China’s Moon Mission Was About More Than Rocks

December 14, 2020 by 67 Comments

If everything goes according to plan, China will soon become the third country behind the United States and the Soviet Union to successfully return a sample of lunar material. Their Chang’e 5 mission, which was designed to collect 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of soil and rock from the Moon’s surface, has so far gone off without a hitch. Assuming the returning spacecraft successfully renters the Earth’s atmosphere and lands safely on December 16th, China will officially be inducted into a very exclusive club of Moon explorers.

Of course, spaceflight is exceedingly difficult and atmospheric reentry is particularly challenging. Anything could happen in the next few days, so it would be premature to celebrate the Chang’e 5 mission as a complete success. But even if ground controllers lose contact with the vehicle on its return to Earth, or it burns up in the atmosphere, China will come away from this mission with a wealth of valuable experience that will guide its lunar program for years to come.

In fact, one could argue that was always the real goal of the mission. While there’s plenty of scientific knowledge and not an inconsequential amount of national pride to be gained from bringing a few pounds of Moon rocks back to Earth, it’s no secret that China has greater aspirations when it comes to our nearest celestial neighbor. Starting with the launch of the Chang’e 1 in 2007, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has progressed through several operational phases, each more technically challenging than the last. Chang’e 5 represents the third phase of the plan, with only the establishment of robotic research station to go before the country says they’ll proceed with a crewed landing in the 2030s.

Which helps explain why, even for a sample return from the Moon, Chang’e 5 is such an extremely complex mission. A close look at the hardware and techniques involved shows a mission profile considerably more difficult than was strictly necessary. The logical conclusion is that China intentionally took the long way around so they could use it as a dry run for the more challenging missions that still lay ahead.

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Join Us For The “Holiday With Hackaday And Tindie” Meet-Up

December 14, 2020 by 4 Comments

It’s a ritual in workplaces around the world this time of any other year but 2020: the office holiday party. Too much food, perhaps too much alcohol, and garish sweaters that you wouldn’t be caught dead in on any other occasion. Things are, of course, a tad different this year, which is why we’re putting our community’s party online with the Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up on Tuesday, December 15 at noon Pacific time!

Why should you come to this hangout? Because why not! This is going to be a loose, informal meet-up that will give us all a chance to get to know one another. We’ve got an amazing community here, and just putting faces to names can be really valuable. You’ll be able to connect with old friends and perhaps make new ones. It’s your chance to reach out and find someone to collaborate with, or perhaps just find an answer to a thorny problem you’ve been stuck on. Be sure to bring your latest projects to show off, and maybe even consider giving everyone a virtual tour of your shop. Ugly sweaters are optional, of course, and we don’t judge.

The Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up is being held on Remo. Those of you who joined the Friday night Bring-a-Hack session at Remoticon this year will no doubt remember the platform, which we got a lot of good feedback on. You’ll want to check browser compatibility ahead of time and reserve your spot, so head over to Remo and make it so. If you need help with timezone conversions, we’ve got you covered on that too.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at the Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up!

Save Your Original Xbox From A Corrosive Death

December 14, 2020 by 21 Comments

Fans of retro computers from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras will be well aware of the green death that eats these machines from the inside out. A common cause is leaking electrolytic capacitors, with RTC batteries being an even more vicious scourge when it comes to corrosion that destroys motherboards. Of course, time rolls on, and new generations of machines are now prone to this risk. [MattKC] has explored the issue on Microsoft’s original Xbox, built from 2001 to 2009.

Despite looking okay from above, the capacitor inside the Xbox had already started leaking underneath. Leaving this in the console would inevitably cause major damage.

The original Xbox does include a real-time clock, however, it doesn’t rely on a battery. Due to the RTC hardware being included in the bigger NVIDA MCPX X3 sound chip, the current draw on standby was too high to use a standard coin cell as a backup battery. Instead, a fancy high-value capacitor was used, allowing the clock to be maintained for a few hours away from AC power. The problem is that these capacitors were made during the Capacitor Plague in the early 2000s. Over time they leak and deposit corrosive material on the motherboard, which can easily kill the Xbox.

The solution? Removing the capacitor and cleaning off any goop that may have already been left on the board. The fastidious can replace the part, though the Xbox will work just fine without the capacitor in place; you’ll just have to reset the clock every time you unplug the console. [MattKC] also points out that this is a good time to inspect other caps on the board for harmful leakage.

