url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173 values | publish_date stringclasses 1 value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/mini-3d-printed-press-is-sure-to-make-an-impression/ | Mini 3D-Printed Press Is Sure To Make An Impression | Kristina Panos | [
"Art",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"printing press",
"relief printing",
"spring-loaded"
] | Making stamps out of potatoes that have been cut in half is always a fun activity with the kids. But if you’ve got a 3D printer, you could really step up your printing game by building
a mini relief printing press
.
To create the gear bed/rack, [Kevr102] used a Fusion 360 add-in called GF Gear Generator. At first this was the most finicky part of the process, but then it was time to design the roller gears. However, [Kevr102] got through it with some clever thinking and a little bit of good, old-fashioned eyeballing.
Per [Kevr102], this press is aimed at the younger generation of printers in that the roller mechanism is spring-loaded to avoid pinched fingers. [Kevr102] 3D-printed some of the printing tablets, which is a cool idea. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that well for some styles of text, but most things came out looking great. You could always use a regular linocut linoleum tile, too.
This isn’t the first 3D-printed printing press to grace these pages.
Here’s one that works like a giant rubber stamp
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6773247",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T20:11:32",
"content": "The dog is brown too eh? Don’t think that’s in the original pangram, since you’ve already used all those letters once",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "67... | 1,760,371,866.799377 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/a-cute-sentry-scans-your-net-for-scullduggery/ | A Cute Sentry Scans Your Net For Scullduggery | Elliot Williams | [
"Network Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"network",
"security",
"tamagotchi",
"wifi"
] | As long as we get to make our own network security tools, why not make them look cute?
Netgotchi
may not be much more than an ESP8266 running network scans and offering up a honeypot service, but it smiles while sits on your desk and we think that’s swell.
Taking inspiration from a recent series of red-team devices that make hacking adorable, most obviously
pwnagotchi
(and arguably
Flipper
), Netgotchi lives on the light side of the Force. Right now, it enumerates the devices on your network and can alert you when anything sketchy joins in. We can totally imagine customizing this to include other network security or health checks, and extending the available facial expressions accordingly.
You might not always be thinking about your network, and if you’re like us, that’s probably just fine. But we love standalone displays that show one thing in an easily digestable manner, and this fits the bill, with a smile. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6773207",
"author": "MZXX",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T18:18:11",
"content": "THANK YOU for the support Hackaday! <3feel free to contribute or modify it as you like, enjoy!-MXZZ",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6773236",
"autho... | 1,760,371,866.706342 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/cloudflare-adds-block-for-ai-scrapers-and-similar-bots/ | Cloudflare Adds Block For AI Scrapers And Similar Bots | Maya Posch | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"News"
] | [
"web scraping"
] | It’s no big secret that a lot of the internet traffic today consists out of automated requests, ranging from innocent bots like search engine indexers to data scraping bots for LLM and similar generative AI companies. With enough customers who are less than amused by this boost in useless traffic, Cloudflare has announced that it’s
expanding its blocking feature
for the latter category of scrapers. Initially this block was only for ‘poorly behaving’ scrapers, but now it apparently targets all of such bots.
The block seems to be based around a range of characteristics, including the user agent string. According to Cloudflare’s data on its network, over 40% of identified AI bots came from ByteDance (
Bytespider
), followed by GPTBot at over 35% and ClaudeBot with 11% and a whole gaggle of smaller bots. Assuming that Imperva’s claims of bots taking up over
half of today’s internet traffic
are somewhat correct, that means that even if these bots follow
robots.txt
, that is still a lot of bandwidth being drained and the website owner effectively subsidizing the training of some company’s models. Unsurprisingly, Cloudflare notes that many website owners have already taken measures to block these bots in some fashion.
Naturally, not all of these scraper bots are well-behaved. Spoofing the user agent is an obvious way to dodge blocks, but scraper bot activity has many tell-tale signs which Cloudflare uses, as well as statistical data across its global network to compute a ‘
bot score
‘ for any requests. Although it remains to be seen whether false positives become an issue with Cloudflare’s approach, it’s definitely a sign of the times that more and more website owners are choosing to choke off unwanted, AI-related traffic. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6773167",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T16:14:38",
"content": "Hopefully more major websites will start bot blocking, enough to discourage the major offenders from running and free up the Internet for better uses.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,867.054891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/a-second-octoprint-plugin-has-been-falsifying-stats/ | A Second OctoPrint Plugin Has Been Falsifying Stats | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Octoprint",
"octoprint plugin",
"statistics",
"telemetry"
] | The ongoing story of bogus analytical data being submitted to the public OctoPrint usage statistics has taken a surprising turn with the news that a
second
plugin was being artificially pushed up the charts. At least this time, the
developer of the plugin has admitted to doing the deed personally
.
Just to recap, last week OctoPrint creator [Gina Häußge] found that
somebody had been generating fictitious OctoPrint usage stats
since 2022 in an effort to make the OctoEverywhere plugin appear to be more popular than it actually was. It was a clever attempt, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the fake data was reporting itself to be from a significantly out of date build of OctoPrint, there’s no telling how long it would have continued. When the developers of the plugin were confronted, they claimed it was an overzealous user operating under their own initiative, and denied any knowledge that the stats were being manipulated in their favor.
Presumably it was around this time that Obico creator [Kenneth Jiang] started sweating bullets. It turns out he’d been doing the same thing, for just about as long. When [Gina] contacted him about the suspicious data she was seeing regarding his plugin, he owned up to falsifying the data and published what strikes us as a fairly contrite apology on the Obico blog. While this doesn’t absolve him of making a very poor decision, we respect that he didn’t try to shift the blame elsewhere.
That said, there’s at least one part of his version of events that doesn’t quite pass the sniff test for us. According to [Kenneth], he first wrote the script that generated the fake data back in 2022 because he suspected (correctly, it turns out) that the developers of OctoEverywhere were doing something similar. But after that, he says he didn’t realize the script was still running until [Gina] confronted him about it.
Now admittedly, we’re not professional programmers here at Hackaday. But we’ve written enough code to be suspicious when somebody claims a script they whipped up on a lark was able to run unattended for two years and never once crashed or otherwise bailed out. We won’t even begin to speculate
where
said script could have been running since 2022 without anyone noticing…
But we won’t dwell on the minutiae here. [Gina] has once again purged the garbage data from the OctoPrint stats, and hopefully things are finally starting to reflect reality. We know she was already angry about the earlier attempts to manipulate the stats, so she’s got to be seething right about now. But as we said before, these unfortunate incidents are ultimately just bumps in the road. We don’t need any stat tracker to know that the community as a whole greatly appreciates the incredible work she’s put into OctoPrint. | 34 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6773106",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T13:01:52",
"content": "Is it for clout? Is there a monetary incentive? Pay-to-play?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6773127",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp... | 1,760,371,866.882503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/smartwatch-snitches-on-itself-and-enables-reverse-engineering/ | Smartwatch Snitches On Itself And Enables Reverse Engineering | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"firmware",
"Ghidra",
"Jlink",
"jtag",
"nRF52832",
"reverse engineering",
"smartwatch",
"sprintf"
] | If something has a “smart” in its name, you know that it’s talking to someone else, and the topic of conversation is probably you. You may or may not like that, but that’s part of the deal when you buy these things. But with some smarts of your own, you might be able to
make that widget talk to you rather than about you
.
Such an opportunity presented itself to [Benjamen Lim] when a bunch of brand X smartwatches came his way. Without any documentation to guide him, [Benjamen] started with an inspection, which revealed a screen of debug info that included a mysterious IP address and port. Tearing one of the watches apart — a significant advantage to having multiple units to work with — revealed little other than an nRF52832 microcontroller along with WiFi and cellular chips. But the luckiest find was JTAG pins connected to pads on the watch face that mate with its charging cradle. That meant talking to the chip was only a spliced USB cable away.
Once he could connect to the watch, [Benjamen] was able to dump the firmware and fire up Ghidra. He decided to focus on the IP address the watch seemed fixated on, reasoning that it might be the address of an update server, and that patching the firmware with a different address could be handy. He couldn’t find the IP as a string in the firmware, but he did manage to find a
sprintf
-like format string for IP addresses, which led him to a likely memory location. Sure enough, the IP and port were right there, so he wrote a script to change the address to a server he had the keys for and flashed the watch.
So the score stands at [Benjamen] 1, smartwatch 0. It’s not clear what the goal of all this was, but we’d love to see if he comes up with something cool for these widgets. Even if there’s nothing else, it was a cool lesson in reverse engineering. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6773058",
"author": "Luis García de la Fuente",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T09:26:38",
"content": "[Benjamen] 1, [Sauron] 0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6773060",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-07-04T09:31:54",
... | 1,760,371,866.998726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/03/peering-into-the-black-box-of-large-language-models/ | Peering Into The Black Box Of Large Language Models | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"large language model",
"LLM",
"mind mapping",
"research"
] | Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce extremely human-like communication, but their inner workings are something of a mystery. Not a mystery in the sense that we don’t know
how
an LLM works, but a mystery in the sense that the exact process of turning a particular input into a particular output is something of a black box.
This “black box” trait is common to neural networks in general, and LLMs are
very
deep neural networks. It is not really possible to explain precisely why a specific input produces a particular output, and not something else.
Why? Because neural networks are neither databases, nor lookup tables. In a neural network, discrete activation of neurons cannot be meaningfully mapped to specific concepts or words. The connections are complex, numerous, and multidimensional to the point that trying to tease out their relationships in any straightforward way simply does not make sense.
Neural Networks are a Black Box
In a way, this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, the entire umbrella of “AI” is about using software to solve the sorts of problems humans are in general not good at figuring out how to write a program to solve. It’s maybe no wonder that the end product has some level of inscrutability.
This isn’t what most of us expect from software, but as humans we can relate to the black box aspect more than we might realize. Take, for example, the process of elegantly translating a phrase from one language to another.
I’d like to use as an example of this an idea from
an article
by Lance Fortnow in
Quanta
magazine about the ubiquity of computation in our world. Lance asks us to imagine a woman named Sophie who grew up speaking French and English and works as a translator. Sophie can easily take any English text and produce a sentence of equivalent meaning in French. Sophie’s brain follows some kind of process to perform this conversion, but Sophie likely doesn’t understand the entire process. She might not even think of it as a process at all. It’s something that just
happens
. Sophie, like most of us, is intimately familiar with black box functionality.
The difference is that while many of us (perhaps grudgingly) accept this aspect of our own existence, we are understandably dissatisfied with it as a feature of our software. New research has made progress towards changing this.
Identifying Conceptual Features in Language Models
We know perfectly well
how LLMs work
, but that doesn’t help us pick apart individual transactions. Opening the black box while it’s working yields only a mess of discrete neural activations that cannot be meaningfully mapped to particular concepts, words, or whatever else. Until now, that is.
A small sample of features activated when an LLM is prompted with questions such as “What is it like to be you?” and “What’s going on in your head?” (source:
Extracting Interpretable Features from Claude 3 Sonnet
)
Recent developments have made the black box much less opaque, thanks to tools that can map and visualize LLM internal states during computation. This creates a conceptual snapshot of what the LLM is — for lack of a better term —
thinking
in the process of putting together its response to a prompt.
Anthropic have recently shared details on their success in
mapping the mind of their Claude 3.0 Sonnet model
by finding a way to match patterns of neuron activations to concrete, human-understandable concepts called
features
.
A feature can be just about anything; a person, a place, an object, or more abstract things like the idea of upper case, or function calls. The existence of a feature being activated does not mean it factors directly into the output, but it does mean it played
some
role in the road the output took.
With a way to map groups of activations to features — a significant engineering challenge — one can meaningfully interpret the contents of the black box. It is also possible to measure a sort of relational “distance” between features, and therefore get an even better idea of what a given state of neural activation represents in conceptual terms.
Making Sense of it all
One way this can be used is to produce a heat map that highlights how heavily different features were involved in Claude’s responses. Artificially manipulating the weighting of different concepts changes Claude’s responses in predictable ways (
video
), demonstrating that the features are indeed reasonably accurate representations of the LLM’s internal state. More details on this process are available in the paper
Scaling Monosemanticity: Extracting Interpretable Features from Claude 3 Sonnet
.
Mapping the mind of a state-of-the-art LLM like Claude may be a nontrivial undertaking, but that doesn’t mean the process is entirely the domain of tech companies with loads of resources.
Inspectus
by [labml.ai] is a visualization tool that works similarly to provide insight into the behavior of LLMs during processing. There is a
tutorial on using it with a GPT-2 model
, but don’t let that turn you off. GPT-2 may be older, but it is still relevant.
Research like this offers new ways to understand (and potentially manipulate, or fine-tune) these powerful tools., making LLMs more transparent and more useful, especially in applications where lack of operational clarity is hard to accept. | 35 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772877",
"author": "Bryce Schroeder",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T15:23:38",
"content": "I’m glad to see a technically-oriented, non-hostile article about AI on Hackaday exploring a limitation of LLMs (explainability) and research on the issue. Thank you!",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,867.284232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/03/the-ergo-ring-makes-computer-interactions-comfortable/ | The ErgO Ring Makes Computer Interactions Comfortable | Arya Voronova | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"ergonomic mouse",
"ring",
"Smart ring",
"wearable electronics",
"wearable ring",
"Wearables"
] | [Sophia Dai] brings us a project you will definitely like if you’re tired of traditional peripherals like a typical keyboard and mouse combo. This is
ErgO, a smart ring
you can build out of a few commonly available breakouts, and it keeps a large number of features within a finger’s reach. The project has got an IMU, a Pimoroni trackball, and a good few buttons to perform actions or switch modes, and it’s powered by a tiny Bluetooth-enabled devboard so it can seamlessly perform HID device duty.
While the hardware itself appears to be in a relatively early state, there’s no shortage of features, and the whole experience looks quite polished. Want to lay back in your chair yet keep scrolling the web, clicking through links as you go? This ring lets you do that, no need to hold your mouse anymore, and you can even use it while exercising. Want to do some quick text editing on the fly? That’s also available; the ErgO is designed to be used for day to day tasks, and the UX is thought out well. Want to use it with more than just your computer? There is a device switching feature. The build instructions are quite respectable, too – you can absolutely build one like this yourself, just get a few breakouts, a small battery, some 3D printed parts, and find an evening to solder them all together.
All code is on GitHub,
just like you would expect from a hack well done.
Looking for a different sort of ring? We’ve recently featured
a hackable cheap smart ring
usable for fitness tracking – this one is a product that’s still being reverse-engineered, but it’s alright if you’re okay with only having an accelerometer and a few optical sensors. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772842",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T11:33:58",
"content": "Very well thought out project. What impressed me the most isn’t the execution but how usability drove the design (as it should!), rather than a strictly “functional” prototype like I usually do.For exam... | 1,760,371,866.749159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/03/lasers-al-fresco-fun-with-open-cavity-lasers/ | Lasers Al Fresco: Fun With Open-Cavity Lasers | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"He-Ne",
"helium-neon",
"laser",
"lasing",
"mirror",
"optical cavity",
"stimulated emission",
"turret"
] | Helium-neon lasers may be little more than glorified neon signs, but there’s just something about that glowing glass tube that makes the whole process of stimulated emission easier to understand. But to make things even clearer, you might want to take a step inside the laser with something like [
Les Wright]’s open-cavity He-Ne laser
.
In most gas lasers, the stimulated emission action takes place within a closed optical cavity, typically formed by a glass tube whose ends are sealed with mirrors, one of which is partially silvered. The gas in the tube is stimulated, by an electrical discharge in the case of a helium-neon laser, and the stimulated photons bounce back and forth between the mirrors until some finally blast out through the partial mirror to form a coherent, monochromatic laser beam. By contrast, an open-cavity laser has a gas-discharge tube sealed with the fully silvered mirror on one end and a Brewster window on the other, which is a very flat piece of glass set at a steep angle to the long axis of the tube and transparent to
p
-polarized light. A second mirror is positioned opposite the Brewster window and aligned to create a resonant optical cavity external to the tube.
To switch mirrors easily, [Les] crafted a rotating turret mount for six different mirrors. The turret fits in a standard optical bench mirror mount, which lets him precisely align the mirror in two dimensions. He also built a quick alignment jig, as well as a safety enclosure to protect the delicate laser tube. The tube is connected to a high-voltage supply and after a little tweaking the open cavity starts to lase. [Les] could extend the cavity to almost half a meter, although even a waft of smoke was enough obstruction to kill the lasing at that length.
If this open-cavity laser arrangement seems familiar, it might be because [Les] previously looked at
an old-school particle counter
with such a laser at its heart. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772851",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T12:45:48",
"content": "I can look at the “glorified neon signs” with the remaining eye.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6772861",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,867.101599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/everyone-needs-a-1950s-signal-generator-in-their-life/ | Everyone Needs A 1950s Signal Generator In Their Life | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"signal generator",
"test equipment",
"vintage equipment"
] | At Hackaday, we comb the world of tech in search of good things to bring you. Today’s search brought up something very familiar,
[Jazzy Jane] has an Advance E1 tube signal generator
, the same model as the unit on the shelf above where this is being written. It’s new to her, so she’s giving it a teardown and fixing any safety issues before powering it on.
For a 70+ year old unit, the quality of these instruments was such that they remain useful and reliable to this day. Unsurprisingly a few things need looking at, such as an aged mains lead and a pair of filter caps in the power supply which haven’t aged well. These parts failed on the E1 here too, and while she’s taking the time to order appropriate replacements we have to admit to being cheapskates and robbing parts with an appropriate working voltage for ours from a nearby PC power supply.
Where this one becomes rather interesting is in an extra switch and socket. It’s a wafer switch with a load of capacitors, and the best guess is it provides some adjustability for the inbuilt audio oscillator which had a fixed frequency on stock models. This is part one of a series though, so we’re looking forward to finding out its purpose in the next installment. Take a look at the video below the break, and if that’s not enough,
we seem to have had more than one piece of vintage British test equipment
here of late. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772780",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T05:34:25",
"content": "As I am Dutch, of course I have a few of the Dutch equivalent of this one, made by Philips, the GM2308. In one sweep from 0 to 16 Khz and back. It uses two hf oscillators and a mixer to get the differen... | 1,760,371,867.331517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/google-drive-now-bootable/ | Google Drive Now Bootable | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"boot",
"bootable",
"dracut",
"file system",
"fuse",
"google drive",
"initramfs",
"linux"
] | USB drives are incredibly useful, both storing files for transport between different computers and for creating bootable drives that let us use or install other operating systems on our computers. While online file storage systems like Dropbox and Google Drive have taken over a large percentage of the former task from USB drives, they have not been able to act as bootable media, ensuring that each of us have a few jump drives lying around. That might not be the case anymore, though, as
this guide is the first we know of to be able to use Google Drive to boot to a Linux system
.
Unlike the tried-and-true jump drive methods, however, this process is not straightforward at all. It relies on two keys, the first of which is
FUSE
which allows a filesystem to be created in userspace. The second is exploiting a step in boot process of Linux systems where the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem, called
initramfs
, in order to load the real filesystem. Normally a user doesn’t interact much with this step, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. A tool called
dracut
allows using an existing Linux installation to build a custom
initramfs
and in this case, the custom
initramfs
is built to include the proper support for both networking and
FUSE
.
The proof of concept in this demonstration originally ran in a container, using an existing project called
google-drive-ocamlfuse
to interact with Google Drive itself. From there, after sorting out some issues with root access, networking, malfunctioning symlinks, and various timeouts on the (perhaps predictably) slow system, the whole contraption was moved over to a laptop so it could be tested on real hardware. Everything runs, and although the original creator of this behemoth admits it is a bit “silly” they note that there may be some real-world use cases for something like this. We still won’t expect everyone to throw out their jump drives anytime soon, though. If you’re not feeling like your Linux skills are up to the challenge of something like this, we’d recommend you start with
our own [Al Williams]’s Linux Fu series
. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772767",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T04:00:35",
"content": "Author says “Booting Linux off of a Google Drive root.” The root disk being key here.No need for all this talk of no more USB sticks because you still need to boot the kernel as to continue on to the step of b... | 1,760,371,866.945305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/instant-filament-drying-satisfies-an-immediate-need/ | Instant Filament Drying Satisfies An Immediate Need | Bob Baddeley | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"3D printer filament spool",
"dehumidifier",
"filament",
"humidity"
] | Most 3D printer filament soaks up water from the air, and when it does, the water passing through the extruder nozzle can expand, bubble, and pop, causing all kinds of mayhem and unwanted effects in the print. This is why reels come vacuum sealed. Some people 3D print so much that they consume a full roll before it can soak up water and start to display these effects. Others live in dry climates and don’t have to worry about humidity. But the rest of us require a solution. To date, that solution has been filament dryers, which are heated elements in a small reel-sized box, or for the adventurous an oven put at a very specific temperature until the reel melts and coats the inside of the oven. The downside to this method is that it’s a broad stroke that takes many hours to accomplish, and it’s inefficient because one may not use the whole roll before it gets soaked again.
In much the same way that instant water heaters exist to eliminate the need for a water heater, [3DPI67] has a
solution to this problem
, and it involves passing the filament through a small chamber with a heating element and fan circulating air. The length of the chamber is important, as is the printing speed, since the filament needs to have enough time in the improvised sauna to sweat out all its water weight. The temperature of the chamber can’t get above the glass transition temperature of the filament, either, which is another limiting factor for the dryer. [3DPI67] wrote up a small article on his
improvised instant filament heater
in addition to the video.
So far, only TPU has been tested with this method, but it looks promising. Some have suggested a larger chamber with loops of filament so that more can be exposed for longer. There’s lots of room for innovation, and it seems some math might be in order to determine the limits and optimizations of this method, but we’re excited to see the results. | 36 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772758",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-07-03T02:23:32",
"content": "Dumb question but… why not make a reel-to-reel drying system? It’s not as fancy but it seems like it would be faster than the dryer box method and more reliable/flexible than the “instant” drying method. B... | 1,760,371,867.463602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/putting-some-numbers-on-your-nemas/ | Putting Some Numbers On Your NEMAs | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts",
"Science"
] | [
"driver",
"dynamometer",
"dyno",
"microstepping",
"stepper",
"TB6600",
"TMC2209",
"torque",
"Trinamic"
] | It’s official: [Engineer Bo] wins the internet with
a video titled “Finding NEMA 17,”
wherein he builds a dynamometer to find the best stepper motor in the popular NEMA 17 frame size.
Like a lot of subjective questions, the only correct answer to which stepper is best is, “It depends,” and [Bo] certainly has that in mind while gathering the data needed to construct torque-speed curves for five samples of NEMA 17 motors using his homebrew dyno. The dyno itself is pretty cool, with a bicycle disc brake to provide drag, a load cell to measure braking force, and an optical encoder to measure the rotation of the motor under test. The selected motors represent a cross-section of what’s commonly available today, some of which appear in big-name 3D printers and other common applications.
[Bo] tested each motor with two different drivers: the TMC2209 silent driver to start with, and because he released the Magic Smoke from those, the higher current TB6600 module. The difference between the two drivers was striking, with lower torque and top speeds for the same settings on each motor using the TB6600, as well as more variability in the data. Motors did better across the board with the TBC6600 at 24 volts, showing improved torque at higher speeds, and slightly higher top speeds. He also tested the effect of microstepping on torque using the TBC6600 and found that using full steps resulted in higher torque across a greater speed range.
At the end of the day, it seems as if these tests say more about the driver than they do about any of the motors tested. Perhaps the lesson here is to match the motor to the driver in light of what the application will be. Regardless, it’s a nice piece of work, and we really appreciate the dyno design to boot — reminds us of a scaled-down version of
the one [Jeremey Fielding] demonstrated
a few years back. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772716",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T21:14:25",
"content": "Bicycle brake dyno is very nice, that would be handy for all sorts of stuff",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6772773",
"author": "rewolff",
"timest... | 1,760,371,867.655965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/make-a-cheap-robot-mower-much-smarter/ | Make A Cheap Robot Mower Much Smarter | Jenny List | [
"home hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"esphome",
"mower",
"Parkside"
] | The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest. This means that Parkside hacking has become as much of a cottage industry as IKEA hacking, and they’re a firm favorite for modifications. [Lambertus] has taken a Parkside robot mower, and converted it from a relatively mundane device
to a fully-connected smart robot
, with the aid of an ESP8266.
The hardware is surprisingly simple, as all that’s really needed is a stop/go command. This can be readily found by hooking up to the input from the mower’s rain sensor, allowing the ESP to control its operation. Then there’s an accelerometer to allow it to count motion, and a hookup tot he battery to measure voltage. The firmware uses ESPHome, resulting in a mower now connected to home automation.
This isn’t the first time we’ve shown you someone
upgrading the smarts on robot mover,
and of course we’ve also taken
a tour through the history of lawn mowers in general
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772681",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T19:05:49",
"content": "> The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest.Citation needed.> This means... | 1,760,371,867.385819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/access-to-fresh-and-potable-water-an-ancient-and-very-current-challenge/ | Access To Fresh And Potable Water: An Ancient And Very Current Challenge | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"Mayan history",
"water filter"
] | Throughout history, clean and potable water has been one of the most prized possessions, without which no human civilization could have ever sustained itself. Not only is water crucial for drinking and food preparation, but also for agriculture, cleaning and the production of countless materials, chemicals and much more. And this isn’t a modern problem: good water supplies and the most successful ancient cultures go hand in hand.
For instance, the retention and management of fresh water in reservoirs played a major role in the
Khmer Empire
, with many of its reservoirs (
baray
) surviving to today. Similarly, the
Anuradhapure Kingdom
in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) featured massive reservoirs like Kala Wewa that was constructed in 460 CE with a capacity of 123 million m
3
. In the New World, the Maya civilization similarly created reservoirs with intricate canals to capture rainwater before the dry season started, as due to the karst landscape wells were not possible.
Keeping this water fresh and free from contaminants and pollution was a major problem for especially the Maya, with a
recent perspective
by Lisa J. Lucera in
PNAS Anthropology
suggesting that they used an approach similar to modern day
constructed wetlands
to keep disease and illness at bay, while earlier discoveries also suggest the use of filtration including the use of zeolite.
Resource Management
In climates where rainfall is plentiful, and where wells can fill in gaps, extensive water management is not a major concern. This is where the civilizations of Mesoamerica provide good illustrations of the effects this can have on societies, with the Aztec and Inca using aqueducts to bring mountain spring water to their cities, while the Maya in their region with a
karst topography
had to capture every drop of rainwater before it would vanish within the hollowed-out structures that are a distinctive feature of these soluble carbonate rock landscapes.
This meant that the only time when the Maya could refill their reservoirs was when it rained, which also placed significant restrictions on how much water would be available to any population. It is postulated that it was a drought and reservoir pollution led to the eventual abandonment of the Mayan city of
Tikal
(
ti ak’al
in Yucatac Maya, but
Yax Mutal
(‘First Mutal’) according to inscriptions within the city) after the Late Classic Period (~900 CE). This preceded the
Terminal Classic
period, during which much of the lowlands were abandoned.
There is strong paleoclimatological evidence for a sustained drought between 800 – 1000 CE (likely related to the
Medieval Warm Period
) in and around the Yucatán Peninsula, coinciding when archeological evidence shows a reduced human presence in these lowlands by the Maya. It’s thought that these droughts coincided with epidemic diseases in combination with dense populations and intensification of agriculture with associated ecological destruction. The post-classical Maya period featured far less dense cities, and despite the often used term of ‘Classic Maya Collapse’, Mayan society was only regionally affected and persists to this day, despite efforts by European invaders and associated occupation over the centuries.
Filtration
Hypothetical scheme of the ancient water purification system at Tikal. Macro-crystalline quartz crystal sand and zeolite filtration system positioned just upstream of, or within the reservoir ingress. (Credit: Kenneth Barnett Tankersley et al, 2020, Scientific Reports)
Water filtration is something that happens not just with man-made structures and mechanisms, as anyone who uses water from springs and wells knows. The granular structure of soil serves to filter out larger and smaller contaminants as well as bacteria and other potential disease carriers. This same principle can be applied with artificial water filtration systems, with the Corriental water reservoir at the city of Tikal providing evidence that the Mayans even used the
zeolite
mineral for its water purification properties.
