Impostor Syndrome And Individual Competence

August 22, 2016 by Jenny List 24 Comments

When you attend a very large event such as EMF Camp, there is so much going on that it is impossible to catch everything. It’s easy to come away feeling that you’ve missed all the good stuff, somehow you wasted your time, everyone else had complete focus and got so much more out of the event.

In an odd twist, one of the EMF 2016 talks people have been raving about is very relevant to that fear of inability to take in a festival programme. [Jessica Rose] gave a talk about imposter syndrome. A feeling of inadequacy compared to your peers and a constant anxiety at being exposed as a fraud that will probably be very familiar to many readers. As she points out, it’s a particularly cruel affliction in that it affects those people who do have all the skills while the real impostors share an inflated competence in their abilities.

This has significant relevance to many in our community and for a single presentation to get so many people talking about it at an event like EMF Camp means it definitely hit the mark. The full video is embedded below the break. At about half an hour long it’s well worth a look.

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Let’s Make Life A Little Better

August 22, 2016 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of the next great project to hit your workbench. We’ve all built up a set of tools, honed our skills, and set aside some time to toil away in the workshop. This is all for naught without a really great project idea. The best place to look for this idea is where it can make life a little better.

I’m talking about Assistive Technologies which directly benefit people. Using your time and talent to help make lives better is a noble pursuit and the topic of the 2016 Hackaday Prize challenge that began this morning.

Assistive Technology is a vast topic and there is a ton of low-hanging fruit waiting to be discovered. Included in the Assistive Technology ecosystem are prosthetics, mobility, diagnostics for chronic diseases, devices for the aging or elderly and their caregivers, and much more. You can have a big impact by working on your prototype device, either directly through making lives better and by inspiring others to build on your effort.

Hardware prototypes of the OpenBionics project

Patrick Joyce, team leader of Eyedrivomatic

Need some proof that this is a big deal? The winners of the 2015 Hackaday Prize developed a 3D printed mechanism that links electric wheelchair control with eye movement trackers called Eyedrivomatic. This was spurred by a friend of theirs with ALS who was sometimes stuck in his room all day if he forgot to schedule a caregiver to take him to the community room. The project bridges the existing technologies already available to many people with ALS, providing greater independence in their lives. The OpenBionics Affordable Prosthetic Hands project developed a bionic hand with a clever whiffletree system to enable simpler finger movement. This engineering effort brings down the cost and complexity of producing a prosthetic hand and helps remove some of the barriers to getting prosthetics to those who need them.

Utrasonic sensors measure the distance to objects, giving haptic feedback to the wearer

This prototype lets you remotely check that the stove is not left on

Hand Drive uses a rowing motion to move a wheelchair

The Is the Stove Off project adds peace of mind and promotes safe independence through an Internet connected indicator to ensure the kitchen stove hasn’t been left on and that it isn’t turned on at peculiar times. Pathfinder Haptic Navigation reimagines the tools available to the blind for navigating their world. It uses wrist-mounted ultrasonic sensors and vibration feedback, allowing the user to feel how close their hands are to objects. Hand Drive is another wheelchair add-on to make wheeling yourself around a bit easier by using a rowing motion that doesn’t depend as much on having a strong hand grip on the chair’s push ring.

In most cases, great Assistive Technology is not rocket science. It’s clever recognition of a problem and careful application of a solution for it. Our community of hackers, designers, and engineers can make a big impact on many lives with this, and now is the time to do so.

Enter your Assistive Technology in the Hackaday Prize now and keep chipping away on those prototypes. We will look at the progress all of the entries starting on October 3rd, choosing 20 entries to win $1000 each and continue onto the finals. These finalists are eligible for the top prizes, which include $150,000 and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab, $25,000, two $10,000 prizes, and a $5,000 prize.

Ask Hackaday: Calling All 68k Experts

August 22, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 101 Comments

This is a tale of old CPUs, intensive SMD rework, and things that should work but don’t.

Released in 1994, Apple’s Powerbook 500 series of laptop computers were the top of the line. They had built-in Ethernet, a trackpad instead of a trackball, stereo sound, and a full-size keyboard. This was one of the first laptops that looked like a modern laptop.

The CPU inside these laptops — save for the high-end Japan-only Powerbook 550c — was the 68LC040. The ‘LC‘ designation inside the part name says this CPU doesn’t have a floating point unit. A few months ago, [quarterturn] was looking for a project and decided replacing the CPU would be a valuable learning experience. He pulled the CPU card from the laptop, got out some ChipQuick, and reworked a 180-pin QFP package. This did not go well. The replacement CPU was sourced from China, and even though the number lasered onto the new CPU read 68040 and not 68LC040, this laptop was still without a floating point unit. Still, it’s an impressive display of rework ability, and generated a factlet for the marginalia of the history of consumer electronics.

