Prusa XL Goes Big, But That’s Only Half The Story

November 29, 2021 by Tom Nardi 44 Comments

For a few years now it’s been an open secret that Prusa Research was working on a larger printer named, imaginatively enough, the Prusa XL. Positioned at the opposite end of their product spectrum from the wildly popular Prusa Mini, this upper-tier machine would be for serious hobbyists or small companies that need to print single-part objects that were too large for their flagship i3 MK3S+ printer. Unfortunately, the global COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for the Czech company to focus on bringing a new product to market, to the point that some had begun to wonder if we’d ever see this mythical machine.

But now, finally, the wait is over. Or perhaps, it’s just beginning. That’s because while Prusa Research has officially announced their new XL model and opened preorders for the $1,999+ USD printer, it’s not expected to ship until at least the second quarter of 2022. That’s already a pretty substantial lead time, but given Prusa’s track record when it comes to product launches, we wouldn’t be surprised if early adopters don’t start seeing their machines until this time next year.

So what do you get for your money? Well, not an over-sized Prusa i3, that’s for sure. While many had speculated the XL would simply be a larger version of the company’s popular open source printer with a few modern niceties like a 32-bit control board sprinkled in, the reality is something else entirely. While the high purchase price and ponderous dimensions of the new machine might make it a tough sell for many in the hacker and maker communities, there’s little question that the technical improvements and innovations built into the Prusa XL provide a glimpse of the future for the desktop 3D printer market as a whole.

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PiGlass V2 Embraces The New Raspberry Pi Zero 2

November 27, 2021 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. It’s been just about a month since the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 hit the market, and we’re already seeing folks revisit old projects to reap the benefits of the drop-in upgrade that provides five times the computational power in the same form factor.

Take for example the PiGlass v2 that [Matt] has been working on. He originally put the Pi Zero wearable together back in 2018, and while it featured plenty of bells and whistles like a VuFine+ display, 5 MP camera, and bone conduction audio, the rather anemic hardware of the original Zero kept it from reaching its true potential.

But thanks to the newly released Pi Zero 2, slapping quad-core power onto the existing rig was as easy as unplugging a couple cables and swapping out the board. With the increased performance of the new Pi, he’s able to play multimedia content through Kodi, emulate classic games with RetroPie, and even stream live video to YouTube. Using the custom menu seen in the video below, a small off-the-shelf Bluetooth controller from 8BitDo is all he needs to control the wearable’s various functions without getting bogged down with a full keyboard and mouse.

Although it might not have the punch of its larger siblings, the new Pi Zero 2 is definitely a very exciting platform. The highly efficient board delivers performance on par with the old Pi 3, while still being well positioned for battery powered projects like this one. We’re eager to see what develops as the new SBC finds its way into the hands of more hackers and makers in the coming months.

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ESP32 Brings Air Purifier Online With Home Assistant

November 25, 2021 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

A lot of hackers are rightfully concerned about the privacy issues that surround many of today’s “smart” gadgets, but it’s hard to argue that the ability to remotely control devices around your home isn’t convenient. Enter self-hosted, open source projects like Home Assistant. This provides the framework for building out a home automation system without having your ~~soul~~ information sold, but as you might expect, you’re going to have to put some effort in to get the most of it.

For example, take a look at this Phillips AC4014 air purifier that [Anton] connected to Home Assistant by way of an ESP32. Rather than getting too bogged down in reverse engineering the purifier’s surprisingly complex internal electronics, he took the easy way out and wired a couple of relays across the power and fan speed buttons; this allows the device to be easily controlled by the microcontroller, without impacting the functionality of the original controls.

But since those front panel controls still work, that meant [Anton] needed a way for the ESP32 to detect the device’s status and report that to Home Assistant so everything stayed in sync. So he looked around on the PCB for a trace that got powered up when the air purifier was up and running, which he connected to a pin of the microcontroller through a transistor. This let’s the firmware determine if the machine is running or not just by checking if the appropriate pin has gone high.

Speaking of the firmware, [Anton] decided to use ESPHome rather than trying to write his own code from scratch. This project allows you to rapidly add new devices to Home Assistant by providing the firmware with a relatively simple YAML configuration file, which he’s provided as an example. In fact, he’s provided quite a lot of examples with this project, down to an annotated image of the PCB that shows where to tap your wires into. He’s done quite a service for anyone who’s got this same model of air purifier.

This unit doesn’t appear to have any capability of actually checking the quality of the air in the room, but we’ve recently seen a low-cost IKEA product that can do exactly that. Even better, it can be easily modified to report its findings over the network using the ESP8266.

Blue Origin Rolls Out Test Article For Next-Gen Rocket

November 22, 2021 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

By any metric you care to use, this is a very exciting time for America’s space program. NASA is refocusing their efforts towards the Moon and beyond, SpaceX is launching routine crew and cargo flights to the International Space Station with reusable rockets, and if you’ve got deep enough pockets, there are now multiple companies offering suborbital pleasure trips requiring little more than a few hours worth of training. It’s taken longer than many people had hoped, but it seems we’re finally making the confident strides necessary to truly utilize space’s vast resources.

But things are just getting started. A new generation of massive reusable rockets are currently being developed, which promise to make access to space cheaper and faster than ever before. We’ve seen quite a bit of SpaceX’s Starship, thanks in no small part to the dramatic test flights that the media-savvy company has been regularly live streaming to YouTube. But Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been far more secretive about their New Glenn. That is, until now.

