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https://hackaday.com/2024/09/29/internet-connected-ti-84-to-cut-your-academic-career-short/ | Internet Connected TI-84 To Cut Your Academic Career Short | Danie Conradie | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"calculator",
"ChatGPT",
"ESP32",
"ti-84"
] | In an educational project with ethically questionable applications, [ChromaLock] has converted the ubiquitous TI-84 calculator into
the ultimate cheating device.
The foundation of this hack lies in the TI-84’s link protocol, which has been a mainstay in
calculator mods
for years. [ChromaLock] uses this interface to connect to a tiny WiFi-enabled XIAO ESP32-C3 module hidden in the calculator. It’s mounted on a custom PCB with a simple MOSFET-based level shifting circuit, and slots neatly into a space on the calculator rear cover. The connecting wires are soldered directly to the pads of the 2.5 mm jack, and to the battery connections for power.
But what does this mod do? It connects your calculator to the internet and gives you a launcher with several applets. These allow you to view images badly pixelated images on the TI-84’s screen, text-chat with an accomplice, install more apps or notes, or hit up ChatGPT for some
potentially hallucinated answers
. Inputting long sections of text on the calculator’s keypad is a time-consuming process, so [ChromaLock] teased a camera integration, which will probably make use of newer LLMs image input capabilities. The ESP32 doesn’t handle all the heavy lifting, and needs to connect to an external server for more complex interfaces.
To prevent pre-installed programs from being used for cheating on TI-84s, examiners will often wipe the memory or put it into test mode. This mod can circumvent both. Pre-installed programs are not required on the calculator to interface with the hardware module, and installing the launcher is done by sending two variables containing a password and download command to the ESP32 module. The response from the module will also automatically break the calculator out of test mode.
We cannot help but admire [ChromaLock]’s ingenuity and polished implementation, and hopefully our readers are more interested in technical details than academic self-sabotage. For those who need even more capability in their calculator,
we’d suggest checking out the NumWorks
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8045135",
"author": "Charles",
"timestamp": "2024-09-29T08:35:48",
"content": "Love the delicacy on how this article was approached :)It will always baffle me that the most creative students that less need to cheat, are the ones that go into these extents lol",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,371,778.51783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/an-esp32-delivers-perfect-slot-car-control/ | An ESP32 Delivers Perfect Slot Car Control | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"electronic speed control",
"ESP32",
"slot car"
] | If your memory of slot cars as a childhood toy is of lightweight controllers with wire-wound rheostats inside, then you’re many years behind the state of the art when it comes to competitive slot car racing. In that world the full force of modern electronics has been brought to keeping the car on the road, and as an example here’s [Maker Fabio] with a
cutting edge controller that has an ESP32 at its heart
.
It’s obvious that a huge amount of attention has gone into both the physical design of the unit and its software, and the result speaks for itself. The trigger sits on a proper bearing, and the sensor is a Hall-effect device on the PCB. The firmware was written in the Arduino IDE, and through the trigger and a rotary encoder all of its options can be configured on a small OLED display. Individual settings can be configured for each car, and we’re treated to a full explanation of this in the video.
We are told that the files for both software and hardware will be released in due course, as this is still a work in progress for the moment. The video meanwhile provides ample demonstration, so we look forward to the release.
It’s a surprise to find relatively few projects from the slot car world on these pages, given the amount of potential there is in them for electronic improvement.
Here’s one from a few years ago though
.
Thanks [Bri] for the tip! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8045465",
"author": "kodacy",
"timestamp": "2024-09-30T06:38:55",
"content": "Great project and instructions. Thank you for your sharing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8045534",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2024-09... | 1,760,371,778.190984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/the-last-sun-sparc-workstation/ | The Last Sun Sparc Workstation | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"solaris",
"Sun Microsystems"
] | The truth is, our desktop computers today would have been classed as supercomputers only a few decades ago. There was a time when people who needed real desktop power looked down their noses at anyone with a Mac or a PC with any operating system on it. The workstation crowd used Sun computers. Sun used the Sparc processor, and the machine had specs that are laughable now but were enviable in their day. [RetroBytes] shows off Sun’s final entry in the category, the
Ultra 45 from 2007
.
Confusingly, the model numbers don’t necessarily increase. The Ultra 80, for example, is an older computer than the 45. Then there were machines like the Ultra 20, 24, 27, and 40 that all used x86 CPUs. A ’45 had one or two UltraSPARC III 64-bit CPUs running at 1.6 GHz and up to a whopping 16 GB of RAM (the one in the video has 8GB). Sure, we see less powerful computers today, but they are usually Chromebooks or very cheap PCs.
The Ultra line started back in 1995 but went underground for a few years with a re-branding. Sun brought the name back in 2005, and the Ultra 45 hit the streets in 2006, only to discontinue the machine in late 2008. According to [RetroBytes], the Sun team knew the Workstation days were numbered and wanted to produce a final awesome workstation. Partially, the reason for sparing few expenses was that anyone who was buying a SPARC workstation in 2006 probably had a reason not to move to cheaper hardware, so you have them over a proverbial barrel.
We liked the CPU cooler, which looked hefty. Honestly, except for the type of CPUs in it, the box could pass itself off as a mid-range desktop tower today with PCI express sockets. The operating system was Sun’s brand of Unix, Solaris, now owned by Oracle.
Sun’s big competitor for a while was
Apollo
. We’d point out that if all you want is to run Solaris, you
don’t need to buy new old hardware
. | 38 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8045036",
"author": "George B",
"timestamp": "2024-09-29T02:18:17",
"content": "I think I might have an old Ultra 5 in the garage somewhere.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8045195",
"author": "Macarty",
"times... | 1,760,371,778.268282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/dog-poop-drone-cleans-up-the-yard-so-you-dont-have-to/ | Dog Poop Drone Cleans Up The Yard So You Don’t Have To | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks",
"home hacks",
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"computer vision",
"drone",
"machine learning",
"poop",
"quadcopter",
"removal",
"uav"
] | Sometimes you instantly know who’s behind a project from the subject matter alone. So when we saw this
“aerial dog poop removal system”
show up in the tips line, we knew it had to be the work of [Caleb Olson].
If you’re unfamiliar with [Caleb]’s oeuvre, let us refresh your memory. [Caleb] has been on a bit of a dog poop journey, starting with
a machine-learning system
that analyzed security camera footage to detect when the adorable [Twinkie] dropped a deuce in the yard. Not content with just knowing when a poop event has occurred, he automated the task of locating the packages with
a poop-pointing robot laser
. Removal of the poop remained a manual task, one which [Caleb] was keen to outsource, hence the current work.
The video below, from a lightning talk at a conference, is pretty much all we have to go on, and the quality is a bit potato-esque. And while [Caleb]’s PoopCopter is clearly still a prototype, it’s easy to get the gist. Combining data from the previous poop-adjacent efforts, [Caleb] has built a quadcopter that can (or will, someday) be guided to the approximate location of the offending package, home in on it using a downward-looking camera, and autonomously whisk it away.
The retrieval mechanism is the high point for us; rather than a complicated, servo-laden “sky scoop” or something similar, the drone has a bell-shaped container on its belly with a series of geared leaves on the open end. The leaves are open when the drone descends onto the payload, and then close as the drone does a quick rotation around the yaw axis. And, as [Caleb] gleefully notes, the leaves can also open in midair with a high-torque yaw move in the opposite direction; the potential for neighborly hijinx is staggering.
All jokes and puns aside, this looks fantastic, and we can’t wait for more information and a better video. And lest you think [Caleb] only works on “Number Two” problems, never fear — he’s also put considerable work into
automating his offspring
and
taking the awkwardness out of social interactions
. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044986",
"author": "Caleb Olson",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T23:04:40",
"content": "Sky dump!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8045024",
"author": "paxton",
"timestamp": "2024-09-29T01:29:57",
"content": ... | 1,760,371,778.458552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-unlocks-hp-ink-cartridges/ | Man-in-the-Middle PCB Unlocks HP Ink Cartridges | Maya Posch | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"circumvention",
"drm",
"inkjet printer",
"man-in-the-middle"
] | It’s a well-known secret that inkjet ink is being kept at artificially high prices, which is why many opt to forego ‘genuine’ manufacturer cartridges and get third-party ones instead. Many of these third-party ones are so-called re-manufactured ones, where a third-party refills an empty OEM cartridge. This is increasingly being done due to digital rights management (DRM) reasons, with tracking chips added to each cartridge. These chip prohibit e.g. the manual refilling of empty cartridges with a syringe, but with the right tweak or attack can be bypassed, with [Jay Summet]
showing off
an interesting HP cartridge DRM bypass using a physical man-in-the-middle-attack.
This bypass takes the form of a flex PCB with contacts on both sides which align with those on the cartridge and those of the printer. What looks like a single IC in a QFN package is located on the cartridge side, with space for it created inside an apparently milled indentation in the cartridge’s plastic. This allows is to fit flush between the cartridge and HP inkjet printer, intercepting traffic and presumably telling the printer some sweet lies so that you can go on with that print job rather than dash out to the store to get some more overpriced Genuine HP-approved cartridges.
Not that HP isn’t aware or not ticked off about this, mind. Recently they
threatened to brick
HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected, amidst vague handwaving about ‘hackers’ and ‘viruses’ and ‘protecting the users’ with their
Dynamic Security
DRM system. As the many lawsuits regarding this DRM system trickle their way through the legal system, it might be worth it to keep a monochrome laser printer standing by just in case the (HP) inkjet throws another vague error when all you want is to just print a text document. | 151 | 46 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044953",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T20:12:37",
"content": "Dont use inkjets, its a drain of your wallet.And if you save on your printouts the cartridges dry out an you still have to pay more.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,371,778.926495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/vr-headset-with-custom-face-fitting-gets-even-more-custom/ | VR Headset With Custom Face Fitting Gets Even More Custom | Donald Papp | [
"Virtual Reality",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"3d scan",
"custom",
"custom fitting",
"ergonomic",
"headset",
"hmd",
"vr"
] | The Bigscreen Beyond is a small and lightweight VR headset that in part achieves its small size and weight by requiring custom fitting based on a facial scan. [Val’s Virtuals] managed to improve fitment even more by
redesigning a facial interface and using a 3D scan of one’s own head
to fine-tune the result even further. The new designs distribute weight more evenly while also providing an optional flip-up connection.
It may be true that only a minority of people own a Bigscreen Beyond headset, and even fewer of them are willing to DIY their own custom facial interface. But [Val]’s workflow and directions for using Blender to combine a 3D scan of one’s face with his redesigned parts to create a custom-fitted, foam-lined facial interface is good reading, and worth keeping in mind for anyone who designs wearables that could benefit from custom fitting. It’s all spelled out in the project’s documentation — look for the
.txt
file among the 3D models.
We’ve seen a variety of DIY approaches to VR hardware, from
nearly scratch-built headsets
to
lens experiments
, and one thing that’s clear is that better comfort is
always
an improvement. With newer iPhones able to do 3D scanning and
1:1 scale scanning in general becoming more accessible
, we have a feeling we’re going to see more of this DIY approach to ultra-customization. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044904",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T17:47:04",
"content": "Well, certainly better than the Lilygo t-glass",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8045217",
"author": "Felix Domestica",
"timestamp": "2024-09... | 1,760,371,778.390857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/whats-the-deal-with-ai-art/ | What’s The Deal With AI Art? | Elliot Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"art",
"newsletter"
] | A couple weeks ago, we had a kerfuffle here on Hackaday: A writer put out a piece with AI-generated headline art. It was, honestly, pretty good, but it was also subject to all of the usual horrors that get generated along the way. If you have played around with any of the image generators you know the AI-art uncanny style, where it looks good enough at first glance, but then you notice limbs in the wrong place if you look hard enough. We replaced it shortly after an editor noticed.
The story is that the writer couldn’t find any nice visuals to go with the blog post, with was about encoding data in QR codes and printing them out for storage. This is a problem we have frequently here, actually. When people write up a code hack, for instance, there’s usually just no good image to go along with it. Our writers have to get creative. In this case, he tossed it off to Stable Diffusion.
Some commenters were afraid that this meant that we were outsourcing work from our fantastic, and very human, art director Joe Kim, whose trademark style you’ve seen on many of our longer-form original articles. Of course we’re not! He’s a genius, and when we tell him we need some art about topics ranging from refining cobalt to Wimshurst machines to generate static electricity, he comes through. I think that all of us probably have wanted to make a poster out of one or more of his headline art pieces. Joe is a treasure.
But for our daily blog posts, which cover
your
works, we usually just use a picture of the project. We can’t ask Joe to make ten pieces of art per day, and we never have. At least as far as Hackaday is concerned, AI-generated art is just as good as finding some cleared-for-use clip art out there, right?
Except it’s not. There is a lot of uncertainty about the data that the algorithms are trained on, whether the copyright of the original artists was respected or needed to be, ethically or legally. Some people even worry that the whole thing is going to bring about the end of Art. (They worried about this at the introduction of the camera as well.) But then there’s also the extra limbs, and AI-generated art’s cliche styles, which we fear will get old and boring after we’re all saturated with them.
So we’re not using AI-generated art as a policy for now, but that’s not to say that we don’t see both the benefits and the risks. We’re not Luddites, after all, but we are also in favor of artists getting paid for their work, and of respect for the commons when people copyleft license their images. We’re very interested to see how this all plays out in the future, but for now, we’re sitting on the sidelines. Sorry if that means
more headlines with colorful code
!
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
! | 103 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044839",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T14:11:40",
"content": "Clearly labeled, and the courts sort out the copyright issue (it can be trained on legally acquired art).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044842"... | 1,760,371,778.733083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/winamp-a-few-days-later-you-can-fork-and-watch-for-gpl-violations/ | Winamp A Few Days Later: You Can Fork, And Watch For GPL Violations | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"open source",
"source available",
"winamp"
] | A few days ago the source code for the popular Winamp music player was released into the world, with as we reported at the time, a licence that left a lot to be desired. Since then it seems some of the criticism has caught up with the company, for not only have they
modified their terms to allow forking
, they’ve reacted to
a bunch of claimed GPL violations
by removing offending files. Perhaps How-To-Geek are right in describing it all as
an absolute mess
.
The forking amendment means that with luck we’ll start seeing a few modified players descending from the Winamp code, and it seems that the GPL violations are more embarrassing technicalities than show-stoppers, but we have to wornder whether or not this makes for something with any more than historical interest. Perhaps its value stands in a lesson for corporate entities in how
not
to release their source, which sadly we expect will be taken by other organisations as an excuse not to do so.
If you’re following the Winamp source code saga
you can read our coverage from when it came out
. It will be interesting to see where this story goes. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044820",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T11:59:48",
"content": "Good on them for acting on feedback and being responsive to GPL violation claims.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044928",
"author": "re... | 1,760,371,778.343092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/see-the-hands-on-details-behind-stunning-helmet-build/ | See The Hands-on Details Behind Stunning Helmet Build | Donald Papp | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"cosplay",
"helmet",
"sanding"
] | [Zibartas] recently created wearable helmets from the game
Starfield
that look fantastic, and we’re happy to see that he created a video showcasing the whole process of design, manufacture, and assembly. The video really highlights just how much good old-fashioned manual work like sanding goes into getting good results, even in an era where fancy modern equipment like 3D printing is available to just about anyone.
The secret to perfectly-tinted and glassy-smooth clear visors? Lots and lots of sanding and polishing.
The visor, for example, is one such example. The usual approach to making a custom helmet visor (like for
Daft Punk
helmet builds
) is some kind of thermoforming. However, the
Starfield
helmet visors were poor candidates due to their shape and color. [Zibartas]’s solution was to 3D print the whole visor in custom-tinted resin, followed by lots and lots of sanding and polishing to obtain a clear and glassy-smooth end product.
A lot of patient sanding ended up being necessary for other reasons as well. Each helmet has a staggering number of individual parts, most of which are 3D printed with resin, and these parts didn’t always fit together perfectly well.
[Zibartas] also ended up spending a lot of time troubleshooting an issue that many of us might have had an easier time recognizing and addressing. The helmet cleverly integrates a faux-neon style RGB LED strip for internal lighting, but the LED strip would glitch out when the ventilation fan was turned on. The solution after a lot of troubleshooting ended up being simple decoupling capacitors, helping to isolate the microcontrollers built into the LED strip from the inductive load of the motors.
What [Zibartas] may have lacked in the finer points of electronics, he certainly makes up for in practical experience when it comes to wearable pieces like these. The helmets look solid but are in fact full of open spaces and hollow, porous surfaces. This makes them more challenging to design and assemble, but it pays off in spades when worn. The helmets not only look great, but allow a huge amount of airflow. This along with the fans makes them comfortable to wear as well as prevents the face shield from misting up from the wearer’s breathing. It’s a real work of art, so check out the build video, embedded just below. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044845",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T14:41:30",
"content": "Superb!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044887",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T17:08:37",
"co... | 1,760,371,778.101812 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/spectroscopy-on-the-cheap/ | Spectroscopy On The Cheap | Al Williams | [
"Science",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"spectrometer",
"spectroscopy"
] | [Project 326] wanted to know exactly what gas was in some glass tubes. The answer, of course, is to use a spectrometer, but that’s an expensive piece of gear, right?
Not really
. Sure, these cheap devices aren’t perfect, but they are serviceable and, as the video below shows, there are ways to work around some of the limitations.
The two units in question are “The Little Garden” spectrometer and a TLM-2. Neither are especially sensitive, but both are well under $100, so you can’t expect much. Because the spectrometers were not very sensitive, a 3D printed jig and lens were used to collect more light and block ambient light interference. The jigs also allowed the inclusion of special filters, which enhanced performance quite a bit. The neon bulbs give off the greatest glow when exposed to high voltage. Other bulbs contain things like helium, xenon, and carbon dioxide. There were also tubes with mercury vapor and even deuterium.
We’ll admit it. Not everyone needs a spectrometer, but if you do, there’s a lot of really interesting info on how to get the most out of these cheap devices. Apparently, [Project 326] was frustrated that he couldn’t buy an X-ray spectrometer and has vowed to create one, so we’ll be interested to see how that goes.
Some homebrew spectrometers can get
pretty fancy
. Of course, there’s more to spectroscopy
than just optics
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044780",
"author": "Davidmh",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T08:20:44",
"content": "Hamamatsu has some very nifty microspectrometer modules. Not as cheap, but cover more ranges, and are of professional quality.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,371,778.151858 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/turn-a-mouse-into-an-analogue-tuning-knob/ | Turn A Mouse Into An Analogue Tuning Knob | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"mouse",
"rotary encoder",
"tuning knob"
] | The software defined radio has opened up unimaginable uses of the radio spectrum for radio enthusiasts, but it’s fair to say that there’s one useful feature of an old-fashioned radio they lack when used via a computer. We’re talking of course about the tuning knob, because it represents possibly the most intuitive way to move across the bands. Never fear though, because [mircemk] has a solution.
He’s converted a mouse into a tuning dial
.
The scroll wheel on a mouse is nothing more than a rotary encoder, and can easily be used as a sort of tuning knob. Replacing it with a better encoder gives it a much better feel, so that’s what he’s done. An enclosure has the guts of a mouse, with the front-mounted encoder wired into where the scroll wheel would have been. The result, for a relatively small amount of work, is a tuning knob, and a peripheral we’re guessing could also have a lot of uses beyond software defined radio.
It’s not the first knob we’ve seen, for that you might want to start with the wonderfully named
Tiny Knob
, but it’s quite possibly one of the simplest to build. We like it. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044742",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T02:44:02",
"content": "Would be nice to see him use one button to switch quickly between the various digits of the frequency so he could rapidly get gross, medium, and fine control of the frequency sweeping instead of having to t... | 1,760,371,779.012556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/3d-printed-jellyfish-lights-up/ | 3D Printed Jellyfish Lights Up | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"jellyfish",
"kinetic sculpture"
] | [Ben] may be 15 years old, but he’s got the knack for 3D printing and artistic mechanical design. When you see his
3D-printed mechanical jellyfish lamp
, we think you’ll agree. Honestly, it is hardly fair to call it a lamp. It is really — as [Ben] points out — a kinetic sculpture.
One of the high points of the post is the very detailed documentation. Not only is everything explained, but there is quite a bit of background information on jellyfish, different types of gears, and optimizing 3D prints along with information on how to recreate the sculpture.
There is quite a bit of printing, including the tentacles. There are a few options, like Arduino-controlled LEDs. However, the heart of the operation is a geared motor.
All the design files for 3D printing and the Arduino code are in the post. There’s also a remote control. The design allows you to have different colors for various pieces and easily swap them with a screwdriver.
One major concern was how noisy the thing would be with a spinning motor. According to [Ben], the noise level is about 33 dB, which is about what a whisper sounds like. However, he mentions you could consider using ball bearings, quieter motors, or different types of gears to get the noise down even further.
We imagine this jellyfish will come in at
well under $6 million
. If you don’t want your jellyfish to be art, maybe you’d prefer one
that creates art
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044726",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2024-09-28T00:29:41",
"content": "Looks great! :-)Some suggestions for future iterations:~ (pseudo) randomly moving all tentacles (probably a lot more complicated with some fancy gears or easier with a lot of very tiny motors?).~ sound int... | 1,760,371,778.972931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/hacking-kia-remotely-hijack-a-car-using-only-its-license-plate/ | Hacking Kia: Remotely Hijack A Car Using Only Its License Plate | Maya Posch | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"car security",
"Kia"
] | These days everything needs to be connected to remote servers via the internet, whether it’s one’s TV, fridge or even that new car you just bought. A recently discovered (and already patched) vulnerability concerning Kia cars was a doozy in this regard, as a fairly straightforward series of steps allowed for any attacker to obtain the vehicle identification number (VIN) from the license plate, and from there become registered as the car’s owner on Kia’s network. The hack and the way it was discovered is
described in great detail
on [Sam Curry]’s website, along with the timeline of its discovery.
Notable is that this isn’t the first vulnerability discovered in Kia’s HTTP-based APIs, with [Sam] this time taking a poke at the dealer endpoints. To his surprise, he was able to register as a dealer and obtain a valid session ID using which he could then proceed to query Kia’s systems for a user’s registered email address and phone number.
With a specially crafted tool to automate the entire process, this information was then used to demote the car’s owner and register the attacker as the primary owner. After this the attacker was free to lock/unlock the doors, honk to his heart’s content, locate the car and start/stop the vehicle. The vulnerability affected all Kia cars made after 2013, with the victim having no indication of their vehicle having been hijacked in this manner. Aside from the doors randomly locking, the quaint honking and engine turning on/off at a whim, of course.
Perhaps the scariest part about this kind of vulnerability is that it could have allowed an attacker to identify a vulnerable parked car, gained access, before getting into the car, starting the engine and driving away. As long as these remote APIs allow for such levels of control, one might hope that one day car manufacturers will take security somewhat more serious, as this is only the latest in a seemingly endless series of amusingly terrifying security vulnerabilities that require nothing more than some bored hackers with HTTP query crafting tools to discover. | 55 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044634",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T20:42:11",
"content": "How many people legitimately use these features anyway? How hard is it to just get in your car and start it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044636",
... | 1,760,371,779.142275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/2024-sao-contest-speak-sao/ | 2024 SAO Contest: Speak, SAO | Kristina Panos | [
"contests"
] | [
"2024 Supercon SAO Contest",
"sao",
"speak 'n spell"
] | For some of us, the Speak ‘n Spell evokes pleasant memories of childhood as our first computer, along with one of those Merlin things. For others, it’s the ultimate circuit bending victim. For [Jeremy Geppert], they’re all-around good fun and
he wanted to immortalize the device in a Simple Add-On (SAO)
.
This is [Jeremy]’s first board and SAO rolled into one, motivated by both Supercon and the SAO Contest. To start things off, [Jeremy] scaled down the design we all know and love to fit a 128×32 OLED display, and it looks great. The plan is to have the display, an amplified speaker, and a single button for input.
Before committing the board order, [Jeremy] had a brief freak-out about the pin distance as it relates to the window for the OLED display. Luckily, his brother suggested checking things first by printing a 1:1 scale image of the board outline, and laying that over the display.
This is the week it all comes together, as the tiny switches and (regular-size) connectors have arrived, and the boards are due quite soon. Go, [Jeremy], go! | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044601",
"author": "Reactive Light",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T19:02:13",
"content": "“Now try…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044619",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T19:48:10",
... | 1,760,371,779.056062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/retro-gadgets-things-your-tv-no-longer-needs/ | Retro Gadgets: Things Your TV No Longer Needs | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"nostalgia",
"tv"
] | It is hard to imagine that a handful of decades ago, TV wasn’t a thing. We’ve talked a few times about the birth of television. After an admittedly slow slow start, it took over like wildfire. Of course, anything that sells millions will spawn accessories. Some may be great. Then there are others.
We wanted to take a nostalgic look back at some of the strange add-ons people used to put on or in their TVs. Sure, VCRs, DVD players, and video game consoles were popular. But we were thinking a little more obscure than that.
Rabbit Ears
A state-of-the-art set of rabbit ears from the 1970s
Every once in a while, we see an ad or a box in a store touting the ability to get great TV programming for free. Invariably, it is a USB device that lets you watch free streaming channels or it is an antenna. There was a time when nearly all TVs had “rabbit ears” — so called because they made an
inverted
V on the top of your set.
These dipoles were telescoping and you were supposed to adjust them to fit the TV station you were watching but everyone “knew” that you wanted them as long as possible at all times. Holding one end of them gave it a ground and would give you a major improvement in picture. People also liked to wrap tin foil around the tips. Was it like a capacitive hat? We aren’t sure.
The better rabbit ears had knobs and switches along with multiple elements. If you lived close to a TV station, you probably didn’t need much. If you didn’t, no number of fancy add-ons would likely help you.
External Antenna with Rotator
Antennas like this used to tower over many homes, especially in suburbia
If you really wanted to get TV from a distance, you needed an outside antenna. Most of these were either yagi or log periodic designs. That means they were very directional. The also means you probably needed a way to rotate it. If you were lucky, all the TV stations were in the same direction from you. Then you didn’t need to rotate your antenna. Some UHF-only antennas looked like dishes and they, too, were directional.
Rotators were crazy. They were all a little different, but typically you’d move a big knob to the direction you wanted the antenna pointing. Then you’d hear CHUNK, CHUNK, CHUNK as the antenna actually moved. This was a cheap form of stepper motor. Some rotators used something akin to a selsyn to move continuously, but most just moved to a few dozen points around a circle. Hams still use modern versions of antenna rotators to adjust directional antennas.
CRT Brightener
The most expensive part of any old TV was the picture tube. These tubes were fragile and expensive to make and ship, so it was often the case that if the ‘tube went out, it was cheaper to just buy a new TV.
When a picture tube started to go dark, you could sometimes run a high voltage through it to restore it (you being a TV repairman
with the equipment to do it
). Or, you could try installing a CRT brightener. These devices looked a little like tubes. You’d remove the connector from the CRT’s neck and install the device. Then, the wire that used to plug into the CRT would plug into the other side of the device.
These were essentially little transformers that boosted the AC voltage going to the filaments. They worked for a while, but it probably meant a new TV wasn’t far in your future. If you want to know more than you could possibly imagine about how these work, there was
an article in Radio Electronics
written by someone who worked for a company that made them, and it goes into incredible detail. [Chris] shows us a 1950s TV that had one of these in it. You could actually stack these one on top the other if you wanted to take your chances and try to keep the old TV working as long as possible.
Ghost Eliminator
If it phases the ground wave, it has got to be good!
According to a Layfayette Electronics catalog the Rembrandt TV Ghost Eliminator “Electrically rotates the polar-receiving pattern of your existing antenna and phases the ground wave picked up by the electrical wiring system with the sky wave picked up by the antenna.” What?
As far as we can tell, these units were just attenuators, which reduced weaker signals below the receiver’s ability to find them.
Tuner Rebuild and Cleaners
One of the key components of a TV was the tuner. Because of the high frequencies and the low technology of the day, these were usually a compact unit that was directly behind the knob you used to change channels. The output of the tuner was relatively a low-frequency signal at the intermediate frequency, and that’s what the rest of the TV used.
It was difficult to make broadband devices back then, so the tuners usually had banks of tuned circuits, and a giant mechanical switch selected the ones you wanted. That’s why you turned the knob to pick the channel you wanted. With contacts like that, they eventually get dirty. Contact cleaners for tuners were common and probably contained a lot of things you aren’t allowed to put in spray cans today. Tun-O-Foam was one common brand.
If your tuner did UHF and VHF, it was actually $15!