This was discovered by Kenneth Barnett Tankersley and colleagues, and
published in 2020
in the journal
Scientific Reports
. They discovered that the water in this reservoir was filtered through a mixture of zeolite and coarse crystalline quartz. Zeolite is interesting, as it has adsorbent and ion-exchange properties which make it a popular choice even today for water purification to the point where most zeolite is synthesized for this and other purposes.
As for whether this extensive filtration in Mayan reservoirs was common is unknown, as the authors succinctly point out that the number of excavations of these reservoirs is quite limited. The presence of zeolite would have significantly helped with filtering out contamination from microbial sources like cyanobacteria and toxins such as
cinnabar
(mercury(II) sulfide). The latter is both a historically common brilliant red pigment as well as a good source of toxic mercury due to its mercury sulfide composition. Unfortunately this kind of filter does not help against mercury from volcanic sources due to its very small particle size, meaning that this type of contamination would have built up over the years in reservoirs.
Circle Of Life
LiDAR map of Tikal highlighting some of its reservoirs. LiDAR-derived hillshade image created by Francisco Estrada-Belli of the PAQUNAM LiDAR Initiative with additions by Christopher Carr and Nicholas Dunning.
The term ‘
constructed wetland
‘ pretty much gives away the concept: these create an artificial wetland ecosystem where plant and often also animal life work to treat sewage, greywater, stormwater runoff, and wastewater in general. They provide both a filtration function and a remediation one, with the vegetation along with microbial life serving to break down and process excess elements, while maintaining a healthy pH and nutrient levels.
In the mostly stagnant water reservoirs which the Maya maintained, preventing the build-up of organisms and harmful pollutants was essential, leading to likely extensive use of aquatic plants in these reservoirs. This is reflected in the headdresses, architecture and other elements of Mayan culture where the clean water-loving water lily (nymphaea ampla) is prominently displayed and associated with prosperity and the leadership.
Likely many different aquatic plants were used in combination with water lilies, along with various types of fish. This would have helped to deal with pests like mosquitoes and their aquatic offspring, reduce evaporation and creating a self-sustaining cycle where the waste from the fish would have provided nutrients for the plants, who themselves would have provided shade and food for these fish. Settlement maps show that the Maya did not generally build residences near the reservoirs, likely keeping human waste run-off to a minimum.
This healthy system did however begin to break down during the Late and Terminal Classic period, with the sediment record showing a gradual increase in contamination from cyanobacteria and human waste. This gives a sobering insight into the final years of the city of Tikal and areas like it that got hit worst by the drought.
Lessons For Today
Although we often like to regard droughts and access to potable water as historical problems, even today one in four humans does not have access to
safe drinking water
, with unsafe water being responsible for about a million deaths each year. Unsafe water can include water that is contaminated with infectious diseases such as cholera, with much of Africa and Asian countries like India heavily affected in this manner, but even wealthy countries like the US seeing its share of drinking water
contamination incidents
, with that of Flint, Michigan, being just one of many.
Such forms of contamination and lack of access to safe drinking water are obviously issues that ought to be resolved and prevented as well as possible once the cause has been determined. These days we don’t necessarily have to rely on constructed wetlands courtesy of modern technology, but they could be very beneficial as a self-sustaining water purification system.
As the US Geological Survey (USGS)
points out
, we are dealing with increasing drought since 2000 as well. This doesn’t merely translate into less rain, but also changes in the rain and melting patterns, as well as the availability of groundwater. This becomes apparent in periods of extreme drought interrupted by extreme rain accompanied with floods. As this makes water availability less predictable for drinking water and agriculture, the creation of reservoirs may be advisable, both to reduce the impact of floods and as buffers for dry periods.
Today we have many reservoirs that were formed due to dams blocking the course of rivers, but something similar could be done for rainwater, not unlike historical cisterns that once used to be extensively used throughout the world, like the famous
Basilica Cistern
below the city of Istanbul. It’s perhaps ironic that many of such cisterns were abandoned over the years, even as the need for them becomes more apparent today. | 28 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772697",
"author": "Spazer",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T19:51:07",
"content": "Water technology = technology",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6772700",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T19:57:15",
"conten... | 1,760,371,867.539342 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/usb-pd-on-ch32v003-teaches-you-everything/ | USB PD On CH32V003 Teaches You Everything | Arya Voronova | [
"how-to",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"CH32",
"CH32V003",
"Type-C",
"USB C",
"usb c power delivery",
"USB Type-C",
"USB-C PD",
"USB-PD"
] | How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you their
implementation of USB-PD on a CH32V003,
which has no PD peripheral. This includes building a PD trigger,
completely open source,
and walking you through the entire
low-level PD basics,
too!
It helps that CH32V003 is a 32-bit MCU with a good few resources and peripherals, for instance, an internal comparator. Other than that, you don’t need much in terms of hardware resources, but you do need a steady hand — parts of the firmware had to be written in assembly to keep up with PD timing. Want to tinker with the fruit of this research, perhaps, further build upon the code? There’s an example board on GitHub, too!
Want to try your own luck with this method? There’s a schematic, and logic analyzer captures, and a board to refer to. Again, more than enough information on every single low-level detail! Otherwise, grab
an MCU pre-programmed to talk PD
, maybe
a trigger
board
chip, or maybe even a PD PHY and
implement PD communications with it directly
– it’s pretty easy!
We thank [Julianna] for sharing this with us! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772657",
"author": "eeucalyptus",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T17:34:19",
"content": "Haha, oh my that is still very WIP. But anyone interested: stay tuned I’m going to continue this in the next few weeks ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,371,867.846306 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-tasty-snacks-board/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Tasty Snacks Board | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Chinese keyboards",
"CircuitPython",
"micropython",
"mint chocolate chip",
"one-handed keyboard",
"rp2040",
"tasty snacks",
"tiny keyboard"
] | Image by [MakerM0] via
Hackaday.IO
[MakerM0]’s LangCard
is an entry into our 2024 Business Card Challenge that just so happens to fit the Keebin’ bill as well.
You might label this a pocket cyberdeck, and that’s just fine with me. The idea here is to have a full-keyboard development board for learning programming languages like CircuitPython, MicroPython, C++, and so on, wherever [MakerM0] happens to be at a given moment.
Open up the LangCard and you’ll find an RP2040 and a slim LiPo battery. I’m not sure what display that is, but there are probably a few that would work just fine were you to make one of these fun learning devices for yourself.
Calling All Tiny Keyboard Makers!
Image by [sporewoh] via
KBD
It seems that [sporewoh],
who has been featured here before
for building magnificent tiny keyboards,
is holding a tiny keyboard design contest
, which is being sponsored by PCBWay.
All the rules and such are available over on GitHub
. Basically, you need to create a new design, publish the open-source design somewhere along with the source files, and, ideally, build a functional prototype. Entries are made official by sharing in the appropriate channel of [sporewoh]’s Discord.
Entries will be scored on novelty and innovation, size/portability, viability, reproducibility, and presentation. Submissions aren’t due until September 10th, so you have a bit of time to really think about what you’re going to do. The prizes include PCBWay credits as well as kits designed by [sporewoh]. How small can you go and still be able to type at least 20 WPM? That’s a requirement, by the way.
The Centerfold: It’s a Tasty Snacks Board
Be sure to stare at the keycaps until you get it. Image by [CattiDaddi] via
reddit
Don’t the spacebars make you want ice cream? Image by [CattiDaddi] via
reddit
Image by [CattiDaddi] via
reddit
Who could resist a blue raspberry Ring Pop knob? Image by [CattiDaddi] via
reddit
The lights are a nice touch as well. Image by [CattiDaddi] via
reddit
That’s right; we’ve got a gallery this time. I simply couldn’t decide which picture best conveyed the deliciousness of this thing. I mean, the first shot is a good thought, but you really don’t get right away that it’s a Ring Pop knob, and that’s vitally important information.
Anyway, this is a Le Chiffre that has been quite smoothly 3D-printed in marble filament. [CattiDaddi] says they got that by using a matte print bed. I wish I knew what keycaps those are, because that is a sneaky typeface they have going.
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 Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboards
The IPX keyboard. Image via
IEEE Spectrum
Here is quite an interesting bit of history
as it relates to China’s ability to survive the ravages of time, which pivots on their use of character-based script.
The story begins with a talk that took place decades ago, and follows the path of one audience member who came to change the course of Chinese keyboard history — a Taiwanese cadet named Chan-hui Yeh.
After graduating with a B.S. in electrical engineering, Yeh went on to earn an M.S. in nuclear engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He then joined IBM, although it wasn’t to revolutionize Chinese text technologies; he was helping to develop computational simulations for large-scale manufacturing plants. But the talk stuck with him.
Yeh eventually quit his job and developed the IPX keyboard, which had 160 main keys with 15 characters each. A daughter keyboard was used to choose the character on a given key, and there were nearly 120 levels of “Shift” to change all the 160 keys’ character assignments.
See that picture with the spiral-bound book? The 160 keys are underneath the book, and the user presses the pages to access the pressure pads beneath. The booklets had up to eight pages, each with 2,400 characters. The total number of potential symbols was just under 20,000.
The IPX keyboard is just the first of three interesting inputs described within this history. You owe it to yourself to devote time to reading this one.
Thanks to [juju] for sending this in!
ICYMI: One-Handed Keyboard Does It Without Chording
Image by [Dylan Turner] via
Hackaday.IO
Usually when we talk about operating an entire keyboard with one hand and leaving the other free for mousing or holding a beer, chording — pressing multiple keys at once like on a piano — is very much on the table. Keyboards like
the Infogrip BAT
come to mind.
But that isn’t always the case. Take for example
the one-handed PCD Maltron
, which I think must have inspired
[Dylan Turner]’s one-handed keyboard
.
[Dylan]’s design puts 75 keys in close reach of one hand’s worth of fingers, and doesn’t let the thumb off easy like on a standard keyboard. All the Function keys are there, and the arrow keys are in a familiar layout. There is even an Insert/Delete cluster.
Everything is up on GitHub if you want to make your own
.
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
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772719",
"author": "calculus",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T21:40:04",
"content": "The keycaps on Le Chiffre are DSA Milkshake Weirdos (also available in Cherry profile if that is more your liking). They are pretty much a regular font just missing a stroke here or there.",
"parent_... | 1,760,371,868.000977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/fork-ladybird-browser-and-serenityos-to-go-separate-ways/ | Fork! Ladybird Browser And SerenityOS To Go Separate Ways | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"browser",
"Ladybird",
"SerenityOS"
] | In the monthly
Ladybird Browser update video
which we’ve placed below, SerenityOS founder [Andreas Kling] announced an interesting development. The browser has been forked from the OS that has been its progenitor, and both projects will now proceed separately. This frees the browser from the SerenityOS insistence on avoiding external libraries, and allows it to take advantage of stable, fast, and mature open source alternatives. This is already paying dividends in compatibility and speed, and is likely to lead further towards a usable everyday browser as time goes by.
As the world of fully-featured web browser engines has contracted from a number of different projects to little more than Google’s Blink and Mozilla’s Gecko, Ladybird has found itself in an unexpected position. It is vital that the browser market retains some competition and does not become a Google monoculture, so while it might not seem so at first glance, the news of Ladybird going alone has the potential to be one of the most far-reaching open source stories of the year.
If you’d like to try Ladybird
you’ll have to get your hands slightly dirty and build it yourself, but we’d expect ready-built versions to appear in due course.
We took a look at an earlier version of Ladybird last year
, as well as SerenityOS itself. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772629",
"author": "Maave",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T13:44:48",
"content": "A browser that isn’t based on Chrome, WebKit, or Firefox? Noice. Midori was my preferred alternate browser / bootable USB browser for years but it’s taking a turn now. This is pretty exciting and I’ll start... | 1,760,371,868.135024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/meccano-based-hellschreiber-machine/ | Meccano-based Hellschreiber Machine | Alexander Rowsell | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"feld hell",
"ham radio",
"Hellschreiber",
"meccano",
"Rudolph Hell"
] | [ZXGuesser] has pulled off a true feat of Meccano engineering: building
a Meccano Hellschreiber machine
. The design is a close replica of the original Siemens Feld-Hell machine as documented
here
. What is Hellschreiber, you might ask? It’s a very neat method of sending written messages over the air by synchronizing a printing wheel on the receiving end with pulses generated on the transmitter. By quickly moving the print wheel up and down, arbitrary figures can be printed out. If you want to learn more about Hellschreiber, check out
this excellent Hackaday post
from almost a decade ago!
The Mastodon thread linked above goes into more detail about the difficulty in building this behemoth — and the slight regret of sticking with the authentic QWERTZ keyboard layout! In order to use the Hellschreiber mode, you have to keep up a steady rhythm of typing at about 2.5 characters per second, otherwise, the receiving end will see randomly spaced gaps between each letter. So while having to type at a steady speed [ZXGuesser] also had to work with a slightly different keyboard layout. Despite this difficulty, some very good quality output was generated!
Incredibly, the output looks just like the output from the original, century-old design. We think this is an absolutely incredible accomplishment, and we hope [ZXGuesser] doesn’t follow through on disassembling this amazing replica — or if they do, we hope it’s documented well enough for others to try their hand at it!
Thanks [BB] for the tip! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772607",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T10:17:02",
"content": "That’s quite an accomplishment! Very nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6772608",
"author": "ZXGuesser",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T10... | 1,760,371,868.049579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/so-much-going-on-in-so-few-components-dissecting-a-microwave-radar-module/ | So Much Going On In So Few Components: Dissecting A Microwave Radar Module | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"doppler radar",
"microwave",
"radio",
"regenerative receiver"
] | In the days before integrated circuits became ubiquitous, providing advanced functionality in a single package, designers became adept at extracting the maximum use from discrete components. They’d use clever circuits in which a transistor or other active part would fulfill multiple roles at once, and often such circuits would need more than a little know-how to get working. It’s not often in 2024 that we encounter this style of circuit, but here’s [Maurycy] with
a cheap microwave radar module doing just that
.
On the board is an RF portion with a single transistor, some striplines, and an SOIC chip. Oddly this last part turns out to be an infra-red proximity sensor chip, so what’s going on? Careful analysis of the RF circuit reveals something clever. As expected, it’s a 3.18 GHz oscillator, but how is it functioning as both transmitter
and
receiver? The answer comes in the form of a resistor and capacitor in the emitter circuit, which causes the transistor to also oscillate at about 20 kHz. The result is that at different times in the 20 kHz period, the transistor is either off, fully oscillating at 3.18GHz and transmitting, or briefly in the not-quite-oscillating state between the two during which it functions as a super-regenerative receiver. This is enough for one device to effectively transmit and receive at the same time with the minimum of parts, there’s no need for a mixer diode as you might expect if it were it a direct conversion receiver. Perhaps in RF terms, it’s not particularly pretty, but we have to admit to being impressed by its simplicity. He goes on to perform a few experiments with the board as a transmitter or as a more conventional radar.
This isn’t the first such radar module we’ve looked at,
here’s one designed from scratch
. And we love
regens
, since they are so simple to
build
. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772548",
"author": "ftg",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T05:39:25",
"content": "So much functionality pulled from a single BFS520 transistor.This writeup clarified a lot of thing to me about how these things could even function and be sensitive. Barely any workable dopplershift from huma... | 1,760,371,867.904964 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/simd-accelerated-computer-vision-on-the-esp32-s3/ | SIMD-Accelerated Computer Vision On The ESP32-S3 | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32-S3",
"SIMD"
] | One of the fun parts of the ESP32-S3 microcontroller is that it got upgraded to the newer Cadence Xtensa LX7 processor core, which turns out to have a range of SIMD instructions that can help to significantly speed up a range of tasks. [Shranav Palakurthi]
recently used this
to speed up the processing of video frames to detect corners using the
FAST
method. By moving some operations that benefit from SIMD over to an optimized version written in LX7 ASM, the algorithm’s throughput was increased by 220%, from 5.1 MP/s to 11.2 MP/s, albeit with some caveats.
The problem with the SIMD instructions in the
LX7
other than them being very poorly documented – unless you sign an NDA with Cadence – is that it misses many instructions that would be really useful. For [Shranav] the lack of support for direct misaligned reads and comparing of unsigned 8-bit numbers were hurdles, but could be worked around, with the
results available
on GitHub.
Much of the groundwork for this SIMD implementation was laid by [Larry Bank], who
reverse-engineered
the SIMD instructions from available documentation and code samples, finding that the ESP32-S3 misses quite a few common SIMD instructions, including various shifts and unaligned reads and writes. Still, it’s good enough for quite a few tasks, as long as you can make it work with the available instructions. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772577",
"author": "Simon Masters",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T07:46:03",
"content": "For someone interested in ESP_32 SHA256 acceleration this article promises a lot but says very little. The article contains no immediately useful information or clear links to actual implementation... | 1,760,371,867.94944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/diy-proximity-sensor-using-just-scrap-parts-and-software/ | A DIY Proximity Sensor, Using Just Scrap Parts And Software | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"capacitance",
"proximity sensor"
] | [mircemk] shows how to create a
simple non-contact proximity sensor
using little more than an Arduino Nano board, and a convenient software library intended to measure the value of capacitors.
The prototype has a threshold set via potentiometer for convenience.
The basic idea is that it’s possible to measure a capacitor’s capacitance using two microcontroller pins and the right software, so by using a few materials to create an open-style capacitor, one can monitor it for changes and detect when anything approaches enough to alter its values past a given threshold, creating a proximity sensor.
The sensor shown here is essentially two plates mounted side-by-side, attached to an Arduino Nano using the
Capacitor library
which uses just two pins, one digital and one analog.
As configured, [mircemk]’s sensor measures roughly thirty picofarads, and that value decreases when approached by something with a dielectric constant that is different enough from the air surrounding the sensor. The sensor ignores wood and plastic, but an approaching hand is easily detected. The sensor also detects liquid water with similar ease, either in the form of pooled liquid, or filled bottles.
We’ve also seen
a spring elegantly used as a hidden touch sensor
that works through an enclosure’s wall by using similar principles, so the next time you need a proximity or touch-sensitive sensor in a project, reaching for the junk box might get you where you need to go. Watch [mircemk]’s sensor in action in the video, just below the page break. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772510",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T23:27:28",
"content": "Something is not right there: Introducing another object, or increasing the dielectric constant, is expected to *increase* the capacitance, not decrease it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,371,868.094961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/split-a-usb-c-pd-port-into-three-port-ions/ | Split A USB-C PD Port Into Three Port-ions | Arya Voronova | [
"how-to",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"Type-C",
"USB C",
"usb c power delivery",
"USB Type-C",
"USB-C PD",
"USB-PD"
] | There’s no shortage of USB-C chargers in all sorts of configurations, but sometimes, you simply need a few more charging ports on the go, and you got a single one. Well then, check out [bluepylons]’s
USB-C splitter,
which takes a single USB-C 5V/3A port and splits it into three 5V/1A plugs, wonderful for charging a good few devices on the go!
This adapter does things right – it actually checks that 3A is provided, with just a comparator, and uses that to switch power to the three outputs, correctly signalling to the consumer devices that they may consume about 1A from the plugs. This hack’s documentation is super considerate – you get detailed instructions on how to reproduce it, every nuance you might want to keep in mind, and even different case options depending on whether you want to pot the case or instead use a thermal pad for a specific component which might have to dissipate some heat during operation!
This hack has been documented with notable care for whoever might want to walk the journey of building one for themselves, so if you ever need a splitter, this one is a wonderful weekend project you are sure to complete. Wonder what kind of project would be a polar opposite, but in all the best ways? Why,
this 2kW USB-PD PSU,
most certainly. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772647",
"author": "ThantiK",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T15:57:37",
"content": "Honestly, what I want to see is a USB-PD data/power splitter. I want to be able to feed data and select the higher power on the same USB port for 3D printing toolheads. Then you can do something like un... | 1,760,371,868.178248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/casting-concrete-with-a-3d-printed-mould/ | Casting Concrete With A 3D-Printed Mould | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed mold",
"cast concrete",
"TPU mold"
] | We’re accustomed to covering the use of 3D printing in casting, usually as a lost-PLA former in metal casting. That’s not the only use of the technique though, and perhaps one of the simplest is to use a 3D-printed mould for casting concrete.
It’s what [ArtByAdrock] is doing in their latest video, casting an ornamental owl model.
The first part of the video below the break deals with the CAD steps necessary to produce the mould, and depending on your CAD proficiency may not be the most interesting part. The process creates a mould with two halves, a pouring hole, and registration points. Then a 3D printer produces it using flexible TPU. The pour is then simplicity itself, using a casting cement mix at a consistency similar to pancake batter. The video shows how a release spray provides easy separation, and the result is a fresh concrete owl and a mould ready for the next pour.
We can see that maybe readers have only so much space in their lives for concrete owls, but this process could be a valuable part of the armoury when it comes to making some less decorative items.
It’s not the first time we’ve looked at this type of work
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772426",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T18:43:01",
"content": "Who?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6772553",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-07-02T06:37:39... | 1,760,371,868.231815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/freecad-foray-shells-for-all-our-pcbs/ | FreeCAD Foray: Shells For All Our PCBs | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D modelling",
"design",
"freecad",
"pcb case"
] | Are you the kind of hacker who tries to pick up FreeCAD, but doesn’t want to go through a tutorial and instead pokes around the interface, trying to transfer the skills from a CAD suite you’ve been using before? I’ve been there too, and in my experience, FreeCAD doesn’t treat such forays lightly. It’s a huge package that enables everything from architecture to robotics design, so if you just want a 3D-printed case for a PCB project, the hill can be steep. So let’s take that first simple project as an example, and see if it helps you learn a little bit of FreeCAD.
This board needs a case – badly.
As motivation, I recently built a USB-C PSU board that uses a DC PSU and does the USB-C handshaking to provide 20 V to a laptop. It is currently my only 100 W USB-C PSU, and my 60 W PSU just died, which is why I now use this board 24/7. I have brought it on two different conferences so far, which has highlighted a problem – it’s a board with tons of exposed contacts, which means that it isn’t perfectly travel-friendly, and neither it is airport-friendly – not that I won’t try and bring it anyway. So, currently, I have to watch that nothing shorts out – given the board has 3.3 V close to 20 V at 9 A, it’s a bit of a worry.
This means I have to design some sort of case for it. I was taught SolidWorks in the half a year that I spent in a university, and honestly, I’m tired of the licensing and proprietary format stuff. When it comes to more hobbyist-accepted tools like Fusion360, I just don’t feel like exchanging one proprietary software for another. So, FreeCAD is the obvious choice – apart from OpenSCAD, which I know and love, but I don’t always want to think up fifteen variable names for every silly little feature. That, and I also want to fillet corners every now and then.
For a full-open-source workflow, today’s PCB is designed with KiCad, too. Let’s see about installing FreeCAD, and the few things you need to import a KiCad board file into FreeCAD.
Pick The Right Package And STEP Ahead
First, installation. On Windows, look for
this guide.
On Linux, there are
a few ways to install FreeCAD
– not all of them might work well for you. I’m using Ubuntu LTS, where the standard repository version is too old, and the PPA
freecad-daily
version was way too bleeding-edge for me. I’ve found that
FreeCAD AppImages
are a wonderful middle ground, and chances are, an AppImage is what you should get – it ought to work for you no matter the system. It’s a hefty executable alright, but it carries all its dependencies inside to make sure you have a smooth experience despite anything, and it’s a reasonably fresh FreeCAD snapshot.
Open your FreeCAD image, make sure it loads well, and feel free to lurk around the provided examples – there’s plenty! All you need to import a KiCad board is to start a new FreeCAD project, and to load that board’s STEP file – you can just drag and drop it.
Here’s my STEP if you just want to follow along,
and, let’s see what you need if you are starting out with your own board.
Today, we have a very simple PCB,
the Altmode Friend devboard
I developed as I went through writing the USB-C article series. KiCad has native STEP export – all it takes, as a rule, is going
File=>Export=>STEP
. Important – you want to have STEP models for all your components so that they can be exported too. KiCad libraries have both STEP and VRML models, and, VRML doesn’t work well for CAD. However, VRML models are picked by the default for KiCad components, perhaps because they’re more render-friendly. I’m not sure it’s necessary to do that anymore, but if your models don’t export together with your board, you might want to replace any
.wrl
model references with
.step
– I straight up edit the
.kicad_pcb
file in text editor and use a “
.wrl
to
.step
” search-replace for this. Got a
.step
model – now go
File=>Import
(
Ctrl+I
) in FreeCAD and load it, or, again, just drag&drop.
Wonder why your imported STEP looks differently? I used the KiCad StepUp plugin here, it can import things better.
Yay, signs of life! There will not be any traces or silkscreen markings visible; you can check a
KiCad-8-only
option that exports them, but that will increase your file size quite a bit for barely any benefit, and the model will take a while to export&import, too. You will have a piece of green material in the exact shape of your board, PCB through-hole pads shown as holes (no plating), and the component 3D models attached on top of it, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, for mechanical design, this is more than enough.
Are any 3D models missing from your board? If the
.wrl
–
.step
conversion didn’t help, it might be that your footprint just doesn’t have a model associated, and if you can’t find a similar enough model in KiCad 3D libraries, you might need to download one. Check up with your parts’ manufacturers, for a start – places like Molex, Keystone, and many other manufacturers publish STEP files for their parts.
Alternatively, visit a place like
GrabCad
, make an account or
bugmenot
one, and treat yourself to the innumerable amount of models they have. Most of their models are either in STEP format or easily converted into STEP, and if it’s not, you might be able to convert it using FreeCAD itself. If you’ve found some part you need but it’s added to a more complex part (say, an LCD panel on an LCD breakout board 3D model) you can even use FreeCAD to yank only that part out of the multi-part STEP model, export that specific small part as a separate STEP, and load it into KiCad!
One addition you might want to know about – there’s also
the KiCadStepUp plugin
for FreeCAD that helps you import your KiCad boards, doing the STEP export automatically, and adding a whole bunch of improvements along the way. You can even edit the PCB outline as a FreeCad sketch, and then export it back into your KiCad PCB file with a single button! I’m not including the plugin in the article to make it as self-contained as possible, but
it’s still very simple to install,
and I recommend you check it out!
Interface Basics
At this point, you should have a model of your PCB imported into FreeCAD. On the left side, you will have the project tree view, called the Combo View – as CADs go, this is a pretty important view. You can doubleclick the board model entry in the tree view, or right click and press
Transform
– three coloured arrows will appear and let you move or rotate the board in 3D space. Click
Esc
if you want to exit the model movement menu – if you’re like me, you’ll accidentally go into it every now and then, so don’t let it startle you.
Want to move around the workspace, as you will usually do while CAD’ing?
FreeCAD movement bindings
might not be what you’re used to, so let’s make sure you know the current ones. And, as usual, if you want to design models lightning fast and without frustration, tooltips will show the keymaps to you when you hover over toolbar elements, and, you can check the keymaps using
Tools=>Customize
at any point!
Want to make any model disappear? Click on its entry in the tree and press
Space
– it will disappear from the model view and get greyed out in the tree. Alternatively, if you want to make it transparent, you can always exit any sketches, go into the
Part
workbench (this is important), right click the model, pick
Appearance
and move the transparency slider.
On the bottom is the commandline interface and log output. If something goes wrong, that’s where it will throw a bunch of red text at you – sometimes the red text will even be easy to understand! FreeCAD doesn’t tend to use dialog boxes, so if there’s a problem, expect it to appear in red in the commandline output. There are also timestamps, which make it easy to see if the problem disappears as you make changes. (A “clear output” button would be nice.)
If you’d like to try your hand at simple operations, here’s the first task – pick Transform (doubleclick in Combo View or right click =>
Transform
) and use the arrows to rotate the the board parallel to the XY plane (plane formed by X and Y arrows), then move the board center to approximately axis center point (X 0 Y 0 Z 0 coordinates). This is very much not required, but it can help you while you design.
