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https://hackaday.com/2025/01/06/turns-out-humans-are-terrible-at-intuiting-knot-strength/ | Turns Out Humans Are Terrible At Intuiting Knot Strength | Donald Papp | [
"Science"
] | [
"illusion",
"knots",
"physics"
] | We are deeply intuitively familiar with our everyday physical world, so it was perhaps a bit of a surprise when researchers discovered a blind spot in our intuitive physical reasoning: it seems
humans are oddly terrible at judging knot strength
.
One example is the reef knot (top) vs. the grief knot (bottom). One is considerably stronger than the other.
What does this mean, exactly? According to researchers, people were consistently unable to tell when presented with different knots in simple applications and asked which knot was stronger or weaker. This failure isn’t because people couldn’t see the knots clearly, either. Each knot’s structure and topology was made abundantly clear (participants were able to match knots to their schematics accurately) so it’s not a failure to grasp the knot’s structure, it’s just judging a knot’s relative
strength
that seems to float around in some kind of blind spot.
Check out
the research paper
for all the details on how things were conducted; it really does seem that a clear understanding of a knot’s structure does not translate to being able to easily intuit which knot will fail first, even when the difference is a considerable one. There’s a video demonstration and
an online version of the experiments
if you’d like to try your hand at it.
It’s always interesting to discover more about our own blind spots, in part because exploiting them can result in
nifty and delightful sensory illusions
. We wonder if
robots are any better with knots
than humans? | 36 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079673",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2025-01-06T12:08:41",
"content": "The reef knot is what you want. There are two mistakes you can do which will give you either a thief knot or a granny knot.If you combine both mistakes you’ll get a grief knot.If your shoelaces keep coming... | 1,760,371,677.985488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/06/mechanical-calculator-finds-derivitives/ | Mechanical Calculator Finds Derivatives | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"calculus",
"derivimeter",
"derivitive",
"slide rule"
] | We like mechanical calculators like slide rules, but we have to admit that we had not heard of the
Ott Derivimeter
that [Chris Staecker] shows us in a recent video. As the name implies, the derivimeter finds the derivative of a function. To do that, you have to plot the function on a piece of paper that the meter can measure.
If you forgot calculus or skipped it altogether, the derivative is the rate of change. If you plot, say, your car’s speed vs time, the parts where you accelerate or decelerate will have a larger derivative (either positive or negative, in the decelerate case). If you hold a steady speed, the derivative will be zero.
To use the derivimeter, you sight the curve through the center glass and twist the device so the cursor, which is a lens and mirror system that lets you precisely find a tangent line. You can read the angle and find the true derivative using a table of tangents.
[Chris] has another derivimeter from Gerber. However, he found a different type of derivimeter that uses a prism, and he sure would like to find one of those for his collection.
Calculus is actually useful and not as hard as people think if you get the
right explanations
. This isn’t exactly a
slide rule
, but since it is a mechanical math device, we think it counts anyway. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079661",
"author": "Jervais",
"timestamp": "2025-01-06T10:38:39",
"content": "It did however fail to find the correct spelling for “derivatives” 😂",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8079747",
"author": "Elliot Williams"... | 1,760,371,678.232477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/05/shining-through-germanium-and-gold-leaf-transparency/ | Shining Through: Germanium And Gold Leaf Transparency | Heidi Ulrich | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"germanium",
"gold",
"gold leaf",
"infrared",
"ir",
"light",
"optics",
"transparency"
] | Germanium. It might sound like just another periodic table entry (number 32, to be exact), but in the world of infrared light, it’s anything but ordinary.
A recent video by [The Action Lab]
dives into the fascinating property of germanium being transparent to infrared light. This might sound like sci-fi jargon, but it’s a real phenomenon that can be easily demonstrated with nothing more than a flashlight and a germanium coin. If you want to see how that looks, watch the video on how it’s done.
The fun doesn’t stop at germanium. In experiments, thin layers of gold—yes, the real deal—allowed visible light to shine through, provided the metal was reduced to a thickness of 100 nanometers (or: gold leaf). These hacks reveal something incredible: light interacts with materials in ways we don’t normally observe.
For instance, infrared light, with its lower energy, can pass through germanium, while visible light cannot. And while solid gold might seem impenetrable, its ultra-thin form becomes translucent, demonstrating the delicate dance of electromagnetic waves and electrons.
The implications of these discoveries aren’t just academic. From infrared cameras to optics used in space exploration, understanding these interactions has unlocked breakthroughs in technology. Has this article inspired you to craft something new? Or have you explored an effect similar to this? Let us know in the comments!
We usually take our germanium in the form of a
diode
. Or, maybe, a
transistor
. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079628",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-01-06T07:53:07",
"content": "There’s nothing odd about semiconductors being transparent to light. Electrically conductive materials absorb light well because they have “loose” electrons that can freely interact with the photons while in... | 1,760,371,678.175985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/05/perfecting-20-minute-pcbs-with-laser/ | Perfecting 20 Minute PCBs With Laser | Al Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"fiber laser",
"pcb"
] | Normally, you have a choice with PCB prototypes: fast or cheap. [Stephen Hawes] has been trying fiber lasers to create PCBs. He’s
learned a lot
which he shares in the video below. Very good-looking singled-sided boards take just a few minutes. Fiber lasers are not cheap but they are within range for well-off hackers and certainly possible for a well-funded hackerspace.
One thing that’s important is to use FR1 phenolic substrate instead of the more common FR4. FR4 uses epoxy which will probably produce some toxic fumes under the laser.
We were surprised at how good the boards looked. Of course, the line definition was amazing, as you’d expect from a laser with details down to 200 microns (a little less than 0.008″), and he thinks it can go even lower. The laser also drills holes and can cut the board outline. A silk screen makes it easy to add a solder mask, and the laser will even cut the mask. [Stephen] also etched “silk screening” into the solder mask and filled it with a different color solder mask to make nice board legends.
Registration is critical and will be extra critical for two-sided boards which is what he’s working on now. We think if you put some scored carrier edges around the board with fiducials, you could make a jig that would hold the board in a very precise position using the holes in the carrier edges.
Vias are another issue. He mentions using rivets, but we’ve also seen people simply solder both sides of a wire through a hole, which isn’t that hard.
For most people, making your own PCBs is fun but
not very practical
. But there is something about being able to turn around actually good-looking boards multiple times in a day when you are doing heavy development. If you don’t mind fumes, you can
laser mark
your PCBs. | 41 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079625",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2025-01-06T07:01:53",
"content": "I see more use in this for creating front panels. As for PCBs, I can get 5 50×50 6 layer boards for less than €2 (excl. shipping) in a week.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,678.113632 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/high-performance-risc-v/ | High Performance RISC-V | Al Williams | [
"FPGA",
"News"
] | [
"cpu",
"RISC-V",
"superscalar"
] | From the Institute of Computing Technology division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peng Cheng Laboratory comes a high-performance and well-documented RISC-V core called
XiangShan
.
In the Git repository, you’ll find several branches including at least two stable branches: Yanqihu and Nanhu. The currently developed architecture, Kunminghu, is impressive, with a sophisticated instruction fetch unit, a reorder buffer, and a register renaming scheme.
The point of these types of circuits in a CPU is to allow multiple instructions to process at once. This also implies that instructions can be executed out of order. A cursory glance didn’t show any branch prediction logic, but that may be a limitation of the documentation. If there isn’t one, that would be an interesting thing to add in a fork if you are looking for a project.
On the computing side, the processor contains an integer block, a floating point unit, and a vector processor. Clearly, this isn’t a toy processor and has the capability to compete with serious modern CPUs.
There is a separate GitHub for
documentation
. It looks like they try to keep documentation in both
Mandarin and English
. You can also find some of
the academic papers
about the architecture there, too.
We love
CPU design
, and this is an interesting chance to contribute to an open CPU while there are still interesting things to do. If you need to start with something easier, plenty of
small CPUs
exist for educational purposes. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079119",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T07:58:29",
"content": "Looks like it has a branch prediction unit (top right yellow block in the diagram). I didn’t look at any code but it’s also on the README.md architecture diagram.When I heard no prediction I did think t... | 1,760,371,678.332809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/math-on-a-checkerboard/ | Math On A Checkerboard | Bryan Cockfield | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"algorithm",
"binary",
"checkerboard",
"chess board",
"division",
"math",
"multiplication",
"square root"
] | The word “algorithm” can sometimes seem like a word designed to scare people away from math classes, much like the words “calculus”, “Fourier transform”, or “engineering exam”. But in reality it’s just a method for solving a specific problem, and we use them all the time whether or not we realize it. Taking a deep dive into some of the ways we solve problems, especially math problems, often leads to some surprising consequences as well
like this set of algorithms for performing various calculations using nothing but a checkerboard
.
This is actually a demonstration of a method called location arithmetic first described by [John Napier] in 1617. It breaks numbers into their binary equivalent and then uses those representations to perform multiplication, division, or to take the square root. Each operation is performed by sliding markers around the board to form certain shapes as required by the algorithms; with the shapes created the result can be viewed directly. This method solves a number of problems with other methods of performing math by hand, eliminating other methods like trial-and-error. The video’s creator [Wrath of Math] demonstrates all of these capabilities and the proper method of performing the algorithms in the video linked below as well.
While not a “hack” in the traditional sense, it’s important to be aware of algorithms like this as they can inform a lot of the way the world works on a fundamental level. Taking that knowledge into another arena like computer programming can often yield some interesting results. One famous example is
the magic number found in the code for the video game
Quake
, but we’ve also seen
algorithms like this used to create art as well
. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079236",
"author": "bobmounger",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T15:02:59",
"content": "medieval chess+math gamehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rithmomachia",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8079297",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,677.901727 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/custom-firmware-adds-capabilities-to-handie-talkie/ | Custom Firmware Adds Capabilities To Handie Talkie | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"custom firmware",
"firmware",
"ham radio",
"handheld",
"handie talkie",
"ht",
"radio",
"spectrum",
"td-h3",
"td-h8",
"tidradio",
"usb"
] | Although ham radio can be an engaging, rewarding hobby, it does have a certain reputation for being popular among those who would fit in well at gated Florida communities where the preferred mode of transportation is the golf cart. For radio manufacturers this can be a boon, as this group tends to have a lot of money and not demand many new features in their technology. But for those of us who skew a bit younger, there are a few radios
with custom firmware available that can add a lot of extra capabilities
.
The new firmware is developed by [NicSure] for the Tidradio TD-H3 and TD-H8 models and also includes a browser-based utility for flashing it to the radio without having to install any other utilities. Once installed, users of these handheld radios will get extras like an improved S-meter and detection and display of CTCSS tones for repeater usage. There’s also a programmer available that allows the radio’s memory channels to be programmed easily from a computer and a remote terminal of sorts that allows the radio to be operated from the computer.
One of the latest firmware upgrades also includes a feature called Ultra Graph which is a live display of the activity on a selected frequency viewable on a computer screen. With a radio like this and its upgraded firmware, a lot of the capabilities of radios that sell for hundreds of dollars more can be used on a much more inexpensive handheld. All of this is possible thanks to an on-board USB-C interface
which is another feature surprisingly resisted by other manufacturers even just for charging the batteries
. | 58 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079058",
"author": "freedomunit",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T00:36:59",
"content": "“popular among those who would fit in well at gated Florida communities where the preferred mode of transportation is the golf cart”I moved to Florida recently, and I promise golf carts are an all-age... | 1,760,371,678.43682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/landing-soon-this-beautiful-weather-display/ | Landing Soon: This Beautiful Weather Display | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Sculpture",
"lander",
"particle photon",
"Particle Photon 2",
"TFT display"
] | All wiring is beautiful, except when it isn’t. But is there anything more lovely to behold than circuit sculpture? Once again, [Mohit Bhoite] has made this process look easy like Sunday morning. This time, he’s created
a weather display in the form of a lander
.
This lander runs on the Particle Photon 2, which connects over Wi-Fi and retrieves the weather forecast for the day, along with sunrise and sunset times and wind conditions. Everything is beautifully displayed on a vertically-oriented Adafruit 170×320 TFT screen.
There’s also a pulse-density microphone (PDM) breakout board and a buzzer, and the build is capped off with a red 0805 LED. We’re not sure what the feet are made of, but they sure make this lander cute (and accurate).
All the project logs are picture-rich, which is really the most we could ask for when trying to imitate this level of greatness. This is apparently an ongoing project, and we’re excited for the end result, although it looks fairly complete from here.
Do you want to bend it like Bhoite?
Then be sure to check out his Hackaday Supercon talk on the subject
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079031",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T22:40:58",
"content": "That looks great, especially with the lighting used for the photography.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8079157",
"author": "Teds",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,678.284382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/organizing-components-the-easy-way/ | Organizing Components, The Easy Way | Al Williams | [
"hardware"
] | [
"component storage",
"parts",
"storage"
] | There’s an old joke: What do you get someone who has everything? A place to put it. For hackers like [Christian], everything is a hoard of priceless electronic components. His
solution
is using small zipper bags, either regular plastic or anti-static. These attach using hook and loop fastener to plastic binder sheets which then live in a binder. Combined with some custom printed labels and a few other tricks, it makes for a nice system, as you can see in the video below.
Honestly, we’ve done something similar before, using a binder with little pockets, but the bag and custom labels beat our system. He even has QR codes on some of them to locate data sheets easily. Seems like a barcode for inventory management might have been good, too.
Some advice from us. If you are just starting out, this might seem like overkill. But if you start out doing something — this or something else — then ten years from now, you won’t have to be like us and think, “I’d get everything organized, but it is going to take months to work through what I already have…” That usually makes it a project you never really get started with. Develop good habits early!
Even if you don’t want to store your components this way, his binder hacks probably work for lots of other things, too. It isn’t as
flashy
as some systems we’ve seen, but it is very practical. If only you didn’t have to
turn the pages in the binder yourself
. | 50 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078981",
"author": "Ox",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T19:10:49",
"content": "The best thing for through hole resistors is plastic test tubes in a rack. I remove them from the tape and store them in the tubes and they are ready to go. A tube will hold about 25 resistors or so. 1 valu... | 1,760,371,678.522734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/hackaday-podcast-episode-302-scroll-wheels-ball-screws-and-a-new-year-for-usb-c/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 302: Scroll Wheels, Ball Screws, And A New Year For USB-C | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | After a bit too much eggnog, Elliot Williams and Al Williams got together to see what Hackaday had been up to over the holiday. Turns out, quite a bit. There was a lot to cover, but the big surprise was the “What’s that Sound” competition. Do you know who had the correct answer from the last show? No one! So they guys did the right thing and drew from all the entrants for a coveted Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
Back to the hacks, you’ll hear about USB-C and the EU, what to do when the Kickstarter product you had your heart set on doesn’t deliver, and a very strange way to hack some power grids wirelessly.
If you are interested in physics cameras, modifying off-the-shelf gear, or a fresh approach to color 3D printing, they’ll talk about that, too. Finally, you can find out what Tom Nardi thought of Hackaday in the year past, and if your next ocean voyage will have to stop for a charge.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Download the MP3 full of optimism for 2025 resolutions.
Episode 302 Show Notes:
News:
When The EU Speaks, Everyone Charges The Same Way
What’s that Sound?
Congrats to [Henré Botha] for winning the dice roll. We’ll have to do whale sounds someday!
52-hertz whale – Wikipedia
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Beam Me Up: Simple Free-Space Optical Communication
Gigabit Ethernet Through The Air
Hackaday Superconference 2017 – Michael Ossmann & Dominic Spill
Getting Started With GNU Radio
Doomscroll Precisely, And Wirelessly
Classical VCR Head Jog Wheel
38C3: Taking Down The Power Grid Over Radio
Ball Nut Modification Charts A Middle Course Between Building And Buying
Rolling Your Own Ball Screws
Improving Cheap Ball Screws
Mechanisms: Lead Screws And Ball Screws
Taking “Movies” Of Light In Flight
Photoresistor-based Single Pixel Camera
Full Color 3D Printing With PolyDye And Existing Inkjet Cartridges
Sprite_TM’s Magic Paintbrush
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
Protect Your Site With A DOOM Captcha
2024 Brought Even More Customization To Boxes.py
VPlayer Puts Smart Display In Palm Of Your Hand
Al’s Picks:
Wire Rope: Never Saddle A Dead Horse
Circuit Secrets: Exploring A $5 Emergency Light
Creating A Mechanical Qubit That Lasts Longer Than Other Qubits
Can’t-Miss Articles:
2024: As The Hardware World Turns
Battery-Electric Ships: Coming Soon To A Harbor Near You? | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079280",
"author": "Brad Skaggs",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T19:10:14",
"content": "For the discussion in the last segment, definitely check out “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger” by Marc Levinson if you want to read an interesti... | 1,760,371,678.031707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/3d-printed-case-turns-pixel-6-pro-into-palmtop/ | 3D Printed Case Turns Pixel 6 Pro Into Palmtop | Tom Nardi | [
"Android Hacks",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"palmtop",
"Pixel 6"
] | Despite initial interest in the 1990s and early 2000s, palmtop computers never really took off. Realistically most consumers were probably satisfied enough with smartphones as they became more widely available, but those of us who would prefer a real keyboard on our mobile devices are still feeling the pain. Today there are still a few commercial palmtop-like machines out there, but they aren’t exactly mainstream.
Which is why this
3D printed case for the Pixel 6 Pro from [TypingCat]
is so interesting. It takes a relatively popular and capable contemporary phone, pairs it with a physical keyboard, and manages to create something that looks quite practical. Thanks to Termux, you can even get a fairly usable Linux environment going on the thing.
There aren’t too many components at play here, but still, we appreciate the fact that [TypingCat] provided links for not only the specific Bluetooth keyboard used, but the fasteners required to hold the three printed parts together. A link is also provided to the
Termux-Desktops project
, which allows you to get a Linux X11 desktop environment running on Android. It’s not the pocket Linux computer of our dreams, but it’s pretty close.
While the Pixel 6 Pro is a solid enough choice to base this project around, we’re interested in seeing if the community will come up with variants of this case to hold other similarly sized phones. It’s interesting to note that [TypingCat] has decided to use the “No Derivatives” variant of the Creative Commons license for the bottom half of the case. But since the top half is a remix of an existing
Pixel 6 Pro case from [JoshCraft3D]
, it carries a more permissive license and
must be distributed separately
. Long story short, folks can create and distribute custom versions of the phone-side of this case, but the bottom needs to remain the same.
If you’ve got filament to
burn
extrude and would rather have a more pure Linux experience, we saw a
printable Raspberry Pi Zero palmtop a couple months back
that looked quite promising. | 33 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078949",
"author": "theking",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T17:18:48",
"content": "That’s funny, I’m actually working on a similar project for a OnePlus 6t (for postmarketOS) but I was going to have it wired so it can be a powerbank and USB hub too.The keyboard I was going to use is fro... | 1,760,371,678.699503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/this-week-in-security-iocontrol-location-leaking-cars-and-passkeys/ | This Week In Security: IOCONTROL, (Location) Leaking Cars, And Passkeys | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"bitlocker",
"Doubleclickjack",
"This Week in Security"
] | Claroty’s TEAM82 has a report on a new malware strain,
what they’re calling IOCONTROL
. It’s a Linux malware strain aimed squarely at embedded devices. One of the first targets of this malware, surprisingly, is the Iraeli made Orpak gas station pumps. There’s a bit of history here, as IOCONTROL is believed to be used by CyberAv3ngers, a threat actor aligned with Iran. In 2023 a group aligned with Israel claimed to have compromised the majority of the gas stations in Iran. IOCONTROL seems to have been deployed as retribution.
There are a few particularly interesting aspects of this malware, and how TEAM82 went about analyzing it. The first is that they used
unicorn
to emulate the obscure ARM platform in question. This was quite an adventure, as they were running the malicious binary without the normal Linux OS under it, and had to re-implement system calls to make execution work. The actual configuration data was encrypted as the data section of the executable, presumably to avoid simple string matching detection and analysis.
Then to communicate with the upstream command and control infrastructure, the binary first used DNS-Over-HTTPS to resolve DNS addresses, and then used the MQTT message protocol for actual communications. Once in place, it has the normal suite of capabilities, like code execution, cleanup, lateral scanning, etc. An interesting speculation is that the level of control this malware had over these gas pumps, it was in a position to steal credit card information. This malware family isn’t limited to gas pumps, either, as it’s been spotted in IoT and SCADA devices from a whole host of vendors.
Bit-unlocker
We have
another attack against TPM backed Bitlocker
full disk encryption. The idea here is that by default Bitlocker uses an encryption key provided by the system’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Unless the user intentionally turns on Bitlocker PIN, this key from the TPM is the only credential needed to decrypt the drive, and is automatically provided at boot time. We’ve covered
one attack against Bitlocker
, where the key is sniffed while it’s being transferred from the external TPM. The conclusion as of that coverage was that a firmware TPM saves you from this attack, since there’s no accessible bus to sniff data from.
Well. There’s another approach, as you might have guessed. Modern memory requires constant refreshing to not lose its value, but that doesn’t mean that it’s entirely lost immediately. That’s what [Jack Crouse] discovered, and put to work here. Using the reset pins on a motherboard, the system is reset and booted off a flash drive. That drive contains a very minimal EFI application that just reads system memory and dumps it to the flash drive. Because the memory is mostly intact, if you reset the machine at the right point during boot, the memory dump includes the disk encryption key, allowing for easy drive decryption. If nothing else, this should be your queue to add a PIN to your Bitlocker setup. This was also
a talk given at 38c3, which is now available
!
Stars for Sale
GitHub stars are a useful way to determine the popularity of a project, and by extension how trustworthy that project is. At least, that’s the idea. Like any measure of popularity and trustworthiness,
the GitHub Stars system has been gamed
. Given how easy it is to create a GitHub account, and that giving out stars is a free action, it’s not surprising. The research suggested that between 3 and 4.5 million stars were fake, and GitHub has been quite responsive at removing the accounts and stars that are very likely to be inauthentic.
The Downside to a Connected Car
In a tale that gets worse the more you think about it, it’s revealed that
800,000 Volkswagen electric vehicles were leaking their precise information history
via an unsecured Amazon storage instance. This wasn’t explicitly referred to as an S3 bucket, but we’ll use the “bucket” term for ease of discussion. This was discovered via an unnamed whistleblower, so it’s unclear whether the bucket name was accidentally made public. Regardless, it was accessible without any authentication. The broader question is
why
VW needs to keep these records on their drivers. It’s the downside to an always connected car.
How’s the Passkey Doing?
[Dan Goodin] is no stranger to the pages of this column, and
he has thoughts about Passkeys
. This isn’t a vulnerability — the FIDO2 specification hasn’t been broken in some new and clever way. Passkeys are still a good, secure way to use a trusted device as an authentication source. The problem is, they’re sort of a pain to use. Say you’re using Google Chrome on an Apple device. A site prompts you to create a passkey. Is that passkey managed by Apple, or Google? The answer is, by Apple, unless you explicitly ask Chrome to manage it. And then, Chrome on Mac isn’t allowed to sync Passkeys to Chrome on an iPhone.
And those are essentially the two problems with Passkeys: Every vendor wants users to use their platform to store passkeys, and once stored it’s devilishly difficult to manage and move passkeys to another device/platform. The silver lining is that many password managers can act as a Passkey store, and handle syncing between devices. But then again, there’s not much difference between passwords and passkeys, when you use a password manager to handle them.
Double-Click-Jack
And in related news, there’s
a new approach to harvesting unintended clicks
. Clickjacking is what happens when a site loads an advertisement at the top of the page, just as you’re trying to click on something, and your click gets hijacked to something else. Browsers have added protections to make truly malicious clickjacking harder to pull off. But Doubleclickjacking neatly sidesteps all of them. It’s simple: Launch another tab that claims to be a captcha, asking the user to double-click to prove they are human. Close the tab after a single click, and the second click goes to a different window. It’s clever and devious, and one more thing to watch out for.
Bits and Bytes
The US Treasury
has reported that it was breached
, via the ironically named BeyondTrust remote support vendor. It’s reported that this was an APT affiliated with the Chinese government, though very few details are available.
The intersection of data scraping and AI writing
has led to dangerously good targeted phishing emails
. Part of the danger here is that so much of the legitimate emails that spam filters are trained on are also written by LLMs, and executives are so used to that style of message, phishing emails fit right in.
[Mateusz Jurczyk]
has released part five of the Windows Registry
deep dive over at Google Project Zero. This installment is all about how the data is actually encoded into the registry files, as well as how those files are loaded and verified. Good stuff. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078942",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T16:48:27",
"content": "With U-Block Origin I never see a pop up or silly stuff. Never pay for gas with anything but cash. All of our gas station-convenience stores are run South Asians so less trust there. India in Indiana?",... | 1,760,371,678.888635 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/fpv-flying-in-mixed-reality-is-easier-than-youd-think/ | FPV Flying In Mixed Reality Is Easier Than You’d Think | Tom Nardi | [
"drone hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"augmented reality",
"FPV",
"fpv flight",
"fpv goggles",
"Meta Quest"
] | Flying a first-person view (FPV) remote controlled aircraft with goggles is an immersive experience that makes you feel as if you’re really sitting in the cockpit of the plane or quadcopter. Unfortunately, while your wearing the goggles, you’re also completely blind to the world around you. That’s why you’re supposed to have a spotter nearby to keep watch on the local meatspace while you’re looping through the air.
But what if you could have the best of both worlds? What if your goggles not only allowed you to see the video stream from your craft’s FPV camera, but you could also see the world around you. That’s precisely the idea behind mixed reality goggles such as Apple Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest, you just need to put all the pieces together. In a recent video
[Hoarder Sam] shows you exactly how to pull it off
, and we have to say, the results look quite compelling.
[Sam]’s approach relies on the fact that there’s already cheap analog FPV receivers out there that act as a standard USB video device, with the idea being that they let you use your laptop, smartphone, or tablet as a monitor. But as the Meta Quest 3 is running a fork of Android, these devices are conveniently supported out of the box. The only thing you need to do other than plug them into the headset is head over to the software repository for the goggles and download a video player app.
The FPV receiver can literally be taped to the Meta Quest
With the receiver plugged in and the application running, you’re presented with a virtual display of your FPV feed hovering in front of you that can be moved around and resized. The trick is to get the size and placement of this virtual display down to the point where it doesn’t take up your entire field of vision, allowing you to see the FPV view and the actual aircraft at the same time. Of course, you don’t want to make it too small, or else flying might become difficult.
[Sam] says he didn’t realize just how comfortable this setup would be until he started flying around with it. Obviously being able to see your immediate surroundings is helpful, as it makes it much easier to talk to others and make sure nobody wanders into the flight area. But he says it’s also really nice when bringing your bird in for a landing, as you’ve got multiple viewpoints to work with.
Perhaps the best part of this whole thing is that anyone with a Meta Quest can do this right now. Just buy the appropriate receiver, stick it to your goggles, and go flying. If any readers give this a shot, we’d love to hear how it goes for you in the comments. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078899",
"author": "Illucidator",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T12:21:14",
"content": "I started running FPV with Epson Moverio bt-100 with external video adapter board in 2011. 10 years later I upgraded to a Moverio bt-40 for the increase in resolution and native external video input.W... | 1,760,371,678.959133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/03/pico-pal-puts-rp2350-into-game-boy-color-shell/ | Pico Pal Puts RP2350 Into Game Boy Color Shell | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"game boy color",
"GBC",
"retrofit",
"rp2350"
] | While modern gaming systems deliver ever more realistic experiences, there’s still something to be said for the consoles and handhelds of the 80s and 90s. For many, the appeal is nostalgic. Others are attracted to the “lo-fi” graphical and sound design of these games, necessitated by the limited hardware of the time.
