Windows Utility Helps ID Serial Ports

May 22, 2019 by Lewin Day 49 Comments

The humble serial interface has been around for a very long time, and will stay with us in one form or other for the foreseeable future. It was easy enough to keep track of back in the days when a computer only had one, or perhaps two COM ports. However, in this day and age of USB-programmable microcontrollers, it’s likely you’ve got COMs coming out the wazoo. Thankfully, [Amr Bekhit] has put together a utility to help solve this problem.

[Amr’s] utility is called Serial Port Monitor, and it does what it says on the tin. When new serial ports are enumerated in Device Manager, a system tray notification pops up noting the number of the newly attached COM port. Additionally, it maintains a list of ports sorted in order of the newest first, and also features a right-click menu that allows the launching of various terminal programs.

It’s a useful tool to keep in your back pocket that can prove particularly so when programming many devboards at once, or any other time when you find yourself dealing with a mess of serial devices.

Incidentally, if you find yourself having continual headaches with USB-to-Serial adapters on Windows, this might just be your problem. Happy hacking.

Footnote: In light of this article, the author would like to formally apologise to [Cosmos2000] for permanently disabling COM1 on his main programming rig. Sorry, friend.

Wolfram Engine Now Free… Sort Of

May 22, 2019 by Al Williams 7 Comments

You’ve probably used Wolfram Alpha and maybe even used the company’s desktop software for high-powered math such as Mathematica. One of the interesting things about all of Wolfram’s mathematics software is that it shares a common core engine — the Wolfram Engine. As of this month, the company is allowing free use of the engine in software projects. The catch? It is only for preproduction use. If you are going into production you need a license, although a free open source project can apply for a free license. Naturally, Wolfram gets to decide what is production, although the actual license is pretty clear that non-commercial projects for personal use and approved open source projects can continue to use the free license. In addition, work you do for a school or large company may already be covered by a site license.

Given how comprehensive the engine is, this is reasonably generous. The engine even has access to the Wolfram Knowledgebase (with a free Basic subscription). If you don’t want to be connected, though, you don’t have to be. You just won’t be able to get live data. If you want to play with the engine, you can use the Wolfram Cloud Sandbox in which you can try some samples.

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Playing NES Games On An Industrial EL Display

May 22, 2019 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Modern consoles are fun, but there are certain charms to retro gear that keep hackers entertained to this day. The original NES is a particularly ripe ground for projects, being one of the most popular consoles of its era. [kevtris] is one such Nintendo hacker, and decided to get NES games running on an old-school electroluminescent display (Youtube video, embedded below).

The display in this project was originally used in an industrial pick-and-place machine.

Rather than work with an original NES, [kevtris] chose to instead work with the NT Mini, an FPGA-based clone of his own design. Having picked up an EL640.480-AA1 screen, formerly from a DEK 265LT pick-and-place machine, he hunted down a data sheet and got to work. With the document outlining the required video input specifications, it was a simple matter of whipping up some Verilog and an adapter cable to get things working.

Mario, Kirby and friends can now run around, looking resplendent in the 9 colors of the red/green EL display. [kevtris] notes that the screen performs well with fast motion, and estimates the refresh rate to be in the vicinity of 60Hz. For those of you playing along at home, such screens are available online, though they’re not exactly cheap.

We’ve seen [kevtris]’s work before, with his SNES chiptune player being particularly impressive. Video after the break.

[Thanks to Morris for the tip!]

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Dummy Security Camera Is Smarter Than It Looks

May 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

The idea behind a dummy security camera is that people who are up to no good might think twice about doing anything to your property when they think they’re being recorded. Obviously a real security camera would be even better, but sometimes that’s just not economically or logistically possible. Admittedly they’re not always very convincing, but for a few bucks, hopefully it’s enough to make the bad guys think twice.

But what if that “fake” camera could do a little more than just look pretty up on the wall? [Chris Chimienti] thought he could improve the idea by adding some electronics that would notify him if motion was detected. As an added bonus, any would-be criminals who might be emboldened by the realization the camera itself is fake might find themselves in for a rude surprise when the notifications start firing off.

In the video after the break, [Chris] really takes his time walking the viewer through the disassembly of the dummy camera. As it turns out, these things look like they’d make excellent project enclosures; they come apart easily, have nothing but empty space inside, and even have an integrated battery compartment. That alone could be a useful tip to file away for the future.

He then goes on to explain how he added some smarts to this dummy camera. Up where the original “lens” was, he installed a PIR sensor, some white LEDs, a light sensor, and the original blinking red LED. All of this was mounted to a very slick 3D printed plate which integrates into the camera’s body perfectly. The new hardware is connected up to a similarly well mounted Wemos D1 Mini inside the camera. The rest of the video goes through every aspect of the software setup, which is sure to be of interest to anyone who’s ever thought of rolling their own IoT device.

