Weird Al’s Monster Battlestation Is Now Just A Reasonably Fast PC

November 4, 2021 by 92 Comments

Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers. If the vintage computing community ever chooses an official anthem, count my vote for It’s All About The Pentiums by “Weird Al” Yankovic. More than twenty years after its release, this track and its music video (with Drew Carey!) are still just as enjoyable as they ever were, with the track’s stinging barbs and computing references somehow only improving over time.

In the track, Weird Al takes on the role of ‘king of the nerds’ with his rock star-esque portrayal of a nameless personal computing legend, someone who de-fragments their hard drive “for thrills” and upgrades their system “at least twice a day”. The lyrics are a real goldmine for anyone that is a fan of 1990s computing, but what stands out to me is the absurd hardware that Weird Al’s character claims to own.

Absurd by 1990s standards, maybe. Not so much anymore. Even with the ongoing chip shortage and other logistic shortfalls, everyone now has the opportunity to start cruising cyberspace like Weird Al and truly become the “king of the spreadsheets”. However, would it have even been possible to reach these lofty computing goals at the time of the parody’s release? Let’s check out both of these threads.

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Space Shuttle Model In A Hypersonic Wind Tunnel

Mach 20 In A Wind Tunnel: Yes, It’s Rocket Science

November 4, 2021 by 5 Comments

Hypersonic speeds are defined by those exceeding Mach 5, and lately there’s been a lot of buzz about unmanned hypersonic vehicles making test flights. Vehicles returning from orbital flight also travel at hypersonic speeds as they do their best to transition back to the terrestrial realm. Before anything leaves ground though, these machines are tested in wind tunnels. [Scott Manley]’s video “How Hypersonic Wind Tunnels Recreate Mach 20” (embedded below) does a wonderful job of explaining the engineering behind wind tunnels for testing hypersonic vehicles.

While the earliest wind tunnels such as that used by the Wright Brothers were powered by simple fans, it is not possible for any propeller to surpass subsonic speeds. This is evidenced by there not being any propeller driven aircraft that can exceed Mach 1. Since an aircraft can’t reach those speeds with a propeller, it follows that a wind tunnel cannot be driven by propellers, fans, or any such device, and exceed Mach 1 wind speed, either. So it begs the question: Just how do they do it?

You might think that the answer lays in Bernoulli’s law – but it does not. You might think it involves compressing the air into smaller and smaller tubes and pipes. It doesn’t. As [Scott Manley] so expertly explains in the video below the break, it has quite a lot in common with actual rocket science.

You may be interested to know that we’ve covered some DIY wind tunnel builds as well as a small desktop wind tunnel in the past. While not hypersonic, they’re exactly what you’d want to have if you’re an aerospace hacker of any kind.

Thanks [Zane Atkins] for the tip!

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Fake motivational plant squirts you in the wherever.

Focus Flower Motivates By Squirting Water In Your Face

November 4, 2021 by 4 Comments

When you need to get some tasks done and are short on attention, it’s hard to beat a timer. But whenever you do, it feels pretty darn good. The problem is that when you don’t finish in time, what’s the punishment? There are no consequences baked into the Pomodoro Technique other than good ol’ guilt. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a bit of negative reinforcement involved?

[Hardware Unknown]’s Focus Flower never needs watering, at least not in the normal horticultural way. You will have to fill a reservoir, because this flower provides liquid motivation. No, it’s not a spirit spritzer, though we suppose you could turn it into an avant-garde vodka fountain when the novelty of water wears off, making this Pomodoro with a twist into more of a Bloody Mary. It’s a natural next step, especially if you were already into the hot sauce idea.

Operation Focus Flower is simple: just push the easy button to start the task timer, and the Arduino Nano attached will begin a countdown. Push the button again when you’re done, but if you don’t do it before the countdown is over, the plant squirts you with a steady, skin-blasting stream of water from a solenoid-driven flosser tip. An air compressor nearby is required, which blows the minimalist vibe a bit, but you could always stow that part underneath your desk.

The Focus Flower sure looks to be effective at the whole negative reinforcement thing. And it doesn’t leave you totally clueless — there’s a ring of LEDs around the base that show how much time is left. Whenever you do successfully hit the button in time, it will say ‘that was easy’ in one of 12 languages, hence all the flags. Do not miss the totally free infomercial below.

Maybe you want a more friendly way to manage your time — we understand. Meet the Pomodachi productivity pet.

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Vintage Computers With A Real Turbo

November 3, 2021 by 42 Comments

In prior centuries, it was common practice to tie the operation of a program to a computer’s clock speed. As computers got faster and faster, the programs tied to that slower clock speed sometimes had trouble running. To patch the issue temporarily, some computers in the early 90s included a “TURBO” button which actually slowed the computer’s clock speed down in order to help older software run without breaking in often unpredictable ways. [Ted Fried] decided that he would turn this idea on its head, though, by essentially building a TURBO button into the hardware of old computers which would greatly increase the execution speed of these computers without causing software mayhem.

