Day: February 20, 2020

How Does Starlink Work Anyway?

February 20, 2020 by 128 Comments

No matter what you think of Elon Musk, it’s hard to deny that he takes the dictum “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” to heart. From hurling sports cars into orbit to solar-powered roof destroyers, there’s little that Mr. Musk can’t turn into a net positive for at least one of his many ventures, not to mention his image.

Elon may have gotten in over his head, though. His plan to use his SpaceX rockets to fill the sky with thousands of satellites dedicated to providing cheap Internet access ran afoul of the astronomy community, which has decried the impact of the Starlink satellites on observations, both in the optical wavelengths and further down the spectrum in the radio bands. And that’s with only a tiny fraction of the planned constellation deployed; once fully built-out, they fear Starlink will ruin Earth-based observation forever.

What exactly the final Starlink constellation will look like and what impact it would have on observations depend greatly on the degree to which it can withstand regulatory efforts and market forces. Assuming it does survive and gets built out into a system that more or less resembles the current plan, what exactly will Starlink do? And more importantly, how will it accomplish its stated goals?

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Counter-Strike Gets The RGB LED Treatment

February 20, 2020 by 6 Comments

Inspired by the over-the-top stage lighting and pyrotechnics used during e-sport events, [Hans Peter] set out to develop a scaled-down version (minus the flames) for his personal Counter-Strike: Global Offensive sessions. It might seem like pulling something like this off would involve hacking the game engine, but as it turns out, Valve was kind enough to implement a game state API that made it relatively easy.

According to the documentation, the CS:GO client can be configured to send out state information to a HTTP server at regular intervals. It even provided example code for implementing a simple state server in Node.js, which [Hans] adapted for this project by adding some conditional statements that analyze the status of the current game.

These functions fire off serial commands to the attached Arduino, which in turn controls the WS2812B LEDs. The Arduino code takes the information provided by the HTTP server and breaks that down into various lighting routines for different conditions such as wins and losses. But things really kick into gear when a bomb is active.

[Hans] wanted to synchronize the flashing LEDs with the beeping sound the bomb makes in the game, but the API doesn’t provide granular enough data. So he recorded the audio of the bomb arming sequence, used Audacity to precisely time the beeps, and implemented the sequence in his Arduino code. In the video after the break you can see that the synchronization isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly close enough to get the point across in the heat of battle.

With the special place that Counter-Strike occupies in the hearts of hackers and gamers alike, it’s little surprise people are still finding unique ways to experience the game.

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The Art Of USB Dongle Repair

February 20, 2020 by 40 Comments

Faced with a broken USB dongle for our wireless devices, most of us would likely bin the part and order a replacement, after all the diminutive size of those things probably means hard to impossible repairability, right? Well, [The Equalizor] took it as a challenge and used the opportunity to practice his microscopic soldering skills just for funsies.

The wireless adapter in question, which came from one of his clients who accidentally bent it while it was plugged into a laptop, refused to be recognized by a computer under any circumstances. After sliding out the metal casing for the USB plug and snapping off the plastic housing, [The Equalizor] discovered that the slightly bent exterior hid a deeply cracked PCB. Then, with an inspection of the severed traces and lifted components, it was simply a matter of reflowing solder a few times to try to make the board whole again. Once the dongle was confirmed working, a new 3D shell was printed for it, replacing the original which had to be broken off.

It might not seem extraordinary to some people, but this video is a good example to show that repairs to delicate electronics in such a small scale are feasible, and can serve to reduce the amount of electronic waste we constantly dump out. Just because some electronics seem dauntingly elaborate or beyond salvaging, it doesn’t always mean there isn’t light at the end of the tunnel. You can see the work performed on this tiny dongle after the break.

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