Faced with a laptop that was effectively unchanged after an immense amount of very, very fine soldering, [quarterturn] had two choices. He could put the Powerbook back in the parts bin, or he could source a 68040 CPU with an FPU. He chose the latter. The new chip is a Freescale MC68040FE33A. Assured by an NXP support rep this CPU did in fact have a floating point unit, [quarterturn] checked the Mac’s System Information. No FPU was listed. He installed NetBSD. There was no FPU installed. This is weird, shouldn’t happen, and now [quarterturn] is at the limits of knowledge concerning the Powerbook 500 architecture. Thus, Ask Hackaday: why doesn’t this FPU work?

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Garage-built Aluminum Miniboat Tears Up The Surf. Or Not.

August 22, 2016 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

It’s the water-borne equivalent of building a minibike out of steel pipe and an old lawnmower engine. Except it’s a DIY personal watercraft made out of aluminum and an old chainsaw, and it has that same garage build feel – and the same disappointing results.

When we first saw the video below, we were hoping for one of those boats that let you water ski by yourself, or a wave-hopping, rooster tailing DIY jet ski. Alas, the chainsaw [MakeItExtreme] chose to power this boat is woefully underpowered, and the boat barely has enough oomph to make a wake. [MakeItExtreme] acknowledges the underwhelming results and mentions plans to fix the boat with a more powerful engine and a water jet drive rather than the trolling motor propeller they used. Still, whatever improvements they make will probably leverage the work they put into the hull, which is a pretty impressive display of metalwork. We’re used to seeing [MakeItExtreme] work in steel, so it was interesting to watch aluminum panels being cut, bent, and welded into a watertight hull. Looks like there’s plenty of room in there for more power, and we’re looking forward to version 2.0 of this build.

If you like rough and ready metalworking videos, there are plenty of them on [MakeItExtreme]’s YouTube channel. We’ve covered quite a few before, including this all-terrain hoverboard and a spot welder that’s more-or-less safe to use.

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You’re Overdue For A Visit To The Library

August 22, 2016 by Kristina Panos 95 Comments

When was the last time you went to a library? If it’s been more than a couple of years, the library is probably a very different place than you remember. Public libraries pride themselves on keeping up with changing technology, especially technology that benefits the communities they serve. No matter your age or your interests, libraries are a great resource for learning new skills, doing research, or getting help with just about any task. After all, library science is about gathering together all of human knowledge and indexing it for easy lookup.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a researcher or a student. Libraries exist to serve everyone in a class-free environment. In recent years, patrons have started looking to libraries to get their piece of the burgeoning DIY culture. They want to learn to make their lives better. Public libraries have stepped up to meet this need by adding new materials to their collections, building makerspaces, and starting tool libraries. And this is in addition to ever-growing collections of electronic resources. Somehow, they manage to do all of this with increasingly strained budgets.

The purpose of this article is to explore the ways that libraries of all stripes can be a valuable resource to our readers. From the public library system to the sprawling academic libraries on college campuses, there is something for hackers and makers at all levels.

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Modified R/C Jet Cannon Spews Nerf, Slays Cardboard Tanks

August 22, 2016 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

[ajw61185] made a video overview of a radio-controlled A-10 jet modified to spew a hail of harmless Nerf balls as it strafes helpless cardboard cutouts of T-72 tanks on a bright, sunny day.

The firing assembly in the jet comes from a Nerf Rival Zeus Blaster, which is itself an interesting device. It uses two electric flywheels to launch soft foam balls – much like a pitching machine. With one flywheel running a little faster than the other, the trajectory can be modified. For example, a slight topspin gives the balls a longer and more stable flight path. Of course, foam balls slow down quickly once launched and at high speeds the aircraft can overtake the same projectiles it just fired, but it’s fun all the same.

Cramming the firing assembly into aircraft took some cleverness. The front of the jet contains the flywheel assembly, and a stripped-down removable magazine containing the foam balls fits behind it. A flick of a switch on the controller spins up the flywheels, and another flick controls a servo that allows the balls to enter the firing assembly and get launched. The ammo capacity on the jet is low at only twelve shots per load, and it fires all twelve in roughly half a second. Since the balls are fired at the ground in a known area, they’re easy to retrieve.

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IKEA Lantern Houses Full-Featured Weather Station

August 22, 2016 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

From plain and utilitarian to the sleek and professional, there are a lot of ways to build a multifunction weather station. We’d thought we’d seen it all here, but building a weather station into an IKEA lantern is a pretty unique presentation.

There’s an active community over at ikeahackers.net, and the variety of IKEA hacks they’ve come up with is pretty astounding. For this weather hack, [Richard Stevens] chose the Borrby, a $15 candle lantern. While it doesn’t exactly scream “weather station”, the form factor makes sense – plenty of room for electronics, easily replaced windows, and a nice cupola for mounting extra displays. [Richard]’s build includes a barometer, a hygrometer, and a thermometer, along with graphing displays for trends and historical data. There’s also an alarm clock and a rear panel bristling with more connectors and switches than an 80s-era HP oscilloscope. The wiring is admittedly “rats-nest style”, but as you can see in the video after the break, it works pretty well and looks good too.

Interested in rolling your own non-lantern weather station? Check out this headless Weather Underground sensor suite, or a simple panel of analog meters.

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