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https://hackaday.com/2024/12/03/torque-testing-3d-printed-screws/ | Torque Testing 3D Printed Screws | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bolt",
"destructive",
"fastener",
"hardware",
"screw",
"testing",
"torque",
"yield strength"
] | Unless you’ve got a shop with a well-stocked hardware bin, it’s a trip to the hardware store when you need a special screw. But [Sanford Prime] has a different approach: he prints his hardware, at least for non-critical applications. Just how much abuse these plastic screws can withstand was an open question, though, until
he did a little torque testing
to find out.
To run the experiments, [Sanford]’s first stop was Harbor Freight, where he procured their cheapest digital torque adapter. The test fixture was similarly expedient — just a piece of wood with a hole drilled in it and a wrench holding a nut. The screws were FDM printed in PLA, ten in total, each identical in diameter, length, and thread pitch, but with differing wall thicknesses and gyroid infill percentages. Each was threaded into the captive nut and torqued with a 3/8″ ratchet wrench, with indicated torque at fastener failure recorded.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, overall strength was pretty low, amounting to only 11 inch-pounds (1.24 Nm) at the low end. The thicker the walls and the greater the infill percentage, the stronger the screws tended to be. The failures were almost universally in the threaded part of the fastener, with the exception being at the junction between the head and the shank of one screw. Since the screws were all printed vertically with their heads down on the print bed, all the failures were along the plane of printing. This prompted a separate test with a screw printed horizontally, which survived to a relatively whopping 145 in-lb, which is twice what the best of the other test group could manage.
[Sanford Prime] is careful to note that this is a rough experiment, and the results need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. There are plenty of sources of variability, not least of which is the fact that most of the measured torques were below the specified lower calibrated range for the torque tester used. Still, it’s a useful demonstration of the capabilities of 3D-printed threaded fasteners, and their limitations. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068582",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2024-12-03T09:31:05",
"content": "Obligatory reminder: plastics creep under load, so a tensioned plastic “bolt” will loosen or bend given some time, even if it appears “strong enough”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,711.83105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/from-cans-to-sheet-metal-with-ease/ | From Cans To Sheet Metal, With Ease | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"can cutter",
"drinks cans",
"sheet metal"
] | Aluminium drinks cans make a great source of thin sheet metal which can be used for all manner of interesting projects, but it’s safe to say that retrieving a sheet of metal from a can is a hazardous process. Cut fingers and jagged edges are never far away, so [Kevin Cheung]’s work in
making an easy can cutter
is definitely worth a look.
Taking inspiration from a rotary can opener, he uses a pair of circular blades in an adjustable injection moulded plastic frame. If you’ve used a pipe cutter than maybe you are familiar with the technique, as the blade rotates round the can a few times it slowly scores and cuts through the metal. Doing the job at both ends of the can reveals a tube, which cna be then cut with scissors and flattened to make a rectangular metal sheet. Those edges are probably sharp, but nothing like the jagged finger-cutters you’d get doing the same by hand. The full video can be seen below the break, and the files to 3D print the plastic parts of the cutter can be found at the bottom of
a page describing the use of cans to make a shingle roof
. | 56 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068516",
"author": "Ccecil",
"timestamp": "2024-12-03T07:15:33",
"content": "Great work. I was planning pretty much exactly the same thing but never got around to it. :)Next step…make 3d printed forms to press housings and shielding from them.Also, don’t forget they are often (al... | 1,760,371,711.358929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/modular-breadboard-snaps-you-into-benchtop-tidiness/ | Modular Breadboard Snaps You Into Benchtop Tidiness | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"dovetail",
"modular",
"power supply",
"prototyping",
"solderless"
] | Solderless breadboards are a fantastic tool for stirring the creative juices. In a few seconds, you can go from idea to prototype without ever touching the soldering iron. Unfortunately, the downside to this is that projects tend to expand to occupy all the available space on the breadboard, and the bench surrounding the project universally ends up cluttered with power supplies, meters, jumpers, and parts you’ve swapped in and out of the circuit.
In an attempt to tame this runaway mess, [Raph] came up with
this neat modular breadboard system
. It hearkens back to the all-in-one prototyping systems we greatly coveted when the whole concept of solderless breadboards was new and correspondingly unaffordable. Even today, combination breadboard and power supply systems command a pretty penny, so rolling your own might make good financial sense. [Raph] made his system modular, with 3D-printed frames that lock together using clever dovetail slots. The prototyping area snaps to an instrumentation panel, which includes two different power supplies and a digital volt-amp meter. This helps keep the bench clean since you don’t need to string leads all over the place. The separate bin for organizing jumpers and tidbits that snaps into the frame is a nice touch, too.
Want to roll your own? Not a problem, as [Raph] has thoughtfully made
all the build files available
. What’s more, they’re parametric so you can customize them to the breadboards you already have. The only suggestion we have would be that making this compatible with
[Zack Freedman]’s Gridfinity system
might be kind of cool, too. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068481",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2024-12-03T04:27:03",
"content": "It’s not really electronic work bench until you spent 5 minutes looking for that strip of 10k resists you had in your hand a few minutes ago, and you finally find them already on the breadboard, along with t... | 1,760,371,711.901416 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/the-automatic-battery-charger-you-never-knew-you-needed/ | The Automatic Battery Charger You Never Knew You Needed | Jenny List | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"battery charger",
"nimh",
"rp2040"
] | When we saw [Max.K]’s
automatic NiMh battery charger
float past in the Hackaday tips line, it brought to mind a charger that might be automatic in the sense that any modern microcontroller based circuit would be; one which handles all the voltages and currents automatically. The reality is far cooler than that, a single-cell charger in which the automatic part comes in taking empty cells one by one from a hopper on its top surface and depositing them charged in a bin at the bottom.
Inside the case is a PCB with an RP2040 that controls the whole shop as well as the charger circuitry. A motorized cam with a battery shaped insert picks up a cell from the bin and moves it into the charger contacts, before dumping it into the bin when charged. What impresses us it how slick this device is, it feels like a product rather than a project, and really delivers on the promise of 3D printing. We’d want one on our bench, and after watching the video below the break, we think you will too. | 47 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068431",
"author": "Curt Thompson",
"timestamp": "2024-12-03T00:40:03",
"content": "yeah, I would absolutely buy one of those. Nice job!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8068597",
"author": "Ricardo Meechan",
"... | 1,760,371,712.037936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/unique-3d-printer-has-a-print-head-with-a-twist/ | Unique 3D Printer Has A Print Head With A Twist | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"CoreXY",
"kinematics",
"polar",
"slicer",
"theta"
] | If you’re used to thinking about 3D printing in Cartesian terms, prepare your brain for a bit of a twist with
[Joshua Bird]’s 4-axis 3D printer
that’s not quite like anything we’ve ever seen before.
The printer uses a rotary platform as a build plate, and has a linear rail and lead screw just outside the rim of the platform that serves as the Z axis. Where things get really interesting is the assembly that rides on the Z-axis, which [Joshua] calls a “Core R-Theta” mechanism. It’s an apt description, since as in a CoreXY motion system, it uses a pair of stepper motors and a continuous timing belt to achieve two axes of movement. However, rather than two linear axes, the motors can team up to move the whole print arm in and out along the radius of the build platform while also rotating the print head through almost 90 degrees.
The kinematic possibilities with this setup are really interesting. With the print head rotated perpendicular to the bed, it acts like a simple polar printer. But tilting the head allows you to print steep overhangs with no supports. [Joshua] printed a simple propeller as a demo, with the hub printed more or less traditionally while the blades are added with the head at steeper and steeper angles. As you can imagine, slicing is a bit of a mind-bender, and there are some practical problems such as print cooling, which [Joshua] addresses by piping in compressed air. You’ll want to see this in action, so check out the video below.
This is a fantastic bit of work, and hats off to [Joshua] for working through all the complexities to bring us the first really new thing we’ve seen in 3D printing is a long time.
Thanks to [Keith Olson], [grythumn], [Hari Wiguna], and [MrSVCD] for the near-simultaneous tips on this one. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068394",
"author": "Thovthe",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T22:08:18",
"content": "The real difficulty with these usually is in the slicing. As far as I know there are no open source (or even inexpensive) slicers that do >4 axis. Maybe one can hack something together with G-Code bendi... | 1,760,371,711.689254 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/a-free-speed-boost-for-your-pi-5/ | A Free Speed Boost For Your Pi 5 | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dram",
"Pi 5",
"Raspberry Pi 5",
"upgrade"
] | The world of the overclocker contains many arcane tweaks to squeeze the last drops of performance from a computer, many of which require expert knowledge to understand. Happily for Raspberry Pi 5 owners the Pi engineers have come up with a set of tweaks you don’t have to be an overclocker to benefit from,
working on the DRAM timings to extract a healthy speed boost
. Serial Pi hacker [Jeff Geerling] has tested them
and thinks they should be good for as much as 20% boost on a stock board
. When overclocked to 3.2 GHz, he found an unbelievable 32% increase in performance.
We’re not DRAM experts here at Hackaday, but as we understand it they have been using timings from the Micron data sheets designed to play it safe. In consultation with Micron engineers they were able to use settings designed to be much faster, we gather by monitoring RAM temperature to ensure the chips stay within their parameters. Best of all, there’s no need to get down and dirty with the settings, and they can be available to all with a firmware update. It’s claimed this will help Pi 4 owners to some extent as well as those with a Pi 5, so even slightly older boards get some love. So if you have a Pi 5, don’t wait for the Pi 6, upgrade today, for free! | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068379",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T21:06:05",
"content": "Having written microcode for RAM, it really pays to know your hardware. There are a lot of clever people who come up with tricks that still comply with timings.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,711.625547 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/a-brief-history-of-calculator-watches/ | A Brief History Of Calculator Watches | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"calculator watch",
"retrotech"
] | When humans counted on their fingers, everyone had a state-of-the-art (at the time) calculator at all times. But as we got smarter about calculation, we missed that convenience. When slide rules were king, techies were known to carry them around like swords swinging from their belts. These were replaced with electronic calculators, some also swinging from belt loops, but no matter how small they were, they still were not that handy, no pun intended. That changed around 1975. The Time Computer Calculator company produced an amazing calculator watch for
Pulsar
. At the time, Pulsar was a brand of the Hamilton Watch Company.
A Pulsar calculator watch (photo:
The Smithsonian
)
There were a few problems. First, the watch was thick. Despite its size, it had tiny keys, so you had to use a little stylus to push the keys — not as handy as you might wish. On top of that, 1975 display technology used power-hungry LEDs. So, the display was prone to turning off quickly, and the batteries died quickly.
Unsurprisingly, Hamilton, in conjunction with Electro/Data, had earlier rolled out the first LED watch in 1972. With an 18-karat gold case, it went for a cool $2,100 — a whole lot of money in 1972. The first calculator watch was also gold and went for almost $4,000. Soon, though, they brought out a stainless and a gold-filled version that came in at under $500.
Hewlett-Packard
The HP-01 (photo: [Stanlkocher]
CC-BY-SA-3.0
)
Not to be outdone, HP created the HP-01 in 1977. These also came in gold and stainless models. Prices ranged from $450 to $850. You needed a special kit to do your own battery changes, so that added to the price, too. It also required a stylus. Unlike other HP calculators, the HP-01 did not use RPN.
For such a hefty price, these calculators didn’t do much. They were generally “four-bangers” with a few extra features, but they were no scientific calculators by any stretch of the imagination. The HP did have time and date calculations and could even use a stopwatch as a data source.
More calculator watches appeared directly from Time Computer Calculator Company and several others, but none were ever more than an expensive novelty. There were a few from companies like Seiko and Citizen. LCD screens would wipe out LEDs in watches, including calculator watches
Some lesser-known companies took their shots. Uranus Electronics was one. Hughes Aircraft also created an LED calculator watch with the name Compuchron.
Citizen had unusual round watches with tiny buttons around the circumference, including some that had scientific functions. These were the first calculator watches to use LCDs.
Seiko’s first entry had truly tiny buttons (see the video below). However, the C-515 had some of the nicest keys of the era, although design-wise, it was a bit blocky.
The calculator from National Semiconductor had a flip-down keyboard cover. (photo: [Mister RF]
CC-BY-SA-4.0
)
National Semiconductor produced a very powerful scientific calculator watch that was available under different names from different companies.
The National watch was a big hit in 1977 and a marvel of miniaturization. You can find some very detailed teardown pictures on
Wikimedia Commons
.
It is hard to say how many of these calculator watches were made and sold. Most are rare, and you would imagine the gold ones were not big production runs. Even the cheaper models seemed more like stunts than mass-market products.
Clearly, there was some demand, but things remained a niche market, and smaller players weeded out quickly. The calculator watch market was relatively sleepy until 1980 when Casio decided to make them.
Casio
The CFX-400 was a top-of-the-line scientific calculator that even did hex (photo: [Septagram] Public Domain)
Casio made a large variety of cheap watches. The Casio C-60 appeared in 1980, the first of their calculators. It would set the basic design for many of their future models, like the popular CA-50 which, along with the similar CA-53W, appeared in movies like Back to the Future II and III.
The CA-50 was popular, and it appeared, along with the similar CA-53W, in popular movies, including Back to the Future II and III. These had tiny buttons, but you could carefully use them with your fingers. Some models had raised buttons. Others had flat buttons. A few even had a form of touch screen.
There were many variations in the Casio calculator watches. Some could store data like phone numbers and addresses. Others had scientific functions, like the excellent CFX-400 or the less-capable CFX-200. The CMD-40 even had a basic remote control.
The nicer models had metal cases, but many were plastic. There were even some that looked like a normal analog watch, but the top would flip up to reveal the calculator display and keyboard. Tricky to replace the batteries on those as you can see on the video below.
Calculator watches became something of a fad, especially with the pocket-protector crowd. However, like all things, they faded in popularity over time and now most are collector’s items.
Today
You can find cheap calculator watches readily on the usual Chinese import sites. Casio still sells some vintage-series calculator watches, and there’s a brisk used market for the watches from any manufacturer. However, outside of the collectible value, most people switched to small calculators, PDAs, and — later — cell phones and smartwatches.
I owned several Casios, including a flip top and the FX-400. I also had the nice boxy Seiko. I don’t think they have made it unless they are hiding in a box somewhere waiting to be rediscovered. Which ones did you have? Do you have them now? Do you ever really use them?
Before you take me to task for not mentioning Sinclair’s
wrist calculator
, I will point out that it wasn’t really a watch. It was just a calculator that strapped to your wrist.
There have been
DIY calculator watches
, of course. It would be even easier to produce one today than ever before. It might be fun to grab one of the new ones and give it
a brain upgrade
.
Let us know
if you take up the challenge.
Featured image: “
Casio Gold Calculator Watch
” by [jonrawlinson]. | 33 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068321",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T18:14:38",
"content": "I had a Casio with raised buttons in the 80s… Was the ‘cool’ thing in those day for us geeks. Plus the calculator in the shirt pocket or on a belt loop … Still like it better than typing on a virtual ca... | 1,760,371,711.563334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/small-feathers-big-effects-reducing-stall-speeds-with-strips-of-plastic/ | Small Feathers, Big Effects: Reducing Stall Speeds With Strips Of Plastic | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"aerodynamics",
"aircraft",
"birds",
"stall"
] | Birds have long been our inspiration for flight, and researchers at Princeton University have found a new trick in their arsenal:
covert feathers
. These small feathers on top of birds’ wings lay flat during normal flight but flare up in turbulence during landing. By attaching flexible plastic strips – “covert flaps” – to the top of a wing, the team has demonstrated impressive gains in aircraft performance at low speeds.
Wind tunnel tests and RC aircraft trials revealed a fascinating two-part mechanism. The front flaps interact with the turbulent shear layer, keeping it close to the wing surface, while the rear flap create a “pressure dam” that prevents high-pressure air from moving forward. The result? Up to 15% increase in lift and 13% reduction in drag at low speeds. Unfortunately the main body of the
paper
is behind a paywall, but video and abstract is still fascinating.
This innovation could be particularly valuable during takeoff and landing – phases where even a brief stall could spell disaster. The concept shares similarities with leading-edge slats found on
STOL aircraft
and fighter jets, which help maintain control at high angles of attack. Imitating feathers on aircraft wings can have some interesting applications, like
improving control redundancy and efficiency
. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068299",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T17:03:11",
"content": "Maintenance will love it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8068303",
"author": "anathae",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T17:13:49",
... | 1,760,371,711.955773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/exploring-the-sounds-and-sights-of-alien-worlds/ | Exploring The Sounds And Sights Of Alien Worlds | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"extraterrestrial",
"rovers",
"science",
"sounds",
"space"
] | The 20th century saw humankind’s first careful steps outside of the biosphere in which our species has evolved. Whereas before humans had experienced the bitter cold of high altitudes, the crushing pressures in Earth’s oceans, as well as the various soundscapes and vistas offered in Earth’s biosphere, beyond Earth’s atmosphere we encountered something completely new. Departing Earth’s gravitational embrace, the first humans who ventured into space could see the glowing biosphere superimposed against the seemingly black void of space, in which stars, planets and more would only appear when blending out the intense light from the Earth and its life-giving Sun.
Years later, the first humans to set foot on the Moon experienced again something unlike anything anyone has experienced since. Walking around on the lunar regolith in almost complete vacuum and with very low gravity compared to Earth, it was both strangely familiar and hauntingly alien. Although humans haven’t set foot on Mars yet, we have done the next best thing, with a range of robotic explorers with cameras and microphones to record the experience for us here back on Earth.
Unlike the Moon, Mars has a thin but very real atmosphere which permits the travel of soundwaves, so what does the planet sound like? Despite what fictional stories like Weir’s
The Martian
like to claim, reality is in fact stranger than fiction, with for example a
2024 research article by Martin Gillier et al.
as published in
JGR Planets
finding highly variable acoustics during Mars’ seasons. How much of what we consider to be ‘normal’ is just Earth’s normal?
Spherical Astronauts On Mars
Curiosity
rover’s robotic arm showing drill in place, February 2013 (Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
)
A major limitation with experiencing extraterrestrial worlds is of course that even if we could easily zip over to the more distant ones in a faster-than-light spacecraft, our bodies have evolved within the confines of the Earth’s biosphere and explicitly just the biosphere as it has existed only relatively recently, geologically speaking. Even the atmospheric conditions of the Earth’s
Cambrian
period would be lethal to humans, with virtually no oxygen to breathe. It’s highly unlikely that we will find any planets out there that are at least as friendly to human life as the Cambrian period would be to our astronauts, so our experience of alien worlds will most assuredly not match those of the average Star Trek episode.
But assume, if you will, that our perfectly spherical, friction-less astronauts are as impervious to cold, heat and radiation as the intrepid robotic explorers which currently peruse the surface of Mars or which have in the past prodded the Venusian atmosphere and its surface. If stepping outside the lander in this ideal scenario, what can our robotic friends tell us about what walking on Mars would be like?
With Mars much further away from the Sun, its light is dimmer, though still bright enough to make out the rocky reddish, brown, greenish and tan coloring. Most steps that you take will leave behind a footprint, albeit not as deep as on Earth due to Mars gravity of only about 0.38 g, or roughly a third of Earth’s. This does preclude the option of bunny hopping across the surface as on the Moon with its 0.165 g.
Mars’ atmosphere is quite thin, also on account of the planet having lost its magnetosphere a long time ago, exposing the atmosphere to the solar winds as they rip and tear away at it. With an atmospheric density of at most 1,150 Pa (on the
Hellas Planitia
plain) it’s akin to being on Earth at an altitude of 35 km, or well above the average commercial jetliner’s cruising altitude of below 12 km. Even so, sounds are audible, albeit attenuated courtesy of the 96% CO
2
content of the Martian atmosphere. This makes everything sound muted and quite different from what we are used to on Earth.
Whether you stand still and take in the vista surrounding you, or move around, you can hear something like what the
Perseverance
rover recorded
using its twin microphones:
Perseverance also captured the noise of the
Ingenuity
helicopter as it flew near the rover at a distance of 80 meters, all of which provided researchers with invaluable data on how sound propagates on Mars. In the
earlier referenced paper
by Martin Gillier et al. the attenuation is calculated to be 500 times higher for low frequencies and 10 times higher at high frequencies as in Earth’s atmosphere at sea level.
Meanwhile the speed of sound on Mars on its surface varies as the CO
2
in the atmosphere increases or decreases with the seasons, especially near the poles where carbon dioxide ice is known to exist. Compared to the speed of sound in Earth’s atmosphere of 343 m/s, on Mars you can expect around 252 m/s, although this will differ wildly per season and at which altitude you are.
As glorified in
The Martian
and other works of fiction Mars may be, the experience of walking around on its surface would be mostly one of eerie disconnect due to the lower gravity and the muffled sounds including those made by one’s own boots. Assuming that the radiation blasting the Martian surface and intense temperature swings are no concern, this might yet be the perfect vacation spot for some astronauts.
From Venus With Love
The Venus surface, as photographed by the USSR Venera 13 in 1982 (recolorized).
The Soviet
Venera 13
and 14
missions featured the first landers to Venus that were equipped with microphones. These were active during their final descent, as well as the workings of the pyrotechnics and surface drill, prior to the quiet observation of the lander with its scientific instruments. Below is embedded part of the audio from the Venera 14 mission (
also on Archive.org
).
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Venera14-Venus-Recording.mp3
Based on these audio recordings, the wind speed on Venus’ surface was calculated to be on average 0.3 and 0.5 m/s, which doesn’t seem much until you realize that this is with a pressure of around 9.5 MPa (94 times Earth’s atmosphere) and a temperature of 465 ℃. These findings were covered in a
1982 paper by L. V. Ksanfomaliti et al.
(
PDF
) as submitted to
Soviet Astronomy Letters
.
The effect for our theoretical astronaut would be akin to being crushed and burned at the same time, while the thick, mostly CO
2
-based atmosphere slowly churns past.
It is for this reason that our less-invincible astronauts would remain in the Venusian atmosphere at a more agreeable pressure and temperature level. In such a floating colony the experience would be much more akin to being on Earth at ground level, if you excuse the sulfuric rain droplets, of course.
Welcome To Europa
So far our photographic and auditory collection of extraterrestrial planets is still rather limited, with Mars and Venus being the two primary examples where we have collected both types of recordings on their respective surfaces. However, depending on how things work out, we may soon be adding Jupiter’s moon
Europa
to this list. This is perhaps the most intriguing target in our solar system which we have not visited yet in any significant detail, despite it being assumed to be a water ice-covered moon that is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with potentially liquid water below the ice.
Europa’s interior and thin, mostly oxygen and water vapor atmosphere. (Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
)
Recently the
Europa Clipper
spacecraft was launched on its multi-year mission for a rendezvous with Europa by April 2030. One of its mission goals at Europa is to determine a suitable landing site for the proposed
Europa Lander
, which – if funded – would land on Europa in the 2030s where it would be able to examine and image the surface. Sadly Europa does not have much of at atmosphere, much like Earth’s Moon, but it might make for a fascinating place to do some ice skating for our radiation-proof astronauts. If there is a liquid ocean underneath the ice as suspected, then deep-sea diving on Europa is definitely also on the menu, barring any scary oceanic lifeforms in said oceans.
Beyond these places in our solar system the sounds and sights become sadly a bit murky. Mercury is a Sun-blasted rock, while Pluto is a darkness-shrouded rock, and all of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are gas giants. Beyond perhaps a couple of the more interesting moons surrounding these gas giants we will have to look beyond this solar system to find more interesting extraterrestrial sights and sounds. Fortunately for this we will only have to send out our faster-than-light spacecraft into deep space, as there are still billions upon billions of star systems to examine and places to experience. Makes you realize how good we’ve got it here on earth. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068273",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T15:47:55",
"content": "Huygens probe from ESA recorded sound on Titan in 2004",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8068274",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
... | 1,760,371,711.48582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/building-experience-and-circuits-for-lithium-capacitors/ | Building Experience And Circuits For Lithium Capacitors | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"capacitor",
"charging protection",
"embedded",
"energy storage",
"solar",
"super capacitor",
"supercapacitor",
"voltage regulator"
] | For the cautious, a good piece of advice is to always wait to buy a new product until after the first model year, whether its cars or consumer electronics or any other major purchase. This gives the manufacturer a year to iron out the kinks and get everything ship shape the second time around. But not everyone is willing to wait on new tech. [Berto] has been interested in lithium capacitors, a fairly new type of super capacitor, and being unwilling to wait on support circuitry schematics to magically show up on the Internet
he set about making his own
.
The circuit he’s building here is a solar charger for the super capacitor. Being a fairly small device there’s not a lot of current, voltage, or energy, but these are different enough from other types of energy storage devices that it was worth taking a close look and designing something custom. An HT7533 is used for voltage regulation with a Schottky diode preventing return current to the solar cell, and a DW01 circuit is used to make sure that the capacitor doesn’t overcharge.
While the DW01 is made specifically for lithium ion batteries, [Berto] found that it was fairly suitable for this new type of capacitor as well. The capacitor itself is suited for many low-power, embedded applications where a battery might add complexity. Capacitors like this can charge much more rapidly and behave generally more linearly than their chemical cousins, and they aren’t limited to small applications either. For example,
this RC plane was converted to run with super capacitors
. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068241",
"author": "Conrad Farnsworth",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T12:54:06",
"content": "I had a product I was building that required backup power for some time to ensure the product was safe. The caveat was we couldn’t have any sort of stored energy after 20 minutes or so. I did lo... | 1,760,371,711.424702 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/esp32-powers-diy-smart-energy-meter/ | ESP32 Powers DIY Smart Energy Meter | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"energy",
"home-assistant",
"power meter"
] | Energy is expensive these days. There’s no getting around it. If, like [Giovanni], you want to keep better track of your usage,
you might find value in his DIY energy meter build.