But if you really had trouble with your tuner, you could pull it out and send it to one of the many companies that would clean and service it for a low price. For a little more, you could buy a refurbished tuner from the same people. They’d always advertise a low price but note that tubes, transistors, and diodes were charged “at cost.” Shipping, too, usually. The reality is that most tuners probably needed a good cleaning and, perhaps, a realignment.
Tube Testers/Tube Guard
You’ve probably heard us talk about tube testers before. One thing that is the enemy of tubes is inrush current. A cold filament draws more current than a hot filament, so tubes get a big jolt of current while they are warming up. The “Tube Guard” was a device you plugged into the wall and then plugged the TV into it. It would prevent fast inrush current. Maybe that would save you a trip to the tube tester at the local drugstore.
You could go into many drugstores and other retail places and find a tube tester. There was usually a book or some other way to look up your tube. The book would tell you to put in socket #8 and set switch 1 to F, switch 2 to A, and so on. Then you’d push a button and big meter would move a needle to a green region if the tube was good or a red region if it was bad. Of course, that wasn’t foolproof, but it did work much of the time since tubes have common failure modes.
If the tube was bad, you’d open the bottom of the tester, find the replacement tube and take it to the register. There were also portable units that service people might carry, like the one in the video below. Like many of the meters, it didn’t have a book, but it had a scroll that you would roll to find the right settings. However, a typical retail store tube tester was usually easier to use than these specialized units.
That’s Not All
There are plenty of other TV gadgets. We mentioned the old VCRs, DVDs, and video games, of course. But there were also color wheels, magnifying screens and more. We’ve even seen boxes that claim to convert your TV into a video phone.
You could get a box that would
censor swear words
. You could even get pay TV in the 1960s if you were willing to
put coins into your set
.
Many of the images in this post are from scans of old magazines and catalogs from the
World Radio History site
. A great resource if you enjoy looking at the way things were. The featured image, however, is a still of “
1950s TV set
“, a 3D model by [Kathrin&Christian]. | 62 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044565",
"author": "Clara",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T17:31:15",
"content": "I just learned that antenna rotors are apparently considered retro, and something your TV no longer needs, by Hackaday. Weird, they were a fixture of my (recent, rural) childhood, and my parents very much s... | 1,760,371,779.765866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/hackaday-podcast-episode-290-iphones-electric-glue-winamps-source-code-and-sonyas-beautiful-instructions/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 290: IPhone’s Electric Glue, Winamp’s Source Code, And Sonya’s Beautiful Instructions | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by acknowledging an incredible milestone: 20 years of Hackaday! Well, probably. When a website gets to be this old, it’s a little hard to nail down when exactly things kicked off, but it seems like September of 2004 is about right. They’ll also go over the latest updates for the fast-approaching Hackaday Supercon, and announce the winner of another tough
What’s That Sound
challenge.
From there, the conversation makes its way from the fascinating electrically-activated adhesive holding the latest iPhone together to pulsed-power lasers and a high flying autonomous glider designed and built by a teenager. You’ll also hear about 3D printing on acrylic, home biohacking, and the Tiny Tool Kit Manifesto. Stick around to the end to hear the duo discuss the fine art of good documentation, and an incredible bodge job from Arya Voronova.
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 290 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Turns 20-ish!
Hackaday Celebrates 15 years!
2024 Hackaday Superconference Speakers, Round Two
What’s that Sound?
Congrats to [Davip] for getting a punch-tape reader/writer right.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Find My Power Tool Battery
GitHub – seemoo-lab/openhaystack
GitHub – JJTech0130/pypush:Cross-platform iMessage POC
Hands-on With New IPhone’s Electrically-Released Adhesive
Apple May Use Electrical Debonding For Battery Replacement
Most Powerful Laser Diodes, Now More Powerful
A Quickly-Hacked-Together Avalanche Pulse Generator
Avalanche Pulse Generator Build Using 2N3904 – Kerry D. Wong
Winamp Releases Source Code, But Is It Really Open?
3D Printing On Top Of Laser Cut Acrylic
3D Printing Wearables With A Net
StratoSoar Glider Flies Itself From High Altitude
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
ESP32 Powers Custom Darkroom Timer
Little Pharma On The Prairie
Custom Mini-Neon Signs In 10 Minutes
Tom’s Picks:
Reviving A 15-Year Old Asus EeePC With Modern MX Linux
Brass Propeller Gets Impressive Hand Trimming
The Tiny Toolkit Manifesto
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Supercon 2023: The Road To Writing Great Step-by-Step Instructions
Switching Regulators: Mistake Fixing For Dummies | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044548",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T16:21:48",
"content": "Okay, what’s the story on the paper tape machine?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044596",
"author": "Perry",
... | 1,760,371,779.536197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/makerpipe-turns-conduit-into-structures/ | Makerpipe Turns Conduit Into Structures | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts"
] | [
"beam",
"conduit",
"connector",
"EMT",
"fitting",
"frame",
"pipe",
"structural"
] | At the risk of stating the obvious, building big things can be difficult. Sure, parts that fit on the bed of a 3D printer are easy to make, if not particularly fast, and scaling up from there is possible. But if you need a long beam or structural element, printing makes little sense; better to buy than build in that case. The trouble then becomes, how do you attach such parts together?
Enter
Makerpipe
. This South Carolina company, recently out of a crowdfunding campaign, makes a range of structural connectors and fittings for electrical mechanical tubing, or EMT, the galvanized steel conduit used in the electrical trades. EMT is widely available in multiple sizes and is relatively cheap, although we have noticed that the price here has ticked up quite a bit over the last couple of years. It also has the advantage of being available off-the-shelf at any big-box home improvement store, meaning you have instant access to a fantastic building material.
Makerpipe’s bolt-together couplings let you turn pieces of EMT, easily cut with a hacksaw or pipe cutter, into structures without the need for welding. Yes, you can do the same with extruded aluminum, but even if you’re lucky enough to live near a supply house that carries extrusions and the necessary fittings and is open on Saturday afternoon, you’ll probably pay through the nose for it.
Makerpipe isn’t giving their stuff away, and while we normally don’t like to feature strictly commercial products, something that makes building large structures easier and faster seems worth sharing with our community. We’ve done our share of
fabricobbling together EMT structures
after all, and would have killed for fittings like these. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044530",
"author": "Impulse405",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T15:49:13",
"content": "MakerPipe is not as new as you think. They go back a few years now. 2019 first post on the MakerPipe blog. If you look at the Maker Pipe YT channel, the first videos are 8 years ago",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,371,779.600815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/this-week-in-security-password-sanity-tank-hacking-and-the-mystery-9-9/ | This Week In Security: Password Sanity, Tank Hacking, And The Mystery 9.9 | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"linux",
"tanks",
"This Week in Security"
] | It looks like
there’s finally hope for sane password
policies. The US National Institue of Standards and Technology, NIST, has released a draft of SP 800-63-4, the
Digital Identity Guideline
.
There’s password guidance in there, like “SHALL NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types) for passwords” and “SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically.” NIST approved passwords must be at least 8 characters long, with a weaker recommendation of at least 15 characters. Security questions like name of first pet get the axe. And it’s strongly recommended that all ASCII and Unicode characters should be acceptable for passwords.
This is definitely moving in the right direction. NIST guidelines are only binding for government services and contractors, though they do eventually get picked up by banks and other industries. So there’s hope for sane password policies eventually.
Tank Hacking
Researchers at Bitsight are interested in infrastructure security, and
they opted to take a closer look at Automatic Tank Gauging (ATG) systems
. Those are found at gas stations, as well as any other facility that needs automated monitoring of liquids or gasses in a tank. There is an actual ATG message format, originally designed for RS-232 serial, and woefully unprepared for the interconnected present. The protocol allows for an optional security code, but it maxes out at only six alpha-numeric characters.
Among the vulnerabilities getting announced today, we have a pair of CVSS 10 command injection flaws, a quartet of 9.8 authentication bypass flaws, with one of those being a hardcoded credential — AKA a backdoor. The other CVSS9+ flaw is a SQL injection, with a trio of slightly less serious flaws.
The really interesting question is what could theoretically be done with admin access and escape to shellcode in one of these systems? There’s the obvious path of Denial of Service. Once you have root, just delete files, flash random noise over the firmware, and walk away. The more interesting approach is to make changes that have physical consequences. If a fuel tank is reprogrammed to indicate that holds twice the volume, will it overflow? Researchers realized that relays have a maximum operation rate, and driving them on and off at faster rates has interesting effects — glowing and letting the magic smoke out.
More Tank Hacking?
Also this week is the story of
a Kansas water treatment plant that has gone to manual mode
after a cyberattack. It’s not clear whether this was actually an aimed attack at infrastructure, or just a ransomware attack that is impacting the water treatment facility as a side-effect.
The Linux Mystery 9.9 CVE
This week we’ve been watching a story develop after
[Simone Margaritelli] sounded the warning
about a very serious GNU/Linux vulnerabiltiy on Twitter/X. The claim was a CVSS 9.9 in all Linux systems. Well apparently it’s time, because
the details have dropped
, and it’s a wild ride.
* Unauthenticated RCE vs all GNU/Linux systems (plus others) disclosed 3 weeks ago.
* Full disclosure happening in less than 2 weeks (as agreed with devs).
* Still no CVE assigned (there should be at least 3, possibly 4, ideally 6).
* Still no working fix.
* Canonical, RedHat and…
pic.twitter.com/N2d1rm2VeR
— Simone Margaritelli (@evilsocket)
September 23, 2024
So first, the actual vulnerabilities: Part of the Common Unix Printing System (now just CUPS) is cups-browsed, a helper daemon that automatically installs printers discovered on the local network. This binds to all IP addresses on UDP port 631, and an incoming UDP packet will trigger a printer install. The quirk here is that this incoming request can include an arbitrary URL as the source of the IPP printer driver information. That IPP data isn’t sanitized, allowing for arbitrary information upload and subsequent file creation with that arbitrary data. The cherry on top is the
foomatic-rip
driver that includes the helpful feature of running a shell command as part of the printing process. Oh, and to be clear, the CVSS 9.9 isn’t strictly accurate, because it does require a user interaction to print to the malicious printer, to trigger the code execution.
Now here’s the tricky question: How many of those quirks are vulnerabilities? Cups-browsed seems obviously architected without an authentication layer, and therefore not at all intended to be exposed to the Internet. Downloading an arbitrary IPP file seems to be working as intended, and the
FoomaticRIPCommandLine
is a documented feature, not a vulnerability.
And yet, pretty obviously, a printer on the local network shouldn’t be able to trigger arbitrary code execution when printing to it, especially when it’s so easy for any computer to fake being a printer. It’s very surprising that there are over 100,000 systems that expose UDP port 631 and the cups-browsed service to the Internet. I look forward to other researchers double-checking that claim. If it wasn’t obvious, don’t expose CUPS to the Internet. It shouldn’t have taken a CVE to make that abundantly clear. That is probably why it was so hard for [Simone] to get the CUPS developers to take this seriously.
As per
the Red Hat notice
, you can check your Linux systems for this issue by running
sudo systemctl status cups-browsed
and check a remote machine using
sudo nmap -sU -p 631 -v ip.address.of.machine
watching for “631/udp open|filtered ipp” in the output. There is already a
Proof of Concept
that has leaked, so do check and pull the plug on any systems that expose this service.
The Other One
The “9.9” CVE was just a bit of a letdown, but
we do have CVE-2024-20017
, a confirmed high severity vulnerability in MediaTek’s
wappd
daemon that seems to weigh in at 9.8.
The vulnerability is specifically in the handling of the Security Block message that’s part of WiFi roaming handoffs.
wappd
allocates a fixed-size buffer, and doesn’t validate the actual message size before copying that data. This can overflow by up to 1433 bytes, and that’s certainly enough to trigger full RCE. There’s Proof of Concept code available, so watch for updates for Wireless gear.
Bits and Bytes
Kaspersky has done something unexpected,
pulling a switcheroo
. Users who still had Kaspersky installed have found UltraAV now automatically installed on their machines. It’s reported that Kaspersky was sending email notices out earlier this month that the update was coming.
There’s
a really impressive chain of tricks
that redirects from a Youtube URL to an arbitrary Google Docs URL. That may not sound particularly interesting, but the whole chain of redirects means that a page that looks like a Google Form with a simple poll could actually grant permissions to arbitrary Google Drive files on submit. Google paid a juicy $4133.70 for the find, and rolled the fix out on the same day.
ChatGPT has a new feature, long-term memory. The idea is that your conversations with the LLM can become part of the training data, making the model even more useful as you use it. There is a really powerful feature available in ChatGPT now, that the LLM can pull data from the Internet in real time. Turns out if you can get one of these instances to pull some manipulated data, the model can keep it in long term storage. The real trick is that
this injection can convince the model to keep revisiting an arbitrary URL, leaking data
. Impressive.
And finally, the Kia dealer and owners websites
leak a bit too much data
. With nothing more than the car’s VIN, an attacker can generate a fake dealer token, and demote and replace the previous owner. From there, it’s trivial to remote start, honk, or otherwise mess with the vehicle. It wasn’t great, but Kia got it fixed over a month ago. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044509",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T15:18:06",
"content": "“There is already a Proof of Concept that has leaked, so do check and pull the plug on any systems that expose this service.”Wouldn’t blocking Port 631 on the router be suffici... | 1,760,371,779.653519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/british-commuters-get-their-wifi-hacked/ | British Commuters Get Their WiFi Hacked | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"mobile data",
"security",
"wifi"
] | As if there weren’t enough worrying global news stories already, today the British press and media have been full of
a story involving the public WiFi networks at some major railway stations
. Instead of being faced with the usual don’t-be-naughty terms and conditions page, commuters were instead faced with a page that definitely shouldn’t have been there.
Hackaday readers will immediately have guessed what is likely to have happened. This is probably more of a compromise of the page than of the network itself, and, indeed, the BBC are reporting that
it may have come via an administrator account
at Network Rail’s er… network provider. Fortunately, it seems the intent was to spread a political message rather than malware, so perhaps those travelers got off lightly. The various companies involved have all got the proverbial egg on their faces, and we’re glad we don’t work in the IT department concerned.
The question we find ourselves asking as we reflect upon this is: In crowded European commuter zones such as southern and central England, should events such as this come as a wake-up call to forgo WiFi and use a cellular data plan instead? Gone are the days when finding public WiFi was like having your own private high-speed connection, in a country blanketed by 4G and 5G networks using your phone as a hotspot is simply much faster as well as offering some security. Hackaday is written and edited on the road using a hotspot in all sorts of unlikely places. Do you do the same? Are Hackaday readers up for free public WiFi, or do you jealously guard your own connections? Let us know in the comments.
You can probably figure out how to share your network
connection among friends
. Network security, of course, is always robust
until it isn’t
.
header: Biblola,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044437",
"author": "Nobody",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T11:29:46",
"content": "I’m surprised Hackaday does not have Starlink Sat modules when out on the road.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044439",
"author": "Nobody"... | 1,760,371,779.999123 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/27/blinking-an-led-passively/ | Blinking An LED Passively | Al Williams | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"blink",
"led"
] | It is a pretty common first project to use an Arduino (or similar) to blink an LED. Which, of course, brings taunts of: you could have used a 555! You can, of course, also use any sort of oscillator, but [Mustafa] has a different approach.
Blinking an LED with three resistors and a capacitor
. Ok, ok… one of the resistors is a light-dependent resistor, but still.
In reality, this is a classic relaxation oscillator. The capacitor charges until the LED lights. This, however, causes the capacitor to discharge, which eventually turns off the LED, and the process starts again.
There is one wrinkle that could be considered a feature. In daylight, the capacitor will stay in the off state, so the blinking only occurs in darkness. Of course, the resistor also has to have a sufficient view of the LED. You might use this as a safety light that only works in the dark.
A simple circuit, but it just goes to show that we tend to forget the simple solutions in a world where a computer costs less than a dollar.
Of course, you can get a chip whose sole purpose is to
blink LEDs
. We always like examples of
doing more with less
. | 44 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044378",
"author": "Abel",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T08:21:12",
"content": "LED is an active component.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044382",
"author": "zoenagy3466",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T08:42:14",
... | 1,760,371,779.929312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/stretch-goal-300x-arduino/ | Stretch Goal: 300X Arduino | Al Williams | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"flexible circuits",
"stretchabale"
] | The Faboratory at Yale University has set a number of stretch goals. We don’t mean that in the usual sense. They’ve been making, as you can see in the video below, clones of commercial devices that can stretch over 300%. They’ve done Ardunios and similar controllers along with sensors. The idea is to put computer circuits in flexible robots and other places where flexibility is key, like wearable electronics.
If you are interested in details, you’ll want to read
the paper in Science Robotics.
They take the existing PCB layout and use a laser to cut patterns in a paper mask over the stretchable substrate. They then apply oxidized gallium-indium to build conductors.
We aren’t sure what we want with a stretchable Arduino, but we are sure someone wants them. We also wonder how much stretching these devices will survive before something happens. In the video, some of the motion looked pretty violent! There are also pictures of the circuits twisting in strange ways, too.
The starfish-like robot shows the controlling Arduino bucking like a faux cowboy on a mechanical horse. On the other hand, a full-sized Arduino wouldn’t have been practical. However, you might consider using tiny circuits, which are certainly possible these days.
Want to build your own? You are in luck, as the Faboratory has instructions and details on
GitHub
about how you can make
your own flex circuit
. Perhaps we will see a
flexible SAO badge
at Supercon this year? You’d think these were totally unique, but there have been many attempts at making stretchy
circuits
, including some other DIY guides for different techniques. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044474",
"author": "Warren J Taylor",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T13:24:10",
"content": "Stretch goal 300x.Great title. I hated this website when Phil sold it. It turned into a corporate joke.Lol stretch 300x goal.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,371,780.052123 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/want-to-help-capture-some-digital-ephemera-break-out-your-vhs-player/ | Want To Help Capture Some Digital Ephemera? Break Out Your VHS Player | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"history",
"teletext",
"viewdata"
] | Do you live in the UK, have a VCR and capture card, and an interest in Teletext?
[James O’Malley] needs your help
! Teletext was, for many people around the world, their first experience of an electronic information system. The simple text and block graphics were transmitted on rotation as data bursts in the frame blanking periods of analogue TV broadcasts, and in an era of printed newspapers, they became compulsory reading. The UK turned off its old-style teletext over a decade ago with the switch to digital, but fragments of the broadcasts remain and can be painstakingly revived from period video recordings with the appropriate software.
This is where [James’] problem begins. Having recovered a very large archive of 1980s and 1990s VHS tapes, he’s come to the realisation that he’s bitten off more than he can chew, and that the archive needs to be in the hands of an individual, entity, or organisation which can give it the resources necessary to archive both the teletext and the programming that it contains. Can you help? Give the article linked above a read.
Meanwhile, you can wallow in a bit of nostalgia
by browsing the archive of recovered pages
, and while you’re at it,
take a minute to envy the French
. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044321",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T03:07:33",
"content": "Stick into a deck that transfers to recordable DVD.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044330",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,371,780.105024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/a-universal-rf-amplifier/ | A Universal RF Amplifier | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"minicircuits",
"rf amplifier"
] | If you need an amplifier, [Hans Rosenberg] has some advice. Don’t design your own; grab
cheap and tiny RF amplifier modules
and put them on a PCB that fits your needs. These are the grandchildren of the old mini circuits modules that were popular among hams and RF experimenters decades ago. However, these are cheap, simple, and tiny.
You only need a handful of components to make them work, and [Hans] shows you how to make the selection and what you need to think about when laying out the PC board. Check out the video below for a very detailed deep dive.
To get the best performance, the PCB layout is at least as important as the components. [Hans] shows what’s important and how to best work out what you need using some online calculators.
Using a NanoVNA and a USB spectrum analyzer, [Hans] makes some measurements on the devices using different components, which is very instructive. The measurements lined up fairly well with the theory, and you can see the effects of changing key components in the design.
[Hans] has
a lot to say about RF PCB design
. If you want to get into a lot of details, don’t forget to check out
[Michael Ossmann’s] Supercon workshop on RF design
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044256",
"author": "Peter Puffer",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T23:37:20",
"content": "Don’t design your ownI thought this is HackADay, not EEVblog Forum.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044287",
"author": "Andrew",
... | 1,760,371,780.261435 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/reverse-time-back-to-the-days-of-rpn/ | Reverse Time Back To The Days Of RPN | Bryan Cockfield | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"calculator",
"display",
"mechanical keyboard",
"mechanical switch",
"programming",
"reverse polish notation",
"RPN",
"seven segment",
"stack"
] | While Texas Instruments maintains dominance in the calculator market (especially graphing calculators), there was a time when this wasn’t the case. HP famously built the first portable scientific calculator, the HP-35, although its reverse-Polish notation (RPN) might be a bit of a head-scratcher to those of us who came up in the TI world of the last three or four decades. Part of the reason TI is so dominant now is because they were the first to popularize infix notation, making the math on the calculator look much more like the math written on the page, especially when compared to the RPN used by HP calculators. But if you want to step into a time machine and see what that world was like without having to find a working HP-35,
take a look at [Jeroen]’s DIY RPN calculator
.
Since the calculator is going to be RPN-based, it needs to have a classic feel. For that, mechanical keyboard keys are used for the calculator buttons with a custom case to hold it all together. It uses two rows of seven-segment displays to show the current operation and the results. Programming the Arduino Nano to work as an RPN calculator involved a few tricks, though. [Jeroen] wanted a backspace button, but this disrupts the way that the Arduino handles the input and shows it on the display but it turns out there’s
an Arudino library
which solves some of these common problems with RPN builds like this.
One of the main reasons that RPN exists at all is that it is much easier for the processor in the calculator to understand the operations, even if it makes it a little bit harder for the human. This is because early calculators made much more overt use of a stack for performing operations in a similar way to Assembly language. Rather than learning Assembly, an RPN build like this can be a great introduction to this concept. If you want to get into the weeds of Assembly programming
this is a great place to go to get started
. | 68 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044168",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T20:04:51",
"content": "I’ve used an HP48GX for very long, and i still have the very good android emulator installed. RPN is not dead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "804417... | 1,760,371,780.208586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/making-a-split-anode-magnetron/ | Making A Split-Anode Magnetron | Dave Rowntree | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"barium carbonate",
"diy",
"magnetron"
] | YouTuber
The Science Furry
has been
attempting to make a split-anode magnetron
and, after
earlier failures,
is having another crack at it. This also failed, but they’ve learned where to focus their efforts for the future, and it sure is fun to follow along.
The magnetron theory is simple enough, and we’ve covered this many times, but the split anode arrangement differs slightly from the microwave in your kitchen. The idea is to make a heated filament the cathode, so electrons are ejected from the hot surface by thermionic emission. These are forced into a spiral path using a perpendicular magnetic field. This is a result of
the Lorentz force
. A simple pair of magnets external to the tube is all that is needed for that. Depending on the diameter of the cavity and the gap width, a standing wave will be emitted. The anodes must be supplied with an alternating potential for this arrangement to work. This causes the electrons to ‘bunch up’ as they cross the gaps, producing the required RF oscillation. The split electrodes also allow an inductor to be added to tune the frequency of this standing wave. That is what makes this special.
Fizz, pop, ah well.
The construction starts with pre-made end seals with the tungsten wire electrode wire passing through. In the first video, they attempted to coat the cathode with barium nitrate, but this flaked off, ruining the tube. The second attempt replaces the coiled filament with a straight wire and uses a coating paste made from Barium Carbonate mixed with nitrocellulose in a bit of acetone. When heated, the nitrocellulose and the carbonate will decompose, hopefully leaving the barium coating intact. After inserting the electrode assembly into a section of a test tube and welding on the ends, the vacuum could be pulled and sealed off. After preheating the cathode, some gasses will be emitted into the vacuum, which is then adsorbed into a nearby titanium wire getter. At least, that’s the theory.
Upon testing, this second version burned out early on for an unknown reason, so they tried again, this time with an uncoated cathode. Measuring the emission current showed only 50 uA, which is nowhere near enough, and making the filament this hot caused it to boil off and coat the tube! They decide that perhaps this is one step too many and need to experiment with the barium coating by making simpler diode tubes to get the hang of the process!
If this stuff is over your head, you need a
quick history lesson about the magnetron
. Next
check out this teardown
. Finally, we have covered DIY magnetrons before, like this excellent
DIY magnetron-powered plasma sputtering device
. Yes, you read that correctly.
Thanks to [Kelvin Ly] for the tip! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044219",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T21:59:51",
"content": "Bravo. Love seeing experiments with home-brew hollow-state electronic devices.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8044247",
"author": "fgsfds",
... | 1,760,371,780.306482 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/estimating-the-size-of-a-single-molecule-of-oil-using-water/ | Estimating The Size Of A Single Molecule Of Oil Using Water | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Science"
] | [] | What is the size of a single molecule of oil? What may initially seem like a trick question – answerable only through the use of complicated, high-tech scientific equipment – is actually as easy to calculate as the circumference of planet Earth. Much like how [Eratosthenes] used a couple of sticks to achieve the latter feat back in about 240 BCE, the size of a molecule of olive oil was
calculated in 1890 by [Lord Rayleigh]
, which is the formal title of [
John William Strutt
]. Using nothing but water and said olive oil, he managed to calculate the size of a single olive oil molecule as being 1.63 nanometers in length.
To achieve this feat, he took 0.81 mg of olive oil and put it on a known area of water. Following the assumption that the distributed oil across the water surface would form a monolayer, i.e. a layer of oil one molecule thick, he divided the volume of the oil by the covered area, which gave him the thickness of the oil layer. Consequently, this result would also be the dimension (diameter) of a single olive oil molecule.
Many years later we know now that olive oil is composed of triacylglycerols, with a diameter of 1.67 nm, or only about 2% off from the 1890 estimate. All of which reinforces once more just how much science one can do with only the most basic of tools, simply through logical deduction. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044106",
"author": "Rex",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T17:09:30",
"content": "I thought that I discovered that when I took high school physics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8044128",
"author": "Paul",
"timestam... | 1,760,371,780.80485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/an-ode-to-the-sao/ | An Ode To The SAO | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"2024 Supercon SAO Contest",
"badgelife",
"Simple Add-On"
] | There are a lot of fantastic things about Hackaday Supercon, but for me personally, the highlight is always seeing the dizzying array of electronic bits and bobs that folks bring with them. If you’ve never had the chance to join us in Pasadena, it’s a bit like a hardware show-and-tell, where half the people you meet are eager to pull some homemade gadget out of their bag for an impromptu demonstration. But what’s
really
cool is that they’ve often made enough of said device that they can hand them out to anyone who’s interested. Put simply, it’s very easy to leave Supercon with a whole lot more stuff than when you came in with.
Most people would look at this as a benefit of attending, which of course it is. But in a way, the experience bummed me out for the first couple of years. Sure, I got to take home a literal sack of incredible hardware created by members of our community, and I’ve cherished each piece. But I never had anything to give them in return, and that didn’t quite sit right with me.
So last year I decided to be a bit more proactive and
make my own Simple Add-On (SAO) in time for Supercon 2023
. With a stack of these in my bag, I’d have a personalized piece of hardware to hand out that attendees could plug right into their badge and enjoy. From previous years I also knew there was something of an underground SAO market at Supercon, and that I’d find plenty of people who would be happy to swap one for their own add-ons for mine.
To say that designing, building, and distributing my first SAO was a rewarding experience would be something of an understatement. It made such an impression on me that it ended up helping to guide our brainstorming sessions for what would become the 2024 Supercon badge and the
ongoing SAO Contest
. Put simply, making an SAO and swapping it with other attendees adds an exciting new element to a hacker con, and you should absolutely do it.
So while you’ve still got time to get PCBs ordered, let’s take a look at some of the unique aspects of creating your own Simple Add-On.
Low Barrier to Entry
To start with, let’s cover what’s probably the biggest benefit of making an SAO versus pretty much any other kind of electronic device: essentially all the hard work has been done for you, so you’re free to explore and get creative.
Consider the
SAO standard
, such as it is. You know there’s going to be 3.3 volts, you know physically how your device will interface with the host badge, and should you decide to utilize it, there’s an incredibly common and well-supported protocol (I2C) in place for communication with other devices.
There’s even a pair of GPIO pins thrown in for good measure, which
more nuanced versions of the SAO spec
explain can be used as the clock and data pins for addressable LEDs. In either event, they provide an even easier way to get your SAO talking to whatever it’s plugged into than I2C if that’s what you’re after.
Not having to worry about power is a huge weight off your shoulders. Voltage regulation — whether it’s boosting the output from a battery, or knocking down a higher voltage to something that won’t fry your components — can be tricky, and has been known to
trip up even experienced hardware hackers
. There’s admittedly some ambiguity about how much current an SAO can draw, but unless you’re looking to push the envelope, it’s unlikely anything that fits in such a small footprint could pull enough juice to actually become a problem.
