url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173 values | publish_date stringclasses 1 value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/hf-in-small-spaces/ | HF In Small Spaces | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"capacitor",
"ham",
"loop",
"mag loop",
"openwspr",
"radio",
"tuner",
"wspr"
] | Generally, the biggest problem a new ham radio operator will come across when starting out on the high frequency (HF) bands is finding physical space for the antennas. For a quick example, a dipole antenna for the 20 m band will need around 10 m of wire, and the lower frequencies like 80 m need about four times as much linear space. But if you’re willing to trade a large space requirement for a high voltage hazard instead,
a magnetic loop antenna might be just the ticket
.
Loop antennas like these are typically used only for receiving, but in a pinch they can be used to transmit as well. To tune the antennas, which are much shorter than a standard vertical or dipole, a capacitor is soldered onto the ends, which electrically lengthens the antenna. [OM0ET] is using two loops of coax cable for the antenna, with each end soldered to one half of a dual variable capacitor which allows this antenna to tune from the 30 m bands to the 10 m bands, although he is using it mostly for WSPR on 20 m. His project also includes the use of an
openWSPR
module, meaning that he doesn’t have to dedicate an entire computer to run this mode.
The main downsides of antennas like these is that they are not omnidirectional, are not particularly good at transmitting, and develop a significantly high voltage across the capacitor as
this similar mag loop antenna project demonstrated
. But for those with extreme limitations on space or who, like [OM0ET] want a simple, small setup for running low-power applications like WSPR they can really excel. In fact,
WSPR is a great mode for getting on the air at an absolute minimum of cost
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727325",
"author": "Tracy",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T06:28:09",
"content": "With a MagLoop antenna I was able to talk SSB (voice) from Washington State to Japan with only 5 watts of power. Mostly 40 meter and 20 meter bands. I had to time it for the gray line, so there was about ... | 1,760,372,019.516696 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/why-not-try-a-diac/ | Why Not Try A DIAC? | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"ac",
"AC mains",
"diac",
"power control"
] | There are plenty of electronic components which were once ubiquitous but once the niche which led to their existence has passed, they fade away to remain a junkbox curio. The DIAC is the subject of
a recent ElectronicsNotes video
, and while it might not quite yet have slid into total obscurity yet it’s definitely not the most common of parts in 2023.
If you’ve encountered one it will almost certainly be in the trigger circuit of a lighting dimmer or motor controller, where its bidirectional breakover makes for symmetrical control of a triac gate. This extremely simple circuit allows for perfect control of AC-powered devices, and could once be found everywhere. Its demise over recent years tells an interesting story of our changing use of electricity, as not only have other devices such as smart lights and brushless motors appeared which preclude traditional dimmers, but also we now demand better RF performance from our lighting controls.
The DIAC is still a handy part to know about, and you can take a look at the video below the break. We would normally try to link to another Hackaday story using a DIAC, but is it telling that we couldn’t find one? If you can, link it in the comments! | 31 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727320",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T05:59:51",
"content": "240VAC scary! Me use 3.3V",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727353",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T11:04:44",
... | 1,760,372,019.64416 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/recovering-a-busted-video-capture-device-with-firmware-flashing-tricks/ | Recovering A Busted Video Capture Device With Firmware Flashing Tricks | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"buyitfixit",
"capture card",
"firmware",
"repair"
] | Sometimes, you have a piece of hardware that just up and stops working on you. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to toss something broken and move on. [BuyItFixIt], as you imagine, makes it their purpose to, well, fix things instead. Their latest efforts involved
resurrecting a dead AVerMedia Live Gamer 2 Plus capture device sourced off eBay.
The device was advertised as being dead, with no power. Probing around the board when powered up showed that there was some basic activity going on with one of the flash chips, but the device simply wouldn’t spring to life. This suggested that perhaps the flash had become corrupted, which was confirmed when reading the chip mostly returned 0xFF. Sadly, the device was so badly bricked that the usual update methods via SD card simply wouldn’t work.
Eventually, hunting down a debug header provided a way in. [BuyItFixIt] was able to find a way to flash firmware over this connection instead, but there was a problem. The firmware they had was formatted for loading via SD card, and wouldn’t work for the debug mode entry route. Instead, getting the device going would require recovering firmware from a similar working device, and then using that as a guide to assemble a proper workable firmware update to get the device back to an operational state.
It’s a great tale of perseverance and triumph, particularly given many would give up after the first update attempt failed. We’ve seen [BuyItFixIt]
pull off some heroic repairs before, too
. Video after the break. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727356",
"author": "Edgar Vice",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T12:22:29",
"content": "This accent is killing me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727375",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T13:22:48",
... | 1,760,372,019.255082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/tricky-3d-printed-joinery-problem-give-heat-staking-a-try/ | Tricky 3D Printed Joinery Problem? Give Heat Staking A Try | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"3d print",
"chamfer",
"heat-staking",
"joint",
"layer lines",
"mortise and tenon"
] | When you just can’t 3D print something as a monolithic part, you’re going to have to join pieces together. In such cases, most of us instinctively include threaded inserts or nut slots in the design, or even reach for a tube of CA glue. But perhaps you should be thinking more along the lines of
heat-staking your printed parts together
.
Although you might not be familiar with the term, if you’ve looked inside anything made out of plastic, chances are good you’ve seen a heat-staked joint. As [Richard Sewell] explains, a heat-staked joint is nothing more than the classic mortise-and-tenon made from plastic where the tenon stands proud of the joint face so it can be softened with heat. The tenon spreads out so the joint can’t be pulled apart. A variant on the theme includes a mortise with a generous chamfer so the melted tenon can spread out, providing not only extra resistance to pull-out be also a more flush surface.
To melt the joint, [Richard] simply uses a soldering iron and a little pressure. To spread out both the heat and the force a bit, he uses the barrel of the iron rather than a tip, although we could see a broad chisel tip being used for smaller joints. Either way, a layer of Kapton tape helps keep the iron from getting gunked up with melted plastic. [Richard] lists a host of advantages for this kind of plastic joinery, including eliminating the need for additional hardware. But we think the best feature of this joint is that by avoiding monolithic prints, each aspect of a part can have its layer lines optimized.
While it probably isn’t applicable everywhere, heat-staking looks like a technique to keep in mind. We’d love to see [Stefan] over at
CNC Kitchen
do some of his testing magic on these joints, like he did for
threaded inserts
. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727224",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T22:38:26",
"content": "You see it in some calculators.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6727236",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timest... | 1,760,372,019.306128 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/03/avocado-shaped-robot-makes-its-way-through-the-rainforest/ | Avocado-Shaped Robot Makes Its Way Through The Rainforest | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"avocado",
"rainforest",
"robot",
"Tether"
] | When you think of a robot getting around, you probably think of something on wheels or tracks. Maybe you think about a bipedal walking robot, more common in science fiction than our daily lives. In any case, researchers went way outside the norm
when they built an avocado-shaped robot for exploring the rainforest.
The robot is the work of doctoral students at ETH Zurich, working with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape research. The design is optimized for navigating the canopy of the rainforest, where a lot of the action is. Traditional methods of locomotion are largely useless up high in the trees, so another method was needed.
The avocado robot is instead tethered to a cable which is affixed to a high branch on a tree, or even potentially a drone flying above. The robot then uses a winch to move up and down as needed. A pair of ducted fans built into the body provide the thrust necessary to rotate and pivot around branches or other obstacles as it descends. It also packs a camera onboard to help it navigate the environment autonomously.
It’s an oddball design, but it’s easy to see how this design makes sense for navigating the difficult environment of a dense forest canopy. Sometimes,
intractable problems require creative solutions. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727183",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T18:14:05",
"content": "Better than strapping a camera to a monkey.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727185",
"author": "Hm",
"timestamp": "2024-02-03T18:27:02",
... | 1,760,372,019.769432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/give-your-projects-a-retro-tint-with-this-8051-based-arduino-uno/ | Give Your Projects A Retro Tint With This 8051-based Arduino Uno | Julian Scheffers | [
"News"
] | [
"8051",
"arduino",
"retrocomputing"
] | Most of us are familiar with the Arduino Uno, a starting place for electronics projects since 2010. But what if the Arduino Uno was released in 1980? You’d probably get something like [ElectroBoy]’s
8051-based Arduino Uno
.
Close-up shot of the 87C752, an 8051 with EPROM
The Arduino Uno-compatible board has an MCS-51 (often called 8051 instead) instead of the usual ATmega328P/ATmega168. Specifically, [ElectroBoy] uses the
AT89S52
. Like the ATmega microcontrollers, the AT89S52 has an 8-bit CPU with a
Harvard architecture
and very similar GPIO capabilities. Unlike the ATmega, however, the original MCS-51 has a
CISC
CPU (as opposed to ATmega being
RISC
) and a release date about 36 years earlier.
The board itself also has some differences from the original Arduino Uno. First of all, it has a USB type-C port, which is definitely a bonus. Secondly, it’s simpler: No USB-UART (which also means no USB programming), a different pin layout (Arduino shields likely won’t fit) and more I/Os than the ATmegas have. Sure, it’s not as practical as an actual Arduino Uno, but it’s definitely cool for our retrocomputing nerds. | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727855",
"author": "brad",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T21:35:14",
"content": "I’m confused:>”The Arduino Uno-compatible board …”>”No USB-UART (which also means no USB programming), a different pin layout (Arduino shields likely won’t fit) and more I/Os than the ATmegas have”How exactl... | 1,760,372,019.382213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/an-apple-with-a-pendulum/ | An Apple ][ With A Pendulum | Jenny List | [
"clock hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Apple 2",
"clock",
"pendulum"
] | Clocks are a favourite project here, and we can say we’ve seen all conceivable types over the years. Just a software clock on a retrocomputer perhaps isn’t the coolest among them, but [Willem van der Jagt ]’s Apple][ clock has a little bit extra.
It takes its time reference from a real pendulum, on an antique wall clock
.
A proximity sensor next to a metal pendulum gives an easy way to generate a digital pulse on each pass, but leaves the question of how to transfer it to the computer. With computers of this age the circuitry is surprisingly simple, and in this case he’s sending an interrupt to the machine which the software can pick up for its timing. There is a small logic circuit between the sensor and the interrupt allowing him to gate the pendulum line, triggered from one of the output lines exposed on the Apple’s game port.
The code is written in assembly, and counts the number of pendulum swings before incrementing the number of minutes. It’s an enjoyable reminder of the days when the architecture of a computer was this accessible, and for those of us whose past lies in the Sinclair world it’s also been a little peek into something of how the Apple works.
We think this is the first pendulum-driven retrocomputer clock we’ve seen here at Hackaday, as you might understand when a clock has a pendulum it’s usually
a more traditional design
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6728044",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2024-02-06T10:56:18",
"content": "Somehow I’ve hoped that the pendulum would generate the clock signal for the CPU :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6728065",
"author": "Ad... | 1,760,372,019.215975 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/biomedical-engineering-hack-chat/ | Biomedical Engineering Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, February 7 at noon Pacific for the
Biomedical Engineering Hack Chat
with
Nyeli Kratz
!
Although medical doctors and engineers generally work in completely different domains, there’s a fair amount of overlap between the disciplines. At the end of the day, they both solve problems, and while doctors clearly focus on the biological aspects of disease, there just might come a point where the problem has to be addressed with engineering principles. From the intricate design of an artificial hip to the electrical interface between an amputee’s nervous system and a prosthetic limb, biomedical engineers can make a tremendous contribution to positive patient outcomes.
Nyeli Kratz, a recent biomedical engineering grad, has worked on quite a few engineering solutions to diseases. Many of her projects, like
this stand-up mobility aid
or
a wheelchair attachment
that lets a tetraplegic father interact with his newborn child, seem aimed at making it easier for patients to interact with the world. She’ll stop by the Hack Chat to talk about these projects in particular as well as what the engineer brings to the table when it’s time to design hardware that heals.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, February 7 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,019.416251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/hackaday-europe-2024-is-on-and-we-want-you/ | Hackaday Europe 2024 Is On, And We Want You! | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"2024 hackaday europe",
"berlin",
"hackaday europe",
"Supercon"
] | Hackaday Europe is on again for 2024, and we couldn’t be more excited! If you’re a European hacker, and have always wanted to join us up for Supercon in the states, here’s your chance to do so without having to set sail across the oceans. It’s great to be able to get together with our continental crew.
Just like last time, we’ll be meeting up in Berlin at Motionlab, Bouchestrasse 12 for a weekend of talks and workshops. On paper, the event runs April 13th and 14th, but if you’re in town on Friday the 12th, we’ll be going out for drinks and socializing beforehand. Saturday starts up at 9 AM and is going to be full of presentations, with food throughout and our own mix of hacking and music running until 2 AM. Sunday starts up a little bit later with brunch and as many lightning talks as we can fit into the afternoon.
And as always, we want you to bring a project or two along to show and tell. Half the fun of an event like this, where everyone is on the same wavelength, is the mutual inspiration that lurks in nearly every random conversation. It’s like Hackaday, but in real life!
So without further ado:
get your tickets right here!
We have a limited number of early-bird tickets at $70, and then the remainder will go on sale for $142 (plus whatever fees).
Call for Participation
So who is going to be speaking at Hackaday Europe? You could be! We’re also opening up the Call for Participation right now, both for
talks
and for
workshops
. Whether you’ve presented your work live before or not, you’re not likely to find a more appreciative audience for epic hacks, creative constructions, or you own tales of hardware, firmware, or software derring-do.
Workshop space is limited, but if you want to teach a group of ten or so people your favorite techniques or build up a swarm of small robots, we’d love to hear from you.
All presenters get in free, of course, and we’ll give you an early-bird price even if we can’t fit you into the schedule. So firm up what you’d like to share, and get your proposal in before Feb 22.
The Badge
Part of the fun of an event like this is sharing what you’re working on with a rare like-minded crowd. True story: we came into last year’s Hackaday Berlin event with a raw idea for our own Superconference badge, that we needed to have done by November. Talks with [Schneider] about the lovely badge for the Chaos Communications Camp inspired us to use those sweet round screens, and a chat with [Stefan Holzapfel] convinced us of the possibility to run an audio DAC at DC.
So it’s fitting that we’ll be bringing the Vectorscope badge to Berlin, with some new graphics of course. If you didn’t catch it at Supercon, it’s a emulation of an old-timey X-Y mode oscilloscope and a DAC to drive it in software.
Folks had a great time hacking it at Supercon
, and you will too. It’s analog, it’s digital, and it’s got room for a lot of art. We’d love to see what you bring to it!
Thanks and See You Soon!
Of course, we can’t put on an event like this without help from our fantastic sponsors, so we’d like to say thanks to
DigiKey
for sponsoring not only the stateside Superconference, but also Hackaday Europe 2024. And as always, thanks to
Supplyframe
for making it all possible.
April is coming up fast, so get your proposals in and order your tickets now! We can’t wait to see you all. | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727800",
"author": "Mano",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T18:06:09",
"content": "Booked! We’ll see with Freddruppel for a talk :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6727815",
"author": "mikeselectricstuff",
"timestamp": "2024-02... | 1,760,372,019.577762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/building-robots-with-a-20x20-grid/ | Building Robots With A 20×20 Grid | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"chassis",
"modular hardware",
"robotics platform"
] | On autonomous robots, the most difficult challenges usually lie in the software and electronic realms, but the mechanics can also be very time consuming. To help address this challenge, [Nikodem Bartnik] is working
on the Open Robotic Platform (ORP)
, a modular robotics chassis system designed to make prototyping as easy and affordable as possible. Video after the break.
The ORP is governed by a set of design rules to maintain interchangeability. Most of the design rules are very open, but the cornerstone of ORP is its standardized mounting plates featuring a 20 mm grid pattern of 3.5 mm mounting holes. These plates can be stacked using connecting rods, creating a versatile foundation upon which various components can be mounted.
[Nikodem] is on a mission to create and collect an entire library of these modular components. From custom 3D-printed holders that accommodate sensors, motors, wheels and dev boards to homemade PCBs that snap directly onto the chassis, everything to get your robot rolling as soon as possible. While manufacturing methods and materials are not limited, 3D printing and laser cutting will likely be the most popular manufacturing technologies for making your own parts.
There are plenty of robotics platforms outdoor with different goals with
STEM education
and
agriculture
being popular. And of course don’t forget good old
LEGO Mindstorms
. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727779",
"author": "Rosmo",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T17:06:37",
"content": "Nice, I’ve done a little 10cm x 10cm one on the ORP rules. Just working on software for it nowhttps://rosmo-robot.github.io/zio/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,019.461419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/arctic-adventures-with-a-data-general-nova-ii-the-equipment/ | Arctic Adventures With A Data General Nova II — The Equipment | Chris Lott | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Computing",
"history",
"research",
"true stories"
] | As I walked into the huge high bay that was to be my part-time office for the next couple of years, I was greeted by all manner of abandoned equipment haphazardly scattered around the room. As I later learned, this place was a graveyard for old research projects, cast aside to be later gutted for parts or forgotten entirely. This was my first day on the job as a co-op student at the Georgia Tech Engineering Experiment Station (EES, since renamed to GTRI). The engineer who gave me the orientation tour that day pointed to a dusty electronic rack in one corner of the room. Steve said my job would be to bring that old minicomputer back to life. Once running, I would operate it as directed by the radar researchers and scientists in our group. Thus began a journey that resulted in an Arctic adventure two years later.
The Equipment
The computer in question was a Data General (DG) mini computer. DG was founded by former Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) employees in the 1960s. They introduced the 16-bit Nova computer in 1969 to compete with DEC’s PDP-8. I was gawking at a fully-equipped Nova 2 system which had been introduced in 1975. This machine and its accessories occupied two full racks, with an adjacent printer and a table with a terminal and pen plotter. There was little to no documentation. Just to turn it on, I had to pester engineers until I found one who could teach me the necessary front-panel switch incantation to boot it up.
Not all Novas are the same, as they were avaialble in various configurations and could also be upgraded in the field. That said, the basic specifications of this machine were as follows:
16-bit CPU
64 Kb magnetic core memory
Floating Point Arithmetic Unit
Ten-slot chassis
Two 9-track Tape Drives
Dual density
phase-encoded or NRZI
up to 10-1/2 in reels
Two Diablo Systems Hard Disks, each with
one fixed 5 MB platter
one removeable 5 MB platter
Paper Tape puncher / reader
GE Terminet Quasi-Line Printer
Nicholet Zeta Pen Plotter
ADM-3A Terminal
At twenty years old, this was a dream come true. I had programmed a TRS-80 in high school which is a very hands-on experience. I had also programmed in Fortran using the Georgia Tech central mainframe computer, which was the complete opposite of hands-on. Enshrined behind glass walls, you handed punched cards to the operator and waited around for your printouts. The notion of having a “big” computer all to myself was both exciting and a bit scary.
Who is Fred?
ERDAS System for Peach Tree Orchard Analysis, 1979
Everyone fondly called this computer “Fred Nova”. The story I heard was that the system was initially procured by a researcher named Fred Dyer. But when I recently tried to track this story down, it wasn’t so clear. Back in the 1970s, these Nova mini-computers were both popular and affordable. There were quite a number of them at EES, used all around in different laboratories on different projects. You could almost say they were the IBM PC or the Raspberry Pi of the era — cheap enough to own multiple systems, and veratile enough to pass around to new projects as old ones wrapped up. I’m pretty sure that this particular Nova originated from a project called Earth Resources Data Analysis System (ERDAS). This was a NASA-sponsored project to study the decline of peach tree orchards throughout the Southeastern United States.
Switches and Blinkin’ Lights
The first hurdle I overcame was how do you boot such a computer? The TRS-80 had a power switch and it magically came to life. The campus mainframe never turned off as far as I knew. The Nova minicomputer just sat there doing nothing when you turned it on. In modern computers, we have the BIOS which can be configured to boot from different devices, and there are tools like GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) to select between different OS partitions. Doing the same thing on the Nova was simpler but not at all obvious. There was a short program one had to key into the computer via the front panel. One of the values in the program selected the boot device. But I quickly discovered that this model had a special option for lazy operators. You only switched in the address of the device you wanted to boot from, and toggled the Program Load switch. This loaded a short boot program from the optional boot PROM, thus saving the painstaking process of toggling in a dozen or so words.
Nova Front Panel
What’s with all the switch toggling and blinking lights? Well this is the most basic way to interact with the computer, speaking its own language. The Nova family of computers had 16-bit words, and the front panel had a row of 16 toggle switches. Using these switches, you could store any value you wanted into any address, first toggling in the address into a register (indicated by lamps) followed by toggling in the data and loading it. If you are entering a program, thankfully the address register auto-incremented with each data load. The lamps showed the current address and data. While this process is tedious to the extreme, I found it really helpful in learning the computer inner workings. I also gained an deep appreciation for keyboard-based memory monitors.
One quirk of the Nova, and other machines of the era, is that the the panel and all the supporting ecosystem of documents used octal notation. This seems a strange choice for 16-bit word sizes. Indeed, by the time I encountered the Nova, most of the industry was using hexadecimal. Jumping back and forth between hex and octal was annoying, and I’m glad octal eventially fell out of favor. Hexadecimal makes more sense, given that word sizes of modern machines are almost always an integer multiple of the 4-bit hex nibbles,
Base eight is just like base ten, really — if you’re missing two fingers! – Tom Lehrer
Magnetic Core Memory
At the time, I was vaguely aware of magnetic core memory — just to the extent that it keeps its contents when power is removed. But I wondered if that property was helpful in the context of a mini-computer system, since that there were so many connected accessories. So one day I did a test. I fired up a large compilation that I knew would take a more than ten minutes. Once started, I went around to the back of the machine and yanked the big plug out of the wall. The front panel lights went out and all motors whirred down to a stop. Satisfied that it was really off, I went to lunch. Coming back an hour later, I plugged it back into the wall. To my surprise, it picked right up where it left off — comilation completed as if nothing had happened. Later, one of the engineers told me there was a small option board installed on this model which sensed power being removed, gaving the OS a few milliseconds to save a handful of CPU registers to scratchpad core memory.
Pseudo-line Printer
GE Terminet (Honeywell Bull) Pseudo-Line Printer, with the agreement of the Computer Museum NAM-IP, Belgium
At the campus mainframe, the printer was a true line printer that struck one entire line of text with one whack. This Nova’s printer was similar, but unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. It was 120 columns wide with 120 tightly-packed, individually-controlled hammers. In front of these hammers ran a long belt holding type fingers. The fingers contained a complete set of the printable characters, repeated a few times along its length. This belt was in continuous motion during operation. When printing, the printer would buffer one line of text, and then fire all the necessary hammers in sequence with the rotating belt of type fingers, each hammer striking it’s assigned letter at the precise moment that letter passed by. This isn’t exactly a line printer, but it sounded almost like one. Instead of one whack per line, there was a very quick burst of sound each line — like a stuttering swarm of angry mechanical wasps. It was a fascinating mechanism to behold and hear.
Nicholet Zeta Pen Plotter
Many of the assignments that I received from the researchers involved producing plots, and I used the plotter like that in the advertisement above — notice one feature is a starting price of less than $6000. The researchers would give me a complicated formula and / or measured experimental data, and request various plots. Quite often these programs would run for hours just to generate one plot, sometimes requiring overnight shift work. One scientist was writing a book at the time, and I made dozens of graphs and charts for him. For the next couple of decades, I would find those same graphs in various radar reference books. One plotter program they asked me to write was actually the opposite of a plotter — it was to input already printed graphs. One of the “pens” you could get was in fact a clear “bomb sight”, complete with cross-hairs. You would manually steer the pen over a desired point on the paper, line it up exactly, enter the value in user units on the termina, and press OK to digitize the point. That program turned out to be surprisingly simple. You first digitize the origin and a point along each axis, then just enter all the desired points along each curve of interest.
Programming
The Author’s Arctic Work Station
Most of the programming I did on this computer was in Fortran, although the EES used a preprocessor called Fortran Language Extended Control Structures ( FLECS ). FLECS took away some of the annoying aspects of Fortran by providing structured programming features, like IF-THEN-ELSE structures, DO-WHILE-UNTIL loops, and internal procedures (kind of like an inline function). But the most interesting project, the subject of this article series, was using assembly language to control custom hardware in order to record radar measurement data — in the frozen Arctic. I will begin covering that in part two. | 51 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727744",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T15:42:48",
"content": "In the 80’s when I was in the USAF, one of the test system I worked on used a GE Terminet 1200 with that belt of hammers. It was a testament to the skill of the designers to be able to track the position... | 1,760,372,019.862341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/starlinks-inter-satellite-laser-links-are-setting-new-record-with-42-million-gb-per-day/ | Starlink’s Inter-Satellite Laser Links Are Setting New Record With 42 Million GB Per Day | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"laser communication",
"Starlink"
] | Slide from the SpaceX Starlink presentation on mesh routing via the laser links. (Credit: PCMag/Michael Kan)
Although laser communication in space is far from novel, its wide-scale deployment as seen with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation has brought the technology to the forefront like never before. This was quite apparent during the SPIE Photonics West event on January 30th when [Michael Kan] and other journalists attended a
presentation
by SpaceX’s [Travis Brashears] on
the inter-satellite laser communication performance
that was first enabled with the Starlink v1.5 satellites.
Among
currently active
inter-satellite communication systems, Starlink is by far the most numerous and with the highest bandwidth, reaching over 42 PB per day across its over 9000 space lasers (yes, that is
over 9000
) for a 5.6 Tbps throughput. Since these satellites form a mesh network with their 100 Gbps laser transceivers, a big part of using it efficiently is to route any data with the least amount of latency while taking into account link distance (maximum of 5,400 km), link duration (up to multiple weeks) and presence of other Starlink satellites before they become within reach. With this complex mesh in LEO, this also means that a very high uptime can be accomplished, with a claimed 99.99% due to rapid route changing.
For the future, SpaceX has plans to not only keep upgrading its own Starlink satellites with better laser transceivers, but to also make them available to third-party satellites, as well as beam the lasers directly down to Earth for ground-based transceivers. The latter is still cutting edge, despite it being tested to
beam cat videos to Earth
from Deep Space. | 44 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727706",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2024-02-05T13:54:45",
"content": "I can not tell which is more accurate… the aim of those lasers or this comment. Let’s just end the discussion now with that one perfectly engineered comment.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,372,019.948134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/your-surface-rt-can-become-useful-again-with-raspberry-pi-os/ | Your Surface RT Can Become Useful Again, With Raspberry Pi OS | Jenny List | [
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"microsoft surface",
"Raspberry Pi OS",
"Surface RT"
] | Over the years there have been so many times when Microsoft came up with a product that so
nearly
got it right, but which tanked in the market because the folks at Redmond had more of an eye to what fitted their strategy than what the customer wanted. The Surface RT was one of these: while the hardware was at least as good if not better than Apple’s iPad, its ARM CPU and an ill-advised signed-apps-only policy meant the tablet couldn’t access the huge existing library of Windows software.
Consumers didn’t want a tablet with next-to-no apps, so it failed miserably. Never mind though, because [Michael MJD] has
a video showing how an RT can be given a new life from an unlikely source,
with the installation of Raspberry Pi OS.
The video pretty closely follows
this guide
, and involves creating a Raspberry Pi OS install medium modified with RT-specific kernel modules and device tree. It’s possible because the 32-bit ARM architecture is one of those which Raspberry Pi OS targets, and while a few things such as graphics acceleration don’t work, it’s still successful (if a little slow).
Oddly this is a technique not unlike one from the earliest days of the Raspberry Pi, when we remember people in Raspberry Pi Jams showing off the ancestor of the modern OS running on cheap ARM-based netbooks. In those cases the hack relied on transplanting the Pi userland over the device’s existing kernel, we’d be interested in an explanation of how the RT can use the Pi kernel without the famous Broadcom BLOB intended for the Pi.
We have a soft spot for the RT, as we said a good product held back by a very bad software decision. Seeing it take a new life years later is thus pleasing to us.
Surface RT image: Decade City,
CC BY 2.0
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726911",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T19:37:05",
"content": "“The Surface RT was one of these: while the hardware was at least as good if not better than Apple’s iPad, its ARM CPU and an ill-advised signed-apps-only policy meant the tablet couldn’t access the h... | 1,760,372,020.431508 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/will-there-be-any-pi-left-for-us/ | Will There Be Any Pi Left For Us? | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"floatation",
"IPO",
"stock exchange"
] | Our world has been abuzz with the news that Raspberry Pi are to float on the London Stock Exchange. It seems an obvious move for a successful and ambitious company, and as they seem to be in transition from a maker of small computers into a maker of chips which happen to also go on their small computers, they will no doubt be using the float to generate the required investment to complete that process.
New Silicon Needs Lots Of Cash
The most important product Raspberry Pi have ever made.
When a tech startup with immense goodwill grows in this way, there’s always a worry that it could mark the start of the decline. You might for instance be concerned that a floated Raspberry Pi could bring in financial whiz-kids who let the hobbyist products wither on the vine as they license the brand here and there and perform all sorts of financial trickery in search of shareholder value and not much else. Fortunately we don’t think that this will be the case, and Eben Upton has gone to great lengths to reassure the world that his diminutive computers are safe. That is however not to say that there might be pitfalls ahead from a hobbyist Pi customer perspective, so it’s worth examining what this could mean.
As we remarked last year,
the move into silicon is probably the most important part of the Pi strategy for the 2020s
. The RP2040 microcontroller was the right chip with the right inventory to do well from the pandemic shortages, and on the SBCs the RP1 all-in-one peripheral gives them independence from a CPU house such as Broadcom. It’s not a difficult prediction that they will proceed further into silicon, and it wouldn’t surprise us to see a future RP chip containing a fully-fledged SoC and GPU. Compared to their many competitors who rely on phone and tablet SoCs, this would give the Pi boards a crucial edge in terms of supply chain, and control over the software.
