ERRF 22: Building A Library Of Filament Colors

October 20, 2022 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

If you’ve ever paged through the color samples at the hardware store trying to match a particular color, you know how hard it can be. Not only are there nearly limitless color variations, but each manufacturer has their own formulas and tints. Often times, the only way to get the exact color you need is to get it custom mixed.

Unfortunately, that’s not really an option when it comes to filament for your 3D printer. Will that roll of orange from Hatchbox actually match the orange from Overture? That’s where the Filament Librarian comes in. Created by [Joe Kaufeld], the project aims to catalog and photograph as many 3D printer filaments as possible so you can see exactly what you’re getting.

Now of course, if it was as easy as looking at pictures of filament swatches on your computer, you wouldn’t need this service to begin with. So what’s the trick? A custom automated camera rig, powered by the Raspberry Pi, is used to position, light, and photograph each filament sample in the library. So while [Joe] can’t promise your monitor is showing a perfect representation of each filament’s color, you can at least be sure they will all look correct in relation to each other. So for example, the site can help you figure out if the local Microcenter stocks anything that comes close to matching Prusament’s Galaxy Silver PLA.

[Joe] brought a collection of his samples along with his slick camera setup to the 2022 East Coast RepRap Festival so attendees could see first-hand how he adds a new filament to the database. With an easy-to-use touch-screen interface, it takes just seconds to get the camera ready for the next shot.

Now that he’s got the hardware and the procedure down, [Joe] is asking the community to help out by providing him with filament samples to process. It doesn’t take much: all he asks is you snip him off a couple meters of filament, write down what it is and who makes it on a pre-made form, and drop it in the mail. If you’re in the US, you can send it directly to his address in Indiana, and for those on the other side of the globe, he’s got a drop point in the Netherlands you can use.

We love a good passion project here at Hackaday, so here’s hoping that the Filament Librarian receives plenty of new filament samples from all over the planet to feed into that fancy camera setup of his.

Barilla’s Open Source Tool For Perfect Pasta

October 17, 2022 by Tom Nardi 79 Comments

Cooking pasta is perhaps one of the easiest things you can do in the kitchen, second only to watching a pot of water boil. But as pasta maker Barilla points out on their website, you can reduce your meal’s CO₂ emissions by up to 80% if you simply let the pasta sit in the hot water rather than actively boil it the whole time — a technique known as passive cooking.

The trick is getting the timing right, so in a fairly surprising move, Barilla has released the design for an open source device that will help you master this energy-saving technique. Granted it’s not a terribly complex piece of hardware, consisting of little more than an Arduino Nano 33 BLE, an NTC probe, and a handful of passive components wrapped up in a 3D-printed case. But the documentation is great, and we’ve got to give Barilla credit for going way outside of their comfort zone with this one.

Magnets in the 3D printed case let it stick to the lid of your pot, and when it detects the water is boiling, the gadget alerts your phone (at least for this version of the device, an Android or iOS application is required) that it’s time to put in the pasta. A few minutes later it will tell you when you can turn off the burner, after which it’s just a matter of waiting for the notification that your passively-cooked pasta is ready to get pulled out.

Like the prop making video Sony put out after the release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, we recognize that on some level this is an advertisement for Barilla pasta. But if developing useful open source gadgets that can be built by the public is what a company wants to spend their advertising dollars on, you won’t catch us complaining. Hell, we might even spring for a box of Barilla next time we’re in the store.

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Teardown: Cooler Max Liquid Cooling System

October 17, 2022 by Tom Nardi 57 Comments

Every week, the Hackaday tip line is bombarded with offers from manufacturers who want to send us their latest and greatest device to review. The vast majority of these are ignored, simply because they don’t make sense for the sort of content we run here. For example, there’s a company out there that seems Hell-bent on sending us a folding electronic guitar for some reason.

At first, that’s what happened when CoolingStyle recently reached out to us about their Cooler Max. The email claimed it was the “World’s First AC Cooler System For Gaming Desktop”, which featured a “powerful compressor which can bring great cooling performance”, and was capable of automatically bringing your computer’s temperature down to as low as 10℃ (50°F). The single promotional shot in the email showed a rather chunky box hooked up to a gaming rig with a pair of flexible hoses, but no technical information was provided. We passed the email around the (virtual) water cooler a bit, and the consensus was that the fancy box probably contained little more than a pair of Peltier cooling modules and some RGB LEDs.