Minimal Investment
Another thing to consider is the cost. While getting PCBs made today is cheaper than ever, the cost still goes up with surface area. Especially for new players, the cost of ordering larger boards can trigger some anxiety. Luckily, the traditional SAO is so small that having 20, 30, or even 50 of them made won’t hit you too hard in the wallet. Just as an example, having 30 copies of the PCB for my first SAO fabricated overseas cost me around $12 (shipping is the expensive part).
In fact, an SAO is usually small enough that a quick-turn prototype run with one of the domestic board houses might be within your budget. I’ve been playing around with a new SAO design, and both DigiKey and OSH Park quoted me around $40 to have a handful of boards produced and at my doorstep within 5 to 7 days.
Now assembly of your SAOs, should you outsource that, can still be expensive. Even though they’re small, it’s all going to come down to what kind of parts you’re using in the design. I was recently talking to Al Williams around the Hackaday Virtual Water Cooler, and he mentioned the cost to have just a handful of his SAO made was in the three figures. Then you look at the parts he used in the design, and it was clear this was never going to be a cheap build.
But even if you’ve got deep enough pockets to pay for it, I’d personally recommend against professional assembly in most cases. Which leads nicely into my next point…
A Taste of Mass Production
Being hobbyists, the reality is that most of us never get the opportunity to build more than a few copies of the same thing. For a personal project, there’s rarely the need to build more than one — and even if you count the early prototypes or failed attempts, it’s unlikely you’d hit the double digits.
But for an SAO, the more the merrier. If you’re planning on swapping with others or giving them away, you’ll obviously want quite a few of them. There’s no “right” number here, but for an event the size of Supercon, having 50 copies of your SAO on-hand would be reasonable. As mentioned earlier, I went with 30 (in part due to the per-unit cost) and in the end felt I should have bumped it up a bit more.
But even at 30, it was far and away the largest run of any single
thing
I’d ever done. After assembling the third or fourth one, I started to pick up on tricks that would speed up the subsequent builds. Where applicable, hand-soldering quickly gave way to reflowing. After some initial struggling, I realized taking the time to make a jig to hold the more fiddly bits would end up saving me time in the long run. Once ten or so were in various states of completion, it became clear I needed some way to safely hold them while in production, so I ended up cutting a couple board holders out of wood on the laser cutter.
A custom jig helped make sure each surface-mount header was properly aligned while soldering.
Looking back, this part of the process was perhaps what I enjoyed the most. As you might expect, I’ve been involved with badge production at significant scales in the past. If you have a Supercon badge from the last several years, there’s an excellent chance I personally handled it in some way before you received it. But this was an opportunity to do everything myself, to solve problems and learn some valuable lessons.
Finding a New Community
Finally, the most unique part of making your own SAO is that it’s a ticket to a whole new subculture of hardware hacking.
The SAO Wall is calling, will you answer?
There are some incredibly talented people making badges and add-ons for the various hacker cons throughout the year, and there’s nothing they like better than swapping their wares and comparing notes. These folks are often pushing the very limits on what the individual hacker and maker is capable of, and can be a wealth of valuable information on every aspect of custom hardware design and production.
When you put your creation up on the SAO Wall at Supercon, or exchange SAOs with somebody, you’re officially part of the club, and entitled to all the honors and benefits occurring thereto. Don’t be surprised if you soon find yourself on a private channel in an invite-only chat server, pitching ideas for what your next project might be.
With a little over a month to go before the
2024 Hackaday Supercon kicks off in Pasadena
, and a couple weeks before the deadline on submissions for the
Supercon Add-On Contest
, there’s still time to throw your six-pin hat into the ring. We can’t wait to see what you come up with. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044027",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T14:13:10",
"content": "Now to move SuperCon to a central USA location, with affordable hotels and parking!/s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8... | 1,760,371,780.744016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/broadcast-tv-simulator-keeps-the-nostalgia-flowing/ | Broadcast TV Simulator Keeps The Nostalgia Flowing | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"70s",
"antenna",
"broadcast",
"golden age",
"over the air",
"raspberry pi",
"rotator",
"tv"
] | Watch out, Gen X-ers — there’s a nostalgia overload heading your way, courtesy of
this over-the-air TV simulator
. And it has us feeling a little Saturday morning cartoon-ish, or maybe even a bit
Afterschool Special
.
[Shane C Mason]’s “FieldStation42” build centers around a period-correct color TV, and rightly so — a modern TV would be jarring here, and replacing the CRT in this irreplaceable TV would be unthinkable. Programming comes via painstakingly collected sitcoms, dramas, news broadcasts, and specials, all digitized and stored on disk and organized by the original networks the programs came from. Python running on a Raspberry Pi does the heavy lifting here, developing a schedule of programs for the week that makes sense for the time of day — morning news and talk, afternoon soaps, the usual family hour and prime time offerings, and finally [Carson] rounding out the day, because that’s all we had for late night.
As for switching between stations, rather than risk damaging the old TV, [Shane] really upped his nostalgia game and found an old antenna rotator control box. These were used to steer the directional antenna toward different transmitters back in the day, especially in fringe areas like the one he grew up in. He added a set of contacts to the knob and a Pi Pico, which talks to the main Pi and controls which “channel” is being viewed. He also added an effect of fading and noise in the video and audio between channels, simulating the antenna moving. The video below shows it in action.
For those who missed the Golden Age of TV, relax; as [Shane] correctly surmises after going through this whole project, Golden Ages only exist in your mind. Things were certainly different with 70s mass media, a fact which this build captures neatly, but that doesn’t mean they were better. Other than
Saturday mornings
, of course — those were objectively better in every way. | 40 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043955",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T11:07:13",
"content": "Saturday morning cartoons on every channel, all day, everyday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8043981",
"author": "The Commenter Formerl... | 1,760,371,780.673336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/2024-hackaday-superconference-speakers-round-two/ | 2024 Hackaday Superconference Speakers, Round Two | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"2024 Hackaday Superconference",
"Supercon"
] | It’s honestly amazing the range of fascinating talks we have lined up for this year’s Supercon. From art robots that burp and belch to gliders returning from near-space, from hardcore DSP to DIY PCBs, and sketching with machines, Hackaday’s Supercon is like nothing else out there.
And in case you’re already coming, you don’t have a talk slot reserved, but you’ve still got something that you want to say,
please sign yourself up for a Lightning Talk
! In the spirit of the Lightning, we’ll be taking submissions up to the absolute last minute, and we will fit in as many short talks as possible, but when it does fill up, we’ll be giving priority to those who got in first.
We’ve got one more speaker announce coming up, and of course our keynote speaker and the badge reveal. Supercon
will
sell out so
get your tickets now
before it’s too late. So without further ado, here is our next round of stellar speakers!
Katherine Connell
Sprite Lights: LED Body Art
Sprite Lights are 1.5 mm thick LED body art, think a light up temporary tattoo. Join Katherine “Smalls” Connell to hear about the 6-year journey to create the impossible as a self taught maker. From hundreds of rapid prototypes, and smelting metal in her driveway to reflowing home made flexible circuits on a griddle, Sprite Lights is a testament that when you’re willing to try anything, you can create everything.
James Rowley
Using an Oscilloscope to Peek Below the Noise Floor
In this talk, we will explore the DSP magic that allows lock-in amplifiers to detect signals hidden below the noise floor. By making a change to the measurement setup, these devices can isolate and measure faint signals amidst noise a hundred dB higher. Lock-in amplifiers are used in various applications, from sensitive photonics research to next-generation battery research and quantum computing.
We’ll also show you how to use your oscilloscope as a lock-in amplifier, enabling a low-cost entry point to these niche instruments.
Nanik Adnani
A Hacker’s Guide to Analog Design in a Digital World
When someone says analog design – what do you think of? If I had to guess I would say you don’t associate it with modern technology. And yet – analog circuits and the designers that build them play a critical role in every modern electronic device, especially the digital ones. In this talk I will provide an overview of the incredible analog circuits in our pockets, and often already in our projects. Once you’re convinced – I’ll show that analog design isn’t as hard as you think and how a few simple concepts can significantly improve your next project, while providing examples with some of mine.
Justin McAllister and Nick Foster
Finding Beamo – from interference to numbers stations, how to track down radio transmissions
In a world increasingly reliant on wireless communication, the ability to track down and understand the sources of radio transmissions has never been more critical. From identifying interference in urban environments to the enigmatic world of numbers stations, “Finding Beamo” will take the audience on a journey through the fascinating and often mysterious world of locating radio transmissions.
Randy Glenn
Yes, you CAN use the Controller Area Network outside of cars
The Controller Area Network (CAN) is used in cars, trains, buses, planes, and spacecraft – but it’s useful for all sorts of cases where systems need to communicate. I’ll talk about how you can use this technology to transfer data between microcontrollers and larger computers, and will present an example application that you can use as a starting point.
Yohan Hadji
Ultralight Glider Returns Home from the Stratosphere
This talk will give you an overview of all the technical challenges to solve to get a sub-250g UAV to autonomously return to home after releasing from a stratospheric balloon at 100,000 ft altitude.
Zach Fredin
The Circuit Graver
We all must strive to minimize iteration time. Designing and testing an idea in a single sitting spawns great things! It’s why we visit fab labs and love laser cutters and push the 3D printers in the corners of our apartments to the absolute limit. But circuit tools haven’t kept up; once you’re done mashing together breakout boards, your choices of milling, conductive-pasting, or home etching all leave a bit to be desired; they’re often messy, delicate, and lack the precision to reach the funnest parts in the catalog. Ugh, I need to go smaller than SOICs, and I don’t want to wait a week for commercial boards!
Here, I present and freely share significant progress on a novel method I’ve been poking at over the last few years which demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating 4/4 PCBs at home!
Priyanka Makin
Tech to Hack Embodiment
Tech constantly takes us out of the present moment and beckons us into the internet wormhole, but can we use technology to explore our emotions and root us in the now or even our physical bodies? At supercon, I would love to talk about my Body of Work series and how I used technology to interrogate my own embodiment.
My Body of Work is a series of tech-powered body part sculptures that relate to my own relationship with my body and come together to make an unconventional self-portrait.
Blair Subbaraman
Sketching with Machines
Artists, craftspeople, and scientists are highly skilled makers. Yet, software for making physical things often overlooks existing skill sets, forcing practitioners to work against built-in assumptions to accomplish their goals. Using examples from digital art, ceramics, and plant biology, this talk will consider how creative practices can guide the development of digital fabrication systems and communities.
Eduardo Contreras
“Cats Turned Plumbers: Embedded Linux Adventures”
A bit of our journey deploying embedded Linux systems, and integrating drivers on the Linux kernels, from the hardware, to the kernel.
[If you read this far, you probably
want tickets.
Just sayin’.] | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043681",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T17:06:06",
"content": "“You’re killin’ me, Smalls!”B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,780.597209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/copper-bling-keeps-camera-chill/ | Copper Bling Keeps Camera Chill | Dan Maloney | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"Action camera",
"aluminum",
"copper",
"heat sink",
"heat spreader",
"thermodynamics"
] | Every action camera these days seems prone to overheating and sudden shutdowns after mere minutes of continuous operation. It can be a real pain, especially when the only heat problem a photographer might face back in the day was fogged film from storing a camera in a hot car. Then again, the things a digital camera can do while it’s not overheated are pretty amazing compared to analog cameras. Win some, lose some, right?
Maybe not. [Zachary Tong], having recently acquired an Insta360 digital camera, went to extremes to solve its overheating problem with
this slick external heat sink project
. The camera sports two image sensor assemblies back-to-back with fisheye lenses, allowing it to capture 360° images, but at the cost of rapidly overheating. [Zach]’s teardown revealed a pretty sophisticated thermal design that at least attempts to deal with the excess heat, including an aluminum heat spreader built into the case, which would be the target of the mod.
He attached a custom copper heatsink to a section of the heat spreader, which had been carefully milled flat to provide the best thermal contact. [Zach] used a fancy boron nitride heat transfer paste and attached the heat sink to the spreader with epoxy. A separate aluminum enclosure was bonded to the copper heat sink, giving [Zach] a place to mount his audio sync and timecode recorder and providing extra thermal mass.
Does it help? It sure seems to; where [Zach] was previously getting about twenty minutes before thermal shutdown with both cameras running, the heatsink-adorned rig was able to run about six times longer, with the battery giving out first. True, the heatsink takes away from the original sleek lines of the camera and might make it tough to use while snowboarding or surfing, but it’s still more portable than
some external camera heatsinks we’ve seen
. And besides, the copper is pretty gorgeous. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043655",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T16:19:11",
"content": "“fancy boron nitride heat transfer paste”I.e. ghost grease?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8043692",
"author": "Fold... | 1,760,371,780.549241 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/tech-in-plain-sight-zipper-bags/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Zipper Bags | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"entrepreneur",
"ziploc",
"zipper bag"
] | You probably think of them as “Ziploc” bags, but, technically, the generic term is zipper bag. Everything from electronic components to coffee beans arrive in them. But they weren’t always everywhere, and it took a while for them to find their niche.
Image from an early Madsen patent
A Dane named Borge Madsen was actually trying to create a new kind of zipper for clothes in the 1950s and had several
patents on the technology
. The Madsen zipper consisted of two interlocking pieces of plastic and a tab to press them together. Unfortunately, the didn’t work very well for clothing.
A Romanian immigrant named Max Ausnit bought the rights to the patent and formed Flexigrip Inc. He used the zippers on flat vinyl pencil cases and similar items. However, these still had the little plastic tab that operated like a zipper pull. While you occasionally see these in certain applications, they aren’t what you think of when you think of zipper bags.
Zipping
Ausnit’s son, Steven, figured out how to remove the tab. That made the bags more robust, a little handier to use, and it also rendered them less expensive to produce. Even so, cost was a barrier because the way they were made was to heat seal the zipper portion to the bags.
That changed in the 1960s when the Ausnits learned of a Japanese company, Seisan Nippon Sha, that had a process to integrate the bags and zippers in one step which slashed the production cost in half. Flexigrip acquired the rights in the United States and created a new company, Minigrip, to promote this type of bag.
Enter Dow
In 1964, Dow Chemical wanted to acquire the rights to the Minigrip bags to sell in supermarkets using Down’s polyethylene bags. And with this marriage, the Ziploc bag as we know it was born.
Dow continued driving down the cost, tasking R. Douglas Behr to improve how the Ziploc production line worked. Eventually, the bags were flying off the line at 150 feet per minute.
You can find plenty of videos of machines that “make” zipper bags on YouTube (like the one below). Many of them are surprisingly light on detail, and it isn’t clear now how many of them are molding zippers and how many are sealing premade zippers to bags or using rolls of bags with zippers in them already. However, the video below shows making “zip lines” from pellets and then creating bags from film. This creates giant rolls of zipper bag stock which are then cut into individual bags.
Slow Start
At first, consumers weren’t sure what to do with the zipper bags. Supposedly, a record company was set to put records in the bags but when an executive handed one to his assistant, the assistant ripped the bag open without using the zipper.
Regardless, consumers finally figured it out. Now, the zipper bag is a staple in electronics, food storage, and many other areas, too.
More Than Meets the Eye
Even the most ordinary things have details you don’t think about, but someone does. For example, zip bags can have one, two, or three zippers. Some have color indicators that show the seal. Some have strips that conceal the zipper so you can tell if the bag was opened.
There are special zippers for liquids and different ones that resist getting powder stuck in the seal. Some zip bags still have pulls, and some of those pulls are child-proof, requiring the user to pinch the tab to slide it. You can even get zipper bags that don’t use locking zippers but
hook-and-loop closures
.
Even though zipper bags don’t seem very glamorous, you can learn a lot from the Ausnits. Improve your product in ways that make people want to use it. Also, improve your product in ways that lower costs. We’d guess that when Ausnit bought the zipper patents, he’d never imagine how the market would grow.
You can see a talk from Steve Ausnit at Marquette University in the video below. If you’ve ever had the urge to be an
entrepreneur
, you can learn a lot from his talk. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043632",
"author": "Prfesser",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T14:46:18",
"content": "The zipper-top bag revolutionized the packaging of…herbal mixtures…which up thru the 70s were still sold in plain plastic bags that were ineffectively spit-sealed. Or so I’ve been told… ;-)",
"parent... | 1,760,371,780.917931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/cyberpack-puts-all-the-radios-right-on-your-back/ | Cyberpack Puts All The Radios Right On Your Back | Dan Maloney | [
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"Anker",
"backpack",
"bluetooth",
"cyberdeck",
"gps",
"Lattepanda",
"sdr",
"wifi"
] | A disclaimer: Not a single cable tie was harmed in the
making of this backpack cyberdeck
, and considering that we lost count of the number of USB cables [Bag-Builds] used to connect everything in it, that’s a minor miracle.
The onboard hardware is substantial, starting with a Lattepanda Sigma SBC, a small WiFi travel router, a Samsung SSD, a pair of seven-port USB hubs, and a quartet of Anker USB battery banks. The software defined radio (SDR) gear includes a HackRF One, an Airspy Mini, a USRP B205mini, and a Nooelec NESDR with an active antenna. There are also three USB WiFi adapters, an AX210 WiFi/Bluetooth combo adapter, a uBlox GPS receiver, and a GPS-disciplined oscillator, both with QFH antennas. There’s also a
CatSniffer
multi-protocol IoT dongle and a Flipper Zero for good measure, and probably a bunch of other stuff we missed. Phew!
As for mounting all this stuff, [Bag-Builds] went the distance with a nicely designed internal frame system. Much of it is 3D printed, but the basic frame and a few rails are made from aluminum. The real hack here, though, is getting the proper USB cables for each connection. The cable lengths are just right so that nothing needs to get bundled up and cable-tied. The correct selection of adapters is a thing of beauty, too, with very little interference between the cables despite some pretty tightly packed gear.
What exactly you’d do with this cyberpack, other than stay the hell away from airports, police stations, and government buildings, isn’t exactly clear. But it sure seems like you’ve got plenty of options. And yes, we’re aware that this is a commercial product for which no build files are provided, but if you’re sufficiently inspired, we’re sure you could roll your own.
Thanks to [KC] for the tip on this one. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043583",
"author": "Dexter Meira",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T12:55:18",
"content": "Regulators would go nuts if they even imagine that exists.That’s a pretty good reason I’m willing to assembly one of those.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,371,781.119138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/learn-gpu-programming-with-simple-puzzles/ | Learn GPU Programming With Simple Puzzles | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"CUDA",
"google collaboratory",
"gpu",
"NUMBA",
"programming"
] | Have you wanted to get into GPU programming with CUDA but found the usual textbooks and guides a bit too intense? Well, help is at hand in the form of a series of
increasingly difficult programming ‘puzzles’
created by [Sasha Rush]. The first part of the simplification is to utilise the excellent
NUMBA python JIT compiler
to allow easy-to-understand code to be deployed as GPU machine code. Working on these puzzles is even easier if you use
this linked Google Colab
as your programming environment, launching you straight into a Jupyter notebook with the puzzles laid out. You can use your own GPU if you have one, but that’s not detailed.
The puzzles start, assuming you know nothing at all about GPU programming, which is totally the case for some of us! What’s really nice is the way the result of the program operation is displayed, showing graphically how data are read and written to the input and output arrays you’re working with. Each essential concept for CUDA programming is identified one at a time with a real programming example, making it a breeze to follow along. Just make sure you don’t watch the video below all the way through the first time, as in it [Sasha] explains all the solutions!
Confused about why you’d want to do this? Then perhaps check out our
guide to CUDA first
. We know what you’re thinking: how do we use non-nVIDIA hardware?
Well, there’s SCALE for that
! Finally, once you understand CUDA, why not
have a play with WebGPU
? | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043512",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T09:25:00",
"content": "Great graphics stuff :-) To hack is to learn, to make a hack to learn, is to hack a hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8043670",
"author": "Greg... | 1,760,371,780.850097 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/a-space-walk-through-iss/ | A Space Walk Through ISS | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Space"
] | [
"aerospace",
"documentary",
"international space station",
"iss",
"national geographic",
"space station"
] | The International Space Station (ISS) might not be breaking news, but this February,
National Geographic
released a documentary that dives into the station’s intricate engineering. It’s a solid reminder of what human ingenuity can achieve when you put a team of engineers, scientists, and astronauts together. While the ISS is no longer a new toy in space, for hackers and tinkerers, it’s still one of the coolest and most ambitious projects ever. And if you’re like us—always looking for fresh inspiration—you’ll want to check this one out.
The ISS is a masterpiece, built piece by piece in space, because why make things easy? With 16 pressurized modules, it’s got everything needed to keep humans alive and working in one of the harshest environments imaginable. Add in the $150 billion price tag (yes, billion), and it’s officially the most expensive thing humans have ever built. What makes it especially interesting to us hackers is its life support systems—recycling water, generating oxygen, and running on solar power. That’s the kind of closed-loop system we love to experiment with down here on Earth. Imagine the implications for long-term sustainability!
But it’s not just a survival bunker in space. It’s also a global science lab. The ISS gives researchers the chance to run experiments that could never happen under Earth’s gravity—everything from technology advancements to health experiments. Plus, it’s our testing ground for future missions to Mars. If you’re fascinated by the idea of hacking complex systems, or just appreciate a good build, the ISS is a dream project.
Catch the
documentary
and dive into the world of space-grade hacking. The ISS may be orbiting out of sight, but for those of us looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible, it’s still full of inspiration. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043452",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T06:21:57",
"content": "“Video unavailableThe uploader has not made this video available in your country” (UK)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8043502",
"author": "Gerhard",
... | 1,760,371,780.970747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/will-you-need-ad-block-for-your-car/ | Will You Need Ad Block For Your Car? | Navarre Bartz | [
"car hacks",
"Rants"
] | [
"auto as a service",
"enshittification",
"features on demand",
"ford",
"functions on demand",
"infotainment",
"patent",
"paywall",
"subscription",
"subscription fee",
"subscription service"
] | The modern web has become difficult to navigate without ad blocking software. Ford now has a patent application that would bring the
ads we hate
to your vehicle’s infotainment system. [via
PCMag
]
Ford has already replied to criticism with the usual corporate spiel of patents not necessarily being the direction the company will go with future products, but it’s hard to imagine that other automakers aren’t planning similar systems since
they’re already charging extra
for heated seats, EV range, and performance. Bringing ads to the captive audience of your personal vehicle and targeting them based on listening to the occupants’ conversations would be a new low. Maybe you’ll be able to pay an extra $100/month for the “ad-free experience.”
Instead of taking advantage of the EV transition to make
better, simpler cars
, automakers are using their highly-computerized nature to extract more from you and provide less when you drive off the lot.
Enshittification
has come for the automobile. Perhaps auto executives should read
A Few Reasonable Rules for the Responsible Use of New Technology
?
The first step of blocking these ads will likely be
jailbraking the infotainment system
. If that wasn’t enough, locking features behind a paywall has
come for wheelchairs too
. | 115 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043391",
"author": "John Q. Public",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T02:13:17",
"content": "Just out of curiosity, but wouldn’t sending ads to a car result in more distracted driving? We already have enough of that. Billboards, flashing signs, construction zones…ridiculous. Seems these da... | 1,760,371,781.333224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/26/inside-a-1999-ramtron-ferroelectric-ram-chip/ | Inside A 1999 Ramtron Ferroelectric RAM Chip | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Teardown"
] | [
"FeRAM",
"teardown"
] | Structure of the Ramtron FeRAM. The image is focus-stacked for clarity. (Credit: Ken Shirriff)
Although not as prevalent as Flash memory storage, ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) offers a range of benefits over the former, mostly in terms of endurance and durability, which makes it popular for a range of (niche) applications. Recently [Ken Shirriff]
had a look inside
a Ramtron FM24C64 FeRAM IC from 1999, to get an idea of how it works. The full die photo can be seen above, and it can store a total of 64 kilobit.
One way to think of
FeRAM
is as a very small version of magnetic core memory, with lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) ferroelectric elements making up the individual bits. These PZT elements are used as ferroelectric capacitors, i.e. the ferroelectric material is the dielectric between the two plates, with a positive voltage storing a ‘1’, and vice-versa.
In this particular FeRAM chip, there are two capacitors per bit, which makes it easier to distinguish the polarization state and thus the stored value. Since the distinction between a 0 and a 1 is relatively minor, the sense amplifiers are required to boost the signal. After a read action, the stored value will have been destroyed, necessitating a write-after-read action to restore the value, all of which adds to the required logic to manage the FeRAM. Together with the complexity of integrating these PZT elements into the circuitry this makes these chips relatively hard to produce and scale down.
You can purchase FeRAM off-the-shelf and research is ongoing, but it looks to remain a cool niche technology barring any kind of major breakthrough. That said, the Sega
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
cartridges which used an FeRAM chip for save data are probably quite indestructible due to this technology. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043935",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T10:13:27",
"content": "Well that was an education, I’d never even heard of FeRAM!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8043941",
"author": "Clara",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T1... | 1,760,371,781.178702 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/bread-proofing-box-for-the-hungry-hacker/ | Bread Proofing Box For The Hungry Hacker | Heidi Ulrich | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"baking",
"bread",
"proofing box",
"sourdough",
"sourdough bread",
"sourdough starter",
"woodworking"
] | While normally more comfortable with a soldering iron, [LucidScience] recently took a dive into woodworking and hardware store electronics to build
a DIY proofing box
. It’s a clever design that doubles as furniture, with some cool problem-solving along the way. While it might not be your typical hack, repurposing seedling heat mats and working with insulation makes it a neat project for anyone who likes to tinker. Plus, the whole thing cranks out two loaves of sourdough bread each week!
The setup includes an 8 watt heat mat, typically used for aquariums or seedlings, and a temperature control box, so no complicated wiring is needed. The entire box is insulated with rigid foam, which makes it energy efficient—once the foam was installed, the heat mat only needed to turn on about a quarter of the time. To give it a more polished look, [LucidScience] hid the raw plywood edges with oak trim, and even added an adjustable vent for moisture control. Pretty slick for something built from basic materials and a few tools!
While this proofing box isn’t a groundbreaking electronics project, it shows how even simple hardware can be repurposed for entirely new applications. The combination of woodworking and basic electronics makes it an approachable project for DIYers looking to stretch their skills. Whether you’re into hacking, woodworking, or just love good bread, this build has something for everyone. [LucidScience]’s clear instructions and simple materials make this a great weekend project that can upgrade your baking game. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043895",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T06:39:39",
"content": "Bakery idea: loaves with patterns lifted from interesting bicycle or car tire tread patterns",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8043901",
"author"... | 1,760,371,781.403828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/remembering-compuserve-the-online-experience-before-the-world-wide-web/ | Remembering CompuServe: The Online Experience Before The World Wide Web | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"CompuServe",
"dial-up",
"online"
] | July 1981 cover of CompuServe’s magazine.
Long before the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, there were other ways to go online, with Ohio-based CompuServe being the first to offer a consumer-oriented service on September 24, 1979. In an article by [Michael De Bonis] a listener-submitted
question to WOSU’s
Curious Cbus
is answered
, interspersed with recollections of former users of the service. So what was CompuServe’s contribution to society that was so important that the state of Ohio
gave historical status
to the building that once housed this company?
The history of CompuServe and the consumer-facing services which it would develop started in 1969, when it was a timesharing and remote access service for businesses who wanted to buy some time on the PDP-10s that Golden United Life Insurance as the company’s subsidiary used. CompuServe divested in 1975 to become its own, NASDAQ-listed company. As noted in the article, while selling timeshares to businesses went well, after business hours they would have these big computer systems sitting mostly idly. This was developed by 1979 into a plan to give consumers with their newfangled microcomputers like the TRS-80 access.
Originally called MicroNet and marketed by Radio Shack, the service offered the CompuServe menu to users when they logged in, giving access to features like email, weather, stock quotes, online shipping and booking of airline tickets, as well as online forums and interactive text games.
Later renamed to CompuServe Information Service (CIS), it remained competitive with competitors like AOL and Prodigy until the mid-90s, even buying one competitor called
The Source
. Ultimately it was the rise of Internet and the WWW that would close the door on this chapter of computing history, even as for CompuServe users this new Internet age would have felt very familiar, indeed. | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043839",
"author": "Troy Davis",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T02:25:40",
"content": "I wish they would open source the software",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8043840",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T02:28:30... | 1,760,371,781.477631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/the-statial-b-open-source-adjustable-mouse/ | The Statial-b Open Source Adjustable Mouse | Dave Rowntree | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"adjustable",
"ergonomic mouse",
"PWM3389"
] | Many of us are very heavy computer users, and two items that can affect our comfort and, by extension, our health are the keyboard and the mouse. We’ve covered many ergonomic and customisable keyboards over the years, but we are not sure we’ve covered a fully adjustable mouse until now. Here’s [Charlie Pyott] with their second take on an adjustable mouse,
the open source, statial-b
.
