[Phil Barrett] designed a new CNC controller breakout board called the PicoCNC which uses the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 module and grblHAL. It packs a bunch of features typical of these controllers, and if you use the Pico W, you get WiFi connectivity along with USB. And if you don’t want connectivity, you can execute G-code directly from a micro SD card. The board is available in kit form, and schematics are posted on the GitHub repository above. Some of the features include four axes of motion, spindle control, limit switches, relay drivers, expansion headers, and opto-isolation.
This isn’t [Phil]’s first controller board. He also designed the grblHAL-based Teensy CNC controller breakout board, a step up from the usual Arduino-based modules at the time and boasting Ethernet support as well. According to the grblHAL site, nine different processors are now supported. There are well over a dozen CNC controller breakout boards listed as well. And don’t forget [bdring]’s 6-Pack grbl-ESP32 controller, a modular breakout board we covered a few years back. So pick your favorite board or roll your own and get moving.
We’ve all been bitten before by USB cables which were flaky, built for only charging, or just plain broken. With the increased conductor count and complexity of USB Type C, there are many more ways your cable can disappoint you. Over in Austria, [Peter Traunmüller] aka [petl] has designed the C2C caberQU USB C cable tester. This small PCB tester checks every wire on the cable, including the shield, and both connector orientations. He also makes a version for testing USB A to C cables (see video below the break).
Automatic cable testers are often associated with factory production, where you want to test a large quantity of cables quickly and automatically, and are priced accordingly. But this project makes it affordable and easy for anyone to test single cables in a home lab or small office.
Want a better way to feed solder, but want to do it on the quick and cheap? Well [ptkrf] has a solution for you in an old instructables post we stumbled upon recently. You might have, or can inexpensively buy, a mechanical pencil which has the feeder button on the side rather than on top, as usual. With the pencil in hand, [ptkrf] shows you the simple procedure for modifying the pencil into a solder feeder. You might need to experiment with different size pencils and solders to get a perfect match. Common mechanical pencils come in sizes to accommodate 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 mm leads, but there are bigger and smaller ones available. Perhaps one of those really large drafting lead holders could be repurposed as a solder dispenser for the bigger jobs.
We discussed a 3D printed solder feeder a few days ago, but if you don’t have one, this may be a good way to go. Thanks to [iliis] for sending in this tip.
Computer engineer [Marco Cilloni] realized a lot of developers today still have trouble dealing with Unicode in their programs, especially in the C/C++ world. He wrote an excellent guide that summarizes many of the issues surrounding Unicode and its encoding called “Unicode is harder than you think“. He first presents a brief history of Unicode and how it came about, so you can understand the reasons for the frustrating edge cases you’re bound to encounter.
There have been a variety of Unicode encoding methods over the years, but modern programs dealing with strings will probably be using UTF-8 encoding — and you should too. This multibyte encoding scheme has the convenient property of not changing the original character values when dealing with 7-bit ASCII text. We were surprised to read that there is actually an EBCDIC version of UTF still officially on the books today:
UTF-EBCDIC, a variable-width encoding that uses 1-byte characters designed for IBM’s EBCDIC systems (note: I think it’s safe to argue that using EBCDIC in 2023 edges very close to being a felony)
Recently [mit41301] wondered about increasing the data capacity of QR codes, and was able to successfully triple the number of bits using color. He chose the new rectangular micro QR code (rMQR) standard which was adopted last year as ISO/IEC 23941:2022. This rectangular-shaped QR code is designed to be used on narrow spaces, with an aspect ratio similar to that of a traditional 1D bar code. There are quite a few variations of rMQR, but the largest can hold 361 bytes. The basic idea is to generate three different rMQR codes, coloring them as red, green, blue, and merging the result. Decoding is performed by separating the color image into its RGB components and then decoding the resulting three images.