Raspberry Pi Are A Software Company. Yes, Really.
Oddly it’s this you’re buying, not the board. Raspbian Project,
CC BY-SA 4.0
.
We see a future risk in the flotation from a hobbyist perspective though, when it comes to that software. Oddly there is a convincing argument to be made that Raspberry Pi is not a hardware company but a software one. This is not because their product isn’t physical boards, but because it’s not the board which makes a Pi such a safe bet. There are a lot of other companies making Pi clones which are every bit as good as the Pi on paper, but what makes the Pi special is that almost none of them come with the breadth of software support that we see on the boards from Cambridge. If I buy a Pi I have been able to rely on OS updates and new kernels for over ten years now, a record that’s completely unmatched by their competitors except maybe the likes of the BeagleBone. So when I buy a Pi, if I want to use it, I’m really in most cases buying it for Raspberry Pi OS, not the PCB.
That risk comes in Raspberry Pi OS being a freely available open source operating system, which is behind the phenomenal success of the Pi line, but which is not a revenue stream for them in itself. We can’t see Eben Upton and the Pi people doing this, but if we were to imagine a corporate in the grip of hard-nosed bean counters, we could also imagine the prospect of trying to monetise their software crossing their minds. After all,
it would hardly be the first time this has happened
.
The Hackaday crystal ball is cloudly, but our view is that an expanded Raspberry Pi is more likely to go on to greater things than to make such a
faux pas
as we’ve described above. We look forward with anticipation to future RP silicon, and we’ll bring you more on the float as it appears. It’s worth remembering though, that the next decade is also likely to produce exciting developments in open source hardware. Will Hackaday readers be so worried about the direction of a commercial board when they can load a RISC-V SoC onto an FPGA without breaking the bank? The next few years are going to be exciting. | 72 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726890",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T18:08:32",
"content": "Sure there are plenty of companies which can produce something similar to the Pi but they’re just hanging on the coat tails of the Pi foundation and none of them are innovating, there’s not much that’s offer... | 1,760,372,020.221235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/hackaday-podcast-episode-255-balloon-on-the-moon-nanotech-goblets-and-usb-all-the-way/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 255: Balloon On The Moon, Nanotech Goblets, And USB All The Way | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Dan joined Elliot for a review of the best and brightest hacks of the week in Episode 0xFF, which both of us found unreasonably exciting; it’s a little like the base-2 equivalent of watching the odometer flip over to 99,999. If you know, you know. We had quite a bumper crop of coolness this week, which strangely included two artifacts from ancient Rome: a nanotech goblet of colloidal gold and silver, and a perplexing dodecahedron that ends up having a very prosaic explanation — probably. We talked about a weird antenna that also defies easy description, saw a mouse turned into the world’s worst camera, and learned how 3D-printed signs are a whole lot easier than neon, and not half bad looking either. As always, we found time to talk about space, like the legacy of
Ingenuity
and whatever became of inflatable space habitats. Back on Earth, there’s DIY flux, shorts that walk you up the mountain, and more about USB-C than you could ever want to know.
And don’t forget that to celebrate Episode 256 next week, we’ll be doing a special AMA segment where we’ll get all the regular podcast crew together to answer your questions about life, the universe, and everything. If you’ve got a burning question for Elliot, Tom, Kristina, Al, or Dan, put it down in the comment section and we’ll do our best to extinguish it.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Grab a copy for yourself
if you want to listen offline.
Episode 255 Show Notes:
News:
Next week, in honor of Podcast Episode 0 (or “256” if you’ve got the bits to spare), we’ll be having an Ask-Us-Anything, with as many of the Podcast regulars as we can fit onto one microphone. If you have questions for us, put ’em in the comments below!
What’s that Sound?
Congrats to [Ed from Virginia] who won a Podcast T-shirt by identifying the start-up music from
Donkey Kong
.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Ingenuity May Be Grounded, But Its Legacy Will Be Grand
Technology Demonstration Missions (TDM) – NASA
A Vintage Monitor Lives Again With A New Heart
Building A CRT And Bathing Yourself In X-rays
DIY Electron Accelerator
Build Your Own CRT TV
Getting Started With USB-C And Common Pitfalls With Charging And Data Transfer
A Handy OSHW USB Cable Tester For Your Toolkit
JITX Spits Out Handy USB Cable Tester
USB-C Cable Tester Is Compact And Affordable
All About USB-C: Resistors And Emarkers
All About USB-C: Cable Types
A Look At 3D Printed Professional LED Signage
Human-Interfacing Devices: The Descriptor Heist
USB HID Usage Tables
(PDF)
Nanotechnology In Ancient Rome? There Is Evidence
Gold and silver dichroic nanocomposite in the quest for 3D printing the Lycurgus cup
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Roman Dodecahedrons: A Mystifying Archaeological Find
Solved? The Roman Dodecahedron – YouTube
A Complete Exchange From Scratch For Your Rotary Dial Phones
A Mouse Becomes A Camera
Dan’s Picks:
Wearable Robot Makes Mountain Climbing A Breeze For Seniors
Flux, From Scratch
No Dish? Try A Portable Weave Helix Antenna
Can’t-Miss Articles:
3D Printering: Speed Is So Hot Right Now
The Past, Present, And Future Of Inflatable Space Habitats
Project Echo – Wikipedia | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726928",
"author": "Anders Nielsen",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T20:45:22",
"content": "That sounds like an exciting event! Here are some tailored questions for each of the hosts based on their individual expertise and contributions:Elliot Williams:Given your background in embedded sy... | 1,760,372,020.112153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/the-case-against-calibration-cubes/ | The Case Against Calibration Cubes | Danie Conradie | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"calibration",
"cnc kitchen",
"precision"
] | Calibration cubes have long been a staple for testing and adjusting 3D printers, but according to [Stefan] of
CNC Kitchen
, they’re not just ineffective—they could be leading us astray. In the
video after the break
he explains his reasoning for this controversial claim, and provides a viable alternative.
Such cubes are often used to calibrate the steps per millimeter for the printer’s steppers, but the actual dimensions of said cube can be impacted by over or under extrusion, in addition to how far the machine might be out of alignment. This can be further exacerbated by measuring errors due to elephant’s foot, over extruded corners, or just inaccuracies in the caliper. All these potential errors which can go unnoticed in the small 20 x 20 mm cube, while still leading to significant dimensional errors in larger prints
So what’s the solution? Not another cube. It’s something called the
“CaliFlower”
from [Adam] of Vector 3D. This is not a typical calibration model — it’s carefully designed to minimize measurement errors with ten internal and external measuring points with stops for your calipers. The model costs $5, but for your money you get a complete guide and spreadsheet to calculate the required of corrections needed in your firmware or slicer settings.
If you regularly switch materials in your 3D printer, [Stefan] also advises against adjusting steps per millimeter and suggests defining a scaling factor for each material type instead. With this method validated across different materials like PLA, PETG, ABS, and ASA, it becomes evident that material shrinkage plays a significant role in dimensional inaccuracy, not just machine error. While [Stefan] makes a convincing case against the standard calibration cube for dimensional calibration, he notes that is is still useful for evaluating general print quality and settings.
[Stefan] has always done rigorous testing to back his claims, and this video was no different. He has also tested the
effects of filament color on part strength
, the practicality of
annealing parts in salt
, and even
printing custom filament
. | 27 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726874",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T16:57:40",
"content": "If you want to calibrate the movement, then simply mount a (digital) caliper or dial indicator on the hot plate, and push it aside with the hot end. This gives you actual motion without artifacts caused b... | 1,760,372,020.371084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/this-week-in-security-glibc-ivanti-jenkins-and-runc/ | This Week In Security: Glibc, Ivanti, Jenkins, And Runc | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"glibc",
"Jenkins",
"Leaky Vessels",
"This Week in Security"
] | There’s a fun
buffer overflow problem in the Glibc
__vsyslog_internal()
function. This one’s a real rollercoaster, because logging vulnerabilities are always scary, but at a first look, it seems nearly impossible to exploit. The vulnerability relies on a very long program name, which can overflow an internal buffer. No binaries are going to have a name longer than 1024 bytes, so there’s no problem, right?
Let’s talk about
argv
. That’s the list of arguments that gets passed into the
main()
function of every Linux binary when it launches. The first string in that list is the binary name — except that’s a convention, and not particularly enforced anywhere. What really happens is that the
execve()
system call sets that list of strings. The first argument can be anything, making this an attacker-controlled value. And it doesn’t matter what the program is trying to write to the log, because the vulnerability triggers simply by writing the process name to a buffer.
There is a one-liner to test for a vulnerable Glibc:
exec -a "`printf '%0128000x' 1`" /usr/bin/su < /dev/null
and
the Qualys write-up
indicates that it can be used for an escalation of privilege attack. The good news is this seems to be a local-only attack. And on top of that, a pair of other lesser severity issues were found and fixed in glibc while fixing this one.
48 Hours to Rip and Repave
We’ve briefly covered the vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure/Policy Secure devices, but it seems we’ve failed to properly grasp the severity of this threat, given the
latest Emergency Directive from CISA
. Issued January 31st, it gives all of 48 hours for every US government network to yank the power cord from these devices. This is significant, as we’ve seen plenty of directives to install updates or mitigations, but this may be the first directive that includes full removal.
And then the instructions for getting a device back into service are fairly extreme, too. Complete factory reset, revoke all the certificates associated with the machine, and generally assume that your box has been completely owned. It seems like CISA knows something that maybe we don’t, and it’s not great news for Ivanti users. Do note that this even applies to devices that have had the XML mitigation applied. Yikes.
Jenkins
The Jenkins automation server just fixed a pair of vulnerabilities,
both of which have the potential to be pretty bad
. Up first is a data leak, where a the parseArgument function will interpret an “@” symbol to mean expanding a file location into a series of arguments. It works out to provide a file read primitive, which can be accessed by any users with read permissions.
There’s also a cross-site scripting problem with the websockets Command Line Interface functionality. Some of the normal protections against XSS problems aren’t applied to websockets connections, so a malicious link can trigger CLI actions when clicked by an authenticated user.
Both of these issues were fixed in 2.442 released on the 24th, but the file read issue now has
Proof
of
Concept
code out in the wild. It’s likely not long until those are used in attacks, if it hasn’t happened already.
This vulnerability in
#Jenkins
is serious CVE-2024-23897
POCs have been published
https://t.co/nGtbf8fehd
https://t.co/pzY0NSL5bA
report by
@SonarSource
https://t.co/VNAUg2PDN8
pic.twitter.com/vbiWGmj47M
— Florian Roth (@cyb3rops)
January 26, 2024
Leaky Vessels
Researchers at Snyk have identified
a quartet of vulnerabilities
that threaten the sandboxing guarantees of modern containers. There’s one that is in the
runc
binary itself, where a host file descriptor can be leaked into the container process, exposing the entire host filesystem. This means a
docker run
or
docker build
command could have access to the outside system. The other three issues are specific to Docker Buildkit, and also allow system access of varying degrees.
There aren’t any signs of active exploitation, and the
runc
program has been updated. Snyk has also released a pair of tools to look for Docker images attempting to exploit these issues.
Bits and Bytes
It’s another chess hack, but thankfully this time there’s no buzzers in shoes or other places,
this is an XSS of chess.com
. This one is a throwback to the original Myspace worm — gaining friends automatically on pageview. The next step was actually running JS on pageview and getting cookie data out. Check and mate.
The FBI
hit the killswitch on a few hundred compromised Cisco and Netgear routers
in December. These are Internet-connected devices that are either end-of-lifed or simply unpatched, and have been compromised and made part of a botnet. The most fascinating bit is that the disinfecting process included adding a mitigation to prevent reinfection, but one that only lasts til the next reboot. Maybe next time we can get the FBI to upgrade those hacked routers to OpenWRT instead.
The Fortra GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer solution has joined the ranks of the critically vulnerable, as versions 6 and 7 of this software allow unauthorized users to create administrator users via an authentication bypass. The fix landed in 7.4.1, and this is the sort of juicy vulnerability that ransomware groups just love to take advantage of.
And this is your reminder that
not every reported data breach is real
, and not every online fake is the result of AI. Europcar.com was reported to have lost records for fifty million customers, with the database being offered in the usual places. Except the data didn’t make any sense, with plenty of those users apparently living in imaginary cities. The explanation quickly came out, that it was obviously ChatGPT-generated data — which is apparently now describes any faked data, as this has no signs of actually being produced by a Large Language Model. Ah well. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726868",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T16:28:26",
"content": "> There is a one-liner to test for a vulnerable Glibc:> exec -a “`printf ‘%0128000x’ 1`” /usr/bin/su < /dev/nullYou want to put that one-liner in parens: (exec -a \"`printf '%0128000x' 1`\" /usr/bin/su... | 1,760,372,020.26013 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/fixing-a-malfunctioning-keithley-model-179-digital-multimeter/ | Fixing A Malfunctioning Keithley Model 179 Digital Multimeter | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"digital multimeter",
"Keithley"
] | Inspired by electronics repair videos on YouTube, [Steven Leibson] recently found himself hunting down something to fix on eBay. This ‘something’ ended up being a certified classic: a
Keithley Model 179 digital multimeter from 1978
. Listed as non-functional, the unit arrived at his door for less than $50. There weren’t any exciting pops or smoke when he powered it on, but the display seemed to be showing nothing but random nonsense.
The meter has a convenient calibration sequence printed on its electrostatic shield cover and a deadly exposed AC line fuse in the upper left part of the photo.
Ultimately reviving this little piece of history was quite simple, with the main issue turning out to be a dodgy inter-board connector between the main and display boards. After admiring an old repair attempt made on the component, he removed both the male and female connectors, replacing them with new ones.
This uncovered issues with the PCB, as the FR4 material and the traces on it had begun to delaminate, probably due to the old adhesive giving up due to age. With pretty low trace density this wasn’t anything that a bit of care couldn’t work around, fortunately.
Before finding this dodgy connector, [Steven] first tried to clean the front mechanical connectors, which took multiple sessions. This was followed up by oiling the mechanism. With the connector fixed and some cleaning, the meter’s display now read correctly. It still has some issues with starting up though, which [Steven] reckons are due to the old capacitors in the device.
Presumably some recapping
will round off this fun device revival experience, but for the time being a Keithley Model 179 has been saved from e-waste, to inspire generations to come. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726834",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T13:19:33",
"content": "We had a few of these relics in my high school electronics class in the 90’s. They worked just fine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6726853",
"a... | 1,760,372,020.308125 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/02/retro-styled-rasti-laptop-packs-framework-mobo/ | Retro-Styled Rasti Laptop Packs Framework Mobo | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"custom computer case",
"framework",
"GRiD Compass"
] | Today, every laptop pretty much looks like every other laptop. Sure you might run into a few different colors and screen sizes out there, but on the whole, all the manufacturers have pretty much agreed on the basic shape and nobody is looking to rock the boat with something different.
Ah, but it wasn’t always so. Before the form factor we all recognize today took over, there were all sorts of interesting variations on the basic portable computer concept. For the Rasti,
creator [Penk Chen] definitely took some inspiration from the iconic (and largely unobtanium) GRiD Compass
of NASA and
Aliens
fame. But while its 3D printed case might look like a product of the early 1980s, on the inside, it features a Framework Laptop 13 mainboard using an 11th gen Intel CPU.
In addition to the widescreen 10.4 inch (1600 x 720) QLED display from Waveshare, the Rasti also includes a custom mechanical keyboard that’s actually been
spun off into its own project
. So even if you can’t swing building the whole Rasti, you could still find yourself tapping away on its vintage-styled input device.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody 3D print a computer inspired by the GRiD Compass. The
GRIZ Sextant we covered back in 2021
was another triumph that would be the envy of any hacker meetup. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726861",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T15:17:51",
"content": "I really like this concept, and this build look really neatly finished too, really sells the look. Seems like they had the space but chose not to add the framework modular ports on one side – a mistake... | 1,760,372,020.481036 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/multi-way-capacitor-replacement-without-the-pain/ | Multi-way Capacitor Replacement Without The Pain | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"capacitor",
"capacitor replacement",
"multi way capacitor"
] | Anyone who’s worked with older tube-based equipment will be familiar with the type of vintage electrolytic capacitor which integrated several capacitors into one can. Long obsolete, they can be bought as reproduction, but unfortunately at an eye-watering price. [D-Lab Electronics]
introduces us to a solution using a very useful kit
, that it’s worth sharing.
The piece of equipment in the video below the break is a rather lovely Heathkit oscillator, following the familiar phase shift model with a light bulb in its feedback loop. It’s a piece of test equipment that produces a low-distortion sine wave output, and would still be of use to an audio engineer today. He replaces the capacitor with two modern ones on a multi-cap board from [W8AOR],
who sells a variety of these kits
for different configurations.
We’ve done this very repair more than once, and it has usually involved wiring, heatshrink sleeving, hot glue, and cable ties, looking very messy indeed. It’s not that often that a kit catches our eye as this one has, but we know we’ll be finding it useful here some time in the future. Meanwhile if you’d like to know why this oscillator has a light bulb,
take a look at our piece on distortion
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726782",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T06:46:21",
"content": "My favorite way is to simply leave the old can on top, clip off the leads underneath so they are only connected to ground, and solder in replacement axial caps. There’s usually plenty of space for the modern o... | 1,760,372,020.5374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/navigate-burning-man-with-ease-with-this-custom-tool/ | Navigate Burning Man With Ease With This Custom Tool | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"burning man",
"gps",
"navigation",
"playa"
] | When setting up a city in the desert, the team behind Burning Man does its best to lay things out in an ordered fashion. Even still, getting around at ground level can be a challenge at times, and it’s easy to get lost. To help get around easier, [Zach] developed a nifty GPS device
built specifically for navigating the ephemeral clock-like city.
The device is built for a few simple purposes. It shows where you are, it helps you navigate somewhere you’ve been before, and it helps you navigate to portable toilets. It’s set up to be usable both on bike and on foot, the typical ways of getting around the playa. Since Black Rock City is fairly simple, it uses an arrow to point to a desired waypoint, and is capable of storing up to five points of interest. It’s built using a cheap GNSS receiver and transflective LCD screen, and a Pi Pico is the brains of the operation.
The value of the device is obvious, particularly when exploring deeper areas of the playa, or after the road signs have been removed or structures have been taken down or burnt to ashes. We’ve seen
some other great projects from the desert festival before, too.
If you’ve got your own playa-spec hacks, don’t hesitate to let us know! | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726871",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T16:52:30",
"content": "Is it mud proof?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6726888",
"author": "Patrice Mackey",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T17:57:23",
... | 1,760,372,020.583246 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/eliminate-that-pesky-power-only-usb-cable-with-this-cable-tester/ | Eliminate That Pesky Power-Only USB Cable With This Cable Tester | Julian Scheffers | [
"Parts"
] | [
"cable tester",
"stm32",
"usb"
] | Ever wondered why your Arduino wasn’t programming, only to find out that the cable doesn’t have any data conductors? Worry not, [Spencer Maroukis] has got you covered with the
USB Sleuth Cable Tester
!
The cable tester is a beautiful black circular PCB, with USB ports of nearly every type on the edges. It works partially through passive detection with LEDs and otherwise through active detection of things like the orientation with an STM32 powered by a coin cell battery. But it gets better: There are disconnect switches and exposed pads to test some of the conductors with a digital multimeter!
It may not be necessary for all of us, but one thing is clear: When you needed a good USB cable, you wished you had this to actually test it. The design is open-source too, which is definitely nice if you want one for yourself.
Meanwhile
this isn’t the first USB cable tester we’ve seen here
. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726705",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2024-02-02T00:03:25",
"content": "I got something like this for $2 on AliExpress. It’s USB powered then has all the various connectors to plug both ends of a cable into it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,020.636584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/a-concrete-solution-to-balance-and-protect-camera-gear/ | A Concrete Solution To Balance And Protect Camera Gear | Danie Conradie | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"camera arm",
"photography",
"tripod"
] | Knocking over expensive camera equipment is an unfortunate occupational hazard when filming projects in a workshop. [Dane Kouttron] wanted to stop sacrificing lights to the cause, so he came up with a practical use for a weeble: A
self-stabilizing monopod
.
Inspired by a
giant scale weeble built by [Colin Furze]
, [Dane] first did the math to determine the parameters for the build. It’s all about achieving torque equilibrium with a hemisphere of concrete, and [Dane] walks us through the equations, arriving at the conclusion that a 2 lb. camera on 4 foot pole, one needs a hemisphere with a mass of 28 lbs. and a radius of just under 4 inches. To achieve this weight in the given volume would require extra dense concrete with steel shot added.
After some CAD work and 3D printing the 4-part mold was assembled, with RTV silicone sealant acting as both adhesive between the parts and mold release agent. [Dane] first did a test mold with concrete he had laying around. With success achieved, he pursued the real mix but had issues with an error in the concrete-water ratio and the difficulty of mixing in the steel shot. On the second attempt he managed to extract a functional hemisphere from the mold, with the pole held in position during curing by a 3D printed bracket.
The hemisphere bottom of the hemisphere has a flat spot to keep it stable when bumped lightly. [Dane] added a Manfroto quick-release mount to the end of the pole to allow easy attachment of lights and cameras. It might be a bit hefty to carry around, but it’s takes up less floor space than a tripod and is sure to save [Dane] from expensive bumps-turned-crashes.
Camera cranes,
small
and
large
, are another great tool for workshop cinematography. For sheer overkill it would be hard to beat an
8-axis workshop-sized motion control robot
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726673",
"author": "mike",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T22:41:51",
"content": "Awesome project! Does it actually hold a full size DSLR? Have you tried rubber coating it so it doesn’t leave marks?also really like the workshop in the background",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,020.686351 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/robot-can-read-braille-much-faster-than-humans-with-new-sensor/ | Robot Can Read Braille Much Faster Than Humans With New Sensor | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"braille",
"robot",
"robotics"
] | Braille is a method of physical writing used to allow humans to read by touch — most commonly used as a substitute for printed text by those who may be visually impaired. Both displaying Braille and reading it is difficult to do with machines, but there has been a development in the latter area. A research team has trained a robot to read Braille at a speed
far exceeding humans.
The robot was developed by a team at the University of Cambridge. Rather than trying to read Braille by touch, it instead uses a camera and an image recognition algorithm to do the job. Their solution is a bit ironic in a way, given the purpose Braille was created for. The robot can quickly sweep across a Braille display, working at a rate of up to 315 words per minute at 87% accuracy. That’s roughly twice as fast as a human reading Braille, with a similar level of accuracy. Some nifty de-blurring algorithms were needed to achieve this speed from the camera’s video feed.
We’ve also seen some impressive development on the other side of all those little bumps, with
two Braille devices taking home awards during the final Hackaday Prize in 2023
. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726626",
"author": "philosiraptor117",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T19:45:39",
"content": "I bet I could beat them with just a web cam and open cv",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6726637",
"author": "Cyna",
"times... | 1,760,372,021.133371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/polynesian-wayfinding-traditions-let-humans-roam-the-pacific-ocean/ | Polynesian Wayfinding Traditions Let Humans Roam The Pacific Ocean | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"navigation",
"ocean",
"polynesian wayfinding",
"sailing",
"voyage"
] | Polynesian cultures have a remarkable navigational tradition. It stands as a testament to human ingenuity and an intimate understanding of nature. Where Western cultures developed maps and tools to plot courses around the world, the Polynesian tradition is more about using human senses and pattern-finding skills to figure out where one is, and where one might be going.
Today, we’ll delve into the
unique techniques of Polynesian navigation
, exploring how keen observation of the natural world enabled pioneers to roam far and wide across the breadth of the Pacific.
Unbounded Exploration
The area of Polynesia is roughly defined as a triangle bounded by Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Those that Credit:
public domain
The Polynesian people, inhabiting the islands in the Pacific Ocean, embarked on epic voyages across vast distances well before the advent of modern navigation tools. Their navigational skills were pivotal in discovering and populating far-flung islands.
Hawaii is perhaps the best example of Polynesian navigational prowess. At a distance of over 2,000 miles from other land masses, it’s practically impossible to get to Hawaii unless you know where you’re going. And yet, evidence suggests that Polynesian navigators were able to find their way to the area’s island chains by 500 A.D., and perhaps even as early on as 100-200 A.D. All the more impressive is that these great distances were travelled without so much as a compass, sextant, or a map.
The essence of Polynesian wayfinding lies in the deep understanding and observation of natural signs. The oceans, the sky, and even wildlife all provided clues that could be read by a skilled observer. Today, we’d never think to use these methods. We can use satellites to plot ourselves as a glowing blip on a map, and make our way around staring at a screen. But with no maps or screens to look at, Polynesian wayfinders instead turned their gaze to the world around them, turning up all kinds of useful environmental flags to help them find points of interest.
Today, we speak of the star Arcturus as the brightest member of the constellation Bootes. For Polynesian navigators, the star was a useful guide for finding Hawaii. Credit: Till Credner,
CC BY-SA-3.0
Some techniques are common across many cultures. Astronomy proved as useful to the Polynesian culture as it did any other, with stars useful as navigational beacons as they shined at night. Astute navigators would gain an understanding of how the stars rose and set depending on one’s own position. Certain stars proved useful for getting to certain locations. Arcturus was known as a guiding sign to Hawaii, and termed
Hōkūleʻa
by Polynesian navigators of yore. Those that left Tahiti by boat could simply sail to the east and north until
Hōkūleʻa
appeared directly overheard. The star is north of the equator by the same number of degrees as Hawaii. Thus, once one was underneath the star, one could be sure they were at the right latitude, and merely needed to sail west with the wind until Hawaii appeared on the horizon.
Other techniques are more unique. Patterns in the ocean swell could hint at distant land. Sit in any university-level fluid mechanics course, and you’ll learn about vortex streets, and how an obstruction in flowing water creates patterns downstream. The same effects are at play in the ocean, where flow around an island might create a pattern in the water readable at a great distance. Other effects could telegraph the position of land at great distance, too. For example, during the day, land is typically warmer than the surrounding water. This can create a thermal updraft, carrying clouds high in the air, while surrounding waters would have far lower cloud cover.
Perhaps most famously,
the testicles were a key tool in the Polynesian navigational kit
. This was a key technique to tracking ocean swells. These are long waves in the ocean that travel in regular patterns, generated by distant weather rather than local winds. They can propagate over thousands of miles, with patterns affected by distant land masses far beyond what the human eye can see. It’s believed that these navigators would sit in a canoe, cross-legged, using the testicles as a highly-sensitive detector for movements generated by the action of these swells beneath the ocean’s surface. Other accounts suggest the technique was performed standing, with the testicles acting as a sort of living plumb-bob.
Multi-hulled canoes were used by Polynesian seafarers to cross great distances. Credit:
Public domain
Animals could be a great navigational aid, too. Pigs, with their keen sense of smell, could be used to determine when land was near. Birds and marine life were also helpful indicators. Certain birds were known to fly out to sea in the morning to fish, and return to land in the evening to nest. Thus, finding your way back in the evening could be as simple as following the birds in to land.
With the arrival of European explorers and colonizers, traditional Polynesian navigation saw a decline. However, there has been a significant revival since the late 20th century. Organizations like the
Polynesian Voyaging Society
have been instrumental in this resurgence. The historic voyages
of the Hokule’a
, a traditional double-hulled canoe, navigated using ancient techniques, have played a pivotal role in this renaissance, reigniting interest in traditional practices and strengthening cultural identity. With no living Hawaiians knowledegable of traditional techniques, Satawalese Master Navigator Mau Piailug of Micronesia joined the voyage to guide the way.
Today, Polynesian wayfinding is recognized not just as a historical curiosity, but as a valuable part of the world’s cultural heritage. It’s amazing to learn just what can be achieved through close and careful observation of the world around us. These traditional techniques are a true triumph of human ingenuity, a testament to what can be achieved with nothing but raw human ability.
Featured image: “
Hokule’a arrival in Honolulu from Tahiti in 1976
” by Phil Uhl. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726601",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T18:20:12",
"content": "Nice write up. I’d guess releasing pigeons from a cage beyond the 1/2 way mark might be useful. They’re either going to head back home or onward to the nearest land, whichever is closest, I gue... | 1,760,372,021.244274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/flat-pack-multi-tool-has-many-dimensions/ | Flat-Pack Multi-Tool Has Many Dimensions | Kristina Panos | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"flat pack",
"flatpack",
"laser cut",
"multi-tool"
] | Sometimes, you just have to see whether something can be done. Such is the case with [ToolTechGeek]’s
flat-pack metal multi-tool
build. Can an entire multi-tool be made with only flat pieces of laser-cut metal and fasteners? It would seem so, yes. And quite nicely, too, as you’ll see in the video after the break.
[ToolTechGeek] started by designing all the parts in Inkscape, and then made a few 3D printed versions to check fitment before committing to laser-cut metal. Once they had the pieces cut, everything came together nicely except for a few tabs that connect some of the parts together. These just had to be filed down a bit.
So now, [ToolTechGeek] has a handy set of pliers, flat- and Phillips-head screwdrivers, a knife, and a bottle opener all in one place. Although the pliers don’t have teeth, they still do a fine job of removing nuts and the like. Be sure to check out the final product and see it get put to the test.
No use for such a thing?
