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https://hackaday.com/2024/03/17/a-fully-automatic-british-breakfast-ready-while-you-sleep/ | A Fully Automatic British Breakfast: Ready While You Sleep | Maya Posch | [
"cooking hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"breakfast machine"
] | What do you mean, the temporary breadboard setup went into production? (Credit: [Gregulations], YouTube)
Among all the amazing technologies that were promised to us, there is one that is much more egregious than the lack of flying cars and real hovering hoverboards: the lack of fully automated breakfast-maker machines. Instead we find ourselves handling the same dumb appliances each morning as we make a healthy breakfast that we then have time to wolf down before rushing out of the door to still be a few minutes late for work. When [Greg] researched machines that could automatically prepare breakfast, he came up empty, which led him down the rabbit hole of the Autochef-9000.
Although often featured in movies – ranging from
Back to the Future
to
Wallace and Gromit
– the contraptions in those are rarely practical, and real-life attempts often suffer the problem of feature creep as they have to handle too many ingredients and operations. This is where [Greg] found redemption in the simplicity of a proper British breakfast: beans, toast, sausages (sossys), and eggs. Months of CAD, welding, breadboarding, and writing Arduino code later, he made a machine that can open a can of beans, toast bread, boil eggs, fry up sausages, and deposit it all on a plate, all ready for that morning breakfast first thing when you stroll into the kitchen.
Thanks to [htky] for the tip. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742253",
"author": "Namespace collision error 0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-03-17T14:13:27",
"content": "Errrr ….. sorry to say this …… but there is no such thing as a ‘British Breakfast’. More likely, this is what non UK habitants probably think exists, not realising that breakf... | 1,760,371,975.94965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/17/creating-a-numbers-station-of-your-very-own/ | Creating A Numbers Station Of Your Very Own | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"audio",
"numbers stations"
] | Numbers stations are a weird phenomenon where odd voices read out long strings of numbers or random codewords to the confusion of the vast majority of the listening audience. If you’ve ever wanted to build one of your own,
you could follow the example of [AudioWanderer].
NumberMumble, as it’s called, is a numbers station emulator. It doesn’t signal spy networks or reveal national secrets. Instead, it randomly plays audio samples using an Arduino, including characteristic bursts of white noise that make it sound more authentic. It relies on the Mozzi library to help with audio tasks, including generating white noise and playing back samples. It’s also kitted out with a filter knob for varying the tone. Audio output is via PWM.
If you want to confuse your neighbours
with oddball audio
, put this thing on a radio transmitter and get broadcasting. But don’t, because that’s illegal without the proper licenses or — you know — if you happen to be a real spy. Video after the break. | 14 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742237",
"author": "☠",
"timestamp": "2024-03-17T11:54:30",
"content": "Another idea might be to get a python script running with two separate instances of chat GPT or Gemini running on two diff accounts and get them to feed into each other and broadcast that instead with text to a... | 1,760,371,976.275707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/17/the-most-famous-room-in-rock-n-roll-youve-never-seen/ | The Most Famous Room In Rock-n-Roll You’ve Never Seen | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"acoustics",
"echo chamber",
"reverb"
] | The study of audio technology has a lot of fascinating branches, and one or two of them even take the curious engineer not into electronics but into architecture. There’s the anechoic chamber with its complete lack of echo, but at the other end of the scale, there’s the echo chamber.
It’s normal in 2024 when searching for reverb to reach for a software plugin, but following the effect back through silicon, spring lines, and metal plates to the 1950s, we find an echo chamber as a real room with a speaker and a microphone placed in it.
[Rick Beato] takes us into the echo chamber
, starting with one of the few remaining originals and probably the one whose effect has been heard on the most highly-charting music, at the famous Abbey Road studio in London.
The video below the break is broadly in two parts, with the first concentrating on the Abbey Road chamber and the second showing how an empty room in a house can be used to make your own. It’s aimed at musicians rather than hardware hackers but we think it’s one of those moments of crossover that readers might find interesting. We were particularly curious about the tall ceramic tubes in the Abbey Road chamber, designed to further break up the sound waves for a greater depth of reverb.
The video shows how reverb can be achieved with just a room, but don’t worry if you’re space limited.
A plate reverb needn’t break the bank
. Or, grab
a spring
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742395",
"author": "swbb reps",
"timestamp": "2024-03-18T02:12:41",
"content": "i got a tour last year by the chief engineer, he told me it was actually, originally, a bathroom meant to be used by the musicians during sessions. before the 50’s, certainly when it first opened in the... | 1,760,371,975.869295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/arduino-turned-into-something-kinda-like-a-pager/ | Arduino Turned Into Something Kinda Like A Pager | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"pager"
] | Video may have killed the radio star, but cell phones and smart phones all but killed the pager. They still exist, of course, but only in very niche applications. [João Santos] wanted a pager-like experience for himself, though,
so he enlisted an Arduino and got to work.
Watch a video of the system working below.
The build uses an Arduino Uno to drive a simple HD44780 LCD display with 16 characters each across two lines of text. It’s hooked up to a Wemos D1, which uses its WiFi connection to get online. To this end, it’s capable of talking to a web application which allows users to enter text messages. It receives these messages, passes them to the Arduino Uno over I2C, and then the Uno shuttles the message to the display. It’s overkill, but [João] just found it quicker to get everything up and running via this route.
Those who want to message [João] via the system can head to a website that runs on the OutSystems platform. There, they can enter their name and message, and it will be sent to the pager-like device for display.
It’s a fun little thing, and it makes us wonder if pagers could make a comeback. Maybe simple devices could work in a similar way to
Sidewalk
or
Apple AirTags
, communicating via a low-power network made up of smartphones in the local area. We’ve seen something similar
done with LoRa
. If you happen to whip up something along those lines, don’t hesitate to
let us know
! | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742207",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2024-03-17T08:22:43",
"content": "The “Beeper” Pagers never left. Its been used in the healthcare sector since the beginning.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6742209",
"author":... | 1,760,371,975.77574 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/radicle-an-open-source-peer-to-peer-github-alternative/ | Radicle: An Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"federated",
"Git",
"gossip",
"public key encryption"
] | The actions of certain large social networks have recently highlighted how a small number of people possess significant power over the masses and how this power is sometimes misused. Consequently, there has been a surge in the development of federated (or decentralized) services, such as Mastodon and Matrix. But what about development? While GitHub and similar services are less likely to be used for political manipulation, they are still centralized services with a common failure point.
Radicle is an open-source, peer-to-peer collaboration stack
built on top of Git but backed with public key cryptography as a standard and a
gossip protocol
to ensure widespread data sharing across the network and, thus, some fault tolerance.
Essentially, code and associated documentation are secured cryptographically with an identity. The
Git protocol
is used for actual data transfer from peer-to-peer, which means that updates are only sent as deltas, not complete copies, maximizing channel bandwidth efficiency. A custom gossip protocol is used for metadata transfer around the network of peers. The projects had a local-first ideology, with users running a full-stack node on their hardware and all features available, even offline, which is great for laptop users who move around locations with sporadic access to the internet.
Judging from their Zulipchat instance, this is a highly active space, so perhaps it is worth diving in and seeing if it floats your boat. Fancy getting onto the Fediverse, but only have a spare MS-DOS machine to try it on?
We’ve got it covered
. Want to use Git but not online?
You need a private Git server
. Finally, too much Git?
How about Gitless
?
Thanks [Anonymous] for the tip! No, that wasn’t lost on us :D | 26 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742161",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2024-03-17T02:41:47",
"content": "This would be great for software projects with a high risk of getting a takedown notice, such as unofficial game ports and emulators.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,976.334606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/nasa-engineers-poke-voyager-1-and-receive-memory-dump/ | NASA Engineers Poke Voyager 1 And Receive Memory Dump | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"voyager"
] | For months, there has been a rising fear that we may have to say farewell to the Voyager 1 spacecraft after it began to send back garbled data. Now, in a sudden twist, Voyager 1 sent back a read-out of the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) memory after a “poke” command, which both gives some hope that the spacecraft is in a better condition than feared while also allows engineers to dig through the returned memory read-out for clues. Although this data was not sent in the format that the FDS is supposed to use when it’s working correctly, it’s nevertheless readable.
It was
previously suspected
that the issue lay with the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), but has since been nailed down to the
FDS itself
. This comes after NASA engineers have been
updating the firmware
on both spacecraft to extend their lifespan, but it’s too early to consider this as a possible reason. Now, as a result of the “poke” instruction – which commands the computer to try different sequences in its firmware in case part of it has been corrupted – engineers can compare it to previous downloads to hopefully figure out the cause behind the FDS problems and a possible solution.
Inspired by this news of the decoded memory download, Nadia Drake – daughter of Frank Drake –
wrote about how it affects
not only the engineers who have worked on the Voyager mission for the past decades but also her own thoughts about the two Voyager spacecraft. Not only do they form a lasting reminder of her father and so many of his colleagues, but the silence that would follow if we can no longer communicate with these spacecraft would be profound. Still, this new hope is better than
the earlier news
about this plucky little spaceship.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip. | 59 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742129",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T23:30:12",
"content": "Voyager didn’t returned garbage, that was just alien encrypted data.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6742134",
"author": "Eric",
"... | 1,760,371,976.168013 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/dev-board-watch-takes-path-of-least-resistance/ | Dev Board Watch Takes Path Of Least Resistance | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"devboard",
"ESP32",
"watch"
] | Building your own watch or clock is kind of a maker’s rite of passage. Once upon a time, if you went with a wrist watch, you’d typically work on producing your own compact PCB with everything crammed into a typical watch form factor, maybe relying on a simple binary output for compactness and simplicity. Times have changed, however, and [Arnov]’s design
is altogether different in its construction.
The build relies on a XIAO ESP32-C3 microcontroller board as the brains of the operation. It’s paired with the XIAO expansion board. It’s designed as a carrier for the ESP32-C3, giving it a bunch of IO that’s accessible over readily-accessible connectors. It also features a display, a real-time clock, and a battery — pretty much the three main things you’d need to add to an ESP32 to turn it into a watch.
Thus, with the electronics pretty much done, it was simply up to [Arnov] to turn the device into a watch. He achieved this by screwing the frame and strap of an old Casio watch to a 3D printed carrier for the XIAO expansion board. With that done, it was simply a matter of writing the code to show the time from the RTC on the display. There’s no connectivity features, no smart stuff going on — just the time and date for your perusal.
Some might decry the project for simply slapping a watch band on a devboard. Or, you could look at how this indicates just how fast and easy development can be these days. Once upon a time, you could spend weeks trying to find a cheap display and then further weeks trying to get it working with your microcontroller. Now you can spend $20, get the parts in a few days, and get your project blasting along minutes later.
If you’ve done an altogether more ornate watch build of your own, we’d love to see that, too.
Show us on the tipsline! | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741482",
"author": "Edgar Vice",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T15:39:56",
"content": "I thought Richard Mille watches were ugly, but boy, this thing far surpasses it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741506",
"author": "St... | 1,760,371,975.997425 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/lithium-ion-batteries-power-your-devboards-easily/ | Lithium-Ion Batteries Power Your Devboards Easily | Arya Voronova | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Featured",
"how-to",
"Slider"
] | [
"18650",
"batteries",
"battery",
"lithium ion",
"TP4056"
] | Last summer, I was hanging out with a friend from Netherlands for a week, and in the middle of that week, we decided to go on a 20 km bike trip to a nearby beach. Problem? We wanted to chat throughout the trip, but the wind noise was loud, and screaming at each other while cycling wouldn’t have been fun. I had some walkie-talkie software in mind, but only a single battery-powered Pi in my possession. So, I went into my workshop room, and half an hour later, walked out with a Pi Zero wrapped in a few cables.
I wish I could tell you that it worked out wonders. The Zero didn’t have enough CPU power, I only had single-core ones spare, and the software I had in mind would start to badly stutter every time we tried to run it in bidirectional mode. But the battery power solution was fantastic. If you need your hack to go mobile, read on.
In 2022, I decided to cast the
Be
Not
Afraid
spell to provide you with a healthy amount of information on working with Lithium-Ion batteries. Over the last year, I’ve been actively mentoring up-and-coming hackers developing various gadgets, and whenever I linked the three LiIon articles to someone, I would realize that it was lacking very specific guidelines, schematics and board layouts.
Prepare The Tools
In terms of tools, you should have a multimeter and a soldering iron – the multimeter in particular is great to have when working with LiIon stuff because it provides you a very quick check on battery health. You’ll also want some wires you can solder, and a small number of common components.
Other than that, you’ll want some Aliexpress-obtainable boards – TP4056 charger boards, and optionally a 5 V step-up if you’re going to be charging off of something other than USB.
Now you need a battery. You’ll want to pick one that has about 3.7 V nominal voltage, and about 4.2 V full charge voltage – which is most of them except stuff like LiFePO4, that we won’t talk about here. You can buy new or
harvest them from other devices
, Old 18650s from devices like laptops are fine as long as they don’t look suspicious, aren’t mechanically damaged, and you get them a holder – don’t solder to them. Pouch batteries are also fine, again, if they’re undamaged, healthy-looking, not overdischarged, and solder to them carefully if you must. You also might want to get a protection circuit to safeguard your battery – TP4056 boards I recommend tend to already have one included, you can harvest them from old devices otherwise, or just get them from Aliexpress. Also, if you’re reusing a smartphone cell, there likely will be a protection circuit present.
Last, look at your dev board – find its schematic if possible, too. Chances are, it’s in one of the three categories as far as powering boards goes – “needs 3.3 V”, “needs 3.3 V to 5 V”, or “needs 5 V”. The overview is that we’ll supply 5 V to the TP4056 charger module to charge up the battery, and depending on the dev board, we’ll need to take the battery’s output and condition it further. Here, our paths diverge.
Your Board Needs 3.3 V
An ESP32, an ESP8266, and a Pi Pico, all have the same thing in common – they simply need 3.3 V for power, and you can provide this easily from a LiIon battery, so at its core, you only need a 3.3 V regulator. On many ESP32 and ESP8266 boards, there’s even a 1117 style regulator on the board already, but those tend to have a problem. The 1117 regulators are uniquely bad for LiIon use. Because of their high drop-out voltage, they fail to provide 3.3 V at as low as at 4 V input, so when the battery is at 50% capacity, they’re already cutting out. There are pin-compatible substitute LDO regulators that are very cheap and accessible – AP2111 and AP2114 are my favourites, so get a few of those. As for Pi Pico boards, or ESPs with small SOT23-5 package regulators, those tend to already be LiIon-compatible!
So we have a 5 V USB input, we have a LiIon battery that needs charging, and we need 3.3 V for the microcontroller. Wire the TP4056 board to the 5 V, and wire its output to the battery. One caveat exists – you can’t pull power from the battery while it’s being charged, that will mess with the LiIon charger chip algorithm! We solve this with three components – a resistor, a diode, and a small MOSFET, mixing the charger and the battery voltage in a way that the charger input is used for power whenever the charger is plugged in. This creates a power rail that goes from about 5 V, down to as low as the battery will go, which is about 3.5 V in practice. I refer to this three-component circuit as a “power path”, because that’s the how circuits for such purposes are usually known as!
You can, of course, add this circuit to a development board – many Sparkfun and Adafruit boards do exactly this, and so do a lot of Eastern-designed devboards. Also, you can measure battery voltage through a resistor divider, as a very crude proxy for state of charge. For ESP32 and ESP8266 boards, dividing battery voltage down to 1 V is the best choice for measurement accuracy for their ADC peripherals, so, you can do something like 330 kΩ / 100 kΩ divider, and for 3.3 V friendly ADCs on a RP2040 or an ATMega, a 1:1 divider (i.e. 470 kΩ / 470 kΩ) will do just fine. Want part recommendations? We talked through those
in the last article!
Oh, and, fun thing about the Pi Pico? Look at its schematic, and notice a fun thing – we have access to all the signals and components we need, and the necessary diode is already present on the Pi Pico board. To power a Pi Pico from a LiIon battery with all the benefits that our circuit brings, you only need a resistor, a FET, and a TP4056 board for charging.
This is a seriously universal solution. It applies for a whole lot of devboards with so many different MCUs, you would easily lose track if I were to list them all. As much as these boards might be initially designed for 5 V, you don’t need to actually create 5 V unless you also need to also power things like servo motors or USB devices. But a Pi Zero, for instance, needs 5 V.
Your Board Needs 3 V to 5 V
There are a lot of Pi Zero battery HATs on the market, and most of them tend to use a powerbank-intended circuit to feed the Pi Zero with 5 V. This is quite inefficient because the Pi Zero itself doesn’t actually need 5 V. Internally, it feeds the 5 V input to its regulator to generate 3.3 V and 1.8 V that the chips actually need. Also, there’s a secret – you can feed that regulator with as low as 3.3 V, as it has 100% duty cycle mode that allows it to do pass-through. This results in the regulator having a wide input range, from low 3.3 V to 5 V. Remember our power path circuit? Yeah, you can just use that again.
Here’s a very important consideration we shall solve! See those microUSB ports on the Pi Zero? They are directly connected to the regulator input, which in turn has a direct connection to the battery whenever a charger is not connected. Your task is to make sure you can’t accidentally plug anything into these ports anymore. Thankfully, not many people actually desire a MicroUSB port, much less a MicroUSB OTG port – solder your own USB-A or USB-C port to the GND/D+/D- testpoints on the bottom, and bring 5V from an additional step-up regulator.
If you plan to use the HDMI port, not all HDMI devices will be compatible with receiving 3.3 V on HDMI’s dedicated power rail, so if you encounter problems, you might want to supply your 5 V to the HDMI 5 V pin too – it has a diode you can comfortably solder a wire onto. Those are about all the problems with this method, and in return, you get a seriously increased battery life – I can run a Pi Zero with a few peripherals for over 20 hours from a 5000 mAh LiIon cell.
But if you need the 5 V, how do you find a 5 V step-up? Usually, search through the same place you got your TP4056 boards from. LM2956 regulators will be too bulky if all you want is to power a USB device or two, and the three-pin IC ones will be too underpowered, but there are a lot of regulators in the middle that will be fine generating 5 V at 500 mA for anything you need. I much prefer these because they even appear to work fine when powered from 5 V; it’s been about 7 years since I started using these, so, you might just find a better option too. Also, many USB devices can be powered from 3.3 V, just that it’s quite a gamble on which ones do.
This, too, applies to more than just the Pi Zero. For instance, I’ve recently taken a look at the Banana Pi M4 Zero schematic while doing my research, and its regulator seems to be fully compatible with this powering method, too – save for the SY8089 regulator powering the WiFi module. Full-sized Pi boards, though, won’t work well with this method – with those, you will want to straight up power your board from a 5 V step-up or step-down.
Your Board Absolutely Needs 5 V
If you’re sure your board truly needs 5 V, you should indeed provide it with that. This is where the circuit tends to get simple, because there are a lot of ICs for this task – you have to do the same thing that a powerbank does, so for a lot of purposes, you can reuse a powerbank circuit. You will find these circuits on boards inappropriate and appropriate alike – for instance.
One of the problems with the powerbank IC approach is that many of these chips will shut down their 5 V output whenever a charger is plugged in. For that, you could semi-easily build a FET-based switch that passes charger voltage through whenever the charger is plugged in, and, perhaps, disconnect the IC’s output too while at it. Want an open-source design example you can modify and manufacture?
Here you go.
Got a USB-C powerbank that has combined USB-C input and output? You can likely use the simplest possible USB-C dock with charging passthrough that provides you with a USB-A or USB-C output port.
The 5 V approach is simple, and the main problem with it is that it’s wasteful. If you’re powering a Pi Zero, this kind of circuit will step the battery 3 V to 4 V up to 5 V only to have the Pi Zero step it back down to 3.3 V, which makes you waste a noticeable amount of power on regulator loss instead of powering your CPU for more hours. In a pinch, you can always rely on the straightforward powerbank-style boards, but if you don’t actually need 5 V, the decreased runtime will make you sad, which is why you should know about the circuits above.
Reference Design To Last You Until Next Time
Last but not least, here’s
a reference design for KiCad
for all your LiIon needs. I’ve developed a power-your-portable-devices helper PCB that can help you handle a wide range of LiIon batteries you might work with, whether it’s pouch cells, or 18650s in holders SMD and THT alike. This board has a ton of quality-of-life features! There’s the power path, TP4056 and 5 V DC-DC footprints with FET control for the DC-DC, JST-SH 2-pin connector for pouch cells (Adafruit polarity), fuses for two 18650 cells you can put on it, an extra USB-C port for charging wired to the TP4056, wiring holes for connecting wires to the board in a mechanically stable way, reverse polarity protection and even per-cell reverse polarity alarm LEDs, separate 3.3V LDO with FET control that’s compatible with both SOT0223 and SOT23-5 LDOs, and even a protection trigger button in case the protection circuit gets stuck in the shut-off state like I’ve described. Plus, I’ve recently added a few mounting holes on the corners, improved wrong polarity silk markings for LEDs, and D-/D+ testpoints for the onboard USB-C port – after all, I’ll need to order a new batch of these boards soon!
I’ve originally developed this board for my own use on hardware hackathons, where I noticed myself always having to roll a small-scale solution for powering whatever gadget I was hacking away at – saving a few hours during a hackathon tends to result in great outcomes. Over the years, this design has powered multiple portable projects of mine, including designs I’ve used for years, and I’ve even used it to trigger small-scale explosives a couple of times – in Minecraft, of course. The design is fully open, so you can remix it, steal footprints and symbols from it, manufacture a small batch, it’s up to you.
Now, what if you need more, like 12 V? At some point, step-ups for such voltage will become inefficient, and you might just want to connect LiIon batteries in series, like many higher-power devices do. This does require more care from you, though, which is why so far, we’ve only talked about single-series configurations. Let’s devote the next article to putting multiple cells in series, so you know what it takes to treat batteries safely while getting a comfortably high voltage for any circuit you might have in mind. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741473",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T15:04:50",
"content": "I’d love to know what the walkie talkie software you had in mind is?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741492",
"author": "spaceminions",
... | 1,760,371,976.068451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/high-voltage-fun-with-an-inexpensive-power-supply/ | High-Voltage Fun With An Inexpensive Power Supply | Dan Maloney | [
"High Voltage"
] | [
"corona",
"feedthrough",
"gigaohm",
"high voltage",
"hv",
"laser",
"spark gap",
"VEVOR"
] | It used to be that nearly every home had at least one decent high-voltage power supply. Of course, it was dedicated to accelerating electrons and slamming them into phosphors so we could bathe ourselves in X-rays (not really) while watching
Howdy Doody.
These days the trusty tube has been replaced with LEDs and liquid crystals, which is a shame because there’s so much fun to be had with tens of thousands of volts at your disposal.
That’s the impetus behind
this inexpensive high-voltage power supply
by [Sebastian] over at Baltic Labs. The heavy lifting for this build is done by a commercially available power supply for a 50-watt CO
2
laser tube, manufactured — or at least branded — by VEVOR, a company that seems intent on becoming the “Harbor Freight of everything.” It’s a bold choice given the brand’s somewhat questionable reputation for quality, but the build quality on the supply seems decent, at least from the outside. [Sebastian] mounted the supply inside a rack-mount case, as one does, and provided some basic controls, including the obligatory scary-looking toggle switch with safety cover. A pair of ammeters show current and voltage, the latter with the help of a high-voltage resistor rated at 1 gigaohm (!). The high-voltage feedthrough on the front panel is a little dodgy — a simple rubber grommet — but along with the insulation on the high-voltage output lead, it seems to be enough.
The power supply’s 30 kV output is plenty for [Sebastian]’s current needs, which from the video below appear to mainly include spark gap experiments. He does mention that 50 kV commercial supplies are available too, but it would be tough to do that for the $150 or so he spent on this one. There are other ways to go, of course — [Niklas] over at
Advanced Tinkering
recently shared his design for
a more scratch-built high-voltage supply
that’s pretty cool too. Whatever you do, though, be careful; we’ve been bitten by a 50 kV flyback supply before and it’s no joke. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741435",
"author": "Miku",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T11:41:21",
"content": "Anyone know a source for adjustable HV power supplies that go from ideally 0.5kv to 12kv or so?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741586",
"aut... | 1,760,371,976.231172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/a-compact-scara-arm-plotter/ | A Compact SCARA Arm Plotter | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"plotter",
"robot",
"scara",
"SCARA arm"
] | If you’re unfamiliar with SCARA robots, the acronym stands for Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm. This refers to the fact that the arms are rigid in the Z axis but somewhat compliant in the X and Y axes, and that they’re often used for assembly tasks. In any case, you can spend a great deal of money equipping your factory with these robots, or you can build your own for the fun of it. If you’re not endowed with a seven-figure investment for opening a production plant,
consider exploring [tuenhidiy’s] project instead.
The build enlists an Arduino Mega as the brains of the operation. It’s paired with a RAMPS controller for running a pair of NEMA 17 stepper motors that actually move the arm in the X-Y plane. Additionally, a tray eject mechanism from a CD/DVD drive is enlisted to act as the Z axis. The frame is assembled from PVC plumbing components and a small amount of aluminium T-slot profile.
The resulting arm isn’t fast in
the video
we see of the build, but it works as a basic plotter without too much complaint. The benefit of the Z-axis in this case is obvious, as it allows the pen to be lifted off the page where necessary.
We’ve seen plenty of
good plotter designs
around these parts before, too. Video after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741437",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T11:50:20",
"content": "I don´t get the point of using PVC tubing if one does not route the wiring inside it …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741476",
"author": "Capo",
... | 1,760,371,975.822455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/the-flex-computer-system-uks-forgotten-capability-computer-architecture/ | The Flex Computer System: UK’s Forgotten Capability Computer Architecture | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Flex Computer System",
"Ten15",
"TenDRA"
] | During the 1970s many different computer architectures were being developed, many of them focused on making computer systems easier and more effective to use. The Flex Machine developed at the UK Ministry of Defence’s Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) was one of them, falling in the category of Capability Architectures. These architectures required hardware with programmable microcode, which required either custom hardware, or computer systems like the Xerox Alto-inspired ICL PERQ (pictured). What’s interesting about Flex is that it didn’t just remain in the 1980s as a quaint footnote, but as
detailed by [Martin C. Atkins]
– who worked on the system – evolved into the Ten15 system, which later got renamed to
TenDRA
.
Capability architectures
have a long history – including the Intel iAPX 432 and more recent implementations – but they all have in common is that they effectively implement an object-based memory architecture, rather than the low-level, flat memory space that we usually see with computer systems. These object-based capabilities, as they were termed, provides a level of memory protection and security that would be hard to implement otherwise. The book
Capability-Based Computer Systems
by [Henry M. Levy] forms a good introduction here.
Detailed information on the
Flex System
is somewhat scattered, with much of the information contained in scans of original paper documentation, such as
this introduction
to the Flex Computer System from 1979, and the documentation on the
instruction set and firmware architecture
from 1981.
The TenDRA project is as described on the project page a ‘compiler framework for architecture neutral representation of compiled programs’. The Wikipedia entry for the
TenDRA Compiler
describes it as a C/C++ compiler for POSIX compatible operating systems, which is now two projects: Ten15 and TenDRA. TenDRA compiles into the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format (
ANDF
) as an intermediate format, which is an Open Software Foundation definition that is based on the Ten15 Distribution Format, continuing the Flex System legacy.
Although Flex System and TenDRA are not well known, and ANDF never get that much traction in a space ruled by .NET, the JVM and others, one could argue that it’s still a relevant and very much alive set of technologies today.
Thanks to [gnif] for the tip.
Top image: Two ICL
PERQ
1 workstation computers, Department of Computer Science, North Machine Hall, James Clerk Maxwell Building, University of Edinburgh. (Credit: J. Gordon Hughes) | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741400",
"author": "Kaylee Kerin",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T05:32:04",
"content": "At the Large Scale Systems Museum in Pittsburgh, we’ve for a PERQ a few of our volunteers are working on getting running again. It’s definitely a “unique” CPU design, which makes it confusing to d... | 1,760,371,976.42995 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/gentle-introduction-to-white-light-interferometry/ | Gentle Introduction To White Light Interferometry | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"Interferometry",
"Michelson interferometer",
"white light interferometry"
] | Screenshot of the Zygo white light interferometry microscope software. (Credit: Huygens Optics)
White light interferometry (WLI) is a contact-free optical method for measuring surface height. It uses the phase difference between the light reflected off a reference mirror and the target sample to calculate the height profile of the sample’s surface. As complex as this sounds, it doesn’t take expensive hardware to build a WLI microscope, as [Huygen Optics] explains in a detailed
introductory video
on the topic. At its core you need a source of white light (e.g. a white LED), with a way to focus the light so as to get a spatially coherent light source, like aluminium foil with a pin hole and a lens.
