Using Google Calendar For Machines To Keep Track Of Human Days

October 25, 2022 by Danie Conradie 10 Comments

Daily triggers for automation are simple in theory, unless it needs to keep track of the calendar that humans actually live by. Seasonal changes, shifting public holidays, or just being on vacation are all exceptions you may need to account for. [Jeremy Rode] likes using Google Calendar to stay on top of events, so he created CalendarScraper, a simple script to make his machines use it too.

Jeremy needed a timer for his spa heater that would reduce costs by only switching it on when his local time-of-use-based electricity rates were favorable. The rates varied based on the time of day, day of the week, and even seasons and public holidays. Instead of trying to set up everything manually in a cron job, he created a short and easy-to-modify JavaScript script to keep track of events on a Google Calendar.

We’ve seen some other projects that pull data from Google Calendar, including a recycling day reminder, and even a physical desktop calendar.

Less Is More When It Comes To Sensor Power

October 25, 2022 by Al Williams 26 Comments

It used to be the cost of a microcontroller was a big inhibitor to putting brains in everything, but those days are long gone. Even 32-bit CPUs are now cheap enough that you can throw them into anything. The biggest factor now is probably power. Do you really want to charge your electric toilet seat or change batteries every few weeks? A company called Everactive wants you to ditch your battery using their sensor platform they claim harvests energy from a variety of sources and they are about to deliver their first developer’s kit.

The sensor can measure temperature, humidity, pressure, magnetic field, and acceleration on three axes. The device claims to harvest energy from radio frequencies, vibrations, small temperature differentials or light, even indoors. Our guess is that the sensor package runs on very little and when you poll the device wirelessly, the incoming radio signal supplies power for communication. The company claims its device uses 1000 times less power than competing solutions.

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Cyberdeck Contest 2022: Gibson Rev 001 Thinks Outside The Pelican Case

October 25, 2022 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

As we’ve gushed previously in these pages, we saw an incredible turnout for our first-ever cyberdeck contest — so many cool ‘decks rolled in that it made judging them all quite the feat, and we would be remiss if we didn’t feature the favorites that, for whatever reason, didn’t make the cut. One of these is the aptly-named Gibson Rev 001 from [Gadjet].

This cyberdeck may be on the pocket-sized side of things, but don’t let that fool you, because it’s loaded with I/O and sensors galore. A Pimoroni Breakout Garden provides particle/smoke and pulse oximetry, temperature/pressure/altitude, an air quality sensor, and a UVA/UVB light sensor — plenty of feelers for judging conditions on the fly. As you might expect, the brains of the operation is a Raspi 4, which is running Twister OS.

We love the dual-display thing going on with the 7″ touchscreen and the color e-ink display — really gives it a cobbled-together-yet-polished, futuristic feel. May the rest of the post-apocalypse gadgetry have such clean lines and cheerful colors (if that’s what you’re into).

2022 Hackaday Supercon: Joe [Kingpin] Grand Keynote And Workshops Galore

October 25, 2022 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

It’s our great pleasure to announce that Joe [Kingpin] Grand is going to be our keynote speaker at the 2022 Supercon!

If you don’t know Joe, he’s a hacker’s hacker. He’s behind the earliest DEFCON electronic badges, to which we can trace our modern #badgelife creative culture. He was at the l0pht when it became the most publicly visible hackerspace in the USA, at the dawn of what we now think of as cybersecurity. And moreover, he’s a tireless teacher of the art of hardware hacking.

Joe’s talk at DEFCON 22 about reverse engineering PCBs on a hacker budget is on our top-10 must watch playlist, and his JTAGulator debug-port enumeration device has been present at the start of countless hacking sessions. But again, it’s his enthusiasm for creating, his inspiring “what if I poke at this thing this way?” attitude, and overwhelming hacker spirit that make Joe a long-overdue speaker at Supercon! Continue reading “2022 Hackaday Supercon: Joe [Kingpin] Grand Keynote And Workshops Galore” →

Build Your Own Concrete 3D Printer

October 25, 2022 by Al Williams 18 Comments

We didn’t notice [Nikita]’s post about building a concrete 3D printer, a few months ago, but the idea seems sound: build a basic CNC XY axis and then add a mortar pump and hose to deposit concrete. The video, below, shows the machine in operation.

While it looks interesting, there is essentially no real Z-axis, so this would be limited to some sort of relatively thin forms unless you, perhaps, did a few layers and then further lifted the machine. We also assume wet concrete won’t bridge at all. Still, this might be an interesting project, especially if you have a spare CNC XY axis floating around.

If you buy everything, though, you are looking at an estimated cost of around $7,000 USD. We presume there is enough weight in the concrete that a conventional 3D printer probably isn’t going to cut it. We did wonder, though, if there would be any merit to connecting a conventional plastic-extruding nozzle to be able to lay down support for the concrete.

This might be a good jumping-off point for a more sophisticated machine. In particular, [Nikita] points out that a progressive cavity pump with a variable frequency drive is ideal, because it allows you to vary the extrusion rate and provides a steady flow of concrete. Armed with that knowledge, you could probably figure out the rest pretty easily if you’ve ever built a 3D printer or CNC machine.

Not the first concrete printer we’ve seen, of course. The one we saw before was capable of some pretty amazing things.

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Mastercard’s New Card: Safer From Quantum Attacks?

October 25, 2022 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

Quantum computers present a unique threat to many aspects of modern information technology. In particular, many cryptographic systems could be at risk of compromise in the event a malicious actor came into possession of a capable quantum computer.

Mastercard is intending to stay ahead of the game in this regard. It has launched a new contactless credit card that it says is impervious to certain types of quantum attack.

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Scripting Coils For PCB Motors

October 25, 2022 by Jenny List 12 Comments

PCB inductors are a subject that has appeared here at Hackaday many times, perhaps most notably in the electromagnetic exploits of [Carl Bugeja]. But there is still much to be learned in the creation of the inductors themselves, and [atomic14] has recently been investigating their automatic creation through scripting.

A simple spiral trace is easy enough to create, but when for example creating a circular array of coils for an electric motor there’s a need for more complex shapes. Drawing a trapezoidal spiral is a surprisingly difficult task for a script, and we’re treated to a variety of algorithms in the path to achieving a usable design.

Having perfected the algorithm, how to bring it into KiCAD? The PCB CAD package has its own Python environment built-in, but it’s not the most flexible in which to develop. The solution is to write a simple JSON interpreter in KiCAD, and leave the spiral generation to an external script that passes a JSON. This also leaves the possibility of using the same code in other PCB packages.

You can watch the whole video below the break. Meanwhile for more PCB electromagnetics, watch [Carl Bugeja]’s 2019 Supercon interview.

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