That said nobody would claim those old systems were perfect. Which is why a hybrid approach like
[Peter Khouly] has been working on with the Pico Pal
might be the ultimate solution. This replacement motherboard for the Game Boy Color (GBC) is powered by the RP2350, meaning the external hardware will have the same look and feel as it did back in 1998, but you’ll still be able to reap the benefits of modern emulation.
While the origins of the project go a bit farther, [Peter] has been working on this particular variation of the Pico Pal GBC since August, and has kept a fascinating log of his progress. Just getting the RP2350 to emulate
Pokémon
isn’t really that big of a deal, but getting all the ancillary hardware implemented and fitted inside the case of the GBC is a different story. Especially since [Peter] intends to pack plenty of features into the final product, such as rechargable batteries, Bluetooth audio, real-time clock support, and digital video out.
The most recent status update is from just last week, where [Peter] goes over some of the new features he’s been working on. A major one is the soft power solution, where the physical power switch doesn’t just pull the plug like it did back in the 1990s. Instead, the switch triggers the board to save the game and enter into a low-power mode so that it can come right back on to where you left off. This does impact battery life, but so far, it looks like the Pico Pal GBC will be able to run for at least five hours on a charge, and more than twice that if you don’t mind turning off the audio.
It sounds like there’s still several gremlins to track down in the design, but even in its current state, the Pico Pal GBC looks very interesting. We’re immediately reminded of the phenomenal work
[Bucket Mouse] has put in on a similar refit for the original DMG-1 Game Boy
. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078864",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T09:53:03",
"content": "“While modern gaming systems deliver ever more realistic experiences, there’s still something to be said for the consoles and handhelds of the 80s and 90s. For many, the appeal is nostalgic. Others are attra... | 1,760,371,678.834431 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/dress-up-your-3d-prints-with-toner-transfer-labels/ | Dress Up Your 3D Prints With Toner-Transfer Labels | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"graphics",
"label",
"laser",
"laser printer",
"polyurethane",
"toner",
"transfer"
] | We’ve always found the various methods for adding text and graphics to 3D prints somewhat underwhelming. Embossed or debossed characters are fuzzy, at best, and multi-color printers always seem to bleed one color into the next. Still, the need for labels and logos is common enough that it’s worth exploring other methods, such as
this easy toner transfer trick
.
Home PCB makers will probably find the method [Squalius] describes in the video below very familiar, and with good reason. We’ve seen
toner transfer
used to mask PCBs before etching, and the basic process here is very similar. It starts with printing the desired graphics on regular paper using a laser printer; don’t forget to mirror the print. The printed surface is scuffed up a bit, carefully cleaned, and coated with a thick layer of liquid acrylic medium, of the kind used in paint pouring. The mirrored print is carefully laid on the acrylic, toner-side down, and more medium is brushed on the back of the paper. After the print dries, the paper is removed with a little water and some gentle friction, leaving the toner behind. A coat of polyurethane protects the artwork reasonably well.
[Squalius] has tested the method with PLA and PETG and reports good results. The text is clear and sharp, and even fine text and dithered graphics look pretty good. Durability could be better, and [Squalius] is looking for alternative products that might work better for high-wear applications. It looks like it works best on lightly textured surfaces, too, as opposed to surfaces with layer lines. We’d love to see if color laser prints work, too; [Squalius] says that’s in the works, and
we’ve seen examples before
that are reason for optimism.
Thanks to [greg_bear] for the tip. | 25 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078846",
"author": "makes you go hmmmm....",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T08:27:43",
"content": "Its so easy to order durable full color high res UV DTF transfers its hard to bother with less than results from a hacked together solution these days. $18 gets you 6 inches by 22 inches in... | 1,760,371,679.088078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/555-timers-bring-christmas-charm-to-miniature-village/ | 555 Timers Bring Christmas Charm To Miniature Village | Tom Nardi | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"Christmas decoration",
"christmas village",
"relaxation oscilator"
] | The miniature Christmas village is a tradition in many families — a tiny idyllic world filled happy people, shops, and of course, snow. It’s common to see various miniature buildings for sale around the holidays just for this purpose, and since LEDs are small and cheap, they’ll almost always have some switch on the bottom to light up the windows.
This year, [Braden Sunwold] and his wife started their own village with an eye towards making it a family tradition. But to his surprise, the scale lamp posts they bought to dot along their snowy main street were hollow and didn’t actually light up. Seeing it was up to him to save Christmas,
[Braden] got to work adding LEDs to the otherwise inert lamps
.
Now in a pinch, this project could have been done with nothing more than some coin cells and a suitably sized LED. But seeing as the lamp posts were clearly designed in the Victorian style, [Braden] felt they should softly flicker to mimic a burning gas flame. Blinking would be way too harsh, and in his own words, look more like a Halloween decoration.
This could have been an excuse to drag out a microcontroller. But instead, [Braden] did as any good little Hackaday reader should do, and called on Old Saint 555 to save Christmas. After doing some research, he determined that a trio of 555s rigged as relaxation oscillators could be used to produce quasi-random triangle waves. When fed into a transistor controlling the LED, the result would be a random flickering instead of a more aggressive strobe effect. It took a little tweaking of values, but eventually he got it locked down and sent away to have custom PCBs made of the circuit.
With the flicker driver done, the rest of the project was pretty simple. Since the lamp posts were already hollow, feeding the LEDs up into them was easy enough. The electronics went into a 3D printed base, and we particularly liked the magnetic connectors [Braden] used so that the lamps could easily be taken off the base when it was time to pack the village away.
We can’t wait to see what new tricks [Braden] uses to bring the village alive for Christmas 2025. Perhaps the
building lighting could do with a bit of automation
? | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078827",
"author": "UnderSampled",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T04:32:56",
"content": "My thoughts went to the flickering code used by many game lights. Is it ironic that I should suggest this could be even better (or at least, nerdier) if a microcontroller was used?https://web.archive... | 1,760,371,679.016311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/the-ultimate-distraction-free-writing-environment/ | The Ultimate Distraction Free Writing Environment | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"distraction free",
"dos",
"word processor"
] | The art of writing has become a cluttered one to follow, typically these days through a graphical word processor. There may be a virtual page in front of you, but it’s encumbered by much UI annoyance. To combat this a variety of distraction free software and appliances have been created over the years.
But it’s perhaps [Liam Proven]’s one we like the most — it’s
a bootable 16-bit DOS environment with a selection of simple text and office packages on board
. No worries about being distracted by social media when you don’t even have networking.
The zip file,
in the releases section of the repository
, is based upon SvarDOS, and comes with some software we well remember from back in the day. There’s MS Word 5.5 for DOS, in the public domain since it was released as a Y2K fix, Arnor Protext, and the venerable AsEasyAs spreadsheet alongside a few we’re less familiar with. He makes the point that a machine with a BIOS is required, but those of you unwilling to enable BIOS emulation on a newer machine should be able to run it in a VM or an emulator. Perhaps it’s one to take on the road with us, and bang away in DOS alongside all the high-powered executives on the train with their fancy business projections.
We recently talked about SvarDOS
, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our article linked to a piece [Liam] wrote for
The Register
. | 42 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078806",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T01:06:15",
"content": "Personally I would fire up either one of my classic Macs or my Atari Mega ST both have very clean GUIs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8079141",
... | 1,760,371,679.381512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/a-modern-battery-for-a-classic-laptop/ | A Modern Battery For A Classic Laptop | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"18650",
"battery",
"HP",
"hp-110plus",
"laptop",
"lead-acid",
"lithium",
"retrocomputing",
"ups",
"USB C",
"USB-PD"
] | Aside from their ability to operate fairly well in extreme temperatures, lead-acid batteries don’t have many benefits compared to more modern battery technology. They’re heavy, not particularly energy dense, have limited charge cycles, and often can’t be fully discharged without damage or greatly increased wear. With that in mind, one can imagine that a laptop that uses a battery like this would be not only extremely old but also limited by this technology. Of course, in the modern day we can do a lot to bring these retro machines up to modern standards
like adding in some lithium batteries to this HP laptop
.
Simply swapping the batteries in this computer won’t get the job done though, as lead-acid and lithium batteries need different circuitry in order to be safe while also getting the maximum amount of energy out. [CYUL] is using a cheap UPS module from AliExpress which comes with two 18650 cells to perform this conversion, although with a high likelihood of counterfeiting in this market, the 18650s were swapped out with two that were known to be from Samsung. The USB module also needs to be modified a bit to change the voltage output to match the needs of the HP-110Plus, and of course a modernized rebuild like this wouldn’t be complete without a USB-C port to function as the new power jack.
[CYUL] notes at the end of the build log that even without every hardware upgrade made to this computer (and ignoring its limited usefulness in the modern world) it has a limited shelf life as the BIOS won’t work past 2035. Hopefully with computers like this we’ll start seeing some firmware modifications as well that’ll let them work indefinitely into the future.
For modern computers we’ll hope to avoid the similar 2038 problem by switching everything over to 64 bit systems
and making other software updates as well. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078769",
"author": "kjsldjflk lkjsdlkjfdsf",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T21:48:40",
"content": "Could have dropped 4 LiFePO4 cells in this with a BMS and it would have basically been a drop in replacement for the lead acid cells assuming the total voltage was 12v, otherwise adjust the... | 1,760,371,679.170381 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/crafting-a-cardboard-tribute-to-puzzle-bobble/ | Crafting A Cardboard Tribute To Puzzle Bobble | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games",
"Retrocomputing",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"bust-a-move",
"lua",
"mame",
"puzzle bobble",
"puzzlebobble",
"retro gaming"
] | What do you get when you cross cardboard, deodorant rollers, and a love for retro gaming? A marvel of DIY engineering that
brings the arcade classic Puzzle Bobble to life
—once again! Do you remember the original Puzzle Bobble aiming mechanism
we featured 12 years ago
? Now, creator [TomTilly] has returned with a revamped version, blending ingenuity with a touch of nostalgia. [Tom] truly is a Puzzle Bobble enthusiast. And who could argue that? The game’s simplicty makes for innocent yet addictive gameplay.
[Tom]’s new setup recreates Puzzle Bobble’s signature aiming mechanic using surprising materials: deodorant roller balls filled with hot glue (to diffuse LED colours), bamboo skewers, and rubber bands. At its heart is an Arduino UNO, which syncs the RGB LED ‘bubbles’ and a servo-driven aiming arm to the game’s real-time data. A Lua script monitors MAME’s memory locations to match the bubble colours and aimer position.
But this isn’t just a static display. [Tom] hints at a version 2.0: a fully functional controller complete with a handle. Imagine steering this tactile masterpiece through Puzzle Bobble’s frantic levels!
Need more inspiration? Check out other quirky hacks like [Tom]’s
deodorant roller controller
we featured in 2023. Whether you’re into cardboard mechanics or retro gaming, there’s no end to what clever hands can create. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078772",
"author": "H",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T21:59:19",
"content": "Totally pointless, I love it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8079961",
"author": "jimjimmitybeebo",
"timestamp": "2025-01-07T02:38:43",
"conte... | 1,760,371,679.226172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/programming-ada-atomics-and-other-low-level-details/ | Programming Ada: Atomics And Other Low-Level Details | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Software Development"
] | [
"ada",
"atomics",
"software development"
] | Especially within the world of multi-threaded programming does atomic access become a crucial topic, as multiple execution contexts may seek to access the same memory locations at the same time. Yet the exact meaning of the word ‘atomic’ is also essential here, as there is in fact not just a single meaning of the word within the world of computer science. One type of atomic access refers merely to whether a single value can be written or read atomically (e.g. reading or writing a 32-bit integer on a 32-bit system versus a 16-bit system), whereas atomic operations are a whole other kettle of atomic fish.
Until quite recently very few programming languages offered direct support for the latter, whereas the former has been generally something that either Just Worked™ if you know the platform you are on, or could often be checked fairly trivially using the programming language’s platform support headers. For C and C++ atomic operations didn’t become supported by the language itself until C11 and C++11 respectively, previously requiring built-in functions provided by the toolchain (e.g. GCC intrinsics).
In the case of Ada there has been a reluctance among the language designers to add support for atomic operations to the language, with the (GNU) toolchain offering the same intrinsics as a fallback. With the
Ada 2022 standard
there is now direct support in the
System.Atomic_Operations
library, however.
Defining Atomic Operations
As mentioned earlier, the basic act of reading or writing can be atomic based on the underlying architecture. For example, if you are reading a 32-bit value on a fully 32-bit system (i.e. 32-bit registers and data bus), then this should complete in a single operation. In this case the 32-bit value read cannot suddenly have 8 or 16-bits on the end that were written during said reading action. Ergo it’s guaranteed to be atomic on this particular hardware platform. For Ada you can use the
Atomic
pragma
to enforce this type of access. E.g.:
A : Unsigned_32 with Atomic;
A := 0;
A := A + 1;
-- This generates:
804969f: a1 04 95 05 08 mov 0x8059504,%eax
80496a4: 40 inc %eax
80496a5: a3 04 95 05 08 mov %eax,0x8059504
Now imagine performing a more complex operation, such as incrementing the value (a counter) even as another thread tries to use this value in a comparison. Although the first thread’s act of reading is atomic and writing the modified value back is atomic, this set of operations is not, resulting in a data race. There’s now a chance that the second thread will read the value before it is updated by the first, possibly causing the second thread to miss the update and requiring repeated polling. What if you could guarantee that this set of atomic operations was itself atomic?
The traditional way to accomplish this is through mutual exclusion mechanisms such as the common concept of mutexes. These do however come with a fair amount of overhead
when contended
due to the management of the (implementation-defined) mutex structures, the management of which uses the same atomic operations which we could directly use as well. As an example there are
LOCK XADD
(atomic fetch and add) and
LOCK CMPXCHG
(atomic compare and exchange) in the x86 ISA which a mutex implementation is likely to use, but which we’d like to use for a counter and comparison function in our own code too.
Reasons To Avoid
Obviously, having two or more threads compete for the same resources is generally speaking not a great idea and could indicate a flaw in the application’s architecture, especially in how it may break modularity. Within Ada an advocated approach has been to use
protected objects and barriers within entries
, which provides language-level synchronization between tasks. A barrier is defined using the
when
keyword, followed by the condition that has to evaluate to
true
before execution can continue.
From a more low-level programming perspective as inspired by C code and kin, the use of directly shared resources makes more sense, and can be argued to have performance benefits. This contrasts with the philosophy behind Ada, which argues that neither safety nor ease of maintenance should ever be sacrificed in the name of performance. Even so, if one can prove that it is in fact safe and does not invite a maintenance nightmare, it could be worth supporting.
One might even argue that since people are
going to use this feature anyway
– with toolchain intrinsics if they have to – one may as well provide a standard library version. This is something that could be immensely helpful to newcomers as well,
as evidenced by my recent attempt
to port a lock-free ring buffer (LFRB) from C++ to Ada and running into the atomic operations details head-first.
Fixing A Lock-Free Ring Buffer
In my original Ada port of the LFRB I had naively taken the variables that were adorned with the
std::atomic
STL feature and replaced that with the
with Atomic;
pragma, blissfully unaware of this being actually an improvement over the ‘everything is implementation dependent and/or undefined behavior’ elements in C++ (and C). Since I insisted on making it a straight port without a major redesign, it would seem that here I need to
use this new Ada 2022 library
.
Since the code uses both atomic operations on Boolean and Integer types we need the following two packages:
with System.Atomic_Operations.Integer_Arithmetic;
with System.Atomic_Operations.Exchange;
These generic packages of course also need to have a specific package defined for our use:
type Atomic_Integer is new Integer with Atomic;
package IAO is new System.Atomic_Operations.Integer_Arithmetic(Atomic_Integer);
type Atomic_Boolean is new Boolean with Atomic;
package BAO is new System.Atomic_Operations.Exchange(Atomic_Boolean);
These new types are defined as being capable of atomic read and write operations, which is a prerequisite for more complex atomic operations and thus featured in the package instantiation. Using these types is required to perform atomic operations on our target variables, which are declared as follows:
dataRequestPending : aliased Atomic_Boolean;
unread : aliased Atomic_Integer;
The
aliased
keyword here means that the variable has to be in memory (i.e. have a memory address) and not just in a register, allowing it to be the target of an access (pointer) type.
When we want to perform an atomic operation on our variables, we use the package which we instantiated previously, e.g.:
IAO.Atomic_Subtract(unread, len);
IAO.Atomic_Add(free, len);
The first of which will subtract the value of
len
from
unread
followed by the second line which will add the same value to
free
. We can see that we are now getting memory barriers in the generated assembly, e.g.:
lock add DWORD PTR [rsp+4], eax #,, _10
Which is the atomic addition operation for the x86 ISA, confirming that we are now indeed performing proper atomic operations. Similarly, for booleans we can perform atomic operations such as assigning a new value and returning the previous value:
while BAO.Atomic_Exchange(dataRequestPending, false) loop
null;
end loop;
Atomic Differences
I must express my gratitude to the commentators to the previous LFRB Ada article who pointed out these differences between
atomic
in C++ (and C) and Ada. Along with their feedback there are also tools such as the
Godbolt Compiler Explorer
site where it’s quite easy to drop in some C++ and Ada code for comparison between the generated assembly, even across a range of ISAs. Since I did not consult any of these previously consider this article my mea culpa for getting things so terribly wrong earlier.
Correspondingly, before passing off the above explanation as the absolute truth, I will preface it by saying that it is my best interpretation of The Correct Way™ in the absence of significant amounts of example code or discussions. Currently I’m adapting the LFRB code as described as above and will update the corresponding GitHub project once I feel relatively confident that I can dodge writing a second apology article.
For corrections and feedback, feel free to sound off in the comments. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079715",
"author": "Luke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-06T14:46:29",
"content": "You keep saying “ada 2022 library” when it’s an Ada 2022feature.You don’t need to add Atomic to your types:type Atomic_Integer is new Integer with Atomic;package IAO is new System.Atomic_Operations.Integer_A... | 1,760,371,679.278274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/2024-as-the-hardware-world-turns/ | 2024: As The Hardware World Turns | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art"
] | [
"3d printing",
"boeing",
"CH32",
"sao",
"voyager",
"Year in Review"
] | With 2024 now officially in the history books, it’s time to take our traditional look back and reflect on some of the top trends and stories from the past twelve months as viewed from the unique perspective Hackaday affords us. Thanks to the constant stream of tips and updates we receive from the community, we’ve got a better than average view of what’s on the mind of hardware hackers, engineers, and hobbyists.
This symbiotic relationship is something we take great pride in, which is why we also use this time of year to remind the readers just how much we appreciate them. We know it sounds line a line, but we really couldn’t do it without you. So whether you’ve just started reading in 2024 or been with us for years, everyone here at Hackaday thanks you for being part of something special. We’re keenly aware of how fortunate we are to still be running a successful blog in the era of YouTube and TikTok, and that’s all because people like you keep coming back. If you keep reading it, we’ll keep writing it.
So let’s take a trip down memory lane and go over just a handful of the stories that kept us talking in 2024. Did we miss your favorite? Feel free to share with the class in the comments.
Boeing’s Bungles
We’ll start off with what was undoubtedly one of the biggest stories in the tech and engineering world, although you’ll find little mention of it on the pages of Hackaday up until now. We’re talking, of course, of the dramatic and repeated failures of the once unassailable Boeing.
As a general rule, we don’t really like running negative stories. It’s just not the vibe we try and cultivate. Unless we can bring something new to the discussion, we’d rather leave other outlets peddle in doom and gloom. So that’s why, after considerable internal debate at HQ, we ultimately never wrote a story about the now infamous Alaska Airlines door plug incident at the beginning of the year.
Nor did we cover the repeated delays of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, a crewed spacecraft that the company was paid $4.2 billion to build under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — nearly double the sum SpaceX received for the development of their Crew Dragon.
Things only got worse once the capsule finally left the launch pad in June. With human lives in the balance, it seemed in poor taste for us to cover Starliner’s disastrous first crewed flight to the International Space Station. The mission was so fraught with technical issues that NASA made the unprecedented decision to send the capsule back to Earth without its crew onboard. Those two astronauts, Barry E. Wilmore and Sunita Williams, still remain on the ISS; their planned eight-day jaunt to the Station has now been extended until March of 2025, at which point they’ll be riding home on SpaceX’s capsule.
We won’t speculate on what exactly is happening at Boeing, although we’ve heard some absolutely hair-raising stories from sources who wish to remain anonymous. Suffice to say, as disheartening as it might be for us on the outside to see such a storied company repeatedly fumble, it’s even worse for the those on the inside.
Desktop 3D Printing Reshuffling
While the tectonic shifts in the desktop 3D printer market didn’t start last year, 2024 really seemed to be the point where it boiled over. For years the market had been at a standstill, with consumers essentially having two paths forward depending on what they were willing to spend.
Had $200 or $300 to play with? You’d buy something like an Ender 3, a capable enough machine if you were willing to put in the time and effort. Or if you could stand to part with $800, you brought a Prusa i3, and didn’t worry about the little details like bed leveling or missed steps because it was automated enough to just work most of the time.
But then, Bambu Labs showed up. Founded by an ex-DJI engineer, the Chinese company introduced a line of printers that might as well have come from the future. Their speed, ease of use, and features were beyond even what Prusa was offering, and yet they cost nearly half as much. Seemingly overnight, the the market leaders at both ends of the spectrum were beat at their own game, and the paradigm shifted. The cheap printers now seemed archaic in comparison, and Prusa’s machines overpriced.
But while Bambu’s printers have dazzled consumers, they bring along some unfortunate baggage. Suddenly 3D printing involves cloud connectivity, proprietary components, and hardware that was designed for production rather than repairability. In short, desktop 3D printing seems on the verge of breaking into the legitimate mainstream, with all the downsides that comes with it these days.
It’s wasn’t all bad news though. When the community started
experimenting with running alternate firmware
on their hardware, Bambu’s response was better than we’d feared:
users would be allowed to modify their firmware
, but would have to waive their warranty. It’s not a perfect solution, but considering
Prusa did more or less the same thing
in 2019 when they released the Mini, the community had already shown they would accept the compromise.
Speaking of Prusa, feelings on how they’ve decided to respond to this newfound competition have been mixed, to put it mildly. In developing their new Core ONE printer it looks like they’ve engineered a worthy opponent for Bambu’s X1, but unfortunately, it appears the company has
all but abandoned their open source hardware roots in the process
.
RP2350 Has a Rocky Start
The release of the
Pi Pico development board made our list of highlights for 2021
, and in the intervening years, the RP2040 microcontroller at its heart has become a favorite of makers and hackers. We’ve even used it for the last two Supercon badges at this point. So the fact that its successor made this year’s list should come as no surprise.
But while the
release of the Pi Pico 2 over the summer
was noteworthy in its own way, it wasn’t really the big story. It’s what happened
after
that triggered debate in the community. You see, the RP2350 microcontroller that powered the Pico 2 launched with a known bug affecting the internal pull-down resistors. A bug that Hackaday alumn
Ian Lesnet started documenting
while incorporating the chip
into a new version of the Bus Pirate
. It turned out the scope of said bug was
actually a lot worse than the documentation indicated
, a fact that the folks at Raspberry Pi didn’t seem keen to acknowledge at first.
Ultimately, the erratum for the RP2350 was
amended to better describe the nature of the issue
. But as for an actual hardware fix, well that’s a different story. The WiFi-enabled version of the Pico 2 was released just last month, and it’s still susceptible to the same bug. Given that the hardware workaround for the issue — adding external pull-downs — isn’t expensive or complicated to implement, and that most users probably wouldn’t run into the problem in the first place, it seems like there’s no rush to produce a new version of the silicon.
Voyager 1 Shows its Age
Admittedly, any piece of hardware that’s been flying through deep space for nearly 50 years is bound to run into some problems, especially one that was built with 1970s era technology. But even still, 2024 was a rough year for humanity’s most distant explorer, Voyager 1.
The far-flung probe was already in trouble when the year started, as it was
still transmitting gibberish
due to being hit with a flipped-bit error in December of 2023. Things looked pretty grim for awhile, but by mid-March
engineers had started making progress on the issue
, and normal
communication was restored before the end of April
.
In celebration
Dan Maloney took a deep-dive into the computers of Voyager
, a task made surprisingly difficult by the fact that some of the key documentation he was after apparently never got never digitized.
Things were still going well by June
, and in September ground controllers were able to
pull off a tricky reconfiguration of the spacecraft’s thrusters
.
But just a month later,
Voyager suffered another major glitch
. After receiving a command to turn on one of its heaters, Voyager went into a fault protection mode that hadn’t been triggered since 1981. In this mode only the spacecraft’s low power S-band radio was operational, and there was initially concern that NASA wouldn’t be able to detect the signal. Luckily they were able to pick out Voyager’s faint cries for help, and on November 26th, the
space agency announced they had established communications
with the probe and returned it to normal operations.
While Voyager 1 ended 2024 on a high note, there’s no beating the clock. Even if nothing else goes wrong with the aging hardware, the spacecraft’s plutonium power source is producing less and less energy each year. Various systems can be switched off to save power,
something NASA elected to do with Voyager 2 back in October
, but eventually even that won’t be enough and the storied spacecraft will go silent for good.
CH32 Gains Momentum
We first got word of the CH32 family of low-cost RISC-V microcontrollers back in early 2023, but they were hard to come by and the available documentation and software toolchains left something to be desired. A 10¢ MCU sounds great, but what good is it if you can’t buy the thing or program it?
The situation was very different in 2024. We ran nearly three times the number of posts featuring some variant of the CH32 in 2024 than we did in the previous year, and something tells us the numbers for 2025 will be through the roof.
The fact that the chips got official support in the Arduino IDE
back in January certainly helped increase its popularity with hobbyists,
and by March you could boot Linux on the thing
, assuming you had time to spare.
In May
bitluni had clustered 256 of them together
, another hacker had
gotten speech recognition running on it
, and there was even a project that aimed to turn the SOIC-8 variant of the chip into the
world’s cheapest RISC-V computer
.
We even put our own official stamp of approval on the CH32 by
giving each and every attendee of Supercon 2024 one to experiment with
. Not only did attendees get a Simple-Add On (SAO) protoboard with an onboard CH32, but the badge itself doubled as a programmer for the chip,
thanks in no small part to help from [CNLohr]
.
Evolution of the SAO
But the CH32 isn’t the only thing that got a boost during Supercon 2024. After years of seeing SAOs that were little more than a handful of (admittedly artistically arranged) LEDs, we
challenged hackers to come up with functional badge add-ons
using the six-pin interface and show them off in Pasadena by way of an event badge that served as a power and communications hub for them.
The response was phenomenal
. Compared to the more complex interfaces used in previous Supercon badges, focusing on the SAO standard greatly reduced the barrier of entry for those who wanted to produce their own modular add-ons in time for the November event. Instead of only a handful of ambitious attendees having the time and experience necessary to produce a modular PCB compatible with the badge, a good chunk of the ticket holders were able bring along SAOs to show off and trade, adding a whole new dimension to the event.