This light source then targets a beam splitter, which splits the light into one beam that targets the sample, and one that targets the reference mirror. When both beams are reflected and return to the beam splitter, part of the reflected light from either side ends up at the camera, which captures the result of the reference and sample beams after their interference (i.e. combination of the amplitudes). This creates a
Michelson interferometer
, which is simple, but quite low resolution. For the demonstrated Zygo Newview 100 WLI microscope this is the first objective used, followed by a more recent innovation: the
Mirau interferometer
, which integrates the reference mirror in such a manner that much higher resolutions are possible, down to a few µm.
This is not the be-all of interferometry, of course, with the field being
much larger
than just these two interferometer types. It is however a great demonstration of how simple and effective this type of microscope is, with its use common in many scientific experiments. The Michelson interferometer dates back to the 19th century, and more recently the largest Michelson interferometer in existence today over at
LIGO
(laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory) has been used to detect the presence of gravitational waves based on the slight difference between the two reflected beams of spatially coherent light. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741533",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T20:07:41",
"content": "Stay away from the white light!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741534",
"author": "Fil Fer",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T20:11:03",
"content":... | 1,760,371,976.377053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/floss-weekly-episode-774-lets-get-rusty/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 774: Let’s Get Rusty | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"rust"
] | This week, Jonathan Bennett chats with
Herbert Wolverson
about Rust! Is it really worth the hype? Should you have written that in Rust? What’s up with “if let some” anyways? And what’s the best way to get started with this exciting language? We also cover comparisons with other languages like Ada, what drives us crazy about Cargo, and the fascinating world of kernel development!
— Hands-on Rust:
https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/
— Rust Brain Teasers:
https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrustbrain/rust-brain-teasers/
— The Rust Roguelike Tutorial:
http://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/
— Ardan Labs:
https://www.ardanlabs.com/
— LibreQos:
https://libreqos.io/
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!
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 | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741380",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T02:59:09",
"content": "I’ve been using C/C++ for many decades, and Rust is the FIRST language that has come along that I think has a chance of replacing them. Yes, I can’t do things in the the C++ way, but that brings many benef... | 1,760,371,976.482733 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/a-nine-year-olds-z80-drawing-program/ | A Nine-Year-Old’s Z80 Drawing Program | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly language",
"logo",
"z80"
] | Full disclosure: [Óscar] isn’t nine now, but he was in 1988 when he wrote
LOCS
, a drawing program in Z80 assembly modeled after Logo. You can see a demo of the system in the video below. You might wonder why you’d want to study a three-decade-old program written for a CPU by a nine-year-old almost five decades ago. Well, honestly, we aren’t sure either. But it did get us thinking.
Kids today are computer savvy and have hardware that would seem to be alien tech in 1988. How many of them could duplicate this feat? Now, how many could do it in assembly language?
LOCS had a few simple commands and was sort of a stripped-down scripting language. The BORRA command clears the screen. TORTUGA centers the turtle. PT (pone tortuga) moves the turtle to any spot on the screen. Then SM, AM, DM, and IM move the turtle up, down, right, and left. Probably helps if you speak a little Spanish.
The program fits on three pages of handwritten code. When was the last time you wrote code on paper? [Óscar] revisits the program to run it on an MSX. The original program was under 500 bytes but adding the code for MSX balloons it to 589 bytes. Gotta love assembly language.
You could argue that LOCS isn’t a language because it doesn’t have variables, expressions, or looping. [Óscar] retorts that HTML doesn’t have those things either, and yet some call it a language. Honestly, if a 9-year-old can create this, we think they can call it anything they want to!
By 1990, he’d graduated to
full-blown games
. If turtle graphics are too abstract for you, try
a Big Trak
. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742100",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T21:02:24",
"content": "Just a nit: what is on that paper is not assembly code. Assembly code is what you pass to an assembler to get machine code. What’s on that paper is machine code – the numbers that get passed acros... | 1,760,371,977.244114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/a-simple-seismometer-you-can-build-yourself/ | A Simple Seismometer You Can Build Yourself | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"earthquake",
"science",
"seismograph",
"seismometer"
] | If you’re a child, there are certain things you’re taught even though they’re probably not directly relevant to your life. We teach young kids all about dinosaurs, and we teach older kids all about how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. We also teach kids about natural phenomena like earthquakes, and the equipment used to measure them. Namely, seismometers. You might like to satisfy your own child-like curiosity by building one of your own,
like [mircemk] did.
Output from the build showing tremors in the Earth.
The build starts with a sensitive geophone
of [mircemk’s] own design.
That’s basically a microphone but it’s for picking up vibrations in the ground, not in the air. However, a geophone is not enough. You need to be able to pick up the signals from the geophone and then plot them if you want a seismometer.
First, the signals from the geophone must be amplified, which is achieved with a small circuit based around the LM358 op-amp. From there, the signal is sent to an Arduino where the output is captured via the analog-to-digital converter. This passes the signal to an attached PC which plots the results using a piece of software called NERdaq, which was developed for schools that built their own slinky-based seismometers.
[mircemk] reports that this setup has served as a reliable tool for visualizing earthquake activity for over 6 years. Though, it bears noting, it’s not calibrated so don’t expect to get science grade results out of it. Regardless, though, it’s a super cool way to understand more about w
hat is going on with the geology around us
. Video after the break. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742071",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T17:35:26",
"content": "I have a strong sense of deja vu.https://hackaday.com/2024/03/02/diy-geophone-build-performs-well/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6742073",
"... | 1,760,371,976.983907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/a-spif-fy-way-of-forming-metal/ | A SPIF-fy Way Of Forming Metal | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"forming",
"single point incremental forming",
"SPIF",
"titanium"
] | Thanks to 3D printing, most of us are familiar with the concept of additive manufacturing, and by extension, subtractive manufacturing. But what is it when you’re neither adding material nor taking it away to create something? Generally speaking, that’s called forming, and while there are tons of ways to do it, one you might not have heard of is single-point incremental forming (SPIF), and
it’s pretty cool
.
To explore SPIF as a method for making small parts, [Russell Makes] gave it a go on a small CNC mill. The idea is pretty simple, and the video below makes it pretty clear what’s going on. A forming tool is moved over a sheet metal blank that’s held very securely to the mill’s table. The tool has no cutting edges, just a smooth, hard, spherical tip — [Russell] made his own by brazing a carbide ball to a piece of drill rod. The tool is driven slightly into the blank along the Z-axis, while simultaneously tracing out a tool path in the XY plane. The tool spins, but very slowly; ideally, the spindle speed is controlled to keep a single point of contact with the metal as the tool works around its tool path. The tool steps downward incrementally, drawing the metal down with it as it forms the desired shape.
[Russell]’s experiments were pretty promising. He started with titanium sheet, which behaved pretty well except for some galling thanks to lack of lubrication. Aluminum and stainless worked pretty well too, at least for simple hemispherical and cone shapes. More complex shapes proved trickier, but with time he was able to figure out the correct speeds and feeds to keep the metal intact. The amount of tension built up in the metal is impressive, though, and is especially evident when cutting the finished part free from the blank.
Could this work with a hobbyist-grade machine? Possibly, but we’d be afraid that the forces involved might be a bit much for light-duty machines, especially in the Z-axis. And it’s a slow process, so it’s probably only good for one-offs and low-volume work. Once you’ve got a prototype,
die stamping
might be a more efficient way to go. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742037",
"author": "SayWhat?",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T15:34:56",
"content": "Would it help to make multiple passes to allow the metal to time to move and stretch and distribute the stress and minimize the heat?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,977.178032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/cheap-diy-microscope-lamp-makes-tiny-macro-shots-look-great/ | Cheap DIY Microscope Lamp Makes Tiny Macro Shots Look Great | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"lamp",
"light",
"microscope"
] | For optical microscopes, light is everything. If you don’t have a good amount of light passing through or bouncing off your sample, you’ve got nothing for your eyeballs or a camera to pick up. To aid in this regard, [Halogenek]
whipped up a nifty microscope lamp with some LEDs.
The build uses a neat arch-shaped PCB with a hole in the middle for the microscope’s optics to pass through. Surrounding this are the LEDs, which provide a circle of light focused on the sample, akin to the ring lights so favored by today’s online influencers. The LEDs are powered via USB C, so the lamp can be run off of any garden-variety phone charger you might have lying around.
[Halogenek] reports that the lamp has proven useful for
extreme macro shots of PCBs.
It’s an easy build to replicate or redesign your own way if you’re doing similar work.
Microscopes are super useful, and there are all kinds of hacks you can do to make them
perform better in your quest for science.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been jazzing up your own lab hardware,
let us know
—we’d love to hear about it! | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6742135",
"author": "edgee",
"timestamp": "2024-03-17T00:00:19",
"content": "Great on the the project and it solves and issue. there is one thing that bugs me. If you are submitting a project or even using it where other people can see, why settle for low quality, partially failed 3... | 1,760,371,977.294161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/16/super-portable-tunable-vhf-antenna/ | Super-Portable, Tunable VHF Antenna | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"conductive",
"J-pole",
"low cost",
"portable",
"pota",
"radio",
"SOTA",
"tape",
"webbing"
] | Ham radio is having a bit of a resurgence these days, likely due to awards programs like Parks on the Air (POTA) and Summits on the Air (SOTA), which encourage amateur radio operators to head outside and “activate” at various parks and mountaintops. For semi-mobile operations like this, a low-power radio is often used, as well as other portable gear including antennas. In the VHF/UHF world, the J-pole is a commonly used antenna as well, and
this roll-up tunable J-pole antenna is among the most versatile we’ve seen
.
The antenna uses mostly common household parts which keeps the cost down tremendously. The structure of the antenna is replacement webbing for old lawn chairs, and the conductive elements for the antenna are made out of metallic HVAC tape which is fixed onto the chair webbing after being cut to shape. The only specialized parts needed for this is a 3D printed bracket which not only holds the hookup for the coax cable feeding the antenna, but is also capable of sliding up and down the lower section of the “J” to allow the antenna to be easily tuned.
As long as you have access to a 3D printer, this antenna is exceptionally portable and pretty easy to make as well. Although VHF and UHF aren’t too popular for POTA and SOTA, portable equipment like this for the higher frequency bands is still handy to have around when traveling or operating remotely. With the antenna situation sorted out,
a DIY radio that can make use of it
might be in order as well. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741990",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T11:32:25",
"content": "Does it perform better than this one very easily made from 300 ohm twin lead?https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/TrainingModules/jpole-dual-band.pdf",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,977.121688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/retro-unit-converter-is-a-neat-little-gadget/ | Retro Unit Converter Is A Neat Little Gadget | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"gadget",
"unit conversion",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | These days, unit conversions aren’t something we have to worry about so much. If you’re sitting at a computer, you can usually just tap away in your browser to get a quick conversion done, or you can ask your smartphone for an answer. [HackMakeMod] wanted a bespoke device for this, though,
and built a tiny little retro-styled unit converter.
It’s a straightforward build that uses a handful of familiar components. An ESP8266 D1 Mini development board is the heart of the operation, running off a small battery harvested from a disposable vape pen. It runs a 0.96 inch OLED display which has a menu system for selecting from a whole bunch of different unit conversions. Navigating the menu is done via a rotary encoder with an integrated push button. Everything’s wrapped up in a neat 3D printed enclosure that was given a nice worn, weathered finish after printing.
[HackMadeMod] also clearly thought about usability, too. Turning the encoder dial faster ramps up the numbers exponentially so you’re not stuck jogging for ages when you need to enter a bigger figure.
It’s not something a lot of us would have a use case for, given that smartphones are always there and probably faster to use. However, it is
a tidy little gadget
, and a well-presented one at that. Video after the break.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip! | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741963",
"author": "Make",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T08:21:44",
"content": "Absolutelly fantastic little device!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6742035",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T15:27:35",
"conte... | 1,760,371,976.938337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/do-we-need-a-new-hardware-description-language/ | Do We Need A New Hardware Description Language? | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"hdl",
"SystemVerilog",
"verilog"
] | When you think about hardware description languages, you probably think of Verilog or VHDL. There are others, of course, but those are the two elephants in the room. Do we need another one? [Veryl-lang]
thinks so
. The Veryl language is sort of Verilog meets Rust. What makes Veryl interesting is that it transpiles to normal SystemVerilog, so it will — probably — work with your existing tool chains.
That means you can define your logic Veryl, have it output SystemVerilog, and then use that Verilog in your vendor’s (or an open source) Verilog tool. The output is supposed to be human-readable Verilog, too, so you don’t have to transport opaque blocks of gibberish.
You can find an example of the language on
GitHub
in the documentation. If you can read any HDL, you won’t find it very different. That might be the weakest part — from a user’s point of view, this might just as well be Verilog. The documentation claims that parsing the language is easier, but if you are just going to convert it to Verilog anyway, it might be as well to just write to Verilog. Then again, we know Verilog well enough that we are probably biased.
If you want to try it easily, there’s a browser-based “
playground
” to try. For example, the input:
// module declaration
module Hackaday (
// module port
v : input logic<32>,
q : output logic<32>
) {
assign q=~v;
}
Resulted in:
// module declaration
module project_Hackaday (
// module port
input logic [32-1:0] v,
output logic [32-1:0] q
);
assign q = ~v;
endmodule
Perhaps a little nicer, but not an overwhelming improvement.
What do you think? Will you try Veryl? Let us know in the comments. It isn’t the only alterative choice, of course. There’s
SpinalHDL
and
MyHDL
, to name two. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741949",
"author": "M.Dark",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T06:54:13",
"content": "Or, you can just use Python:https://github.com/davidel/pyxhdl",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741956",
"author": "Johan",
"timestamp": "2024-... | 1,760,371,977.391439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/tops-the-diy-robot-dog-has-great-moves/ | TOPS, The DIY Robot Dog, Has Great Moves | Donald Papp | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"actuator",
"diy",
"robot",
"robot dog"
] | We love [Aaed Musa]’s
TOPS (Traverser of Planar Surfaces)
which is a robot dog with custom-made actuators. The DIY is very strong with this project, and the 3D-printed parts alone took a whopping three weeks to print!
There’s additional detail on the electronics and design of TOPS in
the build log of the project’s Hackaday.io page
, so check it out because there are all sorts of nice design details, like the feet being cast with a silicone outer layer for better traction. We’ve previously covered [Aaed]’s
DIY robotic actuator design
which we’re delighted to see is put to excellent use in the finished robot.
Of course, a robot’s hardware and physical design is only part of the battle. In fact, [Aaed] says the software side of things was probably the biggest overall challenge. It takes a lot of work to make walking happen, and the process has in fact been a huge learning experience. [Aaed] already has plenty of ideas for a potential TOPS V2.
[Aaed]’s website
has video tours of all stages of design and construction of TOPS, and there’s a
GitHub repository
for all the design details. To see it all in action, check out the short video rounding up the finished robot, embedded here just under the page break. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741904",
"author": "deL",
"timestamp": "2024-03-16T03:40:57",
"content": "Great work, but aren’t we ready to look further than YouTube for content ‘distribution’? Is there no alternative?!?! Gone are the days of ‘make $1000+ a month’ passive income. Now it’s endless ads, premium (3... | 1,760,371,977.334768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/folding-solar-panel-is-underpowered/ | Folding Solar Panel Is Underpowered | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"solar panel",
"solar power"
] | If you hang out on certain kinds of sites, you can find huge-capacity USB drives and high-power yet tiny solar panels, all at shockingly low prices. Of course, the USB drives just think they are huge, and the solar panels don’t deliver the kind of power they claim. That seems to be the case with [Big Clive’s]
latest folding solar panel purchase
. The nice thing about the Internet is you can satisfy your urge to tear things open to see what’s inside of them vicariously instead of having to buy a lot of junk yourself. Thanks [Clive]!
The picture on the website didn’t match the actual product, which was the first sign, of course. The panel’s output in full sun was around 2.5 watts instead of the claimed 10 watts. He’s also seen sellers claim they are between 20 and 80-watt panels. But the interesting bits are when [Clive] decides to rip the panel into pieces and analyze the controller board.
The tiny circuit board uses a buck regulator chip to feed 5V to the attached USB port. There are hardly any other components: a Schottky diode, an inductor, two capacitors, an LED, and the LED’s resistor.
Maybe those little panels would
work for a Game Boy
. We’ve seen some
simple buck regulators
before, but this one may be the most minimal. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741811",
"author": "KJoh",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T20:15:29",
"content": "I’m always amused by camping equipment that has a camouflage motif. It’s a recipe for it to be lost and have to buy another.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,977.452114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/glow-plug-turned-metal-capable-3d-printer-hotend/ | Glow Plug Turned Metal-Capable 3D Printer Hotend | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"EDM",
"glow plug",
"hotend"
] | At this point, most readers will be familiar with fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers, and how a plastic filament is pushed through a heater and deposited as liquid through a nozzle. Most of us also know that there are a huge variety of materials that can be FDM printed, but there’s one which perhaps evades us: you can’t load a spool of metal wire into your printer and print in metal, or at least you can’t
yet
. It’s something [Rotoforge] is working on, with a
project to make a hot end that can melt metal
. Their starting point is a ceramic diesel engine glow plug, from which they expect 1300 C (2372 F).
The video below the break deals with the process of converting the glow plug, which mostly means stripping off the metal parts which make it a glow plug, and then delicately EDM drilling a hole through its ceramic tip. The video is well worth a watch for the in-depth examination of how they evolved the means to do this.
Sadly they aren’t at the point of printing metal with this thing, but we think the current progress is impressive enough to have a good chance of working. Definitely one to watch.
Previous metal 3D printers we’ve featured
have often used a MIG welder
.
Thanks [theFinn] for the tip! | 37 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741782",
"author": "TB",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T19:00:47",
"content": "Why not just use a ceramic nozzle to extrude the material and induction heating to melt it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741812",
"author": ... | 1,760,371,977.520913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/hackaday-podcast-episode-262-wheelchair-hacking-big-little-science-at-home-arya-talks-pcbs/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 262: Wheelchair Hacking, Big Little Science At Home, Arya Talks PCBs | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they go over their favorite hacks and stories from the past week. This episode starts off with an update on Hackaday Europe 2024, which is now less than a month away, and from there dives into wheelchairs with subscription plans, using classic woodworking techniques to improve your 3D printer’s slicer, and a compendium of building systems. You’ll hear about tools for finding patterns in hex dumps, a lusciously documented gadget for sniffing utility meters, a rare connector that works with both HDMI and DisplayPort, and a low-stress shortwave radio kit with an eye-watering price tag. Finally, they’ll take a close look at a pair of articles that promise to up your KiCAD game.
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!
Direct download in DRM-free MP3.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 262 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Europe 2024 Is On, And We Want You!
Hackaday Europe 2024 Tickets, Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 9:00 AM
What’s that Sound?
This week’s sound was mechanical adding machine. Congratulations to [Baldo9256]
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
The Insurance Buys The Wheelchair, But Not The App To Run It
Custom Library Rescues Good LoRa Hardware From Bad Firmware
μRepRap: Taking RepRap Down To Micrometer-Level Manufacturing
Measuring Nanometers At Home
Reducing Seams In FDM Prints With Scarf Joint Seams
That’s A Lot Of Building Systems
Generator Control Panel Unlocked With Reverse Engineering Heroics
BitBench Helps Parse Binary Data
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Randomly Move Marionette With Steel Balls And Geneva Drives
2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: Simple Window Closer Relies On Gravity
Simple Optical Meter Sets New Standards For Documentation
3D Imaging For Natural Science — For Free
Tom’s Picks:
Unusual Port Combines DisplayPort And HDMI
Stressless Shortwave Reviewed
Rosie The Robot Runs For Real
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Design Review: DPI-LVDS Sony Vaio LCD Devboard
Revive A Sony Vaio P-Series With KiCad’s Background Bitmaps
Share Your Projects: KiCad Automations And Pretty Renders | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,977.555861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/the-perils-of-return-path-gaps/ | The Perils Of Return Path Gaps | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"common mode",
"design",
"electromagnetic compatibility",
"emc",
"H-field",
"harmonics",
"return path",
"RF"
] | The radio frequency world is full of mysteries, some of which seem to take a lifetime to master. And even then, it seems like there’s always something more to learn, and some new subtlety that can turn a good design on paper into a nightmare of unwanted interference and unexpected consequences in the real world.
As [Ken Wyatt] aptly demonstrates in the video below, where you put
gaps in return paths on a PCB
is one way to really screw things up. His demo system is simple: a pair of insulated wires running from the center pins on BNC jacks and running along the surface of a piece of copper-clad board to simulate a PCB trace. The end of each wire is connected to the board’s ground plane through a 50 ohm resistor, with one wire running over a narrow slot cut into the board. A harmonics-rich signal is fed into each trace while an H-field EMC probe connected to a spectrum analyzer is run along the length of the trace.
With the trace running over the solid ground plane, the harmonics are plentiful, as expected, but they fall off very quickly away from the trace. But over on the trace with the gapped return trace it’s a far different story. The harmonics are still there, but they’re about 5 dBmV higher in the vicinity of the gap. [Ken] also uses the probe to show just how far from the signal trace the return path extends to get around the gap. And even worse, the gap makes it so that harmonics are detectable on the unpowered trace. He also uses a current probe to show how common-mode current will radiate from a long conductor attached to the backplane, and that it’s about 20 dB higher with the gapped trace.
Hats off to [Ken] for this simple explanation and vivid reminder to watch return paths on clock traces and other high-frequency signals. Need an EMC probe to check your work?
A bit of rigid coax and an SDR are all you need
. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741736",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T15:50:43",
"content": "When your plane is grounded one should mind the gap, not to fall into unwanted interference.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741738",
"author": "sme... | 1,760,371,977.602195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/this-week-in-security-apple-backdoors-curl-tors-new-bridge-and-ghostrace/ | This Week In Security: Apple Backdoors Curl, Tor’s New Bridge, And GhostRace | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Jenkins",
"tesla",
"This Week in Security"
] | OK, that headline is a bit of a cheap shot. But if you run the
curl
binary that Apple ships,
you’re in for a surprise
if you happen to use the
--cacert
flag. That flag specifies that TLS verification is only to be done using the certificate file specified. That’s useful to solve certificate mysteries, or to make absolutely sure that you’re connecting to the server you expect.
What’s weird here is that on a MacOS, using the Apple provided
curl
binary,
--cacert
doesn’t limit the program to the single certificate file. On an Apple system, the verification falls back to the system’s certificate store. This is an intentional choice by Apple, but not one that’s aimed particularly at
curl
. The real magic is in Apple’s SSL library, which forces the use of the system keychain.
The current state of things is that this option is simply not going to do the right thing in the Apple provided binary. It’s documented with the note that “this option is supported for backward compatibility with other SSL engines, but it should not be set.” It’s an unfortunate situation, and we’re hopeful that a workaround can be found to restore the documented function of this option.
Jenkins, Bring Me a File
The Jenkins continuous delivery server has
a critical issue, CVE-2024-23897
. It’s an arbitrary file read that clocks in with a 9.8 CVSS score. The one quirk about the way this works is the vulnerable function does the file read as strings, and loses quite a bit of the raw binary in the process. And many of the interesting files, like the
.Secret
files, use binary encoding. And on a Linux or Mac system, the default character encoding is UTF-8, which renders half of that 32-byte key unreadable. Far too many missing bytes to be useful.
But hang on. There’s a caveat here. Because of US cryptography export restrictions, JDK ships with only 128-bit encryption keys, truncating the rest of the bits. That means we’ve only got 16 byte keys, and an attacker can recover half the bits via this vulnerability.
We may have a problem
.
And wait, there’s more! Because the bytes have had an attempt at interpretation as UTF-8, we know more about the missing bytes than one might think. Check out
the breakdown
by [Guillaume Quéré] for more details, but the short version is that with just a little luck, one of these keys can be brute-forced in minutes or hours on a single desktop. More missing bytes means more processing time, but this is not an attack outside the realm of possibility, particularly for a determined adversary.
Big. Really big
There are some thresholds where things change. Doing security for yourself looks much different from doing security for a small business. It’s different again when at the enterprise level. But what does security posture look like for a company that competes for the top-ten list of largest companies in the world? We get a bit of
a peak behind the curtain, at how the Alphabet (Google) migration to BeyondCorp
Managed Non-Privileged (MNP) network went.
The basic idea of BeyondCorp is that inside the network offers no benefits or privileges. Every user and device gets authenticated, and has limited capabilities. It sounds great, but runs into the issues you might expect at a technical shop like Google. That’s things like employees needing access to an IRC chat for emergency communications, lots of SSH use, and plenty other niche network needs that’s hard to put into a simple category, and handle through MNP networks. Lots to chew on here, learning about how the really big teams work.
Tor Has a New Toy
One of the fun cat-and-mouse games we get to watch is the constant battle between the folks behind Tor trying to stay a step ahead of various regimes and their attempts to block access. Well Tor has a new tool ready for use, the
WebTunnel
. The concept is pretty simple in concept — just make it look like all the other HTTPS traffic. Part of the magic here is that all the Tor WebTunnel bridges are also normal web sites, and the Tor traffic is handled by a reverse proxy. So when a sophisticated packet inspection system like the Great Firewall investigates the hidden Tor connection, the website at the remote end checks out.
The weak points here are the same as the rest of the hidden Tor entry node schemes: A user has to have unfettered Internet access to fetch a node address. The system has to stay under the radar enough to prevent an adversary from just grabbing the list of endpoints and blocking them. We’re hoping for the best for Tor and WebTunnels.
GhostRace
There’s a new speculative execution bug,
GhostRace
. Though more properly, this might be best thought of as a new class of gadgets that enable the Spectre attack. GhostRace is the realization that thread synchronization checkpoints like mutexes and spinlocks can work as conditional branches. The other interesting observation is that an Inter-Process Interrupt (IPI) storm can be used to freeze execution at the proper point in code, extending the window to abuse GhostRace indefinitely.
There’s a mitigation that could be applied to the kernel, but at a performance cost of 5% globally, it’s been opted against for now. In the words of Linux Torvalds, “There’s security, and then there’s just being ridiculous.” The IPI storm is being treated as a problem, and has been fixed, cutting down on the issue’s exposure for abuse.
Bits and Bytes
There’s
a clever attack against Tesla customers
, where a fake WiFi access point presents a Captive Portal, that prompts the user to sign in with a valid Tesla account. That’s a phishing portal, and the sign-in is then used to add a new “phone key”, which gives full access to the vehicle. The hack was originally pulled off using a Flipper Zero, which fed into the pandemonium about that particular device. This is your reminder that this is a simple WiFi trick, and any laptop running a bit of software could also pull it off. And more people have laptops.
We’re big fans of the Termux command line tool for Android. While yes, tapping on the tiny keyboard on your mobile screen is a terrible experience, bringing your entire toolkit of command line tools along in your pocket is awesome!. And here’s another tool that belongs on the mobile.
APKDeepLense
is specifically designed for scanning APKs to look for vulnerable apps. With Termux, we have the added bonus of doing the scan locally. Neat!
With just a bit of know-how and curiosity, you don’t have to look far to find exploitable bugs.
[Stefán] was looking at a travel website
, and was annoyed by a
disabled
checkbox that was pre-selected, and labeled as a mandatory fee. That’s nothing to a skilled hacker with access to elite tools like… Google Chrome’s built-in devtools. Remove the flag on the checkbox, deselect it, and the price dropped accordingly. But that’s just user facing, surely the transaction wouldn’t complete for the lower price, right? It completed for the lower price. There’s no trains, but the story covers ferries and automobiles for more fun.
And finally, have you ever wanted
an in-depth look at a Ruby exploit chain
? Include Security brings us the goods, with a walk-through of how to go from a deserialization bug all the way to arbitrary code execution. The takeaway? Don’t do unsafe deserialization on user-provided payloads! | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741740",
"author": "Maave",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T16:02:52",
"content": "I like the takeaway on Stefan’s article: security scanners can’t find design issues",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741786",
"author": "bemu... | 1,760,371,977.834997 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/cats-a-new-communication-and-telemetry-system/ | CATS: A New Communication And Telemetry System | Dave Rowntree | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"APRS",
"aprs-is",
"cats",
"FELINET",
"fm",
"FSK",
"KiCAD",
"LDPC coding",
"packet radio",
"rf4463",
"rust",
"whitening"
] | CATS is a new communication and telemetry standard
intended to surpass the current Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) standard by leveraging modern, super-cheap Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) transceivers rather than standard FM units. The project is in the early stages, but as of this writing, there is a full open source software stack and reference hardware for both Raspberry Pi-based gateway devices and an STM32-based mobile device.
