Retrotechtacular: Farming Implements In 1932

April 28, 2017 by Kristina Panos 28 Comments

Few people would deny that farming is hard work. It always has been, and it probably always will be no matter how fancy the equipment gets. In 1932, farming was especially grueling. There was widespread drought throughout the United States, which gave rise to dust bowl conditions. As if those two things weren’t bad enough, the average income of the American farmer fell to its lowest point during the Depression, thanks to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

Even so, crop farming was still a viable and somewhat popular career path in 1932. After all, knowing how to grow food is always going to get you elected into your local post-apocalyptic council pretty quickly. As such, the John Deere Equipment Company released the 19th edition of their classic book, The Operation, Care, and Repair of Farm Machinery. This book covers all of the various equipment a crop farmer needed to get from plough to bounty. The text gives equal consideration to horse-driven and tractor-driven farming implements, and there’s an entire chapter dedicated to tractor engine maintenance.

According to its preface, this book was used as an agricultural text in schools and work-study programs. It offers a full course in maintaining the all the (John Deere) equipment needed to work the soil, plant crops, cultivate, harvest, and manure in all parts of the country. The Operation, Care, and Repair of Farm Machinery was so well-received that John Deere kept the book in publication for over thirty years. The 28th edition and final edition came out in 1957. We wonder why they would have stopped putting it out after all that time. Maybe it wasn’t profitable enough, or the company decided to phase out the shade tree tractor mechanic.

So why should you delve into a sorely outdated textbook about farm equipment? Well, it’s straightforwardly written and easy to learn from, whether you’re trying or not. You should check it out if you’re even remotely curious about the basics of farming. If for no other reason, you should go for the beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and stay for the interesting tables and charts in the back. Did you know that a gallon of milk weighs 8.6 pounds?

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72 Hours To Design Your Concept

April 28, 2017 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

The first challenge of the 2017 Hackaday Prize closes on this coming Monday morning. You have about 72 hours hours to submit your entry.

The challenge, called Design Your Concept, is really about a plan. Seeing a project through depends greatly on your ability to foresee where the pain points are. Will you get half way into your fabrication process and realize the PCB components won’t fit in the available space for your robot’s limbs? To be successful at this first round, show that you have a clear plan on all aspects of your design. It really is that easy. And you can start now and still get an entry together by Monday morning.

IuT ! IoT

The Hackaday Prize is about Building Something that Matters. That concept takes shape as we move into the second challenge round next week: IuT ! IoT.

This stands for “Internet of Useful Things, *not* Internet of Things”. We’ve proven that we can get connected devices into the hands of consumers that are useless, a privacy and security nightmare, and sometimes both. There are far fewer examples of really useful connected items that demonstrate a balance of privacy, security, and utility.

Sounds like fun, right? We think so, and there are several other payoffs to boot. The first is that we’re excited to see projects that address a social good. There is great power in technology, can you wield it in a way that benefits us all? Show us what you got and you may be one of 100 finalists awarded $1000. That pool of finalists — 20 from each of 5 challenge rounds — will go on to compete for the Hackaday Prize of $50,000 and four other top cash prizes of $20,000 to $5,000.

I’m A Tricorder, Not A Doctor, Jim!

April 28, 2017 by James Hobson 14 Comments

Machine learning and automated technologies are poised to disrupt employment in many industries — looking at you autonomous vehicles — and medicine is not immune to this encroachment. The Qualcomm Tricorder competition run by the X-Prize foundation has just wrapped, naming [Final Frontier Medical Devices]’s DxtER the closest thing available to Star Trek’s illustrious medical tricorder which is an oft referenced benchmark for diagnostic automation.

The competition’s objective was for teams to develop a handheld, non-invasive device that could diagnose 12 diseases and an all-clear result in 24 hours or less without any assistance. [Dynamical Biomarkers Group] took second place prize worth $1 million, with [Final Frontier Medical devices] — a company run by two brothers and mostly financed by themselves and their siblings — snagging the top prize of $2.5 million. DxtER comes equipped with a suite of sensors to monitor your vitals and body chemistry, and is actually able to diagnose 34 conditions well in advance of the time limit by monitoring vital signs and comparing them to a wealth of medical databases and encyclopediae. The future, as they say, is now.

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Hands On With The Pinebook

April 28, 2017 by Alasdair Allan 101 Comments

The Pine A64 was a 64-bit Quad-Core Single Board Computer which was kickstarted at the tail end of 2015 for delivery in the middle of 2016. Costing just $15, and hailed as a “Raspberry Pi killer,” the board raised $1.7 million from 36,000 backers. It shipped to its backers to almost universally poor reviews.

Now they’re back, this time with a laptop—a 11.6-inch model for $89, or a 14-inch model for $99. Both are powered by the same 64-bit Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 as the original Pine A64 board, but at least Pine are doing a much better job this time around of managing user expectations.

