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https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/the-sunchronizer-keeps-your-solar-panel-aligned/ | The Sunchronizer Keeps Your Solar Panel Aligned | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"elevation",
"ESP32",
"linear actuator",
"single axis",
"solar",
"solar panel",
"solar tracker"
] | In the past few years, the price-per-watt for solar panels has dropped dramatically. This has led to a number of downstream effects beyond simple cost savings. For example, many commercial solar farms have found that it’s now cheaper to install a larger number of panels in fixed positions, rather than accepting the extra cost, maintenance, and complexity of a smaller number panels that use solar tracking to make up the difference. But although this practice is fading for large-scale power production, there are still some niche uses for solar tracking. Like [Fabian],
if you need to maximize power production with a certain area or a small number of panels you’ll wan to to build a solar tracker
.
[Fabian]’s system is based on a linear actuator which can tilt one to four panels (depending on size) in one axis only. This system is an elevation tracker, which is the orientation generally with respect to latitude, with a larger elevation angle needed in the winter and a lower angle in the summer. [Fabian] also designs these to be used in places like balconies where this axis can be more easily adjusted. The actuator is controlled with an ESP32 which, when paired with a GPS receiver, can automatically determine the sun’s position for a given time of day and adjust the orientation of the panel to provide an ideal elevation angle on a second-by-second basis. The ESP32 also allows seamless integration with home automation systems like SmartHome as well.
Although this system only tracks the sun in one axis right now, [Fabian] is working on support for a second axis which mounts the entire array on a rotating table similar to an automatic Lazy Susan. This version also includes a solar tracking sensor which measures solar irradiance in the direction the panel faces to verify that the orientation of the panel is maximizing power output for a given amount of sunlight. Tracking the sun in two axes can be a complicated problem to solve,
but some solutions we’ve seen don’t involve any GPS, programming, or even control electronics at all
. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "7260961",
"author": "Ramriot",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T20:34:26",
"content": "BTW If the “single axis” just happens to be parallel to your latitude then you will never be more that 23.44 degrees out (obliquity of the ecliptic). Then if you have a manual jack screw that you turn per... | 1,760,371,822.208111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/edge-lit-thin-lcd-tvs-are-having-early-heat-death-issues/ | Edge-Lit, Thin LCD TVs Are Having Early Heat Death Issues | Maya Posch | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"backlight",
"display technology"
] | Canadian consumer goods testing site RTINGS has been subjecting 100 TVs to an accelerated TV longevity test, subjecting them so far to over 10,000 hours of on-time, equaling about six years of regular use in a US household. This test has shown a range of interesting issues and defects already, including for the OLED-based TVs. But the most recent issue which they covered is that of
uniformity issues with edge-lit TVs
. This translates to uneven backlighting including striping and very bright spots, which teardowns revealed to be due to warped reflector sheets, cracked light guides, and burned-out LEDs.
Excluding the 18 OLED TVs, which are now badly burnt in, over a quarter of the remaining TVs in the test suffer from uniformity issues. But things get interesting when contrasting between full-array local dimming (FALD), direct-lit (DL) and edge-lit (EL) LCD TVs. Of the EL types, 7 out of 11 (64%) have uniformity issues, with one having outright failed and others in the process of doing so. Among the FALD and DL types the issue rate here is 14 out of 71 (20%), which is still not ideal after a simulated 6 years of use but far less dramatic.
Cracks in the Samsung AU8000’s Light Guide Plate (Credit: RTINGS)
As part of the
RTINGS longevity test
, failures and issues are investigated and a teardown for analysis, and fixing, is performed when necessary. For these uniformity issues, the EL LCD teardowns revealed burned-out LEDs in the EL LED strips, with cracks in the light-guide plate (LGP) that distributes the light, as well as warped reflector sheets. The LGPs are offset slightly with plastic standoffs to not touch the very hot LEDs, but these standoffs can melt, followed by the LGP touching the hot LEDs. With the damaged LGP, obviously the LCD backlighting will be horribly uneven.
In the LG QNED80 (2022) TV, its edge lighting LEDs were measured with a thermocouple to be running at a searing 123 °C at the maximum brightness setting. As especially HDR (high-dynamic range) content requires high brightness levels, this would thus be a more common scenario in EL TVs than one might think. As for why EL LCDs still exist since they seem to require extreme heatsinking to keep the LEDs from melting straight through the LCD? RTINGS figures it’s because EL allows for LCD TVs to be thinner, allowing them to compete with OLEDs while selling at a premium compared to even FALD LCDs. | 60 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "7256869",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T18:29:21",
"content": "Heat management seems to be a forgotten art. We got a new cable box that’s only an inch thick with no buttons and no vent cuts except in the back and it gets HOT. Hot to the point were we have to shut it ... | 1,760,371,822.51973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/open-source-residential-energy-storage/ | Open Source Residential Energy Storage | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"appropriate technology",
"diy power",
"flow battery",
"freecad",
"iodine",
"iodine battery",
"off grid",
"off grid hacks",
"renewable energy",
"scratch built",
"wind power",
"Wind turbine",
"zinc",
"zinc battery"
] | Battery news typically covers the latest, greatest laboratory or industry breakthroughs to push modern devices further and faster. Could you
build your own flow battery
stationary storage for home-built solar and wind rigs though?
Based on the
concept of appropriate technology
, the system from the Flow Battery Research Collective will be easy to construct, easy to maintain, and safe to operate in a residential environment. Current experiments are focusing on Zn/I chemistry, but other aqueous chemistries could be used in the future. Instead of an ion exchange membrane, the battery uses readily attainable photo paper and is already showing similar order of magnitude performance to lab-developed cells.
Any components that aren’t off-the-shelf have been designed in
FreeCAD
. While they can be 3D printed, the researchers have found traditional milling yields better results which isn’t too surprising when you need something water-tight. More work is needed, but it is promising work toward a practical, DIY-able energy storage solution.
If you’re looking to build your own open source
wind turbine
or
solar cells
to charge up a
home battery system
, then we’ve got you covered. You can also break the chains of the power grid
with off-the-shelf parts
. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "7252982",
"author": "ITman496",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T16:59:27",
"content": "I can’t actually find where it says what kind of power it makes at what kind of flows.. Am I blind? I want to know!! Whats the performance?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,822.129808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/australias-controlled-loads-are-in-hot-water/ | Australia’s Controlled Loads Are In Hot Water | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Australia",
"controlled load",
"controlled loads",
"electrical grid",
"Electricity meter",
"home solar",
"meter",
"power generation",
"smart meter",
"solar",
"solar energy",
"solar power",
"victoria"
] | Australian grids have long run a two-tiered pricing scheme for electricity. In many jurisdictions, regular electricity was charged at a certain rate. Meanwhile, you could get cheaper electricity for certain applications if your home was set up with a “controlled load.” Typically, this involved high energy equipment like pool heaters or hot water heaters.
This scheme has long allowed Australians to save money while keeping their water piping-hot at the same time. However, the electrical grid has changed significantly in the last decade. These controlled loads are starting to look
increasingly out of step with what the grid and the consumer needs
. What is to be done?
Controlled What Now?
Hot water heaters can draw in excess of 5 kW for hours on end when warming up. Electrical authorities figured that it would be smart to take this huge load on the grid, and shift it to night time, a period of otherwise low demand. Credit: Lewin Day
In Australia, the electricity grid has long relied on a system of “controlled loads” to manage the energy demand from high-consumption appliances, particularly electric hot water heaters. These controlled loads were designed to take advantage of periods when overall electricity demand was lower, traditionally at night. By scheduling energy-intensive activities like heating water during these off-peak hours, utilities could balance the load on the grid and reduce the need for additional power generation capacity during peak times. In turn, households would receive cheaper off-peak electricity rates for energy used by their controlled load.
This system was achieved quite simply. Households would have a special “controlled load” meter in their electrical box. This would measure energy use by the hot water heater, or whatever else the electrical authority had allowed to be hooked up in this manner. The controlled load meter would be set on a timer so the attached circuit would only be powered in the designated off-peak times. Meanwhile, the rest of the home’s electrical circuits would be connected to the main electrical meter which would provide power 24 hours a day.
By and large, this system worked well. However, it did lead to more than a few larger families running out of hot water on the regular. For example, you might have had a 250 liter hot water heater. Hooked up as a controlled load, it would heat up overnight and switch off around 7 AM. Two or three showers later, the hot water heater would have delivered all its hot water, and you’d be stuck without any more until it switched back on at night.
Historically, most electric hot water heaters were set to run during the low-demand night period, typically after 10 PM. Historically, the demand for electricity was low at this time, while peak demand was in the day time. It made sense to take the huge load from everyone’s hot water system, and move all that demand to the otherwise quiet night period. This lowered the daytime peak, reducing demand on the grid, in turn slashing infrastructure and generation costs. It had the effect of keeping the demand curve flatter throughout the whole 24-hour period.
This strategy was particularly effective in a grid predominantly powered by coal-fired power stations, which operated most efficiently when running continuously at a stable output. By shifting the hot water heating load to nighttime, utilities could maintain a more consistent demand for electricity throughout the day and night, reducing the need for sudden increases in generation capacity during peak times.
Everything Changed
The Australian grid now sees large peaks in solar generation during the day. Credit:
APVI.org.au
via screenshot
However, the energy landscape in Australia has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. This has been primarily driven by the rapid growth of renewable energy sources, particularly
home solar generation
. As a result, the dynamics of electricity supply and demand have changed, prompting a reevaluation of the traditional approach to controlled loads.
Renewable energy has completely changed the way supply and demand works in the Australian grid. These days, energy is abundant while the sun is up. During the middle of the day, wholesale energy prices routinely plummet below $0.10 / kWh as the sun bears down on thousands upon thousands of solar panels across the country. Energy becomes incredibly cheap. Meanwhile, at night, energy is now very expensive. The solar panels are all contributing nothing, and it becomes the job of coal and gas generators to carry the majority of the burden. Fossil fuels are increasingly expensive, and spikes in the wholesale price are not uncommon, at times exceeding $10 / kWh.
Solar power generation peaks are now so high that Australian cities often produce more electricity than is needed to meet demand. This excess solar energy has led to periods where electricity prices can be very low, or even negative, due to the abundance of renewable energy on the grid. As a result, there is a growing argument that it now makes more sense to shift controlled loads, such as hot water heaters, to run during the daytime rather than at night.
The rise of home solar generation has created unexpected flow-on effects for Australia’s power grid. Credit:
Wayne National Forest, CC BY 2.0
Shifting controlled loads to the daytime would help absorb the surplus solar energy. This would reduce the need for grid authorities to kick renewable generators off the grid in times of excess. It would also help mitigate the so-called “duck curve” effect, where the demand for electricity sharply increases in the late afternoon and early evening as solar generation declines, leading to a steep ramp-up in non-renewable generation. By using excess solar energy to power controlled loads during the day, the overall demand on the grid would be more balanced, and the reliance on fossil fuels during peak times could be reduced.
Implementing this shift would require adjustments to the current tariff structures and perhaps the installation of smart meters capable of dynamically managing when controlled loads are activated based on real-time grid conditions. In a blessed serendipity, some Australian states—like Victoria—have already achieved near-100% penetration of smart meters. Others are still in the process of rollout, aiming for near 100% coverage
by 2030.
While these changes would involve some initial investment, the long-term benefits, including greater integration of renewable energy, reduced carbon emissions, and potentially lower electricity costs for consumers, make it a compelling option.
Fundamentally, it makes no sense for controlled loads to continue running as they have done for decades. Millions of Australians are now paying to heat their water during higher-demand periods where energy is more expensive. This can be particularly punitive for those on regularly-updated live tariffs that change with the current wholesale energy price. Those customers will sit by, watching cheap solar energy effectively go to waste during a sunny day, before their water heater finally kicks at night when the coal generators are going their hardest.
While the traditional approach to controlled loads in Australia has served the grid well in the past, the rise of renewable energy has changed things. The abundance of solar generation necessitates a rethinking of when these loads are scheduled. By shifting the operation of controlled loads like hot water heaters to the daytime, Australia can make better use of its abundant renewable energy resources, improve grid stability, and move closer to its sustainability goals. It’s a simple idea that makes a lot of sense. Here’s waiting for the broader power authorities to step up and make the change. | 125 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "7246725",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T14:28:58",
"content": "I’ve lived in places in the US where we had something kind of similar.Ours wasn’t a timer in the house though.Hah! If we had that here I bet there would be a non-negligible number of people who would tr... | 1,760,371,822.753883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/help-the-lego-camera-become-a-reality/ | Help The LEGO Camera Become A Reality | Jenny List | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"35mm camera",
"camera",
"lego camera"
] | Some time over a year ago, we told you about a camera. Not just any camera, but a fully-functional 35mm film camera made entirely of LEGO, and with a pleasingly retro design into the bargain. It’s the work of [Zung92], and
it can be found on the LEGO Ideas website
.
You might now be asking why we’re talking about it again so soon, and the answer comes in its approaching the deadline for being considered by LEGO for a set. Projects on the Ideas website move forward when they achieve 10,000 supporters, and this one’s just shy of 8,000 with a month to go. We like this project and we think it deserves to see the light of day, and perhaps with your help it can.
When
we covered this project last time
we lamented the lack of technical detail, so we’re pleased to see a glimpse inside it as part of a manual uploaded to
the updates page
. We’d be the first to remark that with its LEGO part plastic lens and quarter-frame pictures it won’t be the best camera ever, but that’s hardly the point. Cameras like this one are a challenge, and it seems as though this one is perfect for
the competition with a difference
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7237674",
"author": "Heind",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T11:24:30",
"content": "I don’t know if Lego would release it looking like this considering they currently have set 31147 which looks about the same (based on a Canon AE-1 from what I can tell.Of course, that one doesn’t actually ... | 1,760,371,822.325826 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/unusual-tool-gets-an-unusual-repair/ | Unusual Tool Gets An Unusual Repair | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"driver",
"fabrication",
"gear",
"planetary",
"repair",
"ring",
"tool"
] | In today’s value-engineered world, getting a decade of service out of a cordless tool is pretty impressive. By that point you’ve probably gotten your original investment back, and if the tool gives up the ghost, well, that’s what the e-waste bin is for. Not everyone likes to give up so easily, though, which results in clever repairs like
the one that brought this cordless driver back to life
.
The Black & Decker “Gyrodriver,” an interesting tool that is controlled with a twist of the wrist rather than the push of a button, worked well for [Petteri Aimonen] right up until the main planetary gear train started slipping thanks to stripped teeth on the plastic ring gear. Careful measurements of one of the planetary gears to determine parameters like the pitch and pressure angle of the teeth, along with the tooth count on both the planet gear and the stripped ring.
Here, most of us would have just 3D printed a replacement ring gear, but [Petteri] went a different way. He mentally rolled the ring gear out, envisioning it as a rack gear. To fabricate it, he simply ran a 60° V-bit across a sheet of steel plate, creating 56 parallel grooves with the correct pitch. Wrapping the grooved sheet around a round form created the ring gear while simultaneously closing the angle between teeth enough to match the measured 55° tooth angle in the original. [Petteri] says he soldered the two ends together to form the ring; it looks more like a weld in the photos, but whatever it was, the driver worked well after the old plastic teeth were milled out and the new ring gear was glued in place.
We think this is a really clever way to make gears, which seems like it would work well for both internal and external teeth. There are
other ways to do it
, of course, but this is one tip we’ll file away for a rainy day. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "7230598",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T08:41:41",
"content": "It looks like the joint was silver soldered – that’s a form of brazing.From wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolderSoldering performed using alloys with a melting point above 450 °C (840 °F; 72... | 1,760,371,822.272769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/tiny-90s-laptop-gets-modern-power/ | Tiny ’90s Laptop Gets Modern Power | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"libretto",
"Toshiba",
"USB-C PD"
] | The laptop to have here in the 2020s varies depending on who you ask, perhaps a Framework, or maybe a ThinkPad. Back in the 1990s the answer might have included a now-forgotten contender, because in that decade Toshiba made a range of legendarily tough chunky grey machines. Of these the smallest was the Libretto, a paperback book sized clamshell design which was an object of desire. It’s one of these that [Robert’s Retro] has
upgraded to use USB-C power
instead of the original power brick.
The full video is below the break, and while it first deals with replacing a defective screen,
the power part starts just before 22 minutes in
. As you’d expect it involves a USP-C PD trigger board, this time at 15 volts. It’s mounted in a small 3D printed adapter to fill the space of the original jack, and requires a tiny notch be removed from the corner of its PCB to fit round the motherboard. The rest of the video deals with reassembling the machine and tending to mishaps with the ageing plastic, but the result is a Libretto with a modern charging port.
Naturally a machine with a Pentium CPU and 32 megabytes of RAM is in of limited use in modern terms, but these Librettos remain very well-designed tiny PCs to this day. It’s great to see them still being modified and upgraded, even if perhaps there’s a limit to how far you can push their computing power. We’ve encountered the Libretto before a few times, such as
when one was used to retrieve data from an old Flash card
. | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "7530412",
"author": "12L14",
"timestamp": "2024-08-22T07:53:27",
"content": "Must find new lcd for mine – heard that same type was used in some navigation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7532874",
"author": "Wil H",
"ti... | 1,760,371,822.812778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/the-first-mass-produced-dram-of-the-soviet-union/ | The First Mass Produced DRAM Of The Soviet Union | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"dram",
"Soviet Union"
] | KE565RU1A (1985) in comparison with the analogue from AMD (1980)
Although the benefits of semiconductor technology were undeniable during the second half the 20th century, there was a clear divide between the two sides of the Iron Curtain. Whilst the First World had access to top-of-the-line semiconductor foundries and engineers, the Second World was having to get by with scraps. Unable to keep up with the frantic pace of the USA’s developments in particular, the USSR saw itself reduced to copying Western designs and smuggling in machinery where possible. A good example of this is the USSR’s first mass-produced dynamic RAM (DRAM), the 565RU1,
as detailed
by [The CPUShack Museum].
While the West’s first commercially mass-produced DRAM began in 1970 with the
Intel 1103
(1024 x 1) with its three-transistor design, the 565RU1 was developed in 1975, with engineering samples produced until the autumn of 1977. This DRAM chip featured a three-transistor design, with a 4096 x 1 layout and characteristics reminiscent of Western DRAM ICs like the Ti TMS4060. It was produced at a range of microelectronics enterprises in the USSR. These included Angstrem, Mezon (Moldova), Alpha (Latvia) and Exciton (Moscow).
Of course, by the second half of the 1970s the West had already moved on to single-transistor, more efficient DRAM designs. Although the 565RU1 was never known for being that great, it was nevertheless used throughout the USSR and Second World. One example of this is
a 1985 article
(page 2) by [V. Ye. Beloshevskiy], the Electronics Department Chief of the Belorussian Railroad Computer Center in which the unreliability of the 565RU1 ICs are described, and ways to add redundancy to the (
YeS1035
) computing systems.
Top image: 565RU1 die manufactured in 1981. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7545569",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-22T17:18:53",
"content": "In Soviet Union, RAM is redundant, KGB remember every thing!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7548373",
"author": "Mat... | 1,760,371,822.400127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/farewell-magnetic-stripe/ | Farewell Magnetic Stripe | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"magnetic stripe"
] | For decades, the magnetic stripe has been ubiquitous on everything from credit cards to tickets to ID badges. But the BBC reports — unsurprisingly — that the mag stripe’s
days are numbered
. Between smartphones, QR codes, and RFID, there’s just less demand for the venerable technology.
IBM
invented the stripe back in the early 1960s. The engineer responsible, [Forrest Parry], was also involved in developing the UPC code. While working on a secure ID for the CIA, his wife suggested using an iron to melt a strip of magnetic tape onto the card. The rest is history.
The new technology rapidly took over, and by 1969, in the United States, there was a standard that has remained largely unchanged. The BBC post notes that a card reader in 1970 could read a credit card out of your pocket today if it still had a magnetic stripe. Infamously, IBM’s CEO at the time was not a fan, reportedly because “Mom doesn’t like credit cards.”
So, while you’ll still find mag stripes on a few cards here and there, in a few years, they’ll probably vanish completely. Don’t worry! You
can still make your own
. Don’t have a reader? Grab a
flatbed scanner
. | 115 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "7518756",
"author": "mrsimicsak",
"timestamp": "2024-08-22T00:25:05",
"content": "Hmm… The card readers at my local grocery store (West Coast USA) consistently fail to read the chip on my debit card (they only take debit or cash) 3 times in a row causing it to fall back to the mag s... | 1,760,371,823.011714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/atari-announces-the-atari-7800-nostalgia-console/ | Atari Announces The Atari 7800+ Nostalgia Console | Maya Posch | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"atari 2600",
"Atari 7800"
] | Following the trend of re-releasing every single game console as some kind of modern re-imagining or merely an ARM-SBC-with-emulator slapped into a nice looking enclosure, we now got the announcement from Atari that they will soon be releasing the Atari 7800+.
It’s now
up for pre-order
for a cool $130 USD or a
mega bundle with wired controllers
for $170 and shipping by Winter 2024. Rather than it being a cute-but-non-functional facsimile like recent miniature Nintendo and Commodore-themed releases, this particular console is 80% of the size of the
original 7800 console
, and accepts 2600 and 7800 cartridges, including a range of newly released cartridges.
On the outside you find the cartridge slot, an HDMI video/audio output, a USB-C port (for power) and DE-9 (incorrectly listed as DB-9) controller ports, with wireless controllers also being an option. Inside you find a (2014-vintage)
Rockchip RK3128
SoC with a quad core Cortex-A7 that runs presumably some flavor of Linux with the
Stella
2600 emulator and
ProSystem
7800 emulator. This very likely means that compatibility with 2600 and 7800 titles is the same as for these emulators.
Bundled with the console is a new 7800 cartridge for the game
Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest
, and a number of other new games are also
up for pre-order
at the Atari site. These games are claimed to be compatible with original Atari consoles, which might make it the biggest game release year for the 7800 since its launch, as it only had 59 official games released for it.
Given the backwards compatibility of this new system, you have to wonder how
folks who purchased the 2600+ last year
are feeling right about now. Then again, the iconic faux-wood trim of the earlier console might be worth the price of admission alone. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "7508833",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-21T20:12:54",
"content": "No mention of an SD card slot…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7577979",
"author": "dlcarrier",
"timest... | 1,760,371,821.978898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/floss-weekly-episode-797-coreutils-dont-rm-r-up-the-tree/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 797: Coreutils — Don’t Rm -r Up The Tree | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"java",
"Liferay"
] | This week
Jonathan Bennett
and
Dan Lynch
chat with
Pádraig Brady
about
Coreutils
! It’s been around since the 90s, and is still a healthy project under active development. You’ve almost certainly used these tools whether you realize it or not! What’s the relationship with the other coreutils implementations? And why is GNU Coreutils the most cautious of them all?
https://www.pixelbeat.org/contact.html
http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils-testing.html
http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils-gotchas.html
http://www.pixelbeat.org/programming/avoiding_large_buffers.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rejected_requests.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/quotes.html
http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils_i18n/
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": "7678553",
"author": "calculus",
"timestamp": "2024-08-26T23:37:47",
"content": "Another coreutils-like project, similar to busybox, is toybox. It is already shipping as part of Android since Android Marshmallow (since 2015).Here are the project details:https://landley.net/toybox/",... | 1,760,371,822.852718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/supercon-2023-soft-actuators-as-assistive-tech/ | Supercon 2023: Soft Actuators As Assistive Tech | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"2023 Hackaday Supercon",
"assistive technology",
"soft actuator",
"soft robotics"
] | When we think of assistive prostheses or braces, we often think of hard and rigid contraptions. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that prosthetic limbs were still being made out of wood. Even devices made of more modern materials tend to have a robotic quality that inevitably limits their dexterity. However, advancements in soft robotics could allow for assistive devices that more closely mimic their organic counterparts.
At Supercon 2023,
Benedetta Lia Mandelli and Emilio Sordi presented their work in developing soft actuator orthosis
— specifically, a brace that can help tetraplegics with limited finger and thumb control. Individuals with certain spinal cord injuries can move their arms and wrists but are unable to grasp objects.
A traditional flexor hinge brace
Existing braces can help restore this ability, but they are heavy and limited by the fact that the wearer needs to hold their wrist in a specific position to keep pressure on the mechanism. By replacing the rigid linkage used in the traditional orthosis, the experience of using the device is improved in many ways.
Not only is it lighter and more comfortable to wear, but the grip strength can also be more easily adjusted. The most important advancement however is how the user operates the device.
Like the more traditional designs, the wearer controls the grip through the position of their wrist. But the key difference with the soft actuator version is that the user doesn’t need to maintain that wrist position to keep the grip engaged. Once the inertial measurement units (IMUs) have detected the user has put their wrist into the proper position, the electronics maintain the pressure inside the actuator until commanded otherwise. This means that the user can freely move their wrist after gripping an object without inadvertently dropping it.
From Concept to Production
While much of the talk covers the advantages of their brace, the team also goes over how their design was improved from their original proof of concept work — which featured an earlier version of the soft actuator literally zip tied to the wearer’s fingers.
While the brace itself was modified, the biggest changes came to the actuator itself. The first version used two chambers, but this was eventually simplified to just one. In addition, they switched from using a pneumatic system to hydraulic. Originally, an air pump was used to pressurize the actuator, but they found a syringe pushing liquid into the actuator provided better control.
Soft Actuator Design
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of their talk was the discussion of the soft actuator itself. In a series of slides, they described not only how the mechanism works, but how they produce them in-house using a surprisingly simple process.
Essentially, the actuator is a strip of silicone with a series of hollow chambers molded into it. When the actuator is pressurized with air or liquid, these chambers expand. Normally, this would just make the structure blow up like a balloon, but by integrating a non-elastic layer onto the bottom of the actuator, it instead causes it to curve around. Once the system releases pressure, the silicone naturally returns to its original size and shape.
Creating the actuator is as simple as pouring silicone into a custom-made mold, and then attaching a strip of cotton to one side with a bit more liquid silicone. Once cured, they cut cotton to size and the actuator is ready to go. While the team tested several shapes for the actuator, the final version is a simple rectangle, as this was determined to be the easiest to produce.
Looking Ahead
While the design is already impressive, it’s still essentially a prototype. The electronics still live on scraps of protoboard, and the team continues to research potential improvements to their actuator design — from changes to the silicone mold to different motor and gearbox options for driving the syringe. Benedetta and Emilio also want to look into different ways of controlling the actuator outside of their current IMU solution.
Ultimately, they hope to put the brace into production as a semi-assembled kit that can be put together and fitted to the wearer by a medical professional in the field. The hope is that by bringing the cost of the brace down and making it easy to customize for the individual, they can bring this assistive technology to traditionally underserved areas. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "7531397",
"author": "Zoe",
"timestamp": "2024-08-22T08:46:33",
"content": "Well 10 fingers is already more input than this has.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,823.176572 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/21/jangle-box-plucks-strings-at-the-press-of-a-button/ | Jangle Box Plucks Strings At The Press Of A Button | Tom Nardi | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"musical instrument",
"samples",
"string instrument"
] | There are some that enjoy the human element of a musical performance, delighting in the unique way an artist teases the desired sound from their instruments. Then there are those of us who listen to random bleeps, bloops, and buzzes tortured out of some crusty sound chip pulled from an 8-bit computer. It’s all very subjective.
It seems to us that the Jangle Box,
created by [Rich Bernett]
, lands somewhere in the middle. A human is still playing the instrument, but they aren’t directly touching the strings. Instead, buttons and a potentiometer on the front of the device are used to control four small hobby motors that slap their respective strings with what appears to be the remnants of plastic propellers — we’d guess these motors were pulled from cheap personal fans. Standard guitar tuner knobs can be used to adjust the tension of each string, providing further control over the sounds produced by the device.
In the video below, [Rich] briefly explains the operation of the Jangle Box, and then launches into a performance of sorts. The goal here really isn’t to “play” the instrument in the traditional sense. Rather, he records the various noises it produces, normalizes them, and sorts them into a full octave of notes so he can use them in future compositions. The last few minutes of the video contain some electronic beats made up of the samples created from the Jangle Box.
If you’re one of his Patreon supporters you can download the sample pack yourself, otherwise, you’ll have to make your own version of the instrument to get your hands on that electro-tangy sound.
This isn’t the first original [Rich Bernett] musical creation to grace these pages,
back in 2020 we covered his Cassettone synth
.
Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7503679",
"author": "TheRainHarvester on YouTube",
"timestamp": "2024-08-21T16:33:48",
"content": "Connect it to arduino. Control with midi.That would feel cool controlling a janglebox with a keyboard!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,371,823.235767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/autonomous-boat-plots-lake-beds/ | Autonomous Boat Plots Lake Beds | Bryan Cockfield | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"autonomous",
"bathymetry",
"batteries",
"boat",
"catamaran",
"drone",
"gps",
"solar",
"solar panel",
"topography",
"water depth"
] | Although the types of drones currently dominating headlines tend to be airborne, whether it’s hobbyist quadcopters, autonomous delivery vehicles, or military craft, autonomous vehicles can take nearly any transportation method we can think of. [Clay Builds] has been hard at work on his drone which is actually an autonomous boat, which he uses to map the underwater topography of various lakes.
In this video he takes us through the design and build process of this particular vehicle and then demonstrates it in action
.
The boat itself takes inspiration from sailing catamarans, which have two hulls of equal size connected above the waterline, allowing for more stability and less drag than a standard single-hulled boat. This is [Clay]’s second autonomous boat, essentially a larger, more powerful version
of one we featured before
. Like the previous version, the hulls are connected with a solar panel and its support structure, which also provides the boat with electrical power and charges lithium-iron phosphate batteries in the hull. Steering is handled by two rudders with one on each hull, but it also employs differential steering for situations where more precise turning is required. The boat carries a sonar-type device for measuring the water depth, which is housed in a more hydrodynamic 3d-printed enclosure to reduce its drag in the water, and it can follow a waypoint mission using a combination of GPS and compass readings.
Like any project of this sort, there was a lot of testing and design iteration that had to go into this build before it was truly seaworthy. The original steering mechanism was the weak point, with the initial design based on a belt connecting the two rudders that would occasionally skip. But after a bit of testing and ironing out these kinks, the solar boat is on its way to measure the water’s depths. The project’s code as well as some of the data can be found
on the project’s GitHub page
, and if you’re looking for something more human-sized
take a look at this solar-powered kayak instead
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "7226037",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T07:01:35",
"content": "Here in Arizona the bottom contour of many of the lake bottoms was determined from the topo maps that were generated before the canyons were dammed up. And the maps often can be at least partially verifie... | 1,760,371,823.288902 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/entangled-photons-maintained-using-existing-fiber-under-nycs-streets/ | Entangled Photons Maintained Using Existing Fiber Under NYC’s Streets | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"quantum cryptography",
"quantum entanglement"
] | Entangled photons are an ideal choice for large-scale networks employing quantum encryption or similar, as photons can use fiber-optical cables to transmit them. One issue with using existing commercial fiber-optic lines for this purpose is that these have imperfections which can disrupt photon entanglement. This can be worked around by delaying one member of the pair slightly, but this makes using the pairs harder. Instead, a team at New York-based startup Qunnect used polarization entanglement to successfully transmit and maintain thousands of photons over the course of weeks through a section of existing commercial fiber, as detailed in the
recently published paper
by [Alexander N. Craddock] et al. in
PRX Quantum
(with accompanying
press release
).