CATS packets are called ‘whiskers!’
From a radio perspective, CATS uses raw FSK rather than the inefficient AFSK used by APRS. A real killer for channel utilization is the PTT time; this is the dead time around a packet APRS requires for ‘keying up’ and ‘keying down.’ The
CATS standard
is aggressive with PTT timing, enabling the channel to get going on sending the data sooner.
Additionally, compared to APRS, the packet baud rate increases from 1200 baud to 9600 baud. Other key points are using
LDPC encoding
for forward error correction and
data whitening
(a useful PDF guide from Ti) to smooth over any burst errors.
One of the neat concepts of APRS is the
APRS-IS
(APRS Internet service). This enables amateur radio services to be connected over the Internet, vastly improving range. The CATS equivalent is called FELINET (if you’re not spotting all the ‘cat’ references by now, go and get another coffee). Together with the I-gate hardware, FELINET bridges the CATS radio side with the current APRS network. As FELINET expands to more than the current few dozen nodes, APRS services will no longer be required, and FELINET may well replace it. Interestingly, all software for FELINET, the APRS relay, and the I-Gate firmware are written in Rust. We told you
learning Rust was going to be worth the effort
!
On the reference hardware side of things, the CATS project has delivered a
Raspberry Pi hat
, which uses a 1 watt RF4463 transceiver and supporting passives. The design is about as simple as it can be. A mobile transceiver version uses an STM32 micro to drive the same RF4463 but with supporting power supplies intended to run from a typical automotive outlet. Both designs are complete KiCAD projects. Finally, once you’ve got some hardware in place and the software installed, you will want to be able to debug it. CATS has you covered with
an RTL-SDR I-Gate module
, giving you an independent packet log.
APRS is quite mature, and we’ve seen many hacks on these pages. Here’s an earlier
APRS IGate build using a Raspberry Pi
. Need to hook up your PC to a cheap Chinese transceiver? You need
the all-in-one cabl
e. As with many things amateur-radio-oriented, you can get
playing cheaply
. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741675",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T11:43:59",
"content": "The capitalisation of CATS makes me think that you should transmit this message:How are you gentlemen!All your base are belong to us.(Yes, I know I’m thirty years out of date, but I couldn’t resist it.)ht... | 1,760,371,977.949598 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/15/a-look-inside-a-70-ghz-electromechanical-attenuator/ | A Look Inside A 70-GHz Electromechanical Attenuator | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"attenuator",
"electromechanical",
"microwave",
"Pi-pad",
"RF",
"rohde & schwarz",
"solenoid",
"stripline"
] | It might not count as “DC to daylight,” but an electromechanical attenuator that covers up to 70 GHz is pretty close, and getting
a guided tour of its insides
is quite a treat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this one comes to us from [Shahriar] at “The Signal Path,” where high-end gear most of us never get a chance to work with goes for one last hurrah after it releases the magic smoke. And indeed, that appears to be exactly what happened to the Rohde & Schwarz 75 dB step attenuator, a part that may have lived in the front end of one of their spectrum analyzers. As one would expect from such an expensive component, the insides have some pretty special engineering. The signal is carried through the five attenuation stages on a narrow strip of copper. Each stage uses a solenoid to move the strip between either a plain conductor or a small Pi pad with a specified attenuation. The attention to detail inside the cavity is amazing, with great care taken to maintain the physical orientation of the stripline to prevent impedance mismatches and unwanted reflections.
The Pi pads themselves are fascinating, too, especially under [Shahriar]’s super-duper microscope. All of them were destructively removed from the cavity before getting to him, but it’s still pretty clear what’s going on. That’s especially true with the 5-dB pad, which bears clear signs of the overload that brought on the demise of the whole attenuator. We suppose a repair would have been feasible if it had been just the one pad that needed replacement, but with all of them broken, it’s off to the scrap bin. Or to the recycler — there appears to be plenty of gold in there.
We thought this was a fantastic look under the covers of an exquisitely engineered part. Too bad it didn’t rate the [Shahriar] X-ray treatment, as
this multimeter repair
or
this 60-GHz phased array
did. Oh, well — maybe next time. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741691",
"author": "Willaim",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T13:40:13",
"content": "Pi pad and no further explanation of what that is..From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Π pad (pi pad) is a specific type of attenuator circuit in electronics whereby the topology of the circuit is fo... | 1,760,371,977.987928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/bonkers-nerf-blaster-sprays-balls-everywhere/ | Bonkers Nerf Blaster Sprays Balls Everywhere | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"blaster",
"darts",
"nerf"
] | Nerf blasters are fun toys, to be sure. However, they’re limited by factors like price and safety and what Hasbro thinks parents will put up with. Few caregivers would ever countenance a build like this one
from [ItllProbablyWork].
It’s a blaster designed to fire 48 darts in a second or so, or a truly ludicrous 288 Nerf balls. Like so many rapid fire blaster designs, it’s based on a pair of rotating wheels which fling darts out at rapid speed. The trick to the rapid fire ability is the delivery of ammunition. In this case, the blaster has a rotating drum of 12 barrels, which can each be loaded with 4 darts or 24 balls. As the drum rotates into position, a trigger mechanism unlatches a spring which forces the contents of the barrel out through the wheels and on to the target.
It’s mostly pretty good with darts, but with balls, it tends to send them flying everywhere, including jamming a bunch into the blaster’s internals. It is very funny to watch, though.
We’ve seen some other great blaster builds recently, too
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Keith Olson for the tip!] | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741617",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T05:23:04",
"content": "This remembers me about the gatling gun elastic shooter and the tedious job of loading ammo for hours in order to dump it in 30 seconds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,371,977.874061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/making-floating-point-calculations-less-cursed-when-accuracy-matters/ | Making Floating Point Calculations Less Cursed When Accuracy Matters | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"calculus",
"floating point"
] | Inverting the earlier exponentiation to reduce floating point arithmetic error. (Credit: exozy)
An unfortunate reality of trying to represent continuous real numbers in a fixed space (e.g. with a limited number of bits) is that this comes with an inevitable loss of both precision and accuracy. Although floating point arithmetic standards – like the commonly used IEEE 754 – seek to minimize this error, it’s inevitable that across the range of a floating point variable loss of precision occurs. This is
what [exozy] demonstrates
, by showing just how big the error can get when performing a simple division of the exponential of an input value by the original value. This results in an amazing error of over 10%, which leads to the question of how to best fix this.
Obviously, if you have the option, you can simply increase the precision of the floating point variable, from 32-bit to 64- or even 256-bit, but this only gets you so far. The solution which [exozy] shows here involves using redundant computation by inverting the result of e
x
. In a demonstration using Python code (which uses IEEE 754 double precision internally), this almost eradicates the error. Other than proving that floating point arithmetic is cursed, this also raises the question of why this works.
Simplified numerator and denominator with floating point delta. (Credit: exozy)
For the explanation some basic understanding of calculus is rather helpful, as [exozy] looks at the original function (
f(x)
) and the version with the logarithm added (
g(x)
). With an assumption made about the error resulting with each arithmetic operation (δ), the two functions can be analyzed, adding a
1 + δ
assumption following each of these operations and simplifying them as much as possible. For
f(x)
it becomes clear that it is the denominator which is the cause of the error, but we have to look at
g(x)
to make sense of what changes.
Intuitively, log(ex) helps because it somehow cancels out the error in ex, but what really happens is that with the small inputs used for
x
(
g(1e-9)
,
g(1e-12)
and
g(1e-15)
) the approximations result in the simplified breakdown shown here (
fl()
). With a larger
x
, the Taylor series expansions used in the analysis no longer apply. What seemed like a fix no longer works, and we are left with the stark realization that representing real numbers in a fixed space will forever be the domain of tears and shattered dreams. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741593",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2024-03-15T02:28:18",
"content": "shattered dreams are also in representing fixed precision decimal in binary. at least in finance.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741665",
... | 1,760,371,978.053973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/celebrating-pi-day-with-a-ghostly-calculator/ | Celebrating Pi Day With A Ghostly Calculator | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"heads up display",
"LED array",
"pepper's ghost",
"Pi day"
] | For the last few years, [Cristiano Monteiro] has marked March 14th by building a device to calculate Pi. This year, he’s combined an RP2040 development board and a beam-splitting prism to create an
otherworldly numerical display inspired by the classic Pepper’s Ghost illusion
.
The build is straightforward thanks to the Cookie board from Melopero Electronics, which pairs the RP2040 with a 5×5 matrix of addressable RGB LEDs. Since [Cristiano] only needed 4×5 LED “pixels” to display the digits 0 through 9, this left him with an unused vertical column on the right side of the array. Looking to add a visually interesting progress indicator for when the RP2040 is really wracking its silicon brain for the next digit of Pi, he used it to show a red Larson scanner in honor of
Battlestar Galactica
.
With the MicroPython code written to calculate Pi and display each digit on the array, all it took to complete the illusion was the addition of a glass prism, held directly over the LED array thanks to a 3D-printed mounting plate. When the observer looks through the prism, they’ll see the reflection of the display seemingly floating in mid-air, superimposed over whatever’s behind the glass. It’s a bit like how the
Heads Up Display (HUD)
works on a fighter jet (or sufficiently fancy car).
Compared to his 2023 entry, which used
common seven-segment LED displays
to show off its fresh-baked digits of Pi, we think this new build definitely pulls ahead in terms of visual flair. However, if we had to pick just one of [Cristiano]’s devices to grace our desk, it would still have to be his portable GPS time server. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,978.094779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/building-a-hydraulic-loader-for-a-lawn-tractor/ | Building A Hydraulic Loader For A Lawn Tractor | Lewin Day | [
"Engine Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"hydraulics",
"lawn mower",
"loader",
"mower"
] | Lawn tractors are a great way to mow a large yard or small paddock. They save you the effort of pushing a mower around and they’re fun to drive, to boot. However, they can be
even more fun
with the addition of some extra hardware.
The hydraulic loader build from [Workshop from Scratch] demonstrates exactly how.
The build is based around a John Deere LX188 lawn tractor, which runs a 17 horsepower Kawasaki engine and features a hydrostatic transmission. It’s a perfectly fine way to mow a lawn. In this case, though, it’s given new abilities with the addition of a real working loader. It’s fabricated from raw steel from the arms right down to the bucket. It’s all run from a hydraulic pump, which is mounted to the engine via an electromagnetic clutch. The clutch can be engaged when it’s desired to use the hydraulics to actuate the loader.
As you might expect, the humble lawn tractor isn’t built for this kind of work. Thus, to support the extra equipment, the mower was also given some frame reinforcements and a wider track for stability.
If you’re trying to give your neighbours mower envy, this is how you do it. Or,
you could go another route entirely
. Video after the break. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741562",
"author": "Jonathan Bennett",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T22:23:03",
"content": "This is really cool, and something I’ve considered trying to tackle. Having a front-end loader is insanely useful for getting stuff done on a property.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,978.135284 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/new-brains-save-12-v-fridge-from-the-scrap-heap/ | New Brains Save 12 V Fridge From The Scrap Heap | Dave Rowntree | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"car",
"IoT",
"ntc",
"Raspberry Pi Pico W",
"refridgerator",
"thermistor"
] | Recently [nibbler]’s Evakool 55L vehicle fridge started to act strangely, reporting crazy temperature errors and had no chance of regulating. The determination was that the NTC thermistor was toast, and rather than trying to extricate and replace this part, it was a lot easier to
add a new one at a suitable location
Bog-standard fridge internals
A straight swap would have been boring, so this was a perfect excuse for an overboard hack. Reverse engineering the controller wouldn’t be easy, as the data wasn’t available, as is often the case for many products of this nature.
While doing a brain transplant, the hacker way, we can go overboard and add the basics of an IoT control and monitoring system. To that end, [nibbler] learned as much as possible about the off-the-shelf ZH25G compressor and the associated compressor control board. The aim was to junk the original user interface/control board and replace that with a Raspberry Pi Pico W running
CircuitPython
.
For the display, they used one of the ubiquitous SH1106 monochrome OLED units that can be had for less than the cost of a McDonald’s cheeseburger at the usual purveyors of cheap Chinese electronics. A brief distraction was trying to use a DS18B20 waterproof thermometer probe, which they discovered didn’t function, so they reverted to tried and trusted tech — a simple NTC thermistor.
Testing testing
The final puzzle piece was to interface the Pico to the compressor controller. The controller expected a variable resistance to control the speed, for which they could have used a digitally controlled potentiometer. However, after failing to tame this particular beast, an easier solution was to build a small PCB with a few relays and some fixed resistors and call it a hack.
An annoyance was the lack of interrupt support in CircuitPython. This meant that interpreting the fault codes from the controller would be a bit tricky. The solution was to wedge in another microcontroller, a small Arduino. Its job is to sit there, listen for commands on the serial port, control the relay board to drive the compressor, listen for any error codes, and pass those back to the Pico. Of course, this could have all been done directly on the Pico, just not with CircuitPython, and a lot more learning would have been needed.
Of course, you need to own a working refrigerator to hack it, but you can
easily build it from scratch
. Even on a tight budget,
you can get your beers cold
. Needs must! | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741545",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T20:54:31",
"content": "Another advantage of this is you can adjust the temperature to fit the kinds of drinks you like. Standard refrigerator temperatures are just way too cold for most beer.I’ve seen them used on deep-freeer to ... | 1,760,371,978.265827 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/14/retrotechtacular-air-mail-for-the-birds/ | Retrotechtacular: Air Mail For The Birds | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"carrier pigeons",
"homing pigeons",
"pigeon",
"signal corps"
] | Today, if you want to send a message to a distant location, you’ll probably send an e-mail or a text message. But it hasn’t always been that easy. Military commanders, in particular, have always needed ways to send messages and were early adopters of radio and, prior to that, schemes like semaphores, drums, horns, Aldis lamps, and even barrels of water to communicate over distances.
One of the most reliable ways to pass messages, even during the last world war, was by carrier pigeon. Since the U.S. Army Signal Corps handled anything that included messages, it makes sense that the War Department issued
TM 11-410
about how to use and care for pigeons. Think of it as the network operations guide of 1945. The practice, though, is much older. There is evidence that the Persians used pigeons in the 6th century BC, and Julius Caesar’s army also used the system.
You wouldn’t imagine that drawing an assignment in the Signal Corps might involve learning about breeding pigeons, training them, and providing them with medical attention, but that’s what some Signal Corps personnel did. The Army started experimenting with pigeons in 1878, but the Navy was the main user of the birds until World War I, when the U.S. Pigeon Intelligence Service was formed. In World War II, they saw use in situations where radio silence was important, like the D-Day invasion.
The Navy also disbanded its earlier Pigeon Messenger Service. It then returned to avian communications during the World Wars, using them to allow aviators to send messages back to base without radio traffic. The Navy had its own version of
the pigeon manual
.
Why it Works
Pigeons instinctively return home and can do so over long distances. Apparently, part of this is tied up in hunger, but a large part is mating. Pigeons have a single mate, and when they are apart, they want to return to that mate. Kind of romantic.
The pigeons did require training. Ideally, you’d start with young birds and give them a steady source of water plus one day of generous feeding. It is also necessary to train the birds to return to their loft, a process called “trapping”, since having the bird just return to the general area isn’t helpful if you are trying to retrieve a message from its leg.
If the pigeons had headquarters duty, this was pretty straightforward. However, in combat, pigeons would be expected to reacclimate to a new location within eight days of arrival.
You can see a pigeon handler during World War II in the film below.
They were used even more in World War I, as you can see in the Pathé film from that war below.
Gear
A carrier pigeon vest made for the Army by Maidenform, a company known for bras. These vests let pigeons hitch a ride with a paratrooper
There was a whole host of equipment, like the PG-50 cage and the PG-14 message holder. Our favorite, though, might be the PG-100/CB and PG-101/CB. These are little tubes full of pigeons that include a parachute, allowing pigeons to be delivered by air. Second place was the PG-106/CB pigeon vest.
Presumably, there were logistics deliveries for the birds, too — grit, medical supplies, and all the other things bird handlers needed. There’s a lot to running a bird army. The Army sold the last of its pigeons in 1957 since, by that time, radio was a perfectly fine alternative. Apparently,
France
and, possibly, China still maintain carrier pigeon contingents — or, at least, have in the last few years.
Of course, plenty of the Signal Corps did handle wired telephones and radios, too. A lot of
hams wound up in the Corps
and many other Signal Corps soldiers would become hams after the war.
All the forces on both sides used pigeons. In fact, Britain’s MI14 ran the Confidential Pigeon Service during World War II. Bombers would drop pigeons by parachute with tiny spy kits, including thin paper and special pencils, to allow civilians in occupied countries to send intelligence reports. The Germans eventually sent out their own birds, claiming they were British and wanting to know the names of resistance members. Of course, the birds would return to their German lofts.
A Famous Bird
Cher Ami courtesy of the Smithsonian.
Perhaps the most famed pigeon was the World War I winged warrior Cher Ami. In 1918, nearly 200 soldiers — the remnants of the infamous Lost Batallion — were trapped and were being accidentally shelled by their own artillery. The enemy quickly captured runners, and a number of carrier pigeons were also shot down. Cher Ami was dispatched to fly over enemy territory to request assistance and an end to the friendly fire. Although shot twice by enemy combatants, the bird’s message arrived, and the soldiers were saved.
Sadly, Cher Ami’s injuries were substantial, but the bird was a legitimate war hero. Army medics saved his life, but not one of his legs. General Pershing himself saw the bird off as it was put on a transport to return to the United States. While he made it to Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, he didn’t survive his wounds. He did receive the Croix de Guerre medal and was one of the first animals to receive the Animals in War and Peace Medal of Bravery. Cher Ami is displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Another famous bird was
Kaiser
. In World War I, he worked for the Germans until captured. Many World War II pigeons were his children. Kaiser is also part of the Smithsonian collection. Numerous decorated birds existed in both World Wars. Gustav and Paddy both received the Dickin Medal — sometimes called the animal’s Victoria Cross — for bringing the first reports of the Normandy landings to the British mainland. Another 30 pigeons would earn that same award. You can learn more about another bird’s World War II medal in the newsreel below.
It is worth noting that in Brussels, there is a monument to the wartime carrier pigeons known as the Monument au Pigeon-Soldat. We just hope the generals don’t go there for payback. England also pays homage to the feathered soldiers with a memorial at Beach House Park in Worthing.
Advanced Pigeon/IP
We’d be remiss not to mention the famous
RFC1149
and
RFC2549
. These RFCs cover using IP over pigeon networks. You might note the date of issue of both of these RFCs. RFC2549 defines several service levels, including First, Business, and Coach.
Of course, you’d assume no one ever really sent packets like this. You’d be
wrong
. Then again, why use IP when you can just
strap a memory card to the pigeon
? Pigeons were also the
earliest spy planes
(the first link in that post is dead,
but you can still find it
). There was even talk of letting them fly
missiles
. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741505",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T17:35:31",
"content": "Cooo…l",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741513",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T18:27:59",
"content": "There is a problem a... | 1,760,371,978.319024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/goldilocks-beverage-coaster-tells-you-when-its-just-right/ | Goldilocks Beverage Coaster Tells You When It’s Just Right | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"coaster",
"infrared temperature sensor",
"Seeed Xiao SAMD21"
] | If you ask us, morning is the only excuse we need for a hot caffeinated beverage — weather be damned. Wherever [gokux] is, they may be experiencing actual winter this year, given that they are out there getting cozy with a hot cup of what-have-you. But how do they know it’s at the right temperature for drinking?
Enter the temperature-monitoring smart coaster.
At the heart of this build is a GY-906 infrared temperature sensor, which senses the warmth (or lack thereof) and displays the degrees on a small OLED screen thanks to a Seeed Xiao SAMD21. To make things simple, there is also an ideogram that corresponds to the current temperature — snowflake for too cold, danger sign for too hot, and thumbs up for that just-right range. Although this coaster is mostly 3D-printed, the mug sits on a slotted piece of aluminium that is removable for easy cleaning. This would be a good-looking and useful addition to any desk.
This is isn’t the first temperature-indicating beverage coaster we’ve seen.
The most recent one ultimately used a probe
, which is likely about as accurate (and messy) as you can get with these things. | 17 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741321",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T20:34:12",
"content": "This is nicely made, but I wonder if it’s the right solution to the problem. You’ll also want to keep your drink as long as possible at that “ideal” temperature. This coaster won’t help you with that... | 1,760,371,978.367497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/pdp-10-fits-in-your-living-room/ | PDP-10 Fits In Your Living Room | Al Williams | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"DEC",
"PDP-10"
] | [Oscar] at
Obsolescence Guaranteed
is well-known for fun replicas of the PDP-8 and PDP-11 using the Raspberry Pi (along with some other simulated vintage computers). His latest attempt is the PDP-10, and you can see how it looks in the
demo video below
.
Watching the video will remind you of every old movie or TV show you’ve ever seen with a computer, complete with typing noise. The PDP-10, also known as a DECsystem-10, was a mainframe computer that usually ran TOPS-10. These were technically “mainframes” in 1966, although the VAX eclipsed the system. By 1983 (the end of the PDP-10’s run), around 1,500 had been sold, including ones that ran at Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and — of course — MIT. They also found homes at CompuServe and Tymshare.
The original 36-bit machine used transistors and was relatively slow. By the 1970s, newer variants used ICs or ECL and gained some speed. A cheap version using the AM2901 bit-slice CPU and a familiar 8080 controlling the system showed up in 1978 and billed itself as “the world’s lowest cost mainframe.”
The Knight terminals were very unusual for the day. They each used a PDP-11 and had impressive graphics capability compared to similar devices from the early 1970s. You can see some of that in the demo video.
Naturally, anyone who used a PDP-10 would think a Raspberry Pi was a supercomputer, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Still, these machines were the launching pad for
Adventure
,
Zork
, and Altair Basic, which spawned Microsoft.
The cheap version of these used
bitslice
which we’ve been talking about lately. [Oscar] is also known for the KIMUno, which we converted into
a COSMAC Elf
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741347",
"author": "Lord Kimbote",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T23:17:43",
"content": "My first computing classes and practice were done coding FORTRAN in a PDP 11/23. I barely missed writing my code in 80-column cards just because the card reader (an IBM machine) was out of order at t... | 1,760,371,978.413525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/2024-home-sweet-home-automation-simple-window-closer-relies-on-gravity/ | 2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: Simple Window Closer Relies On Gravity | Kristina Panos | [
"contests",
"home hacks"
] | [
"2024 Home Sweet Home Automation",
"because cats",
"counterweight",
"gravity",
"pulley"
] | While most pet owners are happy to help out their furry friends, everyone has a limit. For [Gauthier], getting up to open or close the window every three minutes so their cat can go out on the balcony was a bridge too far, so they decided to take a crack at automating the window.
The end result not only does the job, it’s extremely low-tech and pretty much invisible except when in use.
Of course, [Gauthier] didn’t arrive at this solution immediately. Their first thoughts went to RFID or perhaps a pressure sensor to detect the cats, coupled with something motorized to open and shut the window, like a belt or maybe a linear actuator. But ultimately, the system has to be robust, so that’s when [Gauthier] got the idea to employ gravity by using pulleys and weights.
Due to the configuration of the space and the shape of the window, [Gauthier] was able to to hide cable pretty well — you can’t really see anything when the window is closed. Be sure to check it out in action after the break. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741286",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T18:39:42",
"content": "I have something like this setup for my patio screen door so the pets can’t get out. The main side effect is that since I’m used to pulling a little harder to open the screen, I tend to slam my frie... | 1,760,371,978.461556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/review-the-new-essential-guide-to-electronics-in-shenzhen/ | Review: The New Essential Guide To Electronics In Shenzhen | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"Bunnie Huang",
"Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen",
"Naomi Wu",
"shenzhen"
] | The city of Shenzhen in China holds a special fascination for the electronic hardware community, as the city and special economic zone established by the Chinese government at the start of the 1980s it has become probably one of the most important in the world for electronic manufacturing. If you’re in the business of producing electronic hardware you probably want to do that business there, and if you aren’t, you will certainly own things whose parts were made there. From the lowly hobbyist who buys a kit of parts on AliExpress through the project featured on Hackaday with a Shenzhen-made PCB, to the engineer bringing an electronic product to market, it’s a place which has whether we know it or not become part of our lives.
First, A Bit Of History
These are the markets we have been looking for. Credit: Naomi Wu.
At a superficial level it’s very easy to do business there, as a quick trawl through our favourite Chinese online retailers will show. But when you’ve graduated from buying stuff online and need to get down to the brass tacks of sourcing parts and arranging manufacture, it becomes impossible to do so without being on the ground. At which point for an American or European without a word of Chinese even sourcing a resistor becomes an impossibly daunting task. To tackle this, back in 2016 the Chinese-American hardware hacker and author Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang produced a slim wire-bound volume,
The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen
. This book contained both a guide to the city’s legendary Huaquanbei electronics marts and a large section of point-to-translate guides for parts, values, and all the other Chinese phrases which a non-Chinese-speaker might need to get their work done in the city. It quickly became an essential tool for sourcing in Shenzhen, and more than one reader no doubt has a well-thumbed copy on their shelves.
There are places in the world where time appears to move very slowly, but this Chinese city is not one of them. A book on Shenzhen written in 2016 is now significantly out of date, and to keep pace with its parts that have since chanced beyond recognition, an update has become necessary. In this endeavour the mantle has passed to the hardware hacker and Shenzhen native Naomi Wu, someone with many years experience in introducing the people, culture, and industries of her city to the world. Her updated volume,
The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen
has been the subject of
a recent crowdfunding effort
, and I was lucky enough to snag one. It’s a smart hardcover spiral-bound book with a red and gold cover, and it’s time to open it up and take a look.
A Helping Hand For The Traveling Engineer
The first thing I did with this book was sit on the sofa and read it cover to cover, then again later in the day. Now as I have it open while I write this review it’s obvious just how every part of it is full of information. Even the introduction dives into Chinese pronunciation and what to bring with you, and then you’re into a section on the basics of being in the city and how to interact with its culture. What weather to expect, what to wear, how to take a taxi, where to eat, and even advice for any Western visitors who might be LGBT. I may be sitting in a cold and damp corner of Europe as I write this, but I’m already being prepared for my journey.
All the book’s sections are brought out as handy tabs.
If you’re a native speaker of a European or other atonal language and you have ever encountered Chinese speech directly, you’ll know that theirs is a tonal language. If you put in a lot of effort to learn Chinese you can master the differences between the syllables as an outsider, but for those of us who have not there are many identical sounding words to our untrained ear with entirely different meanings. Naomi takes us through some of the maze of technical Chinese, and delicately reminds us through the example of “IC part number, or “xīn piàn hào”, or “芯片号” sounding similar to “xìng piān hào”, or “性偏好” which means “sexual preference”, that attempting to say Chinese words as a non-speaker can lead to pitfalls. There’s an entire section on etiquette, and in particular how it applies to the online parallel Huaquanbei through WeChat, including cultivating your image, avoiding using inappropriate emojis, and perhaps most importantly, how to master the use of the hong bao, “red envelope” system of informal gifts and payment for services rendered.
The guide is full of essential practical tips about the markets themselves. Knowing when they open versus when the booths will open, how to gather and maintain contacts, and even mealtime culture, all things which could so easily be messed up by the uninitiated. Perhaps one of the most often heard concerns about sourcing parts in China is the risk of fakes, and here there’s a comprehensive section on the various different things to watch out for, graded by impact on your project.
This and many other pages of useful translations should keep you talking to suppliers.
After that comprehensive introduction, we come to the main meat of the book, the point-to-translate guides. The vocabulary related to likely topics such as parts, components, tools, materials, injection moulding, packaging, shipping, and even asking for slight differences in an order is laid out in a table, with each box containing the English word, the Chinese characters, and the pinyin transliteration. I can specify a capacitor for example by turning to the relevant page, pointing to “电容器”, or “capacitor”, and then so on for the various dielectrics, packages, tolerances, and so on. I can’t fully test these pages without being in front of a Shenzhen trader ready to sell me something, however it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into them, and the many successful users of the first edition tell me that they are pretty good. The final part of the translation guide is not related to the markets but is no less essential, a survival phrase guide for Shenzhen itself. You can take the metro, get a taxi, order food, top up your SIM, and even find a toilet armed with this guide.