Two Workbenches, Same Purpose
On the top, you will see a dropdown, that likely says
Start
after you’ve booted up. This is also an important one – it has workbench switching. Click on it – you will notice
Part
,
Part Design
and
Sketcher
workbenches. You will invariably be using the
Sketcher
workbench, but as for
Part
and
Part Design
workbenches, you have to pick one of these two. My suggestion is that you go with
Part
, that’s what I’ve learned using so far, and it works wonders for me while not having some limitations of
Part Design
that would be my dealbreaker. Interested to learn more? Here’s
a comparison on the FreeCAD wiki.
One side is Part and another side is PartDesign. Personally, I use Part, and will use that in this tutorial too.
FreeCAD is community-sourced, a lot of people contribute a lot of different parts, thanks to its modular interface. A FreeCAD workbench is one such module that people can contribute – which is how it ended up with two workbenches for the same task. There are workbenches for all sorts of stuff, including one for KiCad import and one for OpenSCAD, and quite a few more. Who knows, maybe you will feel compelled to add a workbench at some point, too! But today, let’s start with a sketch.
Select a face on the surface (bottom of the board is typical) and click on it
Selected face – now you can press the “New sketch” button
I’d start the sketch by drawing on the bottom of the PCB. Rotate the PCB so that its bottom is facing you, and click on it. That will highlight just one continuous surface on the board, the bottom surface. If you’ve accidentally selected the entire PCB as a block, all of it turning bright green, click on the background so that it gets deselected, then click once again on just the surface – that should simply select the face. Go to the workbench dropdown, select
Sketcher
, and press the
New Sketch
button. In the dialog that opens, simply press
Ok
or tap Enter – the default
Plane face
option is what you need.
That brings you into the sketch drawing mode. Pick the rectangle tool and draw a random rectangle. Tap Esc to exit the sketch, go to
Part
workbench, then press the
Extrude
button. On the left, select extrusion length, and press “Ok”. See the extrusion? If it went into the direction you didn’t want, double click on the extrusion in model tree view, and at the bottom, look for the
Reversed
option; flip that.
Sketch drawn on the PCB
Sketch extruded 1mm
Flip the extrusion direction here
This is the point at which I feel it’s safe to leave you alone with FreeCAD – any CAD-savvy hacker will learn the ropes from here, and if you’re looking to move away from something like Fusion360, or at least have a second option at your disposal, this is most of what you need to continue.
There’s one major thing I’ve found that’s unintuitive, that I feel like you should know about immediately. The tree view on the left panel will sometimes become as if unresponsive, and some menu items will be greyed out. If you find yourself battling that, you might have to exit the sketch you’re currently editing, or, if you have a sketch tool activated, you might have to press
Esc
on that to deactivate the tool. Another recommendation is – save early, save often; FreeCAD crashes like a proper CAD tool, less and less with every new version, but it is still a thing to watch out for.
Cool Features, Rough Edges, Friendly Tool
Next time, I want to show you how designing this case went, of course, and talk about things like external geometry. I’d also like to talk to you about a few things I’ve found, that you can keep in mind to ensure your FreeCAD workflow is as smooth as possible. I’ve also accumulated a list of things you want to avoid doing – we will talk about filleting, topo naming, general editing tips, and anything else that you personally think FreeCAD beginners should learn about. Make sure you leave a comment below if there’s anything you want to see discussed! | 58 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772397",
"author": "Pete",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T17:42:58",
"content": "I’m curious. When you say it’s “not airport friendly,” are you saying that TSA gives you a hard time when they see it, or that it’s prone to damage during transport or use?It’s a pet peeve of mine that TSA ... | 1,760,371,868.398962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/modeling-home-heating-systems-with-circuit-simulation-software/ | Modeling Home Heating Systems With Circuit Simulation Software | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"furnace",
"Heat pump",
"heating",
"hvac",
"LTSpice",
"model",
"simulation",
"SPICE"
] | Electricity flow is generally invisible, silent, and not something that most humans want to touch, so understanding how charge moves around can be fairly unintuitive at first. There are plenty of analogies to help understand its behavior, such as imagining a circuit as a pipe of water, with pressure standing in for voltage and flow standing in for current. But you can flip this idea in reverse and use electric circuits to model other complex phenomena instead. [Oxx], for example, is using circuit theory to model his home’s heating systems.
To build his model, he’s using LTSpice, a free circuit simulation program. Using voltage to model temperature and current to model heat flow, he’s set up a model for his home to compare the behavior of a heat pump and a propane furnace. A switch model already in LTSpice with built-in hysteresis takes the place of the thermostat. Using temperature data for a single day in January [Oxx] can see how each of his two heating systems might behave, and the model for the heat pump is incredibly close to how the heat pump behaved in real life.
The model includes all kinds of data about the system, including the coefficient of performance of the heat pump and its backup electric resistive heater, and the model is fairly accurate at predicting behavior. Of course, it takes a good bit of work to set up the parameters for all of the components since our homes and heating systems won’t be included in LTSpice by default, but it does show how powerful an electric circuit analog can be when building models of other systems. If you’ve never used this program before,
we’ve featured a few guides to getting started
that you can take a look at.
Thanks to [Jarvis] for the tip! | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772356",
"author": "Clara",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T15:57:41",
"content": "If your only tool for analyzing dynamical systems is SPICE, every control system’s dynamics looks like a circuit.Well done, and an interesting hack. 😁",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,868.437517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/a-brief-history-of-perpetual-motion/ | A Brief History Of Perpetual Motion | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"perpetual motion"
] | Conservation of energy isn’t just a good idea: It is the law. In particular, it is the first law of thermodynamics. But, apparently, a lot of people don’t really get that because history is replete with inventions that purport to run forever or produce more energy than they consume. Sometimes these are hoaxes, and sometimes they are frauds. We expect sometimes they are also simple misunderstandings.
We thought about this when we ran across the viral photo of an EV with a generator connected to the back wheel. Of course, EVs and hybrids do try to reclaim power through regenerative braking, but that’s recovering a fraction of the energy already spent. You can never pull more power out than you put in, and, in fact, you’ll pull out substantially less.
Not a New Problem
If you think this is a scourge of social media and modern vehicles, you’d be wrong. Leonardo da Vinci, back in 1494, said:
Oh ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.
There was a rumor in the 8th century that someone built a “magic wheel,” but this appears to be little more than a myth. An Indian mathematician also claimed to have a wheel that would run forever, but there’s little proof of that, either. It was probably an overbalanced wheel where the wheel spins due to weight and gravity with enough force to keep the wheel spinning.
Villard’s machine
An architect named Villard de Honnecourt drew an impractical perpetual motion machine in the 13th century that was also an overbalanced wheel. His device, and other similar ones, would require a complete lack of friction to work. Even Leonardo da Vinci, who did not think such a device was possible, did some sketches of overbalanced wheels, hoping to find a solution.
Types of Machines
There isn’t just a single kind of perpetual motion machine. A type I machine claims to produce work without any input energy. For example, a wheel that spins for no reason would be a type I machine.
Type II machines violate the second law of thermodynamics. For example, the “zeromoter” — developed in the 1800s by John Gamgee, used ammonia and a piston to move by boiling and cooling ammonia. While the machine was, of course, debunked, Gamgee has the honor of being the inventor of the world’s first mechanically frozen ice rink in 1844.
Type III machines claim to use some means to reduce friction to zero to allow a machine to work that would otherwise run down. For example, you can make a flywheel with very low friction bearings, and with no load, it may spin for years. However, it will still spin down.
Often, machines that claim to be perpetual either don’t really last forever — like the flywheel — or they actually draw power from an unintended source. For example, in 1760, James Cox and John Joseph Merlin developed Cox’s timepiece and claimed it ran perpetually. However, it actually drew power from changes in barometric pressure.
Frauds
These inventions were often mere frauds. E.P. Willis in 1870 made money from his machine but it actually had a hidden source of power. So did John Ernst Worrell Keely’s induction resonance motion motor that actually used hidden air pressure tubes to power itself. Harry Perrigo, an MIT graduate, also demonstrated a perpetual motion machine to the US Congress in 1917. That device had a secret battery.
However, some inventors probably weren’t frauds. Nikola Tesla was certainly a smart guy. He claimed to have found a principle that would allow for the construction of a Type II perpetual motion machine. However, he never built it.
There have been hosts of others, and it isn’t always clear who really thought they had a good idea and how many were just out to make a buck. But some people have created machines as a joke. Dave Jones, in 1981, created a bicycle wheel in a clear container that never stopped spinning. But he always said it was a fake and that he had built it as a joke. Adam Savage looks at that machine in the video below. He wrote his secret in a sealed envelope before he died, and supposedly, only two people know how it works.
Methods
Most perpetual machines try to use force from magnets. Gravity is also a popular agent of action. Other machines depend on buoyancy (like the one in the video below) or gas expansion and condensation.
The US Patent and Trademark Office manual of patent examining practice says:
With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device. If operability of a device is questioned, the applicant must establish it to the satisfaction of the examiner, but he or she may choose his or her own way of so doing.
The UK Patent Office also forbids perpetual motion machine patents. The European Patent Classification system has classes for “alleged perpetua mobilia”
Of course, having a patent doesn’t mean something works; it just means the patent office thought it was original and can’t figure out why it wouldn’t work. Consider Tom Bearden’s motionless electromagnetic generator, which claims to generate power without any external input. Despite widespread denouncement of the supposed operating principle — Bearden claimed the device extracted vacuum energy — the patent office issued
a patent
in 2002.
The Most Insidious
The best machines are ones that use energy from some source that isn’t apparent. For example, a Crookes radiometer looks like a lightbulb with a little propeller inside. Light makes it move. It is also a common method to use magnetic fields to move something without obviously spinning it. For example, the egg of Columbus (see the video below) is a magnet, and a moving magnetic field makes the egg spin. This isn’t dissimilar from a sealed pump where a magnet turns on the dry side and moves the impeller, which is totally immersed in liquid.
Some low-friction systems, like the flywheel, can seem to be perpetual motion machines if you aren’t patient enough. But eventually, they all wear down.
Crazy or Conspiracy?
Venues like
YouTube are full of people claiming to have free energy devices
that also claim to be suppressed by “the establishment”. While we hate to be on the wrong side of history if someone does pull it off, we are going to go out on a limb and say that there can’t be a true perpetual motion machine. Unless you
cheat
, of course.
This is the place we usually tell you to get hacking and come up with something cool. But, sadly, for this time we’ll entreat you to spend your time on something more productive, like a
useless box
or put
Linux on your Commodore 64
. | 65 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772330",
"author": "I Guess It Keeps Them Out Of REAL Trouble",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T14:18:50",
"content": "I have a friend who grew up as an orphan in an Eastern European country, with limited educational opportunities. He just can’t seem to grasp the idea that the laws of the... | 1,760,371,868.701876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/an-ibm-m2-keyboard-lives-again/ | An IBM M2 Keyboard Lives Again | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"Buckling Spring",
"IBM model M2",
"Model M"
] | There’s a mystique in old keyboard circles around the IBM Model M, the granddaddy of PC keyboards with those famous buckling spring key switches. The original Model M was a substantial affair with a sheet metal backplane that would probably serve well as a weapon in a zombie apocalypse and still allow writing a
Hackaday
piece afterward, but later on in the life of these ‘boards there was also a lighter version. The M2 as these models are dubbed has a few known problems, and [Anders Nielsen] scored one online that turned out to have dodgy capacitors. His video, below the break,
takes us through the disassembly of his M2
and provides a relaxing tour of these not-quite-so-famous peripherals.
As you’d expect, three-decade-old plastic isn’t always in the best shape, so disassembly and unlatching all those little tabs has to be performed with care. The keys come off and the springs are on show, but we get a nasty shock when they all fall out of place as the top is removed. It appears the rookie mistake is to not turn the ‘board upside down before parting it. Replacing the caps is an easy process after all that, and we get a little dive into the 6805 processors used in model Ms.
If you have a model M of any description then you’re probably at home with the clack-clack-clack sound they make, but
have you ever looked at its ancestor, the model F
? | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772465",
"author": "Titus431",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T20:45:13",
"content": "True story – Back in the day I broke my big toe dropping my Model M on it. Try doing that with a modem keyboard.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,868.490404 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/chatgpt-and-other-llms-produce-bull-excrement-not-hallucinations/ | ChatGPT And Other LLMs Produce Bull Excrement, Not Hallucinations | Maya Posch | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"retrieval augmented generation"
] | In the communications surrounding LLMs and popular interfaces like ChatGPT the term ‘hallucination’ is often used to reference false statements made in the output of these models. This infers that there is some coherency and an attempt by the LLM to be both cognizant of the truth, while also suffering moments of (mild) insanity. The LLM thus effectively is treated like a young child or a person suffering from disorders like Alzheimer’s, giving it agency in the process. That this is utter nonsense and patently incorrect is the
subject of a treatise
by [Michael Townsen Hicks] and colleagues, as published in
Ethics and Information Technology
.
Much of the distinction lies in the difference between a lie and bullshit, as so eloquently described in [Harry G. Frankfurt]’s 1986 essay and 2005 book
On Bullshit
. Whereas a lie is intended to deceive and cover up the truth, bullshitting is done with no regard for, or connection with, the truth. The bullshitting is only intended to serve the immediate situation, reminiscent of the worst of
sound bite
culture.
When we consider the way that LLMs work, with the input query used to provide a probability fit across the weighted nodes that make up its vector space, we can see that the generated output is effectively that of an oversized word prediction algorithm. This precludes any possibility of intelligence and thus cognitive awareness of ‘truth’. Meaning that even if there is no intent behind the LLM, it’s still bullshitting, even if it’s the soft (unintentional) kind. When taking into account the agency and intentions of those who created the LLM, trained it, and created the interface (like ChatGPT), however, we enter into hard, intentional bullshit territory.
It is incidentally this same bullshitting that has led to LLMs being partially phased out already, with
Retrieval Augmented Generation
(RAG) turning a word prediction algorithm into more of a fancy search machine. Even venture capitalists can only take so much bullshit, after all. | 99 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772229",
"author": "Anathae.",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T08:32:04",
"content": "Llms, ultimate mansplaining?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6772348",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T15:31:51",
... | 1,760,371,868.937289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/hackaday-links-june-30-2024/ | Hackaday Links: June 30, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"autonomous",
"av",
"conways game of life",
"enforcement",
"fcc",
"Florida Man",
"Flux Capacitor",
"gigawatts",
"gmrs",
"hackaday links",
"lawsuit",
"nasa",
"repeater",
"SAE Level 4",
"safety",
"solar flare",
"space junk",
"space weather",
"sunspot"
] | A couple of weeks back we featured
a story
(third item) about a chunk of space jetsam that tried to peacefully return to Earth, only to find a Florida family’s roof rudely in the way. The 700-gram cylinder of Inconel was all that was left of a 2,360-kg battery pack that was tossed overboard from the ISS back in 2021, the rest presumably turning into air pollution just as NASA had planned. But the surviving bit was a
“Golden BB”
that managed to slam through the roof and do a fair amount of damage. At the time it happened, the Otero family was just looking for NASA to cover the cost of repairs, but now they’re looking for
a little more consideration
. A lawsuit filed by their attorney seeks $80,000 to cover the cost of repairs as well as compensation for the “stress and impact” of the event. This also seems to be about setting a precedent, since the
Space Liability Convention
, an agreement to which the USA is party, would require the space agency to cover damages if the debris had done damage in another country. The Oteros think the SLC should apply to US properties as well, and while we can see their point, we’d advise them not to hold their breath. We suppose something like this had to happen eventually, and somehow we’re not surprised to see
“Florida Man” in the headlines
.
There was a little hubbub this week around the release of
a study
regarding the safety of autonomous vehicles relative to their meat-piloted counterparts. The headlines for the articles covering this varied widely and hilariously, ranging from
autonomous vehicles only being able to drive in straight lines
to
AVs being safer than human-driven cars, full-stop
. As always, one has to read past the headlines to get an idea of what’s really going on, or perhaps even brave reading the primary literature. From our reading of the abstract, it seems like the story is more nuanced. According to an analysis of crashes involving 35,000 human-driven vehicles and 2,100 vehicles with some level of automation, AVs with
SAE Level 4 automation
suffered fewer accidents across the board than those without any automation. Importantly, the accidents that Level 4 vehicles do suffer are more likely to occur when the vehicle is turning just before the accident, or during low-visibility conditions such as dawn or dusk. The study also compares Level 4 automation to Level 2, which has driver assistance features like lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control, and found that Level 2 actually beats Level 4 in clear driving conditions, but loses in rainy conditions and pretty much every other driving situation.
There’s a strange story coming out of New York regarding
a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforcement action that seems a little shady
. It regards a General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) repeater system used by the New York State GMRS Alliance. GMRS is sort of a “ham radio lite” system — there’s no testing required for a license, you just pay a fee — that uses the UHF band. Repeaters are allowed, but only under specific rules, and that appears to be where things have gone wrong for the club. The repeater system they used was a linked system, which connected geographically remote repeaters stretching from the far western part of the state near Buffalo all the way to Utica. It’s the linking that seems to have raised the FCC’s hackles, and understandably so because it seems to run counter to the GMRS rules in section 95. But it’s the method of notification that seems hinky here, as the repeater custodian was contacted by email. That’s not typical behavior for the FCC, who generally send enforcement notices by certified snail mail, or just dispense with the paper altogether and knock on your door. People seem to think this is all fake news, and it may well be, but then again, the email could just have been an informal heads-up preceding a formal notice. Either way, it’s bad news for the GMRS fans in upstate New York who used this system to keep in touch along Interstate 90, a long and lonely stretch of road that we know all too well.
Third time’s a charm? We’ll see when
sunspot region AR3723 (
née
AR3697
née
AR3664) makes a historic third pass around the Sun
and potentially puts Earth in its crosshairs yet again. The region kicked up quite a ruckus on its first pass across the solar disk back in May with a series of X-class flares that produced stunning aurorae across almost all of North America. Pass number two saw the renamed region pass more or less quietly by, although it did launch an M-class flare on June 23 that caused radio blackouts in most of the North Atlantic basin. When AR3723 does peek out from behind the eastern limb of the Sun it’ll be a much-diminished version of its former
Carrington-level
glory, and will likely be given multiple designations thanks to fragmentation while it was hanging out on the backside. But it could still pack a punch, and even if this particular region doesn’t have much juice left, it sure seems like the Sun has plenty of surprises in store for the balance of
Solar Cycle 25
.
Somebody made a version of
Conway’s Game of Life using nothing but checkboxes
, which is very cool and you should check it out.
And finally, we’ve been doing an unexpected amount of automotive DIY repairs these days, meaning we spend a lot of time trolling around for parts.
Here’s something
we didn’t expect to see offered by a national retailer, but that we’d love to find a use for. If it ever comes back in stock we just might pick one up. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772220",
"author": "CampGareth",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T06:39:37",
"content": "Hey Dan, I’m not sure ‘trolling’ is the word you meant to use there, you probably meant ‘trawling’ as in to search thoroughly. I saw the same misuse yesterday in subtitles for Dexter so had to verify t... | 1,760,371,869.15852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/almost-google-glass-in-1993/ | Almost Google Glass In 1993 | Al Williams | [
"Art",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"wearable"
] | You might think Google Glass was an innovative idea, but [Allison Marsh] points out that artist
[Lisa Krohn] imagined the Cyberdesk in 1993
. Despite having desk in the name, the imagined prototype was really a wearable computer. Of course, in 1993, the technology wasn’t there to actually build it, but it does look like [Krohn] predicted headgear that would augment your experience.
Unlike Google Glass, the Cyberdesk was worn like a necklace. There are five disk-like parts that form a four-key keyboard and something akin to a trackpad. There were two models built, but since they were nonfunctional, they could have any imagined feature you might like. For example, the system was supposed to draw power from the sun and your body, something practical devices today don’t really do, either.
She also imagined a wrist-mounted computer with satellite navigation, a phone, and more. Then again, so did [Chester Gould] when he created
Dick Tracy
. The post also talks about a more modern reimagining of the Cyberdesk last year.
While this wasn’t a practical device, it is a great example of how people imagine the future. Sometimes, they miss the mark, but even then, speculative art and fiction can serve as goals for scientists and engineers who build the actual devices of the future.
We usually think about machines augmenting our intelligence and senses, but maybe we should consider more
physical augmentation
. We do appreciate seeing designs that are both
artistic and functional
. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772239",
"author": "loonquawl",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T09:16:12",
"content": "nonfunctional design study in 1993? Hold my (in fact not mine, but Steve Mann’s) Eyetap! Functional in 1981/1984https://mannlab.com/eyetap",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,868.792059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/an-open-xbox-modchip-enters-the-scene/ | An Open XBOX Modchip Enters The Scene | Arya Voronova | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"hacking the xbox",
"homebrew",
"modchip",
"modchips",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"xbox",
"xbox hack"
] | If you’ve ever bought a modchip that adds features to your game console, you might have noticed sanded-off IC markings, epoxy blobs, or just obscure chips with unknown source code. It’s ironic – these modchips are a shining example of hacking, and yet they don’t represent hacking culture one bit. Usually, they are more of a black box than the console they’re tapping into. This problem has plagued the original XBOX hacking community, having them rely on inconsistent suppliers of obscure boards that would regularly fall off the radar as each crucial part went to end of life. Now, a group of hackers have come up with a solution, and [Macho Nacho Productions] on YouTube
tells us its story
– it’s
an open-source modchip
with an open firmware, ModXO.
Like many modern modchips and adapters, ModXO is based on an RP2040, and it’s got a lot of potential – it already works for feeding a BIOS to your console, it’s quite easy to install, and it’s only going to get better. [Macho Nacho Productions] shows us the modchip install process in the video, tells us about the hackers involved, and gives us a sneak peek at the upcoming features, including, possibly, support for the Prometheos project that equips your Xbox with an entire service menu. Plus, with open-source firmware and hardware, you can add tons more flashy and useful stuff, like small LCD/OLED screens for status display and LED strips of all sorts!
If you’re looking to add a modchip to your OG XBOX, it looks like the proprietary options aren’t much worth considering anymore. XBOX hacking has a strong community behind it for historical reasons and has spawned entire projects like XBMC that outgrew the community. There’s even an amazing book about how its security got hacked. If you would like to read it,
it’s free
and worth your time. As for open-source modchips, they rule, and it’s not the first one we see [Macho Nacho Productions] tell us about – here’s
an open GameCube modchip
that shook the scene, also with a RP2040! | 45 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772109",
"author": "Electronic Eel",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T20:30:58",
"content": "When you mention that there are other modchips based on the RP2040, I think you should also mention the Picofly for the Nintendo Switch. It does voltage-glitch the verification of the bootloader an... | 1,760,371,869.108136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/a-vintage-ac-bridge-teardown/ | A Vintage AC Bridge Teardown | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"AC bridge",
"AVO",
"test equipment"
] | If you ever encounter a British engineer of a certain age, the chances are that even if they use a modern DMM they’ll have a big boxy multimeter in their possession. This is the famous Avo 8, in its day
the
analogue multimeter to have. Of course it wasn’t the only AVO product, and [Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU] is here with another black box sporting an AVO logo. This one’s an AC bridge, one of a series of models manufactured from the 1930s through to the late 1940s, and
he treats us to a teardown and restoration of it
.
Most readers will probably be familiar with the operation of a DC
Wheatstone
Bridge in which two resistances can be compared, and an AC bridge is the same idea but using an AC source. A component under test is attached to one set of terminals while one with a known value is put on the other, and the device can then be adjusted for a minimum reading on its meter to achieve a state of balance. The amount by which it is adjusted can then be used as a measure of the difference between the two parts, and thus the value of an unknown part can be deduced.
In the case of this AVO the AC is the 50Hz (remembering that this is a British instrument) mains frequency, and the reading from the bridge is taken via a single tube amplifier to a rectifier circuit and the meter. Inside it’s a treasure trove of vintage parts with an electrolytic capacitor that looks as though it might not be original, with a selenium rectifier and a copper oxide signal diode in particular catching our eye. This last part is responsible for some reading anomalies, but after cleaning and lubricating all the switches and bringing up the voltage gently, he’s rewarded with a working bridge. You can see the whole story in the video below the break.
Test equipment from this era is huge, so perhaps not all of you have the space for something like this.
Some of us have been known to own other AVO products
though. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772480",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2024-07-01T21:32:15",
"content": "That “pigtail” of twisted wire might be a low value “gimmick” capacitor; maybe C8? See this: Gimmick capacitor – Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmick_capacitor]. A gimmick capacitor is a capacit... | 1,760,371,868.742923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/root-your-sleep-number-smart-bed-discover-it-phoning-home/ | Root Your Sleep Number Smart Bed, Discover It Phoning Home | Arya Voronova | [
"home hacks",
"how-to",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"homebridge",
"sleep number",
"smart bed"
] | Did you know you can get a “smart bed” that tracks your sleep, breathing, heart rate, and even regulates the temperature of the mattress? No? Well, you can get root access to one, too,
as [Dillan] shows,
and if you’re lucky, find a phone-home backdoor-like connection. The backstory to this hack is pretty interesting, too!
You see, a Sleep Number bed requires a network connection for its smart features, with no local option offered. Not to worry — [Dillan] wrote a Homebridge plugin that’d talk the cloud API, so you could at least meaningfully work with the bed data. However, the plugin got popular, Sleep Number didn’t expect the API to be that popular. When they discovered the plugin, they asked that it be shut down. Tech-inclined customers are not to be discouraged, of course.
Taking a closer look at the hardware, [Dillan] found a UART connection and dumped the flash, then wrote an extensive tutorial on how to tap into your bed’s controller, which runs Linux, and add a service you can use locally to query bed data and control the bed – just like it should have been from the beginning. Aside from that, he’s found a way to connect this hub to a network without using Sleep Number’s tools, enabling fully featured third-party use – something that the company doesn’t seem to like. Another thing he’s found is a reverse SSH tunnel back into the Sleep Number network.
Now, it can be reasonable to have a phone-home tunnel, but that doesn’t mean you want it in your personal network, and it does expose a threat surface that might be exploited in the future, which is why you might want to know about it. Perhaps you’d like to use Bluetooth instead of WiFi. Having this local option is good for several reasons. For example, having your smart devices rely on the manufacturer’s server is a
practice
that
regularly
results
in
perma-bricked
smart
devices
, though we’ve been seeing
some
examples
of dedicated hackers bringing devices back to life. Thanks to this hack, once Sleep Number shutters, is bought out, or just wants to move on, their customers won’t be left with a suddenly dumbed-down bed they can no longer control.
[Header image courtesy of Sleep Number] | 64 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771998",
"author": "purplepeopleated",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T14:06:57",
"content": "Leela: “Didn’t you have ads in the 20th century?”Fry: “Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on tv and radio…and in magazines…and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shi... | 1,760,371,869.030669 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/3d-printing-with-a-twist/ | 3D Printing With A Twist | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"Twist"
] | When we think about sending an STL off on the Internet for processing, we usually want someone to print it for us or we want mesh repair. But [Chuck] found an interesting project on GitHub from [Andrew Sink] that will let you add a
variable amount of twist to any STL
and then return it to you for printing or whatever else you use STLs for. If you don’t get what we mean, check out the video below.
The
site that does the work
initially loads a little gnome figure if you are too lazy to upload your own model. That’s perfect, though, because the little guy is a good example of why you might want to twist a model. With just a little work, you can make the gnome look in one direction or even look behind him.
[Chuck] shows how to use the tool for artistic effect by twisting his standard cube logo. The result is something that looks like it would be difficult to create, but could hardly be easier. The tool lets you rotate the object, too, so you can get the twist effect in the right orientation for what you want to accomplish. A great little tool for making more artistic 3D prints without learning new software. If you want some fun, you can try the version that uses sound from your
microphone to control the twist
.
