fit in RAM and the processing will be fast enough to appear instantaneous for the user. This is fine if you desire for the voice-driven interface to only have decent accuracy, within the limits of the training data, while only offering limited interaction. In the case that the goal is to, say, allow the user to turn a handful of lights on or off, this may be sufficient. On the other hand, if this interface is called ‘Siri’ or ‘Alexa’ the expectations for such an interface are a lot higher.
Essentially, these virtual assistants are supposed to act like they understand natural language, the context in which it is used, and to reply in a way that is consistent with the way that the average civilized human interaction is expected to occur. Not surprisingly, this is a tough challenge to meet. Having the speech recognition part off-loaded to a remote data center, and using recorded voice samples to further train the model are natural consequences of this demand.
No Smarts, Just Good Guesses
Something which we humans are naturally pretty good at, and which we get further nagged with during our school time, is called ‘part-of-speech tagging’, also called
grammatical tagging
. This is where we quantify parts of a phrase into its grammatical constituents, including nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, and so on. Doing so is essential for understanding a sentence, as the meaning of words can change wildly depending on their grammatical classification, especially in languages like English with its common use of nouns as verbs and vice versa.
Using grammatical tagging we can then understand the meaning of the sentence. Yet this is not what these virtual assistants do. Using a
Viterbi algorithm
(for HMMs) or equivalent RNN approach, instead the probability is determined of the given input fitting a specific subset of the language model. As most of us are undoubtedly aware, this is an approach that feels almost magical when it works, and makes you realize that Siri is as dumb as a bag of bricks when it fails to get an appropriate match.
As demand for ‘smart’ voice-driven interfaces increases, engineers will undoubtedly work tirelessly to find more ingenious methods to improve the accuracy of today’s system. The reality for the foreseeable future would appear to remain that of voice data being sent to data centers where powerful server systems can perform the requisite probability curve fitting, to figure out that you were asking ‘Hey Google’ where the nearest ice cream parlor is. Never mind that you were actually asking for the nearest bicycle store, but that’s technology for you.
Speak Easy
Perhaps slightly ironic about the whole natural language and computer interaction experience is that speech synthesis is more or less a solved problem. As early as the 1980s the
Texas Instruments TMS
(of Speak & Spell fame) and the
General Instrument SP0256
Linear Predictive Coding (
LPC
) speech chips used a fairly crude approximation of the human vocal tract in order to synthesize a human-sounding voice.
Over the intervening years. LPC has become ever more refined for use in speech synthesis, while also finding use in speech encoding and transmission. By using a real-life human’s voice as the basis for an LPC vocal tract, virtual assistants can also switch between voices, allowing Siri, Cortana, etc. to sound as whatever gender and ethnicity appeals the most to an end user.
Hopefully within the next few decades we can make speech recognition work as well as speech synthesis, and perhaps even grant these virtual assistants a modicum of true intelligence. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531996",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T16:35:28",
"content": "Two examples of why speech recognition will never work 100% with English:“Eats shoots and leaves” [a book on grammar]“I’m hungry let’s eat Dad” [a phrase used to teach the importance of commas]",
"parent_i... | 1,760,372,497.854716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/arduino-brings-a-micropython-ide/ | Arduino Brings A MicroPython IDE | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino IDE",
"micropython"
] | Both Arduino and MicroPython are giants when it comes to the electronics education area, and each one of them represents something you can’t pass up on as an educator. Arduino offers you a broad ecosystem of cheap hardware with a beginner-friendly IDE, helped by forum posts explaining every single problem that you could and will stumble upon. MicroPython, on the other hand, offers a powerful programming environment ripe for experimentation, and doesn’t unleash a machine gun fire of triangle brackets if you try to parse JSON slightly incorrectly. They look like a match made in heaven, and today, from heaven
descends the Arduino Lab for MicroPython.
This is not an Arduino IDE extension – it’s a separate Arduino IDE-shaped app that does MicroPython editing and uploads code to your board from a friendly environment. It works over a serial port, and as such, the venerable ESP8266-based boards shouldn’t be be left out – it even offers file manager capabilities! Arduino states that this is an experimental effort – it doesn’t yet have syntax checks, for instance, and no promises are made. That said, it already is a wonderful MicroPython IDE for beginner purposes, and absolutely a move in the right direction. Want to try?
Download it here,
there’s even a Linux build!
High-level languages let you build projects faster – perfect fit for someone getting into microcontrollers. Hopefully, what follows is a MicroPython library manager and repository! We’ve first
tried out MicroPython in 2016,
and it’s
come a long way since then
– we’ve seen quite a few beginner-friendly MicroPython intros, from a
gaming handheld programming course,
to a
bipedal robot programming MicroPython exploration.
And, of course, you can
bring your C libraries with you. | 52 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531887",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T12:15:00",
"content": "“the venerable ESP8266-based boards shouldn’t be be left out”be be be left out?All other boards then the ones produced by Arduino SRL are be be be left out?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,497.326405 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/3d-printer-z-sensor-claims-0-01mm-resolution/ | 3D Printer Z Sensor Claims 0.01 Mm Resolution | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"auto bed leveling"
] | Early 3D printers usually had a microswitch that let you know when the Z axis was at the zero point. There was usually an adjustment screw so you could tune for just the right layer height. But these days, you most often see some sort of sensor. There are inductive sensors that work with a metal bed and a few other styles, as well. However, the most common is the “BL touch” style sensor that drops a probe below the nozzle level, measures, and then retracts the probe. However, nearly all of these sensors work by detecting a certain height over the bed and that’s it.
A
new probe called BDsensor
is inductive but can read the height over the bed in real time. According to information from the developer, it achieves a resolution of 0.01 mm and a repeatability of +/- 0.005mm. We don’t know if that’s true or not, but being able to take real-time soundings of the nozzle height leads to some interesting possibilities such as real-time adjustments of Z height, as seen in the video below.
The device does require calibration. You essentially touch the nozzle down to the bed and the machine measures 7 mm, building a calibration curve as it goes. Recent versions of Marlin support the probe and provides a real-time display of the measured height on the LCD. You do need two free I/O pins, but since the BL Touch does too, you probably have a port you could use.
In use, you can watch the real-time display to help you manually level, or use the device as
a traditional probe to autolevel
. You can also set up for dynamic leveling as seen in the video. Bed sensors
don’t have to be expensive
, but there’s something attractive about constantly measuring the bed height that seems mostly unique to this probe.
These are some pretty big claims for a fairly inexpensive device. Have you used it? If so, let us know in the comments how it is working out for you. | 54 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531835",
"author": "wibble",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T09:11:52",
"content": "A shame the sensor costs more than my printer, no exaggeration at all. I got all excited for a minute.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531841",
... | 1,760,372,497.416752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/power-up-vintage-electronics-less-unsafely-with-a-dim-bulb-tester/ | Power Up Vintage Electronics Less Unsafely With A Dim-Bulb Tester | Donald Papp | [
"classic hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antique",
"diagnostic",
"dim bulb",
"radio",
"tester",
"vintage"
] | Plugging in something like an antique radio to see if it works is a good way to have a bad time, because some old components don’t age well. For vintage electronics, inspection and repair are steps one and two. When it comes time to cautiously apply power,
it’s best to use what’s called a dim-bulb tester
and most hackers can probably put one together from scrap.
Being able to use one (or both) bulbs adds some flexibility, and the embedded power monitor is an inexpensive and handy addition.
These testers make it easier, and safer, to tell if there are any big problems with a device’s power supply. In its simplest form, a dim-bulb tester puts an incandescent lamp in series between a device — like an old radio — and the AC power from a wall socket. Thanks to this, if the device has a short circuit, the bulb will simply light up instead of causing any damage.
Ideally, one uses a bulb with a wattage rating that is roughly equal to the power consumption of the device being tested. If all is well, the bulb will glow very faintly and the device will work normally. A brightly glowing bulb would indicate excessive current draw. To allow some flexibility, [Doz]’s tester design allows using one or two 60 W incandescent bulbs in series, and even incorporates an inexpensive power monitor.
A dim-bulb tester
isn’t an in-depth diagnostic tool but it is effective, simple, and allows for a safe startup even if there’s a serious problem like a short. It helps protect valuable hardware from going up in smoke. In fact, the fundamental concept of limiting power to protect hardware in case of a fault has also been applied in the world of retrocomputing, where it
helps protect otherwise irreplaceable hardware
if something goes wrong. | 55 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531809",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T06:41:12",
"content": "These are great devices with a long history for all sorts of curbside and dumpster rescues. Only trouble is, it’s getting harder to find ( in California) things like incandescent bulbs and linear power su... | 1,760,372,497.513455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/circadian-lighting-for-the-home-via-home-assistant/ | Circadian Lighting For The Home Via Home Assistant | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"circadian rhythm",
"smart home"
] | Artificial lighting is great, in that it lets us work and live well into the night. However, our bodies are dependent on the natural lighting cycles of the sun as part of their basic operation, and artificial lighting can interfere with this.
[Tyler Cipriani] decided to use Home Assistant with some smart lights to try and make home lighting more suitable for our natural circadian rhythms.
The basic intent was to give the home bright white/blueish light during the day, matching the sun’s output. The light would then be altered to warmer yellow/red tones in the evening. The eye has cells that respond to blue light to regulate our circadian rhythms with the presence of the sun, so reducing blue light at night may help reduce disruption to sleep and other body processes.
Home Assistant has a Circadian lighting component available built specifically for this task. It’s a useful smart home tool for achieving such a job, too, as it readily works with a wide variety of hardware from different vendors. In [Tyler]’s case, light switches are Zigbee devices that talk to Home Assistant via a Zigbee2MQTT hookup and a Combee Zigbee gateway. Lights around the home are a mixture of Philips Hue devices and other brands of smart lights.
[Tyler] states the effects are “subtle but noticable.” He notes that it’s easier to feel sharp and work during the day, but harder to continue the lighting warms and dims at night. He points out that this is a design feature to help keep him on a healthy sleep schedule.
We’ve seen other circadian rhythm lights before. In fact, NASA uses them on the ISS, but you can build your own
for a lot less than they spent.
If you’ve got your own circadian lighting hacks,
don’t hesitate to drop us a line! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531773",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T03:35:52",
"content": "If you want to try this on the cheap, grab a set of inexpensive red laser safety goggles on eBay. (Don’t use these for laser safety – get an actual, rated set for that.)Put the red goggles on about 1/2 hou... | 1,760,372,497.7344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/hackaday-links-november-13-2022/ | Hackaday Links: November 13, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"crowdfunding",
"Eben Upton",
"hackaday links",
"headset",
"jpl",
"Oculus",
"orbiter",
"palmer luckey",
"Psyche",
"raspberry pi",
"restoration",
"retrocomputer",
"supply chain",
"system 34",
"vr"
] | Talk about playing on hard mode! The news this week was rife with stories about
Palmer Luckey’s murder-modified VR headset
, which ostensibly kills the wearer if their character dies in-game. The headset appears to have three shaped charges in the visor pointing right at the wearer’s frontal lobe, and would certainly do a dandy job of executing someone. In a blog post that we suspect was written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, describes that the interface from the helmet to the game is via optical sensors that watch the proceeding on the screen, and fire when a certain frequency of flashing red light is detected. He’s also talking about ways to prevent the removal of the headset once donned, in case someone wants to tickle the dragon’s tail and try to quickly rip off the headset as in-game death approaches. We’re pretty sure this isn’t serious, as Luckey himself suggested that it was more of an office art thing, but you never know what extremes a “three commas” net worth can push someone to.
There’s light at the end of the Raspberry Pi supply chain tunnel
, as CEO Eben Upton announced that he foresees the Pi problems resolving completely by this time next year. Upton explains his position in the video embedded in the linked article, which is basically that the lingering effects of the pandemic should resolve themselves over the next few months, leading to normalization of inventory across all Pi models. That obviously has to be viewed with some skepticism; after all, nobody saw the supply chain issues coming in the first place, and there certainly could be another black swan event waiting for us that might cause a repeat performance. But it’s good to hear his optimism, as well as his vision for the future now that we’re at the ten-year anniversary of the first Pi’s release.
But if you really, really can’t wait for the flow of Pi’s to normalize, there are a host of services out there that will help you find one. Check out
this review of five such services
if you absolutely, positively have to get a Pi right now. Just be ready to open your wallet wide.
If your dream job has always been to build space hardware, then there’s good news buried in
a recent report
on why the NASA Psyche mission has missed its 2022 launch window.
Psyche
is an orbiter designed to study the iron-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, to figure out what role metallic asteroids play in planetary formation, if any. The report on the launch delay blames “an imbalance between the workload and the available workforce at JPL.” This would seem to translate into job opportunities for engineers — qualified ones, at least — as the review board recommended increasing staffing at JPL, particularly in critical positions like the currently vacant chief engineer slot. The report also blames the lack of experienced staff on flight projects, which of course new hires won’t do much about. But if you’ve ever dreamed about being a rocket surgeon, now may be the time.
And finally, while we don’t generally like to feature crowd-funding pitches, here’s one that caught our eye. Jon George, a former field engineer and system engineer for mainframe computers, is
raising funds to help him restore an IBM System/34 machine to working order
. He says that working System/34 machines are pretty rare, and we’re inclined to believe him. He was looking for about $1,800 to acquire the machine and have it shipped across the country, but it looks like blew through that goal in one day, with donations totaling $2,559 at this writing. We’d imagine there will be plenty of unseen expenses before the restoration is done, whereupon the working machine will hopefully head off to a computer museum. Seems like a great project to us, and we’re keen to see the restoration get underway. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531779",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-11-14T03:58:14",
"content": "I’m sure the diesel shortage and corresponding price hike have blown the price of shipping the System/34 out of the water.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,497.553713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/emulate-any-isa-card-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-an-fpga/ | Emulate Any ISA Card With A Raspberry Pi And An FPGA | Robin Kearey | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"emulation",
"fpga",
"isa bus",
"sound card"
] | One of the reasons the IBM PC platform became the dominant standard for desktop PCs back in the mid-1980s was its open hardware design, based around what would later be called the ISA bus. Any manufacturer could design plug-in cards or even entire computers that were hardware and software compatible with the IBM PC. Although ISA has been obsolete for most purposes since the late 1990s, some ISA cards such as high-quality sound cards have become so popular among retrocomputing enthusiasts that they now fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay.
So what can you do if your favorite ISA card is not easily available? One option is to head over to [eigenco]’s GitHub page and
check out his FrankenPiFPGA project
. It contains a design for a simple ISA plug-in card that hooks up to a Cyclone IV FPGA and a Raspberry Pi. The FPGA connects to the ISA bus and implements its bus architecture, while the Pi communicates with the FPGA through its GPIO ports and emulates any card you want in software. [eigenco]’s current repository contains code for several sound cards as well as a hard drive and a serial mouse. The Pi’s multi-core architecture allows it to run several of these tasks at once while still keeping up the reasonably high data rate required by the ISA bus.
In the videos embedded below you can see [eigenco] demonstrating the system on a 386 motherboard that only has a VGA card to hook up a monitor. By emulating a hard drive and sound card on the Pi he is able to run a variety of classic DOS games with full sound effects and music. The sound cards currently supported include AdLib, 8-bit SoundBlaster, Gravis Ultrasound and Roland MT-32, but any card that’s documented well enough could be emulated.
This approach could also come in handy to replace other unobtanium hardware, like
rare CD-ROM interfaces
. Of course, you could take the concept to its logical extreme and simply
implement an entire PC in an FPGA
. | 28 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531701",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T21:45:23",
"content": "The Schematic on Github connects the ISA bus directly to the FPGA board. The FPGA board looks like the TB276 board. That board does not have level shifters. Is he running the Cyclone IV out of spec?And he ... | 1,760,372,497.61708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/diy-usb-charging-the-right-way/ | DIY USB Charging The Right Way | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"charging",
"fast charger",
"Gallium Nitride",
"GaN",
"power",
"silicon",
"usb",
"USB-PD",
"usb4"
] | Since the widespread adoption of USB 1.1 in the 90s, USB has become the
de facto
standard for connecting most peripherals to our everyday computers. The latest revision of the technology has been USB 4, which pushes the data rate capabilities to 40 Gbit/s. This amount of throughput is mindblowing compared to the USB 1.x speeds which were three to four orders of magnitude slower in comparison. But data speeds haven’t been the only thing changing with the USB specifications. The amount of power handling they can do has increased by orders of magnitude as well, as
this DIY USB charger demonstrates by delivering around 200 W to multiple devices at once
.
The build comes to us from [tobychui] who not only needed USB rapid charging for his devices while on-the-go but also wanted to build the rapid charger himself and for the charger to come in a small form factor while still using silicon components instead of more modern
gallium nitride
solutions. The solution he came up with was to use a 24 V DC power supply coupled with two regulator modules meant for solar panel installations to deliver a staggering amount of power to several devices at once. The charger is still relatively small, and cost around $30 US dollars to make.
Part of what makes builds like this possible is the USB Power Delivery (PD) standard, which has enabled all kinds of electronics to switch to USB for their power needs rather than getting their power from dedicated, proprietary, and/or low-quality power bricks or wall warts. In fact, you can even use this technology to do things
like charge lithium batteries
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531661",
"author": "Stephen Walters",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T18:06:03",
"content": "Audio is unintelligible !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531674",
"author": "MartyK",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T19:29:08",
"cont... | 1,760,372,497.786581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/dial-up-internet-over-whatsapp/ | Dial-Up Internet Over WhatsApp | Matthew Carlson | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"internet tunnel",
"websockets",
"WhatsApp"
] | As we returned from Supercon 2022, we noticed many airlines offer free in-flight messaging. While the messages are handy for complaining about the seat size, it isn’t quite as exciting as access to the internet. In the air, we wondered how hard it would be to tunnel an internet connection over messaging. Funny enough, [Aleix Rodríguez Alameda] has a project
that does exactly that by tunneling traffic over Whatsapp.
In [Aleix]’s case, cell carriers are pretty stingy with internet data when traveling in South America but often give unlimited WhatsApp data. So, ahead of time, two accounts are set up. A server is on one account and acts as a proxy to the broader internet and listens to messages to the server account. Then when in a restricted access setting, the client connects with a WebSocket and sends messages. The real trick for turning the WhatsApp messages into an internet connection the client can use is exposing a port from a local nodeJS web server. It connects to the WhatsApp API through a WebSocket and then acts as a proxy. Then, you set up traffic to be redirected through that port with curl or Firefox.
Packets are split to prevent you from sending too many messages, as in their testing, [Aleix]’s accounts were banned quickly. You shouldn’t expect massively fast speeds, as 300kbps was pretty typical during testing, which according to Wikipedia,
is about what dial-up got with V.44 compression
.