On November 8th, Blue Origin rolled out their GS1 simulator for the New Glenn’s first stage. This stand-in for the real rocket will never fly, but it’s designed to perfectly recreate the dimensions, center of gravity, and mass, of the real thing. Ground teams will use the GS1 to practice safely transporting the booster, which is approximately half the length of the Saturn V, from their production facility to Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral. It will also be used to test the fit and function of various pieces of ground support equipment, and eventually, the second stage stacking procedure.

For the uninitiated, it might seem like this is a lot of fuss over what’s ultimately just a hollow metal tube. But the introduction of a test article such as this has traditionally been a major milestone during the design and construction of rockets and spacecraft, dating back to the “boilerplate” test capsules used during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs; a sure sign that what was just an idea is now becoming a reality.

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Hackaday Podcast 145: Remoticon Is On, Movie FX, Cold Plasma, And The Purest Silicon

November 19, 2021 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

With literally just hours to go before the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon kicks off, editors Tom Nardi and Elliot Williams still managed to find time to talk about some of the must-see stories from the last week. There’s fairly heavyweight topics on the docket this time around, from alternate methods of multiplying large numbers to the incredible engineering that goes into producing high purity silicon. But we’ll also talk about the movie making magic of Stan Winston and some Pokemon-themed environmental sensors, so it should all balance out nicely. So long as the Russian’s haven’t kicked off the Kessler effect by the time you tune in, we should be good.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (52 MB)

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Friday: Getting Social With Discord And Bring-a-Hack

November 17, 2021 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

With just a few days to go before the kickoff of the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon, we’re still working furiously behind the scenes to pack as much content as possible into the two day virtual event. In fact, there’s so much going on that we thought you’d appreciate getting a bit of a head start as far as planning your own personal course through the weekend goes. The event might be free, but that’s no reason not to squeeze as much out of it as you can.

Chat It Up on Discord

To begin with, you’re really going to want to join the official Hackaday Remoticon Discord server. We know some subset of the Hackaday readership would rather we used Matrix, or IRC, or maybe carefully modulated smoke signals; but at the end of the day, Discord has bubbled to the top as the defacto choice for this kind of thing. Give it a shot, you might actually like it.

The Discord server isn’t just a place for like-minded hackers to hang out and discuss the musical stylings of DJ Jackalope during the Saturday afterparty. It’s also how attendees can ask questions at the end of each presenter’s talk, as we’ll be turning off YouTube chat to keep things centralized. Even if you don’t plan on communicating with others (though you really should), the Discord server has an interactive schedule of events which will let you sign up to be notified when the talks you’ve selected are about to start, and we’ll be dropping important announcements and links in there as the event goes on.

Friday Bring-a-Hack on Gather Town

Friday night ends with a Bring-a-Hack where attendees can show off whatever they’ve been working on using Gather. It’s a video chat platform inside a virtual 2D world that looks a bit like Legend of Zelda.

Using this virtual environment, you can easily drop into an ongoing video stream simply by walking up to the presenter. Once you’ve seen enough, just walk over to the next little cluster of users. The point is to recreate the experience of stopping by a crowded after party where everyone brought some hardware project along with them to get spark conversations. Space will be limited, with ticket holders and people in Discord getting the first dibs, so keep an eye on your inbox for information about how to join.

Of course this is not the only Friday evening activity. A few weeks ago we announced that Lewin Day will be hosting Hacker Trivia, giving our beloved commenters the chance to show off your unimpeachable knowledge of technology and Hackaday history. The Friday talk stream will dump immediately into trivia, but here’s the dedicated link if you want to set a reminder for yourself.

Try It, You’ll Like It!

It’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to truly recreate the experience of going to an in-person hacker con. But with interactive events and the latest and greatest communication software, we’re hoping the 2021 Remoticon can get pretty close. All the pieces are in place, the only thing we need now is to have a whole bunch of excited hackers to join in and have a good time. Think you can help us out?

Arduino Library Makes Digital Rain Like It’s 1999

November 17, 2021 by Tom Nardi 31 Comments

There’s going to be a new Matrix movie in theaters next month, and you know what that means: we’re about to see a whole new generation get obsessed with the franchise’s iconic “Digital Rain” effect. Thanks to modern advertisement technology, expect to see lines of glittering text pouring down the displays of everything from billboards to gas pumps pretty soon.

For those of us who’ve just been looking for an excuse to break out the old Matrix screensavers, you might as well get a jump on things using this handy Arduino library for the ESP8266 and ESP32. Developed by [Eric Nam], it lets you start up a digital rainstorm on displays supported by the TFT_eSPI library as easily as running digitalRainAnim.loop().

You can even install the library through the Arduino IDE, just open the Library Manager and search for “Digital Rain” to get started. You’ve still got to hook the display up to your microcontroller, but come on, [Eric] can’t do it all for you.

Looking at the examples, it seems like various aspects of the animation like color and speed can be configured by initializing the library with different values. Unfortunately we’re not seeing much in the way of documentation for this project, but by comparing the different examples, you should be able to get the high points.

While our first choice would certainly be a wall of green alphanumeric LED displays, we can’t help but be impressed with how easy this project makes it to spin up your own little slice of the Matrix on the workbench.

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