[Giovanni] built his energy meter to monitor energy usage in his whole home. An ESP32 serves as the heart of this build. It’s hooked up with a JSY-MK-194G energy metering module, which uses a current clamp and transformer in order to accurately monitor the amount of energy passing through the mains connection to his home. With this setup, it’s possible to track voltage, current, frequency, and power factor, so you can really nerd out over the electrical specifics of what’s going on. Results are then shared with Home Assistant via the ESPHome plugin and the ESP32’s WiFi connection. This allows [Giovanni] to see plots of live and historical data from the power meter via his smartphone.
A project like this one is a great way to explore saving energy, particularly if you live somewhere without a smart meter or any other sort of accessible usage tracking.
We’ve featured some of [Giovanni]’s neat projects before, too. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068201",
"author": "benj111",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T09:43:17",
"content": "If you’re missing it, I’m missing it too.Incase it’s silently updated, the title is currently“Balancing Balls With A Touchpad”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,712.09458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/stripping-gopros-to-the-bone-for-model-rocketry/ | Stripping GoPros To The Bone For Model Rocketry | Danie Conradie | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"News"
] | [
"bps.space",
"GoPro",
"joe barnard",
"model rocketry"
] | The small size of action cameras has made them a great solution for getting high-quality experimental footage where other cameras don’t fit. GoPros are [Joe Barnard]’s camera of choice for his increasingly advanced rockets, but even the smallest models don’t quite fit where he needs them. They also overheat quickly, so in the video after the break, he demonstrates how he
strips and customizes
them to fit his required form factor.
[Joe] starts out with a GoPro HERO10 Bones, which is a minimalist version intended for FPV drones. He likes the quality of the 4K 120 FPS video and the fact that he can update the settings by simply holding up a QR code in front of the camera. The case appears to be ultrasonically welded, so careful work with a Dremel is required to get it open. The reveals the control board with an aluminum heat sink plate, and the sensor module on a short ribbon cable. For minimal drag[Joe] wants just the lens to poke out through the side of the rocket, so he uses slightly longer aftermarket ribbon cables to make this easier.
The camera’s original cooling design, optimized for drone airflow, meant the device would overheat within 5 minutes when stationary. To increase the run time without the need for an external heat sink, [Joe] opts to increase the thermal mass by adding thick aluminum to the existing cooling plate with a large amount of thermal paste. In an attempt to increase heat transfer from the PCB, he also covers the entire PCB with a thick layer of thermal paste. Many of the video’s commenters pointed out that this may hurt more than it helps because the thermal paste is really intended to be used as a thin layer to increase the contact surface to a heat sink. It’s possible that [Joe] might get better results with just a form-fitting thermal block and minimal thermal paste.
[Joe] is permanently epoxying three of these modified cameras into his latest rocket, which is intended to fly at Mach 3, and touch space. This may look like a waste of three relatively expensive cameras, but it’s just a drop in the bucket of a very expensive rocket build.
We’ve seen GoPros get (ab)used in plenty of creative ways, including getting shot from a
giant slingshot
, and reaching the edge of space on a
rocket
and a
balloon
. | 11 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068190",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T08:49:25",
"content": "I assume the limiting factor is the weight of the camera. The best tradeoff in terms of weight vs. passive cooling capacity is probably a relatively thin and wide heatsink. But on the other hand, adding a tin... | 1,760,371,712.377273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/electrostatic-puck-making-an-electret/ | Electrostatic Puck: Making An Electret | Danie Conradie | [
"High Voltage"
] | [
"electret",
"Plasma Channel",
"static electricity"
] | You might have heard of electrets being used in microphones, but do you know what they are? Electrets produce a semi-permanent static electric field, similar to how a magnet produces a magnetic field. The ones in microphones are very small, but in the video after the break [Jay Bowles] from
Plasma Channel
makes a big electret and demonstrates it’s effects
.
Electrets
have been around since the 1800s
, and are usually produced by melting an insulating material and letting it solidify between two high-voltage electrodes. The original recipe used a mix of Carnauba wax, beeswax, and rosin, which is what [Jay] tried first. He built a simple electric field detector, which is just a battery, LED and FET, with an open-ended resistor on the FET’s gate.
[Jay] 3D printed a simple cylindrical mold and stuck aluminum foil to the outer surfaces to act as the electrodes. He used his custom 6000:1 voltage transformer to hold the electrodes at ~40 kV. The first attempt did not produce a working electret because the electrodes were not in contact with the wax, and kept arcing across, which causes the electric charge to drop off. Moving the aluminum electrodes the inner surfaces of the mold eventually produced an electret detectable out to 10 inches.
This was with the original wax recipe, but there are now much better materials available, like polyethylene. [Jay] heated a a block of it in the oven until it turned into a clear blob, and compressed it in a new mold with improved insulation. This produced significantly better results, with an electric field detectable out to 24 inches.
[Jay] also built an array of detectors in a 5×5 grid, which he used to help him visualize the size and shape of the field. He once pulled off a similar trick
using a grid of neon bulbs
. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068148",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T03:56:48",
"content": "Polyethylene makes good electrets?Does that mean that hot-melt glue could be used?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8068153",
"author": "Kevin Pete... | 1,760,371,712.592365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/when-transistor-count-mattered/ | When Transistor Count Mattered | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"transistor",
"transistor radio",
"transistors"
] | Many Hackaday readers have an interest in retro technology, but we are not the only group who scour the flea markets. Alongside us are the collectors, whose interest is as much cultural as it is technological, and who seek to preserve and amass as many interesting specimens as they can. From this world comes [colectornet], with a video that crosses the bridge between our two communities, examining
the so-called transistor wars
of the late 1950s and through the ’60s. Just as digital camera makers would with megapixels four or five decades later, makers of transistor radios would cram as many transistors as they could into their products in a game of one-upmanship.
A simple AM transistor radio can be made with surprisingly few components, but for a circuit with a reasonable performance they suggest six transistors to be the optimal number. If we think about it we come up with five and a diode, that’s one for the self-oscillating mixer, one for IF, an audio preamplifier, and two for the audio power amplifier, but it’s possible we’re not factoring in the relatively low gain of a 1950s transistor and they’d need that extra part. In the cut-throat world of late ’50s budget consumer electronics though, any marketing ploy was worth a go. As the price of transistors tumbled but their novelty remained undimmed, manufacturers started creating radios with superfluous extra transistors, even sometimes going as far as to fit transistors which served no purpose. Our curious minds wonder if they bought super-cheap out-of-spec parts to fill those footprints.
The video charts the transistor wars in detail, showing us a feast of tiny radios, and culminating in models which claim a barely credible sixteen transistors. In a time when far more capable radios
use a fraction of the board space
, the video below the break makes for a fascinating watch. | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068124",
"author": "Frankens43",
"timestamp": "2024-12-02T02:00:10",
"content": "Ah, thr good old days.. you could make an AM radio with a simple germanium diode and a length of wire.. place a few coils and a single transistor.. and you had a radio you could hear without a crystal ... | 1,760,371,712.529567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/creating-a-signature-wood-joint/ | Creating A Signature Wood Joint | Navarre Bartz | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dowel",
"furniture",
"joinery",
"joint",
"Laura Kampf",
"wood joinery",
"woodworking"
] | We really love when makers make their construction techniques evident in an aesthetically-pleasing way, and [Laura Kampf] has created a clever joint
that reveals how a piece is made
.
[Kampf] is a big fan of using her domino joiner, which is similar to biscuits or dowel joinery, but she didn’t love how it hid the construction of the joint. She first figured out an “off label” use of the joiner by running it from the outside of the joint to show the exposed domino from one end.
Building on the concept to show an interesting contrast on both sides of the joint, she drilled a hole perpendicular the domino and placed a dowel through it, creating a locking joint. The choice looks great once a finish is applied to really accentuate the contrast, and another bonus is that if glue is only applied to the dowel and domino, it becomes trivial to separate the joint if needed by drilling out the dowel.
If you’d like to see some other interesting ways to join wood, how about this
laser-cut wedge tenon
,
soda bottle heat shrink
, or this
collection of CNC joints
. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068068",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T21:41:33",
"content": "Neat. Also what if she replaced the smaller dowel with a brass nut and screw? That way you can disassemble and reassemble without having to drill out the dowel. Nice to see a woman carpenter too, good t... | 1,760,371,712.709471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/tailwheel-trainer-go-cart-to-avoid-wrecked-planes/ | Tailwheel Trainer Go-Cart To Avoid Wrecked Planes | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aviation",
"cart",
"driving simulator"
] | Taildraggers remain a popular configuration for small aircraft, but they come with a significant risk during ground handling: ground loops. If the tail gets too far off course, it can swing around completely, often damaging or destroying aircraft if a wing hits the ground. Avoiding ground loops requires good rudder and brake control, and there currently isn’t a good way to learn it without getting into an actual aircraft. [Trent Palmer] is a pilot and who has been thinking about this problem for a few years, so he built a 3-wheeled electric go-cart to help pilots
train their ground handling
.
The cart is controlled exactly like a taildragger, with a pair of rudder pedals connected to the single steerable via cables, and springs to add some response delay. Independent hydraulic brakes on each main wheel, operated by toe pedals, further simulate the control on many aircraft. The main wheel are controlled with a throttle lever, with a differential to allow them to rotate at different speeds. The cart is unforgiving, and requires constant corrections with the pedals to keep it going straight.[Trent] had few pilot and non-pilot friends try out the cart, and even the experienced tailwheel pilots got into ground loop. It might be bit too sensitive, but everyone agreed that mastering this cart would significantly improve ground handling skills in actual aircraft.
Repairing a damaged aircraft can cost several thousand dollar, so a cheap training tool like this could prove invaluable flight schools and even individual pilots. [Trent] doesn’t have big plans for commercialization, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it goes that way.
Taildraggers are especially popular as bush planes, with many tracing their heritage from the humble
Piper J-3 Cub
. We’ve seen some extreme extreme modern bush planes, like [Mike Patey]’s
Scrappy
and
Draco
builds. | 16 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068036",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T18:13:07",
"content": "Not being a pilot I never thought of this before but once you think about it that is a damn good idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8068059",
... | 1,760,371,712.642762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/8-bit-computers-crunch-advanced-scientific-computations/ | 8-Bit Computers Crunch Advanced Scientific Computations | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"8 bit",
"basic",
"commodore",
"model",
"quantum",
"quantum computing",
"retrocomputing",
"science",
"simulation"
] | Although largely relegated to retrocomputing enthusiasts and embedded systems or microcontrollers now, there was a time when there were no other computers available other than those with 8-bit processors. The late 70s and early 80s would have seen computers with processors like the Motorola 6800 or Intel 8080 as the top-of-the-line equipment and, while underpowered by modern standards, these machines can do quite a bit of useful work even today. Mathematician [Jean Michel Sellier] wanted to demonstrate this so
he set up a Commodore 64 to study some concepts like simulating a quantum computer
.
The computer programs he’s written to do this work are in BASIC, a common high-level language of the era designed for ease of use. To simulate the quantum computer he sets up a matrix-vector multiplication but simplifies it using conditional logic. Everything is shown using the
LIST
command so those with access to older hardware like this can follow along. From there this quantum computer even goes as far as demonstrating a quantum full adder.
There are a number of other videos on other topics available as well. For example, there’s an AmigaBasic program that
simulates quantum wave packets
and a
QBasic program that helps visualize the statistical likelihood of finding an electron
at various locations around a hydrogen nucleus. While not likely to displace any supercomputing platforms anytime soon, it’s a good look at how you don’t need a lot of computing power in all situations. And, if you need a refresher on some of these concepts,
there’s an overview on how modern quantum computers work here
. | 37 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067981",
"author": "Astro Jetson",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T15:29:22",
"content": "I do robotics with students. There was a need for the basic trig functions but the programming didn’t support it. So I broke out routines I had from my PIC days and we used them. Turns out that 2... | 1,760,371,712.466683 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/upgrading-the-m4-mac-mini-with-more-storage/ | Upgrading The M4 Mac Mini With More Storage | Navarre Bartz | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"Apple repair",
"Apple Silicon",
"arm",
"M Series",
"mac mini"
] | Apple’s in-house chips have some impressive specs, but user serviceability is something Apple left behind for consumer machines around a decade ago. Repair legend [dosdude1] shows us how the new M4 Mac mini can get
a sizeable storage upgrade
without paying the Apple tax.
The Mac mini is Apple’s least expensive machine, and in the old days you could swap a SATA drive for more storage and not pay the exorbitant prices that OEMs demand. Never one to turn down a walled garden, later Intel machines and now the ARM-based M-series chips soldered storage into the machine leaving an upgrade out of the hands of anyone without a hot air station.
Both the Mac Studio and Mac mini now have proprietary storage cards, and after some tinkering, [dosdude1] has successfully upgraded the storage on the base model M4 mini. While most people don’t casually reball NAND chips while chatting on a video, his previous work with others in the space to make a Mac Studio upgrade kit give us hope we’ll soon see economical storage upgrades that keep the Mac mini affordable.
We’ve previously covered the first time
Apple tried to make its own processors
, and some of their
more recent attempts at repairability
. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8068002",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T16:26:46",
"content": "It’s criminal that they intentionally wall users in on a device with easily enough physical space. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple start using serialization to prevent this from being offered as a service.",... | 1,760,371,712.766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/01/pushing-802-11ah-to-the-extreme-with-drones/ | Pushing 802.11ah To The Extreme With Drones | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"802.11ah",
"dragon bridge",
"dragonos",
"drone",
"drone bridge",
"HaLow",
"radio",
"wi-fi",
"wifi"
] | It might come as a surprise to some that IEEE, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, does more than send out mailers asking people to renew their memberships. In fact, they also maintain various electrical standards across a wide range of disciplines, but perhaps the one most of us interact with the most is the 802.11 standard which outlines WiFi. There have been many revisions over the years to improve throughput but the 802.11ah standard actually looks at decreasing throughput in favor of extremely increased range.
Just how far you can communicate using this standard seems to depend on how many drones you have
.
802.11ah, otherwise known as Wi-Fi HaLow, operates in the sub-gigahertz range which is part of why it has the capability of operating over longer distances. But [Aaron] is extending that distance even further by adding a pair of T-Halow devices, one in client mode and the other in AP (access point) mode, on a drone. The signal then hops from one laptop to a drone, then out to another drone with a similar setup, and then finally down to a second laptop. In theory this “Dragon Bridge” could allow devices to communicate as far as the drone bridge will allow, and indeed [Aaron] has plans for future revisions to include more powerful hardware which will allow even greater distances to be reached.
While there were a few bugs to work out initially, eventually he was able to get almost two kilometers of distance across six devices and two drones. Something like this might be useful for a distributed network of IoT devices that are just outside the range of a normal access point. The Dragon Bridge borrowed its name from DragonOS, a Linux distribution built by [Aaron] with a wide assortment of software-defined radio tools available out of the box.
He’s even put in on the Steam Deck to test out long-distance WiFi
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067954",
"author": "Jethro",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T12:56:22",
"content": "How do you propose to prevent wifi spectrum from turning into a version of 11 meters ? or 14.3 on HF.Is there any deconfliction strategy ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,712.868167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/making-a-stool-from-clay/ | Making A Stool From Clay | Navarre Bartz | [
"Art",
"home hacks"
] | [
"art",
"chair",
"clay",
"furniture",
"kiln",
"stool"
] | We’ve seen furniture made out of all sorts of interesting materials here, but clay certainly isn’t the first one that comes to mind. [Mia Mueller] is expanding our horizons with
this clay stool
she made for her garden.
Starting with an out-of-budget inspiration piece, [Mueller] put her own spin on a ceramic stool that looks like a whimsical human head. An experienced potter, she shows us several neat techniques for working with larger pieces throughout the video. Her clay extruder certainly beats making coils by hand like we did in art class growing up! Leaving the coils wrapped in a tarp allows her to batch the process coils and leave them for several days without worrying about them drying out.
Dealing with the space constraints of her small kiln, her design is a departure from the small scale prototype, but seeing how she works through the problems is what really draws us to projects like this in the first place. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be making, would it? The final result is a beautiful addition to her garden and should last a long time since it won’t rot or rust.
If you’re thinking of clay as a medium, we have some other projects you might enjoy like
this computer mouse
,
3D printing with clay
, or a
clay battery
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067924",
"author": "Jink",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T07:49:54",
"content": "I’d be super interested in an article on the history and uses of ceramics in high tech applications, such as the airtight glass-ceramic seal for 1940’s vacuum tubes, and the high budget R&D involved in makin... | 1,760,371,712.812311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/arduino-vga-the-old-fashioned-way/ | Arduino VGA, The Old Fashioned Way | Jenny List | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"isa",
"vga"
] | Making a microcontroller speak to a VGA monitor has been a consistent project in our sphere for years, doing the job for which an IBM PC of yore required a plug-in ISA card. Couldn’t a microcontroller talk to a VGA card too? Of course it can, and [0xmarcin] is here
to show how it can be done with an Arduino Mega
.
The project builds on the work of another similar one which couldn’t be made to work, and the Trident card used couldn’t be driven in 8-bit ISA mode. The web of PC backwards compatibility saves the day though, because many 16-bit ISA cards also supported the original 8-bit slots from the earliest PCs. The Arduino is fast enough to support the ISA bus speed, but the card also needs the PC’s clock line to operate, and it only supports three modes: 80 x 25, 16 colour text, 320 x 200, 256 colour graphics, and 640 x 480, 16 colour graphics.
Looking at this project, it serves as a reminder of the march of technology. Perhaps fifteen years or more ago we’d have been able to lay our hands on any number of ISA cards to try it for ourselves, but now
eight years after we called the end of the standard
, we’d be hard placed to find one even at our hackerspace. Perhaps your best bet if you want one is
a piece of over-the-top emulation
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067882",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T03:39:42",
"content": "“The Arduino is fast enough to support the ISA bus speed, but the card also needs the PC’s clock line to operate, and it only supports three modes: 80 x 25, 16 colour text, 320 x 200, 256 colour graphics,... | 1,760,371,712.914066 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/uncle-sam-wants-you-to-recover-energy-materials-from-wastewater/ | Uncle Sam Wants You To Recover Energy Materials From Wastewater | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy",
"ARPA-E",
"grants",
"material recovery",
"material separation",
"mining",
"US Department of Energy",
"US DOE",
"wastewater treatment"
] | The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) was founded to support moonshot projects in the realm of energy, with a portfolio that ranges from the edge of current capabilities to some pretty far out stuff. We’re not sure exactly where their newest “Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)” falls, but they’re looking for
critical materials from the wastewater treatment process
. [via
CleanTechnica
]
As a refresher,
critical materials
are those things that are bottlenecks in a supply chain that you don’t want to be sourcing from unfriendly regions. For the electrification of transportation and industrial processes required to lower carbon emissions, lithium, cobalt, and other rare earth elements are pretty high on the list.
ARPA-E also has an interest in ammonia-based products which is particularly interesting as industrial fertilizers can wreak havoc on natural ecosystems when they become run off instead of making it into the soil. As any farmer knows, inputs cost money, so finding an economical way to recover those products from wastewater would be a win-win. “For all categories, the final recovered products will need to include at least two targeted high energy-value materials, have greater than 90% recovery efficiency, and be commercially viable in the U.S. market.” If that sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to try hacking on, consider
filling out an Applicant Profile
.
If you’re curious about where we’re getting some of these materials from right now, checkout our series on
Mining and Refining
, including the
lithium
and
cobalt
ARPA-E wants more of. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067840",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T00:55:10",
"content": "My dog recovers energy materials from the cat’s litter box.Then he gives everybody sloppy dog kisses.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8067886",
... | 1,760,371,713.104341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/its-like-lightscribe-but-for-floppies/ | It’s Like LightScribe, But For Floppies! | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"disk image",
"floppy disk",
"lightscribe"
] | Back when CD-Rs were the thing, there were CD burner drives which would etch images in the unoccupied areas of a CD-R. These so-called LightScribe drives were a novelty of which most users soon tired, but they’re what’s brought to our mind by [dbalsom]’s project. It’s called PNG2disk, and
it does the same job as LightScribe, but for floppies
. There’s one snag though; the images are encoded in magnetic flux and thus invisible to the naked eye. Instead, they can be enjoyed through a disk copying program that shows a sector map.
The linked GitHub repository has an example, and goes in depth through the various options it supports, and how to view images in several disk analysis programs. This program creates fully readable disks, and can even leave space for a filesystem. We have to admit to being curious as to whether such an image could be made physically visible using for example ferrofluid, but we’d be the first t admit to not being magnetic flux experts.
PNG2disk is part of
the Fluxfox project
, a library for working with floppy disk images. Meanwhile LightScribe my have gone the way of the dodo, but if you have one
you could try making your own supercaps
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067784",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T21:23:32",
"content": "Thanks for covering my silly little utility.A similar project was covered on Hackaday a few years ago, but only did black and white images:https://hackaday.com/2021/02/19/writing-pretty-flux-patterns-... | 1,760,371,713.160271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/saving-a-samsung-tv-from-the-dreaded-boot-loop/ | Saving A Samsung TV From The Dreaded Boot Loop | Lewin Day | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"firmware",
"samsung",
"tv"
] | [eigma] had a difficult problem. After pulling a TV out of the trash and bringing it home, it turned out it was suffering from a troubling boot loop issue that basically made it useless. As so many of us do, they decided to fix it…
which ended up being a far bigger task than initially expected.
The TV in question was a Samsung UN40H5003AF. Powering it up would net a red standby light which would stay on for about eight seconds. Then it would flicker off, come back on, and repeat the cycle. So far, so bad. Investigation began with the usual—checking the power supplies and investigating the basics. No easy wins were found. A debug UART provided precious little information, and schematics proved hard to come by.
Eventually, though, investigation dialed in on a 4 MB SPI flash chip on the board. Dumping the chip revealed the firmware onboard was damaged and corrupt. Upon further tinkering, [eigma] figured that most of the dump looked valid. On a hunch, suspecting that maybe just a single bit was wrong, they came up with a crazy plan: use a script to brute-force flipping every single bit until the firmware’s CRC check came back valid. It took eighteen hours, but the script found a valid solution. Lo and behold, burning the fixed firmware to the TV brought it back to life.
It feels weird for a single bit flip to kill an entire TV, but this kind of failure isn’t unheard of. We’ve seen other dedicated hackers
perform similar restorations previously
. If you’re out there valiantly rescuing e-waste with these techniques, do
tell us your story
, won’t you? | 39 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067736",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T19:01:51",
"content": "“which ended up being a far bigger task than initially expected.”respect…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8067749",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"tim... | 1,760,371,713.423161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/thanks-for-hacking-2/ | Thanks For Hacking | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"thanks",
"thanksgiving"
] | It’s that time of year again, when the turkey roasts and we think of the important things that we’re thankful for. Here at Hackaday, we’re simply thankful for all of you out there. The readers who make Hackaday worth writing for, and the hackers out there who give us something to write about.
It’s no exaggeration to say that we have one of the most bizarrely creative communities out there, and we’re thankful to still be chronicling all of the inventive madness, all of the engineering feats, and all of the projects that succeed and those that fail. It’s truly a pleasure, day in and day out, to read and to write about.
So thank you all for being Hackaday, for sticking with us through our 20th year now, and for continuing to share your hacks and
sending in the tips
when you see one that you’d like us to share. Keep on hacking, and we can’t wait to see what you’re up to in 2025.
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
! | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067673",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T15:28:54",
"content": "The top pic needs an accompanying youtube video!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8067679",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T15:44:10",
... | 1,760,371,713.296428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/the-many-reasons-for-putting-microphones-in-rainforests/ | The Many Reasons For Putting Microphones In Rainforests | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"Bioacoustics",
"biomonitoring",
"rainforest"
] | If a tree falls in a forest with nobody around, does it make a noise? In the case of the rainforests equipped with the Rainforest Connection’s Guardian system someone most assuredly will.
Rainforest Connection’s Guardian system up close, with microphone visible. (Credit: RFCx)
Originally created by the people behind the US nonprofit Rainforest Connection (RFCx)
using upcycled smartphones to detect the sounds of illegal logging
, their project now has grown into something much larger, keeping not only tabs on sounds of illegal activity, but also performing bioacoustic monitoring for scientific purposes.
Currently active in ten countries, the so-called
Guardian Platform
no longer features smartphones, but custom hardware inside an IP66 weatherproof enclosure and a whole range of communication options, ranging from cellular bands to satellite communications. The petal-shaped solar panels provide the module with up to 30 watts of power, and double as a shield to help protect it from the elements.
Not only is the real-time microphone data incredibly useful for rangers trying to stop illegal logging, it also provides researchers access to countless hours of audio data, which will require detailed, automated analysis. Even better is that if the audio data is available to the general public as well,
via their Android & iOS apps
(bottom of page), just in case you wanted to hear what that sneaky wildlife in the jungle of Peru is up to right now. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067686",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T16:17:51",
"content": "That Guardian Device sure hits multiple spots. Building something that includes serious PV, energy harvesting or a battery that allows it to run for years AND survives the temperature, pressure cycles and h... | 1,760,371,713.344981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/30/building-a-miniature-rainbow-sand-table/ | Building A Miniature Rainbow Sand Table | Lewin Day | [
"Art"
] | [
"sand",
"sand table"
] | Sure is coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. But it can also be beautiful — drag a small ball through it in a controlled manner you can make some really pretty patterns.
That’s precisely what this compact build from [Printerforge] does.
The build relies on an ESP32 as the brains of the operation. It employs small 28BYJ-48 motors to run the motion platform. These were chosen as they operate on 5 V, simplifying the build by allowing everything to run off a single power supply. Along with a bunch of 3D printed parts, the motors are assembled into motion system with linear rods and belts
in a CoreXY layout,
chosen for speed and precision. It’s charged with moving a small magnet to drag a ball bearing through the sand to draw patterns under the command of G-code generated
with the Sandify tool
.