While it’s unlikely we’ll ever make another Supercon badge that’s quite as SAO-centric as we did in 2024, we hope that the experience of designing, building, and sharing these small add-ons will inspire them to keep the momentum going in 2025 and beyond.
Share Your 2024 Memories
Even if this post was four times as long, there’s no way we’d be able to hit on everyone’s favorite story or event from 2024. What would you have included? Let us know in the comments, and don’t be afraid to speculate wildly about what might be in store for the hacking and making world in 2025. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078683",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T15:11:55",
"content": "I’m glad you didn’t list controversial Hackaday articles about non‐software/ hardware that seemed to be written to generate lots of comments.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,371,679.451624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/diyfpv-a-new-home-for-drone-builders/ | DIYFPV: A New Home For Drone Builders | Tom Nardi | [
"drone hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"drone",
"first person view",
"FPV"
] | If you’re looking to get into flying first-person view (FPV) remote controlled aircraft, there’s an incredible amount of information available online. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. In fact, between the different forums and the countless YouTube videos out there, it can be difficult to sort through the noise and actually find the information you need.
What if there was one location where FPV folks could look up hardware, compare notes, and maybe even meet up for the occasional flight?
That’s the idea behind the recently launched DIYFPV
. In its current state the website is a cross between a social media platform, a hardware database, and a tech support forum.
Being able to look up parts to see who has them in stock and for what price is certainly handy, and is likely to become a very valuable resource, especially as users start filling the database with first-hand reviews. There’s no shortage of social media platforms where you can post and chat about FPV, but pairing that with a dedicated tech support section has promise. Especially if the solutions it produces start getting scrapped by show up in search engines.
But the part of DIYFPV that has us the most interested is the interactive builder tool. As explained in the announcement video below, once this feature goes live, it will allow users to pick parts from the database and virtually wire them together. Parts are represented by high-quality illustrations that accurately represent connectors and solder pads, so you won’t be left guessing where you’re supposed to connect what. Schematics can be shared with others to help with troubleshooting or if you want to get feedback.
The potential here is immense. Imagine a function to estimate the mass of the currently selected electronics, or a simulation of how much current it will draw during flight. It’s not clear how far DIYFPV plans on taking this feature, but we’re eager to find out. | 30 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078653",
"author": "Bogus Boy",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T13:28:13",
"content": "Enjoy it while you can. Probably by 2030 multirotors, parts and RC equipment in general (except for shit-tier children toy stuff) will be as restricted (if not more) as lab equipment and certa... | 1,760,371,679.531696 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/light-brite-turned-sci-fi-console-on-the-cheap/ | Light Brite Turned Sci-Fi Console On The Cheap | Tom Nardi | [
"Art",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"control panel",
"finishing",
"prop",
"sci-fi",
"weathering"
] | Generally, the projects featured on Hackaday actually
do
something. We won’t go as far as to say they are practical creations, but they usually have some kind of function other than to sit there and blink. But what if just sitting still and blinking away randomly is precisely what you want a piece of hardware to do?
That was exactly the goal when
[createscifi] set out to dress a Lite Brite up as a futuristic prop
. On a technical level, this project is pretty much as simple as it gets. But we appreciated seeing some of the techniques brought to bear on this project, and perhaps more importantly, really like the channel’s overall goal of creating affordable sci-fi props using common components. We don’t plan on filming our own space epic anytime soon…but we like to know the option is there.
A diode laser makes adding surface details easy.
The process starts off with creating some 2D imagery to represent various components on the final “control panel”, such as sliders, knobs, and a logo. These details, plus the big opening for the Lite Brite itself, are then cut out of thin wood using a diode laser.
After gluing the parts together, [createscifi] sprays the whole thing black and then rubs graphite powder into the surface to give it a unique metallic texture. Finally, small discs are glued onto the surface to represent knobs and buttons — a process known as “greebling” in the model and prop making world.
The very last step of the process is to glue the Lite Brite into the back of the console, and set it off randomly blinking. Personally, we’d have liked to have seen some attempt made to cover the Lite Brite. It seems like putting the thing behind a piece of scuffed up acrylic to act as a diffuser would have made for a more mysterious visual, but as [createscifi] points out, he considers the fact that its still recognizably a child’s toy to be something of a visual gag.
We love prop builds;
from ray guns
to
historical recreations
, they’re multi-disciplinary projects that really allow the creator to stretch their creativity without getting bogged down by the tyranny of practicality. It’s been a
couple years since the last Sci-Fi Contest
, perhaps it’s time for another? | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078664",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T14:01:08",
"content": "I didn’t know about this guy.Thanks for the “introduction”!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8078672",
"author": "jbx"... | 1,760,371,679.637985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/broken-usb-lamp-saved-with-a-bit-of-woodworking/ | Broken USB Lamp Saved With A Bit Of Woodworking | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"lamp",
"LED lamp",
"woodworking"
] | For many of us, when we think of creating a custom enclosure, our minds immediately go towards our 3D printer. A bit of time in your CAD program of choice, and in an hour (or several), you’ve got a bespoke plastic box. A hacker’s dream come true.
But extruded plastic is hardly perfect. For one thing, you might want a finished piece that looks a little more attractive on your desk. Which is why we
appreciate this quick hack from [Tilma]
. When faced with a broken LED light and minimal equipment, he decided to transplant the repaired electronics into a scratch-built wooden frame that not only looks better than the original, but is more functional.
Fitting the LED board into the new wooden frame.
The video starts with a teardown of the original light, which was a flexible affair meant to plug directly into a USB port. [Tilma] found that the reason it failed was because of a broken solder joint, presumably due to repetitive motion. Of course, to find this failure he needed to cut away the rubbery sleeve it was encased in, hence the need for a new home.
After tacking on some longer wires to the driver board, [Tilma] connected an external button that he thought would last longer then the stock membrane affair on the PCB. Once it was confirmed that the light worked with the modified electronics, the rest of the video covers how the wooden components were assembled using hand tools. Compared to the high-tech gadgetry we cover on a daily basis here, there’s something refreshing about seeing a person working with chisels, clamps, and rulers.
We think the final result looks quite nice for as simplistic as it is, and is unquestionably more practical than a weird little light bar that sticks out from your USB port. If you’d like to add a bit of woodworking to your bag of tricks,
[Dan Maloney] covered some of the basics for us several years ago
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078974",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-01-03T18:56:59",
"content": "A future improvement could be to incorporate the button and driver into the base, with just a short cord to attach to the power bank.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,679.579398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/protect-your-site-with-a-doom-captcha/ | Protect Your Site With ADOOMCaptcha | Jenny List | [
"Games",
"internet hacks"
] | [
"captcha",
"does it run doom",
"doom"
] | We all know that “Can it run
DOOM
?” is the first question of a hardware hacker. The 1993 first person shooter from id Software defined an entire genre of games, and has since been made open source, appearing on almost everything. Everything, that is, except a Captcha, those annoying “Are you a human” tests where we’re all expected to do a search giant’s image classification for them. So here’s [Guillermo Rauch] with
a
DOOM
captcha
, in which you must gun down three bad guys to proceed.
As a way to prove you’re a human we can’t imagine a more fitting test than indiscriminate slaughter, and it’s interesting to read a little about what goes on behind the scenes. It’s a WebAssembly application as you might have guessed, and while it’s difficult to shake that idea from the early ’90s that you needed a powerful computer to run the game, in reality it shows just how powerful WebAssembly is, as well as how far we’ve come in three decades.
We’d prefer a few different entry points instead of always playing the same level, and we were always more handy with the mouse than the keyboard back in the day, but it’s certainly a bit of fun. It’s worth noting that simply playing the game isn’t enough to verify your humanity — if you’re killed in the game before vanquishing the required three foes, you’ll have to start over. As the game is running at “Nightmare” difficulty, proving your worth might be a tad harder than you’d expect…
Need more
DOOM
? How about seeing it
on hardware nobody would have believed in 1993
? | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078539",
"author": "Srav",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T05:36:25",
"content": "I might not be best doom player but passing that seems impossible, though problem might be me since i don’t even know what is a traffic lamp…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,371,679.756645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/self-driving-like-its-1993/ | Self Driving Like It’s 1993 | Al Williams | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"driver assist",
"driver assistance",
"full self driving"
] | In a stunning example of the Baader Meinhof effect, we’ve recently heard several times this week about events like the “carbage run.” That is, a motoring event where you can only buy some garbage car to compete. In the case of [Robbe Derks], the idea was to take a six-day journey to the polar circle in a car. But not just any car. It had to be at least 20 years old and cost less than €1000. That wasn’t hard enough for [Robbe] and friends. They also decided to make the car
self-driving
.
If you have a car that is new enough, this might not be as hard as it sounds. The OpenPilot project adds L2 self-driving features to about 275 car models. But probably not a 20-year-old junker or, in particular, a 1993 Volvo 940. [Robbe] took up the challenge and is doing a series of blog posts covering how it all worked.
Most (or maybe all) cars in 1993 didn’t have actuators for remote steering, so the car needed a transplant from a 2020 Toyota Corolla part. Adaptive cruise control also needed some help in the brake system. Add an accelerator servo and an optional radar sensor and you are almost ready to go.
We are waiting for more blog posts to tell us just how close to ready you are at that point. But even the first post has a lot of cool car info. It won’t be a weekend project to duplicate, but it does have a certain cool factor.
Now add a decidedly non-1993
Android phone
… If you want to start with something less complex, maybe settle for driving assistance only in
certain conditions
. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079362",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-01-05T03:35:50",
"content": "Self driving cars were achieved in the 1980’s. The question is merely about the definition – whether it’s succeeding 95% of the time, or 99% of the time, or 99.9%… etc. How often does the driver have to inte... | 1,760,371,679.695082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/poe-power-protection-the-hornet-nest-alarm-panel/ | PoE-Power Protection: The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel | Heidi Ulrich | [
"home hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"alarm panel",
"ESP32",
"esphome",
"home-assistant",
"PoE",
"power over ethernet",
"usb",
"wESP32"
] | Have you ever thought of giving new buzz to outdated wired alarm systems or saving money while upgrading your home security? The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel, to which hacker [Patrick van Oosterwijck] contributes, does just that. Designed for domotics enthusiasts, it offers 42 sensor zones and seamless integration with Home Assistant and ESPHome. This open-source gem uses the wESP32 board, which combines an ESP32 with Ethernet and Power over Ethernet (PoE) for robust, reliable connectivity.
Check out the Crowd Supply campaign for details
.
So what makes this Hornet Nest special? Besides its hackable nature, it repurposes existing wired sensors, reducing waste and cost. Unlike WiFi-dependent solutions, the PoE-powered ESP32 ensures stable performance, even in hard-to-reach locations. The optional USB programming port is genius—it’s there when you need it but doesn’t clutter the board when you don’t. With its isolated circuits, long-cable safety, and smart Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth combination, this system ticks every DIY box.
Hackaday has featured
other DIY PoE-powered projects
, offering more inspiration for smart automation enthusiasts. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079345",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-01-05T01:41:20",
"content": "Water sensors wake up the family to do something about basement flooding at 3am. Fire sensors are handy when out of the house with no-one around to call the fire department. Security companies charge ridicul... | 1,760,371,679.981121 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/how-crane-games-are-playing-claw-games-with-the-player/ | How Crane Games Are Playing Claw Games With The Player | Maya Posch | [
"Games"
] | [
"arcade",
"crane game",
"gambling",
"game of chance",
"solenoid"
] | Fresh from AliExpress, [Big Clive] got another fascinating item to tear down:
a crane claw
, as used in those all too familiar carnival games. These games feature a claw the player moves into position above a pile of toys or other items. Lower the claw gently down in the hopes that it grabs the target item. In a perfect world, the claw will move your prize and deposit it, via a chute, into your waiting hands. Of course, everyone knows that these games are rigged and rely less on skill or luck than the way that they are programmed, but the way that this works is quite subtle, as you can see in the video below.
Despite how complex these crane claws may appear, they are simply solenoids, with the metal rod inside providing the claw action. The weight of the rod and claw section opens the claw via gravity. The strength of the claw is thus fully dependent on how strongly the solenoid is being driven, which, as [Clive] demonstrates, depends on the voltage and the duty cycle. At only 12V, the target plushie will easily slip away again as the claw barely has any strength, while at 24V, it’s pretty solid.
The basic way these crane games are programmed is to use a voltage and/or duty cycle that depends on the amount of money spent (in credits) and the monetary value of the items you can ‘win.’ If you’re very lucky you’ll get a solid catch even with a floppy claw. Most of the time you’ll have to wait until you get a solid claw. While a simple concept, it seems more designed to game the player. As [Clive] duly notes, just buying the item will probably save you a lot of money and frustration.
Or,
build your own
, of course. There are plenty of
examples
. | 42 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079299",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T21:11:32",
"content": "So many of these arcade machines (not just the claw machines but many others) are as rigged as any slot machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,371,680.066287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/pi-pico-makes-sstv-reception-a-snap/ | Pi Pico Makes SSTV Reception A Snap | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"decoder",
"ham",
"Martin",
"pi pico",
"Scottie",
"Slow-scan television",
"SSTV"
] | There’s a paradox in amateur radio: after all the time and effort spent getting a license and all the expense of getting some gear together, some new hams suddenly find that they don’t have a lot to talk about when they get in front of the mic. While that can be awkward, it’s not a deal-breaker by any means, especially when
this Pi Pico SSTV decoder
makes it cheap and easy to get into slow-scan television.
There’s not much to [Jon Dawson]’s SSTV decoder. Audio from a single-sideband receiver goes through a biasing network and into the Pico’s A/D input. The decoder can handle both Martin and Scottie SSTV protocols, with results displayed on a TFT LCD screen. The magic is in the software, of course, and [Jon] provides a good explanation of the algorithms he used, as well as some of the challenges he faced, such as reliably detecting which protocol is being used. He also implemented correction for “slant,” which occurs when the transmitter sample rate drifts relative to the receiver. Fixing that requires measuring the time it took to transmit each line and adjusting the timing of the decoder to match. The results are dramatic, and it clears up one of the main sources of SSTV artifacts.
We think this is a great build, and simple enough that anyone can try it. The best part is that since it’s receive-only, it doesn’t require a license, although [Jon] says he’s working on an encoder and transmitter too. We’re looking forward to that, but in the meantime, you might just be able to use this to
capture some space memes
.
Thanks to [CJay] for the tip. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079271",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T18:15:32",
"content": "Great use case for a 2040 PIco. I’ll never get sick of those microcontrollers or projects like these. Seeing individuals be able to purchase a 3 USD board and some 50 cent components wire up what is... | 1,760,371,679.908985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/resolution-share-inspiration/ | Resolution: Share Inspiration | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"happy new year",
"newsletter",
"resolution"
] | It’s been a good 2025 so far! I just got back from
Chaos Communication Congress
, which is easily my favorite gigantic hacker conference of the year. (Partisan Hackaday pride puts Supercon up as my favorite moderate-sized conference, naturally.) CCC is
huge
. And it’s impossible to leave an event like that without your to-hack list at least doubling in length.
And then I got back home and started prepping up for the podcast, which meant reading through about a week’s worth of Hackaday in a single sitting. Which in turn adds a few more projects to the list. Thanks for that, y’all!
All of this was possible because people who do crazy nerdy things decided to share their passions with everyone. So in the spirit of the New Year, I’m going to try to document my own projects a little bit better, because if people can’t see what you’re doing, they can’t get inspired by it.
And while it’s my day job, it’s not yours, so I’d like to encourage you to point out a cool project if you see it as well. Because what’s better than inspiring other hackers to pick up the torch on a project you love?
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
! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079257",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T17:29:09",
"content": "My list for this year:Christmas ornament reusable platforms:– Ch32 led per gpio, 1 resistor, usbc board edge target 1$ bom plus board– Esp32 neopixel 2020 wledCrawl space inspection and mapping robot majority... | 1,760,371,680.151012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/button-debouncing-with-smart-interrupts/ | Button Debouncing With Smart Interrupts | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"buttons",
"debounce",
"inputs",
"interrupts",
"isr",
"microcontrollers",
"timer"
] | Debouncing button or switch inputs on microcontrollers can be a challenging problem for those first starting to program these devices. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that real-world buttons don’t behave like the idealized textbook components we first learn about, and therefore need special consideration to operate like one would expect. There are simple ways to debounce inputs like adding a delay after a button is pressed, but for more efficient use of computer resources as well as adding some other capabilities to inputs
you might want to look at this interrupt service routine (ISR) method from [Lee] aka [stockvu]
.
The strategy with this debounce method is not simply to use a single ISR for the button input, but to activate a second timer-based ISR at that time that runs at a certain interval which timestamps any button press and checks the amount of time the button has been active. If it’s under a certain threshold the ISR assumes it’s caused by bounce and blocks the bounce. If the timestamp ages past another longer threshold it knows the button has been released. This method allows on-the-fly adaptation between long button presses and rapid button presses and is capable of debouncing both types.
For those wanting to try this out, [stockyu] has included some example Arduino code for others to use. It’s an interesting take on a solution for a common problem, and puts very little load on the microcontroller. There are about as many ways to debounce inputs as there are microcontroller platforms, though,
and you can even use a 555 timer to get this job done
which frees up 100% of the microcontroller’s CPU. | 55 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079165",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T12:05:28",
"content": "Yay, 555s Forever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8079168",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T12:15:20",
"content": "why bother. S... | 1,760,371,680.246413 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/04/a-new-life-for-a-conference-badge-weighing-bees/ | A New Life For A Conference Badge, Weighing Bees | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"badgelife",
"bees",
"EMF camp",
"tilda",
"TiLDA Mk.e"
] | We love electronic conference badges here at Hackaday, but it’s undeniable that many of them end up gathering dust after the event. Most of them are usable as development boards though, so it’s nice to see them appear in projects from time to time. [Benjamin Blundell] has a good one,
he’s using an EMF Camp 2014 badge to power a set of load cells in a bee scale
.
Not being skilled in the art of apiary here at Hackaday we’re thankful for his explanation. Beekeepers weigh their hives as a means of gauging their occupancy, and the scale for this purpose has a few application specific features. The EMF 2014 badge (known as the TiLDA MKe) meanwhile is an Arduino Due compatible ARM Cortex M0 board with an LCD display, making it perfect for the job. He devotes quite some time to describing the load cells, mounting them on extrusion, and calibration, all of which should be of use to anyone making a scale.
The software for the badge is an odd mix of Arduino and FreeRTOS, and he takes one of the stock apps and modifies it for the scale. It’s very much a badge of its era, being programmable but not with a built-in interpreter for MicroPython or similar. You can see the whole project at work in the video below the break.
If you’ve not seen a TiLDA MKe before,
we wrote about it when it was released
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8079283",
"author": "Zachary W Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-01-04T19:38:27",
"content": "I love this. I actually BOUGHT some 10-20 dollar e ink badges and price tags with the 10 to 100+ year “battery” life and theyre amazing. I program with my phones nfc and they just stay on . Som... | 1,760,371,680.111244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/38c3-taking-down-the-power-grid-over-radio/ | 38C3: Taking Down The Power Grid Over Radio | Elliot Williams | [
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"38C3",
"infrastructure",
"power grid",
"radio"
] | You know how you can fall down a rabbit hole when you start on a project? [Fabian Bräunlein] and [Luca Melette] were looking at a box on a broken streetlamp in Berlin. The box looked like a relay, and it contained a radio. It was a Funkrundsteueremfänger – a radio controlled power controller – made by a company called EFR. It turns out that these boxes are on many streetlamps in many cities, and like you do, they thought about how cool it would be to make lights blink, but on a city-wide basis. Haha, right?
So they bought a bunch of these EFR devices on the used market and started hacking
.
They did a lot of background digging, and found out that they could talk to the devices, both over their local built-in IR port, but also over radio. Ironically, one of the best sources of help they found in reversing the protocol was in the form of actually pressing F1 in the manufacturer’s configuration application – a program’s help page actually helped someone! They discovered that once they knew some particulars about how a node was addressed, they could turn on and off a device like a street lamp, which they demo with a toy on stage. So far, so cute.
But it turns out that these boxes are present on all sorts of power consumers and producers around central Europe, used to control and counteract regional imbalances to keep the electrical grid stable. Which is to say that with the same setup as they had, maybe multiplied to a network of a thousand transmitters, you could turn off enough power generation, and turn on enough load, to bring the entire power grid down to its knees. Needless to say, this is when they contacted both the manufacturer and the government.
The good news is that there’s a plan to transition to a better system that uses authenticated transmissions, and that plan has been underway since 2017. The bad news is that progress has been very slow, and in some cases stalled out completely. The pair view their work here as providing regulators with some extra incentive to help get this important infrastructure modernization back on the front burner. For instance, it turns out that large power plants shouldn’t be using these devices for control at all, and they estimate that fixing this oversight could take care of most of the threat with the least effort.
National power grids are complicated machines, to say the least, and the impact of a failure can be very serious.
Just take a look at what happened in 2003 in the US northeast
, for instance. And in the case of real grid failure,
getting everything back online isn’t as simple a just turning the switches back on again
. As [Fabian] and [Luca] point out here, it’s important to discover and disclose when legacy systems put the grid in potential danger. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078498",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-01-02T01:14:23",
"content": "I similar situation could happen with enough hacked IOT devices.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8078586",
"author": "Johnu",
"timest... | 1,760,371,680.343396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/floss-weekly-episode-814-the-banksy-situation/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 814: The Banksy Situation | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"FRRouting"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Rob Campbell
talk with
Alistair Woodman
about FRRouting, the Internet routing suite that helps make all this possible. But also business, and how an open source project turns the corner into a successful way to support programmers.
FRR
https://github.com/FRRouting/frr
https://frrouting.org/
Erlang Ecosystem Foundation
https://erlef.org/
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show Right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078446",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T22:10:06",
"content": "As far as my understanding goes… for those curious.The Banksy Situation: Published non-commercial (open source?) code is art, and there fore not subject to The Cyber Resilience Act.(Unless somebody uses it i... | 1,760,371,680.285026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/2024-brought-even-more-customization-to-boxes-py/ | 2024 Brought Even More Customization To Boxes.py | Tom Nardi | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"boxes",
"laser cut",
"laser cut box",
"parametric"
] | If you have access to a laser cutter, we sincerely hope you’re aware of
boxes.py
. As the name implies, it started life as a Python tool for generating parametric boxes that could be assembled from laser-cut material, but has since become an invaluable online resource for all sorts of laser projects. Plus, you can
still
use it for making boxes.
But even if you’ve been using boxes.py for awhile, you might not know it was actually an entry in the Hackaday Prize back in 2017. Creator [Florian Festi] has kept up with the project’s Hackaday.io page all this time, using it as a sort of development blog, and
his recent retrospective on 2024
is a fascinating read for anyone with an eye towards hot photonic action.
In it, he describes a bevy of new designs that have come to the site, many of which have been developed either by or in conjunction with the community. For example, a
new tool for generating IKEA-like pegboard
is sure to be useful for the better organized among us. The last twelve months also saw the addition of a parametric air filter box, LEGO sorters, storage bins, book holders, bird feeders, and plenty more.
At the end, [Florian] has some interesting thoughts on how the community as a whole has developed over the years. He notes that in the early days, any code or designs proposed by users for inclusion in the project usually needed work before they were ready for prime time. But now that everything is more established, the pull requests he’s getting are so well done that they rival any of the original work he put in.
We’re glad to hear that the community is coming together to make this already fantastic project even better. It sounds like [Florian] is even getting some help to
track down and eliminate the remaining Python 2.x code
that’s still lingering around.
Here’s to many more excellent years for Boxes.py! | 20 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078413",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T20:16:39",
"content": "Now to get a laser cutter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8078424",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As... | 1,760,371,680.409982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/led-wall-clock-gets-raspberry-pi-pico-upgrade/ | LED Wall Clock Gets Raspberry Pi Pico Upgrade | Tom Nardi | [
"clock hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"ntp",
"Pi Pico W",
"seven segment LED"
] | When [Rodrigo Feliciano] realized that the reason his seven-segment LED wall clock wasn’t working was because the original TG1508D5V5 controller was fried, he had a decision to make. He could either chuck the whole thing, or put in the effort to reverse engineer how the displays were driven and replace the dead controller with something a bit more modern. Since you’re reading this post on Hackaday,
we bet you can guess which route he decided to take
.
If you happen to own the same model of clock as [Rodrigo], then you really lucked out. He’s done a fantastic job documenting how he swapped the original controller out for a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which not only let him bring the clock back to life, but let him add new capabilities such as automatic time setting via Network Time Protocol (NTP).
But even if you don’t have this particular clock there’s probably something you can learn from this project, as it’s a great example of practical reverse engineering. By loading a high-resolution image of the back of the PCB into KiCad, [Rodrigo] was able to place all the components into their correct positions and following traces to see what’s connected to what.
Pretty soon he not only had a 3D model of the clock’s PCB, but a schematic he could use to help wire in the Pi Pico. Admittedly this is a pretty straightforward PCB to try and reverse engineer, but hey, you have to start somewhere.
We had
high hopes for KiCad’s image import feature
when it was introduced, and it’s
great to see real-world examples
like this trickle in as more folks learn about it. | 11 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078360",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T16:56:27",
"content": "Interestingly this LCD panel is well known for the meme which claims that a certain day and time was on the display in BTTF. This was generally photoshopped to show a different date from the film. Eventual... | 1,760,371,680.460048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/creating-temporal-light-reflections-with-metamaterials/ | Creating Temporal Light Reflections With Metamaterials | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"metamaterials",
"reflection",
"reflections"
] | Owing to the wave nature of light there are many ways that such different waves can interact with each other, but also with materials. Everyone knows about reflecting light with a mirror, which is a property of materials like metals, but specific structures can cause the light to behave in a way that creates rather amazing results.
Examples of this are cases of iridescence in nature (like butterfly wings) and eye color, where the perceived colors are the result of environmental light interacting with these structures rather than pigmentation or dyes. An even more interesting interaction has now been demonstrated by reflecting multiple microwave radiation beams off each other,
creating a time reflection
.
The
study by [Emanuele Galiffi] et al.
(
shared copy
) was published in
Nature Physics
. By creating a metamaterial that allows for temporal coherent wave control (CWC) the electromagnetic radiation was controlled to where it allowed for this kind of unusual interaction. The key here being that there is no major constructive or destructive interaction between the two waves as with spatial CWC, rather the wave reflect off each other, or more specifically the time interface.
Although the popular reporting talks about ‘turning back time’ and ‘watching the back of your own head in a mirror’, the impact is far less dramatic: in the article conclusion the researchers mention unveiling new light-matter interactions in the microwave- and other parts of the spectrum, as well as new ways to control and shape light.
