[Enza3D] shows off a surprisingly compact articulated animatronic eyeball that can be intuitively controlled with a Wii nunchuk controller. The design uses 3D printed parts and some tiny servos, and all of the necessary electronics can be easily purchased online. The mechanical design of the eye is very impressive, and [Enza3D] walks through several different versions of the design, the end result of which is a tidy little assembly that would fit nicely into masks, costumes, or other projects.
A Wii nunchuk is ideal for manual control of such a device, thanks to its ergonomic design and ease of interface (the nunchuk communicates over I2C, which is easily within the reach of even most modest of microcontrollers.) Of course, since driving servos is also almost trivial nowadays, it doesn’t look like working this into an automated project would pose much of a challenge.
Tesla vehicles have a charging port that is under a cover that only opens on command from a charging station. Well, maybe not only. [IfNotPike] reports that he was able to replay the 315MHz signal using a software defined radio and pop the port open on any Tesla he happened to be near.
Apparently, opening the charging port isn’t the end of the world since there isn’t much you can do with the charging port other than charging the car. At least, that we know of. If history shows anything, it is that anything you can get to will be exploited eventually.
You probably don’t want to lose a leg, but if you have to there are many options now that were unthinkable not long ago. That is, if you can afford them. A microprocessor knee — a prosthetic with some smarts in it — can run anywhere from $25,000 to well over $100,000. However [Lucas Galey], a PhD candidate at the University of Texas El Paso in a recent paper claims to be able to produce a comparable artificial knee for under $1,000. If the paper is too long to read, Amplitude has a good summary including what it means to people who need them.
Of course, the cost of making something like this is almost incidental. The cost of approvals, testing, and other factors mean that even with about $500 in parts, the retail price would be much higher. Probably not $25,000, though.
You probably never imagined you’d be reading about new software getting developed for Nokia’s infamous N-Gage handheld game system in 2022, and we certainly never thought we’d be writing about it. But here we are. Of course, we aren’t talking about a commercial title — this is an unofficial port of Wordle by “taco phone” superfan [Michael Fitzmayer].
[Michael] tells us that this first version is pretty simplistic, and currently uses a single word list with all 2,309 terms in the New York Times version. Translations to Finnish, Russian, and German are in the works, though interestingly it looks like the effort is currently stymied by the fact that the code doesn’t support words with hyphens in them; meaning it’s possible to find yourself in an unwinnable situation if you’re playing in Russian. We’re sure that’s just a coincidence and not meant as any kind of political commentary, but still…you can’t make this stuff up.
In Soviet Russia, N-Gage plays you!
So how does one go about developing a new game for a failed console from the early 2000s? The answer is by using the modern N-Gage SDK that’s is currently in development, which lets you write code for the system using popular tools and libraries like Visual Studio 2022, CMake, and SDL. But [Michael] isn’t just a user of this new SDK, he’s also the brains behind the operation.
The hope is this new development platform will lead to something of a renaissance for the maligned device, and he’s even started a Discord server to discuss the past, future, and present of sidetalkin’. If you’re surprised to find yourself looking up what a used N-Gage goes for on eBay these days, join the club.
If you read about the history of personal computing, you hear a few familiar names like Microsoft, Apple, and even Commodore. But there were a host of companies that were well known and well regarded back then that are all but forgotten today. Godbout computing, Ohio Scientific, and Southwest Technical Products (SWTP). SWTP is probably best remembered for having a relatively cheap printer and “TV typewriter”, but they also made a 6800-based computer and [Adrian] takes us inside of one.
The 6800 was Motorola’s entry into the microprocessor fray, competing with the Intel 8080. The computer came out scant months after the introduction of the famous Altair 8800. Although the Altair is often credited as being the first hobbyist-grade computer, there were a few earlier ones based on the 8008, but the Altair was the first to be successful.
The SWTP was notable for its day for its blank appearance. Most computers in those days had lots of switches and lights. The SWTP has a blank front with only a power switch and a reset button. A ROM monitor let you use the machine with a terminal. For about the same price as a bare-bones Altair that had no interfaces or memory, you could pick one of these up with most of the extras you would need. The memory was only 2K, but that was 2K more than you got with an Altair at that price point.
