Author: Mike Szczys

6403 Articles

Hackaday Journal Completes First Review Process, Seeks More Submissions

July 5, 2018 by 14 Comments

Congratulations and thank you go to Theodore Yapo for authoring the first paper to complete the peer review process for the Hackaday Journal. You can read the standalone paper here; it will be included in the first volume of the Hackaday Journal officially released later this year.

The Hackaday Journal is an open access, peer reviewed journal that seeks to ensure hard-won domain knowledge is preserved and made available for the benefit of all. Before jumping into Ted’s topic, please take a moment to consider submitting your own paper for the journal.

Paper Submissions Wanted

We have other submissions in the pipleline now but we still need more papers to round out the first volume of the Hackaday Journal. Please consider authoring a paper on any creative research, engineering, or entertaining discovery in the areas of interest to the Hackaday community. The full name of our journal is the Hackaday Journal of What You Don’t Know — it will be a tome of infinite appeal to any who seek to broaden their minds in the engineering space. But for that to happen we need you to share your knowledge.

We are in an age of unparalleled opportunity for individuals and small teams to make interesting discovery. You should not need to be working on a degree to have your findings published, but of course students and faculty are encouraged to submit their papers. Do not hesitate to get in touch with us about topics you want to write about.

Scalar Network Analyzer Leakage Correction by Theodore Yapo

Low-pass filter being tested by a Rigol DSA-815 using the phase shifting correction technique

The title of Ted’s paper is a mouthful and the subject material wades into radio frequency knowledge with gusto. We applaud him, and the peer reviewers, for the attention to detail while moving toward publication.

In his work, Ted finds an interesting opportunity to get more performance out of relatively inexpensive bench equipment used to characterize RF components. This task is often reserved for Vector Network Analyzers (VNA) but with a heafty price tag these tools aren’t available to everyone. Spectrum Analyzers with Tracking Generators (SA/TG) have come onto the market, but especially with early versions, there is a leakage problem that causes inaccuracy. Ted found a simple technique that can correct for the leakage.

The solution is based on phase shifting the measurement. Starting with a properly calibrated machine, Ted uses a small board he built to electronically shift the phase of the Tracking Generator where the leakage is a problem. The signal is first measured, then measured again with a phase shift of 180 degrees. This effectively cancels out the error while preserving the signal being measured.

This paper goes into great technical detail in the RF domain. It is worth noting that the Hackaday Journal is open to discovery on multiple topics and levels of complexity. Don’t let what you think is a simple, useful idea go unpublished. We’re interested in a wide range of the simple, the obscure, and the frighteningly technical as long as the ideas of both novel and well supported.

This is Your Journal

You, yes you reading this right now, embody a movement of inventive and curious people working both inside and outside of formal academic structures. This is our time to contribute to the knowledge base of humanity. Pour yourself a refreshing beverage, saddle up your headphones, crack those knuckles, and let the writing process begin. Let us now what we don’t know. Submit your paper now.

Video Quick-Bit: The Things That Move Robots

July 2, 2018 by 1 Comment

Magenta Strongheart returns for a look at some of the coolest robotic entries from this year’s Hackaday Prize. Each of these answered the challenge for modular designs that will help supercharge new robot projects.

We think that cheap and abundant motor designs are poised to revolutionize robotics and several of the entries thought along those same lines. [Masahiro Mizuno] came up with a great 3D printed servo design based around a 6mm DC motor. Also in this ballpark, a team of two — Giovanni Leal and Jonathan Diaz — used 3D printing to turn some tiny metallic servos into linear actuators.

Picking stuff up is a difficult thing for a machine to do. We’ve long enjoyed seeing jamming grippers which do it with an inflatable bladder around a granular material (watch the video… it’s amazing). Two of these were demonstrated as part of the challenge. The Universal Jamming Gripper focuses on the entire mechanism, while Programmable Air took aim at the pneumatic actuation system and can adapt to other soft-robotics uses.

