Hackaday Links: January 26, 2019

January 26, 2020 by Dan Maloney 20 Comments

The news this week was dominated by the novel coronavirus outbreak centered in Wuhan, China. Despite draconian quarantines and international travel restrictions, the infection has spread far beyond China, at least in small numbers. A few cases have been reported in the United States, but the first case reported here caught our eye for the technology being used to treat it. CNN and others tell us that the traveler from Wuhan is being treated by a robot. While it sounds futuristic, the reality is a little less sci-fi than it seems. The device being used is an InTouch Vici, a telemedicine platform that in no way qualifies as a robot. The device is basically a standard telepresence platform that has to be wheeled into the patient suite so that providers can interact with the patient remotely. True, it protects whoever is using it from exposure, but someone still has to gown up and get in with the patient. We suppose it’s a step in the right direction, but we wish the popular press would stop slapping a “robot” label on things they don’t understand.

Also in health news, did you know you’re probably not as hot as you think you are? While a glance in the mirror would probably suffice to convince most of us of that fact, there’s now research that shows human body temperature isn’t what it used to be. Using medical records from the Civil War-era to the 1930s and comparing them to readings taken in the 1970s and another group between 2007 and 2017, a team at Stanford concluded that normal human body temperature in the USA has been slowly decreasing over time. They proposed several explanations as to why the old 98.6F (37C) value is more like 97.5F (36.4C) these days, the most interesting being that general overall inflammation has decreased as sanitation and food and water purity have increased, leading the body to turn down its thermostat, so to speak. Sadly, though, if the trend holds up, our body temperature will reach absolute zero in only 111,000 years.

Wine, the not-an-emulator that lets you run Windows programs on POSIX-compliant operating systems, announced stable release 5.0 this week. A year in the making, the new version’s big features are multi-monitor support with dynamic configuration changes and support for the Vulkan spec up to version 1.1.126.

Any color that you want, as long as it’s amorphous silicon. Sono Motors, the German start-up, has blown past its goal of raising 50 million euros in 50 days to crowdfund production of its Sion solar-electric car. The car is planned to have a 255 km range on a full charge, with 34 km of that coming from the solar cells that adorn almost every bit of the exterior on the vehicle. Living where the sun doesn’t shine for a third of the year, we’re not sure how well this will pay off, but it certainly seems smarter than covering roads with solar cells.

And finally, here’s a trip down memory lane for anyone who suffered through some of the cringe-worthy depictions of technology that Hollywood came up with during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Looking back through the clips shown in “copy complete” reminds us just how many movies started getting into the tech scene. It wasn’t just the sci-fi and techno-thrillers that subjected us to closeups of scrolling random characters and a terminal that beeped every time something changed on the screen. Even straight dramas like Presumed Innocent and rom-coms like You’ve Got Mail and whatever the hell genre Ghost was got in on the act. To be fair, some depictions were pretty decent, especially given the realities of audience familiarity with tech before it became pervasive. And in any case, it was fun to just watch and remember when movies were a lot more watchable than they are today.

Light The Way To Every Component

January 26, 2020 by Jenny List 47 Comments

How do you organize your stock of components and modules? If an unruly pile of anti-static bags and envelopes from China stuffed into a cardboard box sounds familiar, then you need help from [Dimitris Tassopoulos]. He’s organized his parts into drawers and created a database, then linked it via an ESP8266 and a string of addressable LEDs to light up the individual drawer in which any given component resides. It’s a genius idea, as you can see in action in the video below the break.

Behind the scenes is a web server sitting atop an SQL database, with a PHP front end. It’s running on a Banana Pi board, but it could just as easily be running on any other similar SBC. The ESP8266 has a REST API to which the webserver connects when a component is sought, and from that it knows which LED to light.

The LED strip is not the tape with which most readers will be familiar, but a string of the type we might be more used to as Christmas lights. These have a 100mm spacing between LEDs, allowing them to be easily positioned behind each drawer. The result is a very effective parts inventory system. We’re not entirely sure that it would entirely banish the tide of anti-static bags here, but we’re impressed nevertheless.

Continue reading “Light The Way To Every Component” →

CNC Etch-A-Sketch: Stop Motion Is Logical Next Step

January 26, 2020 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

It happens to everyone. You get your hands on an Etch-A-Sketch for the first time, and armed with the knowledge of how it works, you’re sure you can draw things other than rectangles and staircases. And then you find out the awful truth: you are not as precise as you think you are, and if you’re [QuintBUILDS], the circles you try to draw look like lemons, potatoes, or microbes.

Okay, yes, this definitely isn’t the first CNC-ified Etch-A-Sketch we’ve seen, but it just might be the coolest one. It’s certainly the most kid-friendly, anyway.

Most importantly, you can still pick it up and shake it to clear the screen, a feature sorely lacking in many of the auto-sketchers we scratch about. And if you’re not fully satisfied by this hack, be sure to check out the stop-motion video after the break that turns this baby into a touch-screen video player for Flatlanders.

Turn it over and you’ll find a Raspberry Pi 3 and a CNC hat. The knobs are belt-driven from a pair of NEMA-17 size stepper motors that interface to the knobs with tight-fitting pulleys. Power comes from four 18650s, and is metered by a battery management board that provides both overcharge and drain protection. At some point in the future, [QuintBUILDS] plans to move to a battery pack, because the cell holder is electrically unstable.

We love the welded frame and acrylic enclosure because they make the thing sturdy and portable. Also, we’re suckers for see-through enclosures. They’re clearly superior if you want to do what [QuintBUILDS] did and take it to an elementary school science fair to show the kids just how cool science can be if you stick with it.

If you don’t think motorized Etch-A-Sketches can be useful, maybe you just haven’t seen this clock build yet.

