Procedurally Generated Terrain In OpenSCAD

January 14, 2025 by Tom Nardi 21 Comments

We’re big fans of OpenSCAD here at Hackaday — it’s free and open source software, runs on pretty much anything, and the idea of describing objects via code seems like a natural fit for producing functional parts. Rather than clicking and dragging elements on the screen, you can knock out a quick bracket or other simple component with just a few lines of code. But one of the things we don’t often get a chance to showcase is the incredible potential of generating 2D and 3D objects algorithmically.

In a recent Reddit post, [ardvarkmadman] dropped an extremely impressive snippet of OpenSCAD code that he calls TerrainGen. In fewer than fifteen lines of code, it’s able to create randomized “islands” which range from simple plateaus to craggy mountain ranges. After dropping the code in the OpenSCAD editor, you can just keep hitting F5 until you get a result that catches your eye. This seems like an excellent way to generate printable terrain elements for gaming purposes, but that’s just one possibility.

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Clever PCBs Straighten Out The Supercon SAO Badge

January 13, 2025 by Tom Nardi No comments

When we decided that Simple Add-Ons (SAOs) would be the focus of Supercon 2024, it was clear the badge would need to feature more than just one or two of the requisite connectors. We finally settled on six ports, but figuring out the geometry of getting all those ports on the badge in such a way that the SAOs wouldn’t hit each other was a bit tricky. In early concept drawings the badge was just a big rectangle with the ports along the top, but it was too ugly.

In the end we went with a somewhat organic design — an electronic “flower” with the radially arranged SAOs forming the petals, but this meant that that none of the SAOs were in the traditional vertical orientation. Luckily, [Adrian Studer] designed a couple of PCBs that not only resolve this issue, but add a seventh SAO port for good measure.

In the project repository you’ll find two PCB designs. The first, “SAO Up” is essentially a little arm that turns the SAO port 90 degrees. This doesn’t exactly get them vertical, in fact, whether or not the new orientation is actually an improvement for the top two SAOs is perhaps debatable. But it definitely helps on the lower SAOs, which are essentially upside down in their original configuration.

The real star of the show is “SAO Bridge”, a wavy board that connects across the two midline SAO ports on the Supercon badge and turns it into a set of three (nearly) horizontal connectors across the front. The center port is particularly helpful in that it gives you a place to put unusually wide SAOs.

As a reminder the Supercon SAO badge, and the winners of the 2024 SAO Contest, will be making the trip across the pond for Hackaday Europe in just a few months. That means you’ve still got plenty of time to have a few of these CERN-OHL-P licensed boards made up.

IFixit Releases Command Line Docs For FixHub Iron

January 11, 2025 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

When we reviewed the iFixit FixHub back in September, one of the most interesting features of the portable soldering station was the command line interface that both the iron and the base station offered up once you connected to them via USB. While this feature wasn’t documented anywhere, it made a degree of a sense, as the devices used WebSerial to communicate with the browser. What was less clear at the time was whether or not the user was supposed to be fiddling with this interface, or if iFixit intended to lock it up in a future firmware update.

Thanks to a recent info dump on GitHub, it seems like we have our answer. In the repo, iFixit has provided documentation for each individual command on both the iron and base, including some background information and application notes for a few of the more esoteric functions. A handful of the commands are apparently disabled in the production version of the firmware, but there’s still plenty to poke around with.

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Remotely Controlled Vehicles Over Starlink

January 8, 2025 by Tom Nardi 35 Comments

Modern remote control (RC) radios are capable of incredible range, but they’re still only made for line-of-sight use. What if you want to control a vehicle that’s 100s of kilometers away, or even on the other side of the planet? Cellular is an option, but is obviously limited by available infrastructure — good luck getting a cell signal in the middle of the ocean.

But what if you could beam your commands down from space? That’s what [Thingify] was looking to test when they put together an experimental RC boat using a Starlink Mini for communications. Physically, there was no question it would work on the boat. After all, it was small, light, and power-efficient enough. But would the network connection be up to the task of controlling the vehicle in real-time?

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More Things To Do With Your Cheap Yellow Display

January 7, 2025 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

The Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is an ESP32 development board that’s been making the rounds for a while now, thanks to its value and versatility. For around $10 USD, you get a nicely integrated package that’s perfect for a wide array of projects and applications. Toss a couple in on your next AliExpress order, and all you need to do is come up with an idea. [Craig Lindley] had two ideas, and maybe they will help get those gears turning in your head. Even if you don’t need a network-connected MP3 player or GPS information display, we bet browsing the source code would be useful.

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Logging Baby’s Day In Linux

January 7, 2025 by Tom Nardi 38 Comments

There’s plenty of surprises to be had when you become a parent, and one of the first is that it’s suddenly your job to record the frequency of your infant’s various bodily functions in exacting detail. How many times did the little tyke eat, how long did they sleep, and perhaps most critically, how many times did they poop. The pediatrician will expect you to know these things, so you better start keeping notes.

Or, if you’re [Triceratops Labs], you build a physical button panel that will keep tabs on the info for you. At the press of each button, a log entry is made on the connected Raspberry Pi Zero W, which eventually makes its way to a web interface that you can view to see all of Junior’s statistics.

In terms of hardware, this one is quite simple — it’s really just an array of arcade-style push buttons wired directly into the Pi’s GPIO header. Where it shines is in the software. This project could have been just a Python script and a text file, but instead it uses a MariaDB database on the back-end, with Apache and PHP serving up the web page, and a custom Systemd service to tie it all together. In other words, it’s what happens when you let a Linux admin play with a soldering iron.

It probably won’t come as much surprise to find that hackers often come up with elaborate monitoring systems for their newborn children, after all, it’s a great excuse for a new project. This machine learning crib camera comes to mind.

No Frills PCB Brings USB-C Power To The Breadboard

January 6, 2025 by Tom Nardi 30 Comments

At this point, many of us have gone all-in on USB-C. It’s gotten to the point that when you occasionally run across a gadget that doesn’t support being powered USB-C, the whole experience seems somewhat ridiculous. If 90% of your devices using the same power supply, that last 10% starts feeling very antiquated.

So why should your breadboard be any different? [Axiometa] has recently unveiled a simple PCB that will plug into a standard solderless breadboard to provide 3.3 and 5 VDC when connected to a USB-C power supply. The device is going to start a crowdfunding campaign soon if you want to buy a completed one — but with the design files and Bill of Materials already up on GitHub, nothing stops you from spinning up your own version today.

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