Supercon 2023: Bringing Arcade Classics To New Hardware

July 18, 2024 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

The processing power of modern game consoles is absolutely staggering when compared to the coin-op arcade machines of the early 1980s. Packed with terabytes of internal storage and gigabytes of RAM, there’s hardly a comparison to make with the Z80 cabinets that ran classics like Pac-Man. But despite being designed to pump out lifelike 4K imagery without breaking a virtual sweat, occasionally even these cutting-edge consoles are tasked with running one of those iconic early games like Dig Dug or Pole Position. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug…

As long as there are still demand for these genre-defining games, developers will have to keep figuring out ways to bring them to newer — and vastly more complex — systems. Which is precisely the topic of Bob Hickman’s 2023 Supercon talk, The Bits and Bytes of Bringing Arcade Classics to Game Consoles. Having spent decades as a professional game developer, he’s got plenty of experience with the unique constraints presented by both consoles and handhelds, and what it takes to get old code running on new silicon.

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A Look At The DEC VT220, A Proper Serial Terminal

July 17, 2024 by Tom Nardi 53 Comments

If you’re reading Hackaday, we’re willing to bet that if somebody asked you about a serial terminal, you’d immediately think about a piece of software — a tool you run on the computer to communicate with some hardware gadget over UART. You might even have a favorite one, perhaps minicom or tio. You’d be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but if you wind back the clock a bit, there’s a little more to the story.

You see, the programs we use these days to talk to microcontrollers and routers are more accurately referred to as serial terminal emulators, because they are doing in software what used to be the job of hardware. What kind of hardware? Why beauties like this DEC VT220 for example.

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Linksys Velop Routers Caught Sending WiFi Creds In The Clear

July 15, 2024 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

A troubling report from the Belgian consumer protection group Testaankoop: several models of Velop Pro routers from Linksys were found to be sending WiFi configuration data out to a remote server during the setup process. That would be bad enough, but not only are these routers reporting private information to the mothership, they are doing it in clear text for anyone to listen in on.

Testaankoop says that while testing out the Pro WiFi 6E and Pro 7 versions of Velop routers, they discovered that unencrypted packets were being sent to a server hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). In these packets, they discovered not only the SSID of the user’s wireless network, but the encryption key necessary to join it. There were also various tokens included that could be used to identify network and user.

While the report doesn’t go into too much detail, it seems this information is being sent as part of the configuration process when using the official Linksys mobile application. If you want to avoid having your information bounced around the Internet, you can still use the router’s built-in web configuration menus from a browser on the local network — just like in the good old days.

The real kicker here is the response from Linksys, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Testaankoop says they notified them of their discovery back in November of 2023, and got no response. There’s even been firmware updates for the affected routers since then, but the issue is still unresolved.

Testaankoop ends the review by strongly recommending users avoid these particular models of Linksys Velop routers, which given the facts, sounds like solid advice to us. They also express their disappointment in how the brand, a fixture in the consumer router space for decades, has handled the situation. If you ask us, things started going downhill once they stopped running Linux on their hardware.

Simple Version Of Pong Played On A Row Of LEDs

July 15, 2024 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

As far as video games go, Pong is already about as simple as it gets. But if even two dimensions is a bit more than you’re looking to tackle, [mircemk] shows how you can distill the core gameplay of this iconic title to its absolute minimum using an Arduino and a row of LEDs.

While [mircemk] brings their usual design aesthetic and flash to the project, this one could truly be done as a parts bin build. All you really need is a microcontroller with enough I/O pins (here, an Arduino Nano is used), a couple of buttons, and the aforementioned LEDs. A 16×2 LCD and a buzzer have been added to improve on the user interface a bit, but even that isn’t strictly required.

To play, each user holds their button and gets ready to hit it as soon as the LED closest to them lights up. Again, [mircemk] spruces this build up by offering both integrated buttons on the front panel of the game, as well as a pair of external “controllers” so you don’t have to crowd around the main unit. In this incarnation the score is shown on the LCD, but swapping that out for a pair of seven-segment LEDs could give the whole thing a bit more of a retro flair.

This isn’t the first time [mircemk] has tackled 1D Pong — if you can spring for addressable LEDs, you can pull the whole thing off with significantly less wiring.

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Axial 3D Printer Aces Test Aboard Virgin Spaceplane

July 13, 2024 by Tom Nardi 32 Comments

Here on Earth, being able to 3D print replacement parts is handy, but rarely necessary. If you’ve got a broken o-ring, printing one out is just saving you a trip to the hardware store. But on the Moon, Mars, or in deep space, that broken component could be the difference between life and death. In such an environment, the ability to print replacement parts on demand promises to be a game changer.

Which is why the recent successful test of a next-generation 3D printer developed by a group of Berkeley researchers is so exciting. During a sub-orbital flight aboard Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane, the SpaceCAL printer was able to rapidly produce four test prints using a unique printing technology known as computed axial lithography (CAL).

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Supercon 2023: Why More Hackers Should Earn Their Wings

July 10, 2024 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

Hacking has taken on many different meanings over the years, but if you’re here reading these words, we’ll assume your definition is pretty close to ours. To hack is to explore and learn, to find new and (hopefully) better ways of doing things. Or at least, that’s part of it. The other part is to then take what you learned and share it with others. Do that enough, and soon you’ll find yourself part of a community of like-minded individuals — which is where things really start getting interesting.

Here at Hackaday the objects of our attention are, with the occasional exception, electronic devices of some sort or another. Perhaps an old piece of gear that needs a modern brain transplant, or a misbehaving consumer gadget that could benefit from the addition of an open source firmware. But just as there are different ways to interpret the act of hacking, there’s plenty of wiggle room when it comes to what you can hack on.

In his talk during the 2023 Hackaday Supercon, Tom Mloduchowski makes the case that more hackers should be getting involved with aviation. No, we’re not talking about flying drones, though he does cover that during the presentation. This is the real deal. Whether you want to take a quick joyride in a small plane, become a professional pilot, or even build and operate your own experimental aircraft, this talk covers it all.

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Full-Scale Flying DeLorean Gets Closer To Liftoff

July 6, 2024 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

These days, even hobbyist multi-rotor aircraft are capable of carrying considerable payloads. For example, the test rig that [Brian Brocken] recently put together should be able to loft more than 80 pounds (36 kilograms) without breaking a sweat. That would be a whole lot of camera gear or other equipment, but in this case, he’s planning on carrying something a bit more interesting: a full-scale foam DeLorean.

We first covered this project in December of last year, when [Brian] started using a massive robotic arm to carefully cut the body and individual parts of the car out of expanded polystyrene foam. He estimated at the time the body should weigh in at less than 30 lbs (14 kg), so he’d need to build a quadcopter with a maximum lift of roughly twice that much to keep the performance where he wanted it.

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