Rounding out this update, make sure to take a peek at the PCB stepper motor [Bobricius] built after being inspired by [Carl Bugeja’s] PCB motor. You’ll also want to see the entry that is taking on industrial farming. Imaging slow-rolling behemoths that use computer vision and spinning tillers to take care of weeds, cutting down on herbicide use.

Right now we’re in the thick of the Power Harvesting Challenge. Show us how you’re getting power from an interesting source and you’ll be on the way to the finals. Twenty power harvesting entries will get that honor, along with a $1,000 cash prize. The five top entries of the 2018 Hackaday Prize will split $100,000!

The HackadayPrize2018 is Sponsored by:

Rachel Wong Keynote: Growing Eyeballs In The Lab And Building Wearables That Enhance Experience

June 28, 2018 by 18 Comments

The keynote speaker at the Hackaday Belgrade conference was Rachel “Konichiwakitty” Wong presenting Jack of All Trades, Master of One. Her story is one that will be very familiar to anyone in the Hackaday community. A high achiever in her field of study, Rachel has learned the joy of limiting how much energy she allows herself to expend on work, rounding out her life with recreation in other fascinating areas.

There are two things Rachel is really passionate about in life. In her professional life she is working on her PhD as a stem cell researcher studying blindness and trying to understand the causes of genetic blindness. In her personal life she is exploring wearable technology in a way that makes sense to her and breaks out of what is often seen in practice these days.

Continue reading “Rachel Wong Keynote: Growing Eyeballs In The Lab And Building Wearables That Enhance Experience” →

Scotty Allen’s PCB Fab Tour Is Like Willy Wonka’s For Hardware Geeks

June 12, 2018 by 23 Comments

The availability of low-cost, insanely high-quality PCBs has really changed how we do electronics. Here at Hackaday we see people ditching home fabrication with increasing frequency, and going to small-run fab for their prototypes and projects. Today you can get a look at the types of factory processes that make that possible. [Scotty Allen] just published a (sponsored) tour of a PCB fab house that shows off the incredible machine tools and chemical baths that are never pondered by the world’s electronics consumers. If you have an appreciation PCBs, it’s a joy to follow a design through the process so take your coffee break and let this video roll.

Several parts of this will be very familiar. The photo-resist and etching process for 2-layer boards is more or less the same as it would be in your own workshop. Of course the panels are much larger than you’d ever try at home, and they’re not using a food storage container and homemade etchant. In fact the processes are by and large automated which makes sense considering the volume a factory like this is churning through. Even moving stacks of boards around the factory is show with automated trolleys.

Six headed PCB drilling machine (four heads in use here).

What we find most interesting about this tour is the multi-layer board process, the drilling machines, and the solder mask application. For boards that use more than two layers, the designs are built from the inside out, adding substrate and copper foil layers as they go. It’s neat to watch but we’re still left wondering how the inner layers are aligned with the outer. If you have insight on this please sound off in the comments below.

The drilling process isn’t so much a surprise as it is a marvel to see huge machines with six drill heads working on multiple boards at one time. It sure beats a Dremel drill press. The solder mask process is one that we don’t often see shown off. The ink for the mask is applied to the entire board and baked just to make it tacky. A photo process is then utilized which works much in the same way photoresist works for copper etching. Transparent film with patterns printed on it cures the solder mask that should stay, while the rest is washed away in the next step.

Boards continue through the process to get silk screen, surface treatment, and routing to separate individual boards from panels. Electrical testing is performed and the candy making PCB fab process is complete. From start to finish, seeing the consistency and speed of each step is very satisfying.

Looking to do a big run of boards? You may find [Brian Benchoff’s] panelization guide of interest.

Continue reading “Scotty Allen’s PCB Fab Tour Is Like Willy Wonka’s For Hardware Geeks” →

Joe Grand Is Hiding Data In Plain Sight: LEDs That Look Solid But Send A Message

June 10, 2018 by 19 Comments

Thursday night was a real treat. I got to see both Joe Grand and Kitty Yeung at the HDDG meetup, each speaking about their recent work.