Last in the book but definitely not least are a travel guide, and a comprehensively annotated series of maps dividing the Hua Quang district into a series of zones. The maps appear in two forms, a descriptive guide in English to what you should expect to find in each zone, and then a series of zone maps with point-to-translate essentials such as “Where am I?”, and “Please mark your stall on the map”. This acknowledges the many changes made to the area since 2016, but also warns that in such a fast changing city there may be future changes that might render it inaccurate.
I have spent a happy weekend immersing myself in this guide, maps of Shenzhen, and online Chinese translations to bring you this review. But of course the one thing I can’t do from here in Europe is give you a practical review in which I walk the halls of Huaquanbei and attempt to use it in the purchase of a load of parts. Thus I can only rate it on how comprehensive I find it rather than its on-the-ground usefulness. What I can say though is that the many users of the first edition found it to be of significant help, and the point-to-translate format assisted in a significant number of purchases. That coupled with Naomi’s undoubted on the ground knowledge of and enthusiasm for her native city makes this updated second edition definitely worth a look, and I can only wish you luck finding your parts and be slightly envious because my job doesn’t take me there.
The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen, by Naomu Wu is available to pre-order now,
from its crowdfunding page
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741388",
"author": "Javi",
"timestamp": "2024-03-14T03:55:07",
"content": "What’s the biggest difference with the previous book?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741440",
"author": "C. Scott Ananian",
"timesta... | 1,760,371,978.544974 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/a-solar-powered-wristwatch-with-an-attiny13/ | A Solar-Powered Wristwatch With An ATtiny13 | Maya Posch | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"attiny13",
"LED watch",
"wristwatch"
] | Wristwatches come in many shapes, sizes, and types, but most still have at least one thing in common: they feature a battery that needs to be swapped or recharged somewhere been every other day and every few years. A rare few integrate a solar panel that keeps the internal battery at least somewhat topped up, as environmental light permits.
This
“Perpetual” wristwatch designed by [Serhii Trush]
aims to keep digitally ticking along using nothing but the integrated photodiodes, a rechargeable LIR2430 cell, and a power-sipping face that uses one LED for each hour of the day.
The face of the perpetual wristwatch. (Credit: Serhii Trush)
The wristwatch’s operation is demonstrated in
the linked video
(in Ukrainian, auto-generated subtitles available): to read out the current time, the button in the center is pressed, which first shows the hour, then the minutes (in 5 minute intervals).
After this the ATtiny13 MCU goes back to sleep, briefly waking up every 0.5 seconds to update the time, which explains why there’s no RTC crystal. The 12
BPW34S
photodiodes are enough to provide 2 mA at 0.5 V in full sunlight, which together keep the LIR2430 cell charged via a Zener diode.
As far as minimalistic yet practical designs go, this one is pretty hard to beat. If you wish to make your own, all of the design files and firmware are provided on the GitHub page.
Although we certainly do like the exposed components, it would be interesting to see this technique paired with the
PCB watch face we covered recently
.
Thanks to [Lucas] for the tip. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741252",
"author": "spaceminions",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T16:03:11",
"content": "So if a LIR2430 has 95mAh, and it charges at 2mA, that’s about 48 hours worth of direct sun that it stores. If it doesn’t run years on that, it’s understandable given it’s a minimalist DIY and a neat... | 1,760,371,978.718793 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/the-short-workbench/ | The Short Workbench | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bench multimeter",
"oscilloscope",
"owon",
"power supply",
"rigol"
] | Imagine an electronics lab. If you grew up in the age of tubes, you might envision a room full of heavy large equipment. Even if you grew up in the latter part of the last century, your idea might be a fairly large workbench with giant boxes full of blinking lights. These days, you can do everything in one little box connected to a PC. Somehow, though, it doesn’t quite feel right. Besides, you might be using your computer for something else.
I’m fortunate in that I have a good-sized workspace in a separate building. My main bench has an oscilloscope, several power supplies, a function generator, a bench meter, and at least two counters. But I also have an office in the house, and sometimes I just want to do something there, but I don’t have a lot of space. I finally found a very workable solution that fits on a credenza and takes just around 14 inches of linear space.
How?
How can I pack the whole thing in 14 inches? The trick is to use only two boxes, but they need to be devices that can do a lot. The latest generation of oscilloscopes are quite small. My scope of choice is a Rigol DHO900, although there are other similar-sized scopes out there.
If you’ve only seen these in pictures, it is hard to realize how much smaller they are than the usual scopes. They should put a banana in the pictures for scale. The scope is about 10.5″ wide (265 mm and change). It is also razor thin: 3″ or 77 mm. For comparison, that’s about an inch and a half narrower and nearly half the width of a DS1052E, which has a smaller screen and only two channels.
A lot of test gear in a short run.
If you get the scope tricked out, you’ve just crammed a bunch of features into that small space. Of course, you have a scope and a spectrum analyzer. You can use the thing as a voltmeter, but it isn’t the primary meter on the bench. If you spend a few extra dollars, you can also get a function generator and logic analyzer built-in. Tip: the scope doesn’t come with the logic analyzer probes, and they are pricey. However, you can find clones of them in the usual places that are very inexpensive and work fine.
There are plenty of reviews of this and similar scopes around, so I won’t talk anymore about it. The biggest problem is where to park all the probes.
The Little Box
Split screen shows the multimeter and power supply data at one time.
So what’s the other box? Well, it is hard to categorize. It is a power supply. But it is also a multimeter. It also has at least one other unusual feature for a power supply. The unit is the diminutive OWON SPM3103. There are several similar models that have different voltage and current capabilities and — for a power supply — none of them are inexpensive, but you can find them for just over $100 if you shop.
At first, it looks like the usual cheap power supply you see everywhere. However, it is quite different. It has a color screen. You can switch the screen to show the power supply output or use it as a bench meter. However, it is more than just a power supply with a meter jammed in.
There are several types of screens you can select using the buttons on the power supply’s front. You can, of course, display a standard power supply screen that shows volts and amps. You can set the voltage and the current limit, too. It makes sense, too, that you can select a meter screen that has a bar graph and 20,000 counts.
The meter has all the features you’d expect: autoranging (if you want it), continuity, capacitance, and a diode test. It also has hold and delta functions.
You can set up to 10 different steps with times from 1 second to almost 24 hours.
However, you can also select a screen that shows you both screens at once. There’s also a graph output that shows voltage and current from the supply over time which is handy.
There are a few other tricks. You can control the device via USB using SCPI. You can also save and load a few preset slots so you can’t switch between settings quickly. There’s also a ten-step memory that lets you define a “program.” For example, you might make step 1 start at 12V with a 5A current limit for 2 seconds to allow something with a high surge current to start. Then you could to 13.8V at 1A for the next 24 hours.
[Kerry Wong] reviewed a similar device in a video last year. You can watch it below. It works well, although the user interface takes a bit of time to get used to. There are a few quirks you can see in the video.
So those two boxes give you a capable bench in a very small space. Still plenty of desk space for a portable soldering iron, a device programmer, or a development board. Just to recap, the setup has a four-channel mixed-signal scope that can also act as a frequency counter, a spectrum analyzer, and it has a built-in signal generator. It also has a 20,000-count meter and power supply. There’s even a 1 amp USB power connector if you need it. Not bad for less than half of my credenza.
What else would you add to your ultimate tiny bench? If you have a Rigol scope like this one,
WiFi
is an option. If you want to orchestrate both instruments, you’ll need some
SCPI skills
. If you insist on using a laptop, there are plenty of multifunction boxes out there that can
turn a computer into a reasonable test instrument
. | 36 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741246",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T15:37:17",
"content": "Putting a banana in the picture is a good idea. Why didn’t you?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741386",
"author": "MonkeyBusiness",
"... | 1,760,371,978.654978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/custom-library-rescues-good-lora-hardware-from-bad-firmware/ | Custom Library Rescues Good LoRa Hardware From Bad Firmware | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"dev board",
"ESP32",
"firmware",
"LoRa",
"Meshtastic",
"SX1262"
] | The range of hardware that comes on some dev boards these days is truly staggering. Those little LoRa boards are a prime example — ESP32 with WiFi and Bluetooth, a transceiver that covers a big chunk of the UHF band, and niceties like OLED displays and plenty of GPIO. But the firmware and docs? Well, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Or better yet,
just roll your own
.
Of course that doesn’t hold true for all the LoRa dev boards on the market, but [Rop] certainly found it to be the case for the Heltec HTIT-WB32LA. This board has all the bells and whistles and would be perfect for LoraWAN and Meshtastic applications, but it needed a little help getting it over the line. [Rop]’s contribution to this end is pretty comprehensive and is based on his fork of the RadioLib library, which incorporates a library that greatly reduces wear on the ESP32’s flash memory. In addition to full radio support, the library supports all the hardware on the board from the pushbutton to the display, power management and battery charging, and of course the blinkenlights.
[Jop] includes quite a few example applications, from the bare minimum needed to get the board spun up to a full-blown spectrum analyzer. It’s a nice piece of work, and a great give-back to the LoRa community. And if you want to put one of these modules to work, you’re certainly in the right place. We’ve got everything from
LoRaWAN networks
to
the magic of Meshtastic
, so take your pick and get hacking. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741192",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T11:31:27",
"content": "Is that the Heltech V3?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741194",
"author": "Dennis",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T11:36:55"... | 1,760,371,978.800403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/this-piano-does-not-exist/ | This Piano Does Not Exist | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"opencv",
"piano",
"tensorflow"
] | A couple of decades ago one of *the* smartphone accessories to have was a Bluetooth keyboard which projected the keymap onto a table surface where letters could be typed in a virtual space. If we’re honest, we remember them as not being very good. But that hasn’t stopped the idea from resurfacing from time to time.
We’re reminded of it by
[Mayuresh1611]’s paper piano
, in which a virtual piano keyboard is watched over by a webcam to detect the player’s fingers such that the correct note from a range of MP3 files is delivered.
The README is frustratingly light on details other than setup, but a dive into the requirements reveals OpenCV as expected, and TensorFlow. It seems there’s a training step before a would-be virtual virtuoso can tinkle on the non-existent ivories, but the demo shows that there’s something playable in there. We like the idea, and wonder whether it could also be applied to other instruments such as percussion. A table as a drum kit would surely be just as much fun.
This certainly isn’t the first touch piano we’ve featured, but we think it may be the only one using OpenCV.
A previous one used more conventional capacitive sensors
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740976",
"author": "SW",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T16:01:48",
"content": "Is there a link to this? I only see links to the paper piano and the capacitive piano.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741105",
"author": "Piec... | 1,760,371,978.841248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-pocket-cyberdeck/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Pocket Cyberdeck | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"d-pad",
"Espruino",
"nice nano",
"Svalboard"
] | When you find something you love doing, you want to do it everywhere, all the time. Such is the case with [jefmer] and programming. The trouble is, there is not a single laptop or tablet out there that really deals well with direct sunlight. So, what’s a hacker to do during the day? Stay indoors and suffer?
Image by [jefmer] via
Hackaday.IO
The answer is
a project like Pocket Pad.
This purpose-built PDA uses a Nice! Nano and a pair of two very low-power ST7302-driven monochrome displays. They have no backlight, but they update much faster than e-paper displays. According to [jefmer], the brighter the ambient light, the more readable the displays become. What more could you want? (Besides a backlight?)
The miniature PocketType 40% is a little small for touch typing, but facilitates thumbs well. [jefmer] added those nice vinyl transfer legends and sealed them with clear nail polish.
All of the software including the keyboard scanner is written in Espruino, which is an implementation of JavaScript that targets embedded devices. Since it’s an interpreted language, [jefmer] can both write and execute programs directly on the Pocket Pad, using the bottom screen for the REPL. I’d sure like to have one of these in my pocket!
A Love Connection
Image via
KCRW
One day ten years ago,
Aaron Therol fell in love while taking out the trash.
Someone had thrown a 1950s Royal typewriter in the Dumpster, which Therol initially mistook for an empty suitcase.
This inciting incident led to Aaron opening Typewriter Connection, a 400 square foot typewriter shop in downtown Los Angeles that rent, sells, and repairs the machines.
The store is crammed with dozens of specimens dating as far back as 1898, and visitors are invited, nay, encouraged to play with them. After all, regular use is what keeps them in clacking order.
Therol specializes in older models, from the turn of the century to the turn of the plastic in the 1960s. In addition to being a salesman, he is also the designated typewriter repair person for one Tom Hanks, who writes short stories on his collection of hundreds of typewriters. LA has a whole typewriter scene, you see, and Therol also hosts what I’m sure is one of many type-ins around town. Darn my Midwestern contentment. Maybe I should host a type-in here?
The Centerfold: A New Setup for 2024
Image by [Gremlinalizacja] via
reddit
I don’t usually go for full battlestations here, but
[Gremlinalizacja]’s 2024 setup
has an irresistible glow, a tiny car, and LEGO all in the same picture. The warmth comes from a Xiaomi light bar, shining down on an Epomaker TH80 keyboard and a mat from Minimal Desk Setups.
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 Bennett Typewriter
Image via
The Classic Typewriter Page
Well, isn’t this the cutest typewriter you ever saw? About the size of a box of chocolates, the Bennett typewriter holds the honor of being the smallest keyboard typewriter ever built. I suppose that’s as opposed to an
index typewriter
, the prime modern example being the embossing-style label maker.
This 1910 typewriter originally sold for $18, which
equates to about $567 in 2024.
Other machines of this era like
the Oliver No. 5 for example
typically sold for $65-$125, so the Bennett was as economical as it was portable.
One of the great things about this typewriter is that
the elements are cylindrical
, so they can easily be swapped for other fonts. There are some interesting things to note about the key layout: space is on the top row and T and Y are on the home row, which forces G and H into the bottom row. That had to be at least a little bit confusing.
ICYMI: Calling All RSI Sufferers
If you’ve heard of the DataHand keyboard, then this may look familiar. This is
the Svalboard
, [Morgan Venable]’s recreation of a popular-among-users keyboard that saved many RSI sufferers a lot of suffering.
[Morgan] hopes to preserve and tweak further the career-saving ergonomics of the DataHand with the Svalboard. The finger clusters are adjustable in all directions via the L-brackets, and the PLA palm rests can be thermo-formed for a custom fit.
Unlike its predecessor the lalboard which uses an ESP32, [Morgan] hand-rolled an RP2040-based controller. The really cool part of course is the switches — they are magneto-optical, using tiny magnets as springs. All the force is up front, and so it feels like no other switch out there.
If you did miss it, go check out my lengthy review of this awesome keyboard where I do my best to approximate what it’s like to type on, among other things. In a word, it’s fascinating.
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
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740973",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T15:48:06",
"content": "man this headline “pocket cyberdeck” really pushes my nostalgia buttons, and makes me recognize how much has changed.i was really into portable computing when i was younger. back when the parts were more ... | 1,760,371,978.903521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/unusual-port-combines-displayport-and-hdmi/ | Unusual Port Combines DisplayPort And HDMI | Maya Posch | [
"Parts",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"displayport",
"hdmi"
] | Everyone knows you can’t plug an HDMI cable into a DisplayPort… port, and yet a
recent video from [Jon Bringus] challenges that seemingly obvious assumption
. The hardware in question is a variant of the 2013-era Xi3 X7A mini PC, code-named ‘Piston’ and also known as a
‘Steambox’
, from back when that was still something that Valve was working on. Although the physical format here is definitely quaint, it might be implementing
DisplayPort Dual-Mode
(DP++), which was introduced around the same time.
With DP++ the DP port can detect when a DVI or HDMI adapter is connected and then transmit DVI/HDMI TMDS signals rather than DP signals. Since DP and HDMI/DVI use a different signaling scheme, normally an active adapter would be required. One disadvantage of DP++ is that the HDMI signal will be limited to e.g. 1920×1080 @ 120 Hz and 4K only at 30 Hz.
Normally a DP++ port is marked as such, and requires an adapter that works with the DP++ port. What Xi3 did in this case to make regular DP and HDMI connectors work seems to be somewhat of a mystery, with any information on this type of port being rather scarce. [Jon] thinks he
may have found the part itself listed on Mouser
, but isn’t completely sure.
Feel free to leave your thoughts and any information you have on this oddity in the comments.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740913",
"author": "pcbwizard",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T11:28:39",
"content": "“Everyone knows you can’t plug an HDMI cable into a DisplayPort… port” … Yet.. My DP to HDMI connectors work fine. They’re cheap and easy to purchase. I know the protocol has been updated. This is by fa... | 1,760,371,978.96305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/stressless-shortwave-reviewed/ | Stressless Shortwave Reviewed | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"radio",
"receiver",
"shortwave",
"shortwave radio"
] | [Dan Robinson] picked up a shortwave receiver known as the
“stressless” receiver kit
. We aren’t sure if the stress is from building a more complicated kit or operating a more complicated receiver. Either way, it is an attractive kit that looks easy to build.
Presumably to reduce stress, the VFO and receiver boards are already built, so assembly is just a few hours connecting large components and boards. As kits go, this is a fairly simple one. We were surprised to read that the supplier says you can’t upgrade the firmware. We, of course, wonder if that’s true.
For technical specs, the receiver is AM only and can operate from 100 kHz to 30 MHz. It uses a double conversion with intermediate frequencies of 21.4 MHz and 455 kHz. There’s a BNC connector on the back, and the radio requires 11 to 15V on the input. Apparently, the frequency generator inside is an SI5351. The sensitivity and selectivity numbers look very good for an AM radio.
We were surprised to see the radio didn’t have provisions for SSB since AM-only makes it not as useful for hams or others interested in non-broadcast transmissions. If we are doing our conversions correctly, the kit is fairly pricey, too, especially considering that it is AM only.
Still, we like that you could easily assemble a nice-looking radio kit. We were interested in hearing it perform, and [Dan’s] video lets us virtually try it out without the effort. We’ve seen the
SI5351
on a carrier if you want to roll your own. Come to think of it,
we’ve seen several
. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740872",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T08:31:55",
"content": "Wow $633 US, £495. Nice box tho.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741020",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T19:45:46"... | 1,760,371,979.10513 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/a-555-shaped-discrete-component-555/ | A 555-Shaped Discrete Component 555 | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"discrete",
"eda",
"proteus",
"should have used a 555",
"smd"
] | While the “should have used a 555” meme is strong around these parts, we absolutely agree with [Kelvin Brammer]’s decision to make
this 555-shaped plug-in replacement for the 555 timer chip
using discrete parts, rather than just a boring old chip.
As [Kelvin] relates, this project started a while back as an attempt to both learn EDA and teach students about the inner workings of the venerable timer chip. The result was a 555-equivalent circuit on a through-hole PCB, with the components nicely laid out into the IC’s functional blocks. As a bonus, the PCB was attached to an 8-pin header which could be plugged right in as a direct replacement for the chip.
Fast forward a few years, and [Kelvin] needed to learn yet another EDA package; what better way than to repeat the 555 project? It was also a good time to step into SMD design, as well as add a little zazzle. While the updated circuit isn’t as illustrative of the internal arrangement of the 555, the visual celebration of the “triple nickel” is more than worth it. And, just like the earlier version, this one has a header so you can just plug and chug — with style.
Want to know how the 555 came to be?
We’ve covered that
. You can also look at
some basic 555 circuits
to put your 555-shaped 555 to work. We’ve even seen
a vacuum tube 555
if that’s more your thing. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740888",
"author": "mj",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T09:29:27",
"content": "Neat! Very cool, well done",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740891",
"author": "Francis Stokes",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T09:44:26",
"content"... | 1,760,371,979.004768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/3d-imaging-for-natural-science-for-free/ | 3D Imaging For Natural Science — For Free | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"3d scan",
"CT Scan"
] | It isn’t that unusual for a home lab to have a microscope, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a CT scanner? Well, you probably won’t anytime soon, but if you are interested in scans of vertebrates — you know, animals with backbones — a
group of museums have you covered
.
The oVert project is scanning 20,000 specimens and making the results available to everyone. This should be a boon to educators and might even be useful for 3D printing animal forms. Check out the video about the project below.
The 20,000 scans should cover about 80% of the vertebrates. Digital images and mesh files are on
MorphoSource
which is an interesting resource, too. Need a model for
a pre-Aztec spindle whorl
? They got that.
Of course, it’s not as good as having your own scanner, but it’s still an amazing source of detailed scans that will be a handy resource for educators, researchers, and anyone interested in natural sciences. Maybe the next generation won’t have to dissect frogs.
Of course, you can still
dissect robotic dinosaurs
. If you really want to get your own scanner, you can
find some advice
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740807",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T02:21:44",
"content": "Scans help with paleontology.https://youtu.be/-NYsz82eTEE",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740869",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2024-03-... | 1,760,371,979.046037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/playing-zx-spectrums-manic-miner-on-the-arduino-uno/ | Playing ZX Spectrum’s Manic Miner On The Arduino Uno | Maya Posch | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Arduino Uno",
"manic miner",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | Composite output shield with audio driver and controller inputs for Arduino Uno (Credit: Scott Porter)
Although it seems many have moved on to 32-bit MCUs these days for projects, there is still a lot of fun to be had in the 8-bit AVR world, as [Scott Porter] demonstrates with a recent Arduino Uno project
featuring his game engine
running a port of the
Manic Miner
game that was originally released in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum. For the video and audio output he created an
add-on board
for the Uno that creates a composite signal using two resistors, along with an audio driver circuit and control inputs either from the onboard buttons or from a NES controller. Audio can be sent either over the composite output or via the audio jack.
A
demonstration of the game
is provided in a number of videos on [Scott]’s YouTube account, which shows off a few levels, at 256×256 resolution. It contains all 20 original levels, with a few quality of life upgrades with animation. It also features original music, which may or may not work for you, but music can be turned on or off in the main menu. Compared to the 3.5 MHz Z80 MPU in the ZX Spectrum, the 16 MHz AVR of the Uno is a lot beefier, which raises the hope that a color version like the ZX Spectrum one is also in the future, even if it may require an add-on board with a framebuffer. As [Scott] notes, the weakness of the Uno is that the ZX Spectrum has significantly more RAM, which limits what can be done.
Thanks to [256byteram] for the tip. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740721",
"author": "Dagobert",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T20:59:34",
"content": "I only got as far as the penguins…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6740813",
"author": "Scott Porter",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T02... | 1,760,371,979.396061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/4d-knit-dress-skirts-waste/ | 4D Knit Dress Skirts Waste | Kristina Panos | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"4d",
"4D knitting",
"apparel",
"dress",
"wearable"
] | Regular 2D sewing of anything is inherently wasteful. You can align the pattern pieces however you want, but there’s going to be wasted everything — thread, fabric, and interfacing — whether you get it right the first time or not. Never mind the fact that people tend to create a muslin (prototype) first using inexpensive fabric (like muslin) for the purposes of getting the fit right.
A few examples of the lines than can be created.
The MIT Self-Assembly Lab x Ministry of Supply have come up with
a 4D garment construction technique that minimizes waste
while being pretty darn cool at the same time. They’ve created a knit dress that combines several techniques and tools, including heat-activated yarns, computerized knitting, and 6-axis robotic activation. The result is a dress that can be permanently molded to fit the body however and wherever you want, using a heat gun mounted on a 6-axis robotic arm.
As far as we can tell, a finished dress does not come off of the machine in the short demo video after the break. It looks like it still has to be sewn together, which creates some potential for waste, but absolutely nothing like conventional methods.
This is probably the coolest dress we’ve seen since
the one covered in LCD panels. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741178",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T09:19:03",
"content": "Now we just need that shape-shifting humanoid robot mandrel that reenacts our whole body 3D scan during the procedure, and only after sharing it with 372 partner companies.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,371,979.235065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/randomly-move-marionette-with-steel-balls-and-geneva-drives/ | Randomly Move Marionette With Steel Balls And Geneva Drives | Maya Posch | [
"Art"
] | [
"Geneva Drive",
"marble machine"
] | The ball driven Geneva drives that move the marrionette. (Credit: Karakuri channel, YouTube)
Over the years we have seen many marble machines, but
this one on the [Karakuri channel]
(hit CC for subtitles) on YouTube is somewhat special, as it uses Geneva drives to turn the motion of the steel balls going around the circuit into random movement of a marionette. The
Geneva drive
type of gear mechanism normally converts a constant rotary motion into intermittent rotary motion by having a singular pin on the first wheel drive the second wheel. In the demonstrated mechanism, however, the pin is replaced by the steel balls, which are only intermittently and randomly present because of how each steel ball picks one of four paths, one towards each Geneva drive.
As a result of this, the motion of the marionette’s appendages – attached to the red wheel – is random. The only powered element of the (mostly 3D printed) system is the drive mechanism that carries the steel balls up again and keeps the primary wheels on the Geneva drives rotating. We have to give the creator pops for what is both an interesting art piece and a demonstration of how to creatively use this somewhat unusual gear mechanism to introduce randomness without a lot of complexity.
Thanks to [MrTrick] for the tip. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741142",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T06:03:01",
"content": "This is delightful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6741149",
"author": "bob",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T06:58:05",
"content": "how does ... | 1,760,371,979.453276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/an-optical-computer-architecture/ | An Optical Computer Architecture | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"optical computing",
"optics"
] | We always hear that future computers will use optical technology. But what will that look like for a general-purpose computer? German researchers
explain it
in a recent scientific paper. Although the DOC-II used optical processing, it did use some conventional electronics. The question is, how can you construct a general computer that uses only optical technology?
The paper outlines “Miller’s criteria” for practical optical logic gates. In particular, any optical scheme must provide outputs suitable for introduction to another gate’s inputs and also support fan out of one output to multiple inputs. It is also desirable that each stage does not propagate signal degradation and isolate its outputs from its inputs. The final two criteria note that practical systems don’t depend on loss for information representation since this isn’t reliable across paths, and, similarly, the gates should require high-precision adjustment to work correctly.
The paper also identifies many misconceptions about new computing devices. For example, they assert that while general-purpose desktop-class CPUs today contain billions of devices, use a minimum of 32-bits of data path, and contain RAM, this isn’t necessarily true for CPUs that use different technology. If that seems hard to believe, they make their case throughout the paper. We can’t remember the last scientific paper we read that literally posed the question, “Will it run Doom?” But this paper does actually propose this as a canonical question.
We aren’t sure we follow all of their arguments, but they do make the case that combining digital techniques with analog light representations may provide unexpected benefits. The paper indicates they’ve built a two-bit demonstration of the optical circuits and demonstrated that computation with them is possible.
What would optical CPUs mean to our community? We don’t know. While here are people who hack optics, it isn’t nearly as well-developed as what we know as a group about electronics. Still, someone will do it and, when they do, we’ll write about it.
Using optics
for specific computations
is nothing new, of course. You can even build
a neural network with glass
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741124",
"author": "Jarad O",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T02:52:20",
"content": "I think, for the time being, what we’ll see is optical accelerators. Devices that use an analog optical process for a single function. For instance, it is possible to do a purely optical FFT.There are man... | 1,760,371,981.377733 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/lego-keyboard-stand-fits-just-right/ | LEGO Keyboard Stand Fits Just Right | Kristina Panos | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"kyria",
"lego",
"tenting"
] | Split keyboards are great for many reasons, but mostly because you can place the halves as far apart as you want and really give your arms and shoulders the room they need. [Jason Cox] hit the nail on the head, though: add in a couple of palm rests, and you now have four things that will potentially shift and drift out of place on your desk or keyboard tray. It was such a problem that [Jason] hardly ever used his Kyria. That is, until
he built a stand out of LEGO to hold everything.
[Jason] was using a pair of Manfrotto pocket tripods to tent the keyboard, and those held their position surprisingly well, even though he tweaked them here and there over time. Ultimately, [Jason] knew he wanted the answer to be something customizable. And what’s more customizable than LEGO?
About $60 worth of new white bricks and plates later, [Jason] got to work, spending an evening building the thing. He ended up using a few bricks to hold the keyboard in place on the plate, and it worked perfectly.