Top image: Temporal coherent wave control and photonic collisions enabled by time-interfaces. (Credit: Emanuele Galiffi et al.,
Nature Physics
, 2023) | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078317",
"author": "arcturus",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T13:58:35",
"content": "Cool, and somewhat weird. Not sure I understood this. Could this perhaps make giant space telescopes more practically realizeable? It would be so cool if we one day could directly image extrasolar planet... | 1,760,371,680.505056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/01/turning-a-lada-into-an-ev-with-50-cordless-drills-because-why-not/ | Turning A Lada Into An EV With 50 Cordless Drills, Because Why Not? | Donald Papp | [
"Tool Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"cordless drill",
"diy",
"ev",
"lada",
"motor",
"vehicle"
] | [Garage 54] is no stranger to vehicle-related projects of the “because why not?” variety, and their latest is
using 50 cordless drills combined into a monstrous mega-motor
to turn a gutted (and extended) Lada into an electric vehicle (EV).
Doing this leans on some of [Garage 54]’s earlier projects, such as replacing the aforementioned Lada’s engine block with a frame containing sixteen chainsaws. That means they don’t need to start completely from scratch, and have a frame design that can drop into the vehicle once the “engine” is constructed.
Fifty cordless drills won’t set any efficiency records for EV engines, but it’s got a certain style.
Here’s what’s in the new engine: each of the drills has its chuck replaced with an aluminum pulley, and belts connect each group of drills to an output shaft. Ideally, every drill motor would run at the same time and at exactly the same speed, but one works with what they have. [Garage 54] originally worked to synchronize the drills by interfacing to each drill’s motor control board, but eventually opted to simply bypass all controls and power each drill’s motor directly from the batteries. Initial tests are done by touching bare cable ends with a turned-away face and squinted eyes, but we expect “Just A Big Switch” to end up in the final assembly.
It looks wild and we can think of more than a few inefficiencies present in a system like this, but the output shaft does turn and torque is being transferred, so the next step is interfacing to the car’s factory gearbox.
If it powers the car in any meaningful way, that Lada might very well become the world’s most gloriously hacked-together EV. And hey, if the power output of the EV motor is disappointing,
you can just make your own
.
[via
Motor1
] | 49 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078287",
"author": "Jay Kwon",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T09:35:25",
"content": "Drill batteries make good ebike batteries, you can get nice quality and cheap packs new from aldi or lidl. Using whole drills though i guess why not lol. I would like to see battery swop stations for EV ... | 1,760,371,680.66585 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/repairing-a-bps-305-30v-bench-power-supply/ | Repairing A BPS-305 30V Bench Power Supply | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"bench power supply",
"repair"
] | When [Tahmid Mahbub] recently reached for his ‘Lavolta’ BPS-305 bench supply, he was dismayed to find that despite it being a 30V, 5A-rated unit, the supply refused to output more than 15V. To be fair, he wasn’t sure that he had ever tried to push it beyond 15V in the years that he had owned it, but it had better live up to its specs. Ergo out came the screwdriver to open the power supply to see what had broken,
and hopefully to fix it
.
After some more probing around, he discovered that the unit had many more issues, including a highly unstable output voltage and output current measurement was completely wrong. Fortunately this bench power supply turns out to be very much like any number of similar 30V, 5A units, with repair videos and schematics available.
While [Tahmid] doesn’t detail his troubleshooting process, he does mention the culprits: two broken potentiometers (VR104 and VR102). VR104 is a 5 kOhm pot in the output voltage feedback circuit and VR102 (500 Ohm) sets the maximum output current. With no 500 Ohm pot at hand, a 5 kOhm one was combined with a 470 Ohm resistor to still allow for trimming. Also adjusted were the voltage and current trimpots for the front display as they were quite a bit off. Following some testing on the reassembled unit, this power supply is now back in service, for the cost of two potentiometers and a bit of time. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078288",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T09:35:50",
"content": "I have a love hate relationship with power electronicsI love what its capable of, many of my projects are power conversion related. I love getting into all the different ways to optimise the circuit.I h... | 1,760,371,680.581989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/quantum-mechanics-and-negative-time-with-photon-atom-interactions/ | Quantum Mechanics And Negative Time With Photon-Atom Interactions | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"quantum physics"
] | Within our comfortable world of causality we expect that reactions always follow an action and not vice versa. This why the
recent chatter in the media
about researchers having discovered ‘negative time’ with photons being emitted before the sample being hit by source photons created such a stir. Did these researchers truly just crack our fundamental concepts of (quantum) physics wide open? As it turns out,
not really
.
Much of the confusion stems from the fact that photons aren’t little marbles that bounce around the place, but are an expression of (electromagnetic) energy. This means that their resulting interaction with matter (i.e. groupings of atoms) is significantly more complicated, often resulting in the photonic energy getting absorbed by an atom, boosting the energy state of its electron(s) before possibly being re-emitted as the excited electrons decay into a lower orbit.
This dwell time before re-emission is what is confusing to many, as in our classical understanding we’d expect this to be a very deterministic process, while in a quantum world it most decidedly is not.
This is highlighted in the
Scientific American article
on the subject as well, specifically quantum probability. Within this system, it’s possible that there can be re-emissions before the atomic excitation has fully ceased. It was this
original 2022 finding
that was
recently retested
, with the findings confirmed.
As confusing as this all may sound, the authors of the recent paper stress that the core of the issue here is the so-called ‘group delay’ of the original pulse as it excites the cloud of rubidium atoms. If one were to think of this pulse as discrete quanta of photon particles, it’d seem to break causality, but as a wave function within quantum physics this is perfectly acceptable. Observations such as the rubidium atoms becoming excited despite photons passing through the cloud, and emitting a photon before the electrons returned to their ground state do not seem to make sense, but here we also have to consider how and what we are measuring.
The short version is that causality remains unbroken, and the world of quantum physics is intuitive in its own, strange ways. Research like this also gives us a much better fundamental understanding of photonics and related fields, none of which involve time travel.
Experimental setup and measured optical depth. (Credit: Josiah Sinclair et al., PRX Quantum, 2022) | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078259",
"author": "azeemh",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T04:58:55",
"content": "Happy New Year Maya!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8078271",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T07:18:15",
"co... | 1,760,371,680.963358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/a-foil-tweeter-sound-from-kitchen-consumables/ | A Foil Tweeter, Sound From Kitchen Consumables | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"loudspeaker",
"ribbon tweeter",
"tweeter"
] | The world of audio has produced a variety of different loudspeaker designs over the last century, though it’s fair to say that the trusty moving coil reigns supreme. That hasn’t stopped plenty of engineers from trying new ways to make sound though, and
[R.U.H] is here with a home-made version of one of them
. It’s a foil tweeter, a design in which a corrugated strip of foil is held in a magnetic field, and vibrates when an audio frequency current is passed through it.
He shows a couple of takes on the design, both with neodymium magnets but with different foils and 3D printed or wooden surrounds. They both make a noise when plugged into an amplifier, and unsurprisingly the thicker foil has less of the high notes.
We can see that in there is the possibility for a high quality tweeter, but we can’t help having one concern. This device has an extremely low impedance compared to the amplifier, and thus would probably be drawing far too much current. We’d expect it to be driven through a transformer instead, if he had any care for not killing the amplifier.
Happily there are other uses for a ribbon,
they are far better known as microphones
. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078242",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-01-01T01:37:08",
"content": "Metallized mylar from a balloon might work better.As far as the resistance goes, putting an 8 ohm resistor in series might help.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,371,681.008368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/doomscroll-precisely-and-wirelessly/ | Doomscroll Precisely, And Wirelessly | Michael Shaub | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed prototype",
"3d printing",
"bluetooth",
"cnc",
"ergonomic",
"hid",
"input device",
"magnetic encoder",
"nordic",
"nRF52840",
"prototype",
"scroll wheel",
"USB C"
] | Around here, we love it when someone identifies a need and creates their own solution. In this case, [Engineer Bo] was tired of endless and imprecise scrolling with a mouse wheel. No off-the-shelf solutions were found, and other DIY projects either just used hacked mice scroll wheels, customer electronics with low-res hardware encoders, or featured high-res encoders that were down-sampled to low-resolution.
A custom build was clearly required
.
We loved seeing hacks along the whole process by [Engineer Bo], working with components on hand, pairing sensors to microcontrollers to HID settings, 3D printing forms to test ergonomics, and finishing the prototype device. When 3D printing, [Engineer Bo]
inserted a pause after support material to allow drawing a layer of permanent marker ink that acts as a release agent that can later be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.
We also liked the detail of a single hole inside used to install each of the three screws that secure the knob to the base. While a chisel and UV-curing resin cleaned up some larger issues with the print, more finishing was required. For a project within a project, [Engineer Bo] then threw together a mini lathe with 3D printed and RC parts to make sanding easy.
Scroll down with your clunky device to see the video that illustrates the precision with a graphic of a 0.09° rotation and is filled with hacky nuggets. See how the electronics were selected and the circuit designed and programmed, the use of PCBWay’s CNC machining in addition to board assembly services, and how to deal with bearings that spin too freely.
[Engineer Bo] teases that a future version might use a larger bearing for less wobble and an anti-slip coating on the base. Will the board files and 3D models be released, too? Will these be sold as finished products or kits? Will those unused LED drivers be utilized in an upcoming version? We can’t wait to see what’s next for this project.
Thanks for the tip [UnderSampled]! | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078171",
"author": "Apple Bootlicker",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T22:31:57",
"content": "Why not just use Apple’s Magic Trackpad? Not to be confused with the Magic Mouse and infamous charging port.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,371,680.918876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/sony-vaio-revived-power-the-second-80/ | Sony Vaio Revived: Power, The Second 80% | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"PCB design",
"power",
"sony vaio"
] | A bit ago, I’ve told you about
how the Sony Vaio motherboard replacement started
, and all the tricks I used to make it succeed on the first try. How do you plan out the board, what are good things to keep in mind while you’re sourcing parts, and how do you ensure you finish the design? This time, I want to tell you my insights about what it takes for your new board revision to stay on your desk until completion, whether it’s helping it not burn up, or making sure the bringup process is doable.
Uninterrupted, Granular Power
Power was generally comfortable to design, but I did have to keep some power budgets in mind. A good exercise for safeguarding your regulators is keeping a .txt file where you log consumers and their expected current consumption on each board power rail, making sure all of your power regulators, connectors, and tracks, can handle quite a bit more than that current. Guideline: increase current by 20%-50% when figuring out the specs for switching regulators and inductors, and, multiply by 10-20% when figuring out conversion losses going between downstream and upstream rails.
I did have a blunder in this department – not accounting for track current early on enough. I laid out the board using 0.5mm wide tracks for power – it looked spacious enough. Then, I put “0.5mm” into a track current calculator and saw a harrowing temperature increase for the currents I was expecting. At that point in routing, it took some time to shift tracks around to accomodate the trace width I actually needed, which is to say, I should’ve calculated it all way way earlier. Thankfully, things went well in the end.
Apart from this, the power rails are a crucial aspect for bringup. How are you going to bringup your board? Which power rails need to be powered on so that the board can boot? Which signals do you need for every power rail, and what power rails do those signals depend on? What are the minimum required parts for the board to “boot”, and how quickly can you test every part before getting the next revision? My strategy was: I flash the EC with MicroPython, and hack at the code part by part I go. It worked surprisingly well for lowering the debugging entry level, and I will tell more about it later.
A lot of bringup preparations are done during design, though. You have to think about typical usecases, and think how your hardware is going to react to them. What kind of state will the board enter after you insert the battery, or apply power from an external charger? Will you need to find a charger after you swap the battery? Is battery hotswap possible? The best way to understand all of it is to look through fundamental blocks of the circuit, and ask questions about their behaviour.
The questions can be pretty simple. Is the EC always powered no matter the input source? Can you detect when the power sources are too low, or too high? What’s the default states of the EN pins of every switching regulator, and what are the default state of GPIOs that control your regulator EN pins? Are any of these pins connected to GPIOs that might oscillate during your MCU’s boot? Is the input DC-DC enabled by default? What about the battery charger?
In the end, I went through all the switching regulator datasheets, taking note of the EN pins. Closer to the end, I’ve noticed that I’d need to invert the EN pin of the input DC-DC with help of a FET if I wanted that regulator to be powered on by default – otherwise, I’d get a chicken-and-egg problem if I were to try and power the board through its charger with missing or fully discharged battery. The FET barely fit on the board, but I massaged the tracks until it did.
Double-Sided Assembly
Here’s tips for bringup – you want to make sure you can access your EC at all times. In my case, I decided to mux the EC RP2040’s USB onto the external port, allowing for a “debug mode” with a USB A-A cable – a cool feature, but I have definitely regretted restricting myself with it. Essentially, I locked myself into USB plug-unplug cycle during the early development, and it was hell to solve problems as a result. My advice is – plan for an extra USB-C connector or just USB testpoints on your board, so you can have a permanent unshakeable USB/SWD/UART/etc. link during the period while you’re not quite sure how well your board works. In the end, I had to tombstone the two 0402 D+/D- resistors of the RP2040 EC and pull an external “debug” USB-C connector on three magnet wires – a finicky endeavour, worth avoiding if you can.
Other than that hurdle, the bringup has been seamless, in no small part because I used the MicroPython REPL to probe through the board as I enabled parts of it. The REPL flow let me enable/disable power rails and query GPIOs dynamically during early bringup, mocking up code on the fly and immediately testing it on my hardware, and dynamically debug features like onboard shift registers, or buttons and LEDs on the Vaio’s case, wrapping them into code and putting them into the main.py file – the EC firmware grew larger and larger as I experimented. There’s something special about having a list of power rails at your fingertips, switching them off one by one, quickly tying program states into switches/buttons/LEDs as needed – it was a joy of a bringup experience.
How do you assemble such a double-sided board – really, how do you even stencil it? I planned for stenciling it from the very beginning, and, I distributed the components in a way that one side had way less components than the other – including more intricate components, like multi-pin ICs. One thing that’s really helped, is using the JLCPCB stencil shipping cardboard to make a jig for the board with cutouts in it, letting me stencil the less-populated side once the more-populated side already had components soldered onto it. In a different life, I used to lasercut frames for this kind of endeavour – KiCad SVG export should be all you need.
The more-populated side got assembled using one of those tiny $20 hotplate, in the comfort of my home – I’d hot air it, but my hot air gun fell and broke. I did have to borrow a hot air gun for assembling the second side, though – and assemble it very carefully. The main problem was the plastic connector on the less-populated side – I had to hot air it from the bottom, through the RP2040 EC and its supporting circuitry.
Learning, Achievements, Expansion
I’ve had some fun failure modes happen on this board. One, the failing 5V boost with subpar layout, which I’ve already described in the
switching regulator patch board article
a couple months ago. Fun fact – it’s also verified a RPi SD card corruption theory of mine, confirming that noise on the input power rail easily propagates into the 3.3V rail powering the SD card, and results in SD card corruption; if you’re getting SD card corruption issues, make sure to check the DC-DCs involved in your project!
Another one was specifically the output pin of the 3.3V EC regulator not getting soldered properly – somehow, it had a cold solder joint, and the EC was getting powered with around 1.23V, again, somehow; it might’ve been due to my incessant multimeter probing, in hindsight. I’m glad that this was the cold solder joint I had to figure out – as far as cold solder joints go, this one was seriously easy to debug, since just moving the probe between the 3.3V reg leg and an EC power capacitor was enough to find the spot the voltage drop happened.
Again, any burnt components on such an assembled board get expensive – not just monetarily, it’s also that you don’t want to repeat the assembly effort. So, keep all metal and solder away during bringup, check all the connectors for accidental solder blobs many times over, and be very careful to. Tempted to hotplug internal connectors? Don’t do it unless you’ve designed them to hotplug, or if the original manufacturer has – there’s always pinout and connector considerations you have to mind. This goes doubly for high-current and high-voltage connectors.
Expansion slots are wonderful if you can afford them – there’s usually leftover GPIOs and some power rail capacity that you might want to later tap, and in my case, there’s also heaps of free space inside of the laptop. I managed to fit two FFC sockets on this particular board, which have plenty of high-current power rails and GPIOs – my plan, personally, is to make a board that takes SATA or NVMe SSDs, and maybe even has expansions like GPS or extra WiFi – the case internals are spacious enough for all of those.
Looking to put a new powerful motherboard into an old lovely chassis? Chances are, you can certainly do it – even if it takes time, trial-and-error, and help from some friends or internet strangers. I hope this project walkthrough can help you lots along the way, especially in being comfortable to take the first steps! Got a project stuck on the mental shelf? Get on with it – you will learn new cool things, and find new tricks to improvise. Me, I’m getting a friendly device to carry in my pocket, and that alone is a wonderful experience. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078149",
"author": "Tom Crowley",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T21:15:38",
"content": "Love this! Do you think you could adapt it to a CM5 module?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8078661",
"author": "Christopher Smith",
"ti... | 1,760,371,681.280798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/why-2025-will-not-be-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop/ | Why 2025 Will Not Be The Year Of Linux On The Desktop | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"desktop",
"linux",
"linux desktop"
] | One of the longest running jokes in our sphere is that the coming year will
finally
be the year of “Linux on the Desktop.” Never mind that the erosion of the traditional Windows-style desktop form of computing is a thing, or that Linux-derived operating systems such as Android or Chrome OS are running on literally billions of devices across the globe, it sends up the unreasonable optimism of Linux enthusiasts back in the day that their nascent platform could depose Windows from its pedestal.
If there’s one thing we like more than a good tech joke then, it’s a well-written tech rant, and [Artem S. Tashkinov] has penned a doozy in
“
Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition
“. It’s Linux trolling at its finest, and will surely get many a crusty open source devotee rushing to their keyboard to decry its ideas.
Aside from the inherent humor then, reading it we have to admit that he makes a set of very cogent points. Even having used a Linux desktop exclusively for a very long time indeed there’s no shame in admitting that it’s not perfect, and things such as the mildly annoying state of network file sharing or the complexity for most users of getting to grips with the security model are very fair criticisms. And the last section on the Linux community hits hard, it’s necessary to admit that the world of open source doesn’t always welcome people trying to use its software as well as it could.
But as power users of a Linux desktop for everything, more than just for writing Hackaday, we’d take the view that for all its undoubted faults, it still offers a better experience than the latest version of Windows. Oddly it
could
now be an acceptable desktop for many people, but the sad thing is that the need for that may well have passed to those Android and Chrome OS devices we mentioned earlier.
We’ve been known to have
our own Linux related rants
from time to time. | 124 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "8078031",
"author": "Daniel Öster",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T16:41:25",
"content": "When Microsoft introduced the idea of Recall, I switched to Linux Desktop. Wish I would have done the switch a long time ago, running Linux is great!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,371,681.440166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/new-years-circuit-challenge-make-this-rfid-circuit/ | New Years Circuit Challenge: Make This RFID Circuit | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"125khz",
"rfid",
"transistor"
] | The Proxmark3 PCB 125kHz antenna., GNU GPL version 2,
GitHub link
.
Picture this: It’s the end of the year, and a few hardy souls gather in a hackerspace to enjoy a bit of seasonal food and hang out. Conversation turns to the Flipper Zero, and aspects of its design, and one of the parts we end up talking about is its built-in 125 kHz RFID reader.
It’s
a surprisingly complex circuit
with a lot of filter components and a mild mystery surrounding the use of a GPIO to pulse the receive side of its detector through a capacitor. One thing led to another as we figured out how it worked, and as part of the jolity we ended up with one member making a simple RFID reader on the bench.
Just a signal generator making a 125 kHz square wave, coupled to a two transistor buffer pumping a tuned circuit. The tuned circuit is the coil scavenged from an old RFID card, and the capacitor is picked for resonance in roughly the right place. We were rewarded with the serial bitstream overlaying the carrier on our ‘scope, and had we added a filter and a comparator we could have resolved it with a microcontroller. My apologies, probably due to a few festive beers I failed to capture a picture of this momentous event.
A Nasty Circuit That Just Has To Be Made
Here on the Morning After the Night Before, I’m sitting thinking about 125 kHz RFID, as this is honestly the first time in many decades playing with radio I’ve given one of these a look. (Though we’ve pondered its
13.56 MHz cousin
.) An evil thought forms in my mind; would it be possible to make a single-transistor, self-oscillating 125 kHz RFID reader? It would be an extremely nasty circuit and there is no possible need for one to exist, but it’s the electronic engineers equivalent of an earworm. I know how I would approach it but I don’t know whether my idea would work. I’m thus going to set it as a New Years exercise for you readers.
So, how would I approach this? One of the first electronic projects I made over four decades ago was
a regenerative radio
. This is a one-transistor receiver for AM radio which applies positive feedback to an RF amplifier to the point at which it’s almost but not quite oscillating. This has the effect of narrowing its bandwith hugely, to the extent that it makes a passable narrowband radio receiver. I would approach the RFID reader using a variation on this circuit; a single transistor regenerative receiver which is just oscillating at 125 kHz, but whose oscillation is quenched momentarily every time the RFID tag loads its coil to indicate serial data. I should thus be able to pull a DC voltage from my emitter resistor, filter it, and return something that could be turned into a square wave. I think something like this could work but I stand ready to be proved wrong What do you think, would this circuit function?
Every Contest Needs a Few Rules:
Your circuit must use only one transistor, no ICs. Diodes and RCL passives are allowed, but also no vacuum tubes, tunnel diodes, or other active components, you lateral thinkers. It must demonstrably read a 125 kHz RFID tag placed within its range, and output something capable of being resolved by a 74 series logic gate of any family, thus decipherable as the serial payload by a microcontroller etc. That doesn’t have to be a TTL-level-compliant gate, and can be a Schmitt trigger. Otherwise it’s up to you. If you do a write-up somewhere, I’d even write it up for Hackaday. So go on, have a go at this one. I’d love to see what awesome awfulness you come up with! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077997",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T15:34:22",
"content": "That link is pointing to a computer path (/home/jenny/Downloads/RFID schematic.pdf) rather than to an actual website!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,371,681.133228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/vplayer-puts-smart-display-in-palm-of-your-hand/ | VPlayer Puts Smart Display In Palm Of Your Hand | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"miniature",
"smartwatch",
"video player"
] | It’s not something we always think about, but the reality is that many of the affordable electronic components we enjoy today are only available to us because they’re surplus parts intended for commercial applications. The only reason you can pick up something like a temperature sensor for literal pennies is because somebody decided to produce millions of them for inclusion in various consumer doodads, and you just happened to luck out.
The vPlayer, from [Kevin Darrah]
is a perfect example. Combining a 1.69 inch touch screen intended for smartwatches with the ESP32-S3, the vPlayer is a programmable network-connected display that can show…well, pretty much anything you want, within reason. As demonstrated in the video below, applications range from showing your computer’s system stats to pulling in live images and videos from the Internet.
With an ESP32 at its heart, you can obviously program the vPlayer to do your bidding just like any other development board based on the chip. But to speed things along, [Kevin] is providing demo code to accomplish several common enough tasks that there’s a good chance he’s already got your use case covered.
Out of the box it will play videos stored on the SD card, though you’ll first have to run them through
ffmpeg
to get the format right. There’s also code written to have the vPlayer act as a weather display, or pull down data and images from public APIs.
The vPlayer is intended to be powered via the USB-C connection, but the VUSB and 3.3 V pins from the ESP32 are broken out on the back should you want to inject power that way. Just be warned, the documentation notes that doing so while plugged into USB may release the Magic Smoke. [Kevin] has also provided a
3D model of the vPlayer and its stock case
, should you want to design your own 3D printed enclosure.
Admittedly, there’s nothing exactly groundbreaking about the vPlayer. You could
easily roll your own version
with existing modules. But as enjoyable as it can be to come up with your own solutions, there’s something to be said for this sort of polished, turn-key experience.
Thanks to [LegoManACM] for the tip. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077939",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T12:08:06",
"content": "DOOM wristwatch?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8077976",
"author": "Zamorano",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T14:22:19",
"content": "Hah, you own ... | 1,760,371,681.188253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/bringing-openstreetmap-data-into-minecraft/ | Bringing OpenStreetMap Data IntoMinecraft | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"minecraft",
"openstreetmap",
"rust"
] | Over the years, dedicated gamers have created incredible recreations of real (and not so real) locations and structures within the confines of
Minecraft
. Thanks to their efforts, you can explore everything from New York city to Middle Earth and the U.S.S.
Enterprise
in 1:1: scale.
But what if you wanted to recreate your own town, and didn’t have the hundreds of hours of spare time necessary to do it by hand? Enter Arnis, an open source project from [Louis Erbkamm] that can pull in geographic data from OpenStreetMap and turn it into a
highly detailed
Minecraft
map with just a few keystrokes
.
The tool, written in Rust, can be either run via an interactive graphical interface or on the command line. In either case, you provide Arnis with the latitude and longitude for a bounding box around whatever you want to import into the game. [Louis] warns that the resulting process is fairly computationally heavy, so you should start be experimenting with small areas.
Once generated, the map can be loaded into the Java Edition of
Minecraft
. This refers to the original build of the game that predates the Microsoft buyout. Once Redmond took over they spearheaded a new version of the game written in C++ which was then ported over to mobile operating systems and game consoles. Long story short, if you want to wander around a
Minecraft
version of your home town, you’ll have to do it on your desktop computer instead of your Nintendo Switch.
While the tool is usable in its current state, [Louis] has a fairly long list of features that either still need to be implemented or could use some improvements. From the number of pull requests that have been merged in, it looks like any assistance the community can provide to make Arnis as capable as possible is welcome, so feel free to lend a hand if you’ve got that geospatial fever.
We’ve seen several examples of hackers
bringing
objects from
Minecraft
into the physical world
, so it’s refreshing to see a bit of our reality sneaking into the game’s blocky universe. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077586",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T12:26:17",
"content": "The urge to try out rust becomes stronger every day. If only the syntax was less verbose with random characters sprinkled everywhere.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,681.235051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/the-twisted-history-of-ethernet-on-twisted-pair-wiring/ | The Twisted History Of Ethernet On Twisted Pair Wiring | Adam Fabio | [
"History",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"10base-t",
"10base2",
"3com",
"5base2",
"ethernet",
"the serial port"
] | We all take Ethernet and its ubiquitous RJ-45 connector for granted these days. But Ethernet didn’t start with twisted pair cable. [Mark] and [Ben] at
The Serial Port
YouTube channel are taking
a deep dive into the twisted history of Ethernet on twisted pair wiring
. The earliest forms of Ethernet used RG-8 style coaxial cable. It’s a thick, stiff cable requiring special vampire taps and lots of expensive equipment to operate.
The industry added BNC connectors and RG-58 coax for “cheapernet” or 10Base2. This reduced cost, but still had some issues. Anyone who worked in an office wired with 10Base2 can attest to the network drops whenever a cable was kicked out or a terminator was dropped.
The spark came when [Tim Rock] of AT&T realized that the telephone cables already installed in offices around the world could be used for network traffic. [Tim] and a team of engineers from five different companies pitched their idea to the IEEE 802.3 committee on Feb 14, 1984.
The idea wasn’t popular though — Companies like 3COM, and Digital Equipment Corporation had issues with the network topology and the wiring itself. It took ten years of work and a Herculean effort by IEEE committee chairwoman [Pat Thaler] to create the standard the world eventually came to know as 10Base-T. These days we’re running 10 Gigabit Ethernet over those same connectors.
