Transmitting Wireless Power Over Longer Distances

March 16, 2025 by Maya Posch 25 Comments

Proof-of-concept of the inductive coupling transmitter with the 12V version of the circuitry (Credit: Hyperspace Pirate, YouTube)

Everyone loves wireless power these days, almost vindicating [Nikola Tesla’s] push for wireless power. One reason why transmitting electricity this way is a terrible idea is the massive losses involved once you increase the distance between transmitter and receiver. That said, there are ways to optimize wireless power transfer using inductive coupling, as [Hyperspace Pirate] demonstrates in a recent video.

Starting with small-scale proof of concept coils, the final version of the transmitter is powered off 120 VAC. The system has 10 kV on the coil and uses a half-bridge driver to oscillate at 145 kHz. The receiver matches this frequency precisely for optimal efficiency. The transmitting antenna is a 4.6-meter hexagon with eight turns of 14 AWG wire. During tests, a receiver of similar size could light an LED at a distance of 40 meters with an open circuit voltage of 2.6 V.

Although it’s also an excellent example of why air core transformers like this are lousy for efficient remote power transfer, a fascinating finding is that intermediate (unpowered) coils between the transmitter and receiver can help to boost the range due to coupling effects. Even if it’s not a practical technology (sorry, [Tesla]), it’s undeniable that it makes for a great science demonstration.

Of course, people do charge phones wirelessly. It works, but it trades efficiency for convenience. Modern attempts at beaming power around seem to focus more on microwaves or lasers.

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Building A Fully Automatic Birkeland-Eyde Reactor

March 15, 2025 by Maya Posch 7 Comments

Ever wanted to produce nitrogen fertilizer like they did in the 1900s? In that case, you’re probably looking at the Birkeland-Eyde process, which was the first industrial-scale atmospheric nitrogen fixation process. It was eventually replaced by the Haber-Bosch and Ostwald processes. [Markus Bindhammer] covers the construction of a hobbyist-sized, fully automated reactor in this video.

It uses tungsten electrodes to produce the requisite arc, with a copper rod brazed onto both. The frame is made of aluminium profiles mounted on a polypropylene board, supporting the reaction vessel. Powering the whole contraption is a 24 VDC, 20 A power supply, which powers the flyback transformer for the high-voltage arc, as well as an air pump and smaller electronics, including the Arduino Uno board controlling the system.

The air is dried by silica gel before entering the reactor, with the airflow measured by a mass air flow sensor and the reaction temperature by a temperature sensor. This should give the MCU a full picture of the state of the reaction, with the airflow having to be sufficiently high relative to the arc to extract the maximum yield for this already very low-yield (single-digit %) process.

Usually, we are more interested in getting our nitrogen in liquid form. We’ve also looked at the Haber-Bosch method in the past.

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Add WebUSB Support To Firefox With A Special USB Device

March 15, 2025 by Maya Posch 7 Comments

RP2040-based Pico board acting as U2F dongle with Firefox. (Credit: ArcaneNibble, GitHub)

The WebUSB standard is certainly controversial. Many consider it a security risk, and, to date, only Chromium-based browsers support it. But there is a workaround that is, ironically, supposed to increase security. The adjacent Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard also adds (limited) USB support to browsers. Sure, this is meant solely to support U2F USB dongles for two-factor authentication purposes, but as [ArcaneNibble] demonstrates using U2F-compatible firmware on a Raspberry Pi RP2040, by hijacking the U2F payload, this API can be used to provide WebUSB-like functionality.

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My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting A Romance Fraudster

March 15, 2025 by Maya Posch 21 Comments

Nobody likes spam messages, but some of them contain rather fascinating scams. Case in point, [Ben Tasker] recently got a few romance scam emails that made him decide to take a poke at the scam behind these messages. This particular scam tries to draw in marks with an attached photo (pilfered from Facebook) and fake personal details. Naturally, contacting scammers is a bad idea, and you should never provide them with any personal information if you decide to have some ‘fun’.

The games begin once you contact them via the listed email address, as they’re all sent from hacked/spoofed email accounts. After this you have to wait for the scammers to return to the campaign on their monthly cycle, so give it a few weeks. Analyzing image metadata provides some clues (e.g. the FBMD prefix in IPTC tags set by Meta, as well as timezone info). The IP address from the email headers pointed to a VPN being used, so no easy solution here.