The entangled photons were created via spontaneous four-wave mixing in a warm rubidium vapor. This creates a photon with a wavelength of 795 nm and one with 1324 nm. The latter of which is compatible with the fiber network and is thus transmitted over the 34 kilometers. To measure the shift in polarization of the transmitted photos, non-entangled photons with a known polarization were transmitted along with the entangled ones. This then allowed for polarization compensation for the entangled photos by measuring the shift on the single photons. Overall, the team reported an uptime of nearly 100% with about 20,000 entangled photons transmitted per second.
As a proof of concept it shows that existing fiber-optical lines could in the future conceivably be used for quantum computing and encryption without upgrades. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7215704",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T02:36:53",
"content": "The kind of entanglement guys would be comfortable with.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7226535",
"author": "Ol' Ben",
"timestamp... | 1,760,371,823.343525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/handsome-sim-racing-button-box-is-a-super-easy-build/ | Handsome Sim Racing Button Box Is A Super Easy Build | Lewin Day | [
"Games",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arcade usb",
"button box",
"sim racing"
] | Sim racing is a lot more complex than playing
Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit.
You need buttons for all kinds of stuff, from headlights to brake balance to traction control. If you want to control all that in an intuitive and realistic manner, you’ll want to build yourself a decent button pad
like [Chris Haye] has done.
It’s surprisingly easy, too!
Very cool.
[Chris] is quite a serious racer, and needed
four
button boxes. He wanted to do this on the cheap, so he decided to build his first three boxes around the Zero Delay Arcade USB Encoder, a cheap controller board available on eBay for around £7. Arcade buttons were sourced off Amazon to populate the black project boxes which acted as the housings.
His final button pad looks straight out of a GT3 race car, but it’s the simplest of the bunch. It’s literally just a USB numpad with a carbon vinyl wrap applied and some home-printed labels. One suspects the feel isn’t particularly high-quality but the look is top tier. If you’re a streamer that wants to build a hardcore-looking setup, this is a great way to go.
[Chris] estimates that each box took maybe an hour to build, tops. It’s a great example of solution-focused design. He could have gotten out his own microcontroller and done a custom PCB and all that, and the results surely would have been good. But it would have taken far longer! It’s hard to beat the speed of wiring together Amazon arcade buttons with the Arcade USB Encoder’s pre-terminated wire harness. If you’re more interested in sim racing than building button boxes, it’s a great way to do a custom pad fast.
Best of all? [Chris] says he managed to put these all together for £60—quite a feat of bargain engineering. We’ve featured some other builds along these lines before, too—
even using vintage aircraft controls!
Video after the break. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7244460",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-08-15T13:38:22",
"content": "“estimates that each box took maybe an hour to build, tops”hmm… it took me 5 minutes to read and process the hackaday post, another 5 to view the YT-videe, sourcing the components most likely an hour (find th... | 1,760,371,823.399244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/handheld-oscilloscope-meter-reviewed/ | Handheld Oscilloscope Meter Reviewed | Al Williams | [
"Reviews",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"scopemeter"
] | We live in a time where there’s virtually no excuse not to have
some
kind of oscilloscope. As [IMSAI Guy] shows in a recent video, for what you might expect to pay for a decent meter, you can now
get one that includes a scope
. There are several options out there but it is hard to know how much to spend to get the best possible product. The Zoyi ZT-702S that he looks at costs under $80. But is it worth it?
Scopes that connect to your PC are often very inexpensive. You can also find little toy scopes that use a microcontroller and a little LCD screen. Even though the specs on these are usually appalling, they will still let you visualize what’s happening in a circuit. Sure, you want an expensive bench scope with lots of channels sometimes, but often, you just need to see a signal in broad strokes. Having a scope and a meter together is very handy.
The little meter claims 10 MHz bandwidth and 48 megasamples per second in scope mode. The meter claims true RMS and 9999 counts. The internal battery charges from USB-C. As you might expect, the meter portion works well enough for a basic meter. The scope reacts well up to 5 MHz. It isn’t necessarily the best scope in the world, but for $80 it seemed quite adequate. The probe compensation wasn’t able to quite make a square wave square, but you still got the idea.
As commenters on the video pointed out, there is a newer model that has two channels (at a slightly higher price tag). They also point out that there are dozens of similar devices at different price points, and everyone has their favorite.
If you have hobby-level cash, we’d suggest a higher-end scope meter like
an OWON or Hantek
since the professional brands are still very expensive. We wonder what the designer of
1983’s Pocket-O-Scope
would think of these modern devices. | 25 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "7194781",
"author": "CLOVIS FRITZEN",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T20:11:55",
"content": "Price still separates toys from instruments",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7217778",
"author": "Phyzzi",
"timestamp": "2024... | 1,760,371,823.469545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/floss-weekly-episode-796-homebrew-im-more-of-a-whopper-guy/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 796: Homebrew, I’m More Of A Whopper Guy | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"java",
"Liferay"
] | This week
Jonathan Bennett
and
David Ruggles
chat with
John Britton
and
Mike McQuaid
about Homebrew! That’s the missing package manager for macOS; and Workbrew, the commercial offering built on top of it. We cover lots of territory, like why the naming scheme sounds like it was conceived during a pub visit, how Workbrew helps businesses actually use Homebrew, and why you might even want to run Homebrew on a Linux machine!
https://brew.sh
https://workbrew.com
https://johndbritton.com
https://mikemcquaid.com
Homebrew 15th Anniversary Stream with Creator Max Howell –
https://workbrew.com/homebrew-turns-15
Strap – Bootstrap your macOS development system –
https://strap.mikemcquaid.com
&&
https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/strap
Homebrew Bundle – Bundler for non-Ruby dependencies from Homebrew, Homebrew Cask, and the Mac App Store –
https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle
MAS Mac App Store command line interface –
https://github.com/mas-cli/mas
Dotfiles
Mike’s Dotfiles –
https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/dotfiles
John’s Dotfiles –
https://github.com/johndbritton/dotfiles
Brewfiles
Mike’s Brewfile –
https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/dotfiles/blob/main/Brewfile
John’s Brewfile –
https://github.com/johndbritton/dotfiles/blob/main/dot/Brewfile
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": "7298940",
"author": "Jeff Rafter",
"timestamp": "2024-08-16T16:34:31",
"content": "These are very cool people making such important stuff!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,823.511917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/hacker-tactic-pimp-your-probes/ | Hacker Tactic: Pimp Your Probes | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Slider"
] | [
"probe",
"reverse engineering",
"skills"
] | Is your multimeter one of your trusty friends when building up boards, repairing broken gadgets, and reverse-engineering proprietary ones? Is it accompanied by a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope at times?
Having a proper probing setup is crucial for many a task, and the standard multimeter probes just won’t do. As a PCB is slipping under your grip as you’re trying to hold the standard multimeter probes on two points at once, inevitably you will ponder whether you could be doing things differently. Here’s an assortment of probing advice I have accumulated.
Beyond The Norm
There’s the standard advice – keep your board attached firmly to a desk, we’ve seen gadgets like the Stickvise help us in this regard, and a regular lightweight benchtop vise does wonders. Same goes for using fancy needle probes that use gravity to press against testpoints – they might be expensive, but they are seriously cool, within limits, and you can even 3D-print them!
Both of these become insufficient at some point, sadly – sometimes you need to change the probing spots so often that the gravity probes become bothersome, sometimes the board is double-sided and you need to flip it for tracing a connection, and sometimes you want to do current injection where the probing point actually matters. Default multimeter probes are nice, but they are also dull to the point it’s easy to short adjacent IC pads if you’re not careful.
Two most helpful probes in my toolkit
So, where do you go? My advice is, fashioning your own probes or buying nonstandard ones. Ever find a set of broken multimeter probes? Good, you can use them up as banana jack pigtails, a piece of solderable wire with a banana jack on one end. Don’t got some broken probes? Just buy a cheap set and harvest wires from it, or build some out of screwpost banana jacks. You can fashion a fair few things with solderable banana leads – let’s take a look!
Just Solder It On
The first advice I have is literally soldering such pigtails to a GND pad on your board. This is wonderful if you have to constantly probe voltages relative to GND, soldering a wire to GND is a serious timesaver – it frees up one of your hands, and unlike crocodile clip probes, it is not terribly likely to break off silently while you’re in the middle of debugging. If you must probe between two non-soldered-to points, feel free to temporarily swap in a usual probe – that’s why I recommend a spare probe wire for this!
If GND is your reference and you’re tempted to use something that looks like it should be GND, make sure your probe soldering point is GND-connected! USB-C sockets are a good starting point for this – all USB-C sockets must have their shield grounded, no matter the device. Of course, before assuming that a certain connector shield is ground, you must check that it actually connects to the board’s ground, which should be easy to find on your board’s inevitably present decoupling capacitors.
For reliable and easy measurements, just solder the probe wire on!
Soldering won’t work for smaller testpoints, unless you use a piece of magnet wire for the last-inch part and hotglue or tape the probe wire to the board. If you don’t do one of these, the wire will either break away from the board easily, or even tear your testpoint off the board completely; many times I have foolishly tried to directly solder thick wires to small pads, and it invariably resulted in torn off pads, so I recommend you skip this step. For logic analysis, soldering 2.54 mm header wires in the same fashion is pretty convenient – I often use stray female-male wires from my bench for this.
Of course, if you have a multimeter lead with a solderable end, you can easily convert it to a croc clip end – those are also quite handy for times when you don’t want to bother soldering or can’t do it! You can buy a set of decent croc clip probes, but if you haven’t yet, a broken probe and a croc clip end will do just fine. Apart from the usual things you would use a crocodile clip for, there’s one more purpose you might not have considered!
Reusing Metal Brushes And Tweezers
a reverse-engineer’s best friend
I’ve done a fair bit of reverse-engineering where my task was to figure out all connections to a certain pad, usually on multi-layer boards with no visible tracks in sight. In laptop repair, you would usually use a boardview for this, but they’re rarely available for generic devices, and while
that Nintendo Switch flying wire reverse-engineered boardview
is impressive, it’s not about to become a hacker household staple, unless everyone levels up their skills real quick.
Enter metal brushes – of the kind you find in dremel and other rotary tool kits. Where does a certain pin of an IC lead? One probe wire held onto the pin, another probe is a croc clip holding the metal brush that you gently caress your board with; not too strongly so as to scratch the soldermask, but strongly enough to break through the oxides on the solder joints. I keep two sizes – one large and one small, using the large one first to find the general contact areas, and then using the small brush to narrow it down.
These are instrumental for many a black box board, and so are metal SMD tweezers – as long as they’re sharp to a point, you can use them as super sharp multimeter probes. Spread the tweezer legs, insert your wire up to the very top of the join point, then release the tweezers, and make sure it doesn’t fail a continuity test. Congrats, you have just acquired a probe sharp enough to probe 0.5 mm pitch pins with ease. As long as your parallax vision doesn’t fail you, you will do just fine, which is to say, it will be less of a struggle than usual. I use Rhino tweezers that you can get on Adafruit, Dangerous Prototypes, or Aliexpress – they are super sharp and durable in long term.
Much More Cool Stuff To Learn
Summary – have some solderable banana jack pigtails handy, which you can make out of old or cheap probes. You can use them to free up a hand while probing or do current injection. In a pinch, you can use metal brushes held in croc probes for reverse-engineering, and tweezers holding solderable leads for fine point probing. With these tricks, you will find that many kinds of probing and repair work gets easier and way less failure-prone.
Now, these aren’t the only probe hacks; for instance, when using an oscilloscope and measuring high-speed signals or power rails, upgrading your ground connection can give you a significantly cleaner signal. Also, don’t be afraid of making custom jigs for testing your boards, and don’t forget about probing for ESD diodes! | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "7188363",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T18:22:38",
"content": "Be careful when sliding your (sharp) probe across small pitched IC legs, like TQFP. I think i managed to create a short once that killed an entire project (unobtainium IC and stuff). :-/ The advice (in t... | 1,760,371,823.591492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/a-really-low-level-guide-to-doing-ethernet-on-an-fpga/ | A Really Low Level Guide To Doing Ethernet On An FPGA | Lewin Day | [
"FPGA",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"ethernet",
"fpga",
"network",
"networking"
] | With so much of our day-to-day networking done wirelessly these days, it can be easy to forget about Ethernet. But it’s a useful standard and can be a great way to add a reliable high-throughput network link to your projects. To that end, [Robert Feranec] and [Stacy Rieck] whipped up a tutorial on
how to work with Ethernet on FPGAs.
As [Robert] explains, “many people would like to transfer data from FPGA boards to somewhere else.” That basically sums up why you might be interested in doing this. The duo spend over an hour stepping through doing Ethernet at a very low level, without using pre-existing IP blocks to make it easier. The video explains the basic architecture right down to the physical pins on the device and what they do, all the way up to the logic blocks inside the device that do all the protocol work.
If you just want to get data off an embedded project, you can always pull in some existing libraries to do the job. But if you want to
really
understand Ethernet
, this is a great place to start. There’s no better way to learn than doing it yourself. Files are
on GitHub
for the curious. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7180351",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T16:03:43",
"content": "I highly, highly, highly recommend Alex Forencich’s Ethernet implementation.https://github.com/alexforencich/verilog-ethernetHe’s just insanely responsive for a free project and there are implementations up t... | 1,760,371,823.807845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/laser-cutters-wheres-the-point/ | Laser Cutters: Where’s The Point? | Al Williams | [
"cnc hacks",
"Featured",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"laser cutter",
"laser engraver"
] | It is funny how when you first start doing something, you have so many misconceptions that you have to discard. When you look back on it, it always seems like you should have known better. That was the case when I first got a low-end laser cutter. When you want to cut or engrave something, it has to be in just the right spot. It is like hanging a picture. You can get really close, but if it is off just a little bit, people will notice.
The big commercial units I’ve been around all had cameras that were in a fixed position and were calibrated. So the software didn’t show you a representation of the bed. It showed you the bed. The real bed plus whatever was on it. Getting things lined up was simply a matter of dragging everything around until it looked right on the screen.
Today, some cheap laser cutters have cameras, and you can probably add one to those that don’t. But you still don’t need it. My Ourtur Laser Master 3 has nothing fancy, and while I didn’t always tackle it the best way, my current method works well enough. In addition, I recently got a chance to try an XTool S1. It isn’t that cheap, but it doesn’t have a camera. Interestingly, though, there are two different ways of laying things out that also work. However, you can still do it the old-fashioned way, too.
Humble Beginnings
I started out with
a Laser Master 2
, but it really had no comfort features. You had to focus the laser by observing the beam, and there was nothing to help you with positioning. I thought I would be clever and have the laser cut a grid into a spoil board so I could lay things out. That didn’t work well at all.
There are a few reasons a grid like that isn’t as useful as you’d think. First, if you do want to try it, the board needs to be totally secure with respect to the laser cutter’s frame. Otherwise, if the board or laser moves, you are now off. Even just a little tilt or slide will show up in the finished product. But the big problem is the workpiece has to be totally square with the frame, or things will be crooked.
A Better Plan
It didn’t take many ruined pieces to realize I needed a better way. The answer turned out to be wrapping paper. A trip to the dollar store will give you plenty of wrapping paper, and it can be ugly — you don’t care what it looks like since you’ll use the back.
Leather notebooks engrave well if you can keep them straight and centered
Suppose I’m going to engrave a notebook with a logo and name. I’ll have some outline representing the book. The steps are simple:
1) Put down the wrapping paper and tape it to the cutter’s bed.
2) Turn off everything and then turn on just the outline vector.
3) Focus on the paper and do the engrave.
Now, you have a perfect book-shaped rectangle on the paper. If the bed is tilted, it doesn’t matter because so is the rectangle.
4) Place the book inside the outline on the paper.
5) Refocus the laser.
6) Turn off the outline layer and turn on the other layers.
7) Burn!
The Laser Master 3 added a nice feature, which was a little hinged stick that flops out of the laser and lets you easily set the focus. I’d been doing that before with a little homemade cube, but it was nice to have it all set up.
No Camera, No Problem
The S1 is a fairly high-end machine for a diode laser, so I was a little surprised it didn’t have a camera. However, what it does have is closed-loop motor control. What that means is that if you move the laser head with your hands, the machine still knows where it is. There’s also a little laser pointer cross that shows you where the laser head is — sort of. There is an offset between the actual beam and the cross, but if you use their software, they know that. If you use Lightburn, you have to set that yourself.
So if you have a book you want to engrave on the bed, you tell the software to “mark.” It lets you pick a few shapes, but usually, you want a rectangle. You line up the laser cross with the top corner of the book (or whatever) and press the button on the machine. You hear a loud beep. Then, you move to the far bottom corner and press the button again. That’s it.
Now, the software will place a little box that shows exactly where the book is. This doesn’t help you correct for small skew problems, but it does let you accurately move things to the right location.
The machine also has an interesting way of dealing with autofocus. It has a metal pin that drops from the laser head sort of like a BL Touch on a 3D printer. When it hits something, it knows how far away the surface is. Then, it moves to a corner where a metal plate pushes the pin back up. You need to make sure the head is over something before you tell it to measure. If you have a honeycomb bed, the laser head will bottom out before the pin, and you’ll hear some ugly noises.
But A Picture is Worth…
If you can’t stand not having an image of your workspace, the S1 can do it, but honestly, it is a pain. The printer comes with little sticky target decals, and you can make more if you need them. Three of them look like little bullseyes, and one is just a small dot. You place them somewhere on the bed where the laser can reach.
A phone camera image of the bed with a purple vector overlaid
After you install the phone app, you can connect to the printer and calibrate the dots. You do this just like the marking routine. You aim at each target and press the button. Now, the software knows exactly where each bullseye is.
The next step is to take a picture of the bed with your phone. Since the software knows the bullseyes are circles and where they are, it can reconstruct a proper view of your bed. Moving it to your computer is a pain the first time since you have to scan a QR code on the computer to make a connection. After that, though, it just sends it. The problem, of course, is the shot isn’t live. You have to fix up the bed the way you want, shoot the picture, and then don’t change anything after that.
One tip: don’t cut anything on top of the bullseyes. They will blacken up and then you’ll need some extras. Not that we’ve done that, of course!
The Answer
It seems odd that cameras haven’t taken over everything. They work well, and a live view is handy. However, if you don’t have a camera, there are clear alternatives. For as much as the Xtool system is clever, it still doesn’t help you with crooked alignment. It is, however, better than the wrapping paper method for things where you don’t know the size already.
If you do know the size of the workpiece, though, it really isn’t that handy. Sure, you don’t have to tape down paper and score it with a framing cut, but that’s a small price to pay for the benefit you get. If we were
building our own cutter
, we’d seriously consider adding a probe, though.
How do you get engraving to go where you want it? Do you have another method? Let us know in the comments. If you haven’t splurged on a laser yet, you
might enjoy a tutorial
. | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "7178326",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T14:26:21",
"content": "I guess it is time to dust off the laser engraver and burn some Jolly Wrenchers!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7178602"... | 1,760,371,823.947108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/whacky-science-using-mayonnaise-to-study-rayleigh-taylor-instability/ | Wacky Science: Using Mayonnaise To Study Rayleigh-Taylor Instability | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"inertial confinement fusion",
"plasma physics",
"rayleigh-taylor instability"
] | Sometimes a paper in a scientific journal pops up that makes you do a triple-take, case in point being
a recent paper
by [Aren Boyaci] and [Arindam Banerjee] in
Physical Review E
titled
“Transition to plastic regime for Rayleigh-Taylor instability in soft solids”
. The title doesn’t quite do their methodology justice — as the paper describes zipping a container filled with mayonnaise along a figure-eight track to look at the surface transitions. With the paper paywalled and no preprint available, we have to mostly rely the Lehigh University press releases pertaining to the
original 2019 paper
and this
follow-up
2024 one.
Rayleigh-Taylor instability
(RTI) is an instability of an interface between two fluids of different densities when the less dense fluid acts up on the more dense fluid. An example of this is water suspended above oil, as well as the expanding mushroom cloud during a explosion or eruption. It also plays a major role in plasma physics, especially as it pertains to nuclear fusion. In the case of
inertial confinement fusion
(ICF) the rapidly laser-heated pellet of deuterium-tritium fuel will expand, with the boundary interface with the expanding D-T fuel subject to RTI, negatively affecting the ignition efficiency and fusion rate. A simulation of this can be found in a
January 2024 research paper
by [Y. Y. Lei] et al.
As a fairly chaotic process, RTI is hard to simulate, making a physical model a more ideal research subject. Mayonnaise is definitely among the whackiest ideas here, with other researchers like [Samar Alqatari] et al.
as published
in
Science Advances
opting to use a
Hele-Shaw cell
with dyed glycerol-water mixtures for a less messy and mechanically convoluted experimental contraption.
What’s notable here is that the Lehigh University studies were funded by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which explains the focus on ICF, as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is based there.
This also makes the breathless hype about ‘mayo enabling fusion power’ somewhat silly, as ICF is even less likely to lead to net power production, far behind even Z-pinch fusion. That said, a better understanding of RTI is always welcome, even if one has to question the practical benefit of studying it in a container of mayonnaise. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7176024",
"author": "Nebk",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T12:48:28",
"content": "Just another example of Hackaday being in the deep and sticky pockets of Big Mayonnaise.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7178404",
"author": "... | 1,760,371,823.864888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/ryobi-battery-pack-gives-up-its-secrets-before-giving-up-the-ghost/ | Ryobi Battery Pack Gives Up Its Secrets Before Giving Up The Ghost | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"battery",
"bms",
"console",
"i2c",
"reverse engineering",
"ryobi",
"serial"
] | Remember when dead batteries were something you’d just toss in the trash? Those days are long gone, thankfully, and rechargeable battery packs have put powerful cordless tools in the palms of our hands. But when those battery packs go bad, replacing them becomes an expensive proposition. And that’s a great excuse to
pop a pack open and see what’s happening inside
.
The battery pack in question found its way to [Don]’s bench by blinking some error codes and refusing to charge. Popping it open, he found a surprisingly packed PCB on top of the lithium cells, presumably the battery management system judging by the part numbers on some of the chips. There are a lot of test points along with some tempting headers, including one that gave up some serial data when the battery’s test button was pressed. The data isn’t encrypted, but it is somewhat cryptic, and didn’t give [Don] much help. Moving on to the test points, [Don] was able to measure the voltage of each battery in the series string. He also identified test pads that disable individual cells, at least judging by the serial output, which could be diagnostically interesting. [Don]’s reverse engineering work is now focused on the charge controller chip, which he’s looking at through its I2C port. He seems to have done quite a bit of work capturing output and trying to square it with the chip’s datasheet, but he’s having trouble decoding it.
This would be a great place for the Hackaday community to pitch in so he can perhaps get this battery unbricked. We have to admit feeling a wee bit responsible for this, since [Don] reports that it was
our article
on reverse engineering a cheap security camera that inspired him to dig into this, so we’d love to get him some help. | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "7169488",
"author": "David Mark Pye",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T09:23:47",
"content": "I did some work reverse engineering and then writing replacement firmware for the Dyson V10 series, which uses the same BMS IC family.https://github.com/davidmpye/V10_Dyson_BMS/wiki/Hardware-infoTh... | 1,760,371,824.089084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/original-game-boy-gets-display-upgrade/ | Original Game Boy Gets Display “Upgrade” | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"crt",
"display",
"game boy",
"gaming",
"video"
] | Before LCD and LED screens were ubiquitous, there was a time when the cathode ray tube (CRT) was essentially the only game in town. Even into the early 2000s, CRTs were everywhere and continuously getting upgrades, with the last consumer displays even having a semi-flat option. Their size and weight was still a major problem, though, but for a long time they were cutting edge. Wanting to go back to this time with their original Game Boy, [James Channel] went about
replacing their Game Boy screen with a CRT
.
The CRT itself is salvaged from an old video conferencing system and while it’s never been used before, it wasn’t recently made. To get the proper video inputs for this old display, the Game Boy needed to be converted to LCD first, as some of these modules have video output that can be fed to other displays. Providing the display with power was another challenge, requiring a separate boost converter to get 12V from the Game Boy’s 6V supply. After getting everything wired up a few adjustments needed to be made, and with that the CRT is up and running.
Unfortunately, there was a major speed bump in this process when [James Channel]’s method of automatically switching the display to the CRT let the magic smoke out of the Game Boy’s processor. But he was able to grab a replacement CPU from a Super Game Boy, hack together a case, and fix the problem with the automatic video switcher. Everything now is in working order for a near-perfect retro display upgrade. If you’d like to do this without harming any original hardware,
we’ve seen a similar build based on the ESP32 instead
.
Thanks to [Lurch] for the tip! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "7165344",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T05:36:59",
"content": "“Even into the early 2000s, CRTs were everywhere and continuously getting upgrades, with the last consumer displays even having a semi-flat option.”That seems right, though I got my first pocket TV with a ... | 1,760,371,824.007409 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/possible-discovery-of-liquid-water-in-mars-mid-crust-by-the-insight-lander/ | Possible Discovery Of Liquid Water In Mars’ Mid-Crust By The Insight Lander | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"extraterrestrial water",
"mars",
"seismology"
] | One of the most sought after substances in the Universe is water – especially in its liquid form – as its presence on a planet makes the presence of life (as we know it) significantly more likely. While there are potentially oceans worth of liquid water on e.g. Jupiter’s moon Europa, for now Mars is significantly easier to explore as evidenced by the many probes which we got onto its surface so far. One of these was the InSight probe, which was capable of a unique feat: looking inside the planet’s crust with its seismometer to perform geophysical measurements. These measurements have now led to the fascinating prospect that liquid water may in fact exist on Mars right now, according to
a paper published
by [Vashan Wright] and colleagues in
PNAS
(with easy-read
BBC coverage
).
InSight’s
mission lasted from November 2018 to December 2022 by which time too much dust had collected on its solar panels and communication was lost. During those active years it had used its seismometer (SEIS) to use the vibrations from natural marsquakes and similar to map the internals of the planet. Based on rock physics models and the data gathered by InSight, there is a distinct possibility that significant liquid water may exist in Mars’ mid-crust, meaning at a depth of about 11.5 to 20 km. Most tantalizing here is perhaps that at these depths, more liquid water may exist today than may have filled Mars’ past oceans.
Since we’re talking about just a single lander with a single instrument in a single location, it would be highly presumptuous to draw strong conclusions, and at these depths we would have no means to access it. Even so, it would offer interesting ideas for future Mars missions, not to mention underground Mars bases. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "7161352",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-08-14T02:11:53",
"content": "” One of the most sought after substances in the Universe is water ” And we have magnitudes of it right here on earth. No need to look elsewhere.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,824.295827 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/from-vehicle-to-grid-to-diy-home-powerwalls/ | From Vehicle-to-Grid To DIY Home Powerwalls | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"EV battery",
"powerwall"
] | As battery-to-grid and vehicle-to-home technologies become increasingly mainstream, the potential for repurposing electric vehicle (EV) batteries has grown significantly. No longer just a niche pursuit, using retired EV batteries for home energy storage has become more accessible and appealing, especially as advancements in DIY solutions continue to emerge. Last year,
this project by [Dala]
showcased how to repurpose Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model 3 battery packs for home energy storage using a LilyGO ESP32, simplifying the process by eliminating the need for battery disassembly.
In the past few months, this project has seen remarkable progress. It now supports over 20 different solar inverter brands and more than 25 EV battery models. The most exciting development, however, is the newly developed method for chaining two EV packs together to create a single large super-battery. This breakthrough enables the combination of, for example, two 100kWh Tesla packs into a massive 200kWh storage system. This new capability offers an accessible and affordable way to build large-scale DIY home powerwalls, providing performance that rivals commercial systems at a fraction of the cost.
With these advancements, the possibilities for creating powerful, cost-effective energy storage solutions have expanded significantly. We do however stress to put safety first at all times.
Hungry for more home powerbanks?
We’ve been there before
. | 48 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "7158118",
"author": "Pablo Rogina",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T23:33:21",
"content": "How the battery packs are obtained? Are they discarded? Brought at auction? I am curious how those 2 100kWh Tesla packs came from. Thanks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,824.182079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/cheap-diy-button-pad-uses-neat-punchcard-trick/ | Cheap DIY Button Pad Uses Neat Punchcard Trick | Lewin Day | [
"Games",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"button box",
"diy",
"streamdeck"
] | A StreamDeck is effectively a really cool box full of colorful buttons that activate various things on your PC. They’re fun and cool but they’re also something you can build yourself if you’re so inclined. [Jason] did just that for his sim racing setup,
and he included some nifty old-school tech as well.
An ESP32 is at the core of the build, listening to button presses and communicating with the PC. However, the build doesn’t actually use regular buttons. Instead, it uses infrared sensors wired up in a matrix. This was an intentional choice, because [Jason] wanted the device to be reconfigurable with different paper card overlays. There are ways to do this with regular buttons too, but it works particularly well with the infrared technique. Plus, each button also gets a Neopixel allowing its color to be changed to suit different button maps.
What’s really neat is that the button maps change instantly when a different overlay card is inserted. [Jason] achieved this with an extra row of infrared sensors to detect punched holes in the bottom of the overlay cards.
Once upon a time, even
building your own keyboard
was an uphill battle. Today, it’s easier than ever to whip up fun and unique interface devices that suit your own exact needs. That’s a good thing! Video after the break. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "7154137",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T20:24:48",
"content": "Neat!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7154911",
"author": "drenehtsral",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T21:21:30",
... | 1,760,371,824.239279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/stemfie-the-3d-printable-construction-set/ | Stemfie, The 3D-Printable Construction Set | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"construction kit",
"construction toy",
"horse"
] | Construction kit toys are cited by many adults as sparking great creativity and engineering talent in their youth. LEGO, Meccano, K’NEX, Lincoln Logs—these are all great commercial options.
But what about printing your very own construction kit at home?
Meet Stemfie.
Fundamentally, Stemfie isn’t that different from any other construction kit you might have seen before. It has various beams and flat plates that are full of holes so they can be assembled together in various ways. It also uses bolts, spacers, and small plastic nuts that can be tightened using a special hand tool. Think of a mixture between LEGO Technic and Meccano and that will get you in the ballpark. It includes neat motion components too, including gears, wheels, and even a large flat spring!