For those who don’t know, this video is part of a
much larger series about Ethernet,
covering both history and practical applications. We also covered
the 40th anniversary of Ethernet
in 2020. | 55 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077571",
"author": "Joe Momma",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T10:59:15",
"content": "The center pins 3,4,5,6 oddity came from phone lines originally",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077721",
"author": "Abraham Barnhart",
... | 1,760,371,681.532102 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/ball-nut-modification-charts-a-middle-course-between-building-and-buying/ | Ball Nut Modification Charts A Middle Course Between Building And Buying | Dan Maloney | [
"hardware",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"annealing",
"ball nut",
"ball screw",
"build vs buy",
"lead screw",
"machining",
"modification"
] | A lot of the projects we feature here on Hackaday engender the classic “build versus buy” argument. We’ve always been puzzled by that; if anyone can appreciate the sheer joy of making something rather than buying it, it should be our readers. But there’s something to be said for buying the stuff you can buy and concentrating your effort on the bespoke aspects of the project. It’s perhaps not as exciting, but needs must, oftentimes.
Let’s not forget there’s a third way though, which [Andy] explores with
this ball nut modification project
. Keen-eyed readers will recall [Andy]’s recent
scratch-built ball screw build
, in service of some top-secret, hush-hush project related to world domination and total subjugation of humanity. His homebrew efforts in this regard were a great lesson in how to machine a complex mechanism to work in a constrained space. Still, it left folks wondering why he’d go to all the trouble when he could have just trimmed an off-the-shelf part down to size. So, he decided to give that a try.
After securing a ball nut of the proper pitch and diameter, [Andy] looked for ways to shorten it without ruining it. Unfortunately, ball nuts are usually made of hardened steel, which tends to make the usual subtractive methods difficult. But when all else fails, you pull out the metal shop problem solver: the angle grinder. That had the benefit of shortening the nut while simultaneously annealing the steel around the cut, making it possible to face in the lathe. [Andy] put this happy accident to use twice in the build, and it’s a tip we’ll be filing away for a rainy day.
The whole modification process is presented in the video below, which includes testing the modified ball nut. It turned out pretty well, at least in terms of axial backlash. There are compromises, of course, but far fewer than we expected when the sparks started flying from that precision-machined ball nut. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077530",
"author": "Teds",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T06:15:30",
"content": "I’ve always been very fond of the modding middle ground between DIY or Buy which tends to generate a lot more collective work and documentation than pure DIY projects or costly commercial solutions.Nothing i... | 1,760,371,681.576456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/kerry-wong-talks-and-talks-about-a-300-mhz-oscilloscope/ | [Kerry Wong] Talks (and Talks) About A 300 MHz Oscilloscope | Al Williams | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"oscilloscope"
] | There aren’t many people who could do an hour-long video reviewing an oscilloscope, but [Kerry Wong] is definitely one of them. This time, he’s looking at a
UNI-T MSO2304X 300 MHz scope
. The review might be a little long, but the scope — like many modern scopes — has a lot of features for measuring power, accommodating digital signals with an add-on pod, and protocol decoding.
The scope has a touchscreen and four normal inputs, plus two frequency generator outputs. You can also use a mouse or an external display. But, of course, what you really want to know is how the scope performs when reading signals.
Thanks to its 5 GSa/s sampling rate, this 300 MHz scope was still able to handle much higher frequencies. Of course, the amplitude isn’t meaningful as you go over the limit, but sometimes, you just want to see the shape of the signal.
[Kerry] has promised a teardown video for this scope soon, and we’ll be watching for it. He sure knows his way
around a scope
. The scope reminded us a bit of our Rigol DHO924S, and we wondered how its trigger modes
compare with this scope
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077515",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T03:51:08",
"content": "” There aren’t many people who could do an hour-long video reviewing an oscilloscope ”Dave from EEVblog could easily beat that time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,681.624374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/38c3-lawsuits-are-temporary-glory-is-forever/ | 38C3: Lawsuits Are Temporary; Glory Is Forever | Elliot Williams | [
"News",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"corruption",
"justice",
"legal system",
"Poland",
"trains"
] | One of the blockbuster talks at last year’s Chaos Communications Congress covered how a group of hackers discovered code that allegedly bricked public trains in Poland when they went into service at a competitor’s workshop. This year, the same group is back
with tales of success, lawsuits, and appearances in the Polish Parliament
. You’re not going to believe this, but it’s hilarious.
The short version of the story is that [Mr. Tick], [q3k], and [Redford] became minor stars in Poland, have caused criminal investigations to begin against the train company, and even made the front page of the New York Times. Newag, the train manufacturer in question has opened several lawsuits against them. The lawsuit alleges the team is infringing on a Newag copyright — by publishing the code that locked the trains, no less! If that’s not enough, Newag goes on to claim that the white hat hackers are defaming the company.
What we found fantastically refreshing was how the three take all of this in stride, as the ridiculous but incredibly inconvenient consequences of daring to tell the truth. Along the way they’ve used their platform to speak out for open-sourcing publicly funded code, and the right to repair — not just for consumers but also for large rail companies. They are truly fighting the good fight here, and it’s inspirational to see that they’re doing so with humor and dignity.
If you missed
their initial, more technical, talk last year
, go check it out. And if you ever find yourself in their shoes, don’t be afraid to do the right thing. Just get a good lawyer. | 35 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077527",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T05:43:38",
"content": "This case also reminds us that white-hat hackers need to be very careful about the actions that they take and also should document all their steps carefully. The corporations have no problems lying about... | 1,760,371,683.562634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/beam-me-up-simple-free-space-optical-communication/ | Beam Me Up: Simple Free-Space Optical Communication | Heidi Ulrich | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"beam",
"communication",
"led",
"open space",
"optical",
"signal"
] | Let’s think of the last time you sent data without wires. We’re not talking WiFi here, but plain optical signals. Free-space optical communication, or FSO, is an interesting and easy way to transmit signals through light beams. Forget expensive lasers or commercial-grade equipment;
this video by [W1VLF]
offers a simple and cheap entry point for anyone with a curiosity for DIY tech. Inspired by a video on weak signal sources for optical experiments, this project uses everyday components like a TV remote-control infrared LED and a photo diode. The goal is simply to establish optical communication across distances for under $10.
The heart of this setup is a basic pulse-width modulator driving the LED. Pair it with a photo diode for reception, and voilà—light beams become data carriers. Add a lens for focus, and you’ll instantly see the dramatic signal gain. LEDs from remote controls are surprisingly effective. For more precision, swap to narrow-beam LEDs or use filtered photo diodes to block ambient noise from sunlight or fluorescent lights. It’s delightfully simple yet endlessly tweakable.
[W1VLF]’s advice: start small, but don’t stop there—enthusiasts have built entire FSO networks to link rural areas! If you’re intrigued,
[W1VLF] has more videos to explore
. Want to d
ig deeper into the history of optical communications? We’ve got that!
Once you advance, share your tips and thoughts in the comments below to help others get set up. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077469",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T21:57:23",
"content": "“One if by Land, and Two if by Sea,” 1775.Countless other examples of free-space-optical modulated-light-signal communications dating to antiquity.This is just doing old things with modern, better tools to ... | 1,760,371,683.700108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/38c3-xobs-on-hardware-debuggers/ | 38C3: Xobs On Hardware Debuggers | Elliot Williams | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"debugger",
"hardware",
"microcontroller",
"protocol"
] | If you just want to
use
a debugger for your microcontroller project, you buy some hardware device, download the relevant driver software, and fire up GDB. But if you want to
make
a hardware debugger yourself, you need to understand the various target chips’ debugging protocols, and then you’re deep in the weeds. But never fear, Sean [Xobs] Cross has been working on a hardware debugger and is here to
share his learnings about the ARM, RISC-V, and JTAG debugging protocols with us
.
He starts off with a list of everything you need the debugger hardware to be able to do: peek and poke memory, read and write to the CPU registers, and control the CPU’s execution state. With that simple list of goals, he then goes through how to do it for each of the target chip families. We especially liked [Xobs]’s treatment of the JTAG state machine, which looks pretty complicated on paper, but in the end, you only need to get it in and out of the
shift-dr
and
shift-ir
states.
This is a deep talk for sure, but if you’re ever in the throes of building a microcontroller programmer or debugger, it provides a much-appreciated roadmap to doing so.
And once you’ve got your hardware setup,
maybe it’s time to dig into GDB
? We’ve got you covered. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077479",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T23:21:01",
"content": "Debugging with gcc c compiler sends this programmer back to 1960s methods … lots of prints, changers, and retries.64 bit transparent portable multiply accurate to 128 bits appears to now work on x... | 1,760,371,683.214213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/wire-rope-never-saddle-a-dead-horse/ | Wire Rope: Never Saddle A Dead Horse | Adam Fabio | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dead horse",
"safety",
"wire rope"
] | If you’re into building large projects, you’ll eventually find yourself looking at wire rope. Multistrand steel wire used as antenna guy wires, bridge supports, and plenty of other uses. The [HowNot2]
team tested an old rule of thumb for wire rope. “Never saddle a dead horse”
.
Click through the break for more:
The old saying refers to the clips used on wire rope. These clips have a saddle, and u shaped bolt. As the diagram shows, the saddle side of the bolt should always go on the live (loaded) end of the cable, not the dead (cut) end. This is because the saddle has teeth to grip the cable, and protects it from crimping and damage over time.
[HowNot2] tests a number of different wire rope clamps – including improper installation. The best clamps are hydraulically crimped connectors. These require some expensive tooling — which is worth it when your life depends on the connection.
When testing got to the u-clips, saddling the live side went fine. When saddling the “dead horse”, the pull test failed at a lower force. Before the failure though, the joint made sounds that would instill fear in the heart of anyone who’s been around heavy equipment or cranes. The adage turns out to be true – never saddle a dead horse.
If you really want to know more about wire rope rigging, the
US Navy has you covered
. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077419",
"author": "Steeplejack",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T18:15:56",
"content": "Way back in the ’70’s, I worked painting watertowers around the Midwest. The quote “Don’t saddle a dead horse” was our mantra when rigging cables for access.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,683.365289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/a-die-level-look-at-the-pentium-fdiv-bug/ | A Die-Level Look At The Pentium FDIV Bug | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"decapping",
"division",
"FDIV",
"floating point",
"intel",
"lookup table",
"pentium",
"PLA",
"reverse engineering"
] | The early 1990s were an interesting time in the PC world, mainly because PCs were entering the zeitgeist for the first time. This was fueled in part by companies like Intel and AMD going head-to-head in the marketplace with massive ad campaigns to build brand recognition; remember “Intel Inside”?
In 1993, Intel was making some headway in that regard. The splashy launch of their new Pentium chip in 1993 was a huge event. Unfortunately an esoteric bug in the floating-point division module came to the public’s attention.
[Ken Shirriff]’s excellent account of that kerfuffle
goes into great detail about the discovery of the bug. The issue was discovered by [Dr. Thomas R. Nicely] as he searched for prime numbers. It’s a bit of an understatement to say this bug created a mess for Intel. The really interesting stuff is how the so-called FDIV bug, named after the floating-point division instruction affected, was actually executed in silicon.
We won’t presume to explain it better than [Professor Ken] does, but the gist is that floating-point division in the Pentium relied on a lookup table implemented in a programmable logic array on the chip. The bug was caused by five missing table entries, and [Ken] was able to find the corresponding PLA defects on a decapped Pentium. What’s more, his analysis suggests that Intel’s characterization of the bug as a transcription error is a bit misleading; the pattern of the missing entries in the lookup table is more consistent with a mathematical error in the program that generated the table.
The Pentium bug was a big deal at the time, and in some ways a master class on how not to handle a complex technical problem. To be fair, this was the first time something like this had happened on a global scale, so Intel didn’t really have a playbook to go by. [Ken]’s account of the bug and the dustup surrounding it is first-rate, and if you ever wanted to really understand how floating-point math works in silicon, this is one article you won’t want to miss. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077356",
"author": "SimianChatter",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T12:19:11",
"content": "Nostradarmus:“When the GATES of logic misalign,Numbers shall falter in their prime.Calculations awry, trust cast aside,The maker of chips shall pay the tide.”(emphasis added…) it cost them billions ... | 1,760,371,683.155765 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/29/a-review-that-asks-do-you-need-a-thermal-camera/ | A Review That Asks: Do You Need A Thermal Camera? | Al Williams | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"flir",
"thermal camera"
] | [Maker’s Fun Duck] has a recent video
review
of a cheap thermal camera from a company called Kaiweets, which you can see below. It checked all of his boxes: It was standalone, handheld, cheap, and not too cheap. The question is: does it work well for the kinds of things we would do with such a camera?
That’s a tricky question, of course, because everyone’s uses are different. Considering a soldering iron. A tiny one is great for working on PCBs, but lousy for soldering large coax connectors. A soldering gun works well for that purpose, but is too much for the PCB. The same goes for thermal cameras. Some are great for, for example, finding leaky parts of houses, but might not be so great at locating defective components on a PCB.
[Duck] starts out looking at coffee cups and hand prints. But he quickly moves on to printed circuit boards like a 3D printer controller. He also provides a number of tips on how to get accurate readings.
He seems to like the camera. But your use case might be different. There are some advantages to having cameras connected to your phone, for example, and there are other considerations. The camera appears to have a 256×192 resolution and can connect to a PC. It retails on the street for around $250.
Small cameras are valuable
, even if you need to cable them to a phone. Like many things, thermal cameras get
better and cheaper
every year. | 47 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077347",
"author": "George White",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T11:34:13",
"content": "Unless you have a daily need for such a thing, it would probably get used a few times and end up in a drawer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,371,683.640323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/the-business-card-of-doom/ | The Business Card OfDOOM | Dan Maloney | [
"Games"
] | [
"business card",
"doom",
"reference circuit",
"rp2040"
] | This account of
running DOOM on a PCB business card
isn’t really about serving the “Will it DOOM?” meme of getting the classic game to run on improbable hardware. Rather, this project has more to do with getting it done right and leveraging work that’s already been done.
We’ll explain. You may recall [rsheldiii]’s previous
DOOM keycap
build, which was quite an accomplishment for someone who doesn’t fancy himself a hardware hacker. But he made a fair number of compromises to pull that build off, and rather than letting those mistakes propagate, he decided to build a more general platform to serve as a jumping-off point for the DOOM building community. The card is centered on the RP2040, which keeps things pretty simple. The card has a tiny LCD screen along with USB jacks for power and a keyboard, so you can actually play the game. It also has GPIO lines brought out to pads on the edge of the board, in case you want to do something other than play the game, which is shown in the brief video below.
Pretty standard stuff, right? Perhaps, but where this project stands out for us is that it stresses the importance of relying on reference circuits. We’ve all seen projects that have been derided for pulling the example circuit from the datasheet, but as [rsheldiii] points out, that seems a little wrongheaded. Component manufacturers put a lot of effort into those circuits, and they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Yes, they want to make it easier for engineers to choose their parts, but in doing so they’ve done a lot of the work for you. Capitalizing on that work wherever possible only makes sense, and in this case the results were perfect for the task at hand. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077305",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T06:45:14",
"content": "Do Crysis next. I don’t think anyone has gotten Crysis working on a business card yet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077315",
"author": "Jo... | 1,760,371,683.415524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/porting-dragons-lair-to-the-game-boy-color-was-a-technical-triumph/ | PortingDragon’s LairTo The Game Boy Color Was A Technical Triumph | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"game boy color",
"nintendo",
"port",
"quantizer"
] | If you remember the 80s arcade game
Dragon’s Lair
, you probably also remember it was strikingly unlike anything else at the time. It didn’t look or play like anything else. So it might come as a surprise that
it was ported to Nintendo’s Game Boy Color
, and that took some doing!
Dragon’s Lair
used LaserDisc technology, and gameplay was a series of what we’d today call quick-time events (QTE). The player essentially navigated a series of brief video clips strung together by QTEs. Generally, if the player chose correctly the narrative would progress. If they chose poorly, well, that’s what extra lives (and a stack of quarters) were for.
More after the break!
Simplifying graphics and reducing frame rate wasn’t enough, and developers needed to get truly clever to hit targets.
The Game Boy Color was a fantastic piece of handheld gaming hardware, but it was still quite limited. Porting
Dragon’s Lair
to the GBC required not only technical cleverness, but quite a few ingenious tricks along the way. Some methods were straightforward. Limiting the frame rate to ten frames per second looked acceptable and saved space, and audio was likewise limited to simple tones and only a few key samples from the original game.
Even so, compression and simplified graphics just wasn’t enough. Cramming everything onto an 8 megabyte cartridge took the form of a custom quantizing tool called the Tile Killer. This tool allowed artists to perform meticulous frame-by-frame optimization of graphics and color palettes in a way that maximized compression savings, squishing animated sequences down to target sizes in a semi-automated way. When steered by an experienced artist who understood constraints and didn’t need sleep, it was a clever and powerful tool.
The end result was a port of
Dragon’s Lair
that frankly looked impressive as heck, and released to positive reviews. It was a technical triumph, but commercially it made rather less of an impact. Still, it’s really impressive what got pulled off. You can watch it in action in the video embedded below.
The GBC port of
Dragon’s Lair
may not have been a commercial success, but at least
mounds of unsold copies never ended up in a landfill
like
E.T.
for the Atari 2600 did. Console ports aren’t the only task that requires clever developers; upscaling video games
brings its own unique technical challenges
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077298",
"author": "phil",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T05:11:05",
"content": "I worked for a vending company when this game was released. Our company bought several machines sight-unseen. They made us a ton of money in the bars and clubs where we put them. I remember working on them t... | 1,760,371,683.753978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/full-color-3d-printing-with-polydye-and-existing-inkjet-cartridges/ | Full Color 3D Printing With PolyDye And Existing Inkjet Cartridges | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"inkjet",
"Multicolor 3D printing",
"PolyDye"
] | The PolyDye system installed on an Elegoo Neptune 2 printer. (Credit: Teaching Tech, YouTube)
Being able to 3D print FDM objects in more than one color is a feature that is rapidly rising in popularity, assisted by various multi-filament systems that allow the printer to swap between differently colored filaments on the fly. Naturally, this has the disadvantage of being limited in the number of colors, as well as wasting a lot of filament with a wipe tower and filament ‘poop’. What if you could print color on the object instead? That’s basically
what the community-made PolyDye project does
, which adds an inkjet cartridge to an existing FDM printer.
In the [Teaching Tech] video the
PolyDye
technology is demonstrated, which currently involves quite a few steps to get the colored 3D model from the 3D modelling program into both OrcaSlicer (with custom profile) and the inkjet printing instructions on the PolyDye SD card. After this the 3D object will be printed pretty much as normal, just with each layer getting a bit of an ink shower.
Although it could theoretically work with any FDM printer, currently it’s limited to Marlin-based firmware due to some prerequisites. The
PolyDye hardware
consists of a main board, daughter board, printed parts (including inkjet cartridge holder) and some wiring. A Beta Test unit is available for sale for $199, but you should be able to DIY it with the files that will be added to
the GitHub project
.
Even for a work-in-progress, the results are quite impressive, considering that it only uses off-the-shelf translucent filament and inkjet cartridges as consumables. With optimizations, it could give multi-filament printing a run for its money. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077261",
"author": "Ccecil",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T01:03:26",
"content": "We discussed using the Inkshield [1] to do this exact thing many years ago. Glad to see someone is making attempts again.Some people discussed (were using?) sharpies to do similar.[1]https://reprap.org/wi... | 1,760,371,683.302839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/38c3-towards-an-open-wifi-mac-stack-on-esp32/ | 38C3: Towards An Open WiFi MAC Stack On ESP32 | Elliot Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"mac",
"open source",
"rust",
"wifi",
"wireless"
] | At the 38th Chaos Communications Congress, [Frostie314159] and [Jasper Devreker] gave us a nice
update on their project to write an open-source WiFi stack for the ESP32
. If you’re interested in the ESP32 or WiFi in general, they’ve also got a nice deep dive into how that all works.
On the ESP32, there’s a radio, demodulator, and a media access controller (MAC) that takes care of the lowest-level, timing-critical bits of the WiFi protocol. The firmware that drives the MAC hardware is a licensed blob, and while the API or this blob is well documented — that’s how we all write software that uses WiFi after all — it’s limited in what it lets us do. If the MAC driver firmware were more flexible, we could do a lot more with the WiFi, from AirDrop clones to custom mesh modes.
The talk starts with [Jasper] detailing how he reverse engineered a lot of Espressif’s MAC firmware. It involved Ghidra,
a Faraday cage
, and a lucky find of the function names in the blob. [Frostie] then got to work writing the MAC driver that he calls Ferris-on-Air. Right now, it’s limited to normal old station mode, but it’s definite proof that this line of work can bear fruit.
This is clearly work in progress — they’ve only been at this for about a year now —
but we’ll be keeping our eyes on it
. The promise of the ESP32, and its related family of chips, being useful as a more general purpose WiFi hacking tool is huge. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077224",
"author": "cnlohr",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T21:53:57",
"content": "Anyone see contact other than matrix? I.e. a github, IRC? I’d be interested in reaching out to these folks, but matrix is such a pain. Well, mostly I’m interested in finding out what their code looks li... | 1,760,371,683.813232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/31/lowering-your-noise-floor-the-easy-way/ | Lowering Your Noise Floor, The Easy Way | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"ham",
"interference",
"noise floor",
"QRM",
"RFI",
"smps",
"switch mode power supply"
] | If there’s anything more annoying to an amateur radio operator than noise, we’re not sure what it could be. We’re talking about radio frequency noise, of course, the random broadband emissions that threaten to make it almost impossible to work the bands and pick out weak signals. This man-made interference is known as “QRM” in ham parlance, and it has become almost intolerable of late, as poorly engineered switch-mode power supplies have become more common.
But hams love a technical challenge, so when a nasty case of QRM raised its ugly head,
[Kevin Loughlin (KB9RLW)] fought back
. With an unacceptable noise floor of S8, he went on a search for the guilty party, and in the simplest way possible — he started flipping circuit breakers. Sure, he could have pulled out something fancier like a TinySA spectrum analyzer, but with his HF rig on and blasting white noise, it was far easier to just work through the circuits one by one to narrow the source down. His noise problem went away with the living room breaker, which led to pulling plugs one by one until he located the culprit: a Roomba vacuum’s charging station.
Yes, this is a simple trick, but one that’s worth remembering as at least a first pass when QRM problems creep up. It probably won’t help if the source is coming from a neighbor’s house, but it’s a least worth a shot before going to more involved steps. As for remediation, [Kevin] opts to just unplug the Roomba when he wants to work the bands, but if you find that something like an Ethernet cable is causing your QRM issue,
you might have to try different measures
. | 35 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077889",
"author": "Frank M.",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T09:18:12",
"content": "I was going to say on/off + binary search, but this sly fox is way ahead of me!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8078526",
"author": "Cubeb... | 1,760,371,683.894494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/fan-made-dreamcast-port-of-gta-3-steals-the-show/ | Fan Made Dreamcast Port OfGTA 3Steals The Show | Drew Littrell | [
"Games"
] | [
"GTA",
"reverse engineer",
"sega",
"sega dreamcast",
"video games"
] | As it turns out, Sega’s long defunct Dreamcast console is still thinking. The company behind the machine cut support long ago due in part to the commercial pressures applied by Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, but that never stopped the most dedicated of Dreamcast fans from seeking out its true potential. Thanks to [Stefanos] and his team, the genre defining Grand Theft Auto III (GTA 3), can now run on Sega’s hardware. Their combined efforts have yielded
a fully playable port
of the PC version of the game for the Dreamcast.
The porting effort was years in the making. It began with reverse engineering the entire source code of GTA 3 then implementing it into the homebrew SDK for the Dreamcast, KallistiOS. All the in-game graphic and sound assets are only pulled from a user provided PC copy of the game. Steps for those seeking to compile a bootable Dreamcast image of their own have been provided on
the project’s website
. Real hardware enthusiasts will be pleased as the port runs fine on the twenty-five year old Dreamcast as evidenced in the video below.
This port of GTA 3 represents what could have been a true butterfly effect moment in console gaming history. The game was a major hit in the early days of the PlayStation 2, and it has been theorized that it could have proven to be a major commercial success for Sega as well had it been pressed onto a Dreamcast GD-ROM disc. Recently one of the original developers of GTA 3,
Obbe Vermejj, divulged
that the game actually began development on the Dreamcast. The project was obviously transferred onto PlayStation 2 for commercial reasons, but with this port from [Stefanos] and crew we no longer have to dream of what could have been. | 16 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077893",
"author": "richard",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T09:29:51",
"content": "I was a developer when the PS2 and dreamcast were getting started. Sony refused to give any PS2 devkits to any game studio that had dreamcast kits and were making dreamcast games. We had to shelve our dre... | 1,760,371,683.944486 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/re-engineering-potatoes-to-remove-their-all-natural-toxins/ | Re-engineering Potatoes To Remove Their All-Natural Toxins | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"nightshade",
"potato"
] | Family
Solanum
(nightshade) is generally associated with toxins, and for good reasons, as most of the plants in this family are poisonous. This includes some of everyone’s favorite staple vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant, with especially potatoes responsible for many poisonings each year. In the case of harvested potatoes, the chemical responsible (steroidal glycoalkaloids, or SGA) is produced when the potato begins to sprout. Now a team of researchers at the University of California have
found a way to silence the production
of the responsible protein: GAME15.
The research was
published in
Science
, following
earlier research
by the Max Planck Institute. The researchers deleted the gene responsible for GAME15 in
Solanum nigrum
(
black nightshade
) to confirm that the thus modified plants produced no SGA. In the case of black nightshade there is not a real need to modify them as – like with tomatoes – the very tasty black berries they produce are free of SGA, and you should not eat the SGA-filled and very bitter green berries anyway, but it makes for a good test subject.
Ultimately the main benefits of this research appear to be in enriching our general understanding of these self-toxicity mechanisms of plants, and in making safer potatoes that can be stored without worries about them suddenly becoming toxic to eat.
Top image: Different potato varieties. (Credit:
Scott Bauer
, USDA ARS) | 66 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077814",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T04:22:45",
"content": "It would be more helpful if they figured out how to add poison to potatoes that had none. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077830",
"auth... | 1,760,371,684.204005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/when-the-eu-speaks-everyone-charges-the-same-way/ | When The EU Speaks, Everyone Charges The Same Way | Jenny List | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"dc power",
"European Union",
"USB C"
] | The moment everyone has been talking about for years has finally arrived,
the European Union’s mandating of USB charging on all portable electronic devices is now in force
. While it does not extend beyond Europe, it means that there is a
de facto
abandonment of proprietary chargers in other territories too. It applies to all mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, game consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and earbud
s
, and from early 2026 it will be extended to laptops.
Hackaday readers will probably not need persuading as to the benefits of a unified charger, and truth be told, there will be very few devices that haven’t made the change already. But perhaps there’s something more interesting at work here, for this moment seals the place of USB-C as a DC power connector rather than as a data connector that can also deliver power.
Back in 2016
we lamented the parlous state of low voltage DC power standards
, and in the time since then we’ve arrived at a standard involving ubiquitous and commoditised power supplies, cables, and modules which we can use for almost any reasonable power requirement. You can thank the EU for that mobile phone now having the same socket as its competitor, but you can thank the USB Implementers Forum for making DC power much simpler. | 100 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077775",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-12-31T00:31:53",
"content": "Shame about the mountain of e waste that will probably end up burning in a landfill in a third world country. There really should have been grandfathering for already manufactured products.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,371,684.091157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/38c3-save-your-satellite-with-these-three-simple-tricks/ | 38C3: Save Your Satellite With These Three Simple Tricks | Elliot Williams | [
"Software Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"38C3",
"38th Chaos Communication Congress",
"cubesat",
"rescue",
"satellite",
"software",
"space"
] | BEESAT-1 is a 1U cubesat launched in 2009 by the Technical University of Berlin. Like all good satellites, it has redundant computers onboard, so when the first one failed in 2011, it just switched over to the second. And when the backup failed in 2013, well, the satellite was “dead” — or rather sending back all zeroes.