Maybe you’d prefer an NFC multi-tool. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6727342",
"author": "erhyerwhywert",
"timestamp": "2024-02-04T08:53:50",
"content": "why nobody create a hat or adaptor for making a ethernet cable in multitool?normal press ethernet socket to cableI need it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,372,021.173961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/how-much-longer-will-cars-have-cigarette-lighter-ports/ | How Much Longer Will Cars Have Cigarette Lighter Ports? | Kristina Panos | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"12v",
"car lighter",
"cigarette lighter",
"dash lighter"
] | Depending on the age of your car, it might contain a round 12 V power outlet in the dash, or possibly in the elbow compartment. And depending on your own age, you might know that as the cigarette lighter port. Whereas this thing used to have a single purpose — lighting cigars and cigarettes via hot coil — there are myriad uses today, from charging a phone to powering a dash camera to running one of those tire-inflating machines in a roadside emergency.
But how did it come to be a power source inside the vehicle? And how long will it stick around? With smoking on the decline for several decades, fewer and fewer people have the need for a cigarette lighter than do, say, a way to charge their phone. How long will the power source survive in this configuration?
A Little History
Image via
US Patent #2959664
The electric lighter is older than you might think. The first one was patented in the early 1880s and sold as a cigar lighter. In 1921,
a patent was issued to Joshua M. Morris
for an electric lighter with a removable element.
A few years later in 1928, a company named Casco created a lighter especially made for the automobile. This lighter used a cord and reel to draw the lighter back into the dashboard.
The wireless version that some of us dinosaurs actually used to light cigarettes in the 90s was developed by Casco in 1956 and
patented in 1960
. After that, car lighters didn’t change, but they did proliferate — some cars had a second lighter for the rear passengers to go with the ashtray in every door.
Powerful Auto-motives
The earliest cars didn’t have electrical systems at all, just a magneto to provide a spark. Cars didn’t even have batteries until about 1920, when an electric starter motors began to be used in conjunction with DC generators. Now, people could start think about electrical accessories. But there was a problem — the widely varying voltages provided by these systems.
When the alternator came along, then power got more serious. The AC produced by the alternator gets converted to fairly uniform DC to charge the battery, and remains steady regardless of the alternator’s speed.
Socket To Me
My own setup. Notice the old, dead adapter at bottom right which failed to maintain electrical contact after so many years.
Car lighter sockets were not originally intended to power anything but car lighters, but since they involve a handy little powered and grounded receptacle, they were bound to be co-opted for other uses. This led to the development of
ANSI/SAE J563
to ensure compatibility between these 12 V receptacles and power plugs made by different manufacturers.
According to the spec, the cylinder contact must be negative, and the center contact point positive. Once that specification was settled, it was open season on electrical automotive accessories.
That said, the car-lighter-socket-as-power-outlet is not without its problems. The internal diameters of these sockets vary, as do the depths. Therefore, 12 V power plugs usually have spring-loaded contacts. This allows for a range of tolerances, sure, but it also means that the plugs can lose electrical contact. And since the output voltage of alternators still isn’t perfect, automotive accessories have to be made to run between roughly 9 V and 14 V DC. Many of them contain a DC-to-DC converter for a steady USB voltage.
Up In Smoke?
At this point, we are all quite used to having power inside the vehicle. Although many cars now ship with a receptacle labeled 12 V with a 120 W maximum and no cigarette lighter in sight, more and more cars are shipping with USB-A and USB-C ports instead. But what about all those accessories that require more juice, like tire inflators? Will those run on USB-C in the future? They may have to, unless the round automobile accessory outlet becomes eternal, like the floppy disk save icon. | 106 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726529",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T15:17:05",
"content": "This port is still highly useful and is not going anywhere. Try using a Air compressor from USB.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6726537",
"au... | 1,760,372,021.400651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/this-time-its-toyota-takata-airbag-recalls-continue/ | This Time It’s Toyota: Takata Airbag Recalls Continue | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"takata",
"takata airbag recall",
"toyota"
] | The automotive industry is subject to frequent product recalls, as manufacturers correct defects in their vehicles that reveal themselves only after some use. While such events may be embarrassing for a marque, it’s not necessarily a bad thing — after all, we would rather put our trust in a carmaker prepared to own up and fix things rather than sweep their woes under the carpet.
There’s one recall that’s been going on for years which isn’t the vehicle manufacturer’s fault though,
and now it seems Toyota are the latest to be hit
, with some vehicles as old as two decades being part of it. Long time Hackaday readers will probably recognize where this is going as we’ve covered it before; at its centre are
faulty airbag charges from Takata
, and the result has been one of the largest safety related recalls in automotive history.
An automotive airbag is a fabric structure inflated at high speed by a small explosive charge when triggered by the sharp deceleration of an incident. It is intended to cushion any impact the occupant might make upon the car’s interior. The problem with the faulty Takata units is that moisture ingress could alter the properties of the charge, and this along with corrosion could increase its power and produce a hail of metal fragments on detonation.
Our colleague [Lewin Day] has penned
a series of informative and insightful investigations
of the technology behind the Takata scandal, going back quite a few years. With such relatively ancient vehicles now being recalled we can’t help wondering whether it would be easier for Toyota to run a buyback scheme and take the cars off the road rather than fix them in this case, but we’re curious as non automotive safety engineers why the automotive airbag has evolved in this manner. Why is one of very few consumer explosive devices not better regulated, why is it sold with an unlimited lifetime, and why are they not standardized for routine replacement on a regular schedule just like any other vehicle consumable?
2003-2004 Toyota Corolla: IFCAR,
Public domain
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726490",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T12:24:08",
"content": "I’d imagine half the reason there’s no overt regulation on them is because it helps people not to freak out about the bomb in front of their faces.Not saying they’re a bad idea – they’re brilliant and save li... | 1,760,372,021.068888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/01/cheap-hack-gets-pci-x-card-working-in-pci-slot/ | Cheap Hack Gets PCI-X Card Working In PCI Slot | Lewin Day | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"pci",
"pci x",
"riser",
"riser card"
] | PCI and PCI-X are not directly compatible, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that means you’re out of luck if you need to use a PCI-X card in a machine that only has basic PCI slots. And yet, that needn’t be the case. As [Peter] shows us, you can work around this
with a cheap hacky hack
. Our favorite kind!
[Peter] had a PCI-X RAID card that he wanted to use on his Socket 7-based computer. The 3ware 9550SX PCI-X card is 3.3 V only, and doesn’t fit in a typical PCI slot. It’s not compatible mechanically or electrically. Enter a PCI-X riser, which gets around the missing notch that would normally not let the card sit in the slot. Other than that, it just took masking off some pins to avoid damage from the 5 V rail. Throughput is good, too, reportedly sitting at roughly 60-70 MB/s.
The hard part is probably finding a PCI-X riser;
PCI-Express stuff is far more common.
Few of us need to deal with PCI-X anymore, but if you’re working on some ancient industrial hardware or something, this hack might just save your beans from the roast pot one day. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726474",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T10:32:16",
"content": "> PCI and PCI-X are not directly compatible,This generalization is just false.Many PCI and PCI-X cards are compatible to PCI and PCI-X slots.They are pretty much exactly as compatible as PCI cards to PCI s... | 1,760,372,021.448952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/the-gyro-monorail-how-to-make-trains-better-with-a-gyroscope/ | The Gyro Monorail: How To Make Trains Better With A Gyroscope | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"gyroscope",
"gyroscopic car",
"monorail"
] | The gyroscopic system for gyro monorail trains that Brennan developed. (Credit: Primal Space)
Everyone who has ever handled a spinning gyroscope found themselves likely mesmerized by the way it absolutely maintains its orientation even when disturbed. Much of modern technology would be impossible without them, whether space telescopes or avionics. Yet during the early 20th century a much more radical idea was proposed for gyroscopes, one that would essentially have turned entire trains into gyroscopes. This was the concept of the Gyro Monorail, with Louis Brennan being among those who built a full-sized, working prototype in 1910, with
its history and fate
covered in detail by [Primal Space], along with an
accompanying video
.
At first glance it may seem rather daft to have an entire train balancing on a single rail track, using nothing but gyroscopic forces to keep the entire contraption level and balanced even when you feel the thing should just tip over. Yet the gyroscopic system that Brennan created and patented in 1903 turned out to function really well, and reliably kept the train on its single track. Key to this was the use of two gyroscopic wheels, each spinning in an opposite direction, with a pneumatic system linked to a gear system between the two wheels that used the gyroscope’s precession in corners to quickly establish a new balance.
Despite this success, investors were unconvinced, and regular trains were already firmly established, and the system would also require that each car had its own gyro system. Even so, the idea of the gyro monorail
never truly died
, as evidenced by the recently created German
MonoCab-OWL
project. This targets converting single-rail sections into dual-rail, bi-directional service with no infrastructure investment required.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726504",
"author": "KC",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T13:47:26",
"content": "O.K. Single points of failure make me nervous, I’d really want two gyros operating independently of one anther per rail car for a passenger train. That said, the MonoCab-OWL project looks really cool. The idea... | 1,760,372,021.507092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/check-out-these-amazing-self-soldering-sleeves-from-world-war-ii/ | Check Out These Amazing Self-Soldering Sleeves From World War II | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"commando",
"SOE",
"solder",
"solder sleeve",
"soldering",
"world war II"
] | Imagine you’re a commando, doing some big secret mission on the continent in the midst of World War II. You need to hook up some wires to your explosive charges, and time is of the essence. Do you bust out the trusty Weller and see if those petulant Axis chaps will let you plug it in somewhere? No! You use a pyrotechnic self-soldering sleeve,
as [Our Own Devices] explains.
Like so many British inventions during the war, the sleeves really are ingenious. They were developed by the Special Operation Executive, an organization charged with sabotage and subversion operations in then-occupied Europe.
The soldering sleeves were designed to make electrical connections between detonators and firing wires for explosives. The sleeves consist of a copper tube through which wires to be joined are fed, with a lump of solder in the middle. The assembly is covered in pyrotechnic material with a safety match-style starter chemical dosed on top. Using the sleeves is simple. First, two stripped wires are fed into either end of the copper tube. The starter the sleeve is then ignited using the box, just like striking a match. The pyrotechnic material then gets red hot, melting the solder and making the connection.
It’s well worth watching the video to see how these field-expedient devices actually work. We’ve explored the use of
more-typical solder sleeves before, too
. Video after the break. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726411",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T03:44:05",
"content": "I’d probably just twist the wires up, but then again I don’t have to worry about watching twenty of my compatriots waltz into a machine gun nest if it gets pulled loose.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,021.566544 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/floss-weekly-episode-768-open-source-radio/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 768: Open Source Radio | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"internet radio",
"radio",
"wordpress"
] | This week Jonathan Bennett and Doc Searls talk with Tony Zeoli about Netmix and the Radio Station WordPress plugin. The story starts with the Netmix startup, one of the first places doing Internet music in the 1990s. That business did well enough to get bought out just before the Dot Com bubble burst in 2000. Today, Tony runs the Radio Station plugin, which is all about putting a station’s show schedule on a WordPress site.
In the process, the trio covers Internet radio history, the licensing complications around radio and streaming, the state of local radio, and more. Is there a long term future for radio? Does Creative Commons solve the licensing mess? Is AI going to start eating radio, too? All this and more!
–
wordpress.org/plugins/radio-station
–
radiostation.pro
–
netmix.com
–
tonyzeoli.com
–
avlhms.com
–
linkedin.com/in/tonyzeoli
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show
right in the Hackaday Discord
? Next week we’re interviewing Matt Ray of the Opencost project.
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 | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726487",
"author": "thom",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T12:06:10",
"content": "Is it really “radio” if it does not radiate from a antenna??Not to me. YMMV",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6726577",
"author": "Vbf",
... | 1,760,372,021.608955 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/high-caliber-engineering-on-a-low-torque-pcb-servo-motor/ | High Caliber Engineering On A Low Torque PCB Servo Motor | Danie Conradie | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"closed loop servo motors",
"optical encoder",
"pcb motor"
] | Building a 3D motor printed motor is one thing, but creating a completely custom servo motor with encoder requires some significant engineering. In the video after the break [365 Robots] takes us through the build process of a
closed-loop motor with a custom optical encoder
.
The motor, an axial flux design, uses a stack of 0.2mm PCBs with
wedge shaped coils
clamped in a 3D printed body. It’s similar to some of the other
PCB motors
we’ve featured, but what really sets this build apart is its custom optical encoder, which was a project in its own right. The
4-bit absolute position encoder
uses IR LEDs to shine through an PCB disc with concentric
gray code
copper encoder rings onto IR receivers. This works because FR4, the composite material used in PCBs doesn’t block IR light.
The motor’s body was printed from ABS to withstand the heat during operation. [365 Robots] didn’t skimp on the testing either, creating a 3D printed closed-loop test stand with load cell and Arduino. Like other PCB motors it produces very little torque, roughly 2% of a typical NEMA17 stepper motor. Even so, the engineering behind this project remains impressive. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726431",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T06:28:14",
"content": "Plate style brushless motor is best at high speeds but it has very low torque. Strange decision to use such design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "672... | 1,760,372,021.651408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/3d-mouse-with-3d-printed-flexures-and-pcb-coils/ | 3D Mouse With 3D Printed Flexures And PCB Coils | Danie Conradie | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3d mouse",
"PCB coil",
"Stewart platform"
] | 3D mice with six degrees of freedom (6DOF) motion are highly valued by professional CAD users. However, the entry-level versions typically cost upwards of $150 and are produced by a single manufacturer.
[Colton Baldridge] has created the OS3M Mouse
— an open source alternative using PCB coils and 3D printed flexures.
The primary challenges in creating a 6DOF input device, similar to the 3Dconnexion Space Mouse, lie in developing a mechanical coupling that enables full range motion, and electronics capable of precisely and consistently measuring this motion. After several iterations of
printed flexure
combinations and trip down the finite element analysis (FEA) rabbit hole, [Colton] had a working single-piece mechanical solution.
To measure the knob’s movement accurately, [Colton] employs inductive sensing. Inductance to Digital Converters (LDCs) assess the inductive alterations across three pairs of
PCB coils
, each having an opposing metal disk mounted on the knob. This setup allows [Colton] to use a
Stewart platform
‘s kinematic model calculate the knob’s relative position. The calculation are done on an STM32 which also acts USB HID send the position data to a computer. For the demo [Colton] created a simple C++ app to translate the position data to Solidworks API calls. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726294",
"author": "hmmmmm.....",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T20:58:00",
"content": "I m still running a german spacecontroller. I find their sensor has more natural response and the sphere feels better to me as well.https://spacecontrol.de/download/manual/manual_en.html",
"parent... | 1,760,372,021.698658 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-typewriter-orchestra/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Typewriter Orchestra | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Boston Typewriter Orchestra",
"butterfly keyboard",
"ibm 701c",
"typewriter orchestra"
] | Have you ever wished you had more control over what goes into a kit keyboard build? Like, a whole lot more control? Well, that’s the idea behind
the Akruvia 12×4 Playground by [iketsj].
Image by [iketsj] via
YouTube
This is a 48-key ortholinear keyboard, but other than that, it’s a complete blank slate. The kit includes the PCB, diodes, RGB LEDs, and Kailh Choc V1 hot swap sockets, which is really the only choice you don’t have in the matter.
All the rest is up to you, thanks to a generous prototyping area that wraps around three sides of the keys. Bring your own microcontroller and anything else that sounds useful, like displays, rotary encoders, gesture sensors, pointing devices, you name it.
You could even magnetically link a macro pad to one side, as [iketsj] teases in
the intro video
. [iketsj] has made the kit available through links on their website, and you’ll find a product guide there as well.
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra rehearses on the sturdiest table ever made. Image via
the Boston Globe
Clack, clack; ding! Clack, clack; ding! Quick, what song is that supposed to be? Well, if you heard it coming out of
the Boston Typewriter Orchestra
, you’d instantly know it as Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. Not that they actually play that one, but I think it would sound pretty good.
Yes,
the Boston Typewriter Orchestra
are exactly what they sound like — a group of people banging and clanging on Royals, Underwoods, and Smith-Coronas in order to reproduce popular songs. Seemingly no typewriter surface nor function is left untouched during their performances. Even the spool covers are employed as added percussion.
Let me just say that I’m really surprised that dining room table can handle all of that stress. Regular clacking on just one typewriter of suitable weight will make a table move significantly. But eight machines being beaten on continuously? Like, where can I get one of those tables?
The Centerfold: Zoom75 Teal with GMK Retrowave
Image by [2002whitegt] via
reddit
Okay,
I think this is one of my favorite centerfolds
, and it has everything to do with that vaporwave desk mat from SwitchKeys. Vaporwave all the things, I say, and of course I am happy to see it extended to the keycaps.
Unfortunately the Zoom75 from Meletrix is currently sold out in teal — isn’t that always how these things go? — but we hear that it may still be possible to snag one via the site or even the company’s Discord.
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 Gardner Typewriter
Image via
The Antikey Chop
Some might think that layers on a keyboard are a relatively new idea, but they so are not. After all, capital letters technically live on another layer, though as we’ve seen, it wasn’t always that way in the typewriter world.
John Gardner’s 1890 typewriter
consisted of a mere 14 keys, which typed 84 characters with the help of a multi-directional shift lever. This lever could move both forward and backward to type different characters, and additional characters could be typed by simultaneously depressing the shift lever and the space bar. Sounds like quite the dance, doesn’t it?
Interestingly enough, the impetus for this machine was something inexpensive that could type quickly, but it didn’t really work out that way. Maybe it would have been easier to type quickly with a different type of layer-accessing mechanism. I suppose we’ll never know.
ICYMI: Breathing Life Back Into a Butterfly
Anyone with an appreciation for keyboards is likely aware of IBM’s ThinkPad 701C laptop. This top-selling laptop of 1995 featured a special “butterfly” keyboard that expanded when the lid was opened and folded back in when the lid was closed.
[John Graham-Cumming] got their hands on not one but two of these beauties, and although they were in a fairly sorry state,
managed to resurrect a working machine from between the two.
They even had plastic damage from old, leaky Ni-MH batteries. Only one of those beautiful keyboards was in good shape, which is sad to hear, but of course one is far better than none.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726513",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T14:04:14",
"content": "Interesting and inspirational as always. Thanks, Kristina.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6726885",
"author": "SCOTT W",
"timestamp": "2024-... | 1,760,372,021.752122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/making-an-aircraft-wing-work-for-an-audience/ | Making An Aircraft Wing Work For An Audience | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Airbus",
"aircraft",
"wing"
] | Many of us will have sat and idly watched the flaps and other moving parts of an airliner wing as we travel, and it’s likely that most of you will know the basics of how an aircraft wing works. But there’s more to an aircraft wing than meets the eye, which is why the Aerospace Bristol museum has an Airbus A320 wing on display. [Chris Lymas] was part of the team which turned a surplus piece of aircraft into an interactive and working exhibit, and he told the Electromagnetic Field audience all about it in his talk
Using Arduinos to Resurrect an Airliner Wing
.
The talk starts with an explanation of how a variable surface wing works, and then starts to talk about the control systems employed. We’re struck with the similarity to industrial robots, in that this is a a powerful and thus surprisingly dangerous machine to be close to. The various moving surfaces are moved by a series of shafts and gearboxes, driven by a DC motor. Running the show is an Arduino Mega, which has enough interfaces for all the various limit switches.
It’s fascinating to see how the moving parts in an airliner wing work up close, and we’re impressed at the scale of the parts which keep us safe as we fly. Take a look, the video is below the break. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726273",
"author": "imber",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T20:15:00",
"content": "Been there, seen it working! :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6726645",
"author": "Paul Driver",
"timestamp": "2024-02-01T21:20:06",
"con... | 1,760,372,022.022766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/the-cockpit-voice-recorder-controversy/ | The Cockpit Voice Recorder Controversy | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"airplane",
"flight recorder",
"flight safety"
] | Every time there’s a plane crash or other aviation safety incident, we often hear talk of the famous “black box”. Of course, anyone these days will tell you that they’re not black, but orange, for visibility’s sake. Plus, there’s often not one black box, but two! There’s a Flight Data Recorder (FDR), charged with recording aircraft telemetry, and a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), designed to record what’s going on in the cabin.
It sounds straightforward enough, but the cockpit voice recorder has actually become the subject of some controversy in recent times. Let’s talk about the basics of these important safety devices, and why they’re the subject of some debate at the present time.
That’s a Hot Mic
A flight data recorder (left) and a cockpit voice recorder (right). Some later designs combine the two into a single unit. Credit: YSSYguy,
CC BY-SA-3.0
When it comes to figuring out what happened in an air disaster, context is everything. Flight data recorders can tell investigators all about what the plane’s various systems are doing, while more advanced maintenance recorders developed by airline manufacturers can deliver even more granular data. Knowing the control inputs from the pilots, the positions of control surfaces, and system statuses is all relevant to piecing together what happened. However, there’s also a lot that can be learned from the pilots themselves.
Past research
has found pilot error to be a factor in over a third of major airline crashes. Knowing what pilots are thinking at a given moment isn’t quite possible, but having a recording of their conversation can provide good insight. The cockpit voice recorder plays a pivotal role in this regard. It’s also useful for capturing other sounds, too, like rattles, thuds, explosions, or alarms going off in the cockpit.
This information can prove crucial in the event of an incident or accident. It aids investigators who must try and piece together a sequence of events and contributing factors. An instructional example is the case of
Air France Flight 447.
Flight data indicated that the plane was likely subject to icing on the pitot tubes, leading to unreliable airspeed measurements. The crew’s response was incorrect for the given situation, with the voice recording clearly laying out how the errors made led to the tragic loss of the aircraft and the lives of all on board. Without the voice recording, there would have been a far greater mystery around how the plane came to enter its deadly stall before plummeting into the water.
Early cockpit voice recorders used wire recorders, like this model from a MiG-21 fighter aircraft. Credit: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA-4.0
So, cockpit voice recorders are super useful. With today’s modern storage technologies, we must be recording and storing what goes on in every flight, right? No? Well… surely we’re recording for the full length of every flight, at least. Again, not quite.
As it stands today, there are notable differences in regulations around the world regarding the length of recording time required for a CVR. Once upon a time, recording durations were as short as 30 minutes, but this was often found to be insufficient to gain a good understanding of a safety-related incident. Today, in the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration mandates that planes fitted with cockpit voice recorders have a recording duration for a minimum of two hours. Recording is done on a loop, such that as the recording continues, older audio is overwritten, preserving just the last two hours of sound recorded from the cabin.
Modern cockpit voice recorders use solid state storage. The boards seen here were recovered from the cockpit voice recorder on Atlast Air Flight 3591. Credit: NTSB, public domain
Obviously, modern technology has made storage incredibly cheap. While early units often used magnetic recording on wire or tape, more recent designs have relied on solid state digital recordings. There’s no real technical reason for CVRs to only record two hours of audio, but airlines and aircraft manufacturers build to the regulation. There’s also great expense required to get a new piece of equipment designed and approved for safety-critical use in an aircraft. Without a regulation mandating longer recording times, US airlines have little reason to invest in upgrades to their fleets.
In Europe, however, there’s a rather different picture. Under the regulations set by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), aircraft with a maximum takeoff weight exceeding 59,500 pounds must have cockpit voice recorders that store at least 25 hours of audio. This regulation applies to aircraft manufactured after Jan 1, 2021, and doesn’t explicitly require that earlier aircraft be retrofitted.
The European move has led to calls for the FAA to adopt similar minimum standards. Most recently, the chair of the National Transport Safety Board has called for the 25-hour recording period to apply not just to newly built aircraft, but existing planes as well. This was in part due to
the case of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282,
in which a Boeing 737 MAX 9 had a door plug blow out at altitude. Unfortunately, after the plane landed safely, neither the crew nor other technicians switched off the breaker for the cockpit voice recorder. Thus, it kept recording while on the ground, and overwrote the relevant period in short order. A 25-hour recording would have provided a much longer period for somebody to realize and shut off the CVR, even if it’s an imperfect solution. The 25-hour limit is also of use to provide full coverage of longer international flights. The FAA continues to accept comment on the matter
until February 2, 2024.
Privacy in the Cockpit
There are other limits on cockpit voice recorders, too. Privacy has been a major concern for pilots and aviation unions over the years, primarily regarding the potential misuse of recordings. While many of us are recorded by surveillance cameras on a daily basis in our places of work, they seldom capture the intimate details of conversations between colleagues. Pilots, on the other hand, have every word they speak recorded by multiple microphones in the cabin. On long flights, pilots will typically have all sorts of personal conversations, just like anyone else at work. There’s naturally some apprehension about having one’s conversations stored, and possibly listened to, in such a manner.
A cockpit voice recorder recovered from a cargo jet crash in Texas, 2019. Even after a major incident, there are strict rules about how cockpit voice recordings can be used. Credit: NTSB, public domain
By and large, recordings from cockpit voice recorders are not released publicly, even in the event of a major crash investigation. Instead,
when the NTSB investigates an incident
, it forms a committee to listen to a recording. This committee usually consists representatives from the NTSB and FAA, the aircraft manufacturer, and members of the pilots union. The committee then produces a transcript for further use in the investigation and public distribution, where necessary.
While transparency can aid public understanding and trust in aviation safety processes, there are concerns about sensationalism and misinterpretation of the technical conversations by the general public. These matters are treated with the highest sensitivity; Congress mandates that CVR audio is not released to the public, in whole or in part. Even the written transcript can only be released on a set timetable, typically at a public hearing or when a report is issued for public consumption.
While there are strict rules in place,
pilot unions
and
individuals
have come out against CVR reforms on the table in the US. Prime concerns remain around privacy, and fears that airlines might begin to use cockpit recordings to pursue disciplinary actions or surveil pilots, rather than sticking to using the systems for safety investigations. Others contend that, in some cases, pilots have even worked around existing 2-hour recording limits to cover their tracks in cases of
potential misconduct.
Ultimately, controversy continues to hold back cockpit voice recorders from being as good as they possibly could be. It’s likely that crash investigators in future will have to make do with what they can get as opposition to more capable recorders remains potent in the US. Meanwhile, European regulators seem happy to charge ahead and enforce a greater standard. We may yet learn from this folly, but hopefully not through the loss of some critical information that could solve a future airline tragedy. | 75 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726157",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T15:25:56",
"content": "I’m all for it.Every now and then I watch a bunch of video’s from Mentour Pilot and it happens far to often that data from the CVR is not available after an accident.And for me, the responsibility for a f... | 1,760,372,022.355083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/resistor-swap-gives-honda-insights-more-power/ | Resistor Swap Gives Honda Insights More Power | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"drivetrain",
"fuse",
"Honda",
"horsepower",
"hybrid",
"InSight",
"resistor",
"shunt resistor",
"upgrade"
] | A common complaint around modern passenger vehicles is that they are over-reliant on electronics, from overly complex infotainment systems to engines that can’t be fixed on one’s own due to the proprietary computer control systems. But even still, when following the circuits to their ends you’ll still ultimately find a physical piece of hardware. A group of Honda Insight owners are taking advantage of this fact
to trick the computers in their cars into higher performance
with little more than a handful of resistors.
The relatively simple modification to the first-generation Insight involves a shunt resistor, which lets the computer sense the amount of current being drawn from the hybrid battery and delivered to the electric motor. By changing the resistance of this passive component, the computer thinks that the motor is drawing less current and allows more power to be delivered to the drivetrain than originally intended. With the shunt resistor modified, which can be done with either a bypass resistor or a custom circuit board, the only other change is to upgrade the 100 A fuse near the battery for a larger size.
With these two modifications in place, the electric motor gets an additional 40% power boost, which is around five horsepower. But for an electric motor which can output full torque at zero RPM, this is a significant boost especially for a relatively lightweight car that’s often considered under-powered. It’s a relatively easy, inexpensive modification though which means the boost is a good value, although since these older hybrids are getting along in years the next upgrade might be
a new traction battery like we’ve seen in the older Priuses
.
Thanks to [Aut0l0g1c] for the tip! | 123 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726110",
"author": "Alex365",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T12:32:43",
"content": "I’m all for hacking, but increasing torque by 40% without taking into consideration the rest of the drive train and its limitations calls for sheared off/broken parts. Also current capacity of cables and ... | 1,760,372,022.665497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/31/low-cost-dsp-for-scanning-probe-microscopy/ | Low-Cost DSP For Scanning Probe Microscopy | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"scanning probe microscopy",
"scanning tunneling microscope"
] | A scanning probe microscope comes in a wide variety of flavors, they all produce a set of data points containing the measurements at each location. Usually these data points form a regular 2D grid, but it can be more beneficial to change the density of measurements at certain locations, or even the height, which creates a much more complex probing path and subsequent (XYZ) data set.
Yet this should not deter anyone, as
[Miroslav Valtr] and colleagues demonstrate in a July 2023 article
in
Hardware X
where they use a Red Pitaya SBC along with custom Eurocard-format PCBs to create a low-cost-ish (<1,500 USD) open hardware Digital Signal Processor (DSP) they call
Gwyscope
.
How the Gwyscope controller fits into an example of a scanning probe microscope setup. (Credit: Miroslav Valtr et al., 2023)
The Red Pitaya itself is used as a convenient hybrid FPGA-based module with on-board signal processing hardware, with its Xilinx Zynq ARM-FPGA chip providing both an FPGA section to implement the feedback loop module in Verilog, as well as the means to run a Linux instance with the C-based software that connects via Ethernet to a remote workstation. This communication is based around the GwyFile library, which is part of the
Gwyddion
project. The scanning paths are generated using
libgwyscan
(see
this presentation
for an introduction).
The resulting scan data is saved as an XYZ data file, which can be read with the Gwyddion visualization and analysis program. Although far from a quick & easy afternoon project for the casual hobbyist, it could be a boon for universities and laboratories.
