Grabbing Weather And Traffic Overlays From IHeartRadio

December 20, 2017 by Will Sweatman 17 Comments

When the older of us think of radio, we think of dialing in an FM or AM station. Giant broadcast towers strewn throughout the countryside radiated electromagnetic waves modulated with music, talk and sports across our great land. Youngsters out there might be surprised that such primitive technology still exists. Though the static of an untuned AM receiver might be equivalent to the dial tone of a 56K modem, it’s still a major part of our society.

Like all technology, radio has transitioned to faster and better ways of sending information. Today we have digital radio stations – one of the most popular being iHeartRadio. And because it’s digital, it can also send along info other than audio, such as weather and traffic information.

The guys over at [KYDronePilot] have made use of this to display real-time weather and traffic maps with an SDR and a little Python. They’re new to Python, so be sure to check out their GitHub, grab a copy of the code, and let them know if you see room for improvement.

This hack is based on recent work decoding the digital data, which is worth checking out if you’re interested in SDR, DSP, or any other radio-related acronyms.

Powering Your Mining Rig The Right Way

December 17, 2017 by Will Sweatman 36 Comments

It happens to the best of us. We power up our project and immediately run into issues. Be it spotty communication or microcontroller reset or any number of bugs that have us mystified and picking though our code… only to find that it’s a power supply issue. Anyone who has tried doing Raspberry Pi stuff and depended on the USB power from their PC has certainly been bit by this.

It’s the same with larger, more power hungry projects as well. [Nerd Ralph] has been running a mining rig for a few years now, and has learned just how important proper power supply management can be. His strategy involves using interlocks to ensure everything powers up at the same time to avoid feedback problems, running a separate ground wire between all GPU cards and the PSU and running the supplies at 220 for the NA folks.

Be sure to check out [Nerd Ralph’s] blog for more details and tips to power your own mining rig.

Generate Random Numbers The Hard Way

December 13, 2017 by Will Sweatman 24 Comments

Your job is to create a random number generator.

Your device starts with a speaker and a membrane. On this membrane will sit a handful of small, marble-size copper balls. An audio source feeds the speaker and causes the balls to bounce to and fro. If a ball bounces high enough, it will gain the opportunity to travel down one of seven copper tubes. Optical sensors in each of the tubes detect the ball and feed data to an Ardunio Mega. When the ball reaches the end of the tube, a robotic hand will take the ball and put it back on the speaker membrane. The magic happens when we write an algorithm such that the audio output for the speaker is a function of how many balls fall down the pipes.

The above is a rough description of [::vtol::]’s art piece: kinetic random number generator. We’re pretty sure that there are easier ways to get some non-determinstic bits, but there may be none more fun to watch.

[::vtol::] is a frequent flyer here on Hackaday Airlines. Where else would you showcase your 8-bit Game Boy Photo Gun or your brainwave-activated ferrofluid monster bath? Would it shock you to find out that we’ve even covered another kinetic random number generator of his? Fun stuff!

Keep Track Of Your Weight While Sleeping

December 12, 2017 by Will Sweatman 36 Comments

When the average person looks at a bed, they think about sleeping. Because that’s what beds are for. You cover them with soft, warm cloths and fluffy pillows and you sleep on them. [Peter] is not your average person. He’s a maker. And when he looks at a bed, he thinks about giving it the ability to track his weight.

The IKEA bed has four Chinese-made TS-606 load cells under each foot with custom aluminum enclosures. Each one goes to an HX711 analog-to-digital converter, which offers a 24 bit resolution. These feed an Arduino Nano which in turns connects to a Raspberry Pi via USB to UART bridge. Connecting to the Pi allows [Peter] to get the data onto his home network, where he plots the data to gnuplot.

This smart bed doesn’t just track [Peter’s] weight. It can also track the weight of other people in the house, including his pets. Be sure to check his GitHub for full source code.

Rock Out With The Nod Bang

December 10, 2017 by Will Sweatman 7 Comments

In our years here on Hackaday, we’ve seen our fair share of musical hacks. They even have their own category! (Pro Tip – you can find it under the drop down menu in the Categories section). But this one takes the cake. [Andrew Lee] is a student at New York University who had a task of creating a project for his physical computing class. In about 60 days time; he went from dinner napkin sketch to working project. The project is quite interesting – he’s made an instrument that plays music as you move your head.

It works as you would expect. An accelerometer in the user’s headphones feed data to an arduino. There are four (3D printed of course) buttons that are used to select the the type of audio being played. The operation goes as such:

Press button.
Bang head.

[Andrew] speaks of a particular satisfaction of hearing the music play in sync with the rhythm of head movement. Be sure to check out the video below to see the Nod Bang in action.

Continue reading “Rock Out With The Nod Bang” →

Woman Gets Diabetes, Builds Own Pancreas

December 6, 2017 by Will Sweatman 64 Comments

For the most part, when we break out the soldering iron to make a project for ourselves – we do so for fun. Sometimes we do so for necessity. Rarely do we, however, do so to save our own lives. [Dana Lewis] is one of the 30 million people in the US who suffer from diabetes. It’s a condition where the pancreas fails to make insulin, resulting in a buildup of sugar in the bloodstream. Managing the levels of insulin and sugar in their bodies is a day-to-day struggle for the millions of diabetics in the world. It’s a great deal more for [Dana], however. She sleeps with machines that monitor the glucose levels in her blood, but lives with constant worry.

“I was afraid at night because I am a super-deep, champion sleeper,” Lewis said, “I sleep through the alarms on the device that are supposed to wake me up and save my life…”

What she needed was the glucose data from the device and use it to trigger a louder alarm. It wasn’t long until she found someone who had done just this. Using a Raspberry Pi, she was able to capture the data and then alarm her via her phone. She then setup a web interface so others could see her data and call her if she didn’t wake.

The next step is obvious. Why not make the state of the insulin pump a function of the data? And thus, a sort of artificial pancreas.

The project is open source for anyone to use and improve upon. She was placed on a list for the 100 most creative people in the US for 2017. We’re not strangers to the idea of an artificial pancreas, but it’s always great to see people using things we make video game consoles out of to save lives.

Thanks to [Dave Zzzz] for the tip!

Grabbing Better Images From A Newer Russian Satellite

December 5, 2017 by Will Sweatman 46 Comments

The Soviet Union took the world by surprise when it sent its Sputnik satellite into low earth orbit way back in 1957. The event triggered a space race between the Soviets and the United States and ushered in technologies that would go on to touch the lives of every human on earth. Today, several nations have a space program. And one of the more useful things to put in orbit are weather satellites.

In 2014, the Russians launched their Meteor N M-2 weather satellite into a polar orbit. The part that were most interested in is the fact that it transmits images at 137.1 MHz using the standard LRPT protocol. However, the newer Meteor N M-2 transmits images at twelve times the resolution of US NOAA satellites. No typo there – that’s twelve (12!) times. Have we got your attention now?

We shouldn’t have to tell you to jump on over to [phasenoise’s] blog which gives you everything you need to start grabbing some of these awesome images.

Now, before you get your jumper wires in a bunch – we are well aware that receiving satellite images is nothing new.

Thanks to [Roy Tremblay] for the tip!