Until [PistonMiner] took a look at it, that is
.
Getting the job done required debugging the firmware remotely — like 700 km remotely. Because it was sending back all zeroes, but sending back valid zeroes, that meant there was something wrong either in the data collection or the assembly of the telemetry frames. A quick experiment confirmed that the assembly routine fired off very infrequently, which was a parameter that’s modifiable in SRAM. Setting a shorter assembly time lead to success: valid telemetry frame.
Then comes the job of patching the bird in flight. [PistonMiner] pulled the flash down, and cobbled together a model of the satellite to practice with in the lab. And that’s when they discovered that the satellite doesn’t support software upload to flash, but does allow writing parameter words. The hack was an abuse of the fact that the original code was written in C++. Intercepting the vtables let them run their own commands without the flash read and write conflicting.
Of course, nothing is that easy. Bugs upon bugs, combined with the short communication window, made it even more challenging. And then there was the bizarre bit with the camera firing off after every flash dump because of a missing
break
in a
case
statement. But the camera never worked anyway, because the firmware didn’t get finished before launch.
Challenge accepted: [PistonMiner] got it working, and after fifteen years in space, and ten years of being “dead”, BEESAT-1 was taking photos again. What caused the initial problem? NAND flash memory needs to be cleared to zeroes before it’s written, and a bug in the code lead to a long pause between the two, during which a watchdog timeout fired and the satellite reset, blanking the flash.
This talk is absolutely fantastic, but may be of limited practical use unless you have a long-dormant satellite to play around with. We can nearly guarantee that after watching this talk, you will
wish
that you did. If so,
the Orbital Index can help you get started
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077764",
"author": "Maj. Tom",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T23:19:13",
"content": "Ond must wonder how many more “dead” satellites are currently in orbit… That can make a wild new community.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8077772"... | 1,760,371,684.756587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/release-your-inner-ansel-adams-with-the-shitty-camera-challenge/ | Release Your Inner Ansel Adams With The Shitty Camera Challenge | Jenny List | [
"Current Events",
"digital cameras hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"camera hacking",
"cameras",
"photography"
] | Social media microblogging has brought us many annoying things, but some of the good things that have come to us through its seductive scrolling are those ad-hoc interest based communities which congregate around a hashtag. There’s one which has entranced me over the past few years which I’d like to share with you; the
Shitty Camera Challenge
. The premise is simple: take photographs with a shitty camera, and share them online. The promise meanwhile is to free photography from kit acquisition, and instead celebrate the cheap, the awful, the weird, and the wonderful in persuading these photographic nonentities to deliver beautiful pictures.
Where’s The Hack In Taking A Photo?
Of course, we can already hear you asking where the hack is in taking a photo. And you’d be right, because any fool can buy a disposable camera and press the shutter a few times. But from a hardware hacker perspective this exposes the true art of camera hacking, because not all shitty cameras can produce pictures without some work.
The #ShittyCameraChallenge has a list of cameras likely to be considered shitty enough, they include disposables, focus free cameras, instant cameras, and the cheap plastic cameras such as Lomo or Holga. But also on the list are models which use dead film formats, and less capable digital cameras. It’s a very subjective definition, and thus in our field everything from a
Game Boy camera
or
a Raspberry Pi camera module
to a home-made medium format camera could be considered shitty. Ans since even the ready-made shitty cameras are usually cheap and unloved second-hand, there’s a whole field of camera repair and hacking that opens up. Finally, here’s a photography competition that’s fairly and squarely on the bench of Hackaday readers.
Night time rave at EMF 2024 hacker camp, Kodak Vision3 200T Super 8 frame.
Signs at BornHack 2024, FomaPan 100 , Agfa Rapid 1F.
Winter forest scene, Chinese thermal printing toy camera.
Reflecting trees, Chinese thermal printing toy camera.
A Whole World Of Shitty Awesomeness Awaits!
Having whetted your appetite, it’s time to think about the different routes into camera hacking. Perhaps the simplest is to take a camera designed for an obsolete film format, and make a cartridge or spool that takes a commonly available film instead. Perhaps
resurrecting an entire home movie standard
is a little massochistic, but Thingiverse is full of 3D-printable adapters for more everyday film. Or you could make your own, as I did
for my 1960s Agfa Rapid snapshot camera
.
If hacking film cartridges seems a little low-tech, a camera whether film or digital is a simple enough device mechanically that making your own is not out of the question. At its simplest
a pinhole camera can be made from trash
, but we think if you’re handy with a CAD package and a 3D printer
you should be able to do something better
. Don’t be afraid to combine self-made parts with those from manufactured cameras; when every second hand store has a pile of near-worthless old cameras for relative pennies it makes sense to borrow lenses or other parts from this boanaza. And finally, you don’t need to be a film lover to join the fun, if a Raspberry Pi or
an ESP cam module
floats your boat, you can have a go at the software side too. As a hint, take a look on AliExpress for a much wider range of camera modules and lenses than the ones supplied with either of these boards.
This Polaroid is a lot of camera for ten quid!
If I’m exhorting readers to have a go with a shitty camera then, perhaps I should lead by example. Past entries of mine have come from that Agfa Rapid cartridge I mentioned, but for their current outing I’ve gone for a mixture of new and old. The new isn’t a hack, I just like those toy cameras with the thermal printers, but the old one has been quite a project. Older consumer grade Polaroid pack film instant cameras are particularly unloved, so I’ve 3D-printed
a new back for mine that takes a 120 roll film
. It’s an ungainly camera to take to the streets with, but now I’ve finished all that 3D printing I hope I’ll get those elusive dreamy black and white landscapes on my poll of FomaPan 100.
If you want to try the #ShittyCameraChallenge, hack together a shitty camera and get shooting. Its current iteration lasts until the 1st of February, so you should have some time left to post your best results on Mastodon. Good luck! | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077675",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T18:14:46",
"content": "“Expect butt naked hackers”Ewwwww!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077692",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp... | 1,760,371,684.49916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/30/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-copycat-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Copycat Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"billiard ball",
"Coffman pocket typewriter",
"Coffman typewriter",
"copycat keyboard",
"index typewriter",
"markov",
"Markov frequency",
"OLED keycaps",
"row staggered",
"split keyboard",
"Totem keyboard"
] | This is
Crater75
, an almost completely from-scratch row-staggered wireless split board that [United_Parfait_6383] has been working on for a few months. Everything but the keycaps and switches is DIY.
Image by [United_Parfait_6383] via
reddit
As cool as a keyboard full of screens might seem, can you imagine what it would be like to type at speed on a sea of slick surfaces? Not very nice, I’m thinking. But having them solely on the Function row seems like the perfect compromise. Here, the Function row keys interact with foreground applications, and change with whatever has focus. For the curious, those are 0.42″ OLEDs from Ali with a resolution of 72×40.
I’m not sure what’s going on internally, but the two sides connect with magnets, and either side’s USB-C can be used to charge the board. Both sides have a 2100 mAh Li-Po battery, and the average current of the OLED displays is low enough that the board can run for months on a single charge.
The switches are Gateron low-profiles and are wearing keycaps recycled from a Keychron, which add to the professional finish. Speaking of, the enclosures were manufactured by JLC3DP using the Nylon Multi-Jet Fusion process, but [United_Parfait_6383] says the left side feels too light, so the next revision will likely be CNC’d aluminium.
Be sure to check out this short video of Crater75 in action
.
Markov Keyboard Layout Changes Based on Frequency
For many people, QWERTY just doesn’t cut it. You’ve got your Dvorak devotees, the Colemak clan, and, well, if you’re not content with any of those, it just gets crazier from there.
Image by [shapr] via
GitHub
Okay, so, what if the layout changed on your behalf? Constantly.
Based on Markov frequency
. What?
Yep, the layout changes as you type. It updates itself to move the letters that frequently come next to the home row.
Let’s say you only type the word
Hackaday
all day. After a short while, all the letters you need would be on the home row. I’m not sure whether they update left-to-right or what. But updating randomly would be even more fun, wouldn’t it? Of course it would.
While this one would make a good case for screens on every switch, that’s not entirely necessary here. It operates as an emacs library that updates constantly, showing the current layout.
The Centerfold: Sunshine On Your Desk
Image by [AsicResistor] via
reddit
This is another Totem, but she sure looks different from
last week’s contestant
. And while I’d like to personally apologize for the lack of an appealing desk mat, I think the billiard-based trackball and see-through desk makes up for it. For the curious, [AsicResistor] sanded the ball a bit to help with tracking.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Coffman Pocket Typewriter
It’s easy to think of a keyboard that can fit in your pocket as a strictly modern device, but
the Coffman pocket index typewriter
dates back to 1902. Costing a mere $5 after a single lifetime price increase, the Coffman was ultimately destined to fail, even at that price ($160 in 2024 money).
Image via
The Antikey Chop
Although the idea of the index typewriter would live on in the form of the embossing label maker, its time as a popular item one uses to produce documents from wherever had come and gone. After all, by this time, there were tiny Underwood machines and
Blickensderfers
about that served the purpose much faster, if nothing else.
The Coffman, renamed the Popular in 1905, came in two versions — with and without a platen made of wood, interestingly enough. The one you see here does have a platen. The version without would print directly on to a sheet of paper.
Operationally, the Coffman used a rubber strip type element to print both upper and lower case letters. Ink was transferred via rollers. Unfortunately, the machine had no bell, line indicator, or Backspace.
The Antikey Chop finds no mention of the Coffman or the Popular after 1907, so the machine probably just quietly failed. Dr. Coffman did okay for himself, though. Not only did he have a medical practice, he was a professor of physiology, a Sunday school superintendent, and even
a published poet
.
The index of the Coffman/Popular pocket typewriter. Image via
The Antikey Chop
“I Didn’t Expect To See My Keyboard On AliExpress.”
Hey, at least it’s affordable. Image via
reddit
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But you know, I’m not sure I’d be quite so calm as [Squalius-cephalus] is being about
this whole thing
.
It started when [Squalius-cephalus] got a comment on YouTube from someone who found one of their silakka54 boards on Ali. This is an upgrade from their previous board, which lacked a number row, and was designed just a few months ago.
[Squalius-cephalus] went a-browsing and found multiple listings for the ’54. They say they don’t understand why Ali chose to copy the ’54, because the firmware is quite bare-bones. But hey, once an idea is out there, it belongs to the ether, right? Looks like redditor [alarin] ordered one and will have an update on quality and usability next month.
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
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077638",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-12-30T15:49:06",
"content": "Now I’m wondering if Dyno makes/made an embossing wheel for their august labeler that has frequently used letters grouped together.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,684.361389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/circuit-secrets-exploring-a-5-dollar-emergency-light/ | Circuit Secrets: Exploring A $5 Emergency Light | Heidi Ulrich | [
"LED Hacks",
"News",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Teardown"
] | [
"circuit",
"led",
"light",
"reverse engineering",
"self-latching"
] | Who would’ve thought a cheap AliExpress emergency light could be packed with such crafty design choices? Found for about $5, this unit uses simple components yet achieves surprisingly sophisticated behaviors. Its self-latching feature and decisive illumination shut-off are just the beginning.
A detailed analysis by [BigCliveDotCom]
reveals a smart circuit that defies its humble price.
The circuit operates via a capacitive dropper, a cost-effective way to power low-current devices. What stands out, though, is its self-latching behavior. During a power failure, transistors manage to keep the LEDs illuminated until the battery voltage drops below a precise threshold, avoiding the dreaded fade-to-black. Equally clever is the automatic shut-off when the voltage dips too low, sparing the battery from a full drain.
Modifications are possible, too. For regions with 220V+ mains, swapping the dropper capacitor with a 470nF one can reduce heat dissipation. Replacing the discharge resistor (220k) with a higher value improves longevity by running cooler. What remarkable reverse engineering marvels have you come across? Share it in the comments! After all, it is fun to hack into
consumer stuff
. Even if it is
just a software hack
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077400",
"author": "expired56k",
"timestamp": "2024-12-29T16:10:58",
"content": "Very clever indeed! I love watching Clive’s videos and his explanations are great. Treasure trove for learning electronics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,684.799412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/let-it-snow-with-a-sub-100-snowmaking-machine/ | Let It Snow With A Sub $100 Snowmaking Machine. | Adam Fabio | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"pressure washer",
"snow maker",
"snowmakre"
] | [Mattmopar] figured out how to get a white Christmas even if the weather isn’t frightful. He
built a simple DIY snow making machine with a few plumbing parts
, and tools you probably already have. Snowmaking machines used on the ski slopes cost tens of thousands of dollars. Even the “low-cost” home versions are $400 and up.
[Matt] cut things down to the basics. Snowmaking requires two ingredients: Water and compressed air. The water is coming from a cheap electric pressure washer he found used. The air pressure is from an old air compressor. [Matt] is using his shop compressor – but even a cheap compressor will do fine.
The cold is an unforgiving environment though – so a few changes are needed. The trick is to use garden hose instead of air hose. Traditional air hose has a rather small hole. This leads to ice clogs coming from the compressor itself. A check valve also ensures that water from the pressure washer doesn’t back up into the compressor.
The nozzles are pressure washer nozzles. Two 40 degree nozzles for the water, and a 65 degree nozzle for the air/water mix. In true hacker style, the frame of the machine is a ladder, and the gun attached via zip-ties.
Of course you still need cold temperatures for this to work, but that’s not too hard in the winter months. Now if you have the opposite problem of too much snow, check out
this self clearing concrete
. | 29 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077164",
"author": "Adam Zeloof",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T15:16:38",
"content": "What if you filled it with liquid manure instead of water? I think it would make for a fine Christmas Odorizing Machine, especially if the area is HOA.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,684.436186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/a-low-cost-spectrometer-uses-discrete-leds-and-math/ | A Low-Cost Spectrometer Uses Discrete LEDs And Math | Dan Maloney | [
"Science"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"AS7431",
"cuvette",
"led",
"spectrometer",
"spectrum"
] | A spectrometer is a pretty common lab instrument, useful for determining the absorbance of a sample across a spectrum of light. The standard design is simple; a prism or diffraction grating to break up a light source into a spectrum and a detector to measure light intensity. Shine the light through your sample, scan through the spectrum, and graph the results. Pretty easy.
That’s not the only way to do it, though, as [Markus Bindhammer] shows with
this proof-of-concept UV/visible spectrometer
. Rather than a single light source, [Marb] uses six discrete LEDs, each with a different wavelength. The almost-a-rainbow’s-worth of LEDs are mounted on circular PCB, which is mounted to a stepper motor through a gear train. This allows the instrument to scan through all six colors, shining each on the sample one at a time. On the other side of the flow-through sample cuvette is an AS7341 10-channel color sensor, which can measure almost the entire spectrum from UV to IR.
The one place where this design seems iffy is that the light source spectrum isn’t continuous, as it would be in
a more traditional design
. But [Marb] has an answer for that; after gathering data at each wavelength, he applies a cubic spline interpolation to derive the spectrum. It’s demonstrated in the video below using chlorophyll extracted from spinach leaves, and it seems to generate a reasonable spectrum. We suppose this might miss a narrow absorbance spike, but perhaps this could be mitigated by adding a few more LEDs to the color wheel. | 53 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077123",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T12:18:57",
"content": "Very cool projectI’m curious if it can be used with non liquid samples, like say rocks? Will the setup need higher power LEDs to reflect a lot of light off the surface of the rock or what?",
"parent... | 1,760,371,684.708679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/28/building-a-3d-printed-phone-handset-with-mil-spec-style/ | Building A 3D Printed Phone Handset With Mil-Spec Style | Tom Nardi | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"handset",
"MIL-SPEC",
"military",
"openscad",
"telephone"
] | In general, military gear is designed to be rugged and reliable. A side effect of this is that the equipment usually has a distinct visual look that many people find appealing. You might not
need
a laptop that can survive being in a war zone, but plenty of hackers have picked such machines up on the second hand market anyway.
Case in point, the H-250 telephone handset. [Tobias] didn’t actually need a combat-ready phone handset, but loved the way it looked. Technically you can pick these up on eBay for a reasonable price, but then you’ve still got to deal with the weirdo military components inside it.
So why not design a look-alike and 3D print it
?
[Tobias] came up with a design in OpenSCAD that has a very close resemblance to its military counterpart. Not only has he made the source code for the 3D model available for others who might want to print their own look-alike handset, but the Hackaday.io page also includes a breakdown of the hardware that needs to be added to the printed parts to make it a functional handset.
If you think the H-250 handset looks familiar, it’s probably because it comes standard issue on the
TA-1042 field telephone
— another very slick looking piece of military gear that
we’ve covered previously
. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077091",
"author": "Adam Zeloof",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T10:24:10",
"content": "Mil-spec doesn’t mean its particularly good or durable, just that it can withstand being used by crunchies with IQ in 85-90 range.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,684.849369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/fallingwater-clock-puts-new-spin-on-a-common-lcd/ | FallingWater Clock Puts New Spin On A Common LCD | Tom Nardi | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"clock",
"DM8BA10",
"laser cut",
"lcd"
] | Sometimes, all it takes is looking at an existing piece of tech in a new way to come up with something unique. That’s the whole idea behind
FallingWater, a gorgeous Art Deco inspired clock created by [Mark Wilson]
— while the vertical LCD might look like some wild custom component, it’s simply a common DM8BA10 display module that’s been rotated 90 degrees.
As demonstrated in the video below, by turning the LCD on its side, [Mark] is able to produce some visually striking animations. At the same time the display is still perfectly capable of showing letters and numbers, albeit in a single column and with noticeably wider characters.
In another application it might look odd, but when combined with the “sunburst” style enclosure, it really comes together. Speaking of the enclosure, [Mark] used OpenSCAD to visualize the five layer stack-up, which was then recreated in Inkscape so it could ultimately be laser-cut from acrylic.
Rounding out the build is a “Leonardo Tiny” ATmega32U4 board, a DS3221 real-time clock (RTC), a couple of pushbuttons, and a light dependent resistor (LDR) used to dim the display when the ambient light level is low. All of the electronics are housed on a small custom PCB, making for a nicely compact package.
This build is as simple as it is stylish, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired more than a few clones. At the time of writing, [Mark] hadn’t published the source code for the ATmega, but he has provided the code to generate the cut files for the enclosure, as well as the Gerber files for the PCB. If you come up with your own version of this retro-futuristic timepiece,
let us know
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8077101",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T11:09:37",
"content": "Cool project, terrible readability",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077292",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"ti... | 1,760,371,684.903904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/creating-a-mechanical-qubit-that-lasts-longer-than-other-qubits/ | Creating A Mechanical Qubit That Lasts Longer Than Other Qubits | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"quantum computer",
"qubit"
] | Among the current challenges with creating quantum computers is that the timespan that a singular qubit remains coherent is quite limited, restricting their usefulness. Usually such qubits consist of an electromagnetic resonator (boson), which have the advantage of possessing discrete energy states that lend themselves well to the anharmonicity required for qubits. Using mechanical resonators would be beneficial due to the generally slower decoherence rate, but these have oscillations (phonons) that are harmonic in nature. Now researchers may have found a way to use both electromagnetic qubits and mechanical resonators to create
a hybrid form that acts like a mechanical qubit
, with quite long (200 µs) coherence time.
As per the
research paper by [Yu Yang]
and colleagues in
Science
(open access
preprint
), their experimental mechanical qubit (piezoelectric disc and superconducting qubit on sapphire) was able to be initialized and read out, with single-qubit gates demonstrated. The experimental sequence for the phonon anharmonicity measurement is shown in the above image (figure 2 in the paper), including the iSWAP operations which initialize the hybrid qubit. Effectively this demonstrates the viability of such a hybrid, mechanical qubit, even if this experimental version is not impressive yet compared to the best electromagnetic qubit. Those have managed to hit a coherence time of 1 ms.
The lead researcher, [Yu Yang] expresses his confidence that they can improve this coherence time with more optimized designs and materials, with future experiments likely to involve more complex quantum gates as well as sensor designs. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,684.940598 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/playing-around-with-the-mh-cd42-charger-board/ | Playing Around With The MH-CD42 Charger Board | Tom Nardi | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"battery charger",
"lithium ion",
"TP4056"
] | If you’ve ever worked with adding lithium-ion batteries to one of your projects, you’ve likely spent some quality time with a TP4056. Whether you implemented the circuit yourself, or took the easy way out and picked up one of the dirt cheap modules available online, the battery management IC is simple to work with and gets the job done.
But there’s always room for improvement. In a recent video, [Det] and [Rich] from
Learn Electronics Repair
go over using a more modern
battery management board that’s sold online as the MH-CD42
. This board, which is generally based on a clone of the IP5306, seems intended for USB battery banks — but as it so happens, plenty of projects that makers and hardware hackers work on have very similar requirements.
So not only will the MH-CD42 charge your lithium-ion cells when given a nominal USB input voltage (4.5 – 5 VDC), it will also provide essential protections for the battery. That means looking out for short circuits, over-charge, and over-discharge conditions. It can charge at up to 2 A (up from 1 A on the TP4056), and includes a handy LED “battery gauge” on the board. But perhaps best of all for our purposes, it includes the necessary circuitry to boost the output from the battery up to 5 V.
If there’s a downside to this board, it’s that it has an automatic cut-off for when it thinks you’ve finished using it; a feature inherited from its USB battery bank origins. In practice, that means this board might not be the right choice for projects that aren’t drawing more than a hundred milliamps or so. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076976",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T00:15:34",
"content": "The same thing for 3.3V output would be nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8077018",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T03:19:28"... | 1,760,371,685.003038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/blast-away-the-flux-with-brake-cleaner/ | Blast Away The Flux — With Brake Cleaner? | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"acetone",
"brake cleaner",
"cleaning",
"flux",
"pcb",
"perchloroethylene",
"removal",
"solder",
"Solvent",
"toluene"
] | Can you use brake cleaner for flux removal on PCBs?
According to [Half Burnt Toast], yes you can. But should you? Well, that’s another matter.
In our experience, flux removal seems to be far more difficult than it should be. We’ve seen plenty of examples of a tiny drop of isopropyl alcohol and a bit of light agitation with a cotton swab being more than enough to loosen up even the nastiest baked-on flux. If we do the same thing, all we get is a gummy mess embedded with cotton fibers smeared all over the board. We might be doing something wrong, or perhaps using the wrong flux, but every time we get those results, we have to admit toying with the idea of more extreme measures.
The LED bar graphs were not a fan of the brake cleaner.
[Toast] went there, busting out a fresh can of brake cleaner and hosing down some of the crustier examples in his collection. The heady dry-cleaner aroma of
perchloroethylene
was soon in the air, and the powerful solvent along with the high-pressure aerosol blast seemed to work wonders on flux. The board substrate, the resist layer, and the silkscreen all seemed unaffected by the solvent, and the components were left mostly intact; one LED bar graph display did a little melty, though.
So it works, but you might want to think twice about it. The chlorinated formula he used for these tests is pretty strong stuff, and isn’t even available in a lot of places. Ironically, the more environmentally friendly stuff seems like it would be even worse, loaded as it is with
acetone and toluene
. Whichever formula you choose, proceed with caution and use the appropriate PPE.
What even is flux, and what makes it so hard to clean?
Making your own
might provide some answers. | 75 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076692",
"author": "deL",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T06:18:30",
"content": "I’ve seen water soluble flux used 100% successfully in a large production environment. Chlorinated solvent stuff was only good for nasty accidents involving unwary workers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,371,685.231485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/stream-deck-plus-reverse-engineered/ | Stream Deck Plus Reverse Engineered | Al Williams | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"reverse engineering",
"stream deck",
"usb hid",
"wireshark"
] | [Den Delimarsky] had a Stream Deck and wanted to be free of the proprietary software, so he reverse-engineered it. Now, he has a Stream Deck Plus, and with the same desire, he
reverse-engineered it as well
.
The device has eight buttons, a narrow screen, and four encoder dials. The device looks like a generic HID device to the host machine, and once it has been configured, doesn’t need any special software to function. By configuring the device using the official software in a virtual machine under the watchful eye of Wireshark, it was possible to figure out how that initial setup worked and recreate it using a different software stack.
If you’ve never done this kind of thing before, there is a lot of information about how to find USB data and draw inferences from it. The buttons send messages when pressed, of course. But they also accept a message that tells them what to display on their tiny screen. The device screen itself isn’t very big at 800×100.
[Den] packages everything up in the
DeckSurf SDK
, an open source project that lets you control Stream Decks. So if you just want to control the Deck, you don’t need to know all these details. But, for us, that’s where the fun is.
Way back in 2015, we covered some guy who had
sniffed out a USB signal generator
. That was easy since it was a serial port. However, you can go pretty
far down the rabbit hole
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076688",
"author": "WonkoTheSaneUK",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T05:44:13",
"content": "This project seems to be only available for Windows so far.Linux users might like to search Github for “StreamController”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,371,685.050922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/a-lora-rain-gauge-from-the-ground-up/ | A LoRa Rain Gauge From The Ground Up | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"atmega328p",
"BMP280",
"hall effect TMR",
"LoRa",
"rain",
"RFM95",
"tipping bucket",
"weather"
] | It’s a fair bet that most of us have a ton of wireless doo-dads around the house, from garage door remotes to wireless thermometers. Each of these gadgets seems to have its own idea about how to encode data and transmit it, all those dedicated receivers seem wasteful. Wouldn’t it be great to use existing RF infrastructure to connect your wireless stuff?
[Malte Pöggel] thinks so, and
this LoRa rain gauge
is the result. The build starts with a commercially available rain transmitter, easily found on the cheap as an accessory for a wireless weather station and already equipped with an ISM band transmitter. The rain-collection funnel and tipping-bucket mechanism were perfectly usable, and the space vacated by the existing circuit boards left plenty of room to play, not to mention a perfectly usable battery compartment. [Malte] used an ATmega328P microcontroller to count the tipping of the bucket, either through the original reed switch or via Hall Effect or magnetoresistive sensors. An RFM95W LoRa module takes care of connecting into [Malte]’s LoRaWAN gateway, and there’s an option to add a barometric pressure and temperature sensor, either by adding the BMP280 chip directly to the board or by adding a cheap I2C module, for those who don’t relish SMD soldering.
[Malte] put a lot of work into power optimization, and it shows. A pair of AA batteries should last at least three years, and the range is up to a kilometer—far more than the original ISM connection could have managed. Sure, this could have been accomplished with a LoRa module and some jumper wires, but this looks like a fantastic way to get your feet wet in LoRa design. You could even
print your own tipping bucket collector
and modify the electronics if you wanted. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076665",
"author": "RF Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T04:12:23",
"content": "Really nice work! Well organized too. Thank you!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8076703",
"author": "eet4t4",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T08:... | 1,760,371,685.103103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/a-mechanical-calculator-for-the-modern-age/ | A Mechanical Calculator For The Modern Age | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"calculator",
"mechanical calculator",
"woodwork"
] | There was a brief period through the 1960s into the 1970s when the last word in electronics was the calculator. New models sold for hundreds of dollars, and owning one made you very special indeed. Then the price of the integrated circuit at their heart fell to the point at which anyone could afford one, and a new generation of microcomputers stole their novelty for ever. But these machines were by no means the first calculators, and [What Will Makes] shows us in detail
the workings of a mechanical calculator
.