If you’d rather twist in CAD,
we can help
. If you really want artsy 3D printing, you probably need to
learn Blender
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771989",
"author": "Andrew Sink",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T13:38:53",
"content": "Thanks for the write-up! As a few people noticed on Chuck’s video, the twist function doesn’t subdivide low poly models, so models that have only a few triangles can get distorted after twisting.Addin... | 1,760,371,869.209007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/30/swapping-vinyl-for-cardboard-with-this-esp32-turntable/ | Swapping Vinyl For Cardboard With This ESP32 Turntable | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"audio",
"cardboard",
"ESP32",
"magnet",
"music",
"record player",
"rfid",
"sound",
"turntable",
"vinyl"
] | Cardboard is a surprisingly durable material, especially in its corrugated form. It’s extremely lightweight for its strength, is easy to work, can be folded and formed into almost any shape, is incredibly inexpensive, and when it has done its duty it can be recycled back into more paper. For these reasons, it’s often used in packaging material but it can be used to build all kinds of things outside of ensuring that products arrive at their locations safely.
This working cardboard record player is one example
.
While the turntable doesn’t have working records in the sense that the music is etched into them like vinyl, each has its own RFID chip embedded that allows the ESP32 in the turntable’s body to identify them. Each record corresponds to a song stored on an SD card that instructs the ESP32 to play the appropriate song. It also takes care of spinning the record itself with a small stepper motor. There are a few other details on this build that tie it together too, including a movable needle arm held on with a magnet and a volume slider.
As far as a building material goes, cardboard is fairly underrated in our opinion. Besides small projects like this turntable, we’ve also seen
it work as the foundation for a computer
, and it even has the strength and durability to be built into a wall or
even used as shelving material
. And, of course,
it’s a great material to use when prototyping new designs
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771958",
"author": "tyjteyj5tyj",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T08:43:15",
"content": "this not working ;(I remember a good idea to save sound on plastic cup transparent. very nice idea. this device not work, it only symulatet working vinyl",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,371,869.2578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/try-out-mcus-with-this-jumperable-tssop20-adapter/ | Try Out MCUs With This Jumperable TSSOP20 Adapter | Arya Voronova | [
"Lifehacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Tech Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"breakout",
"breakout board",
"CH32",
"CH32V003",
"MCU",
"tssop"
] | There are so many new cool MCUs coming out, and you want to play with all of them, but, initially, they tend to be accessible as bare chips. Devboards might be hard to get, not expose everything, or carry a premium price. [Willmore] has faced this problem with an assortment of new WCH-made MCUs, and brings us all a solution –
a universal board for TSSOP20-packaged MCUs,
breadboard-friendly and adaptable to any pinout with only a few jumpers on the underside.
The board brings you everything you might want from a typical MCU breakout – an onboard 3.3V regulator, USB series resistors, a 1.5K pullup, decoupling capacitors, and a USB-C port. All GPIOs are broken out, and there’s a separate header you can wire up for all your SWD/UART/USB/whatever needs – just use the “patch panel” on the bottom of the board and pick the test points you want to join. [Willmore] has used these boards for the CH32Vxxx family, and they could, no doubt, be used for more – solder your MCU on, go through the pin table in the datasheet, do a little point-to-point wiring, and you get a pretty functional development board.
Everything is open-source
– order
a few of these boards
from your fab of choice, and you won’t ever worry about a breakout for a TSSOP20 MCU or anything that would fit the same footprint. It could even be used in a pinch for something like an I2C GPIO expander. This is also a technique worth keeping in mind – a step above the
generic footprint breakouts.
Looking for more universal breakouts to keep? Here’s
one for generic LCD/OLED panel breakouts
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771976",
"author": "k1io",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T11:45:29",
"content": "With 2L boards running $2/5 and this requiring SMT anyway, I’m normally just inclined to order purpose-designed boards than ever mess with jumpers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,869.301452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/apple-may-use-electrical-debonding-for-battery-replacement/ | Apple May Use Electrical Debonding For Battery Replacement | Maya Posch | [
"Battery Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"electroadhesion",
"smartphone battery",
"smartphone repair"
] | As a result of the European Union’s push for greater repairability of consumer devices like smartphones, Apple sees itself forced to make the batteries in the iPhone user-replaceable by 2027.
Reportedly
, this has led Apple to look at using electroadhesion rather than conventional adhesives which require either heat, isopropyl alcohol, violence, or all of the above to release. Although details are scarce, it seems that the general idea would be that the battery is wrapped in metal, which, together with the inside of the metal case, would allow for the creation of a cationic/anionic pair capable of permanent adhesion with the application of a low-voltage DC current.
This is not an entirely wild idea. Tesa has already commercialized it in the electrical debonding form of its
Debonding on Demand
product
. This uses a tape that’s applied to one side of the (metal) surfaces, with a 5 bar pressure being applied for 5 seconds. Afterwards, the two parts can be released again without residue as shown in the above image. This involves applying a 12V DC voltage for 60 seconds, with the two parts afterward removable without force.
Tesa markets this right alongside the pull tab adhesive strips which are currently all the rage in smartphones, with the opinions on pull strips during battery replacement strongly divided. A bottle of IPA is always good to have nearby when a pull tab inevitably snaps off and you have to pry the battery loose. In that regard electroadhesion for debonding would make life significantly easier since the times when batteries were not a structural part of smartphones are unlikely to return
no matter how much we might miss them
.
We covered electroadhesion
previously
, as you can make just about anything stick to anything, including biological tissues to graphite and metal, with potentially interesting applications in robotics and medicine. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771915",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T03:00:04",
"content": "I kept reading “Tesla”!B^P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771955",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,869.369248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/go-forth-with-this-portable-programmer/ | Go Forth With This Portable Programmer | Bryan Cockfield | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"computer",
"display",
"forth",
"handheld",
"keyboard",
"lcd",
"programmer"
] | When choosing a low-level language, it’s hard to beat the efficiency of Forth while also maintaining some amount of readability. There are open source options for the language which makes it accessible, and it maintains its prevalence in astronomical and other embedded systems for its direct hardware control and streamlined use of limited resources even though the language started over 50 years ago. Unlike 50 years ago, though,
you can now take your own self-contained Forth programmer on the go with you
.
The small computer is built on a design that [Dennis] built a while back called my4TH which has its own dedicated 8-bit CPU and can store data in a 256 kB EEPROM chip. Everything else needed for the computer is built in as well but that original design didn’t include a few features that this one adds, most notably a small 40×4 character LCD and a keyboard. The build also adds a case to tie everything together, with ports on the back for I2C and power plus an RS232 port. An optional battery circuit lets the computer power up without an external power supply as well.
Part of the appeal of Forth for systems like this is that it includes an interpreter and compiler in addition to the programming language itself, meaning that it has everything needed for a usable computer system built right in. For some more details on this unique language, or if you’d like to explore below the world of Python or C,
check out [Elliot]’s discussion on the “hacker’s language.”
. While Forth can tackle big problems, it can
fit on tiny machines
, too. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771898",
"author": "Joe Gould",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T00:29:38",
"content": "If you’ve got an old WikiReader device laying around it runs Forth natively.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771905",
"author": "Bobtato... | 1,760,371,869.515183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/building-a-hydraulic-system-with-3d-printed-sla-resin-parts/ | Building A Hydraulic System With 3D Printed SLA Resin Parts | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"hydraulics",
"sla printing"
] | Showing off the 3D-printed hydraulics system. (Credit: Indeterminate Design, YouTube)
Hydraulics are incredibly versatile, but due to the pressures at which they operate, they are also rather expensive and not very DIY-friendly. This isn’t to say that you cannot take a fair shot at a halfway usable 3D-printed set of hydraulics, as [Indeterminate Design] demonstrates in a
recent video
. Although not 100% 3D-printed, it does give a good idea of how far you can push plastic-based additive manufacturing in this field.
Most interesting is the integration of the gear pump, 4-way selector valve, and relief valve into a single structure, which was printed with a resin printer (via the JLC3DP 3D print service). After bolting on the (also 3D printed) clear reservoir and assembling the rest of the structure including the MR63 ball bearings, relief spring valve, and pneumatic fittings it was ready to be tested. The (unloaded) gear pump could pump about 0.32 L/minute, demonstrating its basic functionality.
For the hydraulic cylinder, mostly non-3D printed parts were used, with a brass cylinder forming the main body. During these initial tests, plain water was used, followed by CHF11 hydraulic oil, with a pressure of about 1.3 bar (19 PSI) calculated afterward. This fairly low pressure is suspected to be caused by leaky seals (including the busted shaft seal), but as a basic proof of concept, it provides an interesting foundation for improvements.
Want a primer on hydraulics?
We got you
.
MIT likes 3D printing with hydraulics
, too (dead link, but the underlying paper link is still good). | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6772141",
"author": "Erhannis",
"timestamp": "2024-06-30T22:37:50",
"content": "If you get over 100PSI, be careful of injection injuries, I hear they can cost you a limb",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6772272",
"autho... | 1,760,371,869.561145 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/solar-energy-plant-creates-fuel/ | Solar Energy Plant Creates Fuel | Al Williams | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"solar energy",
"syngas"
] | Normally, when you think of solar power, you think about photovoltaic cells or using the sun to generate steam. But engineers at Synhelion — a spin off from ETH Zurich — had a crazy idea. Could you reverse combustion and change waste products back into fuel? The answer is
yes if you can use the sun to turn things up to 1,500°C
.
The input is water, carbon dioxide, and methane into syngas. The pilot plant in Germany is set to begin operations using a thermal storage device to allow the plant to operate around the clock. The new plant is slated to produce several thousand liters of fuel a year. Future plants will produce more, and they are targeting a cost of $1 per liter of fuel. The pilot plant has a 20-meter-tall tower and around 1,500 square meters of mirrors, producing 600 kW of output. The hexagonal mirrors are very thin, and the plant uses drones to aim the mirrors quickly compared to other methods.
Syngas
shows up a lot lately
. Getting to 1,500 degrees is a big ask, although we’ve seen ETH Zurich get to
1,000 using solar
. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771802",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T18:05:44",
"content": "Synthetic fuels are the next step in the transition away from pure hydrocarbon fuel. This is a good example of using solar to that effect. I didn’t see in the linked article what the efficiency of the proce... | 1,760,371,869.65454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/danger-is-my-middle-name/ | Danger Is My Middle Name | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"danger",
"newsletter",
"safety",
"science",
"x-ray"
] | Last week, [Al Williams] wrote up a
his experience with a book
that provided almost too much detailed information on how to build a DIY x-ray machine for his (then) young soul to bear. He almost had to build it! Where the “almost” is probably both a bummer because he didn’t have an x-ray machine as a kid, but also a great good because it was a super dangerous build, of a typical sort for the 1950s in which it was published.
Part of me really loves the matter-of-factness with which “A Boy’s First Book of Linear Accelerators” tells you how you (yes you!) can build a 500 kV van der Graff generator. But at the same time, modern me
does
find the lack of safety precautions in many of these mid-century books to be a little bit spooky. Contrast this with modern books where sometimes I get the feeling that the publisher’s legal team won’t let us read about folding paper airplanes for fear of getting cut.
A number of us have built dangerous projects in our lives, and many of us have gotten away with it. Part of the reason that many of us are still here is that we understood the dangers, but I would be lying if I said that I
always
fully understood them. But thinking about the dangers is still our first and best line of defense. Humility about how well you understand all of the dangers of a certain project is also very healthy – if you go into it keeping an eye out for the unknown unknowns, you’re in better shape.
Safety isn’t avoiding danger, but rather minimizing it. When we publish dangerous hacks, we really try to at least highlight the most important hazards so that you know what to look out for. And over the years, I’ve learned a ton of interesting safety tricks from the comments and fellow hackers alike. My ideal, then, is the spirit of the 1950s x-ray book, which encourages you to get the hack built, but modernized so that it tells you where the dangers lie and how to handle them. If you’re shooting electrons, shouldn’t the book also tell you how to stay out of the way?
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
! | 75 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771745",
"author": "e",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T15:20:04",
"content": "I remember reading about old book lacking safety warnings. “The Radioactive Boy Scout” tells about a boy in Michigan who caused major incident when he was seeking elements.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,371,869.927143 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/long-term-octoprint-stat-manipulation-uncovered/ | Long-Term OctoPrint Stat Manipulation Uncovered | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Octoprint",
"octoprint plugin",
"stats"
] | Developing free and open source software can be a thankless experience. Most folks do it because it’s something they’re passionate about, with the only personal benefit being the knowledge that there are individuals out there who found your work useful enough to download and install. So imagine how you’d feel if it turns out somebody was playing around with the figures, and the steady growth in the number of installs you
thought
your software had turned out to be fake.
That’s what happened just a few days ago to OctoPrint developer [Gina Häußge]
. Although there’s no question that her software for remotely controlling and monitoring 3D printers is immensely popular within the community, the fact remains that the numbers she’s been using to help quantify that popularity have been
tampered with by an outside party
. She’s pissed, and has every right to be.
[Gina] discovered this manipulation on June 26th after taking a look at the publicly available usage stats on
data.octoprint.org
. She noticed that an unusually high number of instances appeared to be running an old OctoPrint release, and upon closer inspection, realized what she was actually seeing was a stream of bogus data that was designed to trick the stat counter. Rolling back the data, she was able to find out this spam campaign has been going on since late 2022. Tens of thousands of the users she thought she’d gained over the last two years were in fact nothing more than garbage spit out by some bot. But why?
Here’s where it gets interesting. Looking at the data being reported by these fake OctoPrint instances, [Gina] could tell the vast majority of them claimed to be running a specific plugin: OctoEverywhere. The perpetrators were clever enough to sprinkle in a random collection of other popular plugins along with it, but this specific plugin was the one most of them had in common. Sure enough this pushed OctoEverywhere to the top of the charts, making it seem like it was the most popular plugin in the community repository.
So what do the developers of OctoEverywhere have to say for themselves? In a statement that [Gina] posted on the OctoPrint blog, they claim they were able to determine a member of the community had performed the stat manipulation of their own accord, but as of this writing are unwilling to release this individual’s identity. A similar statement
now appears on the OctoEverywhere website
.
On June 27th, Gina Häußge, the developer behind OctoPrint, informed us of an incident involving the OctoPrint usage stats. Gina had observed that the stats were being manipulated to boost OctoEverywhere’s rankings.
We took the report very seriously and quickly started an investigation. Using private community channels,
we determined
a community member was responsible for manipulating the OctoPrint stats
. We had a private conversation with the individual, who didn’t realize the impact they were having but apologized and promised never to do it again.
From a journalistic perspective, it would be inappropriate for us to leap to any conclusions based on the currently available information. But we will say this…we’ve heard more convincing stories on a kindergarten playground. Even if we take the statement at face value, the fact that they were able to figure out who was doing this within 48 hours of being notified would seem to indicate this person wasn’t exactly a stranger to the team.
In any event, the bogus data has now been purged from the system, and the plugin popularity charts are once again showing accurate numbers. [Gina] also says some safeguards have been put into place to help prevent this sort of tampering from happening again. As for OctoEverywhere, it slid back to its rightful place as the 6th most popular plugin, a fact that frankly makes the whole thing even more infuriating — you’d think legitimately being in the top 10 would have been enough.
On Mastodon, [Gina] expressed her disappointment
in being fooled into thinking OctoPrint was growing faster than it really was, which we certainly get. But even so, OctoPrint is a wildly popular piece of software that has become the cornerstone of a vibrant community. There’s no question that her work has had a incredible impact on the world of desktop 3D printing, and while this turn of events is frustrating, it will ultimately be little more than a footnote in what is sure to be a lasting legacy. | 31 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771719",
"author": "SteveL",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T12:15:03",
"content": "CI/CD test updating the live database, perhaps?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771744",
"author": "jneilliii",
"timestamp": "2024-... | 1,760,371,869.740595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/can-we-ever-achieve-fusion-power/ | Can We Ever Achieve Fusion Power? | Jenny List | [
"Science"
] | [
"fusion",
"fusion reactor",
"nuclear fusion"
] | Fusion power has long held the promise of delivering near-endless energy without as many unfortunate side effects as nuclear fission. But despite huge investment and some fascinating science, the old adage about practical power generation being 20 years away seems just as true as ever. But is that really the case?
[Brian Potter] has written a review article for
Construction Physics
, which takes us through the decades of fusion research.
For a start, it’s fascinating to learn about the many historical fusion process, the magnetic pinch, the stelarator, and finally the basis of many modern reactors, the tokamak. He demonstrates that we’ve made an impressive amount of progress, but at the same time warns against misleading comparisons. There’s a graph comparing fusion progress with Moore’s Law that he debunks, but he ends on a positive note. Who knows, we might not need a Mr. Fusion to arrive from the future after all!
Fusion reactors are surprisingly easy to make, assuming you don’t mind putting far more energy in than you’d ever receive in return.
We’ve featured more than one Farnsworth fusor
over the years. | 51 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771680",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T08:18:39",
"content": "There’s a different graphhttps://benjaminreinhardt.com/fusion-never/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771707",
"author": "combinatorylogic",
... | 1,760,371,870.057511 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/hosting-your-own-pixmob-party-made-easy/ | Hosting Your Own PixMob Party Made Easy | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"concert",
"infrared emitter",
"pixmob",
"reverse engineering"
] | Over the last few years, it’s been increasingly common for concertgoers to be handed a light-up bracelet from PixMob that synchronizes with the others in the crowd to turn the entire audience into a music visualizer. They’re a clever way of enhancing the concert experience, but unfortunately, they don’t do anything once you leave the show. Or at least, that used to be the case.
We’ve seen efforts to reverse engineer the IR (and occasionally radio) signals that drive these PixMob devices, but since we checked in last it seems like things have gotten a lot easier for the home gamer.
[David Pride] has recently posted a brief write-up
that shows how quickly and easily it is to get these devices fired up using nothing more exotic than an Arduino, an IR LED, and an audio sensor module.
With the audio sensor module connected to the Arduino’s digital input and the IR LED wired to digital out, all you need to do is flash firmware to the board and start playing some beats. The source code [David] has provided is a a remixed version of what’s previously been published by [Carlos Ganoza], which, in this case, has been tweaked to make the lighting patterns less random.
Presumably, this is to make the devices behave more like they do during an actual concert, but since nobody at Hackaday is cool enough to have seen a live musical performance in the last decade, we’re not really sure. All we can say is that the effect looks pretty sweet in the demo video.
Back in 2019, we saw a
teardown
of an early PixMob device, and by 2022, the efforts to
reverse engineer
their IR control protocol were well underway. We’re glad to see things have progressed to the point that you can piece together a transmitter from what’s in the parts bin, as it means at least some of these devices will have a lifespan longer than a single concert. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771708",
"author": "blink281",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T11:09:25",
"content": "now HaD needs Captchas to filter our AIs. oh well",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6771731",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T14:... | 1,760,371,869.976548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/8mm-digitization-for-anyone/ | 8MM Digitization For Anyone | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"8mm",
"8mm digitiser",
"single 8",
"super 8"
] | There’s a pleasing retro analogue experience to shooting Super 8 film, giving as it does the feel of a 1970s home movie to your work. But once you’ve had the film developed, there’s a need for a projector to enjoy the result. Far better to digitize it for a more modern viewing and editing experience. [Elbert] has made
a digitizer for 8mm film
which takes the best approach, snapping each frame individually to be joined together in a video file as a whole.
The frame of the device is 3D printed, but some parts of a film transport must be higher quality than a printed part can deliver. These, in particular the sprockets, are salvaged from a film viewer, and the movement is powered by a set of stepper motors. The steppers are controlled by an ESP32, and the optics are provided by a USB microscope. All this is hooked up to a PC which grabs each image, and finally stitches them all together using
ffmpeg
.
As anyone who has dabbled in 8mm film will tell you, there is a lot in the quality of a film digitizer, and it’s often worth paying for a professional job from someone aimed at the film-making world rather than you local photographic print booth. It would be interesting to take a look at this device, and see whether its quality is worth pursuing. After all,
some of us have been known to dabble in 8mm film
. | 8 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771653",
"author": "Isaac Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T03:32:38",
"content": "Some film transports optically detect the sprocket holes instead of using actual sprockets.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771671",
... | 1,760,371,869.811335 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/3d-printing-with-sublime-sublimation/ | 3D Printing With Sublime Sublimation | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"color printing",
"dye sublimation"
] | [Teaching Tech] got an interesting e-mail from [Johan] showing pictures of 3D prints with a dye-sublimated color image on the surface. Normally, we think of dye sublimation, we think of pressing color pictures onto fabric, especially T-shirts. But [Johan]
uses a modified Epson inkjet printer
and has amazing results, as you can see in the video below.
The printers use separate tanks for ink, which seems to be the key. If you already have an Espon “tank” printer, you are halfway there, but if you don’t have one, a cheap one will set you back less than $200 and maybe even less if you pick one up used.
You have to fill bottles with special dye, of course. You can also use the printer to make things like T-shirts. The idea is to print a dye transfer page and place it on the bed before you start printing. The sublimation dye is activated with heat, and, of course, you are shooting out hot plastic, so the image will transfer to the plastic.
[Teaching Tech] explains the best settings to make it all work. The results look great and we’re interested to try this ourselves. Transferring
bed images is old hat
, but this is something else. Beats
liar’s color printing
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771644",
"author": "Heath Kit",
"timestamp": "2024-06-29T00:41:44",
"content": "This could possibly be use to create custom legends on keycaps.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771646",
"author": "Andrew",
"ti... | 1,760,371,870.100436 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/2024-business-card-challenge-pov-fidget-keeps-your-info-in-their-hands/ | 2024 Business Card Challenge: POV Fidget Keeps Your Info In Their Hands | Kristina Panos | [
"cons"
] | [
"2024 Business Card Challenge",
"bearing",
"fidget",
"fidget mechanism",
"leds",
"POV"
] | So what if we’re halfway through 2024? People who needed to fidget all along still need something to do with their hands.
So why not hand them a solution with your information on it?
Not only will this spin nicely, the spinning action will use magnets to energize PCB coils and light up LEDs for some persistence of vision action. Designing the PCB was easier than you might imagine thanks to
KiMotor
, a KiCad plugin to automate the design of parametric PCB motors.
Mechanical testing went pretty well with the bearings and magnets that [mulcmu] had on hand, along with a scrap PCB as the sacrifice. Although a bit difficult to hold, it spins okay with just the bearing and the shaft. Once the boards arrived, it was time to test the electrical side. So far, things are not looking good — [mulcmu] is only getting a few tens of mV out of the rectifier — but they aren’t giving up hope yet. We can’t wait to see this one in action!
Hurry! This is the last weekend to enter the 2024 Business Card Challenge! Technically you have until Tuesday, July 2nd, but you know what we mean. Show us what you’ve got! | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771617",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T21:36:26",
"content": "How much Energy can be stored in a rotating PCB the size of a bussines card?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6772075",
"author": "Benn",
... | 1,760,371,870.17386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/reviving-a-free-1990s-millport-cnc-vertical-mill/ | Reviving A Free 1990s Millport CNC Vertical Mill | Maya Posch | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"CNC mill"
] | When faced with the offer of free machining equipment, there is no realistic way to say ‘no’. This is how [Anthony Kouttron]’s brother [Thomas] got to
pick up a large 1990s-era CNC machine
as a new companion for his growing collection of such equipment. The trickiest part of the move to the new location was getting the machine to fit through the barn doors, requiring some impromptu disassembly of the Z-axis assembly, which required the use of an engine crane and some fine adjustments with the reinstallation. With that [Thomas] and [Anthony] got to gawk at their new prize in its new home.
This Millport vertical mill is effectively a Taiwanese clone of the Bridgeport vertical mill design, though using an imported servo control system from Anilam. The most exciting part about a CNC machine like this is usually the electronics, especially for a well-used machine. Fortunately the AT-style PC and expansion cards looked to be in decent condition, and the mill’s CRT-based controller popped up the AMI BIOS screen before booting into the Anilam S1100 CNC software on top of MS-DOS, all running off a 1 MB Flash card.
Which is not to say that there weren’t some issues to be fixed. The Dallas DS12887 real-time clock/NVRAM module on the mainboard was of course dead. After replacing it, the BIOS finally remembered the right boot and input settings, so that the CNC machine’s own controls could be used instead of an external keyboard. This just left figuring out the Anilam controls, or so they thought, as a range of new errors popped up about X-lag and the Distribution Board. This had [Anthony] do a deep-dive into the electronics cabinets to clean metal chips and repair broken parts and floating pins. After this and a replacement Anilam Encoder this Millport vertical mill was finally ready to be put back into service. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771591",
"author": "Cnckeith",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T20:27:27",
"content": "We got a kit for thishttps://shopcentroidcnc.com/allin1dc-cnc-controller/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771610",
"author": "Anthony Kou... | 1,760,371,870.228109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/hackaday-podcast-episode-277-edible-robots-a-personal-eclipse-and-diy-pcbs-to-die-for/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 277: Edible Robots, A Personal Eclipse, And DIY PCBs To Die For | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week on the Podcast, it’s Kristina’s turn to ramble on alongside Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams. First up in the news: Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum + Labs is being liquidated at auction after just 12 years of being open to the public. In Hackaday news,
the 2024 Business Card Challenge
ends next Tuesday, July 2nd, so this is your weekend to shine! Also,
you’ve got about two weeks to get your talk proposals in for this year’s Supercon
. (Can you believe it’s only four months away?)
Then it’s on to What’s That Sound, at which Kristina made a couple of close-but-no-cigar guesses. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
Then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with a $3 smartwatch that can run Python, and a completely DIY analog tape recording solution. We’ll talk about making your wireless keyboard truly low power, all the steps you can take to produce perfect PCBs at home, and AI in a font. Finally, we talk about the dangers of a curious childhood, and talk about a dotcom hardware solution that could have gone far, given the right business model.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download and savor at your leisure
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 277 Show Notes:
News:
Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum And Labs To Be Auctioned
2024 Business Card Contest
Hackaday Supercon 2024 Call For Participation: We Want You!
What’s that Sound?
Fill out this form with your best guess
, and you might win!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
The Best DIY PCB Method?
One-handed PS-OHK Keyboard Doesn’t Need Chording Or Modifier Keys
$3 Smartwatch Can Run Python
Reverse Engineering the M6 Smart Fitness Bracelet
Build Your Own Tape Recorder/Player
Making Your Wireless Keyboard Truly Low-Power
How Much Current Do WS2812 / NeoPixel LEDs Really Use?
2024 Business Card Challenge: NoiseCard Judges The Sound Around You
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Enjoy Totality Every Day With This Personal Eclipse Generator
Llama.ttf Is AI, In A Font
Bats Can No Longer Haunt Apple VR Headsets Via Web Exploit
Adding Texture To 3D Prints
Kristina’s Picks:
Tired With Your Robot? Why Not Eat It?
Using The Wind And Magnets To Make Heat
The SpinMeister, For A Perfect Pizza Every Time!
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Book That Could Have Killed Me
The Amstrad E-m@iler, The Right Product With The Wrong Business Model | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,870.135848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/cleaning-up-world-war-2s-legacy-on-the-seafloor-with-robots/ | Cleaning Up World War 2’s Legacy On The Seafloor With Robots | Maya Posch | [
"History"
] | [
"deep sea exploration",
"rov",
"unexploded ordnance"
] | Until the 1970s, a very common method to dispose of unneeded munitions was to simply tip them off the side of a ship. This means that everything from grenades to chemical weapons have been languishing in large quantities around Europe’s shorelines, right alongside other types of unexploded ordnance (UXO).
Although clearing and mapping such dump sites are a standard part of e.g. marine infrastructure such as undersea cabling and off-shore wind turbines, no large-scale effort has so far been undertaken to remove them, even as they continue to pose an increasing hazard to people and the environment. Most recently, efforts are underway to truly begin clearing these UXO, as
the BBC reports
.
Map of discovered munitions
Considering the hazards of these UXO, most interactions are performed by swimming and crawling robots, to find the UXO and grip it so that they can be gathered, classified and sorted with like types, for later disposal. Rather than explosively dispose of the UXO, they will instead be disassembled and the elements separately disposed of, including thermal decomposition of the explosive material by
GEKA
, a company which specializes in such disposal.
