New Round Of Astronaut Or Not: Most Outrageous Component

July 23, 2014 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

And so ends round 2 of Astronaut or Not. We asked you to vote for the projects “most likely to be used in other projects”. Again you didn’t disappoint. We had a mountain of votes, and happily gave away a Bukito portable 3D printer to one of the lucky voters.

You must vote at least once in this new round to be eligible for the voter lottery on Friday!

Vote for the project with “the most outrageous component”. Can’t figure out what we mean by that? Well, if you come across an entry that has a quarter-million-dollar hard drive in it… vote for that one.

Voter Lottery Prize:

BK Precision 1760A How long have you been making do with a hacked together power supply?

Be sure you vote and you could kiss those days goodbye with this BK Precision 1760A bench supply. It has three channels; 0-30V 0-2A on the first two and 4-6.5V 0-5A on the third. We’re also throwing in some leads so that you can be up and running as soon as it arrives.

We’ll draw a random number on Friday morning. If you have voted at least one time in this current round (your participation in previous rounds doesn’t matter) and your hacker number is drawn you will win! But if your number is drawn and you haven’t voted… no bench supply for you.

Now for the results:

Continue reading “New Round Of Astronaut Or Not: Most Outrageous Component” →

THP Entry: Cut Energy Consumption By 30 Percent With This WiFi XBee Setup

July 23, 2014 by Matt Terndrup 11 Comments

5277901405891974757

Let’s be honest. Paying electricity bills sucks. The amount paid is always too much, and the temperatures in the building are rarely set at a comfortable level. But now, with the help of this DIY Climate Control system, power-users can finally rejoice knowing that the heating and cooling process of their home (or commercial space) can be easily controlled through the utilization of an XBee Remote Kit and a process called zoning.

The team behind the project is [Doug], [Benjamin] and [Lucas]. They hope to solve the inconsistent temperature problems, which are caused by a moving sun, by open-sourcing their work into the community.

Their XBee system runs on a mesh network making it a perfect tool for sensing and communicating which areas in the house are too hot or too cold. Once the data is collected, XBee modules route the information wirelessly to each other until it reaches a central Arduino gatekeeper; which then decides if it wants to heat, ventilate, or air condition the room.

Not to mention all the added benefits posted below:

Continue reading “THP Entry: Cut Energy Consumption By 30 Percent With This WiFi XBee Setup” →

Flight For Your Right (And Do It By Friday)

July 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 65 Comments

About a month ago, the FAA – the governing body for nearly everything that flies in US airspace – proposed an interpretation of their rules governing model aircraft. The world hasn’t ended quite yet, but if the proposed rules go into effect, an entire hobby will be destroyed in the United States. While congress has given the FAA authority over nearly everything that flies, there are specific laws saying what the FAA has no jurisdiction over – model aircraft being one of the major exceptions.

Congress, however, is working on a definition of model aircraft that is at least 10 years out of date and doesn’t have any leeway for the huge advances in technology that have happened since then. Specifically, all FPV flight with video goggles would be banned under the proposed FAA rules. Also, because model aircraft are defined as being for, ‘hobby or recreational purposes,’ anyone who flies a model aircraft for money – a manufacturer conducting flight tests on a new piece of equipment, or even anyone who records a video of their flight, uploads it to YouTube, and hits the ‘monetize’ button – would be breaking the law.

The proposed FAA rules for model aircraft are not in effect yet, and you can still make a public comment on the proposal until 11:59 PM EDT Friday. If you leave a comment, please make a well-reasoned statement on why the FAA’s interpretation of the rules governing model aircraft are overly broad, do not take into account technological advances made since the drafting of Congress’ working definition of ‘model aircraft,’ and the effects of a complete ban flying model aircraft for any type of compensation.

Of course, if the proposed rules for model aircraft go through, the only option will be to turn to the courts. Historically, the FAA simply does not lose court cases. Recently, cases involving drones have come up with successful defenses and judges deciding in favor of drone operators. The legal services for the eventual court case challenging the proposed FAA rules will most likely be funded by the Academy of Model Aeronautics, who just so happen to be offering membership at 50% off.

Below is a video of some RC people we really respect – [Josh] from Flite Test and [Trappy] of Team BlackSheep – talking about what the proposed rule change would do to the hobby. There’s also a great podcast featuring the first lawyer to successfully defend drone use in federal court that’s worth a listen.

Continue reading “Flight For Your Right (And Do It By Friday)” →

DIY Conductive Paint For All Your Wearable Needs

July 23, 2014 by James Hobson 24 Comments

DIY Conductive Paint

Conductive ink or paint is lots of fun. It opens up tons of possibilities for flexible and unique circuits — unfortunately, it’s pretty expensive. [Brian McEvoy] shows us how to make your own for cheap, and it works great!

