We recently went through our twice yearly period of communal venting called adjusting for daylight saving time (DST), or British Summer Time (BST) as it’s called in the UK. But why are we changing the time? Seriously, who caused all this? Does it do any good? Do we still need it? And what can we do about it? As it turns out, most of us want it, as you’ll see below.
Today is Cyber Monday, the day when everyone in the US goes back to work after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is a celebration of consumerism, and the largest online shopping day of the year. Right now, hundreds of thousands of office workers are browsing Amazon for Christmas presents, while the black sheep of the office are on LiveLeak checking out this year’s Black Friday compartment syndrome compilations.
This is the season of consumption, but there’s still time to give back. We would suggest #OpenCyberMonday, an effort to donate to your favorite Open Source foundations and projects.
It’s not necessary to explain how much we all rely on Open Source software, but it goes even further than the software powering the entire Internet. Hackaday is built on WordPress, and the WordPress Foundation is responsible for very important, very widely used Open Source software. The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to the compilation of all knowledge. The Internet Archive is a temporal panopticon, preserving our digital heritage for future generations. The Open Source Hardware Association is doing their best to drag physical objects into the realm of Open Source – a much more difficult task than simply having the idea of Copyleft.
While everyone else is busy buying Internet-connected toasters and wearable electronics, take a few minutes and give a gift everyone can enjoy. Make a donation to the Open Source initiative of your choice A list of these foundations can be found on opensource.org. This isn’t a comprehensive list of worthy Open Source initiatives, so if you have any other suggestions, put it out on the Twitters.
The modern human’s worst nightmare: a power outage. Left without cat memes, Netflix, and — of course — Hackaday, there’s little to do except participate in the temporary anarchy that occurs when left without internet access. Lamenting over expensive and bulky uninterruptible power supplies, Youtube user [Gadget Addict] hacked together a UPS power bank that might just stave off the collapse of order in your household.
This simple and functional hack really amounts to snipping the end off of a USB power cable. The cable is then attached to a screw terminal to barrel connector adapter and plugged it into a pass-through power USB power bank. No, really — that’s all there is to it. [Gadget Addict] notes that while most modems and routers are designed to run off a 12V power supply, they still operate at 5V. He goes on to connect several router and router/modem combination units to the power bank. In each case the system appears to boot up and perform normally.
Continue reading “This Quick Hack Will Keep You Online During Your Next Power Outage”
A tachometer used to be an accessory added to the dash of only the sportiest of cars, but now they’re pretty much standard equipment on everything from sleek coupes to the family truckster. If your daily driver was born without a tach, fear not – a simple Arduino tachometer is well within your reach.
The tach-less vehicle in question is [deepsyx]’s Opel Astra, which from the video below seems to have the pep and manual transmission that would make a tach especially useful. Eschewing the traditional analog meter display or even a digital readout, [deepsyx] opted to indicate shift points with four LEDs mounted to a scrap of old credit card. The first LED lights at 4000 RPM, with subsequent LEDs coming on at each 500 RPM increase beyond that. At 5800 RPM, all the LEDs blink as a redline warning. [Deepsyx] even provides a serial output of the smoothed RPM value, so logging of RPM data is a possible future enhancement.
The project is sensing engine speed using the coil trigger signal – a signal sent from the Engine Control Unit (ECU) which tells one of the ignition coilpacks to fire. The high voltage signal from the coilpack passes on to the spark plug, which ignites the air-fuel mixture in that cylinder. This is a good way to determine engine RPM without mechanical modifications to the car. Just make sure you modify the code for the correct number of cylinders in your vehicle.
Simple, cheap, effective – even if it is more of a shift point indicator than true tachometer, it gets the job done. But if you’re looking for a more traditional display and have a more recent vintage car, this sweeping LED tachometer might suit you more.
Continue reading “Quick Arduino Hack Lets Tach-less Car Display Shift Points”