This type of PIR sensor is hacker favorite, and we’ve seen a number of projects using them for all sorts of creative purposes. We’ve even seen them paired with the ESP8266 before for Internet-connected motion sensing, albeit without the tidy security camera enclosure.

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Modern Evolution Of The Classic Water Rocket

May 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

Whether it was home-built from scraps or one of the various commercial versions that have popped over up over the years, there’s an excellent chance that the average Hackaday reader spent at least a couple of their more formative summers flying water rockets. You might not have realized it at the time, but with shirt soaked and head craned skywards, you were getting a practical physics lesson that was more relatable than anything out of a textbook. Water rockets are a great STEM tool for young people, but in a post-Fortnite world, the idea could use a little modernization to help keep kids engaged.

With his entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, [Darian Johnson] hopes to breathe some new life into this classic physics toy. His open source kit would provide a modular water rocket intended for a wide range of ages thanks to various payloads and upgrade options. The younger players would be content to simply see it take off, but high school students could outfit the craft with an electronic payload to capture performance data or an automatic parachute.

[Darian] has been building and flying rockets with his own children and other youth in community for years now, and has found them to be a huge hit. They became so popular that he started thinking of a way to not produce them in larger quantities, but make them stronger so they would survive more flights.

Of course, the fuselages are easy enough; there’s no shortage of one-liter bottles you can recycle. But for the nose cone, fins, and ultimately even the launch pad, [Darian] turned to 3D printing. This allows him to continually optimize the design while delivering repeatable performance. When he had a semi-printable water rocket on his hands, he started to wonder if he could get older kids interested by adding some electronics into the mix.

His current proof of concept is a flight data recorder using a Adafruit nRF52 Bluefruit LE Feather, a BMP280 sensor to determine altitude via barometric pressure, and an SD card breakout for local data storage. Long term, [Darian] wants to be able to stream flight data to student’s phones over Bluetooth, with the SD card providing a local copy which can be analyzed after the flight.

[Darian] has leaned heavily on the open source community for the various components of his water rocket kit, and is dedicated to giving back. He hopes that his final kit will allow communities to create engaging STEM activities at little to no cost. This includes creating a repository of lesson plans and designs contributed from others experimenting with water rockets. It’s a noble goal, and we’re excited to see how the project progresses.

From Dirt To Space, Backyard Iron Smelting Hackerspace Style

May 22, 2019 by Jenny List 21 Comments

When I went to a hacker camp in the Netherlands in February I was expecting to spend a few days in a comfortable venue with a bunch of friends, drink some beer, see a chiptune gig, and say “Ooh!” a lot at the exciting projects people brought along. I did all of those things, but I also opened the door to something unexpected. The folks from RevSpace in the Hague brought along their portable forge, and before long I found myself working a piece of hot rebar while wearing comically unsuitable clothing. One thing led to another, and I received an invite to come along and see another metalworking project of theirs: to go form ore to ornamental technology all in one weekend.

From Dirt To Space is a collaboration between Dutch hackerspaces with a simple aim: to take iron ore and process it into a component that will be launched into space. The full project is to be attempted at the German CCCamp hacker camp in August, but to test the equipment and techniques a trial run was required. Thus I found myself in a Le Shuttle car transporter train in the Channel Tunnel, headed for the Hack42 hackerspace in Arnhem where all the parties involved would convene.

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A Very Modern Flying Spot Scanner

May 22, 2019 by Jenny List 16 Comments

Analogue TV signals are a beautiful exercise in order and synchronisation, in that as the white dot on your old CRT TV back in the day traced its way across the glass it would have been doing so in faithful obedience to the corresponding electron beam in the camera at the studio. But a camera with a lens and light-sensitive scanning camera tube wouldn’t have been the only way of generating a picture. The flying-spot scanner drew a raster over its subject — usually celluloid film — with a white dot of light and recorded the result with a single photocell to produce a video signal. The ever resourceful [Niklas Roy] has built one using a video projector.

In this scanner the “dot” is a square of white pixels that is moved around the scene, while the sensor is a photoresistor that is read by an Arduino which passes the data to a PC. The whole is mounted in a booth that the subject positions themselves in front of, and covers their head with a cloth. It’s a slow process because the photoresistor is hardly the best sensor, in fact a portrait takes 83 seconds.

The result is hardly superlative quality, but of course this is an artwork in itself rather than a particularly good camera. It is however an impressive piece of work, and we know we’d give it a go if we had the chance.

[Niklas] is a frequent feature on these pages, having produces some pretty impressive work over the years. Some of our favourites are his container-sized music construction machine, and his tiny cardboard plotter.