Which is around the same speed as
TCP/IP tunneled over NRF23L01 radios. | 42 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531621",
"author": "Janez D.",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T15:12:52",
"content": "While in New Zealand I would occasionally bypass paid WiFi using TCP over DNS service. It was painfully slow but to just check an email while not paying $20 it’s done it job well.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,497.933461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/go-fly-a-kite/ | Go Fly A Kite | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"Autopilot",
"generator",
"kite",
"power",
"Tether",
"turbine",
"wind"
] | Harvesting energy from the wind has been a commercially viable way of generating clean energy for around three decades now. Wind turbines are a reliable, proven technology but they do have some downsides, one of which is that since there’s more wind higher above the ground this usually means tall, expensive towers. There is a way around this problem, though, which is using kites to generate energy instead of a fixed turbine.
While kite generators aren’t a new idea,
[Benjamin] has been working on this kite generator
which has a number of improvements over existing kite generators. Like other kite generators, this one uses a tether to spin a generator which is located on the ground. But while this is similar to other kite systems, this prototype has a much simpler design and sweeps a much larger area while in flight. It also has an autopilot with multiple independent steering systems, which [Benjamin] says will allow it to stay in flight for months at a time provided there is enough wind. If there isn’t, it can land reliably, and launching it is relatively fast and simple as well.
While kites do have some obvious downsides compared to fixed turbines including a single point of failure at the tether and a large amount of cleared area to operate, they have plenty of advantages as well. They’re smaller, simpler, require no complicated yaw system, and can be easily maintained on the ground. In fact, it’s possible to build very simple kite generators out of
nothing more than a hobby kite and some readily-available electrical components
. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531598",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T13:14:44",
"content": "More like three millennia now. Ask the Dutch.(or did you meanelectricalenergy?)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531668",
"author": "cj@seej.... | 1,760,372,497.986573 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/rfid-sticker-on-bike-helmet-grants-garage-access/ | RFID Sticker On Bike Helmet Grants Garage Access | Donald Papp | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"bike helmet",
"door opener",
"garage door",
"rfid",
"wiegand"
] | [Glen] might describe his project of
opening his garage door by way of an RFID sticker on his bike helmet
as simple, but some of the interfacing he needed to do was quite complex. He walks through the project from beginning to end, and there’s plenty to learn from.
When designing an RFID access control system, one has to decide what kind of reader and what kind of tags one wishes to use. They all function more or less the same way, but there are a lot of practical considerations to take into account such as cost, range, ease of use, and security options. After a lot of research, [Glen] decided on inexpensive sticker-style tags and a compatible reader supporting credentials with an ISO14443 UID that could be suitably mounted on a building’s exterior.
The actual opening of the door was the simple part, done by interfacing to a spare remote.
Breakout boards with ready-to-use code libraries exist for
some
RFID readers, but that wasn’t the case for the reader [Glen] had. He ended up rolling his own code to handle communication with the reader, with a Microchip PIC18F45K50 doing all the work of reading tags and performing access control. His code is on
the project’s GitHub repository
, and if you also find yourself needing to interface to a reader that uses the Wiegand protocol, you might want to give it a look.
Controlling the actual garage door was the easy part. All that took was soldering two wires across the switch contacts of a spare garage door opener remote, and using a relay to close the contacts. Simple and effective. You can see it in action in the short video, embedded below the break.
Overhead door access control might be a simple concept, but it comes in all shapes and sizes when enterprising hackers start looking for solutions. We’ve seen garage doors given
the DIY IoT treatment
, and even seen
access controlled by a car’s headlamp flashes
, which actually turned out to be more secure than it sounds. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531630",
"author": "voxnulla",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T15:52:23",
"content": "The first bike helmet (laminated piece of Styrofoam) that actually does something significantly useful! I’d opt for a key-fob, but that is just me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,498.620612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/protect-your-property-with-this-fire-breathing-billionaire/ | Protect Your Property With This Fire-Breathing Billionaire | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"butane",
"Elon Musk",
"facial recognition",
"flamethrower",
"opencv"
] | Let’s face it: if you can’t trust
a fire-breathing billionaire industrialist
to protect your stuff, who can you trust? (Video, embedded below.)
This one is straight out of the Really Bad Ideas™ files, and comes to us from [Marc Radinovic]. His story on this one is that he wants to protect the stuff in his new house, and felt that a face-recognition system with a flame thrower would be the best way to address that. And to somehow make it even better, said system would be built into a ridiculous portrait of everyone’s favorite plutocrat. The guts of the system are pretty much what you’d expect — a camera and a Raspberry Pi running OpenCV and a face recognition library, a butane reservoir and a solenoid valve, an arc lighter as an ignition source, and an Arduino and some completely not sketchy at all wiring to control all pieces. And LCD displays for [Elon]’s eyes, of course.
The system is trained to recognize [Marc]’s face and greets him cheerfully when he’s in view. [Non-Marc] people, however, are treated a bit less accommodatingly, up to and including a face-melting fireball. Effigies of other billionaires got the treatment; strangely, [Marc]’s face-recognition algorithm didn’t even recognize another [Mark] as a human face, which when you think about it is pretty darn funny.
So, certainly not a practical security system, and definitely not something you should build, but it’s pretty good fun anyway. It reminds us a bit of
the fire-breathing duck
we saw years ago.
Thanks to [JK] for the tip. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531548",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T07:34:59",
"content": "The project itself is very fun and well worthy of a hack.Though why do so many revolve around public figures? After year long obsessions with orange guy, people will obsess now about spaceship guy.",
... | 1,760,372,498.035392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/a-private-view-of-a-public-transport-sign/ | A Private View Of A Public Transport Sign | Abe Connelly | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"BDF",
"ESP32",
"HUB75",
"public transport",
"public transportation",
"RGB LED matrix"
] | [Stefan Schüller] was a fan of the LED signs that display arrival information for the trams and buses in their city of Zürich. [Stefan] was having trouble finding a source to purchase the signs so, instead, decided to
build one himself
.
[Stefan] decided to recreate the 56×208 single color 2mm dot pitch display with an 128 x 64 P2 RGB LED screen respecting the same 2 mm pitch. The display is driven by an ESP32 DMA RGB LED matrix shield utilizing a HUB75 RGB LED matrix library, all being powered from a 5 V 4 A power supply.
In addition to driving the LED matrix display, the ESP32 polls Zürich’s public transportation API and then parses the XML for the relevant information. Since [Stefan] wanted to match the fonts as closely as possible,
he created a new font from scratch, including the bus and accessibility icons. The new font was encoded into a glyph bitmap distribution format (BDF) that was then converted to work with Adafruit’s GFX library, with [Stefan] creating a custom conversion tool, called
bdf2adafruit
, to do the last leg of the conversion.
Since the LED matrix had full color capability, [Stefan] decided to add a little extra flourish and color code the transportation lines with the official tram colors. All source code is available on his
GitHub repository for the project
, for those looking for more detail.
We’ve featured
DIY builds of public transportation feeds
before. With the ubiquity of low cost RGB LED displays and public APIs, hopefully we’ll see many more! | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531547",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T07:31:09",
"content": "The Bürgermeister von Zürich might be interested in upgrading their signs. Locally made and supported; win-win all around. What do you think [Stefan Schüller]?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,372,498.14849 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/bringing-up-an-old-motherboard-is-a-delicate-process/ | Bringing Up An Old Motherboard Is A Delicate Process | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8088",
"bios",
"ibm",
"Model 5160",
"PC-XT",
"retrocomputing",
"rom"
] | If you were around for the early days of the personal computer revolution, you’ll no doubt recall the excitement every time IBM announced a new version of its beige boxes. For a lot of us, the excitement was purely vicarious, for despite the “personal” moniker, mere mortals could rarely afford a branded IBM machine. But it was still cool to keep track of the latest releases, and dream of the days when cheap clones would make it possible to play.
[Anders Nielsen]’s recent find of
an original IBM Model 5160 motherboard
sort of echoes that long-ago excitement, but in a different way. This board, from a PC XT built in 1984, was in unknown condition upon arrival, so [Anders] set about a careful process to try to bring the board back to life. A quick visual inspection leaves one with a sense of both how much things have changed, and how much they’ve stayed the same. Aside from the big 40-pin DIP 8088 CPU and the BIOS ROMs, the board is almost completely populated with discrete logic chips, but at the same time, the basic footprint of a motherboard has changed very little.
The bring-up process in the video below includes checks of all the power rails for shorts, which ended up being a good call — drat those tantalums. After fixing that issue, [Anders] had a bit of trouble getting the board to POST, and eventually resorted to dumping the BIOS ROMs and inspecting the contents. One of the chips had picked up a case of the scramblies at some point, which was easy enough to fix thanks to images of the 5160 ROMs available online. We thought the trick of using a 64k ROM and just writing the BIOS image twice was pretty clever.
In the end, the board came up, although without video or keyboard — that’s for another day. Can’t find your own PC XT motherboard to play with?
Then maybe you can just build one
. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531551",
"author": "Anders Nielsen",
"timestamp": "2022-11-13T07:41:11",
"content": "Thanks for the mention!I already got a VGA card in the mail and I have an idea for an active PS/2 -> XT keyboard adapter, so it shouldn’t be too long with the next video.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,498.809043 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/diy-streamdeck-helps-you-professionalize-your-twitch-show/ | DIY Streamdeck Helps You Professionalize Your Twitch Show | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"stream deck",
"streamdeck",
"twitch"
] | The one thing that separates the pros on Twitch from the dilettantes is the production values. It’s all about the smooth transitions, and you’ll never catch the big names fiddling with dodgy software mid-stream. The key to achieving this is by having a streamdeck to help control your setup,
like this straightforward design from [Electronoobs].
(Video, embedded below.)
The build relies on an Arduino Micro, which is a microcontroller board perfectly equipped to acting as a USB macro keyboard. It’s paired with a Nextion LCD touchscreen that displays buttons for various stream control features, like displaying a “Be Right Back” screen or cuing up video clips. The build also features bigger regular buttons for important quick-access features like muting a mic. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D printed housing, with some addressable RGB LEDs running off another Arduino to add some pizazz. The neat trick is that the build sends keycodes for F13-F24, which allows for the streamdeck’s hotkeys to avoid conflicting with any other software using conventional keyboard hotkeys.
It’s a useful tool that would be of use to anyone streaming on Twitch or other platforms. Alternatively,
you could repurpose an old phone to do a similar job
. Video after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531454",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T22:41:10",
"content": "A “Pi monitor” could be used as well.https://youtu.be/0PW3goYAbQI",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531575",
"author": "Ø",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,498.379923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/bicycle-inner-tube-becomes-rugged-pencil-case/ | Bicycle Inner Tube Becomes Rugged Pencil Case | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle inner tubes",
"inner tubes",
"pencil case",
"rubber",
"sewing"
] | If you’re a cyclist that lives in an area with poorly-maintained infrastructure, you’ll likely have plenty of punctured inner tubes begging for reuse. Consider crafting them into a rugged, hard-wearing pencil case
with this design from [Yorkshire Lass].
[Yorkshire Lass] does a great job of not only explaining the basic design of the pencil case, but also the unique techniques required to work with inner tubes in this manner. For best results, the tube must first be straightened by stretching it for some time along a flat board. Strips of the rubber must then be cut to suit, and then assembled into the pattern to make the pencil case. Sewing up the case also requires some special techniques outside those used in regular sewing. That’s largely down to the fact that rubber can’t be pinned in place without leaving a permanent hole in the material. Thankfully, the write-up explains all the traps for those new to sewing inner tubes, which we’d have to suspect is most of us.
Assembled properly, you’ll end up with a pencil case made of far tougher material than most. Plus, it makes a great fashion accessory to flaunt to other bicycle or recycling evangelists at your school, college, or workplace. Even better, there’s scope to run a group craft session with your local bike group given everyone surely has a few dud mountain bike tubes laying around.
We’ve seen some other neat hacks intended to store pens and pencils
around the workshop.
Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own great reuse ideas for old bicycle inner tubes,
do drop us a line! | 23 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531406",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T18:07:08",
"content": "Some inner tubes hate UV. They start to crack and dry up. Some but not all. One can tell with touch. Those feelings harder and most slippery a bit like PVC will resist, while those having a typical soft, rub... | 1,760,372,498.342824 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/welcome-back-supercon/ | Welcome Back, Supercon! | Elliot Williams | [
"cons"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Supercon",
"newsletter"
] | The last two Novembers, Hackaday’s annual gathering was held in remote mode: Remoticon instead of Supercon. While still recovering from jetlag, I’m reflecting on the pros and cons of live versus virtual events. And wondering how we can combine the virtues of both for next year. Come brainstorm with me!
The blatantly obvious pros of having a live Supercon is the ease of talking to everyone who is there, trading code tips, life experience, and must-see projects. In person, you can physically trade badge add-ons in real time, without waiting for customs to clear the packages. Simply hanging out has a real charm to it, and doing so over shared tacos is even better. Spontaneous collaborations were easy and natural. And finally, while you can watch someone electrocute a twinkie with a neon sign transformer on YouTube, you can’t smell the ozone.
Against this, all of the expensive travel, the aforementioned jetlag for some, and the real-world limitations that only so many people can fit in a given physical space at once.
The best part of Remoticon was hearing from people who wouldn’t have been able to make it to an in-person con, whether it’s because it’s of geography or money. Since everything is online, there’s no missing out, and anyone can freely dip in to one talk or another. The online chat channels were better attended during Remoticon as well – perhaps because they were the only game in town – but that was a more global community.
There’s probably nothing that can be done about the tacos, but what could we do about incorporating the benefits of Remoticon? We
did
stream one stage live, and we had two chat channels open for commentary the whole time. If you took part remotely in Supercon, let us know how it went, and if you have any suggestions to improve our remote experience for next time. Because in the end, we want Hackaday to be as inclusive and as global as the hacker community itself.
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
!
Banner Photo by Poyu Chen. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531418",
"author": "Drix",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T19:10:05",
"content": "It was amazing to be back in person!The small room (DesignLab) had some of my favorite presentations, and many of us had to miss some because too much awesomeness was happening everywhere…=> Does anyone know... | 1,760,372,498.427074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/a-muppet-on-a-tricycle/ | A Muppet On A Tricycle | Abe Connelly | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"motorized",
"puppet",
"tricycle"
] | [Donald Bell] wanted to recreate the magic of seeing Kermit on a tricycle from a 2018 NY Maker Faire he attended, so he created his own take of a
Muppet on a Radio Flyer kids tricycle bike
.
He started by attaching a ready made puppet to a classic Radio Flyer dual deck toddler tricycle using zip ties and split pipe insulation to give the limbs stiffness. [Donald] then put all the electronics, including the 12 V 50 RPM DC motor, 24 V 22.4 Ah Li-Ion battery pack, TB67H420FTG motor driver, and the Arduino Uno microcontroller under the back axle.
The motor transfers power to one of the back wheels via pulleys and timing belts with an additional ASMC-04B 24 V servo used to steer the tricycle via a steel pushrod. The RC communication is done with a FlySky FS-GT2 2.4 GHz 2-channel system. [Donald] gives a detailed list of parts that he uses in a
Google doc
for anyone wanting to know more.
[Donald] goes into great length about the limitations of the build, including the low clearance of the electronics underneath, the finicky nature of the timing belts and the “uncanny valley” that the size of the puppet induces to a casual observer. Regardless, the build is exceptional and paves the way for a variety of improvements for anyone wanting to extend the idea either further into the creepy or cute domain.
Retrofitting vehicles with motorized control are a crowd favorite, as seen with some projects like a
stroller controller
from Maker Faires of the past. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531361",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T12:30:12",
"content": "Wonderful, albeit creepy :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531392",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T16:08:41",
"content": "G... | 1,760,372,498.564407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/12/robot-gets-a-life-sized-pokemon-costume-for-halloween/ | Robot Gets A Life-Sized Pokemon Costume For Halloween | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"jolteon",
"pokemon",
"quadruped",
"quadruped robot",
"robot"
] | Quadruped robots are everywhere now that companies like Boston Dynamics are shipping smaller models in big numbers. [Dave’s Armoury] had one such robot, and wanted to give it a Pokemon Halloween costume.
Thus, the robot dog got a Jolteon costume that truly looks fantastic.
(Video, embedded below.)
You would think that covering a quadruped robot in foam would ruin it, but somehow it didn’t stop it moving too badly at all.
The robot in question is a Unitree Go1, which [Dave] had on loan from InDro robotics. Thus, the costume couldn’t damage or majorly alter the robot in any way. Jolteon was chosen from the original 150 Pokemon as it had the right proportions to suit the robot, and its electric theme fitted [Dave’s] YouTube channel.
A 3D model of Jolteon was sourced online and modified to create a printable head for the robot application. Two 3D printers and 200 hours of printing time later, and [Dave] had all the parts he needed. Plenty of CA glue was used to join all the parts together with some finishing required to make sure seams and edges didn’t spoil the finish too much. Wood filler and spray paint were used to get the costume looking just like the real Pokemon.
[Dave] committed to the bit, and for that, he has our respect.
For the legs, body, and neck of the robot, foam was used instead of 3D printed components. it was first covered in saran wrap, with spray foam put over the top to create a surface to mount parts of the costume. The foam panels were carved up and removed from the robot, fitted with the 3D-printed costume panels, then put back on the robot.
The end result is beautifully fun. It genuinely reads as Jolteon, and is charming to see running around. It’s a little bit too spidery in its gait to be an authentic recreation, but realistically, most people would be smiling too hard to notice.
There are other ways to take Pokemon out on a walk, too
. Video after the break. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531363",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T13:01:22",
"content": "Being of similar age i never really understood why my classmates were so enticed by an electric mouse & pals, or why its still such a big thing ~25 years later, but hey, that’s still a pretty fun project ... | 1,760,372,500.683563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/3d-printer-repurposed-for-light-duty-lab-automation-tasks/ | 3D Printer Repurposed For Light-Duty Lab Automation Tasks | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"cartesian",
"Ender",
"gantry",
"histology",
"laboratory"
] | Laboratory automation equipment is expensive stuff, to such a degree that small labs are often priced out of the market. That’s a shame, because there are a lot of tedious manual tasks that even modest labs would benefit from automating. Oh well — that’s what grad students are for.
But it actually isn’t that hard to bring a little automation to the lab, if you follow the lead of [Marco], [Chinna], and [Vittorio] and
turn a 3D printer into a simple lab robot
. That’s what HistoEnder is — a bog-standard Creality Ender 3 with a couple of special modifications that turn it into a tool for automating histology slide preparation. Histology is the study of the anatomy of tissues and uses various fixing and staining techniques to make microscopic features visible. In practice, this means moving baskets of glass slides back and forth between jars of different solutions, a job that’s perfect for a simple Cartesian gantry lab robot with a small work envelope and light loads.
None of the printer modifications are permanent; the 3D printed accessories — a hook for the slide basket and a carrier for standard histology staining jars — can quickly come off the printer to return it to its regular duty. All it takes to run HistoEnder is a bit of custom G-code and some careful alignment of the jar carrier on the print bed. We suppose the bed heater could even be used to warm up the fixing and staining solutions. There’s a brief video of HistoEnder in action embedded in the tweet below.
This isn’t the first time this team has repurposed technology for the lab — remember
the fitness band that was turned into an optical densitometer
?