After establishing contact, the scammers try to coax the mark into ‘helping’ them move to their country, with Skype out-call numbers received on [Ben]’s burner phone that seem designed to add to the realism. Then ‘disaster’ strikes and the mark is asked to transfer a lot of money to help their new ‘love’. Naturally, [Ben] wasn’t a gullible mark, and set up a few traps, including a custom domain and website that’d log any visitor (i.e. the scammer).

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C+P: Combining The Usefulness Of C With The Excellence Of Prolog

March 14, 2025 by Maya Posch 7 Comments

In a move that will absolutely not over-excite anyone, nor lead to any heated arguments, [needleful] posits that their C Plus Prolog (C+P for short) programming language is the best possible language ever. This is due to it combining the best of the only good programming language (Prolog) with the best of the only useful programming language (C). Although the resulting mash-up syntax that results may trigger Objective-C flashbacks, it’s actually valid SWI-Prolog, that is subsequently converted to C for compilation.

Language flamewars aside, the motivation for C+P as explained in the project’s README was mostly the exploring of macros in a system programming language. More specifically, by implementing a language-within-a-language you can add just about any compile-time feature you want including – as demonstrated in C+P – a form of generics. Even as a way to have a bit of fun, C+P comes dangerously close to being a functional prototype. Its main flaw is probably the lack of validation and error messages, which likely leads to broken C being generated.

Also mentioned are the Nim and Haxe languages which can be compiled (transpiled) to C or C++, which is somewhat of a similar idea as C+P, as well as cmacro (based on Common Lisp) and the D language.

Utah’s FORGE: A Research Laboratory For Enhanced Geothermal Systems

March 14, 2025 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

Geothermal heat is a tantalizing source of energy that’s quite literally right below our feet. At the same time geothermal energy is hard to develop as the Earth’s crust is too thick in most places, limiting this to areas where magma is close enough to the surface and the underground rock permeable enough for water. The Utah FORGE facility is a field site were researchers are developing and testing ways to increase the scope of geothermal energy.

An Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) is designed to be capable of using geothermal energy where this is normally not feasible through a technique that’s reminiscent of the hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) used by the oil and gas industry, but rather than creating more fractures, it instead uses hydro-shearing to prop open existing fractures and thus create the through-flow of water needed to extract geothermal energy.

So far FORGE has reported the successful creation of a geothermal reservoir where before there was none. This facility is located in the Milford valley in southwest Utah, which has some hydrothermal activity at the nearby Roosevelt Hot Springs, but through EGS other parts of this valley and similar areas could conceivably be used for generating electricity and for community heating as well. In a 2024 study by University of Utah scientists, it is described how the Milford valley’s volcanic past has left a large body of magma below a thick barrier of granitic rock that could provide access to geothermal resources with EGS to create the requisite fluid permeability.

FORGE is not the only facility working on EGS, but many other sites around the world having ceased activities after issues ranging from induced seismicity, susceptibility to earthquakes and budget shortages. Much like fracking, EGS is likely to cause earthquakes. Whether EGS can be made economically feasible still remains to be seen.

Image Credit: Eric Larson, Flash Point SLC

BritCSS: Write CSS With British English Spellings

March 13, 2025 by Maya Posch 37 Comments

Everyone knows that there is only one proper English, with the rest being mere derivatives that bastardize the spelling and grammar. Despite this, the hoodlums who staged a violent uprising against British rule in the American colonies have somehow made their uncouth dialect dominant in the information technologies that have taken the world by storm these past decades. In this urgent mission to restore the King’s English to its rightful place, we fortunately have patriotic British citizens who have taken it upon themselves to correct this grave injustice. Brave citizens such as [Declan Chidlow], whose BritCSS project is a bright beacon in these harrowing times.

Implemented as a simple, 14 kB JavaScript script to be included in an HTML page, it allows one to write CSS files using proper spelling, such as background-colour and centre. Meanwhile harsh language such as !important is replaced with the more pleasant !if-you-would-be-so-kind. It is expected that although for now this script has to be included on each page to use BritCSS, native support will soon be implemented in every browser, superseding the US dialect version. [Declan] has also been recommended to be awarded the Order of the British Empire for his outstanding services.