For the pilot project being undertaken in the Baltic Sea by SeaTerra and other companies, the goal for the first phase is to collect 50 tons of UXO. This of course is but the merest fraction of the estimated 1.6 million tons of explosives and weapons, and the chemical weapons would have to be treated with even more care in future operations.
For now the goal is to streamline and automate the UXO recovery and disposal process, so that the
European seafloor
and those around the world may one day be less riddled with UXO and other symptoms of humankind’s follies. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771522",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T15:59:28",
"content": "Study the effect seawater has on munitions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771587",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T2... | 1,760,371,870.290578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/this-week-in-security-kaspersky-ban-project-naptime-and-more/ | This Week In Security: Kaspersky Ban, Project Naptime, And More | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"kaspersky",
"This Week in Security"
] | The hot news this week is that
Kaspersky is banned in the USA
. More specifically, Kaspersky products will be banned from sale in the US starting on September 29. This ban will extend to blocking software updates, though it’s unclear how that will actually be accomplished. It’s reasonable to assume that payment processors will block payments to Kaspersky, but will ISPs be required to block traffic that could contain antivirus updates?
WordPress Plugin Backdoor
A Quartet of WordPress plugins have been found
to have recently included backdoor code
. It’s a collection of five Open Source plugins, seemingly developed by unrelated people. Malicious updates first showed up on June 21st, and it appears that all five plugins are shipping the same malicious code.
Rabbit AI API
The Rabbit R1 was released to less than thunderous applause. The idea is a personal AI device, but the execution has been disappointing, to the point of
reviewers suggesting some of the earlier claims were fabricated
. Now it seems there’s a serious security issue, in the form of
exposed API keys that have *way* too many privileges
.
The research
seems to be done by the rabbitude group
, who found the keys back in May. Of the things allowed by access to the API keys, the most worrying for user privacy was access to every text-to-speech call. Rabbitude states in their June 25 post, that “rabbit inc has known that we have had their elevenlabs (tts) api key for a month, but they have taken no action to rotate the api keys.” On the other hand,
rabbit pushed a statement on the 26th
, claiming they were just then made aware of the issue, and made the needed key rotations right away.
MOVEit is Back
Last year a severe vulnerability in MOVEit file transfer server led to some big-deal compromises in 2023 and 2024. MOVEit is back, this time
disclosing an authentication bypass
. The journey to finding this vulnerability starts with an exception, thrown whenever an SSH connection is attempted with a public key.
…the server is attempting to open the binary data representing our auth material, as a file path, on the server.
Uh-oh. There’s no way that’s good. What’s worse, that path can be an external SMB path. That’s even worse. This behavior does depend on the incoming connection referencing a valid username, but this has the potential to enable password stealing, pass-the-hash attacks, and username mapping. So what’s actually going on here? The SSH server used here is IPWorks SSH, which has some useful additions to SSH. One of these additions seems to be an odd delegated authentication scheme that goes very wrong in this case.
The attack flow goes like this: Upload a public SSH key to any location on the MOVEit server, log in with any valid username signing the connection with the uploaded key, and send the file location of the uploaded key instead of an actual key. Server pulls the key, makes sure it matches, and lets you in. The only pesky bit is how to upload a key without an account. It turns out that the server supports PPK keys, and those survive getting written to and read from the system logs. Ouch.
The flaws got fixed months ago, and a serious effort has been carried out to warn MOVEit customers and get them patched. On the other hand, a full Proof of Concept (PoC) is now available, and Internet monitoring groups are
starting to see the attack being attempted in the wild
.
Cat File: Pop Calc
We all know not to trust files from the Internet. Don’t execute the script, don’t load the spreadsheet, and definitely don’t install the package. But what about running
cat
or
strings
on an untrusted file? Apparently
the magic of escape strings makes those dangerous too
. The iTerm2 terminal was accidentally set to allow “window title reporting”, or copying the window title to the command line. Another escape code can set that value, making for an easy way to put an arbitrary command on the command line. One more quirk in the form of tmux integration allowed the injection of a newline — running the arbitrary command. Whoops. Versions 3.5.0 and 3.5.1 are the only iterm2 versions that are vulnerable, with version 3.5.2 containing the fix.
Putting LLM to Work During Naptime
There’s been a scourge of fake vulnerability reports, where someone has asked ChatGPT to find a vulnerability in a project with a bug bounty. First off, don’t do this. But second, it would be genuinely useful if a LLM could actually find vulnerabilities. This idea intrigued
researchers at Google’s Project Zero, so they did some research, calling it “Project Naptime”
, in a playful reference to napping while the LLM works.
The secret sauce seems to be in extending an LLM to look at real code, to run Python scripts in a sandbox, and have access to a debugger. The results were actually encouraging, that LLM could eventually be a useful tool. It’s not gonna replace the researcher, but it won’t surprise me to cover vulnerabilities found by a LLM instead of a fuzzing tool. Or maybe that’s an LLM guided fuzzer?
Github Dishes on Chrome RCE
Github’s [Man Yue Mo] discovered and reported CVE-2024-3833 in Chrome back in March, a fix was released in April, and
it’s now time to get the details
. This one is all about how object cloning and code caching interacts. Cloning an object in a particular circumstance ends up with an object that exists in a superposition between having unused property fields, and yet a full property array. Or put simply, the internal object state incorrectly indicates there is unused allocated memory. Try to write a new property, and it’s an out of bounds write.
The
full exploit is involved
, but the whole thing includes a sandbox escape as well, using overwritten WebAssembly functions. Impressive stuff.
Bits and Bytes
[Works By Design] is
taking a second crack at building an unpickable lock
. This one has some interesting features, like a ball-bearing spring system that should mean that levering one pin into place encourages the rest to drop out of position. A local locksmith wasn’t able to pick it, given just over half-an-hour. The real test will be what happens when [LockPickingLawyer] gets his hands on it, which is still to come.
Gitlab just fixed a critical issue
that threatened to let attackers run CI pipelines as arbitrary users. The full details aren’t out yet, but CVE-2024-5655 weighs in at a CVSS 9.6, and
Gitlab is “strongly recommending” immediate updates
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771499",
"author": "Needleroozer",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T14:49:15",
"content": "I think you mean a quintet of WordPress plugins.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771501",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As ... | 1,760,371,872.405122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/solving-cold-cases-with-hacked-together-gear/ | Solving Cold Cases With Hacked Together Gear | Tom Nardi | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"pontoon",
"sonar",
"underwater"
] | People go missing without a trace far more commonly than any of us would like to think about. Of course the authorities will conduct a search, but even assuming they have the equipment and personnel necessary, the odds are often stacked against them. A few weeks go by, then months, and eventually there’s yet another “cold case” on the books and a family is left desperate for closure.
But occasionally a small team or an individual, if determined enough, can solve such a case even when the authorities have failed. Some of these people, such as [Antti Suanto] and his brother, have even managed to close the books on multiple missing person cases.
In an incredibly engrossing series of blog posts
, [Antti] describes how he hacked together a pair of remotely operated vehicles to help search for and ultimately identify sunken cars.
The first craft built was intended to perform reconnaissance using a consumer side-scan sonar unit. While these devices are designed to be mounted to a “real” boat, [Antti] didn’t have the room at home for one. So he did some research and eventually settled on an affordable solution that combined a watertight plastic box with pontoons made out of PVC pipes.
We’ve seen similar designs before
, and have always been
impressed with the stability and payload capacity
offered by such an arrangement given its low cost and ease of assembly.
In an interesting twist [Antti] decided to outfit his craft with quadcopter motors and propellers to create a sort of airboat, which would keep it from getting tangled up in weeds. We also appreciate the no-nonsense method of viewing the sonar’s output remotely — all they had to do was take an old smartphone, point its camera at the unit, and open up a video calling application.
While having the sonar data would help the brothers identify potential targets on the bottom, it wasn’t enough to make a positive identification. For that, they’d have to go down there and directly image the object being investigated. So the second project was a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
Its PVC frame might look a bit low-tech, but [Antiii] designed the central “dry hull” to survive at depths of up to 100 meters (328 feet). With cameras, lights, a Raspberry Pi, and an Arduino Mega pulling it all together, the finished product is a formidable underwater explorer.
Combined with diligent research on the individuals who went missing and the areas in which they were last seen, the brothers were able to use these vehicles to solve a pair of missing persons cases that had been open for more than a decade. Their work earned them the personal thanks of the President of Finland, and a medal that’s generally only given to police officers.
Our hats off to this intrepid duo — surely there’s no more noble a pursuit than dedicating your skills and free time to help others. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771446",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T11:53:11",
"content": "The level of dedication and focus with these guys is insane. If you’re wondering whether or not to read the article, go for it. It’ll be one of the better reads of the year.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,872.175422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/28/spinning-magnets-do-your-dice-rolling-for-you/ | Spinning Magnets Do Your Dice Rolling For You | Dan Maloney | [
"Games"
] | [
"dd",
"dice",
"die",
"flip-dot",
"magnet",
"neodymium",
"random number",
"rng",
"RPG"
] | Dice are about the simplest machines possible, and they’ve been used since before recorded history to generate random numbers. But no machine is so simple that a little needless complexity can’t make it better, as is the case with
this mechanical spinning dice
. Or die. Whatever.
Inspiration for the project came from [Attoparsec]’s long history with RPG and tabletop games, which depend on different kinds of dice to generate the randomness that keeps them going — that and the fortuitous find of a seven-segment flip-dot display, plus the need for something cool to show off at OpenSauce. The flip-dot is controlled by an array of neodymium magnets with the proper polarity to flip the segments to the desired number. The magnets are attached to an aluminum disk, with each array spread out far enough to prevent interference. [Attoparsec] also added a ring of magnets to act as detents that lock the disk into a specific digit after a spin.
The finished product ended up being satisfyingly clicky and suitably random, and made a good impression at OpenSauce. The video below documents the whole design and build process, and includes some design dead-ends that [Attoparsec] went down in pursuit of a multiple-digit display. We’d love to see him revisit some of these ideas, mechanically difficult though they may be. And while he’s at it, maybe he could spice up the rolls with
a little radioactivity
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771433",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T10:43:02",
"content": "I’m wondering if fixed magnets and display with a moveable flux path to do the rolling would be the best way to approach this concept – though that is a rabbit hole of design I’ve not dived into enough ... | 1,760,371,871.822317 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/rock-out-without-getting-knocked-out/ | Rock Out Without Getting Knocked Out | Alexander Rowsell | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio amplifier",
"bass",
"guitar",
"headphone amplifier",
"instruments",
"musical hacks",
"Practice"
] | It’s a constant battle for musicians — how to practice your instrument without bothering those around you? Many of us live in apartments or shared accommodation, and having to wait until the apartment is empty or only being able to practice at certain times of day can be restrictive, especially if you need to practice for an upcoming gig or if the creative juices start flowing and it’s 3 AM! [Gavin] was having this issue and started developing
Porter, a guitar/bass practice device
which works with all effects pedals and is portable and rechargeable. So you can grind away your epic heavy metal solo no matter the time of day!
While there have been similar solutions, many musicians weren’t satisfied with the sound and often couldn’t support inputs from distortion pedals. They usually chewed through batteries and were just not a great solution to the problem. [Gavin] has spent the last two years fine-tuning the design. It’s a fully analog design, with built-in rechargeable batteries to boot. So it not only sounds great, but it can last as long as your practice session does with a 15-hour runtime when fully charged!
Initially, the project began as a headphone amplifier but morphed into a design specifically for guitar and bass, with preamp and power amp stages and adjustable input impedance – 500kΩ for guitars and 1MΩ for bass. The latest revision also changed to a different power amp that further reduced THD and led to an even better sound. The schematics are up on the Hackaday.io project page, but [Gavin] is also hoping to do a crowdfunding campaign to get these devices out into the hands of guitarists everywhere! | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771404",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T05:59:11",
"content": "I think he is not trying to emulate fully, just get a “good enough” practice sound that is similar to amps.Probably will work fine for practice use for sure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,872.240726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/8-bits-and-1120-triodes/ | 8-Bits And 1,120 Triodes | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"tube computer",
"tubes",
"vacuum tube computer"
] | While it’s currently the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it will inevitably get cold again. If you’re looking for a unique way of heating your workshop this year, you could do worse than build an 8-bit computer with a bunch of 6N3P vacuum tubes. While there are some technical details, you might find it a challenging build. But it is still an impressive sight, and it took 18 months to build a prototype and the
final version
. You can find the
technical details
if you want to try your hand. Oh, did we mention it takes about 200 amps? One of the prototype computers plays
Pong
on a decidedly low-tech display, which you can see below.
The architecture has 8 data bits and 12 address bits. It only provides six instructions, but that keeps the tube count manageable. Each tube has two triodes in one envelope and form a NOR gate which is sufficient to build everything else you need. In addition to tubes, there are reed relays and some NVRAM, a modern conceit.
Operating instructions are to turn it on and wait for the 560 tubes to warm up. Then, to quote the designer, “… I check the fire extinguisher is full, and run the code.” We wonder if one of the six instructions is halt and catch fire. Another quote from the builder is: “It has been a ridiculous amount of soldering and a fantastic amount of fun.” We can imagine.
If the computer seems familiar, we covered the first and second prototypes named
ENA
and
Fred
. We’ve also seen tube-base
single-board computers
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771396",
"author": "Felix Domestica",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T03:57:02",
"content": "In the broadcast biz, I’m told, FRED was the name hung on the least reliable piece of equipment in the studio, standing for Effing Ridiculous Electronic Device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,371,872.121595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/activated-alumina-for-desiccating-your-filament/ | Activated Alumina For Desiccating Your Filament | Navarre Bartz | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"activated alumina",
"alumina",
"aluminum oxide",
"filament drying"
] | When you first unwrap a shiny new roll of filament for your FDM printer, it typically has a bag of silica gel inside. While great for keeping costs low on the manufacturing side, is silica gel the best solution to keep your filament dry at home?
Frustrated with the consumable nature and fussy handling of silica gel beads, [Build It Make It] sought a more permanent way to
keep his filament dry
. Already familiar with activated alumina beads, he crafted a desiccant cylinder that can be popped into the oven all at once instead of all that tedious mucking about with emptying and refilling plastic capsules.
A length of aluminum intake pipe, some high temperature epoxy, and aluminum mesh are all combined to make a simple, sealed cylinder. During the process, he found that using a syringe filled with the epoxy led to a much more precise application to the aluminum cylinder, so he recommends starting out that way if you make these for yourself.
We suspect something with a less permanent attachment at one end would let you periodically swap out the beads if you wanted to try this hack with the silica beads you already had. Perhaps some kind of threaded pipe fitting? If you want a more active dryer, try making
one with a Peltier
. If you want to know just how dry your filament is getting, you could also
put in a sensor
. You might also wonder, do you really need to
dry filament at all
? | 23 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771369",
"author": "rockso",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T23:12:05",
"content": "silca gel is 100% reusable…you put it in an oven or microwave, dry it out and go again.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6771370",
"author": "Joe",... | 1,760,371,872.001494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/portable-full-size-arcade-cabinets/ | Portable, Full-Size Arcade Cabinets | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"arcade",
"Fusion 360",
"game",
"mame",
"portable",
"raspberry pi",
"video game"
] | Believe it or not, there was a time when the only way for many of us to play video games was to grab a roll of quarters and head to the mall. Even though there’s a working computer or video game console in essentially every house now doesn’t mean we don’t look back with a certain nostalgia on those times, though. Some have turned to restoring vintage arcade cabinets and others build their own.
This hackerspace got a unique request for a full-sized arcade cabinet that was also easily portable as well
.
The original request was for a portable arcade cabinet, and the original designs were for a laptop-like tabletop arcade. But further back-and-forth made it clear they wanted full-size cabinets that just happened to also be portable. So with that criteria in mind the group started building the units. The updated design is modular, allowing the controls, monitor, and Raspberry Pi running the machines to be in self-contained units, with the cabinets in two parts that can quickly be assembled on-site. The base is separate and optional, with the top section capable of being assembled on the base or on something like a tabletop or bar, and the electronics section quickly drops in.
While the idea of a Pi-powered arcade cabinet is certainly nothing new, the quick build, prototyping, design, and final product that’s mobile and quickly assembled are all worth checking out. There is even more information on the build at
the project’s GitHub page
including Fusion 360 models. If you need your cabinets to be even more portable,
this tabletop MAME cabinet
is a great place to start. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771424",
"author": "Marcel",
"timestamp": "2024-06-28T09:49:01",
"content": "Vectric, the CNC software firm, had a nice project some time ago:https://forum.vectric.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=41817That’s a full-size cabinet, portable because of smart connectors.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,371,872.35411 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/a-previously-unknown-supplier-for-a-classic-chip/ | A Previously Unknown Supplier For A Classic Chip | Jenny List | [
"Parts",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"486",
"i486",
"Shenzhen State Micro"
] | It’s common enough for integrated circuits to be available from a range of different suppliers, either as licensed clones, or as reverse-engineered proprietary silicon. In the case of a generic circuit such as a cheap op-amp it matters little whose logo adorns the plastic, but when the part in question is an application processor it assumes much more importance. In the era of the 486 and Pentium there were a host of well-known manufacturers producing those chips, so it’s a surprise decades later to find that there was another, previously unknown. That’s just what [Doc TB] has done though,
finding a 486 microprocessor from Shenzhen State Micro
. That’s not a brand we ever saw in our desktop computers back in the 1990s.
Analysis of a couple of these chips, a DX33 and a DX2-66, shows them to have very similar micro-architecture but surprisingly a lower power consumption suggesting a smaller fabrication process. There’s the fascinating possibility that these might have been manufactured to serve an ongoing demand for 486 processors in some as-yet-unknown Chinese industrial application, but before any retrocomputer enthusiasts get their hopes up, the chips can’t be found anywhere from Shenzhen State Micro’s successor company. So for now they’re a fascinating oddity for CPU collectors, but who knows, perhaps more information on these unusual chips will surface.
Meanwhile we’ve looked at the 486’s legacy in detail before, even finding
there could still just be 486-compatible SoCs out there. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771360",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T22:37:26",
"content": "“Analysis of a couple of these chips, a DX33 and a DX2-66, shows them to have very similar micro-architecture but surprisingly a lower power consumption suggesting a smaller fabrication process.”Cool, thes... | 1,760,371,871.862843 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/powering-airplane-with-microwaves-an-aviation-physics-challenge-amidst-many/ | Powering Airplanes With Microwaves: An Aviation Physics Challenge Amidst Many | Maya Posch | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"microwave",
"wireless power transfer"
] | Falling firmly under the fascinating science category of ‘What if…?’ comes the idea of powering airplanes with beamed microwaves. Although the idea isn’t crazy by itself, since we can even keep airplanes flying using just solar power (though with no real useful payload), running through the numbers as [Ian McKay] does in a
recent article in
IEEE Spectrum
makes it clear that there are still some major hurdles if we want to make such a technology reality. Yet is beamed microwave power that much more far out than other alternative ways to power aviation?
Most of the issues are rather hard limits with the assumed technology (phased microwave arrays), with the need for 170 meter diameter ground transmitters every 100 km along the route (including floating transmitters on the oceans with massive power cables, apparently). Due to the limited surface area on something like a Boeing 737-800 you’d need to cram the full take-off power needs (~30 MW) on its ~1,000 m
2
surface area available for receiver elements, or 150 Watt per rectifying antenna (rectenna) element assuming a wavelength of 5 cm.
The good news is that the passengers inside would probably survive if the microwave-like shielding keeps up, and birds passing through the beams are likely to survive if they’re fast enough. It’d ruin a whole part of the local radio spectrum from leaked microwaves, of course. Unfortunately beaming MW levels of microwaves across 100 km is still beyond our capabilities.
After this fun science session, [Ian] then looks at alternatives like batteries and hydrogen, neither of which come even close to the energy density (or relative safety) of commercial aviation fuels. Perhaps synthetic aviation fuel might be the ticket, but at this point beamed microwave power is as likely to replace aviation fuel as batteries or hydrogen, though more likely than countries like the United States building out a fast & cheap high-speed rail network. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771268",
"author": "Zoe Nagy",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T15:42:58",
"content": "I guess 5G giving cancer is not a problem anymore.30 MW for take of power? Like a small city’s?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771318",
... | 1,760,371,872.298512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/the-ss-united-states-the-most-important-ocean-liner-we-may-soon-lose-forever/ | The SSUnited States: The Most Important Ocean Liner We May Soon Lose Forever | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"history",
"ocean liner",
"ship",
"steam ship"
] | Although it’s often said that the era of ocean liners came to an end by the 1950s with the rise of commercial aviation, reality isn’t quite that clear-cut. Coming out of the troubled 1940s arose a new kind of ocean liner, one using cutting-edge materials and propulsion, with hybrid civil and military use as the default, leading to a range of fascinating design decisions. This was the context in which the SS
United States
was born, with the beating heart of the US’ fastest battle ships, with light-weight aluminium structures and survivability built into every single aspect of its design.
Outpacing the super-fast
Iowa
-class battleships with whom it shares a lot of DNA due to its lack of heavy armor and triple 16″ turrets, it easily became the fastest ocean liner, setting speed records that took decades to be beaten by other ocean-going vessels, though no ocean liner ever truly did beat it on speed or comfort. Tricked out in the most tasteful non-flammable 1950s art and decorations imaginable, it would still be the fastest and most comfortable way to cross the Atlantic today. Unfortunately ocean liners are no longer considered a way to travel in this era of commercial aviation, leading to the SS
United States
and kin finding themselves either scrapped, or stuck in limbo.
In the case of the SS
United States,
so far it has managed to escape the cutting torch, but while in limbo many of its fittings were sold off at auction, and the conservation group which is in possession of the ship is desperately looking for a way to fund the restoration. Most recently, the owner of the pier where the ship is moored in Philadelphia got the ship’s
eviction approved
by a judge, leading to very tough choices to be made by September.
A Unique Design
WW II-era United States Maritime Commission (MARCOM) poster.
The designer of the SS
United States
is William Francis Gibbs, who despite being
a self-taught engineer
managed to translate his life-long passion for shipbuilding into a range of very notable ships. Many of these were designed at the behest of the United States Maritime Commission (
MARCOM
), which was created by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, until it was abolished in 1950. MARCOM’s task was to create a merchant shipbuilding program for hundreds of modern cargo ships that would replace the World War I vintage vessels which formed the bulk of the US
Merchant Marine
. As a hybrid civil and federal organization, the merchant marine is intended to provide the logistical backbone for the US Navy in case of war and large-scale conflict.
The first major vessel to be commissioned for MARCOM was the
SS
America
, which was an ocean liner commissioned in 1939 and whose career only ended in 1994 when it (then named the
American Star
) wrecked at the Canary Islands. This came after it had been sold in 1992 to be turned into a five-star hotel in Thailand. Dry docking in 1993 had revealed that despite the advanced age of the vessel, it was still in remarkably good condition.
Interestingly, the last merchant marine vessel to be commissioned by MARCOM was the SS
United States
, which would be a hybrid civilian passenger liner and military troop transport. Its sibling, the SS
America
, was in Navy service from 1941 to 1946 when it was renamed the USS
West Point
(AP-23) and carried over 350,000 troops during the war period, more than any other Navy troopship. Its big sister would thus be required to do all that and much more.
Need For Speed
William Francis Gibbs’ naval architecture firm – called
Gibbs & Cox
by 1950 after Daniel H. Cox joined – was tasked to design the SS United States, which was intended to be a display of the best the United States of America had to offer. It would be the largest, fastest ocean liner and thus also the largest and fastest troop and supply carrier for the US Navy.
Courtesy of the major metallurgical advances during WW II, and with the full backing of the US Navy, the design featured a military-style propulsion plant and a heavily compartmentalized design following that of e.g. the Iowa-class battleships. This meant two separate engine rooms and similar levels of redundancy elsewhere, to isolate any flooding and other types of damage. Meanwhile the superstructure was built out of aluminium, making it both very light and heavily corrosion-resistant. The eight US Navy
M-type
boilers (run at only 54% of capacity) and a four-shaft propeller design took lessons learned with fast US Navy ships to reduce vibrations and cavitation to a minimum. These lessons include e.g. the five- and four-bladed propeller design also seen used with the Iowa-class battleships with their newer configurations.
SS
United States
colorized promotional B&W photograph. The ship’s name and an American flag have been painted in position here as both were missing when this photo was taken during 1952 sea trials.
Another lessons-learned feature was a top to bottom fire-proofing after the terrible losses of the
SS
Morro Castle
and SS
Normandie
, with no wood, fabrics or other flammable materials onboard, leading to the use of glass, metal and spun-glass fiber, as well as fireproof fabrics and carpets. This extended to the art pieces that were onboard the ship, as well as the ship’s grand piano which was made from mahogany whose inability to ignite was demonstrated by trying to burn it with a gasoline fire.
The actual maximum speed that the SS
United States
can reach is still unknown, with it originally having been a military secret. Its first speed trial supposedly saw the vessel hit an astounding 43 knots (80 km/h), though after the ship was retired from the United States Lines (USL) by the 1970s and no longer seen as a naval auxiliary asset, its top speed during the June 10, 1952 trial was revealed to be 38.32 knots (70.97 km/h). In service with USL, its cruising speed was 36 knots, gaining it the Blue Riband and rightfully giving it its place as
America’s Flagship
.
A Fading Star
The SS
United States
was withdrawn from passenger service by 1969, in a
very unexpected manner
. Although the USL was no longer using the vessel, it remained a US Navy reserve vessel until 1978, meaning that it remained sealed off to anyone but US Navy personnel during that period. Once the US Navy no longer deemed the vessel relevant for its needs in 1978, it was sold off, leading to a period of successive owners. Notable was Richard Hadley who had planned to convert it into seagoing time-share condominiums, and auctioned off all the interior fittings in 1984 before his financing collapsed.
In 1992, Fred Mayer wanted to create a new ocean liner to compete with the
Queen Elizabeth
, leading him to have the ship’s asbestos and other hazardous materials removed in Ukraine, after which the vessel was towed back to Philadelphia in 1996, where it has remained ever since. Two more owners including Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) briefly came onto the scene, but economic woes scuttled plans to revive it as an active ocean liner. Ultimately NCL sought to sell the vessel off for scrap, which led to the SS
United States
Conservancy (
SSUSC
) to take over ownership in 2010 and preserve the ship while seeking ways to restore and redevelop the vessel.
Considering that the SS
America
was lost only a few years prior, this leaves the SS
United States
as the only example of a Gibbs ocean liner, and a poignant reminder of what would have been a highlight of the US’s marine prowess. Compared to the United Kingdom’s record here, with the
Queen Elizabeth 2
(QE2
, active since 1969) now a floating hotel in Dubai and the
Queen Mary 2
‘s maiden voyage in 2004, the US looks to be rather meager when it comes to preserving its ocean liner legacy.
End Of The Line?
The curator of the Iowa-class USS
New Jersey
(
BB-62
, currently
fresh out of dry dock
), Ryan Szimanski, made the short trip to the other side of the Delaware River from his museum ship last year to take a look at the SS
United States
. Through the videos he made, the viewer can get a sense of the sad internal and external state of this once luxurious ship.
At the end of all this, the question remains whether the SS
United States
deserves it to be preserved. There are many arguments for why this would the case, from its unique history as part of the US Merchant Marine, its relation to the highly successful SS
America
, it being effectively a sister ship to the four
Iowa
-class battleships, as well as a strong reminder of the importance of the US Merchant Marine at some point in time. The latter especially is a point which professor Sal Mercogliano (from
What’s Going on With Shipping?
fame) is rather passionate about.
Currently the SSUSC is in talks with a New York-based real-estate developer about a
redevelopment
concept, but this was thrown into peril when the owner of the pier suddenly doubled the rent, leading to the eviction by September. Unless something changes for the better soon, the SS
United States
stands a good chance of soon following the
USS
Kitty Hawk
,
USS
John F. Kennedy
(which nearly became a museum ship) and so many more into the scrapper’s oblivion.
