Author: Zoe Skyforest

3699 Articles

Audio Synthesizer Hooked Up With ChatGPT Interface

December 25, 2023 by 15 Comments

ChatGPT is being asked to handle all kinds of weird tasks, from determining whether written text was created by an AI, to answering homework questions, and much more. It’s good at some of these tasks, and absolutely incapable of others. [Filipe dos Santos Branco] and [Edward Gu] had an out of the box idea, though. What if ChatGPT could do something musical?

They built a system that, at the press of a button, would query ChatGPT for a 10-note melody in a given musical key. Once the note sequence is generated by the large language model, it’s played out by a PWM-based synthesizer running on a Raspberry Pi Pico.

Ultimately, ChatGPT is no musical genius. It’s simply picking a bunch of notes from a list that are known to work together melodically; that’s the whole point of musical keys. It would have been wild if it generated some riffs on the level of Stairway to Heaven or Spontaneous Devotion, but that might be asking for too much.

Here’s the question, though. If you trained a large language model, but got it to digest sheet music instead of written texts… could it learn to write music in various genres and styles? If someone isn’t working on that already, there’s surely an entire PhD you could get out of that idea alone. We should talk!

In any case, it’s one of the more creative projects from the ever-popular ECE 4760 class at Cornell. We’ve featured a bunch of projects from the class over the years, and noted how the course now runs on the RP2040. Continue reading “Audio Synthesizer Hooked Up With ChatGPT Interface” →

Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane

December 25, 2023 by 16 Comments

[Tom Stanton] is a fan of things like rubber band planes, and has built many of his own air-powered models over the years. Now, he’s built a model powered by a supercapacitor for a thoroughly modern twist on stored-energy flying toys.

It’s not a wholly original idea; [Tom] was inspired by a toy he bought off-the-shelf. His idea, though, was to make one that could be hand-cranked to charge it to make it more like the rubber-band planes of old. He thus built his own geared generator for the job using a big pile of magnets and 3D printed components. It’s capable of putting out around 17 volts when cranked at a reasonable speed. Hooked up to the toy plane, his hand-crank generator was able to fully charge the plane in just a few turns.

His generator was really overkill for the small toy, though. Thus, he elected to build himself a much larger supercapacitor-powered model. He wired up a pack of six supercapacitors in series, designed for roughly 18 volts. The pack was given balance leads to ensure that no individual capacitor was charged beyond its 3.0 V rating. The pack was placed inside a nice aerodynamic printed fuselage. The plane was then given a brushless motor and prop, speed controller, servos, and an RC receiver. Indeed, far from a simple throwable model, it’s a fully flyable RC plane.

The plane is quite a capable flyer with plenty of power, but a fairly short run time of just under two minutes. Though, with that said, it can be recharged in just about that same amount of time thanks to its supercapacitor power supply. [Tom] reckons it should be capable of a 1:1 crank time to flight time ratio in ideal conditions.

Supercapacitors are super cool, but we don’t see enough of them. They’ve popped up here and there, and obviously have many important applications, but we’re not sure they’ve had a real killer app in the consumer space. XV Racers were killer fun, though. Continue reading “Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane” →

Is This 3D Printed Third Arm Useful? Maybe?

December 25, 2023 by 11 Comments

Humans have two arms, and we do pretty good things with them. More is surely better, though, right? With that in mind, [Emily The Engineer] set out to make a third arm for popular YouTuber [This Old Tony], and our primary question is this: is it actually useful?

The basic design is based around a strapped-on arm brace, which mounts the additional appendage to the wearer’s forearm. It uses a motor-driven geared mechanism to open and close a gripper, but the first revision was incredibly slow to open and close, to the point of being almost useless. Changing out the threaded rod that drives the mechanism massively sped up the gripper, much to [Emily]’s satisfaction. Strength and mounting upgrades got it to the point where it could actually be used to lift objects like spray cans and bricks. Ultimately, though, the arm mount and controls do kind of prevent the user from using their left hand when they have the third hand fitted.

It’s a fun project, if not exactly a useful one, even if [Emily] does use it to carry extra grocery bags . It does have us wondering if some kind of shoulder or backpack-mounted arms could be useful, though. It’s certainly not up to the standards of modern prosthetic, but we do love the idea of human augmentation with additional robot limbs. Here’s hoping technology advances further to make builds like this more capable in future!

Continue reading “Is This 3D Printed Third Arm Useful? Maybe?” →

Radiochat Is A Simple LoRa Interface Over WiFi

December 25, 2023 by 20 Comments

LoRa is often talked about as a potentially useful solution for emergency communication. The problem is, few of us are running around with LoRa hardware on a day-to-day basis. Student [William Barkoff] designed the Radiochat device as a simple tool that could pair with virtually anything over WiFi, and allow it to send and receive LoRa messages.