What can you build with it? Well, as every construction kit toy says, you’re only limited by your imagination! However, if your imagination is especially small, you can just use the Stemfie 3D YouTube channel for inspiration. It features everything from a
ping pong ball catapult
to a
rubber-band driven car.
Plus, since it’s all 3D printed, you can simply scale up the parts and build even bigger designs. Like a giant catapult that can hurl
entire water jugs
. Fun!
We’ve seen other projects in this vein before. One of our favorites is
[Ivan Miranda]’s giant 3D printed assembly kit that he uses to build big monster toys. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7153198",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T18:49:52",
"content": "heh this is a great example of how i’ve had a 3d printer for a decade now and i’ve made about 120 projects and i’ve only used about 5 rolls of filament. for building toys, i’ve made replacement parts and ... | 1,760,371,824.451358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/portable-router-build-picking-your-cpu/ | Portable Router Build: Picking Your CPU | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Network Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"diy",
"network",
"router"
] | I want to introduce you to a project of mine – a portable router build, and with its help, show you how you can build a purpose-built device. You might have seen portable routers for sale, but if you’ve been in the hacking spheres long enough, you might notice there are “coverage gaps”, so to speak. The Pi-hole project is a household staple that keeps being product-ized by shady Kickstarter campaigns, a “mobile hotspot” button is a staple in every self-respecting mobile and desktop OS, and “a reset device for the ISP router” is a whole genre of a hacker project. Sort the projects by “All Time” popularity on Hackaday.io, and near the very top, you will see
an OpenVPN &Tor router project
– it’s there for a reason, and it got into 2014 Hackaday Prize semifinals for a reason, too.
I own a bunch of devices benefitting from both an Internet connection and also point-to-point connections between them. My internet connection comes sometimes from an LTE uplink, sometimes from an Ethernet cable, and sometimes from an open WiFi network with a portal you need to click through before you can even ping anything. If I want to link my pocket devices into my home network for backups and home automation, I can put a VPN client on my laptop, but a VPN client on my phone kills its battery, and the reasonable way would be to VPN the Internet uplink – somehow, that is a feature I’m not supposed to have, and let’s not even talk about DNSSEC! Whenever I tried to use one of those portable LTE+WiFi[+Ethernet] routers and actively use it for a month or two, I’d encounter serious hardware or firmware bugs – which makes sense, they are a niche product that won’t get as much testing as phones.
I’ve come to hate these little boxes with a passion.
By [www.digitalpush.net],
CC BY 4.0
Solving these problems and implementing my desired features is quite motivational for me – it’s not just that I need my devices to work for me, it’s also that every time I tackle a project like this, I push some cool tech boundaries, find out a number of fun things I can share with you all, and I end up creating yet another device I use to significantly improve my life. What’s more, routers are a sea of proprietary hardware coupled to proprietary software, and it shows. The Pi-hole project is about cutting profit margins, and the Tor network, so you won’t see them on a commercial device. Your Huawei portable router’s battery died? Good luck sourcing a replacement. Router randomly shutting down because of overheating? Either do something and lose your warranty, or send it away for repair for weeks with no guarantee of having it fixed, and stars help you if it’s made by Asus.
Feature Plan
I need a router with an always-on WiFi AP, LTE, Ethernet and an optional WiFi station interface. As for software, I need it to run a lightweight VPN client like Wireguard and route my traffic through it, as well as run a bunch of quality-of-life features – from reasonable static IP allocation and DNS configurability, to captive portal auto-clicking and DNSSEC. The best part about building your hardware is that you can pick your batteries and can choose cells as large as you desire, so it shouldn’t be hard to make it last a day, either.
You also get to pick your own CPU, LTE modem, power management circuits. Thankfully, I have building blocks for most of these, and I’ve discussed them before – let’s talk CPUs first, and next time, go into LTE modem selection.
You might have seen fun boards throughout the last decade – a half-a-GHz CPU, from 64 to 512 MB of external RAM, WiFi and Ethernet interfaces done in hardware, an SPI flash for firmware, a bunch of GPIOs, OpenWRT shipped by default, and no video output interface in sight. You might have bought one for a generic Raspberry Pi grade project, misunderstanding its purpose. It’s a a router CPU board, put into a maker-friendly form-factor – tt will work wonders for routing packets, but it won’t work well for streaming video. I know, because I bought my first board ever with the intention of running mjpg-streamer on it, and as soon as I set it to a reasonable resolution, the CPU went to 100% consumption in a heartbeat.
Perhaps one of the most promising “router CPU” modules to this day.
By [Pinguinguy],
CC0 1.0
There are plenty of boards like this around – the VoCore, the Carambola boards, the BlackSwift boards I keep nostalgically remembering, LinkIt boards, and the Onion Omega modules. Of these, to the best of my knowledge,
the Onion Omega 2
is the most up-to-date of them all, so I got one for cheap locally with a breakout – despite their name, they have nothing to do with Tor routing, though I do aim to change that. The Omega-designed breakout is underwhelming in my eyes – they used a powerbank IC to add battery backup functionality, with all the inefficiency and bugs that entails. As you might already know, you literally don’t need to do that.
Still, it ships with OpenWRT, it’s reasonably open, and it’s got everything I need. I started this project in 2018, but thankfully, I picked well – the Onion Omega repositories are active to this day, which means that, to this day, I can resume my project by just reflashing OpenWRT to a newer version; if you don’t do this, you can’t use the repositories meaningfully, which is a large part of the fun!
Want to prototype a project that contains multiple components? Just tape them to a piece of board while you map it out and test things together!
Could you pick something more powerful? Yes, absolutely – a Raspberry Pi would have a beefier CPU for anything I’d want to hack – in fact, many boards today can boast a faster CPU and better peripherals. My hunch, however, is that native WiFi and Ethernet are an important thing to have – I don’t want to go full USB for everything I need, lest I get throttled by the 480 Mbps restriction. Also, I do want to make sure the module I pick is well-suited for the task in aspects I might not even foresee yet, and it just feels right to use a router CPU.
In short, I’m cool with throttling my Internet uplink in some ways, as long as this gives me a bunch of cool features in return; later on, I can do a market review and see if there’s a more suitable board I could integrate, but until then, I see no boards like this. Do you have better CPU board suggestions for a portable router? Drop them in the comments down below.
Choice Outcomes
So, this is what I set out to do – use an Onion Omega as my personal WiFi repeater, for now, without an LTE uplink integrated. I’ve used it as my portable router, in a half-complete configuration, and here’s what I found. First off, the WiFi adapter allows combined STA (station=client) and AP (access point=hotspot) mode – something that might feel like a pretty nifty feature to you, and it did to me. Initially, I thought this would allow me to do WiFi forwarding easily – and it did, but as soon as I leave the house with the router in my backpack and the STA mode goes inactive, things break.
Test setup, creating an access point with an Ethernet uplink. With two 18650 cells, no LTE enabled, it works for about 20 hours.
Here’s a bug – if you expect an always-on AP and an occasionally active STA, your AP will be regularly glitching out, at least on the Onion Omega, and this is a fundamental problem that might translate into other hardware too. This is because, whenever the STA interface is disconnected, it needs to periodically re-scan the network to see if it needs to reconnect to an AP. Your WiFi radio needs to stop and drop what it’s doing, including any ongoing transmissions, and listen to the aether for a while – switching between different channels while at it. This is very noticeable when doing live audio or video streaming; if you do a local file transfer over the AP’s network and the transfer speed is plotted, there will be visible gaps in the transmission speed.
First lesson – scrutinize cool features like the combined STA+AP modes if you’re actually building a network you want to rely on, especially if you don’t see them – you will notice that many devices don’t come with STA+AP simultaneous connection support out of the box. Sharing an antenna for two different purposes at once feels like an error-prone situation, and if you’re having a connectivity problem, you will want to look into that.
Is the hardware support ideal? No. Is this fun so far? Yes, absolutely, and it gives some cool insights into features you might consider worth building your project around. Does this router beat the performance of a Huawei battery-powered router I used to carry in my pocket? Yep, it already has quite a few important features I always wanted to have, like static IP assignments and an Ethernet port I can use for an uplink. Now, it doesn’t have LTE just yet – let’s talk about that in the next article, showing you how to pick an LTE modem, and what can you do to make the process significantly easier for you. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "7152444",
"author": "ULISSES CAMPOS",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T17:51:10",
"content": "Hi, I’m from Brazil and I use a European solution here (Mikrotik). This model is a router with LTE and is very versatile. The system is based on Linux. I don’t use this specific model, but I have u... | 1,760,371,824.525279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/diy-gaming-laptop-built-entirely-with-desktop-parts/ | DIY Gaming Laptop Built Entirely With Desktop Parts | Lewin Day | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"build your own laptop",
"diy laptop",
"home made laptop",
"home-built laptop",
"homemade",
"laptop"
] | Gaming laptops often tend towards implementing more desktop-like hardware in the pursuit of pure
grunt.
But what if you were to simply buy desktop hardware yourself, and build
your own
gaming laptop? That would be very cool,
as [Socket Science] demonstrates for us all.
The project began with lofty goals. The plan wasn’t to build something rough and vaguely laptop-like. [Socket Science] wanted to build something of genuine quality, that for all intents and purposes, looked and worked like a proper commercial-grade laptop. Getting to that point took a full 14 months, but the final results are impressive.
Under the hood lies an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and a XFX Radeon RX6600, hooked into an ITX motherboard with some low-profile RAM sticks. Those components were paired with a thin keyboard, a touchpad, and a portable gaming monitor. Getting all that into a thin laptop case, even a custom one, was no mean feat. Ports had to be cut down to size, weird ribbon cables had to be employed, and heatsinks and coolers had to be rearranged. To say nothing of all the work to 3D print a case that was strong and actually worked!
The full journey is quite the ride. If you want to go right back to the start, you can find
part one here
.
We’ve seen some builds along these lines before
, but seldom few that get anywhere near this level of fit and finish. Oftentimes, it’s that kind of physical polish that is most difficult to achieve. All we can say is “Bravo!” Oh, and… video after the break. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "7148751",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T15:36:28",
"content": "What the actual…?Damn I want to build one too!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7150463",
"author": "Padrote",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T16:2... | 1,760,371,824.582169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/the-long-slow-demise-of-dvd-ram/ | The Long, Slow Demise Of DVD-RAM | Alexander Rowsell | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News"
] | [] | While CDs were still fighting for market share against cassettes, and gaming consoles were just starting to switch over to CD from cartridge storage, optical media companies were already thinking ahead. Only two years after the introduction of the original PlayStation, the DVD Forum had introduced the DVD-RAM standard: 2.58 GB per side of a disc in a protective caddy. The killer feature? Essentially unlimited re-writeability. In a DVD drive that supports DVD-RAM, they act more like removable hard drive platters. You can even see hard sectors etched into the media at the time of manufacture, giving DVD-RAM its very recognizable pattern.
At the time, floppy drives were still popular, and CD-ROM drives were increasingly available pre-installed in new computers. Having what amounted to a hard drive platter with a total of 5 GB per disc should have been a killer feature for consumers. Magneto-optical drives were still very expensive, and by 1998 were only 1.3 GB in size. DVD-RAM had the same verify-after-write data integrity feature that magneto-optical drives were known for, but with larger capacity, and after the introduction of 4.7 GB size discs, no caddy was required.
So why didn’t DVD-RAM completely take over removable storage? The gigabyte-size MO drives in 2002 sold for about $400 in 2001 (roughly $721 today), whereas the first 4.7 GB DVD-RAM drives sold in 1998 for $500-$800, with blank discs costing $30 for single-sided and $45 for double-sided, which would have been 9.4 GB total per disc. Around the same time, MO discs with 1.3 GB capacity were often around $20-$25, though they varied widely. So we can see the up-front cost for a DVD-RAM drive was higher, with the media cost per megabyte lower.
Another benefit of DVD-RAM over MO drives was the ability to do hard-drive-like fast random seeks and support various filesystems, allowing non-contiguous data. MO drives were typically quite a bit slower, though they had a decent continuous write speed if writing large blocks of data contiguously. Around this same time, devices like the LS-120 and ZIP drive were trying to replace floppy drives, but their relatively small media sizes of 120 MB / 240 MB and 100 MB / 250 MB couldn’t do the same things DVD could do. Despite this, the Iomega ZIP in particular did have some breakthrough success. This was mostly because of the relatively low drive cost, and the price per 100 MB ZIP disk being $10-$15 on average. These were more expensive per MB than DVD-RAM or MO, but with lower overall consumer investment. So it really seems like the up-front drive costs for DVD-RAM kept them from becoming ubiquitous, though reviews at the time showed that those who bought and used the drives loved them and felt they were an economical way to store and transfer data.
A DVD-RAM disc, with its distinct hard sector pattern clearly visible
DVD-RAM, What’s It Good For?
One of the killer apps for DVD-RAM ended up being Personal Video Recorders, or PVRs. The TiVo introduced consumers to the idea of easy, high-quality timeshifting without having to faff about with the timer feature on their VCRs. A DVD-RAM-based PVR could easily record many shows in high quality, play them back instantly, and be used an essentially unlimited number of times. With the purchase of 3-4 DVD-RAM discs, you could easily record and store your favourite TV shows and later transfer them to another medium for long-term storage. Similarly, DVD-RAM drives in handheld camcorders made a lot of sense, but for various reasons, DVD-RW and some tape formats continued to dominate in that field.
For archival and backup purposes, CD-R, DVD-R and even LTO tape drives were still much more popular. Despite write-once optical media being single-use, the much lower media cost and the rapidly falling price of CD and then DVD burners meant they were much more popular. Many consumers didn’t even realize that their newly purchased DVD burner could almost certainly also support DVD-RAM discs. And for audio and video, write-once media made more sense for the vast majority of end users. Though CD-RW and DVD-RW weren’t quite as popular as the write-once media, they remained more popular than DVD-RAM despite lacking the extreme write endurance of DVD-RAM. It’s hard to say definitively why this is the case, though consumer confusion about all the different blank media formats likely played a part. People were already confused enough about
the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R
!
Of course, we can’t talk about DVD-RAM’s downfall without mentioning USB flash drives. First introduced commercially around 1999 in sizes of 8 MB, by 2002 drives in the 1 GB – 2 GB capacity were available. These were much smaller and lighter than optical media and had very fast read/write speeds (comparatively) — especially with USB 2.0 becoming popular. Their cost and ubiquity were the death knell not only for DVD-RAM as a portable storage format, but also floppies, magneto-optical, ZIP drives, and essentially everything except for CD-R and DVD-R for audio and movie burning, respectively. While USB drives didn’t have the write endurance of DVD-RAM drives, for most users this wasn’t a problem — they were just transferring office documents, pictures, and other files back and forth between computers. If one started to wear out, another could be cheaply purchased.
So in 2024, is there any use for DVD-RAM left? I recently purchased a pack of 6 brand-new, Japanese-made Panasonic DVD-RAM discs to test out with my USB DVD burner. Essentially all DVD drives still support DVD-RAM, though as Technology Connections discovered in his rundown on the format, the drive firmware support for DVD-RAM seems to be slapdash and lacking in many ways. Write speeds are nowhere near what they should be. On my Arch Linux laptop, I couldn’t believe how slow copy speeds were.
iostat
showed utilization of less than 1% of the available bandwidth, and with the disc constantly speeding up and spinning down, I was seeing speeds way under 50 kB/s most of the time. Considering DVD-RAM discs support up to 3x (4140 kB/s), something was clearly wrong.
I connected the drive to my Windows 10 virtual machine and saw mostly similar speeds, except when writing an ISO to the drive. Because this seems to be a firmware issue, the usefulness of DVD-RAM for doing backups of important files depends entirely on the drive you happen to own. My idea was to back up all my code, schematic, and PCB design files as they are the most valuable files on my laptop. If I can find a decent drive, I might still follow through — but with 128GB USB drives being less than the cost of the 6 DVD-RAM discs I bought, I can’t say it’s economical, more just for the nerd cred. | 35 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "7146948",
"author": "M95D",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T14:45:32",
"content": "Spin up and down is caused by low quality discs. Set the drive to a lower speed. That will improve write quality and data readability during verification.Another suggestion is not to use Linux unless you do ... | 1,760,371,824.661802 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/diy-rabbit-r1-clone-could-be-neat-with-more-hardware/ | DIY Rabbit R1 Clone Could Be Neat With More Hardware | Lewin Day | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"gemini",
"rabbit",
"rabbit r1",
"raspberry pi"
] | The Teenage Engineering badging usually appears on some cool gear that almost always costs a great deal of money. One such example is the Rabbit R1, an AI-powered personal assistant that retails for $199. It was also revealed that it’s basically a small device running a simple Android app. That raises the question — could build your own dupe for $20?
That’s what [Thomas the Maker] did.
Meet Rappit. It’s basically [Thomas]’s take on an AI friend that doesn’t break the bank. It runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, which has the benefit of integrated wireless connectivity on board. It’s powered by rechargeable AA batteries or a USB power bank to keep things simple. [Thomas] then wrapped it all up in a cute 3D printed enclosure to give it some charm.
It’s software that makes the Rappit what it is. Rather than including a screen, microphone, or speakers on the device itself, [Thomas] interacts with the Pi-based device via smartphone. It makes it a less convincing dupe of the self-contained Rabbit R1, but the basic concept is the same. [Thomas] can make queries of the Rappit via a simple Android or iOS app he created called “Comfyspace,” and the Rappit responds with the aid of Google’s Gemini AI.
If you’re really trying to duplicate the trend of AI assistants, you really need standalone hardware. To that end, the Rappit design could really benefit from a screen, microphone, speaker, and speech synth. Honestly, though, that would only take you a few hours extra work compared to what [Thomas] has already done here. As it is, [Thomas] could simply throw away the Raspberry Pi and just use the smartphone with Gemini directly, right? But he chose this route of using the smartphone as an interface to keep costs down by minimizing hardware outlay.
If you want a real Rabbit R1, you can
order one here.
We’ve
discussed controversy around the device before, too.
Video after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7142755",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T12:52:35",
"content": "With the name “Rabbit”, I was expecting a device from Usagi Electric.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7144171",
... | 1,760,371,824.710011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/13/rc-submarine-build-starts-with-plenty-of-research/ | RC Submarine Build Starts With Plenty Of Research | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"buoyancy",
"drone",
"military",
"remote control"
] | [Ben]’s a 15-year-old who loves engineering and loves taking on new challenges. He’s made some cool stuff over the years, but the high water mark (no pun intended) has to be this
impressively documented remote controlled submarine
.
His new build starts off with more research than the actual building. [Ben] spent a ton of time investigating the design of the submarine from its shape, to the propeller system, to the best way to waterproof everything, keeping his sub in tip-top shape. He decides to go with the Russian-style Akula submarine, which is probably the generic look that most of us would think of when we hear the word submarine. He had some interesting thoughts on the propeller system (
like the syringe ballast we’ve seen before
), and which type of motor to use. In the end, he decided with four pumps that would act essentially as thrusters.
fill a chamber with water, allowing the submarine to submerge, or fill with air, making the submarine buoyant, allowing it to resurface.
However, what we found most interesting about his build is how he explains the rationale for all his design decisions and clearly documents his thought process on his project page. We really can’t do [Ben]’s project justice in a short post, so head over to his project page to see it for yourself.
While you’re at it, check out some of these
other cool submarine builds that we’ve featured here on Hackaday | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "7134889",
"author": "zoe",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T08:27:28",
"content": "Hopefully, it won’t implode.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7543182",
"author": "Orlando Hoilett",
"timestamp": "2024-08-22T15:54:50",... | 1,760,371,824.768232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/a-simple-portable-ps4-build/ | A Simple Portable PS4 Build | Lewin Day | [
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"playstation",
"playstation 4",
"portable playstation",
"sony"
] | Building a portable console is hard, right? You have to do lots of wiring, maybe trim a few PCBs, and learn all about the finer points of high-end motherboard design! Or, you could keep it simple.
That’s just what [Francesco6n] did when he built this portable PS4.
The aim for this build wasn’t to build the smallest, sleekest, or prettiest portable PS4. It was just to build a functional one that worked. To that end, the guts of the PS4 was installed in a 3D-printed case decorated with the usual square-circle-cross-triangle motif. A 1024×600 Acer Aspire One laptop display was installed in a clamshell configuration to act as the screen for the build. Inside the case is a large GPU-style cooler which helps keep temperatures down. As for power, there’s no need to plug this thing in everywhere you go. Instead, it’s capable of running for up to 90 minutes continuously thanks to a battery pack consisting of eighteen 18650 cells. In a beautiful touch of cross-platform cooperation, an Xbox 360 supply is used to power the thing when mains power is available.
It’s a neat build, and one that doesn’t overcomplicate things. Projects like this are a great way to get your feet wet with
portable console hacking
, letting you learn the ropes
without too much pressure.
More pictures after the break.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Francesco Tempra (@francesco6n) | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "7133650",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T07:33:15",
"content": "Try Noctua sileny fans.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7137641",
"author": "Francesco6n",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T10:02:53",
... | 1,760,371,824.813716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/hydrogen-generation-with-seawater-aluminum-and-coffee/ | Hydrogen Generation With Seawater, Aluminum, And… Coffee? | Alexander Rowsell | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"green hydrogen",
"hydrogen",
"hydrogen fuel cell",
"marine propulsion",
"research"
] | A team at MIT led by [Professor Douglas Hart] has discovered a
new, potentially revelatory method
for the generation of hydrogen. Using seawater, pure aluminum, and components from coffee grounds, the team was able to generate hydrogen at a not insignificant rate, getting the vast majority of the theoretical yield of hydrogen from the seawater/aluminum mixture. Though the process does use indium and gallium, rare and expensive materials, the process is so far able to recover 90% of the indium-gallium used which can then be recycled into the next batch. Aluminum holds twice as much energy as diesel, and 40x that of Li-Ion batteries. So finding a way to harness that energy could have a huge impact on the amount of fossil fuels burned by humans!
Pure, unoxidized aluminum reacts directly with water to create hydrogen, as well as aluminum oxyhydroxide and aluminum hydroxide. However, any aluminum that has had contact with atmospheric air immediately gets a coating of hard, unreactive aluminum oxide, which does not react in the same way. Another issue is that seawater significantly slows the reaction with pure aluminum. The researchers found that the indium-gallium mix was able to not only allow the reaction to proceed by creating an interface for the water and pure aluminum to react but also coating the aluminum pellets to prevent further oxidization. This worked well, but the resulting reaction was very slow.
Apparently “on a lark” they added coffee grounds. Caffeine had already been known to act as a chelating agent for both aluminum and gallium, and the addition of coffee grounds increased the reaction rate by a huge margin, to the point where it matched the reaction rate of pure aluminum in deionized, pure water. Even with wildly varying concentrations of caffeine, the reaction rate stayed high, and the researchers wanted to find out specifically which part of the caffeine molecule was responsible. It turned out to be imidazole, which is a readily available organic compound. The issue was balancing the amount of caffeine or imidazole added versus the gallium-indium recovery rate — too much caffeine or imidazole would drastically reduce the recoverable amount of gallium-indium.
This chart shows the incredible acceleration found by adding 0.01M caffeine – from well over 20h down to 5-10m
After some experimentation, they hit a magic number: a 0.02M concentration of imidazole resulted in consistent recovery rates of ~90% of the gallium-indium, which is comparable to the recovery rate in seawater with no catalysts of any kind! This method of hydrogen generation could make marine applications of hydrogen engines much more viable. By only needing to carry aluminum, imidazole and gallium-indium, the safety issues with liquid or compressed hydrogen disappear. This could make marine vehicles cleaner and more efficient while reducing the safety issues already present in carrying diesel or other marine fuels aboard.
The study
goes into much, much more detail, so if you want to learn more, be sure to check it out! Thankfully, it’s hosted in an open-access journal so the knowledge is free for all to learn from.
[Thanks to zoobab for the tip, via ScienceDaily!]
Header image
CC-BY-SA 4.0 | 57 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "7127688",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T02:01:33",
"content": "Man who knew my coffee habit could be so useful?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7128249",
"author": "puzzled",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T02:... | 1,760,371,825.083504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/globe-shaped-world-clock-is-a-3d-printed-mechanical-marvel/ | Globe-Shaped World Clock Is A 3D-Printed Mechanical Marvel | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"3d printer",
"clock",
"japan",
"japanese",
"time",
"time zone",
"world clock"
] | Time zones are a complicated but necessary evil. Humans like the numbers on the clock to vaguely match up with what the sun is doing in the sky outside. To that end, different places in the world keep different time. If you want to keep track of them in a very pretty fashion, you might consider building
a fancy and beautiful World Clock like [Karikuri] did.
The design is based around a globe motif, mimicking the world itself. Only, on the surface of the globe, there are clock faces instead of individual countries. Each clock runs to its own time, directed by a complicated assemblage of 3D-printed gears. Mechanical drive is sent to the globe from a power base, which itself carries a mechanical seven-segment display. This too can display the time for different regions by using the controls below. It’s also useful for setting the clock to the correct time.
It’s a little difficult to follow the build if you don’t speak Japanese. However, quality subtitles are available in English if you choose to enable them.
We’ve seen [Karikuri’s] work before
. We’ve also featured a great many world clocks over the years, including
this particularly beautiful example that tracks night and day
. Just don’t expect it to
keep track of moon time
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to MrTrick for sending this in!] | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "7122638",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T00:12:55",
"content": "Sugoi!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7128924",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T03:14:58",
"content": "Anyone know what CAD p... | 1,760,371,824.878312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/can-you-hack-the-rp2350-theres-10000-on-the-line/ | Can You Hack The RP2350? There’s $10,000 On The Line | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"microcontroller",
"raspberry pi",
"raspberry pi pico 2",
"rp2350",
"RPi"
] | The Raspberry Pi Foundation had their new RP2350 chip audited by Hextree.io, and now, both companies want to see if
you
can hack it. Just to prove that they’re serious, they’re putting out a $10,000 bounty.
Can you get inside?
The challenge to hack the chip is simple enough. You need to dump a secret that is hidden at OTP ROW 0xc08. It’s 128 bits long, and it’s protected in two ways—by the RP2350’s secure boot and by OTP_DATA_PAGE48_LOCK1. Basically, the chip security features have been activated, and you need to get around them to score the prize.
The gauntlet was thrown down ahead of DEF CON, where the new chip was used in the event badges. Raspberry Pi and Hextree.io invited anyone finding a break to visit their booth in the Embedded Systems Village. It’s unclear at this stage if anyone claimed the bounty, so we can only assume the hunt remains open. It’s been stated that the challenge will run until 4 PM UK time on September 7th, 2024.
Hacking microcontrollers is a tough and exacting art.
The GitHub repo provides full details on what you need to do, with the precise rules, terms, and conditions linked at the bottom. You can also watch the challenge video on
Hextree.io
. | 63 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "7107368",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T20:20:15",
"content": "Isn’t hacking the sole reason for Pi x existence?B^)I’d be disappointed if the 2350 wasn’t good hor hacking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,824.98111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/prusa-picks-up-the-pace-with-new-mk4s-printer/ | Prusa Picks Up The Pace With New MK4S Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"MK4S",
"open source hardware",
"prusa",
"upgrade"
] | One of the things you’re paying for when you buy a 3D printer from Prusa Research is, essentially, your next 3D printer. That’s because Prusa’s machines are designed to be upgraded and modified as time goes on. An upgrade kit is always released to allow each older printer to be converted into its successor, and while there’s occasionally been some debate about whether or not it’s the most cost-effective choice, at least it
is
a choice you have as an owner.
If you’ve got a Prusa MK4, you’ll soon get to make that decision for yourself. Announced earlier today, the new MK4S brings some
notable changes to last year’s printer.
The $99 upgrade is scheduled to be available by the end of the month for existing owners, but if you’ve been on the fence about joining Team Orange and Black, you can purchase the MK4S right now in both
kit
and
assembled
forms for the same price ($799 and $1,099 respectively) as the previous MK4.
The front panel of the MK4S is now injection molded.
So, what’s new with the MK4S? With
speed an increasingly hot topic
in the 3D printing community, it should come as little surprise to find this new machine is even faster than its predecessor. A reworked cooling system and new high-flow nozzle mean Prusa’s latest can spit out everyone’s favorite little boat in 14 minutes—or as little as 8 minutes if you don’t mind a slight drop in print quality.
The announcement post also cites improvements to the machine’s printed structural components. Parts that were previously made in PETG are now being printed in carbon fiber-infused polycarbonate. Some parts, such as the front panel, have even been switched over to injection molding.
While describing the changes made with the MK4s, the blog post also clarified Prusa’s position regarding open sourcing of their printers. There was considerable concern back in March of 2023 when the company
announced it was reconsidering
its traditional dedication to making its hardware and software as open — as much as possible — in light of increased commercial competition. But now the
company has posted a chart
on their site that explains not only what’s being shared for each of their printers, but a timeline as to when we can expect it.
The GPIO hackerboard
While it hasn’t been updated for the 4S yet, the overview shows that the company plans on holding onto the design files for the MK4 PCBs until the end of the product’s life. Otherwise, it seems their current flagship printer is equally as open as the MK3 that came before it. While a time-limited source release will likely rub some in the wrong way, the reality is that it’s more than you’d get with pretty much any other 3D printer manufacturer out there.
The announcement also talks briefly about the new
GPIO “Hackerboard”
that the company will start shipping in September. The $15 board plugs into an expansion connector on the PCB of the MK4 or MK4S, and provides eight pins that can be toggled via G-Code sent to the printer. These could be used for all sorts of automation tasks, such as turning on the lights and fans inside of an enclosure or triggering the shutter on a camera. There’s not much detail about this particular add-on yet, but it’s certainly something we’ll be keeping a close eye on. | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "7104062",
"author": "Tadpole",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T18:49:58",
"content": "Thank you for sharing that. I wasn’t sure and was (of course) basing my decision on yours.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7104325",
"author": "C... | 1,760,371,825.37656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/audio-on-pi-here-are-your-options/ | Audio On Pi: Here Are Your Options | Arya Voronova | [
"Featured",
"hardware",
"how-to",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"codec",
"I2S",
"raspberry pi",
"sound",
"usb audio",
"usb audio card"
] | There are a ton of fun Raspberry Pi and Linux projects that require audio output – music players, talking robots, game consoles and arcades, intelligent assistants, mesh network walkie-talkies, and much more! There’s no shortage of Pi-based iPods out there, and my humble opinion is that we still could use more of them.
To help you in figuring out your projects, let’s talk about all the ways you can use to get audio out of a Pi or a similar SBC. Not all of them are immediately obvious and you ought to know the ropes before you implement one of them and get unpleasantly surprised by a problem you didn’t foresee. I can count at least five ways, and they don’t even include a GPIO-connected buzzer!