We’ve seen some great sand table builds over the years. Some use
polar coordinate systems,
while others repurpose bits
of 3D printers.
If you’ve got a creative new way of doing it, don’t hesitate to
let us know
! | 10 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067647",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T13:33:48",
"content": "Nice. I wonder if anyone has designed a mechanism to lift and move the ball? That’d give a whole new range of art it could generate.You’d probably need two separate motors and a arm above the ball to accom... | 1,760,371,713.241886 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/modernizing-an-apple-ipod-or-a-modern-day-ship-of-theseus/ | Modernizing An Apple IPod, Or: A Modern-Day Ship Of Theseus | Maya Posch | [
"ipod hacks"
] | [
"5thGenIpod",
"apple iPod",
"modernization"
] | Back in the day the Apple iPod was the personal music player (PMP) to get even if mostly because everyone and their dogs had one. These days most people just use their smartphone as a PMP, but what if you were to take, say, a 5th generation iPod and modernized it? That was the basic idea that [Zac Builds] picked up and ran with, with the results
as shown in the video
he made about it.
The
5th gen iPod
was the first one capable of playing video, and was released in October of 2005. Powering it is a Broadcom BCM2722 for video playback, and came with a 30 or 60 GB HDD. First thing that [Zac] tosses is the old (3.7V, 650 mAh) battery, which appears to be already a replacement for the original, followed by the 60 GB 1.8″ HDD. Next tossed is the 2.5″ 320×240 QVGA screen, which gets replaced by a compatible modern LCD. The case is replaced with a transparent case, along with a transparent touch wheel, and the HDD is replaced with a 256 GB SD card in an
iFlash Solo
SD card adapter for iPods.
Next up was the installation of more off-the-shelf mods, such as a ‘taptic mod’ – which adds a rumble motor – and replacing the iPod’s 30-pin connector with a USB-C connector, requiring some fiddly soldering and desoldering. Following this a Bluetooth audio transmitter was added, extreme PCB mods performed with a cut-off wheel to make everything fit with a custom midframe and rear case.
Ultimately, the parts left of the original iPod were most of the mainboard and some flex cable, which raises the question of whether it might not have been faster and easier to start off with designing a custom PCB. Perhaps the true value is in the modding journey and not the destination?
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067543",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T06:25:02",
"content": "its nice that my 5th gen still works fine, only having replaced a screen and a battery. wanted to do the storage upgrade, but my inability to read the tiny screen in my old age has put a damper on tha... | 1,760,371,713.597554 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/hacking-trees-to-bring-back-the-american-chestnut/ | Hacking Trees To Bring Back The American Chestnut | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"American Chestnut",
"arbology",
"bioengineering",
"biology",
"biotech",
"botany",
"chestnut",
"Christmas carol",
"genomics",
"transgenic",
"tree"
] | “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is playing on the radio now in the Northern Hemisphere which begs the question, “What happened to the American chestnut?” Would you be surprised to hear there’s a group dedicated to
bringing it back from “functional extinction?”
[via
Inhabitat
]
Between logging and the introduction of chestnut blight, the once prevalent American chestnut became
increasingly uncommon
throughout its traditional range in the Appalachians. While many trees in the southern range were killed by Phytophthora root rot (PRR), the chestnut blight leaves roots intact, so many chestnuts have been surviving by growing back from the roots only to succumb to the blight and be reborn again. Now, scientists are using a combination of techniques to develop blight-resistant trees from this remaining population.
The American Chestnut Foundation recognizes you can’t improve what you can’t measure and uses a combination of “small stem assays (SSAs) performed on potted seedlings, improved phenotype scoring methods for field-grown trees, and the use of genomic prediction models for scoring resistance based on genotype.” This allows them to more rapidly screen varieties for blight resistance to further their efforts. One approach is based on conventional plant breeding techniques and has been crossing blight and PRR-resistant Chinese chestnuts with the American type. PRR resistance has been found to be less genetically complicated, so progress has been faster on resistance to that particular problem.
Research is also ongoing on transgenic solutions to both the blight and PRR. Initial experiments using a wheat gene had mixed results, but researchers hope to develop a version that can be expressed in more nuanced conditions like when a tree is more susceptible to infection. This could prevent or reduce some of the negative affects of the transgenic hack like increased tree mortality and metabolic costs with always producing the oxalate oxidase enzyme that interferes with the blight toxin.
If we’re tinkering with genomes anyway, maybe boosting the American chestnut’s
photosynthetic efficiency
isn’t out of the question? If you’re more interested in
making insulin
or
combating mosquito-borne diseases
, there’s a biohack for that too. | 36 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067517",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T04:56:05",
"content": "As far as I know we’ve got plenty of those things here in the Netherlands, and they are being treated as an invasive spieces. I’ve seen a few and they’re not very big nor impressive. I don’t know whether ... | 1,760,371,713.540409 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/swapping-batteries-has-never-looked-this-cool/ | Swapping Batteries Has Never Looked This Cool | Donald Papp | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"18650",
"3d printed",
"battery",
"cool",
"linear slide"
] | We don’t know much more than what we see with
[Kounotori_DIY]’s battery loader design
(video embedded below) but it just looks
so cool
we had to share. Watch it in action, it’ll explain itself.
Before 3D printers made it onto hobbyist workbenches, prototyping something like this would have been much more work.
[Kounotori_DIY] uses a small plastic linear guide as an interface for an 18650 battery holder and as you can see, it’s pretty slick. A little cylindrical container slides out of the assembly, allowing a spent cell to drop out. Loading a freshly charged cell consists of just popping a new one into the cylinder, then snapping it closed. The electrical connection is made by two springy metal tabs on either end that fit into guides in the cylindrical holder.
It’s just a prototype right now, and [Kounotori_DIY] admits that the assembly is still a bit big and there’s no solid retention — a good bump will pop the battery out — but we think this is onto something. We can’t help but imagine how swapping batteries in such style with a nice solid
click
would go very nicely on a
cyberdeck
build.
It’s not every day that someone tries to re-imagine a battery holder, let alone with such style. Any ideas how it could be improved? Have your own ideas about reimagining how batteries are handled? Let us know in the comments!
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/ssstwitter.com_1732825429623.mp4 | 39 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067454",
"author": "Frank Peters",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T00:07:27",
"content": "I’m gonna be that guy:This is absolutely amazing, but perhaps I need a profession where I have to swap batteries that often!On the bright side, I miss old flashlight battery compartments with screw c... | 1,760,371,713.681226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/simple-pen-plotter-rolls-on-the-table/ | Simple Pen Plotter Rolls On The Table | Lewin Day | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"plotter"
] | Pen plotters are popular builds amongst DIY CNC enthusiasts. They’re a great way to learn the fundamentals of motion control and make something useful along the way. In that vein,
[Maker101] has created a neat barebones plotter for tabletop use.
The basic design relies on familiar components. It uses a pair of MGN15 linear rails as the basis of the motion platform, along with NEMA 17 stepper motors to run the X and Y axes. These are assembled with the aid of 3D-printed parts that bring the whole frame together, along with a pen lifter operated with a hobby servo.
The neat thing about the design is that the barebones machine is designed to sit upon an existing tabletop. This eliminates the need to integrate a large flat work surface into the plotter itself. Instead, the X axis just runs along whatever surface you place it on, rolling on a small wheel. It’s likely not ideal for accuracy or performance; we could see the machine itself skating around if run too fast. For a lightweight barebones plotter, though, it works well enough.
If you dig building plotters, you might like to
step up to something more laser-y in future.
Video after the break. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067456",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known as Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T00:11:26",
"content": "What keeps the paper from moving when the pen is dragging on it?I’ve wanted a plotter for a long time, just didn’t find one for the right price.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,713.469095 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/building-a-generator-that-runs-off-hose-power/ | Building A Generator That Runs Off Hose Power | Lewin Day | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"generator",
"hose",
"turbine",
"water wheel"
] | [Paul Junkin] bought a curious product off the Internet. It was supposed to generate electricity when hooked up to a running hose. Only, it didn’t do a very good job. His solution was straightforward—
he built his own hose-powered generator that actually worked.
The design uses a turbine hooked up to a small motor acting as a generator. To maximize the transfer of energy from the stream of water to the blades of the turbine, the hose is hooked up to a convergent nozzle. [Paul] does a great job explaining the simple physics at play, as well as the iterative design process he used to get to the final product. He calculates the best-case power coming out of his hose around 50 watts, so for his turbine to collect 22 watts is a win, and it’s good enough to charge a phone or run some LED lighting.
Of course, this isn’t a practical generator if you have to pay for the water, and there are other solutions that will get you less wet. Still, credit where it’s due—this thing does make power when you hook it up to a hose.
We’ve seen some slightly less ridiculous concepts in this space before, though. | 68 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067343",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T18:20:55",
"content": "This is the first step for making your own hydropower plant. A typical water hose has about 40 – 80 PSI of pressure, which is something like 100-200 ft of “head” or elevation. If you have a stream uphill and... | 1,760,371,713.803845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/hackaday-podcast-episode-298-forbidden-usb-c-a-laser-glow-o-scope-and-the-epoch-super-cassette-vision/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 298: Forbidden USB-C, A Laser Glow-o-Scope, And The Epoch Super Cassette Vision | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week’s Hackaday podcast has a European feel, as Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for a look at the week’s happenings in the world of cool hardware hacks. Starting with the week’s news, those Redbox vending machines continue to capture the attention of hackers everywhere, and in the race to snag one before they’re carted off for recycling someone has provided the missing hardware manual in the form of a wiki. Europeans can only look on wistfully. Then there’s the curious case of life on the asteroid sample, despite the best efforts of modern science those pesky earth bacteria managed to breach all their anti-contamination measures. Anyone who’s had a batch of homebrew go bad feels their pain.
The week provided plenty of hacks, with the team being wowed by [Bitluni]’s CRT-like laser projector, then the many ingenious ways to 3D-print a hinge, and perhaps one of the most unforgiving environments in the home for a piece of robotics. Meanwhile our appetite for cool stuff was sated by an entire family of Japanese games consoles we’d never heard of, and the little voltage reference whose data sheet also had an audio amplifier circuit. Finishing up, our colleague Arya has many unorthodox uses for a USB-C cable, and we have a frank exchange of views about Linux audio.
Give it a listen below and check out all the links, and by all means, give us a roasting in the comments!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Download it your own self
!
Episode 298 Show Notes:
News:
Life Found On Ryugu Asteroid Sample, But It Looks Very Familiar
There’s Now A Wiki For Hacking Redbox Machines
What’s that Sound?
Last weeks’ sound was
Eurosignal
, an old pager protocol on FM radio. Congrats [Niklas]!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Would An Indexing Feature Benefit Your Next Hinge Design?
The Japanese Console You Maybe Haven’t Heard Of
A Laser With Mirrors Makes A CRT-like Display
Flyback, Done Right
DIY Pipe Inspector Goes Where No Bot Has Gone Before
Programmable Zener Is Really An IC
[Ken Shirriff] Explains The TL431
Ode To The TL431, And A LiFePO4 Battery Charger
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Homebrew Phosphorescence Detector Looks For The Glow In Everyday Objects
Your Undocumented Project May Also Baffle People Someday
E-Ink Screen Combined With Analog Dial Is Epic Win
Jenny’s Picks:
Getting Started In Laser Cutting
Even Apple Get Their Parts Wrong Sometimes
OLED Screen Mounting, Without The Pain
Can’t-Miss Articles:
USB-C For Hackers: Reusing Cables
Linux Fu: Audio Network Pipes
PipeWire, The Newest Audio Kid On The Linux Block | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067810",
"author": "Michael C",
"timestamp": "2024-11-30T22:59:58",
"content": "Really great this week!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8068086",
"author": "PuceBaboon",
"timestamp": "2024-12-01T22:29:49",
"content"... | 1,760,371,713.943237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/fully-submerge-this-modernized-ph-sensor/ | Fully Submerge This Modernized PH Sensor | Bryan Cockfield | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"instrument",
"meter",
"pH",
"sensor"
] | There’s a school of thought that says you shouldn’t mess around with a solution that’s already working, but that’s never seemed to stop anyone in this community. When [Skye] was looking at the current state of connected pH meters
they realized there was incredible room for improvement
.
Called the Nectar Monitor, this pH meter is a more modern take on what is currently offered in this space. Open source and based on the ESP32, it’s accessible to most people with a soldering iron, fits into a standard project box, and includes other modern features like USB and WiFi connectivity. It can even measure conductivity and temperature. But the main improvement here is that unlike other monitors that can only be submerged temporarily, this one is designed to be under water for long time periods thanks to a specially designed probe and electrical isolation.
This design makes it an appealing choice for people with aquariums, hydroponic farms, or any other situation where constant monitoring of pH is extremely important to maintaining a balanced system. We’ve seen some unique takes on hydroponics before especially, including
this build that moves the plants instead of the nutrient solution
and
this fully automated indoor garden
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067281",
"author": "Jan Grewe",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T15:14:08",
"content": "Uhm, i think there’s have quite a bit of a misunderstanding… pH/EC probes are ALWAYS submerged, because otherwise they can’t measure anything, and the electrical isolation has nothing to do with being s... | 1,760,371,713.860245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/low-profile-travel-keyboard-is-mostly-3d-printed/ | Low-Profile Travel Keyboard Is Mostly 3D Printed | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"micro keyboard"
] | If you’ve got a nice mechanical keyboard, typing on anything else can often become an unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, full-sized versions are bulky and not ideal when you’re travelling or for certain portable applications.
[Applepie1928] decided to create a small travel keyboard to solve these problems.
Meet the Micro Planck. It’s a simple ortholinear mechanical keyboard in a decidedly compact form factor—measuring just 23 cm wide, 9.5 cm tall, and 2 cm deep. You could probably stuff it in your pocket if you wear baggy jeans. Oh, and if you don’t know what ortholinear means, it just means that the keys are in a straight grid instead of staggered. Kind of like those “keyboards” at the bowling alley.
The build relies on Gateron KS-33 switches installed on a custom PCB, with a ATmega32U4 microcontroller running the popular
open source QMK firmware
. The keyboard has a USB-C port because it’s 2024, and all the components are wrapped up in a neat 3D printed shell.
Overall, it’s a tasteful design that packs in a lot of functionality. It’s also neat to see a mechanical design used which offers
more tactile feedback
than the rubber dome designs more typical at this scale. Meanwhile, if you’re cooking up your own nifty keyboard designs, don’t hesitate to
let us know
what you’re up to! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067227",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T13:08:49",
"content": "“like those “keyboards” at the bowling alley.” is oddly specific.Maybe I’m of a certain age and lived in certain countries, and have not bowled in about a decade, but I’ve never seen a keyboard at a bowling... | 1,760,371,713.99583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/gps-enabled-pumpkin-spice-sprayer-knows-when-its-psl-season/ | GPS Enabled Pumpkin Spice Sprayer Knows When It’s PSL Season | Drew Littrell | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"aerosol",
"arduino",
"pumpkins"
] | Pumpkin spice, also known as allspice with better marketing, has found its way into a seemingly endless amount of products over the years. It goes beyond the obvious foodstuffs of pies and cakes; because there are plenty of candles, deodorants, and air fresheners ready to add a little more spice to your world. One such autumnal smell enthusiast, YouTube user [J-Knows], sought to automate the delivery mechanism with his 3D printed pumpkin spice aerosol sprayer.
The sprayer device uses an Arduino to rotate a small 3D printed arm that depresses the button on an air freshener cap. This design came as a result of multiple attempts to create a clip that would securely attach to a standard canister. When problems arose with the clip slipping out of place after the motor rotated, a pinch of sticky tack ended up being just the solution. With the proper amount of adhesion, the automated sprayer could now “pollute” any space it is in, as [J-Knows] described.
What took this project to another level is the addition of an Adafruit GPS module. It was coded to respond when it was within one mile of a Starbucks — arguably the organization responsible for the pumpkin spice craze. For some the company’s pumpkin spice latte (PSL) is synonymous with all things fall, and marks the beginning of the season when it is brought back to the coffee menu. Though not being a regular coffee drinker himself, [J-Knows] fully committed to the bit by taking his creation on a test trip to his local Starbucks for a PSL. Judging by the amount of pumpkin spice aerosol solution that ended up on his car dash, he is going to be smelling it into the next year. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067200",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T10:03:53",
"content": "I have never been so confused by the purpose of an electronics project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8067255",
"author": "James",
... | 1,760,371,714.278502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/ultra-wide-gaming-handheld-channels-the-nintendo-ds/ | Ultra-Wide Gaming Handheld Channels The Nintendo DS | Lewin Day | [
"News"
] | [
"laptop",
"lenovo",
"TouchPad"
] | “The Nintendo DS isn’t wide enough!” said nobody, ever. Most players found Nintendo’s form factor to be perfectly acceptable for gaming on the go, after all. Still, that doesn’t mean a handheld gaming rig with a more…
cinematic
aspect ratio couldn’t be fun!
[Marcin Plaza] built just that, with great results.
The initial plan was to build a Steam Deck-like device, but using laptop trackpads instead of joysticks. [Marcin] had a broken Lenovo Yoga 730-13 to use as the basis for the build. That caused the plan to diverge, as the only screen [Marcin] could find that was easily compatible with the laptop’s eDP interface was an ultrawide unit. From there, a clamshell enclosure was designed specifically to rehouse all the key components from the Lenovo laptop. The top half of the clamshell would hold the screen, while the base would feature a small custom keyboard, some buttons, and the aforementioned trackpad. This thing reminds us of the Nintendo DS for multiple reasons. It’s not just the clamshell design—it’s the fact it has a touch control on the lower deck, albeit without a screen.
It’s an original concept
for a handheld gaming device
, and it makes us wish there were more games built for the ultrawide aspect ratio. This is one project that has us browsing the usual websites to see just what other oddball screens are out there…
round screens
in a makeup compact clamshell, anyone? Video after the break. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067176",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T06:19:37",
"content": "There are eDP to DSI starting to become available (The Legion Go for example uses a tablet screen on ‘laptop’ CPU hardware)https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1e181sm/what_ic_to_convert_edp_to_... | 1,760,371,714.061537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/us-is-getting-its-first-onshore-wave-power-plant/ | US Is Getting Its First Onshore Wave Power Plant | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"News"
] | [
"coastal",
"energy",
"maritime",
"ocean",
"onshore",
"renewable energy",
"tidal",
"tidal power"
] | Renewables let you have a more diverse set of energy inputs so you aren’t putting all your generation eggs in one basket. One type of renewable that doesn’t see a lot of love, despite 80% of the world’s population living within 100 km (~60 mi) of a coastline, is
harnessing the energy of the tides
. [via
Electrek
]
“The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wave energy has the potential to generate over 1,400 terawatt-hours per year,” so while this initial project won’t be huge, the overall possible power generation from tidal power is nothing to sneeze at. Known more for its role in shipping fossil fuels, the Port of Los Angeles will host the new wave power pilot being built by Eco Wave Power and Shell.
Eco Wave’s system
uses floaters to drive pistons that compress hydraulic fluid and turn a generator before the decompressed fluid is returned to the pistons in a nice, tidy loop.
Eco Wave plans to finish construction by early 2025 and already has the power conversion unit onsite at the Port of Los Angeles. While the press release is mum on the planned install capacity, Eco Wave claims they will soon have 404.7 MW of installed capacity through several different pilot projects around the world.
We covered another Swedish company trying to
harness tidal power with underwater kites
, and if wave power isn’t your thing but you still like mixing water and electricity, why not try
offshore wind
or a
floating solar farm
? Just make sure to
keep the noise down
! | 60 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067149",
"author": "SRSLY??",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T03:07:09",
"content": "California should make a goal to scale a decentralized network of these across the state along side desalinization plants to become water independent.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,714.37979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/ufo-50-inspired-lx-system-looks-straight-out-of-a-video-game/ | UFO 50 Inspired LX System Looks Straight Out Of A Video Game | Drew Littrell | [
"Games"
] | [
"3d printed",
"3D printed case",
"mini pc",
"video game console"
] | They simply don’t make them like they used to, and in the case of this retro LX system build, they only make what never existed in the first place. Earlier this year the long awaited video game UFO 50 released to widespread critical acclaim. The conceit of the game is an interactive anthology of a faux 1980’s game console constructed by a large group of actual indie game developers. Leave it to [Luke], who admitted to UFO 50 to taking over his life, to
bring the LX system from the digital screen to the real world
.
Each piece of the LX System case was printed on a multi-color filament capable Bambu Labs P1S. Dual XLR jacks wired up as USB serve as controller ports, and the controller itself is a repurposed NES style USB controller fitted with a new housing printed with the same filament as the case. Both the prominent front mounted power and “sys” buttons are functional; the latter actually switches to a new game within UFO 50. The brains of this project is a mini Windows PC hooked up to a 9 inch 720p LCD screen which is plenty enough resolution for pixelated look of the games. As impressive as replicating the whole case look is, it’s really brought together by the addition of a 3.5 inch floppy drive. It could be an interesting way to backup save files, provided they fit within 1.44 MB.
In addition to sharing the completed LX System, [Luke] has also made the print files available online along with a list of project materials used. It would be neat to see an alternate color scheme or remix for this working prototype of a console that never actually existed. In the meantime, there are plenty more games to play and discover in UFO 50…there’s 50 of them after all.
via
Time Extension | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067128",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T00:13:17",
"content": "I wonder whether switching the gender of the XLR would be wise, a hot pin isn’t a great idea in so open of a connector.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,371,714.430234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/minichord-wants-to-help-you-find-rad-chord-progressions/ | Minichord Wants To Help You Find Rad Chord Progressions | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"minichord",
"music",
"sound",
"synth"
] | If you’re good at music theory, you can probably find all the chords and progressions you need just by using your fingers and a suitable instrument. For a lot of musicians, though, remembering huge banks of chords can be difficult, and experimenting with combinations can quickly become tedious and tiring.
Enter the minichord
, a tiny version of
the Omnichord synth
designed by [Benjamin] that offers to help out by putting all the chords you need a mere button press away.
The minichord is based around the
Teensy 4.0
, a capable microcontroller platform if ever there was one. It’s paired with a bunch of tactile buttons which are used to tell the Teensy which chord you desire to play. Various combinations of buttons can be used to play more advanced chords, too. There are potentiometers on board as well for volume control, as well as a touch pad for “strumming” arpeggios and other fine control tasks. An online interface allows modifying the presets onboard, too.
[Benjamin] hopes to get the minichord into production; it’s currently in a Seeedstudio competition that could see that happen, based on likes
on the project video
. The minichord isn’t the only player in this space, of course.
The Orchard synth
has been making similar waves this week.
We’ve seen [Benjamin’s] work before, too
. Video after the break. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067168",
"author": "Taper",
"timestamp": "2024-11-29T06:00:01",
"content": "Neat! This kind of chording synth is always cool to see. I have a similar device, Johan Berglund’s T.Chordstrum — a less polished thing, based around a Teensy 3.2.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,371,714.530253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/the-junk-machine-prints-corrupted-advertising-on-demand/ | The Junk MachinePrints Corrupted Advertising On Demand | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"advertising",
"ai",
"embedded",
"Nvidia Jetson",
"printer",
"sdxl",
"stable diffusion"
] | [ClownVamp]’s art project
The Junk Machine
is an interactive and eye-catching machine that, on demand, prints out an equally eye-catching and unique yet completely meaningless (one may even say
corrupted
) AI-generated advertisement for nothing in particular.
The machine is an artistic statement on how powerful software tools that have genuine promise and usefulness to creative types are finding their way into marketer’s hands, and resulting in a deluge of, well,
junk
. This machine simplifies and magnifies that in a physical way.
We can’t help but think that
The Junk Machine
is in a way highlighting Sturgeon’s Law (paraphrased as ‘ninety percent of everything is crud’) which happens to be
particularly applicable to the current AI landscape
. In short, the ease of use of these tools means that crud is also being effortlessly generated at an unprecedented scale, swamping any positive elements.
As for the hardware and software, we’re very interested in what’s inside. Unfortunately there’s no deep technical details, but the broad strokes are that
The Junk Machine
uses an embedded NVIDIA Jetson loaded up with Stable Diffusion’s SDXL Turbo,
an open source AI image generator
that can be installed and run locally. When and if a user mashes a large red button, the machine generates a piece of AI junk mail in real time without any need for a network connection of any kind, and prints it from an embedded printer.
Watch it in action in the video embedded below, just under the page break. There are a few more different photos on
[ClownVamp]’s X account
.
https://cdn.transientlabs.xyz/tlx/junk-machine/TJM_Video.mp4 | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066279",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T12:26:06",
"content": "You dont need AI for that.Every other section on Facebook has that.Just copy and print out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066319",
"author":... | 1,760,371,714.484316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/electric-motors-run-continuously-at-near-peak-power/ | Electric Motors Run Continuously At Near-Peak Power | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"continuous power",
"Electric motor",
"mahle",
"peak power",
"power output",
"power rating",
"torque",
"tractor trailer",
"transportation",
"truck"
] | For a lot of electrical and mechanical machines, there are nominal and peak ratings for energy output or input. If you’re in marketing or advertising, you’ll typically look at the peak rating and move on with your day. But engineers need to know that most things can only operate long term at a fraction of this peak rating, whether it’s a power supply in a computer, a controller on an ebike, or the converter on a wind turbine. But this electric motor system has a unique cooling setup
allowing it to function at nearly full peak rating for an unlimited amount of time
.
The motor, called the Super Continuous Torque motor built by German automotive manufacturer Mahle is capable of 92% of its peak output power thanks to a unique oil cooling system which is able to remove heat and a rapid rate. Heat is the major limiter for machines like this; typically when operating at a peak rating a motor would need to reduce power output to cool down so that major components don’t start melting or otherwise failing. Given that the largest of these motors have output power ratings of around 700 horsepower, that’s quite an impressive benchmark.
