Day: December 12, 2021

[Kerry Wong] Is Really Into Scope Meters

December 12, 2021 by 13 Comments

If a combination multimeter and oscilloscope is on your holiday shopping list this year, you might want to have a look at some of [Kerry Wong’s] recent videos on the subject. Over several videos he looks at — inside and out — an OWON HDS272S and a Hantek 2D72, both reasonably inexpensive entries in the field. Both instruments are similar and have a few variants depending on the frequency capability and the addition of a waveform generator.

There are several videos on the Hantek device that are a few months old, then some recent videos — like the one below — on the OWON device along with some comparison videos.

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Differential Probe Clocks At 100MHz And $200

December 12, 2021 by 12 Comments

[Voltlog] often looks at interesting test equipment and in the video below he reviews something that isn’t very common in hobby labs: a differential oscilloscope probe. These are usually pretty expensive, but the Micsig probe in the video costs under $200. The question, of course, is what do you need with a differential probe?

A typical scope probe has a ground lead that connects directly to the actual grounding point. This can cause a problem if you try to measure across some component that has more voltage than you want to short to ground. It might hurt your device under test, your scope, or both.

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Hackaday Links: December 12, 2021

December 12, 2021 by 14 Comments

It looks as though the Mars Ingenuity flight team is starting to press the edge of the envelope a bit. The tiny rotorcraft, already 280-something sols into a mission that was only supposed to last for about 30 sols, is taking riskier flights than ever before, and things got particularly spicy during flight number 17 this past week. The flight was a simple up-over-and-down repositioning of the aircraft, but during the last few meters of descent at its landing zone, Ingenuity dipped behind a small hill and lost line-of-sight contact with Perseverance. Without the 900-MHz telemetry link to the rover, operators were initially unable to find out whether the chopper had stuck the landing, as it had on its previous 16 flights. Thankfully, Perseverance picked up a blip of data packets about 15 minutes after landing that indicated the helicopter’s battery was charging, which wouldn’t be possible if the craft were on its side. But that’s it as far as flight data, at least until they can do something about the LOS problem. Whether that involves another flight to pop up above the hill, or perhaps even repositioning the rover, remains to be decided.

Thinking up strong passwords that are memorable enough to type when they’re needed is never easy, and probably contributes more to the widespread use of “P@$$w0rD123” and the like than just about anything. But we got a tip on a method the musically inclined might find useful — generating passwords using music theory. It uses standard notation for chords to come up with a long, seemingly random set of characters, like “DMaj7|Fsus2|G#9”. It’s pretty brilliant, especially if you’ve got the musical skills to know what that would sound like when played — the rest of us can click here to find out. But since we can’t carry a tune in a bucket, we’ll just stick with the “correct horse battery staple” method.

Looks like you can only light so many roofs on fire before somebody starts to take an interest in what’s going on. At least that seems to be the case with Tesla, which is now under investigation by the US Security and Exchanges Commission for not keeping its shareholders and the public looped in on all those pesky solar array fires it was having back in the day. The investigation stems from a 2019 whistleblower complaint by engineer Steven Henkes, who claims he was fired by Tesla after pointing out that it really would be best not to light their customers’ buildings on fire with poorly installed solar arrays. It’s interesting that the current investigation has nothing to do with the engineering aspects of these fires, but rather the financial implications of disclosure. We discussed some of those problems before, which includes dodgy installation practices and seems to focus on improperly torqued MC4 connectors.

Staying with the Tesla theme, it looks like the Cybertruck is going to initially show up as a four-motor variant. The silly-looking vehicle is also supposed to sport four-wheel steering, which will apparently make it possible to drive diagonally. We’ve been behind the wheel for nearly four decades at this point and can count on no hands the number of times diagonal driving would have helped, and while there might be an edge case we haven’t bumped into yet, we suspect this is more about keeping up with the competition than truly driving innovation. It seems like if they were really serious about actually shipping a product, they’d work on the Cybertruck windshield wiper problem first.

And finally, as I’m sure you’re all aware by now, our longtime boss Mike Szczys is moving on to greener pastures. I have to say the news came as a bit of shock to me, since I’ve worked for Mike for over six years now. In that time, he has put me in the enviable position of having a boss I actually like, which has literally never happened to me before. I just thought I’d take the chance to say how much I appreciate him rolling the dice on me back in 2015 and giving me a chance to actually write for a living. Thanks, Mike, and best of luck with the new gig!

Resin Stacking Proves Messy And Difficult

December 12, 2021 by 15 Comments

3D printers are typically the tool you use when you want a one-off quick prototype. However, more and more, they’re being used to produce things in quantity. [Uncle Jessy] decided to try out the resin stacking technique in order to quickly produce many figurines on his resin printer. However, not everything went exactly to plan.

