Fizzle Loop Synth Does It With 555 Timers

For every project that uses an Arduino to make soup or an ESP8266 to hash bitcoin, there’s always someone out there uttering the same old refrain. I could have done it with a 555. More often than not, this is true, even if it is tangential to the discussion being had. In this case however, such a statement is moot. [lonesoulsurfer] has built the Fizzle Loop Synth, featuring not one, but three triple-nickel timers.

It’s a build that delights in both presentation and performance. The hardware is elegantly slotted into a vintage metal flashlight case, which is absolutely covered in controls. It’s an aesthetic that gives us an irresistible urge to start twiddling knobs and flicking switches. Inside, two 555s are set up as basic flasher circuits, each feeding a vactrol – essentially a resistive optoisolater. Inside is an LED, which is optically coupled to a light-dependent resistor. The LEDs are flashed by the 555s, and this creates a varying resistance which is used to feed a third 555 which generates the tones.

The final result is a fun little noisebox that’s capable of generating quite the variety of bleeps, bloops and blops. There’s an onboard speaker for noodling on the go, as well as a line-out if you need to record your work on external hardware. It would be great fun to hear this circuit hooked up to a modular synth, too.

For a history lesson on the venerable 555, we’ve got you covered. Video after the break.

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A Zelda Compilation Album On A Cartridge

The Zelda series of games are known for their exciting gameplay, compelling story, but also their soundtracks. From fast-paced boss battles, to scenes of emotional turmoil, these tunes have been pumped out millions of Nintendo consoles over the years. [Tyler Barnes] has been a fan for a long time, and decided to produce a compilation of some of these tracks – delivering it on cartridge, of course.

The music was created using the Music Macro Language, and encoded into the NSF format ready to play on the Nintendo Entertainment System. [Tyler] has coded a menu system that allows the user to pick which tracks they wish to listen to. There’s some pretty parallax animations as well, along with an easter egg for those who know the games well enough to unlock it.

[Tyler] hopes to burn a few EEPROMs and send out some custom carts, either using donor carts or fresh builds. If you’re a fan of NES music but need your C64 fix as well, there’s a solution for that too. Video after the break.

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Hiding Messages In Magnets

Magnets have always been fun, particularly since the super-powerful neodymium type became readily available. You can stack them up, pull them apart, or, if you really want, use them for something practical. Now [Adric] has shown us a new use for them entirely – by writing hidden messages on them.

It’s a remarkably simple hack, but ingenious all the same. [Adric] was pretty sure that the Quelab hackerspace laser wasn’t powerful enough to cut or etch a nickel-plated neodymium magnet. However, they suspected it would have just enough power to heat localised parts of the magnet above the Curie temperature, where the magnetic properties of the material break down.

Thus, the laser cutter was set up to run a few passes over some neodymium magnets. By placing a magnetic viewing film over the magnet, it’s possible to make the etched pattern visible. There was also some incidental visible marking of the magnet surface, which [Adric] thinks is due to the tape applied to the magnet before the laser processing.

For those of you operating spy rings in deep cover, you’ve now got a new way to send them secret messages. Just be sure to check in with the local postal service as to their policies regarding giant magnets in the post. Then you can contemplate whether you have the ability to sense magnetic fields.

Arduino Shield Makes Driving Nixies Easy

Nixie tubes are adored by hackers across the world for their warm glow that recalls an age of bitter nuclear standoffs and endless proxy wars. However, they’re not the easiest thing to drive, requiring high voltages that can scare microcontrollers senseless. Thankfully, it’s possible to score an Arduino shield that does the heavy lifting for you.

The HV supply is the heart of any Nixie driver.

The shield uses HV5812 drivers to handle the high-voltage side of things, a part more typically used to drive vacuum fluorescent displays. There’s also a DHT22 for temperature and humidity measurements, and a DS3231 real time clock. It’s designed to work with IN-12 and IN-15 tubes, with the part selection depending on whether you’re going for a clock build or a combined thermometer/hygrometer. There’s also an enclosure option available, consisting of two-tone laser etched parts that snap together to give a rather sleek finished look.