[Charlie] goes into an extensive discussion of the design process in the video after the break, which is a fascinating glimpse into the methods used by a professional industrial designer. The statial concept breaks the contact surfaces of the mouse into fixed and moveable sections. The moveable sections are attached to the mouse core via a pair of ball joints connected with extendible arms, allowing the surfaces to be adjusted for both position and orientation. The design process starts with 3D scanning their ‘workhorse mouse,’ a Razer Deathadder Elite. This creates a reference volume within which the statial body should fit in its minimal configuration.
So which mouse grip style are you into?
The design has a fixed central core, with each button (including the central scroller) separately adjustable. The side panel with a pair of thumb buttons is also moveable. Creating a model in Rhino 3D working with the grasshopper visual programming environment [Charlies] explored the surface constraints for the base, claw, finger and vertical grip styles common among mouse users. This model was then fed into Fusion 360 for the detailed design. After completing the design, it was passed back into Rhino 3D to add lattice effects to the panel. This helps reduce weight and lets the internal LEDs shine through. The design is intended for resin printing, so you could go wild with the visuals by missing custom resins if you were so inclined.
For the electronics, [Charlie] based the design around an Arduino Pro Micro, taking input from a PWM3389 laser direction sensor module. These are soldered to a simple base PCB, which also houses PH series connectors for the moveable switches to hook into. Check out the GitHub
project page
for all the files and an excellent build guide! As mentioned earlier, we don’t see many custom mouse hacks, but here’s
a nice DIY gaming mouse
to look into. If desk space is tight, perhaps a
DIY trackball is in order
? And while thinking about input devices, what about
a neat DIY PCB-coil 3D mouse
?
Thanks to [Keith] for the tip! | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043816",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T00:34:23",
"content": "The Title Photo made me think of the flying toy little Princess Leia had in the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series. More like a ladybug.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,781.543602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/a-davinci-screw-cutting-machine/ | A DaVinci Screw-Cutting Machine | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"leonardo da vinci",
"screw-cutting",
"thread",
"woodworking"
] | It’s not news that Leonardo DaVinci was somewhat ahead of his time, and over the centuries many of the creations in his sketchbooks have been created and proved quite functional.
The guys from the YouTube channel
How To Make Everything
have been looking at one such sketch, a
screw thread-cutting machine
.
At first glance, it seems a little flawed. Threads are hard to make by hand, and you can see that this thread-cutting machine needs two identical threads operating as a reference to make it work. However
, as the guys demonstrate, you
can
create threads by hand using simple methods
.
Starting with an offset blade mounted on a block with a hole through it, a dowel can be scribed with a starter thread. This can then be worked by hand to cut enough of a groove for the application. They demonstrated that the machine was viable using nothing but wood for construction. A metal blade was mounted, and some preload force was applied to it with a spring. The dowel to be cut was loaded, and the machine ran back and forth enough times to create a very nice-looking screw thread. And once you’ve made two identical threaded dowels, you can use them to upgrade the machine or even build a second. Once you have a repeatable way to make such threads, all kinds of applications become more accessible. Need a bench vice? No problem now!
Whilst the demonstration doesn’t precisely follow the plans laid out by the master inventor, they aren’t all that clear on the cutting tool after all, it’s nice to see people still wanting to build his ideas, and we’ll certainly be following along.
If you like these “from scratch” builds,
you’ll like this other one
. Leonardo’s work wasn’t just about machines; he was also very interested in science. Here’s a
recreation of his demonstration of gravity as a form of acceleration
.
Thanks to [Keith] for the tip! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043896",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-09-26T06:42:33",
"content": "Next do the transmission gearing in his “tank” vehicle design.(I suspect that was an innocent oversight on his part, he’s clearly smart enough to recognize that three gears all meshed together is a brick)",
... | 1,760,371,781.587716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/reviving-a-15-year-old-asus-eeepc-with-modern-mx-linux/ | Reviving A 15-Year Old Asus EeePC With Modern MX Linux | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Reviews"
] | [
"linux",
"MX Linux"
] | Welcome back to 2010 and the Asus eeePC Netbook, Seashell series. (Credit: Igor Ljubuncic)
It’s often said these days that computers don’t become outdated nearly as quickly as they did in the past, with even a decade-old computer still more than capable of handling daily tasks for the average person. Testing that theory, [Igor Ljubuncic]
revisited the Asus eeePC
which he purchased
back in 2010
. Although it’s not specified exactly which model it is, it features an Intel
Atom N450
(1 core, 2 threads) running at 1.67 GHz, 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 and a 250 GB HDD, all falling into that ultra-portable, 10.1″ Netbook category.
When new, the netbook came with Windows 7 Starter Edition, which [Igor] replaced with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04, which was its own adventure, but the netbook worked well and got dragged around the world on work and leisure assignments. With increasingly bloated updates, Ubuntu got replaced by
MX Linux
18, which improved matters, but with the little CPU struggling more and more, [Igor] retired the netbook in 2019. That is, until reviving it recently.
Upon booting, the CMOS battery was of course empty, but the system happily continued booting into MX Linux. The Debian update repositories were of course gone, but changing these to the archive version allowed for some (very old) updates. This raised the question of whether modern Linux would even run on this ancient Atom CPU, the answer of which turned out to be a resounding ‘yes’, as MX Linux still offers 32-bit builds of its most recent releases. A 15 minute upgrade process later, and a 2 minute boot later, the system was running a Linux 6.1 kernel with Xfce desktop.
As for the performance, it’s rather what you expect, with video playback topping out at 480p (on the 1024×600 display) and applications like Firefox lacking the compact density mode, wasting a lot of screen space. Amazingly the original battery seems to still deliver about half the runtime it did when new. All of which is to say that yes, even a ‘low-end’ 2010-era netbook can still be a very usable system in 2024, with a modern OS. | 71 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043728",
"author": "BadAngel",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T19:27:52",
"content": "Nice !I would like these device to be sold again (with updated hardware). From my point of view, smartphones are are too big as phones, and too small as computers, and having one that can run a linux dis... | 1,760,371,781.886442 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/25/floss-weekly-episode-802-emba-layers-upon-layers-of-bash/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 802: Emba – Layers Upon Layers Of Bash | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"java",
"JBang"
] | This week
Jonathan Bennett
and and
Randal Schwartz
chat with Michael and Benedikt about Emba, the embedded firmware analyzer that finds CVEs and includes the kitchen sink! It does virtualization, binary analysis include version detection, and more. Check it out!
https://github.com/e-m-b-a/
https://github.com/e-m-b-a/emba/wiki#publications-talks-and-live-demos
https://medium.com/@iugkhgf/leveraging-automated-firmware-analysis-with-the-open-source-firmware-analyzer-emba-46d30d587a87
https://youtu.be/8sXyRv21jPY?si=J9H3HK_5KX75Fk4C
https://github.com/e-m-b-a/emba/wiki/Referring-sites-and-talks
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 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8044399",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2024-09-27T09:26:31",
"content": "https://github.com/e-m-b-a/embaNever heard of Emba before.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,781.628417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/winamp-releases-source-code-but-is-it-really-open/ | Winamp Releases Source Code, But Is It Really Open? | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"open source",
"source available",
"winamp"
] | The 1990s seem to have reached that point at which they are once more considered cool, and ephemera of the decade has become sought-after. One of the unlikely software hits from the period was Winamp, the MP3 player of choice in an era when time spent on dodgy file sharing sites or peer to peer sharing would snag you almost any music you wanted. Decades later its interface is still widely copied, but now you can try the original again as
its source code has been made available
. It’s not what we’d call open source though, even though they seem to be making an effort to imply as much with phrases such as “
opening up its source code
“.
If you’d like to have a go with it you can snag a copy from
this GitHub repository
, and you’ll need a particular version of Visual Studio 2019 to build it. Any celebrations will be muted though by paragraph five of the
Winamp Collaborative License
, which prohibits distribution of modified versions or forks, and stipulates that only the official maintainers can distribute it. This doesn’t sound like open source to us, indeed it seems they’re just looking for community maintenance for free, which probably isn’t too surprising from a brand
which went all-out to join the NFT bandwagon a couple of years ago
.
So have a look for nostalgia’s sake if you want, but we’d suggest going for
something more community driven
if you want to do anything with it.
Header: Christiaan Colen,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 58 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043336",
"author": "Ken C",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T23:22:08",
"content": "back when i had win9x and win2k winamp was great, i switched to Linux when winxp was released,Audacious is plenty good,",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,371,781.72026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/esp32-powers-custom-darkroom-timer/ | ESP32 Powers Custom Darkroom Timer | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"control panel",
"darkroom",
"timer"
] | Developing your own film is an unabashedly analog process, which is one of the reasons people still gravitate towards it. After spending all day pushing buttons and looking at digital displays, spending some quiet time in the dark with pieces of paper and chemicals can be a way to decompress. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a
bit
of modern digital convenience.
Specifically, [John Jones] wanted a timer that offered more features than his old school analog model,
so he decided to build one himself
. He took the long away around to make sure the end result would be a tool he could rely on, which meant getting a custom PCB made, 3D printing a case to fit in with his existing workspace, and designing a control panel that he could operate in the dark.
The PCB plays host to an ESP32 development board and an I/O expander that connects up to the array of LEDs, switches, and buttons on the front panel. The bottom-half of of the 3D printed enclosure is pretty simple, but the control panel is quite a piece of work.
Borrowing a trick from the flight sim community, [John] switched over to a clear filament after laying down the first few layers of the panel. This essentially created an integrated light diffuser, and with the addition of a few red LEDs, he had very slick backlit labels on his panel with relatively minimal effort.
We’ve covered custom darkroom tools in the past,
from this relatively simple enlarger
to an
automated system that will develop the film for you
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043304",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T21:07:16",
"content": "nice idea. I’m also still playing with the idea of a custom timer with programmable preset times for test strip exposure. Separate rotary encoders for minutes, ten second and single seconds an a A/B but... | 1,760,371,781.766064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/3d-printing-on-top-of-laser-cut-acrylic/ | 3D Printing On Top Of Laser Cut Acrylic | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"acrylic",
"plastic",
"Z-hopping"
] | [Julius Curt] needed to mark acrylic panels with a bit more clarity than the usual way of rastering the surface, so they attempted to
3D print directly to an acrylic sheet
, which worked perfectly. The obvious way to do this was to bond the acrylic sheet to the bed with glue temporarily, but another way was tried, and it’s much less messy and precarious.
The bond between a 3D print and acrylic is very strong
The first step was to create a 3D model which combined a constraining ‘fence’ to contain the acrylic panel with the required artwork floating above. It was easy enough to run the print long enough to build the fence, then pause the print mid-way to add the pristine panel and restart after a quick re-prime and wipe.
There were a few simple takeaways from the video below. First, to ensure sufficient tolerance between the fence and the panel, consider the layer width (plus associated tolerance when printed) and the laser kerf of your machines to ensure a not-too-sloppy fit. Secondly, that hot nozzle won’t do the acrylic surface any favours during travel moves, so enabling Z-hopping is essential!
Another use for this simple technique is to fully incorporate an acrylic sheet within a print by pausing at an appropriate height again, dropping the panel in, and continuing the print. A degree of overlap will lock the panel tight, with the plastic bonding
very
firmly to the acrylic, as [Julius] demonstrates in the video.
It’s always a delight to see how techniques can combine to create the desired effects. Here’s how to use a color laser printer and toner transfer paper to
apply designs to a 3D printing front panel
. Whilst we’re thinking about the multitude of uses for hacking with acrylic, what about not doing that and
using corrugated plastic instead
? | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043414",
"author": "Dave Z.",
"timestamp": "2024-09-25T03:35:15",
"content": "This is a great video, and a good reminder that even though 3d printers have come a long way towards being consumer products that “just work” instead of projects unto themselves, they’re still flexible an... | 1,760,371,781.996596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/supercon-2023-the-road-to-writing-great-step-by-step-instructions/ | Supercon 2023: The Road To Writing Great Step-by-Step Instructions | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Supercon",
"2023 Hackaday Superconference",
"Hackaday SuperConference",
"instructions",
"lego",
"sonya vasquez",
"talk",
"wiring diagram"
] | IKEA is known as a purveyor of build-it-yourself flatpack furniture. LEGO is known as a purveyor of build-it-yourself toys. Both are known for their instructions. The latter’s are considered incredibly clear and useful, while the former’s are often derided as arcane and confusing—though the major difference between the two is color printing.
These two companies are great examples of why instructions are important. Indeed, Sonya Vasquez has learned this lesson well, and came down to Supercon 2023 to tell us all about it. Prepare to learn all about how to write
great
step-by-step instructions that enable greatness and never frustrate the end user.
This, Then This, Then This
Before we discuss the talk, it’s important we acknowledge something. The audio on Sonya’s talk is completely absent until about seven minutes in. Perhaps we should have put better instructions on the streaming computer’s mixing desk or something. In any case, it doesn’t harm much—when the audio comes in, Sonya is already telling us about one of her early builds.
The talk starts by looking at a fun little project—Sonya’s GameCube-Bot. It’s a simple robot chassis that fits into the plastic case of a
Nintendo GameCube
, allowing it to be driven around on the floor like an RC car. The result was both remarkably cute and nicely maneuverable. Initial reactions were positive, and that got Sonya thinking. “How do I share this with people?” she says. The answer? A more accessible build method, and of course—instructions!
Early on, Sonya used photographs for her assembly diagrams. However, she’s since found that producing instructions with CAD drawings can be more effective.
GameCube-Bot 2 was designed to rely on laser-cut plastic parts instead of expensive machined aluminium parts. “I can just put the design files on the internet, but actually, I think I need some sort of instructions,” said Sonya. Thus, she laid out the bill of materials, parts, and processes required to build one, and threw it all on Instructables.
“I learned a lot from this process,” she says. “I realized this is actually a lot of work.” The project taught Sonya multiple valuable lessons. She notes the value of quality photographs for illustrating a build process like this, which presents challenges around getting the right lighting, angles, and focus. That can be particularly difficult for complex mechanisms, especially where gravity might make it hard to keep parts in place. Then, if your design changes, you have to go back and do all the work again!
Sonya’s next big project was The Tentacle, which you might remember from her articles published here
back in 2016!
The animatronic appendage was designed in CAD, relying on a combination of off-the-shelf and laser-cut parts. Again, once the design was complete, she had to contemplate how to share this design with others. Once again, she didn’t just supply the design files themselves, but
the build instructions too
! Since it was all designed in CAD, she was able to reuse these models to create diagrams and animated GIFs for visual aids. This was, in many ways, easier than just relying on photographs alone. She later refined her instructions for a workshop at the Hackaday Supercon, teaching many people how to bring their own creepy tentacles to life.
Breaking up instructions can make things much clearer, particularly when it comes to order of assembly.
The skills learned on these projects have served Sonya well in her later career. She next walks us through the Jubilee multi-capable CNC platform, which she developed at grad school. Along the way, we learn more great techniques for creating clear instructions, such as that color is always helpful, and that community feedback is very valuable. In fact, the size of the community for any given project is generally larger the better the instructions are. The less guesses and leaps of logic required by the end user, the broader your user base can be.
One can draw some similarities between Sonya’s instructional diagrams and those used by Lego. They show the progression of installation clearly with easily-read graphical representations.
Ultimately, we’re taught that good instructions are about removing the need for thinking on the builder’s part. The person crafting proper instructions decides what the builder does and the order they should do it in. Good instructions are about allowing someone to reliably replicate a project. It’s also worth noting that build instructions don’t need to teach the builder about the design of the project—they should focus on its assembly.
On the practical side, Sonya notes that using your CAD software to manage your parts lists and BOM can be a big time saver—allowing for automatic updates of your instructions as your design changes. There’s also great value in creating 1:1-sized reference sheets that allow your builders to quickly identify parts unambiguously. Using subassemblies to break things down into more manageable chunks can also ease the burden on the builder.
These wiring diagrams aren’t just beautiful, they’re unambiguous and super useful, too.
Meanwhile, color diagrams can be a big boon, too—and Sonya explains the value of using real colors or false colors in different contexts where necessary. You might also want to explore using safe and inclusive color palettes that minimize issues for those with varying types of color-blindness using tools like
Viz-Palette
. Sonya also shares valuable insights into making wiring diagrams that are accurate and easy to read.
If you’ve ever worked on a project that you want other people to build, you could certainly learn a trick or two from this talk. Being able to craft quality instructions is a boon to your own work, and a blessing for anyone that tries to replicate it. Better documentation helps everyone, after all, and this talk is a great resource for anyone trying do produce just that. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043273",
"author": "Len Miller",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T19:08:54",
"content": "I’m part of the R2-D2 build community, and almost across the board, the instructions that people write for assembling their designs (e.g. the feet) are shite. These are brilliant people in their desig... | 1,760,371,781.9366 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/most-powerful-laser-diodes-now-more-powerful/ | Most Powerful Laser Diodes, Now More Powerful | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"driver",
"laser",
"Nichia",
"nixie",
"NUBM47",
"optical",
"pulse laser"
] | Many hobbies seem to have a subset of participants who just can’t leave well enough alone. Think about hot rodders, who squeeze every bit of power out of engines they can, or PC overclockers, who often go to ridiculous ends to milk the maximum performance from a CPU. And so it goes in the world of lasers, where
this avalanche driver module turns Nichia laser diodes into fire-breathing beasts
.
OK, that last bit might be a little overstated, but there’s no denying the coolness of what laser jock [Les Wright] has accomplished here. In his endless quest for more optical power, [Les] happened upon a paper describing a simple driver circuit that can dump massive amounts of current into a laser diode to produce far more optical power than they’re designed for. [Les] ran with what few details the paper had and came up with a modified avalanche driver circuit, with a few niceties for easier testing, like accommodation for different avalanche transistors and a way to test laser diodes in addition to the Nichia. He also included an onboard current sensing network, making it easy to hook up a high-speed oscilloscope to monitor the performance of the driver.
For testing, [Les] used a high-voltage supply homebrewed from a Nixie inverter module along with a function generator to provide the pulses. The driver was able to push 80 amps into a Nichia NUBM47 diode for just a few nanoseconds, and when all the numbers were plugged in, the setup produced about 67 watts of optical power. Not one to let such power go to waste, [Les] followed up with some cool experiments in laser range finding and dye laser pumping, which you can check out in the video below. And check out our back catalog of [Les]’ many laser projects, from
a sketchy tattoo-removal laser teardown
to
his acousto-optical filter experiments
. | 31 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043206",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T15:40:46",
"content": "I’m not going to be the laser safety nanny here,except in the way of burning out a diode laser with too much current.That’s a fear that I have from the early 1990s when diode l... | 1,760,371,782.412851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/2024-hackaday-supercon-workshop-tickets-go-on-sale-now/ | 2024 Hackaday Supercon Workshop Tickets Go On Sale Now | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"Supercon",
"tickets",
"workshops"
] | Our workshop ticket sales go live today at 8 AM PDT! If you’re coming to Supercon, and you’re interested,
go get your workshop ticket before they all sell out
!
There will be a change to this year’s workshop ticket limits. We heard our community’s feedback, and in the spirit of giving as many people as possible the opportunity to enjoy a workshop, we are limiting sign up to one workshop per attendee. If there are extra tickets by October 18th, we will allow folks to sign up for additional workshops.
If you register for more than one workshop we will refund you the ticket for the others based on the timestamp that you registered for each ticket (leaving only the ticket for the first workshop you registered for). We hope everyone understands our goal is to allow more people to experience a Supercon workshop due to limited space.
And of course, you can’t join in the workshops at Supercon without
coming
to Supercon.
So get your tickets now
if you haven’t already.
Stay tuned tomorrow for more speaker announcements!
Adam McCombs and Isabel Burgos
Hands on with an Electron Microscope
Price: $40.00
This workshop will teach you how to become an electron microscope knob turner, starting with basic principles and which fields you are actually manipulating in the column. We will also cover sample preparation and considerations, so bring something you want to examine!
Anool Mahidharia
Blinky Con Badge requires no soldering!
Price: $15.00
Conference badges have become incredibly complex over the years. This workshop will turn the clock back to a simpler time by showcasing a design that can be assembled quickly with simple components and zero soldering.
Jazmin Hernandez
It Matter(s)! Learn to use the Arduino Matter
Price: $10.00
This workshop will teach attendees how to use the Arduino Nano Matter in conjunction with the IoT cloud. It will also cover the basics of Matter protocol and how to connect devices. Beginners are welcome, there’s no prior experience required!
Matt Venn
Tiny Tapeout
Price: $60.00
In this workshop, you will get the opportunity to design and manufacture your own design on an ASIC! You will learn the basics of digital logic, how semiconductors are designed and made, how to use an online digital design tool to build and simulate a simple design, and how to create the GDS files for manufacture on the open-source Sky130 PDK. Participants will have the option to submit their designs to be manufactured on the next shuttle as part of the Tiny Tapeout project.
Shawn Hymel
Introduction to Zephyr: Demystifying Device Drivers
Price: $20.00
This workshop is designed for embedded engineers who are new to the Zephyr OS and are interested in exploring how it can be used for building next-generation embedded applications. Participants will gain hands-on experience with Zephyr OS, including initial setup, toggling pins with existing libraries, and creating custom device drivers. (Shawn’s workshop is sponsored by DigiKey.)
Paul Beech
Mini Robot Jam. Build Hard. Drive Hard.
Price: $20.00
Participants will be given a neat kit of tiny robot parts, and a garage of materials and sensors to build their sweetest ride. Learn how to make the RP2350 at its heart rock ‘n’ roll in MicroPython. Participants will pit their robot against obstacles to see how well their code works in real life. (Paul’s workshop is sponsored by DigiKey.) | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043185",
"author": "Kenny Trussell",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T15:04:41",
"content": "Paul Beech: Mini Robot is not showing up in the ticket choices. I would have chosen that, but had to choose another. :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,371,782.345701 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/little-pharma-on-the-prairie/ | Little Pharma On The Prairie | Brian McEvoy | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"3D printable",
"chemical",
"DEFCON 32",
"medical",
"peristalic pump",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi",
"reactor"
] | Let’s get the obvious out of the way first — in his
DEFCON 32 presentation
, [Dr. Mixæl Laufer] shared quite a bit of information on how individuals can make and distribute various controlled substances. This cuts out pharmaceutical makers, who have a history of price-gouging and discontinuing recipes that hurt their bottom line. We predict that the comment section will be incendiary, so if your best argument is, “People are going to make bad drugs, so no one should get to have this,” please disconnect your keyboard now. You would not like the responses anyway.
Let’s talk about the device
instead of policy because this is an article about an incredible machine that a team of hackers made on their own time and dime. The reactor is a motorized mixing vessel made from a couple of nested Mason jars, surrounded by a water layer fed by hot and cold reservoirs and cycled with water pumps. Your ingredients come from three syringes and three stepper-motor pumps for accurate control. The brains reside inside a printable case with a touchscreen for programming, interaction, and alerts.
It costs around $300 USD to build a MicroLab, and to keep it as accessible as possible, it can be assembled without soldering. Most of the cost goes to a Raspberry Pi and three peristaltic pumps, but if you shop around for the rest of the parts, you can deflate that price tag significantly.
The steps are logical
, broken up like book chapters, and have many clear pictures and diagrams. If you want to get fancy, there is room to improvise and personalize. We saw many opportunities where someone could swap out components, like power supplies, for something they had lying in a bin or forego the 3D printing for laser-cut boards. The printed pump holders spell “HACK” when you disassemble them, but we would have gone with extruded aluminum to save on filament.
Several times [Mixæl] brings up the point that you do not have to be a chemist to operate this any more than you have to be a mechanic to drive a car. Some of us learned about SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System) from this video, and with that elementary level of chemistry, we feel confident that we could follow a recipe, but maybe for something simple first. We would love to see a starter recipe that combines three sodas at precise ratios to form a color that matches a color swatch, so we know the machine is working correctly; a “calibration cocktail,” if you will.
If you want something else to tickle your chemistry itch, check out our
Big Chemistry
series or learn how big labs do
automated chemistry
. | 53 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043149",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T11:53:57",
"content": "Pretty cool, chemistry hacks are often not as visible as other kinds. And he is right that chemistry does seem less accessible.Keep the politics away though. I don’t care about the pricing, policy, lega... | 1,760,371,782.505835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/24/replacing-selenium-rectifiers/ | Replacing Selenium Rectifiers | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"mosfet",
"Selenium",
"vintage radio"
] | Old radios often had selenium rectifiers to convert AC to DC. The problem is that the old units, dating back to 1933, are prone to failure and to release dangerous chemicals like hydrogen selenide. [M Caldeira] has a
new board made to fit a particular rectifier
and also allows a varying voltage drop. The circuit consists of a few diodes, a MOSFET, and a pot for adjusting the voltage drop. An IRF840 MOSFET provides the adjustment.
Did it work? It did. The good news is that if it fails — which shouldn’t happen very often — it won’t release stinky and noxious fumes
We wondered if he should 3D print a fake case to make it look more the part. If you haven’t seen a real selenium rectifier, they were made of stacks of metal plates coated with bismuth or nickel. Then, a film of doped selenium was annealed to the surface to form cadmium selenide. Each plate could handle about 20 V and the more plates you used, the more reverse voltage the device could withstand.
Selenium was also
found in old photocells
. If you fancy replacing other parts of an old radio, you might consider a
faux magic eye
or even one of the
main tubes
. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043104",
"author": "Tomasz",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T08:37:25",
"content": "Once, while restoring an ancient FM radio from the sixties (Nordmende, stereo, really big enclosure :-), I met a defunct selenium rectifier. I replaced it with a silicon rectifying bridge worth $0.2. It wo... | 1,760,371,782.556737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/digital-audio-workstation-in-a-box/ | Digital Audio Workstation In A Box | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"behringer",
"DAW",
"digital audio workstation",
"digital effects",
"midi",
"music",
"reverb",
"sequencer",
"smartphone",
"synthesizer"
] | Although it’s still possible to grab a couple of friends, guitars, and a set of drums and start making analog music like it’s 1992 and there are vacant garages everywhere yearning for the sounds of power chords, the music scene almost demands the use of a computer now. There are a lot of benefits, largely that it dramatically lowers the barrier to entry since it greatly reduces the need for expensive analog instruments. It’s possible to get by with an impressively small computer and only a handful of other components too,
as [BAussems] demonstrates with this tiny digital audio workstation
(DAW).
The DAW is housed inside a small wooden box and is centered around a Behringer JT-4000 which does most of the heavy lifting in this project. It’s a synthesizer designed to be as small as possible, but [BAussems] has a few other things to add to this build to round out its musical capabilities. A digital reverb effects pedal was disassembled to reduce size and added to the DAW beneath the synthesizer. At its most basic level this DAW can be used with nothing but these components and a pair of headphones, but it’s also possible to add a smartphone to act as a sequencer and a stereo as well.
For a portable on-the-go rig, this digital audio workstation checks a lot of the boxes needed including MIDI and integration with a computer. It’s excellent inspiration for anyone else who needs a setup like this but doesn’t have access, space, or funds for a more traditional laptop- or desktop-centered version. For some other small on-the-go musical instruments
we recently saw a MIDI-enabled keyboard not much larger than a credit card
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043095",
"author": "Flotsam",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T07:05:39",
"content": "A friend of mine bought a DAW in a box for his studio around 30 years ago. The box was a six feet tall 19″ rack. IIRC The system cost about UKP90k and stored about 80 minutes of multitrack audio. How time... | 1,760,371,784.219658 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/the-possibility-of-reverting-time-on-the-ageing-of-materials/ | The Possibility Of Reverting Time On The Ageing Of Materials | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"aging",
"materials science"
] | Everyone knows that time’s arrow only goes in one direction, regardless of the system or material involved. In the case of material time, i.e. the ageing of materials such as amorphous materials resulting from glass transition, this material time is determined after the initial solidification by the relaxation of localized stresses and medium-scale reordering. These changes are induced by the out-of-equilibrium state of the amorphous material, and result in changes to the material’s properties, such as a change from ductile to a brittle state in metallic glasses. It is this material time which the authors of a
recent paper
(
preprint
) in
Nature Physics
postulates to be reversible.
Whether or not this is possible is said to be dependent on the stationarity of the stochastic processes involved in the physical ageing. Determining this stationarity through the investigation of the material time in a number of metallic glass materials (1-phenyl-1-propanol, laponite and polymerizing epoxy) was the goal of this investigation by [Till Böhmer] and colleagues, and found that at least in these three materials to be the case, suggesting that this process is in fact reversible.