Let’s rank the different audio output methods, zoning in on things like their power consumption, and sort them by ease of implementation, and we’ll talk a bit about audio input options while we’re at it.
USB: Accessible, Cheap, Growing
In the first category of audio interfaces, you have USB, Bluetooth, HDMI and network audio. All of these are high-power-consumption interfaces, with HDMI likely taking the inefficiency cake. Let’s talk about USB and BT first, since they are the interfaces you can use most realistically.
USB soundcards are definitely the simplest possible solution. You can get a very cheap one for $2 in the usual places, and while it might be noisy and cheaply built, you’re going to be fine with it for many usecases. It will likely have a 3.5 mm mic input, but you won’t always be able to use it as line-in.
There’s some surprising options when it comes to USB audio – especially with disappearance of 3.5 mm headphone jacks on, which are now replaced by USB-C dongles that are essentially USB soundcards. My personal favourite is the Apple USB 3.5 mm adapter – it’s only $10, it’s well-built mechanically, there’s no audible noise even in standby, it’s 100% Linux-friendly, and the audio quality overall is seriously good! Plus, if you’re using a 3.5 mm 4-pin TRRS headset, it supports the microphone, with very good audio quality, and it even exposes the headset buttons as HID events – something I’m using in a project right now. To use with the Pi, plug it into a cheap USB-A to USB-C adapter and you’re golden. One note – most of these USB-C adapters won’t expose an audio interface until you plug something into the 3.5 mm jack, which is likely a power saving feature. If you plug it into your port and your OS doesn’t see an audio output, plug in a headset, and it should enumerate properly.
Unironically, it’s perhaps the only Apple product with a reasonable price and a large featureset fully compatible with open-source OSes. There’s no shortage of other similar adapters, but I haven’t tested them as thoroughly as this one. If you get one with your phone, they should work just as well. Mind you – all of these will occupy a USB port and require a 5 V source, which makes them a bit of a power hog. Moreover, they’re wired, which is not always what you want.
Bluetooth: Tends To Work Well
What about Bluetooth? It is pretty great in situations where USB isn’t. The main advantage is of course wireless connectivity, and there’s lots of Bluetooth to go around. You can get speakers, headphones of all sorts, and 3.5 mm audio adapters. It’s a pretty good solution if you don’t want any tether between you and your device, or if you just have a spare Bluetooth headset/speaker that you want to put to good use.
There are plenty of obvious advantages to Bluetooth, so I’d like to focus on disadvantages here, and tell you how to work around them. On the Pi, the Bluetooth connection basically occupies the only stable UART port you can get, so if you want to have a UART connection for your GSM modem, GPS, or Linux debug console purposes, you will want either a USB Bluetooth adapter, a USB-UART adapter, use one of those obscure SPI to UART chips. Oh, if you have a Pi 4 or Pi 5, remember,
it has extra UART ports waiting for you,
so you might not need to use any extra USB!
The input situation on Bluetooth is kind of sad, too, so beware if you expect a headset and a microphone to work at the same time. The gist is, due to limited bandwidth, there have traditionally been two Bluetooth audio modes available – a bidirectional one optimized for low bandwidth voicecalls (HFP and HSP modes), and a unidirectional one optimized for music (A2DP). The bidirectional modes simply have lower audio output quality. The aptX codec increases audio quality even in bidirectional audio modes, but it’s as proprietary as any Qualcomm product, and devices that use aptX are both expensive and kind of rare.
Another disadvantage of Bluetooth is its many failure points. Your Bluetooth audio device is a whole separate entity, usually its own battery that needs to be kept charged and might die at some point. If your hardware isn’t good, you might have to re-pair devices every now and then, the connection range is limited, it drops even further if a badly built microwave oven is operating nearby, Bluetooth software stacks are a mess more often than not, and Bluetooth adapters are typically pretty proprietary. All of this can result in mysterious problems you often can’t solve unless you fully swap your hardware. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, you may be out of luck.
Network And HDMI Audio: Unexpected Options
Ever thought about audio over WiFi or Ethernet? If your Pi is on the same network as
an Android phone
– or any Linux/
Mac OS computer
, – you are in luck, because there are easy ways to stream arbitrary audio over network, and many of them are open-source. I use network audio streaming a lot in my own projects – specifically,
the roc project.
Roc is a wonderful solution for streaming audio – it’s open-source, it has both CLI tools and
Pulseaudio and Pipewire integration
, and it has an audio buffer for wireless/wired connection dropouts. Thanks to this buffer, I’ve even had Roc links work over LTE really well, going on a long bike trip while listening to an audio stream from my laptop left at home, aided by Tailscale. The audio quality is as good as it goes since it’s lossless, it’s easy to setup, and it’s perhaps the only ready-to-use “arbitrary audio over network” solution that I’ve had work for me properly.
There are disadvantages to roc, certainly – one of them is about a second’s worth of delay caused by the buffer, which does make for good audio over WiFi transmission and is negligible for music listening, but it’s not good for gaming, and it might screw with your brain if you’re watching a movie; I’ve gotten used to it over time though. Apart from this, the roc-recv CLI process doesn’t exit if you unplug a USB audio adapter it’s using, starting to consume 100% of CPU until it’s killed and not reattaching when the USB device is replugged, so if you want to use and your USB soundcard might get unplugged, you might have to power-cycle your device or trigger a service restart – I have USB device presence monitoring scripts that do it.
If you do not require a speaker, and you have a nearby smart device with a speaker/headset handy, roc might just become your new friend – it’s not uncommon to have an Android phone or a Linux/MacOS connected to the same network as your Pi, after all. The Android application is on F-Droid, even!
What if you are using a HDMI display with your Pi? You might be in luck and get a 3.5 mm jack for free, or, if you’re using a TV, you get access to its entire audio output system. Many Pi-suited cheap HDMI displays throw a 3.5 mm output in, like the one I converted into a USB touchscreen display a couple months ago. Not using a HDMI display? You can get a small HDMI audio extractor box. This is one way you can cheaply get a digital audio out of a Pi, since it seems that some of these boxes have a S/PDIF output. On the other hand, if you’re doing a low-power device and you’re not already using a HDMI interface, HDMI audio output on the Pi consumes a fair bit of extra power, and so will a HDMI-processing audio chip.
I2S And PWM: Low-Power, Featureful, Some Hacking Required
The last two interfaces are I2S and PWM – if you’re building a low-power or small integrated device, you should know about them, because they’re quite easy to use. A Broadcom-based Pi has two PWM channels, and this interface takes up both of them – one for left channel audio and another for right channel. It’s unpopulated on the Pi Zero models and on Pi 5, but on any other model, if you want to get some PWM for other purposes, whether that’s a fan or a servo motor, you will need to either use software PWM, steal one of the channels from the audio output, or disable the audio output altogether. Also, there’s only two sets of pins you can output PWM audio through, so, arrange your pins accordingly.
How does it work? Through the power of a custom kernel driver, adjusting the duty cycle and the frequency to match the audio your system wants to output, and it gets the job done pretty well. Want to learn more about how it works at the low level? Our own Jenny List
has described it in a way better detail than I ever could
. This interface has gone through two revisions between the Pi B and B+, though I can’t tell if the resistor/capacitor changes made were a quality improvement or just BOM optimization. It’s a decent interface, but you still might get some audible noise on it, especially at idle. The interface also doesn’t have much power due to inline resistors, so expect it to be too quiet if your headphones are high-impedance.
What if a single headphone jack isn’t enough? Want to do it the pro way, get audio from a dedicated chip, add a mic, and maybe drive a speaker while at it? I2S is the way to go, and it’s a seriously promising audio interface. It’s a three-data-wire interface
(plus an extra wire if you also want audio input)
, it’s low-power, and integrating it into your board will give you a fair bit of hacker cred. One caveat – just like with PWM, you have to use it
on a specific set of pins,
so make sure you got them freed up!
The gist of working with I2S on a Raspberry Pi board is – get an I2S audio chip, maybe even on a breakout like the ones sold by Adafruit, or, if you want to expand your field of view, look into the list of Linux kernel drivers for I2S devices. There are both I2S output chips (DACs) input chips (ADCs), and there are a large number of I2S microphones with built-in ADCs out there too. With different I2S chips, you can give yourself a headphone jack, or a S/PDIF digital audio output, or a speaker amplifier output – maybe, all of these things at once. Look out for a nuance, sometimes your I2S chip will also want an I2C interface for sending it some configuration commands – especially if it’s a codec.
A codec is an entire audio system on a chip, usually used in phones and computers. Your phone’s CPU might only have a single I2S interface, yet it needs to drive headphones, a pair of speakers, grab data from onboard digital microphones and compensate for noise, your on-headset analog microphone, route all that audio to an LTE modem whenever needed, and maybe even apply some processing like wind cancellation. A CPU has neither the interfaces nor the CPU power to do all of this, which is why modern-day devices include a codec IC. Thanks to the market availability of these chips, there are a fair few Pi HATs carrying audio codec chips on their backs, and they bring you a whole bunch of audio capabilities at once.
If you want a featureful device when it comes to audio, get an I2S codec chip. If you can find a device schematic or a full datasheet that is using a certain codec, you’ve find a promising one, and all you have left is checking that your codec is supported by the Linux kernel; if not, you may make a bet on it nevertheless and hack it into submission. You will also need an I2C or SPI interface for configuration: the I2S interface is only usable for carrying audio data, it can’t carry sideband commands like “use a certain frequency for these digital microphones” or “adjust volume by X percent”. You’ll need some GPIO pins.
Your Turn
That’s as far as I’ve seen of Raspberry Pi and other Linux SBC audio, but if I have forgotten something, please do let me know! All in all, I hope this helps if you’re ever wondering just how much audio you can squeeze out of an ARM CPU, and you can go on to design that music player you always wanted to make! | 37 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "7093785",
"author": "Adrian",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T14:26:36",
"content": "What about FM radio? There was a hack using the early version Raspberry Pi that involved soldering a short piece of wire to one GPIO pin to act as a short range FM transmitter. A special kernel driver was ... | 1,760,371,825.18778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/12/pi-pico-sdr-on-a-breadboard/ | Pi Pico SDR On A Breadboard | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"pi pico",
"raspberry pi",
"sdr"
] | How hard is it to make a fully standalone SDR? [101 Things] shows you how to take a breadboard, a PI Pico, and two unremarkable chips to create
a capable radio
. You can see the whole thing in the video below.
The design uses a standard Tayloe demodulator. There’s also an encoder and an OLED display for a user interface. You might also want to include some PC speakers to get a bit more audio out of the device.
The PCB breadboard in question seems to work at higher frequencies, although the construction is very careful not to have long wires. This is a simplified version of an earlier design, so the software on
GitHub
is mature and can decode AM, FM, and SSB. The radio tunes up to around 30 MHz.
If you don’t want to change the program, you can download precompiled firmware, too. This would make a great weekend project, and there’s even a 3D-printed case design you can download for aesthetics. You may need to order a few parts ahead of time, so plan accordingly.
If you want even fewer parts,
it is possible
. Need an antenna for your slick new shortwave? We
tried a few
. | 26 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "7080413",
"author": "doppler",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T09:59:53",
"content": "This is worthy of a smd or through hole parts PCB. Not just fly wires and a breadboard. It has the potential to make pricey low band radios envious.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,825.253718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/2024-tiny-games-contest-are-you-a-good-judge-of-time/ | 2024 Tiny Games Contest: Are You A Good Judge Of Time? | Kristina Panos | [
"contests",
"Games"
] | [
"2024 Tiny Games Challenge",
"CircuitPython",
"ESP32-S3",
"macro pad",
"macropad"
] | What can you do with a one-button keyboard? Quite a bit, actually, especially if that key has a little screen on it. That’s the idea behind
[Maker M0]’s MagicClick macro pad
, which is an updated version of a highly useful project
we have featured in the past
. Well, now there’s a tiny game to go with it.
Think you’re pretty good at measuring the passage of time? This game will likely prove you wrong. Press and hold the button and the timer begins with some pre-determined interval, such as four seconds. Once you think those four seconds have passed, release the button and find out how far off you were.
While the first version of this keyboard used the CH582F RISC-V microcontroller, the second and this third version use an ESP32-S3 on a custom, tightly packed PCB. That TFT display measures 0.85″, and the battery is an 3.7 V 802025 Li-Po. [Maker M0] has also redesigned this to make it easier to print, and plans to support circular screens in the near future. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7069943",
"author": "los",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T05:06:20",
"content": "That ESP32-S3 must get really bored in this job :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7080490",
"author": "Deon",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12... | 1,760,371,825.303094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/the-first-new-long-wave-radio-station-of-this-millennium/ | The First New Long Wave Radio Station Of This Millennium | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"broadcast radio",
"long-wave",
"radio"
] | The decline of AM broadcast radio is a slow but inexorable process over much of the world, but for regions outside America there’s another parallel story happening a few hundred kilohertz further down the spectrum. The long wave band sits around the 200kHz mark and has traditionally carried national-level programming due to its increased range. Like AM it’s in decline due to competition from FM, digital, and online services, and one by one the stations that once crowded this band are going quiet. In the middle of all this it’s a surprise then to find a new long wave station in the works in the 2020s, bucking all contemporary broadcasting trends.
Arctic 252
is based in Finland with programming intended to be heard across the Arctic region and aims to start testing in September.
The hack in this is that it provides an opportunity for some low-frequency DXing, and given the arctic location, it would be extremely interesting to hear how far it reaches over the top of the world into the northern part of North America. The 252KHz frequency is shared with a station in North Africa that may hinder reception for some Europeans, but those with long memories in north-west Europe will find it fairly empty as it has been vacated in that region by the Irish transmitter which used to use it.
So if you have a receiver capable of catching long wave and you think you might be in range, give it a listen. Closer to where this article is being written,
long wave stations are being turned off
.
Harris & Ewing, photographer,
Public domain
. | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "7064520",
"author": "WXfreak",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T02:40:47",
"content": "They are starting with only 1KW, that could be a struggle. 100KW high fidelity AM would be more like it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7066170",
... | 1,760,371,825.542391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/hackaday-links-august-11-2024/ | Hackaday Links: August 11, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bassinette",
"bricking",
"CrowdStrike",
"doggo",
"fire",
"grid",
"hackaday links",
"IoT",
"lithium ion",
"paywall",
"pylon",
"regex",
"regular expression",
"root cause",
"tower",
"wildcard",
"wiring harness"
] | “Please say it wasn’t a regex, please say it wasn’t a regex; aww, crap, it was a regex!”
That seems to be the conclusion
now that Crowdstrike has released a
full root-cause analysis
of its now-infamous Windows outage that took down 8 million machines with knock-on effects that reverberated through everything from healthcare to airlines. We’ve got to be honest and say that the twelve-page RCA was a little hard to get through, stuffed as it was with enough obfuscatory jargon to turn off even jargon lovers such as us. The gist, though, is that there was a “lack of a specific test for non-wildcard matching criteria,” which pretty much means someone screwed up a regular expression. Outside observers in the developer community have latched onto something more dire, though, as it appears the change that brought down so many machines was never tested on a single machine. That’s a little — OK, a lot — hard to believe, but it seems to be what Crowdstrike is saying. So go ahead and blame the regex, but it sure seems like there were deeper, darker forces at work here.
Congratulations, new parents; on top of everything else you’re dealing with, including raging sleep deprivation, there’s a good chance that
your bundle of joy has just been bricked
. It seems that something called a Snoo, an unbelievably expensive “smart bassinette,” has had its most useful features hidden behind a paywall, and parents are hopping mad. And rightly so; selling something for $1,700 with all the features activated only to pull back two-thirds of them unless the owner coughs up another $20 a month is a little unreasonable. Then again, back in the day we’d have gladly given someone twenty bucks
a day
if it helped get the kid to sleep, which the Snoo seems to do admirably well. And really, how long is the kid going to be in the thing anyway? Couple of months, tops. What’s another hundred or two when you’ve already spent nearly two grand? Still, we’d love to see someone hack one of these things, or even just do a teardown to see what makes it tick.
Dog lovers, listen up: the dog is OK. But not so much the dog owner’s apartment, as the not-goodest boy managed to
burn the place down by gnawing on a lithium-ion battery pack
. The entire event, which happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma in May, was captured on a security camera, which shows the moment the playful pup got his first mouthful of nastiness from a tooth penetrating the pack. The speed with which the fire took off is terrifying, but easy to understand since the dog bed where it started was essentially a big pile of tinder. Thankfully, the dog and his co-conspirators noped right out of the house through a doggie door, but it looks like the apartment was a total loss.
Have a project that needs a wiring harness? You might want to check out
this cool harness designer
. We haven’t had much chance to play with it yet, but it seems pretty cool. You select connectors, wire gauges, and lengths, and the app generates a BOM and wiring diagram.
And finally, in another case of the algorithm actually delivering for a change, we found
this very good piece
on the history of electrical distribution pylons. It’s heavily UK-centric, but that doesn’t get in the way at all. It not only goes over the history of pylons but also delves a bit into their engineering, both electrical and mechanical. As a bonus, it answers some of the questions you might never know you had, like what those little doo-dads attached to the wires near the insulators are. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7056298",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T23:16:16",
"content": "I guess now they have three problems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7091164",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12... | 1,760,371,826.122529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/if-you-give-a-dev-a-tricked-out-xbox-theyll-patch-halo-2/ | If You Give A Dev A Tricked Out Xbox, They’ll PatchHalo 2 | Matthew Carlson | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Video Hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"console modding",
"halo 2",
"kernel",
"xbox",
"xbox mod"
] | [Ryan Miceli] had spent a few years poring over and reverse-engineering
Halo 2
when a friend asked for a favor. His friend created an improved Xbox with significant overclocks, RAM upgrades, BIOS hacks, and a processor swap. The goal was simple: patch the hardcoded maximum resolution from 480p to 720p and maybe even 1080p. With double the CPU clock speed but only a 15% overclock on the GPU,
[Ryan] got to work
.
Step one was to increase the size of the DirectX framebuffers. Increasing the output resolution introduced severe graphical glitches and rendering bugs. The game reuses the framebuffers multiple times as memory views, and each view encodes a header at the top with helpful information like width, height, and tiling. After patching that, [Ryan] had something more legible, but some models weren’t loading (particularly the water in the title screen). The answer was the texture accumulation layer. The Xbox has a hardware limitation of only sampling four textures per shader pass, which means you need a buffer the size of the render resolution to accumulate the textures if you want to sample more than four textures. Trying to boot the game resulted in an out-of-memory crash. The Xbox [Ryan] was working on had been upgraded with an additional 64MB of RAM, but the memory allocator in
Halo 2
wasn’t taking advantage of it. Yet.
To see where the memory was going, [Ryan] wrote a new tool called
XboxImageGrabber
to show where memory was allocated and by whom. Most games make a few substantial initial allocations from the native allocator, then toss it over to a custom allocator tuned for their game. However, the extra 64MB of RAM was in dev consoles and meant as debug RAM, which meant the GPU couldn’t properly access it. Additionally, between the lower 64MB and upper is the Xbox kernel. Now, it became an exercise of patching the allocator to work with two blobs of memory instead of one contiguous one. It also moved runtime data into the upper 64MB while keeping video allocations in the lower. Ultimately, [Ryan] found it easier to patch the kernel to allow memory allocations the GPU could use in the upper 64MB of memory. Running the game at 720p resulted in only a semi-playable framerate, dropping to 10fps in a few scenes.
After some initial tests, [Ryan] concluded that it wasn’t the GPU or the CPU that was the bottleneck but the swap chain.
Halo 2
turns VSync on by default, meaning it has to wait until a blank period before swapping between its two framebuffers. A simple tweak is to add a third frame buffer. The average FPS jumped 10%, and the GPU became the next bottleneck to tweak. With a light GPU overclock, the game was getting very close to 30fps. Luckily for [Ryan], no BIOS tweak was needed as the GPU clock hardware can be mapped and tweaked as an MMIO. After reverse engineering, a debugging feature to visual cache evictions, [Ryan] tuned the texture and geometry cache to minimize pop-ins that the original game was infamous for.
Overall, it’s an incredible hack with months of hard work behind it. The
code for the patch is on Github
, and there’s a video after the break comparing the patched and unpatched games. If you still need more Halo in your life, why not make yourself
a realistic battle rifle from the game
? | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "7144085",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-08-13T13:26:50",
"content": "Better off going for like 640pAnd use higher res models, particles and hd textures insteadEven in 2001 640p was actually a high resolution….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,371,826.07629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/moonbounce-music/ | Moonbounce Music | Adam Fabio | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"amatur radio",
"ham radio",
"moon",
"moonbounce"
] | There’s something inspiring about echos. Who among us hasn’t called out or clapped hands in a large space just to hear the sound reflected back? Radio takes this to a whole new level. You can bounce signals from buildings, aircraft, the ionisphere, or even the Moon itself. Humans have been bouncing radio waves from the moon for decades. It’s been used at war, and in peacetime. But [Hainbach] might be the first to
use it for music
.
Earth Moon Earth or EME communication is quite popular with amateur radio operators. With the right equipment, you can bounce a signal off the moon and hear the echo around 2.5 seconds later. The echo isn’t quite normal though. The moon and the earth are both rotating and moving in relation to each other. This causes Doppler shifts. At higher frequencies, even the craters and surface features of the moon can be heard in the echo.
[Hainbach] spent some time learning about moonbounce at a large radio telescope, and wanted to share this strange audio effect with the world. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the large microwave dish required for this. The next best thing was to create an application which emulates the sound of a moon bounce. To this end, [Hainbach] created a Moon Echo, an audio plugin that emulates a moonbounce.
Moon Echo was created using sounds from a soprano signer and a double bass. [Hainbach] had to be careful not to be too musical, as ham operators are not allowed to broadcast music. This meant all the tests had to be broken into short non-musical clips. Rolling all this empirical data into a model took quite a bit of work, but the end result is worth it.
If you’d like to learn how to moonbounce yourself,
check this article out. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "7049059",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T19:31:18",
"content": "In 1981, I had an opportunity to take over the operation of a U.S. Air Force height-finder RADAR system for a few minutes one night during daily maintenance time, at a time when the Moon was close t... | 1,760,371,825.587566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/a-tiny-knob-keeps-you-in-control/ | A Tiny Knob Keeps You In Control | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"hid",
"knob",
"Volume knob"
] | There are many forms of human interface device beyond the ubiquitous keyboard and mouse, but when it comes to fine-tuning a linear setting such as a volume control there’s nothing quite like a knob. When it comes to peripherals it’s not the size that matters, as proven by [Stefan Wagner] with the
Tiny Knob
. It’s a very small PCB with a rotary encoder and knob, an ATtiny85, a USB port, and not much else.
It uses the
V-USB
software implementation of USB HID, and should you have a need for a Tiny Knob of your own you can find all the files for it
in a GitHub repository
. There’s even a very professional-looking 3D-printed enclosure for the finishing touch. We like this project for its simplicity, and we think you might too.
Over the years we’ve brought you more than one knob, they appear to be a popular subject for experimentation. If you’re up for more,
have a look at this one
. | 35 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "7039319",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T14:06:05",
"content": "The photo of the 3D printed case doesn’t have any tick marks, so it may not go up to 11.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,371,825.661119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/achieving-human-level-competitive-robot-table-tennis/ | Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis | Maya Posch | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ping",
"ping pong",
"pong",
"robot",
"table tennis robot"
] | A team at Google has spent a lot of time recently playing table tennis, purportedly only for science. Their goal was to see whether they could construct a robot which would not only play table tennis, but even keep up with practiced human players. In the
paper available on ArXiv
, they detail what it took to make it happen. The team also
set up a site
with a simplified explanation and some videos of the robot in action.
Table tennis robot vs human match outcomes. B is beginner, I is intermediate, A is advanced. (Credit: Google)
In the end, it took twenty motion-capture cameras, a pair of 125 FPS cameras, a 6 DOF robot on two linear rails, a special table tennis paddle, and a very large annotated dataset to train multiple convolutional neural networks (CNN) on to analyze the incoming visual data. This visual data was then combined with details like knowledge of the paddle’s position to churn out a value for use in the look-up table that forms the core of the high-level controller (HLC). This look-up table then decides which low-level controller (LLC) is picked to perform a certain action. In order to prevent the CNNs of the LLCs from ‘forgetting’ the training data, a total of 17 different CNNs were used, one per LLC.
The robot was tested with a range of players from a local table tennis club which made clear that while it could easily defeat beginners, intermediate players pose a serious threat. Advanced players completely demolished the table tennis robot. Clearly we do not have to fear our robotic table tennis playing overlords just yet, but the robot did receive praise for being an interesting practice partner. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "7035654",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T11:51:44",
"content": "I think you meant a convolutional neural network, though a convolutional network network sounds pretty convoluted, all right!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,371,825.721152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/11/inside-the-mecanum-wheel/ | Inside The Mecanum Wheel | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"360 movement",
"mecanum wheels",
"omni-wheel",
"omniwheel"
] | If you make anything that moves, like a robot, you quickly realize that turning can be a pain. That’s why there are a number of designs for wheels that can go in different directions. One of the most common is the Mecanum wheel. [Jeremy] explains how they work by
filming them from below on a transparent table
. You can see the enlightening video below.
If you haven’t done anything with omni wheels before, it is disconcerting to see wheels rotating one way causing the vehicle to move at a right angle to the rotation. But this is very useful when you build robots or — as he shows at the start of the video — a forklift.
Mecanum wheels are similar to omni wheels, but with some differences. In particular, omni wheels have rollers at a 90-degree angle so they drag in the “wrong” direction. The Mecanum rollers are at 45-degree angle. That might seem like a small difference, but it means that all rotation translates and requires some vector math, as the video points out.
Many years ago, we were surprised to learn you could build strange wheels
from wood
. We like using omni wheels in a
three-wheel configuration
often called a Kiwi drive. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7043625",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T16:38:17",
"content": "I’ve always found these wheels fascinating but nobody ever seems to talk about their wear and tear. Is there more wear than normal wheels or is the wear in a different pattern? Inquiring minds want to know... | 1,760,371,825.764355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/proxxon-cnc-conversion-makes-a-small-mill-a-bit-bigger/ | Proxxon CNC Conversion Makes A Small Mill A Bit Bigger | Elliot Williams | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"MF70",
"mill",
"proxxon"
] | The Proxxon MF70 mini-mill is a cheap and cheerful, but decently made little desktop mill. As such, it’s been the target of innumerable CNC-ification projects, including an official kit from the manufacturer. But that didn’t stop [Dheera Venkatraman] from sharing
his Big Yellow take on this venerable pursuit
with us!
This isn’t simply a CNC modification, it’s a wholly 3D-printed CNC modification, which means that you don’t already need a mill to make the usual aluminum pieces to upgrade your mill. And perhaps the standout feature: [Dheera]’s mod basically doubles the Y-axis travel and adds an extra 15 mm of headroom to the Z. If you wanted to stop here, you would have a bigger small manual mill, but as long as you’re at it, you should probably bolt on the steppers and go CNC. It’s your call, because both models are included.
[Dheera] also built a nice enclosure for the MF70, which makes sense because it’s small enough that it could fit on your desktop, and you don’t want it flinging brass chips all over your bench. But as long as it’s on your desk, why not consider
a soundproof enclosure for the MF70
? Or take the next step, make a nice wooden box, mount a monitor in it, and
take the MF70 entirely portable
, like this gonzo hack from way back in 2012. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "7043283",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T16:25:56",
"content": "Never understood Proxxon tools. Why buy plastic equipment at twice the price of cast iron?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7046555",
"aut... | 1,760,371,825.929186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/potential-cure-for-all-of-englands-beta-thalassemia-patients-within-reach/ | Potential Cure For All Of England’s Beta Thalassemia Patients Within Reach | Maya Posch | [
"Lifehacks",
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"blood disorders",
"CRISPR",
"CRISPR CaS9",
"gene-therapy"
] | Beta thalassemia and sickle cell are two red blood cell disorders which both come with massive health implications and shortened lifespans, but at least for UK-based patients the former
may soon be curable
with a fairly new CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy (Casgevy) via the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Starting with the NHS in England, the therapy will be offered to the approximately 460 β thalassemia patients in that part of the UK at seven different NHS centers within the coming weeks.
We
previously covered
this therapy and the way that it might offer a one-time treatment to patients to definitely cure their blood disorder. In the case of β thalassemia this is done by turning off the defective adult hemoglobin (HbA) production and instead turning the fetal hemoglobin (HbF) production back on. After eradicating the bone marrow cells with the defective genes, the (externally CRISPR-Cas9 modified) stem cells are reintroduced as with a bone marrow transplant. Since this involves the patient’s own cells, no immune-system suppressing medication is necessary, and eventually the new cells should produce enough HbF to allow the patient to be considered cured.
So far in international trials over 90% of those treated in this manner were still symptom-free, raising the hope that this β thalassemia treatment is indeed a life-long cure.
Top image: A giemsa stained blood smear from a person with beta thalassemia. Note the lack of coloring. (Credit: Dr Graham Beards,
Wikimedia Commons
) | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "7017479",
"author": "Question",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T04:21:42",
"content": "I want to see them try deleting someone’s entire DNA sequence and replace it with an exact copy taken from a genome sequencing.I’m curious if it’d fix aging related issues that are due to error accumulat... | 1,760,371,825.879029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/robot-arm-gives-kids-the-roller-coaster-ride-of-their-lives/ | Robot Arm Gives Kids The Roller Coaster Ride Of Their Lives | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"gaming",
"KUKA",
"motion simulator",
"NUC",
"robot arm",
"roller coaster"
] | Unfortunately, [Dave Niewinski]’s kids are still too little to go on a real roller coaster. But they’re certainly big enough to be tossed around by
this giant robot arm roller coaster simulator
.
As to the question of why [Dave] has a Kuka KR 150 robot in his house, we prefer to leave that unasked and move forward. And apparently, this isn’t his first attempt at using the industrial robot as a motion simulator. That attempt revealed a few structural problems with the attachment between the rider’s chair and the robot’s wrist. After redesigning the frame with stouter metal and adding a small form-factor gaming PC and a curved monitor in front of the seat, [Dave] was ready to figure out how to make the arm simulate the motions of a roller coaster.
Now, if you ever thought the world would be a better place if only we had a roller coaster database complete with 4k 60 fps video captured from real coasters, you’re in luck.
CoasterStats
not only exists, but it also includes six-axis accelerometer data from real rides of coasters across Europe. That gave [Dave] the raw data he needed, but getting it translated into robot motions that simulate the feeling of the ride was a bit tricky. [Dave] goes into the physics of it all in the video below, but suffice it to say that the result is pretty cool.
More after the break.
