Open Source Smart Display Takes The Long Way Around

July 31, 2019 by Tom Nardi 18 Comments

Thanks to the relatively low cost of the Raspberry Pi and high resolution LCD screens, “smart displays” have become a favorite project of those looking to clear out their parts bins. Just hook the Pi up to the screen, setup some software, and you’ve got yourself a digital bulletin board for your home that can show your schedule, the weather, etc. Build it into a mirror, and you’ve got yourself at least double Internet points.

But when [John Basista] started planning his own smart display, he decided to take the path less traveled. He’s entered the resulting open source project into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, and we’re very excited to see where it goes from here. Even in these early days he’s already made some great strides, with nary a Raspberry Pi in sight.

[John] has nothing against using the Raspberry Pi for these smart displays, and indeed, it has a number of traits which make it particularly well suited to the task. But the problem for him was that it only supported HDMI, and he had his heart set on using an Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) screen. Namely the Innolux N173HCE-E31, a 17.3 inch IPS LCD designed for laptops.

He tried to find a Linux or Android compatible SBC that featured eDP, but found it to be a challenge. There were some x86 options, but didn’t want to go down that road. Eventually he settled on the Dragonboard 410c, which features a quad-core Qualcomm APQ8016E CPU running at 1.2 GHz and 1GB of RAM. This board didn’t have eDP either, but it did have Display Serial Interface (DSI), which he could convert to eDP with the Texas Instruments SN65DSI86 IC.

From there, he started developing a PCB which would hold the Dragonboard 410c and the SN65DSI86. The board also breaks out I2C and UART so he can connect it to various other sensors and gadgetry down the road, and includes all the necessary power regulation to drive everything. The whole thing fits in the palm of your hand, and judging by the renders [John] has put together, should nestle nicely into the back of the 3D printed enclosure when everything is finished.

There’s still quite a bit left to do on this project, but [John] has plenty of time to tie up the loose ends. Currently there’s little information about the software side of things, but as you can see in the video after the break, it’s now running Android which should make things relatively easy.

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RTL-SDR: Seven Years Later

July 31, 2019 by Tom Nardi 40 Comments

Before swearing my fealty to the Jolly Wrencher, I wrote for several other sites, creating more or less the same sort of content I do now. In fact, the topical overlap was enough that occasionally those articles would get picked up here on Hackaday. One of those articles, which graced the pages of this site a little more than seven years ago, was Getting Started with RTL-SDR. The original linked article has long since disappeared, and the site it was hosted on is now apparently dedicated to Nintendo games, but you can probably get the gist of what it was about from the title alone.

When I wrote that article in 2012, the RTL-SDR project and its community were still in their infancy. It took some real digging to find out which TV tuners based on the Realtek RTL2832U were supported, what adapters you needed to connect more capable antennas, and how to compile all the software necessary to get them listening outside of their advertised frequency range. It wasn’t exactly the most user-friendly experience, and when it was all said and done, you were left largely to your own devices. If you didn’t know how to create your own receivers in GNU Radio, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do other than eavesdrop on hams or tune into local FM broadcasts.

Nearly a decade later, things have changed dramatically. The RTL-SDR hardware and software has itself improved enormously, but perhaps more importantly, the success of the project has kicked off something of a revolution in the software defined radio (SDR) world. Prior to 2012, SDRs were certainly not unobtainable, but they were considerably more expensive. Back then, the most comparable device on the market would have been the FUNcube dongle, a nearly $200 USD receiver that was actually designed for receiving data from CubeSats. Anything cheaper than that was likely to be a kit, and often operated within a narrower range of frequencies.

Today, we would argue that an RTL-SDR receiver is a must-have tool. For the cost of a cheap set of screwdrivers, you can gain access to a world that not so long ago would have been all but hidden to the amateur hacker. Let’s take a closer look at a few obvious ways that everyone’s favorite low-cost SDR has helped free the RF hacking genie from its bottle in the last few years.

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Preserving Historic NASA Display Technology

July 30, 2019 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

When [Patrick Hickey] spent a tidy sum on eBay to purchase a pair of seven-segment displays used in the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo program, he could have just put them up on a shelf. It’s certainly what most people would have done. Instead, he’s decided to study and document their design with the hope of eventually creating 3D replicas of these unique pieces of NASA history.

With a half century now separating us from the Moon landing, it’s more important than ever to preserve the incredible technology that NASA used during mankind’s greatest adventure. Legitimate Apollo-era hardware is fairly scarce on the open market, and certainly not cheap. As [Patrick] explains on the Hackaday.io page for this project, being able to 3D print accurate replicas of these displays is perhaps the best way we can be sure they won’t be lost to history.

