Author: Jenny List

3411 Articles

This End Table Conceals A Close Encounter

April 11, 2022 by 18 Comments

If you’re of a Certain Age, perhaps you had a train set as a child. An oval of track, a loco, and some rolling stock; it matters not whether it was Thomas the Tank Engine or a large express train — they were at the time a pretty cool toy. Move forward a few decades, and model railways have become either super-expensive room-filler layouts, or have sunk low as novelty Christmas ornaments, so that the basic loop of track is in dire need of rescue. Perhaps [Peter Waldraff] can help, with a beautifully-constructed N gauge circular layout concealed in an end table. Even better, when you examine it closely, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary train set, it’s a scene from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

This is a project of two equally well-made parts, the piece of furniture and the train. The former is entirely scratch-built, with a cylindrical outside made from carefully cut rings of plywood and a sliding riser mechanism in the centre with a concrete counterweight. Slide the cylinder upwards, and the layout is revealed — a scratch-built hill in the centre of the ring of track and the lit-up underside of the UFO above it. As the train goes round the track, it even triggers a set of crossing lights and sounds for extra realism. The full story can be seen in the video below the break, and is well worth a watch.

We’ve covered more than one concealed model railway layout in the past, and it comes as no surprise when browsing to find that [Peter]’s work has featured here before.

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It’s Almost A New Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. But Not Quite

April 8, 2022 by 21 Comments

We know that readers are familiar with the global chip shortage and its effects on product availability. The Raspberry Pi folks haven’t escaped its shadow, for even though they’ve managed to preserve availability of their RP2040 microcontroller, it’s fair to say that some of their flagship Linux-capable boards have been hard to find. All of this has had an unlikely effect in the form of a new Raspberry Pi, but unexpectedly it’s one which few end users are likely to get their hands on.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module has been part of the range since the early days, and in its earlier versions took a SODIMM form factor. The last SODIMM Compute Module had a Pi 3 processor, and this unexpected new model is reported as having a very similar hardware specification but featuring the Pi 4 processor. It seems that the chip shortage has affected supplies of the earlier SoC, and to keep their many industrial customers for the SODIMM Compute Modules in business they’ve had to produce this upgrade. As yet it’s not surfaced for sale on its own and there’s a possibility it will stay only in the realm of industrial boards, but as the story develops there’s a Raspberry Pi forum topic about it for the latest and you can find the pertinent info in the video below the break.

Of course, the Compute Module of the moment remains the CM4 in its newer form factor, which we see as possibly the most exciting of all the Pi products of the moment. Meanwhile this is not the first custom industrial Raspberry Pi to be seen in the wild.

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Just What On Earth Is A Therm?

April 7, 2022 by 86 Comments

With the news here in Europe full of the effect of the war in Ukraine on gas supplies and consequently, prices, there it was on the radio news: a unit of measurement so uniquely British that nobody uses it in the real world and nobody even has a clue what it really means. We’re speaking of the Therm, one of those words from our grandparents’ era of coal gas powered Belling cookers and Geyser water heaters hanging over the bath, which has somehow hung on in the popular imagination as a mysterious unit of domestic gas referred to only in the mass market news media. What on earth is a therm, and why are we still hearing it on the news in the UK?

You can’t Buy A Therm

Asking the internet what a therm is reveals the answer, it’s 100,000 BTU. What’s a BTU? A British Thermal Unit, another anachronistic measurement five decades after the UK went metric, it’s the amount of energy required to raise a pound of water by a degree Fahrenheit. Which in turn is about 1,054 joules, in today’s measurements. So a therm is thus a unit of energy, can we take a look at our gas meters and see how many of them we’ve used this winter? Not so fast, because gas isn’t sold by the therm. Older gas meters had cubic feet on them, and we’re guessing that now they’re calibrated in cubic meters. We can’t even buy a therm of gas, so why on earth are the British media still using it? Continue reading “Just What On Earth Is A Therm?” →

Magnetic Hockey Game Uses A 555

April 6, 2022 by 1 Comment

We love a good project here at Hackaday, particularly one that makes us want to pick it up and have a go at whatever it does for ourselves. And when we see such a project and find that it contains the One Chip To Rule Them All (otherwise known as the NE555 timer), our collective cup runneth over with joy. So [Andrew Fentem]’s magnetic hockey project certainly pushes all our buttons, as it’s a game superficially similar to an air hockey table in which a magnetic puck is accelerated by a handheld electronic bat.

