Dim Hallway Gets Lighting Upgrade

May 27, 2020 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

There’s nothing worse than a lightswitch that’s nowhere near where it should be, leaving you fumbling around in the dark. [supersquirrel72] had just this problem, and decided to put an Arduino to work instead.

Rather than using the original mains lighting that was poorly positioned and not enough to light the hall, instead 2 meters of white LED strip was chosen. The form factor is perfect for lighting a long, thin space – far better than running a series of seperate bulbs. The strip was rigged up to an Arduino Uno, that triggers the lights when movement is detected with a simple PIR motion sensor. After some feedback from the other occupants of the house, it was decided to tweak things further. An RTC was implemented to allow the Arduino to keep things dimmer after 9PM, so as to not wake others when making a trip to the kitchen for a midnight snack.

It’s a simple solution which brightens up the hallway nicely. We imagine this could just be the first step to a yet-more-integrated lighting solution in [supersquirrel72]’s house. Whether it’s IOT lights or something more festive, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Slaying Dragons In Notepad

May 27, 2020 by Sven Gregori 5 Comments

We all have our favorite text editor, and are willing to defend its superiority above all other editors by any means necessary. And then there’s Notepad. But what Notepad may lack in text manipulation features, it compensates with its inconspicuous qualities as a gaming platform. Yes, you read that correctly, and [Sheepolution] delivers the proof with a text-based adventure game running within Notepad.

What started out with [Sheepolution] jokingly wondering what such a game may look like, ended up as an actual implementation as answer to it. Behind the scenes, a script written in Lua using the LÖVE framework — for which he also created an extensive tutorial — monitors the state of several text files that make up the game world. Each location is a separate text file to open in Notepad, showing the current state of the game, telling the story with text and ASCII art, and offering choices to the player. The game is played by modifying and saving those text files, which the script then processes to push the gameplay forward by simply updating the content of those files with the new state. Check out the game’s trailer after the break to get a feel of what that looks like.

Unfortunately, Notepad itself doesn’t automatically reload the file when its content changes, so to provide a smoother gaming experience, [Sheepolution] modified the open source implementation Notepad2 to work around this, and bundled it as part of the game’s executable. Initially, he even added animations to the ASCII graphics, but in the end decided against most of them to avoid constant disk writes and race conditions caused by them.

Sure, this is no Game Boy emulator in a text editor, and it may not be as groundbreaking as Notepad’s latest feature, but it’s always amusing to see alternative uses for well-established tools.

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ATMega328 SSB SDR For Ham Radio

May 27, 2020 by Danie Conradie 23 Comments

The humble ATmega328 microcontroller, usually packaged as an Arduino Uno, is the gateway drug for millions of people into the world of electronics and embedded programming. Some people just can’t pass up the challenge of seeing how far they can push the old workhorse, and it looks like [Guido PE1NNZ] is one of those. He has managed to implement a software-defined SSB ham radio transceiver for the HF bands on the ATMega328, and it looks like the project is going places.

The radio started life as a QRP Labs QCX, a $49 single-band CW (morse code) HF transceiver kit that is already one of the cheapest ways to get on the HF bands. [Guido] reduced the part count of the radio by about 50%, implementing much of the signal processing digitally on the ATmega328. On the transmitter side, the SSB signal is generated by making slight frequency changes to a Si5351 clock generator using 800kbit/s I2C, and controlling a very efficient class-E RF power amplifier with PWM for about 5W of output power. The increased efficiency means that there is no need for the bulky heat sink usually seen on SSB radios. The radio is continuously tunable from 80m to 10m (3.5 Mhz – 30 Mhz), but it does require plugging in a different low pass filters for each band. Continue reading “ATMega328 SSB SDR For Ham Radio” →

Building A Serious Solar Inverter Battery Pack

May 27, 2020 by Lewin Day 35 Comments

If you’re out in the wilderness, having plenty of electricity on hand is a blessing. Eschewing fossil fuels, [LithiumSolar] is, as their name suggests, a fan of other technologies – undertaking the construction of a 3.5kWh solar generator that’s rugged and ready for the outdoors.

