WSPR To The Wind With A Pi Pico High Altitiude Balloon

April 11, 2024 by Richard Baguley 19 Comments

They say that if you love something, you should set it free. That doesn’t mean that you should spend any more on it than you have to though, which is why [EngineerGuy314] put together this Raspberry Pi Pico high-altitude balloon tracker that should only set you back about $12 to build.

This simplified package turns a Pico into a tracking beacon — connect a cheap GPS module and solar panel, and the system will transmit the GPS location, system temperature, and other telemetry on the 20-meter band using the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) protocol. Do it right, and you can track your balloon as it goes around the world.

The project is based in part on the work of [Roman Piksayin] in his Pico-WSPR-TX package (which we covered before), which uses the Pico’s outputs to create the transmitted signal directly without needing an external radio. [EngineerGuy314] took this a step further by slowing down the Pico and doing some clever stuff to make it run a bit more reliably directly from the solar panel.

The system can be a bit fussy about power when starting up: if the voltage from the solar panel ramps up too slowly, the Pico can crash when it and the GPS chip both start when the sun rises. So, a voltage divider ties into the run pin of the Pico to keep it from booting until the voltage is high enough, and a single transistor stops the GPS from starting up until the Pico signals it to go.

It’s a neat hack that seems to work well: [EngineerGuy314] has launched three prototypes so far, the last of which traveled over 62,000 kilometers/ 38,000 miles.

Let Your Finger Do The Soldering With Solder Sustainer V2

April 11, 2024 by Dan Maloney 20 Comments

Soldering is easy, as long as you have one hand to hold the iron, one to hold the solder, and another to hold the workpiece. For those of us not so equipped, there’s the new and improved Solder Sustainer v2, which aims to free up one of however many hands you happen to have.

Eagle-eyed readers will probably recall an earlier version of Solder Sustainer, which made an appearance in last year’s Hackaday Prize in the “Gearing Up” round. At the time we wrote that it looked a bit like “the love child of a MIG welder and a tattoo machine.” This time around, [RoboticWorx] has rethought that concept and mounted the solder feeder on the back of a fingerless glove. The solder guide is a tube that clips to the user’s forefinger, which makes much finer control of where the solder meets the iron possible than with the previous version. The soldering iron itself is also no longer built into the tool, giving better control of the tip and letting you use your favorite iron, which itself is no small benefit.

Hats off to [RoboticWorx] for going back to the drawing board on this one. It isn’t easy to throw out most of your design and start over, but sometimes it just makes sense.

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Exploring The Bendix G-15’s Typewriter

April 10, 2024 by Maya Posch 3 Comments

The Bendix Corporation’s Bendix G-15 was introduced in 1956 as an affordable system for industrial and scientific markets. As with any computer system, a range of peripheral devices for input and output were available, which includes an electric typewriter. Produced by IBM, this typewriter was heavily modified by Bendix, with the version that [Usagi Electric] got their mittens on being equipped with a gigantic 28″ platen. With just power applied to the machine it will even still work as a regular electric typewriter, but it can do much more.

The bits that make an IBM electric typewriter into a Bendix G-15 accessory. (Credit: Usagi Electric)

Most typewriters for the G-15 have a much smaller platen, as can be seen in the brochures for the system. The typewriter is connected together with other peripherals like plotters, card punches and tabulators via a coupler which uses a 5-bit interface. For the encoding on this interface no standard encoding is used, but rather 4 bits are used as data followed by 1 bit to indicate a command. In addition a number of other signal lines are used with the Bendix G-15, which allows control over the punch card reader and run status on the computer from the comfort of the typewriter’s desk.

In addition to the added electronics that communicate with the Bendix G-15, there are also solenoids and sensors which interface with the typewriter’s keyboard. This is what allows for command keys on the typewriter to be recorded separately along with the regular number and letter keys, in addition to the Bendix G-15 using the typewriter to automatically type on the paper. After a good cleaning session the typewriter’s basic functionality is restored, with the hope that once the Bendix G-15 over at the Usagi Farm can power up its DC circuit both will happily chat with each other. Color us excited.

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Synesthetic Clock Doesn’t Require Synesthesia

April 10, 2024 by Kristina Panos 14 Comments

We often think of synesthetes as those people who associate say, colors with numbers. But the phenomenon can occur with any of the senses. Simply put, when one sense is activated, synesthesia causes one to experience an unrelated, activated sense. Sounds trippy, no?