Before anyone gets the urge to call Family Services and report [Dave], know that he seems to have taken great care not to build something that’ll turn the kids into jelly. He describes the safety systems in
an earlier video
, but the basics are laser light curtains to keep the arm within a small safe window, an e-stop switch, and limiting the acceleration to 1
g
even when the real coaster would be giving its riders a good beating. That’s probably less than something like
this real backyard coaster
generates. | 60 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "7010555",
"author": "someone",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T00:13:15",
"content": "This guy set new bar for awesome here.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7011547",
"author": "deL",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T00:53:26",
"co... | 1,760,371,828.038034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/3d-printed-jet-engine-goes-turbo/ | 3D Printed Jet Engine Goes Turbo | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"turbojet",
"turbonfan"
] | Printing a model jet engine is quite an accomplishment. But it wasn’t enough for [linus3d]. He wanted to
redesign
it to have a turbojet, an afterburner, and a variable exhaust nozzle. You can see how it all goes together in the video below.
This took months of work and it shows. This probably won’t make a good rainy-day weekend project. You do need a few ball bearings and some M2 hardware, but it is mostly 3D printed.
True turbojets are most often found on military planes. They are loud, don’t perform well at low speeds, and are generally not very efficient. A variation, the turbofan, is what you usually find on passenger jets. They are quieter and work better at low speeds, but have more parts and, thus, more maintenance.
Unlike a true turbojet, turbofan engines have a cold section and a hot section. The bypass ratio refers to how much air flows through the cold path relative to the amount flowing through the hot path. This cold air provides additional thrust, making the turbofan engine more efficient, especially at lower speeds. The reduced demand on the hot air thrust also reduces the amount of noise.
Plastic isn’t going to cut it for a real jet engine, although you can
3D print some parts of one
. Bonus hacker cred if you
build your jet engine by hand
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "7010967",
"author": "ejaio",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T00:29:56",
"content": "Protip: skip to 4:35, all the important content starts from there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "7022456",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,371,828.234351 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/be-your-own-dj-with-qn8066-and-an-arduino-library/ | Be Your Own DJ With QN8066 And An Arduino Library | Adam Fabio | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"AM/FM",
"fm",
"FM broadcast",
"radio",
"transmitter"
] | The QN8066 is a fun little FM transmitter chip. It covers the full FM broadcast band and has built-in DSP. You would find this sort of part in car cell phone adapters before every vehicle included Bluetooth or an AUX port. [Ricardo] has created an
Arduino library to bring the QN8066 to the masses
.
The chip is rather easy to use – control is handled with a common I2C interface. All the complex parts – Phase Locked Loop (PLL), RF front end, power management, and audio processing are all hidden inside. [Ricardo’s] library makes it even easier to use. One of the awesome features of the 8066 is the fact that it handles Radio Data System (RDS). RDS is the subcarrier datastream that allows FM stations to inject information like song title and artist into the signal. The data is then displayed on your radio screen.
You can find the source to
[Ricardo’s] library on GitHub
. Using it is as simple as picking it up from the Arduino IDE.
If you are looking for an RDS-enabled radio to test out your QN8066 design, you wouldn’t do too bad with this
Gameboy cartridge receiver
.
Click through the break for a video from [Ricardo] explaining his QN8066 design. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "7018656",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2024-08-11T04:48:58",
"content": "The QN8066 has quite good specifications both as transmitter and receiver, although as a receiver the -40 dB alternate channel rejection is not impressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,828.412397 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/better-living-through-hackery/ | Better Living Through Hackery | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"diy",
"personal tech"
] | Hackaday’s own [Arya Voronova] has been on a
multi-year kick to make technology more personal by making it herself
, and has just now started writing about it. Her main point rings especially true in this day and age, where a lot of the tech devices we
could
use to help us are instead used to spy on us or are designed to literally make us addicted to their services.
The project is at the same time impossible and simple. Of course, you are not going to be able to build a gadget that will bolster all of your (perceived or otherwise) personal weaknesses in one fell swoop. But what if you start looking at them one at a time? What if you start building up the good habits with the help of a fun DIY project?
That’s where [Arya]’s plan might just be brilliant. Because each project is supposed to be small, it forces you to focus on one specific problem, rather than getting demoralized at the impossibility of becoming “better” in some vague overall sense. Any psychologist would tell you that introspection and dividing up complex problems are the first steps. And what motivates a hacker to take the next steps? You got it, the fun of brainstorming, planning, and building a nice concrete DIY project. It’s like the ultimate motivation, Hackaday style.
And DIY solutions are a perfect match to personal problems. Nothing is so customizable as what you design and build yourself from the ground up. DIY means making exactly what you need, or at least what you think you need. Iteration, improvement, and the usual prototyping cycle applied to personal growth sounds like the ideal combo, because that’s how the tech works, and that’s also how humans work. Of course, even the coolest DIY gadget can’t instantly make you more mindful, for instance, but if it’s a tool that helps you get there, I don’t think you could ask for more.
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
! | 11 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6988791",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T15:01:14",
"content": "I’ve spent a fair bit of time tuning my environment and lifestyle to promote creativity and my projects.The biggest problem I have now is what I call the “one more project” problem. That’s where you can se... | 1,760,371,828.085028 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/video-game-preservation-stop-killing-games/ | Video Game Preservation – Stop Killing Games! | Alexander Rowsell | [
"Games",
"News"
] | [
"consumer protection",
"digital preservation",
"petition",
"preservation",
"software preservation",
"video games"
] | It’s been an ongoing issue for years now. People who buy video games, especially physical copies, expect to be able to play that game at their leisure, no matter how old their console gets. This used to be a no-brainer: think about the SNES or Genesis/Mega Drive from the late 80s and early 90s. You can still buy one today and play the games without any issues. Not so with many modern, internet-connected games that rely on communication with servers the publishers own, whether or not the online features are necessary for gameplay.
Stop Killing Games
is a new initiative in the EU and worldwide to get enough valid petition signatures to force the issue to be brought up in parliaments all over the world, including the EU Parliament.
An increasing number of videogames are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends. The legality of this practice is untested worldwide, and many governments do not have clear laws regarding these actions. It is our goal to have authorities examine this behavior and hopefully end it, as it is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media.
StopKillingGames.com
Why now? Well, Ubisoft recently killed a popular videogame called
The Crew
by taking down the servers that support the game. Without these servers, the game is completely useless. France and many other European countries have strong consumer protection laws which, in theory, should prevent companies from pulling stunts like this, but this particular situation has never been tested in court. Besides this, the group are also petitioning governments around the world, including France (where Ubisoft is based), Germany, Canada, the UK, the US, Australia, and Brazil, and also options for anywhere else in the EU/world.
If you’re a gamer, and especially if you play video games which use online components, it’s definitely worth reading through their website. The FAQ section in particular answers a lot of questions. In any case, we wish them luck as the preservation of media is a very important topic!
[Thanks to Jori for the tip!] | 60 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6981685",
"author": "June",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T12:07:21",
"content": "I mean, this is just licensed software, and revoking licenses is a well tested thing. “Sold as goods” isn’t legal nomenclature and just nonsense.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,827.933481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/10/what-is-systemverilog-really/ | What Is SystemVerilog, Really? | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga"
] | [Mark] starts a post from a bit ago with: “… maybe you have also heard that SystemVerilog is simply an extension of Verilog, focused on testing and verification.” This is both true and false, depending on how you look at it. [Mark] then
explains what the differences are
. It’s a good read if you are Verilog fluent, but just dip your toe into SystemVerilog.
Part of the confusion is that until 2009, there were two different things: Verilog and SystemVerilog. However, the SystemVerilog 2009 specification incorporates both languages, so modern Verilog is SystemVerilog and vice versa.
While many new features are aimed at verification, there is something for everyone. For example, [Mark] explains how you can replace instances of
reg
and
wire
with the
logic
data type. SystemVerilog will figure out if you need a reg or a wire on its own.
In addition, some common idioms are now part of the standard, which can make defining always blocks easier. So if you are using FPGAs and Verilog, are you using SystemVerilog? We don’t see much of it in incoming projects, but we do see it
occasionally
. Of course, pundits tell us that soon we
won’t even have to write Verilog
thanks to — what else? — AI. We remain skeptical. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6978745",
"author": "combinatorylogic",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T10:45:30",
"content": "As useful as SystemVerilog is, I find the features provided by the Emacs verilog-mode an almost complete substitution (and, in some regards, superior).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,827.785682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/the-luminiferous-theremin/ | The Luminiferous Theremin | Al Williams | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"electronic music",
"music",
"theremin"
] | [Extreme Kits] asks the question: “What the hell is a
luminiferous theremin
?” We have to admit, we know what a thermin is, but that’s as far as we got. You’ve surely seen and heard a theremin, the musical instrument developed by Leon Theremin that makes swoopy music often associated with science fiction movies. The luminiferous variation is a similar instrument that uses modern time of flight sensors to pick up your hand positions.
The traditional instrument uses coils, and your hands alter the frequency of oscillators. Some versions use light sensors to avoid the problems associated with coils. While the time of flight sensors also use light, they are immune to many false readings caused by stray light.
While there is a kit for sale, you can find the schematic and source code on
GitHub
with a BSD-3-Clause license. We had hoped for a video of the device, but we didn’t see one.
One nice thing about the device is you can easily swap the “handedness.” That is, you can switch the function of the virtual coils easily if you prefer to use your dominant hand for pitch.
We talk about
theremins
around here more than you’d think. You can build a
classic
one quite easily, and we’ve seen plenty of more complex designs, too. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6970775",
"author": "Dadjokes",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T07:25:14",
"content": "I was thinking of selling my theramin: I haven’t touched it for years!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6987377",
"author": "The Commenter ... | 1,760,371,827.826501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/laser-fault-injection-on-the-cheap/ | Laser Fault Injection On The Cheap | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"fault injection",
"galvanometer",
"galvo",
"glitching",
"laser fault injection",
"LFI"
] | One can only imagine the wonders held within the crypto labs of organizations like the CIA or NSA. Therein must be machines of such sophistication that no electronic device could resist their attempts to defeat whatever security is baked into their silicon. Machines such as these no doubt bear price tags that only a no-questions-asked budget could support, making their techniques firmly out of reach of even the most ambitious home gamer.
That might be changing, though, with
this $500 DIY laser fault injection setup
. It comes to us from Finnish cybersecurity group [Fraktal], who have started a series of blog posts detailing how they built their open-source reverse-engineering rig. LFI is similar to other “glitching” attacks we’ve covered before, such as
EMP fault injection
, except that a laser shining directly on a silicon die is used to disrupt its operation rather than a burst of electromagnetic energy.
Since LFI requires shining the laser very precisely on nanometer-scale elements of a bare silicon die, nanopositioning is the biggest challenge. Rather than moving the device under attack, the [Fraktal] rig uses a modified laser galvanometer to scan an IR laser over the device. The galvo and the optical components are all easily available online, and they’ve started
a repo
to document the modifications needed and the code to tire everything together.
Of course, this technique requires the die in the device under study to be exposed, but [Fraktal] has made that pretty approachable too. They include instructions for milling away the epoxy from the lead-frame side of a chip, which is safer for the delicate structures etched into the top of the die. The laser can then shine directly through the die from the bottom. For “flip-chip” packages like BGAs, the same milling technique would be done from the top of the package. Either way, we can imagine a small CNC mill making the process safer and quicker, even though they seem to have done pretty well with a Dremel.
This looks like a fantastic reverse engineering tool, and we’re really looking forward to the rest of the story.
Thanks to [gnud] for the heads up on this one. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6966725",
"author": "Anony mouse",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T06:03:38",
"content": "Erm, laser is also electromagnetic energy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6983208",
"author": "Jan-Willem",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T12:... | 1,760,371,827.685348 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/the-waveguide-explanation-you-wish-youd-had-at-school/ | The Waveguide Explanation You Wish You’d Had At School | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"microwave",
"transmission line",
"waveguide"
] | Anyone who has done an electronic engineering qualification will at some point have had to get to grips with transmission lines, and then if they are really lucky, waveguides. Perhaps there should be one of those immutable Laws stating that for each step in learning about these essential parts, the level of the maths you are expected to learn goes up in an exponential curve, for it’s certainly true that most of us breathe a hefty sigh of relief when that particular course ends. It’s not impossible to understand waveguides though, and [Old Hack EE] is here
to slice through the formulae with some straightforward explanations
.
First of all we learn about the basics of propagation in a waveguide, then we look at the effects of dimension on frequency. Again, there’s little in the way of head-hurting maths, just real-world explanations of cutt-off frequencies, and of coupling techniques. For the first time we’ve seen, here are simple and understandable explanations of the different types of splitter, followed up by the famous Magic T. It’s all in the phase, this is exactly the stuff we wish we’d had at university.
The world needs more of this type of explanation, after all it’s rare to watch a YouTube video and gain an understanding of something once badly taught. Take a look, the video is below the break. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6947556",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T23:07:17",
"content": "Waveguides and RF in general are really the dark arts they work with black magic and witchcraft",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6952663",
"author":... | 1,760,371,827.738035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/the-first-fitbit-engineering-and-industrial-design-lessons/ | The First Fitbit: Engineering And Industrial Design Lessons | Maya Posch | [
"History"
] | [
"fitbit",
"fitness tracker"
] | It could happen to anyone of us: suddenly you got this inkling of an idea for a product that you think might just be pretty useful or even cool. Some of us then go on to develop a prototype and manage to get enough seed funding to begin the long and arduous journey to turn a sloppy prototype into a sleek, mass-produced product. This is basically the story of how the Fitbit came to be, with a
pretty in-depth article
by [Tekla S. Perry] in
IEEE Spectrum
covering the development process and the countless lessons learned along the way.
Of note was that this idea for an accelerometer-based activity tracker was not new in 2006, as a range of products already existed, from 1960s mechanical pedometers to 1990s medical sensors and the shoe-based Nike+ step tracker that used Apple’s iPod with a receiver. Where this idea for the
Fitbit
was new was that it’d target a wide audience with a small, convenient (and affordable) device. That also set them up for a major nightmare as the two inventors were plunged into the wonderfully terrifying world of industrial design and hardware development.
One thing that helped a lot was outsourcing what they could to skilled people and having solid seed funding. This left just many hardware decisions to make it as small as possible, as well as waterproof and low-power. The use of the
ANT protocol
instead of Bluetooth saved a lot of battery, but meant a base station was needed to connect to a PC. Making things waterproof required ultrasonic welding, but lack of antenna testing meant that a closed case had a massively reduced signal strength until a foam shim added some space. The external reset pin on the Fitbit for the base station had a low voltage on it all the time, which led to corrosion issues, and so on.
While much of this was standard development and testing fun, the real challenge was in interpreting the data from the accelerometer. After all, what does a footstep look like to an accelerometer, and when is it just a pothole while travelling by car? Developing a good algorithm here took gathering a lot of real-world data using prototype hardware, which needed tweaking when later Fitbits moved from being clipped-on to being worn on the wrist. These days Fitbit is hardly the only game in town for fitness trackers, but you can definitely blame them for laying much of the groundwork for the countless options today. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6947075",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T22:58:30",
"content": "I bought a couple of Fitbits at a garage sale a couple years ago.But without the password I wasn’t able to register them Google, or even reset their time.",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,828.279235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/500cc-of-4-wheel-off-road-fun/ | 500cc Of 4-Wheel Off-Road Fun | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"buggy",
"off road",
"space frame"
] | Who among us hasn’t at some point thought of building a little vehicle, and better still, a little off-road vehicle for a few high-octane rough-terrain adventures. [Made in Poland] has, and there he is in a new video
with a little off-road buggy
.
The video which we’ve paced below the break is quite long, and it’s one of those restful metalworking films in which we see the finished project take shape bit by bit. In this case the buggy has a tubular spaceframe, with front suspension taken from a scrap quad and a home-made solid rear axle. For power there’s a 500cc Suzuki two-cylinder motorcycle engine, with a very short chain drive from its gearbox to that axle. The controls are conventional up to a point, though we’d have probably gone for motorcycle style handlebars with a foot shift rather than the hand-grip shift.
The final machine is a pocket drift monster, and one we’d certainly like to have a play with. We’d prefer some roll-over protection and we wonder whether the handling might be improved were the engine sprung rather than being part of a huge swing-arm, but it doesn’t appear to interfere with the fun. If you fancy a go yourself it’s surprisingly affordable to make a small vehicle, just build a
Hacky Racer
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6943108",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T21:20:53",
"content": "Needs mouse, but not as much as the last one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7024687",
"author": "J. Samson",
"timestamp": "2024-08-... | 1,760,371,828.324483 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/hackaday-podcast-episode-283-blinding-lasers-leds-and-ets/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 283: Blinding Lasers, LEDs, And ETs | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams reflect on the fact that, as humans, we have–at most–two eyes and no warp drives. While hacking might not be the world’s most dangerous hobby, you do get to work with dangerous voltages, temperatures, and frickin’ lasers. Light features prominently, as the guys talk about LED data interfaces, and detecting faster-than-light travel.
There’s also a USB sniffer, abusing hot glue, and some nostalgia topics ranging from CRT graphics to Apollo workstations (which have nothing directly to do with NASA). The can’t miss articles this week cover hacking you and how you make the red phone ring in the middle of a nuclear war.
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!
As always,
please download the file to archive in your doomsday bunker
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 283 Show Notes:
News:
Tickets For Supercon 2024 Go On Sale Now!
Taco Bell To Bring Voice AI Ordering To Hundreds Of US Drive-Throughs
What’s that Sound?
Al was unsuccessful, but
if you know the correct answer, submit it and you could win
a limited edition Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Getting A Laser Eye Injury And How To Avoid It
Saving Your Vision from Super Glue in the Eyes
Detecting Faster Than Light Travel By Extraterrestrials
Programming Tiny Blinkenlight Projects With Light
You Can Use LEDs As Sensors, Too
Photoresistors Provide Air Gap Data Transfer, Slowly
Need A USB Sniffer? Use Your Pico!
Hacking A $100 Signal Generator
Pixel Art And The Myth Of The CRT Effect
All About CRTs
Linux Fu: The Old School Terminal
Over-molding Wires With Hot Glue And 3D Printed Molds
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
An ESP Makes A Bicycle Odometer
Tiny Trackpad Fits On Ergonomic Keyboard
Get Your Glitch On With A PicoEMP And A 3D Printer
RC Car Gets Force Feedback Steering
Al’s Picks:
1000 Picks Make For A Weird Guitar
Homebrew Relay Computer Features Motorized Clock
Apollo Computer: The Forgotten Workstations
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Hack On Self: Sense Of Time
Radio Apocalypse: HFGCS, The Backup Plan For Doomsday | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "7100144",
"author": "David Plass",
"timestamp": "2024-08-12T16:47:34",
"content": "You kept mentioning SAO but …what is it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7146056",
"author": "somehacker",
"timestamp": "2024-0... | 1,760,371,828.372138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/custom-pneumatic-cylinders-lock-this-monitor-arm-in-place/ | Custom Pneumatic Cylinders Lock This Monitor Arm In Place | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"kvm",
"lock",
"monitor",
"parallelogram",
"pneumatic",
"shop",
"solenoid"
] | Few consumer-grade PCs are what you’d categorize as built to last. Most office-grade machines are as likely as not to give up the ghost after ingesting a few too many dust bunnies, and the average laptop can barely handle a few drops of latte and some muffin crumbs before croaking. Sticking a machine like that in the shop, especially a metal shop, is pretty much a death sentence.
And yet, computers are so useful in the shop that [Lucas] from “Cranktown City” built
this neat industrial-strength monitor arm
. His design will look familiar to anyone with a swing-arm mic or desk light, although his home-brew parallelogram arm is far sturdier thanks to the weight of the monitor and sheet-metal enclosure it supports. All that weight exceeded the ability of the springs [Lucas] had on hand, which led to the most interesting aspect of the build — a pair of pneumatic locks. These were turned from a scrap of aluminum rod and an old flange-head bolt; when air pressure is applied, the bolt is drawn into the cylinder, which locks the arm in place. To make it easy to unlock the arm, a pneumatic solenoid releases the pressure on the system at the touch of a button. The video below has a full explanation and demonstration.
While we love the idea, there are a few potential problems with the design. The first is that this isn’t a fail-safe design, since pressure is needed to keep the arm locked. That means if the air pressure drops the arm could unlock, letting gravity do a number on your nice monitor. Second is the more serious problem [Lucas] alluded to when he mentioned not wanting to be in the line of fire of those locks should something fail and the piston comes flying out under pressure. That could be fixed with a slight design change to retain the piston in the event of a catastrophic failure.
Problems aside, this was a great build, and we always love [Lucas]’ seat-of-the-pants engineering and his obvious gift for fabrication, of which
his wall-mount plasma cutter
is a perfect example. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6930564",
"author": "Manfred",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T17:07:37",
"content": "And now a POV AR display! Moving the monitor at full speed……",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6934598",
"author": "mip",
"timestamp": "2024-08... | 1,760,371,829.205334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/this-week-in-security-ghostwrite-localhost-and-more/ | This Week In Security: GhostWrite, Localhost, And More | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Ghostwire",
"Localhost",
"PNA",
"This Week in Security"
] | You may have heard some scary news about RISC-V CPUs. There’s good news, and bad news, and the whole thing is a bit of a cautionary tale.
GhostWrite
is a devastating vulnerability in a pair of T-Head XuanTie RISC-V CPUs. There are also unexploitable crashes in another T-Head CPU and the QEMU soft core implementation. These findings come courtesy of a group of researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany. They took at look at RISC-V cores, and asked the question, do any of these instructions do anything unexpected? The answer, obviously, was “yes”.
Undocumented instructions have been around just about as long as we’ve had Van Neumann architecture processors. The RISC-V ISA put a lampshade on that reality, and calls them “vendor specific custom ISA extensions”. The problem is that vendors are in a hurry, have limited resources, and deadlines wait for no one. So sometimes things make it out the door with problems. To find those problems, CISPA researchers put together a test framework is called RISCVuzz, and it’s all about running each instruction on multiple chips, and watching for oddball behavior. They found a couple of “halt-and-catch-fire” problems, but the real winner (loser) is GhostWrite.
Now, this isn’t a speculative attack like Meltdown or Spectre. It’s more accurate to say that it’s a memory mapping problem. Memory mapping helps the OS keep programs independent of each other by giving them a simplified memory layout, doing the mapping from each program to physical memory in the background. There are instructions that operate using these virtual addresses, and one such is
vs128.v
. That instruction is intended to manipulate vectors, and use virtual addressing. The problem is that it actually operates directly on physical memory addresses, even bypassing cache. That’s not only memory, but also includes hardware with memory mapped addresses, entirely bypassing the OS. This instruction is the keys to the kingdom.
So yeah, that’s bad, for this one particular RISC-V model. The only known fix is to disable the vector extensions altogether, which comes with a massive performance penalty. One benchmark showed a 77% performance penalty, nearly slashing the CPU’s performance in half. The lessons here are that as exciting as the RISC-V is, with its open ISA, individual chips aren’t necessarily completely Open Sourced, and implementation quality may very wildly between vendors.
0.0.0.0 Day Vulnerability
We’ve come a long way since the days when the web was young, and the webcam was strictly for
checking on how much coffee was left
. Now we have cross-site scripting attacks and cross-site request forgeries to deal with. You might be tempted to think that we’ve got browser security down. You’d be wrong. But finally, a whole class of problems are getting cleaned up, and a related problem you probably didn’t even realize you had. That last one is
thanks to researchers at Oligo, who bring us this story
.
The problem is that websites from the wider Internet are accessing resources on the local network or even the localhost. What happens if a website tries to load a script, using the IP address of your router? Is there some clever way to change settings using nothing but a JS script load? In some cases, yes. Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) fixes this, surely? CORS doesn’t prevent requests, it just limits what the browser can do after the request has been made. It’s a bit embarrassing how long this has been an issue, but PNA finally fixes this,
available as an origin trial in Chrome 128
. This divides the world into three networks, with the Internet as the least privileged layer, then the local network, and finally the local machine and localhost as the inner, most protected. A page hosted on localhost can pull scripts from the Internet, but not the other way around.
And this brings us to
0.0.0.0
. What exactly is that IP address? Is it even an IP address? Sort of. In some cases, like in a daemon’s configuration file, it indicates all the network devices on the local machine. It also gets used in DHCP as the source IP address for DHCP requests before the machine has an IP address. But what happens when you use it in a browser? On Windows, nothing much. 0.0.0.0 is a Unixism that hasn’t (yet) made its way into Windows. But on Linux and MacOS machines, all the major browsers treat it as distinct from 127.0.0.1, but also as functionally equivalent to localhost. And that’s really not great, as evidenced by the list of vulnerabilities in various applications when a browser can pull this off. The good news is that it’s finally getting fixed.
PLCs Sleuthing
Researchers at
Claroty have spent some time digging into Unitronics Programmable Logic Controllers
(PLCs), as those were notably cracked in a hacking campaign last fall. This started with a very familiar story, of rigging up a serial connection to talk to the controller. There is an official tool to administrate the controller over serial, so capturing that data stream seemed promising. This led to documenting the PCOM protocol, and eventually building a custom admin application. The goal here is
to build tooling for forensics
, to pull data off of one of those compromised devices.
You Don’t Need to See My JWT
Siemens
had a bit of a problem with their AMA Cloud web application
. According to researchers at Traceable ASPEN, it’s a surprisngly common problem with React web applications. The login flow here is that upon first visiting the page, the user is redirected to an external Single Sign On provider. What catches the eye is that the React application just about fully loads before that redirect fires. So what happens if that redirect JS code is disabled? There’s the web application, just waiting for data from the back end.
That would be enough to be interesting, but this goes a step further. After login, the authenticated session is handled with a JSON Web Token (JWT). That token was checked for by the front-end code, but the signature wasn’t checked. And then most surprisingly, the APIs behind the service didn’t check for a JWT either. The authentication was all client-side, in the browser. Whoops. Now to their credit, Siemens pushed a fix within 48 hours of the report, and didn’t drop the ball on disclosure.
(Hackaday’s parent company, Supplyframe, is owned by Siemens.)
Bits and Bytes
If you run NeatVNC,
0.8.1 is a pretty important security update
. Specifying the security type is left up to clients, and
“none” is a valid option
. That’s not great.
Apparently we owe Jia Tan a bit of our thanks, as
the extra attention on SSH has shaken loose a few interesting findings
. While there isn’t a single glaring vulnerabiltiy to cover, HD Moore and Rob King found a bunch of implementation problems, particularly in embedded devices. This was presented at Black Hat, so hopefully the presentation will eventually be made available. For now, we do have a nifty new tool,
SSHamble
, to play with.
In 2023,
the Homebrew project undertook an audit by Trail of Bits
. And while there weren’t any High severity problems found, there were a decent handful of medium and lower issues. Those have mostly been fixed, and the audit results have now been made public. Homebrew is the “missing package manager for MacOS”, and if that sounds interesting, be sure to watch for next week’s
FLOSS Weekly episode
, because we’re chatting with Homebrew about this, their new Workbrew announcement, and more! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6923715",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T14:34:01",
"content": "There is a RFC for almost anything IP.https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1918– Special Use IPv4 AddressesIt’s only “Category: Best Current Practice” but it does give 0.0.0.0 a definition:“Address ... | 1,760,371,828.800065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/liquid-reversibly-solidifies-at-room-temperature-gets-used-for-3d-prints/ | Liquid (Reversibly) Solidifies At Room Temperature, Gets Used For 3D Prints | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"3d printing",
"liquid",
"materials science",
"polymer"
] | Researchers demonstrate sustainable
3D printing by using poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) solutions
(PNIPAM), which speedily and reliably turn solid by undergoing a rapid phase change when in a salt solution.
This property has been used to 3D print objects by using a syringe tip as if it were a nozzle in a filament-based printer. As long as the liquid is being printed into contact with a salt solution, the result is a polymer that solidifies upon leaving the syringe.
What’s also interesting is that the process by which the PNIPAM-based solutions solidify is entirely reversible. Researchers demonstrate printing, breaking down, then re-printing, which is an awfully neat trick. Finally, by mixing different additives in with PNIPAM, one can obtain different properties in the final product. For example, researchers demonstrate making conductive prints by adding carbon nanotubes.
While we’ve seen the concept of printing with liquids by
extruding them into a gel bath
or similar approach, we haven’t seen a process that prides itself on being so reversible before. The research paper with all the details is available
here
, so check it out for all the details. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6920339",
"author": "Knochi",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T12:02:57",
"content": "Well it doesn’t look really solid in the water.. more like cooked spaghetti.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "7004110",
"author": "Allie_x",
... | 1,760,371,828.948239 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/09/fixing-a-busted-fluke-while-fighting-a-wonky-schematic/ | Fixing A Busted Fluke While Fighting A Wonky Schematic | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"fluke",
"Fluke 25",
"fusible",
"meter",
"multimeter",
"repair",
"teardown"
] | Fluke meters have been around for a long, long time. Heck, we’ve got a Fluke 73 that we bought back in 1985 that’s still a daily driver. But just because they’ve been making them forever doesn’t mean they last forever, and getting a secondhand meter back in the game can be a challenge. That’s what [TheHWCave] learned with
his revival of a wonky eBay Fluke 25
, an effort that holds lessons for anyone in the used Fluke market.
Initial inspection of the meter showed encouragingly few signs of abuse, somewhat remarkable for something built for the military in the early 1980s. A working display allowed a few simple diagnostics revealing that the ammeter functions seemed to work, but not the voltmeter and ohmmeter functions. [TheHWCave]’s teardown revealed a solidly constructed unit with no obvious signs of damage or blown fuses. Thankfully, a service schematic was available online, albeit one with a frustrating lack of detail, confusing test point nomenclature, and contradictory component values.
Despite these hurdles, [TheHWCave] was able to locate the culprit: a bad fusible power resistor. Finding a direct replacement wasn’t easy given the vagaries of the schematic and the age of the instrument, but he managed to track down a close substitute cheap enough to buy in bulk. He searched through 40 units to find the one closest to the listed specs, which got the meter going again. Fixing the bent pin also gave the meter back its continuity beeper, always a mixed blessing.
If you’re in the market for a meter but can’t afford the Fluke name, picking up a busted meter and fixing it up like this might be one way to go. But are they really worth the premium? Well,
kinda yes
. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6919777",
"author": "Derek",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T10:34:55",
"content": "“If you’re in the market for a meter but can’t afford the Fluke name, picking up a busted meter and fixing it up like this might be one way to go.”But you need a working multimeter to do it ?",
"parent_... | 1,760,371,829.007799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/mouse-doesnt-play-pong-it-is-pong/ | Mouse Doesn’t Play Pong… It IS Pong! | Al Williams | [
"Games",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"pi pico",
"pong",
"usb host"
] | From the “why didn’t we think of that” department comes [dupontgu’s]
pong mouse project
. The mouse appears and acts like a normal computer mouse until you click the scroll wheel. When you do, the mouse rapidly moves the cursor on the connected computer to play pong. Obviously, though, the paddles and the ball all look like your cursor, whatever that happens to be. So, how do you tell the score? Well, when a score happens, the cursor shows between the two paddles. In the middle means the game is tied. Otherwise, the player closest to the score indicator is winning.
