Day: March 10, 2018

Android Sources For The Asus Tinker Board

March 10, 2018 by 18 Comments

The Asus Tinker Board is one of the quiet achievers of the powerful single board computer market. A Raspberry Pi form factor with a significantly more powerful processor, more memory, faster networking, and Asus build quality. In hardware terms it leaves many of the other Pi competitors in the dust. If the Tinker Board has a problem though it is the same one that affects so many otherwise promising offerings, that its software support isn’t as strong as the fruity computer from Cambridge. When you buy a Pi it’s Raspbian that makes it a wise purchase, along with the huge community support that surrounds it.

An interesting development on that front comes courtesy of [Justin], who tells us that the sources have been released for the Tinkerboard flavour of Android. The community have put in the work on the board’s Linux distro, but the Android side hasn’t had the same opportunity. This step makes the Tinker Board a significantly more interesting choice for custom Android development, as unlike some of its competitors for which only precompiled builds are available it puts a bespoke Android build in the hands of its developers.

We like the Tinker Board here at Hackaday. We first reviewed it when the boards became available, but later found that they had reached the market in error before Asus had a stable operating system. We therefore returned with another review six months later, and found it to be a credible Raspberry Pi alternative saved by its band of enthusiasts who have filled in for any of its software shortcomings.

IoT Chore Reminder For The Serially Forgetful

March 10, 2018 by 6 Comments

The secret to domestic bliss often lies in attention to detail, an area in which we can all do a little better. But if paper notes and smartphone reminders are not enough to help you remember to knock jobs off your list, perhaps this IoT task reminder will give you the edge you need to keep the peace at home.

As [Andreas Spiess] points out, his best intentions of scheduling recurring tasks in Google Calendar were not enough to keep him on on top of his share of chores around the house. He found that the notifications popping up on his phone were far too easy to swipe away in favor of other distractions, so he set about building a real-world reminder. His solution uses a WeMOS D1 Mini in a bright blue 3D-printed box with from one to four LED switches on the front. Each box is linked to his Google Calendar, and when a task comes due, its light turns on. Sprinkled about the house near the task, like the laundry room or near the recycling, [Andreas] can’t help but see the reminder, which only goes out when he cancels it by pressing the task button. Simple but effective, and full of potential for other uses too.

Of course, the same thing could be accomplished with a Magic Mirror build, which we’ve seen a lot of over the years. But there’s something about the simplicity of these devices and their proximity to the task that makes sense — sort of like the Amazon Dash concept. We might build a few of these too.

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Only Mechanical Relays Will Do For Automated Hi-Fi Audio Source Switching

March 10, 2018 by 54 Comments

If you are a devotee of audiophile-quality analogue hi-fi, switching between sources simply can not be done through a solid-state device. Only physical switches will do because they come without the risk of extra noise or distortion that their silicon equivalents might bring.

That is the philosophy that lies behind [Skrodahl]’s relay-based audio switching board, which boasts 5 high-quality relays each handling a stereo input, with their control passed either to a rotary switch or to an ESP32 module. The ground connections on audio and switching sides are isolated from each other to avoid transient noise finding its way to the speakers.

You might think that an audio switching board is a very simple device indeed and thus not worthy of Hackaday’s attention, but it’s surprisingly easy to make a mess of a module like this one and they have put in some effort to avoid the pitfalls. The metal-can version of the switching transistors seems a little overkill, but fancy audio is a funny business.

If the ESP isn’t your bag, we’ve brought you another relay based audio switcher in the past that used an Atmel chip.

Wireless Protocol Reverse Engineered To Create Wrist Wearable Mouse

March 10, 2018 by 7 Comments

We’ve seen a few near-future sci-fi films recently where computers respond not just to touchscreen gestures but also to broad commands, like swiping a phone to throw its display onto a large flat panel display. It’s a nice metaphor, and if we’re going to see something like it soon, perhaps this wrist-mounted pointing device will be one way to get there.

