Split Keyboard Finder Stacks Them Up For Your Approval

August 11, 2020 by Kerry Scharfglass 16 Comments

Tired of a boring, single piece keyboard? Thinking about a change but don’t know what all your options are? Well prospective-keyboard-shopper, today is your lucky day. We at the Hackaday are here to facilitate the habit with two excellent resources for the eager keyboard shopper; [pvinis]’s awesome-split-keyboards and [jhelvy]’s splitkbcompare.

As indicated by its title, awesome-split-keyboards is an awesome list of split keyboards 50 examples strong. Every split we’ve come across seems to be represented here, many with at least an image or two along with links to more information about how to build or buy the model in question. If that’s not enough, the bottom of the page has a wealth of background information about building or buying your own.

But before making such an important decision it’s important to make sure the keyboard in question will be a good fit in the hands. This is where splitkbcompare comes in, providing a visualization of many popular split layouts. If we hadn’t just found awesome-split-keyboards this filterable list and wide selection would have been the highlight here. But what does stand out is the ability to generate 1:1 scale printouts of the layouts in question, even stacking them for comparison, allowing a prospective buyer get a hands on feel for what they’re considering.

Not enough clackin’ action? Recently we’ve been producing a fierce amount of keyboard related content, of particular highlight is [Kristina Panos’]’ series called Inputs of Interest. Earlier in the summer she even built her own Ergodox split keeb.

[Main image source: HeliDox by diimdeep]

Popcorn Pocket P. C. Open Sourced

August 11, 2020 by Al Williams 19 Comments

If you miss the days you could get an organizer that would — sort of — run Linux, you might be interested in Popcorn computer’s Pocket P. C., which was recently open-sourced on GitHub. Before you jump over to build one, though, there are a few things you should know.

First, the files are untested since the first unit hasn’t shipped yet. In addition, while the schematic looks pretty complete, there’s no actual bill of materials and the PCB layers in the PDF file might not be very easy to replicate, since they are just a series of images, one for each layer. You can see an overview video of the device, below.

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HOPE 2020 Delivers Historic Marathon Of Hacking

August 11, 2020 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

Anyone who’s ever attended a hacker conference knows that the talks and workshops are only part of the reason that people travel from all over the country (and indeed, the world) to be there. The social and extracurricular aspects of these events are just as important as the scheduled content, if not more so. After all, you can always watch the recorded version of any presentation you missed when you get back home; but there’s only a relatively short window for drinking Club-Mate, driving a Segway at unreasonable speeds, and hanging out with other people in the community.

So I don’t mind admitting that I was extremely skeptical when it was announced that the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference was going virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially since the decision came just a few months before the event was set to kick off in New York. Trying to recreate the experience of a large scale hacker con as an online-only event is hard enough, but doing it on such short notice seemed like a recipe for disaster. Particularly for an event like HOPE that had always crammed the historic Hotel Pennsylvania to the rafters (and sometimes, above) with content and activities.

Which is not to say they didn’t have some interesting ideas. Since so many people were stuck at home anyway, they decided there wasn’t much point limiting HOPE to a single weekend. For 2020, the event would instead run for nine continuous days. Prerecorded talks and interactive workshops would start at 9 AM Eastern and run right up until the wee hours of the morning, often concluding with a live musical performance.

As founder Emmanuel Goldstein described it, the idea was to turn this year’s HOPE into a 24 hour hacker television channel that could beam a diverse array of ideas and opinions into homes all over the planet. Rather than pretending that the classic hacker convention experience could be fully replicated online, they would fully embrace the possibilities offered by the Internet and create something completely different. But could they pull it off?

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Building A YouTube Remote Control Worthy Of 2020

August 11, 2020 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

Back in 2018, [Gryo] built a remote control specifically for watching YouTube videos on his computer. It worked perfectly, but it didn’t quite fit the expectation one has for a modern media remote — it was a bit chunky, the buttons weren’t very responsive, and it didn’t feel as nice as the remotes that ship with consumer streaming devices. Looking to improve on things, he’s recently unveiled a far more svelte version of his scratch built media streaming remote includes a scrollwheel, color feedback, and a UI for customizing how it works.

wireless-YouTube-keyboard-remote-exploded-view

It might not look the part, but technically [Gyro] categorizes his creation as a wireless keyboard since that’s what the operating system sees it as. This makes it easy to use with whatever media playback software or service might be running on the computer, as button presses on the remote are picked up as standard keyboard events. And the software easily sets which key each button on the remote will be associated with.