Thanks to [Nicolae Irimia] for the tip. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726194",
"author": "julian",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T16:59:24",
"content": "could be even more low cost if they used an ebay 4250…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6726555",
"author": "Prfesser",
"timestamp": "2024-02-0... | 1,760,372,022.142147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/swapping-nunchucks-for-a-steering-wheel/ | Swapping Nunchucks For A Steering Wheel | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"controller",
"d-pad",
"gaming",
"mario kart",
"nunchuck",
"servo",
"steering wheel",
"wii",
"wiimote"
] | Rather than chasing pure performance and high quality graphics like other gaming companies, Nintendo has made a name for themselves over the last few decades by favoring not only artistic design and gameplay, but the physical design of the game systems. Of course the hybrid handheld Switch console is among these, but it also includes things like the novel design of the Nintendo 64 controller and, of course, the Wii nunchuck controllers. They’re not always met with resounding approval, though. Some of us tend to prefer more traditional gamepad design, and will go to extreme lengths to get it
like this D-pad for playing Mario Kart Wii
.
Rather than simply building a compatible controller for the Wii, or even using a GameCube controller, this controller setup takes a more roundabout approach. A Wiimote is placed in a holster built from Lego, and the game is set up to recognize it as if it were being used in its steering wheel mode. The Lego holster has a servo attached which can tilt the Wiimote from side to side, mimicking a player holding it to play the game, with another set of servos set up to press the various buttons. To control the controller, a homebrew D-pad built on perfboard with an Arduino at its core is used to send commands to the servos, allowing for a more standard controller layout to be used for the classic kart racing game than the steering wheel Wiimote allows.
While it’s quite obvious that there are simpler, easier solutions that avoid the sometimes awkward nature of using Wiimotes, we certainly appreciate the Rube Goldberg-like approach to setting up your gaming experience exactly the way you like. Whether that’s setting up
an antique CRT effect
for the authentic retro gaming experience or building
a complete racing simulator from scratch
, the gaming experience is ripe for personalization and unique builds like this one. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726050",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T06:23:38",
"content": "I suppose an AI backed voice recognition that would control the servos was too easy while the commands should be shouted by a family / neighbours chorus that are directed by the player?",
"... | 1,760,372,022.095493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/ingenuity-may-be-grounded-but-its-legacy-will-be-grand/ | IngenuityMay Be Grounded, But Its Legacy Will Be Grand | Donald Papp | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"Ingenuity",
"mars",
"nasa",
"Perseverance"
] | [Eric Berger] has a thoughtful and detailed article explaining why
Ingenuity,
NASA’s small helicopter on Mars, was
probably far more revolutionary than many realize
, and has a legacy to grant the future of off-world exploration that is already being felt.
Ingenuity
was
recently grounded due to rotor damage
, having already performed far beyond the scope of its original mission. The damage, visible by way of a shadow from one of the rotors, might not look like much at first glance, but flying in the vanishingly-thin atmosphere of Mars requires the 1.18 meter (3.9 foot) carbon fiber blades to spin at very high speeds — meaning even minor rotor damage could be devastating.
Perseverance and Ingenuity pose for a selfie on Mars.
[Eric] points out a lot that is deeply interesting and influential about
Ingenuity
. Not only is successful powered flight on another planet a real Wright brothers moment, but how
Ingenuity
came to be validates a
profoundly different engineering approach for NASA
.
To work in the space industry is to be constrained by mass. But even so,
Ingenuity
‘s creators had a mere four pounds to work with. That’s for rotors, hardware, electronics, batteries, solar panel — all of it. NASA’s lightest computer module alone weighed a pound, so engineers had no choice but to depart from the usual NASA way of doing things to get it done at all. Not everyone at NASA was on board. But
Ingenuity
worked, and it worked wonderfully.
Powered flight opens new doors, and not just for support roles like navigation planning. There’s real science that can be done if powered flight is on the table. For example, [Eric] points out that inaccessible terrain such as the
Valles Marineris
canyon
on Mars is doubtlessly scientifically fascinating, but at 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep, rover-based exploration is not an option. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725798",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T12:19:44",
"content": "Loved the Scott Manley metaphorical take on what would happen if they attempted take-off now “like a brick inside a washing machine on a trampoline” (…shows three second clip of a brick inside a ... | 1,760,372,022.71679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/building-a-semi-auto-cookie-dough-gun/ | Building A Semi-Auto Cookie Dough Gun | Julian Scheffers | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"chocolate chip cookie",
"cookies",
"cooking",
"dispenser",
"kitchen hacks"
] | Are you a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur? Do you want to eat more cookies than you probably should at the push of a button? Don’t worry, [Startup Chuck] has got you covered with his
semi-automatic cookie dough dispenser
.
[Startup Chuck] tries several ways of dispensing dough, some of which more explosive than others. Turns out that a homemade pneumatic extruder doesn’t exactly rhyme with “safety”. The other methods are more promising
dough
though, and an empty caulk tube sourced from Amazon and a motorized caulking gun demonstrate a less dangerous, more effective way to dispense dough.
Inspired by this approach, he started development of a servo-driven extruder. It uses store-bought dough cylinders in a sleek metal and acrylic contraption that is then treated with the requisite big mess of wires any good project has. As the dough is extruded, an optical sensor detects how far the dough has moved and it uses sufficiently violent pneumatics to slice the dough, which has the fun side effect of launching pucks of cookie dough at the user.
If you like the idea of edible extrusions, but aren’t so concerned about the rapid-fire element of this project, the concept isn’t unlike
some of the food printers we’ve covered
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725761",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T09:05:22",
"content": "Make a Bugsy Malone splurge gun!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6725934",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T20:22:01",
"conten... | 1,760,372,022.450331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/a-complete-exchange-from-scratch-for-your-rotary-dial-phones/ | A Complete Exchange From Scratch For Your Rotary Dial Phones | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"pots",
"slic",
"telephone exchange"
] | Such has been the success of the mobile phone that in many places they have removed the need for wired connections, for example where this is being written the old copper connection can only be made via an emulated phone line on an internet router. That doesn’t mean that wired phones are no longer of interest to a hardware hacker though, and many of us have at times experimented with these obsolete instruments. At the recent 37C3 event in Germany, [Hans Gelke] gave a talk on
the analog exchange he’s created from scratch
.
The basic form of the circuit is built around a crosspoint switch array, with interfaces for each line and a Raspberry Pi to control it all. But that simple description doesn’t fully express its awesomeness, rather than hooking up a set of off-the-shelf modules he’s designed everything himself from scratch. His subscriber line interface circuit uses a motor controller to generate the bell signal, his analogue splitter has an op-amp and a transistor, and his crosspoint array is a collection of JFETs.
Having dabbled in these matters ourselves
, it’s fascinating to see someone else making this work. Video below the break.
Have an analogue phone but nowhere to use it?
Bring it to a hacker camp
! | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725707",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T06:40:48",
"content": "As a general recommendation:watch CCC videos directly on their platform:https://media.ccc.deMuch better, YT is so annoying.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,022.405487 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/new-robots-to-explore-new-areas-of-japans-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant/ | New Robots To Explore New Areas Of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant | Maya Posch | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"Fukushima",
"quadcopter",
"robotics",
"TEPCO"
] | During a press event on January 23rd, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
demonstrated two new robots
at the mock-up facility at Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s
Naraha Center for Remote Control Technology Development
(
NARREC
).
As pictured by AP
, one is a snake-like robot that should be able to reach very inaccessible areas, while four flying drones will be the first to enter the containment vessel of the Unit 1 reactor for inspection.
The flying drone to be used at Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 1 building. (Credit: Daisuke Kojima/Kyodo News via AP)
These flying drones are 20 cm across, weigh 185 grams each, and were adapted from an existing model that’s used for boiler inspections. At the Naraha Town facility, operators were able to practice flying it into a copy of the Unit 1’s containment vessel via the piping. As the most heavily damaged unit at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, engineers are interested to learn the details of the fuel and debris that has fallen to the bottom of the vessel so that the clean-up and decontamination steps can be planned.
Most of the current work inside the Fukushimi Daiichi reactor buildings is performed by robots, with the
TEPCO gallery
providing an overview of the wide range of the types used so far.
One of the first was the PackBot, from US-based iRobot, with
many more
following for a variety of tasks, from inspection to debris clearing and even dry ice-based decontamination. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725673",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T03:50:52",
"content": "HAD recently had an article bemoaning the use of “robot” for just about everything and anything with a motor. To be fair, a bristlebot is the end of a toothbrush with a pager vibrator glued on – and people... | 1,760,372,022.508725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/a-mouse-becomes-a-camera/ | A Mouse Becomes A Camera | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"digital camera",
"mouse",
"mouse sensor",
"optical mouse"
] | If your pointing device is a mouse, turn it over. The chances are you’ll see a red LED light if you’re not seriously old-school and your mouse has a ball, this light serves as the illumination for a very simple camera sensor. The mouse electronics do their thing by looking for movement in the resulting image, but it should be possible to pull out the data and repurpose the sensor as a digital camera. [Doctor Volt] has a new video showing just that
with the innards of a Logitech peripheral
.
The mouse contains a microcontroller and the camera part, which fortunately has an SPI interface. The correct register to query the sensor information was deduced, and as if my magic, an image appeared. An M12 lens provided focus with a handy 3D printed mount, and the board went back into the mouse case as a housing. The pictures have something of the Game Boy camera about them, being low-res and monochrome, but it’s still a neat hack.
If you’d like to give it a go
you can find the code in a GitHub repository
.
You might find it worth finding a gaming mouse though
, for the much higher resolution sensor. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725614",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T00:17:46",
"content": "Does the mouse camera do infrared? I mean I can’t see a reason a mouse would need an infrared filter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6725652",
... | 1,760,372,022.784921 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/3d-printed-axial-compressor-is-on-a-mission-to-inflate-balloons/ | 3D Printed Axial Compressor Is On A Mission To Inflate Balloons | Donald Papp | [
"Engine Hacks",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"axial",
"balloon",
"compressor",
"inflate"
] | [Let’s Print] has been fascinated with creating a
3D printed axial compressor
that can do meaningful work, and his latest iteration mixes FDM and SLA printed parts to successfully inflate (and pop) a latex glove, so that’s progress!
Originally, the unit couldn’t manage even that until he modified the number and type of fan blades on the compressor stages. There were other design challenges as well. For example, one regular issue was a coupling between the motor and the rest of the unit breaking repeatedly. At the speeds the compressor runs at, weak points tend to surface fairly quickly. That’s not stopping [Let’s Print], however. He plans to explore other compressor designs in his quest for an effective unit.
Attaching motor shafts to 3D printed devices can be tricky, and in the past we’ve seen a clever solution that is worth keeping in mind: half of a spider coupling (or jaw coupling) can be
an economical and effective way to attach 3D printed things to a shaft
.
While blowing up a regular party balloon is still asking too much of [Let’s Print]’s compressor as it stands, it certainly inflates (and pops) a latex glove like nobody’s business. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725537",
"author": "NiHaoMike",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T21:23:41",
"content": "Could this be adapted into an open source turbo vacuum pump? Probably would need to use a piece of pipe as the sealed housing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,372,022.834147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/a-vintage-monitor-lives-again-with-a-new-heart/ | A Vintage Monitor Lives Again With A New Heart | Jenny List | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"commodore 1702",
"crt",
"CRT monitor"
] | Aside from keeping decades-old consumer-grade computing hardware working, a major problem for many retrocomputing enthusiasts lies in doing the same for vintage monitors. Whether your screen is a domestic TV or a dedicated monitor, the heat and voltage stress of driving a CRT made these devices significantly less reliable than many of their modern-day counterparts. [Adrian’s Digital Basement] has a worn-out and broken Commodore 1701 monitor, which
he’s brought back to life with a modern circuit board and a CRT transplant.
Following on from a previous project
, he’s using a replacement board sold as a repair option for CRT TVs on AliExpress. The Commodore monitor has its board on a metal chassis which takes the replacement with a bit of modification. He doesn’t say where the new CRT came from, but we’re guessing it was a late model TV as CRTs made over the last few decades are more interchangeable than might be expected. There’s a moment of mild dodginess as he makes a voltage doubler to run the 220 V board from 120 V with a pair of large electrolytic capacitors hot glued in place, but otherwise it’s a success.
At the end of it all after some testing and set-up he has a Commodore monitor with a new heart and multi-standard support. Is it really a Commodore monitor though, or should it have been repaired? It’s a difficult one to answer, but we’d suggest that CRT monitor repair is less easy today than it used to be because many of the parts are now difficult to find. If it saves at least some of the original from the dumpster it’s better than doing nothing. We wonder how long these upgrades will remain possible as even with Chinese plants making these boards and a handful of CRT TVs still appearing on AliBaba it’s clear that CRTs are at the very end of their life. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725505",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T19:55:58",
"content": "I wonder if/when an artisinal CRT operation will start up. Doubt they’ll be making trinitrons but I bet somebody will do it someday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,022.89457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/tech-in-plain-sight-escalators/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Escalators | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Slider"
] | [
"escalator",
"inventions",
"machines"
] | If you are designing a building and need to move many people up or down, you probably will at least consider an escalator. In fact, if you visit most large airports these days, they even use a similar system to move people without changing their altitude. We aren’t sure why the name “slidewalk” never caught on, but they have a similar mechanism to an escalator. Like most things, we don’t think much about them until they don’t work. But they’ve been around a long time and are great examples of simple technology we use so often that it has become invisible.
Of course, there’s always the elevator. However, the elevator can only service one floor at a time, and everyone else has to wait. Plus, a broken elevator is useless, while a broken escalator is — for most failures — just stairs.
Early Concepts and Patents
The Nathan Ames Escalator Patent
The story of the escalator begins in the mid-19th century. In 1859, Nathan Ames, a patent attorney from Saugus, Massachusetts, patented the first known design of an “escalator,” though he never built a working model. His design, called the “revolving stairs,” was quite speculative. He suggested the device would be either manually powered or work with hydraulics.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that designs resembling modern escalators emerged. In 1889, Leamon Souder patented the “stairway,” which featured a series of linked steps. Like Ames, Souder never built a model of his invention. He’d later patent three other proto-escalator designs, including two shaped like a spiral.
By 1892, the patent office granted a patent to Jesse W. Reno’s “Endless Conveyor or Elevator.” A few months later, George A. Wheeler patented his design for a moving staircase, which was never built but influenced future developments. Charles Seeberger bought Wheeler’s patents and collaborated with the Otis Elevator Company to create a prototype that incorporated Wheeler’s ideas.
Jesse W. Reno created the first working escalator, which he termed an “inclined elevator.” In 1896, he installed it at Coney Island, New York City. This early version was essentially a belt with cast-iron slats for traction that moved along a 25-degree incline.
Diagram of an Escalator from Mitsubishi
Charles Seeberger and Otis Elevator Company produced the first commercial escalator in 1899. This model won first prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Unlike Reno’s design, which was also at the Exposition, Seeberger’s escalator had flat, moving stairs and a smooth step surface without the comb effect seen in modern escalators. Attendees of the exposition could also see escalators from the Link Belt Machinery Company, Piat, and Hallé.
Piat, a French firm, had installed a “stepless” escalator in Harrods back in 1898. It had a leather belt, and — reportedly — employees had to revive unnerved patrons who rode it with free smelling salts and cognac.
Several companies went on to develop their own escalator products, often under different names due to trademark rights held by Otis. For instance, the Peelle Company called their models the Motorstair, and Westinghouse referred to theirs as an Electric Stairway, while Haughton Elevator had the delightfully simple name of Moving Stairs. Otis lost their trademark in a 1950 case
Haughton Elevator Co. v. Seeberger
where the court confirmed that escalator had become a generic descriptive word.
Some old escalators, including the one at Macy’s Herald Square in New York City, still operate today. It opened in the 1920s but was retrofitted with metal steps in the 1990s. You can see it below from — not kidding —
The Escalator Channel
.
The Core Components
An escalator is essentially a continuously moving staircase powered by an electric motor. The main components include steps, tracks, handrails, and a drive system. Each of these plays a crucial role in the seamless operation of an escalator. The main structural component is called a truss and is typically a hollow structure that runs the length of the escalator and supports the straight sections of the track.
The tracks guide the movement of the steps. There are two sets: one for guiding the steps up and another for guiding them back down. This creates a continuous loop that the steps ride.
Some Escalators Show their Inner Workings
Steps are the most visible part of the machine and are usually made from a single piece of die-cast aluminum or steel. They are linked together like a chain and mounted on tracks. Each step has wheels on the underside that roll along these tracks, allowing the steps to remain level while moving along the inclined path.
The handrails (part of the sides known as the balustrade) move in sync with the steps because the pulleys that drive them are on the same motor. The steps emerge from and disappear under the landing platforms at each end. The landing platforms have a comb to stop large things from entering the machinery. Many escalators also have a sensor, so if something unexpected enters the comb, the escalator will stop.
All About the Movement
Of course, the heart of it all is the motor. It is often under the top landing platform along with the drive gear. Another gear that reverses the direction of the steps.
The magic of an escalator’s movement lies in its looped system of steps. One track guides the two wheels in the front of the step that form a drive chain, and another guides the two back wheels. By controlling the vertical distance between the tracks, the steps can be made to lie flat or stand up.
If it doesn’t make sense, check out the animation from [Jared Owen] below.
The Future
It doesn’t seem like the escalator is going anywhere soon. However, there are always developments to make them safer, more efficient, and faster. Of course, today’s escalator will have much more control and monitoring via the network than the Macy’s building engineer could have dreamed of. Some escalators can now control their speed depending on the size of the crowd or even stop when no one is using them.
Want to really understand what’s inside? Why not
print a model
? Or, go to the woodshop and build
a torture device for your Slinky
.
Featured image: “
Escalators 1
” by Eric Pesik | 36 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725457",
"author": "Pav Eng",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T18:27:02",
"content": "The Budapest metro still has wooden escalators that move scarily fast! Though the stations are DEEP underground so the extra speed is appreciated!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,372,022.975467 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/need-a-serial-data-plotter-better-write-your-own/ | Need A Serial Data Plotter? Better Write Your Own | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"plotter",
"PyQT",
"python",
"serial"
] | When you’re working with a development team, especially in a supporting capacity, you can often find yourself having to invent tools and support systems that are fairly involved, but don’t add to the system’s functionality. Still, without them, it’d be a dead duck. [Aidan Chandra] was clearly in a similar situation, working with a bunch of postgrads at Stanford, on an exoskeleton project, and needed
an accurate data plotter
to watch measurements in real-time.
This particular problem has been solved many times over, but [Aidan] laments that many solutions available seem to be too complex, hard to extend, or just have broken dependencies. This happens a lot, and it simply leads to yet another project to get going, before you can do the real work it supports. Based on Python and PyQT5, serial-plotter is a new beginning, with an emphasis on correct data acquisition and real-time data visualization with a little processing thrown in. Think, acquire data, show the raw values as well as the mean value, and RMS noise all on the same windows side-by-side, all of which is easily tweakable with a bit of programming using Numpy and Matplotlib.
One particularly important point to highlight is that of the handling of time-stamping. [Aidan] needed to ensure samples were logged together with a local MCU timestamp so that when displayed and possibly later post-processed, it was possible to accurately determine when a particular value or event occurred. With the amount of buffering, data loss and multiple-thread shenanigans, it is easy to forget that the data might get to the application in a non-deterministic way, and just relying on local CPU time is not so useful.
If you need to visualize data transported over the serial port, we have seen many projects to help. Like the
highly configurable Serial Studio
, for one. If your needs are a bit more complex, especially with multiple data transport methods, then a
Supercon 2022 talk by [Alex Whittemore]
might be a jolly good place to start. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725407",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T17:17:22",
"content": "RRDtool was probably not appropriate in this situation, since it’s not realtime, but it’s worth looking into if you do need some data collection and graphing that is not too hard to set up. It’s very old... | 1,760,372,023.023947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/3d-printering-speed-is-so-hot-right-now/ | 3D Printering: Speed Is So Hot Right Now | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"Bambu",
"klipper",
"prusa",
"speed",
"tradeoff"
] | Speed in 3D printing hasn’t been super important to everyone. Certainly, users value speed. But some value quality even more highly, and if gaining quality means giving up speed, then so be it. That’s more or less how things stood for a while, but all things change.
The landscape of filament-based 3D printing over the past year or so has made one thing clear: the market’s gotten a taste of speed, and what was once the domain of enthusiasts installing and configuring custom firmware is now a baseline people will increasingly expect. After all, who doesn’t want faster prints if one doesn’t have to sacrifice quality in the process?
Speed vs. Quality: No Longer a Tradeoff
Historically, any meaningful increase in printing speed risked compromising quality. Increasing print speed can introduce artifacts like
ringing
or
ghosting
, as well as other issues. Printing faster can also highlight mechanical limitations or shortcomings that may not have been a problem at lower speeds. These issues can’t all be resolved by tightening some screws or following a calibration process.
The usual way to get into higher speed printing has been to install something like
Klipper
, and put the necessary work into configuring and calibrating for best results. Not everyone who prints wishes to go this route. In 3D printing there are always those more interested in the end result than in pushing the limits of the machine itself. For those folks, the benefits of speedy printing have generally come at too high a cost.
That’s no longer the case. One can now buy a printer that effectively self-calibrates, offers noticeably increased printing speeds over any earlier style machines, and does it at a reasonable price.
Fast, Right Out of the Box
Printer manufacturers like Bambu Lab have made reliable high-speed printing something that’s available from a printer right off the shelf. Since then, other manufacturers have focused more on features that bring speed increases like input shaping and pressure advance. One no longer has to choose between quality and speed, nor does one need to install and configure custom firmware to get the benefits.
Bambu Lab didn’t invent any of these features, but they were the first major player to bring them out of the enthusiast niche and into the limelight. Prior to Bambu Lab bringing these features to the mass market, 3D printer designs spent years without really changing much. Certainly, machines gained features and refinements, but the basic designs and capabilities went broadly unchanged.
Then a new machine comes along that not only has folks printing within twenty minutes of opening the box, but self-calibrates and cranks out a
Benchy boat
in a fraction of the usual time.
By the end of 2023 it was clear that reliable speed that does not seriously compromise print quality had arrived, and the 3D printing scene has been very, very receptive to the idea.
Why Hasn’t This Happened Earlier?
A 3D printer has many parts that must work together, and only when all these are in harmony can a print be both fast
and
of reliable quality. That means speed isn’t just about running motors faster; it’s about ensuring everything works in harmony as well. With small and slow machines, this is far less difficult to do. As machines get larger and faster, the problem gets rapidly more complex and the margins for error get smaller.
Any speed increase has an impact on the physics of all of the other moving (and melty) parts that make up a printer. As it’s sometimes said in physics, “everything is a spring.” Motors do not start and stop instantly, toolheads have mass and inertia, melted plastic doesn’t stop or start flowing instantly in perfect volumes. The faster everything moves and the larger the printer is, the harder the job becomes and the more obvious it is when everything isn’t as it should be.
Making a printer fast and reliable means minimizing some of those effects and compensating for the others, which is not a trivial task. And with the need for precise tuning comes the need for regular calibration to keep things in line. Effective self-calibration becomes an attractive complement to higher print speeds.
What Will Be Next?
For a good while, printers got improvements and new features but fundamentally didn’t change very much. Now that printers have hit the market that show speed doesn’t have to sacrifice quality, the response is clear: faster is better.
It won’t be long before what we now consider “fast” becomes normal expectation for 3D printers. Once that happens, what do you think will be the next frontier? What features are currently the domain of cutting-edge DIY enthusiasts that you believe will be the next big thing?
Non-planar printing
, perhaps? Let us know in the comments. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725356",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T15:34:29",
"content": "The article about a delta printer some days ago got me wondering – are they obsoleted by the current gen of core xy printers?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,023.100414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/roman-dodecahedrons-a-mystifying-archaeological-find/ | Roman Dodecahedrons: A Mystifying Archaeological Find | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"News"
] | [
"archeology",
"dodecahedron"
] | Much about archaeology can be described as trying to figure out the context in which objects and constructions should be interpreted. A good example of this are the metal dodecahedrons (twelve-sided shape) which have been found during archaeological excavations at former Roman sites. Since 1739 over 115 of them have been recorded, most recently
a fully intact copper specimen
found near the Lincolnshire village of Norton Disney during the Summer of 2023 by a
local group of archaeologists
.
Two ancient Roman bronze dodecahedrons and an icosahedron (3rd c. AD) in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany. (Credit: Kleon3,
Wikimedia
)
As the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group notes on their page, this is the 33rd example of one of these items found in what was once Roman Britain, lending credence to the idea that such
dodecahedrons
originated within the Gallo-Roman culture.
As for the objects themselves, the ones so far found were dated to between the 2nd and 4th century CE, are all made out of some kind of metal alloy (e.g. bronze), are usually a dodecahedron but sometimes different (e.g. an icosahedron with 20 faces), yet all are hollow and usually with a single large hole in each face. The dodecahedron found at Norton Disney was analyzed to consist out of 75% copper, 7% tin and 18% lead, with a width of 8.6 cm and weighing in at 254 grams.
What is perhaps most interesting about these objects is that they can be found all across the former Roman Empire, as well as the
Maritime Silk Road
with similar examples found in what today is
Óc Eo
in Vietnam, but which used to be part of the Kingdom of Funan, as well as in Myanmar (formerly Burma). These finds generally are in the form of smaller, golden polyhedrons, albeit possessing a strong resemblance to the versions found throughout the former Roman Empire. A great overview of these Asian versions is
provided by Anna T. N. Bennett
in a 2009 article in
Archeo Sciences
.
The polyhedral gold bead from Khao Sam Kaeo, in eastern peninsular Thailand, is stylistically identical to those from Óc Eo in the Mekong Delta, and to numerous similar beads from Pyu sites in Burma. (Credit:
Bennett, 2009
)
As for the purpose of those objects, it is clear that at least the golden type was intended as decorative jewelry, possibly with some religious overtones. The ones made out of bronze and similar materials are more of a mystery, with a variety of uses suggested over the years, including as a spool knitting device, as well as a mathematical or a surveying instrument, yet none of the available sources from the era ever reference these objects, making that highly unlikely.
Ultimately it is highly likely that these objects were made and coveted primarily because people liked how they looked, which isn’t too dissimilar from how humans today pick and choose baubles to keep around, whether on shelves or as part of personal jewelry.
Some of us also like to
build LED-covered dodecahedrons
for fun, which is something that will have archaeologists in a few hundred years from now likely very puzzled. You can also
assemble your own
Gallo-Roman-style dodecahedron if you really want to throw said archaeologists for a loop. | 121 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725262",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T12:10:03",
"content": "My theroy is that these are candle toppers. The candle goes through the largest hole at the bottom with the small hole at the top holding it in place and the projections allow a dish (or other object) t... | 1,760,372,025.074788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/29/flux-from-scratch/ | Flux, From Scratch | Jenny List | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"flux",
"rosin",
"soldering"
] | Soldering flux is (or at least, should be) one of the ubiquitous features of any electronics bench. It serves the purpose of excluding oxygen from a solder joint as it solidifies, and in most cases its base is derived from pine rosin. Most of us just buy flux, but [pileofstuff]
is having a go at making his own
.
He starts with a block of rosin and a couple of different solvents. Isopropanol we’re happy with, but perhaps using methanol for something to be vaporized within breathing distance isn’t something we’d do. At about 25% rosin to solvent ratio the result is a yellow liquid flux, which he tests against some commercial fluxes. The result is a reasonable liquid flux, something which perhaps shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, and is a handy piece of information to store away should we ever be MacGuyver-like stuck in a pine forest with a need to save the day with electronics.
It would be interesting to try the same technique but with a solvent selected to soften the rosin for a paste flux, and perhaps any chemists among our readership could enlighten us about just what rosin is beside the heavy fractions left after extracting the volatiles from pine resin.
In the past
we’ve taken a close look at how solder really works
. | 53 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725209",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T09:27:08",
"content": "I’d like to see it with ethanol as something that would be homebrewable. Or just tested with everclearWith distillation you can get to nearly 96% ethanol I’m not sure what a home setup could reach (not ... | 1,760,372,025.24345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/ballpoint-switch-is-oh-so-satisfying/ | Ballpoint Switch Is Oh-So Satisfying | Kristina Panos | [
"how-to",
"Parts"
] | [
"ballpoint",
"ballpoint pen",
"hot glue",
"low voltage",
"paper clip",
"switch"
] | Alright, here’s your quick and dirty hack for the day. The astute among you may recall [Peter Waldraff]’s bookshelf train build of a few days ago, and the fact that he used a switch made from a dead ballpoint pen to light up the scene. Fortunately,
[Peter] wrote in to give us the details of this low-voltage sub-build
, which you can see in the video after the break.
Essentially, [Peter] starts by making a shortened version of the pen. He modifies nearly every bit of it, including cutting down the ink cartridge, so if you try this, make sure the thing is all dried up first. Then, as he is screwing the point holder back on the barrel, he wraps elastic cord around the inside barrel in lieu of having sewing thread lying around. This cord along with some hot glue will hold a pair of paper clips to the sides of the point holder. When the pen is clicked into the writing position, it makes a connection between the paper clips and closes the circuit on whatever is wired into it.