Naturally, the primary use of this research is to validate theories regarding the ageing of materials, other aspects of which have been investigated over the years, such as the
atomic dynamics
by [V.M Giordano] and colleagues in a 2016 paper in
Nature Communications
, and a 2022 study by [Birte Riechers] and colleagues in
Science Advances
on
predicting the nonlinear physical ageing
process of glasses.
While none of these studies will give us time-travel powers, it does give us a better understanding of how materials age over time, including biological systems like our bodies. This would definitely seem to be a cause worthy of our time.
Header image: Rosino on Flickr,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043062",
"author": "Ralph",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T02:21:18",
"content": "Physical aging in amorphous materials really has nothing to do with the way biological systems age. The former aging is caused by molecular relaxation to a lower, generally more dense, state. Biological s... | 1,760,371,784.398972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/find-my-power-tool-battery/ | Find My Power Tool Battery | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Find My",
"lidl",
"Parkside"
] | Apple’s Find My network has seen its fair of hacks to devices, but perhaps the most unusual we’ve seen is before us today. [biemster]
has added a Lidl Parkside smart connected power tool battery to the network
, not by concealing an AirTag within it, but by hacking its on-board firmware.
Opening up the device reveals a Tuya BT17L Bluetooth module, the hackable nature of which due to other projects prompted a port of
a previous Find My project
which provided open source access to the network. The result is as he describes, the world’s chunkiest key finder, and also we’re guessing the one with one of the longest battery lives too.
The European budget supermarkets are well known for their budget bargain aisles, and Lidl’s Parkside range has some surprisingly robust tools among it. They might not quite be up to replacing IKEA in the hacker source stakes, but those of us who live in countries served by them know to keep an eye out in the hope of fresh gems alongside those awesome AlpenFest apple crumble cakes. This one
certainly isn’t the first Parkside hack we’ve seen
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043045",
"author": "a person",
"timestamp": "2024-09-24T00:42:52",
"content": "Definitely a hack! But findmy ‘coins’ are $5 including a case and battery and can be stuck to or embedded in just about anything…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,784.086417 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/a-beautiful-lamp-inspired-pc-case/ | A Beautiful Lamp-Inspired PC Case | Navarre Bartz | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed computer case",
"casemod",
"cnc",
"CNC woodworking",
"Laser cutting",
"sewing"
] | Sometimes you see something super cool and think of how it would be really neat if applied in a totally different context. [MXC Builds] saw an awesome lamp from [karacreates], but decided it would be better as
a PC case
.
We love seeing how different techniques can be used in conjunction to make something that no one method could produce on its own, and for this build, we see [MXC Builds] use 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC, sewing, soldering, and traditional woodworking techniques.
A large part of the video is spent on the CNC process for the walnut base and power button enclosure for the build. As with any project, there are a few places requiring some creative use of the tools on hand, like the walnut piece for the base being too tall for the machine’s usual z-calibration puck or any of [MXC Builds]’s bits to do in one pass, and it’s always interesting to see how other makers solve these issues.
If you’re looking for other beautiful casemods, how about a
transparent PS2
or this
Art Deco number
? Before you go, may we bend your ear about how
PC Cases are Still Stuck in the Dark Ages
? | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8043008",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T21:16:18",
"content": "Nice,But does it suppress RFI?And a thief might pass by it not knowing what it is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8043... | 1,760,371,784.177535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/custom-mini-neon-signs-in-10-minutes/ | Custom Mini-Neon Signs In 10 Minutes | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"LED lighting"
] | Sometimes, you see a project that isn’t a technical powerhouse but just looks so good you can’t help but think about duplicating it. That’s how we felt with the
mini-neon signs
made by [makerverse]. From an electronics point of view, it is just some filament LEDs and a 3D-printed casing. But, as you’ll see in the video below, these look like little miniature neon signs, and they look great.
Although we might use a different set of tools to get there, the idea is to create your text in DXF, extrude it in CAD, and then print a dark shell with a light or translucent center using a filament change. Glow-in-the-dark filament is also an option. Obviously, if you are handy in any CAD tool, you could easily pull this off.
After printing, you simply put your LED lighting in the center, and there you go. Sure, there’s no high voltage or neon involved, but it is a cute, fun 3D-printing project.
We’ve
seen this trick before
, but the contrasting 3D printing really sells it. You can also take a peek at how a
pro shop in Korea does it
. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042957",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T17:57:00",
"content": "Theres also el wire which is closer to neonNeeds 300 voltsBut doesn’t need a neon transformer and 20 – 50kv",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,371,784.284498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/revisiting-1990s-mac-games-that-never-were/ | Revisiting 1990’s Mac Games That Never Were | Dave Rowntree | [
"Mac Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"macintosh classic",
"macintosh plus",
"retrocomputing",
"Think Pascal"
] | [John Calhoun] was digging around their old MAC hard drives,
revisiting some abandoned shareware games
they wrote over three decades ago, and has
uploaded the recovered disk images to GitHub
for everyone to take apart and play with. This repository has a few of the games complete with their development files and the compiler environment, a mixture of Think Pascal and C.
Back then, [John] had a solid mantra when creating projects, specifically prototyping fast and abandoning things quickly if they were not working out. The blog shows a list of twenty-eight projects, of which only five ever made it to release, with all the rest left to rot. This is reminiscent of the attitude around Silicon Valley of moving fast and breaking things. Anyway, reasons for ditching a project ranged from ‘too much sprite work’ for a D’n’D style game to simply ‘not fun’ for some with clunky control mechanisms. [John] even abandoned a neat-looking steampunk flight simulator due to the sheer amount of work needed. Of course, it’s not all lost effort. Much of the code written was reused across multiple projects; after all, there’s no point in re-writing a cosine lookup table if you’ve already got one kicking around in another project.
Still, it’s a fun trip down memory lane, looking deep into projects that never were and the development journey to becoming a successful programmer.
While it isn’t hard to find old Macintosh hardware, some are not in great shape. Here’s a fun
Hackintosh project that uses retro parts
. [John] was featured a while back, with his homage to his first mac, a
sleek Rpi-powered eInk desk ornament
. Finally, we can’t talk about recovering retro software without
looking in detail at the floppy disk themselves
. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042915",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T16:18:52",
"content": "In future, when people choose to write “Mac” in all caps, instead of flying into a rage, I should make a fun game out of guessing what it’s supposed to stand for. Multipurpose Action Computer? Mothers Ag... | 1,760,371,784.536805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/fukushima-daiichi-cleaning-up-after-a-nuclear-accident/ | Fukushima Daiichi: Cleaning Up After A Nuclear Accident | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"Fukushima",
"nuclear power"
] | On 11 March, 2011, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake shook the west coast of Japan, with the epicenter located at a shallow depth of 32 km, a mere 72 km off the coast of Oshika Peninsula, of the Touhoku region. Following this earthquake, an equally massive tsunami made its way towards Japan’s eastern shores, flooding many kilometers inland. Over 20,000 people were killed by the tsunami and earthquake, thousands of whom were dragged into the ocean when the tsunami retreated. This Touhoku earthquake was the most devastating in Japan’s history, both in human and economic cost, but also in the effect it had on one of Japan’s nuclear power plants: the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi plant.
In the subsequent Investigation Commission
report
by the Japanese Diet, a lack of safety culture at the plant’s owner (TEPCO) was noted, along with significant corruption and poor emergency preparation, all of which resulted in the
preventable meltdown
of three of the plant’s reactors and a botched evacuation. Although afterwards TEPCO was nationalized, and a new nuclear regulatory body established, this still left Japan with the daunting task of cleaning up the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Removal of the damaged fuel rods is the biggest priority, as this will take care of the main radiation hazard. This year TEPCO has begun work on removing the damaged fuel inside the cores, the outcome of which will set the pace for the rest of the clean-up.
Safety Cheese Holes
Overview of a GE reactor as at Fukushima Daiichi. (Credit: WNA)
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was built between 1967 and 1979, with the first unit coming online in 1970 and the third unit by 1975. It features three generations of General Electric-designed boiling water reactors of a 1960s (Generation II) design. It features what is known as a Mark I containment structure. At the time of the earthquake only units 1, 2 and 3 were active, with the quake triggering safeties which shut down these reactors as designed. The quake itself did not cause significant damage to the reactors, but three TEPCO employees at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants died as a result of the earthquake.
A mere 41 minutes later the first tsunami hit, followed by a second tsunami 8 minutes later, leading to the events of the
Fukushima Daiichi accident
. The too low seawall did not contain the tsunami, allowing water to submerge the land behind it. This damaged the seawater pumps for the main and auxiliary condenser circuits, while also flooding the turbine hall basements containing the emergency diesel generators and electrical switching gear. The backup batteries for units 1 and 2 also got taken out in the flooding, disabling instrumentation, control and lighting.
One hour after the emergency shutdown of units 1 through 3, they were still producing about 1.5% of their nominal thermal power. With no way to shed the heat externally, the hot steam, and eventually hydrogen from hot steam interacting with the zirconium-alloy fuel rod cladding, was diverted into the dry primary containment and then the wetwell, with the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) injecting replacement water. This kept the cores mostly intact over the course of three days, with seawater eventually injected externally, though the fuel rods would eventually melt due to dropping core water levels, before solidifying inside the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) as well as on the concrete below it.
It was attempted to vent the steam pressure in unit 1, but this resulted in the hydrogen-rich air to flow into the service floor, where it found an ignition source and blew off the roof. To prevent this with unit 2, a blow-out panel was opened, but unit 3 suffered a similar hydrogen explosion on the service floor, with part of the hydrogen also making it into the defueled unit 4 via ducts and similarly blowing off its roof.
The hydrogen issue was later resolved by injecting nitrogen into the RPVs of units 1 through 3, along with external cooling and power being supplied to the reactors. This stabilized the three crippled reactors to the point where clean-up could be considered after the decay of the short-lived isotopes present in the released air. These isotopes consisted of mostly iodine-131, with a half-life of 8 days, but also cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years, and a number of other isotopes.
Nuclear Pick-up Sticks
Before the hydrogen explosions ripped out the service floors and the building roofs, the clean-up would probably have been significantly easier. Now it seemed that the first tasks would consist out of service floor clean-up of tangled metal and creating temporary roofs to keep the elements out and any radioactive particles inside. These roof covers are fitted with cameras as well as radiation and hydrogen sensors. They also provide the means for a crane to remove fuel rods from the spent fuel pools at the top of the reactors, as most of the original cranes were destroyed in the hydrogen explosions.
Photo of the damaged unit 1 of Fukushima Daiichi and a schematic overview of the status. (Credit: TEPCO)
This meant that the next task is to remove all spent fuel from these spent fuel pools, with the status being tracked on the
TEPCO status page
. As units 5 and 6 were undamaged, they are not part of these clean-up efforts and will be retained after clean-up and decommissioning of units 1-4 for training purposes.
Meanwhile, spent fuel rods were removed already from units 3 and 4. For unit 1, a cover still has to be constructed as has has been done for unit 3, while for the more intact unit 2 a fuel handling facility is being constructed on the side of the building. Currently a lot of the hang-up with unit 1 is the removal of debris on the service floor, without risking disturbing the debris too much, like a gigantic game of pick-up sticks. Within a few years, these last spent fuel rods can then be safely transported off-site for storage, reprocessing and the manufacturing of fresh reactor fuel. That’s projected to be 2026 for Unit 2 and 2028 for Unit 1.
This spent fuel removal stage will be followed by removing the
remnants of the fuel rods
from inside the RPVs, which is the trickiest part as the normal way to defuel these three boiling-water reactors was rendered impossible due to the hydrogen explosions and the melting of fuel rods into puddles of corium mostly outside of the RPVs. The mostly intact unit number 2 is
the first target
of this stage of the clean-up.
Estimated corium distribution in Fukushima Daiichi unit 1 through 3. (Credit: TEPCO)
To develop an appropriate approach, TEPCO relies heavily on exploration using robotic systems. These can explore the insides of the units, even in areas which are deemed unsafe for humans and can be made to fit into narrow tubes and vents to explore even the insides of the RPVs. This is how we have some idea of where the corium ended up, allowing for a plan to be formed for the extracting of this corium for disposal.
Detailed updates on the progress of the clean-up can be found as
monthly reports
, which also provide updates on any changes noted inside the damaged units. Currently the cores are completely stable, but there is the ongoing issue of ground- and rainwater making it into the buildings, which causes radioactive particles to be carried along into the soil. This is why groundwater at the site has for years now been pumped up and treated with the ALPS radioactive isotope removal system. This leaves just water with some tritium, which after mixing with seawater is released into the ocean. The effective tritium release this way is lower than when the Fukushima Daiichi plant was operating.
TEPCO employees connect pipes that push the ‘Telesco’ robot into the containment of Unit 2 for core sample retrieval. (Credit: TEPCO)
In these reports we also get updates on the robotic exploration, but the most recent update here involves a telescoping robot nicknamed ‘Telesco’ (because it can extend by 22 meters) which is tasked with retrieving a corium sample of a few grams from the unit 2 reactor, in the area underneath the RPV where significant amounts of corium have collected. This can then be analyzed and any findings factored into the next steps, which would involve removing the tons of corium. This debris consists of the ceramic uranium fuel, the zirconium-alloy cladding, the RPV steel and the transuranics and minor actinides like plutonium, Cs-137 and Sr-90, making it radiologically quite ‘hot’.
Looking Ahead
Although the clean-up of Fukushima Daiichi may seem slow, with a projected completion date decades from now, the fact of the matter is that time is in our favor, as the issue of radiological contamination lessens with every passing day. Although the groundwater contamination is probably the issue that gets the most attention, courtesy of the highly visible storage tanks, this is now fully contained including with sea walls, and there is even an argument to be made that dilution of radioisotopes into the ocean would make it a non-issue.
Regardless of the current debate about radiological overreacting and safe background levels, most of the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant has already been reopened, with only some zones still marked as ‘problematic’, despite having background radiation levels that are no higher than the natural levels in other inhabited regions of the world. This is also the finding of the UNSCEAR in
their 2020 status report
(PDF), which finds levels of Cs-137 in marine foods having dropped already sharply by 2015, no radiation-related events in those evacuated or workers in the exclusion zone, and no observed effects on the local fauna and flora.
Along with the rather extreme top soil remediation measures that continue in the exclusion zone, it seems likely that within a few years this exclusion zone will be mostly lifted, and the stricken plant itself devoid of spent fuel rods, even as the gradual removal of the corium will have begun. First starting with small samples, then larger pieces, until all that will be left inside units 1-3 will be some radioactive dust, clearing the way to demolish the buildings, at the end of this long road. | 47 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042864",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T14:37:46",
"content": "since 2011, i have wondered why the various emergency core cooling systems (ECCS) didn’t function adequately. obviously, they weren’t up to the task, but i wish i understood more thoroughly why they were ... | 1,760,371,784.483649 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/new-release-of-vision-basic-hot-new-features/ | New Release Of Vision Basic: Hot New Features! | Alexander Rowsell | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Development"
] | [
"basic",
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"retro computing",
"retro gaming",
"software development"
] | As the Commodore 64 ages, it seems to be taking on a second life. Case in point: Vision BASIC is a customized, special version of the BASIC programming language with a ton of features to enable Commodore 64 programs to be written more easily and with all sorts of optimizations. We’ve tested out both the original 1.0 version of Vision BASIC, and now with
version 1.1 being released
there are a whole host of tweaks and updates to make the experience even better!
One of the only limitation of Vision BASIC is the requirement for expanded RAM. It will not run on an unexpanded C64 — but the compiled programs will, so you can easily distribute software made using Vision on any C64. A feature introduced in version 1.1 is support for GeoRAM, a different RAM expansion cartridge, and modern versions of GeoRAM like the NeoRAM which has battery-backed RAM. This allows almost instantaneous booting into the Vision BASIC development environment.
Some of the standout features include a doubling of compilation speed, which is huge for large programs that take up many REU segments in source form. There are new commands, including ALLMOBS for setting up all sprites with a single command; POLL to set up which joystick port is in use; CATCH to wait for a particular scanline; and plenty more! Many existing commands have been improved as well. As in the original version of Vision BASIC, you can freely mix 6510 assembly and BASIC wherever you want. You can use the built-in commands for bitmaps, including panning, collision detection, etc., or you can handle it in assembly if you want! And of course, it comes with a full manual — yes, a real, printed book!
One of the nice features of Vision BASIC is the customization of the development environment. On the first run, after agreeing to the software terms, you enter your name and it gets saved to the Vision BASIC disk. Then, every time you start the software up, it greets you by name! You can also set up a custom colour scheme, which also gets saved. It’s a very pleasant environment to work in. Depending on how much additional RAM you have, you can hold multiple program segments in different RAM banks. For example, you could have all your source code in one bank, all your bitmaps and sprites in another, and your SID tunes in yet another. The compiler handles all this for you when you go to compile the program to disk, so it’s easy to keep large programs organized and easy to follow.
If you’ve always wanted to write a game or application for the C64 but just didn’t know how to get started, or you felt daunted at having to learn assembly to do sprites and music, Vision BASIC is a great option. You will be blown away at the number of commands available, and as you become more experienced you can start to sprinkle in assembly to optimize certain parts of your code if desired. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042908",
"author": "Ray",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T16:02:30",
"content": "At first, I thought another for-profit ad; then I read the author’s website and looked at the pricing of $59 (inc. shipping) and concluded that he is barely breaking even for his effort. So, this appears to b... | 1,760,371,784.136766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/23/stratosoar-glider-flies-itself-from-high-altitude/ | StratoSoar Glider Flies Itself From High Altitude | Tom Nardi | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"autonomous aircraft",
"glider",
"high-altitude"
] | As the technology available to the average hacker and maker gets better and cheaper each year, projects which at one time might have only been within the reach of government agencies are inching closer to our grasp. Take for example the impressive work
[Charlie Nicholson] has put into his StratoSoar
series of autonomous gliders.
Dropped from several thousand feet by a high-altitude balloon, the glider’s avionics are designed to either guide it along a series of waypoints or head directly towards a specific target. Once at the given coordinates it can initiate different landing programs, such as spiraling down to the ground or releasing an onboard parachute. It’s an ambitious combination of custom hardware and software, made all the more impressive by the fact that it’s been put together by somebody who’s not yet old enough to have a driver’s license.
[Charlie] originally experimented with developing his own airframe using 3D printed components, but at least for now, found that a commercial off-the-shelf foam glider was a more practical option. All that’s required is to hollow out some areas to mount the servos, battery, and the avionics. This takes the form of a custom PCB that contains a ATSAMD21G18 microcontroller, an ICM-20948 inertial measurement unit (IMU), connections for GPS and LoRa modules, as well as several onboard sensors and some flash storage to hold collected data.
The goal of this open source project is to make these sort of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cheaper and more accessible for hobbyists and researchers. Eventually [Charlie] hopes to offer kits which will allow individuals to build and operate their own StratoSoar, making it even easier to get started. He’s currently working on the next iteration of the project that he’s calling
StratoSoar MK3
, but it hasn’t had a flight test yet.
We’ve seen various attempts
to
launch autonomous gliders from balloons
in the past, but none from anyone as young as [Charlie]. We’re eager to see the StratoSoar project develop, and wish him luck in future test flights. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042742",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T08:52:31",
"content": "Extremely impressive. The creator is a child! I was wrestling in the mud with the other kids at that age",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8042844"... | 1,760,371,784.354733 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/hands-on-with-new-iphones-electrically-released-adhesive/ | Hands-on With New IPhone’s Electrically-Released Adhesive | Donald Papp | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"adhesive",
"apple",
"electrical debonding",
"repair",
"tesa"
] | There’s a wild new feature making repair jobs easier (not to mention less messy) and iFixit covers it in their roundup of the iPhone 16’s repairability:
electrically-released adhesive
.
Here’s how it works. The adhesive looks like a curved strip with what appears to be a thin film of aluminum embedded into it. It’s applied much like any other adhesive strip: peel away the film, and press it between whatever two things it needs to stick. But to release it, that’s where the magic happens. One applies a voltage (a 9 V battery will do the job) between the aluminum frame of the phone and a special tab on the battery. In about a minute the battery will come away with no force, and residue-free.
9V does the job in about a minute, but up to 30 V can be used.
The battery comes away cleanly and without leaving residue.
There is one catch: make sure the polarity is correct! The adhesive releases because applying voltage oxidizes aluminum a small amount, causing Al3+ to migrate into the adhesive and debond it. One wants the adhesive debonded from the phone’s frame (negative) and left on the battery. Flipping the polarity will debond the adhesive the wrong way around, leaving the adhesive on the phone instead.
Some months ago we shared that
Apple was likely going to go in this direction
but it’s great to see some hands-on and see it in action. This adhesive does seem to match electrical debonding offered by a company called Tesa, and there’s
a research paper
describing it.
A video embedded below goes through the iPhone 16’s repairability innovations, but if you’d like to skip straight to the nifty new battery adhesive, that starts at
the 2:36 mark
. | 65 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042702",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T05:56:35",
"content": "This should be made mandatory for all glues in phones, inc displays.When will ifixit sell replacement tape :DId want this tape just because its friggin cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,784.642863 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/the-tiny-toolkit-manifesto/ | The Tiny Toolkit Manifesto | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"tool roll",
"toolkit",
"tools"
] | Most of us have some form of an on-the-go toolkit, but how much thought have we put into its contents? There’s a community of people who put a lot of thought into this subject, and EMF Camp have put up one of their talks from earlier in the summer in which [Drew Batchelor]
sets out their manifesto
and introduces
tinytoolk.it
, a fascinating resource.
The talk is well worth a watch, as rather than setting the tools you should be carrying, it instead examines the motivations for your kit in the first place, and how to cull those which don’t make the grade. If an item seems to see little use, put a piece of tape with the date on it every time it comes out, to put a number on it. As an example he ended up culling a multi-tool from his kit, not because it’s not an extremely useful tool, but because he found everything it did was better done by other items in the kit.
It’s probable we’ll all look at our carry-around kit with new eyes after watching this, it’s certain that ours could use a few tweaks. What’s in your kit, and how could you improve it? Let us know in the comments. | 48 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042683",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T02:19:46",
"content": "“As an example he ended up culling a multi-tool from his kit, not because it’s not an extremely useful tool”I recently saw a “short” on YouTube, where a guy makes the case aga... | 1,760,371,784.881943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/3d-printing-a-wire-wrap-tool-emergency-fix-or-permanent-solution/ | 3D Printing A Wire-Wrap Tool: Emergency Fix Or Permanent Solution? | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed tool",
"wire wrap"
] | Although less popular these days, wire-wrap is still a very relevant, easily reversible solder-free way to assemble (prototype) systems using wire-wrap wire and a wire-wrap tool. This latter tool can be either a hand or powered tool, but all it has to do is retain the stripped wire, fit around the wire-wrapping post and create a snug, oxidation-proof metal-metal contact fit. For the very common 30 AWG (0.25 mm) wire-wrap wire, the Jonard Tools (OK Industries)
WSU-30M
wire-strip-unwrap tool is pretty much the popular standard. It allows you to strip off insulation, wrap and unwrap connections all with one tool, but the question is whether you can just 3D print a wrap-unwrap tool that’s about as good?
First a note about cost, as although the genuine WSU-30M has risen in cost over the years, it can still be obtained for around $50 from retails like Mouser, while clones of varying quality can be obtained for around $15 from your favorite e-tailer website. From experience, these clones have quite sloppy tolerance, and provide a baseline of where a wrapping tool becomes unusable, as they require some modding to be reliable.
Wire-wrap tool model by [KidSwidden] on Thingiverse.
Taking a quick look at the wire-wrap tools available on Thingiverrse, we can see basically two categories: one which goes for minimally viable, with just a cylinder that has a hole poked on the side for the stripped wire to fit through, as these versions by
[JLSA_Portfolio]
,
[paulgeneres]
,
[orionids]
and
[cmellano]
. The WSU-30M and similar tools have a channel on the side that the stripped wire is fed into, to prevent it from getting tangled up and snagging. On the clone units this channel often has to be taped off to prevent the wire from escaping and demonstrating why retaining the wire prior to wrapping is a good idea.
This leads us to three examples of a 3D printed wire-wrap tool with such a wire channel: by
[KidSwidden]
(based on a Radio Shack unit, apparently), another by
[DieKatzchen]
and an interesting variation by
[4sStylZ]
. Naturally, the problem with such fine features is that tolerance matter a lot, with an 0.2 mm nozzle (for FDM printers) recommended, and the use of an SLA printer probably a good idea. It’s also hard to say what kind of wire-wrap connection you are going to get, as there are actually two variants: regular and modified.
The
starting guide to wire-wrapping
by Sparkfun uses the WSU-30M, which as the name suggests uses modified wire-wrap, which means that part of the wire insulation is wrapped around the bottom of the post, for extra mechanical stability, effectively like strain-relief. A lot of such essential details
are covered in this
[Nuts and Volts] article which provides an invaluable starting guide to wire-wrapping, including detecting bad wraps.
Naturally, the 3D printed tools will not include a stripper for the wire insulation, so you will have to provide this yourself (PSA: using your teeth is not recommended), and none of these 3D models include an unwrap tool, which may or may not be an issue for you, as careful unwrapping allows you to reuse the wire, which can be useful while debugging or reworking a board.
Top image: completed wire-wrap on a post. (Credit:
Sparkfun
) | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042672",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T01:09:28",
"content": "you can braise two thin metal tubes together and print a handle with a hub for a wire spool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042677",
"autho... | 1,760,371,784.797475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/hackaday-links-september-22-2024/ | Hackaday Links: September 22, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"crowd source",
"dragster",
"enshittification",
"fire",
"forward scatter",
"hackaday links",
"makerspace",
"nerfing",
"nitromethane",
"openai",
"prompt injection",
"Starlink",
"stealth",
"top fuel",
"Wyze"
] | Thanks a lot, Elon. Or maybe not, depending on how
this report
that China used Starlink signals to detect low-observable targets pans out. There aren’t a lot of details, and we couldn’t find anything approximating a primary source, but it seems like the idea is based on forward scatter, which is when waves striking an object are deflected only a little bit. The test setup for this experiment was a ground-based receiver listening to the downlink signal from a Starlink satellite while a DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone was flown into the signal path. The drone was chosen because nobody had a spare F-22 or F-35 lying around, and its radar cross-section is about that of one of these stealth fighters. They claim that this passive detection method was able to make out details about the drone, but as with most reporting these days, this needs to be taken with an ample pinch of salt. Still, it’s an interesting development that may change things up in the stealth superiority field.
Another week, another example of how the fine print on the EULA is never your friend. This time around it’s the popular Wyze security cameras, where there’s
an unconfirmed report
that a recent firmware update nerfed the “Recording Cooldown” setting menu, making the option to have no cooldown period between recording a paid feature. As we understand it, Wyze cameras
previously had a cooldown feature
, intended to keep the camera from overheating or killing the battery if the motion sensor detects a lot of continual movement. But it looks like earlier firmware revs allowed users to bypass the default five-minute period between recordings, a reasonable choice for anyone using these as security cameras. Now, bypassing the cooldown seems to require
a paid subscription
. We have to stress that we don’t know anything beyond this one unconfirmed report, but this
enshittification
is certainly something we’ve seen before, so it at least rings true, and it seems like another solid example of the fact that with cheap IoT appliances, you never truly own your stuff.
We hate to be the bearers of bad news — well, that might be a stretch given the two articles above — but this is really the kind of news we hate to hear. The Eugene Makerspace in Eugene, Oregon, suffered
a major fire in their community shop
on September 15. Judging by
the pictures
, the place was pretty thoroughly destroyed, and the fact that it was an early morning fire probably contributed to the lack of injuries. Their
GoFundMe campaign
is doing pretty well, but they could certainly use some help getting back on their feet. If you’re in a position to contribute, we’re sure they’d appreciate it.
When it comes to OpenAI’s newest AI model,
you’d better watch what you think
— or rather, you’d better not think too much about how the model thinks. Trying to get inside the model’s “head” is apparently against the terms of service, with users getting nastygrams from OpenAI warning them to step off. The “Strawberry” AI model has a feature that lets users have a glimpse into the “chain of thought” used to answer a question or complete a task, which on the face of it seems to be exactly what they don’t want users to do. But the chain of thought is only a hand-waving summary of the raw thought process, filtered through a separate AI model. This is what OpenAI doesn’t want people probing, and any attempts at engineering tricky prompts to reveal the raw chain of thought will potentially get you banned.