Of course, he didn’t get the whole contraption exactly how he wanted it the first time, but tweaking builds is half the fun, right? After a while, [Jason] figured out he could rebuild the part that connects the two keyboard halves to go around a plastic piece at the back of the keyboard tray, which holds the whole thing in place. The end result? Wonderful. The Kyria stays in place, and now [Jason] is using it way more than before.
You know LEGO is versatile, but did you know
you can use it to build a hydroelectric dam?
Via
reddit | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741137",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2024-03-13T04:48:12",
"content": "I am not familiar with this layout but just 6 keys ergonomically for the left hand with twice as many keys in a left out of this scheme and a couple more behind the knob that are out of reach never mind... | 1,760,371,980.975373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/playing-audio-on-the-pi-pico-with-no-dac-to-speak-of/ | Playing Audio On The Pi Pico With No DAC To Speak Of | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"pi pico",
"pwm",
"raspberry pi"
] | Normally, if you want to play music or other audio on a microcontroller, you need to get yourself a DAC. Or at least, that’s the easiest way to go about it and the one most likely to get you good, intelligible audio. You don’t have to go that way, though,
as [antirez] demonstrates.
[antirez] decided to do this with a Pi Pico, but it’s applicable to other microcontrollers too. It’s all done with a single pin and a PWM output. The PWM output is set to a very high frequency beyond human hearing. In this case, it was 100 KHz. Then, the duty cycle of the PWM is changed to essentially output various average voltage levels at the pin. Vary the output voltage as per your desired sound file by using each sample to vary the duty cycle of the PWM. Voila! You can output whatever sound you want on that pin! [antirez] steps through the basics of doing this, including processing simple WAV files into a raw format that can be dumped into MicroPython code.
There’s no sound sample on the project page, and we’d have to assume it sounds pretty crunchy when hooked up to a speaker. And yet, it could prove a useful technique if you’re designing
your own audio greeting cards
or something, so keep that in mind! | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741041",
"author": "Konkers",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T20:37:38",
"content": "For those interested in doing this on the rp2040 in C++, the pico-extras repo has library support for pwm audio (along with spdif and i2s):https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-extras/tree/master/src/rp2_co... | 1,760,371,981.323754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/led-choker-is-a-diamond-in-the-junk-pile/ | LED Choker Is A Diamond In The Junk Pile | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"blinkenlights",
"choker",
"leds",
"necklace",
"Seeed Xiao S3"
] | Isn’t it great when you find a use for something that didn’t work out for the project it was supposed to? That’s the story behind the LED strips in
this lovely blinkenlights choker
by [Ted].
The choker itself is a 15 mm wide leather strap with holes punched in it. According to [Ted], the hole punching sounds like the absolute worst and hardest part to do, because the spacing of the holes must be greater than that of the LEDs to account for flex in the strap. [Ted] tested several distances and found that there is little margin for error.
Controlling those blinkenlights is a Seeed Xiao S3, which fits nicely behind the neck in what looks like a heat shrink tube cocoon. [Ted] chose this because there was one lying around, and it happens to be a good fit with its LiPo charge controller.
The choker runs on four 300 mAh LiPo batteries, which makes for more bulk than [Ted] would like, but again, sometimes it’s about what you have lying around. Even so, the batteries last around two hours.
Sometimes it’s about more than just blinkenlights.
Here’s an LED necklace that reports on local air quality. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741006",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T18:45:20",
"content": "Four cells? Why?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6741013",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T19:05:23",
... | 1,760,371,981.137022 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/12/design-review-dpi-lvds-sony-vaio-lcd-devboard/ | PCB Design Review: DPI-LVDS Sony Vaio LCD Devboard | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"PCB Hacks",
"Skills"
] | [
"design review",
"DPI",
"lvds"
] | Ordering a PCB with mistakes sucks. We should help each other avoid such mistakes – especially newcomers. One of the best ways to avoid these mistakes, especially if it’s your first one, is to get a few other people to look at it. You deserve to get a PCB that is as functional and as helpful as humanly possible, so that you can be happy with your project, and feel ever so slightly more confident in yourself in whatever you shall set out to do next.
At the end of last year, I put out a call for design review submissions, and we’ve received enough projects to make me feel overwhelmed for a bit. A design review has always felt like a personal thing, and here we are doing them in public. But in that sense, we hope that everyone can learn from them, and we hope to push forward a healthy review culture.
What’s more, these articles won’t just be design review. Every project I’m highlighting is worthy of a Hackaday feature just on its own, so tune in and learn more about them!
Today’s Contestant
For this example, I will be walking through a review I’ve already given someone with a pretty cool board, for a pretty cool project I’ve already shown you. Remember the
Sony Vaio remake project
? A fair bit of people have reached out to me afterwards, and one of them, [Exentio] also had the same Sony Vaio rebuild idea in mind. We started chatting, and he decided to tackle one of the project’s milestones, and perhaps the most crucial one – adapting the LCD.
The stock LCD in the Vaio is LVDS, and the Raspberry Pi boards we’ve agreed on using don’t have that – they have parallel RGB, HDMI and DSI display interfaces available. Plus, it has non-standard display backlight arrangement, as the backlight driver is expected to be on the mainboard. This complicates things compared to most displays on the market, where you just provide a hefty voltage rail and a few board signals.
Our hacker has done wonderfully with the first revision, and there’s visibly a lot of care put into routing, even length matching the parallel RGB interface, which isn’t required but is definitely a nice thing to do. The star of the show, a parallel RGB chip from TI, is correctly wired up – I’ve checked both the datasheet and the Raspberry Pi parallel RGB (DPI) mappings! It’s a great example of a board that’s going to work for its purpose.
It’s also a great example of a board you could make even more helpful than it already is! [Exentio] sent me a .zip file with the board as it was initially, we hopped on a Discord screenshare call, I would speak in voice chat, [Exentio] would type in text chat, and I’ll walk you through what we talked about. For a start, let’s talk about component choices.
More Friendly Components
The board has a lot of different components, and I’m not convinced that all of them are optimal. This board uses comparably large tantalum caps at the regulator, but then has 0201 resistors and 100 nF capacitors for the chip. We talked about it, and it turned out they made a KiCad-aided mistake of picking the “R/C_0201_0603Metric” footprints, thinking they’d be what we actually mean when we recommend 0603. But 0603 in imperial units is a lot bigger than 0603 metric! Eventually, you learn to notice such mistakes early – otherwise, that’s what a review is for!
The tantalum capacitors at the 1117 are also not as friendly. For a start, the 1117 is an outdated regulator design, which requires you to use high-ESR capacitors, and usually, electrolytic caps. Tantalum caps tend to be the opposite of high-ESR, so the regulator will struggle. Of course, this is just a footprint, and you could also solder ceramic capacitors onto it – except they’re also not going to work. Switching to a more modern regulator will fix it, and the best part is we will barely even have to change the circuit!
For context, this linear regulator generates a 2.5 V rail for the display’s logic power rail. A linear regulator is a great choice for this task, since the current will be less than 1 A, which is about where such linear regulators start to underperform. There are many linear regulators that can handle such work, and what’s best, they are package- and pinout-compatible with the old 1117 regulators! I recommended the AP2111 or AP2114 in particular – easy to find on both Mouser and LCSC, and both have 2.5 V versions.
Finally, powering this regulator from the Pi’s 3.3 V rail is a better bet, because you can then reduce the amount of voltage dropped by the regulator. A 3.3 V to 2.5 V drop wouldn’t work with 1117, but our new regulator can do that without a worry! A possible issue with this is that different Pi boards have different current capacities on the 3.3 V rail, so a display like this could perhaps overcurrent the rail. If that fails us, however, we could also rewire the regulator back to 5 V without a worry.
As for the RGBTTL-LVDS chip, it’s a great pick – there are some slightly cheaper ones, but honestly, the savings are not worth the reroute. Also, it makes sense to build this board around a known-working high-quality chip from TI. The fewer assumptions your board design relies on, the better, and adding a less tested chip is a gamble we don’t have to pull today. Instead, let’s make sure this board does as much for us as it can!
Sanity Checks
Any time chips can interface with each other in multiple modes, there is an opportunity for mistakes. Here, that’s wiring between the DPI interface GPIO mappings and the few different ways you can wire up. I sat down, checked this particular schematic, and it was perfect! When you’re doing such a check, I recommend making a table you can cross-compare, maybe in the schematic editor using text labels, or in Excel – wherever is more comfortable for you, the most important thing is that you don’t need to rewire the tiny pins of the parallel RGB interface IC.
Then, let’s take a look at a less obvious but still very pertinent problem – is the pin 1 orientation of the connector correct? It’s one of the easiest mistakes to make, and I know that because I’ve made it a couple of times before I learned to be cautious. One potential failure factor is that we got this pinout from a schematic we miraculously found online, and we got the connector footprint from a different spot – there’s already two points at which someone could’ve reversed the pin 1 marking, and if they don’t cancel out, the resulting bodge will be ugly.
Thankfully, this one has a simple solution – comparing to the actual physical board we’re reverse-engineering. Here’s the real-life connector picture, next to our footprint in KiCad, and it speaks for itself. Now, if it had turned out to be the opposite, this picture would’ve been way funnier, but it’s also pretty good we have no mistake to fix, because rotating the connector could’ve been annoying mechanically. Oh, and we should probably include the LVDS common mode filters at some point – they’re not strictly required, so this revision is lazy with them, but they are nice to have.
Traces Are Cheap
Here’s some PCB design mindset advice I’ve figured out over the years, something that drives most of my PCB design decisions. Routing tracks and adding silkscreen text is cheap, making bodges is expensive. With this in mind, we take a look at the traces and the connectors – and there’s really only two connectors to keep in mind.
First of all, there’s the Raspberry Pi GPIO header. There are a few unused GPIO pins on it that are left un-utilized that we could easily fix. We’ve found that the unused pins happened to be default software I2C pins, and put them onto some pin headers – plus a JST-SH connector for QWIIC, again, this is very cheap to do. This is simple.
Now, there’s a bigger problem – the display needs external backlight driving, remember? [Exentio]’s idea was to only tackle RGB to LVDS conversion in this revision, and I understand it very well – backlight drivers can be intimidating. However, that means the v1 boards will be quite limited in what they can do, and we would have to use v2 for actual backlight circuit experimentation, and then v3 if we need to make any changes to the backlight circuit – which is likely.
The problem is that neither of us has designed backlight drivers like that, so this is going to be new – we will make mistakes. A mistake, however, might just result in us having to remanufacture this particular board, move the RGB-LVDS driver and the connector to a new one or discard them, or spend money on new ones. Every forced iteration to a project requires you to spend extra time and money, and every iteration is a step where you might never complete the project. Let’s make sure this project is easy to complete.
Here is a trick that lets you cheat and give yourself extra time to figure out backlight driver options, not have to produce any more of the main board’s iterations than you really need to, not have to get rid of these boards, and make driver circuit development itself simple. Let’s make an impromtu daughterboard header for the backlight driver! We’ve found two possible drivers, one with PWM/EN control and one with extra I2C interface, and pulled out some more GPIO pins so that we can control the driver in software.
For the daughterboard, we’ve added 2.54 mm headers on a 2.54 mm grid. Neither the header nor the grid pitch is required to be 2.54 mm, but it’s probably the best thing you can do for yourself because this pitch will be the easiest to work with when developing. Then, pull all the needed signals onto these headers, without skipping any capabilities. I’ve also added both 5 V and 3.3 V rails, because one of our drivers needs 3.3 V as well as 5 V, so it’s good that the daughterboard for that won’t need to have a 3.3 V regulator too.
After the backlight devboard header is done, there are still a few unconnected signals left, which shouldn’t be important, but they could be fun to poke at. Again, traces are cheap, bodges are expensive, so we can pull them onto a separate 5-pin 2.54 mm pin header. And add pinout markings, because silkscreen is cheap too. Also, I’ve added a keepout around one of the LCD driver traces – it’ll have up to 60 V on it, which is not really a voltage you need a keepout for, but I decided to be overly safe with it.
Finished, Published, Waiting For Orders
I’ve reviewed this board in a call, and was applying changes to it as we spoke. After we finished the review, I’ve zipped the project folder up and sent it back. Whenever you review someone’s board and apply some changes on your end, you should also make sure to send them back, it helps! Some people will use the project as sent back with your changes applied, and some people will want to re-apply your changes themselves – whether because they want to learn these things themselves through practicing, or because that’s the way they’re most comfortable, both are okay.
We finished this board a couple months ago, but we haven’t yet ordered it. It is ready to order, however, and we don’t need to figure out the backlight circuit before we do so, so all I need to do is to poke [Exentio] about it or order them myself! It is also a nice DPI-LVDS reference design for any Raspberry Pi hacker – the design is
now public on GitHub
for any of your copying needs. About the only thing left that would’ve been nice to add is series resistors for the DPI interface, but they’re not that crucial, and definitely not worth moving the traces around to add – I might add them myself whenever I move this chip to the Sony Vaio design.
This board is a start for the design review series, and it’s also the first building block into our Sony Vaio rebuild project. Speaking of that project, one of our chosen ICs has recently acquired Not Recommended For New Designs status, which means we must immediately use it to design a board! | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6741000",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-03-12T18:03:42",
"content": "“one of our chosen ICs has recently acquired Not Recommended For New Designs status, which means we must immediately use it to design a board!” ….. nice article, but not sure if this line w... | 1,760,371,981.081259 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/hack-makes-microwave-cookies-fast-and-not-terrible/ | Hack Makes Microwave Cookies Fast And Not Terrible | Dan Maloney | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"baking",
"convection",
"cookie",
"magnetron",
"microwave",
"vending"
] | Making a chocolate chip cookie is easy. Making a good chocolate chip cookie is a little harder. Making a good chocolate chip cookie quickly is a pretty tall order, but if you
cobble together a microwave and a conventional oven
, you just might get delicious and fast to get together.
The goal of this Frankenstein-esque project is to build a vending machine that can whip up a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie on demand and make [Chaz] wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. We’re guessing at that last part; for all we know his goal is world peace through instant cookies. We’re fine with the idea either way, and his previous work on the project resulted in
a semi-automatic cookie gun
to splooge the dough out in suitable dollops.
The current work is turning those into something edible, for which a microwave seems a logical choice. Experience tells us otherwise, so off to the thrift store went [Chaz], returning with a used air fryer. He ripped the guts out of a small microwave, slapped the magnetron onto the side of the air fryer, and discovered that this was officially A Bad Idea™ via a microwave leakage tester. Round 2 went the other way — adding a conventional heating element to a large microwave. That worked much better, especially after close-up video revealed the dynamics of microwave cookery and the best way to combine the two cooking modalities. The result is a contraption that makes a pretty tasty-looking two-minute cookie. World peace, here we come!
Of course there’s plenty to say about the safety of all this, much of which [Chaz] himself cops to in the video. It’s important to remember that he’s just prototyping here; we’re sure the final machine will be a little more sophisticated than a heat gun duct-taped to the side of a microwave. Those cookies aren’t going to bake themselves, though, so you’ve got to start somewhere. | 36 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740688",
"author": "Lucas",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T19:08:06",
"content": "Cool project! Just a very cool thingamajig",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740698",
"author": "notmyfault2000",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T19:44... | 1,760,371,981.451577 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/share-your-projects-kicad-automations-and-pretty-renders/ | Share Your Projects: KiCad Automations And Pretty Renders | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"kicad integration"
] | I have a
pretty large GitHub repository,
with all of my boards open-sourced there. Now, I’m finally facing the major problem it has – it can be uncomfortable for others to work with. I don’t store Gerber files in the repository because that will interfere with how Git functions – you’re supposed to only have source files in the repo. Yet, when someone needs Gerbers for my PCB, or a schematic PDF, or just to see how the board looks before they clone the entire repository, I often don’t have a good option for them.
In my experience as a hacker, being able to find others’ PCBs on GitHub is simply wonderful, but a PCB repository without a README feels barren, and a PCB README without pictures makes me sad. On the other hand, not having these files autogenerate is uncomfortable – updating a picture every time is a major drawback in particular.
Let’s take a look at some KiCad Git integrations, and see what they have to offer.
kicad_cli
We’ve mentioned kicad_cli back
when KiCad 7 got released
, and in the
recently released KiCad 8
, it’s only become more powerful. Before, it could do gerbers and schematic PDFs, but now, it can even do DRC checks – which is ideal if you want to add a hook for any pull requests you might encounter.
When you update to KiCad 8, you will get a few new cool commands in this list!
The benefit of
kicad_cli
is that it’s extremely simple to add – all you need to do is to install KiCad from a PPA in your workflow, then run
kicad_cli
on your files. How quick? Well, here’s
a KiCad makefile
that lets you run
make pcb
in your commandline – you don’t even have to open KiCad anymore if all you want is Gerbers! It’s also reasonably quick.
However, there are limitations. For one, it cannot generate images – in KiCAD v8, it has gained the ability to export 3D models, but those have neither copper nor silkscreen. (
Update:
kicad_cli
now has image generation support, read more at the end of the article!) Plus,
kicad_cli
is quite limited in which options it supports – if you want to tweak 3D model export settings, you might just find that the necessary checkbox isn’t exported as commandline option.
So, for my own purposes, pure
kicad_cli
won’t do – I want people to have board images, preferably, the same way they’d get one if they were to open a 3D viewer. Also, I want to be able to customize the output. Thankfully, there’s a KiCad integration juggernaut we can use, that you might even have already seen.
KiKit
You might have seen KiKit be used for panelization as PCB editor plugin with a nice toolbar button, but did you know it can also generate manufacturer-tailored files for you? Or that you can run it from commandline? Or that it can even help you generate board images, either SVG, or exported 3D viewer screenshots?
I first realized that KiKit could be used for integration when I
stumbled upon a tweet
showing how the
epdiy
project makes its KiCad outputs accessible on an autogenerated webpage – generating gerber files, schematic PDF, and even exporting the STEP model. This looked ideal, and I started looking into what’s up. I’ve found great things, and horrible things, let’s start with the great ones.
This is how simple it is to generate things automatically for your repository – it’s
a ready-to-go GitHub workflow.
You can likely get the relevant workflow files from this repo into your repo right now and have nice exports automatically generated with every commit within an hour’s time. Gerbers are wonderful, so are PDFs and STEPs, but in particular, again, I’m interested in images – those must be present, and they’re the most pain to regenerate.
Pcbdraw
There are two ways to generate images that everyone’s been using until now, both of them are through a Pcbdraw tool written by KiKit’s creator. One of them is more diagram-ish but requires some effort on your part, and another way creates a perfect 3D viewer render
.jpeg
but requires a blood sacrifice. Let’s start with the first one, the
pcbdraw plot
method.
This rendering method creates an SVG file for your board, complete with silkscreen, traces and pads – way nicer than digitizing a 3D model from
kicad_cli
output. However, any components you might expect, will be missing – you need to have SVGs for your components too, they won’t just be present. There are SVG libraries, but in general, expect yourself to have to work in Inkscape if you want the diagram to look anything like the most bare board you get from the factory.
However, I have to say that you must not sway from the path of light and you really should consider investing effort into
pcbdraw plot
generation. For one, it’s very nice – SVGs are low-footprint, they’re easy to embed, render, modify and convert. The
pcbdraw plot
even has a command to generate an assembly manual for you, how cool is that? And surely, you could also add pinout diagram nice arrows to it with a bit of SVG modification?
The most important thing, however, is that your other option is
pcbdraw render
, and it’s not quite easy. It’s the one that creates 3D viewer 1:1 images, and given that
kicad_cli
has no such export option, you might guess that this involves black magic – your main hint being that the images take anywhere from 30 to 150 seconds to generate.
Yes, the black bars are sometimes (randomly) part of the exported image. Still, I love that this method exists.
There’s no good way to say this –
pcbdraw render
opens the KiCad PCB editor in a virtual display window, analyzes open window headers to figure out whether the PCB Editor has loaded the PCB yet, blindly sends keyboard/mouse movements with
xdotool
, then exports the picture of the 3D viewer window, cropped used Pillow magic.
If you encounter a problem, I hope you are of strong enough spirit to debug it. For me, this is the only viable way, because my repository has about 200 boards and counting, and sitting in front of Inkscape is time I don’t have.
Me and my friend, who is a Docker witch, are currently hacking at creating a monorepo-viable integration for generating PCB output files, and we hope to release it soon – whenever we do, you too will be able to push all your boards into a single repository and have pretty pictures magically appear in your READMEs.
Update:
this article was written ten days ago. Just a couple days ago, a
kicad_cli pcb render
command
has been merged into KiCad 8
, which actually exports 3D viewer images out of
kicad_cli
in the same way that
pcbdraw render
does, except it’s blazing fast! [arturo182] has made a
“rotating PCB” animation script
with it,
open-source, too.
So, the
pcbdraw render
method above is likely not viable anymore, unless you’ve got a very specific usecase in mind –
pcbdraw plot
, however, still has a whole bunch of advantages.
In the meantime, I hope that this summary and the integration and script links can help you in your own board publishing. You now know what it takes to auto-generate a board image or a Gerber
.zip
each time you make a commit into your repository, and now is possibly the best time to take a look at making your PCB repository more approachable. Got any favourite KiCad integrations? Tell us about them in the comments! | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740648",
"author": "Stappers",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T17:42:07",
"content": "Nice. Arya: Thank you for bringing CI/CD to electronic enginering.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740654",
"author": "Konkers",
"times... | 1,760,371,981.519323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/generator-control-panel-unlocked-with-reverse-engineering-heroics/ | Generator Control Panel Unlocked With Reverse Engineering Heroics | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"24LC08B",
"control panel",
"eeprom",
"generator",
"pin",
"reverse engineering",
"rework"
] | Scoring an interesting bit of old gear on the second-hand market is always a bit of a thrill — right up to the point where you realize the previous owner set some kind of security code on it. Then it becomes a whole big thing to figure out, to the point of blunting the dopamine hit you got from the original purchase.
Fear not, though, because there’s dopamine aplenty if you can copy what [Buy it Fix it] did to
decode the PIN on a used generator control panel
. The panel appears to be from a marine generator, and while it powered up fine, the menu used to change the generator’s configuration options is locked by a four-digit PIN. The manufacturer will reset it, but that requires sending it back and paying a fee, probably considerable given the industrial nature of the gear.
Instead of paying up, [Buy it Fix it] decided to look for a memory chip that might store the PIN. He identified a likely suspect, a 24LC08B 8-Kb serial EEPROM, and popped it off to read its contents. Nothing was immediately obvious, but blanking the chip and reinstalling it cleared the PIN, so he at least knew it was stored on the chip. Many rounds of soldering and desoldering the chip followed, blanking out small sections of memory each time until the PIN was located. The video below edits out a lot of the rework, but gives the overall gist of the hack.
To be honest, we’re not sure if the amount of work [Buy it Fix it] put into this was less than taking a couple of hours to punch in PINs and brute-force it. Then again, if he hadn’t done the reverse engineering he wouldn’t have stumbled upon where the generator parameters like running time and power figures were stored. And it’s not really his style, either; we’ve seen him perform similar heroics on everything from
tractors
to
solar inverters
, after all. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740612",
"author": "STR-Alorman",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T16:10:45",
"content": "This is a neat write up.The panel is an older unit made by Deep Sea Electronics in the UK (pre-2012, by the looks of it). They’re incredibly helpful when I’ve had tech support questions on some units ... | 1,760,371,981.26527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/on-an-aging-space-station-air-leaks-become-routine/ | On An Aging Space Station, Air Leaks Become Routine | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"international space station",
"iss",
"leak"
] | Anyone who’s ever owned an older car will know the feeling: the nagging worry at the back of your mind that today might be the day that something
important
actually stops working. Oh, it’s not the little problems that bother you: the rips in the seats, the buzz out of the rear speakers, and that slow oil leak that might have annoyed you at first, but eventually just blend into the background. So long as the car starts and can get you from point A to B, you can accept the sub-optimal performance that inevitably comes with age. Someday the day will come when you can no longer ignore the mounting issues and you’ll have to get a new vehicle, but today isn’t that day.
Looking at developments over the last few years one could argue that the International Space Station, while quite a bit more advanced and costly than the old beater parked in your driveway, is entering a similar phase of its lifecycle. The first modules of the sprawling orbital complex were launched all the way back in 1998, and had a design lifetime of just 15 years. But with no major failures and the Station’s overall condition remaining stable, both NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency have agreed to several mission extensions. The current agreement will see crews living and working aboard the Station until 2030, but as recently as January, NASA and Roscosmos officials were quoted as saying a further extension isn’t out of the question.
Still, there’s no debating that the ISS isn’t in the same shape it was when construction was formally completed in 2011. A perfect case in point: the fact that the rate of air leaking out of the Russian side of the complex has recently doubled is being treated as little more than a minor annoyance, as mission planners know what the problem is and how to minimize the impact is has on Station operations.
Reading Tea Leaves, Literally
While the leak might have been generating some additional buzz over the last week or two, this is only the latest chapter in a story that’s been unfolding for several years.
Zvezda, launched in July of 2000
You can find similar headlines popping up every year or so since at least 2019, and even back that far, it was noted that the Station was constantly losing breathable atmosphere to some degree. It’s only considered a proper “leak” when ground controllers see a notable spike in the normal amount of air being lost.
By 2020, the rate of air being lost was getting to the point that NASA and Roscosmos decided it was worth spending some time to investigate. So during a (relatively) slow operational period, with only three crew members aboard, all of the inter-module hatches were
closed throughout the Station
. The air pressure in each module was then carefully monitored over the next several days, an effort which ultimately determined the leak was somewhere within the Russian Zvezda module.
Once it was determined the leak was on the Russian side of the complex, cosmonauts started a more localized search. By 2021, they were watching
thin strips of paper and tea leaves
as they were carried by air currents within Zvezda. This allowed them to identify a few cracks in the hull where air was escaping, which were taped up to help slow the bleed.
An Intermittent Problem
Our latest update comes from NASA’s International Space Station Program Manager, Joel Montalbano. In a February 28th media briefing ahead of the launch of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission, Montalbano explained that the Station leak rate doubled to approximately 0.9 kilograms air per day as preparations were made to dock the Progress MS-26 cargo spacecraft to the Station.
Zvezda’s rear docking port
It was eventually determined that the leak was within the one-meter long vestibule in the rear of Zvezda known as the PrK, which acts as a sort of air lock between a visiting Progress spacecraft and the rest of the module. The leak rate only increased when the inner hatch to this chamber was open, and went back to normal as soon as it was closed. Since this hatch only needs to be open during active loading and unloading of a Progress vehicle, NASA feels confident that it presents no risk to the crew or the Station.
Even still, Montalbano did say the situation was being continuously monitored from the ground, and that Russian engineers are currently looking into locating the leak within the PrK and patching it permanently. It was also explained that, thanks to the nature of the PrK chamber, even if the leak were to become worse and found to be beyond repair, it would pose no risk to the Zvezda module. It could potentially mean permanently losing access to the docking port on the other side of the PrK however — an unfortunate,
but not insurmountable
, situation. | 41 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740569",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T14:20:27",
"content": "At 80000 US dollars per kilogram, I’d hope they’d be a little more concerned about air loss:https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/65534/how-much-does-air-on-the-iss-costIf nothing else, every kilo... | 1,760,371,981.220475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/reducing-seams-in-fdm-prints-with-scarf-joint-seams/ | Reducing Seams In FDM Prints With Scarf Joint Seams | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"FDM",
"scarf joint"
] | One unavoidable aspect of FDM 3D printing is that each layer consists out of one or more lines that have a beginning and an end. Where these join up, a seam is formed, which can be very noticeable if the same joint exists on successive layers. Taking a hint from woodworking, a possible solution is now being worked on that involves scarf joints. This research is covered by [Michael Laws] in a
recent
Teaching Tech
video
on YouTube, where he also details his own printing attempts with a
custom 3D model
, and a
guide by [psiberfunk/Adam L]
.
The idea for a scarf joint was pitched practically simultaneously by
[vgdh]
on the PrusaSlicer GitHub, and
[Noisyfox]
on the OrcaSlicer GitHub. The basic idea follows the woodworking and metalworking version of a
scarf joint
, with the overlap between two discrete parts across two heavily tapered ends. As with the woodworking version, the FDM scarf joint is not a silver bullet, and with the under development OrcaSlicer builds a lot of the parameters are still being tweaked to optimize the result.
