A Wii Playing The GameCube, Disguised As A Game Boy SP

June 9, 2019 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

It may be hard to believe, but thanks to the expert work of Nintendo aficionado [Bill Paxton], the Game Boy Advance SP and GameCube lovechild that you see before you started its life as a Wii. That means not only can it play commercial GameCube and Wii games, but also has access to the wide library of homebrew games and emulators available for those systems.

To create this marvel, [Bill] first had to expertly cut away extraneous components from the Wii’s motherboard. He then mated the “trimmed” PCB to a new board that holds the controls as well as some other ancillary components such as the audio amplifier and USB port. He even managed to squeeze a battery in there, as demonstrated in the video after the break.

Finally, he designed a 3D printed enclosure that incorporates GameCube-style controls (complete with printed buttons) into the classic clamshell Game Boy SP shape. Because of the complexity of the design, [Bill] decided to have it professionally printed at Shapeways rather than trying to run it off of his home printer, which he says helps sells the professional look. It did take him some trial and error before he got the hang of painting the printed material to his satisfaction, but we think the end result was certainly worth the effort.

It probably won’t come as a huge surprise to find that this isn’t the first time [Bill] has pulled off a stunt like this. A few years back he created a very similar “GameCube SP”, but by the looks of it, this revised attempt improves on the original version in every way possible.

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Hail To The King, Baby: Reverse Engineering Duke

June 8, 2019 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

If you’re a fan of DOS games from the 1990s, you’ve almost certainly used DOSBox to replay them on a modern computer. It allows you to run software in a virtual environment that replicates an era-appropriate computer. That’s great for historical accuracy, but doesn’t do you much good if you’re trying to leverage modern computing power to breathe some new life into those classic titles. For that, you need to dig in a little deeper.

For the last two and a half years, [Nikolai Wuttke] has been doing exactly that for 1993’s Duke Nukem II. The end result is RigelEngine, an open source drop-in replacement for the original game binary that not only runs on a modern Windows, Linux, or Mac OS machine, but manages to improve on the original in a number of ways. An accomplishment made even more impressive once you learn that the original source code for the game has been lost to time, and that he had to do everything blind.

In a blog post chronicling his progress so far, [Nikolai] explains the arduous process he used to make sure his re-implementation was as accurate as possible to the original game. He spent untold hours studying the original game’s disassembled code in Ida Pro, handwriting out pages of notes and pseudocode as he tried to understand what was happening behind the scenes. Once a particular enemy or element of the game was implemented in RigelEngine, he’d record the gameplay from his version and compare it to the original frame by frame so he could fine tune the experience.

So what’s the end result of more than two years of work and over 25K lines of code? Thanks to the incredible advancements in computing power since the game’s release nearly 30 years ago, [Nikolai] has managed to remove the need for loading screens. His engine is also capable of displaying an unlimited number of particle effects on the screen at once, and multiple sound effects can now be played simultaneously. In the future he’s looking to implement smooth character movement (in the original game, movement was in 8 pixel increments) and adaptive volume for sound effects based on their distance from Duke. Ultimately, RigelEngine should be able to replace the original graphics with new high resolution textures once some issues with the rendering buffer gets sorted out.

It’s hard to overstate how important some of these classic games are to those who grew up playing them. With John Romero still releasing DLC for the original DOOM and hackers disassembling nearly 40 year old games to fix bugs, it doesn’t seem like they’re in any danger of being forgotten.

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Maker Media Ceases Operations

June 7, 2019 by Tom Nardi 200 Comments

Over the years we’ve had the dubious honor of bidding farewell to numerous companies that held a special place in the hearts of hackers and makers. We’ve borne witness to the demise of Radio Shack, TechShop, and PrintrBot, and even shed a tear or two when Toys “R” Us shut their doors. But as much as it hurt to see those companies go, nothing quite compares to this. Today we’ve learned that Maker Media has ceased operations.

Between the first issue of Make magazine in 2005 and the inaugural Maker Faire a year later, Maker Media deftly cultured the public face of the “maker movement” for over a decade. They didn’t create maker culture, but there’s no question that they put a spotlight on this part of the larger tech world. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the shuttering of Maker Media could have far reaching consequences that we won’t fully understand for years.

While this news will surely come as a crushing blow to many in the community, Maker Media founder and CEO Dale Dougherty says they’re still trying to put the pieces together. “I started the magazine and I’m committed to keeping that going because it means something to a lot of people and means something to me.” At this point, Dale tells us that Maker Media is officially in a state of insolvency. This is an important distinction, and means that the company still has a chance to right the ship before being forced to declare outright bankruptcy.

