Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys gather round the microphone to spin tales from a week of hacks. All the rage are fax-machine-based malware, a hydrogen fuel cell drone, and bringing color to the monochrome world of the original Super Mario Land. There are at least three really cool LED hacks this week, plus Tom’s been exploring space advertising, Maya’s debunking solder myths, and Elliot goes ga-ga for a deep Ikea electronics hack. Closing out the show is an interview with Bart Dring about his exquisitely-engineered string art robot.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download (60 MB or so.)
Episode 018 Show Notes:
New This Week:
- 6th Annual Hackaday x Tindie MFBA Meetup w/ Kickstarter
- New, larger venue!
- Hackaday article: 6th Annual Hackaday x Tindie MFBA Meetup with a New, Larger Venue
- Please RSVP: The 6th Annual Hackaday x Tindie MFBA Meetup w/ Kickstarter Tickets
- Thursday evening before MFBA: HDDG 39: The Only Makers That You Want To Meet
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Drone
- Faxsploit – Exploiting A Fax With A Picture
- Lots of Blinky! ESP32 Drives 20,000 WS2812 LEDs
- Ripping Up A Rothult
- LED Matrix And A Phototransistor Make A Reverse Camera
- Utterly Precise Light Painting, Thanks to CNC and Stop Motion
Quick Hacks:
- Mike’s Picks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
Can’t-Miss Articles:
- Get To Know The Physics Behind Soldering And The Packaging Of ICs
- This Space for Rent: Advertisements in Orbit
Interview:
Bart Dring turns out some of our favorite machine builds. You’ve likely seen his work which he publishes on BuildLog.net and his YouTube Channel.
- We discussed the design process for his incredible string art machine.
- Bart did an excellent plotter robot workshop at 2018 Hackaday Supercon
- Here’s the belt dispenser for his string plotter.
Is there a way for Hackaday to publish an RSS for their podcast on Soundcloud? I have a hard time listening to podcasts without an RSS feed.
Absolutely, we already have one that we link to in each of these show notes articles:
http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:93913472/sounds.rss
HYDROGEN DONES? – What about some spell check :D
Fair trade solder is a thing, look for HS10 fair: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&q=stannol+hs10+fair
On the topic of being unable to heat up large pads, etc, it’s better to think of the issue as dissipating energy quickly – yes, one could just turn the soldering iron up to a really high heat but, for all the reasons Maya discussed, it’s not the ideal solution. If you need to heat a large pad or cable that seems to struggle when using your small soldering iron bit (at sensible temperatures) I was taught to use a larger tip to get better coverage.
Oh, and the bookmarks (well, comments) you’ve added to the SoundCloud listing is a nice touch (not that one should listen to just one bit, unless you’re trying to make it easier to find the quick-hacks intro “music” – I think the jazzy one from EP16? has been the closest to being a ‘pro’ intro so far :)
Hope the desk is tidy again (loving the outros that are snuck on the end)
The pro tip for soldering heat sinks is to get the whole shebang up to a just-not-melting temperature (150 C? 175 C?) so that less heat flows away from the area where you want it to melt (proportional to temperature difference, etc.). I’ve only had to do that once in my life, but it’s surprisingly effective. Go physics!
The quick and dirty, pump heat in faster than it leaks out, still works. That was a bit out of the scope of Maya’s piece, but that’s also why you don’t usually get chip damage from wet chips when hand soldering. If you just solder the leads, and you heat them hot and fast, the inside of the chip doesn’t get a chance to equilibrate to the outside, and there’s no water boiling off. Contrast to wave / reflow soldering.
Anywhoooo….
Glad you like the bookmarks.
Re: Bloopers in the intro/outro. That started by accident, funnily enough. I was using some 1990s studio gear for our first few podcasts, b/c no good USB interface, and some random comments like “should we start? OK, let’s go!” were on the tape and perfectly in sync with the intro music, so I just knocked the volume down and left them there. Now I have to seek them out and carefully place ’em. :)
And for the true heads: Mike was bleeped out with DTMF tones.
My desk will soon be shut down by the health department. I might need to get a new office ;-p