It’s finally out! Our (
@V_Saggiomo
@ChinnaDevarapu
@armando_carlone
+NRucci) simple, dirt-cheap solution to create a histology slide autostainer, that lets you do more, while it takes care of the boring part:
#HistoEnder
! It is also great at dip-coating!1/5
https://t.co/3wbDF69qTh
pic.twitter.com/CTqXyRueAo
— Marco Ponzetti (@Ponz91)
January 20, 2022 | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531298",
"author": "kex",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T07:44:31",
"content": "Finally, a proper hack! Impressive that it even outperforms the result of the manual process",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531382",
"author": "Joh... | 1,760,372,500.462011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/bike-riding-skeleton-stalks-the-streets-on-halloween/ | Bike-Riding Skeleton Stalks The Streets On Halloween | Lewin Day | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"skeleton"
] | Stationary pumpkins and motionless skeletons aren’t enough to scare people these days. If you want to really create a fright on Halloween, you need something more convincing.
This bike-riding skeleton from [rc jedi] might just do the trick.
A few neat tricks make this impressive build surprisingly simple in nature. Propulsion is via a scrapped electric scooter drivetrain hidden in the sidecar. This not only propels the rig, but the third wheel means there’s no need to do any fancy balancing work to keep the bike upright. Steering is via a big chunky servo mounted to the bike frame which controls the handlebars. Regular RC gear handles remote control of the steering and drive.
The skeleton itself was an off-the-shelf buy, that was modified to have more flexibility in its joints. The hands were attached to the handlebars, and the feet attached to the pedals, so it appears to pedal the bicycle as it moves down the road. A dog skeleton rides along in the sidecar as a spooky companion.
A skeleton prowling the streets by BMX is a wonderfully spooky sight. We’ve seen some other great skeleton builds before, too, from the
canine
to the
musical variety
. Video after the break. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531265",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T05:00:48",
"content": "It’s beautiful",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531287",
"author": "plouc",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T07:04:13",
"content": "This... | 1,760,372,500.381234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/first-folding-iphone-doesnt-come-from-apple/ | First Folding IPhone Doesn’t Come From Apple | Navarre Bartz | [
"ARM",
"Cellphone Hacks",
"hardware",
"iphone hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"apple iphone",
"engineering",
"folding phone",
"folding smartphone",
"iphone",
"mobile device"
] | Folding phones are all the rage these days, with many of the major smartphone manufacturer’s having something in this form factor. Apple has been conspicuously absent in this market segment, so [KJMX] decided to take matters into their own hands with
the “iPhone V.”
(YouTube – Chinese w/subtitles via
MacRumors
).
Instead of trying to interface an existing folding phone’s screen with the iPhone, these makers delaminated an actual iPhone X screen to use in the mod. It took 37 attempts before they had a screen with layers that properly separated to be both flexible and functional. Several different folding phones were disassembled, and [KJMX] found a Motorola Razr folding mechanism would work best with the iPhone X screen. Unfortunately, since the iPhone screen isn’t designed to fold, it still will fail after a relatively small number of folds.
Other sacrifices were made, like the removal of the Taptic Engine and a smaller battery to fit everything into the desired form factor. The “iPhone V” boasts the worst battery life of any iPhone to date. After nearly a year of work though, [KJMX] can truly claim to have made what Apple hasn’t.
Curious about other hacks to let an iPhone do more than Apple intended? Check out how to
add USB-C
to an iPhone,
try to charge it faster
, or give one a
big memory upgrade
. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531211",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-11-12T00:29:35",
"content": "Incredible engineering, but I can’t see the point. Even the “real” folding phones will fail. Such is the nature of matter.I need a thin slab that expands to accommodate new content, like The Expanse.",
... | 1,760,372,500.743326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/scratch-built-wind-turbine-makes-power-and-turns-heads/ | Scratch Built Wind Turbine Makes Power And Turns Heads | Ryan Flowers | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"diy power",
"off grid",
"off grid hacks",
"renewable energy",
"scratch built",
"wind power",
"Wind turbine"
] | If you’ve ever aspired to live off the grid, then it’s likely that one of the first things you considered was how to power all of your electrical necessities, and also where to uh… well we’ll stick to the electrical necessities. Depending on your location, you might focus on hydroelectric power, solar power, or even a wind turbine. Or, if you’re [Kris Harbor],
all three
.
In the video below the break
, we get to watch [Kris] as he masterfully rebuilds his wind turbine from scratch and reconfigures his charging solution to match.
The Rotors Are Built With a 3d Printed Rotor Jig
A true hacker at heart, [Kris] has used a everything from 3d printing to broken car parts in order to build his new wind turbine. The three phase generator is constructed from scratch. A hand wound stator is held firmly between two magnetic rotors, where 3d printed jigs hold the magnets in place.
A CNC cut backing plate holds everything together while also supporting the automatically furling vane that keeps the entire turbine from self destructing in inclement weather. A damaged wheel hub from [Kris]’ Land Rover provides the basis for a bearing so that the entire turbine can turn to face the wind, and various machined parts round out the build. The only things we
didn’t
see in the build were hot glue and zip ties, but we remain hopeful.
Ironically, one of the problems [Kris] had to solve was that of having
too much power
. If the batteries are full and the solar and hydroelectric are doing their jobs, where will all of the wind generated power go? The answer is toward the end of the video. If MPPT controllers, relays, PWM signals and fail safes are your thing, then we suggest watching to the end for an excellent walk through of the entire system.
We’ve featured [Kris]’s work before, whether it be his
8.4KW scratch built solar frame
or his
500W hydroelectric build.
If you have smaller aspirations for wind turbine power, then
2022’s Hackaday Prize winner
might give you good reason to fire up your 3d printer! | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531184",
"author": "Paul F",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T22:34:07",
"content": "This is a Hugh Piggott design. It has indeed been battle (storm) tested, and works pretty well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531185",
"author"... | 1,760,372,500.813182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/concrete-boat-cements-its-way-to-high-speeds/ | Concrete Boat Cements Its Way To High Speeds | Ryan Flowers | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airboat",
"cement",
"concrete",
"concrete boat",
"peter sripol",
"rc boat"
] | Steel is scarce. Wood is not an option. And you need a boat
now.
These wartime circumstances drove innovation in all kinds of crazy directions, and one somewhat less crazy direction — concrete boats. As [Peter Sripol] demonstrates in the
video below the break
, making an RC concrete boat isn’t hard. Making a
fast
one on the other hand
is
. But that didn’t stop him from trying, and we think the effort deserves a look.
Starting with a basic displacement style hull, [Peter] and his cohorts experimented with a simple RC boat that worked, but could only move at slow speeds. They turned things up a notch or two and instead modeled their concrete boat after an RC speedboat hull that they had on hand.
The construction methods left a lot to be desired though, and they even tried various wire meshes as rebar, but they proved too heavy. Eventually though, they got a working hull, and had some fun with it. Rather than try to make the hull watertight with a rudder and propeller, they opted for a ducted fan and an airboat style rudder to make what they call the “world’s fastest concrete boat”.
Whether it’s the fastest or not is unconfirmed, but it
is
fast and actually gets on step fairly nicely. We applaud the exploration of alternative materials and the experimentation with different build methods. If building things with concrete floats
your
boat, then be sure to check out this
concrete pinhole camera
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531148",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T19:39:19",
"content": "Real engineers race concrete canoes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531616",
"author": "Brandon Whitworth",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,372,500.553389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/hackaday-podcast-192-supercon-was-awesome-how-to-grind-ics-and-make-your-own-telescope/ | Hackaday Podcast 192: Supercon Was Awesome, How To Grind ICs And Make Your Own Telescope | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi are still flying high on their post-Supercon buzz (and are a bit jet lagged) this week. We’ll start with some of the highlights from our long-awaited Pasadena meetup, and talk a bit about the winner of this year’s Hackaday Prize. Talk will then shift over to shaved down NES chips, radioactive
Dungeons and Dragons
gameplay, an impressive 3D printed telescope being developed by the community, and the end of the Slingbox. Stick around for a double dose of Dan Maloney, as we go over his twin treatises on dosimetry and the search for extraterrestrial life.
Download it
, burn it on a floppy, and you’ll have it forever!
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 192 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Prize 2022: Meet The Winners Of This Year’s Competition
What’s that Sound?
Think you know this week’s sound?
Fill out the form
for a chance to win a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
How Those NES DIP Chips Were Reduced To QFNs
Pocket Sized Wii Sets the Bar for Portable Builds
Roll The Radioactive Dice For Truly Random D&D Play
Smelting Solar Style
Solar Metal Smelter — Jelle Seegers
3D Printed Newtonian Telescope Has Stunning Looks, Hadley Breaks The Bank
Rope Core Drum Machine
Slingbox Getting Bricked – You Have Less Than 24 Hours
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Nanoassembly With Water
The Great Resistor Embiggens the Smallest Value
The Seven-Segment Display That’s Also An Input Device
3D Printer Tuning: An Engineering Approach
Tom’s Picks:
Thin Client And Smartphone Step In For 3D Printer’s Raspberry Pi And Touchscreen
Overengineered Fume Extractor, Version 2
IR Remote Tester Helps You Crack The Code
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Dosimetry: Measuring Radiation
Use A Cheap PIN Diode As A Geiger Counter
A Trio Of Photodiodes Make A Radiation Detector
Radiation Detector Eschews Tubes, Uses Photodiode
The Wow! Signal Revisited: Citizen Science Informs SETI Effort | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6533324",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2022-11-18T15:39:54",
"content": "Hi Tom & Elliott,What about those extra photos that Jelle Seegers emailed regarding the solar smelter? It looks like you haven’t had a chance to add them to the story yet. I’m wondering if you might be able t... | 1,760,372,500.42464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/this-crosswalk-sign-costume-is-a-halloween-hit/ | This Crosswalk Sign Costume Is A Halloween Hit | Lewin Day | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"costume",
"crosswalk",
"fairy lights",
"halloween"
] | Halloween costumes can be anything from an expensive authentic recreation of a character’s garb, to a cheap knockoff bought from one of those overcrowded pop-up stores. Alternatively, you can get creative and conceptual about things,
such as by building yourself a crosswalk sign costume.
The creation of [jared531], the build uses a large piece of cardboard painted black as the base. This sits behind the wearer, and is given a yellow outline to emulate the crosswalk signals common in the US. Red fairy lights are then laid out on half of the cardboard in a pattern emulating the “STOP” hand signal.
The wearer should then dress in all-black garb, and attach the flat cardboard panel to themselves with elastic straps. A black mesh face covering helps to complete the look by blending in the wearer’s face. They are then outfitted with white fairy lights around their body, emulating the “WALK” signal.
It’s a simple concept, but quite accurately replicates a typical crosswalk sign. It’s something we certainly haven’t seen before, which is impressive in this Internet era when anything new is old again mere minutes later.
If your tastes are more avant-garde, though,
consider going the TV head route next year
. If you’ve built your own high-tech, high-concept costume,
hit us up on the tips line! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531099",
"author": "fdufnews",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T16:43:27",
"content": "If you plan using this, check the weather forecast, as the wind can turn you into a kite",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6531106",
"author": "ec... | 1,760,372,500.853973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/this-week-in-security-microsoft-patches-typosquatting-continues-and-code-signing-for-all/ | This Week In Security: Microsoft Patches, Typosquatting Continues, And Code Signing For All | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Outlook",
"Sigstore",
"This Week in Security"
] | The pair of Outlook vulnerabilities we’ve been tracking have
finally been patched, along with another handful of fixes this Patch Tuesday
, a total of six being 0-day exploits. The third vulnerability was also a 0-day, discovered by the Google Threat Analysis Group. This one resulted in arbitrary code execution when a Windows client connected to a malicious server.
A pair of escalation of privilege flaws were fixed, one being yet another print spooler issue, and the other part of a key handling service. The final zero-day fixed was a mark-of-the-web bypass, that being the tag that gets added to file metadata to indicate it’s a download from the internet. If you deliver malware inside an ISO or marked read-only in a zip file, it doesn’t show the warning when executing.
Will Typosquat For Bitcoin
A trend that doesn’t show signs of slowing down is Typosquatting, the simple malware distribution strategy of uploading tainted packages using misspelled variations of legitimate package names. The latest such scheme,
discovered by researchers at Phylum
, delivered a crypto-stealer in Python packages. These packages were hosted on PyPi, under names like
baeutifulsoup4
and
cryptograpyh
. The packages install a JavaScript file that runs in the background of the browser, and monitors for a cryptocurrency address on the clipboard. When detected, the intended address is swapped for an attacker-controlled address.
Old Flaws
Speaking of clipboards,
Google’s Project Zero let us in on a story
from 2020, where Samsung devices were getting exploited by an exploit chain that starts on the clipboard. Samsung built a custom clipboard service that supported image files on the clipboard. An oversight allowed any app on the device to request a handle to any file. This was used to drop a stage 2 binary. A second app, Samsung’s Text to Speech system, is hijacked by overwriting a settings file, causing the malicious binary to be launched instead of a valid speech engine. This step escalates privilege because the speech engine gets launched as a
system_app
SELinux context.
The second vulnerability was an information leak, where the kernel log is copied to a file readable by the
system_app
context. Triggering a warning in the GPU driver led to address information getting logged to this file. Leak that a few times, and you have cracked Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization, not to mention a pointer value used in the third vulnerability.
This last one is a use-after-free in the DECON driver, Display and Enhancement Controller, part of the graphics stack. DECON opens a file descriptor and shares it with userspace. Userspace can free the descriptor, and the driver continues to treat it as valid. In between freeing and access, many malicious copies of the file descriptor are sprayed into memory, with the hope that one such copy will occupy the freed address. This bogus descriptor allows the malware to make the jump into kernel space, and elevate its userspace component to run as the
vold
context, AKA Volume Daemon. Malware that makes it to this level is king of the Android castle.
This exploit chain was found in the wild, and fixed in March of 2021, but it’s still a nifty look into how exploitation is done. In this case, it’s believed to be from a commercial vendor — NSO Group or a similar outfit.
Code Signing
Let’s Encrypt is great. You control a domain, you can generate a free SSL certificate for encrypting and verification of that domain for HTTPS traffic. You may have asked yourself at some point, could you use Let’s Encrypt to sign binaries? That would be useful, but sadly not an option. So very welcome this week is the news that Sigstore is now generally available, and
Trail Of Bits has the story
.
The key here is that you can get your code signed by a short-lived certificate, attested to an OpenID identity. Examples of useful OpenID services are Github, Google, and Microsoft accounts. So you can get a signature, tied to your public identity, and not have to worry about certificate management at all. Keep an eye on Sigstore, as it looks to have a bright future, as the Let’s Encrypt of code signing.
Pixel Lock Bypass
There was a simple-yet-critical bug in Android’s lock screen,
discovered by [David Schütz]
in June, and weirdly sat on by Google for months before finally getting fixed in the November security update. The discovery happened by accident, due to a forgotten SIM PIN. Did you know your SIM card has a PIN that you can use to lock the card? And if you do forget it, the documentation with the SIM contains a PUK, a Personal Unblocking Key.
Boot your phone with PIN-protected SIM, fail three times to unlock the card, and it goes into locked mode, requiring the PUK to unlock it. That process is handled by an Android security screen, and successfully unlocking the SIM via a PUK triggered a
.dismiss()
function call. The problem is that multiple security screens can be active at once, including your lock screen, and the
.dismiss()
call gets processed by the top of the stack. The SIM card gets unlocked, which changes the stack of screens, and the unlock screen often lands at the top of that stack, popping the phone open.
Now do note, that this exploit does not decrypt a phone. It does not work from a cold boot. But a booted phone that has been authenticated once, and merely locked could be unlocked in this way. It’s likely that the Google engineer that triaged the bug couldn’t quite replicate the problem, so it didn’t get handled as quickly as it should have. After demonstrating the issue in person, the wheels of change began to move, and the fix finally shipped out, and [David] earned a very nice $70,000 bounty. This is an AOSP problem as well, so downstream projects like LineageOS are pulling the patch and working on shipping the fix as well.
Bits and Bytes
Twenty-five different Lenovo laptops unintentionally shipped with development drivers that allowed manipulation of NVRAM variables from within the OS. Or put more simply,
you could turn off secure boot from within Windows
. Updates for the affected models fixed the firmware to disable the manipulation of such settings after boot.
A collection of malicious apps on the Google Play store has
managed a million downloads
. These apps delay any malicious activity for a few days after install, but eventually start loading phishing sites in new Chrome tabs. The really worrying part is that these apps made it onto the Play Store, and didn’t get flagged in any of Google’s app scanning. It makes one wonder what else might be lurking.
And some positive news, Open Bug Bounty has passed the milestone of
fixing a million vulnerabilities
. This alternative bug bounty system is designed for smaller sites and organizations to attract security talent to find problems with their infrastructure. And it seems to be working, congrats on the milestone! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531167",
"author": "Erik T",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T21:11:21",
"content": "I guess that explains why my Galaxy S9+ has been having an unusual number of updates pushed to the Samsung TTS engine recently. It’d be awesome if they ever admitted what was changed in the changelog.",
... | 1,760,372,500.502996 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/surface-mount-light-breathes-life-into-your-project/ | Surface-Mount Light Breathes Life Into Your Project | Dave Walker | [
"hardware",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"breathing light",
"led",
"lm358",
"op-amp",
"surface mount"
] | If you’ve ever seen those gadgets with the “breathing light” LEDs on them and wondered how to do it, then [DIY GUY Chris] can show you how to
design your own surface-mount version
, using only analogue electronics.
The LED current tracks up and down in an approximately triangular-wave pattern
The circuit itself is built around a slow triangular-wave oscillator, that ramps the current up and down in the LEDs to make it look as if the lights are breathing in and out. The overall effect is rather pleasing, and the oscillation speed can be adjusted using the on-board potentiometer.
This project is actually an update to a previous version that used through-hole components (also shown in the video below), and goes to show that revisiting completed projects can give them a new lease of life. It also shows how easy it has become to design and order custom circuit boards these days. It’s not so long ago that a project like this would have been either made on stripboard or etched from copper-plated FR4 in a bubbling tank of acid!
If you have revisited an old project that you’re proud of and would like to show others, why not drop us a message on our
tips line
?
We have covered some other options for breathing LEDs in the past, such as this
digital logic version
, and
this Arduino library
that has a host of other effects to choose from, too. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6531019",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T12:39:15",
"content": "Pure analog is so pleasing for this effect instead of the ramping pwm as utilized by every manufacturer",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531200",
... | 1,760,372,500.907679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/11/oh-snap-3d-printing-snapping-parts-without-breakage/ | Oh Snap! 3D Printing Snapping Parts Without Breakage | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"snap fit"
] | One of the great things about plastic is that it can be relatively flexible. We see things all the time that snap together, but when 3D printing, you don’t often run into snap fit designs. [Engineers Grow] has a video to help you
design snap fittings that don’t break
.
