Author: Brandon Dunson

52 Articles

Inside A Circuit Breaker With MikesElectricStuff

February 26, 2016 by 25 Comments

High voltage is  not something we usually tinker with at home. In fact, most of us are more comfortable working with non-lethal, low current, low voltage DC signals. When we do venture into the world of high voltage, we prefer to do it vicariously thru someone with more safety training and/or experience.

[Mike] shows us the inner workings of a 240VAC circuit breaker and explains how the different safety features in the device work. In proper MikesElectricStuff form, [Mike] finds out what it takes to destroy the device. Or in this case multiple devices, [Mike] uses his “Destruct-o-tron” to create catastrophic failure in more than one breaker. You can check out the video embedded after the break to learn a bit about how a circuit breaker works, and of course witness the carnage.

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Dallas

February 24, 2016 by 11 Comments

Join us for a Meetup on Saturday, March 19th in the Lone Star State. Team Hackaday will be at the Dallas Makerspace and we want to hang out with you. Bring a hack to show off and come see what everyone else in the area has been up to.

Come join us for food, drinks and lightning talks. If you aren’t familiar with lightning talks it’s pretty simple, they’re designed to be short and to the point talks no longer than 7 minutes. Bring one of your hacks and 5 to 7 minutes of bragging rights to show off. Or perhaps you are working on a new project and need some help, what better audience to bounce ideas off of? Come on out and show us what you got no matter what stage of the project you’re in, we want to see it and hear all about it.

This is a free event and you are not required to be a member of the Dallas Makerspace to attend, however we do want you to RSVP if you plan to come.

We can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on and we want to hear all about it. We will also have a few Hackaday related talks: [Mike Szczys] is giving a talk on Hackaday Belgrade and [Brandon Dunson] is giving a talk on the 2016 Hackaday Prize. The monthly hardware design workshop I will be teaching at the Dallas Makerspace starting in April: Mrs Penny’s Driving School will also be the topic of a lightning talk. Full disclosure: [Mike Szczys] also hinted at giving another talk but we’ll have to wait and see what he chooses to talk about.

The Ultimate 1:1 BB-8 Build Guide

February 24, 2016 by 8 Comments

BB-8 is not only a cute little droid but also presents dandy of a challenge for hackers ’round the globe to try and recreate in the garage. Nonfunctional models are a dime a dozen and the novelty has long worn off the Sphero toy. This brings us to a legit full-scale BB-8, seen in action in the video after the break.

Lucky for us, [Ed Zarick] has written up a blog post that’s as impressive as the build itself. [Ed] has drawn some inspiration and shared knowledge from several online groups focused around recreating the BB-8. He also provides some thorough Solidworks assemblies that look painfully detailed.

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Waiting For China To Re-Open, From Huaqiangbei

February 20, 2016 by 24 Comments

The Chinese New Year is something we keep in mind at least half of the year, and probably still don’t plan for properly. In case you’re new to the situation: The Chinese New Year celebration empties out Shenzhen of its more than 12 million residents for the better part of a month. It’s the one time of year that manufacturing sector workers (and everyone that supports that ecosystem) travels home to visit family.

For those involved in manufacturing goods in Shenzhen, this part of the year leaves us cut off from one of our vices and we count the days until our tracking numbers and order confirmations start to show signs of life. It’s an inconvenience of an entirely different nature if you are one of the lonely few that stays in the city during the holiday. [Ian] over at Dangerous Prototypes wrote a blog post from his office in Huaqiangbei which is a sub-district of Shenzhen, China to share the experience with us.

Shenzhen is uniquely a migrant-worker city, and when emptied of the factory employees there are not enough people to patronize local services like markets and restaurants so they also shut down. But an empty city offers its own interesting entertainment like wicked fireworks sessions. As always, [Ian] does a great job of sharing this peculiar part of Shenzhen culture. He also kindly points out some of the offensive offers that come through the inter-webs from desperate customers who have poorly planned around the holiday.