The mouse is an off-the-shelf unit, but inside is a tiny XIAO RP2040 board that can act as both a USB host and a USB device. The RP2040 intercepts the USB traffic and can modify it as it sees fit or just pass it unchanged. Part of the secret sauce is to make the mouse use absolute mode so that it can teleport the cursor between two spots. This is common with, for example, touchscreen drivers. However, it is unusual for a mouse to use this mode. Of course, the cursor is actually only in one place at a time, but your eye thinks it is in multiple places at the same time.
The code itself isn’t very long. A few hundred lines of C++ and, of course, plenty of libraries to handle the USB. We can think of lots of reasons we might want to filter a USB device.
This version of pong doesn’t take a lot of
mechanical parts
. Or, you could try making one with
no parts at all
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6921204",
"author": "davedarko",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T13:30:58",
"content": "That’s Guy Dupont btw :)https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=Guy+Dupont",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,828.752074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/kickflips-and-buffer-slips-an-exploit-in-tony-hawks-pro-skater/ | Kickflips And Buffer Slips: An Exploit In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater | Matthew Carlson | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"exploit",
"rop",
"strcpy",
"xbox"
] | [Ryan Miceli] wanted to build some reverse engineering skills by finding a new exploit for an original Xbox. Where he ended up was an exploit that worked across the network, across several games, and several different consoles. But it all started with an
unbounded strcpy in Tony Hawk Pro Skater (THPS)
.
Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube (often referred to as the sixth generation) are wonderful hacking targets as they don’t possess many of the security enhancements of the seventh generation, like hypervisors, privilege levels, and hardware executability protections. The console launches the game, and control is fully within the game, so once you get your code executing, you’re done. The exploit started with a feature in many Tony Hawk games, the custom map editor. In the editor, you can create gaps between jumps with a name so that when a player completes the gap, it can flash “you jumped x” in big letters. However, on Xbox, the gap name is copied with an unbounded strcpy to the stack, meaning you can overwrite the return pointer. Additionally, there are no stack cookies for THPS, which meant nothing stopped [Ryan] from smashing his way through. He includes a small memcpy stub in the header of the level, which the gap name jumps to, which then copies and executes his full payload.
The other games in the series
, like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (THPS3), had the bug, but the gap name was copied to the heap, not the stack. However, he could overflow into a vtable of the next object that would call his code when the object was freed. However, the level save data wasn’t an executable region of memory, which meant he needed
ROP
(return-oriented programming). Just a few gadgets later,
and [Ryan] had another exploit working.
Tony Hawk’s Underground 1 and 2 had stack cookies turned on. This meant a random value was placed on the stack before a function, then popped off and checked. This meant the program could check if its stack had been smashed. Unfortunately for [Ryan], this proved to be a major roadblock. However, the PC and PS2 versions of these games do not have stack cookies, which means they can be exploited in the same manner.
The beauty of the exploit is that the game allows you to invite a friend to play a custom level. This means once the level is transferred over the network, their console is hacked as well. However, the full payload wasn’t sent to the client console, which meant the exploit had to send the payload to the other console using the game’s existing net code. The exploit sets up an asynchronous file transfer then hands control back to the game. Of course, there was a memory leak in the netcode, because the game had never sent large amounts of data over the network before. So, part of the exploit was a hot patch for a memory leak.
As a last hurrah, [Ryan] ported the hack to Gamecube, PS2, and PC. The
code is on GitHub,
and the video is after the break. We love the attention the Xbox has been getting, and if you’re curious about a hardware hack, this
256MB ROM mod goes deep into the internals
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6915390",
"author": "Luke Davis",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T07:14:20",
"content": "Wow, he really doesn’t like the PS2 lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6920389",
"author": "Josiah Gould",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T12:16... | 1,760,371,828.84668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/building-ai-models-to-diagnose-hvac-issues/ | Building AI Models To Diagnose HVAC Issues | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"aiot",
"artificial intelligence",
"cnc",
"heat",
"hvac",
"hydronic",
"machine learning",
"model",
"thermal camera",
"thermal imaging"
] | HVAC – heating, ventilation, and air conditioning – can account for a huge amount of energy usage of a building, whether it’s residential or industrial. Often it’s the majority energy consumer, especially in places with extreme climates or for things like data centers where cooling is a large design consideration. When problems arise with these complex systems, they can go undiagnosed for a time and additionally be difficult to fix, leading to even more energy losses until repairs are complete. With the growing availability of platforms that can run capable artificial intelligences, [kutluhan_aktar] is working towards
a system that can automatically diagnose potential issues and help humans get a handle on repairs faster
.
The prototype system is designed for hydronic (water-based) systems and uses two separate artificial intelligences, one to analyze thermal imagery of the system and look for problems like leaks, hot spots, or blockages, and the other to listen for anomalous sounds especially relating to the behavior of cooling fans. For the first, a CNC-like machine was built to move a thermal camera around a custom-built model HVAC system and report its images back to a central system where they can be analyzed for anomalies. The second system which analyses audio runs its artificial intelligence on a XIAO ESP32C6 and listens to the cooling fans running in the model.
One problem that had to be tackled before any of this could be completed was actually building an open-source dataset to train the AI on. That’s part of the reason for the HVAC model in this project; being able to create problems to train the computer to detect before rolling it out to a larger system. The project’s code and training models can be found
on its GitHub page
. It seems to be a fairly robust solution to this problem, though, and we’ll be looking forward to future versions running on larger systems. Not everyone has a hydronic HVAC system, though. As heat pumps become more and more popular and capable, you’ll need systems to control those as well. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6906195",
"author": "Michael Joseph Ballezza",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T04:15:12",
"content": "Heat pumps can reject or collect heat from water as well. Better to move water or glycol around than refrigerant anyway.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,828.894659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/internet-appliance-to-portable-terminal/ | Internet Appliance To Portable Terminal | Navarre Bartz | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"assembly",
"bbs",
"Cidco MailStation",
"Internet Appliance",
"MailStation",
"retro",
"retro computer",
"retrocomputing",
"terminal",
"z80",
"zilog"
] | Few processors have found themselves in so many different devices as the venerable Z80. While it isn’t powerful by modern standards, you can still use devices like this
Cidco MailStation
as a terminal.
The MailStation was originally designed as an email machine for people who weren’t onboard with this whole computer fad, keeping things simple with just an adjustable monchrome LCD, a keyboard, and a few basic applications. [Joshua Stein] developed a terminal application, msTERM, for the MailStation thanks to work previously done on decoding this device and the wealth of documentation for Z80 assembly.
While [Stein] designed his program to access BBSes, we wonder if it might be a good way to do some distraction-free writing. If that wasn’t enough, he also designed the
WiFiStation dongle
which lets you communicate over a network without all that tedious mucking about with parallel ports.
If you’d like something designed specifically for writing, how about an
AlphaSmart
? Wanting to build your own Z80-based project? Why not start with an
Altoids-sized Z80 SBC
, but don’t wait forever since
Z80 production finally ended in June
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6920792",
"author": "brian",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T13:19:56",
"content": "This device looks to be the same as a British Telecom device from that time . except the BT one is green. I always assumed BT had actually designed it .",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,829.050198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/adapter-salad-making-your-own-server-cables-because-hp-wont-sell-them-to-you/ | Adapter Salad: Making Your Own Server Cables Because HP Won’t Sell Them To You | Lewin Day | [
"computer hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"cable",
"cables",
"hp enterprise",
"hpe",
"sas",
"serial attached scsi"
] | The world is tough and uncaring sometimes, especially if you’re at home tinkering with HP Enterprise equipment. If you’re in the same boat as [Neel Chauhan], you might have found that HPE is less than interested in interacting with small individual customers. Thus, when a cable was needed, [Neel] was out of luck.
The simple solution was to assemble a substitute one instead!
[Neel] had a HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 server, which was to be used as network-attached storage (NAS). Unfortunately, it was bought as an open box, and lacked an appropriate serial-attached SCSI (SAS) cable. Sadly, HPE support was of no assistance in sourcing one.
SlimSAS LP x8 to dual MiniSAS x4 cables aren’t easy to find from anyone else, it turns out. Thus, [Neel] turned to Amazon for help sourcing a combination of parts to make this work. A SlimSAS LP 8X to 2x MiniSAS SFF-8643 cable was used, along with a pair of Mini SAS SFF-8087 to SAS HD SFF-8643 female adapters. From there, SFF-8087 cables could be used to hook up to the actual SAS devices required. The total cost? $102.15.
The stack of cables and adapters looks a bit silly, but it works—and it got [Neel]’s NAS up and running. It’s frustrating when you have to go to such lengths, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen hackers have to
recreate obscure cables or connectors from scratch
! What’s the craziest adapter salad you’ve ever made? | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6882051",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T19:11:04",
"content": "I have made– one Cat5-cable with one RJ-45 8P8C (with 4 wires) and two “RJ-11” 6P4C (with 2 wires) at each end– A few cables meant for RJ485 with two male USB-A connectors (hey, it works, just don’t use it i... | 1,760,371,829.113563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/a-smart-led-dice-box-thanks-to-the-internet-of-things/ | A Smart LED Dice Box Thanks To The Internet Of Things | Lewin Day | [
"Games",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"dice",
"dice box",
"dice roll",
"smart dice"
] | If there’s one thing humans love, it’s dancing with chance. To that end, [Jonathan] whipped up
a fun dice box, connecting it to the Internet of Things for additional functionality.
Expect dice roll stat tracking to become a big thing in the D&D community.
The build is based around
Pixels Dice.
They’re a smart type of IoT dice that contains Bluetooth connectivity and internal LEDs. The dice are literally capable of detecting their own rolls and reporting them wirelessly. Thus, the dice connects to the dice box, and the dice box can literally log the rolls and even graph them over time.
The project was built in a nice octagonal box [Jonathan] picked up from a thrift store. It was fitted with a hidden battery and ESP32 to communicate with the dice and run the show. The box also contains integrated wireless chargers to recharge the dice as needed, and a screen for displaying status information.
The dice and dice box can do all kinds of neat things, like responding with mood lighting and animations to your rolls—for better or worse. There are some fun modes you can play with—you can even set the lights to sparkle if you pass a given skill check in your tabletop RPG of choice!
If you play a lot of tabletop games, and you love dice and statistics, this is a project well worth looking into. Imagine logging every roll so you can see how hot you are on a given night. Or, heck—whether it was the dice’s fault you lost your favorite player character in that foreboding dungeon.
We see a few dice hacks now and then
, but not nearly enough. This project has us questioning where smart dice have been all our life! Video after the break. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6879282",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T17:04:00",
"content": "I dunno about this, it seems a bit … dicey.dodges rotten fruitSeriously, this looks like a cool way to help keep records.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,371,829.161543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/raspberry-has-a-new-pico-and-the-rp2350/ | Raspberry Has A New Pico, Built With The New RP2350 | Elliot Williams | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"microcontroller",
"pi pico",
"rp2350"
] | Raspberry Pi’s first foray into the world of microcontrollers, the RP2040, was a very interesting chip. Its standout features were the programmable input/output units (PIOs) which enabled all sorts of custom real-time shenanigans. And that’s not to discount the impact of the Pi Pico, the $4 dev kit built around it.
Today, they’re announcing a brand-new microcontroller:
the RP2350
. It will come conveniently packaged
in the new Pi Pico 2
, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the new chip is better in every way, and that the Pico form factor will stay the same. The bad news? It’s going to cost 25% more, coming in at $5. But in exchange for the extra buck, you get a lot.
For starters, the RP2350 runs a bit faster at 150 MHz, has double the on-board RAM at 520 kB, and twice as much QSPI flash at 4 MB. And those sweet, sweet PIOs? Now it has 12 instead of just 8. (Although we have no word yet if there is more program space per PIO – even with the incredibly compact PIO instruction set, we always wanted more!)
Two flavors on the same chip: Arm and RISC
As before, it’s a dual-core chip, but now the cores are Arm Cortex M33s
or
RISC-V Hazard3s. Yes, you heard that right, there are two pairs of processors on board. Raspberry Pi says that you’ll be able to select which style of cores runs either by software or by burning one-time fuses. So it’s not a quad core chip, but rather your choice of two different dual cores. Wild!
Raspberry Pi is also making a big deal about the new Arm TrustZone functionality. It has signed boot, 8 kB of OTP key-storage memory, SHA-256 acceleration, a hardware RNG, and “fast glitch detectors”. While this is probably more aimed at industry than at the beginning hacker, we’re absolutely confident that some of you out there will put this data-safe to good use.
There is, as of yet, no wireless built in. We can’t see into the future, but we can see into the past, and we remember that the original Pico was wireless for a few months before they got the WiFi and Bluetooth radio added into the Pico W. Will history repeat itself with the Pico 2?
We’re getting our hands on a Pico 2 in short order, and we’ve already gotten a sneak peek at the extensive software toolchain that’s been built out for it. All the usual suspects are there: Picotool, TinyUSB, and OpenOCD as we write this. We’ll be putting it through its paces and writing up all the details next week. | 129 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6874941",
"author": "Ergotron",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T15:30:12",
"content": "I don’t know, little hard to get excited about this. Sure the spec bump is nice, and I imagine there’s a valid application for the core selection out there (even if I don’t know what it is). But now it’s... | 1,760,371,829.90428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-kicad-plugin/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The KiCad Plugin | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"cirque",
"harlequin",
"KiCAD",
"kicad plugin",
"QMK",
"raspberry pi",
"Smith Premier 1 typewriter",
"track pad",
"trackpad",
"ZMK"
] | Image by [fata1err0r81] via
reddit
The most striking feature of the
Tenshi
keyboard has to be those dual track pads. But then you notice that [fata1err0r81] managed to sneak in two extra thumb keys on the left, and that those are tilted for comfort and ease of actuation.
The name Tenshi means ‘angel’ in Japanese, and creator [fata1err0r81] says that the track pads are the halos. Each one slides on a cool 3D-printed track that’s shaped like a half dovetail joint, which
you can see it closer in this picture
.
Tenshi uses a pair of RP2040 Zeros as controllers and runs QMK firmware. The track pads are 40 mm each and come from Cirque. While the Cirques have been integrated into QMK, the pull request for ZMK has yet to be merged in. And about those angled keys — [fata1err0r81] says they tried risers, but the tilting feels like less effort. Makes total sense to me, but then again
I’m used to a whole keyboard full of tilted keys
.
kbplacer Is Your New Best Friend
The finished result. Image by [Adam] via
GitHub
What’s the worst part about building custom mechanical keyboards? Well, it probably depends on the person, but for many, the answer would be placing the elements and routing them in order to create the actual PCB.
[Adam] wrote
kbplacer
, which is an open-source KiCad plugin for designing mechanical keyboards.
kbplacer
does automatic key placing and routing, and works with Keyboard Layout Editor, VIA, QMK, and, experimentally, Ergogen. It also places diodes, and lets the user select the diode position in relation to key position. In addition,
kbplacer
can also be installed with
pip
as a Python package for use with other tools.
If you do want to use it with Ergogen, [Adam]
outlines a workflow example
. Also,
check out how kbplacer works with a whole bunch of popular layouts
.
The Centerfold: Battleship Harleyquin
Image by [hiphasreddit] via
reddit
Harlequin all the things, I say, and bring back the four-color Volkswagen. That’s why I love this here
Battleship Harleyquin
. Don’t miss
the gallery
!
This may look like an Alice, but it’s really the AVA by Sneak Box with GMK Panels key caps. A matching Panels desk mat might have been too much; I think the GMK Slasher looks nice.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Smith Premier 1
Image via
Antique Typewriters
While not quite a 200% keyboard,
the Smith Premier 1
definitely has one in spirit. As you can probably tell, there are separate keys for upper and lower case letters. No key performs a second function, so there is no Shift in sight. I particularly like the double space bars and the fact that the numerals run down both sides.
This machine, produced by the L.C. Smith Gun Co. of Syracuse, New York beginning in the late 1880s was “the most advertised and successful double keyboard typewriter of its time”. It sold for $100, which was about average for a keyboard typewriter at that time, when one could buy a horse-drawn carriage for $60.
While modern typewriters make use of keys attached to type bars with levers, the Smith Premier uses an array of turning rods in order to transfer motion from the key press to the type bar.
Pressing a key turns a particular horizontal rod that runs the length of the machine. At the rear, a small lever connected to the rod pulls down on the type bar above it, striking the paper. Apparently this design was quite smooth and responsive for the typist. Be sure to check out the detailed images on this one.
ICYMI: the Portable Pi 84
Image by [Michael Mayer] via
Printables
Over the years, the idea of ‘portable’ has changed significantly. While we once had luggable computers and chonky laptops, these have given way to sleek machines that look pretty much all alike from the outside.
Some of those laptops of yore had ultra-wide displays and were hinged in the center, leaving a sort of trunk the back. It is these classic computers that inspired [Michael Mayer] to build
the Portable Pi 84
.
Well, those, and in particular, [Michael]’s chosen mechanical keyboard, itself based on
the Happy-Keyboard
from [Luis Alegría]. The 9.3″ Waveshare display serendipitously just fits over the keyboard, and the rest is in that spacious trunk — the Raspberry Pi 4, a UPS hat, a couple of 21700 batteries, and a pair of speakers.
Be sure to check out the printed panels that let the user change up the ports and connection layout, because that’s an incredibly cool idea.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6898160",
"author": "Lola",
"timestamp": "2024-08-09T01:48:37",
"content": "More keyboards? Move on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6954248",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2024-08-10T01:20:31",
"con... | 1,760,371,829.654624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/magnesium-and-copper-makes-an-emergency-flashlight/ | Magnesium And Copper Makes An Emergency Flashlight | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"copper",
"flashlight",
"magnesium"
] | Many of us store a flashlight around the house for use in emergency situations. Usually, regular alkaline batteries are fine for this task, as they’ll last a good few years, and you remember to swap them out from time to time. Alternatively, you can make one that lasts virtually indefinitely in storage, and uses some simple chemistry,
as [JGJMatt] demonstrates.
The flashlight uses 3D printing to create a custom battery using magnesium and copper as the anode and cathode respectively. Copper tape is wound around a rectangular part to create several cathode plates, while magnesium ribbon is affixed to create the anodes. Cotton wool is then stuffed into the 3D-printed battery housing to serve as a storage medium for the electrolyte—in this case, plain tap water.
The custom battery is paired with a simple LED flashlight circuit in its own 3D-printed housing. The idea is that when a blackout strikes, you can assemble the LED flashlight with your custom battery, and then soak it in water. This will activate the battery, producing around 4.5 V and 20 mA to light the LED.
It’s by no means going to be a bright flashlight, and realistically, it’s probably less reliable than just keeping a a regular battery-powered example around. Particularly given the possibility of your homebrew battery corroding over the years unless it’s kept meticulously dry. But that’s not to say that
water-activated batteries don’t have their applications
, and anyway it’s a fun project that shows how simple batteries really are at their basic level. Consider it as a useful teaching project if you have children
interested in science and electricity! | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6868921",
"author": "Rezz",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T12:12:44",
"content": "Yes! I remember as a kid doing projects in school where we ran a clock on a lemon, a LED on a bunch of apples in series, and with one potato we ran a whole ass GLaDOS!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,371,829.608172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/tulip-is-a-micropython-synth-workstation-in-an-esp32/ | Tulip Is A Micropython Synth Workstation, In An ESP32 | Elliot Williams | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"diy",
"ESP32",
"micropython",
"synthesizer"
] | We’re not sure exactly
what
Tulip
is, because it’s so many things all at once. It’s a music-making environment that’s programmable in Python, runs on your big computer or on an ESP32-S3, and comes complete with some nice sounding synth engines, a sequencer, and a drum machine all built in. It’s like your dream late-1980s synthesizer workstation, but running on a dev board that you can get for a song.
And because Tulip is made of open-source software and hardware, you can extend the heck out of it. For instance, as
demonstrated in this video
by [Floyd Steinberg], you can turn it into a fully contained portable device by adding a touchscreen.
That incarnation is available from Makerfabs
, and it’s a bargain, especially considering that
the developer [Brian Whitman] gets some of the proceeds
. Or, because it’s written in portable Python, you can run it on your desktop computer for free.
The most interesting part of Tulip for us, as programmer-musicians, is that it boots up into a Micrypython REPL. This is a synth workstation with a command-line prompt as its primary interface. It has an always-running main loop, and you make music by writing functions that register as callbacks with the main loop. If you were fast, you could probably live-code up something pretty interesting. Or maybe it wants to be extended into a physical musical instrument by taking in triggers from the ESP32’s GPIOs? Oh, and did we mention it sends MIDI out just as happily as it takes it in? What can’t Tulip do?
We’ve seen some
pretty neat minimalist music-making devices
lately, but in a sense Tulip takes the cake: it’s essentially almost entirely
software
. The various hardware incarnations are just possibilities, and because it’s all open and extremely portable, you can freely choose among them. We really like the design and sound of the
AMY software synthesizer engine
that powers the Tulip, and we’re sure that more synthesizer models will be written for it. This is a music project that you want to keep your eyes on in the future. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6877722",
"author": "Matthew Cox",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T16:30:42",
"content": "dasiy seed does all of this, with onboard dsp. it doesnt have BLE, but musicians wouldn’t use ble anyway. oh, and it’s $30",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,371,829.948288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/forget-ship-in-a-bottle-how-about-joule-thief-in-a-fuse-tube/ | Forget Ship In A Bottle, How About Joule Thief In A Fuse Tube? | Donald Papp | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ethernet transformer",
"joule thief",
"led",
"tiny"
] | We love close-up pictures of intricate work, and [w] hits the spot with
a tiny joule thief in a fuse case
(social media post, embedded below) powered by an old coin cell from a watch. It’s so tiny!
Ethernet transformers contain tiny coils.
A joule thief is a sort of minimum-component voltage booster that can suck nearly every last drop of energy from even seemingly-drained batteries, and is probably most famously used to light LEDs from cells that are considered “dead”.
Many joule thief designs feature hand-wound coils, which is great for junk box builds but certainly becomes more of a challenge for a tiny build like this one.
We really like that [w] salvaged a miniscule coil from an
Ethernet transformer
, most of which look like blocky SMD components from the outside but actually contain tiny coils.
The joule thief has been the basis of
plenty of hacks
over the years, and it’s always nice to see new twists on the concept.
Miniature 'Joule thief' in a fuse case powered by a 10 year old watch battery 😈
pic.twitter.com/flJHggDRc8
— w (@WFrwrd)
August 7, 2024 | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6855591",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T05:47:19",
"content": "How efficient is a Joule Thief exactly?Sure, it can run off of a “dead” battery, but the amount of energy remaining in the battery is less than 5-10% extra. If the running efficiency of the circuit is less t... | 1,760,371,830.008888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/the-first-real-sputnik/ | The First Real Sputnik | Al Williams | [
"History",
"Space"
] | [
"Soviet Union",
"space",
"sputnik"
] | Americans certainly remember Sputnik. At a time when the world was larger and scarier, the Soviets had a metal basketball flying over the United States and the rest of the world. It made people nervous, but it was also a tremendous scientific achievement. However, it wasn’t the plan to use it as the
first orbiter
, as [Scott Manley] explains in a recent video that you can see below.
The original design would become Sputnik 3, which, as [Scott] puts it, was the first Soviet satellite that “didn’t suck.” The first one was essentially a stunt, and the second one had an animal payload and thermal problems that killed the canine occupant, [Laika].
Most people don’t remember the later Sputnik missions. However, they did some of the first science in Earth’s orbit. [Scott] has a lot of history related to the early days of space science.
The original Sputnik did little more than
beep
from orbit. We were surprised
the CIA didn’t swipe one of them
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6850755",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2024-08-08T04:21:37",
"content": "Very interesting. History tends to only mention the first Sputnik. Nice to know there were more in the series. One thing….in the video, where were the illustrations ? Where were the pictures ? The lecture o... | 1,760,371,830.063045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/vintage-crystal-radio-draws-the-waves/ | Vintage Crystal Radio Draws The Waves | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"am radio",
"crystal radio",
"germanium diode"
] | The classic crystal radio was an oatmeal box with some wire and a few parts. [Michael Simpson] has something very different. He found an assembled
Philmore “selective” radio kit
. The simple kit had a coil, a germanium diode, and a crystal earphone.
We were sad when [Michael] accidentally burned a part of the radio’s coil. But–well–in the end, it all worked out. We’ll just say that and let you watch for yourself. The radio is simplicity itself, built on a wooden substrate with a very basic coil and capacitor tuned circuit.
The model VC-1000 appears to be about 60 years old, and back then, it cost $5. That doesn’t sound like much, but that’s about $50 in today’s money. Of course, a nice one in mint condition today would probably be worth a good bit more than $50.
[Michael] uses an amplifier to let us listen in, but the original crystal earphone has to have a high impedance to prevent loading the detector. At first, there was an intermittent connection to the radio, perhaps not surprising after 60 years for a $5 radio.
The variable capacitor had metal plates with what looked like mylar spacers. The capacitor plates intermittently shorted, probably due to damage to the spacers. He did take the cap apart and found the root cause of the issue. Watching him reassemble it was oddly calming.
A “new” capacitor finally arrived. After a little surgery, the radio was back to its original condition. It always seems like magic that just some wire, metal plates, and a little glass-like cylinder is all you need to hear signals that fly through the air.
While crystal radios tend to be simple, that’s
not always true
. They can also be
a lot smaller
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6831247",
"author": "victor martelli",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T23:25:48",
"content": "The first thing I recall hearing on my Philmore crystal set was a news report on the day Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. None of that fancy 1N34A stuff, it had a cats whisker and an a... | 1,760,371,830.113157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/floss-weekly-episode-795-liferay-now-were-thinking-with-portals/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 795: Liferay, Now We’re Thinking With Portals | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"java",
"Liferay"
] | This week
Jonathan Bennett
and
Doc Searls
chat with
Olaf Kock
and Dave Nebinger about Liferay! That’s a Java project that started as an implementation of a web portal, and has turned into a very flexible platform for any sort of web application. How has this Open Source project turned into a very successful business? And how is it connected to most iconic children’s educational show of all time? Listen to find out!
https://liferay.dev/
https://liferay-community.slack.com
https://liferay.dev/chat
https://liferay.com
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 | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,830.149306 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/compiling-four-billion-if-statements/ | Compiling Four Billion If Statements | Matthew Carlson | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly code",
"code",
"compiler",
"python"
] | With modern tools, you have to try very hard to do something stupid, because the tools (rightly) recognize you’re doing something stupid. [Andreas Karlsson] can speak to that first hand as
he tried to get four billion if statements to compile
.
You may ask what state space requires four billion comparisons to evaluate? The answer is easy: the range of an unsigned 32-bit integer. The whole endeavor started with a simple idea: what if instead of evaluating whether an integer is even or odd with a modulo or bit mask, you just did an if statement for every case? Small ranges like 0-10 are trivial to write out by hand, but you reach for more automated solutions as you pass 8 bits and move towards 16. [Andreas] wrote some Python that outputs a valid C program with all the comparisons. For 16 bits, the source only clocks in at 130k lines with the executable less than 2 MB.
Of course, scaling to 32 bits is a very different problem. The source file balloons to 330 GB, and most compilers barf at that point. Undeterred, [Andreas] modified the Python to output x86_64 assembly instead of C. Of course, the executable format of Windows (PE) only allows executables up to 4 GB, so a helper program mapped the 40 GB generated executable and jumped into it.
What’s incredible about this whole journey is how performant the program is. Even large numbers complete in a few seconds. Considering that it has to thrash 40 GB of an executable through memory, we can’t help but shake our heads at how even terrible solutions can work. We love seeing someone turn a bad idea
into an interesting one, like
this desoldering setup
. | 44 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6813384",
"author": "0xDEADBEEF",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T18:54:57",
"content": "Older class AMD GPUs with DX10 class hardware can only execute loop with 32 bit counter and don’t have actual jump, only rigid loop and if/else constructs in shader instruction set.So when used for GPG... | 1,760,371,830.292842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/on-carbon-fiber-types-and-their-carcinogenic-risks/ | On Carbon Fiber Types And Their Carcinogenic Risks | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science"
] | [
"carbon fiber",
"carcinogen",
"toxicity"
] | Initially only seeing brief popular use as the filament in incandescent lighting, carbon fibers (CF) experienced a resurgence during the 20th century as part of composite materials that are lighter and stronger than materials like steel and aluminium, for use in aircraft, boats and countless more applications. This rising popularity has also meant that the wider population is now exposed to fragments of CF, both from using CF-based products as well as from mechanically processing CF materials during (hobby) projects.
It is this popularity that has also led to the addition of short CF sections to FDM 3D printing filaments, where they improve the mechanical properties of the printed parts. However, during subsequent mechanical actions such as sanding, grinding, and cutting, CF dust is created and some fraction of these particles are small enough to be respirable. Of these, another fraction will bypass the respiratory system’s dust clearing mechanisms, to end up deep inside the lungs. This raises the question of whether CF fragments can be carcinogenic, much like the once very popular and very infamous
example of asbestos mineral fibers
.
Making Carbon Fiber
The process of producing
carbon fiber
is fairly straightforward, involving a carbon-rich monomer, the precursor, that’s coaxed into becoming a polymer prior to having the non-carbon elements removed from the polymer. This then leaves the pure carbon, which depending on the precursor material will have certain physical and mechanical properties. The two most common precursor materials are
polyacrylonitrile
(PAN, (C
3
H
3
N)
n
) and
pitch
, the latter being a viscoelastic polymer that is either produced from petroleum or derived from plants. Both materials are used in many other applications as well.
In the case of CF production, the polymer is stretched and stabilized as part of pre-treatment, followed by carbonization and finally graphitization. In the case of PAN CF the precursor fiber is stabilized through oxidation while heated, followed by carbonization at much higher temperatures under an inert nitrogen atmosphere before undergoing a final third step called graphitization. This induces a graphite crystalline molecular structure arranged in a turbostratic (shifted planes) fashion and completing the CF which can then be wound on to bobbins and readied for shipping.
Schematic representation of carbon fiber preparation from polyacrylonitrile.
The turbostratic structure of PAN CF contrasts with the mesophase pitch CFs, which form strongly directional (sheet-like) graphitic structures. It is this difference in graphitic structure which ultimately determines the properties of PAN and pitch CF, such as a very high elastic modulus in the case of the latter and high tensile strength for the former. Currently the overwhelming majority of CF produced today is in the form of PAN CF, but pitch- and rayon-based CF are also used where their properties are superior to those of PAN CF.