What types of little hacks like this have gotten you through the build? Let us know in the comments, or better yet, write it up and drop
us a tip
. By the way,
here is that bookshelf train build
in case you missed it. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725184",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T08:18:00",
"content": "I did something similar when I was about seven or eight, but I made use of the fact the cam inside rotates and created a push button that could have more than two states, it was fairly tricky to stop it ja... | 1,760,372,024.907622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/lorenz-attractor-analog-computer-with-octave-simulation/ | Lorenz Attractor Analog Computer With Octave Simulation | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"lorenz attractor",
"octave",
"op-amp"
] | [Janis Alnis] wanted to
build an analog computer circuit
and bought some multiplier chips. The first attempt used apparently fake chips that were prone to overheating. He was able to get it to work and also walked through some Octave (a system similar to Matlab) simulations for the circuit. You can follow along in the video below.
Getting the little multiplier chips into the breadboard was a bit of a challenge. Of course, there are a variety of ways to solve that problem. The
circuit in question
is from the always interesting [Glen’s Stuff]
website
.
From that site:
The Lorenz system, originally discovered by American mathematician and meteorologist, Edward Norton Lorenz, is a system that exhibits continuous-time chaos and is described by three coupled, ordinary differential equations.
So, the circuit is an analog solution to the system of differential equations. Not bad for a handful of chips and some discrete components on a breadboard. We’ve seen a similar circuit on
Hackaday.io
.
Check out our recent competition winners if you want to see op amps do their thing. Analog computers
were a thing
. They aren’t always that
complicated
, either. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725216",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T09:57:04",
"content": "I love the idea of using analogue circuitry to generate attractors. The only trouble is that these days with digital oscilloscopes it’s not so easy to display the results as on a good old fashioned CRT. I... | 1,760,372,024.667019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/harvesting-electricity-from-high-voltage-transmission-lines-using-fences/ | Harvesting Electricity From High-Voltage Transmission Lines Using Fences | Maya Posch | [
"High Voltage",
"Science"
] | [
"high voltage",
"inductive coupling",
"transmission line"
] | When you have a bunch of 230 kV transmission lines running over your property, why not use them for some scientific experiments? This is where the [Double M Innovations] YouTube channel comes into play, including a recent video where the idea of harvesting electricity from HV transmission lines
using regular fences
is put to an initial test.
The nearly final voltage measurement by [Double M Innovations].
A rather hefty 88 µF, 1200 V capacitor, a full bridge rectifier, and 73 meters (240 feet) of coax cable to a spot underneath the aforementioned HV transmission lines. The cable was then put up at a height consistent with that of fencing at about 1.2 m (4 ft), making sure that no contact with the ground occurred anywhere. One end of the copper shield of the coax was connected to the full bridge rectifier, with the opposite AC side connected to a metal stake driven into the ground. From this the capacitor was being charged.
As for the results, they were rather concerning and flashy, with the 1000 VAC-rated multimeter going out of range on the AC side of the bridge rectifier, and the capacitor slowly charging up to 1000 V before the experiment was stopped.
Based on the capacity of the capacitor and the final measured voltage of 907 VDC, roughly 36.2
Joule
would have been collected, giving some idea of the power one could collect from a few kilometers of fencing wire underneath such HV lines, and why you probably want to ground them if energy collecting is not your focus.
As for whether storing the power inductively coupled on fence wire can be legally used is probably something best discussed with your local energy company.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip. | 373 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724752",
"author": "Ray",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T04:10:14",
"content": "“As for whether storing the power inductively coupled on fence wire can be legally used is probably something best discussed with your local energy company.”Seriously? Stealing is stealing. Like that will n... | 1,760,372,025.717817 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/ground-effect-vehicle-to-carry-passengers-around-hawaii/ | Ground-Effect Vehicle To Carry Passengers Around Hawaii | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airplane",
"boat",
"ferry",
"ground effect",
"hawaii",
"passenger",
"seaglider"
] | Although Hawaii used to have a ferry service to access the various islands in the archipelago, due to environmental and political issues, air travel is now the only way to island-hop. Various companies have tried to fill this transportation gap, but have all been stymied for one reason or another. The latest to attempt to solve this problem is a unique one, however.
The Hawaii Seaglider Initiative is currently testing a ground-effect vehicle
for inter-island passenger service that hopes to use the unique characteristics of this type of aircraft to reduce costs and limit environmental concerns.
The Seaglider, with backing from the Hawaii state government and various corporate interests like Hawaiian Airlines, is actually an amalgamation of three different types of vehicle. It’s capable of operating like a normal, hulled boat at low speeds but has a hydrofoil for operating at higher speeds. Beyond that, its wings give it enough lift to leave the water but stay in ground-effect flight, flying low to the water to reduce drag and improve lift when compared to an aircraft flying out of the ground effect. The efficiency gains from this type of flight are enough that the Seaglider can use electric motors and batteries to make the trips from island to island.
While the ferry is not yet in service, flight testing of the vehicle is scheduled for this year. Ground-effect vehicles of this type do have a large number of obstacles to overcome, whether they’re huge military vehicles like the
Ekranoplanes of the Soviet Union
or even
small remote-controlled crafts
, including difficulty with rough seas and having to operate in a harsh salt water environment. | 31 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724694",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T00:02:57",
"content": "Why in the holy heck would “environmental” issues cause a ferry to be replaced with flying?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6724698",
"author":... | 1,760,372,025.378338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/a-look-at-3d-printed-professional-led-signage/ | A Look At 3D Printed Professional LED Signage | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"large 3d prints",
"sign",
"signmaking"
] | Customer perception is everything when you’re running a business, particularly in retail. High-quality signage can go a long way into creating a good impression in this respect. [king process] decided to show us
how professional-grade LED signage is made
in a Korean shop that specializes in the work.
The signs we’re shown are custom builds that are matched to the shape of a company’s logo. No rectangular printed lightboxes here, this is fully custom stuff. To that end, a 3D printer is the perfect tool for the job, as it lets the shop produce signs in any shape desired with no need for custom tooling.
The 3D printers that build up the signs have seriously large build volumes, though more so in the X and Y dimensions rather than the Z. We see a whole fleet of printers working away to allow multiple signs to be produced quickly. The first step is to produce the outline of a sign, which serves as a base for the build. Cavities in the sign are then filled with a translucent silicone solution to act as diffuser material. Once cured, these various sections are colored by hand as required. LED strips are then installed on a backing plate to illuminate the sections of the sign.
The final result is a sign with clean, bright glowing lines. It’s vaguely reminiscent of a neon sign, but without any of the limitations of the glass tubes influencing how it looks. It’s also neat to see the techniques a professional shop uses to make things right the first time, without dinging or marring any of the parts along the way.
Indeed, it seems the classical neon sign is, these days,
bested by a variety of alternative technologies. | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724666",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T22:17:39",
"content": "The real question is how these will look after a few years. Silicone yellows with UV and oxygen while plastics become brittle with UV alone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,025.139445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/a-general-purpose-pid-controller/ | A General-Purpose PID Controller | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"controller",
"controls",
"ESP32",
"gui",
"humidity",
"open source",
"pid",
"temperature",
"user friendly"
] | For those new to fields like robotics or aerospace, it can seem at first glance that a problem like moving a robot arm or flying an RC airplane might be simple problems to solve. It turns out, however, that control of systems like these can get complicated quickly; so much so that these types of problems have spawned their own dedicated branch of engineering. As controls engineers delve into this field, one of their initial encounters with a control system is often with the PID controller, and
this open source project delivers two of these general-purpose controllers in one box
.
The dual-channel PID controller was originally meant as a humidity and temperature controller and was based on existing software for an ATmega328. But after years of tinkering, adding new features, and moving the controller to an ESP32 platform, [knifter] has essentially a brand new piece of software for this controller. Configuring the controller itself is done before the software is compiled, and it includes a GUI since one of the design goals of the project was ease-of-use. He’s used it to control humidity, temperature and CO2 levels in his own work at the University of Amsterdam, but imagines that it could see further use outside of his use cases in things like reflow ovens which need simple on/off control or for motors which can be controlled through an H-bridge.
The PID controller itself seems fairly robust, and includes a number of features that seasoned controls engineers would look for in their PID controllers. There are additionally some other open-source PID controllers to take a look at
like this one built for an Arduino
, and if you’re still looking for interesting use cases for these types of controllers one of our favorites is
this PID controller built into a charcoal grill
. | 19 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724615",
"author": "NSFW",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T18:38:23",
"content": "In case anyone is interested in a PID controller with a variable output signal rather than on/off:https://github.com/LegacyNsfw/AvcsController/blob/master/Code/Controller/Feedback.cppThere’s also a simple LC... | 1,760,372,025.303382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/in-praise-of-simple-projects/ | In Praise Of “Simple” Projects | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"newsletter",
"water rocket"
] | When I start off on a “simple” project, experience shows that it’s got about a 10% chance of actually remaining simple. Sometimes it’s because Plan A never works out the way I think it will, due to either naivety or simply the random blockers that always get in the way and need surmounting. But a decent percentage of the time, it’s because something really cool happens along the way. Indeed, my favorite kind of “simple” projects are those that open up your eyes to a new world of possibilities or experiments that, taken together, are nothing like simple anymore.
Al Williams and I were talking about water rockets on the podcast the other day, and I realized that this was a perfect example of an open-ended simple project. It sounds really easy: you put some water in a soda bottle, pressurize it a bit with air, and then let it go. Water gets pushed down, bottle flies up. Done?
Oh no! The first step into more sophistication is the aerodynamics. But honestly, if you make something vaguely rocket-shaped with fins, it’ll probably work. Then you probably need a parachute release mechanism. And then some data logging? An accelerometer and barometer? A small video camera? That gets you to the level of [ARRO]’s
work that spawned our discussion
.
But it wasn’t ten minutes into our discussion that Al had already suggested making the pressure vessel with carbon fiber and doctoring the water mix to make it denser. You’d not be surprised that
these and other elaborations have been tried out
. Or you could go multi-stage, or vector-thrust, or…
In short, water rockets are one of those “simple” projects. You can get one basically working in a weekend day, and then if you’re so inclined, you could spend an entire summer of weekends chasing down the finer points, building larger and larger tubes, and refining payloads. What’s your favorite “simple” project?
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
! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724583",
"author": "Jesse Jenkins",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T16:27:04",
"content": "Back in 1967, I had physics at UCSB with Dr. Virgil Elings as the professor. We had an indoor classroom with about 50 students and the topic was momentum. Dr. Elings brought out a simple toy rocket,... | 1,760,372,025.77027 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/a-hydroelectric-dam-built-out-of-lego/ | A Hydroelectric Dam, Built Out Of LEGO | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"dam",
"hydroelectric dam",
"lego"
] | Hydroelectric dams are usually major infrastructure projects that costs tens of millions of dollars to construct. But they don’t have to be — you can build your own at home, using LEGO,
as [Build it with Bricks] demonstrates!
The build is set up in an aquarium with a pump, which serves to simulate flow through a river system. The LEGO dam is installed in the middle of the aquarium, blocking the flow. It has a sluice gate in the lower section to feed water to a turbine for power generation. The gate is moved via a rack and pinion. It’s driven by a LEGO motor on a long shaft to keep it a safe distance from the wet stuff. The dam also gets a spillway to allow for overflow to be handled elegantly. Meanwhile, a second motor acts as a generator, fitted with a fairly basic turbine.
Hilariously, the first build fails spectacularly as the hydrostatic pressure of the water destroys the LEGO wall. A wider base and some reinforcements help solve the problem. There’s a better turbine, too. It’s all pretty leaky, but LEGO was never designed to be water tight. As you might imagine, it doesn’t generate a lot of power, but it’s enough to just barely light some LEDs.
It’s a fun way to
learn about hydroelectric power
, even if it’s not making major amounts of electricity. Video after the break. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724648",
"author": "Floydian Slip",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T21:06:27",
"content": "That looks like quite a nice inspirational project for students in their STEM subjects. There’s a nice amount of practical engineering to get them interested and have fun doing it.",
"parent_id"... | 1,760,372,024.713014 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/soldering-holder-from-old-lamps/ | Soldering Holder From Old Lamps | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"helping hands",
"soldering tools"
] | One of the neat things about 3D printing is that you can create custom parts to fit salvage to use in projects. For example, [Willyrags05] took a lamp — looks like something you might find at a resale shop —
harvested the gooseneck tubes from it
.
Before 3D printing, it would have required ingenuity to cobble together some way to secure base and add a clamp to the other end. A blob of epoxy wouldn’t look as nice and not everyone can machine nice round adapters. Don’t have the same lamp? No problem. You can easily modify the adapters or create new ones to print for yourself.
Outside of the 3D printer, the project required a way to cut the ends off the tubes. [Willy] used a chop saw, but it seems like a hacksaw or bolt cutters might work. Neatness doesn’t count since the printed adapter will cover all sins.
Once the tubes are ready, some glue, magnets, and alligator clips (why aren’t these crocodile clips?) complete the assembly. [Willy] mentions he needs stronger magnets, but we might have been tempted to make the bases wider with depressions for multiple magnets. This is probably a project you won’t duplicate exactly, but it may well inspire you to upcycle that old lamp in the attic.
Maybe you prefer
a vise-like holder
. There are
plenty of other choices
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724509",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T09:28:44",
"content": "Nice ! Very usefull as you always miss one hand or two when soldering.Btw in french it’s a “crocodile clip” !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6724514",... | 1,760,372,026.161631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/hackaday-links-january-28-2024/ | Hackaday Links: January 28, 2024 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bug bounty",
"chrome",
"court",
"crime",
"gateway",
"germany",
"hackaday links",
"incognito",
"INTERPOL",
"isp",
"metacrime",
"metaverse",
"mysql",
"Rural",
"Starlink",
"white hat hacking"
] | From the “No good deed goes unpunished” files, this week came news of a German programmer who probably wishes he had selected better clients. According to
Heise Online
(
English translation
), a freelance programmer — referred to only as “defendant” in the article — was retained by a company to look into a database problem in their system. His investigation revealed that the customer’s database was being filled with log messages from a third-party service called
Modern Solution GmbH & Co. KG. over a MySQL connection to a remote server. Assuming this connection was dedicated for his client’s use, the programmer looked at the executable used to make the connection with a text editor, which revealed a password in plain text. Upon connecting to t
he remote database, he found that it not only contained data for all of Modern Solution’s customers, but also data for all the end users of their customers.
Realizing he’d unintentionally wandered into
verboten
territory, the programmer immediately backed out and contacted Modern Solutions. They quickly fixed the issue, and then just as quickly reported him to the police. Their “investigation” revealed that the programmer had “decompiled” the executable to obtain the password, in violation of German law. The judge agreed, stating that merely looking at and using the password constituted a criminal offense, regardless of intent and despite the fact that Modern Solution had provided the password to the programmer’s client when they sold them the software. The upshot of all of this nonsense? A €3,000 fine for the programmer, if the verdict stands on appeal. It could have been worse, though; German law allows for up to three years in prison for such offenses.
Speaking of legal nonsense, the
Venn diagram of dystopian fiction
is edging ever closer to becoming just a bunch of concentric circles with news of
an INTERPOL white paper
that details international law enforcement
opportunities
challenges presented by the metaverse. With the frightening title “Grooming, radicalization and cyber-attacks: INTERPOL warns of ‘Metacrime’,” the white paper anticipates a day when police will be faced with “virtual crime scenes where there is no physical evidence to be collected – just digital interactions involving virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).” Crimes they imagine taking place in this imaginary world include obvious yet ill-defined crimes such as grooming and radicalization, but also “virtual trespassing” into private metaverse property and theft from digital avatars. To some degree, we get their point; wherever people go, crime will follow. And it makes sense to be ahead of the curve, of course. But “metacrime” is a little too close for comfort to various sci-fi visions of crime.
In today’s “Google’s Gonna Google” news, it looks like the tech giant is
floating changes to how it touts Incognito mode on Chrome browsers
. Right now, the splash screen that pops up on Chrome incognito windows has comforting verbiage about how you’ll be browsing privately, and that you won’t leave any trace of which sites (ahem) you visited. But on Chrome Canary, which is a bleeding edge browser intended mainly for developers and gets nearly daily updates, the incognito splash screen now has more weasel words, saying that your browsing session will be more private than in a regular window, and offers a warning that data will still be collected. It’s probably not news to most readers that just because the calming visage of
“Heisen-Nerd”
appears doesn’t mean nobody is looking over your virtual shoulder while browsing, but it’s interesting that Google seems to be planning on making that clearer to the general public.
And finally, if you’re looking for a side hustle and have an extra $75,000 a month to spare, you might want to consider going into business as a rural ISP. That seems to be the intention of
Starlink’s Community Gateways program
, which lets participants access the satellite internet company’s 10-Gbps connection via a special gateway kit. As opposed to the flat user terminals we’re used to seeing, the gateways look more like miniature radomes; in a “Dishy McFlatface” world, we shudder to think what the nickname for these things will be. Setting up a Community Gateway seems like a pretty serious undertaking, as in addition to the $75K a month, you need to provide a suitable site with power and “lifting equipment,” as well as a startup fee of $1.25 million. But for someone with the right location and the proper skills, this could be a great opportunity. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725111",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2024-01-29T00:25:05",
"content": "What a crock with that poor programmer. Reminds me of that US case Gov. Mike Parson tried to claim a Journo was a “hacker:” All the guy did was look at a website’s source and noticed 50,000 teacher’s Social... | 1,760,372,025.932415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/building-nanoleaf-inspired-wall-panels-that-look-great/ | Building Nanoleaf-Inspired Wall Panels That Look Great | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"led tiles",
"nanoleaf"
] | Nanoleaf is well-known as being that company that makes those lovely glowing tiles that you can hang on your wall. The only thing is, they’re not cheap. So if you want a really cool layout, you have to spend a great amount of money. [Projects with Red] was inspired by the basic concept, though,
and whipped up their own gem-shaped wall tiles along similar lines.
The devices can work as a big clock if you so desire.
The irregular hexagon shape of each gem has ten connection points to attach the segments together. Physical connections are made using the 3D printed housings of each segment, while connections are simply made with wires and connectors hanging out the back for flexibility.
Each segment features a black printed housing with a solid lid and a translucent acrylic sheet to act as a diffuser. An addressable LED strip is mounted to the lid for illumination, with Dupont connectors for hooking them up to power and data. An ESP32 is used to drive the addressable LED chain, running the
WLED.me software
for easy control of the lights and animations. The video below also explains how to configure the segments into a giant colorful 7-segment display.
It’s a neat way to build some LED wall art, with plenty of scope to reconfigure it to suit your own needs.
We’ve seen some other fun LED tile projects before, too. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725068",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T22:31:25",
"content": "Timely.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6725073",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T22:36:56",
"content": "These are MUCH ... | 1,760,372,025.988798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/bringing-an-ibm-butterfly-laptop-back-from-the-dead/ | Bringing An IBM Butterfly Laptop Back From The Dead | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ibm",
"restoration",
"Thinkpad 701c"
] | Among all the laptops produced over the last few decades, there is one which rises above the rest and which has retained an appeal long after its meager computing resources became obsolete. It’s the IBM 701c, the famous “Butterfly” laptop, whose fold-out keyboard still gives it star quality, and
[John Graham-Cumming] has documented the restoration of one
from the tattered remains of two scrap examples.
The two laptops in question were someone else’s never-started project, and were in a sorry state. The flexible cables were in poor condition, and the 1990s Ni-MH batteries had leaked and damaged both circuits and case. We were unaware that NiMH leakage could damage plastic, but the parts of these machines were significantly damaged.
One had a working mainboard, the other a working modem card. One keyboard was in pretty bad shape, the other was complete. Of the pair there was a double super twisted nematic (DSTN) display and a more contemporary thin film transistor (TFT) panel. Be thankful if you have never had to use a DSTN laptop, as they were truly awful. From this pile of parts a working machine could be made, and with a new CMOS battery, that cable repair, and a repaint, he was ready. Or at least, as he says, ready for 1995.
This isn’t the first 701c restoration we’ve seen
, and within reason,
it’s even possible to give them a retro processor upgrade
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724975",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T18:05:56",
"content": "There a double space between star and quality :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6725053",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2024-... | 1,760,372,026.04039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/getting-started-with-usb-c-and-common-pitfalls-with-charging-and-data-transfer/ | Getting Started With USB-C And Common Pitfalls With Charging And Data Transfer | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"usb",
"USB C",
"USB-PD"
] | USB-C is one of those things that generally everyone seems to agree on that it is a ‘good thing’, but is it really? In
this first part of a series
on USB-C, [Andreas Spiess] takes us through the theory of USB-C and USB Power Delivery (PD), as well as data transfer with USB-C cables. Even ignoring the obvious conclusion that with USB-C USB should now actually be called the ‘Universal Parallel Bus’ on account of its two pairs of differential data lines, there’s quite a bit of theory and associated implementation details involved.
The Raspberry Pi 4B’s wrong USB-C CC-pin configuration is a good teaching example.
Starting with the USB 2.0 ‘legacy mode’ and the very boring and predictable 5 V power delivery in this mode, [Andreas] shows why you may not get any power delivered to a device with USB-C connector. Most likely the Downstream Facing Peripheral (DFP, AKA not the host) lacks the required resistors on the CC (Configuration Channel) pins, which are both what the other USB-C end uses to determine the connector orientation, as well as what type of device is connected.
This is where early Raspberry Pi 4B users for example saw themselves caught by surprise
when their boards didn’t power up
except with some USB cables.
The saga continues through [Andreas]’s collection of USB-C cables, as he shows that many of them lack the TX/RX pairs, and that’s before trying to figure out which cables have the e-marker chip to allow for higher voltages and currents.
On the whole
we’re still excited about what USB-C brings to the table
, but the sheer complexity and number of variables make that there are a myriad of ways in which something cannot work as expected. Ergo Caveat Emptor. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724960",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T17:09:00",
"content": "Yet ANOTHER USB-C “Tutorial”! I have a collection of these now – they all produce different results depending on the hardware devices and cables you use. Surely any progress towards a USB “standard” we user... | 1,760,372,026.114512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/3d-printed-rc-kart-actually-made-entirely-by-hand/ | 3D Printed RC Kart Actually Made Entirely By Hand | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3D printing pen",
"kart",
"radio control"
] | If we told you somebody built a 3D printed go-kart, you’d expect to see a certain sequence of events. A bit of work in CAD, a printer montage, then some assembly. That’s not the case here. [3D Sanago] is an artist that works with 3D printing pens, creating 3D objects entirely by hand. It’s an impressive skill, all the more so when it’s used to build something functional
like this gorgeous little go-kart.
Just filling in the front wing of this build took approximately four hours. Thus, [3D Sanago] used foam boards to cover much of the chassis.
The build recreates the kart from the
KartRider Rush+
game. The first step was to purchase a basic RC car frame to serve as the basis for the kart. [3D Sanago] then set about building a kart skeleton over the unpainted body of the basic RC car. It starts with a wireframe and individual flat panels that are eventually fused together into 3D trusses using the 3D pen.
The trusses are then mounted to the RC car chassis underneath with some wood plates serving as a supporting structure. [3D Sanago] has been known to surface his creations by tediously filling in the wireframes with the 3D pen, but not so this time. He took the easy way out of affixing sections of foam board to create the outer skin of the kart. He also demonstrates neat techniques like forming over a pen to create long plastic pipes and other tubular features. His acrylic-and-mousepad wheel and tire package is also pretty neat.
It’s as much craft as anything else, but it’s amazing to see what can be done when a human takes on the role of a 3D printer. We’ve featured other great builds from [3D Sanago] before, like this
awesome Pokemon-themed humidifier
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724885",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T13:55:10",
"content": "Nice video.“I gotta get me one of these!” (3D pen]-Will Smith in Independence Day",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6724... | 1,760,372,026.338731 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/no-dish-try-a-portable-weave-helix-antenna/ | No Dish? Try A Portable Weave Helix Antenna | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"helical antenna"
] | When you think of satellite communications, you probably think of a dish. But that’s not the only option — a new device from the American University of Beruit and Stanford created a
portable antenna
made of woven materials that packs easily, weighs little, and can reconfigure for ground-to-space or ground-to-ground communications. The antenna reminded us of a finger trap and you can see it for yourself in the video below.
Because of the antenna’s construction, it can fold up and also adjust to different lengths for different purposes. The antenna collapses to a ring that is five inches across and 1 inch tall. The weight? Under two ounces. The actual paper in
Nature Communications
is available to read online.
Stretched out to about a foot, the antenna is omnidirectional. The size, of course, also changes the resonant frequency. Tuning is no problem, though, since you can easily change the size as needed. The antenna may also find use on satellites where it’s low weight, and compact storage would be a definite advantage.
The antenna’s weave is actually two separate helixes, one conductive and the other insulating. The antenna normally operates in a vertical configuration. It looks like it might be simple to make some version of this without anything exotic. Let us know if you try!
Helical antennas
aren’t new, but this is an unusual construction. They are p
opular as satellite antennas
because of their polarization characteristics among other things. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724820",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T09:36:14",
"content": "ITYM American University of Beirut.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6724875",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T13:19:02",
"con... | 1,760,372,026.289148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/hotshot-3d-printed-hovercraft-is-devastatingly-fast/ | Hotshot 3D Printed Hovercraft Is Devastatingly Fast | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"hovercraft",
"remote control"
] | These days, it’s pretty cheap and easy to build your own little RC hovercraft.
[ValRC] demonstrates just that with a hovercraft build
that is surprisingly nimble, and fast to boot.
The build started with a design [ValRC]
found online.
It was simple enough to print and assemble, needing only a pair of a brushless motors, a speed controller, a receiver, and a servo to run the show. The design uses a plastic bag as a skirt, assembled around a 3D printed frame. That proved to be the hardest part of the build, as hot glue didn’t want to play nice with the thin garbage bag.
Even despite the challenges, once assembled, the hovercraft performed well. It readily slid around on a cushion of air, drifting across asphalt with abandon. Upgrades included a better rudder and a skirt made of thicker and more resilient plastic. The final craft looked mesmerizing as it glided over the smooth concrete of a parking garage with ease.
A hovercraft is, honestly,
one of the cooler printable projects for beginners.
All you need is a simple design, some powerful motors, and you’re good to go. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724790",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T07:00:45",
"content": "Holy cow that’s awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6724910",
"author": "Josuah",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T15:09:07",
"content": "I won... | 1,760,372,026.515448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/how-to-build-your-own-16-bit-system-on-spreadsheet/ | How To Build Your Own 16-Bit System-on-Spreadsheet | Maya Posch | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"cpu",
"soft cpu",
"spreadsheet"
] | Back in the hazy days of the early home computers, many of us would rejoice at running our first BASIC applications, some of us even built our own 8-bit system from a handful of ICs and felt elated the moment the connected LEDs, screen or other output device would show signs of life. It is this kind of excitement that [Inkbox] has managed to bring to the bane of every office worker: spreadsheet programs like Excel. How, you may ask? Why, by implementing a completely functional 16-bit system with 16 general purpose registers, 128 kB of RAM and a 128×128 pixel color display,
all inside an Excel spreadsheet
, making it conceivably the world’s first System-on-Spreadsheet (SoS).
Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of this approach is that it provides a very good visual way to indicate what is happening inside the system using color codes and clearly segregated and marked functional elements. Not only can it be programmed manually, but [Inkbox] also created an assembler for the CPU’s ISA – called Excel-ASM16 – all of which is available from the
ExcelCPU GitHub project
page. The ASM is assembled into a ROM.xlsx file that can then be run by the CPU.xlsx file by triggering the
Read ROM
button. After this you are confronted with the realization that although it all works, it’s also incredibly slow, at about 2-3 Hz.
Still, with all the elegance of an IMSAI 8080 front panel, we cannot help but give full points for this achievement. Plus it gives many of us something to do during those exceedingly dull meetings where only serious applications like office suites are allowed. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726045",
"author": "Jaz",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T05:12:12",
"content": "Simply… Brilliant!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6726054",
"author": "Victor_UK",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T07:01:49",
"conten... | 1,760,372,026.393578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/a-basic-usb-c-primer/ | A Basic USB-C Primer | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"usb",
"USB C",
"USB-C PD"
] | Over the last five years or so there has been a quiet take-over of the ports on laptops, phones, and other devices, as a variety of older ports as well as the familiar USB A and micro USB sockets have been replaced by the now-ubiquitous USB-C port. It’s a connector which can do so many things, so many in fact that it bears a handy explanation. The Electromagnetic Field 2022 hacker camp has been quietly uploading videos of its talks, and a recent one has [Tyler Ward]
explaining the intricacies of the interface
.
Many of you will be familiar with
XKCD number 927
which makes a joke about proliferating connector standards, and it’s evident that USB-C is a rare case of a connector which bucks the trend of simply making another standard, and has instead created something with which it makes sense to replace what went before. We learn about the intricacies of inter-device communications and USB-PD, and the multiple high-speed connection lanes shoehorned into it. That one small connector can plug into a laptop and provide power, USB peripherals including network, and display, is nothing short of amazing. Take a look at the video below the break, and if you’re interested in diving deeper, have a look at our colleague [Arya Voronova]’s
USB-C for hackers
series. | 32 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725996",
"author": "ScubaBearLA",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T00:14:35",
"content": "Well yes, the connector can do all those things, but will the cable? All the variables with USB-C cables are really kind of a mess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,026.467582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/design-secrets-of-fantastic-hand-made-puzzle-boxes/ | Design Secrets Of Fantastic, Hand-made Puzzle Boxes | Donald Papp | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Puzzle Box",
"veneer",
"wooden spring",
"woodworking"
] | [Kagen Sound] is a woodworker and artist who gives a great behind-the-scenes look at
his amazingly high-quality puzzle boxes
(video). Not only do his varied puzzle box designs show his math background, but they are all made entirely of wood. There are no nails or fasteners; just intricately-fitted wood and some glue.
