Retrotechtacular: Another Thing Your TV No Longer Needs

October 2, 2024 by Jenny List 23 Comments

As Hackaday writers we don’t always know what our colleagues are working on until publication time, so we all look forward to seeing what other writers come up with. This week it was [Al Williams] with “Things Your TV No Longer Needs“, a range of gadgets from the analogue TV era, now consigned to the history books. On the bench here is a device that might have joined them, so in taking a look at it now it’s by way of an addendum to Al’s piece.

When VHF Was Not Enough

In a Dutch second-had store while on my hacker camp travels this summer, I noticed a small grey box. It was mine for the princely sum of five euros, because while I’d never seen one before I was able to guess exactly what it was. The “Super 2” weighing down my backpack was a UHF converter, a set-top box from before set-top boxes, and dating from the moment around five or six decades ago when that country expanded its TV broadcast network to include the UHF bands. If your TV was VHF it couldn’t receive the new channels, and this box was the answer to connecting your UHF antenna to that old TV.

It’s a relatively small plastic case about the size of a chunky paperback book, on the front of which is a tuning knob and scale in channels and MHz, on the top of which are a couple of buttons for VHF and UHF, and on the back are a set of balanced connectors for antennas and TV set. It’s mains powered, so there’s a mains lead with an older version of the ubiquitous European mains plug. Surprisingly it comes open with a couple of large coin screws on the underside, so it’s time to take a look inside. Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: Another Thing Your TV No Longer Needs” →

Seven Day Movement Makes A Rubbish Clock

September 29, 2024 by Jenny List 10 Comments

We see a lot of clocks here at Hackaday. Some of them are better than others, but this one from [John Graham-Cumming] is definitely a rubbish clock. It performs the simple yet vital task of keeping track of which day is which when it comes to trash collection.

The big revelation for us from this project is that the standard plastic battery clock mechanism which you’ll no doubt be familiar with from many cheap clocks can also be bought with gearing for a weekly rather than daily revolution. The physical hack is therefore a pretty simple one of mounting the movement with a single hand over a face showing the waste collections, and the write-up goes into more depth about the code for creating custom SVG clock faces. We’re already thinking of interesting stuff that can be done with one of these movements.

Meanwhile, we like this clock, but it’s certainly not the first trash indicator we’ve seen.

An ESP32 Delivers Perfect Slot Car Control

September 28, 2024 by Jenny List 5 Comments

If your memory of slot cars as a childhood toy is of lightweight controllers with wire-wound rheostats inside, then you’re many years behind the state of the art when it comes to competitive slot car racing. In that world the full force of modern electronics has been brought to keeping the car on the road, and as an example here’s [Maker Fabio] with a cutting edge controller that has an ESP32 at its heart.

It’s obvious that a huge amount of attention has gone into both the physical design of the unit and its software, and the result speaks for itself. The trigger sits on a proper bearing, and the sensor is a Hall-effect device on the PCB. The firmware was written in the Arduino IDE, and through the trigger and a rotary encoder all of its options can be configured on a small OLED display. Individual settings can be configured for each car, and we’re treated to a full explanation of this in the video.

We are told that the files for both software and hardware will be released in due course, as this is still a work in progress for the moment. The video meanwhile provides ample demonstration, so we look forward to the release.

It’s a surprise to find relatively few projects from the slot car world on these pages, given the amount of potential there is in them for electronic improvement. Here’s one from a few years ago though.

Continue reading “An ESP32 Delivers Perfect Slot Car Control” →

Winamp A Few Days Later: You Can Fork, And Watch For GPL Violations

September 28, 2024 by Jenny List 34 Comments

A few days ago the source code for the popular Winamp music player was released into the world, with as we reported at the time, a licence that left a lot to be desired. Since then it seems some of the criticism has caught up with the company, for not only have they modified their terms to allow forking, they’ve reacted to a bunch of claimed GPL violations by removing offending files. Perhaps How-To-Geek are right in describing it all as an absolute mess.

The forking amendment means that with luck we’ll start seeing a few modified players descending from the Winamp code, and it seems that the GPL violations are more embarrassing technicalities than show-stoppers, but we have to wornder whether or not this makes for something with any more than historical interest. Perhaps its value stands in a lesson for corporate entities in how not to release their source, which sadly we expect will be taken by other organisations as an excuse not to do so.

If you’re following the Winamp source code saga you can read our coverage from when it came out. It will be interesting to see where this story goes.

Turn A Mouse Into An Analogue Tuning Knob

September 27, 2024 by Jenny List 4 Comments

The software defined radio has opened up unimaginable uses of the radio spectrum for radio enthusiasts, but it’s fair to say that there’s one useful feature of an old-fashioned radio they lack when used via a computer. We’re talking of course about the tuning knob, because it represents possibly the most intuitive way to move across the bands. Never fear though, because [mircemk] has a solution. He’s converted a mouse into a tuning dial.

The scroll wheel on a mouse is nothing more than a rotary encoder, and can easily be used as a sort of tuning knob. Replacing it with a better encoder gives it a much better feel, so that’s what he’s done. An enclosure has the guts of a mouse, with the front-mounted encoder wired into where the scroll wheel would have been. The result, for a relatively small amount of work, is a tuning knob, and a peripheral we’re guessing could also have a lot of uses beyond software defined radio.

It’s not the first knob we’ve seen, for that you might want to start with the wonderfully named Tiny Knob, but it’s quite possibly one of the simplest to build. We like it.

British Commuters Get Their WiFi Hacked

September 27, 2024 by Jenny List 24 Comments

As if there weren’t enough worrying global news stories already, today the British press and media have been full of a story involving the public WiFi networks at some major railway stations. Instead of being faced with the usual don’t-be-naughty terms and conditions page, commuters were instead faced with a page that definitely shouldn’t have been there.

Hackaday readers will immediately have guessed what is likely to have happened. This is probably more of a compromise of the page than of the network itself, and, indeed, the BBC are reporting that it may have come via an administrator account at Network Rail’s er… network provider. Fortunately, it seems the intent was to spread a political message rather than malware, so perhaps those travelers got off lightly. The various companies involved have all got the proverbial egg on their faces, and we’re glad we don’t work in the IT department concerned.

Continue reading “British Commuters Get Their WiFi Hacked” →

Want To Help Capture Some Digital Ephemera? Break Out Your VHS Player

September 26, 2024 by Jenny List 16 Comments

Do you live in the UK, have a VCR and capture card, and an interest in Teletext? [James O’Malley] needs your help! Teletext was, for many people around the world, their first experience of an electronic information system. The simple text and block graphics were transmitted on rotation as data bursts in the frame blanking periods of analogue TV broadcasts, and in an era of printed newspapers, they became compulsory reading. The UK turned off its old-style teletext over a decade ago with the switch to digital, but fragments of the broadcasts remain and can be painstakingly revived from period video recordings with the appropriate software.

This is where [James’] problem begins. Having recovered a very large archive of 1980s and 1990s VHS tapes, he’s come to the realisation that he’s bitten off more than he can chew, and that the archive needs to be in the hands of an individual, entity, or organisation which can give it the resources necessary to archive both the teletext and the programming that it contains. Can you help? Give the article linked above a read.

Meanwhile, you can wallow in a bit of nostalgia by browsing the archive of recovered pages, and while you’re at it, take a minute to envy the French.