The motor is meant for use in passenger vehicles but also tractor-trailer style trucks, where a motor able to operate at its peak rating would mean a smaller size motor or less weight or both, making them easier to fit into the space available as well as being more economically viable. Mahle is reporting that these motors are ready for production so we should be seeing them help ease the transportation industry into electrification. If you’re more concerned about range than output power, though,
there’s a solution there as well
so you don’t have to be stuck behind the times with fossil fuels forever.
Thanks to [john] for the tip! | 35 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066250",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T10:01:29",
"content": "So if it can run continuously at X watts, why can’t you push it a little further for a short period? Is the peak power limited by other (mechanical?) factors?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,714.610417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/building-a-pi-powered-led-chess-board/ | Building A Pi-Powered LED Chess Board | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"chess",
"chess board",
"led",
"raspberry pi"
] | If you live near Central Park or some other local chess hub, you’re likely never short of opponents for a good game. If you find yourself looking for a computer opponent, or you just prefer playing online,
you might like this LED chessboard from [DIY Machines] instead.
At heart, it’s basically a regular chessboard with addressable LEDs of the WS2812B variety under each square. The lights are under the command of an Arduino Nano, which is also tasked with reading button inputs from the board’s side panel. The Nano is interfaced with a Raspberry Pi, which is the true brains of the operation. The Pi handles chess tasks—checking the validity of moves, acting as a computer opponent, and connecting online for games against other humans if so desired. Everything is wrapped up with 3D printed parts, making this an easy project to build for the average DIY maker.
The video tutorial
does a great job of covering the design. It’s a relatively simple project at heart, but the presentation is great and it looks awfully fun to play with. We’ve featured
some other great builds from [DIY Machines] before, too
. Video after the break. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066211",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T08:16:38",
"content": "Next step – autodetection of where chess pieces are on the board. Are there any (very) cheap solution for such thing, tiny rfid readers?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,714.662356 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/solar-orbiter-takes-amazing-solar-pictures/ | Solar Orbiter Takes Amazing Solar Pictures | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"ESA",
"solar orbiter",
"sun"
] | There’s an old joke that they want to send an exploratory mission to the sun, but to save money, they are going at night. The European Space Agency’s
Solar Orbiter
has gotten as close as anything we’ve sent to study our star on purpose, and the pictures it took last year were from less than 46 million miles away. That sounds far away, but in space terms, that’s awfully close to the nuclear furnace. The pictures are amazing, and the video below is also worth watching.
Because the craft was so close, each picture it took was just a small part of the sun’s surface. ESA stitched together multiple images to form the final picture, which shows the entire sun as 8,000 pixels across. We’ll save you the math. We figure each pixel is worth about 174 kilometers or 108 miles, more or less.
The stunning images used the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. The first instrument snapped the visible light and the magnetic field lines. It also provided a velocity map. The UV instrument took pictures of the corona.
Understanding the sun is important because it
greatly impacts
our life on Earth. Technology is
especially sensitive
, and, lest we forget, massive solar disruptions have
happened before
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066159",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T03:46:08",
"content": "Is it just me, or does the sun look like it might have skin cancer?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066164",
"author": "Charles Springer",
... | 1,760,371,714.714313 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/an-over-engineered-basement-monitor/ | An Over-Engineered Basement Monitor | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"basement",
"bme280",
"grafana",
"sump pump",
"water",
"water level",
"water monitor"
] | [Stephen] has a basement that depends on a sump pump. What that means is if the pump fails or the power goes out, the basement floods—which is rather undesirable. Not wanting to rely on a single point of failure, [Stephen] decided to
build a monitor for the basement situation
, which quickly spiralled to a greater degree of complexity than he initially expected.
The initial plan was just to have water level sensors reporting data over
a modified CATS packet radio transmitter.
On the other end, the plan was to capture the feed via a CATS receiver, pipe the data to the internet
via FELINET
, and then have the data displayed on a Grafana dashboard. Simple enough. From there, though, [Stephen] started musing on the possibilities. He thought about capturing humidity data to verify the dehumidifier was working. Plus, temperature would be handy to get early warning before any pipes were frozen in colder times. Achieving those aims would be easy enough with a BME280 sensor, though hacking it into the CATS rig was a little challenging.
The results are pretty neat, though. [Stephen] can now track all the vital signs of his basement remotely, with all the data displayed elegantly on a nice Grafana dashboard. If you’re looking to get started on a similar project, we’ve featured a great Grafana guide
at a previous Supercon, just by the by.
All in all, [Stephen’s] project may have a touch of the old overkill, but sometimes, the most rewarding projects are the ones you pour your heart and soul into! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066095",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T00:14:24",
"content": "” [Stephen] can now track all the vital signs of his basement remotely, ”Radon?Carbon monoxide?Sewer gas?Rodents?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,714.762299 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/e-ink-screen-combined-with-analog-dial-is-epic-win/ | E-Ink Screen Combined With Analog Dial Is Epic Win | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"analog dial",
"e-ink",
"e-ink display",
"home-assistant",
"smart home"
] | Analog dials used to be a pretty common way of displaying information on test equipment and in industrial applications. They fell out of favor as more advanced display technologies became cheaper. However,
if you combine an analog dial with a modern e-ink display
, it turns out you get something truly fantastic indeed.
This build comes to us from [Arne]. The concept is simple—get an e-ink display, and draw a dial on it using whatever graphics and scale you choose. Then, put it behind a traditional coil-driven analog dial in place of the more traditional paper scale. Now, you have an analog dial that can display any quantity you desire. Just update the screen to display a different scale as needed. Meanwhile, if you don’t need to change the display, the e-ink display will draw zero power and still display the same thing.
[Arne] explains how it all works in the writeup. It’s basically a LilyGo T5 ESP32 board with an e-ink screen attached, and it’s combined with a MF-110A multimeter. It’s super easy to buy that stuff and start tinkering with the concept yourself. [Arne] uses it with Home Assistant, which is as good an idea as any.
You get all the benefits of a redrawable display, with the wonderful visual tactility of a real analog dial. It’s a build
that smashes old and new together in the best way possible
. It doesn’t heart that [Arne] chose a great retro font for the dial, either. Applause all around! | 52 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066041",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T21:18:56",
"content": "Every now and then, something will show up here that makes you say, “why didn’t I think of that?”This is one of those times.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,714.852317 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/square-roots-1800s-style-no-the-other-1800s/ | Square Roots 1800s Style — No, The Other 1800s | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"math",
"square root"
] | [MindYourDecisions] presents a
Babylonian tablet
dating back to around 1800 BC that shows that the hypotenuse of a unit square is the square root of two or 1.41421. How did they know that? We don’t know for sure how they computed it, but experts think it is the same as the ancient Greek method written down by Hero. It is a specialized form of the Newton method. You can follow along and learn how it works in the video below.
The method is simple. You guess the answer first, then you compute the difference and use that to adjust your estimate. You keep repeating the process until the error becomes small enough for your purposes.
For example, suppose you wanted to take the square root of 85. You can observe that 9 squared is 81, so the answer is sort of 9, right? But that’s off by 4 (85-81=4). So you take that number and divide it by the current answer (9) multiplied by two. In other words, the adjustment is 4/18 or 0.2222. Putting it together, our first answer is 9.2222.
If you square that, you get about 85.05 which is not too bad, but if you wanted closer you could repeat the process using 9.2222 in place of the 9. Repeat until the error is as low as you like. Our calculator tells us the real answer is 9.2195, so that first result is not bad. A second pass gives 9.2193, You could keep going, but that’s close enough for almost any purpose.
The video shows a geographical representation, and if you are a visual thinker, that might help you. We prefer to think of it algebraically. You are essentially creating each adjustment by adding the guess and the square divided by the guess and averaging them.
The ancients loved to
estimate numbers
. And
Hero
was into a lot of different things. | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066016",
"author": "George",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T20:05:04",
"content": "I was actually using this technique on an Intel 80C186 in the mid 80s. We needed a square root function and the routine needed to complete in less that 10 msec. 10 msec was one revolution of the disk dri... | 1,760,371,714.940289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/your-undocumented-project-may-also-baffle-people-someday/ | Your Undocumented Project May Also Baffle People Someday | Donald Papp | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"antique",
"history",
"mystery"
] | What’s life without a little mystery? There’s one less rolling around after
historians finally identified a donated mystery machine that had been in storage for years
.
Feeding dough through this machine may have been faster, but probably not safer.
The main pieces of the machine are about a century old and any staff who may have known more about the undocumented device were no longer around to ask. The historical society finally posted pictures and asked for any insights, which eventually led to solving the mystery.
The machine is in all likelihood a
beaten biscuit
maker, which was a type of dense baked good popular in the American south. Making them called for a long and labor-intensive process of pounding and working the dough, and the society says this machine was likely created by a fellow trying to help his aunt streamline her business, offloading the labor of working the dough to a machine.
The machine had no branding of any sort and lacked any identifying marks. Its purpose was doubtlessly obvious at the time, but no records remained and quite possibly none existed in the first place. Sound familiar? Perhaps someday our own undocumented projects and prototypes will mystify people. It’s certainly happened in the case of
mysterious Roman dodecahedrons
, which remain a head-scratching mystery. | 49 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066526",
"author": "Maggie",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T03:06:12",
"content": "Similar machines were used up until late 1980s for processing pine cones.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066677",
"author": "Dude",
... | 1,760,371,715.152339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/a-robot-meant-for-humans/ | A Robot Meant For Humans | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"animal crossing",
"animalese",
"blossom",
"human-robot interaction",
"large language model",
"laser cut",
"open source",
"research",
"robot",
"servo",
"text to speech"
] | Although humanity was hoping for a more optimistic robotic future in the post-war era, with media reflecting that sentiment like The Jetsons or Lost in Space, we seem to have shifted our collective consciousness (for good reasons) to a more Black Mirror/Terminator future as real-world companies like Boston Dynamics are actually building these styles of machines instead of helpful Rosies. But this future isn’t guaranteed, and a PhD researcher is hoping to claim back a more hopeful outlook with
a robot called Blossom which is specifically built to investigate how humans interact with robots
.
For a platform this robot is not too complex, consisting of an accessible frame that can be laser-cut from wood with only a few moving parts controlled by servos. The robot is not too large, either, and can be set on a desk to be used as a telepresence robot. But Blossom’s creator [Michael] wanted this to help understand how humans interact with robots so the latest version is outfitted not only with a large language model with text-to-speech capabilities, but also with a compelling backstory, lore, and a voice derived from Animal Crossing that’s neither human nor recognizable synthetic robot, all in an effort to make the device more approachable.
To that end, [Michael] set the robot up at a Maker Faire to see what sorts of interactions Blossom would have with passers by, and while most were interested in the web-based control system for the robot a few others came by and had conversations with it. It’s certainly an interesting project and reminds us a bit of
this other piece of research from MIT
that looked at how humans and robots can work productively alongside one another. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066484",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T00:34:47",
"content": "I feel many universities and corporations have studied human robots interactions ad nauseum.If I end up talking to a robot, there will always be the suspicion it is recording m... | 1,760,371,715.055242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/a-laser-with-mirrors-makes-a-crt-like-display/ | A Laser With Mirrors Makes A CRT-like Display | Maya Posch | [
"how-to",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"CRT display",
"phosphorescence",
"uv"
] | [bitluni]’s laser-based display pretending to be a an old-school vector CRT.
Phosphor-based displays like CRTs rely on the phosphor to emit light for a set amount of time after being activated, allowing them to display a seemingly persistent image with one drawing beam per color. Translated to UV-sensitive PLA filament, this means that you can totally use a printed sheet of this material in combination with a 405 nm laser diode to create a display that doesn’t look dissimilar to an early CRT. This is exactly what
[bitluni] did in a recent video
, meshing together said laser diode, UV-sensitive PLA, stepper motors and two mirrors with an Arduino-based controller to create a rather interesting vector display.
In the video, [bitluni] goes over the development steps, including a range of improvements like being able to turn off the laser when moving between the end of a line and the beginning of a new one. While the Arduino Nano board does the driving of the stepper motor controllers, an ESP32 provides the drawing instructions. The STL and other project files including Nano & ESP32 firmware can be found on the
GitHub project page
.
While far from being a practical display with a single-digit Hz refresh rate, it does provide an interesting demonstration of these types of persistence of vision based displays, and without the use of exotic MEMS mirror modules or the like. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066432",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T21:24:00",
"content": "Ooh. Now I want to make a SSTV display like this, mimicking the olde P7 phosphor CRTs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066488",
"author": "J... | 1,760,371,715.213489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/alternatives-dont-need-to-be-bashed/ | Alternatives Don’t Need To Be Bashed | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"alternatives",
"bash",
"janet",
"nutshell",
"shell"
] | By default, bash is the most popular command language simply because it’s included in most *nix operating systems. Additionally, people don’t tend to spend a lot of time thinking about whatever their computer uses for scripting as they might for other pieces of software like a word processor or browser. If you are so inclined to take a closer look at this tool that’s often taken for granted, there are a number of alternatives to bash
and [monzool] wanted to investigate them closely
.
Unlike other similar documentation that [monzool] has come across where the writers didn’t actually use the scripting languages being investigated, [monzool] is planning to use each of these and accomplish specific objectives. This will allow them to get a feel for the languages and whether or not they are acceptable alternatives for bash. Moving through directories, passing commands back and forth, manipulating strings, searching for files, and manipulating the terminal display settings are all included in this task list. A few languages are tossed out before initial testing even begins for not meeting certain specific requirements. One example is not being particularly useful in [monzool]’s preferred embedded environments, but even so there are enough bash alternatives to test out ten separate languages.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day none of the ten selected would make a true replacement for bash, at least for [monzool]’s use case, but there were a few standouts nonetheless. Nutshell was interesting for being a more modern, advanced system and [monzool] found Janet to be a fun and interesting project but had limitations with cross-compiling. All in all though this seemed to be an enjoyable experience that we’d recommend if you actually want to get into the weeds on what scripting languages are actually capable of.
Another interesting one we featured a while back attempts to perform as a shell and a programming language simultaneously
. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066407",
"author": "GetOffMyHack",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T19:48:48",
"content": "Switched to zsh a few years ago and never looked back!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066580",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,371,717.070586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/linux-fu-audio-network-pipes/ | Linux Fu: Audio Network Pipes | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"linux",
"Pipewire"
] | Life was simpler when everything your computer did was text-based. It is easy enough to shove data into one end of a pipe and take it out of the other. Sure, if the pipe extends across the network, you might have to call it a socket and take some special care. But how do you pipe all the data we care about these days? In particular, I found I wanted to transport audio from the output of one program to the input of another. Like most things in Linux, there are many ways you can get this done and — like most things in Linux — only some of those ways will work depending on your setup.
Why?
There are many reasons you might want to take an audio output and process it through a program that expects audio input. In my case, it was ham radio software. I’ve been working on making it possible to operate my station remotely. If all you want to do is talk, it is easy to find software that will connect you over the network.
However, if you want to do digital modes like PSK31, RTTY, or FT8, you may have a problem. The software to handle those modes all expect audio from a soundcard. They also want to send audio to a soundcard. But, in this case, the data is coming from a program.
Of course, one answer is to remote desktop into the computer directly connected to the radio. However, most remote desktop solutions aren’t made for high-fidelity and low-latency audio. Plus, it is nice to have apps running directly on your computer.
I’ll talk about how I’ve remoted my station in a future post, but for right now, just assume we want to get a program’s audio output into another program’s audio input.
Sound System Overview
Someone once said, “The nice thing about standards is there are so many of them.” This is true for Linux sound, too. The most common way to access a soundcard is via ALSA, also known as Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. There are other methods, but this is somewhat the lowest common denominator on most modern systems.
However, most modern systems add one or more layers so you can do things like easily redirect sound from a speaker to a headphone, for example. Or ship audio over the network.
The most common layer over ALSA is PulseAudio, and for many years, it was the most common standard. These days, you see many distros moving to PipeWire.
PipeWire is newer and has a lot of features but perhaps the best one is that it is easy to set it up to look like PulseAudio. So software that understands PipeWire can use it. Programs that don’t understand it can pretend it is PulseAudio.
There are other systems, too, and they all interoperate in some way. While OSS is not as common as it once was, JACK is still found in certain applications. Many choices!
One Way
There are many ways you can accomplish what I was after. Since I am running PipeWire, I elected to use qpwgraph, which is a GUI that shows you all the sound devices on the system and lets you drag lines between them.
It is super powerful but also super cranky. As things change, it tends to want to redraw the “graph,” and it often does it in a strange and ugly way. If you name a block to help you remember what it is and then disconnect it, the name usually goes back to the default. But these are small problems, and you can work around them.
In theory, you should be able to just grab the output and “wire” it to the other program’s input. In fact, that works, but there is one small problem. Both PipeWire and PulseAudio will show when a program is making sound, and then, when it stops, the source vanishes.
This makes it very hard to set up what I wanted. I wound up using a loopback device so there was something for the receiver to connect to and the transient sending device.
Here’s the graph I wound up with:
A partial display of the PipeWire configuration
I omitted some of the devices and streams that didn’t matter, so it looks pretty simple. The box near the bottom right represents my main speakers. Note that the radio speaker device (far left) has outputs to the speaker and to the JTDX in box.
This lets me hear the audio from the radio and allows JTDX to decode the FT8 traffic. Sending is a little more complicated.
The radio-in boxes are the loopback device. You can see it hooked to the JTDX out box because when I took the screenshot, I was transmitting. If I were not transmitting, the out box would vanish, and only the pipe would be there.
Everything that goes to the pipe’s input also shows up as the pipe’s output and that’s connected directly to the radio input. I left that box marked with the default name instead of renaming it so you can see why it is worth renaming these boxes! If you hover over the box, you’ll see the full name which does have the application name in it.
That means JTDX has to be set to listen and send to the streams in question. The radio also has to be set to the correct input and output. Usually, setting them to Pulse will work, although you might have better luck with the actual pipe or sink/source name.
In order to make this work, though, I had to create the loopback device:
pw-loopback -n radio-in -m '[FL FR]' --capture-props='[media.class=Audio/Sink]' --playback-props='[media.class=Audio/Source]'
&
This creates the device as a sink with stereo channels that connect to nothing by default. Sometimes, I only connect the left channels since that’s all I need, but you may need something different.
Other Ways
There are many ways to accomplish this, including using the pw-link utility or setting up special configurations. The PipeWire documentation has a page that covers
at least most of the scenarios
.
You can also create this kind of virtual device and wiring with PulseAudio. If you need to do that, investigate the pactl command and use it to load the module-loopback module.
It is even possible to use the
snd-aloop
module to create loopback devices. However, PipeWire seems to be the future, so unless you are on an older system, it is probably better to stick to that method.
Sound Off!
What’s your favorite way to route audio? Why do you do it? What will you do with it? I’ll have a post detailing how this works to allow remote access to a ham transceiver, although this is just a part of the equation. It would be easy enough to use something like this and socat to stream audio around the network in fun ways.
We’ve talked about
PipeWire
for audio and video before. Of course, connecting blocks for audio processing makes us want to do more
GNU Radio
. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066389",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T18:53:50",
"content": "I’m currently using jack and pipewire on Ubuntu to route audio from a Behringer XR18 into Ardour and back out to both the XR18 (to monitor mix) and to OBS. I combine the audio with a video stream provided fr... | 1,760,371,716.972462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/recreating-unobtainium-weather-station-sensors/ | Recreating Unobtainium Weather Station Sensors | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"hub",
"la crosse",
"LoRa",
"weather station"
] | Imagine you own a weather station. Then imagine that after some years have passed, you’ve had to replace one of the sensors multiple times. Your new problem is that the sensor is no longer available. What does a hacker like [Luca] do?
Build a custom solution, of course!
[Luca]’s work concerns the La Crosse WS-9257F-IT weather station, and the repeat failures of the TX44DTH-IT external sensor. Thankfully, [Luca] found that the weather station’s communication protocol had been
thoroughly reverse-engineered by [Fred], among others.
He then set about creating a bridge to take humidity and temperature data from Zigbee sensors hooked up to his Home Assistant hub, and send it to the La Crosse weather station. This was achieved with the aid of a SX1276 LoRa module on a TTGO LoRa board. Details are
on GitHub
for the curious.
Luca didn’t just work on the Home Assistant integration, though. A
standalone sensor was also developed
, based on the Xiao SAMD21 microcontroller board and a BME280 temperature, pressure, and humidity sensor. It too can integrate with the Lacrosse weather station, and proved useful for one of [Luca’s] friends who was in the same boat.
Ultimately, it sucks when a manufacturer no longer supports hardware that you love and use every day. However, the hacking community has a way of working around such trifling limitations. It’s something to be proud of—as the corporate world leaves hardware behind, the
hackers pick up the slack! | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066362",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T17:20:45",
"content": "Just FYI, La Crosse makes garbage products. They are selling literal e-waste.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066369",
"author": "cmholm",
... | 1,760,371,717.224742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/humans-can-learn-echolocation-too/ | Humans Can Learn Echolocation Too | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"bat",
"echolocation",
"sonar",
"study"
] | Most of us associate echolocation with bats. These amazing creatures are able to chirp at frequencies beyond the limit of our hearing, and they use the reflected sound to map the world around them. It’s the perfect technology for navigating pitch-dark cave systems, so it’s understandable why evolution drove down this innovative path.
Humans, on the other hand, have far more limited hearing, and we’re not great chirpers, either. And yet, it turns out we can learn this remarkable skill, too. In fact, research suggests it’s far more achievable than you might think—for the sighted and vision impaired alike!
Bounce That Sound
Bats are the most famous biologcal users of echolocation. Credit:
Petteri Aimonen
Before we talk about humans using echolocation, let’s examine how the pros do it. Bats are nature’s acoustic engineers, emitting rapid-fire ultrasonic pulses from their larynx that can range from 11 kHz to over 200 kHz. Much of that range is far beyond human hearing, which tops out at under 20 kHz. As these sound waves bounce off objects in their environment, the bat’s specialized ultrasonic-capable ears capture the returning echoes. Their brain then processes these echoes in real-time, comparing the outgoing and incoming signals to construct a detailed 3D map of their surroundings. The differences in echo timing tell them how far away objects are, while variations in frequency and amplitude reveal information about size, texture, and even movement. Bats will vary between constant-frequency chirps and frequency-modulated tones depending on where they’re flying and what they’re trying to achieve, such as navigating a dark cavern or chasing prey. This biological sonar is so precise that bats can use it to track tiny insects while flying at speed.
Humans can’t naturally produce sounds in the ultrasonic frequency range. Nor could we hear them if we did. That doesn’t mean we can’t echolocate, though—it just means we don’t have quite the same level of equipment as the average bat. Instead, humans can achieve relatively basic echolocation using simple tongue clicks. In fact,
a research paper from 2021
outlined that skills in this area can be developed with as little as a 10-week training program. Over this period, researchers successfully taught echolocation to both sighted and blind participants using a combination of practical exercises and virtual training. A group of 14 sighted and 12 blind participants took part, with the former using blindfolds to negate their vision.
The aim of the research was to investigate click-based echolocation in humans. When a person makes a sharp click with their tongue, they’re essentially launching a sonic probe into their environment. As these sound waves radiate outward, they reflect off surfaces and return to the ears with subtle changes. A flat wall creates a different echo signature than a rounded pole, while soft materials absorb more sound than hard surfaces. The timing between click and echo precisely encodes distance, while differences between the echoes reaching each ear allows for direction finding.
The orientation task involved asking participants to use mouth clicks to determine the way a rectangular object was oriented in front of them. Credit:
research paper
The size discrimination task asked participants to determine which disc was bigger solely using echolocation. Credit:
research paper
The training regime consisted of a variety of simple tasks. The researchers aimed to train participants on size discrimination, with participants facing two foam board disks mounted on metal poles. They had to effectively determine which foam disc was larger using only their mouth clicks and their hearing. The program also included an orientation challenge, which used a single rectangular board that could be rotated to different angles. The participants had to again use clicks and their hearing to determine the orientation of the board. These basic tools allowed participants to develop increasingly refined echo-sensing abilities in a controlled environment.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the training involved a navigation task in a virtually simulated maze. Researchers first created special binaural recordings of a mannikin moving through a real-world maze, making clicks as it went. They then created virtual mazes that participants could navigate using keyboard controls. As they navigated through the virtual maze, without vision, the participants would hear the relevant echo signature recorded in the real maze. The idea was to allow participants to build mental maps of virtual spaces using only acoustic information. This provided a safe, controlled environment for developing advanced navigation skills before applying them in the real world. Participants also attempted using echolocation to navigate in the real world, navigating freely with experimenters on hand to guide them if needed.
Participants were trained to navigate a virtual maze using audio cues only. Credit:
research paper
The most surprising finding wasn’t that people could learn echolocation – it was how accessible the skill proved to be. Previous assumptions about age and visual status being major factors in learning echolocation turned out to be largely unfounded. While younger participants showed some advantages in the computer-based exercises, the core skill of practical echolocation was accessible to all participants. After 10 weeks of training, participants were able to correctly answer the size discrimination task over 75% of the time, and at increased range compared to when they began. Orientation discrimination also improved greatly over the test period to a success rate over 60% for the cohort. Virtual maze completion times also dropped by over 50%.
Over time, participants improved in all tasks—particularly the size discrimination task, as seen in the results on this graph. The difficulty level of tasks were also scaled over time, presenting greater challenge as participants improved their echolocation skills. Credit:
research paper
The study also involved a follow-up three months later with the blind members of the cohort. Participants credited the training with improving their spatial awareness, and some noted they had begun to use the technique to find doors or exits, or to make their way through strange places.
What’s particularly fascinating is how this challenges our understanding of basic human sensory capabilities. Echolocation doesn’t involve adding new sensors or augmenting existing ones—it’s just about training the brain to extract more information from signals it already receives. It’s a reminder that human perception is far more plastic than we often assume.