The bats look extremely high-tech but are in fact surprisingly simple. Each one contains a Hall effect sensor which triggers the 555 which we’d expect is wired as a monostable, this in turn fires a MOSFET which energises an electromagnet for a set period of time. The puck is a magnet, and thus when it is detected by the Hall sensor it is shot away at high speed by the electromagnet. the result is a fast-paced game which has an extra edge over conventional air hockey, and which being honest, we’d love to have a go at. You can see it in the video below the break.

Of course, if your budget doesn’t stretch to not one but two chips in this era of semiconductor shortages, you can always try a conventional table.

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Build A TPM Module For Your Server

April 6, 2022 by 62 Comments

One of the big stories surrounding the announcement of Windows 11 was that it would require support for TPM 2.0, or Trusted Platform Module, to run. This takes the form of an on-board cryptographic processor, which Microsoft claims will help against malware, but which perhaps more importantly for Redmond, can be used to enforce DRM.  Part of the standard involves a hardware module, and [Zane] has built a couple of them for ASrock server motherboards.

The chip in question is the Infineon SLB9965, which with a bit of research was found to map more or less directly to the pins of the TPM socket on the motherboard. The interesting thing here lies in the background research it gives into TPMs, and furthermore the links to other resources dealing with the topic. The chances are that most readers needing a TPM will simply buy one, but all knowledge is useful when it comes to these things.

Our weekly security roundup has been keeping an eye on the use of TPMs for a while, and has even shown us some ways that people have used to bypass the modules.

Fix Every Broken Via To Return This Game To Life

April 5, 2022 by 11 Comments

We all know the havoc that water in the wrong place can do to a piece of electronics, and thus we’ve probably all had devices damaged beyond repair. Should [Solderking] have thrown away the water-damaged PCB from a Nintendo Pokemon Ruby cartridge? Of course he should, but when faced with a board on which all vias had succumbed to corrosion he took the less obvious path and repaired them.

Aside from some very fine soldering in the video below the break there’s little unexpected. He removes the parts and tries a spot of reworking, but the reassembled board doesn’t boot. So he removes them again and this time sands it back to copper. There follows a repair of every single vial on the board, sticking fine wires through the holes into a sponge and soldering the top, before turning it over and fixing the forest of wires on the other side. Fixing the ROM results in a rather challenging fitment involving the chip being mounted at an angle and extra wires going to its pads, which demonstrates the value in this story. It’s not one of monetary value but of persevering with some epic rework to achieve a PCB which eventually boots. Of course a replacement board would make more sense. But that’s not the point, is it?

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A 3D Printed 35mm Movie Camera

April 5, 2022 by 19 Comments

Making a camera can be as easy as taking a cardboard box with a bit of film and a pin hole, but making a more accomplished camera requires some more work. A movie camera has all the engineering challenges as a regular camera with the added complication of a continuous film transport mechanism and shutter. Too much work? Not if you are [Yuta Ikeya], whose 3D printed movie camera uses commonly-available 35 mm film stock rather than the 8 mm or 16 mm film you might expect.

3D printing might not seem to lend itself to the complex mechanism of a movie camera, however with the tech of the 2020s in hand he’s eschewed a complex mechanism in favour of an Arduino and a pair of motors. The camera is hardly petite, but is still within the size to comfortably carry on a shoulder. The film must be loaded into a pair of cassettes, which are pleasingly designed to be reversible, with either able to function as both take-up and dispensing spool.

The resulting images have an extreme wide-screen format and a pleasing artistic feel. Looking at them we’re guessing there may be a light leak or two, but it’s fair to say that they enhance the quality rather than detract from it. Those of us who dabble in movie cameras can be forgiven for feeling rather envious.

We’ve reached out to him asking whether the files might one day be made available, meanwhile you can see it in action in the video below the break.

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