There’s a lot of variety in his designs, and while it’s all fantastic from beginning to end, two things stood out to us as being of particular interest. One is the “Plus Box” which makes a clicking sound when the pieces are moved (at
2:47
) thanks to a clever wooden spring. [Kagen] shows an example of the concept, where a flat wood piece with slots cut from the sides acts as a spring and clicks into notches when moved, providing audible and tactile feedback without anything other than wood.
The other is a patterned puzzle box (at
7:10
) whose geometric designs change as the user moves the pieces. A reminder that [Kagen]’s devices are made entirely of wood and glue, so the design comes from two different types of wood assembled and cut at an angle to create the patterns seen. [Kagen] shaves thin layers of veneer from this block to attach to the puzzle pieces as needed to create the patterns without resorting to ink, paint, or decals.
[Kagen] has a math degree but is entirely self-taught as a woodworker, so don’t let lack of formal training stop you from experimenting. You can watch him give a tour of his work in the video, embedded below.
Feeling the urge to make your own puzzle boxes? Take a look at
some we’ve seen over the years
, and we even have
a collection of single-line cryptex fonts
to make laser-engraving puzzle bits a little easier. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725976",
"author": "Dave Z.",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T22:30:13",
"content": "I was lucky enough to have a semi-personal connection to Kagen many years back, and got to chat with him and have a tour of his shop when he was still in Portland. These are really amazing to hold and man... | 1,760,372,026.748072 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/simon-says-with-an-rp2040/ | Simon Says With An RP2040 | Chris Lott | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cornell",
"ece4760",
"Pico-W",
"rp2040",
"simon says",
"udp",
"vga"
] | The team of [Michael] and [Chimdi] from Cornell’s
Designing with Microcontrollers
(ECE 4760) Fall 2023 session designed a version of
Simon Says on an RP2040 which they call Pico Says
. It uses UDP packets over WiFi to communicate between the players, and supports VGA graphics for output. Each player’s hardware consists of a Pico W module plus a control panel containing the four LEDs and buttons ( red, green, yellow, and blue ) plus send and reset buttons.
For purposes of this lab, the modules were build on a solderless breadboard and used perfboard for the control panels. They weren’t entirely happy with their choice of UDP because they experienced frequent datagram dropouts in the noisy environment of the microcontroller lab. They also planned to implement sound effects, but ran out of time after spending too much time on the WiFi implementation, and had to drop that feature. In the end, however, they wrapped up their project and demonstrated a working game. We can only speculate whether this bonus lesson in resource management was intended by [Dr. Hunter Adams] or not.
Two ECE 4760 course references are highlighted in the write-up that helped them jump-start the project: the
UDP
and
VGA
examples for the Pico. These are good links to put in your RP2020 toolbox for future projects, in addition to the
ECE 4760 course home page
itself. We’ve
covered several of these projects recently
, as well as the curriculum switch from the Microchip PIC32MX-based Microstick II to the RP2040
last Spring
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,027.504724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/human-interfacing-devices-the-descriptor-heist/ | Human-Interfacing Devices: The Descriptor Heist | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"hid",
"HID keyboard",
"HID usb",
"USB HID Keyboard"
] | Today, we’ll build our own input devices. And they will be easy to create and write firmware for, they will work perfectly, and they will be cross-platform. We can do that with help of the Human Interface Device (HID) standard, and by way of introduction, so that you never get confused by what a “descriptor” means, and we’ll build our own HID device — a Human Interface Device device. The way we build them won’t require reading specifications – instead, I’ll teach your how to steal HID descriptors from existing devices, tweak them for our purposes, and use them in our devices to harness the power of HID.
For decades now, it’s been possible to build a HID mouse or keyboard by using a library or two, and it’s been a godsend for hackers all around the world. However, these libraries are typically confined to a certain template and inflexible, and we hackers often go outside of what’s expected. HID allows for much more than a simple keyboard or a mouse. That’s why today we’re building a touchscreen – something not yet covered online or by libraries.
HID lets you build devices that are friendly. They don’t need drivers, they are plug and play, and they do what you expect them to do. At its core, the HID standard is as simple as is ubiquitous. You can tunnel HID over USB, Bluetooth, I2C, and modern-day operating systems support all three of these. Today, let’s go through the basics of HID, and then build a USB touchscreen out of a SPI-connected resistive touchscreen, with help of the usual RP2040+MicroPython combo. I will also give you a toolkit for how to debug a Human Interface Device device as thoroughly as possible – specifically on Linux, showing all the HID debug and introspection capabilities that Linux gives you. But it’ll work on Windows too through the beauty of standardization.
Checking The Map
There’s quite a few guides on this topic by now, but of course, I’ll go in more detail, be more succinct, and give you tools that other guides don’t have. That said, you can always benefit from multiple different guides to cross-reference on your journey, so here’s
an Adafruit guide,
and here’s a
few
other
ones.
In particular, they go further into HID descriptor structure and explain it in all the detail you could use when figuring out descriptors. Instead, I will give you a high-level overview of HID, and demonstrate you that you don’t need to fully understand HID descriptors to create HID devices – you can hack on them all the same.
A report descriptor is a machine-readable guide on how to parse a HID packet (“report”) from your device. The descriptor tells your OS which bits and bytes inside a HID packet correspond to what kinds of data. When a HID device is connected to your OS, the OS gets the descriptor, reads it, learns what it can expect from your device, and whenever an incoming packet of data arrives, the OS parses your device’s packet given the info in the descriptor.
As you can see, descriptors are quite verbose, and that lets devices send packets that are short and simple. This descriptor portion was taken
from here
, you can see the complete descriptor there if you’re interested.
Of course, your device could be sending different kinds of packets, for different sorts of data. For instance, a mouse-plus-keyboard wireless receiver would send at least two different kinds of HID packets, and a touchscreen would send different packets based on whether you’re using a finger, or the special stylus. That’s why a report descriptor can have different sections for different types of packets, and the packets are then distinguished by the report ID. This ID has to be the first byte of the report – if you don’t get the ID first and foremost, you don’t know which section of the descriptor to use to parse the entire packet that just arrived.
It’s easy to build a HID mouse. It’s easy to build a HID keyboard. There are libraries for both of these, and if you want to build a keyboard, the Adafruit tutorial will show you how. Today, I need to build a different device for my arsenal – a small portable touchscreen display, something that’s not exactly available off the shelf. Naturally, I also want it to be plug and play, and in the future, I want to have it be accessible over I2C for all my embedded needs, too.
As a test polygon, here’s a touch-enabled HDMI screen with an SPI-connected XPT2046 resistive touchscreen controller IC, a clone of the ADS7846, with SPI pins exposed onto a Raspberry Pi-compatible header. The HDMI part of it is alright, save for it pretending to be a 1080p screen while its actual resolution is 480×320. The touchscreen part, however, is a pretty obtuse piece of tech – it only works if you have an SPI interface, you have to load the driver before anything works, and if you unplug it, you might have to reboot your Pi for the touchscreen to work again. Plus, it’s a bother to calibrate. HID support would make it universal, plug&play, and having our own firmware would let us to even put calibration settings into nonvolatile storage, something that all self-respecting touchscreen displays do.
All that our firmware has to do is to store a descriptor, and then send descriptor-matching HID packets to the OS whenever we want to send touch coordinates. As long as the OS is okay with our descriptor and the values in our packets make sense, the OS is going to create touchscreen events from our packets. It’s really this simple.
A Vault Full Of Descriptors
One way to create a touchscreen descriptor is to read the HID specification, figure out all the things you need to say in your descriptor to be a valid touchscreen, carefully put those things together, and then debug it until it works. If this doesn’t really sound fun for you, don’t worry, it doesn’t sound fun for me either.
Here’s a hacker-friendly plan instead. We steal a HID descriptor from a touchscreen, see how the touchscreen events are parsed by an OS, then make our own touchscreen descriptor out of a mouse one, send packets that correspond to this descriptor, and see how our OS reacts. I have a capacitive touchscreen panel that I’ve salvaged from a laptop – it connects over USB, it works on Linux without trouble, and that’s very much enough to extract a descriptor from.
In the meantime, I’ve modified this screen to power from HDMI instead of using a separate microUSB power input
We won’t be using super abstract libraries today, either – let’s build raw packets and see how they work. MicroPython still doesn’t have HID support, somehow, so here’s
a build of MicroPython,
where [elpekenin]
has added HID device support
with only
a few extra commits
(plus, undoubtedly, hours of blood, sweat and tears). There’s no “send ‘A’ keypress” API to speak of, you must make your packets even for keyboard use – but it’s very simple, and, that’s perfect for our goal! This build was made by
[Pablo Martínez (elpekenin)]
, and I’m eternally grateful to them for sharing it – go follow them on GitHub, they make cool stuff! For the XPT2046 driver, I’ve used a
XPT2046 MicroPython library
by the ever-prolific
[robert-hh]
, who is also the hacker to turn to if you want your fix of high-quality MicroPython libraries and tools!
I suggest cloning this repository like
git clone --branch peke-devel --recursive URL
, since the main branch of the repository was rebased onto CircuitPython and the recursive clone required for the main branch, will also pull in an absolute ton of Adafruit and other code that was added into CircuitPython. Cloning only the specific branch we need, that still relies only on MicroPython libraries, will save you a ton of bandwidth, time, and disk space. Once you do that, however, compiling this firmware and loading this onto a friendly RP2040 will give you a good few new HID devices, and a library to import:
import time
import usb_hid
report = bytearray(8)
report[2] = 0x04 # register 'a' keycode
usb_hid.report(usb_hid.KEYBOARD, report) # send event
time.sleep(2)
report[2] = 0x00 # unregister 'a' keycode
usb_hid.report(usb_hid.KEYBOARD, report) # send event
As you can see, a report is 8 bytes (64 bits) long, and different bits in the report respond to different characters you can send. If you’re wondering how is it that
0x04
corresponds to
a
, that’s a default bit-to-character mapping that
can be found here
and
here
and
more info here
, here’s more tips on
how you can mod that mapping.
Most of
this firmware’s HID descriptors
come from TUSB library, tried and true, and, there’s also
the
MOUSE_ABS
descriptor
added in the code itself, that you can change if you simply recompile the firmware!
With the MOUSE_ABS descriptor helpfully included and easily editable in particular, you have everything you could need to make your own descriptor quickly, be it a custom keyboard, a touchscreen, or a Braille display. In CircuitPython, you don’t even have to recompile the firmware to change a descriptor, but it’d be harder to use CircuitPython for tinkering here, for reasons we might just pinpoint and alleviate in a future article! Until then, this is a MicroPython library that lets you play with HID directly, on the lowest level comfortable. In the next article, I want to give you a Linux-compatible toolkit for playing with both device descriptors and HID packets, showing you how to quickly and easily debug all sides of the equation, and then, I’ll show you how to modify the descriptor to create your own USB touchscreen! | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6726053",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2024-01-31T06:57:45",
"content": "The HID usage tables are surprisingly comprehensive. Sadly most of the codes are never used or supported by operating systems. For example barcode scanners just disguise as 0x07 keyboards instead of using 0x8... | 1,760,372,026.941276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/the-worlds-first-microprocessor-f-14-central-air-data-computer/ | The World’s First Microprocessor: F-14 Central Air Data Computer | Maya Posch | [
"History",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"avionics",
"F-14",
"microprocessor"
] | When the Grumman F-14 Tomcat first flew in 1970, it was a marvel. With its variable-sweep wing, twin tail, and sleek lines, it quickly became one of the most iconic jet fighters of the era — and that was before a little movie called
Top Gun
hit theaters.
A recent video by [Alexander the ok]
details something that was far less well-documented about the plane, namely its avionics. The Tomcat was the first aircraft to use a microprocessor-driven flight system, as well as the first microprocessor unit (MPU) ever demonstrated, beating the Intel 4004 by a year. In 1971, one of the designers of the F-14’s Central Air Data Computer (CADC) – [Ray Holt] – wrote an article for Computer Design magazine that was naturally immediately classified by the Navy until
released to the public
in 1998.
The MPU in the
CADC
is called the Garrett AiResearch MP944, and consists of a number of ICs that together form a full computer. These were combined in the CADC with additional electronics to control many elements of the airplane automatically, including the weapons system and the variable-sweep wing configuration. This was considered to be essential based on experiences with the F-111 and its very complex electromechanical flight computer, which was an evolution of the 1950s-era
Bendix CADC
.
The video goes through the differences between the 4-bit Intel 4004 and the 20-bit MP944, questioning whether the 4004 is even really an MPU, the capabilities of the MP944 and its system architecture. Ultimately the question of ‘first’ and that of ‘what is an MPU’ will always be somewhat fuzzy depending on your definitions, but there is no denying that the MP944 was a marvel of large-scale integration.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip. | 34 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725892",
"author": "George M",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T17:34:42",
"content": "On a similar note; I had just graduated as a BS EE and started working at Hamilton Standard. They made propellers and fuel control for the F15 (1969-1970). The fuel control was built from individual T... | 1,760,372,026.882792 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/30/the-past-present-and-future-of-inflatable-space-habitats/ | The Past, Present, And Future Of Inflatable Space Habitats | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"inflatable",
"nasa",
"space station",
"TransHab"
] | Recently, a prototype inflatable space station module built by Sierra Space
exploded violently on a test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama
. Under normal circumstances, this would be a bad thing. But in this case, Sierra was looking forward to blowing up their handiwork. In fact, there was some disappointment when it failed to explode during a previous test run.
LIFE Module Burst Test
That’s because the team at Sierra was looking to find the ultimate bust pressure of their 8.2 meter (26.9 foot) diameter Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module — a real-world demonstration of just how much air could be pumped into the expanding structure before it buckled. NASA recommended they shoot for just under 61 PSI, which would be four times the expected operational pressure for a crewed habitat module.
By the time the full-scale LIFE prototype ripped itself apart, it had an internal pressure of 77 PSI. The results so far seem extremely promising, but Sierra will need to repeat the test at least two more times to be sure their materials and construction techniques can withstand the rigors of spaceflight.
Sierra is a targeting no earlier than 2026 for an in-space test, but even if they nail the date (always a dubious prospect for cutting edge aerospace projects), they’ll still be about 20 years late to the party. Despite how futuristic the idea of inflatable space stations may seem, NASA first started experimenting with the concept of expandable habitat modules back in the 1990s, and there were practical examples being launched into orbit by the early 2000s.
NASA TransHab
As NASA finalized plans for what we now know as the International Space Station, it was understood that most of the components for the orbiting complex would need to
fit inside the payload bay of the Space Shuttle
. In practice, this meant that Station modules would need to be largely cylindrical in shape, and no longer than approximately 18 m (60 ft). These alone weren’t particularly difficult parameters to work around, as previous space stations from the US and Soviet Union faced similar limitations from their respective launch vehicles. The tricky bit was that the Shuttle’s payload bay was only 4.6 m (15 ft) wide.
While this allowed for modules slightly wider than what had been used thus far for
Mir
, it was a considerable downgrade when compared to the 6.6 m (21.6 ft) diameter
“Orbital Workshop” module of Skylab
. Seeing this as a potential long-term problem, engineers at NASA turned to an idea that had originally been conceived for a theoretical mission to Mars: an inflatable habitat module that could be packed into the Shuttle’s payload bay and then expanded to its final size of 8 m (26 ft) once in orbit and filled with air.
The proposed module, known as TransHab, was to be divided into multiple decks providing living and working areas for the astronauts as well as ample storage. There would have been six individual crew cabins, a dedicated workout area, medical facilities, a fully-equipped kitchen, and a large wardroom table that could be used for all-hands meetings or group meals.
Unfortunately, due to delays and cost overruns on the overall International Space Station program, NASA was ordered to stop R&D on inflatable modules like TransHab in 2000. Construction was instead started on a more simplistic habitation module which could fit inside the Shuttle, but ironically, this too was ultimately canceled.
Even today, there is no official “habitat” module on the ISS — facilities for the sleeping, eating, and exercising are instead spread throughout the Station.
Bigelow Aerospace
While NASA was forbidden by
House Resolution 1654
to work on their own inflatable Station modules, the bill did include language that said the space agency could lease such a module if it was built by private industry. Having heard about the cancellation of TransHab, entrepreneur Robert Bigelow contacted the space agency and was able to secure the necessary rights to commercialize the research they had already done on inflatable modules through his company Bigelow Aerospace.
TransHab development had been largely conceptual at this point, and Bigelow Aerospace spent the next several years taking NASA’s ideas and turning them into a practical test article. One of the improvements they made was the addition of Vectran to the inflatable structure. Twice as strong as Kevlar, this manufactured fiber is spun from a liquid-crystal polymer, and had previously been used in the airbag which allowed
Pathfinder
to safely land on Mars in 1997.
Genesis I
In 2006, Bigelow Aerospace had developed NASA’s original concept to the point that they were ready to launch a functioning prototype.
The
Genesis I
module had a length of 4.40 m (14.4 ft), and expanded from its original diameter of 1.60 m (5 ft 3 in) at launch to 2.54 m (8 ft 4 in) in an operation that took roughly 10 seconds to complete. Its solar arrays provided power for onboard diagnostic systems and more than a dozen cameras which recorded the inflation from both inside and outside of the module.
Designed to operate for six months, the
Genesis I
module transmitted data back to Bigelow Aerospace for two and a half years before finally going dark. While the onboard systems stopped transmitting useful data, the structure itself remained completely intact with no signs of pressure loss or other degradation.
Currently,
Genesis I
remains in a stable 463 x 471 km (287 x 292 mile) orbit at an inclination of 64.5°, and is cataloged as NORAD 9252 and
COSPAR 2006-029A
.
Genesis II
Following on the success of their first prototype module, Bigelow Aerospace launched
Genesis II
a year later in 2007. This second module was largely identical from a external and mechanical standpoint, but added even more cameras, reaction wheels which allowed the module to better orient itself in space, an improved gas inflation system, and an upgraded sensor suite.
Like its predecessor, Genesis II transmitted data for more than two years, and remains in a very similar 452 x 505 km (280 x 314 mile) orbit. It’s cataloged as NORAD 31789 and
COSPAR 2007-028A
.
Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)
After nearly a decade of further development, Bigelow Aerospace finally provided NASA with an inflatable ISS module in 2016. The space agency paid $17.8 million for the module, and it was delivered to the Station inside the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon. From there, the Canadarm2 robotic arm was used to attach BEAM to the aft port of the
Tranquility
module.
Expansion progress of BEAM over seven hours.
Unlike the twin
Genesis
modules, BEAM could expand both its length and diameter. When packed into the Dragon’s trunk, it was 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in) long and 2.36 m (7 ft 9 in) in diameter. After an expansion process which took seven hours, it measured 4.01 m (13.2 ft) long with a diameter of 3.23 m (10.6 ft).
A fully developed inflatable module would have included internal fixtures and equipment, but being a test article, the inside of BEAM was essentially just open space. After monitoring the module for a year, it was decided to use it for storage, and the inside of BEAM was outfitted with cloth bags. Following an engineering assessment in 2019, NASA decided that the module would remain attached to the ISS until at least 2028.
ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli inside BEAM
Unfortunately, Bigelow Aerospace
laid off all of its employees in March 2020
, and the company suspended operations entirely in 2021. While no official announcement was ever made, the company is now considered defunct.
Sierra Space
With Bigelow Aerospace out of the running, Sierra Space has emerged as the new industry leader for space-bound expandable structures. Spun off from Sierra Nevada Corporation in 2021, the company is focused primarily on developing not just the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module, but also the Dream Chaser spaceplane. The end goal is vertical integration — with the Dream Chaser bringing crew and cargo to a space station comprised of LIFE modules.
Sierra’s multi-layer inflatable technology includes a Vectran “Restraint Layer”, which the company says makes their modules harder than steel once fully inflated. They’ve also developed a way to place openings, such as for windows or air locks, in the inflatable walls of the module while still exceeding the pressure ratings required for certification by NASA. This capability promises to greatly expand the potential functionality of inflatable modules, which previously had only been designed with openings on either end of the cylindrical structure.
Each layer of the inflatable structure has a specific function.
The module that Sierra Space destructively tested recently was a full-scale prototype of what the company calls LIFE 1.0: a structure with an inflated volume of 300 m³ that is 6 m (19.6 ft) long with a diameter of 9 m (29.5 ft), and can be launched in a standard 5 m (16.4 ft) payload fairing. This would make it compatible with rockets such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the
newly debuted Vulcan
from United Launch Alliance.
The next evolution will be LIFE 2.0, which will double the length of the module to 12 m (39.3 ft) to achieve an inflated volume of 600 m³ while retaining the same diameter to stay compatible with current launch vehicles. Sierra Space also has long-term plans for a LIFE 3.0, a massive 1440 m³ module that would have more usable volume than the entire International Space Station. With a length of 16.2 m (53 ft), an inflated diameter of 11 m (36 ft), and a packed diameter of 7 m (23 ft), putting LIFE 3.0 into orbit would require a next-generation launch vehicle such as
NASA’s SLS Block 1B Cargo
, the SpaceX Starship, or the
New Glen from Blue Origin
.
Next Steps
Orbital Reef Concept
According to the press release from Sierra Space, 2024 will be a busy year. There will be several more tests, with both full-size and sub-scale articles, and they’ll also be working on the Micrometeoroid Orbital Debris (MMOD) layers which will be critical to protect the module from the inevitable impacts that will come with long-duration spaceflight.
As for the first practical application of the technology, Sierra Space and Blue Origin are working together to develop the Orbital Reef commercial space station, which is slated to have at least one LIFE module as part of its baseline configuration.
NASA awarded the Orbital Reef project $130 million in December of 2021
, with the goal of having it operational by the time the International Space Station is retired, which is currently scheduled for sometime in 2030.
While it looks like it won’t end up happening on the ISS, with a bit of luck, NASA’s dream of having astronauts living and working in an inflatable space station may finally become a reality before the end of the decade. | 24 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6725850",
"author": "KC",
"timestamp": "2024-01-30T15:21:01",
"content": "There have been a couple companies that have been experimenting with inflatable concrete and cement shelters for a while now. I know concrete is water intensive, but aggregate materials like that make for exce... | 1,760,372,027.019386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/a-zx-spectrum-raytracer-in-basic/ | A ZX Spectrum Raytracer,In BASIC | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"bas2tap",
"basic",
"dithering",
"fuse",
"ray tracing",
"shadows",
"sinclair",
"Tiny Raytracer",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | [Gabriel Gambetta] knows a few things about ray tracers, being the author of Tiny Raytracer, a raytracer written in just 912 bytes of JavaScript. As a long-time
fellow
sufferer of the UK-designed ZX Spectrum, could these two love affairs be merged? Could the Tiny Raytracer fit on the ZX Spectrum? In BASIC? The answer is
an affirmative, albeit with our beloved speccy’s many limitations
.
Ray tracing with only 15 primary colours
The story starts with [Gabriel]’s
Computer Graphics From Scratch (CGFS) raytracer algorithms
and an existing code base that was ported to the ZX Spectrum’s very limited BASIC dialect, using VSCode for editing,
BAS2TAP
to generate a tape image file (essentially an audio track) and executed with
FUSE
. With the toolchain sorted, [Gabriel] adds just enough code to deal with the ray intersection equations of a sphere, and renders a three-sphere scene to a 32×22 pixel colour image, taking a mere 15 minutes of runtime. Fellow sufferers will remember the spectrum had a 32×22 block attribute array (or colour array) with two colour values for foreground and background pixels. Each attribute block contains 8×8 pixels, each of which could be foreground (on) or background (off.) The next stage was then to expand the code to handle pixels as well as blocks, by simply expanding the raytracing to the full 256×176 resolution, and for each block simply determine the two most common colours, and run with those for the whole block. It sort of works, in a very spectrum-esq ‘attribute clash’ kind of fashion.
But now the runtime is 17 hours! Next, a spot of performance tweaking, using quite a few spectrum BASIC hacks, and some graphical approximations such as casting rays for each corner pixel of the block, and if they’re identical, colouring all the remaining 60 pixels the same and moving on. This effort reduced runtime to two hours.
Next [Gabriel] bravely ditches the flat lighting model, models a single light source and pulls out the only remaining trick in the monochrome spectrum world, that of dithering intensity values for each block, using a simple
8×8 ordered dither pattern
, that doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. A quick stop on the way to completion, to
add shadows
and the run time is back to 17 hours, but it’s worth it. Clearly, this is optimised for a single scene type, one where spheres feature predominantly, but the principles are there, and cubes are just a few more lines of code away. Any takers?
Raytracing is one of those fun, but complex tasks that people just love to wedge into inappropriate hardware,
like this TI-84Plus CE graphing calculator
, and if that’s a bit hard to access, here’s something equally mad
running in plain old Excel
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724520",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T10:23:46",
"content": "That’s cool. The ZX Spectrum isn’t exactly my favorite platform, but I must admit it has a fine community.Another outstanding 3D routine was being used in the game ‘Sentinel’ , I believe.It’s not exactly ... | 1,760,372,027.077887 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/nanotechnology-in-ancient-rome-there-is-evidence/ | Nanotechnology In Ancient Rome? There Is Evidence | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"cage cup",
"dichroic",
"dichroic glass",
"gold",
"Lycurgus",
"Lycurgus cup",
"nanoparticles",
"nanotechnology",
"silver"
] | Anything related to nanotechnology feels fairly modern, doesn’t it? Although Richard Feynman planted the seeds of the idea in 1959, the word itself didn’t really get formed until the 70s or 80s, depending on who you ask. But
there is evidence that nanotechnology could have existed as far back as the 4th century in ancient Rome.
That evidence lies in this, the Lycurgus cup. It’s an example of dichroic glass — that is, glass that takes on a different color depending on the light source. In this case, the opaque green of front lighting gives way to glowing red when light is shining through it. The mythology that explains the scene varies a bit, but the main character is King Lycurgus, king of Edoni in Thrace.
So how does it work? The glass contains extremely small quantities of colloidal gold and silver — nanoparticles of gold to produce the red, and silver particles to make the milky green. The composition of the Lycurgus cup was puzzling until the 1990s, when small pieces of the same type of glass were discovered in ancient Roman ruins and analyzed. The particles in the Lycurgus cup are thought to be the size of one thousandth of a grain of table salt — substantial enough to reflect light without blocking it.
The question is, how much did the Romans know about what they were doing? Did they really have the means to grind these particles into dust and purposely infuse them, or could this dichroic glass have been produced purely by accident? Be sure to check out the videos after the break that discuss this fascinating piece of drinkware. | 47 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724456",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T03:52:24",
"content": "I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Ancient people were a lot smarter that we give them credit for. A lot of highly advanced techniques have been lost to history. Any student of history can... | 1,760,372,027.169945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/hacking-a-xiaomi-air-purifiers-filter-drm-to-extend-its-lifespan/ | Hacking A Xiaomi Air Purifier’s Filter DRM To Extend Its Lifespan | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"air purifier",
"drm",
"NFC tag"
] | When [Unethical Info] was looking at air purifiers a while back, their eye fell on a Xiaomi 4 Pro, with a purchase quickly made. Fast-forward a while and suddenly the LCD on top of the device was showing a threatening ‘0% filter life remaining’ error message. This was traced back to an NFC (NTAG213) tag stuck to the filter inside the air purifier that had been keeping track of usage and was now apparently the reason why a still rather clean filter was forcibly being rejected. Rather than give into this demand, instead the NFC tag and its contents were explored for a way
to convince it otherwise
, inkjet cartridge DRM-style.
While in the process of reverse-engineering the system and doing some online research, a lucky break was caught in the form of earlier research by [Flamingo Tech] on the Xiaomi Air Purifier 3, who had obtained the
password-generating algorithm
used with the (password-locked) NFC tag, along with the target area of the filter’s NFC tag to change. Using the UID of the NFC tag, the password to unlock the NFC tag for writing was generated, which requires nothing more than installing e.g. ‘NFC Tools’ on an NFC-capable Android/iOS smartphone to obtain the tag’s UID and reset the usage count on the filter.
A password generating tool is provided with the [Unethical Info] article, and this approach works across a range of Xiaomi air purifiers, making it an easy fix for anyone who owns such a device but isn’t quite ready yet to shell out the big bucks for a fresh DRM-ed filter. This approach also saves one from buying more NFC tags, which was the case with
the previous solution
. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724414",
"author": "lamalasx",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T00:50:10",
"content": "I don’t understand why the need to hack the nfc tag. You can reset the filter with a key combination.I have a Pro H which has this NFC sticker on the filter, but it can be reset by opening the filter doo... | 1,760,372,027.367298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/building-a-cable-driven-delta-printer/ | Building A Cable-Driven Delta Printer | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"delta printer"
] | Most of us have played with a Cartesian-style 3D printer. Maybe you’ve even built a rigid delta. In this case, [Diffraction Limited] decided to a little further away from the norm
with a cable-based delta design.
This delta design uses direct cable drives to control the end effector, with preloading rods effectively decoupling the preload from the drive force. Thus, the motors only have to provide enough power to move the end effector around without fighting the tension in the cables. The end effector is nice and light, because the motors remain stationary. With lightly-loaded motors and a lightweight effector, rapid accelerations are possible for faster printing. The video does a great job of explaining how the winch-based actuation system works to move the mechanism quickly and accurately. It’s a pleasure to watch the delta robot bouncing around at high speed as it executes a print.
