Hackaday Links: October 21, 2018

October 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

A few weeks ago, we got word [Fran] was being kicked out of her workshop. You might remember [Fran] from her exploits in reverse engineering the launch computer for the Saturn V, her work on replicating the DSKY from an AGC, her visit to the Air & Space Museum annex (so jealous), and her other musical adventures. Why is she getting kicked out? Philly’s getting gentrified, ya jabroinis. Now, there’s a GoFundMe for a new Fran Lab. Go on and ring that bell.

Everyone needs a Sharpie sitting around, so how about one that weighs a pound or so? [MakingStuff] created a new body for a big ‘ol Sharpie marker, complete with knurling. Oh, man, the knurling.

A Powerball ticket costs $2. Last Friday, the expected return on a single Powerball ticket was more than $2. This doesn’t happen often, but last Friday the most logical course of action for everyone was to buy all the Powerball tickets they could.

Boston Dynamics built another dog robot and made it dance to Uptown Funk because we haven’t heard that song enough. No one has listened to Uptown Funk enough times in their life. It’s a great song that never gets old or overplayed.

[Wintergatan] is building a drum machine. You might remember this artisan of plywood from various marble machine builds that also play music. This build goes deep into the techniques of building gigantic mechanical contraptions out of plywood and steel.

Speaking of plywood, Rockler had a contest a while back to build something out of a single sheet of plywood. [OSO DIY] came up with the most interesting table I’ve ever seen. A lot of the entries into this plywood contest turned the plywood on its end, resulting in something that looks like it’s made out of skateboard decks. [OSO DIY]’s coffee table is no exception; it’s basically just a panel of edge-grain plywood made into a table. Where this gets really good is the actual design of the table. It’s clearly a mid-century modern piece, with threaded inserts holding the legs on. However, instead of something that was pressed out of a factory, this table just exudes an immense amount of manual labor. It’s a counterpoint between craftsmanship and minimalist design rendered in plywood and by far one of the most interesting pieces of furniture made in the last few years. Here are some more entries that also capitalize on edge-grain plywood

The Polyphonic Analog/Digital Synth Project

October 21, 2018 by Rich Hawkes 8 Comments

[Matt Bradshaw]’s entry in the Hackaday Prize is Polymod, a modular digital synthesizer which combines the modularity of an analog synth with the power of a digital synth. Each module (LFO, Envelope Generator, Amplifier, etc.) are connected with audio cables to others and the result is processed digitally to create music.

The synth is built with a toy keyboard with each key having a tactile switch underneath it, contained inside a wooden case upcycled from a bookshelf found on the street. Each module is a series of potentiometers and I/O jacks with a wooden faceplate. The modules are connected to sockets on the main board and are held in place with thumbscrews so that the modules can be easily switched out. Each module can be connected to others using audio cables, the same way modular analog synths are connected.

The main board contains a Teensy 3.6 and a Teensy Audio Adapter creates the audio for the synth. Software that [Matt] wrote runs on the Teensy and allows the digital synthesizer to run in either monophonic or polyphonic modes. In polyphonic mode, the software creates digital copies of each module to allow the playing of chords. The Teensy scans up to eight module sockets and for each module that it finds, it reads the potentiometer value as well as the status of the I/O jacks. The keyboard buttons are converted to a control voltage which can be sent to any of the modules to create a melody.

[Matt] has created a great synth that combines benefits of both analog and digital synths together and the result is an inexpensive modular synth that can create some really cool sounds. Check out the videos after the break. In the meantime, take a look at this mess of wires and this article on a slew of open-source synthesizers.

Continue reading “The Polyphonic Analog/Digital Synth Project” →

Turning The Deep Note Into A Game

October 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

One of the most famous pieces of computer-generated music is the Deep Note, the audio trademark for THX. It begins with a dozen or so voices, randomly tuned between 200 and 400 Hz, then glissandos to a frequency spread of three octaves. Put that through a few thousand watts of a speaker system, play it before Jedi, and the audience will be listening.

The original THX Deep Note was created on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware running 20,000 lines of code, but that was in 1983. Now we have cheap microcontrollers, so of course, you can now fit the Deep Note in your pocket. You can even make it a game. That’s exactly what [Bob] did with his Deep Synth. It’s the Deep Note, in a Game Boy-ish format.

The hardware for this build is the 1Bitsy 1UP, a retro-inspired handheld game console from [Bob]’s friend [Pitor]. Onboard the 1Bitsy is an STM32 F4 running at 168 MHz with a 2.8″ LCD, SD card reader, and the traditional Game Boy control scheme. All the games are up to you.

[Bob] wrote an audio driver for the 1UP, but needed a good audio demo. Since the Deep Note was a good enough demo for Lucasfilms, it would obviously be a good enough demo for a microcontroller. In far less than 20,000 lines of code, [Bob] made the 1UP polyphonic, and it was surprisingly fast enough to synthesize around thirty oscillators. It actually sounds like the Deep Note, too. You can check out a video (and audio) of that after the break.

Continue reading “Turning The Deep Note Into A Game” →

What The Hack Is This Thing?