The build starts with 18650 lithium-ion cells sourced from a recycler, packed inside obsolete modem battery packs. After harvesting 390 cells, the best 364 are chosen and assembled into plastic holders to create a 14S26P configuration. A spot welder is employed to weld the pack together, with XT60 connectors used as the main bus connectors, albeit in a very non-standard configuration. Balance leads are hooked up to a 14S battery management system, to keep things in check. The huge pack is then installed inside a stout Craftsman toolbox, along with a MPPT solar charger module, and a 1500W inverter for output.

The build video is a great resource for anyone interested in building custom 18650 packs or battery solar power systems. [LithiumSolar] does a great job of clearly explaining each step and the reasons for part selections along the way. Of course, in a neat dovetail to this project, we’ve even seen solar-powered spot welders before – which would be useful if you need to replicate this build out in the field somewhere. Video after the break.

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EPaper Tablet Gets Desktop Linux Install

May 27, 2020 by Lewin Day 34 Comments

ePaper is an interesting thing, providing a non-backlit viewing experience that is much more akin to reading a book than staring at a screen. The reMarkable tablet is a device designed around just such a display, and [Davis Remmel] has been hacking away at the platform. His latest work brings full-fat Linux to the fore.

The work builds upon [Davis]’s earlier work, installing a microSD slot in the tablet to make development easier. Getting Linux running required a custom kernel, but once sorted, working with the reMarkable is easy. apt is available for easy software installs, and the tablet is demonstrated using several different pieces of software, like mtPaint and Xournal.

The golden part of all this has been getting automated partial screen refreshes working. ePaper displays take a long time to refresh the whole screen. Being able to do faster partial writes makes for a much faster interface, which is evident when some of the drawing software is demonstrated. Even Doom runs, but remains largely unplayable, sadly – the ePaper is still a long way off hitting 25 fps.

We look forward to seeing where [Davis] takes this project, and how display performance improves with newer reMarkable tablets. With the reMarkable 2 out for pre-order, there could be a step change in display speed on the horizon. We’re betting that there’s big things to come yet for ePaper – 2020 may finally be its year.

Losing A Wheel On Your Commute; 3-Wheelers Vie For The Open Road

May 27, 2020 by Jenny List 76 Comments

We live at an interesting point in time for the technologically minded motor vehicle enthusiast, and we stand on the brink of a major directional shift in how we imagine a car. Within ten years it’s likely that the electric motor will have moved from an extravagance or a fringe choice to a mainstream one, and a piston engine will be the preserve of an ever smaller niche market.

The Electrameccanica Solo three-wheeler car.

Along the way is it possible that the very form factor of an automobile will change, or will cars in decades hence have the same basic shape as those we’re used to? The Canadian company Electrameccanica certainly think so, because they’ve launched a refreshingly different take on commuter transport for one. Their Solo is a three-wheeler car, with two wheels at the front and one trailing wheel at the back configuration. It’s a bold design, but if it’s such an obvious one then why don’t we drive three-wheelers already?

It’s time to examine a few of the properties of a three-wheeler, and along the way visit some of the past attempts at this configuration.

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Useless Machine For An Existential Quandary

May 27, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

There’s no project that dives into existential quandaries more than a useless machine, as they can truly illustrate the futility of existence by turning themselves off once they have been powered on. Typically this is done with a simple switch, but for something that can truly put the lights out, and then re-illuminate them, [James]’s latest project is a useless machine that performs this exercise with a candle.

The project consists of two arms mounted on a set of gears. One arm has a lighter on it, and the other has a snuffer mounted to a servo motor. As the gears rotate, the lighter gets closer to the candle wick and lights it, then the entire assembly rotates back so the snuffer can extinguish the flame. Everything is built around an Arduino Nano, a motor driver powering a Pitman gear motor, and a set of Hall effect sensors which provide position data back to the microcontroller.

If you’re in the mood for a little existential angst in your own home, [James] has made the project files available on his GitHub page. We always appreciate a useless machine around here, especially a unique design like this one, and one which could easily make one recognize the futility of lighting a candle at all.

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