In the first video that you can see below, he covers three parameters that can help. The first is the length of the snap element. Secondly, the undercut size can be reduced. You can also try making the snap; as thin as possible, although in the example he went too thin and wound up breaking the snap anyway.
The final suggestion, covered in detail in the second video below, is to change the material you use. The key parameter is known as elongation at break. For PLA the typical value for this is 8%. ABS is 10%, PETG is 24% and Nylon is 100%. Simplistically, you could assume that a PETG piece could deform up to 25% before breaking. That may be true, but it will permanently deform long before that. The video suggests using 10 or 15% of the value to assure the part doesn’t lose its shape.
In the third video, you’ll learn, too, that print orientation counts. Making the hooks grow off the build plate leads to a weak hook as you might expect.
We’ve looked at the mechanics
behind these before
. You can find a lot of
detailed technical data about joints
, too. | 22 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530971",
"author": "Arjan",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T09:24:11",
"content": "Even though PLA might not break when printed in the right orientation, the hygroscopic nature will make it brittle and it will tend to deform over time more than PET(G) or ABS, when exposed to the bending s... | 1,760,372,501.004183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/computer-space-flies-again/ | Computer SpaceFlies Again | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Classic Arcade Repairs",
"Computer Space",
"Vintage Gaming"
] | [Sean] from
Classic Arcade Repairs
fixes classic arcade machines, and he got a request to repair a very special machine. It’s
Computer Space
, the first commercial arcade cabinet ever made, and loosely based on
Spacewar!
This grand-daddy of coin-op was a literal barn find, and was in pretty bad shape after sitting for years. All the parts appeared to be original, making them 50 years old. As you can imagine, that combination didn’t bode well for the health of the components. There’s a couple hours of footage here, but it’s invaluable troubleshooting advice, and very cool to see such an old machine being worked on.
Part one
is the intro, and [Sean] started with an HP logic analyzer, just probing the many TTL chips on the board looking for floating or otherwise suspicious outputs. Figure out the obviously faulty chips and replace each with a socket and new chip. Just about every diode in the machine needed replacing.
Part two
of the repair starts with a broken trace repair, and the discovery that all the ceramic capacitors on the boards were leaky. The interesting thing is that a multimeter tested those caps as having the correct capacitance, but a dedicated leak tester discovered the problem.
Part 3
shows the process of running the remaining chips through a logic tester, which found more problematic ICs. In some cases, a chip would only sometimes test as working. And strangely, one of the new, replacement chips turned out to have a problem. Though as a commenter pointed out, it could be a falling edge vs rising edge variation of the logic chips to blame. Or maybe the new chips were counterfeit. Hard to nail down.
Part 4
starts with a gotcha moment, where one of the first repairs to the board was a misstep. What appeared to be a damaged trace, was actually a factory modification (a bodge cut?). Then a lucky break really helped out, where only half of one of the 7476 chips was in use, and one of the chips on hand was only half working. Put the dead bit into the unused slot, and the machine really started to behave.
Part 5
is the victory lap, where all the components finally arrived, and everything starts working on the bench. How cool to see the old machine bleeping and blooping again. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530946",
"author": "recook",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T07:17:28",
"content": "Nice work!Though that’s not Spacewar but Asteroids without the asteroids, just UFO opponents.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531071",
"aut... | 1,760,372,501.226266 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/dot-painting-graffiti-machine-is-wonderfully-simple/ | Dot-Painting Graffiti Machine Is Wonderfully Simple | Lewin Day | [
"Art"
] | [
"Mural",
"spray paint"
] | Traditionally, when many of us think of graffiti, we think of artists spraying away with simple paint cans. However, there’s often a lot of tech and art that goes into the field these days.
[Vitaly Tesh] built himself a impressive dot-painting spray rig that’s really rather nifty.
The dot maker performed ably in this piece by [Vitaly].
The build starts with [Vitaly] using a heated Stanley knife to cut away a propeller assembly from a small toy drone. He then fits a small plastic disc to the motor in place of the prop. The disc has a cutout so that as it spins, it only allows paint to pass at certain times. The whole package bolts onto a regular spray can, so it can be used with any paint color or brand that’s desired.
The spray can paints individual dots on the wall at varying distances apart, thanks to the spinning disc. Varying the speed of the motor or the rate at which the can is moved relative to the wall changes the pitch of the dots. Importantly, [Vitaly] included a drip capture system so that paint that doesn’t pass out of the dot aperture doesn’t leak all over his hands or the wall, ruining the piece.
We’ve seen robots put to work painting murals on walls, too.
Video after the break.
[Thanks to Abe Tusk for the tip!] | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530918",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T04:58:45",
"content": "If only someone would buy these graffiti artists an airbrushing kit, many of them could make a very good living. Fabulously talented, far too determined to ‘share’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,501.160859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/upgrading-a-line-trimmer-with-3d-printed-parts/ | Upgrading A Line Trimmer With 3D Printed Parts | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"string trimmer",
"trimmer line",
"weed whacker",
"whipper snipper"
] | Many have complained about the hassle of rewinding their weed whackers with fresh trimmer line. Manufacturers responded by making models with solid plastic blades instead. Some of these suck, though, like this Ozito model belonging to [Random Sequence]. 3D printing was the way forward,
adapting the blade trimmer to use traditional line.
The design is simple. [Random Sequence] created a small plastic tab which matches the attachment tab of the Ozito trimmer’s plastic blades. On the end of the tab, in lieu of a blade is a round slot into which a length of trimmer line can be inserted. The trick is to use a cigarette lighter to slightly melt a bulb onto a length of trimmer line so that it doesn’t pull through the slot. Centrifugal force (argue about it in the comments) keeps the line from falling out.
[Random Sequence] prints them in PETG, but notes that the part could benefit from additional strength. They do break when hitting tough objects, much like the stock trimmer blades do. Also, unlike a bump-feed trimmer head, there’s no way to auto-feed more line. Instead, one must simply assemble more of the tab-adapters with fresh line manually.
Overall, though, it’s a great way to fit stronger, more capable trimmer line to a weed whacker otherwise hamstrung by weak blades. It’s reported to work with Ozito and potentially Bosch tirmmers, and parts are on Thingiverse for those wishing
to print their own.
Just as string trimmer line was once used as 3D printing filament, you can also go the other way,
turning old plastic bottles into trimmer line.
If you’ve whipped up your own fun hacks for tools in the garden,
don’t hesitate to let us know.
Sound off with your best name for a weed whacker in the comments, too. The Australians may hold the title with “whipper snipper,” but we’re open to other submissions! | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530849",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2022-11-11T00:04:26",
"content": "Old guitar strings.And centrifugal force does not exist, only centripetal acceleration.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6530851",
"author": "k... | 1,760,372,501.288243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/a-diy-equatorial-mount-using-harmonic-drives/ | A DIY Equatorial Mount Using Harmonic Drives | Dave Rowntree | [
"Space"
] | [
"astrophotography",
"equatorial tracking",
"harmonic drive",
"NEMA-17",
"onstep",
"Teensy 4.0",
"telescope mount",
"TMC2130"
] | As an amateur astrophotographer will tell you, you just don’t get to capture the really interesting objects without spending a ton of money on some decent pieces of kit. Telescope aside, there really is a surprising amount of complexity, weight, and associated costs with the telescope
mount
alone, let alone one that is capable of any sort of programmable tracking. [Alan (Jialiang) Zhao] clearly wanted to up their game, and having suffered some of the shortcomings of their Sky-Watcher HEQ-5 pro Equatorial mount decided to go ahead and
build an open-source mount,
Alkaid, which hopefully works a bit better for them.
In simple terms, the difficulty of photographing an extremely dim, distant object (or one that is larger but diffuse) is that the camera sensor needs to spend a significant amount of time signal-averaging, to gather enough light
for anything to be seen at all, through the noise. But, this ball of rock we sit on is rotating constantly, so the only solution is to track the object of interest, to compensate. This is referred to as equatorial tracking, and allows the rotation of the Earth to be compensated for during a long exposure.
The design of each of the two axes revolves (sorry!) around the use of a NEMA-17 stepper motor with a 27:1 planetary gearbox, driving into a harmonic reducer gearbox. Harmonic drives (aka strain wave drives) are pretty neat, working on the principle of a fixed, but circularly distorting ring gear that transmits torque from the inside surface to the outside, with almost no backlash. They are expensive parts, but for a super smooth movement, this is what you want. The huge output torque they allow, meant that [Alan] was able to build a mount for a heavy telescope without any counterbalances. Structurally, the whole thing is constructed from 10 mm thick aluminium plates that were cut with a waterjet and subsequently milled to finish.
On the electronics side, a custom PCB was produced, with a pair of TMC2130-based stepper drivers, controlled by a teensy 4.0. The simple design was constructed with Eagle PCB, and can be found on the
Alkaid project GitHub
, together with details of the frame and a suitable copy of the
OnStep telescope controller firmware
. Some 3D-printed side panels hold the electronics in place and box-in the internals giving the mount a tidy. kind of industrial look. One important metric for any such mount, is the total weight, which [Alan] reports as being around 5.5 kg which is less than half that of an HEQ-5 mount, without its counterbalances. Hopefully, it is heavy enough to dampen out any vibrations transmitted from the tripod, but testing will prove that one way or the other.
Too complex? Not enough time to build? How about
a barn-door tracking mount
? We’ve also seen a
Raspberry Pi-based star tracker
featured as part of the 2016 Hackaday Prize.
Thanks to [Buckarooooo] for the tip! | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530797",
"author": "BrendaEM",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T21:07:01",
"content": "Cool. Some counterweights might keep them happy.I have some old Vexta harmonic drives. 50,000 steps/rev. I am not wanting to let them go, at all cost. Also seen here:https://youtu.be/Lm8oprDhAnQ?t=1897",... | 1,760,372,501.96389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/trigger-your-home-automation-routines-with-home-buttons/ | Trigger Your Home Automation Routines With Home Buttons | Dave Rowntree | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arduino",
"e-ink display",
"ESP32",
"flexures",
"home automation",
"mqtt",
"wi-fi"
] | Home automation systems are all well and good, so long as the person who built it all is around to drive it. Let’s face it, they’re quite often a complex web of interconnected systems, all tied to the specifics of one’s home — and someone less familiar with it all could get a little irritated if, on a chilly day, the interface to the boiler is via a Python script, and something won’t work. Just saying.
Home Buttons by [Matej Planinšek] over on Hackaday.IO
is a nicely polished project, which aims to take some of the hackiness out of such automation by providing a sleek front end to those automation routines, enabling anyone to rock on over and set one in action without hassle.
The PCB is based around the ESP32-S2-mini which deals with WiFi connectivity and integration with Home Assistant using the usual MQTT protocol. We expect integration with other flavors of home automation would not be difficult to achieve. The center of the unit holds a simple E-Ink display, for that low-standby power. Specifically, the unit chosen is a Good Display GDEY029T94 2.9″ which this scribe can confirm is easy to interface and pretty cheap to purchase from the usual Chinese online vendors. This was matched up with six clicky Alps SKRB-series low-profile tact switches, which sit on either side of the display, and corresponds to a flexure-type affair on the 3D printed front casing. Neat and simple.
The PCB design was provided in Altium format, which you can
find on the project GitHub page
. This shows a straightforward design, with a few nice little details here and there. The internally mounted 18650 cell is reportedly good for at least a year of operation, but when time, it can be charged via USB. A
Xysemi XB8608AF
(PDF) protection chip provides appropriate limiting for the 18650 cell, shielding it from the perils of overcharging, discharging, and whatnot. Not that that is likely in this current setup. A
Sensiron SHTC3
humidity and temperature sensor is also in there, hanging off the I2C bus, which makes sense for this application.
Home Automation hacks are plenty on these pages,
like this scroll-wheel interface
, for instance. If all this stuff is looking quite overbearingly complicated to get into,
how about starting with a Pico W
? | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530764",
"author": "dnvr",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T19:48:03",
"content": "Shouldn’t “186550 cell” actually read “18650 cell”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6530772",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2022-11... | 1,760,372,501.749316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/building-a-sinclair-zx81-in-2022-with-all-new-parts/ | Building A Sinclair ZX81 In 2022 With All New Parts | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"sinclair",
"sinclair zx81",
"zx81"
] | As the supply of genuine retrocomputers dwindles and their prices skyrocket, enthusiasts are turning their eyes in other directions to satisfy their need for 8-bit pixelated goodness. Some take the emulation route, but others demand a solution that’s closer to the original hardware. Following the latter path, [iNimbleSloth] is answering the question
as to whether it’s possible to build a Sinclair ZX81 from all-new parts in 2022
.
The ZX81 was Sir Clive’s second Z80-based computer, and its low price made it an instant success which paved the way for the legendary ZX Spectrum. From here in 2022 the original
Ferranti ULA
chip that contained all the logic is unobtainable except by raiding another ’81, so he’s using a design that has the same functionality in 74 series logic. The PCB is the same size as the original, and he’s paired it with a keyboard PCB using tactile switches. The video below the break is the first of what is to be a series, and he will be looking at a readily available 3D printed ZX81 case and
the re-manufactured membrane keyboard
.
For those of us who first learned to code in its meager 1k of memory the ’81 will always be a special computer. Sure it had many faults, but simply having an affordable real computer at all in 1981 was special. To see one being made from scratch is special then, and it would be nice to think that a few other people might learn how a computer works the Sinclair way. | 50 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530696",
"author": "Greg Garriss",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T16:41:30",
"content": "That takes me back. I remember building the ZX81 when it came out. It was fun until my employer bought us all Ferguson Big Boards to assemble / play with.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,501.592861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/the-importance-of-physical-models-how-not-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-or-anywhere-else/ | The Importance Of Physical Models: How Not To Shoot Yourself In The Foot Or Anywhere Else | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"engineering",
"fighter jet"
] | We take shortcuts all the time with our physical models. We rarely consider that wire has any resistance, for example, or that batteries have a source impedance. That’s fine up until the point that it isn’t. Take the case of the Navy’s Grumman F11F Tiger aircraft. The supersonic aircraft was impressive, although it suffered from some fatal flaws. But it also has the distinction of being the first plane ever to shoot itself down.
So here’s the simple math. A plane traveling Mach 1 is moving about 1,200 km/h — the exact number depends on a few things like your altitude and the humidity. Let’s say about 333 m/s. Bullets from a 20 mm gun, on the other hand, move at more than 1000 m/second. So when the bullet leaves the plane it would take the plane over three seconds to catch up with it, by which time it has moved ever further away, right?
Who Shot You Down?
No. In 1956, Tom Attridge took off from Long Island to do a weapons test over the Atlantic. He climbed to 20,000 feet, started a Mach 1 dive, and fired his cannons which ran out of ammo at about 13,000 feet.
Around the 7,000-foot mark, something hit his windshield — presumably a bird. The plane started losing power and the plane crashed leaving a 300-foot flaming path through a wooded area near the airstrip. Attridge survived but had a broken leg and broken vertebra.
But it wasn’t a bird that hit the naval aviator’s plane. It was his own bullets. The problem is, the bullet did leave the gun at a high rate of speed. However, they immediately encountered air resistance causing them to slow down. By the time the bullets slowed to 643 m/s, the plane was going at 1,400 m/s. Three bullets hit the plane, one through the nose cone, one through the windshield, and one hit the starboard engine intake. All this took a mere 11 seconds. You can see the whole story in the video, below.
The plane proved to be less reliable compared to other contemporary fighter planes. It had other undesirable characteristics, but it was used as a training aircraft and the Blue Angels used them until 1968.
Lesson Learned?
You would think this was ample evidence that something was wrong, but no. It was dismissed as a “fluke.” Of course, in 1973, an F-14 Tomcat also shot itself down with a dummy missile. A Dutch F-16 also shot itself down in 2019 in a very similar incident. You have to wonder if there aren’t other examples that went unreported.
However, there is a lesson here.
Common sense isn’t always engineering sense
. Think a two-micron deviation isn’t important?
Think again
. Or maybe you want to check for
air leaks using a candle in a nuclear power plant
? Engineering history is full of stories where any reasonable person would think something was fine, when, in retrospect, it was anything but.
There’s an old Russian saying “trust but verify.” That is a good adage for us, too. Trust your instincts, but verify with solid mathematical models that take everything into account. | 73 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530654",
"author": "Henk",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T15:09:13",
"content": "“By the time the bullets slowed to 643 m/s, the plane was going at 1,400 m/s.” so the Tiger as a hypersonic fighter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,501.70069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/sprig-is-an-open-source-handheld-game-console/ | Sprig Is An Open Source Handheld Game Console | Lewin Day | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"handheld",
"open source",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"sprig"
] | [Hack Club] is a group that aims to teach teenagers about tech by involving them in open-source projects. One of the group’s latest efforts is Sprig,
an open-source handheld game console
, and [Hack Club] has even been giving them away!
The console is based around a Raspberry Pi Pico, paired up with a TFT7735 screen. There’s also a MAX98357A audio amp on board to provide sound. Other than that, there’s a full ten buttons for control, some LEDs for feedback, and it’s all assembled on a custom PCB designed for easy soldering.
Plenty of work has been done to make Sprig an accessible platform for first-time developers. Games can be created for Sprig and run either on the device, or in
an online web-based editor.
[Hack Club] is even running a program that will give Sprig hardware away to kids and teens worldwide who write a game for the platform and
submit it to the online gallery
.
If you’re eager to get into game development while understanding both the hardware and software side of things, Sprig might be just what you’re looking for. With today’s microcontrollers being so cheap and so powerful,
we’ve seen some other great handheld designs recently, too! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530596",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T12:45:02",
"content": "Surprised Doom isn’t in the games collection yet",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6530706",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T16:56... | 1,760,372,501.801215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/automatic-candy-dispenser-takes-the-hard-work-out-of-halloween/ | Automatic Candy Dispenser Takes The Hard Work Out Of Halloween | Robin Kearey | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"candy dispenser",
"dispenser",
"halloween"
] | Halloween may be behind us, but we couldn’t resist showing you [Mellow]’s latest project:
an automatic candy dispenser that takes the hard work out of serving trick-or-treaters
. It’s a cool build that might serve as an inspiration for next year’s Halloween project, or perhaps for a different occasion altogether: think birthday parties or Valentine’s Day. After all, when’s a bad time to give sweet treats to someone you love?
The basic concept is a scary face, made of wood, that disgorges a set amount of candy through its mouth after you press its nose. The dispensing mechanism is made from 3D printed mechanical parts as well as a piece of drain pipe. Candy is stored in the pipe, with a servo-operated flap releasing a set amount each time the nose is pressed. [Mellow] cleverly designed the flap to be somewhat flexible, so that it wouldn’t crush any candy bars that got stuck between it and the pipe.
A Wemos D1 Mini reads out the nose switch and drives the candy-dispensing servo, as well as a further two servos that swivel the eyes left and right for an additional visual effect. The original idea was to have the eyes swiveling all the time, but because the mechanism turned out to be quite loud [Mellow] changed the code to only move them during the candy-dispensing process.