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Low-cost Drift Buoy Plies The Atlantic For Nearly A Year

April 28, 2017 by Dan Maloney 34 Comments

Put a message in a bottle and toss it in the ocean, and if you’re very lucky, years later you might get a response. Drop a floating Arduino-fied buoy into the ocean and if you’ve engineered it well, it may send data back to you for even longer.

At least that’s what [Wayne] has learned since his MDBuoyProject went live with the launching of a DIY drift buoy last year. The BOM for the buoy reads like a page from the Adafruit website: Arduino Trinket, an RTC, GPS module, Iridium satellite modem, sensors, and a solar panel. Everything lives in a clear plastic dry box along with a can of desiccant and a LiPo battery.

The solar panel has a view through the case lid, and the buoy is kept upright by a long PVC boom on the bottom of the case. Two versions have been built and launched so far; alas, the Pacific buoy was lost shortly after it was launched. But the Atlantic buoy picked up the Gulf Stream and has been drifting slowly toward Europe since last summer, sending back telemetry. A future version aims to incorporate an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, presumably to report the signals of AIS transponders on nearby ships as they pass.

We like the attention to detail as well as the low cost of this build. It’s a project that’s well within reach of a STEM program, akin to the many high-altitude DIY balloon projects we’ve featured before.

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Air-Powered Wheelchair Goes Like The Wind

April 28, 2017 by Lewin Day 53 Comments

Electric wheelchairs are responsible for giving back independence to a great many people the world over. They do have their limitations, however, including long recharge times and a general aversion to large amounts of water. Being weatherproof is one thing, but taking one to a waterpark is another thing entirely. Fear not, for The University of Pittsburgh has the answer: the air-powered wheelchair.

Known as the PneuMobility project, the chair relies on a couple of compressed air tanks as a power source. They appear to be a of composite construction, which would cut down on weight significantly and help reduce risk of injury in the case of a failure. The air is passed through a system of valves to a special compressed air motor, allowing the user to control the direction of travel. Unfortunately details on the drive system are scant — we’d love to know more about the design of the drivetrain! Reportedly a lot of the components come from the local hardware store, though we haven’t seen a whole lot of compressed air drive motors on the racks of Home Depot/Bunnings/et al.

Range for the wheelchairs is listed as about 1/3 of an electric wheelchair but recharging compressed air takes minutes, not hours. Developed by the university’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories, the wheelchair isn’t just a one off. There are plans to supply ten of the machines to the Morgan’s Wonderland amusement park to enable wheelchair users to share in the fun of the water park.

We’ve seen some great wheelchair hacks in the past, too – like this chair built specifically for the sand dunes! Video after the break.

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Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack At Make Munich Next Week!

April 27, 2017 by Elliot Williams 10 Comments

Attention Europe! Next weekend, May 6th and 7th, is Make Munich. Hackaday wants to help you warm up with a Bring-a-Hack party on Friday, May 5th from 20:30 and on at the Munich local branch of the Chaos Computer Club.

Immediately following build-up for exhibitors at Make Munich, head on over to Schleißheimer Str. 41 (corner Heßstrasse, U-Bahn Theresienstraße) where Hackaday will be providing beer, Mate, and pizza for anyone who brings along a small project that they’re working on. We’ll have Hackaday.com and Hackaday Prize stickers galore, and a few copies of the Hackaday Omnibus on hand for those who really wow us, or just ask really nicely.

Afterwards, get a little sleep and then head back over to Make Munich on Saturday morning. We’ll be wandering around at least on Saturday, so if you see anyone in a Hackaday t-shirt, say hi! There is a lot to see.

Unlike other similar fairs, Make Munich is entirely volunteer-run, and a great way to show your support for the local scene is to help out. The deal: hang out with cool people and help run the show for four hours, and you get in free. We’ve heard that they still have some shifts open.

Saturday night is the Hebocon terrible robot battle, which is always absurd, and always worth the price of admission. (And you’ve already paid that if you’re going to attend on Saturday anyway.) Rules are sumo-esque, and if your lump of, well whatever, moves — it’s a robot and it has a chance. Battle starts at 18:30. Check out the video from last year embedded below.

If you still want more Make Munich, it goes on Sunday as well. We’ll be at home typing up the previous days’ events so the rest of you can read about it while sipping coffee.

Just in case you missed it in all the hubbub, we repeat: Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack at μC3, Friday May 5th from 20:30 on.

Come say hi to [Elliot Williams] and all of your other favorite Munich hackers! Bring a hack, show and tell, pizza and beer. And Mate, and probably Spezi. If you’re coming, shout out in the comments, and let us know your favorite toppings. Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack At Make Munich Next Week!” →