To do these experiments, [mit41301] took advantage of readily available tools. Generating rMQR codes can be done with this Python module by [Takahiro Tomita], who also makes the generator available online. Or if you’re more comfortable with Go, check out this repository by [Ichinose Shogo]. As a proof-of-concept, [mit41301] takes the first 449 digits of pi, plus the decimal point, and splits them into three each 150 byte chunks. Then he uses the image manipulation program ImageJ, an open-source Java program developed at the National Institutes of Health, to implement the combination and deconstruction processes.
The first 449 digits of pi expressed as a colorful rMQR code
There might be a few pitfalls if you want to do this outside the laboratory, however. First of all, this standard is reasonably new, and after a brief search this author couldn’t find any decoder that would recognize rMQR codes, nor any software modules or libraries. Research into colorization of QR codes, known as HCC2D (High Capacity Colored 2-Dimensional) codes has been ongoing. One issue is that correcting for arbitrary chromatic abnormalities in a scanner’s lens requires a baseline color palette in the code, which eats up some of the newly-gained data capacity.
Nonetheless, we really do like this concept. Do you have any applications of QR codes in your projects where coloring could be helpful? Is anyone using (monochrome) rMQR codes and if so, how are you scanning them? Check out our overview of barcodes, their history, and their future, in this recent article.
A new wind turbine installed in the Taiwan Strait went online last week, as part of the Fujian offshore wind farm project by the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG). The system is the MySE 16-260, designed by the Ming Yang Wind Power Group, one of the leading manufacturers of wind turbines in the world. The numbers are staggering, the 16MW generator is projected to provide 66 GWh (gigawatt-hours) to the power grid annually. And this is a hefty installation, with a 260 m rotor diameter ( three each 123 m blades ) sitting atop a 152 m tower. The location is both a blessing and a curse, being an area of the Pacific that experiences Beaufort level 7 winds ( near gale, whole trees in motion ) for more than 200 days per year. Understandably, the tower and support structures are beefy, designed to survive sustained winds of 287 km/h.
This 16 MW installation surpasses the previous record holder, announced this January — the Vestas V236-15.0MW turbine with 115.5 m blades, located in Denmark’s Østerild Wind Turbine Test Center. But wait … Ming Yang also announced in January their new 18 MW turbine with 140 m long blades.
We imagine that there will eventually be a natural plateau, where the cost of the next humongous installation approaches or exceeds that of multiple smaller ones. Or will these multi-megawatt turbine systems just keep leapfrogging each other, year after year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
[Fran] has been curious about the innards of Tivoli Audio’s Model One radio, but was reluctant to shell out $200 just to tear it apart. But she found one recently on eBay, won the auction, and proceeded to do a review and teardown. Spoiler alert, she was disappointed.
Physically speaking, the radio looks great and has quite an array of I/O connections. The geared tuning knob looks cool, but is heavily damped which [Fran] isn’t keen about. Turning it on, a few more quirks are discovered. The volume control is out-of-whack — it appears they substituted a linear taper potentiometer where a logarithmic taper was called for.
Another problem, at least in the RF-dense metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, is the FM tuner’s station-lock feature. It is so strong that it can be impossible to tune in weak stations. This is especially ironic since, according to Wikipedia, that was one of audio engineer Henry Kloss’s main goals when founding Tivoli Audio back in 2000:
Their first product was the Model One, a simple to use mid-century modern designed table top radio with a high-performance tuner, receiving FM radio in congested urban locations, while maintaining the ability to pick out distant or low power stations. Kloss had noted that the mid 60’s wave of Japanese radios lacked the ability to receive FM stations in congested locations, and this became a defining goal of his radio designs throughout his career.
Interestingly, many folks in the YouTube comments say their Model One radios have none of these issues. We wonder if [Fran] has obtained a damaged radio, or maybe a newer version produced with less attention to detail. If you have a broken Model One radio, before tossing it, consider the hack we wrote about last year, turning it into an internet radio.
