Month: July 2017

ESP32 Display Is Worth A Thousand Words

July 3, 2017 by 13 Comments

The ESP32 is the successor to the wildly popular ESP8266. There seems to be no end to what the chips can do. However, despite all the wireless communication capabilities, the module doesn’t have a display. [G6EJD] wanted to connect an ILI9341 TFT display and he put the code and information on GitHub. You can also see a video of his work, below.

Since the display uses a serial interface, there isn’t much wiring required. The Adafruit GFX library does the heavy lifting, utilizing the SPI library for the actual communications. The first demo shown on the hardware can pull weather data decoded. If you want more details on the display’s operation, check out [G6EJD’s] YouTube channel and you’ll find other videos that go into more detail.

We’ve seen these displays married to an ESP8266 with an integrated PCB, too. There’s a choice of libraries, and perhaps we’ll see a similar range of choice for the ESP32.

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Best Product Entry: Telescope Control With RDuinoScope

July 3, 2017 by 2 Comments

The Hackaday Prize is more than just giving tens of thousands of dollars to hardware hackers. It’s also about funding the next batch of Open Source hardware products. Alongside The Hackaday Prize — the contest where we’re funding hardware that will change the world, — we’re also giving away $30,000 to the project that will best become a product. It’s almost like we’re funding hardware startups here.

[Dessislav Gouzgounov] wanted to build a small piece of hardware — a GoTo for his telescope. This handheld controller would allow him to use software to align the telescope with whatever celestial body he’s checking out.

Many GoTos simply interface with a laptop, but [Dessislav] built a standalone system centered around an Arduino Due and 240×400 touch screen, with GPS, RTC, and Bluetooth under the hood. It works on both hemispheres and contains a database of 250 celestial objects, features different speeds for time-delayed tracking of celestial, lunar, and solar phenomena, and it can work with any stepper-equipped telescope.

We covered [Dessislav]’s previous version of the RDuinoScope, but he’s improved the project considerably with over 2,400 lines of code including a new menu system and added a star atlas showing the location of the sky at which the telescope is currently pointed, among other improvements. The project is open source and you can learn more about it on [Dessislav]’s project page or check out his code on GitHub.

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Tiny Light Bulb Flasher Vies For World’s Record

July 3, 2017 by 21 Comments

We’re going to go out on a limb here and declare this minuscule incandescent light flasher the smallest such circuit in the world. After all, when you need a microscope to see it work, you’ve probably succeeded in making the world’s smallest something.

Even if it’s not record breaking, [Ben Krasnow]’s diminutive entry in the 2017 Flashing Light Contest, which we recently covered, is still pretty keen. For those not familiar with the contest, it’s an informal challenge to build something that electrically switches an incandescent light on and off in the most interesting way possible for the chance to win £200. [Ben] says he’ll donate the prize money to a STEM charity if he wins, and we’d say he has a good chance with this flea-sized entry.

The incandescent lamp he chose is a specialty item for model makers and scale railroad enthusiasts; we’d heard of “grain of wheat” bulbs before, but this thing is ridiculous. The bulb makes the 4.6 mm diameter SR416 hearing aid battery that powers the flasher look enormous. The driver is a clever Schmitt trigger inverter with a tiny RC network to flash the bulb at about 1 Hz. The video below shows the flasher working and details the development and the build, which featured spot welding to the battery. [Ben] has even spec’d precisely how many Joules of energy will rupture the thing steel cases on these cells — we suspect involuntarily through trial and error.

[Ben]’s entry in the contest is now our favorite, and not just because he’s been a great friend to Hackaday with such classic hacks as watching a phonograph needle with an electron microscope and a homebrew CT scanner. This circuit is genuinely fascinating, and we hope it inspires you to try to top it. There’s a little less than a month left in the contest, so get to it.

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Daily Prophet Is A Magic Newspaper! (Kinda)

July 3, 2017 by 14 Comments

A few gadgets around the house make for excellent display and conversation pieces, but when an artifact from the wizarding world finds its way into a muggle household? Well, you frame it.

Okay so in reality this is really an animated picture frame with a Harry Potter theme — specifically the fabulous newspaper, The Daily Prophet, from the series of novels and movies. Conceived by [Piet Rullins Jr.] after a trip to ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’ attraction at Orlando Studios, he wanted an inventive way to showcase the videos of his vacation.

The seven inch display is secured inside a poster frame, surrounded by a customized front page of the wizard paper — weaving the tale of his trip — and controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3. When someone approaches, an Adafruit infrared sensor detects the movement and activates the display, shutting it off after five minutes in order to preserve the screen and save power. A USB power cable hidden inside the cabinet it’s mounted on adds to the effect of a magical periodical. What, did you think it was powered by magic too?

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Automate The Freight: Front Line Deliveries By Drone

July 3, 2017 by 49 Comments

Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC, once said that “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” That’s true in many enterprises, but in warfare, the side that neglects logistics is likely to be the loser. Keeping soldiers fed, clothed, and armed is the very essence of effectively prosecuting a war, and the long logistical chain from rear supply depots to forward action is what makes that possible.

Armies have had millennia to optimize logistics, and they have always maximized use of new technologies to position supplies where they’re needed. Strong backs of men and beasts sufficed for centuries, supplemented by trains in the 19th century and supplanted by motor vehicles in the 20th. Later, aircraft made an incalculable impact on supply chains, allowing rapid mobilization of supplies and supporting the industrial scale death and destruction of the 20th-century’s wars.

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3D-Printed Turbine Rotary Tool Tops 40,000 RPM

July 3, 2017 by 38 Comments

For your high speed, low torque needs, few things beat a rotary tool like a Dremel. The electric motor has its limits, though, they generally peak out at 35,000 rpm or so. Plus there’s the dust and the chips to deal with from whatever you’re Dremeling, so why not kill two birds with one stone and build a turbine-driven rotary tool attachment for your shop vac?

Another serious shortcoming of the electric Dremels that is addressed by [johnnyq90]’s 3D-printed turbine is the lack of that dentist’s office whine. His tool provides enough of that sound to trigger an attack of odontophobia as it tops out at 43,000 rpm. The turbine’s stator and rotors are 3D-printed, as is the body, inlet scoop, and adapter for the vacuum line. A shaft from an old rotary tool is reused, but a new one could be turned pretty easily. The video below shows the finished tool in action; there’ll no doubt be objections in the comments to ingesting dust, chips, and incandescent bits of metal, but our feeling is that the turbine will hold up to these challenges pretty well. Until it doesn’t, that is.

We like [johnnyq90]’s design style, which you may recall from his micro Tesla turbine or nitro-powered rotary tool. He sure likes things that spin fast.

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