The video notes that it was a successful build, though difficult to calibrate. The strings also wore out regularly. The truth of the matter is, delta printers are just more fun to watch at work than their less-controversial Cartesian cousins. Video after the break. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724410",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2024-01-27T00:42:07",
"content": "No point in a delta; too much is lost in height. CoreXY, YZ or XZ up to a practical limit (due to belt lengths), on the other hand…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,372,027.319653 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/a-diy-e-ink-tank-watch/ | A DIY E-Ink Tank Watch | Dave Rowntree | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"DSKY",
"eink",
"pic16",
"rtc",
"watch"
] | [Augusto Marinucci] liked the classic Cartier Tank series of dress watches aesthetic, but wanted something a bit more techy, with a decent runtime on a single battery. E-Ink displays are often used in such applications, but finding one to fit a custom case design, is a tall order. When ordering one off the shelf is not easy, the solution is to
make one from scratch
.
Building a programming jig is a great idea for small-scale production
The article doesn’t have much information on the E-Ink side of things, which is a bit of a shame. But from what we can glean, the segment shapes — in this case, based on the famous Apollo DSKY — are formed in the top copper of a four-layer PCB, using filled and capped vias to connect invisibly from below.
A donor E-Ink display is cut to size with scissors (we don’t know much more than this!) and glued in place around the edge to make the common electrode connection. The display PCB attaches to the control PCB, at the rear using low-profile board-to-board connectors. This board hosts a PIC16 micro, as well as an RV-3028-C7 RTC which keeps time whilst consuming a paltry 45 nA.
Five volts are provided via a MAX1722 low-power boost converter which is fed power from the CR1616 cell via a couple of logic-controllable load switches. With a low-power design such as this, it’s critical to get this correct. Any mistakes here can easily result in a very low runtime. It is easy to over-stress small button cells and kill them prematurely.
The case looks like it’s printed in a translucent resin, with the PCB stack sealed inside with a UV-cured resin pour. It’s not immediately obvious if the rear panel can be removed to access the battery and programming port. There are what appear to be screw holes, so maybe that’s possible, or maybe they’re the rear side of the PCB mounting posts. Who can tell?
If DIY hardware is but too much effort for you, then there’s the option of
hacking new firmware onto an existing watch
, or perhaps meeting in the middle and
making something out of all those junk E-ink tags
you can get from time to time?
Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724324",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T19:55:02",
"content": "a bit sad that there’s no way to recharge it through, but great build, I stumbled on it a few days ago…I dunno, just some gold pad or something left exposed in the epoxy…",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,027.422688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/hackaday-podcast-episode-254-ai-hijack-guy-and-water-rockets-fly/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 254: AI, Hijack Guy, And Water Rockets Fly | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams chew the fat about the Haier IOT problem, and all other top Hackaday stories of the week. Want to prove your prowess at C programming? Take a quiz! Or marvel at some hairy display reverse engineering or 3D-printed compressor screws. On the lighter side, there’s an immense water rocket.
After Al waxes nostalgic about the world of DOS Extenders and extended memory, the guys talk about detective work: First detecting AI-written material, and finally, a great detective story about using science to finally (maybe) crack the infamous DB Cooper hijacking case.
Follow along with the links below. Don’t forget to tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Here’s a string of bits containing the podcast that looks suspiciously like an MP3
!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 254 Show Notes:
News:
HOPE Is On, Spread The Word
What’s that Sound?
Guess the sound
, get a shot at a Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Haier Threatens Legal Action Against Home Assistant Plugin Developer
Haier Europe Eases Off On Legal Threat And Seeks Dialogue
https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/blob/main/assets/haier_response.png
How To Build A Fully Offline Smart Home, Or Why You Should Not
Does anyone want any toast?
Testing Your C Knowledge With This One Simple Quiz
Reverse Engineering The Apple Touch Bar Screen
3D Printed Screw Compressor Revisited
Massive Water Rocket Is Impressive But Accessible
Air Command Water Rockets
Water Rocket Construction & Tutorials Menu
Air Command Water Rockets Flight Log – Day 181 – Acoustic Apogee Detector – Part 2
640k Was Never Enough For Anyone: How DOS Broke Free
A Brief History of Unreal Mode
Roll Your Own DOS Extender
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Autofeeding CNC Lathe Cranks Out Parts All By Itself
Crusty: The Story Of The Mac SE That Could
This Unique Flip-Flop Uses Chemistry And Lasers
The Giant LEGO You Always Wanted To Play With
Al’s Picks:
Inside A Fake LM358
FM Radio Is Discriminating
Learn Sailing Mechanics Without Leaving Dry Land
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Human-Written Or Machine-Generated: Finding Intelligence In Language Models
DB Cooper Case Could Close Soon Thanks To Particle Evidence | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724991",
"author": "Kirk",
"timestamp": "2024-01-28T18:47:33",
"content": "Love the podcast! Re: AI and being able to “watermark” content, Unsung Science did an episode on this relating to photos and videos:https://www.unsungscience.com/index.php/2023/02/17/deepfakes-big-tech-figh... | 1,760,372,027.468536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/wearable-robot-makes-mountain-climbing-a-breeze-for-seniors/ | Wearable Robot Makes Mountain Climbing A Breeze For Seniors | Kristina Panos | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"gait",
"mobility",
"robot",
"wearable robot"
] | You know, it’s just not fair. It seems that even if we stay active, age will eventually get the better of our muscles, robbing them of strength and our bodies of mobility. Canes and walkers do not provide additional strength, just support and reassurance in a treacherous landscape. What people could really benefit from are wearable robots that are able to compensate for a lack of muscle strength.
[Dr. Lee Jongwon] of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology has developed this very thing.
MOONWALK-Omni is designed to “actively support leg strength in any direction”, and make one feel like they are walking on the moon.
In order to test the wearable robot, [Dr. Jongwon] invited senior citizens to climb Korea’s Mount Yeongbong, which is some 604 meters (1980 feet) above sea level.
The robot weighs just 2 kg (about 4.5 lbs) and can be donned independently by the average adult in under ten seconds. There are four high-powered but ultra lightweight actuators on either side of the pelvis that aid balance and boost leg strength by up to 30%. This is all designed to increase propulsion.
An AI system works to analyze the wearer’s gait in real time in order to provide up-to-the-second effective muscle support in many different environments. One wearer, a formerly active mountain climber, reported feeling 10-20 years younger when reaching the top of Mount Yeongbong.
It’s quite interesting to see mobility robots outside of the simplicity of the rehabilitation setting. We have to wonder about the battery life. Will everyone over 65 be wearing these someday? We can only hope they become so affordable. In the meantime,
here’s a wearable robot that travels all over your person for better telemetry. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724271",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T16:33:34",
"content": "You can call anything a robot now, even an exoskeleton.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6724274",
"author": "VestasSystem",
"timest... | 1,760,372,027.572963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/pots-at-a-hacker-camp/ | POTS At A Hacker Camp | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"dial-up",
"EMF camp",
"pots",
"telephone"
] | For those of us off the Atlantic coast of Europe it’s a frigid winter as our isles are lashed by continuous storms. Summer seems a very long time ago, and the fun of the EMF 2022 hacker camp is an extremely distant memory. But the EMF team have been slowly releasing videos from the talks at that camp, the latest of which comes from [Matthew Harrold]. He was the force behind
the public POTS phone network at the camp
, providing anyone within range of one of his endpoints with the chance to have a wired phone line in their tent.
We’d love to imagine a mesh of overhead wires converging on a Strowger mechanical exchange somewhere on the field, but in a more practical move he used an array of redundant Cisco VOIP gear, and a multi-modem rack to provide dial-up services. Even then there were a few hurdles to overcome, but on the field it was definitely worth it as an array of unusual phone kit was brought along by the attendees. Our favourite is the Amstrad eMailer, an all-in-one phone and internet appliance from a couple of decades ago which perhaps due to its expensive pay as you go model, failed commercially. The video is below the break.
It’s a good time for this talk to come out, because it’s reminded us that the next EMF camp is on this summer. Time to dust off an old phone to bring along. Meanwhile, we’ve seen [Matthew] before,
as he refurbished a sluggish dial mechanism
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724273",
"author": "kos",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T16:40:57",
"content": "At CCCamp23 there was not just POTS, but also ISDN :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,027.773386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/displays-we-love-hacking-parallel-rgb/ | Displays We Love Hacking: Parallel RGB | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"displays",
"hardware",
"parallel",
"rgb"
] | You might have seen old display panels, from 3″ to 10″, with 40-pin FFC connectors where every pin seems to be used for some data signal. We call these displays parallel RGB, or TTL RGB, or DPI, and you can find them in higher-power MCU, Raspberry Pi, and other Linux SBC projects. You deserve to know what to do with those – let’s take a look.
The idea is simple – this interface requires you to constantly send a stream of pixels to the display, and you need to send those pixels through a parallel bus. You can send up to 8 bits per color channel per pixel, which makes for 24 bits, and the 24-bit mode is indeed the standard, but in practice, many parallel RGB implementations don’t bother with more than 5-6 bits of color – two common kinds of parallel RGB links are RGB565 and RGB666. The parallel RGB interface is a very straightforward approach to sending pixels to your display, and in many cases, you can also convert parallel RGB to LVDS or VGA interfaces relatively easily!
If you’re new to it, the easiest way you can drive a parallel RGB display is from a Raspberry Pi, where the parallel RGB interface is known as DPI. This is how 800 x 480 display Pi HATs like the Pimoroni HyperPixel work – they use up almost all of the GPIOs on your Pi, but you get a reasonably high-resolution display with a low power footprint, and you don’t need any intermediate ICs either. FPGAs and some higher-grade MCUs also often have parallel RGB output capability, and surely, someone could even use the RP2040 PIO as well!
Throughout the last decade, parallel RGB has been used less and less, but you will still encounter it – maybe you’re working with an old game console like the PSP and would like to
put new guts into it,
maybe you’re playing with some tasty display that uses parallel RGB, or maybe you’d like to convert parallel RGB into something else while treating it with respect! Let’s go through what makes parallel RGB tick, what tools you have got to work with it, and a few tips and tricks.
Timing Makes Everything
So, you have three primary colors, and five to eight bits per color, requiring from 15 to 24 parallel lines – you push pixel bit values through these lines, one pixel at a time. There’s also a clock signal that lets the display know when it should capture the state of its parallel inputs, this signal is called a pixel clock, where each clock rising edge indicates a new pixel. The clock rate is therefore more-or-less equal to screen pixel width times pixel height times the refresh rate – say, for 1280 x 800 at 60 Hz refresh rate, you’d expect about 62 MHz. There’s also two more pins that you have to wiggle periodically – HSYNC and VSYNC, which signal a complete row and a complete screen of pixels respectively. Want to learn more? Here’s some
MIT lecture materials!
(diagram not 100% representative of real world signals)
Here’s
a list of common frequencies
per resolution per refresh rate; on Linux, you can enter
cvt 1600 768 60
into the terminal
to calculate the pixel frequency for a custom resolution. You can notice that
for 1280 x 800,
the proposed pixel clock frequency is 83.50 MHz, which is higher than we’d expect from a simple calculation, and there’s a bunch of extra numbers in the
cvt
output – that’s because
there’s a caveat.
You’re expected to wait for a certain amount of clock pulses before and after each HSYNC and VSYNC, so, before and after each row, and before and after each screenful of data. Also, while either VSYNC or HSYNC are asserted, you’re supposed to wait for a certain amount of clock pulses too – of course, the clock is expected to keep wiggling at all times!
The specific inactivity periods before and after the sync pulse are called back and front porch respectively. So, each display has six data-less periods with certain durations – for both vertical and horizontal sync signals, there’s back porch, the sync pulse itself, and front porch. Most of the time, you can get away with the most standard durations used for most monitors, or get the numbers from a calculator like
cvt
if your resolution or refresh rate are a bit non-standard. If you’re working with a monitor that has an I2C EEPROM which stores
EDID
, you can also get this data from EDID. Would you like to learn more about those periods? Here’s
a wonderful blog page,
and there’s many more too!
Some displays want very particular periods, like
this display that Sipeed sells,
where they give you the datasheet so that you can get the exact parameters that the display is comfortable with – the back porch durations they recommend are an exact number, and I don’t know if the display would support a different one in reality, so it’s always good to know the recommended one for sure. If you’re reverse-engineering an existing display and you got the device able to drive it, this is the sort of thing that you can figure out in-system with an oscilloscope. Apart from this data, you’ll want the pinout – and, sadly, we don’t always have the luxury of checking the datasheet on this one.
Adafruit
DPI Display Kippah
, a Raspberry Pi parallel RGB shield using a common 40-pin pinout
Of course, there’s standardized pinouts for parallel RGB displays! I don’t have a summary handy for you, but someone could certainly compile a table with a few pinouts and say “these are the pinouts you’re 99% likely to encounter”. Nevertheless, you’ll find quite a few pinouts that match from display to display, here’s
one you’re likely to encounter
on 40-pin FPC displays, and I encourage you to check places like Adafruit and Aliexpress to see which pinouts they have displays and breakouts for. Adafruit in particular has developed a large amount of parallel RGB display tech, so studying their offerings will help you a lot when it comes to parallel RGB display intricacies. If you’re reverse-engineering a display out of a known-working system, you can always try to have it display an image, then use a bench oscilloscope to find pixel clock/VSYNC/HSYNC signals, and mess with the individual pins to see which pins correspond for MSB and LSB of which color.
A Raspberry-Scented Testbench
You got the timing parameters, you got the pinout – let’s talk practice. There’s a whole bunch of things you can attach a parallel RGB LCD to – MCUs with parallel RGB interfaces, FPGAs, and quite a few SBCs. I’d say that the simplest way for an average newcomer to drive parallel RGB displays, is a just Raspberry Pi board with a 40-pin GPIO header! I do mean a Linux-running Raspberry Pi, and I don’t mean a Pi Pico running Linux through RISC-V emulation – though, without a shred of a doubt, some of yall could make that work too.
Two dozen pins, all with series resistors? That’s a parallel RGB display alright!
On a Pi, a parallel RGB display can be connected through
the DPI interface,
which will take up a whole bunch of GPIOs, but you can decrease the GPIO amount by running the LCD in 565 (16-bit) or 666 (18-bit) mode and freeing a fair few; this will limit your color range, but you might value the extra GPIOs more. Lower-bit modes are not a bad idea either – an overwhelming majority of old laptop displays have historically been driven in 565 mode and it hasn’t been much of a problem, at least, considering that those displays weren’t of stellar quality either. When wiring up the display for modes less than 24-bit, you’ll want to ground the pins for the least significant bits you’re not using, for instance, ground D0-D1 in 666 mode.
Now, the software! On the Pi, the parallel RGB aka DPI interface has
a fair bit of documentation
and success stories, unlike the DSI interface, which is proprietary and uses that one FFC connector near the SD card slot. It might be easy to confuse them, so here’s an easy mnemonic – DPI is
P
retty hacker-friendly, and DSI is,
S
adly, defined by the MIPI Alliance.
If you know the display parameters, it might be enough to
put them into
config.txt
and go
– there’s enough documentation on the parameters required, so, even if the low-level workings of the DPI peripheral aren’t exposed, you’ll do wonders with the output of
cvt
alone if you stick to one of the required pinouts. One weird little thing is the aspect ratio parameter. If you’re facing a display with a wacky resolution and aspect ratio, like the 1600×768 Sony Vaio display I’m about to poke at, that might be a headscratcher. However, it doesn’t appear to be a big issue – here’s
someone making a 720×720 display work,
and they just used an aspect ratio parameter that was close enough.
After you’ve put your parameters in, your display should Just Work. If it doesn’t and your parameters are close enough, let’s see if there’s any other wiring requirements you might have missed.
Finishing Touches
Some displays expect you to drive their backlight LEDs yourself – while sometimes it can be as simple as just a few separate LEDs, more often it’s a string of LEDs that requires upwards of 12V at certain (low) current to drive it. There’s enough backlight driver circuits and special chips online, many of them pretty cheap, and a series resistor will do in a pinch if you have a voltage source high enough. However, some displays are very particular – for instance, I’m currently dealing with a display that has LEDs in a 4-channel 8-series configuration, which forces me to add a separate boost-capable backlight driver circuit on the adapter board. That said, Mouser has great search filtering for such drivers, and LCSC has a good amount of options if you’re willing to go through the search results, so you shouldn’t have any hassle. Other displays might have a backlight driver on the panel, and will only expect a digital PWM signal for brightness control from you.
Some displays will even come with a touch panel that has its own FFC, and some will give you touchscreen controller IC signals (typically I2C) on the same FFC that carries the data pins. Careful – if you only get raw captouch panel signals, like on
this iPad CM4 rebuild project
, you will need to
bring your own controller!
Not that it’s not doable – the subsequent worklogs of that project
have some great pointers.
Some displays will need high voltages for the TFT internals – other displays will only need 3.3V or 5V, producing any high voltages on their own with a booster circuit, and some will have the circuit but will expect you to wire up a capacitor or two to the FFC so that the booster circuit can work. A datasheet helps with all of these, and a website like Panelook might just help with the more obscure panels, especially if you have an email address on a custom domain name. In completely unrelated news, sharing is caring!
Most likely though, you’ll get one of the pretty standard 40-pin footprints, and chances are, you’ll be able to use an Aliexpress board with it. What if you need to design your own board? For Raspberry Pi use, it’s as simple as pulling wires from the GPIO header onto the FFC header, handling the backlight and any other requirements, and options if you’re so inclined. Theoretically, you would want to length-match the parallel signals, which is to say, get all the RGB & clock & sync tracks to be the same length using wiggles, but the answers on
this Stackoverflow page
unequivocally that you don’t really need to do that. It’s not like it will hurt, but don’t feel guilty for omitting length matching at these frequencies, either. A better idea is having series resistors at the receiving end, something from 10 to 100ohms – those should help quell reflections that are bound to happen at DPI switching speeds.
If, however, dealing with 20-30 tracks at a time is too much for you, you’re in luck – the next article will talk about LVDS and eDP, which boil down all of the parallel RGB signals into just a few diffpairs, while achieving way better throughput! LVDS in particular is an interface where knowing the parallel RGB history pays off – as you will see, it’s basically parallel RGB in a trenchcoat. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723976",
"author": "MattAtHazmat",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T21:18:02",
"content": "I’ve had to adapt a couple parallel port LCD displays to microcontrollers. Most of the displays I’ve worked with have gone away from HSYNC/VSYNC entirely, and just use DE (Data Enable). DE just asse... | 1,760,372,027.650537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/bus-pirate-5-now-shipping/ | Bus Pirate 5 Now Shipping | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bus pirate",
"Bus Pirate 5",
"reverse engineering",
"serial interface"
] | It’s happened to all of us at one time or another. There’s some component sitting on the bench, say an I2C sensor, a new display, or maybe a flash chip, and you want to poke around with it. So you get out the breadboard, wire it to a microcontroller, write some code, flash it…you get the idea. Frankly, it’s all kind of a hassle. Which is why [Ian Lesnet] created the Bus Pirate: a USB multi-tool designed to get you up and running with a new piece of hardware as quickly as possible.
Now, after years of development, the
Bus Pirate 5 is available for purchase
. Completely redesigned to take advantage of the impressive I/O capabilities of the RP2040, the new Bus Pirate also features a 240 x 320 IPS LCD that can show real-time voltage data and pin assignments. But despite the new display, and the bevy of RGB LEDs lurking under the injection molded enclosure, the primary interface for the device remains the VT100 terminal interface — now with the addition of a color status bar running along the bottom.
As with the earlier versions of the Bus Pirate, the device includes all sorts of features that should prove useful to the hardware hacker. It can be used as a programmable 1 to 5 volt power supply, complete with current detection and a resettable fuse. With a simple text interface you can send communicate with devices over 1-Wire, I2C, SPI, UART, MIDI, and various RGB LED protocols out of the box, but thanks to its open source firmware, expect it to learn some new tricks before too long. In the announcement post, [Ian] mentions upcoming firmware additions to support JTAG, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and a very slick oscilloscope that uses the Pirate’s onboard display.
Long time readers may recall that the
Bus Pirate started its life right here on Hackaday back in 2008
, when [Ian] was writing for us. While we no longer have any official connection to the project, we remain big fans of the open hardware device. There’s a Bus Pirate 5 with our name on it currently working its way through the postal system at the time of this writing, so expect a hands-on look at the new hardware in the near future. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723893",
"author": "Zoe Nagy",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T16:46:58",
"content": "I ordered v4, never used it, by the time I figure out the cryptic config I write a demo in arduino or via any HAL.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,027.722761 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/could-moon-mining-spoil-its-untouched-grandeur-and-science-value/ | Could Moon Mining Spoil Its Untouched Grandeur And Science Value? | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"Artemis",
"artemis accords",
"earth",
"iau",
"moon",
"nasa",
"research",
"science",
"The Moon"
] | It’s 2024. NASA’s Artemis program is in full swing, and we’re hoping to get back to the surface of the Moon real soon. Astronauts haven’t walked on the beloved sky rock since 1972! A human landing was scheduled for 2025, which has now been pushed back to 2026, and we’re all getting a bit antsy about it. Last time we wanted to go, it only took 8 years!
Now, somehow, it’s harder, but NASA also has its sights set higher. It no longer wants to just toddle about the Moon for a bit to wave at the TV cameras. This time, there’s talk of establishing permanent bases on the Moon, and actually doing useful work, like mining. It’s a tantalizing thought, but what does this mean for the sanctity of one of the last pieces of real estate yet to be spoilt by humans? Researchers are already arguing that
we need to move to protect this precious, unique environment.
There’s Moon Gold In Them Thar Moon Hills
Features like Shackleton Crater may host water ice, which could be a vital resource for astronauts on the Moon. However, they may also hold secrets for researchers to uncover, with some suggesting they are perhaps best left undisturbed at this time. Credit: NASA, public domain
Previously, astronauts have rocked up to the Moon with enough supplies to sustain themselves for a short visit. With plans being worked up for a sustained base on the Moon, there’s more interest in exploiting locally-available resources. This would help cut back on the amount of cargo required to be freighted in by rocket, which is incredibly expensive. Scientists have
found frozen water on the Moon
, lurking in craters that are shielded from the sun. They regularly remain at temperatures below -225 C, and could hold clues to how asteroids carried water to Earth. Or, they could be mined to sustain the needs of astronauts living on the Moon, either to provide water for drinking, or to split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.
There are also hopes that these ultra-cool craters could serve as a useful base for a Moon-based telescope. Much like space-based telescopes, a telescope on the Moon wouldn’t have to contend with the distortions of Earth’s atmosphere, nor light pollution. By being so cold, it would be possible to build a highly-sensitive detector without a need for complicated refrigeration mechanisms as used on space telescopes
like the JWST.
A large telescope
built in a Moon crater
could potentially help us image the surfaces of distant planets similar to our own.
Areas of surface ice identified by India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter. Credit: NASA, public domain
There’s also the prospect of finding useful minerals to bring back to Earth. Prime candidates are rare-earth elements and helium-3 deposits that could be useful for fusion power generation. The latter can be readily found on Earth, and the latter isn’t particularly useful until we have viable commercial fusion reactors. However, scientists and engineers are always planning ahead, and there are researchers working on concepts for how these resources could be obtained on the Moon and brought back to Earth for gainful exploitation.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been used to map the surface of the Moon. There are fears that increased numbers of satellites orbiting the Moon could frustrate radio astronomy efforts in future. Credit: NASA, public domain
The problem with mining is that it tends to disrupt the environment a bit. Or a lot, depending on how deep you go digging and how you go about it. On Earth, humanity has started to manage this problem. Many countries now require environmental assessments and strict approvals processes to be passed before new mining projects can begin. To some degree, this keeps mining activity in check, and helps preserve the environment. Sadly, plenty of environmental damage still occurs due to mining, but we’re at least aware of the problem and doing something to rein it in.
On the Moon, though, it’s an altogether different situation. The Moon isn’t the property of any one nation, nor does it fall neatly within one country’s borders. The
Artemis Accords
were developed to solve this problem, being a set of “Principles for Cooperation In The Civil Exploration And Use Of The Moon, Mars, Comets and Asteroids For Peaceful Purposes.” Much like earlier space treaties, they enshrine cooperation and mutual respect as core tenets, and aim to avoid conflict or military uses of such areas or resources. They also commit nations to support each other through the use of interoperable standards wherever possible, and in rescue and provision of emergency assistance to each other’s astronauts.
Images taken by Galileo using spectral filters were used to generate this false color image. It shows areas of different mineral composition on the Moon’s surface. Credit: NASA, public domain
Scientists hope that in a similar spirit, nations might respect the status of the Moon as a precious and unspoiled place. Concerns have been raised that mining operations could disrupt the natural environment, compromising efforts to study the Moon as it stands today. For example, water mining operations could destroy vital clues to the history of our solar system, buried deep in lunar ice. Increased activity in the Moon’s orbit could disrupt science efforts, too. With more satellites orbiting around the Moon in support of new operations, there’s a risk that future radio astronomy efforts on the Moon’s far side could be disrupted by spurious emissions. The area has been set aside as a “radio quiet zone” since 1971 by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), but the rules don’t take into account the increased prevalence of new satellites.
For now, only a few sites are protected under the Artemis Accords. Historic artifacts left behind by the Apollo missions are the main example—no surprise given the importance of the first Moon missions. However, the accords don’t provide any real protection for areas of potential interest to scientists. Thus, it’s possible areas of great research value could be spoiled by the forward march of human mining operations.
There is a hope that this will change. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is on the case. It hopes to clearly define which areas of the Moon should be preserved for further research. It also plans to improve upon the ITU’s work in protecting the radio silence on the far side of the Moon, by creating clear rules for what’s okay, and what isn’t. A working group, led by astronomer Richard Green, held its first meeting on the matter last year.
Given we haven’t landed on the Moon yet, this might seem a bit like putting the cart before the horse. The problem is, once crucial sites on the Moon are mined or otherwise interfered with, crucial science could be lost forever. Thus, it’s important to have all this figured out before humans return to the Moon in any major way. Here’s hoping scientists can protect what’s important as humanity takes baby steps towards maybe, one day, spreading itself beyond this Earth. | 89 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723825",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T15:14:58",
"content": "“Now, somehow, it’s harder,”The difference lies in the goals.The original moon race was to get people to the moon and back safely.Artemis is about getting people to the moon and staying there.It’s the... | 1,760,372,028.262254 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/the-nsas-furby-artificial-intelligence-scare-foia-documents-provide-insight/ | The NSA’s Furby Artificial Intelligence Scare: FOIA Documents Provide Insight | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Freedom of Information Act",
"furby",
"nsa"
] | For those of us who were paying a modicum of attention to the part of the news around 1999 which did not involve the imminent demise of humanity due to the Y2K issue, a certain toy called a ‘Furby’ was making the headlines. In addition to driving parents batty, it also gave everyone’s favorite US three-letter agency a scare, with it being accused of being both a spying tool and equipped with an advanced artificial intelligence chip. Courtesy of a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we now have the low-down on what had the NSA all atwitter.
In a
Twitter thread
(
Nitter
) user [dakotathekat] announced the release, which finally answered many questions about the
NSA’s on-premises ban of Furbys
(or Furbees if you’re Swedish). The impression one gets is that this ‘Furby ban’ was primarily instated out of an abundance of caution, as unauthorized recording devices of any kind are strictly forbidden on NSA premises. With nobody at the NSA apparently interested in doing a teardown of a Furby to ascertain its internals, and the careful balance between allowing children’s toys on NSA grounds versus the risk of a ‘Furbygate’, a ban seemed the easy way out. Similarly, the FAA saw fit to also make people
turn their Furbys off
like all other electronic devices.
The original Furby toys did not have anything more complex inside of them than a 6502-derived MCU and a Ti TSP50C04 IC for speech synthesis duties, with the supposed ‘learning’ process using a hardcoded vocabulary that gradually replaced its default gibberish with English or another target language. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723786",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T13:19:42",
"content": "Once got a Furby in a Yankee swap at Christmas. It sat on my PC monitor for a while, gathering dust. One day I happened to scan the Computer History Museum’s “wanted” page (as I am an old fart with ... | 1,760,372,028.095093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/a-paddle-wheel-ground-effect-vehicle/ | A Paddle Wheel Ground Effect Vehicle | Danie Conradie | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ekranoplan",
"ground effect",
"rctestflight"
] | Who said paddle wheels were just for leisurely riverboat cruises? [rctestflight] is smashing that image with a high-speed twist on the concept, using
paddle wheels to propel a ground effect vehicle
across water. In the video after the break, witness this blend of old and new as he tests various designs.
Over the past few years he’s worked on a series of ground effect vehicles which exploits the increased lift and reduced drag when flying close to a surface. Unlike full-sized counterparts, smaller RC models struggle to stay in this sweet spot due to less pronounced self-stabilizing feedback loops. This means a small scale vehicle tends to touch the water rather often, and bleeding a lot of momentum in the process.
He wanted to convert these losses into gains by giving the vehicles a boost of speed whenever it touches the water. It’s a popular trick with RC cars which will hydroplane for long distances as long as they can maintain speed. All the designs still required air propellers for takeoff and to help maintain speed. The final design didn’t really need the paddle wheel when the air and water was calm, but it definitely helped when things got choppy. He is already experimenting with different paddle designs but also plans to test some other types of surface drives.