What, one might ask, is truly in the name of the SS
United States
? | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771262",
"author": "HuggyBear",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T15:05:38",
"content": "USS Enterprise is next for the scrap yard ……No, not “that” Enterprise….. Enterprise CVN-65 (first US Navy nuclear powered aircraft carrier).Presently parked at Newport News, VA.Awaiting – disassembly.So... | 1,760,371,872.06975 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/lego-bricks-now-out-of-this-world/ | LEGO Bricks: Now Out Of This World | Jenny List | [
"Space",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ESA",
"lego",
"regolith"
] | Now the eyes of space explorers are turned once more towards the Moon, there are a whole host of new engineering challenges facing engineers working on lunar missions. One such challenge relates to how any proposed Moon base might be built, and as European Space Agency (ESA) researchers turn their mind to the problem they’ve taken a uniquely European approach.
They’ve made some LEGO bricks
.
Sadly lunar regolith is in short supply in Europe at the moment, so as a stand-in they’ve ground up a meteorite, mixed the powder with a polymer, and 3D printed their bricks. The LEGO write-up is a little long on frothy writing style and a little short on the science, but it seems that they clutch in exactly the same way as the official bricks from Billund, and can be assembled just as you would a normal set of bricks.
It’s with some regret that we have to concede that Europe’s off-planet outpost won’t be crewed by LEGO people in a base made from LEGO bricks, but we applaud them for doing this as a practical test given the limited supply of starter material. LEGO themselves have snagged some of them to display in a range of their flagship stores, so we hot-footed it down to London to catch some pictures. What we found is a single brick in a glass case, sadly looking very like any other 3D printed brick in a shiny grey medium. It’s probably the most expensive brick in the world though, so we doubt they’ll be available to buy any time soon.
If you’re hungry for more of all things LEGO, we can do no better than suggest
a trip to the mother lode, in Billund, Denmark
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771230",
"author": "Grumpy Bob",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T13:05:09",
"content": "Looks rather like the LEGO Group admitting that you CAN 3d print legos. Not only that, but from the closeup image in the linked article it’s clearly an fdm print (with the layer lines and individual li... | 1,760,371,872.455945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/3dprintering-adaptive-bed-leveling/ | 3D Printering: Adaptive Bed Leveling | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printing",
"bed leveling",
"klipper",
"marlin",
"tramming"
] | Have you ever read about something and thought, “Gee whiz! Why did I never think about that?” That was my reaction to reading about a feature commonly associated with Klipper called
adaptive bed leveling
or adaptive mesh leveling. Too bad I don’t typically use Klipper, but it all worked out, and I’ll show you how it might work for you.
What Is It?
Time to tram your bed!
Once a luxury, most 3D printers now come with some kind of bed level sensor. The idea is that the printer can probe the bed to determine the shape of the build plate and then adjust the build plate accordingly. So if a particular spot on the bed is 0.5 mm too high, the nozzle can rise 0.5 mm when it is in that area. There are several techniques Marlin firmware uses, including what I usually use:
UBL
. Some people scan the bed once and hope it won’t change much. Others will do a time-consuming scan before each print.
However, adaptive bed leveling is a bit different. The idea is that the printer only probes the area where the part is going to print. If your print bed is 235 mm x 235 mm but your part is 50 mm square, you could just probe the points under the 50 mm square.
This does several things. For a given number of points, there is less motion, so it should be faster. Also, for the same number of points, you will have a much denser mesh and, thus, a better idea of what the bed is at any given point. You could even reduce the number of points based on the size of the part you are printing.
When you think about it, it is a dead simple idea. What’s not to love? For most print jobs, you’ll have less work for the printer, faster prints, and a denser mesh. But how do you do it?
How Do You Do It?
Can you make this work with your printer? Maybe. The trick is you need a way to tell your printer firmware to restrict the mesh area. You also need a way to have the slicer output a bounding box for the part, but that’s usually not hard. If you had to, you could even post process your Gcode and figure that out, but you probably won’t have to.
I
Giving your sensor less distance to travel is a good thing
f you use linear or bilinear leveling, you are in business. That’s because the G29 command for bilinear accepts an L, R, F, and B parameter that lets you set the left, right, front, and back measurements of the probing grid. You can also set the number of probe points with H. Actually, H sets one side of the square, so if H=5, you will probe 25 points in the area.
However, I use UBL, and on one of my printers, I think I’m out of luck without changing something in the firmware. While there is a mesh inset setting, it is set when you build the firmware, so it won’t be practical to change it on the fly.
However, two of my printers are Ender 3 v2 Neo machines. By themselves, they use some odd variant of normal leveling, but I long ago flashed them with the excellent “professional” firmware by [mriscoc]. This is Marlin configured for these machines and — at least the version I use — has UBL set. But, there’s a catch.
The firmware has some custom Gcodes that start with C. C29 sets the mesh size and location very much like other versions. For some reason, it also sets the temperature. Here’s the documentation:
C29 Ln Rn Fn Bn Tn Nn Xn Ym : set probing mesh inset (Left, Right, Front, Back) in mm. T is the probing temperature (T0 doesn’t change the current bed temperature) and N is the density or amount of grid points NxN, it is posible to set a NxM density by using X and Y. In UBL use G29 S# to save to a mesh slot number #.
Try It!
Just as an experiment, I sent the following to the printer via a terminal:
C29 L100 R150 F100 B150 T0 N5
Nothing happened. But when I performed a G29 P1 to probe the bed, it obeyed the new restriction. All that was left was to make the slicer output the correct startup code. Of course, if you are using bilinear levelling, you’ll use G29 instead and have to change a few of the arguments.
Engage Start Up Sequence
Most slicers allow you to put placeholder variables in your Gcode scripts. You may have to look it up for your slicer. There are also plugins that can do the work, but you’d need to change their G29 to C29 (in my case). I mostly use
SuperSlicer
, which is forked from PrusaSlicer, which is forked from Slic3r.
Here’s part of my startup code:
G28 ; home all
C29 L{first_layer_print_min[0]} R{min(190,first_layer_print_
max[0])} F{first_layer_print_min[1]} B{min(180,first_layer_print_
max[1])} T0 N5
G29 P1 ; probe
G29 A ; activate (may not be needed?)
G29 F2 ; Fade height 2mm (or whatever you want)
That’s it. If you have a line that purges your nozzle, you might want to correct it using similar logic or just add a few skirt loops in the slicer and forget about it. Note that I probe 25 points, which might be a bit much for a small part. It would be nice to write a script to detect how big a part is and adjust things. Note that Prusa has enough
power
to do this totally in the start code, but it would be different in Slic3r or Cura. If you look around, there are a few different
examples
of doing this for both slicers and various firmware that you will — no doubt — have to adapt to your circumstances.
I need to crack into the firmware for my other printer to see if a similar C command is feasible to add. But that’s for another day, especially since the C29 command is provided as object code only, so I’ll have to start from scratch. Luckily, I’m used to building (and rebuilding) Marlin for all the machines, especially that one, since it is a custom blend of many parts. I may switch out to bilinear leveling. Or, I could break down and go to
Klipper
, I suppose.
We want to try
fast scanning
next. Of course, things are simple if you tram your
flat bed once and forget it
. That is until something changes. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770947",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T14:12:23",
"content": "After heating up, it takes more then 30minutes before a glass bed stops changing shape. Your fancy multi-point leveling isn’t as useful as you think it is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,371,872.647985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/bats-can-no-longer-haunt-apple-vr-headsets-via-web-exploit/ | Bats Can No Longer Haunt Apple VR Headsets Via Web Exploit | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"bats",
"bug",
"bug bounty",
"loophole",
"spiders",
"vr"
] | Bug reporting doesn’t usually have a lot of visuals. Not so with the visionOS bug [Ryan Pickren] found, which
fills a user’s area with screeching bats after visiting a malicious website
. Even better, closing the browser doesn’t get rid of them! Better still? Doesn’t need to be bats, it could be spiders. Fun!
The bug has been fixed, but here’s how it worked: the Safari browser build for visionOS allowed a malicious website to fill the user’s 3D space with animated objects without interaction or permission. The code to trigger this is remarkably succinct, and is actually a new twist on an old feature:
Apple AR Quick Look
, an HTML-based feature for rendering 3D augmented reality content in Safari.
How about spiders, instead?
Leveraging this old feature is what lets an untrusted website launch an arbitrary number of animated 3D objects — complete with sound — into a user’s virtual space without any interaction from the user whatsoever. The icing on the cake is that Quick Look is a separate process, so closing Safari doesn’t get rid of the pests.
Providing immersive 3D via a web browser is a valuable way to deliver interactive content on both desktops and VR headsets; a good example is the fantastic
virtual BBC Micro
which uses WebXR. But on the Apple Vision Pro the user is always involved and there are privacy boundaries that corral such content. Things being launched into a user’s space in an interaction-free way is certainly not intended behavior.
The final interesting bit about this bug (or loophole) was that in a way, it defied easy classification and highlights a new sort of issue. While it seems obvious from a user experience and interface perspective that a random website spawning screeching crawlies into one’s personal space is not ideal, is this a denial-of-service issue? A privilege escalation that technically isn’t? It’s certainly unexpected behavior, but that doesn’t really capture the potential psychological impact such bugs can have. Perhaps the invasion of personal space and user boundaries will become a quantifiable aspect of bugs in these new platforms. What fun. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770898",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T12:06:53",
"content": "Bats aren’t bugs!https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/11/03",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6770918",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,371,872.728965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/coupling-stm32-and-linux-consider-hid-over-i2c/ | Coupling STM32 And Linux? Consider HID Over I2C | Arya Voronova | [
"how-to",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"descriptor",
"hid",
"hid over i2c",
"i2c hid",
"stm32"
] | If you’re pairing a tiny Linux computer to a few peripherals — perhaps you’re building a reasonably custom Pi-powered device — it’s rightfully tempting to use something like an STM32 for all your low-level tasks, from power management to reading keyboard events.
Now, in case you were wondering how to tie the two together, consider HID over I2C, it’s a standardized protocol with wide software and peripheral support, easily implementable and low-power. What’s more, [benedekkupper] gives you
an example STM32 project
with a detailed explanation on how you too can benefit from the protocol.
There are several cool things about this project. For a start, its code is generic enough that it will port across the entire STM32 lineup nicely. Just
change the pin definitions
as needed, compile it, flash it onto your devboard and experiment away. Need to change the descriptors? The
hid-rdf
library used lets you
define a custom descriptor super easily
, none of that building a descriptor from scratch stuff, and it even does compile-time verification of the descriptor!
The project has been tested with a Raspberry Pi 400, and [benedekkupper]
links a tutorial
on quickly adding your I2C-HID device on an Linux platform; all you need is DeviceTree support. Wondering what’s possible with HID? We’ve seen hackers play with HID aplenty here, and hacking on the HID standard isn’t just for building keyboards. It can let you
automate your smartphone
,
reuse a laptop touchpad
or
even a sizeable Wacom input surface
,
liberate extra buttons on gamepads
, or
build your own touchscreen display. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770850",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T08:14:58",
"content": "> all you need is DeviceTree supportAnd the 2 weeks to understand it, yet to even master it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770864",
"a... | 1,760,371,872.795762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/all-about-crts/ | All About CRTs | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"cathode ray tube",
"crt"
] | For old-timers, CRTs — cathode ray tubes — were fixtures as kids sat in front of TVs watching everything from Howdy Doody to Star Trek. But there’s at least one generation that thinks TVs and computer monitors are flat. If that describes you, you might enjoy [The 8-Bit Guy’s]
coverage of how CRTs work
in the video below.
CRTs were heavy, took high voltage, and had a dangerous vacuum inside, so we really don’t miss them. The phosphor on the screen had a tendency to “burn in” if you showed the same image over and over. We don’t miss that either.
The basic idea is simple. An electron is fired at the phosphor behind the screen. An electrostatic or electromagnetic arrangement allows you to hit specific spots on the screen, and, of course, you can turn the beam off. Color CRTs have three different phosphors, and the beams have to fire at the correct color phosphor.
The best part of the video is the part where they tear apart an actual CRT, something you don’t see very often. We were worried about the vacuum, but the tube in question had already vented to atmosphere.
We doubt CRTs will make a comeback like vinyl records have. If so, maybe you’ll settle for
a software simulation
. It does make
retrocomputing simulators feel better
. | 76 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770818",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T05:30:38",
"content": "TFTs and OLED screens also suffer ‘burn in’ though the mechanism is (obviously) different.I don’t miss colour CRTs so much now TFTs etc have got so high resolution (though that does present its own problems)... | 1,760,371,872.984572 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/paul-allens-living-computers-museum-and-labs-to-be-auctioned/ | Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum And Labs To Be Auctioned | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [] | After the Living Computers museum in Seattle closed like so many museums and businesses in 2020 with the pandemic, there were many who feared that it might not open again. Four years later this fear
has become reality
, as the Living Computers: Museum + Labs (LCM+L, for short) entire inventory is being auctioned off. This occurs only 12 years after the museum and associated educational facilities were opened to the public. Along with Allen’s collection at the LCM+L, other items that he had been collecting until his death in 2018 will also be auctioned at Christie’s, for a grand total of 150 items in the
Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection
.
In 2022 Allen’s art collection had seen the auction block, but this time it would seem that the hammer has come for this museum. Unique about LCM+L was that it featured vintage computing systems that visitors could interact with and use much like they would have been used back in the day, rather than being merely static display pieces, hence the ‘living computers’ part. Although other vintage
computing museums
in the US and elsewhere now also allow for such interactive displays, it’s sad to see the only major vintage computing museum in Washington State vanish.
Hopefully the items being auctioned will find loving homes, ideally at other museums and with collectors who aren’t afraid to keep the educational spirit of LCM+L alive.
Thanks to [adistuder] for the tip.
Top image: A roughly 180° panorama of the “conditioned” room of the Living Computer Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA. Taken in 2014. (Credit: Joe Mabel) | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770795",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T02:24:48",
"content": "“The best laid plans of mice and men…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6770797",
"author": "ajlitt",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,371,872.855236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/3d-scanning-phone-edition/ | 3D Scanning, Phone Edition | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"photogrametry"
] | It seems to make sense. If you have a 3D printer, you might wish you could just scan some kind of part and print it — sort of like a 3D photocopier. Every time we think about this, though, we watch a few videos and are instantly disappointed by the results, especially with cheap scanners. If you go the hardware route, even cheap is relative. However, you can — in theory — put an app on your phone to do the scanning. Some of the apps are free, and some have varying costs, but, again, it seems like a lot of work for an often poor result. So we were very interested in the video from [My 3D Print Lab] where he uses his phone and quite a few different apps and
objectively compares them
.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most expensive packages that required a monthly or annual subscription created an excellent scan. He didn’t print from it, though, because it would not let you download any models without a fee. The subject part was an ornate chess piece, and the program seems to have captured it nicely. He removed the background and turntable he was using with no problems.
Other apps didn’t fare as well, either missing some of the parts or failing to omit background elements. You may have to do some post-processing. Some of the other expensive options have free trials or other limits, but you can at least try them for free. One of the free trials let you do three free scans, but each scan took about 8 hours to process.
There are some free options, too, and while they aren’t great, most of the paid ones aren’t very good either. The apps tested are: Widar, Polycam, xOne, RealityScan, MagiScan, Qlone, Kiri Engine, and MakerWorld AI Scanner. Not all of these would provide a free download, but for the ones that did, he tried to print the resulting model from each. Qlone didn’t work on Android, so it didn’t get tested either.
Of the phone apps, Kiri Engine looks like the best. However, he also shows MakerWorld AI Scanner, a Web app that converts videos. It had a few minor issues, but it did a great job and looks like something that might be fun to try, especially since it is free. They also have a tool on that same website that has a limited number of uses per month that claims it can create a 3D model from a single photograph (and not just an extrusion of the flat image). There’s some
science
behind that.
If you just want the results, you can skip to about 14:50 to learn the reasoning behind the top three picks in each evaluation category. We know sometimes it is just as
easy to design a part as scan it
. We’ve used one of those cheap turntable scanners before, but they have gotten
somewhat better recently
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770821",
"author": "loonquawl",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T05:48:07",
"content": "It is one of the many absurdities of the ‘information age’ that the prices for custom HARDware that does a great job at producing a physical thing, fell like a stone, with great stuff now available for ... | 1,760,371,873.039644 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/esp-hosted-turns-esp32-into-linux-wifi-bt-adapter/ | ESP-Hosted Turns ESP32 Into Linux WiFi/BT Adapter | Arya Voronova | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ble",
"bluetooth",
"bluetooth 5",
"esp-hosted",
"ESP32",
"ESP32-C2",
"esp32-C3",
"ESP32-C6",
"ESP32-S2",
"ESP32-S3",
"espressif",
"SDIO",
"wifi card"
] | While we are used to USB WiFi adapters, embedded devices typically use SDIO WiFi cards, and for good reasons – they’re way more low-power, don’t take up a USB port, don’t require a power-sipping USB hub, and the SDIO interface is widely available. However, SDIO cards and modules tend to be obscure and proprietary beyond reason. Enter ESP-Hosted – Espressif’s firmware and driver combination for ESP32 (
press release
)(
GitHub
), making your ESP32 into a WiFi module for either your Linux computer (ESP-Hosted-NG) or MCU (ESP-Hosted-FG). In particular, ESP-Hosted-NG his turns your SPI- or SDIO-connected ESP32 (including -S2/S3/C2/C3/C6 into a WiFi card, quite speedy and natively supported by the Linux network stack, as opposed to something like an AT command mode.
We’ve seen this done with ESP8266 before
– repurposing
an ESP8089 driver
from sources found online, making an ESP8266 into a $2 WiFi adapter for something like a Pi. The ESP-Hosted project is Espressif-supported, and it works on the entire ESP32 lineup, through an SDIO or even SPI interface! It supports 802.11b/g/n and even Bluetooth, up to BLE5, either over an extra UART channel or the same SDIO/SPI channel; you can even get BT audio over I2S. If you have an SPI/SDIO port free and an ESP32 module handy, this might just be the perfect WiFi card for your Linux project!
There are some limitations – for instance, you can’t do AP mode in the NG (Linux-compatible) version. Also, part of the firmware
has blobs in it,
but a lot of the firmware and all of the driver are modifiable in case you need your ESP32 to do even more than Espressif has coded in – this is not fully open-source firmware, but it’s definitely way more than the Broadcom’s proprietary onboard Raspberry Pi WiFi chip. There’s
pl
e
nt
y
of
do
cu
me
nt
at
io
n,
and even some fun features like
raw transport layer access.
Also, of note is that this project supports ESP32-C6, which means you can equip your project with
a RISC-V-based WiFi adapter.
Title image
from [zhichunlee]. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770703",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T20:17:50",
"content": "What’s the reason you cannot do AP mode?Let’s hope that one day someone will come with a free radio stack for the ESP32, those binary blobs makes me sick:https://zeus.ugent.be/blog/23-24/esp32-reverse-engi... | 1,760,371,873.24684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/enjoy-totality-every-day-with-this-personal-eclipse-generator/ | Enjoy Totality Every Day With This Personal Eclipse Generator | Dan Maloney | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"blind",
"coronagraph",
"eclipse",
"gantry",
"moon",
"shade",
"sun",
"window",
"X-Y"
] | There have been a couple of high-profile solar eclipses lately, but like us, you probably missed the news of the one that passed over Munich in 2019. And every day since then, in fact, unless you were sitting in a particular spot: the couch of one [Bernd Kraus], who has
his very own personal eclipse generator
.
We’ll attempt to explain. Living in an apartment with a gorgeous western view of Munich is not without its cons, chief among which is the unobstructed exposure to the setting sun. Where most people would opt for a window treatment of some sort to mitigate this, [Bernd] felt that blotting out the entire view was a heavy-handed solution to the problem. His solution is a window-mounted X-Y gantry that dangles a cutout of the moon in just the right place to blot out the sun. An Arduino uses the time and date to calculate the position of the sun as it traverses the expansive window and moves the stepper motors to keep the moon casting its shadow in just the right place: on his face as he sits in his favorite spot on the couch.
There are a couple of time-lapse sequences in the video below, as well as a few shots of the hardware. We know this isn’t an actual
coronagraph
, but the effect is pretty cool, and does resemble an eclipse, at least in spirit. And it goes without saying that we applaud the unnecessary complexity embodied by this solution. | 31 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771193",
"author": "ewlie",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T08:12:10",
"content": "Brilliant",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771277",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T16:06:47",
"content": "But ... | 1,760,371,873.314236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/3-smartwatch-can-run-python/ | $3 Smartwatch Can Run Python | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Teardown"
] | [
"smartwatch",
"telink"
] | [Poking Technology] doesn’t think much of his new smartwatch. It is, by his admission, the cheapest possible smartwatch, coming in at about $3. It has very few useful features but he has figured out how to
port MicroPython
to it, so for a wrist-mounted development board with BLE, it might be useful. You can check it out in the video below.
The first step is a teardown, which reveals surprisingly little on the inside. There’s a tiny battery, a few connections, a display, and a tiny CPU board. There are, luckily, a few test pads that let you get into the CPU. What do you get? A 24 MHz Telink CPU with 512k of flash and 16k of RAM, along with all the other hardware.
Of course, even if you just want a display with some smarts, $3 might be in your price range. The whole thing wound up taped down to a PCB. But the usual debugger didn’t want to connect. Grabbing an oscilloscope revealed that the output from the board had some level problems. He eventually wrote his own debugger interface using a Pi Pico.
He was able to find the onboard CPU’s development tools. The CPU claims to be proprietary but looks suspiciously like a slightly modified ARM. A short investigation shows that the object code is extremely similar to the ARM Thumb instruction set but with a few extra bits set and different mnemonics. But once you put Python on board, who really cares?
The only downside is that it doesn’t appear that the BLE is practically usable because of memory limitations. But there are still places you might use the little watch in a project. Check out his
TELink debugger
,
MicroPython port,
and [rbaron]’s
previous work on this device
if you want to get started.
If you want a smartwatch, maybe
build your own
. While many DIY watches are simple, you can get pretty
complicated
if you like. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771221",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T12:24:55",
"content": "I have opened a similar cheap chinese watch (4EUR) where I found a chinese SOC Freqchip with SWD tap points on the PCB.There is GCC for that chip:https://github.com/zoobab/FR801xH",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,873.18202 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/llama-ttf-is-ai-in-a-font/ | Llama.ttf Is AI, In A Font | Elliot Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"font",
"hack",
"harfbuzz",
"rendering",
"web assembly"
] | It’s a great joke, and like all great jokes it makes you think. [Søren Fuglede Jørgensen] managed to
cram a 15 M parameter large language model into a completely valid TrueType font: llama.ttf
. Being an LLM-in-a-font means that it’ll do its magic across applications – in your photo editor as well as in your text editor.
What magic, we hear you ask? Say you have some text, written in some non-AI-enabled font. Highlight that, and swap over to llama.ttf. The first thing it does is to change all “o” characters to “ø”s, just like [Søren]’s parents did with his name. But the real magic comes when you type a length of exclamation points. In any normal font, they’re just exclamation points, but llama.ttf replaces them with the output of the TinyStories LLM, run locally
in the font
. Switching back to another font reveals them to be exclamation points after all. Bønkers!
This is all made possible by the
HarfBuzz font extensions library
. In the name of making custom
ligatures
and other text shaping possible, HarfBuzz allows fonts to contain Web Assembly code and runs it in a virtual machine at rendering time. This gives font designers the flexibility to render various Unicode combinations as unique glyphs, which is useful for languages like Persian. But it can just as well turn all “o”s into “ø”s or run all exclamation points through an LLM.
Something screams mischief about running arbitrary WASM while you type, but we remind you that since
PostScript
, font rendering engines have been able to run code in order to help with the formatting problem. This ability was inherited by PDF, and has kept
malicious PDFs
in the top-10 infiltration vectors for the last fifteen years. [Citation needed.] So if you can
model a CPU in PDF
, why not an LLM in TTF? Or
a Pokemon clone in an OpenType font
?
We don’t think [Søren] was making a security point here, we think he was just having fun. You can see how much fun in his video demo embedded below. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771144",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T02:10:43",
"content": "A 280GB font file has to be a new record.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771151",
"author": "kael29lv",
"timestamp": "2024-06-27T0... | 1,760,371,873.354318 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/floss-weekly-episode-789-you-cant-eat-the-boards/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 789: You Can’t Eat The Boards | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Podcasts",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"Arbmian",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"raspberry pi"
] | This week
Jonathan Bennett
and
Doc Searls
chat with Igor Pecovnik and Ricardo Pardini about Armbian, the Debian-based distro tailor made for single-board computers. There’s more than just Raspberry Pi to talk about, with the crew griping about ancient vendor kernels, the less-than-easy ARM boot process, and more!
–
https://www.armbian.com/
–
https://github.com/armbian
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Have someone you’d like use 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 | [] | 1,760,371,873.397319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/decoding-meshtastic-with-gnu-radio/ | Decoding Meshtastic With GNU Radio | Al Williams | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"gnu radio",
"LoRa",
"Meshtastic"
] | Meshtastic is a way to build mesh networks using LoRa that is independent of cell towers, hot spots or traditional repeaters. It stands to reason that with an SDR and GNU Radio, you could send and receive Meshtastic messages. That’s exactly what [Josh Conway] built, and you can see a video about the project,
Meshtastic_SDR
, below. The video is from [cemaxecuter], who puts the library through its paces.
For hardware, the video uses a Canary I as well as the WarDragon software-defined radio kit which is an Airspy R2 and a mini PC running Dragon OS — a Linux distribution aimed at SDR work — in a rugged case. GNU Radio, of course, uses flows which are really just Python modules strung together with a GUI.
The GNU blocks send and receive data via TCP port, so using the radio as a data connection is simple enough. The flow graph itself for the receiver looks daunting, but we have a feeling you won’t change the default very much.
If you’ve wanted to dip your toe into Meshtastic or you want a meaty example of using GNU Radio, this would be a fun project to duplicate and extend. While Meshtastic is generally a mesh protocol, you can set up a node to
act as a repeater
. You never know when
decentralized communications
might save the day. | 21 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771105",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T21:13:32",
"content": "What’s in a name?You wouldn’t name a new church ‘People’s Temple’?Name a new political party ‘The Bolsheviks’?Introduce a new ‘Yugo’?Why would you name any networking product *tastic?You realize LANtastic ex... | 1,760,371,873.456735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/as-cheap-as-chips-the-mifare-ultra-light-gets-a-closer-look/ | As Cheap As Chips: The MiFare Ultra Light Gets A Closer Look | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"decap",
"mifare",
"NFC"
] | If you take public transport in many of the world’s cities, your ticket will be an NFC card which you scan to gain access to the train or bus. These cards are disposable, so whatever technology they use must be astonishingly cheap. It’s one of these which [Ken Shirriff] has turned his microscope upon, a Montreal Métro ticket, and
his examination of the MiFare Ultra Light it contains is well worth a read
.
The cardboard surface can be stripped away from the card to reveal a plastic layer with a foil tuned circuit antenna. The chip itself is a barely-discernible dot in one corner. For those who like folksy measurements, smaller than a grain of salt. On it is an EEPROM to store its payload data, but perhaps the most interest lies in the support circuitry. As an NFC chip this has a lot of RF circuitry, as well as a charge pump to generate the extra voltages to charge the EEPROM. In both cases the use of switched capacitors plays a part in their construction, in the RF section to vary the load on the reader in order to transmit data.
He does a calculation on the cost of each chip, these are sold by the wafer with each wafer having around 100000 chips, and comes up with a cost-per-chip of about nine cents. Truly cheap as chips!