Thankfully, [Markus Opitz]’s synesthetic clock doesn’t require one to have synesthesia. It’s actually quite easy to read, we think. Can you tell what time it is in the image above? The only real requirement seems to be knowing the AM color from the PM color. The minute display cycles through blue, green, yellow, and red as the hour progresses.

Behind that pair of GC9a01 round displays lies an ESP32 and a real-time clock module. [Markus] couldn’t find a fillArc function, so instead he is drawing triangles whose ends lie outside the visible area. To calculate the size of the triangle, [Markus] is using the angle function tangent, so each minute has an angle of 6°.

[Markus] created a simple but attractive oak housing for the clock, but suggests anything from cardboard and plastic to a book. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever used for an enclosure? Let us know in the comments.

Do you appreciate a good analog clock when you see one? Here’s a clock that uses analog meters for its display.

FLOSS Weekly Episode 778: OctoPrint — People Are Amazing At Breaking Things

April 10, 2024 by Jonathan Bennett 7 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and Katherine Druckman sit down with Gina Häußge to talk OctoPrint! It’s one of our favorite ways to babysit our 3D printers, and the project has come a long way in the last 12 years! It’s a labor of love, primarily led by Gina, who has managed to turn it into a full time job. Listen in to hear that story and more, including how to run an Open Source project without losing your sanity, why plugins are great, and how to avoid adding a special services employee as a co-maintainer!

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Baseboard Heaters Get Automated

April 10, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 12 Comments

If you’re lucky enough to have central heating and/or air conditioning, with an automatic thermostat, you probably don’t have to worry too much about the outside temperature. But central HVAC is far from the only way of maintaining temperature in a home. From wood stoves to boilers there are many options depending on your climate and home type, and [Murphy’s Law] has a decentralized baseboard system instead of something centralized. An ESP8266 solution was found that was able to tie them all together.

There are other types of baseboard heaters, but in [Murphy’s Law]’s case the heaters were electric with a separate thermostat for each heater. Rather than build a control system from the ground up to replace the thermostats, turnkey smart wall switches were used instead. These switches happened to be based on the popular ESP8266 microcontroller, like plenty of other off-the-shelf automation solutions, which meant less work needed to be done on the line voltage side and the microcontroller’s firmware could be easily customized for use with Home Assistant.

While [Murphy’s Law] doesn’t live in the home with the fleet of electric baseboard heaters anymore, the new home has a single baseboard heater to keep a bathroom warm since the central heating system doesn’t quite keep it warm enough. This system is able to scale up or down based on number of heaters, though, so it’s still a capable solution for the single room and has since been updated to use the ESP32. All of the code for this project is available on GitHub as well, and for those of you attempting to add other HVAC components to a home automation system this project that loops in a heat pump is worth taking a look at as well.

Chandra X-ray Observatory Threatened By Budget Cuts

April 10, 2024 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

Launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in July of 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is the most capable space telescope of its kind. As of this writing, the spacecraft is in good health and is returning valuable scientific data. It’s currently in an orbit that extends at its highest point to nearly one-third the distance to the Moon, which gives it an ideal vantage point from which to make its observations, and won’t reenter the Earth’s atmosphere for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Yet despite this rosy report card, Chandra’s future is anything but certain. Faced with the impossible task of funding all of its scientific missions with the relative pittance they’re allocated from the federal government, NASA has signaled its intent to wind down the space telescope’s operations over the next several years. According to their latest budget request, the agency wants to slash the program’s $41 million budget nearly in half for 2026. Funding would remain stable at that point for the next two years, but in 2029, the money set aside for Chandra would be dropped to just $5.2 million.

Drastically reducing Chandra’s budget by the end of the decade wouldn’t be so unexpected if its successor was due to come online in a similar time frame. Indeed, it would almost be expected. But despite being considered a high scientific priority, the x-ray observatory intended to replace Chandra isn’t even off the drawing board yet. The 2019 concept study report for what NASA is currently calling the Lynx X-ray Observatory estimates a launch date in the mid-2030s at the absolute earliest, pointing out that several of the key components of the proposed telescope still need several years of development before they’ll reach the necessary Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for such a high profile mission.

With its replacement for this uniquely capable space telescope decades away even by the most optimistic of estimates, the potential early retirement of the Chandra X-ray Observatory has many researchers concerned about the gap it will leave in our ability to study the cosmos.

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