CF is commonly used to create composites, in which case they are referred to as carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP).
Creating Dust
Example SEM and TEM images of the released particles following the rupture of CFRP cables in the tensile strength test. (Credit: Jing Wang et al, Journal of Nanobiotechnology, 2017)
That CF produces fragments when mechanically or thermally stressed should come as little surprise, with research on the health implications of CF fragments going back far into the 20th century. It is however only much more recently that we have been able to fully study the effects of CF fragments on lung tissue, not only based on empirical studies but also by looking at gene expression changes, DNA breakage, inflammation markers and so on.
Recently there was
a bit of a furore
surrounding the topic of CF fragments resulting from CF-infused FDM 3D printer filaments, with the question being raised of whether CF might be the new asbestos. In the linked article a
2017 paper
by Jing Wang et al. as published in
Journal of Nanobiotechnology
was referenced. The researchers compared the way in which asbestos and carbon fiber fragments formed, as well as in the case of carbon nanotubes (CNTs).
The SEM and TEM shown here on the right comes from a 2015 study by Schlagenhauf et al., in which PAN-based (Teijin IMS60) CFRP cable was exposed to extreme tension until failure. During this CFRP cable failure, many fragments were produced, some of which were deemed respirable according to the WHO criteria (minimum length of 5 µm and maximum diameter of 3 µm). This thus shows that PAN CF can in fact produce respirable fragments, but the pertinent question is whether these fragments are as harmful as pitch CF fragments, or even asbestos fibers.
In an article
response on Twitter
by Josef Prusa, the founder of Prusa 3D – a 3D printer and filament company – made the assertion that PAN-based filaments are in fact quite safe and that studies back this up,
citing a 2019 study
by Dominic Kehren et al. as published in
Aerosol and Air Quality Research
.
PSA🚨 You might have seen the recent videos from
@NathanBuilds
or an article on
@hackaday
about the potential dangers of carbon fibers in filaments, comparing it to asbestos 😳 Given that we offer several filaments containing carbon fibers, I thought many of you would be…
pic.twitter.com/SjTTbqGe4N
— Josef Prusa (@josefprusa)
August 4, 2024
This study by Kehren et al. looked at the amount of respirable fragments produced due to a limited number of mechanical actions. Their conclusion was that pitch CF fragments pose a significant health risk, including lung cancer and mesothelioma, while for PAN CF fragments more research was warranted. Of note here is also that no study was made of the actual effects of these biopersistent carbon fragments on lung tissue. Only assumptions of potential health implications were made based on WHO criteria and the observed fragments.
The advice by Josef Prusa to always wear a respirator while working with CF-based materials would thus seem to be rather prudent advice. Meanwhile we got much more recent studies which actually consider the physiological impact of exposure to PAN-based CF fragments.
In Vitro Lungs
SEM images of the PAN-based CF. (Credit: Friesen, Int J Mol Sci, 2023)
Whereas previous studies would generally use in vivo study models with all of the (ethical) complications which doing so entails, more recently in vitro models have become a viable alternative. In a
2023 study
on PAN CF fragment effects on lung tissue by Alexandra Friesen et al. as published in
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
, a series of in vitro lung tissue models were used to directly study the effects of these fragments, including inflammation, DNA breakage and changes to gene expression.
Schematic representation of the three cell culture models used for CF exposure experi-
ments. (Credit: Friesen et al., Int J Mol Sci, 2023)
These three different human cell culture models were exposed to both mechanically pre-treated (mCF) and thermo-mechanically pretreated (tmCF), using
Teijin UMS40
filament yarn as the source of PAN CF. For both types of CF fragments the filament yarn was cut into 1 cm sections, which for mCF were immediately milled in a planetary ball mill. The tmCF pieces were first exposed to thermal stress in two furnaces (400°C for 4 hours, 800°C for ~30 minutes) in a nitrogen atmosphere before also being milled. The resulting fragments were then aerosolized and the cell culture models exposed.
Schematic representation of the setup for ALI exposure studies. (Credit: Friesen et al., Int J Mol Sci, 2023)
After exposure, the cell cultures were post-incubated for 0, 3 or 23 hours to give an indication of how the exposure affects them over time. During exposure, the mCF showed a WHO fiber fraction of around 20%, whereas for tmCF this was around 9.4%. When analyzing the exposed cultures following post-incubation no significant cytotoxic effects were observed (based on
LDH
release).
Where things got more interesting was in the gene expression profiles, with the tmCF-exposed cultures showing the strongest pro-inflammation, cell-death (apoptosis) and DNA damage response. Interestingly, the triple-culture with fibroblasts present showed a less dramatic picture after 23 hours since mCF exposure, with inflammation transcription factors in particular significantly downregulated, though DNA damage response transcription was still upregulated.
Correspondingly, interleukin-8 (
IL-8
) release increased, though by an extraordinary level in the triple-culture. The exact reason for this and related observations remain to be investigated.
Genotoxicity was assessed after the increased DNA repair transcription, by analyzing DNA breaks. This provided the most interesting results, as it was found that while single-strand breaks were present in the mono- and co-culture samples, the triple-culture showed a significantly higher number of single-strand breaks. This indicates a genotoxic response upon exposure to PAN CF fragments, with the tmCF fragments showing the strongest response, possibly due to the production of more smaller fragments.
Although not as aggressively toxic as the multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) which the authors contrast with, the triple-culture results hint at secondary genotoxicity caused by the pro-inflammatory response.
Actions To Take
Although these in vitro cell culture models are not a perfect representation of human lungs, they do provide us with some of the first concrete evidence of how PAN CF can affect human lung tissue. With a clear inflammatory response that seems to get more significant and more harmful the more complete the cell culture becomes compared to a living lung’s insides, there is at the very least a solid basis to treat any CF dust as potentially carcinogenic.
Similar to asbestos fibers, it is not so much the material itself that causes toxicity and promotes
carcinogenesis
, but rather the body’s response to this foreign matter. Through sustained irritation, inflammation and subsequent DNA damage with possibly flawed repairs, outcomes such as silicosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma become possible.
The reasonable response here thus would be to treat CF no different from asbestos and similar sources of respirable, biopersistent fibers. This means not disturbing them if possible, being wary around damaged CFRP products and always wearing a respirator with asbestos-rated filters when sanding, cutting or otherwise processing CF in any form or shape, making sure to properly ventilate the room.
As with asbestos, it’s quite possible that being exposed will not cause permanent harm, but when the choice is between taking all possible safety precautions now, or finding out that you should have done so in one or two decades, it should hopefully be obvious what the reasonable choice is as we wait for more studies to be performed. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6813525",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T18:57:52",
"content": "Anything fun usually harms you in some way. I will gladly throw away my body to be able to make things out of interesting materials. Therefore, this is a non-issue. Bring back asbestos, lead, and hexava... | 1,760,371,830.210229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/an-esp-makes-a-bicycle-odometer/ | An ESP Makes A Bicycle Odometer | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"cycling",
"ESP8266",
"speedometer"
] | If you’d like to measure the speed of your cycling then it’s easy enough to buy a cycle computer, but as [Clovis Fritzen] has done
it’s also an option to build one
. The result of his work is a smart PCB on which the speed is indicated with a row of LEDs.
The sensor is a straightforward affair, a reed switch with a magnet on a wheel, which is sensed by an ESP8266. The six LEDs are charlieplexeed over three lines. To keep the supply voltage correct for the ESP from the uncertain state of a lithium battery, a small buck-boost module is used. Sadly the code doesn’t seem to make the speed available via the wireless part of the processor, but we’re guessing that a bit of extra software work could fix that.
The result when put in a box on the handlebars, is a smart but simple instrument that would aid any bike.
It’s by no means the first one we’ve brought you
and we doubt it will be the last. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6805705",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T16:14:37",
"content": "Build your own bicycle odometer, practical and not too difficult to start with, great idea :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6806608",
"author": ... | 1,760,371,830.334419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/i2c-for-hackers-the-basics/ | I2C For Hackers: The Basics | Arya Voronova | [
"Featured",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [] | You only really need two data wires to transfer a ton of data. Standards like UART, USB2, I2C, SPI, PS/2, CAN, RS232, SWD (an interface to program MCUs), RS485, DMX, and many others, all are a testament to that. In particular, I2C is such a powerful standard, it’s nigh omnipresent – if you were to somehow develop an allergy to I2C, you would die.
Chances are, whatever device you’re using right now, there’s multiple I2C buses actively involved in you reading this article. Your phone’s touchscreen is likely to use I2C, so is your laptop touchpad, most display standards use I2C, and power management chips are connected over I2C more often than not, so you’re covered even if you’re reading this on a Raspberry Pi! Basically everything “smart” has an I2C port, and if it doesn’t, you can likely imitate it with just two GPIOs.
If you’re building a cool board with a MCU, you should likely plan for having an I2C interface exposed. With it, you can add an LCD screen with a respectable resolution or a LED matrix, or a GPS module, a full-sized keyboard or a touchpad, a gesture sensor, or a 9 degree of freedom IMU – Inertial Measurement Unit, like a accelerometer+compass+gyroscope combination. A small I2C chip can help you get more GPIOs for your MCU or CPU, or a multi-channel motor driver, or a thermal camera, or a heap of flash memory; if you’re adding some sort of cool chip onto your board, it likely has an I2C interface to let you fine-tune its fancy bits.
As usual, you might have heard of I2C, and we sure keep talking about it on Hackaday! There’s a good few long-form articles about it too, both general summaries and cool tech highlights; this article is here to fill into some gaps and make implicit knowledge explicit, making sure you’re not missing out on everything that I2C offers and requires you to know!
Basics And Addressing
A common I2C EEPROM – you likely have a good few such chips within a dozen meter radius. B
y [Raimond Spekking],
CC BY-SA 4.0
I2C is a two-wire interface, and you can put multiple devices on these two wires – thanks to an addressing system and strictly defined hierarchy. One party on the bus is the one always initiating all conversations (old: master, new: controller), and this role is basically always static; usually, it’s your MCU. Your devices can’t send data to your MCU on your own – your MCU has to read data from your devices. As such, you usually can’t make bidirectional effortless communications UART style, unless you dig deep enough to make “multi-master” communications work – which is a cool feature but is often poorly supported.
Instead, if your device is the kind you expect to return important data at random points, there’s often an INT pin – the INT pin is not included in the standard and usually is not required to use any I2C device, but if your IC or breakout exposes the INT pin, you should consider using it, since it will save you a fair bit of CPU time spent polling your device for data.
I2C is wonderful in that you can put a large number of devices on your bus – as long as your communications can physically stay stable. How does it work? Addresses. Devices are pre-programmed with an address you can use to talk to them, and you can query a bus to get a list of addresses that the connected devices respond on. Some devices can only have a single address so you can only add one of them to a – unless you hack it in one of the ways I’ll describe below. Many devices that – for instance, SSD1306 displays have a single pin you can tie high or low, so you can put two of these devices on the same bus, and GPIO expanders tend to have three pins that result in eight possible addresses. Rarely, there are devices that let you reprogram their address with a command, too.
An I2C device’s address is specified in the datasheet. Beware – addresses are 7-bit, and during transfer, the address is shifted and the least significant bit signifies whether a write or read operation is happening; some datasheets will show the address in its proper 7-bit form and some show it already shifted. The way you can notice the latter if you see separate read and write addresses specified – that’s a non-shifted address. A surefire way is to connect your device to any I2C controller and scan for devices, of course. I2C addresses aren’t unique like MAC addresses, so, there’s way more kinds of I2C devices than there are addresses. Here’s a database you can check for fun, but it’s definitely incomplete. 10-bit addresses exist and they do widen the address space comfortably, but they’re still not that popular. Remember – an I2C bus can be scanned, and it’s a pretty wonderful feature – it gives you a sanity check showing that a device is connected, a check that you don’t really get with interfaces like SPI and UART!
An I2C device with a twist. ADDR here is set by connecting it to SCL/SDA/GND/VCC (4 bits with one pin), and, INT pin here is called ALERT.
By [Pradeep717],
CC BY-SA 4.0
How do you avoid address conflicts, in case you’re planning to use multiple devices? Plan ahead, use address changing pins where possible, and use tricks. There are chips that help you put more devices on an I2C bus, for instance, acting like a “gateway” – it’s a saturated market, with Linear Technology taking up a lot of its space with their famously pricy but seriously worthwhile ICs, and they even have Linux drivers! There’s also a large number of tricks – some hackers suggest using SCL lines as chip selects, some suggest swapping SCL and SDA, and some talk about powering devices down selectively; if you’re experiencing address conflicts, you won’t be able to solve this purely in software, but it’s certain you won’t run out of hardware options.
Clocks And Pullups
There’s three standard I2C clock speeds – 100kHz, 400kHz and 1MHz, some hosts and devices can go even higher but it’s not especially prominent. Technically, you can go higher or lower, software I2C implementations often do, but some devices might not like it. Hosts often run at 100kHz, but it’s common that you can up the frequency and switch it into 400kHz; however, there’s hosts that are hardwired to 100kHz operation, like VGA/DVI/HDMI port and desktop/laptop-internal I2C controllers.
This affects, and sometimes, if you have choice between I2C and some other interface, speed might be a deciding factor. For example, take SSD1306 or SH1106 OLED screens – they can be connected through either I2C or SPI, so if you’re using a breakout, it just depends on the way it’s wired. You won’t be able to send data to an I2C screen as quickly over SPI, because of the inherent data cap – they supports SPI links at multiple MHz clock rate, whereas an I2C link will be limited to 400KHz. Want faster screen refresh? You’ll want to wire the screen into SPI mode. Fine with possibly lower FPS? I2C is a valid choice, then.
You need pullups – and you cannot use GPIO-internal pullups like you can do with buttons, they are too high of a value as a rule. A typical range for a pullup is from 1K to 10K – going too high will distort the signal on the bus, and going too low will make the bus impossible to drive. Raspberry Pi boards use 1.8K pullups on the dedicated I2C bus, 4.7K is another popular value, and I’ve had 10K pullups result in unstable communications at higher speeds, so I typically go lower a fair bit, using 1.8K, 4.7K or 5.1K pullups. Mind you, if both your device, so if an I2C sensor breakout is failing to respond when connected to a Raspberry Pi but it really should work, check whether you maybe should desolder or disconnect the pullups on the sensor board itself.
I2C is pretty cool indeed – all those devices I mentioned in the intro, they’re a breakout board and a cable away, often, you don’t even have to solder. Looking to use I2C on your board as an expansion interface, but don’t know what kind of connector to use? It’s pretty simple, I’ve talked about it in my article on I2C ecosystems. One five-pin header and one four-pin JST-SH is all you need, and you can even get vertical JST-SH connectors if space is a concern!
Next time, let’s talk more about I2C devices, the kinds of I2C interfaces you will encounter and all the places they are usually hidden in, types of I2C transfers you can do, and notable implementation nuances, – leaving no stone unturned as usual. | 51 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6801332",
"author": "Zoe",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T14:23:19",
"content": "Advanced i2c might be more interesting, pitfalls/timeouts/errata/clock stretching.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6805585",
"author": "brad",
... | 1,760,371,830.437532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/obscure-sci-fi-robots/ | Obscure Sci Fi Robots | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"movies",
"science fiction"
] | Even if you don’t like to build replicas of movie robots, you can often draw inspiration from cinema. Everyone knows Robby the Robot, Gort, and R2D2. But [Atomic Snack Bar] treats us to some
lesser-known robots from movies
in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. While we are pretty up on movies, we have to admit that the video, which you can see below, has a few we didn’t know about.
The robots are mostly humanoid. The comedy vampire flick from the 1950s could have inspired Robby, who appeared four years later. The exception that proves the rule is the Twonky which was a TV set turned robot turned mind controller.
Kronos wasn’t exactly humanoid but still had a human-like figure. It turns out Kronos has a direct connection to Robby, even though he wasn’t nearly as famous.
A 1939 movie featured a mad scientist with “the robot,” which was sort of a cross between Robby and a Halloween mask. Then there was the water heater robot that appeared in many Republic movies, including Commando Cody, where we remember him.
We’d love to see some replicas of these fine old robots, especially since the
originals
go for a fortune. Or maybe try
a replica movie computer
. | 38 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6793139",
"author": "hammarbytp",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T11:16:34",
"content": "A bit outside the time frame, but you couldn’t beat Dewey and Heuy from Silent Running",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6794893",
"author... | 1,760,371,830.523815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/kali-cyberdeck-looks-the-business/ | Kali Cyberdeck Looks The Business | Dan Maloney | [
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"cyberpunk",
"kali linux",
"NVMe",
"Pi 5",
"ssd"
] | Even though we somewhat uncharacteristically don’t have a cyberdeck contest currently underway, there’s never a bad time to get your [Gibson] on. That’s especially true when fate hands you an enclosure as perfect as the one that inspired
this very compact Kali Linux cyberdeck
.
Now, that’s not to say that we don’t love larger cyberdecks, of course. The ones built into Pelican-style shipping containers are particularly attractive, and it’s hard to argue against their practicality. But when [Hans Jørgen Grimstad], who somehow just sounds like a person who should be building cyberdecks, found a new-old-stock stash of US Army Signal Corps spare parts kits from the 1950s, designation CY-684/GR, he just had to spring into action. After carefully gutting the metal case of the dividers that once protected tubes and other parts, he had some PCB panels made up for the top and bottom. The bottom had enough room for a compact USB keypad, with room left over on the panel for a cooling fan and various connectors. A 7″ HDMI display was added to the panel on the top lid, while a Raspberry Pi 5 with a 500-GB NVMe SSD went below the lower panel. The insides are properly decorated with cyberpunk-esque regalia including a “Self Destruct” button. Sadly, this appears to be unimplemented in the current version, at least for the stated purpose; there’s always hope for version two.
While we love the look and feel of this build and the subtle nods to the cyberpunk aesthetic, it sure seems like you could get some serious work done with a deck like this. Hats off to [Hans] for the build, and here’s hoping he left some of those cool cases for the rest of us. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6787645",
"author": "Popko",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T09:28:02",
"content": "we need hacker cyber deck.normal keyboard, ethernet, long working time and …. normal unix system",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6788686",
"a... | 1,760,371,831.017407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/tiny-trackpad-fits-on-ergonomic-keyboard/ | Tiny Trackpad Fits On Ergonomic Keyboard | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"ergonomic",
"i2c",
"keyboard",
"mouse",
"Pogo pin",
"split keyboard",
"trackpad",
"trrs",
"zsa voyager"
] | Cats are notorious for interrupting workflow. Whether it’s in the kitchen, the garden, or the computer, any feline companion around has a way of getting into mischief in an oftentimes disruptive way. [Robin] has two cats, and while they like to sit on his desk, they have a tendency to interrupt his mouse movements while he’s using his Apple trackpad. Rather than solve the impossible problem of preventing cats from accessing areas they shouldn’t, he set about building
a customized tiny trackpad that integrates with his keyboard
and minimizes the chance of cat interaction.
The keyboard [Robin] uses is a split ergonomic keyboard. While some keyboards like this might use a standard USB connection to join the two halves, the ZSA Voyager uses I2C instead and even breaks the I2C bus out with a pogo pin-compatible connector. [Robin] originally designed a 3D-printed integrated prototype based on a Cirque trackpad that would clip onto the right side of the keyboard and connect at this point using pogo pins, but after realizing that the pogo pin design would be too difficult for other DIYers to recreate eventually settled on tapping into the I2C bus on the keyboard’s connecting cable. This particular keyboard uses
a TRRS connector
to join the two halves, so getting access to I2C at this point was as simple as adding a splitter and plugging in the trackpad.
With this prototype finished, [Robin] has a small trackpad that seamlessly attaches to his ergonomic keyboard, communicates over a standard protocol, and avoids any unwanted cat-mouse action. There’s also
a build guide
if you have the same keyboard and want to try out this build. He does note that using a trackpad this small involves a bit of a learning curve and a larger-than-average amount of configuration, but after he got over those two speed bumps he hasn’t had any problems. If trackpads aren’t your style, though, with some effort you can put a TrackPoint style mouse in your custom mechanical keyboard instead. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783369",
"author": "w0lfwood",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T07:05:56",
"content": "basically no split keyboard uses usb daisy chaining. serial, i2c or BLE are the only supported options in opinsource firmwares",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,371,830.727769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/1000-picks-make-for-a-weird-guitar/ | 1000 Picks Make For A Weird Guitar | Navarre Bartz | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"build",
"guitar",
"guitar pick",
"hurdy gurdy",
"musical instrument",
"string instrument"
] | String instruments have a long history in civilization, helping humans make more complex and beautiful music. We wonder what our forebears would think of this
guitar strummed with 1000 picks
?
[Mattias Krantz] wondered what the best number of picks was to play guitar and took the experiment to its illogical extreme. Starting with zero picks and working up through various 3D printed multi-picks he tests all the feasible combinations of handheld picks.
After that, he switches gears to a fishing rod-actuated system of several picks in a ring. Not pleased with the initial acoustics of the picks in this system, he switched to printing his picks in a more flexible filament to better approximate the characteristics of the human thumb. Finally, he takes us to the undiscovered country of a spinning ring of 1000 picks strumming the underside of the strings and the… interesting acoustic result. As many pointed out in the comments, this blurs the line between a
guitar
and a
hurdy gurdy
.
If you want more melodic musical mischief, perhaps try this
optical guitar pickup
, a
$30 guitar build
, or get fancy with a
3D printed violin
? | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6810092",
"author": "genixia",
"timestamp": "2024-08-07T17:54:18",
"content": "Ha!Maybe you went to the wrong extreme?! Saturday night I tried to get one of the world’s top guitarists to give me his pick. When I asked, he gestured he only had one. I pleaded my case, suggesting t... | 1,760,371,830.680685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/old-time-stereographs-get-new-photos/ | Old Time Stereographs Get New Photos | Al Williams | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"3D image",
"stereoscope"
] | In the late 1800s, the stereograph — sometimes incorrectly called a stereopticon — was a big craze. You’d view two side-by-side images through some lenses and see a three-dimensional image. This, of course, later would morph into View-Masters and, eventually, virtual reality headsets. But if you have an old stereograph, where do you get new images for it? If you are [Engineers Need Art], you write a program to convert MPO files (a common 3D image format) to printable
stereograms
. Interestingly, he used AI to assist in the project and has observations about where it helped and where it didn’t.
The post goes into a lot of detail about how the author experimented with 3D imaging for many years. However, it eventually discusses a MacOS application built with the help of an AI chatbot.
There are a number of subtle issues involved with creating a viewer, and those are — unsurprisingly — the parts where AI needs the most help. You can find the source code for the application on
GitHub
.
Honestly, this made us think of building some 3D camera gear or even adapting the program to a VR headset. On the other hand, reading glasses can make
a cheap stereoscope
. While not pretty, they are more comfortable than
cross-eyed viewing
. | 34 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783309",
"author": "Steven Clark",
"timestamp": "2024-08-06T23:18:05",
"content": "I guess I should someday post on my gizmo: Two EOS-M’s and adapted 28mm FDn lenses running MagicLantern with audio-triggering turned on and a button bridging the mic power contact for both to the out... | 1,760,371,830.798127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/rc-car-gets-force-feedback-steering/ | RC Car Gets Force Feedback Steering | Bryan Cockfield | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"ESP-Now",
"ESP32",
"force feedback",
"load cell",
"R/C car",
"rc",
"remote controlled",
"steering"
] | Remote-controlled cars can get incredibly fast and complex (and expensive) the farther into the hobby you get. So much so that a lot of things that are missing from the experience of driving a real car start to make a meaningful impact. [Indeterminate Design] has a few cars like this which are so fast that it becomes difficult to react to their behavior fast enough through sight alone. To help solve this problem and bridge the gap between the experience of driving a real car and an RC one,
he’s added force feedback steering to the car’s remote control
.
The first thing to tackle is the data throughput required to get a system like this working wirelessly. Relying heavily on the two cores in each of a pair of ESP32s, along with a long-range, high-speed wireless communications protocol called ESP-NOW, enough data from the car can be sent to make this possible but it does rely on precise timing to avoid jitter in the steering wheel. Some filtering is required as well, but with the small size of everything in this build it’s also a challenge not to filter out all of the important high-frequency forces. With the code written, [Indeterminate Design] turned to the 3D printer to build the prototype controller with built-in motors to provide the haptic feedback.
The other half of the project involves sensing the forces in the RC car which will then get sent back to the remote. After experimenting with a mathematical model to avoid having to source expensive parts and finding himself at a deadend with that method, eventually a bi-directional load cell was placed inside the steering mechanism which solved this problem. With all of these pieces working together, [Indeterminate Design] has a working force feedback steering mechanism which allows him to feel bumps, understeer, and other sensations, especially while doing things like drifting or driving through grass, that would be otherwise unavailable to drivers of RC cars. The only thing we could think of to bring this even more into realistic simulation territory would be
to add something like a first-person view like high-speed drones often have
. | 8 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783287",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2024-08-06T22:02:37",
"content": "Cool.In my brief foray into the realm, I found myself to be practically worthless at racing an RC car. I just constantly overreacted. This might have made me passable as a driver (well, actually, based on ... | 1,760,371,830.841286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/a-two-stroke-engine-made-from-scratch-using-basic-hardware-store-parts/ | A Two-Stroke Engine Made From Scratch Using Basic Hardware Store Parts | Maya Posch | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"internal combustion engine",
"machining"
] | A working DIY two-stroke in all of its glory, with the flywheel removed. (Credit: Camden Bowen)
How hard could it to be to build a two-stroke internal combustion engine (ICE) from scratch?
This is a challenge that [Camden Bowen] gladly set for himself
, while foregoing such obvious wastes of time like first doing an in-depth literature study on the topic. That said, he did do some research and made the design in OnShape CAD before making his way over to the hardware store to make some purchases.
As it turns out, you can indeed build a two-stroke engine from scratch, using little more than some metal piping and other parts from the hardware store. You also need a welder and a lathe, with [Camden] using a Vevor mini-lathe that totally puts the ‘precision’ in ‘chatter’. As building an ICE requires a number of relatively basic parts that have to move with very little friction and with tight tolerances, this posed some challenges, but nothing that some DIY spirit can’t fix.
In the case of the very flexible boring bar on the lathe, improvising with some sturdy metal stock welded to a short boring bar resolved that, and precision was achieved. Together with an angle grinder, [Camden] was then able to manufacture the crank case, the cylinder and crank shaft and all the other pieces that make up an ICE. For the carburetor he used a unit off Amazon, which turned out to have the wrong throat size at 19 mm, but a 13 mm version worked. Ultimately, the first ICE constructed this way got destroyed mostly by running it dry and having the starter fluid acting as a solvent, but a full rebuild fixed all the issues.
This second attempt actually ran just fine the first time around, with oil in the crank case so that the poor engine wasn’t running dry any more. With a 40:1 fuel/oil mixture the little engine idles and runs as well as a two-stroke can, belching blue smoke and making a ruckus. This answers the question of whether you can build a two-stroke ICE with basic machining skills and tools, but of course the question that’s now on everyone’s lips is whether a four-stroke one would be nearly as ‘easy’. We wait with bated breath. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783041",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T21:15:29",
"content": "Making your own engine has been a thing for far longer than that.Ford built his first engine out of scrap, and connected it to a light bulb socket to make the spark. That was in 1893.https://www.theh... | 1,760,371,831.078683 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/asteroids-kessler-syndrome-edition/ | Asteroids: Kessler Syndrome Edition | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"arcade",
"Asteroids",
"cabinet",
"debirs",
"Kessler syndrome",
"Mass Effect",
"programming",
"repulsor",
"scientific accuracy",
"space junk"
] | Asteroids
, the late-70s arcade hit, was an immensely popular game. Often those with the simplest premise, while maintaining a fun, lighthearted gameplay have the most cultural impact and longest legacy. But, although it was popular, it doesn’t really meet the high bar of scientific fidelity that some gamers are looking for. That’s why [Attoparsec] built
the Kessler Syndrome Edition of this classic arcade game
.
The Kessler Syndrome is a condition where so much man-made debris piles up in low-Earth orbit that nothing can occupy this orbit without getting damaged or destroyed by the debris, and thus turning into more debris itself in a terrible positive feedback loop. [Attoparsec] brings this idea to
Asteroids
by reprogramming the game so that asteroids can be shot into smaller and smaller pieces but which never disappear, quickly turning the game into a runaway Kessler Syndrome where the chance of survival is extremely limited, and even a destroyed player’s ship turns into space junk as well.
To further the scientific accuracy and improve playability, though, he’s added a repulsor beam mechanism which can push the debris a bit and prolong the player’s life, and also added mass effect reactions so that even shooting bullets repels the player’s ship a bit. The build doesn’t stop with software, either. He also built a custom 70s-style arcade cabinet from the ground to host the game.
Asteroids
is still a popular platform for unique builds like this. Take a look at a
light-vector game using lasers to create the graphics
, or
this tiny version of the game that uses a real CRT
.
Thanks to [smellsofbikes] for the tip! | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783026",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T19:19:27",
"content": "Neat, but it needs a gravity well like Spacewar, that way you can have a chance to win the game.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6783039",
... | 1,760,371,831.125512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/embedded-python-micropython-toolkits/ | Embedded Python: MicroPython Toolkits | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Slider"
] | [
"micropython",
"tutorial"
] | Last time, I talked about how
MicroPython is powerful
and deserving of a place in your toolkit, and it made for a lively discussion. I’m glad to see that overall, MicroPython has indeed been getting the recognition it deserves – I’ve built a large number of wonderful projects with it, and so have people I’ve shown it to!
Sometimes I see newcomers dissatisfied with MicroPython, because the helper tools they initially pick don’t suit it well. For instance, they try and start out with a regular serial terminal application that doesn’t fit the MicroPython constraints, or a general IDE that requires a fair bit of clicking around every time you need to run your code. In particular, I’d make sure that you know your options no matter whether you prefer GUI or commandline – both have seriously nice tools for MicroPython use!
The main problem to be solved with MicroPython is that you have a single serial port that everything happens through – both file upload and also debugging. For ESP8266/32-based boards, it’s a physical serial port, and for chips like RP2040 and ESP32-S* where a hardware USB peripheral is available, it’s a virtual one – which makes things harder because the virtual port might get re-enumerated every now and then, possibly surprising your terminal application. If you want to upload a program of yours, you need to free up the serial port, and to see the program’s output, you will need to reopen that port immediately after – not a convenient thing to do if you’re using something like PuTTy.
So, using MicroPython-friendly software is a must for a comfortable hacking experience. What are your options?
