Day: October 3, 2017

Ben Franklin’s Weak Motor And Other Forgotten Locomotion

October 3, 2017 by 11 Comments

Most of the electric motors we see these days are of the electromagnetic variety, and for good reason: they’re powerful. But there’s a type of motor that was invented before the electromagnetic one, and of which there are many variations. Those are motors that run on high voltage, and the attraction and repulsion of charge, commonly known as electrostatic motors.

Ben Franklin — whose electric experiments are most frequently associated with flying a kite in a thunderstorm — built and tested one such high-voltage motor. It wasn’t very powerful, but was good enough for him to envision using it as a rotisserie hack. Food is a powerful motivator.

What follows is a walk through the development of various types of these motors, from the earliest ion propelled ones to the induction motors which most have never heard of before, even an HV hacker such as yours truly.

Continue reading “Ben Franklin’s Weak Motor And Other Forgotten Locomotion” →

Becdot Teaches With Touch

October 3, 2017 by 5 Comments

Braille is a tactile system of communication, used the world over by those with vision impairment. Like any form of language or writing, it can be difficult to teach and learn. To help solve this, [memoriesforbecca] has developed Becdot as a teaching tool to help children learn Braille.

The device is built around four Braille cells, which were custom-designed for the project. The key was to create a device which could recreate tactile Braille characters at low cost, to enable the device to be cheap enough to be used a children’s toy. The Braille cells are combined with an NFC tag reader. Small objects are given NFC tags which are programmed into the Becdot. When the object is placed onto the reader, the Braille cells spell out the name of the object. Objects can be tagged and the system programmed with a smartphone, so new objects can be added by the end user.

It’s a great way to teach Braille, and an impressive build that keeps costs down low. Details are a little thin on the ground, and we’d love to see more detail on how the actuators on the Braille cells work. We’ve seen similar projects before, like this Hackaday prize entry. Share your theories in the comments below.

A Vintage Morse Key Turned Into USB Keyboard

October 3, 2017 by 23 Comments

Time was when only the cool kids had new-fangled 102-key keyboards with a number pad, arrow keys, and function keys. They were such an improvement over the lame old 86-key layout that nobody would dream of going back. But going all the way back to a one-key keyboard is pretty cool, in the case of this Morse keyer to USB keyboard adapter.

To revive her dad’s old straight key, a sturdy mid-20th century beast from either a military or commercial setup, [Nomblr] started with a proper teardown and cleaning of the brass and Bakelite pounder. A Teensy was chosen for the job of converting Morse to keyboard strokes; careful consideration to the timing of dits and dahs and allowances for contact debouncing were critical to getting the job done. A new wooden base not only provides stability for the key but hides the Teensy and makes for a new presentation. The video below shows it in action; our only complaint is the lack of sidetone to hear the Morse as you pound out that next great novel one click at a time.

Lovingly restored telegraph gear is a bit of a thing around here; we featured this vintage telegraph sounder revived with a Morse code sender not too long ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_apYcr4xI

[via r/DIY]

Thanks to [Liz] for the tip