Cloned Gate Remote Does It (Slightly) Better

December 11, 2019 by Kristina Panos 21 Comments

Ever make something just to see if you could? Yeah, we thought so. [serverframework] wanted to see if he could clone the remote that opens his neighborhood gate, inspired by the long distance ding-dong-ditch efforts of [Samy Kamkar].

This clone uses an ATtiny85 and an RF module to emulate and send the frequency that the gate is waiting for. To accomplish that, [serverframework] had to figure out both the operating frequency and the timing used by the remote. The crystal inside seemed to indicate 295 MHz, and a quick check of the device’s FCC registration confirmed it. Then he used an SDR dongle to watch the data coming across when he pressed the button, and ran it through Audacity to figure out the timing.

Unfortunately, the 295 MHz crystal is a rare beast, so [serverframework] had to transplant the original to the donor RF module. Then it was just a matter of programming the ATtiny85 to send the frequency with the right timing. It actually does a better job since the original has no timing crystal, and the ‘tiny is clocked with a standard 16 kHz oscillator. The code is available within [serverframework]’s excellent write-up, and you can see a tiny demo after the break.

There’s more than one way to clone a gate remote. This one leverages MQTT to turn friends’ phones into remotes.

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Weird Substances: Hagfish Slime

December 10, 2019 by Kristina Panos 27 Comments

In the cold, dark recesses of ocean floors around the world, hagfish slither around like sea snakes, searching for food. When a hagfish finds a suitable carcass, it devours the dead fish in two different ways. As it burrows face-first through the tissue, eating with its jaw-less, tentacled mouth, the hagfish also absorbs nutrients through its skin.

Hagfish are not the unholy result of dumping toxic waste in the ocean. They’re one of the oldest creatures on Earth, having been around for more than 300 million years. How have they lasted this long?

A coiled hagfish reveals its slime ports. Image via Oregon Coast Aquarium

These ancient creatures have no eyes, no backbones, and no scales. They are often misidentified as eel, and often called ‘slime eels’, but they are definitely fish. They just don’t look like conventional fish. In fact, when conventional, gill-faced fish come after hagfish, those guys are in for a surprise, because hagfish have a disgusting but ingenious defense mechanism.

Whenever hagfish are attacked or even just stressed by nearby fish or curious grabby humans, they immediately emit amazing amounts of mucus at an alarming rate. At the same time, the hagfish shoots out silky strands of protein that hold the slime together in a cohesive blob. Any predator that tries to bite down on one of these velvety frankfurters of the deep sea will find its mouth and gills covered in a wad of suffocating slime.

How is it that hagfish haven’t slimed themselves out of existence? Whenever they get get a taste of their own medicine, these boneless noodles quickly twist themselves into a pretzel. In the same motion, they use their paddle-shaped tails to squeegee off the slime.

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Don’t Hang Christmas Lights, Embed Them

December 10, 2019 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

Finding it hard to get into the holiday spirit this year? Maybe you just need a timely project to light up the evenings until Santa (or Krampus) pays your house a visit. Whoever visits this season, delight or distract them with a 3D printed tree featuring embedded RGB LEDs.

[MakeTVee] printed this tree in four stages to make it a little bit easier to wire everything up. Each stage has six LEDs embedded in a 5mm transparent layer at the bottom. The top stage has a second color change to make a tree topper that holds a single LED. The color change feature in PrusaSlicer 2.0 made it easy to pause the print, insert the wired-up LEDs, and resume seamlessly in green filament. There’s a hidden base of what appears to be appropriately delicious cinnamon filament that holds the Trinket M0 and the power switch.

This lil’ tree looks great, especially considering how fiddly and nerve-wracking the wiring and assembly must have been. [MakeTVee] made it easier on himself with a printed wiring stencil that holds the LEDs in their star formation while he solders them up with magnet wire (a solid choice in our book). He thoughtfully included that stencil in the files which are up on the Prusa site. Dim the lights, grab a hot beverage, and check out [MakeTVee]’s build video after the break.

If you want a holiday hack that people can play with, invite them to paint your addressable tree.

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DIY Music Controllers For Raging With Machines

December 9, 2019 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

[Tristan Shone], aka Author & Punisher, found a way to make industrial music even heavier. This former mechanical engineer from Boston crafted his one-man band in the university fab labs of Southern California while pursing an art degree. He started machining robust custom MIDI controllers that allow him to get physical while performing, instead of hunching over tiny buttons and trying to finesse microscopic touch pad-style pitch sliders.