The researchers suggest that echolocation training should be integrated into standard mobility training for visually impaired individuals. Given the relatively short training period needed to develop functional echo-sensing abilities, it’s hard to argue against its inclusion. We might be standing at the threshold of a broader acceptance of human echolocation, not as an exotic capability, but as a practical skill that anyone can learn. | 50 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066326",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2024-11-26T15:12:03",
"content": "Reminds me of Richard Feynman’s party trick of discerning which books someone has handled by smell. Everyone assumed he used some other method, and that the smelling was a blind to throw them off. He... | 1,760,371,717.36293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/chocolate-coating-machine-mk-2-the-merry-go-round/ | Chocolate-Coating Machine Mk. 2: The Merry-Go-Round | Kristina Panos | [
"cooking hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed gears",
"air blade",
"chocolate",
"chocolate coating",
"chocolate fountain",
"enrobing",
"gear",
"motor"
] | This holiday season, [Chaz] wanted to continue his family’s tradition of enrobing a little bit of everything in dark chocolate, and
built an improved, rotating chocolate-coating machine
.
You may remember last year’s offering, aka
the conveyor belt version
. Although that one worked, too much chocolate was ultimately lost to the surface of the kitchen table. [Chaz] once again started with a standard chocolate fountain and bought a round wire rack that fits the circumference of the bowl at the bottom. He snipped a hole in the center large enough to accommodate the business part of the fountain and printed a collar with holes that he cleverly zip-tied to the rack.
[Chaz] also printed a large gear to go around the bowl, a small gear to attach to a six RPM motor, a motor mount for the bowl, and an air blade attachment for a portable Ryobi fan. The air blade worked quite well, doing the double duty of distributing the chocolate and thinning out the coating. Plus, it gives things a neat rumpled look on the top.
Want to make some special chocolates this year, but don’t want to build an enrober? Get yourself a diffraction grating and
make some rainbow goodies with melted chocolate
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8067038",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known as Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T18:30:51",
"content": "Mmmmm!Chocolate covered turkey drumsticks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8067041",
"author": "Andrew",
... | 1,760,371,716.908456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/the-japanese-console-you-maybe-havent-heard-of/ | The Japanese Console You Maybe Haven’t Heard Of | Jenny List | [
"Games"
] | [
"Cassette Vision",
"Epoch Cassette Vision",
"Super Cassette Vision"
] | The games consoles which came out of Japan in the 1980s are the stuff of legend, with the offerings from Nintendo and Sega weaving themselves into global popular culture. Most of us can recite a list of the main players in the market, but how many of us would have Epoch and their Super Cassette Vision on that list? [Nicole Express] is here with
a look at this forgotten machine
which tried so hard and yet missed the target when competing with the NES or Master System.
Before the arrival of the Sega and Nintendo cartridge based systems, one of the better known Japanese consoles was the Epoch Cassette Vision. This was something of a hybrid between single-game TV games and an Atari 2600 style computing device for games, in that it used pre-programmed microcontrollers in its cartridges rather than the ROMs of the 2600. For the late-70s gamer this was still hot stuff, but by 1983 as the Master System and NES hove into view it was definitely past its best. Epoch’s response for 1984 was the Super Cassette Vision, a much more conventional 8-bit console with on the face of it some respectable graphics and sound hardware.
The article looks at the console’s capabilities in detail, highlighting the multi-colored sprites and smooth sprite movement, but also the tilemap limitations and the somewhat awful sound chip shared with handheld games and sounding very much like it. Coupled with its inferior controllers and TV game style aesthetic, it’s not difficult to see why it would be the last console from this manufacturer.
If forgotten consoles are your thing, have a read about the
Fairchild Channel F
, the machine that gave us console cartridges. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066972",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T12:44:28",
"content": "Awesome! Never heard of it before, though.I like the name, also. Who needs a Super Famicom, if there’s a Super Cassette Vision! 😁Seriously, though. I remember my friends and me calling game cartridges “ca... | 1,760,371,717.121171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/28/homebrew-phosphorescence-detector-looks-for-the-glow-in-everyday-objects/ | Homebrew Phosphorescence Detector Looks For The Glow In Everyday Objects | Dan Maloney | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"AVR",
"op-amp",
"phosphorescence",
"photodiode",
"transimpedance",
"uv"
] | Spoiler alert: almond butter isn’t phosphorescent. But powdered milk is, at least to the limit of detection of
this homebrew phosphorescence detector
.
Why spend a bunch of time and money on such a thing? The obvious answer is “Why not?”, but more specifically, when [lcamtuf]’s son took a shine (lol) to making phosphorescent compounds, it just seemed natural for dad to tag along in his own way. The basic concept of the detector is to build a light-tight test chamber that can be periodically and briefly flooded with UV light, charging up the putatively phosphorescent compounds within. A high-speed photodiode is then used to detect the afterglow, which can be quantified and displayed.
The analog end of the circuit was the far fussier end of the design, with a high-speed transimpedance amplifier to provide the needed current gain. Another scaling amp and a low-pass filter boosts and cleans up the signal for a 14-bit ADC. [lcamtuf] went to great lengths to make the front end as low-noise as possible, including ferrite beads and short leads to prevent picking up RF interference. The digital side has an AVR microcontroller that talks to the ADC and runs an LCD panel, plus switches the 340 nm LEDs on and off rapidly via a low gate capacitance MOSFET.
Unfortunately, not many things found randomly around the average home are all that phosphorescent. We’re not sure what [lcamtuf] tried other than the aforementioned foodstuffs, but we’d have thought something like table salt would do the trick, at least the iodized stuff. But no matter, the lessons learned along the way were worth the trip. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066990",
"author": "Jim Luther",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T14:59:34",
"content": "In the 1980s I worked for marine biologists who used fluorometers to measure chlorophyll in the open ocean at concentrations of micrograms per litre in seawater. The lab instuments used a photomultipli... | 1,760,371,717.270673 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/even-apple-get-their-parts-wrong-sometimes/ | Even Apple Get Their Parts Wrong Sometimes | Jenny List | [
"Mac Hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"LCIII",
"Macintosh LC",
"rework"
] | There can be few among those of us who produce printed circuit boards, who have not at some point placed a component the wrong way round, or with the wrong footprint. Usually this can be rectified with a bit of rework and a fresh board spin, but just occasionally these mishaps make it into the wild undetected. It seems nobody is immune, as [Doug Brown] is here to tell us with
a tale of an Apple product with a misplaced capacitor
.
The LC series of Macs came out through the early 1990s, and their pizza-box style cases could be found slowly turning yellow in universities and schools throughout that decade. Of them there was a persistent rumor of the LCIII had a misplaced capacitor, so when he received an unmodified original machine he took a look. The investigation is quite simple, but revealing — there are three power supply rails and one of the capacitors does have a significant leak.
The explanation is simple enough, the designer had placed a capacitor on each rail, with its negative side to the ground plane, but one of the rails delivers -5 volts. Thus the capacitor is the wrong way round, and must have failed pretty early in the lifetime of each LCIII. We’re curious then since so many of them went through their lives without the component being replaced, how the circuit remained functional. We’re guessing that there were enough other capacitors in the -5 volt line to provide enough smoothing. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066930",
"author": "k-ww",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T07:41:58",
"content": "Ah, the joys of a cap designed in with polarity reversed. In the late 80’s I worked at SMC [Standard Micro Systems], and since they produced a chip that implemented the ArcNet protocol, they also made an int... | 1,760,371,717.171753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/a-look-under-the-hood-of-intermediate-frequency-transformers/ | A Look Under The Hood Of Intermediate Frequency Transformers | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts"
] | [
"choke",
"ferrite",
"IFT",
"inductor",
"intermediate frequency",
"RF",
"VNAm resonance"
] | If you’ve been tearing electronic devices apart for long enough, you’ll know that the old gear had just as many mysteries within as the newer stuff. The parts back then were bigger, of course, but often just as inscrutable as the SMD parts that populate boards today. And the one part that always baffled us back in the days of transistor radios and personal cassette players was those little silver boxes with a hole in the top and the colorful plug with an inviting screwdriver slot.
We’re talking about subminiature intermediate-frequency transformers, of course, and while we knew their purpose in general terms back then and never to fiddle with them, we never really bothered to look inside one.
This teardown of various IF transformers
by [Unrelated Activities] makes up somewhat for that shameful lack of curiosity. The video lacks narration, relying on captions to get the point across that these once-ubiquitous components were a pretty diverse lot despite their outward similarities. Most had a metal shell protecting a form around which one or more coils of fine magnet wire were wrapped. Some had tiny capacitors wired in parallel with one of the coils, too.
Perhaps the most obvious feature of these IF transformers was their tunability, thanks to a ferrite cup or slug around the central core and coils. The threaded slug allowed the inductance of the system to be changed with the turn of a screwdriver, preferably a plastic one. [Unrelated] demonstrates this with
a NanoVNA
using a nominal 10.7-MHz IFT, probably from an FM receiver. The transformer was tunable over a 4-MHz range.
Sure, IFTs like these are still made, and they’re not that hard to find if you know where to look. But they are certainly less common than they used to be, and seeing what’s under the hood scratches an itch we didn’t even realize we had. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066928",
"author": "ytrewq",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T07:20:22",
"content": "IF transformers are still sold, but finding the correct one for a project isn’t that easy, especially when they’re not the “standard” values like 455KHz or 10.7MHz and bandwidth type. I would encourage peo... | 1,760,371,717.018956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/diy-pipe-inspector-goes-where-no-bot-has-gone-before/ | DIY Pipe Inspector Goes Where No Bot Has Gone Before | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ethernet",
"inspection",
"pip",
"PoE",
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"remotely operated vehicle",
"rov",
"sewer"
] | If you think your job sucks, be grateful you’re not
this homebrew sewer inspection robot
.
Before anyone gets upset, yes we know what [Stargate System] built here isn’t a robot at all; it’s more of a remotely operated vehicle. That doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a very cool build, especially since it has to work in one of the least hospitable and most unpleasant environments possible. The backstory of this project is that the sewer on a 50-year-old house kept backing up, and efforts to clear it only temporarily solved the problem. The cast iron lateral line was reconfigured at some point in its history to include a 120-degree bend, which left a blind spot for the camera used by a sewer inspection service. What’s worse, the bend was close to a joint where a line that once allowed gutters and foundation drains access to the sewer.
To better visualize the problem, [Stargate] turned to his experience building bots to whip up something for the job. The bot had to be able to fit into the pipe and short enough to make the turn, plus it needed to be — erm, waterproof. It also needed to carry a camera and a light, and to be powered and controlled from the other end of the line. Most of the body of the bot, including the hull and the driving gear, was 3D printed from ABS, which allowed the seams to be sealed with acetone later. The drive tracks were only added after the original wheels didn’t perform well in testing. Controlling the gear motors and camera was up to a Raspberry Pi Zero, chosen mostly due to space constraints. An Ethernet shield provided connectivity to the surface over a Cat5 cable, and a homebrew PoE system provided power.
As interesting as the construction details were, the real treat is the down-hole footage. It’s not too graphic, but the blockage is pretty gnarly. We also greatly appreciated the field-expedient chain flail [Stargate] whipped up to bust up the big chunks of yuck and get the pipe back in shape. He did a little bit of robo-spelunking, too, as you do.
And no,
this isn’t the only sewer bot
we’ve ever featured. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066873",
"author": "Eightbitswide",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T01:42:30",
"content": "Obligatory link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa9MpLXuLs0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8066876",
"author": "Maggie",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,716.85152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/would-an-indexing-feature-benefit-your-next-hinge-design/ | Would An Indexing Feature Benefit Your Next Hinge Design? | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"3d printed",
"butt hinge",
"design",
"dfm",
"hinge"
] | [Angus] of Maker’s Muse has
a video with a roundup of different 3D-printable hinge designs
, and he points out that a great thing about 3D printing objects is that adding printable features to them is essentially free.
These hinges have an indexing feature that allows them to lock into place, no additional parts needed.
A great example of this is his experimental print-in-place butt hinge with indexing feature, which is a hinge that can lock without adding any additional parts. The whole video is worth a watch, but he shows off the experimental design at
the 7:47 mark
. The hinge can swing normally but when positioned just right, the squared-off pin within slots into a tapered track, locking the part in place.
Inspired by a handheld shopping basket with a lockable handle, [Angus] worked out a design of his own and demonstrates it with a small GoPro tripod whose legs can fold and lock in place. He admits it’s a demonstration of the concept more than a genuinely useful tripod, but it does show what’s possible with some careful design. Being entirely 3D printed in a single piece and requiring no additional hardware is awfully nice.
3D printing is very well-suited to this sort of thing, and it’s worth playing to a printer’s strengths to do for pennies what one would otherwise need dollars to accomplish.
Want some tips on designing things in a way that take full advantage of what a 3D printer can achieve? Check out
printing enclosures at an angle
with minimal supports, leveraging the living hinge to
print complex shapes flat
(and fold them up for assembly), or even print
a one-piece hinge
that can actually withstand a serious load. All of those are full of tips, so keep them in mind the next time you design a part. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066956",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T11:04:40",
"content": "The “live hinge” reminded me of the “CA Hinge” from the balsa wood RC airplane models. It’s basically a fiber/fabric/plastic flap that you cut and superglue into thin slots. Instead of a live hinge, you co... | 1,760,371,717.412183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/floss-weekly-episode-811-elixir-nerves-real-embedded-linux/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 811: Elixir & Nerves – Real Embedded Linux | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"elixir",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"linux",
"Nerves",
"raspberry pi"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Lars Wikman
chat about Elixir and Nerves — a modern language that’s a take on Erlang, and an embedded Linux approach for running Elixir code on devices.
https://underjord.io
https://elixir-lang.org/
https://nerves-project.org/
Introducing Elixir and the ecosystem from Oredev 2023
Introducing Nerves from Oredev 2024 (just released)
The Soul of Erlang & Elixir, by Sasa Juric
Subscribe to catch the show live, and come to Hackaday for the rest of the story!
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": "8066986",
"author": "X4lldux",
"timestamp": "2024-11-28T14:47:30",
"content": "I worked with Elixir & Nerves in my previous job and it was a a joy (still working with Elixir, but sadly not embedded anymore). Device I was building was a bridge between PLC, POS, NFC card scanner, a bu... | 1,760,371,718.156217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/could-nuclear-be-the-way-to-produce-synthetic-fuel-on-the-cheap/ | Could Nuclear Be The Way To Produce Synthetic Fuel On The Cheap? | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"hydrogen",
"nuclear",
"synfuel",
"synthetic fuel"
] | Fossil fuels can be a bit fussy to access, and geopolitics tends to make prices volatile. Burning them also takes carbon out of the ground and puts it into the atmosphere, with undesirable climate implications. The hunt for a solution has been on for quite some time.
Various synthetic fuels have been proposed as a solution, wherein carbon dioxide is captured from the air and chemically processed into useful fuel. Done properly, this could solve the climate issue where any fuel burned has its carbon later captured to make more fuel. The problem, though, is that this process is very energy intensive. Given the demands, it’s no surprise that some are
looking towards nuclear reactors for the answer.
Hot To Go
Synthetic fuels are typically designed to replace conventional gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. Credit:
DOE
, public domain
Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, but the problem is that they’re so very useful. Take transport, for example. Fossil fuels are perfect for this application because they pack a huge amount of energy into very little space while weighing relatively little to boot. At the same time, more than a third of global carbon emissions in 2021 came from transportation, according to the
International Energy Agency
. While electric vehicles are rapidly gaining market share in some areas, the complete phase out of internal combustion engines is by no means a sure thing. Meanwhile, sectors like aviation are proving especially difficult to fully electrify. We want to get off fossil fuels, but circumstances demand we continue to use them.
Enter synthetic fuels. They’re essentially drop-in replacements for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel that are produced from CO2, water and clean energy rather than being refined from petroleum. When made using captured CO2 and cleanly-produced hydrogen, they have the potential to significantly reduce transport emissions when taking the whole system into account. All this, without requiring an entirely new fueling infrastructure or any changes for the end user.
By capturing carbon and then chemically processing it into a useful combustible fuel, we could keep using existing technologies that we already find practical, like combustion-engined vehicles. Their emissions would still be undesirable, but they’d be offset by the capture process used to make new fuel. The idea is to create a closed loop for carbon emissions. The problem is finding a synfuel production process that’s efficient—both in terms of carbon capture and chemical processing—and to find the energy to run it.
Indeed, synthesizing hydrocarbons is an energy-intensive process. The process is well-understood at this point.
Capturing CO2 from the air
,
generating hydrogen via electrolysis
, and
catalytically combining them into fuels
at high temperatures and pressures all require a lot of energy input. For synfuels to deliver real climate benefits, this energy must come from clean, non-fossil sources.
The Department of Energy has a strong interest in nuclear synfuel production. Credit:
Argonne National Laboratory
What do we do when we need a
lot
of power with minimum emissions? We look at nuclear! Several U.S. Department of Energy labs are actively researching nuclear-powered synfuel production, and the DOE is funding
a $20 million demonstration project
in Utah. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom,
the Nuclear Industry Association
has been urging the country to seize a leadership position in this emerging field as well.
On a very basic level, a conventional nuclear power plant could provide electricity for various processes involved in synthetic fuel production. However, that’s not the only way to go. For some processes, the heat from a nuclear reactor could be directly used to power the synfuel production process. That is, rather than using heat from a nuclear reaction to create steam to turn a turbine, a purpose-built synfuel reactor could just deliver heat directly to a chemical process that needs it. Nuclear heat could be useful for desalinating seawater for hydrogen electrolysis, or for carbon capture, too.
The chemistry involved in synfuel production is well understood. The problem is figuring out how to do it cheaply enough to be competitive with fossil fuels, while using clean sources of CO2 and hydrogen. Credit:
Argonne National Laboratory
The question is whether all the effort will be worthwhile. Competing with regular old fossil fuels on price will be a must, even if some degree of subsidy is used to lean the scales in the favor of synfuels. There are hopes that nuclear-produced synfuels could reach prices of $3 a gallon with the right feedstocks and input costs, but that’s words on a page at this stage. There is plenty of engineering to be done before you’ll be filling your car with 20 gallons of nuke gas at your local station.
Efficiency also comes into it, and this could play a big role in how synfuels pan out. Take cars, for example. Automakers have figured out how to make supremely efficient electric vehicles in the past decade. Electrical engineers have become experts at squirting power efficiently all over the country, and there are more EV charging stations than ever. Does it make sense to spin up bespoke nuclear synfuel plants to keep internal combustion alive, when the technology to replace it already exists? Arguments could be made for more demanding applications like trucking or aviation, but then the market for synfuels grows smaller.
Synthetic fuels are particularly attractive for the aviation industry, which has found electrification hard to achieve due to the limits of battery technology. Credit:
US Air Force
, public domain
In any case, nuclear synfuel holds great promise. Whether it can overcome the general resistance towards all nuclear technologies remains to be seen. Still,
the tides may be changing
on that front, and the future is anyone’s guess. If you’re a fan of fossil fuels and the like, be happy—there is hope yet that the flammable fluid market will roll on. | 127 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066738",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T18:11:49",
"content": "Make nuclear synfuels and bring muscle cars back. I believe in a less shitty and annoying future, I am ready for it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066... | 1,760,371,718.688179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/retrotechtacular-the-deadly-shipmate/ | Retrotechtacular: The Deadly Shipmate | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"115 volts",
"ac",
"electrocution",
"grounding",
"mains",
"navy",
"retrotechtacular",
"safety",
"shock"
] | During World War II, shipboard life in the United States Navy was a gamble. No matter which theater of operations you found yourself in, the enemy was all around on land, sea, and air, ready to deliver a fatal blow and send your ship to the bottom. Fast forward a couple of decades and Navy life was just as hazardous but in a different way, as
this Navy training film on the shipboard hazards of low-voltage electricity
makes amply clear.
With the suitably scary title “
115 Volts: A Deadly Shipmate
,” the 1960 film details the many and various ways sailors could meet an untimely end, most of which seemed to circle back to attempts to make shipboard life a little more tolerable. The film centers not on the risks of a ship’s high-voltage installations, but rather the more familiar AC sockets used for appliances and lighting around most ships. The “familiarity breeds contempt” argument rings a touch hollow; given that most of these sailors appear to be in their 20s and 30s and rural electrification in the US was still only partially complete through the 1970s, chances are good that at least some of these sailors came from farms that still used kerosene lamps. But the point stands that plugging an unauthorized appliance into an outlet on a metal ship in a saltwater environment is a recipe for being the subject of a telegram back home.
The film shows just how dangerous mains voltage can be through a series of vignettes, many of which seem contrived but which were probably all too real to sailors in 1960. Many of the scenarios are service-specific, but a few bear keeping in mind around the house. Of particular note is drilling through a bulkhead and into a conduit; we’ve come perilously close to meeting the same end as the hapless Electrician’s Mate in the film doing much the same thing at home. As for up-cycling a discarded electric fan, all we can say is even brand new, that thing looks remarkably deadly.
The fact that they kept killing the same fellow over and over for each of these demonstrations doesn’t detract much from the central message: follow orders and you’ll probably stay alive. In an environment like that, it’s probably not bad advice. | 33 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066704",
"author": "V",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T17:04:14",
"content": "I don’t believe RCDs were present on navy ships, even considering the technology was already invented at the time of these videos…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,718.061288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/boss-byproducts-corium-is-man-made-lava/ | Boss Byproducts: Corium Is Man-Made Lava | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Chernobyl",
"concrete",
"corium",
"fission",
"Fukushima",
"fusion",
"Meltdown",
"three mile island"
] | So now we’ve talked about all kinds of byproducts, including man-made (Fordite), nature-made (fulgurites), and one that’s a little of both (calthemites). Each of these is beautiful in its own way, but I’m not sure about the beauty and merit of
corium
— that which is created in a nuclear reactor core during a meltdown.
A necklace made to look like corium. Image via
OSS-OSS
Corium has the consistency of lava and is made up of many things, including nuclear fuel, the products of fission, control rods, any structural parts of the reactor that were affected, and products of those parts’ reaction with the surrounding air, water, and steam.
If the reactor vessel itself is breached, corium can include molten concrete from the floor underneath. That said, if corium is hot enough, it can melt any concrete it comes in contact with.
So, I had to ask, is there corium jewelry? Not quite. Corium is dangerous and hard to come by.
But that doesn’t stop artisans from imitating the substance with other materials
.
Forming Corium
Chernobyl corium in steam discharge corridor. Image via
ICTP
Corium lava was produced at both Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai’ichi, and on a smaller scale at Three Mile Island. It’s a rare thing, this man-made lava, and it’s only produced when humans gather enough highly-radioactive isotopes to start a chain reaction.
When a nuclear meltdown occurs, the fission reaction occurring within the reactor is no longer sufficiently cooled and contained to keep the rods, cases, core containment vessel, et cetera cool. Heat builds rapidly, produced by the fission of uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
If the chain reaction of fission and decays is allowed to go on, the heat will build up enough that the fuel rods start to bend and eventually melt. Usually, this is controlled by cooling water and control rods that are able to absorb some of the neutrons created by fission and decay. But if the fuel rods become fully molten, then you’ve got a meltdown on your hands.
April 26, 1986
The largest formation of corium in existence occurred during the Chernobyl disaster. In fact, so much corium issued forth that the molten mass dripped underneath to form stalactites, stalagmites, and lava flows such as the
Elephant’s Foot
.
The Chernobyl Elephant’s Foot, a large mass of corium. Image via
Wikipedia
Chernobyl’s corium was formed over several days in three phases, the first of which lasted only seconds. The second stage lasted six days and comprised the interaction of the lava with silica-based structural materials like sand, concrete, and serpentinite. Finally, fuel lamination took place, and the molten corium penetrated the floors and solidified.
The corium at Chernobyl consists of uranium dioxide fuel, zircaloy cladding, concrete, and the serpentinite that had been packed around the reactor to serve as thermal insulation. Analysis has since shown that the corium reached a maximum temperature of 2,255 °C (4,091 °F). Far from cooling quickly, it remained above 1,660 °C (3,020 °F) for several days.
Chernobyl Corium
There are five types of material in Chernobyl’s corium:
black ceramics: dark black, glassy material with a highly pitted surface
brown ceramics: brown, glassy material that is both glossy and dull
slag-like granulated corium: these are glassy granules with a crust and range from gray-magenta to a dark brown. These were formed by extended contact of brown ceramics with water
pumice: grayish-brown porous formations that were formed when molten brown ceramic came into contact with water
metal: both molten and solidified
The Elephant’s Foot is a large mass comprised of black corium and has many layers. It resembles tree bark on its surface. In order to get to where it was discovered in December 1986 (15 meters southeast of the reactor in a maintenance corridor), the corium burned through 2 m (6 ft) of reinforced concrete, then traveled through pipes and fissures and flowed down a hallway.
Three Mile Island
By comparison, the accident at Three Mile Island was a slow, partial meltdown. Within two minutes, over 40,000 pounds of various materials melted and relocated. And although a pool of corium formed at the bottom of the reactor vessel, it wasn’t breached.
Eventually, scientists took samples from the reactor and discovered two masses of dull, grey corium with a few yellow areas — one in the fuel assembly, and the other on the lower head of the reactor vessel. They found the corium to be mostly molten fuel and cladding. Elementally, it was mostly uranium, along with zirconium, oxygen, stainless steel, and an alloy called Inconel. Some of the samples included silver and indium from the control rods.
