It might sound like a joke, but this week, Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by asking how you keep a Polish train from running. Like always, the answer appears to be a properly modulated radio signal. After a fiery tale about Elliot’s burned beans, the discussion moves over to the adventure that is home CNC ownership, the final chapter in the saga of the Arecibo Telescope, and the unexpected longevity of Microsoft’s Kinect. Then it’s on to the proper way to cook a PCB, FFmpeg in the browser, and a wooden cyberdeck that’s worth carrying around. Finally, they’ll go over the next generation of diode laser engravers, and take a look back at the origins of the lowly breadboard.
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!
Download it yourself. You don’t need the cloud!
Episode 234 Show Notes:
News:
- Polish Railways Fall Victim To Cheap Radio Attack
- Add Full-Color Images To Your 3D Prints With Toner Transfer
What’s that Sound?
- Think you recognize this week’s sound? Let us know!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Impulse Buying A 3040 CNC Machine, What Could Go Wrong?
- Blame It On The Sockets: Forensic Analysis Of The Arecibo Collapse
- Going To Extremes To Block YouTube Ads
- GTA 6 Hacker Found To Be Teen With Amazon Fire Stick In Small Town Hotel Room
- Microsoft Discontinues Kinect, Again
- PCB Toaster Oven Solders Your Boards
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Tom’s Picks:
I appreciate the fact Elliot had more important things to do at the time but…. I wish there was a video!
Me too!
My wife says I get this very-calm-but-spookily-serious face. Then she knows it’s hitting the fan. Apparently that was in full force. :)
After a good cleaning out with alcohol, I got most/all of the soot off of the chamber, and pulled another length of dryer hose out of the basement. Roasted up for the next morning. All’s well that ends well?
I like Tom’s reassuring conclusion: “usually I don’t set the same thing on fire twice.” Words of inspiration!
We have a similar problem to yours with EEPROM definitions changing in my real job (an embedded hydraulic pump controller). We first implemented a version check, so if the version number in EEPROM doesn’t match compiled version at startup then the EEPROM is overwritten with defaults. The next improvement was to run a CRC of the parameter definition (name, type, max and min) which is stored in a JSON config file also used to generate the C interface – now we can compare the CRC in the flash with the last time the EEPROM was written and only reset it if we absolutely have to.
In terms of fire prevention though, I guess a max allowable value would also have been enough!
This is good! I like the idea of the version number. I could have it just refuse to fire up at all, throwing an error, when they don’t match. Will implement. Thanks!
Please can you provide a link to the Eric post on youtube add blocking?