TV Ambient Lighting Built For Awesome Performance

June 11, 2021 by Lewin Day 36 Comments

[AndrewMohawk] had seen all kinds of ambient lighting systems for TVs come and go over the years, and the one thing they all had in common was that they didn’t live up to his high standards. Armed with the tools of the hacker trade, he set about building an Ambilight-type system of his own that truly delivered the goods.

The development process was one full of roadblocks and dead ends, but [Andrew] persevered. After solving annoying problems with HDCP and HDMI splitters, he was finally able to get a Raspberry Pi to capture video going to his TV and use OpenCV to determine the colors of segments around the screen. From there, it was simple enough to send out data to a string of addressable RGB LEDs behind the TV to create the desired effect.

For all the hard work, [Andrew] was rewarded with an ambient lighting system that runs at a healthy 20fps and works with any HDMI video feed plugged into the TV. It even autoscales to work with video content shot in different aspect ratios so the ambient display always picks up the edge of the video content.

With 270 LEDs fitted, the result is an incredibly smooth and fluid ambient display we’d love to have at home. You can build one too, since [Andrew] shared all the code on Github. As an added bonus, he also gave the system an audio visualiser, and tested it out with some Streetlight Manifesto, the greatest third-wave ska band ever to roam the Earth. The Fourth Wave still eludes us, but we hold out hope.

We’ve seen plenty of hacks in this vein before; one of the most impressive hacked a smart TV into doing the video processing itself. Video after the break.

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Balloon Antenna Doesn’t Need A Tower

June 11, 2021 by Al Williams 20 Comments

What do you do with floral wire and balloons from Dollar Tree? If you are [Ham Radio Crash Course], you make a ham radio antenna. Floral wire is conductive, and using one piece as a literal sky hook and the other as a ground wire, it should do something. He did use, as you might expect, a tuner to match the random wire length.

The first attempt had too few balloons and too much wind. He eventually switched to a non-dollar store helium tank. That balloon inflates to about 36 inches and appears to have plenty of lift. It looks like by the end he was using two of them.

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Open-Source Method Makes Possible Two-Layer PCBs With Through-Plating At Home

June 11, 2021 by Dan Maloney 39 Comments

If the last year and its supply chain problems have taught us anything, it’s the value of having a Plan B, even for something as commoditized as PCB manufacturing has become. If you’re not able to get a PCB made commercially, you might have to make one yourself, and being able to DIY a dual-layer board with plated-through vias might just be a survival skill worth learning.

Granted, [Hydrogen Time]’s open-source method, which he calls “Process 01”, is something that he has been working on for years now. And it’s quite the feat of chemistry, which may require you to climb a steep learning curve, depending on how neglected the skills from high school or college chemistry are. But for as complex as Process 01 is, it’s actually pretty straightforward, and the first video below covers it in extreme detail. It starts with a drilled double-sided copper-clad board, which after cleaning is given a bath in palladium chloride. A follow-up dunk in stannous chloride leaves a thin film of palladium metal over all surfaces, even the via walls. This then acts as a catalyst for electroless copper plating in a solution of copper sulfate, followed by an actual electroplating step to thicken the copper plating.

After more washing, photoresist is applied to define the traces as well as to protect the now-plated vias, the board is etched, and a solder mask layer is applied. The boards might not be mistaken for commercial PCBs, but they’re pretty darn good, and as [Hydrogen Time] states, Process 01 is only a beginning. We expect this will be improved and streamlined as time goes by.

Fair warning, though — some steps require a fume hood to be performed safely. Luckily, we’ve got that covered. Sort of.

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Recreating The Intercom From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

June 11, 2021 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a pop culture classic, and remains one of the standout teen films of the era. Notably, titular character Ferris was somewhat of a hacker himself, with the movie showcasing several contraptions the teenager used to get out of a day of school. Among them was the intercom, which [Aaron] faithfully recreated with modern technology.

For those who haven’t seen the film, the intercom was hooked up to a cassette player to feign a believable response to anyone that visited the house while Ferris was away. Rather than do things the old fashioned way, [Aaron] built his replica using an ESP32 fitted with a sound chip instead. When visitors ring the intercom, it plays back sound clips from the movie, while also signalling another ESP microcontroller inside [Aaron]’s house to let him know he has visitors.

The build is a charming tribute to the classic film, and all the more fun for [Aaron’s] efforts to make it look the part as well, choosing to build it inside a period-correct intercom housing. To avoid confusion for those who haven’t seen the film, however, he’s been careful to place a sign up to clarify the intercom is not as it seems.

We’ve seen other movie replicas in the same vein before – like this great Star Trek build. Video after the break.

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Recycling A Laptop Screen Into A Portable Folding Monitor

June 11, 2021 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

There’s plenty of times we’ve seen a laptop fail, break, or just become too slow for purpose despite the fact that it’s still packing some useful components. With all the single-board computers and other experiments lurking about the average hacker workshop, it’s often useful to have a spare screen on hand, and an old laptop is a great way to get one. This recycled display build from [Gregory Sanders] is a great example of how to reuse old hardware.

The build doesn’t simply package a laptop monitor in the same way as a regular desktop unit. Instead, [Gregory] designed a custom 3D printed frame with an arch design. The laptop screen is installed onto the frame using its original hinges, and [Gregory] designed in standoffs for an laptop LCD driver board to run the display as well as a generic frame where single-board computers can be installed.

The result is a portable monitor that can be folded up for easy transport, which is also self-supporting with its nice large base. It can also be used with other hardware, as it has a full complement of DVI, HDMI and VGA inputs on board. Of course, while you’re tinkering with laptop displays, you might also consider building yourself a dual-screen laptop as well.

Circuit VR: Arduino Virtually Meets Analog

June 11, 2021 by Al Williams 3 Comments

There was a time when building electronics and building software were two distinct activities. These days, almost any significant electronic project will use a CPU somewhere, or — at least — could. Using a circuit simulator can get you part of the way and software simulators abound. But cosimulation — simulating both analog circuits and a running processor — is often only found in high-end simulation products. But I noticed the other day the feature quietly snuck into our favorite Web-based simulator, Falstad.

The classic simulator is on the left and the virtual Arduino is on the right.

Back in March, the main project added work from [Mark McGarry] to support AVR8js written by [Uri Shaked]. The end result is you can have the circuit simulator on the left of the screen and a Web-based Arduino IDE on the right side. But how does it work beyond the simple demo? We wanted to find out.

The screen looks promising. The familiar simulator is to the left and the Arduino IDE — sort of — is to the right. There’s serial output under the source code, but it doesn’t scroll very well, so if you output a lot of serial data, it is hard to read.

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Hackaday Podcast 122: Faster Than Wind Travel, Sisyphish, ALU Desktop Calculator, And Mice In Space

June 11, 2021 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys marvel at the awesome hacks from the past week. We had way too much fun debating whether a wind-powered car can travel faster than the wind, and whether or not you can call that sailing. Low-temperature desoldering was demystified: it’s the bismuth! And we saw a camera gimbal solve the problem of hand tremor during soldering. Ford just wants to become your PowerWall. And the results are in from NASA’s mission to spin mice up in a centrifuge on the ISS.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (around 55 MB)