Joe walked us through the OpticSpy, his newest hardware product that had its genesis in some of the earliest days of data leakage. Remember those lights on old modems that would blink when data is being transmitted or received? The easiest way to design this circuit is to tie the status LEDs directly to the RX and TX lines of a serial port, but it turns out that’s broadcasting your data out to anyone with a camera. You can’t see the light blinking so fast with your eyes of course, but with the right gear you most certainly could read out the ones and zeros. Joe built an homage to that time using a BPW21R photodiode.

Transmitting data over light is something that television manufacturers have been doing for decades, too. How do they work in a room full of light sources? They filter for the carrier signal (usually 38 kHz). But what if you’re interested in finding an arbitrary signal? Joe’s bag of tricks does it without the carrier and across a large spectrum. It feels a bit like magic, but even if you know how it works, his explanation of the hardware is worth a watch!

Continue reading “Joe Grand Is Hiding Data In Plain Sight: LEDs That Look Solid But Send A Message” →

Power Harvesting Challenge: Scavenge Some Power, Win Prizes

June 4, 2018 by 26 Comments

It’s a brand new day as the Power Harvesting Challenge begins. This is the newest part of the 2018 Hackaday Prize and we’re looking for 20 entries who will each receive $1,000 and move onto the finals to compete for the top five spots, scoring cash prizes of $50k, $25k, $15k, $10k, and $5k.

Put simply, Power Harvesting is anything you can do that will pull some of the energy you need from a source other than wall-power or traditional battery tech. The most obvious power harvesting technologies are solar and wind. Ditch the battery in your doorbell for a solar panel, or turn your time-lapse camera rig into one that tops its battery with a tiny wind turbine. On the other end of the spectrum you could go nuts with chemistry and develop your own take on harvesting power from saltwater, or sip off the ambient RF waves all around us.

Every Idea Matters

We live in an amazing time as chip manufacturers have squeezed every low power trick out of their silicon dies that they possibly can. The Power Harvesting Challenge is the complement to those achievements: can we now squeeze as much energy out of non-traditional sources as possible to further reduce our energy footprints?

Continue reading “Power Harvesting Challenge: Scavenge Some Power, Win Prizes” →

A Wild Hackaday Belgrade Confirms Status As One Of World’s Greatest Hardware Cons

June 1, 2018 by 15 Comments

Hackers, Designers, and Engineers flooded into Dom Omladine on Saturday for what can only be described as an epic celebration of hardware culture. This is the second time Hackaday has organized a huge conference in Belgrade, and lightning really did strike twice.

A Gathering of New Friends and Old

We got things started off with a meetup the night before the conference. The first Hackaday Belgrade was held in 2016 and we didn’t reserve a bar on Friday night — we ended up taking over one just through sheer numbers. This year we called ahead for a large outdoor space, then made good use of it.

A great kickoff to the weekend
LED cube animation emulation demo
*No beers were wasted during this meetup

Everyone was giddy with anticipation of the next day to come. There is always a sizzling energy of meeting up in real life. Most of this group hangs out on Hackaday.io, but only some of them have met in person. Add to that the reunions of those who became friends at the previous Hackaday Belgrade and at other cons around Europe and you have the feeling of coming home. These really are your people.

Yes, a Conference. But the Cool Kind

Hackaday conferences are more than just parties… they’re conferences. If you approach it the right way you can get your employer on board with you attending because you’re going to meet incredible people, learn lots of stuff, and come back excited to take on the Universe. Actually, bring your boss along for the ride too!

Flooding into Hackaday Belgrade
Breakfast spread as the doors open

This year we had thirteen incredible talks. As is our practice, we started off with a super-technical talk as Rachel Wong (aka @konichiwakitty) discussed her Ph.D research which involves growing eye tissue in the lab. But like all incredibly brilliant minds, she has a creative outlet which she also covered as part of her Keynote address. Rachel has a passion for building wearables that are reaching for the future by embracing things we really do need in our garments and gear.