If NFC technology interests you,
we’ve taken a deep dive into their antennas in the past
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771050",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T18:41:37",
"content": "Don’t you mean “cheap ass chips”?B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6771074",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,873.516142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/26/making-your-wireless-keyboard-truly-low-power/ | Making Your Wireless Keyboard Truly Low-Power | Arya Voronova | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth keyboard",
"low power",
"low power optimization",
"wireless keyboard",
"ZMK"
] | The basics of keyboard design are tried and true at this point, but there are still a few aspects yet unconquered. One of them is making your keyboards wireless. You might think it’s easy, but if you just slap a wireless-enabled microcontroller onto your board, you’ll soon be left with a dead battery. Rejoice – [Pete Johanson], creator of ZMK,
tells all that you want to know about making your keyboard low-power.
In a lengthy blog post, he goes through everything that a typical keyboard consists of, and points out factor after factor that you never knew could cause a spike in power consumption. Are you using muxes or
config options
that will force your MCU to always stay alert? Is your voltage regulator’s quiescent current low enough, and can the same be said about other parts you’re using? Does your MCU have to work extra hard transmitting bytes because you’ve put a copper fill under its antenna? Most importantly, is the firmware you’re using designed to optimize power consumption at its core?
If you’ve ever thought about designing low-power keyboards, hell, any low-power device, you seriously should read this post – it will set you at ease by giving you a checklist of things to do, and it also links to quite a few other useful resources, like
the ZMK power profiler
. Perhaps, if you’re building a wireless keyboard or just creating battery-powered device,
you should consider ZMK
, as it sure seems to be written with energy efficiency in mind.
Want to learn more about what it takes to
build a low-power device
? Our 2023 Low-Power Contest
attracted a wide range of entrants,
and they’ve shared a flurry of methods and tricks you can use to build any sort of battery-juice-sipping gadget. | 46 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6771013",
"author": "Zoe Nagy",
"timestamp": "2024-06-26T16:18:17",
"content": "Why introduce more problems with wireless especially when keyboard never moves?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6771018",
"author": "TEMPE... | 1,760,371,873.599857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/injection-molding-using-a-3d-printer/ | Injection Molding Using A 3D Printer | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"3d printed injection mold",
"injection molding"
] | Recently [Stefan] of
CNC Kitchen
took a gander
at using his gaggle of 3D printers to try injection molding (IM). Although the IM process generally requires metal molds and specialized machinery, 3D printers can be used for low-volume IM runs which is enough for limited production runs and prototyping before committing to producing expensive IM molds. In the case of [Stefan], he followed
Form Labs’ guidance
to produce molds from glass-infused Rigid 10K resin (heat deflection temperature of 218 °C). These molds are very rigid, as the ceramic-like noise when [Stefan] taps two together attests to.
Injection molded bolt, with imperfections on the head. (Credit: Stefan, CNC Kitchen)
The actual injection process is where things get more hairy for [Stefan], as he attempts to push the clamped-shut mold against the nozzle of the FDM printer to inject the molten plastic, rather than
using an IM press
. With PLA at standard extrusion temperature the plastic barely gets into the mold before solidifying, however. Following this, higher temperatures, different materials (PETG, TPU) and high flow-rate extruders are attempted, with varying results.
Many of the struggles would seem to be due to poor mold design, rather than fundamental issues with using an FDM. The Form Labs document details some of the basics, such as opening up the injection gate (to decrease pressure inside the mold), adding air vents to improve flow and so on. Commentators to the video with professional experience point out many of these issues as well, along with the benefits of preheating the mold.
With the caveat that most of the challenge is in making a good mold, we’ve even injection molding done with
nothing more exotic than a hot glue gun
. If you’ve got a friend, or a long enough lever,
you can even inject the plastic by hand
. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770698",
"author": "Dylan Turner",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T19:42:04",
"content": "Soon we can make LEGO at home!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770718",
"author": "Srsly?",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T21:07:45... | 1,760,371,873.659109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/the-amstrad-e-miler-the-right-product-with-the-wrong-business-model/ | The Amstrad E-m@iler, The Right Product With The Wrong Business Model | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"Amstrad",
"e-mailer",
"Internet Appliance"
] | One of the joys of the UK’s Electromagnetic Field hacker camp lies in
the junk table
, where trash turns to treasure in the blink of an eye. This year I returned relatively unscathed from my few days rifling through the tables,but I did snag a few pieces. One of them is a wired telephone, which would be a fairly unremarkable find were it not for its flip-up LCD screen and QWERTY keyboard.
My prize is a 2002 Amstrad E-m@iler Plus, one of a series of internet-equipped telephones from the British budget electronics company. The device itself and the story behind it make for a fascinating tale of a dotcom-era Internet flop, and a piece of hardware that could almost tempt today’s hackers.
You’ve Heard Of The Dotcom Boom, But Have You Heard Of The Hardware?
In the late 1990s, everything was about the Internet, but seemingly few outside the kind of people who read Hackaday really understood what it was really about. I’ve written before on these page about how hype blinded the CD-ROM industry to the shortcomings of its technology, but while that had in reality only gripped the publishing business, the Internet hype which followed had everyone in its thrall. You’re probably familiar with the story of the dotcom boom and crash as startup companies raised millions on shaky foundations before folding when they couldn’t deliver, but in parallel with that there was also a parallel world for hardware. The future was going to be connected, but on what and whose hardware would that connection happen?
This was considered stylish back in 2002.
It was clear that bulky desktop PCs weren’t exactly convenient, and the mobile phone manufacturers wouldn’t figure out the potential of their nascent smartphones for another decade, so there was a brief period when a host of internet browsing appliances attempted to grab the market. These were usually either set-top boxes or all-in-one stripped-down PCs, and were often sold through consumer electronics outlets rather than computer stores. Among them were even a few unexpected outings for familiar operating systems, for example the BeOS-powered Sony eVilla with its portrait CRT, or the Bush set-top box which would become sought-after among Acorn Archimedes fans because it ran RiscOS.
Many large consumer electronics companies dipped their toe into this market, and in the UK it caught the attention of Sir Alan Sugar’s Amstrad. At the time they were a huge name in consumer electronics in these isles, having specialised in the flashy-but-budget end of the sector. Their existing computer business had equipped Brits with CP/M word processors and proprietary PC clones for years, and it’s fair to say that Sir Alan had a keen eye for what was likely to work with consumers. The E-m@iler was a standard wired phone with an internet appliance built-in, at first as the name suggests as an email terminal, and then with later models featuring a web browser, and later on a camera for video calling. It was for its time a very well-thought-out product that was perfect for older or less technically-inclined customers, and when it was launched in 2000 it caused quite a bit of excitement.
Such A Good Product, Shame About The Business Model
If the E-m@iler was a great piece of hardware for its time then, it had an Achilles’ heel in its business model. Sold at a loss, it relied on a subscription-based ISP with a premium-rate phone line and a per-email charge. It couldn’t be used with any ISP other than Amstrad’s Amserve, and thus although it won a small and loyal customer base, it hardly flew off the shelves. By the end they could be picked up in the UK supermarket Tesco for under £20, and despite those new models appearing, by 2010 they were gone. In a later interview Sir Alan revealed that the product did break even from the user base it had gathered, but was nowhere near a runaway success.
At the time I thought that the E-m@iler was a great idea well-executed far as the hardware went, even though its business model made no sense. A friend of mine’s elderly father had one, and it was easy for him to use it to keep in touch. Looking at mine in front of me today I still like it, but I want to know more. Time for a closer look.
Peering Inside, Is It Hackable?
The mainboard is dominated by the Connexant telephony chipset.
My device appears to be unused as it still has protective plastic over its handset, but sadly try as I might I couldn’t get it to power up. Cracking it open I find its motherboard, centred around a Sharp ARM processor and a Connexant phone line and modem chipset. On the back there are serial and USB sockets as well as the modem, and though it’s not populated there’s also space for a parallel printer port. Meanwhile on the sides of the unit are a smart media card slot, a smartcard slot driven by a daughter board, and what looks like another serial connection for Amstrad’s pocket databank range.
Digging around online for pages from two decades ago I find that the later version with the video camera had a TI OMAP main processor and ran MontaVista Linux under the hood, but sadly there’s much less info to be found for my second-generation one.
A TV advert on YouTube
reveals it running Microsoft Mobile Internet Explorer so it’s either Windows CE or something proprietary underneath all the Amserve interface, thus perhaps it’s not as hackable as I’d hoped. Still, it’s not without interesting possibilities, as that slide-out keyboard has a PS/2 interface.
Here in 2024 the idea of accessing the Internet through a wired phone seems laughable. Indeed the wired phone itself has become an endangered breed in many places. But a device like the E-m@ailer made sense two decades ago, for which I will give Sir Alan his due: I believe he was right. It’s sad then that it completely missed its opportunity in a rare case of Amstrad getting it so wrong on the subscription model. Now it’s little more than a paperweight, but I can’t help looking at it with speculative eyes. Should I put it back on the swap table at the next event I go to, or should I bring it back to life with a decent screen and a Raspberry Pi? | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770675",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T17:50:17",
"content": "A landline Blackberry…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770768",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T23:40:08",
"c... | 1,760,371,873.73029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/torment-poor-milton-with-your-best-pixel-art/ | Torment Poor Milton With Your Best Pixel Art | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Games"
] | [
"ai",
"api",
"LLM",
"open souls"
] | One of the great things about new tech tools is just having fun with them, like embracing your inner trickster god to mess with ‘Milton’, an AI trapped in an empty room.
Milton is trapped in a room
is a pixel-art game with a simple premise: use a basic paint interface to add objects to the room, then watch and listen to Milton respond to them. That’s it? That’s it. The code is available on the GitHub repository, but there’s also a link to play it live without any kind of signup or anything. Give it a try if you have a few spare minutes.
Under the hood, the basic loop is to let the user add something to the room, send the picture of the room (with its new contents) off for image recognition, then get Milton’s reaction to it. Milton is equal parts annoyed and jumpy, and his speech and reactions reflect this.
The game is a bit of a concept demo for
Open Souls
whose “thing” is providing AIs with far more personality and relatable behaviors than one typically expects from large language models. Maybe this is just what’s needed for AI opponents in things like
the putting game of
Connect Fore!
to level up their trash talking. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770646",
"author": "Cheese Whiz",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T16:08:14",
"content": "Poor Milton has seen so many penises",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770691",
"author": "Unochepassa",
"timestamp": "2024-06-2... | 1,760,371,873.957779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/the-spinmeister-for-a-perfect-pizza-every-time/ | The SpinMeister, For A Perfect Pizza Every Time! | Jenny List | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"Pizza",
"pizza oven",
"pizza stone"
] | If you don’t happen to have a traditional stone-floored domed clay oven on hand, it can be surprisingly challenging to make a pizza that’s truly excellent. Your domestic oven does a reasonable job, but doesn’t really get hot enough. Even a specialist pizza oven such as [Yvo de Haas]’ Ooni doesn’t quite do the best possible, so he’s upgraded it with
the SpinMeister
— a system for precise timing of the heat, and controlled rotation of the cooking stone for an even result.
The spinning part is handled by a stepper motor, driving a hex shaft attached to the bottom of the stone through a chuck. The rotating bearing itself is from an aftermarket stone rotator kit. The controller meanwhile is a smart 3D printed unit with a vacuum-fluorescent display module, powered from an Arduino Nano. There’s a motor controller to handle driving the stepper, and an MP3 module for audible warning. It’s all powered from a USB-C powerbank, for true portability. He’s produced a video showing it cooking a rather tasty-looking flatbread, which we’ve placed below. Now for some unaccountable reason, we want pizza.
If you recognize [Yvo]’s name, then perhaps it’s because he’s appeared on these pages a few times. Whether it’s
a tentacle robot
or
something genuinely different in 3D printing
, his work never ceases to be interesting. | 46 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770557",
"author": "WurstCase",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T11:33:39",
"content": "The idea is nice but launching a pizza into the oven on a round stone is quite a lot harder, at least if you want a decent sized pizza and not a tiny one… And to be honest, getting an evenly cooked pizz... | 1,760,371,874.038837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/using-the-wind-and-magnets-to-make-heat/ | Using The Wind And Magnets To Make Heat | Dan Maloney | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"halbach",
"heat",
"induction",
"neodymium",
"windmill"
] | On the face of it, harnessing wind power to heat your house seems easy. In fact some of you might be doing it already, assuming you’ve got a wind farm somewhere on your local grid and you have an electric heat pump or — shudder — resistive heaters. But what if you want to skip the middleman and draw heat directly from the wind? In that case,
wind-powered induction heating
might be just what you need.
Granted, [Tim] from the
Way Out West
Blog is a long way from heating his home with a windmill. Last we checked, he didn’t even have a windmill built yet; this project is still very much in the experimental phase. But it pays to think ahead, and with goals of simplicity and affordability in mind, [Tim] built a prototype mechanical induction heater. His design is conceptually similar to an induction cooktop, where alternating magnetic fields create eddy currents that heat metal cookware. But rather than using alternating currents through large inductors, [Tim] put 40 neodymium magnets with alternating polarity around the circumference of a large MDF disk. When driven by a drill press via some of the sketchiest pullies we’ve seen, the magnets create a rapidly flipping magnetic field. To test this setup, [Tim] used a scrap of copper pipe with a bit of water inside. Holding it over the magnets as they whiz by rapidly heats the water; when driven at 1,000 rpm, the water boiled in about 90 seconds. Check it out in the video below.
It’s a proof of concept only, of course, but this experiment shows that a spinning disc of magnets can create heat directly. Optimizing this should prove interesting. One thing we’d suggest is switching from a disc to a cylinder with magnets placed in
a Halbach array
to direct as much of the magnetic field into the interior as possible, with coils of copper tubing placed there. | 53 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770520",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T08:29:30",
"content": "My parents used to have a windmill that heated the house via a water brake. When it worked, it was very effective, but the system broke down so often and needed so many maintenance, in comparison to the near... | 1,760,371,874.185582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/one-handed-ps-ohk-keyboard-doesnt-need-chording-or-modifier-keys/ | One-handed PS-OHK Keyboard Doesn’t Need Chording Or Modifier Keys | Donald Papp | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"custom keyboard",
"one-handed keyboard"
] | Most one-handed keyboards rely on modifier keys or chording (pressing multiple keys in patterns) to stretch the functionality of a single hand’s worth of buttons. [Dylan Turner]’s
PS-OHK
takes an entirely different approach, instead putting 75 individual keys within reach of a single hand, with a layout designed to be practical as well as easy to get used to.
We can’t help but notice Backspace isn’t obvious in the prototype, but it’s also a work in progress.
The main use case of the PS-OHK is for one hand to comfortably rest at the keyboard while the other hand manipulates a mouse in equal comfort. There is a full complement of familiar special keys (Home, End, Insert, Delete, PgUp, PgDn) as well as function keys F1 to F12 which helps keep things familiar.
As for the rest of the layout, we like the way that [Dylan] clearly aimed to maintain some of the spatial relationship of “landmark” keys such as ESC, which is positioned at the top-left corner of its group. Similarly, arrow keys are grouped together in the expected pattern.
One-handed keyboards usually rely on
modifier keys or multi-key chording
and it’s interesting to see work put into a different approach that doesn’t require memorizing strange layouts or input patterns.
Want to make your own? The
GitHub repository
has everything you need. Accommodating the 75 physical keys requires a large PCB, but it’s a fairly straightforward shape and doesn’t have any oddball manufacturing requirements, which means getting it made should be a snap. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770493",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T05:05:16",
"content": "I use a regular full size keyboard one handed just fine. 60 WPM. I do still want to make a chord keyboard though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "67706... | 1,760,371,874.098671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/how-the-cd-rom-lost-the-multimedia-dream-to-the-internet/ | How The CD-ROM Lost The Multimedia Dream To The Internet | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1990s",
"CD-ROM",
"multimedia"
] | High-tech movie guides on CD-ROM; clearly the future had arrived in 1994.
In the innocent days of the early 90s the future of personal computing still seemed to be wide open, with pundits making various statements regarding tis potential trajectories. To many, the internet and especially the World Wide Web didn’t seem to be of any major significance, as it didn’t have the reach or bandwidth for the Hot New Thing
tm
in the world of PCs: multimedia. Enter the CD-ROM, which since its introduction in 1985 had brought the tantalizing feature of seemingly near-infinite storage within reach, and became cheap enough for many in the early 90s. In a
recent article
by [Harry McCracken] he reflects on this era, and how before long it became clear that it was merely a bubble.
Of course, there was a lot of good in CD-ROMs, especially when considering having access to something like Encarta before Wikipedia and broadband internet was a thing. It also enabled software titles to be distributed without the restrictions of floppy disks. We fondly remember installing Windows 95 (without Internet Explorer) off 13 1.44 MB floppies, followed by a few buckets of Microsoft Office floppies. All pray to the computer gods for no sudden unreadable floppy.
Inevitably, there was a lot of shovelware on CD-ROMs, and after the usefulness of getting free AOL floppies (which you could rewrite), the read-only CD-ROMs you got in every magazine and spam mailing were a big disappointment. Although CD-ROMs and DVDs still serve a purpose today, it’s clear that along with the collapse of the Internet Bubble of the late 90s, early 2000s, optical media has found a much happier place. It’s still hard to beat the sheer value of using CD-R(W)s and DVD-/+R(W)s (and BD-Rs) for offline backups, even if for games and multimedia they do not appear to be relevant any more.
If you’re interested in another depiction of this period,
it’s somewhere we’ve been before
. | 77 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770462",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2024-06-25T02:12:06",
"content": "Meanwhile, I have still have my LaserDisc player and the THX box set of the Star Wars trilogy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770555",
"author... | 1,760,371,874.549848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/2024-business-card-challenge-go-tic-tac-toe-to-toe-with-them/ | 2024 Business Card Challenge: Go Tic-Tac-Toe-to-Toe With Them | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"contests"
] | [
"2024 Business Card Challenge",
"arduino",
"atmega328p"
] | There is perhaps no more important time to have a business card than when you’re in college, especially near the end when you’re applying for internships and such. And it’s vital that you stand out from the crowd somehow. To that end, Electrical & Computer Engineer [Ryan Chan]
designed a tidy card that plays tic-tac-toe
.
Instead of X and O, the players are indicated by blue and red LEDs. Rather than having a button at every position, there is one big control button that gets pressed repeatedly until your LED is in the desired position, and then you press and hold to set it and switch control to the other player. In addition to two-player mode, the recipient of your card can also play alone against the ATMega.
The brains of this operation is an ATMega328P-AU with the Arduino UNO bootloader for ease of programming. Schematic and code are available if you want to make your own, but we suggest implementing some type of changes to make it your own. Speaking of, [Ryan] has several next steps in mind, including charlieplexing the LEDs, using either USB-C or a coin cell for power, upgrading the AI, and replacing the control button with a capacitive pad or two. Be sure to check it out in action in the two videos after the break. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770441",
"author": "RobHeffo79",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T23:52:57",
"content": "Couldn’t he use the photodiode effect of LEDs to use the LED itself as the button?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770499",
"author": "... | 1,760,371,874.37256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/an-easy-transparent-edge-lit-display/ | An Easy Transparent Edge Lit Display | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware"
] | [
"3d printed",
"7-segment display",
"acrylic",
"display",
"edge-lit",
"ESP32-S3"
] | Displays are crucial to modern life; they are literally everywhere. But modern flat-panel LCDs and cheap 7-segment LED displays are, well, a bit boring. When we hackers want to display the progress of time, we want something more interesting, hence the plethora of projects using Nixie tubes and various incantations of edge-lit segmented units. Here is [upir] with their
take on the simple edge-lit acrylic 7-segment design
, with a great video explanation of all the steps involved.
Engraving the acrylic sheets by hand using 3D printed stencils
The idea behind this concept is not new.
Older displays of this
type used tiny tungsten filament bulbs and complex light paths to direct light to the front of the display. The modern version, however, uses edge-lit panels with a grid of small LEDs beneath each segment, which are concealed within a casing. This design relies on the principle of total internal reflection, created by the contrast in refractive indices of acrylic and air. Light entering the panel from below at an angle greater than 42 degrees from normal is entirely reflected inside the panel. Fortunately, tiny LEDs have a wide dispersion angle, so if they are positioned close enough to the edge, they can guide sufficient light into the panel. Once this setup is in place, the surface can be etched or engraved using a CNC machine or a laser cutter. A rough surface texture is vital for this process, as it disrupts some of the light paths, scattering and directing some of it sideways to the viewer. Finally, to create your display, design enough parallel-stacked sheets for each segment of the display—seven in this case, but you could add more, such as an eighth for a decimal point.
How you arrange your lighting is up to you, but [upir] uses an off-the-shelf
ESP32-S3 addressable LED array
. This design has a few shortcomings, but it is a great start—if a little overkill for a single digit! Using some straightforward Arduino code, one display row is set to white to guide light into a single-segment sheet. To form a complete digital, you illuminate the appropriate combination of sheets. To engrave the sheets, [upir] wanted to use a laser cutter but was put off by the cost. A CNC 3018 was considered, but the choice was bewildering, so they just went with a hand-engraving pick, using a couple of 3D printed stencils as a guide. A sheet holder and light masking arrangement were created in Fusion 360, which was extended into a box to enclose the LED array, which could then be 3D printed.
If you fancy an edge-lit clock (you know you do)
check out this one
. If wearables are more your thing,
there’s also this one
. Finally, etched acrylic isn’t anywhere near as good as glass, so if you’ve got a vinyl cutter to hand,
this simple method is an option
. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770373",
"author": "MacAttack",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T20:34:04",
"content": "Isn’t this a slightly different take on the faux Nixie tube display featured here some years ago ? Except back then the individual plates held a single, whole digit (0 – 9).",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,874.331444 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/build-your-own-core-rope-memory-module/ | Build Your Own Core Rope Memory Module? | Dave Rowntree | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"Apollo Guidance Computer",
"Core rope memory",
"memory",
"rom"
] | [Luizão] wanted to create some hardware to honour the memory of the technology used to put man on the moon and chose the literal core of the project, that of the hardware used to store the software that provided the guidance. We’re talking about the
magnetic core rope memory
used in the Colossus and Luminary guidance computers. [Luizão] didn’t go totally all out and make a direct copy but instead produced a scaled-down but supersized demo board with just eight cores, each with twelve addressable lines, producing a memory with 96 bits.
The components chosen are all big honking through-hole parts, reminiscent of those available at the time, nicely laid out in an educational context. You could easily show someone how to re-code the memory with only a screwdriver to hand; no microscope is required for this memory. The board was designed in EasyEDA, and is about as simple as possible. Being an AC system, this operates in a continuous wave fashion rather than a pulsed operation mode, as a practical memory would. A clock input drives a large buffer transistor, which pushes current through one of the address wires via a 12-way rotary switch. The cores then act as transformers. If the address wire passes through the core, the signal is passed to the secondary coil, which feeds a simple rectifying amplifier and lights the corresponding LED. Eight such circuits operate in parallel, one per bit. Extending this would be easy.
Obviously, we’ve covered the Apollo program a fair bit. Here’s a fun tale about
recovering the guidance software from the real hardware
. Like always, the various space programs create new technologies that we mere mortals get to use, such as
an auto-dialling telephone
.
(video in Brazilian Portuguese) | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770310",
"author": "Luizão",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T17:17:21",
"content": "Yeah! Thank you for publishing my project :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770425",
"author": "Patrick",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24... | 1,760,371,874.432607 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/inside-nfc/ | Inside NFC | Al Williams | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"decapsulation",
"NFC",
"Transit ticket"
] | [Ken Shirriff] likes to take chips apart and this time his target is
an NFC chip
used in Montreal transit system tickets. As you might expect, the tickets are tiny, cheap, and don’t have any batteries. So how does it work?
The chip itself is tiny at 570 µm × 485 µm. [Ken] compares it to a grain of salt. The ticket has a thin plastic core with a comparatively giant antenna onboard.
Working with such a tiny chip presented additional challenges. A few drops of boiling sulphuric acid freed the die. Then applications of phosphoric acid, Armour etch — nasty stuff, but better than hydroflouric acid — and hydrochloric acid took care of the rest.
With everything exposed, it was time to analyze the different parts. As you’d expect, the NFC tag draws power from the antenna and sends data from a EEPROM. There was some analog circuitry and also some digital gates used to control the output. But there isn’t room for much.
How are these so cheap? You can order an 8-inch wafer with 100,587 chips onboard. The price? Around $9,000 per wafer, so about nine cents per chip. Actually, you may be more because the wafer actually has 103,682 dice but a file included tells you which ones are bad. If you want to bargain shop, a 12-inch wafer is $19,000 but gives you 215,712 dice. What a steal!
Can’t get enough NFC?
We understand
. There are times you just want to
make your own
. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770297",
"author": "Owlman",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T16:14:00",
"content": "I was under the impression that Armor Etch contained precursors that produced hydroflouric acid – it isn’t something that I have ever used, bit I did look into it as a “safe” glass etchant.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,371,874.590363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/the-book-that-could-have-killed-me/ | The Book That Could Have Killed Me | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"arc furnace",
"particle accelerator",
"scientific american",
"x-ray tube"
] | It is funny how sometimes things you think are bad turn out to be good in retrospect. Like many of us, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by science of all kinds. As I got older, I focused a bit more, but that would come later. Living in a small town, there weren’t many recent science and technology books, so you tended to read through the same ones over and over. One day, my library got a copy of the relatively recent book “
The Amateur Scientist,”
which was a collection of [C. L. Stong’s] Scientific American columns of the same name. [Stong] was an electrical engineer with wide interests, and those columns were amazing. The book only had a snapshot of projects, but they were awesome. The magazine, of course, had
even more projects
, most of which were outside my budget and even more of them outside my skill set at the time.
If you clicked on the links, you probably went down a very deep rabbit hole, so… welcome back. The book was published in 1960, but the projects were mostly from the 1950s. The 57 projects ranged from building a telescope — the original topic of the column before [Stong] took it over — to using a bathtub to study aerodynamics of model airplanes.
X-Rays
[Harry’s] first radiograph. Not bad!
However, there were two projects that fascinated me and — lucky for me — I never got even close to completing. One was for building an X-ray machine. An amateur named [Harry Simmons] had described his setup complaining that in 23 years he’d never met anyone else who had X-rays as a hobby. Oddly, in those days, it wasn’t a problem that the magazine published his home address.
You needed a few items. An Oudin coil, sort of like a Tesla coil in an autotransformer configuration, generated the necessary high voltage. In fact, it was the Ouidn coil that started the whole thing. [Harry] was using it to power a UV light to test minerals for flourescence. Out of idle curiosity, he replaced the UV bulb with an 01 radio tube. These old tubes had a magnesium coating — a getter — that absorbs stray gas left inside the tube.
The tube glowed in [Harry’s] hand and it reminded him of how an old gas-filled X-ray tube looked. He grabbed some film and was able to image screws embedded in a block of wood.
With 01 tubes hard to find, why not blow your own X-ray tubes?
However, 01 tubes were hard to get even then. So [Harry], being what we would now call a hacker, took the obvious step of having a local glass blower create custom tubes to his specifications.
Given that I lived where the library barely had any books published after 1959, it is no surprise that I had no access to 01 tubes or glass blowers. It wasn’t clear, either, if he was evacuating the tubs or if the glass blower was doing it for him, but the tube was down to 0.0001 millimeters of mercury.
Why did this interest me as a kid? I don’t know. For that matter, why does it interest me now? I’d build one today if I had the time. We have seen more than one
homemade X-ray tube
projects, so it is doable. But today I am probably able to safely operate high voltages, high vaccums, and shield myself from the X-rays. Probably. Then again, maybe I still shouldn’t build this. But at age 10, I definitely would have done something bad to myself or my parent’s house, if not both.
Then It Gets Worse
The other project I just couldn’t stop reading about was a “homemade atom smasher” developed by [F. B. Lee]. I don’t know about “atom smasher,” but it was a linear particle accelerators, so I guess that’s an accurate description.
The business part of the “atom smasher” (does not show all the vacuum equipment).
I doubt I have the chops to pull this off today, much less back then. Old refigerator compressors were run backwards to pull a rough vaccuum. A homemade mercury diffusion pump got you the rest of the way there. I would work with some of this stuff later in life with scanning electron microscopes and similar instruments, but I was buying them, not cobbling them together from light bulbs, refigerators, and home-made blown glass!
