3D Navigator For Blender

April 4, 2024 by Al Williams 14 Comments

If you work with high-end CAD workstations, you may have encountered a SpaceMouse or similar devices. Sort of a mouse with an extra dimension, they aren’t cheap. So [meisterodin1981] decided to build a do-it-yourself version for use with Blender. You can check it out in the video below.

The device uses an MPU6050 accelerometer and a spring. It also has some buttons for special features. The device uses a Teensy 2, although any controller that can provide an HID device could probably do the job. Of course, a nice 3D printed case is part of the design. A printed pair of plates holds a 3D printer bed spring to provide the device’s Z-axis movement. The wires to the encoder are routed through the center of the spring, so neatness counts.

We’ve seen other 3D mice like the Orbion. Your other option is to pick up the old-fashioned serial port versions and convert them. Until you can do your designs in virtual reality, these mice are just the ticket.

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Retrotechtacular: The IBM 7070

March 29, 2024 by Al Williams 10 Comments

If you think of IBM mainframe computers, you most likely are thinking of the iconic S/360 or the slightly newer S/370. But what about the 7070 from 1958? It had transistors! It didn’t, however, use binary. Instead, it was a decimal-architecture machine. You can see a lost video of the machine below.

It was originally slated to upgrade the older IBM 650 and 705 computers. However, it wasn’t compatible with either, so IBM had to roll out the IBM7080, which was compatible, at least, with the 705. Both machines could run 650 code via emulation.

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Retrogadgets: Butler In A Box

March 28, 2024 by Al Williams 12 Comments

You walk into your house and issue a voice command to bring up the lights and start a cup of coffee. No big deal, right? Siri, Google, and Alexa can do all that. Did we mention it is 1985? And, apparently, you were one of the people who put out about $1,500 for a Mastervoice “Butler in a Box,” the subject of a Popular Science video you can see below.

If you think the box is interesting, the inventor’s story is even stranger. [Kevin] got a mint-condition Butler in a Box from eBay. How did it work, given in 1983, there was no AI voice recognition and public Internet? We did note that the “appliance module” was a standard X10 interface.

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Tech Support… Can AI Be Worse?

March 28, 2024 by Al Williams 56 Comments

You can’t read the news today without another pundit excitedly reporting how AI is going to take every job you can imagine. Of course, AI will change the employment landscape. It will take some jobs and reduce the need for others. What about tech support? Is it possible that an AI might be able to help people with technical issues better than humans? My first answer was no way, but then I was painfully reminded of something. The question isn’t if AI can help you better than any human can. The question is if AI can help you better than the low-paid person on the other end of the phone you are likely to talk to. Sadly, I think the answer to that question is almost certainly yes.

In all fairness, if you read Hackaday, you probably don’t encounter many technical support people who can solve a problem you can’t. By the time you call them, it is a lost cause. But this is more than just “Hackday folks are smarter than the tech support agents.” The overall quality of tech support at many companies is rock bottom no matter who you are. Continue reading “Tech Support… Can AI Be Worse?” →

Fictional Computers: Colossus And Guardian

March 28, 2024 by Al Williams 27 Comments

We can learn a lot by looking at how writers and filmmakers imagine technology. While some are closer than others, there are some definite lessons like never make a killer computer without an off switch you can reach. We are especially interested in how computers appear in books, movies, and TV shows, and so in Computers of Fiction, we want to remember with you some of our favorites. This time, we are thinking about the 1970 movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. There were actually two computers: the titular Colossus, which was an American computer, and the Guardian, a similar Soviet computer.

The Story

In the United States, Dr. Forbin has created a supercomputer deep under a mountain. Colossus, the computer, is put in charge of the nuclear arsenal to eliminate human error in the defense of the country. Colossus gathered intelligence, analyzed it, and was able to launch its own missiles.

Colossus realizes there is another system.

Shortly after activation, however, the computer reaches a startling conclusion: “WARN: THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM.” It provides coordinates in the Soviet Union. That system is a similar system called Guardian. The computers decide they want to talk to each other. The President decides to allow it, hoping to learn more about the Soviet’s secret computer. The Soviets agree, too, presumably for the same reason. You can watch the original trailer below.

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Retrotechtacular: TOPS Runs The 1970s British Railroad

March 27, 2024 by Al Williams 30 Comments

How do you make the trains run on time? British Rail adopted TOPS, a computer system born of IBM’s SAGE defense project, along with work from Standford and Southern Pacific Railroad. Before TOPS, running the railroad took paper. Lots of paper, ranging from a train’s history, assignments, and all the other bits of data required to keep the trains moving. TOPS kept this data in real-time on computer screens all across the system. While British Rail wasn’t the only company to deploy TOPS, they were certainly proud of it and produced the video you can see below about how the system worked.

There are a lot of pictures of old big iron and the narrator says it has an “immense storage capacity.” The actual computers in question were a pair of IBM System/370 mainframes that each had 4 MB of RAM. There were also banks of 3330 disk drives that used removable disk packs of — gasp — between 100 and 200 MB per pack.

As primitive and large as those disk drives were, they pioneered many familiar-sounding technologies. For example, they used voice coils, servo tracking, MFM encoding, and error-correcting encoding.

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3D Printing With (Ersatz) Moon Dust

March 27, 2024 by Al Williams 29 Comments

When the people of Earth set up bases on the moon, you can imagine that 3D printing will be a key enabling technology. Of course, you could ship plastic or other filament at great cost. But what if you could print with something you can already find on the moon? Like moon dust. NASA thinks it is possible and has been doing tests on doing just that. Now [Virtual Foundry] wants to let you have a shot at trying it yourself. It doesn’t really contain moon dust, but their Basalt Moon Dust Filamet has a similar composition. You can see a video about the material below.

It isn’t cheap, but it is probably cheaper than going up there to get some yourself. At least for now. The company is known for making PLA with various metal and ceramic materials. Like their other filaments, you print it more or less like PLA, although you need a large hardened nozzle, and they suggest a prewarmer to heat the filament before going to the hot end.

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