The video below shows the finished product in action, with the cursor controlled by arm movements. Finger gestures that are very much like handling a real mouse’s buttons are interpreted as clicks. The wearable has a Nano, an MPU6050 IMU, and a nRF24L01 transceiver, all powered by some coin cells and tucked nicely into a 3D-printed case. To be honest, as cool as [Ronan Gaillard]’s wrist mouse is, the real story here is the reverse engineering he and his classmate did to pull this one off.

The road to the finished product was very interesting and more detail is shared in their final presentation (in French and heavy with memes). Our French is sufficient only to decipher “Le dongle Logitech,” but there are enough packet diagrams supporting into get the gist. They sniffed the packets going between a wireless keyboard and its dongle and figured out how to imitate mouse movements using an NRF24 module. Translating wrist and finger movements to cursor position via the 6-axis IMU involved some fairly fancy math, but it all seems to have worked in the end, and it makes for a very impressive project.

Is sniffing wireless packets in your future? Perhaps this guide to Wireshark and the nRF24L01 will prove useful.

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IoT Potty Training

March 10, 2018 by 22 Comments

If you have not had children, stop reading now, we implore you. Because before you’ve had kids, you can’t know how supremely important it is that they take care of going to the bathroom by themselves. [David Gouldin] knows how it is. But unlike most of us, he resorted to using an Amazon IoT button and Twilio. No, we are not kidding.

The problem he was trying to solve is when his younger child would need to use the potty in the middle of the night, calling out for assistance would wake the older child. [David] said it best himself:

Behind the smiling emoji facade is an Amazon IoT button, a variant of Amazon’s dash button. When my kid presses this button, it triggers an AWS Lambda function that uses Twilio’s Python Helper Library to call my iPhone from a Twilio number. The Twilio number is stored in my contacts with “emergency bypass” turned on, so even when it’s 2am and I’m on “do not disturb” I still get the call.

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High-Effort Streaming Remote For Low-Effort Bingeing

March 10, 2018 by 7 Comments

There’s no limit to the amount of work some people will put into avoiding work. For instance, why bother to get up from your YouTube-induced vegetative state to adjust the volume when you can design and build a remote to do it for you?

Loath to interrupt his PC streaming binge sessions, [miroslavus] decided to take matters into his own hands. When a commercially available wireless keyboard proved simultaneously overkill for the job and comically non-ergonomic, he decided to build a custom streaming remote. His recent microswitch encoder is prominently featured and provides scrolling control for volume and menu functions, and dedicated buttons are provided for play controls. The device reconfigures at the click of a switch to support Netflix, which like YouTube is controlled by sending keystrokes to the PC through a matching receiver. It’s a really thoughtful design, and we’re sure the effort [miroslavus] put into this will be well worth the dozens of calories it’ll save in the coming years.

A 3D-printed DIY remote is neat, but don’t forget that printing can also save a dog-chewed remote and win the Repairs You Can Print contest.

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A Faster Grave Digger For Your Child

March 10, 2018 by 12 Comments

Children love speed, but so few of those electric ride on toys deliver it. What’s a kid to do? Well, if [PoppaFixit]’s your dad, you’re in luck.

This project starts with an unusually cool Power Wheels toy, based on the famous Grave Digger monster truck. During the modification process, it was quickly realised that the original motor controller wasn’t going to cut the mustard. With only basic on/off control, it gave a very jerky ride and was harsh on the transmission components, too. [PoppaFixit] decided to upgrade to an off-the-shelf 24 V motor controller to give the car more finesse as well as speed. The controller came with a replacement set of pedals, both accelerator and brake, to replace the stock units. On the motor side, a couple of beefier Traxxas units were substituted for the weedy originals.

Acceleration is now much improved, not just due to the added power, but because the variable throttle allows the driver to avoid wheelspin on hard launches. It also makes the car much more comfortable and safe to drive, thanks to the added controllability. Another way to tell the project was a success is the look of pure joy on the new owner’s face!

This was a fairly basic install, very accessible to the novice. These sort of electric vehicle hop-ups are commonplace enough that there are a wide variety of suppliers who sell easy-to-use kits for this sort of work. For that reason, we’ve seen plenty of hacks of this sort – like this modified scooter, or these Power Wheels set up for racing.

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