Small Server For Model Trains

October 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

For reasons we can’t comprehend, model train layouts are incredibly popular in Germany. [Gerhard] is one of those model train aficionados that has moved far beyond a layout with a transformer controlling the speed of the train; he sent in a tip for a very tiny Rocrail server he built to control the locomotives moving across his layout.

[Gerhard] uses Rocrail – a control system for train layouts large or small. Rocrail comes in both client and server configurations. The client is able to run on iDevices or Android. [Gerhard]’s server runs on a very tiny Linux computer tucked away under the layout.

Instead of a Raspberry Pi ([Gehard] couldn’t get one in time for this build), he used a Carambola board. The Rocrail server is installed on this single board computer and connects to a CAN bus controller. It’s a step up from [Gehard]’s previous CAN/Ethernet gateway built around OpenWRT, and makes the entire device much smaller.

[Gehard] doesn’t have a video of his layout in action, but after the break you can see how much the German people love their model trains at Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg.

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Gyrocam Keeps The Horizon Level Even When The Camera Isn’t

October 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 44 Comments

[Derek] likes to get a little bit of drivers-eye footage when racing his motorcycle, but there’s an inherent problem with mounting a camera to a moving and tilting platform. When he leans into turns, the camera can’t keep the horizon level. Cinematography and electronics go well together. so [Derek] built a horizon-stabilized camera mount for motorcycle videography.

The build was inspired by footage shot from [Valentino Rossi’s bike in 2010. Of course the professional model costs a small fortune, but [Derek] managed to make his own out of 3D printed parts and a hobby servo.

Based on the Contour Roam camera, [Derek] had a pair of gears printed at Shapeways to fit over the camera and attach to a servo. The electronics are an ATMega32 with a L3G4200D gyroscope. When the ‘micro detects a change in the gyroscope it rotates the servo in the opposite direction, keeping the horizon in the video level.

It’s a very cool build, and judging from the action videos after the break, makes for awesome track footage.

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LEDs Fade To The Music Using A Python Filter

October 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

This little LED rig fades in time to music. The hardware itself is quite simple, some LEDs connected to the PWM pins of an Arduino. But the signal processing is happening on a computer using a Python script.

Many of the projects we see which pulse lights to music use the MSGEQ7 chip to perform hardware processing on the audio signal. But since [Zolmeister] is using a computer to play his tunes he took a different route. His Linux box uses PulseAudio to handle sound. This allows him to record from the audio playback which provides an internal source for the pyAudio package. His Python script saves snippets of the streaming audio to .wav files. I then normalizes the volume level and uses the amplitude to set a PWM value before deleting the sample and moving onto the next. These values are pushed to the Arduino at 115200 baud to achieve the results seen in the video after the break.

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A PIC Powered Pair Of Electronic Dice

October 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Timothy] is honing his microcontroller skills with this electronic dice project. In addition to giving him an opportunity to work on some code, the use of an 8-pin chip provides a design challenge for driving the twelve pips and providing a user input.

The project started off with some $4 strings of LED Christmas lights. He promptly disassembled the strands, each yielding 100 LEDs. The microcontroller he chose to work with is a PIC 12F629. It’s DIP8 package provides six I/O pins to work with. When examined closely you will find that the pips on a die are always present in pairs with the exception of the center pip. This means that only four pins are needed to drive one die. You can see a pair of transistors above; one is a PNP, the other an NPN. These are both driven from the same uC line, which toggles between the pair of die. This accounts for 5 of the available pins, with the sixth monitoring the push button.

Laptop LCD Resurrection Gets Some Clean Packaging

October 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

We love to see derivative works that take a great hack and make it even better. This LCD Laptop resurrection project is an excellent example. [Alex] took the work seen on this other FPGA LCD driver and delivered a leap forward on the final hardware packaging.

The link at the top drops you into the second page of [Alex’s] project thread. But if you go back to the beginning you’ll see the protoboard and spaghetti wiring which started off the process. Obviously if he plans to use this for a length of time it needs to be fortified or he’ll be cracking it open and grabbing a soldering iron again before long. But rather than just tidying up he ended up spinning his own circuit boards that make the screen look like it was manufactured to be used in this way.

He was able to mount the add-on board inside the LCD bezel, cutting out a space for the HDMI connector, barrel jack, trimpot, and the head of the inductor which was just a bit too large to fit inside. The trimpot allows him to adjust the LCD brightness. As far as we can tell the HDMI connector is just an easy way for him to deliver the drive signals from the Papilio board (FPGA) to the screen.

LV0 Encryption Key Cracks Current And Future PlayStation 3 Firmware

October 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

It looks like the security of the PlayStation 3 has been cracked wide open. But then again we’ve thought the same thing in the past and Sony managed to patch those exploits. The latest in the cat and mouse game is the release of the LV0 encryption codes for the PS3 console. The guys who discovered the magic strings of characters supposedly intended to keep them a secret, but have gone public after there was a leak and some black-hats now intend to use them for profit.

The keys are the bottom layer of security when pushing firmware updates to the PS3. With keys in hand, current and future upgrades can be unencrypted, altered, and repackaged without the gaming rig putting up a fuss. Our only real beef with the tight security came when Sony removed the ability to install Linux on systems marketed with this option. The availability of these keys should let you install just about whatever you want on your hardware.

[Thanks Kris via Phys]

Fixing A First Generation GuruPlug’s Cooling Problems

October 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Doragasu] had been using a hacked Xbox as his file server but upgraded to a single board Linux device when the GuruPlug was released. Unfortunately the first run of these devices had an overheating issue, which resulted in reboots even at moderate CPU load. The design was changed from a passively cooled heat sink to an internal fan, but that didn’t really help those who already had one of the early models. Above is [Doragasu’s] method of cooling down the overheating computer.

The original sink — which was really just a fin-less metal plate — was removed and replaced with a proper heat sink. This makes contact with the ARM, RAM, and Ethernet chips. They were all coated with thermal compound before installation and a silent fan was added to help whisk away the heat. This still fits inside of the original case, but to make way he did remove the original power source and cut a hole to allow for air movement.

The post also details an external LCD screen used to display system information. It’s along the same lines as this USB LCD screen project which inspired him to send us a link to the project.