Hacking And Philosophy: Crackdown Part III

November 25, 2013 by Marsh 21 Comments

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“Law and Order” may be my favorite chapter of Hacker Crackdown: it covers the perspective of the early 90’s seizures and arrests from the perspective of law enforcement. While the chapter has its flaws, I highly recommend it; [Sterling] treats both sides with patience and understanding, revealing how similarly adrift everyone was (and to some extent, remains) in the uncertainty of cyberspace. I also recommend the [Gail Thackeray] / [Dead Addict] joint talk from DEFCON 20 as an accompanying piece to this chapter, as it bridges the twenty-year gap between Crackdown‘s publication and today—and [Thackeray] herself is the focus of this chapter.

As always, everyone is welcome in our weekly discussion, even if you haven’t been keeping up with our progress through Hacker Crackdown. You can download it for free as an audiobook, too! Onward for more!

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Circuit Stickers

November 25, 2013 by James Hobson 30 Comments

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One of our tipsters just sent an interesting crowd funding project our way. They’re called Circuit Stickers and are a very creative way to get basic electronics into children’s hands through arts and crafts.

The project is the brainchild of [Bunnie] and [Jie Qi]. [Bunnie] is a hacker, and a Director of Studio Kosagi, a small manufacturing outfit in Singapore. [Jie] on the other hand is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, who focuses her research on combining electronics and programming with arts and crafts. They came up with this idea to bridge the gap that exists between electronics and the arts, and the stickers are a great start. They allow anyone to learn basic electronics in a very easy and friendly way, using skills we all learned as children, drawing and sticking stickers on everything.

The current offering includes LED stickers, effects stickers (to control the LEDs), sensors, microcontrollers, and even breakout boards. They are all in sticker form, and can be connected together using conductive fabric, thread, carbon-based paint, copper tape, pencil graphite, and really, anything conductive. They have already manufactured thousands of the stickers and everything is working as designed, so the crowdfunding campaign isn’t to raise funds to continue research, or even to start their company. It’s more of getting it out there, and getting these stickers into children’s hands to raise the next generation of hackers from a young age.

The video after the break gives a great overview of the project, and if anything we think it’ll give you some great ideas on children’s electronics projects.

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EmuDroid 4: An Android Gaming Controller

November 25, 2013 by James Hobson 10 Comments

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[Carnivore] over at Droid Build is working on a very awesome Android Gaming Controller called the EmuDroid 4.

It’s a work in progress at the moment, but so far it looks utterly fantastic. He is combining an android tablet with a USB SNES controller, an OTG adapter, and an inductive charging unit. He’s cramming them all into a custom designed, 3D printed controller body, which is semi-reminiscent of an Xbox 360 controller — minus the joysticks.

The forum posts go over his current progress and outline the ups and downs of 3D printing a project as precise as this. There is everything from designing it in segments to suit the small build volume of his UP 3D printer, to dealing with issues like delamination from the print bed, and seamlessly bonding the parts together. It’s a great learning experience, and we love to see projects in progress like this. Best of all, he’s planning on giving it away for FREE when it’s complete!

We’ve seen lots of modified controllers used with Android before, but we think this integrated solution really takes the cake, at least for now anyway!

[Thanks Tony!]

Mini Supergun PCB

November 25, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

A few decades ago, Japanese manufacturers of arcade games realized they should make a connector for all their boards that provides the power, controller, video, and audio I/O. This became the JAMMA standard and it make arcade owner’s lives awesome. Because you can buy arcade boards off the Internet, arcade enthusiasts figured out they could build their own console with an ATX power supply, AV connectors, and a few controllers. These ‘superguns’ as they’re called are big devices with wires all over the place. [Charlie] wanted to condense the size of his supergun and ended up creating a single PCB solution (link dead, try the Internet Archive version).

The JAMMA compatable boards require a few power connections; +5 V, +12 V, and -5 V. Of all the boards [Charlie] has collected so far, he realized only one used the negative supply. This, along with a big 12V laptop power supply, means the only power connection for this mini supergun is a single barrel connector.