To accomplish this, he is running CPU emulators on Teensys (Teensies?), but they are configured to be a drop-in replacement for the physical CPU of several retro computers such as the Apple II, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 rather than an emulator for an entire system. It can be configured to run either in cycle-accurate mode, making it essentially identical to the computer’s original hardware, or it can be placed into an accelerated mode to take advantage of the Teensy 4.1’s 800 MHz processor, which is orders of magnitude faster than the original hardware. This allows (most of) the original hardware to still be used while running programs at wildly faster speeds without needing to worry about any programming hiccups due to the increased clock speed.

The video below demonstrates [Ted]’s creation running in an Apple II but he has several other cores for other retro computers. It’s certainly a unique way to squeeze more computing power out of these antique machines. Some Apple II computers had a 4 MHz clock which seems incredibly slow by modern standards, so the 800 MHz Teensy would have been considered wizardry by the standards of the time, but believe it or not, it’s actually necessary to go the other direction for some applications and slow this computer down to a 1 MHz crawl.

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More Software-Defined Radio Projects Using DragonOS

November 3, 2021 by 14 Comments

DragonOS, a Debian-based Linux distribution specifically packaged for software-defined radio functionality, roared onto the wavelengths during the beginnings of the various pandemic lockdowns last year. Since then [Aaron], the creator of the OS, has been busy adding features to the distribution as well as creating plenty of videos which show off its capabilities and also function as how-tos for people who might want to learn about software-defined radio. The latest is a video about using this software to detect radio signals in certain specified spectrums.

This build uses two  RTL-SDR devices paired with the DragonOS software suite to automatically detect active frequencies within a specified frequency range and that aslo exceed a threshold measured above the average noise floor. The video includes the setup of the software and its use in detecting these signals, but also includes setup of influxdb and Grafana which provide logging capabilities as well. Using this setup, multiple receivers either local or over the internet can then be configured to dump all the identified frequencies, powers, and time stamps into DragonOS.

[Aaron] has also been helping developers to build the SDR4space.lite application which includes GPS support, so he hopes that in a future video a user will be able to easily associate location to identified frequencies. Projects like these also serve as a reminder that getting into software-defined radio is as easy as buying a $10 USB radio receiver and configuring some free software to do anything that you can imagine like tracking ships and airplanes in real time.

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Hacking The Mekamon Robot To Add New Capabilities

November 3, 2021 by 6 Comments

The Mekamon from Reach Robotics is a neat thing, a robot controlled by a phone app that walks on four legs. [Wes Freeman] decided to hack the platform, giving it a sensor package and enabling some basic autonomous behaviours in the process.

[Wes] started out by using a packet sniffer to figure out the command system for controlling the Mekamon robot over Bluetooth. Then, he set about fitting a Raspberry Pi 3 on the ‘bot, along with a Pi Camera on a gimballed camera head.

Running OpenCV on the Raspberry Pi gives the Mekamon robot the ability to follow a colored ball placed in its field of vision. Later work involved upgrading the hardware to a Pi Compute Module 3, with its dual camera inputs allowing for the use of a stereo imaging setup.

All the parts simply ziptie on top of the original robot, with no permanent changes needed. It’s a neat way of hacking, by expanding the original capabilities without actually having to tamper within.

We’ve seen plenty of autonomous builds over the years, from farming robots to those designed to explore the urban environment. Video after the break.

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Building A Heavy-Duty Log Splitter, One Piece At A Time

November 3, 2021 by 9 Comments

With temperatures dropping in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the time of year when many people start processing firewood for the coming winter months. For the city folks, that means chopping a tree into logs, and then splitting those logs into something small enough to fit in your wood stove. You can do it all with hand tools, but if you’ve got big enough logs, a powered splitter is a worthy investment.

Unless of course you’re like [Workshop From Scratch], in which case you can craft a powerful splitter from random bits of steel you’ve got laying around your impeccably outfitted shop. Given the incredible forces some parts of the splitter will be exposed to, he really takes his time on this build to make sure everything is bulked up. Add in his legendary attention to detail, and you’ll be watching this one for awhile. Not that we’re complaining.

Fitting the adjustable blade.

Early on it seemed like [Workshop From Scratch] was putting together a fairly simple log splitter, which in the most basic form is nothing more complex than a hydraulic cylinder pushing a log against a triangular piece of metal. But then he starts layering on the special features, such as the small hydraulic cylinder that can raise and lower the splitter’s fearsome looking blade.

There’s also the ladder-like feeder mechanism, which prevents the user from having to lift the log onto the machine manually; just stop the log between the rungs, and let the hydraulics raise the ramp and send the log rolling towards the machine’s hungry maw.

In short, this splitter may be a DIY project, but it’s just as strong and well built as anything on the commercial market. In fact, it’s probably an improvement over what you’d be able to find a the big box retailer. Which shouldn’t come as surprise if you’ve seen some of his previous work.

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