Main hall packed for the keynote address
The workshop area full to the brim

From drone monitoring networks to robot soldering machines, and concepts for designing meaningful hardware to using code to automate tedious PCB layout, there was plenty in these talks for everyone.

Rachel Wong on the growing of eye tissue
Elliot Williams demos Logic Noise live on stage

I really enjoyed Elliot Williams’ talk on Logic Noise for his live demos using simple logic chips to build up complex music. Marcel van Kervinck took us on a journey of TTL computer design. And Sophi Kravitz’s talk on building non-rigid airships had at least two people at the con get inspired and spin their own blimp design during the conference! There was a live-feed of the talks so keep your eye on Hackaday as we pull those out to be featured individually.

Some of the demo hardware: Acoustic levitation for lab work

The workshops were standing room only as people who weren’t able to grab a ticket audited the course. We had three hands-on session that built wearable circuitry, brough art to PCB design, and dove into the world of FPGAs.

Welcome, Here’s Your Neck-Mounted Retro Computer

Everyone through the door received a custom electronic badge to hack on during Hackaday Belgrade. Voja Antonic designed the hardware and oversaw the manufacture. We had excellent yield which is great because we had nearly (if not more than) 100% attendance at the conference. We ended the day with just 5 badges to spare!

Hackaday Belgrade badge and user guide put to use

These handheld computers are truly hot! The badges each have 55 really clicky keys. With at least 350 people in the room, that’s approaching 20k momentary push switches and at one point, a brief “silence” fell and all that could be heard were clicking buttons. That and we asked everyone to play the Mario Overworld tune at the same time as hundreds of badges rose in a glorious chorus. There’s also a 16-page user manual to go along with them which included sample code to get started.

Hacking went on throughout the day but as the talk session wrapped up we transformed the hall into a Hacker Village. Tables were brought in and immediately filled. Live music filled the room as Bogdan Rosu and Richard Hogben each played IDM sets. If you’ve been watching Hackaday videos you’ve heard their work and their performances this night were epic.

What is better than hacking to live music?
Still going strong as midnight approaches
Rich and Bogdan join forces for the final live music set
So much hacking, so little time
Head to head game called ‘Shoot my Valentine’
Head to head Tic Tac Toe
There were other hardware demos on display too
This badge was put on WiFi by lunchtime
[Flummer]’s badge displays minimalist style
Detail of [Larissa Koncz]’s Interactive Poetic Glove from the workshop
The world’s slowest sinewave, calculated in BASIC: [Tom van Dijk]
So much ASCII art!
[Frederic] and [Manoel] got their badges talking over AFSK, when the RF interference didn’t get them…
The RevSpace crew at work in the quiet workshop room

There was food, there was beer, and there were the tools of our lifestyle; laptops, programmers, jumper wires, blinky add-ons, and the excitement that goes along with all of them. The badge hacking presentations began at midnight and the place was still alive with excitement. It is truly great to see how supportive our community is of exploring hardware and trying things out. Publish your badge hacks and stories from the conference on Hackaday.io as we’ll be featuring those in the coming days and want to make sure we have all the juicy details.

Why Belgrade?

Keep your eye on Hackaday as there is much more coverage to come on this wonderful event. Many have asked: “Why Belgrade?”. It’s a fantastic city and the engineering community in the area is passionate about getting together to learn and share ideas. This includes the Supplyframe engineers who live in Belgrade and did the heavy lifting to organize and staff Hackaday Belgrade. You all did an amazing job and everyone at the con owes you a debt of gratitude, thank you so much! We also want to thank Supplyframe and SevenBridges, our sponsors for the event.

To all who attended, it wouldn’t have happened without you! I can speak for everyone on the Hackaday crew in saying the culture we share is energizing, encouraging, and humbling. It’s exactly the kind of recharge everyone looks for to keep life interesting! We’ll see you at the next one. Now over the next five months we have our sights set on the Hackaday Superconference. See you there!