If it can be made to work, it could mean that scarf joints will soon be coming to an OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer release near you. Theoretically it should mean faster prints than with randomized seams as fewer print head adjustments are needed, and it may provide a smoother result. Definitely an interesting development that we hope to see come to fruition. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740512",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T11:26:56",
"content": "I wonder how well bonded the scarfs end up, depending on the method used to adjust plastic extrusion vs head motion to create them it might end up having a structural benefit as well – that slightly lon... | 1,760,371,981.023906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/11/measuring-nanometers-at-home/ | Measuring Nanometers At Home | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"optical cavity",
"spectrometer"
] | If someone asked you to measure a change in distance at about one ten thousandths of the diameter of a proton, you’d probably assume you would need access a high-tech lab. The job is certainly too tight for your cheap Harbor Freight calipers. [Opticsfan], though,
has a way to help
. You might not be able to get quite that close, but the techniques will allow you to measure a surprisingly small distance.
The technique requires a Fabry Perot cavity, an inexpensive spectrometer, and an online calculator to interpret the data. This type of cavity is two parallel mirrors facing each other with a slight gap between them. Light can only pass through the cavity when it is in resonance with the cavity. These have been around since 1899, so they aren’t that exotic. In fact, they are often used in laser communication systems, according to the post.
Using partially reflective mirrors, the device causes interference fringes. The project requires two half-silvered mirrors, a white light source, some binder clips, and some helping hands. Oh, you also need a spectrometer.
The Spectryx Blue spectrometer mentioned in the post isn’t as expensive as a professional instrument, but it still isn’t a throwaway purchase. We wonder if you could use a homebrew spectrometer and get similar results. Light down at these scales is a strange and wonderful
thing
. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740485",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T09:22:11",
"content": "I reads as if you are equating nanometer scales with “one ten thousandths of the diameter of a proton”. It should be said that atom-scales are a tenth of a nanometer and with protons at femtometers we are t... | 1,760,371,981.71113 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/%ce%bcreprap-taking-reprap-down-to-micrometer-level-manufacturing/ | μRepRap: Taking RepRap Down To Micrometer-Level Manufacturing | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printer",
"microreprap",
"openflexure",
"reprap"
] | When the RepRap project was started in 2005 by [Dr Adrian Bowyer], the goal was to develop low-cost 3D printers, capable of printing most of their own components. The project slipped into a bit of a lull by 2016 due to the market being increasingly flooded with affordable FDM printers from a growing assortment of manufacturers. Now it seems that the RepRap project may have found a new impetus, in the form of sub-millimeter level fabrication system called the μRepRap as
announced
by [Vik Olliver] on the RepRap project blog, with
accompanying project page
.
The basic technology is based around the OpenFlexure project’s
Delta Stage
, which allows for very precise positioning of an imaging element, or conceivably a fabrication tool. As a first step, [Vik] upgrade the original delta stage to a
much reinforced one
that can accept larger NEMA17 stepper motors. This also allows for standard 3D printer electronics to control the system much like an FDM printer, only at much smaller scales and with new types of materials. The current prototype [Vik] made has a claimed step accuracy of 3 µm, with a range of tools and deposition materials being considered, including photosensitive resins.
It should be noted here that although this is a project in its infancy, it has solid foundations due to projects like OpenFlexure. Will μRepRap kickstart micrometer-level manufacturing like FDM 3D printing before? As an R&D project it doesn’t come with guarantees, but color us excited.
Thanks to [Tequin] for the tip. | 30 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740451",
"author": "M_B",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T06:53:47",
"content": "For those with no concept of how small 3 micrometers is. Hair is about 80 to 120 micrometers thick on average. So 3 µm stepping distance is just a tiny bit small.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,981.658765 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/got-to-go-fast-the-rise-of-super-fast-fpv-drones/ | Got To Go Fast: The Rise Of Super-Fast FPV Drones | Maya Posch | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"drone fpv",
"world record"
] | Generally when one considers quadcopter drones, the term ‘fast’ doesn’t come to mind, but with the rise of FPV (First Person View) drones, they have increasingly been designed to go as fast as possible. This can be for competitive reasons, to dodge enemy fire on a battlefield, or in the case of [Luke Maximo Bell] to break
the world speed record
. Over the course of months he set out to design the fastest FPV drone, involving multiple prototypes, many test runs and one failed official speed run.
The components of the third FPV drone attempt, as used with the world record attempt. (Credit: Luke Maximo Bell)
The basic design of these designed-for-speed FPV drones is more reminiscent of a rocket than a quadcopter, with the upside-down propellers requiring the operator first lifting the drone into the air from an elevated position. After this the drone transitions into a level flight profile by rotating with the propellers pointing to the back. This gives the maximum thrust, while the body provides lift.
Although this seems simple, flying this type of drone is very hard, as it’s hard to tell what is happening, even when landing. [Luke] ended up installing a camera in the nose which can rotate to provide him with different angles. Tweaking the flight computer to deal with the control issues that occur at speeds above 300 km/h.
Yet in September of 2023 he managed to pull off four solid passes, reaching an average speed of 397 km/h (214 nm/h) and a top speed of 401 km/h. Although still to be confirmed by Guinness World Records, it’s a major achievement, even if it didn’t get as much attention as a recent FPV drone
shown off by Red Bull
when it raced against a Formula 1 car at a paltry 350 km/h. The Red Bull drone by the [Dutch Drone Gods] was designed to handle following the F1 car even around corners, not just straight laps, but considering the resources that [Luke] had at his disposal versus the Red Bull team, it seems fair to say that he did a marvelous job, and we’re awaiting the outcome of the Guinness submission with bated breath.
Thanks to [Keith Olsen] for the tip. | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740414",
"author": "RobHeffo",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T02:55:17",
"content": "That thing is absolutely mental. A drone that small, agile, and fast in the wrong hands could do a LOT of damage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,371,981.982984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/hackaday-links-march-10-2024/ | Hackaday Links: March 10, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"content creation",
"Flock",
"Go",
"hackaday links",
"Ingenuity",
"java",
"license plate",
"linux",
"memory-safe",
"National Security Agency",
"nsa",
"Orwell",
"regolith",
"rust",
"surveillance",
"voyager"
] | We all know that we’re living in a surveillance state that would make Orwell himself shake his head, but it looks like at least one company in this space has gone a little rogue.
According to reports
, AI surveillance start-up Flock <<insert gratuitous “What the Flock?” joke here>> has installed at least 200 of its car-tracking cameras on public roads in South Carolina alone. That’s a serious whoopsie, especially since it’s illegal to install anything on state infrastructure without permission, which it appears Flock failed to obtain. South Carolina authorities are making a good show of being outraged about this, but it sort of rings hollow to us, especially since Flock now claims that 70% of the population (of the USA, we presume) is covered by their technology. Also, police departments across the country are in love with Flock’s service, which lets them accurately track the movements of potential suspects, which of course is everyone. No word on whether Flock will have to remove the rogue cameras, but we’re not holding our breath.
It looks like we’ll soon be writing the obituary we hoped would still be a couple of years away, as the chance that NASA will be able to
reestablish meaningful communications with
Voyager 1
seems to be diminishing with each passing day. We reported on
the latest “flipped-bit glitch” back in February
, but the problem dates back to November, when
Voyager 1
started sending back gibberish instead of its usual payload of scientific data and spacecraft telemetry. The breakdown is thought to be caused by a corrupt bit of memory in the Flight Data System; NASA planned to resolve this by commanding the craft to switch back to a mode last used when it did its planetary flybys all those decades ago, but it’s not clear whether they ever did this or what the results were. We’ll assume the silence speaks for itself. We know that the entire Voyager program is long past the point of diminishing returns, and that the money NASA spends coaxing half-century-old hardware 24 billion kilometers away into producing results might be put to better use elsewhere. But then again, having something that far away to communicate with seems like an excellent way to develop the skills we’ll need as we expand humanity’s footprint further into the galaxy, so maybe it’s worth the expense. Just a thought.
Also in space news but a little bit closer to home, the mortally wounded
Ingenuity
helicopter may fly no more, but
it still has work to do
. Unlike
another recent lander spacecraft
,
Ingenuity
managed to stay on its feet after crashing into the Martian regolith, leaving its solar panel exposed to the Sun and keeping it powered up. That’s the good news; the bad news is that about the only thing it can do now is use its downward-pointing navigational cameras to watch the grains of sand and dust drift by in the wind. It’s valuable geological work, no doubt, but compared to soaring through the thin Martian atmosphere and breaking record after record, it seems a somewhat ignominious retirement. Lemonade out of lemons, anyone?
Nobody ever said being a Linux geek was going to be easy, but as those of us who have voluntarily defenestrated or depomified their computers can tell you, it’s not always an easy row to hoe. That’s especially true with content creation; while the Mac and Windows crowd can (usually) just plug and play, getting a Linux machine to cooperate with audio and video editing hardware and software can be a bit painful. Luckily, we have
Venn Stone’s Interfacing Linux
to help us out. Venn has spent the last decade or so building a Linux-based AV production studio and is now sharing the tips and tricks learned along the way, as well as building a community of like-minded content creators. If you refuse to worship at the altar of Redmond or Cupertino, this might be the place for you.
And finally,
last week
(fifth item) we noted the news that the US government is pushing programmers to eschew programming languages it deems to be “memory unsafe.” This basically boiled down to “C/C++ bad” because they lead to buffer overflow errors that can be exploited by malware. Now, the US National Security Agency — yes,
that NSA
— has come out with
a helpful list of alternative languages
, which have better memory-safety features and are totally not compromised in any way. Rust fans will be pleased, no doubt, as will Java programmers. We were a little surprised to see C# on the list, though, and we expect the inclusion of Ruby and Python will raise some eyebrows, with the latter no doubt drawing the ire of a certain Hackaday editor. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740377",
"author": "cmholm",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T00:22:59",
"content": "A cursory web and dictionary search leaves me bereft of guidance, so I’ll fall back on Aussie lingo to assume “depomify” is “to reduce British influence on one’s computer, mate”?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,981.814697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/how-thermal-post-curing-resin-prints-affects-their-strength/ | How Thermal Post-Curing Resin Prints Affects Their Strength | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"resin printing",
"UV curing resin"
] | Credit: CNC Kitchen
Resin 3D prints have a reputation for being brittle, but [Stefan] over at [CNC Kitchen] would like to dispel this myth with the thing which we all love: colorful bar graphs backed up by
scientifically appropriate experiments
. As he rightfully points out, the average resin printer user will just cure a print by putting it in the sunshine or in a curing station that rotates the part in front of some UV lights. This theoretically should cause these photosensitive resins to fully cure, but as the referenced Formlabs documentation and their Form Cure station indicate, there’s definitely a thermal element to it as well.
To test the impact of temperature during the UV curing process, the test parts were put into an oven along with the UV lamp. Following this uncured, ambient cured and parts cured at 40 to 80 ºC were exposed to both tensile strength tests as well as impact strength. The best results came from the Siraya Tech Blu resin cured at 80 ºC, with it even giving FDM-printed parts a run for their money, as the following graphs make clear. This shows the value of thermal post-curing, as it anneals the resin prints. This reduces their impact strength somewhat, but massively improves their tensile strength.
An interesting data point is also that not only does thermal post-curing work during the exposure to the UV source, but also afterwards, even if you lose a few points in the tensile strength test. Although these results are just for this one type of resin, it’s possible that heating the resin prints while UV curing may universally benefit resin prints. This would surely make for a fascinating follow-up study.
Credit: CNC Kitchen
Credit: CNC Kitchen | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740379",
"author": "cncFriend",
"timestamp": "2024-03-11T00:27:39",
"content": "It is always so good to see Stefan and his testing gizmos. And how he tries to quantify things,",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6740459",
... | 1,760,371,981.761562 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/ford-patent-wants-to-save-internal-combustion/ | Ford Patent Wants To Save Internal Combustion | Al Williams | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"evaporative emissions",
"ice",
"internal combustion engine"
] | There’s no doubt the venerable internal combustion engine is under fire. A recent patent filing from Ford claims it can dramatically reduce emissions and, if true, the technology might
give classic engines a few more years of service life
, according to [CarBuzz].
The
patent
in question centers on improving the evaporative emission system’s performance. The usual evaporative emission system stores fuel fumes in a carbon-filled canister. The canister absorbs fuel vapor when under high pressure. When the engine idles and pressure in the cylinder drops, the canister releases fumes, which are combusted with ordinary fuel/air mixture.
However, these fumes tend to reduce engine performance, which is why you should only use them during idle. If the engine exceeds the canister’s capacity without removing vapor, the residual gasses vent to the atmosphere.
The invention uses a pre-chamber that allows the engine to purge the canister more often and faster. The [Carbuzz] post claims this will improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and reduce carbon deposits on valves.
Of course, there are two big questions: will this be practical at scale production, and how effective will it be? We aren’t sure we could answer either of those questions, especially from arcane patent language.
Engines are an amazing bit of tech and even more complicated now that we care about emissions. The
tiny ones
are especially awe-inspiring. Then again, if you
build your engines with Lego
, emissions aren’t really a problem. | 85 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740219",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T17:22:05",
"content": "This is about catching vaporized, unburnt fuel. It will not reduce the amount of greenhouse gases.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6740263",
... | 1,760,371,982.149768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/custom-mouse-making-clay-is-the-way/ | Custom Mouse-Making: Clay Is The Way | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"adafruit feather S3",
"arduino",
"arduino pro micro",
"ergonomic mouse",
"ergonomics",
"mouse"
] | For something that many of us handle all day long, it sure would be nice if mice came in more sizes and shapes, wouldn’t it? Until that day, we’ll just have to find something passable or else
design and build a custom-shaped mouse from scratch
like [Ben Makes Everything] did.
First, [Ben] played around with some modelling clay until he had a shape he was happy with, then took a bunch of pictures of it mounted on a piece of wood for easy manipulation and used photogrammetry to scan it in for printing after cleaning it up in Blender. About six versions later, he had the final one and was ready to move on to electronics.
That’s right, this isn’t just mouse guts in an ergonomic package. Inside is Arduino Pro Micro and a PMW 3389 optical sensor on a breakout board. [Ben] was going to use flexible 3D printed panels as mouse buttons, but then had an epiphany — why not use keyboard switches and keycaps instead? He also figured he could have two buttons per finger if he wanted, so he went with Kailh reds for the fingers and and whites in the thumb.
Speaking of the thumb, there was no room for a mouse wheel in between those comparatively huge switches, so he moved it to the the side to be thumb-operated. [Ben] got everything working, and after all this, decided to make it wireless. So he switched to an Adafruit Feather S3 and designed his first PCB for both versions. Ultimately, he found that the wireless version is kind of unreliable, so he is sticking with the wired one for now.
Via
Hackster | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740197",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T15:48:43",
"content": "I swear to the Gods above, its like hackaday articles read my mind. Uncountable number of times, I open hackaday and lo,I was just thinking of making my own wireless mouse (after my Logitech G502 cable ... | 1,760,371,982.036688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/stm32-draws-on-scope/ | STM32 Draws On Scope | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope",
"vector graphics"
] | Drawing on an oscilloscope’s XY mode isn’t a new idea. However, if you’ve ever wanted to give it a go, you’d be hard-pressed to find
more information
than the nearly hour-and-a-half video about the topic from [Low Byte Productions]. You can check out the video below.
If you prefer to jump straight into the code, there’s a
GitHub
page. While the code is specific to the STM32, you can apply the ideas to anything.
The theory, of course, is simple. Generate voltages for the scope’s X and Y inputs. How hard can it be? The devil, of course, is in the details. You need a reliable way to generate voltages in sync with each other, and depending on how you do that, you may need additional filtering to get good results.
The filtering is particularly important in this case because [Low Byte Productions] uses PWM outputs. While these are very simple to create, they do tend to have high-frequency noise on their outputs.
Once you have the idea, there are plenty of things you can do with a scope output. These projects work great with old analog scopes, and we see
clocks
made like this fairly often. We also see a number of
video games
. Heck,
even a badge
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740332",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T22:04:07",
"content": "Has anyone ported old vector arcade games to something that’ll drive an oscilloscope? BattleZone is the first thing that comes to mind.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,371,982.195922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/10/your-cat-needs-its-own-tv/ | Your Cat Needs Its Own TV | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"because cats",
"cat TV",
"lcd display",
"raspberry pi"
] | Cats are wonderful creatures to have around, and they provide us with hours of entertainment. So why not do a little something to entertain them in return? That’s exactly what [Becky Stern] did by making
a cat TV that shows YouTube videos of birds
and other cat-approved content. Not all cats seem to care about TV, but [Becky]’s cat Benchley really gets into it.
As you may have guessed, this is a fairly simple build, consisting largely of a Raspberry Pi, a speaker, and a screen — a 5″ HDMI LCD display to be exact. Seems like a nice size for cats. After getting the cat-puter up and running, [Becky] set about designing a 3D-printed enclosure to turn it into a TV. The first draft looked great in marble-effect filament, but lacked breathing holes for the Pi, so the final version has a nice honeycomb pattern that is too small for curious cat paws to fit through.
What their paws can do is accidentally pause the video via the touch screen, so [Becky] swapped the USB cable for a charge-only to prevent this. Be sure to check out the build video after the break, because there is plenty of cat cuteness to be had. [Benchley] was so into it that he went looking around back for cats and squirrels inside the box.
Would you rather not encourage your cats to lie about the house watching TV all day?
Make them play piano for their dinner. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740112",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T09:23:12",
"content": "Aren’t cats supposed to be farsighted? They can’t focus their eyes on objects closer than 10 inches, or at least that’s what I remember reading about it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,982.252291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/ender-3-plotter-attachment-for-printing-onto-cassettes/ | Ender 3 Plotter Attachment For Printing Onto Cassettes | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"ender 3",
"plotter"
] | One way to look at FDM 3D printers is as machines that turn filament into three-dimensional objects, but at their core they are much more versatile than that. Since they can move just about any tool around in 3D space, you can also use them for plotter tasks, a fact that [Geoffrey Gao] made use of when he had to write labels for a stack of music tapes. The resulting
FS-Plotter project
is based around a Creality Ender 3 FDM printer. Standard g-code from PrusaSlicer is used to move a pen around, after the latter has been fitted into a (3D-printed) spring-loaded fixture.
The cassette tape is fitted into its own fixture that is attached to the printer bed to hold it in place, while the writing utensil can move in its spring-loaded fixture to account for some unevenness on the surface it’s writing on. In the linked GitHub project a PrusaSlicer profile is provided that can generate 2D plotter Gcode. Where [Geoffrey] says that this project is very useful to him as a musician is that it enables him to make small runs of tapes with professional printing, without running into extra expenses.
Beyond putting a writing utensil into the holder, it could also be used for light engraving and similar tasks, while still making it possible to switch between the FDM hotend and this plotter attachment as needed. For about $30 in parts, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal to get a small-ish plotter and maybe give that old Ender 3 a second life. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740097",
"author": "fluffy",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T08:04:15",
"content": "I was researching means of turning a 3D printer into a plotter a few years ago when I needed to do some printing of stuff and didn’t have a 2D printer. At the time I’d found someone else’s pen holder desig... | 1,760,371,982.297903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/the-insurance-buys-the-wheelchair-but-not-the-app-to-run-it/ | The Insurance Buys The Wheelchair, But Not The App To Run It | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"app",
"enshittification",
"WheelChair"
] | The writer Cory Doctorow coined the term
enshittification
to describe the way that services decline in quality as their users become the product. He was talking about online services when he came up with the word, but the same is very much true when it comes to hardware. Items which once just worked now need apps and online services, with marginal benefit to the user if any. It’s one thing when it’s your soundbar or your washing machine, but thanks to Lemmy user [@win95] from the Netherlands we’ve seen a far more egregious example. People with disabilities are being provided with new powered wheelchairs through their medical insurance,
but are then discovering that unaffordable in-app purchases are needed to use their features
.
The chairs in question come from the German company
Alber
, and it seems their defence for the practice is that an Alber chair can be used without the paid-for software upgrades. Reading the many comments attached to the thread linked above it seems this is not a view shared by the people with disabilities who have the chairs, so we’d be extremely interested to know more from both the company and its customers. Either way, selling a very expensive mobility aid and then demanding hundreds more Euros for its features via
the app
seems to us if it’s as described, to be at least rather questionable. We hope therefore that it attracts some publicity, and the company is shamed into abandoning the practice.
It would be tempting here to exhort the hacker community to blow whatever protocols these chairs use wide open, and create a free and open source app which runs everything on an Alber chair. We certainly know enough people with the skills to do this, and we’re certain there are many more among our readers. But oddly here this isn’t the answer, and not because they might resort to legal measures such as the DMCA. A wheelchair is a vital mobility device for its users and superficially a straightforward enough machine, but it’s also a medical device which has to adhere to a bunch of standards to ensure that it doesn’t harm its user. For that reason perhaps it’s better to shame the manufacturer into ending the practice, and ensuring that people with Alber chairs can use them without resorting to hackery. After all, becoming
an engineer saviour
by accident is always something to be wary of. | 36 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740054",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T03:12:43",
"content": "Short term favour, long term disaster.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740059",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T03:52:52",
... | 1,760,371,982.365784 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/upgrading-pc-cooling-without-upgrading-parts/ | Upgrading PC Cooling With Software | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"desktop",
"fans",
"gaming",
"heat",
"linux",
"liquid cooling",
"PC cooling",
"performance",
"sensors",
"systemd",
"temperature",
"water cooling"
] | As computing power increases with each new iteration of processors, actual power consumption tends to increase as well. All that waste heat has to go somewhere, and while plenty of us are content to add fans and heat sinks for a passable air-cooled system there are others who prefer a liquid cooling solution of some sort. [Cal] uses a liquid cooler on his system, but when he upgraded his AMD chip to one with double the number of cores he noticed the cooling fans on the radiator were ramping quickly and often.
To solve this problem he turned to Python
instead of building a new cooling system.
The reason for the rapid and frequent fan cycling was that the only trigger for the cooling fans available on his particular motherboard is CPU temperature. For an air cooled system this might be fine, but a water cooled system with much more thermal mass should be better able to absorb these quick changes in CPU temperature without constantly adjusting fan speed. Using a python script set up to run as a systemd service, the control loop monitors not only the CPU temperature but also the case temperature and the temperature of the coolant, and then preferentially tries to dump heat from the CPU into the thermal mass of the water cooler before much ramping of cooling fans happens.
An additional improvement here is that the fans can run at a much lower speed, reducing dust in the computer case and also reducing noise compared to before the optimizations. The computer now reportedly runs almost silently unless it has been under load for several minutes. The script is specific to this setup but easily could be modified for other computers using liquid cooling, and using Grafana to monitor the changes can easily be done as [Cal] also demonstrates when calibrating and testing the system. On the other hand, if you prefer a more flashy cooling system as a living room centerpiece,
we have you covered there as well
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6740026",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2024-03-10T01:11:01",
"content": "Better to do it in C and lower the CPU overhead running it and generate less heat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6740028",
"author": "S... | 1,760,371,982.421609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/a-vanadium-redux-flow-battery-you-can-build/ | A Vanadium Redox Flow BatteryYouCan Build | Dave Rowntree | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"diy",
"electrolyte",
"flow battery",
"ion exchange",
"nafion",
"sulfuric acid",
"vanadium pentoxide"
] | Vanadium flow batteries are an interesting project, with the materials easily obtainable by the DIY hacker. To that effect [Cayrex2] over on YouTube presents
their take on a small, self-contained flow battery created with off the shelf parts and a few 3D prints
. The video (embedded below) is part 5 of the series, detailing the final construction, charging and discharging processes. The first four parts of the series are
part 1
,
part 2
,
part 3
, and
part 4
.
The concept of a flow battery is this: rather than storing energy as a chemical change on the electrodes of a cell or in some localised chemical change in an electrolyte layer, flow batteries store energy due to the chemical change
of a pair of electrolytes. These are held externally to the cell and connected with a pair of pumps. The capacity of a flow battery depends not upon the electrodes but instead the volume and concentration of the electrolyte, which means, for stationary installations, to increase storage, you need a bigger pair of tanks. There are even 4 MWh containerised flow batteries installed in various locations where the storage of renewable-derived energy needs a buffer to smooth out the power flow. The neat thing about vanadium flow batteries is centred around the versatility of vanadium itself. It can exist in four stable oxidation states so that a flow battery can utilise it for both sides of the reaction cell.
The reaction plates in the cell’s heart are printed with an ‘ABS-like’ resin for this build. They comprise a flat plate with through-holes for clamping, a central opening to house the charge collector electrodes, protection layers, and the ion exchange membrane. Pipes on the edges lead to tiny holes at either end of the flow region, on the inner edge, to enable electrolytes to flow to and from the external reservoir. Resin printing was chosen due to its strength and, most importantly, the surface smoothness, which will help to prevent leaks. The electrodes are copper sheets, with a protective layer of conductive HDPE and a second layer of graphite felt. The last layer allows electrons to be conducted to the HDPE and copper electrode whilst allowing a lateral electrolyte flow from the reservoir. A
Nafion
-based ion exchange membrane in the centre prevents mixing positive and negative electrolyte solutions. However, initial testing with baking paper also works for a while. Each half of the battery is filled with vanadium pentoxide and sulphuric acid.
The theoretical cell voltage is centred on 1.5 volts, but a fair current must be available even for such a small electrode area. Watching the two halves of the cell change the electrolyte state visibly during the charging process was fun. Vanadium does produce some spectacular colours in its various oxidation states! If you want to play along at home, the STL files for the 3D-printed parts can be found on the
Cayrex2 Patreon site
. | 36 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739999",
"author": "DJNZ",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T22:45:36",
"content": "Re: the headline.ITYM “REDOX” (as in “reduction/oxidization”), not “REDUX” (as in faux-french “re do”)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6740068",
... | 1,760,371,982.496127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/rosie-the-robot-runs-for-real/ | Rosie The Robot Runs For Real | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"robot",
"rosie the robot",
"vacuum"
] | On the recent 256th episode of the Hackaday podcast, [Kristina] mentioned her favorite fictional robot was Rosie from
The Jetsons
. [Robert Zollna] must agree since
he built a reimagined Rosie
and it even caught the notice of mainstream outlet
People
magazine.
We didn’t find much information outside of the
TikTok video
(see below; you can use the Guest button if you don’t have an account). However, there were a few clever ideas here. First, the robot mechanism is actually Rosie’s vacuum cleaner. Like a tail wagging a dog, an off-the-shelf floor vac tows the robot body.
Rosie herself is clearly an office chair base with an artistic body. The head rotates, and the mouth appears to open and close, so there’s apparently a little more electronics inside, but that’s nothing you couldn’t throw together with some RC servos and an ESP32.
Some
videos
cover the build so you might be able to glean more
details
, but the bite-sized videos aren’t very descriptive even though they are fun to watch. If you thought folks documenting their projects on YouTube was bad, you’re really gonna love the TikTok generation.
We like the look of Rosie, but as a practical matter, we need our robot vac to be smaller, not larger. However, using these off-the-shelf robots as a quick start for a robotics project is reasonable. Especially if you can pick up one cheap. Not that
that’s a new idea
. They even make
stripped-down
units with the
intent that you don’t want to use them as cleaners
.
@ziggy_nonskid
#eufy
#robitina
#robot
#rosietherobot
#3dprinting
#engineering
#fyp
#cute
#robotics
#robitina
#realrosietherobot
♬ original sound – ziggy_nonskid | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739971",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T20:13:40",
"content": "Very retro, not as convenient but makes a regular roomba look like crap.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6740179",
"author": "Inhibit",
"ti... | 1,760,371,982.543546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/hacking-and-working-on-the-go/ | Hacking And Working On The Go | Elliot Williams | [
"Rants"
] | [
"kit",
"newsletter",
"travel"
] | I’m off visiting my parents for a while, and have managed to bring nearly everything along with me that I need to get work done, and it all fit in a small backpack! This includes a portable audio interface to run my podcast mic, two (count them) two Linux computers, and all manner of simple hacking tools. Microcontrollers with USB/serial adapters built in are a godsend.
But putting together the minimal setup was no easy task! Alone the USB cable assortment I had to bring was astounding. And in the end, it looks like I forgot a USB-B mini, and good luck finding that at the local drug store. (I know! But the Zoom recorder wants mini. Don’t ask me why.)
And then there’s the power adapters — brick for the laptop, USB-C fast charger for the Steam Deck, another wall-plug USB for recharging the power banks. And of course, this silly custom keyboard which I’m so used to typing on, and which embodies so much muscle memory in its macros that I’m practically helpless without it.