For covered a number off small scale ekranoplans, including a previous version by [rctestflight] that uses
lidar for altitude control
. He has also collaborated with [Think Flight] to
build a autonomous small scale prototype
for a maritime shipping startup. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723752",
"author": "Reluctant Cannibal",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T09:59:18",
"content": "Seems like the secret to his success is to use AG1. Think I might get some to boost the development of my own projects.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,028.013228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/24/upgrading-at-least-one-component-of-a-ti-calculator/ | Upgrading At Least One Component Of A TI Calculator | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"boost converter",
"charge controller",
"lipo",
"lithium polymer",
"retrofit",
"texas instruments",
"ti"
] | Even though Texas Instruments were the first company to produce an integrated circuit and a microprocessor, their success as a company in the 60s and 70s was not guaranteed. At the time there wasn’t much demand for previously non-existent products like these, so to drive some business they built the first hand-held calculator, a venture that they are still famous for today. Since then, though, they’ve become a bit of a punchline for producing calculators with decades-old technology but with modern price tags, so while this business model was quite successful if you want a calculator with a few modern features you’ll have to take a DIY approach
like this calculator retrofitted with a LiPo battery
.
The modern battery pack, with a lithium polymer battery at its core, includes all of the circuitry needed to integrate it seamlessly into the TI-59 calculator, which is all available on
the project’s GitHub page
. This calculator originally used a 9V battery, so the new battery pack includes a boost converter to match the 3.7V from the new battery to the needs of the old calculator. It doesn’t stop there, though. The pack is rechargeable from an included USB-C port, has a built-in charge controller, and is housed in its own custom-built case that fits neatly into the calculator where the old battery would sit.
While this wouldn’t be a drop-in replacement for more modern calculators like the TI-83/84 and TI-89, a new case and a different boost converter would solve the problem of the AAA batteries dying during exams. It might make the calculators non-compliant with various standardized testing requirements, though (which TI was also instrumental in developing) so you may want to verify with your testing standard of choice before modifying a calculator you need for an exam. But if all the rules are off,
why not add Wi-Fi to it too
? | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723707",
"author": "Adrian",
"timestamp": "2024-01-25T06:49:45",
"content": "As far as I know, the Ti-59 featured a removable battery pack that comprised of three Ni-CAD cells in series.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "672386... | 1,760,372,027.955186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/this-week-in-security-moab-microsoft-and-printers/ | This Week In Security: MOAB, Microsoft, And Printers | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"CVE",
"haveibeenpwned",
"This Week in Security"
] | This week, news has broken of
the Mother of All Breaches, MOAB
. It’s 12 terabytes and 26 billion records, averaging about 500 bytes each. Now note that a record here is likely not a discrete email address, but simply a piece of data — a row on the database.
Now before we all lose our minds over this, there’s an important detail to take note of: These aren’t new leaks. This is a compilation of leaks, and as far as researchers have checked, there aren’t
any
new leaks disclosed here. This was someone’s database of accumulated leak data, accidentally re-leaked via an unsecured database. [Troy Hunt] goes so far as to speculate that it could be from a breach search service, which sounds pretty plausible.
There was
yet another release of credentials
late last week that hasn’t attracted as much attention, but seems to represent a much bigger issue. The Naz.api data set isn’t a breach where a company was hacked, and their entire user database was stolen. Instead, this one is combination of a credential stuffing list and stealer logs.
Credential stuffing is basically a smarter brute force attack, where the credentials from one breach are tried on multiple other sites. Such a list is just the results where guesses were successful. The really interesting bit is that this dataset seems to include stealer logs. Put simply, that’s the results of malware that scrapes victim machines for credentials.
Naz.api has over 70 million unique email addresses, and it looks like about a third of them are new, at least according to the Haveibeenpwned dataset. Now that’s significant, though not really worthy of the MOAB title, either.
Microsoft’s Mysterious Shellacking
Microsoft got their email breached, and
the story is weird
. Microsft states that it was Midnight Blizzard, a Russian APT, and that initial access was via a “password spray attack” — essentially a dictionary attack. Microsoft states that this approach attackers to “compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account”. And from this foothold, attackers “used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team”. It feels like there’s a whole lot of details in the missing step two of this story, before Midnight Blizzard arrived at PROFIT!!.
A
late update has come in on this story
. It looks like there was an old OAuth application that had some sort of global admin access to the entire Microsoft corporate environment. This is very new information, but it’s beginning to look like Microsoft accidentally left the keys in the lock on this one.
HP Saves Printers by Bricking Them
Printer companies have done some sketchy things over the years. For example, I remember one unit I was tasked with configuring, that was programmed not to print anything until a Windows machine finished an online registration process — it was bricked out of the box, unless unlocked through this process. So it’s not terribly surprising to read that HP is pulling a similar stunt, bricking printers when third-party ink replacements are installed. If you’re wondering how they haven’t been sued into oblivion for this tactic, the answer is that the lawsuits are still ongoing. But what really caught our attention is the explanation HP came up with to defend this practice:
We brick printers to protect them from viruses on that unauthorized ink
.
OK, so let’s take a look at this claim. HP
puts a memory chip in each of their cartridges
, which contains the model and serial number of the cartridge. The printer pulls this data from the chip and sends it off to HP for verification. So, embedded firmware, pulling very structured data from a black-box source, that gets lightly manipulated and forwarded on. That sounds exactly like a situation where buffer overflows and vulnerable code would abound. So the basic premise checks out. HP printers probably have vulnerable code that reads from ink cartridges.
The rest of HP’s argument is that third-party cartridges are using re-programmable chips, which could contain a malicious payload. Because HP has a secure manufacturing process, it’s much less likely to deliver something malicious. And honestly, that thought checks out, too. Who knows where third-party cartridges come from, and who’s had access to them?
So… Thanks HP? Not so fast. There’s a couple intervening points. The first is that this sort of attack would necessarily be targeted and difficult to pull off. It’s a possible threat, but one that’s squarely in the realm of state-sponsored actors. And most importantly, why exactly do HP ink cartridges have data chips and a serial data connection in them? It’s specifically so HP can implement cartridge DRM. So yes, this is a self-causing security problem.
And if that’s not enough printer security news for one week, Lexmark has announced a
pair
of
vulnerabilities
in PostScript interpreters. The really interesting one is
a vulnerability in the Service Engineer menu
, that allows for arbitrary code execution.
Crawling Domains for Secrets
It’s amazing what a clever idea can turn into with just a few days of work, and about $100 worth of compute. A researcher at Escape
built a webcrawler with a single purpose
: looking for exposed API keys. The crawler was fed with the Majestic Million list of the top one million domains (
Hackaday clocks in at number 2,757
), and set off to work.
The results are a bit surprising. After scanning just under a million domains — governmental and other sensitive targets were pruned from the list — the tool found 18,000 exposed secrets. That’s nearly two percent of the world’s top million domains. Yikes!
Atlassian detailed and scanned
Last week we talked about a nasty Confluence vulnerability, and this week it already seems to be under active exploitation. ProjectDiscovery has us covered
with a fairly deep dive into the issue
, and it’s not a hard one to understand. Confluence uses Velocity template files, and Struts to actually serve those pages. But it’s possible to access the template files directly as an unauthenticated user. That’s not great, but what turns this into a serious vulnerability is that some of those templates will take HTTP parameters, and fire off processes with them. The
text-inline.vm
template in particular is vulnerable to this, and injected parameters can lead to code execution.
Bits and Bytes
Also from ProjectDiscovery, we have
cvemap
, an interesting little tool for quickly searching, sorting, and reviewing released vulnerabilities. Of particular interest is the integration with GitHub, the tracking of whether PoCs are in the wild, and more.
We prefer to talk about security problems when there are patches or workarounds available to mitigate the problem. That’s why we really don’t like
problems like this one
, that gets released after radio silence from the vendor. Researchers at HeroLab found a deserialization vulnerability in the Gambio online shop software that can lead to code execution. It was discovered back in December, and after six weeks of silence, we have disclosure. HeroLab has included a workaround that should protect Gambio installs, but warns that it may lead to functionality breakage.
And finally, there’s a bit of a storm brewing around CVEs,
particularly when it comes to WordPress Plugins
. It seems that a handful of security vendors are making the assumption that every vulnerability has always existed, and report CVEs as affecting every version prior to the fix, even when only a single version is vulnerable. The problem seems to be worse when these security vendors are anointed as CVE Numbering Authorities, CNAs. There is some hope, in that
the CNA rules are being revised
, and some of these issues are being considered. Here’s hoping. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724253",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T15:38:57",
"content": "Wait, what? HP printers phone home to verify the ink cartridge is legit?What happens if the printer is behind a firewall, or airgapped?My Epsons try to phone home, but seem unperturbed when they can’t.My Br... | 1,760,372,028.605189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/san-francisco-sues-to-keep-autonomous-cars-out-of-the-city/ | San Francisco Sues To Keep Autonomous Cars Out Of The City | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"legal",
"san francisco",
"self-driving car",
"Waymo"
] | Although the arrival of self-driving cars and taxis in particular seems to be eternally ‘just around the corner’ for most of us, in an increasing number of places around the world they’re already operational, with Waymo being quite prevalent in the US. Yet despite approval by the relevant authorities, the city of San Francisco has opted to sue the state commission that approved Google’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise. Their goal? To
banish these services from the streets
of SF, ideally forever.
Whether they will succeed in this seems highly doubtful. Although Cruise has lost its license to operate in California after a recent fatal accident, Waymo’s track record is actually quite good. Using public information sources, there’s a case to be made that Waymo cars are
significantly safer to be in or around
than those driven by human operators. When
contrasted with Cruise’s troubled performance
, it would seem that the problem with self-driving cars isn’t so much the technology as it is the safety culture of the company around it.
Yet despite Waymo’s better-than-humans safety record, it is regarded as a ‘nuisance’,
leading some to sabotage the cars
. The more reasonable take would seem to be that although technology is not mature yet, it has the overwhelming advantage over human drivers that it never drives distracted or intoxicated, and can be deterministically improved and tweaked across all cars based on experiences.
These considerations have been taken into account by the state commission that has approved Waymo operating in SF, which is why legal experts note that SF case’s chances are very slim based on the available evidence. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724186",
"author": "Benny",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T12:35:51",
"content": "The link behind the “Using public information sources, there’s a case to be made that Waymo cars are significantly safer to be in or around than those driven by human operators.” text leads to Verge article... | 1,760,372,028.389544 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/26/reviving-a-sensorless-x-ray-cabinet-with-analog-film/ | Reviving A Sensorless X-Ray Cabinet With Analog Film | Dan Maloney | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"darkroom",
"develop",
"film",
"Instax",
"polaroid",
"process",
"Radiography",
"reverse engineering",
"x-ray"
] | In the same way that a doctor often needs to take a non-destructive look inside a patient to diagnose a problem, those who seek to reverse engineer electronic systems can greatly benefit from the power of X-ray vision. The trouble is that X-ray cabinets designed for electronics are hideously expensive, even on the secondary market. Unless, of course, their sensors are kaput, in which case they’re not of much use. Or are they?
[Aleksandar Nikolic] and [Travis Goodspeed] strongly disagree, to the point that they dedicated a lot of work documenting
how they capture X-ray images on plain old analog film
. Of course, this is nothing new — [Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen] showed that photographic emulsions are sensitive to “X-light” all the way back in the 1890s, and film was the de facto image sensor for radiography up until the turn of this century. But CMOS sensors have muscled their way into film’s turf, to the point where traditional silver nitrate emulsions and wet processing of radiographic films, clinical and otherwise, are nearly things of the past.
A study in black and white of an SD card, on film using X-ray.
Luckily, though, [Aleksandar] and [Travis] happened upon a small X-ray cabinet whose sensor had given up the ghost, forcing them to improvise. The first pass was with plain black-and-white film, Ilford Ortho Plus to be precise. The 4×5 format film was just the right size to substitute for the wonky image sensor, and at ISO 80 was fine-grained enough to capture the details needed for reverse engineering. After 3D-printing some film holders — PETG proved to be more radiolucent than PLA for some reason — they took some long exposures of various devices in their X-ray cabinet.
The film was processed with the standard chemicals, and the results were pretty fantastic. For those opposed to the wet work, they also tried using instant film packs like those used in Polaroid and Fuji Instax cameras. After removing a single piece of film from a pack inside a dark bag and sensitizing it with a quick flash of visible light, they were able to expose the film and re-insert it into an empty film pack. Slapping the pack back in the instant camera ejects the film, squeezing out the chemical and developing the picture.
Et voilà
, instant X-rays.
We’ve got to say that this is pretty fantastic work, and we love that this perhaps makes a valuable reverse engineering tool a little more accessible to the average hacker. [Aleksandar] and [Travis] presented this work at Schmoocon a couple of weeks back; the entire track of talks was streamed live, but luckily their talk is at the very beginning of the long video below.
Thanks to [FuzzyAleks] for the tip | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724172",
"author": "Mr Matthew D Rose",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T11:18:14",
"content": "Fabulous work. Would love to do this; I’m still using 4×5 film (Ilford Ortho Plus) and have a Intrepid camera and a load of film holders at my disposal. No idea where I’d get a knackered x-ray c... | 1,760,372,028.316798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/building-a-mouse-thats-also-a-computer/ | Building A Mouse That’s Also A Computer | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"computer",
"mouse",
"Windows 11"
] | Once upon a time, a computer was a big metal brick of a thing that sat on or next to your desk. Now, it’s possible to fit decent computing power into a board the size of a stick of gum. [Electo] took advantage of this
to build an entire computer into a mouse form factor.
[Electo] had tried this before years ago, and built something pretty sloppy. This time, he wanted to build a version that had an actually-legible screen and fit better in the hand. He whipped up a giant 3D-printed mouse housing, and fitted the sensor board from an optical mouse inside. That was hooked up to an Intel NUC PC that fits inside the housing. A small LCD screen was then installed on a rack system that lets it pop out the front of the mouse. Data entry is via a laser keyboard mounted in the side of the mouse.
Of course, being based on an Intel NUC means the thing was the size of a couple of phonebooks. That’s not really a mouse. Starting again, he reworked the build around a tiny palm-sized computer running Windows 11. It was stripped out of its case and wedged into a compact 3D-printed housing only slightly larger than a typical mouse. It has a keyboard of a sort – really it’s just an array of buttons covering W, A, S, D, and a couple others for playing simple games. Amazingly, it’ll even run Minecraft or Fortnight if you really want to try and squint at that tiny screen.
Having a computer with a screen that moves every time you move the mouse isn’t ideal. At the same time, it’s fun to see someone explore a fun (and silly) form factor. It’s interesting to see how the project works compared to the original version
from a few years ago
. Video after the break. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724124",
"author": "Mike Volk",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T06:54:37",
"content": "This would be better served with a wireless HDMI setup than a tiny screen like that.Wireless HDMI would allow you to use a small screen or a 4K TV — whatever was handy at the time.I’m old and eyesight i... | 1,760,372,028.549475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/open-vehicle-monitoring-system-is-the-window-to-your-evs-soul/ | Open Vehicle Monitoring System Is The Window To Your EV’s Soul | Navarre Bartz | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"automotive as a service",
"automotive privacy",
"car manufacturers",
"electric car",
"evs",
"features on demand",
"functions on demand",
"infotainment",
"Open Vehicle Monitoring System",
"paywall",
"privacy",
"subscription",
"subscription fee",
"subscription service"
] | Electric cars have more widgets than ever, but manufacturers would rather you don’t have direct access to them. The
Open Vehicle Monitoring System
intends to change that for the user. [via
Transport Evolved
]
As car manufacturers
hoover up user data
and
require subscriptions for basic features
, it can be a frustrating time to make such a big purchase. Begun in 2011, OVMS now interfaces with over a dozen different EVs and gives you access to (or helps you reverse engineer) all the data you could want from your vehicle. Depending on the vehicle, any number of functions can be accessed including remote climate start or cell-level battery statistics.
The hardware connects to your car’s OBDII port and uses an ESP32 microcontroller connected to a SIMCOM SIM7600G modem (including GPS) to provide support for 3 CAN buses as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. This can be particularly useful for remote access to data for vehicles that
can no longer phone home
via their originally included cellular modems as
older networks shut down
.
Do you wish EVs weren’t so complicated? Read our
Minimal Motoring Manifesto
. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724139",
"author": "Gérald",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T08:23:07",
"content": "Sadly no support for any Toyota Prius. What would be the best option for Prius III 2009?OOT: it seems that since around may last year, i’m unable to receive new comments notifications by email, despite lea... | 1,760,372,028.653659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-flights-ingenuity-permanently-grounded-after-72-flights/ | So Long And Thanks For All The Flights:IngenuityPermanently Grounded After 72 Flights | Dan Maloney | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"Ingenuity",
"mars",
"Perseverance"
] | Just a few hours ago, NASA dropped some devastating news:
Ingenuity
will fly no more
. Three years after dropping from the belly of the
Perseverance
rover and after 72 flights through the thin Martian atmosphere, the little helicopter that could now can’t, after having sustained damage to one or more of its rotors during its final landing.
Shadow of
Ingenuity
‘s rotor blade, showing damage suffered during a rough landing.
NASA’s terminal diagnosis of
Ingenuity
comes from a photo from one of the helicopter’s cameras, which shows a chunk missing from the tip of one of its rotors, likely caused by a rough landing after transiting a flat, sandy area that may have confused the aircraft’s navigational cameras.
While this is anything but good news, it’s not at all unexpected and in a way long overdue.
Ingenuity
was designed for
a primary mission of just five flights
, which it accomplished all the way back in May of 2021. There was heavy speculation at the time that
Ingenuity
might not even do that; we can recall one of the team members suggesting the odds were that
Ingenuity’s
tenure as the first controlled powered flying machine on another world would end as twisted wreckage in the newest, smallest crater on Mars.
But happily,
Ingenuity
proved the oddsmakers — and possibly those wishing to temper expectations — spectacularly wrong. In fact, by the fourth flight, it was clear that
Ingenuity
was in it for the long haul, enough so that
NASA redefined its mission to “operational demonstration”
and gave it another 30 sols of flight time. This gave the team the flight time needed to prove the helicopter’s worth as a scout for
Perseverance
and not just a distracting sideshow from the primary mission of searching for signs of ancient life on Mars.
Ingenuity
‘s success was hard-fought; the plucky little unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had more than its share of close calls over the last three years. Designed to communicate to Earth mainly by relay through
Perseverance
, the helicopter lost contact with controllers on Earth quite a few times, with each blackout inducing a sense of “Is this finally it?” The helicopter had also been designed for only a few flights, all of which would occur during the relatively balmy Martian spring. This meant that controllers had to reprogram it to survive the harsh winter months when the computer would freeze solid and reset itself. They also had to figure out how to clean dust off the tiny solar panels, deal with imaging problems that scrambled the guidance computer, and probably most importantly, give the aircraft the ability to choose its own landing spots.
Sadly, it’s unlikely that we’ll see
Ingenuity
in its final landing zone anytime soon.
Perseverance
is currently about a kilometer away, too far to image the helicopter with the rover’s cameras. Although there’s no word yet if the rover will try to make the trip over, and doing so may not align with the rover’s primary mission, it seems to us that such a trip could be of immense value. From close up,
Perseverance
‘s MASTCAM would be able to provide data about the extent of damage and what caused it, which could be extremely valuable and might just inform the design of the space helicopters that are sure to follow in
Ingenuity
‘s footsteps.
But beyond the engineering data it would glean, getting the team back together for
one last selfie
would be an amazing tribute to both
Ingenuity
and the team that pushed its technology to the limit, and a bit beyond.
Ingenuity
pushed back so many engineering and scientific boundaries in its longer-than-expected but still far too brief life that it seems a little harsh to just leave it there sitting on the floor of Jezero Crater to die. A final visit so we can all pay our respects and celebrate the achievements of an incredible feat of human ingenuity seems like the least we can do.
Photo credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS | 43 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724036",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T00:05:09",
"content": "The little enginuity that could!Thanks for everything!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6724099",
"author": "The... | 1,760,372,028.739275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/you-can-use-a-crappy-mixer-as-a-neat-synthesizer/ | You Can Use A Crappy Mixer As A Neat Synthesizer | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"mixer",
"music",
"synth"
] | [Simon the Magpie] found himself in possession of a Behringer mixer that turned up in someone’s garbage. They’re not always the most well-regarded mixers, but [Simon] saw an opportunity to do something a bit different with it. He decided to show us all
how you can use a mixer as a synthesizer.
[Simon] actually picked up the “no-input” technique
from [Andreij Rublev]
and decided to try it out on his own equipment. The basic idea is to use feedback through the mixer to generate tones. To create a feedback loop, connect an auxiliary output on the mixer to one of the mixer’s input channels. The gain on the channel is then increased on the channel to create a great deal of feedback. The mixer’s output is then gently turned up, along with the volume on the channel that has formed the feedback loop. If you’ve hooked things up correctly, you should have some kind of tone feedbacking through the mixer. Want to change the pitch? Easy – just use the mixer’s EQ pots!
It’s pretty easy to get some wild spacey sounds going. Get creative and you can make some crunchy sounds or weird repeating tones if you play with the mixer’s built in effects. Plus, the benefit of a mixer is that it has multiple channels. You can create more feedback loops using the additional channels if you have enough auxiliary sends for the job. Stack them up or weave them together and you can get some wild modulation going.
Who needs a modular synth
when you can do all this with a four channel mixer and some cables? Video after the break. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6724037",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2024-01-26T00:08:43",
"content": "And you are not limited to using only the mixer’s output for input!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6724039",
"author... | 1,760,372,028.797697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/24/this-unique-flip-flop-uses-chemistry-and-lasers/ | This Unique Flip-Flop Uses Chemistry And Lasers | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"flip-flop",
"laser",
"merocyanine",
"optics",
"photochromic",
"spiropyran",
"SR"
] | One of the first logic circuits most of us learn about is the humble flip-flop. They’re easy enough to build with just a couple of NOR or NAND gates, and even building one up from discrete components isn’t too much of a chore. But building a flip-flop from chemicals and lasers is another thing entirely.
That’s the path [Markus Bindhammer] took for
his photochromic molecular switch
. We suspect this is less of an attempt at a practical optical logic component and more of a demonstration project, but either way, it’s pretty cool. Photochromism is the property by which molecules reversibly rearrange themselves and change color upon exposure to light, the most common example being
glass that darkens automatically
in the sun. This principle can be used to create an optical flip-flop, which [Markus] refers to as an “RS” type but we’re pretty sure he means “SR.”
The electronics for this are pretty simple, with two laser modules and their drivers, a power supply, and an Arduino to run everything. The optics are straightforward as well — a beam splitter that directs the beams from each laser onto the target, which is a glass cuvette filled with a clear epoxy resin mixed with a photochromic chemical. [Markus] chose spiropyran as the pigment, which when bathed in UV light undergoes an intramolecular carbon-oxygen bond breakage that turns it into the dark blue pigment merocyanine. Hitting the spot with a red laser or heating the cuvette causes the C-O bond to reform, fading the blue spot.
The video below shows the intensely blue dot spot developing under UV light and rapidly fading thanks to just the ambient temperature. To make the effect last longer, [Markus] cools the target with a spritz from a CO
2
cartridge. We imagine other photochromic chemicals could also be employed here, as could some kind of photometric sensor to read the current state of the flip-flop. Even as it is, though, this is an interesting way to put chemistry and optics to work. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723352",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2024-01-24T12:37:41",
"content": "How to build 1 bit of asynchronous memory no transistors, you’d need a pigment the needs a wide band gap of sort, the set wavelength and reset wavelength need to be far apart to not interfere,... | 1,760,372,028.847686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/24/massive-water-rocket-is-impressive-but-accessible/ | Massive Water Rocket Is Impressive But Accessible | Danie Conradie | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"air-water rocket",
"parachute",
"soda bottle",
"water rocket"
] | Water rockets are one of those projects that never get old, and bumping the size just adds to the challenge. In the video after the break, [ARRO Rockets] takes us through the launch of
Gamma IV, his most ambitious water rocket
project yet. Crafted with spliced soda bottles and standard household materials, this rocket is a testament to what one can achieve with simple components and a bit of ingenuity.
The rocket’s release mechanism demonstrates this — employing nothing more than a quick connect hose connection and a basic pulley system. The parachute recovery system is also a nice combo of modern electronics and simplicity. It uses a microcontroller with accelerometer to detect the apogee, and release the parachute to be ejected by another piece of soda bottle acting as a spring. It also records or the flight data on an SD card.
[ARRO Rockets] had some trouble with friction on the launch rail, which was partially solved with liberal application of silicone spray. The root cause might be the rail button flexing on launch, or just the change of the pressurized bottles.
We are especially impressed by how accessible this project is, a reminder that high-flying achievements don’t necessarily require deep pockets or hard-to-source parts. The entire setup is not only cost-effective but also opens up numerous possibilities for further experimentation and refinement, like
adding a second stage
or a
precision release mechanism
. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723336",
"author": "concretedog",
"timestamp": "2024-01-24T11:14:39",
"content": "Just a small clarification, they aren’t doing apogee detection. The altimeter is simply logging and the recovery deployment is just on a timer set via the dip switches. It’s a nice simple system, but ... | 1,760,372,028.897318 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/23/crusty-the-story-of-the-mac-se-that-could/ | Crusty: The Story Of The Mac SE That Could | Adam Fabio | [
"hardware",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"drowned",
"mac",
"retrocomputing",
"torture test"
] | Retrocomputing often involves careful restorations, rare components, and white gloves. This story involves none of those. This is the story of two people who sought to answer one of the greatest questions in the universe: What does it take to kill a Mac SE?
Crusty’s mainboard as found
The star of the show here is Crusty, a Mac SE that was found on the loading dock of a scrap company. It sat out in the weather for at least 6 months, complete with the original leaking lithium battery.
Enter [RadRacer203], who is friends with the owner of this particular scrap company. [RadRacer203] and picked up Crusty, along with a few other classic Macs. He brought these machines to
VCF East 2021
, where our other hero comes in. [CJ] is something of a magician with CRTs and analog electronics. Trained under [Sark] himself, [CJ] has mastered the 5-finger exploding capacitor technique.
The battery had eaten through the mainboard and even into the chassis. But after a thorough cleaning, the damn thing booted up. Crusty was born.
This Mac was a survivor. Much like Top Gear and their plucky Toyota Hilux, [RadRacer203] and [CJ] devised a plan to put Crusty to the test.
Click through the break for more!
Test 1: Bury it for 6 months.
[RadRacer203] lives on a large computer ranch. He took Crusty out to the back 40 and buried him. [CJ] is quick to mention they did remove the IWM chip before burial, as he and [RadRacer203] aren’t monsters. After 6 months underground, Crusty was dug up just in time to attend VCF East, still wearing his muddy attire. [CJ] immediately went to work. While the burial had rusted a few parts, it only took a bit of cleaning to get Crusty up and running again. The machine would not die. Obviously, this required drastic measures.
Test 2: Submerge it in a creek for 8 months.
Glug glug glug
Did we mention [RadRacer203] lives on a large computer farm? This includes a creek. He chucked Crusty in and walked away. Crusty was only retrieved 8 months later when the danger of a hard freeze put the CRT itself at risk. Rather than winter in the water, Crusty became a Halloween decoration and spent some time as the head of a rather dapper looking snowman.
At this point, Crusty was a bit of a celebrity, and his next appearance at
VCF East 2023
included meeting and getting signatures from several notable YouTubers. Unfortunately [CJ] wasn’t quite able to get him working this time. The 1/8-watt power supply feedback resistors rusted right off the PCB.
[CJ] was undaunted. Fast forward to VCF Midwest 2023, and he was going to give Crusty the best possible chance of running again. [CJ] had everything he needed. Except cleaning supplies. Not a problem, as there was plenty of Old Bay vodka available. This was perfect for cleaning up the boards and made everyone around hungry looking for crabcakes.
Did Crusty live? We’ll let [CJ] tell the
rest of the story on his page
. We’ll just say we’re in awe of his skills in bringing old decrepit hardware back to life. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723207",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2024-01-24T06:15:23",
"content": "so its the ak-47 of computers.i have fond memories of the se, you could say its the machine that got me into computers. though to be fair having high scores in crystal raiders is not exactly hackery."... | 1,760,372,029.703314 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/23/a-live-map-display-in-a-1960s-airliner/ | A Live Map Display In A 1960s Airliner | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aviation",
"doppler radar",
"gps",
"map"
] | We tend take GPS navigation for granted these days, so it’s easy to forget that it became only available in the last few decades. Aviation navigation used to be significantly more challenging, so how was the Hawker Siddeley Trident, a 1960s airliner, fitted with a live updating map display? In a fascinating dive into aviation history the British Airliner Collection has spun up an insightful article on the magic behind these
moving map displays
.
Without access to satellite navigation or advanced electronics, engineers had to get creative. Enter the Trident’s moving map display, a marvel of ingenuity that predated the GPS systems. Using a combination of Doppler radar and some clever mechanics, pilots could accurately determine their position without relying on any external signals.
The system makes use of four Doppler radar beams, arranged in what was known as the Janus array. This configuration corrected for errors caused by changes in altitude or wind drift, ensuring accurate ground speed readings. The movable antennas mounted under the cabin floor could adjust its orientation to maintain alignment with the actual direction of travel, calculating drift angle precisely. Combined with compass information and flight time from a known start point to to indicate the current position with a pointer on a rolled paper map. The system was well ahead of it’s time, and significantly easier to use and more accurate than the Decca radio navigation system in use at the time.
It’s mind boggling to see the solutions engineers came up with without much of the digital technology we take for granted today.
Gyroscopes
for inertial navigation, the
cavity magnetron
for radar and
radial engines
were all building blocks for modern aviation.
Thanks for the tip [poiuyt]! | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6723178",
"author": "Marc",
"timestamp": "2024-01-24T04:38:28",
"content": "My father worked on doppler radar navigation/bombing systems in the mid to late 50s, in particular, the system that would have gone into the B-70 had it gone into production. So, I was curious just when thi... | 1,760,372,028.939946 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.