He started trying to formulate his own recipe after playing with other Instructable guides and commercially available paint, and what he found is it’s really not that complex! Graphite powder, acrylic paint, and a jar with an airtight seal — seriously, it’s that simple! But, like any engineer worth their salt (he calls himself the 24 Hour Engineer), he had to do some tests to compare his formula.

In a detailed experiment he compares his formula to the commercially available Wire Glue, and two other recipes using Elmer’s Glue-All and graphite, and Titebond III with graphite. The results? Acrylic paint and graphite produce the most conductive material — and the cheapest!

Now that you can make conductive ink, why not 3D print a circuit stamp to make your very own SMD circuit board!

HOPE X: Wireless Tor Proxies And Sharing TrueCrypt Volumes

July 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

When you’re at HOPE, of course you’re going to see a few Tor proxies, but [Jose]’s is top-notch. It’s a completely portable Tor proxy (.br, Google translation), battery-powered, with a connection for 4G networks.

[Jose]’s OnionPi setup is based on the Adafruit version, but adds a few interesting features that make it even more useful. It’s battery-powered with about a day of charge time, has a built-in battery charger, Ethernet pass through, external 4G and WiFi antennas, all in a sealed case that makes the entire build impervious to the elements.

While this isn’t much of a hack per se, the amount of integration is impressive. There are switches to turn off each individual networking port, and all the relevant plugs are broken out to the front panel, with the AC input and USB serial connection using screw connectors that are supposedly very popular in Brazil.

[Jose] also brought along a new device that isn’t documented anywhere else on the web. It’s called NNCFA, or Nothing New Crypto For All. Using a Cubieboard, an interesting ARM single board computer with a SATA connector, [Jose] created a device that will mount TrueCrypt volumes on a hard drive and share them via Samba.

POV Display Does It On The Cheap

July 23, 2014 by Adam Fabio 15 Comments

[Sholto] hacked together this ultra low-budget spinning display. He calls it a zoetrope, but we think it’s actually an LED based Persistence Of Vision (POV) affair. We’ve seen plenty of POV devices in the past, but this one proves that a hack doesn’t have to be expensive or pretty to work!

The major parts of the POV display were things that [Sholto] had lying around. A couple of candy tins, a simple brushed hobby motor, an Arduino Pro Mini, 7 green LEDs, and an old hall effect sensor were all that were required. Fancy displays might use commercial slip rings to transfer power, but [Sholto] made it work on the cheap!

The two tins provide a base for the display and the negative supply for the Arduino. The tins are soldered together and insulated from the motor, which is hot glued into the lower tin. A paper clip contacts the inside of the lid, making the entire assembly a slip ring for the negative side of the Arduino’s power supply. Some copper braid rubbing on the motor’s metal case forms the positive side.

[Sholto] chose his resistors to slightly overdrive his green LEDs. This makes the display appear brighter in POV use. During normal operation, the LEDs won’t be driven long enough to cause damage. If the software locks up with LEDs on though, all bets are off!

[Sholto] includes software for a pretty darn cool looking “saw wave” demo, and a simple numeric display. With a bit more work this could make a pretty cool POV clock, at least for as long as the motor brushes hold up!

Continue reading “POV Display Does It On The Cheap” →

Talking BeagleBoard With [Jason Kridner]

July 22, 2014 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Jason Kridner] is a member of the i3 Detroit hackerspace and during the Hackaday meet-up we were able to spend a few minutes talking about what’s going on with BeagleBoard right now. For those of you that don’t know, BeagleBoard is a non-profit foundation which guides the open hardware initiative of the same name. This includes BeagleBone which is the third iteration of the platform. [Jason’s] a good guy to talk to about this as he co-founded the organization and has been the driving force in the community ever since.

Right now the organization is participating in the Google Summer of Code. This initiative allows students to propose open source coding projects which will help move the community forward. Students with accepted proposals were paired with mentors and are paid for the quality code which is produced. One of the projects this year is a 100 Megahertz, 14-channel Logic Analyzer which [Jason] is waving around in the video. It’s the GSoC project of [Kumar Abhishek] and you can learn more from his proposal.

Also of interest in the video is a discussion about the power of the BeagleBone’s PRUs, or Programmable Real-Time Units. They’re basically unused microcontrollers that have direct access to a lot of the processor’s features and are just waiting for you to bend them to your will. Having these is a huge boon for hardware hackers. If you haven’t played with them before, check out our earlier article on what PRUs are all about and then give it a whirl yourself.

After the break there’s a brief table of contents which maps the topics shown off in the video.

Continue reading “Talking BeagleBoard With [Jason Kridner]” →