If you build electronics, you will eventually need a coil. If you spend any time winding one, you are almost guaranteed to think about building a coil winder. Maybe that’s why so many people do. [Jtacha] did a take on the project, and we were impressed — it looks great.
The device has a keypad and an LCD. You can enter a number of turns or the desired inductance. It also lets you wind at an angle. So it is suitable for RF coils, Tesla coils, or any other reason you need a coil.
At first glance the very idea of a zipper that unzips and zips up by itself seems somewhat ridiculous. After all, these contraptions are mostly used on pieces of clothing and gear where handling a zipper isn’t really sped up by having an electric motor sluggishly move through the rows of interlocking teeth. Of course, that’s not the goal of YKK, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of zip fasteners. The demonstrated prototype (original PR in Japanese) shows this quite clearly, with a big tent and equally big zipper that you’d be hard pressed to zip up by hand.
The basic application is thus more in industrial applications and similar, with one of the videos, embedded below, showing a large ‘air tent’ being zipped up automatically after demonstrating why for a human worker this would be an arduous task. While this prototype appears to be externally powered, adding a battery or such could make it fully wireless and potentially a real timesaver when setting up large structures such as these. Assuming the battery isn’t flat, of course.
It might conceivably be possible to miniaturize this technology to the point where it’d ensure that no fly is ever left unzipped, and school kids can show off their new self-zipping jacket to their friends. This would of course have to come with serious safety considerations, as anyone who has ever had a bit of their flesh caught in a zipper can attest to.
Continue reading “YKK’s Self-Propelled Zipper: Less Crazy Than It Seems”
While most hams and hackers have at least heard of Heathkit, most people don’t know the strange origin story of the legendary company. [Ham Radio Gizmos] takes us all through the story.
In case you don’t remember, Heathkit produced everything from shortwave radios to color TVs to test equipment and even computers. But, for the most part, when you bought something from them, you didn’t get a finished product. You got a bag full of parts and truly amazing instructions about how to put them together. Why? Well, if you are reading Hackaday, you probably know why. But some people did it to learn more about electronics. Others were attracted by the lower prices you paid for some things if you built them yourself. Others just liked the challenge.
But Heathkit’s original kit wasn’t electronic at all. It was an airplane kit. Not a model airplane, it was an actual airplane. Edward Heath sold airplane kits at the affordable price around $1,000. In 1926, that was quite a bit of money, but apparently still less than a commercial airplane.
Sometimes you need random numbers — and properly random ones, at that. [Sean Boyce] whipped up a rig that serves up just that, tasty random bytes delivered fresh over MQTT.
[Sean] tells us he’s been “designing various quantum TRNGs for nearly 15 years as part of an elaborate practical joke” without further explanation. We won’t query as to why, and just examine the project itself. The main source of randomness — entropy, if you will — is a pair of transistors hooked up to create a bunch of avalanche noise that is apparently truly random, much like the zener diode method.
In any case, the noise from the transistors is then passed through a bunch of hex inverters and other supporting parts to shape the noise into a nicely random square wave. This is sampled by an ATtiny261A acting as a Von Neumann extractor, which converts the wave into individual bits of lovely random entropy. These are read by a Pi Pico W, which then assembles random bytes and pushes them out over MQTT.
Did that sound like a lot? If you’re not in the habit of building random number generators, it probably did. Nevertheless, we’ve heard from [Sean] on this topic before. Feel free to share your theories on the best random number generator designs below, or send your best builds straight to the tipsline. Randomly, of course!
It was probably Montesquieu who coined the proto-hacker motto “the best is the mortal enemy of the good”. He was talking about compromises in drafting national constitutions for nascent democracies, of course, but I’ll admit that I do hear his voice when I’m in get-it-done mode and start cutting corners on a project. A working project is better than a gold-plated one.
But what should I do, Monte, when good enough turns out to also be the mortal enemy of the best? I have a DIY coffee roaster that is limping along for years now on a blower box that uses a fan scavenged in anger from an old Dust Buster. Many months ago, I bought a speed-controllable and much snazzier brushless blower fan to replace it, that would solve a number of minor inconveniences with the current design, but which would also require some building and another dive into the crufty old firmware.
So far, I’ve had good enough luck that the roaster will break down from time to time, and I’ll use that as an excuse to fix that part of the system, and maybe even upgrade another as long as I have it apart. But for now, it’s running just fine. I mean, I have to turn the fan on manually, and the new one could be automatic. I have only one speed for the fan, and the new one would be variable. But the roaster roasts, and a constant source of coffee is mission critical in this house. The spice must flow!
Reflecting on this situation, it seems to me that the smart thing to do is work on smoothing the transitions from good enough to best. Like maybe I could prototype up the new fan box without taking the current one apart. Mock up some new driver code on the side while I’m at it?
Maybe Montesquieu was wrong, and the good and the best aren’t opposites after all. Maybe the good enough is just the first step on the path toward the best, and a wise man spends his energy on making the two meet in the middle, or making the transition from one to the other as painless as possible.
In the 90s, a video game craze took over the youth of the world — but unlike today’s games that rely on powerful PCs or consoles, these were simple, standalone devices with monochrome screens, each home to a digital pet. Often clipped to a keychain, they could travel everywhere with their owner, which was ideal from the pet’s perspective since, like real animals, they needed attention around the clock. [ViciousSquid] is updating this 90s idea for the 20s with a digital pet squid that uses a neural network to shape its behavior.
The neural network that controls the squid’s behavior takes a large number of variables into account, including whether or not it’s hungry or sleepy, or if it sees food. The neural network adapts as different conditions are encountered, allowing the squid to make decisions and strengthen its algorithms. [ViciousSquid] is using a Hebbian learning algorithm which strengthens connections between neurons which activate often together. Additionally, the squid’s can form both short- and long-term memories, and the neural network can even form new neurons on its own as needed.
[ViciousSquid] is still working on this project, and hopes to eventually implement a management system in the future, allowing the various behavior variables to be tracked over time and overall allow it to act in a way more familiar to the 90s digital pets it’s modeled after. It’s an interesting and fun take on those games, though, and much of the code is available on GitHub for others to experiment with as well. For those looking for the original 90s games, head over to this project where an emulator for Tamagotchis was created using modern microcontroller platforms.
Classic demos from the demoscene are all about showing off one’s technical prowess, with a common side order of a slick banging soundtrack. That’s precisely what [BUS ERROR Collective] members [DJ_Level_3] and [Marv1994] delivered with their prize-winning Primer demo this week.
This demo is a grand example of so-called “oscilloscope music”—where two channels of audio are used to control an oscilloscope in X-Y mode. The sounds played determine the graphics on the screen, as we’ve explored previously.
The real magic is when you create very cool sounds that also draw very cool graphics on the oscilloscope. The Primer demo achieves this goal perfectly. Indeed, it’s intended as a “primer” on the very artform itself, starting out with some simple waveforms and quickly spiraling into a graphical wonderland of spinning shapes and morphing patterns, all to a sweet electronic soundtrack. It was created with a range of tools, including Osci-Render and apparently Ableton 11, and the recording performed on a gorgeous BK Precision Model 2120 oscilloscope in a nice shade of green.
If you think this demo is fully sick, you’re not alone. It took out first place in the Wild category at the Revision 2025 demo party, as well as the Crowd Favorite award. High praise indeed.
We love a good bit of demoscene magic around these parts.
Continue reading “Amazing Oscilloscope Demo Scores The Win At Revision 2025”
