Go Back In Time With A Laser Cut Wood 3D Printer Kit

May 23, 2019 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

About a decade ago, the only way the average hacker was getting their hands on a desktop 3D printer was by building it themselves from a kit. Even then, to keep costs down, many of these kits were made out of laser cut wood. For a few years, wooden printers from companies like MakerBot and PrintrBot were a common sight in particularly well equipped hackerspaces. But as the market expanded and production went up, companies could afford to bend metal and get parts injection molded; the era of the wooden 3D printer was over nearly as soon as it had started.

But [Luke Wallace] thinks there’s still some life left in the idea. For his entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, he’s proposing a revival of the classic laser cut 3D printer kit. But this time, things are a bit different. Today, laser cutters are cheap enough that these kits could conceivably be manufactured at your local hackerspace. With a total bill of materials under $100 USD, these kits could be pumped out for less than the cheapest imports, potentially driving adoption in areas where the current options are too expensive or unavailable.

Of course, just a laser cut wood frame wouldn’t be enough to break the fabled $100 barrier. To drive the cost down even farther, [Luke] has redesigned essentially every component so it could be made out of wood. If its not electronic, there’s a good chance its going to be cut out of the same material the frame is made out of. Probably the biggest change is that the traditional belt and pulley system has been replaced with rack and pinion arrangements.

After cutting all the pieces, essentially all you need to provide is the stepper motors, a RAMPS controller, the hotend, and the extruder. He’s even got a design for a laser cut wood extruder if you want to go back to the real olden days and save yourself another few bucks. Or skip the LCD controller and just run it over USB.

But what do the prints look like? [Luke] has posted a few pictures of early test pieces on the project’s Hackaday.io page, and to be honest, they’re pretty rough. But they don’t look entirely unlike the kind of prints you’d get on one of those early printers before you really got it dialed in, so we’re interested in seeing how the results improve with further refinements and calibration. (Editor’s note: Since writing this, he got backlash compensation up and running, and it looks a ton better already. Very impressive for something running on wooden gears!)

Dummy Security Camera Is Smarter Than It Looks

May 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

The idea behind a dummy security camera is that people who are up to no good might think twice about doing anything to your property when they think they’re being recorded. Obviously a real security camera would be even better, but sometimes that’s just not economically or logistically possible. Admittedly they’re not always very convincing, but for a few bucks, hopefully it’s enough to make the bad guys think twice.

But what if that “fake” camera could do a little more than just look pretty up on the wall? [Chris Chimienti] thought he could improve the idea by adding some electronics that would notify him if motion was detected. As an added bonus, any would-be criminals who might be emboldened by the realization the camera itself is fake might find themselves in for a rude surprise when the notifications start firing off.

In the video after the break, [Chris] really takes his time walking the viewer through the disassembly of the dummy camera. As it turns out, these things look like they’d make excellent project enclosures; they come apart easily, have nothing but empty space inside, and even have an integrated battery compartment. That alone could be a useful tip to file away for the future.

He then goes on to explain how he added some smarts to this dummy camera. Up where the original “lens” was, he installed a PIR sensor, some white LEDs, a light sensor, and the original blinking red LED. All of this was mounted to a very slick 3D printed plate which integrates into the camera’s body perfectly. The new hardware is connected up to a similarly well mounted Wemos D1 Mini inside the camera. The rest of the video goes through every aspect of the software setup, which is sure to be of interest to anyone who’s ever thought of rolling their own IoT device.

This type of PIR sensor is hacker favorite, and we’ve seen a number of projects using them for all sorts of creative purposes. We’ve even seen them paired with the ESP8266 before for Internet-connected motion sensing, albeit without the tidy security camera enclosure.

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Modern Evolution Of The Classic Water Rocket

May 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

Whether it was home-built from scraps or one of the various commercial versions that have popped over up over the years, there’s an excellent chance that the average Hackaday reader spent at least a couple of their more formative summers flying water rockets. You might not have realized it at the time, but with shirt soaked and head craned skywards, you were getting a practical physics lesson that was more relatable than anything out of a textbook. Water rockets are a great STEM tool for young people, but in a post-Fortnite world, the idea could use a little modernization to help keep kids engaged.