Starting about ninety seconds into the video after the break, [Tristan] explains his set up and walks through each of his handmade controllers, all of which are built on Arduinos and Raspberry Pis.

Our favorite is probably Grid Iron, because it looks like the most fun. Grid Iron is a rhythm controller that works by running back and forth and side-to-side over a grid of machined textures that act like speed bumps. A spring-loaded stylus picks up the textures, and an encoder translates them to sound. Eight buttons along the 3D-printed pistol grip let [Tristan] make changes on the fly.

Tired of twiddling tiny knobs, [Tristan] made Big Knobs, a set of three solid aluminum knobs that look to be 3-4″ in diameter. These are assigned jobs like delay and filter, and their weight combined with ball bearings allows them to spin almost indefinitely while [Tristan] injects other sounds into the mix.

[Tristan] has made a few custom microphones to make the most of his voice. One is a trachea mic made from four piezos strapped to his throat that picks up every possible vocal utterance and other guttural sounds quite nicely. The other is an 8-pack of mics built into a curved metal box. He can assign a different effect to each one and do things like turn a breathy scream into the sounds of swelling cymbals.

There are more machines not covered in the video, and you can read about those on [Tristan]’s site. In a bonus video after the break, [Tristan] discusses a trio of pneumatically-driven mask controllers he made.

Don’t have a machine shop at your disposal? Dig out that fidget spinner and get moving on your own MIDI controller.

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Retrotechtacular: The Gyro-X

December 5, 2019 by Kristina Panos 42 Comments

In the 1950s, American automobiles bloomed into curvaceous gas-guzzlers that congested the roads. The profiles coming out of Detroit began to deflate in the 1960s, but many bloat boats were still sailing the streets. For all their hulking mass, these cars really weren’t all that stable — they still had issues with sliding and skidding.

One man sought to fix all of this by re-imagining the automobile as a sleek torpedo that would scream down the road and fly around turns. This man, Alex Tremulis, envisioned the future of the automobile as a two-wheeled, streamlined machine, stabilized by a gyroscope. He called it the Gyro-X.

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1984 WeatherMan Pi Shows The Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

December 5, 2019 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

When [MisterM]’s MIL gave him a rad 80s portable cassette player, he jumped for joy. Once he figured out the window was exactly the same size as the standard for Raspberry Pi HATs, the possibilities left him reeling. A flurry of ideas later, he settled on a weather display featuring a Pimoroni Unicorn HAT HD.

The 1984 Weatherman Pi pulls data from the Dark Sky API every 1.5 seconds using a Zero W. [MisterM] chose to highlight the current temperature, conditions, and rain probability, though there are heaps of other API goodies still on the table. It shows the current weather conditions as animations, scrolls the temperature, and gives a nice graph of rainfall probability.

Surprisingly, the dazzling display isn’t our favorite part. See those spongy headphones up top? They’re not just for decoration, though they go a long way in helping the cassette player keep its identity. Whenever there’s a change in the weather, they shimmy back and forth on a 9g servo. If the servo were continuous, it might be neat to use them as a weather vane.

Be sure to check out [MisterM]’s comprehensive demo/build video waiting for you on the B-side. We love a good weather display around here, and the more colorful and literal, the better.

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A Thermal Typewriter For Burning Thoughts

December 5, 2019 by Kristina Panos 15 Comments

There’s a certain charm to old technologies that have been supplanted by newer versions. And we’re not just talking about aesthetic nostalgia this time. With older versions of current technology, you are still connected to the underlying process, and that’s a nice feeling.

Part of the typewriter’s charm is in its instant permanence. These days, its so easy to backspace, delete, and otherwise banish thoughts to the void without giving them a fair trial, though it’s nice not to have to pound the keys to make an impression. At the typewriter, your words are immediately committed to paper, for better or worse. You can usually see them pretty well, although maybe not on the current line, and that is good for letting the words flow without judgment.

[Murtaza Tunio] recently used a thermal POS printer in an art project, but it had since grown cold with disuse. Why not turn it into a typewriter? All it took was a Raspberry Pi, a USB keyboard, and an existing Python library for communicating with these parallel printers. Typing is a bit challenging for a few reasons. For one thing, [Murtaza] has to type five lines before the words become visible. The enter key doesn’t come across for some reason, so a different one had to be assigned. On the upside, [Murtaza] can trigger the paper cutter with a keystroke.

Not too hot on thermal printers? You might find this e-ink typewriter refreshing.