Continue reading “CNC Etch-A-Sketch: Stop Motion Is Logical Next Step” →

Hubble Telescope Power Supply Tester On EBay

January 26, 2020 by Richard Baguley 38 Comments

Got $75K spare? Then this is the eBay deal for you! [jvanorsdal] pointed us to this eBay bargain: the VPI Vehicle Power Interface Rack & Console Hubble Space Telescope. This was the actual system used to test the power systems of the Hubble Space Telescope before it was launched, so it’s a genuine piece of space history.

For the price you get two, yes two CRT displays, six HP power supplies and a huge amount of hand-wired history. Even if you aren’t going to bid, it is worth taking a look at the insides of this thing, as it is all hand-soldered and the cable routing is a thing of beauty. I have absolutely no use for this, but I totally want it for my living room.

There are a few gotchas, though. Because it is NASA space hardware, you can’t export it to places like Iran, and the shipping cost for the US is a cool $1.5K. Considering the size of the thing, that is not so bad, perhaps: it is built into a three rack metal cabinet with built-in wheels that measures over 7 feet long and weighs over 800 lbs.

Interested? It is on sale for $75k, and there is a handy buy it now button on the site.

We all love space history here at Hackaday. Back in 2019, our own [Tom Nardi] got to spend an evening with the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Keeping A 3D Printed NAS Updated With The Times

January 26, 2020 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

Back in 2018, [Paul-Louis Ageneau] created a 3D printed network-attached storage (NAS) enclosure for his Raspberry Pi. The design worked well, the Internet liked it when he posted the details on his blog, and all was right with the world. But of course, such glories are fleeting. Two years later that design needs updating, and thanks to the parametric nature of OpenSCAD, he’s been able to refresh his design for another tour of duty.

In our book, this is as much a cautionary tale as it is a success story. On one hand, it’s a testament to the power of CAD and desktop 3D printing. That a design can be tweaked and reproduced down the line with only minimal hassle is great for folks like us. But it’s also a shame that he didn’t get more than two years before some of the parts he used in the original NAS became unobtainium.

The main issue was that the integrated USB hub he used for the first version is no longer available, so the design had to be modified to accept a similar board. Unfortunately, the new hub is quite a bit wider than the old one. Resizing the entire case isn’t really an option since the Pi has to slide into it, so the hub now bumps out a bit on one side. He’s added a printable cover that cleans it up a bit, but the asymmetrical look might be a problem for some. While fiddling with the design, he also changed around the cooling setup so a larger fan could be mounted; now that the Raspberry Pi 4 is out, it can use all the cooling help it can get.

We covered the original version of the printed NAS back when it was first released, and it’s always good to see a creator coming back and keeping a project updated; even if it’s because hardware availability forced their hand.

Put The Power Of PCR In Your Pocket With This Open-Source Thermal Cycler

January 26, 2020 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

When the first thermal cyclers for the polymerase chain reaction came out in the 1980s, they were as expensive as a market driven by grant money could make them. Things haven’t got much better over the years, largely shutting STEM classes and biohackers out of the PCR market. That may be about to change, though, if the €99.00 PocketPCR thermal cycler takes hold.

PCR amplifies DNA in a three-step process: denaturation, which melts double-stranded DNA into single strands; annealing, which lets small pieces of primer DNA bind to either side of the region of interest; and elongation, where the enzyme DNA polymerase zips along the single strands starting at the primer to replicate the DNA. The cycle repeats and copies of the original DNA accumulate exponentially. Like any thermal cycler, [Urs Gaudenz]’s PocketPCR automates those temperature shifts, using a combination of PCB-mounted heating elements and a cooling fan. The coils rapidly heat a reaction block up to the 99°C denaturation temperature, the fan brings that down to the 68°C needed for annealing, and then the temperature ramps back up to 72°C for elongation with thermostable DNA polymerase. PID loops keep the reaction temperature precisely controlled. The whole thing is, as the name suggests, small enough to fit in a pocket, and can either be purchased in kit form or scratch-built from the build files on GitHub.

We applaud [Urs]’ efforts to get the power of PCR into the hands of citizen scientists. Quick and dirty thermal cyclers are one thing, but Pocket PCR has a great fit and finish that makes it more accessible.

Thanks to [Abe Tusk] for the tip.

Tracking Cancer Treatment With An ESP8266-Based Radiation Sensor

January 25, 2020 by Jenny List 22 Comments

Those of us who have not been in that position can only imagine the anguish of learning that your teenager has cancer. This happened to [Rob], whose child was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. It’s a condition that can be treated with surgery followed by a course of radioactive iodine to kill any remaining cancer cells. During iodine treatment, the patient is radioactive enough that other people must maintain a distance of 3m from them, and as a learning exercise for both father and teen he created and refined the design of a portable wireless radioactivity monitor.

There are a variety of sensors for radiation monitoring including the well-known Geiger–Müller tube, but he settled on a PIN photodiode based sensor supplied by radiation-watch.org. This sensor is not at its most sensitive at the energy levels emitted by the iodine isotope used in the treatment, but the relatively high intensity of the radiation meant that enough would register for a useful reading to be taken. The sensor board he was mated to an ESP8266 module. [Rob] went through three iterations of the balance of the hardware before settling on a lithium-ion battery and a plastic case.

On the software side, the ESP connects to an MQTT server, from which a CSV file of data is derived. On a computer, the CSV data is collected and plotted to a graph. The data take during treatment clearly shows the reduction in radiation following the isotope’s half-life. The graph isn’t perfect though, there is a gap due to the second prototype’s batteries running flat

From his epilogue it appears that his son has recovered, and we wish them further good health. The details have been published in the hope that other young people facing the same trial might benefit from building their own radiation monitor.