With his entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, [Darian Johnson] hopes to breathe some new life into this classic physics toy. His open source kit would provide a modular water rocket intended for a wide range of ages thanks to various payloads and upgrade options. The younger players would be content to simply see it take off, but high school students could outfit the craft with an electronic payload to capture performance data or an automatic parachute.

[Darian] has been building and flying rockets with his own children and other youth in community for years now, and has found them to be a huge hit. They became so popular that he started thinking of a way to not produce them in larger quantities, but make them stronger so they would survive more flights.

Of course, the fuselages are easy enough; there’s no shortage of one-liter bottles you can recycle. But for the nose cone, fins, and ultimately even the launch pad, [Darian] turned to 3D printing. This allows him to continually optimize the design while delivering repeatable performance. When he had a semi-printable water rocket on his hands, he started to wonder if he could get older kids interested by adding some electronics into the mix.

His current proof of concept is a flight data recorder using a Adafruit nRF52 Bluefruit LE Feather, a BMP280 sensor to determine altitude via barometric pressure, and an SD card breakout for local data storage. Long term, [Darian] wants to be able to stream flight data to student’s phones over Bluetooth, with the SD card providing a local copy which can be analyzed after the flight.

[Darian] has leaned heavily on the open source community for the various components of his water rocket kit, and is dedicated to giving back. He hopes that his final kit will allow communities to create engaging STEM activities at little to no cost. This includes creating a repository of lesson plans and designs contributed from others experimenting with water rockets. It’s a noble goal, and we’re excited to see how the project progresses.

Solving The Final Part Of The IClicker Puzzle

May 21, 2019 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

The regular Hackaday reader might remember the iClicker from our previous coverage of the classroom quiz device, or perhaps you even had some first hand experience with it during your university days. A number of hackers have worked to reverse engineer the devices over the years, and on the whole, it’s a fairly well understood system. But there are still a few gaps in the hacker’s map of the iClicker, and for some folks, that just won’t do.

[Ammar Askar] took it upon himself to further the state of the art for iClicker hacking, and has put together a very detailed account on his blog. While most efforts have focused on documenting and eventually recreating how the student remotes send their responses to the teacher’s base station, he was curious about looking at the system from the other side. Specifically, he wanted to know how the base station was able to push teacher-supplied welcome messages to the student units, and how it informed the clients that their answers had been acknowledged.

He started by looking through the base station’s software update tool to find out where it was downloading the firmware files from, a trick we’ve seen used to great effect in the past. With the firmware in hand, [Ammar] disassembled the AVR code in IDA and got to work piecing together how the hardware works. He knew from previous group’s exploration of the hardware that the base station’s Semtech XE1203F radio is connected to the processor via SPI, so he started searching for code which was interacting with the SPI control registers.

This line of logic uncovered how the radio is configured over SPI, and ultimately where the data intended for transmission is stored in memory. He then moved over to running the firmware image in simavr. Just like Firmadyne allows you to run ARM or MIPS firmware with an attached debugger, this tool allowed [Ammar] to poke around in memory and do things such as simulate when student responses were coming in over the radio link.

At that point, all he had to do was capture the bytes being sent out and decode what they actually meant. This process was complicated slightly by the fact the system uses to use its own custom encoding rather than ASCII for the messages, but by that point, [Ammar] was too close to let something like that deter him. Nearly a decade after first hearing that hackers had started poking around inside of them, it looks like we can finally close the case on the iClicker.

Bringing Battle Bots Into The Modern Classroom

May 21, 2019 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

With the wide array of digital entertainment that’s available to young students, it can be difficult for educators to capture their imagination. In decades past, a “volcano” made with baking soda and vinegar would’ve been enough to put a class of 5th graders on the edge of their seats, but those projects don’t pack quite the same punch on students who may have prefaced their school day with a battle royale match. Today’s educators are tasked with inspiring kids who already have the world at their fingertips.