The $450 sounds fairly cheap, but in the early 70s, that was a lot of lawns to mow. Of course, while you’d need to add memory to the Altair, you’d have to add some kind of terminal to the SWTP. However, you’d wind up with something more usable but the total bill was probably going to approach $1,000 to get a working system.
Inside the box were some old-fashioned-looking PC boards and connectors that will look familiar to anyone who has been inside 1970s gear. Will it work? We don’t know yet, but we hope it does. [Adrian] promises that will be in the next video.
It is amazing how far we’ve come in less than 50 years. A postage-stamp sized $10 computer now has enough speed and memory to emulate a bunch of these old machines all at once. The SWTP has been on our pages before. A lot of these old machines and companies are all but forgotten, but not by us!
Thanks to the relatively recent rise of affordable board production services, many of the people reading Hackaday are just now learning the ropes of PCB design. For those still producing the FR4 equivalent of “Hello World”, it’s accomplishment enough that all the traces go where they’re supposed to. But eventually your designs will become more ambitious, and with this added complexity will naturally come new design considerations. For example, how do you keep a PCB from cooking itself in high current applications?
It’s this exact question that Mike Jouppi hoped to help answer when he hosted last week’s Hack Chat. It’s a topic he takes very seriously, enough that he actually started a company called Thermal Management LLC dedicated to helping engineers cope with PCB thermal design issues. He also chaired the development of IPC-2152, a standard for properly sizing board traces based on how much current they’ll need to carry. It isn’t the first standard that’s touched on the issue, but it’s certainly the most modern and comprehensive.
It’s common for many designers, who can be referencing data that in some cases dates back to the 1950s, to simply oversize their traces out of caution. Often this is based on concepts that Mike says his research has found to be inaccurate, such as the assumption that the inner traces of a PCB tend to run hotter than those on the outside. The new standard is designed to help designers avoid these potential pitfalls, though he notes that it’s still an imperfect analog for the real-world; additional data such as mounting configuration needs to be taken into consideration to get a better idea of a board’s thermal properties.
Even with such a complex topic, there’s some tips that are widely applicable enough to keep in mind. Mike says the thermal properties of the substrate are always going to be poor compared to copper, so using internal copper planes can help conduct heat through the board. When dealing with SMD parts that produce a lot of heat, large copper plated vias can be used to create a parallel thermal path.
Towards the end of the Chat, Thomas Shaddack chimes in with an interesting idea: since the resistance of a trace will increase as it gets hotter, could this be used to determine the temperature of internal PCB traces that would otherwise be difficult to measure? Mike says the concept is sound, though if you wanted to get an accurate read, you’d need to know the nominal resistance of the trace to calibrate against. Certainly something to keep in mind for the future, especially if you don’t have a thermal camera that would let you peer into a PCB’s inner layers.
A rig used to test thermal properties of different trace configurations.
While the Hack Chats are often rather informal, we noticed some fairly pointed questions this time around. Clearly there were folks out there with very specific issues that needed some assistance. It can be difficult to address all the nuances of a complex problem in a public chat, so in a few cases we know Mike directly reached out to attendees so he could talk them through the issues one-on-one.
While we can’t always promise you’ll get that kind of personalized service, we think it’s a testament to the unique networking opportunities available to those who take part in the Hack Chat, and thank Mike for going that extra mile to make sure everyone’s questions were answered to the best of his ability.
The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the transcripts posted to Hackaday.io make sure you don’t miss out.
Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos as we spend an hour or so dissecting some of the more righteous hacks and projects from the previous week. We’ll discuss a DIY TPM module that satisfies Windows 11, argue whether modern guts belong in retrocomputer builds even if it makes them more practical, and marvel at the various ways that sound has been encoded on film. We’ll also rock out to the idea of a 3D-printed guitar neck, map out some paths to defeating DYMO DRM, and admire a smart watch that has every sensor imaginable and lasts 36+ hours on a charge. Finally, we’ll sing the praises of RS-485 and talk about our tool collections that rival our own Dan Maloney’s catalogue of crimpers.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments below!
A Wii nunchuk is ideal for manual control of such a device, thanks to its ergonomic design and ease of interface (the nunchuk communicates over I2C, which is easily within the reach of even most modest of microcontrollers.) Of course, since driving servos is also almost trivial nowadays, it doesn’t look like working this into an automated project would pose much of a challenge.