For those looking to spin up their own, code is available on Github and schematics are also available. You’ll have to create your own PCB of course, but there are guides that can help you along that path. If you’re looking to whip up a quick Nixie project to get your feet wet, this might just be what you need to get started. Of course, you can always go straight to hard mode, and attempt a functional Nixie watch. Video after the break.

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Pocket-Sized Deauther Could Definitely Get You In Trouble

Interfering with radio communications, whether through jamming, deauthing attacks, or other meddling, is generally considered a crime, and one that attracts significant penalties. However, studying such techniques should provide a useful edge in the electronic wars to come. In this vein, [Giorgio Filardi] has recently built a WiFi deauther the size of a credit card.

The device has a simple interface, consisting of 3 buttons and a small OLED screen. It can also be accessed remotely and controlled through a web interface. A NodeMCU ESP8266 board runs the show, using [spacehuhn]’s deauther firmware. The point-to-point construction probably won’t hold up to much rough and tumble out in the field, but it’s fine for a bench test. We’d recommend constructing an enclosure if it was to be used more regularly.

There’s plenty of functionality baked in – the device can scan for networks, perform deauth attacks, and even create spoof networks. It’s a tricky little device that serves to highlight several flaws in WiFi security that are yet to be fixed by the powers that be.

Using one of these devices for nefarious purposes will likely get you into trouble. Experimenting on your own networks can be educational, however, and goes to show that wireless networks are never quite as safe as we want them to be.

If you’re wondering as to the difference between deauthentication and jamming, here’s your primer.

TI-83 Gets CircuitPython Upgrade

Graphing calculators are an interesting niche market these days. They’re relatively underpowered, and usually come with cheap, low resolution screens to boot. They remain viable almost solely due to their use in education and the fact that their limited connectivity makes them suitable for use in exams. The market is starting to hot up, though – and TI have recently been doing some interesting work with Python on their TI-83.

Rumor has it that TI have been unable to get Python to run viably directly on the TI-83 Premium CE. This led to the development of the TI-Python peripheral, which plugs into the calculator’s expansion port. This allows users to program in Python, with the TI-Python doing the work and the calculator essentially acting as a thin client. The chip inside is an Atmel SAMD21E18A-U, and is apparently running Adafruit’s CircuitPython platform.

This discovery led to further digging, of course. With some hacking, the TI-Python can instead be replaced with other boards based on Atmel SAMD21 chips. For those of you that aren’t in Atmel’s sales team, that means it’s possible to use things like the Adafruit Trinket M0 and the Arduino Zero instead, when flashed with the appropriate CircuitPython firmware. It’s a tricky business, involving USB IDs and some other hacks, but it’s nothing that can’t be achieved in a few hours or so.

This is a hack in its early days, so it’s currently more about building a platform at this stage rather then building fully-fledged projects just yet. We’re fully expecting to see Twitter clients and multiplayer games hit the TI-83 platform before long, of course. When you’ve done it, chuck us a link on the tip line.

[Thanks to PT for the tip!]

Reinking Dot Matrix Printer Ribbons Because It’s Fun, Okay

Ink! No matter the printer you’ve got, whether it be inkjet, laser or otherwise, it’s the consumables that will send you broke. At times, the cost of Hewlett-Packard black ink has exceeded the price per volume of human blood, and shareholders around the world have rejoiced.

As a retrocomputing reprobate, I have a personal dilection for printers of the vintage persuasion. My previous dalliances have involved fully fledged office copiers, but lately I’ve found myself tinkering with dot matrixes of a 1980s vintage. These workhorses are now reaching middle age, and as you’d expect, their ribbons are a little worse for wear after all this time.

Replacements are cheap enough for the most common printers, but shipping takes weeks and hackers are an impatient bunch. Plus, if you’ve got one of the more obscure models, it’s unlikely you’ll find a fresh cart just sitting on the shelf. It was these factors that spurred my good friend [Cosmos2000] and I into action.

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