Day: July 18, 2022

Print Your Own Drill Guide Without A Linear Bearing

July 18, 2022 by 15 Comments

Typically we often don’t cover paid products here on Hackaday, but we couldn’t help but be impressed with this 3D printed drill guide from [USSA]. While you’ll need to pay the toll to access the STL files and plans, there’s an excellent video showing a bit of magic behind the curtain that you can check out free of charge. There are several interesting insights and some great techniques put into this design that anyone could take and apply to their own project.

First, what is a drill guide? Many of us don’t have the luxury of a full-sized drill press, so we have to make do with a hand drill. There are various jigs and tricks to get straighter holes, but it can be frustrating to mark out threaded screw inserts with great precision only to discover all the inserts are at an angle and the circuit board won’t fit. A drill guide ensures holes are plunged straight up and down and at a reliable depth.

[USSA] starts by showing the node-based CAD that makes up the design (a program called Grasshopper). As he assembled it, simple nuts and screws held it together. But rather than clamp two separate pieces together, the screws compress the single plastic with a clever slot in the side to allow the plastic to flex. Several 3D printed jigs were used for assembling the bearing shaft. Ultimately the results look quite impressive, and it’s an inspiration for our own printed projects.

Continue reading “Print Your Own Drill Guide Without A Linear Bearing” →

A Commodore 64 running a smartwatch link program

The Commodore 64 Smartwatch Can Now Sync With Your Commodore 64 Desktop

July 18, 2022 by 5 Comments

If you’ve got a smartwatch on your wrist, chances are you’ve also got a device nearby that links up with it. Most modern watches will happily sync with Android devices or iPhones, and some will also talk to Windows PCs. But what if you’re running an alternative OS? Something like, say, Commodore BASIC? In that case, you might want to check out [Nick Bild]’s latest project, which lets you to sync your smartwatch to your Commodore 64.

Sadly, you can’t just use any old smartwatch: the project is an extension of [Nick]’s Commodore 64 Smartwatch that we featured earlier. This watch can run Commodore 64 programs thanks to a custom software stack, but like most typical smartwatches also includes an accelerometer that counts your steps. Syncing the step counter to your computer is straightforward: after you come home from your daily run, you simply tap “sync” on the watch, enter LOAD"SYNC.PRG",8,1 on your Commodore 64, and the computer will show your total step count.

The C64 watch communicates with the host computer through a built-in infrared port. The classic Commodore computers don’t have an IR receiver, so [Nick] built one himself using an Arduino Micro hooked up to the C64’s User port. A custom program reads out the data and shows the step count on the screen.

Although the feature set of this app is a bit limited, [Nick]’s project demonstrates how the good old Commodore 64 can still perform useful tasks in today’s world. Not that we needed much reminding: after all, we’ve even seen it run AI applications using TensorFlow Lite.

Continue reading “The Commodore 64 Smartwatch Can Now Sync With Your Commodore 64 Desktop” →

Photo of the head unit , with "Hacked by greenluigi1" in the center of the UI

Hacker Liberates Hyundai Head Unit, Writes Custom Apps

July 18, 2022 by 39 Comments

[greenluigi1] bought a Hyundai Ioniq car, and then, to our astonishment, absolutely demolished the Linux-based head unit firmware. By that, we mean that he bypassed all of the firmware update authentication mechanisms, reverse-engineered the firmware updates, and created subversive update files that gave him a root shell on his own unit. Then, he reverse-engineered the app framework running the dash and created his own app. Not just for show – after hooking into the APIs available to the dash and accessible through header files, he was able to monitor car state from his app, and even lock/unlock doors. In the end, the dash got completely conquered – and he even wrote a tutorial showing how anyone can compile their own apps for the Hyundai Ionic D-Audio 2V dash.