Melting and Smelting
Man-made lava is a terrible, amazing thing that, ideally, will remain rare. But not all byproducts are rare, and certainly not all of them have cool names. What could I possibly be talking about? Stay tuned! | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066686",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T16:10:02",
"content": "“man made lava” is not very remarkable. Plenty of slag waste from the steel manufacturing industry. Anything melts and even evaporates, and then turns into a plasma if you make it hot enough.",
"paren... | 1,760,371,717.940648 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/life-found-on-ryugu-asteroid-sample-but-it-looks-very-familiar/ | Life Found On Ryugu Asteroid Sample, But It Looks Very Familiar | Donald Papp | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"asteroid",
"bacteria",
"contamination",
"Hayabusa2",
"ryugu"
] | Samples taken from the space-returned piece of asteroid Ryugu were collected and prepared under strict anti-contamination controls. Inside the cleanest of clean rooms, a tiny particle was collected from the returned sample with sterilized tools in a nitrogen atmosphere and stored in airtight containers before being embedded in an epoxy block for scanning electron microscopy.
It’s hard to imagine what more one could do, but despite all the precautions taken,
the samples were rapidly colonized by terrestrial microorganisms
. Only the upper few microns of the sample surface, but it happened. That’s what the images above show.
The surface of Ryugu from Rover 1B’s camera. Source:
JAXA
Obtaining a sample from asteroid Ryugu
was a triumph. Could this organic matter have come from the asteroid itself? In a word, no. Researchers have concluded the microorganisms are almost certainly terrestrial bacteria that contaminated the sample during collection, despite the precautions taken.
You can
read the study
to get all the details, but it seems that microorganisms — our world’s greatest colonizers — can circumvent contamination controls. No surprise, in a way. Every corner of our world is absolutely awash in microbial life. Opening samples on Earth comes with challenges.
As for off-Earth, robots may be doing the exploration but despite NASA assembling landers in clean room environments we may have already inadvertently exported terrestrial microbes to the Moon, and Mars. The search for life to which we are not related is one of science and humanity’s greatest quests, but it seems life found on a space-returned samples will end up looking awfully familiar until we step up our game. | 72 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066633",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T12:30:34",
"content": "Reminds me of early research on cancer. A lot of cancer research had to be dumped because a particular strain of cancer cells (HeLa) would act like a weed in the lab, contaminating other samples, crowding o... | 1,760,371,718.460074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/27/getting-started-in-laser-cutting/ | Getting Started In Laser Cutting | Jenny List | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"EMF 2024",
"Laser cutting"
] | If you were to walk into most of the world’s hackerspaces, it’s likely that the most frequent big-ticket tool you’ll find after a 3D printer is a laser cutter. A few years ago that would inevitably been one of the ubiquitous blue Chinese-made K40 machines, but here in 2024 it’s become common to see something far more sophisticated. For all that, many of us are still laser cutter noobs, and for us [Dominic Morrow] gave a talk at last summer’s EMF Camp in the UK entitled “
Getting Started In Laser Cutting
“. [Dominic] is a long-term laser cutting specialist who now works for Lightburn, so he’s ideally placed to deliver this subject.
It’s fair to say that this is an overview in the time available for a hacker camp talk rather than an in-depth piece, so he takes the approach of addressing people’s misconceptions and concerns about cutters. Perhaps the most important one he addresses is the exhaust, something we’ve seen a few in our community neglect in favor of excessive attention to laser cooling or other factors. An interesting one for us though was his talking about the cheaper diode lasers, having some insight into this end of the market is valuable when you have no idea which way to go.
We’re sorry to have missed this one in the real world, perhaps
because of the allure of junk
. | 20 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066599",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T09:14:11",
"content": "I want a laser cutter which can do copper clad boards",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066609",
"author": "Marc",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,718.115923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/26/massive-mural-from-thermal-receipt-paper/ | Massive Mural From Thermal Receipt Paper | Heidi Ulrich | [
"home hacks",
"News",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"Mural",
"paper",
"printing",
"receipt paper",
"thermal paper"
] | Turning trash into art is something we undoubtedly all admire. [Davis DeWitt] did just that with
a massive mural
made entirely from discarded receipt paper. [Davis] got lucky while doing some light dumpster diving, where he stumbled upon the box of thermal paper rolls. He saw the potential them and, armed with engineering skills and a rental-friendly approach, set out to create something original.
The journey began with a simple test: how long can a receipt be printed, continuously? With a maximum length of 10.5 feet per print, [Davis] designed an image for the mural using vector files to maintain a high resolution. The scale of the project was a challenge in itself, taking over 13 hours to render a single image at the necessary resolution for a mural of this size. The final piece is 30 foot (9.144 meters) wide and 11 foot (3.3528 meters) tall – a pretty conversational piece in anyone’s room – or shop, in [Davis]’ case.
Once the design was ready, the image was sliced into strips that matched the width of the receipt paper. Printing over 1,000 feet of paper wasn’t without its issues, so [Davis] designed a custom spool system to undo the curling of the receipts. Hanging the mural involved 3D-printed brackets and binder clips, allowing the strips to hang freely with a kinetic effect.
Though the thermal paper will fade over time, the beauty of this project lies in its adaptability—just reprint any faded strips. Want to see how it all came together?
Watch the full process
here. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8066566",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T06:27:01",
"content": "The forbidden bisphenol A wallpaper",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066606",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2024-11-27T09:50:05",
... | 1,760,371,718.287041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-tron-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The TRON Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"3.5\" floppy disk",
"bicycle keyboard",
"ESP32",
"Fitch typewriter",
"floppy disk",
"hid",
"TRON keyboard",
"usb host"
] | [Folaefolc] was craving a new keyboard build a few weeks ago and got inspired by the humble 3.5″ floppy disk. So much so that he decided to make
a split keyboard with each half having the exact footprint of a floppy
— 90 mm x 94 mm. And you know the PCBs have floppy details silkscreened on the back. Just check out the gallery.
Image via [Folaefolc] via
reddit
This bad boy uses a pair of
Liatris microcontrollers
, which are made by splitkb and are designed to be drop-in replacements for Pro Micros and an alternative to the RP2040.
The other fun part of this build is that [Folaefolc] used RJ9 connectors to join the halves instead of something like TRRS.
Beneath those candy keycaps are 34 Kailh choc v1 switches shoved into hot swap sockets in case [Folaefolc] changes his mind.
Gerbers are available if you want to build one of these cuties!
Via
reddit
A Bicycle Built for Two Hands
[Lachlan Kermode] got so heavy into cycling last summer that he
figured out the best possible way to do so while getting work done
. Now, if only he could get some fresh air as well.
Image by [Lachlan Kermode] via
OHRG
Phase Zero involved simply sliding the stationary bike under the standing desk, but that didn’t really work for keyboarding. Once someone noted that [Lachlan]’s keyboard is from the ZSA family and pointed him toward the tripod mount, he was on the right track.
This mount is basically just a couple of magnets that attach to the keyboard halves and let you mount them to a standard tripod screw. A couple of camera clamps later, and Bob became [Lachlan]’s proverbial uncle.
Having used it for a while now, [Lachlan] found the most comfort with the halves pointed downward at a 45° angle, which allows him to rest his palms on the handlebars and type fairly comfortably. It’s going to take some experimentation to get it perfect, but he seems to be most of the way there.
The Centerfold: This 90s Japanese TRON Keyboard
Image via
reddit
No, not
TRON
(1982).
This keyboard
refers to
the Japanese operating system and Unicode alternative
, where TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus. I’m not sure how many fingers you’re supposed to have to use this thing, which looks at once both ergonomic and wildly not, what with those faraway pinkie keys. Hey, at least it’s Dvorak? See also
Xah Lee’s page
and this video for more about these keyboards.
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 Fitch (American)
Image via
The Antikey Chop
Yes there are British Fitches as well, and they were slightly different than
the American Fitch
. I’m guessing that both models bore that wild rear-downstrike typebar arrangement which both distinguished it and doomed it to failure. Be sure to check out the other pictures on the Antikey Chop site, including the really strange layout.
The Fitch could type 78 characters with its 26-key, double-shift keyboard. The 1u Space is of particular interest. Ink was transferred via roller, and the earliest specimens had a pair of reservoirs behind the carriage for spare rollers.
Though this machine looks heavy (at least to me), the Fitch weighed only 11 pounds and took up a cubic foot of space. It was never advertised as a portable, though the Antikey Chopkeep theorizes that they could have been. These Fitches were evidently quite well-built little machines, which makes their lightness that much more intriguing.
ICYMI: ESP32 Hosts Keyboard
Image via
YouTube
You’re likely aware of the USB device mode of an ESP32.
But did you know that they can act as HID hosts, too?
That’s Human Interface Devices — keyboards, mice, trackballs, and the like.
For this project, [Volos] used
the EspUsbHost Arduino library
, which makes USB host mode a relatively simple thing to use. Tantamount to success here is the LCD board: it has a dual-role USB-C port, so the hardware required to switch roles is right there.
On the software side, [Volos] created a simple word processing program that saves and loads files from a microSD card, using a four-bit palette to save on memory.
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
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065976",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T18:10:48",
"content": "The bicycle handlebar keyboard is a new plateau of workaholism. I love it. And up there next to the keyboard trousers for cyberpunk aesthetic",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,718.518835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/experimental-drone-flies-like-a-bird/ | Experimental Drone Flies Like A Bird | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"bird",
"flight controller",
"nature-inspired"
] | Most RC planes follow a simple control scheme: elevators for pitch, rudder for yaw, and ailerons for roll. This one-to-one mapping keeps things straightforward, and fewer actuators means less weight. But nature has other ideas. Birds achieve flight control through complex, coordinated movements where different body parts can affect multiple degrees of freedom simultaneously. Now, researchers at EPFL have brought this biological approach to robotics with the
LisEagle
, a drone featuring morphing wings and tail that demonstrate remarkable stability.
All the actuators!
The LisEagle packs seven different actuation methods alongside its nose-mounted motor. Three of these control the bird-like wingtips and spreading tail, while the remaining actuators handle more conventional controls: independently twisting wing bases (similar to ailerons) and a tail assembly that combines elevator and rudder functions in its vertical stabilizer.
Testing took place in controlled indoor conditions, with the maintaining position in front of an open wind tunnel. Optical position tracking provided closed-loop feedback and power was provided via a tether to minimize weight. A
PID flight controller
orchestrated all seven actuators in concert, achieving impressive stability even when faced with induced turbulence or being poked with a stick. In a demonstration of redundancy, the researchers deliberately disabled the twisting wing mechanisms, and the aircraft maintained control using just its wingtips and tail.
The team went further, employing Bayesian optimization to find the most efficient actuator combinations. This revealed potential energy savings of up to 11%, with optimal configurations varying based on airspeed as lift requirements changed.
While research into the flight mechanisms of
bees
,
bats
and
birds
might not immediately translate to practical applications, it deepens our understanding of flight control principles. Don’t be surprised if morphing wings become a more common sight in future aircraft designs. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065977",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T18:16:05",
"content": "In future theaters of war, people will slaughter or poison all the local birds just to make sure they don’t provide cover for enemy ornithopter drones carrying HE shaped charges or antipersonnel frag grenades.... | 1,760,371,717.991756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/apollo-era-pcb-reverse-engineering-to-kicad/ | Apollo-era PCB Reverse Engineering To KiCad | Chris Lott | [
"Featured",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"apollo",
"circuit board",
"KiCAD",
"nasa",
"reverse engineering",
"schematics"
] | Earlier this year [Skyhawkson] got ahold of an
Apollo-era printed circuit board
which he believes was used in a NASA test stand. He took high quality photos of both sides of the board and superimposed them atop each other. After digging into a few obsolete parts from the 1960s, he was able to trace out the connections. I ran across the project just after making schematics for the Supercon badge and petal matrix. Being on a roll, I decided to take [Skyhawkson]’s work as a starting point and create KiCad schematics. Hopefully we can figure out what this circuit board does along the way.
The board is pretty simple:
approximately 6.5 x 4.5 inches
22 circuit edge connector 0.156 in pitch
31 ea two-terminal parts ( resistors, diodes )
3 ea trimmer potentiometers
7 ea transistors
parts arranged in 4 columns
The first thing I did was to create a “dumb” schematic, with no logical significance other than it matched the geometry of the board. The result should match [Skyhawkson]’s diagrams ( it did ).
The next step was to unwrap the parts and connections, with the goal of making recognizable circuits. It was easy to get circuits crossed up and lose track of the original connections. When making a PCB from schematics, if you delete connections and move parts around, you have the rats nest to guide you. But when going the other way, you’re on your own.
To mitigate this, I made a placeholder PCB whose only purpose is to hold the true netlist. Having a correct PCB design provides a way to check the schematic. Go to the PCB editor, update the PCB from schematics, and run a DRC. I little cumbersome, but better than nothing.
As I first studied the diagram, I realized there are really two independent circuits on the PCB, connected by only one signal. This made unfolding and rearranging the parts easier. Not having any clue what this board did, I just untangled each transistor circuit one by one. Knowing the basic function of a transistor, there are only so many ways to orient each one that makes any sense. Soon, familiar circuits began to appear from the jumble of parts.
Obviously this card belonged in a rack system with an interconnecting back plane. We have no idea what these signals do, and that made it more challenging. In addition, there are some signals that seem unnecessary. My speculation is that these are used in PCB testing, test equipment checkout, or perhaps to operate the board in different modes.
Parts
When researching the parts on the board, [Skyhawkson] found a few that were difficult to pin down. By coincidence, even the sketchy details of two such parts gives us clues to the board’s purpose.
Current Sense Resistor
R125 is an X.1 ohm, 3 W wirewound resistor. [Skyhawkson] had to peel back conformal coating to find even a partial part number. This resistor conforms to the MIL-R-26/C, RW59 specification. Many other RWxx resistors from this family are still used today, but RW59 seems to have been dropped a long time ago. It might have already been on the way out back in 1962.
Having such low resistance, perhaps 0.1 ohms, it seems likely to be a current sensing resistor. The high wattage reinforces that idea. But I later realized that almost all of the resistors on the board are 3 W, which I guess was the norm back then. This makes the 3 W power rating of R125 less special. Adding to the mystery, one leg of R125 leaves the board. But lacking a better explanation, I will stick to my initial guess that this is a current sense circuit.
Temperature Compensated Zener
There are several zener diodes on the board, but only one of them has an elusive datasheet — the 1N2625. After combing through old semiconductor data books from the 1960s, I found some interesting information on this Zener diode in Motorola’s Semiconductor Data Book from 1966. This diode comes from a family of temperature compensated Zener diodes 1N262x. Ignoring temperature grades, there are three basic ones: 22, 23, and 24, which differ only in their temperature coefficient. But there are two more special ones in the series: 25 and 26, which sport even better TC values and have a slightly lower zener voltage of 9.4 vs 9.7 V.
If you try to track this part over the decades, it seems to have become / been rolled into the 1N937 series that, though obsolete, is still available from Microchip. But this 60 year old zener has a TC that is an order of magnitude better than its modern equivalent. This suggests that the 9.4 V reference voltage on this PCB plays a key role.
1N262X Family Zener Diodes, Motorola Data Book 1966, pg 1-27
Best Guess
I see a precision voltage reference, what looks like a differential amplifier, and also know that the board was used in NASA test equipment. I immediately think “sensor interface card” — most certainly designed to interface with a strain gauge. A strain gauge is wired into one leg ( or more ) of a Wheatstone bridge excited by a precision voltage. The bridge imbalance is proportional to the strain of the material being measured. The weak signal is usually boosted by a differential amplifier followed by other conditioning circuits. And if your sensor interface card is flexible, you can also configure it to read RTDs, thermocouples, and other kinds of sensors as well. Sensor interface circuitry would certainly be a common need throughout NASA ground test equipment back in the 1960s, and today as well.
Excitation Driver
If my analysis is correct, the supply takes about +80 VDC on the input before all three zener voltage references become active. That seems a bit high. But back in the 60s, maybe this was a common B+ voltage. But, if you only supply say 28 VDC, transistors Q101 and Q102 bypass the top and bottom zeners. Maybe all that circuitry is there just to allow a wide range of input voltages?
Detail of Excitation Circuit, Best Guess
There seems to be a lot of unused edge connector signals, or at least signals I don’t understand, associated with this section. I have a nagging feeling that some of these might be used by other parts of the system to check that the interface card is present and working, and that the cables to the sensor have not shorted nor broken.
Differential Input Amplifier
On the Hackaday.io project discussion section, hacker [Lauri Pirttiaho] pointed out that four of the transistors appeared to make up a differential amplifier. He is right I believe, and if he got that by just glancing at the PCB photos, I’m really impressed. The circuit appears to drive a load located off-board, presumably generating a voltage to be recorded, plotted, converted to digital data, and/or viewed on meters. The operating point is biased by a current set by the zener and transistor combination CR109 / Q107, but the return path for that current isn’t clear. I guessed it returns through the output power supply return, as drawn on the schematics, but am not 100% confident.
This CR109 / Q107 bias circuit can be turned off by grounding edge connector signal NET17, thus disabling the difference amplifier output transistors. This could be a useful feature for multiplexing a group of sensors boards onto a single using A2D converter. Instrumentation quality A2D converters were probably more expensive back in 1962, so this seems like a reasonably guess.
Detail of Differential Amplifier, Best Guess
Edge Connector, Nets
I connected the external signals up to a 22-pin edge-card connector schematic symbol and labeled them according to my guesses. The hope was that their positions along the card edge connector would give me additional insight. They did not. Lacking any descriptive names for the nets, [Skyhawkson] numbered them. I retained that same scheme here. Note that nets 1 through 21 are go to the card edge, and nets 22 through 36 are internal to the board. He numbered the net names sequentially along the card edge connector. But because of the keying gap in the connector, the net numbers don’t match the connector pin number from pin 5 onwards. For example, connector pin 6 is NET05 and so on.
Detail of Edge Card Connector, Best Guess
Mystery Trimming
The section with the R125 current sense resistor also has a bunch of trimmer potentiometers, and almost all of the connections go off board. It might be use to adjust the gain and offset of the output signal. I also wonder these could somehow comprise the fixed legs of the bridge. I’m at a loss here.
Lessons Learned and Next Steps?
This KiCad reverse engineering project has been both easier and more difficult than previous ones. The PCB is so simple by today’s standards, and [Skyhawkson] has already done the tedious task of tracing out the connections. He’s also identified all the parts on the board and prepared a bill of materials. This was a great starting point.
In previous projects, I knew the schematic ahead of time or else I had a reasonable idea of the PCB’s functionality and flow of signals. In the case of this Apollo-era board, I knew nothing. It was just a bunch of transistors and supporting discrete components. It made me appreciate modern IC packages, where knowing a part number gives big clues about its function.
Hints can be found in even the simplest parts. Figuring out that diode 1N2625 was a zener with 0.0002 % temperature coefficient was a big clue that a precision voltage reference was present. The low value R125 is probably a current sensing resistor, but what current is being sensed is still not clear.
The redrawn schematics are found in
this GitHub repository
. If you have any further ideas about how this circuit board might have been used, please let us know in the comments below. If we get enough additional information, maybe [Skyhawkson] can be convinced to power up the board and test it out. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065931",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T15:31:19",
"content": "Seeing the conformal coating on the Title Photo brought back memories of broken components when I was repurposing those parts from excessed military circuits.",
"parent_id"... | 1,760,371,718.353531 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/the-lancaster-ascii-keyboard-recreated/ | The Lancaster ASCII Keyboard Recreated | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Don Lancaster",
"keyboard",
"TV Typewriter"
] | It is hard to imagine that there was a time when having a keyboard and screen readily available was a real problem for people who wanted to experiment with computers. In the 1970s, if you wanted a terminal, you might well have built a [Don Lancaster] “TV Typewriter” and the companion “low cost keyboard.” [Artem Kalinchuk] wanted to recreate this historic keyboard and, you know what?
He did
! Take a look at the video below.
The first task was to create a PCB from the old artwork from Radio Electronics magazine. [Artem] did the hard work but discovered that the original board expected a very specific kind of key. So, he created a variant that takes modern MX keyboard switches, which is nice. He does sell the PCBs, but you can also find the design files on
GitHub
.
Not only were the TV typewriters and related projects popular, but they also inspired many similar projects and products from early computer companies.
The board is really just a holder for keys, some jumper wires, and an edge connector. You still need an ASCII encoder board, which [Artem] also recreates. That board is simple, using diodes, a few transistors, and a small number of simple ICs.
If you weren’t there, part of installing old software was writing the code needed to read and write to your terminal. No kidding. We miss
[Don Lancaster]
. We wonder how many
TV typewriters
were built, especially if you include modern recreations. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065887",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T12:50:38",
"content": "“It is hard to imagine that there was a time when having a keyboard and screen readily available was a real problem for people who wanted to experiment with computers.”Really? Why is that so? I knew about ... | 1,760,371,718.746948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/25/hacking-global-positioning-systems-onto-16th-century-maps/ | Hacking Global Positioning Systems Onto 16th-Century Maps | Heidi Ulrich | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"georeference",
"georeferencing",
"gps",
"historical map",
"history",
"map",
"navigation"
] | What if GPS had existed in 1565? No satellites or microelectronics, sure—but let’s play along. Imagine the bustling streets of Antwerp, where merchants navigated the sprawling city with woodcut maps. Or sailors plotting Atlantic crossings with accuracy unheard of for the time. This whimsical intersection of history and tech was recently featured in a
blog post by [Jan Adriaenssens]
, and comes alive with
Bert Spaan’s Allmaps Here
: a delightful web app that overlays your GPS location onto georeferenced historical maps.
Take Antwerp’s 1565 city map by Virgilius Bononiensis, a massive 120×265 cm woodcut. With Allmaps Here, you’re a pink dot navigating this masterpiece. Plantin-Moretus Museum? Nailed it. Kasteelpleinstraat? A shadow of the old citadel it bordered. Let’s not forget how life might’ve been back then. A merchant could’ve avoided morning traffic and collapsing bridges en route to the market, while a farmer relocating his herd could’ve found fertile pastures minus the swamp detour.
Unlike today’s turn-by-turn navigation, a 16th-century GPS might have been all about survival: avoiding bandit-prone roads, timing tides for river crossings, or tracking stars as backup. Imagine explorers fine-tuning their Atlantic crossings with trade winds mapped to the mile. Georeferenced maps like these let us re-imagine the practical genius of our ancestors while enjoying a modern hack on a centuries-old problem.
Although sites like
OldMapsOnline
,
Google Earth Timelapse
(and for the Dutch:
TopoTijdreis
) have been around for a while, this new match of technology and historical detail is a true gem. Curious to map your own world on antique charts?
Navigate to Allmaps
and start
georeferencing
! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065883",
"author": "Tim McNerney",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T12:41:52",
"content": "Older maps have distortions compared to reality. (Surveying was hard. Heck, even the vectorized USGS map in my pre-smartphone GPS receiver has obvious near-misses). What would be most fun would be to... | 1,760,371,719.58128 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/programmable-zener-is-really-an-ic/ | Programmable Zener Is Really An IC | Al Williams | [
"hardware"
] | [
"tl431",
"zener"
] | [Kevin] doesn’t stock zener diodes anymore. Why? Because for everything he used to use zeners, he now uses TL431
bandgap voltage references
. These look like zener diodes but have an extra terminal. That extra terminal allows you to set the threshold to any value you want (within specifications, of course). Have a look at the video below for an introduction to these devices and a practical circuit on a breadboard.
Inside, there’s a voltage reference, an op-amp, and a transistor, so these are tiny 3-terminal ICs. The chip powers itself from the load, so there are no separate power supply pins.
Note that just before the five-minute mark, he had a typo on the part number, but he corrected that in the comments. He goes on to put a demonstration schematic in KiCad. Once it was all worked out, it was breadboard time.
As always, there were a few real-world things to resolve, but the circuit worked as expected. As [Kevin] points out, the faux-zeners are about four for a dollar and even less in quantity. A zener might be a few pennies cheaper, but unless you are making thousands of copies of your circuit, who cares?
We don’t see zeners as often as
we used to
. As for the TL431, we’ve seen one
torn apart
for your amusement. | 25 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065828",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T08:44:23",
"content": "The TL431 is in about 90% of all offline switching power supplies, in the feedback loop from the secondary to the primary side, through an optocoupler.Whenever I open one, I search for, and usually find it.",... | 1,760,371,718.883961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/aftershock-ii-how-students-shattered-20-year-amateur-rocket-records/ | Aftershock II: How Students Shattered 20-Year Amateur Rocket Records | Heidi Ulrich | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"Aftershock II",
"Black Rock Desert",
"home made rocket",
"Nevada",
"record",
"rocket",
"RPL",
"spaceflight",
"student made"
] | When it comes to space exploration, we often think of billion-dollar projects—NASA’s Artemis missions, ESA’s Mars rovers, or China’s Tiangong station. Yet, a group of U.S. students at USC’s Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL) has achieved something truly extraordinary—a reminder that groundbreaking work doesn’t always require government budgets. On October 20, their homemade rocket,
Aftershock II
, soared to an altitude of 470,000 feet, smashing the amateur spaceflight altitude and speed records held for over two decades. Intrigued?
Check out the full article here
.
The 14-foot, 330-pound rocket broke the sound barrier within two seconds, reaching hypersonic speeds of Mach 5.5—around 3,600 mph. But
Aftershock II
didn’t just go fast; it climbed higher than any amateur spacecraft ever before, surpassing the 2004
GoFast
rocket’s record by 90,000 feet. Even NASA-level challenges like thermal protection at hypersonic speeds were tackled using clever tricks. Titanium-coated fins, specially engineered heat-resistant paint, and a custom telemetry module ensured the rocket not only flew but returned largely intact.