For the controls and A/V, DSub and SCART connectors are commonplace. Laying these parts out in Eagle resulted in a single-sided board that is easily fabbed by etching with a toner transfer at home.

There are a few problems with the build, as [Charlie] admits. Some of the pins on the JAMMA connector aren’t on the board. These are only ground pins on the pinout, and so far everything works okay. It’s still a great project, though, that turns old arcade boards into a playable device with a minimal amount of hardware.

Mathematica And Wolfram On The Raspberry Pi

November 24, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

[Stephen Wolfram], possibly the only person on Earth who wants a second element named after him, is giving away Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mathematica, it’s a piece of software that allows you to compute anything. Combined with the educational pedigree of the Raspberry Pi, [Wolfram] and the Pi foundation believe the use of computer-based math will change the way students are taught math.

Besides bringing a free version of Mathematica to the Raspberry Pi, [Wolfram] also announced the Wolfram language. It’s a programming language that keeps most of its libraries – for everything from audio processing, high level math, strings, graphs, networks, and even linguistic data – on the Internet. It sounds absurdly cool, and you can check out a preliminary version of the language over on the official site.

While a free version of Mathematica is awesome, we’re really excited about the new Wolfram language. If it were only an interactive version of Wolfram Alpha, we’d be interested, but the ability to use this tool as a real programming language shows a lot of promise for some interesting applications.

Pedaling At 128km/h

November 24, 2013 by James Hobson 43 Comments

[Donhou] had a dream. To create a road bike capable of reaching 100mph (160km/h).

He damn well near did it too. The goal of this project wasn’t to set a land speed record, but more of an experiment in design, and building a really fast bike that still looks like a bicycle. In case you’re wondering though, the land speed record is currently set at 167mph by [Fred Rompelberg] who was drafting behind a dragster on the Salt Flats of Bonneville.

The bike features custom everything; a welded lightweight frame using Columbus Max tubing (to help with speed wobbles), super low handlebars for aerodynamics, and a massive 104 tooth chainring which almost scrapes the ground as you pedal. Even the rims and tires are unique — regular bicycle wheels just aren’t designed to go that fast.

We aren’t even bike nuts, but we thoroughly enjoyed the awesome 9-minute documentary on this project. Check it out after the break.

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Hackaday Links: November 24, 2013

November 24, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

We love home theater hacks and this one especially since it is also part of a larger home automation project. [Falldeaf] use Z-Wave wireless home automation and includes mains switching for his television. The only problem being that when power is switch back on the TV remains in the standby state. His solution was to use an ATtiny85 to detect power, then push the IR code to turn the TV on after a short delay.

[Pjkim] wanted to prototype using the Tiva Launchpad on his Mac. He managed to get a toolchain up and running that includes the TivaWare libraries. He put together a guide that shows how to set up Eclipse and Energia for the Tiva family. If you haven’t heard of Energia check out the Github Readme.

Most folks have a smartphone and you can bet that the handsets are Bluetooth enabled. But we think there is still a low percentage who are connecting their smartphone audio to wireless speakers. [Anton Veretenenko] shows how you can use some cheap KRC-86B modules from Ali Express to make your own wireless speakers. He’s even powering his hack with a single 18650 Li-Ion cell.

Taking a turn away from electronics we got a chuckle out of [CADFood’s] plan to make pearls with his bicycle. He used DesignSpark Mechanical to model what amounts to a bicycle powered ball mill. It attaches to his spokes and after taking a hammer to some oyster shells he loads them up and goes for a ride. Well actually he needs to go for a bunch of rides. The idea is that about six months of bicycling will yield a cache of pearls. [Thanks Holger]

We enjoyed this article on how designing powered scooters is changing engineering education. We’re happy to see that hacking is starting to be widely accepted as a functional and effective way to gain and pass on knowledge.

If you have access to a 3D printer you can own some of the relics from the Smithsonian. They’ve been 3D scanning some pieces in their collection and you can download the models.

And finally, [GravityRoad] is working on building a delta-bot arm to use as part of a performance art project. Check out one of the most recent development videos and if that gets you interested there’s much more on the website. [Thanks Charles]