In this series of write-ups [greenluigi1] put together for us, he walks us through the entire hacking process — and they’re a real treat to read. He covers a wide variety of things: breaking encryption of .zip files, reprogramming efused MAC addresses on USB-Ethernet dongles, locating keys for encrypted firmware files, carefully placing backdoors into a Linux system, fighting cryptic C++ compilation errors and flag combinations while cross-compiling the software for the head unit, making plugins for proprietary undocumented frameworks; and many other reverse-engineering aspects that we will encounter when domesticating consumer hardware.

This marks a hacker’s victory over yet another computer in our life that we aren’t meant to modify, and a meticulously documented victory at that — helping each one of us fight back against “unmodifiable” gadgets like these. After reading these tutorials, you’ll leave with a good few new techniques under your belt. We’ve covered head units hacks like these before, for instance, for Subaru and Nissan, and each time it was a journey to behold.

Ortur Laser Will Go Open-Source

July 18, 2022 by 76 Comments

Well, that was fast! Last week, we wrote about a video by [Norbert Heinz] where he called out the Ortur laser engravers for apparently using the GPL-licensed grbl firmware without providing the source code and their modifications to it, as required by the license. Because open source and grbl are dear to our hearts and CNC machines, we wrote again about Norbert’s efforts over the weekend, speculating that it might just be unfamiliarity with the open source license requirements on Ortur’s part.

Because of [Norbert]’s persistance and publicity around the issue, the support ticket finally reached the right person within Ortur, and within two or three days [Gil Araújo], Support Admin at Ortur, managed to convince the company that going fully open source was the right thing to do. What remains is the question of how to do it, operationally.

So [Gil] asked [Norbert] to ask Hackaday: what do you want from Ortur on this, and how should they proceed? Via e-mail, he asked in particular for best practices on setting up the repository and making the code actually useful to non-programmer types. He said that he looked around at the other laser engraver companies, and didn’t find any good examples of others doing the Right Thing™, so he asked [Norbert] to ask us. And now we’re asking you!

Have you got any good examples of companies using open-source firmware, modifying it, and making it available for their users? Is a simple Github repo with a README enough, or should he spend some time on making it user-friendly for the non-coders out there? Or start with the former and work toward the latter as a goal? I’m sure [Gil] will be reading the comments, so be constructive! You’ll be helping a laser engraver company take its first steps into actually engaging with the open source community.

We said it before, and we’ll say it again. Good job [Norbert] for taking Ortur to task here, but also by doing so in a way that leaves them the option of turning around and doing the right thing. This also highlights that companies aren’t monolithic beasts – sometimes it takes getting your cause heard by just the right person within a company to change the response from a “this is a business secret” to “how should we set up our Github?” And kudos for [Gil] and Ortur for listening to their users!

How To Become A Lego Submariner

July 18, 2022 by 7 Comments

A submarine is by necessity a complex and safety-critical machine, but the principle upon which it depends is quite simple. The buoyancy is variable by means of pumping water in and out of tanks, allowing the craft to control the depth at which it sits. The [Brick Experiment Channel] has a series of posts describing in detail the construction of a working submarine, with a hull made from a plastic tube and mechanics made from Lego.

In this submarine the buoyancy tank is a syringe operated by a Lego motor, and the propulsion comes courtesy of a pair of Lego motors driven through ingenious magnetic couplings to avoid a shaft seal. To monitor depth there is both a laser distance sensor and a pressure sensor, and there is a Raspberry Pi Zero to control the whole show.

In the video below the break you can see the craft in action as it zips around a swimming pool at different depths, before setting off on a longer journey with on-board footage along a shady creek. It’s an extremely practical submarine, and one we wish we could try.

This is version 4.0, and it shows.  We had a look at version 3.0 last year, and it’s by no means the first submarine we’ve featured, here’s one made from PVC pipe.