This achievement feels straight out of a Commander Keen adventure—scrappy explorers, daring designs, and groundbreaking success against all odds. The
full story
is a must-read for anyone dreaming of building their own rocket. | 40 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065771",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T03:46:19",
"content": "As the link shows for our SI friends, that is 27,400 meters.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8065774",
"author"... | 1,760,371,718.819312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/hackaday-links-november-24-2024/ | Hackaday Links: November 24, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"Atmos",
"bbs",
"bulletin board",
"casio",
"clock",
"emc",
"hackaday links",
"KiCAD",
"machine vision",
"openems",
"optical sorting",
"perpetual motion",
"simulation",
"Smart ring",
"timepiece",
"Ward Christensen",
"watch",
"wearable",
"XMODEM"
] | We received belated word this week of
the passage of Ward Christensen
, who died unexpectedly back in October at the age of 78. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s understandable, because the man behind the first computer BBS wasn’t much for the spotlight. Along with Randy Suess and in response to the Blizzard of ’78, which kept their Chicago computer club from meeting in person, Christensen created an electronic version of a community corkboard. Suess worked on the hardware while Christensen provided the software, leveraging his XMODEM file-sharing protocol. They dubbed their creation a “bulletin board system” and when the idea caught on, they happily shared their work so that other enthusiasts could build their own systems.
BBSs were the only show in town for a long time, and the happy little modem negotiation tones were like a doorbell you rang to get into a club where people understood your obsession. Perhaps it’s just the BBS nostalgia talking, but despite the functional similarities to today’s social media, the BBS experience seemed a lot more civilized. It’s not that people were much better behaved back then; any BBS regular can tell you there were plenty of jerks online then, too. But the general tone of BBS life was a little more sedate, probably due in part to the glacial pace of dial-up connections. Even at a screaming 2,400 baud, characters scrolled across your screen slower than you could read them, and that seemed to have a sedating effect on your passions. By the time someone’s opinion on the burning issues of the day had finally been painted on your monitor, you’d had a bit of time to digest it and perhaps cool down a bit before composing a reply. We still had our flame wars, of course, but it was like watching slow-motion warfare and the dynamic was completely different from today’s Matrix.
Speaking of yearning for a probably mythical Golden Age, Casio has announced
a smart ring that looks like a miniature version of their classic sports chronograph wristwatch
. The ring celebrates Casio’s 50th anniversary of making watches, and features a stainless steel case made by metal injection molding. The six-digit LCD is pretty limited in what it can display, and the ring doesn’t do much other than tell the time and date and sound alarms. So we’re not sure where the smarts are here, except for the looks, of course.
We got a tip recently on
a series of really interesting videos
that you might want to check out, especially if you’re into EMC simulations. Panire’s channel is chock full of videos showing how to use
openEMS
, the open-source electromagnetic field solver, with KiCad EDA software to simulate the RF properties of high-speed circuits. He’s got some in-depth videos on getting things set up plus some great tutorials on creating simulations that let you see how your PCB designs are radiating, allowing you to make changes and see the results right away. Very useful stuff, and pretty fun to look at, too.
Here at Hackaday, we get a surprising and disappointingly regular stream of projects that claim to finally have beaten the laws of thermodynamics. So the words “Perpetual Motion” are especially triggering to us, but we instantly put that aside when we saw the title card on
this video about the Atmos Clock
. No, it’s not perpetual motion, but since as the name suggests, being powered by atmospheric pressure and temperature changes, it’s about as close as you can get. We remember one of these beautiful timepieces on the mantle in our grandparents’ house, gifted to “Grampy” for years of faithful service by his employer. It was a delicate machine and fascinating to watch work, which it only briefly did once we grandkids got near it. Still, watching how the mechanism worked is pretty interesting stuff.
And finally, if you haven’t checked out
The Analog
, you really should. It’s a weekly newsletter written by our friend Mihir Shah and is full of interesting tidbits from the world of electronics and technology. This time around he gifted us with a video that looks inside
optical sorting in food processing
. You’ve probably seen these in action before, where cascades of objects — grapes in this case, obviously in a winery — are spread out on a high-speed conveyor belt under the watchful gaze of a computer vision system, which spots the bad grapes and yeets them into oblivion with a precisely controlled jet of compressed air. The mind boggles on the control loops needed to get the jet and the bad grape to meet up at just the right time so that good grapes stay in the game. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065742",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T00:13:55",
"content": "How does the stem remover work?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8065754",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2024-11-25T00:58:35",
... | 1,760,371,719.946332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/double-your-analog-oscilloscope-fun-with-this-retro-beam-splitter/ | Double Your Analog Oscilloscope Fun With This Retro Beam Splitter | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"analog",
"beam splitter",
"crt",
"multiplexing",
"oscilloscope",
"phosphor",
"scope",
"time-division"
] | These days, oscilloscope hacking is all about enabling features that the manufacturer baked into the hardware but locked out in the firmware. Those hacks are cool, of course, but back in the days of analog scopes, unlocking new features required a decidedly more hardware-based approach.
For an example of this, take a look at
this oscilloscope beam splitter
by [Lockdown Electronics]. It’s a simple way to turn a single-channel scope into a dual-channel scope using what amounts to time-division multiplexing. A 555 timer is set up as an astable oscillator generating a 2.5-kHz square wave. That’s fed into the bases of a pair of transistors, one NPN and the other PNP. The collectors of each transistor are connected to the two input signals, each biased to either the positive or negative rail of the power supply. As the 555 swings back and forth it alternately applies each input signal to the output of the beam splitter, which goes to the scope. The result is two independent traces on the analog scope, like magic.
More after the break…
If you’re wondering how this would work on a modern digital scope, so was [Lockdown Electronics]. He gave it a go with his little handheld scope meter and the results were surprisingly good and illustrative of how the thing works. You can clearly see the 555’s square wave on the digital scope sandwiched between the two different input sine waves. Analog scopes always have trouble showing these rising and falling edges, which explains why the beam splitter looks so good on the CRT versus the LCD.
Does this circuit serve any practical purpose these days? Probably not, although you could probably use the same principle to double the number of channels on your digital scope. Eight channels on a four-channel scope for the price of a 555? Sounds like a bargain to us. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065721",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T21:59:46",
"content": "Beam splitter ? sigh… A beam splitter or beamsplitter is an optical device that splits a beam of light into a transmitted and a reflected beam (wikipedia)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,371,719.425111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/flyback-done-right/ | Flyback, Done Right | Jenny List | [
"High Voltage"
] | [
"flyback",
"flyback transformer",
"switch mode"
] | A common part used to create a high voltage is a CRT flyback transformer, having been a ubiquitous junk pile component. So many attempts to use them rely on brute force, with power transistors in simple feedback oscillators dropping high currents into hand-wound primaries, so it’s refreshing to see a much more nuanced approach from [Alex Lungu].
His flyback driver board
drives the transformer as it’s meant to be used, in flyback mode relying on the sudden collapse of a magnetic field to generate an output voltage pulse rather than simply trying to create as much field as possible. It’s thus far more efficient than all those free running oscillators.
On the PCB is a
UC3844
switch mode power supply controller driving the transformer at about 25 kHz through an IGBT. We’d be curious to know how closely the spec of the transformer is tied to the around 15 kHz it would have been run at in a typical TV, and thus what frequency would be the most efficient for it. The result as far as we can see it a stable and adjustable high voltage source with out all the high-current and over heating, something of which we approve.
Need to understand more about free running versus flyback?
Read on
. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065676",
"author": "RingingResonance",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T18:10:24",
"content": "I did something similar but with a quad op-amp, some transistors, and one 250v power transistor to drive the primary. The results was my custom flyback transformer and circuit produced a wide ran... | 1,760,371,719.361023 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/risc-cpu-lives-in-excel/ | RISC CPU Lives In Excel | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"cpu",
"excel"
] | Last time we checked in on [Inkbox], he had made a 16-bit CPU in Excel. Impressive, but not really practical. Presumably,
his latest project
isn’t any more practical, but we suspect an 8-bit RISC CPU was easier to implement in Excel and probably runs faster, too. The new machine uses a stack architecture with a simplified instruction set of ten instructions. You can follow along with his Excel adventure in the video below.
If you think about it, you may decide that doing something like this in Excel is easy because you could just script it and use Excel as the user interface. That’s true, but that’s not how [Inkbox] does it. He won’t use scripts or IF statements in a cell. That makes things much harder.
If you are curious about what goes on in a CPU, this is worth watching, even if you don’t expect you’ll use it. If you really want to become a CPU designer, we’d suggest skipping Excel and go straight into Verilog, VHDL, or something similar that you could actually use.
Don’t get us wrong. Seeing it done in Excel can be very educational, but no one designs CPUs like this in practice.
If you want to see the
16-bit version
, we covered that, too. We always say that building the CPU is
the easy part
of developing a new architecture. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065658",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T16:24:29",
"content": "Would it be theoretically possible to emulate a 64 bits CPU in Excel, and have it run emulated Windows within Excel? Doesn’t need to work at decent speed, just work at all.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,371,719.219732 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/modular-multi-rotor-flies-up-to-two-hours/ | Modular Multi-Rotor Flies Up To Two Hours | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"ardupilot",
"pid",
"quadcopter"
] | Flight time remains the Achilles’ heel of electric multi-rotor drones, with even high-end commercial units struggling to stay airborne for an hour. Enter
Modovolo
, a startup that’s shattered this limitation with their modular drone system achieving flights
exceeding two hours
.
The secret? Lightweight modular “lift pods” inspired by bicycle wheels using tensioned lines similar to spokes. The lines suspend the hub and rotor within a duct. It’s all much lighter than of traditional rigid framing. The pods can be configured into quad-, hex-, or octocopter arrangements, featuring large 671 mm propellers. Despite their size, the quad configuration weighs a mere 3.5 kg with batteries installed. From the
demo-day video
, it appears the frame, hub, and propeller are all FDM 3D printed. The internal structure of the
propeller
looks very similar to other
3D-printed RC aircraft
.
The propulsion system operates at just 1000 RPM – far slower than conventional drones. The custom propellers feature internal ring gears driven by small brushless motors through a ~20:1 reduction. This design allows each motor to hover at a mere 60 W, enabling the use of high-density lithium-ion cells typically unsuitable for drone applications. The rest of the electronics are off-the-shelf, with the flight controller running ArduPilot. Due to the unconventional powertrain and large size, the
PID tuning
was very challenging.
We like the fact this drone doesn’t require fancy materials or electronics, it just uses existing tech creatively. The combination of extended flight times, rapid charging, and modular construction opens new possibilities for applications like surveying, delivery, and emergency response where endurance is critical. | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065617",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T12:14:32",
"content": "The video looks a bit odd though. Towards the end where the drone starts to drop down, it looks kinda like a green screen effect with someone bobbing the thing on a fishing line.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,719.301845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/24/hacking-the-soil-to-combat-desertification/ | Hacking The Soil To Combat Desertification | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"News"
] | [
"africa",
"agriculture",
"desertification",
"great green wall",
"green infrastructure",
"healthy soils",
"regenerative agriculture",
"soil health",
"un",
"world food program"
] | While the Sahara Desert is an important ecosystem in its own right, its human neighbors in the Sahel would like it to stop encroaching on their environment. [Andrew Millison] took a look at how the people in the region are using
“half moons” and zai pits to fight desertification
.
With assistance from the World Food Program, people in Niger and all throughout the Sahel have been working on restoring damaged landscapes using traditional techniques that capture water during the rainy season to restore the local aquifer. The water goes to plants which provide forage during the 9 drier months of the year.
The main trick is using pits and contouring of the soil to catch rain as it falls. Give the ground time to absorb the water instead of letting it run off. Not only does this restore the aquifers, it also reduces flooding during during the intense rain events in the area. With the water constrained, plants have time to develop, and a virtuous cycle of growth and water retention allows people to have a more pleasant microclimate as well as enhanced food security. In the last five years, 500,000 people in Niger no longer need long-term food assistance as a result of these resiliency projects.
If this seems familiar, we previously covered
the Great Green Wall
at a more macro level. While we’re restoring the environment with green infrastructure, can we
plant a trillion trees
? | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065663",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T16:52:26",
"content": "I wonder if it will be independently managed long-term",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8066248",
"author": "Hassi",
"timestamp": "2024-1... | 1,760,371,719.640217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/40-ham-antenna-works-six-bands/ | $40 Ham Antenna Works Six Bands | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"ham radio"
] | [My Ham Radio Journey] wanted to see if a “common person” (in his words) could build an effective
vertical ham radio antenna
. If you look at the video below, the answer is apparently yes.
He started with a 24-foot fishing rod and a roll of 22 gauge wire. The height of the antenna wire is just over 20 feet long and he has several ground radials, as you might expect for a vertical antenna.
You also need a toroid to make an unun for the feed point. The details of how he mounted everything will be useful if you want to experiment with making your own version.
Vertical antennas have plusses and minuses. One advantage is they have a low angle of radiation, which is good for long distance communication. It is possible to make arrays of vertical antennas, and we are surprised we haven’t seen any of those lately.
In the end, it looks like the antenna works well. With the 4:1 transformer, the SWR on all the ham bands is within range of the radio’s tuner.
We recently saw
a fishing pole antenna
that used no wire at all. If you want portable and fishing isn’t your thing, try
a tape measure
. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065569",
"author": "Jeff Kowalski",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T06:56:13",
"content": "Nice! Now bring that up the mountain with us!https://www.sota.org.uk/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8065573",
"author": "CUF",
... | 1,760,371,719.744191 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/rfid-from-first-principles-and-saving-a-cat/ | RFID From First Principles And Saving A Cat | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"amplitude shift keying",
"arduino",
"cats",
"demodulation",
"detector",
"Differential Manchester",
"FDX-B",
"low pass filter",
"modulation",
"rfid"
] | [Dale Cook] has cats, and as he readily admits, cats are jerks. We’d use stronger language than that, but either way it became a significant impediment to making progress with an RFID-based sensor to allow his cats access to their litterbox. Luckily, though, he was able to salvage the project enough to give
a great talk on RFID from first principles
and learn about a potentially tragic mistake.
If you don’t have 20 minutes to spare for the video below, the quick summary is that [Dale]’s cats are each chipped with an RFID tag using the FDX-B protocol. He figured he’d be able to build a scanner to open the door to their
playpen
litterbox, but alas, the read range on the chip and the aforementioned attitude problems foiled that plan. He kept plugging away, though, to better understand RFID and the electronics that make it work.
To that end, [Dale]
rolled his own RFID reader
pretty much from scratch. He used an Arduino to generate the 134.2-kHz clock signal for the FDX-B chips and to parse the returned data. In between, he built a push-pull driver for the antenna coil and an envelope detector to pull the modulated data off the carrier. He also added a low-pass filter and a comparator to clean up the signal into a nice square wave, which was fed into the Arduino to parse the Differential Manchester-encoded data.
Although he was able to read his cats’ chips with this setup, [Dale] admits it was a long road compared to just buying
a Flipper Zero
or visiting the vet. But it provided him a look under the covers of RFID, which is worth a lot all by itself. But more importantly, he also discovered that one cat had a chip that returned a code different than what was recorded in the national database. That could have resulted in heartache, and avoiding that is certainly worth the effort too.
Thanks for the tip, [Gustavo]. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065556",
"author": "Ticktok",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T05:14:33",
"content": "I love this and am so jealous of the drive to finish. I ended up on a similar path years ago with an rfid cat feeder that had a fatal flaw. It was not water proof and cats tend to like to puke….. all over... | 1,760,371,719.686433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/forget-pixel-art-try-subpixels/ | Forget Pixel Art: Try Subpixels | Al Williams | [
"Art"
] | [
"crt",
"pixel art",
"subpixel"
] | [Japhy Riddle] was tired of creating pixel art. He went to
subpixel art
. The idea is that since each color pixel is composed of three subpixels, your display is actually three times as dense as you think it is. As long as you don’t care about the colors, of course.
Is it practical? No, although it is related to the Bayer filter algorithm and font antialiasing. You can also use subpixel manipulation to hide messages in plain sight.
[Japhy] shows how it all works using Photoshop, but you could do the same steps with anything that can do advanced image manipulation. Of course, you are assuming the subpixel mask is identical is for any given device, but apparently, they are mostly the same these days. You could modify the process to account for different masks.
Of course, since the subpixels are smaller, scaling has to change. In the end, you get a strange-looking image made up of tiny dots. Strange? Yes. Surreal? You bet. Useful? Well, tell us why you did it in the comments!
Pixel art isn’t just for
CRTs
. However, subpixel art assumes that the pixels can be divided up,
which is not always the case
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065506",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-11-24T00:53:13",
"content": "This would be nice for anyone looking at photographs on the typical computer monitor. What you generally get is about 100 DPI resolution, pixels per inch really, out of the normal consumer displays. All the ... | 1,760,371,719.79932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/close-shave-for-an-old-oscilloscope-saved-with-a-sticky-note/ | Close Shave For An Old Oscilloscope Saved With A Sticky Note | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"attenuator",
"oscilloscope",
"repair",
"Tek",
"tektronix",
"tin whiskers"
] | When you tear into an old piece of test equipment, you’re probably going to come up against some surprises. That’s especially true of high-precision gear like oscilloscopes from the time before ASICs and ADCs, which had to accomplish so much with discrete components and a lot of engineering ingenuity.
Unfortunately, though, those clever hacks that made everything work
sometimes come back to bite you
, as [Void Electronics] learned while bringing this classic Tektronix 466 scope back to life.
A previous video
revealed that the “Works fine, powers up” eBay listing for this scope wasn’t entirely accurate, as it was DOA. That ended up being a bad op-amp in the power supply, which was easily fixed. Once powered up, though, another, more insidious problem cropped up with the vertical attenuator, which failed with any setting divisible by two.
With this curious symptom in mind, [Void] got to work on the scope. Old analog Tek scopes like this use a bank of attenuator modules switched in and out of the signal path by a complex mechanical system of cams. It seemed like one of the modules, specifically the 4x attenuator, was the culprit. [Void] did the obvious first test and compared the module against the known good 4x module in the other channel of the dual-channel scope, but surprisingly, the module worked fine. That meant the problem had to be on the PCB that the module lives on. Close examination with the help of some magnification revealed the culprit —
tin whiskers
had formed, stretching out from a pad to chassis ground. The tiny metal threads were shorting the signal to ground whenever the 4x module was switched into the signal path. The solution? A quick flick with a sticky note to remove the whiskers!
This was a great fix and a fantastic lesson in looking past the obvious and being observant. It puts us in the mood for breaking out our old Tek scope and seeing what wonders — and challenges — it holds. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065468",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T22:03:03",
"content": "An extremely unlikely find, however not impossible. One would never think to look for tin whiskers within an assembly produced prior to the widespread use of ROHS solder, but ROHS solder may have been used b... | 1,760,371,719.851031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/3d-printed-boat-uses-tank-tracks-for-amphibious-propulsion/ | 3D Printed Boat Uses Tank Tracks For Amphibious Propulsion | Lewin Day | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"snowmobile",
"tracked vehicle",
"tracks"
] | Boats normally get around with propellers or water jets for propulsion. Occasionally, they use paddles. [Engineering After Hours] claims he is “changing the boat game forever” with his new 3D printed boat design
that uses a tank tread for propulsion instead
. Forgive him for the hyperbole of the YouTuber. It’s basically a modified paddle design, but it’s also pretty cool.
It works on land, even if it doesn’t steer well!
The basic idea is simple enough—think “floating snowmobile” and you’re in the ballpark. In the water, the chunky tank track provides forward propulsion with its paddle-like treads. It’s not that much different from a paddle wheel steamer. However, where it diverges is that it’s more flexible than a traditional paddle wheel.
The tracked design is actually pretty good at propelling the boat in shallow water without getting stuck. In fact, it works pretty well on dirt, too! The video covers the basic concept, but it also goes into some detail regarding optimizing the design, too. Getting the float and track geometry right is key to performance, after all.
If you’re looking to build an oddball amphibious craft, maybe
working with the snowmobile concept
is worth your engineering time. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065437",
"author": "Sailingfree",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T20:31:35",
"content": "Or they can also get around using sails, or oars, or(canoe/kayak) paddles…… not everything needs to be motorised, noisy or splashy!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,720.245273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/open-source-forced-innovation-and-making-good-products/ | Open Source, Forced Innovation, And Making Good Products | Elliot Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"3d printer",
"newsletter",
"open hardware",
"open source hardware",
"printer",
"prusa"
] | The open-source hardware business landscape is no doubt a tough one, but is it actually tougher than for closed-source hardware? That question has been on our minds since the announcement that the latest 3D printer design from former open-source hardware stalwarts Prusa Research
seems like it’s not going to come with design files
.
Ironically, the new Core One is exactly the printer that enthusiasts have been begging Prusa to make for the last five years or more. Since seeing hacker printers like
the Voron
and even crazy machines like
The 100
whip out prints at incredible speed, the decade-old fundamental design of Prusa’s i3 series looks like a slow and dated, if reliable, workhorse. “Bed slinger” has become a bit of a pejorative for this printer architecture in some parts of the 3DP community. So it’s sweet to see Prusa come out with the printer that everyone wants them to make, only it comes with the bitter pill of their first truly closed-source design.
Is the act of not sharing the design files going to save them? Is it even going to matter? We would argue that it’s entirely irrelevant. We don’t have a Core One in our hands, but we can’t imagine that there is anything super secret going on inside that couldn’t be reverse engineered by any other 3DP company within a week or so. If anything, they’re playing catch up with other similar designs. So why not play to one of their greatest strengths – the engaged crowd of hackers who would most benefit from having the design files?
Of course, Prusa’s decision to not release the design files doesn’t mean that they’re turning their backs on the community. They are also going to offer an upgrade package to turn your current i3 MK4 printer into the new Core One, which is about as hacker-friendly a move as is possible. They still offer kit versions of the printers at a discount, and they continue to support their open-source slicer software.
But this one aspect, the move away from radical openness, still strikes us as bittersweet. We don’t have access to their books, of course, but we can’t imagine that not providing the design files gains them much, and it will certainly damage them a little in the eyes of their most devoted fans. We hope the Core One does well, but we also hope that people don’t draw the wrong lesson from this – that it does well
because
it went closed source. If we could run the experiment both ways, we’d put our money on it doing even better if they released the design files.
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
! | 46 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065358",
"author": "Greg",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T15:50:29",
"content": "Imagine if the next Bambu flagship announced for beginning of next year is also easy to repair… The difference between both would become the features and the Core One already has less than the X1C (no flow c... | 1,760,371,720.186286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/3d-space-can-be-tiled-with-corner-free-shapes/ | 3D Space Can Be Tiled With Corner-free Shapes | Donald Papp | [
"Science"
] | [
"math",
"soft cell",
"tesselation",
"tiling"
] | Tiling a space with a repeated pattern that has no gaps or overlaps (a structure known as a tessellation) is what led mathematician [Gábor Domokos] to ponder a question: how few corners can a shape have and still fully tile a space? In a 2D the answer is two, and
a 3D space can be tiled in shapes that have no corners at all
, called
soft cells
.
These shapes can be made in a few different ways, and some are shown here. While they may have sharp edges there are no corners, or points where two or more line segments meet. Shapes capable of tiling a 2D space need a minimum of two corners, but in 3D the rules are different.
A great example of a natural soft cell is found in the chambers of a nautilus shell, but this turned out to be far from obvious. A cross-section of a nautilus shell shows a cell structure with obvious corners, but it turns out that’s just an artifact of looking at a 2D slice. When viewed in full 3D — which the team could do thanks to a micro CT scan available online — there are no visible corners in the structure. Once they knew what to look for, it was clear that soft cells are present in a variety of natural forms in our world.
[Domokos] not only seeks a better mathematical understanding of these shapes that seem common in our natural world but also wonders how they might relate to aperiodicity, or the ability of a shape to tile a space without making a repeating pattern.
Penrose Tiles
are probably the most common example. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065325",
"author": "Gordon M Shephard Jr",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T13:40:39",
"content": "Nautiluses don’t know how to make corners.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8065327",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2024-11... | 1,760,371,720.314952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/23/drilling-rig-makes-accurate-holes-in-seconds/ | Drilling Rig Makes Accurate Holes In Seconds | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"drill",
"drilling",
"jig",
"power drill",
"wood"
] | Drilling holes can be quite time consuming work, particularly if you have to drill a lot of them. Think about all the hassle of grabbing a part, fixturing it in the drill press, lining it up, double checking, and then finally making the hole. That takes some time, and that’s no good if you’ve got lots of parts to drill. There’s an easy way around that, though.
Build yourself a rad jig like [izzy swan] did.
The first jig we get to see is simple. It has a wooden platter, which hosts a fixture for a plastic enclosure to slot perfectly into place. Also on the platter is a regular old power drill. The platter also has a crank handle which, when pulled, pivots the platter, runs the power drill, and forces it through the enclosure in the exact right spot. It’s makes drilling a hole in the enclosure a repeatable operation that takes just a couple of seconds. The jig gets it right every time.
The video gets better from there, though. We get to see even niftier jigs that feature multiple drills, all doing their thing in concert with just one pull of a lever. [izzy] then shows us how these jigs are built from the ground up. It’s compelling stuff.
If you’re doing any sort of DIY manufacturing in real numbers, you’ve probably had to drill a lot of holes before.
Jig making skills
could really help you if that’s the case. Video after the break. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065313",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T13:19:05",
"content": "For me it looks like the hole is a bit crooked at 6:37. The drill is not lined up straight? Maybe classical xample how you can make lots of damage with little effort.For the single hole, drill press isn’t t... | 1,760,371,720.371977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/transforming-drone-drives-and-flies/ | Transforming Drone Drives And Flies | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"dRehmFlight",
"quadcopter",
"transformer robot"
] | Vehicles that change their shape and form to adapt to their operating environment have long captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts, and building one remains a perennial project dream for many makers. Now, [Michael Rechtin] has made the dream a bit more accessible with a 3D printed
quadcopter that seamlessly transforms into a tracked ground vehicle
.
The design tackles a critical engineering challenge: most multi-mode vehicles struggle with the vastly different rotational speeds required for flying and driving. [Michael]’s solution involves using printed prop guards as wheels, paired with lightweight tracks. An extra pair of low-speed brushless motors are mounted between each wheel pair, driving the system via sprockets that engage directly with the same teeth that drive the tracks.
