An animated GIF of Engineer Bo's Precision Bluetooth Scroll Wheel wirelessly, and effortlessly scrolling down the Hack A Day blog with a single finger

Doomscroll Precisely, And Wirelessly

December 31, 2024 by Michael Shaub 18 Comments

Around here, we love it when someone identifies a need and creates their own solution. In this case, [Engineer Bo] was tired of endless and imprecise scrolling with a mouse wheel. No off-the-shelf solutions were found, and other DIY projects either just used hacked mice scroll wheels, customer electronics with low-res hardware encoders, or featured high-res encoders that were down-sampled to low-resolution. A custom build was clearly required.

We loved seeing hacks along the whole process by [Engineer Bo], working with components on hand, pairing sensors to microcontrollers to HID settings, 3D printing forms to test ergonomics, and finishing the prototype device. When 3D printing, [Engineer Bo] inserted a pause after support material to allow drawing a layer of permanent marker ink that acts as a release agent that can later be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

We also liked the detail of a single hole inside used to install each of the three screws that secure the knob to the base. While a chisel and UV-curing resin cleaned up some larger issues with the print, more finishing was required. For a project within a project, [Engineer Bo] then threw together a mini lathe with 3D printed and RC parts to make sanding easy.

Scroll down with your clunky device to see the video that illustrates the precision with a graphic of a 0.09° rotation and is filled with hacky nuggets. See how the electronics were selected and the circuit designed and programmed, the use of PCBWay’s CNC machining in addition to board assembly services, and how to deal with bearings that spin too freely. [Engineer Bo] teases that a future version might use a larger bearing for less wobble and an anti-slip coating on the base. Will the board files and 3D models be released, too? Will these be sold as finished products or kits? Will those unused LED drivers be utilized in an upcoming version? We can’t wait to see what’s next for this project.

Continue reading “Doomscroll Precisely, And Wirelessly” →

A photo of a farmer in Kazakhstan wearing a balaclava mask standing in front of a farm house with a rusting piece of Soyuz space capsule used as part of the farm's animal feed trough

One Giant Steppe For Space Flight

September 9, 2024 by Michael Shaub 16 Comments

In a recent photo essay for the New Yorker magazine, author Keith Gessen and photographer Andrew McConnell share what life is like for the residents around the launch facility and where Soyuz capsules land in Kazakhstan.

Read the article for a brief history of the Baikonur spaceport and observations from the photographer’s fifteen visits to observe Soyuz landings and the extreme separation between the local farmers and the facilities built up around Baikonur. A local ecologist even compares the family farmers toiling around the busy spaceport to a scene our readers may be familiar with on Tatooine.

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A workbench with a 3D printer, a home-made frame of metal tubing and 3D printed brackets and phone holders. 3 iOS devices and 1 Android phone arranged around the printer with a clock and 3 different camera angles around the print bed

Even 3D Printers Are Taking Selfies Now

October 16, 2023 by Michael Shaub 1 Comment

We love watching 3D prints magically grow, through the power of timelapse videos. These are easier to make than ever, due in no small part to a vibrant community that’s continuously refining tools such as Octolapse. Most people are using some camera they can connect to a Raspberry Pi, namely a USB webcam or CSI camera module. A DSLR would arguably take better pictures, but they can be difficult to control, and their high resolution images are tougher for the Pi to encode.

If you’re anything like us, you’ve got a box or drawer full of devices that can take nearly as high-quality images as a DSLR, some cast-off mobile phones. Oh, that pile of “solutions looking for a problem” may have just found one! [Matt@JemRise] sure has, and in the video after the break, you can see how not one but four mobile phones are put to work.

Continue reading “Even 3D Printers Are Taking Selfies Now” →

Several video clips of a robot arm manipulating objects in a kitchen environment, demonstrating some of the 12 generalized skills

RoboAgent Gets Its MT-ACT Together

August 20, 2023 by Michael Shaub 6 Comments

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shared a pre-print paper on generalized robot training within a small “practical data budget.” The team developed a system that breaks movement tasks into 12 “skills” (e.g., pick, place, slide, wipe) that can be combined to create new and complex trajectories within at least somewhat novel scenarios, called MT-ACT: Multi-Task Action Chunking Transformer. The authors write:

Trained merely on 7500 trajectories, we are demonstrating a universal RoboAgent that can exhibit a diverse set of 12 non-trivial manipulation skills (beyond picking/pushing, including articulated object manipulation and object re-orientation) across 38 tasks and can generalize them to 100s of diverse unseen scenarios (involving unseen objects, unseen tasks, and to completely unseen kitchens). RoboAgent can also evolve its capabilities with new experiences.