And finally, although motorsports aren’t really our thing, we have to admit a certain sense of awe at
this video
that exposes some of the extreme engineering that goes into top fuel drag racing. Specifically, this video concentrates on drag racing, where nitromethane-fueled engines-on-wheels scream down a quarter-mile track in less than four seconds. Everything about this sport is extreme, especially the engines, which run themselves almost to death for the few seconds they are under full power. The video is packed full of tidbits that boggle the mind, such as these engines burning out their sparkplugs about halfway through the course, with the engine continuing to run in diesel mode thanks to the high compression and temperatures. Drivers experience a brain-squishing 8
g
of acceleration during a run, which consumes over 30 gallons of fuel and exerts so much force on the engine that the connecting rods get compressed. The supercharger alone takes 800 horsepower to run, and yet the engine still produces enough power that the car is going 60 miles per hour before it covers its own length. Oh, and that ridiculous exhaust plume? That’s raw fuel that is purposely left unburned until it escapes the exhaust tips, which are angled to provide additional down-force to make sure as much torque as possible gets from the tires to the track. Enjoy! | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042629",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T20:27:10",
"content": "This time around it’s the popular Wyze security cameras, where there’s an unconfirmed report that a recent firmware update nerfed the “Recording Cooldown” setting menu, making the option to have no coo... | 1,760,371,785.651998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/linux-now-in-real-time/ | Linux, Now In Real Time | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"kernel",
"linux",
"operating system",
"real time operating system"
] | Although Linux runs almost every supercomputer, most of the web, the majority of smart phones, and a few writers’ ancient Macbooks, there’s one major weak point in the Linux world that will almost always have developers reaching for a different operating system. Linux is not a real-time operating system (RTOS), meaning that it can’t respond to requests in the real world within a set timeframe. This means that applications needing computer control in industry, medicine, robotics, and other real-world situations generally need a purpose-built RTOS. At least, that was true until recently when
an update to the Linux kernel added real-time capabilities
.
The feature, called PREEMPT_RT, forces the Linux kernel to respond to certain request within a set limit of time. This means that a system with this support built into the kernel can “preempt” any current task, stopping everything else a computer is doing in order to execute that task right away. There are some existing solutions to getting a functional equivalent system working with Linux now, but they can be clunky or inelegant, requiring the user to install patches or other software to get it to work. With the support built directly into the kernel this will become much less of a pain point for anyone who needs this functionality going forward.
This feature has been in the works for around two decades now, so with this entering general use now we would expect to start seeing it show up in various projects as well as in commercial offerings soon, especially since other RTOS solutions can be pricey. Don’t recompile the kernel in your desktop for this feature just yet, though; real-time function can cause some unintended consequences with normal use you’ll need to account for.
There’s some more discussion on this in the /r/Linux subreddit
and there are
some other real-time operating systems available for computers not typically capable of running Linux
to take a look at as well. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042378",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T20:42:00",
"content": "Okay, so it is not a Real Time system, but does give priority to declared critical operations.At this point, I’m okay with that, if I need a Real Time system, they are availab... | 1,760,371,784.945511 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/jumperless-breadboard-v5-readies-for-launch/ | Jumperless Breadboard V5 Readies For Launch | Donald Papp | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"prototyping",
"solderless"
] | When are jumper wires on a breadboard entirely optional? When it’s the latest version of
[Kevin Santo Cappuccio]’s Jumperless
, which uses a bunch of analog crosspoint switches (typically used for handling things like video signals) to create connections instead of physical wires. There’s even an RGB LED under each hole capable of real-time visualization of signals between components.
If this looks a bit familiar, that’s because an
earlier version took second place in the 2023 Hackaday Prize
. But things have evolved considerably since then. There are multiple programmable power rails, ADC channels, a rotary encoder, and much more. The PCB design itself is fantastic, including the probe which acts like a multi-function tool for interacting with the whole thing. The newest version will
make its debut on Crowd Supply in just a few days
.
It’s open source and made to be hackable, so give the GitHub repository a look if you want a closer peek. You can watch it in action in a brief video posted to social media, embedded below.
We (and I cannot stress this enough) are so back.
Jumperless V5 lets you prototype like a nerdy wizard that can see electricity and conjure jumpers wherever you want. And the wait is nearly over for this particular superpower, it launches September 23rd on
@crowd_supply
.
pic.twitter.com/VRr5H9sJD5
— Kevin Santo Cappuccio (@arabidsquid)
September 20, 2024 | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042350",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T19:24:53",
"content": "Okay, very clever. what happens when you have to connect a bunch of signals between the top and bottom sides? Seems like it would run out of LEDs to show the connections pretty quickly, making thi... | 1,760,371,785.160619 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/against-elitism/ | Against Elitism | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"rants"
] | A while back we got an anonymous complaint that Hackaday was “elitist”, and that got me thinking. We
do
write up the hacks that we find the coolest, and that
could
lead to a preponderance of gonzo projects, or a feeling that something “isn’t good enough for Hackaday”. But I really want to push back against that notion, because I believe it’s just plain wrong.
One of the most important jobs of a Hackaday writer is to find the best parts of a project and bring that to the fore, and I’d like to show you what I mean by example. Take this post from two weeks ago that was nominally about
rescuing a broken beloved keyboard
by replacing its brain with a modern microcontroller. On its surface, this should be easy – figure out the matrix pinout and wire it up. Flash in a keyboard firmware and you’re done.
Of course we all love a good hardware-rescue story, and other owners of busted Sculpt keyboards will be happy to see it. But there’s something here for the rest of us too! To figure out the keyboard matrix, it would take a lot of probing at a flat-flex cable, so [TechBeret] made a sweet breakout board that pulled all the signals off of the flat-flex and terminated them in nicely labelled wires. Let this be your reminder that making a test rig / jig can make these kind of complicated problems simpler.
Checking the fit with a 3D printed PCB
Once the pinout was figured out, and a working prototype made, it was time to order a neat PCB and box it up. The other great trick was the use of 3D-printed mockups of the PCBs to make sure that they fit inside the case, the holes were all in the right places, and that the flat-flex lay flat. With how easily PCB design software will spit out a 3D model these days, you absolutely should take the ten minutes to verify the physical layout of each revision before sending out your Gerbers.
So was this a 1337 hack? Maybe not. But was it worth reading for these two sweet tidbits, regardless of whether you’re doing a keyboard hack? Absolutely! And that’s exactly the kind of opportunity that elitists shut themselves off from, and it’s the negative aspect of elitism what we try to fight against here at Hackaday.
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
! | 104 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042245",
"author": "ALI",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T14:25:16",
"content": "only n00b like me search for 1337 in 5min only to find its just elitist lang",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8042318",
"author": "Piecutter",
... | 1,760,371,785.391461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/steel-reinforcement-toughens-cracked-vintage-knobs/ | Steel Reinforcement Toughens Cracked Vintage Knobs | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"collar",
"epoxy",
"heathkit",
"insert",
"JB Weld",
"knob",
"restoration",
"shaft"
] | Nothing can ruin a restoration project faster than broken knobs. Sure, that old “boat anchor” ham rig will work just fine with some modern knobs, but few and far between are the vintage electronics buffs that will settle for such aesthetic affrontery. But with new old stock knobs commanding dear prices, what’s the budget-conscious restorationist to do? Why,
fix the cracked knobs yourself
, of course.
At least that’s what [Level UP EE Lab] tried with his vintage Heahkit DX60 ham transmitter, with pretty impressive results. The knobs on this early-60s radio had all cracked thanks to years of over-tightening the set screws. To strengthen the knobs, he found some shaft collars with a 1/4″ inside diameter and an appropriate set screw. The backside of the knob was milled out to make room for the insert, which was then glued firmly in place with everyone’s go-to adhesive, JB Weld. [Level UP] chose the “Plastibonder” product, which turns out not to be an epoxy but rather a two-part urethane resin, which despite some initial difficulties flowed nicely around the shaft collar and filled the milled-out space inside the knob. The resin also flowed into the channels milled into the outside diameter of the shaft collars, which are intended to grip the hardened resin better and prevent future knob spinning.
It’s a pretty straightforward repair if a bit fussy, but the result is knobs that perfectly match the radio and still have the patina of 60-plus years of use. We’ll keep this technique in mind for our next restoration, or even just an everyday repair. Of course, for less demanding applications, there are always
3D printed knobs
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042247",
"author": "Felix Domestica",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T14:31:09",
"content": "This may turn out to be useful. I have an old piece of equipment in which one of the potentiometers was replaced at some point, and the new one’d shaft is not the same size as the original. I coul... | 1,760,371,785.065902 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/theres-no-lower-spec-linux-machine-than-this-one/ | There’s No Lower Spec Linux Machine Than This One | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"4004",
"linux",
"MCS-4",
"mips"
] | It’s not uncommon for a new distro version to come out, and a grudging admission that maybe a faster laptop is on the cards. Perhaps after seeing this project though, you’ll never again complain about that two-generations-ago 64-bit multi-core behemoth, because [Dimitri Grinberg] — who else! — has succeeded in booting an up-to-date Linux on the real most basic of processors. We’re not talking about 386s, ATmegas, or 6502s, instead he’s gone right back to the beginning. The Intel 4004 was the first commercially available microprocessor back in 1971, and
now it can run Linux
.
So, given the 4004’s very limited architecture and 4-bit bus, how can it perform this impossible feat? As you might expect, the kernel isn’t being compiled to run natively on such ancient hardware. Instead he’s achieved the equally impossible-sounding task of writing a MIPS emulator for the venerable silicon, and paring back the emulated hardware to the extent that it remains capable given the limitations of the 1970s support chips in interfacing to the more recent parts such as RAM for the MIPS, an SD card, and a VFD display. The result is shown in the video below the break, and even though it’s sped up it’s clear that this is not a quick machine by any means.
We’d recommend the article as a good read even if you’ll never put Linux on a 4004, because of its detailed description of the architecture. Meanwhile we’ve had a few 4004 stories over the years, and
this one’s not even the first time we’ve seen it emulate something else
. | 47 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042172",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T08:54:19",
"content": "“It’s not uncommon for a new distro version to come out, and a grudging admission that maybe a faster laptop is on the cards. ”You mean a Windows distro?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,371,785.246797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/get-your-lisp-on-with-the-dune-shell/ | Get Your Lisp On With The Dune Shell | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"bash",
"lisp",
"programming",
"rust",
"shell"
] | Lisp is one of those programming languages that seems to keep taunting us for not learning it properly. It is still used for teaching functional languages today. [Adam McDaniel] has an obvious fondness for this fifty-year-old language and has used it in several projects, including
their own shell, Dune
.
Dune is a shell designed for powerful scripting. Think of it as an unholy combination of
bash
and
Lisp
.
Dune is designed to be highly customisable, allowing you to create a super-optimised workstation for your admin and programming tasks. [Adam] describes the front end for Dune as having turned up the cosiness dial to eleven, and we can see that. A cosy home is personalised, and Dune lets you customise everything.
Dune is a useable functional programming environment with a reasonably complete standard library to back it up, which should simplify some of the more complicated sysadmin tasks. [Adam] says the language also supports a few metaprogramming concepts, such as a quote operator, operator overloading, and macro programming. It’s difficult to describe much more about what you can do with Dune, as it’s a general-purpose programming language wrapped in a shell. The possibilities are endless, and [Adam] is looking forward to seeing what you lot out there do with his project!
The shell can be personalised by editing the prelude file, which allows you to overload functions for the prompt text, the incomplete prompt text (so you can implement intelligent completion options), and a function that deals with the formatting of the command response text. [Adam] gives us
his personal prelude file
, which defines many helper functions displaying useful things such as the current weather, a calendar, and an ASCII art cat. You never know when that might come in handy. This file is written in Lisp, so we reckon that’s where many people will start as they come up the Lisp (re)learning curve before embarking on more involved automation. Dune was written in Rust, so you need that infrastructure to install it with Cargo.
As we said earlier, Lisp is not a new language. We found a hack
for
porting a Lisp interpreter to any old language
and also
running Lisp bare metal on a Lisp machine.
Finally,
[Al] takes a look at
some alternative shells
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042167",
"author": "Feinfinger (kinda angry here)",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T08:16:05",
"content": "Already too rusty!Rewrite it in C!Or in (Gambit-)Scheme?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8042271",
"author": "Gravis"... | 1,760,371,785.116518 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/amateur-astronomer-images-spy-satellite/ | Amateur Astronomer Images Spy Satellite | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Space"
] | [
"astrophotography",
"dobsonian",
"radar",
"satellite",
"space",
"spy satellite",
"Synthetic aperture radar",
"telescope",
"top secret"
] | As anyone who’s looked at the sky just before dawn or right after dusk can confirm, for the last seventy years or so there have been all kinds of artificial satellites floating around in low-Earth orbit that are visible to the naked eye. Perhaps the most famous in the last few decades is the International Space Station, but there are all kinds of others up there from amateur radio satellites, the Starlink constellation, satellite TV, and, of course, various spy satellites from a few of the world’s governments.
[
Felix
] seems to have found one and his images of it can be found here
.
[Felix] has been taking pictures of the night sky for a while now, including many different satellites. While plenty of satellites publish their paths to enable use, spy satellites aren’t generally public record but are still able to be located nonetheless. He uses a large Dobsonian telescope to resolve the images of several different satellites speculated to be spy satellites, with at least one hosting a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. His images are good enough to deduce the size and shape of the antennas used, as well as the size of the solar panels on board.
As far as being concerned about the ramifications of imaging top-secret technology, [Felix] is not too concerned. He states that it’s likely that most rival governments would be able to observe these satellites with much more powerful telescopes that he has, so nothing he has published so far is likely to be a surprise to anyone. Besides, these aren’t exactly hidden away, either; they’re up in the sky for anyone to see. If you want to take a shot at that yourself
you can get a Dobsonian-like telescope mostly from parts at Ikea
, and use
a bit of off-the-shelf electronics to point them at just the right position
too. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042160",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T07:49:06",
"content": "cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042164",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T08:06:07",
"content": "Looking at them l... | 1,760,371,785.441272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/mechanical-logic-gates-with-amplification/ | Mechanical Logic Gates With Amplification | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"amplifier",
"analog",
"analogy",
"capstan",
"digital logic",
"electronics",
"lever logic",
"logic gate",
"mechanical",
"pulley",
"teaching"
] | One of the hardest things about studying electricity, and by extension electronics, is that you generally can’t touch or see anything directly, and if you can you’re generally having a pretty bad day. For teaching something that’s almost always invisible, educators have come up with a number of analogies for helping students understand the inner workings of this mysterious phenomenon like the water analogy or mechanical analogs to electronic circuits. One of [Thomas]’s problems with most of these devices, though, is that they don’t have any amplification or “fan-out” capability like a real electronic circuit would.
He’s solved that with a unique mechanical amplifier
.
Digital logic circuits generally have input power and ground connections in addition to their logic connection points, so [Thomas]’s main breakthrough here is that the mechanical equivalent should as well. His uses a motor driving a shaft with a set of pulleys, each of which has a fixed string wrapped around the pulley. That string is attached to a second string which is controlled by an input. When the input is moved the string on the pulley moves as well but the pulley adds a considerable amount of power to to the output which can eventually be used to drive a much larger number of inputs. In electronics, the ability to drive a certain number of inputs from a single output is called “
fan-out
” and this device has an equivalent fan-out of around 10, meaning each output can drive ten inputs.
[Thomas] calls his invention capstan lever logic, presumably named after
a type of winch used on sailing vessels
. In this case, the capstan is the driven pulley system. The linked video shows him creating a number of equivalent circuits starting with an inverter and working his way up to a half adder and an RS flip-flop. While the amplifier pulley does take a minute to wrap one’s mind around, it really helps make the equivalent electronic circuit more intuitive.
We’ve seen similar builds before as well which use pulleys to demonstrate electronic circuits
, but in a slightly different manner than this build does. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042292",
"author": "Gar",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T16:19:33",
"content": "It is nice to see someone who appreciates the three requirements for logic.Amplification, Inversion and AND, or OR :)The Nand gate does all three, but still it is three parts.(Diode logic and do two, but amp... | 1,760,371,785.483662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/raspberry-pi-rp2350-e9-erratum-redefined-as-input-mode-leakage-current/ | Raspberry Pi RP2350-E9 Erratum Redefined As Input Mode Leakage Current | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"raspberry pi pico 2",
"rp2350"
] | Although initially defined as an issue with GPIO inputs when configured with the internal pull-downs enabled, erratum RP2350-E9 has recently been
redefined in the datasheet
(page 1341) as a case of increased leakage current. As it is now understood since we
previously reported
, the issue occurs when a GPIO (0 – 47) is configured as input, the input buffer is enabled, and the pad voltage is somewhere between logic LOW and HIGH. In that case leakage current can be as high as 120 µA with IO
VDD
= 3.3 V. This leakage current is too much for the internal pull-up to overcome, ergo the need for an external pull-down: 8.2 kΩ or less, per the erratum. Disabling the input buffer will stop the leakage current, but reading the input requires re-enabling the buffer.
GPIO Pad leakage for IOVDD=3.3 V (Credit: Raspberry Pi)
The upshot of this issue is that for input applications, the internal pull-downs are useless, and since PIO applications cannot toggle pad controls, the input buffer toggling workaround is not an option. ADC usage requires one to clear the GPIO input enable. In general any circuit that relies on floating pins or an internal pull-down resistor will be affected.
Although this should mean that the affected A2 stepping of the RP2350 MCU can still be used for applications where this is not an issue, and external pull-downs can be used as a ‘fix’ at the cost of extra power usage, it makes what should have been a drop-in replacement a troubled chip at best. At this point there have still been no definite statements from Raspberry Pi regarding a new (B0) stepping, leaving RP MCU users with the choice between the less flashy RP2040 and the buggy RP2350 for the foreseeable future.
Header: Thomas Amberg,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042069",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T20:35:09",
"content": "Still not gonna buy it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8042116",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,785.600595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/fixing-an-elgato-hd60-s-hdmi-capture-device/ | Fixing An Elgato HD60 S HDMI Capture Device | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"board-level repair",
"Elgato"
] | There’s a special kind of satisfaction found in the act of repairing a previously broken device, which is why YouTube is full of repair channels and guides on how to do it yourself. Inspired by this,
[Doug Brown] decided to give it a shot himself
, with an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device as the patient. As per the eBay listing, the device did not show up as a USB device when connected to a computer — a quick probing of the innards revealed that not only were the board voltages being dragged down, but some of the components on the PCB were getting suspiciously hot.
One of the broken switching regulators on the Elgato HD60 S capture device PCB. (Credit: Doug Brown)
On a thermal camera the hot components in question turned out to part of the voltage regulator circuits, one a switching regulator (marked fiVJVE, for Fitipower FP6373A) and another a voltage inverter marked PFNI (Ti TPS60403DBV).
Since both took 5 V, the suspicion was an over-voltage event on the USB side. After replacing the FP6373A and TPS60403 with newly purchased ones, the voltage rails were indeed healthy, and the Elgato sprung to life and could be used for HDMI capture and pass-through. However, the device’s onboard LEDs stubbornly refused to follow the boot-up pattern or show any other color patterns. Was this just a busted Innotech IT1504 LED driver IC?
Swapping it with a pin-compatible Macroblock MB15040 didn’t improve the situation, and the LEDs worked fine when externally controlling the MB15040 on its SPI bus, as well as with the original IT1504. Asking Elgato whether there was a known issue with these status LEDs didn’t lead to anything, so [Doug] decided to tackle the presumed source of the problem: the Nuvoton M031LD2AE MCU that’s supposed to drive the LED driver IC. The PCB helpfully provides a 4-pin JST connector on the board for the MCU’s SWD interface, but Elgato did protect the flash contents, so a straight dump wasn’t going to work.
The binary firmware is however helpfully available from Elgato, with the MCU already running the latest version. This is the point where [Doug] loaded the firmware into Ghidra to begin to understand what exactly this firmware was supposed to be doing. Putting on a fresh MCU with the correct firmware definitely worked, but debugging was hard as the new MCU also enabled protections, so in Ghidra the offending code for this was identified and neutralized, finally allowing for on-chip debugging and leading down another rabbit hole only to find an SPI flash chip at the end.
Ultimately it turned out that all the hardware was working fine. The problem ended up being that the LED patterns stored on the SPI EEPROM had become corrupted, which caused the Nuvoton MCU to skip over them. The same issue was confirmed on a second HD60 S, which makes it seem that this is a common issue with these Elgato capture devices. As a next step [Doug] hopes to figure out a way to more easily fix this issue, as even the streamlined process is still quite convoluted. Whether it is an issue with Elgato’s software or firmware (updater) is unknown at this point, but at least there seems to be a fix for now, even if Elgato support seems to just tell owners to ‘ignore it if capturing works’.
There’s nothing quite as inspirational as reading about a successful repair. If you need another shot of endorphins,
check out the work [BuyItFixIt] put into a video baby monitor to bring it back online
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042241",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2024-09-21T14:19:00",
"content": "Nice work!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042670",
"author": "Anthony Kouttron",
"timestamp": "2024-09-23T00:53:14",
"content": "This ... | 1,760,371,785.526952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/hackaday-podcast-episode-289-tiny-games-two-modern-modems-and-the-next-big-thing/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 289: Tiny Games, Two Modern Modems, And The Next Big Thing | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"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:
we’ve announced the 2024 Tiny Games Contest winners!
We asked you to show us your best tiny game, whether that means tiny hardware, tiny code, or a tiny BOM, and you did so in spades. Congratulations to all the winners and Honorable Mentions, and thanks to DigiKey, Supplyframe, and all who entered!
We also announced the first round of Supercon speakers
, so if you haven’t gotten your ticket yet,
now’s the second best time
.
But wait, there’s more! We’re already a few weeks into the next contest, where
we want you to show us your best
Simple
Supercon Add-On
. We love to see the add-ons people make for the badge every year, so this time around we’re really embracing the standard. The best SAOs will get a production run and they’ll be in the swag bag at Hackaday Europe 2025.
Then it’s on to What’s That Sound, which completely stumped Kristina once again. Can
you
get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
Now it’s on to the hacks, beginning with non-planar ironing for smooth prints, and a really neat business card that also plays tiny games. Then we’ll discuss USB modems, cool casts for broken wrists, and archiving data on paper. Finally, we ask two big questions — where do you connect the shield, and what’s the Next Big Thing gonna be? Inquiring minds want to know.
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 289 Show Notes:
News:
2024 Hackaday Superconference Speakers, Round One
Supercon 2024: May The Best Badge Add-Ons Win
Discord
Meet The Winners Of The 2024 Tiny Games Contest
What’s that Sound?
Know that sound?
Submit your answer
for a chance at a Hackaday Podcast T-Shirt.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Non-planar Ironing Makes Smooth Prints
GitHub – mfx-inria/curvislicer: CurviSlicer: Slightly curved slicing for 3-axis printers
3D Printering: Non-Planar Layer FDM
A Universal, Non-planar Slicer For 3D Printing Is Worth Thinking About
3D Printing 90° Overhangs With Non-Planar Slicing
Full Printing Path Control Without Writing GCode
2024 Tiny Games Contest: Neat PCB Business Card Was Inspired By The Arduboy
A Brand New USB Modem In The 2020s
The JawnCon 0x1 Badge Dials Up A Simpler Time
Cast21 Brings Healing Into 2024
Archiving Data On Paper Using 2D Images
Back Up Your Data On Paper With Lots Of QR Codes
Color Can Triple QR Code Capacity
Barcodes Enter The Matrix In 2027
An Espresso Machine For The DIY Crowd
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Ferrites Versus Ethernet In The Ham Shack
Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles
High-Performing Li-ion battery designs
Microwave Forge Casts The Sinking-est Benchy Ever
Kristina’s Picks:
Recreating A Popular Faux-Nixie Clock
Pong In A Petri Dish: Teasing Out How Brains Work
Create Custom Gridfinity Boxes Using Images Of Tools
Gridfinity: 3D Printed Super Quick Tool Storage And Retrieval
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Where Do You Connect The Shield?
WTF Are Ground Loops?
Ham Busts The Myth Of Ground
Ask Hackaday, What’s Next?
We’ll Take DIY Diamond Making For $200,000 | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042024",
"author": "Zach Hugethanks",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T18:37:40",
"content": "What’s that sound link not working?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8042028",
"author": "Tom Nardi",
"timestamp": "2024-09-... | 1,760,371,785.705466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/inviting-the-public-to-take-stereo-photos-for-science/ | Inviting The Public To Take Stereo Photos For Science | Al Williams | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"citizen science",
"photogrametry"
] | [Lynnadeng]’s team wanted to monitor the Los Angeles River over time and wanted citizen scientists — or anyone, for that matter — to help. They built
a dual phone holder
to allow random passersby to use their phones to take photos. A QR code lets them easily send the pictures to the team. The 3D printed holder is fixed in place and has a known gap that allows stereo reconstruction from pairs of photos.
Of course, people aren’t going to know what to do, so you need a sign with instructions along with the QR code. One advantage to this scheme is that it’s cheap. All the camera hardware is in the public’s phone. Of course, you still have to make the holder robust to the elements, but that’s not nearly as difficult as supplying power and weatherproofing cameras and radios.
The real interesting part is
the software
. At first, we were disappointed that the post had a dead link to GitHub, but it was easy enough to find the correct one. In some cases, people will use a single camera, so 3D reconstruction isn’t always possible.
We love
citizen science
around here. No matter where you live, there are many
opportunities to contribute
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041969",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T16:50:20",
"content": "Two cell phones for stereo imaging? Really? One can find a two camera peripheral for Raspberry Pi with 8MP resolution on Amazon. This would be a cheaper, easier to build and easier to use. For example, wi... | 1,760,371,785.846472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/this-week-in-security-open-source-c2-raptor-trains-and-end-to-end-encryption/ | This Week In Security: Open Source C2, Raptor Trains, And End To End Encryption | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Command and Control",
"end-to-end cryptography",
"This Week in Security"
] | Open Source has sort of eaten everything in software these days. And that includes malware, apparently, with open source Command and Control (C2) frameworks like Sliver and Havoc gaining traction. And of course,
this oddball intersection of Open Source and security has intrigued at least one security researcher
who has found some interesting vulnerabilities.
Before we dive into what was found, you may wonder why open source malware tools exist. First off, trustworthy C2 servers are quite useful for researchers, who need access to such tools for testing. Then there is Red Teaming, where a security professional launches a mock attack against a target to test its defenses. A C2 is often useful for education and hobby level work, and then there are the true criminals that do use these Open Source tools. It takes all types.
A C2 system consists of an agent installed on compromised systems, usually aiming for stealth. These agents connect to a central server, sending information and then executing any instructions given. And finally there’s a client, which is often just a web interface or even a command line interface.
Now what sort of fun is possible in these C2 systems? Up first is Sliver, written in Go, with a retro command line interface. Sliver supports launching Metasploit on compromised hosts. Turns out, it accidentally supported running Metasploit modules against the server’s OS itself, leading to an easy remote shell from an authenticated controller account.
Havoc has a fancy user interface for the clients, and also a command injection flaw. A service name field gets used to generate a shell command, so you’re only a simple escape away from running commands. That’s not quite as useful as the API that failed open when a bad username/password was given. Oops.
Trains!
[Bertin Jose] has a bit of a side hobby, of scanning the Internet for interesting endpoints, with an emphasis on industrial control systems. In an automated scan,
a CZAT7 device popped up
— a traction power substation controller. This is a miniature power station that supplies power to electric railways. And this one was not only connected to the Internet, it exposed a web interface that probably wasn’t intended to be public. And it included coordinates. It’s delightful that we can point to a picture on Google Maps, to the little building in Poland where this controller lives.
[Bertin] has enough experience with control devices like these, to know that
1111
is a common password. It’s wild that for these devices, both
1111
and
2222
worked for read/write access to the devices. This is where there was clearly a line, where fiddling around further inside these real devices would be ill-advised. What turned out to be more of a problem is finding the right people to disclose the device to. There was never a response, but the device seems to be finally off the Internet.
Raptor Train
We have news this week of a joint effort between Lumen Technologies and the US DoJ to
take down the Raptor Train
, a botnet that lives on a variety of routers, IoT devices, and cameras and NVRs. This botnet is interesting, that each device was only compromised for an average of 17 days at a time, with the infection only persisting until the next reboot.
What’s always fun about watching malware activity like this is to line up activity with timezones around the world. This one roughly corresponds to a 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM working day in China Standard Time, which checks out with the likely attribution to the Chinese group, Flax Typhoon. The
count of total devices was somewhere around 260,000
, with exploitation due to a combination of 0-day and n-day vulnerabilities. Turns out maybe it’s not a great idea to put those cameras on the Internet.
