Handmade LED Cube Is A Work Of Art

September 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 18 Comments

We see all kinds of projects come across the news desk at Hackaday. Sometimes it’s a bodge, neatly executed, that makes us laugh out loud at its simple ingenuity. Other times, it’s a case of great skill and attention to detail, brought to bear to craft something of great beauty. [Greg Davill]’s LED cube is firmly the latter.

The matte black finish makes the artwork really pop. Note the matrix of tiny pads for the LEDs on the backside.

The build starts with custom four layer PCBs, in matte black with gold-plated pads. It’s a classic color scheme, and sets the bar for the rest of the project. Rather than proceeding to hook up some commodity microcontrollers to off-the-shelf panels, [Greg] goes his own way. Each PCB gets a 24×24 raw LED matrix, directly soldered on the back side. By producing a “dumb” matrix, there are large savings in current draw to be had over the now-popular smart strings.

The panels are then loaded into a tidy 3D printed cube, with space inside for the FPGA running the show and a power supply. Five panels are held in with double sided-tape and screws, with the last being installed with magnets to allow access to the inside. Neatly folded flat-flex cables are pressed into service to connect everything up.

It’s a build that shows there is value in doing things your own way, and that the new methods don’t always beat out the old. With careful consideration of aesthetics from the start to the end of the project, [Greg] has built an LED cube both astounding in its simplicity, and beautiful in its execution. We’ve seen [Greg]’s work before, too – it’s not too often hand soldered BGAs cross these pages. Video after the break.

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This LED Cube Is One Heck Of An ICEBreaker

September 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Like the tastes of the makers that build them, LED cubes come in all shapes and sizes. From the simplest 3x3x3 microcontroller test, to fancier bespoke installations, they’re a great way to learn a bunch of useful embedded techniques and show off at the same time. [kbob] has done exactly that in spades, with a glittering cube build of his own and published a repository with all the files.

Just like a horde of orcs from Mordor, [kbob]’s cube is all about strength in numbers. Measuring 136 mm on each side, it’s constructed out of 64 x 64 P2 panels, packing 4096 LEDs per side, or 24,576 total. A Raspberry Pi is used to run the show, allowing a variety of animations to be run. Unfortunately, it lacks the raw horsepower to run this many LEDs at a decent frame rate. Instead, it’s teamed up with an ICEBreaker FPGA, which can churn out the required HUB75 signals for the panels without breaking a sweat.

Thanks to the high density of tiny LEDs, and the smooth framerate of the animations, the final effect is rather gorgeous. [kbob] notes that there’s actually a lot of people working on similar projects with ICEBreaker muscle; a recent video from [Piotr] is particularly impressive.

The LED cube will likely remain a staple for sometime, and we can’t wait to see what comes out next from the community. You can even throw in some OpenGL if you wanna get fancy. Video after the break.

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Open Source Intel Helps Reveal US Spy Sat Capabilities

September 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

On the 30th August 2019, the President of the United States tweeted an image of an Iranian spaceport, making note of the recent failed Safir launch at the site. The release of such an image prompted raised eyebrows, given the high resolution of the image, and that it appeared to be a smartphone photo taken of a classified intelligence document.

Inquisitive minds quickly leapt on the photo, seeking to determine the source of the image. While some speculated that it may have been taken from a surveillance aircraft or drone, analysis by the satellite tracking community disagreed.

A comparison of the actual image, top, and a simulation of what a shot from USA 224 would look like. Ignore the shadows, which are from an image taken at a different time of day. Note the very similar orientation of the features of the launchpad.

The angle of shadows in the image was used to determine the approximate time that the image was taken. Additionally, through careful comparison with existing satellite images from Google Maps, it was possible to infer the azimuth and elevation of the camera. Positions of military satellites aren’t made public, but amateur tracking networks had data placing satellite USA 224 at a similar azimuth and elevation around the time the image was taken.

With both the timing and positioning pointing to USA 224, evidence seems conclusive that this KH-11 satellite was responsible for taking the image. The last confirmed public leak of a Keyhole surveillance image was in 1984, making this an especially rare occurrence. Such leaks are often frowned upon in the intelligence community, as nation states prefer to keep surveillance capabilities close to their chest. The Safir images suggest that USA 224 has a resolution of 10cm per pixel or better – information that could prove useful to other intelligence organisations.

It’s not the first time we’ve covered formerly classified information, either – this teardown of a Soviet missile seeker bore many secrets.

Are Hydrogen Cars Still Happening?

September 4, 2019 by Lewin Day 318 Comments

Potentially coming to a service station near you.