His machine is beautifully made with gears hand-cut from plywood, and follows a decimal design in which the rotation of a gear with ten teeth represents the numbers 0 to 9. We’re taken through the mechanical processes behind addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, showing us such intricacies as the carry lever or a sliding display mechanism to implement a decimal equivalent of a bitwise shift multiplication.
We have to admit to be particularly impressed by the quality of the work, more so because these gears are hand made. To get such a complex assembly to work smoothly requires close attention to tolerance, easy with a laser cutter but difficult by hand. We heartily recommend watching the video, which we’ve placed below the break.
Meanwhile if you’d like more mechanical calculators, take a look at
one of the final generation of commercial models
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076580",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T22:22:18",
"content": "I have the remains of a friden computerized accountancy desk with pegboard programming and a IBM model C typewriter for input/output. internally the brains of the machine was a friden STW10 mechanical c... | 1,760,371,685.474536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/the-focus-dial-never-shipped-but-you-can-build-one-from-scratch/ | The TimeChi Never Shipped, But You Can Build One From Scratch | Maya Posch | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"pomodoro"
] | What do you do when a crowdfunded product you really liked gets cancelled? Naturally, you take the idea and build your own version of it.
That’s what [Salim Benbouziyane] did
when the TimeChi project on Kickstarter saw its launch cut short. This device allows you to set a ‘no distractions’ timer, during which notifications on one’s phone and elsewhere are disabled, making it something similar to those Pomodoro timers. What this dial also is supposed to do is integrate with home automation to set up clear ‘focus’ periods while the timer runs.
A quick prototype of the newly minted Focus Dial project was set up using an ESP32 and other off-the-shelf components. The firmware has to run the timer, toggle off notifications on iOS and trigger firewall traffic rules to block a batch of social media addresses. Automating this with iOS was the hardest part, as Apple doesn’t make such automation features easy at all, ultimately requiring a Bluetooth audio board just to make iOS happy.
After this prototyping phase, the enclosure and assembly with the modules were drawn up in Autodesk Fusion 360 before the plastic parts were printed with a resin printer. The end result looks about as good as the Kickstarter one did, but with a few changes, because as [Salim] notes, if you are going to DIY such a failed crowdfunding project, why not make it work better for you? | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076714",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T09:36:58",
"content": "Thanks for correcting the product name; I was wondering about it earlier and couldn’t find it. Might I suggest linking the failed indiegogo though? It’s interesting to see what might have been…",
"par... | 1,760,371,685.563795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/battery-electric-ships-coming-soon-to-a-harbor-near-you/ | Battery-Electric Ships: Coming Soon To A Harbor Near You? | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"battery-electric propulsion",
"electric ship"
] | When ships moved from muscle- and wind power to burning coal and other fossil fuels for their propulsion, they also became significantly faster and larger. Today’s cargo ships and ferries have become the backbone of modern civilization, along with a range of boat types. Even though tugs and smaller pleasure vessels are a far cry from a multi-thousand ton cargo or cruise ship, one would be hard-pressed to convert these boats back to a pure muscle or wind-based version. In short, we won’t be going back to the Age of Sail, but at the same time the fossil fuel-burning engines in these boats and ship come with their own range of issues.
Even if factors like pollution and carbon emissions are not something which keep you up at night, fuel costs just might, with these and efficiency regulations increasing year over year. Taking a page from alternative propulsion systems in cars and trucks, the maritime industry has been considering a range of replacements for diesel and steam engines. Here battery-electric propulsion is somewhat of an odd duck, as it does not carry its own fuel and instead requires on-shore recharging stations. Yet if battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) can be made to work on land with accompanying low ‘refueling’ costs, why not ships and boats?
A
recent study
by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) researchers
Hee Seung Moon et al.
as published in
Nature Energy
claims that a significant part of US maritime traffic can be electrified this way. Yet as a theoretical model, how close does it hit to the harsh realities imposed by this physical world which we live in?
Different Scales
Justine McAllister (IMO 8107878), a tug boat in New York Harbor. (Credit: Eric Baetscher,
Wikimedia
)
An important aspect with any battery-powered craft is matching the battery capacity with the expected range. For BEVs like cars, the goal is to put as much battery capacity into the vehicle as possible, constrained mostly by factors such as the cost per kWh and how much physical volume is available in the vehicle for batteries without intruding on the driver and passengers. This is how we ended up with a range of BEVs that can cover a sizable chunk of daily usage cases, as well as specific cases like buses where the daily range requirement is planned in advance and thus very easy to optimize for. Even so, a number of road-bound vehicles are hard to electrify with just batteries, such as cross-country trucks due to the sheer weight of the batteries required in most scenarios. Unlike a fuel tank, these batteries also do not lose weight as they become more empty.
In the case of boats, these smaller vessels tend to have pretty limited range. For example: tugs put in a lot of work, but either remain bound to a specific harbor or slowly follow a set watercourse like a river with a gaggle of barges in tow. Here you can have recharging infrastructure set up and charging points ready to go with relatively little difficulty in the harbor or at mooring spots along the route. More challenging are vessels with more erratic routes, not to mention ships with routes that are so long that no reasonable amount of batteries could power it without recharging or swapping batteries. The main case in point here is container ships.
In a
2022 study by Jessica Kersey et al.
in
Nature Energy
it was found that for routes of less than 1,500 km electrification would be economical, assuming a battery price of $100 per kWh. At that point the main question remains how many batteries you can fit into the ship without negatively impacting the cargo load that it can carry. A container ship
can travel around 540 km per day
at its average cruising speed, with a shipping route like Los Angeles to Yokohama of 7,792 km (4,207.6 nautical miles) taking over two weeks:
Putting enough batteries on cargo ships to allow them to travel these routes without recharging in between is too much to ask. This is why the focus with battery-electric propulsion for ships and boats is on these shorter routes, where the total volume of batteries combined with electric motor(s) does not significantly exceed the volume (and weight) previously taken up by the diesel engine(s) and fuel tanks. As modelled by Kersey et al., for a small neo-Panamax container ship this would be the case if the route is kept below 3,000 km. Yet if the route is extended to something like 20,000 km the batteries would take up 32% of the container ship’s carrying capacity.
Using batteries with higher energy density could help here, but as seen with today’s favorite battery chemistries using the higher density Li-ion comes with fewer charge cycles and worse stability, while LiFePO
4
with its common use in especially BEVs and grid-storage and solar-storage batteries has much better longevity and safety record, at the cost of more weight per kWh.
Removable Batteries
Currently a number of battery-electric boats and ships are in service, with ferries being one of the first to be outfitted with such propulsion, case in point being the Norwegian
Bastø Electric
ferry. This 600 passenger and 200 car ferry uses its 4.3 MWh battery as well as a diesel generator to travel the 10 kilometer route between Moss and Horten. While docked the batteries are charged up when a charging point is available. This makes it not a pure battery-electric boat, but rather a hybrid.
The Zhongyuan Haiyun Lu Shui 01 battery-electric 700 TEU container ship. (Credit: COSCO Shipping)
More interesting are the two battery-electric container ships owned by China’s COSCO Shipping which recently began carrying shipping containers along the approximately 500 km route between Nanjing and Shanghai’s Yangshan Port. The Lu Shui (Green Water) 1 and 2 vessels are 700 TEU container ships that can travel at 10.4 knots over the Yangtze river. Perhaps most interesting about them is that they don’t have a battery bank integrated into their hulls, but rather take swappable batteries, with a standard capacity of 57.6 MWh, but with optional connection points for additional battery packs.
In the aforementioned LBNL study by Hee Seung Moon et al. the assumption was made that existing vessels would be retrofitted with batteries and electric motors, which would place a range of restrictions relative to newly designed and built vessels like COSCO’s newly commissioned ones. Being able to swap out battery packs along with shipping containers allows freshly charged packs to be ready when the container ship docks and avoids the hassles of quick charging after each trip and replacing batteries after their approximately decade-long useful lifespan, for LiFePO
4
.
Practical Within Limits
It’s clear that for shorter routes the use of battery-electric propulsion can make sense. Depending on the local grid this can also be less polluting than burning low-sulfur diesel fuel, and conceivably be cheaper, though it all has to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. In the case of COSCO the reasoning appears to have been that these custom container ships are perfect for such a shorter route, with cost savings to be expected over the use of direct-driven diesel or diesel-electric propulsion. Ultimately the success of battery-electric propulsion will come down to simple economics, especially in the cut-throat shipping business.
Featured image & thumbnail: Container ship MSC Texas. (Source:
Wikimedia Commons
) | 77 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076494",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T18:24:39",
"content": "“BATTERY-ELECTRIC SHIPS: COMING SOON TO A HARBOR NEAR YOU?”Nope, because there isn’t a harbor near me!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,686.083376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/blinded-by-the-light-the-problem-with-led-headlights/ | Blinded By The Light: The Problem With LED Headlights | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"headlights",
"LED headlight"
] | Having a good set of (working) headlights is a crucial feature of any motor vehicle, assuming you want to be able to see the road ahead of you when there’s a lack of sunshine. Headlights are also essential to be noticed by other cars and traffic participants, but if installed improperly they can end up blinding an opposing driver with potentially fatal results. This is
a major worry with LED lamps
that are increasingly being installed in cars, often replacing the old-style halogen bulbs that have a very different color spectrum and beam patterns, to the dismay of fellow road participants.
This headlight glare can also be simulated in driving simulators, as in a
2019 article by [B.C. Haycock] et al.
where the effect is of course diminished because displays can only get so bright. Of note is that it’s not just LED lights themselves, but also taller vehicles and misaligned headlights, all of which makes it important that the angle of your car’s headlights is proper. You want to see the road in front of you, after all, not illuminate every house in the nearest settlement two klicks away.
Compounding the problem is that the shorter wavelength, blue-ish light of LED headlights is more energetic than the more reddish, longer wavelength of halogens and are generally perceived as more intense by our eyes. Ultimately the solution appears to be
adaptive driving beam headlights
(ADB), a technology that constantly adjusts the headlights to the circumstances. ADB has been common in e.g. Europe already for the past 15 years, and is allowed in Canada since 2018 and in the US since 2022 after a
rule change by the NHTSA
.
With plenty of improper headlights on vehicles in North America still, it’s best to practice defensive driving, with a brighter dashboard illumination, anti-glare coatings and safety squinting when a miniature solar system passes by during an night-time drive. | 178 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076442",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T16:43:48",
"content": "A lot of larger SUV’s have auto levelling headlights that adjust the headlight angle if the truck is heavily loaded or towing a heavy trailer. These were most commonly halogen. If anything in that... | 1,760,371,685.973168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/lathe-gears-make-a-clock/ | Lathe Gears Make A Clock | Al Williams | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"gear",
"lathe"
] | When you think of making something using a lathe, you usually think of turning a screw, a table leg, or a toothpick. [Uri Tuchman] had a different idea. He wanted to
make a clock out of the gears used in the lathe
. Can he do it? Of course, as you can see in the video below.
Along the way, he used several tools. A mill, a laser cutter, and a variety of hand tools all make appearances. There’s also plenty of CAD. Oh yeah, he uses a lathe, too.
Initially, the clock ran a little fast. A longer pendulum was the answer, but that required the clock to sit on a table edge because the pendulum now extends below the bottom of the clock!
We have to admit there is a lot going into this, but it looks great by the time it is done. We are impressed with the range of different tools used and the clever design. Of course, he could have made the gears, too, but using the metal gears already available is a nice touch.
You can, of course, get by with less.
Much less
. Or, you might elect to try something even more
elaborate
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076966",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T23:37:35",
"content": "Now, how to make it run for longer without adding more gears?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076977",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timest... | 1,760,371,685.524051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/20-ghz-lnb-testing-and-teardown/ | 20 GHz LNB Testing And Teardown | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"20 GHz",
"LNB",
"Low Noise Block"
] | Many things have combined to make very high-frequency RF gear much more common, cheaper, and better performing. Case in point:
[dereksgc] is tearing apart a 20 GHz low-noise block (LNB)
. An LNB is a downconverter, and this one is used for some Irish satellite TV services.
The scale of everything matters when your wavelength is only 15 mm. The PCB is small and neatly laid out. There are two waveguides printed on the board, each feeding essentially identical parts of the PCB. Printed filters use little patterns on the board that have particular inductance and capacitance — no need for any components. Try doing that at 2 MHz!
The LNB is a single-band unit, so it only needs to worry about the two polarizations. However, [dereksgc] shows that some have multiple bands, which makes everything more complex. He also mentions that this LNB doesn’t use a PLL, and he’d like to find a replacement at this frequency that is a bit more modern.
After the teardown, it is time to test the device to see how it works. If you want to experiment at this frequency, you need special techniques. For example, we’ve seen people try to
push solderless breadboards this high
(spoiler: it isn’t easy). Maybe that’s why many people settle for
modifying existing LNBs
like this one. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076933",
"author": "Jerry",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T21:32:12",
"content": "Learn the term “mixer”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8077011",
"author": "Rune",
"timestamp": "2024-12-28T02:08:46",
"conte... | 1,760,371,685.610063 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/do-you-know-vail-code/ | Do You Know Vail Code? | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"morse code",
"telegraph"
] | Alfred Vail (public domain)
We talk about Morse code, named after its inventor, Samuel Morse. However, maybe we should call it Vail code after Alfred Vail, who may be its real inventor. Haven’t heard of him? You aren’t alone. Yet he was behind the first telegraph key and improved other parts of the fledgling telegraph system.
The story starts in 1837 when Vail visited his old school, New York University, and attended one of Morse’s early telegraph experiments. His family owned Speedwell Ironworks, and he was an experienced machinist. Sensing an opportunity, he arranged with Morse to take a 25% interest in the technology, and in return, Vail would produce the necessary devices at the Ironworks. Vail split his interest with his brother George.
By 1838, a two-mile cable carried a signal from the Speedwell Ironworks. Morse and Vail demonstrated the system to President Van Buren and members of Congress. In 1844, Congress awarded Morse $30,000 to build a line from Washington to Baltimore. That was the same year Morse sent the famous message “What Hath God Wrought?” Who received and responded to that message? Alfred Vail.
The Original Telegraph
Telegraphs were first proposed in the late 1700s, using 26 wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. Later improvements by Wheatstone and Cooke reduced the number of wires to five, but that still wasn’t very practical.
Samuel Morse, an artist by trade, was convinced he could reduce the number of wires to one. By 1832, he had a crude prototype using a homemade battery and a relatively weak Sturgeon electromagnet.
Morse’s original plan for code was based on how semaphore systems worked. Messages would appear in a dictionary, and each message would be assigned a number. The telegraph produced an inked line on a paper strip like a ticker tape. By counting the dips in the line, you could reconstruct the digits and then look up the message in the dictionary.
Morse’s partners, Vail and a professor named Gale, didn’t get their names on the patents, and for the most part, the partners didn’t take any credit — Vail’s contract with Morse did specify that Vail’s work would benefit Morse. However, there is evidence that Vail came up with the dot/dash system and did much of the work of converting the hodgepodge prototype into a reliable and manufacturable system.
Improvements
Vail’s sending key is instantly recognizable (photo from Smithsonian Institute)
3D View
For example, Morse’s telegraph used a pencil to mark paper, while Vail used a steel-pointed pen. The sending key was also Vail’s work, along with other improvements to the receiving apparatus (we’ve seen some nice
replicas
of this key).
A typical case for type used by printers (public domain)
As you may have noticed, the length of Morse code characters is inversely proportional to their frequency in English. That is, “E,” a common letter, is much shorter than a “Z,” which is far less common. Supposedly, Vail went to a local newspaper and used the type cases as a guide for letter frequencies.
Two Types of Code
American Morse Code (public domain)
It is worth noting that the code in question isn’t the one we use today. It was “American Morse Code” which was used most often by railroads. The modern International Morse Code is somewhat similar, but several differences exist. The most notable is that dashes are not always the same length. An L is a “long dash,” and a zero is an even longer dash (you occasionally hear this as shorthand on the ham bands if the sender uses a straight key).
In addition, some letters use longer than normal spaces. For example, the letters “A” and “B” are exactly like modern code, but the letter “C” is two dots, a double space, and another dot. An “O” is a dot, a double space, and another dot.
Gerke’s code from 1848 (Public Domain)
The gaps and different lengths caused problems with long cables, which led to Friedrich Gerke developing a derivative code in 1848. His code is essentially what we use today and uses a fixed length for dots, dashes, and spaces. There is one exception. The original Gerke code used the long-dash zero. Most of the letters in the International code are the same as the ones in the Gerke code, although when International Morse was codified in 1865, there were a few changes to some letters and numbers.
The telegraph was a huge success. By 1854, around 23,000 miles of lines were in operation. Western Union formed in 1851, and by 1866, there was a trans-Atlantic cable.
Will Success Spoil Alfred Vail?
Vail, however, was not a huge success. Morse took on an influential congressman as a partner and cut Vail’s shares in half. That left the Vail brothers with 12.5% of the profits. In 1848, Vail was disillusioned with his $ 900-a-year salary for running the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company. He wrote to Morse:
“I have made up my mind to leave the Telegraph to take care of itself, since it cannot take care of me. I shall, in a few months, leave Washington for New Jersey, … and bid adieu to the subject of the Telegraph for some more profitable business.”
He died less than 11 years later, in 1859. Other than researching genealogy, we didn’t find much about what he did in those years.
The Lone Inventor Fiction
Like most inventions, you can’t just point to one person who made the leap alone. In addition to Vail and his assistant William Baxter, Joseph Henry (the inductor guy) created practical
electromagnets
that were essential to the operation of the telegraph. In fact, he demonstrated how an electromagnet could ring a bell at a distance, which is really all you need for a telegraph, so he has some claim, too.
Part of the Speedwell Ironworks is now
a historic site you can visit
. It might not be a coincidence that the U.S. Army Signal Corps school was located in New Jersey at Camp Alfred Vail in 1919. Camp Alfred Vail would later become Fort Monmouth and was the home to the Signal Corps until the 1970s.
These old wired telegraphs made
a clicking noise
instead of a beep. Of course, wired telegraphs would give way to radio, and telegraphy of all kinds would mostly succumb to digital modes. However, you can still find the occasional
Morse station
. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076857",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T18:14:36",
"content": "I think the effort to “retire” Morse code was in fact a genius publicity move to get tons of new people to learn it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "807... | 1,760,371,685.682107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/ldu-decoded-the-untold-tale-of-lego-dimensions/ | LDU Decoded: The Untold Tale Of LEGO Dimensions | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"brick",
"LDU",
"lego",
"Lego Draw Unit"
] | LEGO bricks might look simplistic, but did you know there’s an actual science behind their sizes? Enter LDUs — LEGO Draw Units — the minuscule measurement standard that allows those tiny interlocking pieces to fit together seamlessly.
In a recent video [Brick Sculpt] breaks down this fascinating topic.
So, what is an LDU precisely? It’s the smallest incremental size used to define LEGO’s dimensions. For context, a standard LEGO brick is 20 LDUs wide, and a single plate is 8 LDUs tall. Intriguingly, through clever combinations of headlight bricks, jumper plates, and even rare Minifig neck brackets, builders can achieve offsets as tiny as 1 LDU! That’s the secret sauce behind those impossibly detailed LEGO creations.
We already knew that LEGO is far more than a toy, but this solidifies that theory. It’s a means of constructing for anyone with an open mind – on its own scale. The video below explains in detail how to achieve every dimension possible. If that inspires you to build anything,
dive into these articles
and see if you can build upon this discovery! | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076850",
"author": "Fallen",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T17:25:41",
"content": "Lego Drawing Unit and not Lego Dimensional Unit?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076943",
"author": "Paul A LeBlanc",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,686.127757 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/this-week-in-security-license-plates-tp-link-and-attacking-devs/ | This Week In Security: License Plates, TP-Link, And Attacking Devs | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"digital license plates",
"openwrt",
"This Week in Security",
"tp-link"
] | We’re covering two weeks of news today, which is handy, because the week between Christmas and New Years is always a bit slow.
And up first is
the inevitable problem with digital license plates
. Unless very carefully designed to be bulletproof, they can be jailbroken, and the displayed number can be changed. And the Reviver plates were definitely not bulletproof, exposing a physical programming port on the back of the plate. While it’s not explicitly stated, we’re guessing that’s a JTAG port, given that the issue is considered unpatchable, and the port allows overwriting the firmware. That sort of attack can be hardened against with signed firmware, and using an MCU that enforces it.
This does invite comparisons to the James Bond revolving license plate — and that comparison does put the issue into context. It’s always been possible to swap license plates. If someone really wants to cause mischief, traditional plates can be stolen, or even faked. What a digital plate adds to the equation is the ability to switch plate numbers on the fly, without stopping or turning a screwdriver. Regardless, this seems like it will be an ongoing problem, as so many manufacturers struggle to create secure hardware.
Malicious RDP
There’s
a clever attack
, that uses Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), to give away way too much control over a desktop. That’s accomplished by sending the target a
.rdp
file that shares local resources like the clipboard, filesystem, and more. What’s new is that it seems this theoretical attack has now
shown up in the wild
.
The attack campaign has been attributed to APT29, CozyBear, a threat actor believed to be associated with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. This attribution tracks with the victims of choice, like government, research, and Ukrainian targets in particular. To escape detection, the malicious RDP endpoints are set up behind RDP proxies, running on services like AWS. The proxies and endpoints are accessed through TOR and other anonymous proxies. The .rdp files were spread via spear-phishing emails sent through compromised mail servers. The big push, with about 200 targets, was triggered on October 22nd. Researchers at TrendMicro believe this was the end of a targeted campaign. The idea being that at the end of the campaign, it no longer matters if the infrastructure and methods get discovered, so aim for maximum impact.
Free* Mcdonalds?
Here we learn that while McDonald’s USA dosn’t have a bug bounty program,
McDonald’s India does
— and that’s why researcher [Eaton Zveare] looked there. And found a series of Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) bugs. That’s a new term to this column, but a concept we’ve talked about before. BOLA vulnerabilities happen when a service validates a user’s authentication token, but doesn’t properly check that the user is authorized to access the specific resources requested.
In the McDonald’s case, any user of the web app is issued a guest JWT token, and that token is then valid to access any Order ID in the system. That allows some interesting fun, like leaving reviews on other users’ orders, accessing delivery maps, and getting copies of receipts. But things got really interesting when creating an account, and then ordering food. A hidden, incomplete password login page allowed breaking the normal user verification flow, and creating an account. Then after food is added to the cart, the cart can be updated to have a total price of a single rupee, about the value of a penny.
This research earned [Eaton] a $240 Amazon gift card, which seems a little stingy, but the intent behind the gesture is appreciated. The fixes landed just over 2 months after reported, and while [Eaton] notes that this is slower than some companies, it’s significantly faster than some of the less responsive vendors that we’ve seen.
Banning TP-Link
The US Government has recently begun discussing
a plan to ban TP-Link device purchases
in the United States. The reported reason is that TP-Link devices have shipped with security problems. One notable example is a botnet that
Microsoft has been tracking
, that primarily consists of TP-Link devices.
This explanation rings rather hollow, particularly given the consistent security failings from multiple vendors that we’ve covered on this very column over the years. Where it begins to make more sense is when considered in light of the Chinese policy that all new vulnerabilities must first be reported to the Chinese government, and only then can fixes be rolled out. It suggests that the US Commerce Department suspects that TP-Link is still following this policy, even though it’s technically now a US company.
I’m no stranger to hacking TP-Link devices. Many years ago I wrote a simple attack to put the HTTPD daemon on TP-Link routers into debug mode, by setting the wifi network name. Because the name was used to build a command run with bash, it was possible to do command injection, build a script in the device’s
/tmp
space, and then execute that script. Getting to debug mode allowed upgrading to OpenWRT on the device. And that just happens to be my advice for anyone still using TP-Link hardware:
install OpenWRT on it
.
Developers Beware
We have two separate instances of malware campaigns directly targeting developers. The first is
malicious VSCode extensions
being uploaded to the marketplace.
These fakes are really compelling
, too, with lots of installs, reviews, and links back to the real pages. These packages seem to be droppers for malware payloads, and seem to be targeting cryptocurrency users.
If malware in your VSCode extensions isn’t bad enough,
OtterCookie is a campaign believed to come from North Korea
, spreading via fake job interviews. The interview asks a candidate to run a Node.js project, or install an
npm
package as part of prep. Those are malicious packages, and data stealers are deployed upon launch. Stay frosty, even on the job hunt.
Bits and Bytes
PHP has evolved over the years, but there are still a few quirks that might trip you up. One of the dangerous ones is tied up in
$_SERVER['argv']
, a quick way to test if PHP is being run from the command line, or on a server. Except, that relies on
register_argc_argv
set to off, otherwise query strings are enough to fool a naive application into thinking it’s running on the command line. And
that’s exactly the footgun that caught Craft CMS with CVE-2024-56145
.
Australia
may know something we don’t
, setting 2030 as the target for retiring cryptography primitives that aren’t quantum resistant. That’s RSA, Elliptic-curve, and even SHA-256. It’s a bit impractical to think that those algorithms will be completely phased out by then, but it’s an interesting development to watch.
Fuzzing is a deep subject, and
the discovery of 29 new vulnerabilities found in GStreamer
is evidence that there’s still plenty to discover. This wasn’t coverage-guided fuzzing, where the fuzzer mutates the fuzzing input to maximize. Instead, this work uses a custom corpus generator, where the generator is aware of how valid MP4 files are structured. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076823",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T16:28:13",
"content": "“The US Government has recently begun discussing a plan to ban TP-Link device purchases in the United States” And yet CISCO which has more CVE’s than anything else. are OK?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,686.18441 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/minecraft-in-cobol/ | MinecraftIn…COBOL? | Al Williams | [
"Games",
"Software Development"
] | [
"cobol",
"minecraft"
] | When you think of languages you might read about on Hackaday, COBOL probably isn’t one of them. The language is often considered mostly for business applications and legacy ones, at that. The thing is, there are a lot of legacy business applications out there, so there is still plenty of COBOL. Not only is it used, but it is still improved, too. So [Meyfa] wanted to set the record straight and created a
Minecraft
server called
CobolCraft
.
The system runs on GnuCOBOL and has only been tested on Linux. There are a few limitations, but nothing too serious. The most amazing thing? Apparently, [Meyfa] had no prior COBOL experience before starting this project!
Even if you don’t care about COBOL or
Minecraft
, the overview of the program is interesting because it shows how many things require workarounds. According to the author:
Writing a Minecraft server was perhaps not the best idea for a first COBOL project, since COBOL is intended for business applications, not low-level data manipulation (bits and bytes) which the Minecraft protocol needs lots of. However, quitting before having a working prototype was not on the table! A lot of this functionality had to be implemented completely from scratch, but with some clever programming, data encoding and decoding is not just fully working, but also quite performant.