The transition magic happens through a four-bar linkage mounted in a parallelogram configuration, with a linear actuator serving as the bottom bar. To change from flying to driving configuration the linear actuator retracts, rotating the wheels/prop guards to a vertical position. A servo then rotates the top bar, lifting the body off the ground. While this approach adds some weight — an inevitable compromise in multi-purpose machines — it makes for a practical solution.
Powering this transformer is a Teensy 4.0 flight controller running
dRehmFlight
, a hackable flight stabilization package we’ve seen successfully adapted for everything from
VTOLs
to
actively stabilized hydrofoils
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065295",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T11:50:52",
"content": "driving the system via sprockets that engage directly with the same teeth that drive the tracks.Pretty sure that’s a “nope” right there. From the picture alone one can see that the wheels have a track of g... | 1,760,371,720.417457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/mammalian-ancestors-shed-light-on-the-great-dying/ | Mammalian Ancestors Shed Light On The Great Dying | Navarre Bartz | [
"Science"
] | [
"carbon dioxide",
"climate",
"climate change",
"co2",
"extinction event",
"paleobiology",
"paleoclimatology",
"paleontology",
"Pangea",
"volcano",
"volcanology"
] | As we move through the Sixth Extinction, it can be beneficial to examine what caused massive die-offs in the past.
Lystrosaurus
specimens from South Africa
have been found
that may help clarify what happened 250 million years ago. [via
IFLScience
]
The
Permian-Triassic Extinction Event
, or the Great Dying, takes the cake for the worst extinction we know about so far on our pale blue dot. The primary cause is thought to be intense volcanic activity which formed the Siberian Traps and sent global CO
2
levels soaring. In Karoo Basin of South Africa, 170 tetrapod fossils were found that lend credence to the theory. Several of the
Lystrosaurus
skeletons were preserved in a spread eagle position that “are interpreted as drought-stricken carcasses that collapsed and died of starvation in and alongside dried-up water sources.”
As Pangea dried from increased global temperatures, drought struck many different terrestrial ecosystems and changed them from what they were before. The scientists say this “likely had a profound and lasting influence on the evolution of tetrapods.” As we come up on the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, perhaps you should give thanks for the prehistoric volcanism that led to your birth?
If you want to explore more about how CO
2
can lead to life forms having a bad day, have a look at
paleoclimatology and what it tells us about today
. In more recent history, have a look at how we can
detect volcanic eruptions from all around the world
and how you can learn more about the Earth by
dangling an antenna from a helicopter
. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065200",
"author": "SayWhat?",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T03:41:22",
"content": "There’s hacks, and then there’s hacks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8065208",
"author": "maybe",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T04:51... | 1,760,371,720.542776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/lasers-galvos-action-a-quest-for-laser-mastery/ | Lasers, Galvos, Action: A Quest For Laser Mastery | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"galvanomirror",
"galvo",
"laser",
"laser projector",
"python",
"RGB laser",
"spectometry",
"stm32",
"STM32 timer"
] | If you’re into hacking hardware and bending light to your will, [Shoaib Mustafa]’s latest project is bound to spike your curiosity. Combining lasers to project multi-colored beams onto a screen is ambitious enough, but doing it with a galvanomirror, STM32 microcontroller, and mostly scratch-built components? That’s next-level tinkering. This project isn’t just a feast for the eyes—it’s a adventure of control algorithms, hardware hacks, and the occasional ‘oops, that didn’t work.’ You can follow
[Shoaib]’s build log and join the journey here
.
The nitty-gritty is where it gets fascinating. Shoaib digs into STM32 Timers, explaining how modes like Timer, Counter, and PWM are leveraged for precise control. From adjusting laser intensity to syncing galvos for projection, every component is tuned for maximum flexibility. Need lasers aligned? Enter spectrometry and optical diffusers for precision wavelength management. Want real-time tweaks? A Python-controlled GUI handles the instruments while keeping the setup minimalist. This isn’t just a DIY build—it’s a work of art in problem-solving, with successes like a working simulation and implemented algorithms along the way.
If laser projection or STM32 wizardry excites you, this build will inspire. We featured
a similar project by [Ben]
back in September, and if you dig deep into our archives, you can eat your heart out on decades of
laser projector projects
. Explore
Shoaib’s complete log on Hackaday.io
. It is—literally—hacking at its most brilliant. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065218",
"author": "Shoaib Mustafa",
"timestamp": "2024-11-23T06:13:38",
"content": "Thank you, Heidi, for taking the time to review the build log and for your kind words about my work. While I feel it pales in comparison to the incredible projects I’ve admired and learned from on ... | 1,760,371,720.626335 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/build-yourself-a-useful-resistor-decade-box/ | Build Yourself A Useful Resistor Decade Box | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"decade box",
"resistor",
"tools"
] | If you’ve ever worked with guitar pedals or analog audio gear, you’ve probably realized the value of a resistor decade box. They substitute for a resistor in a circuit and let you quickly flick through a few different values at the twist of a knob. You can still buy them if you know where to look,
but [M Caldeira] decided to build his own.
At its core, the decade box relies on a number of 11-position rotary switches. Seven are used in this case—covering each “decade” of resistances, from 1 ohm to 10 ohm and all the way up to 1 megaohm. The 11 positions on each switch allows the selection of a given resistance. For example, position 7 on the 100 ohm switch selects 700 ohms, and adds it to the total resistance of the box.
[M Caldeira] did a good job of building the basic circuit, as well as assembling it in an attractive, easy-to-use way. It should serve him well on his future audio projects and many others besides. It’s a simple thing, but sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than building your own tools.
We’ve seen other neat designs like this in the past, including
an SMD version
and this
neat digital decade box
. Video after the break. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065152",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T21:22:49",
"content": "Nice to see the resistors are easily-replaceable robust through-hole components. Because, inevitably, one resistor gets burnt one day, rendering the whole box markedly less useful.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,720.471618 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/oled-screen-mounting-without-the-pain/ | OLED Screen Mounting, Without The Pain | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"oled",
"panel mount"
] | There was a time when no self-respecting electronics engineer would build a big project without at least one panel meter. They may be a rare part here in 2024, but we find ourselves reminded of them by [24Eng]’s project. It’s
a 3D printed housing for one of those common small OLED displays
, designed to be mounted on a panel with just a single round hole. Having had exactly this problem in the past trying to create a rectangular hole, we can immediately see the value in this.
It solves the problem by encasing the display in a printed shell, and passing a coarsely threaded hollow cylinder behind it for attachment to the panel and routing wires. This is where we are reminded of panel meters, many of which would have a similar sized protrusion on their rear housing their mechanism.
The result is a neatly made OLED display mounting, with a hole that’s ease itself to create. Perhaps now
you’ll not be afraid to make your own panels
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065133",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T20:29:59",
"content": "Nice solution, but that asymmetry itches my OCD.And, like the linked post mentions, less fugly screw heads are an option.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,371,720.591347 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/hack-on-self-the-un-crash-alarm/ | Hack On Self: The Un-Crash Alarm | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [] | Ever get home, tired after work, sit down on a couch, and spend an hour or two sitting down without even managing to change into your home clothes? It’s a seriously unpleasant in-between state – almost comfortable, but you know you’re not really at rest, likely hungry, and even your phone battery is likely about to die. This kind of tiredness can get self-reinforcing real quick – especially if you’re too tired to cook food, or you’re stuck in an uncomfortable position. It’s like the inverse of
the marshmallow test
– instead of a desire, you’re dealing with lack thereof.
I’ve been dealing with this problem a lot within the last two years’ time. Day to day, I could lose hours to this kind of tiredness. It gets worse when I’m sick, and, it’s gotten worse on average after a few bouts of COVID. It’s not just tiredness, either – distractability and tiredness go hand in hand, and they play into each other, too.
My conclusion, so far, was pretty simple. When I’m tired, delayed but proper rest is way better than “resting” in a half-alert state, even if that takes effort I might not have yet. So, it’s important that I can get up, even if I’m already in a “crashed” position. Sure, I could use tricks like “do not sit down until I’m ready to rest”, but that only works sometimes – other times, the tiredness is too much to handle.
Audio files and sound playback library in hand, negative reinforcement methods fresh in my mind, I went and cooked together a very simple solution.
Anti-Crash Script
When I noticed myself being tired and in a “crash” state, I would think “oh, no worries, I’m going to get up any minute now”. Of course, it was never just a minute, and I decided to hook into that realization, subsurface but close enough that I could justify some intervention to myself.
Would you be surprised if I told you the solution was to ring a siren into my headphones? The algorithm is simple – every time I’m “crashed” and planning to get up “real soon”, I press a button that starts a five-minute timer, programmed to ring a siren into my headphones. When the seconds stop ticking and the siren triggers, I have a choice – get up and then re-trigger the alarm for five more minutes. There is no second choice, really – I don’t give myself one. The part where I get up before turning the siren off is crucial, of course – though, in case of missing willpower, an accelerometer measuring activity could do as well.
Not that much of my willpower would be required – turned out, it typically would be enough of a shock to realize just how quickly five minutes have passed. Consistently, every time I got tired, time would pass much quicker than I could feel it, and the “oh damn it’s been five minutes already” thought made for a surprisingly powerful reality check.
Initially, the script was a tiny local webserver – I had some Flask examples fresh in my mental toolbox, so I took those and wrote two tiny HTML pages,
crash
and
uncrash
. The
crash
page received a
seconds
argument, indicating how many seconds to wait before ringing the alarm, and the
uncrash
page stopped the alarm. Keep the two webpages open, and hit Ctrl+R on the page I need – simple enough.
Resistance Is Counterproductive
Later on, I beautified the pages a little – adding background colours, so that it’d be easy for me to find the pages in my laptop’s window switcher and not get confused between them. That was my first attempt to make the crash/uncrash “hooks” more accessible – since, unsurprisingly, having to Alt-Tab a couple times before finding the right page required some mental energy, so I would often forget about them altogether, and developing a habit of using these pages was significantly harder. Thinking back to the very first article and principles I outlined in it – reducing resistance to use was a must.
So, the “crash” webpages got turned into keybinds accessible on my laptop globally. Surprisingly, despite the
crash
endpoint’s arbitrary integer delay, I didn’t need much granularity. Right now, I only use three buttons , “uncrash”, “crash in 300 seconds” (5 minutes), and “crash in 1 second” (immediate). The “immediate crash” button was a surprisingly helpful one, too. See, the “oh, five minutes truly can pass quicker than expected” lesson has stuck with me – so, when I’d notice myself crashing, I knew better than to waste time trusting in the “just a few minutes” notice.
The keybinds got me to use the script more often – which has helped me find more usecases, and use it even when I’m not sick or super tired. Really, most of the trouble nowadays is noticing when I need to press the button – which, generally, is in the mornings, when I am still groggy and a scheduled appointment might not feel as important as it actually is.
One important aspect turned out to be retriggering the alarm instead of turning it off after five minutes. I get up either way, but usually, the crash doesn’t – I might “crash” immediately afterwards, or a minute-two later. Stopping the alarm ended up being a very intentional “crash is over” decision – so, the “stop” button never got into my muscle memory. I’ve indeed had muscle-memory cycle restarts, giving myself five more minutes without realizing – but I’ve never had muscle-memory stops, which is nice, because stopping the script without even realizing it would be a critical failure condition.
Retrospective: It’s Great, Somehow
Anything missing? Definitely! For one, there are some good keybinds I could add, even if maybe they wouldn’t fundamentally impact how the script is functioning. Say I’ve woken up, and I have to get somewhere early – so I use the “crash” script to get up and get with the gravity of my current situation. As I run around the house doing morning chores, five minutes pass and the alarm rings again, even though I’m currently actively doing something around the house.
Now, running back to the laptop and pressing a keybind isn’t a problem. The problem is that I could be pressing the “reset alarm” button in two different states – either I’m doing well, or I’m not, but it’s the same button. Making two different buttons, one “doing good” and one “still crashed”, would help me collect metadata I could use for a good purpose – and, quite likely, add a trigger for some sort of positive reinforcement.
Other than that? This script has eliminated yet another common failure mode from my life – and, once again, helped improve focus. It’s as simple as simple goes, and, it’s gotten me to a more comfortable point – often, making a difference between an evening lost to tiredness, and an evening of recuperation.
One thing you might notice – to actually work properly, this script requires always-on, wireless headphones. In the next article, I’ll talk about the wireless headphone device I’ve built, why I had to build one instead of buying one, and how that device has helped me solved a bunch of other problems I didn’t realize I had. | 52 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065078",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T18:35:16",
"content": "Take some LSD or smoke some marijuanaAnd this won’t be a problem for you…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8065079",
"author": "... | 1,760,371,720.806859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/hackaday-podcast-episode-297-prusa-eschews-open-source-hardware-the-lemontron-prints-upside-down-and-the-vecdec-cyberdeck-does-minority-report/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 297: Prusa Eschews Open Source Hardware, The Lemontron Prints Upside-Down, And The Vecdec Cyberdeck Does Minority Report | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week on the Podcast, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.
First up in the news: Elliot was at
Electronica
and
spotted a wild Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5
. And just as excitingly,
FreeCAD has finally reached version 1.0
, which means it’s stable and ready for real work.
Kristina is getting tired of losing at What’s That Sound, so she’ll have to come up with some to stump you all. Can
you
get this week’s sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
Then it’s on to the hacks and such, but first, there’s even more news and opinion to be had in Tom’s review of Prusa’s new printer, which happens to be closed-source. Then we’ll discuss another printer that prints upside-down, an elegant cyberdeck, and a cyberpunk pocket watch. Finally, we talk about the Great Redbox Cleanup, and take a look at man-made stalactites.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download in
DRM-free MP3
and savor at your leisure.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 297 Show Notes:
News:
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Seen In The Wild
FreeCAD Version 1.0 Released
What’s that Sound?
Know that sound?
Submit your answer for a chance at a Hackaday Podcast T-Shirt
.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
With Core ONE, Prusa’s Open Source Hardware Dream Quietly Dies
Spotted At Supercon: Glowtape Wearable Display
Glowxels … – YouTube
If Life Gives You Lemons, Build This Lemontron
Positron 3D
The Vecdec Cyberdeck Is More Than A Pretty Case
AlphaSmart Neo Teardown: This Is The Way To Write Without Distractions
Dial-up Internet Using The Viking DLE-200B Telephone Line Simulator
A Cyberpunk Pocketwatch
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Stepping On LEGO For Science
Simple Stack Of Ferrites Shows How Fluxgate Magnetometers Work
Simple Hydrogen Generator Makes Bubbles And Looks Cool
Kristina’s Picks:
ESP32 Hosts A USB Keyboard In This Typewriter
Ruined 1993 ThinkPad Tablet Brought Back From The Brink
The Barcode Beast Likes Your CDs
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Great Redbox Cleanup: One Company Is Hauling Away America’s Last DVD Kiosks
Redbox Is Dead, But The Machines Are Kind Of Hanging On
Boss Byproducts: Calthemites Are Man-Made Cave Dwellers | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065157",
"author": "JMR",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T22:22:34",
"content": "NO Christina! NO Eliot! Don’t spend all that money! Buy a couple ATA boxes to build your home intercoms. Then you can still set it up to just ring if you want. Way cheaper and way more options. So many op... | 1,760,371,720.848118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/enhiker-helps-you-decide-if-its-a-good-day-to-hike/ | Enhiker Helps You Decide If Its A Good Day To Hike | Lewin Day | [
"green hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"gnss",
"gps",
"hiking",
"weather"
] | Many of us check the weather before heading out for the day — we want to know if we’re dressed (or equipped) properly to handle what Mother Nature has planned for us. This is even more important if you’re going out hiking, because you’re going to be out in a more rugged environment. To aid in this regard,
[Mukesh Sankhla] built a tool called Enhiker
.
The concept is simple; it’s intended to tell you everything you need to know about current and pending conditions before heading out on a hike. It’s based around
Unihiker
, a single-board computer which also conveniently features a 2.8-inch touch screen. It’s a quad-core ARM device that runs Debian and has WiFi and Bluetooth built in, too. The device is able to query its GPS/GNSS receiver for location information, and then uses this to get accurate weather data online from OpenWeatherMap. It makes some basic analysis, too. For example, it can tell you if it’s a good time to go out, or if there’s a storm likely rolling in, or if the conditions are hot enough to make heat stroke a concern.
It’s a nifty little gadget, and it’s neat to have all the relevant information displayed on one compact device. We’d love to see it upgraded further with cellular connectivity in addition to WiFi; this would make it more capable when out and about.
We’ve seen some other neat hiking hacks before, too, like this
antenna built with a hiking pole
. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own neat hacks for when you’re out on the trail, don’t hesitate to
let us know
! | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065062",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T18:02:35",
"content": "and you can’t lookup the weather beforehand on your phone ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8065066",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T1... | 1,760,371,721.024195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/this-week-in-security-footguns-bing-worms-and-gogs/ | This Week In Security: Footguns, Bing Worms, And Gogs | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"abandonware",
"Footguns",
"This Week in Security",
"wormable"
] | The world of security research is no stranger to the phenomenon of not-a-vulnerability. That’s where a security researcher finds something interesting, reports it to the project, and it turns out that it’s something other than a real security vulnerability. There are times that this just means a researcher got over-zealous on reporting, and didn’t really understand what was found. There is at least one other case, the footgun.
A footgun is a feature in a language, library, or tool that too easily leads to catastrophic mistake — shooting ones self in the foot. The main difference between a footgun and a vulnerability is that a footgun is intentional, and a vulnerability is not. That line is sometimes blurred, so an undocumented footgun could also be a vulnerability, and one possible solution is to properly document the quirk. But sometimes the footgun should really just be eliminated. And that’s what the article linked above is about. [Alex Leahu]
takes a look at a handful of examples, which are not only educational, but also a good exercise in thinking through how to improve them
.
The first example is Tesla from the Elixer language. Tesla is an HTTP/HTTPS client, not unlike libcurl, and the basic usage pattern is to initialize an instance with a
base_url
defined. So we could create an instance, and set the URL base to
https://hackaday.com
. Then, to access a page or endpoint on that base URL, you just call a
Tesla.get()
, and supply the client instance and path. The whole thing might look like:
client = build_client(config, "https://hackaday.com", headers)
response = Tesla.get(client, "/floss")
All is well, as this code snippet does exactly what you expect. The footgun comes when your path isn’t just
/floss
. If that path starts with a scheme, like
http://
or
https://
, the base URL is ignored, and path is used as the entire URL instead. Is that a vulnerability? It’s clearly documented, so no, definitely not. Is this a footgun, that is probably responsible for vulnerabilities in other code? Yes, very likely. And here’s the interesting question: What is the ideal resolution? How do you get rid of the footgun?
There are two related approaches that come to mind. The first would be to add a function to the library’s API, a
Tesla.get_safe()
that will never replace the base URL, and update the documentation and examples to use the safe version. The related solution is to then take the extra step of deprecating the unsafe version of the function.
The other example we’ll look at is Psychopg, a PostSQL driver library for Python. The example of correctly using the driver is
cur.execute("INSERT INTO numbers VALUES (%s, %s)", (10, 20))
, while the incorrect example is
cur.execute("INSERT INTO numbers VALUES (%s, %s)" % (10, 20))
. The difference may not seem huge, but the first example is sending the values of 10 and 20 as arguments to the library. The second example is doing an printf-like Python string formatting with the
%
operator. That means it bypasses all the protections this library has to prevent SQL injection. And it’s trivially easy because the library uses
%
notation. The ideal solution here is pretty straightforward. Deprecate the
%
SQL notation, and use a different character that isn’t overloaded with a particularly dangerous language functino.
Wormable Bing
[pedbap]
went looking for a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaw on Microsoft’s services
. The interesting thing here is that Bing is part of that crowd of Microsoft websites, that users automatically get logged in to with their Microsft accounts. An XSS flaw there could have interesting repercussions for the entire system. And since we’re talking about it, there was obviously something there.
The flaw in question was found on Bing maps, where a specific URL can load a map with custom features, though the use of json file specified in the URL. That json file can also include a Keyhole Markup Language file, a KML. These files have a lot of flexibility, like including raw HTML. There is some checking to prevent running arbitrary JavaScript, but that was defeated with a simple mixed case string:
jAvAsCriPt:(confirm)(1337)
. Now the example does require a click to launch the JS, so it’s unclear if this is actually wormable in the 0-click sort of way. Regardless, it’s a fun find, and netted [pedbap] a bounty.
Right There in Plain Text
[Ian] from Shells.Systems was
inside a Palo Alto Global Protect installation
, a VPN server running on a Windows machine. And there was something unusual in the system logs. The log contained redacted passwords. This is an odd thing to come across, particularly for a VPN server like this, because the server shouldn’t ever have the passwords after creation.
So, to prove the point, [Ian] wrote an extractor program, that
grabs the plaintext passwords from system memory
. As far as we can tell, this doesn’t have a CVE or a fix, as it’s a program weakness rather than a vulnerability.
Your Gogs Need to Go
Speaking of issues that haven’t been patched, if you’re running
gogs
, it’s probably time to retire it. The latest release
has a Remote Code Execution vulnerability
, where an authenticated user can create a symlink to a real file on the gogs server, and edit the contents. This is a very quick route to arbitrary code execution.
The real problem here isn’t this specific vulnerability, or that it hasn’t been patched yet, or even that
gogs
hasn’t seen a release since 2023. The real problem is that the project seems to have been almost completely abandoned. The last change was only 2 weeks ago, but looking through the change log, almost all of the recent changes appear to be automated changes. The vulnerability was reported back in August, the 90 day disclosure deadline came and went, and there was never a word from the project. That’s concerning. It’s reminiscent of the sci-fi trope, when some system keeps running itself even after all the humans have left.
Bits and bytes
The NPM account takeover hack
now has an Open Source checking tool
. This is the issue of expired domains still listed on the developer email addresses on NPM packages. If an attacker can register the dangling domain, it’s possible to take over the package as well. The team at Laburity are on it, with the release of this tool.
Lutra Security researchers
have an interesting trick up their sleeves
, when it comes to encrypted emails. What if the same encrypted text encrypted to different readable messages for each different reader? With some clever use of both encryption and the
multipart/alternative
MIME type, that;s what Salamander/MIME pulls off.
And finally, it’s
time to dive in to DOMPurify bypasses again
. That’s the JavaScript library for HTML sanitizing using the browser’s own logic to guarantee there aren’t any inconsistent parsing issues. And [Mizu] has the lowdown on how to pull off an inconsistent parsing attack. The key here is mutations. When DOMPurify runs an HTML document through the browser’s parsing engine, that HTML is often modified — hence the Purify in the title. What’s not obvious is that a change made during this first iteration through the document can have unexpected consequences for the next iteration through the document. It’s a fun read, and only part one, so keep your eyes peeled for the rest of it! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8065060",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T17:49:22",
"content": "are footguns developed by software sadists? i sometimes have the feeling there is a League of Undercover Sadists with a prominent infiltration of the car and software industry…",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,721.075694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/a-surprisingly-simple-omnidirectional-display/ | A Surprisingly Simple Omnidirectional Display | Danie Conradie | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"LED screen",
"persistance of vision",
"zoetrope"
] | Old-school technology can spark surprising innovations. By combining the vintage zoetrope concept with digital displays, [Mike Ando] created the
Andotrope
, a surprisingly simple omnidirectional display.
Unlike other 3D displays, the Andotrope lets you view a normal 2D video or images that appear identical irrespective of your viewing angle. The prototype
demonstrated in the video below
consists of a single smart phone and a black cylinder spinning at 1,800 RPM. A narrow slit in front of each display creates a “scanning” view that our brain interprets as a complete image, thanks to persistence of vision. [Mike] has also created larger version with a higher frame rate, by mounting two tablets back-to-back.
Surprisingly, the Andotrope appears to be an original implementation, and neither [Mike] nor we can find any similar devices with a digital display. We did cover one that used a
paper printout
in a a similar fashion. [Mike] is currently patenting his design, seeing the potential for smaller displays that need multi-angle visibility. The high rotational speed creates significant centrifugal force, which might limit the size of installations. Critically, display selection matters — any screen flicker becomes glaringly obvious at speed.
This device might be the first of its kind, but we’ve seen plenty of zoetropes over the years, including ones with
digital displays
or ingenious
time-stretching tricks
. | 37 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8064960",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T12:27:50",
"content": "Nice coffee machine!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8064977",
"author": "Beaker",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T13:15:06",
"content": "That’s ama... | 1,760,371,720.971135 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/22/learn-about-robot-arms-by-building-pedro-2-0/ | Learn About Robot Arms By Building Pedro 2.0 | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"robot arm",
"robots"
] | Whether you’re a kid or a kid at heart, learning about science and engineering can be a lot more fun if it’s
practical.
You could sit around learning about motors and control theory, or you could build a robot arm and play with it. If the latter sounds like your bag of hammers,
you might like Pedro 2.0.
Pedro 2.0 is a simple 3D-printable robot arm intended for STEAM education. If you’re new to that acronym, it basically refers to the combination of artistic skills with education around science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The build relies on components that are readily available pretty much around the world—SG90 servo motors, ball bearings, and an Arduino running the show. There’s also an NRF24L01 module for wireless remote control. All the rest of the major mechanical parts can be whipped up on a 3D printer, and you don’t need a particularly special one, either. Any old FDM machine should do the job just fine if it’s calibrated properly.
If you fancy dipping your toes in the world of robot arms, this is a really easy starting point that will teach you a lot along the way. From there, you can delve into
more advanced designs,
or even consider
constructing your own tentacles.
The world really is your
octopus
oyster. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8064974",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2024-11-22T13:12:51",
"content": "“If you’re new to that acronym”I’m not new to it, just incredibly annoyed by people using it. There is no reason to combine STEM with the A. It was started by the RISD to insult science/tech/engin... | 1,760,371,721.259653 |
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