Raspi-Powered Typewriter Is A Real MUSE

September 5, 2023 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Thanks to parenting and life in general, [Brendan] had fallen out of the habit of writing and wasn’t happy about it. If you write anything ever, you already know there are endless distractions when it comes to doing so on a computer. Sure, there always typewriters, but it’s difficult to do anything with the fruits of a typewriter other than scan it in or make copies, and it’s basically un-editable except by hand.

Instead of just sitting down and writing, [Brendan] did what any of us would do — took the time to create an elegant solution. The Most Unusual Sentence Extractor, or MUSE, is a Raspberry Pi-based typewriter with the best of both worlds. It’s essentially a word processor, but it can save to the cloud.

[Brendan] found beautiful inspiration in the Olympia Traveller de Luxe typewriter, a delightfully boxy affair made in the 1960s and 70s with lovely keys. Starting with a 68Keys.io board, [Brendan] set about re-creating the lines of the Traveller de Luxe in Tinkercad.

Since it doesn’t really need a platen, this was the perfect place to mount a screen using black PVC. At first, [Brendan] was going to use an e-ink screen, but a mishap led to a better solution — an LCD touchscreen that makes document navigation a breeze.

We absolutely love the look of this machine, which was obviously a labor of love. And yeah, it does the trick:[Brendan] is writing again. Though it maybe be inconvenient, we agree that it really is nice to have a dedicated workstation for certain things.

Looking for the complete opposite of this project? How about a Chat GPT-assisted daisywheel typewriter?

Spooky Noise Box Has Post-Halloween Potential

September 5, 2023 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

There’s more than one way to scare people on Halloween. Sure, there’s always the low-brow jump scare, but that will generally just annoy the person and possibly cause a heart attack. No, what you need is a sustained soundscape of hellish audio. And where does one find hellish audio? Well, you make your own with a spooky-sounds noise box.

And no, we’re not talking about a soundboard that goes ‘boo’ and ‘ooo-OOO-oooh’ and whatnot. This is a full-on DIY instrument that has potential beyond Halloween. Essentially, the wooden box takes input vibrations from various doodads, and these vibrations are picked up by a piezo disk or two glued to the underside of the lid. The piezos are wired up to a 3.5 mm jack, which runs out to the PC and [SvartalfarQc]’s favorite Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). From there, it’s just a matter of playing around with the sounds — looping them, running them through various instrument voices, adding effects, and so on.

We love the the things that [SvartalfarQc] came up with, including a wind-up walking heart thing, a retractable badge holder, and that noise box mainstay, a sproingy doorstop.

We all know piezos are awesome, but have you ever considered that they can be used to digitize old wax cylinder recordings?

You’ve Got Mail: Straining The Limits Of Machine And Man

September 5, 2023 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

When we last left this subject, I told you all about Transorma, the first letter-sorting machine in semi-wide use. But before and since Transorma, machines have come about to perform various tasks on jumbled messes of mail — things like distinguishing letters from packages, making sure letters are all facing the same way before cancelling the postage, and the gargantuan task of getting huge piles of mail into the machines in the first place. So let’s dive right in, shall we?

Continue reading “You’ve Got Mail: Straining The Limits Of Machine And Man” →

The ‘Scope Of This Kickstarter? Ten Years.

September 4, 2023 by Kristina Panos 18 Comments

It may have taken ten years to come through on this particular Kickstarter, but a promise is a promise. In late August 2023, backers who had since likely forgotten all about the project started receiving their oscilloscope watches from creator [Gabriel Anzziani]. Whatever the reason(s) for the delay, the watch looks great, and is miles ahead of the prototype pictures.

As you may have guessed, it functions as both a watch and an oscilloscope. The watch has 12- and 24-hour modes as well as an alarm and calendar, and the ‘scope has all the features of the Xprotolab dev board, which [Gabriel] also created: ‘scope, waveform generator, logic analyzer, protocol sniffer, and frequency counter.

Internally, it has an 8-bit Xmega microcontroller which features an internal PDI, and the display is a 1.28″ E ink display. When we covered this ten years ago, the screen was the type of Sharp LCD featured in the Pebble watch. [Gabriel]’s ‘scope watch features eight buttons around the edge which are user-programmable. One of [Gabriel]’s goals was for people to make their own apps.

Of course, the Kickstarter rewards are no longer available, but if you want to build your own small, digital ‘scope, check out this DIY STM32 project.

Image via the Company Formerly Known As Twitter

Labor Day BBQs May Feature NYPD

September 1, 2023 by Kristina Panos 53 Comments

Planning to host a large backyard wingding in the NYC metro area this weekend? Be sure to watch the skies for uninvited guests. That’s right, the NYPD are deploying drones over “large” Labor Day events and yes, even private barbecues. The strategy was announced during a briefing about J’ouvert — that’s a yearly Caribbean festival that marks the end of slavery. It generally brings crowds of thousands and draws a strong police presence to Brooklyn.

While this particular invasion may come as a bit of a shock, this certainly isn’t the first time the NYPD has deployed drones in the name of public safety or in response to emergencies. Data shows they have used them 124 times this year, which is up a staggering 31 times from the four events in 2022.

As you may have guessed, this has invited backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates. One pointed out that this action “flies in the face of the POST Act,” a city law that requires the NYPD to provide transparency about their various surveillance tactics. The advocates cite the fact that regulations have not kept up with the proliferation of technology.

No matter what happens in the future with regulations, the NYPD can always crash large parties the old fashioned way. Usually, the neighbors will complain at some point, unless they were all invited.

Photo via Unsplash.

Re-Creating Pink Floyd In The Name Of Speech

September 1, 2023 by Kristina Panos 18 Comments

For people who have lost the ability to speak, the future may include brain implants that bring that ability back. But could these brain implants also allow them to sing? Researchers believe that, all in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.

In a new study published in PLOS Biology, twenty-nine people who were already being monitored for epileptic seizures participated via a postage stamp-sized array of electrodes implanted directly on the surface of their brains. As the participants were exposed to Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In the Wall, Part 1, the researchers gathered data from several areas of the brain, each attuned to a different musical element such as harmony, rhythm, and so on. Then the researchers used machine learning to reconstruct the audio heard by the participants using their brainwaves.

First, an AI model looked at the data generated from the brains’ responses to components of the song, like the changes in rhythm, pitch, and tone. Then a second model rejiggered the piecemeal song and estimated the sounds heard by the patients. Of the seven audio samples published in the study results, we think #3 sounds the most like the song. It’s kind of creepy but ultimately very cool. What do you think?

Continue reading “Re-Creating Pink Floyd In The Name Of Speech” →

Hackaday Podcast 233: Chandrayaan On The Moon, Cyberdecks, Hackerspaces Born At A German Computer Camp

August 25, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos experimented with the old adage that brevity is the soul of wit. That’s right; this week, they’re all Quick Hacks, and that’s to make room for a special series of interviews that Elliot recorded at CCCamp with the pillars of US hackerspace creation. This one’s really special, do have a listen.

We still made room for the news this week: India launched Chandrayaan-3, which combines an orbiter, lander, and rover all in one. Then it’s on to the What’s That Sound results show, and while Kristina did not get it right, she did correctly identify it as being used in Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, as did one of the guessers who identified it as the cowbell sound from a Roland 808.

Then it’s on to the (quick) hacks, where we alternated for once just to keep things interesting. This week, Elliot is into 3D printing a clay extruder and then printing pottery with that, z-direction conductive tape, and the humble dipole antenna. Kristina is more into cyberdecks for the young and old, a reusable plant monitor, and 3D printing some cool coasters.

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 and savor at your leisure.