Hoping to rise to that challenge with her entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, [Misty Lackie] is putting together a kit which would allow elementary and middle school students to build their very own fighting robots. Thanks to the use of modular components, younger students don’t have to get bogged down with soldering or the intricacies of how all the hardware actually works. On the other hand, older kids will be able to extend the basic platform without having to start from scratch.

The electronics for the bot consist primarily of an Arduino Uno with Sensor Shield, a dual H-bridge motor controller, and a wireless receiver for a PS2 controller. This allows the students to control the bot’s dual drive motors with an input scheme that’s likely very familiar to them already. By mapping the controller’s face buttons to digital pins on the Arduino, additional functions such as the spinner seen in the bot after the break, easily be activated.

[Misty] has already done some test runs with an early version of the kit, and so far its been a huge success. Students were free to design their own bodies and add-ons for the remote controlled platform, and it’s fascinating to see how unique the final results turned out to be. We’ve seen in the past how excited students can be when tasked with customizing their own robots, so any entry into that field is a positive development in our book.

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Tracking Stolen Bikes With Narrowband IoT

May 20, 2019 by Tom Nardi 36 Comments

For his entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, [Marin Vukosav] is working on an ambitious project to create a small GPS tracking device which utilizes Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) for long range communications. Rather than using a GSM modem which would suck the batteries dry in short order, NB-IoT can theoretically maintain a connection within a 10 to 15 kilometer range while keeping the energy consumption low enough that the tracker could go up to a year before needing to be recharged.

At this point, the hardware is still in the proof of concept phase. [Marin] is using an Arduino with a GPS shield and a SIM7000 NB-IoT module to experiment with the concept, but ultimately says he wants to shrink the hardware down to the point it could fit inside of a bike light. Looking even farther ahead, he’d like to make deals with bike manufacturers so the module could be integrated into the frame itself, where a thief wouldn’t be able to access it at all.

Of course, nothing says this technology has to be limited to bikes. If [Marin] can get it small enough, and reach even half of his goal battery life, he’d have a very compelling product on his hands. Who wouldn’t want to add something like this to their long-range drone in case it gets lost?

There’s still a long way to go on this project, and it’s not all hardware. [Marin] will also have to create the software side of things, a site where you can register your tracker and be able to view its near real-time position on the map. It’s a lot of work, especially if you’re planning on turning it into a commercial product, and we’re very interested to follow along and see where the project goes throughout the year.

Everything We Know About SpaceX’s Starlink Network

May 20, 2019 by Tom Nardi 75 Comments

When it comes to SpaceX, or perhaps more accurately its somewhat eccentric founder and CEO Elon Musk, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. For as many incredible successes SpaceX has had, there’s an equal number of projects or ideas which get quietly delayed or shelved entirely once it becomes clear the technical challenges are greater than anticipated. There’s also Elon’s particular brand of humor to contend with; most people assumed his claim that the first Falcon Heavy payload would be his own personal Tesla Roadster was a joke until he Tweeted the first shots of it being installed inside the rocket’s fairing.

So a few years ago when Elon first mentioned Starlink, SpaceX’s plan for providing worldwide high-speed Internet access via a mega-constellation of as many as 12,000 individual satellites, it’s no surprise that many met the claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. The profitability of Starlink was intrinsically linked to SpaceX’s ability to substantially lower the cost of getting to orbit through reusable launch vehicles, a capability the company had yet to successfully demonstrate. It seemed like a classic cart before the horse scenario.

But today, not only has SpaceX begun regularly reusing the latest version of their Falcon 9 rocket, but Starlink satellites will soon be in orbit around the Earth. They’re early prototypes that aren’t as capable as the final production versions, and with only 60 of them on the first launch it’s still a far cry from thousands of satellites which would be required for the system to reach operational status, but there’s no question they’re real.

During a media call on May 15th, Elon Musk let slip more technical information about the Starlink satellites than we’ve ever had before, giving us the first solid details on the satellites themselves, what the company’s goals are, and even a rough idea when the network might become operational.

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