We’ve seen [MattKC] dive into consoles before, burning his own PS1 modchip from sourcecode found online. Video after the break.

Edit: As noted by [Doge Microsystems], this scourage only effects pre-1.6 Xboxes; later models don’t suffer the same problem, and shouldn’t be modified in this way.

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Peeking Inside A VW Gearbox Reveals Die Casting Truths

December 14, 2020 by 70 Comments

Recently, I was offered a 1997 Volkswagen Golf for the low, low price of free — assuming I could haul it away, as it suffered from a thoroughly borked automatic transmission. Being incapable of saying no to such an opportunity, I set about trailering the poor convertible home and immediately tore into the mechanicals to see what was wrong.

Alas, I have thus far failed to resurrect the beast from Wolfsburg, but while I was wrist deep in transmission fluid, I spotted something that caught my eye. Come along for a look at the nitty-gritty of transmission manufacturing!

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15 Volts To 110,000 Volts

December 14, 2020 by 25 Comments

There’s something satisfying about creating high voltages. Sure, there are practical uses like neon signs or doing certain experiments, but be honest — you really just want to see some giant arcs lighting up your dark mad scientist lair. [Mircemk] has just the prescription for what ails you. Using a two-stage approach, he shows a simple setup that generates about 110KV from a pretty tame 15V supply.

From the 15V, there is a stage that uses a flyback transformer and a switch to generate a reasonably high voltage. The final stage is a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier that can produce quite a bit of voltage. You can see the impressive arcs in the video below.

The multiplier circuit found fame with experiments by Cockroft and Walton, obviously, but was actually originated in the early 1900s with a physicist named Greinacher. The circuit uses diodes as switches and charges a bank of capacitors in parallel. The discharge, however, puts the capacitors in series. Neglecting losses and loads, the output voltage is equal to the peak-to-peak input voltage times the number of stages present. Real-world considerations mean you won’t quite get that voltage out of it, but it can still provide a potent punch. Click through the break for a video of the circuit in action!

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Building A Tiny Finger Plane For Detailed Work

December 14, 2020 by 16 Comments

A plane is a tool familiar to all woodworkers, used to shape a workpiece by hand by shaving away material. Regular planes are two-handed tools available at all good hardware stores. For finer work, a finger plane can be useful, though harder to find. Thankfully, [Daniel] put together a video showing how to make your own.

[Daniel]’s build relies on stabilized wood, useful for its density and consistent quality, though other woods work too. A 6″ pen blank is enough to make a pair of matching finger planes. A block and two side panels are cut out from the material, with attention paid to making sure everything remains square for easy assembly. The parts are glued together with a block set at the desired cutting angle for the plane. With the assembly then tidied up on the bandsaw and sander, [Daniel] installs the cutting blade. This can be made from a larger standard plane blade, or a cutdown chisel can be pressed into service. The blade is held in place with a wooden wedge beneath a metal pin. The pin itself is crafted from an old drill bit, cut down to size.

It’s a useful tool for doing fine plane work, for which a full-size tool would be ungainly. We can imagine it proving particularly useful in producing accurate scale models in smaller sizes. If you’re big into woodworking, consider giving your tools a good sharpen on the cheap, too. Video after the break.

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Auto Tuning For A Vintage Stereo

December 13, 2020 by 8 Comments

In 1984 there weren’t many ways to listen to high-quality music, so an FM tuner was an essential part of any home hi-fi system. The Pioneer TX-950 picked up by [The Curious Lorenz] would have been someone’s pride and joy, with its then-cutting-edge microprocessor control, digital PLL tuning, and seven-segment displays. Astoundingly it doesn’t have an auto-tuning function though, so some work to implement the feature using an ATtiny85 was called for.

A modern FM tuner would be quite likely to use an all-in-one tuner chip using SDR technology under the hood, but this device from another era appears to be a very conventional analog tuner to which the PLL and microprocessor have been grafted. There are simple “Up” and “Down” buttons and a “Station tuned” light. One might imagine that given these the original processor could have done autotune. At least the original designers were kind enough to provide the ATtiny with the interfaces it needs. Pressing either button causes it to keep strobing its line until the “Station tuned” line goes high, at which point it stops. It’s an extremely simple yet effective upgrade, and since the ATtiny is so small it’s easily placed on top of the original PCB. The result is an ultra-modern tuner from 1984, that’s just that little bit more modern than it used to be.

If you don’t have a vintage FM radio, you can always build its modern equivalent.