Power Of Thonny And Friends
Whether you’re primarily a GUI user, or you’re teaching someone that is, Thonny is undoubtedly number one in MicroPython world – it’s an IDE developed with Python in mind, and it has seriously impressive MicroPython integrations. Your board’s terminal is being managed as if effortlessly in the background – just open your files in different tabs as you normally do, and press the Run button sometimes.
Expecting more? There is more – basically anything MicroPython adjacent you’d do from commandline, is present in Thonny in a comfortable way. For instance, are you working with an ESP32 board that doesn’t yet have a MicroPython image in its flash? Lucky you, there’s an esptool integration that lets you flash an image into your MCU through a dialog box. Want debugging? There’s single-step debugging that works in an intuitive user-friendly way – you’d find this pretty hard to happen from console apart from specially engineered print statements, but Thonny delivers.
Not looking to pick a new IDE? There are
VSCode extensions
. Arduino IDE more your jam? Yeah, well, remember how
Arduino has a MicroPython IDE now
? It’s decently usable, so if you got used to the Arduino keybindings, you might like it. More of a commandline user? You’ve got a good few options, then, and they are similarly powerful.
Mpremote And Ampy
Rather use the terminal? Maybe IDEs are too clunky for you and the terminal window’s cleanliness provides for a distraction-free environment you can only dream about, maybe it’s just the thing you’ve used your entire life, or maybe you’re even debugging a MicroPython device over an SSH connection?
mpremote
is the tool to save you.
mpremote
is part of the MicroPython project, it’s developed alongside the project, and it’s got plenty of killer features to show for it. It includes an “inline” terminal emulator that lets you access REPL effortlessly to see your code’s results and interact with the variables afterwards, correctly managing things like Ctrl+C so you can interrupt your code if needed and still poke at its variables in the REPL. You can also explore the MicroPython filesystem Linux-style with ease, and, most importantly, you can mount your current directory up to it with
mpremote mount
, and
mpremote
will send files to your board as the on-MCU interpreter requests them.
Overall,
mpremote
offers a seriously comfortable environment for iterating on MicroPython code lightning quick. Without it, you would need to reopen the serial port each time you need to upload a new file – here, you can just chain a bunch of commands together and
mpremote
will dutifully do the serial port juggling needed to get you there.
In addition to that, you can see that
mpremote
is designed to help you with awkward-to-do things you didn’t know you needed to do. Need to sync your board’s RTC time with your computer’s time? That’s a
mpremote rtc
command away. Want to access the MicroPython package manager? That’s
mpremote mip
. Your board needs to switch into bootloader mode? No need to fiddle with buttons, just use
mpremote bootloader
. In short,
mpremote
is a MicroPython powerhouse for everyone who’s most comfortable in a terminal window.
There is an alternative here, too:
ampy
, a personal choice of mine, which I use combined with
screen
.
Ampy
is a tool initially designed by Adafruit, and it’s more barebones – I like it because I have control of what’s happening when I issue a command to a software, keeping my MicroPython devices in a known state at all times. On the other hand, it does require jugging the serial port on your own, so when I need to update my code, I exit
screen
, run the
ampy
command, then re-enter
screen
again. I regularly work with large MicroPython files that also import static library files that don’t change for months, however, so having control of the upload process seems to save me a fair bit of time.
There are caveats, of course – the major one is, when using
screen
in serial terminal mode, you need to press `Ctrl+A k y` (kill window) instead of `Ctrl+A d` to detach the screen session. If you do the detach instead, as you might be used to with
screen
, the serial port will remain open until you unplug the device or kill the screen process, and
ampy
will fail mysteriously.
Summary
I hope this toolkit overview helps you make sure you’re using exactly the kind of MicroPython environment that works for you – while compiling it, I’ve learned some nuances myself! Next time, we shall talk about CircuitPython – a MicroPython fork that has grown into a contender in the educational Python space, and how it is different from MicroPython in a number of crucial ways you deserve to know about. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6782996",
"author": "Anon python user",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T17:20:31",
"content": "I use pycopy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6783000",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T17:36:37",
"content": "I ju... | 1,760,371,831.190872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/serve-your-next-website-with-quickbasic/ | Serve Your Next Website With QuickBasic | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"quickbasic"
] | You can only imagine that when they made Star Trek back in the 1960s, they would have laughed if anyone suggested they’d still be making the show nearly six decades later. If you told [John Kemeny] at Dartmouth back in 1964 that people would be serving websites in Basic in the year 2024, he’d probably be amazed after you explained what a website was. But that’s what [Jamonholmgren]
is doing
.
[Jamon] wrote his first Basic program when he was 12, which was a common thing to do. Recently, he decided to build and deploy a website using Basic, and so this project, qub (pronounced like cube), was born. The web server is modified from an existing source but adds features and many new features are planned.
The main program essentially creates a starter set of HTML and related files for the server. Honestly, we don’t recommend a server in Basic, but it is fun to see Basic — granted a modern version of QuickBasic — being up to the task.
It would probably be smarter to dedicate
an old phone to the task
. Or you could stand up an old
DOS computer
, but that’s probably not any better. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6782988",
"author": "Johannes Burgel",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T16:57:16",
"content": "I wonder how much work it would have been to get QB64 working as a CGI interpreter. Not sure why so many reimplementations of a HTTP server are necessary.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,831.781507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/radio-apocalypse-hfgcs-the-backup-plan-for-doomsday/ | Radio Apocalypse: HFGCS, The Backup Plan For Doomsday | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [] | To the extent that you have an opinion on something like high-frequency (HF) radio, you probably associate it with amateur radio operators, hunched over their gear late at night as they try to make contact with a random stranger across the globe to talk about the fact that they’re both doing the same thing at the same time. In a world where you can reach out to almost anyone else in an instant using flashy apps on the Internet, HF radio’s reputation as somewhat old and fuddy is well-earned.
Like the general population, modern militaries have largely switched to digital networks and satellite links, using them to coordinate and command their strategic forces on a global level. But while military nets are designed to be resilient to attack, there’s only so much damage they can absorb before becoming degraded to the point of uselessness. A backup plan makes good military sense, and the properties of radio waves between 3 MHz and 30 MHz, especially the ability to bounce off the ionosphere, make HF radio a perfect fit.
The United States Strategic Forces Command, essentially the people who “push the button” that starts a Very Bad Day™, built their backup plan around the unique properties of HF radio. Its current incarnation is called the High-Frequency Global Communications System, or
HFGCS
. As the hams like to say, “When all else fails, there’s radio,” and HFGCS takes advantage of that to make sure the end of the world can be conducted in an orderly fashion.
Bombs Away LeMay
The US Air Force has a long history radio, dating back to when airplanes were little more than wood and canvas contraptions. Radio, especially HF radio, played a huge role in prosecuting World War II, changing the face of warfare forever. As the Cold War years set in and strategic forces became increasingly important, HF radio systems continued to play a role. One of the biggest boosters of HF radio for coordinating strategic air forces was none other than General Curtis LeMay, who as an enthusiastic amateur radio operator well knew the power of HF radio to communicate long distances, particularly using single-sideband (SSB) modulation.
Despite this history, HFGCS itself is relatively new. It only came onto the scene in 1992, when post-Cold War military restructuring combined two earlier Air Force HF networks into the Global High-Frequency System. GHFS would undergo equipment upgrades in 2002 and get an extra letter in its rearranged acronym, becoming HFGCS. While HFGCS may have started out as the Air Force’s baby, its design is open and flexible enough that it can be used by Air Force, Army, and Navy assets anywhere in the world around the clock.
The primary fixed infrastructure of HFGCS is a network of thirteen ground stations scattered across the United States and its territories as well as allied countries around the world. The HFGCS ground stations are linked together through a combination of landlines and satellite stations to act as a unified network. Almost all of the stations on the network are “lights out” stations that are controlled remotely. The primary control point for the entire system is located at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, DC, with a backup location deep in the interior of the continent at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska. Each of these two stations is manned around the clock and can control the entire network.
It’s obviously difficult to get a lot of technical detail on what sort of gear is being used at each HFGCS station, but there’s one aspect of the system that’s hard to keep from public scrutiny: the antennas.
The Offutt AFB transmitter station
provides a pretty good look at things, sitting as it does in the middle of a cornfield off a public road in Elkhorn, Nebraska. There sprouts a sprawling farm of directional and omnidirectional antennas, including a collection of massive
AS-3482/GRC
log periodic arrays. These giants have twin towers that support a rotating platform with three support booms for the radiation array. A balun at the base matches the antenna to the feedline, which is a 50-ohm hardline coax measuring a whopping 3-1/8″ (80 mm) diameter. HFGCS stations also have receive capability, of course, but given the 25,000-watt power rating on these antennas, the receivers are generally not located with the transmitters. In the case of the Offutt AFB station, the receivers are located 28 miles (45 km) away
outside of Scribner, Nebraska
.
Interesting crop. One of the many AS-3482/GRC log-periodic antennas at the HFGCS transmit antenna farm outside Offut AFB in Nebraska. Source:
Google
Fine Business, Old Minuteman
The ability of HF radio to make contacts across the globe with no fixed infrastructure between contact points is what makes it perfect for backup communications with strategic forces. That’s not to say that it’s foolproof, of course; there certainly are
ways to interfere with the ionospheric skip
that it depends on, which probably plays a large part in why HFGCS is only a backup, but things have to have gone badly wrong for that to be the case.
Built to last. Blast cover for HFGCS transmit antenna silo at a Minuteman LCC. The white cone in the background is a hardened radome for the UHF satellite link. Source:
Library of Congress
.
Ironically, one of the ways for things to go wrong enough to bump HFGCS up from backup status is an all-out nuclear exchange, which would no doubt involve the 450-odd Minuteman III ICBMs that comprise one of the legs of the United States’ nuclear triad. The Minuteman missiles are kept at the ready in 45 missile alert facilities (MAFs) scattered across the American prairie. Each MAF is comprised of ten launch facilities, each storing one LGM-30 missile in an underground silo, and a separate launch control center, or LCC. The LCC is the underground bunker crewed by two Air Force officers who bear the responsibility of turning the keys that launch their flight of missiles, should it be so ordered.
But to perform that final official act of their careers, those officers have to get the coded order from US Strategic Command, typically over one of the primary secure networks. Should those links fail, though, each LCC is equipped with an HFGCS link. The fact that each LCC is no doubt slated to receive a nasty package on the appointed day means that standard HF antennas, which tend to be quite large, are far too exposed to survive and perform their backup duties. So the LCCs sport hidden HFGCS antennas that can be deployed on command.
On the transmit side, each squadron LCC has a 50′ (15 meter) deep reinforced concrete silo topped by an extremely sturdy blast door that’s flush to the ground, for maximum resistance to nearby blast waves. Upon command, the door opens to allow a telescopic HF antenna to extend up to 120′ (36 meters) above the ground. The reality, though, is that the need to transmit on HFGCS is far less important than being able to receive. That’s why the receiving antenna arrangement is a bit more complicated.
The Bravo-01 LCC for the 319th Missile Squadron. It’s not entirely clear if Minuteman LCCs still have the deployable antennas activated, but the silo for the receive antenna is clearly visible in the northeast corner below the freestanding red-on-white tower. The telescoping transmit antenna silo is the ominous bullseye in the southwest section of the facility. Source:
Google Maps
To make sure the LCC is always ready to receive and act on an Emergency Alert Message (EAM), each facility has a hardened HFGCS receive antenna array. Like the transmitting antenna, these are housed in underground silos. Each silo has six monopole steel antennas, one of which is always deployed. The five others are kept in reserve; should the main antenna get knocked down, an explosive charge at the bottom of the antenna’s tube detonates, extending a fresh antenna above the ground.
Mainsail, Mainsail
Given the highly sensitive nature of the traffic on a radio network charged in part with ending the world, you’d think that messages would be digitally encrypted and completely useless to try snooping in on. And while it’s true that there are encrypted digital modes that use HFGCS, a surprising amount of traffic is just plain old voice messages transmitted in the open. While it remains true that nothing punches through like good old Morse code on continuous wave (CW), SSB voice is far more efficient. The video below shows British ham M0SZT monitoring HFGCS from an adorable shepherd’s camp somewhere in the Peak’s District, not far from the RAF Croughton HFGCS site:
That’s not to say that you’d be able to understand the messages, the bulk of which is a block of 30 numbers and letters, with the former stated as the standard NATO phonetic alphabet. Unless you have the decryption code, the message will read as gibberish. In fact, you can’t even derive any useful information from the length of the message, since it’s always 30 characters long. About the only metadata you could potentially glean would be the station code names embedded in the message, but since those are randomly changed every day, there’s not much point.
Still, there’s plenty to be gained from monitoring HFGCS, especially in times of geopolitical tumult. If the balloon goes up, so to speak, then traffic on HFGCS will undoubtedly increase markedly, as it will on its Russian counterpart, colloquially known as
Bear Net
to the US military. It’ll make for interesting listening — at least for a few minutes. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6782952",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T14:30:23",
"content": "There are situations where even the backup failsSo then it’s either get shot or turnkeyshttps://youtu.be/5bF1_PGMAj0?si=H8LAp-V_vshmdDw2",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,371,831.26507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/proof-that-find-mkdir-are-turing-complete/ | Proof Thatfind+mkdirAre Turing-Complete | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"gnu",
"Tag System",
"turing complete"
] | Data manipulation is at the heart of computation, and a system is said to be Turing-complete if it can be configured to manipulate data in a way that makes implementing arbitrary computation possible. [Keigo Oka]
shared a proof
that
find
and
mkdir
together are Turing-complete, which is to say, a system with only GNU’s
find
and
mkdir
has access to enough functionality to satisfy the requirements of Turing completeness, which ignores questions of efficiency or speed.
[Keigo Oka]’s first attempt at a proof worked to implement
Rule 110
, an elementary cellular automata configuration that has been shown to be Turing-complete, or ‘universal’, but has been updated to implement a
tag system
as it’s proof, and you can
see it in action for yourself
.
Seeing basic utilities leveraged in such a way illustrates how computation is all around us, and not always in expected places. We’ve also seen
Turing-complete origami
and
computation in cellular automata
. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6782905",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T11:21:36",
"content": "But will it run Doom?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6782906",
"author": "Weasel",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T11:25:21",
"content": "So … how ... | 1,760,371,831.320249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/at-last-chumby-is-ready/ | At Last, Chumby Is Ready | Matthew Carlson | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"chumby",
"devicetree",
"linux"
] | It has been two years, but the slow and steady progress that [Doug Brown] has been making towards bringing a modern Linux kernel to the Chumby has approached the point that it could be called done. In
his final blog post of the series,
[Doug] walks through the highs and lows of the whole process.
Many of the changes [Doug] and others have made are already upstream in the Linux mainline. However, some will likely remain in private branches for a few reasons that [Doug] gets into. The blog post covers every commit needed to turn a Chumby or other Marvell ARMADA-powered widget into a working device. At the end of the day, what does [Doug] have to show? He can turn it on, see a boot logo, and then see an indefinite white screen. While underwhelming to most of the world, an X server is coming up, Wi-fi is online, the time syncs from an NTP server, and the touchscreen is ready to be tapped. A white screen, yes, but a white screen of potential. [Doug] has to decide what to launch after boot.
However, the future of the Chumby and other older devices is still on the chopping block of progress. Compiler writers want to drop support for platforms that nobody uses anymore, and the Chumby is ARMv5. With many changes destined to languish, [Doug] still considers it a huge success, and we do too. The whole series represents a journey with beautiful lessons about the power of the Linux device tree, making the dark and scary world of Linux kernel drivers seem a little more approachable.
We’ve covered
the first post
and
when graphics started coming along
. We salute the mighty Chumby and the idea it stood for. Of course, the idea of a handy screen displaying information is still alive and well.
This handy e-paper HomeAssistant display
is just one of many examples. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6782923",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2024-08-05T12:12:14",
"content": "Whatever it is, it should have an LCARS interface.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6783103",
"author": "Handymanjam",
"timestamp... | 1,760,371,831.442245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/tickets-for-supercon-2024-go-on-sale-now/ | Tickets For Supercon 2024 Go On Sale Now! | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"2024 Hackaday Superconference",
"Supercon 2024"
] | Tickets for the 2024 Hackaday Supercon are on sale now
! Go and get yours while they’re still hot. True-Believer Tickets are half-price at $148 (plus fees), and when that pile of 100 is gone, regular admission is $296 (plus fees).
Come join us on November 1st-3rd in sunny Pasadena, CA, for three days of talks, demos, badge hacking, workshops, and the sort of miscellaneous hardware shenanigans that make Hackaday Hackaday! If you’ve never been to a Supercon, now is the best time to check that off your bucket list. And if you’re a seven-time veteran, we’re stoked to see you again. Supercon is like a year’s worth of posts in one weekend. You don’t want to miss it.
Friday, November 1st, is our chill-out day. You can roll in as soon as the doors open in the morning, get your badge and some bagels, and get down to hacking. Or you can start socializing early. Or, as it almost always happens, both at once. We’ll have food and music and even a few workshops, but for the most part, Fridays are what you all make of them. And we love it that way.
Talks start up on Saturday on both stages, along with the soldering contest and an alley full of hackers. We’ll close out the evening with a special celebration, but more on that in a minute.
On Sunday, in addition to the usual slate of talks, we’ve set aside a big block of time for Lightning Talks. These are seven-minute quickies where you get to tell the bigger Hackaday community what you’re up to. A short talk like this forces you to condense the story down to its essence while giving tons of people their fifteen minutes of fame in half the time!
If you’ve got a Lightning Talk that you’d like to present, let us know
! We’ll try to fit in everyone we can.
Wrapping up Sunday evening, we’ll give you a chance to show off whatever badge hacks you’ve been working on over the weekend. We love the badge hacking demo because it allows us to see a wide (and wild) range of projects, all of which were put together in record time. Whether funny, flashy, or phenomenal, we want to see what you’ve been up to.
Supercon Add-Ons
It’s still way too early to let the badge cat out of the bag, but we’ll give you a clue. This year centers around the
shitty
Supercon Add-On
. We want you to make your own fun badgelets to show off and share, so we’re offering three special prizes and much limited-edition schwag for honorable mentions.
DeLorean, by [realanimationxp]
But more than a contest, designing your own Supercon Add-On is an invitation to get creative, get clever, or even just to get your first-ever PCB project made. There’s nothing simpler than an SAO – you’re talking six pins, a small board, and the rest is up to you. With a snazzy board outline and some good artwork, even a couple of LEDs can make a weekend’s work look like a million dollars.
Or, if you want to make it more interesting, the six-pin SAO standard has both I2C lines and a pair of GPIO pins, and we don’t see those taken advantage of nearly enough in the wild. If you’re already onto your second or third SAO design, why don’t you pay attention to the connectivity in this design?
Next week, we’ll release the full specs, rules, and regulations. Until then, start brainstorming up six-pin SAO designs. Again, we’re not saying that you’ll
need
to make use of the I2C pins, but we’re saying that we’ll be running some tutorial articles about SAO design in the very near future. Here’s [Arya]’s
SAO design primer from two Supercons past
if you want to get a head start.
Come Join Us!
If you are Hackaday, you really want to make it to Supercon if you can, and we want to see you there. You’re all a great crowd, and the small size and relaxed venue makes for about the highest signal-to-noise ratio around! We’ll be releasing the schedule as it firms up over the next couple weeks, and until then, you
have a chance to get a discount ticket if you move quickly
. Stay tuned, and act fast! | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783282",
"author": "g2-c133535210f76855393e13f95c9684ee",
"timestamp": "2024-08-06T21:40:40",
"content": "Does anybody know when the full price tickets go on sale, or are all the tickets gone now? I can only see the cheap tickets and they’re sold out",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,831.391498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/benchy-in-a-bottle/ | Benchy In A Bottle | Matthew Carlson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"Benchy",
"resin"
] | Making something enjoyable often requires a clever trick. It could be a way to cut something funny or abuse some peripheral in a way it was never designed for. Especially good tricks have a funny way of coming up again and again. [DERAILED3D] put a 3d printed benchy in a bottle with one of the best tricks 3d printing has.
The trick is stopping the print part way through and tweaking it. You can
add manual supports
or
throw in some PTFE beads to make a generator
. The benchy isn’t the print being paused; the bottle is. The benchy is a standard print, and the bottle is clear resin. Once halfway through, they paused the print, and the benchy was left suspended in the bottle with a bit of wire. Of course, [DERAILED3D] moved quickly as they risked a layer line forming on the delicate resin after a minute or two of pausing. The difficulty and mess of tweaking a gooey half-finished resin print is likely why we haven’t seen many attempts at playing with the trick, but we look forward to more clever hacks as it gets easier.
The real magic is in the post-processing of the bottle to make it look as much like glass as possible. It’s a clever modern twist on the old ship in the bottle that we love. Video after the break. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783210",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2024-08-06T15:42:35",
"content": "Just print benchy using flexible filament and then squish it in using some piston that roughly resembles tampon applicator (or bottle corking press).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,371,831.557065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/06/hack-on-self-sense-of-time/ | Hack On Self: Sense Of Time | Arya Voronova | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Slider",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"ADHD",
"sense of time",
"watch",
"wearable"
] | Every now and then, a commercial product aims to help you in your life journey, in a novel way, making your life better through its presence. Over the years, I’ve been disappointed by such products far more often than I have been reassured, seeing each one of them rendered unimaginative and purposeless sometimes even despite the creator’s best intentions. The pressures of a commercial market will choke you out without remorse, metal fingers firmly placed on your neck, tightening with every move that doesn’t promise profit, and letting money cloud your project’s vision. I believe that real answers can only come from within hacker communities, and as we explore, you might come to see it the same way.
This is the tip of the iceberg of a decade-long project that I hope to demonstrate in a year or two. I’d like to start talking about that project now, since it’s pretty extensive; the overall goal is about using computers to help with human condition, on a personal level. There’s a lot of talk about computers integrating into our lives – even more if you dare consult old sci-fi, much of my inspiration.
Tackling a gigantic problem often means cutting it down into smaller chunks, though, so here’s a small sub-problem I’ve been working on, for years now, on and off: Can you use computers to modify your sense of time?
The Time Question
Ever start your day thinking you will hack on a project, and in the evening, realize you’ve instead done something else entirely? Sometimes you find something cool while distracted, and sometimes, getting distracted comes to haunt you.
maybe one day I will assemble these
This has been a staple of my days as long as I remember my conscious life, and at some point, I started wondering just how much this could be modified. Do you remember one particular project we’ve seen a couple people build,
a vibration-based compass build that gives you a sense of where north is
? Ironically, I have made PCBs for building my own version of this project – they were designed in 2022, I finally ordered them last year in 2023, and I haven’t gotten to assemble them still.
So, you can give yourself a sense of “where’s north” – something that humans are missing, generally. Technically, humans are also missing a source of time, which is why we always supplemented it with wrist-worn watches and pocket clocks. Having compared my day plans to what actually happens on that day for two decades, I can see that I need something more than that. It’s traditionally been common for me to mis-estimate when exactly I could get something done – I would give an estimate that felt correct, then start doing part of the task and forget about the flow of time, minutes passing by me.
So, there are two problems here. One of them is that, despite having been alive for a fair bit of time, my database of “how much it takes for me to do X” is inaccurate. This makes sense: keeping such references is a conscious effort that might not extend to, and day-to-day situations are highly variable. Still, if someone is relying on me, it would be nice to be aware enough to at least notify that person, and to learn to plan ahead. Another is that it’s easy for me to get and forget about the flow of time. It sure helps me concentrate on articles, but it doesn’t help when someone is waiting on me.
At some point, this started to screw with my sense of self. Really, just how much can you rely on some aspects of your mind if it continuously fails you and people you care about, in a manner that you are expected to “just figure out already”? You have to learn to distrust certain basic aspects of your cognitive processes; again and again, something as “simple” as time planning is weighted down by all the instance of letting people down with zero intention to do so. This is a pretty uncomfortable position to be in, if being honest with yourself is a priority of yours. Unsurprisingly, it also made things pretty difficult when talking about employment or real-life obligations. Something had to be done.
Well, could you give yourself a sense of time, say, with vibromotors? Apparently, you can, but there’s nuance to it. Let me tell you about two projects I’ve built to attempt this, and some basic concepts I learned about human-computer integration.
The Not-A-Bomb Wearable
My first project in this vein grew out of a purpose-less experiment, funnily enough:
a project
literally called I Made This And I Don’t Know Why – a simple board I built to make use of seven-segment displays our hackerspace had a dozen of. ESP8266, dynamic indication with a shift register, and MicroPython – writing firmware for this board was a nice challenge in writing non-blocking code and finding portions of code to optimize. Soon, the board found a good few purposes – among them, a time tracker.
I decided to solve a simple problem – building a mental database on the amount of time does it take me to get from “start” to “finish” for an arbitrary task. Tracking that was tricky – say, I want to check the length of a bicycle ride from my house to a certain point. I’d need to check my phone at the exact time when I left the house, keep that time in mind, and then, once I’ve arrived to my destination, check again. Both of these require some time to execute and some memory, so, I decided to make an automatic countdown timer. Glancing at my wrist felt significantly easier, so, after some cutting, sewing, and hotglue work, I made one of the IMTAIDKW boards into an oversized watch, and used one of my universal power source designs to power it from a 18650.
There were some setbacks during – notably, this countdown timer required me to patch MicroPython’s ESP8266 port, due to an obscure bug making the
time.time()
function seriously imprecise; an inaccurate countdown timer wasn’t in my plan. Still, it was a nice experiment – relying on something that you build yourself is always fun, and I’ve added features like adjusting the start time. It was also automatic enough to be useful, with digits large enough and bright enough to be noticeable, still, making for an unobtrusive device, and pretty cool to wear.
The main problem was that I forgot to put it on and start the countdown. It was a purpose-built device, and I only needed it a couple times a day at its very most, so most of the time it stayed off my wrist, and I would even lose track of it sometimes. Another problem was remembering to check the time of arrival, unsurprisingly – looking at my wrist was easy enough, so most of the time I could notice the time difference and go “oh interesting”, but even then, it was easy to forget. The last, main problem, was actually keeping a mental database – turns out that when you need to remember pretty similar datapoints, it’s easy to confuse them. Does it normally take me 15 minutes to get to the city center, or was it the electronics store? This turned out to be pretty easy to mix up.
The lessons from this iteration: decreasing resistance to use is good, collecting data is good, and, you should automate the data collection process if at all possible. I wouldn’t stop here, of course – some time later, I found an even nicer wristband to hack on.
Unconventional Battery Upgrades
The TTGO (or was it Lilygo?) T-Wristband is a fun product – with an ESP32 at its heart, a good few sensors, a 160 x 80 IPS LCD, and a single capacitive button. It’s an old device by now, but when I bought it in the beginning of 2020, it was fun to hack on, and
hack it I did,
making it
run MicroPython.
I didn’t know what exactly to do with it, but soon I remembered about the “sense of time” project. At the time, I wanted to tap into my life minute-by-minute and see if I could build a device able to help me notice when I’m distracted. The minimum viable prototype idea was very simple – adding a vibromotor to the watch, then having it vibrate exactly every minute, having it be an “am I currently spending my time correctly” reminder.
The problem was, by the time I came up with that, a good few months passed where the wristband was sitting in a drawer with the battery fully discharged – hurting its capacity a bit, which, at 80 mAh, was already not great. Also, I wanted to be able to keep adding features to the code without carefully balancing sleep modes or having to charge my watch multiple times throughout the day; I just wanted to run code and charge the battery every night at most. So, it got a battery upgrade – a Samsung phone battery glued to, ahem, yet another wristband, and a devboard with vibromotor driver taped on top. After the hardware tweaks,
the code itself
was seriously easy to write.
despite the added bulk, it was surprisingly fun to wear. at some points, I even added features like remote PC control and a gesture interface!
Whenever I’d notice it vibrating, I’d ask myself – “am I doing the right thing right now?” And, to my surprise, it did catch some distraction moments every now and then, for sure! Oftentimes, I wasn’t doing the right thing, in one way or another, and a reminder about being supposed to do something else was quite welcome. Other times, when I was focused on something, the “am I doing the right thing” question would get a “yes” in my mind, and, it felt good to think that.
It wasn’t as comfortable in times when I wasn’t expecting me to be on top of things – while I’d be resting, the every-minute feedback of the watch would feel annoying and needlessly distracting; soon, I implemented a vibration toggle with the capacitive button, and a few other things. My guess is that the annoyance factor and generally getting used to the vibrations has made me less sensitive to the vibromotor’s signal, which in turn made the wearable less effective at its goal. Apart from that, the battery wire kept breaking every so often, taking the watch out of commission, which made it hard to start properly relying on it.
On the upside –
it
turned
out
that
this idea has been floating in collective unconscious for a while now, to the point that it was the point of a watch worn by one of the characters in Mr. Robot, and a relatable one at that. It’s pretty good to get external independent confirmation that an idea of yours has merit! In particular, the video above reminds me a lot of my experiences – I spent less time on my phone and generally less time doing things I didn’t want to do, I was getting up and walking around more often, and, I had add a small feature that mutes the watch when I go to sleep.
It All Worked Out Despite The Plan
Lessons here? If you can hook your device’s signals into producing a thought in your brain, that helps massively – checking for “am I doing the right thing” every minute came to me naturally, and a lot quicker than I expected it to. Context sensitivity is a must for self-help devices- the wearable would’ve had been way more effective if I had some ways to detect that I’m likely to be distracted, as opposed to having it vibrate indiscriminately every minute. In general, make sure your device is not annoying to you in any bad way – it’s supposed to be helping you, so any reason you’re annoyed by it, is a problem for the device’s primary usefulness.
On the hardware side, make your device reliable – building habits takes an ongoing effort, and you want it to be consistent. At the same time, consider building your device as a playground for developing your idea further; this could require a bigger battery, or more space inside the case, or an expansion socket. Reality is to plans what pure oxygen is to paper, and getting things done is typically way more important than getting them right the first time. Last but by no means least, wires suck –
I’ve been saying this
, and I will repeat that as much as needed.
In the end, I have mostly solved my original problem by tweaking my personal approach to time over the years, learning to over-estimate estimates, and ultimately putting myself in less situation where I am under time pressure – it turned out that was the bigger problem. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve noticed that sooner, but, the devices I’ve built certainly have helped. Today, I still have some sense-of-time solutions I rely on, but they are new, designed with these lessons in mind, and they’re a part of a multi-faceted system that I can only tell you about in the next articles – stay tuned! | 49 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6783202",
"author": "Student",
"timestamp": "2024-08-06T14:58:27",
"content": "Vibrating metronome watches are also good for this off the shelf – As hardware anyway, the nice cheap Soundbrenner Pulse has terrible software + will benefit from reverse engineering",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,831.739124 |
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