Reviewing The HBTool HB-019 Desoldering Iron: It Probably Won’t Shock You

April 10, 2018 by Jenny List 38 Comments

This unholy lovechild of a cheap solder sucker and an even cheaper soldering iron is the HBTool HB-019 desoldering iron. It came to me for the princely sum of five pounds ($7). So for somewhere between the cost of a pint of foaming ale and the pub’s pie and mash I’d eat alongside it, what had I got?

Regular Hackaday readers will be familiar with my penchant for ordering cheap tools and other electronic gizmos from the usual suppliers of Far Eastern tech, and subjecting them to review for your entertainment and edification. Sometimes the products are so laughably bad as to be next-to-worthless, other times they show enough promise to be of use, and just occasionally they turn out to be a genuine diamond in the rough, a real discovery. This is no precious stone, but it still makes for an entertaining review. Continue reading “Reviewing The HBTool HB-019 Desoldering Iron: It Probably Won’t Shock You” →

The Forgotten Workstation: Sun JavaStation

April 10, 2018 by Al Williams 56 Comments

These days, conversations about Java tend to center around Oracle and Google fighting it out in court. But back in 1996, Sun was the keeper of Java and promoted it heavily. They even released a diskless workstation that only runs Java applets. The Sun JavaStation was affectionately called the “Mr. Coffee” and [Cameron Gray] wants to show you how it worked and what’s inside of it.

A single screw frees the innards from the small case. Inside looks like a dense PC from the era, although the parts inside are a far cry from a typical PC. The CPU was a 110 MHz microSPARC II soldered directly to the motherboard. The four RAM slots could take up to 64 megabytes of PC RAM.

Continue reading “The Forgotten Workstation: Sun JavaStation” →

Leap Motion Announces Open Source Augmented Reality Headset

April 10, 2018 by Adam Fabio 29 Comments

Leap Motion just dropped what may be the biggest tease in Augmented and Virtual Reality since Google Cardboard. The North Star is an augmented reality head-mounted display that boasts some impressive specs:

Dual 1600×1440 LCDs
120Hz refresh rate
100 degree FOV
Cost under $100 (in volume)
Open Source Hardware
Built-in Leap Motion camera for precise hand tracking

Yes, you read that last line correctly. The North Star will be open source hardware. Leap Motion is planning to drop all the hardware information next week.

Now that we’ve got you excited, let’s mention what the North Star is not — it’s not a consumer device. Leap Motion’s idea here was to create a platform for developing Augmented Reality experiences — the user interface and interaction aspects. To that end, they built the best head-mounted display they could on a budget. The company started with standard 5.5″ cell phone displays, which made for an incredibly high resolution but low framerate (50 Hz) device. It was also large and completely unpractical.

The current iteration of the North Star uses much smaller displays, which results in a higher frame rate and a better overall experience. The secret sauce seems to be Leap’s use of ellipsoidal mirrors to achieve a large FOV while maintaining focus.

We’re excited, but also a bit wary of the $100 price point — Leap Motion is quick to note that the price is “in volume”. They also mention using diamond tipped tooling in a vibration isolated lathe to grind the mirrors down. If Leap hasn’t invested in some injection molding, those parts are going to make the whole thing expensive. Keep your eyes on the blog here for more information as soon as we have it!