Hackaday Links: July 3, 2016

This week, Popular Mechanics published cutaway diagrams of ships that will be seen in Star Trek: Beyond, released later this month. This is your cue for spoilers for the remainder of this paragraph. The USS Franklin looks suspiciously like – and was likely built after – the NX-01, the titular ship of Star Trek: Enterprise. The Abrams-verse Franklin was the first Warp 4 ship, yet the prime universe NX-01 was the first Warp 5 ship, with previous ships having trouble reaching Warp 2. We must now consider the Abrams-verse Trek is not a parallel universe to prime-universe Trek and should therefore be considered a completely separate canon (yes, even the destruction of Vulcan. If you see the new Star Trek movie, the NX-01 launched in 2151, and your suggested viewing beforehand is ST:ENT, S02E24, First Flight.

The Mechaduino is a Hackaday Prize entry that turns steppers into closed-loop servos. It’s a phenomenal idea, and now it’s a Kickstarter.

Walk into a dollar store, and you’ll find stupid solar powered electronic flower pots. They’re bits of plastic that shake a plastic flower back and forth when placed in the sun. They’re selling millions, and I have no idea why. [Scott] put a jolly wrencher on one of these flower pots. Really, this is just an exercise in 3D printing, but [Scott] printed the jolly wrencher. We don’t see a lot of that, due to how difficult it is to render the wrencher in OpenSCAD.

In just a few hours, Juno will perform an insertion burn around Jupiter. Does this mean pretty pictures? Not quite yet. This is the closest a spacecraft has ever gotten to Jupiter, and over thirty or forty orbits, Juno will fly between Jupiter’s massive radiation belts. Here’s the NASA trailer.

This video recently caught the Internet’s attention. It’s squares and circles that when put next to a mirror look like circles and squares. Yes, it’s weird. People have 3D printers, so of course these ambiguous objects were quickly reverse engineered and printed. Here’s how they work

It looks like Brexit has caught up to Mouser. Here’s their country select dialog for eu.mouser.com. Thanks [Tom] for the screencap.

10 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: July 3, 2016

  1. At a $1 a piece, those stupid solar powered baubles are hard to resist for a lot of people. A lot of kids want them so parents will buy them to shut them up. Adults will buy them to spruce up a cubicle or something.

    A lot of adults are buying them as “collectables” as well. They generally use the same molds year after year with minor pattern or color variations each year. You figure an average of five figures every week or two at a dollar a pop, these are cheaper than your ceramic crap of the month subscriptions. As a result these things sell out in a matter of hours in some stores. It’s like a poor mans version of Beanie Babies.

    I gutted a few to snag the ultra thin copper windings for patching PCBs or the solar panels for a sensor or whatever. At $1 it’s cheaper than hitting up AliBaba or eBay for the same crap.

    1. That site with the HaD logo trick should have added a GIF, or better yet animated PNG.
      Missed a trick there.

      And yeah, I also used dollar store stuff for parts where they are in no way intended for, although often there is very little usable stuff in the items in such stores, but there are a few sometimes.

  2. Seems mouser always pops up the country you are in and the region options, regardless if it’s britain or not.
    And it’s about the currency, and without a brexit (which hasn’t even been officially asked for and will take 2 years after that) britain always had the pound. And the reason is that britain was never into the whole EU thing, ever.

    1. Addendum: I do hope to see less of the UK being used as the only shopping option in Europe BTW. I personally don’t have much faith in UK as a shopping country, and then there is the whole five eyes thing.
      And from what I hear many companies are preparing to leave and move operations to mainland Europe, as well as the financial sector. Even British-international companies from what I understand. So it’s looking good for people who don’t care much for UK based operations..

  3. That illusion seriously messed with my head. Great job!
    Ssooooo many idiots on YouTube! Many of the comments are that it’s either CGI or a second person behind a fake mirror.
    And I can’t stand those stupid solar things. Eventually it stops wobbling and into the trash it goes. What a waste of copper and silicon.

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