How I Embraced My Introvert And Joined The Hacker Community

February 16, 2016 by 67 Comments

For some people to join a new group is an exciting proposal, to meet new people and interact with them to accomplish a goal is their idea of a good time. If this describes you then you’re all set to jump in there and make some new friends! There are other people who see social interaction as not such a good time. They would rather avoid that situation and go on about their normal day, I get it. In general my level of comfort is inversely proportional to the number of people with me. This is not a character trait that I chose, I’m an introvert by nature.

The stereotype depicts hackers, nerds, or geeks as people without many friends who spend most of our time alone or you might just call us “loners”. I should make it clear that I’m writing this article from a table for 1 at my local diner and it would be out of the ordinary if there was another person at this table with me. Just in case someone feels the need to speak to me I’m wearing headphones as a deterrent, audio delivery is not their use at this time (headphone hack). I can feel the first comment brewing so let me nip that in the bud real quick: I’m in a restaurant AND actively being alone because there are often too many distractions at home to get things done in a timely manner. And I like the pancakes.

Before I climb up on this soapbox let me say that many of you are already involved in the community and are doing a great job, in fact I’m pretty sure many of the old-timers I talk about are Hackaday readers. This article is a result of my self reflection regarding my lack of community involvement as of late. I can’t think of any reasons why I shouldn’t take myself down a peg or two publicly, enjoy.

I won’t bother with the “Ra-Ra! Team Spirit!” garbage to get you all jazzed up to be a part of the team. But I will tell you what you’re missing out on by not being active and participating. It’s similar to the saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make that horse join a group of like-minded horses that would all benefit from a wealth of horse-knowledge.” The saying changes depending on where you’re from, that’s how it was told to me.

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Bench Testing A Switch Mode Drop In Replacement For The LM7805

February 15, 2016 by 50 Comments

Throwing a 5V regulator like the LM7805 at our projects can become habit forming, after all they’re dirt cheap and the circuit is about as basic as they come with only two external components, an input and output cap. As this is a good enough solution to most of our 5V circuits we can come into some issues if we aren’t paying attention. Linear regulators can only dissipate so much power in the form of heat before they need a heat sink and/or active cooling. Even if they can produce a cleaner output, in an embedded system, large power losses to heat are less than ideal to say the least.

[Daniel] needed an efficient solution to use in the place of an LM7805, after looking at the drop-in replacement switching solutions available on Adafruit’s website, he headed to DigiKey for a similar and less expensive part. [Daniel] collected some data and found the regulator to be 92% efficient with a 12V input, which is not quite the claimed 97% but a good solution nonetheless.

Switching voltage regulators are nothing new, so don’t even act like we just jumped on this switch-mode bandwagon! But it pays to give a little thought to your power supply. And while you’re in the mood, have an extremely thorough look inside the LM7805.

Good Old-Fashioned Circuit Bending With Patient Alpha

February 15, 2016 by 4 Comments

For a lot of us some sort of audio circuit was our first endeavor into electronics. Speak and Spell, atari punk console, LM386 in a mint tin, sound familiar? If not, you should do yourself a favor and knock out a couple of those simple projects. For those of us who have done a bit of what the kids are calling circuit bending, [Nickolas Peter] brings us a familiar hack with his Patient Alpha project. You can see a time-lapse video of the build process and a short demo in the video after the break.

[Nickolas] did a few mods to his 2013 Executor key fob; the obligatory potentiometer for resistor swap is always a crowd pleaser. Adding an audio out via 3.5 mm jack is something that some of us wouldn’t have thought to include, but it lets the Executor scream into your serious audio gear for maximum eargasms. It’s worth mentioning that [Nickolas] does a good job with this hack’s finished look, albeit he started with a product in an enclosure he still goes to the trouble of custom fitting all his bits in an aesthetically pleasing way. And then he made a second.

We have covered circuit bent projects aplenty: from an old school take on circuit bending to one with a ratking of wires built on a proper bit of audio kit. Dig out your soldering iron and dig in.

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