But more than that, he also wants others to be able to see them in operation and perhaps even use them in their own projects. So that means coming up with modern electronics that stand-in for the 60s era hardware which originally powered them.

Since [Patrick] doesn’t have access to whatever (likely incandescent) lighting source these displays used originally, his electronics are strictly functional rather than being an attempt at a historic recreation. But we have to say, the effect looks fantastic regardless.

Currently, [Patrick] is putting most of his efforts on the smaller of the two displays that he calls “Type A”. The chunk of milled aluminum with integrated cooling fins has a relatively simple shape that should lend itself to replication through 3D scanning or even just a pair of calipers. He’s also put together a proof of concept for how he intends to light the display with 5mm LEDs on a carefully trimmed bit of protoboard, which he plans on eventually refining to reduce the number of wires used.

One aspect he’s still a little unsure of is how best to replicate the front mask. It appears to be made of etched metal with an integrated fiberglass diffuser, and while he’s already come up with a few possible ways to create a similar front panel for his 3D printed version, he’s certainly open to suggestions from the community.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a dedicated individual use 3D printing to recreate a rare and expensive object. While the purists will say that an extruded plastic version doesn’t compare to the real thing, we think it’s certainly better than letting technology like this fade into obscurity.

Teardown: Catel CTP300 Restaurant Pager

July 30, 2019 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

I have a problem. If I go to a swap meet , or even a particularly well stocked yard sale, I feel compelled to buy something. Especially if that something happens to be an oddball piece of electronics. While on the whole I’m a man of few vices, I simply can’t walk away from a good deal; doubly so if it has a bunch of buttons, LEDs, and antennas on it.

Which is exactly how I came into the possession of a Catel CPT300 restaurant paging system for just $20 a few months ago. I do not, as you may have guessed, operate a restaurant. In fact, as many of my meals take the form of military rations eaten in front of my computer, I’m about as far away from a restaurateur as is humanly possible. But I was so enamored with the rows of little plastic pagers neatly lined up in their combination charging dock and base station that I had to have it.

The man selling it swore the system worked perfectly. Even more so after he plugged it in and it didn’t do anything. But appearances can be deceiving, and his assurance that all the pagers needed was a good charge before they’d burst back to life seemed reasonable enough to me. Of course, it hardly mattered. The regular Hackaday reader at this point knows the fate of the CPT300 was to be the same whether or not it worked.

Incidentally, those cute little pagers would not burst back to life with a good charge. They may well have burst into something, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, let’s take a look at a gadget that most of us have used at one time or another, but few have had the opportunity to dissect.

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Vintage Computer Festival West Is Almost Here

July 30, 2019 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

If you’ve got an interest in technology, a penchant for that particular shade of yellowed plastic, and happen to be located in the California area, then we’ve got the event for you. The Vintage Computer Festival West is happening this weekend, August 3rd and 4th, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The Vintage Computer Festival offers a truly unique experience for anyone with a passion for all the silicon that’s come before. Where else could you sit in on a roundtable of early Apple employees discussing the bevy of authentic ultra-rare Apple I computers that will be on display, or get up close and personal with a restored Apollo Guidance Computer? If you really want to dive in on the deep end, Hackaday’s own Bill Herd will be in attendance giving his lecture about the effects of heat and time on the internal components of decades-old pieces of hardware.

Still skeptical? Perhaps you’ll get a kick out of the exhibit that celebrates more than two decades of Quake by hosting a LAN game where the classic game is running on less common platforms like the RS/6000 series or the Sun Ulta. If you’re interested in seeing modern reconstructions of classic technology, there will be plenty of that on display as well. Eric Schlaepfer will be showing off his transistor-scale replica of the iconic 6502 microprocessor, and you won’t want to miss the Cactus in all its rainbow colored toggle switch and blinkenlight glory.

Of course, if you’re in the market for your very own piece of computing history, there’s no better place to be. The consignment area gives showgoers a chance to buy and sell all manners of vintage and unique hardware, harking back to the days where the best way to get your hands on a computer (or the parts to build one) was by attending a dedicated event. Plus, no shipping fees!

Put simply, there really is something for everyone at the Vintage Computer Festival. Even if you weren’t around to experience Apple II or Commodore 64 in their prime, these events are a rare opportunity to learn about the early days of a technology that today we all take for granted. Have you ever wondered how programs were entered into those early computers with nothing more than a bank of toggle switches and an array of LEDs? One of the passionate exhibitors at VCF will be more than happy to walk you through the process.

