Back To The Future Part II, released in 1989, told us the far-off future of 2015 would have flying cars, drones working for national newspapers, and self-lacing sneakers. Our best hope for flying cars is Uber, and that’s going to be hilarious when it fails. (Note to Uber: buy KSMO, Santa Monica airport, as an air taxi hub because that’s the most hilarious of all possible realities.) National newspapers — heck, even newspapers — don’t exist anymore. Self-lacing sneakers? Nike’s self-lacing sneakers brick themselves with a firmware update. Don’t worry, it’s only the left shoe.
HackSpace magazine Vol. 16 is out, and there’s a few pages dedicated to Tindie from the person who runs it, our fabulous [Jasmine]. There’s some good tips in here for Tindie sellers — especially shipping — and a good introduction to what Tindie actually is. The three-second elevator pitch of, ‘Etsy but for DIY electronics’ is not in the feature, though.
Is it duct tape or duck tape? That’s a silly question, because it’s ‘duck’ tape, but that’s not important. Gaffer tape is superior. [Ross Lowell], the inventor of gaffer tape, passed away last week at the age of 92.
[Peter Stripol] has a hobby of building ultralights in his basement. Actually, he has a hangar now, so everything’s good. His first two planes flew as Part 103 ultralights, however, there were design problems. [Peter] is using an electric powerplant, with motors and batteries, which is much lighter than a gas-chugging Rotax. However, he was still basing his designs on traditional ultralights. His now third build will be slightly more trimmed down, probably a little bit faster, and might just use 3D-printed control surfaces. Check out the intro to the mk3 airplane here.
[Matthias Wandel], the woodworking Canadian famous for designing the pantorouter, just built a three-legged stool. Sure, that doesn’t sound impressive, but check this out. All the weird mortises were done on the pantorouter, and there are some weird mortises here.
You’re only cool if you got chainz, so here’s some PCB chainz. This was done by [@jeffwurz] with OSHPark PCBs. The design, from as far as we can tell, is simple. It’s just a PCB without a soldermask, and a small cutout in one of the links. Assemble it into a chain, and if you’re clever, solder some resistor leads across the gap to make it a bit more solid.
ASMR, or officially, ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’, is the tingling sensation moving down your back induced by specific auditory (or visual) stimuli. That’s the scientific definition. On the Internet, it’s people breathing into microphones and smacking their lips. Yes, there are videos of this. Thousands of them. There are 11-year-old girls raking in the YouTube money posting ASMR videos. It’s weird and gross, and don’t get me started on slime videos. You’ve also got unboxing videos. The Raspberry Pi foundation found a way to combine ASMR with unboxing videos. I gotta respect the hustle here; ASMR and unboxing videos are some of the most popular content available, and the Pi foundation is not only combining the two, but doing so ironically. It’s exactly the content everyone wants to see, and it’ll bring in people who hate ASMR and unboxing videos. Someone over at the Pi foundation really knows what they’re doing here.
Wait… a gas engine + 5gal gas is heavier than a motor + batteries (in an ultralight)? Since when? This changes everything!
Also IIRC part 103 limits the amount of fuel you may carry on board. How do the regs apply to battery power?
He did the math, and I was surprised too.
The great thing about using gas is that it gets lighter the longer you keep flying. That’s what kills *large* electric planes.
I am pretty sure that greg was being sarcastic. Everyone knows that there is ware more chemical energy density in combustion (gasoline/kerosene/etc + air) then batteries. Not to mention the fact that batteries do not get (appreciably) lighter as they are discharged.
The only time when you come out ahead mass wise is for very short (few-minute) run times where the battery mass is less than the mass of an engine and associated support equipment.
Iirc the batteries count as part of the overall weight of the aircraft, as opposed to being able to be reomved like gasoline. That being said, I don’t think there is a limit on the amount of batteries you can carry, aside from weight.
Duct.
Duct, if you’re stupid enough to put it on ducting.
It’s duct tape, but ShurTech makes Duck Brand(tm) Duct Tape, aka proper Duck Tape(tm). So if you say “Duck Tape” you’re referring to a specific brand of duct tape.
Yeah, because when people refer to Band-Aid, they’re definitely meaning Band-Aid™ brand bandages…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY&w=560&h=315%5D
You are all wrong it is Gaffer tape :)
Nope. Gaffer’s tape :P
Also known as Gapheur’s tape…
The original was “duck” tape, due to it being made for, and holding, when splashed.
Someone decided “duct” was an easy way around risking getting sued.
And idiots all over put in on ducting and got to watch it fail.
If you’ve got ducting, use the foil tape.
There’s suppose to be heavy-duty duct tape for stuff like flexpipe.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Nashua-1-89-in-Duct-Tape/3432852
Okay, where do I get that giant flat chunk of 8020-esque aluminum extrusion that serves as the Pantorouter table?
It’s called a “T-Slot Fixture Plate”
That brings up something very similar, but not quite the same. It looks like his is actually 8020-style extruded aluminum, which is important to me because it would work with all my existing fasteners. The fixture plates I’m seeing are mostly milled steel, with slot dimensions substantially different.
I dug around a little on the Pantorouter sites and can’t find a part number for exactly the material he’s using, but I’ll keep looking. Thanks for the terms!
Duct, not duck.
Is there any way that HaD could have “startTime”-based older/newer buttons the way Gawker (for example) sites do? As it is now, with the pages constantly changing, it’s a pain in the butt to keep track of where you are.
you can browse by day rather than page number.
so to see this article (and the others from this day) you’d visit
https://hackaday.com/2019/02/24/
I don’t like to miss any article. which was fine until i skipped a couple of weeks and hackaday hired a gazillion writers, and now here i am, 3 months behind.