In layman’s terms, the fate of Make magazine and Maker Faire is currently uncertain. The intent is to restructure the organization and rehire enough people to keep the brand alive, but it may take rethinking their business model entirely. While they aren’t looking to crowdsource the resurrection of Make, Dale said he believes the answer may ultimately come from the community’s willingness to financially support them, “my question is can we perhaps rely on the community to offer support for what we’re doing in ways we have not asked for in the past.” Ideas currently being discussed include the sort of annual membership and pledge drives used by public broadcasting.

It’s impossible to overstate the positive influence that Make has had on the public’s perception of DIY. It put on a global pedestal the sort of projects which otherwise might have never been seen outside the basement workshops or garages they were constructed in. Through their events and outreach programs, Make showed an entire generation of young people that building something just for the joy of building it was something to be proud of. Make proved that nerds could be cool in a way that had never been done before, and worryingly, may never be done again. Let’s take a look at that legacy.

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The ArduBoy Community Rolled Their Own Cartridge

June 7, 2019 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

The Arduboy, as you might have guessed from the name, was designed as a love letter to the Nintendo Game Boy that many a hacker spent their formative years squinting at. While the open source handheld is far smaller than the classic DMG-01, it retains the same general form factor, monochromatic display, and even the iconic red LED to the left of the screen. But one thing it didn’t inherit from the original was the concept of removable game cartridges. That is, until now.

Over the last year, [Mr.Blinky] and a group of dedicated Arduboy owners have been working on adding a removable cartridge to the diminutive handheld. On paper it seemed easy enough, just hang an external SPI flash chip off of the test pads that were already present on the Arduboy PCB, but to turn that idea into a practical cartridge required an immense amount of work and discussion. The thread on the Arduboy community forums covers everything from the ergonomics of the physical cartridge design to the development of a new bootloader that could handle loading multiple games.

The first problem the group had to address was how small the Arduboy is: there’s simply no room in the back to add in a cartridge slot. So a large amount of time is spent proposing different ways of actually getting the theoretical cartridge attached to the system. There was some talk of entirely redesigning the case so it could take the cartridge internally (like the real Game Boy), but this eventually lost out for a less invasive approach that simply replaced the rear of the Arduboy with a 3D printed plate that gave the modders enough room to add a male header along the top edge of the system.

As an added bonus, the cartridge connector doubles as an expansion port for the Arduboy. While perfecting the design, various forum users have chimed in with different gadgets that make use of the new port, from WS2812B LEDs to additional input devices like joysticks or a full QWERTY keyboard. Even if you aren’t interested in expanding the storage space on your Arduboy, being able to plug in new hardware modules certainly opens up some interesting possibilities.

In fact, the project so impressed Arduboy creator [Kevin Bates] that he chimed in on the topic last month to announce he would start looking into integrating the community’s cartridge modification into the production hardware. If all goes well, pretty soon there might be an official upgrade path for those who want to expand what this tiny nostalgia machine is capable of.

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BikeOn Makes Electric Conversion A Snap

June 7, 2019 by Tom Nardi 66 Comments

If you’re in a relatively urban area and your destination is within a reasonable distance, it’s hard to argue against riding your bike rather than taking a car. It’s a positive for the environment, and great way to exercise and keep active. But some of us, say folks who write for the Internet full-time, might appreciate a little electromechanical advantage when the going gets tough.

In an effort to make electrifying your bike as easy as possible, [Shushanik] and [Aram] are working on a product they call BikeOn which they’ve recently entered into the 2019 Hackaday Prize. Thanks to some very clever engineering, this small unit can clamp onto the frame of a standard bicycle and transfer the energy from its 350 watt motor directly into the rear wheel; all without any tools or permanent modifications.

In the video after the break, [Aram] demonstrates how the user can install the BikeOn motor assembly in literally just a few seconds. Naturally there’s a beefy battery that needs to get attached to the frame as well, but even that has been made modular enough that it can attach where many bikes have their water bottle holder.

The attentive reader will likely notice that there’s no obvious control mechanism for BikeOn. Instead of having to fumble around with it manually, BikeOn uses a combination of torque sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to intelligently determine when the rider could use a boost.

BikeOn nabbed Editor’s Choice award at Maker Faire 2019, and now that it’s in the running for the Hackaday Prize, we’re excited to see more information on the product as it moves towards commercial release.