So fundamentally, I’m astounded by the amount of functionality I could cram into my pack, but I’m also aghast at all the little things that add up around the edges. And I’m sure that I’ll find stuff that I’m missing in the next few weeks.
Do you need to travel for work with your full kit? What’s your approach? Minimal? Maximal? Leave us your hacker travel kit tips in the comments.
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
! | 38 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739898",
"author": "C. Scott Ananian",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T15:19:22",
"content": "You’ve hit on the reason I am converting everything possible to USB-C and/or the 12V battery standard used by my Makita CXT tools. The multiplication of dongles and cables is just nuts. I recen... | 1,760,371,982.626056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/create-virtual-usb-sticks-with-a-raspberry-pi-zero/ | Create Virtual USB Sticks With A Raspberry Pi Zero | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"pi zero",
"usb drive"
] | Playing back music files from USB sticks is a common feature these days, and is built-into the infotainment system in [Folkert van Heusden]’s Opel Astra. Unfortunately such USB playback features often come with a range of limitations on things like audio codecs, and in the case of [Folkert]’s car, a 1000 file limit. This had him
looking at an alternative
to lugging a lot of USB sticks around to avoid the horror of hearing the same songs within a week while commuting. The solution? Make a Raspberry Pi Zero into a virtual USB mass storage device using the Mass Storage Gadget (
MSG
) driver in the Linux kernel.
Picking USB storage as the ideal option here comes mostly from the age of the infotainment system, which lacks Bluetooth, and the audio input jack is rather crackly. Of course, having the Raspberry Pi Zero pretend to be a storage device via the MSG driver wouldn’t solve the file limit, but to get around this two Python scripts were written: one which creates images from a folder of music files, and another which randomly picks one of the available images from the Zero’s SD card and configures the MSG driver to use it.
As for the list of future improvements, there is mounting the RPi Zero’s SD card as read-only to deal with the power-off when the car is shut down, and the creating of images requires to be run as root due to the use of loopback devices. As a Proof-of-Concept it does seem to be on the right track.
It’s not just the older infotainment systems that get to have all the fun. If you’re lucky enough to have Linux running in the dashboard, you might be little more than a
Bash script away from bending the system to your will
. | 28 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739861",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T12:23:44",
"content": "The problem is that the Astra’s USB socket only provides 500mA.Dont break it or it will get really expensive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6739866",... | 1,760,371,982.819367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/simple-optical-meter-sets-new-standards-for-documentation/ | Simple Optical Meter Sets New Standards For Documentation | Arya Voronova | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"energy meter",
"homeassistant",
"optical interface",
"power meter",
"smart meter",
"smart meters"
] | PiggyMeter is a wonderful example of a device that you never knew you needed – simple, elegant, easy to build, and
accompanied by amazing documentation.
It’s a snap-on interface for electric meters, dubbed so because its 3D printable shell looks like a pig nose, and it works with IEC62056-21 compliant meters. If you want to learn about your home’s power consumption in real time and your meter happens to fit the bill, look into building a PiggyMeter, it’s the kind of DIY project that a hacker was destined to design at some point.
All you need is a printed shell, a Wemos-compatible development board with an ESP32 MCU, an optical interface board, and a few small parts like a ring magnet. The optical interface board is not open source, but there’s drawings available, and the design is pretty simple, so it should be trivial to recreate. Plus, it’s also reasonably inexpensive if you don’t want to build your own board. Got parts? Simply put them all together, flash the firmware, and you have a meter adapter added to your smart home device family.
This device works with HomeAssistant, and it’s incredibly easy to set up, in part because of just how clearly everything is outlined in the blog post. Seriously, the documentation is written with love, and it shows. If you’re looking to learn how to document a device in a helpful way, take notes from the PiggyMeter. And, if you’d like to learn more about optically coupled power meter interfaces, here’s
a different open source project
we’ve covered before! | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739883",
"author": "Robert rolnik",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T14:34:16",
"content": "Where do I get the 30 x 15 x 2 mm ring magnet?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6739907",
"author": "Jc",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T15:57... | 1,760,371,982.759588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/thats-a-lot-of-building-systems/ | That’s A Lot Of Building Systems | Navarre Bartz | [
"Parts"
] | [
"80/20",
"grid beam",
"lego",
"modular",
"modular design",
"modular hardware",
"OpenStructures"
] | The only thing makers like more than building things is making systems to build things. [Eric Hunting] has compiled a
list of these modular building systems
.
You’ve certainly heard of
LEGO
,
grid beam
, and
80/20
, but what about Troxes or Clickaloo? The 70 page document has a helpful index at the beginning arranged in families of similar systems followed by information about each and some helpful links.
As the well-known
XKCD comic
likes to point out, the issue with standards is that they tend to proliferate instead of getting adopted, so this might be a good list to check before you start to implement your brilliant spin on modular construction. It’s possible the right system is already waiting for you.
The list certainly isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start. If you do have the modular building system that will solve all the world’s problems though, by all means,
send it to the tipsline
! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739820",
"author": "Manuel",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T07:19:56",
"content": "Appreciate the effort, but would be better with pictures",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6739846",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp... | 1,760,371,982.722452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/inside-americas-last-morse-code-station/ | Inside America’s Last Morse Code Station | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"morse code",
"radio"
] | The Titanic famously (or infamously) used Morse code to call out in distress at the end of its final voyage. Ships at sea and the land-based stations that supported them used Morse code for decades, but with the growing use of satellites, maritime Morse code ended in 1999. With one notable exception. [Saahil Desai] writing in the Atlantic tells the story of
America’s last Morse code station
, KPH just north of San Francisco.
In fact, KPH did shut down in 1997 as part of the wind down of Morse code in ocean vessels. But some radio enthusiasts, including [Tom Horsfall] and [Richard Dillman], have brought the venerable station back to life. The radio squirrels, as they call themselves, dutifully send news and weather every Saturday to anyone interested in listening. They also exchange radio traffic, primarily with the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II-era ship parked nearby. N2FQ visited the station and operated the station on video, which you can see below. Or, check out the tour in the second video, below.
There are still a few niches of Morse code, including, of course, the amateur radio community. Code isn’t that hard to learn, it is dead easy to make a computer send it and only moderately hard to receive it. Making a transmitter to send the code is also easy, or feel free to whistle, thump, or use a flashlight in an emergency.
If you want to listen to the rechristened
K6KPH
or the official
KPH
station, you can find their pages at the Maritime Radio Historical Society’s web site. Just the thing for your
SDR
or even a
web-based receiver
. | 42 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739814",
"author": "YourMother",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T06:57:15",
"content": "Last Morse code station? How are we gonna communicate now when the Independence Day aliens invade?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6739972",
... | 1,760,371,983.022344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/pairing-a-new-remote-to-a-cheap-rc-car/ | Pairing A New Remote To A Cheap RC Car | Arya Voronova | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"mini rc car",
"R/C car"
] | The cheap little RC cars are abundant anywhere you are, and if you’ve ever disassembled one, you are familiar with how the PCB looks. A single-sided phenolic paper PCB with a mystery chip driving a bunch of through-hole transistors, a sprinkle of through-hole capacitors, and a few supporting components for the wire antenna. It might not feel reusable, but [Chris Jones] begs to differ, with
a Twitter thread
showing us how he’s paired a scrap board from one RC car with a remote control from another, all to help a little family project.
These mystery ICs turn out to be RC-car-on-a-chip modules, and Chris lucked out in that his IC has a detailed datasheet available, complete with code pulse examples for different commands. The datasheet for the chip in the remote control is nowhere to be found, though, so we have to dig deeper. How about scoping the RF output? Turns out the supported codes between the two ICs are basically identical! The scrap board wouldn’t move any motors though, so it was time to narrow down the issue.
The RC car board has a 128KHz oscillator, and scoping that has shown the issue – it was producing 217KHz for some reason. It turned out that the oscillator’s load resistor was 100 kiloohms instead of recommended 200k, and switching that put it back on course. We would assume that, wherever the original remote control for that car is, it is similarly mis-tuned, or otherwise the RC car could never have worked.
Through sheer luck and tactical application of an oscilloscope, the RC car moves again, paired to a remote it was never meant to be, and the family project moves forward. Got a RC car, but no remote? Perhaps
a HackRF can help. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739849",
"author": "ytrewq",
"timestamp": "2024-03-09T11:18:30",
"content": "If only ESP32 allowed ad-hoc links, making new remote transmitters and receivers for various toys with a potentially huge number of channels would be almost trivial.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,371,983.075588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/ferrules-and-3d-prints-revive-classic-microphone/ | Ferrules And 3D Prints Revive Classic Microphone | Dan Maloney | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"Amphenol",
"balanced",
"ferrule",
"microphone",
"shure",
"strain relief",
"Unidyne",
"xlr"
] | Contrary to what our readers may think, we Hackaday writers aren’t exactly hacking layabouts. True, we spend a great deal of time combing through a vast corpus of material to bring you the best from all quadrants of the hacking galaxy, but we do manage to find a few minutes here and there to dip into the shop for a quick hack or two.
Our own [Jenny List] proves that with
this quick and easy vintage microphone revival
. The mic in question is a Shure Unidyne III, a cardioid pattern dynamic microphone that has been made in the millions since the 1950s. She’s got a couple of these old classics that have been sidelined thanks to their obsolete Amphenol MC3M connectors. The connectors look a little like
the now-standard XLR balanced connector
, but the pin spacing and pattern are just a touch different.
Luckily, the female sockets in the connector are just the right size to accept one of
the crimp-on ferrules
[Jenny] had on hand with a snug grip. These were crimped to a length of Cat 5 cable (don’t judge) to complete the wiring, but that left things looking a bit ratty. Some quick OpenSCAD work and a little PLA resulted in a two-piece shell that provides strain relief and protection for the field-expedient connections.
It’s not [Roger Daltry] secure
, mind you, but as you can see in the video below the break it’s not bad — nothing a few dozen yards of gaffer’s tape couldn’t fix. Come to it, looks like The Who were using the same microphones. Small world. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739691",
"author": "KenN",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T21:25:21",
"content": "A pair of Shure 545’s were my first “serious” mic purchase in the 80s. I still have’em… somewhere. XLR version, fortunately.Glad to see these classics given new life. But that exposed tiewrap? Cringe ;-)",
... | 1,760,371,983.127272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/2024-home-sweet-home-automation-plantpal-is-a-friend-to-you-both/ | 2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: Plantpal Is A Friend To You Both | Kristina Panos | [
"contests",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"2024 Home Sweet Home Automation",
"automated plant care",
"plant care"
] | One easy way to get started on the home automation front is with something that makes a house a home in the first place — lush, green plants. As nice as it is to have them around, it can be difficult to care (or remember to care) for them all the time.
Plantpal makes easy work of that
, with an e-paper display that makes it plain as day how your plant is feeling. As you might expect, it features a soil moisture sensor, but what might be unexpected is that it’s capacitive instead of the usual resistive type. This way, no traces are exposed to the elements of plant life. It also has a BME688 sensor to monitor air quality and CO₂, so your plant has the chance to thrive.
Around back you’ll find an ESP32-C6, an AEM10941 for solar energy harvesting, and another set of solar panels. Be sure to check out
the project’s GitHub
if you want to learn more about this adorable and useful device. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739722",
"author": "Glen",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T23:03:39",
"content": "Is there any plan to make this available for sale assembled and ready to plant?This looks perfect for a large indoor garden, ie. Lots of plants in pots.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,983.179038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/retro-gadgets-pay-tv-in-the-1960s/ | Retro Gadgets: Pay TV In The 1960s | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"CATV",
"matv",
"pay per view",
"tv"
] | These days, paying for TV programming is a fact of life. You pay your cable company or some streaming service and the only question is do you want Apple TV and Hulu or would you rather switch one out for NetFlix? But back in the 1960s, paying for TV seemed unthinkable and was quite controversial. Cable TV systems were rare, and the airwaves were a public resource, so allowing someone to charge to watch TV on the public airwaves was hard to imagine. That was the backdrop behind the Telemeter — an early attempt to monetize TV programming that was more like a pay phone than a modern streaming service.
Rear view of the telemeter and coin box
[Lothar Stern] wrote about the device in the
November 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics
(see page 220). The device looked like a radio that sat on top of your TV. It added a whopping three pay-TV channels, and inside was a coin box, and — no kidding — a tape punch or recorder. These three channels were carried from a Telemeter studio over what appears to be a dedicated cable strung on existing phone poles.
Of course, TVs with coin boxes were nothing new. But those TVs were found in public places, airports, and hotels. The money was simply to turn the TV on for a set amount of time. This was different. A set-top box unscrambled channels delivered over a dedicated cable. Seems like old hat today, but a revolutionary idea in 1959.
At Home
The Telemeter had a control labeled “Program Information” that played an audio description of the three programs currently available. A bypass allows the user to tune in normal free TV as well. The Telemeter itself broadcast on either channel 5 or 6, assuming one of these channels was open in your area.
Suppose you heard that something you wanted to watch was on channel “B.” You’d turn to channel five on the TV and set the Telemeter to channel B. You’d lift a little lid on the box and find a window with the price of the program. There would also be a coin slot for you to insert your money. The box didn’t make change, but it would give you credit for excess money against future purchases.
Why a Tape?
The tape device inside wasn’t for programming. It registered what programs you’d paid for. Every month or two, someone would visit your home, empty the coin box, and switch tapes. The data on the tape told the company what shows you watched, which allowed them to pay providers and gather statistics. It also made sure the coins in the box matched the amount charged. Here you thought that companies monitoring your viewing habits was a modern thing!
At first, it might seem hard to imagine that someone would visit your home to empty out a coin box, but until recently, most electric, gas, and water services were the same way. Typically, but not always, the meters were outside your home, so they didn’t enter, but it was the same idea. Had the Telemeter caught on, it would be easy to imagine a system where your usage was on credit and the tape outside your house would generate your bill.
The practical problems of people swindling your coin acceptor — like they did with payphones — would have been an issue. Not to mention people simply hacking the device.
Business
Paramount was interested in the technology and bought 50% of the company in 1951. In 1952, they performed a brief test of their scrambling technology on the air in Los Angeles. By 1953, they had wired up a network in Palm Springs, California. Need some bar trivia? The first feature film on pay TV was
Forever Female
staring Ginger Rodgers and William Holden. There were 70 homes that could have watched it, and the cost was $1. One of those 70 homes, by the way, was owned by Bob Hope.
Things changed in 1954. The service had 148 users, with more waiting for service. An average subscriber was dropping $10 a month on movies. But drive-in theater owners sued, and it became hard to source movies for the fledgling service. The service shut down in 1954, but Paramount wound up owning the entire company. lt’s no surprise that movie theaters were dreadfully frightened of pay TV, but check out the theater ad below.
Back to our story. In 1959, the service was reincarnated as a Canadian company that carried on until 1965. In 1960, they connected 1,000 subscribers in Ontario. Despite adding sporting events and original movies, the service did not prosper. It peaked at 5,800 homes in the area around Etobicoke, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, but when it ceased operation in 1965, there were only 2,500 users. At the peak, reports claim the average subscriber spent $0.80 a week (or about $1.22 a week if you exclude people who didn’t watch anything).
Cost
For the cost of one movie ticket, the whole family could watch
So, what did this modern convenience cost? The Palm Springs network charged almost $22 to install the box. A movie typically went for $1 to $1.25. The first program was a college football game that cost $1 and Telemeter claimed that 97% of users tuned into the first broadcast.
Palm Springs had an early master antenna system so residents could receive TV from Los Angeles. That was a $162 install plus $65 a year, so the $22 was not that high.
The cost was a lot less in the Canadian incarnation. According to the article, you paid $5 to have it connected, but keep in mind that $5 in 1959 was more like $50 today. That was enough to buy five gallons of milk, 20 gallons of gas, or take five people to the movies. Presumably, the company made their money by emptying your coin box every month.
The price per program was said to vary. There could be sponsored free programs, too, but you could expect those to have commercials.
Other Systems
Phonevision scrambled vs unscrambled image
Zenith experimented with
Phonevision
to deliver programming using broadcast frequencies and phone lines. That isn’t surprising since Zenith had looked into pay television as early as 1931. In 1951, some Zenith TVs had connectors for Phonevision. The system required the user to call an operator to be placed in a queue for a particular movie. When the movie was available, the set top box would receive instructions via the phone line to unscramble the movie. The bill showed up on your regular phone bill. Depending on who you asked, the system was a flop or a success. The scrambling method, however, was not compatible with color TV, so there was a definite limit to the technology.
RCA and Skiatron had Subscriber-Vision. This was similar to Phonevision, but used punched cards instead of a phone line. You’d insert the card to start decoding. A new card arrived in the mail every week. Initially, the card was a normal IBM punch card, but those were easily duplicated. Later versions used a “translucent card” with “a circuit printed in metallic ink” (that from
Sponsor
Magazine’s May 1952 edition).
In 1957, a famous system in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, ran briefly. It was more like a modern cable system. The service provided a descrambler for a monthly fee.
The Zenith system was as early as 1951, but all were victim to the FCC’s indecision about pay-per-view. If the FCC allowed over-the-air scrambling, it would change the landscape. If they didn’t allow it, then things like Telemeter or Phonevision would be necessary. It would be 1961 before the FCC allowed real tests and 1963 before Zenith did the first over-the-air test.
Future
Of course, cable TV systems made anything like this seem silly, and the Internet is in the process of wiping out cable TV. But this wasn’t always obvious. Even the president of Zenith TV said that it would be too expensive to wire large areas like Los Angeles or New York with cable TV.
The company behind the Telemeter, the International Telemeter Corporation, persisted as part of Paramount and its owners for a number of years and tried to create pay-per-view equipment and systems, but it was just too early. For example, they offered a box that would let cable operators accept a quarter to display cable TV for an 18-hour period. While paid services would eventually be the answer, it would arrive much too late for Telemeter to be more than a historical footnote.
There were a lot of gizmos associated with early cable TV. Everyone wants to know about the
weather
and cable operators were happy to oblige. Then,
the weather went high-tech
, at least by the standards of the day. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739613",
"author": "Alex99a",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T18:26:28",
"content": "The local utilities (gas, electric and water) still visit my house every month. Gas and water meters are read wirelessly from a truck driving slowly down the street, but the guy from the electric company ... | 1,760,371,983.308133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/hackaday-podcast-episode-261-rickroll-toothbrush-keyboard-cat-zombie-dialup/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 261: Rickroll Toothbrush, Keyboard Cat, Zombie Dialup | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up in a new disposable location to give the lowdown on this week’s best hacks. First up in the news —
the Home Sweet Home Automation contest
is still going strong. You’ve still got plenty of time, so
get on over to Hackaday.IO and start your entry today.
In the news,
the UK is asking how powerful an electric bike should be
(more than 250 Watts, certainly), and
legal pressure from Nintendo has shut down two emulators
.
Kristina’s cigar box kalimba…
…with hand-wound pickup!
Then it’s on to What’s That Sound. Kristina failed again, although she was pretty confident about her answer. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound this week? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
But then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with a Wi-Fi toothbrush hack from [Aaron Christophel]. This can only mean the beginning of some epic toothbrush firmware, right? From there, we marvel at moving cat food, the ultimate bulk material, and the idea of spoofing a whole cloud of drones. Finally, we examine one of Jenny’s Daily Drivers in the form of Damn Small Linux (the other DSL), and reminisce about dial-up (speaking of DSL).
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 261 Show Notes:
News:
Our Home Automation Contest Starts Now!
How Powerful Should An Electric Bike Be? The UK Is Asking
Yuzu And Citra Emulators Shut Down After Legal Pressure From Nintendo
What’s that Sound?
Fill out this form
with your best guess, and you might win!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Hacking An Actual WiFi Toothbrush With An ESP32-C3
Piano Feeder Gets Pets Playing For Their Supper
Handling Bulk Material: Why Does My Cat Food Get Stuck?
Can’t Disable DJI Drone ID? Spoof It With An ESP!
Loudmouth DJI Drones Tell Everyone Where You Are
Thumbs Up To This Pico MIDI Kalimba
Making A Crystodyne Radio With Zinc Oxide And Cat’s Whiskers
Spark, Bang, Buzz and Other Good Stuff.
A “Full” Keyboard For $5*
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
The $16 PCB Robot
A Simple Hack For Running Low-Power Gear From A USB Battery Pack
Reverse Engineering The Behringer Ultranet Protocol
Kristina’s Picks:
RGB LED Disco Ball Reacts To Sound And Color
Optical Guitar Pickup Works With Nylon Strings
Luggable Cyberdeck Can Still Be A Luggable PC
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Jenny’s Daily Drivers: Damn Small Linux 2024
Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, A Thing | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739614",
"author": "Bruce Gettel",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T18:26:55",
"content": "The sound is an old-timey credit card machine at the cash register, taking an imprint of a credit card.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,983.232181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/more-progress-on-perovskite-solar-cells/ | More Progress On Perovskite Solar Cells | Navarre Bartz | [
"Science",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"materials science",
"nanoscale",
"nanostructure",
"perovskites",
"Solar Cells",
"solar energy"
] | Perovskites hold enormous promise for generating solar energy, with the potential to provide lighter and cheaper cells than those made from silicon. Unfortunately, the material breaks down too rapidly to be practical for most applications. But thanks to some recent research, we now have a better understanding of the
nanoscale changes that happen during this breakdown
, and how to combat it.
The research is focused on the topic of passivation, which seeks to increase the useful lifespan of perovskites by studying the surface interface where they meet other materials. Most of the perovskite material is a perfect latticework of atoms, but this structure is broken at the surface. This atomically “jagged” interface introduces losses which only get worse over time. Currently, the best way to address this issue is to essentially seal the surface with a very thin layer of hexylammonium bromide.
While this technique significantly simplified the passivation process when it was discovered, the effect had yet to be adequately characterized to further advance the field. According to lead author, [Dane deQuilettes], “This is
the first paper
that demonstrates how to systematically control and engineer surface fields in perovskites.”
Prefer to roll your own cells? How about a
DIY dye sensitized cell
or this
thermionic converter model
? | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739617",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T18:43:05",
"content": "Countenance hints that progress is grim.Especially since it’s coming from what’s usually the land of smiles, rainbows and breathless hyperbole.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,983.365979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/this-week-in-security-blame-the-feds-emergency-patches-and-the-dma/ | This Week In Security: Blame The Feds, Emergency Patches, And The DMA | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ransomware",
"teamcity",
"This Week in Security",
"vmware"
] | The temptation to “take the money and run” was
apparently too much for the leadership of the AlphV
ransomware crime ring. You may have heard of this group as being behind the breach of Change Healthcare, and causing payment problems for nearly the entire US Healthcare system. And that hack seems to be key to what’s happened this week.
It’s known that a $22 million payment made it through the bitcoin maze to the AlphV wallet on the 1st. It’s believed that this is a payment from Change Healthcare to recover ransomed files. An important detail here is that AlphV is a ransomware-as-a-service provider, and the actual hacking is done by “affiliates”, who use that service, and AlphV handles the infrastructure, maintaining the actual malware, and serving as a payment processor. That last one is key here.
A couple days after that big payment landed in the AlphV account, a seizure notice went up on the AlphV TOR site, claiming that it had been taken down by the FBI and associated agencies. There was something a bit odd about it, though. See,
the FBI did seize the AlphV Tor site back in December
. The seizure notice this time was an exact copy, as if someone had just done a “save page as”, and posted the copy.
There is precedent for a ransomware group to close up shop and disappear after hitting a big score. The disruption AlphV enabled in the US health care system painted a big target on them, and it didn’t take a tactical genius to realize it might be good to lay low for a while. Pocketing the entire $22 million ransom probably didn’t hurt either. The particularly nasty part is that the affiliate that actually pulled off the attack still claims to have four terabytes of sensitive data, and no incentive to not release it online. It’s not even entirely clear that Change Healthcare actually received a decryption key for their data. You do not want to deal with these people.
TeamCity Emergency
The confusingly named 2023.11.4
update to JetBrains TeamCity was released on March 4 of 2024
, containing a pair of fixes for critical security vulnerabilities. The worst is
a CVSS 9.8 authentication bypass issue
. TeamCity is an on-premises Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment server, and this exploit gives complete control over the machine, leading to some nasty potential for supply chain attacks and code stealing.
With
the release of the details
came
active exploitation nearly immediately
. And it’s not hard to see why. The flaw is a logic error in how HTTP/S request URLs are parsed in the case of a 404 response. A vulnerable request looks as simple as
/hax?jsp=/app/rest/server;.jsp
. Ouch.
VMWare Emergency
TeamCity is not the only headache you need to worry about, as
VMware has issued an “emergency change”
to fix a quartet of vulnerabilities. Three of them are in USB controller code, and the final is a sandbox escape to get out of the VMX process. To put them in perspective, these flaws allow for an attacker inside a virtual machine to run an exploit that breaks out of the VM, allowing arbitrary code execution on the underlying host system.
The workaround is to completely remove virtual USB controllers from all running VMs. A humorous note warns that this could degrade user experience — depending on the configuration and guest OS, this could disable mouse and keyboard input altogether. The kicker is that VMware guidance is to assume that all previous and unsupported versions of ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion are vulnerable. It seems like this bug has been lurking in the VMware codebase for a very long time.
Digital Markets Act
And here we have coverage of the intersection between security and politics. The noteworthy topic is
the Digital Marketplace Act
, an EU bill that mandates doors and windows be installed in locked garden ecosystems. The mandated changes are what you might expect: Opening devices to alternative app stores, allowing alternative payment systems, and even more choice screens on first boot of devices.
Does that matter for security? Apple has long maintained that the strict limitations of the App Store are essential for user security. It’s true that a sizable portion of mobile malware can be traced directly back to alternative app stores that serve shady apps, but Apple isn’t immune either. On the other hand, there are certainly reputable alternative app stores, like the open-source f-droid. And for most users, we just want a Google Chrome that isn’t re-skinned Safari, and a way to install Kodi without jailbreaking first.
Bits and Bytes
In a continuation of both the ransomware and geopolitics themes, the Swiss technology company, Xplain, suffered a ransomware attack in 2023, and the Swiss government has finally released an announcement about the
severity of the breach
. There were 1.3 million files released online, and about 65,000 were actually government documents.
The
RT-Thread Real Time Operating System (RTOS) received an audit
of sorts from [Marco Ivaldi] at HN Security. It’s not surprising that the low level code that makes up this RTOS has its fair share of buffer overflow flaws. Many of the vulnerabilities have received fixes, but some are still in progress.
And finally, there a
.NET and Visual Studio vulnerability
affecting the Microsoft FTP server. The problem is a relatively simple command injection flaw in the FTP command handling.
That’s it for this week, be sure to
come let us know what security stories you’re following
! | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,983.400992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/extracting-secoc-keys-from-a-2021-toyota-rav4-prime/ | Extracting SecOC Keys From A 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"CAN",
"canbus",
"car security",
"reverse engineering"
] | With the recently introduced SecOC (Secure Onboard Communication) standard, car manufacturers seek to make the CAN bus networks that form the backbone of modern day cars more secure. This standard adds a MAC (message authentication code) to the CAN messages, which can be used to validate that these messages come from a genuine part of the car, and not from a car thief or some third-party peripheral.
To check that it isn’t
possible to circumvent SecOC
, [Willem Melching] and [Greg Hogan] got their hands on the power steering (EPS) unit of a Toyota RAV4 Prime, as one of the first cars to implement this new security standard.
The 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime’s power steering unit on the examination bench. (Credit: Willem Melching)
As noted by [Willem], the ultimate goal is to be able to run the open source driver assistance system
openpilot
on these SecOC-enabled cars, which would require either breaking SecOC, or following the official method of ‘rekeying’ the SecOC gateway.
After dumping the firmware of the EPS Renesas RH850/P1M-E MCU via a voltage fault injection, the AES-based encryption routines were identified, but no easy exploits found in the main application. This left the bootloader as the next target.
Ultimately they managed to reverse-engineer the bootloader to determine how the update procedure works, which enabled them to upload shellcode. This script then enabled them to extract the SecOC keys from RAM and send these over the CAN bus. With these keys the path is thus opened to allow any device to generate CAN messages with valid SecOC MACs, effectively breaking encryption. Naturally, there are many caveats with this discovery.
