Day: October 12, 2021

Fukushima Daiichi at night

A Tritium Story: How Afraid Should You Be Of Hydrogen’s Big Brother?

October 12, 2021 by 30 Comments

Despite being present in everything that contains water, tritium is not an isotope that many people were that familiar with outside of select (geeky) channels, such as DEF CON with a tritium-containing badge, the always excellent NurdRage’s assembly of a tritium-based atomic battery, or the creation of a tritium-phosphor-based glow-in-the-dark tesseract cube.

Tritium is a hydrogen isotope that shares a lot of characteristics with its two siblings: 1H (protium) and 2H (deuterium), with the main distinction being that tritium (3H) is not a stable isotope, with a half-life of ~12.32 years that sees it decay into 3He. Most naturally occurring tritium on Earth originates from interactions between fast neutrons (>4.0 MeV) from cosmic radiation and atmospheric nitrogen.

Recently tritium has become a politically hot topic on account of the announced release of treated water at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This has raised for many the question of just how much tritium is ‘too much’ and what we’re likely to notice from this treated — but still tritium-containing water — being released into the ocean.

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Ford Maverick Welcomes DIY Spirit

October 12, 2021 by 43 Comments

We’ve featured a lot of car hacks on these pages, most would void the warranty and none of it with explicit factory support. Against that background, Ford’s upcoming Maverick is unique: a major manufacturer has invited owners to unleash their do-it-yourself spirit. It is one of several aspects that led [Jason Torchinsky] of Jalopnik to proclaim The 2022 Ford Maverick Is An Honest, Cheap, Multitool Of A Vehicle And I’m All For It.

There are two primary parts to Ford’s DIY invitation. Inside the cabin are several locations for a dovetail mount called “Ford Integrated Tether System” (FITS). Naturally Ford will be selling their own FITS accessories, but they also expect people to create and 3D-print designs addressing needs unmet by factory kits. CAD files for FITS dimensions are promised, but any maker experienced with a caliper should have little trouble.

Another part of Ford’s DIY invitation is in the cargo area, whose sides were stamped with slots for lumber beams supporting projects like a ~$45 bike rack. There are also threaded bolt holes already in the bed, no drilling or tapping into sheet metal necessary. Behind a few small plastic doors are wires to supply 12 V DC power without the risk of splicing into factory harnesses.

There will always be wild car hacks like turning a sedan into a pickup truck. But it’s great to lower the barrier of entry for milder hacks with these small and very welcome features. QR codes on a sticker takes us to Ford’s collection of video instructions to get things started. Naturally if this idea takes off other people will post many more on their own YouTube channels. We like where Ford wants to go with this, and we would love to see such DIY-friendliness spread across the auto industry. A few Ford videos explaining design intent in this area after the break.

[Title image: Ford Motor Company]

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Wearable colour eink display in watch format showing additional internal details

Bendable Colour EPaper Display Has Touch Input Too

October 12, 2021 by 8 Comments

The Interactive Media Lab at Dresden Technical University has been busy working on ideas for user interfaces with wearable electronics, and presents a nice project, that any of us could reproduce, to create your very own wearable colour epaper display device. They even figured out a tidy way to add touch input as well. By sticking three linear resistive touch strips, which are effectively touch potentiometers, to a backing sheet and placing the latter directly behind the Plastic Logic Legio 2.1″ flexible electrophoretic display (EPD), a rudimentary touch interface was created. It does look like it needs a fair bit of force to be applied to the display, to be detectable at the touch strips, but it should be able to take it.

The rest of the hardware is standard fayre, using an off-the-shelf board to drive the EPD, and an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense board for the application and Bluetooth functionality. The casing is 3D printed (naturally) and everything can be built from items many of us have lying around. The video below shows a few possible applications, including interestingly using the display as part of the strap for another wearable. Here is also is a report on adding interactive displays to smart watches. After all, you can’t have too many displays.

Many wearables projects can be found in the HaD archives, including this dubious wearable scope, a method for weaving OLED fibres into garments. Finally, for a good introduction to wearable DIY tech, you could do worse than this Supercon talk from Sophy Wong.

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