Author: Navarre Bartz

182 Articles

Droplet Watch Keeps Time Via Electrowetting

February 9, 2024 by 6 Comments

Hackers just can’t help but turn their sights on timepieces, and [Armin Bindzus] has designed an electrowetting-based watch.

Electrowetting is a way of changing the contact angle of droplets on a surface using electricity, and can be used to move said droplets. The liquid needs to be polar, so in this case [Bindzus] has used a red ink mixed with mono-ethylene glycol to stand out against the white dielectric back of the device. The 60 individual electrodes of the bottom section were etched via laser out of the ITO-coated glass that makes up the bottom plates of the face.

The top plate houses the small round pillars that keep the ink constrained to its paths. They are made of a photosensitive epoxy that is spin-coated onto the glass and then cured via the laser. The plates are put together at a distance of 0.23 mm with epoxy, but a small hole is left to insert the droplets and a filler liquid. An Attiny1614 microcontroller runs the show along with a DS3231 RTC. A 46V signal drives the droplets around their path.

It seems this project is a bit away from true wearable use, but perhaps [Bindzus] could make a desk clock first? If you’re interested in another ink-based, watch, how about this custom E-Ink Tank watch?

Continue reading “Droplet Watch Keeps Time Via Electrowetting” →

A line-art diagram of the microfluidic device. On the left, in red text, it says "Fibrillization trigger (CPB pH 5.0). There is a rectangular outline of the chip in grey, with a sideways trapezoid on the left side narrowing until it becomes an arrow on the right. At the right is an inset picture of the semi-transparent microfluidic chip and the text "Negative Pressure (Pultrusion)." Above the trapezoid is the green text "MaSp2 solution" and below is "LLPS trigger (CPB pH 7.0)" in purple. The green, purple, and red text correspond with inlets labeld 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Three regions along the arrow-like channel from left to right are labeled "LLPS region," "pH drop," and in a much longer final section "Fiber assembly region."

Synthetic Spider Silk

February 8, 2024 by 7 Comments

While spider silk proteins are something you can make in your garage, making useful drag line fibers has proved a daunting challenge. Now, a team of scientists from Japan and Hong Kong are closer to replicating artificial spider silk using microfluidics.

Based on how spiders spin their silk, the researchers designed a microfluidic device to replicate the chemical and physical gradients present in the spider. By varying the amount of shear and chemical triggers, they tuned the nanostructure of the fiber to recreate the “hierarchical nanoscale substructure, which is the hallmark of native silk self-assembly.”

We have to admit, keeping a small bank of these clear, rectangular devices on our desk seems like a lot less work than keeping an army of spiders fed and entertained to produce spider silk Hackaday swag. We shouldn’t expect to see a desktop microfluidic spider silk machine this year, but we’re getting closer and closer. While you wait, why not learn from spiders how to make better 3D prints?

If you’re interesting in making your own spider silk proteins, checkout how [Justin Atkin] and [The Thought Emporium] have done it with yeast. Want to make your spider farm spiders have stronger silk? Try augmenting it with carbon.

A child in a red shirt and blue pants balances on a board suspended across two small, green sawhorses. An astroturf hill and blue elephant-esque cart are in the background.

Popup Playground Roams Around

February 4, 2024 by 4 Comments

Going to the park is a time-honored pastime for kids around the world, but what if there isn’t one nearby? COMPA Teatro Trono and the International Design Clinic have designed a park that can come to you.

Working with a group of design students from Bolivia and America, the theatre troupe has iteratively designed a set of playground carts that can be deployed for kids to meet each other and play. El Alto, the city of 1 million where the playground plies the streets, has grown exponentially since its incorporation as an independent town in 1985. Infrastructure has trouble catching up with population jumps of 54% like that experienced from 2000-2010.

Starting with interviews with kids from the city about what was important for a playground, they found a trend of trees, slides, and the color green. Over the course of three summers, the design students went from janky prototypes to the more refined carts now seen roaming El Alto built around the idea of “exaggerated topography.” An elephant and “astroturf bee” are the two hand carts which disassemble into a variety of playground equipment once in place at a destination.

Not a ton of details are given in the article about the construction of the carts themselves, but we think this tactical urbanist approach to parks is a hack in itself. That said, be sure to point us toward some more info on the builds if you’ve found any. Know of another hack, that brings joy to your own neighborhoods? Send it to the tipsline!

 

A white male in a green shirt sitting next to a tall rectangular robot made of green and black components with an aluminum frame. In front of him are a variety of components from several windshield wiper motor assemblies. Casings, gearboxes, and the like are strewn across the wooden table.

