Grabbing Better Images From A Newer Russian Satellite

December 5, 2017 by Will Sweatman 46 Comments

The Soviet Union took the world by surprise when it sent its Sputnik satellite into low earth orbit way back in 1957. The event triggered a space race between the Soviets and the United States and ushered in technologies that would go on to touch the lives of every human on earth. Today, several nations have a space program. And one of the more useful things to put in orbit are weather satellites.

In 2014, the Russians launched their Meteor N M-2 weather satellite into a polar orbit. The part that were most interested in is the fact that it transmits images at 137.1 MHz using the standard LRPT protocol. However, the newer Meteor N M-2 transmits images at twelve times the resolution of US NOAA satellites. No typo there – that’s twelve (12!) times. Have we got your attention now?

We shouldn’t have to tell you to jump on over to [phasenoise’s] blog which gives you everything you need to start grabbing some of these awesome images.

Now, before you get your jumper wires in a bunch – we are well aware that receiving satellite images is nothing new.

Thanks to [Roy Tremblay] for the tip!

Making A Motorized Turntable Portable

December 5, 2017 by James Hobson 2 Comments

[Robin Reiter] needed a better way to show off his work. He previously converted an electric TV stand into a full 360-degree display turntable, but it relied on an external power supply to get it spinning. It was time to give it an upgrade.

Putting his spacial organization skills to work, [Reiter] has crammed a mini OLED display, rotary encoder, a LiPo 18650 battery and charging circuit, a pair of buck converters, a power switch, and an Arduino pro mini into the small control console. To further maximize space, [Reiter] stripped out the pin headers and wired the components together directly. It attaches to the turntable in question with magnets, so it can be removed out of frame, or for displaying larger objects!

When first powered on, the turntable holds in pause mode giving [Reiter] time to adjust the speed and direction. He also took the time to add an optical rotary encoder disk to the turntable and give the gearing a much needed cleaning. Check out the project video after the break!

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Upgrading A USB Soldering Iron!

December 4, 2017 by James Hobson 14 Comments

Seeing the popularity of the TS-100 soldering iron, GitHub user [ole00] found himself desirous of a few of its features, but was put off by its lack of a power supply. What is a hacker to do? Find a cheaper option, and hack it into awesomeness.

[ole00] stumbled across the inexpensive ZD-20U and — despite a handful (sorry!) of issues — saw potential: it’s compact, lightweight, and powered via a USB power cable. Wanting to use as much of the ZD-20U’s original board as possible, the modifications were restricted to a few trace cuts and component swaps. The major change was swapping out the 555 timer IC controlling the iron with am ATtiny13a MCU to give it a bit more control.

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Oil Barrel Smoker

December 4, 2017 by James Hobson 23 Comments

What would you do with a pair of oil drums and a craving for delicious food? Like any sane person, redditor [Kilgore_nrw] made the logical choice and built a smoker.

To make the build easier, he picked up a double barrel stove kit which came with a door, hinges, legs and flue connectors. While fixing the legs and mounting the stove door — high enough for a bed of bricks in the fire barrel — went as planned, he had to improvise the installation of the smoke flue. It ended up being the exact same diameter as the flue connectors, but notching it enough to slide into place made a satisfactory seal.

Not liking the look of having the stack at the ‘front’ of the smoker, he mounted it above the flue at the rear and added two sandstone slabs in the smoking chamber to evenly distribute the heat. Finishing touches included heavy duty drawer slides for the cooking rack — ensuring easy access to deliciousness — and painstakingly grinding off the old paint to apply a new heat resistant coating. For any fans out there, the finished pictures are a sight to behold.

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Let There Be Automated Blinds!

December 4, 2017 by James Hobson 13 Comments

More than once a maker has wanted a thing, only to find it more economical to build it themselves. When your domicile has massive windows, closing what can feel like a mile of blinds becomes a trial every afternoon — or every time you sit down for a movie. [Kyle Stewart-Frantz] had enough of that and automated his blinds.

After taking down and dismantling his existing roller blinds, he rebuilt it using 1-1/4 in EMT conduit for the blinds’ roll to mount a 12V electric shade kit within — the key part: the motor is remote controlled. Fitting it inside the conduit takes a bit of hacking and smashing if you don’t want to or can’t 3D print specific parts. Reattaching the roller blind also takes a fair bit of precision lest they unroll crooked every time. He advises a quick test and fit to the window before moving on to calibrating and linking all your blinds to one remote — unless you want a different headache.

Now, to get Alexa to do your bidding.

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Slinky Walks Down Stairs And Picks Up 80m Band

December 4, 2017 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Originally intended as a way to stabilize sensitive instruments on ships during World War II, the Slinky is quite simply a helical spring with an unusually good sales pitch. But as millions of children have found out since the 1940’s, once you roll your Slinky down the stairs a few times, you’ve basically hit the wall in terms of entertainment value. So what if we told you there was yet another use for this classic toy that was also fun for a girl and a boy?

As it turns out, a cheap expandable metal coil just so happens to make for a pretty good antenna if you hook it up right. [Blake Hughes] recently took on this project and provided some detailed pictures and information for anyone else looking to hook a couple of Slinkies to their radio. [Blake] reports excellent results when paired to his RTL-SDR setup, but of course this will work with whatever kind of gear you might be using at these frequencies.

Before anyone gets out the pitchforks, admittedly this isn’t exactly a new idea. There are a few other write-ups online about people using a Slinky as a cheap antenna, such as this detailed analysis from a few years ago by [Frank Dörenberg]. There’s even rumors that soldiers used a Slinky from back home as a makeshift antenna during the Vietnam War. So this is something of an old school ham trick revived for the new generation of SDR enthusiasts.

Anyway, the setup is pretty simple. You simply solder the RF jack of your choice to two stretched out Slinkies: one to the center of the jack and one to outside. Then run a rope through them and stretch them out in opposite directions. The rope is required because the Slinky isn’t going to be strong enough when expanded to keep from laying on the ground.

One thing to keep in mind with a Slinky antenna is that these things are not exactly rated for outside use. Without some kind of treatment (like a spray on acrylic lacquer) , they’ll quickly corrode and fail. Though a better idea might simply to be to think of this as a temporary antenna that you put away when you’re done with. Thanks to the fact that the Slinky doesn’t get deformed even when stretching it out to maximum length, that’s relatively easy to accomplish.

If you’re looking for a good RTL-SDR to go along with your new Slinky antenna, check out this roundup of some of the options that are on the market as of 2017. You’ll probably need an upconverter to get down to the 80m band, so you might as well build that while you’re at it.

Kristin Paget Is Hacking Carrier Grade LTE ENodeB

December 4, 2017 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Every once in a while you get lucky and a piece of cool gear lands on your bench to tear down and explore. On that measuring stick, Kristin Paget hit the jackpot when she acquired a fascinating piece of current generation cellphone infrastructure. She’s currently researching a carrier-grade LTE eNodeB and walked through some of the findings, along with security findings of two IoT products, during her talk on the Laws of IoT Security at the 2017 Hackaday Superconference.

Evolved Node B (eNodeB) is the meat and potatoes of the LTE cellular network. It connects the antenna to backhaul — this is not something you’d expect to see on the open market but Kristin managed to pick one up from a vendor at DEF CON. Hearing her walk through the process of testing the hardware is a real treat in her talk and we’ll get to that in just a minute. But first, check out our video interview with Kristin the morning after her talk. We get into the progress of her eNodeB research, and touch on the state of IoT security with advice for hardware developers moving forward.