We’ve seen several designs for automated candy dispensers over the years, ranging from
a Jack-o-Lantern
that holds enough candy to feed a small city, to
a beautifully over-engineered machine
more suitable as a Valentine’s Day gift. | 5 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530579",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T11:59:19",
"content": "” candy dispenser that takes the hard work out of serving trick-or-treaters ”That line pretty much sums up this generation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,501.507257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/old-6809-computer-lives-again-on-breadboards/ | Old 6809 Computer Lives Again On Breadboards | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6809"
] | Among old CPUs, the 6809 never got as much attention as some of its cousins. The Radio Shack CoCo used it and so did a construction article in Wireless World Magazine. Now [Dave] has reconstructed that computer on breadboards and it
looks great
. The files are on GitHub and there is even a series of videos about the machine. You can watch the first one below.
You can even read the original articles in the
January 1981
Wireless World where the board used a 6802. The upgrade to a 6809 appears in the
July 1981
issue. The magazine promised you could build the system for £100. Besides the 6809 there were only a few chips. A PROM, two RAM chips, A 6821 PIA, and a 74LS138 decoder for address selection. An MC1413 transistor array also allowed for a 7-segment display and a keypad along with a 7442 BCD decoder.
Apparently [Dave] had started a similar computer back in the 80s, and made changes to it to adapt to the Wireless World’s project memory map. It sounds like he didn’t finish it, but he found the old boards and decided to recreate it on a breadboard.
Like many computers of the day, the machine had a cassette interface. We really like the aesthetic of the 7-segment LEDs and the overall look of the build.
The 6809 did see use in some specific
industrial
and video game applications. There was also a New Zealand
educational computer based on the 6809
, along with a few other home computers like the SuperPET and the Dragon. | 36 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530494",
"author": "ziew",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T07:59:50",
"content": "The use of breadboard power strips for data and address buses is the Real Hack (TM) here!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6530526",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,502.038659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/taking-pokemon-on-a-walk/ | Taking Pokémon On A Walk | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"animation",
"emerald",
"game boy advance",
"pokemon",
"rom",
"sprites",
"third generation"
] | Emulating old computers or video game systems isn’t always about recreating childhood nostalgia or playing classics on hardware that doesn’t exist anymore. A lot of the time it can be an excellent way to learn about the mechanics of programming a video game. Plenty of older titles have available source code that anyone can pour over and modify, and one of those is Pokémon Emerald. This was the first Pokémon game that [Inkbox] played,
and he added a few modern features to it with this custom ROM file
.
The first thing to add to this game was the ability to have one’s Pokémon follow their character around in the overworld map. This is common in later games, but wasn’t yet a feature when Emerald and Ruby first came out. [Inkbox] needed to import sprites from later games into the Emerald game file, convert their color palettes to match the game’s palette, and then get to work on the mechanics. After everything was finished, the Pokémon not only follow the player around the map but are animated, enter and exit their Pokéballs, and even jump off ledges in a believable, 32-bit way.
One of the great things about older games like these is that they’ve been around long enough to have source code or decompiled code available, they often have plenty of documentation, and the platforms they operate on are well-known by now as well. Pokémon Emerald is not alone in this regard; in fact, there is a huge
Game Boy Advance homebrew scene that is not too difficult to get involved in
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530419",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T04:15:07",
"content": "Pokemon Yellow was the first to have a Pokemon follow around. Pikachu only though but it was a start. Ruby and Emerald came out years later.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,502.192222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/1-pov-display-goes-round-and-round/ | $1 POV Display Goes Round And Round | Al Williams | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny",
"POV",
"POV display"
] | You don’t need much to do a persistence of vision display. A few LEDs and a processor is all it really takes. [B45i] made a
simple PC board with five LEDs and an ATtiny CPU
. There’s a battery and it connects to a fan to spin around.
While the project is pretty simple, we liked two aspects of it. First, he provides very detailed explanations about how to use an Arduino to program the Tiny using the Arduino IDE.
The other item of interest is the two web applications that can build arrays of data for the POV display easily. Examining the code is instructive, too, because of the use of bit coding and enumerations to save space.
The downside, however, is you do have to adjust the delay to match the fan or other rotating item you attach to. It would be a great enhancement to read an accelerometer and adjust the speed on the fly. That would, though, drive the costs up a little bit. You would also need a clever way to drive the LEDs since you’d lose at least one pin to the accelerometer.
You can make much more
sophisticated POV setups
, of course. You can even do it
with an FPGA
. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530346",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2022-11-10T00:49:49",
"content": "Some other thing’s that usually come in handy:* Something that moves, either a motor, bycicle wheel, an arm or whatever.* Either a battery or some sliding contact for the power.* A bit of software, but it... | 1,760,372,502.10641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/this-wii-has-an-apple-m1-inside/ | This Wii Has An Apple M1 Inside | Navarre Bartz | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Games",
"Mac Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Nintendo Wii Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"apple m1",
"Apple Silicon",
"Case mod",
"case modding",
"Case mods",
"M1",
"mac mini",
"mario kart",
"nintendo",
"nintendo wii",
"wii"
] | The conveniently tiny logic board of the M1 Mac mini has lead to it giving the Mini ITX format a run for its money in case mods. The latest example of this is
[Luke Miani]’s M1 Wii
. (Youtube via
9to5Mac
)
[Miani] chose the Wii as a new enclosure for this Mac mini given its similar form factor and the convenient set of doors in the top to maintain access to the computer’s I/O, something he wasn’t able to do with one of his previous M1 casemods. The completed build is a great stealth way to have a Mac mini in your entertainment center. [Miani] even spends the last several minutes of the video showing the M1 Wii running Wii, GameCube, and PS2 games to really bring it full circle.
A Microsoft Surface power brick was spliced into the original Wii power cable since the Wii PSU didn’t have enough wattage to supply the Mac mini without significant throttling. On the inside, the power runs through a buck converter before making its way to the logic board. While the Mini’s original fan was too big to fit inside the Wii enclosure, a small 12V fan was able to keep performance similar to OEM and much higher than running the M1 fanless without a heat spreader.
If you’d like to see some more M1 casemods, check out this
Lampshade iMac
or the
Mac Mini Mini
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530254",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T21:08:18",
"content": "I was bored until I read about the “heat spreader”. Those words were like butter on the toast, a warm feeling of fully circle splicing into. Thank you for the soup.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,502.147679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/diy-spacenavigator-brings-the-freedom/ | DIY SpaceNavigator Brings The Freedom | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3D CAD",
"3d printed",
"6dof"
] | [Pepijn de Vos] wanted a 6DOF HID. You know, a 6 Degrees Of Freedom Hardware Interface Device. Those are the fancy controllers for navigating in 3D space, for uses like Computer Aided Design, or
Kerbal Space Program
. And while we can’t speak to [Pepijn]’s KSP addiction, we do know that the commercially available controllers are prohibitively expensive. It takes some serious CAD work to justify the expenditure. [Pepijn] falls somewhere in-between, and while he couldn’t justify the expense, he does have the chops to
design and 3D print his own
.
Marvelously, he’s shared the design files for SpaceFox, linked above. It’s 6 spring-loaded potentiometers, supporting a floating printed Big Knob. The pots feed into an Arduino Pro Micro, which calculates the knob’s position on the fly and feeds in into the connected computer. On the computer side, the project uses the
spacenavd
driver to interface with various applications.
SpaceFox V1 is essentially a proof of concept, just asking for someone to come along and knock off the rough edges. [Pepijn] even includes a wishlist of improvements, but with the caveat that he’s satisfied with his working model. If this project really gets your 6DOF juices flowing, maybe try making an improved version, and share the improvements. And let us know about it! | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530208",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T19:46:37",
"content": "Cool stuff!Some random suggestions for future versions:– In current design ‘cut off the knob’ (that sounds wrong..) then mount a potentiometer to the platform you’re left with, then mount the knob to that... | 1,760,372,502.255295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/slingbox-getting-bricked-you-have-less-than-24-hours/ | Slingbox Getting Bricked – You Have Less Than 24 Hours | Arya Voronova | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Repair Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"bricking",
"slingbox",
"unbricking"
] | The Slingbox devices used to let you catch up with the programming on your TV when you weren’t near it, using your Internet-connected mobile device. As cable TV became less popular, their business model faded away, and in 2020, they scheduled a service shutdown for November 9th, 2022. If you own a Slingbox, it’s getting bricked tomorrow – for those reading this in EU, that’ll be today, even. Do you have a Slingbox? You might still be able to repurpose it, let’s say, for local media streaming – but
only if you waste no time.
[Gerry Dubois] has been developing
the “Slinger” software
for the past few months, a small app you run locally that proxies commands and video for your Slingbox, thanks to reverse-engineering communications with Slingbox servers. However, it needs a “hardware password” alphanumeric string, that you need to get from the Slingbox service web interface – which is to be promptly shut down. If you think you might have a use for what’s essentially a network-connected analog/digital video capture card with decent hardware, the GitHub repo has
a lively discussion tab
for any questions you might have.
One one hand, Slingbox shouldn’t be bricking the devices in a way that requires you act fast – perhaps, releasing a final update that makes the device hacker-friendly, like O2
did with their Joggler appliance
back in the day, publishing the hardware documentation, or at least setting up a service up that lets anyone retrieve their hardware password indefinitely. On the other hand, at least
they gave us two years’ notice,
something less than usual – the amount of time between bricking and an announcement
can even be a negative number.
For those of us stuck with no operational device, a hardware exploration might be in order – for instance, we’ve
torn down the Sling Adapter
and even ran simple custom code on it! | 41 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529804",
"author": "FiveEyesNoPrize",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T01:34:20",
"content": "It’s a shame that manufacturers can break a device you bought and paid for, on purpose. Even if it is “no longer supported”, being able to use what you already bought should be the baseline. Logit... | 1,760,372,502.332377 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/cheap-scope-troubleshoots-commodore/ | Cheap Scope Troubleshoots Commodore | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"scope"
] | [Adrian] had a Commodore computer to fix and decided to
see how his latest tiny portable scope would work
. He paid $57 for the tiny little test instrument although the current price seems higher. It claims to have 120MHz bandwidth along with 500 megasamples per second. There are several versions with different claimed specs, but we did find a similar device for under $60. You can see the unboxing and how it worked in the video below.
Of course, these kinds of instruments often overstate their specs, and [Adrian] was also suspicious. One odd feature of the device is it can echo its output to an NTSC video output so you can send the screen to an external monitor.
If you want to skip the scope unboxing, forward up to about 19 minutes to see the inside of the Commodore 64. The scope was easily sufficient for scanning the chips in the computer and revealed a suspicious address line. The line went to a PLA and a mux chip, neither of which were in sockets. He clipped the PLA out of the circuit, and the address line started looking normal. So the conclusion was the PLA was dead.
After that, it was straightforward to remove the chip and replace it. Well, technically, replace it with a socket to make a future repair easier. Will a $57 scope replace your big benchtop instrument? Maybe not. But it was a useful tool for troubleshooting.
Even if you don’t want a cheap scope, you can learn a lot from [Adrian’s] thoughtful troubleshooting and analysis if you are faced with any digital repair project. We do like
cheap scopes
around here. It is amazing how much scope $100 will buy now compared
to just a few years ago
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529715",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T21:37:49",
"content": "My only complaint is sometimes you need a second probe when you’re trying to compare timing between two signals. More than two isn’t necessary – just convenient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,502.443361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/3d-printed-shelf-connector/ | 3D Printed Shelf Connector | Navarre Bartz | [
"home hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"3d printed furniture",
"3d printed joint",
"customizable furniture",
"furniture",
"prototype",
"woodworking"
] | Sometimes, you really need a custom shelf. Whether you have a weird-shaped space, weird-shaped stuff, or just want something different, making your own shelving can make your place more like home.
The Plus Shelf by [shurly]
aims to make building your own shelves a little easier with a 3D printed bracket.
These connectors aren’t just sitting flush against the wood of the shelf. Each end of the + sign actually sits in a 3/8″ drilled recess, giving a more secure fit. The pieces were printed on an Objet and then dyed in various bright shades to really make the shelving pop. The cubbies were assembled with biscuits after cutting down a sheet of plywood to the appropriate sizes. The 45˚ angles around the edges of the cubbies make the whole shelf system that much nicer.
The final shelf has a little wobble, but that’s probably because dying the shelf connectors made them “bendy.” Because of the instability with the friction fit, the shelf connectors were super glued into the shelf boxes. [shurly] hopes that a metal version of the connectors might be able to eliminate these problems in the future.
This shelving system not your cup of tea? Maybe you’d prefer this
Vintage Adjustable Shelving Method
or this
MP3 Player Shelf
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529672",
"author": "Jace",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T19:39:51",
"content": "I mean, if the dying process is what cause the structural problems, the solution seems to be to just use the desired color for the 3D printed material to start.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,372,502.386149 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-pumpkin-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Pumpkin Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Edison typewriter",
"Malling-Hansen writing ball",
"pumpkin",
"pumpkin keyboard"
] | Oh, the places plastic has taken us. One of the arguably better inventions might be the fake carve-able pumpkin, which is more or less guaranteed not to shrivel up and rot on your porch, though it might get smashed by wily teenagers along with its organic brethren next door.
Though they will be around much longer, the fake kind lend themselves to all kinds of creations, including this one from [BunkEbear] which was “a nightmare” to build. Yeah, we bet it was along the lines of [Aaron Rasmussen]’s
spherical keyboard
, except inside out, since that one’s concave.
This tasty keyboard is modeled after
the Malling-Hansen writing ball
, which is arguably the first commercial typewriter and dates to 1865. [BunkEbear]’s pumpkin version features the 54-key layout, plus two additional for Shift and Escape to suit modern needs. Since the inside of the pumpkin is pretty small, [BunkEbear] wired all the connections close together on the protoboard, and used JST extension cables between the Glorious Panda switches themselves and the Arduino Pro Micro.
Historical Clackers: the Edison Typewriter
Image via
Antikey Chop
Before you get too excited and wonder what others you’re unaware of,
no this thing wasn’t invented by Thomas Edison
— it was created to support the Edison Mimeograph by cutting stencils from wax paper, but as a special bonus, also functioned like a typewriter. Edison’s name was licensed to one Albert Blake Dick for the purpose of selling these machines through his office supply business.
Unfortunately, it was difficult to use, and did neither one of its two functions well. As a typewriter, it was slow, averaging 30 WPM vs. an average 80 WPM from the competition. Other typewriters were even better at cutting wax stencils.
Much like Frank Lloyd Wright and certain buildings bearing his name, Edison disowned this typewriter and distanced himself from it pretty quickly. Nevertheless, there were three models produced over the years, each with successively more keys. These horrible things finally went away after other manufacturers threatened to pull their machines from retailers unless they stopped stocking Edison typewriters. Well, that’s one way to do it.
The Centerfold: [REDcamp] Answers the Ultimate Question
Image via
Damn Fine Keyboards #3
You are surely familiar with the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything, which of course is 42. But what is the ultimate question? Why, it’s this keyboard here, from the third issue of
Damn Fine Keyboards
.
Whether related to H2G2 or not, don’t bother to count the colorful plastic caps, because there are the appropriate number of switches present. And appropriately, they are blue to match the lovely and simple 3D-printed case. While they would otherwise also announce loudly and proudly that [REDcamp] has solved this mystery of the ages, it seems that they chose to mod the Otemus by de-clickifying them. The horror! To each their own.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send a picture to Damn Fine Keyboards
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
ICYMI: We Had a Cyberdeck Contest
I’m not sure how you could have missed the fact that we held our first-ever cyberdeck contest, but we did, and boy, were the entries plentiful and amazing and the winners difficult to choose.
But somehow we did
.
And yes, ‘first-ever’ implies that there will be more to come. I already can’t wait to see what those entries will look like, now that we’ve had so many people establish what a cyberdeck even is.
Anyway, here is one of my personal favorites —
[Tinfoil_Haberdashery]’s modular, ARM-based S/EA-X Cyberdeck
— which won the prestige of an Honorable Mention in the Jacking In category.
In this case, jacking in comes courtesy of the S/EA — the Serial/Energy connection — which lets users connect terminals and other peripherals quickly and easily. Come for the split keyboard, and stay for the user manual, which is just icing on this cake.
When will the next Cyberdeck Contest be? Can’t say, really, but it shouldn’t be too far off — probably mid-2023 if my sources are to be believed. So keep those soldering irons warmed up in the meantime.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529643",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T18:36:07",
"content": "I stopped watching the pumpkin keyboard video around 30 seconds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6529726",
"aut... | 1,760,372,502.783947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/chevron-desk-takes-advantage-of-plywood-for-patterning/ | Chevron Desk Takes Advantage Of Plywood For Patterning | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"desk",
"plywood",
"woodwork",
"woodworking"
] | Buying a desk is all well and good, but [WoodCraftly] found that the options they found online were too pricey for what was being offered. Buying the table frame from scratch was much cheaper, and just required crafting a top to match. That provided the opportunity to create
this beautiful herringbone-finish desk created with some simple woodworking techniques.
Plenty of clamps were needed for the glue-up.
The build starts with a motorized corner desk frame that can be bought from amazon for just $550. To create the chevron-finish top, [WoodCraftly] grabbed some plywood sheets, and cut them into a series of 1-inch strips. These were then flipped 90-degrees onto their side, and glued together to create a panel that showed off the individual layers of the plywood. This panel was then cut into 3-inch wide strips at a 45-degree angle, and these strips were then placed back to back and once again glued up to create the attractive herringbone design.
From there, it was a simple matter of gluing up panels into the L-shape required for the desk, adding mounting holes, and rounding off the corners for a nice finish. The desk was also given a thick coat of epoxy on the bottom which soaked into the wood and helped give the desk some strength, and a top coat that was sanded back to a natural-look finish.
Overall, the final desk is just the product of some smart cutting and gluing steps combined to create a fun pattern in the end. It’s always fun to build your own furniture
because you can express your own style in your creations.
Video after the break.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8beIaBkeiM&feature=emb_title | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529611",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T16:44:15",
"content": "I’ve made wood plane handles out of stacked and glued 6mm plywood and they look fantastic but the wood itself isn’t very durable and wears/dents pretty easily. As such, if you’re going to do this I... | 1,760,372,502.734834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/the-wow-signal-revisited-citizen-science-informs-seti-effort/ | The Wow! Signal Revisited: Citizen Science Informs SETI Effort | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Space"
] | [
"2MASS 19281982-2640123",
"citizen science",
"exoplanet",
"radiotelescope",
"SETI",
"The Big Ear",
"The Wow! Signal"
] | As far as interesting problems go, few can really compete with the perennial question: “Are we alone?” The need to know if there are other forms of intelligent life out there in the galaxy is deeply rooted, and knowing for sure either way would have massive implications.
But it’s a big galaxy, and knowing where to look for signals that might mean we’re not alone is a tough task. Devoting limited and expensive resources to randomly listen to chunks of the sky in the hopes of hearing something that’s obviously made by a technical civilization is unlikely to bear fruit. Much better would be to have something to base sensible observations on — some kind of target that has a better chance of paying off.
