Year: 2017

Get Your Eclipse Glasses Emblazoned With Hackaday

August 15, 2017 by 60 Comments

We’re getting ready to stare at the Sun for a few hours when a total solar eclipse is visible across the United States on August 21st. You could protect your eyes with some welding goggles, but why not wear a pair of Hackaday eclipse glasses instead?

UPDATE: And They’re Gone. We had a huge response to this with over 200 event pages made in just a few hours (and more coming since then; thank you, you’re awesome!). We had 500 glasses to give away and are sending them out in envelopes of 4. We would still love it if you made an event page but unfortunately we’ve run out of glasses to send out.

Let us know where you’ll be watching the eclipse and we’ll mail you some custom-printed Hackaday eclipse glasses (sorry, they’re all gone).  Head over to the Eclipse Meetups page, click the “Host a Meetup” button and tell us where you’ll be. We’ll add you to the map and contact you for the shipping address and the number of glasses you’ll need.

Whether you want others to join you or not is your choice, but we want to see a map full of pins where the Hackaday community is taking part in this momentous event.

As you can see, there are already a number of meetups watch the partial eclipse and that’s fine with us. No matter where you are, if you can see the eclipse we’re ready to send you some glasses. Hurry up though, they need to arrive before Monday!

Print A Flexible Keypad

August 15, 2017 by 8 Comments

[Micah Elizabeth Scott] needed a custom USB keyboard that wrapped around a post. She couldn’t find exactly what she wanted so she designed and printed it using flexible Nijaflex filament. You can see the design process and the result in the video below.

The electronics rely on a Teensy, which can emulate a USB keyboard easily. The keys themselves use the old resistor divider trick to allow one analog input on the Teensy to read multiple buttons. This was handy, but also minimized the wiring on the flexible PCB.

The board itself used Pyralux that was milled instead of etched. Most of the PCB artwork was done in KiCAD, other than the outline which was done in a more conventional CAD program.

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Clever Battery Holder Hack Makes Brilliant Earrings

August 15, 2017 by 6 Comments
A ‘googly eye’ with hole for LED leads on one side, slot for coin cell on the other. Black disk for pupil removed.

We love seeing a thing get used effectively for other than its intended purpose, and this DIY LED Earrings project is a great example. [IdunnGoddess] liked the idea of making light-up LED earrings powered by a small coin cell, but an enclosure and power connection for the battery were sticking points. The solution? A googly eye after a few minor modifications turned out to be perfect.

A googly eye resembles a thin, flat, hollow plastic bulb. Choose one that’s just a bit bigger than the coin cell, and cut a slot in one end and a small hole in the other. The LED leads go into the hole, and the coin cell slides into the slot. The result? A lightweight battery holder for an attached LED, and as a bonus the hacked googly eye is a clean and super smooth surface that can easily be painted or decorated to make it part of the design. The video embedded below demonstrates the process and showcases a few sample designs.

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A Tiny Sharp MZ-80K That Really Works!

August 14, 2017 by 16 Comments

If you were a computer enthusiast in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of your objects of desire may well have been a Sharp MZ-80K. This was an all-in-one machine from the Japanese electronics giant, and like Commodore’s PET line it included a CRT monitor, full alphanumeric keyboard and cassette tape drive in a smart console.

[Yasushi Enari] is a modeller of miniatures, and while at high school back in 1981 he made a perfect 1/5 scale model of an MZ-80K as an art project. Fast-forward to 2017, and with the help of a Raspberry Pi Zero, a miniature LCD composite video screen, and a Li-Po battery, he’s turned his 1981 model into a functioning computer.

Sadly he was not able to make his tiny 1981 plastic keyboard work, so an external Bluetooth unit is required to perform that function. And he makes no mention of running an MZ-80K emulator on the little machine, either. But the result is a work of art, and an odd collaboration between his adult and teenage self, something we are guessing most readers would be proud to own.

This isn’t the first tiny replica computer we’ve shown you, an Odroid W went into making this tiny Powermac from an American Girl doll’s toy computer.

Thanks [RC2014] for the tip.

Building A Motorized Barrel Boat

August 14, 2017 by 24 Comments

[Rinoa Super-Genius] shows us in a video how to build a crude motorized barrel boat using only a few parts, including pontoons for extra buoyancy and stabilisation.

Building a barrel boat is simple. All you really need is a plastic barrel, scrap wood, PVC pipe with end caps, a battery, and a trolling motor. Of course, you could go even further and build your own trolling motor too.

The video shows the process of building the boat. You start of by cutting the barrel in two, making some calculations of water displacement in order to add the pontoons in the correct positions. These are just held in place with scrap wood screwed into the barrel. Connect the trolling motor to a battery and you’re done.

This isn’t obviously the best looking DIY boat out there, nor does it claim to be, but it can be built on a tight budget. If you have the right parts lying around, you could even build it for free.

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DIY Dual Extrusion

August 14, 2017 by 8 Comments

Dual extrusion 3D printers are not as uncommon as they used to be, but there are still a lot of single-extruder machines. [Paul Lang] wanted to refit his printer to take two MK8 extruders, and he documented his experience with a blog post that has a few good tips if you want to try it yourself.

[Paul] used Fusion 360 to design a holder for the extruders that would fit his printer. Since he had accidentally ordered a spool of pink PLA, the whole assembly is shocking pink — not subtle at all. He shares a few design tips about using PLA near the hot areas and making everything fit and level.

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Smart Speed Bumps Slow Only Speeding Cars

August 14, 2017 by 121 Comments

Like it or not speed bumps are an essential part of our road infrastructure especially in built-up places like near schools [Business Insider UK] reports non-Newtonian liquid filled speed bumps are being tested in Spain, Israel and Germany.

Traditional speed bumps do have their drawbacks; damage to the underside of low vehicles is common. While they should be uniform in dimensions, in practice they can vary significantly, making driving over unfamiliar bumps a bit unpredictable. This is all set to change with non-Newtonian bumps which are soft to drive over at slow speeds but for speeding drivers they harden up and act more like traditional bumps. This gives drivers following the letter of the law a better driving experience whilst still deterring speeding drivers..

Non-Newtonian materials are nothing new but we think this is a great way of purposing these type of materials. Roads are getting smart whether you like it or not. It’s time to embrace technology and improve our commutes.  Continue reading “Smart Speed Bumps Slow Only Speeding Cars” →