Hackerspace Happeninging: A Booc For C-Base

June 11, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

In the annals of hackerspace history, there’s one space that stands above the rest. It’s c-base, the crashed spaceship below Berlin that’s also one of the first hackerspaces in the world. Before NYC Resistor, Noisebridge, and every other building filled with tools and cool people, there was c-base.

Although the Hackerspace movement has only been around for a little less than a decade now, c-base itself is much, much older. It was founded way back in 1995, marking this year as the second decade of c-base’s existence. A few of the members of c-base are celebrating this occasion by publishing a book on the vast and storied history of their hackerspace.

The mythology of c-base includes a space station crashing in the middle of Berlin, with the giant, famous disco ball in Berlin being the station’s antenna. Yes, it’s weird, but all good hackerspaces have some sort of irreverent mythos surrounding them. The c-booc will document the twenty year long excavation of the space station, chronicling how this hackerspace came to be.

The booc is a Kickstarter project, and if funded, will be available for pickup at the Chaos Communication Camp this August

Arduino Controlled Air Conditioner

June 11, 2015 by Rich Bremer 31 Comments

Now that summer is coming, it’s time to break out the Air Conditioners! There are some old AC units out there that still work just fine, but nowadays we are used to everything being remotely controlled and automatic. [Phil] had an old window-mounted AC unit that still worked but was installed in a not-so-convenient place. To access the AC’s controls, one would have to climb over a large desk. This is a perfect opportunity to use the plethora of widely available hobby electronics to make an automatic AC controller retrofit.

First things first, there needs to be a way to turn the current control knob on the AC. [Phil] modeled up a 3D bracket to hold an RC car servo to the AC control panel. Attached to the servo horn is a slotted cylinder sized appropriately to fit the shape of the control knob. An Arduino measures the temperature of the room via a DS18B20 temperature sensor which then has the servo turn the control knob to the appropriate position, on or off. The Arduino sends temperature data back to a PC via MegunoLink Pro which graphs past data and also displays current temperature data. Using MegunoLink Pro, the min/max temperature points can also be set without uploading a new sketch to the Arduino.

From the temp vs time graph, it looks like the room temperature stays a consistent 23 +/- 1 °C. [Phil] did us summer-swelterers a favor and made all his design files available. This is a great idea but wonder if leaving the air conditioner unit switch in the ‘on’ position and turning the unit on/off via a relay connected to the 120vac line would work just as well.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Teaching OpAmps

June 10, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

TI makes some great chips, and to sell those chips, they’re more than willing to put together some awesome tutorials, examples, and online classes to get engineers up and running. This isn’t limited to $5 Launchpads; TI has a great video and lab series for their precision OpAmps. These tutorials come with an evaluation module that costs about $200. Yes, that’s two Benjamins for a few OpAmps and a PCB. Of course no engineer would ever pay this; their job would. But what about someone who wants to learn at home?

That’s where [SUF]’s project for The Hackaday Prize comes in. He’s building a replica of a $200 lab board, and even without researching the cheapest solution for each individual component, [SUF] reckons he can build this kit for about $50. Like I said, the TI board is a business purchase.

The complete lab and tutorial TI offers uses NI’s virtual lab. This, again, isn’t something a random electron hacker could afford, but anyone who wants to go through this teaching module would probably use their own tools anyway.

As far as projects to teach electronics go, [SUF] has knocked it out of the park. He’s already relying on excellent tutorials, but bringing the price down to something a little more sane and amenable to checkbooks that aren’t tied to the corporate account.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

World’s First Internet Connected Lawnmower

June 10, 2015 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Okay so this IOT is getting a bit out of hand. Introducing the world’s first(?) tweeting, internet connected, lawnmower.

[Michel] recently bought one of those new-fangled cordless lawn mowers by EGO. It runs off a 56V lithium ion battery pack, and apparently, works pretty well. Since it has plenty of on-board power, he decided to strap a 64MHz PIC18F25K22 to a ESP8266 and connect it to the internet. That part number has been taking the world by storm and it’s totally freaking awesome. The ESP8266 is a tiny WiFi module that is controllable over a serial port — and it only costs $5. Hello IOT-everything.