Luckily, a chance observation nearly 50 years ago has provided just that. The so-called Wow! Signal, much discussed but only occasionally and somewhat informally studied, has provided a guidepost in the sky, thanks in part to a citizen scientist with a passion for finding exoplanets.
No really — Wow!
We’ve already covered
the story of the Wow! Signal
and how we got to this point in the story, but to summarize: in 1977, a radio telescope in Ohio known as “The Big Ear” detected an unprecedented signal coming from the general direction of the constellation Sagittarius. As the fixed antenna swept the night sky thanks to the rotation of the Earth, a stream of radio noise entered the dual feed horns of the instrument, with a signal-to-noise ratio that peaked at over 30 times the typical background noise. The signal, which lasted 72 seconds, became known as the “Wow! Signal” thanks to astronomer Jerry Ehman’s excited note from the night of August 15, made in red pen on the margin of the fanfold hard copy of the data.
In the 45 years since that night, the Wow! Signal has been at the center of a storm of scientific curiosity. In some ways, it bears all the hallmarks of being a transmission from another technical civilization. The frequency of the signal was very close to the 1,420-MHz hydrogen line frequency, and anyone capable of building a radiotelescope would most likely know about that frequency and might choose to use it in their efforts to search for other life in the galaxy. The signal’s characteristics were also very much in line with what one would expect for an extraterrestrial beacon, given the rotational speed of the Earth at the latitude of the antenna. There have also been extensive efforts to provide alternative explanations for the signal, none of which have ruled out an extraterrestrial signal.
Then again, there hasn’t been much to support the Wow! SIgnal’s potential as an extraterrestrial calling card either. No other observatories working that night picked up anything similar, and multiple attempts to listen to the patch of sky for a repeat of the event have failed to hear a peep. Forty-five years on, the Wow! Signal remains the worst kind of event, scientifically speaking: a one-off, a chance observation that provides a tantalizing clue for more work, but nothing more.
Citizen Science Points the Way
And yet, scientists are still plugging away at the Wow! Signal, since it seems to be the best chance we’ve had so far to find out who might be out there. One such scientist is Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer from Spain who, as head of the
Habitable Exoplanet Hunting project
, very much has extraterrestrial life on his mind. The project enlists astronomers, both pros and amateurs, to turn their telescopes to the stars in search of faint dimming events that might result from planets passing in front of the star. The project focuses its efforts on a small group of G-type, K-type, and red dwarf stars within 100 light-years of Earth, and looks for transit signals that would be characteristic of rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone around each star.
2MASS 19281982-2640123, a Sun-like star within the Wow! Signal footprint. Source: Alberto Caballero.
Alberto’s interest in exoplanets took a different turn with
a paper he published this year
concerning a potential source for the Wow! Signal. The peer-reviewed paper suggests that out of 66 stars that were within the view of the Big Ear’s feedhorn on that night in 1977, the star 2MASS 19281982-2640123 may be a good candidate for further investigation, by virtue of its luminosity and size.
Picking up on this thread, a group of astronomers led by Karen Perez of Columbia University recently made
the first coordinated, multi-telescope observations of 2MASS 19281982-2640123
, with the specific intent of locating a “technosignature” from the star. Using the
Green Bank Telescope
in West Virginia and the
SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array
in northern California. The team coordinated observations so that both telescopes were looking at the target star at the same time, and made their observation at the same 1,420-MHz frequency of the original Wow! Signal.
Sadly, the experiment resulted in no technosignature, perhaps not a surprise since the total time that both telescopes were trained on the star was only nine minutes or so. But the effort is still significant, mainly because it’s the first time in the 45 years since the Wow! Signal was heard that a coordinated observation effort has been undertaken. Such an effort can only make it easier to coordinate observations of spurious signals, both as they pop up and after the fact. It also suggests other candidates besides 2MASS 19281982-2640123 — they found that there are actually eight Sun-like stars in the observation window used by the Big Ear that night; relaxing the criteria for luminosity, mass, and star type opens the candidate pool substantially, to over 600 stars.
There’s certainly more to come on this and other SETI efforts, and while we look forward to hearing how they turn out, for now we’re glad that a little citizen science has proven to be the foundation upon which a much broader effort has been built.
[Featured image source:
North American Astrophysical Observatory
.] | 52 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529578",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T15:29:58",
"content": "The Dandy’s had something to say about this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0aeJObwf8",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6531685",
"author"... | 1,760,372,502.911847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/making-medical-simulators-less-expensive-with-3d-printing-and-silicone/ | Making Medical Simulators Less Expensive With 3D Printing And Silicone | Navarre Bartz | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"anatomy",
"clinic",
"FDM",
"hospital",
"medical simulator",
"medical training",
"medicine",
"training"
] | Medical training simulators are expensive, but important, pieces of equipment.
[Decent Simulators]
is designing simulators that can easily be replicated using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printers and silicone molds to bring the costs down.
Each iteration of the simulators is sent out for testing by paramedics and doctors around the world, and feedback is integrated into the next revision. Because the trainers are designed to be easily replicated, parts can easily be replaced or repaired which can be critical to keep personnel trained, especially in remote areas.
While not open source, some models are freely available on the [Decent Simulators] website like wound packing trainers or wound prostheses which could be great if you’re trying to get a head start on next year’s Halloween costumes. More complicated models will be on sale
starting in January
as either just the design files or a kit containing the files and the printed and/or silicone parts.
Interested in more medical hacks? Check out this
Cyberpunk Prosthetic Eye
or this
Arduino Hearing Test Device
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,502.821901 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/ir-remote-tester-helps-you-crack-the-code/ | IR Remote Tester Helps You Crack The Code | Dave Walker | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"arduino",
"infrared",
"ir",
"remote control",
"TSOP4838"
] | Even though some devices now use WiFi and Bluetooth, so much of our home entertainment equipment still relies on its own proprietary infrared remote control. By and large (when you can find them) they work fine, but what happens when they stop working? First port of call is to change the batteries, of course, but once you’ve tried that what do you do next? [Hulk] has your back with this simple but effective
IR Remote Tester / Decoder
.
How to connect the TSOP4838 to an Arduino to read the transmitted codes
By using a cheap integrated IR receiver/decoder device (the venerable
TSOP4838
), most of the hard work is done for you! For a quick visual check that your remote is sending codes, it can easily drive a visible LED with just a resistor for a current-limit, and a capacitor to make the flickering easier to see.
For an encore, [Hulk] shows how to connect this up to an Arduino and how to use the “IRremote” library to see the actual data being transmitted when the buttons are pressed.
It’s not much of a leap to imagine what else you might be able to do with this information once you’ve received it – controlling your own projects, cloning the IR remote codes, automating remote control sequences etc..
It’s a great way to make the invisible visible and add some helpful debug information into the mix.
We recently covered a
more complex IR cloner
, and if you need to put together a truly universal remote control, then
this project may be just what you need
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529500",
"author": "Redhatter (VK4MSL)",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T10:09:51",
"content": "Or, grab pretty much any phone camera, open the camera program and point the camera lens at the remote control as you press the buttons… you’ll see the LED on the phone’s screen flash since the... | 1,760,372,503.0293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/how-those-nes-dip-chips-were-reduced-to-qfns/ | How Those NES DIP Chips Were Reduced To QFNs | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"chip sanding",
"nes",
"qfn"
] | The world of console modding leads us to some extremely impressive projects, and a recent one we featured of note was a portable NES produced by [Redherring32]. It was special because the original NES custom DIP chips had been sanded down to something like a surface-mount QFN package. Back when our colleague [Arya] wrote up the project there wasn’t much information, but since then the full details
have been put up in a GitHub repository
. Perhaps of most interest, it includes
a full tutorial for the chip-sanding process
.
To take irreplaceable classic chips and sand them down must take some guts, but the premise is a sound enough one. Inside a DIP package is a chip carrier and a web of contact strips that go to the pins, this process simply sands away the epoxy to expose those strips for new contacts. The result can then be reflowed as would happen with any QFN, and used in a new, smaller NES.
Along the way this provides a fascinating insight into DIP construction that most of us never see. If any of you have ever managed to fatigue a pin off a DIP, you’ll also no doubt be thinking how the technique could be used to reattach a conductor.
You can read our original coverage of the project here
. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529471",
"author": "ColinB",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T08:15:15",
"content": "I would love to see this with a Sega Genesis.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6529479",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T08:49:49"... | 1,760,372,502.975438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/commodore-datasette-does-its-own-calibration/ | Commodore Datasette Does Its Own Calibration | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"News",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"calibration",
"commodore 64",
"datasette"
] | Ah, the beloved Commodore 64. The “best-selling computer system of all time”. And hobbyists are keeping the dream alive, still producing software for it today. Which leads us to a problem with using such old equipment. When you get your copy of Petscii Robots on cassette, and try to fastload it, your machine might just consistently fail to load the program. That’s fine, time to pull out the cue-tips and rubbing alcohol, and give the read heads a good cleaning. But what if that doesn’t do the job? You may just have another problem, like
tape speed drift
.
There are several different ways to measure the current tape speed, to dial it in properly. The best is probably a reference cassette with a known tone. Just connect your frequency counter or digital oscilloscope, and dial in the adjustment pot until your Datasette is producing the expected tone. Oh, you don’t have a frequency counter? Well good news, [Jan Derogee] has a solution for you. See, you already have your Datasette connected to a perfectly serviceable frequency counter — your Commodore computer. He’s put out a free program that counts the pulses coming from the Datasette in a second. So play a reference cassette, run the program, and dial in your Datasette deck. Simple! Stick around after the break for a very tongue-in-cheek demonstration of the problem and solution. | 41 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529417",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T03:58:38",
"content": "“cue-tips” never heard it that way, usually I spell em as Q-tips.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6529419",
"author": "KDawg",
... | 1,760,372,503.216316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/smelting-solar-style/ | Smelting Solar Style | Al Williams | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"fresnel",
"metal casting",
"solar energy"
] | If you attended the 2022 Supercon, you might have heard the story about the SMD soldering challenge table nearly catching on fire. A magnifying lamp caught the sun just right and burned a neat trench into another lamp’s plastic base. While disaster was averted, [Jelle Seegers] does this on purpose using
a huge 5-meter lens to smelt metal
.
The Design Academy Eindhoven student is participating in Dutch Design Week and built the machine which is able to manually track the sun to maximize the amount of solar energy applied to the metal.
According to [Seegers], the smelter is more sustainable and uses less energy than the normal procedure which he worked with during an internship.
The lens was also made manually by cutting into a sheet of polycarbonate with a custom-made machine. The operator has to turn the hand crank every 5 or 10 minutes to track the moving sun. The machine can heat to about 800 to 1,000C with an estimated 4 kilowatts of energy. It can melt 20 kg of zinc or 5 kg of aluminum.
This is probably more efficient than
using a microwave
. You
can do a lot with direct solar energy instead of a laser
. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529361",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2022-11-08T01:04:37",
"content": "Reminds me a little of this old hackaday post:https://hackaday.com/2011/06/25/selective-solar-sintering-with-sand/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,503.392911 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/overengineered-fume-extractor-version-2/ | Overengineered Fume Extractor, Version 2 | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"fume extractor"
] | We all know the temptation of adding one more feature to your latest project. [Arnov Sharma] didn’t resist the urge. Building on his 3D-printed fume extractor, he
developed a new version
made of PCB material.
The device has a 18650 battery and corrects several flaws in the original design we covered earlier. In particular, the new version uses a quiet fan and consumes less power. There is also a 3D-printed filter housing that uses cotton as a filter media.
Like the
previous version
, an ATTiny controls the motor speed. The board uses surface mount components, although we imagine you could reproduce the device with through-hole components if you were so inclined.
This would be an easy build for a soldering station. We wonder, too, if it would help with a smelly resin printer. We might add activated carbon to the filter and while the battery is handy, we imagine most places we want it, we’d be just as happy to have it plugged in.
We always like the use of PCBs as structural elements. After all, it is a cheap way to get a precision-machined piece of fiberglass. We’ve even seen the trick used for
wrenches
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529314",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T21:40:26",
"content": "As a gourmand and food hacker it is my fumes that are over engineered.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6529411",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,503.264677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/m-2-for-hackers-cards/ | M.2 For Hackers – Cards | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"laptops hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"M.2",
"m2"
] | Last time, I’ve explained everything you could want to know if you wanted to put an M.2 socket onto your board. Today, let’s build M.2 cards! There’s a myriad of M.2 sockets out there that are just asking for a special card to be inserted into it, and perhaps, it’s going to be your creation that fits.
Why Build Cards?
Laptops and other x86 mainboards often come with M.2 slots. Do you have a free B-key slot? You can put a RP2040 and bunch of sensors on a B-key PCB as an experimental platform carried safely inside your laptop. Would you like to do some more advanced FPGA experiments? Here’s
a miniscule FPGA board
that fits inside your laptop and lets you play with PCIe on this same laptop – the entire setup having a super low footprint. Are you looking for an extra PCIe link because you’re
reusing your laptop as a home server?
Again, your WiFi slot will provide you with that. Want to get some PCIe out of a SteamDeck? Building a M-key 2230 card seems to be your only hope!
There’s also plenty of space for simpler, less active devices. Do you only have a spare M-key slot, perhaps, an A or E key slot? You can
replace your WiFi adapter with an extra SSD
for extra storage, or perhaps, the other way around, put
a second WiFi card into your second SSD slot
for all your wardriving needs! Have you just found some unused SATA port traces on your mainboard? You can do what I did and create
a dual-port M.2 card
that splits one more SSD socket away from your power rail, that you can wire that extra SATA port to and put a SATA M.2 SSD in. Did you just find out that your chipset can give you entire four SATA ports on the M-key SSD slot? You can do what my friend did, and
build a card that breaks these SATA ports out!
Even outside x86, quite a few ARM SBCs will have the same problems – they have a M.2 socket with a specific key, say, B, that doesn’t fit some M.2 extender you just bought – well, turns out you can just make an adapter on your own. What about going beyond the standard? Of course, there’s
the SparkFun MicroMod ecosystem
I mentioned before. Would you like to develop a MicroMod CPU board that works with a myriad of other devices, or perhaps your own MicroMod sensor?
That’s an M.2 card right there;
and if you need to create your own ecosystem using M.2, nobody stops you either.
Of course, you could design cards with wholly different kinds of value added. For instance, you could be extracting cash out of audiophiles by
designing overpriced ‘audio-grade’ SSDs
with fancy electrolytic capacitors on them – wouldn’t want to let all that gold plating to go underappreciated, would you? And, if you’re an SBC maker using an M.2 socket for your expansion slot, when buyers say they want to use your SBC as a router, nobody can stop you from designing
an absolutely wacky and gigantic card
with four Ethernet sockets on it.
Outlining The Card
Don’t make your card too short…
M.2 cards are of standardized sizes – 3042 for 30mm wide 42mm tall, 2260 for 22mm wide 60mm tall; handy thing is, these will be your PCB’s exact dimensions. The screw notch is centered as opposed to mPCIe cards, and is usually a single M.2 screw. You’ll see people saying that the screw is responsible for having a ground connection – it isn’t, even if it might look like it, the ground pins on the receptacle itself are enough, though extra ground paths tend to be nice. In fact, there’s no requirement to have the notch area expose copper, either, it can just be a PCB cutout.
If designing a card for an existing device, it will either be 42 mm or 80 mm long. 30 mm is rare outside the SteamDeck and other low-footprint devices, and 60 mm is super obscure. 22 mm is width for everything except for WWAN slots, those are usually designed with 30 mm card width in mind. Placing all components on a single side of the card isn’t required, though, of course, it will make assembly easier for you. Keep in mind, though, some devices use flat or mid-mount socket, and tall components on the bottom might become a problem you wouldn’t have expected.
M.2 requires a 0.8 mm PCB. You don’t need to have it ENIG, but I recommend it. My understanding is that solder coating done with HASL would oxidise quicker and make worse contact with card sockets – that said, I never tried going with HASL. I am certain that HASL would work well enough for short-term-use prototypes, though! You might think that gold finger treatment is a must, whether with thicker gold on pads or beveled edge of the card – in my experience, neither are required, but thicker gold will increase plug-unplug cycles and a beveled edge will make the card a bit easier to insert. I’ve personally always went with non-beveled regular ENIG and had a great experience.
…or too long.
Of course, you’ll want a card edge footprint in KiCad. I’ve personally been using
a KiCad M.2 card edge footprint generator plugin,
initially created by @STOP-Pi on GitHub and refactored by me. However, the author deleted their GitHub account at some point, and the plugin no longer loads on KiCad6 – all the generated footprints were done in KiCad5. What’s worse is, between me making my changes and the deletion moment, they even updated the plugin code – and it might’ve been that I missed their KiCad 6 compatibility commits before deletion. Welp, pull requests most welcome! In the meantime, here are
the pre-generated A, B, E, M, A+E and B+M card edges that you can already use,
and [timonsku] has also
made an Eagle library
that you should be able to easily convert to KiCad.
Inside The Outline
You might be wondering whether you’d need a four-layer PCB, especially if you want to do PCIe – with four layers, 90 ohm impedance matching is actually achievable, while 0.8 mm distance to ground on two-layer makes it unrealistic. Here’s my experience – I’ve been doing small PCIe adapters for a while now, and they’ve worked quite well on 2-layer, which is a requirement for my specific
prototyping workflow.
Typically, M.2 cards account for a very short distance proportionally to the length of the entire PCIe link you’ll have, and deviations likely won’t prevent the PCIe link from working – it’s longer distances that
might have you experience problems
until you upgrade your cabling. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a higher error rate or the link being downgraded to a lower generation during training, but my bets are that your PCIe will function.
Need to stick with two layers? Do as much impedance matching as you can manage, treat your differential pairs with respect, and your prototypes will work fine – after all,
it has been said that PCIe works over wet string,
and we’ve witnessed confirmations one after another. My diffpairs are typically 0.35 mm / 0.15 mm, which is within cheap 2-layer process boundaries and results in around 130 ohm impedance, which is imperfect but better than nothing. For stuff like PCIe and SATA, M.2 typically keeps all high-speed diffpairs on the card’s top side, and this alone helps a bunch with aspects like an uninterrupted ground layer under your pairs. If your workflow and budget allows for four layers, go for it!
Add a ground fill plane keepout plane on the area where gold fingers go – otherwise, you might short out a bunch of important host-side pins when inserting the card. The standard also suggests a keepout plane on internal layers under the fingers, so keep that in mind if you go four-layer or beyond.
When stenciling, make sure that solder paste doesn’t get on the M.2 card fingers – clean them well before reflow if it does, because it’s way more painful to get them solder-free after. 0.8 mm PCBs are thin, and if you decide to hot air them, fasten them in a way that doesn’t stress them – I’ve had a few self-designed M.2 cards bend when held in a vise and blasted with a hot air gun that, perhaps, was a bit outside its calibration.