In every comment section, there’s always one. No matter the electric vehicle, no matter how far the technology has come, there’s always one.

“Only 500 miles of range? Electric cars are useless! Me, and everyone I know, drives 502 miles every day at a minimum! Having to spend more than 3 minutes to recharge is completely offensive to my entire way of life. Simply not practical, and never will be.”

Yes, it’s true, electric cars do have limited range and can take a little longer to recharge than a petrol or diesel powered vehicle. Improvements continue at a rapid pace, but it’s not enough for some.

To these diehards, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may have some attractive benefits. By passing hydrogen gas through a proton-exchange membrane, electricity can be generated cleanly with only water as a byproduct. The technology holds a lot of promise for powering vehicles, but thus far hasn’t quite entered our daily lives yet. So what is the deal with hydrogen as a transport fuel, and when can we expect to see them in numbers on the ground?

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Process Characterization On The Cheap With A Custom Test Rig

September 2, 2019 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Testing is a key part of any product development cycle. Done right, it turns up unknown bugs and problems, and allows for them to be fixed prior to shipment. However, it can be a costly and time-consuming process. The [Bay Libre] team needed to do some work on power management, but the hardware required was just a little on the expensive side. What else does a hacker do, but build their own?

Enter the Thermo-Regulated Power Measurement Platform. It’s a device designed to control the die temperature of a chip during process characterization. This is where a chip, in this case the iMX8MQ, is run at a variety of temperatures, voltages, and frequencies to determine its performance under various conditions. This data guides the parameters used to run the chip in actual use, to best manage its power consumption and thermal performance.

The rig consists of a Peltier element with controller, a heatsink, and a fan. This is lashed up to a series of Python scripts that both control the chip temperature and run through the various testing regimes. Thanks to this automation, what would normally be a day’s work for an engineer can now be completed in just two hours.

Through a few smart component choices, the team accomplished the job at around one-tenth of the cost of commercial grade hardware. Granted, the average hacker probably won’t find themselves doing process characterization for cutting-edge silicon on a regular basis. Still, this project shows the value in building custom hardware to ease the testing process.

Testing is key to success in production. Custom jigs can make for light work when large orders come in, and we’ve run a primer on various testing techniques, too.

Ultra Benchy Is A Big Plastic Boat, Alright

September 1, 2019 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

The 3DBenchy, or Benchy for short, is a popular test model for 3D printers. Designed with overhanging curved surfaces, flat planes, holes, and other difficult geometry, it’s a great way to benchmark a printer or verify that everything is set up correctly. It comes in rather handy, but at this point has also become something of a meme within the 3D printer community. Thus, when NURDspace members decided to embark on a collaborative giant print, the decision was easy – and Ultra Benchy was born!

The size chosen for the print was arbitrarily set at 700mm long, or a 1166.65% scale up of the original model. The versatile LuBan software was used to split the giant model into manageable chunks that could be printed by community members. Chunks were claimed and kept track of in a spreadsheet, with contributors instructed to print with specific settings in order to ensure quality was similar across the whole build.

With all the parts collected, the final construction was done on the 31st of August in a Youtube livestream. Reportedly, build time was a marathon 10 hours. The final result is a pleasingly patchwork Benchy, that looks quite impressive in its final assembled form.

Collaborative prints are a staple of 3D printing festivals, but the technique can also be used to create large functional assemblies from smaller 3D printed components, such as [Ivan]’s gigantic Nerf gun that we covered previously.

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Force Sensitive Resistor Takes The Pain Out Of Bed Leveling

September 1, 2019 by Lewin Day 32 Comments

How do you know if your 3D printer bed is levelled? Oh, don’t worry – you’ll know. Without a level bed, filament won’t stick properly to the build surface and you’ll run into all sorts of other problems. Knowing how tricky it can be to get the bed just right, [Antzy] built a tool to help.

The device, which he calls the FS-Touch, is based around an Arduino Pro Micro fitted with a force sensitive resistor. This allows the distance between the bed and nozzle to be measured based on the force read by the resistor when placed in between the two.

Using the tool is simple. First, the bed is brought roughly into alignment using the typical paper method. Then, a reading is taken from one corner of the bed, and the measurement saved for reference. The other corners can then be set to the same level, with the aid of LEDs to guide the user in which direction to turn the adjustment knobs.

Measuring force in this way has the potential of being more repeatable than the somewhat difficult paper method. It promises to ease the task for users that may be struggling to get their bed in proper shape. Of course, automated bed levelling makes things even easier again. Video after the break.

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