The technique is simple. The idea is to produce many copies of an object in a single continuous print on a resin 3D printer. To achieve this, the object is cloned many times, and scaffolding is created to allow the stacking of multiple objects on top of each other. This must be done carefully to avoid ruining the geometry of the object, and similarly to support material, uses more resin in the process.

[Uncle Jessy] experimented several times, but ran into multiple issues with the process when trying to print out some small Magneto figurines. An initial experiment using a raft failed when the print fell off the build plate. With the raft removed, the second print failed as the scaffolding didn’t print quite right. Further tweaks and beefing up the scaffold improved things, and [Jessy] managed to print 93 figurines in a single operation.

It’s a useful technique if you want to print a ton of models on a resin printer in as short a time as possible. However, expect to spend plenty of resin as you refine the technique. You’ll also need a big wash tank to clean the prints during post-processing. Video after the break.

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An Atari 130XE's keyboard made mechanical with Kailh box pinks and 3D-printed keyswitch stems.

Atari 130XE Keyboard Now Goes Clack

December 12, 2021 by 10 Comments

Performing a resto-mod on a beloved piece of childhood technology can be quite a ride. In [Bertrand]’s case, it was the keyboard to their Atari 130XE. Although it has those cool double-shot keycaps, they’re hiding a crappy membrane underneath that could really benefit from a mechanical upgrade. Relax — the membrane part was broken.

[Bertrand] designed and printed some new stems for Kailh box pinks that can accept both of the two known variants instead of the standard Cherry MX receptacle. He also made a new PCB (natch) and a keyboard adapter to replace the membrane interface, and had a steel keyswitch plate custom cut. The so-called Atari 130MX mod can be used with an Atari 130XE computer, or as a regular keyboard for a PC if you solder in a Pico.

[Bertrand] says that this labor of love was meant to be reproduced and told us that for some folks in the Atari community, it’s already on like Donkey Kong. If you’re going to attempt this mod, know that filament printers won’t work well at all for these tiny and precise parts. [Bertrand] printed the stems on an Elegoo with a resolution of 1/20 mm (50 micrometers). On the bright side, old-new stock Atari keycaps are not that hard to find. Check it out after the break.

We love to see vintage keyboards get modern upgrades. Did you see the nuclear missile silo keyboard/trackball combo? When we read that it came from ebay, our wallet took itself to DEFCON 1.

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A Nested Gear Clock

December 12, 2021 by 11 Comments

One of the most common projects we see here at Hackaday is a clock. It could just be that we as humans are fascinated by the concept of time or that making a piece of functional art appeals to our utilitarian sense. In that spirit, [Alexandre Chappel] set out to make a large mechanical clock with complex gears.

The initial design was made in Fusion360 over a week and then in a somewhat bold move, [Alexandre] started up the CNC and cut all the parts out of valchromat. The basic idea of the clock is that the numbers move on the clock, not the hands. So the clock should show 10:25 instead of moving hands to the 10 and the 5. Most of the clock is made of up stacked gear assemblies, geneva drives, and many bearings. A single stepper motor drives the whole clock, which [Alexandre] admits is a bit of a cheat since trying to add springs and an escapement would add complexity to an already complex clock. He did have to adjust and recut a few gears but most of the assembly came together nicely. Some 3d printed numbers dropped into the CNCed slots offers much-improved readability.

A few problems became apparent once the system was together. The numbers don’t quite line up perfectly, which is unfortunate. He mentioned that tighter tolerances on the gears would likely help there. A fatal design flaw on the smallest disk became apparent as it needs to turn a sixth of the circle whereas the outer circle is just turning a tenth of the circle. Mechanical advantage isn’t in [Alexandre’s] favor and the stepper skips some steps and it slowly makes its way towards the next second digit of the hour.

If you’re looking for more beautiful artistic clocks, why not check out this circuit sculpture one?

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Customize These 3D Printed Cases

December 12, 2021 by 27 Comments

Building something, of course, requires your electronics skills. But packaging it is often an exercise in mechanics. You can buy off the shelf, of course, but sometimes it is hard to find just the right enclosure. You probably have a 3D printer, too, but sometimes 3D printing an entire case can be time consuming and isn’t always completely attractive. Enter [Johannes-Bosch] and Fusion 360. These 3D printed frames assemble into boxes and are easy to customize. The panels are aluminum, although we imagine you could substitute wood, acrylic, or even a 3D printed sheet of plastic, if you wanted to.

The video below shows some examples. If your German isn’t up to snuff, ask YouTube to automatically translate the subtitles and you’ll get the idea.

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