Year: 2019

We’re Hiring: Come Join Us!

June 7, 2019 by 33 Comments

You wake up in the morning, and check Hackaday over breakfast. Then it’s off to work or school, where you’ve already had to explain the Jolly Wrencher to your shoulder-surfing colleagues. And then to a hackspace or back to your home lab, stopping by the skull-and-cross-wrenches while commuting, naturally. You don’t bleed red, but rather #F3BF10. It’s time we talked.

The Hackaday writing crew goes to great lengths to cover all that is interesting to engineers and enthusiasts. We find ourselves stretched a bit thin and it’s time to ask for help. Want to lend a hand while making some extra dough to plow back into your projects? We’re looking for contributors to write a few articles per week and keep the Hackaday flame burning.

Contributors are hired as private contractors and paid for each article. You should have the technical expertise to understand the projects you write about, and a passion for the wide range of topics we feature. You’ll have access to the Hackaday Tips Line, and we count on your judgement to help us find the juicy nuggets that you’d want to share with your hacker friends.

If you’re interested, please email our jobs line (jobs at hackaday dot com) and include:

  • One example post written in the voice of Hackaday. Include a banner image, at least 150 words, the link to the project, and any in-links to related and relevant Hackaday features. We need to know that you can write.
  • Details about your background (education, employment, interests) that make you a valuable addition to the team. What do you like, and what do you do?
  • Links to your blog/project posts/etc. that have been published on the Internet, if any.

What are you waiting for? Ladies and Gentlemen, start your applications!

BikeOn Makes Electric Conversion A Snap

June 7, 2019 by 66 Comments

If you’re in a relatively urban area and your destination is within a reasonable distance, it’s hard to argue against riding your bike rather than taking a car. It’s a positive for the environment, and great way to exercise and keep active. But some of us, say folks who write for the Internet full-time, might appreciate a little electromechanical advantage when the going gets tough.

In an effort to make electrifying your bike as easy as possible, [Shushanik] and [Aram] are working on a product they call BikeOn which they’ve recently entered into the 2019 Hackaday Prize. Thanks to some very clever engineering, this small unit can clamp onto the frame of a standard bicycle and transfer the energy from its 350 watt motor directly into the rear wheel; all without any tools or permanent modifications.

In the video after the break, [Aram] demonstrates how the user can install the BikeOn motor assembly in literally just a few seconds. Naturally there’s a beefy battery that needs to get attached to the frame as well, but even that has been made modular enough that it can attach where many bikes have their water bottle holder.

The attentive reader will likely notice that there’s no obvious control mechanism for BikeOn. Instead of having to fumble around with it manually, BikeOn uses a combination of torque sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to intelligently determine when the rider could use a boost.

BikeOn nabbed Editor’s Choice award at Maker Faire 2019, and now that it’s in the running for the Hackaday Prize, we’re excited to see more information on the product as it moves towards commercial release.

Continue reading “BikeOn Makes Electric Conversion A Snap” →

Ask Hackaday: What Skills Would You Give A Twelve Year Old?

June 7, 2019 by 84 Comments

In several decades of hanging around people who make things, one meets a lot of people fascinated by locks, lock picking, and locksport. It’s interesting to be sure, but it had never gripped me until an evening in MK Makerspace when a fellow member had brought in his lockpicking box with its selection of locks, padlocks, and tools. I was shown the basics of opening cheap — read easy from that— padlocks, and though I wasn’t hooked for life I found it to be a fascinating experience. Discussing it the next day a friend remarked that it was an essential skill they’d taught their 12-year-old, which left me wondering, just what skills would you give to a 12-year-old? Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: What Skills Would You Give A Twelve Year Old?” →

Hackaday Podcast 022: King Of Power Banks, Great SDR Hacks, Sand Reflow, And Rat Rod Mower

June 7, 2019 by 3 Comments

Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys dig through the most interesting hacks from the past week. On this episode we take a look at a portable power bank build that defies belief. We discuss an all-in-one SDR portable, messing with restaurant pagers, and the software that’s common to both of these pursuits. There’s a hopping robot that is one heck of a PID challenge, and another robot that does nothing but stare you down. We bring it on home with great articles on pianos with floppy disks, and that satellite cluster you should be watching for in the night sky.