Got the urge for Cobol? We’ve
been there
. Or write
Minecraft
in…
Minecraft
. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076753",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T12:20:12",
"content": "COBOL gave me PTSD in the early 90’s.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076860",
"author": "James the [LEGO-car] engineer",
"timesta... | 1,760,371,686.252078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/27/uncanny-valley-of-clean-conquered-by-clever-chair/ | Uncanny Valley Of Clean Conquered By Clever Chair | Navarre Bartz | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"chair",
"clothing",
"furniture",
"laundry",
"simone giertz"
] | Do you ever have clothes that you only wore for a few hours, so you don’t want to wash them, but it still seems icky to put them back in the drawer or closet? What if you had a dedicated place to put them instead of on your floor or piled on a chair in the corner?
[Simone Giertz] has a tidier solution for you
.
On top of the quasi-dirty clothing conundrum, [Giertz]’s small space means she wanted to come up with a functional, yet attractive way to wrangle these clothes. By combining the time-honored tradition of hanging clothes on the back of a chair and the space-saving efficiency of a Lazy Susan, she was able to create a chair with a rotating rack to tuck the clothes out of the way when not wearing them.
The circular rack attached to the chair orbits around a circular seat and arm rests allowing clothes to be deposited on the chair from the front and conveniently pushed to the back so they remain out of sight and out of mind until you need them. The hardware chosen seems to be pretty strong as well given the number of items placed on the rail during the demonstration portion of the video. We also really like how [Giertz] challenged herself to “CAD celibacy” for the duration of the build to try to build it quick.
If you want to see some other clever furniture hacks, how about repurposing the
seats from an old subway
, or
hacking IKEA furniture to be more accessible
? | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076731",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2024-12-27T10:32:08",
"content": "I have a few folding crates for laundry. One orange one which serves exactly this purpose, and a few blue ones for my cleam-but-not-yet-folded loundry which all fit in my clothing cupboard.However, I recentl... | 1,760,371,686.295861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/25/esperanto-the-language-that-hoped-to-unite-the-world/ | Esperanto: The Language That Hoped To Unite The World | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"duolingo",
"Esperanto",
"GTA",
"hope",
"Klingon",
"language",
"lingua franca",
"linguistic",
"loglan",
"Toki Pona",
"zamenhof"
] | Christmas: a good time to broach a topic of hope. We’re talking Esperanto. This language that spurred the hope it one day could hack the barriers between people, eliminating war and miscommunication.
The video below unpacks the history of this linguistic marvel
. Esperanto was a constructed language dreamed up in 1887 by Ludwik Zamenhof, a Polish-Russian eye doctor with a knack for linguistics and great ideals. If you’re a little into linguistics yourself, you’ll sure know the name stems from the Latin
sperare
: to hope.
Inspired by the chaos of multilingual strife in his hometown, Zamenhof created Esperanto to unite humanity under a single, simple, easy-to-learn tongue. With just 16 grammar rules, modular word-building, and no pesky exceptions — looking at you, English — Esperanto was a linguistic hack ahead of its time.
But Esperanto wasn’t just a novelty—it almost became the
lingua franca
of diplomacy. In 1920, Iran proposed Esperanto as the official language of the League of Nations, but the French vetoed it, fearing their language’s global dominance was at risk. From there, Esperanto’s journey took a darker turn as both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia persecuted its speakers. Despite this, Esperanto persisted, surfacing in quirky corners of culture, from William Shatner’s Esperanto-only horror film
Incubus
to its inclusion on NASA’s Voyager Golden Record.
Fast-forward to the digital age: Esperanto is thriving on online learning platforms, where over a million learners explore its minimalist elegance. It appears at places in various editions of Grand Theft Auto. It has even inspired modern makers to create new constructed languages, like Loglan, Toki Pona, and even Klingon. Could Esperanto—or any reimagined language—rise again to unite us? For curious minds,
watch the video here
. | 65 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076157",
"author": "Adam Zeloof",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T18:37:28",
"content": "Perhaps evolution is better than intelligent design. LISPers of 1960s scoffed at primitives doing BCPL, COBOL or assembly. 60 years later LISP machines are gathering dust in museums while C (a descend... | 1,760,371,687.140421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/25/open-source-multimeter-raises-the-bar-for-diy-tools/ | Open Source Multimeter Raises The Bar For DIY Tools | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"multimeter",
"open source hardware",
"test equipment"
] | Whether you only dabble in electronics as a hobby or it’s your full-time job, there are few tools as indispensable as the multimeter. In fact, we’d be willing to bet nearly everyone reading this site owns
at least
one of them. But as common and mindbogglingly useful as they may be, they aren’t perfect. Even the high-end models will invariably have some annoyance that only reveals itself once you become intimately acquainted with it.
Most people would just live with those quirks, especially when dealing with a cheaper model. But not [John Duffy]. Deciding nothing but perfection would do, he took every favorite feature he’d ever run into while using other multimeters and
combined them into his scratch-built HydraMeter
. In the process, he managed to come up with a few new ideas that push this device into a league of its own.
Some of the features of the HydraMeter will look familiar. You might even have them on your own personal meter, such as the wireless removable display module. Other features you’ll wish your meter had, such as the removable cartridge on the front of the device that lets you rapidly swap out a burned fuse. On the other side of the spectrum, there are some esoteric features that might leave you scratching your head. The ability to tell exactly how the meter is configured at a glance thanks to its exclusive use of toggle switches has a certain hacker appeal, but it’s a tricky user interface for most folks.
While the overall design of the HydraMeter may be divisive, one thing we can all agree on is that getting the project to this state took incredible determination.
Over the years we’ve only seen a handful
of individuals attempt to develop their own multimeters, and even then, none of them approached this level of fit and finish. The fact that [John] has turned all that effort over to the community by releasing his design under the CERN license is truly admirable.
[John] brought the HydraMeter out to Pasadena back in November for Supercon, and it got quite a reaction. And if you don’t like the user interface, it’s not hard to imagine how you could change it. This project has unquestionably pushed the state of the art for open source multimeters forward, and we’re eager to see where it goes from here. | 39 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076142",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T16:47:04",
"content": "From just a glace: Great project!The ability to tell exactly how the meter is configured at a glance thanks to its exclusive use of toggle switches has a certain hacker appeal, but it’s a tricky user inter... | 1,760,371,686.424595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/25/break-me-off-a-piece-of-that-open-source-serial-adapter/ | Break Me Off A Piece Of That Open Source Serial Adapter | Tom Nardi | [
"PCB Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"rs232",
"serial adapter",
"uart",
"USB to serial"
] | We know, you’ve already got a USB to serial adapter. Probably several of them, in fact. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t use one more — especially when it’s as as cleverly designed
as this one from [Anders Nielsen]
.
The first thing you notice about this adapter, and the big departure from the ones that are likely littering your parts bin, is that it terminates in a full-size male DSUB9 connector. With the ability to be directly plugged into a RS-232 port, this adapter will certainly catch the eye of retrocomputer enthusiasts. With a clever arrangement of jumpers, you can even reconfigure the RX and TX lines to be straight-through or cross over as needed.
But if you’re working with something that doesn’t have a literal serial port, no worries. All of the lines coming from the CH340G chip are broken out to a header so you can connect it up to whatever device you’re working with via jumpers.
In fact, if you’re
really
sure you’ll never need that RS232 feature, the PCB is even designed in such a way that you can simply snap it off. Admittedly it might seem a little odd to get a device like this if you
didn’t
want that capability. But once broken off, it’s not like the components go to waste. [Anders] has designed the board in such a way that if you flip it over and install a right-angle header, you can use the RS232 segment on a breadboard.
But the list of features doesn’t stop there. There’s also a 3.3 V regulator on board that you can use to power external circuits, as well as breakouts for the data lines in the USB-C connector. In keeping with the theme of the device, that part of the PCB can
also
be snapped off if you want to use it elsewhere.
Most folks probably’ won’t need all the capabilities offered by this particular serial adapter, and that’s fine. We’re still happy that it’s out in the wild and available for the community to use and adapt as an open source project. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076075",
"author": "Henrik",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T09:40:05",
"content": "Awesome work Anders!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8076085",
"author": "rtyu5r5",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T10:41:04",
"content": "I drea... | 1,760,371,686.347152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/24/going-digital-teaching-a-ti-84-handwriting-recognition/ | Going Digital: Teaching A TI-84 Handwriting Recognition | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"handhelds hacks",
"Machine Learning",
"News"
] | [
"calculator",
"convolutional neural network",
"graphics calculator",
"handwriting",
"mnist",
"neural network",
"texas instruments",
"ti-84",
"TI-84 Plus CE"
] | You wouldn’t typically associate graphing calculators with artificial intelligence, but hacker [KermMartian] recently made it happen. The innovative project involved running a neural network directly on a TI-84 Plus CE to recognize handwritten digits. By using the MNIST dataset, a well-known collection of handwritten numbers, the calculator could identify digits in just 18 seconds. If you want to learn how,
check out his full video on it here
.
The project began with a proof of concept: running a convolutional neural network (CNN) on the calculator’s limited hardware, a TI-84 Plus CE with only 256 KB of memory and a 48 MHz processor. Despite these constraints, the neural network could train and make predictions. The key to success: optimizing the code, leveraging the calculator’s C programming tools, and offloading the heavy lifting to a computer for training. Once trained, the network could be transferred to the calculator for real-time inference. Not only did it run the digits from MNIST, but it also accepted input from a USB mouse, letting [KermMartian] draw digits directly on the screen.
While the calculator’s limited resources mean it can’t train the network in real-time, this project is a proof that, with enough ingenuity, even a small device can be used for something as complex as AI. It’s not just about power; it’s about resourcefulness. If you’re into unconventional projects,
this is one
for the books. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076059",
"author": "Santa",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T07:54:23",
"content": "To me, real time suggests that characters are decoded as they are written, not that it takes 18 seconds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076091",
... | 1,760,371,686.664399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/24/pis-evil-twin-goes-for-infinity/ | Pi’s Evil Twin Goes For Infinity | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"infinity",
"math",
"Pi"
] | Most people know about the numerical constant pi (or π, if you prefer). But did you know that pi has an evil twin represented by the symbol ϖ? As [John Carlos Baez]
explains
, it and its related functions are related to the lemniscate as pi relates to circles. What’s a lemniscate? That’s the proper name for the infinity sign (∞).
[John] shows how many of the same formulas for pi also work for the lemniscate constant (the name for ϖ). Some (as John calls them) “mutant” trig functions use the pi-like constant.
Mathematically, a circle is a point (the center) with a curve that describes x
2
+y
2
=r
2
. The lemniscate is a particular instance of a Cassini oval where r
2
=cos2θ. We all know the circumference of a circle—basically, the perimeter—is 2π; the perimeter of the lemniscate is 2ϖ.
Why does any of this matter? Well, [John] shows how it connects to elliptic curves and the Gauss constant.
Like pi, the lemniscate constant probably never ends, but it is roughly 2.622057. Will this be useful in your next project? Probably not. Will it help you win some bar bets? Maybe.
Then again, if you are bored
calculating more digits of pi
, here’s something new to try. Not that you need
that many digits
. | 37 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076010",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T03:18:34",
"content": "So, if lemmings could wear skates, would they move around in Figure-8s?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076011",
... | 1,760,371,686.91134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/24/holiday-jukebox-gets-esp32-home-assistant-support/ | Holiday Jukebox Gets ESP32, Home Assistant Support | Tom Nardi | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"home automation",
"home-assistant",
"retrofit"
] | If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the only thing hardware hackers love more than a device festooned with buttons is one that’s covered in LEDs — so it’s no surprise that this
“Mr Christmas” jukebox caught the eye of [Roberts Retro]
. But while the holiday gadget might have been mildly entertaining in its stock configuration, he quickly realized that what it really needed was an ESP32 retrofit. After all, what good are all those buttons and LEDs if you can’t bend them to your will?
For the first half of the video, [Robert] treats us to a detailed teardown of the device, which as you might imagine, is largely hollow inside. This gave him plenty of room to graft in new hardware, which is really the best gift any of us could hope to find under the tree. In addition to the ESP32 development board, the jukebox also received a number of WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs, and a DFPlayer module to handle music playback.
With all the buttons wired up to inputs on the ESP32, [Robert] can reconfigure the jukebox to do pretty much whatever he wants with just changes to the software. In the video, he demonstrates how the buttons can be used to trigger the playback of individual songs stored on the DFPlayer’s SD card, which essentially replicates it’s stock functionality. A few lines of changed code later, those same buttons can be used to control devices via Home Assistant.
To get into the holiday spirit, [Roberts Retro] shows off the completed jukebox controlling his ESP-enabled LEGO train set —
another of his festive upgrades that we covered back in 2022
. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8075997",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-12-25T01:30:34",
"content": "Which has me thinking…When the new administration (USA) takes effect, there has been warnings of increased tariffs.Any suggestions of what to stock up on before they are put in... | 1,760,371,686.771893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/24/a-twenty-segment-display-artistically/ | A Twenty-Segment Display, Artistically | Elliot Williams | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"7-segment display",
"led",
"seven segmemt"
] | We all know and love the humble seven-segment display, right? And if you want to make characters as well as numbers, you can do an okay job with sixteen segments off the shelf. But if you want something more art-deco, you’ll probably want to roll your own. Or at least, [Ben] did,
and you can find his designs up on GitHub
.
Taking inspiration from
[Posy]’s epic investigation of segmented displays
, [Ben] sat down with a sketchpad and created his own 20-segment font that displays numbers and letters with some strange, but frankly lovely, segment shapes. There is no center line, so letters like “T” and numbers like “1” are a little skewed, but we think it’s charming.
We’ve seen about a bazillion takes on the seven-segment idea over the years here. Most recently,
we fell in love with this 21-segment beauty
, but honestly
the original eight(!) segment patent version is charming as well
. Anyway,
picking a favorite segmented display at Hackaday
is like picking your favorite child, if you have a few hundred children. We love them all.
Thanks [Aaron] for the tip! | 21 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8075980",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2024-12-24T22:16:06",
"content": "But, kerning….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8075982",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-12-24T22:41:50",
"content"... | 1,760,371,686.720602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/tech-in-plain-sight-incandescent-bulbs/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Incandescent Bulbs | Al Williams | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"History",
"Slider"
] | [
"history",
"incandescent lamp"
] | While they are dying out, you can still find incandescent bulbs. While these were once totally common, they’ve been largely replaced by LEDs and other lighting technology. However, you still see a number of them in special applications or older gear. If you are above a certain age, you might be surprised that youngsters may have never seen a standard incandescent lightbulb. Even so, the new bulbs are compatible with the old ones, so — mechanically, at least — the bulbs don’t look different on the outside.
You might have learned in school that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but the truth is much stranger (public domain)
It has been known for a long time that passing a current through a wire creates a glow. The problem is, the wire — the filament — would burn up quickly. The answer would be a combination of the right filament material and using an evacuated bulb to prevent the filament degrading. But it took over a century to get a commercially successful lightbulb.
We were all taught in school that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but the truth is much more complicated. You can go back to 1761 when Ebenezer Kinnersley first caused a wire to glow. Of course, wires would quickly burn up in the air. By the early 19th century, limelight was fairly common in theaters. Limelight — also known as the Drummond light — heated a piece of calcium oxide using a gas torch — not electric, but technically incandescence. Ships at sea and forts in the U.S. Civil War used limelights to illuminate targets and, supposedly, to blind enemy troops at night. Check out the video below to see what a limelight looks like.
Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated a dim, impractical light that used a huge battery and a thin strip of platinum. More practical was Davy’s electric arc lamp, which, after being refined by others, became common in some applications.
Arc lights had issues, though. They hissed and flickered. The carbon rods emitted carbon monoxide and ultraviolet light. They were extremely harsh and bright, and the rods burned up quickly. Everyone knew a better light bulb would be a winner, but no one knew how to create it.
Getting Closer
Starting around 1835, there were many experiments and demonstrations, but none of them really caught on. A Belgian, Marcellin Jobard, was on the right track in 1838 with a lightbulb in a vacuum with a carbon filament, but nothing really came of it. He also came up with what amounts to early emojis, but that took a long time to catch on, too.
Since platinum has a high melting point, it was a popular filament candidate. In the 1840s and 1870s,
many inventors used platinum or carbon with varying degrees of success
. During that same time period, there were many patents and demonstrations, but none were successfully commercialized. However, a Russian named Alexander Lodygin did patent a working bulb with carbon rods in nitrogen gas.
It isn’t clear if Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans knew of the Russian patent. In 1874, they filed a Canadian patent for a similar bulb. Ultimately, they failed to commercialize it, but they sold their patent to Thomas Edison.
Edison
Edison got serious about electric lighting in 1878. He experimented with different carbonized materials and platinum but finally settled on carbon fed by platinum wires. Using carbonized threads resulted in a bulb that lasted just over 13 hours. However, he would discover that carbonized bamboo could last 1200 hours. You can see one of the oldest surviving Edison bulbs at the Port Huron Museum and in the video below.
Many people worked on the problem throughout the 1800s. Edison arrived at a practical solution and had the mechanism in place to exploit it. However, others had light bulb patents. Albon Man and William Sawyer had bulbs that didn’t last as long as Edison’s but formed the basis for the United States Electric Lighting Company. That company’s chief engineer was Hiram Maxim, a name familiar to most ham radio operators, but this particular Hiram Maxim was the famous ham radio operator’s father.
The elder Maxim is one of several people who claimed they had actually invented the incandescent light before Edison. The courts eventually decided that some of Edison’s claims were preempted by William Sawyer’s patents, but that Edison still had other valid patent claims.
Modern Types
These early bulbs had little in common with modern bulbs. The inside of the bulb had to have very little oxygen and moisture, or the filament would oxidize or burn out. Initially, mercury vapor pumps and phosphoric anhydride were used, but this added expense to bulbs. Arturo Malignani found that red phosphorus would allow for a drier vacuum with cheaper pumps. Edison was quick to buy the patent.
However, Lodygin and others were on the right track, and using a metal filament and an inert gas to replace the oxygen would be more effective. This prevents the filament from burning and also reduces the evaporation of the filament. (See the video below if you want to see the effect of air on a tungsten filament.) He invented a process for forming thin metal filaments and sold the patent to General Electric in 1902.
The truly modern bulb is the result of a 1904 invention by Sándor Just and Franjo Hanaman. They created a tungsten filament that worked better in an argon or nitrogen atmosphere. The Hungarian company Tungsram sold these, and they could practically pass for a modern clear-glass bulb.
A modern bulb has a glass envelope and a tungsten filament, although they add a few impurities to increase the filament life. The bulb contains a low pressure of a gas like argon, nitrogen, krypton, or xenon. Modern glass bulbs are either clear or coated with kaolin clay from the inside. Some bulbs have pigments to change color or different glass to produce different colors. Bulbs used for heating sometimes have special glass or even fused quartz.
Real World Considerations
Light bulbs are one of those circuit elements we pretend are perfect, but they aren’t. Tungsten filaments have a low resistance when cold, which causes a bulb to draw a lot of current when it first turns on. As the filament gets hot, the resistance goes up, and the current goes down. Oddly enough, carbon filaments have the opposite problem. They draw more power as they get hot, which also makes them sensitive to power surges, since if they get hot, they draw more current, which causes them to draw even more current, which makes them even hotter, and the cycle repeats.
In high-reliability circuits, designers often highly derate a bulb’s specifications to get a dimmer light that lasts longer. A 5% reduction in voltage will roughly double a bulb’s lifetime but also make it about 16% dimmer. Some will also pass a small current through the bulb even when it is off to keep the filament warm. This reduces the current draw and heating associated with turning on a cold filament.
The other big problem with incandescent lights is that they are relatively inefficient since most of the energy produces heat and infrared light.
A typical bulb is around 5% efficient in terms of visible light
, and the best halogens come in around 10%.
Of course, this inefficiency is why there’s been a move to ban incandescent bulbs in favor of LEDs, fluorescents, and other technologies. LED lights, in contrast, can reach 30-40% efficiency. Still more light than heat, but almost an order of magnitude more efficient than plain-old incandescents.
So Much More
There’s a lot more to learn about light bulbs. In 1885, the U.S. had an estimated 300,000 carbon filament bulbs. By 1914, there were 88.5 million. In 1945, the market was around 795 million. When you deal with that kind of scale there are many innovations both in the technology and the machinery used to build them. Want to see how lightbulbs were made? Check out the video below.
We’ve talked about the early lighting market and one of its pioneers,
Lewis Latimer
, a few years ago. We’ve looked at
the checkered history
many times.
Featured image: “
Yellow Bulb
” by [Daniel Reche] | 71 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076402",
"author": "sbrk",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T15:07:27",
"content": "I just threw away (“recycled”) another couple of LED bulbs that died. So much for “Lasts 10+ years!”. Let’s compare the impact of LED lighting on Mother Earth…Incandescent Bulb components:1) Glass2) Metals (... | 1,760,371,687.391275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/openwrt-but-on-an-unsupported-router/ | OpenWRT, But On An Unsupported Router | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"openwrt",
"router"
] | Everyone likes something cheap, and when that cheap thing is a router that’s supported by OpenWRT, it sounds like a win. [Hennung Paul] ordered a Wavlink WL-WN586X3 for the princely sum of 39 Euros, but was disappointed to find his device a rev. 2 board rather than the rev.1 board supported by the Linux distribution. Toss it on the failed projects pile and move on? Not at all,
he hacked together a working OpenWRT for the device
.
It’s fair to say that a majority of Hackaday readers will have familiarity with Linux, but that’s something which runs on a sliding scale from “Uses Ubuntu a bit” all the way to “Is at one with the kernel”. We’d rate ourselves somewhere around halfway along that scale in terms of having an in-depth knowledge of userland and a working knowledge of some of the internals which make the operating system tick even if we’re apprehensive about tinkering at that level. [Henning] has no such limitations, and proceeds to take the manufacturer’s distribution, itself a heavily modified OpenWRT, and make it his own. Booting over tFTP we’re used to, and we’re particularly impressed to see him using a Raspberry Pi as a surrogate host for the desoldered Flash chip over SPI.
It’s a long path he takes to get the thing working and we’re not sure we could follow it all, but we hope that the result will be a new device added to OpenWRT’s already extensive support list. It’s sometimes a shock to find this distro
is now over two decades old
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076361",
"author": "Steve Balmer",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T13:13:58",
"content": "Next step is upstreaming so we can all benefit!! :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8076564",
"author": "Henning Paul",
"times... | 1,760,371,687.286018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/open-source-lemontron-3d-printer-is-ready-to-build/ | Open Source Lemontron 3D Printer Is Ready To Build | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"compact",
"lemontron",
"portable 3D printer",
"positron printer"
] | In this era of cheap turn-key machines, the idea of actually
building
your own desktop 3D printer might seem odd to some. But if you’re looking for a challenge, and want to end up with a printer that legitimately sets itself apart from what they’re stocking on Amazon these days, then
take a look at the Lemontron
.
We’ve been keeping tabs on the development of this open source 3D printer for some time now, and just before Christmas, the files finally were released for anyone who wants to try putting one together themselves. There’s currently no formal kit available, but once you’ve printed out all the parts, there’s a very nice bill of materials you can find on the website which will tell you everything you need to complete the assembly — and critically — where you can get it.
The hotend and heated bed come from
KB-3D
, while the bulk of the rest of the components are sourced from AliExpress with a bit of DigiKey sprinkled in. There’s also a custom PCB you’ll want to pick up from your favorite board house. All told, building the Lemontron should cost you somewhat north of $400 USD. Of course, that assumes your time is free. But since you’re reading this on Hackaday, it’s probably a safe bet that you’ll enjoy your time.
You can check out the video below for an expedited look at assembling the printer. It’s not a step-by-step guide exactly, but it should give you a good idea of what to expect before you commit to building the thing. It also provides a look at the design philosophy behind the Lemontron, which largely eschews custom components and relies on off-the-shelf bits to tie all the printed parts together.
If you’re wondering were these upside-down 3D printers came from, the Lemontron is ultimately evolved from the
Positron that we first covered back in 2021
. | 19 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076332",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T10:47:18",
"content": "$400 is pretty expensive for what you end up with…AND you already need to have a decent printer to print a bunch of parts.I can appreciate the effort and engineering that went into this but it does not make... | 1,760,371,687.197445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/25/taking-movies-of-light-in-flight/ | Taking “Movies” Of Light In Flight | Elliot Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"laser",
"photomultiplier tube",
"pulse",
"speed of light"
] | This one isn’t clickbait, but it
is
cheating. [Brian Haidet], the guy behind Alpha Phoenix, has managed to assemble movie footage of a laser beam crossing his garage, using a rig he put together for just a few hundred dollars. How, you ask? Well, for the long version,
you’re going to want to watch the video
, also embedded below. But we’ll give you the short version here.
Light travels about a foot in a nanosecond. What have you got that measures signals on a nanosecond scale pretty reliably? Of course, it’s your oscilloscope. The rest of [Brian]’s setup includes a laser that can pull off nanosecond pulses, a sensor with a nanosecond-ish rise time, and optics that collect the light over a very small field of view.
He then scans the effective “pinhole” across his garage, emitting a laser pulse and recording the brightness over time on the oscilloscope for each position. Repeating this many thousands of times and putting them all together relative to the beginning of each laser pulse results in a composite movie with the brightness at each location resolved accurately enough to watch the light beam fly. Or to watch different time-slices of thousands of beams fly, but as long as they’re all the same, there’s no real difference.
Of course, this isn’t simple. The laser driver needs to push many amps to get a fast enough rise time, and the only sensor that’s fast enough to not smear the signal is a photomultiplier tube. But persistence pays off, and the results are pretty incredible for something that you could actually do in your garage.
Photomultiplier tubes are pretty damn cool, and can not only detect very short light events,
but also very weak ones, down to a single photon
. Indeed, they’re cool enough that if you get yourself a few hundred thousand of them and put them in a dark place, you’re on your way to a
neutrino detector. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076374",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T14:20:27",
"content": "“Femtophotography” is what you’re looking for…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8076380",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-... | 1,760,371,687.238684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/25/time-management-for-toddlers/ | Time Management For Toddlers | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"time management",
"wemos d1 mini",
"ws2812",
"ws2812b"
] | It’s really never too early (or too late) to learn time management. All joking aside, carefully managing one’s time can result in some really wondrous achievements. So it’s best to learn early, when most of your time is spent generally having fun.
Let’s say you’ve just heard you have five minutes left to play, but what does that mean if you’re three years old? Not much, unless you have some visual cues to go by. That’s the idea behind
[Julius Curt]’s visual timer for toddlers
.
This lovely reverse progress bar uses a Wemos D1 mini to control a strip of six WS2812B LEDs at 30 LEDs/meter density. There’s a small OLED display for literate users, and the whole thing is childproof. [Julius] challenged himself to do this entire project in one day, and ended up finishing it in a little over eight hours total, including time to design the way cool knob. Be sure to check out the build video below.
If you struggle with managing your time,
check out our own [Arya Voronova]’s personal account
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8076281",
"author": "Illucidator",
"timestamp": "2024-12-26T03:09:58",
"content": "when my daughter were toddlers I would tell them “X cartoon{s)” or “Y movie(s)” to define lengths of time.When we took roadtrips I would tell her a trip was “X fingers long” and whenever we had driven... | 1,760,371,687.437565 |
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