Intel’s New Way Of Creating Randomness From Digital Orderliness

September 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

Random number generation is a frequent topic of discussion in projects that involve encryption and security. Intel has just announced a new feature coming to many of their processors that affect random number generation.

The random number generator, which they call Bull Mountain, marks a departure from Intel’s traditional method of generating random number seeds from analog hardware. Bull Mountain relies on all-digital hardware, pitting two inverters against each other and letting thermal noise tip the hand in one direction or the other. The system is monitored at several steps along the way, tuning the hardware to ensure that the random digits are not falling more frequently in one direction or the other. Pairs of 256-bit sequences are then run through a mathematical process to further offset the chance of predictability, before they are then used as a pseudorandom number seed. Why go though all of this? Transitioning to an all-digital process makes it easier and cheaper to reduce the size of microchips.

A new instruction has been added to access this hardware module: RdRand. If it works as promised, this should remove the need for elaborate external hardware as a random number source.

[via Reddit]

Coil Gun Revolver

September 2, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 33 Comments

[Sam] sent in a coil gun revolver – a feature we’ve never seen on a coil gun build before. The gun is based on a cheap toy revolver and is powered by a 9 Volt battery connected to an “electrified fly swatter tennis racquet” instead of the usual disposable camera build.

The revolver mechanism isn’t perfect – [Sam] has to advance the chamber with his thumb while the capacitor is recharging. This is only because of the mechanics of the plastic toy his gun is based on, though. He figures a small motor could do the work for him, but he’ll be forgoing that project to work on the MK II version.

Most of the coil gun builds on Hack A Day have been muzzle or breech loaders, so with [Sam]’s revolver we’re probably seeing the evolution of firearms mirrored in coil gun advancements. Does anyone want to take a guess and predict when we’ll see the equivalent of a this .50 caliber beast?. [Sam] says his next project is going to be a rifle, so he might have his work cut out for him.

Engine Hacks: Electrified Datsun Is The Ultimate Engine Swap

September 2, 2011 by Mike Nathan 57 Comments

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Forget the Tesla Roadster, we want an electric car like [John Wayland’s] White Zombie!

If it wasn’t plastered with sponsor stickers and the like, you would never realize that this otherwise unassuming ‘72 Datsun 1200 is an absolute beast of a car. The gas engine that used to provide a mere 69 horsepower was swapped out for a pair of custom-built electric motors which propel the Datsun to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds.

The electric motors supply 500 horsepower and a staggering 1250 foot pounds of instant torque, providing one hell of a ride. The car is powered by 12 custom 29.6V battery packs which provide 2,400 Amps of current each! Aside from laying down a quarter mile in under 11 seconds, White Zombie can make a 90 mile trek before requiring a recharge.

Needless to say, this impressive car takes plenty of people by surprise each time [John] hits the track. Continue reading to watch one poor sap learn the hard way that his brand new Maserati is no match for White Zombie.

[via Discovery]

Continue reading “Engine Hacks: Electrified Datsun Is The Ultimate Engine Swap” →

Kraftwerk Inspired LED Tie

September 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

If you didn’t land the job after your last interview, it might have been because you were not wearing this sweet Kraftwerk-inspired necktie. Although our own [Caleb Kraft] insists that this recent creation by the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is a tribute to him, [Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider] beg to differ.

The inspiration for the tie actually comes from Kraftwerk’s 1977 video for “The Robots”, in which the band wore black ties with embedded scrolling LEDs. The effect is very similar to that of a Larson Scanner, though Kraftwerk’s ties light the LEDs in a single direction and do not fade in and out.

EVMSL has released a firmware update to the Larson Scanner they sell in their shop that replicates the Kraftwerk effect, and they also put together a quick tutorial showing how you can construct your own coin cell-powered LED tie. We’re not suggesting that anyone rush out and buy their kit, as it can be replicated fairly easily – we just thought it was pretty cool.

So, if you’re looking for a retro-inspired Halloween costume, search no further – Evil Mad Scientist Labs has you covered.

Continue reading for a video demo of their tie, as well as the original video that inspired it.

Continue reading “Kraftwerk Inspired LED Tie” →

Awesome Fiber Optic LED Viking Helmet

September 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 28 Comments

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[Garrett] over at MaceTech was approached by a friend who needed a light-up mohawk installed on a Viking helmet, and he needed it ASAP.

Now, [Garrett] does tons of work with LEDs but it’s not every day you are asked to construct a sound-responsive LED mohawk. He had all sorts of LEDs and other bits on hand, but finding the fiber optics that would make up the mohawk itself took a bit of time.

After a bit of searching, he located some cheap bulk fiber optic toy wands, and got busy cutting them apart to remove the fiber bundles. The fibers were glued into a laser cut plastic assembly, where they were paired with a handful of OctoBrite CYANEA modules [Garrett] had on hand. He bought a handful of components from SparkFun, including an Arduino Pro Mini to control the device, as well as an electret mic and graphic equalizer chip to handle the audio input/filtering.

He wrapped up the code portion of the mohawk and handed it off to his friend, who says that the “helmet is +99 to epic awesomeness”, which sounds like a ringing endorsement to us.

[via BuildLounge]

Check out the video below to see the fiber optic mohawk helmet in action.

Continue reading “Awesome Fiber Optic LED Viking Helmet” →

Highway Based Soundtrack Recordings

September 1, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

[Urpo Lankinen] has a father who is a huge movie buff, and once you care deeply about something it begins appearing everywhere you look. While driving on a back-country road one day, [Urpo]’s dad noticed that the shadows of the trees on the road looked like an optical film soundtrack, so it was up to the son to make it happen.

Early sound-on-film technologies like the RCA Photophone, and Movietone recorded audio onto the film stock with a variable area exposure. This exposure corresponds to the waveform of the audio signal. [Urpo] figured that his small digital video camera served the same purpose as the audio sensors inside the projector, so he put a piece of tissue paper over the lens and wound up with a video that was just frames of gray.

[Urpo] built an app in Processing that averages the pixels in each frame of the video. Of course, recording at 30 frames/second won’t produce any audio this way, so he modulated a triangle wave with this data in Audacity. In the end it really doesn’t sound like much, but it’s great to see such a geeky build.

We’d love to post the video after a break but [Urpo] doesn’t believe in YouTube embeds. We’ll honor his wishes, so you can check out the video here.

Candlestick Phone Goes Modern.

September 1, 2011 by Jack Buffington 10 Comments

[Adam Ben-Dror] recently tipped us off to a project that he worked on recently. In this build he gutted an old candlestick-style phone and added modern technology to make it work as a cordless phone. We really liked this project because he married together new and old technology into an elegant package. There are a few hacks that he had to perform to get this to work. One was converting the rotary pulses into DTMF tones. The other was making the cordless phone that he gutted recognize when the phone was on or off of the hook.

Details of his build after the break. Continue reading “Candlestick Phone Goes Modern.” →