The story very nearly ended there, but there was something about the email that I couldn’t shake. If it was just using Peltier modules, then why was the box so large? What about that “powerful compressor” they mentioned? Could they be playing some cute word games, and were actually talking about a centrifugal fan? Maybe…

It bothered me enough that after a few days I got back to CoolingStyle and said we’d accept a unit to look at. I figured no matter what ended up being inside the box, it would make for an interesting story. Plus it would give me an excuse to put together another entry for my Teardowns column, a once regular feature which sadly has been neglected since I took on the title of Managing Editor.

There was only one problem…I’m no PC gamer. Once in a while I’ll boot up Kerbal Space Program, but even then, my rockets are getting rendered on integrated video. I don’t even know anyone with a gaming computer powerful enough to bolt an air conditioner to the side of the thing. But I’ve got plenty of experience pulling weird stuff apart to figure out how it works, so let’s start with that.

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ERRF 22: After Two Years, Back And Better Than Ever

October 14, 2022 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it became clear that organizers would have to pull the plug on any large social events they had planned. Many organizers decided to take their events online, but blurry web streams and meme-filled Discord channels can only get you so far. At this point we’re all keenly aware that, while they do have some advantages, virtual events are not the same as the real thing.

Which is why I was looking forward to making the trip down to Bel Air, Maryland for the first in-person East Coast RepRap Festival (ERRF) since 2019. I’m happy to report that the event, which was still in its infancy prior to the pandemic, was just as lively this year as it was doing my previous trips. Perhaps even more so, as local hackers and makers were eager for an outlet to show of their latest creations.

I’ll admit that part of me was concerned the two-year shutdown would have robbed ERRF of the momentum organizers had worked so hard to build. But judging by what I saw over the weekend, it seems even a global pandemic couldn’t slow down this fantastic event.

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Hackaday Podcast 189: Seven Segments Three Ways, Candle Code, DIY E-Readers, And The Badge Reveal

October 14, 2022 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

This week Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi will discuss the return of the East Coast RepRap Festival, the scientific application of slices of baloney, and the state of the art in homebrew e-readers. The discussion weaves its way through various reimaginings of the seven (or more) segment display, an impressive illuminated headboard that comes with its own science-fiction film, and the surprising difficulty of getting a blinking LED to actually look like a flame. Stick around to the end to find out why iPhones are freaking out on amusement park rides, and to hear all the details about this year’s Supercon badge.

Direct download your own!

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2022 Cyberdeck Contest: Picking The Best Of The Best

October 13, 2022 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

Given how many incredible builds we’ve covered over the last couple of years, we knew that an official Cyberdeck Contest would certainly receive some impressive entries. But never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted that more than 100 decks would end up crossing the finish line, or that of them, the vast majority would be never-before-seen designs. In fact, the response to this contest was so overwhelming that the judging process took far longer than we originally anticipated.

Ultimately, we decided that there were simply too many phenomenal builds entered into the contest to award $150 Digikey spending sprees to just three of them. So as an added bonus, we’ve rustled up some $50 Tindie gift certificates that will go to the four special category honorable mentions.

With that, let’s take a look at the cyberdecks that took top honors as decided by our panel of judges.

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The 2022 Supercon Badge Is A Handheld Trip Through Computing History

October 12, 2022 by Tom Nardi 73 Comments

Over the last several years, there’s been a trend towards designing ever more complex and powerful electronic event badges. Color displays, sensors, WiFi, USB, Bluetooth — you name it, and there’s probably a con badge out there that has packed it in. Even our own 2019 Supercon broke new ground with the inclusion of a Lattice LFE5U-45F FPGA running a RISC-V core. Admittedly, observing this unofficial arms race has been fascinating. But as we all know, a hacker isn’t defined by the tools at their disposal, but rather the skill and imagination with which they wield them.

So this year, we’ve taken a slightly different approach. Rather than try and cram the badge with even more state of the art hardware than we did in 2019, we’ve decided to go back to the well. The 2022 Supercon badge is a lesson in what it means to truly control a piece of hardware, to know what each bit of memory is doing, and why. Make no mistake, it’s going to be a challenge. In fact, we’d wager most of the people who get their hands on the badge come November 4th will have never worked on anything quite like it before. Folks are going to get pulled out of their comfort zones, but of course, that’s the whole idea.

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