DJ Hero Controller Gets A New Gig

February 24, 2020 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Fans of the Guitar Hero etc. franchise may be interested to hear about Spin Rhythm XD, a similar rhythm game which uses a jog wheel for much of the chase-down-the-notes action. Although it can be played with a keyboard and mouse, the ideal input is a professional DJ MIDI controller — imagine two capacitive “turntables” the size of 45s, and a lot of buttons, knobs, and sliders.

Like most of us, [Dave] doesn’t have one of those. But what he does have is an old DJ Hero controller made for the Wii. It’s a lot like the big boy version of a DJ MIDI controller as far as the inputs go, except that the turntable isn’t capacitive.

Since the Wii brain is just sending I²C over a funny-looking connector, [Dave] was able to replace the Wiimote with a Teensy LC, and write new firmware for the controller inputs using a breakout board built for another project.

[Dave] tried to use as many of the DJ Hero controller’s inputs as he could, so in addition to mapping the wheel and wheel buttons to the main game controls, he wired up the joystick, effects knob, and buttons to navigate through the game menus. The game’s designers had the forethought to map these to keyboard keys, so it was pretty easy to do. He can even use dual turntables and mix or isolate them with the crossfader. Slide past the break to check out the build video, and stick around for a full-length song demo.

Are these games a little too frantic for you? Turn those ‘tables into an Etch-A-Sketch instead.

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Ethics Whiplash As Sonos Tries Every Possible Wrong Way To Handle IoT Right

February 24, 2020 by Gerrit Coetzee 158 Comments

We’re trying to figure out whether Sonos was doing the right thing, and it’s getting to the point where we need pins, a corkboard, and string. Sonos had been increasing the functionality of its products and ran into a problem as they hit a technical wall. How would they keep the old speakers working with the new speakers? Their solution was completely bizarre to a lot of people.

First, none of the old speakers would receive updates anymore. Which is sad, but not unheard of. Next they mentioned that if you bought a new speaker and ran it on the same network as an old speaker, neither speaker would get updates. Which came off as a little hostile, punishing users for upgrading to newer products.

The final bit of weirdness was their solution for encouraging users to ditch their old products. They called it, “trading in for a 30% discount”, but it was something else entirely. If a user went into the system menu of an old device and selected to put it in “Recycle Mode” the discount would be activated on their account. Recycle Mode would then, within 30 days, brick the device. There was no way to cancel this, and once the device was bricked it wouldn’t come back. The user was then instructed to take the Sonos to a recycling center where it would be scrapped. Pictures soon began to surface of piles of bricked Sonos’s. There would be no chance to sell, repair, or otherwise keep alive what is still a fully functioning premium speaker system.

Why would a company do this to their customers and to themselves? Join me below for a guided tour of how the downsides of IoT ecosystem may have driven this choice.

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A Rope Maker You Can 3D Print At Home

February 24, 2020 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

Ropes are one of those things that, while possible to make by hand, having a little mechanical help goes a long way in their manufacture. [b33ma247] wanted just such a rig, so set about building one from scratch.

It’s a simple device, but one that makes the task much easier. A series of gears are printed, which assemble on to a frame to form the winding mechanism that weaves the rope. There’s also a slide, a rope separator, and a weight carriage to ensure proper tension is kept on the string during the weaving process. The mechanism is driven by a power drill, though this could be easily replaced with a hand crank if full manual operation was desired.

It’s a project which shows if you have a 3D printer, you can make a lot of other useful tools for your workshop too. We see similar approaches taken when it comes time to wind coils, too. Video after the break.

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Multiple 3D Printers, And One Pi To Rule Them All

February 24, 2020 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

If you’ve got a desktop 3D printer, there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard of OctoPrint. This web front-end, usually running on a Raspberry Pi, allows you to monitor and control the printer over the network from any device that has a browser. But what if you’ve got two printers? Or 20? The logistics of each printer getting its own Pi can get uncomfortable in a hurry, which is why [Jay Doscher] has been working on a way to simplify things.

Leveraging the boosted processing power of the Raspberry Pi 4 and some good old fashioned Linux trickery, [Jay] is now controlling multiple printers from a single device. The trick is to run multiple instances of the OctoPrint backend and assign them to virtual network interfaces so they don’t interfere with each other. This takes some custom systemd unit files to get up and running on Raspbian, which he’s been kind enough to include them in the write-up.

But getting multiple copies of OctoPrint running on the Pi is only half the battle. There still needs to be a way to sort out which printer is which. Under normal circumstances, the printers would be assigned random virtual serial ports when the Pi booted. To prevent any confusion, [Jay] explains how you can use custom udev rules to make sure that each printer gets its own unique device node. Even if you aren’t trying to wrangle multiple 3D printers, this is a useful trick should you find yourself struggling to keep track of your USB gadgets.

If you’re wondering why [Jay] needs to have so many 3D printers going at the same time, we hear they’ve been keeping rather busy running off parts for commissioned copies of his popular projects. Something to consider the next time you’re wondering if there’s a way to make a happy buck out of this little hobby of ours, folks.