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.)

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 022: King Of Power Banks, Great SDR Hacks, Sand Reflow, And Rat Rod Mower” →

StrollerController Free Parents From Menial Labor

June 7, 2019 by 10 Comments

Raising young children is hard work, and parents need all the help they can get. There’s a whole industry catering to parents who are willing to pay to make their lives a little easier. Then, we have hacker minded parents like [Sam Pearce] who build his own solutions like joystick-controlled motorized strollers. His kids have fun taking their first steps into independent autonomy, dad has freed up his hands from pushing strollers, and everyone wins!

We were impressed when we saw [Sam] and his StrollerController zipping along at Maker Faire Bay Area 2019. Normally the only way young children get to control their own vehicle is in a field of bumper cars or a constrained track like Autopia. These lucky kids can drive around without being constrained by pen or track. This will give them a great early start on their driver’s license test, assuming autonomous vehicles haven’t taken over by the time they grow up.

The StrollerController we saw is a two part affair, each capable of independent operation:

StrollerController v1 is a stroller enhanced with motor gearbox from cordless drills driving rear wheels. Its top speed can be constrained by a limiter depending on the child pilot’s driving proficiency. It also has a bright red emergency stop button on top, plus a remote controlled kill switch held by a supervising adult.

StrollerController v2 is a pusher module equipped with much faster wheelchair motors under an grownup-sized standing platform. Welded to the front is a pair of brackets to dock with either a regular non-motorized stroller or StrollerController v1. The linked system delivers expedient travel for both parent and child.

For such a display of inventive ingenuity and resourcefulness, this project won a well-deserved Editor’s Choice ribbon from Maker Faire. We hope such recognition and enthusiasm from other Maker Faire attendees helped motivate [Sam] as he continues to improve StrollerController.

This Week In Security: Nvidia, Ransomware Retirement, And A TOCTOU Bug In Docker

June 7, 2019 by 2 Comments

Nvidia’s GeForce Experience (GFE) is the companion application for the Nvidia drivers, keeping said drivers up to date, as well as adding features around live streaming and media capture. The application runs as two parts, a GUI, and a system service, using an HTTP API to communicate. [David Yesland] from Rhino Security Labs decided to look into this API, searching for interesting, undocumented behavior, and shared the results on Sunday the 2nd.

The first interesting finding was that the service was written in Javascript and run using Node.js. Javascript is a scripting language, not a compiled language — the source code of the service was open for studying. This led to the revelation that API requests would be accepted from any origin, so long as the request included the proper security token. The application includes an update mechanism, which allows an authorized API call to execute an arbitrary system command. So long as the authentication token isn’t leaked to an attacker, this still isn’t a problem, right? Continue reading “This Week In Security: Nvidia, Ransomware Retirement, And A TOCTOU Bug In Docker” →

Mech Warfare: Like Driving A Building-Sized Robot Through A Busy City

June 7, 2019 by 20 Comments

The sound a set of machined robot legs tapping on concrete make is remarkable. If for nothing more, the video after the break is worth watching just for this. It’s what caught my attention when I first wandered by the Mech Warfare area at Maker Faire, as one of the competitors had their bot out wandering around as a demo during the setup day.

Installing target plate
Making sure the ammo is set to go

This is truly a hacker’s robotics competition. There are constraints, but there’s also a lot of room for freedom. Meet a dozen or so requirements and you be as creative as you want with the rest. My favorite part is that this is not a destructive event like many the battle-based robot TV shows that tend to turn my stomach. Instead, these robots each carry an electric AirSoft gun and seek to hit any of four target panels on their competitor’s robot. Continue reading “Mech Warfare: Like Driving A Building-Sized Robot Through A Busy City” →