In terms of power, you only get 3.3 V, at an amp or two. This is both a blessing and a curse – it’s plenty of power, and you don’t typically need extra regulation since majority of chips are okay with 3.3 V, but there’s still some good uses for 5 V. Manufacturers that need to get 5 V on a M.2 card, tend to resort to cursed solutions – here’s
the story of a Dell adapter
creating a 2.5″ HDD socket out of M.2, that redefines one of the GND pins as a proprietary card detection pin and sends 5 V to a group of otherwise reserved pins if that pin is not GND-connected.
Research And Proceed
Designing a card for an existing device and expecting a certain interface? Make sure it’s actually there – as I mentioned, you can expect PCIe on A, E and M sockets, and USB 2.0 on A, E and B sockets, anything else is not a given. if Internet doesn’t help you here, looking for traces coming from the socket could work, but is not always foolproof because signals might be going through vias under the socket. That said, if you can spot traces or diffpair series capacitors, that will be a good indication – or perhaps, using a multimeter for an IC internal diode test on USB2 or single-ended signals like PERST / PEWAKE / CLKREQ would be in order. After all, quite a few laptops have B-key slots that only have USB 3.0 (ThinkPad T460s), or even only USB 2.0 (ThinkPad T470S), despite SATA and PCIe typically being available.
This concludes the “M.2 For Hackers” series. Some things about M.2 might look alien when you see it for the first time, but I hope I could clarify what’s going on, and how you can get in on the action. The M.2 ecosystem is not going away anytime soon, and it helps if we know just how to bend it to our will wherever needed! | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529272",
"author": "McErer",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T19:03:46",
"content": "Very interesting read (including a minor confusion in the paragraph ‘outlining the card’, I guess… -> width / length).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,503.326056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/an-rp2040-powered-pick-and-place/ | An RP2040 Powered Pick And Place | Matthew Carlson | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"circuit design",
"pick and place",
"PickAndPlace",
"rp2040"
] | Pick and place machines are a wonder to behold, as they delicately and accurately place part after part. Unfortunately, they have to have a similarly wondrous price tag. Luckily, they aren’t too difficult to make yourself as they share many properties of a 3D printer with some extra constraints. [Stargirl Flowers] released
Starfish, an open-source pick-and-place control board based around an RP2040
to help people make their own.
She purchased a
LumenPnP
, and the itch to tinker became too much to ignore. The STM32 on the stock controller also happened to get fried, leaving an obvious opening to create a custom board. [Stargirl] chose Trinamic TMC2209 motor controllers to drive the three stepper motors. The power circuit is impressively overbuilt with a 3A fuse, a TVS diode for shunting voltage spikes, a P-channel MOSFET for reverse polarity protection, a low-pass filter for AC ripple, and a large 100μF capacitor.
The RP2040 is a good choice since it’s easy to get and has plenty of digital I/O. USB connects the board to the outside work and includes ESD TVS diodes to protect the board when connecting and disconnecting the USB port. Motors for vacuums are controlled by a 74HC2G34 buffer that drives enable lines to two MOSFETs. Solenoids are similar but with a high current peak and a much smaller current to keep them open. The DRV120 fits the bill as it is a single-channel relay with current regulation. I2C vacuum sensors are the same ones on the Lumen motherboard; they just required an I2C multiplexer.
It’s an extremely well-documented project explaining why each part was chosen and why. If you want to create an RP2040 project that needs to last, we consider this a guiding star. It’s
all up on GitHub for you to take a look at
.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
RP2040 as part of a motor controller
, and we suspect we’ll see more. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529249",
"author": "Günther von Schreck",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T17:58:26",
"content": "Why is there a car type fuse on the brett?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6529449",
"author": "Thea Flowers",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,503.550795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/retrotechtacular-programming-by-card/ | Retrotechtacular: Programming By Card | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrocomputing",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"keypunch",
"punched cards"
] | The recent Supercon 6 badge, if you haven’t seen it, was an old-fashioned type computer with a blinky light front panel. It was reminiscent of an Altair 8800, a PDP-11, or DG Nova. However, even back in the day, only a few people really programmed a computer with switches. Typically, you might use the switches to toggle in a first-level bootloader that would then load a better bootloader from some kind of storage like magnetic or paper tape. Most people didn’t really use the switches.
What most people did do, however, was punch cards. Technically, Hollerith cards, although we mostly just called them cards, punched cards, or IBM cards. There were a lot of different machines you could use to punch cards, but none were as popular, I would guess, as the IBM 029. Certainly, the models in the series were overwhelmingly what people used to punch cards.
For the uninitiated, a card was about the size of an old-fashioned dollar bill — the ones in style when Herman Hollerith invented them. The card was made of material not quite as thick as a standard file folder and was divided into 80 columns and 12 rows. Later cards had more columns, but those never really caught on to the same scale as the classic 80-column card.
To punch a number on the card, a machine made a hole in one of the bottom 10 columns. So a hole in the “1” row was a 1 and a hole in the “4” row was a 4. The original cards used round holes and 45 columns, but an IBM inventor named Lake realized that narrow square holes could pack in extra data back in 1928. The 11th and 12th row, and sometimes the “0” row, were used to denote special characters or, sometimes, the signs of numbers.
A deck with a “sorting stripe” by ArnoldReinhold, CC-BY-SA-3.0
Honestly, you could interpret a card however you liked, but in practice, there were a few common schemes. However, it wasn’t unknown to have cards punched in binary where each hole was a 1 or a 0 and each column make up a binary number. On top of character encoding, there were other format conventions, such as having checksums or line numbers in certain columns of the card. Line numbers, in particular, were good because it allowed you to sort a deck after it was dropped and the order scrambled. Another common trick was to draw a diagonal marker line across the edge of a deck of cards so you could quickly spot if one or more were out of order.
Blank cards were often used as a “sentinel” or what we would call today an “end of file” marker. However, some programs would look for an impossible value like -9999999, for example.
Reading
A card reader was relatively simple. Most readers used a series of wire brushes that the card moved under. Where there was a hole, the brush could contact a metal plate under the card and complete a circuit. If this sounds not super reliable, that’s because it wasn’t.
The old admonition “do not fold, spindle, or mutilate” was a request for users not to make the cards jam the machines or make new holes in them. A spindle, if you don’t remember, was a probably non-OSHA-compliant spike on your desk that you pushed papers on to hold them in place. Not a great strategy for a punched card.
In fact, a common prank was to punch every column in a card so it would become flimsy and jam the reader, which the operator, of course, was sure not to appreciate. These were sometimes called “lace” cards because they were delicate like lacework.
Writing
So how do you punch a card? Although there were some schemes for manually punching precut cards, those were mostly used for niche applications like voting, small schools with no equipment, or inventory control. For serious use, you used a keypunch. You can see an instructional University of Michigan video from 1967 on the operation of the 029 below.
An 029 program drum
There were three stations in the 029: The rightmost held a card waiting to be punched. The center slot was the card you were currently punching. The leftmost was the card you had just punched (usually). Because the machine had the left card where it could be read, you could duplicate columns from it to the card you were working on. This was important for making corrections. You could copy the previous card up to the point of the error, correct it, and then copy the remaining punches.
The 029 could do a lot of tricks, including punch a card that would set special options for the machine itself. You’d take the card and wrap it around a drum that would control the operation of the machine. For example, you could define fields or set the machine to automatically skip or duplicate columns. Another common operation was to automatically set the letter or figures shift for certain fields.
If you didn’t get enough in the first video, part two shows advanced usage. For an electromechanical device made in the 1960s, this was a sophisticated piece of hardware.
Interpreting
Modern keypunches would print text along the top edge so you could look at it and read it. If you had cards that were not interpreted, you could put it through a machine to do the printing. For example, most card output from a program didn’t have interpretation prints on it.
To help you read a card, many of them had guides printed on them. A basic card just had rows and columns printed. But special cards would show dedicated fields for line numbers or other data specific for programs. It was also common to see cards with company or school logos.
Your Own Cards
Custom card image from the virtual keypunch
Want to make your own cards? Well, the best way would be to build your own hardware. The second best would be to pick up some old gear surplus and restore it —
the manuals
are available. But most of us will settle for trying it online. Try making a card with the
virtual keypunch
. Want to read it back?
You can do that
, too.
We do miss some of the old tech, but we don’t miss cards, really. There were many variations. The 96-column card was used with the IBM System 3. There were also 40-column hand-punched cards, 90-column UNIVAC cards, and even 130-column Powers-Samas cards. Aperture format cards were normal cards with a hole to accept a small piece of microfilm to hold things like graphics.
Even
IBM computers
that thought they were using cards weren’t at the end. A typical IBM computer was taking “virtual card decks” from magnetic tape or floppy before cards finally died. Can an
Arduino read cards
? Yes, yes it can. Punched cards famously were developed not for computers, but for looms. They were also used much later for
tube testers
.
Title graphic from
Columbia University
. | 67 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530156",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T18:22:12",
"content": "Very interesting stuff here !I remember an uncle telling me stories about his young time when he went to Switzerland from France on a regular basis with a bunch of punch-cards with him (he was a researcher at... | 1,760,372,503.500876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/detecting-radiation-for-fun-and-profit/ | Detecting Radiation For Fun And Profit | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"geiger counter",
"radiation",
"teardown"
] | It used to be that every well-stocked doomsday bunker had a Geiger counter. These days, you don’t have to have a big tube-based meter. You can inexpensively get a compact digital instrument to handle your radiation detection needs. [DiodeGoneWild]
reviews and tears down such a unit from FNIRSI
. The case looks like several other similar instruments we’ve seen lately, so presumably, someone is mass-producing these handheld meter cases. You can see the video, below. The meter reads the absolute radioactivity and can also measure cumulative exposure.
After measuring a few common radioactive items, we get to the teardown. Inside, of course, is an ordinary tube. A few screws reveal a typical rechargeable battery, a fairly simple PCB with a microcontroller and battery backup for the real-time clock. A lot of the board is involved in multiplying voltage up to the several hundred volts required for the Geiger tube.
The other side of the PCB has only buttons, a vibration motor, and, of course, the LCD. We don’t know how you might test the relative accuracy other than comparing it to a known-good meter. The bare tube was, of course, more sensitive without the plastic cover, but that could be calibrated out, too.
A Geiger counter
doesn’t have to have a lot of parts
. Either way,
a surprising number of things
will set them off. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530132",
"author": "Vic",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T17:31:56",
"content": "I see neither a single radiation-hardened component on this PCB, nor lead foil shielding. Exposed to real nuclear fallout, this thing will last mere minutes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,503.605023 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/chinese-chips-are-being-artificially-slowed-to-dodge-us-export-regulations/ | Chinese Chips Are Being Artificially Slowed To Dodge US Export Regulations | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News"
] | [
"china",
"chip",
"chip foundry",
"fabless",
"fabless semiconductor company",
"silicon foundry",
"Tech",
"technology",
"tsmc"
] | Once upon a time, countries protected their domestic industries with tariffs on imports. This gave the home side a price advantage over companies operating overseas, but the practice has somewhat fallen out of fashion in the past few decades.
These days, governments are altogether more creative, using fancy export controls to protect their interests. To that end, the United States enacted an export restriction on high-powered computing devices. In response,
Chinese designers are attempting to artificially slow their hardware to dodge these rules.
I Got New Rules, I Count ‘Em
Companies like NVIDIA and AMD have had to rework certain products to comply with US regulations against Chinese exports. The A100 datacenter GPU was banned from export, so NVIDIA developed the lower-specced A800 instead. Credit: NVIDIA Press Site
The new export rules come as the US government grapples with the ascendance of China’s military, in both size and technological sophistication.
The regulations
restrict the export of advanced integrated circuits, but the regulations don’t stop there. The tooling, software, and other manufacturing equipment required to fabricate such hardware is also subject to the rules. The often-stated aim is to slow or halt the development of advanced military devices that could be used by the Chinese government or sold on to other countries. Alternatively, it could be painted as an attempt to safeguard the advantage of existing players in the semiconductor market.
Chips capable of an “aggregate bidirectional transfer rate over all inputs and outputs” exceeding 600 GB/s, not counting to volatile memory, may not be exported or re-exported to China, under the new rules. Advanced manufacturing tools used for electroplating, chemical vapor deposition, and other chip-production processes are similarly banned from export. Just to cover all bases, software packages for the design, manufacturing, or use of these chips or associated hardware is also subject to the sanctions. Companies can apply for a license to export such material to China, however, as with most such restrictions, there is a presumption that such licenses will be denied. Other restrictions apply to chips exceeding certain machine learning performance limits and powerful supercomputers.
Additionally, regarding exports of items not subject to the above restrictions, “US persons” must have a license if the items will be used in the “development” or “production” of ICs in China meeting certain criteria. This includes chips that use a non-planar architecture, or are made at a technology node of 14 nm or less, as well as NAND memory with 128 or more layers, and DRAM made at a node of 18 nm or less. The category of “US persons” is broad, too, including US citizens, permanent residents, and companies and legal entities established in the US, even when operating abroad.
Dodging the Issue
Chinese tech giant Alibaba and smaller startup Biren Technology have since found themselves
struggling with the restrictions.
Along with a variety of lesser-known Chinese chip firms, they’ve invested heavily in designing new chips for high-powered computing applications. These include new chips to rival GPUs from companies like Nvidia and AMD, along with processors for machine learning applications.
But Alibaba and Biren are fabless, outsourcing the actual production step. Many of these firms have their designs produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), considered a world-leading silicon foundry.
Some of the latest designs from these companies are in contravention of the new export rules, in terms of data rates or other factors. While they’re slated for production in Taiwan, the US export regulations nonetheless have an effect. That’s due to the fact that the vast majority of semiconductor fabs around the world rely on US-made equipment and software. If foreign fabs started shipping such designs to China, they would quickly be cut off from US equipment and software necessary to the facility’s work. China is spinning up its own semiconductor production facilities, but they’re presently years or decades behind the cutting-edge and thus can’t produce such advanced designs.
Biren Technology has been touting its new datacenter GPUs as outperforming NVIDIA’s A100 offering. Given the latter is no longer legal to export to China, having a homegrown replacement is key. Credit: Biren Tech News Site
Biren Technology is at risk of running over the limit with its
BR100 GPU
, which is intended for machine learning applications. Early statements quoted a figure of 640 GB/s, in excess of the stated limit. Since then, the company’s website has listed the card’s bandwith at various figures from
512 GB/s
to
448 GB/s.
According to some researchers, the company may be disabling parts of the BR100 chip to slide past the limit, while potentially allowing it to be re-enabled later.
Alibaba’s own efforts are facing similar troubles. The company has been working on advanced machine-learning chips for AI work at TSMC’s 5 nm technology node. Reportedly, the team is exploring reworking the designs to avoid issues with the regulations, but this is a costly exercise that would take many months and millions of dollars.
Engineers have complained that the rules aren’t clear cut, as there are various ways to calculate the bidirectional transfer rate. Regardless, many are already working to reduce processor speeds to skirt by the rules. The key is remaining low-key, according to one source speaking to
Ars Technica.
Some companies have had press materials out in public for chips with transfer rates in excess of the regulations, alerting authorities to monitor shipments of such parts. In cases where a chip’s capabilities aren’t yet widely known, though, engineers have more potential to work with the fab to find a redesign that could bypass the regulations.
Part of a Trend
It’s not the first time that US export regulations have tried to clip the wings of Chinese tech firms. Huawei’s semiconductor arm, HiSilicon, fell afoul of a previous set of export rules
in 2019
. Initial sanctions were placed on the company due to backdoors allgedly found in Huawei’s communications equipment. These rules cut off Huawei’s access to software and hardware from companies like Intel, Google, and Qualcomm. However, Huawei persevered with its own chips and apps, with Chinese buyers propping up the company’s sales as international business faltered. HiSilicon quickly became the number one supplier of smartphone chipsets in China.
From there, the US government went up the chain, making it illegal to supply HiSilicon with equipment for its semiconductor fabs. That was the death knell
for the company’s flagship smartphone chipsets
, and it was quickly overtaken by other companies in the market.
Access to the world’s best silicon fabs is key to building high-performance chips. Presently, the US holds the keys to those, thanks to a monopoly on the supply of cutting-edge manufacturing equipment and design software. China will persevere on spinning up its own capacity, in much the same way as it has pursued the production of
its own jet engines
and other technologies. However, in much the same way, that’s a long, slow road to walk, and a costly one to boot.
Banner image: “
Silicon Wafer
” by Enrique Jiménez | 68 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530082",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T15:43:22",
"content": "Restricting AI-capable technology is good, not because of trying to keep ahead of Chinese tech, but because China is using it to violate human rights of their population, and to oppress minority people groups... | 1,760,372,503.713194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/moved-off-twitter-make-your-esp32-toot/ | Moved Off Twitter? Make Your ESP32 Toot | Arya Voronova | [
"internet hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"c++",
"ESP32",
"mastodon",
"platform.io",
"platformio",
"toot",
"twitter"
] | Since Twitter was officially taken over by Elon Musk a few days ago, there’s been significant staff cuts, a stream of questionable decisions, and uncertainty about the social media platform’s future. So it’s little surprise that a notable number of people, those in the tech and hacker scenes in particular, have decided to move over to (or at least bridge their accounts with) the distributed and open source Mastodon service.
Of course, the hacks would follow closely, and [Toby] shares a simple ESP32-based
Mastodon client library
for us to start with. Instead of “tweets”, messages on Mastodon instances are called “toots”, in line with the platform’s mammoth-like mascot. The library, called Luyba, is able to send toots and includes a demo firmware. Built using C++ and with support for Platform.IO, it should fit into quite a few projects out there, letting you easily send toots to whichever instance you find your home, as
the library-aided demo toot shows.
What could you do with such a library on your MCU? Turns out, quite a few fun things – a
home automation interface
, a
critter trap
, an online
BBC Basic interpreter
, or, given image support, a camera that
tweets whatever it’s pointed at
. There’s quite a bit of fun hackers can have given a micro-blogging service API access and a bit of code that works with it. That said, for all the good that Twitter brought us over the years, there’s a lot that Mastodon can easily do better, between
easily game-able “Trending” sidebar
,
bias found in auto-cropping algorithms
and
disarrayed internal security policies. | 75 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6530008",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T12:28:48",
"content": "What about hosting all your text tweets on an ESP32?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6530017",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,504.015245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/clever-control-loop-makes-this-spinning-drone-fault-tolerant/ | Clever Control Loop Makes This Spinning Drone Fault-Tolerant | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"control",
"drone",
"multicopter",
"pitch",
"Roll",
"thrust",
"yaw"
] | Most multi-rotor aircraft are about as aerodynamic as a brick. Unless all its motors are turning and the control electronics are doing their thing, most UAVs are quickly destined to become UGVs, and generally in spectacular fashion. But by switching up things a bit, it’s possible to make
a multi-rotor drone that keeps on flying even without two-thirds of its motors running
.