As noted in the blog post, the specific MCU targeted did the crypto routines in software rather than using a more secure hardware module, while also omitting to validate the payload sent to the bootloader. That said, it might be that this approach works even with much newer SecOC implementations. Some experimentation on a 2023 Corolla Cross demonstrated that its power steering unit could also be coaxed into allowing code execution via the bootloader, but further attempts at defeating SecOC on it haven’t been made yet.
A
GitHub repository
containing the the software tools to extract keys and such has been made available.
While SecOC promises to make the future of CAN hacking more difficult, there are still millions of vehicles on the road that are all too happy to let you poke around in their data networks — allowing you to do everything from
pulling EV battery info
to
adding a backup camera
so long
as you have the proper tools
. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739581",
"author": "scottunique",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T15:00:15",
"content": "Giving vehicle owners the capacity to update and change features on their vehicle electronic control systems should be a *right* for folks who own their vehicles and are not leasing them.We’ve seen ho... | 1,760,371,983.449731 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/08/beverage-coaster-indicates-ideal-drinking-temperature/ | Beverage Coaster Indicates Ideal Drinking Temperature | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"beverage",
"blue pill",
"coaster",
"DS18B20",
"STM8S103F",
"tea"
] | When temperatures plummet, there’s nothing like a hot beverage to keep you warmed up inside. [
Palingenesis
] aka [Tim] sure does fancy a nice cuppa, but only within a certain temperature range is it ideal to drink. In an attempt to signal when the time is just right,
he created various iterations of a hot beverage coaster.
To be clear, this is a plywood sandwich that does not keep the beverage warm, though that would be an interesting addition to the project. Rather, it indicates when the beverage’s temperature is just right using LEDs. When it’s too hot, the red LEDs are lit. The green LEDs flash while it’s just right, and once [Tim]’s tea has gone cold, the blue LEDs take center stage.
The brains of the operation is an STM8S103F module, aka the Blue Pill, which is paired with a DS18B20 temperature sensor. [Tim]’s original coaster has one in a TO-92 package embedded in the top layer, but ultimately he went with the probe version as it reads a truer temperature by virtue of being directly in the liquid. Be sure to check out the video after the break which covers planning the original version.
If you do want to keep you drink warm,
here’s an ESP8266-based solution.
If you’re more into looks,
check out this blinkencoaster. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739537",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T10:17:04",
"content": "Cool project and that’s not something I just say in the heat of the moment of typing this comment. I don’t think I’d be building this design myself as I’m afraid to get cold feet once (during the warm up time... | 1,760,371,983.494016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/rp2040-esp32-and-an-atmega-have-an-adc-off/ | RP2040, ESP32, And An Atmega Have An ADC-Off | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega328p",
"ESP32",
"microcontroller review",
"review",
"rp2040"
] | [Simon Monk] got frustrated with bad ADC performance when tinkering with an ESP32 board, and decided to
put three of the nowadays-iconic boards to the test
– a classic ESP32 devboard, a Pi Pico with an RP2040, and an Arduino Uno R3 with an ATmega328P. To do that, he took a bench PSU, added a filter circuit to it, went through the entire ADC range for each board, took a large number of samples at different points and plotted the results. The plots show us both linearity and precision, as well as ADC dead zones, and the results are quite surprising.
The ESP32 doesn’t only have the most limited ADC with maximum 1V input, it also produces the worst results out of all three, with large error bars and sizeable dead zones at both ends. The Pi Pico, despite being colloquially known for its subpar ADC, produces better results than the ESP32. However, both of them are dwarfed by the ATMega328P’s performance. If you need a dedicated ADC, it might just be a good idea to put an ATMega328P on your board.
The example code is provided, and we are wondering whether there are methodology errors. For instance, the ATMega328P code is written in Arduino-supplied C++, but ESP32 and RP2040 in particular used MicroPython, which does more than just running the code, and MicroPython for ESP32 in particular creates a WiFi access point – something known to induce noise into ADC readings. Nevertheless, this is a fun comparison, and we like when hackers do microcontroller standoffs like that – for instance, check out this review from 2017 which
pits a dozen microcontrollers of the time against each other! | 31 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739483",
"author": "JanW",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T06:07:48",
"content": "It’s sad Espessif does so poorly with their ADCs… But their micros are so damn cheap and supported by so many great projects (Think Home Assistant) that I tend to use those over Atmegas anyway. At least wher... | 1,760,371,983.671013 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/raspinamp-it-really-replicates-questionable-activities-involving-llamas/ | Raspinamp: It Really Replicates Questionable Activities Involving Llamas | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"digital",
"ipod",
"linux",
"llama",
"mp3 player",
"music",
"qmmp",
"raspberry pi",
"tft",
"touchscreen",
"winamp"
] | In the late 90s as MP3s and various file sharing platforms became more common, most of us were looking for better players than the default media players that came with our operating systems, if they were included at all. To avoid tragedies like Windows Media Center, plenty of us switched to Winamp instead, a much more customizable piece of software that helped pave the way for the digital music revolution of that era. Although there are new, official versions of Winamp currently available, nothing really tops the nostalgia of the original few releases of the software
which this project faithfully replicates in handheld form
.
The handheld music player uses a standard Raspberry Pi (in this case, a 3B) and a 3.5″ TFT touchscreen display, all enclosed in a clear plastic case. With all of the Pi configuration out of the way, including getting the touchscreen working properly, the software can be set up. It uses QMMP as a media player with a Winamp skin since QMMP works well on Linux systems with limited resources. After getting it installed there’s still some configuration to do to get the Pi to start it at boot and also to fit the player perfectly into the confines of the screen without any of the desktop showing around the edges.
Although it doesn’t use the original Winamp software directly, as that would involve a number of compatibility layers and/or legacy hardware at this point, we still think it’s a faithful recreation of how the original looked and felt on our Windows 98 machines. With a battery and a sizable SD card, this could have been the portable MP3 player many of us never knew we wanted until the iPod came out in the early 00s, and would certainly still work today for those of us not chained to a streaming service. A Raspberry Pi is not the only platform that can replicate the Winamp experience, though.
This player does a similar job with the PyPortal instead
. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739443",
"author": "STEPHEN BROWN",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T03:55:36",
"content": "Pretty Awesome just 15 years too late for most. Though come the apocalypse..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6739479",
"author": "Gra... | 1,760,371,983.730099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/fabbing-a-fab-new-watch-face/ | Fabbing A Fab New Watch Face | Kristina Panos | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"luminescence",
"Omega Seamaster Calypso III",
"pcb",
"watch"
] | [STR-Alorman] is into vintage watches, particularly Omega Seamaster quartz numbers from the 1980s. Among his favorites is the Seamaster Calypso III, a precious few of which were created in a lovely and rare black-on-black colorway. [STR-Alorman] found one on online, but it had a number of problems including a scratched-up face. Having done a respectable amount of PCB design and assembly,
he decided to make a new face and have it fabbed.
The one angle where you can even tell this is a PCB.
After taking scale-referenced photos with a DSLR, [STR-Alorman] created vectors in Illustrator and then ported those to KiCad. He sent two versions to the board house — one with holes at index points, and one without — because he wasn’t sure which would be better for applying the luminization compound that makes them glow. Spoiler alert: it was the one with the cutouts.
Once this was done, [STR-Alorman] reassembled the movement, which doesn’t look easy at all, and involved getting the height of a bit of CA glue just right so as not to interfere with the movement of the date wheel. He replaced the bezel insert, re-luminized the hands, and now has a beautiful timepiece.
We believe only the nerdiest of nerds could tell this is a PCB, and they would need exactly the right light to make that determination.
Here’s a watch that leaves no doubt about it. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739062",
"author": "Thomas Anderson",
"timestamp": "2024-03-07T11:08:20",
"content": "Cool idea, you can also use a combination of the copper layer and solder mask to get better definition on the text and lines. The silkscreen is pretty low res usually, but the copper layers can be... | 1,760,371,983.775809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/best-of-both-worlds-the-macpad/ | Best Of Both Worlds: The MacPad | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"ipad",
"macbook",
"sidecar",
"touch screen",
"vision pro"
] | Despite a growing demand for laptop-tablet hybrid computers from producers like Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft, Apple has been stubbornly withdrawn this arena despite having arguably the best hardware and user experiences within the separate domains of laptop and tablet. Charitably one could speculate that this is because Apple’s design philosophy mandates keeping the user experiences of each separate, although a more cynical take might be that they can sell more products if they don’t put all the features their users want into a single device. Either way, for now it seems that if you want a touchscreen MacBook
you’ll have to build one yourself like the MacPad from [Federico]
.
This project started as simply providing a high-quality keyboard and mouse for an Apple Vision Pro, whose internal augmented reality keyboard is really only up to the task of occasionally inputting a password or short string. For more regular computing, [Federico] grabbed a headless MacBook which had its screen removed. This worked well enough that it triggered another line of thought that if it worked for the Vision Pro it might just work for an iPad Pro as well. Using Apple tools like Sidecar makes this almost trivially easy from a software perspective, although setting up the iPad as the only screen, rather than an auxiliary screen, on the MacBook did take a little more customization than normal.
The build goes beyond the software side of setting this up, though. It also includes a custom magnetic mount so that the iPad can be removed at will from the MacBook, freeing both the iPad for times when a tablet is the better tool and the MacBook for when it needs to pull keyboard duty for the Vision Pro. Perhaps the only downsides are that this only works seamlessly when both devices are connected to the same wireless network and that setting up a headless MacBook without a built-in screen takes a bit of extra effort. But with everything online and working it’s nearly the perfect Apple 2-in-1 that users keep asking for. If you’re concerned about the cost of paying for an iPad Pro and a Macbook just to get a touchscreen, though,
take a look at this device which adds a touchscreen for only about a dollar
.
Thanks to [Stuart] for the tip! | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6738992",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2024-03-07T06:17:15",
"content": "At least at the time I was still using macbooks, they weren’t the walled gardens that iOS devices were. So you could actually use them for meaningful things. It made sense at the time to only use the iPa... | 1,760,371,984.079257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/harvard-claims-breakthrough-in-anode-behavior-of-solid-state-lithium-batteries/ | Harvard Claims Breakthrough In Anode Behavior Of Solid State Lithium Batteries | Dave Rowntree | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"dendrite",
"Harvard University",
"lithium battery",
"pouch cell",
"silicon anode",
"solid state"
] | One of the biggest issues facing the solid-state lithium-based batteries we all depend upon is of the performance of the anode; the transport of lithium ions and minimization of dendrite formation are critical problems and are responsible for charge/discharge rates and cell longevity. A team of researchers at Harvard have
demonstrated a method for using a so-called constriction-susceptible structure on a silicon anode material in order to promote direct metal lithium deposition
, as opposed to the predominant alloying reaction. After the initial silicon-lithium alloy layer is formed, subsequent layers are pure lithium. Micrometre-scale silicon particles at the anode constrain the lithiation process (i.e. during charging) where free lithium ions are pushed by the charge current towards the anode area. Because the silicon particles are so small, there is limited surface area for alloying to occur, so direct metal plating of lithium is preferred, but crucially it happens in a very uniform manner and thus does not tend to promote the formation of damaging metal dendrites.
Current solid-state silicon-anode lithium batteries suffer from anode expansion during charging, which limits their practicality in liquid electrolyte applications. This research demonstrates that such anodic swelling can be mitigated by using silicon particles at the anode, and thus paves the way to better liquid electrolyte batteries, of the kind we use every day. In the meantime, the team demonstrated using a hybrid lithium-silicon-germanium anode structure together with multiple electrolyte layers, in a solid-state configuration. They measured improved cycling stability and capacity retention, even at very high current densities, in both coil and pouch cell configurations.
What this means in real terms — if it can be applied to the common liquid-type pouch cell — is higher charging rates, longer cell life and higher charge density. All very desirable goals.
If this research is hard to follow, we get you, it’s complicated stuff. Here’s a primer on
lithium batteries to get you started
, and
a practical guide to acquiring and handling them
once you want to get your hands dirty. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6738998",
"author": "Agammamon",
"timestamp": "2024-03-07T06:31:09",
"content": "We’ve seen a lot of different ‘breakthroughs’ in batteries over the last decade – none of them are making it into production.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,371,983.980652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/floss-weekly-episode-773-nodebb-dont-do-the-math/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 773: NodeBB — Don’t Do The Math | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"node.js",
"NodeBB"
] | This week, Jonathan Bennett and Jeff Massie talk with
Julian Lam
about
NodeBB
! It’s modern forum software that actually has some neat tricks up its proverbial sleeves. From forking of forum threads when conversations differ, to new integration with ActivityPub and Mastodon. It’s forums like you’ve never quite seen them.
—
https://nodebb.org/
—
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/
—
https://community.nodebb.org/user/julian
—
https://fosstodon.org/@nodebb
—
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17684/nodebb-receives-nlnet-ngi0-core-grant
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Next week, we’re talking with Herbert Wolverson about Rust!
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 | [] | 1,760,371,984.037432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/the-16-pcb-robot/ | The $16 PCB Robot | Al Williams | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"pcb robot",
"robot"
] | It is a fun project to build a simple robot but, often, the hardest part these days is creating the mechanical base. [Concrete Dog] has a new open source design for
stoRPer
that uses a PC board as the base. The board has a Raspberry Pi Pico and motor drivers. The modular design allows you to add to it easily and use custom wheels. The video below shows some treaded wheels and some mechanum wheels with gears.
There are mounting holes for sensors and also a way to put another deck above to hold other circuits, power, or whatever you like. There’s lots you could do with this as a starting point.
Some of the parts are 3D printed, like the motor mounts, for example. This offers some flexibility on motors. There are even files for printing PLA wheels with TPU treads that look like they would work well.
The idea is that with a 3D printer and the PC board, you should be able to build something easily. Obviously, you’ll need to find options for motors. Still, with a populated board, many other parts are printable or easy to repurpose. For example, the video mentions using repurposed vape batteries as a power source.
We were a little disappointed there was no video of the little robots doing anything, but if you’ve programmed these sorts of robots before, you know they can be a lot of fun and very capable, especially with a Pi Pico on board.
You could argue that
you don’t need four wheels
to do this. That does
require strange wheels
, though, and we bet the stoRPer will do better on terrain with the right wheels, too. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6738893",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-03-06T23:35:57",
"content": "It’s a simple idea to use the PCB as part of the mechanical construction but there is a hidden problem with this. Ceramic parts such as MMLC capacitors and resistors are very brittle and break easily when... | 1,760,371,984.352514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/how-powerful-should-an-electric-bike-be-the-uk-is-asking/ | How Powerful Should An Electric Bike Be? The UK Is Asking | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"250V",
"electric bike",
"uk"
] | As electric drives sweep their way to dominance in the automotive world, there’s another transport sector in which their is also continuing apace. Electric-assisted bicycles preserve the feeling of riding a bike as you always have, along with an electric motor to effortlessly power the rider over hill and dale. European electric two-wheelers are limited to a legal top speed of about 15 miles per hour and a 250 watt motor, but in a post-Brexit dash for independence
the British government are asking whether that power should be increased to 500 watts
.
The Westminster politicians think such a move will make electric bikes more attractive to consumers, and along with a move to motorcycle-style throttles rather than pedal-to-go throttles they want it to accelerate the take-up of greener transport in a country with plenty of hills. Meanwhile cycling groups and safety groups are concerned, the former whether the move is needed at all, and the latter over the fire risk from more powerful battery packs.
The Hackaday electric bike stable
gives us a bit of experience on the matter, and our take is that with a 15 mile-per-hour limit there’s little point in upping the motor power. There’s a 350 watt European limit for three-wheelers though, which we could see would really benefit from a raise if applied to cargo bikes. We can however see that a readily-available supply of cheap 500 W motors would be worth having. | 119 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "6738774",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-03-06T19:34:56",
"content": "Oi you got a loicense for that electric bike, mate?Wow, they’re increasing the wattage limit instead of cutting it. Very nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,371,984.522873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/06/the-1970s-computer-a-slice-of-computing/ | The 1970s Computer: A Slice Of Computing | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"amd",
"bit slice",
"bitslice",
"cpu"
] | What do the HP-1000 and the DEC VAX 11/730 have in common with the video games Tempest and Battlezone? More than you might think. All of those machines, along with many others from that time period, used AM2900-family bit slice CPUs.
The bit slice CPU was a very successful product that could only have existed in the 1970s. Today, if you need a computer system, there are many CPUs and even entire systems on a chip to choose from. You can also get many small board-level systems that would probably do anything you want. In the 1960s, you had no choices at all. You built circuit boards with gates on the using transistors, tubes, relays, or — maybe — small-scale IC gates. Then you wired the boards up.
It didn’t take a genius to realize that it would be great to offer people a CPU chip like you can get today. The problem is the semiconductor technology of the day wouldn’t allow it — at least, not with any significant amount of resources. For example, the Motorola MC14500B from 1977 was a one-bit microprocessor, and while that had its uses, it wasn’t for everyone or everything.
The Answer
The answer was to produce as much of a CPU as possible in a chip and make provisions to use multiple chips together to build the CPU. That’s exactly what AMD did with the AM2900 family. If you think about it, what is a CPU? Sure, there are variations, but at the core, there’s a place to store instructions, a place to store data, some way to pick instructions, and a way to operate on data (like an ALU — arithmetic logic unit). Instructions move data from one place to another and set the state of things like I/O devices, ALU operations, and the like.
Basic bitslice CPU from the AMD data book
Sure, that’s an oversimplification, but it can be stretched to describe most traditional CPUs. The AMD chips provided a 4-bit data path that could be chained together. Other chips in the family could manage memory (including, optionally, DMA) and take care of bookkeeping between slices. You could build an 8-bit machine with two slices, a 12-bit machine with three, and so on.
Not only did this allow fewer ICs than using conventional chips, it also allowed bipolar logic which — especially at the time — was faster but not as dense as NMOS or CMOS. Chips like the AM2900 family let you create flexible CPUs. They fit your application and ran fast compared to what you might be able to do using other methods.
Microcoding
Microcode is common in many CPUs, and bitslice CPUs were no exception. For example, you might have a very long microcode instruction where each register has a separate read and write line. If you had eight registers, that’s 16 bits just in those controls. Then you might also have a function code (4 bits) and a bit indicating if the condition codes should update. Now, each “instruction” is 21 bits. That’s longer than you want for, say, an 8-bit machine, so you define instructions that execute microcode.
Pinout of AM2901
For example, an instruction to add register A to register B and leave the result in B might have three microcode steps. The first would gate register A and B to the data bus and assert the code that makes the ALU add. Then, the second instruction would put the result on the databus and command the B register to read the databus. The final microcode instruction would jump to the main part of the microcode that reads the next instruction and continues the program.
That’s how you’d typically design a bitslice CPU. An AM2909 , AM2910, or AM2911 (microprogram sequencers) would address a microprogram store ROM, which would feed commands to an array of AM2901 chips. The 40-pin AM2901 came in several variations (e.g., AM2901B) each having technology improvements to make them smaller and faster.
The microprogram store would then orchestrate the fetching of instructions and their execution. Presumably, the microprogram was relatively small compared to the real software, so your ROM with the microcode could be smaller than the ROM containing your actual application.
Cooperation
Of course, you can’t do everything just by adding another chip. They have to cooperate. For example, there is an F output on each chip that is open collector. You tie all the F outputs together with a pull-up resistor. If any CPU slice has a non-zero result, it will pull down the F output. Therefore, if the F output is high, then the entire result (however many bits that may be) must be zero.
Handling carry is also a problem. If your first slice adds 1111+0001 the answer isn’t really 0000. It is 0000 + a carry. You can simply wire up each Cn+4 output to the next chip’s Cn input to get ripple carry, but that will create a speed penalty that gets worse as you add slices. You can also use an AM2902 to “look ahead” for better performance. Each 2902 could handle four slices or 16 bits. If you wanted to go beyond that, you could use one AM2902 to look ahead for up to another four AM2902s, each of which handled four CPU slices. Presumably, it would be possible to extend this scheme further if you wanted to go beyond 64 bits, although in 1975, that might not have been your biggest problem with building a machine that large.
Shifting and multiplication required cooperation, too. It was common to use a multiplexer at each end of the chain to determine the source of new bits when shifting. It just depended on what you needed.
Customization
That’s one interesting thing about using bit slice. You could design just what you needed. Why build a 32-bit machine if you needed 24-bits for the task at hand? Why use multiplexers to enable a rotate instruction that you will never use?
These days, we take a building block and make it fit our problem. With bitslice, you made a CPU that exactly fit what you needed. There were many tidbits about how to do different operations like fetching instructions, multiplying, or byte swapping in the
AM2900 data book
.
That data book also shows the chips you’d need, like AM2902s or the 48-pin AM2903 “Superslice” with extendable registers, multipliers, division, and other special circuits onboard.
Evolution
The AM2900 family was very successful. The original AM2901 started out on a very large die using low-power Schottky and could operate at 80 nanoseconds. By 1978 — three years later, the AM2901B die was less than half the size and could handle 50 nanoseconds. By 1981, the AM2901C used ECL internally and could do 37 nanoseconds on the same die. By 1979, you could even get a floating point coprocessor (the AMD9511).
These were simple devices because you needed multiple chips to support it and multiple AM2901s to do anything bigger than four bits. The original AM2901, for example, had only 540 gates onboard. Yet they found their way into everything from workstations and music synthesizers to video games. Because of their popularity, there were many second-source suppliers for the device, and it is still possible to find new old stock. There were even Soviet copies produced.
More Bitslice
Many of the CPUs made with the AM2900 were proprietary or military. But if you want to see one that has a good bit of documentation, here’s
a 1980 Master’s thesis on implementing a Nova 1200-compatible CPU
using the technology — well, part of one, anyway.
The AM2900 wasn’t the only game in town. In 1974, National Semiconductor’s IMP and Intel’s 3000-series were available. In addition, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Fairchild, Raytheon, and others made similar devices. But for various reasons, the AM2900 is what most people think of when they remember bitslice CPUs. In fact, the Master’s thesis about the Nova CPU also has a table of other bitslice tech and the reason they didn’t use any of the other ones. For example, some of the devices used PMOS, which was slow. Others used ECL, a fast technology with a deserved reputation for being difficult to use. Another
thesis
from 1976 has similar logic for selecting the AM2900.
Want more?
[Ken Shirriff]
took an ECL variant of the AM2901 apart
. There’s also
a book from 1980
you can read. There is also
a ton of documents on a Gopher server
(not kidding). If your browser doesn’t handle Gopher — and that won’t surprise us — try one of the many
Gopher proxies
.
The 16-bit computer design example
is especially worth a look. Want a more complex example? Here’s a blazing-fast 8080 CPU built with bitslice. Over on
Hackaday.io
, [zpekic] recently built this 8080 and ran tiny Basic on it (see the video if you don’t believe it).
The Xerox Star 8010 used the
AM2900 in 1981
. Cost less than $17,000! Luckily, you can
emulate one if you like
. For that matter, you can sort of
emulate the AM2900
using Java, although it might not work for every possible design (tip: download from the releases). | 46 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6738773",
"author": "Correct-o-bot",
"timestamp": "2024-03-06T19:28:59",
"content": "> You could build an 8-bit machine with two slices, a 24-bit machine with three, and so on.Shouldn’t that be six slices for a 24-bit machine?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,371,984.240386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/motherboard-revived-with-simplest-1-8v-spi-shifter-ever/ | Motherboard Revived With Simplest 1.8V SPI Shifter Ever | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"1.8v logic",
"level shifter",
"level shifting",
"Ryzen"
] | If you have ever had to fix a modern desktop motherboard, you might have noticed that the BIOS (UEFI) SPI flash is 1.8V – which means you can no longer use a Raspberry Pi or a CH341 adapter directly, and you’d need to use a 1.8V level shifter of some sort. Now, some of us can wait for a 1.8V level shifter adapter from an online store of your choosing, but [treble] got a “BIOS flash failed” motherboard from Facebook Marketplace, and
decided to make it work immediately.
She tells us a story about reviving the motherboard, and there’s one thing she shows that is interesting in particular – a very simple way to level shift 3.3V signals from a
serprog-flashed Pi Pico
down to the 1.8V that the flash chip required, something you are guaranteed to be able to build out of the parts in your parts bin, only requiring nine resistors and an NPN transistor. If you ever need to reflash BIOS on a modern motherboard, take note. As for 1.8V rail, she ended up tapping the 1.8V power pin of the SPI chip the motherboard itself to power the chip while programming it.
In the end, after swapping the two BIOS chips places and fixing a broken trace mishap, the motherboard booted, and works wonderfully to this day, a much-needed upgrade to [treble]’s toolkit that allows her to do RISC-V cross-compiling with ease nowadays. This is not the first time we see people reflash modern boards with 1.8V chips – if you want to learn more, check out
this incredibly detailed writeup!
Need to do some further debugging?
Use your Pico as a POST card! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739474",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2024-03-08T05:33:25",
"content": "Cool save. Did you pay full price for the mobo. I tend to offer scrap value for the ones that will not at least POST. I get a lot of used computes and the POST is where I draw the line, those that do and t... | 1,760,371,984.291886 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/an-esp32-multifactor-totp-generator/ | An ESP32 MultiFactor TOTP Generator | Dave Rowntree | [
"Security Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32-WROVER-32",
"lcd",
"MFA",
"platformio",
"totp",
"visual studio code"
] | MFA, or multifactor authentication, is a standard security feature these days. However, it can be a drag to constantly reach into one’s pocket, scroll to Google Authenticator (other MFA applications are available!), and find the correct TOTP code to log in to a site for a short while. [Allan Oricil] felt this pain point, so they took the problem by the horns and created a
desktop MFA TOTP generator
to make life just that little bit easier.
TOTP, which stands for
Time-based One-Time Password
, is a security measure that uses a device or application to provide unique codes that expire after a short time. Two-factor authentication requires a physical item (something you have), such as a key or swipe card, and knowledge of a fact (something you know), like a password, rather than relying on a single factor. This approach ensures a higher level of security. [Allan]’s project is a physical thing one would use with a password or key file.
Utilising the snappily titled
Sunton ESP32-2432S028 EVB
, based around the Espressif ESP32-WROVER-32 module and a generic touch screen, the neat little package is intended for custom IoT projects. However, we can use it for practically anything. The project uses the
PlatformIO
infrastructure and associated plugins for VSCode, which are a winning combination if you ask us. The service details and associated secret strings are stored as plain text files on an SD card, so moving from one physical device to another and adding new services is simple. If you’re wondering why a physical device needs a Wi-Fi connection, this is to sync the RTC (the local measure of ‘time’ for that TOTP) with a downstream NTP server. If you don’t do this, you quickly get out of sync with your target services, and your codes could expire prematurely or even fail outright.
If you want to read more, see
our guide to Two-Factor Authentication
. Regarding hardware implementations, here’s a
sweet macropad-based solution
, and a
tiny one using a BadUSB for good
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739301",
"author": "Mungojerry",
"timestamp": "2024-03-07T21:05:27",
"content": "I came here for the Top Of The Pops generator.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6739533",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2024-0... | 1,760,371,984.583994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/micro-jeep-model-kit-is-both-business-card-and-portfolio/ | Micro Jeep Model Kit Is Both Business Card And Portfolio | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"3d printed",
"business card",
"craft cutter",
"Jeep",
"kit card",
"model kit",
"vinyl cutter"
] | When finding work in product design and prototyping, two things are important to have at hand: a business card, and a sample of one’s work. If one can combine those, even better. Make it unique and eye-catching, and you’re really onto something. That seems to have been the idea behind [agepbiz]’s 1:64 scale micro Jeep model kit that serves as an
“overcomplicated” business card
.
Complete with box and labels in a shrink-wrapped package.
At its heart, the kit is a little print-in-place model kit that looks a lot like larger injection-molded model kits. Completing it is a custom-made box with custom labels, and it’s even shrink-wrapped. The whole thing fits easily in the palm of a hand.
There’s a lot of different tools effectively used to make the whole thing. The model card itself is 3D printed in multiple filament colors, and the box is constructed from carefully glued cardstock. The labels are custom printed, and a craft cutter (which has
multiple uses for a hobbyist
) takes care of all the precise cutting. It’s an awfully slick presentation, and the contents do not disappoint.
Get a closer look in the video, embedded just below. And if you like what you see, you’re in luck because we’ve seen [agepbiz]’s work before in
this mini jet fighter, complete with blister pack
. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6739279",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-03-07T20:01:55",
"content": "Well I’m all for saving fuel but I don’t think I can drive around in that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6739346",
"author": "marz",
"tim... | 1,760,371,984.636889 |
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