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Mobile phone reading an NFC tag with information on a garden plant

NFC Puts A Stake In The Ground

August 15, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

Sometimes we have a new part or piece of tech that we want to use, and it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Upon first encountering NFC Tags, [nalanj] was looking for an application and thought they might make a great update to old-fashioned plant markers in a garden. Those are usually small and, being outside 24/7, the elements tend to wear away at what little information they hold.

[nalanj] used a freeform data structuring service called Cardinal to set up text information fields for each plant and even photos. Once a template has been created, every entry gets a unique URL that’s perfect for writing to an NFC tag. See the blog post on Cardinal’s site for the whole process, the thought behind the physical design of the NFC tag holder, and a great application of a pause in the 3D print to encapsulate the tags.

NFC tags are super hackable, though, so you don’t have to limit yourself to lookups in a plant database. Heck, you could throw away your door keys.

a modern car dipped into a chemical bath for electrodeposition adding a phosphate layer

Watching Paint Dry For Over 100 Years

July 2, 2023 by Michael Shaub 19 Comments

A Model T Ford customer could famously get their car “in any color he wants, so long as it’s black.” Thus begins [edconway]’s recounting of the incremental improvements in car paint and its surprising role in mass production, marketing, and longevity of automobiles.

In it, we learn that the aforementioned black paint from Ford had so much asphalt in it that black was the only color that would work. Not to go down a This Is Spinal Tap rabbit hole, but there were several kinds of black on those Model Ts. Over 30 of them were used for various purposes. The paints also dried in different ways. While the assembly only took 12 hours, the paint drying time took days, even weeks backing up production and begging for innovation. [edconway] then fast-forwards to an era of “conspicuous consumption and ‘planned obsolescence’” with DuPont’s invention of Duco that brought color to the world of automobiles.

See the article for the real story of advances in paint technology and drying time. Paint application technology has also steadily improved over the years, so we recommend diving in to get the century’s long story.

Ventbot fans with 3D printed brackets and control circuit board with ESP32 breakout and multicolored 3D printed cases

Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation

June 24, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

[WJCarpenter] had a common HVAC problem; not all the rooms got to a comfortable temperature when the heater was working to warm up their home. As often happens with HVAC systems, the rooms farthest from the heat source and/or with less insulation needed a boost of heat in the winter and cooling in the summer too. While [WJCarpenter] is a self-reported software person, not a hardware person, you will enjoy going along on the journey to build some very capable vent boosters that require a mix of each.

There’s a great build log on hackaday.io here, but for those who need more of a proper set of instructions, there’s a step-by-step guide that should allow even a beginner hardware hacker to complete the project over on Instructables. There you’ll find everything you need to build ESPHome controlled, 3D printed, PC fan powered vent boosters. While they can be integrated into Home Assistant, we were interested to learn that ESPHome allows these to run stand-alone too, each using its own temperature and pressure sensor.

The many iterations of hardware and software show, resulting in thoughtful touches like a startup sequence that checks for several compatible temperature sensors and a board layout that accommodates different capacitor lead spacings. Along the way, [WJCarpenter] also graphed the noise level of different fans running at multiple speeds and the pressure sensor readings against the temperatures to see if they could be used as more reliable triggers for the fans. (spoiler, they weren’t) There are a bunch of other tips to find along the way, so we highly recommend going through all that [WJCarpenter] has shared if you want to build your own or just want some tips on how to convert a one-off project to something that a wider audience can adapt to their own needs.

See a video after the break that doesn’t show the whole project but includes footage of the start-up sequence that tests each fan’s tachometer and the customizable ramp-up and ramp-down settings. Continue reading “Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation” →