Author: Zoe Skyforest

3743 Articles

Portable PS4 Is Easier To Move Than A Regular One

August 22, 2024 by 5 Comments

The PlayStation 4 was a popular enough console, but it was a home console. If you wanted to play at a friend’s house, you had to unplug all your cables and haul the whole lot over there. Unless, that is, you built something along the lines of [Rudd van Falier]’s Portable GameStation.

It’s not a super-complicated build, but it is a well-executed one. It combines laser cut acrylic with 3D-printed brackets to produce a housing that looks clean, sharp, and of almost commercial quality. That’s the benefit of laser-cutting—it avoids all the ugly problems of layer lines. From there, [Rudd] simply set about stuffing the PS4 motherboard inside, along with placing the relevant ports and vents in the housing where needed. A screen with inbuilt speakers was then attached to complete the build. The one thing it’s missing is a set of batteries for playing it on the bus. This thing needs mains power to run.

We’d love to see [Rudd] take another stab at the concept, making it fully independent from cables. It’s definitely possible. Who wouldn’t want to play some Persona 5 Royal on the train, anyway? Video after the break.

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Wardriving Tools In The Modern Era

August 22, 2024 by 13 Comments

When WiFi first came out, it was a super exciting time. The technology was new, and quite a bit less secure back then—particularly if not configured properly. That gave rise to the practice of wardriving—driving around with a computer, looking for unsecured networks, often just for the fun of it. [Simon] has been examining this classic practice from a modern perspective. 

He’s been at the game for a long time—from back in the days when you might head out with a thick old laptop, a bunch of PCMCIA cards, and dangly antennas. It’s much more advanced these days, given we’ve got WiFi on all different bands and Bluetooth devices to consider to boot. Heck, even Zigbee, if you’re hunting down a rogue house full of Internet of Things gadgets.

Today, when he’s out researching the wireless landscape, he uses devices like the Flipper Zero, the Raspberry Pi, and a Google Pixel 5 running the WiGLE WiFi Wardriving app. [Simon] notes that the latter is the easiest way to get started if you’ve got an Android phone. Beyond that, there’s software and hardware out there these days that can do amazing things compared to the simple rigs of yesteryear.

If you’re out looking for free internet these days, wardriving might be a bit pointless given it’s available in practically every public building you visit. But if you’re a wireless security researcher, or just curious about what your own home setup is putting out, it might be worth looking at these tools! Happy hunting.

You Can 3D Print Yourself Some Simple Magnetic Switches

August 22, 2024 by 9 Comments

Permanent magnets aren’t typically switchable. They’re always doing their magnet thing. However, if you align them with a bunch of other magnets in just the right way, you can create a permanent magnet that you can effectively switch on and off. [Andrew Klein] has done just that with his 3D-printed magnetic switch design.

The concept is simple enough. The design consists of a 3D-printed housing in two parts, top and bottom. When set into one orientation, the housing holds two arrays of magnets in opposite orientations. This effectively cancels out their magnetic fields and allows you to move the assembly around as if it’s pretty much not magnetic at all. However, rotate the device to its alternative orientation, and the magnets poles are aligned. This effectively combines their magnetic fields and makes the assembly act as one big large magnet.

These devices are useful if you want to create magnetic clamps or fixtures that can be attached and detached at will from ferrous surfaces. Being able to effectively “switch the magnet off” is much easier than trying to wrench a powerful magnet from a metal plate, after all.

You can do something similar with electromagnetic techniques, too! Video after the break.

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A Cheap DIY PLC Based On The Atmega328P

August 22, 2024 by 42 Comments

If you’re running a big factory, you’ve probably got a massively expensive contract with a major programmable logic controller (PLC) manufacturer. One shudders to think about the cost of the service subscription on that one. If you’re working on a smaller scale, though, you might consider a DIY PLC like this one from [Mr Innovative.]

PLCs are rarely cutting-edge; instead, they’re about reliability and compliance with common industry standards. To that end, this design features the ATmega328P. Few other microcontrollers are as well understood or trusted as that one. The device is compatible with RS232 and RS485 and will run off 24 VDC, both of which you would find in a typical industrial environment. It offers 24 V digital inputs and outputs, as well as analog inputs and outputs from 0 to 10 V. [Mr Innovative] demonstrates it by hooking up a DWIN human-machine interface (HMI) for, well… human interaction, and a variable frequency drive to run a motor.

If you want to run a basic industrial-lite system but can’t afford the real industrial price tag, you might enjoy tinkering around at this level first. It could be a great way to get a simple project up and running without breaking the bank. Video after the break.

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Citizen Scientists Spot Super Fast Moving Object In NASA Data

August 22, 2024 by 18 Comments

When you were five, you probably spotted your best friend running at “a million miles an hour” when they beat everybody at the local athletics meet. You probably haven’t seen anything that fast snice. According to NASA, though, a group of citizen scientists spotted a celestial object doing just that!

The group of citizen scientists were involved in a NASA program called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. They were working on images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Explorer mission. Scanning through stored images, Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden identified a curiously speedy object termed CWISE J124909.08+362116.0. There are lots of fast-moving objects out in space, but few quite as fast as this one. It’s quite literally zooming through the Milky Way at about 1 million miles per hour.

It’s unclear exactly what the object is. It appears light enough to be a low-mass star, or potentially a brown dwarf—somewhere in between the classification of gas giant and star. It also has suspiciously low iron and metallic content. The leading hypothesis is that CWISE J1249 might have been ejected from a supernova, or that it got flung around a pair of black holes.

For now, it remains a mystery. It’s a grand discovery that really highlights the value of citizen science. If you’ve been doing your own rigorous scientific work—on NASA’s data or your own—do let us know!

Australia Didn’t Invent WiFi, Despite What You’ve Heard

August 20, 2024 by 62 Comments

Wireless networking is all-pervasive in our modern lives. Wi-Fi technology lives in our smartphones, our laptops, and even our watches. Internet is available to be plucked out of the air in virtually every home across the country. Wi-Fi has been one of the grand computing revolutions of the past few decades.

It might surprise you to know that Australia proudly claims the invention of Wi-Fi as its own. It had good reason to, as well— given the money that would surely be due to the creators of the technology. However, dig deeper, and you’ll find things are altogether more complex.

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Australia’s Controlled Loads Are In Hot Water

August 15, 2024 by 125 Comments

Australian grids have long run a two-tiered pricing scheme for electricity. In many jurisdictions, regular electricity was charged at a certain rate. Meanwhile, you could get cheaper electricity for certain applications if your home was set up with a “controlled load.” Typically, this involved high energy equipment like pool heaters or hot water heaters.

This scheme has long allowed Australians to save money while keeping their water piping-hot at the same time. However, the electrical grid has changed significantly in the last decade. These controlled loads are starting to look increasingly out of step with what the grid and the consumer needs. What is to be done?

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