At the end of the day, preserving this technology and sharing it with future generations is really what it’s all about. Just as in previous years, Hackaday is proud to sponsor the Vintage Computer Festival and further their goal of ensuring this incredible shared heritage isn’t lost.

The Bluetooth LCD Sniffer You Didn’t Know You Needed

July 29, 2019 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

At one time or another, we’ve all suffered through working with a piece of equipment that didn’t feature a way to export its data to another device. Whether it was just too old to offer such niceties, or the manufacturer locked the capability behind some upgrade, the pain of staring at digits ticking over on a glowing LCD display and wishing there was a practical way to scrape what our eyes were seeing is well known to hackers.

That was precisely the inspiration for DoMSnif, the dot matrix LCD sniffer that [Blecky] has been working on. Originally the project started as a way to record the temperature of his BRTRO-420 reflow oven, but realizing that such a device could have widespread appeal to other hardware hackers, he’s rightfully decided to enter it into the 2019 Hackaday Prize. If perfected, it could be an excellent way to bolt data capture capabilities to your older devices.

The first phase of this project was figuring out how to capture and parse the signals going into the device’s KS0108 LCD. Getting the data was certainly easy enough, he just had to hook a logic analyzer up between the display and the main board of the device. Of course, figuring out what it all means is a different story.

After running the oven for a bit with the analyzer recording, [Blecky] had more than enough data to get started on decoding it. Luckily, the layout of this fairly common 128×64 pixel display is well documented and easy enough to understand. With a little work, he was able to create a tool that would import the captured data and display it on a virtual LCD.

Unfortunately, the Bluetooth part is where things get tricky. Ultimately, [Blecky] wants to ditch the logic analyzer and use a Adafruit Feather nRF52 Bluefruit to capture the signals going to the LCD and pipe them to a waiting device over Bluetooth. But his testing has found that the nRF52’s radio is simply too slow. The display is receiving data every 14us, but it takes the radio at least 50us to send a packet.

[Blecky] is looking at ways around this problem, and we’re confident he’ll crack it. The solution could be in buffering and compressing the data before sending it out, though you’d lose the ability to monitor the display in real-time. Even if he has to abandon the Bluetooth aspect entirely and make the device wired, we still think there would be a market for an easy to use hardware and software solution for scraping LCD data.

Taking A Peek Inside Amazon’s Latest Dot

July 29, 2019 by Tom Nardi 37 Comments

Like a million or so other people, [Brian Dorey] picked up a third generation Echo Dot during Amazon’s big sale a couple weeks ago. Going for less than half its normal retail price, he figured it was the perfect time to explore Amazon’s voice assistant offerings. But the low price also meant that he didn’t feel so bad tearing into the thing for our viewing pleasure.

By pretty much all accounts, the Echo Dot line has been a pretty solid performer as far as corporate subsidized home espionage devices go. They’re small, fairly cheap, and offer the baseline functionality that most people expect. While there was nothing precisely wrong with the earlier versions of the Dot, Amazon has used this latest revision of the device to give the gadget a more “premium” look and feel. They’ve also tried to squeeze a bit better audio out of the roughly hockey puck sized device. But of course, some undocumented changes managed to sneak in there as well.

For one thing, the latest version of the Dot deletes the USB port. Hackers had used the USB port on earlier versions of the hardware to try and gain access to the Android (or at least, Amazon’s flavor of Android) operating system hiding inside, so that’s an unfortunate development. On the flip side, [Brian] reports there’s some type of debug header on the bottom of the device. A similar feature allowed hackers to gain access to some of Amazon’s other voice assistants, so we’d recommend hopeful optimism until told otherwise.

The Echo Dot is powered by a quad-core Mediatek MT8516BAAA 64-bit ARM Cortex-A35 processor and the OS lives on an 8GB Samsung KMFN60012M-B214 eMMC. A pair of Texas Instruments LV320ADC3101 ADCs are used to process the incoming audio from the four microphones arranged around the edge of the PCB, and [Brian] says there appears to be a Fairchild 74LCX74 flip-flop in place to cut the audio feed when the user wants a bit of privacy.

Of course, the biggest change is on the outside. The new Dot is much larger than the previous versions, which means all the awesome enclosures we’ve seen for its predecessor will need to be reworked if they want to be compatible with Amazon’s latest and greatest.