You needed a good way to measure low pressure, too, so you needed to build a McLeod gauge full of mercury. The accelerator itself is three foot long, borosilicate glass tube, two inches in diameter. At the top is a metal globe with a peephole in it to allow you to see a neon bulb to judge the current in the electron beam. At the bottom is a filament.
The globe at the top matches one on top of a Van de Graf generator that creates about 500,000 volts at a relatively low current. The particle accelerator is decidedly linear but, of course, all the cool particle accelerators these days
form a loop
.
[Andres Seltzman] built something similar, although not quite the same, some years back and you can watch it work in the video below:
What could go wrong? High vacuum, mercury, high voltage, an electron beam and plenty of unintentional X-rays. [Lee] mentions the danger of “water hammers” in the mercury tubes. In addition, [Stong] apparently felt nervous enough to get a second opinion from [James Bly] who worked for a company called High Voltage Engineering. He said, in part:
…we are somewhat concerned over the hazards involved. We agree wholeheartedly with his comments concerning the hazards of glass breakage and the use of mercury. We feel strongly, however, that there is inadequate discussion of the potential hazards due to X-rays and electrons. Even though the experimenter restricts himself to targets of low atomic number, there will inevitably be some generation of high-energy X-rays when using electrons of 200 to .300 kilovolt energy. If currents as high as 20 microamperes are achieved, we are sure that the resultant hazard is far from negligible. In addition, there will be substantial quantities of scattered electrons, some of which will inevitably pass through the observation peephole.
I Survived
Clearly, I didn’t build either of these, because I’m still here today. I did manage to make an arc furnace from a long-forgotten book. Curtain rods held carbon rods from some D-cells. The rods were in a flower pot packed with sand. An old power cord hooked to the curtain rods, although one conductor went through a jar of salt water, making a resistor so you didn’t blow the fuses.
Somehow, I survived without dying from fumes, blinding myself, or burning myself, but my parent’s house had a burn mark on the floor for many years after that experiement.
If you want to build an arc furnace, we’d start with
a more modern concept
. If you want a
safer old book to read
, try the one by [Edmund Berkeley], the developer of the
Geniac
. | 93 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770251",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T14:18:15",
"content": "No mention of the Anarchist’s Cookbook?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770254",
"author": "Joe Gould",
... | 1,760,371,874.724288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/testing-large-language-models-for-circuit-board-design-aid/ | Testing Large Language Models For Circuit Board Design Aid | Maya Posch | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"large language model"
] | Beyond bothering large language models (LLMs) with funny questions, there’s the general idea that they can act as supporting tools. Theoretically they should be able to assist with parsing and summarizing documents, while answering questions about e.g. electronic design. To test this assumption, [Duncan Haldane] employed three of the more highly praised LLMs
to assist with circuit board design
. These LLMs were GPT-4o (OpenAI), Claude 3 Opus (Anthropic) and Gemini 1.5 (Google).
The tasks ranged from ‘stupid questions’, like asking the delay per unit length of a trace on a PCB, to finding parts for a design, to designing an entire circuit. Of these tasks, only the ‘parsing datasheets’ task could be considered to be successful. This involved uploading the datasheet for a component (nRF5340) and asking the LLM to make a symbol and footprint, in this case for the text-centric JITX format but KiCad/Altium should be possible too. This did require a few passes, as there were glitches and omissions in the generated footprint.
When it came to picking components for a design, it’s clear that you’re out of luck here unless you’re trying to create a design that a million others have made before you in exactly the same way. This problem got worse when trying to design a circuit and ultimately spit out a netlist, with the best LLM (Claude 3 Opus) giving nonsensical suggestions for filter designs and mucking up even basic amplifier designs, including by sticking decoupling capacitors and random resistors just about everywhere.
Effectively, as a text searching tool it would seem that LLMs can have some use for engineers who are tired of digging through yet another few hundred pages of poorly formatted and non-indexed PDF datasheets, but you still need to be on your toes with every step of the way, as the output from the LLM will all too often be slightly to hilariously wrong. | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770227",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T11:53:03",
"content": "I get the feeling the author of the article was trying desperately to present the chatbot output in a positive light.Like this:“Claude did a good job calling out the need to bias the microphone, nice ... | 1,760,371,874.788834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/esp32-brings-new-features-to-classic-geiger-circuit/ | ESP32 Brings New Features To Classic Geiger Circuit | Tom Nardi | [
"green hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"environmental monitoring",
"ESP32",
"geiger counter",
"mqtt",
"radiation monitor"
] | There’s no shortage of Geiger counter projects based on the old Soviet SBM-20 tube, it’s a classic circuit that’s easy enough even for a beginner to implement — so long as they don’t get bitten by the 400 volts going into the tube, that is. Toss in a microcontroller, and not only does that circuit get even easier to put together and tweak, but now the features and capabilities of the device are only limited by how much code you want to write.
Luckily for us, [Omar Khorshid] isn’t afraid of wrangling some 0s and 1s, and
the result is the OpenRad project
. In terms of hardware, it’s the standard SBM-20 circuit augmented with a LILYGO ESP32 development board that includes a TFT display. But where this one really shines is the firmware.
With the addition of a few hardware buttons, [Omar] was able to put together a very capable interface that runs locally on the device itself. In addition, the ESP32 serves up a web page that provides some impressive real-time data visualizations. It will even publish its data via MQTT if you want to plug it into your home automation system or other platform.
Between the project’s Hackaday.io page and
GitHub repository
, [Omar] has done a fantastic job of documenting the project so that others can recreate it. That includes providing the schematics, KiCad files, and Gerbers necessary to not only get the boards produced and assembled, but modified should you want to adapt the base OpenRad design.
This project reminds us of the
uRADMonitor
, which [Radu Motisan] first introduced in 2014 to
bring radiation measuring to the masses
. This sort of hardware has become far more accessible over the last decade, bringing the dream of a globally distributed citizen-operated network of radiation and environmental monitors much closer to reality. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770211",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T09:17:26",
"content": "Two points:– No regulation of the tube supply voltage. Meaning, the voltage can be inside the window the tube requires, or not. You’ll never know. Also, as the boost converter is always running, it’ll waste a... | 1,760,371,874.832667 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/bit-of-openscad-code-caps-off-wiremold/ | Bit Of OpenSCAD Code Caps Off Wiremold | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts"
] | [
"openscad",
"Wiremold"
] | Wiremold is great stuff — it’s relatively cheap, easy to work with, and offers all sorts of adapters and angle pieces which take the hassle out of running (and hiding) wires. But [Dr. Gerg] found a shortcoming of this otherwise very flexible product: since each run is intended to start and end in a surface mounted box, he couldn’t find an end cap that would let him close off a section.
The solution? A desktop 3D printer and a
chunk of OpenSCAD code telling it what to extrude
. When you break it down, the Wiremold profile is fairly straightforward, and can be easily described with geometric primitives. A handful of cylinders, a cube or two, tie it all together with the
hull()
function, and you’re there.
We’d say this would be a fantastic project to cut your OpenSCAD teeth on, but since [Dr. Gerg] was kind enough to share the source code, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. Though there’s still benefit in reading over it if you’re looking for some practical examples of how the “Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller” gets things done.
So why would you want a Wiremold endcap? In the case of [Dr. Gerg], it sounds like he was trying to cover up a short run of wire that was running vertically. But we could imagine other applications for this basic design now that it’s out in the wild. For example, a short length of Wiremold outfitted with a pair of printed caps could make for a nice little enclosure if you’ve got a small project that needs protecting. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770189",
"author": "tkjrtyukjryu",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T06:43:27",
"content": "openscad is ugly, not intuitive. I hate it.but it worksI wait for new version with Ruby language (or Hascell, perl etc.) and normal grammar",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,874.891533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/kernel-hack-brings-windows-xp-to-the-486/ | Kernel Hack Brings Windows XP To The 486 | Alexander Rowsell | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"486",
"80486",
"Intel 486",
"retro computing",
"windows xp"
] | The venerable Intel 486 was released in 1989 as the successor to the extremely popular Intel 386. It was the minimum recommended processor for Windows 98. (Surprisingly, the Windows 95 minimum was a 386!) But by the time XP rolled around, you needed at least a 233 MHz Pentium to install. Or at least that was the case until recently when an extremely dedicated user on MSFN named
[Dietmar] showed how he hacked the XP kernel
so it could run on the classic chip!
The biggest issue preventing XP from working on earlier processors is an instruction introduced on the Pentium: CMPXCHG8B. This instruction compares two 8-byte values and takes different actions depending on an equality test. It either copies the 8 bytes to a destination address or loads it into a 64-bit register. Essentially, it does what it says on the tin: it CoMPares and eXCHanGes some values. If you want to dig into the nitty-gritty details, you can
check out this info on the instruction
taken from the x86 datasheet.
Without getting too technical, know that this instruction is vital for performance when working with large data structures. This is because one instruction moves 8 bytes at a time, unlike the older CMPXCHG instruction, which only moves a single byte. Essentially, [Dietmar] had to find every usage of CMPXCHG8B and replace it with an equivalent series of CMPXCHG instructions.
On a side note, the once well-known and devastating
Pentium F00F bug
was caused by a faulty encoding of the CMPXCHG8B instruction. This allowed any user, even unprivileged users, to completely lock up a system, requiring a full reset cycle!
So [Dietmar] was successful, and now you can run the German version of Windows XP on either a real 486 or an emulated one. The installer is available
on the Internet Archive
and there’s a detailed video below demonstrating installing it on the 86Box virtual machine host.
Thanks to [DosFox] for the tip! | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770172",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T03:44:58",
"content": "> Essentially, [Dietmar] had to find every usage of CMPXCHG8B and replace it with an equivalent series of CMPXCHG instructions.Perhaps I missed something but after browsing through the discussion threa... | 1,760,371,875.077437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/hackaday-links-june-23-2024/ | Hackaday Links: June 23, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d",
"bug",
"car dealership",
"CVE",
"cyberattack",
"dealer management system",
"hackaday links",
"helicopter",
"lunar landing",
"Minitel",
"ransomware",
"rescue",
"rov",
"surf",
"water rescue"
] | When a ransomware attack targets something like a hospital, it quickly becomes a high-profile event that understandably results in public outrage. Hospitals are supposed to be backstops for society, a place to go when it all goes wrong, and paralyzing their operations for monetary gain by taking over their information systems is just beyond the pale. Tactically, though, it makes sense; their unique position in society seems to make it more likely that they’ll pay up.
Which is why
the ongoing cyberattack against car dealerships
is a little perplexing — can you think of a less sympathetic victim apart from perhaps the Internal Revenue Service? Then again, we’re not in the ransomware business, so maybe this attack makes good financial sense. And really, judging by the business model of the primary target of these attacks, a company called CDK Global, it was probably a smart move. We had no idea that there was such a thing as a “Dealer Management System” that takes care of everything from financing to service, and that shutting down one company’s system could cripple an entire industry, but there it is.
Water may seem like the enemy for anyone who gets in trouble while swimming, but it’s really time that they’re fighting. Even a strong swimmer can quickly become exhausted fighting wind and waves; add in the hypothermia that’ll eventually set in even in water as warm as a bath, and the difference between life and death can come down to seconds. Getting help to a floundering swimmer isn’t easy, though, as lifeguards can only swim so fast.
But
a new remotely operated rescue boat
aims to change that, by getting to someone in trouble as fast as possible. Named EMILY, for “Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard,” the unit is a compact electrically powered rescue boat that can be rapidly deployed by lifeguards, who remotely pilot it to the victim. The boat’s deck is covered with what looks like survival gear, most of which would probably be of more use to the lifeguard upon their arrival than to the swimmer, who would likely just use the boat for flotation. As such, this makes way more sense than sending a drone out there, which at best could only drop a life ring. At $12,000 a piece, these boats aren’t cheap, but for the families who lost their kids in 2022 who donated them, they probably seem like quite a bargain. Here’s hoping they pay off.
We can’t be sure, but we’ve got a vague memory of playing a game called
Lunar Landing
way back in the day. It would likely have been on a TRS-80 in our local Radio Shack store, and if memory serves, we never got particularly good at the text-based simulator. Happily, though, we can now at least attempt to foist our lack of skills off on
a 55-year-old bug in the software
. Recently discovered by the excellently named Martin C. Martin while trying to optimize the fuel burn schedule to land softly with the most fuel remaining — the key to a high score, as we recall — the bug makes it so a tiny change in burn rate gives wildly different results. The post-mortem of his search and the analysis of the code, written by high school student Jim Storer only months after the real moon landing in 1969, is very interesting. We especially appreciated the insights into how Storer wrote it, revealed via personal communications. It’s a great look at a piece of computer history, and hats off to both Storer and Martin — although we haven’t seen a CVE posted for this yet.
We know that Minitel terminals are highly collectible, but
this is ridiculous
. Granted, the Minitel occupies a unique place in computer history, and the boxy design of the original CRT and keyboard terminal was not without its charms. But this particular terminal seems to have had a Very Bad Day in the recent past and is now on the chopping block for a mere €430. To be fair, the eBay user in France has listed the Dalí-esque Minitel as an
objet d’art
; at that price, we’d like to at least get some usable parts from it to fix other terminals, but that doesn’t seem likely. Somebody will probably buy it, though — no accounting for taste.
And finally, AnimaGraffs is back, this time with
a deep dive into the Bell 407 helicopter
. We’ve been big fans of his work for a while and have featured a few of his videos in this space, including
his look inside the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane
. The new video is richly detailed and includes not only the engineering that goes into rotorcraft but also the physics that makes them work and makes them so challenging to fly. Enjoy! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770210",
"author": "Alexander Rowsell",
"timestamp": "2024-06-24T09:04:04",
"content": "Lunar lander goes way way back! It was playable on the Altair 8800. At that time to get a perfect landing, you would (spoiler) do 5 turns of no action followed by 5 turns of full rocket firing a... | 1,760,371,874.94522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/the-best-diy-pcb-method/ | The Best DIY PCB Method? | Elliot Williams | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"diy pcb",
"etching",
"laser",
"soldermask"
] | Now before you start asking yourself “best for what purpose?”, just have a look at the quality of the DIY PCB in the image above. [ForOurGood] is getting higher resolution on the silkscreen than we’ve seen in production boards. Heck, he’s got silkscreen and soldermask
at all
on a DIY board, so it’s definitely better than what we’re producing at home.
The cost here is mostly time and complexity.
This video demonstrating the method
is almost three hours long, so you’re absolutely going to want to skip around, and we’ve got some relevant timestamps for you. The main tools required are a cheap 3018-style CNC mill with both a drill and a diode laser head, and a number of UV curing resins, a heat plate, and some etchant.
[ForOurGood] first
cleans and covers the entire board with soldermask
. A clever recurring theme here is the use of silkscreens and a squeegee to spread the layer uniformly. After that, a laser removes the mask
and he etches the board.
He then applies another layer of UV soldermask and a UV-curing silkscreen ink. This is baked, selectively exposed with the laser head again, and then he cleans the unexposed bits off.
In the last steps, the laser clears out the copper of the second soldermask layer, and the holes are drilled. An
alignment jig
makes sure that the drill holes go in exactly the right place when swapping between laser and drill toolheads – it’s been all laser up to now. He does a final swap back to the laser to etch additional informational layers on the back of the board, and
creates a solder stencil to boot
.
This is hands-down the most complete DIY PCB manufacturing process we’ve seen, and the results speak for themselves. We would cut about half of the corners here ourselves. Heck, if you do single-sided SMT boards, you could probably get away with just the first soldermask, laser clearing, and etching step, which would remove most of the heavy registration requirements and about 2/3 of the time. But if it
really
needs to look more professional than the professionals, this video demonstrates how you can get there in your own home, on a surprisingly reasonable budget.
This puts even
our best toner transfer attempts
to shame. We’re ordering UV cure soldermask right now. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770115",
"author": "Neil",
"timestamp": "2024-06-23T21:02:34",
"content": "Nowhere near as pretty as these boards but I make my SS boards by milling then flipping over and using the laser for black silkscreen. Alignment is not critical because it’s just labels. The trick is to spra... | 1,760,371,875.01716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/rescued-imac-g4-restored-and-upgraded-with-mac-mini-m1-guts/ | Rescued IMac G4 Restored And Upgraded With Mac Mini M1 Guts | Maya Posch | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"imac",
"imac g4"
] | Three abandoned iMac G4s, looking for a loving home… (Credit: Hugh Jeffreys)
The Apple iMac G4 was also lovingly referred to as the ‘Apple iLamp’ due to its rather unique design with the jointed arm on which the display perches. Released in 2002 and produced until 2004, it was the first iMac to feature an LCD. With only a single-core G4 PowerPC CPU clocked at around 1 GHz, they’re considered e-waste by the average person.
That’s how [Hugh Jeffreys] recently found a triplet of these iMacs abandoned at an industrial site. Despite their rough state, he decided to adopt them on the spot, and gave one of them a
complete make-over
, with a good scrub-down and a brand-new LCD and Mac Mini M1 guts to replace the broken G4 logic board.
The chosen iMac had a busted up screen and heavily corroded logic board that looked like someone had tried to ‘fix’ it before. A new (used) 17″ LCD was installed from a MacBook Pro, which required the use of a Realtek RTD2660-based display controller to provide HDMI to LVDS support. The new logic board and power supply were sourced from a Mac Mini featuring the M1 SoC, which required a 3D printed adapter plate to position everything inside the iMac’s base. Wiring everything up took some creative solutions, with routing the wires through the flexible monitor arm the biggest struggle. The WiFi antenna on the Mac Mini turned out to be riveted and broke off, but the iMac’s original WiFi antenna could be used instead.
Although some clean-up is still needed, including better internal connector extensions, the result is a fully functional 2024 iMac M1 that totally wouldn’t look out of place in an office today. Plus it’s significantly easier to adjust the monitor’s angle and height compared to Apple’s official iMac offerings, making it the obviously superior system. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6770035",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-23T17:25:20",
"content": "When I saw it, I thought of the comic strip “Foxtrot”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770041",
"author": "bru... | 1,760,371,875.49516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/tsmcs-long-path-from-round-to-square-silicon-wafers/ | TSMC’s Long Path From Round To Square Silicon Wafers | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [
"semiconductor fab",
"silicon wafer"
] | Crystal of Czochralski-grown silicon.
Most of us will probably have seen semiconductor wafers as they trundle their way through a chip factory, and some of us may have wondered about why they are round. This roundness is an obvious problem when one considers that the chip dies themselves are rectangular, meaning that a significant amount of the dies etched into the wafers end up being incomplete and thus as waste, especially with (expensive) large dies. This is not a notion which has escaped the attention of chip manufacturers like TSMC, with this particular manufacturer apparently currently studying a way to make
square substrates a reality
.
According to the information provided to Nikkei Asia by people with direct knowledge, currently 510 mm x 515 mm substrates are being trialed which would replace the current standard 12″ (300 mm) round wafers. For massive dies such as NVidia’s H200 (814 mm
2
), this means that approximately three times as many would fit per wafer. As for when this technology will go into production is unknown, but there exists significant incentive in the current market to make it work.
As for why wafers are round, this is because of how these silicon wafers are produced, using the
Czochralski method
, named after Polish scientist [Jan Czochralski] who invented the method in 1915. This method results in rod-shaped crystals which are then sliced up into the round wafers we all know and love. Going square is thus not inherently impossible, but it will require updating every step of the process and the manufacturing line to work with this different shape. | 45 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769997",
"author": "Mr. Geometry",
"timestamp": "2024-06-23T14:51:26",
"content": "Why not design hexagonal parts instead and pack them more efficiently into a circle?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6770023",
"author... | 1,760,371,875.294432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/fixed-point-math-exposed/ | Fixed Point Math Exposed | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"fixed point",
"floating point"
] | If you are used to writing software for modern machines, you probably don’t think much about computing something like one divided by three. Modern computers handle floating point quite well. However, in constrained systems, there is a trap you should be aware of. While modern compilers are happy to let you use and abuse floating point numbers, the hardware is often woefully slow. It also tends to eat up lots of resources. So what do you do? Well, as [Low Byte Productions] explains, you can opt for
fixed-point math
.
In theory, the idea is simple. Just put an arbitrary decimal point in your integers. So, for example, if we have two numbers, say 123 and 456, we could remember that we really mean 1.23 and 4.56. Adding, then, becomes trivial since 123+456=579, which is, of course, 5.79.
But, of course, nothing is simple. Multiplyting those two numbers gives you 56088 but that’s 5.6088 and not 560.88. So keeping track of the decimal point is a little more complicated than the addition case would make you think.
How much more complicated is it? Well, the video covers a lot but it takes an hour and half to do it. There’s plenty of code and explanations so if you haven’t dealt with fixed point math or you want a refresher, this video’s worth the time to watch.
Want to do 3D rendering on an ATMega?
Fixed point is your friend
. We’ve done our
own deep dive
on the topic way back in 2016. | 50 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769947",
"author": "mista4a",
"timestamp": "2024-06-23T11:41:35",
"content": "> Multiplyting those two numbers gives you 56088 but that’s 5.6088 and not 560.88. So keeping track of the decimal point is a little more complicated than the addition case would make you think.How is tha... | 1,760,371,875.586988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/22/thumb-nuts-for-not-a-lot/ | Thumb Nuts For Not A Lot | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"captive nuts",
"insert nuts",
"thumb nuts"
] | Sometimes it’s the most straightforward of hacks which are also the most satisfying, and so it is that we’d like to draw your attention to [mikeandmertle]’s
PVC thumb nuts
. They provide a cheap an easy to make way to create thumb-tightenable nuts for your projects.
Starting with a PVC sheet, a series of discs can be cut from it with a hole saw. The hole in the centre of the disc is chosen such that it’s a bit smaller than the required nut, so that it can be pressed into the space with a bolt and a washer. Then a second PVC disc is glued over one side of the first before being sanded to a regular shape, resulting in a captive nut at the centre of a finger-sized and easily turnable handle.
We like this project, and we think that quite a few of you will too. We wonder how much torque it will take, but we’re guessing that a threaded insert could easily be substituted for the nut in more demanding applications. And of course,
for more demanding applications you could always try knurling
. | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769740",
"author": "hartl",
"timestamp": "2024-06-22T13:19:54",
"content": "“They provide a cheap an easy to make way to create thumb-tightenable nuts for your projects”Too much work. Get a crown cork, “drill” with hammer and nail and tap the hole (a self-tapping screw will do). Or... | 1,760,371,875.441742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/22/learning-morse-code-with-a-diy-trainer/ | Learning Morse Code With A DIY Trainer | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"cw",
"display",
"morse",
"radio",
"trainer"
] | Morse code, often referred to as continuous wave (CW) in radio circles, has been gradually falling out of use for a long time now. At least in the United States, ham radio licensees don’t have to learn it anymore, and the US Coast Guard stopped using it even for emergencies in 1999. It does have few niche use cases, though, as it requires an extremely narrow bandwidth and a low amount of power to get a signal out and a human operator can usually distinguish it even if the signal is very close to the noise floor. So if you want to try and learn it,
you might want to try something like this Morse trainer from [mircemk]
.
While learning CW can be quite tedious, as [mircemk] puts it, it’s actually fairly easy for a computer to understand and translate so not a lot of specialized equipment is needed. This build is based around the Arduino Nano which is more than up for the job. It can accept input from any audio source, allowing it to translate radio transmissions in real time, and can also be connected to a paddle or key to be used as a trainer for learning the code. It’s also able to count the words-per-minute rate of whatever it hears and display it on a small LCD at the front of the unit which also handles displaying the translations of the Morse code.
If you need a trainer that’s more compact for on-the-go CW, though, take a look at
this wearable Morse code device based on the M5StickC Plus instead
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769717",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-06-22T11:04:43",
"content": "“Morse code, often referred to as continuous wave (CW) in radio circles, has been gradually falling out of use for a long time now. ”That’s the situation, sadly. And it angers me almost daily. It’s like sa... | 1,760,371,875.699815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/21/vintage-hacks-for-dot-matrix-printers-in-china/ | Vintage Hacks For Dot Matrix Printers In China | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"chinese",
"dot matrix printer"
] | In an excerpt from his book
The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age
, [Thomas Mullaney] explains how 1980s computer tech — at least the stuff that was developed in the West —
was stubbornly rooted in the Latin alphabet
. After all, ASCII was king, and with 60,000 symbols, Chinese was decidedly difficult to shoehorn into 8 bits. Unicode was years in the future so, of course, ingenious hackers did what they do best: hack!
The subject of the post is the dot matrix printer. Early printers had nine pins, which was sufficient to make Latin characters in one pass. To print Chinese, each character required at least two passes of the print head. This was slow, of course, but it was also subject to confusing variations due to ink inconsistency and registration problems. It also made the Chinese characters twice as big as English text.
Initial attempts were made to use finer pins to pack twice as many dots in the same space. But this made the pins too thin and subject to bending and breaking. Instead, some engineers would retain the two passes but move the print head just slightly lower so the second pass left dots in the gaps between the first pass dots. Obviously, the first pass would print even-numbered dots (0, 2, 4,…), and the second pass would catch the odd-numbered dots. This wasn’t faster, of course, but it did produce better-looking characters.
While international languages still sometimes pose challenges, we’ve come a long way, as you can tell from this story. Of course, Chinese isn’t the
only non-Latin language
computers have to worry about. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769671",
"author": "Alexander Pruss",
"timestamp": "2024-06-22T05:22:22",
"content": "I remember multipass printing for better graphics and higher resolution Latin fonts on dot matrix printers. It wasn’t just for Chinese.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,371,875.637771 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/21/tired-with-your-robot-why-not-eat-it/ | Tired With Your Robot? Why NotEatIt? | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"Science"
] | [
"charcoal",
"edible battery",
"edible circuits",
"gelatin",
"microfluidics",
"oleogel",
"robotics"
] | Have you ever tired of playing with your latest robot invention and wished you could just eat it? Well, that’s exactly what a team of researchers is investigating. There is a fully funded research initiative (not an April Fools’ joke, as far as we know) delving into the possibilities of edible electronics and mechanical systems used in robotics. The team, led by EPFL in Switzerland, combines food process engineering, printed and molecular electronics, and soft robotics to create fully functional and practical robots that can be consumed at the end of
their lifespan. While the concept of food-based robots may seem unusual, the potential applications in medicine and reducing waste during food delivery are significant driving factors behind this idea.
The
Robofood project
(some articles are paywalled!) has clearly made some inroads into the many components needed. Take, for example, batteries. Normally, ingesting a battery would result in a trip to the emergency room, but an edible battery can be made from an anode of riboflavin (found in almonds and egg whites) and a cathode of quercetin, as
we covered a while ago
. The team proposed another battery using
activated charcoal (AC) electrodes on a gelatin substrate. Water is split into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen by applying a voltage to the structure. These gasses adsorb into the AC surface and later recombine back into the water, providing a usable one-volt output for ten minutes with a similar charge time. This simple structure is reusable and, once expired, dissolves harmlessly in (simulated) gastric fluid in twenty minutes. Such a device could potentially power a GI-tract exploratory robot or other sensor devices.
But what use is power without control? (as some car tyre advert once said) Microfluidic control circuits can be created using a stack of edible materials, primarily oleogels, like ethyl cellulose, mixed with an organic oil such as olive oil. A microfluidic NOT gate combines a pressure-controlled switch with a fluid resistor as the ‘pull-up’. The switch has a horizontal flow channel with a blockage that is cleared when a control pressure is applied. As every electronic engineer knows, once you have a controlled switch and a resistor, you can build NOT gates and all the other logic functions, flip-flops, and memories. Although they are very slow, the control components are importantly edible.
Edible electronics don’t feature here often, but we did dig up this
simple edible chocolate bunny
that screams when you bite it. Who wouldn’t want one of those? | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6769647",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-06-22T02:12:04",
"content": "When Skynet becomes sentient, your vegetables will eat you!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6769650",
"author"... | 1,760,371,875.756807 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.