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Designing A Drone To Fire From A Grenade Launcher

June 6, 2019 by Tom Nardi 56 Comments

You might think that tiny autonomous drones that can be fired out of a standard 40 mm grenade launcher for rapid deployment would be the kind of thing the military would love to get their hands on. Which is true, of course, and a number of companies are working on the idea for police and military applications. But [Glytch] thinks the technology could also be used for search and rescue operations, so he’s working on creating a version for us civilians.

During his presentation “3D Printing Canister-Launchable Drones for City-Scale Wardriving” at the 2019 CircleCityCon, [Glytch] gave an overview of his progress towards creating a small fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that can be built even by those of us who don’t have the budgets of a three letter government agency. He’s not at the point where he can do a test launch just yet, but the design is coming along nicely, and we’re extremely interested in seeing where it goes from here.

The only way you’re fitting a winged aircraft into the bore of a 40 mm launcher is by folding it up, and so far, that’s where [Glytch] has directed most of his efforts. The wings of his UAV will use a rigid leading edge that folds flat until deployment. When in flight mode, ripstop nylon attached between the body of the drone and the leading edge will be pulled taught to form the actual wing surface; think of it sort of like a bat’s wing. A similar trick will be used for the two control surfaces at the rear of the craft.

Internally, the UAV is using all off-the-shelf components which [Glytch] hopes will keep it cheap enough that they could eventually be mass produced. As he explained in a recent YouTube video, the motor, speed controller, receiver, and flight controller, are all the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a small RC quadcopter. To make it easier to manage the UAV in the field, the batteries and payload will be housed in a detachable nose cone; allowing the user to rapidly configure the hardware for different missions.

Right now, [Glytch] says the biggest obstacle keeping his drone out of the air is finding a foldable propeller with the specific characteristics he requires. Unable to find anything commercially available, he’s currently looking into designing it himself and having it 3D printed on an SLA machine. He also needs to design a sabot to hold the drone as it travels through the barrel of the launcher. Incidentally, he’s currently testing his design with an Airsoft grenade launcher, as he doesn’t want to wade through the paperwork involved in getting the real deal.

[Glytch] is no stranger to the world of high-tech UAVs. The “Watch Dog” inspired hacking drone he created last year was a huge hit, and he’s recently been working on a HD video and telemetry link over WiFi with the Raspberry Pi Zero for his flying creations.

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Overengineering The Humble USB Power Bank

June 5, 2019 by Tom Nardi 21 Comments

Back in the flip phone days, you could get through the whole weekend before you had to even think about plugging the thing in. But as the processing power of our mobile devices increased, so to did their energy consumption. Today you’re lucky if your phone doesn’t die before you make it home at the end of the day. To avoid the horrors of having to live without their mobile devices, many people have resorted to lugging around small “power banks” to keep their phones topped off.

That said, the “Ultimate 18650 Power Bank” created by [Kennedy Liu] is on a whole new level. Only true Road Warriors need apply for this particular piece of kit. Inside the 3D printed enclosure is…well, pretty much everything. It’s got an internal inverter to power your AC devices, a Qi wireless charging coil, an adjustable DC output, displays for all relevant voltages, and naturally plenty of USB ports to charge your gadgets. Oh, and some RGB LEDs tossed in for good measure.

[Kennedy] packed a lot of hardware into this relatively small package, and in the video after the break, shows off exactly how everything is arranged inside of this power bank. A big part of getting the whole thing together is the 3D printed frame, which includes carefully designed insets for all of the key components. So if you want to build your own version, you’ll need to get the exact same hardware he used to make sure the puzzle fits together. Luckily, he’s provided links for all the relevant components for exactly that purpose.

Now, you might be wondering about the wisdom of packing all this electronic gear into a thermoplastic enclosure. But [Kennedy] has thought about that; in addition to tacking a heatsink onto pretty much everything, he’s added fans for active cooling and a fairly robust thermal overload protection scheme. By mounting thermally controlled switches to the heatsinks of the high-output components, the system can cut power to anything getting too hot before it has a chance to melt the plastic (or worse).

Most of the DIY power banks we’ve seen in the past have been little more than a simple collection of 18650 cells, so it’s interesting to see one with so much additional functionality packed in. Admittedly some elements of the construction are, to quote the great Dave Jones, “a bit how ya doin.” But with some refinements we think it would be a very handy device to have in your arsenal.

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