Discord and DAVE
Discord has rolled out DAVE,
Discord Audio and Video end-to-end Encryption
. This new solution will provide encryption for voice and video for DMs, Group DMs, and other live calls on Discord. The solution is Open Source, and was designed in collaboration with trailofbits.
Lots of established cryptography was used, and at a brief look the scheme seems to check out. Notably missing is any mention of quantum-resistant cryptography. That’s not entirely unexpected, as we’re still several years away from practical quantum computers, and the cryptography schemes designed to be immune to quantum cryptography are still quite new and immature.
The Other Side of the Coin
In an interesting counterpoint to Discord’s new scheme,
Interpol has taken down Ghost
, an end-to-end-encrypted communications platform widely used for organized crime. It seems that Ghost was designed and marketed specifically for criminal use, but one has to ask the question about whether Discord will also face repercussions for the move to strong encryption.
Bits and Bytes
The folks at Cyber Security Associates
have the scoop on doing a Patch Diff
on a vulnerability fixed in a recent Windows Patch Tuesday. The short explanation is that incoming calls to the driver weren’t checked for whether they originated in the kernel or in userspace.
And finally,
there’s a real mystery on the Internet
. GreyNoise describes Noise Storms of spoofed packets flooding the Internet. These seem to be malicious, coming in waves since January 2020. The inclusion of the string
LOVE
in recent packets suggests the name LOVE Storm.
GreyNoise has made packet captures available
, if any of our readers feel like joining in on the sleuthing to figure out what these packets are up to. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041913",
"author": "Rog77",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T14:54:21",
"content": "I feel that there were a couple of security related incidents this week that you might have missed, they were in the news a lot… They even had hardware hacking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,785.904355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/cobb-tuning-hit-with-2-9-million-fine-over-emissions-defeat-devices/ | COBB Tuning Hit With $2.9 Million Fine Over Emissions Defeat Devices | Maya Posch | [
"Engine Hacks",
"green hacks",
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"car tuning",
"clean air act"
] | Recently, the EPA and COBB Tuning
have settled
after the latter was sued for providing emissions control defeating equipment. As
per the EPA’s
settlement details document, COBB Tuning have since 2015 provided customers with the means to disable certain emission controls in cars, in addition to selling aftermarket exhaust pipes with insufficient catalytic systems. As part of the settlement, COBB Tuning will have to destroy any remaining device, delete any such features from its custom tuning software and otherwise take measures to fully comply with the Clean Air Act, in addition to paying a $2,914,000 civil fine.
The tuning of cars has come a long way from the 1960s when tweaking the carburetor air-fuel ratios was the way to get more power. These days cars not only have multiple layers of computers and sensor systems that constantly monitor and tweak the car’s systems, they also have a myriad of emission controls, ranging from permissible air-fuel ratios to catalytic converters. It’s little surprise that these systems can significantly impact the raw performance one might extract from a car’s engine, but if the exhaust of nitrogen-oxides and other pollutants is to be kept within legal limits, simply deleting these limits is not a permissible option.
COBB Tuning proclaimed that they weren’t aware of these issues, and that they never marketed these features as ’emission controls defeating’. They were however aware of issues regarding their products, which is why they announced
‘Project Green Speed’
in 2022, which supposedly would have brought COBB into compliance. Now it would seem that the EPA did find fault despite this, and COBB was forced to making adjustments.
Although perhaps not as egregious as modifying diesel trucks to
‘roll coal’
, federal law has made it abundantly clear that if you really want to have fun tweaking and tuning your car without pesky environmental laws getting in the way, you could consider switching to electric drivetrains, even if they’re mind-numbingly easy to make performant compared to internal combustion engines. | 110 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041841",
"author": "it's our fault",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T11:35:28",
"content": "Take one cruise liner out of commission and it would cut more emissions and toxic dumping than everything cobb tuning has ever sold, including the manufacturing emissions. Better yet, one ship of ... | 1,760,371,786.048316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/laser-fault-injection-now-with-optional-decapping/ | Laser Fault Injection, Now With Optional Decapping | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"ablation",
"decapping",
"die",
"epoxy",
"fault injection",
"laser",
"package",
"silicon"
] | Whether the goal is reverse engineering, black hat exploitation, or just simple curiosity, getting inside the packages that protect integrated circuits has long been the Holy Grail of hacking. It isn’t easy, though; those inscrutable black epoxy blobs don’t give up their secrets easily, with most decapping methods being some combination of toxic and dangerous. Isn’t there something better than acid baths and spinning bits of tungsten carbide?
[Janne] over at Fraktal thinks so, and the answer he came up with is
laser decapping
. Specifically, this is an extension of
the laser fault injection setup
we recently covered, which uses a galvanometer-scanned IR laser to induce glitches in decapped microcontrollers to get past whatever security may be baked into the silicon. The current article continues that work and begins with a long and thorough review of various IC packaging technologies, including the important anatomical differences. There’s also a great review of the pros and cons of many decapping methods, covering everything from the chemical decomposition of epoxy resins to thermal methods. That’s followed by specific instructions on using the LFI rig to gradually ablate the epoxy and expose the die, which is then ready to reveal its secrets.
The benefit of leveraging the LFI rig for decapping is obvious — it’s an all-in-one tool for gaining access and executing fault injection. The usual caveats apply, of course, especially concerning safety; you’ll obviously want to avoid breathing the vaporized epoxy and remember that lasers and retinas don’t mix. But with due diligence, having a single low-cost tool to explore the innards of chips seems like a big win to us. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041818",
"author": "Jan-Willem",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T10:24:48",
"content": "The article is well written, and I like the rest of the series as well. The short history lesson on packaging is quite thorough. The part on decapping is correct, but it wasn’t as clear to the approach... | 1,760,371,786.08823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/inside-a-portable-satellite-dish/ | Inside A Portable Satellite Dish | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"satellite dish",
"winegard"
] | Like many of us, [Gabe] has things he just can’t stop buying. In his case, it is
portable satellite dishes
. You’ve seen these. They look like a dome or maybe a hard hat on some kind of motorized base. What’s in them? What can you do with them? Watch the video below and find out.
As [Gabe] points out, you can often find these on the surplus market for very little money. You can sometimes find them on the side of the road for free, too. Although we’ve never been that lucky.
The video shows three generations of Winegard antennas. It shows what’s inside and how to command them. Of course, the obvious use for these is as an antenna. But we also were thinking they’d make a fair motion base for something, too.
Some of the antennas lack any limit switches. On startup, the system spins until it grinds the plastic gears to find its travel limits. We expect that’s not good for the gears, but it does work. [Gabe] mentions it might be a bit of planned obsolescence, but we imagine it is more of a cost-saving measure.
Junkyards are a frequent source for
satellite gear
, apparently. Dishes have
lots of other uses
, too. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041781",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T07:06:13",
"content": "Pretty neat… I have used these but I haven’t seen a nice teardown of one before, I hadn’t really thought of it before now. Nice work",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,371,786.15288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/2024-sao-contest-the-jolly-tagger-is-a-golden-way-to-share-info/ | 2024 SAO Contest: The Jolly Tagger Is A Golden Way To Share Info | Kristina Panos | [
"contests"
] | [
"2024 Supercon SAO Contest",
"NFC",
"sao"
] | For this contest, we’re asking you to come up with the best SAO you can think of that does something cool. What could be cooler than
sharing your contact information all over Supercon and beyond with a tap of a Jolly Wrencher?
It’s way better than just some sticker, and with the extra solder pad on the back, you can turn it into a pin once the con is over. Contact data can be uploaded over I²C.
The KiCad-generated coil.
Here, [Phil Weasel] seeks to answer the question of whether one can make a working NFC tag with the M24LR04E IC, using a PCB trace as a coil. If there is an issue, it’s probably going to be that copper plane inside the antenna.
Designing the antenna itself proved fairly easy after checking the datasheet for the internal tuning capacitance (~27.5 pF), verifying the frequency of NFC (~13.56 MHz), and doing the math to find the inductance needed. After confirming everything in LTSpice, [Phil] used
a PCB coil calculator
and let the KiCad coil generator draw it out.
Did we mention the Jolly Wrencher is backlit by four side-mounted LEDs? Because what’s an SAO without a few blinkenlights? | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041724",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T02:07:30",
"content": "OK, I’ll be the one: WTF is an SAO?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8041758",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T05:18:40",
... | 1,760,371,786.214185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/is-that-a-coaster-no-its-an-led-matrix/ | Is That A Coaster? No, It’s An LED Matrix! | Julian Scheffers | [
"Art"
] | [
"bitluni",
"led matrix",
"microcontroller"
] | I’m sure you all love to see some colorful blinkenlights every now and then, and we are of course no exception. While these might look like coasters at a distance, do not be deceived! They’re actually [bitluni]’s latest project!
[bitluni]’s
high-fidelity LED matrix
started life as some 8×8 LED matrices lying on the shelf for 10 years taunting him – admit it, we’re all guilty of this – before he finally decided to make something with them. That idea took the form of a tileable display with the help of some magnets and pogo pins, which is certainly a very satisfying way to connect these oddly futuristic blinky coasters together.
It all starts with some schematics and a PCB. Because the CH32V208 has an annoying package to solder, [bitluni] opted to have the PCB fab do placement for him. Unfortunately, though, and like any good prototype, it needed a bodge! [bitluni] had accidentally mirrored a chip in the schematic, meaning he had to solder one of the SMD chips on upside-down, “dead bug mode”. Fortunately, the rest was seemingly more successful, because with a little 3D-printed case and some fancy programming, the tiny tiles came to life in all of their rainbow-barfing glory. Sure, the pogo pins were less reliable than desired, but [bitluni] has some ideas for a future version we’re very much looking forward to.
Video after the break.
Has your hunger for blinkenlights not been satiated? More posts about [bitluni] perhaps? How about the time [bitluni] made
a very blinkenlight-y “super”computer
? | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041708",
"author": "Chinchilla",
"timestamp": "2024-09-20T00:19:30",
"content": "started life as some 8×8 LED matrices lying on the shelf for 10 years taunting him – admit it, we’re all guilty of this…yep.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,371,786.400152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/reverse-engineering-a-keyboard-driver-uncovers-a-self-destruct-code/ | Reverse Engineering A Keyboard Driver Uncovers A Self-Destruct Code | Dave Rowntree | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bricked",
"driver",
"keyboard",
"reverse engineering",
"windows",
"x64dbg"
] | Should you be able to brick a keyboard just by writing a driver to flash the lights on it? We don’t think so either. [TheNotary] got quite the shock when embarking on a
seemingly straightforward project to learn C++ on the x86-64 architecture with Windows
and sent it straight to
Silicon Heaven
with only a few seemingly innocent USB packets.
The project was a custom driver for the XVX S-K80 mechanical keyboard, aiming to flash LED patterns across the key LEDs and perhaps send custom images to the integrated LCD. When doing this sort of work, the first thing you need is the documentation of the communications protocols. Obviously, this was not an option with a closed-source project, so the next best thing is to spy on the existing Windows drivers and see how they worked. Using Wireshark to monitor the USB traffic whilst twiddling with the colour settings, it was clear that communications were purely over HID messages, simplifying subsequent analysis. Next, they used
x32dbg
(now x64dbg, but whatever) to attach to the existing driver process and trap a few interesting Windows system calls. After reading around the
Windows API
, a few candidate functions were identified and trapped. This gave them enough information to begin writing code to reproduce this behaviour. Then things got a bit odd.
There apparently was a lot of extra protocol baggage when performing simple tasks such as lighting an LED. They shortened the sequence to reduce the overhead and noticed an additional byte that they theorized must encode the number of packets to expect in case only a subset of the LEDs were being programmed. Setting this to 0x01 and sending LED code for single keys appeared to work and was much faster but seemed unreliable. After a short experiment with this mystery value, [TheNotary] reverted the code to send all the packets for the full LED set as before, forgetting to correct this mystery value from the 0xFF it was programmed to during the experiment. They were surprised that all the LEDs and LCD were switched off. They were then horrified when the keyboard never powered up again. This value appeared to have triggered an obscure firmware bug and bricked it—a sad end to what would have been a fun little learning project.
Keyboard hacks are so plentiful it’s hard to decide where to start. How about
upgrading the keyboard of your trusty ZX81
? Here’s a
lovely, minimal mechanical keyboard powered by a Pi Pico
, and finally while we’re thinking about drivers bricking your stuff,
who can forget FTDI gate
? We may never forgive that one.
Header image: Martin Vorel,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041649",
"author": "Megol",
"timestamp": "2024-09-19T20:55:50",
"content": "Using HID as the base protocol is something most hw hackers should get familiar with. Really comfy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8041694",
... | 1,760,371,786.273623 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/lathe-outfitted-with-electronic-gearbox/ | Lathe Outfitted With Electronic Gearbox | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"change gears",
"electronics",
"encoder",
"gear ratio",
"gearbox",
"lathe",
"stepper motor",
"Teensy 4.1"
] | Running a metal lathe is not for the faint of heart. Without proper knowledge and preparation, these machines can quickly cause injury or destroy expensive stock, tools, or parts. The other major problem even for those with knowledge and preparedness is that some of their more niche capabilities, like cutting threads with a lead screw, can be tedious and complicated thanks to the change gear system found on some lathes. While these are useful tools for getting things done, [Not An Engineer] decided that there was a better way and got to work
building an electronic gearbox to automate the task of the traditional mechanical change gear setup
in this video.
What makes change gears so tricky is that they usually come as a set of many gears of different ratios, forcing the lathe operator to figure out the exact combination of gears needed to couple the spindle of the lathe to the feed screw at the precise ratio needed for cutting a specific thread pattern. It is possible to do this task but can be quite a headache. [Not An Engineer] first turned to an Arduino Nano to receive input from a rotary encoder connected to the shaft of the lathe and then instruct a motor to turn the feed screw at a set ratio.
The first major problem was that the Arduino was not nearly fast enough to catch every signal from the encoder, leading to a considerable amount of drift in the output of the motor. That was solved by upgrading to a Teensy 4.1 with a 600 MHz clock speed. There was still one other major hurdle to cross; the problem of controlling the motor smoothly when an odd ratio is selected. [Not An Engineer] used
this algorithm
to inspire some code, and with that and some custom hardware to attach everything to the lathe he has a working set of electronic change gears that never need to be changed again. And, if you don’t have a lathe at all but are looking to get started with one,
you can always build your own from easily-sourced parts
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSDNKmk5B20 | 45 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041599",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2024-09-19T18:42:26",
"content": "CLOUGH42 makes a pretty good controller kit (just add stepper) for an electronic lead screw, and uses a fairly tame in comparison TI F280049CWhile the more the better, [Not An Engineer] did seem to go thoug... | 1,760,371,786.358815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/design-and-the-golden-rule/ | Design And The Golden Rule | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"golden rule",
"hp/1000",
"retrocomputing"
] | You often learn the golden rule or some variation of it as early as kindergarten. There are several ways to phrase it, but you most often hear: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While that’s catchy, it is really an aphorism that encourages us to consider the viewpoints of others. As people who design things, this can be tricky. Sometimes, what you want isn’t necessarily what most people want, and — conversely — you might not appreciate what most people want or need.
EDIT/1000
HP/1000
CC-BY-SA-3.0
by [Autopilot]
I learned this lesson many years ago when I used to babysit a few HP/1000 minicomputers. Minicomputer sounds grand, but, honestly, a Raspberry Pi of any sort would put the old HP to shame. Like a lot of computers in those days, it had a text editor that was arcane even by the standards of vi or emacs.
EDIT/1000
couldn’t be sure you weren’t using a printing terminal, and the commands reflect that.
For example, printing a few lines around the current line requires the command: “/-2,L,5” which isn’t that hard, I suppose. To delete all lines that contain a percent sign, “1$ D/%/A/” assuming you don’t want to be asked about each deletion.
Sure, sure. As a Hackaday reader, you don’t find this hard to puzzle out or remember. But back in the 1980s, a bunch of physicists and chemical engineers had little patience for stuff like that. However, the editor had a trick up its sleeve.
Old Terminal Basics
Old HP terminals didn’t work like you think of a terminal today. The computer would send a whole screen to the terminal along with some instructions. This was common on several brands of computers, even though it is rare today. For example, the computer might send a form with some data. The user can then use the terminal to modify the data or add new data. Then, with a single keystroke, the entire screen goes back to the computer for processing.
In the case of EDIT/1000, you could invoke screen mode, which would load a page of text into your terminal. Then you could use the arrow keys, insert, delete and the experience wasn’t too far from using a text editor today. Until you wanted to change pages, that is.
You’d use /S to start the screen mode from the current location in a file. But to move forward you needed to use Control+F. Well, that’s if you wanted to send your changes to the computer. You could also move forward and discard your changes by pressing Control+F twice. There were a handful of other commands you could use in screen mode. To do things like search and replace, you still needed the oddball commands along with the Control+X incantation to execute a command while in screen mode.
Complaint Department
We heard no end of complaints about EDIT/1000 and spent a lot of time helping people fix their mistakes made while editing. Training didn’t really seem to help. There didn’t seem to be any other reasonable options as far as buying a different editor.
The problem is, we were split into two camps. People who knew how to use EDIT/1000 well and people who needed to use it, but didn’t really know anything about it.
One More Puzzle Piece
HP terminals of the day all had an interesting feature. The keyboards had nine keys along the top row — what you’d think of as function keys today. The monitors always had eight little spots at the bottom that had labels for what the keys did. The ninth key let you page through a couple of sets of function keys. You can see that in the HP terminal teardown video below.
So F1 might have “Help” on the screen above it, unless you set the next page where it might say “Clear” or something. The effect was best on the terminals where the keyboard and screen were one piece so the labels lined up.
Then One Day…
I was thinking, probably uncharitably, about how stupid people were that couldn’t learn how to use the editor. I happened to be setting up custom function keys at the time. I wrote a quick program to put a few editor-specific keys on the terminal like “next page” and “previous page” and mapped them to the correct commands.
That worked fine, and then I wrote a short program to launch the editor on a file and put it into screen mode. I grabbed someone passing by and had them try it. By the end of the day, everyone was using “my” editor.
No Genius
I can’t overstate how simple this was. I later reduced it to just a batch file that copied a text file to the terminal to set the function keys, and then launched the editor. And everyone loved it. The people who knew how to use the editor didn’t need all this, of course. And they knew how easy it was. But they loved that it saved people asking dumb questions or messing up their files. The other users just loved it because it made the editor easy.
This predates easy access to the Internet, and a common thing in those days was to trade tapes with other sites. You’d get a magnetic tape in the mail, mount it, look at what was on it, copying anything you found interesting. Then you’d add anything you had to the end, and send it to the next place. In a year or so, the tape would make its way back around to you and the process would repeat. I put my editor on the outbound tape.
Within a year or so, people were literally finding me — hard to do in those days — and sending me real letters thanking me for my editor solution.
The Moral
The script to do this was extremely trivial. It probably took 10 minutes to write and once you knew how to do it, maybe less. But the point was, the people who knew how to write the script didn’t need it. The people who needed it were those who had no more idea how to program function keys than I know how to perform open heart surgery.
It doesn’t matter if it is hardware or software. Getting into the heads of users can really pay off. | 37 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041578",
"author": "Even if that person is yourself",
"timestamp": "2024-09-19T17:38:24",
"content": "I thought it was “program knowing that the next person to maintain it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,371,786.526026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/brass-propeller-gets-impressive-hand-trimming/ | Brass Propeller Gets Impressive Hand Trimming | Tom Nardi | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"metalworking",
"propeller"
] | Whether you’re a landlubber or an old salt, you’ve got to appreciate the effort that
[The Aussie boat guy] puts into cutting an old brass propeller down
into a far smaller and sleeker specimen. Especially since he does the entire thing with hand tools, a couple different calipers, and that most valuable of natural resources: experience.
The whole process was made somewhat easier by the fact that [The Aussie boat guy] had a model to work from — his friend had a small propeller that was already known to perform well, it was just a matter of cutting the larger prop down to match its dimensions. Using what appears to be pieces of leather (presumably for its flexibility), a template was made to accurately map out the front face of the blade.
As Bob Ross would say — “Here comes your bravery test”
By measuring out from the hub of the prop with his calipers, [The Aussie boat guy] was able to make sure the template was properly positioned before scribing its shape into the larger prop. An angle grinder was used to cut the shape out of each blade, followed by a smoothing off with a flap wheel.
But there was still a problem — the blades were the right shape, but they were far too thick. So he took the angle grinder to the back of each one to start removing material, using another set of calipers to occasionally spot-check them to make sure they were thinning out at roughly the same rate.
This thinning out process continued until the prop was brought into balance. How do you check that, you might be wondering? Well, if you’re a madman like [The Aussie boat guy], you chuck the thing into a power drill and spin er’ up to see how badly it shakes. But this only gives you a rough idea, so he has to move over to a somewhat more scientific apparatus that uses a set of parallel bars to help determine which blade is heavier than its peers.
Along the way, [The Aussie boat guy] also installs a bushing in the hub of the prop to adapt it to his engine, but he doesn’t spend much time talking about that given the far more audacious surgery he’s performing. He takes the end result out for a test run and achieves a notable speed boost when compared to the prop he was running previously — the final product doesn’t just look incredible, it brings the results as well.
This would appear to be the first time we’ve come across [The Aussie boat guy], which looking at some of his past videos, is a bit surprising. His channel is full of engine and boat modifications made in the pursuit of speed; check it out if you’ve ever dreamed of screaming across the surface of the water in a boat not much larger than a bathtub.
Thanks to [Bill] for the tip. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042619",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T19:49:52",
"content": "Hmm, didn’t think I was going to see a propeller bris today.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042725",
"author": "hardwerker",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,371,786.445359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/__trashed-26/ | Robotic Touch Using A DIY Squishy Magnetic Pad | Donald Papp | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"robotics",
"silicone",
"skin"
] | There are a number of ways to give a robotic actuator a sense of touch, but the
AnySkin
project aims to make it an overall more reliable and practical process. The idea is twofold: create modular grippy “skins” that can be slipped onto actuators, and separate the sensing electronics from the skins themselves. The whole system ends up being quite small, as shown here.
Cast skins can be installed onto bases as easily as slipping a phone case onto a phone.
The skins are cast in whatever shape is called for by using silicone (using an off-the-shelf formulation from Smooth-on) mixed with iron particles. This skin is then slipped onto a base that contains the electronics, but first it is magnetized with a
pulse magnetizer
. It’s the magnetic field that is at the heart of how the system works.
The base contains five MLX90393 triple-axis magnetometers, each capable of sensing tiny changes in magnetic fields. When the magnetized skin over the base is deformed — no matter how slightly — its magnetic field changes in distinct ways that paint an impressively detailed picture of exactly what is happening at the sensor. As a bonus, slippage of the skin against the sensor (a kind of shearing) can also be distinctly detected with a high degree of accuracy.
The result is a durable and swappable robotic skin that can be cast in whatever shape is needed, itself contains no electronics, and can even be changed without needing to re-calibrate everything.
Cameras can also sense touch
with a high degree of accuracy, but camera-based sensors put constraints on the size and shape of the end result.
AnySkin builds on another project called
ReSkin
and in fact uses the same sensor PCB (design files and bill of materials available
here
) but provides a streamlined process to create swappable skins, and has pre-made models for a variety of different robot arms. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042563",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T14:45:49",
"content": "My wife, a nurse, works a lot with preventing bed sores in patients. Shear is definitely a problem. I’m wondering how this sensor might be used in her work.",
"parent_id"... | 1,760,371,786.575162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/hackfest-a-new-event-for-your-european-calendar/ | Hackfest, A New Event For Your European Calendar | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"hacker event",
"hackfest",
"Netherlands"
] | Our community’s events are something special, bringing as they do an opportunity to meet and mingle with other hackers whether their field be hardware, software, or security, to share ideas, and to see some very cool projects. Here at Hackaday aside from our own Supercon and Hackaday Europe events we try to take in as many as we can over the year, and thus it’s always interesting to sot a new one. If you’re in north-west Europe next weekend, consider dropping by
Hackfest
, in the Dutch city of Enschede, right on the German border.
Looking at the program and the projects and workshops listed on the website we can see robotics, lockpicking, demoscene, retrocomputing, and plenty of open source. There are quite a few names which have featured at times here on these pages, something which certainly piqued our interest. Finding that it’s only 15 Euros for a weekend’s admission sealed the deal, and thus it’s time for Hackaday to break out the trusty Interrail pass once more and make the trek. Sadly many of Hackaday’s community will be too far away to join us, but if you’re close enough to make it then it’s one to consider.
This is a part of the world it’s fair to say isn’t often featured on Hackaday, but some of you might remember the city
as being at the centre of a Wi-Fi tracking scandal
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042531",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T12:28:10",
"content": "Ah I see a shed outside to make us feel at home!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042538",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T... | 1,760,371,786.621309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/where-did-the-japanese-computers-go/ | Where Did The Japanese Computers Go? | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"japan",
"retrocomputing"
] | If you are a retrocomputer person, at least in North America and Europe, you probably only have a hazy idea of what computers were in the Japanese market at the time we were all buying MSDOS-based computers. You may have heard of PC-98, but there were many Japanese-only computers out there, and a recent post by [Misty De Meo] asks the question:
What happened to the Japanese computers
?
To answer that question, you need a history lesson on PC-98 (NEC), FM Towns (Fujitsu), and the X68000 (Sharp). The PC-98 was originally a text-only MSDOS-based computer. But eventually, Microsoft and NEC ported Windows to the machine.
The FM Towns had its own GUI operating system. However, it too had a Windows port and the machine became just another Windows platform. The X68000, as you may well have guessed, used a 68000 CPU. Arguably, this was a great choice at the time. However, history shows that it didn’t work out, and when Sharp began making x86-based Windows machines — and, of course, they did — there was no migration path.
[Misty] makes an interesting point. While we often think of software like Microsoft Office as driving Windows adoption, that wasn’t the case in Japan. It turns out that multitasking was the key feature since Office, at the time, wasn’t very friendly to the native language.
So where did the Japanese computers go? The answer for two of them is: nowhere. They just morphed into commodity Windows computers. The 68000 was the exception — it just withered away.
Japanese pocket computers
were common at one time and have an interesting backstory. Japanese can be a challenge for input but, of course, hackers are up to
the challenge
. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042516",
"author": "just another anon",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T11:13:25",
"content": "Still a lot of NEC PC98’s in old japanese cnc machine controls. Complete with their odd fd1135’s with vfo on the drive board not motherboard side like pc’s.I have one about 12ft from me here in ... | 1,760,371,786.81049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/freecad-is-near-1-0/ | FreeCAD Is Near 1.0 | Elliot Williams | [
"News",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3D modelling",
"freecad",
"software",
"version"
] | The open-source parametric 3D modelling software,
FreeCAD, is out in a release candidate for version 1.0
. If you’ve tried FreeCAD before and found a few showstoppers, it might be a good time for you to test it out again because the two biggest of them have been solved in this latest version.
First, version 1.0 finally implements a solution to the “topological naming problem”. Imagine you want to put a hole into a surface. The program needs to know on which surface to put the hole, and so it refers to this surface by name / number. Now imagine you subdivide the surface, and both subsections get new names. Where does your hole go now? If you want to dig into the issue,
the inimitable [MangoJelly] has a great video about the topo naming problem
. Practically, there were workarounds, like only adding chamfers after the main design has stabilized, but frankly it was a hassle to remember all of the tricks. This is a huge fix.
The second big fix concerns assemblies. Older versions of FreeCAD were great for making single parts, but combining them all together inside the CAD program was always janky.
Version 1.0 combines the previous two patchwork assembly workbenches into one
, and it’s altogether more pleasant to use. The constraints of how two parts move when held together with an axle
just works
now, and this is a big deal for multi-part models.
If you’re coming from any other parametric CAD program, most of FreeCAD will seem familiar to you, but there will also be workflow differences that will take some getting used to. In trade, what do you get? Scriptability in Python, real open source software, and all of the bells and whistles for free. Now that its two biggest pain points have been addressed, FreeCAD has become a lot easier to love. We’re looking forward to some good V1.0 tutorials in the future, and we’ll keep you posted when we find them. | 48 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042502",
"author": "mista4a",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T08:59:52",
"content": "Great news for FreeCAD, especially for what concerns widespread adoption amongst hobbyists and professionals alike, especially considering the lack of viable alternatives in the Linux space for CAD toolin... | 1,760,371,786.975545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/the-surprising-effects-of-fast-food-kiosks/ | The Surprising Effects Of Fast Food Kiosks | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"fast food",
"kiosks"
] | For as long as there have been machines, there have been fears of machines taking your job. One of the latest incarnations of this phenomenon is the fast-food ordering kiosk. No longer will you have some teenager asking you if you want fries with that. These days, you are more likely going to find the question on a touch screen. So, are those poor kids out of an entry-level job? Apparently not,
according to a recent CNN story
.