Continue reading “How To Become A Lego Submariner” →

Quick Hack: The Phone To Stream Deck Conversion

July 18, 2022 by 8 Comments

What do you do with those old Android or iPhone phones and tablets? You have plenty of options, but it is pretty easy to build your own stream deck with a little off-the-shelf software. What’s a stream deck, you ask? The name comes from its use as a controller for a live-streaming setup, but essentially, it’s an LCD touchscreen that can trigger things on your computer.

The software I’m using, Deckboard, is a server for Windows or Linux and, of course, an Android app. The app is free with some limitations, but for under $4 you can buy the full version. However, even the free version is pretty capable. You can use an Android phone or tablet and you can connect to the PC with a USB cable or WiFi. I’ve found that even with WiFi, it is handy to keep the phone charged, so realistically you are going to have a cable, but it doesn’t necessarily have to connect to the host computer.

Linux Setup

Setup is very easy. The biggest hurdle is you might need to set up your firewall to allow the server to listen on port 8500 with TCP.  There are a few small issues when installing with Linux that you might want to watch out for.  There are 32-bit and 64-bit versions in deb, tar.gz, and appimage format. There’s also a snap. The problem with the snap is it is sandboxed, so without effort you can’t easily launch programs, which is kinda the entire point. I finally removed it and installed the deb file which was fine.

There were still two other wrinkles. First, while Deckboard offers a way to launch programs, it must be a program from a list it reads from your system. That would be acceptable, but the list wasn’t complete. I never did figure out why some things show up on the list and others don’t. For example, GIMP which shows up on my application menu was absent. Yet other things that were fairly obscure did show up.

I thought this might be a dealbreaker until I found that Deckboard has a well-developed plugin system and one of those plugins lets you run an arbitrary command line. I guess it is a little less convenient, but it is much more flexible since you can launch any program you want and provide options to it as well.

The only other complaint I had is that when you run the program, it shows its configuration interface and puts itself in the system tray. That’s great the first time you run it, but on system startup, it would be nice to just have it quietly start. If there’s an option for that I haven’t found it. I’ll tell you how I solved that later, but, for now, just live with it.

Continue reading “Quick Hack: The Phone To Stream Deck Conversion” →

The 2022 Hackaday Supercon Is On! And The Call For Proposals Is Open

July 18, 2022 by 42 Comments

After two years in remote mode, we’re very excited to announce that this year’s Hackaday Supercon will be coming back, live! Join us Nov. 4th, 5th, and 6th in sunny Pasadena, CA for three days of hacks, talks, and socializing with the Hackaday community. And we’d love to see and hear in person what you’ve been up to for the last two years – so start brainstorming what you’re going to talk about now and fill out the call for proposals.

Supercon is On!

We’ll be starting off on Friday Nov. 4th with early-bird registration, a mellow afternoon of badge-hacking and workshops, and a party to kick off the con. Saturday and Sunday will be the full enchilada: two tracks of talks, hacking stations and food set up in the alley, and workshops aplenty. (Just thinking about hacking in the alley and sharing tacos afterward again brings a tear of joy to my eye.) We’ll close up Sunday night with the 2022 Hackaday Prize Awards and a chance to demo the weekend’s badge hacking on stage.

If you haven’t ever been to a Supercon before, it’s Hackaday in real life. People bring hacks to show and share, projects to work on, and their ideas that are too big to fit in the overhead compartment anyway. The crowd is awesome. There are seasoned pros, famous YouTubers, and brand-new hackers to boot. But yet it’s not overwhelming – Supercon is too big to fit in your living room, but it’s nonetheless cozy. The folks in attendance are all fantastic and you’ll stumble into the most awesome conversations.

It’s a weekend you don’t want to miss, so start figuring out how you’re going to get to Pasadena now.

We’ll be putting tickets on sale soon, and while we can’t see into the future, they have sold out every year, so keep your eyes on Hackaday to get yours. And of course, speakers don’t need no stinking tickets. Continue reading “The 2022 Hackaday Supercon Is On! And The Call For Proposals Is Open” →