Improved Digital Caliper Interfacing, Including 3D Printed Connector

May 17, 2016 by Donald Papp 42 Comments

[MakinStuff] wrote in to let us know about a project he did for new and improved interfacing to the ubiquitous cheap Chinese digital calipers. Interfacing to this common caliper model is well-trod ground, but his project puts everything about interfacing and reading the data in one place along with some improvements: a 3D printed connector that makes mating to the pads much more stable and reliable, a simple interface circuit for translating the logic levels, and an interrupt-driven sample Arduino sketch to read the data. Making the sketch interrupt-driven means the Arduino never sits and waits for input from the calipers, making it easier have the Arduino do other meaningful work at the same time, ultimately making it easier to incorporate into other projects.

The connector has spaces to insert bare wires to use as contacts for the exposed pads inside the calipers. Add a little hot glue and heat shrink, and you’ll never have to fiddle with a hacked-together connection again.

This common caliper model has been hacked and re-purposed in interesting ways. We’ve seen them used as a Digital Read Out (DRO) on a lathe as well as being given the ability to wirelessly log their data over Bluetooth.

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Bricked Intel Tablet Lives Again

May 17, 2016 by Jenny List 51 Comments

We’ve probably all taken a look at the rash of cheap Intel-Atom-based tablet computers and wondered whether therein lies an inexpensive route to a portable PC. Such limited hardware laden down with a full-fat Windows installation fails to shine, but maybe if we could get a higher-performance OS on there it could be a useful piece of kit.

[donothingloop] has an Intel tablet, a TrekStore Wintron 7, bought for the princely sum of $60. Windows 10 didn’t excite him, so he decided to put Ubuntu on it, or more specifically to put Ubuntu on an SD card to try it on the Wintron before overwriting the Windows installation. His problem with that was a bug in the Baytrail Atom chipset which limits the speed of SD card access and made Ubuntu very slow, and in trying to fix the speed issue he managed to disable a setting in the BIOS which had the effect of bricking the machine. A show-stopper when the BIOS is in a tiny SPI Flash chip and can’t be wiped or restored.

What followed was an epic of desoldering the BIOS chip and reflashing it, though that description makes the process sound deceptively easy. The specification says it is a 1.8V device, so after attempts to flash it using an ESP8266 and then a home-made level-shifter failed, he was stumped. With nothing but a cheap tablet to lose, he tried the chip in a 3.3V programmer, and to his amazement despite the significant overvoltage, it survived. Resoldering the chip to the motherboard presented him with a working tablet that would live to fight another day.

We’d have said that this work might reside in the “Don’t try this at home” category, but since Hackaday readers are exactly the kind of people who do try this kind of thing at home it’s interesting and reassuring to see that it can be done, and to see how someone else did it. A tablet that can be bricked through a mere BIOS setting though is something a manufacturer should be ashamed of.

We like unbricking stories here at Hackaday, something about winning against the odds appeals to us. In the past we’ve covered Blu-ray drives crippled by dodgy DRM and routers rescued with a Raspberry Pi, but the crown has to be taken by the phone rescued with a resistor made using paperclips and pencil lead.