Inside the 3D printed case there’s a custom PCB that pulls together the ATmega328P, NRF24L01 radio, and TP4056 charger that tops off the 500 mAh Li-Po battery via USB-C. The receiver is also a custom creation, using a second NRF24L01 chip but swapping out the microcontroller for the ATmega32U4.

[Gyro] has done a fantastic job documenting this build in the write-up, and provides everything you need should you want to spin up your own copy. As much as we liked the unique approach used in the first version of the remote, we’ve got to admit this iteration is much more likely to end up sitting on our living room table.

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3D Printing Interactive Maps For The Visually Impaired

August 11, 2020 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Most maps and educational materials for teaching geography are highly visual in nature. For those with a visual impairment, it can make learning more difficult when suitable resources are not available. After visiting a boarding school in Moscow, [Sergei] set out to build an interactive map to teach students geography regardless of their vision status.

After seeing the poorly embossed paper maps used in the school, [Sergei] decided there had to be a better way. The solution was 3D printing, which makes producing a map with physical contours easy. Initial attempts involved printing street maps and world maps with raised features, such that students could feel the lines rather than seeing them.

Taking things a step further, [Sergei] went all out, producing an interactive educational device. The build consists of a world map, and contains audio files with information about countries, cultures, and more. When the ultrasonic sensor detects a user in range, it invites them to press or pull out the removable continents on the map. The device can sense touch, thanks to a pair of MPR121 capacitive touch sensor boards which are used to trigger the audio files.

It’s a great way to use the sense of touch to teach where the sense of vision may be lacking. Previous Prize entries have worked in this field too, like this haptic glove to help vision-impaired users interpret camera data. We can’t wait to see what comes next as technology improves!

Linux Fu: Remote Execution Made Easy

August 11, 2020 by Al Williams 20 Comments

If you have SSH and a few other tools set up, it is pretty easy to log into another machine and run a few programs. This could be handy when you are using a machine that might not have a lot of memory or processing power and you have access to a bigger machine somewhere on the network. For example, suppose you want to reencode some video on a box you use as a media server but it would go much faster on your giant server with a dozen cores and 32 GB of RAM.

Remote Execution

However, there are a few problems with that scenario. First, you might not have the software on the remote machine. Even if you do, it might not be the version you expect or have all the same configuration as your local copy. Then there’s the file problem. the input file should come from your local file system and you’d like the output to wind up there, too. These aren’t insurmountable, of course. You could install the program on the remote box and copy your files back and forth manually. Or you can use Outrun.

There are a few limitations, though. You do need Outrun on both machines and both machines have to have the same CPU architecture. Sadly, that means you can’t use this to easily run jobs on your x86-64 PC from a Raspberry Pi. You’ll need root access to the remote machine, too. The system also depends on having the FUSE file system libraries set up.

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Ring The Bell For The Hackaday Prize: Three More Weeks To Enter Your Project!

August 11, 2020 by Mike Szczys No comments

We are hurtling toward the close of entries for the 2020 Hackaday Prize. You need to have your project submitted within the next three weeks, by 7:00 AM Pacific time on Monday, August 31st. Entry is easy, just start a project page over on Hackaday.io and use the “Submit project to:” button on the left sidebar to enter it in the Hackaday Prize.

There are a number of cash prizes on the line this year. In addition to a $50,000 grand prize we have four best nonprofit solution prizes of $10,000, four $3,000 honorable mention prizes, and a $5,000 wildcard prize.

Need some inspiration to help you get started? We’ve teamed with four nonprofit organizations who have highlighted real-world challenges for you to tackle. From protecting our oceans and innovating on earthen housing designs to building assistive devices and designing systems for disaster relief, there’s plenty of ground to cover here!

Once entries close at the end August, we’ll announce a slate of finalists who will continue to refine their designs for another month. Each finalist’s project entry will be reviewed in October by our panel of expert judges to identify the top winners. Of course, with these type of challenges, having more people focus on ways to help is a win in our books. So grab your engineering notebooks and get to work!