Anyway, to avoid voiding his warranty, [Michel] using non-invasive sensors to collect data — A series of hall effect sensors and magnets to be exact. One detects when the cutting system is engaged, and another magnet and sensor pair counts wheel revolutions. In the end, this gives you data on how far you pushed the mower, how long you spent cutting, and how long you were out there. When the job is done, you have the option to push a tweet with your stats. Woo!

He does admit, the tweeting feature is more there just to annoy his friends.

Astoundingly Great $60 3D Printer Called Chimera Bests Your Printer

June 10, 2015 by Eric Evenchick 59 Comments

When most people think of 3D printing, they think of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printers. These work by heating a material, squirting it out a nozzle that moves around, and letting it cool. By moving the nozzle around in the right patterns while extruding material out the end, you get a part. You’ve probably seen one of the many, many, many FDM printers out there.

Stereolithography printing (SLA) is a different technique which uses UV light to harden a liquid resin. The Chimera printer uses this technique, and aims to do it on the cheap by using recycled parts.

First up is the UV light source. DLP projectors kick out a good amount of UV, and accept standard video inputs. The Mitsubishi XD221u can be had for about $50 off eBay. Some modifications are needed to get the focus distance set correctly, but with that complete the X and Y axes are taken care of.

For the Z axis, the build platform needs to move. This was accomplished with a stepper motor salvaged from a disk drive. An Arduino drives the motor to ensure it moves at the right rate.

Creation Workshop was chosen as the software to control the Chimera. It generates the images for the projector, and controls the Z axis. The SLA process allows for high definition printing, and the results are rather impressive for such a cheap device. This is something we were just talking about yesterday; how to lower the cost of 3D printers. Obviously this is cheating a bit because it’s banking on the availability of cheap used parts. But look at it this way: it’s based on older technology produced at scale which should help a lot with the cost of sourcing this stuff new. What do you think?

DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room

June 10, 2015 by James Hobson 17 Comments

Lava lamps had their time, but that time is over. Perhaps a spinning, glowing, DNA helix style lamp will take their place?

Inspired by the ever mesmerizing DNA helix, a member of the eLab hackerspace decided to try making it into a lamp. It’s almost entirely 3D printed, with the helix made out of glow in the dark filament. A series of UV LEDs fade in and out as a small geared motor from a microwave turntable spin the helix round and around.

[João Duarte] designed the assembly using TinkerCAD and has shared all the files on the Instructable in case you want to make one yourself. It is a lot of printing though, so you might want to recruit your own hackerspace’s 3D printer to do some of the work. He ended up using his own Prusa i3 as well as the LulzBot TAZ4 from the space to speed things up.

Continue reading “DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room” →

Quadrotor Control Systems And Kerbal Harriers

June 10, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

Kerbal Space Program, the game that teaches engineers at JPL and SpaceX the basics of rocket design and orbital mechanics, recently had a giant update. There are now science contracts that require you to fly Kerbals all over their tiny globe, collect data, and transmit it back to the Kerbal Space Center. As would be expected, this is a grind for XP, and the contracts sometimes don’t make sense – you need to collect data from cliff faces and mountain tops. Landing a Kerbal jet at these places is hard.

[Matt Thiffault] wanted to do these science contracts more efficiently. The best way to get to a remote location without a landing strip would be a helicopter, but a harrier jump jet would do just as well. This isn’t supported in the stock game, so [Matt] wrote a complete control system for four engines to control a hovering Kerbal jet.

[Matt]’s work is built on kOS, a scriptable autopilot mod for Kerbal that was originally intended to be something like the Apollo Guidance Computer. People have been using it to make computerized skycranes and automated rendezvous and docking programs, but these are actually relatively simple examples; there’s far more math involved in flying a quadcopter than there is getting into orbit.

To build his automated hovering harrier, [Matt] needed an aircraft. His Kerrier has parts from the Kerbal Aircraft Expansion, B9, and Infernal Robotics mods for KSP, but this is only half the problem. Anyone can put four tilt jets on an airplane, and it takes a real wizard to force a control system to hover. Hover control of the Kerbal harrier is accomplished with a complete control system for a four-engined aircraft, with proper PID control loops and code updating at 20Hz.

With kOS, the proper plane, and the right software running on this emulated guidance computer, [Matt] is able to park his plane in mid-air, have a Kerbal descend the ladder, perform some science, and return to base. It’s an impressive amount of work for a video game. A good thing, too: [Matt] is looking to get into controls engineering professionally. Whether this will go on his resume is another question entirely.