A Wiper Motor 101

February 2, 2024 by 22 Comments

Need a powerful electric motor on the cheap? [Daniel Simu] and his friend [Werner] show us the ins and outs of using windshield wiper motors.

Through many examples and disassembled components, the duo walk us through some of the potential uses of wiper motors to power a project. Some of the nuggets we get are the linear relationship of torque to current (10-15A max) and speed to voltage (12-15V DC) on these units, and some of the ways the wiring in these motors is a little different than a simple two wire DC motor.

They also discuss some of their favorite ways to control the motors ranging from a light switch to an Arduino. They even mention how to turn one into a big servo thanks to a project on Hackaday.io and a few modifications of their own. [Simu] also discusses some of the drawbacks of wiper motors, the most evident being that these motors use nylon gears which are prone to stripping or failing in other ways when subjected to high torque conditions for too long.

If you recognize [Simu], it may be from his robotic acrobat built with wiper motors. Want to see some more wiper motor hacks? How about a 3D scanner or making sure your wipers always keep the beat?

Continue reading “A Wiper Motor 101” →

A black PCB with a cellular modem board piggy backed on top. It has a micro-USB and DB-type connector on the end facing the camera.

Open Vehicle Monitoring System Is The Window To Your EV’s Soul

January 25, 2024 by 14 Comments

Electric cars have more widgets than ever, but manufacturers would rather you don’t have direct access to them. The Open Vehicle Monitoring System intends to change that for the user. [via Transport Evolved]

As car manufacturers hoover up user data and require subscriptions for basic features, it can be a frustrating time to make such a big purchase. Begun in 2011, OVMS now interfaces with over a dozen different EVs and gives you access to (or helps you reverse engineer) all the data you could want from your vehicle. Depending on the vehicle, any number of functions can be accessed including remote climate start or cell-level battery statistics.

The hardware connects to your car’s OBDII port and uses an ESP32 microcontroller connected to a  SIMCOM SIM7600G modem (including GPS) to provide support for 3 CAN buses as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. This can be particularly useful for remote access to data for vehicles that can no longer phone home via their originally included cellular modems as older networks shut down.

Do you wish EVs weren’t so complicated? Read our Minimal Motoring Manifesto.

An image of a smarphone sitting on a lightly-colored wooden table. It has a tan case surrounding it on the top 2/3, and a copper case holding a BlackBerry Q10 keyboard jutting out over the bottom of the phone.

FairBerry Brings The PKB Back To Your Smartphone

January 24, 2024 by 37 Comments

Missing the feel of physical keys on your phone, but not ready to give up your fancy new touchscreen phone? [Dakkaron] has attached a BlackBerry keyboard to a slightly more recent device.

Designed for the FairPhone 4, [Dakkaron]’s hack should be transferable to other smartphones as it connects to the phone over USB without any of that tedious mucking about with Bluetooth. There’s even a handy OpenSCAD-based generator to help you along in the customization process.

[Dakkaron] started with an Arduino Pro Micro-based implementation, but the most recent iteration uses a custom board that can be obtained partially-populated. Unfortunately, the Hirose connector for the keyboard isn’t available off-the-shelf, so you’ll have to solder that yourself if you’re planning to do this mod. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to practice your surface mount soldering skills!

If the Q10 keyboard looks familiar, it’s probably because it’s one of the most popular keyboards for small projects around here. Check out Regrowing a BlackBerry from the Keyboard Out or a LoRa Messenger with one. We’ve even seen them in a conference badge!

Two researchers, a white woman and dark-skinned man look at a large monitor with a crystal structure displayed in red and white blocks.

AI On The Hunt For Better Batteries

January 23, 2024 by 17 Comments

While certain dystopian visions of the future have humans power the grid for AIs, Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) set a machine learning system on the path of better solid state batteries instead.

Solid state batteries are the current darlings of battery research, promising a step-change in packaging size and safety among other advantages. While they have been working in the lab for some time now, we’re still yet to see any large-scale commercialization that could shake up the consumer electronics and electric vehicle spaces.

With a starting set of 32 million potential inorganic materials, the machine learning algorithm was able to select the 150 most promising candidates for further development in the lab. This smaller subset was then fed through a high-performance computing (HPC) algorithm to winnow the list down to 23. Eliminating previously explored compounds, the scientists were able to develop a promising Li/Na-ion solid state battery electrolyte that could reduce the needed Li in a battery by up to 70%.

For those of us who remember when energy materials research often consisted of digging through dusty old journal papers to find inorganic compounds of interest, this is a particularly exciting advancement. A couple more places technology can help in the sciences are robots doing the work in the lab or on the surgery table.

Continue reading “AI On The Hunt For Better Batteries” →