According to McDonald’s, a business that embraces the kiosks, the new technology increases sales and creates more jobs, albeit more jobs further behind the counter. Part of the reason is that while “Do you want fries with that” is a cliche, it is also a sound business practice. Cashiers should try to upsell but don’t always do so. The kiosk always remembers to offer you an apple pie or whatever else they want to move today.
Of course, there are other new jobs. A decade ago, very few restaurants would deliver food to your car while you were parked. Now, that’s practically a norm, and it requires humans for now. Of course, there are other studies that show people at kiosks with a line behind them tend to order less or have more trouble entering their order. But the consensus seems to be that it is generally a good thing and is leading to more jobs in the sector instead of less.
We like tech, of course. We can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a case where the computer isn’t great, but it is better than what
you are likely to get in real life
. If you are feeling smug with your job at the grill, don’t worry. The robots are
coming for you next
. What do you think? Are robots, AI, and tech taking jobs or making them? | 81 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042450",
"author": "SRSLY??",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T02:30:45",
"content": "doesnt make much sense to me.Are McDonalds expanding their kitchens to accommodate additional workers?There are only so many spots and positions to work in a kitchen.There are only so many windows to pass... | 1,760,371,787.089204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/21/when-raw-network-sockets-arent-raw-raw-sockets-in-macos-and-linux/ | When Raw Network Sockets Aren’t Raw: Raw Sockets In MacOS And Linux | Maya Posch | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"internet protocol",
"networking"
] | Raw network sockets are a curious beasts, as unless you have a strong urge to implement your own low-level network protocol, it’s a topic that is probably best left to the (well-paid) experts. That said, you can totally use raw sockets in virtually every operating system, but one should be aware of a few things, the lack of portability being one of them. This is what tripped [Swagnik] up while trying to write a
low-level network ping (ICMP) utility
, by reading the Linux socket documentation while testing on MacOS. It’s all BSD-style sockets, after all, right?
As it turns out, the network stacks in Linux and MacOS have some subtle differences, which become apparent when you read the friendly manuals. For Linux, the
raw(7)
man entry for IPv4 sockets make it clear that the
IP_HDRINCL
socket option is default by default for
IPPROTO_RAW
sockets. This is different from MacOS, which is effectively FreeBSD with glossy makeup. Like
FreeBSD
, the MacOS
man page
makes it clear that the
IP_HDRINCL
option is not set by default.
So that’s easy, right? Just fire off a
setsockopt()
call on the raw socket and that’s done. Not quite. The Linux man page notes that it cannot receive all IP protocols, while the FreeBSD/MacOS version makes no such exceptions. There is also the issue of endianness, which is where [Swagnik]’s blog post seems to err. The claim is that on MacOS the received IPv4 raw socket header is in host (little endian) order, while the documentation clearly notes that these are in network (big endian) order, which the blog post also shows.
Where things get really fun is when moving from IPv4 raw sockets to IPv6 raw sockets, as [Michael F. Schönitzer]
covered for Linux
back in 2018 already. IPv6 raw sockets drop
IP_HDRINCL
and requires a whole different approach. The endianness also changes, as IPv6 raw sockets under Linux must send and will receive data in network byte order, putting it in line with FreeBSD raw sockets. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8042518",
"author": "gav",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T11:27:35",
"content": "htonl() FTW",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8042587",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2024-09-22T16:15:44",
"content": "“…a topic … bes... | 1,760,371,787.12694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/a-brand-new-usb-modem-in-the-2020s/ | A Brand New USB Modem In The 2020s | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"modem",
"pots",
"usb modem"
] | The dulcet tones of a modem handshake may be a thing of the distant past for most of us, but that hasn’t stopped there being a lively hacking scene in the world of analogue telephones. Often that’s achieved using old devices resurrected from a parts bin, but sometimes, as with
[Brian]’s USB modem
, the devices are entirely new.
A surprise is that modem chips are still available, in this case the
SkyWorks IsoModem chips
. It uses an M.2 module format to allow the modem and support circuitry to be separated enough to place it in another project if necessary, along with a clear warning on the PCB not to put it in the identical-looking PC slot. It also comes with tips for experimenting if you don’t have access to a landline too, given that POTS is fast becoming a thing of the past itself in so many places.
If you’ve got nowhere to show off your modem, we’d like to suggest you try a hacker camp. There you’ll often find a copper network
you’re positively expected to hack. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041074",
"author": "Karl Koscher",
"timestamp": "2024-09-18T05:16:53",
"content": "Here’s a cute Raspberry Pi hat modem, specifically designed to be used at hacker camps:https://x.com/AdiStuder/status/1800735915029221572Github repo:https://github.com/astuder/ModemHAT",
"parent_... | 1,760,371,787.179098 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/thermal-runaway-solving-the-bane-of-electric-vehicles/ | Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric car",
"electric vehicle"
] | Although battery fires in electric cars and two-wheeled vehicles are not a common phenomenon, they are notoriously hard to put out, requiring special training and equipment by firefighters. Although the full scope of the issue is part of a contentious debate, [Aarian Marshall] over at
Wired
recently wrote an article
about how the electric car industry has a plan to make a purportedly minor issue even less of an issue. Here the questions seem to be mostly about what the true statistics are for battery fires and what can be done about the primary issue with batteries: thermal runaway.
While the Wired article
references a study
by a car insurance company about the incidence of car fires by fuel type (gas, hybrid, electric), its cited sources
are dubious
as the NTSB nor NHTSA collect statistics on these fires. The
NFPA does
, but this only gets you up to 2018, and they
note
that the data gathering here is spotty. Better data is found from
European sources
, which makes clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) catch fire less often than gasoline cars at 25 per 100,000 cars sold vs 1529/100k for ICE cars, but when BEVs do burn it’s most often (60%) from thermal runaway, which can be due to factors like a short circuit in a cell, overcharging and high ambient temperatures (including from arson or after-effects of a car crash).
As for the claimed ways to make battery-powered vehicles safer, the Wired article mentions the shift to more stable lithium-ion chemistries like lithium-ion phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP for short), experimenting with solid-state batteries and easier ways to extinguish a fire and disconnect the BEV’s battery, along with firefighter training. Meanwhile the European Union will require a ‘battery passport’ starting in 2027 which tracks the origin, manufacturing and testing of batteries.
Of the risks with batteries, thermal runaway is probably the least predictable, with a
review article
by [Mahn-Kien Tran] and colleagues in
Processes
from 2022 covering our current understanding here, including ways to model and predict the occurrence of thermal runaway to increase safety while e.g. charging a battery. As internal shorts due to wear and/or manufacturing defects can be hard to predict, it is essential to detect thermal runaway before it has a chance to get out of hand.
Beyond electric cars, electric bikes are far more notorious for catching on fire, with these devices in New York City having gained the reputation of burning down apartment buildings, generally while charging. As
MIT Technology Review
reports, a solution here
may have been found
in battery swapping stations that are equipped with sensors and fire extinguishing systems, so that delivery drivers and other e-bike users do not have to charge batteries at their apartments while praying that they don’t wake up to thick smoke and a screaming fire alarm.
As battery-powered vehicles and devices become more and more common, it’s clear that even if the risk of fire from these vehicles is small compared to their gasoline-powered brethren, those generally do not catch on fire while parked in one’s garage or hallway. Finding ways to mitigate this risk is therefore more than welcome. | 86 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041032",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2024-09-18T02:24:01",
"content": "the difference between cars and electric bikes is that cars have to pass safety regulations to be sold, where electric bikes are made by anyone, to any random design, and may or may not even been tested – ... | 1,760,371,787.305629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/ferrites-versus-ethernet-in-the-ham-shack/ | Ferrites Versus Ethernet In The Ham Shack | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur",
"ethernet",
"ferrite",
"ham radio",
"nanovna",
"QRM",
"RF",
"RFI",
"suppression"
] | For as useful as computers are in the modern ham shack, they also tend to be a strong source of unwanted radio frequency interference. Common wisdom says applying a few ferrite beads to things like Ethernet cables will help, but does that really work?
It surely appears to, for the most part at least, according to
experiments done by [Ham Radio DX]
. With a particular interest in lowering the noise floor for operations in the 2-meter band, his test setup consisted of a NanoVNA and a simple chunk of wire standing in for the twisted-pair conductors inside an Ethernet cable. The NanoVNA was set to sweep across the entire HF band and up into the VHF; various styles of ferrite were then added to the conductor and the frequency response observed. Simply clamping a single ferrite on the wire helped a little, with marginal improvement seen by adding one or two more ferrites. A much more dramatic improvement was seen by looping the conductor back through the ferrite for an additional turn, with diminishing returns at higher frequencies as more turns were added. The best performance seemed to come from two ferrites with two turns each, which gave 17 dB of suppression across the tested bandwidth.
The question then becomes: How do the ferrites affect Ethernet performance?
[Ham Radio DX] tested that too,
and it looks like good news there. Using a 30-meter-long Cat 5 cable and testing file transfer speed with iPerf, he found no measurable effect on throughput no matter what ferrites he added to the cable. In fact, some ferrites actually seemed to boost the file transfer speed slightly.
Ferrite beads for RFI suppression are nothing new, of course, but it’s nice to see a real-world test that tells you both how and where to apply them. The fact that you won’t be borking your connection is nice to know, too. Then again, maybe it’s not your Ethernet that’s causing the problem, in which case maybe you’ll need
a little help from a thunderstorm
to track down the issue. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8041004",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-09-18T00:16:54",
"content": "So what’s it mean that it’s only 25dB down at 12:38 when he has disconnected the wire to put some more turns on his ferrite core?Measuring RF stuff is much more involved then just juggling around with som... | 1,760,371,787.540202 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/latest-pieeg-shield-now-offers-16-channels/ | Latest PiEEG Shield Now Offers 16 Channels | Tom Nardi | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"biosignals",
"brain-computer interface",
"eeg"
] | We’ve previously covered the PiEEG, an affordable brain-computer interface (BCI) shield designed to connect to the Raspberry Pi. The open source project developed by [Ildar Rakhmatulin] is intended to allow students and hobbyists to experiment with detecting electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and electrocardiography (ECG) biosignals — unlocking a wide array of applications ranging from assistive tech to gaming.
Now, the PiEEG hardware has been upgraded to
detect sixteen channels via either wet or dry electrodes
. The new board, referred to as the PiEEG-16, offers up the same ease of use and features as its predecessor, including the ability to read out signals from the device using Python scripts. Compared to the eight channels supported by the previous generation of hardware, the PiEEG-16 promises to provide the fine-grain data required for more complex operations.
Since we last checked in with the PiEEG back in 2023, [Ildar] says the project has attracted plenty of attention. To help document how the community is using the capability offered by these BCIs, he’s added a page on the project’s site to show off
what folks are building with the technology
.
Inevitably, some express concern when talking about non-professionals working with brain interfacing hardware. But the project’s documentation is quick to point out that efforts have been taken to make the endeavour as risk-free as possible. The most important thing to remember is that the Raspberry Pi and PiEEG are intended to be powered by batteries so as to remain completely isolated. Similarly, there’s no need to connect the devices to a mains-powered computer, as everything happens on the Pi itself.
Even still, it’s made clear that the PiEEG-16 is
not
a medical device, and has received no formal certifications. If you want to experiment with this technology, you do so at your own risk. Just something to keep in mind…no pun intended. | 24 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040956",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T20:51:46",
"content": "And then you hook the Pi up to an HDMI screen that is connected to wall power?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8040960",
"author": "clancydaenl... | 1,760,371,787.370032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/new-duckypad-pro-is-bigger-and-smarter-than-original/ | New DuckyPad Pro Is Bigger And Smarter Than Original | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"duckyPad",
"macropad",
"mechanical switches"
] | In a world that has no shortage of macropads, the duckyPad still managed to set itself apart. The open source mechanical pad offered an incredible array of customization options, and thanks to its onboard OLED display, you never had to wonder which key did what. But there’s always room for improvement.
Announced earlier today, the
duckyPad Pro
is the culmination of everything creator [dekuNukem] learned from developing, marketing, and supporting the original duckyPad. Much hasn’t changed — it looks largely the same, offers the same RGB-backlit mechanical switches, and the trademark OLED is still there, although it’s gotten a little larger. The obvious changes are the addition of five more keys, and a pair of rotary encoders.
The most exciting changes are the things you can’t see. For one, the duckyPad Pro is now powered by the ESP32-S3. This not only provides considerably more processing power and storage, but also allows the new pad to connect over Bluetooth. Naturally that also means WiFi is along for the ride, which could offer some interesting hacking potential down the line.
Upgrading the brains of the operation has also allowed for considerable expansion of the duckyPad’s already impressive scripting capabilities; [dekuNukem] boasts the new Pro model can type out the entire script for the
Bee Movie
at the touch of a button. That’s gotta be worth the cost of admission alone.
We’re also very interested in the expansion capabilities offered by the duckyPad Pro. While there’s not much technical information available this early in the game, the video below shows how you can create custom hardware interfaces that range from button boxes for flight simulators to assistive devices. This feature reminds us a bit of the
Xbox Adaptive Controller
, and we can’t wait to see what the community does with it.
You’re probably wondering how much this marvel will set you back. Unfortunately we don’t yet have an answer for that, as [dekuNukem] says the final price of the duckyPad Pro is still undecided. But we suspect it won’t be long before we know more — the
Kickstarter for the new pad
is set to go live next month. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040972",
"author": "Dielectric",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T21:58:58",
"content": "This might be really cool with some KiCAD and FreeCAD keymaps. I started making my own spin on this like two years ago, but maybe the OLED is worth it instead of using re-legendable keys. My big dumb i... | 1,760,371,787.416457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/2024-hackaday-superconference-speakers-round-one/ | 2024 Hackaday Superconference Speakers, Round One | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"2024 Hackaday Superconference"
] | Supercon is the Ultimate Hardware Conference and you need to be there! We’ve got a stellar slate of speakers this year — way too many to feature in one post. So here’s your first taste, and a reminder that Supercon
will
sell out so
get your tickets now
before it’s too late.
In addition to the full-length talks, we’ve got a series of Lightning Talks, so if you want to share seven minutes’ of insight with everyone there,
please register your Lightning Talk idea now
.
But Supercon has a lot more than just talks! The badge heavily features Supercon Add-Ons, and
we want to see the awesome SAOs you are working on.
There will be prizes, and we’ll manufacture four of our favorite designs in small batches for the winners, and make a full run for Hackaday Europe in 2025.
Want to know more about SAOs
? They’re the ideal starter PCB project.
If you are a fan of interesting display technology, you definitely won’t want to miss
Supplyframe’s DesignLab mini-museum of odd and interesting displays
.
Of course, there will be workshops. We haven’t announced them yet, but swing by Hackaday on Tuesday the 24th at 8 AM PST for our Gigantic Workshop Reveal and Ticket Sale!
So stay tuned for that announcement, the full details on the badge, and of course the remaining speakers.
See you in November at Supercon!
Christina Cyr
3D-Printing Packaging for Small Scale Product Deliveries
You’ve successfully brought your product to life and received a hundred orders – congratulations! To ensure your product’s box can withstand rough handling during delivery, you need robust packaging. However, the minimum order for molded packaging inserts is in the thousands of units, and your product’s design is still evolving with each revision, making it difficult for a vendor to create suitable packaging.
With extra filament on hand, why not design and 3D print the packaging yourself? Here is the story of one such journey, along with the lessons learned and the eco-friendly advantages detailed.
Ayesha Iftiqhar-Wilson
Environmentally-Friendly Electronics: Design Principles for Sustainability
In this talk, I will address the pressing issue of electronic waste (e-waste) by introducing Sustainable Design Engineering (SDE) and Design for Environment (DFE) principles. As an electronics designer in climate tech, I’m acutely aware of the exponential growth of e-waste and its environmental impact.
By exploring SDE and DFE, attendees will gain practical insights into integrating environmental considerations into electronics design, fostering a more sustainable approach. Learn how to make a positive impact through eco-conscious design practices in the electronics industry.
Cedric Honnet
FiberCircuits: Integrating Miniature FPCs with MCUs & Sensors INSIDE Fibers!
FiberCircuits explore the miniaturization of electronics to be woven into textiles like fibers. With both scalability and DIY approach in mind, the presentation details design and fabrication techniques for high density PCB challenges, miniature component selection, encapsulation for embedding in fabrics, and (embedded) software tips.
Some applications will also be demonstrated to speculate about a future where electronics devices are seamlessly integrated into our clothing. As a conclusion, some tips about Shenzhen manufacturing and its exploding art scene can be discussed at the end.
Sarah Vollmer
Turning (a lot) of talk into action – friends, foes, and forging ahead.
This talk is a journey of experiences, hacks, product developments, companies started, connections and collaborations, and international exhibitions that can all be traced back to my first ever Supercon (2019) and the talk I gave then – on haptics.
I will focus on how Hackaday and the people and the connections I’ve made there that started with that haptics talk and has led to so many interesting projects, new builds, papers, exhibitions, courses. How I also pressed on with haptics and became an external company vendor to an academic institution – contracted for custom builds to research labs. In addition, I will also present on the various large scale digital media exhibitions and international museum and gallery exhibitions we have put on in the past few years, including ones incorporating past Hackaday badges and participants live interactions while at past Supercons piped into the exhibitions themselves.
Charles Lohr
Every machine can be a radio if you operate it wrong enough
Every wire is an antenna, and software can perform all the operations that would normally be done with dedicated radio hardware. We’ll explore how to leverage every cycle of under-powered microcontrollers to get them to do the work of parts 10x their price.
We’ll go into tricks and tips the methodology of broadcasting 900 MHz LoRa over a mile from a pin operating at under 60 MHz and receiving broadcast radio stations by looking at the noise on an ADC pin of a 25-cent-microcontroller, all without any dedicated radio hardware.
Wenting Zhang
Making E-Ink Go Fast
The talk will go through the design of the Caster project and the background information on the e-ink technology. Caster enables high refresh rate and low latency display on off-the-shelf e-ink panels.
Caster is an open-source low-latency electrophoretics display controller design, offering support for wide range of screens, flexible screen update control, and multiple dithering options. Zhang also recently turned it into a fully-fledged portable e-ink monitor with Type-C and HDMI input which will be discussed as well.
Jorvon Moss (Odd-Jayy) and Shawn Hymel
Giving Robotic Friends a Voice: Integrating Local LLMs and Speech Systems Into a Companion Bot
Companion bots in media (e.g. Baymax, R2-D2, K9) often include both high-functioning AI and interactivity with humans. A common form of interaction is voice: the bots can understand human speech and can respond with either synthetic speech or lovable beeps.
Jayy will demonstrate full voice interaction on his Digit companion bot and discuss how this was made possible through the use of a large language model (LLM). He will show how physical movement can be triggered by this voice system to breathe life into the bot’s actions and how such a powerful AI was made portable. Shawn will discuss running Meta’s Llama 3 (8B) model on NVIDIA Jetson Orin hardware to achieve response times in a few seconds. He will also show the hopper-chat system, which wraps the LLM with speech-to-text and text-to-speech modules to construct a full, AI-powered voice assistant.
Baird Bankovic
DIY Atomic Imaging with STM and Active Vibration Cancellation
I will talk about a DIY desktop scanning tunneling microscope (Peregrine) I built, along with a fully analog controller for Peregrine, and finally a feed-forward active cancellation system which allows for atomic resolution even in non-ideal vibration conditions. All parts in the build are made to be accessible for others to replicate and afford.
Peregrine’s head uses a commercial tube scanner, CNC milled aluminum, and plastic 3D printed parts, which total ~$300. A key feature of the head is a very low-noise, high bandwidth transimpedance amplifier, which provides exceptional signal integrity, allowing Peregrine to resolve individual atoms.
Vibrations are often a problem for STMs, Peregrine features a real-time active vibration cancellation system which is implemented using a cheap FPGA and seismometer. This is a good introductory project for those looking to learn more about FPGAs, especially for real-time signal processing.
Angelica Tavella
Designing Intelligent Interfaces for the Future of Renewable Energy
The global shift towards renewable energy sources requires not only new infrastructure for a more flexible and distributed network, but also a collective paradigm shift in understanding who consumes and generates electricity, and how and when they do so.
This talk will show how open source Energy Metering Systems (EMS) can be used to better utilize solar power, and ideas around how interfaces for visualizing and metering electricity can be more user-friendly.
Mohit Bhoite
Building space themed circuit sculptures
Hardware engineer and circuit sculptor Mohit Bhoite will explore the art of building space-themed free-formed electronic circuit sculptures. Join this talk to learn how anyone with the right tools can get involved in this art form.
Andy Kong
Human Plants: Open-Source Implants You Don’t Need To Recharge
Hobbyist implants such as magnets or RFID chips are cool, but have not progressed much in the past decade. And the main reason is power systems: batteries are big and recharging is a drag. But what if implants and other devices didn’t need to bring their own power, but rather took it from the environment?
I’d like to talk about the modern state of energy harvesting (piezoelectric, solar, capacitive, RF) as it relates to implantable devices, and how I’m working to make open-source platforms which support health tracking and embodied computation in tiny, implantable form factors.
Jim Scarletta
Repurposing ESP32 Based Commercial Products
You want to build out your home automation setup? This talk will teach you how to turn any ESP32 into an Apple HomeKit device and flash custom software onto existing commercial ESP32-based products.
Along the way, I’ll cover classic reverse engineering methods like finding JTAG pins, and development and debugging using open source Tigard JTAG hardware with VisualGDB in Visual Studio.
Finally, I’ll implement more secure cryptographic functions (e.g. post quantum TLS 1.3) with commercial-grade wolfSSL examples, and warn of the dangers with modifications to and use of high voltage devices.
[If you read this far,
you probably want tickets
. Just sayin’.] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040908",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T17:46:17",
"content": "Speaking of;“Ayesha Iftiqhar-WilsonEnvironmentally-Friendly Electronics: Design Principles for Sustainability”Maybe SuperCon badges should be designed/built forward looking for... | 1,760,371,787.471993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/pc-floppy-copy-protection-electronic-arts-interlock/ | PC Floppy Copy Protection: Electronic Arts Interlock | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"copy protection",
"electronic arts",
"reverse engineering"
] | Continuing the series on floppy copy protection, [GloriousCow] examines
Electronic Arts’ Interlock system
. This was used from 1984 to 1987 for at least fourteen titles released on both 5.25″ and 3.5″ floppies. Although not officially advertised, in the duplication mark sector the string
ELECTRONIC ARTS IBM INTERLOCK.
appears, hence the name. Compared to other copy protection systems like
Softguard Superlok
this Interlock protection poses a number of somewhat extreme measures to enforce the copy protection.
The disk surface of Side #0 of the 1984 mystery-adventure title,
Murder on the Zinderneuf
(Credit: GloriousCow)
Other than the typical issues that come with copying so-called ‘booter’ floppies that do not use DOS but boot directly into the game, the protection track with Interlock is rather easy to spot, as seen on the right. It’s the track that lights up like a Christmas tree with meta data, consisting out of non-consecutive sector IDs. Of note is the use of ‘deleted’ sector data marks (DDAM), which is a rarity in normal usage. Along with the other peculiarities of this track it requires an exact query-response from the disk to be accepted as genuine, including timings. This meant that trying to boot a straight dump of the magnetic surface and trying to run it in an emulated system failed to work.
Reverse-engineering Interlock starts with the stage 0 bootloader from the first sector, which actually patches the End-of-Track (EOT) table parameter to make the ridiculous number of sectors on the special track work. The bootloader then loads a logo, which is the last thing you’ll see if your copy is imperfect.
Decrypting the second stage bootloader required a bit of disassembly and reverse-engineering, which uncovered some measures against crackers. While the actual process of reverse-engineering and the uncovered details of Interlock are far too complex to summarize here, after many hours and the final victory over the handling of an intentional bad CRC the target game (
Murder on the Zinderneuf
from 1984) finally loaded in the emulator.
After confirming the process with a few other titles, it seems that Interlock is mostly broken, with the DOS-based title
ArcticFox
(1987) the last hurdle to clear. We just hope that [GloriousCow] is safe at this point from EA’s tame lawyers.
Interested in more copy protection deep dives? Check out the work [GloriousCow] has already done on investigating
Softguard’s Superlok
and
Formaster’s Copy-Lock
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040902",
"author": "johm",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T17:16:00",
"content": "Can I point out that the contents of this article were very interesting, but I have never seen magnetic floppy data visualized…it is insane that we can store that information; which was once magnetically enc... | 1,760,371,787.590851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/apple-may-break-into-the-hearing-aid-industry/ | Apple May Break Into The Hearing Aid Industry | Jenny List | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"AirPod",
"fda",
"hearing aid"
] | When the entry of a tech giant such as Apple into a market represents its liberation from exploitation, that market must be
really
broken, yet
the reported FDA approval of the hearing aid feature in the latest AirPod earbuds
seems to represent just that. The digital hearing aid business is notorious for its sharp sales practices and eye-watering prices, so for all Apple’s own notoriety the news might actually represent a leap forward for consumers in that sector. We have to ask though, if Apple of all people are now the Good Guys, where has the world of electronics gone so badly wrong?
Your grandparents decades ago would have had a simple analogue hearing aid if they had one, usually a small transistor circuit and perhaps with some kind of analogue filtering. Digital aids with DSP algorithms to pick out speech arrived some time in the 1990s, and from there evolved a market in which their high prices increasingly didn’t match the cost of the technology or software involved. At least in the UK, they were sold aggressively to older people as less cumbersome or better than the National Health Service aids, and if you had an older person in the family it was routine to see pages and pages of targeted junk mail offering dubious financial schemes to pay for them.
The question then, given that a modern hearing aid has a relatively cheap microcontroller and DSP at its heart, why has the open source community not risen to the challenge? The answer is that they have, though the
Tympan
seems an over-expensive trinket for what it is and the
LoCHAid
and
Open Speech Platform
seem to have sunk without trace. Can we do better?
Header: Gregory Varnum,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 33 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040792",
"author": "Cheese Whiz",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T11:17:08",
"content": "I didn’t realize the hearing aid industry was so scummy. Challenge accepted!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8040821",
"author": "TG",... | 1,760,371,787.658457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/17/the-rise-of-self-cleaning-cat-killing-litter-boxes/ | The Rise Of Self-Cleaning, Cat-Killing Litter Boxes | Maya Posch | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"cat litter box",
"PSA"
] | Machines that automate the various tedious tasks that come with being a servant in a cat’s household — like feeding and cleaning Mr. Fluffles’ litter box — are generally a godsend, as they ensure a happy cat and a happy human. That is, unless said litter box-cleaning robot kills said cat. That’s the gruesome topic that [Philip Bloom], also known as the bloke of the
One Man Five Cats
channel on YouTube,
decided to investigate
after coming across a report about a certain Amazon-bought unit.
The theory of a self-cleaning litter box: a happy Mr. Fluffles.
Although he was unable to get the (generic & often rebranded) unit off Amazon UK, he did get it via AliExpress for £165 + £80 shipping. Although this version lacks the cute ears of other variants, it’s still effectively the same unit, with the same moving components and mechanism. An initial test with a cat plushie gave the result that can be observed in the above image, where the inner part with the opening will move upwards, regardless of whether a cat is currently poking through said opening. Once the victim is stuck, there is no obvious way to free the trapped critter, which has already led to the death of a number of cats.
The other self-cleaning litter boxes which [Philip] owns have a number of safety features, including a weight sensor, an infrared sensor above the opening to detect nearby critters, a top that will pop off rather than trap a critter, as well as a pinch sensor. During a test with his own hand, [Philip] managed to get injured, and following a banana test, he had a nice banana smoothie.
What takes the cake here is that after [Philip] connected the mobile app for the litter box, he found that there was a firmware update that seems to actually change the machine to use the pinch and infrared sensors that do exist in the litter box, but which clearly were not used properly or at all with the shipped firmware. This means that anyone who buys any of these self-cleaning litter boxes and does not update the firmware runs the significant risk of losing their pet(s) in a gruesome incident. In the video a number of such tragic deaths are covered, which can be rather distressing for any cat lover.
Of note here is that even with the improved firmware, any issue with the sensors will still inevitably lead to the tragic death of Mr. Fluffles. If you do want to obtain a self-cleaning litter box, make sure to for example get one of [Philip]’s recommendations which come with a paw stamp of approval from his own precious fluff balls, rather than a random unit off Amazon or AliExpress. | 68 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "8040760",
"author": "A cat owner",
"timestamp": "2024-09-17T08:44:19",
"content": "Stick with the rotating globe ones that are impossible to kill your cat. They work just fine and are totally safe.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,371,787.798001 |
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