October 21, 2018 by Mike Szczys 46 Comments

Let’s play a guessing game. Shown here is a sneak peek at the rear view of a hardware demo being built specifically for the Hackaday Superconference in Pasadena this November 2-4. It’s sure to be a crowd pleaser when finished, but if you’re anything like us, studying what’s behind the finished face of a project like this is even more satisfying than seeing the final product.

If you think you know what it is, you can score yourself a free hardware badge from the conference! Leave a comment below with your best guess about what this is — we’ll pick whoever is closest to win the badge.

Want a closer look? Click here to embiggen.

Update: We have a winner!

It didn’t take long at all for Zardam to realize this a replicate of the console for the Hal 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Congrats!

Some comments on the build from Voja Antonic:

The red round board at the bottom is the PIR motion sensor, the part of another project which is not related neither to HAL nor to the badge. There is a clearly visible 915 MHz module, which is disconnected and has no function in this project.

It is connected to the lower left Raspberry just because it has to be supplied with about 3V and it uses Raspberry’s LDO. It also generates Reset signal for all four Raspis, as it turned out that the 5V supply (bottom right) delivers the slow-rise voltage when turned on, so Raspis won’t boot at all without the external Reset.

When someone walks in front of HAL, motion sensor randomly triggers one of 30 HAL’s sentences from the movie. That’s why the lower left Raspberry is connected to the amplifier and has an extra wire from the motion sensor board to GPIO 24.

And the demo video:

The Prize for Guessing Correctly:

Voja Antonics builds beautiful hardware. The Hackaday Superconference badge is a piece of art, as is the Hal 9000 console. Voja will be at Supercon along with hundreds of other awesome hackers. Come join us for a weekend you’ll never forget!

HTTPS For The Internet Of Things

October 21, 2018 by Lewin Day 42 Comments

Every day, we’re connecting more and more devices over the internet. No longer does a household have a single connected computer — there are smartphones, tablets, HVAC systems, deadbolts — you name it, it’s been connected. As the Internet of Things proliferates, it has become readily apparent that security is an issue in this space. [Andreas Spiess] has been working on this very problem, by bringing HTTPS to the ESP8266 and ESP32.

Being the most popular platform for IOT devices, it makes sense to start with the ESP devices when improving security. In his video, [Andreas] starts at the beginning, covering the basics of SSL, before branching out into how to use these embedded systems with secure cloud services, and the memory requirements to do so. [Andreas] has made the code available on GitHub so it can be readily included in your own projects.

Obviously implementing increased security isn’t free; there’s a cost in terms of processing power, memory, and code complexity. However, such steps are crucial if IOT devices are to become trusted in wider society. A malfunctioning tweeting coffee pot is one thing, but being locked out of your house is another one entirely.

We’ve seen other takes on ESP8266 security before, too. Expect more to come as this field continues to expand.

[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!]

Dollar Store Helping Hands For Soldering

October 21, 2018 by Al Williams 20 Comments

Although [I Love To Make] appears to have text in Chinese, their recent video (see below) is like a wordless workshop so it won’t matter if you are up on your Mandarin or not. The soldering vise looks like it mostly came from a dollar store (or perhaps a yaun store).

As far as we can tell, the assembly is two utility clips like you might use on a cork board or to seal up chips, a Micro SIM cutter, and TV rabbit ears. Oh, and a syringe. The rabbit ears get mostly destroyed in the build process. You have to do some cutting and plastic melting, too (we might have used a drill), but nothing you couldn’t do with some simple hand tools. They don’t show it, but apparently, they drilled a hole in the SIM cutter, so you’ll need a drill anyway.

Continue reading “Dollar Store Helping Hands For Soldering” →

Finally, An Open Source MIDI Foot Controller

October 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

MIDI has been around for longer than most of the readers of Hackaday, and you can get off my lawn. In spite of this, MIDI is still commonly used in nearly every single aspect of musical performance, and there are a host of tools and applications to give MIDI control to a live performance. That said, if you want a MIDI foot controller, your best bet is probably something used from the late 90s, although Behringer makes an acceptable foot controller that doesn’t have a whole bunch of features. There is obviously a need for a feature packed, Open Source MIDI foot controller. That’s where the Pedalino comes in. It’s a winner of the Musical Instrument Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, and if you want a MIDI foot controller, this is the first place you should look.

With the Pedalino, you can change the presets of your guitar rig, turn old MIDI equipment into something that’s USB-compatible, give you hands-free or foot-occupied ways to control your rig during a live performance, and it can be expanded with WiFi or Bluetooth. This is a full-featured MIDI controller, with three user profiles, and it can control a maximum of 48 foot switches. That’s an impressive amount of kit for such a small device; usually you’d have to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a simple MIDI controller, and the Pedalino does everything with very cheap hardware.

While the Pedalino is just in its prototype phase now, there is obviously a market for a feature-packed MIDI foot controller. It might just be a breadboard and a Fritzing diagram, but there’s significant work being done on the software side, and we’re looking forward to this being stuffed into a gigantic aluminum enclosure and velcroed to a pedal board.