Radiochat is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico W, and uses the microcontroller’s wireless hardware to communicate with other devices. It provides a WiFi network that devices like laptops or smartphones can connect to. The Pico serves up a simple web page which accepts text input. Type in a message and hitting enter and the Pico will command a LoRa radio module over SPI to send that message out over the airwaves. It can then be picked up by another Radiochat module which displays the message on its own webpage.

It’s in an early state of development, and the demo video shows there are still some bugs to work out. Ultimately, though, it could be a cheap battery-powered device that lets smartphones and laptops chat over LoRa in remote areas. Indeed, [William’s] trips to New Mexico on model rocketry expeditions were a big inspiration for the project.

Continue reading “Radiochat Is A Simple LoRa Interface Over WiFi” →

Hidden Wall-Mount Table Looks Like Hanging Art

December 24, 2023 by 13 Comments

If you live in a compact space, sometimes you have to get creative with your furniture to make the most of it. This wall-hanging table design from [diyhuntress] is perfect for those situations where you need a table, but you don’t want it taking up the whole room when it’s not in use. Plus, it’s kinda stealthy, which makes it even more fun!

The table is a folding design, with a flat wooden top, and an equally-sized supporting leg that goes down to the ground. The other end of the table is supported by a frame on the wall, which also contains several shelves for small objects. The trick is that the table top and support are hinged together, so that they can fold up and sit in front of the shelves, essentially hanging the whole assembly from the wall. Even better, by painting a simple artwork on the support, the whole thing just looks like a decor piece with no clue as to its hidden functionality.

It’s a fun build, and one that you could easily knock out in a weekend with some basic woodworking skills. We’ve featured some other nifty shelf designs before, too. Just remember, too – a neat and tidy space is a boost to your hacker productivity, so don’t rule this out for your own use!

Continue reading “Hidden Wall-Mount Table Looks Like Hanging Art” →

DIY Cleats Give You Traction In Ice And Snow

December 24, 2023 by 16 Comments

It’s getting into the cold and snowy season for much of the world, and that means it can be slippy when you go walking outside. If you need more traction, but your shoes don’t have spikes, fear not. You can build yourself a set of these nifty strap-on cleats designed by [Zero To Infinity].

The cleats are a 3D printed design, which [Zero To Infinity] modeled in Fusion 360 to match their own shoes. Obviously, everybody’s shoes differ, so they’ve provided simple instructions on how to design your own similar cleats to suit your personal footwear. They’re then printed in a stiff TPU to give them the right amount of flex for bending to conform to the shoe. The cleats themselves are simply M4 bolts, nuts, and washers screwed through the cleats, pointy-side down. They can then be strapped to a shoe, and you’re done!

We’d love to see a set of snow shoes that are fully printed and ready to accept cleats. Indeed, we’ve seen some neat printed sneaker designs before. They haven’t really caught on yet, but there’s nothing to stop you printing the hottest kicks of 2024 right in your own home. When you do, don’t hesitate to hit up the tipsline!

Talking Ohmmeter Also Spits Out Color Bands For You

December 24, 2023 by 13 Comments

If you’ve got a resistor and you can’t read the color bands (or they’re not present), you can always just grab a multimeter and figure out its value that way. [Giacomo Yong Cuomo] and [Sophia Lin] have built an altogether different kind of ohmmeter, that can actually spit out color values for you, and even read the resistance aloud. It’s all a part of their final project for their ECE 4760 class.

The build is based around a Raspberry Pi Pico. It determines the value of a resistor by placing it in a resistor divider, with the other reference resistor having a value of 10 kΩ. The resistor under test is connected between the reference resistor and ground, while the other leg of the reference resistor is connected to 3.3 V. The node between the two resistors is connected to the Pi Pico’s analog-to-digital converter pin. This allows the Pico to determine the voltage at this point, and thus calculate the test resistor’s value based on the reference resistor’s value and the voltages involved.

A large fake resistor provides user feedback. It’s filled with addressable LEDs, which light up the appropriate color bands depending on the test resistor’s value. It’s capable of displaying both 3-band, 4-band, and 5-band color configurations. While six-band resistors do exist, the extra band is typically used for denoting temperature coefficients which can’t readily be determined by this simple test. It can also play audio files to announce the resistance value over a speaker.

It’s a neat project that surely taught the duo many useful skills for working with microcontrollers. Plus, it’s kinda fun — we love the big glowing resistor. We’ve featured some other fancy resistors before, too!

Continue reading “Talking Ohmmeter Also Spits Out Color Bands For You” →