We’ve been keeping a close eye on [Nick Rehm]’s cool
spinning drone project
, which basically eschews a rigid airframe for a set of three airfoils joined to a central hub. The collective pitch of the blades can be controlled via a servo in the hub, and the whole thing can be made to rotate and provide lift thanks to the thrust of tip-mounted motors and props. We’ve seen [Nick] manage to get this contraption airborne, and hovering is pretty straightforward. The video below covers the next step: getting pitch, roll, and yaw control over the spinning blades of doom.
The problem isn’t trivial. First off, [Nick] had to decide what the front of a spinning aircraft even means. Through the clever uses of LED strips mounted to the airfoils and some POV magic, he was able to visually indicate a reference axis. From there he was able to come up with a scheme to vary the power to each motor as it moves relative to the reference axis, modulating it in either a sine or cosine function to achieve roll and pitch control. This basically imitates the cyclic pitch control of a classic helicopter — a sort of virtual swashplate.
The results of all this are impressive, if a bit terrifying. [Nick] clearly has control of the aircraft even though it’s spinning at 250 RPM, but even cooler is the bit where he kills first one then two motors. It struggles, but it’s still controllable enough for a bumpy but safe landing. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529958",
"author": "Stuart Longland",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T10:06:32",
"content": "Unmanned G??? Vehicle?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6529967",
"author": "Paul F",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T10:24:20",
... | 1,760,372,503.854821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/z80-gets-new-os/ | Z80 Gets New OS | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"z80"
] | If you have a soft spot for a Z80 computer but want a new operating system experience, try
Zeal
. You can watch a demo of the open-source OS in the video below.
As you might expect, the whole system is written in Z80 assembly language. The features you expect are there: files, directories, device drivers, a clock, and even memory banking to support up to 16M of memory. The work isn’t totally done, nor is the initial target computer — Zeal — but it looks like a great piece of work so far and will be of interest to anyone who has a Z80.
You can also try it in
emulation mode
in your browser if you don’t have a Z80 CPU handy. The author wanted a simple OS that wasn’t multithreaded and could live in ROM. The kernel takes about 6K of ROM and 1K of RAM, depending on the configuration. The system calls and general operation will remind you of Linux.
There is a large list of things to do, so if you have a mind to pitch in, there’s no shortage of ideas to work on. Does the world need another Z80 OS? For that matter, does the world need any more Z80 systems? We don’t know about the world, but
we can always use them
. They don’t even
have to cost very much
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529970",
"author": "Sanouage",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T10:34:19",
"content": "Very interesting and ambitious. Not only it has the Zeal 8-bit OS, but also the creator is making Z80 computer. I think the world still needs the Z80, especially in IT education. Why not teaching comput... | 1,760,372,503.910173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/08/three-norths-align-and-its-not-even-up-north/ | Three Norths Align, And It’s Not Even Up North | Jenny List | [
"Science"
] | [
"magnetic north",
"mapping",
"north"
] | Sometimes here at Hackaday we bring you stories from slightly outside our world of tech, because they have an interesting angle. Maybe they relate to science or astronomy, or
in the case of the UK’s Ordnance Survey explaining how Britain’s three Norths will align
, geography.
Some of you may know that the British monarch has two birthdays, but three Norths, what on earth is going on? You’ll guess that two of them are true North, pointing to the North Pole, and magnetic North, pointing to the Earth’s north magnetic field, but how about the third? It’s grid North — the north of the country’s mapping grid system in which the curved surface is projected onto a flat sheet.
It aligns with true North at 2 degrees West of Greenwich, and the news is that for the first time ever due to movement of the magnetic North Pole, the three different Norths will align at a point in the south of England. Magnetic North has been on the move at some pace over the last few decades, from a position somewhere in the Canadian Arctic islands northwards, and it so happens that for Brits its direction is briefly aligned with our view of the Pole. The Ordnance Survey story is of some interest, but for a wealth of information
it’s worth consulting NASA
. Take a look at the video below the break.
Header image: ArnoldReinhold,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529916",
"author": "loonquawl",
"timestamp": "2022-11-09T07:18:17",
"content": "Magnetic North (while in flux over time) is at any specific time the direction to the magnetic North Pole, True North is not in flux over time, it is simply the direction to the geographic north pole, b... | 1,760,372,504.398238 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/07/dosimetry-measuring-radiation/ | Dosimetry: Measuring Radiation | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"dosage",
"measurement",
"radiation"
] | Thanks to stints as an X-ray technician in my early 20s followed by work in various biology labs into my early 40s, I’ve been classified as an “occupationally exposed worker” with regard to ionizing radiation for a lot of my life. And while the jobs I’ve done under that umbrella have been vastly different, they’ve all had some common ground. One is the required annual radiation safety training classes. Since the physics never changed and the regulations rarely did, these sessions would inevitably bore everyone to tears, which was a pity because it always felt like something I should be paying very close attention to, like the safety briefings flight attendants give but everyone ignores.
The other thing in common was the need to keep track of how much radiation my colleagues and I were exposed to. Aside from the obvious health and safety implications for us personally, there were legal and regulatory considerations for the various institutions involved, which explained the ritual of finding your name on a printout and signing off on the dose measured by your dosimeter for the month.
Dosimetry has come a long way since I was actively considered occupationally exposed, and even further from the times when very little was known about the effects of radiation on living tissue. What the early pioneers of radiochemistry learned about the dangers of exposure was hard-won indeed, but gave us the insights needed to develop dosimetric methods and tools that make working with radiation far safer than it ever was.
Rads and Rems, Sieverts and Grays
While there are a lot of tools for measuring the dose of radiation a person receives, there needs to be some way to put that data into a meaningful biological context. To that end, a whole ecosystem of measurement systems exists, all of which boil down to some basic principles of physics and biology.
The first principle is that sources of radiation are all capable of imparting kinetic energy into tissues, either in the form of ionized particles (alpha and beta radiation) or electromagnetic waves (gamma radiation and X-rays). Different types of radiation have different impacts on tissue, and those differences need to be taken into account when calculating dose, through weighting factors that reflect the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of the radiation. This is basically a measure of how much punch the radiation packs. For example, alpha particles, which are relatively massive helium nuclei, are weighted 20 times higher than beta, gamma, or X-rays.
The second principle behind dosimetry is biological in nature, and reflects the fact that in almost all cases, whatever deleterious effects of radiation experienced by an organism are caused by interactions with its DNA. There are certainly other effects, like ionization in the cytoplasm of cells and production of free radicals, but by and large, the big problems with radiation happen as a result of it crashing into DNA, particularly while it’s in the act of replicating itself. That’s why the rapidly dividing cells in the blood-forming organs (bone marrow mostly), the linings of the digestive system, and the gonads are particularly sensitive to radiation.
Effective dose takes the type of radiation and the biological sensitivity of various organs into account. Source:
EPA
The need to take all these factors and more into account has resulted in a host of dosimetric measurement systems, with units crafted for different applications. In the SI system, the basic unit of
absorbed dose
is the gray (Gy), which is one joule per kilogram of matter. The
equivalent dose
, which takes into account the RBE of the radiation, is measured in sieverts (Sv), which is just the absorbed dose in joules per kilogram multiplied by the dimensionless weighting factor. Similarly, the
effective dose
is also expressed in sieverts, and is the effective dose multiplied by another dimensionless factor based on the target tissue’s sensitivity to radiation. To add to the complexity, non-SI units (rads for absorbed dose, rems for equivalent and effective dose) are still in wide use, and many dosimeters are still calibrated in these units.
Foggy Film
Although ad hoc methods of recording the dose received by occupationally exposed radiation workers go back well into the early years of radiochemistry, the first attempt to create a systematic method of monitoring radiation workers is credited to E.O. Wollan, a physicist who worked with the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. As the part of the Manhattan Project that was looking into the radiochemistry of plutonium, Wollan recognized the need for accurately monitoring exposures, and came up with the first film badge dosimeter in 1942. His device was simple: a lightproof envelope containing a strip of photographic film slipped into an aluminum holder. Wollan also included a filter made of cadmium, to even out the film’s response to different kinds of radiation. Developing the film would show the degree to which radiation had fogged it, which was easily read with an optical densitometer.
Film badge dosimeters. Source:
Henry Grabowy
, Copyrighted free use.
Given their ease of use, low cost, high sensitivity, and compact size, film badge dosimeters were the de facto standard until relatively recently. Modern versions were more likely to be made from plastic than Dr. Wollan’s aluminum, but they still incorporated a variety of metals to act as filters. Developing film badges and even reading them eventually became automated processes, and systems were developed that could handle millions of badges every month.
One disadvantage of film badge dosimeters is that they provide no feedback on the dose received until after they’ve been worn for a month and developed. While that’s probably fine in most medical and academic settings, where the radiation exposure is expected to be generally low, some dosimeters are designed to provide ongoing readings for cases where the environment is a bit more energetic. One design, the self-indicating pocket dosimeter, dates all the way back to 1937. The SIPD generally takes the form of a tube about the size of a pen and contains a sealed air-filled chamber at one end. Inside the chamber is an electroscope, consisting of a flexible quartz fiber and a fixed electrode, and a microscope with a calibrated reticle. When a high voltage is applied to the electrode, an electrostatic field bends the quartz fiber toward the zero mark on the reticle; as ionizing radiation passes through the chamber, charges are slowly knocked off the electrode, allowing it to bend further up the reticle scale. Wearers could easily keep track of dose by looking through the microscope before charging the chamber back up with a battery-powered portable charger.
A quartz fiber dosimeter. It’s basically a small electroscope that gets charged by a portable HV supply; radiation passing through the chamber knocks out charge and deflects the fiber, which is read on a reticle through a small microscope.
Bright yellow SPIDs bearing the familiar red, white, and blue Civil Defense logo became very popular during the Cold War in the United States. Millions of the devices were made, some calibrated with scales that would only be useful only in catastrophically high radiation environments. SPIDs are extremely robust devices and most of them still work after many decades, and even the chargers, with their very simple electronics, can still be found in working order.
Solid(er) State
Film badges and quartz-fiber SPIDs were handy, but technology marches on, and cheaper, better methods for dosimetry have largely supplanted them. Thermoluminescent Dosimetry (TLD) has become a very popular method for keeping track of exposure. It relies on the tendency of certain materials to “trap” electrons excited by high-energy photons passing through them. These trapped electrons, which accumulate in the crystal matrix in proportion to the amount of radiation that has passed through it, can be released to their ground state simply by applying some heat. The light released is picked up by a photodetector and used to calculate the dose received.
TLDs for most commercial dosimetric applications are based on crystals of lithium fluoride doped with a small amount of manganese or magnesium, which creates electron traps. TLD crystals can be small enough to build into a plastic ring, to monitor the dose received by the extremities while handling radioisotopes, for example. A related method, known as optically stimulated luminescence (OLS), uses a beryllium oxide ceramic as the trapping material; electrons are released from the trap using a laser tuned to a specific frequency and a photodetector reads the emitted light.
An electronic personal dosimeter (EPD) using a PIN diode sensor. Source: by
Rama
, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR.
Like film badges, TLD and OSL provide no real-time feedback to the wearer on dosage. Luckily, compact electronic personal dosimeters are now in wide use. Most EPDs use the humble PIN diode as a sensor. Much in the same way as PIN diodes are sensitive to light when reverse-biased thanks to their large, undoped intrinsic region — the “I” in PIN — EPDs use reverse-biased PIN diodes to count photons of ionizing radiation that pass through them. Charge carriers are created when a photon hits the intrinsic layer, resulting in a small current that can be amplified. A microcontroller totals up counts and displays the calculated equivalent dose; most EPDs have options to sound an alarm if setpoints are reached, too.
Another interesting radiation sensor, although one used more for in vivo dosimetry during radiation therapy than for personal dosimetry, is the MOSFET, which has similar properties as the materials used in TLDs. The area of a MOSFET that’s sensitive to ionizing radiation is the silicon dioxide layer that separates the gate from the source and the drain. When radiation travels through the MOSFET, electron-hole pairs are created in the SiO
2
layer. The holes quickly migrate to the interface between the SiO
2
and the N-type silicon, where they gradually increase the threshold voltage of the transistor. The more radiation it has received, the harder it’ll be to turn on the MOSFET; the total dose can be calculated by measuring this change.
The interesting thing about MOSFET dosimeters is that the accumulated damage in the transistor serves as a permanent record of the dose received. The disadvantage is that the accumulated damage to the MOSFET eventually makes it unusable as a sensor. The practical limit is an absorbed dose of about 100 Gy, which is more than three times the whole-body absorbed dose that’s 100% lethal within 48 hours. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529220",
"author": "Richard Price",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T17:00:50",
"content": "In geotechnical engineering, site field engineer technicians use a Troxler device to check compaction of soil during construction. All technicians are required to wear a dosimetry badge during opera... | 1,760,372,504.074674 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/06/rope-core-drum-machine/ | Rope Core Drum Machine | Jonathan Bennett | [
"hardware",
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Core rope memory",
"modular synth",
"sequencer"
] | One of our favorite musical hackers, [Look Mum No Computer] is
getting dangerously close to building a computer
. His quest was to create a unique drum machine, inspired by
a Soviet auto-dialer that used rope core memory for number storage
. Rope memory is the read-only sibling to magnetic core memory, the memory technology used to build some beloved computers back in the 60s and early 70s. Rope core isn’t programmed by magnetizing the ceramic donuts, but by weaving a wire through them. And when [Look Mum] saw the auto-dialer using the technology for a user-programmable interface, naturally, he just had to build a synth sequencer.
The basic technology is to monitor the ferrite ring using a primary winding connected to a comparator. Then run the signal wire through some of the rings, and use a 555 to send an oscillating signal through it. The individual bits, AKA ferrite rings, pick up the signal and trigger the comparator. (Using transformers as bits, what fun!) So for a working sequencer, each ferrite ring controls an instrument. Ring 1 is a kick drum, ring 2 is a snare, etc. Then each wire is a different step, and they get powered sequentially. Wire the bit outputs to your instruments, and then weave your beats. It’s already the most unique sequencer we’ve ever seen, but there’s more.
Since he used really big ferrite cores, there was plenty of room to take beat submissions from his community, so there’s eight different beats “programmed” into this sequencer. And to switch between them? Looks like [Look Mum] is using a step-by-step module from the old phone system. Dial-a-beat! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529079",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T06:54:03",
"content": "I admire this guy’s energy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6529165",
"author": "Titchard",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T12:51:46",
... | 1,760,372,504.232018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/06/recycled-chairs-bring-the-subway-to-your-living-room/ | Recycled Chairs Bring The Subway To Your Living Room | Navarre Bartz | [
"home hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boston",
"mbta",
"mit",
"MIT Hobby Shop",
"public transit",
"recycled chair",
"recycled furniture",
"Red Line",
"subway"
] | Public transit seats have a rough life. Enduring a number of wear cycles that would make your sofa weep, they take a beating and have to keep looking presentable. When trains and buses are retired, where do the old seats go? A team from the MIT Hobby Shop investigated what was happening to the seats from retiring MBTA Red Line cars and
recycled them into stylish chairs
.
After some sleuthing and many emails, the MBTA relinquished a number of old subway seats to the team. Since the subway seats didn’t have legs, wood from old church pews was used to create bases. It took one pew end support to create each set of legs, which were cut out on a bandsaw. The old dark stain was sanded off, and the bases were finished with three coats of gel topcoat, letting the natural beauty of the old oak shine through.
We love seeing old things given new life here at Hackaday. If you want to see some more recycled furniture, check out this
tire table
, this
upcycled jeans chair
, or these
best practices for making box forts
. | 38 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6529031",
"author": "SB5",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T03:08:59",
"content": "As someone who has spent a long time on the Red Line, I really don’t want to spend any more time on those uncomfortable seats.But I have to ask, do these seats come with the smells of an actual Red Line train... | 1,760,372,504.359183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/06/hackaday-links-november-6-2022/ | Hackaday Links: November 6, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"AirTag",
"chip shortage",
"dust",
"engine simulator",
"hackaday links",
"InSight",
"Lufthansa",
"mars",
"physics engine",
"Pi",
"semiconductor"
] | Remember the chip shortage? We sure do, mainly because as far as we can tell, it’s still going on, at least judging by the fact that you can’t get a Raspberry Pi for love or money. But that must just be noise, because according to
a report in the Straits Times
, the chip shortage is not only over, it’s reversed course enough that there’s now a glut of semiconductors out there. The article claims that the root cause of this is slowing demand for products like smartphones, an industry that’s seeing wave after wave of orders to semiconductor manufacturers like TSMC canceled. Chips for PCs are apparently in abundance now too, as the spasm of panic buying machine for remote working during the pandemic winds down. Automakers are still feeling the pinch, though, so much so that
Toyota is now shipping only one smart key
with new cars, instead of the usual two. So there seems to be some way to go before balance is restored to the market, but whatever — just call us when Amazon no longer has to offer
financing on an 8 GB Pi
.
The long, sad farewell to the Mars InSight lander continued this week as NASA released
the spacecraft’s final selfie
. Once you look at the picture, the eventual cause of death for the mission is pretty clear — or rather, really dusty. The whole vehicle is absolutely caked in dust, and with its twin 2-meter diameter solar panels obscured, it’s only a matter of time before the batteries can’t be charged anymore. InSight’s team is preparing for the end by making sure every last bit of data is gathered and downlinked, even while they massage the power management systems to keep the lander’s seismometer running as long as possible. The team is even knocking down the mockup lander ForeSight, which was kept on a model Martian surface and used to plan moves of the robotic arm before sending instructions up to InSight.
We’ve been following Lufthansa’s
off-again
,
on-again
relationship with Apple AirTags with some amusement, mainly because it seems way more likely that the airline is trying to manage perceptions of its luggage handling prowess rather than mitigate the risk of a CR2032 coin cell bringing down a flight. And while Lufthansa finally relented, it seems that other airlines are now interested in alienating their customers too.
Air New Zealand just banned AirTags in checked baggage
, although curiously their version of the TSA hasn’t been told to remove any of the devices it finds. And just to give you an idea of why airlines might actually be doing this, check out
this story
about some AirTag-equipped camera equipment that was allegedly stolen from checked baggage and tracked to a private residence in Alaska.
And finally, we featured
a really cool engine simulator
a while back that really seems to have caught people’s imagination. That’s understandable, because as cursed as the internal combustion engine may be, there’s no denying that they can sound really, really awesome, and the simulator was geared to reproducing the sound of various engines based solely on their fluid dynamics. We have to admit to not really grokking the whole thing when it first came out, mainly because it was just too much fun to play with the simulation; we spent way too much time trying to get it to reproduce the chirp of the four-cylinder, air-cooled, horizontally-opposed Volkswagen engines that were our introduction to automotive mechanics back in the day. But now, the simulator’s author, Ange Yaghi, has dropped a follow-up video going into quite some detail on how the simulation works. It’s worth watching, even if just to see his homebrew physics engine going through its paces. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6528975",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-11-07T00:12:55",
"content": "Yeah, there is just too much weight/cost to include a brush and motor to sweep dust off Martian solar panels. It’s much cheaper to end the mission and ask Congress to fund the... | 1,760,372,504.288223 |
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